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\begin{document}
\title{Freedom And Not Peace}
\date{March 4, 2006}
\author{Lightning on the Wave \and Assembled in \LaTeX \\ by Tyler Davis \\ \texttt{tydavis@gmail.com}}
\maketitle
\tableofcontents

% \textbf{Story:} Freedom And Not Peace\\
% \textbf{Storylink:} \url{https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2721625/1/}\\
% \textbf{Category:} Harry Potter\\
% \textbf{Genre:} Drama/Suspense\\
% \textbf{Author:} Lightning on the Wave\\
% \textbf{Authorlink:} \url{https://www.fanfiction.net/u/895946/}\\
% \textbf{Last updated:} 03/04/2006\\
% \textbf{Words:} 500864\\
% \textbf{Rating:} M\\
% \textbf{Status:} Complete\\
% \textbf{Content:} Chapter 1 to 86 of 86 chapters\\
% \textbf{Source:} FanFiction.net\\[2\baselineskip]\textbf{Summary:} AU of
% GoF, Slytherin!Harry. Training his brother, negotiating with former
% Death Eaters, juggling responsibility and duty\ldots{}Harry's life is
% running away with him, as he struggles to balance. COMPLETE

\chapter*{Word from the Author}

\textbf{Title}: {Freedom And Not Peace}.

\textbf{Summary:} AU of GoF, sequel to {Comes Out of Darkness Morn}.
Harry Potter's life is split between duty and freely chosen
responsibility, and as his dark dreams of Voldemort grow, it becomes a
desperate balancing act.

\textbf{Notes:} Fourth installment of this AU, the Sacrifices Arc.

I almost didn't think I would make it this far.

Summing up what's happened to this point would take at least two pages.
Suffice it to say that this won't make much sense if you haven't read
the three stories that come beforehand. If you have, then you'll know
what it means when I say that Harry has to deal with his brother,
reconcile with his parents, argue with goblins, do his best to balance
his blood family and his adopted family, and attempt to negotiate with
former Death Eaters and unaligned Dark wizards in order to pull in a
favorable result for the Light. And that's only the beginning of it.

\textbf{Disclaimer}: The recognizable characters, events, concepts, and
settings in the following story belong to J. K. Rowling, not to me. I am
making no money from this fanfic.

\textbf{Updates:} I archive on Fanfiction, Skyehawke, and my LJ, and
send notice of updates through my Yahoo!Group. The addresses of all of
them, and information about the Arc itself, can be found in my
Fanfiction profile.

\textbf{Warnings}: Language, violence, messed-up psychology, heavy
angst, \textbf{character death} later in this and the other stories,
\textbf{eventual severe gore}.

In addition, this is the first story in the arc where a slash romance
between Harry and Draco becomes a going concern. There is no explicit
sex, and the story is not primarily a romance because, well, it can't be
with so much other stuff happening, but if you can't stand to read a
story with slash in it, go away now. Additionally, since this \emph{is}
an epic, there will be other pairings, het and slash, and probably at
least one saffic (femmeslash) pairing, though they may not all show up
during {Freedom and Not Peace}. I'm not going to spoil them by saying
who they involve. I haven't made up my mind on everything myself yet, so
as to allow myself some freedom.

Sorry for the length of this introduction, but I thought it best to
stamp out all the warnings in advance.

Ready? Let's go, then.

\chapter{Lux Aeterna}\label{chapter-1-lux-aeterna}

``This is the holiest time,'' James whispered. ``This is the time of
longest Light.''

Harry's hands trembled as he clasped the little paper boat. He fought to
still them. He reminded himself that he had chosen to come here, and
that this ceremony was no different than the many pureblood rituals of
the Dark wizards he had learned when he was a child.

But that was a lie, and Harry was getting better at realizing when he
lied to himself. This \emph{was} different. The pureblood rituals had
never been something that he himself took part in during day-to-day life
with his family. They had been exercises that he learned for the sake of
winning his brother allies sometime in the future. This was a ritual of
the Light, one that his own grandparents had celebrated, and his father
as a child.

James looked almost like a child now, with his trousers rolled up above
his ankles, as he took the first step forward into the gray waters of
the North Sea, shivering at the waves' chill touch. The water shone like
stone, Harry thought. Even the foam curling in to the sweeping amber
sand of the Northumberland beach looked sharp, as though it were made of
broken glass.

``This is Midsummer morning,'' James went on, his voice soft and solemn,
``the moment when the sun shines in all its power, and magic can happen
with its rising.'' He placed the boat he himself held gently on the
water.

The first wave to come towards it seemed set to swamp it. It was such a
simple little thing, Harry thought, the sides made of folded parchment,
the mast a twig that James had broken from one of Lux Aeterna's yews,
the sail a bit of brightly-colored cloth that had come from what James
said was one of his childhood jumpers. James hadn't even waved a wand or
incanted a spell to protect it.

But, inexplicably, the wave shied away from the boat and swept
\emph{around} it instead of over it. The next one went under it, and
bore it up. Harry caught his breath. He couldn't feel the surge of magic
that he would have expected, even the oddly directionless force that he
associated with wandless magic, but there was something there, a faint
golden glow that limned the boat. It grew brighter as Harry watched, and
then the boat began to blaze like the sun. James let out a shaky breath.
Harry darted a glance at his father. He was smiling.

``We sail our ships,'' he whispered, ``to welcome in the sun, to salute
it, as we once sailed out of the sun on a Midsummer morning.''

Harry glanced at Connor, and found that his twin's eyes were wide.
Connor obviously didn't know what to think, either. Harry flashed him a
small smile, and then waded forward into the water and released his own
boat.

The sunlight curled around it, and sent it skidding forward, away from
the shore, following the path of James's boat. Harry watched as it
bobbed and skipped. He could feel the magic reaching out to him this
time, a purring warmth that slipped into his bones and took up residence
there, as if his stomach had turned into its own cat.

Connor's boat followed his, nodding its mast like a head as it slid
after the other two. Harry watched them until a shining gray wave took
the three shimmering craft from sight. He was barely aware that his
father had reached out and taken hold of his hand until he felt James
tug gently at him, urging them both back to shore.

Harry walked as if in a daze. He could feel the sunlight traveling with
him, lingering, exploring his bones with leisurely fingers. He had never
been conscious of how \emph{bright} everything in the world was. When he
turned his head, individual grains of sand flashed as if polished. The
birds darting overhead were too brilliant to look at. Harry exhaled a
little breath and put out a hand.

He would have sworn that a great warm tongue licked his palm before it
vanished.

James looked faintly uneasy as they reached shore again, but nodded
bracingly when Harry glanced at him. ``The sun is welcoming you, that's
all,'' he said. ``Potters have performed this ritual for hundreds of
years. This is just the summer and the sun and the light getting a good
look at you.''

``It tickles!'' Connor complained abruptly, and Harry saw that his eyes,
for once, weren't dulled with nightmares of Sirius's death or
Voldemort's capture and torture of him. He was grabbing at his jumper,
laughing and swatting, as if insects were biting him. ``I've never felt
the sun tickle me before!''

``You've never been here before,'' said James, his pensive frown passing
away, ``on this day, at this time.'' He grabbed Connor and ruffled his
hair. ``Dawn on Midsummer is special, like sunset. Aren't you glad I
dragged you out of bed?''

``Not if it was just to \emph{tickle} me!'' Connor squirmed out of his
father's grasp, and laughed again. ``I didn't know that this would
involve making everything so bright I couldn't see, and
\emph{tickling}!''

Harry sighed quietly in relief. He had been doing what he could to heal
his brother, to quell his trauma, to make him see that there was life
even after everything he had been through, but he hadn't achieved a
result this dramatic. Harry thought the wind and the light had as much
to do with that as his father did, though.

He glanced around again. The land around them was thick with birds and
spray and the noticeable wind and light, but empty of people. The beach
curved down to meet the sea like an extended hand. The sea roared in to
meet it meanwhile, flinging its waves a good distance up the sand before
trickling away between its fingers. The noise was constant, smooth,
reassuring, steady as a heartbeat. Harry found himself comforted to
think that he could die, and still the sea would go on washing up on the
sand.

``Harry?''

Harry looked up, blinking. Connor had run ahead towards the Portkey that
would take them back to Lux Aeterna, but James was walking at his side,
peering closely at his face.

``Didn't you enjoy the ritual?'' he asked.

Harry smiled. ``Of course I did. It was wonderful to meet Light magic,
in a way I haven't before. I didn't know that dances of any kind
survived among the Light wizards. I'm glad they do.''

``You looked so\ldots{}'' James fumbled for a word. Harry waited
patiently. They were new at this, all of them. It would do no good if he
hurried his father along, through the very pause that might be part of
the reason James was learning to trust him. ``So intent,'' his father
said at last.

``I was thinking of Connor,'' said Harry. ``He's much happier now than
he was when we left the school.''

James stopped, fidgeting from foot to foot. Harry stopped, too, gazing
into his face. He was somewhat startled to find that he didn't have to
crane his head back as far as he remembered. Of course, part of that
came from not being around James for months at a time, but part of it
was probably the growth spurt that James insisted he was finally
entering.

``You know,'' said James at last, every word a step on an eggshell,
``that you can think of yourself, too? You can talk to me about anything
that's bothering you? I'll help take care of Connor, Harry. I know you
can't stop completely. But I want you to have the chance to be taken
care of, too.'' He stared off into the distance. Harry wondered if he
was watching Connor. He hoped so. Death Eaters were unlikely to attack
here, but they were still outside Lux Aeterna's wards, and accidents
could happen. ``Especially since Snape can't visit you.''

Harry sighed and ran a hand through his hair. ``I knew that might
happen.'' Lux Aeterna's wards would accept Draco, who hadn't practiced
enough Dark magic to make a difference to them, but a combination of
Snape's Dark Mark, his magic, and James's dislike for him had made the
Potter linchpin reject the Potions Master. Harry had promised to meet
him at some point during the summer before they went back to Hogwarts,
but right now he was still struggling to fit back with his family and
learn new ways of being comfortable around them. And Connor still had at
least one nightmare every night. Harry didn't think he could leave.

``You don't sound upset,'' James ventured, and finally met his eyes
again. Harry was glad. It was easier to reassure people that he really
was fine when they did that.

``I'm not,'' said Harry, with a shrug. ``Like I said, I knew that might
happen.''

James was silent. He simply looked at Harry, and Harry let him look. His
father understood him better after those silent, locked gazes.

``Are you going to let Hedwig fly from here?'' James asked, when he'd
apparently done his fill of looking.

Harry started, and then flushed. In truth, with the ritual and then his
worry over Connor, he'd nearly forgotten that he'd brought his owl
along, and why. ``Yes,'' he murmured, and then hurried over to where the
snowy owl waited, preening her feathers on a boulder and looking at the
seabirds as though to say that she could outfly them all.

She perked up when Harry pulled a parchment from his pocket and bound it
carefully to her leg. He spent a moment stroking her feathers, gazing
into her golden eyes. Unlike the looks he shared with his father, his
brother, and sometimes, it seemed, everyone else, this was an
uncomplicated one.

``Hedwig,'' he whispered. ``Malfoy Manor, girl, to Lucius Malfoy. It's
his Midsummer gift.''

Hedwig hooted her understanding, and clambered onto his arm as Harry
extended it. Harry winced at the prickle of her claws, but spun and
launched her into the air, the way that one should launch an owl at this
point in the truce-dance.

Dazzling light spread around Hedwig as her wings caught the wind, her
feathers glinting like the foam. Harry watched her as she turned south,
towards Wiltshire, her pace precise and swift. She was out of sight in
seconds.

Harry sighed, hoping the circle of light was a good omen. He had chosen
his truce-gift carefully. It was the only one in the dance that he would
initiate, given that Lucius had started this out by courting \emph{him}.
He had chosen to send a list of his own dearest ambitions and hopes, and
what he perceived as his duties.

He wanted Lucius to understand what he would and would not do.

Draco would no doubt flush at the news. Snape would no doubt rail that
he had been stupid. Even Narcissa Malfoy might raise an eyebrow. Harry
was well-aware that she loved her husband, but did not entirely trust
him.

Harry hoped that Lucius would respond with a similar list.

\emph{It's no good hating and distrusting people until they've proven
beyond all doubt that they can be hated and distrusted,} he thought as
he accompanied his father back to the Portkey. \emph{If I'd done that in
the past, I would have rejected Draco just based on his being a Malfoy,
and Hawthorn and Adalrico just based on their once being Death Eaters,
and I would have lost the chance to reconcile with my father and
brother. It's better to ask, if you can, and see what they tell you.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry hesitated, one hand on the door handle. After all, James hadn't
\emph{forbidden} him to enter this room. He'd just said that it might
not be a good idea.

And Connor was peacefully asleep now, his nightmares calmed by a
Dreamless Sleep potion, and James was at least dozing, if not outright
asleep, and Remus was still recovering from the full moon. And Harry was
sick of dreaming of dark forests and a cold, high-pitched voice
murmuring constantly of the sun. And his scar didn't usually bleed when
he was awake.

Besides, he'd explored the rest of Lux Aeterna and found fascinating
things---mirrors that only reflected pureblood wizards, windows that
gazed into different worlds, rooms so perfectly proportioned that the
light flooding them formed constructs like cathedrals with walls of sun
and air. Nothing had harmed him. Harry couldn't see that this would be
much different.

He did blink as a pulse of warmth hit him, but the door yielded when he
pushed it, and nothing sprang out at him as he crossed the threshold.

Beyond the threshold, a wave of magic stopped him where he stood. Harry
had never felt anything like it. He gazed at the structure in front of
him, and understood why. No wizard, Light or Dark, had \emph{made} this
thing. It had come from\ldots{}somewhere else.

The Maze was a glittering, overlapping labyrinth of tunnels, though
Harry found it extremely hard to tell where one ended and another began,
the same way that he found it hard to distinguish the ending of one
sleeve when his jumper was sprawled on the floor. Light made it even
harder to pick them out, wavering over the edges and the curves like a
heat shimmer. Harry couldn't tell its color. Was it white, or silver, or
gold, or something else? Perhaps it was the blue-white hue at the hearts
of diamonds. Harry couldn't see the end of the Maze, but he could tell
it filled almost the whole of the enormous room.

This was the structure his father had entered to face his mistakes, to
learn what needed to be done for his family and his friends.

Harry felt the heat on his face, and could understand the why of that,
too. This was Light as honest as a blade. Touch it, and it would cut
you, but it would sear away all the impurities, too, and cut away the
bruised and bleeding flesh. What was left would be scoured clean.

Harry didn't enter it. He wasn't that great a fool. But he walked
carefully around the edge of the burning wards, and studied the Maze.

A few moments later, as the heat and the light focused and sharpened, he
became aware that it was watching him back.

Harry blinked, and lifted his chin. So far, everything he had met in Lux
Aeterna had not attacked him for the Dark magic that he had used in the
past; his Potter blood had protected him. He was becoming aware that
this might be the exception. He had imagined the Maze, but this was
beyond his imagining. Just being in the same room with the Maze made him
feel as if he were about to burst into a phoenix's cleansing flames.

A trill sounded above him, and Harry felt the Maze's attention shift,
then relax. After all, the bird that had just entered the room was a
creature of light. Fawkes, Dumbledore's phoenix who for some reason had
abandoned the Headmaster and come with Harry, settled on his shoulder
and rubbed his head against Harry's cheek.

Harry yawned. Sleep hadn't sounded at all appealing just a moment ago,
and now it did. He cast a suspicious glance at Fawkes. Fawkes blinked
one dark eye and sang a song of heat that blended into the warm rustle
of blankets and the pleasant drowse of half-wakefulness at the end.

Harry yawned again. ``I don't want to go to bed,'' he muttered, but he
was being childish and he knew it.

Fawkes crooned, and Harry's eyes almost fell shut. He shook his head
slowly. ``I might wake Connor up if I went back now\ldots{}''

The Maze abruptly reached out to him.

Harry froze, his heart banging hard and chasing away the spell of sleep
Fawkes had tried to weave. Harry felt the light move over him, piercing,
flickering, a few steps away from flame. Fawkes sat silent but
respectful under it. Harry found himself remembering every time he had
used Dark magic, every time he had hurt someone else even by accident,
and especially the Walpurgis Night celebration, where he had danced
wildly among the Dark wizards and gone through a portal of blackness
that was supposed to free him utterly.

The Light let him go. Harry blinked and pushed his glasses up his nose.
The Maze was still watching him, but now it was an indulgent kind of
watchfulness, the kind a mother might give to a favored child.

Harry winced, and wished that comparison had not occurred to him.

Behind him, the door opened. The burning wards around the Maze slowly
expanded, herding him towards it. Harry sighed and went.

``I'll just come back, you know,'' he told the Maze.

The barely discernible hum in his head had a tone of amusement to it
this time.

Harry huffed and went to bed. He hated it when people---well, that
included magical objects---treated him like a child. But he supposed
that if anything could get away with it, an enormously powerful magical
artifact not originally of Earth could.

This time, he didn't go to bed alone. Fawkes came along, the glow of his
feathers muted when Harry hissed at him that he might wake Connor up,
and perched on his pillow, and sang. Harry tried to resist, but his eyes
fell shut, and he drifted away into a sleep that was dreamless, if one
didn't count the image of himself walking along a path of white thorns
and glass roses, trying to find the one trail that would lead to freedom
for everybody.

Phoenix song accompanied him all the way.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

James's hands trembled as he unfolded the parchment. He didn't mind
admitting it. Of course, it also helped that he was alone in his study,
and there was no one else to see his hands shaking. This was a response
to the letter he had written Peter the day after he brought his boys
home to Lux Aeterna.

Peter hadn't responded for nearly four weeks; this was the last day of
June. James had been shamefully relieved. If his betrayed friend wanted
to cut all the ties between them, that would be easier.

But he hadn't, as evidenced by this letter.

James took a deep breath, lowered his eyes to the parchment, and read.

\emph{Dear James:}

\emph{I don't even know if I should call you that, since for the last
twelve years you have been anything but dear to me.}

James closed his eyes for a moment. If he listened to the boys playing
with their friends beyond the window of his study, which looked out over
Lux Aeterna's glittering sweep of front lawn, then he could pretend that
Peter's letter was not there, and all the words that he deserved were
not smacking him in the face.

\emph{You deserve them}, he reminded himself, in a firm tone of voice
that he thought he'd picked up from the Maze, and then looked back at
the letter.

\emph{And yet that is not true, since, after all, I did go to Azkaban
for your sake, and Sirius's, and Remus's. For twelve years, I stayed
there for you. I told myself that you loved me, that you'd just been
frightened, that you hadn't meant to betray me.}

\emph{But you did. It hurt, James, even knowing that when it came down
to a choice between me and your own family, of course you'd choose your
own family. You chose Sirius and Remus over me too, though, and that}
hurt.

James found it hard to breathe. But it was better, it had to be better,
than the pain he'd felt when he realized he'd been hiding from the truth
all these years.

\emph{I decided at last that I didn't have any reason to stay in Azkaban
any longer, no reason to honor a covenant with obviously false friends.
I broke my phoenix web's grip by shifting it to another target, and
focused on Harry. I promised myself that I'd protect him and keep him
from being a sacrifice like I have been.}

\emph{Dumbledore was wrong, James. Innocence isn't innocence when it's
ignorance. Just to keep the whole wizarding world innocent of war,
Dumbledore sacrificed minds and imbued them with a terrible knowledge.
At least he had my consent when he did it to me. He never got Harry's.}

\emph{That's what I'm going to ask for, James, as proof that you're
telling the truth. Be a good father to Harry. If I hear that he suffered
in your care, and you could have prevented the suffering, or you caused
it, then I will consider you an enemy from now until the end of my life.
I will slip in through any hole in your defenses that you can find. A
rat can cause plenty of trouble before he's caught, James, and even a
wizard is defenseless when he comes with enough friends. I know that
very well.}

\emph{If you can reassure me that you're going to be a good father to
Harry, contact me again. If you don't write back, I'll assume you're the
enemy.}

\emph{Peter}.

James carefully put the parchment down and sat back, staring at the
ceiling. On the whole, it hadn't been that bad, he thought, aware of the
numbness at the center of himself. He could do what Peter had suggested.
He would write back. He certainly intended to be a good father to Harry.
And, in a way, it was good that he had this threat at his back, so he
wouldn't ever be tempted to slip and falter.

He just hadn't expected a letter like this from Peter. There had been
bitterness in it, yes, but also a savage strength that James had never
seen when they were students in Hogwarts together. Twelve years in
Azkaban had changed him.

\emph{Or it was always there, and I just never took the care to see it.}

And now he had the visual of gray rats swarming him in his head. He knew
that Peter had a special connection with rats, could summon them and
speak with them. He could certainly call enough to take down someone
else, and from the tone in his words, he wouldn't hesitate.

James stood up and wandered to the window, looking out over the vast
lawn.

Ron Weasley and Connor were swooping about on their brooms, chasing the
Quaffle that hovered and darted in front of them. Their laughter was
audible from here. James hadn't minded at all when they asked him to
Transfigure the lawn into a Quidditch pitch. It was simple magic, if
strong, and it kept Connor satisfied. Connor needed time and healing,
still, but his wants, as opposed to his needs, were fairly easy to tend
to.

Harry\ldots{}was a different matter.

James had to look around the lawn a few times before he could spot his
elder son. Harry sat with Draco Malfoy in the shade of one of the yews
at the edge of the grass. He was speaking with him, far too quietly to
be heard from here. James narrowed his eyes. They didn't appear to be
playing a game.

His gaze flitted back and forth from the flying pair to the sitting
pair, and he shook his head.

He supposed he could dismiss the differences between the two friendships
as products of the differences between his sons, or the boys they had
befriended, or Light and Dark pureblooded wizards, or Gryffindors and
Slytherins. But he still didn't know if that would produce so profound a
gap. Connor and Ron were much the way he remembered himself and Sirius
being---loud, strong as sunlight, boisterous as young lions, interested
in Quidditch more than pranks but otherwise comparable.

Harry and Draco were so much quieter that it was unnerving. They did fly
and play Quidditch together, and practice dueling spells together, and
explore Lux Aeterna and commented on the artifacts together. (James had
had to warn them away from several, including his great-grandfather's
portrait, which had tried to hex Draco on learning he was a Malfoy). But
they did it with an incredible intensity, as though each moment would
never come again, and Draco, at least, gave James a poisonous glare
whenever they were interrupted, quite unlike the usual sulky protest of
a child told he had to go home now. Harry would become more reserved
instantly when he noticed his father watching them, but if he didn't
notice, he smiled and laughed in a way that James had never seen or
heard when Harry lived with them in Godric's Hollow.

James couldn't understand it, and that agitated him, because he thought
it meant he couldn't understand his son.

The door of the study opened, and James turned and smiled at Remus.
``Feeling better?'' he asked.

Remus nodded and covered his mouth with one hand to hide a yawn. ``Don't
know what came over me,'' he said. ``Stress, I suppose, or the
combination of it and the Wolfsbane Potion.''

James nodded. Remus had been unable to attend the Midsummer morning
ritual with them because of the full moon, but even after it had passed,
he had been more tired than usual, and spent long hours sleeping or
wandering quietly by himself in the corners of Lux Aeterna. James didn't
know---

\emph{Oh. Of course I do.}

James winced. ``Remus,'' he said quietly, ``you do know that you can
talk to me about Sirius.''

Remus blinked at him.

``I've been remiss not to talk to you about it before this,'' said
James.

``I didn't want to intrude,'' said Remus, turning to admire a portrait
on the wall, though his tense shoulders said he wasn't admiring it at
all. ``I---you've been so busy with your boys, James, and Merlin knows
they need every bit of attention that you can give them---''

``I still should have talked to you,'' said James. ``I'm an idiot,
Remus.'' He moved carefully up to stand beside his friend, and wasn't
surprised that the woman in the portrait, his great-aunt Mafalda, bore a
strong resemblance to Sirius. The pureblood families had intermarried
many times in the past, and there had been a time when the Blacks were
considered prestigious allies, without the taint of insanity and Dark
magic that had overcome the past few generations. Mafalda was peering
hard at Remus now, as though trying to decide what to say to cheer him
up. James knew how she felt. ``You miss him, don't you?''

``Every damn day,'' said Remus softly. ``He was---I'm still so angry at
him, for not just \emph{telling} us, the imbecile, that he had the Dark
Lord in his head, and then I hate myself for being angry at him, and
then I remember the pranks he used to pull and want to laugh, and then
I'm angry at him again for making me feel so many contradictory
emotions, and then I remember the way he died and want to scream.'' He
lowered his head, his breathing careful and paced. James recognized the
patterns. Remus had learned them while he was still a child, to control
the wolf who thought his pain a grand game.

``I know,'' James whispered. In truth, he didn't feel much better, but
he had simply been letting his grief for Sirius overwhelm him when he
was alone at night, and sure that Connor and Harry didn't need anything
from him right then. He hesitated for a long moment, then told himself,
\emph{Looking stupid be damned,} and pulled Remus into a rough hug. ``I
miss him every damn day, too. And the way he died is \emph{infuriating.}
The next time I see him, I'm going to kick his arse.''

Remus laughed hard for a moment, and then tears spilled into his voice,
though he didn't let them fall. James moved him over until they sat in
front of the window, and positioned himself between Remus and the door.

``Now,'' he said, ``tell me. Just tell me. Anything that you want to
say.''

Remus drew a deep breath and started talking. James found it easy to
give Remus his full attention. He could rely on Harry to guard Connor,
and Draco to guard Harry.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``No.'' Harry's voice was endlessly patient, Draco thought, even in a
situation like this, where the person he was being patient at didn't
deserve the favor. ``You didn't flick your wrist hard enough. Like this.
\emph{Protego!}''

The Shield Charm snapped up in front of Harry. Draco backed away a step,
though in truth that still left him close to Harry. The spell was
instant, effective, and very, very strong. The wild crackle of magic
made Draco's hair stand on end, and seemed to bounce from point to point
in the wide room, constantly illuminated by crossing beams of sunlight
from the enormous windows, that James had given the boys to practice in.

Draco didn't mind. That power smelled like roses, where once it had
pained him. He loved to watch Harry practicing magic, even when, as now,
he had to use his wand so that someone else could imitate him.

He just wished that Harry didn't have to be teaching his brother.

Connor Potter stood on the other side of the room, watching Harry with a
frown of concentration. He held his wand out in front of him and said,
without much conviction, ``\emph{Protego.}''

The wrist flick was still wrong, Draco saw in exasperation, and the
Shield Charm failed to materialize. Connor scowled. ``I'll never be able
to do it,'' he declared.

``Of course you will.'' Harry gave his brother a smile that made Draco
feel sick. Harry was very far from the blind idiot he'd been where
Connor was concerned a year ago, but he still had too much of himself
tied up in the prat, Draco thought. He should pay more attention to
those who were really concerned with him, like Draco, and should
certainly not calmly insist on practicing with his brother when Draco
was there, just because it was part of his daily routine.

``Do you really think so?'' Connor glanced up, searching out Harry's
eyes for reassurance. Draco scowled and folded his arms. Connor had just
turned from asking Sirius for protection to asking Harry. And Harry gave
it, and gave it---poured more and more of himself down the endless dry
well that was Connor Potter. Draco had to struggle to retain his
composed mask when he thought of it.

``Of course I do,'' said Harry, his voice low and soothing. ``A powerful
wizard is nothing without will, Connor. He can practice and practice,
and not rouse the tiniest spark from his wand if he doesn't really
\emph{want} to. Or he can cast the most dazzling spells, and none of
them will be what he really intends, because he doesn't \emph{know} what
he really intends. You're faltering now because of a lack of will, but
you don't have to. You know what's at stake. You know that we have to do
this.''

Connor shivered, then raised his head and nodded. Draco blinked. This
wasn't the first time Harry had said something like that, but it was the
first time the words had worked so complete a transformation.

``I remember the Shrieking Shack,'' Connor whispered.

That was another thing that drove Draco mad. Harry had told him what
happened in the Shack, but it wasn't the same as having been there. That
was obvious every time the twins traded glances. They shared some
special depth of experience that Draco didn't. Connor had access to part
of Harry that he didn't.

Harry glanced back at him abruptly. ``Are you all right, Draco?''

Draco blinked, realizing he'd almost let his own magic get out of
control, and shook his head. ``Fine.''

Harry studied him for a moment more, then nodded and turned back to
Connor. ``Like this,'' he said, voice strong and confident.
``\emph{Protego!}''

Connor echoed him, his voice as self-willed, and this time gave the
right wrist flick

A thin shield encased him. Harry laughed aloud. ``Excellent, Connor!
You'll have to work on making it stronger, still, but you've got the
will, now, and you know what you need to do. I think even this shield
will stand up to hexes.'' He gestured carefully with his wand. Draco
knew Harry had to hold himself back as if on chains in situations like
this. He was so much more used to using wandless, raw, wild magic.
``\emph{Petrificus Totalus!}''

The hex shot towards Connor and bounced off his shield. Connor's smile
widened, and he broke into a spontaneous jig. Harry laughed again.

``Now that you can do it, we'll start working on building the shield
stronger,'' he promised his brother, ``and other defensive spells.''

Connor grinned at him. ``Tomorrow?'' he asked, patting his stomach.
``I'm starving.''

Harry nodded. ``I'll let you go---for today,'' he said, in a mock
threatening tone, and Connor laughed in turn. ``It must be near dinner,
anyway. But we'll work on this tomorrow, and every day until you can do
it perfectly.''

Connor nodded. ``I know,'' he said, and bounced off and through the
door.

Harry turned to Draco the moment he was gone. ``He \emph{is} getting
better,'' he said.

Draco lifted his chin. ``You don't know that I was about to say anything
about that.''

``Yes,'' Harry pointed out, ``I do.''

Draco sighed. ``\emph{Fine}, Harry. But I want to know---when are you
going to tell him that you're holding back on him?''

Harry's eyes slid away from his. Draco grasped his chin and tilted his
face back, the way he had in the hospital wing when Harry had tried to
deny that Draco loved him.

``You are,'' said Draco gently. If he played his cards right, he might
be able to win Harry free of his commitment to teaching his brother.
Surely James Potter could do it. He should. Connor was his child.
``You're too powerful for these kinds of games. You know it. You can
demonstrate to him how to cast spells, but you don't make a good
opponent for a duel. You could destroy him at any time, and block any
spell he casts, and you don't want to hurt him anyway. He'll only
improve to a certain point, and then he'll start thinking that he's much
better-prepared than he really is. Get someone else to train him. Your
father, maybe, or Professor Lupin. They're nearer his match in power.''

``I said that I would teach him,'' Harry whispered. ``I said that even
at Hogwarts, and it didn't work very well there. I need to make up for
that. And there're still plenty of things I can teach him that don't
rely on magic. Pureblood rituals, history, etiquette,
leadership\ldots{}''

``Harry.'' Draco decided that he might as well give Harry the full
message that his parents had communicated to him before he left the
Manor to visit Lux Aeterna. He hadn't wanted to, thinking the words too
harsh for Harry's current worldview, but Harry needed to hear them.
``You can teach him those things, yes, but he doesn't need them nearly
as much as the magic. If Voldemort comes back and Connor's the one to
defeat him, fine.'' Draco couldn't keep the skepticism out of his voice.
He truly didn't think that the Dark Lord was going to fall at Connor's
hand, ambiguous prophecy or not. Harry was so much his brother's better
that it was impossible to conceive of. ``But that doesn't mean he's going
to be a leader. \emph{You} are. \emph{You} have to be. You know that
there are wizards keeping an eye on you for your power, and they'll be
looking for signs of your true intentions soon. That's what my mother
was doing as Starborn, making sure that there are some wizards
cautiously sympathetic to the possibility of a third side, not
Voldemort's or Dumbledore's. She can only do that because you're---well,
you. And sooner or later, you'll have to become the leader of that third
side. My parents are willing to follow you if you become that leader,
you know.''

That last fact had impressed Draco the most. He didn't know what
Midsummer gift Harry had sent to his father, but he did know that Lucius
had been stunned and shaken for a day afterward, and then gravely
thoughtful. And his mother, his mother who had never bowed her head to
Voldemort, never got her arm branded with the Dark Mark, had smiled when
Draco asked her about Harry and said, ``He won't be a Lord, dear. He
will be something much greater than that. And he shall have my loyalty
until the day he shows that he can't become that person anymore. I don't
expect that day to come.''

``I don't want to give anyone orders.''

Draco blinked, and came back from his dreams of the future to find the
Harry of the now facing him, his arms folded and his eyes hard and his
face shut.

``I don't want to compel anyone,'' said Harry. ``And I don't want to
order anyone around, either. If I can ask them to do things, fine. But I
won't command them, Draco. I \emph{won't}.''

``You're not going to be a Lord,'' Draco tried.

``I don't care.'' Harry stepped away from him, and Draco was almost
instantly irritated, as he always was when Harry got so far away from
him. He tried to calm down, not let it show in his face. ``They would
still expect me to tell them what to do, wouldn't they?''

Reluctantly, Draco nodded. His mother had made that point to him. She
had done what she had done so far to make the world a safer place for
her son and to fulfill a debt she owed to Harry, but sooner or later she
would come to a place where only Harry's power, backed by wisdom, could
safely guide her. She would look to him then, and whatever name Harry
gave what he told her, advice or commands or something else, she would
still be \emph{obeying.}

``I don't want to,'' said Harry. ``I've been a slave. I would never wish
that fate on anyone else.''

``If they choose it, they're not slaves,'' said Draco. ``Merlin, you're
\emph{frustrating.}''

Harry shook his head. ``I prefer to make bargains and debts and
sacrifices, Draco. I understand those. As long as I can be of use to
your family, as long as I can give something in return for any aid I
get, then I'm happy enough. But don't ask me to become some kind of---''
He waved his hands, obviously searching for the right word.
``\emph{General},'' he spat at last, and strode towards the door.

``Harry,'' Draco whispered.

Harry heard it, and stopped, though he didn't look at him.

``There might be times when the bargains have to be very general, or you
can't reach someone to ask their opinion,'' said Draco. ``You've studied
war. You \emph{know} that. Are you really going to refuse to lead just
because you might hurt someone's feelings, or make them feel briefly
like a slave?''

Harry looked back over his shoulder. ``I told you about being
\emph{vates.}''

Draco nodded, bewildered.

``I don't see how I could be both the kind of leader that your parents
want me to be and \emph{vates,}'' said Harry. ``Not when one is about
commanding, sometimes without thought, and the other is about knowing
myself so deeply that I'll be instantly aware of when I'm giving a
command, and hammered by disgust for doing it. The magical creatures
have been hurt enough by their bindings, Draco. I can't let myself get
used to putting bindings on wizards. I'll rely on the pureblood rituals,
which someone won't use unless they have full knowledge of what it
entails, and bargains. If I can't return aid for aid, equal help for
equal help, then I won't make the bargain.''

Draco paused. What he had to say next sounded foolish and naïve, but he
needed to say it.

``I think you can be both, Harry,'' he said. ``If anyone can, it's
you.''

Harry blinked, obviously startled, then gave him a wry grin. ``It's nice
that you have such faith in me, Draco, but I think I'll probably have to
choose, and I choose to be \emph{vates.} I'll leave free choice open to
the wizards, too, though they don't need as many nets removed. Just the
nets that make them so blind and stubborn,'' he added, in an undertone.

``But what if someone chooses to obey you?'' Draco asked. ``Would you
really deny that decision and force your own will over that person's
will?''

He hated the way the question made Harry's smile vanish, but they needed
to consider this. \emph{Harry} needed to consider this, at least. Draco
watched him struggle with discomfort squirming in his gut. He wished he
could hug Harry and say he understood, but he didn't. He knew where he
stood, where he would always stand.

Harry was the one who needed to make the choice.

``I don't know,'' said Harry at last, in a subdued tone. ``I guess
not.''

Draco knew when to back off. The scent of roses in the room was nearly
overpowering, as Harry's magic reacted to his upset. He smiled. It
wasn't hard to do, now that the prat was gone. ``Well, you don't need to
choose right now. Do you want to go back and explore that secret passage
in the attic?''

Harry perked up immediately. ``Yes!'' He opened the door that led out of
the room and glanced around a few times. ``But we'll have to be
careful,'' he whispered. ``Dad told me there was a ward on that door for
a reason.''

Draco blinked. He didn't remember a ward. ``What ward?''

Harry swallowed. ``I, uh, kind of destroyed it because it wouldn't let
us in,'' he admitted. ``But I'm sure that there's nothing there that
will hurt us.''

``Of course not,'' Draco said, reminding himself to be on guard, just in
case.

Harry gave him a wild smile and dashed out of the room, heading for the
attic---quietly.

\emph{Everything is so hard,} Draco complained to himself, as he
followed Harry through the sunlight of Lux Aeterna. \emph{I wish it
wasn't this hard. But at least I'm here, and I can make sure that he
doesn't overtax himself, or ignore important decisions, or make stupid
ones. And that's enough.}

\emph{And if it's not enough, I'll} make \emph{it be enough.}

\chapter{Interlude: A Flurry of Letters}\label{chapter-2-interlude-a-flurry-of-letters}

\noindent \emph{June 30th, 1994}

\noindent \emph{Dear Peter:}

I assure you that I intend to take good care of Harry. I don't know if
you want me to swear an oath, since the last ones I swore were hardly
kept. But I will, if you wish me to. Simply name the terms: by Merlin,
by magic, or anything else.

Harry is healing, I think. He's thrown himself into teaching his
brother. I've tried to get him to slow down and relax when I think he
needs it. He doesn't take to that very well. The more I watch him, the
more I realize my son has never had a true parent. In some ways, he's
learned to compensate on his own. In others, he hasn't, or he's missing
the presence of his guardian. His dislike of `restrictions' such as
eating properly and going to bed early makes me think that he's still
not learned to care for himself.

I've asked Harry what he wants. That sometimes does me good, but not
often. What Harry says he wants is time with his brother, and honesty
from me, and for Draco Malfoy to visit him. Nothing else.

If you have any advice that you can give me, Peter, I'd be grateful. You
saw more of him this year than I did. And it's not just your threat
driving me, before you make that insinuation. I really do want to be a
better father to my sons. Nothing else is more important to me right
now.

\noindent \emph{James.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\noindent \emph{July 1st, 1994}

\noindent \emph{Lily:}

I don't really know what to say to you, so I'll put my words on the
parchment and hope that you can make them out. You always used to be
good at that, back at Hogwarts. I'm wondering how much of the woman I
knew after Hogwarts was real and how much an illusion, so I'll go back
to what I knew was true.

Do you want to see our sons again for any other purpose than using them
in the war? That's the question I need an answer to before I can let you
see Connor again. The other decision isn't yours, but Harry's.

I've asked Connor. He went big-eyed and quiet, and then admitted that he
misses you, but he's afraid of what would happen if he saw you again- if
you would try to control him or tell him that he couldn't have his own
life or see Harry again until Harry was properly under control.

Maybe that's the second question I want an answer to. If you do want to
see our sons again for any other purpose than just making them
sacrifices, then what would you say to them? You can write it out. I
can't promise to show it to them.

And yes, before you can ask, I love you still. That doesn't mean I can
bring the boys back to you yet. I {can't}.

\noindent \emph{James.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\noindent \emph{July 1st, 1994}

\noindent \emph{Dear Professor Snape:}

I hope you're well, sir. I've investigated the possibilities of your
coming through to Lux Aeterna by Floo and Portkey, and I'm afraid that
the wards block them both. Lux Aeterna is entirely sealed off to the
world for some people, and entirely open to others. James says that he
can't lower one set of wards, and he certainly can't change his dislike
of you when he doesn't know you very well at all.

Could you perhaps write to him, sir? That might help ease the lowering
of the barriers, and permit you to come to Lux Aeterna in time.

I'm very well. Connor is improving in leaps and bounds. Lux Aeterna is
fascinating---not as fascinating as Dark magic or Potions, of course,
but it has many treasures, and hidden corners I didn't know existed.
I've met my grandparents and great-aunts and other relatives through
portraits. I've learned that the Maze James was in compelled him to
honesty, so I trust his intentions more now. I've celebrated Midsummer
by launching boats into the dawn from a beach in Northumberland. I'm
slowly starting to feel at home here. It isn't a feeling I've felt very
often before, so it took me some time to analyze it. Of course, Draco
claims that I felt at home at Malfoy Manor, but I don't know. I was so
tense the first time I was there, for Christmas, and then I was largely
broken last summer, and the people around me were more important than
the place.

Please don't tell Draco I said that, sir.

I've read the books you sent me, and I had a few questions. Is it really
true that Calming Potions can't be improved? Why? The book just made a
flat statement about it, which I don't think very wise. It seems as
though the addition of a few violet petals should not only make them
last longer, but also taste better. And I was thinking that perhaps a
few more violet petals in the Wolfsbane Potion wouldn't go amiss,
either.

I was wondering whether I couldn't make a potion that would mimic the
effects of the Disillusionment Charm. Oh, I know that I'm very far from
being able to make a successful potion of my own, but the theory is
sound, I think, sir. Can you take a look at my list of notes on this
other parchment and tell me what I should do to brew it?

Why are Beetle's Eye Potions orange?

I promise, sir, that I will arrange to visit you before we come back to
Hogwarts. Perhaps at Diagon Alley?

\noindent \emph{Harry.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\noindent \emph{July 3rd, 1994}

\noindent \emph{Dear Harry:}

Do not think it escaped my notice that you said nothing in your most
recent letter about your nightmares, which I know that you are still
having, as you also made no comment about the vial of Dreamless Sleep
Potion I sent you not being needed. Nightmares like yours are a
{serious} matter, Harry. If I find out that you have been having them
still and not reporting them to me, you will be in Occlumency training
for the entirety of this next year.

How frequent are your nightmares? How long do they last? How many do you
have a night? What common images occur in them?

I am glad that you are feeling at home in Lux Aeterna. However, never
forget that James has been weak before. I do {not} trust him. If he
makes a single motion that you interpret as threatening you, contact me
at once. The second owl I will send comes with books on wards. Even old
houses such as that Potter wreck often have unsuspected weaknesses in
the wards. I wish you to know what they are, both for reasons of your
own safety and so you will know what you must attack if I ever need to
come through.

I trust that Mr. Malfoy is making you rest and spend some time on
yourself as well as your brother. I will write him, and if I find this
is not the case, you {will} meet me in Diagon Alley next week, so that I
can assess your condition.

To answer your questions:

Calming Potions cannot be improved by the addition of violet petals, or
indeed in any other way, because their base is stagnant. That is what
makes them work, but it also means they simply absorb the extra
ingredients without any effect. There have been numerous experiments to
improve them over the last twenty years. Nothing has ever worked. There
are already violet petals in the Wolfsbane Potion. Why do you feel the
need to add more? Has the wolf been threatening you?

Your notes on your Disillusionment Potion still lack answers to several
basic questions. What mixture of demiguise hair and liondragon scales
would possibly be stable enough to bear the addition of yet more
ingredients? What would you do to protect yourself from the explosion of
fumes that would follow your seventh step? How would you prevent the
potion from becoming inert when you had added the lacewings' bodies?

If I find that you have been trying to brew this potion on your own, I
will not wait for any meeting in Diagon Alley. You will come back to
Hogwarts with me for the summer, and you will have detention from then
until next summer, as you obviously cannot be trusted with the safety of
yourself and others.

Beetle's Eye Potions are orange from the addition of the tiger's-eye
stone, Harry. You should have known that.

Be happy.

\noindent \emph{Professor Severus Snape.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\noindent \emph{July 3rd, 1994}

\noindent \emph{Dear Draco:}

I know that you have been visiting Harry regularly at Lux Aeterna. I
would like you to give me a description of his condition, in particular
focusing on his nightmares, his eating habits, and how much time and
attention he spends on his twin.

\emph{Professor Severus Snape.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{July 4th, 1994}

\emph{Dear Professor Snape:}

Harry is happy, though I think it's thanks to me and not that miserable
father and brother of his. (Professor Lupin helps, sometimes, but Harry
doesn't spend that much time with him). He laughs and smiles when I see
him. He'll explore Lux Aeterna and fly with me as readily as he'll talk
with me about history or the pureblood customs or the war that's coming.
I think he's finally learning that he can say {anything} to me, and it
doesn't matter; I won't judge him or turn my back on him for it.

He seems to be sleeping relatively well, though he won't talk about his
nightmares (all right, then, there's still one thing he won't talk with
me about). He eats well. He's not thin or starving or anything like
that.

He still spends far, far too much time on his twin. He trains Connor in
dueling spells every day, at the same time, whether or not I'm there.
Sometimes I visit, and he's just sitting and listening to the prat
babble on about Sirius Black and nodding, as though Harry were just a
listening ear and not an equal sufferer. I've tried to talk to Harry
about that. He shrugs, and says that he's done a lot of his mourning,
and the best way for him to heal is to listen to other people talk about
it. He drives me {mad}.

I think the most disturbing thing is that Harry still doesn't have any
clue about the impact his magic is having on the wizarding world. He
thinks he can get away with, I don't know, just tossing power at people
sometimes, and they'll nod and give him the aid he asks for, and then
that's the end of it, a bargain for a bargain. I've talked to him about
it several times, and now I understand. It's a combination of things. He
doesn't want to be a Lord like Dumbledore, and asking someone else to do
something without giving something immediate in return, or swearing an
oath back to them, strikes him as Dumbledore-ish. He doesn't feel as
much awe of his magic as we do, because, of course, he's living in the
middle of it, and doesn't know just how much joy it causes for other
people. And he {still} has trouble conceiving of himself in any
important role that draws other people's attention, as opposed to some
shadowy fighter whom no one really knows exists. That's his mother's
training, I'll bet.

But it doesn't matter. He's still Slytherin, and I'll still visit him
every other day, and I'm going to make sure that he doesn't suffer for
lack of Slytherin company. I'll take good care of him, sir, for his sake
and for both of ours.

\emph{Your gracious student,}

\emph{Draco Malfoy.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{July 4th, 1994}

\emph{Potter:}

Your son thinks I ought to write to you, in the interests of lowering
our enmity. I am unconvinced that this is the best course of action. So
long as I loathe you, I cannot enter Lux Aeterna, but the boy will also
have a protector who is looking out for his best interests, instead of
your own.

Nevertheless, Harry asked me to contact you, and I have done so.

\emph{Professor Severus Snape}

\emph{Potions Master of Hogwarts.}

\emph{Head of Slytherin House.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{July 6th, 1994}

\emph{Snape:}

Loathing me is not the best course of action. Neither is loathing you, I
admit. For example, if you were here, perhaps you would be able to tell
me why an explosion has just destroyed the anteroom that I'd let Harry
set up as a Potions lab. He's fine, but the anteroom is completely
covered in orange slime.

\emph{James Potter,}

\emph{Master of Lux Aeterna.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{July 7th, 1994}

\emph{Potter:}

Harry added other ingredients to a mixture of demiguise hair and
liondragon scales. Let me through the wards. I told the boy I would
punish him if he attempted to make this potion, and I have the right to
do so, as his {legal} guardian.

\emph{Snape.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{July 8th, 1994}

\emph{Snape:}

You don't get it, do you? I can't just lower the wards like that. They
depend on my loathing of you, and that is quite intact, thank you.

Harry has long since been punished. You forget that, while you're
writing letters from Hogwarts, I'm in the same house with him. He has
apologized, though he did say specifically that he was not attempting to
use demiguise hair and liondragon scales, but some other mixture of
ingredients. I've forbidden him to work on potions for a week, and he
meekly accepted that.

Speaking of which, I found a vial of Dreamless Sleep Potion in his
bedroom, one that Connor hasn't been using. I'll thank you to stop
sending Potions to my son which I haven't approved.

\emph{James Potter.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{July 9th, 1994}

\emph{Potter:}

You are a fool. Did you even check his lab for remnants of demiguise
hair and liondragon scales? Or did you simply accept his word? Have you
checked on the lab since you demanded that he stop working? Harry is a
Slytherin, Potter. He is quite capable of agreeing on the surface, and
pursuing something that he {really} wants to do under it.

I have sent the Dreamless Sleep Potion to Harry because he has been
suffering from nightmares, quite savage ones, from the brief
descriptions he sent me at the beginning of summer---nightmares that
make his {scar bleed.} I trust that even {you} can grasp the importance
of that. If he has been using it, then he has managed to escape into
peace for a time, and I hope that, as the man who denied peace to him
for such a large part of his childhood, you will not begrudge him this.

You may send another letter, but I shall not answer it. It is obvious
that you are still an acrimonious {child} who cannot be trusted to look
after children. I shall find some way to remove Harry from your care.

\emph{Professor Severus Snape.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{July 10th, 1994}

\emph{Harry:}

It has occurred to me that while I cannot come to you, you might easily
come to me. If you were to leave Lux Aeterna's wards and give me details
of a point outside of them, I could easily Apparate to you. Then you
could spend the rest of your summer the way it should be spent, with
Slytherin companions who do not depend on you to train them and make
allowances for them.

\emph{Professor Severus Snape.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{July 11th, 1994}

\emph{Snape:}

You {can't} take Harry away from me, not if he doesn't want to go. And
I've investigated the lab, thank you, and found no trace of either
demiguise hair or liondragon scales, and no sign that Harry's been
working in it this past week.

\emph{James Potter.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{July 13th, 1994}

\emph{Dear Professor Snape:}

I'm sorry, sir. I don't think leaving the wards would be a good idea.
There are still Death Eaters abroad, and one of them might manage to
trace me if I leave the wards for long. I'm told that my magic is rather
distinctive.

Besides, there is still the same problem there always was if I am to
spend the summer with you. You will not accept Connor, and my brother
has to come with me. I'm just making progress in training him, and
helping him to recover from the loss of Sirius. I'm not going to abandon
him half-healed just because I might, possibly, have made a mistake with
a potion, which was {not} the Disillusionment Potion, but a different
one.

Thank you, sir, for your solicitude. My father is planning to bring us
to Diagon Alley at the end of August; I don't know the exact day yet.
But when I do, I'll write to you, and we can certainly plan to meet.

\emph{Harry Potter.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{July 15th, 1994}

\emph{Snape:}

Damn it, answer me, you bastard!

\emph{James Potter.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{July 17th, 1994}

\emph{Harry:}

It seems that, as you are intent on thinking the best of those with you,
and that they need more healing than, in fact, they do, another form of
proof is needed. Enclosed please find the letters that your father has
sent me in the past few weeks. In the latest one, he descended to
impugning my parentage. Once you have read them, perhaps you will agree
that it is best for you to leave a house in which the man who calls
himself your father makes no effort to do what is really best for his
son.

\emph{Professor Severus Snape.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{July 18th, 1994}

\emph{Dear Professor Snape:}

I've read the letters, and talked to my father about them. He showed me
the letters that you had sent him in return.

I'm not going to say they were worse than his. They were about the same,
really: the writings of a man who cannot get over a childish grudge, who
claims to love me but, really, doesn't seem to show it.

I understand that you may not be able to heal this enmity overnight. Do
know that I am asking you to try. If you cannot, then, please, simply be
satisfied with meeting me at the end of August, as I will send you no
more letters.

I can see your face now, worrying over whether James will be receiving
equal treatment to you. Oh, yes, he will. Be assured. I am perfectly
capable of ignoring someone even though he lives in the same house with
me.

You were plaguing me with questions about my feelings, I believe, sir,
earlier in the summer. At the moment, I am coldly furious with {both} of
you.

\emph{Harry.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{July 20th, 1994}

\emph{Dear Harry:}

I have taken a few days to consider the matter, and I have decided that
you were right. Please forgive me.

I am unhappy with having you so far away, relying on second-hand
reports---even yours must be considered second-hand reports, because I
do not have the evidence of my own eyes to balance them with---of your
health and safety. I do not want you to destroy yourself. That has
nothing to do with your being James's son, a pawn in any game I might
wish to play against him, or a Slytherin I think is powerful and
magically talented. It has to do with your being Harry.

I do not want to lose you, and knowing I cannot be there to help protect
you is driving me slowly {mad}.

Please, stay safe. I will plague you with no more questions about
nightmares if you do this for me. Do not brew dangerous Potions. Do not
venture outside the house's wards; I was wrong to encourage you to do
so. Spend time on your own healing, as well as your brother's. Do
nothing to antagonize anyone who might hurt you.

I ask you to do these things, because I can do nothing else right now.

\emph{Professor Severus Snape.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{July 20th, 1994}

\emph{Dear Professor Snape:}

I understand how hard it was for you to write that letter, and I accept
your apologies.

I am staying safe. I have written down a list of my nightmares, which
I'll enclose and send to you, though in truth they're so disjointed that
I don't think they mean much. The Dreamless Sleep Potion has been
helping.

Draco visited yesterday, and managed to coax me into letting Remus take
over Connor's training session. I hate to admit it, but I think it may
have helped both of them. Remus has been feeling more or less useless
ever since we came here---not wanting to intrude on the bond that James
has been rebuilding with both of us, but not knowing what else to do
with himself. And Connor\ldots{}damn it, Draco was right---

Excuse me, Professor Snape. Draco would not stop {laughing} when he read
what I'd written over my shoulder. Getting him to shut up was in order.

I'm not going to repeat it. He can see it. Connor needs someone who
won't hold back with him the way I tend to do. Remus knows how to teach
someone. It's working fine, and Connor was even impressed when they were
done.

Of course, Draco didn't let me watch them for very long. We went flying,
and then I introduced him to the Maze---it just watched him---and then I
got your letter.

You are my legal guardian, and I want you to stay that way. I know it's
hard trying to write to the wizard who saved your life. But, even given
that both of those things are true, other things are also true. James is
my blood father, and he wants to be a father in affection, too. I want
that. I never want to choose between you, but if it came down to a
choice, then it would lie with the one who had the most commitment to
making my life easier. Right now, both of you are making it very hard by
not even making an {attempt} to get along.

But I do trust that you will try. Thank you.

\emph{Harry.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{July 21st, 1994}

\emph{James:}

I am impressed that you wrote back. I didn't think you had it in you.

I have taken time to think over what sort of advice I ought to give you
about Harry, and my best piece is not to trust everything the boy says
about himself. I know that you might be inclined to accept what he is on
the surface and not look any deeper, but you have to. Harry knows a
great deal about the world, and almost nothing about himself.

Watch him. Note the way he reacts to things, even when he doesn't
realize he's doing so, or when you might be tempted to consider the
reactions trivial. You could probably name a dozen things that Connor
likes, foods or sweets or games or Quidditch teams, without even trying.
Can you say the same about Harry? If not, start building up the bond.

Be {honest} with him. He's been lied to enough in his life. He has to
know that when someone says he loves him, he really means it this time.
Otherwise, he'll give chances, and give chances, and get hurt in the
meanwhile, until he finally cuts that person out of his mind and heart.
And remember, James, I hear that you've hurt him, and you'll have a bit
of a rat problem.

Don't try to make him reconcile with Lily. He doesn't have to. He
doesn't need her any longer. I know you love her, but Harry doesn't have
to.

Be respectful of the people who did manage to make a dent in his
heart---Snape, the Malfoy boy, his brother.

Make sure you speak with him about Sirius. I have no words for how
horrible that was, James. I miss him, too, the stupid, stubborn son of a
bitch. And I was the one who went to Azkaban for him. I can't imagine
what Harry must be feeling. Sirius was his godfather, and Harry hadn't
got to the point of cutting him out of his mind and heart yet.

I suppose the ideal thing to say would be for you to find a balance
between your sons, but I really do think that Harry needs more
attention. Don't let him fob you off, or distract you by referring to
Connor. I saw him do that a few times when I was in the school to watch
over him. He knew that other people would want to talk about Connor
because he was the Boy-Who-Lived, or because they disliked him, and he
would get that person to start thinking about Connor and stop paying
attention to him. That's a relic of Lily's training, I think.

I don't know about rebuilding our friendship yet. For now, I'll take
these letters, to discuss a boy who's been hurt enough in his life,
Merlin knows.

\emph{Peter.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{July 23rd, 1994}

\emph{James:}

I want to see the boys. Please. Can't I talk to them? And you, as well?
Don't you miss the house at Godric's Hollow? It was our home for so many
years. I do love you, and them, and miss you, and them.

Please, come back home.

\emph{Love,}

\emph{Lily.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{July 25th, 1994}

\emph{Dear Lily:}

I'm sorry. You didn't answer either of the questions I asked you. I
can't let you see them. I think it would be best if we stopped writing
for now.

\emph{James.}

\chapter{Spiders on a Dead Web}\label{chapter-3-spiders-on-a-dead-web}

``Dad, why doesn't Lux Aeterna have house elves?''

James blinked and looked up from his bowl of beef stew. Harry was
frowning intently at him from the other end of the table.

``Because we don't need them,'' James replied, sipping at his spoon
again. ``You must have noticed by now that our food just appears, the
way that it does at Hogwarts, and yet we don't have house elves
around?''

Harry frowned. ``I \emph{should} have,'' he said, his voice subdued. He
leaned back in his chair and stared around Lux Aeterna's dining hall.
The walls were pierced with half a dozen windows on either side, not
that that was unusual; in this case, they let in the late summer
sunlight. James sometimes wondered whose bright idea it had been to hang
mirrors among the windows, to bounce and reflect the light. Probably his
grandmother Matilda, he thought. She was always searching for ways to
declare the family's new, formal allegiance to Light in symbolic terms
as well as in her words and actions. ``But I was focused on Connor.''

James glanced carefully around the hall, despite the fact that he knew
Connor had gone outside to practice with Remus in a duel. Perhaps now
was a good time to speak with Harry about his devotion to his brother,
when Connor had no chance of overhearing them.

``So, why not?''

\emph{In a minute, then, when he can be persuaded to leave the subject
of house elves,} James promised himself, and finished his stew and
pushed the bowl away. It vanished in a moment. Harry eyed it, then
looked at him.

``We don't need them,'' James explained, leaning back in his chair. ``We
were able to persuade brownies to work for us a long time ago, and they
take the place of house elves.''

Harry shook his head slowly, his eyes bearing the glassy look that James
knew meant he was searching his head for memories. ``I don't know much
about brownies. Why did they agree to work for us?''

``Brownies live in colonies,'' James said, smiling slightly at how much
he sounded like his grandmother. Matilda Potter had been so anxious to
make the family Light in every conceivable way, and she had delighted in
telling the tale of how she had got free-willed but calm and domestic
servants to anyone who would listen. ``The colony nearest Lux Aeterna
was kidnapped by goblins one day, all but their king. He appealed to my
grandmother---that would be your great-grandmother---''

``I know,'' said Harry, his voice bearing just the hint of a snappish
tone.

\emph{He doesn't like to be treated as if he's stupid,} James noted to
himself. \emph{See, Peter? I'm watching him.} ``He appealed to my
grandmother for help,'' he continued smoothly. ``She not only got his
colony back, she worked spells to insure that no goblins could ever
kidnap them again. He offered her a service in exchange for her service,
and she asked him to care for Lux Aeterna, with the help of his
colony.''

``I wondered why nothing was ever dusty here,'' said Harry, looking
around the dining hall at the faint golden-brown gleam of the rich wood.
James himself wasn't sure what kind of wood it was, only that the trees
didn't grow anymore. ``I didn't think you'd had time to clean the entire
house by yourself, even during the months you were hiding.''

James nodded. ``The brownies aren't like house elves. They delight in
cleanliness, so they'll wash our clothes and cook our food and clean up
our dishes and so on, but they don't much like wizards, and they
\emph{certainly} aren't subservient.'' He winced, and massaged a faint
scar on his hand. Trying to trap a brownie engaged in cleaning up wasn't
the smartest thing any child could do, even a wizard child who already
had his wand. ``So they work for us, but they stay out of our way, and
we stay out of theirs.''

``And the Potters let their house elves go?'' Harry surmised.

James nodded. ``What made you think of it?''

Harry stared at a point above his head, reminding James of a Kneazle
kitten he'd had when he was seven. ``I can see the web,'' he whispered.

James actually turned to look at the ceiling, where it seemed Harry was
staring, but could see nothing. He frowned. ``What do you mean?''

Harry didn't respond. When James turned around again, Harry was rubbing
his eyes. He sighed, and said, ``I can see the bindings on magical
creatures. The webs that tie house elves to our service, for example,
and the webs in the Forbidden Forest that bind unicorns to be less
dangerous in their beauty, and the web that tied the Dementors to
Azkaban.'' He looked at James. ``I told you about that.''

James nodded slowly. He'd gone to Harry when he received the first
Ministry letter complaining that they no longer had any reliable means
of keeping the prisoners at Azkaban, excepting anti-Apparition wards and
wizard guards. James had so far fobbed them off by pointing out that, so
far as he knew, freeing Dementors and sending them home into nightmares
wasn't an actual crime. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement was
scrambling among the obscure laws, trying to come up with one that they
could charge Harry under.

The latest letter was something of a puzzle, there. It reassured James
that Harry wouldn't have any more trouble until the Ministry could
actually \emph{find} the forms that it required to charge him and fill
them out, in triplicate. It hadn't been signed, but Harry had given a
fleeting grin when he'd seen it.

``Well, I can see the webs that used to tie house elves here, but they
aren't engaged,'' said Harry, and waved his hand. ``They're
just---floating in the air. I can't describe it, really. They're torn
and tattered, and they shine gold, like threads of silk from clothing.''
He shrugged. ``So I figured some other kind of magical creature had to
be doing the cleaning.''

He shifted to look at his father, and James just barely swallowed a
gasp. Harry's eyes were \emph{burning.} It was a look that James had
never seen on him, and one that he couldn't connect to what he knew of
Lily, either. It seemed this expression of ferocious, bloody-minded
determination was Harry's alone.

``Why couldn't everyone do that?'' he asked, with a tone in his voice
that might have been anger or simple passion. ``Why can't everyone call
on a colony of brownies to clean their houses, instead of enslaving
house elves?''

James blinked. ``Harry, house elves aren't enslaved. I told you,
brownies are very different. House elves welcome their service---''

``I spoke with one of them,'' Harry interrupted him. ``He said that
house elves have multiple webs on them, and one of them makes it
impossible for them to rebel.''

James frowned slightly. He was missing something here. He had to be.
``Harry, you said that you wanted to be \emph{vates}.''

Harry nodded, eyes never blinking. James winced. Facing a stare like
that for long was enough to make sweat pop out on his forehead.

``But you didn't say that you were trying to become it,'' James
continued. ``I didn't know you were having\ldots{}well, conversations
with house elves, and learning history that's not normal wizarding
history.'' \emph{Freeing Dementors is one thing, they were dangers to
everyone and should have gone back to nightmares long ago, but can he
conceive of how much things would have to change overnight if he were to
free house elves?}

``I am,'' said Harry. ``There was a prophecy, Dad, Connor's prophecy
that he told you about.''

James nodded again. He'd wanted to understand everything about the night
that his boys had faced Sirius, possessed by Voldemort, and nearly died.
The Maze had shown it to him, but hadn't been able to tell him what
Harry and Connor had felt.

``I thought that prophecy applied only for that one night,'' he said.

Harry shook his head and then leaped to his feet, pacing back and forth.
``No,'' he breathed. ``It was about the first decision I'd make as a
\emph{vates}, the one decision that set the path for all. I asked the
Dementors what they wanted me to do. They told me. I refused their first
suggestion and bargained them down to a different one, going home into
nightmares. But now I need to start thinking about the other magical
creatures.'' He turned to James. ``I probably should have thought about
it before now, but I was busy with Connor.''

James leaned forward. \emph{I meant to address this, and he got me
side-tracked again. Harry has a habit of doing that.} ``Because you're
no longer training your brother in dueling spells doesn't mean that you
need to sacrifice yourself to some other cause, Harry,'' he said.
\emph{There, those words sound right.} ``You don't have an obligation to
think about freeing magical creatures.''

``It's not an obligation,'' Harry murmured. ``It can't be, or it would be
against the nature of what being a \emph{vates} is. It's something I
want to do.''

``Why?'' James asked. Harry had explained what a \emph{vates} was and
what it had to do with webs and how he had freed the Dementors, but he
had never explained why his own desire ran so strongly to this odd task.
``What do you hate so much about the bindings on magical creatures?''

``That they're there,'' said Harry, and his face shuttered around his
burning eyes. ``I was a slave, and I don't see why anyone else should
have to be.'' James felt the burgeoning buzz of his son's magic, which
to him had always seemed the smell of the sea. ``And you didn't answer
my questions. Why doesn't everyone do a service for a colony of
brownies, instead of enslaving house elves?''

``Brownies don't live everywhere,'' said James. ``Northumberland has the
largest population of them left. They don't do well in crowded wizarding
environments like Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley. Even the ones here were
happier when no one else lived in the house, I think. Harry, you have to
see that it isn't as simple as switching brownies for house elves.''

Harry laughed. James flinched. It wasn't the kind of laugh his son had
been giving lately, contented and free with Draco, or even muted the way
it was in the presence of other people. It was wild, and bitter, and it
ended with Harry snorting and muttering, ``I long ago realized that
nothing is \emph{ever} simple.''

He shook his head when James started to stand up in concern. ``I really
am fine,'' he said quietly. ``Just tired. And worrying on this. I
shouldn't worry on it, I know. I should start sorting out solutions. I
think I'll go read a book that might tell me how. Thank you for telling
me about the brownies.''

He slipped out of the dining hall. Frowning, James stood, and watched as
the last remnants of their dinner vanished with brisk efficiency.

He was halfway up the stairs to his study when he realized that Harry
had deflected him, once again, from asking about how Harry spent his
time and poured himself into what he perceived as his duties.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Hello, Hermione.''

Hermione dusted off her hair as she stepped out of the fireplace and
nodded to Harry. ``That was different from any Floo trip I've been on,''
she said. ``Did you know that there's something in your fireplace that
makes you wait while it examines you and decides to let you through?''
It had been an ugly face, which fixed red eyes on her. Hermione had
frowned back, trying to decide if it was a gargoyle. She had been almost
disappointed that she didn't have longer to study it when it abruptly
whirled her forward again.

``Is there?'' Harry looked startled. ``I haven't traveled by Floo since
we got here, and I didn't notice that.''

Hermione shrugged. ``You probably have it easier because you're a
Potter.'' She rummaged in her bookbag. ``You should see the histories
I've brought along, Harry, your family's in almost all of them. \emph{A
Reasoned Discussion of Light Wizards. Tactics of the Firestar Wars.
Fighting Dark Lords: A Beginner's Guide.} I think you'll enjoy them.''

She glanced up to find Harry watching her with a faint smile on his
mouth. ``What?'' she snapped, fiddling with her hair. She knew that the
Floo journey tended to disarray it, but she didn't see how she was
supposed to keep it straight when she was spinning through fireplace
after fireplace and brushing her head against their roofs and covering
herself with soot.

``I've missed you, Hermione, that's all,'' Harry said, and moved forward
to give her a hug. Hermione hugged him back, and glanced around. The
room where he'd met her seemed to be kept as a sort of welcoming room.
It had a few murals on the walls, but only simple chairs, and nothing
that encouraged guests to linger. ``Connor's downstairs,'' he added,
drawing her gaze to him.

Hermione blinked. ``Not up here with you?''

``He's playing Exploding Snap with Ron,'' said Harry, falling into step
beside her as she headed for the door. This was more like what she had
expected a grand old pureblood house to look like, Hermione thought, as
she studied the door. The door was intricately carved oak wood, with a
creature that resembled both a griffin and a dragon writhing around
whorls of sunbursts. ``He didn't know you were coming,'' Harry added,
and that drew Hermione's attention from the door.

``I thought he invited me,'' she said.

``No. Um. I did.'' Harry hesitated, then turned his hands up. ``I wanted
to see you, and I know that you wanted to see Lux Aeterna,'' he
finished.

Hermione frowned and folded her arms. \emph{I think we better straighten
some things out right here and now.} ``Is he still my friend, Harry?''

``I don't \emph{know},'' said Harry, running a hand through his hair. ``I
think so, but I don't know how things stood between you at the end of
the year.''

``Awful,'' said Hermione crisply. Her mind tossed her memories of
countless uncomfortable nights in the Gryffindor common room, where
Connor sat on one end of it, she sat on the other, and Ron shuttled back
and forth between them with a desperately unhappy expression on his
face. ``He sort of apologized, but never properly. And he was always
muttering about you all the time.''

``You know why, now,'' said Harry, his voice pleading.

Hermione pursed her lips. ``Harry, I can't forgive him that easily,''
she said. ``I had to pry the story out of him step by step.''

``But what he went through was awful,'' Harry said.

``And what \emph{you} went through was awful, and yet you never did the
same kinds of things to me,'' said Hermione. She tapped her foot when
Harry just looked at her in incomprehension. She knew Harry was smart,
but sometimes he could be awfully dense about things like this, though
he was still better than his twin. ``I'm still angry, Harry. He had
every chance to patch things up with me, and he didn't.''

``Well, maybe now he can?'' Harry made it a question, leaving it up to
her.

Hermione sighed. She'd thought that the invitation was from Connor, and
represented an extended hand that she sorely wanted. She wasn't sure how
she felt, knowing that Harry had been the one to arrange things for his
twin's best benefit, as always.

Then she smiled. \emph{Well, I'll just arrange things so that Connor
can't lean on Harry this time.}

``I'll talk to him,'' she agreed. ``Alone,'' she added, and stole
Harry's own widening smile.

``Um, I'm not sure---'' Harry began.

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him. \emph{There's such a thing as going
too far.} ``Harry James Potter,'' she said. ``Your brother's nearly as
old as you are. I'm sure that he can make up with me without you there
to hold his hand.''

Harry's face abruptly flushed, but to Hermione's shock, he didn't yell
at or disagree with her. ``That's just what Draco said,'' he whispered.
``That I do too much sticking up for him, too much interfering for him.
He's kept saying it, over and over, these past few days.''

Hermione wrinkled her nose. She didn't like having anything in common
with Draco Bloody Malfoy. On the other hand, he hadn't called her
``Mudblood'' once in the last few months they were at Hogwarts, which
she supposed made him---all right. Not any less of an enormously
arrogant and obnoxious prat, but all right.

``Yes, I think you do,'' she said, keeping her voice gentle. ``So let me
talk to him, Harry. Alone.''

Harry nodded, and opened the door.

They emerged onto a balcony that extended out over a wide, sweeping
hall. Hermione caught her breath. She didn't think that she'd ever seen
such a lovely, gracious old place. The walls didn't actually spiral
inward to settle around the floor, but it felt that way, because of the
spiraling grains of the wood. Everywhere she looked was gold---not
actual gold, but reflected sunlight from cunningly placed mirrors.
Windchimes rustled with delicate music in the breeze through the
windows. They weren't made of silver, as Hermione expected, but a
delicate amber-colored material. The lower portion of the walls was done
in a mural of scalloped wings, curling around the floor.

In the center of it, Ron and Connor were playing Exploding Snap, and
laughing their heads off.

Hermione felt her heart lighten and lift when she saw them, for all that
it was probably, at least in part, the effect of that beautiful room.
She \emph{was} glad, really, that Connor looked happier than he had in
those last few miserable weeks at school. Even from here, she could see
that his face was flushed with merriment, and somewhat tanned from time
in the sun, and his eyes were much brighter. And Ron looked content as
he hadn't when he was trying to keep every second person from asking
Connor what had happened and how Sirius Black had really died.

But they were still infuriating.

Connor paused, his gaze drawn by their movement on the balcony,
probably, and froze when he looked up and saw her. Hermione gave him her
most threatening glare in return.

Ron stood up when he saw her.

Hermione rolled her eyes. Ron had acted like she was about to hurt
Connor for at least half the time they were at Hogwarts after the
incident with Sirius Black---which meant the times he was on the far
side of the common room with Connor. If he'd spent enough time with him
this summer, he'd probably forgotten about all the reassurances Hermione
had given him, reassurances that she really did want to make up with
Connor.

``I think we should go down,'' said Harry, and guided her to the stairs.
Hermione followed him. Ron's fists were clenching, and his face turning
red. Connor just watched her. His own face looked pale, but resolute.

Harry halted in front of both of them and met Ron's gaze. ``Hermione
wants to talk to Connor privately,'' he said. ``So let's let them.''

``She'll hurt him,'' said Ron, and gave her a suspicious glance.
Hermione managed to refrain from rolling her eyes again, but it was a
near thing. She reminded herself that Ron was just being loyal, and
Connor had probably needed that this summer. ``He's just starting to
recover, and---''

``It's been more than two months, Ron,'' said Harry, so softly that
Hermione wasn't convinced his brother could hear them. ``If he hasn't
started to recover now, then it's time to pull off the scab.''

Ron stared hard at Harry for a moment, then at Connor. Hermione looked
at him, too. He'd wiped his face clean of expression, though.

Ron said, ``Well, what do you think, mate? Do you want to talk to her?''

``I think I have to,'' Connor muttered.

``That's not an answer---'' Ron began.

``Yes, it is.'' Harry took Ron's arm and hauled him away, meeting
Hermione's eyes over his shoulder for a minute. ``We'll see you when
you've made up, Hermione. Or when one of you comes storming out of the
room, I suppose.'' He flashed her a faint smile, then led Ron to the far
side of the hall and firmly out a door there.

Left alone with Connor, Hermione put her hands on her hips. ``You never
did really admit that you were wrong,'' she said evenly.

Connor listlessly turned over one of the Exploding Snap cards he and Ron
had been playing with, and then jumped as it exploded. ``But I did,'' he
said. ``I told you what happened. I am sorry for saying what I did to
you, and not really making up with you, Hermione.'' He stared at her.
``What else do you want me to say?''

``That you won't do it again,'' said Hermione. ``And then start acting
\emph{natural} around me again. If you really did think you apologized,
why were you looking at me the way you did when I came down the stairs?''

``You can't possibly have seen the expression on my face from that far
away,'' Connor objected, standing up and turning slightly away from her.

``Yes, I did,'' said Hermione. ``And now tell me why you were looking
that way.''

Connor took a deep breath and moved his hands in front of him, clenching
and relaxing on different parts of his arms. It was a gesture Hermione
hadn't seen him make before. She suspected he'd been trained to do it by
someone else, probably Harry. ``I know that eventually this summer will
end,'' he whispered. ``I know that eventually I have to go back to
Hogwarts and face everyone else. That's going to be hard. Harry's told
me how most of the school regarded me by the time the year ended, and I
was too blind to see it. But\ldots{}do I have to face it \emph{now}, in
the middle of the summer? I didn't really want to talk to you, Hermione,
and that's why.''

Hermione tapped her foot again. \emph{It's only too obvious that he's
used to leaning on other people to do his thinking for him. That'll have
to stop soon. Harry's not always going to be there, and neither am I.}
``Think of this as practice,'' she said. ``You only need to face one
person instead of hundreds. And if you can't face the one person, then
you need lots more practice.''

Connor turned around slowly. ``But how do you get past that?'' he
whispered. ``Are you really capable of forgiving me?''

Hermione snorted. ``Of course. I forgave you for that business with
compulsion in our second year.''

Connor's face reflected confusion for a moment. ``I thought you did that
by thinking my compulsion gift was good, part of the Light.''

Hermione stared at him. ``Of course not. I still think it could be nasty,
and \emph{Hogwarts, A History} classifies it as a Dark gift and talks
about the Blacks who had it and the nasty things they did with it.'' She
restrained herself from telling a story about Orion Black and how he'd
compelled the professors of Hogwarts into doing a jig in the middle of
the Great Hall. Connor probably wouldn't understand the comparison, and
he'd probably never heard of Orion Black, either. ``But I got past it by
forgiving you.''

Connor nodded slowly.

Hermione cocked her head to the side. ``Is that the way you get past
wrongs that others have done you? By considering them part of the
Light?''

Connor laughed, but it was too loud.

``You do, I think,'' said Hermione. A few things she'd heard during the
last few weeks of the term now suddenly made sense. ``You were able to
forgive Sirius because he died heroically. You were able to forgive
Harry because he fought to save you. And you don't see how anyone can
forgive you, because you've been thinking about what you've done, and
you can't make it sound good or like it was part of the Light.''

``Leave it, Hermione,'' said Connor, voice gone suddenly tight.

``No,'' said Hermione. ``Not everyone thinks the same way as you do,
Connor. I really forgave you for compelling me. And I would forgive you
for being a prat, if you would just \emph{tell} me things like this,
that you're afraid I'm going to carry around a grudge against you no
matter how much you apologize. Didn't anyone ever tell you it's better
to tell people these things?''

``Sirius said not to,'' Connor whispered, ``that it was a weakness my
enemies could use against me.''

``And was this before or after he was possessed by You-Know-Who?''
Hermione inquired.

``I don't \emph{know}!'' Connor let out a frustrated shout, and Hermione
sneezed. His magic was rising around him, not as strong as Harry's, but
still thick. ``I don't know how to trust what he told me, how to forgive
him, sometimes, for not saying that he just \emph{was} possessed.''

Hermione closed her eyes and shook her head. ``It would have all been a
lot easier if you'd just told me this.''

They stood in silence for a few moments, while Connor's level of power
dropped down from dramatic.

``So you do forgive me?'' His voice was unsteady now.

Hermione peered at him hard. His eyes were hopeful, bright and
endearing, the eyes of a small dog that Hermione's neighbors had once
had, which begged for sweets the same way.

Trouble was, Hermione had always got bitten when she put her hand near
that little dog's mouth.

``I can forgive you if you make an effort to actually forgive other
people,'' said Hermione. ``And stand and learn on your own. I think
you've been hiding here.'' She hesitated for a moment, then forged
ahead. ``And have you spoken to Harry at all about \emph{his} version of
what happened in the Shrieking Shack?''

``He said it was settled,'' said Connor. ``That he didn't have
nightmares about it any more.'' His eyes reflected envy of that.

``Oh, \emph{Connor},'' said Hermione, feeling both exasperated and sorry
for him. It would be hard being stuck with a brother like Harry, who hid
everything that was true of himself as a matter of course. ``I don't
think so. Harry would say anything if he thought it would spare you
further hurt. Talk to him, all right? And then when you come back to
school, watch him. See how he forgives people. He certainly doesn't have
to think they're part of the Light to do it. It can give you some good
training in tolerance and compassion.''

``I keep making promises to do things,'' said Connor. ``And then people
say I don't fulfill the promises, no matter what I try.'' He looked as
mulish as Harry could, for a moment, but it passed quickly. He let out a
deep breath and met her eyes squarely for the first time in the
conversation. ``But I want to try this time.''

``Good,'' Hermione said, and put out her hand. ``Friends again?''

Connor grasped her hand firmly and shook.

``Good,'' Hermione repeated, and turned towards the door at the far end
of the hall. ``We can tell Harry that neither of us will be storming out
of the room.''

She was glad that was all settled. When she talked to Harry again, she
would have to ask about the history of this house, and the difference
between Light and Dark pureblood rituals. The books she'd found on the
subject had all been surprisingly reticent, as if neither side wanted to
commit too much of themselves to paper.

\emph{Maybe I can even borrow books from their library!}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``How are you doing, mate?''

Harry blinked and looked away from the scene of Lux Aeterna's lawn that
he was contemplating beyond the window. He had expected to stand in
silence with Ron from the beginning of Hermione and Connor's
conversation to the end of it. Ron didn't generally say much to him
beyond quick, embarrassed comments that attempted to include Harry in
his and Connor's conversations.

But now he was leaning on the wall and watching Harry with that
chess-player's look on his face that Harry had seen once before, when he
told Harry about the magic he radiated, which other purebloods could
sense.

Harry shrugged. ``What context do you mean it in?''

``Only you would want a bloody \emph{context},'' Ron muttered, but he
didn't really look upset. ``I mean, do you still have nightmares? Connor
looks all right, really, but what about you?''

Harry blinked, then smiled slightly. Ron was attempting to express
concern for him. It was\ldots{}endearing, if only because it was so
completely different from the way a Slytherin would have. Draco would
have charged ahead, asking questions and making assumptions until Harry
was forced to correct him. Snape would observe him in silence and pop
out with the correct answer later. Ron just asked, and his face was
already going red in embarrassment as the silence stretched and Harry
didn't answer.

``I'm fine, really,'' said Harry. ``No more nightmares about Sirius.''
And that was true. His dreams still remained the disjointed, rambling
things they had been all summer, full of thorns and plains of ice and a
voice murmuring about the sun, how it rose and set and had the earth
turn about it on the solstices and equinoxes. He noticed Ron's
expression lighten, and decided there was no need to mention the other
nightmares, especially when he didn't understand them himself. ``Why are
you asking?''

Ron rubbed his face with one hand. ``Well, you're really important to
Connor,'' he muttered. ``And I don't know you much, and sometimes we
haven't got on much. I thought I should ask.''

Harry cocked his head. ``So you can see both of us being important to
Connor for a long time?''

``Yeah, something like that.'' Ron didn't sound as though he'd worked it
all out in his head, and he drew his wand. Harry straightened, but Ron
didn't seem to notice. ``Would you mind dueling with me on a few spells,
mate? Something to pass the time. I know nothing I do can hurt you.''

``All right,'' said Harry, and pulled his own wand out. A few spells
insured this room was right for dueling, including practice mats and
Shield Charms on the walls. Ron watched admiringly. Harry glanced back
at him. ``What kind of spells would you most like to learn?''

``Something embarrassing,'' said Ron. ``Something I could actually hit
Fred and George with the next time they humiliate me.''

Interested, Harry peered at Ron. He would have to see what Ron's level
of power was, to see if he could ever match the twins no matter what
spells Harry taught him. The twins were very odd, magical geniuses who
also had a latent ability to deflect most low-level spells aimed at
them. The ability manifested most of the time as a simple missing of the
hex, which bounced past them and gave Fred and George a chance to
retaliate. Harry knew the twins were some of the strongest wizards in
the school, right below Hermione, but he didn't know anything about
Ron's magic.

He blinked. \emph{Well, that's odd.}

``What's the matter?'' Ron demanded. ``Why're you looking at me like
that?''

Harry shook his head slightly. ``There's a block on your magic,'' he
said. ``A level it can't rise past. It looks like a lid on top of a box
full of light.'' He broke out of his magic-seeing and glanced at Ron.
``Do you know what that is?''

Ron looked crestfallen. ``Yeah,'' he muttered, scuffling a trainer on
the floor. ``Bill cast a hex at me when I was seven, and Charlie cast
one at the same time. Somehow, they collided in me and\ldots{}formed
that. The mediwitch Mum took me to said that it had to heal on its own,
and until it did, my magic would be restrained. I kind of hoped it would
have gone away by now, though. I mean, it's been seven bloody years.''
He scratched the back of his neck. ``I don't know, I was really angry
when the hexes hit me, and she said it might heal if I could be calm.''

Harry smiled. ``I don't think you can do that.''

``No, me neither,'' Ron agreed, and lifted his wand. ``Unless you think
you can heal it?'' His face and his words were full of ill-guarded hope.

Harry peered once more at the block. It sat firm and strong, not a web
to his sight, but a seamless lid. ``Sorry, no.''

Ron sighed. ``Well, just teach me what spells you can teach me.''

Harry showed him the \emph{Apis Occaeco} hex, which caused the victim to
feel as though invisible bees were stinging him all along his wand hand.
Ron yelped and dropped his wand, but agreed it was a good one, and even
got most of the wrist flicks and pronunciation right when Harry
corrected him a few times.

Harry studied Ron as he once again triumphantly repeated \emph{Apis},
but faltered on \emph{Occaeco.} He was a good friend to Connor, that was
certain. And he was a Light pureblooded wizard. Harry understood a few
more things about them, now that he'd spent time in Lux Aeterna.

\emph{And I understand more things about my family than I ever cared
to.}

Harry jumped. That voice hadn't been his. ``Regulus?'' he whispered. Ron
looked at him curiously.

\emph{Yes. Did you think I'd gone away forever?}

\emph{I wondered,} Harry said, even as he said aloud, ``No, Ron, slight
lifting of your voice on the second syllable of \emph{Occaeco}.'' \emph{I
hadn't heard from you in a long time.}

\emph{I went to try and find out where the bloody hell I am, and I won't
ask you to pardon me, since I hear you use worse language all the time.
And it didn't work. All I really know is that I'm in some small and dark
place, and the worse pain Voldemort tortured me with hasn't come back.}

\emph{So, not much more than before.}

\emph{No.}

\emph{Well, I said that I'd help you get free, and I will,} Harry
promised him. \emph{I---}

``\emph{Apis Occaeco}!''

Harry jumped as the sensation of stinging bees coiled around his left
hand. He didn't drop his wand, since that was in his right, but he did
nod to Ron and have to shake away the sting. ``Impressive,'' he said.

``I got you!'' Ron looked gleeful about his success, one moment away
from jumping up and down.

Harry nodded again. ``Yes, you did.'' \emph{And that was a lesson,
Harry. Never let yourself be too distracted, even by private
conversations in your head. Someone might sneak up and kill Connor while
you're involved in a chat.}

``That was fun,'' said Ron contemplatively. ``We'll see if I can't do it
again.'' He raised his wand.

Hermione and Connor knocked on the door just then and came in, so Harry
didn't have to let Ron do it again, or admit out loud why he had jumped.
He did see Connor shooting him concerned glances, so he managed several
reassuring smiles. He was busy listening to Regulus, though, and trying
to figure out from the very limited descriptions he was able to give if
he could help.

\emph{Well, let's start with the smallness,} he said at last,
\emph{since I don't think I can help much with the darkness or the pain
right now.}

\emph{All right,} Regulus said sulkily. \emph{I want to see the sun
again.}

\emph{You can see it through my eyes.}

\emph{Not the same thing.}

Harry agreed that it was not, and began naming off a long checklist of
small places that Regulus might be crammed into, while Regulus tried to
decide if they sounded like they matched his prison. Harry showed
Hermione the library, had dinner, and evaded another of his father's
ridiculous bouts of being too concerned about him while he was doing it.

No one seemed to notice. It was easy, really, Harry reflected, to hide
what was going on in his head.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry blinked. He wasn't used to owls waking him in the middle of the
night, especially not owls who pecked him on the cheek to deliver their
letters. He sat up slowly, stretching his arms, and called \emph{Lumos}
with a wave of his hand, so he could see.

\emph{Who's writing you?} Regulus demanded.

\emph{I don't know}, Harry said, and blinked further when he saw that
there were two more owls lined up on the windowsill. \emph{Three. What
do they want with me?}

\emph{To deliver letters.}

\emph{I} knew \emph{that,} Harry pointed out, even as he relieved the
eagle-owl sitting on his bed of its burden. \emph{If I have to have
other voices in my head, they should at least think thoughts I wouldn't
have.}

Regulus sniffed and retreated.

Harry glanced down at the letter he held in his hands, smiling slightly
as he recognized the handwriting on the outside of the envelope. Ripping
it open, he studied the message.

\emph{Dear Mr. Potter:}

\emph{I am writing this as a request for a formal meeting. I would like
to come and see you on your birthday, and of course Draco wants to come
with me. I shall bring my sister, Andromeda Black Tonks, with me, as
well as her daughter, Nymphadora Tonks. They are both interested in
meeting you, and Andromeda may wish to enter into an alliance.}

\emph{I await your owl.}

\emph{Narcissa Malfoy.}

Harry bit his lip for a moment, but in the end, he could see no reason
not to grant permission for it. Draco would have wanted to come on his
birthday anyway, Narcissa was welcome, and Harry was curious what
Narcissa's sister and niece would have to say. He scribbled out a reply
and sent the eagle-owl home happy.

The second one fluttered forward, and Harry realized in some surprise
that it wasn't an owl at all; he'd simply assumed it was because it was
dark and he didn't have his glasses. It was a gull, which regarded him
with even more haughtiness than an owl as he took the message from its
webbed foot. Then it pecked his hand---for no especial reason, Harry
thought, or maybe just in case he had food.

The message was sharp and crabbed, as though it had been written by
someone not used to holding a quill, and it had no salutation.

\emph{We have heard the rumors that you are a} vates. \emph{We wish to
meet you and discuss our future freedom. I speak for the goblin class of
Northland: Seadampin, Waterrune, Ternretten, Stonecantor.}

\emph{Our gulls are by far cleverer than your owls. Speak your answer,
and he will know it and bring it back to us.}

\emph{Helcas Seadampin}.

Harry felt his breath tingle in his lungs. He had been awaiting a
summons like this, and it seemed it had finally come. He met the gull's
eye.

``Tell Helcas Seadampin I will come, though I need more information on
where and when,'' he said.

The gull spread its wings, and then abruptly dissipated into a shower of
white sparks. Harry watched them rain down on his bed, burning northing,
since they fluttered out before they touched the blankets, and
swallowed. He had not known that the goblins had such formidable magic.

He shook his head slightly, and then turned to regard the third owl. It
looked rather anemic, and barely raised its head when he called. Harry
had to walk over to it and remove its letter.

\emph{Potter:}

\emph{Samuel Taylor Coleridge spoke of an albatross hanging around one's
neck. He was not really a Muggle poet, but a Squib. Did you know that
his mother was a witch who never acknowledged her heritage after her
wand was broken for casting an Unforgivable when she was eleven? She
cast it at a Muggle, and the Muggle died. And then she married a Muggle.
What a waste of talent, in both ways.}

Harry stared at the parchment. \emph{What?}

The letter went on.

\emph{The sailors hung the albatross around the Ancient Mariner's neck
to be a burden, because he'd shot the sacred bird and thus cursed them,
and always had to be reminded of his actions. Let me be your albatross,
then.}

\emph{Greetings.}

\emph{Evan Rosier.}

Harry hissed. The name was the name of a Death Eater, who for a very
long time he had believed dead, killed in one of the battles of the
First War the year he and Connor were born. But he'd seen the man alive
in May, the night he killed Rodolphus---

With practiced ease, Harry cut off the thought, and stared hard at the
letter. Why would Evan Rosier be writing to him? Why was he rambling on
about Squib poets and albatrosses and witches who killed Muggles?

\emph{More to the point,} he realized abruptly, \emph{how did the owl
bearing a known Death Eater's letter get past the wards surrounding Lux
Aeterna? They should have kept anything a Death Eater had touched out.}
They'd made Harry's hand tingle for hours afterward just because he'd
touched Snape's arm when his guardian originally tried to come through
the wards.

It was a mystery, and one that Harry didn't like.

``No response,'' he told the owl.

The owl gave a feeble hoot and turned to fly away. Then it collapsed to
the carpet. Harry kneeled beside it and watched one talon flex and then
slowly close again.

\emph{Dead,} he realized. \emph{Perhaps the effort of getting through
the wards was too much for it.}

He backed carefully away from it, not needing the echo of Snape's voice
in his head to know that touching the dead bird wasn't a good idea, and
hoped the brownies would dispose of it. He would write Snape in the
morning, and tell him about Rosier's letter. Snape had been a Death
Eater, had known him firsthand. Perhaps he would know what Rosier was on
about.

With an effort, Harry turned his thoughts towards the meetings with the
goblins and the Tonks instead. He felt a pleasant tingle of excitement.

\emph{Finally, I'm going to be doing something.}

\chapter{Griphook Fishbaggin's Legacy}\label{chapter-4-griphook-fishbaggins-legacy}

Thank you for the reviews lately!

\emph{Why} do the chapters insist on getting longer lately?

\textbf{Chapter Three: Griphook Fishbaggin's Legacy}

\emph{Harry:}

\emph{Convince your father to lower the wards.}

Harry sighed and shook his head. He had \emph{known} Snape would act
like this, though he had sent the letter anyway, thinking his guardian
had the right to be informed of Rosier's ability to get at him. But
really, James had examined the dead owl, and though he had gone quite
pale, he had assured Harry that Rosier had only used an old piece of
Dark magic, both to kill it and to get it through the wards. It was one
that inspired the owl with a fervor to complete its delivery at any cost
and made it draw on its own life-force in order to do so. So it had
managed to break through the wards, but it could not possibly have lived
long after that.

James had performed the counter-curse, and now all was well; no other
owls charmed with the same spell would be able to get through the wards.

Harry could almost feel the Snape in his head fuming that it wasn't
enough. If the wards had one weakness, they could have others. He should
be reading the books on wards that Snape had sent. He should be studying
ways to outperform any similarly nasty Dark spells the Death Eaters
might use on him. He should stop receiving owls altogether. He should
leave Lux Aeterna, which was obviously vulnerable to threats, and come
live in Hogwarts with Snape, where no Death Eater would be able to
enter.

Harry couldn't do the last two, and he \emph{would} do the first two. He
wrote as much in his letter to Snape, which he sent on its way with
Hedwig before the sun was fully over the horizon. He stood in the window
of his room, watching her fly, and gnawed her lip. Sometimes he thought
it was good that he and Connor had moved into separate rooms---he
couldn't have handled all the owls as easily if they were still sleeping
in the same one---but right now, he would have liked to have his brother
beside him, so that he could reach out and simply receive a hug.

Then Harry shook his head and turned for the door out of the room.

It was their birthday, or at least the morning of their birthday. And
Harry had big things happening today. The meeting with the Malfoys and
the Tonks was this morning, the meeting with the northern goblins this
afternoon.

There would be time to worry about hugs later.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Happy birthday, Harry, Connor!''

Harry blinked intelligently. He hadn't expected their father to have
presents ready for them when he went to the dining hall table for
breakfast. But he did, two gifts wrapped in red silk patterned with gold
sunbursts. Harry thought he recognized more of the same kind of cloth
that their Midsummer ships' sails had been made from.

James grinned at him. Harry read the hope in his eyes, and smiled back.
He felt a distant pity. James was trying hard, really, to be a good
father. He was just poor at it.

Well, giving him extra chances was a small price to pay.

Connor was at the table, grinning at him over a birthday breakfast of
sausages and pancakes and Chocolate Frogs. ``Dad made me wait until you
were up to open my present,'' he half-complained at Harry.

Harry gave him a smile, too. In truth, he'd been up for some hours,
writing the letter to Snape and reading the books on wards before that
arrived, but Connor no longer knew that, as they no longer slept in the
same bedroom.

It was odd how unsettled he was by that, really.

\emph{I'm just used to sharing a bedroom,} Harry dismissed it, and came
to sit down in his own spot. He looked out of the corner of his eye, and
thought he caught a glimpse of a small, dark cloak as the brownie
brought his breakfast. He didn't stare long, though. The research he'd
done in the Potter library said that brownies hated to be scrutinized,
or even thanked for their services. The bargain Matilda Potter had made
with them was a true bargain, respected on both sides; the family and
the brownies owed each other nothing more.

``Well, I'm here now, so you can open it,'' he said, with a nod to
Connor.

Connor didn't need further permission, tearing into his gift. He gaped
as the red cloth fell away. Harry craned his neck, not quite able to see
what it was.

``Wow, Dad,'' Connor whispered, as he scooped out the object and held it
up for Harry to see. ``This is really special.''

Harry raised his eyebrows. It was, indeed. James had got Connor a
dueler's wand---one that was obviously made of holly wood, like his
actual wand, and thus modeled after his. A dueler's wand could be used
only in battle or practice for battle, either formal duels or all-out
war, and grew acclimated to more and more spells as its wizard cast
them. If Connor often used \emph{Protego} with his dueler's wand, then
the wand would become accustomed to the Shield Charm, and would begin
casting it with only half the word out, or even nonverbally, long before
Connor would have been able to master such feats of magic with his other
wand. It was an honorable weapon and a method of winning, both in one.

``Open your gift, Harry,'' Connor urged, snapping out of his reverie.

Harry turned curiously to his gift. He had assumed without thinking
about it that James would buy him and Connor the same gifts, or at least
similar ones. But he really didn't need a dueler's wand, interesting
complement though it might make to his own cypress one. He had enough
trouble remembering to use his regular wand as it was.

He slid the cloth off, and blinked. He didn't recognize the object that
lay beneath it for a moment, and then it clicked. He held it up and
turned it slowly in his hands. It was beautiful, made of copper so old
it had acquired a green tinge, and the needle within looked like silver.
The N on it was a softly glowing letter that might be made of fairy
dust.

``A compass?'' he asked.

James did not answer. Harry looked at him, and found his face deadly
serious, not the proud but anxious one it had been when he watched
Connor hold up the dueler's wand.

``An alliance compass, Harry,'' he said. ``It detects both magical power
and the friendship that other people feel towards its bearer. I want you
to carry it with you. When you're in danger, it will point towards the
nearest person who can help you. Follow the pointer, and it will lead
you there by the shortest route possible.'' He let out a long, shaking
breath. ``Merlin knows you need it.''

Harry swallowed. ``This came from the Potter treasures, didn't it?'' he
asked, turning the compass around in his fingers. He had heard of things
like this, but they were always family heirlooms, not the kind of thing
that one could buy casually in Diagon Alley.

James nodded. ``During the Firestar Wars, a Lord arose. Everyone thought
he was a Light Lord at first, but then he turned to Dark magic\ldots{}or
he might even have found a way to combine Light and Dark magic both at
once, which no one wants to consider because \emph{that's} rather
frightening.'' His eyes looked past Harry, and Harry could almost picture
his father as a young boy, shivering slightly in awe and wonder as he
crouched by a storytelling parent's or grandparent's chair. ``Our
ancestor Helen Potter made and used this one. Once it led her on a
three-day chase across Northumberland, when the Firestar Lord had
cloaked the whole region in an anti-Apparition spell, one that also
forbade the use of Portkeys. There was no ally nearer than three days of
running away. And he was chasing her himself. He badly wanted her
dead.'' James returned to himself, and his smile was both proud and sad.
``He'd been her betrothed once, you see, the man she was in love with.
No one else knew him the way she did. As long as she was alive, then
someone might still be able to figure out one of his hidden
weaknesses.''

Harry made a mental note to look again at the history books Hermione had
brought him. This sounded more fascinating than he had thought they
would prove.

And James wasn't really a poor father, just an inexperienced one.

He closed his hand carefully around the alliance compass. ``I'll carry
it at all times, Father. I promise.''

James met his eyes keenly, then smiled and nodded. ``Good, Harry.'' He
glanced at Connor. ``Remus said that he'd be waiting for you outside, if
you want to duel with him there. I see that you're mostly finished with
breakfast, anyway.''

``Yes!'' Connor slipped out of his chair. ``I'll go and see him.'' He
grabbed Harry in an abrupt hug around the waist, startling him
considerably. ``You \emph{better} carry the compass with you all the
time,'' he whispered in his ear. ``You're in danger.''

Harry blinked and patted his twin's back. Connor had known that before,
of course, but it was gratifying to see him realize it. ``Thanks,
Connor.''

His brother slipped out of the room, and James took a deep breath. ``Eat
your breakfast first, Harry,'' he said, before Harry could open his
mouth.

Harry nodded and dug into his food, watching his father carefully. James
obviously wanted to say---something.

``I blocked the spell that Rosier used to send the owl through the
wards,'' said James, his face long. ``That doesn't mean that he won't
try again. I read his letter, and couldn't make heads or tails of it. He
was always one of the cleverest of the Death Eaters, and I'm not sure
what he intends.''

He looked Harry directly in the eye. ``That letter brought home to me how
much you could \emph{die} at any time. You're not safe, Harry, not here
at Lux Aeterna and not anywhere else.''

Harry nodded. ``I already accept that.''

``But things can be done to \emph{keep} you safe,'' James said. Harry
slowed down on forking sausages into his mouth---lately he'd been
incredibly hungry---and watched his father warily. He sounded almost
manic about this, almost Snape-like. ``Thus the alliance compass. Thus
the wards. I want you to promise me that you won't go outside the wards,
Harry.''

Harry narrowed his eyes. He'd told his father about Narcissa Malfoy's
formal visit this morning, and it was beyond bad manners not to meet
with her if she couldn't come inside Lux Aeterna's wards; it could
endanger his standing among any other pureblood wizards she'd managed to
tempt into considering his offers. And the northern goblins had flatly
refused to meet him anywhere near Lux Aeterna. The closest they would
come was the shore where Harry, Connor, and James had gone for the
Midsummer ritual. ``I have to.''

``No, you don't,'' said James. ``Tell them that you'll talk to anyone
who comes inside the wards, but not otherwise.''

``Not everyone can,'' Harry pointed out, clinging to his patience as he
felt it slip. He \emph{had} to do this, didn't his father see that? Not
in the sense of duty or obligation, at least not with the \emph{vates}
work, but with the sense of a moral principle. It pricked him every time
he thought about anything else for long. So long as his primary goal was
training Connor and helping him heal, Harry could think about something
else, but Connor had duels with Remus now, and had reversed even their
usual listening positions since his talk with Hermione, insisting on
hearing Harry's side of the fight with Voldemort in the Shrieking Shack.
So Harry thought about being a \emph{vates} and a not-Lord instead.
``And I still have to talk to them. It's an insult not to talk to
them.''

``They can get over it,'' James insisted.

``Not an insult in the sense of politeness,'' said Harry. ``An insult to
their free will, or an insult to their honor. I don't want to insult
anybody, Dad. We have to have all the wizards I can swing on our side to
win this war. And the goblins\ldots{}they've been bound, I know they
have, and I want to listen to what they have to tell me.''

James closed his eyes. ``I knew Lily trained you to be a soldier,'' he
said. ``I didn't know she trained you to be a politician, too.''

Harry rose cleanly above the pain that was still there at the sound of
his mother's name. She was nothing to him any more. ``Whatever was
needed,'' he said. ``Politics is part of winning this war. I've known
that since I was five and started learning the histories of the
pureblood families and their dances. I've got to court them, Dad. You
know that.''

James sighed. ``Compromise, then. I'll come with you to any meetings
outside the wards.''

Harry winced. ``That'll work for my meeting with Mrs. Malfoy, but not
for the goblins. They specifically said I wasn't to bring anyone else.''

``Why did you agree to meet with them, then?''

``Because I have to,'' said Harry. ``It's a great honor that they would
trust me enough to meet with me at all, after the way wizards have bound
them.''

James tensed, and sat in silent stillness for a long while. Then he
nodded. ``Fine. But you'll take a Portkey to the goblin meeting with
you.''

``Fair enough.'' Harry had been planning to ask for one anyway. In
emergencies before, he'd been able to Apparate, but it wasn't a pleasant
experience, or one he looked forward to repeating.

``Let's go meet with the Malfoys, then,'' James said, rising to his
feet. Then he gave a faint smile and sat down again. ``When you finish
your breakfast, of course.''

Harry began hastily swallowing his pancakes.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry watched as four shapes came into being at the Apparition point,
and felt Lux Aeterna's wards react at once, even though they were
outside of them, reaching out to assess the Dark magic that came with
the new arrivals. Harry felt their hiss and crackle, and suspected they
were spitting at Narcissa Malfoy. It was just as well they'd chosen to
meet out here, he thought, on this clean, wide sweep of lawn next to a
flowing river the color of malachite, and not try the house's patience.

Narcissa released Draco, who looked slightly queasy from Side-Along
Apparition, but hurried up to Harry and hugged him nonetheless. ``Happy
birthday, Harry!'' he crowed.

Harry smiled and hugged him back, relieved that there was no sign of an
ostentatious package. ``What did you get me, Draco?'' he teased,
stepping back and making a show of looking around. He felt James shift
at his side, uneasily, but ignored him. The alliance compass was safely
tucked into his robe pocket, after all, and his father must know there
was no way that Draco's gift would \emph{compete} with it.

Draco grinned at him and bounced back to his mother. Narcissa released a
Disillusionment Charm on something floating beside her, and a broom came
into view. Draco seized it and tugged it triumphantly back towards
Harry.

``\emph{Oh}, no,'' Harry said.

``\emph{Oh}, yes,'' said Draco maniacally. ``It's the new Firebolt. Happy
birthday, Harry.'' He looked quite content.

Harry reluctantly looked the broom over. He had to admit it was
magnificent; the soft hum of magic around it had already told him that.
But he felt rather embarrassed. It was a very expensive present. Draco
didn't have to get him this. Harry did love flying, but it wasn't as
though he were mad for Quidditch in the same way Connor was.

Draco had apparently anticipated the entire silent conversation Harry
was having with himself. ``I wanted to get it for you,'' he said. ``It's
yours. And it's charmed so that you're the only one who can ride it.''

``\emph{Draco!}'' Harry said, startled out of his reverie. ``That's not a
good idea! What if we're in danger and someone else has to ride it, or
it has to bear a wounded person?''

Draco rolled his eyes. ``Think about something other than the war for
ten seconds, Harry,'' he said crossly, and folded his arms. Harry
considered and discarded the idea of telling him he looked like Hermione
when he did that. ``I bought this for you to have fun, and to have
something of your very own to keep. The charms don't fade or wear off,
either,'' he added, dashing Harry's next hope.

\emph{It's a nice broom,} said Regulus's voice abruptly in the back of
his head. \emph{Take it, for Merlin's sake.}

\emph{I thought you were elsewhere,} Harry retorted, and reached out
reluctantly to take the broom. The moment he touched it, the broom gave
a little sound remarkably like a purr, and settled into his grasp.
``Thank you, Draco,'' he said aloud. ``I'm sorry if I sounded
ungracious. I was just\ldots{}startled.''

\emph{Did you think I would miss a meeting with my cousins?} Regulus
hummed to him. \emph{And it's a very nice broom. They didn't make them
like that in my day. Ride it, for Merlin's sake.}

Harry studied Draco's beaming face, and sighed. \emph{I plan to. I
just---I just didn't\ldots{}} He shook his head, unable to express why
this made him so uncomfortable.

``Harry.''

Harry was grateful to turn and meet Narcissa's eyes, inclining his head.
At the moment, the prospect of getting his father and Narcissa to be
calm around each other was better than the thought of dealing with the
emotions that Draco's gift roused in him. ``Mrs. Malfoy,'' he said
aloud. ``May I present my father, James Potter?''

``We have been formally introduced, once before, long ago,'' said
Narcissa as she came nearer. She held out one elegant white hand. Her
face was the epitome of a pureblooded witch, bland and calm. ``I am not
sure if your father remembers.''

``I remember,'' said James. Harry swung his head to look at his father,
startled. He'd never heard his voice sound like that before: tight,
restrained, as if he were in the middle of a dance himself. He grasped
Narcissa's hand. ``You wore a lovely gown.''

Narcissa's faint smile flickered around the corner of her mouth. ``A
Light wizard to the bone,'' she murmured. ``Absolute truth. I suppose
you would keep your mouth shut on my kindness, or lack thereof, that
night?''

James raised his brows, but said nothing.

Narcissa stepped away with a faint bow of her head, and turned to Harry.
``Harry, may I present my sister, Andromeda Black Tonks, and her
daughter, Nymphadora Tonks, who has just completed her training in the
Auror program?''

Harry turned to face the two witches who had waited at the Apparition
point, his senses on edge now. Was the Ministry going to learn secrets
about him from Nymphadora? Was the Order of the Phoenix?

His first sight of Nymphadora rather reassured him, though. She wore the
robes, black edged with silver, that a pureblood witch would for a
formal meeting, but her hair was purple, also edged with silver, and
dazzlingly bright. She came eagerly forward to meet him, and tripped on
the hem of her robes. She helped herself back up again, her smile not
even faltering, and shook his hand.

``Call me Tonks, Harry,'' she said. ``Everyone does. I hate Nymphadora. I
can't imagine why \emph{some} people chose it,'' she added, with a glare
over her shoulder at her mother, who was approaching much more slowly.

Harry found himself grinning. \emph{Well, if she can be informal, so can
I.} ``Let me guess,'' he said. ``Metamorphmagus? Unless you're into
Muggle dyes.''

``Right the first time!'' Tonks said cheerfully, and grew her nose
longer in demonstration, for a moment making her face look alarmingly
like Snape's. ``I've been wanting to meet you for \emph{months.} You
realize you're the cause of the first non-bitchy letter that my mother's
exchanged with her sister in ten years?''

``Now, Nymphadora,'' said Andromeda, who had halted at her left
shoulder, entirely properly. ``That word is inappropriate. We are
sometimes cool and restrained with each other, but we are
never\ldots{}what you said.'' She nodded calmly to Harry. She was
dark-haired and dark-eyed. Harry would have thought that she looked
remarkably like her elder sister Bellatrix Lestrange, but not having a
light of crazed madness shining in her eyes did wonders in diminishing
the resemblance. ``Congratulations, Mr. Potter. I have heard what you
did for\ldots{}certain elements who might otherwise not have found the
fire.''

Harry blinked. She was referring to Sirius's funeral. For some reason,
he hadn't thought Narcissa would tell her sister about that. ``Mrs.
Tonks,'' he said, and held out the hand that Tonks wasn't holding. ``A
pleasure to meet you.''

``Indeed,'' Andromeda murmured, ignoring his hand. ``I am obviously not
adverse to Muggleborns, since I married one, and I do not use much Dark
magic. But, of late, my unease with Dumbledore has been growing. I am
glad that you may represent a third side to this war, one that I can
comfortably join, without worrying that I am gaining a Lord who will
turn on me later.'' Her eyes were wide and cool and utterly direct. ``My
sister said that about you, and I do trust her on that score.''

Harry smiled again. Andromeda was as cutting as Narcissa in her own way,
but she didn't go for the subtle dances, and sometimes that was
refreshing, like the slap of the breeze across his face. ``I hope to
represent one,'' he answered. ``Until recently, the Boy-Who-Lived was
synonymous with Dumbledore, but my brother's learning better.''

``I was not thinking of the Boy-Who-Lived, but of \emph{you},'' said
Andromeda, stressing the last word more than Harry thought was strictly
necessary. ``You are the one who impressed my sister and her son.''

Harry sent a sideways glance at Narcissa and Draco. They were both
keeping out of this formal introduction, as was proper, but Narcissa had
a faint smile on her lips. Draco just looked challenging, as if he
wanted Harry to remember the conversation back in June when Draco had
first told him he would have to be a leader.

``That's true, at least,'' he said. ``But I certainly don't intend to
fight \emph{against} my brother.''

``No one said anything about that, either,'' said Andromeda. ``Connor
Potter is of no matter to me until and unless he does something more
momentous than defeating the Dark Lord as a baby.''

Draco opened his mouth, and Harry just knew he was about to say
something unfortunate, such as the truth about the prophecy. He hastily
intervened. ``Mrs. Tonks, Tonks, this is my father, James Potter.''

``We have met before,'' said Andromeda, with a glance that said she
didn't relish the reminder, but she held out her hand. James kissed it
with absolute precision.

Tonks didn't repeat the gesture. Her eyes were wide with wonder.
``\emph{The} James Potter?'' she blurted. ``The James Potter who brought
in the Lestranges? The James Potter who once shielded fourteen Muggle
families from the Black Plague spell in one night? You're him?'' She
looked all but ready to burst into song. ``Somehow I never made the
connection! It's a pleasure to meet you, sir!'' She stuck out a hand in
what was obviously meant to inspire a shake and not a kiss to her
knuckles. ``I've just finished my Auror training, and you're one of my
heroes.''

James looked horribly uncomfortable as he grasped her hand. Harry
thought it was probably the reminder about the Lestranges. ``Thank
you,'' he said. ``Sirius used to talk about you. He regretted that he
didn't get to see you more often.''

Tonks smiled at him. ``He was the only one who didn't call me Nymphadora
when I was a kid,'' she said. ``Even in letters. Yeah, I liked him. I'm
so sorry he's gone.''

James blinked. ``I should be the one saying that to you, Miss Tonks.''

Tonks shook her head. ``I liked him, but I didn't really know him,'' she
said. ``He was your best friend. I'm sorry you lost him.''

James had to look away from her. Harry blinked. Tonks was doing better
than he could have in a similar situation, even though she'd referenced
Sirius. He hoped that was a good indication of things to come.

Then he looked at Narcissa, whose face was aloof, and Andromeda, who
simply looked blank, and sighed. It wasn't going to be easy.

But he didn't intend to give up either his blood father or his best
friend and his relatives, and the sooner that both sides understood
that, the better.

``Mr. Potter?''

Harry looked back at Andromeda, glad of the question. Hopefully,
whatever she asked of him would distract attention from the
confrontation that felt as if it were going to happen, what with having
both Malfoys and Potters in the same place.

``Can you show me your magic?'' Andromeda asked. ``Lower all your
shields and show me the full strength? I have heard that your displays
in the past were rather impressive, but I have not felt them myself.''

Harry read the hidden message in her voice. She wanted to trust him, but
she had no particular reason to do so, not until she saw some actual
evidence of power from him. Narcissa had been the one who had observed
or told her everything so far, and she wanted some granite proof.

Harry nodded, then closed his eyes and lowered his shields.

He felt his magic swell around him and then flood out, singing, across
Lux Aeterna's lawn. It was under much better control than when he'd
released it at the Quidditch game back in November, or from the Owlery
at the vernal equinox. He could command it to rise up around him and
hover, not overwhelming anyone, but not letting anyone who watched doubt
its depth, either.

He opened his eyes. He saw the world through a shimmering haze of
golden-white light, which didn't surprise him, as he was feeling calm at
the moment. He \emph{was} surprised by the expressions on the faces
around him.

Draco grinned smugly. Come to that, Narcissa wasn't far from a smug grin
herself. James had a combination of a proud and worried look on his
face, tilting towards the worried.

Tonks held out a hand, as though she could feel the solid force of the
magic in the air itself, and grinned at Harry. ``\emph{Wicked},'' she
said.

Andromeda slowly closed her eyes. Harry had no idea what she was
thinking as she stood there, apparently soaking in the magic.

Then she opened her eyes and whispered, ``It will serve. It will more
than serve. If you can avoid becoming a Lord, you will be greater than
any wizard this world has seen for more than thirty generations.''

Harry blinked, wondering why she'd picked the number thirty generations,
and then reminded himself that his magic had been out of bounds a bit
too long. Tonks and Draco were both beginning to get dreamy expressions
on their faces. He had enough of a problem with his magic sometimes
flooding out of the boundaries of his own mind and changing people when
he didn't know about it. What it could do when completely free resembled
one of the better healing potions.

He gently caged his power again, and met Andromeda's eyes. ``I'm
interested in defeating Voldemort, in freeing the magical creatures, and
in helping those who will agree to settle problems,'' he said. ``Not
in---well, in becoming a Lord, or doing what Dumbledore has done.''

``The power is always a temptation,'' Andromeda whispered. She sounded
like a worshipper in a church. ``To turn to compulsion. That is what
felled so many of the Lords in the past, Lords who could have been
great.''

``I hope to avoid that trap,'' said Harry. ``I want to be a \emph{vates},
if you're familiar with the word. I'm doing what I can to control my
magic and my unconscious compulsive abilities both. I don't know if I'll
succeed, but I want to.''

Andromeda smiled. ``Yes,'' she said. ``I believe you will. And I believe
that I am willing to become your formal ally.'' She added, without even
looking away from Harry, ``Stop grinning, Narcissa.''

Harry grinned slightly, himself, and turned to glance at his father.
James was giving him an unfathomable stare.

\emph{Hopefully, he'll think I'm safe when I go off to meet the goblins
this afternoon,} Harry thought. \emph{And he'll get along with the
Malfoys and the Tonks after all. This is going rather well.}

\emph{It is,} Regulus agreed happily from the back of his head.
\emph{Whoever thought my cousins could be sterling examples of good
sense when they wanted to be? In both choice of allies and choice of
brooms?}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry felt the difference the moment the whirl of the Portkey let him go
and he found himself facing that same beach from which they'd launched
their tiny ships. The same beach, yes, but this was later in the summer,
without the gentle magic of the solstice to cushion the place. This
time, it felt utterly wild, and Harry could hear the magic panting in
each roar of the ocean up its beach.

More to the point, there was sharp power in the air, not really
wizarding. Harry sniffed once or twice, and glanced straight ahead of
him.

White fire, the same color as the sparks that had fallen from the
messenger gulls' feathers each time they had come to him, burned ahead
of him. Harry took a deep breath and started walking. He had been able
to find only contradictory information in \emph{A Practical History of
Goblins in the North} about what one should wear when meeting with the
northern clans, and he suspected none of it would be appropriate for a
\emph{vates} wizard meting with goblins anyway, so he'd chosen to wear
simple shirt and trousers and let it go at that.

As he came nearer, the white fire divided into four, the spikes leaping
out from a central point to start the fires burning in the midst of
rocky nests. Harry still didn't know what caused or fed the fire. Of
course, house elves had unique magic, too, and centaurs.

From between the fires, or behind them, or somewhere around them, came
the goblins. Each fire had four goblins at it. Four each for the clans
of Seadampin, Waterrune, Ternretten and Stonecantor, Harry thought. He
didn't know how to tell one clan from the others, so he simply halted at
an equal distance between the fires and waited.

One goblin stepped forward from the nearest set of flames. ``Harry James
Potter?'' His voice was a croaking, grating slide, uglier and harsher
than the voices of goblins Harry had heard in Diagon Alley when he went
to buy school supplies.

Harry inclined his head.

``I am Helcas Seadampin.''

Harry nodded, having expected this. The other goblins were hanging back,
and one thing that \emph{A Practical History of Goblins in the North}
had indeed been good for was detailing what happened when multiple
allied clans met with a representative of some outside interest. They
inevitably deferred to the most powerful goblin present to speak for
them. Griphook Fishbaggin, who had written the book, speculated that
their deference to him was rather like the deference of wizards to a
Lord.

If what Harry suspected was true, that was exactly backwards, but he
would probably learn the truth in a few minutes.

``You are rather silent, for a wizard and a \emph{vates},'' said Helcas,
his eyes narrowing in suspicion.

``I did not wish to give offense,'' said Harry. ``I couldn't find much
about your people in any book, and I don't know much of the etiquette.''

Helcas had a wild laugh, he thought. From the sea, a gull screamed in
response. ``We have made sure that wizards cannot understand us from
books,'' he said. ``It forces them to come deal with us. We only trusted
one wizard to write down the truth, and he got many things wrong.''

``Griphook Fishbaggin,'' Harry whispered.

``Yes.'' Helcas cocked his head. ``We adopted him, and he was a coward
and a traitor in the end. Why were you willing to meet with us?''

Helcas had stepped away from the fire now, and Harry could see him
without his eyes dazzling him with purple afterimages. Helcas was taller
than the southern goblins he had met before, with skin as gray as the
water. His hands bore twisted dark claws, and though Harry glimpsed them
clearly only once, he thought Helcas had six fingers on either. Helcas's
face was dominated by his mouth, rich with teeth. Harry was surprised
that he could speak English as well as he could, with all those fangs
pressing on his tongue.

\emph{Be careful,} Regulus whispered abruptly in his head.

Harry had had much practice in the last few days concealing his jolt
whenever that voice suddenly spoke, as well as his instinctive urge to
respond with a nod or a shake of his head. \emph{I will be,} he
whispered back, and focused on the goblin. ``Because I became aware of
the webs on all magical creatures recently,'' he answered. ``I think
that everyone else should be as free as possible.''

Helcas laughed softly. ``Wizards have said things like that to us
before.''

Harry suppressed a shrug. ``I'm not those wizards,'' he said.

Helcas eyed him in silence for a long moment. Then he said, ``Griphook
Fishbaggin was a coward and a traitor. We took him in, and showed him
the truth, and he ran away from it. He said that we must be mistaken,
and he wrote his book to show us as poor slaves looking for a leader for
our rebellion. Do you know why that is wrong?''

Harry nodded. He'd had the idea after reading over \emph{A Practical
History of Goblins in the North} again. It was the book that Connor had
originally got the idea that compulsion was good from, after reading
that the goblins apparently wanted a wizard leader who could compel
them. ``Someone who opens doors is not the same as a ruler,'' he said.
``And because a wizard is uncomfortable with what you show him doesn't
mean you're lying.''

``I like you better than him already,'' said Helcas. Abruptly, he took a
few steps forward and closed one clawed hand on Harry's left wrist,
squeezing.

Harry began to breathe as his mother had taught him, retreating before
the pain, rolling under it when he couldn't retreat, letting it find but
not conquer him. It grew in intensity until he thought his bones might
grind into mush, but if they did, then, well, he had the resources to
heal himself, either here or at Lux Aeterna. He was certainly not about
to strike at the goblins.

``Why aren't you defending yourself?'' Helcas whispered. ``Can we ask
someone for help who won't defend himself?''

``When I think you're going to kill me,'' Harry whispered back, fighting
not to sag to his knees, ``then I'll strike.''

Helcas laughed like a gull again, wild and near and overwhelmingly loud,
and released his wrist. Harry massaged it as the blood rushed back into
his hand. He saw no need to pretend that it hadn't hurt. It \emph{had},
and just like screaming under torture, the acknowledgment could make him
hurt less. His pride mattered infinitely less than his life did.

``Patience,'' said Helcas. ``Honesty. Those are good qualities. But they
are not the only ones a \emph{vates} must have.'' He turned and snapped
his claws together in a complicated pattern, too quick for Harry's eyes
to follow. One of the other goblins hastened forward, holding an
earthenware bottle in his hands.

Helcas picked up the bottle and turned to meet Harry's eyes. ``The
others follow me because I know what must be done,'' he said. ``We might
ask you to look, but no human can see with goblin eyes, unless they are
granted to him.'' He held out the bottle. Harry heard it slosh, and knew
it was full of some liquid.

Harry raised his brows. If the other tests had been of patience and
honesty, this one was a test of courage.

\emph{And stupidity,} Regulus snarled. \emph{I don't like this. I don't
trust goblins, and I don't trust this beach. Something is strange about
it.}

\emph{Of course there is,} Harry thought back, even as he accepted the
bottle. \emph{There is goblin magic in the air.}

\emph{More than that.}

But Regulus didn't say anything else, certainly not to tell him what was
strange, so Harry sniffed at the potion. He recognized the scent of
seaweed, and nothing else. The potion was thick, green, the color of the
river that ran near Lux Aeterna, but it shifted and became gray and
brown as he watched.

\emph{The colors of Northumberland,} Harry thought, as he tipped the
bottle off. \emph{The colors of the county my father was born in. They
won't hurt me.}

It was like drinking thick, sandy water. It spilled down his throat and
nearly choked him. Harry grimaced and kept swallowing, not allowing any
of the vestiges of the liquid to roll out of the corners of his mouth,
even though it was tempting. He had to get it all down.

The liquid brewed and churned in his stomach, and then Harry coughed in
surprise. The potion itself had been cold, but a burning line seemed to
be rising up his throat.

He raised his eyes, and saw the same burning engulf the air in front of
him. Dancing white fires were everywhere he looked, not only in the
nests of rocks that the goblin clans had made. In fact, those flames
became the dimmest as the whole world burned. Harry could see white fire
consuming the air, and revealing another world behind the surface one,
rather like the one he had traveled with Fawkes.

This one glittered as a vast, empty waste of air above, and, beneath
Harry's feet, endless reaches of stone and soil and metal. Harry
blinked. He turned his head to the sea, and realized he was seeing the
currents that pulsed within it, the veins of salt and warm and cold that
made it so different from the land.

``Now,'' whispered Helcas, taking his shoulder, ``turn and look behind
you.''

Harry did, and recoiled. He could clearly see the goblins' net now, a
vast and dirty thing, the web of an old and savage spider, spreading out
to the south. As he watched, it reared into one sharply defined peak of
foulness very close at hand, and then went on running, linking to other
places, lone mountains of filth in the midst of cleanliness. Harry
shivered in revulsion.

``What are they?'' he whispered.

``The stakes of our net,'' Helcas whispered back, his mouth very close
to Harry's ear. ``The pins that hold us down, running into the sweet
earth itself, making us unable to simply free ourselves. The
\emph{linchpins.}''

Harry understood, then. The nearest mountain of foulness was Lux
Aeterna.

``Why did they bind you?'' he breathed.

``Why do wizards bind any magical creature?'' Helcas sounded old and
cross and tired. ``Because they wanted things from us. Because they were
afraid we might hurt them. Because they didn't want to hear the truth.
In our case, they wanted us to mine.''

``But that wasn't all of it. We told them, when they first tried to
establish their linchpins, what it would do to the land they established
them in. They sink so deep that they pierce the soil. The earth can't
move and shift around them the way it would naturally.'' Helcas motioned
with his head in the direction of the beach, though Harry saw that only
from the corner of his eye. The black, smoking volcano of Lux Aeterna in
this realm of sight still occupied most of his attention. ``If all was
as it should be, the sea would have eaten this beach long ago, and the
land where Lux Aeterna stands would have sunk, and hills would have
arisen in other places.''

Harry wanted to close his eyes, hide his face, turn away. He did not.
``And the only way to free you is to destroy the linchpins?'' he asked.

``Yes,'' said Helcas. ``All of them. If even one is left, then it will
enslave us, and prevent the net from being pulled up.''

``You do realize,'' said Harry, startled to hear his own voice so dry,
``that it's less than ideal to ask a Potter, one of the heirs of the
nearest linchpin, to destroy his own home?''

``Less than ideal,'' said Helcas. ``Immediately? Impossible. But you are
the \emph{vates.} We have hope now, where we had none before. You can
take your time, \emph{vates.} But eventually, we expect that you will
destroy the linchpins, yes. Your own ideals are stronger than the
wizarding world's.''

Harry tried to think of how many grand old homes he would be destroying,
how many pureblood families he would anger, and shook his head. It was
too much to contemplate for right now.

But he was not running. He was not turning away.

``I understand,'' he said, and then blinked. White flames were crawling
back over the world, dimming his sight of the earth and the sea and the
slag mountains. He waited until his eyes were normal again, then stepped
away from Helcas and turned to look at him.

Helcas studied him intently. His eyes were a thick yellow-green, Harry
saw, the color of dead seaweed. ``Patience, honesty, courage,'' he said.
``One more remains.''

He turned and gestured at one of the fires arrayed behind him and off to
the left. Harry didn't know which clan it was, but one of the members
stepped forward and tossed Helcas a small object. Helcas felt at it for
a moment, then turned and handed it to Harry.

Harry found a small, spiky stone, star-shaped, with one spike on either
side and one on top and bottom. He looked at Helcas. ``Well?''

``Tell us all the things that you could do with this,'' Helcas said.

Harry frowned and looked at the stone. ``I could toss it behind me if
someone was chasing me and try to stab them in the foot, I suppose,'' he
said. ``It'd be good for horses' hooves---well, not \emph{good}, but it
would slow them down. I could throw it at someone else's head and
distract them that way, if not actually hit them. I could hold it in my
hand and stab it into an enemy's eye.''

He tossed the stone, and watched as it sparkled when it soared. Faint
veins of silver were probably the cause, he saw, when the stone landed
in his palm again. ``I could use it is a signal, throwing back the sun,
if a friend were close enough. I could use it in a game; it's weighted
enough to make a good playing piece. I could use it as the base of
several potions, but I'd have to know if the black stone was basalt or
onyx or something else first.'' He grimaced. His studies in stones
weren't going as well as he wanted them to, but then, it was hard
splitting his attention between all the subjects he wanted to study. He
didn't have Hermione's ability to do so effectively.

``And I could use it as a token of friendship---''

He started as Helcas grabbed the stone back out of his hand. Harry
looked at him curiously. ``What's the matter?''

``You named eight uses,'' said Helcas, folding the stone back into his
palm. Harry winced, but either the goblin didn't feel the spikes cutting
into his hand the way Harry would have, or he was unwilling to show
pain. ``Two for each clan. The final test was one of intelligence.''

He stared hard at Harry. ``We shall be here, \emph{vates}, when you feel
the need to set us upon the path of freedom at last. We shall send you
messages through any storm of danger. We shall tell you the truth,
always. And we shall come up with clever plans where others could not.''

One correspondence to each virtue they'd tested him on, Harry guessed.
He nodded. ``Then I suppose our meeting is over?''

``As soon as you tell us why you have brought other wizards along,''
Helcas said.

``I didn't.'' Harry immediately thought of Connor's Invisibility Cloak,
though, and felt a welling of unease. \emph{Did someone follow me out of
sight?}

``Then explain that,'' said Helcas, and nodded over his shoulder. Harry
turned.

Four black figures were behind him.

\emph{Death Eaters!} Regulus screamed abruptly in his head. \emph{I can
feel their connections to Voldemort.}

Harry heard wild, immediately recognizable laughter in the same instant,
and then the Portkey in his pocket began to burn. He snatched it out and
threw it, not letting himself think about it, and watched as it was
destroyed, a small sparkle in the air, consuming itself in a burst of
fire. Anti-Apparition spells were already up, slamming into place around
him and holding him like a fly in amber.

And then the goblins whirled aside, and Bellatrix Lestrange's first hex
came at him, and he had no time for anything other than battle.

\chapter{Battles in Conversation}\label{chapter-5-battles-in-conversation}

Harry felt his shoulder all but crunch on the sand as he avoided
Bellatrix's first hex. He felt his heart hammering in his ears, heard
his own gasping, and felt an ache travel across his sides that might
have been the remnant of the bruises he'd earned from Voldemort's
justice ritual, were those not healed long since.

He felt all that, but his attention was on the mental world,
interpreting the Death Eaters' movements and the repertoire of spells
they were likely to use in this situation and the urgent murmurs that
Regulus was handing him.

\emph{Rabastan---that must be Rabastan with her, from the way he
moves---has a weak left side. Strike him there. The one on the very end
is Mulciber. Watch out for his Imperius.}

\emph{That I knew,} said Harry, and heard Bellatrix cry out,
predictably, ``\emph{Crucio!}''

Of course she would do that, Harry thought, as he raised his Shield
Charm around himself without pausing to breathe out the incantation. She
liked to hurt people, and he had killed both her husband and her Lord.
He wasn't surprised that she had sought him out for vengeance.

Mind, he would have liked to know how she'd found him.

But when he thought about that, as the Unforgivable bounced from his
shield and a hex from Mulciber followed it, he knew. There was only one
possible candidate for a guidepost. He'd released his magic, at
Andromeda's asking, and it would have lit up the sky like a second sun
to anyone looking for it.

\emph{Merlin take it,} he thought in resignation. \emph{That was
dangerous. Although how I could have refused when she'd asked me to do
so, without insulting her\ldots{}}

His Shield Charm cracked apart under a persistent hex from the Death
Eater on the far right, and Harry jerked his mind back to the battle. He
had every chance of surviving this, but not if he nattered on to
himself.

\emph{Who's that?} he asked Regulus as he cast a full body-bind at the
one whom Regulus had identified as Rabastan. The man stiffened and
toppled over, but Mulciber was already turning to revive him.

\emph{Rosier,} said Regulus flatly.

Rosier cast back his hood in the next moment, and confirmed Regulus's
statement. He was the same dark-eyed, handsome, smiling man Harry had
glimpsed on the night he slew Rodolphus. His gaze was fixed on Harry
now, and he spoke a few words, his voice unexpectedly loud in that
little pause between the firing of spells. Harry could even hear him
over the pounding of his heart.

``How dull it is to pause, to make an end,'' he said, ``to rust
unburnish'd, not to shine in use! As tho' to breathe were life.'' He
raised his wand and sent a blue hex at Harry that he didn't recognize.
He summoned his own magic, figuring there wasn't much use hiding it now,
and grabbed the hex in midair, flinging it back at Rosier. The Death
Eater dodged it easily, and his voice only grew more assured. ``Life
piled on life were all too little, and of one to me little remains.''

``Shut \emph{up}, Evan,'' Bellatrix Lestrange snapped at him, and then
turned and snarled at Harry, her long black hair flying free around her
face. ``You're going to die, baby,'' she said, her voice unexpectedly
conversational. ``I hope that you like potatoes. Before you die, I'll
make you peel them, and then cut off your fingers, and serve to you a
stew full of potatoes and fingers stripped to the bone.''

Harry shuddered in spite of himself, but decided that he might as well
do something with all this time his enemies were giving him as they
chattered. He gestured with his hand at Rabastan's right side and
murmured, loud enough to be heard, ``\emph{Incendio}.''

A fire started in the grass at Rabastan's feet, making him lunge to the
left. Harry aimed at his ribs.

\emph{There's a good spot,} said Regulus helpfully.

``\emph{Reducto!}'' Harry snapped, and Rabastan went spinning and
slumping, gasping and wheezing aloud. Harry heard several ribs snap
clear across the grass.

``Oh, you'll pay for that, baby,'' Bellatrix whispered, and there was no
warning of a word this time as she sent the Cruciatus at him again.
Harry dropped flat. He didn't dare let the curse catch him.

``You have no sense of \emph{adventure}, Bellatrix,'' said Rosier, as if
continuing a conversation they hadn't finished, and pointed his wand
slightly to the side of Harry. ``But every hour is saved from that
eternal silence, something more, a bringer of new things.'' He fired a
hex.

Harry couldn't understand why it was going to travel past him, at first.
Then he remembered the goblins, who had remained still and silent behind
him, but apparently not fled.

He jumped into its path, spitting, ``\emph{Haurio!}'' The jade-green
shield formed in his palm and drank the magic. Harry was reminded that
he could, himself, drink magic if he wished, and add some of Rosier's
power to his own. He shook off the temptation. He would either be trying
to swallow and incorporate it fully into his own magic in the middle of
battle, or he would be slinging around raw and uncoordinated power, and
that had not worked well in the past.

He felt a stirring at his back. He kept his eyes forward, though he wove
another Shield Charm just above his skin. If Helcas was on the Death
Eaters' side, there was nothing Harry could do about that.

Instead, Helcas said, ``He stood to defend us. \emph{Gralashigan!}''

A storm of white, glinting shapes flew past Harry, and Mulciber gave a
shriek. Harry spun to face him, and saw him tugging at two bone-white
arrows, one of them embedded in his shoulder and another in his arm.
Rosier and Bellatrix had been quick enough to raise shields against
them, and Rabastan still lay motionless on the ground.

Harry smiled slightly. It appeared that the goblins were on no side in a
wizarding war, unless those wizards actually fought for them.

Rosier threw back his head and laughed. He looked more mad than Harry
had thought he was, this close, with his eyes glinting and his voice
whispering out the words of a poem that Harry still did not recognize.

``Death closes all: but something ere the end,'' he said, bowing to
Harry and flourishing his wand, ``some work of noble note, may yet be
done, not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.'' His voice dipped into
a more normal register. ``I think that we are very close to striving with
a god now. \emph{Accendo intra cruore!}''

Harry felt the spell begin \emph{within} his shields, something that was
supposed to be impossible. A moment later, he cried out as his blood
began to boil in his veins. He could actually hear his flesh cooking as
it flashed and burned, or at least he thought he could.

\emph{Hold steady, Harry!} Regulus was shouting at him. \emph{Unleash
that magic-feeding ability you have and turn it on yourself! You can do
this. Eat up his spell! Consume into you and make it harmless!}

Harry forced himself to listen. What Regulus said made good sense. He
would listen. He had to listen. He forced his breathing flat and rolled
around the pain, never mind that it was more intense than anything he
had ever felt, never mind that he could imagine the fire broiling his
liver and his heart. He had to do this, and it was to be done, and he
was doing it---

And it was done. Harry felt the fire retreat as his ability hungrily
swallowed the curse making its way through his body. It left pain
vibrating in him, still, and he wanted nothing so much as he wanted to
collapse to the ground and cry, but he could think and feel and function
again.

And given the ability that was flooding around him, and the fact that he
could have nearly died and so cost Connor and the goblins and Draco and
Snape and many other people someone who might matter to them, Harry let
go of the hold on his temper.

He fixed his eyes on Rosier, who was cocking his head, not looking
really surprised that Harry had survived.

``Tennyson,'' he explained, when he saw Harry staring at him. ``His
father was a wizard. Real father, that is. His mother never told anyone
about a certain visitor to her bed one night, but I found the letter she
wrote, begging her `demon lover' to come back. I would never quote the
words of a simple Muggle, of course.''

Harry didn't bother replying, but simply gestured. Around him, the snake
of his ability opened its jaws wide.

Mulciber shrieked like a girl, probably because Harry would have
swallowed the healing spells he was working on the arrows first. And
then Harry felt his magic tearing hungrily at the actual magic of the
Death Eaters, eating it and chewing on it, and feeding it to Harry as if
down a siphon.

This time, Harry was better braced for the rush of insane strength that
came to him, and he knew how he wanted to use it. He concentrated, hard,
and glittering blue walls sprang into being behind Rosier and Bellatrix.
Those would prevent them from moving, by any means, even Portkey or
Apparition.

Bellatrix snapped something out of the front of her robe in response,
and cast it to the ground in the moment before the blue walls curled
around her and completely restricted her movement. Harry saw a familiar
black flash.

``Attack,'' Bellatrix whispered. ``As I am of the Black blood, attack.''

The creature, a centipede with a multilegged and multi-jointed body,
scurried forward and through Harry's blue cage walls as if they weren't
there. Harry focused his ability on it and started to drain it, but his
magic rolled off its own with no effect.

\emph{They can't be touched by anyone not of the House of Black,}
Regulus snarled, \emph{in any way. But I can do something about this.
How} dare \emph{she steal our family's treasures, when she's not the
rightful heir? Open your mouth, Harry.}

Harry opened it, trusting him, and spoke in a voice that was not his
own. ``Back, as I am Black's heir.''

The centipede stopped. Harry watched its body sway, blinking now and
then as his own body swelled with power. He occupied it in building
shields around the goblins, just to make sure that Mulciber and
Rabastan, if they recovered, couldn't strike at them.

``No,'' Bellatrix whispered. ``That's impossible. \emph{Attack}, you
cursed creature!''

``I think not,'' said Regulus's same smooth, self-assured voice,
sounding much calmer than it ever was when he shouted in Harry's head.
``\emph{Toujours pur} abstained.''

The centipede abruptly self-destructed, rather like Harry's Portkey had,
flipping over and ripping itself to shreds. Harry blinked at the
gleaming black joints and legs left behind, then lifted his head and met
Bellatrix Lestrange's eyes.

``Who \emph{are} you?'' she whispered.

``Someone who wasn't as dead as you thought, Bellatrix,'' Regulus said
through Harry's mouth. It was rather an odd experience, Harry thought,
even as more magic flooded him and he sent more into the shields
surrounding the goblins. ``And I see now that you've been hiding in one
of the family's estates. No wonder the Aurors couldn't find you. I shall
make sure to remedy that. I may not have my body back yet, but I have my
voice, and my will, and I am the rightful heir of the Black line. From
now on, any doors that have opened in our houses because of your
bloodline are closed to you, and to those who travel with you.''

Bellatrix let out a long, descending scream. Harry caught a glimpse of
movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned swiftly.

Rabastan was writhing slowly. He placed a hand on his left arm, probably
above the Dark Mark, and whispered something Harry couldn't make out.

Harry felt the sucking pull of some immense, stirring magic, as
perverted as that which Voldemort had unleashed in the Shrieking Shack.
He instinctively coiled his ability back about his body, not wanting to
swallow any of the foul power now blasting from Rabastan.

In an instant, the anti-Apparition spells the Death Eaters had
established were gone, and his shields and cages, without the feeding of
new magic to hold them, were melting. Harry fell back a step and
prepared for battle.

But Bellatrix obviously knew when she was beaten, and Apparated out.
Mulciber and Rabastan followed her a moment later. Rosier lingered,
smiling faintly at Harry.

``You'll want to get to a healer soon,'' he said. ``My \emph{Accendo
intra cruore}---'' Harry tensed, but the spell didn't repeat itself
``---can leave a lot of internal damage. Why, I've known people who went
mad in St. Mungo's, trying to reverse it.'' He tilted his head to the
side and clucked his tongue. ``Or was that the people who went mad
trying to heal from the pain? I can never remember.''

And then he was gone.

Harry sagged to his knees, breathing hard. He felt Regulus retreat into
the back of his head, apparently looking at something not visible to
Harry, and then murmur, \emph{He's right. And I can feel someone else
with a connection to Voldemort coming.}

Harry struggled to his feet, then sat down hard on the sand again. His
body was reeling from the sudden reversal of magic, and he could feel
the first pain coming back again, like the first rise of a long tide at
sea. He'd just had his veins cooked from the inside out. He had no idea
how much damage had been done, or what had to be done to reverse it, or
how much agony he was going to be in in a short while.

A clawed hand caught his elbow. Harry looked up, through eyes already
going glassy, and met Helcas's gaze.

``We are your allies now,'' said Helcas. ``Formally. You defended us.
That is not something many wizards, even one who claimed to be
\emph{vates}, would do.'' His gaze went abruptly over Harry's head. ``We
will protect you from those who might come to hurt you, even him.''

Harry turned his head wearily to look. Yes, the pain was rising, but he
had to remain conscious and sane for just a little longer.

He didn't need his usual wits to recognize the figure coming at a dead
run across the sands, though. \emph{Snape.}

Probably Harry's blast of magic had called him, he thought, or perhaps
whatever Rabastan had done with the Dark Mark. Harry closed his eyes and
sighed. He was glad that Snape was here. He concentrated on remaining
conscious, so that he could tell Snape what had happened.

Snape slid to a stop beside him, not even appearing to notice the
goblins. Helcas made a motion, but Harry managed to whisper, ``He's a
friend,'' and the goblin stopped.

``Harry!''

Harry couldn't even tell which emotion was predominant in that cry, it
held so many .He forced his eyes open, and met Snape's gaze calmly.

``Rosier used \emph{Accendo intra cruore} on me,'' he said, and then the
pain grabbed him and dragged him out to sea. Harry felt himself falling
through darkness, with sounds that might be the cries of gulls or the
laughter of goblins in his ears.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape might have glared at the goblins ordinarily. He might have
demanded that Harry keep awake and help him with a little more
information about what Rosier had done to him, if he could. He might
have suffered a surge of rage about what Harry was doing out here alone,
with no one to protect him.

He might have done that, if he hadn't heard the name of the spell that
Harry had suffered, and seen the telltale black traces already spreading
beneath Harry's skin.

Snape grabbed Harry close and shut his eyes. He let his desperation
build, his pain, his resolve, and used them to call up a picture of a
place he hadn't been in months.

Together, he and Harry Apparated, and he felt the world around him
squeeze and tingle unpleasantly the way it always did when he performed
Side-Along Apparition. Or Chest-Along Apparition, as it was in this
case, Snape thought, as he came out very firmly on the floor of his
potions lab at Spinner's End.

He laid Harry down on a stone bench that he usually kept for potions
that needed a flat surface, and moved towards the shelves. He had
potions here that could fight the Blood-Burning Curse, potions that he
didn't have at Hogwarts and doubted they would have at St. Mungo's. He
could save Harry's life. He would move fast enough to do so.

He used those thoughts like iron spikes, hammering them into the
yammering, yelping, confused mass of his panic, holding it steady. His
hands did not shake as he found the proper mixture of potions and poured
them into a vial. The mortar and pestle moved in fine, precise strokes
as he crushed a small measure of violet petals and likewise emptied them
into the mixture of the potions. He did not spin and slosh the brew
wildly all over the room; he turned, with no more than a small flourish
of his robes, and strode back to Harry.

He pried Harry's jaws apart and emptied the mixture down his throat. He
saw the blackness begin to retreat along the path of his veins almost
immediately. Harry gave a little shivering sigh and relaxed.

Snape Transfigured a cauldron into a chair and sat down on it, hard,
across from Harry.

Then, \emph{then}, he allowed himself to put his hands over his face,
and shake, from affection and pain and fury and the panic of such a near
miss. If he had not been there, Harry would have died---perhaps not for
days, perhaps in as little as two minutes. The Blood-Burning Curse did
immense damage, contingent on how long it was held and how much the
caster wanted to hurt the victim, and Snape had no information on what
Rosier's intentions might have been.

\emph{Evan Rosier. I wish the Dementors were still at Azkaban, if only
so they might contain and cage} him.

Snape had thought for the past fourteen years that Rosier was dead, and
even though the man had died before he officially abandoned his loyalty
to Voldemort, he had been relieved. There was something wild in Rosier,
something even more untrustworthy than Bellatrix's unrelenting sadism,
something that made him civilized in one moment and then longing for
pain and death in the next. He had invented the Blood-Burning Curse, and
used it, often so lingeringly that the sufferers had felt their blood
slowly boiling away for days. Snape doubted that fourteen years in
Azkaban would have improved him.

And Harry had faced him alone---\emph{alone}. That he had had goblins
with him did not matter; goblins would not often fight for wizards. And
by the position of the boy's body, he'd been protecting them, not the
other way around.

Snape could guess how the Death Eaters had found Harry, too. He himself
had felt the beacon rise this morning, the siren song of a magic wild
and seductive and alluring, and had identified Lux Aeterna in a few
moments. He'd had to control the temptation to Apparate there and snatch
Harry away.

Then he'd felt another blast of magic this afternoon, and his Dark Mark
had burned the way it did when one of the Death Eaters was using
Voldemort's ``gift'' to befoul all the magic in the area, and he'd
Apparated towards both calls without waiting.

And if he had not, Harry would be dead.

Snape slowly dropped his hands from his face and checked on Harry. The
boy had uncurled from the tight, almost fetal, position he'd adopted on
the way here. The black traces were gone from his hands and his right
arm, and had retreated most of the way towards his heart on his left
arm. Snape knew the signs. The Curse was dissipating. The few times he'd
used this mixture of potions on other Death Eaters whom Rosier had
cursed and the Dark Lord had ordered him to heal, the effect had been
the same.

Harry was going to live.

But he so nearly had not.

Snape allowed the rage to wake up in him then. This wasn't the wild
emotion he had felt when he thought Harry was still in danger. This was
the familiar rage associated with James Potter and Sirius Black, the
cold, dark hatred that stalked Snape's veins like a chill version of the
\emph{Accendo intra cruore.}

\emph{James Potter could not take care of him. He let his son go to meet
goblins, alone, after flourishing his magic like a banner outside the
wards.}

\emph{Does he care about Harry at all?}

\emph{And does he really think that I will let him take Harry back?}

He should contact the man fairly soon, Snape considered. Reassure him
that Harry was all right, that he hadn't been abducted by Death Eaters.
And of course a letter to Draco would not go amiss.

On the other hand, there might be Death Eaters watching Spinner's End,
waiting to intercept any owls. Snape really had no way of knowing. He
hadn't been here since last summer, and would not have risked coming
here now, if not for the potions he'd needed. He should get back behind
Hogwarts's wards as soon as possible. The Death Eaters knew his
affiliation with the Light, and were hunting him now.

\emph{And letters can wait until Harry is safe,} he decided, and
gathered the sleeping boy up again. This time, he felt almost calm as he
Apparated to Hogsmeade. He could actually afford to land outside
Hogwarts's anti-Apparition spells, and walk in, without fearing that
Harry would die along the way.

He did not feel calm, however, because the rage was waiting under the
surface.

\emph{I am the only one who can properly protect him. I knew it all
along, and still I let him leave. Not this time. Not again.}

\emph{No matter what anyone says.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry woke slowly. He knew that he wasn't at home, as much from the feel
of the magic around him as because the sheets didn't fold like his own.
He blinked and wiped at his face, and found that he had no glasses. A
quick glance located them on the bedside table, and from the thick stone
walls around him, he guessed he was at Hogwarts.

His broken memories traced themselves back to darkness, and pain, and
Professor Snape crouched over him---

``Feeling better, Harry?''

And here came Professor Snape now, swooping through the door of the room
like a huge black version of the gulls on the Northumberland shore.
Harry nodded hesitantly at him; he couldn't see his expression that well
without his glasses. ``Fine, thank you, sir, although I'm still weak,''
he said. He hesitated, then added, ``You probably saved my life.''

For a moment, Snape stilled, and Harry wondered what emotions the words
roused, how close he had come to death. Then Snape said, in an almost
neutral voice, ``Yes, I did. And now you are in a private room that I
have furnished for your convenience, linked to mine with a magical door.
The loo is to your right, and there is a small library beyond this door,
already stocked with books, that you may peruse when you are feeling
better.'' Snape came close enough for Harry to make out his expression
this time, and added, ``I am certain you would go mad if you were left
without \emph{something} to do.''

Harry nodded. ``Yes, I would, sir.'' He was uneasy. Something was wrong.
He had been certain that Snape would come in raging about the
carelessness of parents in general and James Potter in particular, how
his father wasn't fit to care for his own sons, how Harry would have
been better off with Fenrir Greyback, and how obviously neither Remus
Lupin nor his brother could be trusted to have heads on their shoulders,
either. Instead, Snape watched him with intent but not agitated eyes,
and seemed to be waiting for a first sally from Harry, instead of a
response.

Harry finally coughed and said, ``Were the goblins fine, sir?''

``They were,'' said Snape. ``None of them were injured that I saw.
Granted, my first priority was \emph{not} injured goblins.''

Ah, the first hint of sharpness in his voice. Harry relaxed at hearing
it. He would rather deal with an angry, and thus familiar, Snape than
the calm stranger who'd come striding into the room. ``Then they
probably weren't at all,'' he said. ``I did pour some of my magic into
shields to defend them.'' He paused again, and still Snape stood silent.
Harry fidgeted with the blankets. \emph{Isn't he even going to scold
me?}

Abruptly, a new thought struck him. \emph{Did something horrible happen
to someone else, and he doesn't want to tell me?}

He stared at Snape, who immediately came over to sit down on a chair
beside the bed. ``What is it, Harry?''

``What about James and Connor and Remus?'' Harry whispered. ``Was there
a---a disaster at Lux Aeterna? Did the Death Eaters get them?'' His mind
jumped to people who wouldn't have been in the vicinity of either Rosier
or Bellatrix next. ``What about Draco? Narcissa? One of the other
Slytherins? I---''

Snape caught his wrist and held it, firmly enough that Harry couldn't
pick at the blankets any more, or scratch at his scar, as he'd
half-raised his hand to do. ``No one suffered, Harry,'' he said. ``No
one but Death Eaters, who doubtless deserved it, and you. And that is
why you are going to be staying with me for the rest of the summer.''

Harry let out a relieved breath, and then his mind caught up with his
ears.

\emph{That's why he's so calm,} he realized, as he studied Snape again.
\emph{He's acting as though this is already settled.}

Of course, it wasn't. Harry was damn well going to fight it. What
unnerved him wasn't Snape's mask---he would probably have tried to look
composed in the face of Voldemort returned---but how genuine it seemed,
as though he really thought Harry couldn't make a successful argument.

``I have to let James and my brother know what happened,'' he said
evenly.

``I have already done so,'' said Snape. ``And Draco, and Narcissa. And
the Headmaster knows you are here, Harry, and has agreed to let you stay
the summer---and stay out of our way. He has learned better.''

Harry sighed. ``I didn't want to have to say it,'' he said. ``I'll
remain with you a few days, enough to make sure all the effects of that
curse are gone, and then I'm leaving for Lux Aeterna.''

Snape sat back in his chair, releasing his grip on Harry's hand.
``Harry,'' he said, ``you seem to be under the impression that if I let
you go home, you would do something other than attempt to get yourself
killed again.''

``That wasn't \emph{deliberate,}'' Harry snapped, his temper flaring. He
saw Snape wince, and calmed his magic as hard as he could. ``I know now
that I summoned the Death Eaters by letting my magic flare out of
control. That won't happen again. And I won't venture out to meet with
the goblins again, either. They can send messages to me through the
wards. I really would have tried to save myself, but someone, Bellatrix
probably, cast a spell that destroyed my Portkey first thing. And I
couldn't have known that Rosier would use that spell. I never heard of
it.''

``None of that matters,'' said Snape, immovable as a petrified tree.
``Your father was beyond careless in the first place to send you out
with nothing more than a Portkey for protection.''

``I had an alliance compass, too,'' Harry said. ``In my robe pocket.''

Snape sneered. ``Much good that would do you when you were under
immediate attack.''

``The goblins helped---''

``It does not \emph{matter.}'' Snape leaned sharply forward. ``You are not
returning to Lux Aeterna for the rest of this summer, Harry, and not for
Christmas or Easter, either, if I have a say in it. I have been worried
about you before. My worry increased when you reported Rosier's letter
to me. This attack\ldots{}'' He shook his head. ``My demanding that you
remain here is as much for my sake as for your own. Your absence has
been destroying my ability to do useful work. That will stop now.''

Harry scowled at him. The thing was, he really couldn't imagine anyone
better-suited to protect him than Snape. Snape was harder to evade or
distract than most other people, and now that he'd been frightened for
Harry's life, he would make it even harder. He would make restrictions,
and he would enforce them. He had no other children to care for, as
James had Connor. He was a powerful wizard, and wouldn't hesitate to use
Dark magic in the cause of Harry's defense, and he could use potions to
heal most injuries Harry received, as he'd already proven.

And that was precisely the reason Harry wanted to go home. The
restrictions weren't what he needed, not if he was going to accomplish
what he wanted to accomplish this summer. He wanted to be around Connor
to encourage him and set him on his own two feet; Remus could only do so
much, and so could James. Harry needed to get more used to defending
\emph{himself}, too, and brewing his own potions, which was what he'd
been trying to do when the orange mess exploded in his makeshift potions
lab.

Snape would insist on getting in between him and danger. He hadn't yet
come to the realization James had, that Harry was in danger every moment
he breathed \emph{anyway}.

\emph{So perhaps I can help him come to it,} Harry thought abruptly, and
nodded. He knew how stubborn Snape could be, how unwilling to recognize
reality when it didn't accord with his preconceptions. Perhaps he needed
a blunt, open statement of it to let him face it.

``I could die anyway,'' he told Snape calmly. ``You can't wrap me up in
cotton wool, and threats could find their way through Hogwarts's wards
if they're determined enough. So you might as well let me go to a place
where I can be useful. I understand you care for me, I \emph{know} that,
but sometimes the most caring act a guardian can perform is to step
aside and let his charge make his own mistakes.''

Snape still looked too calm, though Harry could see his fingers
spidering along the edge of the blankets, and knew he was feeling at
least some rage. ``A mistake is one thing,'' he said. ``And I will indeed
be pleased to instruct you in potions and defensive magic, Harry, so
that when you face your enemies, you may \emph{survive.} There is a
large difference between that and leaving you to die.''

``James didn't leave me to die---'' Harry started to argue.

``Regardless, you almost \emph{did.}'' Snape's hand came out and closed
around Harry's left wrist, in the same place that Helcas had held him,
and squeezed with no gentle pressure. Harry winced. Snape stopped
squeezing, but didn't let his hand go, instead staring into his eyes
with a feral intensity. ``And if you are indeed in as much danger as you
say, it makes sense that you should be in the place and with the person
who gives you the greatest chance of surviving. That person is not
James. Or do you disagree with that?'' he added, with a little purring
tone in his voice that reminded Harry of the way he sounded when he got
ready to serve students with detentions.

``No,'' said Harry. ``But you don't understand, sir. I want to be with
my brother and my father.''

``Why?'' Snape asked.

Harry hissed at him.

``I have committed no crime,'' said Snape blandly. He still hadn't let
go of Harry's wrist, and he still hadn't leaned away from him. ``I've
asked you a question. \emph{Answer it.}''

Harry ducked his head. He hated this. He couldn't think of a subject to
distract Snape, and even if he could, it wouldn't do much good, not with
Snape trapping him like this and able to detect lies as a Legilimens.

And meanwhile, all that attention was \emph{focused}. On \emph{him.}

He didn't like it. Remnant of his training, result of his love for
Connor, the fact that it was Snape---no, not the last, he would have
felt this way if anyone had stared at him with such intensity, he felt
this way when Draco did it---he didn't \emph{like} it. He didn't like
being stared at, and peered at, and remarked about in wondering tones.
Rumors were at least better than the stares, because he could pretend
that they didn't exist if he couldn't hear them. But he couldn't escape
the stares, and he knew that meant the person involved was looking at
him, considering him, when all Harry really wanted was to duck into the
shadows.

That was another reason he didn't think he could be a leader, no matter
what Draco might say. He did well enough in small formal meetings. How
in the world could he stand in front of an army or a gathering of
wizards expecting a grand speech and not feel frozen and pierced to the
bone by the stares? That was Connor's scene, or the scene that Connor
would be master of once he was trained, not Harry's.

\emph{Someone else can get that attention,} he thought, as he hunched
his shoulders and ducked his head further and felt, all the while,
Snape's hand on his wrist like a manacle, binding him to reality.
\emph{I know it happens. I have no problem with it. But not me. Not like
this. Stop} looking \emph{at me.}

``Answer it,'' Snape breathed, and Harry decided reluctantly that he
would have to answer it, as long as it meant that Snape would stop
\emph{looking} at him.

He licked his lips and whispered, ``I---I think I should try to create a
family with them again. I want to reconcile with James. I want to give
him a chance. I want to make sure that Connor has what he needs, and
does heal from the wounds that Sirius's death inflicted on him. He does
need attention, you know. He needs---''

``We were not talking about your brother,'' Snape said. ``We were
talking about you.''

Harry discovered he couldn't look up yet, and brought his head back
down. He'd counted on mention of Connor to deflect Snape into a tirade
about his brother. That evidently wasn't going to work. He felt stripped
naked. ``I---I don't feel like I have much to do with them, now that I
know James does want to reconcile with me and Remus is training
Connor,'' he whispered. ``So I'm trying to study. But it's difficult on
my own, and I can't get any peace, and I keep thinking of other things I
should be doing, and trying to build a family step by step with them
instead of letting it grow naturally, because if \emph{that} happens,
it'll all fall apart again.''

``So you don't want to stay with them,'' Snape summed up effortlessly.
``Or, at least, that is not your sole ambition. But you feel as if you
\emph{should} want to stay with them.''

Harry nodded, his eyes on his hands. He'd come to that realization early
last week, when he'd wondered why his head was filling up with
restlessness as he thought of his various tasks, instead of the calm,
ordered resolve that he usually got when he made a list of things he had
to do. He could have done so many of the things he had to do better at
Hogwarts or Malfoy Manor. But he was confined in Lux Aeterna, distant
from the people who understood him best, with wards inhibiting his
freedom of movement, around a brother who seemed to be doing just fine
without him and a father who still didn't understand him, not yet. It
would have been all right if he'd just been with Connor and James for a
few weeks. But not a whole summer.

\emph{But what if they need you for the whole summer? What if they want
you there for the whole summer?}

Snape abruptly let go of his hand and sat back. ``I want you to stay
here,'' he told Harry. ``You want to stay here. So you will stay here.''
He released his breath in small catches, hitches that seemed to stick on
his teeth and tongue. ``I am not\ldots{}adverse\ldots{}to letting your
brother and father visit, so long as they do it when I am with you.''

Harry jerked his head up and stared at him, so fast that he hurt his
neck. ``But you said that you were at the beginning of summer,'' he
said. ``You said that you wouldn't let them visit.''

``Things have changed,'' said Snape, raising his eyebrows, as if Harry
should take it for granted that he could change his mind, even though
he'd almost never done it before. ``In particular, I have been without
your company for nearly two months, and I have found communication by
letter an insufficient substitute. If you wish to stay here, and you
wish to have your brother and father visit you, I see no reason why you
should not have both.''

Harry stared at him, waiting for the catch. Snape's face remained bland,
but as open as Harry had ever seen it.

``I---you \emph{really} mean this?'' Harry asked, testing. ``You won't
change your mind later and not let them visit?''

Snape shook his head slowly. ``I swear by Merlin that I mean it,
Harry,'' he said. ``Of course, I will supervise the visits, and restrict
them by length, and they will be dependent on the politeness of the
Potters as well as my own. But you matter more to me than an old
hatred.''

Harry knew his face was blazing, and he fought back the temptation to
cry. This was a day for smiling, instead. He let Snape see his fierce
grin, rather than ducking his head to hide it, and said softly, ``Thank
you. That's what I want, then.''

``Then you shall have it, Harry,'' said Snape, and rose to his feet.
``You will want something to eat, now, and another potion.''

Harry fell back on his pillows and half-closed his eyes, listening to
Snape move out of the room. He spent a few minutes, until Snape returned
with the food, trying to reason out the tumult of emotions within him.

\emph{This is really brilliant,} was the best he could come up with.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape watched Harry silently from the doorway in the moments before he
departed to get a tray. The look on Harry's face had been worth the
promise, as he had thought it would be when he made it. He had set
himself a rough challenge, but he was determined to overcome it. If
nothing else, he could treat it as a competition with James Potter. He
was sure the man would crack and be rude before he would.

\emph{And it is not as if this is forever,} he noted to himself, his
glance lingering on a pile of books that had become quite familiar to
him, and the parchment and quill ready and waiting for the next letter
he would write. \emph{Only until a better solution can be found, and
James and Lily and Albus all together can be made to pay for their
crimes.}

\chapter{Interlude: And Then There Were More}\label{chapter-6-interlude-and-then-there-were-more}

\noindent \emph{July 31st, 1994}

\noindent \emph{Potter:}

I must congratulate you on finding an original way to try and get your
son killed. Quite ingenious, really, to have him employ his magic
outside the wards of the house you are so proud of and then go alone to
meet goblins and Death Eaters.

Death Eaters? you will say. I did not send him to meet Death Eaters.

Nevertheless, Death Eaters were there, and they found him. Evan Rosier
used the Blood-Burning Curse on him. If you paid any attention during
the First War, you will have heard of this curse and its effects. Of
course, I must conclude that you never paid any attention during the
First War, as otherwise you would have forbidden Harry to leave Lux
Aeterna at all while there was any possibility of Death Eaters anywhere
nearby. That would require you to have a grain of common sense and a
modicum of love for the boy, as well, but observation power must come
first.

Harry would have died were I not there. I fetched him, took him to
Spinner's End with me, saved his life, and brought him back to Hogwarts.

He is safe now. He will be safe as long as he is with me. He will never
be safe for as long as he is with you. He will stay with me the rest of
the summer. Dumbledore will not interfere, and you know it.

If you behave, I may let you visit my ward once or twice before the term
begins.

\emph{Professor Severus Snape.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\noindent \emph{August 1st, 1994}

\emph{Snape:}

I am glad to hear that Harry is safe. I am always glad to hear that
Harry is safe, no matter what else you may think of me.

I would not have let him go alone to meet the goblins, but he insisted.
He said that they had told him they would not meet with him if he came
with any other wizard, and since he seems so intent on being {vates}, I
yielded. I did not think about the consequences of his magic burst. I
did not think it was so strong that Dark wizards could find it from
dozens or hundreds of miles away.

I am his father, Snape. If I go to the Ministry and challenge you for
legal control of him, who do you think will win?

I will accept that Harry needs to rest, probably for today as well as
whatever time he spent with you yesterday. Tomorrow, I will come to
fetch him, and I expect you to return my son to me, alive and unharmed.

\emph{James Potter,}

\emph{Master of Lux Aeterna.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{August 1st, 1994}

\emph{Potter:}

You are not behaving. You will not see Harry tomorrow, or for at least a
week, unless he asks to see you. And even then, I will supervise the
meetings.

You should have thought of the consequences of leaving him alone,
Potter. You did not, and you are sorry. Is that not what you always say?
Always you come too late, after your wife has hurt Harry, after
Dumbledore has hurt him, after your friend Black has hurt him, after
Death Eaters have hurt him, and wail your apologies. That is not good
enough. What Harry needs is a guardian who can keep up with him and at
least {try} to understand him, and you are not prepared to do either.

Harry is still asleep. When he wakes, I fully intend to make this the
happiest summer he has ever spent. Not that that will be very difficult.

By all means, Potter, approach the Ministry and ask them to put my ward
back into your incompetent care. I think you will find that most
requests concerning Harry have a way of vanishing into a maze of forms
in triplicate.

\emph{Professor Severus Snape.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{August 1st, 1994}

\emph{Draco:}

I wanted to reassure you that Harry, though attacked by Death Eaters
yesterday, is currently well and resting in a room attached to my own at
Hogwarts. He will be spending the rest of the summer with me. You are
welcome to visit in two days, when Harry should have awakened from the
potions needed to spare him the effects of the Blood-Burning Curse.

\emph{Professor Severus Snape.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{August 1st, 1994}

\emph{Rufus Scrimgeour}

\emph{Auror Office}

\emph{Ministry of Magic}

Dear Auror Scrimgeour:

I thought you might like to know that James Potter will no doubt be
shortly approaching the Department of Magical Family and Child Services,
to request that guardianship of Harry Potter be transferred back to him.
As I know that you have cause to regard Harry favorably, and have
approved my guardianship of him besides, this issue might be of interest
to you.

\emph{Favorably,}

\emph{Professor Severus Snape.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{August 2nd, 1994}

\emph{Dear Professor Snape:}

That's awful! Is he awake? Is he able to receive visitors yet? Are there
any side-effects? Where were his brother and his father and his werewolf
when that happened? Probably behind their wards like the cowards they
are! Why didn't you stop by Malfoy Manor and Apparate with me, too?

My mother and father are beside themselves. At least, my mother is, and
my father looks as if he could be. I don't think I have to tell you how
many of their separate hopes and ambitions ride on Harry, and if they
plan to stand against the Dark Lord, they need him in other ways.

Tell Harry that he'll get a hug when he sees me, and a bunch of sweets,
and then he won't {move} for the rest of the summer without someone
being there with him. I need to know if I can come to Hogwarts for an
extended stay, Professor Snape. Please say yes. He needs someone with
him, and while I trust you and know that you can handle Harry, you'll
have potions brewing work to do. I {need} to be with Harry. Please say
yes. I am going to ask my parents if they'll agree to let me stay at
Hogwarts until the term begins.

\emph{Your elegant student,}

\emph{Draco Malfoy.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{August 3rd, 1994}

\emph{Dear Draco:}

Harry is currently awake, and has been since yesterday. We have had a
slight argument about him returning to his relatives, but Harry has
accepted that he will stay with me. He has granted me permission to say
that he was going half-mad at Lux Aeterna, and much prefers the intimate
company of Slytherins, when he must spend large amounts of time around
anyone at all.

I think it would be best to wait a few more days before asking Harry
about visitors. He needs the time to relax. He will have visits with his
father and brother as well, if they come to deserve them, but be assured
that I will supervise those visits. His father and brother and Lupin
were all inside Lux Aeterna's wards. He went alone to meet with goblins
as a {vates}, and that was the cause of his injury.

I did not stop by Malfoy Manor because I was concerned with saving
Harry's life, first and foremost.

You may not stay with us for the rest of the summer. Harry needs time to
himself as well as with me, and I know you have already said that you
would not allow that. Be assured, he is safe, and does not venture out
of Hogwarts. However, once Harry feels like it, visits every other day
are not out of the question.

Be assured of one thing, however. He will not return to the custody of
his father, not while I am still alive.

\emph{Professor Severus Snape}.

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{August 4th, 1994}

\emph{James Potter}

Lux Aeterna

\emph{Dear Mr. Potter:}

I must express my deep concern that your serious question, regarding
reversing the guardianship of Professor Severus Snape over your son,
Harry Potter, has gone unaddressed for two days. I have spent that long
researching the specifications of the case, since I could not remember
them; it has been months since the files have been looked at. As well,
the necessary forms have been misplaced. You see, the Department of
Magical Family and Child Services recently suffered the loss of its
master filer, who was sacked for accepting bribes, and no one else knows
the filing system as he did.

We are extremely sorry for the confusion. However, as the guardianship
was approved and not contested even when Harry Potter's official
residence was changed to Lux Aeterna, we believe little harm can be done
in continuing to leave the boy where he is for now. We are still
searching for the necessary forms, and will send them to you as soon as
we have them in hand.

\emph{Regretfully yours,}

\emph{Rufus Scrimgeour}

\emph{Head of the Auror Office.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{August 4th, 1994}

\emph{Snape, you slimy bastard:}

I know that you've got an ally in the Ministry somewhere! The sacking of
the secretary is too great to be coincidence. Who would have thought a
half-blood Slytherin's reach went so high up?

I {am} going to find a way to get Harry away from you. Be assured of
that.

\emph{James Potter.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{August 5th, 1994}

\emph{Potter:}

Dear dear. It seems that you haven't behaved well enough to earn a visit
with Harry yet.

\emph{Professor Severus Snape.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{August 7th, 1994}

\emph{Dear Harry:}

I know that Dad said I shouldn't write to you, because you'd probably
show the letter to Snape, but I want to.

I think I understand why you left, and why we weren't doing that great a
job. Hermione was right, and I should have asked you about stuff more. I
saw that you were unhappy a few days ago, but when I asked and you said
nothing was wrong, I just let it go. I should have asked about it a
little more. Sorry about that.

Was it something I did? I can try to make it up to you if you want. Was
it something Dad did? I can try to get him to apologize.

I'm very, very glad the Death Eaters didn't kill you. That sounds
stupid, I know, but that's all I know how to say about it.

If Professor Snape won't let Dad and me visit you before school starts,
will you at least be able to make the Quidditch World Cup? I think it's
on the 25th of August. Wait, let me look at the calendar\ldots{}yes,
that's it! Snape could come with you, if he wants. I find it awfully
hard to imagine him enjoying a Quidditch World Cup, but I find it harder
to imagine him letting you go anywhere alone. Dad and Ron and Ron's
family and I are all going to be there.

Please give Professor Snape a formal thanks for saving your life.

\emph{Love,}

\emph{Connor.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{August 9th, 1994}

\emph{Dear Connor:}

I've been doing marvelously, thank you. And no, it was nothing either
you or Dad did. I simply didn't have enough time to do everything I
wanted to do at Lux Aeterna, and I didn't have all the books I needed to
do research and brew potions and so on.

It's been brilliant here. Snape nursed me back to health as well as
saved my life, and he's let Draco visit me, though he doesn't let me go
outside. I find that I don't mind it so much. We're discussing Potions
theory instead. Hermione would {kill} to hear some of the things he's
sharing with me. Wait until I tell her!

I've given your thanks to Professor Snape. He grunted.

It took me a while to persuade him about the Quidditch World Cup, but he
finally agreed, as long as I stay with him at all times I can and in the
vicinity of another adult the rest of the time. The Malfoys are going to
go, so I'll have them as extra protection. And you ought to see Draco.
He's been taking lessons from Crups, I think, the way he guards me and
whips his wand out the moment anything threatens me. He fried a wasp the
other day because he thought it might sting me. I think I'll be
perfectly safe.

See you on the 25th! And tell Dad not to worry too much. I really have
been happy.

\emph{Love,}

\emph{Harry.}

\chapter{Never Trust a Rosier}\label{chapter-7-never-trust-a-rosier}

Thank you for all the reviews on the chapter yesterday! And here is this
one, which is a massive thing.

The poem Rosier quotes from this time is George Meredith's ``The Woods
of Westermain.''

\textbf{Chapter Five: Never Trust A Rosier As Far As You Can Throw Him}

Harry stretched out carefully, with both his body and his magic. He knew
what he would encounter, since he'd encountered it many times in his
rooms already, but he wanted to feel it again.

Silence and peace met his magic. No one else was in the rooms. There was
no one he had to worry about serving or doing things for, no one he had
to worry about protecting, no one who might need something from him. He
had a soft divan beneath him, cradling his shoulders and back, and
making the large book on calming Potions---he still didn't believe they
couldn't be improved---that he was reading comfortable, even though it
rested on his upper chest. The rooms were \emph{still}.

He had never been able to get that sense of stillness at Lux Aeterna. He
was always aware of something. It could have been Connor, or James, or
Remus, or one of the many magical artifacts in the house. Whatever he
felt, he just wasn't able to relax.

Here, he could.

Harry rolled his head sideways on the pillow and closed his eyes. He
knew that Snape was in his potions lab just beyond these rooms, striving
to perfect one of the secret projects that he'd refused to let Harry
help him with. He knew that Draco was visiting in a few hours. He knew
that tomorrow, they were going to the Quidditch World Cup, and he would
see his family again.

But for now, he could calm himself.

If no one was near him, there was no one whom he had to worry about
protecting.

Harry let out a small sigh. He didn't mean to do it, since he still had
his glasses on and the heavy book resting on his chest, but he did it.
His breathing evened, and he slid into sleep, one of his hands just
barely remembering to steady the book so that it wouldn't slide to the
floor with a \emph{thump} and wake him up.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape entered Harry's library intending to ask him if he wanted to
practice his Disillusionment Charm potion---he at least knew, now, not
to mix the liondragon scales and the demiguise hair, which he had indeed
been doing---but paused at the sight of him asleep. His face looked
unlined, and his scar, though revealed by the fall of his fringe, for
once wasn't glowing bright red or bleeding, both of which it had done
numerous times since Harry had come to live with him.

Snape knew he should probably wake Harry and convince him that sleeping
on the bed was more comfortable than the divan. If nothing else, the
position his head was in, half-dangling off the pillow, would give him a
crick in his neck when he woke.

He didn't have the heart.

Silently, before the mere presence of his magic could wake Harry, he
stepped gently backward out of the library and closed the door. Then he
moved towards the Floo. He would firecall Malfoy Manor and tell Draco to
hold off on visiting for at least another hour.

He could content himself with the knowledge that this had indeed been
the happiest summer that Harry had ever spent. He had watched his ward's
face grow calmer and calmer in every moment he spent here, and the odd
dance of guardianship had grown easier and easier as they practiced at
it. Harry \emph{did} take well to restrictions when Snape could explain
them to him, and if Snape sometimes had to use emotional blackmail to
get him to rest or slow down, the need for that lessened as the days
passed. Harry had laughed at Draco's protectiveness and frowned at
potions and discussed magical theory with academic passion as well as
with an eye to what the spells could eventually be useful for.

Snape wished he could forget the curse that had made Harry spend his
summer like this in the first place, and that it was ending tomorrow,
and that Harry should have been able to have a summer like this every
year, if it was what he wanted, and that Harry was only fourteen years
old and already a soldier.

He shook his head as he made the firecall. He \emph{did} have to face up
to reality, and pockets like the hour of sleep he was preserving for
Harry were only that, pockets of softness scattered in a hard world that
was anything but forgiving of them.

But for now, he would preserve this one.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry blinked and gasped as the tug of the Portkey, a small coin passed
from hand to hand in the Three Broomsticks, released him at last. He
moved at once out of the way of the rest of the arriving witches and
wizards; a large portion of Hogsmeade's residents was attending the
Quidditch World Cup, and many of them had chosen to come to Madam
Rosmerta's pub for their Portkeys.

Snape steadied him at once with a hand on his shoulder, and glanced
around with the faint sneer on his face that Harry was learning to
expect. ``Disgraceful,'' he muttered. ``No security at all, of course.''

Harry rolled his eyes. The day was, rather, brilliant with more security
spells than they'd had any right to expect, given the wide-open nature
of the place and the fact that people would need to wander in and out of
the Quidditch area at will.

The grass around them was thick enough that Harry could feel it like a
cushion beneath his feet as he walked, and the voices of wizards and
witches were continual and loud, mingled with the cries of children.
Harry saw families he recognized and families he didn't, some of the
parents hoisting small children to their shoulders as if that would help
them see the game, which wasn't happening yet, a little better. He
watched a young witch patiently spelling a tiny girl's teeth back to
white from blue, while her slightly older brother stood next to her and
looked innocent of the magic that had turned them way. Harry, tuned to
adults' emotions, shook his head when he saw the witch's tightening
face. She'd be punishing the boy in a moment, all his protests to the
contrary.

He turned around, scanning the rows of tents, some of them with absurd
flags trailing in the breeze. They bore family coats of arms, the
symbols of the Ministry or Diagon Alley businesses, sometimes the image
of an award if the wizard or witch inside had received one.

Harry blinked and cocked his head, his gaze darting over the bunting
once more. \emph{More family coats of arms than there should be,} he
thought, slowly. \emph{I don't even recognize some of them. People are
digging out old and obscure symbols they have no reason to be proud of
any more.}

\emph{Why?}

The answer came to him almost at once. The symbols were those of minor
pureblood families, so sunken into obscurity that the only thing really
separating them from any other wizard in the world was their blood
status. They had the same social standing and amount of money as any
Muggleborn, and no wizards powerful enough to be Lords or inventors of
wonderful spells had been born among them. Pureblood families like the
Malfoys and the Blacks, who had managed to retain prestige, money,
homes, and reputation, were fairly rare.

Yet those minor families had chosen to drag out the coats of arms that
perhaps only Crazy Aunt Mildred had truly cared about, and display them
on their flags.

It was a declaring of allegiance, Harry thought, his mind tuned to an
entirely different sort of dance than a young witch's impatience now.
These were people who wanted to remind other wizards and witches that,
in fact, yes, their family was pureblooded, thank you very much. They
might not have anything much to show for it, but damn, they were going
to \emph{proclaim} it.

\emph{Why would they be want to be known as pureblooded?}

\emph{One possible answer: because of what could happen to them if
someone were to think they weren't.}

Harry breathed carefully. He looked up to find Snape's gaze on him, his
guardian already understanding something was wrong. Snape asked the
question with his eyes, and Harry nodded to the flags. Snape's gaze
darted after his, and it took him only a moment longer to understand
what had concerned Harry. Of course, it would, Harry thought. Snape
hadn't been raised around the pureblood symbols, and wouldn't know
immediately which ones were recognizable.

And then Snape surprised him by thinking of something Harry hadn't.

``Stay close to me,'' Snape whispered, as they began to walk through the
lines of tents to the pavilion where they were supposed to meet the
Malfoys. ``\emph{Absolutely} close, Harry, do you understand? At the
first sign of trouble, we will Apparate back to Hogsmeade. None of this
nonsense about Portkeys. I will simply take you in a Side Along
Apparition. And keep your shields on your magic.''

Harry blinked at Snape, and then firmed his mouth. Yes, he did
understand. The \emph{Daily Prophet} last year, thanks to Rita Skeeter,
had reported on his outburst of magic at the Quidditch game, and
circulated rumors about him, including that he was a Parselmouth and had
somehow been involved in the attacks on other students during his second
year. Many people knew something about him, even if it was only a rumor
and a vague sense that he was powerful. It would be best to keep his
head down and his magic concealed as much as possible.

It didn't entirely work, he saw as they walked. A few of the people
twitched their heads to look at them, and a low murmur spread in their
wake. Harry didn't meet the stares, though, and used a breathing pattern
to calm herself when he was about to panic at the thought of wizards and
witches staring at him. He could handle this. Really. It wasn't all that
difficult.

\emph{Not at all.}

``Harry! You came!''

Harry was able to look up and smile, as they at last neared the elegant
ice-blue pavilion the Malfoys had set up. Draco bounced towards him and
enveloped him in a tight embrace. Harry hugged him back, amused. They'd
only seen each other yesterday, but Draco acted as though each and every
absence were some new opportunity for Harry to slip away from him.

``Mr. Potter.''

Harry let Draco go swiftly and stepped back, snapping up his magic
around him. He hadn't noticed Draco's father standing behind him.

\emph{Careless,} he reprimanded himself, meeting Lucius's gaze.
\emph{How many times do you need to be told to remember your
surroundings, Harry? This is the second time in as many months that
something has surprised you like this.}

Lucius Malfoy looked much as he had the last time Harry had seen him,
last Christmas, if one excused the lack of a handprint on his face. He
leaned on a cane with a silver serpent's head, his robes the old
sky-blue ones of celebration. They weren't much lighter in color than
the pavilion's cloth, Harry couldn't help noticing. Lucius's eyes were
calm, his face as cool, as ever.

``Mr. Potter,'' Lucius repeated. ``Since I was to see you today, I
thought I would present my midsummer gift in person. Forgive me the
lateness, as it is less than a month until the next exchange, but I
wanted to consider my response \emph{very} carefully.'' He gave a smile
that moved his mouth in odd directions, and reached towards his robes.

Abruptly, his eyes narrowed, and looked past Harry's shoulder. ``I
promise I am not going to hex him, Severus,'' he said.

Harry glanced up. Snape had his wand drawn and pointing at Lucius. He
didn't move or lower his wand, even when Harry hissed at him.

``The last time you were near my ward but one, Lucius,'' he whispered,
``you did damage to his mind that it took months to reverse. Forgive me
if I find it hard to forgive you.''

Exasperated, Harry wondered if Snape held grudges against everyone in
the universe. He reached up and tugged firmly at his mentor's arm until
Snape looked at him. Harry stared back. ``The last time I saw him,'' he
said, ``not the last time but one, he gave me a truce-gift that exposed
his neck to me. Besides, sir, Mr. Malfoy was the indirect cause of my
breaking with my mother at last. I would never have gone home at
Christmas if not for him, and that means that I would never have
summoned the justice ritual.''

Snape did not look as though this were a convincing argument.

Harry shook his head at him. ``This is a truce-dance, sir. You can't
interfere in a truce-dance.'' He turned to look at Lucius, noting with
approval that Draco had stepped aside and stood silent all this while.
He was learning, then, probably from his intense study of pureblood
manners and rituals. It was bad manners, very bad manners, to interfere
in a gift exchange, especially this late in the truce-dance. In fact,
Snape and Draco were being accorded an immense honor in witnessing the
exchange at all. Harry decided not to point that out to Snape, though,
since he wouldn't be sensitive of the honor. Harry lifted his chin.
``You said that you had a gift for me, sir,'' he reminded Lucius, never
looking away from him.

Lucius gave him a faint, cold smile. Harry smiled back. He enjoyed this
dance with Lucius. They were allies, and it would be a long time, if
ever, before they were friends. That meant they had to operate in the
dancing ground laid down by ritual and tradition, and \emph{that} meant
no unnecessary attention paid to Harry or suddenly shifting emotional
relationships. It was complicated, yes, but it was a complicatedness
that was unlikely to change.

``I did indeed, Mr. Potter,'' Lucius replied, and pulled the gift from
his robes this time, slowly, in deference to Snape's snarl. Harry
expected to see a folded piece of parchment, a return list of Lucius's
ambitions and hopes for the one he had sent him in June, and rather
blinked when Lucius extended a slender silver chain with something blue
on the end instead. Harry accepted the object and peered at it.

The stone was clear, thought with the blueness actually darting beneath
the surface of the facets instead of burning in the heart of it like a
diamond, and almost the color of Lucius's robes---

\emph{Of course,} Harry thought.

---and egg-shaped. It made a faint buzzing noise as it hung on the
chain, and Harry could sense that it had magic, though the magic was
faint and old. He looked up at Lucius and waited patiently for an
explanation.

``From the Malfoy family treasuries,'' Lucius said casually. ``A gift of
defense and protection, once handed down from heir to heir. It expended
most of its magic on defending my father from a Cruciatus Curse when he
was fourteen. Since then, we have kept it, as a sentimental reminder
more than anything else.'' He raised an eyebrow. ``But, of course, a
reminder of how fierce the Malfoys can be in defense of their own, as
well.''

Harry understood in a moment. Lucius had chosen to complement Harry's
own midsummer gift, not match it exactly. As Harry had sent a gift that
looked forward to the future, Lucius had sent one that looked back to
the past.

And one that bound Harry more and more tightly, not just to Lucius, but
to Lucius \emph{Malfoy.}

Harry wondered what the man had expected as a reaction. Whatever it had
been, it didn't appear to be Harry casually lifting the pendant and
dropping the stone to rest against his own chest as he linked the chain
around his neck.

``You accept, then, Mr. Potter?'' Lucius asked.

``Of course, Mr. Malfoy,'' Harry said. ``It would be a pity if I did
not, after all the dancing we have done so far.''

``Harry.''

Harry turned in relief as Narcissa stepped out of the pavilion, grateful
that she was here now and he no longer had to pretend to a level of
comfort with the situation that he didn't feel. He trusted her to
mediate between her husband and him. She, too, wore sky-blue celebration
robes, but her face was much calmer than Lucius's, her eyes watchful but
gentle.

``Mrs. Malfoy,'' said Harry, and kissed the hand that she extended to
him. ``I trust that you have been well? I know we have written, but I
haven't seen you for almost a month, and there are some things it would
be unwise to put in letters.''

Narcissa's lips twitched, and she nodded. ``Indeed, Harry. Suffice it to
say that I \emph{must} be well, never having got as much exercise as
this before. My legs are nearly worn out with all the dancing.''

Harry felt Draco's arm settle around his shoulders, and his friend
whispered into his ear, ``Do you have to discuss this? Couldn't we go
and buy Omnioculars for the game?''

Harry patted his arm, and turned back to Narcissa. ``I hope you are not
too tired to dance any more?''

``I do not think so,'' she said consideringly. ``When one becomes tired
of the waltz, after all, there is always the pavane.''

Harry nodded. ``When you are ready to stop dancing, Mrs. Malfoy, if you
are ever ready, just let me know.''

Narcissa blinked, once, twice. Then she said, ``I would think that I can
always find strength in my legs as long as I am still alive.''

Harry studied her with narrowed eyes. She was in effect saying that she
would continue trying to bring wizards and witches to his side, even
though Harry had offered to let her debt to him for her mistakes be
fulfilled. Of course, she had the motivation to protect Draco, as well,
and that could be one reason that she didn't want to stop the danger she
was putting herself in. But Harry would have thought there were less
risky ways she could achieve Draco's safety.

\emph{Well. If she does want to risk herself, and chooses to do so, then
I cannot interfere.} Harry inclined his head. ``If you say so, Mrs.
Malfoy.''

``I do,'' said Narcissa, and then smiled at Draco. ``Do go find the
Omnioculars, Harry, before my son drags you off your feet in searching
for them. Severus, always a pleasure.'' She extended her hand for Snape
to kiss, and then swirled back inside the pavilion. Lucius remained
outside, watching them, as they walked away---well, Draco walked, and
Harry was tugged after him---with Snape behind them.

``Finally!'' said Draco. ``They've been talking about you and that damn
gift for \emph{ages}, Harry. I know that your truce-dance is important,
but they seem to forget that you're just fourteen sometimes and should
be allowed to have fun.''

Harry just shrugged and remained quiet. He \emph{was} here to have fun,
as well as to meet with Connor and James, if they could even find them
in the immense, shifting sea of people. Now wasn't the time to give
Draco another gentle lecture on how hard it was for him to have fun and
how he didn't want Draco exhausting himself in that futile pursuit.

``Now, where are the Omnioculars?'' Draco craned his head. ``You'd think
there would a readily identifiable flag, but noooo\ldots{}.''

``Harry!''

Harry turned, smiling, at least as much as he could with Draco's tight
grip on his shoulders. After not hearing it for almost a month, his
brother's voice was welcome. Connor was running towards him, his fringe
flapping up now and then to reveal his scar, and behind him came a mass
of red hair that could only mean the Weasleys. Harry looked for James,
but didn't see him immediately.

Harry tried to step away from Draco so that he could catch Connor at the
end of his dash in the kind of hug that his brother seemed to want, but
Draco wouldn't move his arm, and tightened it, making a small sound of
protest, when Harry tugged again. Harry rolled his eyes and extended the
one hand he could. Connor blinked at him, but then grabbed his hand and
pumped it up and down enthusiastically.

``Harry!'' he exclaimed again. ``How have you been? Do you have
Omnioculars yet? Who do you think will win, Bulgaria or Ireland? I know
that Bulgaria has Viktor Krum, but I think the Irish work together
better as a team---''

Harry tried to answer the questions, but the Weasleys were coming up
just then, and he had to make his greetings to them. He'd only met
Arthur Weasley once, and the meeting had ended with a fight between him
and Lucius. Harry eyed him apprehensively, but if Arthur still
remembered that incident, more than two years ago now, he wasn't letting
it influence the way he reacted to Harry. He nodded to him, and said,
``Harry. Ron has told us that you're recovering nicely from the attack
in July?''

``Yes, thank you, Mr. Weasley,'' said Harry, relaxing a bit.

``Yes, we heard about that,'' said Mrs. Weasley, bustling up beside her
husband. ``You poor dear!'' She looked as if she would hug him, and
there came an awkward moment when Harry felt like a rope in a tug-of-war
contest, since Draco wasn't about to surrender him, and was getting more
and more agitated the more Weasleys joined them. Mrs. Weasley settled
for giving him a dimpled smile. ``Death Eaters are the nastiest people I
know,'' she added.

Harry held her eyes. They were kind, but behind the compassion was
sorrow that she had a reason to feel. After all, Death Eaters had killed
her brothers, even though it had taken five of them to do so.

Lucius Malfoy had been one of those five.

Harry sighed. Sometimes he felt as though he were walking through a
world of contradictions, one of which was about to smack him in the face
at any time now. ``I'm completely recovered now, Mrs. Weasley, thank
you,'' he said, and looked back for Snape. He found the professor
standing slightly to one side, as though he didn't want to risk
contamination. ``Professor Snape saved my life. If not for his potions,
the Blood-Burning Curse would have killed me.'' Snape raised his
eyebrows, as much to say that that was an understatement of what had
really happened.

``Evan Rosier is alive, then,'' Mrs. Weasley whispered. ``I hoped that
was a rumor. I see it wasn't.''

Harry blinked at Snape and turned his head back. ``Yes, he is,'' he
said. ``He took another Death Eater's place under a glamour of him for
years. I'm sorry that you had to hear the news like this.''

Mrs. Weasley sighed. ``Well, we can only hope that the Aurors find the
Death Eaters soon, and that they manage to find \emph{some} way of
caging them up again, now that the Dementors are gone.'' She shook her
head, and managed to drive herself out of sadness as if on a spur. ``Of
course you know Ron,'' she added, as Ron joined Connor, ``and Ginny.''
She gestured to her daughter, who had halted beside her and seemed to be
waiting for her mother to be finished. Ginny rolled her eyes at Harry,
as much to say that yes, they did know each other, and it hadn't been
long since they'd seen each other, and wasn't this reintroduction
ridiculous? Harry grinned back, while Mrs. Weasley, oblivious, chattered
on. ``And here are---'' She stopped abruptly, and frowned at Arthur.
``Where are the twins?''

Arthur's face took on a faint panicked expression as he turned around,
scanning the grass behind him. ``They were right here the last time I
looked---''

``Here, Dad! Here, Mum!''

Fred and George was jogging towards them, wearing identical smug grins.
Their pockets bulged and jingled. Harry wondered idly if he should tell
them that the coins probably weren't real. With Ireland in the game,
there would be leprechauns nearby, and a good deal of false gold.

``We just made---'' one of the twins, probably Fred, began.

``A most profitable wager,'' the other, probably George, finished, and
patted his robe pockets.

``You boys should not be making \emph{wagers!}'' said Mrs. Weasley, her
voice rising slightly. ``What are you \emph{thinking?} What kind of
example are you setting for Ron and Ginny? Did you think---''

Draco tugged hard on Harry's shoulders, which he had managed to nest
completely under his left arm. ``Come \emph{on},'' he said, whining. ``I
want the Omnioculars.'' From the glare he was giving the Weasleys, Harry
thought it was probably time that they found some.

``Harry,'' said someone else before he could move.

Harry turned around slowly. James had come up behind the Weasleys,
unnoticed, and stood there staring at him. He appeared to ignore both
Molly Weasley's soaring temper tantrum and the long, careful glare Snape
was giving him. He had eyes only for his son.

\emph{It will be all right,} Harry reassured himself firmly. \emph{You
saw the letters he sent Snape. You know that he wasn't ready for a
reunion before now, and neither were you. You haven't damaged your
relationship irreparably by leaving. It was better this way.}

That didn't quell the guilt churning in his gut when he saw the look of
almost-desperation in James's eyes.

``Hi, Dad,'' he said quietly. ``How's your summer been?''

``Quieter and less exciting than it would have been with you there,''
said James, with a faint grin that vanished in the next moment. ``But
also lonelier. Connor and I missed you, Harry.''

Harry tried to step forward, and found Draco's arms had dropped to his
waist and held him firmly. He turned and glared at him. Draco blinked
once, twice, then let him go.

Harry was able to walk forward and embrace his father, though it felt
awkward, like hugging a stranger who might or might not pick him up and
take him somewhere. James's hug felt no less awkward. Harry closed his
eyes and tried to loose all his impatience and anger in one breath.
\emph{You have nothing to be angry at him for. He did nothing wrong.
Yes, he shouldn't have let you go outside the wards with only a Portkey
for protection, the way that Snape keeps ranting on about, but neither
of you} knew. \emph{So why are you fidgety and anxious and uneasy around
him?}

Harry didn't know, which made it all the more awkward to hug James and
then step back and smile at him. He knew the smile didn't reach his
eyes. He wasn't sure what to do about it.

He glanced at Connor, and saw his brother watching them with an
expression of sympathy on his face. Connor grabbed Ron's arm and
whispered something in his ear, and then both of them and Ginny edged
around the Weasley parents and went somewhere else. Mrs. Weasley, still
absorbed in yelling at the increasingly sullen twins, didn't notice.
Arthur followed his younger children, looking relieved.

Harry sighed. That was both a good move and a not-so-good one. It left
him alone with Draco and Snape and James. On the other hand, it left
James alone with Harry and Draco and Snape.

And, sure enough, as though he'd been waiting for a smaller audience,
James began.

``Did you really choose to stay with Snape, Harry?'' he asked, not
bothering to look at Snape. ``Or did he force you?''

Harry blinked at him, startled by the tone and direction of the
questioning, and heard Snape laugh, an ugly sound, back in his throat.
``As if I could \emph{make} Harry do anything that he does not wish to
do, Potter,'' he said.

``He's powerful,'' snapped James. ``Doesn't mean that he's indomitable.
And I know you, Snape. You do manipulate people. You tried to manipulate
Harry by sending those letters to him in July. So I'll thank you to keep
your nose out of my and my son's business---''

``He is not just your son,'' said Snape, in a voice as sharp as a shout,
though much lower than one. ``He was not ever your son. You chose to
ignore him, Potter, and then he became my ward.'' His face wore an
expression Harry had not seen on it before, an oddly focused and intent
expression. It was not the murderous rage he had worn when he'd almost
killed Sirius on the Quidditch Pitch last November, but something deeper
and darker, something that frightened Harry. ``If you had seen the truth
before being forced to it, perhaps you would have some kind of claim on
Harry. As it is, you have only the kind that he chooses to grant you.''

``Merlin take you, Snivellus,'' James yelled, abruptly losing his
temper. ``You know why I didn't---''

He abruptly shut his mouth and stared at Harry, blinking. Harry saw
Snape wince and touch his head in the next instant. He sniffed. He
regretted giving Snape a headache as his power swelled out of control,
but he didn't care. Both of them were acting childish, and he wasn't
about to take it any more. A guardian and a father \emph{fighting} over
him? It was ridiculous. He was damn lucky to have both, and Harry knew
it.

``Please shut up,'' he said, and then paused when they both stared at
him in silence. ``Well, that's accomplished.'' He could feel heads
turning around him, and was aware of the Weasleys scratching at their
shoulders as they felt his power manifesting, but he had to say this
before he put his magic away. ``I don't want either of you insulting each
other in my presence. I know that I can't control what you write in
letters, but this is different. This was supposed to be an outing so
that I could see Connor and James one last time before school.''

``Don't call him names,'' he snapped, turning to face his father. ``Yes,
I chose to stay with him, and yes, I was happy. I know you don't
understand the connection I have with him, but that's because we forged
it when you \emph{weren't there.} Of course you're not going to bloody
understand it.'' He felt a hand touch his shoulder, and leaned back into
it instinctively. It was Draco, not Snape, and Draco moved when he did,
turning to stay behind him as he faced Snape, so Harry allowed it to
remain.

``And James is my father,'' Harry told Snape, meeting his eyes and not
flinching before the cold fury he saw in those depths. He was coldly
furious, too, if Snape wanted that, the grass silvering with frost
beneath his feet. At least it wasn't as dramatic a reaction as would
have happened last year, before he learned to control his rage. ``I know
you don't think I need to associate with him at all, but I want to. And
you're making this harder than it has to be. \emph{You're} the one who
prides yourself on your understanding of the situation. \emph{You're}
the one who said I meant more to you than an old hatred. So stop it.'' He
couldn't help the betrayed tone that crept into his voice on the last
words. The hand on his shoulder tugged at him, and Harry leaned back
against Draco, not taking his gaze from Snape's face.

Snape looked at him with fathomless eyes, then nodded once and looked at
James. ``A truce, then, Potter?'' he asked. ``We will only acknowledge
each other's existence when necessary for Harry's sake, and ignore each
other the rest of the time.''

James was breathing fast, his face flushed, but as Harry watched, he
seemed to master himself. He nodded once, the motion clipped. ``Yes.''

Harry sighed, and tucked his magic back behind his shields. He felt
Draco inhale as though releasing a long breath, and smiled when he
whispered in his ear.

``Can we see about the Omnioculars now? \emph{Please}?''

Harry turned and walked away with him, along the path that Ron, Ginny,
and Connor had taken. Behind them, he heard Molly Weasley draw in her
breath and start on both James and Snape.

``Never seen such a \emph{disgraceful} display---''

``If you please, ma'am,'' said Snape, his voice tight, ``my ward should
not be leaving without adult supervision.''

``I'm perfectly happy to provide it, Severus,'' said Arthur Weasley,
bustling back towards them from around a tent. ``I can show the boys
where to buy flags and anything else they might need for the game.''

Draco looked disgusted at the thought of associating with a Weasley
parent, but Harry said swiftly, ``That would be brilliant, Mr. Weasley.
Thank you.''

He followed, and heard Molly's voice climbing. ``\emph{Children}, the
both of you, and when that brave sweet boy has to act like the adult,
then I think there's something wrong---''

Harry felt no sympathy with Snape whatsoever, and less for James. Both
of them \emph{had} acted like children, and Molly Weasley was a mother.
She could scold children well enough to make the twins sullen and angry.
That meant she was exactly the right woman for the job in this
particular situation.

``Are you all right?'' Draco whispered, sliding his hand through Harry's
hair.

Harry sighed, and this time managed to release all the tension. ``Yeah.
Come on.''

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``That was a Wronski Feint.''

``That was \emph{not} a Wronski Feint,'' Harry argued right back,
adjusting his Omnioculars so that he could keep track of Viktor Krum as
the Bulgarian Seeker angled after the Snitch again. ``He pulled out of
the dive too soon. You could see the way that he was trying to fool his
opponent, and that means that it's not a Wronski Feint. The Feint has to
\emph{work.}''

``But it did work,'' Connor argued, pointing to the way the Irish Seeker
circled after Krum like a loon with one wing. ``See?''

``Not that well,'' Harry said, and pulled the Omnioculars from his face
so that he could see his brother more clearly. ``He tried, yes, but
that's not the same thing as succeeding. You should know,'' he added.
Connor had attempted the Wronski Feint the first week they were home,
and promptly broken his arm. James was luckily good enough with medical
magic to heal that.

Connor made a rude face at him. ``He \emph{is} the greatest Seeker in
Europe,'' he said.

``When he can pull off a proper Wronski Feint, then I'll agree,'' Harry
sniffed, and put his glasses back to his face.

So far, the game had gone well. Draco had wanted to sit in the Malfoy
box. Connor had wanted to sit with the Weasleys. Harry had compromised
by finding them seats in a row a short distance from the Malfoy box.
They could see Narcissa and Lucius if they just glanced back, and Draco
was sitting at one end of the row, so that, as he'd complained to Harry
in a low voice, ``none of the unwashed Weasels can touch me.'' Harry had
pushed him on the shoulder for that one.

The game was taking place over a large Quidditch Pitch in the hollow
below them, the grass smoothed with magic and the hollow's sides
Transfigured into seats. Harry approved of the arrangement. They could
see all the action without straining their necks, and, thanks to the
Omnioculars, replay the events in minute detail if they were
questionable in some respect. So far, Krum really had been playing
remarkably well, but the rest of the Bulgarian team was too used to
depending on him, and flopped about in the air. The Irish team kept
stealing the Quaffle and scoring handily.

A roar brought Harry's attention firmly back to the game, and he lifted
his Omnioculars. He could see Krum arrowing downward, his body bent over
his broom, his hand extended in front of him as though trying to capture
an elusive Snitch just ahead of him. The Irish Seeker was following,
desperately trying to catch up, and obviously knowing he wouldn't be
able to.

Harry felt a smile hovering on his lips. He heard Connor cry out beside
him, ``\emph{That's} a Wronski Feint!''

\emph{Not exactly,} Harry thought, and watched as Krum abruptly angled
out of his dive and up towards the Snitch, which had always been
hovering just above the Pitch. His hand reached out and handily took it
from the air.

It took everyone, including Lynch, the Irish Seeker, a moment to realize
what had happened, so thoroughly had Krum's dive distracted them. Then
they roared, and the roars grew louder when the Irish team were
proclaimed the winners, never mind Krum's catching of the Snitch,
because they'd managed to score more points with the Quaffle. Harry
shook his head and lowered his Omnioculars to his lap.

``You need more help recognizing a feint when you see one,'' he told
Connor helpfully. ``I could show you.''

``Shut up,'' said Connor, and shoved him so hard that Harry almost
topped on to Draco. Harry laughed and sat back up, though the arm Draco
had wrapped around his shoulders wouldn't allow him to retreat far.
Harry felt Snape shift uneasily in the seat behind him, but ignored him.
His mentor had to be able to tell the difference between actual harmful
shoving and the horseplay of brothers, and it looked as though he could
use the practice. ``It's not as though you could have done that.''

``Could too,'' Harry insisted.

``Show me when we're at school then,'' said Connor.

``I will---''

\emph{Fuck!}

The voice in his head wasn't his own, and it was all the warning Harry
had before the scene, bright with the whizzing robes of the Irish team
as they performed their victory lap, darkened abruptly with a burst of
malevolent green. Harry felt his scar burst into fire, too, and reeled
back in his seat, one hand clapped to his forehead. He heard Draco
shout, but wasn't sure if it was the result of the way he'd moved or the
fact that he looked like he was in pain or something else.

Harry's eyes rose and fastened on the source of the green light. He
already knew what he would see, but it was one thing to envision it, and
another thing entirely to witness the enormous Dark Mark hovering over
the Pitch. He could hear the screams around him edging from confusion
into panic.

An amplified voice, too distorted by the loudness for Harry to recognize
it, boomed around the Pitch. ``Let's have some \emph{real} fun, shall we?
\emph{Adflo ventum dirum!}''

The field darkened further. Harry could feel the air around him
whirling, the magic dancing in it, drawn towards the center of the
Pitch. He felt the wind being sucked out of his lungs, the harsh
pressure in his chest as he struggled to get enough air to breathe, the
building desperation as his ears began to ring.

Then the spell let out the wind in a forceful \emph{crack}, and it came
flooding back over them.

And Harry felt the fear begin.

It attacked the minds of everyone around him, and prompted screams of
panic from them. The panic turned quickly into terror, and in some cases
into sounds of rage, and in other cases into mindless grunts and growls
of the kind that animals might make. Harry felt, as if from a distance,
the spell attempting to work on his own thoughts, to tip them towards
fear and anger.

He didn't let it work. He brought up his Occlumency shields, furiously
resisting, and felt the wind slam into them and back out of his mind the
way that Connor's compulsion ability did. Snape was snarling behind him,
a wordless sound, but not mindless, and Harry knew he must have resisted
the same way.

Draco, on the other hand, was struggling beside him, seeming torn
between getting his wand out to hex someone and running in fear. Harry
grabbed his wrists and thought \emph{Ventus} firmly, holding his eyes.
He felt a clean wind of his own run out of his eyes and into Draco's
mind, grabbing and strangling the ill-omened one. Draco let out a loud
gasp, then sagged against him.

``What happened?'' he whispered.

``The Ill Wind curse,'' said Harry, glancing around the Pitch. He could
see people tearing into each other, or trampling each other as they ran,
or throwing their own wands away as the spell convinced them they were
snakes or strangling vines or something else equally horrible. Connor
and the Weasleys were already gone. ``I've heard of it, but I never
realized it was like this.'' He grimaced, and glanced at Snape. ``Can
you protect yourself and Draco while I change things?''

``Harry,'' Snape ground out, his eyes so angry that he looked half-human
at best, ``my first priority is your safety, and you know that.'' He
reached out as if he were going to settle one hand on Harry's shoulder
and prevent him from moving. ``There are Death Eaters here. We must move
you.''

\emph{Just one,} Regulus's voice whispered in Harry's thoughts.
\emph{Just the one. I can feel him. Rosier. He's waiting for you. The
western side of the Quidditch Pitch.}

``Regulus says there's just one,'' Harry told Snape, even as he turned
his head. Sure enough, he could see a figure in a dark cloak standing
motionless on the western rim of the hollow, a faint empty space around
him even as people fled past him. Harry had to shout to make himself
heard, but he never looked away from that single solitary figure.
``Rosier. I can take him.''

Snape shook his head, his eyes in constant motion, skimming around the
Pitch. ``No,'' he said. ``No, Harry.''

Harry gave him a faint smile. ``I'm the only one who can stop this, and
you know it, sir,'' he said, and then slammed magic into his limbs,
tearing free of both Draco's and Snape's holds on him. He heard them
yell. He didn't particularly care. He was already gathering his magic to
Apparate, keeping his gaze fixed on Rosier. He had no chance of getting
through the sea of seats and the confused, roiling crowd if he didn't
Apparate. His only real fear was that the Death Eater would run before
he could get there.

\emph{He won't move,} Regulus whispered to him. \emph{I've seen him like
this. Once he's taken an interest in you, he doesn't run unless you
convince him that you really are stronger. And it's been long enough
since that day on the beach that I don't think he believes that any
more.}

\emph{Really?} Harry couldn't help but ask sarcastically, even as he
heard Snape begin the incantation for a full body-bind. He concentrated,
and then the world around him rippled and squeezed him out again as
though he were being born a second time, landing him with a \emph{crack}
on the western rim of the hollow.

The empty space around the dark-cloaked figure expanded to encompass
him. The figure pushed its hood back, and it was indeed Rosier, and he
was smiling.

``There,'' he said pleasantly. ``Now we shall not be interrupted.
\emph{Accendo---}''

Harry was already forming his magic in front of him, pushing it as a
blade straight at Rosier's chest. This was something he had thought he
might be able to after reading some of Snape's books on wandless magic.
Rosier would have to shield against it, or it would pierce his heart.

Rosier abruptly winced, and gasped, and did a nonverbal spell that
halted Harry's push. He fixed Harry with a gaze into which some respect
had fallen, nodding a bit. ``Truly impressive, Harry. `Enter these
enchanted woods, you who dare'. But I had forgotten that the warnings
about darkness might also apply to me. You are a Dark wizard, aren't
you?'' He was swinging his wand back and forth now, trailing sparks that
might be harmless or the beginning of a curse, for all Harry knew.

Harry said nothing. He kept an eye on Rosier, but he was drawing his own
strength in, too, tucking it close to his chest. What he had to use
would be a simple spell, but incredibly powerful. He had to make sure it
was just right, while defending against whatever Rosier threw at him.

Rosier raised an eyebrow, and that was all the warning Harry had before
he was convulsing under \emph{Crucio}.

``I tell Bellatrix she has no sense of adventure when she uses this,''
Rosier said conversationally, from somewhere beyond the pain. ``But
sometimes the old methods are the best, don't you agree? And since she
isn't here tonight, I think I ought to do this, just in remembrance of
her.'' His voice dropped into what was obviously a quote from a poem
again. `` `Of dire wizardry no hint, save mayhap the print that shows
hasty outward-tripping toes, heels to terror on the mould.' They are all
running in terror now, and when I repeat the spell, it will be more than
that.''

Harry gritted his teeth and rolled under the pain, above it, not letting
himself panic as he remembered how the \emph{Crucio} in first year had
broken his ribs, not needing Regulus's whispered reassurances, not
letting himself think about anything but resisting the pain and then
reaching out and casting the spell at the Pitch---

\emph{Finite Incantatem!} He cried it silently, but with everything in
him.

He heard the tenor of the cries from the Pitch change. The Ill Wind
curse was gone. People were beginning to breathe normally again. They
would wake up completely in a few minutes, with luck.

Meanwhile, the pain flooded him, since he no longer had a bulwark of
determination to shield himself against it.

Harry howled, and screamed, and let the agony out any way he could.
There was no point in trying to keep silent under torture. They would
just have it out of you in the end, anyway, one way or another, and life
was more important than pride. Harry concentrated on gathering up the
magic inside. That wasn't hard. It would have been hard to think of
anything \emph{but} the writhing, shrieking pain in his chest.

``This is boring,'' said Rosier loudly, cheerfully.

The curse ceased, before Harry could do anything about it himself. He
lay there, panting for a moment.

Then he brought his head up as a scorching hex came at him, and blocked
that with a \emph{Protego}, and then he was forcing himself to stand and
confront Rosier, who danced to the side in a circle, his eyes wide and
his face laughing.

``Strong for a child,'' he said. ``Self-sacrificing for a Slytherin.
That self-sacrificial side is probably going to get you killed, Harry,
especially since the Dark Lord is returning.'' He gave the Dark Mark
he'd cast a fond glance. Harry knew he could turn and see it hovering
there, skull and snake.

Harry didn't reply. He thought \emph{Incendio}, and Rosier's cloak
caught on fire. Rosier whirled, dropped it from his shoulders, and
continued his circling. At least, Harry thought, they had the clean
light of the fire to combat the green horror of the Dark Mark.

``There are some people who will tell you that of course the Light will
triumph, the way it always has, but Dark Lords have won before. I think
one might win even if you could actually kill my Lord, Harry. After all,
you're awfully like him.''

\emph{Petrificus Totalus.}

The body-bind failed to catch Rosier, who'd already lifted a shield
against it. His face was lazy as he considered Harry, and then he
grinned and gestured with his wand, murmuring, ``\emph{Adsulto cordis!}''

Harry blocked the heart attack spell with a shield, and replied with a
nonverbal \emph{Tarantallegra} that actually made Rosier dance for a
brief moment before he dispelled it. He laughed then, and his face was
open with honest enjoyment as he peered into Harry's eyes.

``Beware of Moody,'' he said.

Harry stared at him. ``What?'' he asked, despite his resolve not to
speak to his enemy again.

Rosier tilted him a slow wink, whispered, ``Enter these enchanted woods,
you who dare,'' and whirled to cast a spell at the Pitch.
``\emph{Cremo!}''

The intense fire that soared towards the sky from the seats and boxes
had destroyed enough homes and safe places in the First War that Harry
felt compelled to deal with it, and though he managed to calm the flames
in a few seconds, the damage was done. By the time Harry turned back,
Rosier had Apparated out.

He let out a harsh breath, and asked Regulus, \emph{Does he always do
that?}

\emph{Rosier doesn't ``always'' do anything,} said Regulus, his voice
flat and angry. \emph{He's completely unpredictable in his specific
actions, Harry. And that warning, if you can call it that? What the hell
did that mean? Alastor Moody is a respected Auror. He wouldn't betray
you to the Death Eaters, and it seems useless to encourage you to
distrust him.}

Harry shook his head and closed his eyes. \emph{Do you know why he might
have wanted to come here tonight?}

\emph{Mainly to frighten people, I think. That was the purpose of the
Dark Mark in the sky and the Ill Wind curse, at least. But also to test
you, it looks like. I don't know why. It's not as though he's going to
abandon the Dark Lord and join you, and you wouldn't really want him on
your side, anyway.}

Harry snorted. \emph{No.} He looked down at his trembling hand and
sighed. Damn it, he'd been put under \emph{Crucio} yet \emph{again}, and
though it couldn't have lasted more than a few seconds, whatever it felt
like, he just \emph{knew} that Snape would be very unreasonable about
all of this and insist on bundling him up again.

\emph{Can you feel Snape at all in the crowd?} he asked Regulus, while
swatting at his hair. There was an insect of some kind in it, but it
fell and flew away at his swat. Harry closed his eyes. He could feel the
fine trembling that was the aftermath of pain and shock creeping through
his limbs, but he didn't want to lie down or faint. There would be time
for that later, after he made sure that everyone who mattered to him was
all right.

\emph{Right behind you,} said Regulus, sounding just the tiniest bit
amused. \emph{Climbing the ridge. Harry?}

``Yeah?'' Harry blinked and shook his head. He was getting black spots
in front of his eyes. \emph{Damn Rosier.}

\emph{Find me and put me back in my body as soon as possible,} Regulus
said. \emph{I can give you advice, but it's patently obvious that you
need as many people to protect you as possible, and I'd rather be there
fighting in body.}

Harry started to respond, but Snape grabbed him by the shoulders then,
spun him around, and Apparated. Harry blinked and shivered, then blinked
again as he found them standing on the outskirts of Hogsmeade. He looked
up at Snape in tired incomprehension.

``But what about Draco and---''

``Mr. Malfoy is fine,'' said Snape, seizing his wrist. ``I saw him
reunited with his parents before I set out to look for you.'' His eyes
bored into Harry's, intense and angry. ``You promised me at the
beginning of August that if you were ever in Rosier's vicinity again,
you would not seek him out.''

Harry blinked. He had made that promise, and easily, because he could
not imagine a situation in which he would be close to Rosier again any
time soon. ``I'm sorry---'' he began.

``I'm \emph{very} angry that you disobeyed me, Harry.''

Harry shivered. The voice was cold and dark, and promised plenty of
awful things. ``Um. Sorry?''

``You should be.'' Snape leaned down and stared into his face. ``You will
remain in Hogwarts until term begins, bar any \emph{strictly necessary}
excursions, in which I will be with you at all times. Draco will not be
allowed to visit you again before school starts. And I will require you
to brew me as many boil cure potions as you can before September first.''

``But boil cure potions are \emph{boring},'' Harry protested, before he
could think better of it.

``Exactly,'' said Snape, and then paused to study him. ``What did he hit
you with?''

Harry winced. ``\emph{Crucio.}''

``Detention for the first week of school, for not telling me at once,''
said Snape evenly. ``Now, come, Mr. Potter. I have potions that will
reverse the effects of the Cruciatus Curse, as well you know.'' He set
off towards Hogwarts, not lessening his hold on Harry's wrist. Harry put
his head down and followed, sighing when he stumbled now and then over
small, hidden hollows in the grass.

He knew Snape's anger was prompted by fear. He knew that he'd broken his
promise. But still, what else could he have done? He was the only one
who could have dispelled that Ill Wind curse.

\emph{But you could have done that without going to confront Rosier,}
Regulus muttered at him.

\emph{You were the one who told me that he was waiting for me!} Harry
exclaimed, unable to believe how unfair this was. \emph{I had to handle
him!}

\emph{No, you didn't,} Regulus disagreed. \emph{And if I had known for
sure what you would do, I wouldn't have told you where he was. What did
your duel with him accomplish, Harry? Exactly nothing. You could have
dispelled the curse and stayed safe.}

\emph{But then he might have hurt someone else,} Harry protested.

\emph{Instead, he hurt you,} Regulus snarled. \emph{Oh, yes, that was a}
brilliant \emph{solution, Harry. Stop risking your life needlessly.} And
Harry felt the intense silence in his head that usually indicated
Regulus had left and gone elsewhere.

It mirrored the silence outside as they reached their rooms in Hogwarts,
Snape fed Harry his potions, and he went to bed. Harry lay awake for a
while with his arms folded behind his head, staring at the flames and
wondering if Connor was all right, and James, and the Weasleys.

He knew that he couldn't ask Snape right now. His guardian would refuse
to answer, and his punishments would be raised.

Harry sighed and closed his eyes. Damn it, he'd just wanted to help, and
it did seem as though the people around him were overreacting, but he
probably should have been more careful.

He didn't know how to be, though.

He drifted into a restless, troubled sleep.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

After the third attempt to pour himself a glass of wine had failed,
Snape turned and hurtled the goblet into the fireplace. It broke with a
loud, satisfying crash, and he snarled, glad that silencing charms
warded his rooms.

He sat down in his favorite chair and stared at the flames.

Was there no end to the trouble that Harry could get in to? Was there no
way to protect him?

Snape closed his eyes. \emph{Strike at the root of the problem. That is
what I must do. Punishments won't do it; I don't think that anything I
can say will make much of an impact on Harry's behavior for long, unless
I threaten to end the guardianship, and I} cannot \emph{do that, not
now. He would never believe me, anyway.}

\emph{No, what I must do is change his attitudes, especially the one
that says he is to be a weapon and a sacrifice, and it is therefore all
right for him to risk his life. He does not think twice about the danger
he goes into. Oh, he cares what we think, Draco and I, and he does not
want to cause us pain, but in this case he weighed our welfare against
the crowd's, and since we were safe and not the object of Rosier's
attention, he saw no reason not to go into danger and try to stop it.}

\emph{Another project for this year, then.}

\emph{Ah, Harry. You are the most complicated person I have ever known.}

A flutter of wings made Snape blink and look up. An owl had found its
way through the hole in the wards that he left specifically for owls
bearing parchment that was not enchanted in any way, and had landed on
his table, waiting. Snape sighed and went to fetch a treat for it.

His heartbeat spiked sharply when he saw that the letter on the owl's
talon bore a Ministry seal. He tore open the envelope and drew the
parchment inside out.

\emph{August 24th, 1994}

\emph{Dear Professor Snape:}

\emph{It has come to our attention that your ward, Harry Potter, is a
Parselmouth. One may be excused ignorance, but under the newly passed
Ministry Edict 6.7.3. For the Control of Dark Talents, Mr. Potter is
required to come to the Ministry and register himself as being in
possession of a Dark gift. This is being done for the safety of everyone
in the wizarding world, and I am sure that you will not refuse such a
reasonable request. Please bring Mr. Potter to the Ministry to register
no later than the first week of Hogwarts term. Unless he is registered,
Mr. Potter will not be able to attend Hogwarts with Light wizard
students.}

\emph{Sincerely,}

\emph{Dolores Umbridge,}

\emph{Special Assistant to the Minister of Magic.}

Snape dropped the letter and drew his wand, conjuring several light
wooden figures in the space of a heartbeat. In a moment, a curse had
destroyed one of them, frying it so severely that charred fragments
slammed into the wall.

It was obviously a night for breaking things, and in the end Snape
destroyed several dozen of the figures before he trusted himself enough
to put his wand away and go to bed.

\chapter{Ministry on the Rise}\label{chapter-8-ministry-on-the-rise}

``Here. Drink this.''

Harry blinked sleepily and managed to accept the vial that Snape held
towards him. He swallowed the potion inside, and blinked again as it
seemed to whip the cobwebs of drowsiness from his mind. He studied the
vial in wonder. It hadn't tasted much different from an ordinary
Pepper-Up potion, but the result was far more dramatic. ``What was
that?''

``Something to make you think more clearly,'' Snape said. From the sharp
look in his eyes, he'd had some himself already. ``I need you awake and
prepared. Today, we must go to the Ministry.''

Harry stared at him. ``\emph{That's} a strictly necessary excursion?''

Snape raised his eyebrows, and Harry glanced away with a flush. ``Sorry,
sir,'' he said, and then noticed that Snape was carrying a folded
newspaper in one hand. He pointed. ``Does that explain why, sir?''

``In part,'' said Snape. ``If you were less well-known, I might try
bribes or some other way of slipping you under the Ministry's insistence
on registering you, but not now.'' He gave Harry a disgusted glare and
extended the \emph{Daily Prophet} across the bed at him.

Harry picked it up, and blinked at the photograph on the front page. It
showed the Dark Mark floating above the pitch at the Quidditch World
Cup, which was no surprise, but it also showed two dim figures that he
recognized as he and Rosier fighting their duel. The smaller one fell to
the ground even as he watched. ``Who took this?'' he whispered. ``Who
could have been close enough to take this?''

He understood, in part, when his eyes fell on the headline and the
byline.

\textbf{\emph{{BOY HERO DEFEATS DEATH EATER}}}

\emph{By: Rita Skeeter}

Harry groaned and buried his head in his hands. ``Oh, no.''

``Oh, yes,'' said Snape, sounding remarkably like Draco when he'd
brought Harry his Firebolt. ``This story goes into \emph{immense}
detail.'' He'd moved around the bed, and jabbed a fingertip down in the
middle of the column below the photo. Reluctantly, Harry picked up his
glasses from the nearby table, slipped them on, and then studied the
writing.

\emph{ \ldots{} When the Aurors arrived, they found the Ill Wind curse,
used to great effect by the mysterious Death Eater on the World Cup
crowd, already dissipated.}

\emph{``We don't know who did this, exactly,}'' \emph{said Kingsley
Shacklebolt, a senior Auror for the Ministry.} ``\emph{But we know that every
trace of the curse had been banished when we arrived. Someone used a}
Finite Incantatem \emph{most probably, but it would have to have been of
immense power.} ''

\emph{There is speculation among some of the Aurors that the caster of
that spell was also Harry Potter, the boy who battled the Death Eater on
the hill.}

``\emph{I mean, it would make sense,}'' \emph{said an Auror who gave her name
only as Tonks.} ``\emph{Immensely powerful boy appears, duels immensely
powerful Death Eater, and then causes immensely powerful Death Eater to
flee. It sounds to me like he had the magic to make the spell do what he
wanted it to do, too.}''

\emph{Sources whom we cannot reveal confirm that the Ill Wind curse did
indeed seem to dissipate during Harry Potter's battle with the Death
Eater.}

Harry sighed and put the paper down, though he did wonder about that
last paragraph. Most of the people under the effect of the Ill Wind
curse would have been so confused and blurred in their thoughts by
emotion that they couldn't have said for sure when the spell ended.
``And I assume that most of the wizarding world has already seen this by
now?''

Snape nodded, his mouth thin. ``She also repeats the information that
she has used in other stories from the last year---for instance, the
fact that you are a Parselmouth. There are now many people who will know
this as certain fact, or think they do, and many others who will have
been reminded.'' He pulled a crumpled letter from his pocket and
extended it to Harry.

Harry read it and sighed. ``And so I \emph{have} to register, since
everyone and his sister knows I'm a Parselmouth,'' he muttered.

Snape nodded again. ``With luck, it will be nothing more than signing a
form confirming that you have the gift. However, I would rather move
\emph{now}, before there can be any fuss about a `boy hero' and a Dark
wizard not fulfilling this Ministry edict.''

Harry nodded back to him, then realized with shock that he had
completely forgotten to ask about Connor and the Weasleys and James.
Snape had hit him so hard with the potion and the newspaper that it was
understandable, but he still felt a bit of guilt as he asked, ``Sir? Did
everyone else get home safe?''

``There were some casualties from the crowd's trampling,'' Snape said
quietly. ``No one whom you know was among them.''

Even knowing that Snape had probably phrased it that way to lessen his
guilt, Harry still winced. If he hadn't showed off by dueling Rosier,
then he probably could have dissipated the Ill Wind curse before it
killed anyone, and there certainly wouldn't have been Skeeter's stupid
story in the \emph{Prophet}. He bowed his head.

``Harry.''

He started. For some reason, he had been sure Snape had left the room.
\emph{You really need to stop doing that,} he reminded himself, and
looked up at his guardian. ``Yes?''

``It was not your fault,'' said Snape, enunciating every word the way he
would Potions instructions in class. ``You cannot save everyone. You are
not the sacrifice for everyone. Remember that.''

He held Harry's eyes until he nodded, then swept from the room, calling
over his shoulder, ``Prepare yourself for the Ministry, and make sure
that you eat some breakfast. I will know if you have not.''

Harry climbed out of bed, stretching his arms. He paused when he felt a
brief restriction on his movements, and swatted at his hair, wondering
if another bug was in it.

He found nothing, however, and after a moment the sensation faded. Harry
shrugged. \emph{Probably from sleeping too tightly coiled up in the
sheets.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry stuck close to Snape. He knew it was ridiculous, but he'd never
been in a place so noisy as this part of London, and it was overwhelming
him. Diagon Alley was much quieter. Here, there seemed to be people
absolutely \emph{everywhere}, including in corners where his eyes did
not expect to encounter them, and many of them were yelling and laughing
and dashing across streets and throwing things to each other or over
their shoulders, as if they had no care in the world. It was a flat,
sunny day, perhaps the last one of August, and obviously they intended
to enjoy it as much as possible. Harry could appreciate that from the
distance of a newspaper article or a book.

\emph{But}, he wondered, flinching as a bottle flew over his head,
\emph{do they have to be so enthusiastic about it?}

``Here we are.''

Harry blinked. He'd been walking with his head down for the past few
minutes, and hadn't noticed when they turned into a street which was
marginally quieter, though far dirtier than the norm. They passed a wall
along which someone had drawn a careful, spiraling design in green and
red, and someone else had drawn a blue hand scratched through it. ALL
HAIL THE HAND, said another line of blue letters beneath that.

Harry shivered. This was as alien and dangerous a place as the Forbidden
Forest, in its own way. At least he knew that he could use magic to save
his life if he encountered a hostile creature in the woods. He wasn't
sure what remedy would work best for Muggles, and he was forbidden to
use magic in front of them anyway.

Snape stepped into a tall but not very large box, drawing Harry with
him. In front of them hung a device that Harry vaguely recognized from
one of the Muggle picture books his mother had sometimes let Connor
read. It was a telephone. Snape reached out, and, with a look of
distaste, punched five buttons on it, in a sequence too fast for Harry
to make out. He resolved to get Snape to tell it to him later.

``Welcome to the Ministry of Magic. Please state your name and
business.''

Harry squinted. He could just make out the shimmering trace of the spell
that funneled the welcoming witch's voice through a spot in the air. It
plunged past the telephone and into the ground. Harry raised his
eyebrows. \emph{Ah, so the Ministry really is beneath the surface?}

``Severus Snape and Harry Potter,'' Snape said sharply but clearly, the
distaste for this whole ridiculous charade written all over his face.
``Here to register Harry Potter as a Parselmouth.''

There came a soft whirring sound, and two silver badges dropped into
Snape's hand. He sorted through them, found Harry's, and handed it to
him, pinning his own to his robes. Harry followed suit.

The phone box lurched and began to descend, startling Harry, but not as
much as it would have if he hadn't discerned that the offices were
underground. The ride wasn't long, and since Snape was obviously boiling
under the surface, Harry decided he wouldn't say anything. The first
person to talk to Snape was going to get a flood of vitriol, however
carefully concealed.

The door of the telephone box opened, and Harry blinked. The room beyond
was enormous, and flooded with light. There were more fireplaces than
one person could ever need along both walls, and the ceiling was, for
some reason, \emph{blue}, with golden symbols. Harry scowled at it. He
didn't think he could remember any pureblood family that used those two
colors in such brilliant and garish combination, and now he could see
why.

``This way, Harry.''

Snape strode determinedly down the middle of the room, leaving Harry to
follow. He did, but paused as he saw the fountain ahead of them.

It was made of gold. That was the first problem; Harry saw no reason to
use that much gold on anything, and so it just struck him as
ostentatious. The second problem was the statues that made it up. A
wizard, a witch, a goblin (quite obviously a southern one, and not a
northern one), a house elf, and a centaur stood in what was probably
meant to be a brotherly or comradely pose. What Harry mostly saw was the
way that the house elf, goblin, and centaur gazed at the humans as
though about to collapse and fawn at their feet.

He breathed deeply, relaxing his physical sight, and then staggered back
and put a hand over his eyes. The room was flaring like the sun. There
were at least three webs connected to the fountain, so brilliant that
Harry knew they must be powerful. He had to pick his way carefully among
the radiances, but he thought he made out a blue web, a golden one, and
one that was either also golden or a pale orange, like the sky at
sunrise.

``Harry? Harry!''

Harry came back to himself, and even managed to step away in time to
avoid Snape's reaching hand. He nodded to him. ``I'm all right,'' he
whispered, and gestured at the fountain. ``I just don't like \emph{that}
very much.''

``The Fountain of Magical Brethren, it's called.'' Snape said it with a
sneer, but Harry thought that was automatic. He was looking carefully at
Harry now, as though trying to decide whether he needed to be taken back
out of the Ministry.

Harry choked back the bitter laughter that wanted to rise out of his
throat. ``Yes, I suppose it would have to be.''

He gave the fountain a final glance, then shook his head and followed
Snape down the room. He let the sight of the webs slide away again. He
couldn't do anything about them right now, and doubtless the Ministry
had alarms of some kind waiting to activate should he touch the webs or
employ any magic powerful enough to break them. After he'd freed the
Dementors, they would have been mad not to.

The room ended in a pair of golden gates, in front of which stood a
bored-looking wizard behind a small stand. He nodded to them, and
switched on a smile that didn't look natural on his face. ``Greetings
and welcome to the Ministry of Magic! My name is Eric. Let me register
your wands for you.'' He held his hand across the stand.

Snape, though obviously reluctant, surrendered his own wand. Harry
watched and practiced smiles and lost voices in his head, so that he
would look more innocent when Eric turned expectantly to him.

``I, um, didn't bring my wand,'' Harry said.

He heard Snape's hiss. ``\emph{What}?''

``Well, we moved so fast this morning, I just forgot,'' Harry told him.
And it was true. He often didn't use the cypress wand any more, though
most of the time he still carried it. It was currently lying in a drawer
of the table beside his bed. He shrugged at the guard. ``I'm sorry. Can
I still visit the Ministry?''

Eric chuckled. ``Of course, son. Just remember to carry your wand with
you!'' He wagged his finger at Harry. ``Little wizards like you will be
snapped up otherwise!''

``Yes, sir,'' said Harry, while wondering why the Ministry had hired
someone who would say something like that the morning after a Death
Eater attack. ``Thank you, sir.'' He nodded to Eric, and let Snape
escort him through the gates, ignoring his mentor's hiss, of, ``We will
\emph{discuss} this later.'' The important part of that sentence was the
``later.''

Eric called after him. ``Oh! Sir! I forgot to tell you where you're
going.''

Snape turned around with barely controlled anger. ``I assumed,'' he
said, ``as anyone \emph{would}, that we will go to the second floor,
because that is where the Department of Magical Law Enforcement is.''

Eric abruptly seemed to shrink. ``Um.'' He stared at his hands for a
second, then shook his head. ``No,'' he said, and blurted the next words
so fast that Harry almost couldn't make them out. ``Fourth floor, sir.''

Harry felt the moment when Snape went absolutely still. Not even his
hand on Harry's shoulder pressed down. He simply stood there, and then
breathed, ``What?''

``Yes, sir,'' said Eric, taking refuge in babble. ``I thought it was
unusual, but they said, they said it was official, and I said of course
I'd tell the visitors like---like yourself, sir, and they said it made
sense, and on one level I have to agree, because of course we don't want
Dark wizards running around and using their powers, not that that means
this boy \emph{is} a Dark wizard, of course, I saw the story in the
\emph{Prophet}, I think he did some good last night, I think---''

``Come, Harry,'' said Snape, his voice clear as a diamond. ``We are
going to the fourth floor, and the Department for the Regulation and
Control of Magical Creatures.'' His hand clamped down this time, as he
almost dragged Harry along to the lifts.

Harry set his feet and shook his shoulder, dragging it free of Snape's
grasp in a moment. ``Why are you so angry?'' he asked quietly.

Snape turned on him. ``They think you a magical \emph{creature},'' he
hissed.

``No,'' Harry pointed out. ``I don't think they do, at least not on the
same level that they think of, say, goblins.'' He put aside thoughts of
the fountain behind them, as it was only making him angry. ``I think this
is a public relations message. They want everyone \emph{else} to think
that a Parselmouth is a kind of dangerous magical creature, to be
tolerated only if he registers.'' His mind was already speeding ahead,
turning over the implications. He knew what the Ministry had wanted to
do, but he was going to make it backfire on them if he could. At the
very least, he could tell Fawkes about this, though he could not
understand what the phoenix would say in reply, and he would spread the
word to other magical creatures. ``\emph{I} don't mind. I'm honored to be
in the same place where they made Remus and Hawthorn and the other
werewolves register, and once the house elves and the goblins hear about
this\ldots{}''

He looked up at Snape with a smile. ``They might have been able to do
nothing else that would help me so much in my work as \emph{vates.}''

Snape, he saw, was not smiling. Snape, he saw, was so far from smiling
that his face looked as if he would curse the next person to cross his
path. Harry shook his head.

``Don't you see?'' he whispered. ``They intended it as a humiliation,
yes, a reminder of my `proper place,' but that doesn't mean I need to
take it that way. They can insult me only if I let them.''

Snape stared hard at him. Harry stared back, and even relaxed his
shields enough to let Snape read his mind with Legilimency if he wanted.
He really was \emph{not} bothered by this, not when his enemies had just
handed him such a fine weapon.

Snape nodded once, and then said, as they headed for the lifts again,
``Now, you will explain to me why you are walking about without your
wand.''

Harry winced. \emph{Yes, if he can't attack one target, he just goes for
another.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Sign here if the information on this form is correct.''

Harry sighed and bent over the form in front of him, stretching out his
cramped hand before considering the information, mostly basic: on which
day he'd been born, the full names of his parents, the place of his
birth, and so on. This wasn't as hard as he had thought it would be, but
it was far more boring. He had to sign and complete many forms, often in
triplicate. He was finding it harder to understand Scrimgeour by the
moment. Not only did the man say he liked this stuff, he'd built up a
reputation of \emph{truly} liking it. How could he have stood the
torture?

Snape stood behind him, arms folded across his chest. The cheerful young
witch behind the desk kept shooting him glances that edged steadily from
nervous to terrified. Harry understood. Snape didn't need to say
anything. He could intimidate with a single glare.

He completed that form and handed it across the desk. While the witch
considered it, Harry glanced around the office. It was open and airy, or
it seemed that way, with high ceilings and multiple desks and windows
that showed an impossible, magical vision of the sun soaring across a
cloudless blue sky. Harry was not sure which division they were in; he
had seen only a few wizards and witches wandering by, and no magical
creatures. Most of them had paused as though wondering what Harry was
doing there, or perhaps recognizing him from the photos later in
Skeeter's story, but all of them picked up their pace the moment they
spotted Snape.

The witch's warm voice brought Harry back to the present. ``Excellent,
dear. Now, just one more form, and we'll be done.'' She pushed the last,
single, solitary paper to him across the desk. Harry felt his heart
warm. This was tedious and boring and necessary, and after his
realization that the Ministry classed him as a magical creature, nothing
had been fun. He scanned the form quickly. It was only a few lines, but
in legalese, so it took him a moment to work out what it meant.

He sat back, carefully, and put the quill down in front of him, flexing
his fingers. The witch looked at him and tutted. ``Sore hand, dear?
That's all right. You can take a moment to relax before you sign.''

Harry met her eyes calmly and said, ``I'm not putting my signature to
this.''

The witch's mouth dropped open in a pretty picture of shock. She had
dark hair and gray eyes that reminded Harry of Sirius's, at least in the
amount of surprise they could hold. ``Oh, but dear, you must. You've
done so well with all the others! You'll need to sign this one, too.
It's the final step in the registration.'' She gestured at the form and
smiled, as though Harry could have missed that there were no other
papers waiting under this one.

Harry stared at her. ``I know that. But this form says that I'm not to
speak to snakes again without risking a legal penalty from the Ministry.
I'm not going to do that. I'm perfectly willing for the Ministry to know
that I'm a Parselmouth and keep all my forms on file just in case a
Parselmouth ever commits a crime---'' that was the official excuse for
the registration the witch had given him ``---but I won't actually stop
myself from using my gift. Did you make the werewolves sign a form to
keep from transforming every month?''

The witch uttered a nervous titter. ``Now, dear, you know that---that
isn't the same thing. Lycanthropy is a \emph{disease}, and they can't
help being sick.'' She leaned forward confidingly. ``They aren't normal
wizards, anyway. But you are, dear. And you know the difference between
right and wrong, don't you? And you want to be on the side of right and
law? So, you can choose to control your talent. That's all.'' She tapped
a finger on the form coaxingly.

Harry half-closed his eyes, and recalled one of the other forms he'd
signed. ``I'm also legally responsible to help the Ministry if they
should need my Parseltongue abilities, aren't I?''

``Yes,'' said the witch, ``but they meant they would question you about
them, dear, not order you to use them---''

Harry snapped his eyes open and glared at her. ``And what if I could
have saved someone's life by speaking Parseltongue, and I don't do it
because of the legal penalties, and then a person dies from a venomous
snake's bite? Could I be charged with that person's death as a murder,
since I had the power to prevent it and didn't do anything about it?''

The witch opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She began shuffling
through the forms that Harry had already signed.

``I wouldn't put it past them to do that,'' said Harry. He sat on his
rage with an effort, and kept his voice cool and cutting. ``They could,
if I signed that form. So, I won't.'' He stood up. ``Thank you for
helping me sign the other forms. And feel free to tell anyone you want
about this.''

``You can't do this,'' said the witch desperately. ``Dear, the law's
very clear---all Parselmouths and possessors of other Dark talents have
to register, and completely---''

``Can you stop me?'' Harry asked her softly.

The witch picked up her wand. Harry met her eyes, and waited.

Abruptly, the witch went pale, and her hand shook as she laid her wand
back down. ``Don't do that,'' she whispered. ``It's awful, the way that
you're looking at me, as though you can peel back my skin and see every
secret in my head.'' She began to shake, and brought up her hands to
cover her face.

Harry blinked. Perhaps he had looked more ferocious than he anticipated.
He shook his head, once, and turned his back on her, catching Snape's
gaze. He nodded, and they made for the lifts.

``It should never have gone this far,'' Snape hissed, as they waited for
a lift to come. ``To forbid you from speaking to snakes? It is
madness.''

Harry closed his eyes, and entertained himself for a moment by imagining
what Sylarana would have had to say if she was still there and he'd
tried to remain silent around her. That thought helped him dispel some
of the anger. He opened his eyes and said lightly, ``Yes, and sudden,
too. I think we're going to stop by the second floor on the way out. I'd
like to speak to Rufus Scrimgeour and found out how it got this bad this
fast.''

Snape darted him a hard glance. ``I thought we would return to
Hogwarts,'' he said. ``It is dangerous to be outside the wards for too
long, Harry.''

``I know,'' said Harry, with a sigh. ``But I think I need to know. He
didn't warn me. Either he knew and we need to renegotiate the terms of
our alliance, or he didn't know, and that means that things happened
with suspicious speed. Why? Why did they suddenly think they needed to
fear Parselmouths, of all people, or Dark wizards who weren't registered
before?'' He shook his head.

``They have always feared those more powerful than themselves,'' Snape
whispered. ``There are times when I can understand the Dark Lord's
thinking.''

Harry suppressed a shudder. The comment carried him back to Rosier's
laughter last night, and his claim that Harry could become a Dark Lord
even if he killed Voldemort. And there had been times when Harry used
Dark magic, or was in the midst of it, and certainly felt the temptation
to go further. He thought of Walpurgis Night, and how he'd danced there.
That was the kind of celebration the Ministry would like to control, and
no doubt eliminate.

But against that was the set of words that Scrimgeour had once spoken,
with all the passion of true conviction. It was not fair for the
powerful to rule the world and wizards of ordinary power to have no
recourse. By keeping the Ministry a neutral, open, bickering place that
no Lord could control, he hoped to give people that chance.

Harry made a small sound in his throat and shook his head. \emph{Just
another thorny path to dance down.}

The lift came, then, and Harry stepped into it, followed closely by
Snape. Harry concentrated. He would have to come up with the right words
to convince Scrimgeour he wasn't just another Lord come to meddle in the
Ministry. Sometimes, power was a burden as much as it was freedom.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

The Auror Office set Harry on edge. He could feel wards he couldn't see
quietly buzzing away in the background. He saw heads turning to follow
him as Snape escorted him past individual Aurors' desks, not necessarily
because they could feel his magic, but because of the inherent
suspicious nature their training seemed to give them. He could sense
tension and unhappiness and grim, cold responsibility behind many of the
faces around him, though that might have been caused at least partially
by having to deal with paperwork.

They encountered an assistant outside Scrimgeour's office, but for some
reason, the instant he saw Harry, he widened his eyes and nodded to the
door behind him. ``Go right on in,'' he said. ``He's been expecting you.
He told me that I'd recognize you on sight, and I must say, he was
right.'' He started grinning, a grin that didn't falter even when Snape
glared at him.

Harry shook his head in confusion and made his way into Scrimgeour's
office. How had Scrimgeour actually known that Harry would want to visit
him? And why would he have been talking to other people about him?

The office was smaller than Harry would have thought it would be for the
Head of the Auror Office, but that might have been an effect of the
numberless photographs on the walls. Harry stared around, a bit dazedly.
He caught glimpses of houses, people, trees, streets, a map of what
seemed to be the Ministry, a few pictures of Hogwarts, scenes which
seemed to be arrests, the soft, goofy visage of Minister Fudge, and too
many others to really see.

``Harry. Come in.''

Harry turned around. In the center of all the photos was a desk---two
desks, really, facing each other. Scrimgeour sat behind the first one,
his yellow eyes calm and direct. Behind the other one, scratching
frantically at a sheet of parchment that looked longer than he was tall,
was Percy Weasley.

Harry stared at Scrimgeour. The Auror raised his impressive eyebrows and
gestured once at Percy. ``Ah yes, I forgot that you would already know
Mr. Weasley. You were at the same school, after all, though not in the
same House. This is more a re-acquaintance than a reintroduction, isn't
it?''

``Yes,'' Harry muttered, even more confused. He had thought Percy was
working in a department that checked on the thickness of cauldron
bottoms, not for the Head Auror. Percy jerked his head up, gave Harry
one single, eloquent, harassed glance, and then turned back to his sheet
of parchment.

``Mr. Weasley's helping me with a case I'm working on,'' said Scrimgeour
expansively. ``Perfect for someone of his talents.'' He gave Harry a
slow wink.

Harry shook his head slightly, but felt a grin tugging at the corners of
his mouth. He'd warned Scrimgeour about Percy entering the Ministry as a
spy for Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix. He had thought the
Auror would simply keep an eye on him, but it seemed as though
Scrimgeour were more direct than that.

``You're here to see me about the new edict, I suppose?'' Scrimgeour
went on, effortlessly steering the conversation. ``Yes. Pesky thing.
They just dropped the forms on my desk this morning.'' He picked up the
nearest sheaf of papers and rattled them. ``Just how are we supposed to
catch every Dark witch who does a minor love spell and doesn't want to
register that she does them, I ask you?''

``I was hoping you could tell me why it was passed with
such---efficiency,'' Harry said, deciding to take his cue from
Scrimgeour. The Auror obviously didn't mind Percy overhearing them, so
Harry wouldn't, either. ``It really seems to have been hurried through
the Wizengamot. And why does a Parselmouth need to register in the
Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures?'' He
made sure to inject a moderate amount of outrage into his voice. No one
said that he couldn't be angry about that in front of the right people.

He saw that he'd startled Scrimgeour. The Auror sat up and leaned
forward. ``You registered \emph{there}?'' he asked.

Harry nodded. ``I take it no one else is?''

Scrimgeour closed his eyes. ``It would hardly matter if they were,'' he
murmured. ``Someone could always say it's just because there are no
other Parselmouths in Britain.''

``Or, at least, none fool enough to come in and register,'' said Snape
tartly, unable to keep silent any longer.

``I didn't complete the registration,'' said Harry, deciding it was
important to be honest. His alliance with Scrimgeour was based on an
exchange of information, and before anything else, Scrimgeour was an
Auror, bound to enforce wizarding law. If Harry didn't give him some
room to maneuver between the lines, then he might have no choice but to
arrest Harry for breaking the law at some point. ``I didn't sign the
form that said I understood I would be subjected to all appropriate
penalties if I spoke to snakes.''

Scrimgeour's eyes opened. Harry stared in fascination. He'd seen this
transformation only once before, the first time he met Scrimgeour. The
man tended to be detached and amused the rest of the time, but here,
\emph{here} was the intensity that had showed when he was telling Harry
what he believed the Ministry was and could be.

``That,'' said Scrimgeour, his voice clear and quiet, ``was not part of
any other registration.''

Harry clenched his fists. ``So a Dark witch who makes love spells
doesn't have to stop making them?'' he asked.

Scrimgeour shook his head. ``How could we stop that, when love potions
are legal to sell? No, she would agree to register that she made them
and where she lived and so on, so that if a crime involving love spells
happened, we would have a handy list of suspects---excuse me, people who
would help us with our inquiries.'' He fixed his eyes on Harry again.
``But not this. I didn't know that they would say you couldn't use your
talent at all.''

Harry stood quiet, thinking. If not for the date on Umbridge's letter,
he would have thought the registration was targeted at him because of
his exploits at the Quidditch World Cup, but she'd written the letter
before that happened.

\emph{That doesn't mean the registration was not targeted at you,} a
quiet voice told him, not Regulus, from whom he hadn't heard this
morning, but the most Slytherin part of his brain. \emph{It still could
be. At the very least, the idea that they don't want you speaking
Parseltongue, while they're just keeping an eye on other Dark talents,
suggests it.}

But why? Parseltongue had been considered Dark ever since Slytherin's
day, from what Harry understood, because of what had ended up happening
with him, but it was not such a powerful gift that the Ministry would
act to prevent anyone from using it. It wasn't as though Harry could
command armies of snakes to attack anyone.

The voice had an answer for that, too. \emph{The Parseltongue is a
convenient excuse. It's your power that they want to control. The rumors
have had months to build, now, and how many people might have felt the
burst of magic that alerted the Death Eaters to where Lux Aeterna was?
They're getting nervous. If you can be seen as coming in publicly and
cooperating with the Ministry, they can look as if they have you on a
leash, rather than as if you're setting yourself up as an independent
Lord.}

Harry curled his lip in a silent snarl. He didn't think that powerful
wizards should rule over those less strong, no, but he did object to the
thought of the less powerful controlling \emph{him}. He was a weapon and
a sacrifice, but he chose who to defend and where to sacrifice himself.
The Ministry hadn't even done him the courtesy of approaching openly.
Already, Harry was regretting that he had come in and appeared to obey
the law.

Yet what else could he have done? He was hardly prepared to take on the
whole of the Ministry by himself.

He opened his eyes and met Scrimgeour's gaze again. ``I may use it,'' he
said, ``if only to save people's lives.''

``And I may arrest you,'' said Scrimgeour, as carefully, ``if only to
please people's eyes.''

Harry nodded sharply, understanding. There were things Scrimgeour could
not do and rules he would not break, but he might be able to ease the
process of Harry's arrest or fine should it come to that. At least they
both understood each other, now.

He looked once at Percy Weasley, but Scrimgeour did not volunteer any
spontaneous explanation of what he was doing there, so Harry shrugged it
away. ``I'll see you later, Auror Scrimgeour,'' he said.

``And I will see you later, Mr. Potter,'' said Scrimgeour, equally
formal. ``Of that, I have no doubt at all.''

Harry gave him a smile without humor and walked out of the office. As
Snape had said, they really should get behind Hogwarts's wards.

His mind was spinning, though, reaching out, gathering up threads and
seeing what connections he could braid out of them, which ones would
benefit both him and his allies.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape followed quietly in Harry's wake. It appeared as though he
wouldn't have to hex people after all, nor talk to his ward about the
possible implications of a law that forbade only
Parselmouths---effectively, only one wizard in Britain---to use their
Dark talents.

Harry had figured that out for himself. Snape, thanks to the potion that
he'd given Harry this morning, could feel his mind racing, picking and
sorting through the implications, rejecting some and embracing others,
though he could not read the substance of those thoughts.

Snape had brewed the potion last night, first in a series of stopgap
solutions to Harry's self-sacrificial nature that he intended to make
permanent. It had awakened Harry, yes, but it also gave Snape a passive
link to him---one that would warn him when Harry was in danger, tell him
where he was if Snape concentrated, and let him feel the general state
of Harry's mind and emotions. It would not place any barriers on him.
Harry could still go where he liked and do what he pleased, which he
inevitably would anyway. But Snape could at least be at his right
shoulder, should it become necessary.

Watching his ward stride ahead of him, Snape thought that it might not
be as necessary as he believed.

\emph{He is opening his eyes. He sees much more of the world around him
than he did when he first came to Hogwarts.}

\emph{Now, if I can get him to see himself, too, we may be able to win
true victories.}

Snape smirked, and felt the stirring of long-hidden ambitions reviving
in him again, hatching like dragons.

\emph{This is not about just victory over James or Gryffindor any more,
if it ever was. This is about winning in general, and winning the
future.}

\chapter{Who Speaks to the Many?}\label{chapter-9-who-speaks-to-the-many}

``I promise you, Harry, I had nothing to do with this.''

Harry squinted at Albus, who hid his sigh and stifled his instinctive
temptation to read the boy's mind. They had been in his office for the
past ten minutes, and it seemed that no matter how much he denied having
anything to do with Fudge's new edicts, Harry would not believe him. He
kept trying new and subtler ways of questioning, as though he believed
those would pull the truth from Albus at last.

While Albus waited for the next one, he studied what the summer had made
of the boy. Harry had grown a bit taller. That was the most obvious and
banal of the changes, however. His eyes were steadier, more direct, and
he carried himself as though he might have some purpose in life outside
of staying in the shadows. Albus had already concluded that his first
plan to handle the boy would not work. He would have to try others.

At least Severus had agreed to let them meet alone. There was that.
Harry had a fragile trust in Albus, while Severus had none at all,
anymore.

\emph{And whose fault is that?}

Albus winced. He'd grown used to living with that voice during the
summer, but he did not like it. It asked him useless questions whose
answers he already knew, and prompted him to think of regrets that he
had long ago put aside. He had no time to think of them. Merlin knew his
days were already full of the here-and-now consequences of his actions.

Harry seemed to have decided the direct approach was best after all.
``But you're the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot,'' he said. ``Fudge
couldn't have passed this edict against Dark wizards without your
help.''

Albus sighed. ``He could and he did, Harry,'' he said, and picked up the
book that had been resting on a corner of his desk, with one of Fawkes's
shed feathers serving as a bookmark. He handed it to Harry and waited in
silence as the boy read, while staring at the old perch on the other
side of the room. He missed Fawkes. He wished the phoenix would visit
him at least some of the time, but that seemed against whatever decision
as to allegiance that Fawkes had made.

Harry looked back up, his face ashen. ``He thinks we're at war?'' he
croaked.

Albus nodded. ``Yes. `The Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot may be
displaced or set aside in times of war, when the Minister must make a
decision with the help of his loyal supporters,' and that's quoting from
memory, Harry. I must admit, there are times when it's a sensible
precaution. The law came into being during the War with Grindelwald,
when the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot turned out to have been one of
the Dark Lord's Lightning Guard.'' Albus grimaced. The trial of Beowulf
Guile was not one that he liked to remember. ``But this time, Fudge has
been receiving reports of Dark activity that I think are exaggerated and
multiplied beyond all count. He has not claimed that Voldemort has
returned, not yet. That would require an official recognition of a Dark
Lord, and thus an enemy, by the Ministry. But he may think another Dark
Lord is on the rise, and that means that he can convince a good portion
of the Wizengamot to obey him.'' Albus sighed. ``He did not even attempt
to show me the proof of this. He simply bypassed me. I think he knows he
could not convince me.''

Harry nodded slowly, his eyes narrowed. ``That means that he could pass
other laws,'' he said. ``Doesn't it?''

``Yes,'' said Albus, and waited. The boy obviously had other questions
to ask him.

Harry closed his eyes and sat very still for a moment. Albus felt the
shimmer of magic climbing around him, intoxicating and pulling---or at
least it would have been if he wasn't defended by his own, old, settled
power. Harry's magic had not strengthened, but it seemed to have
deepened, as though he were learning better control. Albus sincerely
hoped so, for both the boy's sake and the sake of the wizarding world.

``They could hurt my allies,'' Harry whispered.

Albus's eyebrows rose. ``Of course, the anti-werewolf edicts have
already hurt Remus---'' he began.

Harry opened his eyes and shook his head. ``Not just those allies, sir.
The allies that you promised you wouldn't interfere with, former Death
Eaters and Dark wizards.'' He flexed one hand as though already
anticipating it would hurt from the letters he had to write. ``I have to
warn them.''

Albus checked his desire to say something. Harry was due for some bad
experiences with the former Death Eaters and the Dark wizards, he
suspected. He wished he could say something to ease Harry into the
experience, but the boy would not believe him anyway. He had a
tremendous capacity to forgive and forget.

\emph{Too tremendous,} Albus thought. \emph{We trained him too well,
Lily and I.}

He started in the next instant, and banished the thoughts again. He
simply had no \emph{time} for regrets.

Harry nodded to him and stood. ``Thank you, sir, for letting me know
that magical Britain is essentially under martial law at the moment,''
he murmured, and then turned and strode from the room.

Albus sighed and turned to another of his tasks, not letting his mind
linger for long on Harry. The boy was perhaps the most essential wizard
in the world at the moment, outranking even his brother, whose training
was, by all accounts, going well. But there were problems Albus had to
settle that had nothing to do with him, and one that could, as yet,
\emph{have} nothing to do with him.

He picked up three letters, one from France, one from Bulgaria, and one
from Godric's Hollow, and sat back to consider how best to respond to
them.

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Harry whispered the password to Snape's door---he'd had to ask his
mentor to change it several times before they found one that did not
refer to one of Harry's family members in an unflattering way---and
opened it, just in time to find Snape receiving a Howler. The Potions
Master sat behind his desk, marking essays and looking thoroughly
unimpressed, while the red envelope hovered above his desk and screamed
at him.

``---AND I THOUGHT IT WAS MY MOTHER'S DECREE AT FIRST, AND NOW I FIND
OUT THAT IT'S YOURS! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I WANTED TO SEE HARRY AGAIN,
BEFORE SCHOOL STARTED? AND HOW MUCH HE WANTED TO SEE ME? WHAT RIGHT DO
YOU HAVE TO TELL HIM THAT HE CAN'T HAVE VISITORS? HE SAVED EVERYBODY
FROM A DEATH EATER! ISN'T THAT ENOUGH TO WIN YOUR APROVAL?''

Harry covered his face with one hand. He supposed he'd been foolish to
think that a week of calm letters from Draco meant that there would be
no more explosive response sooner or later.

The Howler fell to Snape's desk. Snape finished writing the line he'd
started, then drew out his wand, murmured, ``\emph{Incendio},'' and burned
the envelope to a crisp before he looked up.

``Harry,'' he said evenly. ``I trust that your meeting with Albus went
well.''

Harry rolled his eyes. He'd insisted on going alone to speak to
Dumbledore, and it still had taken him almost a week to get that
agreement out of Snape. Now he had to stand there while Snape used
gentle Legilimency on him to find out if the Headmaster had left another
web in his mind. His mentor sat back at last, with a nod, and said,
``Your mind is clear. Now. I must ask again if you are sure about this
expedition.''

Harry folded his arms. ``Unless you want me to not have the books and
cauldrons and robes I need for the new term, then yes.''

``I could firecall an associate of mine who often shops in Diagon Alley,
and have her retrieve your new belongings for you,'' said Snape, an
offer he'd made before.

Harry shook his head. His summer at Lux Aeterna had at least addicted
him to one thing, he thought: the feel of open space in front of him and
the sky above his head. It hadn't been bad during the first few weeks of
August, since he could go outside as long as he didn't go too far from
the castle, but for the last week, Snape had kept him behind the wards.
Students arrived tomorrow, and he wouldn't have much excuse to leave
again unless he went flying or to Hogsmeade, and Harry wasn't sure that
Snape would allow that, either. ``I want to go to Diagon Alley myself.''

Snape sighed. ``Very well.'' He stood, cast a Summoning Charm on his
cloak, and gave Harry a critical glance. ``We will get there soon
enough,'' he said. ``It is not yet noon. You need not be so impatient.''

Harry blinked. He had his arms folded, but he wasn't tapping a foot or
sighing or looking at the clock. He hadn't thought that he looked so
impatient. ``What?''

Snape narrowed his eyes as though surprised by something, and gestured.
``Precede me to the Floo, please, Mr. Potter.''

Harry rolled his eyes. His last name usually meant he'd done something
wrong, but in this case, he had no idea what that could be. He paused to
grab his own cloak from his bedroom. With any luck, if anyone recognized
him from Skeeter's newspaper articles, he could use the hood to shield
his face.

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Harry threw his head back and breathed out comfortably. They had arrived
via Floo at the Leaky Cauldron, and from there, Snape had guided him
back into Diagon Alley. The sight around him was exactly what Harry had
wanted. Fresh air, blue sky---he supposed the day Snape had taken him to
London hadn't been the last sunny day of August, after all---people
moving around him who weren't cheering hysterically or running in fear.
He could feel an agitation he'd barely been aware was there dying in his
stomach.

``Come, Harry. James said he had set up a separate account for you at
Gringotts, I take it?''

Harry nodded. Snape would say nothing about the rest of the contents of
that letter if he would say nothing, he supposed. The rest of the letter
from James had warned Snape against trying to touch the money in Harry's
account. Harry winced at the very memory. Sometimes his father reminded
him of nothing so much as a more immature Draco making comments on how
little money the Weasleys had.

``This way,'' said Snape, and guided Harry down the Alley.

They received a few stares as they walked, but not many. Harry relaxed
by degrees. Probably people were staring absently, in the fashion of
someone who knew they were supposed to recognize someone else, but
couldn't quite do it. Of course, Skeeter's last article about him had
been four days ago, and he had his magic even more tightly shielded than
normal.

\emph{They're staring anyway,} Regulus said, his voice abruptly
appearing in Harry's head. \emph{They must sense something about you,
but I think most of them can't tell what it is. That doesn't mean you
won't trouble their dreams, later.}

\emph{How comforting.} Harry snorted. \emph{Where have you been?}

\emph{Teaching you a lesson,} said Regulus. \emph{You seem to have
settled back down, thank Merlin. Are you sorry for what you did?}

Harry sighed as they passed Flourish and Blotts. \emph{The unnecessary
part, yes. But I can't be sorry for dissipating the curse, or facing
Rosier and keeping him occupied when he could have hurt someone else.}

Regulus snorted back at him. \emph{Have you given thought to how you
might help me get my body back?}

Harry threw up his hands, causing Snape to glance at him. Harry resolved
to keep his gestures under control from now on. \emph{I've tried! But
when all you can tell me is ``small space'' and ``darkness,'' that
doesn't help much. I told you what I think the best chance would be.}

\emph{And I told you why it wouldn't work.} Regulus sounded sulky.
\emph{I don't have perfect control of the wards, not when I can't see
them. I was able to shut Bellatrix out of the Black estates she'd been
hiding in, but I can't open the wards for one person and not another. I
just don't have that fine a control. If I opened them to Narcissa so
that she could come in and search about, Bellatrix could get in, too.}

Harry shook his head. \emph{You'll have to take a risk, sooner or later,
if you want to be back in your body.} He thought Regulus was probably
imprisoned somewhere in one of the Black estates. It would explain why
none of the Death Eaters had ever found the body, and why the wards had
slammed shut immediately when Sirius died and the heirship transferred
to Regulus; they were protecting their new master. Harry also thought it
was the sort of thing that would appeal to Voldemort, since the locket
that had contained a part of his soul had also reposed somewhere among
the Black treasures.

\emph{Although\ldots{}come to think of it, he can't have} known
\emph{about that, or he would have taken his locket back.}

\emph{Listen,} Regulus interrupted his musings. \emph{I don't want to be
found by Bellatrix. That would be horrible.}

\emph{I agree, it would be,} Harry said. \emph{But if you are in a Black
house, and you don't let the wards relax for someone who's friendly to
you, then you'll never be found at all.}

Regulus sighed at him. \emph{I would find it reassuring if you were on
hand when the wards fell, so that you could come in immediately and
search.}

Harry raised his eyebrows. \emph{You saw what happened the last time you
tried to convince Snape that I should be able to leave Hogwarts and
search for you.} Snape had driven Regulus from his mind with a judicious
combination of Occlumency and a defense spell that he still hadn't
taught Harry, but which had left Regulus whimpering in pain for hours
afterward.

Regulus sighed again. \emph{I know.}

Harry shook his head once more, and then they were at Gringotts. Harry
had been there, but not for over a year, and he had forgotten how
imposing it was. The white marble glittered and flashed in the sun,
sometimes too bright to look at. The bronze doors weren't much better,
and the uniform of the goblin who stood in front of those outer doors
seemed to have been made by a former Gryffindor who wanted to outdo the
garish combination of red and gold in the House's common room.

Harry met the goblin's eyes as they walked up the steps and towards the
doors. This was a southern goblin, and so different from the northern
ones. For one thing, his skin was darker, his eyes, as they fixed on
Harry, were dark and slanted, and he appeared to have no claws and only
five fingers on each hand when Harry was close.

It wasn't until they reached the actual front doors that Harry realized
the goblin was studying him back, his eyes gone into even smaller slits
as they narrowed. He didn't say anything, however, and so Harry simply
nodded to him and passed into the antechamber beyond, where he and Snape
would have to go through a pair of silver doors engraved with the
goblins' curse on thieves.

Harry's skin began to tingle the moment he stepped into the antechamber.
He blinked and looked behind the world again, wondering if he would see
a web here. He was somewhat puzzled when he did not.

Then he glanced from side to side, and saw glittering white strands
running on either side of him. He couldn't see the web because he stood
in the middle of it. He sighed. \emph{Of course this one would be
especially strict, since after all these goblins are guarding the money
of the wizarding world.}

``Come, Harry,'' said Snape again, and steered him forward. Harry kept
his eyes open and his sight focused on the web, though, which made for a
mixed sight of afterimages, goblins, and wizards in the room beyond. Now
and then he stumbled, but Snape's firm hand on his shoulder held him
steady.

They approached a bored-looking goblin behind the counter, who sat up
slightly on seeing them. ``Welcome to Gringotts,'' he said, with such
practiced polish that Harry wondered how anyone ever heard sincerity in
it. ``My name is Flashkack. Your name and business?''

``Harry Potter,'' said Harry as calmly as he could. The web was growing
brighter around him, or at least the strand of white light immediately
in front of him was. He didn't understand why, and had to strive to hold
his voice under control. ``I've come about an account that my father,
James Potter, established for me from his vault.''

Flashkack didn't say anything for a long moment, simply and steadily
staring at him. Harry blinked, his eyes watering with tears from the
web. He'd never seen any other behave like this, and wondered what was
going on.

\emph{Of course, I still have a lot to learn about being} vates, he
reminded himself.

``Of course,'' the goblin murmured at last, and abruptly the brilliant
strand of the web calmed down to what it had been. ``Here is your key,
sir.'' He passed the key to the vault over with one hand. Harry took it,
and felt a faint stir of magic where their fingers touched. Flashkack
once more stared intently at him, then said, ``I will take you to your
vault myself, sir.''

Harry nodded. ``Thank you. We would be grateful.'' He heard Snape's
slight snarl behind him, and suspected the man was not thrilled at the
thought of riding one of the carts down to the vault. Harry ignored him.
Flashkack's eyes wouldn't have let him go at the moment, either.

``May I invite you,'' Flashkack said suddenly, his voice rough and low,
``to attend a certain meeting in one of the back rooms when you are done
with the vault?''

Harry felt his heart pound once, as though in answer to the unusual
voice. ``I accept,'' he said, without thinking about the consequences.

``Harry,'' said Snape, his voice a pace or two away from a growl.

Harry cast him an impatient glance. ``My guardian can come with me, I
take it?'' he asked Flashkack.

``As long as he promises not to behave like a wizard, of course,'' said
Flashkack.

Harry winced slightly. From the context, ``like a wizard'' obviously
meant ``rudely and arrogantly.'' ``I'll stand surety for him myself if
he does, in the name of blood and stone,'' he said. He was lost when it
came to northern goblin courtesies, but he knew the southern ones fairly
well.

Flashkack cocked his head, and something like a smile touched his solemn
face. ``I accept, in the name of silver and bronze.'' He gestured
towards one of the guarded doors on the far side of the room. ``This
way, sir. Your vault awaits.''

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Harry glanced once around the room, taking in the large number of
goblins standing around the walls, and then fixed his gaze solely on the
table in front of him. It had two chairs. Harry and Snape would sit
there, while the goblins remained on their feet around them.

Harry calmed his breathing, his desire to lash out, and his instinctive
certainty that they were being made to sit like this so that their heads
were lower than the goblins'. It didn't matter. He wasn't coming to this
meeting as some kind of conqueror, anyway, but as a potential
\emph{vates} interested in hearing what the goblins had to say.

He heard Snape drawing in breath for some kind of vitriolic comment, and
reached up, squeezing his mentor's arm. He made sure it was the left
arm, and that his hand covered the Dark Mark. Snape let out his breath
without speaking. Harry nodded to Flashkack, who had served as their
escort, and took his seat.

He realized abruptly that the white web, though still present and
shining around them when he looked, was dimmer here than elsewhere.
Before he could think better of it, he murmured aloud, ``It isn't as
bright.''

One of the goblins near the wall gave a harsh sound that might have been
a laugh, and took a step forward. Harry saw how the heads all around the
room swung to him, orienting on him---no, Harry decided as the goblin
came a step or two forward, \emph{her.} There was something about the
shape of her face and the way she carried herself that was different
from Flashkack, whom Harry was certain was male.

``No,'' she said. ``And do you know why, \emph{vates}?''

Harry shook his head. He was afraid for Snape beside him, strung tight
as a crossbow. He once again tried to reach out and soothe him through
touch, but this time he didn't know if he succeeded. ``Please, tell me
why.''

``Because no money is exchanged here,'' said the goblin, standing with
one foot set in front of the other as she stared at him. ``No keys to
vaults are given.'' She smiled, her grin a nightmare of jagged teeth.
``The web is tied to the business of the bank itself, and reinforced
each time wizards take or add to the wealth they have stolen from us.''

Harry shuddered. The words again spilled from his lips before he could
stop them. ``Who did that?''

``Ah,'' said the goblin, a bare breath. Her eyes hadn't blinked, Harry
realized suddenly, and she had never looked away from him, either. It
was like being caught on a stone drill. ``Most of the magical creatures
have no answer for that. But in our case, we do. We did work as equal
partners with wizards until we refused to give a certain one a certain
treasure he wanted. He took it anyway, and spun the web to make it so
that each exchange thereafter would strengthen the bonds upon us. His
name was Salazar Slytherin.''

Harry felt Snape jerk. ``He never did anything of the kind,'' the Head
of Slytherin snapped. ``He was a Dark wizard, there is no denying that,
but he had no need to steal treasure from goblins or weave webs. You are
lying.''

The reaction was instantaneous. Several goblins around the walls lifted
their hands, and Harry saw that they held bows like the northern goblins
had, save that their arrows did not shine white, but silver. Harry felt
the hum coming from those arrows. He didn't recognize the magic, but he
doubted it would be good for Snape if the bolts hit him anywhere on his
body.

The female goblin turned her head, by slow degrees, to look at Snape.
She seemed amused more than anything, Harry thought, at least if he was
reading the wrinkles that ran around her dark eyes correctly. ``You would
call the \emph{hanarz} of the goblins of Gringotts a liar, to her face?''
she asked.

Harry winced. Remembering how much the northern goblins had valued
honesty, he had some guess as to the depth of the insult Snape had just
given the \emph{hanarz}. ``Please, forgive him,'' he said, making sure
not to start to his feet or get in between Snape and the arrows, though
he wanted to. ``He is completely unfamiliar with all this, and he is the
Head of the House that Salazar Slytherin established at Hogwarts. He
thinks he is speaking the truth.''

``Speaking the truth does not always involve calling others liars, Harry
Potter,'' the \emph{hanarz} murmured. ``Would you not agree?''

Harry nodded unwillingly.

``And you have some idea of how much honesty means to us?''

Harry had to nod again.

``Then tell me,'' said the \emph{hanarz}, tone distant and detached, as
though confronting an intellectual problem, ``why should he not die?''

Harry raised his eyebrows. \emph{Well, they value honesty.} ``If you
kill him,'' he said, ``then I will not help you, and will more than
likely kill many of you in turn, in my explosion of rage. I love him,
and even though he's an idiot sometimes, I won't suffer you to touch
him.''

The \emph{hanarz} considered him in silence. Then she nodded once, and
the bows along the walls lowered. Harry sat back, and became aware of
Snape's harsh breathing next to him. He didn't turn and ask his mentor
how he was. It was obvious how he was---angry and terrified almost
witless. Harry hoped the meeting wouldn't last long pat this moment.
Snape always started saying unfortunate things when he was this upset.

``Well spoken,'' said the \emph{hanarz}. ``Now, tell me what you plan to
do about our web, little \emph{vates.}''

Harry considered her. ``I would have to close the bank to dissipate the
web, wouldn't I?''

``Stop the exchange of money, more than likely,'' the goblin said, not
sounding at all bothered.

Harry nodded. ``And that, of course, would destroy one of the pillars of
wizarding society,'' he said.

The \emph{hanarz} said nothing, simply watched him expectantly. Harry
stared into her eyes and found he could ignore the eyes of the watching
goblins. They followed and obeyed her so deeply that hers was the only
stare that mattered.

He took a deep breath. ``I can't destroy it right now, any more than I
can destroy the linchpins that hold your northern cousins captive,'' he
began.

``But?'' the \emph{hanarz} prompted, instead of getting angry as Harry
had expected, a faint smile touching her lips. Harry revised his opinion
of her cleverness upwards. Perhaps she had never intended to kill Snape,
after all, or had at least been smart enough to know what would happen
if she did.

``I can promise to try,'' said Harry softly.

The \emph{hanarz} nodded once. ``You swear it by blood and stone, by
silver and bronze?''

``More,'' said Harry. \emph{This is where my education comes in handy.}
``I swear it by gold.''

The murmur of voices around him began again, and the \emph{hanarz}
stepped back to rest against the wall. Flashkack came forward to escort
them out of the room. Harry stood up gratefully, stretching tense
muscles and praying that Snape would keep quiet until they were safely
out. Luckily, he did.

Of course, his first words once they were navigating their tunnel back
towards the cart that had brought them here were, ``I suppose that
promise was worth so little that they immediately had to let us go,
without even a farewell?''

``Wrong, wizard,'' said Flashkack, turning around to meet Snape's eyes.
``That promise is worth so \emph{much} that we need ask nothing else of
Mr. Potter. He will keep his oath.''

Harry kept his eyes fixed on the tunnel ahead, and tried not to hear
Snape's mumbling or feel the goblin's speculative glance. He was winding
himself up in more and more complications, but he'd always suspected
that would happen. Life wasn't simple, nor easy.

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Harry glanced around uneasily. It wasn't that he didn't know about Dark
magic, he told himself. He'd practiced it, for Merlin's sake.

But there was something about Knockturn Alley that made him nervous
anyway. Perhaps it was the air of sordid, petty transactions that took
place here, Harry thought, shying away from a witch who stepped out of a
shop so heavily curtained that Harry could make out nothing of what it
sold. He knew some Dark magic, yes, and the deep, wild darkness that had
come and danced with him on Walpurgis Night. He knew little of the
darkness that poverty and desperation could drive one to.

The witch shuffled past him, gave a dry, rattling cough, and fumbled
open the handkerchief she held, scooping up a handful of gray powder to
rub on her face. A look of ecstasy overcame her features. Harry had to
look away.

``This way.''

Snape swept out of the apothecary shop, to Harry's relief, and led him
towards the entrance to Knockturn Alley. He'd insisted on Harry staying
within his sight, his cloak pulled up, but hadn't let him enter the
shop. Now, from the way he strode, he was obviously determined to leave.

Harry hadn't gone far, though, when the force that evidently delighted
in making his life hard decided to do it again.

Two men had been carrying a crate from one shop to another, their hands
obviously trembling under its weight. They were passing directly in
front of Harry and Snape when they dropped the crate, and it cracked
open, wood splinters flying in several directions. Harry ducked them.

Almost at once, there was a horrible hissing.

The men screamed. Harry lowered his hand from his face to see snakes
swarming over them, small, lithe green-and-gold bodies moving with
astonishing quickness, concentrating in one place and biting again and
gain. One of the wizards convulsed and went down. The other managed to
keep his feet, but from the glazed look in his eyes, it wouldn't be long
before he succumbed to the venom.

Acting on instinct, Harry took a step forward. ``Stop!'' he called out,
and from the jerk Snape gave beside him, knew it had been in
Parseltongue.

And the snakes all \emph{stopped}, as one, their bodies reacting like
the body of the artificial snake from the Black treasuries who had
attacked Draco last year. Then their heads swung to face him, also all
as one, and a hissing eddied among them, forming into words that seemed
to emerge at last from one serpent in the center of the pile.

``\emph{Who speaks to the Quiver? Who speaks to the Many?}''

Harry swallowed. He was aware that he had a small crowd, people leaning
out of shops to watch, but he couldn't concentrate on that in the face
of the information he'd just received. The Many were hive cobras, a type
of magical snake from South Africa. They were extremely difficult to
kill, since they were essentially one mind in many bodies, and killing
one small body would just result in the mind passing to another host.
They could bite and inject venom into a victim that would kill as it was
reinforced again and again from multiple mouths, or spit their poison
into their victim's eyes. One book Harry had read even suggested they
could possess wizards, if they really tried. Out of control, they would
be more than a menace.

He had an opportunity to stop that from happening, and it was more than
enough. ``I do,'' he said, taking a step forward just so that he
wouldn't accidentally see any wizards from the corner of his eye and
speak in English. ``I am a Parselmouth, and I ask that you please stop
attacking those wizards.''

``\emph{One is dead, Parselmouth,}'' said the eddying hiss. ``\emph{And
they seized us from our warm den and brought us here, cutting the Many
in half. They intended to cut us and mash us and use our eggs. Why
should we spare them?}''

Harry swallowed. ``I suppose you don't have any reason to,'' he said.
``But I ask you to.''

``\emph{And the other people, too?}'' There was a mocking tone to the
voices now. ``\emph{Shall the Many refrain from attacking other people,
because you ask us to?}''

``Eventually, you have to know that they'll kill you,'' said Harry.
``You can't make your way back home from here; it's too far away.
Hunters will come, and they'll kill you. I can spare the Many's life.''

There was a long silence, and then all the snakes left the dead wizards
and made for him as one. They moved incredibly fast, and smoothly dodged
the hex that Snape fired at them.

Harry forced himself to stand still as the snakes swarmed up his body,
wrapping around his arms and his chest and his legs. One draped around
his neck, and held its body in front of his face, swaying. Harry could
see the hood expanding around its neck, and the marking on it, turned to
delicate green and gold by the light behind it---the infinity symbol,
eternity or death. The cobra's eyes were gold. It could spit into his
eyes, and he would be permanently blinded. There was no cure for that
kind of blindness that anyone knew of, magical or Muggle, though the
Many's ordinary bites could be cured.

Harry held the cobra's eyes and waited.

The hiss once more built into a single voice. ``\emph{What would you give
the Quiver, Parselmouth?}''

``There is a sanctuary,'' said Harry carefully. ``A forest in the place
where I live, where many magical creatures live and run free of
interference from wizards. I will take you there, and set you free. It
is not the Many's natural home, but it may begin a new one.''

There was a long silence, unless one counted the sound of scales
scraping on and over him. Harry breathed shallowly. He was sure that
Snape was staring at him in horror, but he couldn't look up and see if
that was true. He could see only the cobra right in front of his face,
swaying back and forth, back and forth.

It occurred to him that it might be the last thing he ever saw.

``\emph{And if hunters come after the Many even there?}'' they hissed
then. ``\emph{They may. They came after us in our warm den very far from
wizards. Will you defend us?}''

Harry set himself. He was a Parselmouth, the only kind of wizard who
could speak to these creatures, and he had a duty that no other kind of
wizard in this situation could have. ``I will.''

The Many slithered back and forth over him. Harry realized then that
they were actually moving in a pattern, the snakes at the upper right
side of his chest sliding slowly down to the left and then twining
around his legs, while other snakes crawled over his back and shoulders
and upwards. Only the one in front of his face did not alter its
position.

``\emph{We accept.}''

Harry let out a short breath, then turned his head, carefully, to look
at Snape. His mentor's face was furious again, but that was no surprise.

``I'm going to Apparate now,'' said Harry quietly. ``I don't think it
would be a good idea to go by Portkey or Floo. I swear that I'm only
going to Hogsmeade, and nowhere else.''

Snape snapped his head down. ``I will be behind you,'' he said.

Harry nodded, gathered his strength around him, and Apparated.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry watched as the Many flowed away from him into the Forbidden
Forest, a tide of green and gold, and sighed. He straightened, shaking
his hands, and then turned to face Snape, who had followed him every
step of the way from Hogsmeade.

``I couldn't think of anything else to do,'' he said.

Snape simply watched him, face blank. Harry had no way of telling what
he was thinking. He opened his mouth to defend himself again, and was
interrupted by a deep, confident voice that skimmed out from behind him.

``Mr. Potter?''

Harry turned swiftly. Two tall wizards in gray cloaks were walking
towards him from the direction of Hogsmeade. One of them held a scroll
in front of him, from which he read as they halted a few feet from
Harry.

``Mr. Harry Potter, you have today committed two crimes,'' he said.
``One is use of your Parseltongue skills, a forbidden Dark talent under
Ministry Edict 6.8.0. The other is failure to complete your registration
as a Parselmouth, and therefore desire to hide your Dark magic from
others.'' He lowered the scroll, and he and the other wizard both drew
their wands. Harry couldn't see their faces under their low cloak hoods,
but he knew from the wizard's voice that he was smiling. ``You will come
with us now. We will escort you to Minister Fudge.''

Harry stiffened his shoulders. ``And you are?'' he asked.

``Oh, we have an official title,'' said the wizard who hadn't spoken so
far yet, ``but I can never remember it. Call us the Hounds. We sniff
after Dark magic.''

Harry sighed. One glance at Snape showed him an inch from exploding.
Harry shook his head. ``My guardian can come with me?'' he asked, as he
started divesting himself of the shrunken packages he'd got in Diagon
Alley. There was no reason to take them with him.

``Ah,'' said the wizard who'd read the scroll. ``Of course.'' He stepped
forward and gripped Harry's shoulder. ``I'm afraid not.''

And then he went into Side Along Apparition, dragging Harry with him,
cutting off Snape's angry roar as they went.

\chapter{The Hounds}\label{chapter-10-the-hounds}

Harry came out of the Apparition with his stomach jolting, but with
Regulus whispering in his head, \emph{You're somewhere in the Ministry.
One of the interrogation rooms. I recognize them from one time I was
brought here.}

\emph{There's all sorts of interesting things that you haven't told me
about yourself, aren't there?} Harry concentrated on the words to keep
himself from panicking. He blinked, and blinked again, and looked around
the room when it became obvious that the gray-cloaked wizards had simply
released his arms and made no further attempt to confine him.

It was utterly blank, the walls made of gray stone, blocks without a
visible join or seam between them. There were no photographs, portraits,
or other decorations on them, and the only furniture was a chair behind
him, which one of his captors promptly pushed him into. Harry felt his
hands clench in anticipation of something, and it took him a moment to
realize that it was a beating or a surprise attack. The walls and the
chair were not \emph{natural}.

And the wizards were not treating him like one normally would a feared
prisoner. Harry glared at them.

One of them---Harry thought it was the one who had read the scroll out
to him---chuckled. ``Ooh, look, Grim, the kitten has claws!''

Grim, who was apparently the other wizard, laughed more loudly. He swept
his hood back and revealed himself as a confident, handsome,
young-looking man with blond hair and green eyes. Harry wouldn't have
given him a glance if they passed in Diagon Alley. ``I'd say he does,''
he responded. ``Or, at least, fangs. You saw what he did in Knockturn,
Crup.''

Crup made a sound of disgust beneath his breath and moved his hood back.
He himself was brown-haired, but his brown eyes and his face were
utterly ordinary. ``Yeah, you're right.''

``You were watching me in Knockturn Alley?'' Harry asked. He filed away
a few questions to ask for later, such as why they called themselves by
the names of dogs. One of them had said something about being Hounds
right before Apparating with Harry, but he didn't know what that might
mean.

``Of course,'' said Crup. ``Someone had to. You were a Parselmouth who
refused to complete his registration, and then you went to the Auror
Office and acted as though you knew the Head Auror. You're interesting.
When you went down Knockturn Alley, you only made yourself more
interesting.'' He gave a smile, and Harry saw his eyes go cold. His
ordinary face could lie, then. Of course, the way he moved had already
told Harry that; he seemed to have had war wizard training. ``And then
you spoke to snakes. Careless, Mr. Potter, very careless. If you wanted
your Dark talent to remain secret, you shouldn't have used it in
public.''

Harry fought the temptation to bare his teeth. His best choice in these
circumstances was still to remain silent and as polite as possible. He
didn't understand why they were so confident, since they seemed aware of
his power, but that only made him more cautious in return. Perhaps they
had some advantage that would offset his magic.

``The last I knew, saving someone's life was considered laudatory,'' he
said. ``I convinced the Many to come with me to the Forbidden Forest,
instead of attacking other people in Knockturn Alley.''

Crup laughed at him, throwing his head back and closing his eyes. His
laughter did rather resemble a bark, reminding Harry of Sirius's. ``How
would we know that, Mr. Potter? I saw two wizards fall dead of the
Many's bites, and then the snakes migrated to you. Then you fled from
the alley like a criminal. Perhaps you commanded the snakes to stop
attacking, but how would I know that? \emph{I} don't speak
Parseltongue.''

``Shouldn't it have been obvious?'' Harry asked.

``No,'' said Grim, his face gone dark. ``You were caught using your foul
creatures, and you might as well admit it, Dark wizard scum.''

Crup reached out and put a hand on his partner's arm. ``Grim,'' he
chided. ``The boy isn't even aware of why we, and not Aurors, brought
him here yet. I think we should explain that first.'' He faced Harry.
``You heard the name Hounds. Do you have any idea what it means?''

Harry shook his head.

\emph{I don't understand,} Regulus whispered. \emph{I can almost see
into his mind, which should mean that he has a connection with the Dark
Lord, but I'm being blocked. There's a wall of some kind. Do you think
he's a Legilimens?}

\emph{I don't know,} Harry thought back.

``We are the ones who track down and sniff out evil,'' said Crup,
throwing his head back proudly. ``We should know what darkness means.
Some of us were former Aurors who got too close to our enemies. Others
actually served as spies or messengers for the last Dark Lord. Some of
us were simply naturally talented in the Dark Arts, but chose to serve
the Ministry rather than act against the good of the wizarding world.
We're a good group, as good as you'll find, but we follow the scent of
evil. And that means we're the perfect ones to enforce the Minister's
new edicts. The Aurors are often tiresome, with their paperwork and
their legalities. What you need in a war is someone who can act
quickly.''

``I've never heard of you,'' said Harry, driving himself back to
calmness again. ``And I should have. I \emph{have} studied history, and I
would have noticed if there were Hounds running around and arresting
criminals.''

Crup snorted. ``That's because we're new, little kitten. The Minister
needed us, and so he created us, drawing us from other departments.'' He
smiled at Harry. ``You're actually only the second person we've
arrested. Don't you feel special?''

``He didn't announce your creation, either,'' Harry persisted, trying to
ignore the sick feeling in his stomach. ``And he should have. There are
laws saying that a new force like this should get news and press
coverage.''

Grim sighed and pressed his hand over his heart. ``Alas, we had to
sacrifice that for the sake of doing our duty. The Minister decided we
would be more effective if no one knew of us or our ultimate mission for
a while.''

Harry tried to swallow. It was difficult with a dry throat. \emph{These
are Fudge's secret police, essentially.} ``And what is your ultimate
mission?'' he asked, working a note into his voice as if impressed,
playing along.

``To get rid of all Dark magic in Britain.''

They answered together, and their voices were passionate and their eyes
clear. Harry had no doubt this was something that mattered to them,
beyond all the joking around that they had done. He shook his head,
slowly, feeling a surge of pity for them.

``What's the matter?'' challenged Crup. ``Don't think we can do it,
kitten?''

``No,'' said Harry. ``There are Dark artifacts hidden in manors all over
Britain, and plenty of Dark wizards who hide their talents. How in the
world are you going to find everyone who might do a spell you don't
approve of?'' He was thinking of Connor, whose compulsion gift wasn't
common knowledge and could not be eradicated from his mind without
\emph{breaking} his mind. Would they make him sign a form saying that he
would never use it again? Or would they take the chance of breaking him
in order to make him something more ``Light?''

``We'll settle for getting rid of public practitioners first,'' said
Grim. ``Like you.''

Harry shrugged. ``I don't plan to stop using Parseltongue, particularly
when I can use it to save lives.''

Crup surged to his feet. ``That was all we were waiting for,'' he said,
and grabbed Harry's shoulder, and dragged him forward.

Harry tensed, wanting to lash out, but then reminded himself that the
Hounds were still within the boundaries of law as they knew them. He
couldn't strike and hurt someone who was only fulfilling his duty. He
let Crup drag him into the next room.

\emph{Harry,} said Regulus abruptly. \emph{Are they wearing something
around their necks?}

Harry managed to turn his head and squint up at Crup's throat.
\emph{Yes,} he sent back. \emph{A collar, it looks like, though I can't
see the whole thing, and made of silver.} The quick glance he sent Grim
confirmed that he wore what looked the same thing. \emph{I wonder if
their resemblance to dogs really goes so far that they have to be
chained to the wall at night?}

\emph{Yes, I can see them now,} said Regulus. \emph{That's what's
keeping me out of their minds. How strange. I don't know why they would
want to block access to me, how they would even know about something
like me.}

Harry was about to respond, but then he saw the face of the man sitting
behind a desk across from him, and swallowed.

It was Minister Fudge; Harry knew that from every picture he'd seen in
the \emph{Daily Prophet.} The Minister normally looked plump and
self-confident. Now, though, he wore the expression of a man haunted day
and night by some heavy burden, and he stood up when he saw Harry and
began toying with his hands. His eyes examined Harry intently, seeming
to linger especially hard on the lightning bolt scar on his forehead.

``Yes,'' he whispered. ``Yes, that's him.''

Crup nodded. ``Yes, sir. And he just said that he intended to keep using
Parseltongue. If we let him free, he'll go right back to practicing Dark
magic.'' He deposited Harry in a chair in front of the desk, which was
large and made of polished mahogany. Harry tried to look around the
room, but other than knowing it was larger than the interrogation room
and colored red, he couldn't see much. Crup kept hovering over him
``I'll give my word that I saw him practice it, sir, and of course Grim
will back me up.''

``Of course,'' said Grim. He took a position on the other side of the
desk. Harry didn't think it was a coincidence that the stance blocked
Harry from having an easy path to the Minister.

\emph{At least, it would block me from having an easy physical path to
him.} Harry let his lip curl in contempt. \emph{Who do they think I am?
My magic could still reach him and blast the life out of him before they
could move.}

He felt the temptation, once again, to simply do something like that,
lash out and pin Fudge to the wall with his magic, as he'd once pinned
Dumbledore and his brother. But Harry told himself he had to exercise
control over his temper. He couldn't simply go around attacking everyone
he didn't like. That wasn't what a grown wizard did, and it was obvious
he would have to be the adult here, since no one else was about to
volunteer.

``Then,'' said Fudge, bobbing his head, ``the law is very clear.'' He
turned to Harry. ``Mr. Potter, you understand why you've been brought
here?''

Harry met his eyes and gave thanks for the deep, calm mask Lily had made
him practice until it was natural. He could summon it back now, even
though he'd spent so much time with Snape, who encouraged him to be more
open, because he'd spent years on years living under it. ``No,
Minister,'' he said. ``I am sorry that my use of Parseltongue offended
Mr. Grim and Mr. Crup, but I acted as I did to keep the Many from biting
wizards in Knockturn and Diagon Alleys. I would argue that I broke the
law in ignorance, not in malicious use of Dark magic.''

``Ignorance of the law is no excuse,'' Fudge retorted, his eyes gleaming
with triumph. ``And it's a convenient coincidence, isn't it, that lately
Dark potions have appeared on the market that use the eggs and scales of
the Many in them? I suppose you'll argue that you just \emph{happened}
to be able to gain control over the snakes, and that they just
\emph{happened} to appear in Knockturn Alley on a day you were there?''

``Any Parselmouth could have commanded the snakes, sir,'' said Harry.
Regulus's muttering in the back of his head, about disrespect and what
idiots they all were, wasn't helping, so he decided to ignore it. ``And
I did not know about the Dark potions. I'm sorry that they have been a
trouble and a plague on your administration.'' He decided that a little
judicious flattery could not hurt. ``I know that you've been doing your
very best for all of us in wizarding Britain. You've done a remarkable
job.'' \emph{Especially considering that you're soft enough that I would
have expected you to crumple your first year in office.} ``I would hate
to act against that or undermine it in any way.'' He bowed his head
slightly, as though contrite.

It worked, at least partially. He saw Fudge puff up and ran a proud hand
down his chest. ``Yes, well, I do my best,'' he said, and coughed. Then
his face darkened again. ``And that means passing stricter laws against
Dark wizards like yourself. Or would you argue with that?''

``Not at all, sir,'' said Harry. His thoughts were spiky, his mind
crystal clear. He didn't think he could say or do much to soothe Fudge's
fears, but he hoped he could at least keep them from damaging him as
much as they might. ``Dark magic as the magic of compulsion could
threaten the free wills of others, and I am against that.''

He was disconcerted when Fudge laughed. ``Of course you are,'' he said.
``Since when have Dark Lords cared about the wills of others?''

Harry stared at him. ``You think I'm a Dark Lord, sir?''

``Of course you are.'' Fudge waved his hand. ``Not as bad as---as
You-Know-Who, of course, but you're still rising. And we need to do all
that we can to prevent that rise.'' He launched into what Harry thought
was probably a practiced speech. ``We all did very poorly in the First
War, of course, but that was because we weren't prepared. This time, we
know the signs to watch for.'' He nodded to Grim, and the man scurried
off to the other side of the room to fetch something made of paper, by
the sounds of it. ``This time, we won't be caught with our trousers
around our ankles!'' He raised one hand and pointed a finger at Harry.
``Even Dark Lords are subject to the rule of wizarding law, Mr.
Potter!''

Harry hid his contempt as much as possible. He knew from the book that
Hawthorn Parkinson had given him last year, on bindings, that that
wasn't true. Dark Lords and Light Lords usually ignored the bounds of
law because they could afford to do so, though Light Lords sometimes
made a pretense, like Dumbledore, of obeying the rules. But magical
power had always been the ultimate trump card in those discussions. If
Voldemort was standing here, of course he would not hesitate to use
magic to fling the morons into walls.

\emph{But I am not a Dark Lord,} Harry reminded himself. \emph{I am not
any kind of Lord. That is why I am different from them. I'm not about to
hurt innocent people who really think they are protecting the wizarding
world.}

He kept his voice calm, his face friendly and open. ``What would it take
to convince you that I'm not a Dark Lord, Minister?''

``You had a chance to do that already,'' Fudge retorted regally, as Grim
came up beside him, staggering under the weight of the large piece of
paper. ``We offered you a chance to register yourself like any other
Dark wizard. You refused to do so.''

``I am sorry, sir,'' said Harry, slightly narrowing his eyes. ``I was
told that my case was unique. No other Dark wizard was asked to actually
stop using Dark magic. Instead, I was the only one.''

Fudge shook his head. ``That is because you are a Dark Lord.''

Harry wondered if the Minister would know what circular logic was if it
danced naked in front of him. ``Sir---''

Grim managed to shake out the immense piece of parchment with a shout.
Harry peered. It was a chart, he could make out that much, and carefully
labeled with boxes in different colors, but he couldn't tell what the
words said; they were all inked carefully into place with miniscule
letters.

``You see,'' said Fudge, gesturing to the parchment, ``we know that you
are a Dark Lord. No matter what you may claim, we know that you have
Dark talents, and will follow in the path of Grindelwald and---and
You-Know-Who. We have a \emph{chart} that compares you to them.'' He
looked at Harry triumphantly.

Harry wondered when the government of wizarding Britain had become so
desperately pathetic. He kept his voice as calm as possible when he
said, ``Sir, I can't read the chart.''

``You should be able to,'' Crup whispered into his ear. ``What kind of
\emph{Dark Lord} has problems with his eyes?''

Harry glared at him, and then turned back in time to see Fudge jabbing a
finger into one of the boxes. ``Do you see?'' he asked, glancing at
Harry. ``You speak Parseltongue. You-Know-Who spoke Parseltongue. And
Grindelwald spoke---well, he didn't speak to snakes, but he spoke to
thestrals, and used them as part of his army.'' Fudge sneered. ``The
connection makes sense. This is only the first of many threads, but it
was the one that first led us to suspect that you might be the Dark
Lord. Not wise to expose your snake-speaking ability, \emph{my lord.}
Not wise.''

\emph{You could take them,} Regulus whispered. \emph{I'd even support
you. You didn't choose to come here, and I think you should get back to
people who love you and can protect you as soon as possible. Hit them
with magic, and then go back home. Come} on, \emph{Harry. You know you
could do it.}

\emph{And that's precisely why I won't,} Harry snapped back at him.
\emph{Just because I can doesn't mean I should.} He dragged in a
desperate breath, because that temptation was sounding better by the
minute, and fixed his eyes on Fudge's face again. ``What are some of the
other threads that led you to being sure of my incipient Lordship,
sir?'' he asked.

Fudge looked mildly disappointed that Harry wasn't just confessing to
being a Dark Lord right then and there, but he nodded and pointed to
another box. ``The Dark Lord was at the school fifty years ago when the
Chamber of Secrets was last opened,'' he said. ``You were at the school
two years ago when the Chamber of Secrets was last opened.
Grindelwald---well, he wasn't at Hogwarts, since he didn't attend it,
but he was at Durmstrang and held initiations for his Lightning Guard in
an underground cave.'' He frowned sternly at Harry. ``Are you going to
dismiss all of this as \emph{coincidence}?''

``Not especially,'' Harry said. ``I was opening the Chamber and involved
in the Petrifications of students because Voldemort possessed me, sir.''
He didn't miss the way Fudge flinched at the name and glanced over his
shoulder, as though he expected to find Voldemort hiding in the corner.
``So it wasn't a coincidence. That doesn't mean that I'm evil and Dark
in and of myself.''

Fudge shook his head. ``You won't get out of this one, Mr. Potter. We
know \emph{everything.}'' He pointed to another box. ``The armies.
Grindelwald used thestrals, because he could speak to them. You-Know-Who
made deals with the giants and other creatures to march with him, and of
course the werewolf Fenrir Greyback was famous for being part of his
evil troops. And now you've freed the Dementors.'' He turned to Harry,
and waited, as if what he wanted to say should be obvious.

Harry stared at him. ``I have told the Ministry the truth on that score,
sir,'' he said. ``I sent them back home into nightmares. I didn't keep
them to build a private army out of.'' He didn't know whether to laugh
or cry. Out of all the suspicions that someone might have about why he'd
freed the Dementors, he had not thought \emph{this} would be one of
them.

``No one has seen a Dementor since that day,'' Fudge intoned. ``Did you
really banish them, or did you send them somewhere safe and secret, with
instructions to breed and wait for you?''

Harry shook his head. ``Not that last, sir. I don't want to be a Lord. I
would command no magical creature to attack anyone else.'' \emph{But you
used Sylarana to threaten people,} his conscience whispered. Harry
winced and shoved it away. ``I promise, I'm a loyal subject of wizarding
Britain. Is there \emph{nothing} I can do to prove this to you?'' He felt
a touch of true nervousness beneath his irritation and pity. He had
hoped that he could persuade Fudge as he had so many other people, but
the Minister was showing a complete blindness to basic logic. Harry was
not sure what he could manage with dances and rituals.

``Well,'' said Fudge. ``Perhaps one thing.''

Harry narrowed his eyes, suspicious again. He'd been herded into this,
most probably, but now that he was here, he had no choice but to ask,
``What thing would that be, Minister?''

``Since you cost us the Dementors and we can no longer keep the
prisoners safely in Azkaban,'' said Fudge, waving towards a door at the
back of the room, ``we have a new method of determining whether wizards
are safe to be released back into general society.'' The door opened,
and what appeared to be a silver ball on legs shuffled in, until Harry
realized it was actually a device being carried by a short, squat witch.
``Subject yourself to our test, and you can prove that you're loyal.''

\emph{You don't have to,} said Regulus in his head, all fire and denial.
\emph{Why are you subjecting yourself to this, Harry? You're not an
ordinary wizard. You don't need to behave like one.}

\emph{That only makes it all the more urgent,} Harry snapped back. He
wondered why he was surrounded by people so determined to shove him into
being above the law. What Regulus had said sounded like something Snape
or Draco would have said. \emph{Slytherins, honestly. I love them in
general, but get exasperated with them in particular.}

He turned back to the Minister and nodded. ``Of course, sir. What do you
need me to do?''

The witch set the device down next to the Minister's desk, and revealed
her face for the first time. Harry couldn't help but recoil. Her face
was all hanging jowls and bright, gleaming eyes. She resembled nothing
so much as a toad. To make it worse, she was wearing a pink jumper with
small kittens gamboling on it instead of robes, and there were pink bows
tied in her lank hair. She looked straight at Harry, and those bright
eyes blinked.

``This is my assistant, Dolores Umbridge,'' said Fudge proudly. ``She is
the one who has devised the loyalty test, Mr. Potter, and she is the one
who will explain it to you.'' He stepped out of the way.

Umbridge said, ``Hem hem.'' Harry thought at first that she was starting
a sentence, but it seemed to be an odd throat-clearing practice. ``Step
up to the device, sweet child, and put your hands on it. It will measure
your loyalty to the Ministry, and if you are loyal enough, it will let
you go.''

Harry hesitated. ``And what happens if I'm not loyal enough?''

Umbridge's eyes gleamed like the sun. ``But you have just finished
saying that you are loyal, sweet child. I am sure that it will not
trouble you.'' She gave him a grotesque smile. Perhaps the worst thing
was that her teeth all looked perfectly clean and brushed. Harry would
have been more reassured if they were rotten, so that he would know
she'd been eating all the sugar her costume made her look as if she
should consume.

Hesitantly, he moved forward, regarding the device. It remained an
enormous silver ball, pierced with holes, as though something lived
inside it that needed air. It rested on tumblers, and it radiated magic,
but what kind, Harry could not tell, not with three other wizards and a
witch in the room.

\emph{Can you tell what it is?} he asked Regulus. \emph{Or, at least,
what it does?}

\emph{No. Merlin take you, Harry, don't touch it. Apparate out of here.
Hit them all with a bolt of lightning. Do what you have to do to protect
and save yourself.} If Regulus had a body, Harry thought, he would have
been jumping up and down, waving his arms like a chicken to try and
scare Harry away from the device.

\emph{I don't want to,} Harry thought distinctly. \emph{If I flee, then
they'll have the right to arrest me again and treat me worse than ever.
And I'm not going to kill anyone. I can't understand your fascination
with it.}

He put out his hands and clasped them around the silver ball.

There came a faint shimmer, and then a burst of heat. It wasn't
uncomfortable, or Harry didn't think he could have resisted pulling his
palms back, but it did seal his hands to the ball. He tugged,
unconsciously, and his hands remained right where they were.

``Relax, sweet child,'' Umbridge whispered. ``Just relax. The device is
looking through your head now. I am sure that it will find out you are
very, ah, \emph{loyal} to the Ministry. Hem hem.''

Harry didn't have much choice but to stand there hugging the ball,
anyway, so that was what he did. He felt magic running through his body
like water, but couldn't tell what it did. At least it didn't hurt.

He heard a caught breath behind him that he thought came from Grim or
Crup. Harry darted a glance over his shoulder, and saw them both leaning
forward, watching the device intently. Fudge was standing just beyond
them, hands clasped across his middle and a beatific smile on his face.

Harry reminded himself that this was for the best. He really didn't want
to fight the Ministry. It would make his primary task, being
\emph{vates}, all the harder. And besides, how could he blame them for
wanting confirmation that someone of his magical power was not a Dark
Lord? Of course they would fear that, given Voldemort's spectacular
rise. They were ordinary wizards. They were people who had lives and
souls of their own. He had to understand them.

Then he felt the magic of the device abruptly fill him to brimming. He
blinked, feeling as if it would squeeze and drip out his eyes.

The magic began to run out of him, back into the device.

And it pulled some of his own magic with it.

Harry felt his own power rear up in startled outrage, and a moment
later, his emotions reared up with it. He grabbed back at his own magic,
trying to separate it from what had twined with it.

The device quaked and began to glow warm, cherry red and then gold and
then white. It broke apart in his hands, and Harry felt his palms seared
and burned by it. He didn't care. He was too involved in making sure
that his magic was in his body. Now he had pooled all the foreign
influences into his palm, a swirling dark puddle of foul strength, and
he threw it to the floor in disgust.

The puddle swirled around once, then vanished into the remains of the
device.

Harry turned back to Umbridge. There was an ugly burn across her face,
from where she hadn't got out of the device's way in time, and her
toad-eyes were gleaming in shock. She pointed a trembling finger at
Harry. ``You assaulted the special assistant to the Minister!'' she
whispered, in a little-girl voice that trembled with outrage. ``You
assaulted me!''

Harry snarled. His magic was back where it should be, but not at all
soothed. ``You tried to make me a Squib, under false pretenses,'' he
said. ``You should be grateful that all you've got is a burn on your
face.''

``You are a Dark Lord, then.'' Fudge's voice was flat, colder and more
self-confident than Harry had heard it. ``I should have known, and never
allowed you this test. You're not loyal to the government of wizarding
Britain, not loyal to anyone but yourself, and I was right to pass the
laws.'' Harry turned around in time to see Fudge sticking his hand out
at Grim and Crup. ``Get him. Confine him, and make sure that he can't
use his magic.''

Grim started forward, face blank. Crup was grinning, his wand swinging
back and forth in his hand with a faint whistling sound.

Harry backed a step, breathing harshly. He could feel his magic surging
and dancing, begging to be let through the barriers of his control. And
he could do it. So easily. He could cover them in ice, or bind them
where they stood, or hit them with a curse that would make them hurt
nearly as much as he had under Rosier's Blood-Burning Curse. He could
conjure a snake and swallow their magic, making it a permanent part of
his own. He could reach out with Legilimency, and, since they wore those
collars, probably shatter their minds attempting to enter them.

\emph{I don't want to do that. I don't want to hurt them, damn it!}

He had to use his magic in some capacity, though, to drain some of it
off, so he gestured, with one hand, and whispered \emph{Petrificus
Totalus} in his mind. Grim and Crup stiffened and fell to the floor.

Harry gasped in the silence that followed, seeing Fudge's eyes go wide
with fear, as he finally realized that his incipient Dark Lord was not
as tame as he had assumed. He started backing up, his mouth flapping up
and down. Harry supposed he was trying to come up with a way to calm
Harry down or hold him off. Harry remained still, arms wrapped around
him like chains, making sure that he couldn't lunge and hurt someone
else. He \emph{had} to remain still. In this moment, he was fragile.

The more he thought about what Fudge had done, the angrier he became.

\emph{He kidnapped me. He didn't listen to a word I said. He passed laws
that seem to have been targeted specifically at me, if I'm the Dark Lord
that Dumbledore thought he might have received word of. He tried to make
me a Muggle, or at least a Squib.}

Harry wrapped the rage in the quicksilver pools that Snape had taught
him, and felt calmness coming back to him like the return of a tide. He
could do this. He was not his magic or his fury. He was more than that.
And it was not as though what they had done to him was unforgivable. He
could get past this. He rubbed his forehead with one seared palm.

Then Umbridge whispered something behind him, and Harry felt his back
light up with pain, as though a white-hot knife were striking between
his shoulders.

His magic attacked the place in a moment and banished the curse, but the
damage had been done. Harry swung on the witch, and saw her just
lowering her wand, a look of alarm twisting the burn on her cheek.

\emph{She did that,} he snarled to himself, low in his mind. \emph{They
should not be doing this. What they have done should not be done to any
witch or wizard. How many people did they drain of their magic before
me? How many others would Grim and Crup confine and bring in if I didn't
do something about it?}

Then even that excuse for being angry fell away, and he was just purely
enraged about what they had done to \emph{him.}

\emph{I did} nothing \emph{to deserve this.}

He advanced on Umbridge, and his magic woke and filled the room like a
storm.

\chapter{A Kind of Wild Justice}\label{chapter-11-a-kind-of-wild-justice}

Harry didn't know the part of himself that woke as he stepped forward
and fixed his gaze on Umbridge.

He had met his rage before. He had met his magic before. He knew about
cold fury, and his frustration with his brother, and the absolute pain
of betrayal he'd felt when he used the justice ritual on Lily.

He had never known this.

It came out of him in a rush, breathing past his face in a poisonous
musk, coiling in front of him as a visible dark serpent with stars for
eyes. He stared at it as it twisted back around and focused on him, and
found himself shivering, and not from cold. He could still feel the
flare of pain in his back from where Umbridge's unknown spell had struck
him. Between the shoulder blades, slightly higher than the middle of
that area, and nearer the right one.

It was \emph{wrong} that she had struck him like that.

It was \emph{not} to be borne.

Harry discovered in that instant that he could want another human being
to hurt, as deeply and dearly and devotedly as he had once wanted the
sun to rise so that he could spend more time learning spells in the
light and not reading a book under his covers with \emph{Lumos}.

The serpent had its permission. It sped away from him in a graceful
slide, and ended up coiled around one of Umbridge's ankles, or so Harry
assumed from its position under her robes. He found himself smiling. It
was a lazy expression, one the muscles of his face made without his
consent.

He nodded.

The serpent bit. He knew it, not because he could see it, but because he
\emph{willed} it so, and so it \emph{happened.} The fangs cut into
Umbridge's skin and sent icy cold venom flowing into her veins. She
screamed, and staggered.

Behind him, Harry heard a voice---Fudge's---reciting some kind of charm
desperately. It was probably something to disarm him.

\emph{Foolish, considering I don't have my wand,} Harry thought idly,
and raised a hand without looking away from his serpent, which was now
slithering up Umbridge's calf, a ripple under her robes.

The witch screamed and kicked, and then her leg fell dead. She stared at
it, and gripped it, and tried to move it. Harry knew what it would feel
like in her hands: dead weight, dead stone. He had \emph{willed} it so,
and so it \emph{happened.}

Behind him, Fudge started to say something else, since Harry had
interrupted his first spell with that simple gesture, and then subsided,
with a choking, coughing cry. Harry knew there was another snake wound
about his throat, glowing the deepest green color of the Forbidden
Forest in sunlight, its magic waiting on a command that would strangle
Fudge or otherwise hurt him.

He hissed the command in Parseltongue, just to make it more frightening,
and the black snake bit down again, this time high on Umbridge's leg,
near the hip. There were no words for how she screamed. Harry
half-closed his eyes, understanding for the first time how his father
might have gone mad and held Bellatrix Lestrange under \emph{Crucio} for
ten minutes, how Bellatrix might have felt when she was torturing the
Longbottoms, the reasons why Dark wizards used Unforgivable Curses.

It was a moment of sheer power over one's enemy, knowing that someone
who had caused him \emph{pain} was paying for it.

\emph{One more time,} Harry thought, and then hissed it in Parseltongue.

The black snake moved higher, and its fangs drove home one more time,
under Umbridge's ribs on her left side. Umbridge gave another wail, and
then simply toppled over. Her left side was frozen, all life gone,
though it still looked like flesh. She might limp about with her right
leg, gesture with her right hand, speak from the right side of her
mouth, animate her right cheek and right eye. It didn't matter. Half of
her would always be dead, a frozen grotesque, caught in the last motion
it had made.

Harry became aware, abruptly, that he was laughing. He wasn't sure when
it had started, after the last snakebite or before. He wondered if it
was really necessary to know.

The black snake flowed away from the half-motionless, half-thrashing
Umbridge, and skimmed across the air to him, its sides lifting and
rippling like butterfly wings. Harry extended an arm, and felt the
serpent coil around it, head coming to rest on the back of his wrist,
lazy hiss a music to his ears. Harry ran a hand down its spine and
dipped his head, inhaling its scent. \emph{Ice and wind and stone.}

He turned, slowly, to face the Minister. Fudge was staring at him, one
hand clasped loosely around his wand, his breathing hardly audible. The
green snake around his throat turned its head at once to focus on Harry,
though it tightened a few of its coils so that Fudge wouldn't forget who
currently controlled his life.

Harry nodded back to the Minister. ``Hello, sir.'' His voice sounded
normal. His heard was full of rushing blackness, still, and dancing
snakes, and wasn't entirely normal. \emph{Not normal at all,} he
thought. ``I suppose you might be wondering why I reacted the way I
did.''

Fudge's breath climbed higher, coming in whistling gasps. Harry hissed a
command at the green serpent---since it was made of his magic, it would
obey him in a way that Sylarana or the Many would not have---and the
snake eased its hold a bit, though it could still easily strike at any
place on the Minister's chest or throat.

``An unfortunate combination of magical attack and outrage,'' said
Harry, shrugging. He knew the words were true. They made sense,
somewhere, in the gray rationality that was part of his brain. The chaos
behind that was screaming, and something was trying to rise to the
surface, but Harry would deal with it in a moment. ``I tried and tried
to give you excuses, reasons not to do this, chances to recognize what
you were doing and back out.'' He blinked at Fudge. His eyes were
burning. He didn't know with what. Even if flying drops of the black
serpent's poison had hit him, they wouldn't make his eyes burn. ``And
then you tried to drain my magic, and I realized what it meant, that you
have these laws and these Hounds and that sphere---'' He darted a glance
at the silver device that had tried to steal his magic, now shattered
beyond all repair. ``Well. You \emph{had} that sphere.'' He looked back at
Fudge. ``You would have used them on more people than just me, used them
to terrify and beat into submission and compel. And then Umbridge hit me
with the spell, and that tipped the balance of my mind over for that one
moment.'' He shrugged. ``It's not something that happens often. With
luck, it will never happen again.''

And then the rising emotion broke through the surface, and Harry
understood the stinging in his eyes. He was crying, or at least on the
verge of tears. He hurt and ached, with shame and with guilt.

He had hurt another human being. But even that wasn't the core of it,
because he had done that before, both intentionally and unintentionally.

The core of it was that he had \emph{enjoyed} it.

Harry controlled the rolling nausea, the desire to flee or set the black
serpent on himself. None of them were useful reactions. Let them go too
far, and he would end up like James, turning his back on the darkness
that he was capable of. He would take what was useful from this matter,
and that only.

That was the shame, and the guilt, and his burning comprehension of what
he was, what lay under the persona of compassion and forgiveness he had
tried so hard to cultivate. He looked full-on into the face of sadism
and desire for pain, and he made himself keep looking.

\emph{This is not what happens when I get angry.}

\emph{This is what happens when I get angry and act without thinking.
This is what happens when, even if for just one moment and blindly and
instinctually and because people have been unreasonable,} I hate.

He studied it carefully. He had felt the emotion, of course. He had
hated Voldemort when he thought of what the Dark Lord was capable of,
attacking and trying to kill an innocent baby. And he had hated other
people who had tried to hurt others.

But he had had something to pull him back to reality, all those other
hatreds before. He'd been far from his target, or he'd had other people
in danger and been able to concentrate on defending them instead of
attacking just to inflict pain.

This time, he'd not had those, and the touch of physical pain had pushed
him into a burning desire to make the person who'd hurt him hurt, even
if just for a moment.

That was the difference. He would look at that, and he would learn that,
and he would make sure that he \emph{never} felt it again.

\emph{I cannot afford vengeance. What am I, if I turn to it? Someone
else might take vengeance without causing much more than a slap and a
few hurtful words. When I do it, I maim.}

Harry clenched a hand in front of him and closed his eyes, hissing to
the serpent. The black snake flowed away from him again, and he heard a
little whimper of fear from Umbridge. Harry did not look as the snake
settled on her again. Yes, it would have to bite her once more, but it
would be only three bites, and then it would draw back the cold poison
and leave her free.

Harry was sick, and shaking, and very tired, and ashamed of himself to
his heart. Umbridge and Fudge and Grim and Crup and all the others who
might have helped in the doing of this were still \emph{people.} He had
the right to fight back and defend himself and others from them. He did
not have the right to torture them, or treat their lives as if they were
worth less than his was. He did not have the right to treat them as if
they had no souls, no lives, wishes, hopes, dreams of their own, or as
if they had never laughed or done anything good.

He did not want to live in a world in which that was true.

What he could do was make sure they did not do anything like this to
anyone else again, in the future.

Harry lifted his head and opened his eyes. He could hear Umbridge's
desperate, crying whimpers subsiding behind him as she gained back
control of her left side, and the Minister's eyes were still wide and
fixed on him. Harry moved a hand, and the green serpent dissolved into
mist. Fudge shook his head, touched his neck as though to make sure the
snake was really gone, and then took a deep breath.

``I know what you're about to say, Minister,'' said Harry quietly.
``That only a Dark Lord would do the things I have done.''

Fudge squinted at him. ``Are you going to deny that that was Dark magic,
Potter? Or that you caused my assistant pain?''

Harry sighed. His own nails had been cutting into his palms, and he
hadn't realized it. He flicked his fingers, partially to ease the pain
and partially to dissolve the black serpent, now that it was no longer
needed. ``No. I am sorry about that, Minister.''

He lifted his head. Fudge was staring at him.

``But,'' said Harry, and let just a trace of hardness slip into his
voice, ``I will \emph{not} be sorry if I hear that you have continued
using your Hounds to arrest people, or forced this ridiculous
registration on anyone else, or tried to drain anyone else's magic.'' He
took a step forward. ``You know what I can do now.'' He flicked his
hand, once, twice, and the bindings on Grim and Crup eased. They climbed
to their feet, eyes warily fixed on him, but made no move to reach for
their wands. ``Do you really want to anger me?''

Fudge blustered, ``Everything we used was Light! The sphere came from
the house of a respected Light wizard family! The spell Dolores used on
you was in defense of her own life! Even the collars my Hounds wear
could not be put on without their consent, and serve to defend their
minds from Dark influences---''

Harry felt a faint sensation of relief that he wouldn't be responsible
for freeing the Hounds, coupled with irritation that Fudge continued to
babble. ``Sir,'' he said, his tone barely controlled, ``shut up.''

Fudge shut up.

Harry breathed in and out and in again, until his anger was his to
master once more. Then he said, ``This is the bargain I'll make with
you. Cease using your Hounds at once. Split them up and mix them back in
to other departments. Concentrate on rehabilitating Azkaban and
assigning human guards to the prisoners there. The Hounds might do
nicely,'' he added, and his voice leaked bitterness. He clamped down on
it. He needed to be calm, controlled. ``And strike these ridiculous
edicts directed at certain Dark talents from the books. You might ask
the full Wizengamot about any in the future that you feel are a good
idea.''

``And what will I gain?'' Fudge demanded.

Harry lifted his head. \emph{Stupid, and beyond stupid, but I can't
start a war with the Ministry, and just because he is stupid does not
mean I have the right to hurt him.} ``My silence,'' he said with
absolute evenness. ``I will not tell anyone about what I have learned in
this room today, about events---including the kidnapping of an innocent
child, the brother of the Boy-Who-Lived, taken to the Ministry without
even his guardian to accompany him---that could utterly destroy you,
Minister.''

Fudge's face went white. Harry nodded. There was a reason all this had
been kept secret, with the Dark wizard registration laws the only ripple
to mar the surface. Fudge was aware of what the wizarding public would
and would not tolerate, or at least the outer limits of it.

And still Fudge whispered, ``We all know that isn't what happened here.
And we would have the word of four against one.''

Harry snorted aloud. ``I am willing to take Veritaserum,'' he said.
``Are you?''

Fudge's hands locked together near his mouth, as though he could imagine
the damaging truths spewing forth from it.

Harry nodded. ``But I can easily enough tell everyone the truth, about
\emph{everything}, if I get a hint that you haven't kept our bargain. I
am willing to trade you the past for the future, but only if you
\emph{keep} these events in the past.''

``That truth would include that you're a Dark wizard, and use Dark
magic,'' Fudge said.

\emph{He must have been a Gryffindor. He doesn't know when to give up.
And, right now, I have to be Slytherin.} Harry locked his face into the
calm mask that Lily had taught him to perfect, looked the Minister in
the eye, and said, ``I don't care about that.''

He was lying.

He cared about that. So much. He did not want it revealed, did not think
the wizarding public would care to call a boy innocent who would create
snakes out of magic and set them on the Minister and the Special
Assistant to the Minister. He did not want to see the horror in the eyes
of students at Hogwarts whom he had persuaded, with careful effort, not
to cringe when he walked by. He did not want to see the doubt in his
allies' faces, as they reconsidered whether he could ever be a Dark
Lord. He could imagine all the attention fixed on him if this got out.

He did not \emph{want} it.

But he had managed to bluff Fudge into thinking that all he got out of
this deal was the cessation of his stupidity, he saw, when he could
focus again. Fudge was nodding furiously, and muttering himself blue in
the face. Harry turned his head, and saw Umbridge bobbing her head too,
though her toad-eyes were furious. Grim and Crup watched him with
expressions of a deep and familiar loathing, but they inclined their
heads when Harry stared at him.

It was done. It was \emph{done.} Harry could feel his knees beginning to
wobble. He had to get out of there before anyone saw.

``Remember, Minister,'' he whispered. ``One sign.''

Fudge nodded again, and Harry turned and left the room through the door
that Umbridge had come in by, striking blindly for the lifts and the
Auror Office. He wondered, briefly, who was responsible for cleaning the
room he'd been in, given the beetle that zipped past him with its wings
buzzing as he opened the door.

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Well, Rufus Scrimgeour thought to himself as he led a group of Aurors
towards the tenth level of the Ministry, from which an enormous burst of
magic had come welling, \emph{this is certainly turning into an
interesting afternoon.}

First had come the owls, hurtling through his windows like the small
magical weapons the Glendorring brothers had used in the First War,
bearing piece after piece of news. Two former Aurors, both sacked, had
been spotted entering and leaving the Ministry on several occasions,
with sightings of both confirmed just this morning. Harry Potter had
spoken Parseltongue in Knockturn Alley, and then Apparated with an
obviously illegal bunch of South African hive cobras. No one could find
the Minister, and several of his people who'd been waiting to deliver
reports to the fellow wanted to know what they should do now.

Severus Snape, Harry Potter's guardian, had written a single terse
message saying his charge had been kidnapped by two gray-cloaked wizards
calling themselves Hounds, and that the methods he had of tracking Harry
had fallen afoul of powerful wards, most likely the Ministry's.

Rufus could put together a puzzle as well as any wizard and better than
most, which was part of the reason he was Head Auror, and though he
didn't know all the details, he had a clear sense of the general
outline.

Something was rotten in the heart of Minister Fudge.

Had been for a long time, really, Rufus thought absently, as he and his
team descended past the Department of Mysteries. Cornelius had been a
good enough sort in the beginning, coasting into power on the benign
promises, empty of substance, that had won many Ministers election in
the past. And he had done no worse than most: half-hearted meddlesome
do-gooding, and then a whole-hearted plunge into public relations. Rufus
was used to working around Ministers rather than with them, and this was
no different.

And then Cornelius started becoming afraid.

Rumor traced it back to a werewolf attack several years ago that he'd
barely survived, or to the defection of a good friend to the Dark, or
simply to the rumors circulating among the scum they brought to Azkaban
of the Dark Lord's return. Rufus didn't know. He didn't really care
about the cause. He saw the effects, and the effects rotted the Minister
from the inside out, turned him into a shameless puppet swayed towards
any ``Light'' wizard who wanted to whisper the right, reassuring words
into his ear.

Rufus had watched the dissolution of the Minister's bribery-fueled
friendships with some Dark families, like the Malfoys, with high
satisfaction, but when Cornelius was all but dancing attendance on
replacements who soothed him with lies and half-truths and whispered
elaborate plans to ``secure the future against the Dark,'' he didn't
think the result was a net gain for his Ministry.

\emph{You don't cower in fear from the Dark, for Merlin's sake,} Rufus
thought, as he approached the door to level ten, his cloak flaring out
behind him and his limp so smoothly integrated into his stride that it
never marred it. \emph{You fight it.}

The door opened before he could get there. Rufus halted and brought his
wand up in front of him.

Harry Potter stood there, and he stank of Dark magic.

Rufus's nose twitched, but he forced himself to lower his wand. Yes,
he'd dedicated himself to Light magic so early and so young that he
could literally smell it when a wizard used other kinds of spells, a
claim that he was content to have remain as rumor. That didn't mean that
he was ready to strike a child just for using it, especially when Potter
lifted his head and fixed his eyes on Rufus's.

\emph{Something has happened,} Rufus thought. Those green eyes were too
like the eyes of children who had been infected with lycanthropy, the
eyes of women who'd survived a centaur rampage, the eyes of Voldemort's
last victim on record before he went after the Potters, Alba Starrise,
who'd said softly, over and over, that she was fine, and then hanged
herself in her cell when Rufus went to fetch her tea.

He spoke the same words he spoke then, his voice low, soothing. His team
came up behind him and stopped. He heard young Percy Weasley gulp
audibly, but the others remained silent. They knew better than to
interrupt him when he was like this. ``It's all right. I'm here to
protect you. What happened, Harry?''

The boy blinked, once, twice. He lifted a hand to touch his face, as
though surprised that emotion was showing there.

Then he straightened and shut the emotion away behind a stern mask. It
was one of the most impressive things Rufus had ever seen, and one of
the most outrageous. Potter simply sealed his face, and then looked him
right in the eye and said, ``Nothing.''

He was a practiced liar, that much was clear. Rufus might even have
believed him, if he hadn't seen those eyes.

His gaze went to the door from level ten, but no one could be seen
there. Of course, most of the workers would probably have fled the
explosion of magic, which had certainly come from Potter.

He leaned down towards Potter and whispered, ``Why are you here, then?
Your guardian sent me word that you'd been abducted.''

``A misunderstanding,'' Potter said, his voice light, dismissive.
``Could you take me to him, please? I'd like to see him.''

Rufus considered. Snape wasn't there---no, wait, probably by now he was.
Rufus had left instructions for him to be admitted to his office at once
when he arrived, partially to content the man and partially to prevent
him from going anywhere else and doing anything\ldots{}unfortunate.
Rufus believed he had accurately taken the measure of Severus Snape. The
man was a devoted, driven guardian. He was also a Dark wizard who had
been accused of being a Death Eater. Rufus intended to forget neither.

But the desperate hope in the boy's voice was no fakery.

Rufus decided that questions could wait. He nodded and extended a hand.
``Come with me,'' he said.

Harry hesitated, then shook his head. ``With all due respect, sir, I
really don't need to hold anyone's hand.'' He strode ahead of Rufus
then, parting the ranks of the stunned and silent Aurors, and paused to
look back at Rufus. ``Your office, sir?''

Rufus made a certain resolve then. He knew he could keep it. Scrimgeours
always kept their word, and he had done it without fail since he was
twelve years old.

He was going to find out what had happened, what had caused a child to
look like that in his own Ministry, and when he'd discovered the
corruption, he would tear it out root and branch.

He'd been in Slytherin, but the Sorting Hat had recommended Hufflepuff
to him. Once Rufus Scrimgeour began digging, he would not stop.

For now, though, it was kinder to pretend to believe the lie, and the
boy should be back with people who loved him. He nodded.

``My office,'' he said, and walked up the corridor behind Harry, who
held his back as straight as a sword.

He did manage to catch Percy Weasley's eye as he passed, and gave him a
stern glance. \emph{If this doesn't measure and weigh him, nothing
will.}

Percy's shoulders and chin dropped, snatching his eyes from Rufus's
gaze. But then he looked up, and steel gleamed under the surface of his
face.

Rufus hid a smile. \emph{My judgment was not in error, then. Of course,
when it comes to recognizing potential Aurors, it very rarely is.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape sat, once again, in the office crowded with more photographs than
could ever be of use to anyone, speaking of a life lived to the corners,
and sipped the tea that Scrimgeour's assistant had brought him, and
tried to think of nothing at all. Scrimgeour had gone in search of a
burst of magic that he thought was most likely Harry, that assistant had
told him, but he had refused to reveal what level the burst had come
from. There was nothing else that Snape could do, unless he wanted to
run through the Auror Office and threaten people into telling him. And
there were Aurors who had passed the door, glanced inside, and nodded to
him who would prevent that. He knew it.

Harry was safe. He was going to be all right.

Snape told himself that, because considering anything else was
counterproductive.

He did let his mind slip to what had happened after Harry was abducted,
and felt a seizure of rage in his chest. The gray-cloaked wizard who had
followed Harry and the first one in their Apparition had cast some kind
of glittering dust on the ground as he Apparated out. Snape didn't
recognize it, but it reacted with the dirt and rose in a choking cloud
that kept him coughing for long moments.

Then he'd tried to get a hold on Harry with the passive link the potion
had created between them---and failed. The dust had prevented that, he
thought, slowing his brain and confusing the bond. Or perhaps it was the
Ministry's wards, because even when the effect of the dust seemed to
fade, he still could sense nothing from his charge, even the distant
rush of panicked thoughts.

Snape had entered the school. He had made his way to the Headmaster's
office and told Albus what had happened. Albus's eyebrows could still
make his face formidable when he frowned, Snape found. Albus had turned
and firecalled the Minister from his own hearth without a pause.

After long moments of talking to an obviously frightened young wizard,
the Headmaster had turned around and shaken his head, as Snape had
suspected would happen. ``The Minister is not currently available,'' he
said quietly.

Snape had nodded and swept from the office, ignoring Albus's tense call
behind him.

He had knelt down in front of his own hearth, his mind curiously calm,
and firecalled the Malfoys. He did not know where Harry was, and if he
had, wards would probably prevent him from Apparating in. He did not
know who the Hounds were, or what they wanted. If he went charging into
this situation without information, he could get Harry killed.

He had to sit on the panic, and the fury about his panic, that had made
him act irrationally all day today, both with the goblins and with the
snakes. He had not kept Harry safe by lashing out. So he would make sure
that he did not do it this time, that his actions were controlled and
Slytherin.

\emph{Harry could be dying right this moment, and because of the wards,
you wouldn't know it.}

Snape shook his head slightly. No, he \emph{wouldn't} know it. That
meant that it was still best to be rational about this. And that meant
gaining information. At least he could take vengeance on Harry's
killers, if he could not save his charge himself.

Snape plunged his head into the flames at the right moment, and found
himself staring into the small antechamber where Narcissa had welcomed
him at Christmas. A \emph{crack} was presumably a house elf Apparating
to tell someone that he was calling. Snape cracked his impatience, threw
it into one of the quicksilver pools of his mind, and waited.

Draco came through the door to the room at a dead run, barely caught
himself from slipping on a rug, and looked at Snape with an ashen face.
Snape found it easier to be serene after seeing him, incredibly. The
knowledge that someone else was terrified seemed to relieve his own
fear.

``Sir?'' Draco whispered. ``What happened to Harry?''

Snape said quietly, ``The Ministry's kidnapped him, Draco. I need you to
fetch your father. I need someone with connections in the Ministry,
someone who might be able to find out where they took Harry.''

``What seems to be the problem, Severus?''

Lucius Malfoy strode in behind his son, his face frozen marble. Snape
did not waste time loathing him for his calmness, and instead outlined
the situation with the precision that he'd learned to use when he was a
spy among the Death Eaters for the Order of the Phoenix. He included the
dust and the gray cloaks and the names of the Hounds as details, because
if anything could identify the department of the wizards who had
kidnapped Harry, those were the things.

And then he had to watch Lucius Malfoy shake his head slowly, a frown on
his face.

``The Minister no longer speaks to me,'' he said quietly. ``And none of
those sound familiar.''

Snape hissed under his breath. At least Lucius had been honest, though.
This would have taken longer if Snape had had to wade through lying
games to find out how much the other man knew.

``Very well,'' he said. ``We do have an ally inside the Ministry itself,
though he has no fireplace in his office that I saw. I will write to
him. Thank you for your help.'' He nodded curtly to both Draco and
Lucius, and made to withdraw.

``There is something else I can do,'' said Lucius, unexpectedly.
``Adalrico Bulstrode's wife Elfrida works with the goblins, insuring
that coins passed in Diagon Alley are real. She is at least nearer the
Ministry than we are. I will contact Adalrico, and ask him to inform his
wife of this.''

Snape nodded tightly. ``Thank you.'' The Bulstrodes were Harry's formal
allies, and the more people who knew of this, the better.

``It will not stop there,'' Lucius assured him. ``Others will hear of
this.'' He was smiling faintly now, a hard, cold fire in his eyes. Snape
studied him. He doubted highly that Lucius cared for Harry as Snape or
his son did, but he seemed to be enjoying the challenge that these
politics represented. And, of course, he was in the middle of a
truce-dance with Harry, and he would want to see Harry survive to the
end of it. ``The Parkinsons are also allied to him, and my wife speaks
to Hawthorn regularly. And there are others who will
be\ldots{}interested.''

Snape felt a hard fire of his own take hold in his chest. ``Thank you,''
he repeated.

He glanced once at Draco, and felt a stab of pity for the boy. Draco's
eyes were wide, his breathing just on the edge of taking in too little
air. Snape sighed. Among the many, many things he would speak to Harry
about---

\emph{If they got Harry back alive.}

--was how he planned to conduct his deepening friendship with Lucius
Malfoy's son. Snape had slowly become worried over the boy's obsession
with Harry. Draco needed to be his own person, needed to have some
interests and hobbies and life of his own.

``Please let me know when you find him,'' Draco whispered.

Snape nodded. He thought the boy would have asked to come with him, but
not with his father there. ``I will,'' he said, and then pulled his head
out of the flames and turned to write the letter to Rufus Scrimgeour. A
different bird had answered him almost at once, one of the Ministry
falcons bred for speed, inviting him to come to Scrimgeour's office.

And now, here he sat.

Then he felt magic flood the air, or the spent remains of magic, and the
bond snapped into place between him and his ward again, filled with
dark, sluggish, churning emotions.

Snape was on his feet and turning in an instant. Harry came into the
office with Scrimgeour and other Aurors not far behind him.

Snape looked at him. Harry looked as cool as if he had merely gone for
one of his walks in the Forbidden Forest. That was only on the surface,
of course. Snape knelt down and held out his arms, not caring for
Scrimgeour. At least the man had turned his back, and was shooing the
other Aurors out of the office, as well.

Harry bowed his head and moved forward, hugging Snape carefully, as
though he thought he would vanish in a moment. Snape closed his eyes and
let the panic dissipate completely. He said nothing. He didn't think
that there was anything he could say and do this moment justice.

Of course, then the moment passed, and he sat back and met Harry's eyes
and asked, ``What happened?''

Harry regarded him, calm and alert. ``Nothing,'' he said quietly. ``The
Minister blustered at me until he realized that I wasn't a threat. Then
he let me go.''

Snape stared at him in disbelief. The boy was lying, of course---he must
be---but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that Harry had
forcibly calmed his swirling emotions and hardened them into steely
determination. Seemingly, he was not about to tell Snape the actual
truth of what had happened.

``You were \emph{abducted},'' Snape whispered. ``I heard them read you
charges.''

``All a ruse,'' said Harry. He didn't smile, perhaps because he knew it
would have been manic, but his eyes remained as determined and steady as
ever they had been. ``The Minister wanted a pretext to haul me in under
the Dark wizarding laws, so he found one. We had a talk about it. In the
end, he saw sense, and let me go.''

``That is a lie,'' Snape said.

``It's the truth,'' said Harry. ``Nothing happened between us.''

``\emph{Something} did,'' Scrimgeour interjected, turning around abruptly.
Snape snarled at himself for forgetting the man was still there. At
least his eyes were fixed on Harry, and not Snape. ``You let go a burst
of magic strong enough that we felt it through the wards all the way up
here.''

\emph{Up here?} Harry had been held somewhere below, then. Snape
intended to find out where.

Harry's eyes gave a brief flicker, and the tight coil of his emotions
threatened to collapse. His breath sawed at his lungs, but he turned to
Scrimgeour and shook his head. ``I'm afraid that you must be mistaken,
sir. The burst of magic had to have come from something else.''

``I do not think so,'' said Scrimgeour.

Harry simply regarded him.

``You were \emph{abducted,}'' Snape began again.

Harry turned to him with a faint frown. ``I wish you would stop calling
it that, sir. It's too dramatic a word. The Minister wanted me to come
for a visit, and he chose a somewhat pretentious and abrupt way of
inviting me, I admit. But it is all settled now. It was all a
misunderstanding.''

``When someone snatches a child without his guardian or his parent,''
Scrimgeour said, in a gentle tone that Snape knew he could not have
managed through his astonished fury, ``and gives them no choice about
coming along, then we call that abduction, Harry. What the Minister did
to you was illegal.''

``To be punished, it has to come to trial, doesn't it?'' Harry asked, as
though this were a matter of academic interest.

Scrimgeour nodded.

``This won't,'' said Harry, and shrugged. ``I am not going to call it
abduction. I won't file charges against the Minister, or the Ministry
for that matter.''

Snape snarled and grabbed his shoulder, turning him. Harry simply
pivoted under his hand and stared up at him, face expressionless.

``I \emph{will} file them, Harry,'' he told him, wanting his charge to
make no mistake about this. ``I know the names of the men who abducted
you.''

``\emph{Invited} me, sir. And you do?'' Harry asked.

``Of course. The Hounds.''

Harry laughed softly. ``That isn't their official title, sir. I'm sure
that you won't find them referred to by that name anywhere in Minister
Fudge's records.''

``I think I may know,'' said Scrimgeour. ``I have had reports of two
ex-Aurors, sacked for gross negligence of their duty, coming and going
from the building lately.''

Snape did not miss the way Harry's body stiffened. His voice grew high
and strained, but he still did not lash out, though the magic circling
him bubbled as though he were in a pool at the foot of a waterfall. ``I
will ask you this only once, sir. Please, please leave it. I will not
testify in any trial. I have reason to believe that the Minister won't
use this method of inviting people to see him again, and that the talk
we had has no reason to be repeated. I will not cooperate with you on
this. I don't want to fight with you. Either of you,'' he added, turning
his eyes wearily to Snape. ``But I gave my word, and this is done.''

``You gave your word?'' Snape knew his voice was dangerously soft. He
couldn't help it. He could feel the desire to take vengeance swallowing
him alive, tearing away at all the softer parts of him.

Harry nodded, his face firm. ``Yes. This is \emph{done.}''

``It is not right, Harry,'' Snape said, feeling his frustration build.
Surely, the boy \emph{had} to see that? ``Your rights were violated. The
Minister might do this to other people---''

Harry shook his head, an expression Snape had never seen in his eyes.
``No, he won't. We did---discuss that.''

Snape snarled at him.

Harry matched him, stare for stare, the Occlumency shields burning
behind his eyes.

\emph{Something else happened to him,} Snape thought. \emph{There is no
reason that he would be so reluctant to tell us this if it were merely
him playing the part of victim---even on the scale of what happened with
Black last year. Did he do something?}

``Harry,'' he said, keeping his voice low and soothing, ``you know that
whatever you may have done, particularly in defense of your own life, is
excusable.''

Harry \emph{flinched}, flinched with soul and body both, and then tucked
his chin into his chest. ``Please,'' he whispered. ``Please, leave it,
leave it if you love me.''

Snape reached out a careful hand. ``Harry---''

Harry shook his head, wild hair flying. ``I'd like to be by myself for a
few minutes before we go back to Hogwarts,'' he said, and darted a
glance at Scrimgeour. ``If you don't mind.''

Scrimgeour shook his head, and Harry opened the door to his office and
ducked out before Snape could stop him. When he moved to follow his
charge, Scrimgeour reached out and put a hand on his arm.

``No,'' he said quietly. ``I think what he said is true, and he does
need to be alone.''

``He can't hide from this long,'' said Snape, and heard the frustration
in his own voice snap like melting ice. ``It is not natural. And his
allies have already been informed. They do have the right, under the
terms of alliance, to ask for formal satisfaction from the Minister
himself, or challenge him in court in Harry's place.''

``To do that, however, we must still know the details of what
happened,'' said Scrimgeour, ``and we will not get those from Harry in
his current state, nor from the Minister ever, by his choice.'' His gaze
was calm on Snape's face. ``I can tell you one thing. I felt Dark magic
lingering around Harry when he opened the door. My guess is that he did
something with that Dark magic, something he is violently ashamed of.''

Snape understood in a few moments, remembering Harry's grief over
killing the Dark Lord in Rodolphus's body. If anything like that had
happened, or even on a smaller scale, he would want to hide. Snape
wondered if Harry thought they could not forgive him, whatever it was,
and felt sick.

\emph{No one else was there with him, most likely---no one else to
defend, no one else he could have used or excused the Dark magic for. He
was defending himself. And now he feels ashamed.}

He longed to go after Harry and reassure him that of course they could
forgive him, that whatever he had done was probably not bad enough to
require forgiveness in the first place, but Scrimgeour's hand clamped
lightly on his wrist and drew his attention.

``What?'' he growled, facing the Auror.

``I think this matter too important to be left up to silence, even as
you do.'' Scrimgeour's eyes were narrowed as if he were looking into the
sun. ``If my Minister is a man like this, one who would kidnap children
and make deals with them, then I want to know. And there is one place to
start, even if Harry is not yet in any shape to tell us. I will give you
the names and descriptions of the ex-Aurors my people saw.''

Snape nodded, regret and relief rushing through him in a simultaneous
torrent. He would grant Harry his moments alone, but he could do little
more. He would have to push this forward, threaten and fight it, no
matter what Harry's wishes were.

The Minister had simply gone too far this time.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``You're acting stupid, you know.''

Harry had been leaning on a wall in a disused closet for the past few
minutes, trying frantically to stem both his fear and his sorrow. He
straightened now and whipped around, his hands clenching.

A witch stood in the doorway of the closet, her mouth pinched in a
small, hard smile as she watched him. Her hair was blonde and set in
curls that could not be natural, given that they didn't shift even as
she turned her head to study Harry better. Her face was crusted with
makeup, at least around her eyebrows, and her glasses crusted with
jewels. Harry could see a scroll of parchment in one hand and a quill in
the other. She managed to lean one shoulder casually on the side of the
door despite her hands being full.

``What do you mean?'' Harry whispered, wondering if this was someone
else who had ideas about how he should use his magic.

``My name's Rita Skeeter,'' said the woman.

Harry stiffened and narrowed his eyes.

``Oh, yes, glare at me if you want,'' said Skeeter, sounding unaffected.
``But this is your chance, you know. And you're wasting it. That's why I
said you were stupid.'' She made a wide gesture with her parchment that
caused it to shake, as if what she said should be self-evident.

``I don't know what you mean,'' said Harry, returning to his calm mask
and voice again.

``I saw everything that happened in the Ministry's interrogation
rooms,'' said Skeeter. ``And I do mean \emph{everything.}''

Harry stood in silence for a moment, if one could call the thundering
staccato of his heart in his ears silence.

``And I \emph{am} going to publish that story,'' Skeeter said, examining
her quill. ``But it could be a better story if I could speak to an
eyewitness.'' She glanced up at him, eyes hard as the jewels on her
glasses. ``A willing eyewitness, one who's able to confirm every detail.
And one who, should he cooperate with me, can seize control of the
ripples that are going to spread from this moment.'' She shook her head,
a faint smile on her face. ``This can't stay secret, child. It's too
big. And the wizarding public deserves to know the truth about their
Minister, anyway.''

``That's only your excuse,'' Harry whispered.

``Of \emph{course} it is,'' said Skeeter, sounding faintly impatient.
``But, you see, there's a difference between breaking a scandal that
everyone involved will deny, and breaking a truth that's going to make
me a heroine. And I'm tired of the first.'' She leaned forward and
locked eyes with him. ``I'm offering you the chance here, Potter. Refuse,
and I'll just publish the story anyway. Cooperate with me, and I am
going to make you look \emph{damn} good.'' Her eyes glinted. ``What do
you say?''

``I gave my word to the Minister---'' Harry whispered.

``He'll break it,'' said Skeeter. ``It'll get broken. I told you, this
is too big. There are already other people who are aware that
something's wrong, anyway. I was in the Head Auror's office, too. Your
guardian's already broken the word to your allies.''

Harry felt an abrupt surge of panic. Could he reach out and tell them
that it was nothing, that they couldn't worry about it---

\emph{No. No, I can't.}

Harry swallowed, feeling as if it were acid instead of saliva in his
mouth. No, he didn't have the right to restrict anyone else's free will
like that. Snape only knowing the truth was one thing, because there
weren't many people who would take his word against the Ministry's,
given his past. But the Parkinsons, the Bulstrodes, and, oh Merlin help
him, the Malfoys\ldots{}

Harry's ability to keep his word to Fudge had relied on them never
finding out. He knew that once they had an inkling of the truth, they
would pursue it to the end.

And lying to them would weaken their trust in him. And that was not
permissible.

\emph{Being} vates \emph{and a trustworthy ally is worth more to me,} he
realized, the thoughts bounding like boulders, \emph{than hiding what
I've done, or keeping my word to Fudge.}

He breathed slowly, carefully, in and out, in and out. Another truth was
staring him in the face now, even as his sadism had earlier.

\emph{I can't hide from this. I can't recoil from this. I can't sit on
this, and I can't run.}

\emph{Draco was right. There are moments when I am going to have to step
out into the light, and act like a leader even if I'm not one, and not
give the credit or the blame or the burden to anyone else.}

Harry felt as if he rode a wave that was about to break and crash any
moment. He remembered the beach in Northumberland on Midsummer, the
distant breakers rising beyond the tame little ones. They had fallen and
roared and destroyed their walls of dark gray water, but the foam
spinning from their tops had sparked and dazzled Harry in the sunlight.

\emph{I will have to hope that this brings light, and not just
destruction.}

He met Skeeter's eyes. ``When do we go to press?''

\chapter{Alliance and Defiance}\label{chapter-12-alliance-and-defiance}

A year since her first transformation. A year since her first full moon.

That was the substance of Hawthorn Parkinson's thoughts as she prepared
herself to go to the Ministry and meet with Potter. Oh, physically she
was facing a mirror and using a pale ribbon to tie her blonde hair out
of her face, but mentally she was back in the storage shed where she had
made her husband and daughter lock her, a beast without Wolfsbane,
yelping and tearing at the walls.

A year ago this day, she had not even been certain that she wanted to
live. At the moment, she could not imagine anything she wanted more.

She carefully arranged the ribbon pointing to one side, and then turned
to face the welcoming room where Elfrida was waiting on the other side
of the Gringotts fireplace. She halted when she saw the dark figure of
her husband, Dragonsbane, in the way. Usually he would have let her go
without question. Necromancers tended to avoid crowds, partly because
there were still prejudices against and uneasiness around them, and
partly because it was wearying for them, knowing when every witch and
wizard they saw would die.

Yet here Dragonsbane was, standing determinedly still, in the way that
meant he wanted to go with her.

\emph{Are you certain?} Hawthorn asked him with her hands. He could not
speak aloud to her except on two nights of the year, Halloween and
Walpurgis.

Dragonsbane made the subtle move within his black hood that indicated a
nod. He held out an arm to her.

Hawthorn smiled and took it, kissing him on the cheek, or the cloth that
covered his cheek, as they proceeded into the welcoming room. She had
never asked him when she would die, though she knew he saw it; she had
never even felt a temptation to know. There was living dangerously, and
there was living from day to day. Hawthorn preferred the latter, though
she kept an eye always on the future.

Elfrida's head still hovered in the flames, that of a pale and pretty
witch with ash blonde hair and too wide blue eyes. ``Both of you are
coming through?'' she asked, gaze darting to Dragonsbane.

Hawthorn nodded.

Elfrida blinked, then shrugged. ``Say Gringotts Fourth,'' she instructed
them, and pulled her head out of the flames.

Hawthorn gathered up a pinch of Floo powder from the dish on top of the
mantle, but before she could throw it into the flames, Pansy interrupted
them, stepping demurely through the door on the other side of the room.
``You're going to the Ministry, Mother, Father?'' Her voice lilted into
surprise on the second name, but by the time Hawthorn turned and looked
at her, she had hidden it. Hawthorn smiled. Her daughter was
well-trained, and knew all the pureblood courtesies. What some of
Hawthorn's friends had called her ``unusual upbringing'' had added to
Pansy's life and not taken away from it.

``Yes, my darling,'' she said, putting out a hand. Pansy came and
immediately stood with her cheek next to it, not touching it. Hawthorn
leaned nearer and took a deep sniff. One of the few pleasures that came
with her werewolf curse was learning to smell others---both their added
scents, and what they smelled like underneath. Pansy was perfume and
rich, strong flesh. ``There's been an incident with the Minister and
Harry Potter. We may be gone some time.''

Pansy nodded solemnly, but did not ask to join them. She was her
mother's blood heir, but not her magical one, and formal political
meetings with allies were restricted to magical ones, the more important
kind. ``Of course, Mother. I shall have the house elves prepare
something for me.''

``Not cheese,'' said Hawthorn at once, recognizing the look in her
daughter's eyes. ``It made your stomach upset the last time.''

Pansy sighed, but dipped her head, murmured, ``Of course, Mother,'' a
second time, and vanished in the direction of the kitchens.

Hawthorn cast the powder into the flames, calling out, ``Gringotts
Fourth!'' When the flames flared green, she wrapped her arms around
Dragonsbane---he could not say the destination aloud and so would have
to Floo along with her---and stepped into the fire.

Their destination was relatively far away, but Hawthorn had always
enjoyed Flooing---the rush through the darkness, the excuse to get
slightly dirty because no one would expect otherwise, the stumble at the
end as the other fireplace spat them out. The speed of werewolf legs was
the only thing she had found that was faster, since she didn't trust
herself on a broom.

She and Dragonsbane came out in a richly appointed chamber, the walls
red and gold. Hawthorn curled her lip slightly. The goblins made it a
point to have red and gold everywhere, the colors of Gryffindor. It was
a subtle statement back to Salazar Slytherin, who had tricked them into
a bargain long ago, to favor the colors he despised. Hawthorn thought
that a thousand years was quite enough time to get over an insult,
however, and did not understand why the goblins kept doing it.

``Hello, Hawthorn.''

Hawthorn turned and nodded to Elfrida Bulstrode, who was waiting for
them, her hands clasped at her waist, her head bent down, her eyes on
the floor, her voice quiet and gentle. Elfrida had been trained as one
of the traditional \emph{puellaris} witches, the maidenly and gentle
ones, who were nothing but calm and gracious in public. They saved their
ferocity for arguments in private, and for defense of their children;
they were rumored to be able to turn into lionesses if someone harmed
their sons and daughters. Hawthorn had never seen that happen, and hoped
she never would, since she never planned to harm a Bulstrode child.

This time, though, there was something more to Elfrida than her
traditional mannerisms. Hawthorn sniffed, and then sniffed again. Most
women had a faint undertone of blood to their scents at all times,
signaling where they would bleed from their wombs, even if they weren't
menstruating right then. But Elfrida's scent was empty of blood, and had
been for some time.

That meant only one thing.

``Congratulations, my dear,'' said Hawthorn warmly, reaching out to grip
the other witch's hand. ``How far along are you?''

Elfrida looked cautiously up from the floor, and when she found the
permission to meet Hawthorn's gaze in her smile, she smiled back.
``Three months along,'' she said. ``I've dreamed. Adalrico and I are
going to have another daughter.''

Hawthorn inclined her head. ``Congratulations,'' she repeated.

``Indeed,'' said a voice at Elfrida's shoulder, and Adalrico Bulstrode
stalked in through another door, his formal negotiations cloak swirling
behind him. Millicent, as both his blood daughter and his magical heir,
followed close at his heels. ``We are proud beyond proud.'' He moved up
to his wife, seized her in his arms, and kissed her firmly, which
Elfrida yielded to with her usual grace. Millicent moved around her
parents, with a slightly amused glance at them, and bowed. She never
curtsied, knowing, as any woman would, Hawthorn thought, that it only
made her look ridiculous. She wore formal robes, too, not the gown that
Hawthorn and her mother did.

``Mrs. Parkinson,'' said Millicent, her voice polished and polite. ``I
trust that you have dealt well with the Dark gift that you received last
August?''

``With help,'' said Hawthorn, ``I have indeed.'' She admired Millicent
for a moment. Pansy had other strengths, but this girl was a perfect
Slytherin snake, tall for her age, with a mind obviously able to tie
itself into knots behind her calm face. And unafraid, too, which would
serve her well in politics. ``Now I am going to repay one source of that
help.''

``What happened, exactly?'' Millicent asked. ``I came in on the tail end
of my parents' conversation.''

``Harry Potter was taken captive by two gray-cloaked wizards who called
themselves Hounds and claimed to be working for the Ministry,'' said
Lucius Malfoy, as he came in through another door. Behind him was
Narcissa, who met Hawthorn's eyes and nodded to her, and his son Draco,
who looked half-distracted. ``And we have just received another
communication from Severus Snape, who is acting as his guardian. The boy
has been found, but Professor Snape believes it best if we are all there
to hear what happened. It concerns us, as his formal allies.''

Hawthorn flicked up a brow. \emph{The day that Lucius Malfoy allies with
someone on formal terms and means it is the day that I am freed of this
curse.} She considered Lucius a good politician, but too likely to keep
playing both sides until he could no longer do so, always looking more
for his own advantage than his allies'. His wife was worth ten of him,
being able to actually risk her life and ideals \emph{for} her ideals.

Her gaze went to Draco. The boy was Lucius's blood heir, but not yet his
magical one. Of course, Lucius had insisted his son was young yet, and
the talent had time to manifest.

\emph{Save that Millicent manifested when she was six, and even others
younger than fourteen, I might believe that.}

Hawthorn shook herself free of her preoccupation when she realized that
Elfrida was announcing how they would reach the Ministry. She had to
keep her mind focused on the meeting and its purpose, which was Potter
and finding out how deeply this corruption in the Ministry had gone.
Being Potter's formal ally was more than a convenience, and had been
ever since he had given her the first vials of Wolfsbane Potion.

``The goblins keep a series of carts that travel to the Ministry,''
Elfrida was explaining. ``They'll let me take one to the Fourth Level of
the Ministry, and from there it's only a short walk to the Head Auror's
office, where Professor Snape has told Mr. Malfoy that he and his charge
are waiting for us.''

She glanced around the room, blushing when she met the men's eyes, to
see if anyone would object to that plan. No one did. Adalrico put an arm
around his wife's waist and steered her towards the door he and
Millicent had come in by, murmuring in her ear.

Hawthorn followed, her head up and her mind working. She didn't know
what Potter's abduction meant, of course, and wouldn't until she reached
the Ministry. In the meantime, she had to consider the Malfoys.

\emph{Why has Lucius bothered to come? His wife I can see, certainly,
since she has risked so much to help Potter. His son, since Pansy told
me that he's nigh-obsessed with the Potter boy. But what does Lucius
think he can gain by attending the meeting himself?}

\emph{Unless this matter is much deeper than just a simple abduction,
perhaps.}

Hawthorn smiled slightly, feeling a curl of pleasure uncoil and stretch
in her gut. She \emph{loved} politics, as long as they didn't happen the
day after a full moon, and this time she'd had a few days to recover.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Millicent stepped out of the simple cart, which an enormous lizard had
pulled for them, onto the wooden platform, and examined the door in
front of her. It was made of steel, as though the wizards in the
Ministry feared the goblins breaking through. Of course, they might, for
all Millicent knew. Though she had not learned much from Binns, she had
read enough books on her own to know that goblin rebellions were a large
theme of wizarding history.

She glanced back, and watched her father helping her mother out of the
cart. Millicent rolled her eyes. She was happy that her parents were
going to have another child, of course, and she understood why her
father was so proud and so anxious about it, but Elfrida ought to have
been able to step out of a damn cart on her own. Not for the first time,
Millicent was grateful that she hadn't been given the \emph{puellaris}
training. Shapeshifting was not worth giving up her mind and her
freedom.

The door opened as she watched, and the Auror waiting beyond it nodded
to them with awe-inspiring composure, given that she was confronting
eight Dark wizards, one of them a necromancer. ``My name is Auror
Mallory,'' she said. ``If you will accompany me to the second floor?''

Millicent looked around several times as Auror Mallory led them to the
lifts, but saw nothing especially interesting---just desks piled with
forms. Of course, if those forms were covered with laws that controlled
magical creatures, she could imagine their power. But it wasn't
interesting or exciting or flashy power.

\emph{Perhaps it is worth looking into anyway.}

Millicent decided to remember that for later. She knew almost nothing
about how the Ministry functioned on a day-to-day level; her history
lessons had focused on the Wizengamot and the grand process of trials
for Dark wizards. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to study the smaller
things, the nitpicky details that escaped all but the most discerning
eyes.

Millicent had found many useful things that way. If nothing else, it was
how she had first discovered the level of Potter's power.

They reached the second floor at last, and the Department of Magical Law
Enforcement. Millicent saw more to be proud of here, since she
recognized the faint tingle of complicated wards about most of the
desks. She studied them with a critical eye. Most were wanting compared
to the wards of Blackstone, her home, but she could see the attraction
of them for Light wizards. After all, they would never have to say that
they were using magic so powerful that they were tempted to fall into
corruption because of it. The most magic of this level could inspire
someone to do was steal someone else's treacle tart.

They reached Rufus Scrimgeour's office, and crowded inside. Millicent
studied the ring of chairs first. There were ten, enough, she supposed,
for the eight of them, Harry, and Professor Snape. But when she lifted
her gaze, she saw an elderly man she supposed must be the head of the
Auror Office standing against a desk.

\emph{Is Harry not here?}

Not in front of them, but behind them, she realized a moment later, as
the familiar brewing-storm smell struck her nose. She turned her head,
and saw Harry step into the room, his face pale but composed. Behind him
came Professor Snape. His face was also pale, but nothing like composed.
Millicent shivered. She would not have wanted to be in a Potions class
with his eyes flashing that dark fury.

``Greetings, Malfoy, Parkinson, Bulstrode,'' said Auror Scrimgeour, his
voice reflecting only a very faint distaste. He had greeted them by
family names, as was proper, Millicent thought, looking back at him. ``I
have agreed to use my office as a place to host a formal alliance
meeting between your families and Harry Potter, because Mr. Potter was
attacked by Ministry officials working for the Minister himself, and I
would like to know what happened as much as you did.''

``But surely you must have the details by now, Auror Scrimgeour?'' That
was her mother, Millicent knew, her voice soft and retiring. All right,
that was one good thing about the \emph{puellaris} training; it
encouraged other witches, and especially wizards, to underestimate
Elfrida.

Auror Scrimgeour seemed to be no exception. His eyes softened as he
looked at her mother. ``I do not, Mrs. Bulstrode. Mr. Potter promised to
explain everything when we were all assembled.''

\emph{Where is Harry?} Millicent thought abruptly, craning her neck. He
should have made it up to the front of the room by now.

Or, no, wait, of course he had not. He was in the middle of the chairs
instead, being hugged to death by Draco. Millicent's eyebrows rose as
she studied the scene. It did have a single difference from a scene of
the same kind she might have observed in the Slytherin common room.
Harry's arms were clasped around Draco's neck and back, and hugging him
as firmly as Draco usually embraced him.

``If Mr. Potter would like to start explaining?'' the Auror asked, his
voice now equally faint in amusement.

Harry simply turned, adjusting the placement of his arm so that it
draped around one of Draco's shoulders instead of both, and led him up
to the front of the room. He placed him in the chair underneath
photographs of what looked like Aurors capturing criminals, squeezed his
hand once, and stepped away. Draco, who already looked calmer than he
had when he met them underneath Gringotts, nodded at him, then watched
as Harry took his place in the very center of the circle of chairs.

\emph{Standing up,} Millicent thought, as she sat down between her
parents. The Parkinsons took the chairs next to them, Lucius and
Narcissa the seats next to their son, and Snape and Scrimgeour the ones
on the other side of Draco. \emph{He wants to present this to us in
full-on formal terms, then.}

Millicent leaned forward, more eager to hear what it was than ever now,
especially as she noticed the faint green tinge to Harry's cheeks, and
the slight staring quality of his eyes whenever they rested on anyone's
face but Draco's or Snape's.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry told himself he was calm as he and Snape approached Scrimgeour's
office. He \emph{had} to be. He had just worked with Rita Skeeter to
hammer out the final form of the article that she would release tomorrow
in the \emph{Daily Prophet}, and then Snape had found and fetched him.
Harry had promised to explain everything when his allies arrived, and
Snape had agreed. No one was forcing him or pressuring him, and he would
strike the first blow when the article went into print. Meanwhile, it
was only common courtesy to inform his allies and his guardian and his
best friend of what would be in the article beforehand.

Of course, all of that was only so much confectionary sugar on the ugly
truth. He was nervous because of what his allies would say about his
Dark magic and the breaking of his word to the Minister, and because of
what would follow if they did \emph{not} reject him and Harry
essentially began a war on Fudge.

\emph{There is a storm coming, either way,} Harry thought as he stepped
into the office and found it full of people, \emph{and I must be at the
heart of it.}

His eyes skimmed past the Parkinsons, the Bulstrodes, and the elder
Malfoys, and came to rest on Draco. He could see his best friend's tense
face melting into lines of relaxation and relief as he saw Harry. He
probably would have moved forward in a moment to take Harry in a hug.

Harry forestalled that by moving first.

The expression of surprise on Draco's face was priceless, but far better
was the tightness of the embrace Harry received as he tightened his arms
around Draco's shoulders and buried his head in the curve of his neck. A
tension he hadn't realized was there melted away. Yes, there was some
concern that his allies might reject him, but at least one person
wouldn't. There were two if one counted Snape, of course, but Harry had
a different kind of comfort embracing Draco than he did when embracing
Snape.

Draco hugged him back, fierce with delight and relief, and Harry wanted
to go on standing there. But needs must, and he pulled away after too
short a time and led Draco to the front of the room, placing him in a
chair with the promise, given via a squeeze of his hand, that he
wouldn't be far away.

Then he turned around and met his allies' gazes, one by one.

Scrimgeour was waiting. Snape was tense. Narcissa had a calm expression
on her face, as if she could readily accept and forgive whatever crime
Harry had to confess. Lucius was utterly blank. Harry could not see
Dragonsbane's face under his hood, and was surprised that the
necromancer had come at all. Hawthorn leaned forward in her chair, as
thought she would spring and rend the words from Harry before long. The
pale woman whom Harry vaguely remembered as Millicent's mother looked
caught between fear and resignation. Millicent herself had a faint,
amused smile on her face that her father's matched.

Harry nodded. Well, come tomorrow, everyone would know a part of the
truth, anyway. Perhaps this could serve as practice for the wider
publicity that Harry knew he would eventually receive.

``I broke one of the Ministry's laws without knowing it today,'' he
said. ``I spoke Parseltongue in Knockturn Alley, because some South
African hive cobras escaped their confinement and I was afraid they
would hurt others. I convinced them to come to the Forbidden Forest with
me, where I set them free. Then the Hounds, gray-cloaked wizards saying
they worked for the Ministry, came to and abducted me.''

That part had been the easy one, Harry found, as his throat seized up.
That part Snape had seen, and told other people. Now he needed to report
what, so far, no one but those who had been in the interrogation rooms
knew. He struggled to breathe.

Hawthorn unwittingly---or perhaps she did have some inkling, given that
she could smell his emotions---helped him over the hard part. ``How dare
they take a child without his guardian?'' she said, and her voice had a
trace of a growl in it.

Harry blinked, then smiled at her without humor. ``I don't think the
Minister concerned himself that much with legalities, Mrs. Parkinson. I
found out soon enough that he took me because he was afraid of my magic.
He thought he had a Dark Lord in the making. I don't believe I was a
child in his eyes any longer.''

``He should never have done it,'' said Scrimgeour from his corner of the
room, ``regardless.''

Harry chanced a look at the Head Auror. Scrimgeour sat very still, and
his yellow eyes were so intent that Harry felt naked. He had to look
away, down at the floor, and started pacing as he resumed his tale.

``The Hounds explained their purpose to me while we waited for the
Minister.'' \emph{Breathe, breathe, and it will not be so hard.} ``They
used to be Aurors, some of them, and others were spies and messengers
for Voldemort. The Minister was using their connection to the Dark to
seek out other Dark wizards. They wear collars that keep their thoughts
from all Dark influences---''

\emph{Including ones that aren't that Dark,} said Regulus's voice
abruptly in his thoughts.

\emph{Where were you?} Harry asked, losing the forward momentum of his
conversation for a moment. \emph{I thought you'd gone missing.}

\emph{I was testing the Hounds' collars,} Regulus said, his voice
resigned. \emph{There really is no way past them, at least not that I
can find. Usually, I can pass from mind to mind that has a connection to
Voldemort along a sort of tunnel, but this tunnel's collapsed and had
rock shoved into it.}

\emph{Then perhaps they didn't have a connection to Voldemort.}

\emph{I think they did.}

Harry shook his head, and realized his allies were still looking at him.
He sighed and focused on them again. ``I'm sorry,'' he said. ``Choosing
how best to arrange this experience in words has not been easy.''

``Why not?'' Adalrico asked, his voice low and dangerous. ``What about
it was so hard, Harry?''

Harry looked into Mr. Bulstrode's eyes. This was easier. He looked as if
he were all ferocity, considering how this news would affect his family.
Harry could deal with that better than more personal concern right now.
``I found out that the Hounds are Fudge's special police,'' he said.
``His \emph{secret} police. He's been using them to track and arrest Dark
wizards, at least one other before me. And he's shoved edicts through
the Wizengamot about the registration of Dark wizards that the full
Wizengamot didn't vote for, given the clause that allows the Minister to
take control of the Ministry in times of war.''

``We're not at war,'' said Scrimgeour crisply. ``And according to
Section Two of the Ministry Laws, he has to announce that we are before
he can start taking such privileges as the creation of a force of war
wizards.''

Harry blinked. He hadn't known that. ``Oh,'' he said intelligently.

``And then what happened, Harry?'' It was Narcissa who asked, voice warm
and motherly and caring. Harry focused on her face, this time. He would
pretend that she was the only one in the room, and he was talking only
to her, he decided. It was the best way to get through this next part.

``The Hounds brought me to the Minister when I announced that I wasn't
going to stop using Parseltongue,'' he said. ``He told me that I was
indisputably a Dark Lord, and I was the main target of the new laws.''

Shock bloomed on Narcissa's face, and presumably on other faces around
him. Harry grimaced and kept his eyes focused forward. ``I tried to
argue with him, and say that I was loyal to the government of the
wizarding world and didn't intend to take it over. He didn't listen. In
the end, he brought out a silver sphere that would prove my loyalty, if
I really had. I put my hands on it, and I did feel magic running through
my body. I couldn't tell what it did, at first.''

He sighed. He would say this without frill, without decoration, he
decided. Dressing it up would not make it different from what it was,
anyway. ``The sphere wasn't to prove my loyalty. It tried to drain my
magic, to make me into a Squib.''

``What?''

The combined cry came from many throats around him, but the one Harry
noticed the most was Snape's, because he had yet to hear his guardian
raise his voice. He turned to face Snape, and winced when he found him
on his feet, one hand clasped around the wand he didn't seem aware he'd
drawn. ``Sir,'' he said quietly, ``please sit down.''

Snape stayed on his feet. ``Why did you not tell us this at once?'' he
said, in a flat voice that Harry knew covered a rage fit to make him
commit murder.

``Because,'' said Harry, ``of what happened next. I broke free of the
sphere before it could drain my magic, and put a body-bind on the
Hounds. Then I turned to face the Minister, trying to negotiate my way
out of this still, and Dolores Umbridge, the Minister's Special
Assistant, hit me in the back with a spell of some kind. It felt like a
small, concentrated Cruciatus---''

``How do you know what that feels like, Mr. Potter?'' asked Scrimgeour
then.

Harry shot him an annoyed glance. \emph{Must he really ask that question
right now?} ``Because I've felt it several times,'' he said. ``From
Voldemort and from Death Eaters, both.''

He saw Millicent's mother put a hand to her mouth, tears forming in her
eyes, but he didn't have time to figure out why. He had to continue
before Snape could do something stupid like insist on checking his back
for injury right in front of everyone. Besides, this was the moment when
he would find out whether or not his allies would abandon him.

``I let my magic go,'' he said quietly. ``I created a snake of Dark
magic and sent it to fill Umbridge with cold poison that cost her
control of her left side. Meanwhile, I coiled a snake around the
Minister's neck that threatened to strangle him if he did anything I
didn't like.''

He closed his eyes and stood still. There was utter silence around him
for right now. He didn't know what would happen, what the first reaction
would be, and as moment after moment passed without one, he felt his
muscles tighten, his teeth grind, his fingers fold into tense blooms of
pain in his hands.

Then someone snickered.

Harry blinked and opened his eyes. Millicent had her hand over her
mouth, and her brown eyes sparkled merrily at him above her palm.

``Wish I'd been there to see that, Harry,'' she drawled, as she took her
hand away. ``Merlin! The Minister of Magic, confronted and outdone by a
fourteen-year-old boy.''

Harry frowned at her. Once again, it was easier to concentrate on one
person at a time, so he didn't look at the others. ``Didn't you hear a
word I said, Millicent? I said that I created snakes out of Dark
magic.''

``And didn't you hear that my family's a Dark one?'' Millicent gave a
lazy flap of her hand. ``I can see how it might have escaped you, since
after all we \emph{didn't} attend Walpurgis Night and I \emph{wasn't}
Sorted into Slytherin.'' Her voice, heavy with sarcasm, rubbed his nerves
all the wrong ways.

``Regardless---'' Harry began.

``What happened next?''

Harry was actually grateful to turn and face Hawthorn, since Millicent
was puzzling the fuck out of him. ``I explained to the Minister where I
stood,'' he said. ``Then I reversed the damage to Umbridge. But it was
too late. I had already discovered that I had enjoyed causing her
pain.''

He rubbed a hand along his robes, holding Hawthorn's eyes, which were
calm and encouraging. ``I made a bargain with Fudge. I would tell no one
what had happened there, in return for his ceasing at once to use the
Hounds, pass those ridiculous laws, or steal anyone else's magic.''

``That was stupid,'' said Scrimgeour. ``You had no \emph{right.} We have
a right to know what is happening in the Ministry, Harry.''

Harry eyed the Auror sideways. ``Why do you think I'm telling you now?
Something happened to make me break the bargain. Rita Skeeter somehow
saw everything, I don't know how, and told me that she was going to
publish the story. I had a chance to cooperate with her, or not. I chose
the cooperation. The story's coming out tomorrow in the \emph{Daily
Prophet}, minus some details that I thought only my allies needed to
hear.''

There was a faint murmur of noise at that. Harry knew what it meant.
They was struck that he had trusted them, or been honest with them;
Harry himself was not sure which one it would be better categorized as.

``So.'' He let his eyes track, one more time, around the circle of
faces, playing with too many emotions to let him know for sure what
would happen next. ``There you have it. I used Dark magic to torture
someone, and I broke my promise to someone who would have been an ally.
Let that factor into your decision. If any of you want to dissolve your
formal alliances with me, I would understand.''

Hawthorn stood up.

Harry looked at her and swallowed. He had hoped she wouldn't want to
dissolve the alliance, but he had no right to gainsay her if she did. He
started to roll his sleeve up, so he could reach the scar that was the
mark of their binding.

Hawthorn knelt by him in a rush, reaching out to embrace him. Harry
stared at her. \emph{What is she doing?}

``I was a Death Eater,'' Hawthorn whispered, for his ears alone. ``I am
a Dark witch. I am---something else that you know well enough, Harry.
Did you really think that I or my family would abandon you?''

Harry sighed. ``I didn't know. Mrs. Parkinson. And I don't know if you
should trust me---''

``We do not plan to abduct you, steal your magic, or force you into
bargains that would not have held in any case,'' said Hawthorn dryly.
``Be content with what is, Harry. We stand at your side.''

``My family does, as well,'' Adalrico announced, abruptly looming beyond
Hawthorn's right shoulder. ``You have proved that you are not
intolerably of the Light, Mr. Potter. You will use Dark magic to defend
yourself, and that means that you would not condemn us for using it to
defend ourselves.'' He smiled, his teeth flashing in that same fierce
expression Harry had seen in his eyes. ``We stand at your side.''

Harry turned slowly and looked at the Malfoys. Narcissa smiled at him,
nothing but gentleness in the expression.

``I have put much work into dancing the pavane and the waltz and others,
all for your sake, Harry,'' she said. ``I would not give that up. My
muscles ache right now, but my feet will be lighter because of the
realization you have come to today.''

Harry stared at Lucius. Lucius simply laughed softly, his eyes feral.

``I do not begin truce-dances only to stop them two steps from the
end,'' he said. ``And the Minister is a much more satisfying opponent
than any you have showed me so far, Potter. I accept both the offer to
continue the alliance and the opportunity to avenge myself on Cornelius
for the insults he has dealt me.''

Harry simply met Snape and Draco's eyes. He knew he did not have to ask
about the continuation of their bonds with him. They would not abandon
him.

He looked at Scrimgeour.

The Auror looked back. His yellow eyes and his lion-like mane of hair
made him seem formidable even sitting down. Then he shook his head from
side to side, as though waking from a dream.

``I have always known that the Ministry was not what I hoped,'' he
mused. ``I have always put up with that, and encouraged the good and
discouraged the bad where I found it, and enjoyed my paperwork.''

``Now I find that the Ministry is much further from what I am willing to
put up with than I ever knew. A Minister who would seize wartime
privileges when it is not a time of war and kidnap children who have
saved lives and try to steal any wizard's magic is not one I want to
follow, and not one worth keeping bargains with.'' Scrimgeour planted
his bad leg firmly on the floor and nodded. ``If nothing else, I shall
enjoy seeing what shit bobs to the surface in the wake of your storm,
Mr. Potter, so that I might pluck it out of the water.''

Harry closed his eyes. Then he murmured, ``Thank you for listening to
me, everyone. I suppose we should go back to Hogwarts?''

``I'm coming with you.''

Harry opened his eyes and smiled at Draco. ``I know.''

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Draco knew that Professor Snape was giving him a disapproving glance.
His mother was smiling. His father would reflect a faint tension in the
lines around his jaw at the thought of Draco not even asking his
permission.

Draco did not care.

He had been able to sit so silently during the meeting because he had
been wrestling with the realization that had dawned on him like a
personal sunrise when Harry had entered the room and come over to hug
him before he did anything else.

He loved Harry, yes, and he had known that for over a year. But this
time was the first he had realized that that love was not entirely that
of a friend, or even a brother, which was the second comparison that
came to mind.

\emph{Well}, he thought, when the initial shock had passed. \emph{That
isn't entirely surprising. I can live with it pretty damn easily.}

He watched Harry throughout the meeting, the way he spoke the words, the
way he forced himself on through confessions that Draco knew would be
difficult for him, the way he accepted, with a slightly stunned
expression, the offers of the pureblood families to continue their
alliances. He contented himself all the while with the fact that only he
really knew how hard this was for Harry. He knew Harry better than
Professor Snape, better than anyone else would ever know him.

And of course it was only natural that Harry would accept his presence
with equanimity, even a smile, the first genuine one he'd given since
entering this meeting.

Draco didn't care that his parents hadn't given him permission to go, or
that Professor Snape hadn't properly invited him. He was going back to
Hogwarts a day early, because he wanted to, and Harry wanted him to.
Draco couldn't imagine a pair of better reasons in the world.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Hawthorn raised her eyebrows as she watched the glances exchanged
between the Potter boy and the Malfoy heir. \emph{So. Pansy was right.
Well, that alliance will be a benefit to all of us, I think. At least
we're unlikely to lose Potter to some Light wizarding family that might
convince him to become a Light Lord.}

She could feel her own heart pounding harder and harder, much as it did
when the full moon rose and the transformation began. The future lay
before her, much more exciting than it had been only this morning. By
tomorrow, Skeeter's article would be out, and while Hawthorn knew it
would not contain as much detail as Potter had given them today, it
would be an attack on the Minister. Fudge might be pried from his
incompetent perch at last.

And then the wizarding world would go into political chaos---chaos that
a forewarned, clever, politically savvy pureblood could certainly
exploit to her own betterment and her family's.

\emph{And for the benefit of allies, as well,} Hawthorn thought, gaze
turning back to Potter. He sang with power, radiated it, rang with it.
She always forgot, when she had been away from him for a time, how
strong it was. \emph{And if Narcissa is right, we shall have something
much better than a Lord, something we have never had before, something
entirely new.}

It was all she could do not to howl.

The future was near, and it had never looked better.

\chapter{Interlude: Minister Illegally}\label{chapter-13-interlude-minister-illegally}

\textbf{\emph{{The Daily Prophet}}}

\textbf{\emph{September 1st, 1994}}

\textbf{\emph{MINISTER ILLEGALLY KIDNAPS CHILD}}

\textbf{Brother of Boy-Who-Lived Abducted By Minister Fudge}

\emph{By: Rita Skeeter}

At approximately 1:30 in the afternoon yesterday, a pair of wizards
working for Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge abducted Harry Potter, 14,
the elder twin brother of the Boy-Who-Lived, from the grounds of
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

``They called themselves Hounds,'' said Potter. ``They'd even named
themselves after dogs. Grim was one, and Crup was the other.''

He said that he'd been afraid when this reporter caught up with him
yesterday.

``I didn't recognize either one of them,'' said the teen, who celebrated
his birthday and his brother's only a month before his abduction. ``But
I think I could point them out again if I had to.''

Potter described being brought to a blank interrogation room, where the
Hounds explained their purpose to him. Essentially, it appears that the
Minister of Magic has been granting the authority of a secret police to
these Hounds, and that they are authorized to hunt down Dark wizards who
have broken the new laws calling for Dark wizard registration.

As was widely reported last year by this very newspaper, Harry Potter is
in possession of the rare Dark talent Parseltongue, which he used
yesterday in Knockturn Alley to contain a quiver of deadly South African
hive cobras.

``I'd had to register myself as a Parselmouth a few days before,''
explains Potter. The registration included a requirement that he stop
using Parseltongue. Potter refused to sign this form on the grounds that
it did not grant him equality under the law---no other registration
requires that the Dark wizard in question stop using his or her
talent---and left the Ministry.

It seems that the abduction was motivated by Potter's use of
Parseltongue in Knockturn Alley.

``I spoke with the Minister,'' said Potter. ``He told me that my
situation was different because I might become a Dark Lord. I asked him
why, and he said that because I'm a Parselmouth, I'm linked to
You-Know-Who. Then he told me that he would give me a chance to prove my
loyalty to the government of wizarding Britain.''

Potter said that he was eager to take the chance, as he was bewildered
and hurt by the Minister's accusations.

``I mean, I know that people are afraid of me because I'm a
Parselmouth,'' said the fourteen-year-old, who is currently under the
legal guardianship of Professor Severus Snape, who was not permitted to
accompany him to the Ministry. ``I just didn't expect that it would take
any form this extreme. I thought I'd have a chance to go on trial in
front of the whole wizarding world and answer the accusations against me
fairly. I trust the Wizengamot. I'm sure they would come to the right
decision.''

The ``test,'' described by Potter as Minister Fudge's replacement for
Azkaban now that no Dementors attend the island, was a large silver
sphere with holes in it, sitting on a tripod about three feet off the
floor.

``Madam Umbridge told me that I would just have to put my hands on the
sphere, and I would be given the chance to show my loyalty,'' said
Potter. Madam Dolores Umbridge is the Special Assistant to Minister
Fudge, who has overseen many of the new Dark wizard registration laws.

When Potter put his hands on the sphere, nothing happened at first. He
said he could feel magic moving through him and binding his fingers in
place, but as long as nothing hurt him, he trusted Minister Fudge and
Madam Umbridge to do right by him.

``I knew I'd been brought there without my guardian, and rather suddenly,
but I just couldn't believe they would really \emph{hurt} me,'' he said.

The sphere, however, apparently tried to drain Potter of his magic. As
Harry Potter is currently the most powerful young wizard at
Hogwarts---second only to the great Albus Dumbledore, if we may take his
explosion of magic on the Quidditch Pitch last November as sufficient
testimony---this was quite painful for him.

``I drove the sphere's magic off and broke the sphere in so doing,''
said Potter. ``That wasn't my intention. I think I frightened the
Minister and Madam Umbridge with that, if they weren't already
frightened before.''

The Hounds tried to attack Potter at this point, but he says that he
imprisoned them with \emph{Petrificus Totalus.} ``I didn't want to hurt
them,'' he explains.

Minister Fudge stood in front of Potter, and Madam Umbridge behind. At
this point, Madam Umbridge cast what was later identified, from the
wound on Potter's back, as the \emph{Lamina Alba} hex, last made famous
when Bartemius Crouch authorized the Aurors to use it on Dark wizards
during the War with You-Know-Who.

``I didn't know what it was,'' Potter admitted. ``I just knew that it
hurt like a small, concentrated dose of Cruciatus.'' Potter has
experienced the Unforgivable Curse several times now, mostly at the
hands of the Death Eaters who escaped from Azkaban in March and have so
far eluded the Ministry's Aurors.

The sudden pain and the fear and anger that Potter himself was feeling
inspired him with a desire to strike back. He turned and loosed some of
his magic in the form of a snake at Madam Umbridge. ``Since I'm a
Parselmouth, the snake form just seems to come naturally to me,'' he
said.

The snake paralyzed Madam Umbridge with several cold bites, while a
second snake kept Minister Fudge from interfering.

``It was over in five minutes,'' said Potter. ``Then I reversed the
damage. Madam Umbridge can walk again. I would be sorry if she couldn't.
I don't know why I did that. I was on overload, I think. I'd gone
through an abduction, an interrogation, and the sphere in one day. I'm
sorry.'' He shuddered when he spoke with this reporter. ``And then I'd
had to confront being called a Dark Lord. But that's no excuse for
\emph{acting} like one.''

Potter was later rescued by the Head of the Auror Office, Rufus
Scrimgeour, and the arrival of his guardian, Professor Severus Snape.

Potter said that he didn't particularly want the attention that he knew
would follow from this article, but that he felt a duty, however
reluctant, to inform the wizarding world of the truth.

``I just don't think that one boy can handle this alone,'' he told the
\emph{Prophet.} ``I might be magically powerful, but there's a lot I
don't know, and I don't trust myself to make the best decision, so I
should submit to the judgment of my elders. The public should know, so
they can make up their own minds.''

Sources that asked to remain anonymous have confirmed many parts of
Potter's story, including the removal of a large silver sphere that can
drain magic and matches Potter's description of the device used on him
from the estates of Starrise, a powerful Light wizarding family, several
weeks ago, and Potter's abduction by two former Aurors, Gamaliel Gorgon
and Falstaff Morologus, who were sacked for gross negligence of their
duties.

Minister Fudge and Madam Umbridge have so far been unavailable for
comment.

``I hope they speak up soon,'' said Potter. ``I would love to know their
justifications for what they did.''

``I just hope they have a reason good enough to justify abducting a
fourteen-year-old from his guardian. But I'm sure they do. After all,
Minister Fudge is the Minister of Magic, and ultimately accountable to
the whole of wizarding Britain, not just one young wizard.''

\chapter{Stung Into Storm}\label{chapter-14-stung-into-storm}

Harry sighed and sat back, flexing his hand slowly open. It hurt from
the long time he'd spent gripping the quill, more so than the time he'd
spent writing. He'd had to think for long minutes before he discovered
the perfect things to say to James, Connor, and Remus. Each letter had
to be different, just long enough to convey that he was all right
without worrying them with too much detail, and informed by the
knowledge of being mostly apart from them for a month.

\emph{Connor can keep this part of leadership,} Harry thought, as he
sealed the last letter and turned to look apprehensively at Hedwig.
Hedwig cocked her head and hooted indignantly, as much to say that she
could \emph{too} carry three letters to the same place, and Harry had
been a fool to doubt her.

``Sorry, girl,'' Harry whispered, his hand smoothing down the feathers
of her chest. ``Nerves, I guess.''

He found twine in the drawer of the table beside his bed, and used it to
bind the three letters strongly to Hedwig's leg. He made sure the name
on each envelope was clearly visible, then nodded and sighed and told
her, ``Lux Aeterna, girl. James, Connor, Remus.''

Hedwig flipped her wings open and took off, shining in the dim light of
the dungeons. Harry heard a brief hooting squabble before Snape opened
his door for her. He closed his eyes and pictured her skimming up
through the dungeons, heading for the Owlery.

``Harry.''

Harry let out another sigh. The departure of Hedwig meant that he had
finished his letters, and so the time that Snape and Draco had agreed to
let him spend alone was over. He glanced towards the door, and found
Snape already standing there. ``Yes, sir?'' he asked.

``We have things to speak of.'' Snape sounded as certain as he had been
the day he told Harry he was staying at Hogwarts for the rest of the
summer, but this time, there was no happiness or amusement in his voice.
It sounded dry, purged to dust.

Harry nodded, and looked past Snape to see if Draco was there. Draco
slipped around the professor a moment later, and made a zigzag line for
the desk where Harry sat. Harry stood up and hugged him one-armed. He'd
sat for long enough on the hard chair, and figured he should at least be
able to sit in comfort for the discussion that was coming.

He sat down on the bed, with Draco beside him. He looked up to meet
Snape's raised eyebrows, but they went down again in a moment, cutting
off any hope of a reprieve.

``You were once again in danger today,'' Snape noted.

Harry shook his head slightly. ``I am always in danger,'' he said. ``I
think that the sooner you learn that, the better.''

Snape ignored him. ``It was danger that could have been prevented in one
respect, Harry. I think it is time that you learned to resist someone
trying to Apparate with you. It would not have stopped everything that
happened, perhaps, including exposure of the Minister's corruption, but
at least you would have been able to remain free and out of the Hound's
grasp.''

Harry blinked. ``I didn't know that resisting Side Along Apparition was
possible, sir.''

``Of course it is, for a skilled Occlumens,'' said Snape, waving one
hand as though Harry should have known that already. ``You will have
noticed that Side Along Apparition is different from doing it on your
own---that the sensations are more dizzying, for example.''

Harry nodded, and moved closer to Draco when his friend tugged with one
arm. Harry relaxed when he felt the warmth seeping in from his side. ``I
always feel more likely to be sick after a Side Along Apparition,'' he
said.

``That is because the space through which wizards Apparate influences
one's mind when one is not in control of the spell,'' Snape said,
falling into lecture mode. ``Such perceptions can be manipulated. Just
as an Occlumens can refuse to let a Legilimens enter his mind around his
shields, he can refuse to let those perceptions do the same thing, and
thus resist being pulled along.''

Harry half-closed his eyes. ``So I'm resisting the spell or the person
casting it, sir?''

``Both,'' said Snape. ``Now. I want you to concentrate on that,
practicing it, when next you feel up to it.'' He nodded curtly to Draco.
``Come, Draco.''

Draco blinked. ``What--?''

``We should let Harry sleep.''

Harry frowned at Snape. ``It's only nine,'' he said. ``I'll be able to
stay awake for at least a little longer.''

Snape simply waited, and a moment later, Harry's jaws cracked under a
yawn. Harry sighed. ``Yeah, all right,'' he said, and shoved regretfully
at Draco's shoulder. ``See you tomorrow.''

Draco touched his forehead for a moment, as though checking for fever,
and then nodded at him. ``See you tomorrow, Harry. I'm so glad you're
alive.''

The last was a soft murmur, and before Harry could react properly, both
Snape and Draco had left, Snape shutting the door firmly behind them.
Harry stretched his arms and went to prepare for bed. At least tomorrow
was the day the students arrived at Hogwarts, not the actual first day
of school. That gave him some time to prepare.

\emph{And it's the day Skeeter's article comes out.}

Harry's mouth twitched into a small smile. \emph{I thought time to
prepare, not time to relax.}

\emph{I have no idea why Snape had to tell you to go to bed,} said
Regulus abruptly. \emph{You're half-collapsing already. Go to sleep, and
stop thinking ridiculous things like this.}

\emph{Yes, Father,} Harry said with sarcasm that not even Regulus could
miss. He wouldn't call Regulus's nagging like a mother's, since that
still brought up a bit too much pain.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape kept most of his attention tuned to the passive link between him
and Harry as Draco, hardly needing the encouragement, chatted about the
parts of his summer he'd spent with Harry at Lux Aeterna. He was in the
middle of reliving a broom chase when Harry relaxed in Snape's mind, and
he felt him lapse into sleep.

``Draco,'' said Snape, interrupting Draco mid-sentence and winning a
glare for that. ``I've been meaning to talk to you about something for a
while now, something concerning you and Harry.'' Never mind that he had
only noticed properly that day. Draco would believe in him more if he
thought that Snape thought this was an ongoing problem.

``What is it?'' Draco stood up at once, his body all but vibrating with
tension. ``Has he said something about me? Did I hurt him in some way,
something that he can't tell me about face-to-face?''

Snape shook his head slightly. \emph{Yet more signs of obsession. He
does not even strike close to the real truth.} ``No, Draco,'' he said,
and made his voice be gentle with an effort. ``It is related to you more
than it is to Harry. I have become concerned over the amount of time and
thought that you spend on him. You seem to have almost no life of your
own, outside of him.''

Draco stared at him, then blinked lightly. ``That's not true, Professor
Snape,'' he said. ``I spent lots of time at home this summer. I played
Quidditch by myself and with some of the other boys from
Slytherin---Blaise and Vince came over all the time. Not Gregory,
though,'' he added, with a faint frown. ``I studied history and
pureblood rituals with my mother. I tried saying thank you to house
elves, but Harry's wrong about that, it just makes them burst out in
tears. Except Dobby, but he's strange anyway.''

``Then why do you never speak about the time that you have spent playing
Quidditch or studying history with others?'' Snape inquired. ``Why does
every word out of your mouth concern Harry?''

Draco shrugged impatiently. ``Because the time I spent around him was
just more \emph{interesting.}''

Snape nodded once. ``That is one of the signs of obsession, Draco. Even
in a simple statement about what else you have done this summer, you
cannot keep Harry out of it. I have seen the way you look at him---''

Draco's shoulders stiffened so fast that Snape was left wondering what
he had done. Draco's voice was low and harsh. ``And you disapprove?
You're going to act like some crusty old wizarding parent telling me
that your son can't possibly love whom he wants to because he has to
continue the line?''

``What?'' Snape asked blankly. Then his brain caught up with his ears,
and he scrutinized Draco, narrow-eyed.

\emph{It is worse than I thought,} he concluded after a moment.
\emph{The boy has a crush, but he's convinced that this is some kind of
grand passion for the ages.}

``Listen to me, Draco,'' he said quietly, and the force of his tone,
more than what he said, he thought, pulled Draco's eyes to his. ``I do
want to see Harry happy. That much is true. But I do not want to see you
sacrifice your own happiness, your freedom, for his. Neither would he
want that. He has had enough of sacrifices in his life. And as you stand
now, you could sacrifice everything for one smile from him and think it
justified. I will \emph{not} let that happen. What will happen if he
chooses to love elsewhere?''

Draco's expression turned into mulishness blended with something else,
something genuinely frightening. ``He won't,'' Draco said, his voice a
low hiss. ``I've always been here. There's no one else that he cares for
as much as he cares for me. Besides, it'll probably be a while before he
can love anyone else that much. He told me that last year, that he'd
never thought of anything beyond the end of the war but continuing to
serve his brother. But when he can look around and choose on his own,
I'm going to be there.''

``So you'll wait until he notices you?'' Snape asked, and shook his head
when Draco nodded. ``And you're going to act like some lovesick young
witch in Spain pining for her lost true love to come back from the
wars?''

``I am \emph{not} like that.'' Draco was upset enough that Snape felt a
stirring of power rise around him, promising a headache in a few
moments. ``You take that back. I do intend to win Harry's love if I
can.''

``You are thinking of permanence,'' Snape said quietly. ``You are too
young for such things, Draco. You are \emph{fourteen.}''

``You treat Harry like an adult.'' Draco folded his arms and scowled.

``Because he \emph{acts} like one,'' said Snape, patience suddenly at an
end. ``Listen to me. I will watch you closely from now on. If you do not
show some signs of independence by the end of September, then I will
assure that you \emph{have} it, whether you want it or not. Do you
understand me?''

Draco just stared at him.

``I can assign detentions,'' said Snape. ``And that is only the
beginning.''

``You don't have the right to do this,'' whispered Draco.

``And you don't have the right to choose to smother yourself beneath the
clinging blanket of some crush---''

``It is \emph{not} a crush---''

``---simply because you wish to,'' Snape finished. ``I will not allow
it, and Harry, if he notices, will not allow it.''

``I don't want to tell him,'' Draco spat, his face turning crimson. ``I
don't want to tell him that his guardian's being an unreasonable,
stubborn old wanker.''

Snape raised an eyebrow and nodded once. ``Very well. I will leave it up
to you to tell him. You have until the end of October to do that.''

``That's not \emph{fair---}''

``Neither is what this crush might lead you to do, Draco, either to
yourself or Harry,'' Snape cut him off. ``Now, go get ready for bed.''

Draco glared at him for a moment longer, but Snape had practiced, and
received, much harsher glares than this young Malfoy was capable of.
After a while, Draco went off to use the divan in Harry's room,
muttering to himself under his breath.

Snape ground his teeth and moved off to create light wooden targets, so
that he could take out the many frustrations of the day.

\emph{Why must I be the one to notice and take care of things that any
reasonable parent should have noticed long since? Narcissa must have,
though Lucius could be blind to such things. What did she think she was
doing, encouraging the boy?}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Albus finished reading the article on the front page of the \emph{Daily
Prophet}, and then put the paper down. His hands shook, very lightly. He
did not allow himself to notice.

\emph{That's torn it.}

For long moments, that was the only thought that would come to him. He
sat in blankness of mind and stared out his window, past Fawkes's old
perch. It was a magnificent day, brighter than it should be on the first
of September, really, with the sun rising to embrace the sky. The
children would be arriving that evening, and there were a thousand
things to be done beforehand.

But, as well as being the Headmaster of the school, he was the Chief
Warlock of the Wizengamot, and those were the thoughts storming through
his head, when they finally began to storm.

\emph{Harry cannot maintain peace. He cannot maintain a balance. He has
already begun to change the wizarding world, and who knows when he will
stop? The Wizengamot may not have been contacted and told that Fudge
intended to pass new laws or that we were in a state of war, but those
are minor offenses, ones that would at least leave the government of
wizarding Britain intact. It might even have worked in our favor,
because the preparations would be in place when our true war with Tom
begins. I was willing to let those happen, as long as the wider public
did not notice.}

\emph{Instead, Harry tips the balance, and now nothing will be the same
again.}

Albus closed his eyes. The mornings when he felt too old for politics
were rare, but this had decided to be one of them. He could feel every
ache in his joints, the faint stiffness in his back that not even long
nights on a soft mattress could cure, the desire to simply sit back and
hand off any important decisions to someone else. That last was an
especially dangerous desire, because there was no one who could take up
the decisions and confidently handle them.

\emph{Harry}, his mind reminded him.

\emph{Never Harry,} he answered firmly. \emph{He is probably going to
be} vates\emph{, I must admit, and he was the one who deflected
Voldemort's Killing Curse. I can allow him no other role than that, not
when his first political move in public is as disastrous as this one is.
There were a thousand more graceful ways that he could have handled his
abduction. Instead, he crashes through long years of elegant, hard work
like a gorgon in a china shop.}

\emph{I must distract him from participating in the larger political
life of the wizarding world.}

And Albus thought he knew the perfect distraction. He stood and turned
to the chest behind his desk, which held various of his Pensieves that
he had arranged in neat alphabetical order. His hand hovered over the M
section, and then pulled out the Pensieve labeled, in neat letters,
\emph{My time with Falco Parkinson.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

James had just unfolded the \emph{Daily Prophet} when he felt the tingle
in the wards that announced an owl coming through. He waited for a
moment, and was beyond surprised to see Hedwig skim through a window and
land on the table in front of him, hooting urgently. James unbound the
letters, noted the different names on them, and laid them gently down on
the table. Neither Remus nor Connor was awake yet; they'd had a hard,
final dueling session last night, since Remus wouldn't be able to train
him for at least another few months.

``Thank you, Hedwig,'' he said, offering her a bit of the bacon from his
plate in reward. ``I'll be sure to read them in a moment.'' He went back
to unfolding the paper.

Hedwig hit him on the head with a wing. James ducked and eyed her.
Hedwig went on dancing and leaping, her hoots growing more urgent.

\emph{Ah, she wants more bacon.} James handed her a larger piece. The
snowy owl was engaged in swallowing it for a moment, and meanwhile,
James was able to take a bite of his porridge and unfold his paper in
peace.

A moment later, his porridge sprayed across the front page.

James sat back, put the paper on the table, closed his eyes, and rubbed
his face. Several times. He rubbed circles on his forehead, his cheeks,
his chin, and his throat. It was a calming exercise his grandmother had
taught him. When he asked what it was for, she'd said, tartly, ``To deal
with unruly children.''

When he looked again, though, the story was still there, and Hedwig was
tilting her head to glare at him with one golden eye, as if to say,
``You should have opened the letter when I told you to.''

James shook his head and read the article, carefully. Then he slit the
letter that bore his name open and looked at it.

\emph{Dear Dad:}

\emph{I know that you might have seen the article by the time you read
this. I'm sorry. I've told Hedwig to deliver it as fast as she can.}

\emph{I was abducted by the Minister, but I'm fine. I was going to keep
quiet about it at first, but I was convinced by a friend that I wanted
to spread the word. I know that reporters might descend on you now. I'm
sorry about that.}

\emph{You can tell them that you don't know anything more than what's in
the article. That might be best.}

\emph{I promise, Dad, that I'm fine, and that Professor Snape's
vigilance, or lack of it, had nothing to do with the abduction. The
Hounds said they were from the Ministry, that I'd broken a few laws to
do with use of Parseltongue, and that they wanted me to come along with
them. One of them even assured me that I'd be allowed to bring Snape
along, and then snapped me up in a Side Along Apparition before he could
get near enough.}

\emph{I've missed you, but I thought there must be a reason that you
weren't writing to me this summer, that you were angry at me, or angry
at Professor Snape, and wouldn't reply, so I didn't. I hope that you do
reply to this letter. I'd still like us to be a family, Dad. I felt a
little too crowded this summer, but perhaps we could try with
Christmas?}

\emph{Love,}

\emph{Harry.}

James sat back and loosed a long, angry, hissing breath. Harry's letter
rambled a bit, but it included several things that James had longed to
hear: that he still wanted to be part of the family, that he was fine,
that he was sorry for possibly involving James and Connor and Remus with
reporters.

But that wasn't enough to distract James from the obvious, something
that should have been obvious even to Harry.

\emph{Snape still failed him as a guardian. Harry was kidnapped right in
front of him, and he didn't do anything to stop it.}

James shook his head and stood. He should have done this long since, not
given up after one attempt, but he had had Connor to look after and
Harry to brood about. Now Connor was going back to school, and Harry
wanted to be part of the family again, and James could concentrate on
getting one over on his enemy.

He was going straight to the Department of Magical Family and Child
Services, to insure that he got custody of his son back.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Sir! Sir! Please come quickly!''

Rufus carefully put down his morning cup of tea, and considered hexing
whoever was beyond the door. Then he reminded himself that everyone in
the Auror Office knew enough not to disturb him during his morning cup
of tea, and more likely than not, that meant it was something
\emph{truly} urgent.

Drawing his wand, he strode across his office and opened the door. A
young Auror with vividly pink hair and an unfamiliar face stood there.
Thanks to the hair, Rufus recognized her anyway.

``Auror Tonks,'' he said. ``Is something the matter?''

``The Minister, sir! He's screaming in his office, and sometimes
sobbing!'' Tonks waved her hands in agitated circles, taking a step
back, and tripped over a chair. She promptly smashed into Auror
Mallory's desk, and upset the inkwell. Rufus closed his eyes in
resignation as ink dripped onto her hair. Tonks continued in a more
subdued tone. ``Sorry, sir. But he sounds like he's in pain, and we
can't open the door.''

``Coming,'' said Rufus, with a slight growl, and locked his office
behind him. The one time he hadn't done that, someone had stolen his
tea. Rufus could not abide people who stole his tea.

He followed Tonks grumpily across the office, and everyone found a
reason to be elsewhere. Of course, it seemed as though a good many of
his people were already missing. Rufus shook his head and snorted.
\emph{All pounding on the Minister's door and telling him pretty please
to let them through?}

``Why hasn't someone opened the damn door with a Blasting Curse?'' he
asked Tonks, as they reached the lifts.

The young woman gave him a glance of terrified admiration. ``Sir? That
spell's illegal.''

``Doesn't tell me why they haven't used it,'' Rufus muttered, and rubbed
discreetly at his hip. He was almost sixty years old, and on a morning
before his tea, no matter how bright and warm the day was, the old
injury that had given him his limp flared up. \emph{Crises simply
shouldn't happen before there's tea.}

``The door's, uh, locked with some sort of spell that reacts when we try
anything more violent than an \emph{Alohomora}.'' Tonks shrugged
helplessly and, stumbling as she got into the lift, managed to press the
buttons for all the levels. ``Sorry, sir.''

``It's all right,'' said Rufus, and leaned on the lift wall. The gentler
way down was better for his hip, anyway.

When they reached the level of the Minister's office, Tonks took the
lead, as though Rufus might not know where it was. Rufus strode---he
\emph{strode}, he did not \emph{limp}---after her, muttering under his
breath.

He found the Aurors clustered around in front of the Minister's door,
timidly knocking and calling. Rufus stepped past them and laid his wand
on the door.

``\emph{Alohomorana},'' he murmured. It was a variation on the Opening
Spell that his grandmother Leonora had taught him. She was Muggleborn,
with no sense of pureblood pride at all, and had always proclaimed that
there was no reason for doors to be locked among family, which had led
to a string of embarrassing incidents when Rufus's father was sixteen or
so.

He opened the door.

The volume of noise was instant and terrific. There must have been
silencing charms worked into the wood of the door itself, Rufus thought,
sagging back and struggling not to put his hands over his ears.

Once he made out what the noise was about, though, his grumpiness
vanished, and he wanted to cackle like his grandmother.

``---\emph{NEVER BEEN SO EMBARRASSED BY ANYTHING IN MY LIFE! I WOULD MOVE
TO FRANCE IF I WERE ASSURED THEIR GOVERNMENT WAS ANY BETTER! NO, WAIT,
IT COULDN'T POSSIBLY BE WORSE! I THINK I'LL BEGIN PACKING AS SOON AS
POSSIBLE! AT LEAST THEIR MINISTER DOESN'T ABDUCT INNOCENT CHILDREN
WITHOUT TWIRLING HIS MOUSTACHE FIRST, I SHOULDN'T THINK!}''

Rufus watched in amusement as that particular Howler tore itself to
pieces, only to be followed by another from the growing pile on the
Minister's desk. This voice, Rufus happened to recognize from the
meeting in his office yesterday. Hawthorn Parkinson did a good imitation
of outrage, he thought.

``\emph{I AM STUNNED, STUNNED AND} APPALLED! \emph{I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF
SUCH A LOW INCIDENT IN MY LIFE, MINISTER! ARE NONE OF OUR CHILDREN SAFE
IN THEIR BEDS? WILL YOU SEND YOUR HOUNDS AFTER MY DAUGHTER? THAT POOR
INNOCENT BOY! I THINK IT IS TIME THAT WIZARDING BRITAIN HAD A NEW
MINISTER!}''

Fudge was huddling at his desk in the midst of it all, whimpering
softly.

Rufus cleared his throat in the pause between Parkinson's Howler ending
and another starting. Fudge looked up at him hopefully.

``That was a complicated locking charm,'' said Rufus, and then he shut
the door and let the spell snap back into place.

He turned to his team and shook his head solemnly. ``Too bad that we
couldn't rescue the poor man,'' he said. ``At least now we know they
were only Howlers.''

``But why?'' asked Auror Mallory, her pretty face concerned. ``I don't
understand what all of them were yelling about.''

``Read the front page of the \emph{Daily Prophet},'' Rufus told her, and
strode back towards his office, his mood lighter than it had been
without his tea in a long time. Of course, knowing that he was going
back to his tea helped.

\emph{And after that, I can start digging.}

When he got back to his office, he had a second pleasant surprise
waiting for him, besides his tea. Two of his people stood with a third
held between them, his head dangling sullenly. He looked up when Rufus
neared, and Rufus recognized him as Gamaliel Gorgon, one of the sacked
Aurors that Fudge had been using as his so-called Hounds.

``Crup, I presume?'' Rufus asked indulgently.

Gorgon sagged.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``What's so interesting about the front page, Mother?'' Blaise covered a
yawn with one hand. Her darling son had always had such exquisite
manners, Arabella Zabini thought fondly. Of course, she had been the one
to teach him, and not any of her husbands, which was probably the
reason. ``I didn't think you found much of interest in the \emph{Daily
Prophet} normally.''

``This,'' said Arabella simply, and passed over the paper so that he
could see. She herself had already read the article four times, with
each pass looking for a different layer of meaning, and believed she had
found them all. Her lips seemed permanently fixed in a smile this
morning. \emph{Clever boy.}

\emph{And it makes that letter I received yesterday all the more
pathetic.}

Blaise blinked at the headline and said, ``Goddamn.''

``Blaise,'' Arabella chided, looking around the sitting room. She had
worked hard to find all the prettiest portraits for her little home.
Unfortunately, many of those pretty portraits were easily offended high
society witches, and they were turning now to glare at Blaise.
``Language.''

``Sorry, sorry,'' her son muttered, and went back to reading. When he
looked up, his eyes were narrowed. ``Do you really think---I mean, did
this really happen?''

``At least some of it did, my darling,'' said Arabella. ``After all, I
do not believe that either Potter or Skeeter are stupid enough to create
a story that could be so easily disproved.''

Blaise nodded, his eyes glowing. ``Will this mean a new Minister?''

``That is the least of what it will mean.'' Arabella leaned over and
kissed his forehead. ``Now go get your breakfast from the house elves,
and we'll discuss this further when you come back. I don't want you
halfway to falling asleep when we do.''

``Yes, Mother,'' said Blaise, with a perfect little bow of his head, and
trotted to the kitchens.

Arabella chuckled at the article and then moved towards her writing
desk. Yes, she did think, rather, that answering the letter with a
regretful negative was the wiser course.

\emph{Not to mention that I may have something of my own to offer in an
alliance with Potter, while this other would make me only a servant.}

Her gaze brushed across the shelf of books written in Parseltongue, and
then back to the writing desk, at which she sat with a stretch of her
hands and a toss of her long, dark hair.

It was a \emph{glorious} morning to be alive.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Here they come.''

Harry rolled his eyes at Draco's statement of the obvious, but nodded.
``Here they come,'' he repeated, and locked his eyes on the carriages
rolling towards Hogwarts's front doors. At the corner of his vision, the
tiny lighted boats carrying the first-years bobbed across the lake.

The carriages were all drawn by thestrals, who snorted and tossed their
wings when Harry looked at them. Harry looked uneasily away again. He
hadn't yet spoken to any thestrals, and suspected he wouldn't be able to
without help. He wondered what they would want from him, what kind of
freedom they would ask.

\emph{It probably depends on why they're bound, doesn't it?}

\emph{Well, whatever it is, it can't be any worse than the letters I've
received.}

Harry winced. He had not foreseen that Skeeter's article would result in
a flood of post of his own. He'd had a few Howlers, accusing him of
being an attention-seeker, but far fewer than he thought he would. And
there were countless outpourings of sympathy, boxes of Chocolate Frogs,
offers to adopt him and keep him safe, declarations of outrage that the
Minister would kidnap an innocent child, sniffling admirations of his
bravery, and on and on. Harry was beginning to think that Skeeter had
played up the angle of his innocence and his youth too much.

The lead carriage had just about reached them---Harry and Draco stood
not far in front of the entrance to the school---when Regulus snarled in
his head. Harry turned at once, spinning a complete circle and letting
his hand fall to his sleeve, where he carried his wand, by reflex.
``What is it?''

\emph{Death Eater,} Regulus snarled. \emph{One. Come through a hole in
the wards.}

Harry felt his own lips part in a snarl. He had thought that Dumbledore
had found and sealed all the holes in the Hogwarts anti-Apparition wards
that Sirius had torn or told the Death Eaters about last year, but it
seemed he'd missed one.

He turned to face the carriages again, and then saw her, Bellatrix
Lestrange, laughing loudly and absurdly. She stood beside an open
carriage, one arm linked around the throat of a pretty, black-haired
girl in Ravenclaw robes. The girl was gasping and struggling to fight
back, but Bellatrix muttered something, with a wave of her wand, and she
went limp.

``Harry!'' Bellatrix screamed, her voice thin and quite mad. ``Murderer!
Are you going to face me? Or shall I have all the babies?'' She smiled
at the children still in the carriage, and their shrieks of terror rose,
blending with cries from elsewhere. ``Mine to pluck like ripe fruit,
aren't they, yes?''

Harry moved slowly forward, his hands clearly spread in front of him. He
felt Draco at his right shoulder, and snapped, ``Stay \emph{back.}'' Draco
halted, flinching.

Harry faced Bellatrix, noting the way she held her hostage in front of
her, so that she had a human shield against most of the hexes and jinxes
that Harry might throw. She was also handy with a Shield Charm, come to
that. Harry's mind was racing now, filled with fury and filled with
disgust. \emph{What kind of tactic is it, to involve children in our
fight?}

``You want me, Bellatrix,'' he said. ``I'm the only one you want. Let
her go, and you can have me.''

He heard Draco let out an anguished cry, but Bellatrix's laughter
overrode it. ``Little boy,'' she whispered. ``Harry. Child. I know
\emph{exactly} how to hurt you, and letting this baby go isn't it.''

Harry waited, waited, waited. He had the answer now, since he didn't
think Bellatrix was any good with wandless magic. But he needed her to
move her wand away from the Ravenclaw girl's throat, and he also needed
to make sure that she retreated, instead of just grabbing hold of her
hostage, as she would if he simply disarmed her. He decided to try a
taunt. He snorted. ``And do you really think you can take me, Bella?''
he asked. ``I destroyed your lord and your husband easily enough. In
fact, I only had to strike once to destroy them \emph{both.}''

Bellatrix snarled and jerked, extending her wand towards him.

Harry narrowed his focus to her hand, her wand, and thought as hard as
he could, compelling the spell to follow to a single point.

\emph{Sectumsempra!}

Snape's cutting spell flew. Harry could feel its tense soaring across
the grass between him and Bellatrix, and had a moment to reflect that if
he had misjudged, it would also slice the Ravenclaw girl to shreds---

He had not misjudged.

Bellatrix's right arm exploded in a fountain of blood, her right hand
and wand flying free. Harry saw the jagged slice of bone, severed to
stick out of the stump that had been her right wrist. Bellatrix screamed
and staggered back, lost in the pain, releasing her hostage as she
moved.

Harry didn't hesitate. ``\emph{Wingardium Leviosa!}''

The Ravenclaw girl skimmed towards him, past the wheels of the carriage,
and Harry caught her and laid her gently on the ground. Then he lifted
his eyes back to Bellatrix, certain that she would retreat, but ready to
give battle if she did not.

Bellatrix stared back at him, clutching the ruin of her right arm, and
Harry had never seen such pure hatred in anyone's eyes before.

``My Lord will have you,'' she whispered. ``And I will.''

Then she Apparated out.

Harry let out a harsh gasp and bent over the Ravenclaw girl, hearing
Draco come up behind him as he slapped her cheeks. Her eyes fluttered
and opened as Bellatrix's sleeping spell loosed its hold on her.

``Hush,'' Harry told her gently when she opened her mouth to scream.
``She's gone. You're safe now.''

The girl nodded shakily at him and sat up. ``Did you rescue me?'' she
whispered, and Harry nodded again. ``Thank you.''

Harry had time to give her a smile and step away from her before
someone's hand clasped him firmly on the shoulder, a clasp just this
side of pain, and an unfamiliar voice said, ``What's this, then?''

\chapter{The Old Mastiff}\label{chapter-15-the-old-mastiff}

Harry turned with the grip on his shoulder, gaze fixing on the man who
stood over him. He tried, automatically, to meet the man's eyes, but
found it unexpectedly difficult.

Of course, one of the eyes was a blue coin rolling around to the back of
his skull, which would have puzzled even Snape on how to meet it, Harry
thought. The other was dark, but piercing, and looked through Harry as
though judging him for the Dark spell he had just used.

Harry knew where he was when he looked at the man's face and saw the
scars that twisted over every inch of skin, and the nose that looked as
though someone had taken a hammer to it. Add to that a wooden leg
replacing the real one, and Harry was on firm ground. ``Auror Moody,''
he said.

The man's hand loosened on his shoulder, and Moody let out a blistering
laugh, shifting his weight onto his good leg. ``Not Auror any more,
boy,'' he said. ``Retired. And your new Defense professor, at
Dumbledore's request.'' He studied Harry for a moment with a grim smile,
then pulled the collar of his robe away from his neck. ``And I suppose
it's only fair that you know about this.''

Harry blinked when he saw the silver gleam of a collar that was similar
to the ones the Hounds wore.

Regulus snarled in his head. \emph{Maybe he was the one I sensed before,
as well as Bellatrix. I think he must have a connection to Voldemort of
some kind, Harry, but that damn collar is in the way. Can you ask him to
take it off?}

Harry blinked again and met Moody's eyes; the blue one had rolled into
the front of his skull to stare at him. \emph{You ask him,} he thought.

``Heard that you had a bit of trouble with former Aurors wearing collars
like these,'' said Moody expansively. ``You don't have to worry, boy.
\emph{I} was the one who made them, back when we had to face real Dark
wizards every day, not bored children like Fudge and fourteen-year-old
Parselmouths.'' He spat. ``These `Hounds' copied my design. I don't take
mine off, but I'm also not under Fudge's control.'' He smiled, and his
eye spun wildly. ``Just so that you know.''

Harry nodded at him, then turned and knelt over the Ravenclaw girl
again. He supposed that Moody had some other reason for coming over than
just to speak to him about the collar, but since the professor was done
talking, Harry intended to see the girl to the hospital wing.

``What's your name?'' he asked, as he helped her to her feet.

``Harry,'' Draco whined.

``Cho Chang,'' said the girl, with a faint smile at him. ``And you're
Harry Potter, of course. No need to ask that.''

``Harry,'' Draco insisted.

Harry balanced Cho on his shoulder---she was taller than he was, but
considerably lighter---and peered at Draco. ``What?''

Draco was watching Cho with an expression of intense distaste, but,
Harry thought, that was nothing new. Draco seemed to be jealous of any
other person who touched Harry for so much as a second. ``Can't
Professor Moody take her to the hospital wing?'' he said. ``I think that
you should get back inside the wands. There was just a Death Eater here,
in case you forgot.''

Harry blinked. Yes, he had forgotten. And now that he thought about it,
he wondered how he could have. The image of Bellatrix's arm erupting in
blood and bone was vivid, just waiting behind his eyes to pounce him.

He shuddered and glanced at Professor Moody, who had stalked over to the
bloody mess on the ground that was Bellatrix's hand and wand. He prodded
at them for a moment, then knelt with a grunt and a splay of his wooden
leg. Harry watched in sick fascination as he unfolded the fingers from
the wand.

``Don't want to leave Death Eaters' wands lying about, boy,'' he said,
wagging the long black stick at Harry. ``Nasty business. I've known more
than one of them to be a death trap for enemies.'' He drew his own wand
and waved it at the one he held. ``\emph{Inopia!}''

The wand shivered once, and than a cage of blue force built around it.
Harry shivered. \emph{Perhaps she's good at wandless magic after all,}
he thought, \emph{to Apparate away after leaving her wand here. Or
perhaps someone else snatched her.}

\emph{Or perhaps Moody had something to do with it,} Regulus suggested
in his head. \emph{I don't think I trust him, Harry.}

\emph{Like I said,} said Harry, readjusting Cho's weight on his
shoulder, \emph{you can be the one to ask him if he can bare his left
arm and show you the lack of a Dark Mark. I'll believe his story about
the collar for right now, until I learn otherwise. A Hound wouldn't be
stupid enough to come in openly wearing the collar, anyway.}

\emph{You never know,} Regulus muttered, but he fell obligingly silent.

``Sorry about this,'' Harry said to Cho, as they started to walk towards
the school. Cho was recovering with every step of the way, but Harry
didn't like the way she breathed. She must have at least a slight case
of shock, from being so suddenly snatched and used as a hostage like
that. ``Even with what tends to happen around me, that was a bit
extreme.''

``I've been reading the papers over the summer,'' Cho assured him as
they walked up the front steps of Hogwarts. ``I thought this was
practically normal for you.''

Harry gave her a surprised glance, and then snorted when he saw the
smile curving her lips. ``\emph{Practically},'' he agreed. ``But this is
the first time that I've ever really managed to wound a Death Eater,
instead of the other way around.''

``Good,'' said Cho. ``I wouldn't want her to get away unharmed for
attacking me.''

Harry reevaluated the girl as he helped her limp down the corridors to
the hospital wing (it seemed she'd also twisted her ankle when Bellatrix
flung her the ground). Cho was already recovering, color flushing her
cheeks again, her head coming up and a faint grimace of embarrassment
twisting her mouth whenever she looked at Harry. Harry supposed she was
stronger than she looked.

\emph{Of course, she plays for Ravenclaw, doesn't she?} he recalled
abruptly. \emph{Their Seeker. She would have to be less delicate than
she looks.}

``\emph{Harry.}''

Harry blinked and turned around. Draco was in the hallway behind them,
panting as though he'd run to catch up with them.

``Professor Snape wants to see you right now,'' he said. ``I'll take
Chang the rest of the way to the hospital wing.''

He glared at Cho, who blinked back, frowning slightly, as though she
didn't know what she'd done to earn Draco's enmity. Harry rolled his
eyes. The jealousy was rising off Draco like steam, and he would have
wagered many things that this was only a ploy to get him away from the
girl.

\emph{He can calm down. No one else is going to become a better friend
to me than he is.}

Harry \emph{would} have wagered that, and refused to abandon Cho, if
Draco hadn't chosen Snape as the excuse. Snape would have assigned Draco
detention in moments if he found himself being used in a trick like
that.

That meant he really did want to see Harry.

Harry nodded apologetically to Cho. ``Professor Snape is my legal
guardian, and I sort of have to do what he says. If you don't mind---''

``Not at all,'' Cho assured him. ``I told you, I read the papers. And I
think it's wonderful that Professor Snape is looking after you.
Obviously, the Ministry can't be trusted to make the proper legal
deposition for you.'' She squeezed his hand, giving him a sympathetic
smile.

Harry nodded back to her, with a smile in return. \emph{At least there's
someone in the world who doesn't think Professor Snape is an unfit
guardian.} He turned and trotted in the direction of the dungeons, while
Draco took his place at Cho's side.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Draco waited until Harry was out of sight and earshot before he spoke.
He'd walked with Chang, of course, and the idiotic girl had tried to
make a few stabs at conversation, but he ignored them. He was just
making sure there was no chance that Harry could hear them.

When he was certain, he turned and glared straight at Chang. She'd
opened her mouth to say something else, but she closed it now and
watched him with her eyebrows drawn down. ``What's the matter?'' she
asked after a moment.

``Stay away from him,'' said Draco softly. ``\emph{Stay away}, do you
hear?'' It was a blunter threat than he might have made otherwise, but he
could still see the way that his aunt had faced Harry, and the surge of
pride and terror he'd felt on seeing Harry's Dark spell. It was wrong
that Harry had felt forced to defend the Chang girl like that. He didn't
want to use violent spells; Draco knew he didn't. And that spell was not
only violent, it was also Dark. Draco knew, if Harry didn't, that the
sympathy of the wizarding public was as easy to lose as it was to gain.
Let word get out of him doing Dark spells, and more people might swing
back to support the Minister.

Chang shrugged at him, uncomprehending. ``I don't know what you want me
to say, Malfoy,'' she said. ``At the very least, I owe him thanks for
saving my life, which I'll present to him more formally later. And it
looks like he knows a lot of magic. I've never even \emph{heard} of that
spell he used on the Death Eater.'' Her dark eyes sparkled with a
Ravenclaw's curiosity. ``I could probably learn a lot from him.''

``So you are planning on talking to him again?'' Draco demanded.

Chang lifted one of her eyebrows. ``I would think that would be
obvious.''

Draco drew his wand. Chang took a hobbling step backward, supporting an
obviously twisted ankle, but didn't draw her own. She just watched in
fascination while Draco hissed at her, ``I don't want you coming near
him again.'' Once again, he felt compelled to be blunt. Harry had
actually been talking with the girl, smiling at her. He had obviously
been comfortable in her company. There weren't many people Harry was
comfortable with. Draco didn't want the circle to expand further.

Chang didn't back down, to Draco's fury. She simply watched him with her
head on one side, the skin around her eyes pulled tight in a frown, as
though trying to figure out why he would do this.

``Promise me,'' Draco whispered, one of the nasty little hexes that his
father had taught him an inch from his lips.

``I think that you should ask Harry about that,'' said Chang calmly, not
moving. ``After all, does he usually let you choose his friends for him?
There was nothing in the papers about that.''

Draco's fury grew. Her words forced him to think back to Snape's
pronouncement yesterday evening, that he was acting irrational. He
didn't \emph{want} to think that he was acting irrationally. He was the
only one who knew the actual depth of his love for Harry, and that meant
he was the only one who had the right to make decisions based on that.

``I mean it, Chang,'' he said, striving for a tone that would
permanently scare the girl. ``Stay away from him.''

The girl rolled her eyes. ``Are you going to help me to the hospital
wing or not?''

Draco studied her. She was avoiding his eyes now, and making odd little
grimaces of pain as she hopped, obviously trying to avoid supporting
weight on her ankle. Draco noted that she hadn't said she would stay
away from Harry.

Well, she hadn't said she wouldn't, either. Draco was content, for now,
to put his wand away and help her, so that he could tell Harry he had,
later. If she came near him again, then he could hex her without
remorse.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``You wanted to see me, sir?'' Harry asked, putting his head around the
door of Snape's office. In truth, he was shocked that Snape was still
here. He'd have expected him to be at the Sorting Feast by now,
overseeing the introduction of the new Slytherins into his House. But
perhaps the Sorting Feast had been delayed for the Death Eater attack.
Harry wouldn't have put it past Dumbledore to make sure everyone was
calmed down and could properly enjoy the food and the Sorting, perhaps
with some of his compulsion.

``Yes,'' said Snape, his voice quiet. He was watching a bubbling
cauldron, full of a clear potion that Harry didn't recognize. ``I want
to know why you used the spell that you did against Bellatrix
Lestrange.''

Harry winced. He really didn't think his guardian was angry. He sounded
weary, which was worse. ``It was the best one I could think of,'' he
answered honestly. ``I thought she could resist an \emph{Expelliarmus,}
and I wanted to cause enough damage that she would retreat from the
field permanently.'' He shrugged. ``Making her leave her wand behind was
just a bonus.''

Snape turned around. Harry blinked. He had never seen that particular
expression on his guardian's face before, rather as if Snape had watched
him drop off a cliff and then winds levitate him back up. It was a
fortunate coincidence, but one couldn't count on it to happen again.

``Sir?'' Harry whispered.

Snape strode across the room to him and stared down into his face. Harry
stared back, craning his neck to do so.

``I have accepted that you are in danger from moment to moment, whatever
you may think of me,'' Snape began quietly. ``I have accepted that many
of those dangers, I can do nothing about. I can only make sure that you
know the spells and the defenses that you will need to survive them.''

``But there is one danger that I can make sure you \emph{do} know about,
Harry, because I was in the thick of it from the time I was seventeen to
the time I was nineteen.''

Harry blinked. ``When you were part of the Death Eaters, sir?''

Snape bowed his head with a sharp slashing motion. ``When I was
willingly a Death Eater,'' he agreed. ``I used Dark spells before any
other kind. I struck with the same kind of motivation that you used on
Bellatrix tonight---that I had to make sure I killed or wounded my
enemies before they could do me any harm. Oh, I told myself I was
fighting to protect innocents, so that no pureblood child would ever
have to know any harm from Muggles, but an excuse was all it was in the
end.''

Harry swallowed. ``Sir,'' he said, his voice wavering, ``I hardly think
you need to worry about me becoming a Death Eater.''

``That is the one thing I will never fear from you,'' said Snape, his
voice going dry for a moment. Then it sobered again, into that tone that
was frightening on its own, because Harry had never heard it from Snape
before. ``But I think I do need to worry about you using Dark spells,
violent spells, as solutions to your problems. You are powerful, Harry.
You could have done many things to Bellatrix other than cut off her
hand. Why did you choose that instead?''

Harry shook his head. ``I---don't know. It seemed to fit, once I'd
thought of it. Cause her pain, make her retreat, and render her harmless
to anyone else. But then she Apparated out, so maybe I haven't rendered
her harmless.''

Snape nodded again. ``We all had abilities that we hid,'' he said, as if
musing. Harry held his breath. Snape rarely talked about his time among
the Death Eaters. ``It may well be that one of Bellatrix's was wandless
magic, or at least the ability to Apparate without the spell. There are
a few other times that has happened.'' He focused on Harry again, and
his eyes glittered, bright and sharp and present. ``If you \emph{will}
use Dark spells and study the Dark Arts, and not just the defense
against them, then you will do it with me. You are still less
experienced with offensive magic than other kinds, Harry. You could have
slipped up tonight and sliced the Chang girl, and if someone had not got
to her in time, she would have bled to death. And with the Dark magic
yesterday\ldots{}'' Snape shook his head. ``I take it that I need not
tell you how dangerous that was.''

Harry winced. ``Yes.''

``Go to the Feast,'' said Snape, still quietly. ``I will be along in a
few moments. And remember, Harry. With Dark magic as with any other
kind, you need to know and understand it \emph{before} you use it, not
afterwards.''

Harry bowed his head, then slipped out of the office. He made it a few
steps up the hallway before he stopped and leaned on the wall. He was
shaking.

\emph{I really didn't think, did I? Just reached out and chose that
spell, and then focused it on Bellatrix's hand. Snape is right. There
are less dangerous things I could have done, both for myself and for
those around me.}

\emph{If I'm reckless with Dark magic the way I was with my life last
year, then I stand to hurt not only myself, but other people.}

\emph{I never want to be like that.}

He stood, straightened his shoulders, and went to the Feast, grateful
for the company of chattering voices at the Slytherin table and Draco's
warm press against his shoulder as he slid into the seat beside him.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Harry!''

Harry turned around, with a smile on his face, as Connor ducked under
Ron's arm and hurried towards him. He and Draco were on their way to
breakfast, and Harry could feel his friend shifting impatiently beside
him, but he could certainly spare a few moments to greet his brother.
He'd smiled at him across the Great Hall last night, but had had no
chance to get away. All the Slytherins wanted to talk to him about his
summer and his abduction and his use of Dark magic and what spell he'd
done in saving Cho.

Connor hugged him, roughly, and Harry was a bit surprised to realize
that they were of a height now. Connor's hair had also gone slightly
wilder, as though trying to look more like Harry's, and flopped back and
forth over his heart-shaped scar as he held Harry back a short distance
and examined him critically.

``You'll do,'' he said at last. ``I suppose Snape's been feeding you
properly?''

Harry rolled his eyes, but he was grinning. He thought both Connor and
James must think that Snape was feeding him on grave dirt and cobwebs,
or perhaps James just thought that and had given the impression to his
brother. ``Yes, fine. Not as fine as the meals at Lux Aeterna, maybe,
but more interesting. We eat while we're discussing potions sometimes.''

Connor wrinkled his nose. ``Harry, try not to bore me to death before we
even get to class, all right?'' He turned and walked beside Harry into
the Great Hall, ignoring both Draco's attempt to shove him away and
Ron's prompt and growing spat with Draco. ``Lux Aeterna was boring
without you,'' he confessed in a murmur. ``Dad and Remus tried, but
there's only so much dueling you can do before it gets boring. Same with
reading. And sometimes Remus wouldn't duel with me---''

``Near the full moon?'' Harry asked. They were near the point where they
would have to split to go to their House tables, but he decided,
abruptly, that he wanted to sit with his brother this morning, custom be
damned. There was no actual \emph{rule} that someone from Slytherin
House couldn't eat at the Gryffindor table, so he strolled over with
Connor and sat down with a nod at the various other people gathered
there, listening as Connor talked to him.

``Well, yes, then, of course.'' Connor piled his plate high with
pancakes and handed the platter to Harry, who mimicked him. He seemed to
be hungrier lately than he had ever been in his life, Harry thought
dimly. ``But sometimes he sat around and relived memories of the First
War and said that he wished Sirius was alive to help train me, that that
was the only way I would ever gain a greater understanding of some of
the spells.'' Connor winced. ``I think he wanted me to be in deep
mourning with him half the time, and laugh half the time to help heal
him of his grief.''

Harry stifled his irritation that Remus would ask that of Connor. Remus
probably hadn't even realized he was asking it. And it wasn't Connor's
fault that he wasn't the type of person to lie around on his bed for
weeks and refuse to eat when he was grieving someone. ``That does sound
boring,'' he agreed around a mouthful of pancakes. ``I was relieved to
hear that you'd got home all right from the World Cup. Did you suffer
any injuries when the crowd started running?''

Connor shook his head, looking faintly amused. ``That Ill Wind curse
roused protective instincts in Dad. I think it sent him back about
fifteen years, to when he used to be an Auror. He grabbed me, ran to the
nearest Portkey, and got us out right away. Luckily, he went to Lux
Aeterna and not somewhere else.''

Harry nodded. ``I thought something like that might have happened, but I
wasn't sure.''

``Harry, what are you doing?''

Harry blinked and looked up at Draco, who sounded far more indignant
than he should, given that Harry hadn't run out of his sight or battled
any Death Eaters this morning. ``Having breakfast,'' he said.

``With \emph{them}?'' Draco made it sound as though the Gryffindor table
was thick with flobberworms.

Harry caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye, and
turned his head. The Weasley twins were sitting a few seats down from
Connor, and had turned to watch Draco. A speculative gleam lit their
eyes. Harry winced. ``Um, Draco,'' he said, ``some of them are my
friends, too, and a lot of them are Connor's friends. Yes, I wanted to
have breakfast with them.''

Draco folded his arms. ``Well, I don't \emph{want} you to have breakfast
with them.''

Harry rolled his eyes and turned away, taking a bite of the pancakes. It
was best just to ignore Draco when he was like this. He would get past
it soon enough, especially when he saw how unimpressed Harry was with
his childish behavior.

Draco's hand abruptly latched onto his shoulder. ``Come on, Harry,'' he
hissed in his ear, sounding furious. ``Let's go back to the Slytherin
table, where we're at home and we belong.''

``Harry doesn't just belong there,'' Connor spoke up. ``We \emph{all}
read the papers, Malfoy. Harry dashed into danger at the World Cup to
save everyone else. I think that's pretty damn Gryffindor.''

He looked along the table. Surprised, Harry followed his gaze, and saw
other people nodding, or at least not looking as if they disagreed
outright. Neville Longbottom caught his eye and gave him a shy smile.

``Yeah,'' he said, loud enough to make just a few people turn to him. He
coughed and repeated himself. ``Yeah! Harry was brave, and I think that
means that he can sit here if he wants.'' He flinched then, as if
expecting to be attacked by a pride of rabid lions, but Hermione,
looking up from her book just then, nodded firmly.

``Yes, he can,'' she said. ``And I want to know more about the Ill Wind
curse, Harry, and what you did to counter it.''

Harry relaxed. Having a discussion of what Rosier had done in the
abstract was just the thing he needed to keep the memories of what it
had been \emph{really} like at bay. ``Well, the Ill Wind curse affects
the mind, so there are a few ways of fighting it. I used the
\emph{Ventus} spell on Draco. That clears his thoughts with a wind from
my own thoughts, which had resisted the spell. But you have to look
someone directly in the eye to do that, so of course it's of limited use
with that many people. The other solution is \emph{Finite Incantatem},
but---''

Draco abruptly seized his shoulder and yanked, hard. Harry released his
fork and plate in time for them to land on the table, but his spoon went
flying across the room and hit someone else on the head, provoking a
startled yelp.

Harry tensed his muscles and called up his magic, breaking free of
Draco's grip with a twist. ``What the hell are you doing?'' he snarled
at his friend, straightening up and brushing at his robe where Draco had
knocked it askew.

``We are going to eat at the Slytherin table,'' said Draco. ``I don't
like being here.''

``Then go sit down at the Slytherin table.'' Harry had to fight to
control his anger. Draco had always been protective of him, but, in this
case, there was nothing to be protective \emph{about.} The Gryffindors
were being perfectly pleasant. ``I'll join you for lunch, I promise
you.''

``Oh, does poor ickle Draco not feel at home at the Gryffindor table?''
one of the Weasley twins crooned abruptly. ``Don't worry, we'll make it
all better for him.''

Harry turned just in time to see the twins make flinging motions with
their hands, wrists snapping in unfamiliar motions. Two small objects
flew towards Draco, exploding at his feet. Trails of scarlet smoke raced
into the air and curled around Draco, hiding him entirely from sight for
a moment.

When the smoke cleared, most people stared and began roaring with
laughter. Harry could even hear chuckles coming from the Slytherin
table.

Draco now had hair in shocking shades of Gryffindor red and gold. His
tie was striped in the same colors, with a prancing lion in the center
of it, which paced and roared quite realistically. His robes had gone
gold in the top half, scarlet in the bottom, and appeared to be covered
in stars, from the way they glittered.

Harry shook his head. The twins really \emph{were} magical geniuses.
Harry could have willed that effect into being, maybe, but he could not
have combined the dozens of small spells they would have had to combine
to produce it.

The twins were half-collapsed over the table, they were laughing so
hard. Even Connor had joined in, though Harry thought he had tried to
resist, for his brother's sake. Neville was blinking, but other than
that, the only one at the Gryffindor table not laughing was Harry.

Draco stood where he was for a moment, face Gryffindor red with
humiliation, then turned and ran out of the room.

Harry tried to find it in himself to feel sorry for Draco, and couldn't.
Draco had been asking for it. It was one thing to complain and moan and
grumble about the Gryffindors---most of Slytherin House had done that,
at some time or another---but another thing altogether to try and tug
Harry away when he'd agreed to have breakfast with them. Harry rolled
his eyes and turned back to his pancakes, hoping that the twins'
enchantments would wear off soon.

``Harry?''

Harry blinked and turned around. He'd been so occupied with watching
Draco and the results of the prank that he hadn't noticed a small
delegation approaching him from the Ravenclaw table. Cho was in the lead
of it, but behind her were a girl that Harry vaguely knew from his own
year, Padma Patil, and Luna. Harry smiled at Luna, who gave him a slow,
dreamy smile back.

``Hi, Cho,'' said Harry. ``Has your ankle recovered?''

``Madam Pomfrey healed it in an instant, thank you,'' said Cho. ``But I
did not yet thank you properly for what you did in saving my life.'' She
inclined her head and held forth a silver plate that Harry took in
bewilderment. He studied it. It was round, with a pattern of what he
thought were trumpet flowers along the sides. He had never seen anything
like it that he could remember.

``My family has been dedicated to the Light for generations,'' said Cho,
solemnly, and turned to take a small object from Padma. ``But that does
not mean we cannot recognize the old magic of sacrifice and life debt.
We simply choose a different means to acknowledge it than blood.''

She set the object in the center of the plate. It was a dish, Harry saw,
also silver, with its sides worked as petals. It was also empty, but it
tingled with magic when it was set down, and then sealed itself to the
center of the plate. Harry balanced it carefully. It really wasn't much
heavier than the plate alone had been, and he had to marvel at the
craftsmanship.

``I choose to acknowledge my debt with water and with air, with earth
and with fire,'' Cho went on, utterly serene, as she took a pitcher from
Luna. She turned around again, and Harry realized for the first time
that she wore a silver clip in her long dark hair, shaped like a trumpet
flower itself. ``Metal from the earth, forged with the aid of fire, and
water that has fallen from the sky.'' Carefully, she poured the
pitcher's contents into the dish.

Harry saw it was rainwater, silver and trembling. It landed in the dish
and rippled for a moment, then stood utterly still.

Cho extended a hand towards plate and bowl and water, and whispered,
``\emph{Memento vitae.}''

All three objects promptly began to shine with a white light so
brilliant that Harry had to shield his eyes. When he could see again,
they had become a silver bracelet, edged with a pattern of trumpet
flowers, and trembling in color like rainwater. Harry held it up and
stared at it.

``I---thank you,'' he said.

``I owe you my life,'' said Cho simply. ``This is a reminder of it. If
you are ever in danger, touch the bracelet and repeat \emph{Memento
vitae.} I will hear it, or a member of my family will if I cannot help
you, and we will come.'' She fixed her dark eyes on Harry's face, and
waited to hear what he would say.

Harry nodded and clasped the bracelet around his wrist. ``Thank you. I
will wear it with pride.''

Cho bowed once, and then turned and walked back towards the Ravenclaw
table, Padma and Luna following her. Harry turned and sat back down,
blinking, at the Gryffindor table.

``You \emph{have} to teach me Light rituals,'' said Hermione abruptly,
shattering the silence. ``There's so much I don't understand!''

Harry, relieved, joined in the laughter this time.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape narrowed his eyes as he stood to make his way to his first class.
He had seen the pressure Draco put on Harry, and he understood it,
probably far better than either boy did.

He would not be able to use detentions, either to give Draco more
freedom and time apart from Harry, or to simply separate the boys. He
would have to give Draco something to occupy his time alone, something
special and personal and answering to his interests.

A certain Potions book, waiting patiently on the shelf in his office,
contained the answer.

\chapter{Scorpions of Ice}\label{chapter-16-scorpions-of-ice}

``---And \emph{stay out!}''

Harry flinched and backed away from the door to the fourth-year boys'
bedroom, shaking his head. Draco glared at him one more time, still from
beneath a shock of red-and-gold hair---no one had managed to reverse the
twins' enchantment, and Snape had given Draco a detention for bursting
out shouting about it in Double Potions---and then slammed the door.
That made Harry's ears ring again.

``Surprised, Potter?''

Harry glanced over his shoulder. Blaise Zabini was sitting half-sunk in
one of the large, comfortable green couches in front of the hearth, his
Charms book propped on his lap.

``Somewhat, yes,'' said Harry flatly, dropping into the chair across
from Blaise. ``By a number of things.''

Blaise grinned and stuck a finger in the page of his book. ``Come on,
then, Potter. Tell me about them.'' He cupped a hand around his ear and
waggled his fingers back and forth. ``No one ever said I wasn't good at
listening.''

\emph{But you never really cared to listen before,} Harry thought, and
glanced again at the shut door. Probably it was only Draco's spectacular
outburst that had earned the attention of the most standoffish member of
Slytherin House's younger years.

Harry shrugged. Draco, now probably sprawled on the outermost of the
room's four beds and scowling at the ceiling with his hands folded
behind his head, was not going to give him any answers. If Blaise would,
then Harry could put up with his generally irritating and condescending
presence.

``All right. First question.'' Harry brought his gaze back to Blaise's
face. ``Why is Draco so angry at me? I tried to reverse the enchantment,
and I told him what Cho's bracelet meant when he asked.''

Blaise clucked his tongue. ``But you didn't do it \emph{quickly} enough,
Potter. And you didn't do what would really have pleased him. And
Malfoys are accustomed to being pleased, you know.''

``Then I'm asking about that, too.'' Harry ran his hand through his hair
in frustration. ``I must have made some big mistake with him, but I
don't remember what it was. He was fine just a few days ago, when---''
He realized just in time that revealing the meeting with his allies to
Blaise would be a tactical error. He had met Blaise's mother only once,
on Walpurgis Night in the spring, and there was no reason to think, yet,
that she was interested in an alliance. He continued the sentence as
smoothly as possible. ``When he saw me after the Minister's attack. And
since then, we've been together every moment, except when he ran off
after breakfast and I went to see Professor Snape yesterday evening. I
don't know what could be bothering him.''

``You're not paying as much attention to him as you used to, of
course,'' said Blaise, sitting back in the couch and looking at Harry as
if he were an idiot. ``Would you have gone and sat with your brother at
breakfast last year?''

``My brother was an idiot most of last year,'' said Harry. He wasn't
sure what felt better, being able to admit that or knowing that Connor's
idiocy was mostly in the past.

``So, you wouldn't have,'' Blaise poked.

``No.''

Blaise nodded. ``So Draco might think that he's losing you to other
friends, or that he could.'' He extended a hand in front of him and
flipped it over. ``And then you didn't come after him when he fled the
Great Hall.''

``He'd done an idiotic thing,'' said Harry flatly. ``And I wanted to
stay and talk to Connor and the other Gryffindors.''

``I'm sure you did,'' said Blaise. ``And it would have
been\ldots{}undiplomatic to appear to run from Chang just when she was
approaching to offer you a formal thanks. So I agree about that.''

Harry raised his eyebrows. ``In case it escaped you here, I'm asking for
help, Blaise. What else should I have done?''

``I suppose that depends on whether you're thinking like a Malfoy or
not.'' Blaise dropped his Charms textbook altogether and linked his
hands behind his head. \emph{He's enjoying this,} Harry realized. Of
course, Blaise had long said he got off on other people's pain; he even
took Care of Magical Creatures mainly to enjoy the moments when one of
Hagrid's pets got out of control and bit someone else. ``According to
Draco, you should have come after him immediately. Malfoys are used to
getting what they want. Someone interested in allying with the Light
families would say that you should have stayed and negotiated with Chang
the way you did. Your brother would probably say that you should have
spent time with him.'' Blaise shrugged. ``What do \emph{you} think,
Harry?''

Harry cocked his head. \emph{Remember, he's the son of a Dark but
unaligned witch. And he's testing you now.}

Harry had been aware of the glances the other Slytherins gave him ever
since he got back into the House common room yesterday. Most of them
were sidelong or sneaked, and some were accompanied by smiles and some
by frowns, but the one thing all of them did was weigh and measure.
Harry knew that some of their families were Dark and unaligned, some
Light and unaligned, some undeclared. Some were the children of Death
Eaters. Harry would have to remember the affiliations of each and every
member of Slytherin House he talked with, especially someone like
Blaise, whom he didn't know well.

Luckily, his mother's training had honed him for that.

``I think that I should have done exactly what I did,'' said Harry,
``seeing as it \emph{was} what I did, and I have to live with the effects
whether I like them or not.''

Blaise's face relaxed into a small smile. ``I can at least appreciate
the cleverness of that,'' he said.

Harry shook his head, and resisted the impulse to say that it wasn't
cleverness, just truth. \emph{Let your enemies think they know more of
you than they do, and fill in the gaps with their own inventions.} That
particular thought came along with his mother's voice, her intonation,
and he put the pain aside, too. ``All right. So Draco has to remain a
volatile ingredient for now. Second question, then, or set of them.
Where's Greg?''

Blaise's face tightened, and then drained of all expression. ``What do
you mean?'' he asked.

Harry snorted. ``It's true that I don't spend all that much time with
Greg or Vince, but I do notice when one of them is \emph{missing},
Blaise. I know that he's not attending Hogwarts this year. Why?''

Blaise fidgeted with his hands in his lap a moment. ``What makes you
think I know anything?'' he asked.

``Because you tensed up when I asked.''

Blaise said something under his breath that was probably a curse. Then
he said, ``Look, Harry.'' Harry blinked at the sudden switch to his
first name, and then realized that it had probably been meant to throw
him off-guard. ``I do know. That much is true. But there's also a reason
that no one has mentioned it around you yet.'' He looked up. ``Political
reasons.''

Harry made himself relax, even smile. ``I hope I've shown I'm very much
open to allying with Dark wizards and witches.''

``Yes,'' said Blaise. ``And that helps. But you're also the brother of
the Boy-Who-Lived, and blood speaks louder than actions or oaths for a
lot of the older families.'' He leaned back on the couch and closed his
eyes slightly, lowering his voice until it was barely more than a
whisper. ``Harry, we know that you're your own side, in a lot of ways,
but we also know which side you're never, ever going to stand for. We're
not stupid.''

It didn't take Harry long to make the connection, after that.

\emph{Voldemort. The Death Eaters. Greg's father was a Death Eater, and
only cleared on the word of Lucius Malfoy.}

\emph{His father has removed him from school because he doesn't want him
sleeping in the same room, in the same House, with the brother of the
Boy-Who-Lived. Or maybe he just wants to get him out of the way of the
war. But either way, it's the only reason no one would mention him
around me.}

Harry opened his eyes fully and looked at Blaise. The boy was giving him
a cool look, but beneath the surface, it had an awful lot in common with
the gaze of a trapped hare. Either way he leaped, he had a lot to fear
from the two sides.

Harry gave him a grim smile. ``Don't worry,'' he said. ``I know what you
mean. And I won't tell anyone that you told.''

Blaise let go his tension, bit by bit. ``Thanks, Potter,'' he muttered.
``From anyone else, I'd wonder what they wanted, but you\ldots{}I just
\emph{believe} you when you say that, you know?'' He sounded faintly
disgusted with himself.

``I wish other people would,'' muttered Harry, with a glance at the door
to their room, and then stood. At least his schoolbag was still in the
common room, where he'd dropped it after Charms that afternoon. He might
as well get started, both on the more mundane homework that he could
easily pretend to be average at and on the complicated Potions research
that Snape had set him---and on his own efforts to improve the Calming
Potion. There \emph{had} to be a way, even if twenty years of research
hadn't found it.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Draco lay on his bed and stewed.

No, he lay on his bed and \emph{seethed.} The other word sounded too
common, too plebian, for his grand and overpowering rage.

It had \emph{not} been a good day. After the debacle of breakfast, he
had found that he couldn't reverse the twins' enchantment; in fact,
trying only made his hair and his robes begin to radiate scarlet and
gold auras. Then he had encountered Harry as they went in for Potions,
and Harry had refused to apologize for sitting at the Gryffindor table,
and had shown off the life debt bracelet from that bitch Chang, and
totally failed to understand why Draco was so upset with him. Draco had
yelled at him, as was within his rights, and Snape had given him a
detention.

Then the enchantments wouldn't come off for the rest of the day. When
Draco made his way back to the Slytherin common room, Harry had followed
him. At first, he had been gratifyingly apologetic, but then he had
asked what he had done to make Draco so upset. Draco had shoved him out
of the room and locked the door so that he could be alone.

And to top it all off, he thought as he shot a glance at the clock, he
would now be late for his detention with Snape if he didn't hurry.

Forcing himself to his feet with a groan, Draco unlocked the door and
stormed through it, giving deadly glares to anyone who dared to look at
him. He'd tried changing robes, but found that the twins' enchantment
was somehow anchored to his skin, not his clothing; the new robes just
acquired the red and gold hues, too, and a new tie acquired the lion.
And nothing at all could be done to restore his hair.

And Harry was gone, too, instead of being there for Draco to glare at.

It just was not \emph{fair.}

Draco stomped to Snape's offices in a huff, and knocked firmly on the
door, and stood there with arms folded, waiting.

Snape opened the door. He looked at Draco with the same deeply
uninterested gaze he'd used during Potions, as though nothing Draco did
or said or wore could possibly matter, and said, ``You are late by two
minutes. Come in.''

Draco stamped inside and then whirled around as his professor shut the
door. Snape at least knew certain inalienable truths about, among other
things, Draco's feelings for Harry. He might deny them, but he knew
them, and that made him safe to yell at in a way that Harry wasn't. He
also didn't make Draco hurt quite so much when he snapped back. ``Why
didn't you \emph{do} something to the Weasleys?'' he yelled, waving his
arms. ``Two of them hexed one of your Slytherins right in the Great
Hall, and you didn't so much as take off five points!''

Snape merely watched him, head on one side, body still. It crept in on
Draco, distantly, that he had never seen his professor so devoid of
movement. It reminded him of the way he had seen his father once or
twice, when---

When he had been sitting in his study, contemplating the Dark Mark on
his arm.

Draco swallowed and took a step backward. The indignant bubble he had
lived in all day popped, and he realized that he stood in a room with
someone infinitely more dangerous than Snape had ever been. Snape's rage
had always been low, he had almost never raised his voice, but now it
was cold, too.

``I will not take off points,'' Snape began at last, after five more
moments of silence in which Draco could clearly hear his heartbeat,
``when the Weasleys have done a service to the school in chiding the
\emph{idiocy} of one of my Slytherins.'' The emphasis he gave that one
word was icy; there was no other term for it. Draco felt his cheeks pale
in fear, rather than flush. ``No, Draco, you must learn better. You
\emph{will} learn better. I will undertake your instruction myself.''

``What do you mean?'' Draco whispered.

Snape took a single gliding step forward, though it wasn't really a
glide, not the way Draco had always thought of his professor's movement
in the past. Instead, he simply disappeared from one place and appeared
in another, it seemed, suddenly, and much closer to Draco. Draco fought
the nervous urge to shuffle back, but he could not combat the urge to
swallow. Snape studied him with black, flat, dead eyes, the way that
Draco thought a spider might contemplate a fly in its web.

``Your behavior embarrasses our House,'' said Snape. ``Your obsession
weakens you. Your carelessness could endanger Harry. For these reasons,
and others, I am going to make sure that you \emph{change}, Draco.''

He abruptly turned and strode out of the room, through a seldom-used
door that Draco knew led to his library of books he did not want
students come on detentions to see. Draco stood there, dazed, blinking,
for a moment, and then followed.

Snape had already selected a book from the shelf, and he tossed it
underhanded to Draco. Draco caught it, and stared at it.

\emph{Medicamenta Meatus Verus}, it read. Draco's mind translated the
title without really thinking about it. \emph{Potions of the True Path.}

``What is this?'' he asked, blinking at Snape. He'd thought of some
forbidden Potions or Dark Arts book when Snape had first mentioned that
he was going to change Draco's behavior, but he didn't recognize this
title, and he knew all the famous ones.

``A test,'' said Snape. ``And a binding. And a project for you, to lead
you out of the shadows you insist on putting yourself in, into light.''
His mouth twitched with something too chill and faint to be called a
smile. ``Or into true darkness, if you wish to think of it that way.''

As though it had taken Snape's words to let him become aware of it,
Draco felt the magic of the book then. It sang beneath his fingertips,
purring power that was watching him and aware of him, but not going to
do anything to him until he opened it.

He opened it.

Draco watched in terrified amazement as his fingers skimmed past several
pages, riffling them, until they settled onto one in particular. It
felt---\emph{right} as his fingers came down on that page, and the magic
was purring loud enough to make the book vibrate now. Draco looked at
the title of the potion.

He felt his face flush, but he shook his head. ``That isn't---this
potion doesn't exist,'' he whispered. ``It can't possibly.''

``And why not?'' Snape had moved forward so that he loomed over Draco.

``Because my father would have found it, if so.'' Draco stared at the
page, and felt the scars tear off an old, old wound. ``He was furious
when I turned ten and I still hadn't shown any signs of being
sympathetic enough to his own magic to become his magical heir.'' Draco
could still hear his father's words, yelling, the one time he had ever
seen Lucius lose control. \emph{There has been a magical heir in the
Malfoy line for the last thirteen generations, and that will not stop
now!} But nothing could be done about it; either Draco's magic was
enough like his father's to receive Lucius's abilities and knowledge on
his deathbed and showed signs of being so early in life, or it was not
and did not, and Draco's was the latter. Lucius had grown resigned to a
late manifestation in the years that followed, but never quite given up
hope, though Draco knew his hopes dipped lower and lower every year.
``I---this isn't---he would have learned of this potion if it were real.
This is a hoax, a trick.'' He turned to look up at Snape, his eyes
narrowed, his brain feeling free of fog for the first time since he had
realized he was in love with Harry. ``Why are you playing a trick on
me?''

Snape stood looking into his eyes for a long moment. Draco watched his
face tighten. Then he nodded firmly at the book.

``It is real, I promise you,'' said Snape. ``As for why it is not more
widely-known? The author of this particular book was a brilliant Potions
Master, but not regarded as such by her colleagues, because she did not
achieve her results in any traditional way. In bitterness and revenge,
she recorded her finest discoveries here and hid them away from the
world. My---inheritance was lucky to include the book.''

Draco regarded the potion for a long moment. Then he said, ``Sir? Have
you used it?''

``I was unable to.'' Snape sounded entirely unemotional. ``The potion
relies on purity of blood as well as sympathy of magic. My mother was
pureblood. My father was a Muggle.''

Draco felt his mouth drop open. He had not guessed it, although he had
known, in the back of his mind, that Snape did not come of an
established pureblood line. After all, there was no family named Snape.
But he had not thought that---well, that Snape's blood was tainted quite
that \emph{recently.}

He stared at Snape. Snape stared back.

Draco was reminded, abruptly, that Snape, tainted or not, was a powerful
wizard, the third most powerful in the school after Dumbledore and
Harry, and also a Legilimens. Draco wasn't sure what Snape had learned
from looking him in the eye, but he found that he didn't want to match
stares with him any more.

His hands clamped on the book, and the potions recipe. That wrinkled the
page, so he smoothed it out again, frantically. Already, he could feel a
new, burning ambition stirring within him.

\emph{This potion\ldots{}if this potion really could let me bring back
one of my ancestors' ghosts whose magic was sympathetic to mine, then I
could become a Malfoy magical heir. Not Father's, but still an heir of
our family.}

And that would open horizons that Draco had known would close to him
when he reached the age of seventeen without manifesting his sympathy to
his father's magic and Lucius could deny the obvious no longer. He would
be shut out of most formal alliance meetings. He would not be considered
as a potential business partner by some of the pickier purebloods, in
Europe and elsewhere. He would be unable to achieve some magical
training that he might want.

He might be considered an unworthy partner for a powerful witch or
wizard.

He looked up at Snape, though he didn't meet his eyes. ``It will take a
lot of research,'' he whispered.

Snape inclined his head. ``Research into your family background, into
your own magic, into your ancestors' magic, to learn who might be most
sympathetic to you,'' he said. ``Research into birth and marriage
records, to make sure that the ancestor you choose is pureblooded.
Research into the beginning stages of necromancy, that you might summon
the ghost to you. I know. The potion took me two years to achieve when I
tried it out of simple curiosity as to what would happen.''

Draco blew out his breath. ``I'll achieve it by the end of the school
year,'' he said. ``I promise, Professor Snape.''

``Good,'' said Snape, still sounding unmoved. ``I should like my book
back.''

Draco turned and hurried out of the room, the book clasped to his heart.
His brain seemed sharp, clear, whirling up all sorts of ideas about what
subjects he would like to look up in the library. His imagination
painted clear, new pictures of the future. It was all he could do to
keep from laughing aloud.

He had something to \emph{do.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape watched Draco go, his head on one side. He felt as calm as the
mask he had presented to the boy. So was his mind, for that matter.
Harry or Dumbledore might look at the surface of his thoughts and see
nothing but order, focused on potions research or ways to best train
Harry to survive the Death Eaters.

Of course they would. The real agitation in his thoughts lay far below
the surface, at a level he had never reached but once. During the year
when he was spying for the Order of the Phoenix under Voldemort, he had
lived on this level, where driving determination and absolute clear
knowledge of what it would mean to fail had made him unstoppable.

There, he had gone entirely cold.

He could remember his mother's first lessons if he but closed his eyes.
In many ways, his mother had been like Lily Potter, though she had
taught him lessons that turned out not to do warping damage to his
brain, but to be utter, bitter truth.

\emph{Darkness came before light. The Dark wizards all say that,
Severus. But they forget the whole truth. There is one thing older than
darkness. The cold came before even the dark did.}

\emph{When you must survive, go cold, not hot. It will keep you alive.}

And he had, and it kept him alive. And now he had again, since he had
realized what Harry's abduction meant and what kind of firestorm Harry
was calling, and what Draco's obsession was and what \emph{it} meant.

This coldness would save all three of them, and anyone else it was
necessary to save, because the proper people were not doing what they
\emph{should} have been doing.

Snape stalked into his office. His thoughts went on turning in the
darkness, glittering cold wheels, born of snowflakes and bred of
icicles, shining and dancing, dancing.

\emph{Medicamenta Meatus Verus} was indeed a very valuable book, one his
mother had acquired in one of her untraceable ways, and Snape had told
Draco the truth about its author. Scorned by other Potions Masters,
proud, embittered, Melissa Prince had written all her knowledge down and
then never attempted to see her book get the kind of attention it
deserved.

But she had also worked an enchantment into the book itself, one that
she let cost her life, and one that traveled into any new copy of the
book that was made, by hand or magically. The book chose the right
potion for the person who held it, the right path. And once that person
began the necessary research, a binding compulsion would link to their
mind and their will, not letting them abandon the project until it was
finished. It was Melissa Prince's one way of insuring that her legacy
would live on.

The potion it had chosen for Snape when he first opened it had let him
see his soul. Since then, he had lived with no illusions about himself.
It had been rather shattering at first, but it was necessary, and it was
another thing that had let him survive.

Draco would follow the path of this potion, the one Snape had thought
the book would choose for the boy, until he finished it. And he would
grow both new powers and his own life. The boy had mentioned an interest
in history. Snape thought what he would discover in the history of his
own family would be quite, quite interesting.

The fact that he had laid a compulsion on the boy was not something
Harry would have done, nor Dumbledore, and possibly not something Draco
would have wanted if Snape had asked him about it.

Snape, gone cold, did not care. No one else was seeing what harm Draco's
obsession could do. So Snape would do something about it. No one else
would. Besides, the boy was already struggling under the remnants of a
compulsion, as Snape had seen when he looked into his mind---one that
Harry's brother had put on him last year. It was sunken deeply into
Draco's mind now, almost part of the fabric of his thoughts, unable to
be plucked out without doing considerable damage to his sanity. That
compulsion had made him think about his feelings for Harry, constantly,
and was probably part of the reason that he was going so mad now.
Answering a compulsion with a compulsion, when the second one would
ultimately lead to freedom, was something that Snape had no objection to
doing.

As for Harry\ldots{}

Snape's eyes narrowed. He had watched, from the shadows, as Harry threw
\emph{Sectumsempra} at Bellatrix Lestrange. He had not interfered. He
did not wish to. His new, cold temper insisted that he keep a watch on
the boy to see how he would handle the situation, and he had seen. Then
he had spoken with him afterward.

He had panicked before. He had attempted to protect the boy from every
danger possible. \emph{That} was not possible.

So he would not panic, not anymore. He would do what was necessary
instead: train Harry\ldots{}.

And go on the offensive.

Snape turned. In the corner of his office, three potions simmered, all
of them new, and original to him. One was clear in color, one the thick
off-white of parchment, one yellow and red and lit by a candle floating
on a mimicry of a lily pad on the surface.

Snape narrowed his eyes at them, and felt nothing but quiet satisfaction
on the surface, while underneath it---\emph{far} underneath it---the
cold lashed like a scorpion made of ice.

\emph{I am done playing games.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry tried to crane his neck to see what Draco was reading. Without
looking up, Draco leaned away from him.

Harry sighed and fidgeted with his toast, not feeling hungry. He hadn't
really felt hungry ever since the beginning of breakfast. Today was
their first Defense Against the Dark Arts class, and Harry was still
nervous around Moody, his reputation for hating Dark magic, and his
silver collar.

Of course, the real source of his tension was Draco.

Draco had spoken little to him in the past week. Oh, sometimes he gave
Harry an accusing glare (as he had when Harry finally found the spell
combination that rid him of the twins' ridiculous coloring), and
sometimes he entered an animated discussion of class or the mysterious,
hush-hush secret that had the professors all talking in odd clumps in
the corridors. But mostly, he kept to himself, and read, and just
shrugged when Harry attempted to talk to him.

It was putting Harry a bit off his food.

He looked boredly up at the ceiling as the post owls swooped in, and
then blinked. An owl was actually making for his table, carrying
something for him. He caught it on his outstretched arm, and felt a
faint shimmer of a web, gone too swiftly for him to make anything out.
He frowned. He would have to investigate the bindings on the owls
someday.

He drew out the letter from the twine, and recognized the Headmaster's
writing at once.

\emph{Harry,}

\emph{I would like you to come see me at eight'o'clock this evening. It
is past time that we discussed what your being} vates \emph{might mean.
My password is ``Treacle Tart.''}

\emph{Albus Dumbledore.}

Harry shot a glance at the high table, not sure the Headmaster was
serious, but received a look in return that didn't twinkle or make false
promises. Harry inclined his head, and fed the owl a bit of his toast.
It wasn't doing him any good right now anyway.

Again, his glance went back to Draco. Silly as it was, he felt as though
he were missing a limb with Draco so far away, even if it was only in
mind.

\emph{Now} that's \emph{silly,} Harry thought to himself in derision,
and stood to get ready for Defense Against the Dark Arts

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry raised his eyebrows when he entered the Defense classroom. Every
other professor he'd had had already been there, trying to settle in
without making it look as though he were settling in, giving the room
and the desk dubious glances. Lockhart had already arranged his
photographs on the walls that first day, to wink and gleam and grin at
the students. Remus had been ready with his illusions. Even Quirrell had
at least tried to look mysterious, even though his trembling hands, his
stutter, and the ridiculous turban that concealed Voldemort on the back
of his head had severely undercut that image.

Moody was nowhere in sight.

``Think he ran away when he heard he had to teach you?'' Draco whispered
behind him.

Harry, grateful that Draco was speaking to him again even if it was to
tease, turned around and raised an eyebrow at him. ``Or you, maybe.''

``But you're more powerful, and you got the Hounds arrested,'' Draco
pointed out, as he took his seat and got his book out. Harry tried again
to catch a glimpse of the cover of the book he was reading, but Draco
slid it deftly out of sight. He met Harry's eyes, and his voice grew
sharp. ``I think that teaching you would be enough to wear anyone out.
Sometimes you're blind to what's right in front of your face.''

Harry narrowed his eyes, but didn't respond. They were hovering on the
verge of moving from teasing to true argument, and the best reply he
could give---which would involve Moody's capture of Lucius at one of the
scenes of his crimes---would hurt Draco too much. Harry sat down and
faced forward.

This time, he noticed the faint shimmer in front of the desk, the mark
of a Disillusionment Charm. Harry tensed and called his magic, but
waited. It might be a threat, but it might also be a trick.

Just as the first of the students began to relax and complain about
their professor's absence, Moody burst into existence, shedding the
Disillusionment Charm and leaning in front of the desk. The girl who'd
complained, Susan Bones from Hufflepuff, promptly fainted, sliding down
under the chair with a thump. Harry winced and kept one eye on Moody as
he checked on her. She seemed to be fine.

``Do you see that?'' Moody snarled at them, pacing back and forth in
front of the desk with harsh \emph{clumps} of his wooden leg. ``I was in
the room all the time, and no one noticed.'' For a moment, his magical
eye alit on Harry, but it didn't stay there. It came back to Susan, who
was just starting to sit up. ``\emph{CONSTANT VIGILANCE!}'' Moody roared,
causing the girl to shriek and half-faint again. This time, two of her
friends caught her and helped her back into her seat.

Moody turned around fast in front of the desk. Harry could see the gleam
of the silver collar around his neck, and the flask at his hip which
contained what he said was his ``preferred drink.'' He came to rest with
his wand pointing at Harry.

\emph{I don't trust him,} Regulus snarled in his head.

\emph{Why not?} Harry asked, though with the fierce, scarred face
staring directly at him and the wand pointing at his face, he could see
why not.

\emph{He uses too much of his reputation,} said Regulus. \emph{He's
acting} too \emph{much like Moody.}

\emph{Overacting?}

\emph{No, he's too good for that. He acts} too \emph{much like Moody,}
Regulus repeated.

\emph{Regulus, you can't act too much like yourself.}

\emph{Yes, you can. You did it when you were still mooning after that
impossible brother of yours.}

``Mr. Potter,'' Moody growled, catching his attention. ``Do you think
that are proficient in the Dark Arts?''

Harry could feel the attention of the class becoming pinned to him like
a butterfly to a corkboard. Zacharias Smith in particular had a
scorching stare. Harry remembered, suddenly, that his family was Light.
That particular fact had never mattered much before. Now it did.

\emph{I'll have to pay attention to the allegiances of families besides
the ones in Slytherin,} he thought, and answered Moody.

``Which definition of Dark Arts are you using, sir?''

Moody tapped his wand on his wooden leg. ``Stop dodging and answer the
question, Potter,'' he barked.

``I can't until I know which definition you're using,'' said Harry. He
felt his skin flinching and crawling under the stares. Yes, he'd got a
lot of stares the day after Skeeter's article, too, but those he had
expected and could handle. These were unexpected, and decidedly
unwelcome.

``You're dodging like a Death Eater,'' said Moody, limping a step
closer. ``Are you a Death Eater, Potter?''

Harry lifted his left arm, never taking his eyes from Moody, and tilted
it so that his robe sleeve slid back, exposing his blank left forearm.

Moody snorted. ``All well and good to have no Dark Mark, but how do you
\emph{prove} that you aren't a Death Eater?''

``You don't,'' said Harry. He was forcibly reminded of his interrogation
by Fudge, when the man had refused to recognize basic logic. ``You can't
prove a negative. If someone accuses me of being a Death Eater, the
proof is up to them.'' He leaned forward. ``How would you prove that I
am, Professor Moody?''

``The use of Dark Arts would answer for itself, I should think.'' Moody
still stared at him intently, no trace of a smile on his face.

``But lots of people use Dark Arts,'' said Harry, and kept his eyes wide
and innocent, his voice breathless. He didn't want to expose this, but,
on the other hand, he didn't want a term of constant harassment by
Moody, either---or a whole school year of it. Better to slap him down,
now and hard. \emph{And look, Snape, I'm not even using any Dark Arts
spells to do it!} ``I know that you used Dark Arts when you wanted to
capture Death Eaters, Auror Moody. There are rumors that you used
\emph{Imperio} on a few of them who absolutely refused to cooperate, and
the Ministry granted you a special exemption to use it. Yet it's still
Dark Arts, isn't it?'' He blinked at Moody with the guileless expression
of a child. ``Or does a Ministry exemption change the nature of magic?''

Zacharias Smith chuckled. Moody's eyes moved briefly to him, then came
back to Harry, resting on him with feral intensity.

\emph{He hates you,} said Regulus.

\emph{Can you reach into his mind, then?}

\emph{No. But I'm reading his expression. He hates you, Harry.}

\emph{Or he hates the Dark Arts, and hates that a student can walk
freely around Hogwarts after practicing them.} Harry studied Moody's
face, and his collar. \emph{You were the one who told me that Rosier was
mad for telling me to distrust Moody, that he would never yield to
Voldemort and his Death Eaters.}

There was a long, deep pause. Then, even as Regulus sighed, Moody said,
``\emph{Well} done, Potter. Five points to Slytherin.''

Harry blinked. ``What, sir?''

Moody nodded at him, then spun around to address the class again.
``Constant vigilance!'' he shouted. ``You have to be prepared for an
attack at any time---magical, physical, or verbal. Potter was ready for
this attack. The rest of you should be, too.'' He took a long step
forward. ``Smith, if I told you to tell me what was so funny about Mr.
Potter's statement, could you do it?''

Harry let out a long, shaky breath.

\emph{I don't trust him,} Regulus growled in his head.

\emph{Yes, we've established that,} Harry thought in exasperation, and
sat back to watch Moody rip into the other students. His method of
teaching, if that was all it was, was really no more brutal than
Snape's, though Snape's voice was usually lower when he did it.

If that was all it was.

It was true that a few Hufflepuffs darted nervous glances at Harry when
Moody wasn't looking, but Harry was fairly sure of them. Justin, Ernie,
and Hannah were good sorts. Susan knew him less well, but her friends
could calm her from thinking the worst of him. Zacharias was---well, not
a friend, not really, but logical and skeptical and prone to attacking
all things, which would include Moody's teaching methods, with ferocious
energy. Any plan that Moody might have to make them afraid of Harry was
not going to work.

\emph{And not with anyone else either, hopefully.}

\emph{I just wonder if he could have something to do with finding
Voldemort,} said Regulus, abruptly.

Harry blinked. \emph{What?}

\emph{Finding Voldemort,} said Regulus, as if Harry were stupid.
\emph{They're searching the Black Forest for him right now. They don't
have much time. He knows they're close, but they haven't found him yet.}

Harry sat up slowly, though, when Moody glanced at him, he pretended the
motion was a grab for his book. \emph{Regulus, what are you talking
about?}

Regulus abruptly stopped talking. \emph{Um}.

Harry dipped his quill into his inkwell, and waited.

\emph{I, um. I, um, have a connection with the older form of Voldemort,
still, since he tortured me for so long,} said Regulus. \emph{I, um.
Have been following it occasionally and trying to find out what he's
doing?}

Harry bit down on his lip, and mastered the temptation to curse out
loud. Connor had taught him to master it, last year. \emph{Is that where
you've been the times that I couldn't reach you?}

\emph{Um. Some of them?}

Harry hissed.

\emph{You don't understand!} Regulus abruptly wailed. \emph{I feel so
useless, so helpless, without a body, and you heard Dumbledore last
year, the Dark Lord has a lot of trouble recognizing passive links to
his mind, so I thought I would follow mine, and exploit it, and so far I
haven't learned much, but---}

\emph{If you would just let me} tell \emph{Narcissa about the wards and
lower them for her, then you could have your body back!}

\emph{I don't want her to come in here,} said Regulus, and sulked at
him.

Harry kept himself from hurling the inkwell across the room, but it was
a near thing. \emph{Promise me that you won't go hunting down your
connection to the older Voldemort any more.}

Regulus left.

Harry mostly resisted the temptation to bury his head in his hands and
groan aloud because Moody had rounded on him again.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Treacle Tart,'' Harry told the gargoyle outside the Headmaster's
office, and it jumped out of the way. Harry shook his head as he stepped
onto the moving staircase. Only a few months ago, he would have felt
deeply intimidated and nervous, and would have wanted Snape with him.

That was then, and this was now, when he was mostly impatient and
wondered what in the world Dumbledore could possibly \emph{want.}

The staircase left him outside the Headmaster's door. Harry composed
himself enough to knock, and in the moments it took Dumbledore to
answer, reached after Regulus. It was no use. He'd never really been
able to sense the actual connection that Regulus used to reach his mind,
only whether he was there or not, and he had no way of calling Sirius's
stupid brother back.

``Come in.''

Harry pushed the door open and stopped, blinking. Dumbledore's office
had changed in the months since Harry had seen it last. Fawkes's perch
was still in its place, and the Sword of Gryffindor hung on the wall in
a glass case, but the shelves were now mostly filled with books instead
of odd silver devices. Dumbledore had several locked cabinets along the
walls now, but one of them, full of Pensieves, was open. Dumbledore's
desk was loaded with a single huge Pensieve, the silver liquid
shimmering near the brim and almost running out of the bowl.

Dumbledore turned around from examining the Pensieve cabinet, his face a
mask of calm. ``Ah, my dear boy. Come in.''

``We were going to discuss what being \emph{vates} means,'' said Harry,
feeling that he should establish at once what he was there for. He had
told Snape where he was going, and received one long, inscrutable look
from dark eyes, before Snape had nodded his permission. Then he had
turned to tend one of the three potions bubbling in cauldrons at the
back of the room, none of which Harry recognized. Snape's strangeness,
like Draco's, was putting him a bit off his food. ``Sir,'' he added,
when he found that Dumbledore's gaze was resting on him a bit too
heavily.

Dumbledore nodded. ``Yes. Have you heard of Falco Parkinson, Harry?''

Harry, caught by surprise, blinked for a moment, then said, ``Yes. He was
Headmaster of Hogwarts at one time, and tried to negotiate with the
magical creatures, but was harmed by them for it. He also supposedly
tried to be \emph{vates.}''

``He did,'' said Dumbledore simply. He covered the Pensieve with one
hand, turning it so that Harry could see part of the long title carved
on it. \emph{With Falco Parkinson}, it said. ``And he was my mentor.''

Harry blinked at Dumbledore. ``I thought he lived before your time,
sir.''

Dumbledore shook his head. ``He lived much longer than is generally
supposed. Sit down, please, Harry.''

Harry took a chair in front of the desk, staring with wary fascination
at the Pensieve. He wanted to see what was in it, but, on the other
hand, Dumbledore had used Pensieves to trick him before.

``He became interested in being \emph{vates} while still a young man,
when he felt his power growing in him,'' said Dumbledore, tapping the
edge of the Pensieve with one finger. It made a ringing sound. ``You
understand that a \emph{vates} must be a powerful wizard, Harry? And
why?''

``Because otherwise he wouldn't have the power necessary to break the
webs,'' Harry supplied.

Dumbledore winced. ``Ah. Yes. That is something I thought you might have
got wrong.''

Harry narrowed his eyes. ``It's not something I made up, sir. It's
something that Dobby and Fawkes told me.''

Dumbledore smiled sadly. ``I cannot speak for Fawkes. I believe him to
be a creature of the highest good, Harry, and I wish that I still had
him with me. But as for the house elves\ldots{}they have been bound for
a long, long time, Harry. Do you believe that one of them would be above
lying, if he managed to have enough strength of mind to think about it,
in order to gain his freedom?''

Harry hated the tiny seed of doubt that sprang up in him. He tried to
crush it before it could come to full blossom. ``If you think that a
powerful wizard has to be \emph{vates} for another reason, sir, then
show me what it is.''

Dumbledore nodded and removed his hand from the top of the Pensieve.
``We will enter this together, Harry, so that you need fear no tricks
from me.''

Harry leaned forward and put his head beneath the surface of the
Pensieve, all the time watching as Dumbledore's beard descended beside
him. And then the silver liquid closed over him, and flipped him around
twice, and rolled him over, and he found himself standing in a small
meadow.

The meadow was at the bottom of a hollow, a spot in the land shaped like
two cupped hands. Harry found himself breathing more deeply, as though
to take in the scent of the air, though he knew it was only a memory.
The air around him sparkled faintly, with a sheen Harry had before seen
only in water, and the flowers were a kind he was sure he had never
studied, so brilliantly scarlet that the sunlight flinched back from
them. More, a faint, subtle song seemed to be coming from the side.

Harry turned, and found a man who must be a younger Albus Dumbledore,
from the ridiculous robes he was wearing, standing next to a far older
wizard. He radiated such power that Harry understood at once where the
sheen and the scent and the song in the air came from. This was a Light
Lord of considerable strength.

Falco Parkinson's face was mapped with intricate lines, some of them
wrinkles that didn't look natural to Harry. He leaned on a staff of
white oak wood, and his robes were twined with glittering silver sigils
that Harry thought were letters, though not ones he knew. His eyes were
a piercing green, his hair the silver of the sigils, and flowing down to
nearly meet the middle of his back. He was speaking, in a melodious
voice that added to the song in the air. Harry crept forward to listen
to him.

``\ldots{}that is why being \emph{vates} is so hard, Albus, why so many
of us cannot do it. We keep trying to find ways around the ultimate
solution to ease relations between wizards and the magical creatures,
but there is no other path.''

``And what is the solution, sir?'' Dumbledore's voice was soft and
respectful. Harry blinked. He had known, of course, that Dumbledore had
been different when he was younger, but somehow, seeing and hearing it
brought it home to him with more force than he had thought existed.

``The sacrifice of magic.'' Falco moved an arm, and one of the flowers
rose from the ground into the air, turning. Its roots extended to link
around the Light Lord's arm, and it began to sing. Falco gazed at it
sadly. ``Such power as I use right now, to make this little flower sing
and grow elsewhere than the soil, could be used to content the unicorns,
to give them a gift that would make the loss of their freedom seem as
nothing. But in giving that up, I would sacrifice some of my magic, like
cutting off one of my own limbs. That power would never return to me.''

Harry blinked, and felt light-headed. He saw from the younger
Dumbledore's face that he likely felt the same way.

``And that is why so many wizards trying to be \emph{vates} have failed?''
he breathed.

``It is.'' Falco Parkinson turned his head and fixed Dumbledore with
keen eyes. ``They tried to break the webs, and of course, nothing but
destruction and chaos results from that. They tried to use compulsion on
wizards to make them free the magical creatures, and became Dark Lords.
They tried to do anything but give up their own magic. And who can blame
them? What wizard would want to do that?'' His gaze went back to the
flower, his expression sad. ``And even then, one wizard's power is not
enough to content every magical creature in the world. How would he
choose which ones to content and set in a trance of magic before his
ability to go on sacrificing himself ran out?''

Dumbledore bowed his head. ``I understand, sir. I would still---like to
try. But I will no longer make it my life's ambition.''

Falco smiled at him. ``Good boy.''

The scene abruptly dissolved around Harry, and he pulled his head back
from the Pensieve, blinking. He sat hard in his chair, and thought about
that. Before him, Dumbledore sat back in his own chair and watched him
intently.

Harry looked up. ``I'll still have to talk with the magical creatures
about this, sir, and see why their story was so different. But thank you
for telling me.'' \emph{Even though I don't think it's the whole truth.}
``That's another definition of \emph{vates.}''

It was. And Harry could already feel the unease that Falco Parkinson had
talked about. How would he make decisions like that? Could he choose to
free the house elves and unicorns and centaurs, but leave the bindings
on creatures like the Runespoors in the Forbidden Forest?

Then, abruptly, he tensed, and felt like slapping a hand against his
forehead.

\emph{I'm an idiot. I freed the Dementors simply by shredding their web,
without sacrificing my magic.}

He brought his eyes back to Dumbledore's face. \emph{I don't think that
he's telling me the whole truth. I'll have to see.}

``Thank you, sir,'' he said. ``Was there anything else that you wanted
to tell me?''

``Not for right now, Harry.'' Dumbledore nodded towards the door. ``I
would like you to meet with me throughout the term, so that you might
hear more about what it means to be \emph{vates.} I have other memories
to show you.''

\emph{I'm sure you do.} Harry nodded once, said, ``Thank you, sir,'' and
then turned and departed with a swish of his robes.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Albus sat back and gave a little sigh as the door closed behind Harry.
They had got through a meeting without threats. That was already a vast
improvement over their relationship from last year.

And now he had his distraction in place, the hook baited and set, and
Harry had taken it.

Either way, whatever he discovered, he should be distracted enough to
stop pursuing wizarding world politics for a time. He would have to
speak with magical creatures and discover what being \emph{vates} truly
meant. Or he would have to ponder sacrificing his own magic. Knowing
Harry, knowing the way Harry had been raised, Albus was sure that he
would ultimately make the decision to give up his own power if it meant
freedom for someone else.

And \emph{that} gave them another valuable advantage. If Harry became
magically weaker, fewer wizards would pay any attention to him, and he
could do fewer things against the way that things should be done.

Magical power had been the ultimate trump card in wizarding politics for
the last several hundred years, at least. Albus knew his appointment as
Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot had at least as much to do with his
strength as with his status as a follower of the Light or the defeater
of Grindelwald. Many people had followed Tom not because of his ideals
or his Dark magic, but because he was a Dark Lord and they could
\emph{feel} his power.

Harry was a wild card right now, far too dangerous. Reducing his power
could only be a good thing.

\emph{And if he is the Boy-Who-Lived---not just the one who deflected
Tom's Killing Curse, but the savior we need?}

Albus shook his head. The prophecy had been quite clear on that point
(if on nothing else). The savior would defeat Tom with a ``power the
Dark Lord knows not.'' Harry had no powers, at the moment, that Tom did
not know, and several that he knew rather intimately. Reducing his
magical power would do nothing disastrous to the war effort, and
probably rather a lot of good, as it would start forcing Harry to think
before he acted, and develop his capacity for love instead of power. And
the other families, both Dark and Light, would not be so eager to follow
him.

Albus knew the answer to Voldemort was love of the wizarding world, not
magic. It had to be. It was the way he had defeated Grindelwald.

He turned, once again, to study the latest letters from France and
Bulgaria.

He planned to keep Harry distracted with a series of ``discoveries''
about being \emph{vates}. But if that did not work\ldots{}

\emph{Well, another distraction should.}

\chapter{My Responses Have Claws}\label{chapter-17-my-responses-have-claws}

Harry considered, later, that he had had no responsibility for the world
going mad that particular morning, even though it came about as
consequences of his actions. \emph{He} was not the one who had chosen to
go mad at breakfast, for one thing.

He had just asked Draco whether this secret project he was engaged in
was like the project last year, when Draco had been studying compulsion
to understand how Harry's magic affected him. Draco had simply given him
a harsh look, and said, ``Odd as it seems, Harry, not every thought I
think comes back to you.''

Harry winced and sat back on the bench. He thought of arguing, of
protesting, but the same thing that had kept him silent for the last
week and a half choked him now. He trusted Draco, trusted him to be
honest about whatever was bothering him. The fact that he was keeping
silent now must mean he didn't want to talk about it. And Harry would
only anger him further by pressing.

He forced himself to look away from Draco, and so he saw the white owl
enter the Great Hall. It was startling, because Hedwig was the only
snowy owl at the school. Harry stared, and then realized this
magnificent pale bird was not an owl after all, but a gyrfalcon.

It circled low over the Slytherin table and then coasted down onto the
wood in front of him, every feather on its belly and breast ruffled. It
stuck out one leg, snapping its head around to glare at Vince, who had
started to touch its tail. Vince hastily sat back and raised his hands
in defense.

Harry shook his head and removed the letter from the gyrfalcon's leg. It
was a brilliant red, and he wasn't surprised when the Howler exploded in
front of him. He \emph{was} surprised that he didn't recognize the voice
yelling at him.

``\emph{WE THOUGHT THE MINISTRY HAD BETTER CONTROL OF CHILDREN THESE
DAYS! WE THOUGHT THAT A POWERFUL WIZARD SUCH AS YOURSELF, HARRY POTTER,
WOULD KNOW BETTER THAN TO DESTROY A TREASURE SO OLD AND SACRED!}''

Harry blinked. Not only did he not recognize the voice, he had no idea
what the hell it was yelling about. That was unusual.

``\emph{WE WERE SERVING THE CAUSE OF THE LIGHT IN LENDING OUR ARTIFACTS
TO MINISTER FUDGE! YOU HAD NO RIGHT TO DESTROY OUR SPHERE SIMPLY BECAUSE
YOU BELIEVED THE MINISTER WAS ABOUT TO DRAIN YOUR MAGIC! DRAINING MAGIC
IS WHAT THE SPHERE WAS} CREATED \emph{FOR! HAVE YOU NO TASTE? NO
DISCERNMENT?}''

Harry smiled. Now he knew who the Howler was from---the Starrises, the
Light wizarding family who had lent the silver sphere that had nearly
drained his magic to Fudge. He kept his eyes fixed on the Howler, and
caught a glimpse of the seal as the envelope flapped and jumped in
agitation. Sure enough, it bore a device that was unfamiliar to him, but
looked as though it \emph{could} be the seal of a Light family named
Starrise: a thick half-circle with a rising sun at the bottom of it, its
rays reaching out to touch the upper bar of the circle, and five stars
scattered among the rays.

The Howler finished, and ripped itself to pieces. Harry shook his head
in amusement. The gyrfalcon sat where it was, staring at him. Harry
raised a brow. That was a surprise. Most owls delivering Howlers simply
flew off again, under the impression that their recipient didn't want to
reply.

``No response,'' he told the gyrfalcon.

The great bird hissed, and moved one talon as though it would slash at
him. Harry coolly moved his hand out of the way and thought,
\emph{Ventus.}

A blast of wind caught the gyrfalcon and blew it off the table. It
managed to right itself in a few wingbeats, then caught the wind and
used it to its benefit, screeching in indignation as it rose to the
level of the windows.

Harry went back to his breakfast, conscious of the stares and amused by
them, too, instead of sickened. He was too busy coming up with the
perfect response to Starrise. He nodded when he thought he'd composed
it. He would send it out with Hedwig when he had a free period that
evening.

``Aren't you angry?''

Harry blinked and looked at Draco. He'd lowered his book for once and
was staring hard at Harry.

``Not really,'' said Harry. ``I didn't realize they would be so angry at
me, and I certainly didn't think they'd try to make a public scene out
of it, but one has to expect to make enemies in politics.'' He cocked
his head. ``Why?''

``They had no right to do that,'' said Draco, his voice cold and still,
much the same as Snape's voice had been lately. Harry nibbled his lip
thoughtfully, and wondered if he should venture a comment on the change
in Draco's behavior. He still trusted Draco and Snape to be there if he
needed them to be, but he supposed \emph{something} must have changed.
Perhaps it would be worth it, after all, to ask.

``Draco?''

Draco looked at him, most of his mind apparently still occupied with the
insult that Starrise had dealt Harry.

``Did I do something wrong?'' Harry asked. ``Is that why you've been
spending so much time on Potions research lately, and mostly when we do
speak, we argue?''

Draco's face closed off again, and he jerked the book up in front of his
face. ``I told you, Harry,'' he said. ``Not every thought I think comes
back to you. And I can be concerned about you, and about Potions
research, at the same time. I know you might not think it possible, but
it is.''

Harry nodded. ``All right.'' He did feel a brief stab of hurt, but he
found the wound and healed it quickly. Draco just wanted some time
alone. And Harry had been selfish in thinking that the reason must have
something to do with him. Of course it did not. He should trust in Draco
more. Every time before when they had endured something that might have
broken their friendship, it had survived, and they had been the stronger
for it. He would just wait, patiently, until Draco was ready to speak
with him again, and let Draco know that he was here for him if he needed
Harry.

He started to stand. They had Defense Against the Dark Arts in a few
minutes, and Harry didn't feel much like remaining in breakfast.

A group of Ravenclaws passed the table, chattering. Harry nodded to Cho,
and saw a faint movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned in that
direction.

``\emph{Caeco}!''

Harry reacted instinctively to the Blinding Curse, snapping up
\emph{Protego} in front of him, but replaced it with \emph{Haurio} a
moment later. The Shield Charm would bounce the hex, and Harry didn't
want anyone else getting blinded in his place. He absorbed the magic
into the jade-green shield around his hand, and then looked up to see
who had hexed him.

Gorgon, a hefty student whom he had trounced a few times last year for
bullying Luna, was forcing his way out of the middle of the Ravenclaw
group, tears streaking his face.

``You got my uncle arrested, you bastard!'' he screamed at Harry, and
lifted his wand. ``\emph{Petrificus Totalus!}''

Harry rolled under the table, since the hex had come in so low that he
couldn't move his hand to get in the way. He heard a few short screams,
and then someone else pulled a wand and incanted back. Harry grimaced.
He didn't want this to turn into a full-blown fight between Ravenclaws
and Slytherins. Gorgon's grief for his uncle Gamaliel was private, and
should remain so.

Someone else shrieked, and someone else incanted back, before he could
roll out from under the table. Luckily, Harry had the perfect spell on
his lips. He'd learned it the year before he came to Hogwarts, when Lily
had warned him that he might someday have to fight single combats with
any enemies who weren't Voldemort (he was Connor's alone to conquer). A
spell that would insure that he and his opponent could fight alone was
the perfect thing to learn.

He stood and extended a hand towards Gorgon. ``\emph{Privilegium!}''

The spell erupted from around him, tearing a precise line in the floor
that made splinters of stone and dust hover in the air. A tendril of red
light grabbed Gorgon and dragged him forward, stumbling. Meanwhile, the
spell finished carving the dueling ring and shoved everyone else out of
it. Rude, perhaps, but at least this way, no one else could intrude,
Harry thought. A curtain of hazy air then snapped up, exactly following
the line of the carved ring, shutting them away from the sight of anyone
outside it.

Harry bowed his head slightly to the stunned Gorgon and drew his own
cypress wand from his pocket. A duel was a duel, an old and private and
sacred thing, and he would not use wandless magic in it, even though he
had used it to cast the original spell. ``Shall we?'' he asked.

Gorgon just stared at him.

Harry rolled his eyes, and felt a brief stab of anger and impatience
that Gorgon was evidently unwilling to take his grievance this far. Or
maybe he just didn't know what was going on.

``We're dueling now,'' Harry explained. ``No one else can interfere. I
thought that would be best, as we can keep from hurting anyone.''

Gorgon went on staring. There was fear in his eyes now. Harry frowned
and shook his head. \emph{Why would he have started this when he didn't
think that he could finish it?}

\emph{Oh. Of course. He must have been carried away by the heat of the
moment. Well, that happens to everyone.}

Harry bowed again. Gorgon, though still seeming dazed, bowed back. Then
he stuck his wand forward, as though desperation were giving him
courage, and shouted, ``\emph{Tarantallegra!}''

Harry let the hex get through, and danced a brief jig before he
whispered, ``\emph{Finite Incantatem.}'' That ended the spell, and he eyed
Gorgon for a moment. He wanted to end the duel, but not so soon. That
would only be a barb to sting Gorgon's pride, and it might mean that he
would just attack Harry again at a later date, perhaps with a spell that
could seriously damage him. \emph{Prolong it through one round, then.}
``\emph{Rictusempra!}''

The magic surged through his wand, familiar and yet moving oddly; Harry
realized how strange his wand had become in his grasp. The spell hit
Gorgon, and he began to giggle uncontrollably. Harry blinked. He hadn't
expected the Tickling Charm to be one that a sixth-year Ravenclaw
couldn't throw off.

It was, though, and at last Harry realized the duel wouldn't be able to
continue. Stung pride or not, Gorgon was going to lose quickly.

``\emph{Finite Incantatem. Expelliarmus},'' Harry muttered, resigned, and
Gorgon's wand tore itself from his hand and flew to him. He caught it
and examined it for a moment. Oak wood, and probably a phoenix feather
core, from the very slight spark he received as he held it. A good wand.

\emph{If only the wizard who wielded it were worthy of it.}

Harry shook his head and tossed the wand back to Gorgon as the dueling
circle and the privacy curtain, triggered by the loss of one combatant's
wand, broke apart. He had thoughts like that more and more often lately,
as though his anger for himself in the Minister's interrogation room had
broken some barrier that he didn't know he had. Harry had tried to
reestablish the barrier, but since he didn't know what it had been made
of, patience or forgiveness or training, he wasn't having much luck.

Gorgon stared at him, horror and fear and anger in his eyes. Harry
clenched one fist briefly. \emph{What did you} think \emph{would happen
when you attacked me, you idiot? Did you think I wouldn't defend
myself?}

He didn't have time to say anything, and neither did Gorgon, because
just then Luna wandered up to Gorgon and stood gazing at him with huge
silvery eyes.

``You should have used powdered Snorkack horns on your wand,'' she said.
``Then you could have aimed it better.'' She shook her head slowly.
``That's why you lost.'' She glanced at Harry. ``And why you won.''

Harry raised his eyebrows. \emph{No one is supposed to be able to see
through the privacy curtain.} ``You could see what happened, Luna?''

``There are lots of things to see,'' said Luna dreamily, and then turned
and wandered back into the group of Ravenclaws. Harry glanced at them
nervously, wondering how they would respond to him dueling one of their
Housemates.

Cho marched up behind Gorgon and smacked him roundly on the back of the
head.

Gorgon rubbed the spot and turned around to stare at her. ``Cho!'' he
wailed.

``I've had about enough of this,'' said Cho, her eyes narrowed and her
face seething with a furious energy. Fascinated, Harry stared. He
supposed she simply hadn't had enough time to be angry during
Bellatrix's attack. ``You've been chattering nonstop about wanting to
have a duel with Potter for the last five days, and then, when you get
the chance, instead of asking him to duel with you in a
\emph{respectful} way, you just try to hit him with the Blinding Curse?
I thought you looked up that spell because you were genuinely
\emph{interested} in its history, not because you just wanted to use it
on Harry!''

She closed her eyes and blew her breath out through her nostrils, then
turned to Harry and shook her head slightly. ``I'm sorry, Harry,'' she
said. ``I would never have helped him with his research if I knew what
he was going to use it for.''

``That's all right, Cho,'' said Harry, still a little stunned that he
apparently had a friend in Ravenclaw besides Luna. He had thought that
Cho's assistance extended to giving him the life debt bracelet. ``Thank
you.''

Cho nodded back to him, and then turned and stalked out of the Great
Hall. The other Ravenclaw girls pointedly followed, every one of them
making sure to sniff at Gorgon as they passed. A few of the boys
lingered and patted him on the shoulder, but they seemed embarrassed at
being seen there, and hurried out after the girls as soon as possible.

Gorgon stood there, stock-still, and about that time the rest of the
Great Hall appeared to recover and realize what insanity had taken place
in front of them. Harry slipped his wand into his sleeve and listened in
resignation as the Hall erupted, with shouting from the Gryffindor and
Hufflepuff tables, heated arguing as to who was really responsible from
the Ravenclaw table, and loud congratulations and cheers from the
Slytherin table.

``Mr. Potter.''

Harry glanced over his shoulder and tried to smile sheepishly at
Professor McGonagall, who was looking at him sternly. ``Sorry,
Professor,'' he said.

She shook her head at him, lips pursed tight. Harry knew she was fond of
him, but using magic on a fellow student went beyond what she could
tolerate---especially when she knew how much stronger than most of the
other students Harry was, and how easily he could have ended this
``duel'' with one spell.

Harry was now wishing, as McGonagall rounded on Gorgon, that he had done
that. It hadn't been worthwhile to let Gorgon try and keep his pride,
not when he was intent on dashing it to pieces anyway.

``And Mr. Gorgon! I am ashamed of you. Why would you try to take
vengeance for the sake of an uncle who had a part in abducting a
fourteen-year-old wizard? Would you honestly claim that he had done the
\emph{right} thing?''

``He's a good Auror!'' Gorgon howled, apparently stung into anger again.
``He was sacked by mistake!''

``And you have made another one in his name,'' McGonagall announced,
voice tight. ``Thirty points from Ravenclaw, Mr. Gorgon, and a week of
detentions. With Argus Filch,'' she added, making him flinch.

``And you, Mr. Potter.''

Harry lifted his chin and met her eyes. He saw them soften, and then
McGonagall shook her head and sighed in exasperation.

``What you did in setting yourself beyond the reach of anyone else with
the Single Combat Spell was foolish and dangerous,'' she said quietly.
``You or Mr. Gorgon could have been seriously hurt, and no one could
have interfered. Thirty points from Slytherin as well, and five days of
detention with me.''

``Yes, ma'am,'' said Harry, and ignored Pansy's long cry of how that
wasn't fair. He should have found a better way of doing this. He should
have handled it right the first time. He frowned, and wondered when the
moment was that he should have made the decision to do that.

``Do you want a detention as well, Miss Parkinson?'' McGonagall asked.

``No, Professor,'' said Pansy sulkily.

``Then remember that the danger to both Mr. Gorgon and Mr. Potter was
very real,'' said McGonagall, and swept away, shaking her head. Harry
went back to the Slytherin table and gathered up his books.

``Harry.''

He jumped when an arm abruptly grabbed him around the waist and tugged
him backwards. No one had touched him in a few weeks, and he'd got used
to no one doing so. He yanked hard and managed to get away before he
realized that it was Draco who'd done the tugging. He turned around
swiftly.

Draco's face was stricken. But it shut down even as Harry watched, and
he turned, threw his books into his bag, and then left.

Harry narrowed his eyes. \emph{That does it. He can't just be angry at
me if he reached out and tried to touch me like that, and he wouldn't
have been hurt that I tried to strike him. I'm getting some answers out
of him tonight if I have to use the Single Combat Spell.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry leaned against the Owlery wall and watched as Hedwig flew out of
sight, happily clutching the letter destined for Starrise. She had been
huffy the past few weeks, watching Harry get constant post from admirers
and detractors, while she did nothing but fly around a bit at breakfast
and receive treats from Harry's plate. The Starrise family evidently
lived quite a long way south, but that wouldn't deter her.

Harry had sent a very \emph{polite} letter, thanking the Starrises for
explaining to him about the broken sphere. He'd asked which artifact
they would recommend the next time he wanted to have his magic drained,
and apologized for having the bad taste to reject what was obviously the
best. He asked to meet with them, so that he might have a guide to
magic-draining artifacts.

They wouldn't be able to find a single impolite word or sentence in it,
and no grammatical mistakes, either, but that wouldn't stop the scent of
sarcasm from rising off the \emph{page.} Harry regretted that he had no
mirror and no way to spy into their house, so that he could not see what
their expressions would be when they read it. He didn't even know who
would receive it, a couple or an old matriarch or someone else.

He started to turn around, and then paused. Someone was standing near
the Owlery entrance. Harry could feel the thrum of magic, pressing
against his spine and tingling up and down his skin.

More to the point, he hadn't sensed the magic before this because it was
so familiar to him, and trusted.

He let out a breath and said quietly, ``I was coming to seek you out,
Draco. Are you ready to speak with me now?''

Draco made a little growling noise, and then stepped further into the
Owlery. Harry turned around, not bothering to change his position of
leaning against the wall. He folded his arms, thought better of it, and
then kept them folded. It might make Draco think he was unapproachable,
and, well, Harry was feeling that way. He watched with slitted eyes as
Draco edged closer and closer to him. His face was pale, except for two
spots high on his cheekbones, and his hands worked in front of him as
though he were missing his potions book.

``You nearly \emph{died} today, Harry,'' Draco began.

``No, I didn't,'' said Harry. ``Magically, Gorgon is much weaker than I
am, and even if he'd got through with the Blinding Curse, it wouldn't
have killed me.''

Draco's face abruptly flushed all the way. ``That's ridiculous!'' he
shouted. ``How can---how can you just stand there and talk so lightly of
your own \emph{life}? It's stupid, and I won't stand for it!''

Harry narrowed his eyes. He was working hard to control his temper,
really he was, but the words sliced at his lips, begging to be let out.

He breathed slowly, forcing himself to calm down. Bad things happened
when he got angry. He flashed back to Umbridge and the black snake, and
winced. No, that was \emph{not} going to happen here. Besides, what
Draco said was understandable. He had always been worried for Harry's
life, and Gorgon's attack today had taken them all by surprise, and then
Harry had pulled away from his attempt to comfort him afterward. Of
course he would feel this way.

\emph{If he does, he should grow up.}

Harry sat on the thought. It wasn't productive.

``All right, Draco, I'm sorry,'' he said, holding up a hand. ``Yes, I
did think pretty lightly of it. But he attacked me out of grief, and I
tried to give him what he wanted, by setting up a private duel so that
he could exorcise his anger. It didn't work. Yes, I should have thought
of something else, done something else.''

``Why did you pull away from me afterwards?'' Draco demanded.

Harry blinked at the change of subject, but answered readily enough. ``I
was surprised.''

``But I touch you \emph{all the time}.'' Draco's voice had a low growl to
it, and his own arms were folded now. Harry eyed his hands. So long as
Draco didn't go for his wand, this argument was less serious than it
could have been. Harry would keep that in mind. ``You should be used to
it by now.''

Harry had a bad reaction to the words \emph{You should.} He reminded
himself, again, that Draco was irritated with him and had been for the
past few weeks. This interaction was typical of their interactions for
that time. He had no right to be angry at Draco for something that he
understood.

\emph{I still want to understand what it was I did to lose his interest
in the first place.}

Harry shook his head, both in response to what Draco had said and in
response to his own irrelevant thought. ``I'd lost my being used to
it,'' he replied, ``because you hadn't done it in a while.''

Draco looked genuinely startled. Harry blinked. Had he missed that he
wasn't touching Harry as much, too?

Then Draco's face closed in that familiar way that Harry was beginning
to hate. ``You've hurt me, you know,'' he said. ``The things you kept
saying at breakfast today. Why would you assume that my research has
anything to do with you?''

\emph{That wasn't what I said. That wasn't what I meant.}

But it was something disturbing to consider, and Harry winced as he
thought about it. How much time and attention did Draco lavish on him,
and how much did Harry lavish on him in return? The answers were
disturbing. Harry had become used to thinking of Draco as close to him,
but he himself thought about being \emph{vates}, his allies, Connor, how
he would reconcile with his father now, what Dumbledore was up to, and
even Snape more than he thought about Draco.

\emph{Maybe this is the core of what he's upset about, then. I can offer
to spend more time with him, and see if that works.}

Harry spread his hands slightly. ``I know,'' he said. ``I'm sorry. Is
that it, Draco? Are you upset because I haven't spent as much time
thinking of you as you have thinking of me?'' He ran a hand through his
hair. ``I \emph{am} sorry for that. I hope I can make it up to you. I do
miss you. You \emph{are} my friend, and I should respect that.''

More disturbing to him than even the fact that he had not spent as much
time considering Draco as Draco probably did considering him was the
fact that it had taken him so long to notice. Harry would not have gone
after Draco if he were sitting with the Gryffindors and tried to make
him come back to the Slytherin table. Maybe that was what he should have
done? Maybe that was the kind of friend that Draco wanted?

He looked up, to check on the progress of Draco's feelings, and found
Draco's face still closed, still mulish.

``I told you,'' said Draco, and each word fell on the silence like a
hammer on glass. ``Not everything I think and believe and feel and do
has to do with you.''

Harry's anger consumed him so quickly that he was startled. \emph{You
came up to the Owlery, you idiot! You accused me of not taking care of
my own life! It wasn't so long ago that you seemed unwilling to share me
with anyone else. And now you just expect me to know what's wrong with
you even though you won't give me a hint?}

He half-closed his eyes and choked back the words. He \emph{couldn't}
say them, not now that he knew beyond a doubt that Draco wanted to be
left alone. It would be pressuring, forcing, making it sound as though
Harry were demanding that Draco come back and be his friend. And he
didn't have the right to demand that. How much had Draco done for him
over the past years? Quite a lot. Therefore, if he wanted privacy and
time to think about his potions research, Harry could grant that to him,
and would.

``I'm sorry,'' Harry repeated. ``I just can't seem to understand that
part.'' He smiled, but Draco didn't smile back, and Harry felt the
expression wither on his own face. ``I'm sorry,'' he said again. ``I'll
leave you alone for now. If you do want to speak with me later, let me
know. I'd like to listen to whatever you have on your mind.''

And he \emph{would,} he thought, as he worked his way carefully towards
the Owlery stairs, not touching Draco and not looking at him. He missed
Draco's contemptuous dismissals of half the thoughts that Harry came up
with as not worth his attention, his causal references to Gryffindors as
idiots, even the way he sneered at Connor. It was, perhaps, perverse to
miss someone for the \emph{negative} qualities they had, but that seemed
to be the case.

Harry had reached the stairs when Draco's arm abruptly shot out in front
of him, barring his way. Harry blinked and turned his head.

``I didn't say that you could go---'' Draco began, with his familiar
haughty certainty.

The anger broke past Harry's barriers.

``I don't need your fucking \emph{permission} to leave,'' he said, his
voice a few octaves lower than it should have been if he were completely
calm. ``You've said that you don't spend every moment thinking of me,
and I understand that. You deserve your own---call it what you will.
Your own life. Your own time. But you're not going to control my
movements because of that.''

``And I thought you were my friend.''

Harry snarled. He could feel his magic building, and knew he couldn't
sit on it without it bursting out of him in unfortunate ways, not when
he was this angry. He gestured with his right hand, and a jet of blue
light shot past Draco and chewed into the stone instead. Harry focused
on carving out a leering gargoyle face instead of looking at Draco.
Draco was exasperating him badly right now.

``Draco,'' he said, when he thought he could control his voice and not
simply scream, ``I thought I knew what was wrong. Now I don't think I
do, and you won't tell me.''

``You should.'' Draco folded his arms again. ``If you were really my
friend, you'd know.''

Harry snapped his head around. He knew his eyes were blazing. He saw
Draco's eyes go wide as he stared at him. He didn't care.

``Fuck you, Draco,'' he said. ``I thought you would know one thing about
me if you know anything at all. I \emph{hate head games.} I \emph{hate
being manipulated}. That's the one thing you've never done with me. Oh,
sure, you've manipulated life debts and Slytherin rules, but you've
never tried to reach into my mind and scramble my thoughts. And I'd
appreciate if you refrained from doing it now.''

Draco blinked, slowly. Then he said, ``I \emph{told} you, Harry. It
doesn't have anything to do with you.''

``I don't fucking believe you,'' said Harry, and then turned and stormed
down the stairs. He had a detention with McGonagall, and so couldn't go
flying out on the Pitch, but he hoped that she might have something
intense for him to work on, such as a really stubborn spot on the floor.
That was the only way he was going to calm his magic down.

The guilt was growing even as he descended, of course. \emph{You could
have handled that better. You could simply have walked out. You
shouldn't have got angry.}

Harry closed his eyes. He was calm, after all, by the time he reached
McGonagall's office. The guilt had eaten the anger.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Draco leaned on the wall of the Owlery, and stared at the face that
Harry had carved, and shivered. Sometimes he forgot how strong Harry
was, until he actually saw the magic work. The dueling spell today
hadn't been impressive enough, since it had concealed everything that
happened in the circle, and the sensation of power and the scent of
roses were surprisingly easy to get used to.

But that didn't mean he was less angry at Harry.

\emph{Why can't he understand that this is important to me, and support
me and be interested in it? Why can't he just be a friend to me, for
once, instead of my always having to be a friend to him? And why did he
keep pressing me to tell, when I didn't want to? He doesn't have the
right to order me around. No one has the right to order me if I don't
want to take the orders. And I thought that was what he was so
frightened of, giving orders to someone else?}

\emph{Apparently not.}

Draco exhaled as hard as he could, and straightened. He had some more
research to do on Malfoy ancestors in the thirteenth century. He should
get back to that. The burning ambition was stirring in his chest even
now, tugging him on.

\emph{And someday, when I'm at the end of this path, Harry will} have
\emph{to see me for what I am---just as powerful and just as worthy as
he is.}

\chapter{Interlude: From Melinda and Hellebore}\label{chapter-18-interlude-from-melinda-and-hellebore}

\textbf{\emph{{The Daily Prophet}}}

\emph{September 16th, 1994}

\textbf{\emph{MINISTER CALLS FOR SOLUTION TO HARRY POTTER SITUATION}}

\emph{Calls Potter's Current Situation `Disgraceful'}

\emph{By: Melinda Honeywhistle}

Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge, in an unexpected response to the
allegations of abduction and mistreatment made by Harry Potter two weeks
ago, has responded with a plea for a change in Potter's living
situation.

Potter, 14, was interviewed by this very paper, and in that interview,
his unusual home situation was emphasized. He is currently under the
guardianship of Professor Severus Snape, of Hogwarts School of
Witchcraft and Wizardry, despite having two living parents. Of these
parents, one, Lily Evans Potter, has been stripped of her magic under
mysterious circumstances and is no longer considered a fit guardian for
a young wizard, particularly one as magically powerful as Potter.

Potter's father, however, is James Potter, once a famed Auror,
responsible for the capture of the Death Eaters Rodolphus and Bellatrix
Lestrange. Before he retired to live with his young family in a special
isolated home, out of fear of Death Eaters targeting the infant
Boy-Who-Lived in vengeance for You-Know-Who's fall, he also accomplished
many other acclaimed deeds. He is currently in residence at Lux Aeterna,
the Potters' home for the last several generations.

Minister Fudge noted this and several other facts about Harry Potter's
home situation in a special press conference given yesterday, and
attended by select members of the press.

``Harry Potter is a child,'' he declared, to the accompaniment of
several charts that traced the evolution of laws meant to protect young
wizarding children from unfit guardians and parents. ``That he reacted as
he did to what was actually a very innocuous Ministry procedure is
understandable. However, it is my duty as Minister not to allow this
misperception of Mr. Potter's to continue.''

``Mr. Potter has been under the guardianship of Professor Severus Snape
for nearly a year, due to an unfortunate mistake made by members of the
Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and some lost paperwork. At one
point soon after the fall of You-Know-Who, Severus Snape was tried as a
Death Eater. He was cleared on the word of Albus Dumbledore. But it
seems that we may have been wrong about him after all. It seems that he
may have been poisoning the boy's mind against the Light.''

Minister Fudge expressed his horror and surprise at the discovery, and
his dismay that the odd situation had been allowed to continue for as
long as it has.

``Of course, now I completely understand and forgive Mr. Potter's
accusations,'' the Minister explained. ``He has come young to his power,
and he has been receiving inappropriate guidance from a Dark wizard. He
needs to be in a loving home, with parents who can raise him in a good
understanding of the Light.''

The Minister is confident that such a home can soon be found.

``After all,'' he said, as he closed the press conference, ``his twin
brother is living proof that a young wizard can be very powerful, even
powerful enough to defeat You-Know-Who, and yet able to believe and walk
in Light. I humbly admit the Ministry's part in not making sure that
young Harry got the same kind of treatment sooner. It's disgraceful. I
would like to take this opportunity to extend my apologies to Mr.
Potter, and my sincere wishes that he finds a new home soon, with all
possible happiness involved.''

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{Hellebore Shiverwood}

\emph{Ministry of Magic}

\emph{Department of Magical Family and Child Services}

\emph{September 16th, 1994}

Dear Mr. Potter:

Greetings from the Ministry of Magic! We cordially extend an invitation
for you to attend a private meeting, to be held in our offices in the
Ministry on the autumnal equinox. This is the ancient day of balance,
the day of readdressing grievances and righting wrongs, and we would now
like to address a very great wrong. On this day, custody of you will be
transferred back to your blood father, James Potter, who has completed
all appropriate forms.

Please bring your current guardian, Professor Severus Snape, with you.
With any luck, this will be a quick and efficient process that will
return you to the best living situation for you as soon as possible.

Have a wonderful day, and a very happy late summer to you!

\emph{Hellebore Shiverwood.}

\chapter{He Will Have Cause to Regret}\label{chapter-19-he-will-have-cause-to-regret}

Snape gently dipped the tip of his quill into the off-white potion. In a
moment, the liquid had clung to it, and he was ready to write his letter
to James Potter. He nodded, and sat down to compose.

\noindent \emph{Potter:}

\emph{I suppose you imagine that you can best me this way, that you will
take Harry away from me in a legal battle. I would ask you to look
beyond your own reflexive hatreds and childish grudges, but I suspect
that would be like asking a Muggle to fly a broom. Therefore, I will
come to this private meeting with you, since that will perhaps confront
you with the results of your childishness in a way impossible for you to
ignore.}

\emph{Professor Severus Snape.}

Snape finished writing and examined the tip of his quill. Yes, the ink
had dried, and with it, the potion. He ran a finger down the side of the
parchment and gave something that he knew was not a smile. Then he drew
out a small brush waiting and ready in his pocket, dipped it into the
potion, and used it to paint the sides of the parchment, watching
patiently as it dried in turn. No matter where he picked up Snape's
letter, Potter would absorb some of the potion through his fingers.

Then Snape turned and eyed the two other potions. The clear one was not
yet ready, and would not be for some time. The potion with the candle
floating on it glimmered and bubbled. Snape eyed it and nodded. Yes, it
would take a few more days, but he had a few more days. The meeting with
Potter and Fudge was not until the autumnal equinox, after all.

He folded his letter to Potter, slid it into an envelope, and then made
for the Owlery, that he might find a bird to deliver it to Lux Aeterna.
Meanwhile, his emotions exulted far beneath the surface, cold and
stinging.

\emph{Potter was foolish to do this, and still more foolish to send a
letter about the meeting to me before it was time. He will have cause to
regret his actions.}

\emph{He will have cause to regret so many things.}

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Harry clenched his hands in front of him and fought to control his
temper. He had already had to leave breakfast because he was getting
close to destroying half the dishes on the Slytherin table with his
rage. At this rate, he would be late to Transfigurations before he had
calmed down, but he didn't particularly care at the moment. He was so
angry at his father that it was hard to breathe.

\emph{How could he do this to me?}

Knowing that it was only, as James thought, in his best interests for
once did nothing to improve Harry's general disposition or incline him
towards leniency. His father \emph{knew} that Harry didn't want this
kind of legal challenge. He \emph{knew} that Harry had wanted Snape to
remain his guardian even when he was staying at Lux Aeterna. Why now?
What had happened to make him change his mind?

Harry blinked and looked up as someone passed his hiding place, a small
alcove on the second floor. It was Snape, walking back towards the
dungeons. Harry could not be sure, but he thought his mentor's face was
more relaxed than it had been of late, with a small sneer touching the
corners of his mouth. Perhaps he had just assigned someone detention,
Harry thought. In that case, Harry hated to interrupt his good mood with
the letter about the meeting, but Snape was invited, too, and Harry had
to make sure he went. He didn't trust himself to be alone in a room with
James and only one other person, perhaps Madam Shiverwood.

``Sir,'' he called, stepping out into the hallway.

Snape halted and turned to face him, and the sneer vanished. Harry was
left facing the same calm, cold, professorial face he'd confronted for a
few weeks now. The last time Snape had seemed totally normal was when he
gave Harry the lecture on using Dark spells without thinking about it.
No, come to think of it, he'd been oddly quiet even then. Harry
hesitated.

``What is it, Harry?''

\emph{At least he's still calling me by my first name, even if it sounds
strained.} Harry decided that he would go ahead. ``This letter, sir,''
he said, brandishing it. ``The Department of Magical Family and Child
Services says that they're revoking your guardianship over me and
transferring it to---''

``Potter,'' said Snape, and an old, faint, habitual sneer colored the
words. ``Yes, I know. Your father sent me a letter gloating about it.''

Harry winced. ``Did he? I'm sorry, sir. But what are we going to do
about it? I don't think the Ministry will listen if I just tell them
that I want to be left with you.''

``I have taken care of it. Do not worry.''

Harry paused. ``I---don't take this the wrong way, sir, but how?'' He
could just imagine some of the things that Snape would do to his father
if he had the chance. Compulsion was probably the least of them.

``I do not wish to tell you,'' said Snape. ``You will know it when you
see it. Suffice it to say, Harry, that you are well-protected, even if
you do not realize it.'' He turned and started to walk towards his
office again.

``Sir! Wait, sir.''

Snape gave him a glance of faint impatience. ``What is it? I promise
you, Harry, this has been taken care of. It will provide nothing more
than a faint bit of embarrassment on our equinox morning.''

Harry groped for and found the words he had been missing. ``I wasn't
going to ask about that, sir. I meant---why have you gone cold lately?''
Not the best phrasing, perhaps, but it was what Harry thought of. Snape
reminded him of himself when the cold fury gripped him at the end of
second year. He could not think why Snape would be indulging in it
without a good reason, since Snape had always said that such icy rage
was dangerous. ``You're different, and I don't understand why.''

Snape inclined his head. ``It is an effect of the danger you have been
in,'' he said, voice distant. ``I realized that I was doing less than no
good when I panicked and came too late to save you each time. That is
why I wish to teach you to protect yourself, and to make sure that you
are safe and guarded when a danger does threaten. The coldness is
nothing more than an attempt to think rationally about the situation,
instead of raging about each and every enemy.''

``Oh,'' said Harry. He could think of nothing to say to that. He drew in
his breath and forged ahead. ``And do you know what's wrong with Draco?
He still talks to me sometimes, but most of the time he ignores me, and
we had an enormous fight in the Owlery yesterday.''

Snape narrowed his eyes. ``I suggest you ask young Mr. Malfoy that.''

``I did,'' said Harry. ``He said that he didn't want to tell me.''

Snape shrugged. ``Then I suggest you leave it alone,'' he said.
``Sometimes, Harry, people do need time apart from each other, and the
way that you and Mr. Malfoy interact has been causing me anxiety for
some time. Your friendship has been not so much a friendship as an
obsession on his part and a desire to protect him on your part. Perhaps
this is what you need, a small series of fights and distancings that
will enable both of you to become better friends to each other.''

Harry blinked and swallowed. He hadn't even \emph{considered} that. He
had known that he and Draco were not equal in what they gave to and
received from each other since yesterday, but he had been so acutely
unhappy that he had never even guessed that this separation could be a
good thing, or that Snape would approve.

``Oh,'' he said again, and then nodded to Snape. ``Thank you for letting
me know that, sir.''

He turned and walked off, quickly, speeding up when he was sure that he
was out of Snape's sight. He knew he would miss Transfigurations now,
but he made his way to the Slytherin common room anyway, which would be
empty of everyone. It was one missed class, and he would take any extra
detentions that McGonagall assigned him. The one yesterday,
alphabetizing Transfiguration books by title, hadn't been bad.

He needed, very badly, some time alone to think.

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Snape watched Harry go with narrowed eyes.

\emph{The boy is bothered. I did not realize that even a temporary loss
of Draco would hit him so hard.}

Then Snape shook his head.

\emph{This is the only way. Draco needs a distraction, and more, he
needs an interest outside of Harry, something that could lead to him
having true friends and a true, driving passion that does not revolve
around his crush. No one else will step in. There is no other way so
guaranteed to work.}

\emph{And Harry would not speak to me again if he knew that I had used
compulsion. I cannot tell him the truth.}

Snape began the journey to the dungeons again when he was sure that he
would not run into Harry. This might be painful for the boy right now,
but in the end, he would be the stronger for it. Harry had said again
and again that he did not want friends whose lives revolved around him
through compulsion. That Draco's state had not been the result of
Harry's magic made no difference. It was \emph{like} compulsion, and it
was damaging and destroying Draco's freedom, something Snape did not
want to see happen to any member of Slytherin House.

He sank the concerns to the cold level of his mind, and smirked. He had
a class of third-year Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs to terrorize.

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Harry whispered, ``\emph{Ventus dirus},'' to the stone wall, and it slid
aside and admitted him to the Slytherin common room. As Harry had known
it would be, it was empty. Harry hesitated, and thought about flopping
down and having his think on the couch in front of the fire.

Then he shook his head and made for the fourth-year boys' room. He
didn't want anyone coming in because of a forgotten book or homework and
interrupting him, even if it was only for a few minutes. Above all, he
didn't want to have to answer awkward questions right now.

He opened the door to his room, and gave a brief, satisfied nod. The
room was cool and dark. Harry made his way to his bed, climbed in, and
drew the curtains shut after him. Then he lay back and stared at the
ceiling of the four-poster.

He hadn't been \emph{thinking.} It was time to \emph{think,} not just
react.

Harry folded his hands behind his head, closed his eyes, and asked
himself the first question: When had Snape and Draco begun acting
strange?

He knew the answer, as long as he was counting Draco's strange behavior
from his trying to wrestle Harry away from the Gryffindor table that
first day of school and not just from the day he'd started reading the
old Potions book. Draco had been furiously protective of him the day
before, too, even though all he and Harry had done before the attack by
Bellatrix Lestrange was play Exploding Snap together, fend off the post
owls delivering letters to Harry, and talk about the upcoming year. And
Snape had gone cold and strange the very same day, with his lecture to
Harry about Bellatrix and \emph{Sectumsempra.}

So, now, the second question: \emph{Why} did they begin acting strange?
What could Harry have done to send them into those states? How had he
acted differently?

And that one, too, was easy to answer, once he thought about it.

\emph{I took them for utter granted in the meeting in Scrimgeour's
office. I could have told them the truth privately before I revealed it
to my allies, but I didn't. They deserved to hear it in private. They've
done more for me than anybody else. And I barely even looked at them
during the meeting, as though I expected them just to nod and accept
whatever I said.}

\emph{What other unconscious arrogance have I been manifesting? I've
been acting this way, with regard to Draco, for years. I see that now.
But I think I finally passed the boundary of what they were willing to
tolerate. Taking them for granted finally angered them. And, as Snape
pointed out, constantly putting myself in danger only heightened the
feeling that I took them for granted. I didn't trust them enough to
bring them along when I confronted my enemies.}

Harry felt his breath speed up. The idea that he might have lost his
best friend and his guardian forever, through his own actions, was
making tears prickle at the corners of his eyes. And the idea of
\emph{that} combined with the other things he had to accomplish---the
\emph{vates} duties, facing his father down and somehow maintaining
Snape's legal guardianship of him, this political duel with the
Minister, instructing Connor in leadership, learning offensive and Dark
magic, negotiating with his allies---was enough to send a tight spring
of panic coiling in the center of his chest. How was he ever going to do
it all? How was he going to hold up without collapsing under the weight?

\emph{You can do this. You know you can. And now that you know the
problem with Draco and Snape, you know how to solve it.}

Harry gave a shallow nod, for all that no one else was there to see it.
He had been acting out of emotions recently: arrogance, hurt, blind
anger. He knew how to see past them. He had seen past them for years,
when he knew that his brother's life hung on his actions. Just because
he had a different set of lives to save now, more happiness to make
himself responsible for preserving and protecting, did not mean that he
was going to collapse.

\emph{You can do this. You can repair the results of your own mistakes.
You know the determination that kept you going, when you might have
given up on learning the spells that you needed to protect Connor?
Summon it back. You've shamefully neglected it during the last little
while. But you can stand up under the weights hanging on your shoulders.
None of them is an imposition. They're all mistakes that you made
without realizing you were making them, or duties and entanglements that
you chose. That ought to make you more eager to tackle them, not less.}

Harry could feel his breathing ease. The tears receded from the corners
of his eyes. He stared at the ceiling of his bed again and knew his face
was calm.

Carefully, he gathered up all the swimming emotions that were plaguing
him and making his reactions blunt and clumsy and of the kind that hurt
other people, and tucked them under the surface of the quicksilver pools
that Snape had taught him to use in Occlumency. This was not the same
thing as the box that had caused him so much trouble in second year, and
which Harry was never going to use again. These containers were fluid.
They would hold the emotions without making him unaware of them; he
could summon them back if he wanted them. What they did do was give him
patience and clear his mind for the kind of understanding that everyone
around him needed from him so desperately.

His magic stirred, and for once, it was magic without the spikes and
claws it had grown in the last week. This magic was simply eager to do
what he wanted it to do, to have exercise. Harry exhaled the last of his
fear and doubt and anger, and then tried out a smile. It felt more
natural on his face than it had in a long time.

\emph{I have to be conscious of what I'm doing. I always knew that, with
regard to being} vates\emph{, but I should have known it would also
apply to the relationships I have with other people.} Harry shook his
head, but the regret was fading into self-deprecating amusement. \emph{I
have caused harm, but none of it is irreversible, not if I start
watching my steps right the fuck now.}

\emph{And I will. I have to. I have all this power. That means that I
must know what I do with it, since no one else is going to hold my
shoulder and guide me through the motions. I can make people's lives
better, or I can mess them up without even realizing it. I want to do
the first. To defend and protect and serve, Narcissa wrote me once.
That's what the not-a-lord kind of powerful wizard does.}

\emph{That's what I want to do. I forgot about that for way, way too
long. I'm rededicating myself to that as of now.}

\emph{I know what Snape wants from me: to study offensive spells, and
leave him alone to brood in peace, to stop} asking \emph{for so much and
just to trust him. Well, I can give him that. As long as I handle my
Occlumency right, then I can even be cheerful about it.}

\emph{Draco wanted my unconditional support when he wanted it and to
leave him alone the rest of the time. Granted! That's where my magic
comes in useful. I still won't use Legilimency on him unless he asks me
to, but I can easily enough tell what he's feeling towards me. There's a
spell in the book Hawthorn gave me on that. When he's angry and wants to
be left alone, I'll know, and when he wants me there to ask questions or
give him respectful silence or whatever else it is, then I can know and
go to his side. There. It's easy. I'm glad.}

And that left the situation with James.

Harry sighed. \emph{I can't do anything to make the situation worse.
Snape told me that he'd handled it, and I should trust him. He's right.
Writing a letter to James or yelling at him would only make him angrier,
and maybe the meeting would be moved up and whatever plan Snape has
wouldn't work. I'll just write a polite letter to Father telling him
that I don't approve of what he did. He has his reasons, after all. I'd
like to know what they are.}

Harry lay still for a moment more, checking his new list of resolutions.
It seemed solid enough. It made his life so much simpler, and it would
give the people around him what they wanted.

Harry was rather surprised it hadn't occurred to him to do this before.
After all, there was much evil in what his mother had taught him, but
there was much good as well. Harry knew, now, that he didn't have to
dedicate his life to his brother or wear the phoenix web that would
compel him into feeling love and loyalty for his family. That meant he
was free to choose where to place his love and loyalty, and what to do
with his magic.

\emph{And I choose to do these things. I've wanted to be} vates
\emph{anyway, once I understood what the magical creatures needed from
me. This is just understanding more about what other people need from
me.}

\emph{Time to grow up, Harry.}

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Draco gave a small growl and slammed the book shut. This was making
\emph{no} sense. \emph{I thought books weren't like people,} he thought,
as he leaned back, put his arms across his chest, and scowled at the
book he'd just closed as well as the other tomes lying on the table,
\emph{and couldn't lie.}

But what he had found made \emph{no} sense at all. He'd been researching
Julia Malfoy, the ancestor of his who had slept with her own brother to
produce an heir to the Malfoy line. He'd admired her strength and
determination, and from the letter that his mother had written him about
her, Draco had been sure that she must have the compulsion gift. That
sounded like a good choice for an ancestor sympathetic to him. After
all, Draco had inherited the Black blood, and some Blacks had been
compellers.

But there was no mention of Julia Malfoy in the huge \emph{Collegium
List of Registered Compellers 1299-1504}, and there should have been.
The Collegium, the predecessor of the Ministry in record-keeping, hadn't
bothered with this nonsense of asking people to come in and register
their magical gifts of their own free will. Instead, they had simply
recorded anyone born with a certain kind of magic, much the same way
that Hogwarts recorded the birth of magical children to be sent letters
on their eleventh birthdays. It wouldn't have mattered whether Julia
Malfoy told anyone about her gift or not. She should still be listed
there.

And she wasn't.

\emph{Did that mean that she didn't really have the compulsion gift?}
Draco shifted his glare to the book that lay beside the Collegium one.
\emph{But that means that this history is wrong to insist that she did.
And the descriptions it gives of how she smiled at people and made them
do what she wanted certainly makes it sound as if she could compel
them.}

Draco rubbed his face wearily. He'd been in the library, researching and
neglecting his Charms essay. He didn't want to leave, though. He wanted
to \emph{solve} this mystery, and be able to make the potion \emph{right
now.} Julia Malfoy was the best candidate he had found so far, and he
didn't want to abandon her now.

\emph{I wish Harry were here.}

A few minutes later, as he was still sitting there and trying to work
out the best way to continue his research, footsteps sounded behind him,
and a soft voice said, ``Draco?''

Draco turned and blinked. Harry hovered at the end of the aisle of
shelves, as though he would turn and retreat in a moment if Draco didn't
want him there.

Draco motioned for him to come closer.

Harry took a seat on the opposite side of the table. He didn't ask,
irritatingly, for answers to questions that Draco didn't want to give
and which he should already know anyway. He didn't try to connect the
present situation with any one in the past. He simply sat and waited, in
a calm, listening silence, into which Draco could choose to pour words
or not.

Draco poured words into it.

``\emph{Look} at this,'' he snapped, pushing the Malfoy history book
towards Harry. Harry obediently picked it up and let it flop open at the
beginning of the section on Julia Malfoy, which Draco had thumbed
through so often in the past day that he'd weakened the book's binding.
``She could compel people. I know she could. Just read the descriptions.
But she should be in \emph{here}.'' He touched the Collegium book. ``And
she's \emph{not}. I don't \emph{understand.}''

Harry was quiet, reading the book for a long moment. Then he looked up,
blinking. ``Perhaps it's a different kind of compulsion?'' he asked, his
voice soft and meek.

Draco blinked in turn. ``What do you mean?''

Harry turned the history book towards him and touched a particular
passage. Draco bent over and read it. He'd skimmed through it a few
times, since it seemed to have no particular relevance to what he was
doing.

\emph{Observers often reported a dazzling aura around Lady Julia, as
though she were about to burst into light like a phoenix any moment. She
would smile gently when questioned about it and murmur that she had no
great power, only the grace that was her due for being born a Malfoy.
And, indeed, despite the many reports that spread after her death, while
alive, no one ever saw her perform any feat of dazzling magical
prowess.}

Draco looked up and shook his head. ``I don't see what you mean.''

``She was hiding, I think,'' said Harry. ``She could make other people
think that she wasn't a powerful witch just by saying that she wasn't.
But she couldn't hide her aura.'' He hesitated, and then the thick scent
of roses filled the room.

Draco felt his eyes widen as the suspicion caught up with him. ``She was
powerful enough to be a Light Lady or a Dark Lady,'' he whispered. ``Her
magic could drug the people around her and get them following her
inclinations. But it's not the same as her actually having to reach into
people's minds and drive home her desires. That would explain both the
incidents that look like compulsion and the fact that no one ever
reported her formally as a compeller who somehow managed to escape the
Collegium's list. She was just using a side-effect of her magic.''

Harry nodded and smiled.

Draco whistled under his breath, thinking of what he might become if he
could summon Julia's ghost and gather in her magic. First, of course, he
had to make sure that her magic hadn't passed to her son, or any of the
other dozen-odd children in the Malfoy line to whom she had been a
surrogate mother. He thought it unlikely, however. He'd already studied
the Malfoy generation after her, in cursory detail, and none of them
were powerful enough to be a Lord or Lady.

And if her magic remained free, uncontained in any body, like the magic
that came and haunted the dancers on Walpurgis Night, then Draco could
draw it towards him. And if he were sympathetic enough to her---if his
soul and hers sang the same song---then he could absorb the power and
become, perhaps, a Lord, able to compel people without it being formal
compulsion, himself.

He would have to make sure he and Julia were sympathetic before anything
else. But Draco had the quiet, determined feeling that they would be.

He looked up and met Harry's eyes, flashing him a small smile.
``Thanks.'' \emph{He's really not so irritating when he helps me and
doesn't talk as though everything I do had a connection to him.}

Harry smiled back at him, a smile that Draco found he had missed. ``Of
course.'' He hesitated a long moment, then said, ``I understand that you
just want some time to yourself, Draco. I'll help you however I can, and
won't ask any questions that you don't want to answer. I understand that
you need your own life.'' He met his eyes firmly. ``It's nothing more
than you've given me for years.''

Draco blinked, stunned. \emph{Now, if only he had understood that
yesterday, this whole fight could have been avoided.}

``Thank you, Harry,'' he said. ``It won't be all the time. I think we do
need some separate time. I can't spend every moment running around after
you.'' \emph{Especially when you were ignoring me anyway,} his temper
added, but Draco ignored it in turn. Harry was trying to make a
compromise, and wasn't doing anything like talking to the Chang bitch
right in front of Draco. It was almost as though he had figured out that
Draco loved him and was giving him the silent support that any lover had
a right to demand.

Harry nodded. ``I know. Sorry for that, Draco.'' He rose smoothly to his
feet. ``I'll see you when I see you.''

Draco smiled and watched him out of the library. Then he shook his head
and snatched up the Malfoy history book again, this time to look for
clues that he and Julia were in sympathy-song, all the while humming
under his breath. His life went so much more smoothly when people just
agreed with and understood him.

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``Come in, Harry, come in.''

Albus watched approvingly as Harry came in and shut the door behind him,
taking a seat in the chair opposite his desk without waiting to be
asked. Harry even met his eyes fearlessly, and only smiled at the small
touch of Legilimency Albus used. Albus found calm, clear patience and
determination in the forefront of his mind, and thick shields piled on
shields behind them, showing the unmistakable quicksilver touch of
Severus's teaching.

He could read none of Harry's emotions, but he could tell that Harry
wasn't letting them interfere with his thinking. Something had obviously
changed Harry's habit of reacting without consideration of the
consequences lately, and that was wonderful. They could not have an
overly emotional, impulsive fourteen-year-old Lord flinging his magic
anywhere he liked.

``Have you considered what I told you last time, about sacrificing bits
of your magic to help the magical creatures?'' Albus asked him.

Harry leaned back in his chair and adopted a thoughtful frown. ``I don't
think it would work, sir. They would still be in prisons if I did that,
not truly free. It would just be making them ignore their prisons.'' He
met Albus's eyes. ``With respect, sir, I don't think I can do it that
way.''

``What would you do, then?'' Albus concealed his sharp stab of
disappointment. \emph{And things were going so well. Well, at least he
has been ignoring politics. There was no snappy letter to James, and
that Skeeter woman has not done a second article about Fudge yet.}

``I would make a thorough study of the webs, see what shattering them
would cost people, and then try to alleviate the consequences,'' said
Harry. ``There is one magical artifact in Lux Aeterna which might help.
It forces the person who enters it to be absolutely honest with himself.
If I walked through it, and asked it questions about the webs, then it
would help me see any consequences I was ignoring.'' He frowned. ``But
walking it took my father months. I'm not sure that I can afford the
time. I think I'll ask Fawkes first. He can tell me many wise things,
I'm certain, being a phoenix.''

Albus lifted his eyebrows, impressed in spite of himself. The boy
sounded wise, as though he had actually thought about this instead of
just declaring that he would unleash chaos. And he was talking about
absolute honesty, which, like free will and domestication, had always
been a trait of the Light. \emph{He might turn out a Light Lord after
all.}

Better than all that, the slow pace at which Harry evidently intended to
move would give Albus time to weave more plans which might contain him.

``I have nothing to say except that I approve of your plan entirely,
Harry,'' Albus said. ``Please let me know if there is anything else that
I can tell you about being \emph{vates.} I am anxious to see our world
continue in Light.''

Harry smiled at him as he stood. ``Thank you, sir.''

Albus watched him go. \emph{Have I been wrong? Is he the best chance for
the wizarding world after all, and I have simply been ignoring it?}

\emph{}

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\emph{This is stupid.}

Harry nearly leaped off the moving staircase in surprise. He hadn't
heard from Regulus at all in the past several days, and guessed that he
had been upset over Harry's demand that he stop seeking out Voldemort.

Harry winced a little. \emph{I have no right to forbid him from that.
Yes, it's dangerous, but all I can do is explain the danger and hope
that he listens. I don't have any right to control him, and I couldn't,
anyway.}

``Where have you been?'' he whispered aloud, as he stepped off the
bottom step and out past the gargoyle. ``Are you all right? Is the
connection to Voldemort still working?''

\emph{All's quiet for now. I can't read most of his thoughts.} Regulus's
voice became brisk. \emph{But that's not what I came to talk to you
about. This is} stupid\emph{, Harry, what you're doing. It's an exact
variation of what you were doing to yourself before.}

\emph{I don't know what you mean,} said Harry in confusion, as he headed
towards the dungeons. Connor had asked him for lessons in leadership in
a few days, and Harry wanted to make a list of what things he considered
it most important for his brother to learn. \emph{I'm trying very hard
not to make any of the mistakes that I made in the past, while still
aware that I'll make some. I'm giving people what they want. I'm not
tamping all my emotions down; I still crack open the pools and let them
out sometimes. The same with my magic. I'm trying to make up for
ignoring Draco and Snape.}

Regulus retreated into wordless grumbling. Harry smiled. He thought it
sounded like a good argument himself.

He felt a brief stir of anxiety, since tomorrow was the autumnal equinox
and the day he would see James, but the anxiety faded as he remembered
Snape's plan. He had to trust in Snape. If he said he had a plan that
would take care of it, then he would take care of it. Harry's instinct
was still to cry and rage, but his instincts had got him in enough
trouble in the past few weeks.

His mind hummed smoothly as he considered what he would do tomorrow,
laying all the plans neatly in place. The meeting with James would not
take most of the day, he hoped. He had so many other things to do.

He was busy, and he was happy, far happier than he had ever been while
he was trying to be Connor's protector and failing at it.

\emph{I don't like failing. I was failing all over the place in the last
little while. I'll undoubtedly fail in the future. But this time, at
least, I can see it coming and hopefully head it off, or recover from it
quickly.}

\emph{There are people who} need \emph{so much. It's horrible that the
magical creatures have been bound in webs for so long, and that Snape
and Draco felt they had to retreat from me to have any semblance of a
normal life. I was leaning on them, and I didn't realize it. Well, they
can lean on me for once, if they need to, and stand apart from me, if
they need to. I want to show them that they're absolutely as important
as everyone else in my thinking, and deserve the same consideration.}

\emph{I just want them to be happy.}

\chapter{On This Day of Balance}\label{chapter-20-on-this-day-of-balance}

``James, I wish you wouldn't do this.''

James kept his back turned to Remus as he picked up a handful of Floo
powder. ``I know, Remus,'' he said quietly. ``You've told me several
times now that you wish I wouldn't do this, that you think it's the
wrong thing to do, that it's only going to make Harry hate me.'' He
paused and glanced over his shoulder at the oldest friend left to him
now---unless one counted Peter, and James still didn't feel he could.
\emph{Probably even less than before, after today.} ``But you don't
understand. Harry can hate me. But at least he'll be \emph{alive.} I'm
going to take him out of Hogwarts and tutor him in Lux Aeterna for the
year. Then at least Death Eaters can't attack him the way they always
seem to at Hogwarts.''

``And Severus?'' Remus's hands were clenched at his sides, his amber
eyes alive with the wolf. It made James remember the day Remus had tried
to take Harry away from the house in Godric's Hollow, and James had come
after him with silver. He bit his lip. He did not want to remember that
day. ``Do you think \emph{he'll} hate you any less for this, James?''

``I'm rather hoping he won't,'' said James, and rubbed the powder
between his fingers. ``He shouldn't have tried to raise my son if he
couldn't keep him safe. I'm going now, Remus,'' he added, and then
tossed the dust into the fire. The flames flared green.

``I think you're making a mistake,'' Remus whispered.

James shook his head and took a single stride forward, calling,
``Department of Magical Family and Child Services!'' Remus kept trying
to persuade him out of his chosen course of action, but he couldn't
actually offer a rationalization of his arguments, other than that it
was the wrong thing to do. James would need stronger arguments than
that.

\emph{I should have done this before,} he thought, as he whirled through
the fireplaces. \emph{I never should have listened to Harry. He tries,
Merlin knows, but he can't guard his own life the way that he guards
others'. He's always going to take risks as long as he thinks that he
should. So just restrict him from the outside world, and don't let him
be around anyone he thinks he needs to save, and he should be safe.}

It was such a simple solution that James was frankly surprised that it
had never occurred to Snape. He had never thought the man was stupid.
Stubborn, pig-headed, a bastard, yes, but not stupid.

\emph{That only proves that he doesn't really care about Harry,} James
decided as he stepped out of the Floo at his destination. There was a
polite little carpet to catch the soot that came with him. \emph{If he
really cared, he would have thought of this solution and asked me to
take Harry back myself.}

``Mr. Potter!'' gushed the witch sitting behind the desk, rising to
shake his hand. ``We've heard so much about you! Please, won't you sit
down and take a cup of tea? My name is Hellebore Shiverwood. Professor
Snape and your son should be here in a moment.''

James shook the woman's hand, and looked her over carefully. Hellebore
Shiverwood looked a sensible witch in her early forties, in the kind of
casual dark robes that most Ministry employees favored. Her green eyes
sparkled at him with something near hero-worship, though. James supposed
that was the cause of her gushing.

\emph{Well, never let it be said that I can't use that to my advantage.}

Instead of letting go of Hellbore's hand when the shaking was done, he
shifted his clasp to her wrist and raised it to his lips, kissing her
palm. Hellebore blushed as he murmured, ``Your pardon, madam. My shock
overcame me, and led to ill manners. Such beauty can do that to a man.''

The witch ducked her head and said, ``Well, Mr. Potter, really.'' But
she gestured him to a chair in front of her desk with a benevolent
motion. ``Now, are you sure that you won't take a cup of tea?''

``One would be lovely, thank you.'' James looked around the room. It was
almost bare, with only one portrait in the middle of each wall. The
portraits were all of children. James blinked when he realized that one
child was dressed as if he came from a Dark pureblood family, one from a
Light pureblood family, one from a Muggleborn one---that was reinforced
by the Muggle bicycle next to her, which she kept idly kicking with one
leg when she wasn't grinning out of the portrait---and one from a family
of mixed heritage. \emph{I hadn't expected the office to be so open
about serving all magical children.}

Hellebore Shiverwood came back to her desk, and gave him the cup of tea.
James accepted it, studying her the while. It would be a mistake to
underestimate her. The witch who could decorate her office like this
would probably take the duties of her position seriously, and if she
thought Harry was better off with Snape, then she wouldn't hesitate to
assign him there.

But Hellebore smiled at him, and James relaxed. She liked him, he
reminded himself. Besides, she would have a natural prejudice in favor
of blood family unless she was dealing with a case of abuse; most
wizards and witches did.

``And here they are,'' said Hellebore, abruptly glancing up as the door
of her office opened. ``Ah, welcome, welcome! A happy late summer to
you!''

James smiled grimly as he rose to his feet to face the thief of his son.
\emph{It is too much to hope that he might come to his senses as on his
own, or I might have been content to handle this a different way. But
Snape always did have to be cowed by a show of naked force.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``\emph{Ardesco!}''

Snape nodded as Harry's Intense Flame spell caused the nearest wooden
figure to take fire from the inside, consuming itself in a burst of
flames and ashes. Harry stepped back and turned calmly to face him.
Harry was almost always calm lately, Snape had noticed, the turmoil in
his mind that Snape could feel through the passive link soothed into
silver silence. That was obviously a sign that the treatment was
working. Harry also seemed to have adapted to the partial loss of Draco,
and no longer pestered him. Everything was working.

\emph{Of course it is,} said the voice of the scorpion of ice inside
him. \emph{When you go cold, then everything makes much more sense, and
everything is for the best.}

Snape could not understand how he had endured before, when every attack
on Harry made his heart stutter and race. Now he knew about them, and
how to prevent them, before they happened.

``Better,'' he allowed. ``But you will need to be quicker. I saw that
you could not choose your target for several seconds. When many enemies
are charging you at once, you must choose at once and cast to kill.''

``Yes, sir,'' said Harry, and Snape could feel his thoughts turning
inside his head, as excited as they ever got, pulling down the
information, studying it, and shoving it firmly into place. He relaxed
in the next moment and dipped his head. ``Isn't it almost time for the
meeting with Madam Shiverwood and my father, sir?''

Snape sneered in spite of himself. ``Do \emph{not} call him your father,''
he said, turning towards the cauldron in the corner. Yes, the potion
with the candle floating on it was ready. Snape scooped out a ladle full
of it and dipped it into the vial he had ready, then tucked it into his
robes. He could feel the spike of Harry's startlement, but by the time
he turned back, his charge had his eyes on the floor again.

``Yes, sir,'' he said.

Snape gestured ahead of him. ``We will take the Floo from the
Headmaster's office to the Minister's,'' he said. ``He evidently wishes
to speak with us before we meet with Madam Shiverwood and Potter.''

``Yes, sir,'' Harry repeated, almost the only words he used around Snape
these days, and then turned and walked ahead of him.

Snape let the cold rage fill his own thoughts until they were slick and
glittering, like ice. The vial in his pocket might have burned a hole
there, which would have been a good joke, considering what it was meant
to do. Snape had not yet decided on a name for this particular potion,
and he considered that, in the frozen rationality of his mind, as they
waited for the gargoyle to leap aside and rode the moving staircase
upward.

A name came to him, a myth, a legend, a story, and Snape felt his lips
curl in grim amusement, the only kind he felt these days.

\emph{The Meleager Potion. Yes, I think that will do quite nicely.}

Enjoying his private joke, Snape almost did not notice that they had
entered the Headmaster's office until Albus's voice surrounded them.
``Ah, boys,'' he was saying, as he handed a pinch of Floo powder to
Harry. ``Off to meet the Minister, then?''

``Yes, sir,'' said Harry.

Snape narrowed his eyes. \emph{Why does he sound almost the same saying
that to Albus as to me? What is wrong with the boy? I know that he does
not trust Albus, and I had thought he trusted me.}

He made a mental note to speak with Harry later, and sneered at the
twinkle in the Headmaster's eyes as he watched Harry cast the Floo into
the flames and call, with no prompting, ``Minister Fudge's office!''

The flames turned green, and they were through.

They emerged in a room far, far too overdecorated for the man it was
meant to serve, Snape thought, sneering in a circle. It had portraits of
former Ministers on the walls---gilded ones. It had a large chair behind
the desk---large and comfortable enough to hold the half-breed
gamekeeper. The desk itself was made of polished ironwood---a luxury for
someone like Fudge. Snape touched the vial in his pocket again, and slid
the stopper off with long-practiced fingers. The Meleager Potion seeped
out slowly, thick and viscous, coating his fingers. That was all right.
This particular potion, unlike the one he had given Potter, had to be
ingested to be effective.

And it smelled like chocolate, so that was not a problem.

``Ah, ah, Professor Snape, Mr. Potter!'' Fudge was coming around his
desk towards them, his hand already extended. ``So nice to see you
again, and under more auspicious circumstances than the last ones
were!'' He nodded to Snape with a foolish beam.

Snape simply sneered at him, but reluctantly extended his potion-smeared
hand to be shaken. Fudge shook it, then blinked and peered at his
fingers.

``My apologies, Minister,'' said Snape smoothly. ``I was
called\ldots{}rather abruptly from my work, and I am afraid that some of
the products of my brewing were still on my hands. I have a bit of cloth
that---''

``No, no,'' said Fudge, with a faint, faraway look in his eyes.
\emph{The potion's scent has some intoxicating properties when it is
ready,} Snape noted to himself, as he watched Fudge happily lick the
potion from his fingers. It was something he had suspected, but hadn't
been able to test, for obvious reasons. ``I rather like chocolate,''
Fudge said, with a wink at Snape, when he was finished. ``And, of
course, you can't make poisons all the time, no matter how grim! Eh?
Eh?''

Snape merely stared at him, and Fudge's smile withered. He turned to
Harry. ``Hello, young Mr. Potter. Quite a mischievous article you
published about me, really!'' He shook his head and clucked his tongue.
``You like making up fabulous stories, don't you?''

Harry's mind remained calm. Snape narrowed his eyes. \emph{How did the
boy} do \emph{that? Occlumency, obviously, but I had not thought him so
far advanced. I must remind him to tell me} everything.

``They weren't stories, Minister Fudge,'' said Harry. ``They were true.
You know it. You were there, even as I was.''

Fudge's smile withered again. He tried to recover by replacing it with
an even wider, brighter one, but the effort was obviously strained. He
walked behind his desk and shuffled some pieces of parchment, looking at
his hands as though they were going to give him an answer any moment
now.

``The fact of the matter is, Mr. Potter,'' he said at last, looking up,
``I've had some---unpleasant letters as the result of your article.''

``Howlers, Minister?'' Harry asked, as though he were genuinely
interested.

``Not only Howlers, not only Howlers,'' said Fudge, and coughed.
``Others. There are apparently, ah, many citizens of our fair island who
take a great deal more interest in our government than I ever knew.
There is, in particular, one assault---that is to say, one series of
forceful messages coming from one section of them, suggesting I
resign.'' He leaned forward and stared directly into Harry's eyes, as if
he thought that would make a difference. ``The Dark pureblooded
families.''

``Fancy that,'' said Harry politely.

``It's, well, rather been taking up my time lately, and Madam
Umbridge's,'' said Fudge, with a fake laugh. ``I would appreciate it,
Mr. Potter, if you could tell them that there's really nothing to be
concerned about. It would mean a lot, if you could stand at my side for
one of Ms. Honeywhistle's articles and reassure them that what you said
happened really wasn't as bad as all that.''

``But it was, Minister,'' said Harry.

Snape stared at him again. The boy was an absolute \emph{wall}. His
shields weren't letting any emotion through except calm, polite
interest, not even a hint of amusement. Snape frowned. \emph{I know he
can shield well, but to do it this well, he must have some hidden
motivation. And he hasn't discussed that with me, either.} The ice in
him rattled.

Fudge's mouth opened, and hung there like that for a moment. Then he
closed it with a little click. ``You aren't, ah, you won't change your
mind, then?'' he asked.

``No, sir.''

Snape watched Fudge attempt to stand up straight and give Harry a stern
look. He might as well have been giving a cloud a stern look. Harry just
watched him, and then the Minister turned away and pouted, like a child.

``Fine, then,'' he said. ``Go to your meeting with your father and Madam
Shiverwood, Mr. Potter. I hope that you'll find more there to content
you than you can seem to find here with me.''

``I'm sure I will, Minister,'' said Harry, so smoothly that Snape didn't
even notice the vicious insult until they were almost out of the office.
Then he shook his head and caught up with Harry as his ward studied a
map on the wall, locating the Department of Magical Family and Child
Services.

``Why are you shielding like this?'' he hissed at Harry, just to make
sure they weren't overheard. A wizard was walking down the hall behind
them, heading for Fudge's office.

Harry turned to him. ``I thought about what you said, sir,'' he said,
also keeping his voice low and carefully correct. ``That I should have
some trust in you, and spend some time apart from Draco. But I can't
spend all my time apart from Draco; sometimes he wants me there. So I've
been shielding the emotions that would keep me from achieving those
goals, and only letting through the ones that would help.'' He shrugged
and gave Snape a small smile. ``You were right, sir. It works much
better. And I've been more productive and happy since I started doing
this.''

He certainly had been, Snape had to admit, with some trepidation that he
couldn't place. Draco had been thriving, talking to other Slytherins
besides Harry about some of the subjects he'd uncovered in his research,
happily monopolizing Harry's time when he did want him there, and
occasionally coming to Snape to demand extra books that Hogwarts's
library didn't have. And Harry had been practicing his Dark Arts spells
with more determination and dedication, and not asking Snape nearly as
many questions, which in turn left him more time to go on with the
potions and other methods of defense that would secure Harry's life.

He supposed what had disconcerted him was the completeness and swiftness
of Harry's change. But when the boy decided he was going to do
something, he did it.

He nodded to Harry and stepped back. ``So long as we are agreed that
that is the only reason you are shielding,'' he said.

``Of course, sir,'' said Harry, looking puzzled. ``I only want to make
you and Draco happy, to make up for some of the worry I've put you
through.''

\emph{I cannot find anything wrong with that,} Snape thought, a tension
he hadn't realized was there falling from his shoulders.

``Excuse me,'' said a voice from behind Snape's shoulder. ``I hate to
intrude, but I felt the boy's power just now, and he does look familiar
from the newspaper articles. I thought I should introduce myself.''

Snape turned and sneered at the wizard automatically. He had long golden
hair braided with golden bells, and his robes were thick and heavy,
elaborate with golden sigils in a language that Snape knew was one of
protection. His eyes were blue, and startlingly direct. He met Snape's
gaze without blinking before he looked at Harry.

``My name is Augustus Starrise,'' he said.

Harry dipped his head in a polite bow. ``How do you do, sir?''

Starrise nodded back to him. ``We have received your reply,'' he said.
``We are considering how to respond. You truly are a master of the
written word, Potter. I congratulate you.'' He smiled, a sharp
expression. ``That does not mean, of course, that we will stop advising
the Minister. I hope that your meeting goes well, and that you are back
in your blood father's custody by the end of the day. A child should be
with his parents.'' His eyes raked Snape up and down, and his eyebrows
rose. ``Not with someone who might teach him Dark magic, however
well-intentioned.''

Snape fought the urge to snarl. He hated Light pureblooded wizards even
more than Dark ones. They were far more open with their opinions, since
they considered it a matter of honesty and honor to be.

``You were the one who arranged this, then?'' Harry asked, and his
emotions briefly stirred.

``Of course. Fudge is not clever enough to come up with this plan on his
own.'' Starrise shook his head, making the bells in his hair clang.
``Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a meeting with our dear Minister to
get to.''

He turned and walked off down the hall. Snape clenched his hand on the
vial of Meleager Potion and regretted that he did not yet know what
would happen if he spread it to a second subject before it had taken
effect on the first.

``Let's go, sir.''

Harry's hand was on his arm, his voice pitched low enough to soothe.
Snape let himself be soothed, and drawn along. He wondered when their
positions had reversed, and Harry had become the one to offer him
comfort.

\emph{When he made his change, I suspect.}

They found Madam Shiverwood's office easily enough, and entered. Snape
could see James Potter rising to his feet as they did, a hard smile on
his lips.

It was time. Potter would have absorbed the potion through his fingers
when he read Snape's letter, and it had had a few days to settle inside
him---inert until its creator spoke the operative spell, of course.

Snape laid his hand on the wand in his robe pocket and whispered,
``\emph{Augesco.}''

Then he watched in contentment as the potion took effect.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry had braced himself for the first sight of his father. It hit him
like a knife blade between the shoulders, like Madam Umbridge's
\emph{Lamina Alba} hex, but thanks to his shields, he was able to part
the surface of his mind, receive the shock, and then absorb it again,
swallowing it like a stone dropping into a pool.

``Hello, James,'' he said, remembering just in time that Snape had said
he wasn't to refer to him as his father.

James drew breath as if to reply, and then sealed his lips together. A
weird, high-pitched giggle edged out of his mouth.

Harry blinked and glanced at Snape, only to find his eyes half-shut and
locked on James's face. An expression of lazy pleasure was there, though
someone else would have known only that Snape was smirking, Harry was
sure.

``Mr. Potter?'' the witch behind the desk asked worriedly.

``My name isn't Mr. Potter,'' James said, tossing his head, as though he
were a child. ``My name is Mr. Ragglemuffin, King of the Raggles, and I
insist that you treat me as such. Where is my throne?''

Harry swallowed. \emph{That would be Snape's plan, then. I suppose he
couldn't pass up a chance to humiliate his old rival.}

Then he scolded himself for thinking that. He didn't know Snape's
motivations, not all of them, but he knew one of them was his
protection. He ought to be grateful for this, not complaining about what
it could not be.

The witch stared again, then glanced sternly at Snape. ``Professor, if
you have cast a spell on Mr. Potter---''

``I assure you, my good woman,'' said Snape, ``you may examine my wand,
and Mr. Potter as well. I have not cast any spell that would harm him.''
He drew out his wand and pressed it into Madam Shiverwood's hand.

``Where is my purple cat?'' James was peering about the room, and his
hands were patting his knees as though to summon a reluctant animal to
him. ``Come here, kitty kitty kitty!'' Abruptly, he caught sight of
Harry, and his face brightened. ``A silver cat! That will do instead.''

He bounced towards Harry and held out his arms. Harry took a step
backward, unsure of what would happen if he allowed himself to be
embraced, and not really wanting it, anyway. He'd got used to Draco
touching him in the past few weeks, when he wanted to, and Snape putting
his hand on Harry's shoulder to guide him occasionally. Otherwise, no
one else had, and Harry was fine with that.

James grabbed him anyway, practically crushing Harry's face into his
shoulder. ``No,'' he said. ``You aren't a silver cat, are you? You're a
bunny rabbit, a sweet little bunny rabbit!'' He kissed the top of
Harry's head. ``Do you want some carrots, little bunny?''

Harry unobtrusively forced magic into his muscles and managed to tear
out of his father's grip before he could feel too uncomfortable. He
skipped a few steps backward and looked helplessly at Madam Shiverwood.

James lay down on the floor and began to pull off his robes, singing a
nonsense song as he did so. ``As I was walking among the lettuce, up
came the chief of owls and he said, he said to me, oh nonya nonya
no---''

``I---'' Madam Shiverwood shook her head and performed a spell on
Snape's wand that Harry recognized as \emph{Prior Incantato}. A ghostly
image of a giggling child welled up, confirming that Snape had cast a
Cheering Charm on himself. Madam Shiverwood shook her head again, and
then gave the wand back to Snape. ``You were worried about this meeting,
Professor Snape?'' she asked.

``I was.'' Snape nodded and stared at James, who was struggling and
kicking at his robes as if he had forgotten all about buttons. ``I see
that I need not have been.'' He looked at the witch and sneered.
``Unless you will commit a child to the care of someone who clearly has
something loose in his head?''

\emph{He doesn't have something loose in his head,} Harry thought
uneasily. \emph{Except what Snape put there. If they think Dad's somehow
crazy, then he might lose custody of Connor, too, and who would Connor
go with? Remus legally can't take him, and Snape would never agree to.}

He forced down the panic that wanted to burgeon. Snape had said to trust
him. Harry \emph{had} to. And Snape had said at the end of May that he
cared for Harry just as he was. Surely that meant that anything he did
out of that affection could be excused? That it would have to be?

``Look at me!'' James shouted, flipping his robes up towards his head.
``Look what I can do!''

Harry swallowed his embarrassment at his father's actions and looked at
Madam Shiverwood, to see her watching him.

``How do you feel about going home with your father, Harry?'' she asked
carefully. ``The claim he filed included a petition to remove you from
school, so that you might finish out your education at your family home.
He said it would be safer for you than the school.''

Harry sighed. ``With all due respect, madam, my safety there depends on
the wards,'' he said, looking at James. ``And the wards answer to James.
I don't think he can keep me safe if he's acting like this. He might let
Death Eaters through under the impression that they were the Chief of
the Rabbits.''

``Have you ever known him to act like this before?'' Madam Shiverwood
asked.

Harry shook his head.

The witch looked hard at Snape, who returned her scowl with a perfectly
bland expression. Then she sighed. There was anger and disappointment
and disgust in the sigh, but also resignation. ``I cannot send a child
home with someone who acts like this,'' she agreed. ``You may retain
temporary custody of Harry, Professor Snape. We---''

``Have to pee!'' James shouted.

The strong smell of urine a moment later confirmed that he wasn't
kidding. Harry tried, desperately, not to look in his direction.

The witch blinked a few times, slowly, then said, ``I think it best if
you leave now, Professor, Harry. I shall make sure to escort Mr. Potter
home.'' She nodded rather helplessly to Harry. ``I hope that you will be
happy with the professor, Harry, and that this problem will be solved as
soon as possible.'' Her eyes slid to Snape.

Snape simply stared back, then turned and marched out of the office.
Harry scrambled to catch up.

``\emph{Is} it permanent, sir?'' he asked, when he was sure they were far
enough from the office that Madam Shiverwood couldn't hear them.

``I don't wish to tell you,'' said Snape.

Harry flinched from the coldness in his tone, and reminded himself,
again, that he'd resolved to stop asking Snape so many questions. His
guardian was \emph{busy}, and always had his best intentions at heart.
He took the concern and slid it under his shields. It was up to him to
make sure that James wouldn't be hurt permanently by the potion. Snape
couldn't be bothered.

He waited for relief and joy to bubble up, since he was still under
Snape's guardianship.

When it came, it was\ldots{}rather muted, really.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry sighed and looked away from Connor's stricken face. ``I don't
know,'' he said quietly. ``I'm just going to make \emph{sure} that it 's
not permanent, that's all. I think I know some of the ingredients that
Snape used in the potion. I recognized them by scent, and you know that
he taught me about Potions theory this summer. I'm fairly sure that I
can mix up an antidote soon.'' He turned a hopeful grin on his brother.
``But, of course, Snape might even reverse it before then, once he's
decided that James isn't going to come after me again.''

Connor shook his head slowly and leaned against the wall outside the
Great Hall, closing his eyes. ``I still don't understand,'' he
whispered. ``I---you've taught me, Harry, never to take pleasure in
someone else's suffering. How could you just leave him under the potion,
smarting and humiliated like that?''

Harry winced. He wondered what he could have done to both keep Snape's
trust and avoid hurting his brother. It didn't seem there was anything,
so he would have to live with this consequence, too. ``I'll reverse
it,'' he said. ``I promise.''

Connor opened his eyes and gave him a bleak look.

``Do you still want me to give you those lessons, tomorrow?'' Harry
asked him softly.

``Yeah, I guess,'' said Connor, and shuffled into the Great Hall. Harry
watched him go with a faint frown, then turned his head. The Slytherin
table was filling up for dinner, and he wandered over to it with a
slight feeling of disorientation. Everything had gone so well for a few
days, and now\ldots{}this. First failure.

\emph{Snape's an idiot,} Regulus volunteered.

Harry smiled a little in spite of himself, if only because it was so
like something Sylarana would have said. \emph{What about this time?} he
asked, as he sat down next to Millicent and reached for the plate of
bread.

\emph{Because he must have known that you'd have questions about the
potion, but he didn't bother to answer them.} Regulus made what sounded
like a noise of deep disgust in his throat, and Harry wondered how he
could do that, since he didn't have a throat to make it with right now.
\emph{What kind of responsible adult does that?}

\emph{A busy one,} Harry said back, and distracted Regulus. Most people
liked to talk about themselves more than they liked to talk about other
people's problems. Besides, this \emph{was} a problem that needed
attention. \emph{When are you going to drop the wards and let Narcissa
into Grimmauld Place to search for you?}

Sullen silence.

Harry sighed and spread butter on his bread. \emph{You know that you
have to, sooner or later.}

Peeved silence.

Harry shook his head, and looked up as he saw two post owls flap in
through the windows of the Great Hall. It was almost sunset, the
enchanted ceiling reflecting the shine of red and gold light through the
window, and it made the owls glow as they both swooped towards him.

Harry murmured his thanks and fed the ordinary barn owl before he
accepted the letter from the other owl with a grave nod. This was
Julius, Lucius Malfoy's truce-owl, and it would have been an insult to
feed him. He ruffled his feathers at Harry instead, and soared out the
window, followed quickly by the other owl.

Harry opened the truce-letter first. It was a short message, as he had
expected it would be. They were near the end of the dance.

\emph{Harry:}

\emph{I look forward to seeing you again on the longest night.
Meanwhile, on the night of mingled light and dark, in perfect balance, I
ask you for a favor. I shall not demand that you fulfill it yet, but I
ask that you keep it in mind. My gift is the chance for you to owe me a
debt.}

\emph{Lucius Malfoy.}

Harry nodded. He would ask Mr. Malfoy for a favor in return, but he
would wait and think about it before he sent the letter making the
formal request. After all, if he found an immediate use for the favor,
he might as well use it instead of just asking for one. And he had until
winter solstice, and the end of the dance, to reply.

He opened the other letter, which bore only his name on the envelope,
and froze when he recognized the handwriting.

\emph{Dear Harry:}

\emph{There was a Muggle poet, once. Or so they say. In truth, his
family line carried wizarding blood from France, through a distant
cousin of mine. He himself may have been a Squib. His minor magic doing
its best to protect him would have explained how he stayed alive so
often when he seemed so determined to kill himself. There was nothing he
would not try: scaling Culver Cliff, swimming in cold northern waters,
drinking himself nearly to death, visiting flagellation brothels.}

\emph{He wrote of many strange things, strange and fabulous, but none
stranger than he did long after his supposed cure and taming, his
turning from Dark wildness to Light domesticity. He called it a vision,
a nymph-frenzy. I think he may actually have met Pan in the woods.}

Lord God of life and of light and of all things fair, \emph{he sang.}

Lord God of ravin and ruin and all things dim\ldots{}

\emph{There are some who watch, Harry, and know that one in power may be
both ``of life and of light and of all things fair,'' and ``of ravin and
ruin and all things dim.'' Never think to evade our eyes.}

\emph{Evan Rosier.}

Harry shook his head and put the letter on the table. Millicent snatched
it up at once, and Harry couldn't even find the strength to stop her.

``Strange,'' Millicent commented, and then stopped when her eyes alit on
the signature. She frowned at Harry. ``Why do you accept post from
people who tried to kill you?''

Harry shook his head and started to respond, but in that moment, most of
the last colors of sunset drained out of the sky, and pain exploded in
his head, his scar.

Harry gasped, bowing his head, too startled to try and hide, and felt
hands clamp on his shoulders. But that was nothing compared to the grip
in his mind, squeezing and pulling as though someone would yank his
brain out through the back of his skull.

He heard Regulus scream, once, in a voice so horrified and devastated
that Harry tried to reach out to him, tried to follow that connection
that he'd never been able to sense.

Then Regulus was gone.

Harry lay with his head on the table, panting, trying desperately to
soothe the jumbled pain in his head, and hang on to his sanity, and
figure out what in the hell had just happened.

\chapter{Not So Private Lessons}\label{chapter-21-not-so-private-lessons}

\emph{Regulus?}

There was no answer.

Harry sighed and stepped into the abandoned classroom where he'd asked
Connor to meet him for his lessons in leadership. He'd been reaching out
for Regulus since he vanished, trying everything he could think of, from
simple shouts of his name to slurs against his family, which might bring
him roaring back in anger. There was nothing, and Harry thought that if
Regulus could hear him, he would have responded.

That left him being gone, or dead.

Harry shook his head with a frown as he considered the second thought
and set his magic to Vanishing the dust from the desks and corners.
\emph{I don't believe that. I'm nearly certain that his body is in a
Black house somewhere, and the wards are tight around all of them. How
would Voldemort have broken through those, as weak as he is right now?
And we'd soon know if he was back in his full power. He would have come
after either Connor or me first, I think, instead of Regulus.}

\emph{So I think his voice is gone for right now, but not his body.}
Harry bit his lip and sighed. \emph{And since I have no way of
contacting him as he is right now, I think I had best contact Narcissa
and tell her about my suspicions. If there's any way she can still get
into Grimmauld Place, then she should.}

Harry was just finishing the last of the dusting when he felt the
fragile quiver behind his temple that indicated Draco wanted Harry to
come and help him, or sit in admiring silence at his feet, or suggest
books to look in for research on Julia Malfoy and her time period. Harry
hesitated for a moment, then shook his head, with slow determination.
Draco knew this was the time when Harry had promised to give Connor
lessons, since it was Saturday and they had no classes. Harry had
explained that to him, and he was sure Draco had understood. Harry
didn't see the need to leave and go to him now.

Someone knocked on the door. Connor peeked around it, and Harry found
his face relaxing into a smile. His brother's company seemed positively
undemanding these days, next to Snape's, where Harry had to choke back
many of the tendencies that had become natural around the Potions
Master, and Draco's, where Harry was still making the wrong decisions
half the time, as Draco's mind changed like quicksilver.

Of course, the first thing Connor said was, ``Have you found the potion
that could cure Dad's madness yet?''

Harry let the smile fall away from his face, and shook his head. ``No,
sorry, Connor.'' The fact was that he knew at least two ways of finding
out the potion's ingredients and brewing an antidote, but both of them
would make Snape very angry. Harry fought a small battle every day about
whether risking his guardian's anger was worth letting his father
suffer. The part of him that said he shouldn't make Snape angry was
losing, slowly but steadily.

Connor sighed. ``Let's just---''

The door creaked open again, and Ron stuck his head in. ``Room for
two?'' he asked, when he caught Harry's eye.

Harry blinked. ``I suppose so. But why?'' He wouldn't have thought that
Ron was very interested in the kinds of history and philosophy that
Harry aimed to teach Connor, or at least knew about some of it already,
through living in a pureblood family.

``Connor said that you're a good teacher, when you want to be.'' Ron
shrugged and padded over to sit down at one of the tables, idly running
his fingers over the clean surface. ``And I'm \emph{bored.} It's not
going to be the same without Quidditch this year, you know.'' He said
that with a deep disgust in his tone.

``They're not letting us play?'' Harry reflected that nearly everyone
else seemed to know more about what went on in the school than he did.
Of course, he'd been busy with Snape and Draco and trying to find
Regulus and writing suggestions to Skeeter for another article on the
Minister in the past few days, but he wouldn't have thought he would
miss an announcement like that.

Ron gave him a sharp look. ``Yes. And the Headmaster just smiled
mysteriously and refused to explain why. You \emph{must} have heard him
say that, Harry. It was just at dinner last night.''

``Oh,'' said Harry, remembering. He'd been helping Draco research
necromancy last night, and had lost track of enough time that he missed
dinner. He shrugged. ``Sorry, but I wonder why? You're absolutely sure
that the Headmaster didn't say?'' That might explain why the professors,
except Snape, had been gossiping about lately, but Harry didn't see why
the banning of Quidditch would concern anyone save the Heads of House.

``Just said that we'd understand later.'' Ron dropped his head on the
desk. ``I know he's a great man and all---Dad says he's brilliant---but
he's barmy sometimes.''

Harry privately agreed with that assessment. ``All right, then,
let's---''

The door creaked again, and Hermione came in, taking a place at a desk.
Unlike Ron, she seemed to notice how clean it was, but she just raised
an eyebrow at Harry and pulled a piece of parchment, her quill, and her
inkwell out of the bag she was carrying, which Harry would normally
expect to be full of books.

``And what are \emph{you} doing here?'' Harry asked. \emph{If there's one
student in school that doesn't need extra lessons, it's Hermione.}

``I'll go if you don't want me here,'' said Hermione.

Harry looked at her hard, hearing an injured tone in her voice. He
sighed when he recognized it. It was true that he'd been rather
neglecting Hermione lately. He didn't know how to make up for it.
Politics and talking to Fawkes---who could only offer a limited array of
chirps without a house elf to translate---and Draco and Snape had
consumed a lot of his time, that was true, but he could still have found
some hours to spend with her.

``No, that's fine,'' he said. ``But I would have thought that you
already knew everything I did.''

Hermione's scowl grew pronounced. ``I would have thought the library
would have more information on pureblood rituals than it does,'' she
muttered. ``Too many of the books just say something like \emph{And of
course this connects to the Rite of the Scorpion that the Starrise
family performed on full moon nights of victory over their enemies,} but
then they don't explain what the Rite of the Scorpion \emph{is.} I'm
sure I'm missing a lot, and I have to know the whole thing.''

Harry relaxed. Hermione's motivation was easier to deal with, at least.
He wondered how she'd missed getting into Ravenclaw. ``Well, teaching
three people won't be much different than teaching one, I suppose.''

``Six.''

Harry raised his eyebrows as Cho entered, nodding cheerfully at him.
Luna wandered in just behind her, giving Harry a rather vague smile.
Padma Patil followed both of them. Harry eyed her warily, but if she had
any of her sister Parvati's tendency to giggle, it didn't show in the
way she carefully arranged her books and parchment on one of the desks.

``All right, then.'' Harry didn't ask why they'd come. They were
Ravenclaws, and Ravenclaws who genuinely seemed to enjoy learning, from
what he'd seen of them. ``Then I'll start.'' He began, giving the
classroom door one more suspicious look, but this time it didn't seem
inclined to admit more people.

``I wanted to ask my brother who he thinks the main people he'd have to
persuade to follow him are.'' He fastened his gaze on Connor, feeling no
remorse at putting his brother on the spot. It was time Connor learned
to deal with some of the attention that had been flicking away from him
this year, as people whispered and giggled about Harry's abduction.

Connor flushed. ``I, ah. Dark wizards?''

Harry cocked his head. ``You think of them as a block?''

``\emph{Aren't} they?''

Harry shook his head. ``Dark wizards don't all want the same thing, and
they don't even all share the same allegiance,'' he said, falling easily
into the patterns of the book learning he'd had from his mother.
``Really, there are two kinds of Dark wizards, even though they both get
lumped together as the same thing most of the time. There are declared
ones, sworn to a Dark Lord or some ideal---an ill-defined one,
really---of keeping Dark magic legal. Then there are just wizards and
witches who will use Dark spells.'' Hermione's quill was speeding across
her parchment, Harry noticed in amusement. Well, he supposed he couldn't
blame her. She studied \emph{everything}, and their Defense Against the
Dark Arts professors so far hadn't covered much of the history of how
Dark and Light magic appeared among the wizarding families. ``Both often
practice what are called the Dark rituals and the Dark pureblood dances
of manners. Then there are the same distinctions for Light wizards,
except, of course, that they often follow Light Lords, and fight to keep
everything the same as it has been a few centuries, since the last
Minister who really tolerated Dark magic. Their rituals are different.''

Hermione looked up, the dawning of consciousness in her eyes. ``That was
why I was finding so many different rituals,'' she whispered. ``Some of
them were Light, and some Dark.''

Harry nodded. ``As to how they're connected, and whether a certain
ritual is Light or Dark\ldots{}well, they might depend on free will or
compulsion. Or they might depend on taming, bridling, and confining, or
letting loose, freeing, unbinding. Or they might be concerned with
identifying the truth, which is defined as Light magic, or hiding and
subterfuge, which is Dark.''

Connor, Harry saw, was following with a frown, and looking as though he
wished he had brought some parchment. ``But lots of people use glamours
or illusions, and those aren't called Dark Arts,'' he said.

Harry nodded again. ``They aren't \emph{called} that. They are Dark, but
only under one definition of the term. There are lots of definitions.
Another one is the Light magic is often cooperative, done with many
wizards working together, while many Dark spells and arts are solitary.''

Hermione scribbled that down, too. ``I knew that,'' she said
defensively, when Harry looked at her. ``But the way you explain it is a
lot simpler and clearer.''

\emph{Only she would think that,} Harry thought with amusement, and then
looked over Hermione's bowed head, something he was just getting used to
being tall enough to do. \emph{Well, her and the Ravenclaws.} Ron and
Connor looked nearly overwhelmed. ``I've had time to think about it, and
to study it.''

Hermione gave him a long, slow look. ``I heard something about that,''
she said. ``But not everything in detail. Why \emph{do} you know so much
about Dark Arts and spells and rituals, Harry?''

``Lucky, I guess,'' said Harry. ``And I have a really good memory. I
usually only have to read a book once to remember most of the
information.'' It was true, as it happened, but it slid him neatly past
the awkward moment when the Ravenclaw girls might have started asking
why he'd been trained so much as a child. Harry was uncomfortable with
them knowing what they might already, that he'd been trained as Connor's
protector. He was not going to get into the phoenix web or what they
would probably want to call abuse. They were sure not to understand what
it had really been like. ``So, Connor, you'll have to persuade Dark
wizards declared and unaligned, and Light wizards declared and
unaligned, and then of course those families and individual wizards who
aren't either.''

``And where do Muggleborns fit into all this?'' Hermione asked. Harry
thought she was honestly curious. It wasn't the kind of thing that most
people talked about openly in Hogwarts, except maybe in Muggle Studies,
wary as they were of stepping straight into subjects no one wanted to be
forced to take a side on.

``Depends on whether or not they stay in the wizarding world, and
where,'' said Harry. ``Sometimes they declare for Dark or Light.
Sometimes they marry into a family which has an allegiance, and adopt
that. Sometimes they use both Dark and Light magic, anything short of
the Unforgivable Curses, and stay in the middle. And a lot of them go
back to the Muggle world, of course.''

Hermione shook her head. ``That's \emph{stupid.}''

``I quite agree, Granger,'' said a sharp voice from the doorway. ``No
sense in wasting education on people who are only going to misuse it.''

Harry jerked his head up. This time, he hadn't heard the door creak.
Draco was standing there, looking straight at him, and his face was
furious.

Harry lowered his head, and piled shields on top of shields. He had been
irritated at Draco for forgetting that he was going to spend the morning
with Connor. But why had he been irritated? Of course Draco would want
him to be there anyway.

He could feel his whole mind shifting and changing, adapting itself into
the small quiet thing that it usually was of late around Draco, but a
glance at his friend's face showed that was not going to be enough.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Draco tapped a finger on his book. Perhaps he'd been spoiled, but he'd
got quite used to Harry showing up whenever he wanted him; he'd accepted
that Harry was probably watching him by magical means for any such
occurrence. And this was taking much longer than it should have, even if
he was down in the Great Hall or out on the Quidditch Pitch when Draco
thought about him.

Then he remembered that Harry had said something about teaching Connor
lessons in leadership this morning.

\emph{As if that prat could learn anything,} Draco thought, and stood,
storming out of the library. He went to the classroom that Harry had
used to try and ``educate'' Connor last year. They would be there, if
they were anywhere. Harry had to learn that sometimes Draco needed him,
too.

Except that they weren't there, and it took an unconscionably long time
of wandering among the empty classrooms until Draco found them. By then,
his temper was near the boiling point, and he entered just after some
crack by Granger about how it would be stupid for Mudbloods to go back
to the Muggle world. Draco felt compelled to agree with her.

He looked at Harry.

For a moment, a stir of unease struck him as he watched Harry's eyes
widen and then drop from his face, and how his posture changed, flowing
from an almost teacher-like one to one that Draco could well imagine
standing or sitting near him, poised to give but not attract attention.
It rather reminded him of last year, when Harry had sometimes acted like
that around his brother. If there was one person whom Draco didn't want
to be compared to, it was Connor Potter.

But then he shook off the idea. Harry was probably just apologetic for
wasting his time here when he could have been with Draco. And hadn't
Draco given him a lot of attention last year, and gone dashing off to
his side whenever Harry wanted? It was nothing more than Harry owed him
in return.

``Come \emph{here,}'' he said, walking towards Harry.

Weasley was on his feet in an instant, getting between him and Harry.
Draco sneered at him. He didn't have much time for Weasley. He had Harry
and the potion to brew, and the potion and Harry, and that was enough
for him right now. Oh, sure, sometimes he did talk to other people,
because he couldn't spend all his time researching the potion or talking
to Harry, but those people certainly didn't include Weasley.

``Out of the way,'' he said.

Weasley had the audacity to shake his head. His face was bright and
flushed. Draco hoped, spitefully, that he had some idea of how
unattractive he looked, despite the fact that he couldn't give him that
much credit for intelligence. ``How can you just order Harry around like
that?'' he demanded. ``You can't just order him around like that.''

Draco blinked. ``I wasn't giving him an order. I was just telling him
how things were going to be.'' He was sure that he had given Harry a
choice with his tone. It hadn't been an order or a command. He knew that
Harry would despise orders or commands, and that he spent as much time
as he did with Draco because he genuinely wanted to spend time with him,
nothing else. ``Come on, Harry,'' he added, making sure his voice was
coaxing this time, looking over Weasley's shoulder. Harry still didn't
meet his gaze. ``You do want to come work with me, don't you?''

Harry didn't respond. Draco could feel the anger bubbling up in his
chest again. He \emph{needed} Harry's help, and he didn't need Harry
spending his time with these tossers, among whom, he saw with a faint
sneer, was the Chang bitch. Why would Harry want to spend time with
them, anyway? It wasn't as though they were his friends who'd risked
their lives for him again and again, or who loved him the way that Draco
did.

\emph{And if any of them do, they better not come near him.}

Sometimes Draco felt as if he didn't understand his own mind through the
dizzying swirl of emotions and ambitions that occupied it, but what he
\emph{did} understand told him distinctly that Harry was his and no one
else's. He'd felt that for years, really, but now he knew why, and he
wasn't about to let the realization go again.

The thing that really puzzled Draco was why \emph{Harry} wasn't saying
anything about this. He should have been, if he was so interested in
coming to work with Draco, but he only sat there, his head bowed and
drooping, his eyes on the floor. He seemed to be taking several deep
breaths, as if to stave off a panic attack. But Draco knew when Harry's
panic attacks happened. They happened after he was possessed by evil
Dark Lords or when he had too many people staring at him. Neither was
true now, so it couldn't be a panic attack.

``Come on, Harry,'' he said again, feeling angry at having to repeat
himself.

A voice from the doorway said, ``Merlin, but you're a pompous git,
Malfoy.''

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

If there was one thing that offended Zacharias Smith, it was lack of
intelligence.

He was willing to concede that some people didn't know much about some
things (from his experience at Hogwarts, ``some people'' amounted to
``most of the other students''), but that ignorance could be corrected.
If someone wanted to know something, they could ask. If someone
\emph{realized} they didn't know something, and no one else did either,
they could seek to remedy the lack themselves. There was a library
upstairs, and minds residing in the professors' heads, or at least most
of them. Zacharias did not \emph{believe} in native stupidity. It was
only ignorance, what you got when other people didn't care enough to
educate themselves.

But he did believe in a kind of willful stupidity, and he saw it in full
flight when he wandered by the classroom where, just maybe, on the
slimmest of chances, he might have seen Hermione Granger heading about
ten minutes ago.

It offended him more than anything else in the world to see Draco Malfoy
standing in front of Harry Potter and talking as if it wasn't perfectly
obvious that Potter was going into what his great-grandmother called
\emph{avuluchia}. Zacharias considered that she knew what she was
talking about, being a Veela and everything, and here it was. Potter
wanted to do two things, very badly, and neither side was letting up,
sending him into mental paralysis.

\emph{Merlin, Malfoy ought to have known something was wrong just by the
way he's looking at the floor.} Potter \emph{doesn't do that.}

``Merlin, but you're a pompous git, Malfoy,'' Zacharias drawled,
stepping through the door and leaning against it. His eyes lingered on
Hermione as she turned to stare at the door, but that was just
coincidence, really. And if he happened to notice that she had most of a
parchment covered in writing, and wanted to nod in approval, what of it?
Being smart was nothing to sneer at. ``What gives you the right to treat
Potter like your little plush dragon? Real wizards give up on playing
with those dragons when they're six.''

Malfoy flushed. Zacharias nodded, happy to have his suspicions
confirmed. ``You didn't, did you? You were probably playing with it
until you got your Hogwarts letter, and then you put it away and
pretended that you'd never heard of it.''

``Shut up, Smith,'' Malfoy had the gall to hiss, as if he really thought
he could shut someone up who had more than a scattering of intelligence
that way. ``You don't know what you're talking about.''

``Yes, I do,'' said Zacharias, and stepped into the classroom. He
noticed three Ravenclaws there, all girls of good family, good Light
wizarding stock, and nodded to them. Really, Malfoy \emph{was} an idiot,
and not acting like one, to believe that Potter would be unsafe with
this lot.

But he didn't believe in native idiocy, only in native ignorance, so
that meant he could help educate Malfoy out of it.

Zacharias smiled. He was going to enjoy this.

``You put your little plush dragon away only a day before you got your
Hogwarts letter, or the hour after it,'' he said, directing his
attention to Malfoy again. \emph{Pompous git. Braggart, throwing his
money and his weight around. I wonder if his father ever told him that
his great-grandfather was one of the poorest purebloods around for a
long time? Illegal gambling won most of the Malfoy property back, and
ever since then, they've been acting as though they're old money. Old
name, new money, not a lick of common sense.} ``And then it turned out
not to matter, because you immediately found another plush dragon when
you got here. You've been hanging on Potter as though he could grant
your every wish.''

Zacharias paused to study the wizard who, by now, had looked up and was
staring hard at him. Potter's magic beat around him like a stream barely
dammed, a river peering over the top of the obstruction and ready to
flow. ``Well,'' Zacharias amended, ``he probably \emph{could} grant your
every wish.''

He brought his gaze back to Malfoy's face. ``But that doesn't mean that
you get to ask him to try, you know. A Lord belongs to everybody. So
does a \emph{vates.}'' His great-grandmother had told him about the
\emph{vates}, during all the long days when Zacharias had sat by her
chair with the instruction to ``learn something.'' Zacharias had surely
learned something. ``So he doesn't get to just educate one person, or
grant the wishes of one person. That's selfishness on your part, and it
would be on his. He gets to belong to the whole of the wizarding world,
and lavish his magic on the people he chooses to lavish it on.''

Zacharias looked back at Potter, and if he chose to admire Hermione's
face on the way, no one was there to notice. There were no natively
stupid people, but Zacharias believed firmly that some people were more
intelligent and observant than others, and of the people in this room,
only Hermione was his match. She was allowed to notice his looking, if
she wanted to.

Potter's eyes were fastened steadily on his now, and he seemed to be
asking what, exactly, Zacharias wanted.

\emph{Heavens, he's not that far gone, is he?} Zacharias frowned in
thought. Maybe he was. He hadn't known that Malfoy's plush-dragoning of
the other wizard had pushed Potter like this, or he would have
interfered sooner.

Well, now he could.

``I give you permission to use Legilimency on me, Potter,'' he said. ``I
know you know it. Look into my mind, and see if I'm not speaking the
truth about why the way Malfoy treats you is evil.''

``Shut up, Smith!'' Malfoy spat again, and took a step forward, his
hands helplessly clenched.

Zacharias gave him a cool look. He could defend himself, if necessary.
He didn't think he should depend on Potter to do it. ``You shut up,
Malfoy,'' he said. ``You owe courtesy and precedent to a wizard as
powerful as Potter, at least until he decides to decline the invitation
to look into my mind.''

He glanced back at Potter, who was looking helplessly at Malfoy.
``Potter?'' he asked.

Harry glanced at him in turn, and Zacharias narrowed his eyes. \emph{Oh,
honestly. How hesitant can someone with strength like that get? When
he's past this, I'm going to pick at him with everything in me. No one
can afford for him to be this weak.}

``Come on, Potter,'' he said. ``It's a simple enough spell. One word,
and I give you my full permission.'' He summoned the memories that he
wanted Potter to see to the forefront of his mind. He didn't know
Occlumency, but he knew that it would make it easiest for a wizard
entering an unfamiliar mind if he didn't have to dig for memories.
Zacharias was not keen on having it hurt him, either.

Potter whispered, ``\emph{Legilimens.}''

Zacharias felt an odd twisting and pushing, as though someone had slid
through an outer curtain to his thoughts he hadn't even been aware was
there. He braced himself not to fight the intrusion, but after that
first sensation, there was nothing appreciable. He braced himself with
his hands on a desk and hummed, waiting.

The memories were right there, easily accessed.

\emph{``But I don't know what you mean, Grandma,'' said Zacharias,
sitting at the Veela's feet in a fall of sunlight. Her room was always
lit, enough to touch Zacharias's heart and cheer him up even on days
when the winter sky was faint and pasty everywhere else. Here, the light
was golden.}

``\emph{I mean a} vates, \emph{my dear, a creature of magic and freedom
so extreme that nothing can contain her.'' Her hand smoothed across his
forehead, and Zacharias shivered. He was too young to know much about
what Veela could do, but because he was her blood, she could soothe and
enchant him with a touch. ``She has to know herself inside and out, and
she'll lose her position in a moment if she tries to make someone do
something she doesn't want to do, but when she's here, she'll heal and
free all those poor creatures bound in webs to this day.''}

\emph{Zacharias thought ahead, even at that age. ``But what happens if
the} vates \emph{is weak, or shuts herself in a cage?}''

\emph{Grandma's voice went sad and cold, both at once. ``Then she is
dead, and something of beauty and freedom is forever lost to the
world.}''

Potter pulled out of his head, and Zacharias opened his eyes as the
memory ended. He saw Potter's trembling, and shook his head, clucking
his tongue. Perhaps a bit of spurring right now wouldn't go amiss.

``Really, Potter,'' he said. ``Did you think that no one else had
noticed, that no one else would question it when suddenly you started
acting differently?''

``He's just acting the way I wanted him to act,'' Malfoy said.

Zacharias gave him a smirk. Malfoy sounded like a pathetic little boy.
``We did notice,'' he told Potter. ``There's an awful lot of people at
this school who notice everything you do. Everything. And we're not
about to have our chance at a Lord, or something even better, ruined
because you want to go and hide in a cage. I'm going to poke you with a
stick until you get out of the cage. You'll have to find some other
solution than hiding, Potter.''

``And what if hiding is what other people want me to do?'' Potter
whispered, barely loud enough for Zacharias to hear him. ``If I have to
be their servant and their protector, then shouldn't I hide?''

``Then they're stupid,'' said Zacharias, and decided that perhaps he
could believe in stupid people after all. ``If they really do that, if
they really want that, then they're destroying something that could
flood their lives with light, too. How moronic would you have to be, to
do that?'' He looked sideways again, and added, ``Well, you could be a
moron or you could be Malfoy, who's worse.''

Malfoy spat at him. Zacharias grinned. It'd been days since he had a
good argument.

Hermione was nodding along with him, he saw. He felt a warm flush
traveling up his chest that he dismissed as pride. It was good to see
that the smartest witch in school could recognize good sense when she
saw it.

Malfoy wasn't able to get his tongue yet, so Zacharias went on speaking
to Potter, while locking his eyes with his future opponent. ``You're too
needed, Potter. You're going to have to balance what people want out of
you with what other people want out of you, just as some magical
creature should already have told you. They're not Malfoys. They can
recognize what you are.''

\emph{On the other hand, perhaps none of them were quite as bright as I
am.}

``And anyway, if they haven't, I'm telling it to you now,'' Zacharias
added. ``Be a friend, but be a \emph{vates} and a Lord.'' He knew that
``Lord'' wasn't quite right, but he didn't know what the equivalent of a
\emph{vates} would be for wizards, or even if it had a name. ``Stop
letting people make a plush dragon out of you.''

He could feel Potter's breathing growing swifter, his magic surging like
the tide. Then Potter stood up and ran out of the room.

Malfoy moved to follow, but Zacharias was already busy tearing into him.
``Perhaps I had it the wrong way around, didn't I, Malfoy? Perhaps he
has you on a string. The dragon leading the moron, now there's a
change.''

Of course he had to turn around and answer that. Zacharias grinned,
content. He was taking someone who definitely deserved it down a peg or
two, Potter had listened to him and might stop acting like a toy, and
Hermione was giggling behind her hand at his insults.

All was right with the world.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry leaned against the wall and panted for breath. He didn't know
where he was exactly---somewhere on the third floor. He hadn't bothered
to keep track as he ran. His mind was what occupied him, whirling with
thoughts and ideas he hadn't considered before like sparks of light in a
broken window.

Oh, he had thought some of them, but somehow, they hadn't impacted
heavily on him. Harry closed his eyes, ran a hand through his hair, and
took a deep breath. The glass shards flashed and cut deep.

\emph{I know that Snape and Draco matter, but they can't matter more
than everybody else in the world. Why was I acting as though they did? I
never would have, only a few months ago. No, only a month ago. Before
Snape got so worried about me that he had to change his behavior, I
would never have stood for\ldots{}}

And a whole bunch of things he would never have stood for stormed
through his brain: Draco shoving his friends away, Draco dictating where
he spent his time, Snape ordering him around the way he had, Snape
humiliating his father.

\emph{So why am I standing for it now?}

He knew the answer. He'd wanted to make up for his past behavior, the
behavior that had made Snape and Draco so worried about him. He'd wanted
to show them that he cared and yes, he \emph{could} do what they wanted,
be an entirely undemanding ward and friend, not take everything for
himself, the way that he had been so far. He'd stumbled so badly in the
past that he wanted to make sure he didn't stumble again.

But he had. He'd swung the balance, and overcorrected it.

Harry grimaced to himself and rubbed at one arm, where he could almost
feel the truth making him bleed.

\emph{And I forgot. I forgot what I swore to myself in the Owlery when
Connor freed my magic from the last of the phoenix web, what I swore to
myself when I found out that I could be} vates. \emph{I have to know
myself. I have to know when I'm lying or making mistakes.}

\emph{And this was a lie and mistake, both.}

Harry hung his head for a moment, but already he could feel a stirring
impatience inside him. He didn't want to go on mourning his mistakes. It
was time to go about correcting them.

\emph{But what can I do? If I just change back again, that won't do any
good, either, because that would deprive Snape and Draco of things they
need. And I never want to take them for granted again.}

Harry had to consider for only a few moments, though. He'd been put in
Slytherin for a reason. And he had done something very similar to what
he now planned in the past, when he had concealed certain gifts and
tendencies even from Lily.

\emph{I can hide, but not in a cage, the way Zacharias put it---with
masks. I can make sure that Snape and Draco still have what they want,
what they need. And I can give other people what they want just by
acting differently when I'm around them. When something happens to me
that they wouldn't want to know about, I can just not tell them. If
Snape and Draco start driving into other people's free wills or
interfering with something I need to do as} vates, \emph{then I can
lie.}

It was such a simple solution, so breathtaking, that Harry blinked, and
wondered why he hadn't thought of it before.

But he knew the answer even to that one, of course. \emph{Because I was
so desperate for affection from Snape and Draco. I didn't want them to
abandon me. I thought I had to do this so they wouldn't.}

\emph{And that was a mistake. I got along perfectly fine with just a
word of approval here and there when I was with Lily. I can do the same
thing now.}

Harry sucked in air until he could feel his chest bending to hold it
all, and then blew it out. He draped his Occlumency shields over his
mind again, since he could hear footsteps hastening towards him.

``Harry?'' Draco came around the corner, his face wounded. ``Why did you
abandon me like that?''

``Sorry, Draco,'' Harry said softly, and moved forward to hug the other
boy. He could feel Draco's startlement in the stiffening of his
shoulders, but he ignored that. Draco needed to be hugged more often.
That was something Harry still didn't do a lot. ``I thought you would be
angry at me because Zacharias was attacking you through me.''

``No, no,'' said Draco, his face radiating happiness. ``Let's just go
and work on the potion again, all right? And can you promise me that you
won't listen to Smith anymore? What he said was stupid anyway.''

``Of course, Draco,'' said Harry, the lie coming easily to his lips. He
would remember it, and in this state, when he was with Draco and what
Draco needed, it was an easy promise to keep.

He could do this. He had a very good memory. And he'd had rather a lot
of practice at deception in the last few years. So long as he could give
other people what they wanted and needed, there should be no harm in
this.

\emph{And I'm watching myself now. The moment I see harm---and surely
I'll fail again---I'll correct myself. This is for the best.}

\emph{And, soon, I'll write the letter to Narcissa and make sure Snape
doesn't find out about the way I'm going to reverse the potion against
James. He'll only be angry if he finds out.}

\chapter{Interlude: Answers to the Calling}\label{chapter-22-interlude-answers-to-the-calling}

\noindent \emph{Malfoy Manor}

\noindent \emph{September 22nd, 1994}

Dear allies (for so I hope I may call you, though the link we share is
Harry Potter and not anything more formal):

I think it is time for another gathering. The Minister has not yet been
hooked out of office, for all that he flops like a landed fish. I have
had word from a certain friend within the Ministry that the Starrises
are growing closer to him, lending him the cloak of their reputation,
and they may yet be able to draw him out of trouble. No one has been
able to find any grime that stains that cloak of light, and believe me,
I have tried.

I am sensitive to the difficulties that attend our travel to and meeting
in one place, as well as the friends some of us have who would be most
anxious for us to stay at home. To evade their gazes, I suggest we meet
in Hogwarts itself, rather than force young Mr. Potter to come to us, on
a night when no one would be surprised to see strangers on the grounds.
May I suggest Halloween? There were ghosts in the corridors quite often
when I was a student there. I suspect we may be both more silent and
more dangerous than ever they were.

Awaiting your response,

\emph{Lucius Malfoy.}


\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\noindent \emph{Wyvern's Nest}

\noindent \emph{September 24th, 1994}

Dear Lucius:

I find myself both charmed and offended that you would send me a letter
you have duplicated with a charm, instead of written out yourself.

I must question when you have sent me this letter. It is true that I
have met the boy, but I am hardly part of a circle of allies around him.
I have only met him once, and that is not enough time to judge anyone
thoroughly, even a powerful wizard. And I did not share the rather tight
bond that once connected some of you. Why did you send me this letter?
Answer that, and I might consider joining this gathering.

Eagerly awaiting enlightenment,

\emph{Arabella Zabini.}


\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{Malfoy Manor}

\emph{September 25th, 1994}

Dear Arabella:

The answers as to why I wished you to attend this gathering are very
simple.

You have a son in Slytherin. I think you would know some things about
Potter that most people do not, simply from his observations, and those
could be used to supplement your own judgment.

Potter is a powerful Dark wizard. You are a Dark witch. There will not
come another such chance---not in our lifetimes, certainly, perhaps not
for three hundred years---to change the status of Dark magic so
decisively.

I have had the chance to observe Potter closely on several occasions,
and I can assure you, he has more qualities than he thinks he does. He
will be a leader, but he will require advisers who know more about the
world than he does, who know how to wield those qualities when he does
not, who can direct all that immense magic towards worthy goals.

Finally, while it is true that you were not part of our merry little
band thirteen years ago, it is not only those friends of mine that
Potter is drawing in. He will reach many wizards, and many magical
creatures, before all is done.

Are you interested?

\emph{Lucius Malfoy.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{Wyvern's Nest}

\emph{September 27th, 1994}

Dear Lucius:

Indeed, you interest me. And Blaise has just reported something about
Potter that interests me {immensely.} It appears that the future may be
more open than I thought it would be. I accept your invitation.

Cordially,

\emph{Arabella Zabini.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{Blackstone}

\emph{September 25th, 1994}

Dear Lucius:

I will certainly be there. I am young Harry's formal ally, and he will
not have such a gathering unless I am in attendance. It would be wrong,
and rude, and I am quite certain that Mr. Potter does not mean to be
either wrong or rude to me.

Elfrida will be attending as well. It is true that by that time she will
be five months pregnant, but she wishes to make a certain request of
Potter. After hearing what her request is, I can only agree to it and
wish her well in getting {him} to agree to it. I am certain he will. It
would be wrong and rude of him to do otherwise.

Do you know a place in Hogwarts where we might go without everyone
coming and gaping at my wife?

Yours in comradeship, under the brand and beyond it,

\emph{Adalrico Bulstrode.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{Malfoy Manor}

\emph{September 28th, 1994}

Dear Adalrico:

Your attendance, as well as Elfrida's, gladdens my heart. I have
received a formal letter from Mr. Potter, and I can assure you that he
needs this meeting as much as we do. He has strength, so much of it, but
there are unworthy corners that he will shed it into, just as the moon
{must} shine on the intelligent and the discourteous alike. I am going
to answer the letter, but not tell him about the meeting yet. I have the
impression that it would not be wise to give him much time to object.

The Room of Requirement in Hogwarts will suffice for our meeting, I
think.

Yours in comradeship both old and new,

\emph{Lucius Malfoy.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{The Garden}

\emph{September 30th, 1994}

Dear Lucius:

I agree that a formal meeting would be a good idea, though I think you
are underestimating Mr. Potter. He could arrange one himself if he
wished for one. However, my husband has given his approval to the
meeting as well, and most especially to the date, though he will not
come with me himself to meet Mr. Potter. He says that it would not be
proper.

Tell me, Lucius, because I am interested, and because I am another who
once ran with you when we both served our Lord: what do you hope to gain
from the boy? I do not think that you care only about having Cornelius
gone from office, no matter how he has insulted you. He has served you
at other times. Besides, with the political climate the way it is, you
know that the majority of the public will only choose another
Light-declared Minister, and changes that favor us will come about
slowly, if at all.

What is it?

Cordially,

\emph{Hawthorn Parkinson}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{Malfoy Manor}

\emph{October 2nd, 1994}

Dear Hawthorn:

In the name of comradeship, and because my Narcissa assures me that you
already know anyway, I will tell you. You may have seen the way my son
behaves towards Potter. I have witnessed and heard about it now, and I
am largely convinced that it is genuine. It may turn or change sometime
in the next years, but even then, an alliance with Potter would still be
a good idea. I cannot foresee the Minister, or Dumbledore, or even our
Lord, lasting long in the world that Potter's power creates around him
every moment of every day.

And, who knows? We may find ourselves facing a much closer alliance than
that in a few years, when the boys know their own magic well enough.

We will be meeting in the Room of Requirement in Hogwarts---which
reminds me, I must send a letter to Arabella. Excuse me.

Sincerely,

\emph{Lucius Malfoy}.

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{Dragon's Eye}

\emph{October 10th, 1994}

Truly, Lucius, I am disappointed in you. I gave you a few weeks to send
me an invitation to the gathering of Dark wizards on Halloween to meet
young Mr. Potter. And I received nothing. It is not like you to be so
discourteous.

Never mind. My eyes have revealed it, as you must have suspected they
would. Perhaps your not sending me an invitation is a mark of great
respect instead, because you knew that I would spy out the meeting and
saw no need to repeat yourself in informing me. I think I shall take it
as a sign of that respect, so that I do not need to kill you.

I will see you on Halloween. I am excited. I have not seen you in
several years, after all.

\emph{Acies Lestrange.}

\chapter{Never Underestimate a House Elf}\label{chapter-23-never-underestimate-a-house-elf}

Harry stamped his feet and shivered. He had never realized it was so
immensely \emph{cold} in the dungeons at night. Then again, he was
usually either under his blankets or in the Slytherin common room in
front of a roaring fire.

He wasn't lingering near Snape's offices, under cover of a
Disillusionment Charm, just waiting for the answer that he hoped would
come tonight. He had sent the letter as soon as he thought of the plan.
Was Lucius offended, perhaps? Was he not going to reply to the request
after all? Was he---

Harry nearly jumped in surprise when he heard the \emph{crack} of
Apparition next to him. He looked around hastily, and saw Dobby standing
calmly next to him. The house elf gave him a nod, apparently easily able
to see through the Disillusionment Charm.

``Dobby is here to help Harry Potter,'' he said, and then handed over
two letters, both of which bore his name. Harry recognized the
handwriting on one as Narcissa's, and opened that one first, since he
already knew what Lucius's would say.

\emph{Dear Harry:}

\emph{I am indeed concerned about Regulus, and saddened that my stubborn
cousin did not lower the wards before he vanished or died (we must face
the possibility that he is now dead). I would be happy to meet you at
No. 12 Grimmauld Place, though I cannot promise you that we will be able
to get inside. The wards I encountered when I last tried to visit were
immensely strong, as they are when protecting the true heir of the
family. But if you wish to meet me there and try to enter, I would
welcome the chance. Perhaps in a few weekends? I am dancing until then.}

\emph{Narcissa Malfoy.}

Harry relaxed with a small sigh. At least he would be doing something
that might possibly help Regulus, though he wasn't sure, based on
Narcissa's description of the wards, that it would manage to
\emph{actually} help.

He opened Lucius's letter then, while Dobby waited patiently, looking
around as though he found the dungeon corridor fascinating.

\emph{Dear Mr. Potter:}

\emph{I will not even pretend to understand why you wish to borrow my
house elf for the evening. But your favor is granted, as your autumnal
equinox gift from me. Keep in mind that there is one step in the dance
left, and one only. I already know which gift I most hope to receive at
Midwinter.}

\emph{Lucius Malfoy.}

Harry rolled his eyes and folded the letter. \emph{Arrogant as always,
Lucius. I think that's his natural state of being.} He looked at Dobby.
``Dobby, do you want to be here and help me?'' he asked. Never mind that
the truce-dance had compelled him to approach Lucius formally to ask for
the house elf's help; he would do nothing that went against Dobby's
natural will and inclinations.

``Dobby wants to be here and helping,'' said Dobby calmly. ``Dobby read
the letter that Mr. Harry sent to Master Malfoy.'' He leaned forward and
regarded Harry with that stern force that Harry was always surprised
could hide in the eyes of a house elf. ``This service that he wishes for
Dobby's help on sounds dangerous. Dobby will protect Harry Potter.''

Harry coughed, embarrassed. ``I hope it's not going to be dangerous,
Dobby,'' he said. ``We shouldn't meet anyone in there.''

``In where, Harry Potter?'' Dobby let his eyes widen for the first time,
making him look more like a typical house elf. ``Is Dobby going into a
dragon's lair in the Forbidden Forest?''

``No---''

``Is Dobby hunting unicorns for their blood?''

``No---''

``Is Dobby---'' Dobby took a deep breath and lowered his voice. ``Is
Dobby going into the Slytherin rooms to find Master Draco's trousers?''

Harry gave Dobby an odd look. Sometimes he felt as if everyone else
understood something immense and shifting around him that he did not.
There were remarks he was sure would make sense, if just seen in a
context that he didn't know how to view. ``No, Dobby,'' he said. ``We're
sneaking into Professor Snape's office to retrieve some notes on a
potion. I don't think he should be in there, since he went to bed early
tonight.'' Harry told himself that he did \emph{not} feel guilty about
the very mild sleeping draught he'd put in Snape's goblet during their
last few training sessions. It \emph{had} to be mild, or Snape would
have sensed it, and would probably be immune to it. All it really did
was make Snape yawn and bed sound delicious to him. He had stayed up
late at least once, brewing in his lab and making Harry ache in agony in
case Dobby came that night. ``Just a quick trip in and out, but I need
you with me in case I encounter any magic I can't deal with.'' And he
thought he might. He knew something about the Dark spells that Snape
used to defend his lab, but not all of them.

``Why is Harry Potter sneaking into Professor Snape's lab?'' Dobby
whispered. ``Dobby thought that Professor Snape was Harry Potter's
friend.''

Harry hesitated. What Dobby said had been true, and still was true---up
to a point. In a certain mindset. When Harry was near Snape and draped
himself with Occlumency shields to hide his inappropriate emotions
towards his guardian, then he could believe that what Snape was doing
was good and right. When he was away, and let the emotions break
through, he knew that he had to do something to help James, and if that
meant stealing the potion notes from Snape's lab, then that was what he
would do.

Besides, the only other option would have been using Legilimency on
Snape and finding his memory of brewing the potion. Harry did not want
to force his will on his guardian, and he suspected he couldn't do it
without being caught, anyway. And Snape's wrath would be terrible to
behold if he caught Harry trying to read his mind. Despite the risks of
the spells Snape might have on his lab, this was still safer.

``He is my friend,'' said Harry, deciding on the truth. ``But he did
something I think is bad. Um, sometimes I think it's bad. Maybe.'' He
didn't know if he could accurately describe the state of his mind to
anyone anymore, even to himself. He'd become so good at ducking in and
out of his shields, making himself into a different person around
different people---calm or agitated or active or passive as needed---in
just a few days that he sometimes felt as if he were made of masks. He
just needed to open a box and pick out the appropriate one, and he would
be ready to face whoever required his help at the moment.

``Dobby understands,'' said Dobby, with a small bow. ``Master Malfoy
often does things that Dobby thinks is bad, but Dobby still obeys.''

Harry blinked, then decided that he should be honored to be compared to
a house elf, not angered, and headed towards the door to Snape's office.
``Come on,'' he whispered, and extended one hand. ``\emph{Acclaro.}''

The lines of spells and wards sprang into being around the office door.
Harry grimaced. Given Snape's skill in potions, he couldn't even be sure
that this was all of the protections. He cocked his head and studied the
ones that he recognized, including the leafy green of a Repelling Spell
under the thick blue lines of a spell that would preserve an image of
anyone who walked through the door when Snape wasn't there.

He could dispel most of the magic, but for all he knew, that might trip
alarms in Snape's mind that would break through the fragile barrier of
the sleeping potion.

Then he paused, remembering a description of a spell he'd read about in
a history of the First War. For a long time, the Aurors hadn't been able
to figure out how the Death Eaters were escaping their traps. Then they
realized that the Death Eaters were able to exile the effects of all
their spells from a certain, small area, and Apparate or touch a Portkey
just inside that area. The spell was fragile and would collapse the
moment the Death Eater was gone, but in the meantime it would banish the
magic and---this was the part that had interested Harry---not alert any
Aurors that their spells were being disrupted.

He only needed the spell to last long enough to let him step through a
door.

``\emph{Finite Incantatem Glomero!}''

The magic surged through him, an unfamiliar thrill, the way it always
was when he tried a spell for the first time, and then a sphere of
expanding air opened around his hand and pushed steadily outward. Harry
was already sweating with the effort of holding it. Of course, he'd
never done this before, and he'd done it wandless, besides. \emph{I
really ought to have used my wand}, he thought, as he watched the wards
and spells on the door disappear one by one.

At last the sphere was as big as the door, and Harry stepped through,
with Dobby close on his heels. The door swung shut behind them, and
Harry released the sphere with a hiss. He remembered hazily that it had
been harder for the Death Eaters to raise the spell when the Aurors
trying to confine them were strong wizards. The sheer power and age of
the spells on Snape's door probably had something to do with his
inability to maintain the sphere.

Dobby tapped him on the shoulder. Harry jumped and looked back.

Dobby regarded him carefully. ``In future,'' he squeaked, ``Dobby will
be happy to Apparate Harry Potter past the door.''

Harry smiled in spite of himself. \emph{I didn't even think of asking
him.} ``Thank you, Dobby,'' he said, as he turned to study the Potions
lab. ``I hope that we should only have to do this once, though.''

The only light in the lab was a candle floating on top of a potion in a
cauldron behind Snape's desk, which had been burning for days now. Harry
knew better than to touch it. He was surprised how empty the room
seemed, how dusty, how dead, without Snape to give it a spark of warmth
and life. He shook his head to unsettle the lingering impression and
moved towards Snape's desk.

Dobby trailed behind him. ``What is Harry Potter looking for?''

``Any handwritten notes with the name of a potion at the top,'' Harry
said, studying the locked drawer at the top of the desk. The locking
spell was a simple one, and he wondered why, until he saw the
wicked-looking needle that would have pierced his fingers if he'd used
his hand to it. He shook his head. \emph{Snape really is paranoid.} ``Or
anything that says James Potter.''

Dobby nodded, and whisked away to the other side of the room. Harry
could hear faint squeaks and pops, and assumed he was using house elf
magic to search. He didn't bother to look over. He trusted Dobby
completely.

He rifled through a few half-scribbled sheets of parchment that weren't
anything like complete Potions recipes, and then paused. The nearest
sheet had flickered, as if the words written on it were only a glamour,
and a cover for what was really there. Harry flipped back to it and
narrowed his eyes.

\emph{The Meleager Potion.}

Harry lifted the notes out, and whispered, ``\emph{Aspectus Lyncis},''
when he realized the words wouldn't stop flickering in front of his
eyes. That stripped the glamour from the parchment, and the words calmed
and let him read them.

\emph{A potion to imitate and reverse the fate of Meleager. We all live
as long as candleflames, in truth, compared to the mountains and the
rivers.}

Harry knew the legend of Meleager, whose life had been tied to a burning
brand, and who had died when his mother threw the brand into the fire in
grief over Meleager's killing of her brothers, his uncles. He could
imagine what a potion tied to that legend would do, though of course
Snape was not stupid enough to actually write that out in the notes. He
found his head turning, little by little, to stare at the potion on
which the candle-flame floated.

He walked slowly towards it and bent his head, sniffing. When he
realized that he could smell chocolate, and that he had a deep desire to
taste the potion, he leaned back and closed his eyes, fighting down
several emotions.

The potion smelled, and looked, like the one that Fudge had licked off
his fingers when Snape and Harry visited the Ministry. Whether Snape had
created the Meleager Potion with just Fudge in mind, Harry didn't know.
He also didn't know whether Fudge would die for certain when the candle
was doused.

He did know that it sounded like it, and all he could feel was a sick
wonder at the back of his mind. Would Snape really kill the Minister, in
such a way that no one else would probably be able to trace it back to
him? Surely, if he was tested for the potion, no one else would
recognize it, since it was an entirely new creation. Snape might even
have made it out of ingredients that would go inert when their work was
complete, a tactic he had told Harry about in their summer potions
theory discussions. That would prevent anyone from finding anything
suspicious when they examined Fudge's body.

Harry checked the parchment in his hand. Yes, the Meleager Potion
included several of those ingredients.

He found his hands shaking, his breath rushing, his heart pounding hard
enough in his ears to make his vision blur. Snape could only have wanted
to kill the Minister because he was angry at him over Harry's abduction
and trying to return custody to James. There was no other reason. So far
as Harry knew, before this summer, Snape had completely and utterly
ignored the Minister's existence. Perhaps he might have felt some grudge
from the days when he was arrested and denounced as a Death Eater, but
Harry doubted that. The timing of this revenge would have been too
coincidental.

\emph{He was going to kill someone. Not in battle, not because I asked
him to, but because he wanted to, for what he sees as wrongs done to
me.}

It was intolerable. There were some things that went too far,
particularly when he was out from under the Occlumency shields. Harry
might have been able to understand Snape brewing a potion like this for
a personal enemy; the man who had that many spells and wards on the door
to his potions lab was perfectly capable of coming up with the idea,
even if he never used it. But he would have killed someone in Harry's
name, in a way that would make Harry indirectly responsible for it.

Harry could not bear it. No matter how much he didn't want to make Snape
angry, no matter how much he loved his guardian, there were some things
that he couldn't bear.

He opened his eyes and surveyed the Meleager Potion bleakly. Of course,
part of the problem was that he didn't know what might happen if he
disturbed it. If he put out the candle at all, Fudge might die, or at
least burn. Or perhaps Snape intended to blackmail the Minister, and
would only snuff the candle if Fudge did not do as he wanted.

Or perhaps the potion was actually primed to do something else, and
Harry would set it off if he touched it, because he had an imperfect
understanding of how its name was tied to its nature.

He was sure of only one thing: he could not leave the potion in Snape's
care, no matter what deception he had to come up with to conceal that he
had been the one to take it. He could not bear it if Fudge died after he
knew about the potion.

He extended his hand, and his will, and his magic swept forward and
delicately levitated the entire cauldron into the air, keeping the
floating candle alight. Harry breathed a sigh of relief when no wards
screamed at him. He knew that Snape often didn't use wards around his
actual cauldrons, for fear of the magic interacting with the potion's
ingredients, but if any brew would have been the exception, it was this
one.

``Master Harry.''

Harry controlled his flinch with a stern command to every muscle in his
body, and didn't let the cauldron of Meleager Potion fall. He turned and
smiled at Dobby. ``Yes, Dobby?''

``Dobby has found a paper with James Potter on it,'' said Dobby, waving
a sheaf of papers, and held it so that Harry could read it.

Harry let out a breath when he saw the name of his father scrawled at
the top of the parchment, deep enough to half-tear it, and the list of
ingredients below. At least some of them were ones he had suspected must
be in the potion, to make his father act like he had. And, though Snape
did not say so, the antidote would also be fairly simple to make. This
potion was delicate and complicated and designed to evade notice and
attention. Its antidote would be brute strength, a potion designed to
smash at and tear away and counteract those complex, fine chains of
magic.

Of course, there was the problem of brewing the antidote, and of making
sure that Snape did not blame him for taking the notes for James's
potion and the Meleager Potion.

Harry hesitated for only a few moments before the answer came to him. He
smiled slowly.

``Thank you, Dobby,'' he said. ``You've been an immense help. You can go
back to Malfoy Manor now, if you like.''

Dobby regarded him calmly, and didn't move. ``Harry Potter will need
help brewing the potion?''

Harry blinked. ``Yes, of course, I'd like some. But I didn't know if you
would want to stay and aid me.''

Dobby reached up, and very gently, tapped him on the side of the head
with a long finger. Harry blinked again.

``Harry Potter should ask for help more often,'' said Dobby, and reached
out and gripped his arm. ``Where does Harry Potter want to brew the
potion?''

Harry's mind fixed on the image of the abandoned classroom where he'd
been trying to teach Connor and the others, but he knew that he needed
to go back to the Slytherin rooms first, to fetch his cauldron and the
ingredients he would need. He told Dobby so, and felt the house elf
Apparate him, the odd feeling as though he were being squeezed out of
the world and then fitted back in. To his relief, when he looked around
his room, the cauldron of Meleager Potion had come with them.

Harry trotted to his trunk and drew out his cauldron, his wand, a pouch
of crushed violet petals, a small vial of dragon's blood, a pinch of
demiguise hair, and a few other things that would counteract the more
volatile ingredients in the potion that Snape had fed James. It really
was a marvelous creation, but marvelous creations could be still be
undone by the simplest means.

He found himself shaking his head, though, instead of letting Dobby
Apparate him and the ingredients again. He made his way to Draco's bed
and drew back the curtains, watching as Draco slept.

His sleep seemed to be more restless these days, Harry thought, watching
him, but also more satisfied. Draco usually had no expression when he
slept. Now he often smiled, and murmured what sounded like the names of
potion ingredients as he twitched around in search of a comfortable
position. He had his head dug into the pillow now, strands of blond hair
scattered in several directions, his breathy mutter not loud enough to
make out.

\emph{If Snape is going too far, does that mean that Draco also is?}

Harry half-closed his eyes. Draco still hadn't told him what the purpose
of the potion and his research on Julia Malfoy was, and wouldn't let him
read the book, but Harry thought he should know more about it as the
time to make it drew on. If Draco was going to use the potion to hurt
someone else\ldots{}

Harry wouldn't let him.

Harry sighed and let the curtain fall shut again. It was so much easier
defying his guardian and his best friend when they weren't awake, he
thought.

He nodded to Dobby.

``Can you take me and all of this to the second classroom from the top
of the stairs on the seventh floor?'' he asked.

Dobby bowed, ears flapping, grabbed his hand, and Apparated them all
again.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Harry Potter must wake up.''

Harry lifted his head with a start. He truly hadn't meant to fall
asleep. In fact, the last thing he could remember was counting down the
clockwise turns of the spoon in the cauldron, watching as the potion
swelled and brightened towards what should be an off-white color, if the
notes on the original potion were correct.

``Did I finish---'' Harry asked, lifting his head off the table and
whipping at his hair. A few specks of dust drifted out, but the
classroom hadn't had enough time to get truly dirty since he was last
here.

``Yes, Harry Potter sir,'' said Dobby, and nodded to something behind
him. Harry turned around, and then let his breath out with a small sigh.
His own cauldron was full of the off-white potion that should
neutralize, one by one, the ingredients playing havoc with James's mind
and body right now.

The Meleager Potion cauldron sat in a corner of the classroom, still
full of its glittering liquid and floating candle. Harry shook his head
at it helplessly. He had no idea what to do with the thing, except keep
it safe. Any motion might be the one that would burn Fudge, or kill him,
or, knowing Snape, tear all his limbs off.

Harry carefully used a cleaning spell on the vial that had held the
dragon's blood, then slid the new off-white potion into it. He
hesitated, then, looking at Dobby. He hardly needed help to go to the
Owlery and send the potion to Remus for James, but there was something
else he wanted to ask Dobby about.

The house elf gazed back at him, eyes large and solemn and gleaming.

\emph{I can't,} Harry thought. \emph{He's done more than enough already,
helping me search Snape's rooms and get here and brew the potion.}

``Thank you, Dobby,'' he whispered. ``I don't know what I'd have done
without you. I hope that you have a safe journey home.'' Of course, if
anything could stop a house elf from Apparating, he didn't know what it
was, but the wish seemed appropriate. He started to turn and walk out of
the classroom.

Dobby's hand caught his wrist. Harry turned and looked down.

``Harry Potter can at least ask,'' said Dobby. ``Dobby knows he will not
order.''

Harry felt himself flush. \emph{Are my facial expressions that obvious?
Or is it only because I'm with someone I feel I don't have to lie to?}
``I---Dobby, you're under no obligation at all---''

``Dobby prefers to freely offer his help,'' said Dobby, with a small
stamp of his foot. ``And if anything Harry Potter asks can help him along
the path to becoming \emph{vates}, then Dobby will do it.''

\emph{Well, I should arrange that, too.} Harry decided it might not be
so bad if he linked what he wanted to ask Dobby to do with a conscious
stride towards becoming \emph{vates.}

``If you would seal this room so that no one can get in and touch the
Meleager Potion,'' he whispered, ``I'd be grateful. I'd also like to
arrange---a delegation, a meeting, something, with magical creatures who
are interested in talking about a \emph{vates.} I've only broken one web
so far. I think it's time that I should break more.''

Dobby's smile could have lit suns. He raised one hand, and a soft ball
of flames popped into being above them, quickly revealing itself as
Fawkes. Fawkes uttered a chatter that Harry presumed was irritation at
being summoned so abruptly, but then loosed a long trill as some signal
Harry couldn't make out seemed to pass between phoenix and house elf.

``Fawkes has been waiting for Harry Potter to make up his mind on
this,'' Dobby said. ``Fawkes will go at once and tell the creatures of
the Forest who will want to know that a \emph{vates} wishes to meet with
them.''

Harry felt his face flush again. He had actually intended to ask Fawkes
for help with something else, and now---

Fawkes uttered a sound that began as a trill but expanded into a warble
in the middle. Dobby chuckled again, and shook his head at Harry.
``Fawkes says you is to stop thinking so much, Harry Potter,'' he said.
``Whatever you need, if it is not evil, you may at least ask Fawkes
instead of brooding about it.''

Harry nodded, took a deep breath, and faced the phoenix. ``I want Snape
to think that the Meleager Potion is utterly destroyed, even though the
Minister isn't going to suffer from it. This is what I'd like you to do.
I can't have you do it in reality, because I don't know what would
happen to the potion then, but you can persuade Snape that you did it
if\ldots{}''

Fawkes listened to the whole plan with evident approval; Dobby didn't
bother translating any of his increasingly enthusiastic chirps, until
the last. ``Fawkes has been wondering when Harry Potter would wake up to
the damage the Potions Master was doing,'' said Dobby, with a slightly
stern look.

Harry bowed his head. Waves of heat and cold were threatening to assault
him again as he thought about what Snape might have done with that
potion, and how he would be responsible for it. But he had to get
through that, and do what was necessary. Merlin knew he would brood over
what he had done right and what he had done wrong enough later. He was
already coming to think that his latest plan of lying to everyone wasn't
working, not if two magical creatures could see in a few glances that he
so obviously needed help.

``I'm sorry,'' he whispered. ``I---I'll do something about him. I don't
know what yet, but I will.''

Fawkes landed briefly on his shoulder, making Harry stagger under the
weight, and pushed his head against his cheek with a croon. Then he rose
and spread his wings, vanishing in a ball of flame that Harry knew would
take him to Snape's office, and then to the Forbidden Forest.

``Dobby will seal this room,'' said the house elf, his hand gripping
Harry's wrist once more. ``Harry Potter need not worry.''

``Thank you, Dobby,'' Harry whispered, and ran for the Owlery. He had
only a short time till dawn, he thought, and he wanted to send the
potion on its way to Remus and be in his bed before then.

He checked his hair and his robes for flecks of dust and potion
ingredients as he ran. It was absolutely essential that no one know what
he was doing.

His mind returned to the concerns Fawkes and Dobby had.

\emph{At least, not yet.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape opened the door to his potions lab, and was greeted with the smell
of fire.

His first thought was that the Meleager Potion had somehow tipped over,
and the candle had set fire to other things in the office. But when he
looked, he found a very familiar phoenix instead, sitting amid a pile of
ashes where the cauldron had been and grooming itself casually.

``What is this?''

Snape had never heard his own voice so cold. He could feel a small
amount of shock trying to surface; he knew what Fawkes must have done,
and he had an inkling as to why. But he shoved the thought away. He had
done what was necessary to keep Harry absolutely safe. He would not
burst out into rages anymore if he did this, and Harry's mind had been
calm and brisk and efficient for as long as Snape had been existing on
the icy level of his mind. He knew he was doing the right thing.

Fawkes raised his head and began to sing.

Snape's mother had told him no defense that could allow him to hold the
ice against a phoenix's song. He found himself sitting on the floor with
no notion of how he got there, his arms crossed over his head as though
mere flesh could stand up to music that would conquer and destroy utter
evil. The song washed over him, and dragged his emotions, the ones he'd
been unwilling to acknowledge since he went cold---that is, everything
except the icy rage---into the light.

He saw, as if in a dream, Fawkes flicking into being over the cauldron
that held the Meleager Potion, alighting on it, and destroying it with
flames of red and gold and blue. The phoenix, of course, being a
creature of pure Light and fire, could absorb the candle flame without
putting it out, and thus without hurting the person who had already
ingested it. Then the phoenix had moved to his desk, and Snape's notes
on that potion and the one for Potter, too, were burned and gone.

The potion was evil. What Snape had intended was evil, stepping beyond
the bounds of guarding a child whom he wanted to protect. Fawkes, an
independent creature of Light who had left his former master when that
master grew too Dark for him, would not stand for it.

The whole vision remained hazy and surreal, as though it hadn't really
happened, or as though Snape weren't understanding the full import of
what the bird wanted to convey to him. But there could be no doubt of
Fawkes's disapproval, which overflowed from every stern, loving note.

Snape found himself caught in the storm of emotions he was unprepared to
deal with. He tried to fight them back, but so long as the phoenix was
singing, he could not. He knelt there, panting, and at least refusing to
weep.

A heavy, warm weight on his shoulder nearly unbalanced him. He dropped
his arms and looked into the phoenix's dark eyes.

Fawkes pecked him, a swift, scorching motion that left a tiny bit of
burned flesh on his cheek. Then he spread his wings, lifted into the
air, and flicked out of existence in a ball of flames.

Snape knelt there, and closed his eyes, and breathed hard in the silence
that seemed wrenching after all that music.

He felt sorrow swirl through him, and regret, and the panic that had
been so familiar after the Death Eater attacks during the summer. He
felt as he had when Harry had nearly died from the Blood-Boiling Curse,
and he cursed, soft and low and steady, under his breath, as he might
have then.

His carefully built refuge was destroyed. He did not know if he could go
back to being cold.

But he knew he would have to try, because there was no other way to move
forward now. The Meleager Potion was gone, but the danger from the
Minister to Harry remained. He had to find some way to fight that, or
leave himself helpless.

And Snape hated feeling helpless.

He climbed to his feet and went to fetch a bit of Floo powder and
firecall the Headmaster. He would tell Dumbledore that he was not
feeling well today, and would not teach his classes. It was only the
second time he had ever asked for such an indulgence. He was sure Albus
would grant it to him after seeing his face.

\emph{One day. That is all you have. You must become what you were
again, or you fail Harry and you fail yourself.}

If only the damn, dim remnant of the phoenix song would stop echoing in
the room, and the sensation that he was making a mistake would stop
echoing in his brain.

\chapter{Delegation}\label{chapter-24-delegation}

``Attention, students. Can I have your attention, if you please?''

Harry lifted his head, reluctantly, from the history book he'd been
discussing with Draco. Draco had been insisting that one particular
unspecified incident of a witch showing up to rescue a bunch of captured
pureblood children from Muggles who wanted to burn them sounded a lot
like Julia Malfoy. Harry had been trying to point out that Julia Malfoy
would have been about twelve years old at the time, but he didn't think
he was having a lot of success. That might have been because he kept
breaking off the discussion to eat his dinner, while Draco prattled on,
but he thought it had more to do with his friend's innate stubbornness.

Dumbledore stood behind the high table, smiling, one hand extended as if
he were going to hex everyone in sight. Harry found himself tensing up,
involuntarily. He shook his head at himself and sat back, arms folded
over his chest. \emph{He's not going to hex everyone. You don't cast
just dueling spells with your hand held like that. Calm down, Harry.
Snape's training is rubbing off on you in all the wrong ways.}

``I know that many of you have been wondering why Quidditch has been
canceled this year,'' said Dumbledore, chuckling as shouts came back to
him from the Gryffindor and Slytherin tables. ``It was canceled to give
Hogwarts the opportunity to concentrate its attention on another event
instead. How many people here have ever heard of the Triwizard
Tournament?''

Harry frowned. He vaguely remembered reading a reference to it, once,
but he didn't think---

A flow of chatter from around him told him that many other people
\emph{had} heard of it. Harry resolved to pay more attention in the
future. There was always something he didn't know about, and any part of
it could hurt Connor or someone else he cared for.

``The Triwizard Tournament,'' Dumbledore went on grandly, apparently
open to explaining for those who didn't know, ``is a great contest held
between three of the European wizarding schools---Hogwarts, Beauxbatons,
and Durmstrang. Three champions, one from each school, compete with each
other for a prize and honor and glory for their school. Once it was held
much more often than is the case now, not only for the sake of the
champions and the students, but to strengthen the bonds in the wizarding
community. However, the tasks proved too dangerous, often killing the
champions, and the tradition was discontinued.'' Dumbledore paused, and
Harry could almost see his eyes glowing from where he sat. ``But now the
tradition has been revived! Students from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons
will journey to Hogwarts on Halloween, and a few days after that, the
champions will be chosen!''

A murmur of excitement began to run round the Great Hall. From the
Gryffindor table, someone bold enough to draw the Headmaster's attention
shouted out, ``How will the champions be chosen, Headmaster?''

``By means of the Goblet of Fire,'' said Dumbledore, with calm cheer.
``This will select among the names of many potential champions from each
school in order to narrow down the most worthy students to compete. The
students will need to be clever, of course, good wizards, and honorable.
The Goblet will doubtless decide on the basis of other qualities as
well.''

Harry shook his head as he listened to the murmurs. Everyone around him
seemed simultaneously convinced that he or she might be a champion and
convinced that the Goblet might not pick him or her.

``Who cares?'' he mouthed to Draco, who'd only just looked up from his
book. ``It's just some stupid competition anyway. And who would really
\emph{want} to face basilisks or whatever else they have to face?''

``It probably won't be a basilisk,'' said Draco, and wrinkled his nose
at him as if Harry should have known that. ``Now, what do you think of
this one? `A lovely silver-haired woman was sometimes seen walking the
hills of Wiltshire in early spring, her eyes closed as if she were
dreaming.'\,''

``Lots of Malfoys must have been silver-haired\ldots{}''

Harry let himself be drawn into the argument. It was easier than trying
to figure out why Dumbledore was watching him with shining eyes from the
head table.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Master Harry! Wake up, Master Harry!''

Harry blinked the haze from his eyes and fumbled for his glasses. When
he drew open the curtains of his bed, Dobby was waiting for him, leaping
from foot to foot. Fawkes hovered above his head. Harry glanced around
swiftly, but other than a grumble from Blaise, there was no sign that
the house elf and the phoenix had awakened any of the other boys. Harry
felt a rush of relief.

``What is it, Dobby?'' he whispered.

``Fawkes has done as he said he would,'' Dobby whispered back
insistently. ``Harry Potter is to come to the Forbidden Forest and meet
with the magical creatures who want to meet the \emph{vates.}''

Harry took a deep breath, and felt his heart speed up until he could
literally feel it shaking his chest. But he didn't think of refusing.
How could he have, when Dobby and Fawkes had helped him so much the
other night?

``I'm coming,'' he said, and then glanced down at his pyjamas. ``Do they
want, um, some more formal attire than this?''

Fawkes gave an impatient trill, and Dobby translated without waiting for
Harry to ask. ``Many of the magical creatures in the Forest go naked all
the time, Master Harry. Master Harry is to come \emph{on.}''

Harry shrugged. He supposed he should enjoy the chance to attend a
meeting in pyjamas while he had it. It wasn't as though most of his
wizard allies would have accepted such a thing.

He grabbed his wand, made sure his glasses were settled firmly on his
face, and let Dobby take his hand. This time, the experience of house
elf Apparition wasn't so strange, and he could even stand on his own
feet, take a deep breath, and look around when he was finished. They
were, once again, in that clearing in the Forbidden Forest where the
centaurs had tried Draco his first year. There was the familiar hill,
the rocks that had formed an impromptu gallows standing on top of it.

This time, though, he was in the exact center of the clearing, with
Dobby still holding the wrist. Fawkes puffed into being above him, and
let him see that many magical creatures waited around the edges of the
place, studying him. Harry lifted his chin and let his eyes meet their
gazes, one by one. It was much easier than looking down or shuffling,
much easier than he'd had any right to expect, he thought. At least he
\emph{knew} this kind of dancing, or path-walking, the way that Dobby
and Fawkes had once referred to it, was difficult. It was not full of
human complexities that would turn on him, the way it seemed his
relationships with his guardian and best friend had lately.

A contingent of centaurs stood directly in front of him, on the level
ground, their arms folded across their chests. They began stamping their
left front hooves when they saw him, a sound as low and regular as a
heartbeat, but considerably more unnerving. Harry nodded to the two of
them he recognized, Firenze and Coran, who had tried Draco in that
strange way, and then turned to his left, glancing at the hill.

It was alive with small, lithe bodies. Fawkes's flames gave him glimpses
of gold and green and other brilliant colors. The Many were there, then,
and multiple-headed snakes that Harry was sure were Runespoors. Some of
them had three heads, some only two. Two of the heads would often
combine and bite off a third, if Harry remembered his studies correctly.
He found himself relieved that he would be able to speak with at least
some of the attendees without needing Dobby to translate.

He continued turning, until he could face the edge of the clearing that
had been directly behind him when he arrived. He felt his breath catch,
tears forming in his eyes.

Unicorns stood behind him, shining silvery in the darkness, their heavy
snowfall-like manes and their gleaming horns so beautiful that Harry had
to suppress the urge to go nearer and touch them. He settled for
inclining his head. He had never seen so many unicorns all together in
one place, nor expected to see them. He forbade himself to actually shed
the tears he wanted to. This was a formal meeting, and he was a wizard,
even if was a \emph{vates}---in truth, a representative not of these
creatures, but of the species that had bound the others. He did not have
the right to ask them to indulge any weakness he might have.

He turned back to face the centaurs. As if that had been a signal, their
hooves stopped drumming, and Firenze stepped forth from among the
others, his face calm.

``Harry Potter,'' he said. ``We have met once before. We came tonight
because you have proven your worth to us in formal testing. And because
your fate is linked to Mars, and he grows steadily in the skies.''

Harry couldn't help stiffening a bit. It was an odd first statement from
the centaurs, when he had expected them to speak about the webs that
bound them.

``There is a prophecy, that is true,'' he said. ``But the prophecy is
not clear about the way in which I am implicated in the war.''

``The stars are always clear, shining beyond cloud and storm.'' Firenze
looked unmoved. ``They are the only statement we need. You are in the
war, but you are also our \emph{vates.} We would not see you die before
you have fulfilled your service to our kind.''

Harry frowned, but nodded slightly. \emph{I can hardly blame them for
that.} ``There is a problem with haste,'' he warned them. ``I don't know
the webs very well yet. If I unbind them too fast, then I might do you
as much harm as good.''

Firenze's face was calm and blank. ``We do not understand you, Harry
Potter.''

Harry rubbed his forehead. His scar seemed to tingle and burn, though
that was probably only because he'd been dreaming about Voldemort before
he woke up. ``I thought you meant that you wanted me to unbind you now,
or at any rate as soon as possible, before I die in this war.''

``A \emph{vates} cannot be hurried,'' said Firenze, with something like
shock in his tone. At least, Harry thought it might have been shock if
the centaurs in general weren't so subdued. ``He must always be
becoming. You must walk the path between the thorns and make your
decisions in the right place, without anyone hurrying or urging you on.
We agreed to come to this meeting to let you know that we know of the
war, of Mars's shining. Though not everyone has agreed---'' his gaze
went past the centaurs behind him and further into the Forest, as if to
indicate people who were not there ``---we believe that we must help you
survive, so that you can continue this process of becoming.''

Harry shuddered a bit. ``What kind of help were you thinking of
giving?'' \emph{No need to panic, yet, no need to panic.}

Firenze's gaze came back to him, calm and nearly blank again. ``You have
heard of what centaurs can do in the past.''

``I thought those were only legends,'' Harry whispered. Certainly the
last story of centaurs actually helping wizards, rather than simply
trying to live apart from them, was a thousand years old. Then a small
group of twenty centaurs, joined to a smaller group of wizards, had
devastated a group of wizards four times their size. In battle, they
were ferocious.

``They are not,'' said Firenze. ``We have not gone to war in a long
time, Harry Potter. We are prepared to change that, for your sake and
for our own. We are allowed to harm wizards if we are fighting in
defense of one of them. A hole in the net.'' He might have sounded
ironic---at least, he should have if he were human---but instead, he
went on regarding Harry as if he hadn't said anything at all sickening
or horrifying. ``We offer you our aid in battle, in return for our
freedom.''

``You don't need to do that,'' said Harry, thinking of all the ways in
which he was \emph{not} a general. He didn't know the first thing about
pure battle tactics or strategy. His mother had always trained him to
fight alone. His first goal had always been defensive, to protect
Connor. Even with the Dark Arts spells Snape was teaching him, Harry had
no idea how to arrange soldiers, how to best an army on a battlefield.
The thought of doing so made him sick to his stomach. What if he put
someone in the wrong place and they died because of him? ``It is my
kind's fault that you are bound. I am prepared to free you, as soon as I
study the web and know all the consequences of doing so.''

``Nevertheless,'' said Firenze, ``we have decided it is to our advantage
to do this, and so it will be done.''

Harry hesitated, wondering if he could ask the centaurs to fight under
someone else, and then shook his head. The only person he knew for
certain could arrange soldiers and, in so doing, win battles, was
Dumbledore, and he would not trust the Headmaster not to put the
centaurs back under their web again. ``I am no strategist, no
tactician,'' he said, deciding that he might as well reveal why he was
so reluctant. ``I might lose you the war and your freedom and your
lives, all three, if you put your fates in my hands.''

``We will teach you,'' said Firenze, his voice implacable. ``We ask only
for a commitment from you, \emph{vates}, and that you may give us by
answering five questions for us.''

Harry swallowed. ``Very well.''

``Why do you want to become \emph{vates}?'' Firenze might have been
Professor Vector, questioning Harry on his Arithmancy problems. Harry
found it easier to answer when he thought of this that way, as a test in
abstract knowledge, rather than something that might determine the
future course of his and other people's lives.

``To spread freedom,'' said Harry. ``And out of some guilt, because I
did not know about the webs and was horrified when I did learn about
them. And because I lived under a web myself, and I would like to
prevent that from happening to anyone else.'' He knew the answers were
all honest.

``When do you believe your work as \emph{vates} will end?''

Harry blinked and hesitated, caught off-guard. ``I do not know if it
ever will,'' he said at last. ``I do not know how many webs there are to
undo, how many compulsions to break, or at least try to break. Perhaps I
might spend years negotiating just to make sure that house elf webs can
be removed, for example. I expect that will be my hardest task.'' Then
he thought of the northern goblins, with their webs bound to linchpins,
and shivered. \emph{Perhaps not.} ``It might take me until the end of my
life, or it might last longer than I am able to live. Or perhaps I will
die in the war and it will never end, then. I simply cannot know.''

Firenze nodded, with no sign on his face of whether that answer had been
right or wrong. ``What do you believe would happen to the magical
creatures if Voldemort returned to power?''

Harry shook his head. ``I think he would enslave some of you, the way he
does humans, and perhaps set free those ones who could help him. Others
he would probably kill.'' He could not prevent himself from looking at
the unicorns over his shoulder. ``Or at least only keep them alive for
what they could be useful for.''

The unicorns watched him. An incredibly intense vision came to Harry, of
a night-covered farm where unicorns huddled in pens, milked for their
blood and deprived of their horns. He gagged, and felt a shiver in his
belly that made him come perilously near to losing his dinner. He
swallowed, and managed to fix his gaze on Firenze again.

``What do you believe will happen if this war ends and the Light side
remains in power, untroubled?''

``The continuation of the webs,'' said Harry. ``Dumbledore is committed
to keeping things the way they are, with no major changes. He could not
be \emph{vates}, and I doubt he would become one at this point in his
life, or want to. He told me that he would have to sacrifice his magic
to become \emph{vates}. I don't think he wants to do that.''

Firenze showed no reaction on his face, but did say, ``If you sacrifice
your magic, you cannot be \emph{vates}. Only a \emph{vates} has the
strength to break the webs.''

\emph{I wonder if Dumbledore knows that.} Harry shoved the thought away,
because it made him uneasy. He knew that Dumbledore was worried about
him and his power, but he did not like to think that that extended to
actively working against him. They had a truce, after all, and doing
this would violate it. ``I understand,'' he said.

``And the fifth and last question, Harry Potter.'' Firenze's voice
became deep and rumbling. Behind him, the centaurs began stamping their
hooves again, the drum-like sound mingling well with the tones of his
voice. ``If it came down to a decision between saving a portion of your
own people and freeing a species of magical creature, which would you
choose?''

``Which wizards are we talking about, and which species of magical
creature?'' Harry demanded.

The drumming ended with a full-on, mighty crash as all the centaurs
reared and brought both front hooves down together. Harry started, and
wondered if that meant he had answered the question incorrectly and the
centaurs were about to charge and destroy him.

``We renew our commitment,'' said Firenze, his face perfectly serene.
``We will follow Harry Potter into war, when he fights his battles. We
know that he will be \emph{vates}, or become one from moment to moment.''
He turned and cantered back to his herd, not looking back at Harry once,
though he did say, ``Welcome to our hearts, child of Mars, as no wizard
has been welcome in centuries.''

Harry just shook his head and waited. That seemed to be the end of the
ritual with the centaurs, however, so he turned and looked in the
direction of the Many and the Runespoors writhing on their hill.

``Greetings,'' he said, holding a snake in his sight, so that he knew he
was speaking Parseltongue. ``What can I do for my legless siblings?''

The mingled hissing of the Many came back to him, flowing and ebbing,
restless as a tide. ``\emph{There are many bindings here. We do not like
it. The Forest provides a home, but were we to venture outside it, we
could not bite wizards for hurting us. We are choking on the taste of
webs. Set us free.}''

``Do you wish to return to your home?'' Harry asked, thinking of
possible ways that he might convince---well, someone---to help him send
a shipment of deadly South African hive cobras overseas. ``I could make
arrangements for that. You could live in a world without bindings
again.''

``\emph{We wish to stay in the Forest,}'' the hissing returned. ``\emph{We
have made a nest, and our eggs shall hatch soon. But we will have it on
our own terms. Our children must be able to learn self-defense, and to
extend their tongues and scent no bindings.}''

``It might take a while before that can happen,'' said Harry, and
relaxed his sight the way he had when first traveling with Fawkes, so
that he could see the webs arching everywhere. There was a new, fierce
orange glow in front of him, which Harry guessed was the web that had
taken over the Many. He wondered who had spun it, then shook his head.
\emph{It's probably an old spell left by the Headmasters of Hogwarts, to
make sure that no dangerous creature can simply move into the Forest and
then venture forth and attack the students at any time.} ``I do not know
how long it will take me to remove all these webs.''

``\emph{We want them gone.}''

``And I said it may take time,'' said Harry. He didn't think the Many
were stupid, just immensely stubborn.

``\emph{We accept that. But we will have your commitment. And we will
send a pair of eyes with you, so that we may have reassurance that you
are acting on your commitment even when you are away from the Forest.}''

Harry saw a small, lithe movement low to the ground, and then one of the
tiny cobras was coiling around his ankle, sliding up his leg. He
extended an arm, and it slithered up his chest and then down to his
wrist, coiling there. It was small enough that, when it had wrapped
itself around twice, it felt no thicker than a bracelet.

``What do I call you?'' Harry asked the snake, making a mental note to
keep it out of sight. Snape had been acting more strangely than ever in
the past few days, sometimes cold, sometimes snapping at him with
familiar rage. Merlin knew what he might do if he saw the snake.

``\emph{This is one part of us,}'' said the mingled hiss. ``\emph{You will
call the one part the Many. Through this little one, all of us are with
you, all of us are watching, and all of us, if need be, can come to your
aid.}''

Harry stifled his snort at the thought of what would happen if all the
Many came flowing out of the Forbidden Forest at once. It probably meant
there was something wrong with him that his first reaction to the
thought was amusement, rather than alarm. ``If you wish,'' he said.
``But I thought you had said that you could not defend yourselves even
if you venture out of the Forest.''

``\emph{If we are doing it to defend a wizard, we can.}''

Harry narrowed his eyes. He was starting to wonder which Headmaster had
set the webs to do this, and to hate him or her. ``Very well,'' he said,
and then glanced at the Runespoors. He had only ever spoken to them,
briefly, during the wild full moon night last year when he'd run through
the Forest with Sirius and Remus. He did not know what they would want
of him, other than the ending of their web.

A three-headed Runespoor slid away from the others and raised its necks
to look at him. Harry returned the gaze as steadily as he could, though
he had to blink and the snake did not.

``\emph{Snake-Speaker,}'' said the Runespoor at last, as if something in
the look they exchanged had satisfied her and not hearing him speak
Parseltongue. ``\emph{We are not like the centaurs, nor the Many. We will
not make bargains for either offensive or defensive protection of you.}''

Harry nodded, rather relieved. ``Then is there anything you would like,
beyond the breaking of your web?''

``\emph{Do you hear the singing?}''

Harry frowned and listened for a moment. He could hear nothing more than
the wind in the trees and the shuffling and shifting of the unicorns
behind him. ``No. What is the music I am supposed to hear?''

``\emph{When you can hear the music, then come to us. We will make sure
that you learn to listen.}''

The Runespoor turned and slithered rapidly back in the direction of the
hill. The other snakes followed her, and dissipated. Harry blinked.
\emph{And they say centaurs have a reputation for being enigmatic.}

He waited a moment more, but the Runespoors did not return, and so he
faced the unicorns. He was not sure how he was supposed to speak to
them, until one of them let out a neigh that drifted like snow, and
Fawkes trilled, and Dobby translated the trill.

``They would like Harry Potter to break their web this year,'' he said,
his eyes very large, ``in return for the debt he owes them.''

Harry shook his head. ``I don't understand.''

Trill, neigh, trill, and Dobby was translating again. ``Some time ago,
you had the chance to save a unicorn and did not take it,'' he said.
``They sensed your presence when they came to mourn their dead. They did
not know who you were then. Now they do, and they want to know why the
\emph{vates} would hurt them so severely.''

Harry closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He knew what Dobby
referred to now. He knew that Quirrell had been feeding on unicorns'
blood in his first year, but revealing himself would likely have meant
his death. So he had watched Quirrell kill the unicorn, doing nothing to
stop it.

``Killing a unicorn is a sin,'' Dobby whispered. ``And watching one be
killed is not something the unicorns like.''

Harry heard the soft, bell-like clomp of hooves, and opened his eyes to
see one of the unicorns coming forward. It stopped in front of him, so
brilliant that Harry could barely stand to watch the shine of its coat,
and then bowed its head. Its horn rested a few inches from his heart.

Harry could imagine what would happen if the unicorn moved forward,
putting all the power of its head behind the blow, and speared him.

He could not pretend that he would not deserve it.

The unicorn stepped back and reared. Harry's eyes helplessly followed
the falling-star streak of light that was its horn, and then the golden
motion of hooves as it turned and sped into the Forest.

And then the others followed after it, in a blazing rush, like the Milky
Way come down and dancing in the Forest. Harry put a hand to his face to
hold and wipe away the tears, and felt the tickle of a tongue as the
Many on his wrist put out its tongue to taste the salt.

``\emph{We could have bitten it, and defended you,}'' said the snake.

``I didn't want you to,'' Harry whispered, and glanced at Fawkes and
Dobby. ``What was that about? What did they decide?''

Fawkes trilled, a low and musical sound. Dobby translated. ``Unicorns
are innocent, Harry Potter. They know the touch, the scent, of the
innocent. That close, they could sense that you did not mean to let
their fellow die, that you would have given your life in his defense if
you could. You are forgiven.''

Harry closed his eyes. ``You told me once that the unicorns were bound
because they were too beautiful,'' he said.

``Yes, Harry Potter.'' Harry heard the slight impact of skin on skin as
Dobby nodded his head, his ears flopping.

``What are they like?'' Harry whispered. ``Or what are they going to be
like, when they're free, if they're that beautiful with the web in
place?''

``Dobby does not know,'' said the house elf, and his voice was subdued.

Harry took a deep breath and opened his eyes. His tears were gone, and
that was all to the good. ``I need to break their web,'' he said. ``But
I need to break a web on a smaller scale first, to practice, and in a
way I know won't be against its owner's will.'' He looked at Dobby, and
Dobby's eyes stared back at him.

``Dobby,'' Harry whispered, ``how would you like to be free? I can at
least ask.''

Dobby's eyes widened until they seemed to occupy the whole of his face,
and then he gave a tiny, halting nod.

Harry nodded back. \emph{Oh, Lucius is going to make me pay for this,
but I will not trample on anyone's will. I cannot. I am going to write a
letter to him, and ask him to let Dobby go. Then I will do what I can. I
shall doubtless have to study a bit before I can break his web,
especially because he said once that his were half-frayed and not like
other house elves' webs, and there will be differences between his web
and the unicorns'.}

But he did not feel intimidation at the thought of asking, or even what
Lucius would doubtless ask in return. He felt radiant contentment, which
seemed to spill out of him until he shone in the dark like a unicorn.

\emph{I want to do this. I don't know if there's something I've ever
wanted so much.}

\emph{I want to know what a unicorn looks like without its web.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Harry!''

Harry looked up anxiously, blinking, as Connor ran towards him in the
Great Hall at breakfast that morning. This was the morning he expected
the arrival of Lucius's letter, since he'd sent his request off a few
days ago, and anything else unusual happening made him jump.

It didn't help, of course, that Draco made an annoyed sound, resenting
the presence of Harry's brother, and that the Many, who lurked under
Harry's sleeve and invisibly ate part of his breakfast, took the
opportunity to make softly hissed comments about that. The Many had
decided that they did not like Draco. Harry was actually glad for the
web, now, that did not permit the Many to simply bite anyone they wanted
out of the Forbidden Forest.

``What is it, Connor?'' Harry asked, standing and moving a few feet away
from the table so that he didn't disturb Draco.

``A letter from Dad.'' Connor shook his head. Harry didn't understand
the expression on his face. He was smiling with his mouth, but his eyes
were worried. ``I think you should read it.''

Harry took it, cautiously. He decided that the potion might have worked,
from the simple fact that the lines didn't stagger all over the page,
but he didn't know what he expected to find.

Whatever it was, it was not what James had written, since Harry felt
cold shock pass into him, pressing tendon to bone.

\emph{Dear Connor:}

\emph{I wanted you to know that I am well again. Harry brewed an
antidote to the potion Snape gave me, and I am in my right mind. Remus
has told me about the---things I did while under the potion. I am
horribly embarrassed, but I will not waste time dwelling on them. If
Harry is blaming himself for not stopping Snape, tell him not to. I
wholeheartedly believe that he had no idea what his guardian meant to
do.}

\emph{It has, however, increased my determination to get Harry away from
him. There are other ways than simply approaching the Department of
Magical Family and Child Services, ways that I should have tried in the
first place, given what I know about Snivellus. I am going to try them.
What are they? You'll know soon enough, since I intend to make them
very, very public.}

\emph{Please do not show this letter to Harry. It would only make him
unhappy. I don't want to make him unhappier than he would already be.
But this must be done. The man who would do this has no right to be near
and in control of my son.}

\emph{Your loving father,}

\emph{James.}

Harry looked up from the letter to Connor. ``But he said for you not to
show it to me.''

Connor flushed, then scratched the back of his neck. ``Yeah, well,'' he
muttered to his trainers. ``I still thought you should see it. It
concerns you.'' He jerked his head back up and stared at Harry
defiantly, as though he thought his brother would slap him for being
concerned about him.

Harry smiled at him and shook his head. ``Thank you,'' he said softly,
and handed the letter back to Connor. The shock in him was rapidly
approaching panic, but he didn't want his brother to think he'd made a
mistake in showing him the letter. He hugged Connor, tightly, and felt
the embrace returned. The Many made an angry comment about being jostled
that Harry ignored. ``It's good to know that I've got at least one
person I can depend on.''

Connor hugged him one moment past when Harry would have let him go, then
turned and jogged back to the Gryffindor table. Above him, as if he had
been waiting until Connor was gone so that he wouldn't have to deliver
the letter in the presence of a Gryffindor, Harry saw Julius stooping
down.

He held out his arm for the great horned owl, and resolutely didn't
stagger when Julius landed and clamped down hard enough to draw blood.
He actually held the letter in one talon, presenting it to Harry. Harry
fumbled it open with the hand not occupied with being pressed against
the owl's tail feathers.

The message was short.

\emph{Potter:}

\emph{You ask two favors of me, one more than the truce-dance allows. I,
therefore, demand two favors in return, one of them in the dance and one
outside it. I demand that I be allowed to specify the Midwinter gift I
receive, and I insist that you come to a small gathering of Dark wizards
and witches that I intend to hold in Hogwarts's Room of Requirement on
Halloween night.}

\emph{You have my permission to free my house elf.}

\emph{Lucius Malfoy.}

Harry smiled in spite of himself. Lucius was being a bastard, treading
the edge of courtesy, but Harry's asking for the favor of freeing Dobby
had done the same thing. This was the first step to being a true
\emph{vates}. Harry could feel the thorns of the path yielding to roses
for the first time.

``What are you \emph{doing}?''

Harry found himself nearly jerked off-balance as Draco seized his
shoulder. Julius gave a dangerous hiss and took to the air again,
circling once over Draco. Harry thought for a moment that he would drop
a pellet, but either he remembered that this was his master's son or he
decided it was beneath the dignity of a truce-owl. He turned and flew
out the window of the Great Hall instead, his every feather a-ruffle.

Harry pulled and twisted lightly, and freed himself of Draco's hold.
``What do you mean?'' he asked his best friend, who was flushed and had
that odd look in his eyes again.

``You---I just don't like you \emph{touching} other people the way you
did Connor, that's all,'' said Draco.

Harry narrowed his eyes and, on instinct, did something he'd never
tried, forcing and focusing his sight on a wizard the way he would on a
magical creature.

He nearly gagged when he saw a faint silvery-black web crawling over
Draco's face and arms and head. It was delicate, and Harry could not
comprehend who had put it there, but he thought he knew what it was for.
It had caused Draco's strange behavior of late, behavior that focused
around Harry.

\emph{Could he have borne this web even last year, when he convinced me
that he loved me?}

\emph{There} was a disturbing thought, but Harry pushed it away. He
didn't have the right to worry about it. What mattered was freeing Draco
of that web, and doing it as soon as possible.

``He's my brother,'' he just said, more mildly than Draco expected, from
the blink of his eyes. ``Now, come on, I thought you were going to tell
me what interested you the most about Julia's actions in Scotland.''

Draco let himself be distracted, chattering happily about how he thought
Julia must have come to Hogwarts after she was a student and done
something---strong---in regards to the school. Harry sat down with him
again, his eyes narrowed. He seemed to be seeing the web around Draco
all the time now, even when he didn't want to.

``\emph{Why do you care?}'' the Many asked him, the words barely more than
darts of the little snake's tongue against his skin. ``\emph{He is only
one web among many. What makes him so important?}''

Harry just shook his head. \emph{Draco needs and deserves his freedom as
much as anyone else would. But it's going to be a delicate balance. If
that web focuses around me, then my spending time with him the way he
wants is just going to sink its hold deeper. I'll have to try to give
him his own life as much as possible.}

He found himself almost glad, in a fierce way, of the discovery. Not
only would it mean freeing Draco sooner, but it kept him from wondering
what his father was planning.

\chapter{Cry Havoc}\label{chapter-25-cry-havoc}

Harry was at breakfast when the doors of the Great Hall opened. He
craned his neck to see who would be coming in, blinking. Had the other
schools already arrived for the Triwizard Tournament? Considering the
way that everyone else seemed so interested in it, Harry would have
thought he would hear about that further in advance.

Draco poked him with one finger. ``Harry. I was \emph{trying} to tell you
more about why I think Julia Malfoy was a Dark Lady.''

``And I was saying that she couldn't have been, unless she actually
declared herself to the Dark and a Lady at some point or another,''
Harry snapped back, growing even more curious as he saw two robed
figures, both witches, walking through the doors. ``Just because she has
a certain kind of power and a certain kind of disposition doesn't mean
she actually did what you think she did.''

``Why \emph{wouldn't} she declare herself a Lady?'' Draco sounded huffy.
He didn't appear to take any notice of the two women as they walked
rapidly towards the head table, but then, Harry thought, he wouldn't. He
was becoming more and more convinced that Draco's web had something to
do with this potion, though Merlin alone knew how; Draco still wouldn't
let Harry look at the book that he claimed to have got the potion recipe
from.

``I don't know, Draco,'' Harry said, and then blinked as the two witches
came close enough for recognition. One looked vaguely familiar, but he
couldn't place her until he glanced at the other. Though she had lank,
mouse-brown hair now, she still wore much the same face as she had to
visit him at Lux Aeterna. \emph{Nymphadora Tonks. What's she doing
here?}

``What's my cousin doing here?'' Draco asked then, apparently noticing
her for the first time.

Harry shook his head and stood up, trying to decide what to do. The
second woman was Auror Mallory, the pretty but stern witch he had met in
the Ministry just after he walked away from Fudge. He hesitated when he
stood, though, not knowing what would be the best course.

The two Aurors halted in front of the head table. In a clear, ringing
voice, Auror Mallory pronounced, ``Headmaster Dumbledore, if we might
have a moment of your time?''

``A moment and more than that, dear ladies,'' said Dumbledore, inclining
his head. Harry could see the wariness on his face, though, however well
he tried to hide it; he had often worn such an expression around Harry.
He didn't know what was going on, either. In one way, Harry supposed,
that was good. It meant this couldn't be a plot of Dumbledore's. On the
other hand, Harry had to watch in uncertainty of what came next, and he
\emph{hated} uncertainty and sudden change.

``Thank you.'' Auror Mallory bowed to him, and seemed to nudge Tonks
with an elbow on the way down, so that the younger woman started and
bowed a few moments behind her. Then she drew a scroll from her sleeve.
``My pardons for doing this so publicly,'' she added, to whom Harry
didn't know, ``but Madam Bones felt it was best, given what we've
learned about this man in the past few hours.''

Harry felt his heart lurch, and then speed to such an extent that he
swayed on his feet. Draco took his hand, saying something that Harry
couldn't hear over his heartbeat. Millicent was grabbing his shoulders,
as she had after Regulus was suddenly torn from his head, urging him to
sit back down.

For some reason, although he couldn't hear their soothing words, he
could hear the Auror perfectly when she began to read.

``We have come, under sanction of Madam Amelia Bones, Head of the
Department of Magical Law Enforcement, to arrest Professor Severus Snape
on charges of administering an insanity potion to James Potter---''
Mallory had to lift her voice slightly when the chatter of excited
students began to rise from the tables ``---and a potion with unknown
side effects to Minister Fudge. He did not register the creation of
these potions with the Ministry, and in at least one case he did not
send the antidote on his own. Both James Potter and Minister Fudge have
filed charges.'' The Auror closed the scroll with a shake of her arm and
turned to face Snape.

Harry was glad he hadn't eaten much, or he would have been tempted to
vomit it all back up. He understood at once what was happening, but it
had still taken him by surprise, and he was gasping and choking and
trying not to become overwhelmed by it.

\emph{James knows by now that trying to take me from Snape doesn't work.
So he's taking Snape from me.}

Snape stood up, his face pale but composed. ``I will protest these
charges,'' he said. ``James Potter is a known rival of mine from our
days here at Hogwarts. He would say anything that he thought might
discredit me. And the Minister recently abducted my ward. It is not
surprising that they would file these charges.''

``We have enough evidence to arrest you, sir,'' said Mallory crisply.
``There were eyewitnesses to Potter's condition, in the form of himself,
Remus Lupin, and Madam Hellebore Shiverwood. The Minister and Augustus
Starrise stand ready to testify that you fed the Minister an unusual
potion the day that you visited him, on the autumnal equinox. And we
have evidence of what the insanity potion was meant to do in writing,
from your ward, Harry Potter.'' She turned and glanced calmly over at
the Slytherin table.

Harry felt his sickness increase. He \emph{had} written a note to Remus
along with the antidote, explaining its uses and why he believed it
would counteract the insanity potion that James had taken. And he had
included a line about brewing the antidote because he believed that
Snape would never brew one.

The look of betrayal on Snape's face was terrible. Harry flinched and
tried not to run from the Great Hall. There were still things he had to
do. His guardian might hate him at the moment, but that didn't mean
Harry could give up on trying to save him.

``Sit down before you fall down,'' Millicent hissed in his ear, and
pressed firmly at his shoulders.

``No, damn you,'' Harry snarled at her, making her fall back in
startlement, and tore his hand from Draco's tightening hold. He slipped
around the Slytherin table and set off towards the Aurors, his heart
beating fast. Perhaps he was a coward, but he kept his eyes on the women
instead of on Snape.

He did feel a hand brush his shoulder, briefly, as he worked his way
past the Hufflepuff table, and glanced back to see Justin frowning
worriedly at him. Zacharias's face was as expressionless as it was most
of the time, but he lifted his eyebrows when he saw Harry looking
towards him and mouthed, ``Good luck.''

Harry turned his head and, as if by fate, met his brother's eyes. Connor
looked stricken, but nodded firmly. Harry relaxed a bit. At least Connor
wasn't torn, thinking that he should support James in this---this
crazily stupid idea.

\emph{This entirely} legal \emph{idea. Snape really did do everything
that they said he did.}

That was what made Harry sweat when he finally halted in front of the
two Aurors and bowed to them. Tonks had watched him come, her face
growing more and more unhappy. Auror Mallory was watching Snape as if
waiting for him to draw his wand and come after her, her posture tight
and ready. Harry didn't look forward to what would happen if Snape tried
it. From the power he could feel buzzing under Auror Mallory's skin, she
wasn't much weaker than Snape, and she had had training that might make
the difference. If she forced Snape to resort to Dark Arts in order to
defeat her, that would only give them another reason to arrest him.

``Aurors,'' he said.

Mallory glanced at him, and blinked. ``Potter,'' she said. ``Is
something the matter?''

``I would just like to say that I do believe what my Professor says,''
said Harry. ``My father's been trying to get at him for---a while.'' He
could show them the copies of the taunting letters James had sent, if it
would help. \emph{If it will keep Snape's magic from being drained, or
whatever they really are doing in place of sending prisoners to
Azkaban.} ``And the Minister doesn't like or trust him. I can provide
you with evidence of all of that.''

``You would turn against your own written evidence?'' Mallory asked, her
face skeptical.

``I did not realize what it was going to become evidence \emph{of}, or I
would never have written what I did,'' Harry said.

He knew he had said something wrong when he saw the abrupt way the
Auror's face tightened. She shook her head. ``Your loyalty is
commendable, Mr. Potter, but misplaced in this instance. He \emph{did}
do the things that he's accused of. The motivations behind the
accusations may not be pure---Merlin knows that I've seen this enough in
my own line of work---but that does not excuse his crimes, which I
hardly think were committed out of any pure motivations, either.'' She
shot her eyes back to Snape, who had shifted as if he were about to draw
his wand out of his sleeve. Her voice dropped to a growl. ``The best
thing you can advise him to do right now is come along quietly.''

``And how are you going to punish him?'' Harry tried, he really did, but
he couldn't keep the tightness out of his voice.

Mallory blinked. ``Why---not at all, until after he's had a trial and
the Wizengamot has declared him guilty,'' she said. ``In a case like
this, we can't have anything less than the full Wizengamot try him.''
Her face softened. ``I can promise you, Mr. Potter, we intend to abide by
the rules of law. \emph{All} of them. No punishment and no beating
before the trial, no matter what you may have heard. Things were like
that in the First War, I'll grant you, but Auror Scrimgeour weeded all
that out. It'd be my job to try to do something to hurt a prisoner
before his trial, no matter what he'd done to me or if I really believed
him to be guilty or not.''

``But what about the Minister's Hounds?'' Harry demanded. ``Can you
guarantee that they won't try to reach and silence him?''

``I will swear you a wizard's oath that they will not.'' Mallory looked
thoughtfully back at Snape. ``I don't know exactly if he's more
threatened or threatening, but, in the name of Merlin and the name of my
magic, he will reach his trial alive. Nothing the Hounds or the Minister
may try before then will touch him, I assure you.''

Harry felt the oath settle into place around him, and knew it was all he
was going to get from the Auror. She had already given him far more than
she had to, probably out of pity for the child whose guardian could be
so deceitful. He nodded, once. ``Thank you,'' he said.

``Have you decided, Professor Snape?'' Mallory's voice was calm, but her
wand was pointed at Snape now. ``Are you going to resist us, which will
add an extra charge to your file, or come along quietly?''

Snape snarled, a low sound, but to Harry's relief, he did not burst out
into one of the rages that had marked the last few days. He drew his
wand from his sleeve and placed it, with great dignity, on the table,
then turned and clasped his hands together behind his back. Mallory
began promptly whispering spells that Harry thought were meant to
confine Snape's magic and body.

He took the chance to turn to Tonks. She looked down at him, face more
unhappy than ever. ``Tonks,'' he whispered. ``Can you speak to
Scrimgeour when you get back to the Ministry? Tell him that I think the
main motivation to arrest Snape was hatred and anger, and not justice?''

Tonks closed her eyes. ``Harry\ldots{}''

Harry knew he was asking a lot of her. It could get her sacked, and they
weren't even really formal allies. But he went on asking, anyway, with
his silence, and when Mallory finished the final spell, Tonks gave him a
reluctant nod.

Harry squeezed her hand, hard, then stepped out of the way and watched
in resignation as Mallory led Snape down from the head table. Tonks fell
into place on the right side of him, and they marched him towards the
doors. Harry found his courage before they got quite that far, and
lifted his head, meeting the burning black gaze he knew would be waiting
for him.

It bored into him and tore him apart, but Harry weathered it. He had
lived through this nightmare of losing parents and mentors before. He
could live through it again. He let Snape see what he thought he should
see there, and watched anger melt into confusion. Then the moment was
over, and the two Aurors were leading Snape far enough away that he
could no longer turn his head to meet Harry's gaze without being
obvious. He wouldn't do that, Harry knew. The one thing that Snape hated
most was being obvious, letting his enemies see how they had hurt him.

Harry watched the Aurors leave the Great Hall. To him, it felt as if
they walked in silence, for all that the roaring around him rivaled the
ocean on the beach at Midsummer. He turned only when he heard the
Headmaster rise to his feet and call for quiet, a reprimand with an edge
of compulsion in it. Harry shrugged the compulsion off, and heard the
Many give an angry hiss on his arm.

``Students, students,'' Dumbledore called, his voice sweet with sorrow.
``Obviously this is a sad day, and we \emph{should} be sad at losing a
teacher of Professor Snape's caliber.'' Harry heard snorts that no one
could have stifled exploding from every table but Slytherin's; Snape had
been nothing but a harsh teacher to the other three Houses. ``However, I
have no doubt that he will be back among us shortly. In the meantime, I
will take over his Potions classes myself, having a modicum of knowledge
on the subject.'' He smiled gently, while the buzz of scorn and laughter
turned to a sound of excitement. ``I hope that no one will object to
that?''

The sentiments that came back to him sounded to Harry most like
``\emph{Hell} no!'' He shook his head, a faint smile appearing on his
lips. Snape never had been popular, and then had sometimes wondered
aloud why more students didn't respect him than did. Harry had known it
was impossible, even useless, to try and explain it to him.

``Then I declare all Potions classes canceled for today, so that I might
have a day to learn the schedule and go over Professor Snape's lessons
plans,'' said Dumbledore, and there came a series of appreciative
whoops. In a softer tone, he added, ``Please go sit back down, Mr.
Potter.''

Harry turned and glanced at Dumbledore. His eyes were bright, confident.
He had never looked more like the general of the Light whom Lily had
taught Harry to revere. ``We will get him back,'' Dumbledore assured
him.

Harry dipped his head, not meeting the other professors' eyes, and then
hurried towards the Slytherin table. With Potions canceled, he had no
classes for a few hours, and he wanted to consider what he was going to
do before he did it.

Of course, he already had the stirrings of a plan, but it would be a
costly one, and solve only half the problem. He would find a better one
if he could.

At the Slytherin table, he accepted pats on the shoulder from Millicent,
reassurances from Pansy, noises of sympathy from Blaise and
Vince---Snape was at least their Head of House, if he was nothing else
to them---and an unexpectedly swift, tight embrace from Draco, who
didn't let him go until Harry told him, gently, that he really needed to
go to Gryffindor Tower to see his brother. Then he didn't protest, and
Harry found himself more grateful for that than anything since the
Aurors had taken Snape away.

\emph{Taken Snape away.}

\emph{Well, I'll just have to get him back, then.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry luckily---because he didn't know the latest Gryffindor
password---arrived at the Fat Lady's portrait at the same time as Ron,
Connor, and Hermione. Hermione took one look at Harry's face and tugged
on Ron's arm, prompting him to fall behind. Ron blinked at her, looked
ahead, saw Harry waiting, blinked some more, and then abruptly nodded,
his face going a bit red. He and Hermione stood behind, while Connor
came forward to meet Harry alone.

``I swear, I didn't know Dad was going to do anything like that,''
Connor gasped desperately, halting just a few feet away from him.

Harry hugged his brother, surprising even himself. He hadn't realized
how much he needed to touch someone right then. Maybe it was because his
mind was whizzing along, barely seeming to be contained in his skull.
``I know, I know,'' he whispered, as Connor's arms came up and tightened
around him. ``I know you would have told me if you had, just like you
showed me his letter. And---well, I didn't know either. I thought he was
going to do---something else.'' \emph{And now I'm going to do the
something else.} Harry took a hard breath through his nose. ``I came to
warn you. I really do love Dad, all right? And you. And even---even
Mum.'' Just because he didn't want any more contact with someone didn't
mean he stopped loving them, Harry had found. Love wasn't that easy to
control. ``I have to do something to help Snape, though. And this is the
only thing I can think of to do. If it works right, it won't even make a
mark. If it doesn't, then, well, just remember I love you. Really.''

``Harry?'' Connor's arms tightened abruptly around him. ``Are you going
to do something to hurt yourself?''

``Mentally,'' said Harry, startled. \emph{He thinks I would commit
suicide, or threaten to? Of course not. There are too many people I can
benefit by staying alive.} ``Not physically.''

``Then I still don't want you to do it.''

``I have to.'' Gently, Harry disentangled himself from Connor's arms.
``I have to do what I can to protect Snape.''

``Maybe I want to protect \emph{you} for once.'' Connor folded his arms,
scowling at him. ``And I don't want you to do this if it'll hurt you in
any way.''

``I have to do something, Connor,'' Harry pointed out. ``The Aurors
already came and arrested Snape. It's already begun.''

``Let him get out of it on his own,'' Connor hissed, and Harry was
surprised to see malice in his eyes. ``Damn it, Harry, I know you feel
you owe him, you may even love him too, but didn't he bring this on
himself? Let him deal with the consequences on his own. He
\emph{should}. Why should you have to sacrifice yourself \emph{again}
just to defend him?''

``Because a willing sacrifice is different from an unwilling one.''
Harry squeezed his arm. ``And I have to shield him from this as much as
I can.''

``You forgive too much,'' Connor went on, hazel eyes glowing with that
Gryffindor stubbornness that had caused so much trouble last year. Harry
hoped that it wouldn't cause much now. Connor looked perfectly capable
of tackling him and holding him on the floor to keep him here. ``Sooner
or later, Harry, people have to grow up. \emph{I} had to. Snape's an
adult. Why shouldn't \emph{he} have to?''

Harry sighed. ``There's a limit to what I can do to help him, that's for
sure, but I would never feel good about myself I didn't try. I was
partially the one who got him into this, by writing a letter with the
antidote I sent to Remus.''

``You had to,'' said Connor firmly. ``Or Remus wouldn't have known what
it was or who it was from.''

``Yes, he would have. It came with Hedwig---'' Harry shook his head and
backed off the argument. ``Never mind. I'm going to do this, and I just
wanted to warn you, just in case it doesn't work the way I think it
should.'' He gave his brother's shoulder one more clasp, and then backed
off and slipped away, his hand ducking into his sleeve as he went. A
squeeze to the quill-shaped amulet that waited there, and a certain
person would know he had a story for her.

``Harry!'' Connor shouted behind him, but Harry calmly cast a wandless
Disillusionment Charm on himself so his brother couldn't follow him, and
went to the Owlery, the place where he and Skeeter had agreed to meet.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``This better be good, Potter.'' Skeeter's voice came through a window
of the Owlery.

Startled, Harry glanced out the window and saw her riding a broom, her
stiff blonde curls swaying unnaturally in the wind, her entire body
looking horribly uncomfortable as it crammed onto the broomstick. Harry
couldn't help grinning slightly as he beckoned for her to come through
the window. He knew that there were wards that prevented anyone hostile
from attacking the school on a broom, but evidently the wards didn't
consider Skeeter hostile.

\emph{They might as well have, if this blow actually lands.}

``I was on the verge of just starting a story about your guardian's
arrest,'' Skeeter complained, as she transferred herself awkwardly from
the broomstick through the window. Harry bit his lip and resolutely
didn't laugh as she nearly tumbled into a pile of feathers and owl
pellets. Skeeter brushed her dress off and turned to face him. ``Now
Honeywhistle'll publish one first. She's stuck to the Minister's side
lately.''

``I think this should fulfill both your personas---the truth-seeking
heroine and the gossip-monger,'' said Harry, becoming sober again as he
thought about what was going to happen. ``I have a story for you that's
connected to the arrest of my guardian. And to my blood father, as
well.''

He ignored the rushing in his ears. Yes, he had wanted to keep this
private. Yes, he had never wanted to show any part of it to the
wizarding world, because why should he? It mattered to his family and no
one else, no matter what Draco and Snape said.

\emph{And it will go on mattering only to my family and no one else, if
Dad just does what he's supposed to.}

``Really.'' Skeeter's eyes sparkled as she waved her wand and conjured a
chair to sit on. She drew her quill and a scroll of parchment out, and
focused a keen glance on him. ``I'm waiting.''

Harry had thought very carefully about how to phrase this---not the
actual article, but how much he would tell Skeeter. He met her gaze
calmly, and said, ``I don't know how much you know about my home life
with my parents.''

``Not much,'' said Skeeter. ``I mean, I know about the Auror
investigation into your parents last year. Something odd about that,
wasn't there? They were under Dark magic or something.'' She cocked her
head. ``That was when I was more interested in writing about the
Boy-Who-Lived. I could find my notes, though.''

Harry smiled grimly. ``Your notes won't tell you about this.'' His own
voice in his ears sounded thin and windy. He controlled the urge to just
collapse, or to curl around the secret and hide it away forever. He had
no right to be so selfish. Snape might need this.

\emph{And it's the one thing that might convince Dad to back off, drop
the charges, and stay backed off.}

``My father spent almost all his time with my brother when we were
children,'' Harry began carefully. \emph{Leave Lily out of it. Leave
your training out of it. You only want what will threaten James.} ``He
cherished him more, laughed with him more, loved him more. The Dark
magic incident last year? He was able to forget all about me under the
persuasion of a simple spell.'' Harry lifted an eyebrow, forced himself
to adopt a cynical and mocking expression, and chuckled. ``How loving a
father is one who can forget his child like that?''

Skeeter's quill was speeding across her parchment. That was all, Harry
told himself. He was \emph{not} about to faint. He had to be strong.
Strong people didn't faint.

``Why did he love your brother more?'' she asked, peering at him.

Harry snorted. ``Can you ask? Connor's the Boy-Who-Lived.'' He saw the
spark catch in her eyes, and knew she would believe whatever followed
from this point forward. They had linked his name to his brother's in
the first article against Fudge as a matter of politics, but Connor
still had the larger fame, the bigger reputation. Skeeter would be
interested in and believe a tale of sibling jealousy and rivalry.
\emph{Forgive me, Connor. Our relationship has improved out of all
recognition in the past few months. But this is about James when we were
still children.} ``And\ldots{}'' He trailed off on purpose, painted a
pensive look on his face, and saw that he had her. Rita leaned forward,
her quill brushing the edge of her teeth.

``What, what?'' she urged.

Harry lowered his eyes as if embarrassed. In truth, he was forcing
himself to consider these incidents as if they had happened to someone
else. It was the only way to control the urge just to coil up into a
tiny, tight ball and tell no one else, ever. Why would it \emph{matter}
to them? It was not important, could not possibly be important. James
and Lily weren't criminals. They were parents who had done the best they
could, trying to raise a baby who was the target of Voldemort's
wrath---so far as anyone knew---and a son with magic too powerful for
his own or anyone else's good. They did not deserve to be arrested or
punished. They had made mistakes, and everyone did that.

But he stepped over and around and past that, told himself that this
truth need not come to light if James would only do what he was supposed
to, and said, ``And he was scared of me.'' He flexed a hand, and let a
small ball of light appear in front of him, drifting about and then
winking out. No great deal, but he had done it without a wand and
without a word. He looked up and met Skeeter's eyes. ``You were there,
you said, when I attacked the Minister and Umbridge.''

Skeeter nodded.

Harry sighed. ``So, I had the potential for magic like that as a young
child, and my father was afraid of me. So he stayed distant from me.''
He laughed a bit. ``You'd think he'd have wanted to befriend me, make me
love him, so that I wouldn't ever turn on him, but that wasn't the way
it worked out.''

He choked back the astonishing wave of bitterness rising from his belly,
and wondered about those contradictory impulses. Part of him, it seemed,
did want to tell the truth. Harry snorted. \emph{Why? So you can get
sympathy? Weakness, Potter.}

Skeeter scribbled industriously, and then looked up. To Harry's
surprise, she seemed hesitant. She worried her lip with prominent front
teeth for a moment. Harry remained still, wondering what in the world
\emph{Skeeter} would be nervous about asking.

He understood when she whispered, ``Did he abuse you?''

Harry shook his head. ``No, of course not! He never touched me.'' He
winced when he realized how \emph{that} sounded, and added, ``Except in
the way a parent should touch a child.''

Skeeter went on staring at him. Then she said, in the voice of someone
trying to be comforting when she didn't know how, ``That isn't the only
form of abuse.''

\emph{Oh. Oh, fuck. I've got to get her off this track. I just want to
threaten James with showing that he's not a model father. I don't want
to give her even the} idea \emph{that anything like abuse happened at
home, or he really could be arrested, and Mum, too. No, no, never. I
can't do that. I can't tear them apart and leave them bleeding in public
like that. It's done, it's over with, it never needs to come up again.}

``He just stayed distant from me,'' said Harry, and let a petulant,
complaining tone slip into his voice. ``I was a toy for him, someone he
could play with when Connor was busy or asleep. And someone he was
afraid of, of course, but he tried to mask that.'' He sighed and leaned
his head back on the wall. ``You know why he's trying to take me away
from Snape?''

``Why?'' Skeeter still looked a bit worried, but seized on the new
distraction gratefully.

``Because he and Snape had a rivalry in Hogwarts.'' Harry gave a great
sigh and buried his head in his hands. ``They're both such
\emph{children.} Snape's striking back at him for the same reason, but
at least, with Snape, it's expected, you know? He has a bad reputation
already, as the Head of Slytherin House and a teacher most of the
students hate. You'd think my father would be the better man, but
\emph{no}. He just \emph{has} to try and take a son he never cared about
anyway when we were children away from Snape, because it's Snape who has
me. And my father is supposed to be this glorious Light pureblood wizard
and ex-Auror.'' Harry shook his head slowly back and forth, hair
rustling. ``You'd think he'd be the better man,'' he repeated.

He peered between his fingers to see how Skeeter was taking this, and
saw the rapturous expression on her face as she wrote. He relaxed. For
all her determination to make people admire her, Skeeter was a
gossip-monger at heart. Little would please her more than taking down
someone whom many Aurors and Ministry people still admired years after
he'd left his position.

``Wonderful,'' said Skeeter at last, looking up. ``I can do a lot just
with this. The article should be out in a few days---''

``No,'' Harry interrupted.

Skeeter frowned at him. ``Our deal---''

``I know what our deal is,'' said Harry. ``But this is different. I can
give you plenty of other stories. But this one is personal. Private.
Special. I only agreed to give it out at all because James will just not
bloody well give up. I want to use this to blackmail him instead. If he
doesn't drop the charges against Snape, then---'' The words stuck in his
throat, but he forced them out. ``Then you can publish it.''

Skeeter hesitated, teetering. Harry watched her coolly. He understood
her. She wanted the article published and people buying it, reading it,
admiring her words in shocked whispers, James bleeding from the lash of
a whip that he never saw coming.

On the other hand, she wanted the \emph{anticipation} of it, too. And
she wanted to be involved in intrigues at this level of power, to know
things that other people didn't as well as just spreading them the
moment she knew. She wanted to have power over another person. She had a
chancy power right now, dictated not only by what articles she could
publish but by the public interest, and her competition with Melinda
Honeywhistle and other people, and how long the scandal would run. Harry
was offering her something else, something more political in
nature---the chance to run before, not behind, events.

Besides, she must know that if she published this article when he didn't
want her to, it was the last story she'd ever get from him.

Harry felt almost as if he were inside her head when Skeeter's eyes
lifted to his face and she nodded. He had looked in one of the registry
books in the Hogwarts library just to satisfy his curiosity, but he
really hadn't needed to. He already knew, on instinct, that Rita Skeeter
had been a Slytherin.

``Can I at least write the article and send it to him?'' she asked, her
voice plaintive.

Harry arched an eyebrow. ``Of course. As long as it doesn't slip out,
even accidentally, to anyone else.''

``No,'' said Skeeter, her voice a deep purr. ``Of course not.''

``Send it with this letter,'' Harry instructed her, and pulled a piece
of parchment from his back pocket. ``It explains everything in the
simplest terms. He drops the charges, or he gets smeared across the
front pages of the wizarding world.'' He paused and gave her a stern
look. ``He's got a week to drop the charges. If the article shows up
before then, I will be \emph{very upset}, Rita.'' He hissed at the Many,
and the little snake stuck its head out from under his sleeve and hissed
back at him.

Skeeter's face paled. ``Is that---''

``A South African hive cobra. Yes.'' Harry stroked the Many's neck, and
let the tongue tickle his hand. He made his voice cheery. ``Did you know
that if one of them spits in your eyes, it blinds you, and there's no
cure for that condition?''

Skeeter let out a sharp breath. ``Really, no need to threaten me,
Potter,'' she muttered as she stood. ``I want to keep this secret for
right now as much as you do.''

Harry shrugged. ``Just making sure.'' He handed her the letter to James,
then watched her get on the broomstick and settle herself again. She
gave him a long, slow look that combined many things. Harry saw some
fear and respect in there, though, and was content.

``See you later, Potter,'' she said, and then pushed the broomstick out
the Owlery window.

Harry closed his eyes and stood still for a long time. He could only
hope James would see sense and not let himself and his family be dragged
screaming into the public eye. Granted, he hadn't seen sense before now,
but, on the other hand, he hadn't faced a threat this severe. Harry
intended to make him back off or bleed in public, one or the other.

And if he bled, too, at least he had chosen to do so.

He opened his eyes and shook his head. \emph{I've done all I can for
now, especially since the charges were true. I'll wait and see if
Scrimgeour can't do something about the Minister before I move on that
front.}

And if he didn't hurry, he would be late to Charms, anyway.

\chapter{To Be Slytherin}\label{chapter-26-to-be-slytherin}

\textbf{PLEASE NOTE: This is Chapter 21, not 20. Yes, I know there were
problems getting to Chapter 20, ``Cry Havoc,'' yesterday. Yes, I did
repost and post another copy of the chapter, trying to correct this, and
it didn't work. That was a problem with this site, rather than just this
one story. I deleted the extra copy of the chapter and let the second
one become Chapter 20 (or Chapter 25 according to the numbering here).
I'm very sorry if you can't access it, but it isn't something I can
help. I also post on my livejournal and my Skyehawke account, the
addresses of which are in my profile, and you can always look there if
this site won't let you read the new chapters. This chapter is not going
to make sense if you haven't read ``Cry Havoc.''}

\textbf{Chapter Twenty-One: To Be Slytherin}

Rufus was glad that he had at least got to finish his morning tea before
Aurors Tonks and Mallory returned from Hogwarts with Snape. It gave him
some time to lean back, ease his nerves, and consider what, exactly, he
was going to do.

Amelia had tried to pretend this was just another ordinary arrest. It
wasn't, not when the Minister himself had laid charges against the
prisoner. It could not be, not when the charges were filed in concert
with a different set of charges by a man who had reason to hate the
prisoner. It came just after the Minister himself was accused of
abducting the child at the heart of this storm. And the prisoner was the
guardian of a child with Lord-level power, who could make life very
difficult for the Ministry if they decided the wrong way.

It was all, Rufus considered as he took another sip of his tea, quite
complicated. \emph{A good job for Amelia that I'm currently the Head of
the Aurors, and know Potter, and am aware of all these complexities.}

He set the teacup aside and studied the papers sprawled all over his
desk. He had discovered enough information to take him close to his
ultimate goal. He'd intended to wait, though. A large part of any
strategy was timing. He couldn't just charge in and accuse the Minister
of the things that the papers proved he had, in fact, done. He would
need to go through a careful legal process, and he had to pick just when
it was best to begin and end the process.

\emph{But, then again,} he thought, lifting his eyes to his door as he
heard footsteps pound among the desks outside it, \emph{sometimes the
circumstances around me shift, and don't give me the chance.}

Someone banged on the door. Rufus rolled his eyes and nodded to young
Percy, who sat on the other side of the room, copying down one of the
less important papers. Percy jumped, as though he found his superior's
gesture more startling than the noise, and then hurried over to open the
door.

Rufus watched his back, thoughtfully. Percy didn't say much anymore,
just copied and listened and grew more and more pale by the day. Rufus
wondered if he even realized how much he was learning, and that Rufus's
main purpose in taking him under his wing \emph{wasn't} to control one
of Dumbledore's spies. Probably not, though. Percy was still too caught
up in the perceived drama of having betrayed his family by refusing the
position his father had secured for him.

Tonks hurried through the door the moment it opened, nearly crushing
Percy to the wall. A moment later, she measured her full length on the
floor in front of Rufus's desk. Rufus just raised an eyebrow and waited
for her to speak. The girl was a good Auror. He would defend her to
anyone who asked. At least she didn't try to mumble without lifting her
face, the way that someone more embarrassed with her own clumsiness
might have done.

``Sir,'' Tonks gasped, ``I spoke with Harry---I mean, with Potter, when
Mallory and I went to the school to arrest Professor Snape. He wanted me
to talk with you and see if there was anything you could do to help his
guardian.''

Rufus blinked once, twice, then shook his head. He still wasn't used to
someone with Lord-level power who \emph{asked} instead of demanded.
Dumbledore would have been here already, trying to cozen the Minister
out of the charges, if this was someone who truly mattered to him. Other
Lords Rufus had been familiar with, past and future, would have had no
qualms about trying to tear the Ministry down. Potter still asked.

\emph{Or trusted me to handle it.}

Rufus stamped on the peculiar feeling of warmth rising in his chest. He
could not afford to be \emph{that} partisan. He liked the boy, yes, but
his Ministry came first. If the boy had been making accusations against
Cornelius without merit, then Rufus would have gone after him just as
easily for wasting an Auror's time. It was just good that there
\emph{was} dirt on Cornelius, and that so far Potter seemed to
understand that he couldn't just come in and take over the Ministry.

``I will indeed do so,'' he said, and saw Tonks's face ease.
\emph{Hmmm.} ``Auror Tonks,'' he added, as she stood up again and swiped
dust from her robes.

``Yes, sir?'' She glanced up at him. Her brown hair was already turning
green, a much more cheerful color.

``I hope you remember,'' said Rufus gently, ``that our allegiances are
always to each other and the rule of law first and foremost, above any
personal loyalties that we might have.''

Tonks promptly blushed, even growing larger cheeks to blush in. ``Yes,
sir,'' she said, more meekly. ``I just---well, I met the boy over the
summer, when he was still living with his blood father. I just wish he
didn't have such a hectic life. It's not good for him. Or for anyone
else, if he gets too stressed and strained,'' she added. ``Sir.''

Rufus nodded. ``Harry Potter has a way of collecting people,'' he said.
``Simply make sure that you are not blinded by the cloth of his
pocket.''

Tonks flushed even more brightly, but just nodded and managed to back
out of the office without a word or a fall. Rufus sat back behind his
desk and held out a hand. Percy was already there, hovering, and handed
him a folder with a copy of all the case parchments in it, from the
original document filed by James Potter claiming his child back to the
latest round of charges.

Rufus looked over them swiftly one more time, as he heard the
unmistakable sound of Auror Mallory's voice lecturing a prisoner on how
good he had it. No, he was finding nothing to contradict his basic
impression of reading between the lines. Yes, Potter was going to be
upset, and had the right to be. No, Rufus did not believe the timing of
these latest charges was a coincidence, and he did not think that the
Minister was only acting in a disinterested way for the good of the
wizarding community.

But that still meant Severus Snape was an idiot.

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Snape kept his head high and his eyes locked forward, not deigning to
return the stares of the lesser men and women who sat among their desks
and chased paper for a living. The infernal witch with him would not
shut up, but that did not mean he had to pay attention to her. She must
have been a Gryffindor, he thought, to have so much to talk about even
after their journey outside the school and their Apparition to the
Ministry.

``\ldots{}don't realize how lucky you have it, not really. Auror
Scrimgeour is overseeing this case himself. Of course, the circumstances
are rather unusual, since after all he did lead the investigation of the
boy's parents last year. Couldn't have the parents of the Boy-Who-Lived
infested with Dark magic, could we? And Auror Scrimgeour \emph{hates}
Dark magic. But what he found was rather unusual. Of course, you
probably know about that. Might have been the one who cast it\ldots{}''

\emph{No,} Snape thought, lured into paying attention in spite of
himself, \emph{that was Harry.}

Harry.

He knew that the boy had not meant to write any words that could be used
as evidence against Snape; that was only too clear in the moments after
Mallory had announced what had happened. His ward's eyes had been
distressed, his face clearly revealing the emotions the charge called up
inside him. But it had still happened, and Snape wanted to grab and
shake the boy for it. Why hadn't Harry anticipated that particular
consequence of his actions? Wasn't he Slytherin enough to do so?

And why had he brewed that particular antidote for James, when he knew
full well that Snape did not believe James deserved it?

Snape shook off the thoughts when he realized how close they were to the
Head Auror's office, and did his best to settle himself into his cold
thoughts again. If that bloody phoenix hadn't come and showed him the
vision of his burned notes---notes that he now wondered about, given
that Harry must have come into his office to learn how to brew the
antidote for James---then he would still be all right. He could face any
accusations effortlessly, fend off any shows of concern or nattering
about the letter of the law. With the ice gone, and inconvenient
emotions once more sliding through him like frogs through muddy water,
he wondered what could be done.

\emph{I will find out,} he thought, as Mallory opened the door to the
office and ushered him through. \emph{Scrimgeour is Harry's ally. That
ought to count for something.}

``Here he is, sir,'' said the infernal woman, and deposited him roughly
in a chair in front of Scrimgeour's desk. Snape turned and gave her a
long, slow glare. Mallory gave no sign that she'd noticed it was
happening. ``Would you like me to stay, or do you think that you can
handle him alone? His hands and his magic are bound, and I have his
wand. I made sure of that,'' she added.

Snape stiffened in rage. He hadn't even noticed her picking up his wand
from the head table. His back had been to it, granted, but he ought to
have done. His hands squirmed inside the tight bonds of the silver cords
she had fastened about them, yearning to be free. \emph{Let me only get
one spell on my lips, and I will show them what a Dark wizard can do.}

Then he told himself to be still, and stopped moving his fingers. He was
acting childishly again, ridiculously. This was not the kind of thing
his mother had told him to do, not the kind of thing that any wizard who
had gone cold to survive would do. He breathed deeply, trying to relax,
trying to rise above the emotions and see everything clearly, calmly,
rationally.

``Thank you, Auror Mallory, I think I can question him on my own,'' said
Scrimgeour's voice, and Snape focused on him again. The man was sitting
casually behind his desk, in a posture that probably eased his bad leg,
but at the same time looked entirely natural. His yellow eyes hadn't
looked away from Snape once since he'd been brought into the office.
``But please, stand right outside the door. When I am done questioning
the prisoner, I'll need you to escort him to a holding cell.''

``Of course, sir,'' said the infernal witch, and bowed, and exited the
office. Snape relaxed a bit. It had been unnerving, traveling confined
with someone who was as strong as she was. No, she could not challenge
him, not \emph{quite}. But that margin of error was too small for
comfort when his hands and his magic were so expertly bound up.

He knew that the Auror would probably defend him if they were suddenly
attacked, but that was no guarantee that he would be safe \emph{from}
her.

``Ah, Snape.''

Snape's eyes snapped back to Scrimgeour as the door shut. This was not
how he had expected the interrogation to go, not with the Auror's former
manner and one of the younger Weasley spawn in the office. The elder
wizard was leaning forward, and looked almost pleasant.

Snape scrutinized his face for a moment, carefully. \emph{He is Harry's
ally, and he was Slytherin. Does he intend to go easy on me because of
that? Was all his calmness before only a façade to fool that woman?}

``You're an idiot,'' said Scrimgeour.

Snape blinked for a long moment, cursing himself for being caught
off-guard like that, and for not being prepared with a retort more
quickly than he was. At last he narrowed his eyes and was able to say,
``I would think this would constitute abuse of prisoners. I see you are
continuing that fine Ministry tradition.'' But it took far too long, and
Scrimgeour watched him, not with anger at having his methods compared to
Fudge's abduction of Harry, but with cheerful contempt in his eyes.

``Not at all abuse, Severus,'' said Scrimgeour. ``May I call you Severus?
Of course I may. I'm older than you are, and considerably cleverer, if
the way you've acted in the last month is any indication. You \emph{are}
an idiot. Head of Slytherin House, Potions Master, and yet you couldn't
chose any subtler way to show your enemies your disfavor?'' He shook his
head, clucking his tongue. ``Such a disappointment, when the wizard
who's been out of the House for more than forty years has to scold the
one who's been in daily contact with it for two decades and more. You
haven't been acting very Slytherin, Severus. The very fact that you've
been caught shows me that.''

Snape could, if he turned his head, see the gaping eyes and mouth of the
young Weasley. He felt rather gut-punched himself, though of course he
did not allow his eyes to widen or his mouth to fall open in that
undignified manner. The cold barriers shattered and fell away from his
mind completely, and the frogs of his emotions stirred and swam.

Scrimgeour seemed to take his stunned silence as invitation to continue.
``Where have your mistakes come from? Oh, there have been so \emph{many,}
it will take some time to enumerate them all. First, you did not pursue
legal action against Cornelius immediately after the abduction. And why
not? You had an eyewitness in the form of Harry. You could have filed
charges against him. And you \emph{did not.} Even if Harry didn't want
to, Severus, you should have. You have the ambition and ruthlessness
necessary to get the Minister sacked, and if you had used that flood of
outrage in the first days after Skeeter's article was published, you
might have managed. But you made no motion. I wonder why?''

``I'll tell you why. You wanted to punish your enemies more personally.
That's always been a Slytherin weakness, you know---wanting to stand
over the writhing bodies of those we hate and gloat. But it's an
avoidable weakness. It's certainly not one that I would have expected
you to fall victim to.''

Snape found his tongue at last. ``What is this?'' he said. It did not
sound like a splutter, he was sure, because Severus Snape did not
splutter. ``What right do you have to lecture me about my actions? I
believed this was an interrogation, held according to formal legal
rules---''

``Oh, it is,'' said Scrimgeour. He leaned back and folded his arms,
smiling at Snape, looking as if he were in immense good humor. ``I'm
simply interrogating your stupidity, Severus, and no lesser culprit. And
I don't need Veritaserum, or the beating that you no doubt expected. A
good dash of intelligence and the expressions on your face are my only
tools.''

``Then comes the second mistake. You did not take steps to prevent your
past actions, including your reputation as a Death Eater, from being
used against you. Why? That was another easily avoidable blind spot, and
you ignored it. Perhaps that was only a continuation of a past mistake,
though, and not a new one,'' Scrimgeour added, in a musing tone. ``You've
acted for the past thirteen years as though no one would come after you
for that, as long as you hid at Hogwarts and taught. But, on the other
hand, it \emph{was} an issue last year when we were arranging your legal
guardianship of young Harry. That's another thing you could have used
that flood of good publicity to do, you know: show yourself forth as a
good guardian. But you did not.'' Scrimgeour paused to give him a single,
severe censuring look.

``I have nothing to say to you,'' said Snape, and lifted his chin, and
looked away. Unfortunately, the only things to look at in the office
were the photographs, which were utterly ridiculous in their number and
display, or the Weasley, who \emph{still} hadn't shut his mouth.

``And then there was the third mistake, and, I think, your greatest,''
Scrimgeour said, as if he had not heard or did not care about Snape's
declaration. ``Severus, Severus, Severus. Really. \emph{Gryffindors} are
the ones who let schoolboy rivalries rule their lives and influence
their legal wrangles decades later. Slytherins use the good parts of
their school experiences and put the past behind them. You did not.
Perhaps you could not, though in truth, I hope it is not that second
thing. We do not need someone who cannot let go of his past raising a
child as powerful as Harry.''

Snape's hands clenched in his bonds, and he resisted the urge to snap
that Scrimgeour knew nothing, \emph{nothing}, about either what Snape
had suffered at the hands of James Potter and his friends, or the savage
abuse Harry had taken from his family. He was not speaking. His sudden
words would have to hold the force of a vow, even in the face of this
extreme provocation.

``And so you used a potion with such obvious and traceable effects,''
Scrimgeour said, his voice slightly muffled. Snape darted a glance at
him, and found the Auror with his head in his hands, shaking it sadly.
``In front of witnesses, no less. You make me despair of you, Severus.
Are you \emph{sure} that the Sorting Hat said Slytherin and not
Hufflepuff? Though, in truth, your loyalty would only be to yourself.''
He lifted his head and gave Snape a patronizing stare it seemed he must
have learned from Dumbledore. ``No, on second thought, I believe it must
have said Gryffindor. This is the kind of rash, hot-headed thing that
one of them would do.''

``I was a Slytherin!'' Snape hissed between his teeth, and then clenched
his jaw, berating himself for letting the other man bait him.

``Yes,'' said Scrimgeour. ``I knew that. Just not a very good one,
Severus. Or you would have noticed your own mistakes and corrected them
before now.''

``So you not only used a potion with such obvious and traceable effects,
you left it intact, rather than brewing the antidote and sending it
undetectably.'' Scrimgeour closed his eyes and shook his head in sorrow.
``Wanting an enemy to suffer is no good when it obstructs your goals.
And I would have said that your goal was to retain guardianship of young
Harry.''

Scrimgeour opened his eyes and fixed Snape with a sudden, scorching
stare. ``But perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps, after all, you took up this
guardianship not to benefit the boy, but to get one over on his
father.''

``I did \emph{not}!'' Snape found himself lurching forward in his chair,
his emotions swirling and kicking up to the surface of his mind. ``James
Potter would be \emph{nothing} to me if he would stop trying to take
Harry back!''

``You should have let him be nothing to you regardless,'' said
Scrimgeour, his face utterly stern now. ``A Slytherin does what he knows
will do him and his friends and allies good, and he \emph{does it
undetectably}. I know we are very different in our allegiances, Severus,
but I would have thought we were at least alike in that.''

``This slipping of an unknown potion to the Minister, in such a way that
it left traces Augustus Starrise could notice, is the last straw, the
mistake that truly makes me think you are worthy of being arrested and
sent to the new equivalent of Azkaban. Did you plan to kill him,
Severus, or blackmail him?''

\emph{Blackmail}, Snape thought, and bit his tongue to avoid letting it
out. Scrimgeour seemed to see the answer in his face, though, and
nodded.

``You have lost control,'' the Auror said, softly, almost kindly. ``You
have let your anger outrun you, and you have made no effort to restrain
yourself. And now it has torn gaping wounds in both you and young Harry.
I don't like that on a personal level, I must admit, especially after I
went to such lengths to insure that you could retain guardianship of the
boy.''

He leaned forward across his desk, his eyes never wavering from Snape's
face. ``But more, I am offended as a Slytherin. \emph{Why} did you act
the way you have done, Severus? Why? Give me one honest answer.''

Snape closed his eyes and breathed harshly. He was acting like an
emotional idiot. If only he could rebuild his walls, then he could
answer as a mature, rational adult---

A mature, rational adult who had made all those mistakes that Scrimgeour
talked about while behind his ice walls.

Snape went still. For a moment, a shudder seemed to invade his stomach
and creep up towards his throat, and, incredulous, he wondered if he
were actually about to vomit the small breakfast he had eaten. Then he
realized his hands were clasped so tightly in his bonds that his wrists
seemed about to tear the ropes. He shook his head, sharply, once, not
even sure what he was denying.

``Come, Severus,'' said Scrimgeour, his voice stripped of all its spite.
``You can tell me. You \emph{must} tell me. I think I deserve an answer,
after laying out all your mistakes for you and making you see them in a
new light.''

\emph{A new light.} Snape fought down the urge to laugh hysterically.
Yes, one might call it that.

He looked back on the last month in his mind, a mixture of his own
memories and Scrimgeour's words, and shook. Had he truly \emph{done}
that? Had he truly been \emph{that} stupid? It seemed impossible. As if
awakening from a dream, he could see the insanity potion and the
Meleager Potion, and he wondered what in Merlin's name he had thought he
was doing. Their creation was at once a combination of the most cunning
intelligence and the most mind-numbing stupidity. Oh, yes, all very well
to create an untraceable potion, but then to feed it to the Minister in
such a way\ldots{}and to create such effects with the insanity potion
that the wretched woman in the Department of Magical Family and Child
Services would \emph{know} something was wrong, because the effects only
began when Snape showed up\ldots{}

And Harry.

He had said he would train the boy in Dark Arts so he could defend
himself, and yet, he had not explained more than a quarter of the spells
he showed him---the best times to use them, the variations on the
incantations that would produce more or less subtle results, the ability
to cloak them behind similar Light spells that had allowed Dark wizards
to survive for centuries undetected by the Ministry. He had simply
demonstrated, and expected Harry to understand immediately. The boy had
imitated him, flawlessly most of the time, and not demanded the
explanations. Snape had been creating a killing machine with not the
least idea of discretion in employing the spells, the very thing he had
said he was going to stop.

He had not thought, for one moment, that Potter might not take the
consequences of the insanity potion lying down, or that Harry might
investigate and brew the antidote, at his brother's urging if not his
own. He had not thought of what Augustus Starrise might notice when
entering Fudge's office just after they left. He had not thought of
anything, but simply reacted in a short-sighted manner, bulling ahead.

He had not even checked, at least in the last two weeks, what the book
Draco was using might have done to the boy.

Snape closed his eyes and released a long hiss.

He had been acting more \emph{Gryffindor} than he ever had in his life.

He opened his eyes and answered Scrimgeour's question. ``I did all that
because I was behaving idiotically.''

The Auror simply stared at him for a long moment. Then he smiled, as
though approving a rather slow student who had at last managed to master
an essential lesson. ``Very good,'' he murmured. ``\emph{Good}. There may
be some hope for you after all.'' He tapped a hand on the parchments
spread on his desk, though Snape couldn't read them from this angle. ``I
have some plans to set in motion, plans that this debacle has only
encouraged me to speed up, not create. But it will go much more smoothly
if I know that you are not intent on causing \emph{more} trouble.''

``What do you want me to do?'' Snape asked, his throat tight. It made
him feel a fool, still, to ask for advice, but after Scrimgeour had
enthusiastically ripped open his other mistakes, he didn't see that had
a choice.

``The smart thing,'' said Scrimgeour. ``The subtle thing, that will make
your enemies overconfident. The \emph{Slytherin} thing. Bow your head
and sit still for right now. No one will be looking for a threat coming
from you, and they shouldn't have to. You're arrested. You sit there,
and you look humble and penitent. Appearance is half of everything at
this stage in the game. If you rage and spit and persevere in your
idiocy, you only hand your enemies your wand.''

Snape felt his hands flex in his bonds, this time out of instinct. ``I
hate being helpless,'' he said. ``I began this in the first place so
that I would not have to feel that way.''

Scrimgeour gave him an unimpressed look. ``Then I think you should
reconsider your feelings and your hatred,'' he said, standing. ``You're
not helpless, anyway. You're \emph{being helped.} I am certainly going
to do everything in my power to do so, and young Harry is already
moving, or I don't know him.''

Snape blinked. \emph{Another consequence I did not consider.} ``But what
can he do?'' he asked. ``He has you as an ally in the Ministry, but no
one else that I know of.''

``He has the Skeeter woman on his side.'' Scrimgeour's voice was
extremely dry. ``He'll appeal to her first, I should imagine. And after
that\ldots{}who knows? The Dark wizards I met that day would be a good
start.'' He raised his voice. ``Auror Mallory! I need you to escort the
prisoner to a holding cell.''

As the office door started to open again, Scrimgeour gathered the papers
on the desk together with a wave of his wand. They massed in front of
him, hovering, and Scrimgeour used the sound to conceal his murmur to
Snape. ``I mean it, Severus. No more idiocies, however you might think
they can help. Leave it up to other people to defend and protect you,
since you've put yourself in the position of having to be defended and
protected.''

Snape lowered his eyes instead of snapping out an immediate reply, as
was his impulse. None of his impulses in the past month appeared to have
been \emph{right.}

``Are prisoners allowed to send post?'' he asked abruptly, as Mallory
gathered the cords around his wrists together and hauled him up.

``It will be read before you send it,'' said Scrimgeour. ``But yes.''

Snape nodded stoically. He desperately needed to send a letter to Harry,
and one to Draco---carefully-worded, of course, because he did not want
to think of Harry's reaction if he learned, at this stage, that Snape
had set a compulsion on Draco and it had gone wrong. That could come
later. Harry had to worry about getting his friend free, first.

``Come on, you,'' said Auror Mallory, and tugged at his bonds.

``Careful, Fiona,'' said Scrimgeour, just a touch of rebuke in his
voice. ``He is no longer quite as stupid as he was when he came here.''

The tugging eased at once, and Mallory led Snape towards the lifts,
which, he suspected, would bear him to a holding cell where he would
have much time to think.

He actually welcomed that. He felt as if he needed it.

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Rufus started to leave his office, and then turned back and collected
Percy with a glare. The boy shut his permanently gaping jaw and hurried
after him, but he did whisper, as they wended their way through the
desks, ``Sir, why did you allow me to hear that?''

``Because I thought you needed to hear it,'' said Rufus crisply, not
glancing back at him. The boy was one of those potential Aurors who had
never considered the career, and who needed to be carefully nurtured
into it. It was about time that Percy had his eyes opened to some of the
wonderful, necessary, but unofficial things about working in the
Ministry and defending the rights of ordinary witches and wizards. A
dressing-down, rather than an interrogation, was sometimes called for.

Actually, Rufus felt sure Percy had already grasped that. The tricky
thing would be teaching the boy the subtle art of reading people so that
he would know \emph{when} a dressing-down would work and when it would
not.

And he was about to learn something else---perfectly legal, but not
truly \emph{official}, much like the waltz of paperwork that Scrimgeour
had danced through the summer months, foiling incompetent busybodies who
were trying to find some way to punish young Harry for freeing the
Dementors. It was not his fault if they could not keep up with him. The
truly intelligent and committed people in the Ministry, the ones working
to keep it free of any one interest's or Lord's touch or taint, would
have been able to follow him. Rufus could salute a worthy opponent.

He was on his way to make one of them into an ally, at the moment. He
halted in front of the glass door displaying her name and knocked once.

``Come in!'' came the call, and Rufus opened it and strode in.

Amelia Bones looked up from behind her desk, adjusting the monocle in
one eye so that she could see him better. She was a short witch, her
hair graying, but her outthrust jaw and piercing eyes gave her all the
authority she would ever need. She'd been the head of the Department of
Magical Law Enforcement for over a decade, and she looked calmly at him
now, as if she knew what he carried in his hands and was unimpressed.

Rufus knew she didn't know anything about this, though, because he
trusted her integrity. He laid his bundle of papers on the desk and
nodded to them. ``The top three only,'' he said.

He knew very well that only his long acquaintance with her allowed him
to get away with this, but the thing was, he \emph{would} get away with
it. He was busy being a better Slytherin than Severus Snape could be in
a month of Sundays. The long slow look that Amelia gave him showed it,
as she then turned and began to read the stack of papers after giving
him that long slow look.

Her face paled. She shot her eyes back to Rufus. ``You're absolutely
sure about this?'' she whispered.

Rufus nodded to the documents. ``These are copies of the ones from the
archives, Amelia, but I can retrieve the originals easily enough. Yes,
Fudge did create these Hounds, and yes, he did hire Aurors we'd sacked
for using Dark magic without permission to staff them, and yes, he did
capture and try at least one other person in secret before young Mr.
Potter.'' Rufus felt his jaw twitch. The Minister often did that to him.
``And he---executed at least three more.''

``Call it murder,'' said Amelia, even as she went back to reading. ``Not
execution.''

Rufus felt free to relax and take a chair, massaging his aching leg as
he did so. Percy hovered behind him, not seeming to know what else to do
with himself. Rufus shrugged. The art of gracefully standing in a corner
was another one that the boy would have to learn.

Amelia made it halfway through the third paper before she drew her wand
and hexed a mirror she kept in the corner of her office. It shattered,
but the pieces of glass only flew a short way out of the frame before
reassembling themselves. Rufus smiled slightly. Most Heads of
Departments had a mirror like that somewhere in their offices, for
stress relief if nothing else.

``Something must be done,'' said Amelia flatly, turning to him. ``But
what? What, for Merlin's sake? We won't have another election for three
years, and the full Wizengamot has to agree unanimously to sack the
Minister. They won't. I \emph{know} they won't. He has too many bought
allies.''

``There's another thing the Wizengamot can do,'' said Rufus, leaning
forward. ``And you only need a simple majority there, not consensus.''

Amelia stared at him for a moment longer. Then hope and color surged
into her face, and she smiled sharply at him. Rufus smiled back at her.

``You weren't a Slytherin for nothing, were you,'' Amelia murmured. It
wasn't a question. ``Very well, Rufus. I'll call for a vote of no
confidence. But you know that it can't be done \emph{that} quickly. It
might be near the end of November before the Wizengamot votes.''

``I know,'' said Rufus. ``I don't want to hurry it, Amelia. I want to
rip out every weed that Cornelius has planted here. We'll do everything
nice and legal and proper, and that way no one can accuse us of
anything.'' It always amazed him how few people thought of legal
solutions. Handle them right, and it was extremely hard for an opponent
to challenge you. And Rufus Scrimgeour had always believed in
neutralizing opponents or persuading them over to his side. None of this
letting them have ground to bring charges against \emph{him} instead,
the way Severus Snape seemed to think was best.

Amelia nodded slightly. ``And even then, it won't be easy,'' she warned
him. Rufus thought she was speaking against her own hope as much as his.
``Cornelius still has money behind him, and not everyone will be
persuaded by the new evidence.''

``If I'm right,'' Rufus murmured, ``some of Cornelius's more fanatical
supporters have convinced him that his fear of the Dark is justified,
and they're using the chance to strike mostly against Dark wizards,
through him. That means the Light pureblooded families, and one in
particular. I think I know a way to take out most of his support at a
single blow.''

Amelia knew him too well, at least once he revealed his plans. Her eyes
narrowed. ``And what will it cost us, Rufus?''

``If I fail? My support. I'll have to step back,'' said Rufus. ``But I
really do not anticipate that happening.''

Amelia stared at him for a long moment. Rufus stared back, calmly. This
was the way things had to happen. And there were some risks that
couldn't be lessened. The one he was about to take was one of them.

Amelia sighed, at last, and nodded. ``Then go do whatever it is that
you're going to do,'' she said. ``And don't let me hear about it.''

Rufus smiled grimly at her and stood. ``I assure you, Amelia,'' he said,
``the wizard I'm about to challenge will keep everything perfectly legal
and respectable.''

She winced at the word \emph{challenge}, but her eyes were steady. ``As
you will, then,'' she said.

Rufus inclined his head at her, and then strode out of the office, young
Percy in tow. The poor boy looked ruffled. Well, he was getting quite an
education this morning.

And he was about to get a deeper one.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Rufus Scrimgeour. This is an unexpected pleasure.''

Rufus bowed slightly, as much as he could with his head in the flames of
the hearth, never taking his eyes off the face of the wizard in front of
him. Augustus Starrise sat calmly on a divan covered in cloth of gold,
his hair braided with the usual bells that proclaimed his status as a
dueling war wizard, and thus his utter contempt of the need to move in
silence, because no enemy could take him. His hand rested on a glass of
wine, but he'd put it down when his house elves told him who was waiting
to talk to him. His eyes were piercing and curious, both at once.

``Mr. Starrise,'' said Rufus, the words spilling easily from his lips,
``I have come to challenge you to single combat, under the terms of the
Sunset Accords of 1163, a week from today.''

Augustus blinked slightly, very slightly, and then inclined his head.
``The price to be the usual one?'' he asked quietly. ``No meddling in
politics of any kind for the loser, for a year after the victory?''

``I am willing to extend it,'' said Rufus. He could not let his prey
avoid this trap. ``Five years, if necessary. Yes, if I lose, I step
back, Augustus. And if you lose, you step back from your support of
Cornelius.''

The Light wizard closed his eyes for a moment, and then shook his head,
making his bells ring. ``A year should be sufficient, I think,'' he
said. ``I accept your challenge. A week from today, we dance.'' He
opened his eyes and gave Rufus a smile that brought back old, old
memories. ``I look forward to it.''

``Under the sunset be it sealed,'' said Rufus, and pulled his head back
from the flames, brushing the soot from his hair.

He straightened and met Percy Weasley's horrified, fascinated gaze. The
young wizard swallowed several times before he could move his tongue.
Rufus waited, and watched, massaging the old wound in his leg.

``It's a duel, then?'' Percy finally managed to whisper.

Rufus nodded. ``What you heard. The dance for this duel locks onto the
wizard once the combat has taken place. If Augustus loses, then he won't
be able to give money or support to Cornelius any more---or anyone else,
for that matter---for a full year. If I lose, then I can do nothing more
than act in my position as Head of the Aurors for a full year. No office
politics, no Ministry politics, no maneuvers of the kind I suggested to
Severus or Amelia.''

Percy shivered and stared at him. ``What happens if someone meddles in
politics anyway, after that?'' he whispered.

``Well, that's only happened twice,'' said Rufus. ``The magic coming and
cutting off a limb if the offending wizard breaks his word is considered
sufficient price.''

Percy closed his eyes and shivered again. ``Do you think you can take
him, sir?'' he asked.

Rufus half-closed his eyes, memories flashing behind his eyelids. ``I
don't know,'' he admitted. ``He gave me this scar.'' He drew back the
sleeve of his robe to show a long, pale mark twining around his wrist
and up towards his shoulder. ``That came from the last duel I fought
against him. I lost.''

Percy all but squeaked. ``But, sir, if you lose---''

``I know,'' said Rufus. ``But I don't intend to.''

Percy only stared at him.

Rufus rolled his eyes and made for the lifts. \emph{Use the weapons
against your enemies that will work, that will utterly prevent them from
troubling you in the future. Against an idiotic Slytherin, exposure of
his idiocy. Against a Light wizard, Light dances.}

\emph{I do not see why this lesson is so hard to understand.}

\chapter{And Unleash the Dogs of War}\label{chapter-27-and-unleash-the-dogs-of-war}

James folded his arms, bowed his head forward on his desk, and left it
there.

He could hear sounds, if he listened for them: the steady fall of rain
outside Lux Aeterna's windows, the sound of a Levitation Charm being
snapped at a heavy trunk, and then the sound of footsteps as they made
their smooth way down the stairs. He didn't want to hear them. Or
rather, he wanted to hear them, but only so they would drown out the
sound of the written words echoing in his mind.

What he most wanted, silence, was impossible.

After a few moments, James raised his head, blinked, ran a hand through
his hair, and then drew the envelope lying on the desk towards him
again. Two papers protruded from it. He shoved the larger one away with
what he knew was an expression of disgust, and picked up the smaller
one, a simple square of parchment.

The hand and the message were equally simple and unpretentious.

\emph{Father:}

\emph{I know what you have done to Snape. I want him back. So I am going
to release the information about the part you played in my childhood
unless you drop the charges you filed against him. You have a week from
the day of Snape's arrest to drop them. If you don't, then one way or
another, I am no longer your son.}

\emph{Harry}.

James's fingers twitched, and he resisted the temptation to look again
at the letter, to try to find something in it that his son had never put
there. Simple, straightforward, heartbreakingly clear, it left no room
for doubt. Harry hated him.

\emph{Just as Remus said he would.}

James squashed that thought, too, and picked up the larger piece of
paper. It wasn't published yet; he had Merlin to thank for that. But it
had been made up like a newspaper article, and the headline stood out at
the top in damning letters.

\textbf{{\emph{HARRY POTTER NEGLECTED BY OWN FATHER}}}

\textbf{Brother of Boy-Who-Lived Reveals That His Father Regarded Him as
a Toy}

\emph{By: Rita Skeeter}

In a shocking disclosure, Harry Potter, the brother of the Boy-Who-Lived
and the recent victim of alleged abduction by Minister Fudge, has
revealed that his father, James Potter, who recently filed charges
against Severus Snape for misuse of an insanity potion, neglected him as
a child.

Potter, 14, refuses to call it abuse, but does say that his father paid
more attention to Connor Potter, his famous brother, than he did to his
elder son. The small family lived, together with Lily Evans Potter,
James Potter's Muggleborn wife, in a house at Godric's Hollow for most
of the boys' childhood.

``He just stayed distant from me,'' explained Potter, in a private
conversation with this reporter yesterday morning. ``I was a toy for
him, someone he could play with when Connor was busy or asleep. And
someone he was afraid of, of course, but he tried to mask that.'' Potter
believes his father may have been afraid of him for his magical power,
which, as before reported in \emph{The Prophet}, has reached Lord-level
since last November.

Potter also believes that his father's filing of charges against Severus
Snape, his guardian for the past year, rests not on a deep desire to
have his elder son back, but on what he calls a ``rivalry'' between the
two men forged in their Hogwarts years.

Potter admitted that Professor Snape has a bad reputation as the Head of
Slytherin House, but also that he would have expected better of his
father, a ``glorious Light pureblood wizard and ex-Auror.''

James Potter gave up his Auror position shortly after the attack on his
sons on Halloween of 1981, in which Connor Potter defeated You-Know-Who.
It was believed at the time that he wanted to go into hiding with his
family, but according to his son, all was far from domestic bliss in the
Potter home.

``My father spent almost all his time with my brother when we were
children,'' Potter explained. ``He cherished him more, laughed with him
more, loved him more\ldots{}How loving a father is one who can forget
his child like that?''

Potter added that, since Connor is the Boy-Who-Lived, he would have
expected decreased parental attention to himself, but he still somewhat
resented his father for challenging another man's guardianship of him.

``And he was scared of me,'' he stated. Potter believes that his
potential for Lord-level magic scared his father away from him, and
that, as he has the same potential now, nothing has truly changed in the
way his father perceives him.

The charges against Severus Snape include improper use of newly-created
potions and failure to register such potions with the Ministry. His
trial has so far been set, tentatively, for the middle of December.
Headmaster Albus Dumbledore has taken over Potions classes at Hogwarts
School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

James Potter has so far been unavailable for comment.

James sat back and rubbed his eyes. Behind him, he heard the footsteps
come to a halt, but he didn't turn around and face them. Perhaps it was
childish, but he didn't see why he should have to.

``I'm leaving,'' said Remus.

``Good luck on your journey,'' said James, stiffly.

Remus made a small sound that reminded James of nothing so much as a
snarl. ``You could still salvage this, you know,'' he said then, and
caused an old resentment to rise in James. \emph{Counselor to all of us,
until the bitter end.} ``I know that Harry hates you right now, but if
you visit him, or write him a letter if you don't feel up to doing
that---''

``Stop it, Remus.''

There was a little silence, and then Remus's voice again, clipped and
soft and futile. ``You'd rather sink with your stupid pride than throw a
lifeline out to shore? Harry would grasp it. You know he would.''

James's hands tightened on the article, crumpling it. \emph{Good. I
don't want to look at it any more.} ``It's not that simple, Remus.''

His old friend's voice went cold. ``It can be, or I would never have been
able to reconcile with Peter. And I wish you'd had the good sense to do
the same thing with the people you really need to. \emph{Goodbye},
James. Remember that if you send a letter to me or Peter at the
Sanctuary, it will take some time to reach us.'' He turned around,
snapping something at the trunk, and James heard him leave. He sat in
silence, the wards tingling around him, until he felt Remus step outside
them and Apparate.

Then, biting his lip, James picked up a quill and began his response to
Harry.

It would have been simple, after all, if he didn't have a wife and
another son who might be hurt by this. But he did, and that meant there
was only one answer he could give to Harry's blatant threat.

He wrote with a heavy heart.

\emph{When did everything go so wrong? When did Harry start feeling more
loyalty to one of his professors than his own blood family, even when
that professor embarrassed his father so horribly?}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Calming Potions,'' announced Dumbledore with a degree of satisfaction,
his eyes shining at them over his half-glasses. ``We will begin working
on the variations of the simple calming draught today, and work our way
up to ever more complex potions. Please open your books to page 437.''

Harry dutifully did so, listening in silence to the excited chattering
of the Gryffindors. They had been much more cheerful ever since
Dumbledore took over Snape's classes. And Harry had to admit that
Dumbledore wasn't half a bad teacher. He did explain things more slowly
than Snape, and he could give more encouragement, even though he didn't
possess half of Snape's theoretical knowledge.

But Harry could not forget what else Dumbledore was, not when he could
feel the current of compulsion that soothed a fight beginning to erupt
between Blaise and Dean Thomas, or when the encouragements to Neville
had an extra edge to them. He kept his eyes down, and worked hard, and
tried not to show how bored he was. Snape had had him on seventh-year
work, and despite the lifetime of practice Harry had in pretending to be
less competent than he really was, it was surprisingly hard to go back
to fourth-year brewing.

He stood up to fetch the violet petals and other ingredients they would
need, and Draco caught his arm. Harry glanced at him inquiringly. Snape
had made them partners a few days before his arrest, and Dumbledore had
seen no reason to change the arrangement.

Now, Harry almost wished he had. Draco's eyes were gleaming with the
bright fever they'd taken on in the past few days, and the
black-and-silver web around him pulsed, visible even when Harry wasn't
looking for it.

``Harry,'' Draco whispered. ``Can you fetch me some powdered bicorn horn
and sphinx claws, too?''

Harry recognized those ingredients at once. They were for Draco's
mysterious potion, about which he still refused to say much, but which
he had dedicated himself to passionately.

``Draco---'' Harry whispered.

``It's all right,'' said Draco. ``I think I can get one of the
preliminary steps in the potion done today. A lot of the ingredients are
the same as a calming draught.'' He paused and stared challengingly at
Harry. ``Unless you're not going to help me any more, of course, and I
have to fetch them myself.''

Harry rolled his eyes and went to get what Draco had asked him for.
Arguing with Draco had become more useless than ever.

Harry had, tentatively, touched the web, especially when they were in
the library and Draco was lost in yet another book on Julia Malfoy,
while Harry researched house elves' webs and how he might break them.
The web did not react well to any attempt to touch it, it seemed. It
simply writhed---once Harry had thought it even hissed---and slithered
closer to Draco, wrapping his head and arms and shoulders. Harry could
see the tendrils where it had sunk into his brain, and try as he might,
he could think of no way to detach it without ripping out half Draco's
sanity along with it. He was \emph{not} about to risk that. He'd been
through enough of that himself, after the Chamber.

He was at his wits' end to do anything other than help Draco complete
the potion as fast as possible. The web seemed tied to that. It
certainly grew brighter whenever he talked about it.

\emph{Complete the potion}, Harry thought as he balanced all the
necessary ingredients on a tray, not for the first time, \emph{and the
web should let him go.}

He was reminded, also not for the first time, that that might be as much
wishful thinking as honest hope.

He settled down beside Draco again just as Dumbledore swept past their
table. Harry cast a wandless glamour to shield the extra ingredients
from the Headmaster's sight, and looked up with a small smile.

``You boys have everything you need already?'' The Headmaster looked the
very picture of kindness. Harry just watched him, even as Draco nodded
and smiled and put on the sweet, innocent mask he'd grown expert at
adopting of late, whenever someone who wasn't Harry questioned him about
his life.

``Yes, thank you, sir,'' said Draco, and flicked his wand at the
cauldron, causing the fire beneath it to light. Dumbledore bobbed his
head pleasantly at them both, and then carried on around the room,
pausing to give Neville a gentle scolding on the color of his calming
potion.

``Calming potions,'' Draco muttered beneath his breath, flicking the
powdered bicorn horn into the cauldron with precise movements of his
fingers. ``At our age. Honestly.''

``Is that why we're not making one?'' Harry muttered, even as he used
the mortar and pestle to grind the violet petals down into a fine paste.
He knew what he needed to do as well as Draco did. He had
\emph{listened}, not merely heard, while Draco chattered on and on about
this step of the potion.

``Not just that,'' said Draco seriously. He spoke with his attention on
the cauldron as the potion turned an odd orange color, and Harry thought
that might have been the reason he said what he did, not realizing what
had just slipped out. ``So that I can become my father's magical heir,
too. Or at least magical heir to \emph{a} member of my family.'' He
flashed Harry a hard smile. ``I think that's a very good reason.''

Harry blinked and clenched his hands briefly together. \emph{Research on
Julia Malfoy, and this potion, which he's told me he'll divide into two
equal portions, one heavy and thick, one light and airy. I should have
known.} ``Draco,'' he said quietly. ``Are you trying to call her ghost
to you?''

Draco stiffened abruptly, and Harry saw the web around him blaze so
brightly that someone else should surely have seen it. Then he whipped
around and faced Harry, his face unfriendly.

``What do you know about it?'' he whispered.

``Enough to know that necromancy is dangerous unless you make the
sacrifices,'' said Harry, and filtered the violet petals into the potion
in five equal pinches. ``And you haven't.'' He felt his heart beating
faster, and for a moment, everything in the class blurred but Draco's
face. ``And I don't think that you have any intention of making them
either, do you?''

Draco snorted at him, and the web calmed a bit. ``I don't need to,'' he
retorted haughtily. ``Not if I can finish the potion by Halloween.
That's the night ghosts walk in full strength. She'll hear and heed my
call. She's got to. I'm a Malfoy.''

Harry thought privately that the ghost of Julia Malfoy did not
\emph{need} to do anything. She had struck him through the reading he
himself had done as an independent woman, quietly used to getting her
own way, but used to it nonetheless. If Draco called her, and especially
on a night when the barrier between the ordinary wizarding world and the
world of necromancy was at its weakest, then he would get a response,
but it might not be the one he wanted.

``Draco---'' he began, even as he shredded the sphinx claws.

Draco reached over and closed one hand on his hand. Harry blinked. Draco
hadn't touched him in a day or two, and Harry was startled and worried
to see that it wasn't just the gleam in his eyes that was feverish. His
skin felt hot as well.

``Harry,'' Draco whispered, ``please, will you just support me until
Halloween? Only until then, I promise. I need your help with the potion.
Well, I don't, I mean, I could do it on my own, but I \emph{want} your
help.'' He drew in a deep breath. ``I don't think there's anyone else I
would trust with as much of this as I have you. You're the only one I
could trust, the only one I could \emph{ever} trust.''

\emph{Put like that,} Harry thought, \emph{how could I refuse?} He was
still trying to make it up to Draco for his years of neglect and simply
scooping the insides out of their friendship without giving anything
back in return. What Draco wanted of him was simple enough, and it meant
that Harry could watch his web and his fever and see if either of them
worsened. Perhaps he would even find a way to loosen the web, if he
\emph{really} searched.

And it would give him something else to worry about other than Snape,
and the reply from his father, which was due tomorrow at the latest.

He nodded, firmly. Draco's smile became sweet, and his hold loosened.
``Thanks,'' he whispered. ``Thanks, Harry. Really.''

``I want you to sleep tonight, though,'' Harry told him. ``You look as
though you're getting sick, and you might make a mistake in the
potion.''

Draco blinked, then rubbed the side of his face. ``You're right,'' he
said. ``I was up late last night studying, and the night before that. I
can't collapse and just exhaust myself before I have to summon her. And
someone else might notice if I get too run-down. Thanks, Harry.''

Harry relaxed his shoulders. He would have to wait and see if his
suggestion actually worked before he trusted to it, but at least Draco
sounded sincere right now, and Harry would persuade him again at
bedtime, if necessary.

Draco looked back at the potion, now a slow blue, and frowned abruptly.
``Bother,'' he said. ``I forgot, we'll need more powdered bicorn horn
than that.''

Harry started to stand, but Draco shook his head at him. ``No, no, I'll
go get it,'' he said, and slid out from behind Harry. His hand came down
to squeeze on Harry's shoulder, hard, once, and then he hurried into the
storeroom.

Harry added half the sphinx claws and stirred counterclockwise five
times. Dumbledore swept past again, but just winked at him. Harry
ignored the Headmaster.

He became aware of a quiet purring sound.

Harry squinted down with one eye, and saw an old-looking book poking out
of the top of Draco's bag. He recognized it at once, though he still
didn't know the title. It was the book Draco was always reading outside
the library, the one that seemed to have given him the idea of the
potion in the first place, and which he wouldn't let Harry see.

Now, Harry could reach down, shift the book a bit, and read the title,
if he wanted.

\emph{Snape had to have given it to him,} Harry thought, staring fixedly
at the book, even as he went back to shredding the sphinx claws.
\emph{His parents might have, but I don't think that he had it those
first few days back at school, and they certainly didn't send it by owl.
And it feels magical.}

For a moment, Harry suffered a more profound doubt in Snape than he had
known in years. Could the book have put the compulsion on Draco?

Then he shook his head. \emph{No. Snape wouldn't do that. He wouldn't
take away someone's freedom like that. He was concerned, just like me,
that Draco wasn't getting enough independence. It would be
counterproductive to put that kind of compulsion on him when he wanted
Draco to be his own person. The web has to come from something
else---or, if it's from the book, Snape can't have known this would be
the result.}

\emph{He wouldn't do something like that.}

``Here we are, Harry!''

Harry glanced up with a smile. ``Just in time,'' he said, as Draco
hurried up with the powdered bicorn horn. He felt calm and virtuous,
even with the sight of the crawling black-silver strands on his friend's
head. He had not looked at the book. He would not pry into Draco's
secret until Draco was ready to tell him. ``Add three pinches to the
cauldron, will you?''

Grinning, Draco did so.

Harry eyed his web sideways as he stirred the potion again. They were
going to complete it by the end of the class, and they could safely
bottle it and store it somewhere until it was needed in the full potion.

\emph{I'll stand by him. I'll make sure he's free. He has to be. His
life and his freedom are just as important as anyone else's.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Potter! Stay a moment.''

Harry halted with a wince, but turned around. Moody had just showed them
the Unforgivable Curses in Defense Against the Dark Arts. Harry was
feeling a bit sick, and he had watched even Zacharias Smith look
unwillingly impressed. Harry wished he could stop thinking about the
Killing Curse slamming into his forehead and Connor's that long-ago
Halloween night, as he had seen it in a certain Pensieve, and condemning
them both to this strange life.

Besides, this was the day that his father's reply was supposed to
arrive, if he was really dropping the charges against Snape. Harry
wondered if, by this time tomorrow, every one would be looking at him in
pity and wonder and scorn---the boy who was neglected by his own father,
the boy who was jealous of the Boy-Who-Lived.

Draco lingered for a moment, too, but Harry shook his head and
whispered, ``Do you know, I think that a spell called the Soul Strength
Spell might help in detecting any sympathy-song between your soul and
Julia's.''

Draco's eyes brightened, and he patted Harry's shoulder comfortingly and
rushed away. Harry took a deep breath and turned around to face his
Professor, who limped towards him with steady motions of his wooden leg.
He handled it so well that Harry could sometimes almost forget it was
there, rather like he tended to forget Scrimgeour's limp when he was
faced with the man.

Moody's face had become easier to look at---though easiest of all when
his gaze was spread out over a whole classroom of students, and not just
focused intently on Harry. Harry watched a point just above the normal
eye, where the magical one didn't tend to roll, relaxed, and waited.

``Wanted to ask you something about the Killing Curse,'' Moody grunted,
scratching the side of his scarred nose. ``Didn't want to make a big
deal of it in class, you understand, with everyone watching, but thought
it worthwhile to ask you in private.''

Harry nodded once, a light, tense bob of his head. He didn't know why he
continued to be uneasy around this man. Moody had done nothing to hurt
him, Rosier's warning notwithstanding. The silver gleam of the collar
about his neck reminded Harry of the Hounds now and then, but Moody had
been loud in his denunciations of the Minister for having Snape
arrested. He was just an intimidating teacher, that was all, not quite
as good as Remus, but good enough.

\emph{It's as though Regulus's dislike of him passed into me, since he
can't be here anymore,} Harry thought, with a pang of disquiet, and
reached out after his friend again. Still nothing. There had been
nothing but silence in that part of his brain ever since the autumnal
equinox.

``---brother survived it,'' Moody said, and Harry realized, with a
start, that he hadn't been paying attention, one of the first times that
had ever happened. When the ex-Auror spoke, most of his students
listened. ``I just wondered if you could remember anything about that
night? If you yourself know the source of your brother's
exceptionalism?''

Harry fought the urge to hiss at the man. All his old protective
instincts were up and barking, but he restrained them. Moody was not
threatening Connor. He was just asking a question, a question that most
people must have wondered about at one time or another, but would have
directed to Connor himself or kept quiet about. It was still there
behind their eyes, though. \emph{How'd you do it?}

``No, sir,'' said Harry, letting a regretful frown pull at the corners
of his lips. ``I was only a baby, remember, and I wasn't the one who
survived the Killing Curse.'' He kept his eyes firmly on Moody's. Let
them flicker off to the side, even a little, and Moody might know he was
lying. ``You could ask Connor, though. He might know better than me.
Surviving that has \emph{got} to leave a mark on someone.''

Moody gave him a wolfs-head grin. ``Funny thing, Potter. I did ask him
about that when I taught his class the other day. And he went white as a
ghost and stammered out some nonsense about not being able to see right.
Do you know what he might mean?'' Moody leaned forward in interest.

Harry let his eyes widen in feigned surprise, while his mind sped. He
would bet Connor had been on the verge of blurting out the memory in the
Pensieve, before he remembered that they were supposed to keep it quiet
for now, and hadn't recovered himself in time. Well, there was no reason
that he should do so. Connor wasn't trained in lying and concealment as
Harry was.

``Well, our cots were below the level of the door, you know,'' said
Harry. ``And when Voldemort---''

``Strange, that you refer to him by his name,'' Moody said softly.

Harry cocked his head. ``I think it's silly to call him You-Know-Who,
sir.''

``Why?'' Moody bounced his wand on his palm, both eyes fixed on Harry
now. Harry was just glad that the magical eye couldn't read thoughts. He
armed his Occlumency shields anyway, though.

Harry shrugged. ``It's a silly title. If there was some better one, then
I'd take it. But Voldemort is the name he chose, so I don't see why I
can't call him by that.'' He bit his lip on the next words: that he
could also call him Tom Riddle, and if anyone in the world had the right
to call him that, it would be Harry or Connor, whose heads he'd
sequestered himself in. But he didn't see the point in referring to it.

Moody studied him for a moment, then gave a grunt and a nod so abrupt he
looked like a heron spearing a fish. ``Continue.''

``When Voldemort came in,'' Harry continued, ``he would have shot the
spell at Connor from \emph{above.} Maybe he can remember part of it, but
he couldn't \emph{see} him fire the curse.'' He let a bit of envy creep
into his voice. \emph{Might as well practice, if that article is going
to be published after all.} ``That's different, though. He never told me
that he might be able to remember any of it.''

Moody grunted again, and tapped his wand against his lips. Harry tried
not to think about all the incidents that might result from that, and
waited.

Moody at last fixed him with both eyes, and said, ``Do you ever wonder
about freedom, Potter?''

``Freedom, sir?''

``Freedom.'' Moody nodded firmly. ``Freedom to just---do what you like.
You're very powerful.'' Harry fought the urge to roll his eyes over the
way Moody sounded on those words. \emph{Impressed, just like anyone
else. Isn't there anyone who can see that magic doesn't prevent someone
from being a bad friend, the way I have been with Draco?} ``Have you
ever thought of letting go all restraints and doing just what you like?
That's how a lot of Dark wizards and witches get started, you know.''

Harry shuddered at the mere idea. ``No,'' he said.

``No?'' Moody used a rising inflection. Harry narrowed his eyes.
\emph{He's surprised. How can he be surprised, after he's seen me in
class day in and day out?}

``No, \emph{sir},'' he said firmly. ``I'd hurt too many other people. And
that matters to me. That matters a lot.'' He hesitated, but he didn't
know the purpose of this conversation. On the off chance that Moody was
trying to get him to bare his soul, Harry still had no desire to bare
his soul to him. ``I don't want to do that,'' he finished, simply, and
shifted his feet as he glanced at the door. ``Is that all, sir? Only,
I'm supposed to go study for Transfiguration, and---''

``Go, go,'' said Moody, with a dismissive wave of his hand, and Harry
hurried off, shaking his head. \emph{Strange. I don't know what he
thinks he'll catch me in. Does he think I would suddenly blurt out some
desire to be a Dark wizard, right in front of him? That would be a death
wish, with how much he hates Dark magic.}

Harry did glance back, once, to see Moody still regarding him, not even
his magical eye rolling towards his lesson plan for his next class.

Harry shivered and all but ran out. \emph{He probably does think I'm
going Dark. Honestly. Absolute power does not} always \emph{corrupt
absolutely---and I'm very far from absolutely powerful, anyway.
Dumbledore and Voldemort are still stronger than I am. I wish everyone
would stop acting as though my magic} matters \emph{so much. What
matters is what I do with it.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry saw the post owls coming, and held his breath. Four, and one of
them broke off over the Gryffindor table and fluttered down to Neville,
doubtless bringing him a gift from his grandmother.

The other three came to the Slytherin table, one of them landing beside
Draco. The other two extended their legs to Harry, one already snatching
food impatiently from his plate, as though it had had a long flight.

Harry took both letters, but made himself put off the one that, by the
seal on the envelope, was from Lux Aeterna. His hands were \emph{not}
shaking as he opened the one from Snape. They weren't.

\emph{Harry:}

\emph{I wanted to apologize for my behavior lately.}

Harry blinked and peered hard at the letter. Nothing happened to the
words. ``\emph{Aspectus Lyncis},'' he muttered, just in case, but no trace
of a glamour sprang into existence on the paper.

It seemed that it really was Snape writing this. Harry shook his head in
wonder and continued.

\emph{I have had a friend recommend Slytherin behavior to me, and I
intend to follow it. My trial is slated for December 21st, the day of
longest darkness. I suspect that someone is making a point.}

\emph{You are to bear up and keep your strength ready until that day. It
may be that you will be called as a witness, or may volunteer as one.}

\emph{Keep a watch over Draco. I have noticed of late that his behavior
has altered. I will write to him with my concerns, but I am not sure
they will make much impression on him.}

\emph{Remember that I will not be kind if you have sacrificed something
irreplaceable in a mad plan to free me.}

\emph{Severus Snape.}

Harry closed his eyes, took a long breath, thought, \emph{Let us see
what I have sacrificed, then,} and opened the letter from James.

It was short. It did not have to be long.

\emph{Harry:}

\emph{I am dropping the charges against Snivellus, at your request.}

\emph{Your loving father,}

\emph{James.}

Harry couldn't restrain a whoop of triumph, one that pulled even Draco's
attention from his own letter, which looked to be from Snape. ``What's
that?'' he asked, and snatched the parchment even before Harry could
hold it out. He looked up, eyes wide with surprise, a moment later.

``What did you \emph{do}?'' he demanded of Harry.

Harry waved a hand. ``Who cares? It won't happen now.'' He could feel
the world opening out before him for the first time in a week. He still
didn't have Snape free, that was true, but he had him one step closer to
it. Only the charges from the Minister remained now, and Harry would
wait a short time still to see if Scrimgeour might be able to do
something; he didn't even know if Tonks had spoken to him yet. Then he
would put any number of plans he had into motion.

``Let me see that,'' Millicent insisted, and took James's parchment from
Draco. She reacted with her own whoop, and from there the letter had to
go to Pansy, and Blaise and Vince demanded to know what was up, and the
parchment passed down most of the Slytherin table.

Millicent pounded Harry on the back, hard enough to make him gasp and
choke. ``I don't know what you did, Potter,'' she said, eyes shining
fiercely, ``but it was worth it, whatever it was.'' She grinned at
Pansy. ``I think that \emph{someone} might just happen to know where some
butterbeer is, and if so, we're celebrating tonight!''

\emph{It} was, Harry thought, his heart singing. \emph{It was worth it
entirely.} He caught his brother's anxious eye from across the room and
smiled at him. Connor relaxed with a loud sigh that caught Hermione's
attention. Unsure how much Connor might have told her, Harry looked
away.

\emph{Since I've lost so many rounds lately, it feels good to win one.}

As if mocking that thought, the black-and-silver web on Draco winked
malevolently at him.

Harry narrowed his eyes at it. \emph{I'm going to get rid of you, too,
see if I don't.}

\chapter{Dancers in the Light}\label{chapter-28-dancers-in-the-light}

``You're still taking a risk.''

Rufus stifled the impulse to snap at Kingsley as he settled the dueling
bracelets into place about his wrists. ``Yes, I know that very well,''
he said, rather than the insult he'd been thinking of. He was
almost---\emph{almost}---sure that Albus Dumbledore had approached
Kingsley and inducted him into the Order of the Phoenix, rather than
Kingsley seeking Dumbledore's approval. Nevertheless, he could not
forget that one of his Aurors was working for a Light Lord who wanted
nothing so much as to muck around in the Ministry. ``But it's a risk I
chose to take.'' He clasped the dueling collar into place and glanced at
the younger wizard over his shoulder, waiting.

Kingsley flushed, though his skin was dark enough that it was hard to
see. ``I---yes, sir, I see that.''

``Good,'' said Rufus mildly, and then closed his eyes to feel the buzz
of the collar's magic surrounding him. This was nothing like those foul
things Gorgon and Morologus had worn, and which it had nearly cost the
Hounds' sanity to remove. This collar merely recorded that he had chosen
to enter the dance of his own free will, and that he remained within its
boundaries of his own free will. Despite the consequences for violating
the ritual if the loser attempted to meddle in politics before the
year's term was up, the \emph{heart} of this was not about compulsion, a
tool of the Dark, but choice. ``Come, then.''

He turned and swept out of his office, his wand riding light in his
pocket, the bracelets and the collar equally light on his wrists and
neck. He limped, as always, but that did not mock or mar his stride.
Kingsley followed behind him, grumbling. Young Percy already waited in
the dueling courtyard, a specially-equipped area on the first floor.

Rufus felt his Aurors' gazes trailing him as he walked between their
desks, and heard many murmurs of, ``Good luck, sir.'' He nodded back
with bare tilts of his head, enjoying the smooth pyrite of the collar as
it caught him up now and then. His Aurors knew that he was fighting a
duel with Augustus Starrise, and some of what it meant. None of them
knew of the vote of no confidence that Amelia intended to introduce into
the Wizengamot today. She had decided to wait until after the duel, and
nothing Rufus could say would sway her. He had shrugged and given in at
last. She \emph{was} still his superior.

\emph{But not now}, Rufus thought, and intense delight surged through
him. He was on his way into one of the oldest testing places of all, the
dueling courtyard, and what occurred there was between him and his
opponent. And he was going about it \emph{properly}, with the bracelets
and the collar and the knowledge of the spells he would use all close to
him as his own skin.

Rufus Scrimgeour had declared himself for the Light when he was twelve
years old. Many people had thought him mad, to declare so young, and
when he was in Slytherin, not least.

Rufus had never regretted it. Not for a day. The Light was the best way
of doing things, when it was used right. Or perhaps it was more correct
to say that it \emph{contained} the best way of doing things. Better to
let people make their own choices, within boundaries that prevented them
from trampling on other people's choices, and with absolute honesty, and
in harmony if at all possible. Rufus had looked between Light and Dark
that long-ago day, and chosen the path he thought would let him best
accomplish all those things.

White trails of racing radiance began to coalesce behind his eyelids. He
smiled. He kept his eyes shut, and the radiance shot ahead of him,
leading him a smooth path so that he didn't trip or stumble.

All the wizards and witches he passed, going about the ordinary everyday
business of the Ministry, fell silent when they saw him, and many bowed
and stepped out of the way. Rufus could see that, though he still kept
his eyes shut. A second kind of sight was blooming above the white
trail, the Light showing him the way.

Those who worked and lived within the Light had to use their eyes, in
more ways than one.

Rufus opened his at last when he climbed out of the lift and turned in
the direction of the dueling courtyard. He could feel his opponent
already waiting for him, hot as a summer breeze and as patient. Augustus
Starrise had always been patient, at least since a certain night almost
exactly thirteen years ago.

Rufus stepped through what looked like an ordinary door, Kingsley close
behind him, and emerged into the courtyard. It could not have been
outside, but it appeared to be so. Light filled it from wall to wall.
Vines climbed those walls, which were made of closely-fitted white
stone, and raised enormous blossoms, the shape of trumpets and near the
size of them, to the sky. The blossoms themselves were golden, streaked
with brighter, paler streaks that reminded Rufus of the colors he saw
when he pressed his hand over his tightly-shut eyes. The grass was
smooth and soft as a child's blanket, and a very deep shade, closer to
purple than green.

Rufus ran his eyes over the garden before he turned to acknowledge
Augustus. Yes, as he watched, starburst after starburst opened above the
walls, and split into pairs of white birds, large as peacocks and having
something of the phoenix about them, though they shed no heat. The birds
perched on the walls and stared intently. One of every pair stared at
him, and one at Augustus.

These were the ritual's witnesses, come to make sure the dance was
performed perfectly. If one of the wizards participating in it
\emph{did} break his word not to meddle in politics for a year after he
had lost the duel, then the birds would coalesce into one creature far
greater and come at noon to tear one of his limbs off.

Rufus simply breathed for a time, nearly dazed and overwhelmed by the
presence of Light magic, thick and pure and strong. He thought he would
have needed more time to recover, but his exposure to young Harry had
helped him overcome the swimming sensation that was usually the result
of standing in the middle of so much power.

That, he thought as he finally turned to face his opponent and bow, and
his exposure to a young man named Tom Riddle, three years ahead of him
in Slytherin, who had radiated Lord-level power all the damn time, and
had been a minor factor in Rufus's declaring himself for the Light.

Augustus bowed back, and then stood facing him, features calm and
expressionless as iron. Rufus traced one hand over his arm, following
the line of the scar the war wizard had given him the last time they
dueled.

That had been right after the fall of Voldemort at the hands of Connor
Potter, when Augustus had come seeking the name of the Auror who had
been with his twin sister, Alba Starrise, on the night of her suicide,
and failed to prevent that suicide.

Rufus kept his eyes on Augustus's face, but he saw, how he saw, other
eyes, locked staring and dead above a protruding tongue and broken neck.
Her golden hair had fanned out about her head, pale and perfect and
lovely. Alba Starrise, last victim of Voldemort before he fell. He'd
left her alone for three minutes while he went to fetch her a cup of
tea, and she had managed to hang herself anyway.

Rufus knew he was lucky to have escaped with the scar alone. That had
been because he was the Auror who failed Alba, not the one who had
actually done---whatever it was the Death Eaters did to her. Augustus
had never learned the names or identities of those Death Eaters, or he
would not have hesitated, with the mood he was in after losing his twin,
to call down the \emph{Caerimonia Inrevocabilis}, the highest and
sternest of the old Light justice rituals.

That particular ritual claimed the life of the one who invoked it, but
it also claimed, without exception, the life or lives of the enemies he
had called it against. Rufus had read of it. He had never seen it used.

He would have, that day.

Calm, patient, pale, Augustus Starrise waited for him to finish his
inspection. Then he inclined his head.

``Old friend,'' he said. ``Where are your witnesses?''

Rufus motioned back with his head, to Kingsley. ``One behind me,'' he
said, and heard the rustle as all the birds leaned forward intently.
``Kingsley Shacklebolt is an Auror and a servant of a Light Lord.'' He
felt Kingsley start, badly, and was glad that he had learned to keep a
smile off his face. ``Does he pass your inspection?''

``Rather well,'' said Augustus. ``This is the first of my witnesses.''
He reached out a hand, and summoned forth a pale young man who had been
standing in the shadow of the trumpet-shaped flowers. Bells tinkled
softly in one braid of his hair as he moved. Augustus smiled sharply.
``This is my nephew and heir, Pharos Starrise. Does he pass your
inspection?''

Rufus studied Pharos, and had to admire Augustus's cunning. This was
Alba's son; every line of his face proclaimed it. ``Rather well,'' he
admitted. ``My second witness is Percy Weasley.''

Percy had been huddling in a corner of the courtyard as if he hoped he
wouldn't be noticed. Now, he shuffled forward, head lowered. He flinched
when Augustus looked towards him.

``Percy is the acknowledged son of a Light pureblood family,'' Rufus
said calmly. ``Does he pass your inspection?''

Augustus nodded. ``I know the Weasleys,'' he said. ``I would not have
expected to find one of them working under you, Rufus.''

Rufus simply arched his brows and said nothing. Technically, Percy
wasn't supposed to be working for him, but it would take several
committed wizards working through a mountain of paperwork to figure
\emph{that} out. ``Where is your second witness, Augustus?''

Augustus bared his teeth in a smile that made him look rather like
Lucius Malfoy. Rufus amused himself by considering how both of them,
Light wizard and Dark, would hate to be told that. ``She is all around
us,'' he said. ``I dedicate this duel to my sister Alba, Rufus, whom I
loved and whom you failed. She is with me today in our shared blood, in
the blood of her son, Pharos, and in the Light that was her true and
natural home.''

Rufus narrowed his eyes before he could stop himself, and felt the
bracelets jangle on his wrists as his weight shifted. \emph{Low blow,
Augustus. I would have given my left arm to stop her, and you know it.}

Augustus smiled genially. ``The terms of the Sunset Accords are
strict,'' he said, beginning his part of the ritual. The birds leaned
forward even further. ``If I lose, I must swear to withdraw all my
support from Cornelius Fudge at once, and to refrain from the
persecution of Dark wizards, for one year. If you lose, Rufus, you must
swear to abstain from any politics, even ones in the office, and perform
only your duties as Head of the Auror Office, for one year.'' He tossed
his head, and made his long hair, thick with bells, ring. ``Your last
chance to back out, Rufus.''

``I do not back away,'' said Rufus, giving the correct response. ``In
sunlight I swore this. In the Light I will finish it.'' He drew his
wand.

Augustus made a low, eager sound, like a hound straining forward against
the edge of a leash, and pulled out his own wand, made of some white
wood that Rufus could not immediately identify. ``It begins, then,'' he
said.

``It does,'' said Rufus, and bowed. He felt Kingsley and Percy tensing
behind him, and Pharos shifted a bit at his uncle's side. Augustus's
eyes never moved from his. They were trained, confident, full of pride.
He was the better dueler. The other three there---the other four, Rufus
corrected himself---at least suspected it.

He and Augustus knew it.

That was why Rufus had chosen as he had. The bracelets around his wrists
warmed, and then began to shed small sparkles of light. If Augustus had
been looking, he would have seen and understood the message contained in
those ornaments. They were not the small and flexible, nearly
weightless, things that a dueler who expected to have to move fast would
wear. They were heavy, made of polished platinum, and they shone like
water touched by fire as Rufus gathered himself and they waited for the
duel to begin.

Rufus would not use spells to incapacitate or wound. He was of the
Light, and he would use a spell based on compassion and honesty. When he
could, he preferred that definition of the Light. One might have to lie
to get things done in the Ministry, but the truth was always better.

The birds on the walls lifted their wings and brought them down, in a
rippling wave motion that traveled all around the garden.

Augustus whispered, ``\emph{Diffindo.}''

The spell went for Rufus's wand hand. Of course it did. Rufus made no
motion to defend himself as a long cut opened down the center of his
palm, a thin line of blood that nevertheless hurt like blazes. He saw
Augustus's eyes widen in surprise.

Then he looked at the bracelets, finally, as they began to shine too
brightly to be ignored, and the widening of his eyes changed to one of
comprehension.

It was too late, though. Rufus met his gaze, and smiled, and whispered,
``\emph{Probo Memoriter Meus.}''

The blue web of the spell spun into existence, glowing and radiant.
Rufus closed his eyes as it briefly lashed into place about his head,
asking permission to extract the memory that he wanted to share. Rufus
granted it his permission, and then the light darted away from him. He
opened his eyes and watched, calmly, as it showed Augustus Starrise the
vision he had to see.

All of them---and that would include the witnesses---were pulled
directly into the memory, sharing Rufus's sensations and emotions as
well as the mere sight.

\emph{``Might I please have a cup of tea?''}

\emph{Rufus could feel his heart contract. Alba Starrise's eyes were
horrified, near-broken, and she kept her head bowed, her golden hair
falling around her face. He thought he might know what the Death Eaters
had done to her, and if he was right---well. No one had ever said that
someone need touch a witch to rape her.}

\emph{``Of course, lady,'' he said, the instinctive courtesies of his
childhood springing to his lips. He had taken her wand away; there was
no way she could hurt herself, and this small, barren green room was
cheerless enough without refusing her simple request. ``I'll bring it
immediately.''}

\emph{He left the room with a determined stride, wincing only a little
as his bad leg made contact with the ground. Normally he would have sent
one of the trainees and stayed with Alba himself, but they were all
dealing with the aftermath of the Death Eaters' latest attack. Voldemort
had been in a fine good mood tonight, Rufus thought sourly, almost as
though he were preparing something special for the following nights.}

\emph{They had done well, though. They'd rescued Alba, and several other
witches and wizards who had been prisoners of the Death Eaters for days.
Now the hard work could really begin: the healing of the memories that
had made Alba Starrise's eyes look like that.}

\emph{It was the work of three minutes for Rufus to find a cup, to heat
the tea with a quickly murmured spell, and to return to the room.}

\emph{And it had been the work of three minutes for Alba Starrise to
string one of the banners congratulating some past Auror hero around her
neck, tie one end to a ceiling beam and another around her neck, climb
up on the low bed where she'd been sitting, and jump off.}

\emph{Rufus knew that he didn't hear her neck break, but he thought he
could hear it all the same, echoing and re-echoing in his ears like the
sound of his own guilt, or the teacup shattering on the floor. He stared
at her, and stared. It was long moments before one of the other Aurors
found him and led him away, a few instants more before someone thought
to sever the banner with a hex and levitate Alba's body gently to the
ground.}

\emph{Rufus had gone straight back out to hunt Death Eaters, gripped in
the fury of his rage and his helplessness. When Voldemort fell before
the Boy-Who-Lived the next night, he was not sure if he was relieved or
not. Yes, the Dark Lord and his evil were gone from the world, but Rufus
did not feel that justice for Alba Starrise was done.}

\emph{He learned, slowly and painfully, over the next few years, that
there was little justice one could do for the dead.}

Rufus blinked his eyes and stepped back slightly as the memory came to
an end. ``Little justice for the dead,'' he whispered, so as to echo the
thought aloud, and lifted his eyes back to Augustus Starrise's. ``But
much justice for the living. So long as someone is alive, and I can
help, I will do justice by them.''

The Light wizard stared at him, eyes wide and breath coming in heaves.
The white birds on the walls were utterly still and silent.

``\emph{Diffindo},'' Augustus Starrise said again, but the spell was weak
and almost without strength. Rufus bore the small cut across his hand,
and spoke his second spell gently.

``\emph{Petrificus Totalus.}''

Augustus Starrise, still weak from seeing his beloved sister's death
play out before him, in such a fashion that he could not doubt the
wizard he had blamed for it felt his failure keen as a dagger to the
heart, fell to the ground.

Rufus came forward and knelt down in front of Augustus, as the white
birds raised their wings and then lowered them again. ``I am sorry,
Augustus, that I had to make you see that,'' he whispered. ``But it is
done now.'' He moved back into the words of the ritual. ``Under the
Light, by the Light, in the Light, may our dances be concluded. First
step to you, Augustus Starrise, and last to me.'' He paused and released
the spell, waiting for Augustus to give the token protest he still could
at this stage, even if just with his eyes, but nothing happened. Rufus
nodded. ``You must refrain from supporting Cornelius Fudge and
persecuting Dark wizards for a year, as you swore.''

``Go in peace,'' he added, and turned away.

He had nearly reached the end of the garden when Augustus's voice
whispered behind him, ``Rufus.''

``Yes?'' Rufus turned. The heavy bracelets still shone, sunlight-like,
on his wrists, and Augustus winced. Rufus shook his sleeves over them to
dim them as much as possible. They had proclaimed his pure intentions,
but the duel was over now and they might rest.

``Do you know who they were?'' Augustus whispered. ``Who the Death
Eaters were that did that to my sister?''

Rufus closed his eyes. \emph{He has not learned after all, then.}
``No,'' he said quietly. ``And I would not let you know their names even
if I uncovered evidence of them, Augustus.''

``What?'' The Starrise wizard's voice was anguished. The bells in his
hair clashed and jangled as he scrambled to his feet. ``How can you say
that? You felt pain when she died, I \emph{know} you did---''

``Because,'' Rufus cut in, ``you would kill them without a trial. I want
to bring them to trial, if I can ever catch them.'' He pinned Augustus
with a harsh gaze. ``In such a way as leaves both them alive, to face
justice, and you alive, to see it.''

``But I could invoke---''

``It's been thirteen years, Augustus.'' Rufus made his voice as gentle
as possible, but he thought some of his disgust got across anyway, from
the way Augustus promptly shut his mouth. ``Shouldn't you let her
rest?''

He turned away before he heard anything else, and made his way out of
the dueling courtyard, back towards the lift. The white birds were
already gone, and the Light magic was fading, leaving him in the
ordinary, complicated, mixed and muted world, once again.

\emph{Where I've won a duel, and Amelia will soon announce that the
Wizengamot will consider a vote of no confidence against Fudge.}

He still felt hollow, though, as if he had descended a mountain, and
inside his head there was a roaring quiet.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Harry? Come \emph{on}, Harry.''

Harry rolled his eyes and let Draco drag him away from the celebrating
Slytherins by one hand. At least he'd waited until an hour into the
party. That meant that the focus was now on who could balance the most
empty butterbeer bottles on her head and not on the ``Boy Who Saved
Snape,'' as they insisted on calling him. He could leave with just a few
disappointed looks from Millicent. And Pansy. Oh, and Blaise. And, well,
a few of the fifth-years and sixth-years, too. Harry ducked his head.

\emph{Stop looking at me}, he tried to shout at them silently, but just
then there came a crash of breaking glass, and all focus went back where
it should be. Harry let out a little sigh of relief and shut the door of
the fourth-year boys' room behind them, then turned to look inquiringly
at Draco.

Draco was already digging the potions book out of his trunk. He turned
to face Harry, and his eyes were solemn.

``I decided to tell you more,'' he said. ``You've been a really good
help to me, Harry, and you haven't asked silly questions. You should get
to know.''

Harry bowed his head, feeling honored. ``All right, Draco. What did you
want to tell me?''

Draco bounced onto his bed and opened the potions book. At once, a
tingling wave of magic flooded the room, and Harry saw the web on
Draco's head swell and pulse like a spider eating flies. He squinted at
it. \emph{Yes, the book caused the web, I'd swear it. And it probably
didn't show up before now because Draco wasn't willingly telling me what
he'd done. Now that he is, the book's magic is interacting with the web
in some way.}

\emph{I don't like that web. I really don't like it.}

``See,'' Draco was saying, pointing to a recipe that Harry had to crawl
onto the bed behind him to see, ``this is the recipe that I wanted. It
shows me how to call up an ancestor's ghost and become a magical heir of
him or her, as long as our souls are in sympathy and I can inherit the
magic.'' He beamed at Harry. ``That means that Father would acknowledge
me as a Malfoy magical heir, too.''

Harry fought to keep from snarling at the page. He didn't like the book,
either, now that he'd almost confirmed his suspicion that it had put the
web on Draco. He was still sure that Snape couldn't have known what it
did, though, because Snape wouldn't put webs on people. He'd known
slavery too intimately. But he had a lot to answer for, just giving this
book to Draco when he asked.

``Why is it so important that you be a magical heir?'' Harry asked,
reaching out to trace one line of the recipe with his finger. Now that
he could see the full complexity of the thing, and what kind of research
it would require, Draco's quickness in getting ready to brew the potion
astonished him anew. Draco was not often that\ldots{}dedicated.
Intelligent, yes, passionate, yes, but not this driven.

The page trembled before his finger touched it, and seemed as if it
might turn on its own. Harry jerked his hand back. Draco didn't seem to
notice.

``Because, Harry,'' he said softly, his eyes downcast, ``I have to be a
magical heir to be considered for some of the best advantages in
pureblood society. To be a business partner, for example, or to receive
some gifts, or to participate in some rituals and meetings. Even the
alliance meeting that we had, with you in the Ministry, which the
Parkinsons and the Bulstrodes attended? I couldn't have attended that if
someone really wanted to make a fuss about the rules. My father is just
always saying that I'll manifest sympathy with his soul sometime soon,
but I'm getting older, and I don't think I'm his magical heir.'' He
lifted his eyes, and sought out Harry's. ``Do you understand? This
is---this is \emph{really} important to me. I want to know that I'm not
below anyone else. I want to know that I have the power to defend myself
if someone attacks me, and to defend the people I care about. I know
that you might not get it, because you're Lord-powerful and always have
been, but I really, really want this.'' He bowed his head again, and all
but huddled around the book. ``This is the only chance I can think of.''

``Draco,'' Harry whispered, and, tentatively, knowing that Draco might
lash out at him again in the mood he was in, put his arms around him. It
was easier than he expected, since he was sitting directly behind his
friend. Draco turned his head sharply to the side, burrowing into
Harry's chest. Harry tensed, then forced himself to relax, muscle by
muscle.

\emph{It's all right that I can't spring to my feet and move about
quickly,} he reassured himself. \emph{Nothing's going to attack me
here.}

He concentrated on pouring strength and comfort down his arms to Draco,
without using his magic. Draco kept silent, and so Harry ventured at
last, ``And you want to be equal to me.''

``Yeah,'' Draco whispered. ``That's why I'm really hoping that Julia
Malfoy was a Lady, Harry. You shouldn't always be protecting me. I want
to be able to protect you sometimes, too, you know?''

``Oh, Draco,'' said Harry, stung by the injustice of that comment. ``You
\emph{have} protected me. Last year, when Connor was tearing me apart,
and the year before that, when you went with me into the Chamber,
and---''

``That's not enough,'' Draco said, with a stubborn tilt to his chin that
Harry knew only too well. ``I want to be able to at least match you,
Harry. Picking up the pieces when you come back broken, or just blacking
out in the Chamber and not seeing the whole fight---that's not enough
anymore. I can be with you like that, but not \emph{stand} with you. I
really, really want to fight at your side.''

Harry closed his eyes. Draco was right; he hadn't considered that angle
of it. He'd seen only Draco's possessiveness, not the fact that Draco
had this intense loyalty that could only be eased by the \emph{ability}
to protect someone else. And it was true that he didn't consider that
much. Moving in the midst of his own magic, sheltered and cradled by it,
he tended to forget that other wizards couldn't do everything he could,
or he thought he could do it for them. But why shouldn't they have the
ability, not only to make their own decisions, but to enact those
decisions?

Harry opened one eye and looked at the pulsing black-silver compulsion
again. \emph{I can think of one reason why.}

But if the compulsion was attached to the damn book, and the damn potion
recipe, it should go away when Draco finished the damn potion.

Harry nodded. ``I'll help you all I can, Draco,'' he whispered. ``We'll
have that potion finished by Halloween, I promise.''

Draco gave a sound that might have been a sigh or a sob or even a gasp
of happy contentment, and turned fully to face Harry, though he didn't
hug him; he kept his arms around the potions book. ``Thank you, Harry,''
he whispered. ``Oh, Merlin, I missed you.''

Harry opened his mouth to question what that meant, then shut it again.
They \emph{had} been distant from each other---more distant than Draco
knew, since there was a lot Harry hadn't been telling him.

Harry did want to be close again, if he could. The sudden rush of
longing reminded him of the way he'd felt when he realized the path
might be open to a closer relationship with Connor once more.

``I missed you, too,'' he said.

Draco beamed at him, and, miracle of miracles, for the rest of the
evening, was willing to talk professional Quidditch and how \emph{dare}
Professor Flitwick assign so much homework, rather than the damn potion.
Harry lay close by his side, and commented back to him, and watched the
web twitch and squirm. It seemed to be aware of him now, and to try to
avoid his gaze without abandoning its hold on Draco's head and
shoulders.

\emph{I know what you are,} Harry thought, and hoped it was loud enough
to be heard. \emph{I'm going to tear you apart for messing with my best
friend.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{Harry dreamed.}

He knew at once it was a dream, thanks to the odd darkness, and the
sharp, clear sounds around him, and the fact that the floor was solid
under his---

Feet?

Harry glanced rapidly down at himself, which didn't help, because it was
dark. He could tell he was in a different body than the one he was used
to, though, something mid-size and four-legged. Luckily, as he crept
towards the flickering firelight and the low sound of voices, he walked
silently, too.

He froze, bristling, at the edge of the firelight. He recognized one
voice. High and cold, Voldemort's tones were impossible to forget.

``Everything is in place, Evan?''

``Yes, my Lord,'' said the Death Eater, sounding cheerful. ``Your return
to Britain is awaited with great interest by your loyal subjects, whose
ranks are growing by the day. Fenrir Greyback is a---most useful tool.''

Harry shifted to the side, trying to see. As if the movement had
realigned his perception of the room, he realized abruptly that he was
outdoors, and the thick darkness around him came from immense tree
trunks. The firelight was burning in a clearing among the trees. Harry's
nose twitched at the smells that assaulted it, but he didn't let himself
become distracted from the people he could finally locate.

Voldemort's voice was coming from what looked like a tiny throne,
cradled in the coils of an enormous snake. \emph{Nagini}, Harry
realized, and stayed quite still, just in case she sensed him.

Could she, though? Harry knew this was a dream, or perhaps a vision.

Harry couldn't see Voldemort himself, and did not try, now that he had
seen Nagini. He watched Rosier instead, who stood in front of the
throne, just recovering from a sweeping bow.

``And what of those who were \emph{once} mine?'' Voldemort asked, his
voice deepening with displeasure. Harry felt his forehead begin to burn.
``Those who were once loyal, but have now turned against me?''

``They remain turned, Lord,'' said Rosier, not looking all that sorry
for it. ``Alas.''

``You displease me,'' said Voldemort. ``Bellatrix!''

A shadow shifted to the side, and the woman Harry had last seen
attacking Cho Chang came limping forward. Her right arm was still a
ruin, but she held a wand in her left hand.

``Torture him,'' said Voldemort, sounding bored.

Bellatrix flicked her wand, and Rosier went down under \emph{Crucio}. He
writhed and struggled and gasped with the pain, of course. It took Harry
a moment to identify the odd sound in the midst of the gasping, and when
he did, he put his ears back.

Rosier was \emph{laughing.}

``I have passed from the outermost portal,'' he said, somehow, around
the convulsions, ``to the shrine where a sin is a prayer. What care
though the service be mortal?'' He rolled over and lay there, smiling up
at Bellatrix, resisting the pain that was clearly running through him.
``O our Lady of Torture,'' he whispered, ``what care?''

Bellatrix sneered at him. ``You've gone mad, Evan,'' she said.

``Ah beautiful passionate body,'' Rosier said, his eyes lingering over
her right arm, ``that never has ached with a heart!''

Bellatrix glanced at the throne, and then stopped the spell with a jerk.
Rosier lay where he was for a moment, trembling, then lifted a hand to
wipe the flecks of foam from his lips. Harry did not know if he was
relieved or not to see blood among the spittle. ``But as sweet as the
rind was the core is,'' he whispered. ``We are fain of thee still, we
are fain.''

``I am sending you to negotiate with the giants, Evan,'' said Voldemort,
sounding almost bored. ``See that you do not fail me. They still think
that I am their \emph{vates}, and should listen to you most eagerly.''

Rosier inclined his head to Voldemort and stood, recovering faster than
Harry thought was normal. He smiled at Bellatrix. ``My Lord. Our Lady of
Pain,'' he said. ``Until next time.'' He bowed and limped off into the
woods.

``What now, my lord?'' Bellatrix's voice was unhappy, resigned, and she
sat down in front of the throne, Nagini shifting out of the way with a
hiss of protest.

``Now,'' said Voldemort, ``we wait on the sun.'' He laughed, a sound
that Harry had no desire to hear, ever again. ``And be glad that a
certain troublesome one, bound by blood to you, who was interfering with
me and niggling at me, has been laid to rest.''

He started laughing again, and the pain in Harry's scar grew so
overwhelming that he woke with a gasp.

He found himself still in Draco's bed, fallen asleep half-curled around
his friend. He backed away, slowly, and Draco mumbled drowsily and
rolled over, clutching the potions book. Harry swallowed, and put a hand
to his forehead. It came away covered with blood, of course.

\emph{I will send a message to Narcissa}, he decided, as he padded off
towards the loo. \emph{This weekend, we} must \emph{go to Grimmauld
Place, and find Regulus, if we can.}

``\emph{Will you take us with you?}''

Harry jumped and looked down at a movement near his feet. The Many---or
one snake of the Many; Harry suspected it was not the same one that had
accompanied him so far, since that one had grown tired of the distance
from its hive and gone back to the Forest---lifted its head and regarded
him with bright eyes. Harry knelt so that it could slither up his arm.
The small tongue flicked out and tasted the blood on his scar, a
sensation that made Harry shiver.

``If you want to go,'' he whispered, and set about washing the blood off
his forehead. His face was pale and solemn in the mirror, weary and
streaked with fatigue and pain.

\emph{I could use some help, really. Voldemort coming back to Britain.
And the giants! What do I do about them? And what is this nonsense he
keeps babbling about the sun?}

Harry fought the temptation to put his head against the wall and just
keep it there for a while. Sometimes, he wondered why he should have to
be the one to do this.

\emph{Because there is no one else,} he told himself sternly, and
straightened. \emph{Not yet, at least. Connor might be the prophesied
defeater of Voldemort, but no one else is} vates, \emph{and no one else
receives warnings of the Dark Lord like you do.}

\emph{Grow up, Harry. Stand firm. This is necessary, it always has been,
and accepting help isn't the same thing as abandoning your duty.}

Harry washed the blood off his scar, brushed his teeth, and went to bed.

\chapter{Open Unto Me}\label{chapter-29-open-unto-me}

Minerva closed her eyes and bowed her head. It was the only weakness she
would allow herself, these five minutes alone in her office, before she
had to stand and go down to face the students in the Great Hall on a
Saturday morning near the end of October.

The days of the week and the names of the months had---not mattered to
her so much lately. Oh, she had taught the right lesson plans on the
right days and known when school started. She had to give herself that
much credit. She hadn't been \emph{so} distracted that she couldn't
concentrate.

But things had been disordered ever since three of her pureblood,
seventh-year Gryffindors had come to her and confessed that their
families were being ``recruited'' by Fenrir Greyback.

Minerva brushed her hair wearily out of her eyes and stood. The five
minutes were almost gone. She could afford to relax now, in one sense,
because her students' friends had come flying to her that morning with
the news that each one of them was missing from his or her bed. They had
brought the notes pinned to their pillows, each addressed to her.

All of them were the same.

\emph{I'm sorry.}

She had failed---failed to convince them to stay, failed to convince
them to bring their families to the sanctuary of Hogwarts, failed to
convince them not to retreat and ``stay neutral.'' Voldemort had
slaughtered the supposedly neutral pureblood families in the last war.
It was a path that would only lead them to darkness in the end.

She had told them that, and they had seemed to consider it. Minerva had
been sure that she was winning all of them slowly back towards the
Light, to some consideration beyond what might happen to their families
at the next full moon after their first open gesture of defiance.

And now they were gone, and she had failed.

Minerva shook her head and left her office, her steps brisk. Yes, she
had failed, just as she had she had all those years ago when Sirius
Black tried to kill Severus. And she would deal with it now as she had
then: growing over the wound and going on. There was nothing else to be
done. When the music played, she must dance the dance that it signaled,
not the one that played in her head.

She had told Albus of her failure already, before going to her office to
grieve in private. He had sighed, and patted her head, and murmured some
platitude about it not being her fault.

Minerva did not believe that. She was their Head of House, and yet she
could not wake them enough from the blind haze of fear that they would
see reality

Yet, while she could blame herself and grieve, she saw no point in
brooding on it for long. She would face the consequences, and one of
them was tightening her watch over her remaining students. If one of
them was in trouble, she intended to notice it \emph{before} it reached
the point where they would flee home in sudden cowardice.

She paused when she heard brisk footsteps coming through Hogwarts's
front doors. They were too light to be Hagrid's or Sprout's, and there
was no one else who had reason to be outside this early. Minerva could
feel the temptation to arch her back as she would when she was a cat.

\emph{Do they dare to come into Hogwarts itself?}

She drew her wand and stepped around the last turn of the stairs,
holding it so it was clearly visible before her. Any friend deserved to
have the warning, and any enemy would receive a hex full in the face.

A tall, blonde woman halted where she stood, staring at Minerva as if
she were a troll. It took Minerva a moment to place where she had seen
that smooth, haughty face before.

``Mrs. Malfoy,'' she said calmly, never lowering her wand. ``I believe
that the Headmaster asked to be informed when any parent visited school
grounds, whether they had come to visit their children or to remove them
from Hogwarts.'' She stepped off the last stair, not letting her eyes
stray, either. She remembered Narcissa as an indifferent student of
Transfiguration, but there was no telling what she might have learned in
the years since she left school, and she had been proficient in Dark
Arts, as most Slytherins of that time were.

``Professor McGonagall.'' Narcissa's voice was also calm, and if she
felt the temptation to draw her own wand, it did not show in the way she
held herself. ``No, I am not here to see Draco, nor to take him home. As
a matter of fact, I have suggested a visit to one of my family's
properties to Mr. Potter, and he has accepted.''

Minerva only narrowed her eyes. ``What do you want with Harry?'' she
asked softly. He was another student she had not paid enough attention
to in the past few weeks, involved and bound as she had been in the
lives of her three hopeless cases.

``That is none of your concern, surely.'' Narcissa's eyebrows rose in an
expression of polite disbelief. ``He is not of your House, and I was not
aware that he had formally asked you to ally with him.''

``I need not fulfill either of those circumstances to feel concern about
him.'' Minerva held a stinging curse just behind her lips. It was true
that Narcissa Malfoy had never borne the Dark Mark, never been among the
accused Death Eaters, and was, on the few other occasions that Minerva
met her after she left Hogwarts, a loving and devoted mother to her son.
And it was true that people changed, and her husband was still Lucius
Malfoy. ``I am a professor, and he is my student. Tell me why you are
really here. Now.''

``It's the reason I explained,'' said Narcissa. ``No more than that.''
She lifted her hands slightly, holding them away from her sides. ``When
Harry comes to meet me, ask him. It's the best way to dispel your
suspicions.''

Minerva was almost inclined to believe her then, since it would take a
lot to get Harry to leave the ground with a former Death Eater's wife,
but she kept her wand steady anyway. With her grief barely behind her,
it felt good to have a possible villain in front of her.

``Thank you for the invitation,'' she said. ``I think I will wait for
Harry.''

Narcissa went still in that way only Slytherins had, as if her body had
turned to nothing more than a rock casing for her brain. Minerva didn't
mind. Severus had often tried that trick with her. It hadn't worked
then, and he was better at it than Narcissa was.

\emph{Severus.} His arrest was a bitter injustice, and now that she was
free of that one overwhelming concern, Minerva thought she could spare
some attention to it. Really, Albus should have done so already. The
\emph{Prophet} had reported that the Wizengamot would cast a vote to
determine if they still had confidence in Fudge's government in a few
weeks. That alone should have suggested to Albus that the Minister might
have a less than good reason to file charges against Severus.

They waited several minutes, until a pair of light footsteps came up the
stairs from the Slytherin dungeons. Harry paused when he reached the top
of the steps, and blinked a bit, pushing his glasses off his nose.

``Professor?'' he asked. ``Mrs. Malfoy? What's the matter?''

``Mrs. Malfoy said she'd come to take you to a family property,'' said
Minerva, seeing no reason to mince words. ``And since it's unusual
enough for a parent to visit Hogwarts grounds to see their own children,
let alone to take or remove a child who is not theirs to care for---''

``Tell me,'' Narcissa whispered, lowly enough that Minerva doubted Harry
heard. ``Who has been taking care of him?''

``---I thought I should make sure that you really did want to go with
her,'' said Minerva, seeing no reason to show that she'd heard, either.
``Do you, Harry?''

Harry only blinked again, as if he could not fathom why it would be a
matter of concern to anyone. ``Of course, Professor.'' He gave her a
faint smile. ``Thank you for looking out for me.''

Minerva simply nodded and turned to Narcissa before she put her wand
away. ``If he is not back by this evening,'' she said, ``I will find
you.''

Narcissa was recovered from that Slytherin stillness now, shaking her
head slightly. The smile on her lips was not a sneer only because it was
too faint. ``Oh, Professor,'' she said. ``And what would you do if you
could find me?''

Minerva raised a brow. \emph{Well, perhaps she needs a reminder of what
a Gryffindor is in battle.} ``The same thing I did to Samson Flint,''
she said. ``I understand they could never Transfigure him back at all.''

That wiped Narcissa's mouth and face clean in a most satisfactory
manner. Minerva turned and stalked towards the Great Hall.

She felt few qualms in letting Harry go, in truth. His magic was
massive, and it was probable that Narcissa meant what she said, since
she was the mother of Harry's best friend.

And, if Harry did not return by this evening, then Minerva knew where
she was going.

\emph{Move forward. There is little use in looking back.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Narcissa stared after Minerva, more unnerved than she liked to admit.
\emph{She was the one who turned Samson Flint into that---thing? His
wife finally had to smother it in its sleep one night.} Narcissa
permitted herself one delicate shudder, which did not bounce her
bandaged arm. \emph{I shall be careful of her, then.}

She turned to welcome Harry, cocking her head slightly so that she could
study his face behind the glasses. The dark circles under his eyes were
pronounced, but his lack of expression would make most people look past
that. His hair hung forward---not coincidentally, Narcissa thought,
blocking a view of the lightning bolt scar on his brow. His green eyes
were far warier and more closed than they had been since the last time
she saw him, at the end of August.

\emph{Who has been taking care of you, child?} she thought, the sarcasm
she had bounced at Minerva coming back to haunt her. \emph{Draco's
letters have been normal, but that does not mean he has been. And with
Severus gone\ldots{}}

``Hello, Harry,'' was what she allowed herself to say aloud. ``I thought
we would visit Number Twelve Grimmauld Place today, given that it is the
main house, and the place where Sirius discovered the locket that
possessed him.''

Harry winced and looked over his shoulder as though he thought someone
was there to hear them, but faced her with a small smile and an
inclination of his head. ``Yes, thank you, Mrs. Malfoy,'' he said. ``I'd
like that.'' He paused, his gaze grown suddenly sharper. ``Have you hurt
yourself?''

Narcissa wondered what should unnerve her more: that he had apparently
seen through the cloth of her robe to the wound on her arm, or that he
had sensed a change in her magic that alerted him that way. She would
only make it worse if she pretended nothing had happened, though.
\emph{Merlin knows that Harry needs people willing to be honest with
him.}

She drew back the robe so he could see the tied-off bandage. ``A few of
the people I tried to dance with proved rougher partners than I had
anticipated,'' she said lightly.

Harry's eyes widened, and then came back to her face. Narcissa was
unprepared for the self-blame that she saw there. ``Perhaps you
shouldn't do any more dances, Mrs. Malfoy,'' he whispered. ``I couldn't
live with myself if you lost yourself on one of the floors one night.''

\emph{Oh, no, you don't.} ``I enjoy all the dances,'' said Narcissa.
``The stately waltz and the pavane, of course, but also the ones where I
must suddenly change partners, or where I stumble and take someone's
sharp foot on mine. It keeps me busy, and it serves the purposes that I
feel must be served. I would feel much worse if I always sat at home or
lingered along the wall and never did any dancing.''

Harry's face went blank, but Narcissa knew him well enough to realize he
was conducting an inner debate with himself: whether he should ask her
to refrain from helping him, in the face of her pointed refusal. She
also knew what she was going to say, so she contented herself with
studying him again. She was sure that the circles under his eyes came
from exhaustion, and his posture had subtly changed since that meeting
at the end of August, as had the feeling of his magic. He was more
resigned, more closed-in than before, where he had radiated hope and
courage. It was something that Draco's letters had never mentioned. Of
course, Draco had been obsessed with his ``special surprise'' lately,
something that he said his parents would understand better after
Halloween night, but it wasn't like him to miss an alteration in Harry
so complete. Perhaps it was a kind not visible to someone who lived with
him day-to-day, though.

\emph{I was right. No one else has been taking care of him at all.}

She decided that she might as well start. ``I am not desisting from my
dancing, Harry,'' she said. ``If I ever get weary of it, be assured I
will let you know at once.''

Harry studied her intently for a moment more, then nodded. ``Please do
tell me when it happens, Mrs. Malfoy.''

\emph{When, not if. The boy does not seem to trust anyone to stand by
him.} Narcissa tucked the tidbit away for later, and sidestepped right
into bluntness. It was a move that Harry would not expect, after their
guarded conversation of before. ``How have you been, Harry?''

Harry blinked a few times, then sighed and rubbed at his face. Narcissa
relaxed minutely. If he would confide in her, then she would be less
worried about him. He had tried desperately to hide his gaping emotional
wounds when he had come to the Manor last Christmas. Letting fresh air
and sunlight fall on them would mean that he was past that state.

``I'm really worried about Draco, Mrs. Malfoy,'' he whispered. ``He's
been researching a certain potion lately. I don't know if he would want
me to tell you all the details, but he hasn't been sleeping that much,
and he's hinging all his happiness on the potion working. I don't know
what will happen to him if it doesn't.'' Harry stared at his hands, as
if he held a vision of the future there, and it wasn't a pretty one.

Narcissa swallowed. Draco's letters had been odd, yes, but she had not
imagined they hid something this serious. ``What is the potion?'' she
asked. Harry gave her a considering glance. ``Harry, I am his mother,
and I deserve to know.''

Harry let out a windy sigh. ``He really wants to become a magical heir
to the Malfoy family, and he thinks he's found a potion that can help
him achieve that. I don't know the formal name. And I don't know if the
potion's going to work, either. It's pretty complicated. I've been
helping him, but I'm half-afraid that he's setting himself up for a
disappointment.''

Narcissa closed her eyes .She remembered a few other times her son had
been so caught up in a grand project: learning to fly over the house,
making a gift for his father's birthday, making absolutely \emph{sure}
he was Sorted into Slytherin. When everything played itself out the way
he wanted, he was happy. When it did not, then he was devastated.

Granted, for the last few years his obsession had been Harry Potter, and
the final outcome of that project was more difficult to predict.
Narcissa had been doing what she could to help, to make sure her son got
what he wanted. But could she help with the potion?

``I'd like to talk to him, Harry, if you don't mind,'' she said. ``Just
for a few minuets before we leave.''

Harry nodded to her. ``Of course, Mrs. Malfoy. I hope you might be able
to talk some sense into him. He's in the library already.'' He did her
the courtesy of leading her up the stairs, though she remembered
perfectly well from her years here where the Hogwarts library was.

Narcissa found her son surrounded by books and parchments, and with the
look that she recognized on his face. She spoke with him, and he gave
her all the expected answers, after a few fierce glares at Harry for
giving the game away. No, he didn't want to tell her all the
ramifications of the potion yet. Yes, he was sure it would work. Yes,
Harry had been helping him.

No, he would not use it on Halloween night if she really didn't want him
to.

He sulked all through that part of the promise, but Narcissa flattered
herself that she knew him better than anyone in the world, and she knew
when he finally muttered the words and threw his quill down on the table
that he meant what he said. She kissed his forehead and left the school
with Harry to Apparate them to London, secure in her mind about her son
again.

Something did niggle at her in the back of her mind, though, and went on
wearing and bothering her until that evening, when she had come back
from Grimmauld Place shaken, and had leisure to figure it out.

Harry had rather deftly turned the conversation away from himself, got
her to worry about Draco, and prevented her from asking more extensive
questions about how he had been, all in one go.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``I don't know how we're going to get through the wards,'' said Narcissa
softly. ``You're absolutely sure that Regulus has not contacted you
since the evening when he vanished?''

Harry nodded, and returned to studying the house in front of them.
Number Twelve Grimmauld Place looked little different from all the other
houses, really, Harry thought: broken windows, grimy walls, a knocker on
the door. He had to squint sideways to see the shimmer of the silver
wards, thick and unbroken, around those walls and windows, and that the
knocker was made of silver and in the shape of a serpent coiled back on
itself.

``If Regulus is dead, finally and forever,'' Narcissa whispered, ``then
the ownership has fallen to Bellatrix.'' She grimaced and slipped her
wand into her palm. ``I would prefer not to run into her.''

``I would, too,'' said Harry. ``She'd probably want her hand back, and
she has a new wand.''

He didn't realize what he was saying until Narcissa turned and gave him
a sharp glance. ``And how do you know that, Mr. Potter?'' she whispered.

Harry shrugged. ``Well, I was the one who cut off her hand,'' he said,
playing for time. That had been in the \emph{Daily Prophet}, too.
Narcissa's stare only sharpened. Harry reached for and found a plausible
lie, since the visions were no one's business but his own. ``And
Professor Moody said that she would get a new wand as soon as she could,
even though she left her old one at Hogwarts. A Death Eater and a Dark
witch wouldn't go long without a wand, he said.''

Narcissa sighed, but seemed to accept his story, to Harry's vast relief.
``A pity the Aurors did not think to watch Ollivander's,'' she murmured,
and then stepped forward. ``My name is Narcissa Black Malfoy,'' she
said. She had not raised her voice far, but it carried well. Harry
glanced at the Muggle houses, and hoped their owners were away for the
morning, or still asleep. ``I have visited this house as a child and an
adult, both. I am friendly to the current heir, Regulus Black. I ask for
permission to enter.'' She extended her wand towards the wards.

The wards waited until Narcissa's fingers were only a few inches from
them, and then formed a silvery pair of jaws and lunged at her. Narcissa
pulled her hand away, her mouth thinning. Harry thought that only good
manners kept her from trying to hex the house, even as the wards fell
back into place and gave a little snarl. She glanced at Harry and shook
her head slightly.

``I cannot tell what that means,'' she said. ``Either Regulus has not
had time to lower the wards, or he is dead and the current heir does not
wish me to enter the house.''

Harry nodded. He decided that it was worth a try for him. Regulus had
trusted him more than Narcissa. Perhaps he had keyed the wards to fall
in the last extremity, if something happened to snatch him out of
Harry's head.

Harry drew his own cypress wand from his pocket and took a few steps in
front of Narcissa. ``My name is Harry Potter,'' he told the wards, and
the house, and whatever else was listening. ``I am no relation by blood,
but I am friendly with Regulus Black, and I was Sirius Black's godson.''
It was a risk mentioning Sirius, but he had worked spells that had
convinced the house and even its house elf to accept him as true master.
``Has Regulus left any message within you?''

The wards surged, then flowed out and over him, encasing him in a
silvery skin before Harry could do more than blink. He heard Narcissa's
startled cry, and then he heard nothing but---

Music.

The song moved around him, slow and thick and sluggish at first, but
becoming faster as the wards flickered over his body. Harry held still
and tried to breathe as shallowly as he could. The sensation was rather
like being underwater, save that it affected his mind, too. His thoughts
quickened, until they seemed to race around his head, and he heard the
song coming from several hundred frenzied throats at once.

The wards must have found whatever it was they were looking for. They
gave a final loud note, a twitch, and a twist, and fell away, leaving a
hole just large enough for him to enter, and Narcissa if she ducked.

Harry swallowed and looked back at her. ``I---I don't know what I did,
but I think we're invited inside,'' he said, a bit lamely.

Narcissa narrowed her eyes, and she nodded. ``Regulus must have left a
hole for you,'' she said, edging nearer as if she expected the wards to
attack any moment. They did not, only humming to themselves. Narcissa
ducked through swiftly anyway, then shook her head and glanced back at
Harry. ``Come on,'' she said. ``They may not permit us inside for long.
If necessary, I \emph{can} use a Portkey to take us back to Malfoy Manor
from within the house, but we must open the front door first.''

Harry nodded, and hastily followed her down the half-broken walkway. The
black door opened as they approached it, and Harry heard a deep, distant
thrill of music again.

``Why do the wards sing, Mrs. Malfoy?'' he asked.

She glanced back at him in surprise, tearing her eyes from whatever
inside the house had occupied her attention. ``I have never been aware
of them doing so, Harry.''

Harry swallowed and decided to ignore the teasing little thread of song
that followed him as he stepped inside the house. Regulus probably
\emph{did} have something to do with this. Narcissa had said that the
wards were tight enough to prevent anyone from entering the house whom
the true Black heir did not want in here. How else could they have
fallen, if Regulus hadn't told them to allow Harry in?

\emph{That doesn't explain the singing, or why Narcissa could come with
you.}

Harry ignored the thought, and took in the sight in front of him. The
entrance hall had most definitely seen better days. The wallpaper
yearned in curling strips towards the floor, itself covered with a
carpet which had stronger cousins in spiderwebs. Gas lamps flickered
here and there, and filled the hall with as much shadow as light. There
was a candelabra made as a serpent---a sight that Harry ordinarily
wouldn't have minded, since, after all, he carried a snake on his arm,
but this one had been shaped, by some art to the head and the neck, to
look as malevolent as possible.

Portraits hung on the walls, all of them of past Blacks. A pair of
curtains hid what Harry knew would be a portrait of Sirius's and
Regulus's mother. Sirius had mentioned her a time or two, always with a
bitter twist to his lips when he spoke. Knowing, now, how she had abused
Sirius, Harry wasn't surprised.

``Move quietly,'' Narcissa breathed. ``Aunt Capella tends to scream
about blood traitors in the house, whether there actually are or---''

``\emph{FILTH! BLOOD TRAITORS!}'' came from behind the curtains.

Harry rolled his eyes. ``Yes, Sirius told me about her,'' he said dryly.
He glanced at the curtains, and wondered if it was worth the effort of
opening them. Probably not, he thought. They could cast a
\emph{Silencio} and hold it there, and then she wouldn't disturb them or
cover any cry for help that Regulus might make.

He aimed his wand and started to concentrate on the incantation, but
almost at once, Capella Black's screams ceased. Harry stared, and
blinked. He glanced at Narcissa, who looked as mystified as he had.

Then the portrait's voice started again, low and sly and sounding as if
she were talking to herself. ``Of course, I should have known. Dark
magic, sweet and powerful. They would not have sent someone into the
house who did not smell of Dark magic, powerful and sweet.''

Harry swallowed. He didn't want to think of what \emph{that} might mean,
that he had used so much Dark magic that a witch who sympathized with
the Death Eaters thought he smelled good.

Narcissa patted his shoulder. ``Don't worry about it,'' she whispered.
``Aunt Capella was mad before the end. Let's just be grateful that she's
not disturbing us, and get on with the work.'' She turned towards the
looming staircase. ``I know the place to go first, which should tell us
whether or not Regulus is still alive.''

Harry nodded and followed her, though a time or two he glanced back
towards the portrait. Capella Black was laughing.

Harry heard a trill of music again, deep and self-satisfied as the
laughter.

He shuddered, then tried not to worry about it.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Yes,'' said Narcissa softly, stepping away from the tapestry and
gesturing for Harry to move closer so that he could see for himself.
``He is still alive.''

Harry felt the breath rush out of him as he gazed at the tapestry. It
displayed the names of the Black descendants in a twining tree, with the
motto \emph{Toujours pur} at the top. Under Capella and Canopus lay the
names of Sirius and Regulus. Sirius's name was in faded thread,
Regulus's in brilliant silver.

He glanced at the other side of the cloth, and nodded when he saw that
the names of Bellatrix Black Lestrange and Narcissa Black Malfoy were
also silver, as were the names of Lucius and Draco. In between Bellatrix
and Narcissa was what looked like a blasted bit of cloth. Harry raised
his eyebrows at Narcissa.

Narcissa's smile was small and tight. ``Aunt Capella didn't approve of
Andromeda marrying Ted Tonks,'' she murmured. ``And, really, Sirius
shouldn't have been on this tapestry, either. It was only the magic he
worked that made the house consider him as heir.'' She shook her head
and turned away. ``We know that Regulus is alive now, but I don't
suppose you have any idea on how to find him, Harry?''

Harry shrugged. ``He always told me his body was somewhere small and
dark, and that he felt shut in. He had preservation spells cast on him,
probably, to prevent him from feeling hunger and thirst, and he'd been
through a lot of pain.''

Narcissa half-closed her eyes. ``I know most of the hiding places in
this house,'' she said, and drew a piece of parchment from her robes,
along with a quill. She scribed several dozen lines down on the
parchment, then tore it in half and gave the lower part to Harry.
``We'll have to split up,'' she explained, ``or we'll never get through
all the hiding places. And I don't know if the wards will ever let us in
again, so it makes sense to do all our searching at once.''

Harry nodded. It \emph{did} make sense. Merlin knew that he wanted to
find Regulus, now that he knew he was still alive. ``There are Dark
creatures living in here, aren't there?'' he asked.

``Yes. But I suspect you can handle them, Harry, or I would insist on
accompanying you to each hiding place.'' Narcissa smiled slightly, her
eyes fastened on him. ``Now that Kreacher is dead, none of them are so
fanatically devoted to protecting our house and effects. Doxies,
boggarts, ghouls\ldots{}nothing worse.'' She shook her head. ``They
should let me alone, since I'm of the Black blood, and the security
measures wouldn't permit anything very dangerous inside.''

``\emph{We can bite anything that threatens you,}'' the Many volunteered
from his arm. ``\emph{Tell her that.}''

Harry just shook his head, because the Many wanted to bite everything
sooner or later, and studied his list. \emph{Second closet from the top
of the staircase on the uppermost floor, secret door under the
bookshelves in the library, compartment under the turning chair in the
library\ldots{}}

``Call for help, of course, Harry, if you find something you can't
handle,'' Narcissa continued, drawing his attention back to her. ``And I
will do the same thing.''

Harry relaxed a bit. She was evidently trusting him to act like an
adult. That made him happy, since it meant she was less likely to
question him about things he didn't want her to question him about on
the assumption that he couldn't take care of himself.

``I will, Mrs. Malfoy,'' he agreed, and went to go hunt out the library,
as five of the hiding places on his list concerned it.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry shook his head and pulled out of the compartment in the floor. The
turning chair settled back into place over it with a small grinding
noise the moment Harry stood up again. It would have made an excellent
hiding place for Regulus, Harry reflected, if Regulus were no more than
six inches long and five wide. Narcissa had been good to her word about
listing all the small and secret places in the house, though.

Harry looked thoughtfully around the room. \emph{Maybe I've gone about
this wrong. I'm not surprised that Regulus can't answer us when we call,
and I'm not finding anything by peering into every hidden corner. Maybe
I can sense his magic.}

He concentrated, and then staggered back and sat down hard in the chair.
The library was blazing with Dark magic of every stripe, several dozen
nasty spells and curses waiting for anyone who tried to remove a book
from the room, dirty the chair cushions, enter when they were
Muggleborn, or tear pages.

Harry was even more uneasy about the blaze of spells that he didn't
recognize.

He stood up, swiping dust from his robes, and then paused, turning his
head. The music was back again, and this time it came from a different
direction, beyond the library door. Harry moved towards it, stepping
carefully over the low-running vines and stripes of curses.

The music increased in pitch and volume, as if the singer could feel him
coming. Beyond the library was another staircase upward, barely lit at
all. Harry remembered that he needed to check out the second closet from
the top of it on the uppermost floor, anyway, and climbed. His feet
hardly seemed to make a sound. The singing vibrated in his bones and
curled around his waist like a cord, tugging him forward. He did
remember to whisper a \emph{Lumos} charm so that he could see where he
was going.

The melody come from the second closet from the top of the staircase.
Harry experienced a brief moment of amusement, and then one of hope.
Perhaps Regulus was making the sound, and that was why the wards had
sung when they fell in front of him. Harry had not dared hope that
finding him would be this easy.

Then the music picked up again, and Harry felt those concerns torn from
him as though they were clouds in a windy sky. The song was quite
beautiful enough on its own, ringing again and again with the tones of
struck silver. It sobbed and warbled and dipped, and Harry could hear
intense sorrow in it, as well as the coaxing beauty.

He laid a hand on the closet door. The lines of many spells crisscrossed
it. They were all binding spells. Of course they were, Harry thought,
somewhere hazily, beyond the song, in the part of his brain not consumed
with it. Some Black in the past had really, really not wanted this door
to be opened.

\emph{Or perhaps it was Voldemort. Regulus could still be in there.}

A noise clashed with the song, mingled with it, and welled into his
ears. Harry could hear a soft clicking sound from beyond the door. He
concentrated, and decided that it came from many pairs of legs.

The song fell away, and left a voice behind.

\emph{Let me out.}

Harry blinked. Well, he could do it, couldn't he? Of course he could. He
was the \emph{vates}, and this sounded like a confined magical creature.
And though the binding spells on the door were quite complex, he could
release a blast of magic, or even draw on the magic of the spells around
him, and release them that way.

The voice whispered, tense and excited.

\emph{Not that way. It must be Dark magic or nothing.}

Harry blinked again, then nodded. Of course it must be. This was a Dark
creature of some kind, imprisoned in a Dark house. And Capella Black had
stopped screaming when she sensed Harry's Dark power. It only made
sense.

He stepped away from the door. The creature gave a low, eager bubbling
sound, and then started singing again.

``Harry, \emph{stop!}''

Harry had jumped and turned to face Narcissa before he realized what he
was doing. She held up her hands at once, even dropping her own wand to
the floor with a flick. Her blue eyes were wide, looking like smudged
pale shadows in her equally pale face.

``Don't,'' she whispered. ``I should not have written that hiding place
down, Harry. It was in use during my childhood, but Uncle Canopus
confined something there the year that Sirius ran away. He died from the
wounds it gave him, in the end. Do not undo the binding spells. I do not
think that anything could stop it once it was released.''

``I'm a powerful wizard,'' said Harry. The song was in his mind, and it
made everything make sense. ``It's confined, and it would be grateful
for its freedom, anyway. It wouldn't hurt me.''

Narcissa shook her head. ``Uncle Canopus confined it only because he was
magically average, Harry,'' she said, slowly, softly, taking soft and
slow steps towards him. ``It \emph{fed} on the powerful wizards it found
before him. That's why it can get to you, Harry. It's not singing at me.
It doesn't want me.''

\emph{Let me out}, the voice said, and the music fell away.

The creature had misjudged, Harry knew a moment later. The sudden loss
of the song combined with Narcissa's words to tear his mind out of the
confining fog it had been in. He took a step back, his breathing loud
and harsh in the silence. He shuddered.

\emph{Well, that's the first time a magical creature has tried to compel
me into breaking its web.}

\emph{And I am not a blind} vates. \emph{I cannot charge into freeing
this thing until I know what it is, and what it would cost to have it
free.}

``What are you?'' he asked aloud.

\emph{It does not matter. Let me out.}

Harry shook his head. ``I think it matters,'' he muttered. He could not
believe how stupid he had almost been. He looked at Narcissa. ``Thank
you, Mrs. Malfoy,'' he said. ``Where else should we look for Regulus?''

Narcissa sighed. ``I've cast all the spells I can think of, Harry,
spells that should have revealed the presence of human flesh and blood
anywhere in the house. It only showed me and you. Regulus isn't here. At
least, his body isn't here.''

``But we have to find him,'' said Harry. ``If we don't---''

Narcissa gently closed a hand on his shoulder. ``There are other Black
estates.''

``But we don't know if the wards will let us into them.'' Harry couldn't
understand why Narcissa kept holding his shoulder and looking at him
with such concern in her eyes. ``At least we're inside \emph{this} house
now, and we can look other places. Maybe Voldemort laid a spell to
confound the ones you used.''

Narcissa smiled thinly. ``I used several that only the Black family
knows,'' she said. ``The Dark Lord is powerful, was powerful, but even
he is limited by his knowledge.''

``Regulus could have betrayed them to him. Just let me open this
door---''

``\emph{Harry.}'' Narcissa's hand pressed down firmly. ``The creature's
song is starting to snare you again.''

Harry gave a guilty start, and winced when he realized what he had said.
``You want to get me away from here,'' he said quietly.

Narcissa nodded, and glared at the door. Harry didn't look himself, too
afraid it would turn into a longing stare. ``I do not believe, now, that
the Dark Lord brought Regulus's body here, in any case,'' she said.
``The creature would have tried to feed on him in turn.''

``Maybe he was strong enough to escape.''

Narcissa shook her head. ``The stronger you are, the mightier a hold the
creature has on you,'' she said.

``Maybe some of his Death Eaters rescued him.''

Narcissa knelt down in front of Harry, clasping his shoulders. ``I want
you out of here, and now,'' she said. ``It is not quite evening, but we
can look again later, Harry. The wards will probably let us in again,
now that they have once. And even if they don't,'' she added,
anticipating Harry's next response, ``I would still rather have you safe
than Regulus found immediately. You can't sense him, and he is alive.
That might mean he is not in pain, that the Dark Lord has simply blocked
him from reaching you somehow.''

Harry closed his eyes and fought down the compulsion to stay. When he
looked, he could feel the subtle strands of the song wound about him,
and he plucked and tore them from him with disgust.

He might have stepped from full darkness into full sunshine. Abruptly,
he wanted nothing so much as to be outside the walls of the house. He
shivered, opened his eyes, and nodded to Narcissa.

``Let's go.''

Narcissa smiled at him and escorted him away from the closet door, which
Harry resolutely didn't look back at again. They passed Capella Black's
portrait, and Harry heard her laugh. He winced, expecting an outburst of
shouting, but she merely sniffed, as if drawing in a deep breath.

``You smell so good, child,'' she whispered. ``So strongly of the
Dark.''

Harry heard a chiming trickle of music slide past his ears, as if in
complement to the chuckle.

He let Narcissa take him outside and back through the hole in the wards,
which mended itself seamlessly behind them. As they arranged themselves
for Side Along Apparition, Harry resolutely did not look back.

\emph{I can't just go around freeing everything the moment it asks me to
do so. I'll study and learn more about what that creature is if I can,
but just unleashing it wouldn't make me responsible, either. I have to
remember that my magic is in service to many people, not just one.}

He ignored the sound of song in his ears even after they had landed at
Hogwarts, but he didn't mention that to Narcissa. The tugging at his
temple told him that Draco needed him, and he hurried off, grateful for
a task that he could fling himself into.

\emph{Move forward. There is little use in looking back.}

\chapter{The Light Lord's Bargain}\label{chapter-30-the-light-lords-bargain}

Harry frowned at Connor.

Connor blinked at him. ``What?''

Harry gestured around the abandoned classroom---the third one they'd
used for this purpose, given that neither of them wanted to go back to
the room that had been the scene of several bitter fights between them,
and the second classroom was now thoroughly occupied locking away
Snape's Meleager Potion. ``How many people did you \emph{tell} about
this, anyway?''

Connor glanced back along the ranks of tables and desks, and shrugged in
a way that Harry could wish was more repentant. ``Well, Ron and Hermione
knew already. And Ron might have mentioned something to Neville. Why do
you mind? You like Neville.''

Harry rolled his eyes. ``Connor, half of Gryffindor House is here. And
I'd say at least a quarter of Ravenclaw. And---who \emph{now}'' The door
had opened, and several tall students Harry didn't know, but who wore
Hufflepuff ties, had just come in. From their size, Harry guessed they
were probably seventh-years.

One of them came towards him, hand held out to shake. Harry accepted it
warily, less because he was afraid the boy was trying to trick him than
because of the sheer \emph{strangeness} of seventh-years showing up to
listen to a fourth-year. This boy, at least, had a forthright expression
on his face, and gray eyes that reminded Harry of Sirius, though they
were considerably less shadowed than Sirius's had ever been.

``My name's Cedric Diggory,'' he said, and gave Harry a faint smile.
``Seventh-year Hufflepuff. Hope you don't mind, but Zacharias
\emph{would} not be quiet about these lessons, and it's so rare that
something impresses the little---'' He paused, and Harry could hear the
considerably more impolite word that he might have put in there.
``Fellow,'' Cedric finished smoothly, ``that I thought we should see
what it's all about.''

Harry nodded, rifling through his mental files on the Diggorys. Light
family, lived not far from the Weasleys, more strongly allied to the
Light than the Weasleys were. Traditionally a Hufflepuff and pureblood
family, but they'd had their fair share of relatives in every House but
Slytherin, and they'd intermarried with Muggleborns a few times in the
last century. Harry supposed he could trust Cedric as far as he could
throw him.

``Welcome, then,'' he said, with a shrug. ``I think that we'll probably
be covering ground that you already know, but thank you for coming.''

Cedric nodded at him, and led the group of Hufflepuffs towards the back
of the room. Harry stood at he front of it, and shook off the temptation
to bristle with sweat. Attention like this was understandable, because
the people looking at him wanted something from him that Harry was sure
he could give. He met Luna's eyes, and saw her smiling calmly at him, as
if she couldn't conceive of him failing. He tried to meet Cho's gaze,
but saw it locked on Cedric, and what he saw in her face made him raise
his eyebrows.

\emph{Oh. I wonder if Cedric has more than one reason for coming to this
lesson.}

``Very well,'' he said aloud. ``I explained about the nature of Light
and Dark wizards in our lesson last time, and I don't know what you want
to hear about now.'' He glanced at Hermione, whose quill was poised
above her parchment. ``I can continue that lesson, but---''

``Show us some spells.'' That was Zacharias Smith, who was leaning back
against one of the desks as though he were too important---or
self-important, Harry had to admit---to actually sit down. ``Unless
you're too powerful and afraid of injuring one of these pretty little
babes, of course.''

``Go after Smith first,'' Harry heard Ron mutter.

Harry couldn't help smiling. ``But we're not supposed to use magic out
of class,'' he said, innocently, even as he let his wand fall into his
hand. He wasn't about to show everyone how easily wandless magic came to
him. Let them imagine that was only for moments like the one on the
Quidditch Pitch last November, when his power burst forth from him.

``That's in the \emph{corridors},'' said Hermione, more snottily than
Harry had ever heard her. He realized that she must want to see some
magic, too. She'd even put down her quill and leaned forward, her hands
folded on the desk. ``We're in a \emph{classroom.} I think you can show
us magic, Harry.''

Harry shrugged. ``What do you want to see, offensive magic or defensive
magic or---'' He cut himself off abruptly. \emph{I can't offer to show
them Dark Arts, for Merlin's sake!}

``Offensive,'' said Zacharias, before anyone else could say anything.
``I've heard that's your weakness, and if you're weak on the offensive,
then how can you hope to lead us in battle?''

Harry raised a brow. \emph{He does pick at everyone, doesn't he?} ``All
right,'' he said. ``You'll let me pick the spell myself, I presume?''

``You'd better, Potter,'' said Zacharias. ``I won't be there in the
middle of battle to tell you what to do.''

A few people chuckled at that, but more leaned forward, their eyes never
wavering from Harry's face. Harry concealed a disgusted sigh, and aimed
his wand directly ahead of him. For a moment, the only offensive spells
he could think of were Dark Arts, since Snape had tutored him so
extensively in those the last few weeks before he went away.

Then he shook himself, and normal magic came back to him.
``\emph{Speculum Ardoris!}'' he said clearly.

Fire burst out of the tip of his wand, more controlled than it was when
he used wandless magic, since it had a container to funnel itself
through. Harry found himself wondering abruptly if he could do the same
thing with that wandless magic, using his body as a container.

Then he had to work on controlling the spell, which tended to wander in
strips of flame if he didn't watch out. He wove dazzling mirrors in
front of each student's face, enough to cause some of them to draw their
wands and even shoot out a mild jinx or two. The flame mirrors bounced
them right back, and several people fell unconscious before Harry
dismissed the spell.

Zacharias regarded him with dispassionate eyes as Harry revived a girl
knocked down by her own deflected Stunning Spell. ``I thought that was
ordinarily a defensive piece of magic,'' he said.

Harry shrugged. ``It is. But it's easy to learn how to send it to
confuse your enemies instead. The heat and the light are more intense
than with a normal fire. It reaches into people's minds and panics them,
and then they start using magic even when they know that they
shouldn't.''

Zacharias grinned at him. ``You're all right, Potter,'' he said, as he
lazily awakened one of his Housemates. ``Going to make a good war
leader.''

Harry narrowed his eyes, and chose the victim nearest Zacharias to
practice the next \emph{Ennervate} on. ``What do you mean by that?'' he
whispered. He thought he was probably speaking low enough that no one
else could hear him. ``These lessons are for Connor, to let him practice
in being a good leader. He's the one who'll have to guide us on the
battlefield and defeat Voldemort. Boy-Who-Lived, remember?''

Zacharias was really very annoying when he had that considering look on
his face, Harry decided. ``Why should we worry about you training a war
leader?'' he asked. ``Why not use the one we already have?''

``I'm not the Boy-Who-Lived,'' said Harry, and moved on to a boy who'd
somehow managed to make boils grow on his own face, though the spell he
used at the flame mirror should have resulted in them on his hands.

``I beg to differ,'' Zacharias whispered. ``If the Boy-Who-Lived is the
champion we need to defeat He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, then you are.''

Harry stiffened his spine and refused to look at the annoying Hufflepuff
again. \emph{He doesn't really know anything. He's just making guesses.}

The fact that they were scarily accurate guesses, and ones that might be
influential on the people around them, was not the \emph{point}, Harry
thought.

When he'd revived the last person, Harry returned to the front of the
class. ``That's why showing off magic in an enclosed space is
dangerous,'' he remarked wryly. ``Are you sure that you wouldn't rather
have a history lesson now?''

``I want to try that spell,'' said Hermione, predictably, rising from
the desk while clutching her wand. ``Why would you say it \emph{Speculum
Ardoris}, though?'' She pronounced the spell the way Harry had, though
she made her stresses on the incantation obvious. ``I think I've heard
of this spell, but the emphases were in different places.''

``The difference in the stresses transforms it from a defensive to an
offensive spell,'' Harry explained. ``Rather than just surrounding
yourself with flame, you actively use it to confuse your enemies.''

Hermione frowned and settled a hand on her hip. ``But I've never
\emph{heard} of that,'' she said, managing to make it sound as though her
never having heard of that variation of the spell was a crime against
nature. ``Where did you come up with that?''

Harry saw no need to tell her that he'd come up with it himself, by
accident, during the summer before second year. ``From a book that
Hogwarts library probably doesn't have,'' he said amiably. ``Our father
is pureblood, remember? There are lots of books they like to retain for
themselves.''

Hermione sighed and nodded.

``Do you want to try it?'' Harry asked.

Hermione carefully aimed her wand and said the spell, with the stresses
the same way Harry had performed them.

Flame welled weakly from her wand and whirled into a shield that
wandered off as it would attack Zacharias. Harry performed an
\emph{Accio} and summoned it back towards them, shaking his head. ``You
have to concentrate on your opponent, or your opponents, or it just goes
towards whoever you happen to be thinking about,'' he explained, keeping
it to himself that it was interesting Hermione would be thinking about
Zacharias. She normally seemed to ignore the Hufflepuff outside class.

Hermione nodded again, her face more serious this time, and managed to
form a shield of flame around him on her second try. Harry knew the
counter for it, of course; he erected a \emph{Protego}, and the
combination of two spells that reflected other attacks facing each other
destabilized and destroyed the Flame Mirror. Hermione blinked at him as
her wisps of red and gold flame spun into nothingness.

``How did you \emph{do} that?'' she asked.

Harry was more than happy to explain the theory behind it, especially
since it now seemed as though other people besides Hermione and
Zacharias were taking an interest in what was happening. Connor was
practicing small movements with his wand, murmuring the spells under his
breath. Ron tapped his wand nervously on the desk he sat at, though that
stopped when he saw Harry watching him; he tried as best he could to
pronounce the spell, though he didn't produce more than a few bits of
smoke. The seventh-year Hufflepuffs had already spread out in a dueling
ring, which Harry wasn't surprised to see that Cedric had organized.

Harry caught Luna's eye. She was sitting and staring in wonder at the
ceiling of the classroom, but she nodded and turned towards him when he
came up to her.

``Is something the matter, Luna?'' Harry asked softly. He hadn't spent
much time with her this year, but she hadn't seemed \emph{quite} this
dreamy and distracted before. He glanced at the ceiling himself, but
could see nothing to fascinate her there.

``Don't you see the old shields?'' Luna whispered.

``Old shields?'' Harry squinted obediently upward again, but could still
make nothing out.

``Yes,'' said Luna. ``Someone held this classroom against a siege once.
The old furniture says so.'' She touched the chair she sat on. ``This
one is talking to me about Helga Hufflepuff.''

Harry stared. The chair certainly didn't \emph{look} that old.

``Oh, no, it didn't know her,'' said Luna. ``It heard the story from
another, older desk, and that desk heard it from another one, and back,
and so on.'' She stroked the desk's surface with affection. ``But they
don't really mean to talk to me. They just have old magic on them, and I
can sense it.''

Harry sat down in the desk beside her. Hermione was drilling Connor and
Ron, Cedric was drilling Cho and the Hufflepuffs who had joined them,
and Zacharias was walking around and poking holes in everyone else's
spell technique. No one needed him at the moment. ``So what does the
chair say about Helga Hufflepuff?''

Luna gestured around the room. ``This used to be her private study. She
would retreat here and meditate, or sometimes simply come up with new
spells to hold and defend the earth. She loved gardening, you know, but
it wasn't something she was very good at by itself. She made up spells
to defend the garden from weeds and beetles and pests.'' Luna closed her
eyes, as if meditating. ``And she held the classroom against a siege by
Slytherin once.''

Harry blinked. ``I thought Slytherin and Gryffindor were enemies, not
Slytherin and anyone else.''

``Oh, that was after he went mad,'' said Luna seriously, opening her
eyes and regarding him again. ``I'm sure he didn't mean it.''

Harry frowned, and thought of the history book on Slytherin that
Narcissa Malfoy had given him for his first Christmas with the Malfoys.
``I don't recall that he was insane,'' he said at last. ``He just left
the school when he got so disgusted with Gryffindor that he couldn't
stand it anymore.''

``That's not what the chair says,'' said Luna.

Harry studied the desk at what Luna sat with new determination. Could
Luna really sense the vibrations of magic left behind, without even
needing to cast a spell? That was a useful skill. And it would explain
why she wandered around distracted most of the time. She was seeing a
world that most wizards weren't even aware existed, and it would take a
lot to persuade her to pay attention to the real one.

``Can you do \emph{Speculum Ardoris?}'' he asked, to distract himself from
asking more about her ability. He didn't want Luna to feel harassed and
pressured, or as if he cared only about what use her skill could be to
him in battle and not about her as a person.

``No one but you could do it before this morning,'' said Luna,
``pronounced that way.''

Harry snorted. ``I told Hermione I found it in a book---''

``And your wand says that you didn't,'' said Luna. ``It's been radiating
that magic for a few years now. I think you invented it.''

Harry sighed. ``In a way, but it's not something I want many people to
know about.''

Luna nodded at him. ``I understand. Wrackspurts,'' she said, as if that
explained everything, and then drew her wand and set to practicing by
herself.

Harry shook his head and stood, just as the door of the classroom
opened. Harry turned, wondering if they were to have another visitor.

His mood changed dramatically when he realized it was Professor Moody
stepping through the door. He bowed to the ex-Auror, thinking hard all
the while. \emph{Why is he here now? Did he sense the magic, and come to
make sure that we weren't practicing any Dark Arts? Or is he going to do
something odd, like the way he spoke to me the last time we had a
private conversation?}

``Though I felt magic up here,'' grunted Moody, answering part of the
question. ``What are you doing?'' He fixed his gaze on Harry, as if he
assumed that Harry was the leader of this, whatever it was.

\emph{I'm a teacher, not a leader,} Harry thought in irritation, but
there would be little point in letting Moody see that irritation, so he
didn't. ``I wanted to train my brother in some pureblood history, sir,''
he said. ``He invited along some friends, and then they wanted to see a
spell instead. We're practicing \emph{Speculum Ardoris.}'' He made sure
to pronounce it the way it would be pronounced in the defensive spell,
and thought he saw Moody's shoulders loosen towards relaxation.

``Good, very good,'' Moody said. ``Extra practice, eh? A way of getting
ready to defeat Dark Lords?''

``Well, Connor certainly needs it, sir,'' said Harry, and then turned
and motioned his brother forward. Connor had been successful with the
Flame Mirror, or so he thought from watching him from the corner of his
eye. ``Do you want to show Professor Moody your magic, Connor?''

The expression on his brother's face clearly said that it wasn't his
life's dream, but he did take a deep breath, draw his wand, and then
cast the \emph{Speculum Ardoris} carefully in front of him.

Moody dissipated the Flame Mirror almost lazily, but his face was
thoughtful. ``Perhaps I should be teaching more magic that you could
participate in during class,'' he mused.

Harry refrained from nodding, though he saw many other heads around the
room joining in, even the seventh-years. \emph{That's odd,} he thought.
He had assumed Moody's method of ranting at them about constant
vigilance and showing them spells they couldn't legally perform, like
the Unforgivable Curses, was because they were fourth-years, too young
to be trusted with the powerful magic. But perhaps even his upper
classes received the same treatment.

``A little demonstration, then,'' said Moody, slapping his wand against
his palm. ``Should you and I duel, Potter?''

Harry would have tried to pretend that Moody was talking about Connor,
save that the professor's eyes, both mortal and magical, were fixed on
him. He took a little breath and drew his cypress wand.

``If you wish, sir,'' he said softly.

It was amazing, or amusing, or both, how quickly the desks were pushed
to the sides of the room, leaving Harry and Moody a clear space to move
in. Luna gave Harry a final glance, said, ``At least he's not a
Heliopath,'' and joined the other students in leaning against the walls.
She was the last to speak. The others were silent, intent on what was
about to happen.

``Begin, then,'' said Moody, and bowed to Harry.

Harry bowed back, though his mind was racing not with thoughts of the
spells that he could put into the duel, but with reminders to himself.
\emph{Channel your magic through your wand only. No advanced spells. No
Dark Arts. Defend if you can, but never let on that that's all you're
doing.}

``\emph{Diffindo!}'' came Moody's first spell, and Harry snapped up the
Shield Charm, just barely remembering to blurt out the incantation that
went with it. He caught Moody's gaze, and realized that the Defense
Professor didn't intend to go easy on him.

``Full duel, Potter,'' Moody whispered, and his second and third spell
crackled at Harry. ``\emph{Finite Incantatem. Abicio!}''

Harry ducked the Flinging Hex as his Shield Charm dissipated, and
decided that he would have to do \emph{something}, or look as if he were
merely scrambling around on the floor in front of his professor.

``\emph{Haurio},'' he murmured, casting the jade-green shield on his left
hand that would catch most curses flung at him, and then chose a spell
that he knew had been more common twenty years ago, during Voldemort's
first rise. Moody ought to know it, at least, having worked as an Auror
then. ``\emph{Obturbo!}''

Moody's ears would be filled with an annoying buzzing sound about now,
Harry knew. In a moment, the sounds would move into his inner ears, and
then he would lose his balance. It would bring a quick end to the
duel---

Or it should have, had not Moody narrowed his eyes and simply snapped,
``\emph{Finite Incantatem. Abicio!}'' again.

The wave of the spell was too wide for the Absorption Charm to affect,
and this time it caught Harry. He was grateful for the absence of desks
as he went sailing ten feet, and landed in a roll. Lily had taught him
how to fall, though, even if that had been from a broom, and he came
back to his feet in a few moments.

``\emph{Occaeco Manicula},'' Harry murmured, slipping now into the mindset
of defending himself from an enemy. \emph{No Dark Arts}, his brain
reminded him, but he had bruises on the back of his head and arms now
from the way he had landed, and he could no longer consider this just a
demonstration for the other students, or a way of keeping his professor
from learning all he could do. This was a situation that might end up
with him getting seriously hurt, and then he would have to recover in
the hospital wing and would be of no help to anyone.

Moody jumped as a small, invisible hand pinched him, and then Harry sent
it to attack his hand, trying to get the wand out of his grip. He didn't
think a simple \emph{Expelliarmus} would work on an experienced Auror,
but the hand was harder to resist and infinitely more annoying.

That did not mean that Moody was inclined to give up, of course, and he
showed it when he studied Harry for a moment, ostentatiously ignoring
the hand's efforts. Harry had just climbed to his feet when Moody
pointed his wand and said, ``\emph{Sentire calamitatem noctis!}''

Harry grunted as a mental blow fell on and flowed over him. Abruptly, he
could feel all the sleep he had lost recently---probably since school
began, since that was how long Moody had known him, and this spell could
only be used on the basis of the caster's knowledge of the subject. He
wanted nothing so much as to go to sleep, and spend the next several
days and nights asleep, not helping Draco with the potion or worrying
about Snape or advising the magical creatures or teaching lessons or
shielding himself or\ldots{}

Harry did a wandless, nonverbal \emph{Finite Incantatem}, and picked his
head up, meeting Moody's eyes again. He knew that he did not imagine the
emotions he saw there, though they surprised him. Moody looked as if he
feared and respected Harry, both at once.

\emph{I'm not doing} that \emph{well against him,} Harry thought in
bewilderment, and then had to dodge as Moody tried to use the Flinging
Hex, \emph{again}. Harry wondered if he was running low, or just really
liked that curse, for some reason.

Harry waited for a long moment, running as busily as he could around the
ring of students, dodging the hexes and curses Moody threw, and then
pinched him hard on the nerve in his right arm with the invisible hand,
while shouting, ``\emph{Expelliarmus!}'' at the same time.

Moody's wand soared out of his hand, and Harry managed to grab it. He
took a panting breath, and then bowed to Moody. He resisted the
temptation to mumble something incoherent and go to sleep on the floor.
The Sleep Debt Spell had hit him hard. \emph{I should take better care
of myself,} he thought, as he tossed the wand back to its rightful
owner, \emph{to make sure that I'm ready when and if Draco or Connor or
someone else needs me.}

``Yes, more active magic in the class will definitely be a bonus,''
Moody muttered, his eyes never leaving Harry.

``I'm glad, sir,'' said Harry, and then turned back to answer the
questions that his makeshift class had, barely noticing as Moody slipped
out. If that had been a test of some kind, it appeared that Harry had
passed it.

The unintended consequence, of course---at least, Harry hadn't intended
them, and he was sure that Moody hadn't, either---was that everyone else
wanted to learn \emph{all} the spells Harry and Moody had used during
the duel, and not all of them could perform all of them, and people
fussed, and Harry had to spend some time reviving people stupefied by
finding out how much sleep they'd lost, all the while wishing for his
bed.

\emph{I can't see it,} he reminded himself for the fiftieth time, as he
brought Hermione back to the waking world. \emph{I have work to do.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Ah, Harry. Come in, please.''

Harry entered the Headmaster's office cautiously. It was true that
Dumbledore had sent a politely-worded note to him during dinner,
requesting his presence here, and it was true that Harry didn't have any
more pressing errand. Even Draco didn't require him, wound up as he was
in the final time-consuming but relatively simple steps for finishing
the potion. So long as Dumbledore didn't try to hurt him or break the
bargains they had promised to abide by, why not come?

That every muscle in his body was aching and crying out for bed was not
sufficient excuse, Harry thought.

``Do have a seat,'' said Dumbledore, and Harry realized he'd been
standing by his chair, lost in thought. He shook his head slightly and
took the seat, refused the expected sweet, and looked at the Headmaster.

Dumbledore's eyes were narrowed, his face shrewd. He stroked his beard
as if he knew something Harry didn't.

\emph{Quite possible,} Harry thought. Everyone seemed to have secrets
lately. Connor had been writing to James in private, and said that he
didn't want Harry involved in the arguments he was holding with his
father. Hermione was starting to return Zacharias Smith's crush with
interest, and there were numerous other crushes that their owners, at
least, took care to keep concealed blossoming in dusty corners of the
school. McGonagall had returned to teaching with a new fire and passion
that had been missing for the last two months, which made Harry think
\emph{something} must have been happened. Draco said that his potion
would surprise everyone, even though Harry knew everything about it now,
and Blaise Zabini had been hinting outrageously about the meeting Harry
would have with Lucius Malfoy and the other Dark wizards in a few days'
time.

``I suppose,'' said Dumbledore, ``that you have not thought about
needing my support, or you would have come to me before now.''

Harry blinked, torn out of his thoughts again. ``What, Headmaster?''

``I am Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, Harry,'' said Dumbledore gently.
``You'll need my vote to depose Fudge and to free Severus when his trial
comes before us in December. And yet, you have made no request for my
support.''

Harry stiffened. \emph{Another complication that I didn't need.} ``I
simply assumed, sir,'' he said. ``that you would do what is right.''

``Ah.'' Dumbledore shook his head. ``But what is right? A question much
debated by philosophers, and by wizards.''

Harry bared his teeth. ``You must know that Fudge is the wrong Minister
for us, Headmaster,'' he said, ``what with Voldemort coming back the way
he is. We need someone strong in office, and Fudge is hysterical and
prone to leaping at shadows. You should have replaced him yourself
already. And Snape---he was arrested because of \emph{me}, not because
of himself. You could make everyone see that. I understand a little more
about how Lords work in politics, now. Your magic guarantees you a lot
of things.''

Dumbledore sighed. ``Yes, it does, Harry, but I prefer to work within
the bounds of law whenever possible, and leave people's free choices up
to themselves. I am, after all, a Light Lord. And the people of Great
Britain have chosen Fudge to lead them as Minister of Magic, and more
than once. I saw no reason to contest their decision, not when Cornelius
did seem to be doing a good job.''

``And when he abducted me, and you found out what he'd been doing?''
Harry demanded. ``Why didn't you do something then? He nearly drained my
magic, Headmaster. You can't have that. If I'm a Squib, then two
possible interpretations of the prophecy---the one where I'm Connor's
protector and the one where I'm the soldier who has to defeat
Voldemort---get messed up.''

``Not necessarily, Harry,'' said Dumbledore. ``There is still love, and
I believe that love, and not magical power, is the key to defeating
Voldemort.''

Harry ground his teeth, and didn't dignify that with an answer.
Dumbledore had done little to help him so far, and more to hinder. And
it didn't seem as though he were done hindering.

``What do you want?'' Harry asked instead.

Dumbledore beamed. ``Ah, yes, Harry, I thought you would never ask,'' he
said. ``I am prepared to make one bargain with you, a very simple one.
Fulfill it, and you are guaranteed that I will vote against Fudge's
remaining in office and for Severus's freedom. That is all.''

Harry stared at him. ``You would swear that by Merlin and your magic?''

``By one of the even more ancient oaths, if you would prefer that,''
said Dumbledore. ``But I do so swear. By Merlin and by my magic, I will
vote against Fudge and for Severus if Harry Potter fulfills the bargain
I ask of him.''

The magic settled around them, a tightening of bonds that Harry could
feel like bared swords brushing his skin. Dumbledore's magic was mighty.
It would insure that he kept his promise.

Harry nodded slowly. ``And what is this bargain?''

``Something, I think, that will increase your capacity for love and
forgiveness, and therefore increase your capacity for defeating the Dark
Lord,'' said Dumbledore placidly. ``A letter will come for you a few
days after Halloween. It will be on parchment charmed to insure the
absolute honesty of the person who writes the message. I will ask you to
respond to it, and on the same kind of parchment; I have some that you
may borrow. That is all. You must guarantee that you will receive and
read the letter, and that you will then respond. I will ask for no
promises of further communication, even if the letter-writer does reply
to you. Just one.''

Harry swallowed. He suspected more under the surface---of course he did,
this was Dumbledore---but he couldn't deny how attractive the proposal
sounded. Just one letter, and Dumbledore would vote the way Harry
wanted.

\emph{Just one. How hard could it be? And if it's honest, then I know
that I'm not engaging in yet another fruitless political dance.}

``I accept,'' he whispered.

Dumbledore beamed at him. ``Excellent, my boy! That is all I wanted to
say. Did you have any questions to ask?''

He paused solicitously, but Harry shook his head. He hadn't foreseen
this danger, and now it was averted, with so small a sacrifice.

\emph{What other dangers do I need to watch out for? What other small
sacrifices might I make to insure good results?}

Harry went back to the Slytherin common room, though he wasn't tired any
more. Now he had to wonder what else he might have missed.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Albus closed his eyes as Harry left. A simple enough thing, but it meant
so much, to him and to the one who would write the letter---and it would
mean even more to Harry in the future, though at first it might be hard.

\emph{He does need to experience more love and forgiveness than he has
right now. He is becoming nearly a mindless machine, thinking only of
surviving from one duty to the next. He needs to learn to love and
reconcile with the most important people in his life. Severus is
important, of course, but secondary.}

Albus could not give Harry the support he would need---the boy would
never trust him if he tried, anyway---but he could bring in someone who
would.

\emph{Harry will thank me for this at the end of the year, I'm sure of
it.}

\chapter{Interlude: The Sea in Storm}\label{chapter-31-interlude-the-sea-in-storm}

\emph{The Sanctuary}

\emph{October 27th, 1994}

\emph{Dear Harry:}

I know you're probably surprised to hear from me, and wondering what in
the world I'm doing sending a letter to you now, when I haven't written
in months. Well, I'll answer that question first, and then explain the
other things you'll need to know.

I'm coming to Hogwarts on Halloween to see you. I'm not coming alone, so
don't worry that I'll get captured by Aurors the moment I step out of my
hiding place. One of my hosts will be coming with me. She feels the need
to see you, and she thinks that she and the others have managed to
weaken my phoenix web enough that you can safely remove the final
remnants of it.

As to where I've been\ldots{}well, the problem with this is mostly the
language that I need to use to explain matters to you. I can call my
hosts Seers, because they are, but that doesn't mean the same thing that
it does when applied to a charlatan like Trelawney. They don't See the
future, and they don't make prophecies, except educated guesses based on
knowledge of human character and intelligence. They See the present, and
the true state of human souls. I think the best term I've heard is
clairvoyant, although even that has other meanings.

You see why this is confusing.

Most of the Seers find it hard to be around wizards or Muggles or
magical creatures all the time; they can travel freely for a few months
or years, and then they have to retreat, or their Sight would overwhelm
them with all the information they're receiving. So they created the
Sanctuary, which is a retiring place for Seers, and sometimes other
people who have deep problems influencing their minds and souls. They
surrounded it with shadows of their own creation that owls have a hard
time finding their way through, and which slow down those who try to
approach, long enough for the Seers to judge if they're safe. They've
lifted the shadows briefly so that my owl can get to Hogwarts before
Halloween. They don't consider it fair that you should have no warning
of what's coming.

These Seers have a gift of absolute honesty, Harry, and thus absolute
Light. One of them met me while I was spying among the Death Eaters, saw
that I was not actually as dark of soul as I pretended to be, and
realized why I was pretending in the first place. She offered me the
peace of the Sanctuary if I was ever able to get away. That is the
invitation I accepted when I left you last May, and the months here have
done me more good than I can say. I am ready to come back into the
world, see you again, and have the phoenix web taken off. The Seers can
heal the soul, but not the more intricate portions of the mind.

As for why one of them wants to come and See you---well, they've felt
the rumors of your magic even here, and we {do} get news, if a few weeks
after everyone else in the wizarding world. They've heard of what's
happened with you and Dumbledore, with you and Snape, and with you and
your father. They are concerned about what impact this has had on your
soul. A powerful wizard with a broken soul is not good news for anyone.
The Seer who will come with me, Vera, is the same one who Saw me among
the Death Eaters all those years ago, and she is rested enough after
months here to make the journey again with open eyes. She is personally
curious about you, since she's listened to the tales I've spun of you,
and I assure you she will be sympathetic. She will not lie, however.
That is anathema to any Seer.

Oh, yes, I almost forgot to mention this, in my haste to get the owl
away---Remus is here as well. He has told me the story of his parting
with James. He showed James the note that you sent with the antidote to
the insanity potion in all innocence, thinking that James would be
pleased to know his son had taken the step of healing him. James seized
it and used it as evidence, and told the Aurors that Remus would testify
against Snape, too. Remus argued with him, couldn't persuade him to take
that back, and left. We're reconciled, in a way. Ours is a tentative
sort of friendship, but even I can see that Remus needs to recover from
the hold his wolf has on his soul, and I don't have any Seers' gifts. We
talk and spend a little time together every day. There's no point in
rushing it. He needs more healing still, though, so he won't come with
me and Vera.

I know that you have other commitments on Halloween, more than likely.
If Vera and I arrive when someone else is there, we are more than
willing to wait. A newly recovered Seer tends to be proof against most
people who might want to hurt her.

I'll see you soon, Harry. And don't even bother to write back telling me
that it's dangerous for me to come or that you don't need anyone to look
at you. No, it's not, and yes, you do. We're coming.

In hope,

\emph{Peter Pettigrew.}

\chapter{Inviting Someone Dangerous to Tea}\label{chapter-32-inviting-someone-dangerous-to-tea}

``And \emph{there.} It's done.''

Harry blinked as the potion gave a final slow roil and turned black.
Draco was right. It was finished. He could see the compulsion that
twined about Draco's neck and shoulders shudder, once, as though someone
had fed it more than it could bear. Then it cracked and fell away.

Draco blinked and touched his shoulder briefly, as though he had felt
something brush it. Then he glanced at Harry. ``I can hardly wait to use
it,'' he said. His face was dreamy. ``Can you imagine, Harry? Everyone
gave up hope on my being a magical heir to my family, except for my
father, and that was only because he wanted to deny the truth. But now
everyone will have no choice but to accept it.'' He carefully slid the
black liquid from the cauldron into a vial he had standing ready. Since
Snape was gone, and Dumbledore remained in his own office, there was no
one to see or care if Harry and Draco ducked in and out of Snape's
potions lab and borrowed his equipment. ``I'll be an heir after
tomorrow.''

Harry narrowed his eyes, his joy at the cracking of the web fading.
``Draco. Tomorrow is Halloween.''

Draco blinked at him. ``It is?'' he asked, and then snorted. ``Of
course, it is, Harry. I hadn't forgotten.''

``But you promised your mother that you wouldn't use the potion on
Halloween,'' Harry reminded him. He couldn't believe Draco had
forgotten, any more than he'd really forgotten the date, but he might
have hoped Harry wasn't remembering that.

Draco opened his mouth once, then turned away and concentrated on the
black, stirring potion.

``\emph{Draco.}''

Draco stared at him sullenly over his shoulder. ``I want to use it,
Harry,'' he said. ``You know that Halloween's my best chance of
summoning a ghost, any ghost, and this potion should break down any
barriers that still exist.''

``You promised your mother that you wouldn't.'' Harry folded his arms
and stared Draco down. ``And now I want you to promise me.''

Draco gnawed at his lip.

``I don't want to make you swear an oath,'' said Harry. ``Please, Draco.
Just promise me. Just give me your word. It's dangerous. I know that
spell doesn't talk about all the consequences of the potion.'' \emph{It
certainly never mentioned that you would have a compulsion to brew the
damn thing.} ``Say that you won't summon Julia Malfoy or drink the
potion or offer her the potion.''

Draco attempted to look coy. Or maybe that was cunning, Harry thought.
His friend's face hadn't worn his normal expressions in so long that it
would take Harry time to learn them again. ``What will you give me if I
do promise?'' he wheedled.

``Nothing,'' said Harry. ``This isn't a bargain. This is for your own
safety, Draco. I want you safe.''

Draco kicked the cauldron.

``Promise me, Draco,'' said Harry.

Draco bowed his head, but Harry could hear his rebellious mutter. ``What
do you care? You'll be in your formal meeting with my parents and other
dangerous Dark wizards, anyway. And I can't attend that meeting because
I'm not a magical heir.'' He spat the last words, then glared at Harry
through a strand of hair. ``Don't you see why this is important to me? I
thought you did, after I explained it.''

Harry rubbed his face with one hand. The Many snake on his arm hissed.
``\emph{We could blind him. Then he would have no choice but not to use
the potion.}''

``\emph{You be quiet,}'' Harry told it, and faced Draco again. ``I do
understand,'' he said, trying to make his voice soothing. ``I do. But,
as you pointed out, I'll be busy in this formal meeting.'' \emph{And
that other one, too, with Peter and the Seer.} Harry still didn't plan
to let the Seer actually \emph{look} at him, but he would meet with
Peter and take his phoenix web off. ``I want to be with you when you use
the potion. Please, Draco, promise me you'll wait.''

Draco stared at nothing for long minutes. Harry waited, not knowing if
he would have to make another argument or not.

Draco let out a windy sigh. ``All right,'' he said at last, most
ungraciously. ``I promise.''

Harry smiled and clasped his hand. He was startled when Draco used the
hold to pull him into a hug, but not displeased. ``Thank you,'' he
whispered. ``I knew I could trust you.''

Draco's arms tightened almost convulsively around him, as though he knew
what Harry was not saying. \emph{I can trust almost no one else.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry knew he was annoying his Housemates. His fingers tapped on his
legs, his feet tapped under the table, and his wand all but tapped
inside his sleeve.

He couldn't help it. He was nervous. The Great Hall was fuller than he
had ever seen it, crowded with the students of the other two wizarding
schools, who had arrived that afternoon. Harry had got over his
temptation to stare at them early on, though the silvery hair of the
part-Veela students from Beauxbatons had drawn his attention, and the
thick furs of the Durmstrang students. Madame Maxime, from Beauxbatons,
was very obviously part-giant, and Karkaroff, the Headmaster of
Durmstrang, made Harry's scar bristle and itch when he walked past. So
he might be a former Death Eater, Harry thought. They were all the kind
of things that he would have to remember.

But, right now, he was more worried about other former Death Eaters who
should be arriving at the school soon, by which method he didn't know.
It was Halloween night.

``Good evening, students.''

Harry concealed his groan. Dumbledore was rising to make a speech. From
the sound of translation spells going into effect, at least he would
only make it once, but that meant that the food would be later in
coming, and perhaps Harry would miss the arrival of his allies. Lucius
had said in his last letter that they would meet ``after dinner,'' but
that was taking normal Hogwarts dining habits into account.

``I am most pleased to welcome our fellow wizarding schools to Hogwarts
for the Triwizard Tournament,'' said Dumbledore, his eyes shining in
what Harry thought was a maniacal fashion. Of course, he was on edge.
Harry took a deep breath and told himself to relax. Even Draco was
staring calmly at the Headmaster, and no longer looked agitated at the
thought that he might have to wait to use his potion. If he could be
serene, then Harry could be. ``It is a grand tradition that has been
neglected for too many years. I realize that I have not explained much
about the Tournament, so I shall do that, that \emph{all} of our
students, even those who are not participating in the Tasks, may
understand what is at stake.''

Harry groaned under his breath and looked around for distraction. There
was none. Everyone else looked interested in what Dumbledore was saying,
and the lack of food on the plates wouldn't let him occupy himself with
eating.

Millicent poked him, and hissed at him to sit up straight and stop
embarrassing Slytherin. Harry turned his gaze back reluctantly to the
head of the Hall. He didn't know what was wrong with him. Normally, it
would have been no trouble to conceal his true feelings and let matters
fall out however they would.

Perhaps it was lack of time to relax, he considered. He'd spend the last
few days wondering what the meeting with Peter and the Seer would be
like, and how he could convince Vera not to look at him. That was on top
of helping Draco finish up his potion, and managing a few additional
lessons, both privately with Connor and with many of the younger
students attending, and trying to get Connor to tell him what he was
arguing with James about (unsuccessfully; his twin had proven
close-mouthed on that point). The dreams about Voldemort, which had made
his scar bleed every night this week, hadn't helped, either.

He couldn't collapse, though. It wasn't allowed. He forced himself to
listen to what Dumbledore was saying as if it were the most important
thing in the world.

``\ldots{}three champions, one from each school. The champions shall be
chosen by means of the Goblet of Fire, which considers the names
submitted to it and selects the most worthy. These students will have to
be intelligent, creative, and flexible, as they will be participating in
three dangerous Tasks.'' Dumbledore smiled as a wave of gasps swept the
tables. ``Not impossible, I assure you, but they \emph{are} dangerous.''

``Each student is judged by a panel that includes both interested and
impartial wizards. They will award a certain number of points for
completing the Task, but also for \emph{how} the student completes the
Task, and the skill and character the completion demonstrates. The
student with the largest number of points after the completion of all
three Tasks wins the Tournament, a thousand Galleons, and honor and
glory for his or her school.''

The murmurs were more excited now. Harry frowned at the students who
were discussing the Tournament; it even sounded as if some of the
Slytherins had fallen victim to that nonsense about honor and glory.
\emph{I wonder what's more attractive? The purse or the fame? The purse,
I hope. Fame is not all that comfortable, and certainly nothing that
someone should risk his life for.}

``Our visiting students will join our students in classes for
observations,'' Dumbledore concluded serenely, ``but have their own
assignments and own lesson plans owled from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang.
We wish to give them the experience of a Hogwarts education, but not to
demand that they drop their own lives completely, of course!'' He
smiled, and some of the students dutifully chuckled. Harry shot a
longing glance at the doors of the Great Hall, and wondered if his
allies were arriving now.

``And that is all I have to say.'' Dumbledore clapped his hands, and the
food finally, finally appeared on their plates. ``May you have a
pleasant feast!''

Harry heard the translation spells repeating Dumbledore's words in
French and a mixture of Eastern European languages. He wasted no time in
starting to eat, though Millicent's elbow in his ribs once again forced
him to slow down. His mind sped up gradually, but this time it felt
smoother, the way he had organized and arranged things when Snape and
Draco had first changed on him. He had much to do, but he could manage
it, if he thought like this.

``What is the \emph{matter} with you?''

Harry jumped a bit when Millicent hissed in his ear, but then relaxed.
After all, she was her father's magical heir, and had told him, rather
abruptly that afternoon, that she would be attending the meeting with
him. ``I just don't want to miss the meeting,'' he breathed back at her.

Millicent narrowed her eyes at him. Harry turned away from her gaze and
concentrated on his dinner. The bread was rather dry, but he preferred
it to letting Millicent see him too closely.

``You won't,'' she muttered at last. ``They'll wait for us, if we are
held up, but I don't think we will be.'' She took a dainty bite of her
own food, a French dish Harry didn't recognize, before she went on. ``And
it isn't just that. I haven't been looking, but, Merlin, Harry, you look
\emph{awful.} What's the matter?''

``What isn't the matter?'' Harry cut himself off before he could step
into a tirade, though. He was not about to burden Millicent with his own
problems. ``No, I'm sorry. I just haven't been sleeping well lately.''
It not only happened to be true, it was a great all-purpose excuse.

Millicent chewed thoughtfully at her bread, as if to demonstrate how
someone \emph{should} eat it, and then shook her head. ``It's not just
that. Or not only that. Come on, Harry, spill.''

Harry raised his eyebrows and returned to his dinner. ``There's nothing
to spill, as you put it, Millicent.''

``Yes, there is.''

Harry ignored her for the rest of the meal, thought she managed to come
up with taunts and indignant queries that he would ordinarily have
responded to. She was getting angry, he saw, when they stood up to
leave. Good. That meant she would be more likely to mistake his
reactions for something other than what they were, and would be
preoccupied with her own emotions.

He did \emph{not} want people to worry about him. If they worried, they
would ask questions, and Harry had too many secrets to hide. Besides, if
they worried, they might offer comfort, and he might be too weak to
prevent himself from taking it.

The meal done with, they filed out of the Great Hall. Most of the talk
Harry could hear was about the Triwizard Tournament, and he shook his
head and snorted. Things like that mattered so little in the grand
scheme. Why was everyone so concerned about it?

Then he forced himself calm again. \emph{They're concerned about it
because it matters to} them, \emph{Harry. And it doesn't really matter
if it doesn't matter to you, or you don't think it important.} They
\emph{do. You can hardly dictate what other people value.}

His breathing eased, and he turned his head and caught Millicent's eye.
Millicent nodded, and they slipped away from the rest of the Slytherins,
slowly enough that no one else noticed them go, except Draco, who
murmured, ``Have fun,'' in a tone that smacked of jealousy.

Harry sighed. \emph{Well, we'll use his potion and see what happens soon
enough---when taking proper precautions.}

Millicent led the way to the Room of Requirement, looking over her
shoulder with a frown now and again to make sure Harry was following.
Harry licked his lips as they came nearer and nearer the place. ``How
were they going to get in?'' he whispered to Millicent's back.

Millicent shrugged. ``Dad said that Starborn had found out some ways
past the wards from the Dark Lord's minions, including one of them that
got on the grounds last year.''

\emph{Fenrir Greyback}, Harry's mind supplied at once. He shivered, even
as his concern grew. He hoped that Narcissa had dropped her contact with
the committed Death Eaters and her attempts to convince them that she
might be interested in allying with them. Remembering the wound on her
arm, though, he doubted it.

They reached the Room of Requirement. A door was already visible.
Millicent nodded at nothing in particular, then turned and met Harry's
eyes. ``Ready, Potter?''

Harry cocked his head. She almost never called him by his last name
anymore. ``Of course,'' he said. ``Unless you know something I don't,
and this is really just an attempt to kidnap me and drain me of my
magic.''

``Not all of us are the Minister.'' Millicent's voice was extremely dry.
``No, I just meant whether you were ready to enter a room full of
suspicious Dark wizards experienced in detecting deception, especially
since you seem so determined to prevent anyone from asking questions
about you.''

\emph{Shit. She wasn't distracted, after all.} Harry lifted his chin.
\emph{Well, I know how to deal with this. I've danced harder patterns.}
``No one will have to ask questions like that, because no one has to
worry about my health,'' he said calmly.

Millicent sneered at him and turned away. As she opened the door, which
was made of some thick black wood that Harry didn't recognize, he took
the chance to cast some wandless glamours on himself. He couldn't hide
everything, but he could conceal the deepest shadows beneath his eyes
and the agitation that might reveal itself in the small lines about his
mouth.

\emph{Just a sacrifice I have to make if I want to dance with wizards
like this.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

The Room of Requirement had shaped itself into a comfortable enough
place, Hawthorn supposed. There were enough chairs for all of them,
including Potter and Millicent when they arrived. The seats themselves
were plush, either deep green or black, and circled around a hearth
blazing with warm light. The walls themselves were white wood, whorled
with so many delicate designs that Hawthorn kept looking up and thinking
she saw the Parkinson crest among them. Of course, the others probably
saw the crests or mottos of their own families.

She sat in one chair, acutely feeling the absence at her side. She would
have thought Dragonsbane would come with her this night of all nights,
wanting to meet with Potter, but he had only said that it would not be
proper, and she hadn't been prepared to argue with him. He saw the
future, including the deaths of anyone who came near him. It was
extremely hard to argue with him.

Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy sat together on a divan beside her, sideways
to the hearth, speaking together in soft voices. Hawthorn could not be
sure if they were conducting an argument or not. She sniffed, and then
smiled. Both of them smelled determined, which told her nothing, really.

Nearest the fire on the right side of the circle were Adalrico and
Elfrida. Elfrida was five months gone in pregnancy now, but that did not
mean she looked the worse for wear, as many witches did. She was
\emph{puellaris}, and she had given up much that she might have had for
the sake of protecting her children. Her face was radiant, and whenever
Adalrico said something that might relate to children, she would respond
in a spirited snap. Hawthorn fully approved. The birth of pureblood
children was rare enough. It was good that this one had a powerful
mother protecting her.

On the left side of the circle, Arabella Zabini took a whole couch for
herself, her hair tightly braided with silver pins that left no doubt
about her Songstress status. Hawthorn met the other witch's eyes and
exchanged a small, guarded nod. Arabella had never been a Death Eater,
and had never seemed to care about much beyond studying and raising her
son and making herself beautiful---and singing, of course, but that was
part of her magic and the result of her study. Hawthorn had no idea why
she had really agreed to come to this meeting, nor what benefit there
might be in it for her.

Close beside Arabella's couch sat a hunched figure, covered in a dark
cloak. Hawthorn did her best to ignore her. She \emph{smelled} wrong.
She \emph{was} wrong. None of them could actually deny Acies Lestrange
the right to come to a meeting like this, but it still made Hawthorn
uncomfortable.

The door of the Room opened then, and Potter and Millicent stepped
inside. Hawthorn found herself shifting forward before she realized what
she was doing. She realized that she had missed Potter's magic, which
draped itself over the room in a purring carpet of song and strength.
Hawthorn shook her head. \emph{I could get addicted so easily.}

It had been like this with the Dark Lord, too, at least when she had
first met him, but he had changed sharply not long afterward. Harry did
not smell as if he would change. Besides, the pull of his magic was
entirely unselfconscious, without the edge of the compulsion to it that
always rode Voldemort's power. He moved through the world, wild and
glorious, before he commanded anyone to do anything about that moving.

Hawthorn took a deep sniff, trying to pull in more of that magic.

She narrowed her eyes when she realized what she was smelling underneath
the scent of power. Stress, fatigue, aching weariness, the way that she
smelled herself when she'd been up for all three full moon nights. The
boy \emph{looked} fine, particularly given that the only light in the
Room was the low radiance of the fire, but he smelled as if he should
have been on edge, ready to snap or collapse.

Hawthorn leaned back on the couch and slowly brought her fingers
together. \emph{I would not like him to collapse. He is our ally, and a
powerful wizard besides.}

\emph{Perhaps there is something I can do.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry relaxed when he saw the people in the room. They were all ones he
had met at least once, though Arabella Zabini's sharp, inquisitive eyes
were almost a stranger's to him.

No. Wait.

Harry narrowed his eyes at the cloaked figure on the furthest chair.
``Who is she?'' he asked, not realizing until the words were out of his
mouth that his magic had already identified the cloaked figure as
female.

The witch shifted, and then stood. Her voice was so low and rough that
Harry could easily have mistaken her sex. ``My name is Acies
Lestrange.'' Harry snarled and twitched his wand into his hand, but the
witch shook her head calmly. ``No. You need not prepare to defend
yourself. Rodolphus and Rabastan are distant cousins to me. I am not an
heir of the true line, only of a small one. I was never a Death Eater.
But I did want to meet you.''

Harry let out a small breath. ``All right,'' he said. ``Why?''

``Will you permit me to look at you?'' Acies lifted a hand to the hood
of her cloak. ``Meeting my gaze is rather uncomfortable, but it will
explain more than words ever could. Indeed,'' she added, with a hint of
humor to her words for the first time, ``without this gaze, I don't think
that you would believe my story. And since you are \emph{vates}, I feel
some kinship to you already.''

Harry blinked. Almost no one knew he was \emph{vates.} ``Who \emph{are}
you?''

``This,'' said Acies, and dropped her hood.

Harry met her eyes, but they weren't a human pair of eyes. They blazed
at him, and heat swept over his body as though the fire had come out of
the hearth. Harry felt wind follow after the fire, and then a steady
roaring invaded his ears. His braced legs kept him from collapsing to
the floor, but it was a near thing. He ground his teeth as singing
similar to the music he had heard at Grimmauld Place arose, though he
was sure Acies had not opened her mouth since those initial words.

Then the sensations stopped. Harry looked up to see that Acies had put
on her hood again.

``What was that?'' Harry whispered. His own voice shook. He attempted to
push the shock away and master himself, but it was harder than he had
expected. Only the full moon night he had run through the Forest and the
dark gate he had gone through on Walpurgis Night rivaled what he had
just experienced in wildness.

``You will believe me now, I think,'' said Acies. ``One of my ancestors
grew obsessed with breeding magical creature blood and abilities into
our line. However, there are relatively few magical creatures who whom
wizards can breed with any ease. When he had secured those abilities for
his children, he went after the ones we could not physically breed
with.'' Acies chuckled, and Harry was not surprised to smell smoke
rising when she did. ``He could not, despite the experiments he tried,
actually \emph{mate} any of his relatives to those creatures, but he
could and did link their minds, in effect exchanging their thoughts. All
but one of his daughters died of the shock. She lived, and she had
children, and some of us have had thoughts like that creature's forever
after. A small part of us \emph{is} them.''

``And what was the creature?'' Harry asked.

``A dragon, Mr. Potter,'' said Acies, calmly. ``Wildest of all magical
creatures. I have sensed what you are moving towards, and I have seen
you from a distance. I wanted to see you close, that I might know if you
really are the \emph{vates} that we have been waiting for, or merely
another lie. You have met my gaze, and proven that you are what your
magic's beacon claimed. Thank you.'' She stepped back and sat down in her
chair again. ``I consider myself your ally now. The monies of my part of
the Lestrange family, and any help that I might personally give, are at
your disposal.''

Harry blinked, and blinked again. The contact with her gaze had
unexpectedly refreshed him, made him feel freer than he had in some
time, and he had won another ally, it seemed, for a very small price.
``Thank you,'' he said, unsteadily, and then turned and faced Arabella
Zabini, who reclined beside Acies. ``My lady Songstress. Why have you
come?''

Arabella smiled gently at him. ``I wanted you to know, Mr. Potter,'' she
said, in that deep, thrilling voice, ``that I have books you might be
interested in, books written in Parseltongue.''

Harry blinked. ``How did you acquire them?'' He wondered if all of them
had planned this together, to further unsettle him, but he did not think
so.

``Now, Mr. Potter.'' Arabella inclined her head and peered up at him
between her lashes. ``A lady never reveals all her secrets. Suffice it
to say that I have them. I will be willing to give you one of them in
return for a promise from you. A simple promise, of course, and one that
I think you would probably give anyway, but one I want to be sure of. I
have no intention of tying myself to someone who will act against my
interests.''

Harry frowned at her. ``You weren't a Death Eater.''

``But I am a Dark witch,'' said Arabella softly. ``Both declared to the
Dark and someone who uses Dark magic, Mr. Potter. Studying song the way
I have is not something the Ministry approves of, because my songs can
be used to persuade others of many things, truth only one of them. I
want your promise that you will never declare yourself a Light Lord. We
have had enough trouble with Dumbledore on that front. As long as I know
that you won't become another threat like that, then I am hardly going
to require that you declare any other formal allegiance. Only what you
\emph{won't}. It is true that you do not aspire to be like him?'' Her
eyes shone like Blaise's when she was in a passion, Harry realized.
Otherwise, she looked largely different, both more alive and darker of
skin than Blaise was.

``I do not aspire to be like him,'' said Harry. This, he could say in a
steady voice. ``It would be death to my ambitions as \emph{vates.} No, by
Merlin and my magic, I never aspire to become a Light Lord.''

Arabella smiled as though someone had just offered to kiss her hand.
``Very good, Mr. Potter,'' she said. ``I shall send the book in a few
days. That is all I wanted to ask of you.''

Harry nodded, and then turned towards Adalrico and Elfrida. Millicent,
who had seated herself beside her parents, started to say something, but
her mother was already speaking, eyes shining with a strength that Harry
had not thought she possessed.

``Mr. Potter,'' said Elfrida, her hands cradled around her belly, ``I
have come to ask you to extend your formal alliance with my family to
the babe I carry.''

Harry raised his eyebrows. ``Mrs. Bulstrode,'' he said, ``I would have
done that without your asking, just as I assume you would have
considered yourself allies of any younger sibling or cousin I might
have. Why do you feel the need to ask for more of it?''

Elfrida smiled at him. Harry caught his breath as he saw how it
transformed her face, shading it with a glow of white-gold magic.
\emph{Merlin, I wonder what exactly she looks like when she's defending
her children.} ``Because,'' she said with supreme confidence, ``the
world will change when you rise to power. I know it. I would have my
second daughter know that magic from the moment of her birth. I would
like to ask you to attend her birth and spare what attention you can to
her over the years, so that she never grows up with the cringing mixture
of fear and awe that too many other wizards have around strong magic.''
She did not look at Adalrico, but Harry saw him flinch anyway.
``Millicent is as old as you are, so she had no chance to know you as
Marian will. She will live in the future you craft. Will you do this? I
know Marian is only one among many wizarding children whom you will
affect, but she is one of only a few who might grow up without that fear
that has ruined so many things about our world.''

Harry could feel his eyes soften. Elfrida was right. Fear \emph{had}
controlled too much of the way everyone related to powerful wizards,
from the way that Death Eaters followed Voldemort to the way that his
mother and Dumbledore had tried to control him. ``Of course I will do
it,'' he said quietly. ``I am honored. Mrs. Bulstrode, and I wish that
all mothers were as dedicated to their children as you are.''

Elfrida gave him a smile of breathtaking sweetness, and sat down again.
Adalrico just coughed in embarrassment when Harry looked at him. ``I was
here just in case you refused,'' he muttered. ``But you didn't.''

Harry snorted back at him, and turned to face the Malfoys. Narcissa gave
him a faint smile. ``I came here to see how you were, Harry,'' she said.
``How \emph{are} you?''

\emph{Ah.} Harry should have known that Narcissa was probably the
hardest challenge he would face in this room. She had been concerned
about him the other weekend, after all. ``Very well, Mrs. Malfoy,'' he
said.

Millicent coughed.

Narcissa leaned forward, her eyes narrowed. ``Is that true?'' she asked.
``Harry, I know that you have an unusually low amount of concern for
yourself, but you should not. I know you are reluctant to speak on
personal grounds, so I will talk about our alliance instead. If you run
yourself to death trying to be \emph{vates} and protector for everyone,
then you cannot help us. Remember that.''

Harry relaxed. He knew how to deal with this, too. ``Of course I
remember that, Mrs. Malfoy,'' he said. ``I would never do such a
thing.''

``Liar.''

Harry jumped. The word did not come from Millicent, or even from
Narcissa, who was watching him with utmost concern. It came from the
chair where Hawthorn Parkinson rested. Harry looked at her, and found
her eyes narrowed, her nose flexing as she sniffed.

\emph{Bloody glamours,} Harry thought, as he frowned at her.
\emph{Should have known they wouldn't fool a werewolf's nose. Why don't
any of the books teach glamours to fool scent the way they do sight and
sound?}

``You smell nearly sick with stress and fatigue,'' Hawthorn said softly.
``I assume that you have concealed the evidence, but I know that it is
there. I would be surprised if it were not. My daughter has owled me
about what you have been doing to try and save your guardian, and the
private lessons you have been holding, and many other things that would
tax your time and patience.''

\emph{Bloody Pansy!} Harry kept his expression calm with an effort.
``Other people have already spoken to me about this, Mrs. Parkinson,''
he said. ``I promise, I am sleeping more, and one of my burdens has just
been lifted from my shoulders.'' \emph{Draco finished the potion, and
his compulsion has lifted. Of course I'm happier.} ``I am alive to all
that my duties demand of me. I will not fail you. I will swear that by
any oath you like.''

``We're more afraid that you'll keep your promises to us but destroy
yourself in the process, Harry,'' said Narcissa softly, pulling his
attention back to her. ``I think it's time for an arrangement like the
one I know the Parkinsons and Bulstrodes employed last year. I will ask
Draco to watch over you more closely.'' She glanced at Hawthorn. ``I am
sure that Hawthorn could ask Pansy to do the same thing.''

``We'd be glad to do it,'' said Millicent unexpectedly. ``We already do,
and owl our parents about you, Harry---''

\emph{Bloody Millicent.} Harry gave her a glare that she ignored with
supreme ease.

``But I think it's time to actively interfere.'' Millicent smiled
serenely at him. ``It won't be too much trouble to make sure that you go
to sleep on time and don't wear yourself out, will it, Harry? After all,
you yourself said that you've been trying to improve matters.''

``I don't need \emph{minders},'' said Harry, unable to keep silent any
longer. He turned towards Lucius, who had sat silent through all this,
watching him with a cool, assessing gaze. ``Sir, you and I have been
doing a truce-dance for nearly two years now,'' he said quietly. ``It
will be complete come Yule. You would not have entered the dance with me
if you did not think of me as an equal, would you? Not a child, not
someone who needs minders.''

Lucius shook his head slowly, barely stirring his long hair. Harry
relaxed. He had put Lucius on the spot, forcing him to claim equal
status for Harry unless he wanted to impugn his own honor, but it had
worked. Surely the others would have to see that someone whom
\emph{Lucius} respected would keep his promises and was not in need of
people to trail around after him.

``I trust you to complete the truce-dancer, Mr. Potter,'' said Lucius.
``I came here merely to see if you intended to change your mind about
giving me whatever gift I ask for come Yule.''

Harry relaxed further. \emph{Lucius is predictable.} Not safe, but Harry
knew every step of this dance, and he could take part in it without
feeling as though someone would suddenly turn on him. ``No, sir,'' he
said. ``I promised that, in gratitude for all you've done for me---'' he
meant the permission to free Dobby ``---and I do intend to keep that
promise.''

Lucius nodded. Then he smiled. Harry took a step backward. \emph{Lucius
isn't supposed to smile like that.}

``That said,'' Lucius murmured, ``it would do me no good at all if you
collapsed, as you did the Christmas we began the truce-dance, and spent
the day in the hospital wing. I do not fancy receiving my gift from an
ally who cannot stand. It would make \emph{me} look weak. I suggest that
you let your friends watch over you, Mr. Potter. There is no shame in
such a thing. All the greatest wizards have had such close guards around
them.'' His eyes flashed for a moment, and his right hand twitched, as if
he would touch the Dark Mark hidden on his left arm. ``Their
relationship to them has been defined by their own souls. The Dark Lord
did---what he did. Dumbledore treats no one as an equal, but manipulates
them all. Given that you have resolved never to be a Light Lord, and to
help others around you, I should think an arrangement of mutual aid
would be agreeable to everyone involved.''

Harry stiffened. His mind raced in circles again, for just a moment.

\emph{I'm not going to be able to get out of this.}

Then he forced his breathing smooth, and told himself it could have been
worse. So more people were looking at him, instead of no one. It did not
mean he had to let them see the truth. No one would find out what Lily
and James had done. He would make \emph{sure} of that. No one had to
accompany him to all his meetings with the magical creatures in the
Forest, either; Harry could point out that they wouldn't trust another
wizard or witch, and force his minders to stay behind. He was already
watched in the lessons. He could use magic to keep business like this
letter he had to write a few days after Halloween private.

\emph{The hardest thing to hide is going to be the nightmares,} he
thought, \emph{particularly if they've got Blaise and Draco watching me.
But I need practice on glamours and illusions, anyway.}

He met Lucius's eyes and nodded. ``If you concur, sir, then I'll trust
your judgment.''

He saw the surprise on Hawthorn's face, and Narcissa's, before they hid
it. Harry managed to dredge up a smile for them.

\emph{They aren't going to see anything I don't want them to see. I'm
more worried about convincing this Vera that she doesn't really need to
look at me.}

``Did anyone need anything else?'' he asked, wondering if the meeting
could conclude now and he could go meet with Peter and the Seer.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Hawthorn leaned back in her seat and listened to her allies deny that
they needed anything else. She, too, shook her head when Harry looked
inquiringly at her. She had come along simply to see what the others
wanted and to renew her ties with Harry, if they needed renewing.

\emph{You're thinking of him as Harry now, you realize.}

She did realize that, but there was little to be done about it, she
thought. She was growing closer to the child than she would have
believed possible, given that he was so powerful. Being a Death Eater
had never been like this, \emph{could} never be like this.

And he seemed determined to destroy himself before letting anyone else
suffer. \emph{Protect and defend and serve}, the words Narcissa had
written to him, and he seemed to have taken them to heart more
completely than anyone Hawthorn had ever known of, or even read of in
history.

Even with the victory they had won, Hawthorn thought they had lost
something. She could smell Harry's determination, and knew that he
probably intended to hide himself even better than he had been.

\emph{I might be able to do something about that,} she thought. \emph{He
cannot be as good at facing a ``threat'' of help he does not know is
coming.}

\emph{After all, if he is so dedicated to us, the least we can do is be
dedicated to him in return, and catch him when he falls, the way he
would catch us.}

\chapter{What Light Is Like}\label{chapter-33-what-light-is-like}

Harry stepped out of the Room of Requirement, and realized abruptly that
Peter hadn't said where he and Vera would meet him. \emph{Well, it will
have to be somewhere outside the school, at least, since I think
Dumbledore still has those wards up to prevent Peter from entering.}

He took the wand out from his pocket and murmured, ``\emph{Point Me}
Peter Pettigrew.''

The wand spun once, then pointed steadily towards the school's front
doors. Harry nodded and took a step to follow it.

Millicent's hand grasped his shoulder, pulling him to a halt. ``Where do
you think you're going, Harry?'' she asked, with false cheeriness. ``You
said that you'd been trying to sleep better lately. I think you would
sleep better if you returned to our common room, instead of traipsing
around the halls.''

Harry gritted his teeth and jerked hard, a twisting motion that his
mother had taught him for when an enemy had hold of him. It worked now,
and Millicent's hand fell away. ``I have another meeting,'' he hissed at
her. Her eyes had gone wide as she watched him, the first time Harry had
seen them do so. ``I don't need you to accompany me everywhere, and I
certainly don't need you interfering with those things that I've
promised other people I'd do.''

Millicent merely watched him go. Harry wondered if she planned an
interrogation for when he returned to Slytherin, or had just decided
there was nothing she could do for right now. It was too much to hope
that she would really never try to delay him or interfere again.

Harry ducked past patrolling prefects and Professors, shading himself
with a Disillusionment Charm when he needed to. The great doors of
Hogwarts were still open, and he stepped outside. He did force himself
to pause and draw the sweet air of the outdoors into his lungs.

\emph{Well, perhaps not that sweet, after all,} he thought with a
grimace, as the rich horsey smell of the giant beasts that pulled the
Beauxbatons carriage came to him.

Harry turned and swept the lawn in front of him with his eyes, where the
wand pointed, but could see nothing. Of course, Peter was probably a
rat, and he wouldn't be able to see Harry under the Charm anyway. Harry
shook his head and dropped the Charm, then called, ``Peter?'' as loudly
as he dared.

Movement shimmered off to the left, and Harry saw the flash of a gray
rat running close to the ground---a motion he'd learned to identify
easily after last year. The rat sat up briefly as if to groom its
whiskers, and motioned to him with one paw. Harry smiled and followed.

Peter led him along the wall of the castle towards Gryffindor Tower and
out of immediate sight of the front doors before he changed back. Then
he spent a moment shuffling and adjusting his limbs before he faced
Harry and held out his hand.

``Peter,'' said Harry, as he clasped the hand. ``You look well.''

And he did. His face was no longer as thin and as haunted as it had been
last year, and his blue eyes were bright with good humor. Just a short
time of living away from the Dementors and the Aurors hunting him had
made a difference, Harry thought. Even his smile was slower, deeper,
warmer.

``Harry,'' said Peter. ``Yes, I am feeling better---even better now that
I can see you. The Sanctuary's a remarkable place. Rest there is true
rest, without the ashy feeling of too many snatched hours of sleep that
I'd been having before I went. The Seers know exactly what kind of light
you need, the number of cushions that are comfortable on your bed, when
you're suffering from bouts of fear or dreamlessness, and one of them is
usually awake to talk to. The Sanctuary has no normal night and day,
surrounded by its shadows as it is.'' Peter gave a dreamy smile. ``I
never thought I could like an enclosed space after Azkaban, but I was
wrong.''

Harry could feel himself relaxing, both at the obvious joy and peace in
Peter's voice, and the fact that there was no Seer around yet. ``Where
is Vera?'' he asked, to make sure.

``She'll be along in a while,'' said Peter, and then smiled at him. ``I'm
almost completely healed. But the phoenix web is still there. Since it's
a web, and you're well on your way to becoming \emph{vates}, they
thought you could break it.''

Harry blinked, wondering how Peter had known about his progress towards
becoming \emph{vates}, and then remembered that Peter had said Remus had
come to the Sanctuary. \emph{Of course. He'd be able to tell him about
my breaking the web of his} Obliviate. ``I'll try,'' said Harry. ``But
if I'm hurting you, then you'll have to tell me. I still haven't broken
many webs.''

Peter chuckled. ``I made my pain known last year whenever it happened,
Harry,'' he said, sitting down. ``I've only learned to be more honest in
the Sanctuary. Come, I give you permission to use Legilimency on me.''

Harry nodded and took Peter's head between his hands. Peter gazed back
at him trustingly. That gave Harry much more confidence than he
otherwise would have to lean near and murmur, ``\emph{Legilimens.}''

The familiar sensation of wind sweeping him forward caught him up, and
then he hovered in a place entirely unfamiliar to him. Peter's mind last
year had looked like Azkaban, down to dirty gray walls and long
corridors filled with locked cells.

This place was white, and opulent in a way that made it seem like a true
home, with arched doorways and doors that stood half-open as if inviting
a visitor inside. Harry could see glittering treasures beyond the doors
that he supposed made up Peter's most recent memories. Others lay
further back, in shadow, but that didn't seem to matter as much; Peter
would probably share them if Harry just coaxed him a bit. The light came
from no visible source, but sparkled on off-white pillows and
cream-colored divans and many other pale shades that varied enough to
never become monotonous. Harry wondered if Peter had modeled his mind
after the Sanctuary, or if it was just the natural influence of the
place creeping in. Either way, his words about how peaceful it was there
rang even truer now.

The one thing out of place in all that white was the phoenix web, a
harsh, ugly golden spider crouched on one of the divans. Harry frowned
at it and strode towards it, one hand extended.

``You need to leave,'' he told it.

He received a clacking, hissing refusal in return, and the web curled
up, demonstrating its mastery of the one part of Peter's mind it could
still hold. Harry shook his head and crouched over the web, studying it.
It had a single tiny figure stuck in it. After a moment, he recognized
it as a replica of himself.

Harry blinked, then nodded. \emph{Of course it would be. Peter broke
free of Azkaban by focusing the web around a duty to protect and save me
instead of a duty to protect and save his friends. It only makes sense
that I'm an anchor for one corner of the damn thing.}

Harry lowered his hand and put it on the web. The web hissed at him, and
made as if to coil about his arm.

He summoned what he thought of as his \emph{vates} mindset in
retaliation. The web's strands touching him withered and died. The
golden thing trembled and gave a little warbling song of distress that
might have changed Harry's mind if he hadn't heard the net in his head
sing the same way.

``No,'' he said. ``You should never have been here at all. You certainly
shouldn't have lasted so long. You are \emph{going.}''

He moved a step backward and wound his other hand into place. The web
shone with desperate strength, shooting out a new tendril to curl around
the back of the divan. Harry yanked to the side, and that tendril was
forced to retract before it found an anchor. Harry closed his eyes.

He concentrated on the sound of \emph{true} phoenix song, as he
remembered it soothing him to sleep this summer, before the abduction
and the Death Eaters and Snape's arrest and the other parts of this
mess. The song swelled in his imagination, clear and pure, and overrode
the whining dissonance the web was trying to use to protect itself.

In moments, the real song conquered the pretense, and then the web
withered in his fingers. Harry opened his eyes to see that he held
nothing more than a handful of golden dust, and the replica of himself
had taken its place among the other memories somewhere in one of the
white rooms, no more or less important than the rest---certainly no
longer the purpose that Peter lived for.

Harry smiled, blew the dust carefully into the shadows so that it had no
chance of forming as a web again, and stepped backward, sliding out of
Peter's wonderfully warm and well-lit mind with a murmured word.

He opened his eyes, blinked a bit, and then met Peter's wondering gaze.
Peter was feeling the side of his head as though someone had hit him
with a hammer and then the lump had sunk again to become part of his
skin.

``That feels---wonderful,'' he murmured. ``Like freedom.'' He met
Harry's eyes, and Harry was torn between pride and embarrassment at
seeing awe in his face. ``I never imagined it would be so easy.''

Harry shrugged and turned slightly so that he wouldn't need to meet
Peter's eyes. ``It wouldn't have been, last year,'' he said. ``I tore
Remus's own web on his memories too swiftly, and let all the emotions
flow back in. And the Seers must have weakened your web quite a bit.
This one wasn't hard.''

``Thank you for my freedom, Harry,'' said Peter. ``And now, to the
reason that I came.'' He sat down on the grass.

Harry turned to face him. ``Don't you think we should get under
shelter?'' he asked.

Peter shook his head. ``I don't believe that anyone else has reason to
come here, and if they do, then you and I can both hide well enough.''
He laid emphasis on the word ``hide'' that Harry didn't understand,
staring at him all the while.

Harry nodded slowly, perplexed. ``And what do you mean, the reason you
came?'' he added, his ears finally delivering what they'd heard to his
brain. ``I thought you came to have the phoenix web removed.''

``And to see you.'' Peter leaned forward, one hand washing over the
other. ``Harry, you can't just have absorbed all the blows you took in
the last few months and gone on.''

Harry blinked, mildly insulted that Peter would think that. ``Of course
I can,'' he said. ``I was trained to be strong and resilient, and I've
added more strength to that lately. I'm glad that you were concerned.''
That much was true. Knowing someone else still cared about him when his
father, Snape, and Draco had turned odd mattered more than Harry wanted
to admit. ``But really, there's nothing to be worried about. I'm doing
better, I promise. I have some hope that the Minister will be voted out
of office and Snape will come home after his trial.''

Peter just shook his head.

``What?'' Harry had to swallow the shout he wanted to make. ``What?'' he
repeated more insistently. ``Did one of the Seers prophesize that Snape
is never coming home?''

``They aren't that kind of Seer, Harry, remember?'' Peter smiled at him,
but there was something incredibly weary behind the expression. ``They
See the present, not the future. And no, my headshake has nothing to do
with Snape, though he deserves a bite on the ankle if anyone does. I'm
worried about you. What would you think of someone whom all of your
experiences in these past few months had happened to? Would you really
think that he was all right or doing better?''

Harry lifted his head. \emph{Here it comes again,} he thought in
irritation. \emph{At least I don't think he did bring the Seer the way
he said he did.} ``Of course not,'' he said. ``But those are most
people. I'm me.''

``Better than most people, then?'' Peter's voice was extremely dry.

``Of course not.''

``Stronger than they are?''

Harry shook his head, trying to convey what he really felt. The truest
words were also the ones that other people tended to dismiss, because
they didn't understand them like he did. ``It's just---I don't know them
from the inside out like I do myself,'' he said, in sudden inspiration.
``I wouldn't know for sure what they really felt. And if someone said
that she wasn't afraid any more and then demonstrated signs of fear, I
would suspect her of lying. But I \emph{know} what \emph{I} feel, and I
feel fine. And I know that I can keep going.'' He smiled at Peter. ``I
know that you said you trusted me last year, enough to reveal secrets to
me that you'd carried for twelve years. Can't you trust me now? Can't
you see that I'm fine?''

``You are most assuredly not fine, Harry,'' said a light voice from
behind him. ``You have not been since you were a year and a half old.''

Harry shot to his feet, moving instinctively in front of Peter. Then he
realized that Peter hadn't moved, hadn't started, hadn't seemed upset at
all. He gave him a betrayed glance.

Peter stared back at him without remorse. ``Vera wanted a chance to
observe you from afar for a while, Harry,'' he said. ``Seers need only
one glance to gather the truth of a human soul, but they need time to
absorb it, to \emph{understand} what they're Seeing. She agreed to
remain back while you took the web off me.''

``You lied to me,'' Harry snarled, his eyes tracking the progress of the
short, plump witch walking towards them along the castle wall. She
wasn't close enough for him to see her face yet, but he was sure it
would wear an expression of concern---concern she would be better off
spending elsewhere, concern that would reveal his deepest secrets if he
let it, concern that would encourage him to weakness if he spent too
much time around it. He backed away from Vera. ``I trusted you, and you
lied to me.''

Peter simply looked at him. ``I didn't lie, Harry,'' he said quietly. ``I
warned you we were both coming. I said that she would be along in a
while. I told you that Seers have a gift of absolute honesty, and
absolute Light. I don't know why you thought you could hide from that,
and frankly, I don't understand why you wish to. If you're going to be
\emph{vates}, then you should want to understand yourself. You won't
have another opportunity to understand yourself like this.''

Harry ground his teeth. \emph{Merlin, I hate this.} He always hated the
moments when two opposite obligations tugged at him.

If he did want to be \emph{vates}, then yes, he should try to understand
himself, and he had even said he would try in the Owlery on the vernal
equinox, when his own phoenix web broke. And his doing what he could to
free the magical creatures was important to so many people, even
wizards. It was certainly not a set of principles or a duty that he
wanted to abandon.

But he needed to keep others' secrets, too---most especially his
parents'. If this Seer really had Seen everything, she would know about
what Lily and James had done now. Harry didn't want that. He wondered,
dismally, what the chances were that Seers were absolutely trusted
witnesses in court, and wouldn't even be required to take Veritaserum to
validate their testimony.

He turned to Vera as she came up to him, and inclined his head, not
meeting her eyes. He wouldn't run away, but he didn't need to show
politeness to her, either. ``How do you do, ma'am?'' he asked,
deliberately keeping it to a mumble.

``Much better than you do,'' said Vera, and the sharp, crisp tones of
her voice made Harry lift his head to look at her. Vera was a woman he
could have passed in the streets of Hogsmeade without noticing. Her face
was calm and ordinary, marked with wrinkles from laughter and frowning
and squinting at parchments. Her eyes were deep brown, but not nearly as
dark as Snape's. Her hair was brown and tied in a neat bun on the back
of her head. There was no sign that she was someone who could just rip
the secrets of another wizard's soul away from him.

``I don't know what you mean,'' said Harry, determined to bluff it out
to the end. \emph{Perhaps, if I can show her just how much I don't want
this, then she'll give up and respect my privacy.} ``I've achieved
several last things in the last little while that I'm very proud of. One
of my friends has finally stopped being stupid. I've met with my allies
and sent them home happy. I think I'm going to get my guardian back from
the Ministry unharmed.''

Vera heard him out, her hands folded. She was a solid presence. Harry
was sure now that he could have passed her without noticing anything
unusual about her, but at least she would have drawn his eye. She did
not look as though any blow could rock her, or anything she had seen
could ultimately shock her. Harry supposed that was a good
characteristic for someone who went around peering into people's skulls
and being a busybody about what she found there.

``You've achieved them all at costs to yourself,'' Vera said, when she
seemed sure that he'd finished. ``You've given up time and effort, which
anyone might have done, but you've also agreed to answer a letter from
someone whom you don't want to hear from again, and you've spent an
awful lot of time lying to other people, haven't you? You don't want
anyone to worry about you. Why is that? Why wouldn't someone who wore
himself out in the service of others at least want that service
understood and appreciated for what it is?''

``Shut up,'' said Harry, and then clamped his lips together. He hadn't
meant to be that impolite, really he hadn't, but this---this was too
much. He backed a step away from her, and felt Peter's hand close on his
arm, light but undeniable.

``Harry,'' Peter murmured, ``just listen to her. She was the one who
convinced me that I wasn't evil for following the orders I was given out
of love and a need to protect my friends. I remembered those words the
whole time I was in Azkaban, and they were one of the things that gave
me the courage to break out.''

``I don't want her looking at me,'' said Harry.

``It's too late, Harry.'' Vera's voice was gentle. ``I already have. And
you don't want anyone looking at you, isn't that so? That conditioning
of your mother's still lingers very strongly. You bounce attention from
yourself to other people whom you think have worse problems. You want
everyone to look at Connor and not at you, even when you do something
truly remarkable. You don't want anyone to see the immense load of
secrets you're carrying, even when they almost break you.''

Harry heard his own breath rushing out of his lungs in a frantic,
awkward mess. He controlled the temptation to step back or bolt or do
something else unfortunate. He had to brazen this out, especially if
Vera already had all his secrets. He had to at least persuade her not to
spread them any further.

``It wasn't her fault,'' he told Vera. ``It was---it wasn't the best
thing she could have done, but it was necessary, she thought, to protect
Connor. I had to be hidden so that no one would notice me when they were
making plans to take my brother down.''

``And now?'' Vera asked. ``Now that you have accepted that your brother
might not be the only one who needs protection, why do you insist on
staying hidden? Your magic is very powerful, Harry. You could accomplish
much if you acknowledged that and accepted the position of leader that
others want to give you.''

Harry bared his teeth. \emph{I can explain this, but they won't
understand.} ``People are so wonderful,'' he told Vera. ``And this
already sounds stupid.''

Vera simply raised her eyebrows. ``I've already seen your
justifications, Harry,'' she said. ``Explain. I can promise, I won't
tell you that it sounds stupid. Many other things in your soul have far
less sense backing them, such as what your parents did to you.'' Her
face darkened for the first time, and she narrowed her eyes. ``I would
like to look into their souls, if they were here, and see what this
looks like to them. I am sure I would find some of the most cramped and
twisted reasoning ever woven.''

``Do you want to hear what I'm saying, or do you want to insult my
parents?'' Harry demanded.

``The first, of course,'' said Vera. ``This is the first time you've
ever really said this aloud, Harry. It's an event, I think.''

Harry scowled at her. \emph{I know what I'm saying, and I'm the only one
it should matter to. Why does it matter if others hear it or not?}
``People are so wonderful,'' he said steadily, and ignored the whining
pulse in his head that reminded him how \emph{idiotic} words like this
sounded when he expressed them. ``They have---they have their own souls,
their own inner existences. It \emph{matters} that they exist in the
world. They're all beautiful, looked at in the right way. Even when they
hurt other people, few of them are doing it just to hurt others, like
Voldemort or Bellatrix Lestrange. They have their reasons. You can
listen to those reasons and understand them.''

``I want to protect them. I want to prevent people who hurt others from
hurting them, of course, but I also want to forgive them, and find some
way for them to go on living and forgive themselves, instead of just
crumpling them up and putting them in Azkaban or someplace like that.
Azkaban is such a \emph{waste}. There's so much potential in someone
like Snape, whom people would dismiss just because he was a Death Eater
at one point, or Draco, whom someone might dismiss because of his name
and his family's reputation, or Peter, whom everyone thought was a
criminal.'' Harry looked hard at Vera, willing her to understand. ``I
think that most people can heal of the damage they've done themselves
and come back and change again. No one ever stops changing until they're
dead. And that means that everyone deserves as much freedom as possible,
if they aren't damaging other people's freedom with it, so that they can
make decisions as freely as possible. They should have lots of choices.
They should have lots of paths. That applies to \emph{everyone.} And my
being a leader would cut paths off for people, because they would think
they owed me obedience or something because of my power.'' Harry snorted
and shook his head. ``Power's only good if it's used to give people
choices and paths, not if it's just---I don't know, tossed around and
shaped into pretty lights.''

Vera regarded him in silence for a long moment. Harry watched her back.
She really \emph{did} seem to understand, he thought, as the seconds
passed in silence. He couldn't do anything about the secrets she'd
already discovered, but perhaps, if one person really \emph{did}
understand what he believed\ldots{}

Then Vera said softly, ``Everyone, Harry? Everyone deserves that?''

Harry frowned. ``Perhaps your Sight is deficient, then,'' he said. ``Yes,
\emph{everyone.} Former Death Eaters included. I would have thought you
would understand that, since you offered the Sanctuary to Peter.'' He
felt Peter's hand close tightly on his wrist for a moment, but didn't
look at him. He was still irritated with him.

Vera came a few steps nearer and then sat down on the grass, not seeming
to notice how cold and wet it was. Her eyes were gentle, deep with
sadness.

``If everyone deserves that,'' Vera whispered, ``then why don't you
deserve it, Harry?''

Harry turned his head away from her.

``I was just asking,'' said Vera. ``It seems a simple question, Harry.
You're encouraging other people to be selfish, to a certain point, and
discover all the wild beauty they can spin out of themselves. Why, then,
don't you want to discover what you can spin out of your own soul?''

``It's different,'' said Harry. ``For me, it's different.'' Oh, Merlin,
how he \emph{hated} this. He felt as though someone were peeling his
skin off in strips, leaving his soul exposed. \emph{No, it would have to
be something deeper than my soul. She's already seen that.}

``Tell me how,'' said Vera.

``If you've Seen it, why don't \emph{you} tell \emph{me}?'' Rudeness
should make her go away, Harry thought. It worked on most people. It was
one of his favorite distraction techniques. They would start getting
angry at a rude person, and not think clearly, or decide that a rude,
sullen person was not worth helping.

``All right,'' said Vera.

\emph{No! No, Merlin damn it, I didn't mean to make her do that!} Harry
whipped around again, not sure what he was going to do. Maybe there was
a spell on his lips, maybe he was going to strike at Vera. He didn't get
a chance to find out, since Peter wrapped him tightly in his arms, and
Harry couldn't do anything that would also hurt Peter. He struggled
miserably for a moment, but Peter held him fast.

``You really can't fathom that you're the same as anyone else,'' said
Vera, her voice low and relentless. ``You don't think you're worthy of
love unless you're doing things for other people, and even then, you
expect the love to be taken away the moment you fail a task or
disappoint someone else. You want others to maintain their health, but
if yours is worn down, you don't care, as long as the wearing out
benefits or frees another person. You're willing to forgive others for
the most extreme insults and harm against you, even abuse that should
never be forgiven, but you castigate yourself to death for the slightest
faults. You would intervene in a moment if you found someone else
suffering what you did. For yourself, you see it as normal. You are
interested in other people's souls to the extent of drowning yourself in
them, but you think that no one can know your own, because it's ugly and
uninteresting.'' She paused. ``I think that's most of it, Harry, the
core. You don't really see yourself as human, do you?''

\emph{Merlin}, this hurt, and Harry wanted her to stop. He caught his
breath and did what he could to push the hurt away from himself,
especially since Peter's arms had tightened around Harry and he was
making some absurd noise of horror. ``Of course I do,'' he said, throat
so tight that it pained him to speak. ``I have one head, two arms, two
legs, eyes and nose and ears in the right place---''

Vera reached out and placed a hand on his forehead. ``Harry,'' she said.
Her voice had a sound of tears. ``You have never allowed yourself to
heal. You have broken some webs and some barriers holding you back, but
those are only some of them---in fact, the ones you have broken are
almost all the ones that would prevent you from being of service to as
many people as possible. You've turned your focus from serving your
brother to serving others. You have not come to consider yourself worthy
of rest, or peace, or relaxation, or love. And there is no \emph{reason}
for that, not the logical ones that you convince yourself are there. You
know it, even, and that is why you did not want me to voice them aloud.
Laid before you like that, you know they're illogical.''

Harry twisted his head away from her hand, but then the only option was
burying his face in Peter's shoulder. He stiffened and held still
instead. ``You don't understand,'' he whispered, making sure they could
both hear his words. ``You're \emph{wrong}. It's just---this is just the
way it has to be.''

``It does not,'' said Vera. ``You cannot do \emph{everything}, Harry, and
no one expects that of you---save your mother, whom I would like to do
more than slap.'' Her voice deepened and darkened for a moment, then
returned to normal. ``You can indeed deserve what you would give others.
And I think, when we leave, you will see that.''

Harry turned back around to stare at her. He had to resist the
temptation to cuddle back into Peter. \emph{I knew that would happen. I
do want comfort, and that's a weakness I can't afford, now or ever.}
``What do you mean?''

Vera raised her eyebrows. ``Why, we are taking you back to the Sanctuary
with us, of course,'' she said. ``Your soul is torn nearly in two. I do
not need permission from my brothers and sisters in a case as bad as
this. You need the rest and the peace that you can find there to keep
from collapsing. And in a place where you can't hide, you will have no
way to avoid healing.''

Harry snarled. A wind blew past him, stinging his cheeks and stirring
Vera's neat bun, as his magic surged. ``I won't go,'' he said.

``Because people need you here,'' Vera surmised.

``Yes, exactly.''

``Are you not allowed to be selfish, then?'' Vera asked. ``Are you not
allowed to think about what you need every once in a while, Harry?''

``Please stop talking to me that way,'' said Harry.

``What way?''

``As if you actually cared. You can't. You're a stranger.''

``A Seer is no stranger to anyone she meets,'' said Vera quietly. ``Not
when she can cast one glance and know your soul. And I've had to learn
compassion across long years, since the first soul any Seer looks at is
her own, and I was---rather wanting, then.'' Her voice was wry. ``I know
that Peter told you Seers can't lie, Harry. And I'm not lying now. I do
want to take you back to the Sanctuary. I do think that you need to
rest, and that the outside world can do without you for at least a
month. And when the others gaze upon you, they will understand why I
think so. There is no one in the Sanctuary who will not care for you,
Harry.''

``Imagine it, Harry,'' Peter said gently. ``You can be with me and
Remus. We're reconciling, step by step. I mentioned that in my letter. I
know he'd like to see you.''

Harry realized, abruptly, that part of him did want to go, rather
savagely. But there was no way that he could let his commitments lapse
like that.

``No,'' he said.

``Harry---'' Vera began.

Harry's heard jerked abruptly to the side, and he gasped. Peter
tightened his arms around him as if he were preparing to Apparate right
there and there.

``Harry?'' he said, somewhere beyond the distant, watery world of agony
in which Harry was now immersed.

Harry felt as though a fishhook had lodged behind his cheekbone. He
understood it a moment later. Draco needed him---didn't just want his
presence, but genuinely \emph{needed} him. A moment after that, Harry
could hear him screaming in intense pain, a sound that made Harry's own
ears ring and his body clench.

``I can't,'' he said, to Peter and Vera and anyone else who might be
listening, and gathered himself, and \emph{jumped}, pushing against the
anti-Apparition wards as he headed straight to Draco's side.

\chapter{Julia Malfoy}\label{chapter-34-julia-malfoy}

Draco nodded decisively, and stood. One hand fingered the vials of dark
potion in his pocket, but he quickly pulled it away and folded it
casually across his chest, in case anyone should notice. Then he worried
that either Blaise or Vince would notice \emph{that}, and settled for a
casual-sounding cough.

``It's no good,'' he announced. The lie he'd prepared didn't roll off
his lips as smoothly as he thought it should, after he'd practiced it in
his head most of the day, but that was all right. Blaise gave him only a
faintly interested glance, and Vince, bent over his own Charms homework,
grunted. ``I can't find the information I'll need in our textbook. I
have to go the library.''

Vince grunted again. Blaise cocked his head. ``For what subject?'' he
asked.

``I---what?'' Somehow, Draco hadn't got as far as planning that part
out. His lie was designed to get him alone so that he could take the
potion, not to stand up under close scrutiny.

``What subject are you looking for?'' Blaise had caught the stuttering
hesitation in his words, and was studying him curiously now, one finger
poised between the pages of his book. Even Vince was looking up,
blinking as if it took a lot of effort to recall his mind from the
depths of his study. ``I'm behind on Transfiguration. Maybe I could go
with you and find some books, too.''

Draco managed to give a shaky snort. He hoped Blaise wouldn't pick up on
the fact that it was shaky, but knew that was a little too much to
expect. Blaise had been Sorted into Slytherin for a reason. ``It's not
Transfiguration,'' he said, rather than make up a subject.

Silence. Blaise raised his eyebrows, and when Draco said nothing, he
smiled. ``Well? What subject is it, then?''

Draco scowled at him. ``Herbology, if you \emph{must} know.''

That cured the problem. Blaise had no use for Herbology, and had got his
last three detentions for mimicking Professor Sprout behind her back. He
shrugged and turned back to his book. Draco huffed and made for the
door.

``Draco?''

Wondering when in the name of sanity his roommates had started paying so
much attention to his business, Draco summoned a sickly smile and turned
around to look at Vince. ``Yes?''

``Are you all right?'' Vince asked.

Draco sighed as he eyed the other boy. Vince was being more perceptive
this year, now that he didn't have Greg around to absorb most of his
attention. Draco just wished he would be perceptive at someone
\emph{else.} ``I am,'' he said. ``I just don't like being behind in
\emph{Herbology}, of all subjects, and I wish that the professors
wouldn't assign us homework on bloody \emph{Halloween.}''

Vince, apparently reassured, nodded at him and then tackled Charms again
with a heavily furrowed brow. Greg would have helped him if he were
here, Draco knew. Greg was marginally better in Charms, and the two had
been close enough friends to help each other in every subject.

But Draco had something more important to do than help anyone with
random homework assignments or feel random pangs of guilt, so he slipped
out of the room and through the common room. To his delight, Pansy
wasn't among the Slytherin students sprawled lazily on couches and
practicing spells or writing essays or discussing professional
Quidditch. She was the only other one who'd been watching him closely
enough this year that she'd probably notice Draco's distraction.

\emph{Odd, how I notice that, now,} Draco thought, as he ducked out of
the dungeons. \emph{I didn't really think about Pansy that much for the
last few weeks.}

Well, the potion was made.

Draco wondered if it was odd that his attention had managed to turn so
effectually to other things when that potion was finished, and then
shrugged. In a few hours, he'd have far different concerns. He was
confident that he could summon Julia and gain the power from her that
he'd need to be equal to Harry.

And then, Harry wouldn't need to look anywhere else ever again for
comfort and love, the way that he did now with those stupid lessons and
the hours he spent chatting with people Draco didn't like and knew were
beneath him, like that prat Smith. He wouldn't feel that Draco was
unworthy of him in any way. And Draco wouldn't feel like he had to
cringe in Harry's shadow, either. Things could finally be the way they
were meant to be, as a relationship of equals.

He patted the potion vials in his pocket and quickened his pace. He knew
the perfect place to summon a Malfoy spirit. The research in the library
had provided him with more information than just the clues to making the
potion and which ancestor he should choose for his calling.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Draco took a final look around the hidden room, and then nodded. Yes, he
was right, and the books had been right. No one had disturbed this place
since the last time a Malfoy had been here, his great-grandfather. He
let the door fall shut with a little \emph{snick}, and stepped forward
into the center of the place.

Superficially, this was only one of Hogwarts' many abandoned rooms. To a
Malfoy's eyes, though, it was far more. Even as Draco watched, soft
wards and sigils lit up on the walls, streaming power in brilliant
flames of blue-gray, the color of their old crest, the color of the
stone the Manor was built of. They whispered \emph{welcome} to him in a
voice that purred down his spine.

One of the few things that he would never envy Harry, Draco thought as
he extracted the vials from his pocket, was his blood family. They
didn't care anything for him, or they did but were extremely remiss
about showing it. Draco had never had to doubt that his parents loved
him, and that he came from one of the most important wizarding families
in Great Britain.

\emph{I'll make that family proud tonight,} he thought, as his gaze
locked on the center of the floor. There was no circle visible there,
but he could feel the pressure of power, building almost to pain, that
said there had once been. His great-grandfather would have conducted
experiments on prisoners for Grindelwald there, though so secretly that
no one had ever figured out the identity of Grindelwald's prime
torturer. Draco had only been able to put it together because of family
stories combined with the hints and tinges of fancy in the books.

He drew his wand from his robe pocket opposite to the one where he'd put
the vials, and held it out in front of him. ``\emph{Circino!}''

\emph{See, Harry, I do so listen,} he thought smugly as the spell blazed
a circle into the stones, shining the same blue-gray color as the wards.
If one wasn't going to be a necromancer and make the sacrifices---like
not speaking more than twice a year---that Pansy's father had, then they
had to draw a circle to contain the summoned spirit. Draco had read the
books, and listened when Harry lectured him about it. He wasn't going to
be careless. He knew that Julia's power would raise him in many people's
eyes, and lead to enough risks of its own after he had it. He certainly
wouldn't just snatch it sloppily as he went about getting it.

\emph{That's the thing Harry doesn't understand,} he thought sadly as he
drew out the silver goblets he'd written home for and begged his mother
prettily to send him. \emph{He doesn't know what having that much magic
really means. He doesn't see the way people half-bow to him even when
he's standing still and not looking in their direction. Well, I know it,
and once I have that power, I can defend him and let him do what he
wants with his own magic.}

That was so agreeable to Draco that he spent a moment daydreaming about
it before he uncorked the first vial, the one that held the thicker
version of the potion, and filled one of the silver goblets with it.
Then he filled the second goblet with the lighter, thinner portion. It
steamed as he poured it, and a thin tendril of silver smoke curled up
over the lip of the goblet towards him.

\emph{Patience, patience,} Draco thought at it, shaking his head, and
then closed his eyes and made an effort to calm himself down. It was
difficult, when he knew the culmination of his dreams for the last
several months waited just a few inches away.

Annoyingly, when he cleared his mind, the voices he heard were his
mother's and Harry's, not exclaiming in wonder over his newfound magic,
but encouraging him to wait, to promise that he wouldn't drink the
potion.

Draco snorted and opened his eyes. He \emph{had} kept his promise to
Harry. Harry had asked him to wait when he made the potion. Draco
\emph{had} waited, and hadn't used it on Halloween morning. But it was
Halloween night now, and he had to drink it in just a few minutes if he
wanted to be able to summon Julia Malfoy's ghost and negotiate her power
out of her before the night ended.

His mother\ldots{}Draco winced. Well. He was still breaking his promise
to her, and using the potion on this night of all nights. But she was
pureblood. She would understand when he emerged from this and explained
the full implications of what he'd done. She had always wanted his
happiness and his calm, clear, secure future. Draco was only taking a
few extra steps to claim that future for himself. She would understand
once she saw how he had become a Malfoy magical heir and made himself a
worthy partner for Harry in one go.

He stepped forward, careful not to touch and therefore smudge the
glowing blue-gray line of the circle, and set the goblet with the
lighter portion of the potion inside it. Then he lifted his goblet and
saluted the circle.

``Julia Malfoy,'' he said, invoking the spirit he wanted by name. ``I am
your descendant, Draco Malfoy, and I ask your compliance and
attendance.'' He swallowed the thick potion all at once.

The potion gushed down his throat, seeming to move faster than he could
possibly have swallowed it. Draco expected to gag, but he didn't. What
happened was that his stomach surged and then fell still, and his sight
began to shimmer along the edges. Suddenly the blue-gray light seemed
much more present and clear than he remembered it, and the stone became
less solid. It felt as if he were dreaming.

He saw the goblet inside the circle tilt, and the lighter half of the
potion ran out into an invisible mouth.

Draco hissed under his breath. This was it, then. He had reached out,
and it had been up to his ancestress to respond. Obviously, she'd wanted
to. He smiled, and a flash of buoyant confidence passed through him. He
sat down calmly outside the circle and waited for her to show up.

Trails of silver smoke like the one that had circled the rim of the
second goblet rose and began to twine around each other. Draco watched
in fascination as they mingled and nuzzled each other like serpents
mating, and then linked together so thickly that he could not make out
the space that had been between them just a moment before. Then he
realized that the snakes, together, formed a woman's slender, pale arm.

Draco swallowed. The taste of the potion still lingered on his tongue,
heavy and thick.

Other trails of smoke formed other body parts, all floating
independently of each other: another arm, an ankle, a hand, several
fingers, a nose. Draco found himself looking down, not wanting to see
what would happen if Julia materialized naked. But he snapped his head
up quickly enough when the silver images all collided, and then the
specter of a woman floated there, just barely colored in.

Draco caught his breath. Julia Malfoy was smaller than he had thought
she would be, but then, people tended to be smaller back then, weren't
they? What mattered was that she stood proud and slender, her chin
lifted, and her blue eyes fixed on him with full understanding. Down her
back cascaded a wave of silvery hair with a subtle, unnatural shimmer to
it. She wore an old-fashioned silvery gown, or maybe that was only the
way the smoke made it seem. She didn't look much like him, or Lucius,
but his father would have approved anyway. She was very
\emph{Malfoyish.}

Draco licked his lips and hoped the spell had worked as it should,
letting Julia understand his language. He knew she had spoken a
different variety of English then, and he wouldn't trust his Latin with
a woman who probably spoke it natively. ``I---hello. I'm Draco Malfoy.
You know who I am?''

For a moment, Julia stood motionless, her head tilted as though she were
listening to a distant echo instead of his voice. But then her eyes
fixed on his face, and she nodded rapidly, the motion almost heron-like
in its fluidity.

``You are my many-times-distant-son,'' she said, her voice as ethereal
as her hair was. ``Or you could not have summoned me. We must be bound
by direct ties of blood.''

Draco smiled. He'd been a little overawed by her at first, but that was
changing as he saw how firmly she stayed within the circle. In fact, its
sides flared with blue-grayish power when Julia drifted towards them,
and chased her back into the middle. He was obviously in control here,
and the necromantic magic had worked just \emph{fine}, damn Harry and
his objections. ``Yes,'' he said. ``I'm a descendant of your son
Octavius.'' That just made Julia raise her eyebrows at him, and Draco
was reminded of Professor McGonagall. He pushed the thought away. It
wasn't a comfortable one to have when he was supposed to be becoming an
adult. ``I used a potion that would make me a magical heir of someone in
my family, since I can't be my father's, and I turned up your spirit as
being in sympathy-song with mine. So I called you.''

Julia regarded him in silence again for a long time. Now, Draco was
rather reminded of Harry. He forced himself not to fidget, though. He
hadn't had his childhood training for nothing.

``You want my magic,'' she said.

``To be your magical heir, yes,'' said Draco, and nodded. Then he
stopped nodding. He was sure that too many wild, uncontrolled motions of
his head on his neck were making him look like an idiot. ``I knew you
were a Lady, or powerful enough to be a Lady. I'd like to be the heir of
someone powerful.''

``Why do you want this strength?'' Julia asked softly.

``I'm in love with someone who's going to be a Lord,'' said Draco. ``Or,
well, he could be a Lord, but he doesn't want to. Right now, anyway.''
He would have to see if he could get Harry to change his mind about
that. Lords had traditionally taken paths that were above politics most
of the time. Harry was too blindly noble to do so, but he would have to
listen to Draco once he had the same kind of magic Harry did. ``I want to
make sure that I can protect and support him as an \emph{equal}. It
would kill him to love someone who wasn't an equal partner to him. Kill
us both, really.''

Once again, Julia scrutinized him. Draco wondered what was taking her so
long. She could easily enough have said yes or no by now. Of course, she
would have to say yes, so why was she taking so bloody long to make up
her mind?

``Binding this person to you would improve the fortunes of our family?''
Julia asked.

\emph{What---Oh. I should have known she would care about that.} This
was, after all, the woman who had seduced her own brother to keep the
Malfoy line going forward and to spare her brother from the shame of
having an illegitimate child or a cast-off wife. ``Yes,'' said Draco.
``Yes, it would. There are two other Lords alive right now, but they're
blinded by each other, locked in this stupid struggle of Light and Dark.
Harry has the power to break the deadlock. He'll change the world. And I
think the Malfoys should stand with him. I'm his best friend. I'm going
to be his lover, in time. I promise you, I'm doing this for my own
advantage, but it's not going to hurt our family.'' He smiled at Julia,
and tried to make his tone coaxing. ``And we've had a magical heir in
the direct descent for the last thirteen generations.''

``Perhaps that has been long enough,'' said Julia softly.

Draco blinked at her. ``Why would you say that?'' he protested. ``Don't
you want the honor and glory of the Malfoys to go on?''

``Not at the price of dishonor,'' said Julia. ``Tell me, child, why did
you choose me in particular? Was it because of a true sympathy between
your soul and mine, or because of the power that I wielded?''

Draco narrowed his eyes. ``You sounded similar to me. I know that you
were subtle and cunning and careful about how you used your power. I
would be, too. I want it mostly to protect Harry and to assure the
fortunes of our family. I promise.''

``Tell me, child,'' said Julia, ``why do you think I never declared
myself a Lady?''

``Well,'' said Draco, ``because you could get more done working behind
the scenes. And besides, I thought Lords and Ladies at that time who
declared themselves got wound up in all sorts of petty battles.''
\emph{Sort of like the Dark Lord and Dumbledore. Maybe I don't want
Harry to declare himself a Lord after all, if that stupidity would
overtake him.} ``You did things with cunning, like the way that you
seduced your brother. A Dark Lady would be too open for that.''

Julia's eyes narrowed, and her lips pinched. It took Draco a moment to
realize she was smiling. She was one of the few people he had ever met
who didn't smile by showing her teeth. ``So I would have declared myself
a Dark Lady, but for my need to convince others I was harmless,'' she
said.

Draco nodded. ``I can do the same thing. I don't need to be a Dark Lord
to be happy. I just need Harry, and to be equal to Harry, and to know
that he respects and loves me as much as I do him.''

Julia closed her eyes. ``Child,'' she breathed, ``you have badly
misjudged my character.''

Draco stared at her. \emph{No. That isn't possible.} ``If you weren't in
sympathy with me,'' he said aloud, ``you wouldn't have responded. So I
got that part right.''

Julia pinned him with a fathomless stare. ``Child---''

``\emph{Don't} call me that.''

``You are worthy of no other title,'' said Julia, with maddening calm.
``Child, this is Halloween, the night when spirits are strongest. I was
able to cross the barriers because I chose to answer your call. I was
curious, and I thought that one of my own blood who would call me out of
my long rest must have a compelling reason to do so.'' She narrowed her
eyes. ``Imagine my displeasure when I find out that that is \emph{not}
the case.''

Draco sprang to his feet and watched as she floated towards the edge of
the circle. ``But I made the circle,'' he whispered.

Julia broke the blue-gray light with a wave of her hand. At once, Draco
fell to his knees, clutching his head. He could sense the magic around
her, buzzing, singing swarms of power. The circle had dimmed it before,
but it was abundantly clear now that Julia had only been staying in
those confines because she had wanted to.

And she had most definitely been a Lady in life, declared or not. Draco
had no doubt that this power was the strength of someone who could
destroy him with another wave of her hand, if she chose. Dumbledore's
power was familiar, Harry's comforting. This was like being locked in a
room with a wild panther, a beast that already had iron claws fastened
around his temples.

He could feel his heart beating fast in his ears, his breath coming
noisy in his lungs, with terror.

``Understand,'' Julia whispered. ``If I had declared myself Lady of
anything, it would have been of the Light.''

Draco rolled on his back and stared up at her. He didn't know when he'd
dropped to the floor, but there he was, and there Julia was, hovering
over him, the air around her flaring with fire.

``Oh,'' said Julia, ``not that I particularly wanted to, or that that
was where my first inclinations lay. But it was a matter of necessity.
Before any of my other magic awoke but the most minor accidental
mishaps, there was one particular gift, at the foundation of it all.
That gift wouldn't let me choose any other set of ideals but the Light.
I would have destroyed myself if I tried.''

She smiled at Draco. ``I don't particularly want to go rampaging around
Hogwarts,'' she said. ``Lords and children who should not have developed
their power so young, \emph{faugh}. I will return to my rest. On the
other hand, I have no wish to let you go without granting you a gift,
Draco. That was what you wished for, wasn't it? To be my magical heir?''

Draco watched, beyond fear now, as Julia dipped a hand into the pocket
of her silvery gown and drew out something like a swarm of silver
singing bees.

``You need to learn manners,'' she said. ``And patience, and
consideration for the \emph{feelings} of others. I would not have it
said that my heir was without any of those qualities. I think your lover
will appreciate it, too. This is not Lord-level power, but it did teach
me more than any other ability I possessed about moving in the world.''

She blew on her hand, and the swarm of bees soared across the air and
towards him like a puff of dandelion down, falling on and curling around
his shoulders.

``Enjoy the gift, Draco,'' she said. ``Make me proud, my heir.'' Then
she vanished, and the blue-gray light went with her.

Draco lay there in the darkness for a moment, breathing---

And then claws dug into his \emph{brain}, sculpting it, twitching and
twisting it into new pathways, and bees stung his skin, and swords
scraped along his spine, and unfamiliar fluff pressed close on his arms,
and he screamed, and screamed, and fainted for a moment, caught in the
overwhelming pain.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Hush, Draco. It's all right. Wake up. I'm here now.''

Draco forced his eyes open slowly, sobbing, and found Harry there. Harry
held him close, and his magic flooded the room, chasing away the
lingering pain of Julia's. Draco felt it swarm him, drape him, hold him
close.

The pain ceased at once. Draco let his head fall back with a grateful
gasp. He breathed around the tears, and managed to whisper, ``What was
that? What did she give me?''

``She?'' Harry's hands went tight on his body. ``Draco---you summoned
Julia, didn't you? You bloody \emph{idiot}. I told you to wait!''

``I waited,'' Draco protested. He winced, and touched his head. It was
throbbing, and not with the pain of suddenly released magic. \emph{What
gift did she give me?} ``I waited until I knew you were in the meeting,
and then I summoned her. I didn't know that she was going to do
\emph{that.}''

``What did she do?'' Harry shifted Draco so that he sat with his head on
one of Harry's shoulders, Harry's arm wrapped tightly around his upper
back. Harry was still smaller than Draco was, but the presence of his
magic served to make him effectively larger. ``I felt your pain through
that spell I've been using to keep track of when you need me, but you
don't have any physical wounds.''

``Mental,'' Draco whispered. ``Something mental. It has to be.'' He felt
a growing irritation against his ancestress, and he concentrated on it
to distract himself from his fear, and the chant in the back of his mind
that told him he'd done a very, very, \emph{very} stupid thing.

Harry gently gripped and lifted his chin, locking his eyes with Draco's.
``You trust me to use Legilimency?''

Draco swallowed and nodded. He didn't think it could hurt worse than the
pain Julia had inflicted on him.

Harry murmured the spell, and his eyes went wide and dreamy. Draco
watched his face while he stared in silence. Harry looked as if he'd
suffered some massive shock, and, sweet Merlin, had the circles around
his eyes always been \emph{that} pronounced? It didn't look as though
he'd been getting \emph{any} sleep.

\emph{That's nonsense, the last time I looked at him he---}

Draco caught his breath. \emph{And when was the last time I really
looked at him? When was the last time I really touched him, except to
yank him around? When was the last time we talked about anything other
than the blasted potion?}

For the first time, he could see the last two months as they were,
without a veil over them. What he saw appalled him. He'd demanded
Harry's company and interest in the potion, and everything he'd wanted,
he got. But Harry wasn't normally the type to be that compliant with
anyone.

\emph{Of course he's not. But he's exactly the type to figure out what
you want and give it to you, while concealing his other actions. He
risked his own life first year to defend his brother like the Muggle
wanted. And who knows what he's been doing this time? I haven't exactly
been paying enough attention to him to notice.}

\emph{Oh, Merlin, I'm such an idiot.}

Draco shuddered once and brought his own arms up to wrap fiercely around
Harry. \emph{Shit. Oh, shit. He could have died, and I was too wrapped
up in that potion and that bloody book to notice.}

Harry let out a surprised little grunt, but didn't break his tranced
gaze into Draco's eyes. A moment later, he leaned back from him, stared
him in the face, and sighed.

``What?'' Draco demanded. ``What is it?''

``You're not going to like this,'' said Harry reluctantly. ``Not if
that's what I think it is. Look---focus on me for a moment.''

\emph{Not a hard task}, Draco thought, and did what he should have been
doing all along.

Harry narrowed his eyes, and then Draco jumped as a quick wave of heat
seemed to assault his face, like a sudden wash of sunburn. He held up a
hand in front of him, but the air didn't feel hot. It was just---heat,
on his cheeks and his forehead and his eyebrows.

Then the heat went away. Harry rubbed his face with one hand.

``What?'' Draco demanded again.

``You felt that because I was feeling angry,'' said Harry quietly. ``I
let a bit of my anger out from behind my Occlumency shields. She's made
you into an empath, Draco, the kind who senses emotions as physical
sensations on your skin.'' He shook his head. ``How do you manage to
\emph{do} these things to yourself?''

``So says the master of changing his life around,'' said Draco, but it
was empty sarcasm. His mind was reeling. This couldn't be true. He'd
heard about empaths. They were---they were \emph{soggy}. They were
people who felt it when some little girl lost her kitten, or when some
soppy witch broke up with her boyfriend, or when a first-year cried
because she was away from home for the first time and scared. And while
they could block out the emotions, they couldn't forget they'd felt
them. They usually turned out to be disgustingly kind and helpful to the
people who'd been hurting, even if it was just to cure the pain so they
wouldn't feel it anymore, or to spread joy and happiness so that they
could bask in that instead.

He remembered what Julia had said only too well, though.

\emph{You need to learn manners. And patience, and consideration for
the} feelings \emph{of others.}

``She did,'' Draco moaned, and put his head in his hands. ``I'm
fucked.''

``What's more,'' said Harry, his voice going dry, ``you can feel
emotional impressions left behind on objects, if they're strong enough.
I think you must have been feeling the echoes of pain once practiced in
this room. It was a torture chamber, wasn't it?''

Draco shuddered. ``Does that mean that I'm going to start feeling them
again the moment you and your magic move away from me?''

``No,'' said Harry. ``I can teach you how to shield, or weave temporary
shields for you myself. But it's quite a strong gift, Draco. I suspect
Julia was an empath who was never quite able to escape the feelings she
received from the people around her.''

\emph{No wonder she couldn't declare herself a Dark Lady,} Draco thought
in misery. \emph{And I---}

``Harry, will you ever respect me?'' he whispered. ``I wanted to be your
equal so that you would respect me, but now I'm going to be \emph{wet},
and I'm going to hurt when other people hurt, and it's ridiculous, and I
can't believe she did this to me---''

Heat blasted his arms. Harry yanked himself away abruptly and stood,
pacing around the room and waving his hands. Draco winced and put his
hands up in front of his face, which, of course, did not stop the
feeling that his eyebrows were being cooked.

\emph{But Harry could shield his rage behind Occlumency shields.}

\emph{Unless he was really, really angry with me.}

Draco swallowed.

``You were so bloody stupid,'' said Harry, in a growl that was building
towards a roar. ``I asked you not to do this. Your mother asked you not
to do this. I \emph{trusted} you not to do this, Draco.'' He turned and
glared at him. Draco cowered.

``And now you did it,'' said Harry, ``and it's changed the rest of your
life. It's always going to be there. And I have to take care of you,
and, Merlin, how am I gong to do that on top of the million other things
I have to do? I have half a mind to just leave you to stew in the
emotions you're receiving, and burst into tears every time you pass
someone who just failed an exam. It would be what you deserve, for doing
this to yourself, and to me, and to other people.'' He blew out a hard
enough breath to make his fringe shiver and show his scar. Draco blinked
and touched the center of his forehead. A faint pain was there.

``Harry,'' he said.

His voice must have been soft enough to get Harry's attention through
the tirade, because Harry glared at him. ``\emph{Yes}?''

``Have you been having nightmares about the Dark Lord again?'' Draco
asked. \emph{And how in the world didn't I notice?} Guilt was gnawing
out a comfortable hole for itself in his stomach.

Harry's face was wiped clear of emotion in a second, and the hot,
prickly sensation on Draco's arms and face faded. What replaced it was a
slick, slimy coolness that Draco was pretty sure was fear. Harry took a
step back from Draco, watching him closely.

``Do you know what you have done to yourself?'' he whispered.

``About what he deserves, I would say, Harry.''

Draco jumped and looked over Harry's shoulder. A plain witch was coming
through the door, shaking her head and clucking her tongue at nothing in
particular. Her looks were nothing to owl home about, but her gaze was
piercing, and Draco felt uncomfortable underneath it.

``Empathy,'' said the stranger. ``Yes, and Merlin knows, he needs it.
About time that cramped little soul opened up to other people's
experiences. He's been selfish for too long.'' Draco wondered,
indignantly, whose soul she was calling \emph{cramped}.

``I have to shield him---'' Harry began.

``Teach him how to shield,'' said the stranger. ``Then set him to
researching empaths. Let him learn how to use that gift, since he's not
about to get rid of it. My name is Vera, and I'm a Seer,'' she added, on
catching Draco's blank expression. ``And I would snatch you both away to
our Sanctuary and show you how to shield and teach Harry how to rest, if
I didn't think it would do you more good to be here, and that Harry
won't leave without you.''

``I don't need to be taught how to rest.'' Harry was radiating prickly
heat all down Draco's arms and face again.

But to Draco, what mattered the most was another part of her little
speech. He looked at Harry, who was glaring at the witch with his arms
folded. That didn't conceal the deep exhaustion around his eyes, or the
way he hunched in on himself as if he would roll up into a ball like a
hedgehog any moment. Not anymore.

Draco bit his lip. Both his mother and father had taught him about what
to do when he was in the wrong. Apologize only if he really must.
Apologies didn't mean anything.

\emph{Atonement does.}

After his father had been caught acting as a Death Eater, he couldn't
just say that he was sorry and get on with things. He'd had to show that
he was an upstanding member of the wizarding community: get involved
with Hogwarts, influence the Ministry in acceptably subtle ways, donate
money to St. Mungo's and similar. He'd had to actually change the way he
acted.

And if Harry wouldn't leave and go to this Sanctuary place without him,
then the least Draco could do was change the way he acted.

``I'll take care of him,'' he said quietly to the Seer. Vera glanced at
him again, and Draco still didn't like her gaze, but he did like the way
she nodded to him.

``Don't be an idiot, Draco,'' said Harry. ``\emph{I'm} taking care of
\emph{you}. I need to shield you, and it's obvious you can't be trusted
to keep yourself out of trouble for one red-hot second---''

``We'll take care of each other, then,'' said Draco, and thought he
could stand now. He focused on Harry, and supposed that the wash of cool
air coming over him was surprise. He smiled. He thought he could get to
like it.

He decided to speak as if the Seer wasn't in the room. For what he
wanted to say to Harry, it didn't matter if they had an audience or not.

``I wanted a Lord's power so that I could have a partnership with you
that was absolutely equal, Harry,'' Draco told him. ``And so that I
could protect you and take care of you. But Julia didn't give that to
me. And I made stupid mistakes in trying to acquire it, so I won't try
any more.''

\emph{Although if another way comes along\ldots{}}

Draco pushed the thought out of his head. \emph{Change, remember?} ``I
have this empathy instead,'' he said, staring into Harry's eyes. ``I
know that you don't feel you can trust me right now.'' Distrust was
another uncomfortable feeling, like stepping on sticks with his bare
feet. ``But I promise you, you can always trust me to protect you and
defend you and be your friend. And if I ever feel anything from you that
says I haven't done that, now I can correct myself right away.''

``But---'' Harry started to protest.

``If it's about not wanting to impose on me, stuff it,'' said Draco.
``\emph{Everyone's} going to be imposing on me equally, at least until I
can learn to control this damn ability. I did this to myself, and I'll
have to learn to live with it.''

``If it's about not wanting me to care for you, I don't want to hear
that, either. I've always cared for you, Harry, except for these last
two months, and I really am sorry about that.'' There. Now the cool
feeling of surprise was back---well, more like an icy gale on his face,
really. That would be shock, then. ``I was a prat, a git, a brat,
whatever other names you'd like to call me.''

``I don't expect you to spend all your time teaching me. I'm going to
teach myself a lot of it.'' \emph{If only so I can be sure that Harry
isn't overworking himself using some shield technique that drains him.}
``I wanted to be a magical heir to someone in my family, and I \emph{am}.
I wanted to be more powerful, and I \emph{am}. I can't really complain.
I got what I wanted.'' He smiled, and knew it was faint, but these next
words were so important, and it hurt to say them. ``I---I'm not your
absolute equal in power, but I hope that you'll still consent to regard
me as your friend.''

Harry stared at him intently. His eyes cut more deeply than the Seer's
did. Draco met him gaze for gaze. He meant what he said. He would invite
Harry to use Legilimency on him if he wanted to be absolutely sure.

Harry whispered, ``I need to enter your mind and show you how to
shield.''

``Of course,'' said Draco, and dropped his barriers, meeting Harry's
eyes as he whispered \emph{Legilimens} again.

Harry was in his mind in a moment, delicately spinning shields out of
images of quicksilver, showing Draco how he overlaid them on certain
aspects of his mind so that his magic was contained but not frozen; a
solid container was bad. Harry would drape the pools on their targets
for right now. It would cost him no effort to maintain them. It would be
up to Draco, after this, to study and figure out how to do it for
himself, and how to let the barriers part so that he could use his gift
when he wanted.

If, of course, Draco was going to do that.

Draco took the opportunity to marshal his own emotions, and keep them
patiently back until Harry was done with the shields. Then he sprang
them on Harry, so that Harry could not doubt what he felt.

Patience. Trust. True repentance, and the promise to do better.
Friendship. Love. Agony that he hadn't seen what was happening to Harry
earlier. Anger against the stupidity of his concern with the potion.
Pleading, because Draco couldn't stifle that, and because he didn't want
Harry to break off their friendship---but neither did he want Harry to
forgive him just because this was Harry and Harry forgave everybody. He
wanted to know how low he had fallen in his friend's eyes, and how far
he would have to climb to work himself back up.

It was terrifying. It was exhilarating. It was \emph{fine}, because he
was doing this in his mind, and Harry was the only one who could see it,
and Draco did not mind, at least in this moment, about Harry seeing
everything.

He felt Harry's wonder, and his shock, and then he drew back. Draco
opened his eyes, blinked, and looked steadily at his friend.

Harry had his head cocked on one side, like that phoenix of his,
studying Draco as if he'd never seen him before. Then he slowly, slowly
nodded. ``All right,'' he whispered. ``I---it might take some time before
I can trust that you're not going to annihilate yourself, Draco, but
I'll \emph{have} to trust you, because I've got too many other things to
do. I can't follow you around all the time to make sure you keep your
promises.''

Draco nodded, and refused to blurt out his disappointment at that
verdict. He couldn't. It wouldn't be fair. If he was ever to come to
matter to Harry \emph{more} than, and not just as much as, all his other
duties and obligations, then it would have to be by his own efforts.

\emph{His brother redeemed himself in Harry's eyes. I'm not going to say
that that bloody prat can do anything better than I can.}

``Better results than I expected when I followed you here.'' Vera broke
quietly in again. ``I must ask you, Harry, if you won't reconsider
coming to the Sanctuary. A month alone would do you wonders.''

Harry looked at her and shook his head.

``May I ask why?'' Vera's voice was soft enough to sound like floating
dandelion fluff, and Draco saw tears edging her eyes.

``I do have things to do here,'' said Harry. ``But that's only part of
the reason. The other part is that I don't want to constantly be around
people who can see me all the time, in a way that I can't see them. I've
spent long enough with people who could control me, who had some
advantage over me that I couldn't counter. Not ever again.''

``Draco will be able to see part of you that no one else does, now,''
said Vera. Draco wondered, for a moment furious, why she'd brought that
up---to try and coax Harry along with her, or just because it was true?

Harry blinked. ``But he's \emph{Draco},'' he said. ``And I trust him.''

Draco had to turn his head away, or he was going to have an impossibly
improper and soppy expression on his face. He furtively wiped at his
eyes, and wondered if Harry would ever know how much those words had
meant to him.

``I see,'' said Vera. ``Well. I will not convince you to come along
against your will, Harry.''

``You seemed pretty damn determined to try, earlier.'' Harry said that
in a snarl.

``My apologies, there,'' said Vera. ``I simply assumed that once you
heard about what your soul looked like and what the Sanctuary was, you
would of course want to come.'' She sighed, a light sound. ``Please
remember that the Sanctuary is always open to you. For the school
holidays, or the summer.''

``I have a guardian,'' said Harry, in a hedgehog-voice.

Vera said nothing else that Draco could hear. The door opened and shut
behind her, though.

``Draco?'' Harry said a moment later.

Draco turned and faced his friend, and saw that his eyes had deepened
with such intensity as to almost change their color. ``Yes?'' he asked.
He couldn't not have, with that look coming at him.

``I have to know that you mean it,'' said Harry. ``That you're really
going to work at learning empathy and shielding. If you backslide on me
now, I won't be able to trust you again.''

Draco lifted his hand and held it up in front of him, palm presented to
Harry. ``I swear it,'' he said. ``On my honor as a Malfoy, by Merlin and
my magic.'' He paused, searching Harry's face, and found what he needed
there. ``On my honor as your friend.''

Then he stretched out his hand in front of him, in the simple sort of
gesture he and Harry hadn't shared in so long, and waited.

Harry sidled close to him, still looking like a wild, bruised thing, and
then clasped his hand.

And then he actually moved even closer and hugged Draco, his body going
totally relaxed for a moment. Draco held him close, exulting, well aware
of how fragile this was and what might happen to shatter it, as Harry
whispered, ``I missed you.''

\emph{Thank you,} he thought fervently, to Harry and perhaps even to
Julia. \emph{Thank you for giving me a second chance. I promise, I won't
screw this one up.}

``I missed you, too,'' he whispered.

\chapter{Explosions}\label{chapter-35-explosions}

\emph{Harry dreamed.}

``Welcome home, my lord.'' Bellatrix's voice was soft and exultant as
she steadied the small throne on the ground. ``Oh, welcome home at
last.''

Voldemort's hissing laughter came from the center of the chair. Harry
still couldn't see him, though he could see Bellatrix and the chair
better in the dim half-light of dawn than he had in his last vision. He
snuck around them in a circle, watching carefully. He still didn't think
he was actually present, but this area where they had landed was more
open than the forest where Harry had seen them last time. Harry could
see a long stretch of empty beach plunging down to meet the water, and
beyond that, a waste of equally empty downs.

Nagini slithered around the chair, and hissed something that Harry's
ears translated as, ``\emph{Are you comfortable, dear Master?}''

``\emph{Always, with you near,}'' Voldemort hissed back. Parseltongue
didn't sound that much different from English to Harry, at least while
he was speaking it, but Voldemort's voice managed to make the innocent
snake language sound foul and perverse. He gave a little shudder that
made his fur bristle, and kept watching.

``We must move,'' Voldemort told Bellatrix. ``Nagini needs a warm place,
and so will I. And then---then the sun.'' He was laughing again, and
Harry fixed his eyes on the ground, the soft sand beneath his paws, so
that he wouldn't have to watch the expression on Bellatrix's face when
she listened to the laughter. She looked as if she considered it richest
music.

``Yes, my lord,'' the Death Eater said, and scooped up the chair. Harry
stared despite himself at the end of her right wrist. It was capped
with---something. He thought it was not a hand, but it shimmered and
flexed like moonlight on water, and it obviously gripped like a hand
even if it wasn't one.

The dream moved on, tracking Voldemort and Bellatrix and Nagini across
the sand, and Harry perforce followed. The pain in the center of his
forehead was growing worse, but he didn't know why. This scene was
almost peaceful.

Until they climbed the first down off the beach, of course, and met a
Muggle walking alone, whistling to himself. He paused and stared at
Bellatrix with his mouth open.

Nagini killed him, since Bellatrix's hands were rather occupied. Harry
supposed it was a more merciful death than he could have had, given how
Bellatrix liked to torture her victims, but it hardly mattered as he
watched Nagini's teeth and coils bear down, and heard the quick scream
the Muggle gave before that was choked off. And watching Bellatrix tear
a bit from the body and bring it back to feed to the invisible thing in
the chair was almost more than Harry could stand.

``Welcome home, my lord,'' Bellatrix murmured again, making a motion as
though she were wiping at milk on a child's cheek. Harry highly doubted
that this was anything so innocent as milk. ``Welcome home at last.''

Harry felt the pain in his scar grow to the point where he could feel it
blazing through into reality, and then he burst back to himself, gasping
and grabbing at his forehead, with the knowledge that Voldemort had
returned to Britain.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Draco opened his eyes sharply. He didn't know why. He'd been dreaming
one moment, quite comfortably ensconced in a place that had the best
features of Malfoy Manor and Florean Fortescue's mixed together, and now
he was in his bed with his forehead tingling---

His forehead.

Draco swallowed and carefully pushed the curtains of his bed back. He
had discovered in the past few days that he could ignore most emotions
as ghost sensations, unless they were very strong or they came from
Harry. He had a good idea why his forehead was hurting now.

He padded quietly over to Harry's bed, since a quick \emph{Tempus} check
told him it was still only six in the morning, and twitched on Harry's
curtain. He heard a quick, startled breath, then the rustling that meant
Harry was turning over and trying to pretend he was still asleep.

Draco leaned in and glared at his friend. Harry's face was relaxed, his
mouth slightly parted as though in wonder at a dream. He'd even got his
eyes darting back and forth under his eyelids in pursuit of the
imaginary vision. But he hadn't thought to clean off the trail of blood
that had run down his cheek.

``Harry,'' Draco hissed at him. ``I know that you're awake, damn you.
Open your eyes and talk to me.''

Harry still tried to pretend for a moment, and then he rolled over and
blinked at Draco, one hand rising as though to cover a yawn---and, just
incidentally, shield the trail of blood from view. ``Hi, Draco,'' he
said. ``What are you doing awake so early? Did you have a bad dream?''

``For the love of \emph{Merlin.}'' Draco crawled onto Harry's bed and let
the curtains fall shut behind him. ``Look. This is stupid. We've had a
few days to get used to this now, and that means that you know I have
empathy, and \emph{I} know I have empathy, and I've memorized your words
to me. You said that you didn't mind me being able to see your emotions
because it was me. Was that a lie?'' He could feel hurt rising, but he
shoved it away, in favor of being angry. Showing pain would just make
Harry that more likely to lie.

``No,'' said Harry, blinking as if he couldn't understand how their
conversation had taken this sudden turn. ``I do trust you, Draco, you
know that. I trust you more than anyone else.''

Draco wanted to crow in glee, but instead he put the words away to
admire at a later time. ``Then start bloody well acting like it,
Harry,'' he muttered, and plucked at the sheets. ``You trust me, and you
know that I can feel your dreams, anyway. Why do you pretend that you're
not having them?''

Harry's shoulders hunched, making him look like a turtle. Or a coward.
Draco thought about it for a moment, then told him so.

Harry stared at him in sheer astonishment. Draco squinted and felt out
through his shields, still a tedious process, like groping about for his
wand in a darkened room. Yes, there was the faint sensation of cold wind
on his face. Harry really was shocked. ``I'm not---I didn't even know
you might say that to me,'' Harry muttered.

``Good,'' said Draco. ``Then maybe you'll listen to other things I say,
too. This is getting ridiculous. I made some promises, and I'm trying my
best to act on them, Harry, but I want promises from you, too. Are you
going to make me go through this silly charade every time you have a
dream, which \emph{I can feel}, or are you going to simply confess and
tell me when you have one?''

``I'll tell you if they wake you up,'' Harry tried to bargain.

``Every time,'' Draco insisted.

Harry frowned at him. Draco raised an eyebrow and waited. Harry
\emph{had} been acting slightly different in the past few days, as
though someone had told him something that he wanted to take into
consideration, but he was too obviously searching for a way back. Draco
understood. He would have liked to be able to step back to their
uncomplicated friendship of a few months earlier, too, when he hadn't
made as many stupid mistakes as he had.

But Draco wasn't about to let Harry find the road back. He had changed.
So had Harry. Draco had known that the first time Harry shied from his
touch, if not earlier. And if he let Harry get away with this, then the
prat would just find some way to smother his pain from the dreams, or
maybe make Draco's shields thicker so that he couldn't sense them.

And the maddening thing was, he would do it for unselfish reasons; those
were his real ones. Draco didn't care, though. It was still maddening.

``All right,'' said Harry at last, and let his head fall back on the
pillow with a sigh. ``Merlin, you don't give up, do you?''

``Never,'' said Draco, and felt able to give a smug smile at Harry,
which was returned with interest as a frown. ``Really, Harry, if you
would just look at that serpent I gave you once in a while, then
you'd---''

He shut up as he heard a soft hissing sound travel through the dungeons.
He flinched. He'd only heard that sound once before, but he knew what it
portended. It wasn't easy to forget.

``Oh, \emph{no},'' he muttered.

``Draco?'' Harry was sitting upright in a moment, looking around as
though to move between him and danger. ``What is it?''

``My mother's decided on the response she's going to make for my
summoning Julia against her will,'' said Draco hollowly. The hissing
sound was right next to the bed now, and even knowing it would only hurt
for a moment, he winced and cowered. Harry had been the one to insist
that Draco write a letter to Narcissa telling her the truth, but he had
thought the only possible retaliation would be a Howler. Draco knew
better. ``She's done it before.''

``When?'' Harry asked, even as the curtains parted and a silvery shape
slithered its way across the bed to Draco. Harry was handing his wand
with barely a twitch of his hand, and then he hissed, as though he
thought he could speak to the snake and distract it from its duty. Draco
shook his head at him.

``When I tried to practice a Blasting Curse on one of our house elves,''
said Draco, wincing just at the memory, ``and wound up destroying one of
my mother's family heirlooms instead.'' He held out his hand, palm flat.
The snake wrapped around his wrist. It was much bigger than the tiny
serpent that had attacked him last year, but just as artificial, made of
gleaming metal. It did not stop hissing as it fixed glittering green
eyes on Draco's face, but its jaws parted, and Narcissa's voice came
out.

``Draco Lucius Malfoy,'' she said.

Draco looked down.

``I am \emph{very} disappointed in you.''

That was what she had said about the chest he'd destroyed, too. Draco
had to force himself not to curl his hand up. The snake would only pry
it flat and administer the bite anyway, as it had last time. It would
hurt less this way.

``Disappointed enough to use the heir-snake,'' Narcissa continued. ``What
you did was unworthy of your name, unworthy of the pride that we raised
you to have. To go begging to the dead, Draco. I had thought you were
long past such childish courses, that you would never have
\emph{considered} them.''

``And you broke your promise to me. You are not an adult, as long as you
do so. You are a child.''

Draco swallowed.

``Heir-snake?'' Harry nudged him with one elbow.

``Explain in a minute,'' Draco muttered. ``I don't know if she's done
yet.''

Narcissa, as it happened, was not done. ``Your father has said that he
will congratulate you on becoming a magical heir to the Malfoy line, but
only when you have shown him that you can be an adult. Until then, you
need a reminder of what you have been and must grow away from.''

The snake whipped its head around and bit straight into the center of
his palm. Draco sucked in his breath, but did not cry aloud. The serpent
would be able to hear that, and would carry the sound back to his
parents.

The snake slithered gracefully off his arm a moment later, and off the
bed. It would make its way back to Malfoy Manor and freeze into
motionlessness once more, until Narcissa again had cause to punish him.

Draco watched in dread as the bite in the center of his palm colored
quickly, and then transformed into an image of himself as a
two-year-old, wiping its eyes and crying. It didn't make any sound,
luckily, being no worse than a magical photograph, but anyone who looked
at it could see his face going blotchy and his mouth gaping in the moans
of a spoiled child. Draco started to fold his hand shut.

``Let me see.''

Harry gripped his wrist and gently turned his hand over, frowning at the
image. ``Do you want me to heal it?'' he asked.

Draco found himself smiling, though he knew it was a shaky expression.
``No. The heir-snake would just return and bite me again.''

``What \emph{was} that all about?'' Harry went on lightly holding Draco's
hand, not seeming to realize he was doing it---or perhaps he had
realized, and was willingly reaching out for contact. Since Halloween,
Harry had seemed reluctant to endure any touch that he didn't initiate.
Draco flexed his fingers, partially to enjoy this while he had it and
partially to ease the pain of the bite, and explained.

``It's an heirloom that Malfoy mothers, or the women who marry into the
Malfoy line, inherit. It's used to punish children who really should
know better. It reminds them of what they were when they break a promise
or do something else younger than their age.'' He peered at the crying
image in his palm, and found it, if possible, more horrid than before.
He gave Harry a sickly smile. ``I knew she'd probably do that. I broke
my promise to her. I haven't done that in years, and never in a way that
could have endangered my life before.''

Harry snorted. ``I'm glad to see that you realized that much, at least.
Go back to sleep, Draco. It's Saturday. We don't have to be awake for a
while yet.''

Draco nodded, but waited until Harry pulled away from him and lay down
again before he climbed back into his own bed. Even then, he hesitated
to murmur, ``No more nightmares without telling me, Harry, remember?''

Silence, and then Harry sighed and said, ``No more nightmares. Good
\emph{morning}, Draco.''

Draco slid back into his bed satisfied, despite the lingering pain in
his hand. He knew he was being an annoyance, but that was the only way
to keep Harry from retreating into his shell, and so far, it had worked.

Besides, he knew his mother wasn't furious with him. If she were, she
would have sent him the heir-snake with instructions for it to bite him
in public.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``\emph{We wish you would let us bite him.}''

Harry rolled his eyes as he and Draco entered the Great Hall for
breakfast. The comment from the Many had become the usual order of
things, and he no longer knew why. Draco hadn't done anything especially
annoying in the last week; in fact, he'd been much better than he was
before, now that the compulsion on his mind and heart had finally
cracked. ``\emph{No},'' he said, just as he always said, and sat down at
the Slytherin table.

The Many hissed in irritation, but the smell of food distracted the
little snake, and soon it had crawled up his wrist and was daintily
eating the bits of food he deigned to feed it. Harry glanced around the
room halfway through breakfast, noticing with a faint curiosity that
most of the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students were there. Of course,
it \emph{was} Saturday, but even last weekend, most of them hadn't eaten
at the same time.

\emph{Really? Are you sure? You had other things to notice last
weekend.}

Harry winced at nothing and shook his head. He was---well, compromising
on the issue of Vera's words. He kept them hovering beneath the surface
of his mind, and peeked at them when he absolutely couldn't stand it any
longer. Otherwise, though, he ignored them as much as possible. She had
said many hurtful things, things that could prevent him from helping
others if he spent too much time thinking about them. So he wouldn't.

He caught Connor's eye from where he sat at the Gryffindor table, and
smiled slightly. His brother was yawning, one hand pressed in front of
his mouth and his nose wrinkled. He straightened up the moment he caught
sight of Harry, though, as if he wanted to prove that he was too adult
to yawn. Harry lifted his forkful of sausage to him in greeting, and
Connor nodded back.

``Attention, students.''

Harry jumped slightly. Dumbledore hadn't been behind the head table a
moment ago, but he was there now, and most of the other professors were
with him---minus Snape, which made Harry close his eyes for a moment.
Dumbledore, of course, was smiling, and he held out one hand in front of
him as though to give a blessing.

``As you know,'' Dumbledore continued ceremoniously, ``we have left the
Goblet of Fire alone for a week---long enough for worthy students of all
schools to enter their names in a bid to compete in the Triwizard
Tournament.''

\emph{Oh, yes, that nonsense.} Harry had known that a few upper-level
Slytherins entered their names, but most of his yearmates seemed to be
above that. The one thing he felt grateful for was that he knew Draco
hadn't done it, since he'd been so occupied, first with the potion and
then wrestling with the consequences of the gift of empathy.

``Ow,'' Draco said beside him, as if sensing his thoughts.

``Who is it this time?'' Harry muttered at him from the side of his
mouth, not taking his eyes off Dumbledore.

``Blaise again.'' Draco whispered the name. Blaise was just two seats
down from Harry, on the other side of Millicent. ``Droopy. Weepy. A
brewing black thunderstorm of melancholy.'' He paused. ``Come \emph{on},
Harry, let me make fun of him.''

``You'd have to explain how you knew,'' said Harry, and sipped at his
porridge.

``I would not. I'm a Slytherin. He'd just assume that I figured out he
was mooning over somebody from keen observation.''

``Maybe he had bad news from home,'' said Harry, shaking his head.
Granted, he wasn't the empath, but he didn't see how Draco could be sure
that Blaise's romantic sorrow was, well, romantic, and not the result of
some tragedy. ``And I think you need to work on your shielding.''

``Hush it, Potter,'' Pansy snapped, leaning around Draco's shoulder and
frowning at him. ``They're about to announce whose names will come out
of the Goblet to compete in the Tournament.''

Harry narrowed his eyes. Pansy's face was flushed, her eyes brighter
than they appeared to be normally.

``Tell me you didn't put your name in the Goblet,'' he said.

Pansy flushed more deeply and turned her back on him to face Dumbledore.

Harry rolled his eyes. \emph{Merlin, what does she want? It's not like
her family needs the money. The attention? Honestly, who would?}

``The Goblet of Fire creates a binding magical contract on the wizards
and witches whose names emerge,'' Dumbledore was saying. ``That means
that, if someone's name comes out of the Goblet, that person \emph{must}
compete in the Tournament.'' He paused, but he'd done too good a job
promoting this Tournament as something exciting and not dangerous, Harry
thought. Most of the students still watched eagerly as Dumbledore tapped
a large chest in front of him three times with his wand and took out a
rough wooden goblet.

The top was burning with blue flame, and Harry, his eyes squinting
against the sudden blaze of magic that the Goblet had brought into the
room, had to admit that that more than made up for its appearance.
Dumbledore held out his hand, and a scrap of parchment emerged from the
flames and settled into his palm.

``The champion for Durmstrang,'' he read out, his voice loud and
confident, ``is Viktor Krum.''

The Durmstrang students broke into cheers, and Harry blinked as the
Quidditch player he remembered from the World Cup stood and shouldered
his way forward to the head table. Dumbledore spoke with him softly for
a moment, and Krum nodded and walked through a door into a small side
room leading off the Hall.

Once again, the Goblet gave a name into Dumbledore's hand, and this time
he smiled, as though he'd had something personally to do with the
selection. ``The champion for Beauxbatons,'' he said, ``is Fleur
Delacour.''

Harry saw one of the part-Veela girls rise in a cloud of shimmering
silver hair. Subdued, butterfly-like applause trailed her as she walked
up to the head table. Harry caught a glimpse of her face, and was
reminded of Narcissa the first time he had met her. Fleur, though, had
let a hint of nervous excitement color her cheeks. Dumbledore spoke with
her slightly longer than he had with Krum before sending her into the
small side room.

Harry noticed most of the students around him leaning forward. Draco was
rubbing his forehead and murmuring something about ``bloody excitement
headache.''

``He hasn't announced the Hogwarts champion yet,'' Pansy murmured. ``I
still have a chance.''

``For Merlin's \emph{sake},'' said Harry, but a glance at their faces
showed that no one was paying attention to him. He shook his head and
finished his porridge, as the Goblet seemed to deliberate on the final
name before shooting another scrap of parchment into Dumbledore's hand.

``And the champion for Hogwarts,'' Dumbledore said, ``is Connor
Potter.''

Harry felt himself gasp, which caused him to choke on his porridge. He
heard cries of interest, cries of outrage, and at least one
foot-stomping fit of disappointment from Pansy. Beside him, Millicent
had gone silent and intent, and Draco stared across the room at Connor.

``But he didn't put his name in the Goblet, I thought,'' he said.

Harry gained control of his choking, and swiveled his head to look at
his brother, his heart going crazy in his chest. Connor's face was pale.
He stared at the Headmaster with a look that did not seem to crave
either fame or fortune. That look said that he didn't know what the hell
was going on.

``Come forward, now, Mr. Potter,'' Dumbledore was saying. ``When one's
name emerges from the Goblet of Fire, one is bound to compete in the
Triwizard Tournament.''

One look at Dumbledore's face, which was still smiling serenely, and not
at all concerned that he was putting the Boy-Who-Lived in the way of
danger, convinced Harry that Dumbledore had planned this.

\emph{The bloody} bastard.

Even as his twin hesitantly stood and made his way up to the head table,
Harry was letting his magic go. Dumbledore looked abruptly in Harry's
direction just before Connor reached him. Harry narrowed his eyes and
inclined his head. Beneath his hand, the remnants of the porridge in his
bowl had turned to ice.

\emph{We need to talk, Dumbledore.}

As though he'd heard the words in Harry's thoughts, Dumbledore nodded,
and spoke kindly with Connor for a moment, ignoring the way that Harry's
twin desperately shook his head. A few moments later, Connor put his
head down and trooped unhappily into the side room.

``I will converse with our champions for a few moments, and tell them
what to expect,'' Dumbledore announced to the room, as the Goblet of
Fire's flames went out, and he tucked it back into the chest in front of
him. ``After that, I will be in my office in case anyone wishes to speak
with me.'' His gaze lingered on Harry for a moment, and then he turned
and swept out of the Hall.

Harry glared after him, and then Draco was tugging on his arm and
muttering, ``Come on, Harry, calm down. You're giving me a headache
here.''

Harry blinked, startled out of his rage. ``I thought my magic didn't
give you a headache any more,'' he said, glancing at his friend.

``Not your magic, your fury,'' said Draco plainly. ``Come on. There's
nothing you can do about it for right now. I'll walk you to the
Headmaster's office.'' He tugged on Harry's arm again.

Harry nodded, and stood. He did think it was funny, as they left amid
the buzz of curiosity and interest and unease from other students in the
Hall, that the one person whose expression seemed to match his was
Moody's. He had just destroyed his goblet with what looked like a
modified Blasting Curse, as though intensely upset that Connor's name
had come out of the Goblet.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry tensed when he saw Dumbledore coming up the corridor towards them.
Draco, who'd been standing beside him but saying nothing, tensed too,
and laid his unmarked hand on Harry's shoulder.

``Just be calm,'' he whispered.

Harry could not be calm, though. His gaze was fixed on the Headmaster,
and he couldn't seem to remove it. Rage had given way to something more
dangerous, a mixture of glazed ice and dark, shifting water that altered
from moment to moment. Distrust and disgust were the foremost emotions
in it, but they were mixed with others, among them the abiding
conviction that he would not forgive Dumbledore \emph{this} mistake.

``Ah, Harry,'' said Dumbledore. ``I think that you should go and comfort
your brother after this interview. He did seem somewhat upset about
having to compete in the Tournament, though he understands, now, that
there's no way that he can back out.'' He smiled at Harry.

\emph{Bloody bastard. He isn't even pretending that he had nothing to do
with it! I just---I don't understand---}

``Why?'' Harry whispered, and knew his voice was shaking.

``Because,'' said Dumbledore gently, ``Connor needs a test of his own,
an arena in which he can shine. He has become less noticed this year
than he ever was. At least, when he was in the storm of crisis that his
accusations against you last year and the year before created, he was
learning how to weather the fame and the expectations that came with
being the Boy-Who-Lived. But now, Harry, whose name is in the
newspapers? Who in your family is the focus of attention?''

Harry couldn't quite mask a wince. His oldest instincts shrieked that
this was wrong, that he shouldn't be taking time and attention away from
Connor. His training in defensive magic had been quite heavy on spells
that would protect his brother without attracting notice by their
flashiness. And now he'd been flashy and not even realized it.

He took a deep breath. He bore the guilt, he knew he did. He would deal
with it later, though. He needed to say this. ``His life is in danger in
the Tournament. He could be killed.''

``He has at least as much a chance as the other champions, I would
say,'' Dumbledore murmured. ``And more than most. Why wouldn't he? He is
the Boy-Who-Lived, and most people accept that he must be a wondrously
powerful wizard, to have defeated Voldemort.''

Harry opened his mouth to answer, and found himself stymied again. If he
claimed he was more powerful than Connor, then he was saying the kind of
thing his training made him intensely uncomfortable with saying. And if
he said Connor was more powerful, it was a blatant lie.

He found himself hissing at Dumbledore, and the Many hissed back
comfortingly from his arm.

``\emph{We may bite this one, at least?}''

``\emph{No},'' Harry insisted, and then turned back to the Headmaster
instead of listening to the Many having a sulk. ``I don't understand why
you would do this,'' he bit out. ``You must know that your favored
interpretation of the prophecy is in danger if he is.''

``I trust that you will protect him, Harry,'' said Dumbledore. ``Thanks
to his brother, he has survived worse dangers.''

Harry closed his eyes. ``You're trying to tangle me up again,'' he said.
``Keep me busy.''

``Yes, he is,'' Draco breathed against the back of his neck, so softly
that Harry almost could not hear him. ``His emotions are saying so. He
was a bit surprised that you figured it out.''

Harry opened his eyes quickly, but if Dumbledore had ever actually
looked surprised, it was gone now. ``The Goblet has chosen,'' he said.
``The Tournament must proceed. Connor will succeed, Harry. You'll see.
And this will give him a chance to step, at last, out of his brother's
long shadow.''

Harry came very close to hating Dumbledore then. He watched in silent
rage as the Headmaster whispered the password to the gargoyle and it
sprang aside. Dumbledore put one foot on the staircase beyond, and then
paused.

``Oh, I had almost forgotten,'' he said, and drew an envelope from his
pocket. ``This came for you this morning, Harry. It's the letter I want
you to answer.'' He tossed it to Harry, who caught it automatically.

``Why should I?'' Harry had to ask, since his magic was trembling, as
eager as the Many, to be let out and attack Dumbledore. ``Why should I,
when you've broken our truce by dragging Connor into this damn
Tournament?''

Dumbledore raised one eyebrow. ``Why, Harry,'' he said, ``this letter
has nothing to do with our earlier truce. It is the culmination of a
promise you made me for quite a different reason, don't you remember?''

Harry did. The Minister gone, and Snape free. If Dumbledore voted to
keep Fudge in office and to send Snape to prison, then Harry was fairly
certain the rest of the Wizengamot would follow him.

\emph{If they knew\ldots{}}

But if they were to have proof of what Dumbledore had done, then they
would need to know how \emph{Harry} knew these things, and they would
have to dig up the whole sorry story, and that would hurt other people
and bring attention to focus on some aspects of his life that Harry
could not bear to have exposed.

``I hate you,'' he whispered to Dumbledore, and slipped the letter into
the pocket of his robes, and went to find Connor, Draco hot on his
heels.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Albus watched Harry go with a slight frown. The boy had reacted more
violently than he had hoped or expected to the inclusion of his brother
in the Triwizard Tournament.

\emph{I thought he would understand,} he mused as he climbed the stairs
to his office. \emph{He is the one who wished to play in politics. He
was the one who went to Slytherin. He should be well used to the
necessity of testing someone. And since Connor did not actually defeat
Tom either when he was a baby or last year, and I highly suspect that he
did not in the Chamber, either, he} must \emph{grow stronger. There}
must \emph{be a reckoning. At least this will not be the fatal kind. And
Harry should have known that I would use those words against him.}

\emph{Harry needs to learn love and forgiveness, I know that. But
sometimes he acts as if he had too much compassion already. I do not
understand it.}

\emph{Ah, well. This is his brother. We trained him long enough, Lily
and I, to love Connor to the exclusion of all else.} Albus nodded,
accepting that his foresight had failed because he had forgotten the
bond between the twins. \emph{I should have known he would snap at me
like this.}

But Harry would keep his promise, or he would have destroyed the letter
with fire already. He would read it. He would reply. And that meant he
would be taking the first step on a long, long road to becoming the kind
of leader they would \emph{truly} need, since he had told Albus the
possibility of his fulfilling a different role in the prophecy.

\emph{Harry will understand, when he reads what she has written.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry didn't even need to wait before entering Gryffindor Tower. Ron was
watching for him, and let him in, with only the faintest glare of
distaste at Draco.

``Where is he?'' Harry asked, looking around the common room and finding
no Connor there.

``Upstairs.'' Ron gestured with his head. ``He's locked the door and
won't let anyone else talk to him. It's pretty bad, mate.''

Harry nodded and turned to the stairs.

``Harry?''

Harry glanced back at Ron, and found him frowning, biting one knuckle.
Ron waited. Harry waited.

Ron broke first, and said, ``Are you \emph{sure} that he didn't put his
name in the Goblet? He says he didn't, but\ldots{}'' He shrugged, as
though to say that he would not have given up the opportunity to pursue
such fame and fortune himself, danger or no danger.

Harry quelled the temptation to snap. Ron was Ron, and he wanted to
distinguish himself. With his family and the block on his magic, which
Harry had sensed was still there all through the lessons in spells that
he had given him, it made sense. And if he thought Connor had been lying
to him, he would be understandably upset.

``I'm sure,'' said Harry quietly. ``He's been occupied with something
else, an argument he's been having with our dad by letter.''

Ron's face clouded, even as he nodded. ``I know what \emph{that's} like,''
he said darkly. ``Percy's still a git, and won't come work with
\emph{our} dad.''

Harry hesitated, but Percy's secret wasn't his to tell. He just inclined
his head and went up the stairs. Draco laid a hand on his shoulder all
the way up, and Harry forced himself not to throw it off. It didn't feel
bad, really, just temping, and he couldn't afford to give in to
temptation right now.

He knocked on the door to the fourth-year boys' room, and received an
angry shout from behind it.

``I \emph{told you} I didn't want to talk to anyone!''

``Too bad,'' Harry muttered, and undid the locking charms that Connor
had put on the door with a few twitches of his will. He stepped in, and
had to duck the pillow that Connor threw at him. It caught Draco full in
the face, though.

``Merlin, Potter,'' Draco said, wiping dust off his cheeks. ``Do you
chase the house elves away from your bed just so that you can have the
pleasure of lying around in your own filth?''

Connor's face flushed. He'd already been crying, and now he started
scrabbling for his wand among the bedcovers.

``So help me, Draco,'' Harry said in an undertone, ``talk to him again,
and I'll hurt you.'' He stepped forward before Draco could say anything
to that, and grasped his brother's wrist. Connor tried to jerk away.

Harry wouldn't let him, turning him around and wrapping him in an
embrace instead. Connor closed his eyes tightly and held onto him with
strength that Harry recognized as desperate. That didn't bother him. In
fact, he could feel himself truly relaxing for the first time in a week.
This, he didn't have to do research on, the way that he did with the
Parseltongue book that Arabella had sent him, or on house elf webs.
This, he could do something about immediately, and \emph{help} someone
else. That was the only thing that truly made him feel at ease.

``It's all right, Connor,'' he breathed into his brother's hair. ``I'll
help you. I'll help you find spells to survive the Tasks, whatever they
are. I know that you didn't put your name in the Goblet, and I know that
you didn't want fame and glory.'' And his brother didn't, he was
convinced. Connor had been too busy trying to put himself together again
after Sirius's death to crave this kind of thing. ``I won't let you
die.''

Connor gripped his shoulders for a moment. ``You don't think I'm
cowardly, to be afraid?'' he whispered.

``You didn't want this,'' said Harry. ``How is that cowardly?''

``I got a lecture,'' Connor muttered, pulling away enough to wipe at his
face. ``From some of the upper years, especially this fellow named
McLaggen. I should show courage, what was I crying for, I was going to
make the other Houses think Gryffindor was wet, and so on.''

Harry sighed. ``Well, they will expect you to show up for events with
the other champions, and smile and look cheerful about it,'' he said.
Connor's hazel eyes were clearer now, and he did seem more relaxed, both
of which made Harry feel more cheerful. ``But you can do that, right? I
mean, you did it first year when you got chosen for the Gryffindor
Quidditch team, and that was unusual.''

``But now I don't feel like it,'' said Connor. ``Sometimes I get tired
of being the Boy-Who-Lived all the bloody time.''

Harry felt Draco shift, as though he were going to say something, but he
thankfully didn't and make Harry have to hurt him. Harry smiled gently
at his brother and brushed the hair back from his heart-shaped scar.

``I know,'' he whispered. ``And you'll always have me to talk to, me to
lean on, if it gets to be too much. I mean it, Connor. I love you, and
I'll be here for you.''

Connor's eyes cleared completely, and he nodded, slowly, as though he
needed to feel each separate part of the motion. ``That's what I keep
telling Dad,'' he said. ``That's what we're arguing about. I keep
telling him that he's being an idiot for not trusting you to know your
own mind and backing off Snape. He keeps writing back---oh, all kinds of
things, that Snape has corrupted you and you should have more loyalty to
your blood family and so on.'' Connor shrugged, his face growing mulish,
but, thankfully, no longer closed, the way it had been before when Harry
tried to talk to him about James. ``He's an idiot. I wish he was here so
he'd eat his words. But don't worry. I'll tell him about this, unless
you would rather I'd not.''

Harry smiled in spite of himself. ``No, it's fine. Thank you, Connor.''
He hugged his brother on the shoulders this time, and pulled away with a
pat on his back. ``And you'll come to me if you need my help, right?''

Connor nodded. ``I promise.''

``Good.'' Harry turned around again, and saw Draco watching them both
with an odd expression on his face. Harry blinked and peered at him. It
looked like jealousy. Harry shook his head. He had no clue why. Surely
Draco had to know that if he were in the same kind of trouble, Harry
would help him the same way? And he was an empath now, and should be
able to feel Connor's sincere pain and agony.

``Let me know if there's anything else I can do,'' he told Connor, and,
on receiving a smile from his twin, left in contentment---

Or as much contentment as he could find, with the letter burning a hole
in his pocket.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry took a deep breath and slowly opened the envelope. He had a
suspicion as to who it would be from. That was the reason he'd,
according to Draco, ``been radiating anxiety that would drown the Giant
Squid,'' and the reason that he'd gently refused company while he read
the letter. Draco had finally, reluctantly, backed off, and let Harry
come to the Owlery alone to read it.

There, amid the gentle shiftings and shufflings of the birds, with the
honesty-charmed parchment he'd borrowed from Dumbledore earlier in the
week beside him, Harry looked down and read the letter he'd known, in
the back of his mind, would be coming.

\emph{Dear son:}

\emph{I imagine that you never expected to hear from me again. What else
could there be to say between us? You made your feelings clear when you
took away my magic. And you probably thought I had made mine clear with
the betrayal I inflicted upon you.}

\emph{No, you have not been blinded, or charmed. The only charm on this
parchment insures my complete honesty. It was a betrayal, and I can see
it now, in that light. I have had much time to think, Harry---nearly a
year.}

For months afterward, yes, I raged and plotted as to how to get you back
under my control. That was the reason I told Connor to compel you if
nothing else would answer. But around May, I got past that. The news of
Sirius's death and how you had saved your brother yet again, which Albus
told me of, helped open my eyes to the fact that pain other than my own
existed in the world.

\emph{Albus also told me of your changed position in regards to the
prophecy.}

\emph{Harry, I cannot say that I regret everything I did in the past,
because this parchment is forcing me to be honest. I can say that I
would do it all differently now. I did not realize the truth about what
happened the night of the attack. If I had, then I would have helped you
train your magic so that you could fight Voldemort, not bound it and
caged it. I would have helped you become the Boy-Who-Lived, not the
guardian of the one I thought was the Boy-Who-Lived. I would have helped
you accept your possible death in the light of being a hero, rather than
being a sacrifice.}

\emph{As it is, I accept that I cannot have my magic back. I would like
to know my sons again---the young men Albus says they have become in the
wake of May's events. I read of you only in the newspapers now, and a
terror and a thrill touches me, that the sons I raised have become so
formidable.}

\emph{Harry, will you let me greet you on a new footing, one where I
know what you are and what you can do? Will you consent to see me again?
The justice ritual prevents us from meeting because you said that you
did not want to see me again, but that part can be reversed, even though
the loss of my magic cannot be. This distance between us was something
you required, not a reparation from me, and a prohibition that has
affected you as much as me. If you change your mind, we can see each
other once more.}

\emph{Please write back}.

\emph{Love,}

\emph{Lily.}

Harry closed his eyes. He sat in silence for a long time, save for the
brush of wings above him as owls came and went.

Then he drew out the honesty-charmed parchment---how glad he was, right
now, that he didn't have to go to Dumbledore's office and borrow
some---and composed his reply, intensely glad that no one was there to
see him, and the way his hand shook.

\emph{This is for Snape,} he told himself, again and again.

It was the only way he got through the letter.

\chapter{Interlude: The Hardest Letter}\label{chapter-36-interlude-the-hardest-letter}

\emph{Lily:}

I don't know where to begin. I don't know if I should write a true
response to the letter you sent, or simply record my emotions about you
as they flow forth from my quill. At least the parchment insures that
these words will be honest.

And yes, I did check the parchment for charms and curses before I used
it.

I suppose I can begin with the notion of sacrifice. There are times I
hate what you made me. Someone very wise said---things to me recently
that make a lot of sense, as much as I hate to admit it. I don't like
thinking about them, but one of them was that I consider everyone else
worthy of love and forgiveness, but myself. And I suppose that's true.
And if that's a result of your training, then---

But no, I can't write that, because I don't believe it. I suppose this
parchment works after all.

I think it may be a result of your training, but I've become someone who
{does} put other people before myself. I can admit that much. And that
is a {good} thing. It must be. How can it not be? You trained me to be a
weapon, a sacrifice, the guardian of the Boy-Who-Lived, and I think if
you had stopped there, it would have been enough, and I would have been
what you wished me to be. But you also put on the phoenix web, and that
meant I broke free and turned my attention elsewhere, because I felt
unduly constrained. So I feel the same way about most of the wizards
around me that I used to feel about Connor. And the magical creatures,
too.

I am what you made me, always.

Is that evil?

My skills are what have won me allies. My knowledge of the pureblood
dances gave me ways to approach those allies. My defensive magic helped
save Connor's and Draco's lives in first year, and then other people in
the years after that. Being left wide open to Voldemort gave me the
magic that made you fear me and introduce the phoenix web, and that
means that I broke free, and that means that I turned my attention to
other people.

I already wrote that.

Perhaps this parchment brings forth ideas that are very strong more than
once? I know already that it forces me to write what I honestly believe.
I can write something I am sure is true, and something I'm not sure is
true---I tried on other pieces of it---but I can't write something I'm
sure is false.

All right, then. Here it is.

I find myself unsure if I forgive you. And then I think about my allies.

Lucius Malfoy tortured three Muggleborn children to death, because they
were born possessing magic, and weren't of a pureblood line. That's all.
That's the only crime they committed. And I have never upbraided him for
it. In fact, I've progressed very far with him in a truce-dance, almost
to the final step.

Hawthorn Parkinson was a mistress of blood curses, and cursed Jacob
Smith with a blood-letting spell that replenished his blood even as it
cut new wounds and opened them again and again, wounds that should have
killed him in a few hours. He bled to death for days, screaming as he
did so, and the healers in St. Mungo's could do nothing for him. He
lived for three weeks before he died. Hawthorn has never said that she
regrets that. And I've brewed a potion that she needs for her since last
year, and I made a formal alliance with her not long after I met her.

Adalrico Bulstrode was suspected of helping Voldemort design the Black
Plague curse. How many lives did that claim? How many Aurors did it
raze? How many children died choking to death on the spores? Adalrico
has never mentioned that at all. And I've also made formal alliance with
him, and sit calmly enough beside his daughter at the Slytherin table.

They did far worse than you have. They hurt other people, which is what
I have said I {cannot} stand. And yet I let the memory of the justice
they more than likely deserve lapse. I have told myself that one cannot
win justice for the dead, and that it was in the War, when all sides did
horrible things, and that I am supposed to have compassion, and
shouldn't I forgive them?

Then, if I forgive them, how can I not forgive you? You left Connor
exposed to the Dark Lord, and lied to him, and did not train him as you
should have, if he was really to be the Boy-Who-Lived. But that is of a
piece with {their} crimes, and with Dumbledore's.

And Lucius loves his son, and Hawthorn has looked at me with kind eyes,
and Adalrico has celebrated with me.

And you did what you did in the name of war, in the name of saving the
world.

Nothing is ever {simple}. You taught me to see that at a young age. I
thank you for that. I do not think it is a lesson that either Dumbledore
or Voldemort ever truly learned.

How can those two kinds of things exist in the same person? But they do.
And I will not betray all that I am, all that you made me, by saying
that Lucius Malfoy's love for his son is false, or that all your
decisions must have been wrong and made in the knowledge that you were
doing wrong, simply because I am uncomfortable with one truth or the
other.

I do not know if I can forgive you yet, especially since I was not the
only one you hurt, and there is the betrayal that you inflicted on me by
trying to renew the phoenix web. But if we are speaking only of the
crimes against me\ldots{}

You made me what I am.

You may have saved the world in doing so.

You made me someone who can gain allies in doing so.

And all the time, I know that perhaps I am only forgiving you because
you have raised me to forgive all crimes against myself. I know what the
source of this feeling is, but that does not stop it. And thus I embody
contradictions of my own.

My feelings regarding you will never be {simple}, and anyone who thinks
they are is a fool, including me, if I ever thought it.

I cannot see you yet. I still can't do that. And part of me says that
that's fine and only fair, and part of me says that that's weakness, but
the parchment only compels me to write what's true, not what's right.

I can think about the things this wise person said to me, but I can't
believe all of them. Not yet. And some I know are false, or a
consequence of her not understanding everything that she saw.

I've missed you. I've hated you. I've mourned for you. I've called you
Muggle in my thoughts, and Mum to please Connor. Nothing is ever
{simple}.

Nothing ever should be.

Regards,

\emph{Harry.}

\chapter{Decus}\label{chapter-37-decus}

Harry let out a long, shivering breath, and closed his eyes.

\emph{I} will not \emph{destroy half of Hogwarts, I} will not
\emph{destroy half of Hogwarts\ldots{}}

He stood there until his shaking and his magic ebbed. He finally had to
resort to tucking some of his rage behind Occlumency shields, but it
worked. He opened his eyes and breathed deeply.

He gave Dumbledore's gargoyle one last look, and could have sworn it
cowered. Then he set off back to the dungeons, hoping no one would
accost him. His strides were long and angry, but his magic was only
surging around him like a brushfire part of the time. That meant someone
might try to talk.

And Harry was really, really in no mood for any conversation not
conducted at a shout.

He'd confronted Dumbledore just a few minutes ago, trying to claim that
the terms of the truce they'd sworn meant Dumbledore could not have put
Connor in the Tournament and kept his agreement with Harry, so he should
withdraw him at once. And Dumbledore had had the nerve to smile at him,
and say, ``Why, Harry, do you not remember that you also agreed to train
Connor? This is part of that. I am not endangering him. Not with you
here. I \emph{know} that you would prevent any permanent harm from
coming to him.''

And since Dumbledore believed that, and Harry knew he would die before
he let one of the Tasks destroy his brother, and nothing in the truce
said that Harry could not risk his own life---freely and
willingly---there the matter lay. Under the terms of the truce, this was
not a threat, because it was not something Harry could not protect
Connor from, and it fulfilled one of the conditions that Harry himself
had offered in exchange for Dumbledore's help.

\emph{On a technicality, it does,} Harry thought, aiming a savage kick
at the wall, and then wincing when he saw the patch of stone he'd aimed
his foot for frost over. \emph{But then, the bloody bastard thrives on
technicalities---technicalities of consent and webs and laws and Light
magic.}

He ran a hand through his hair. He knew that part of the reason he was
upset came from his mother's letter, and part of the reason from his
nightmares, which refused to leave him alone whenever he slept, and
another part from the newly added stress of helping Connor to train for
the Tournament. None of that meant he had any excuse to go around
kicking walls.

\emph{Hush. Hush. Be at peace. Relax. You have to meet Connor in the
library in an hour to talk with him about what the First Task might be.
He said he might have some clues from listening to the older students
talk.}

And he couldn't shout then.

What he really wanted, Harry had to admit as he growled the password to
the door of the Slytherin common room, barely waiting until it opened,
was someone to shout \emph{at}, someone who fully deserved it and
wouldn't just smile and deflect him with talk of legal technicalities
like Dumbledore.

He climbed the stairs to the fourth-year boys' room, only grunting when
Millicent called up to him.

``Harry. I mean it.''

Harry blinked and turned his head to regard her. He hadn't been aware
that she'd said anything more than his name. ``What?''

Millicent tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at him. ``Some more food
at dinner tonight, I think,'' she said. ``You still haven't been eating
enough. You haven't since the announcement of the Tournament.''

``That's because it's rather hard to force things down past clenched
teeth and a throat filled with bile.''

Millicent shrugged at him. ``Whatever, Potter. You'll eat tonight. And I
meant what I said. That bedroom has sounded like a war zone for the last
ten minutes. On your head be it if you go in there. \emph{I'm} not
nursing you back to health if you get caught in an Unforgivable.'' She
turned back to a thick book that Harry recognized as her History of
Magic text.

Harry looked up the stairs. Now that he was listening, Millicent was
right: He could hear crashing sounds, quickly muffled spells, and what
sounded like thumps and yelps coming from their room.

He almost snarled with anticipation as he sped up the stairs and opened
the door. \emph{Perfect.}

He was just in time to see Draco duck a hex from Blaise's wand, pop up
again, and croon, ``Oh, does Blaise-Waisy \emph{love} someone from
Gryffindor? That would explain the little lions you've been drawing on
your homework.''

``I do \emph{not} draw lions on my homework, you insufferable
\emph{prat}!'' Blaise was more flustered than Harry had ever seen him;
the very fact that he'd drawn his wand testified to that. He flung a
Jelly-Legs Jinx, which Draco also rolled under. He was moving close to
the table beside his bed, Harry saw, and in a moment he had his wand in
his hand and could scramble up to face Blaise on equal footing. Neither
one of them had even noticed Harry come in, seemingly.

``You do so,'' said Draco, who was beaming and smug in the way that only
certain knowledge made him. \emph{He's used his knowledge of Blaise's
emotions}, Harry realized. \emph{He really was brooding over a crush.}
``Or, wait, perhaps not. Perhaps I mistook the little \emph{hearts} for
them.''

Blaise let out a shriek that ended with, ``\emph{Abicio!}'' Draco cast a
Shield Charm in front of him to take the edge off the Flinging Hex, and
looked proud as Blaise's spell dissipated into nothingness.

``Shut your bloody mouth, Malfoy,'' Blaise said next, his voice
deepening. Harry studied his face, and saw his mother there, one of the
few times he ever had. Blaise was dangerously angry, and it really was
about time to intervene. ``It's none of your bloody business who I crush
on.''

``But you do admit to crushing on someone!'' Draco performed an
impromptu little dance. Harry was Draco's friend, he really was, but
just about then, he understood why Ron might want to strangle him.

``At least I \emph{admit} it,'' Blaise spat. ``That's more than you do,
huh, Draco? Not that you could admit it. You'll probably pine yourself
to death before you do something about it, because you're \emph{afraid},
aren't you? You don't realize that you---''

``\emph{Petrificus Total---}'' Draco began, a look of transcendent rage on
his face.

``\emph{Expelliarmus!}'' Harry cut in, shaking his head at himself for
waiting so long to intervene. He caught both wands as they soared
towards him, and raised his eyebrows when Draco and Blaise spun around
as one to scowl at him. ``That will be quite enough from both of you,''
he said. He gave Draco a warning glare as he opened his mouth. ``Now.
Why don't you apologize to each other? Then I'll return your wands.'' He
had to admit that he was hoping they wouldn't apologize. He wanted to
yell at someone.

``I won't,'' said Draco predictably. ``Merlin, Harry, did you hear him?
He was \emph{mocking} me!''

Harry narrowed his eyes as his anger chose a target. ``Draco,'' he said.
``You have an unfair advantage.'' \emph{Can I not leave him alone for an
hour without him starting to poke people? He should know better than to
use his empathy like that.} Draco was much better than he had been the
last few months, Harry had to admit, but he was far from perfect, and
this fight showed how far.

``I don't care!'' said Draco. ``He \emph{mocked} me.'' He waited and
looked at Harry, and after a moment, Harry realized he was waiting for a
sign that his suffering was shared, that his best friend was on his
side.

Harry wasn't, not this time. He shook his head at Draco, and then turned
to Blaise. ``Look, I'm sorry,'' he said. ``You're right. It's none of
our business who you crush on.'' He tossed Blaise's wand back. ``Just
don't curse him, all right? He'll be impossible to live with if you
do.''

Blaise gave Harry a hard glance, but nodded and slipped his wand into
his robe pocket. ``Always the peacemaker, aren't you, Potter?'' he
asked.

Harry shrugged. ``Not always. Draco and I are about to have a little
chat that should prove quite spirited.'' \emph{Especially,} Harry noted,
looking at Draco out of the corner of his eye, \emph{since he shows no
sign of admitting he was wrong.} ``Do you mind leaving, Blaise?''

Blaise shook his head. ``It beats me how you put up with him,'' he
muttered, as he grabbed his Defense Against the Dark Arts homework and
took his leave. ``Or how you're ever going to put up with him later.''

Harry blinked, wondering what that meant, then let it slide with another
shrug. He tipped the door shut behind Blaise with his foot, then faced
Draco.

``It wasn't my fault,'' Draco said immediately, before Harry could
start. ``He was lying there \emph{sighing}, and I could \emph{feel} all
his bloody emotions! What else was I supposed to do?''

``Not pick at him?'' Harry suggested between clenched teeth.

``He wouldn't stop,'' said Draco, and sulked at him.

``I don't \emph{care},'' said Harry. ``You promised me that you would work
on this, Draco, that you'd try to learn how to use your empathy, and not
just take advantage of how it allows you to view other people's
emotions. What possessed you? You've been doing---rather well so far.''
He had been. No, it wasn't perfect, but he'd managed to resist picking
on Blaise for almost two weeks.

Draco muttered something Harry couldn't make out.

Harry raised his eyebrows. ``Louder, Draco. I don't think the ghosts of
Malfoys past would like their descendant to mumble.''

That pointed reference to Julia brought Draco's eyes, and his temper,
up. ``I said that I was lonely,'' he said harshly. ``And tired. And that
my forehead hurt. Your scar's bleeding even when you're awake now, isn't
it?''

Harry narrowed his eyes. \emph{No, he isn't going to do this to me, not
tip the ground from beneath my feet.} ``Yes, as a matter of fact, it has
been,'' he said coolly. ``That doesn't mean that you need to---''

``When were you planning to tell me this?''

Harry hissed. ``Sometime. I honestly didn't think of telling you, Draco.
I wasn't holding back on purpose. And we were talking about you and the
misuse of your magic.''

``We were talking about \emph{you}, too,'' said Draco. ``Don't you get it,
Harry? I'm better when \emph{you're} around, at least when you're being
honest with me, because then I can concentrate on your emotions. But
when you're not, then I get bored. And Blaise was emoting all over the
place. Did you really expect me to pass up an opportunity like that?''

``Not yet,'' Harry admitted grudgingly. ``But having me around as a
means of controlling your empathy is a crutch, Draco, one that we've got
to wean you of.''

``Now you're using mixed metaphors.''

Harry let magic shimmer out of his shields, run up and down his
shoulders. ``And that's a sign of impossible ill breeding, I suppose?''

Draco, to Harry's astonishment, closed his eyes and released a huffy
little breath. Then he opened his eyes and said, as calmly as he could,
``Look, if you want me to get used to using this empathy alone, I think
you'd better adjust the shields. They're thinning, or something. I'm
getting more emotions than I used to, but they're only the negative
ones, irritation and annoyance and anger and so on. And right now I'm
feeling your rage, and growing defensive about it, and that just makes
me angrier, and that will feed \emph{you}. Now that I'm an empath, I
can't afford to argue about everything under the sun.''

Harry winced, and let his magic relax, guilty for forgetting that.

``Stop feeling guilt, will you?'' Draco muttered, sitting down on his
bed and staring expectantly at Harry. ``And get inside my head. Bloody
shields. Bloody empathy. Bloody Blaise with his bloody crush.''

``Does your mother know you kiss her with that mouth?'' Harry answered,
but took a seat on the bed in front of Draco. Inexplicably, he was
feeling better than he had been when he came from Dumbledore's office,
for all that he hadn't yelled at Draco until he spent the anger. Just
the fact of being able to argue normally with his best friend relaxed
him, he thought. He'd missed that the most in the last few months, more
than being touched or the inane conversations that he and Draco used to
have about Quidditch and homework. He'd missed the idea that he could
say almost anything to Draco and have it answered \emph{somehow}, that
here was someone with whom he could be honest and whom it would be very,
very hard to drive away.

Draco raised an eyebrow, and Harry realized he'd just been sitting
there, hands on the sides of Draco's face, looking at him and not doing
anything. He gave a small, embarrassed cough, and then murmured,
``\emph{Legilimens.}''

He passed into Draco's head again, and found it more ordered than it had
been the last time he'd done this, Halloween night, when the constant
chaos of emotions had barely made him able to distinguish the forms of
the rooms that housed Draco's thoughts. Now he could see the grand and
graceful home again, and he relaxed further. This was somewhat like the
Sanctuary of Peter's imagining, but more calming by far to Harry. No one
was looking at him with Seer's eyes here. Of course, he was never going
to visit the Sanctuary and have people look at him anyway. No, he could
feel Draco in every corner, and \emph{that} was what soothed him.

Carefully, he checked the shields on the empathy. Some of them were
indeed wearing thin. Harry adjusted them, smoothing out the rents and
moving them so that some of the more pleasant emotions could get through
to Draco, too. At last he nodded and backed away, cautiously pleased to
note that a few threads of white had mingled with the quicksilver. His
shields were quicksilver from Snape's teaching, but the white was new.
Draco was gaining control of the shields---spinning himself into them,
at least a bit.

He turned around again, and frowned when he realized a barrier of carved
wood blocked his way back out of Draco's mind. Then he shrugged. He
supposed it was something Draco really wanted him to feel, just as he'd
wanted Harry to feel how sorry and angry at himself he was on Halloween.
Harry stepped forward and put his hand on the barrier, gently pushing it
out of the way and passing his fingers through it at the same time, so
that he could identify it.

Intense, lazy warmth, the kind that came on a good morning in late
spring when all one had to do was lie in bed and not rise for hours yet,
while the sunlight crept in through the window\ldots{}

Harry was past it in a moment, stunned, but coherent enough to think,
\emph{So Blaise was right. Draco does have a crush.}

He shook his head and popped out of Draco's mind back into his own,
smiling gently at his friend. ``Congratulations,'' he said. ``Who's your
crush?''

``That wasn't a crush,'' said Draco, his eyes narrowing at once. ``That
was love, you idiot.''

Harry grinned, not letting himself pause to think of how long it had
been since he smiled like that. \emph{Of course he'd think so. He's a
Malfoy. Crushes are for other people.} ``Of course it is,'' he said
solemnly. ``So, tell me. Who's it focused on? Lucky girl? Or lucky
boy?''

Draco just stared at him with his mouth open. Then he said, ``I can't
\emph{believe} you,'' and stalked over to his school trunk, all offended
dignity.

Harry shrugged. \emph{Guess he doesn't want to talk about it after all.
And I've got to meet Connor in the library, anyway.}

He stood and left. Draco ignored him the entire time. Apparently, it
would be a while before he forgave Harry for bringing up a crush that he
didn't want to talk about, or perhaps for assuming it was a crush.

\emph{That's all right. I don't think our disagreements will last
forever, any more. That's one thing that's gone right, at least, in the
midst of everything else going wrong.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry opened one eye, and waited in silence for a time, until he was
sure that snores were coming from Blaise's and Vince's and Draco's beds,
and not the tense silence that had lain between them for the past hour.
He sat up and rubbed a hand over his forehead, cursing softly as he came
away with a palmful of blood.

He needed to do \emph{something}. The peace he'd got from Draco had
lasted a shorter time than he thought, once he got to the library and
found Connor sporting a black eye. Harry strongly suspected it was from
someone still reluctant to believe that Connor really hadn't put his
name in the Goblet---or perhaps someone who \emph{did} think that Connor
hadn't done that, and was furious over his being chosen anyway.

He'd questioned his brother, tossed references to other students into
the conversation and waited to see if Connor would flinch, done
everything but use Legilimency to get the answer as to who they were.
Connor had steadfastly remained tight-lipped about the whole thing,
saying something about ``wanting to fight his own battles.''

Harry supposed, since a Gryffindor-fifth year named Cormac McLaggen had
come into dinner sporting a target on his buttocks to which a flying
donkey tail constantly tried to attach itself, courtesy of the Weasley
twins, that his question was somewhat answered and the offender
punished.

But that didn't lessen his sense of helplessness, and the
helplessness---muted, so that Draco couldn't sense it and wake up---was
not letting him sleep.

Harry stilled abruptly as an idea came to him. \emph{I could do that},
he decided. \emph{I have enough research on it now.}

``Dobby!'' he called softly. Since Lucius had agreed to let his house
elf go free, he shouldn't mind if Dobby answered a call to Hogwarts
instead of Malfoy Manor.

A \emph{crack}, and Dobby appeared beside his bed, peering up with big
eyes. Harry was grateful he hadn't immediately started chattering. Of
course, given the other times he had appeared in the room and not
awakened anybody, perhaps house elves had the ability to cast silencing
charms around themselves before they began to speak.

``I think I've learned enough to free you,'' Harry said quietly.

Dobby's expression changed. If Harry wasn't used to watching house elf
faces by now, he would not have seen it. But a burning light that hadn't
been there before appeared in the big eyes.

``Dobby would like that very much,'' the little elf said.

``Good,'' said Harry. ``Could you take me to the Forbidden Forest,
though? I don't think I'd better do it here, with all the other house
elf webs in Hogwarts. I only think I know how to unbind a frayed one. I
wouldn't want to untie theirs by mistake.'' \emph{Not to mention that I
don't have the least idea of how to convince Dumbledore to let the
Hogwarts house elves go.}

Dobby nodded, took a step forward, and clasped a hand around Harry's
wrist. Harry endured being squeezed through Apparition with resignation,
and found himself in a surprisingly dry and sheltered spot in the
Forbidden Forest. He did conjure a \emph{Lumos} to see Dobby by, and
also saw they were in a small cave made of several trees bent and
hanging together.

He faced Dobby and let out a little nervous breath, squinting. Dobby's
webs at once sprang into being. Now that Harry was looking exclusively
at them, he could make out how they wound on and around each other. Yes,
there was the web to bind the house elves, and another to insure that
they \emph{liked} slavery. Harry curled his lip in spite of himself.

Then he said, to distract himself from the magic he was building up,
``Who was the wizard who partially unbound you, Dobby?''

Dobby blinked his large eyes, finally making Harry realize he hadn't
blinked once before that. ``Dobby's master's name was Decus,'' he said.

Harry tilted his head. He recognized the Latin word for ``honor'' or
``glory.'' ``Do you remember what his last name was?''

``Lestrange.''

Harry nearly let his magic go in his surprise, but then shook his head
and went on gathering it. He had to weave exact replicas of the webs in
front of him, and so he fixed his eyes on them again. \emph{Strand to
the left, knot just below, strand to the right\ldots{}} ``Do you
remember why he wanted to unbind your webs?''

``Master Decus wanted to be free,'' Dobby whispered, his voice yearning.
He had transferred his stare to the model of the webs that Harry was
building in midair now. ``Master Decus was not like other wizards. He
had something else inside him, something that was wild and wanted to be
free. Dobby does not remember what it was.''

``A dragon?'' Harry asked softly.

Dobby blinked, and then his eyes sparked. ``That was it! Dobby
remembers!'' He clapped his hands and bobbed his head, his ears flapping
against his scalp. ``Yes, a dragon. Master Decus said to Dobby, he said,
`Dragons are long-sighted. Dragons cannot be tamed. Dragons are the
wildest of all Dark creatures. Remember that, Dobby. Someone someday
will need to know it.'\,''

Harry shivered in spite of himself. \emph{Well, Acies was certainly
strange enough that Decus could have been a relative of hers.} ``Do you
remember what happened to him?''

Dobby glanced up at Harry solemnly. ``Master Decus started to lose his
mind. The dragon inside him was too wild. It made him do things that
Master Decus did not want to do, oh, such wicked terrible things!''
Dobby abruptly covered his mouth with one hand and mumbled indistinct
words around it.

``What?'' Harry asked, glancing back and forth from the webs he was
building to the webs he was imitating. ``It's all right, Dobby, you can
tell me. I'm hardly about to tell anyone else.''

``Dobby is a bad house elf,'' Dobby said, taking his hand away. ``One
must never speak ill of one's master!''

Harry ground his back teeth together and let his breath come through his
mouth and nose both at once. ``In a few minutes, Dobby,'' he whispered,
``you aren't going to have to worry about that ever again.''

The webs were complete. Harry knew that the fact that his own created
webs were perfect copies of the ones that had so long endured on Dobby
was not the result of extraordinary skill on his part. The magic had
taken over halfway through, creating small intricate knots where Harry
would have blinked and peered through his glasses, and fraying the edges
in flawless mirror image replica. His sight of the other webs had faded.
There were only Dobby's to worry about now, and what he meant to do with
them.

Harry had expected to feel anxious or excited about now, since this was
the first time he'd ever removed a web from just one magical creature,
instead of tearing it away, as he had from the Dementors. Instead, he
felt focused, calm, as though he were walking a path already set out for
him.

``\emph{Vates},'' Dobby breathed.

The word felt like a signal. Harry leaned forward and touched his hands
to the webs. He had known what he would have to do from his research,
but he hadn't \emph{thought} it. His body moved without the guidance of
his mind, or before his thoughts.

His hands touched the fraying strands of the webs, and then he vanished
inside them.

He no longer stood in the sheltered little cave of trees in the
Forbidden Forest, but skimmed down the endless traceries of the web,
seeing a clear roof overhead, clear walls racing past him without end,
and an indistinct floor sliding under his feet. As if he rode a knife,
he sliced the web cleanly down the middle.

When he looked to the sides, he could see other Harrys riding other
knives. He was not sure what web he was actually in, the original or the
copy, and it did not seem to matter. What mattered was that he was
breaking it.

He came to the first knot, and for a moment, he felt panic. What was he
supposed to do with knots, which served as anchors for the web on the
free will of the creature they enslaved, and would he be able to
remember it in time? He was moving awfully fast.

But his body was already leaping, turning, moving, and then he
remembered.

The knots had endured long enough. He could not untie them, as such. And
they were too tangled and complicated to find the best thread and simply
pull to loosen them.

The best decision was to \emph{cut.}

Harry pulled up his magic and sent it before him, riding an intense
outpouring of will and free will. He was remembering the moment when his
own phoenix web had dissolved---the good part of it, the moment in the
Owlery when he had fully committed to the \emph{vates} path, not the
moment in the Chamber when Sylarana had died and ripped a good portion
of his mind to shreds.

The knot slit apart, and Harry went on sliding through it, bounding up a
clear ramp now, slicing through another glassy knot, slipping down a
different strand. He became aware that he was laughing. The laughter was
not joyous, exactly, but high and hard and proud.

He reached the end of that web, and turned to attack the other one, the
one that kept Dobby thinking he liked slavery---

And then he found that that one was gone. He blinked and shook his head,
but understood in a moment what had happened. Thinking that no house elf
should ever manage to free his magic first, the wizards who wove the
original webs had put the net binding free will under and inside the web
on their powers. The house elves went on thinking that they wanted to
serve wizards, and so of course they would never use magic against them.

Dobby was \emph{free.}

Harry caught his breath and dropped back into his own body. He watched
Dobby stretch his hands, and shake his head, and flash glances here and
there, as though his eyes were truly seeing for the very first time.

Then he looked up at Harry.

Harry gazed back at him. He had expected to feel a little touch or
thrill of fear, as he had once when he saw a vision of what Dobby might
be, fierce and feral. Instead, he felt only a rush of what he knew was
joy this time.

He bowed to Dobby, and moved a few steps backward. If Dobby wanted to
vanish right now, then Harry was hardly going to stop him.

Dobby extended his long fingers, instead, and snapped them twice. At
once, a cloud of colored lights rose from the ground, formed into
bubbles, and drifted around Harry. Harry blinked and focused on them,
and blinked again when he realized that each contained a small,
intricate scene, each one showing a happy family of some different kind
of magical creature. It was magic that a wizard would have been
hard-pressed to create in the first place, never mind maintain.

``I thank you, Harry Potter.'' Dobby's voice was deeper, and had
entirely lost the cringing tone. ``I am free now. I can hear the songs
of the Forest. And I know what is coming.''

Harry tore his gaze away from the bubbles, and looked at Dobby. ``What
is coming?''

Dobby tilted his head back. His ears were shrinking as Harry watched,
coming to rest closer to his head, elegant and sharply pointed. ``Decus
Lestrange committed suicide because he could not control the dragon
within himself,'' he whispered. ``Dragons are the wildest of us all. And
dragons are coming to Hogwarts. The very night sings of their presence,
of their near arrival.''

He opened his eyes and looked at Harry again. Already those eyes were
different, too, larger and greener and possessed of a cat-like glow.
``Dragons cannot be tamed,'' he said, as if it were a proverb, or a
prayer.

Harry felt his breath catch. \emph{That's the First Task. Dragons. It
must be.}

``Even dragons will need their \emph{vates},'' Dobby whispered to him.
``They are wild, but they are not free. Beware, though, Harry Potter.
Wildness can consume even as it exalts.'' He looked abruptly past Harry.
``And you attract both the consuming and the exalting kind more than
most,'' he added.

Harry turned around.

A thestral stood behind him, long draconic neck extended and nostrils
flaring as it sniffed at him. Harry stood still as the creature walked
forward, hooves nearly silent even in the deep leaves, and spread its
wings around him. Then it licked at his forehead, with a tongue as cool
as grave dirt.

Harry started, and then realized that the thestral must have smelled the
blood from his scar. He remained still, and let it take what it wanted.
Then it stepped back from him, snorted, and extended a wing.

``The thestral wishes Harry Potter to ride,'' Dobby said.

Harry blinked and glanced at him. ``Why? I haven't broken their web
yet.''

Dobby laughed. His voice was changing, too, becoming deeper and richer
with promise, like the neigh of a unicorn or the song of a phoenix.
``Some magical creatures respect you for what you are, Harry Potter,''
he said. ``Some do not need you to break their web to prove yourself
worthy of their attention.''

The thestral snorted at him and stamped a hoof, which Harry didn't need
Dobby to translate. Carefully, he hauled himself onto the thin dark
back, clasping the ribs tightly with his legs so he didn't slide off.

The thestral reared. Harry wasn't quite sure how it managed things, but
the leaves of the trees above them parted, and Harry was gazing straight
up at the stars, and especially the black spaces between them, which he
hadn't noticed since Walpurgis Night.

The thestral took off with a powerful kick of its hind legs, and the
leaves rushed away, and the earth, and Dobby's laughter.

What came up to take their place was wind, and darkness, and music.

Harry found himself surrounded by song as they arose. He thought part of
it came from the stars themselves, as if the act of freeing Dobby gave
them voices he could hear. And surely some was the same deep music that
he had heard the night he had run in the Forest, the cheerful voice
booming from glen to glade, and some was the wind and the exaltation he
always felt in the sky.

And some of it was the same song he had heard in Number Twelve Grimmauld
Place, from the wards and the creature caged behind the closet door.

\emph{Let me out.}

Harry extended his hands. He was laughing, because he didn't have any
choice. The symphony reached right into him and ripped the laughter out.
He threw his head back, and felt the wind pass through his hair and
soothe---the first time anything had in days---the pain in his scar. As
if in answer, it built to a gale, and roared back at him.

The music grew more and more frenzied, and the thestral dipped its wings
and swept in a wide circle. Harry could see Hogwarts beneath them, dark
and slumbering, and its grounds, and its lake, and the Forest stretching
on, and the curve of the brilliant world rolling beneath.

\emph{You might leave,} said a voice that did not seem distinguishable
from the voice of the music, or the Dark creature in his memory.
\emph{You might wander the world, setting the magical creatures free and
unbinding webs. What obligations have you to lesser wizards? Your power
sets you above them. Listen to our song. You might claim us, and we
might claim you}.

Harry sighed and closed his eyes. His enchantment had not faded, but
other impulses were rising to hedge it in.

``I have the same obligations I always did,'' he whispered. ``I
\emph{could} fight Dumbledore, and perhaps win, since he'd not looking
for an attack to come from my direction. I \emph{could} attack and kill
my enemies. But I can't. I won't step on their wills, and I don't think
of myself as better than they are just because I have more magic.''

\emph{But you want to,} said the eager voice. \emph{Some part of you
wants to.}

Harry shrugged. ``It would be simpler,'' he muttered. ``That doesn't
mean I'm going to declare myself for the Dark.''

The wind went skipping away from him again, and the chorus of singing
voices rose from all directions.

For a moment, Harry let himself bathe in the song, and imagine what it
could be like if he did become a fully Dark wizard. He wouldn't have to
torture and kill anyone, not like Voldemort. He could simply move
without restraint, righting the wrongs that everyone less intelligent
than he was had put in motion. He could free Snape, and free Connor from
this stupid Tournament, and unbind the magical creatures. He could free
Muggles from their fear and ignorance of wizards, and free wizards from
their fear of Muggles .He had enough magic to set the world going the
way he wanted it.

It would be simpler.

\emph{Nothing is simple.}

Harry felt pain catch at his heart again, and the song lost all
attraction for him. He stroked the thestral's neck and murmured, ``Down
again? Please?''

The winged horse dipped without protest, and landed Harry on the edge of
the Forbidden Forest. Harry slid off its back and stood for a moment,
leaning against it, taking deep breaths.

It hurt to think of his mother, and what she had written in her letter,
and what she would think when she received his back.

But the training she had given him had saved him yet again.

\emph{I cannot declare myself for the Dark. That would be too simple.}

He allowed himself a few heartbeats more to glory in that vast music,
then gave the thestral a pat on the shoulder, let it lick more blood
from his scar, and set off, back to the castle and the world of
limitations he had chosen.

\chapter{To The Ministry We Go}\label{chapter-38-to-the-ministry-we-go}

Harry closed his eyes. He was tired after an evening and a night spent
researching ways to defeat dragons with Connor, a nightmare, and then an
explanation session about the nightmare with Draco, but he thought he
could still manage this. In fact, he thought his exhaustion would
probably contribute to his success.

``\emph{Expelliarmus},'' he whispered aloud, and gestured with one hand.

His wand, which he'd put in the hand of a wooden figure on the other
side of the room, flew away from it with great rapidity and vigor. Harry
felt a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and was too tired to
resist giving it.

\emph{Yes. Perfect. My wandless magic really does work better when I
confine it to my body than when I let it spread around me. And if it's
not floating around me hitting at the walls like wings and plaguing
everyone, that will make life easier for other people, too.}

He walked over to retrieve his wand, humming under his breath. He froze
when he heard the door creak open behind him, though. So far as he knew,
no one else had realized he was here, in a small room in the dungeons
where Snape used to take him to practice dueling spells while students
had detentions in his offices.

Harry turned fluidly around, clutching his wand, and blinked when he saw
Dumbledore standing in the doorway. He stood, but said nothing. He had
no idea why the Headmaster had sought him out, and lately, when he
initiated confrontations, he always seemed to come off the worse in them
anyway. He kept his eyes on Dumbledore's face and waited.

``Harry, my boy.'' Dumbledore nodded to him as if nothing had ever
changed. Harry wanted to rage and snap that yes it \emph{did}, yes it
\emph{had}, but he just inclined his head back. ``Ready for our trip to
the Ministry this morning, I hope?'' Dumbledore continued, looking at
the walls of the dungeon room with interest, as though they offered
something more than stone starred with damp patches and marked
irregularly by flickering shadows from the torches.

``What trip to the Ministry?'' Harry shifted one foot behind him. He was
poised now, ready to dart in several directions. ``I know that today is
Fudge's trial, but I thought you were going to vote no confidence.''

``I am, Harry, I am.'' Dumbledore gave him a fleeting smile. ``I am
satisfied that you have kept up your end of our bargain. Lily has shown
me your letter herself.''

Harry roped his magic, which wanted to explode out of his body in
several dozen different directions, and nodded.

``But you are required to come with me,'' said Dumbledore, with a small
sigh and a flap of his hand. ``One of those tired formalities that
require those involved in bringing the motion before the Wizengamot to
be present when it's debated.''

``But I wasn't the one who suggested the motion,'' Harry argued.

``No, but according to Amelia Bones, you were a large part of the reason
that she decided to suggest the vote.''

Harry flushed. He could feel Dumbledore's mild gaze on him, and that was
bad enough. He did not want people in the courtroom pointing at him, and
whispering that that was the boy who had caused Fudge to be brought to
trial.

``You need not speak,'' Dumbledore reassured him. ``The formalities do
not require you to do \emph{that}. Only to be present, and if someone
does have a mild question, about corroborating factual details perhaps,
then you can give your answer to the court scribe. Your participation
can be limited.''

Harry relaxed. With the way that Dumbledore had come in here, springing
this as a surprise on him, he had been afraid that Dumbledore would
spring the greater and far more unpleasant surprise of making him a
witness. ``Then let me eat breakfast, sir, and I'll be ready to
accompany you,'' he said.

``Take all the time in the world, dear boy,'' Dumbledore said, and stood
out of the way. ``The trial is set for noon, and since we have special
permission to Apparate in to the Ministry, we don't have to take much
time getting there. Meet me in my office no later than half past eleven,
though.''

Harry nodded shortly and edged past Dumbledore. It made his skin crawl
when the Headmaster looked at him.

This time, though, he could not imagine that this was some plan of
Dumbledore's. Why would it be? Perhaps the Headmaster wanted Harry to
witness him voting no confidence, but then inventing this talk of a
formality that required him to be there, an easily detected lie, would
be pointless. No, probably the formality was real and any benefit that
might accrue to Dumbledore from his presence just a side issue.

Harry would make sure to renew his glamours before he entered the court,
though, and several other defensive spells he had learned in the past
few days, while he and Connor worked on trying to find magic that would
fool a dragon. There would still be nosy people poking and prying around
the court, perhaps even other reporters than Skeeter. He did not want
them carrying back stories about the Boy Who Accused Fudge looking pale
or worn or tired.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``You weren't in your bed, Potter,'' was Millicent's greeting as he slid
into place at the Slytherin table. She had two full plates in front of
her, and she pushed one of them towards Harry. ``Eat, and then we can
talk.''

Harry frowned at her. ``You could stop treating me as a child, you
know,'' he said, and started to eat.

``When you stop acting like one, then I will,'' said Millicent. She
glanced about, but their part of the table was largely empty; Pansy
always slept in on a Sunday, and Blaise and Vince had already finished
and gone Merlin knew where. Draco was in the library researching
empathy, Harry knew. Millicent leaned nearer to Harry and lowered her
voice. ``You should \emph{stop} that, you know. Other people are starting
to notice.''

Harry swallowed around a lump that seemed to have frozen in his throat.
\emph{Another problem. Another damn problem.} ``I don't know what you
mean,'' he said.

``Other people are noticing that someone has to coax you to eat, to
sleep.'' Millicent took a dainty bite, her eyes never leaving his. ``And
what they notice, their parents notice, at least some of them. You can't
afford to look weak, Potter, and neither can your allies. You should
start shaping up soon. Any victories you gain are worthless when you
can't be depended upon to stay on your feet past them, or if you have to
spend days in the hospital wing recovering from them.'' She raised her
eyebrows, the expression she usually had before going in for the kill.
``Plus, it doesn't give most people much trust in your basic common
sense.''

Harry frowned and chewed as he considered that. It was true that he
didn't want to inflict public damage on his allies for allying with him.
On the other hand, how could he stop? Some of the victories that he won
for others were dependent on the time that he spent away from extensive
meals and bed rest.

``I could improve the magic that I'm using to prevent people from
noticing,'' he offered. ``I found some spells that---''

``Not enough, Harry.'' Millicent's voice had gone quiet and intense.
``That would only solve half the problems. If you're driving yourself
into the ground, you'll start making mistakes. More, your magic will be
more likely to go mad, and that's what we depend on to win us victories
in the first place.''

Harry picked at his food, no longer hungry. Millicent, though, leaned
closer and closer, until her stern look filled all his vision. It
promised wrath, probably a public scene, if he didn't finish his
breakfast. Harry sighed and started eating again.

``I don't know what to do,'' Harry admitted at last, after several
minutes of eating and thinking.

``I do.'' Millicent was smug, but at the moment, Harry couldn't hold it
against her. ``Delegate, Potter, for Merlin's sake. Get other people to
help you. Don't try to do everything yourself. It's what the best
leaders have always done.''

Harry resisted the temptation to say he wasn't a leader. Millicent would
ignore him, anyway. ``But most of the tasks I have are ones that only I
can do,'' he argued. ``Either because of strength of magic, or because
they're serving people who will only trust me.''

``Name one.'' Millicent folded her hands on the table and watched him
with a quietude that didn't fool Harry for a moment. It was the look she
wore right before she proved someone wrong in class.

``My duties as \emph{vates}, for instance,'' Harry muttered. ``Most of the
magical creatures won't see or converse with anyone but me.''

The Many on his arm stirred, and thrust its head from his sleeve.
``\emph{What is for breakfast?}'' it hissed.

``\emph{Meat,}'' said Harry, and fed it, then added to Millicent, ``You
see? Most wizards aren't Parselmouths.''

``So my speaking to cobras and Runespoors for you is out.'' Millicent
waved her hand. ``You must have some allies who speak English, Potter.''

``The centaurs, but---''

``And they'll accept a delegate if you appoint one according to the
proper formalities.'' Millicent rolled her eyes. ``\emph{Merlin}, but
you're stupid sometimes, Potter. All you need to do is send me to them
with a token of your first meeting. I would think you knew that.''

Harry winced. ``I didn't think of it,'' he said quietly.

``And that's the problem, Potter, your \emph{not thinking}. It's going to
ruin you if you let it.'' Millicent shook her head at him. ``I think
you'll find many more willing hands than you think you will, if you only
ask. Most people our age would be thrilled and excited to help in duties
this big. Gryffindors will like the secrecy of it all, and the
purebloods in other Houses will like the ceremoniousness. And those of
us who are formally allied with you will feel like we're doing something
to help.''

Harry nodded slowly. ``Then I'll find you an egg-shaped stone. That was
the token I shattered to save Draco's life when I first met the
centaurs.''

``Save his---'' Millicent halted and shook her head. ``Never mind. I
don't think I want all the details of the strange relationship that you
two have.''

She paused and watched Harry as if waiting for his response to that, but
Harry just looked back in mild puzzlement. ``I don't blame you,'' he
said at last. ``I would imagine that details of friendships are boring
to most people not directly involved in them.''

Millicent growled something about blindness and oblivious idiots, hit
the table with her hand, and then said, ``I'd be glad to do something to
help you. And so would Pansy, and so would Blaise. And Draco---you've
got to see that he would work himself to the bone for you, Harry. I
can't believe you haven't taken advantage of this fact before now.''

``You all have your own lives.''

``And they're part of yours. For Merlin's sake,'' said Millicent yet
again, but she sounded less displeased this time. ``Well, unless you
have somewhere to go today, then---''

``I'm going to the Ministry to witness Fudge's no confidence vote,''
said Harry, and began eating in earnest. Despite the few hours that he
had before he had to meet Dumbledore, he still wanted to use the time as
best he could. The unexpected chunk missing out of his day was going to
play merry havoc with his plans. ``Apparently, it's a formality that
everyone involved in the motion has to be there to witness it.''

``Yes, there is one of those,'' said Millicent, and lightly caught his
wrist. ``Harry,'' she said, and sat there until he looked at her. ``If
you get in trouble at the Ministry, go to the Department of Magical
Games and Sports. I have an uncle who works there, Thor Bulstrode. You
can depend on him in times of trouble.''

``I'm just going to witness a trial,'' said Harry, caught off guard by
the intense look Millicent was giving him.

``This is politics, Harry.'' Millicent smiled faintly, but her eyes
didn't relent. ``Nothing is ever just one thing.''

Harry nodded his consent and his understanding, and Millicent released
his wrist and turned back to her own breakfast. Harry went on eating,
more slowly this time, because his mind was plunging around, reordering
its conception of the world. Sometimes he forgot, since he lived in
Hogwarts most of the year and so many of the things central to his own
existence happened here, that his alliances implicated him in a larger
world beyond it.

\emph{I should remember that more often,} he thought, and wrote it on a
mental scroll, and slid it into place alongside thirty thousand other
duties in his library.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

The courtroom where the Wizengamot met could have passed easily for a
dungeon room in Hogwarts, Harry thought. It was gloomy enough, with
bare, blank stone walls lit by torches in sconces that looked subtly
wrong to Harry, though that might only be the spells wrapping them to
keep the torches alight. In the center of the room was a chair wrapped
with chains. The judges' balcony loomed above that, and Harry could see
most Wizengamot members already there. Pointed hats nodded to each other
as they milled between their seats.

``Come, Harry.''

Harry shook his head and followed Dumbledore across the judges' balcony.
He would sit in the center, Harry saw, and there was a small chair
positioned directly behind him, where Harry could sit. Even more tension
ran out of his muscles at the sight. No one would observe him at all. On
the other hand, he could see easily between the members of the court,
and if he craned his neck or used a mild Seeing Spell, he could see over
the balcony and to Fudge's chair as well.

``Hem, hem.''

Harry turned his head, and met Umbridge's eyes.

The witch stood looking at him. She did not smile, and she did not toy
with the small pink bows of the cardigan she wore beneath her robes,
which only made her look more menacing. Harry supposed she intended to
engage him in a staring contest, but he turned his back on her before
that could happen, and took the seat that Dumbledore had provided for
him.

He did not want to look at her. She reminded him of the pain he had
caused, and the foul things hiding inside him. He cast the Seeing Spell
that turned a small patch of air in front of him into a window instead,
and let him see through solid stone to where Fudge was shuffling into
place. He cupped his palm around the window so that no one else could
see it.

``Mr. Potter.''

Harry felt himself tense, but didn't look up. ``Yes, Madam Umbridge?''

``Such a polite boy,'' she said in that kittenish, little girl's voice.
``A piece of advice, sweet child. If today does not work out as you
hope, you should still watch your back, rather than your hands.''

``I have eyes in many different directions, Madam Umbridge,'' Harry
murmured. ``That shouldn't be difficult.''

He felt her pause, as if she were going to add some other dire warning,
but then she shook her head and shuffled off to her seat. Harry
shuddered. He could only imagine that she was one of Fudge's appointees
to the Wizengamot, and of course she would vote to retain him. He had to
hope that most of the other wizards and witches would follow
Dumbledore's lead.

``Mr. Potter.''

This was another witch's voice, but Harry did not recognize it, and took
the chance of looking up. In front of him stood an incredibly old woman,
her face so mapped by wrinkles that Harry couldn't see any smooth skin.
The soft blaze of her magic told him that she wasn't that powerful, but
incredibly well-controlled. She was probably older than Dumbledore.

He clenched a hand in front of his heart and bowed, as the young were
supposed to do to elders they respected. A wistful smile caused some of
the witch's wrinkles to realign.

``I haven't seen that gesture in decades,'' she murmured. ``No one is as
polite any more as they are supposed to be.'' She extended a small,
graceful hand, which Harry gently grasped. ``My name is Griselda
Marchbanks, Mr. Potter. I suspect we have some friends in common.''

Harry nodded a bit. He'd heard of this woman, who had sat on the
Wizengamot for years. ``Headmaster Dumbledore, Madam?''

``Not just him,'' said Griselda, and leaned closer to him. ``Some of
them very much shorter than Albus Dumbledore.''

Harry blinked, and abruptly remembered something else about Griselda
that he'd heard but forgotten: she supposedly had links with goblin
groups who at one time had plotted rebellion against the wizards. He
swallowed. ``You are involved in \emph{vates} business, too, Madam?'' he
asked, and lowered his voice as he did so.

Griselda winked gravely at him. ``Never had the power for that path,
myself,'' she said. ``But suffice it to say that I know quite a bit
about it, and when seagulls and starlings both are flying back and forth
in excitement, I know that someone special has given us what we wanted
all along. A chance.''

Seagulls would be from the northern goblins, Harry surmised. He supposed
the southern ones must use starlings as messengers. ``I would like to
speak with you later, Madam, if there's time.''

``So polite,'' Griselda said, in an uncanny echo of Umbridge, and nodded
to him, and went to claim her seat. Harry watched her go.

\emph{I suppose, if I can have enemies I didn't know about, I can have
allies that way, too.}

``Take your places, please! Take your places, please!''

That was a wizard bearing the old, heavy medallion of a court scribe,
whom Harry already didn't like, if only for his officious manner. He
settled back in his seat, though, and directed his attention to his
window. Fudge sat in the chain-draped chair, his gaze traveling over the
members of the Wizengamot. His face flickered continually with changing
emotions, hope and despair and disgust and grief and uncertainty. Harry
shook his head. \emph{Has he never learned to hide what he's thinking?}

``The Wizengamot has gathered to cast a vote of no confidence on
Minister Cornelius Fudge,'' said the scribe, reading from a large and
official-looking scroll. ``Amelia Bones has called the motion. Chief
Warlock Albus Dumbledore presiding.''

``Thank you, Edgar,'' said Dumbledore, and stood. Harry saw the way that
eyes turned towards him as he moved. A barely detectable shimmer of
power insured that. Harry shook his head. \emph{I can only hope to have
that much control over my magic someday.} ``First, according to the
Wizengamot's Charter, the accused has a right to representation. Have
you chosen to waive that right, Cornelius, or would you like to call
someone in now?''

``I am not the \emph{accused},'' said Fudge, his body trembling as he
leaned forward in the chair. ``This is a vote of confidence or no
confidence only. I'll only lose my job if I lose this, not my freedom or
my life.''

Dumbledore beamed at him, from the sound of his voice. ``Silly of me,''
he murmured. ``Forgive me. I \emph{do} get confused.'' A titter moved
through the members of the Wizengamot at that. ``All right, then,
Cornelius. I trust you know why this motion has been brought against
you.''

``I know the more ridiculous accusations,'' said Fudge. ``I want to hear
them all, and I want to hear them now.''

``As you wish,'' said Dumbledore, and nodded to a gray-haired witch with
a monocle and a sharp jaw sitting a few seats down from him. Harry
turned to face her, and decided this must be Amelia Bones. She certainly
looked strong enough for it. She rose to her feet with a scroll in her
arms and a grim expression on here face.

``Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge,'' she read out. ``You are accused of
the following crimes:''

``Of forming a secret police force on your own cognizance, called the
Hounds, which included ex-Aurors who had been sacked for incompetence or
negligence of their duties, thus increasing the danger to the public
safety.''

``Of executing three persons without trial, thereby violating the rule of
law.''

``Of arresting at least one person with these Hounds, thus appointing
yourself arbiter of right and wrong in a way that the Minister's office
was never intended to be.''

``Of abducting a fourteen-year-old wizard called Harry Potter and
bringing him to the Ministry without his guardian, thereby putting a
child in danger and in legal trouble that he was not legally competent
to handle by himself.''

``Of using a magical artifact to try and drain Harry Potter's magic, thus
employing a punishment that has been historically used on only the most
dangerous and desperate criminals.''

``Of claiming the privileges of a Minister in a time of war when no war
has been declared, thereby flouting the Wizengamot's authority.''

``Of passing edicts against Dark wizards and Dark magical talents
without putting these edicts through due process of law, thus flouting
the Wizengamot's authority once more.''

There were more accusations, but Harry didn't think he had to listen to
them. He sat back, shaking his head, and saw Fudge sink lower and lower
in his chair as each accusation was repeated. Madam Bones's steady,
clear voice never faltered.

Harry started sneaking looks at the members of the Wizengamot, trying to
decide how they would vote. A few faces were closed, and he could tell
nothing from them. Most, however, looked steadily more disgusted as the
list rolled on. They might not care anything about him, Harry thought,
or even about the people that Fudge had illegally arrested and killed,
but they were part of the governing body that Fudge had ignored in
making his mad schemes. They had no chance of retaining true power if
they left the Minister's office in Fudge's hands, and they must know it
now. Harry relaxed as the list of accusations finally came to a
conclusion, and Madam Bones leaned forward and peered at Fudge as if he
were an interesting species of bug.

``Do you have anything to add to this list?'' she asked. ``Any
accusations that you see fit to deny?''

Harry glanced back at the window cradled in the palm of his hand again.
Fudge had a mulish look on his face.

``All I did,'' he said, ``I did for the good of wizarding Britain.
Besides, most of those accusations were made by people who had no
\emph{personal} interest in them, weren't they? \emph{I've} never been
approached about illegal executions. It was my political enemies who
decided I acted wrongly.''

He held his hands out in front of him and looked from face to face.
``Most of you know me,'' he said. ``I'm a good wizard of good family,
Light-declared, who's always done my best for our world. Who opposes me?
Paper-chasers, who don't even dare to show their faces in court. There's
no one here with a \emph{legitimate} grievance against me, no one who
dares to meet me face to face, flesh to blood. This is all made in
passive voice, from an impersonal distance. Oh, yes, very easy to do,
isn't it, when you can't look the man you're accusing in the eye? But
not one person who actually wants to act as eyewitness to any of these
supposed crimes.''

Harry squeezed his eyes shut. He could feel his heart beating in his
chest, slow and heavy. No one had looked at him yet, except Griselda. No
one had even noticed that he was here, seemingly. His own power was
shielded by Dumbledore's, and his chair was in a secure and sheltered
place. He had no need to rise to his feet and confront Fudge. He was
going to lose anyway. This was too little, too late. Harry didn't have
to answer Fudge's bluster.

``You're wrong,'' said another calm, clear voice, which did not belong
to Madam Bones. ``There is one wizard here who did dare to come and face
you, and he's the youngest of your victims.''

Harry opened his eyes, turned his head, and met Scrimgeour's gaze. He
sat behind Madam Bones's chair, his bad leg propped out in front of him,
his eyes steady and without mercy.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Rufus had become aware of young Harry almost at once. He'd been around
Dumbledore too many times not to notice what seemed an addition or
augmentation to his power. In fighting the compulsion to pay attention
to the old wizard, even when Amelia was reading out the accusations,
he'd turned his face in the right direction and seen Harry, half-in and
half-out of the shadows.

And he'd known why Dumbledore would have brought him, and he knew what a
chance he had, especially when Fudge made that idiotic plea for one of
his accusers to rise and confront him.

Rufus did feel a pang of sympathy for the boy, whose green eyes were
saying, all too clearly, that he did not want to take this chance, that
he would not even dignify Fudge with a response if he had the choice.

But Harry did not yet understand the way Ministry politics worked, not
completely. Fudge could be ripped out, but he would leave roots behind,
most especially that odious Umbridge. Rufus did not want him to leave
behind any roots of respect, though. It would be better if Fudge's last
moments in front of the Wizengamot were utterly tarnished, if there was
no lingering doubt in the Elders' minds that they had done the best
thing.

And Dumbledore seemed all too content to keep the boy hidden, not
displaying him the way that Rufus would have thought he would, if he
wanted to show the world that Harry was under his control. Whatever
Dumbledore wanted was something that Rufus Scrimgeour usually wanted to
oppose.

\emph{Rise, Harry,} Rufus said silently in his own mind. \emph{I think
that we may have left it alone too long already. There are some here to
whom you will be a surprise, and that is not the way it should be.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry swallowed and stood. He felt gazes moving towards him, necks
craned awkwardly and chairs turned around, and Scrimgeour suggested
calmly, ``Perhaps young Potter should move to the center of the court,
so that all involved can see him?''

Harry shuddered as he imagined those eyes crawling like spiders down his
shirt, but he inclined his head and made his way off the judges'
balcony, until he could stand on the floor of the courtroom. He ignored
Fudge's gaping mouth. He felt compelled to back up until he was at least
not hurting his own neck, meeting the eyes of the Wizengamot members.

``Now, Cornelius,'' said Madam Bones, in a faintly amused voice, ``you
were saying something about none of your accusers facing you? And what
did you want to say to Mr. Potter?''

Harry glanced at Fudge from the corner of his eye. The Minister's face
had gone white, though, and it was only too obvious that he didn't have
anything planned for this eventuality. His mouth was flopping open and
then shut again, as if he were a fox caught in a trap.

``Mr. Potter,'' said Madam Bones then. ``Do you have anything to say to
Minister Fudge?''

The stares intensified. Harry could gladly have shucked his own skin, as
bad, as unnatural, as it felt, to have all these people paying attention
to him.

He carefully pushed his discomfort under the surface of a pool of
quicksilver, the way Snape had taught him. He had a chance to do some
good here, something that mattered to more people than just himself
alone. Perhaps he should thank Scrimgeour for the opportunity after all,
though at the moment he wasn't particularly inclined to.

He turned and faced the Minister. Fudge was looking at him as if faintly
curious what he might say. Harry fixed his gaze and his awareness only
on him. It was easier that way than if he tried to imagine everyone else
staring at him. Merlin, his breath was coming fast, and if he---

Harry chopped off the thoughts, not letting them continue. He met
Fudge's eyes, and began.

``I always thought of the Minister as someone who served the public
interest, sir,'' he said quietly. He knew that the courtroom's
acoustics, and carefully placed spells, would repeat his words in the
ears of everyone in attendance, though. ``I suppose I didn't think much
about that. It was just the sort of thing I learned as a child, the way
that other children learned things.''

``I began to question the Ministry's actions last year, when I realized
they had passed legal restrictions against werewolves. I've had a very
dear friend in a werewolf, Remus Lupin, and he had been taking the
Wolfsbane Potion for the last year. It worked. There's finally a potion
that could give werewolves hope, and then they had it taken away,
because the Ministry forbade them to have custody of a child, to hold a
paying job, to borrow money. They were about to become productive
members of society, and now they're going to be more desperate than
ever.''

``I suppose that's when a lot of my romantic illusions about the Ministry
shattered, assuming that I had any left. I no longer thought that they
worked for the good of wizarding Britain. I thought they worked for the
good of \emph{part} of wizarding Britain, and only that.''

Harry paused. His breath was still coming fast, if he let it; his body
was not convinced by his mind's insistence that only one person was
watching him, and neither was the training he had received from Lily.
The impulse to flee from the room was fading, though. He could do this.
He could go through with this.

``And then I had that confirmed this summer, when you kidnapped me,'' he
finished. ``I knew that even children weren't safe. I thought no one in
the Ministry would ever take me to an illegal trial, ever take me
somewhere without my guardian's consent, ever try to drain my magic. But
you did, and---''

``I did not!'' Fudge interrupted harshly.

``I can fetch a Pensieve, Minister, if you would like,'' said Madam
Bones, all concerned helpfulness.

Harry felt his body stiffen. \emph{No}. They would all see him hurting
Umbridge if they did that, and Harry did not want to remember what he
had done. Sick shame was already bubbling in his gut like vomit.

But Fudge, luckily, shrank from the offer. ``No,'' he said. ``No. I only
meant---I meant that there were extenuating circumstances that the child
does not understand.'' He gave Harry a sickly sweet smile, which Harry
returned with a level glance.

``Do explain them, Minister,'' said Madam Bones. ``This is a very
serious matter, and though of course this is a motion for a vote of no
confidence and not a trial to put you in Azkaban, we would like to
understand everything that surrounds it. Every extenuating circumstance,
every unusual occurrence, should be explained in full.''

Fudge went pale again. ``I do not wish to speak,'' he said, and tried to
put his head up and strive for a look of dignity.

Madam Bones waited, then said, ``Did you have anything else to say, Mr.
Potter?''

Harry shook his head. \emph{I know that Scrimgeour probably wants me to
do something more, but I don't know what it is, and I don't want to
stand here.} ``Just that that day irreparably broke my trust in the
Minister,'' he said. ``I think I could trust again, but only if justice
is truly served this day.'' He gave a little bow to signify that that
was the end of it.

``Very well, Mr. Potter,'' said Madam Bones. ``Please return to your
seat.''

Harry climbed the stairs again, and resumed his tiny chair. The
Wizengamot was stirring and murmuring, most of the wizards and witches
turning at least once to look at him, and then looking away again. Harry
ducked his head, and felt his cheeks turning steadily and steadily more
crimson, his heart hammering loud enough, finally, to obscure the
murmurs.

\emph{Did Scrimgeour even accomplish what he wanted to accomplish with
that? I hope so. I'm certainly not doing it again.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Rufus watched with a faint smile as Harry took his seat, and shook his
head. The boy didn't seem to realize what he'd done, even by speaking
his short little piece that emphasized werewolf rights at the expense of
his own. He was still young, at least in looks, and he had had the
courage to face the Minister, and Fudge hadn't been able to answer him
in any way. The Minister's last moments were forever tarnished now, and
he was a weakling, and Rufus no longer had any doubt that the Wizengamot
would cast a vote of no confidence to throw Fudge out of office.

And, more to the point, the boy's magic had poured off him like heat off
a phoenix, once he was away from Dumbledore's shielding influence.

Things were changing even as Rufus watched, small currents of thought
traveling through the Elders' minds. Harry realigned the world just by
walking around, and he'd done it again here. Rufus would be content with
that. The world \emph{should} change, with the advent of a new Minister.

\emph{And it's about to change even further}. Amelia had told
him---well, told many people---of her own plan. Rufus hadn't told anyone
of his.

He watched calmly as Amelia called for the vote. Three members of the
Wizengamot voted to retain Fudge as Minister. Two abstained. Three
weren't there.

That still left forty-three witches and wizards who voted that they had
no confidence left in Cornelius Fudge, and cast him, resoundingly, out
of office. Amelia cast her vote with a small smile, Dumbledore with a
calm voice and a glance darted at Rufus as the voting moved on around
the circle.

Rufus met his eyes. \emph{Oh, yes, scowl at me, Light Lord, if you must.
I'm taking the Ministry back, and in a moment, you'll see how.}

Amelia clapped her hands, and two of Rufus's Aurors came to escort a
dazed Fudge back to his own office---or the room that had been his
office until just a few moments ago. ``Now,'' said Amelia. ``I realize
that an event of great moment has just taken place, but we must not
leave our poor island in the lurch for long. I call for an emergency
election for Minister to take place, no later than the first day of
January. In the meantime, the Wizengamot will govern Britain. Is there
anyone who wishes to say nay?''

There was a deafening silence. Fudge's supporters, Rufus saw, including
that horrible Umbridge woman, scowled, but remained silent.

Amelia nodded. ``All the rules for emergency elections apply. Candidates
for Minister may offer themselves at any point before the New Year. They
may campaign with all tactics that are legal in a more usual race for
office. I would like to announce my own candidacy at this time.''

There were a few surprised noises, but not many. Amelia really had been
cultivating the ground. Rufus nodded, and waited.

Amelia looked around with a faintly bored expression. ``Would anyone
else like to announce themselves as candidates now?''

Rufus gave a little cough and stood. He felt surprised eyes swing his
way---and Dumbledore's, at least, were dismayed. He liked that.

``I would,'' he said off-handedly.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry blinked, then shook his head. \emph{Oh. That was why he called on
me, then. This had something to do with preparing his own campaign for
Minister. Maybe he wanted to make absolutely sure that Fudge would be
defeated.}

Harry shrugged, and put it out of his head. His own part was done now,
except for the meeting with Griselda. He stood, looking for the old
witch in the sudden movement of people, but found Dumbledore in front of
him.

``Harry,'' said the older wizard with extreme firmness. ``I really think
that we should be returning to school.''

Harry sighed and nodded, reluctantly. He was unwilling to make a scene
now, not when people were still glancing at him, and he didn't want
Dumbledore to know that he was interested in an alliance with someone
who had links to goblin groups. \emph{I can always owl her.}

``Just a moment, Albus,'' said Griselda's voice just then. ``I wanted to
congratulate Mr. Potter. That was a fine piece of oratory that you did
there, young man.'' She held out her hand, as if for the first time, and
Harry shook it. ``Have you ever considered a career in politics?''

Harry met her sparkling eyes, and did his best to smile. ``Not really,
Madam,'' he said. ``I keep busy.''

``I'm sure that you must,'' she murmured. ``But politics isn't
incompatible with a busy life, you know. In fact, it's the cause of busy
lives in other people.''

Harry could feel his own smile turning more natural. ``I'm sure,
Madam,'' he said. ``But I prefer to work with people, and not just the
framework of the Ministry. No matter who the people are,'' he added,
hoping she would interpret that the way he meant it. \emph{Goblins are
people, too.}

``Ah. A distaste for bureaucracy. Well, sometimes that produces
admirable bureaucrats. But someone who can get his way through other
means might not need that.'' Griselda's eyes shifted as if to look at
something in the air around him.

\emph{My magic.} Harry decided that Millicent was right, and his
exhaustion must be affecting the way he controlled his power. He really
wanted the damn stuff confined to his body. More than that, though, he
wanted to stop Griselda before she could wander onto paths he wouldn't
walk.

``Not at all, Madam,'' he said. ``I prefer to \emph{work} with people.
Not against them, not above them, but with them.''

Griselda's face softened. ``I understand that impulse, Mr. Potter,'' she
said quietly. ``It led me into the Ministry. Perhaps your inclinations
will take you down the same path, or a different one, but no less
valuable.''

``I hope so, Madam.''

Dumbledore insisted on hustling him away then, and Harry didn't get a
chance to say anything more. He lifted his head, gave a shuddering
breath, and forced himself to consider this a victory.

\emph{We got Fudge out of office. We did it. And whether Scrimgeour or
Madam Bones becomes our next Minister, as I can hope one of them will,
he or she will be a better Minister than Fudge ever dreamed of.}

\emph{I'll have to tell Draco that I nearly panicked in front of the
Wizengamot, though. How in the world am I ever going to be a leader at
this rate? It really would be better for me to work from the shadows, or
from within the Forest. That gets just as much accomplished without all
this} staring\emph{, and then I won't fail anyone.}

\emph{At least that didn't take as long as I thought it would. Now, I
can get more things done this afternoon.}

\chapter{The Last Day Before}\label{chapter-39-the-last-day-before}

``Who's that from?''

Draco was quick, and curious, and leaned across Harry's shoulder as
though he would snatch a sight of the name written on the outside of the
envelope. Harry was quicker, though, and managed to cover the envelope
with one hand.

Not that it would have told Draco anything anyway, Harry realized as he
looked down, ignoring the dull twinge that seemed to pull to the left
side of his chest. There was only his own name, \emph{Harry}, written in
a delicate hand. The difference was that he knew that hand, and he
already knew he would have to read the letter alone.

``Well, who's it from?'' Draco demanded again.

Harry shook his head again, and slid the envelope into a pocket of his
robe. ``No one,'' he said.

``It can't be no one,'' said Draco, and peered into his face. Harry
could feel a distant tug on his mind that he suspected was Draco's
empathy working, trying to coax the truth out of him. ``Nobodies don't
write on parchment, and nobodies don't put your name on envelopes.'' He
lowered his voice, though Harry could feel most of the Slytherin table
watching them already. ``Nobodies don't make you look as though you've
received a blow to the solar plexus.''

Harry swallowed. He knew he couldn't tell Draco the truth. Draco would
demand to know what Harry thought he was \emph{doing}, and even if Harry
explained, he wouldn't understand most of it, not really. ``Draco,'' he
whispered. ``Please. I've yielded other things to you, the contents of
my nightmares and the contents of my emotions, without complaining.
Leave me this.''

``I could do that a lot more easily if you didn't look the way you
look.'' Draco's irritated flush had faded, and now his face was pale.
``Harry, I think you should tell me. Not because I want to know, but for
your own sake.''

``It's important to me,'' whispered Harry. ``It's something I really
need privacy on.''

Draco let out a long breath in which Harry could hear many emotions,
including the irritation that he'd obviously tried to dismiss. Then he
put one hand over Harry's wrist and squeezed.

``When you're ready to talk, come to me,'' said Draco. ``Don't---I don't
know, don't go and blab everything to your brother, not if he wouldn't
understand either. \emph{I} want to know.''

Harry met his eyes, gauging his willingness to know. Draco did seem
sincere. He nodded, once.

Draco smiled at him, though the expression was strained, and withdrew
his hand. ``Pass the pancakes \emph{this} way, Blaise,'' he said, waving a
lazy hand at the platter still sitting in front of the other boy. ``I'm
not minded to wait while you fill your pockets with them. Thinking of
feeding them to your little lion, later?''

Blaise flushed and almost hurled the platter down the table. ``At least I
have the courage to \emph{talk} to my crush,'' he said spitefully.

Draco drew his wand under the table, and muttered a quick spell that
Harry couldn't hear properly. A moment later, Blaise's hair turned pink.
He didn't notice, at least until the snickering sped up and down the
table. Draco slid his wand back into his sleeve, looking pleased with
himself.

Harry shook his head, but couldn't bring himself to scold. Not when he
was sure that his voice wouldn't shake when he spoke. Not when Draco
watched him from the corner of his eye as if he might collapse at any
second.

He forced his own breathing calm, and accepted the pancake platter as
Draco slid it to him in turn. His stomach churned unpleasantly, but he
did have to eat. Apart from classes and the letter to answer later, this
was the last Friday in November. That made it the last day before the
First Task.

He had to help Connor find a way to defeat the dragons, and soon.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``I don't know,'' Connor whinged, tossing aside \emph{Dragons and Their
Origins.} ``I think that Viktor and Fleur must have all the good books
out. There's nothing in here.''

Harry glanced up from a book of glamours he'd been studying. ``I told
you what I think you should use.''

``And I told you why it wouldn't work.'' Connor was obviously trying
hard to be patient. He flinched when Madam Pince glared at them over her
glasses, and lowered his voice. They were, technically, not supposed to
be in the library, since they were both skiving off classes. ``I can wrap
myself in a glamour to discourage scent and sound and sight, but we
haven't found any glamours to disguise the vibrations of my footsteps on
the ground. And \emph{you} were the one who told me that dragons were
closely related to snakes. They would feel me coming.''

Harry chewed his lip and flipped through the book again. That was true,
but Harry couldn't shake the---perhaps foolish---hope that glamours were
their best bet. He'd got much useful information out of this book,
particularly a scent-defeating glamour that he had wrapped around
himself now, just in case Hawthorn came by. And it wasn't as though
Connor had any other ideas. He wasn't good enough at Transfiguration or
Charms to use the defenses against the dragons that Harry had first hit
upon, and suspected the other Champions would be using.

Harry flipped another page, and found that he'd come to the end of the
book's section on glamours. He sat up when he saw the title of the next
one: \emph{Illusions.}

``Connor,'' he whispered.

``What?'' Connor glanced up from using his wand to scratch at the table,
obviously working hard to look bored instead of terrified out of his
mind.

``What about casting illusions to fool the dragon?'' Harry asked. ``And
wrapping the glamours around them? They wouldn't have the vibrations of
your footsteps, that's true, but I think they might be distracted enough
by all the different scents and sights to not realize that none of them
were you. And you could, if you really tried, make illusions solid
enough that they might cause vibrations.''

Connor brightened for a moment, then let his face fall. ``Wouldn't
work,'' he said. ``It would still have to be a lot of illusions, to keep
me safe from the dragon's flame. And I can't control that many.''

Then he went still, his eyes shining but an odd expression around his
mouth, and Harry felt a surge of hope.

``What?'' he asked.

``I---I forgot,'' Connor whispered. ``I've tried so hard to forget
everything about the end of last year.'' He glanced at Harry. Harry met
his twin's eyes. He understood perfectly why Connor would want to forget
the end of last year. His brother was the only one who would ever know
that as well as he did.

``Go on,'' he said.

``Towards the end, Voldemort was teaching me to use my compulsion gift
on my own spells,'' said Connor quietly. ``It's not that they have
minds, exactly, but spells that look like humans can---fool the
compulsion, sometimes. The compulsion reaches out and controls them the
way that it would try to control a mind, or a wizard who's more powerful
and well-trained than I am would control many spells at once. The way
Hermione does, maybe.'' Connor grinned for a moment. ``Wonder what she'd
say if I told her that she has a gift like compulsion.''

Then his grin vanished, and he looked hard at Harry. ``If I could just
cast the illusions and the glamours, then I could use compulsion to
control them, make them obey my wishes. I could send them in the
directions I wanted. It'd still be risky, because the dragon might flame
at me, after all, and I'd have to cast the other spells all at once, in
a very short time. But I might be able to manage it.''

``Do you know the incantation for a mirror image of yourself?'' Harry
asked.

Connor nodded. ``\emph{Dupliciter.} Siri---Voldemort taught me that one
when he was practicing with me.'' Connor looked somewhat ill, as he did
whenever he remembered that he'd been taking lessons with the Dark Lord
himself. ``I can do that easily enough. And then the glamours---wrapping
them around the illusions will be the hard part. I'm more practiced with
the illusions and the compulsion than I am with them.''

``Then let's practice, shall we?'' Harry asked, standing and picking up
an armful of books to take them back to the shelves.

Connor looked at him with a faint, horrified admiration. ``What? And
miss lunch, too?''

Harry snorted. ``You know as well as I where the kitchens are.'' The
only difference there was that Harry had learned it from the house
elves, in his first, tentative talks with them, and Connor had learned
it from the Weasley twins. ``We can eat later. But, \emph{Merlin},
Connor. I want you to survive this.''

Connor grinned slightly as he stood. ``Me, too,'' he said. ``That would
be nice.''

Harry hugged him briefly, ignoring Madam Pince's tutting. ``I won't let
you die, whatever happens,'' he whispered. ``But I do want you to be
able to succeed on your own if it's at all possible. I know that you
didn't choose this, but---''

``No, I've become reconciled to it, a bit.'' Connor's voice was
resigned. ``No one else's name is coming out of the Goblet, and I've got
to do the best I can. The honor of Hogwarts, and all.''

Harry's heart clenched at the words. He wanted to spend more time with
his brother, to demand the names of the people who'd hurt him, to hug
him again and reassure him it would be all right.

He could only say, ``Let's find one of the abandoned classrooms to
practice the spells in.''

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``\emph{Dupliciter!}''

Harry held his breath as his brother's image multiplied, then doubled
again and again and again. He was good with the illusions, Harry
acknowledged. Voldemort had apparently been an exacting taskmaster,
trying all the time to draw Connor further under his influence.

Harry shook away the dark memories. He was fine. He was past them now.
They were gone, and he had to concentrate on helping his brother survive
the dragons.

``\emph{Dissimulo aspectum, dissimulo sonitum, dissimulo odoratum---}''

Harry shook his head as he watched the spells falter again. Connor was
concentrating, his face bright red as he chanted, casting the spells as
fast as he could, but it was no use. They only wrapped one illusion at a
time, and meanwhile the illusions were fading as Connor lost control of
them before he could reach out with his compulsion. And those were only
the weak glamours, the ones they'd decided to try to see how fast and
hard Connor could cast. They weren't of the strength it would take to
fool a dragon.

Harry wasn't quite ready to give up on the plan yet, though. His mouth
tasted of ashes when he thought about the fact that the First Task was
\emph{tomorrow}, and there was no more \emph{time.} He had to do
something, so he would.

``Connor,'' he said, as the last of the illusions faded and Connor
glanced at him in exhaustion. He flicked sweat from his brow, flipping
up his fringe and bringing his scar into view. Harry felt his own twinge
as if in sympathy. ``This isn't working.''

``But it has to,'' Connor insisted, sitting down on one of the crooked,
broken desks in the corner. He traced patterns in the dust with a
finger, not looking at Harry. ``We don't have time to try anything
else.''

Harry shook his head. ``I wasn't entirely talking about that,'' he said.
``What we need is a spell that \emph{combines} illusions and glamours,
one that you can cast just a few times, so you can start controlling
your illusions with your compulsion.''

Connor sighed. ``I don't know any spells like that.'' Abruptly, he
slammed his hand down on his desk, not even seeming to notice when he
scraped his fist open. ``\emph{Shit}! If I was just stronger, I wouldn't
have any problem casting this many spells at once or making the
illusions more solid, and then everything would be \emph{fine.}''

Harry winced. There weren't many times when he felt actively guilty for
having stronger magic than most people did, but this was one of them. He
pitched his voice low and soothing as he moved towards Connor. ``Off the
top of my head, I don't know one that includes the scent glamour in an
illusion, even if it does include sound and sight. It's not all right, I
know. But I want to try something.''

Connor sighed again, the anger burnt out as quickly as it had flared.
``You might as well, Harry. Nothing is impossible for you.''

Harry chose to ignore the jealousy in his voice. He closed his eyes and
sank into the depths of his memory, where book pages flipped past at
speed. There was the one that would let him cast a solid illusion, a
spell that he'd used more than once, when he wanted to leave a copy of
himself in bed or at a meal and fool Draco and Snape into thinking he
was there. It was limited, since the illusion would only say a few
phrases and fade out of existence in a short time, but he thought a
variation of it, the way he'd learned to vary the Flame Mirror spell,
might serve.

``\emph{Aedifico spiritum cum odoratu},'' he said.

The words rippled oddly in his mouth, and for a moment, Harry thought it
wasn't going to work, or that his wandless magic, which he'd confined
strictly to his body for the past days, was about to break out and crash
into and bounce off things. But then he heard Connor breathe something
like, ``To the \emph{life},'' and Harry opened his eyes and saw a copy of
himself standing before him.

He took a step forward, and a cautious sniff. He grinned when he caught
a scent of sweat. That wasn't everything he smelled like, but then, the
dragon would hardly be familiar with Connor's ordinary scent, either.

``What about vibrations?'' his brother asked, hazel eyes alight. ``Could
we do that?''

Harry nodded, and turned to an empty patch of space. ``\emph{Aedifico
spiritum cum odoratu et vibrare!}''

Another copy of himself appeared, smelling of sweat. Harry focused on
it, asking it silently to walk forward, and it did, shuffling along. He
could clearly feel the shifts of the feet and the trembling in the
floor.

Harry chuckled and dismissed the image, then looked at Connor. ``You
won't want one that steps that heavily, I know,'' he said. ``But the
spell is going to be useful anyway.''

``You're damn right it is.'' Connor's face was alive again, eyes all but
glowing. He stood and drew his wand. ``How did the spell go again?
\emph{Aede---}''

``\emph{Aedi},'' Harry corrected, and set about teaching his brother the
correct pronunciation. Connor was managing weak efforts in a few
minutes, driven by the same strength and energy he put into Quidditch.
Harry felt his tension dissolve into a rush of joy as he watched him. He
was going to survive this after all. Harry was not going to lose his
brother. There was a possible failure that he was not going to have to
bear.

And watching someone else happy made him happy. Thus he passed the most
enjoyable part of his afternoon.

Other things were---not so enjoyable.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry leaned his back against the Owlery wall and opened his letter. He
\emph{knew} that he was going to get into trouble. McGonagall never took
kindly to anyone missing Transfiguration, sick or not, late or not, and
Harry had missed all his classes that day. He'd used a Disillusionment
Charm to escape several confrontations with irate Slytherins. He was
sorry. He was sorry for all of it. But he simply could not stand to have
anyone around him when he looked at the letter inside that envelope that
had come this morning.

\emph{Dear my son:}

\emph{I was grateful to receive your letter, and to know what you
thought about what had happened between us. I must admit, I didn't
expect that interpretation. I didn't realize that I'd trained you so
well, or that you had thought about issues like this so long and so
thoroughly.}

\emph{I think, Harry, that if you look at the difference between your
allies and myself, you'll find that what separates us is} motive.
\emph{Your allies did what they did for a belief in pureblood
superiority that you know is utterly untrue. Or they did it because they
were afraid of the fanatical madman they had chosen to follow. Then they
tried to escape the consequences of their choices by claiming they'd
been under the Imperius Curse. I know the Ministry won't touch them now,
so you need have no fear of my using your letter against them. But they
never really repented. They simply took advantage of a loophole in the
laws.}

\emph{Whereas I---I have faced my crimes, and paid for them.}

\emph{Doesn't there come an end, Harry, a point at which one must cease
to take vengeance or exact justice? You seem to have reached it with
your allies, or would have demanded an answer from them long since. I
wish you could reach it with me. I have lost my magic. I have admitted
that I would have raised you differently had I known what your power
truly meant. I have read your words saying that I have possibly saved
the world by making you what you are.}

\emph{When does the point come at which the bitterness and hatred cease
to exist? I am tired of hatred, Harry, and tired of being afraid. I
admit that I hated you in the first moments after you took my magic, but
now it's gone, and Dumbledore has made sure that I have everything I
need. Now I'm simply weary. I want my boys home again. I want to hold my
husband in my arms. I want to know that one of our oldest friends in the
world is at least alive, even if he has no intention of seeing us again.
It's too late for Sirius. It's not too late for the rest of us, unless
one of us dies before we reconcile.}

\emph{I do not want that to happen.}

\emph{I realize that you have no reason to write to me anymore, at least
not the same sort of reason you had before. I hope you will keep it up
anyway. I would claim, Harry, that no other person alive knows you so
well, and one of the pieces of knowledge I have of you is that you will
write back.}

\emph{All my love,}

\emph{Lily.}

Harry lowered the letter and put his head on his knees. His breath was
coming short, and he felt, horribly, as if he were about to cry. He
scrubbed at his eyes. If he started crying now, he knew, he wouldn't
stop. Worry over Connor had kept him awake last night, that and racing
thoughts. He was losing his ability to remain awake without it affecting
his emotions, even as Millicent had said he would. He couldn't let that
happen. He had to remain strong, awake, aware, if only for his allies.
He would dose himself with a sleeping potion tonight.

He had managed to remain as alert and aware as he had so far thanks to
Lily's training. Hours spent in studying, hours spent in concentration,
practice at being a sentry, depriving himself of sleep when necessary
and getting used to the resulting sensations\ldots{}all those were
techniques he had trained in, and things that he knew how to do. All of
those, she had had a share in, either observing him when he was
practicing them, the only one who did, or actually suggesting them. She
was a huge part of his life. She knew so much about him that Harry was
not about to reveal to anyone else, ever.

How could he just leave her behind, cut her off when she was reaching
out for contact?

Oh, part of it was painful, of course, the same urge that might tell him
to nudge a dangling tooth with his tongue. But he couldn't \emph{not}
write back. He might have managed it if she had written him a letter
full of scathing hatred, or one in which she simply urged him to drop
his allies and become a Light wizard. But she hadn't.

\emph{Because she knew you would reject that,} whispered a voice in his
head that sounded like Snape's. \emph{She is using her knowledge of you
against you, Harry. You know that, just as you know that part of the
reason you want to forgive her is that she trained you into that.}

Harry banished the voice, and sat in silence as clear-headed as he could
make it for a moment, with fatigue and pain battling for preeminence. He
had to consider needs and duties other than those he owed himself and
Lily. Last weekend had reminded him that he was part of a wider context.
What would that wider context say about this? Would writing back to Lily
help other people?

Even there, though, there was a conflict. He knew that Snape and Draco
would urge him not to write back. He knew that Millicent and Pansy and
Blaise would sneer, and say that she'd got what she deserved---if they
knew the full story, which none of them did---and that being a
Muggleborn witch was only one step up from being Muggle anyway, and
she'd reverted to her natural condition of life. (He had never
confronted them about that, either).

But he also knew that he would not be able to think about anything else
until he had written back, that the unanswered letter would nag him both
with pain and a sense of guilt. The guilt would unbalance his reactions
to everything else, and he couldn't afford that. The pain was not so
easy to get rid of, but he would endure a swift, clean stroke better
than a festering wound in the back of his mind.

He took a deep breath, and drew parchment from his robe pocket. It was
not the honesty-charmed parchment he'd taken from Dumbledore. He was
going to be honest anyway, of course. His mother knew him well enough to
be able to tell if he lied.

\emph{Lily:}

\emph{I don't see how we can reconcile, ever. How can we? Dad and I have
problems between us now. I have a much better relationship with Connor
than I did last year, but I'm not sure it would survive reuniting our
family. And you---}

\emph{I---}

Furious with himself, Harry squeezed his eyes shut. A tear had had the
\emph{nerve} to fall on the parchment, and now he couldn't think of what
to \emph{write.} His throat ached as if he'd been running for miles in
freezing cold air. He waited, swallowing several times, until the tears
had gone and he could continue. He knew he'd had a narrow escape from
the flood of emotion that was waiting for him.

\emph{I know that you made me what I am. And there are times I hate and
loathe that. But it's saved me so much recently. It spared me from
incredible temptations. It's helped me and my allies achieve victories,
a few in the last couple of weeks. So I can't say that I hate and
disclaim you, because you're so bound up with that, and you're the only
one I'll ever be able to really discuss it with. There are times I burn
to discuss it with someone, but not the kind of people who wouldn't
understand. And you're the only one who will understand, as well as the
only one who knows.}

\emph{And you're right that I can't ignore it, and periods of
restitution do have to have an end. I'm not ready for that end yet,
though. I'm not ready to see you, not ready to forgive you for the
phoenix web, not ready to try and reconcile.}

\emph{Please, don't send me any more letters. I was only good at
answering the first one because I thought I had to be. This isn't a good
letter, and I know it, but it says what I want it to say.}

\emph{Harry.}

He finished it, and choked back the large lump trying to rise up his
throat, and stood, calling for Hedwig. She landed on his shoulder, and
he stroked her feathers for a moment, forcing himself to focus on the
incredible whiteness of them. She was the only snowy owl in the Owlery.
She looked beautiful when she was flying. She had carried his
truce-gifts to Lucius. He thought about all those things, to avoid
thinking about what she was carrying right now.

He bound the letter to her leg. ``Lily Potter, girl,'' he whispered,
when she looked at him expectantly.

Hedwig nibbled at his ear, and hooted softly, a sound that Harry could
convince himself was sad if he let his mind run about like a mad thing.
Harry watched her fly out of sight. He could see a web binding her if he
looked, but he closed his eyes and turned away. He had to admit that he
wasn't ready to see the webs, not yet. He had to be a \emph{vates}, and
he had to be one whenever a magical creature needed him, but there was
no magical creature requiring his help just at the moment. The webs only
existed. He could unbind them in time.

``There you are.''

Harry jolted. He hadn't realized anyone was coming up the Owlery stairs,
and he really should have, since he could recognize the feel of this
woman's magic. He pressed his back against the stones and murmured,
``\emph{Dissimulo odoratum, dissimulo---}''

``It's too late, Harry.'' Hawthorn Parkinson's voice was gentle. ``I've
already smelled you. And seen you, too.''

Harry heard a rustle, and suspected that she was kneeling down on the
floor of the Owlery, utterly forgetting her fine robes. He was startled
beyond all bearing when she reached out and gathered him into her arms.
She didn't hold him very close, loosening her hold a bit when he
struggled, but she didn't let him go completely, either.

``What are you doing here?'' he whispered.

``I asked the Headmaster for permission to visit Pansy,'' Hawthorn said.

``But you aren't.''

Hawthorn shrugged, or at least Harry thought so from the motion of her
arms on his shoulders. ``I did see my daughter. I came to look at
someone else on whom most of us depend, too.''

``I'm better than I was on Halloween.'' Harry pitched his voice as
convincingly as he could. To his horror, it wasn't very convincing. He
tried to withdraw behind his Occlumency shields, and found even those
shredded, as though his emotions were briars and had punched holes in
them. He wrapped one arm around his face. That much he could manage, at
least, so that Hawthorn wouldn't see his tears. He did not want her to
think him weak, not when they had sworn formal alliance together just a
year ago. That would weaken her, too. ``I am trying to take care of
myself. I know it's not working very well right now, but my brother
faces the First Task tomorrow. I'll be better when that's past. I'm
going to take a sleeping potion tonight.''

``It should never have come to this point in the first place,'' said
Hawthorn, voice low and determined. ``It will not come to this point in
the future.''

Harry's uncertain emotions wavered and tipped over into anger. He felt a
wind pick up, blowing around the Owlery, and the stones at his back
frosted over. Hawthorn took a sharp breath, but didn't withdraw from
him.

``I don't care how many spies you put on me,'' Harry snapped, still not
lowering his arm. The tears weren't gone yet, not entirely, though he
could manage a ferocious scowl in a few minutes. ``I'll still work as
hard as I can, and I would think you would appreciate that, since some
of that work benefits you.''

Hawthorn was silent for a long moment. Then she said, ``Harry, I am
going to tell you a story.''

Harry snorted.

``Not a fey tale,'' said Hawthorn. ``A real one. A story that started not
much more than a year ago.''

``There was a witch once who did things she wasn't proud of. She wouldn't
disown them, but she wasn't proud of them. When someone came to her and
wanted her to renew those activities, she refused. She was proud enough
to think there would be no retaliation for refusing. She had a lovely
home now, and a wonderful husband, and a pretty daughter. She had a
\emph{life}. She'd moved on and left those dark things behind. How could
they touch her?''

``They did, of course. They touched her so deeply that they put a wolf
into her soul, and she heard it whispering to her all the time. She
still hears it. Its words are savage, and it hates you, and it wants to
consume everything she comes near. It can take over her body on the full
moons. It made her into a slavering beast on the first one she endured.
The memory of that night still makes her shudder.''

``But every full moon since then, she has had her own mind. She still
transforms, but the full moon is when the wolf goes silent, and the rest
of the time she can control it. Do you know why, Harry?''

Harry gave a sulky little pull, trying to get out of Hawthorn's embrace.
She ignored him, indeed tightening her arms, and Harry was reminded that
Remus, too, was much stronger than he looked when he wanted to be.

``Because a thirteen-year-old wizard---well, he's fourteen, now---saw
her when she was sweating in the terror of her first transformation, and
offered to brew a potion for her that lets her keep her own mind.''
Hawthorn's voice was so soft that Harry could have mistaken it for
Pansy's; he had never realized before how much Pansy sounded like her
mother. ``He offered it on no other condition that she not ally with
those who had hurt her, who were also his enemies. She gave him a book
as a gift in thanks, but there is no thanks enough for opening her eyes
in the moonlight, and feeling her limbs shift and change, and the wolf
in her mind fall silent instead of howling. When she speaks back to the
moon, she does it as herself.''

Her embrace tightened again, and Harry found his face resting against
warmth---her shoulder.

``If you never did anything else for me,'' said Hawthorn, shifting the
pronouns of the story just when Harry was least prepared to deal with
it, ``that would have been enough. It would be more than enough. You
never need be afraid that I would think you weak, Harry. You saw me in
my weakest hour, and you chose to give me back my strength. You never
hesitated. Someone with that much compassion inside him is assured of
more than allies. He is assured of friends, and deathless loyalty. Do
not worry about weakening me, or anyone else who has allied with you.
Lean on our strength when you must, and then stand and go on. There is
no shame in this, ever.''

Harry felt as if he were drifting beyond speech or thought. Hawthorn
sounded as if she were speaking the truth. And that meant that she
really saw him as someone like that, someone strong and
compassionate\ldots{}

He began to cry, and couldn't stop himself.

Hawthorn said nothing, simply holding him. Harry didn't lower his arm,
but she didn't tell him to. She just murmured the same words over and
over, and when Harry's sobs quieted and the tears finished choking him,
he could make out what they were. ``You gave me back my strength. Thank
you.''

Harry took a deep breath. He had wept, and he could believe, just, that
Hawthorn did not think him weak or foolish for it. He began to draw
back.

Hawthorn still didn't move her arms, and then, with another sign of that
strength that he kept forgetting she had, picked him up and off the
ground.

``You're already missing classes,'' she said quietly. ``And though I
know that you have other needs, I think sleep is the most important one,
now that you have shed your tears. You stink of exhaustion.'' Her voice
was gentle, so that Harry might hear that she was teasing.

``I was going to take a sleeping potion tonight,'' Harry said, and could
hear his words slurring. ``But I have lessons that I'm teaching to other
students this afternoon. I was going to---''

``No,'' said Hawthorn calmly. ``Pansy gave me the Slytherin password.
I'm taking you back to your room. You'll take the sleeping potion now,
assuming you need it. I don't think you will, not when you get a pillow
behind your head.''

That was Harry's fear, too. He pushed at Hawthorn, of course
ineffectually. ``I don't want to fall asleep yet. I want---''

``What you want and what you need are two different things,'' said
Hawthorn, heading towards the steps down from the Owlery. ``And what you
need should win, I think.''

Harry fought. He had techniques for this. Lily had taught some to him,
and some he'd learned by experience. He fought the relaxing in his
muscles, the insidious warmth that was calling to him. He had lessons to
teach. He thought he knew how to break through the block on Ron's magic,
if\ldots{}

He started when he realized that the ghostly images of the lessons he'd
been seeing on the backs of his eyelids were the precursors of dreams,
and tried to jerk back awake. He couldn't even open his eyes, though.

He felt something soft beneath his head, and someone rolled him over
enough that he wasn't lying on his arm. He murmured something about
lessons and Connor, and then sleep hooked him and dragged him away like
a Portkey.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry awakened briefly. He blinked at the dark room, and the intense
warmth curled around him. He realized he was in Draco's arms. Draco had
apparently decided to crawl into his bed and hold him without so much as
a by-your-leave.

Harry realized that he could use more sleep, from the dust weighing his
eyes down, but he had slept some hours, and that ought to be enough. He
squirmed, and that woke Draco up.

``Go use the loo,'' Draco whispered. ``And then come back.''

Harry shook his head. ``I wasn't thinking about that---''

``Yes, I know,'' said Draco, voice sharpening now as he looked into
Harry's eyes. ``And it doesn't matter. Did you know I fainted in
Transfiguration, because I was picking up your exhaustion?'' He sounded
disgusted, but Harry didn't know if it was with Harry or himself.

``I'm sorry---''

``Not enough anymore,'' said Draco. ``Damn it, Harry, this is going to
\emph{stop}. So go to the loo, if that's what you need to do, and then
come back here. It's two in the morning. You still have seven hours
before you need to wake up and watch your bloody prat of a brother
survive the First Task. I'm sure that he will. Everything is going to be
fine, since you've been training him.''

Harry hesitated for a long moment, weighing the pros and cons of staying
awake right now in his mind. He could go out into the Forbidden Forest
if he stayed awake now, perhaps.

And in the morning, he would have to deal with an angry Draco, whom
apologies weren't enough to content any more, and he would still have to
watch Connor face the dragons, and Millicent and Blaise and Pansy would
doubtless yell at him, and he would still attract unwanted attention
from the other Slytherins.

And he would lose the warmth and languor pulling at his muscles now.

He bowed his head, padded into the loo, brushed his teeth, and relieved
himself. He avoided looking into the mirror.

Then he came back and curled up next to Draco, who immediately moved
over to him and slung an arm over his side. Harry pressed closer to the
warmth despite himself and closed his eyes. \emph{It's all right,} he
reassured himself. \emph{Draco won't tell anyone about this. No one else
can see.}

``Good night, Harry,'' Draco whispered, stroking his forehead.

Harry let out a deep sigh, and, for the first time in far too many days,
relaxed.

\chapter{Wildest of Them All}\label{chapter-40-wildest-of-them-all}

He had been right the first time, Draco thought, once he was awake
enough to think coherently. This \emph{had} to stop.

He looked down at Harry, who was still curled up on his side, his
breathing deep and relaxed. Peaceful, Draco thought. He traced one
finger over Harry's forehead, lightly enough that he wouldn't wake him,
and found no trace of blood on the scar. There was no pain in his own
brow, either, but he was no longer sure that he trusted that part of his
empathy. There were nights where he felt no agony, and yet Harry still
had dark circles under his eyes in the morning.

\emph{Of course, now I know he probably wasn't sleeping at all.}

The thought made Draco narrow his eyes. There were many things that had
to stop, really. That was only the most obvious of them---Harry's
staying up until all hours because he was utterly convinced that his
duties for other people needed to be accomplished immediately. But since
it was the most obvious, Draco intended to make \emph{sure} that it
stopped, whether or not Harry was enthusiastic about the idea.

The rest\ldots{}

\emph{You might as well admit it to yourself, you know. You can have all
the arguments with him you like, storm around in high dudgeon, hint and
yell at him until you go blue in the face. He's never going to realize
that you're in love with him until you flat out tell him, honestly, like
a Gryffindor.}

Draco shuddered. He tried to convince himself that it was all disgust,
that it came from the thought of acting like a Gryffindor.

He knew well enough that \emph{that} wasn't true.

He was nervous. Oh, he knew that Harry cared for him, and was his best
friend. He didn't know that Harry was in love with him, and every
instinct he had, every Slytherin instinct, screamed at him not to betray
himself until he was assured of some equal emotion in return. It would
hurt too much to see Harry's eyes cloud over, and hear Harry's voice
tell him gently that he was incapable of returning the feeling.

\emph{And it's not even that,} Draco thought, able to approach the
truth, here in the warm bed in early morning, that he'd been denying to
himself and ignoring all week. \emph{I think Harry could date me, sure.
But he'd do it because that's what} I \emph{wanted. He values me like he
values other people, as someone with a soul he never wants to damage and
freedom he immensely respects.}

\emph{He doesn't value me} more.

\emph{And that's not enough.}

\emph{I'm never going to be another of his sacrifices. I won't accept
any gift he offers me that I can't return. And I won't offer him
anything he can't return, either.}

Draco laid his head back down on the pillow and closed his eyes,
adjusting his arm so that it held Harry more tightly. He could feel
Harry, unselfconscious as he only was when asleep, let out a little sigh
and move closer to the source of warmth and pleasure. That was another
problem, Draco thought, though not as severe as the fact that Harry only
held him as important in the way the rest of the world was. When he was
awake, Harry seemed to consciously recoil from pleasure of any kind. He
took comfort only when he was utterly broken down, and every other touch
he offered was a means of giving it.

\emph{I don't know how I can overcome that. Even empathy only tells me
what he's feeling, not how to make him feel better.}

Draco bit the side of his mouth. The books he'd been reading on empathy
had defined it further and further from him---unsurprisingly, since it
was never something he'd cared to look up before he was cursed with it.
They'd made it clear that empathy wasn't just a fool's or a sop's gift,
that he was not the helpless bearer of emotions from the wide world. He
could choose to tune his empathy to one particular person, and in fact,
the books suggested, that would act as a shield against the random
dumping of feelings from the masses.

Harry's emotions were sharp and strong, and Draco cared about him. He
was the obvious choice.

That was the reason he felt the physical pain from Harry's scar, and why
he'd fainted in Transfiguration yesterday from the pain and fatigue he
could sense pouring through their link---\emph{not} from the stress of
not knowing where Harry was, which Blaise had taunted him with. He could
break the link, if he wanted, but he didn't think he'd be able to. He
had to really desire to do that. He didn't.

And that's what it came down to, in the end, the unanswerable answer to
all the other objections his mind and common sense might raise to being
with Harry.

\emph{I can't back away from him. I can't love someone else the way I
love him. No matter what the problems to being in love with him are, I'm
backed against a wall, and I'll just have to find solutions to the
problems.}

\emph{This helplessness has got to stop, too.}

Even though he hadn't found answers, only made a decision, Draco felt
sleep creeping back in to claim him. It was still an hour until they had
to be up, eat breakfast, and watch the First Task. Harry needed the
sleep, and Draco needed to be here, far more than anything else at the
moment.

He closed his eyes, and let himself sink into golden-green warmth.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry kept his head ducked as he picked at his breakfast. He hadn't
really dared to look anyone in the eye since he came to the Slytherin
table. He knew, just from sidelong glances, that most of them knew about
Hawthorn carrying him to the common room, and so about his breakdown.

He was embarrassed beyond measure to have showed weakness like that.

\emph{Hawthorn said it wasn't weakness,} the voice that sounded like
Snape in his head reminded him, but hers was one assurance against an
army of gazes. Harry couldn't control how everyone else reacted, and if
they were watching him and reporting back to their parents as he now
knew some of them did, then they might report things that could put his
allies in danger.

\emph{Damn it.}

``Harry.''

Harry started and glanced up, only to find himself in a small pen of his
yearmates. Draco leaned close on his left, Millicent on his right, and
Pansy stood behind him. Vince and Blaise sat on the outskirts. Vince
looked mostly interested in his plate, but Blaise was watching Harry
with palpable curiosity.

``What?'' he whispered.

``You remember what I said to you last night,'' Draco murmured, ``about
this stopping? That it had to stop?''

Harry nodded. ``I don't want to skip as much sleep as I did again.''
\emph{I've learned the consequences of that.} ``I can promise you. I
might need reminders sometimes about when to go to bed, but that won't
happen again.''

Draco cocked his head. ``That's a start, but not all of it. Although I'm
pleased that you've learned at least that lesson.'' His eyes flicked
over Harry's head, and Harry suspected that he'd felt a stir in
Millicent's emotions. ``You had something to say?''

Harry turned expectantly to meet her eyes. Millicent looked startled for
the briefest of seconds, before she shrugged and picked up the chance
that Draco had handed her.

``Yes, I did,'' she said, eyes on Harry. ``I know that the formal
alliance you made with our families runs both ways. However, you're in
more need of protection right now than we are. The fact that you're in
more danger has something to do with that, as well as the fact that our
families will come to our aid if we call, and yours\ldots{}won't.''

Harry nodded, grateful that she'd put it so delicately. ``What are you
suggesting?''

``Stop worrying so much about your obligations to us,'' said Millicent.
``You've granted our requests. It's time that we granted you something.
That's going to be protection, and help, and anything else that we can
do.''

``You were already doing that,'' Harry protested, trying to understand
why what Millicent proposed was any different from what had been going
on. ``You tell your parents what I'm doing, and---''

``No,'' said Pansy. Harry turned and blinked at her. ``I haven't written
a letter to Mother about you in a week, Harry,'' she said softly. ``She
showed up here yesterday on her own. Something about concern and your
being better at resisting an attack you knew was coming than one you
didn't.''

Harry snorted lightly. ``I can believe that. But what are you proposing,
then?''

``No more letters home about you, as long as something drastic doesn't
happen,'' said Millicent. ``If you get critically wounded or we think
enemies are hunting you, then yes, of course, our parents should know
about it. But we'll refrain from reporting on your every small movement.
It only stresses you, and it distracts us from helping you more
concretely. Besides, we don't need to do it if you really are going to
make an effort to sleep and eat properly.'' She sounded mildly
exasperated.

Harry stared at her.

``We'll help you, instead,'' said Millicent quietly. ``And that's the
real reason we're not going to act like minders and spies anymore, but
like allies and friends. You're going to be our leader, Harry. We should
at least get used to following you.''

``Wait a minute---'' Harry began, no longer thinking the new bargain was
better than the old.

``That's what we're doing,'' said Draco. ``We're going to treat you like
an equal, Harry, and we expect you to do the same with us. For example,
\emph{tell} us if something is bothering you so badly that you can't
sleep. \emph{Offer} us the chance to help with any tasks that you might
have lying around and want someone else to pick up. That kind of thing.''
He lifted his head and stared calmly back at Harry. ``We discussed this
yesterday. We think it's best. Our parents are perceptive and
intelligent and dedicated to helping you, but we're the ones who're
around you day by day and can see what's happening to you more quickly.
Besides, this old way isn't working, just like Millicent said. We'll try
it new, because, one way or another, your daily suffering is going to
stop.''

Harry swallowed. He would be a fool to reject this offer, and not
because it would probably increase the other Slytherins' watchful
surveillance

\emph{Equality. They know it's important to me.}

He couldn't refuse a relationship that might protect them and at the
same time give them equal standing and freedom. They spoke of being
followers, but let them once get a taste of what real freedom and
independence were like, and he thought they probably would not go back.

Slowly, he nodded. ``All right, then,'' he said. He managed to produce a
smile. ``I can't think of anything that I want done today, except
holding my hand while Connor passes the First Task,'' he added lightly.

Draco grabbed his hand at once, and then glared at everyone else. Harry
rolled his eyes. \emph{Merlin knows why he likes touching me so much. At
least he isn't going to be completely overprotective about me this
time.}

He went back to eating his breakfast. It took him until the middle of
the meal to realize what the strange feeling in the center of his chest
was.

He was free from a source of tension he hadn't known was there. He was
very nearly happy.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Welcome, professors, students, and judges, to the First Task of the
Triwizard Tournament!''

Harry settled back in his seat and looked around the enclosure that had
been created to hold the Task. The seats ringed it, as the stands did
the Quidditch Pitch, and heavy wards glittered in front of them,
protecting the actual grass of the enclosure from interference by spell.
A small tent stood at the southern end of the enclosure. Viktor, Fleur,
and Connor were in it now, Harry knew, preparing for the Task. He had
caught his brother's eyes as they left the Great Hall this morning, and
wished him a silent good hunting, but he hadn't actually got the chance
to say anything to him. Nor had he seen him since.

Dumbledore stood in the stands on the opposite side of the enclosure,
where most of the Hogwarts professors were seated, speaking with his
voice enhanced with \emph{Sonorus}. Harry didn't think it was
coincidence that the Slytherins had brought him to sit in the stands
facing Dumbledore. He wasn't sure what it meant that most of Slytherin
House had come with them, though.

His gaze swept slowly past the stands on the eastern and western sides,
and settled on what he hadn't wanted to look at.

The dragons.

There were three of them, all nesting mothers, crouched possessively
over their eggs. A narrow corridor of wards led down the center of the
enclosure, cutting the pen into thirds and offering restricted access to
each dragon. Harry knew that each Champion would face only one dragon,
and his nightmares of Connor having to defeat all three could be laid to
rest.

Nonetheless, he could not regard the dragons with an easy eye. There
were a Welsh Green, a Chinese Fireball, and a Hungarian Horntail waiting
on the nests, now and then shifting so that the golden gleam of the
false egg the Champions were supposed to retrieve could be seen. They
might be distant, and the wards softened the outlines of their bodies
and dimmed their roars, but they were still \emph{dragons}, undeniably.

It didn't help that Harry had been feeling something like a wind in his
mind since he had arrived in the enclosure, the same kind of sensation
he felt around Connor's compulsion. But this wasn't compulsion. This was
a distant roaring sound, like a storm, and it was coming from the
dragons.

Harry shivered, and tried to turn his eyes to the tent. Dumbledore was
saying something now about the first Champion emerging. He wondered if
it would be Connor, and clenched his sweating palms together sharply.

``Ouch,'' Draco said.

Harry started. He'd forgotten that Draco was sitting beside him, never
mind that the other boy had one of his hands clasped inside Harry's. The
clench was putting a lot of pressure on his fingers. Harry opened his
cramped fists. ``Sorry,'' he breathed.

Draco shook his head, his eyes bright as he watched Harry. Harry frowned
at him. \emph{What is it with him lately? Anyone would think he was
pleased that I'd half-crushed his bloody hand.}

The tent stirred, and Viktor Krum stepped out. The cheering from the
Durmstrang students, most of them seated around the Slytherins,
increased noticeably. Viktor, moving steadily towards the Chinese
Fireball dragon, didn't seem to notice, though he did tilt his head
slightly in acknowledgment.

Harry had expected Viktor to look awkward on the ground, as many large
Seekers did, but he handled himself with both grace and speed as he made
his way towards the dragon. His wand was in his hand, his face set in a
ferocious scowl. Harry was reluctantly impressed. He didn't think that
Viktor regarded the danger he was in, or saw anything but the completion
of his task.

The Chinese Fireball snarled and crouched over her eggs as Viktor came
near. Harry found his gaze skimming past the Champion and settling on
her again. Her scales shone violently scarlet, the same color as the
scales he'd used for his disastrous potion that summer---as they should
have, since liondragon was only another name for the Fireball. A fringe
of golden spikes around her face lifted and lowered with her snarls.
Eggs in the Gryffindor colors showed between her talons as they shifted.

Harry was still staring when the dragon slewed her head around, drawing
in her breath as she prepared to flame, and Harry caught a glimpse of
her eyes.

The roaring of the storm in his head increased. He abruptly felt another
mind moving in concert with his, though unaware of it, rolling into his
thoughts like an ocean consuming a stream. That mind was almost
intolerably vast, and wild, and filled with something better than
intelligence. That mind knew wind and flame and stone, and if it did not
know water, that was a small loss. It---

Harry tore himself free with a gasp as the Chinese Fireball abruptly
shook her head and cried out in pain. She'd barely had time to start her
mushroom-shaped cloud of fire before Viktor's Conjunctivitis Curse hit
her. Harry watched, his heart in his throat, as she went into
convulsions, her long, elegant scarlet body whipping back and forth as
Viktor dodged past her, swift and graceful still, and snatched up the
golden egg. He was out beyond her reach in a moment, and the stands were
exploding with shouts of his name and cries of congratulations.

Harry's eyes were on the dragon; he didn't seem able to look away. He
felt small, sharp tingles of pain in his own skin as the Fireball
smashed her own eggs, and then reared up on her haunches and pawed
furiously at her eyes. He bowed his head, shivering. He was glad that
Viktor had survived, of course---he would not have wanted to see someone
die in the First Task, or in any of the Tasks---but part of him was
still bound to the dragon, hurting as she hurt.

``Harry?''

Draco's hand on his brought him back. Harry nodded and snatched his head
up, gasping out air and then breathing it in again, trying to remind
himself that he had a human chest and human lungs. He couldn't breathe
fire. And he had a human voice, too, in which he whispered, ``I'm all
right,'' as the Chinese Fireball crouched over the smashed remains of
her eggs and trumpeted her loss.

Harry could hear the judges discussing the matter. In the end, while
Viktor received a passable score, he had points removed for the loss of
the eggs.

\emph{He shouldn't get any points at all,} Harry thought, his mind
unexpectedly quick and turning, vicious, and then he let out a sharp
breath and buried his head in his hands.

\emph{What is happening to me? The presence of any other Dark creature
has never affected me like this.}

He did remember what Dobby had said about dragons being the wildest of
all magical creatures, but that didn't mean they should be affecting him
like this. He swallowed and turned back to the tent as Fleur emerged,
walking towards her dragon, the Welsh Green. He was watching the Task.
He was not mourning, with fierce heat and mounting flame, the loss of so
many young lives in the smashed eggs.

Draco kept on stroking his hand as Fleur faced the Green, and Harry
settled further into his own thoughts. He had no reason to have that
same kind of reaction to \emph{this} dragon. Perhaps the reaction to the
Fireball was because it was the first dragon he'd seen in action, Harry
reassured himself. It was just the surprise and shock of it all. He was
used to it now.

That theory held right up until Fleur, trying to draw the dragon's
attention with a flirt of her silver hair, danced towards the western
side of the enclosure, where Harry sat. The dragon, as brilliantly green
as the Fireball had been scarlet, tracked her movements, and her eyes
swept over Harry.

Harry found himself standing on the shore of another enormous mind, this
one sharper and stronger than the Fireball, not as nervous, but more
vicious. Thoughts rose and fell like waves. There were the eggs behind
her, under her, to be protected, but more than that, there was the
enemy. A few moments more, and she would be in the perfect position to
breathe fire at.

Fleur moved.

The Welsh Green breathed.

Harry opened his own eyes in time to see the narrow jet just barely miss
Fleur's face, setting her robes alight, but at the same time, he was
feeling heat churn in his belly, flex up his throat, and blast out in
front of him. He was seeing the world glittering in a hundred shades
that had no names, and everywhere were smaller things than he was,
deserving of no respect, and there were the \emph{eggs}, and he would
\emph{stamp} on this annoying small thing if there was no other way to
get rid of it\ldots{}

The Welsh Green stamped down a talon, lunging off her nest as she did
so. Once again, Fleur was too quick.

And this time, she began to sing.

Harry felt the immense mind in front of him begin to frost over, the
wildness subsiding as it listened to the song, like the mother's
cradle-song. The Welsh Green half-slumped, brilliant eyes shutting, and
the spell somewhat broke. Harry closed his eyes, and kept them shut,
even when the roar of approbation told him that Fleur had succeeded in
snatching her egg.

``Harry?'' That was Millicent this time. ``If you need more sleep, or if
you don't think that you can watch your brother, then we'll take you
back to bed.''

``No,'' Harry said, forcing his eyes open. \emph{Connor. Connor is
next.} ``I---something about the dragons is affecting me. I don't know
what.''

Pansy drew in her breath. ``Wildness,'' she whispered.

``What?'' Harry blinked at her over his shoulder, glad to have the
excuse to look away from the dragons. The Welsh Green was waking up now,
and her rage at finding one of her eggs was gone knew no bounds.

``It's the reason that my mother decided not to come today.'' Pansy's
eyes met his, filled with a knowledge that she didn't look like she
enjoyed having. ``Dragons are so wild that sometimes their minds reach
out and touch the minds of wizards who have a certain susceptibility to
wildness themselves. She knew the wolf in her would answer the dragons,
and she had no mind to transform in front of an audience, which might
happen this close to the full moon.'' Pansy wrapped her arms around
herself and shivered. ``I didn't know they would affect you like this,
though.''

``Neither did I,'' said Harry, remembering what else Dobby had said. The
dragons were wild, but they were not free.

Apparently their wildness was enough to let them affect the thoughts of
a \emph{vates}, though.

Harry shuddered, and then his brother stepped out of the tent and made
his way down the third corridor towards the Hungarian Horntail.

Harry found that his gaze couldn't leave Connor. His brother had always
dealt better with situations in progress than situations he had to
anticipate and plan for. And now that he had a plan, he looked perfectly
content. He walked with his head up, now and then glancing at the
stands. Harry would have waved, but he didn't think Connor could see
him, and he thought the motion would be jerky and stiff anyway, more apt
to make Connor think Harry was choking to death than wishing him good
luck.

Connor drew his wand when he was still a good distance from his dragon,
to Harry's relief, and cast. ``\emph{Aedifico spiritum cum odoratu et
vibrare!}'' Then he repeated it again, and again, and again, even as the
first copy faded into being in front of him.

Harry felt a familiar sensation of wind a moment later. Connor's
compulsion reached out and grasped the illusions, and they began to run
in several different directions, one of them cutting to the left, two to
the right, and another sliding in on his belly as though he were going
to roll right under the dragon's legs and grab the golden shell. Harry
had lost track of his brother in the mess of them.

The dragon roared.

Harry shuddered, and was abruptly \emph{inside} her head, feeling the
heavy tug and lift and shift of wings on her shoulders, the weight of
horns on her head, the pressure of flame and wind in her mouth. The
eggs, the eggs were beneath her, and so much information came from so
many different directions that she could not locate the small thing, and
\emph{there}---

She snapped her jaws down. Harry felt his own terror tear him away from
his intense identification with her for a moment, and then he was pulled
back in as Connor's duplicate faded out of existence. It hadn't been
him.

She turned her head in slow circles, backing and stamping, her feet
falling in delicate patterns that of course wouldn't crush any of her
children. She was irritated, and so the small enemy would die. There was
nothing more to it than that. Things which irritated her died, most
often by burning.

She smelled one of the many small enemies coming up on her left side,
and she whipped her head around and breathed, the flame striking and
bouncing from the magic around her. Another two images faded.

Then she felt pressure, tickling pressure, against her belly. She
flicked her tail around and gathered herself, prepared to reach down and
secure her eggs the moment she determined what it was.

More duplicates erupted from beneath her belly, scuttling like nesting
ants. One of them grabbed at her eggs, and she screamed and lifted her
wings, propelling herself into a hovering rear that would protect her
children from any imaginable enemy.

Many, many small enemies running in circles. She would kill them all.
She took a deep breath, and snapped her head around in a circle, flaming
across the ground. The grass caught on fire. Her eggs, of course, used
to heat, merely baked and soaked it in, rather than being destroyed.

One of the images rolled over and over, just under the flame, clutching
the golden egg close to its chest, and then it was over and under and
across the grass, and \emph{away}, and she had lost a child.

Harry returned abruptly to himself as someone shook his shoulders and
slapped his face. He gasped, sitting bolt upright, and blinked around.
He saw Connor at the far end of the enclosure again, and heard the
cheers, and knew that his brother was safe and had succeeded.

``We've got to get you out of here,'' Pansy was saying worriedly. ``I
don't know how you can keep your mind around the dragons when they start
using the spells to confine them and transport them.''

Harry nodded and stood. He would congratulate Connor later. What
mattered now was that his brother had survived, more than that he had
won.

Then he felt a wind surge past his ears, and it carried the sound of
freedom with it, whispered in a simple word from one of the small ones:
\emph{Imperio}.

Harry turned sharply. The Hungarian Horntail was rearing, and he could
feel her mind contained neatly in the chains of the Imperius Curse,
directed and given a cunning and intelligence she would not have
achieved on her own. She turned broadside to the wards and pressed her
hide against them, the hide that protected dragons from most magical
forms of attack.

The wards snapped, and then fell, opening up the three lanes and
permitting the dragons to catch sound and scent of each other.

And then the wards around the enclosure fell with a crash and sparkling
cascade of magic, and the dragons could see the audience. Harry could
feel the moment when the Fireball's and the Green's seething hatred
turned to decision, the decision that the Imperius-controlled Horntail
had already come to. There were many small things around them. They
could kill and feast and take vengeance for the loss of their children.

The Horntail spread her wings and breathed, her flame shooting towards
the western stands where a large group of Ravenclaw students sat.

Harry was on his feet almost before he realized what was happening.
``\emph{Protego!}''

The Shield Charm had to be enormous to protect all the students
involved, but it had Harry's will behind it, and his desperation. The
flame splattered out in a shining flower against the shield. The dragon
screamed her displeasure, and then she was aloft, circling, her shadow
blotting out the sun, her neck lowered and her throat already flexing
with the next jet of flame.

The Welsh Green joined her in the air a moment later, roaring hungrily,
and the Chinese Fireball turned with frightening speed and power, on
foot, towards the eastern set of stands. Adult wizards were hurling
spells now, but most of them bounced without effect from the dragons'
hides, and they were hindered by the need to protect several hundred
running, screaming, crying students.

Harry slammed a hand onto Draco's shoulder. ``This is where I need your
help,'' he said, lifting his voice to be heard over the screaming and
the roaring. ``I know what I'm going to do. Your job is the protect the
people around you---get the other people who've had lessons with me to
help you---while not hurting the dragons.''

Draco blinked at him in disbelief. ``Not hurt the dragons? Why?''

Harry smiled. He knew it was a horrid smile, more like the rictus of a
corpse. ``Because,'' he said, ``I'm going to need all my wit and power to
defeat them, and I can feel it when they're hurt. \emph{Accio
Firebolt!}''

The Summoning Charm worked rather like a slingshot, given how desperate
he was, snatching up the broom Draco had given him for his birthday and
hurling it to him. Harry flung a leg over it and kicked off before
anyone could say or do anything to stop him. He felt the wind in his
hair and the familiar exaltation rising, which was good. It was
something to keep him anchored in his own body as he swept towards the
dragons and felt the pressure of three mighty minds.

First to draw their attention.

He spun under the Horntail's belly, the flight of something else in the
air with her drawing even her Imperius-controlled eyes, and then dived
towards her nest. For a moment, his vision was filled with scales, his
nostrils with the stink of dragon-hide and fire, and then he was past
again and spiraling down in a long stretch of light and dark straight
towards the cement-colored eggs.

Not even an Unforgivable Curse could control a mother dragon's
protectiveness of her eggs. The Horntail turned back towards him, free
of the spell, screaming, and then she was flying fast, right behind him,
the wind from her wings hard and wild enough to blow his broom
off-course.

Harry turned his broom upside-down and put on another burst of speed,
avoiding both the maddened Horntail's claws and the whip-like tail of
the Welsh Green, who'd turned towards him when he soared over her nest.
Their minds attacked him, the sensations of hunger and hunting and
killing and righteous anger slicing through his thoughts right at the
same time as he needed to perform a complicated double roll maneuver.

Harry closed his eyes and let his mind deal with the attack while his
body dealt with the flying. \emph{Dive} and \emph{loop} and \emph{turn}
and \emph{roll} and \emph{roll}, and then he was past and up again,
rising like a hawk from the nests, with the Horntail right behind him,
tail tucking primly up against her belly so she wouldn't damage her own
eggs.

The Welsh Green was in the air and swerving towards him now, drawn by
his flying or his contact with her mind or his magic. And Harry could
feel the Chinese Fireball turning, too, intent on finding out what had
caused the disturbance in the others. A moment of beating wings and
nervous scraping at the ground, and then she was aloft.

\emph{Great. I have their attention.}

\emph{Now I just need to figure out what the hell I'm going to do with
it.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Draco knew when he could argue with Harry, and now wasn't one of those
times. Determination, hard as dragon-hide, had pushed at Draco like a
wall when Harry had spoken of what he wanted them to do. And it was true
that he couldn't have followed, anyway, since the charms put on the
Firebolt would only allow Harry to fly it.

That didn't mean he didn't turn to the other Slytherins with a hard
pounding in his ears.

``Pansy,'' he said, ``carry the word to the other people who've been
attending lessons with him.''

Pansy gave him an eloquent, confused look. There were people milling
everywhere around them, uncertain which direction to run. \emph{In all
this?} her eyes said for her, with no need to state it aloud.

``You're a witch, for Merlin's sake,'' Draco hissed at her, and then
turned to Millicent. ``You know what he's been teaching in those
lessons?''

``I do,'' said Millicent. ``I came along and listened sometimes. Cast a
Disillusionment Charm on myself so no one would be too particular about
me being there. I think I know how to confuse a dragon.'' She held out
her wand. ``\emph{Speculum Ardoris!}''

A shield of flames spurted out of her wand and shot towards the red
dragon; Draco thought it was a Chinese Fireball, though he wasn't sure.
The flames curled around the dragon's face, obscuring it from view, and
an annoyed roar came from it. Draco swallowed. It would have to work. A
dragon wouldn't be hurt by fire. The dragon really was only irritated,
not hurt, and Harry wouldn't fall from his broom like a bundle of limp
rags at any moment.

Other people seemed to have the same idea. Cries of ``\emph{Speculum
Ardoris!}'' rose from other places in the stands, and Draco breathed
easier when he saw the small, brave, insane figure still on his broom,
dodging sweep after sweep of claws and tails and jets of flame.

Draco took a deep breath and began to concentrate, hard, on the
strongest protection spell he knew. He had to protect; he didn't know
all the spells that Harry had been teaching the other students, and
Pansy had finally thought to cast \emph{Sonorus} so she could shout at
people, and he was feeling emotions sweeping over him like a tide, now
that Harry was no longer right next to him.

The strongest protection spell he knew happened to be Dark Arts, taught
to him by his father just before he left for Hogwarts, in case he
encountered more enemies there than he thought.

\emph{Too bad. People will live with it.}

``\emph{Defensor vindictae!}''

Waves of black coolness spread out around Draco, inundating the stands
and freezing the stupid students who couldn't do anything but run and
scream in place. He opened his eyes. Since he was the source of the
spell, he could see above it and the dark blanket it cast, and see the
form it assumed.

Immense eyes opened in the blanket near the end of the stands, and
looked at Draco. Draco nodded, and managed to lift his hands through the
mist and clasp them in front of him.

Fists surged up just beneath the eyes. Let one of the dragons, or
another hostile force, try to attack those under the Dark spell, and it
would pummel them, presumably to death. Draco didn't know, since his
father had only permitted him to try out the spell with non-lethal force
behind it.

Not this time. This time, he was going to defend people, both for his
own sake and because Harry had asked him to.

\emph{Harry.}

Draco's eyes went back to the sky, where one of the pieces of his life
rode his broom in a death-defying dance, and felt his stomach contract.
He wanted to be sick, but instead, he stood prepared to defend. Because
Harry had asked him to.

\emph{Please, you stupid prat, come back alive to see how well I
listened.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Hermione wondered why she was the one who had to think of everything.
\emph{Speculum Ardoris} could only do so much, and the Dark Arts spell
Malfoy had used only reached across half the stands, and Parkinson was
shouting her head off about not harming the dragons, and Harry, the
brave, stupid idiot, was circling on high with three incredibly
dangerous Dark creatures after him. They might not be able to hurt the
dragons, but they had to insure Harry survived long enough to do
whatever it was that he wanted to do.

It wasn't that she minded thinking of everything, so much .It would just
be nice if other people could assume the burden, too.

She raised her wand, carefully focused on the Hungarian Horntail, who
was closest to Harry, and whispered the same spell that she'd heard
Connor use when he faced that dragon.

In a moment, there were two copies of Harry in the air, and then three,
as she whispered the spell again, and then four. Hermione could feel
herself sweating as she concentrated on holding the images steady. It
was harder than she'd expected, doing it from this distance, and
controlling so many at once.

But she was a powerful witch. She could do this. She hadn't needed any
soppy pureblood ritual to do it, either. She only needed her will and
her magic, and she already knew she was a match for most of the
purebloods in the school.

The Horntail roared in irritation, and left off chasing the real Harry
to swat at one of the images. The Welsh Green was getting into the
action, too, clamping her teeth down and screeching as the image melted
into thin air. Hermione smiled, but she was getting dangerously tired,
and she didn't think---

``\emph{Aedifico spiritum cum odoratu et vibrare.}''

Hermione nearly sagged in relief as someone else whispered the spell,
and then an arm curled around her shoulders, supporting her. She didn't
even mind that much when she looked up and saw it was Zacharias Smith.
Smith wasn't really all that bad, once you got used to him and his more
annoying ways.

``I can't believe no one else is doing anything to help him,'' she said.

``Well, the professors are protecting the students on this side,''
Zacharias said in his cool drawl. ``I suspect they thought that was more
important than just one student, no matter how powerful.''

Hermione scowled at him. ``Yes, but none of the other students are doing
this, either!''

``Perils of being the smartest, Hermione,'' said Zacharias, calling her
by her first name for one of the few times she could remember. ``You get
to do all the other work that other people can't even think of.
\emph{Aedifico spiritum cum odoratu et vibrare.}''

Hermione fixed her gaze on Harry again and repeated the spell, deciding
she was recovered enough to do it now. She would never share, ever, how
much Zacharias's words had warmed her.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry was grateful for the images that appeared suddenly around him, and
for the protective magic he could feel at his back, and the Flame Mirror
spells dodging through the air. Grateful, but he didn't know what to do
with the time they were buying him. All the dragons were very much
focused on him; he could, if he concentrated a bit, get images of
himself through three pairs of eyes.

\emph{You have a connection to their minds. Use it.}

That was the problem, though, Harry thought, as he looped around the
Welsh Green's latest attempt to bring him down with fire. The other
magical creatures he knew wore webs. He did not know how to free these
dragons when they wore none.

\emph{But they are wild and not free. They must be bound somehow. What
way could they be bound that's outside wards and the spells they were
using to confine them in those pens?}

Harry concentrated on that, dodging quick little jabs into their minds,
trying to figure out the high-strung nervousness of the Chinese
Fireball, the cool viciousness of the Welsh Green, the anger of the
Hungarian Horntail, and how he could use that to his advantage without
falling off his broom if he tried.

He felt what he thought he had to do in a moment. There \emph{were}
boundaries, after all. If the dragons' minds were oceans or lakes, there
were still the shores at the edges of them, those things their thoughts
would not cross or contain. He wondered what lay beyond them, behind
them, what kind of freedom the dragons would manage if they could think
beyond their wildness for a moment.

He took a deep breath and pulled up, hovering, on his broom.

The Horntail loomed in front of him, her front legs lifted, her claws
spread wide, her head turned broadside to him. Her gleaming eye caught
and held his, and Harry let himself be swept as on the wind of
Legilimency, or the wind that had borne him through the darkened gate on
Walpurgis Night, into her mind.

He brought with him the music he had heard when he circled on the
thestral's back above the Forbidden Forest, and he unleashed it into the
Horntail's mind, filling her thoughts with a booming chorus that focused
on freedom and joy rather than the ravenous anger and hunger and
mother-terror that had ridden her.

He slipped through her thoughts, rose on the shore of her ocean-like
mind, and then crashed beyond it. The Horntail was listening to music
she had long forgotten, or not thought about, since they had brought her
to Hogwarts. There \emph{were} bindings on her after all, though they
had come from her own nature and not from any spells that the Dragon
Keepers had cast. Prodded into despair and fury over her nest, she had
forgotten there might be more to life than the immediate moment. That
was the surest way for wizards to make dragons forget themselves so they
could control them: just stir up their emotions, and they forgot about
freedom.

Harry slipped out and through the other side, and opened his eyes to
find himself on his broom again, unconsumed by flame.

The Hungarian Horntail began to sing.

Harry cried out at the sweetness of it, bringing up a hand in front of
his face as though to shield his eyes from a physical attack. His scar
was tingling and burning, the way it had when the thestral licked the
blood off it. The music blew past him, storm after storm of notes,
soaring crescendos of sound. It was wild, yes, but it was also free, and
the dragon had remembered that she could do things, be things, as well
as oppose them.

She dipped her wings and flew around him, in a dizzying pattern that
Harry vaguely recognized as an infinity symbol, centered on his broom.
He could not draw his eyes from her long enough to confirm the pattern,
though. The Horntail was blazing, as though the song she were singing
had turned to light, and it edged her scales with burning glory, like
the sun flooding through a stained glass window.

The voices of the Welsh Green and the Chinese Fireball rose a moment
later, as though in response, and now Harry could feel their music
joining with the immense currents of other music that ran just out of
hearing, always rising from the Forbidden Forest. The Dark creatures did
not cease to exist when the Light came, after all. The stars still shone
when the sun had risen.

A dip and a sweep of tail and claws and limbs, all more impossibly
graceful than before, and then the Horntail was hovering in front of
him. Harry met her eyes, and found them consuming, as they had always
been, but this time he plunged into freedom, and something better than
freedom.

The dragons were elevated again to the position of calm joy that they
should have occupied. They did not need to hurt anyone else, because
that sort of killing, mindless destruction was beneath them. They would
take their eggs and go home, and there would be no more hurting.

The Horntail exhaled. Flame whirled out from her nostrils, but parted to
either side of Harry, so that his broom did not become a Firebolt in
truth. Harry felt it lick at his skin, but the touch was gentle, making
him think of the warmth he recalled waking up to with Draco that
morning, rather than the scorching, vicious pain he'd had every right to
expect.

\emph{She's saying thank you.}

The Horntail turned and stooped towards her nest, snapping up the
corners of it in her claws. She hauled it easily off the ground, and
then turned and soared east, into the brightening air. The Welsh Green
and the Chinese Fireball dived, gathered up their eggs, and followed
her, though the Welsh Green parted from the other two after a few
moments of flying side by side. Harry watched her wheel west, and heard
her voice reach back to him, a calling down of glory from above. The
Fireball's song was softer, still hesitant, but full and rich and
wonderful nonetheless.

Harry hovered on his broom and watched them until they were both out of
sight. His heart hurt in his chest, and he could hear the music
vibrating and crooning in his ears, tugging and tempting and calling.

It was no use. He still couldn't give himself to it.

Harry took a deep breath and headed towards the ground. He suspected
that he would have a lot of explaining to do.

And he wanted some explanations of his own. Who had cast the
\emph{Imperio}, for example, and whether anyone was hurt.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Draco lifted the protection spell once the dragons were gone. That was
partially so that he could avoid being questioned---much---about it, and
partially so that he could get to Harry faster.

Harry landed not too far from the stands, and for a moment looked as
though he couldn't get his hands to let go of his broom. Then he did,
with an effort and a little surprised noise. He lifted his head,
blinking, and his eyes sought out Draco.

Draco would always remember that. \emph{He} was the one Harry looked to
first, and part of him preened and gloried and rejoiced in the
knowledge.

He smiled slowly, letting Harry know that he wasn't angry, at least for
right now. Harry's shoulders sagged in visible relief.

Then Draco was out of the stands, and laying one hand on Harry's
shoulder, and he was bathed in welcome weariness (like sand) and
satisfaction (sweet candy on his lips) and more determination (like a
stone wall). He murmured, because he could not speak of what was really
rushing through his soul, ``What maddened the dragons?''

``Someone cast the Imperius Curse,'' Harry breathed, and then laughed
abruptly and sagged against Draco. ``And now the sleep's all been
undone, because I'm just as tired as I ever was.''

Draco could tell that wasn't true. He rubbed one hand on the back of
Harry's head, anyway, noticing that his scar was a more brilliant red
than normal, but not bleeding---

At least, he looked at Harry until a sharp jet of fear summoned his
attention. He turned his head, sharply, his eyes narrowing as he scanned
the stands where most of the professors had sat. It felt as though it
had come from there, which made no sense. Why was someone afraid now,
and that strongly?

Dumbledore was watching Harry with a disappointed look on her face,
McGonagall with a fiercely proud one. Moody was scowling at him, looking
as displeased at ever---though that could be with Draco, and his display
of Dark Arts.

Draco shook off the idea that he could find out who had been afraid
right now, and cuddled closer to Harry as other people began to arrive.
He knew where he most wanted to be, and he was in that place right now.
And Harry leaned on him without complaint, even shifting to follow Draco
when he moved a bit, murmuring something about being warm and feeling
safe.

\emph{Those problems will most definitely be solved somehow, because
there's no way in hell I'm giving this up. Or him.}

\chapter{Serpent's Strike}\label{chapter-41-serpents-strike}

``But what's the matter?'' Blaise asked innocently, waving the
\emph{Daily Prophet} in Harry's face. ``I would have thought you'd be
pleased to see another article about you. Proves they haven't got tired
of you yet.''

Harry ground his teeth. If he could just respond calmly, or somehow
banish the tide of blushing in his cheeks, then he could make Blaise
stop teasing, he knew, but that was beyond him.

``It's been more than a week,'' he said, swallowing half his pumpkin
juice at one gulp. Draco had to pound him on the back, and did so, more
enthusiastically than was necessary. Harry shook his head when he could
speak again. ``You'd think they'd have forgotten about it by now.''

He became aware immediately that he was the object of pitying stares
from several directions. He met Millicent's eyes, and Pansy's, and
Draco's, before he got tired of the game. ``What?'' he demanded.

``Potter,'' Blaise drawled. ``Do you really think that a child defeating
three adult dragons is going to be forgotten that easily?''

``I didn't defeat them, they flew off---''

``While the professors were doing nothing but standing around?'' Blaise
peeked at his paper. ``Where is it---yes, there. `Hogwarts Headmaster
Albus Dumbledore seemed confused by Harry Potter's presence in the
air.'\,''

``They were defending the students---''

``And then you came back to the ground safely, after flying on your broom
against \emph{dragons}?'' Blaise shook his head at him. ``It's \emph{such}
a dramatic story, Harry. Of course they're going to love you.''

``Of course I came back unharmed.'' Harry wanted to eat more of his
toast, but he'd lost his appetite. He sighed and closed his eyes,
massaging his forehead.

``Headache?'' Millicent asked.

Harry peered at her, but she only looked sympathetic, not suspicious.
``No,'' he said. And it wasn't, really. His scar hadn't hurt much in the
last week. \emph{This} headache had more prosaic causes. ``I just wish
they'd give up and move on to something else.'' He shook his head and
stood. ``Come on. McGonagall hasn't forgiven me for missing
Transfiguration last Friday yet.''

They'd just stood when Blaise, who was still looking at his paper, said,
``Hello.''

Harry blinked. ``What?''

``Didn't you fight a witch named Umbridge?'' Blaise asked, glancing at
him in interest. ``Says here that she's been appointed Head of the
Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.''

Harry felt his heart rate pick up. ``That's ridiculous,'' he said to no
one in particular. ``She hated me because I was a Parselmouth. There's
no way that anyone would let her be in charge of the place where we're
supposed to go to register or be taken care of. There's no way\ldots{}''
He shook his head, unable to think of the folly it would take for
someone to appoint Umbridge there.

\emph{On the other hand, this is the Ministry, after all. And not
everyone in it is like Rufus Scrimgeour.}

``Doesn't matter.'' Blaise folded the paper with a careless shrug.
``Sometimes Ministry politics are like that.''

``I know.'' Harry didn't speak the rest of what he was thinking aloud.
If Umbridge was in a position where she could hurt magical creatures,
that was a concern of his. He was \emph{vates}. He had to think about
this, and what it might mean for the future of magical creatures in
Britain.

``Spill,'' said Millicent.

Harry started slightly. ``I was thinking about my allies,'' he said,
nevertheless. He had tried, whenever he wasn't hiding around the corner
from people who wanted to congratulate him on being a bloody
\emph{hero}, to be more open with the Slytherins, and explain what he
worried about and why. ``The centaurs and the rest of them. They aren't
going to fare well with a bitch like Umbridge in power.''

``You're always thinking of the larger picture, aren't you?'' Millicent
didn't sound condemning, just thoughtful.

``He always is.''

That didn't come from Blaise, from whom it would have been sarcasm, but
from Draco. Harry turned around and looked at him in astonishment. He
was taken further off guard by the open light he saw shining in Draco's
eyes, something like tenderness and something like pride.

\emph{Why is he looking at me like that? I mean, I know he's my friend,
but friends don't usually look at friends like that.}

Draco gave him a small smile, and said, ``I take it that you want to do
something about this, Harry.''

``I---yes.'' Harry shook his head, and felt the Many snake stir on his
arm. It was a welcome distraction from trying to figure out why the hell
Draco had been looking at him like that when he hadn't done anything to
merit it. ``Millicent, can you come with me to the Forbidden Forest this
afternoon? I think I should find you an egg-shaped stone and introduce
you to the centaurs.''

Millicent nodded, her face relaxing. ``About time, Potter,'' she said,
but she didn't sound annoyed with him.

``Attention, students.''

Harry turned around in irritation. They'd been close to getting out of
the Great Hall, but more than that, Dumbledore's announcements at
breakfast had never been beneficial for him.

The Headmaster didn't look in Harry's direction, though, instead
choosing to twinkle at the tables where the Durmstrang and the
Beauxbatons students sat, and at the Gryffindor table.

``I would just like to remind everyone,'' he said, projecting his voice
easily over the Hall, ``that the Yule Ball is coming up in a few
weeks---a tradition that Hogwarts has always followed whenever the
Triwizard Tournament has been held here. Students will be invited to the
Great Hall for a night of dancing and celebration.'' The smile on his
face grew more pronounced. ``The Ball is limited to students fourth year
and up, unless younger students attend with an older partner. Dress
robes are the required formal wear. Our Champions will lead the dancing.
I suggest you find yourself partners soon, Mr. Krum, Miss Delacour, and
Mr. Potter. Your various schools will be counting on you to make a good
showing.''

\emph{This isn't the Second Task, is it?} Harry thought in panic for a
moment, before relaxing and telling himself not to be stupid. He knew
the schedule as well as anyone else. The Second Task wasn't until
February. He told himself to get over his paranoia, and moved towards
the doors from the Great Hall, ignoring the other students' excited
buzz. He supposed that announcement hadn't been \emph{that} awful,
though for all he knew it could have unforeseen awful consequences. All
the others had.

``Excellent,'' Blaise said in a tone of deep satisfaction.

Before Harry could ask him what he meant, Draco sniped, ``Thinking about
asking your little crush, Blaise?''

The other boy flushed slightly, but lifted his chin and said, ``As a
matter of fact, I think I \emph{will}. I think it's more than you'll get
up the courage to do, Draco, since you've just been going around moping
and brooding and thinking \emph{yours} will never talk to you.'' He
turned and walked out of the Great Hall with a smart stride.

``You could just talk to your crush, you know,'' said Harry, grabbing
Draco's arm so that he couldn't hex Blaise in the back. ``I know you
don't want to, that you're shy, but it's the only way this person will
ever know for certain that you like him or her.''

Draco turned on him so fast that Harry nearly sat down on the floor.
``You don't know,'' Draco spat, his face turning an ugly, mottled red.
``You'll never get it, Harry Potter, not until it's marching in enormous
letters down the ceiling of the Great Hall.'' He narrowed his eyes. ``And
I am \emph{not} shy.''

``You're certainly unreasonable about it,'' said Harry, moving away from
Draco. There was no dealing with him in these moods. ``And Blaise will
only keep teasing you about it until you do something to counteract the
teasing.''

Draco just shook his head and brushed out of the Great Hall.

Millicent and Pansy were laughing as though they'd just heard the
greatest joke in the world. Harry decided there was no chance to get
sense out of them, either, and strode after Blaise and Draco.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Ew,'' said Millicent, fastidiously flicking slime from her shoe with a
spell. The Forbidden Forest was easier to navigate in the light, Harry
had to admit, but it wasn't necessarily more pleasant.

``Come on, we're almost there,'' Harry said. His hold on the egg-shaped
stone he'd found after a few hours' searching was tight. He didn't want
to risk dropping it and then finding another. Besides, who knew what
centaurs might have against dirt on the stone? Or perhaps they would
insist that he bring only the first he found and no other.

He knew the centaurs were watching them. The odd snap of branches and
the even odder hoofbeat said so. But they hadn't approached them yet.
Harry suspected they wouldn't until he and Millicent reached the gallows
clearing where he had saved Draco's life.

He and Millicent reached a pleasant stretch of the path, and Harry let
himself relax a bit. It \emph{was} a pretty day, most uncommon for
December, the sun beaming through a pearly sky that lent itself to
illumination as easily as the more usual blue. The trees around them had
lost most of their leaves, but their trunks shimmered with splotches of
gold from the light, and underneath their feet, the leaves talked and
murmured as if they still hung on the branches. Harry felt a lively
restlessness in the Forest. Most creatures were conducting their last
business before the winter set in in earnest.

The solstice was coming in a few weeks. And then\ldots{}then he would
meet with Lucius Malfoy, and complete the final step in the truce-dance.
Harry felt a quiet shiver of anticipation run through him, not unlike
the emotions in the Forest's magical creatures. He thought he knew what
Lucius would ask for, and he was alive with curiosity to see what he
would receive himself.

Abruptly, the Many snake on his arm hissed so loudly that even Millicent
glanced over. Harry stopped and drew back his sleeve, letting the little
green-golden cobra see him. ``What is it?'' he asked, dropping into
Parseltongue.

``\emph{Intruders,}'' said the snake. ``\emph{We can feel them. They are
using the same spells that they used on us in our first home. They are
searching for the hive, and when they find it, they will destroy it.}''
The snake was vibrating with anger and anxiety. ``\emph{How did they come
here? Where are they from?}''

Harry swore under his breath. He had promised that he would defend the
Many from hunters, and he did not intend to go back on his promise. He
turned and looked at Millicent, to make sure that he was speaking
English. ``Hunters,'' he whispered. ``In the Forest, after the hive
cobras.''

Millicent's eyes widened, and then narrowed. ``But the Forbidden Forest
is off limits to hunters,'' she said. ``Unless\ldots{}.oh, come
\emph{on}. That would just be stupid.''

``What would be stupid?'' Harry was listening now, trying to make out
sounds that didn't belong to the Forest. It was useless. The Many's hive
lay deeper in the woods, anyway. The hunters could be near it, and Harry
wouldn't be able to hear them from this distance.

``Unless the Ministry allowed it,'' Millicent said, sounding disgusted.
``Unless they passed some special kind of edict that said hunting was
allowed. They did once fifty years ago, when the Chamber of Secrets was
last opened and the beast was rampaging around the school. They thought
it might be lairing in the Forest, so they authorized hunters to destroy
it on sight.''

Harry felt a brief shiver at the reminder of the Chamber---the memory he
experienced when Dementors were near him---but he lost it in the rush of
anger that followed. When he took a step forward, sloppy, new-formed ice
broke under his foot. ``Umbridge,'' he breathed. ``She would have the
power to allow something like this, and I bet she remembered that I
could speak to hive cobras and had put them in the Forest. The Hounds
could have told her. The \emph{bitch.}''

``What are you going to do?'' Millicent shook her wand into her hand and
followed him, head cocked on one side as if she weren't at all afraid.
Harry supposed she might not be. His rage wasn't directed at her.

``Defend the Many,'' said Harry, but his mind was racing along another
plan. His anger was greater than he had expected it to be. He understood
it, though. Umbridge was only another minor thorn in his side. She
aspired to become a major thorn, but he wasn't about to let her. And he
had a way to prevent it, too, a way to make her go away for good and
all. ``Deprive Umbridge of her job. Manipulate people. You know, the
usual.''

Millicent laughed at his back, a sound full of dark promise. ``Good,''
she said. ``I wondered what you were going to do for an encore to the
dragons. Lead the way, Potter.''

Harry chose not to be bothered by her choice of words. He hissed at the
Many, and they guided him and Millicent forward, towards the nest. Harry
stroked the plan in his head, and hissed---a sound not part of
Parseltongue---when he heard footsteps ahead.

\emph{You shouldn't have bothered my allies,} he thought. \emph{You
simply shouldn't have bothered my allies.}

He crouched down, motioning Millicent to be still, and peered through
the thick, tough fronds of some late-autumn plant in front of him. He
could see two wizards, both fairly scrawny, dressed in robes that
matched the browns and grays of the trees. They had their backs to him,
and they were poised in front of the opening in the ground that Harry
knew was the hive. They were debating something, softly, in voices too
low for him to make out. One's wand sparkled the dark purple of a spell
Harry didn't recognize.

``What are you going to do?'' Millicent whispered.

Harry hissed softly to the Many in Parseltongue. The snake hissed back
with enthusiasm, then slithered off his arm and dropped to the ground.
It slid past the wizards without attacking, but called to its kin with
their bond. Harry raised his eyebrows and waited.

The wizards' debate had ended. The one with the dark purple spell on his
wand threw up his arms, as if agreeing that the other had the privilege
of going first, and stepped back. The other came forward, turning
slightly so that Harry could see his face. His eyes were narrow with
determination, his head cocked slightly to the side, as if he could see
down the nest by sheer force of will.

The Many exploded out of the den like a writhing flower.

Dozens of the tiny golden-green cobras raced straight for the wizards,
who jumped back in sheer surprise. The nearest one raised his wand soon,
though, and began to incant a spell that Harry suspected was meant to
contain or destroy the snakes.

He cast a nonverbal, wandless \emph{Protego}. He heard Millicent's
breath catch sharply as his shield manifested above the cobras, throwing
back the wizard's spell, though he wasn't sure why. With a wave of his
hand, pleased that his magic stayed contained in his body, Harry
expanded the Charm to cover the second slithering stream breaking off
and attacking the other wizard.

This one didn't back down or seem as frightened as his companion had. He
began steadily to chant, his face filled with disgust. Harry suspected
that that spell wouldn't be able to get through his Shield Charm,
either, but he thought this was a good time to intervene.

He bolted from the bushes, hissing frantically and waving his own arms.
What he was hissing was really, ``As we agreed, so that these buffoons
don't know what's going on,'' but it would sound like a command to the
wizards, and probably to Millicent.

The Many coalesced back together with an audible rasping snap, which
came from hundreds of scales brushing together. They turned to face him,
many small heads spinning all at once. Harry felt their mind leap from
body to body and coalesce in one particular one near the head of the
formation.

Harry hissed again, ``As we agreed.''

The Many began to sway back and forth, as if they were actually charmed
by his very presence. Harry caught his breath and knelt down, hands held
out, voice hissing a steady stream of reassurances. The Many flowed
forward, slowly, and then faster, and climbed his body.

Harry stood up, draped with the cobras as he had been that day in
Knockturn Alley, and let their tongues caress his face. The body that
contained the hive's mind at the moment curled around his neck and
hovered near his eyes. Harry stared back at it, and admired the slanting
sunlight through its hood. He was still afraid, but the fear was a
distant thing. He no longer seriously worried that the Many meant him
harm; he only knew they could, and that was enough to keep a serious
respect for them at the forefront of his mind. \emph{Let one of them
spit, and I would be blind for the rest of my life. No cure for that
poison, Muggle or magical. Remember that, Harry.}

He hissed, ``Quiet now?''

Their flowing voices came back to him, saying only, ``\emph{Yes},'' and
then they all fell silent as one. The overall effect, Harry had to
concede, was quite impressive.

He took a deep breath and lifted his eyes to the faces of the two
wizards. The one who'd had the purple light on his wand still held it
there, but he seemed utterly stunned and at a loss for what to say next.
The other was nodding, his expression slightly more welcoming.

``You're Harry Potter,'' he said. ``I read about you in the paper.
Deadly creatures seem to like you.'' He made it a challenge.

\emph{Not so easy after all, then.} Harry rewove his plan in his mind,
and blinked. ``I'm sorry,'' he said, focusing hard on the hunters so
that he wouldn't accidentally start speaking in the wrong language. ``I
just got so worried that they'd hurt you. It was the only way I could
think of to save your lives.'' He smiled and shrugged slightly, a move
that helpfully made the Many hiss at him. ``I'm glad you're all right,
though. I'll hold onto that thought as they kill me.''

``What?'' spluttered the wizard with the purple light on his wand. Harry
was glad that Millicent had the good sense to stay silent and out of
sight, though she must have been as stunned at his declaration as the
rest of them.

``Oh, the Many demand a sacrifice from the Parselmouth who takes their
prey from them.'' Harry blinked at them, making sure it seemed as though
he thought everyone should have known that. ``Last time, when I
interrupted them in Knockturn Alley, they were content with my bringing
them to the Forest and setting them free. But now they want to kill me.
That's all right. I'm just glad that I saved your lives, after all.'' He
closed his eyes and lifted his chin.

``Wait,'' said the wizard who'd accused him of being friendly with
deadly creatures. ``That isn't---we can't let you die to save us.''

Harry opened his eyes again and gave him a small, brave smile. ``Of
course you can,'' he said. ``You think it's a plot or something already.
But I'd advise you to run again when they're done with me. I won't be
alive to control them anymore, and they might decide that they're still
hungry.''

The wizard with the purple light on his wand straightened his spine. ``I
can't let you do this,'' he said quietly. ``Harry Potter, my name is
Tybalt Starrise. Will you accept a life debt from me? You must be alive
to accept and fulfill it.''

Harry blinked at him. Now that he looked, he could make out the family
resemblance in this wizard's face to the handsome man with bells in his
hair whom he'd met at the Ministry on the autumnal equinox. Tybalt
looked as though he disapproved of most everything in life, but there
was honor written in the harsh lines about his mouth, and his blue gaze
was clear and steady.

Harry made his voice mournful. ``I don't know how I can. After all, the
Many want to kill me for interrupting their dinner.''

Tybalt shook his head. ``I can't let you do this,'' he repeated. ``Can
you tell them that I'll offer myself to them in your place?'' His eyes
were filled with trepidation now, but he didn't look as though he would
back away.

\emph{Trust a Light wizard to be honorable even unto death.} Harry had
been counting on that, actually, for his plan to work as it should. ``I
could ask,'' he said. ``But they really want to kill the Parselmouth who
takes their prey from them, rather than just getting the prey back.
Unless---'' He caught his lip between his teeth and worried at it, as
though he'd just had an idea.

``What?'' Tybalt leaned forward, his face hopeful. The other wizard
snorted, as though he were still trying to maintain a modicum of doubt,
but his eyes were uncertain as they moved back and forth between his
partner and Harry.

Harry hissed at the Many. ``The next part is going to take some
convincing,'' he said. ``Can all of you hiss at once? You don't need to
say anything, just hiss, and make it sound impressive.''

The Many did so. The sound welled up and around the clearing, and Harry
could make out that it was composed of many distinct voices, which he
usually couldn't when they all spoke in concert. Tybalt's partner took a
step back. Tybalt himself remained still, eyes patiently fixed on
Harry's face.

``They want to feel safe,'' Harry explained. ``That's why they're angry
enough to take my life. They were chased and harassed from their former
home, and now they have eggs and a hive here. They might be able to let
me go if I could promise they would stay safe.'' He met Tybalt's gaze.
``That means that no hunters can come here ever again.''

The wizard behind Tybalt huffed. ``That's impossible. The Ministry
authorized \emph{us} to do this, but if we don't do it, it's just going
to be someone else.''

``Sometimes, John, you're an idiot,'' said Tybalt, without taking his
eyes from Harry. ``I think he doesn't just mean for us to leave and
never come back. Isn't that right, Lord Potter?''

``I am no Lord,'' said Harry sharply, before he could stop himself. His
magic flexed all around him like a beaten sheet of lead, briefly leaving
his body. Tybalt blinked, then nodded.

``Your magic credits you with the title, but from your lips, I will
believe the denial truth,'' he said, the tone formal. ``You mean for us
to strike at the source. To get rid of the problem as soon as
possible.''

``Yes.'' Harry raised one eyebrow. \emph{I think I know him well enough
now that this will work.} ``I have reason to believe that Madam Umbridge
passed the new laws only as a means of getting back at me. She was there
the day I was abducted and brought in for illegal questioning. She
doesn't like me, and she would have remembered that that was also the
day I brought the Many home. She isn't following the rule of law in
authorizing you to hunt the Many, only her own grudges.''

Tybalt's lip curled, and his eyes fired. Harry nodded, a shallow motion
only the Many could see or feel. \emph{I thought so. He was probably a
Gryffindor. He doesn't approve of laws being used for dishonorable
purposes.}

``We can do something about that,'' said Tybalt softly. ``My uncle has
been forbidden from political participation for a year, but that doesn't
mean the rest of us are helpless.'' He glanced at the wizard behind him.
``Do you really think we can just go back and pretend we never heard
this, John?''

The other wizard slowly shook his head. The suspicion had faded from his
face at last, Harry saw, and forbade himself a sigh of relief. He'd done
it. He'd convinced them, and, as Millicent had lectured him to do
lately, he'd given part of the responsibility over to someone else.
These men could work far more easily inside the Ministry than he himself
could---even better, if the way Scrimgeour had operated in the past was
a guide. Umbridge's days of pursuing her grievances through her new
power were about to be numbered.

``Then, please,'' he said, ``make sure that Madam Umbridge can't pass
any more laws like this.''

Tybalt nodded. He seemed almost abstracted. Harry was about to repeat
his comment when Tybalt murmured, ``My uncle has been near you, but I
have not. He declined to speak of your power level when I asked him
about it, murmuring something about it not being an appropriate subject
to discuss around the average wizard, at least until you'd Declared for
Dark or Light. But he did smile when the latest stories appeared. And
now I see why. Will you forgive me for not properly introducing us? My
name is Tybalt Starrise, elder son of Alba Starrise and her husband
Tiberius Griffinsnest, nephew to Augustus Starrise.'' He bowed
shallowly, and then drew John forward to stand beside him. ``This
sometimes ill-mannered wizard is my joined partner, John
Smythe-Blyton.''

John muttered something that sounded uncomplimentary, but bowed to Harry
in return. He was Muggleborn, or so Harry knew he must be from his last
name. His gaze on Harry was somewhere between awed and disbelieving.

``You hardly had time for proper introductions,'' said Harry, himself
torn between curiosity and amusement. ``Why now?''

``Because the magic I can feel around you is extraordinary,'' said
Tybalt, and cocked his head and closed his eyes, as though basking in a
fall of sunlight. ``And it should not go unacknowledged. I do not know
what my uncle was thinking, to engage in such stupidity as forbidding
himself politics so soon after he met you, but I wish to remedy that
mistake. I will send you a formal letter of salutation in the future.''

``Do you want me to become a Light Lord?'' Harry asked. He was a bit
unnerved by what he could see in Tybalt's face. \emph{Better to get the
misconceptions out of the way now.} ``Because I should tell you that I'm
unlikely to.''

``No,'' Tybalt whispered. ``It's the \emph{magic} that's important. You
don't really understand, but why should you? You rest in the middle of
it.'' He opened his eyes and smiled at Harry. ``I will contact you,
unless there is some reason that you don't wish me to.'' He had a
patient, listening expression, as though he would understand if Harry
said no.

Harry frowned. \emph{Why am I suddenly acquiring allies on the Light
side of the fence?} He supposed he shouldn't question his good fortune,
but he did wonder at it. He had become resigned to the fact that no one
Light was likely to ally with him when they found out how closely he
consorted with Dark wizards, and especially when they learned he was a
Parselmouth. ``I won't forbid you,'' he said at last. ``But your uncle
may have been right to ignore your questions.''

``He was right not to talk about you,'' said Tybalt. ``Not right to cut
himself off.'' He bowed one more time to Harry. ``We will do what we can
against Madam Umbridge. Luckily for us, we do know some of her weak
points. Legacy of my uncle's close association with the old Minister.''
He nodded as though that were all, and started to walk out of the
clearing. John followed on his heels, giving Harry a final bewildered
stare that said he was somewhat surprised by all this, but would follow
what his partner decided was appropriate.

Harry shook his head, and turned towards the plants where Millicent had
been hiding as the Many slithered down his body. ``You can come out
now,'' he said.

Millicent moved forward. Her eyes were opaque, her mouth stretched in a
faint smile.

``Are you angry?'' Harry asked, since he couldn't make out anything from
her expression. ``He \emph{is} a Light wizard.''

``And you're sworn to protect and spend time with my little sister,
Harry,'' said Millicent equitably. ``No. Not angry. Just surprised, and
then surprised at myself for being surprised. I should have seen how far
your reach would extend.''

Harry rolled his eyes and waited only for one of the Many snakes to
encircle his left arm before he turned to lead Millicent back in the
direction of the gallows clearing. After what had taken place just now,
he expected their meeting with the centaurs to be somewhat
anticlimactic.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry leaned back against the couch and stretched. Overall, the day had
gone well. The centaurs had watched his encounter with Tybalt and John,
and hadn't made much fuss about accepting Millicent as his delegated
representative. It helped, he supposed, that Millicent hadn't stared or
acted as though the centaurs were the ``halfbreeds'' some pureblood
wizards called them. \emph{That} would certainly have started this
relationship out on the wrong foot.

He shifted around so that he could more easily read the Parseltongue
book, which was fairly heavy, and provoked an irritated sound from
Draco. Harry grinned at his friend. Draco had been sitting on the floor
beside the couch while he did his Astronomy homework, leaning back with
his head near Harry's leg. Harry appeared to have kicked him in the
temple, accidentally, as he shifted positions.

``Sorry,'' Harry said, knowing he didn't sound it. ``But you shouldn't
have put your head in the way of my foot.''

Draco scowled at him. Harry knew it wasn't a serious scowl. In fact, a
moment later it melted away, and left that same expression of pride and
tenderness that Draco had looked at him with this morning. Harry raised
his eyebrows. \emph{He wants to say something. I wonder what it is?}

``Harry---'' Draco started.

``Oi! Potter!'' Montague, one of the older students, called from near
the door. ``Someone's here to see you!''

Harry blinked and put aside the Parseltongue book, which was sometimes
fascinating, but more dry; it was a history of famous Parselmouths in
the past, and appeared to concern itself mostly with who they'd married
and how many children they had. His visitor must be someone from a
different House, but he couldn't imagine who it would be. No one had
seemed especially anxious to talk to him at meals or in class today,
when it would surely have been easier than trekking down to the dungeons
and the Slytherin common room.

``Just a minute, Draco,'' he murmured, and slipped towards the door.
Draco didn't listen, and followed him instead.

Luna Lovegood was standing in the corridor, her face patient and her
expression abstracted as she stared at the ceiling. Harry smiled and
felt himself relaxing. \emph{Of course she would come whenever she
wanted to talk to me. I wonder what the stones are telling her?}

``What is it, Luna?'' he asked gently, so as not to startle her.

``The stones are telling me about the lake,'' said Luna. ``They've felt
many fish swim past in their time, but no Nargles. How strange. Would
you go to the Yule Ball with me, Harry?''

Harry blinked, disconcerted by her speech, and then blinked again as he
realized what she'd asked him. He looked carefully at Luna, but her face
was absolutely serene. Of course she wouldn't play a joke like this on
him---she wasn't that kind of person, it would never occur to her---but
someone else might have put her up to it.

``Are you sure you really want to go to the Ball with me?'' he asked, to
test it.

Luna nodded, her eyes far away. ``Of course. Unless you already have
someone who will escort you. Then I could simply come for the dancing.''
She smiled mistily. ``I like dancing.''

Harry smiled in spite of himself. It wasn't as though anyone else would
ask him, or was likely to. Besides, he didn't think he could trust many
of the offers he might receive. The people who thought him---he
grimaced---a \emph{hero} wouldn't really be offering out of genuine
liking for him, but just so they could bask in some sort of reflected
glory. \emph{I hope Connor can find someone who really wants to dance
with him, and not just a Champion.} There was no doubt, though, that
Luna meant it. ``Then of course, Luna. I'd be honored.''

Luna nodded to him, and turned and wandered up the hall. Harry watched
her go, shaking his head. \emph{I wonder why she asked} me? \emph{Maybe
she knows that I'm one of the few people who will take her seriously.}

He stepped back inside the common room, and turned around. ``Draco, what
were you going to s---''

He paused, finding Draco gone. He glanced in several directions, but
didn't see Draco in the common room, and was just in time to hear a door
slam. He sighed. \emph{My getting a date probably reminded him that he
doesn't have one yet. Well, I'm sorry about that, but he should just}
ask \emph{this bloody crush of his, and then it wouldn't be a problem.}

He moved back to his Parseltongue book. When he was halfway to the
couch, Pansy exploded in laughter. Harry looked at her, and saw her
sparkling eyes focused on him. She was hiding her mouth with her book,
but she was definitely still laughing.

``What?'' he asked.

``Draco is so \emph{funny},'' she said, by means of explanation, and then
lay back on her divan and laughed her head off.

Harry sighed and picked up his book again. \emph{I do feel sorry for
him, but he's got to get over that shyness. People will only keep
teasing him until he does. And besides, his crush might reciprocate his
feelings. I think he'd be happier then. He seems pretty damn serious
about this.}

\chapter{Intermission: Two Conversations}\label{chapter-42-intermission-two-conversations}
``Well, I did it.''

Draco raised his head and glared over his shoulder at Blaise as he
strolled into the fourth-year boys' room. Blaise paused and chuckled at
the sight of him, then took a seat on his own bed and watched Draco with
a small smile.

On the silence went, and on, and on, until Draco ground his teeth and
snapped, ``What did you do?'' He'd wanted to be left alone here in
silence to brood over Harry, but as long as Blaise was going to intrude,
he might as well have something interesting to say.

``I asked my crush to the Yule Ball.'' Blaise examined one hand, as
though trying to determine \emph{why} he would ever had had any doubts
on that score. It drove Draco mad. ``And she said yes.'' He looked up
and winked at Draco. ``So at least \emph{one} of us is going with the
date he wanted to go with.''

Draco threw his pillow at his head. Blaise went down beneath it,
laughing, and sat up a moment later to throw it back. Draco hadn't been
prepared. He grunted as it caught him in the face.

``Honestly,'' Blaise said, when Draco had clawed the cloth away from his
face and could see again. Draco could feel his emotions, since Harry
wasn't in the room to provide a buffer or a shield, and they were all
cool, focused around cold glee and something that might almost have been
pity. ``You're making yourself agitated with not talking to him. And it's
affecting other people now, too---\emph{including} him, and I think we'd
all agree that an angry Harry is something we'd prefer to avoid. I wish
you'd do us all a favor and just ask him to the stupid Ball.''

``He already has a date,'' said Draco. The words stung his mouth as
though he were spitting bees. ``He didn't want to go with \emph{me.}''

Blaise growled, and his emotions turned hot. ``You didn't \emph{ask} him,
you prat! He can't very well read your mind and know that you want to go
with him if you don't ask, can he?''

``The rest of you do well enough.'' Draco rolled back over and shut his
eyes. He didn't want to hear, yet again, the note of pleasure in Harry's
voice as he accepted Loony's invitation. It was plain enough that Harry
really wanted to go with the crazy girl. He didn't seem to care that she
was only a friend he sometimes talked with, rather than the person who'd
been beside him since the day he was Sorted into Slytherin. ``I don't
know why he can't see it.''

``Maybe because he's messed in the head?'' Blaise asked. ``Quite
literally.''

Draco sat up again. The note of scorn in Blaise's voice would have
prompted that even if he'd said something nicer. ``Shut up,'' he
whispered, and the note in his own voice made Blaise pale, a bit. ``You
know nothing about what he went through.''

``Not the specifics.'' Blaise lifted his chin. ``But we can see the mark
it left on his behavior, Draco, and yes, he \emph{is} messed in the
head. Not in the way his date is, I'll grant you that, but in a
different way. And you claim to know more about that than any of us do.
And yet you're still sitting here, waiting for Harry to act like a
\emph{normal} person. I think you're going to have a long wait.'' He
abruptly shook his head and snorted. ``And what the hell am I doing
giving you romantic advice? It's not like you were a great fount of it
with my date.'' He stood and made for the door of the room.

``I told you to stop drawing lions on your homework!'' Draco yelled at
his back, because he couldn't let that pass without some kind of insult.
``She \emph{is} a Gryffindor, isn't she?''

``None of your damn business until you see her on my arm at the Yule
Ball,'' Blaise said over his shoulder. ``Where, and I remind you of
this, Harry will be dancing with Loony.''

He shut the door before Draco managed to hit him yet again with the
thrown pillow.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``It's no use,'' said Ron, and fell into one of the desks, panting.
Harry saw it tilt dangerously and quickly performed a charm that would
keep it upright. There was a reason that these classrooms had been
abandoned, and filled with this kind of furniture. Ron, mopping sweat
from his forehead with one hand, and then shifting his grip on his wand
as that, too, became slimy, didn't notice. He blinked forlornly at
Harry. ``I'm never going to get it right.''

``Sure you are.'' Harry kept his voice pitched low and soothing. He
wouldn't get irritated with Ron. He'd spent the last few days in a haze
of irritation, what with Draco being an impossible git prone to
insulting everyone in sight and the pressure of Snape's approaching
trial date. If he concentrated, it was actually easy to pour out his
irritation into something like this---an action where he thought he
could make a substantial advance. He liked \emph{doing} things,
\emph{accomplishing} things, and today he was going to break the block
on Ron's magic. ``That's why I picked this spell to practice. I know
that you can perform it more easily than most wizards can. Your family's
been Light for at least a few generations. You can manage this.''

Ron shook his head. ``You don't understand,'' he said, with a leaden
disquiet in his voice that Harry knew came from years of failure. ``I've
tried for a long time, and I can't break this block. I can't do it
now.''

Harry narrowed his eyes. He'd been trying to coax Ron up to a certain
level of power before he tried what he thought would actually shatter
the block, but perhaps he should try the shattering process first.
``Right,'' he drawled. ``I suppose I should have known better.'' He
turned as if he would walk out of the classroom. Though it was the usual
place where he held his lessons for the other students, it was empty now
except for him and Ron.

Footsteps pounded on the floor, and then Ron's hand grabbed his
shoulder. ``What do you mean?'' he demanded.

Harry glanced over his shoulder at him. Ron's freckles were standing out
sharply on his pale face. Harry snorted. ``Just that I should have known
that you weren't really a Gryffindor,'' he said distantly. ``A Gryffindor
would keep right on going. \emph{Gryffindors} don't give up. I thought
you sat under the Sorting Hat for a long time. You should have been
Hufflepuff, right?''

``I should not have!'' Ron yelped, and his face flushed. ``I'm a
Gryffindor through and through! My family's \emph{always} been! You take
that back!''

``Why should I?'' Harry wrenched his shoulder free with a motion that,
though easy enough in itself, \emph{looked} as if it took a lot more
effort than it did. He stepped back and snorted at Ron. ``You're not
proving it. You might have argued the Sorting Hat into putting you in
Godric's House, but when it comes to the test, you back off!''

``I \emph{do not!}''

Harry gazed straight into Ron's eyes as he watched him get angrier and
angrier. He made sure not to smile when he saw the block quaking. That
would defeat his purpose. ``Then show me,'' he sniffed. ``Perform this
spell, and I'll believe it. But otherwise, I think I should go to
Headmaster Dumbledore and tell him that you didn't really deserve to
be---''

``I can so do it!'' Ron whipped around, drawing his wand outward.
``\emph{Aurora Speculae!}''

Harry felt Ron's magic rise up, roaring, foam for a moment like a wave
at the block, and then splinter and sweep it aside. He had to shield his
eyes as golden light filled the room, beaming from the end of Ron's room
and inundating the walls. Magic came with it, roaring still, happy, and
Harry felt the corresponding tug and lift in his heart that the spell
was supposed to cause.

The light went on shining for a time. It was the Sunrise of Hope spell,
meant to signal a leader's position to his troops on a battlefield and
give them the continued strength to go on. Light Lords often used it to
start a battle, too, with the invocation, ``And so shines the Light
against the Dark!''

Ron didn't make the cry, but Harry hadn't expected him to. When the
light finally finished shining, he lowered his arm, and found Ron
blinking. Part of that was surely afterimages, but another part was
shock, expressed in his whispered words a moment later. ``My block is
gone.''

Harry smiled at him. ``When you told me about how it was created, when
you were so angry, I thought rage was probably the key to breaking it.''
He shrugged lightly. ``And it was.''

Ron blinked at him some more, then said, ``You \emph{prat}. You did that
on purpose!''

``Of course I did.'' Harry felt weightless, pleased, happy, ready even
to go back to the Slytherin common room and face Draco sulking over his
crush whom he wouldn't talk to. ``I know you're a Gryffindor, Ron. It's
pretty damn obvious all the damn time,'' he added, and walked towards
the door.

He had to duck a spell aimed at his back---Ron was honorable, but he
wasn't stupid---and spun around with a hex ready on his lips. They
dueled for a short time. Ron's spells had a speed and power that Harry
knew they'd never had, and Ron's face had a look of dazed happiness that
wasn't common, either.

Harry finished the duel laughing. There was nothing else that made him
so \emph{happy} as helping people.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Albus settled back in his chair with a little sigh and looked out the
window of his office. The first snowfall of December was sifting down,
turning the sky and the grounds to one haze of white. Students trudged
about in scarves and thick coats, when they ventured outside at
all---except for the Durmstrang students, who went out in shirt sleeves,
had snowball fights with each other, and laughed whenever someone else
complained about the cold.

\emph{I do not know what I am going to do.}

His project to test Harry, Albus had to admit, was not going well. He
had tried to push Harry along two parallel tracks. One was to keep
hidden, to stay further in the shadows, to make him used to the
adulation going to other people. Harry's deep embarrassment when he
\emph{did} do something to attract attention should have made that one
easy. Albus had felt confident enough in that scheme's success to take
him to the Ministry during Fudge's hearing. The Wizengamot was sure to
notice his power, but more than that, they would see how he sat behind
Albus, and they would know who controlled him.

And then Scrimgeour had hauled Harry into the spotlight, and Griselda
Marchbanks herself appeared to have taken notice of him.

Albus shook his head slowly. Bad as that had been, it was nothing
compared to the fiasco of the First Task. Of course he was glad that the
students had not been hurt, but did Harry have to save everyone in so
noticeable a way? Dozens of photographs had shown up, snapped by the
press ostensibly there to report on the First Task, of Harry looping on
his broom around the dragons, staring into the dragons' eyes, protecting
the Ravenclaw students with a Shield Charm that obviously came from
him\ldots{}

No, that part was not going well.

That meant the second part of the plan must pick up momentum. For a
time, Albus considered, it had been more successful than the other.
Harry \emph{had} been busy, \emph{had} been dashing about and trying to
exhaust himself with taking care of everything, \emph{had} come near the
edge of emotional breakdown from the moment Connor's name emerged from
the Goblet. He had nearly entered the state of mind where Albus believed
he would be amenable to a few gentle suggestions that the Headmaster
might make. For all his brilliance when he was thinking clearly, Harry
tended to run headlong into traps when his emotions took control; it was
the Gryffindor in him. Just one noose around his neck, just one offer of
a comfortable place when he was breaking down, and Albus believed that
he would have secured Harry's power from any unfortunate uses it might
be turned to.

And then the Slytherins had intervened.

It had not escaped Albus's attention how closely his yearmates had stuck
around Harry since the day of his mother's last letter. They spoke with
him more often, and didn't let him withdraw into an isolated shell. And
Harry, irritating miracle of miracles, responded to them more often than
not, and throve on the trust they seemed to offer him. It was
astonishing.

It was not at all what Albus had planned.

Albus half-closed his eyes and sighed. He hated having to make decisions
like this, but if he did not make them, then no one would. And Harry
needed \emph{some} decision, some direction, some guide. If he had
Declared for Dark or Light, Albus would not feel the need to interfere
like this. But as it was, Harry appeared to understand almost nothing of
how the world worked, and that other wizards simply could not cope with
having a fourteen-year-old powerhouse running loose. Even his alliances
with the Dark pureblood families, which Albus might have counted a
restraining influence otherwise, were not enough, because they appeared
content to leave leadership up to \emph{Harry}. Albus could not imagine
what wizards like Lucius Malfoy got out of that, other than a laugh at
Harry's (and probably Albus's) expense, but there it was.

There was Severus's trial coming up on the solstice, where Harry would
be expected to testify, but the emotional exhaustion that put him
through would be made up for his guardian's reemergence into school
life, since Albus fully expected the Wizengamot to exonerate Severus.

That meant\ldots{}

Hm. Yes. Well, that might work.

Albus sighed again and opened his eyes. \emph{It will have to. Matters
cannot go on as they have been. And I will send him warning. On his head
be it if he chooses to ignore the warning.}

\chapter{A Deep and Tangled Tale}\label{chapter-43-a-deep-and-tangled-tale}
\emph{Harry dreamed.}

``Evan.'' Voldemort's voice was unmistakable by now, and Harry didn't
feel as though he'd just been hearing it in his dreams. It seemed as
though it ran all through his life, threading through his dreams and
binding them to his visions and his pain and his training, binding his
whole existence to the night when the Dark Lord had come to Godric's
Hollow and changed things for him and Connor.

``My lord.'' Evan Rosier dipped his head and sat down on the floor in
front of Voldemort. They were in an ancient house, Harry knew that much,
with a fire burning in a hearth and throwing back muffled shadows from a
dusty mantle and fire irons. Voldemort sat in a high-backed chair,
facing the fire, so that Harry still couldn't see him. That was all
right. He didn't want to see him, not really. Nagini lay sleeping on the
floor beside his chair. ``I have been to the giants. They did not seem
interested in what I had to say. They did not even appear to recognize
the name of \emph{vates.} They merely stared and grunted, until I spoke
in their own language. Then they roared and chased me away.''

``You have failed me, then, Evan?'' Voldemort did not sound pleased.

``Yes, my lord.'' Rosier did not sound overly concerned. Harry flattened
himself to the floor, grateful he was in the smaller furry
shape---whatever it was---that would permit him to do that, as he heard
footsteps pounding up a hall behind him. He thought he could feel a
swirl of robes as Bellatrix slipped past him and into the room.

``My lord?'' she asked, her voice trembling with excitement. It was a
girlish voice, Harry thought. \emph{Like Umbridge's.} ``You called for
me?''

``Evan does not take his duties seriously even now,'' Voldemort hissed.
``Punish him for me!''

``Yes, do punish me, Bellatrix.'' Rosier winked at her. ``But use
something other than \emph{Crucio} this time, would you? I'm getting
awfully tired of it.'' He lay down on the floor. ``Here, I'll even put
myself in a convulsive posture first, so that you can have the
satisfaction of seeing me like that. Maybe then you'll use something
else.'' He twisted his head to the side, crossed his eyes, and stuck out
his tongue.

Voldemort made an indescribable noise of anger, and Nagini swayed back
and forth, echoing her master with a hiss that Harry recognized as the
closest a snake could come to a curse. Harry shivered for a moment, and
wondered why in the world Voldemort put up with Rosier.

\emph{Because he has no one else,} he thought abruptly. \emph{If
Bellatrix and Rosier are the only two Death Eaters attending him for
some reason, then he doesn't have much choice about not killing them.}

Bellatrix, predictably, chose to put Rosier under the Cruciatus Curse.
As he had before, Rosier laughed throughout it, and Bellatrix lifted the
Curse on orders from the Dark Lord, in disgust. Her right wrist was
folded in her sleeve this time, and Harry could not see what it might
look like.

``Very well, Evan,'' said Voldemort, when Rosier's laughter had faded
and he lay there, looking up at his Lord with a smile. ``Then you will
assist me in another endeavor. We are attempting to compile a list of
traitors to our cause, the cowards and crawling worms who have turned
their backs on me.''

``Well, Severus, of course,'' said Rosier at once. ``He attacked us in
May when we tried to follow Rodolphus onto Hogwarts grounds.''

Harry felt something twitch in his paw, and looked down to see that
claws had shot out of it, as though he were about to scratch someone's
face off in defense of Snape. Voldemort only made that sound of anger
again, and said, ``Yes, Bellatrix had informed me of him. Who else?''

``Hawthorn Parkinson,'' said Rosier. ``She refused to assist us in the
process of your most glorious return last year, and Fenrir Greyback bit
her. For all that, I do not believe she has changed her allegiance back
to us. In fact, I have uncovered evidence that she follows the Potter
boy.''

``It will not go well with her, should we meet again,'' Voldemort
murmured. ``Who else?''

``Adalrico Bulstrode, my lord,'' Bellatrix broke in, sounding as if she
resented being ignored. ``Walden told me that he came to the Ministry
the day that Potter was abducted. It seems likely that he was attending
that meeting rumored to take place in the Head Auror's office.''

Voldemort was silent a moment. Harry waited to hear him swear vengeance
against Adalrico, but he said only, ``And Wormtail?''

``We do not know, my lord,'' Bellatrix said respectfully. ``He broke out
of Azkaban last year, and there were rumors that he intended to go after
the Potter boy. He even sneaked onto Hogwarts grounds. But we do not
know where he is now.''

``I would win him back, if we can,'' said Voldemort. ``Send word abroad.
We will find him.'' A longer pause, this time, and Harry waited and
worried. \emph{At least I was able to hear this.} ``And Lucius?''
Voldemort asked at last, and Harry felt fur lift, bristling, all along
his spine.

``Another unknown, my lord,'' said Rosier. His voice sounded more even
now, balanced, but also bored. ``You said that he had obeyed Sirius
Black's command to retrieve a Dark artifact three years ago, but past
that, we know nothing of his actions in favor of your cause. Greyback
and Macnair said that they did not believe he was loyal any longer, but
Macnair has always been jealous of Lucius, and Greyback is---not stable.
He appears simply to be watching and waiting, rather than committing
himself to one side or another. He attended the meeting in the Ministry
the day Potter was abducted, but that could have been to please his wife
and son, who are Potter's known allies.''

``Waiting and watching would be like Lucius,'' said Voldemort. ``Before
I lost contact with Sirius Black's mind last year, I know that he was
dithering, most unacceptably.'' Another pause, and then he said, his
voice decisive, ``Lucius must not allow family loyalties to stand in the
way of his commitments. Evan. Go to him, tonight, and question him about
the Dark artifact that he retrieved for me. I would know what became of
it.''

\emph{The diary,} Harry thought, feeling his scar burn in brief, hot
pulses. \emph{They're talking about the diary. They must be.}

``And if he can give no satisfactory account of it?'' Rosier asked, his
voice soft and eager.

``End him,'' said Voldemort. ``I give this kill to you, my faithful
servant.''

Rosier bowed, stood, and strode from the room, his hands almost
twitching. Harry tried to follow him, but found the hall running out in
front of him and darkening as he traveled further from Voldemort's
chair. Apparently his dream centered on the Dark Lord, and he could not
move much away from him. He swung back around, reluctant to wait, but
wondering if he would hear anything else useful.

``Why did you want a final accounting of the traitors, my lord?''
Bellatrix whispered, kneeling beside his chair. ``I thought you had
known already who was loyal to you and who was not.''

``I would have my known enemies marked, Bella, and those who might be
persuaded back to my side left alone for now,'' said Voldemort. ``We
must wait. The sun is rising.''

They both started laughing, and Nagini swayed back and forth, and Harry
conceded that he was going to learn nothing else useful. He turned and
sprang up towards the surface of the dream, clawing it down, forcing
himself to wake up.

\emph{I have to open my eyes. This is only a vision, but Rosier is
moving outside it, going to Malfoy Manor. He may have Apparated there
already. Wake} up!

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry opened his eyes, gasping, and then had to blink hard as blood
cascaded down from his forehead and blinded him for a moment. He wiped
it away, and heard the Many snake on his arm hiss, partly in excitement
at the nearness of the blood and partly in concern.

Harry tumbled out of bed, caught his foot in the hem of the skirt, and
tripped. He heard sleepy grumbles from Blaise and Vince, but he couldn't
pause to either reassure them or cast a sleeping charm on them. His
whole attention was fixed on the bed beside his, and Draco lying under
the covers.

He drove himself to his feet again, tugged the curtains open, and
hissed, ``Draco!''

His friend stirred and rolled over to him, slowly blinking his eyes
open. The half-smile on his lips melted when he saw who it was. He'd
been intolerable the past few days, since Harry had agreed to go with
Luna to the Yule Ball.

At the moment, Harry didn't care. This was more important than whoever
Draco's crush might be or might not be.

``Get up!'' he said. ``I need you to firecall your parents, right now!
Or---'' Another idea abruptly came to him. ``If you're sure that serpent
you gave me will work as a Portkey for both of us, we'll take that. Evan
Rosier is on his way to question your father about Tom Riddle's diary.''

He didn't know how much of that Draco had actually understood, but he
was scrambling out of bed, reaching for the set of school robes he'd
draped on his trunk for the next day, and that was all Harry wanted from
him. He hurried back to his own trunk and shrugged on his robes over his
pyjamas. Blaise poked his head out of his curtains.

``What are you \emph{doing}?'' he demanded, irritation and weariness
roughening his voice. ``Some people need to \emph{sleep}, you know!''

``We're going somewhere,'' Harry snapped, even as he opened his trunk
and searched for the glass snake that Draco had given him for his
birthday last summer, the one that showed Draco's emotions for him and
would also act as an emergency Portkey to Malfoy Manor. Harry hadn't
used it for a long time. He didn't know why he needed to, when Draco
himself had told Harry that he loved him like a friend. So long as Draco
said what he was feeling, Harry didn't require any extra reassurance.
``None of your damn business.''

Blaise laughed.

Harry shook his head and found the serpent, snatching it up. He snorted
when he saw it roiling with purple and red---anger and protectiveness,
no surprise. Draco had been feeling a mixture of both of them for him
lately. He turned, his arm already extended, and Draco clasped his wrist
with one hand and the serpent with the other.

``\emph{Portus},'' Harry whispered.

He felt the magic surge forward and claim them, and heard Blaise's
startled shout, in the moment before they vanished. Harry gritted his
teeth and held on tight to the serpent and Draco both as the world
around them danced with mad, dizzying colors. He hated traveling by
Portkey. It never seemed to end, and in this case, with the great
distance between Hogwarts and Malfoy Manor, it seemed to take an
especially long time.

He and Draco sprawled together in a sheltered anteroom that Harry
vaguely recognized as the place where Draco seemed to firecall his
parents. Harry rolled over and climbed to his feet.

He frowned when he noticed the serpent was now shining blue. That was a
color he had never seen before, and he didn't know what it meant.
\emph{I hope using it as a Portkey didn't damage it.}

``My parents should be here soon,'' said Draco, wiping at a bit of dust
on his robes. ``They'll have felt us come through the wards.''

``We are already here,'' said Lucius's cold voice from near the door.
``Why are you here, Draco? Potter,'' he added, when Harry turned and met
his eyes.

Harry nodded tensely back to him. Lucius was his ally, of course that
was true, but his dream tonight had also reminded him that Lucius was
the one responsible for his mind getting torn to shreds in his second
year, his possession by Voldemort, the death of Sylarana, and the
emergence of the phoenix web.

But even that had had good consequences, so that Harry could not blame
him as much as he would have liked.

And Draco would be devastated if he died, which was the main reason that
Harry had brought them here.

``Sir,'' he said, ``Evan Rosier is coming to the Manor. Voldemort sent
him, to see what you did with the diary that you retrieved for him.'' He
paused, thinking rapidly back to the first time he'd met Lucius in the
dance. They'd sat and talked until Draco interrupted, and, yes, an owl
bearing a message had come to the window. Harry thought now that the
message must have been from Sirius, writing in order to relieve the pain
in his mind. ``That \emph{was} in the letter you got during my first
Christmas here, wasn't it, sir?''

Lucius's lips pinched shut, but he only nodded. ``Why is the Dark Lord
sending Rosier?'' he asked softly. ``Evan and I were never close. He
could not think that I would believe whatever lie he intends to tell
me.''

Harry let out a low breath and fixed his eyes on Lucius's face. It was
made somewhat easier by the fact that Narcissa, wearing night-robes, had
come up behind her husband, her face watchful. ``Voldemort already
suspects that you aren't loyal to him. Rosier has orders to kill you if
you can't answer his questions satisfactorily.''

There was a long pause. Then Lucius bared his teeth and said, ``I am
disinclined to let him do that.''

Harry nodded. ``I came here because I wasn't sure what he might do, and
because it is, after all, partly my fault that you're in danger.''

``Might I ask, Harry,'' said Narcissa, her voice cool and slim as a
dagger, ``how you learned this information?''

Harry could almost \emph{feel} Draco smirking off to the side.
\emph{Well, no way to deny this now.}

He sighed and lifted his fringe away from his forehead, so they could
see his scar. ``This connects me to Voldemort,'' he said quietly. ``It
has since the night of the attack on Godric's Hollow. I've had dreams
about him and his plans since I came to Hogwarts, but lately they've
sharpened. I think my connection to him is growing stronger. I had a
vision tonight that warned me Rosier was coming. Voldemort suspects Mrs.
Parkinson, Professor Snape, and Mr. Bulstrode of having betrayed him,
too.''

Narcissa simply blinked at him. Lucius, on the other hand, had turned
pale.

``The Dark Lord could do that,'' he whispered.

``What?'' Harry asked, hoping that he sounded ignorant and not shocked.

``The Dark Lord sometimes received---visions, dreams that might have
been prophetic.'' Lucius shook his head, his eyes never leaving Harry's
face. ``He ascribed it to being a Legilimens, however, someone who had
trained his mind so well that he might catch glimpses of the future from
reading the likely course of other people's thoughts. You cannot have
developed your own skill so far. What \emph{are} you?''

\emph{It says something about how frightened he must be, to have asked
that.} Harry shook his head. ``The explanation is long and convoluted,
and we don't have time for it right now. Rosier---''

An owl flew into the room before he could finish, a large bird bearing
straight for Lucius. Lucius raised a hand and steadied the creature with
a frown. The owl flopped its wings weakly, urgently, as Lucius took the
letter from its leg.

Harry stiffened, remembering the spell that Rosier had used to send an
owl through Lux Aeterna's wards.

``Don't open the letter---'' he started.

Something inside the envelope, or else the letter itself, must have been
a Portkey. Lucius vanished with a pop, and the dying owl fell to the
floor.

Narcissa closed her eyes at once. ``I can still feel him, somewhat,''
she said. ``He's outside the wards. Furious, but alive. The wards would
have let me know if he'd died.''

``Rosier must have pulled him there so he could have a little private
discussion with him,'' said Harry. He took a long step forward, and
grabbed the letter, which Lucius had let drop to the floor.

``Harry!'' he heard from a combined shout of two voices, Draco and
Narcissa.

Harry ignored them both. He had to get to where Lucius and Rosier were,
that much was obvious, and he didn't think that sitting around in the
antechamber and twiddling his thumbs would help matters.

This time, the dizzying pull and the maddening colored journey were
short. He rolled to his feet in a little dip of ground that he
recognized vaguely as being part of the empty land around Malfoy Manor.
Now, it was naked, and glittered with snow in the light of the moon.

And it was dangerous. Lucius and Rosier were already dueling.

Harry lost his own breath for a moment, caught up in the sight. The
wizards involved were both Dark, and so there was none of the holding
back that there might have been in a Light duel. Rosier was throwing
hexes and curses meant to wound and torture, and Lucius was responding
with ones that would kill Rosier if they touched him. Both used
defensive spells that, like the one Draco had employed on the stands
during the day of the First Task, were meant to drive back an enemy, and
not just block his attacks. The light of the many contrasting spells
slamming into each other and canceling each other out showed the hatred
carved on Lucius's face and the amusement on Rosier's, and their flying
hair and bodies made shadows on the snow.

Then Harry shook his head and decided that he'd spent enough time
watching. ``\emph{Protego!}'' he declared, and the air in front of Lucius
firmed and hardened into a glittering wall. Lucius stopped firing hexes
at once, but Rosier had already tossed one off. The Shield Charm
reflected it back at him, and Rosier hissed as it slashed a long line
down his leg.

Harry forced himself to stop thinking that the hex would have hit the
femoral artery if it had struck Rosier just a little higher, and then
he'd be bleeding to death. He stalked forward instead, and let his magic
escape his body a bit, clapping its wings. ``You might as well face me,
Rosier,'' he told the Death Eater. ``Since you've been so eager to all
those other times.''

Rosier laughed, his face reflecting a lean and hungry joy. ``Oh, Harry,
Harry, I hoped you would come,'' he said. ``You couldn't leave your ally
to suffer, could you? Of course not.'' He moved forward, his face a mask
of pleasure now, his eyes never letting Harry's go.

``One thing you \emph{aren't},'' he whispered, ``is boring.''

Harry did his best not to react to those words. He didn't really think
anyone would suspect that his visions of Voldemort existed unless he
told them, but Rosier was crazy and paranoid enough to suspect anyway,
and perhaps wild enough to guess until he got it right.

``You could always give it up, you know,'' Harry told him, as he backed
into a circle, and lured Rosier into it with him. ``Just turn yourself
into the Aurors and accept the inevitable. The Dementors are gone from
Azkaban, and you can't run forever. The Black estates are closed to you
now.''

``You don't really understand,'' Rosier murmured. ``Such a heart, Harry.
There was a poet once, another of those who called himself a Muggle,
though magical blood had descended into him through his mother. He
drowned. Such a sad story. But they burned him on the beach where he
washed up, and the one thing that did not burn, the one thing that his
magic preserved, was his heart. Can you imagine, Harry? The flames die,
and in the middle of it all is this heart, no longer beating, of course,
but still present and whole. Can you imagine what they must have felt,
those Muggles? Do you think they knew they were in the presence of
magic?''

Harry performed a nonverbal Blasting Curse. Rosier dismissed it with a
nonverbal spell of his own. Harry wasn't even sure which one he'd used
to counter it. He narrowed his eyes. \emph{That's what not learning the
Dark Arts before this does to me. I don't know how my enemies defend
themselves.}

``The One remains, the many change and pass,'' said Rosier, his voice
soft. ``Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly; life, like a
dome of many-colour'd glass, stains the white radiance of Eternity.'' He
smiled at Harry, and cocked his head to the side as Harry tried a spell
that would cause unconsciousness, and his shields bounced it. ``Until
Death tramples it to fragments.---Die, if thou wouldst be with that
which thou dost seek!''

His wand flicked, once. ``\emph{Cor cordium flammae!}''

Harry felt the flame start in the center of his chest this time, a
burning, many-colored thing, and then expand, as if it would chew away
at the lining of his muscles and throat. It \emph{hurt.} It was not a
quick pain this time, not like the Blood-Burning Curse, but a slow one
that would take hours, and torture him exquisitely.

And, once again, it had got inside his shields.

Harry narrowed his eyes and forced himself to concentrate on Rosier, who
was watching him in fascination. He did not know the countercurse for
this spell, but, more importantly, he thought that Rosier might get
bored of watching him suffer any moment and turn back to Lucius. He had
to make sure he \emph{left.}

He focused all his will and his magic on the single goal of getting
Rosier to leave. He didn't know what spell to use for it, so he didn't
try to convey his intentions in the framework of an incantation. He just
concentrated instead, pouring all of himself into this one goal.

Rosier blinked, and looked astonished in the moment before he vanished
with a \emph{pop}, slingshotted back to Voldemort. A spray of blood from
his torn leg plumed outward and fell onto the snow.

Harry felt his magic roar away from him, and called it forcibly back
again even as he sagged to his knees. The curse was still spreading
outward from his heart. He forced himself to breathe deeply, evenly, and
concentrated, this time, on stopping the anguish.

It would not end. The fire went right on crawling, and even grew
stronger, as though everything Harry flung at it was so much oil or air
to feed it. Harry dragged out a breath full of panic and pain, and went
at it again. Perhaps he just wasn't focused enough, because it hurt so
much.

``\emph{Finite Incantatem},'' said Lucius from above him, and the burning
sensation in his heart stopped growing. ``You can't do that yourself,''
he added, as he knelt down beside Harry. ``The Burning Heart Curse is
simple to end, but the victim is the one person who can't affect it.''

``Stupid for him to use it, then,'' Harry forced out between gritted
teeth. The pain was as slow to fade as it had been to expand. Harry kept
one hand clasped on his chest, and hoped, fervently, that if he ever did
die of a heart attack, that it was a quick one. ``Since I had someone
else with me.''

``It is traditionally used in situations where the victim would
be---largely bereft of such help,'' said Lucius, and then held out a
hand. ``You can stand, I hope, Mr. Potter?''

Harry nodded, and jerked himself to his feet, using only the lightest
grasp on Lucius's wrist. He looked up, and met a pair of eyes several
times cooler than Draco's, though no less curious about him.

``I think,'' said Lucius, slowly, judiciously, ``that you should come
back to the Manor and tell us how you learned Rosier was coming, and why
you have the link that you do to the Dark Lord, and other things that I
have wondered about.''

Harry couldn't see a way to escape it, so he simply nodded, and followed
Lucius back over the snow-covered clearing to the start of the wards.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Lucius watched Harry Potter with a gaze that he knew would not unnerve
the boy---that was not his purpose---but would conceal his own emotions.
If it did that, then he would account this a victory.

It had been a very strange night.

Narcissa had sensed them the moment they were back inside the wards, of
course, and come out to meet them. Draco had been behind her, but only
for a short distance. Then he'd come flying out, and Potter had received
a truly astonishing amount of yelling. Draco had been genuinely angry,
Lucius knew. He'd even started to utter obscenities, at least until he
remembered that his parents were watching him and nearly swallowed his
tongue. He'd bowed his head, and all but shoved Potter into the house,
where he insisted on hearing the account of the battle, and criticizing
Potter, and talking about what he would have done better had he been
along.

Potter just bore it all, his head tilting towards Draco every few
seconds, when it wasn't bent over the mug of hot chocolate that Narcissa
had had the house elves make for him.

They were gathered in the antechamber where the boys had first landed
now: Potter and Draco on a divan, he and Narcissa on another. Lucius
watched, while his wife asked the questions. Potter trusted her more. He
would reveal more to her.

He was, oddly, gratified to see that Narcissa had been right about what
would bind his son together with the Potter boy in a short time. His
wife had always been more perceptive about that kind of thing; she'd
been the one to predict all the marriages and joinings among their set
when they were just engaged themselves.

\emph{At least Potter has honor, and loyalty. And the magic!}

The magic, Lucius had to admit, was the main reason he had even
considered being the boy's ally.

Narcissa asked first, ``How did you know that the Dark Lord was sending
Rosier after my husband, Harry?'' Her hand wandered sideways to him.
Lucius clasped it. They didn't often demonstrate their affection for
each other, and they often argued, but that didn't matter. Theirs was
simply a relationship of the strong to the strong, and it was how they
had always functioned.

``A vision, as I told you,'' Potter said. ``I've had dreams like this
for years now, but they've sharpened and clarified and homed in on
Vol---''

``Do not say the name,'' Lucius interposed.

Draco glared at him, but Potter only glanced, and then nodded. ``The
Dark Lord,'' he said. ``He's been their focus since this summer. He's
returned to Britain, and Bellatrix and Rosier have been with him, though
he sent Rosier off to negotiate with the giants for a time. I don't know
where the other Death Eaters are.''

``And you never saw fit to inform us of this?'' Narcissa's voice had
dropped several degrees.

``I couldn't, without revealing how I got the information,'' Potter
responded equitably. ``And I didn't want to do that.''

Narcissa sat in silence for a time. Lucius watched his son again. Draco
looked rather the way Lucius himself had when he caught Narcissa playing
a dangerous game with her sister in their seventh year, a game that
could have ended with her disfigured, Transfigured, or dead. Plainly, he
thought Potter should have been talking about the dreams much earlier.

\emph{Yes, he should have,} Lucius thought. \emph{And why didn't he? My
darling will ask that, of course.}

And Narcissa did. ``Why, Harry?'' she asked. ``Why didn't you inform
anyone of this? It counts as danger, and we are your allies. We would
have protected you, as you have striven to protect us.''

Potter's chin briefly rose. ``I have---grown used to considering myself
independent,'' he said. ``Partly it was my training, you know.''

Lucius half-lidded his eyes. He had glimpsed some of Potter's memories
the first Christmas the boy visited the Manor, nearly three years ago
now. They had indeed shown an extensive education and training, but he
wondered that the Potters should have taught their elder son all about
pureblood dances and yet failed to instill in him a sense of connection
to the allies he would make using them.

\emph{There is something there that he is not mentioning.}

``And partly, I thought that you would think I was the same as the Dark
Lord, or a plaything of his, having this connection to him,'' Potter
added.

Narcissa leaned forward. ``What are you to him, Harry?''

Potter's body stiffened. Draco laid a hand on his shoulder. Potter
glanced aside to Draco, and he gave a tiny nod.

Potter blew out his breath and looked at Narcissa. ``Someone whom I
trust very much said that with the attack on Godric's Hollow, I became
the Dark Lord's magical heir,'' he said. He touched his forehead again
and brushed the fringe away, revealing the lightning bolt scar. ``He
cast the Killing Curse at me, and gave me this. He transferred powers
that he didn't mean to transfer, too, like Parseltongue. It's not
complete, but that's part of the connection between us.''

\emph{And he might have inherited the Dark Lord's ability to dream
prophetically, too,} Lucius surmised. \emph{Or perhaps, since the dreams
concern only the Dark Lord's doings, it is a result of the connection of
the curse scar.}

Those were the thoughts on the surface of his mind. Underneath ran a
quick, fiery exaltation that he was reluctant to define even to himself.

Well, most of it, at least. He knew that some of it focused around the
words \emph{the Dark Lord's magical heir}, and the impulse to laugh at
how wrong \emph{both} of them had been, the Dark Lord and the old fool,
and so many others, who had thought that they understood what had
happened that night at Godric's Hollow.

He could see the future, now. It was much more full of his own laughter
than he had ever thought it could be.

Narcissa broke the deep silence that Lucius only then realized had
engulfed both of them. ``So you are the Boy-Who-Lived, then, Harry?''

Lucius returned abruptly to the present.

Potter closed his eyes tightly. His fingers were twined in Draco's, the
cup of hot chocolate sitting alone on his knee. A house elf appeared
without a sound, took the mug, and left again. Potter didn't appear to
notice.

He let out a long, soft breath. ``In a manner of speaking,'' he said,
opening his eyes and focusing on Narcissa.

Lucius sincerely thanked whatever fates had planned for Potter and
Narcissa to be looking at each other, and his son to be looking at
Potter. He was sure his face would have revealed his glee if anyone
glanced at him now.

``Why is this not known?'' Narcissa whispered. ``Why not publicized?''

``Because no one \emph{did} know.'' Potter sounded exhausted. ``Our
parents were gone that night, and then they thought my scar was an
ordinary one, caused by a bit of fallen ceiling. They believed that
Connor was the one who had destroyed the Dark Lord, since his scar was
obviously a curse one, and it fit---it fit certain parameters that
Dumbledore believed in.''

Lucius could feel his nostrils almost twitching. Narcissa turned and
looked at him, and he could see from her face how much he and she were
in accord. There was a deeper mystery here, one they could smell, one
that would change everything, if they could only figure out what it was.

``Yet you know the truth now.'' Narcissa's voice was a light, jabbing
one, a feint, meant not to let her opponent notice the truth of her
attack until it was too late. ``You said that someone you trusted told
you this. Why have you not brought it to the papers? What they could
make of this---''

``I don't want them to.''

Potter's eyes had opened, and Lucius caught his breath at the coldness
in them. Magic swelled around him, filling the air with a low snarl, a
thrum of power. Potter cocked his head to the side, his scar flaring
like a bolt of fire or blood on his head. Come to think of it, there
were trails of dried blood down his face, which appeared to lead from
his brow. \emph{A consequence of the dreams?}

``But you must see that it's for the best, Harry.'' Narcissa's voice was
gentle, persuasive, patient. She'd given up the sneak attack as a bad
idea, then. ``There are thousands of people who would rally to your side
if they realized what you were going through, that they'd been
supporting the wrong Boy-Who-Lived all along. Think of the alliances you
could forge if people knew the truth.''

Potter growled under his breath. Lucius felt the air grow colder. He was
reminded of some times when his lord had been enraged, and he followed
the instincts he'd developed then. He sat perfectly still.

``The truth is bound up with other truths that would make them despise
me,'' said Potter. ``Being the Dark Lord's magical heir isn't exactly
something that would thrill a lot of people into following me. And
telling the truth would lose me the support of people who believe the
lie, as well as make me even more of a target for the Death Eaters than
I am already. I don't think the wizarding world can afford to polarize
itself in some kind of stupid civil war around which Potter twin killed
Voldemort the first time.''

Narcissa was silent again. Lucius felt unusually close to her, and could
tell exactly which twists and turns her mind was making. \emph{What
other truths would make people despise him? And who is he protecting? He
isn't selfish enough to want his brother to suffer the brunt of attacks,
from the Dark Lord or not, just so that he could escape.}

``Harry---'' Narcissa began again.

``No. \emph{I won't do it.}''

Potter's eyes were blazing, the air around him wild with magic. Lucius
lowered his eyes and extended his hands in an open-palmed gesture of
surrender. Narcissa repeated the motion beside him.

Draco only leaned nearer to Potter and whispered something in his ear.

Potter relaxed abruptly, every muscle in his body falling loose. Then he
laughed. It wasn't a pleasant sound, but the magic had dissipated, and
Lucius knew that meant the worst was over. He began to breathe again.

``No, Mrs. Malfoy,'' Potter repeated a moment later, his voice much
lighter. ``I don't want to.''

``That is your choice, Harry,'' said Narcissa. Lucius knew her well
enough to read the determination beneath the words. Any truth Potter was
hiding might somehow concern Draco, too, if their lives were to be bound
together. Narcissa would seek it out, whatever it was, and make sure it
could not hurt her son. ``I hope that you will at least consider our
assistance in getting back to Hogwarts.''

``That would be brilliant.'' Potter rubbed at his eyes, and as his aura
calmed completely, he seemed very much a child. ``Thank you.''

Lucius cleared his throat. ``I do intend to come and visit you on Yule,
Potter. I hope you haven't forgotten? The evening of Christmas Day, we
shall conclude our truce-dance.''

Potter's eyes came back to his with gratifying alertness and awareness.
``I remember, sir. I'll see you then.''

Narcissa escorted the boys to the fireplace to Floo back. Lucius
remained where he was, intent on dealing with his own emotions.

\emph{It is not often that the future changes in a single hour.}

Not often, but Lucius had been through a few such hours before,
including one on Halloween thirteen years ago. He could get through this
one.

And revel, always, in the knowledge that he had made the right choice.
It was pleasant to know that, when forced to commit instead of watch and
wait and hover between decisions as he liked to do, he had chosen the
winning side.

\chapter{Meleager's Fire}\label{chapter-44-meleagers-fire}

The day hadn't been too bad, Harry thought, as he lay in bed that night.
Millicent had reported back to him that she'd been making progress with
the centaurs, and that they no longer fussed at her about loosening
their bindings right away---as she thought they had been doing with all
their talk of wandering stars, though admittedly, with centaurs, it was
hard to tell. She could actually understand them when they talked, now.

Pansy had shared a book full of fey stories with him, which her mother
had given her when she was a girl. The stories changed their endings to
suit whoever was reading them. In this case, the book had been confused
between Pansy's and Harry's moods, and had ended up choosing ridiculous
endings most of the time. Harry had even laughed once or twice.

Draco hadn't said much, but he'd simply \emph{been} there, with one hand
brushing Harry's, or one hand cupping his elbow, or a glance turned on
him, whenever Harry started to waver in consideration of what would go
forward tomorrow. Since the night he and Harry had dashed to the Manor,
he seemed less inclined to go into fits about whoever his crush was,
more calm and reserved, balanced and watchful. Harry had to admit that
he preferred his friend this way.

They had all done what they could to cushion him against the blow they
knew was coming.

Harry closed his eyes.

\emph{Snape's trial is tomorrow. I really should get some sleep if I
can.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape gazed out the window of his cell. Oh, he knew it was fake, the way
all the Ministry's windows were; with the building so far underground,
there was no way that they could be anything but false. Still, the
slanting of the sunlight, autumn sunlight over faded trees, gave him
some peace.

He liked to think that he had learned to appreciate peace, and such
views, in the past few months.

That did not mean that he was any less eager to get this farce of a
trial done with and \emph{know}, one way or another, what his fate would
be. Either back in Hogwarts, teaching again, finding out the truth
behind Harry's and Draco's carefully noncommittal letters, facing the
Headmaster\ldots{}

Or here, and looking out at the autumn trees again before they sent him
to whatever prison they'd come up with as a substitute for Azkaban.

Snape shook his head and turned to the table behind him. The furnishings
of the cell were limited: one table, one high-backed chair, one low bed,
one rug, one bookshelf that filled up with books which vanished again on
the room's or his captors' whim. The \emph{Daily Prophet} also arrived
on the table each morning, though Snape did not often do more than skim
the articles. The Skeeter woman was running out of new material to
report about Harry, and had been reduced to reporting on the upcoming
Yule Ball.

\emph{There will be much for us to talk about,} Snape thought,
remembering the photograph of Harry on his broom, facing three dragons.
\emph{Not least, what you have been doing with yourself all these
months.}

And, of course, what in the world Harry had done to get his father to
drop the charges against Snape.

Snape shook his head and took a place in the chair, reaching for the
\emph{Daily Prophet}. Of course, the headline announced:

\textbf{{\emph{FORMER DEATH EATER TO BE TRIED TODAY}}}

Snape found that he had no appetite for news.

He put the paper back on the table and turned an impatient glance on the
door. He still did not have his wand, of course, but the paper appeared
promptly at nine'o'clock every morning. That meant his breakfast should
not be long in coming. An hour behind that would be his escort to the
trial.

Snape told himself that was \emph{not} terrified. He had faced the
Wizengamot before, when he was first accused of being a Death Eater. He
had done something far more terrible then. This time, there were only
the accusations of the Minister to consider, accusations which Fudge,
now deposed from office, did not even have the authority to try him for
anymore. An Elder from the Wizengamot would do the questioning instead.
It would not have come this far if Snape had been the guardian of anyone
but Harry Potter.

\emph{And if I want to remain his guardian, then I will outface them
all.}

Oh, yes, Snape knew his two months in captivity had changed him, but
they had not made him less dangerous, particularly when he had something
that he wanted to fight for.

Someone knocked on the door. Snape paused, his eyes narrowing. Always
before, the server had called his name and waited until Snape had opened
the door to let him in; Snape could not leave the room without falling
unconscious, but his being able to open the door to let in visitors let
the Ministry pretend they were giving him a modicum of privacy.

\emph{A slight change in routine,} he thought. \emph{Perhaps someone
bribed the guard to see the famous Death Eater prisoner today, when it
might be the last chance he'll have. There could easily be a rational
explanation.}

But he had not stayed alive for so long by finding rational explanations
for things that made him uneasy.

He stepped back and took his chair without a sound. The person at the
door knocked again, and again. Still there was no call. \emph{Unusual.
Why?}

\emph{Perhaps he fears that I will recognize his voice.}

A moment later, there came the sound of urgently muttered spells, and
Snape saw several of the wards on the door, faint lines of color he was
no longer aware of unless he squinted, flicker and die. Then the buzz in
his ears that reminded him at all times of the price he would pay if he
tried to depart faded. Someone had taken that particular ward down, as
well.

\emph{I wonder what it's to be?} Snape thought, his mind cold and dark,
working at high speed. He felt as he had when he was a spy in that last
year of the War, but he had not quite descended to the level of the ice
that had caused him so much trouble with Harry. He had promised himself
not to go in that direction again. \emph{Straightforward assassination
attempt, or killed trying to escape?}

The wizard at the door pushed it open.

Snape pulled his head back below the level of his chair, and carefully,
carefully lifted the shields on his own magic. In a silent rush, it rose
around him, powerful and well-trained. He could not manage much wandless
power in comparison to the Headmaster and Harry, and he had made sure
not to advertise that he could perform it at all. He had no need of it
when he was playing along with this farce, to show willing.

He did not intend to let himself be killed on the verge of walking free,
however.

He recognized the heavy, shuffling tread of the wizard who came into the
room, and curled his lip. \emph{Macnair. No wonder he thought I would
recognize his voice.} Snape might even have recognized his use of
spells, if it wasn't for the wards. Macnair was all lumbering, brute
magical strength, not unintelligent, but hindered by a severe lack of
finesse when he cast.

Silently, Snape prepared a curse that would pierce the outer lining of
Macnair's heart. He would die fast and undetectably; it would require an
investigation to confirm a magical cause of death, and the Ministry was
unlikely to conduct one when they saw the Mark on Macnair's left arm.

The air around him clashed with steel as he prepared to let the spell
fly like a dagger.

``\emph{Stupefy!}''

Snape nearly jumped as he saw the red light of the hex stream into the
room---coming from the door. He still could not see over the back of the
chair, but he heard Macnair utter a helpless grunt and fall. That meant
that whoever had fired that hex was a friend of his.

\emph{Perhaps. Or else someone who did not want to share in the glory of
the kill.}

``Professor Snape,'' said Auror Mallory's voice, calm and controlled.
``Are you all right?''

Snape took a moment to smooth and lock his magic back under his shields
before he stood. The witch was just powerful enough that she might sense
something amiss, otherwise. ``I am, madam,'' he said.

Mallory nodded once, and glanced down at Macnair's body. ``We found your
usual server paralyzed and blinded,'' she said. ``I don't even know him.
Who is he?''

``Walden Macnair,'' said Snape. ``As for what reason he would have to
wish to kill me, check his left forearm.''

Mallory blinked once, and then banished all signs of her startlement.
She nodded. ``I promised that you would reach your trial alive,'' she
told Snape, ``and you will.''

Snape nodded back to her. He could not say he liked the woman---her
power level alone, dangerously close to his, made that impossible---but
he respected her, and the respect was not all grudging. The
\emph{Prophet} said that she would be the likely choice to take over the
Auror Office if Scrimgeour won the election and the post of Minister.
She was a good choice. Snape trusted her to keep her word.

Mallory waved her wand, and conjured a plate of buttered toast and tea.
``I'm afraid that you'll have to eat faster than normal,'' she said.
``The trial will start at half past nine instead of at ten.''

Snape raised an eyebrow as he sat down to eat. ``And whose idea was
that?''

Mallory blinked innocently at him while she renewed the wards on the
room. ``Why, Professor Snape. These things happen, and I am sure I have
no idea to what you are referring. It would be entirely out of line for
me to tell you that Harold Hallowhunt, one of the Minister's supporters
on the Wizengamot, suggested that the trial should be moved up in an
attempt to make your witnesses miss it. Of course, I am sure that Mr.
Hallowhunt was only thinking of the good of wizarding kind as a whole.''

\emph{This one was trained by Scrimgeour,} Snape thought wryly as he
turned to his toast. \emph{And it is to be hoped that he wins the
election. Madam Bones is too honorable, and short-sighted in her honor.
We need someone who can make problems\ldots{}disappear as well as face
them head-on.}

He managed quite a bit of his breakfast while Mallory Body-Bound Macnair
and took him to deposit in a cell. His throat didn't close up until the
witch came back to the door, caught his eye, and nodded. In all, he was
impressed with himself.

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Harry had expected the second time he was in the Wizengamot's courtroom
to be less intimidating than the first. After all, he had some idea of
what it looked like, now, and how the wizards and witches liked to
arrange themselves. And he knew that there were going to be people there
today who were friendly and sympathetic to his cause.

It turned out not to be the case. There had been nobody at the
Minister's hearing who wasn't either part of the Wizengamot or someone,
like Harry and Scrimgeour, required to be there because they were part
of the original process of the motion. Harry suspected Fudge's allies
had been able to insure that. Now, though, there were observers spilling
into the courtroom, wizards and witches in everything from tattered
robes to formal pureblood wear, come to watch and gawk.

Harry realized, this time, that Dumbledore took a circuitous route that,
while it appeared to bring them into contact with many members of the
Wizengamot, conveniently hid them from most of the watchers, or allowed
at most a small glimpse. He didn't mind. He knew that he would have to
testify on Snape's behalf, and he was prepared to deal with that. He was
\emph{not} keen on being recognized as ``that boy what's been in the
papers lately,'' as he had heard himself referred to in one terrifying
conversation he and the Headmaster had barely skirted.

``Harry.''

Harry blinked and looked up. Dumbledore was watching him---closely, as
he had a habit of doing these days, and without a smile.

``Once the trial begins,'' he said quietly, ``I will need you to mask
your emotions. Severus has been accused of something that, all things
considered, I would be quite surprised to learn he did \emph{not} do.
That means that we need to be patient, calm, rational, and \emph{legal}.
Letting your anger or your sorrow go in such a situation would not be
productive.''

Harry nodded.

Dumbledore nodded back, and then escorted him to his seat, once again a
small chair behind Dumbledore's larger one. Harry took it with a sense
of relief. He looked around, but didn't see Umbridge, or either of the
two other members of the Wizengamot who had voted to retain Fudge as
Minister last time. He relaxed.

``Good morning.''

\emph{I really ought to stop relaxing in situations like this.} Harry
rose to his feet to greet Scrimgeour, a bit surprised to see the Auror.
``Why are you attending the trial, sir?'' he asked. ``I thought you
would be out campaigning.''

``Did I tell you,'' said Scrimgeour, as if it were the most natural
thing in the world, ``that I'm a connoisseur of facial expressions?''

Harry blinked. ``No, sir, you never have.''

``I like watching 'em,'' said Scrimgeour happily. ``I savor the moment
when, for example, a criminal who's come to the chair smirking and
swaggering realizes we have all the evidence we need to convict him. I
liked watching the former Death Eaters realize that their names and
their money wouldn't save 'em from being tried, just like normal people.
I lean forward to catch every last glimpse of the woman who killed her
husband and tried to make it look like an accident while the
Wizengamot's vote runs against her.''

Harry lifted his eyebrows. ``I had not known you were so\ldots{}savage,
sir.''

``I expect to see some particularly choice expressions today,'' said
Scrimgeour, his affected Muggleborn way of speaking becoming more
pronounced. ``Yeh've got to understand, Potter, there are people on the
court today who'd be just as happy to see the vote run against yer
guardian. The Minister was one thing, a threat to their livelihood.
Snape was a Death Eater, and a lot of 'em don't like Death Eaters. Never
have, never will.''

Harry clenched his hands. He could not bear the thought of losing Snape
to whatever prison the Wizengamot had come up with in lieu of Azkaban,
but he understood it was a possibility he had to face. ``And you're
going to look at my face when they announce the guilty verdict?'' he
asked.

Scrimgeour snorted a laugh. ``No. I'm looking forward to what they do
when they call the witnesses for the prosecution. Watch 'em, Potter.
That'll be a sight to see.'' He turned on his heel and strode back down
the ranks of the court towards the far side of the room, his robes
flying behind him, though there should have been no room to stride like
that. Harry watched him go in puzzlement.

\emph{I wonder why he's going so far out of his way to help us? Was it
just because he didn't like Fudge?}

Harry had no answer, though, so he had to take his seat instead of doing
anything better. The room was nearly full to bursting, and he heard
someone already shouting for order. Since Fudge wasn't part of the court
anymore, and Amelia Bones was campaigning in her election for Minister,
and Dumbledore had told Harry already that he'd turned down the
opportunity to lead the questioning, that meant the privilege of
leadership would pass to the oldest member of the Wizengamot.

\emph{Who---}

``Attention,'' said a gentle voice enhanced with acoustics spells.
``Attention, if you would please.''

Harry smiled as he watched the little old witch standing up in her seat
on one side of the balcony. Griselda Marchbanks \emph{was} probably the
oldest member of the Wizengamot. She looked it on her face, but her
voice rang clear and strong, and people paid attention. Wizards and
witches sat down, and, while nothing probably could have made the
audience be quiet, their talking receded to a low hum.

``Welcome, ladies, gentlemen, and gentlebeings,'' Madam Marchbanks
began. ``This is a rather unusual trial. The Wizengamot is trying it
because former Minister Fudge brought the charges, but he is no longer
part of the court, hence the reason I am leading.'' She dipped a
graceful little bow. ``Madam Marchbanks, at your service. I've seen one
hundred sixty years, served fifty of them on the Wizengamot, and still,
I believe this is one of the more unusual cases to come before us.''

That increased the excited humming of the watchers. Harry swallowed.
\emph{Unusual? Why? Is there something I don't know about?}

``For starters,'' Madam Marchbanks went on, shuffling through the papers
before her, ``there were two sets of charges in the beginning of the
trial, one from the former Minister, one from James Potter---''

That name made the buzz increase again. Harry swatted at a beetle
hovering around his head, and hoped no one would start looking around
the courtroom to see if a Potter was there, or, worse, cast a spell to
find him.

``But the Potter charges have been dropped,'' the old witch finished.
``And the Minister is no longer with us, though I hope the Wizengamot
has done a good enough job in his absence. That means that the trial of
Professor Severus Snape, Potions Master and Head of Slytherin at
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, will be conducted on a
reduced set of charges, and rely almost solely on witness and prisoner
testimony, rather than the promised written evidence.''

Another buzz circled the courtroom. Harry closed his eyes and let out
his breath. He could see why Dumbledore had told him to be patient, and
keep control of his emotions. A misstep at this point could be fatal to
rescuing Snape, since there were eyes that would be looking for evidence
of shadows in the way Harry, and the other witnesses, told their
stories.

``Bring in the prisoner!''

Harry found himself leaning forward, angling for a glimpse of Snape. It
\emph{had} been two months, after all, and for all that Snape had acted
like an idiot in the short while before he left---and let himself get
\emph{caught} at it, which was worse---Harry wanted desperately to see
him.

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Snape had always thought himself a patient man. As he waited before the
closed doors of the Wizengamot courtroom, he had to reconsider that
self-assessment. His skin was \emph{itching}, and not just because he
stood between two Aurors who both held their wands, while he had none,
or because this antechamber was utterly devoid of any decoration, all
bare, blank stone.

He wanted to get in there and get this trial \emph{done} with.

Mallory frowned and walked forward to press her ear against the doors,
as though wondering if she had somehow missed the signal to bring him
in. At once, the other Auror, the young, nervous one with the ridiculous
blue hair, gave a little cough and leaned nearer to Snape.

``Professor?'' she all but squeaked.

Snape gave her a carefully measured look. He remembered Nymphadora Tonks
as an indifferent student, not incompetent enough to irritate him, but
not good enough to earn his regard, either. She'd also been clumsy
enough to tip over numerous cauldrons, though luckily not to cause
explosions. That did not bode well for whatever she was about to ask
him.

Tonks bit her lip, worried at it, and then said all at once, ``Kingsley
Shacklebolt wants me to join the Order of the Phoenix, and I don't know
if I should, and I'm worried about it, and I don't like it, and I wanted
your opinion.'' She stared at him, then, as if he should have immediate
wise advice to offer.

Snape blinked at her for only a moment. Then he sneered. Tonks's face
drooped.

Snape did not care. Here was an opportunity to vent his frustration
before he entered the court, and go in calmer.

``Consider, Miss Tonks,'' he murmured, shifting his wrists so that his
manacles rang together behind his back, ``that \emph{I} was a member of
the Order, too, and risked my life against the Dark Lord, and served
Albus Dumbledore as faithfully as I knew how. Yet, in the months since I
have been here, he has not made an effort to visit me, nor, so far as I
know, to make sure my trial goes well.'' He had to speak quickly, since
Mallory was walking back towards them, and he chose his words with care.
``Dumbledore named the Order after his own phoenix, Fawkes. But the bird
left him last year.''

Tonks all but recoiled. ``But that means---'' she gasped.

``What means what, Auror Tonks?'' Mallory asked, as she slid into place
on the other side of him again. Snape could feel her watchfulness, knew
she was more loyal to the law than either of them, but didn't care. He
felt better. Tonks had tried to hand him her own burden, and he had
given it back, with interest. That always made him feel more like
himself.

``Nothing,'' said Tonks, and then sighed. Her hair turned brown.
``Nothing at all.''

Mallory looked at them both suspiciously, but the call came from inside
then, and the doors swung open, and they could proceed. Snape walked
with his chin up, masking himself in black ice, and returning the stares
he got with such an indifference that he saw some of the wizards and
witches shrink back. He moved his head in an indecipherable nod.
\emph{That is as it should be.}

Once, he had gone through this, and then, he had been stark terrified,
relying on Dumbledore's word alone to save him. Now, with less notion of
what was to come, he outfaced the stares. Perhaps, he considered, it was
because last time he had had only his own life and freedom to fight for.
This time, along with that, he had the promise of returning to Hogwarts
and Harry.

\emph{And that is too ridiculously sentimental a notion to entertain.}

Tonks and Mallory brought him to the chair in the center of the
courtroom, and settled him into it. Since his hands were still chained
behind his back, they didn't bother with the shackles on the arms of the
seat. Snape was glad of it. He could arrange himself more comfortably,
and sneer at people more effectively.

Uncompromising faces met his from every direction. Snape did not care.
There were very few of them who mattered to him. He did note the old
witch who would lead the questioning, and Scrimgeour's endlessly amused
gaze, and, of course, Dumbledore's piercing stare.

For some odd reason, his eyes didn't move past Dumbledore when he willed
them to. At first he thought the old wizard was using some kind of
compulsion, but then he recognized the flare of familiar power.
Dumbledore's magic could not quite cloak it.

\emph{Harry.}

Snape hoped he did not allow anything to show on his face, but then all
hope of that went as a small shape forced its way past Dumbledore and up
to the railing of the balcony, bending down so that its eyes could meet
his.

Harry looked exhausted, even from this distance. But Snape recognized
the clenching of his jaw, and suspected that the boy had just set
himself to fight for him with every bit of stubbornness he possessed.

Snape did permit himself, then, a brief nod of greeting. He could feel a
sweet burning welling up in him, much like a pleasant version of the
Meleager Potion he had set on Fudge.

\emph{I am going to come out of this alive, and free. If Harry has
survived this so far, I can do no less.}

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Harry looked at Snape for a long moment. His guardian's face was not
nearly as pale as he had imagined it would be, after two months of no
sun. Of course, Snape spent much of his time in the dungeons anyway, so
that would not be too great a change. And now he was sneering around the
room with his customary look of disdain.

It heartened Harry more than he would have been able to express to see
that Snape had passed through his captivity and come out the other side
again.

\emph{I can do this. I can brave this, for his sake.}

Dumbledore pushed at his shoulder, not-so-gently urging him back to his
seat. Harry caught one last glimpse of Snape, to take with him, and then
obeyed. He cast a Seeing Spell in the palm of his hand, as he had last
time, to be able to watch the drama on the floor of the courtroom.

When the murmuring had died down again, Griselda Marchbanks began.

``Severus Snape,'' she murmured, her voice echoing from every side of
the courtroom thanks to the spells, ``you are charged with brewing an
illegal potion, which you did not register with the Ministry of Magic.
You are also charged with administering this potion to former Minister
Fudge. The effects are unknown, but are not assumed to be beneficial.''
There was audible amusement at that. ``Do you understand the accusations
that have been made against you?''

``I do.'' Snape sounded---he sounded \emph{bored.} Harry had a moment of
pure and very Slytherin admiration.

``Under the Wizengamot's Charter, you have the right to call a
representative,'' Madam Marchbanks said. ``Do you choose to do so?''

``No. I will represent myself. I would trust no one else to speak half
so well of me.'' Another wide-spread wash of amusement.

``Very well. Do you wish to accept Veritaserum?''

``I do not.''

Madam Marchbanks sounded as if she'd expected that. ``Very well. The
prosecution has the right to call its witnesses first. As I am leading
the questioning, I will take over this part of the trial. I call
Cornelius Fudge, who has insisted on being here today to respond to you
personally.''

Harry's eyes narrowed as he watched Fudge bustle down into the middle of
the courtroom. His robes hardly appeared less fine than what he'd worn
when he was Minister, and he had the most intolerable look of
self-satisfaction. \emph{What is Scrimgeour talking about? What facial
expression?}

Fudge halted in front of Snape's chair and cleared his throat
importantly. ``My name is Cornelius Fudge,'' he said, before Madam
Marchbanks could even ask him. ``Until recently, I served as Minister of
Magic for Great Britain.''

``Of course.'' The old witch's voice was very bland. ``Will you consent
to answer some questions about the charges you have brought against
Severus Snape?''

``Of course,'' said Fudge back at her, oozing politeness and charm, and
Harry could see how the man had managed to win elections. He didn't look
at Snape, but cast a smile around at everyone else. His charisma was
about as thick as algae, but that could be enough to convince someone
who didn't know any better.

``Do you charge him with both brewing an illegal potion and feeding it
to you on the autumnal equinox of this year?''

``Yes,'' said Fudge, without missing a beat. ``I did not know at the time
that the potion was illegal, of course, but the healers at St. Mungo's
have examined me, and they could find no traces of it that matched any
known potion. They did find \emph{unusual} traces in my bloodstream,
however.''

Harry closed his eyes. \emph{Snape let his will to vengeance overcome
making it untraceable. I bet he used ingredients that he knew would
cause pain. Honestly. That is something I'll have to talk to him about.}

``What were those unusual traces of?'' Madam Marchbanks asked. Harry
opened his eyes, and leaned around Fudge to see Snape. He winced. Snape
had gone slightly paler, which was not in and of itself a testimony to
Fudge's trustworthiness, but was as good as a shout to someone who knew
how to read the signs. He had not expected anyone to find the traces,
then.

``Feverfew and Fire-Crab shell,'' said Fudge. His voice was smug, now,
as though he considered having borne those ingredients in his
bloodstream sufficient price for bringing down an enemy. \emph{He
probably did,} Harry thought sourly. \emph{He's a politician.} ``And
also, death angel mushroom.''

A hiss traveled around the court. Harry winced. \emph{Yes, ingredients
to cause pain. And of course no one but a Potions Master could brew a
potion that would keep that toxin from taking effect in a few hours.
Damn it, Snape!}

He could feel unease bubbling in the back of his mind, too, at the
thought of how much Snape must have wanted Fudge to suffer.

He heard Madam Marchbanks asking the expected question---how was Fudge
still alive?---and Fudge giving the expected answer---through Snape's
skill. He took a deep breath and looked down at the window again.

``We must concede that it is extremely likely a Potions Master could
brew such a fatal draught,'' Madam Marchbanks was saying, her voice
uneven. Harry was reminded of something Snape had told him once, how it
disconcerted many wizards to think that someone could do something to
them that did not require waving a wand, and might take effect hours,
days, months, years, after it was ingested. ``What side effects have you
noticed from this potion, Mr. Fudge?''

Harry raised his brows as he watched Fudge flush for the first time.
\emph{I hope Scrimgeour is doing this.}

``Well, none,'' he admitted grudgingly. ``The only things I know about
it are that it smelled like chocolate, and Snape---the prisoner---made
me lick it from my fingers.'' A titter went around the courtroom at
that. Fudge tried valiantly to persist, though his ears were turning red
now. ``And there's the traces in my bloodstream. But that's all,
really.'' He rallied. ``But that's more than enough! Who knows what
horrible things this potion could have done to me?''

``Thank you, Mr. Fudge,'' said Madam Marchbanks. ``That is all for
now.'' Fudge lifted his head and paraded back to the stairs. ``The
Wizengamot calls the second witness for the prosecution, Augustus
Starrise.''

There was a long silence. Harry stared into his window, and then glanced
up and around the courtroom, but saw no one moving.

He \emph{did} catch a glimpse of Rufus Scrimgeour grinning like a fiend.

``Augustus Starrise,'' Madam Marchbanks repeated, sounding a little less
sure of herself this time. ``Where is Mr. Starrise?''

``I can answer that, Madam,'' Scrimgeour's voice called. ``It seems that
Mr. Starrise recently fought a duel under the Sunset Accords, and lost,
so he's forbidden participation in politics for a year. I'm sure the
Wizengamot understands the impact of this sacred tradition. Should Mr.
Starrise testify in court today, he could literally pay the price of an
arm or a leg.''

Madam Marchbanks was blinking. ``But---such circumstances are not
usually binding in the case of legal testimony,'' she said. ``I have
seen witches and wizards who feel themselves tied to the Sunset Accords
still testifying during their year away from the bustle of the
Ministry.''

Scrimgeour shrugged elaborately. ``In this case, Mr. Starrise felt that
he should not be here. He sends his regrets, I'm sure.''

Harry grinned despite himself. He had to admit that the expressions on
many of the faces around them were worth watching for. Some of them were
obviously trying to figure out why Scrimgeour would have fought such a
duel with Starrise and how he had won, while others were figuring out
what it would mean that Starrise was bound not to testify on the former
Minister's behalf.

``I---'' Madam Marchbanks shook her head. ``Very well. There are no
other official witnesses for the prosecution, then. Unless anyone wants
to volunteer?''

No one did. Of course, Harry knew, even the ones who wanted the case to
go against Snape must know there was really nothing they could add.
Snape's original meeting with Fudge had been too private for them to be
able to corroborate what he had said.

``The case moves to the defense,'' said Madam Marchbanks briskly. ``Mr.
Snape, the court will question you first.''

``Very well.'' Snape had recovered entirely from the surprise Fudge had
dealt him, and merely looked blank.

``Did you create a potion that you did not register with the Ministry?''

``I did.''

``Did the potion contain the ingredients that Mr. Fudge detailed---that
is, feverfew, Fire-Crab shell, and death angel mushroom?''

Harry saw Snape's shoulders tighten momentarily, but he said only, ``It
did.''

The courtroom all but shrieked. Madam Marchbanks had to shout for order
before she got it, and she went on more sternly. ``Why would you include
such ingredients in the potion, Mr. Snape?''

``As you may or may not know,'' Snape began, ``there are many
ingredients in most potions which, though fatal in and of themselves,
lose their toxicity when combined with others. Death angel mushroom is
one such.'' Harry felt a faint stab of amusement through the fear when
he realized that Snape was lecturing. ``It is a common cure for
poisoning, actually, the theory being that the extreme venom of the
mushroom helps to drive out the first poison. There are some Calming
Draughts that require it. The Draught of Ceasing, used to cure
convulsions, could not be made without it.''

``The court did not ask for a lecture on potions making, Mr. Snape.''
Madam Marchbanks did sound interested, despite herself. ``What was the
potion intended to do to the former Minister?''

\emph{Burn him}, Harry thought, and shivered.

``It was a prank potion,'' said Snape, with a little irritation in his
voice, as though he could not understand \emph{why} people \emph{would}
keep misinterpreting things. ``I intended for the Minister to exhibit
some of the more embarrassing side-effects such ingredients can cause on
their own. Thus, he would undergo the cramping and diarrhea caused by
the death angel toxin. It was \emph{not}, and I repeat, \emph{not}
fatal.''

There was a disbelieving murmur, and Madam Marchbanks said, ``Is there
any independent source that can corroborate this, Mr. Snape?''

``Of course not.'' Snape sneered openly. ``I made the potion in private,
and did not register it with the Ministry. That is the very thing I am
charged with, if I may remind the court. I \emph{can} tell you, if you
really wish to hear it, that I was well-known, as a child in Hogwarts,
for making similar potions. The Headmaster can testify to that, as can
Remus Lupin and James Potter.''

The court stirred and hissed among themselves. Harry could feel how
delicate the balance was. On the one hand, they had no reason to believe
Snape, and most of them would have been prejudiced by the mention of the
fatal ingredients in the potion. On the other hand, it was undeniably
true that Fudge had suffered no ill effects so far, and that, if it came
down to what had transpired so far, it was the former Minister's word
against Snape's. And this was the same court that had voted the Minister
out of power only a few weeks before.

It was too delicate. Harry did not know if he could get Snape out of
here as matters stood.

\emph{As matters stand. They have to be redressed. Better, they have to
be redressed by some dramatic gesture.}

\emph{Good thing I'm so good at those, isn't it?}

``The court has no more questions,'' Madam Marchbanks was saying. ``Do
you wish to call any witnesses, Mr. Snape?''

Harry could almost feel Snape's eyes rising to pick him out, as well as
see it in his window, but Snape simply shook his head. Harry hissed in
frustration. \emph{Dumbledore told me that I'd be required to testify. I
think he was betting on Snape calling me. And of course the stubborn
idiot won't.}

``Does anyone wish to volunteer as a witness?'' Madam Marchbanks asked.

\emph{Now.}

Harry stood. ``I do,'' he called.

``And your name is?'' Harry thought Madam Marchbanks knew it very well,
but of course she couldn't see him directly from where she was standing.

``Harry Potter.''

The court exploded in excited whispering again. Harry could feel his
heart hammering, his world spinning like it did when he'd just seen the
Snitch and was about to fall towards the ground in pursuit. He knew how
great a risk he was taking with this. It could so easily go wrong. On
the other hand, if he didn't do this, he was leaving matters up to
chance, and he didn't want to do that. He \emph{did} want to play some
controlling part, no matter how small.

\emph{I guess I'm a Slytherin in that way, too.}

``Very well, Mr. Potter,'' said Madam Marchbanks. ``If you will approach
the prisoner, the court will question you.''

Harry didn't move. ``I have one more thing to say, Madam. I wish to
testify under Veritaserum.''

This time, he might have set the court on fire.

Harry closed his eyes, and fell.

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Snape would have gripped the arms of the chair if his hands weren't
chained behind his back. As it was, he could only watch in horrified,
helpless anger as Harry approached him, and Auror Mallory, her face
white with her own shock, brought out a clear vial.

Harry did not watch her. He watched Snape instead, and he couldn't hide
the faint flush on his cheeks, which someone else might have taken as
born from nervousness or embarrassment. Snape knew better. This was born
from exhilaration, from the incomprehensible pleasure Harry had in
taking a risk.

\emph{He cannot take this one. He has no right to take this one. He
cannot win if he does!}

Except Snape knew there was a small chance he might win, as long as
Madam Marchbanks only asked the right questions and not any of the wrong
ones. And if he did, then the dramatic gesture---a child testifying in
favor of his guardian, and a child hero besides, and willingly taking
Veritaserum, which no one had even suggested to him---would swung
support rapidly to his side.

He had no doubt that Harry knew that, too. It was the reason he would
have chosen this course.

\emph{I will} strangle \emph{him. The stubborn idiot! He has no right to
make this sacrifice for me!}

It was too late for that, though, and Snape had no right to protest when
Harry was a voluntary witness. All was flashing uncertainty at the
moment, like one of those damn Quidditch matches, and Snape could only
watch from the sidelines.

Harry accepted the Veritaserum with a murmur of thanks, and placed three
drops on his tongue without hesitation. Snape was not surprised that he
did not look slack and inattentive. Harry had an Occlumens's mind now,
and would be able to watch the pale chains sprouting around his thoughts
and commanding that he speak only truth.

That did not mean he could break them. Snape had never been able to lie
under Veritaserum, only control his own emotional reactions.

\emph{Control his own emotional reactions.}

\emph{By all that is sacred. In the name of Merlin.} That \emph{is what
he means to do.}

``What is your full name?'' Madam Marchbanks asked.

``Harry James Potter,'' said Harry. He still hadn't looked away from
Snape.

``Where do you attend school?''

``Dur---Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry,'' said Harry,
showing them beyond all doubt that the Veritaserum worked, though he'd
had no need to. He flashed a small smile at Snape.

``And your Headmaster is?''

``Albus Dumbledore.''

Madam Marchbanks nodded. ``The Veritaserum is in order, then. The
questions may begin. Mr. Potter, what do you believe Mr. Snape's purpose
in brewing the potion he fed to Minister Fudge was?''

Harry turned and glanced up at her, his eyes wide open and innocent.

``To hurt him,'' he said. ``And he wanted to hurt him because he was
protecting me. Minister Fudge abducted me at the end of August, and held
me in a private room without benefit of legal counsel, or my legal
guardian. I was at first informed that my guardian could come along, and
then denied his presence. Then the former Minister tried to drain my
magic. Professor Snape has a temper. He decided to brew the potion
because of that.''

Another murmur. Snape shook his head, a bit dazed. Harry was, in his own
way, dancing through the interrogation even though he was under
Veritaserum. It made Snape's ears ring.

``Do you believe that he would have killed the Minister?'' Madam
Marchbanks asked.

``Yes,'' said Harry. ``He would do anything to protect me.'' He turned
to Snape and offered him a smile. ``I am intensely grateful for that
about him. He's---'' Harry's face closed for a moment, as though he'd
almost changed his mind about whatever he was going to say, but the
potion forced the truth from him. ``He's the best parent I've ever
had.''

``Your blood parents are still alive?'' Madam Marchbanks added a touch
of sharpness to her voice, as well she might. She was pureblooded, and
for most wizards, blood family was important above anything else.

Harry lifted his chin, and Snape saw sweat gleaming on his forehead.
\emph{Oh, dangerous, this is dangerous, they might learn something that
Harry would give his life to protect---}

``They both are, Madam,'' said Harry.

``And you do not wish to live with them?''

``I do not wish to live with them,'' Harry said.

``You wish to live with Professor Snape instead?''

``I do.'' Harry took a deep breath, and forged on, before the witch
could ask why. ``Experience has taught me that I'm safer with Professor
Snape than either of my blood parents, both physically and---and
emotionally.'' He winced. ``I believe that he would have killed to
protect me, but most parents will kill to protect their children from
someone they think is an enemy. And the former Minister might have
murdered me, too, for all Professor Snape knew at the time. When the
facts of the case came out, the Minister attempted to force me to return
to the care of my blood parents, with whom I feel profoundly unsafe. I
do not believe it is a coincidence that Professor Snape grew so angry.''

Snape closed his eyes. He knew that someone else might think it was a
sign of falsehood or weakness. He did not care. He could not afford to
look at Harry right now without deeply betraying something that should
more properly wait until he could speak to Harry alone.

\emph{I know what it cost him to admit that. But this is a sacrifice not
torn from him against his will, but freely laid down. We shall speak
about that, about his tendency to do that, but to hear the words, after
all that has happened in the weeks before I was arrested\ldots{}}

Snape startled himself by feeling a profound moment of pity for both
James Potter and Lily Potter, who would never understand what they had
lost.

``I see.'' Madam Marchbanks's voice was deeply shaken. She cleared her
throat, as if attempting to recover herself. ``Do you believe the potion
would have any fatal effects, Mr. Potter?''

``I think it might,'' said Harry. ``I am utterly ignorant of whatever
other effects it \emph{could} have. Professor Snape never confided in me
while he was brewing the potion.''

\emph{All true,} Snape thought, but it was a fragile tissue of truth
that could be torn down if the right questions were asked.

``He never told you the name of the potion?'' Madam Marchbanks demanded.

Snape stiffened. He could not discount the possibility that Harry might
have seen his notes.

Then he ran the phrasing of the question over in his head again, and
wanted to laugh. \emph{Once again, one step away from disaster.}

``No, Madam, he did not,'' Harry said firmly.

``You do realize that he still tried to commit murder, Mr. Potter?'' the
witch demanded.

``I don't know that, no.'' Snape opened his eyes, and saw his ward's
eyes darken as he glared up at the court. ``I told you that I believe he
would have killed the Minister, that he made the potion to hurt him, and
that it \emph{might} have fatal effects. But those effects haven't
manifested, Madam Marchbanks. Until they do, we only have Mr. Fudge's
word against Professor Snape's. And as neither of them testified under
Veritaserum, they're both equally trustworthy.''

Snape began to breathe deeply again, as he had not since Fudge revealed
the Healers finding the ingredients in his bloodstream. Harry's claim
would have been laughable in most other circumstances; who would trust a
Potions Master who brewed potentially fatal draughts? But with Fudge his
only opponent, with the dangerous Starrise witness removed, he had a
good chance.

\emph{And thanks to Harry's utterly insane bravery, of course.}

``Thank you, Mr. Potter,'' said Madam Marchbanks. ``No further
questions.''

Harry bowed to the court, then turned and bowed to Snape. Snape flinched
a bit when he met the steady, open stare of those green eyes.

\emph{You are worth this}, they said.

So Snape had \emph{better} act like he was worth it.

He watched in silence as Harry turned and climbed the stairs again, and
as Madam Marchbanks called for any other witnesses, of which there were
none, and then for the Wizengamot to vote.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry sank into his chair and closed his eyes. His ploy had succeeded.
He was still alive.

\emph{But Snape isn't free yet.}

He opened his eyes, and forced himself to ignore both the curious gazes
on him and the trembling in his muscles. That was close to the hardest
thing he had ever done, not counting his confrontations with Voldemort.
\emph{This isn't done yet.}

He watched as the voting moved around the Wizengamot. Amelia Bones was
gone, as well as one other witch, and that left an uneven number.

Umbridge, of course, voted Snape as guilty. So did the other two Elders
Harry remembered as supporting Fudge. Three to nothing, then.

Harry refused to bolt out of the chair, or gasp.

Madam Marchbanks looked down into the center of the courtroom.
``Innocent,'' she said softly.

Harry closed his eyes.

He heard the votes after that, and tallied them up in his head. No one
was abstaining on this one.

\emph{Thirteen guilty, twelve innocent\ldots{}}

\emph{Fourteen innocent, sixteen guilty\ldots{}}

\emph{Seventeen innocent, eighteen guilty\ldots{}}

As if in a dream, Harry heard the voting tallied at twenty-four guilty,
twenty-four innocent, and then the voices paused right in front of him.
He opened his eyes.

``Innocent,'' said Albus Dumbledore softly.

Harry leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, feeling tears burn
behind them, while all around him the court erupted, yet again.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape received his wand back from Auror Mallory herself. She gave him a
tiny bow and a wry smile.

``Very well done,'' she said. ``I don't know \emph{how} you did it, but
it was well done.'' She paused. ``Tell Harry hello for me.''

\emph{So it's Harry now, is it?} Snape did his best to stifle his
protective snarl, and merely nodded to her. ``I will,'' he said, and
then faced the stairs, his eyes finding Dumbledore at once, but not
noticing Harry until he broke away from the shadows at the foot of the
steps and came towards him.

Snape studied his charge intently. Now he could make out that the
exhaustion he had seen was no deception; Harry's face still showed the
effects of lack of sleep, and intense emotional labor. But his eyes were
shining, and his face wore a slowly widening smile, as though he could
not believe he had achieved what he had.

\emph{Scolding can wait.}

Harry halted in front of him, and they looked at each other for a
moment.

``Harry,'' said Snape.

``Professor,'' said Harry, and then blinked and swallowed. ``I---are you
all right?''

Snape would have valued the concern in his tone in a different way just
two months ago---as a sign that Harry was paying attention to him in the
way he should, as something soothing. Now, he valued it as a sign that
Harry cared about him---

\emph{If that is not too disgustingly sentimental a thought to
entertain.}

``I am, Harry,'' he said quietly. ``And though there are no words for
what I have done or what you have, I will say this. I apologize for what
I put you through before I left Hogwarts. I had no right to do that to
you. I will not ask for forgiveness until you feel truly ready to give
it. And I thank you for what you have done for me today, and for all
that you are.''

Harry stood staring at him. He swallowed again, as though he wanted to
speak, but found himself too choked to do so.

Snape did not even care anymore that people were watching. He knew what
he wanted to do.

He took a deep breath, because there were still parts of him that
objected to this and whose censure he could not so easily escape, and
held out his arms.

Harry made a sound that had no name as he lunged forward and returned
the embrace, and was caught in Snape's.

Snape lowered his head and half-closed his eyes. \emph{Whatever I have
done evil in the past, may it be made up for by what I will do in the
future. I am not letting him go again. He said he felt I would kill to
protect him. Well, I may do other things, also.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Albus turned away from the scene on the floor below him. It could not
have been prevented, of course. He did need Severus back, and Harry had
kept his side of the bargain. He had voted for Severus's innocence
because he had to.

He had had no idea that Harry would do what he had, however, and he was
surprised and unnerved at the extent to which the boy relied on Severus.
Now that he had his guardian back, he was unlikely to run headlong into
the traps Albus had set for him, and thus the wizarding world was likely
still to be in danger of his unbalancing power.

\emph{It is good that I have plans already in motion, and that their
fulfillment will come soon. I am sorry, Severus, Harry, but I cannot
allow you to do what you could so easily do, together.}

\chapter{Dancing With Luna}\label{chapter-45-dancing-with-luna}

Another of Lily's letters came at dinner on Christmas Eve.

Harry swallowed the bite of Christmas pudding in his mouth and scooped
the letter off the table before anyone else could get too curious about
it. Eyes followed the envelope as he dropped it into his robe pocket,
but no one said anything, for which Harry was profoundly grateful. He
kept his gaze on his plate and continued eating. After a moment,
conversation resumed around him. Draco was muttering to himself about
Christmas presents. Apparently, neither of his parents had sent him
anything because they wanted to wait until tomorrow night, when Lucius
would meet Harry and Draco after the Yule Ball.

\emph{And it's the conclusion of the truce-dance.} Harry swallowed, and
then shook his head. He'd spent some hours meditating on it, and still
he had no idea what gift he would receive from Lucius. He would just
have to wait and see, he supposed.

\emph{There might be a gift from your mother in that letter, you know.}

Harry focused his eyes on the twelve Christmas trees scattered around
the Great Hall. Several people were trying to pack the warm, enchanted
snow drifting from the ceiling into balls, and complaining loudly when
they didn't succeed.

The trees and the snow didn't distract him. Instead, they just made him
remember what had happened at Godric's Hollow, the last time he had seen
his mother, a year ago tonight.

\emph{You'll never know what she has to say if you don't open the
letter.}

Harry shook his head and stood. ``I've had enough food, I think,'' he
announced, as heads swiveled around to follow his movement. ``I've got a
private lesson with Professor Snape to go to anyway.''

The others nodded, and Slytherins began to disperse from the table,
chattering to each other. Most of the talk concerned the Yule Ball.
Harry winced, and was careful not to look at Draco. He didn't know if
his friend had got a date or not. Draco simply went into frowns whenever
he asked, or scowled if he was feeling truly angry.

``Harry?''

Harry blinked and tore himself from his distraction as the object of it
came up beside him. ``Yeah?''

``You do know that you can tell me who the letter's from, right?'' Draco
had his eyebrows drawn down, in an expression of concentration that
Harry had long since learned to distinguish from anger, especially since
both of them were focused on him lately. ``I mean, if you want to.''

Harry smiled slightly. \emph{This is his way of letting me know that my
problems matter to him just as much as his do to me.} ``Yeah, I know
that. I just don't want to right now. I---'' He shrugged. ``It's too
much,'' he said honestly. \emph{I don't think I'm going to collapse
crying this time---and oh Merlin, that was embarrassing!---but I still
don't want to talk to anyone about this. They'd all have advice, and I
think it's the kind of thing I need to figure out for myself.}

Draco nodded to him, and then they parted, Draco turning for the
Slytherin common room and Harry for the corridor that led to Snape's
offices. He pondered the whole way over the letter that rested like a
burning coal in his pocket.

\emph{You could tear it to bits. But that wouldn't give you the option
of reading it later.}

And he did want that option, Harry decided.

With a long, quiet sigh, he decided that he might as well leave it where
it was for now. He could always decide later if he wanted to see what
his mother had to say, that way, and he didn't want to have make a more
definite choice right now.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape lifted his head when Harry entered, and then frowned. His charge
looked as though someone had drained all the color from his face. He
took out his wand and the book on the Dark Arts that Snape had set him
to reading, but his expression remained frozen and thoughtful.

``Harry?'' Snape asked quietly.

Harry blinked and looked up at him. ``I---'' he said, and then shook his
head. ``I'm all right,'' he said, in a voice that was convincing if
Snape didn't look at his eyes. ``I had a few questions about the
variations on the Blasting Curse, sir. I tried them, and I didn't do
very well. Can you tell me why that is?''

Snape raised his brows, but stood and walked over to the table Harry'd
put the book on. \emph{If he doesn't want to talk to me directly about
it, there are other ways of holding a conversation.} Snape did not want
to go too fast or be too direct, anyway. He and Harry were building
their bond again step by small step, and they took care not to spend too
much time in each other's company.

``You tried the variations that called for strength and not finesse,
didn't you?'' he asked, as he recognized the page that Harry had the
book open at. It already bore a worn appearance, as though Harry had
read it multiple times in his attempt to get everything right.

``Well, yes, sir.'' Harry blinked at him. ``I'm not \emph{that}
well-trained in the variations, but I'm pretty strong.''

Snape nodded. ``Your training sometimes leaves you at a disadvantage,
Harry,'' he said, and saw a small flinch in the boy. \emph{Ah. Something
to do with his parents, as I thought it might be, given what happened to
him at this time last year.} ``You were taught control, though in
somewhat---different areas than what Dark Arts usually require, I will
agree. That means that you're used to putting your strength in limits.
It's not easy to dig it out of those constraints and simply go flailing
about with it. And that's what the strength variations on the Blasting
Curse call for. You might as well be hitting out with a hammer. And
you're more used to using a dagger than a hammer.'' He drew his own
wand. ``Show me which one gave you the best results.''

Harry gestured with one hand. Snape had noticed that, too, how his
charge tried now to keep his wandless magic closely bound to his body.
He approved it as a sign of caution, but it was also yet another sign of
how Harry adapted to control before he considered freedom, for either
his magic or himself.

\emph{He has changed, but not that much. He's calmed around me, and
around Draco. He accepts help more readily. But his own mind is still
wrapped up in steel wire.}

Snape watched as the Curse destroyed one of his chairs, which Harry
repaired with the next motion, and nodded. ``You will achieve better
results if you attempt to choose one weak point, instead of simply
spreading your strength over the whole of the chair,'' he said.

Harry's face brightened. ``\emph{That} was the commonality between the
finesse-based variations that I couldn't see!'' he exclaimed. He shook
his head. ``I'm slower at learning from books than Hermione. I do much
better with demonstrations.''

``That does not mean you are stupid, Harry.''

Harry's head turned as if he were sensing danger. This was one of those
direct things they didn't talk about as much. His eyes were wide as they
watched Snape, asking him what he was doing, to abandon their safe
routine of the last few days. Caution edged his voice as he replied, ``I
never said I was.''

Snape spun his wand on one hand, thinking of the best way to phrase
this. Nothing came to him. Speak as a diplomat, and Harry would let the
soft words roll off him as he usually did. Speak as a Slytherin, and
Harry would find half a hundred motives in the words and ignore the
right ones. Say something that could possibly be connected to another
person, and Harry would attempt to bounce Snape's attention to what that
person was suffering. Snape had had to make it quite clear on his first
day back at Hogwarts that he was \emph{not} interested in talking about
Draco's problems, Granger's problems, Connor's problems, Weasley's
problems, or anyone else's problems but Harry's during these private
sessions.

\emph{So that leaves hard words, and direct truth.}

``Your words often belie that. I have noticed that you inevitably
denigrate yourself when you compare your actions and performances with
those of others. You imply constantly that you should have been better
than you were in whatever you do. You take next to no pride in your
skills.''

``That's not true,'' Harry argued. ``Not all the time. I made a
comparison of how I flew to how Connor flies the other day, and it was
complimentary to me. And I must have done it at other times in the
past.''

``Then change `inevitably' to `almost always,'\,'' Snape said, unable to
prevent a certain note of dryness from entering his voice. ``It does not
change what is happening, and I will not allow you to get out of this on
a technicality. Think about it, Harry. How many other people would have
been able to save a friend's life, survive numerous wounds and Death
Eater attacks, free their magic, defeat the Dark Lord for the fourth
time, save at least half the students at the school, set three dragons
free, get the Minister of Magic deposed, gain control of a \emph{Daily
Prophet} reporter, and insure that their guardian was set free in a
year?''

``Third time,'' said Harry.

Snape blinked. He'd become a bit caught up in his own words, and had
lost track of what Harry could possibly be responding to. ``What?''

``Third time.'' Harry lifted his chin. ``I told you, Connor defeated him
at the end of our first year at Hogwarts.''

Snape rolled his eyes. ``And you choose to ignore everything else on
that list,'' he said. ``This is \emph{like} you.''

``I don't like to think about it.'' Harry turned away. ``Stop talking
about it, please.''

``For now,'' said Snape, deciding that he couldn't press his charge too
far just yet, but not wanting to lie and tell him that he would drop
this, either. ``Tomorrow evening---''

``After the Yule Ball, Draco and I have to meet with Lucius.''

Snape frowned. He had forgotten that. ``Very well, then. The night after
that, you will return here.''

``I will,'' said Harry, and gave him a sudden, quick smile. ``It's nice
to have you back, sir, even when you talk about uncomfortable things.''
He snatched up his wand and his book and let himself out.

Snape closed his eyes, sighed, and went to pour himself a Calming
Draught. He was patient. He had set plans in motion before that had
taken months to arrive at fruition. He had been a spy for a year. He
could do this. It was \emph{not} too slow. He would break down a few of
the barriers that Harry had placed on himself in the end.

His gaze wouldn't stop going to the three cauldrons in the corner of his
office, though. Two were empty now, the insanity potion and the Meleager
Potion utterly gone.

The third, full of clear silver like liquid glass, still remained.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry closed his eyes. He had, try as he might, been unable to come up
with a combination of spells that would do exactly as he wanted, so he
was trying his best to \emph{will} Connor's Christmas gift into
existence. Or, at least, the overtly magical part of it. He had
Transfigured one of his pillows into a blank book that should hold the
magic once it was complete.

The air around him tightened as he imagined what he wanted. He pictured
Pensieves---though not without a shudder---and Pansy's fey tale reader
and the book of pureblood rituals he had given Draco, and \emph{shoved}
his will into the book.

The magic raced around him twice, and then tightened on his body like a
coiling spring. Harry let out his breath in a surprised \emph{whoof}. He
had not realized how much his power would change when he centered it on
and bound it to his body. He didn't think this particular change was a
bad thing, though. At least it meant his magic tended to be more
obedient than it had been. He opened his eyes to find out if it had
obeyed him this time.

It had. Harry grinned slightly as he opened the book to the first page
and found a written record of the time he and Connor had found a nest of
fairies at the bottom of the garden in Godric's Hollow. The little
creatures had been extremely rude, and refused to reveal how they had
crossed the wards.

He flipped through the other pages, and nodded. Each record was written
``I,'' from his perspective, and in his handwriting. All of them were
carefully chosen. Harry wanted only happy memories in this book. No need
to remind Connor of the storms they'd been through.

He put the book carefully aside, and then started when he saw Draco
sitting on his own bed and watching him. He'd been alone when he
started, but, of course, the magic had consumed him so completely that
it wasn't a surprise he hadn't heard the door open and shut.

``Hi, Draco,'' he said.

``Hi, Harry.'' Draco lay down on his back and folded his hands behind
his head. He kept looking at Harry, though, and his eyes were more
intense than they had been since the night Luna had asked Harry to the
Ball. Harry frowned and tilted his head. \emph{Is he going to say
whatever it was she interrupted then? But why now? He's had plenty of
chances before.}

``Was there something you wanted to tell me?'' he ventured after a few
minutes.

Draco let out a long breath. ``Harry,'' he said at last, ``do you think
there's just one person for every wizard and witch out there? That if
they fall in love with each other, that's it? They get married---or
joined---and spend the rest of their lives with each other?''

Harry snorted. ``Of course not. I grew up isolated, Draco, but I could
\emph{read}. I know there are lots of second marriages and divorces,
even if most purebloods don't like to admit to them.'' This much, he
couldn't resist needling his friend about. Draco sometimes had a
blindness to the less positive parts of the culture in which he'd been
raised.

``But does the mere existence of second marriage and divorces invalidate
the idea?'' Draco had the pensive, contemplative look on his face that
he usually only got when he talked about potions or the pureblood
rituals he was learning. ``I mean, maybe the right people didn't meet
each other until the second marriage, and \emph{then} they'll stay
together for the rest of their lives. And maybe the people who got
divorced realized the other spouse or partner wasn't their perfect
match, so that was why they divorced them.''

Harry shook his head. ``I don't think anyone's perfect for another witch
or wizard, Draco.''

``Why \emph{not}?'' Draco's glare was abruptly of piercing intensity.

Harry blinked. \emph{Is this about his crush? Well, that would explain
why he's so interested in this, since he thinks it's love.}

Harry felt flattered that Draco would choose to talk to him about this,
even if it was in an extremely roundabout way. So far as he knew, Draco
hadn't breathed a word about his crush to anyone else. So Harry gave him
what he really thought, instead of the flippant answer he might have
tried to fob him off.

``Because they can't be,'' he said quietly. ``They'd have opposite
desires and inclinations and arguments at least \emph{some} of the time.
One person would have to suppress all those differences to really be
perfect for the other person, or manufacture the opposing desires and
inclinations and arguments that the other person \emph{wanted} them to
have. It would involve crumpling their freedom at least some of the
time. I hate the very idea.''

Draco opened his mouth, then closed it. Then he said, ``But what if that
person really does think the other one is perfect just the way he---or
she---is?''

``Then he needs to go to St. Mungo's,'' said Harry gently. ``And he's
setting himself up for a fall, I think, because what happens if the
perfect person changes or makes a mistake?'' He shook his head when
Draco gave him a frustrated glance. ``I don't know what you want me to
say, Draco, but that's what I truly believe.''

Draco got up, sighed, and left the room. He didn't seem angry, at least,
just frustrated. Harry watched him wistfully. \emph{I hope he's not
setting himself up for a fall. Merlin knows, I can't think of anyone he
would} believe \emph{is perfect, but then, I don't know who his crush
is.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry sighed and shifted from foot to foot. He'd agreed to meet Luna at
the Ravenclaw Tower before the Yule Ball, but he wished he hadn't. He
felt utterly ridiculous in his dress robes. He could perform fine
gestures and dances and ceremonies all he liked, he thought, but he just
wasn't cut out to \emph{wear} finery.

At least the Christmas Day before this had been fun. He'd given Connor
the book of memories, and received a book on the history of centaurs
from him in return. Draco hadn't yet given him a gift, but he claimed
that was coming this evening, so it could wait. Harry intended to give
him his gift then, too, since it wasn't the kind of thing that could be
carried or made beforehand.

James had sent him a Pensieve. Harry hadn't yet dared to look into it,
resulting in a somewhat awkward letter of thanks.

Draco had been reasonable, resigned, it seemed, to the fact that his
crush wouldn't attend the Ball with him. He'd still dressed up as though
he were going, so Harry assumed he'd see him there.

``There you are, Harry.''

Harry blinked once as Luna came out of the Tower, and then blinked
again. She had on delicate blue robes with silver trim, which would have
looked completely normal if not for the bits of silver tinsel also stuck
on them. Harry wondered if the tinsel was meant to represent stars, the
kind that Dumbledore's robes often showed, but they were not
star-shaped, and if there was any pattern, Harry couldn't see it. Luna
had on a necklace of feathers braided so intricately that Harry couldn't
make out anything but a bristling mass of, well, feather, and her hat
had long silver ribbons that curled into her blonde hair, around her
ears, under her chin, and sometimes left her hat altogether and explored
up and down her neck and shoulders, like serpents.

``You look very noticeable, Luna,'' said Harry, because he wouldn't give
her false gallantry. Luna smiled at him.

``So do you, Harry,'' she said, and held out another necklace. ``Merry
Christmas.''

Harry ducked his head, embarrassed, so she could put it around his
throat. ``I'm sorry, Luna. I didn't get anything for you.''

Luna gave him a strange glance as she straightened again. ``Yes, you did.
You're dancing with me \emph{and} taking me to the Ball.''

Harry would have argued that she'd been the one to ask him, but he knew
she honestly wouldn't know what he was talking about, so he offered her
his arm. ``Shall we go downstairs?''

Luna put her hand on his forearm in the three-fingered posture correct
for a younger witch letting an older wizard escort her---well, after
all, she \emph{was} pureblood---and glided down the hall beside him.
Harry took the opportunity to study the necklace she'd given him out of
the corner of his eye.

``Luna,'' he said after a moment.

``Yes, Harry?'' She glanced up at him, her face utterly serene.

``What kind of teeth are these?'' They didn't look like any he'd seen
before, even as ingredients in advanced potions. They had delicate
spindles rising from a flat base, and ended in four tiny, jagged spikes,
as if the teeth had smaller teeth inside them.

``Hippogriff teeth,'' said Luna.

``But hippogriffs don't have teeth,'' said Harry.

``They do,'' said Luna. ``If you look. They take out their teeth by the
light of the full moon and hide them away, so that people can use them
for necklaces and charms. But you can only find them if you're looking
for them, and for that purpose. The hippogriffs don't want their teeth
to be used for anything else.''

Harry hesitated, then decided that he wouldn't gain much from
questioning her. He would feel like he was badgering her, thought of
course she would be content to patiently explain anything that he didn't
understand. Besides, why should he worry about it tonight? Tonight was a
night for having fun.

He relaxed and smiled. ``I never knew that,'' he said. ``Do they tell
you anything? You know, like the chairs about Helga Hufflepuff?''

Luna sniffed. ``Not anything interesting. Hippogriff teeth only want to
talk about the full moon, and there's only so many times that you can
hear about it rising and setting and waxing and waning before you want
something different.''

Harry found himself smiling more widely. \emph{She's probably the best
person I could have taken to the Ball. It's impossible to be
self-conscious or worry about my dancing when she's around. There are so
many more interesting things to worry about.}

They reached the doors of the Great Hall soon enough, and joined the
crowd of students milling outside it. Harry spotted Viktor Krum, who
nodded tersely at him. The Durmstrang Champion hadn't been that happy
about Harry apparently upstaging him at the First Task, but he'd made no
secret of the fact that he felt a sort of grudging respect as well, and
Harry didn't think the scowl on the other boy's face had anything to do
with him. His date, one of the upper-year Gryffindor girls whom Harry
didn't know very well, kept sneaking glances at him, as if she couldn't
believe she was here with him. Krum ignored her entirely.

Fleur Delacour actually sought him out, smiling at him and tossing her
long silver hair. ``'Ello, Harry,'' she murmured. Her gaze took in Luna,
and her eyebrows rose, but she didn't say anything. Harry didn't think
she had grounds to say anything at all, given that her date, Roger
Davies, the Ravenclaw Quidditch Captain, was all but drooling as he
looked at her. He had his hand on her arm in the wrong position, as
well.

Harry caught the snobbish tone of that thought, and blinked. \emph{Since
when did I become Draco?}

Harry nodded back to Fleur. ``Are you looking forward to the dancing?''
he asked, since he could think of nothing else to ask her.

Fleur laughed, a sound that increased her beauty. ``Of course,'' she
said. ``Dancing eez an art in my country. I look forward to showing
everyone how it eez done!''

\emph{You have an unfair advantage, given your blood,} Harry thought,
but he murmured something polite that seemed to content Fleur. She led
Roger away, absentmindedly moving her sleeve so that he couldn't drool
on her robes.

``Hi, Harry.''

Harry turned around---Luna was looking in the opposite direction, and
for a moment he almost stumbled---to smile at his twin. Connor looked
good enough in his red dress robes, though nervous.

Harry blinked when he saw his brother's date. Connor had only winked
when Harry asked about her or him, and said that Harry would just have
to wait to find out. Harry had, for some reason, imagined that Connor
would bring someone from another House, rather than Parvati Patil.

Parvati ducked her head and blushed when she saw Harry looking at her,
but she didn't giggle. She was much less annoying when she didn't do
that, Harry had to concede. ``Hi, Harry, Luna.'' She didn't appear
startled by Luna's robes, and Harry had to give her mental points for
that, even if it was probably because Parvati admired Professor
Trelawney too much to laugh at strange clothes. ``When do you think
they're going to let us into the Hall?'' She looked imperiously over
several people's heads, as though she could command the doors to open by
sheer force of will alone.

Connor patted her shoulder. ``Probably in a few minutes,'' he said. His
face was soft when he looked at Parvati. Harry blinked again. He had
utterly, utterly missed that Connor was crushing on someone, and he
looked both pleased and proud to have Parvati here with him.

\emph{What else have I missed, I wonder?}

``In four minutes,'' said Luna.

Everyone in the immediate vicinity looked at her.

``In four minutes they'll open the doors,'' Luna clarified helpfully.
``I heard the doors say so.''

Connor couldn't quite hide a smile, but Harry was curious. He cast a
\emph{Tempus} charm, checked the time, and decided to wait.

``Where's Ron?'' he asked then, since he thought it was odd that Ron
wouldn't be at his best friend's right shoulder.

Connor winced. ``Um, he came alone,'' he said. ``His date didn't work
out.''

``It would if he'd asked her the right way,'' said Parvati primly. ``My
sister does \emph{not} enjoy being asked out by someone too angry to get
her name right.''

``What's he angry about?'' Harry asked.

Connor winced again, then abruptly looked over Harry's shoulder and
stared. ``Because of \emph{them},'' he said. ``Oh, \emph{Merlin.} I rather
hoped they'd have the sense not to flaunt it, after everything.''

Harry turned around. Blaise Zabini had entered the room, posing, not at
all coincidentally, as a flash of light from a charm exploded around him
like a camera. He looked good enough, Harry supposed, but his most
noteworthy feature was the very pleased smirk that he turned on his
date.

Ginny Weasley was on his arm.

``Tell me,'' Harry muttered to his brother, ``was he upset about Ginny
dating Blaise, or dating at all?'' Ron did sometimes act insanely
protective of his younger sister, as though she would shatter if she
were dropped. Connor had told him that they'd had a fight at the
beginning of the year, before they found out Quidditch was canceled,
about Ginny joining the Quidditch team. She wanted to be a Chaser. Ron
was worried for her, but he'd chosen to phrase it as ``You can't play!''
That argument had lasted for a while, and this was one was almost
certain to be worse, to judge by the mulish expression on Ginny's face
as Blaise guided her into the room.

Connor sighed. ``It started out with Blaise,'' he said. ``Then it went
through boys, who Ron apparently thinks are lining up to push Ginny into
a wall and snog her senseless. I think it ended somewhere around how Ron
doesn't want her dating a `slimy Slytherin.'\,''

``Bad, then,'' Harry surmised.

Connor closed his eyes and gave a tight little nod. ``And Ron got worse
when Padma wouldn't go out with him because he forgot her name and
shouted at her.''

``She was totally within her rights,'' said Parvati coolly.

``Oh, no, I didn't mean that,'' Connor hastened to reassure her. ``I
just meant that---''

``Welcome, students, to the Yule Ball,'' announced Professor McGonagall,
as the doors swung open.

Harry cast the \emph{Tempus} charm again, and shook his head. ``It's
four minutes later,'' he told Luna. ``You were right.''

Luna eyed him. ``I wasn't right. The \emph{doors} were right.''

Harry smiled in spite of himself.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Draco was trying to decide if being at the Yule Ball without Harry was
worse than staying in their room would have been. So far, he hadn't come
to any definite conclusions.

On the one hand, of course, he could watch, and see that Harry didn't
get groped by anyone else, and he had the great pleasure of seeing that
Harry sat out at least half the dances, talking to Loony.

On the other hand, he was talking to \emph{Loony}. And plenty of other
people were looking at him, not that Harry noticed, the prat.

\emph{He doesn't notice the people looking at him like that in his own
room. Why would he see it now?}

Draco wished the professors allowed any drink stronger than butterbeer.
It wasn't that he'd had a lot of opportunity to get drunk on wine, as
opposed to taste it, but at least he wouldn't be coherent enough to feel
miserable. Besides, nothing could possibly make him feel worse than he
did right now.

``Draco.''

\emph{Is there some Fate assigned to listen to me and make my life worse
whenever I think something like that?}

Draco turned around and nodded tersely to Blaise. ``Zabini,'' he said,
and watched Blaise smirk at him.

``Oh, it's like that, is it?'' Blaise leaned past Draco to pick up one
of the mince pies from the table behind him. Draco had chosen to stand
near the food, since it was relatively central and let him see Harry
even when he was dancing. ``No need to be bitter, \emph{Malfoy}, just
because I got my crush to dance with me and yours doesn't even notice
that you exist.''

``The Weasel's little sister,'' Draco said, feeling glad that Blaise had
given him the excuse to dip his tongue in acid. ``Oh, yes, that's a
conquest, all right.''

Blaise just shrugged at him. ``She's pretty,'' he said. ``I like her. She
makes me laugh. And that she'll tell her brother to sod off so she can
date me is kind of a turn-on. Meanwhile, you claim to have this great,
burning, \emph{blazing} love for Harry, and all you do is moon after him
and glare at anyone who touches him too often. I \emph{told} you, you've
got to tell him.'' Blaise paused, licking his fingers; Draco heroically
refrained from commenting on this appalling lack of taste. ``Or someone
else could tell him,'' Blaise added. ``Like me, for example.''

Draco had drawn his wand before he realized what was happening. Blaise
laughed, but couldn't quite mask the widening of his eyes.

``I've finally taken part of your stupid advice,'' Draco growled, when
he could speak. ``I know Harry's not like a \emph{normal} person, and so
I've got to treat him differently. But he's not going to take it well,
or even understand it, if the time's not right. So shut it, Blaise, or I
can make sure you shut it more permanently. I know the Vanishing Mouth
Hex, you know.''

Blaise's mouth dropped open in spite of himself; then he shut it as
though he thought Draco might choose to cast the hex right then. ``You
do not,'' he said. ``That's Dark Arts.''

Draco sighed. ``Zabini, think about what my father was, \emph{please}.''

Blaise studied him for a moment more, then shrugged. ``Fine. He won't
hear it from me. But you can't have everything just as you like,
Malfoy.'' His eyes were shining with spite, which was fine with Draco;
he preferred it to what Blaise was pleased to call ``humor.'' ``Someone
is going to tell him one of these days. Or take a chance on him
themselves, you know. Pansy fancies him, a bit.''

Draco could well believe it. ``But not today, she won't,'' he said,
glancing over to where Pansy was dancing with Montague.

``Not today,'' Blaise acknowledged. ``But soon enough.''

Draco turned his back on him loftily. ``Soon enough'' was not ``today.''

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Sometimes objects are influenced by what's going on around them in the
present,'' Luna was explaining as Harry led her back to the floor for a
third dance. ``The floor is talking about dances right now, because
that's what people are doing on it right now.''

Harry nodded slowly. As much as he could understand Luna's peculiar
gift, which appeared to be a kind of empathy tuned to objects alone,
that made sense to him. ``Are they telling you about any particular
ones?''

Luna laughed gently as Harry spun her through the first measure of the
music. She barely moved when she was dancing, letting Harry's hands
guide her, but her ribbons made up for it, writhing excitedly around her
head and trailing behind her, like her hair, when she turned around.
``They're remembering the time Salazar Slytherin danced with Rowena
Ravenclaw. He only did it once, because he said that she stepped on his
feet. Just to show him, she didn't step on his feet once the whole
dance, and then told him she'd never dance with him again. He sulked for
a week.''

Harry cocked his head to the side as he and Luna briefly parted and then
came back together again, only their fingertips touching this time. This
dance wasn't one he'd practiced often, but he could watch the other
dancers from a corner of his eye, and this was a variation on one he'd
read about, so he could get through it without embarrassing himself.
``The memories you've been telling me about are almost all from the
Founders' time. Do the floors and the walls and the furniture remember
them best?''

``They loved them,'' said Luna simply. She halted in place, turned in a
half-circle, and bowed to the couple next to them, who, Harry was amused
to see, were Hermione and Zacharias. ``They built Hogwarts, after all.
Of course Hogwarts is going to love them.''

``What's she babbling about now?'' Zacharias looked extremely irritated
as he stepped out of the dance to take his place as Luna's temporary
partner. Harry, moving across from Hermione, was about to retort, but
Luna got there before he could.

``Do you have clumsy feet?'' she asked, frowning at him. ``The floor is
complaining because it says you step too heavily.''

Harry muffled his laughter in his sleeve as Zacharias shut up and
retreated into proper pureblood coolness, leading Luna through the steps
that she and Harry had just performed, in reverse order. Harry offered
his hand to Hermione, and she nodded at him and slid easily into place.
\emph{She's probably studied this,} Harry thought, as Hermione refused
to make a stumble, even when he did.

``You look lovely,'' he complimented her, because it was true. Hermione
had gone to some trouble with the cosmetic charms that girls like
Parvati used far more often. She'd straightened her hair, too, and Harry
did wonder why she'd done that. Curls were perfectly fine. ``And I'm
sorry for what Luna said to Zacharias. I hope that he won't take it out
on you.''

``Thank you,'' said Hermione. ``And he deserved it. He's been a perfect
gentleman to me all evening, but \emph{Merlin}, he's an idiot
sometimes.'' She rolled her eyes as she and Harry wheeled apart from each
other in the finger-touching motion. ``Did you know he told me, in all
seriousness, that he doesn't see what purpose most of the pureblood
dances serve, because anyone worth a Sickle knows he's more intelligent
than they are?''

Harry snorted, and changed it to a cough as Zacharias glanced over
suspiciously at them. ``That sounds like him,'' he said.

Hermione nodded with a frown. ``That's the thing I like and despise
about him most, really.'' She leaned back, and Harry spun her. ``It's
refreshing to be with someone who knows what I'm talking about and
doesn't make fun of me for studying all the time, but he thinks that
makes us \emph{better} than other people. When I try to say that no, it
doesn't, he has very logical arguments on why it does.''

``I have to admit, I'm glad that I'm not dating him,'' Harry said, and
guided Hermione through the first steps of the dance. It was harder than
it looked, doing them backward, and both of them had to concentrate.
``Good luck, I suppose.''

``Thank you.'' Hermione nodded to him and moved back to Zacharias, who
took her arm possessively the moment she came up next to him. They
started what sounded like a muffled argument, in which Harry caught
``different perspective on the world'' several times in the course of a
minute.

\emph{Not sure if I should wish her good luck or not,} Harry thought
with something between a grimace and a smile as he and Luna turned to
face the next couple, Padma Patil and the girl she'd brought, whom Harry
thought was named Marietta something. \emph{Happiness might be a better
bet.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Harry?''

Harry glanced up. Luna had just finished the mince pie he'd brought her
from the food table---he'd nodded to Draco as he'd retrieved it, since
Draco appeared to be standing guard over the food, and Draco had
brightened considerably---and he wondered if she wanted to dance again.

``I'm going back to the Tower,'' she said, and smiled at him. ``Thank
you for dancing with me. I loved it.''

Harry frowned. ``Wait, Luna, let me take you---''

Luna shook her head. ``You need to get to your meeting.''

Harry stared at her.

Luna gave him a patient smile. ``Harry,'' she said, ``the walls told
me.'' She leaned over and kissed his cheek, then wandered towards the
door. Harry stood up to watch her go, at least partially to make sure
that no one thought it would be funny to trip her or snatch one of the
ribbons from her hat.

That was how he happened to have a direct line-of-sight view of Ron
yelling at Ginny and Blaise, his face red as a radish, though Harry
couldn't catch everything he said in the general buzz of music and talk.
From what Connor had told him, ``slimy Slytherin'' would figure quite
prominently. Harry frowned. \emph{If I went over there and challenged
him to repeat that to me, would he? Would he have cared if Ginny had
asked me?}

He also got to see Ginny draw her wand from inside one lacy sleeve and
cast a spell at Ron. It him squarely, and he paused for a moment, then
clawed frantically at his nose.

Harry knew what hex she'd used when a bat began attacking Ron's face.
Harry rolled his eyes. \emph{Bat-Bogey. Well, he got what was coming to
him. If he'd just shut up about it in public, I don't think Ginny would
have felt the need to do that.}

The use of magic caused most people to fall silent and stare, so Harry
could easily hear Professor McGonagall's shocked, ``\emph{Miss} Weasley!''
and Ginny's disgusted, ``I suppose that you want to be known as the Boy
Who Lived To Be An Immature Prat, then.''

She turned sharply away from Ron and took Blaise's arm again. Blaise was
grinning like an idiot, Harry saw. Ron was already out the door.

Harry caught Draco's eye and tilted his head. Draco nodded and came over
to him. ``My father said he would meet us beyond the rose gardens,'' he
murmured. ``I know a side door that goes there without passing through
the places where everyone'll be snogging.''

Harry nodded back, and followed him. Most people were too involved in
laughing or dancing to notice them, and the professors seemed focused on
the drama of McGonagall attempting to get Ginny to stop dancing with
Blaise so she could scold her properly.

Draco led Harry to a far corner of the Great Hall and slipped out a door
that Harry had noticed before, but supposed vaguely must be for house
elves or something. In a moment, they were out in the rose gardens, and
Harry shook his head and sniffed in gratitude. Much as he'd enjoyed
listening to Luna, the Hall had been growing too hot, and too filled
with stares, for his comfort.

``This way,'' Draco whispered, and they slipped off among the
rosebushes, avoiding any places that giggled.

Harry felt his mind calming and becoming cooler as if to match the air,
though he cast a few warming charms on his face so that his cheeks
wouldn't get the same idea. He was absolutely sure that he knew what
Lucius was going to ask for. Luckily, it wasn't something he was at all
reluctant to grant. He wondered what else the end of the truce-dance
would involve beyond the exchange of gifts, though. Most books didn't
talk much about that, as if afraid they would profane something so
sacred with their words.

``Here we are.''

Harry blinked and looked up. They'd reached the wall of the garden, and
Draco was running a hand along the stone, his face seeming all frown in
the faint light from the Great Hall. ``Yes,'' he said after a moment.
``\emph{Here} it is. Father and Mother used to use this way to sneak out
of the school in his seventh year.''

``Why?'' Harry asked, thinking that it would have been easier to go
through the Entrance Hall.

Draco gave him a swift look, and his voice turned dry. ``Harry, believe
me, I \emph{really} wasn't interested in asking.''

Harry flushed. ``That wasn't what I meant,'' he muttered, but Draco was
already tugging at the gate.

A moment later, he muttered, ``What the hell?''

Harry came up beside him, glad to have something to think about other
than Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy sneaking out of Hogwarts. ``What do you
mean?'' he asked, but when he laid his hand on the gate, he realized
what it must be. There was a powerful magical force holding it shut, and
it didn't feel like a ward or a shield. It felt like the result of a
ritual. Harry pushed at it.

A question formed in his mind---not spoken, but written, as though
someone were actively reaching into and writing it on his thoughts.
\emph{Do you wish to pass?}

Harry blinked. \emph{Yes,} he answered, wondering if it could really be
that simple.

\emph{You are certain?}

\emph{I am.}

\emph{There is no longer a prohibition?}

\emph{There is not,} Harry replied, wondering if perhaps this was a
spell put on the school to discourage people from coming in during the
war with Voldemort.

A wind appeared to sigh, and the words were wiped out of his mind. Harry
nodded to Draco, and Draco pulled the gate open.

A single figure waited beyond the gate for them. Harry could make out it
was a witch from the shape of the robes, and hesitated. He hadn't
realized Narcissa would be there.

Draco took a step forward. ``Mum---''

The woman cast the hood of her cloak back and rolled her sleeves at the
same time, sending a small globe filled with light into one of her
palms, so that they could see her face. When he saw it, Harry was
certain that the light had already been lit, as she could not have
managed the spell.

Lily gazed at him, and said, ``Hello, Harry.''

\chapter{A Dark Lord Will Be Along}\label{chapter-46-a-dark-lord-will-be-along}

Albus looked down from the window in his office, charmed to reflect the
view of the gate through the rose-gardens as it was at the moment, and
waited, and hoped.

He had thought of having Lily come to the school long before, but it was
not until he had begun listening seriously to the wards of Hogwarts,
which he usually ignored unless there was a diamond-hard reason not to,
that he realized what an opportunity Lucius Malfoy's visit represented.
He had been aware when the Dark wizards visited Harry on Halloween
night, but he hadn't bothered to listen to their conversations through
the wards, sure he would hear only Slytherin games that they played with
the poor unsuspecting boy. But when the wards reported to him that Harry
and Draco Malfoy were speaking of his father's \emph{second} visit,
Albus's interest had been peaked.

Then Draco, in a private conversation with Severus, had mentioned that
Lucius would wait outside the gate in the rose-gardens that he had used
when he was a student at the school, and that he would be there on the
night of the Yule Ball.

Albus had seen his opportunity.

He had had Lily send a letter to her son, with a warning in it if he had
cared to read it, but he suspected Harry wouldn't---and even if he had,
his only chance to avoid this confrontation would have been to come to
the Headmaster at once and have it in Albus's office instead. He had
told Lily to wait at the rose-garden gate until Harry came through, to
provide a barrier between her and Harry that would let the justice
ritual try to prevent them from seeing each other. Harry would remove
the prohibition so that he and Draco could get through the gate, and
then the rest would be simple enough.

Lucius, meanwhile, was somewhat occupied with the trees of the Forbidden
Forest, which Albus had stirred unexpectedly to life when he passed
them---such feats were not beyond the Headmaster of Hogwarts, though
they tired him and he preferred to accomplish his ends through subtler
means---and would not be along for some time. Severus had agreed to let
Harry go to the meeting alone.

Albus had not anticipated that the young Malfoy heir would be with
Harry, somehow having missed that detail, but he would not let it bother
him. Harry would have no choice about speaking to Lily now.

And when he heard what she had to say, he would have no choice about
surrendering, either.

Albus settled back, tightened his control on the trees, and watched the
drama playing out below, which would change and affect the fate of the
wizarding world in leading Harry back more closely to the Light.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry felt his heart throbbing so hard that he shook. He couldn't move,
couldn't think of what to do, couldn't concentrate on anything but the
sensation of his heart in his ears, it was so overwhelming.

Then he felt a second sensation---Draco's hand slipping into his.

And though he would have preferred to face Lily alone, in his fear of
what would emerge now, Harry grasped the hand and squeezed back.

``Harry?'' Lily's face remained grave and quiet as she held the
light-globe higher so that she could see him, but her voice echoed her
disappointment. ``Aren't you happy to see me?''

Harry swallowed, intending the gesture to take his nervousness with it.
He didn't think he succeeded, but he only sounded as if he'd been kicked
in the stomach when he spoke, instead of half-disemboweled. ``Not
particularly, no. I said that I never wanted to communicate with you
again. How much more of a hint can you \emph{take}?''

``But you responded to my first letter.'' Lily moved a step forward, the
hem of her robe sweeping the ground. Harry could not control the urge to
take a step back, and Draco immediately moved close to his side and
angled half in front of him, as if he would protect Harry at all costs
from his own mother. ``And you did not say that you wished never to
communicate again in your last response. You only asked about right now.
And a mother never gives up her children, Harry. It's been a year. I
think that's long enough. Why can't I see you again, especially now that
you have given your consent to that?'' Her voice had turned into the
same sort of gentle scolding that Harry remembered from nights when he
was proud of something he had done and wanted to tell Connor about it.
She shouldn't have had to remind him to keep his training secret, but
she did, sometimes.

\emph{She shouldn't have had to remind you how much she loves you,
either.}

``\emph{No}, Harry,'' said Draco sharply.

Harry turned his eyes from his mother's face to his friend's, though it
was hard. Draco had been too shocked to say anything at first---his face
still showed pale in Lily's light---but his eyes were rapidly filling
with tears. He reached out and grasped Harry's throat, hard enough to
hurt.

``I know what your guilt feels like,'' he breathed. ``It fills my mouth
with oil. And I won't let you feel it, Harry. I \emph{won't}. You have
\emph{nothing} to feel guilty for. She treated you horribly, and she
deserves everything she got.'' He turned and glanced over his shoulder at
Lily, and Harry shivered. He hadn't known that Draco could feel such
hatred as his expression said he did. ``And I know you won't believe
this,'' he muttered, ``but she deserves worse than that.''

``I don't see that you have any place here.'' Lily pointed off to the
side. ``This is between myself and my son. Go.''

``No,'' said Draco, and this time shoved Harry completely behind him, so
that he could face Lily. ``You've torn your \emph{son} apart and
scattered his heart to the four winds, the way that Gerra did with Aries
Black. You don't deserve to be anywhere near him. I'm going to give you
twenty seconds to leave before I cast one of the Unforgivables.'' He drew
his wand. ``One. Two.''

``You can't cast the Unforgivables yet,'' said Lily. ``You're not old
enough.'' As if in a dream, Harry saw her reach into her pocket, but he
didn't know what she could be taking out. She couldn't use a wand
anymore, given her Muggle state. ``And I told you before that you don't
have any place in a confrontation between myself and my son. My
\emph{beloved} son, whom I haven't met for a year and a day.'' She
gestured to the left with her chin. ``Leave, Malfoy.''

``Five. Six.''

Lily's hand clenched around whatever it was in her pocket.

Harry took a deep breath. He appreciated Draco's defense of him, but he
couldn't let him suffer, just in case Lily did have a magical weapon
with her that she could still use, like the light-globe, because it
didn't require any innate magic. And he didn't want Draco to hurt his
mother, either.

The emotions churned in him, knife-edged and ice-edged, but he knew his
overmastering impulse. He wanted his parents to go \emph{away.} If they
chose never to acknowledge him again, if they never sent him another
letter, if they simply ignored his existence, then he would be satisfied
and do the same for them. He did not want them discussed, or punished,
or hurt. What they had done was done. Harry knew them, knew what they
could do now, and he pitied them. There was no reason that he need do
anything else.

``Draco,'' he said, tugging on his arm.

Draco turned his head to look at him, but said, ``She's still not gone.
Fifteen. Sixteen.''

Lily's hand rose out of her pocket, moving, tossing something at Draco.

Harry had always been a good Seeker, and he thanked Merlin for it now as
he rose in a gentle leap and caught the flying object before it could
come anywhere near Draco's face, its likely target. He felt warmth in
his palm, and then a sharp sting that coursed up his arm. He grimaced.
It was not as bad as the bite of the spiders last year that had
incapacitated him badly enough to need the hospital wing, but it hurt.

Harry turned his hand over enough to see what the thing was, but could
make out only a shattered red shell before Draco said, with a coldness
that belonged in his father's voice and not his own, ``\emph{Crucio}.''

No spell flew, though Harry did see a gleam of something around Draco's
wand. He jerked to his feet, disregarding the fact that it would already
have been too late if Draco's curse had really worked. Lily laughed
softly.

``You don't hate me enough to cast that curse on me,'' she told Draco.
``Could it be that you really understand how matters stand between my
son and I?'' She paused for a moment and cocked her head to the side.
``You have a mother of your own. Can you imagine what she would feel if
someone tried to interfere with your reconciliation with her?''

Draco didn't bother answering her, as if he thought Lily's words not
worth answering. He came over to Harry and turned his hand over,
demanding, ``Let me see.''

A moment later, he shrieked and swatted hard. Harry looked down as bits
of red shell fell to the ground, and blinked. \emph{Still-Beetle. Of
course. I should have realized it. We've used the shells in Potions
before.}

Then he went completely still, paralyzed along the path of the shell's
venom. Draco tugged at his arm, but Harry didn't even sway. Lily let out
an annoyed breath and came a few steps nearer to him.

``Harry,'' she said softly. ``I suppose this is one way of getting you
to listen. Just listen.''

Harry couldn't do anything but stare at her, but Draco made a sound
somewhere between a snarl and a moan and lifted his wand.

Lily lobbed something else at him. Harry couldn't turn his head to
follow the path of the trajectory and see what it was, and though he
struggled, his wandless magic was as much affected by the stillness as
the rest of him was, since he'd bound it to his body. He heard the
muffled thump of Draco slumping to the ground, and hoped that he would
be all right.

``There,'' said Lily. ``Albus gave those to me just in case I
encountered any resistance on the way, but really, I didn't think I'd
have to use one of them on your friend. We were supposed to meet
alone.'' She stared hard at Harry for a moment, and then her voice
softened. ``I hoped I wouldn't have to use one on you, either. I wrote
you in my letter that I was coming.''

Harry had never read the letter. He tried to convey that with his eyes,
since he didn't have any other way to say it. This was worse than the
stillness caused by the Body-Bind spell. At least there, he knew
movement was \emph{possible}, if someone else levitated or dragged him.
This felt as if he were rooted to the ground.

``Finally, we can speak without interruption.'' Lily took a deep breath.
``Harry, I know that I haven't been the best of mothers. But I have made
you what you are, and for that, you owe me a hearing.''

``I did what I did for the sake of the wizarding world surviving the
second war with Voldemort. You know that. I don't need to explain my
reasoning to you. But I have thought of a new way to phrase it since
that you might appreciate: if Voldemort wins, everything about the
wizarding world dies, not just Connor. Your allies will die, since they
are no longer loyal to him, and he does not tolerate anything but
instant obedience. Your friends will die. Your guardian will die. Your
House will be trampled into the mud, tainted with darkness everlasting,
and if you think people speak badly of Slytherin \emph{now}, you don't
want to hear what they'll say when the Light wins again. Slytherin would
be synonymous with evil, and no one would ever be Sorted into that House
again. I think they'd dissolve it, or close Hogwarts, rather than allow
anyone else to go into the House of the Snake.''

``That means that everything new you've found in life would be
destroyed. And that's unacceptable for you, I would think.'' She paused
as if expecting some response from him, some nod or word, but then
seemed to remember he was stilled. She shook her head and went on. Harry
was pleading with her in his head to shut up, while his magic raced
around inside the barrier of the stillness looking for some way out, but
she couldn't hear him.

``It's unacceptable to the boy I raised, I know, the boy who loved
Connor and who's transferred that love elsewhere. And that means that we
have to build a new relationship, you and me and Albus. We're the only
ones who truly understand the meaning of sacrifice, Harry. He's made the
hard decisions that are needed to win this war. I've made hard decisions
of my own. And you've walked the most difficult way.''

Lily put out one hand and smoothed it gently over his hair, making
Harry's scalp feel as if it were crawling with insects. ``We'll need
Connor, but he won't ever understand the meaning of sacrifice the way we
do. I regret that. If I'd known he was a \emph{potential} savior in the
prophecy, I would have raised him that way. He would have understood
that he might die, and what heroism and sacrifice and hard roads meant.
But it's too late to recover him now. Albus has been testing him, but he
doesn't think he's really made of the best stuff.''

Harry thought he felt a finger twitch, and sent his magic down to it as
hard as he could. But the motion wasn't repeated. He remembered Snape
saying of Still-Beetles that they used to be used to bind powerful Dark
wizards while they awaited their trials. Usually, the courtroom was
built around them. He could understand why, now. Movement was becoming a
foreign concept to him.

``You're the best choice for savior,'' said Lily, her eyes soft. ``But
Albus knows that pushing you into the forefront of the world would just
make you uncomfortable. You haven't dealt well with the attention that
you've received from your exploits so far, have you? No, you haven't.
That's the boy I raised. So we'll leave Connor as the Boy-Who-Lived, and
bring you back behind the scenes and behind the shadows. It'll be
different, I promise. You'll have all my love, and all my attention.
Wouldn't you like that, Harry? We'll build a relationship, and we'll
reconcile with James, and it will be like what it was in Godric's
Hollow---except better, because this time you'll be at the center of
things, and not just pushed off into the shadows.'' Her face was glowing
with love and hope.

Harry could feel what it \emph{would} be like, and the picture was
horribly tempting to one part of him. Last year, when Connor was
fighting him and his father was missing and his guilt over what he had
done to his mother was at its peak, he didn't think he could have
resisted the temptation.

But he \emph{had} changed, even if his mother wanted to pretend that he
hadn't. He couldn't give up the friends he had, the allies he'd made,
the promises he wanted to keep and the \emph{vates} duties that he loved
most out of all the roads he had to walk. He couldn't give up Draco, and
he couldn't give up Snape. He wanted someone who would love him without
any other obligations, he couldn't deny that, and there was no doubt
that he would \emph{understand} the kind of household Lily was talking
about better than he had ever understood his own clumsy attempts to live
a normal life. There was familiarity in that, knowledge that could breed
longing.

But that was the only safety it offered, and what he had said under
Veritaserum was true. He didn't feel safe with James and Lily, and he
sincerely believed that he never would again.

His eyes must have conveyed his rejection, because Lily began abruptly
to cry.

``I don't understand,'' she whispered. ``Albus told me---and your
letters said---'' She blinked, and the tears fell from her eyes and
tracked down her face, glimmering in the light of the globe she held.
``Your letters said that you understood what I'd done for you, that you
were what I made you.''

\emph{Yes. I said that. But I've still changed, even if I have a bigger
circle of people to care for now than Connor. And your skills let me
lure in more people like that.}

Lily took a deep breath. ``Forgive me, Harry,'' she said. ``You'll
understand when I'm done why I must say such cutting words, harder than
any words I've had to say before.''

She rose, and her face assumed a look that would have made Harry flinch
if he could move. That look was from the Bad Days, as he called them in
his imagination. Those were the days when he said or did something that
convinced Lily he didn't realize that his first duty was always to be to
Connor, and she had to speak the truths she normally hid behind soft
words.

``You are what I made you,'' Lily whispered. ``You are \emph{all} that I
made you. Harry. Every bit of knowledge you have, every bit of skill
that you possess, came from me. Your inborn magic is something that I
can't take credit for, of course, and neither are the unnatural
additions that Voldemort made to it.'' She paused, then mused aloud,
``Yes, you know about that now, so I can tell you.''

``I was so pleased with you when you were born, Harry. And Connor too,
of course, but in those days we didn't know that there was to be any
substantial difference between you, so I felt proud of you both just the
same. And I played with you and sang to you and laughed with you and
nursed you, and thought that I would never be happier than I was just
then, with my two perfect children.''

\emph{Perfection is an illusion,} Harry thought, in a desperate attempt
to find something that would let him release his magic or distract him
from Lily's words. \emph{One that you and Draco share.}

``And then Albus told me about what we must do, and I was devastated,
but what could I do?'' Lily drew in a breath thick with tears. ``We had
to do it, for the good of the world. Albus had taught James and me about
sacrifice when we were still students at school, and we'd seen a good
bit of it when we fought with the Order of the Phoenix. We couldn't fail
to do our part.''

``We came back after that night, and even before Albus told me what I had
to do, I knew. You were different from your brother now, Harry. I could
feel the increased magic around you. It was frightening. It was alien;
no baby was supposed to have magic that strong, and you hadn't been
\emph{born} with it, which is the natural, correct, proper way for magic
to come into the world.'' She swallowed. ``And it was perverse, Harry.
Filthy. It was like bathing in dog vomit every time I was near you.''

Harry couldn't close his eyes, couldn't turn them from her. All he could
do was stand there and feel as if his mind were lacerated, while his
magic raced screaming around his body.

``You've never felt it,'' Lily whispered. ``You live in the midst of it,
and you can't feel how it affects other people. But, believe me, all the
reactions you get have disgust at the bottom. They might be morbid
fascination, or a temptation to see how deep the perversion runs, or an
attraction to that kind of obscenity, because their magic feels the same
way. But it's never because they admire your magic. I'm sorry if they've
told you so. They don't know its true nature, then, or they want to
console you and make you feel better, or they want something from you.
But you are another Voldemort since your magic was released from the
phoenix web.''

Harry's sight dimmed as he remembered the justice ritual that Voldemort
had corrupted in May, attempting to use it to drain his magic from
Harry. His power was what the Dark Lord had wanted. Could there really
be a doubt that it was dirty, then, and not just plentiful? Would
Voldemort have an attraction to anything that was inherently pure and of
the Light?

And if he was another Voldemort, then did that mean that he would do the
same kinds of things as Voldemort did someday, attacking children and
corrupting ancient pureblood rituals into his service?

``But my training took that away,'' said Lily. ``It made you safe, for a
long time. You didn't use the filthy part of your magic. You used the
clean part, the natural part, with just a bit of the filth leaking in
from time to time, and being cleansed as it came, like offal being
washed in a flowing stream. Had the bindings on your magic lasted until
the time of your last year at Hogwarts, or even a bit earlier, then the
darkness would have all turned to light.''

``But it didn't, and now you're full of the vomit again, and whatever
good is in you---the history that you know, the love that you have for
your brother and other people, the skills that I taught you to defend
and heal---you owe to \emph{me}. Without me, you would have been another
Voldemort by the time you were six.''

Harry tried to swallow, and the Still-Beetle venom prevented that. It
didn't prevent blinking, but it prevented everything else, and the
screaming mental chaos in his head, which felt as though it were ripping
apart his rationalizations piece by piece, was not still \emph{enough}.

\emph{What if she's right? It's true that most of the people who've
professed to like and follow you are only doing it because of things
that Lily instilled in you. You would have nothing to offer them if not
for your knowledge and your talents, and the sheer power of your magic
is something unnatural. Peter called you Voldemort's magical heir, the
heir of the worst Dark Lord of this century. Who wants that? Who will
follow that? Who will follow what you are, if it's all true? Who would
like you or love you or pay you deference, if they knew what Lily
knows?}

``I can still love you, Harry,'' Lily whispered. ``I know it all, and
still I love you, and still I won't turn from you in disgust. We can
cleanse the darkness from you. We can wash you in absolute, utter,
shining purity. A mother's love, and a father's, too, can do that, you
know.''

\emph{What if she's right? What soul do you have that she did not give
you? After all, who loves or likes or approves of someone like you
without some kind of external reason to do so? And she was the one who
taught you to love unconditionally, to accept anything from
others---that same forgiveness they're willing to become your allies
for---and taught you to sacrifice---something the others refuse to
understand, and indeed say is wrong. No, she won't make you safe, but
she'll make you honest. No one else has told you any of this. Draco and
Snape either know it and keep you in the dark because of it, because
they want to protect you, or they don't know it and they'll be shocked
and appalled beyond reason to find out what you are. Draco's probably
appalled, lying there right now and listening to it. How could you have
thought that you were the kind of person who was really capable of
receiving the kind of love they wanted to give? Not the Dark Lord's
magical heir, full of the power that the Dark Lord learned from
obscenity and murder.}

``It'll be better when you're back at Godric's Hollow, Harry,'' Lily
whispered coaxingly. ``There's no one there but people who want to help
you, people whose purity you can bathe in. There's no one as perverse
and cruel there as Voldemort is, or as your friend on the ground is.''

It took Harry a moment to work out that she was talking about Draco.

\emph{Draco isn't perverse and cruel.}

The truth froze the chaos inside his mind, and then cracked it, piece by
piece, like black ice. What roared up from beneath that, silent, was the
same dark rage that had come over him when he confronted Umbridge and
Fudge in the Minister's interrogation room.

\emph{She has no right to say that about him.}

The explosion of his magic cracked the Still-Beetle venom and made his
body wrench violently as it flew out of him. Harry had it under control
in a moment, though, because it was his own, just like his rage. As it
circled his body, he wondered if it was true that it felt filthy and
corrupt to other people.

And then he didn't care, because he was focusing on Lily, and hearing
again what she had said about Draco, a horrible lie in a welter of
might-be-truths, and she was lying, and she had to \emph{know} she was
lying, and \emph{she had no right to say that, and he wanted to make her
hurt.}

This time, the snake didn't flow from his body. It grew on the grass
behind Lily, and it lunged forward, closing its jaws around her foot. It
had no need to crush her ankle, or pump poison into her. Where it bit,
the ankle was simply and suddenly gone, cut away from her body as
smoothly as though she had been born without one.

Lily let out a cry and collapsed to the ground, her foot clinging to her
leg by the barest strip of flesh. She stared up at him, and her fear
made her eyes greener. Harry found that he admired the effect. He moved
a few steps forward, never looking away from her face, though his mind
was busy deciding where his snake, which was swaying behind Lily in
silent obedience to his wishes, should strike next.

It was so simple, here, so wild. He understood what the music he'd heard
on the thestral's back had been singing about. Why \emph{not} give
himself to the Dark? He could have all the filthy magic that he liked
then, and no one would care. And Dark Lords and Ladies were famous for
not giving a damn if anyone loved them, so he wouldn't have to worry
about whether or not everyone around him was lying to him, at least lies
of omission. And he could do whatever he wanted to people who were like
Lily, and wanted to hurt Draco or Snape or Connor or someone else he
cared about.

``Harry.''

Because the voice was not a shout, because it was low and not raised,
Harry stopped, and turned around. Snape was coming across the grass
towards them.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape had seen the boys leave the Ball for their meeting, and he had not
gone after them. He had no desire to meet Lucius \emph{or} Narcissa,
should she be there. He would wait until midnight and then fetch Draco
and Harry if they weren't back, but otherwise, he trusted them to handle
themselves.

He first knew his mistake when the strongest explosion of Dark magic
he'd ever felt burst free beyond the walls, and sent him to his knees.

He stood up again as soon as he could, though his mind was oppressed as
though with a cloud and his knees wobbled. His mind and his ears both
echoed with screams. The last came from students and professors who had
any magical sensitivity, confused and frightened. The first came from
magic in the area, as it turned tortured with the hatred and pain of a
powerful wizard.

\emph{Harry can swallow magic. It's already moving towards him.}

Not that he ever really doubted that the Dark magic was Harry, of
course. If Voldemort had returned, the Mark on his arm would already be
burning.

He staggered out of the Hall by the same door the boys had taken---in
the opposite direction from all the other professors, who were trying to
herd the students to safety---and towards the gate Draco had told him
about, moving mechanically. The garden was full of frightened and crying
children, some of them clutching each other for comfort. Snape ignored
all of them, though he forced away one young girl who would have clung
to his robes with a snarl. He was trying to save all their lives by
getting to Harry.

\emph{Not really,} his conscience, which had been suspiciously active
the last few days, pointed out. \emph{You're really trying just to save
Harry.}

Snape shrugged to himself and pushed open the gate.

It was worse the closer he was to it. Snape could feel the Darkness of
this magic now. It was not deceptive, nor especially solitary, nor
compulsive. It was wild---at once the definition of Dark that probably
made the most sense, and the most dangerous. This was the kind of
wildness that would strike at friends as well as foes, if the wild
creature was hurt enough.

Snape came out of the gate, and recognized the woman lying on the
ground, and saw Draco insensible, and saw black fire burning on Harry's
body, dancing up and down the skin.

``Harry.'' He murmured the name, but it would be enough, and started
walking towards Harry. It was the bravest thing he had ever done in his
life, he thought.

Harry turned.

His eyes were utterly feral. He had \emph{some} control left, given the
way he could focus on Snape, but that wasn't long for this world. And
then, Snape thought, almost amazed he could be so calm while thinking
this, neither would they be.

He stopped well short of Harry. He had often thought his charge was like
a wild animal, the way he flinched and shied from most gestures of
affection. He would use the same mindset now to coax him.

``Harry,'' he repeated. Then he drew his wand. Harry tensed, and the
black fire on his arms reached out, flickering. Snape could feel its
coldness from here, and sense the way the air surged towards it.
Whatever went into that blackness would not come out again.

Snape laid his wand on the ground. Then he knelt beside it---both knees,
without the one-kneed gesture that would show deference and might enrage
Harry by its nearness to the gesture given Light Lords---and held out
his arms.

He saw a fine tremor enter the black fire around Harry, even if Harry
himself wasn't shaking. The gesture awakened memories in him, then,
memories of the Wizengamot's courtroom. That was what Snape was counting
on.

He drove away anger and confusion and hatred as he met Harry's gaze.
There was already enough of that in the boy who needed a step or two
more to become a Dark Lord. He took a deep breath, because this was hard
for him, too, but his surliness about showing his emotions could not be
allowed to rule his mood now, and let himself show his love.

Harry shuddered so hard that for a moment, Snape thought he would sink
to the ground.

Then a movement off to the side drew his attention. Draco had recovered
from whatever weapon Lily had used on him, and had rolled over to one
side. He froze when he saw Harry, but his expression in the light was
not the terror that Snape himself had feared. He simply gave Harry the
look he'd been giving him lately, the one that combined ferocity and
pride and love, and waited.

Harry closed his eyes.

Snape waited. They both waited, and for an intolerable moment, the air
outside the garden was tight with magic and expectation.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry had been prepared to destroy---not only Lily, but his relationship
with everyone else left behind him. Why not? It was all lies anyway. Or
maybe not, but he couldn't trust them again. How could he trust them?
The fact that his rage had come out like this, that he wanted to hurt
people, only meant \emph{he} couldn't be trusted, and no one would want
to be friends with someone who was a sadist like Bellatrix. He might as
well step away now and make all their dislikes come true.

And Snape and Draco were both waiting, and not running, or calling him
names, or casting binding curses on him.

\emph{But she said---}

But they were there.

\emph{But your magic is filthy---}

But they were there.

\emph{But you know that she could be right---}

But they were there.

\emph{But you weren't born with your magic---}

But they were there.

Harry's mind kept bringing up words, and every time, they collapsed
before the implacable \emph{actions} that Snape and Draco kept
presenting him with.

With a little cry, he pulled his magic back inside his body. His rage
was not so easy to lock away, but he kept his back turned on his mother
and his focus trained on Snape and Draco.

One mentor and one friend. They both loved him, for whatever wild and
stupid reasons they had, and he could not prove them wrong, after all.

He swallowed, and crept back towards Draco. Draco was on his feet in an
instant, hugging him, gently. He didn't hold hard enough that Harry
might be tempted to break free. Harry lifted his arms and held him back,
desperately.

Snape's hands came down on his shoulders then, and he murmured, ``What
shall I do with her?''

``Send her away,'' Harry whispered, not looking up from where he had his
face buried in Draco's shoulder. It was nice. It was warm. Draco smelled
good. He didn't see why he should have to \emph{see} anything right now.
``Please. I know you want to hurt her, but I just---I don't care. Call
Madam Pomfrey and take her to the hospital wing so that they can heal
her foot. I can't try to take it back, or I'll kill her.''

Hot shame was washing him now, that he had that desire for pain inside
him and had caused Lily's soft sobs. But at least he knew himself well
enough to know that he couldn't turn around right now. At least there
was that much.

Snape was silent for a moment, then said, ``As you wish.'' Harry heard
him mutter the incantation for a message spell, and the silvery flutter
of one of them sped away to summon Madam Pomfrey. ``Harry,'' he said
then. ``Do you feel strong enough to continue to your meeting with
Lucius Malfoy, or should we return to the castle?''

Harry felt a surge of gratitude. Snape was trusting him by asking, just
as he had trusted Harry to know what was best with Lily, and wasn't
giving in to his own inclinations to hurt her.

``I want to go on,'' he whispered. ``Tonight is the end of the
truce-dance. I---that's going to make me feel better, because it's such
powerful, ancient magic. And I don't want to go to bed or anything,
anyway. I want to stay with the two of you.''

Draco whispered, ``Good. I couldn't let go of you this soon.''

Snape sighed. ``Let us find Lucius,'' he said, and guided Harry and
Draco around in a careful half-circle, so that they would neither have
to separate nor look at Lily. The mere thought of looking at her made
Harry shiver in shock, and Draco tighten his hold on him.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

At his window, Albus Dumbledore leaned his forehead on the glass and
shut his eyes in utter despair.

\chapter{Dark Yule}\label{chapter-47-dark-yule}

Harry knew that he could collapse if he let himself. There were
too many thoughts in his head. They were drifting in bladed circles that
would spring open in swords in a few moments, and pierce him.

If he let them. If he concentrated on what his mother had said, on the
things that had just happened to him.

But he didn't want to. Even when he lifted his head from Draco's
shoulder, he only looked ahead, and not back, and let Snape guide them
along the path of the Forbidden Forest by the light of his wand. Now and
then Snape reached out to touch his shoulder, and Harry made himself
appreciate the touch without thinking about why Snape felt it necessary
to give it.

Draco's arm around his shoulder, and the shoulder pressed against his
side, as if Draco wanted them to blend into one being, were even more
comforting. Harry used them to leap from moment to moment, to coax and
urge his thoughts along past that moment of most danger, until he was
sure that he could have walked on his own. He still didn't let Draco go,
though, or tug himself free. This time, it was because he didn't want
to, rather than because he needed the support.

He knew what he would have to do when this meeting with Lucius had
finished. He wondered if he should be alone, but then dismissed that.
No, he would want to have Snape and Draco with him for that. Besides, if
he left either of them alone this evening, he thought there was a high
chance they would go into the hospital wing after Lily.

Harry didn't want her hurt more than she was. It was the \emph{end}. It
should have been the end a year ago, when he had taken her magic. He had
been a fool to agree to answering the letter in the first place.

\emph{You didn't know who it was from then.}

But he could have suspected, and avoided this, if he'd been just a bit
smarter.

Well, now he was. He was going to close off that part of his life. That
meant that he wouldn't hurt his mother further, and he would not let
anyone else hurt her, either. Let her cease to exist to him, as much as
though she had died when he was born. He need no longer remember what
she had said to him.

The trees ran out ahead of them, and then they came to a halt in a wide
clearing that Harry supposed must be the place. Snape halted, at least,
and glanced at Draco, who nodded.

Harry stared around inquiringly. The place seemed familiar, though he
couldn't make out the similarity until he turned around and saw an arch
of branches against the moon. He remembered those branches.

\emph{This is the clearing where Connor and I fought the Dark Lord in
first year.}

Harry gave a violent shiver, and Draco cast a warming charm on him
without being asked, drawing a little away to do so. Harry gave him a
faint smile. ``Thank you,'' he said, and Draco's gaze sharpened as his
voice limped and croaked.

``Harry---''

``Ah, Potter,'' said Lucius's voice. ``And Draco. And Severus. I did not
expect you, at least, to join us, Severus.''

``Lucius.'' Harry turned around in time to see Snape incline his head.
The expression on his face wasn't quite visible, but his voice was laden
with irony. ``What can I say? Circumstances change.''

``They certainly do,'' Lucius said. Harry realized he must have been at
the other side of the clearing, under the trees there. His robes were
starred with snow, and so was his hair, which he'd left free of his
cloak. He turned his head, and his eyes gleamed in the wand-light as
they fastened on Harry. Harry almost thought he saw a faint tightening
around their corners, but it vanished at once, and anything could have
caused it. ``Mr. Potter. I brought some other people with me. I thought
they would want to witness the end of our truce-dance, and they wish to
present you with gifts.''

Harry stiffened and lifted his head. ``No former Death Eaters except the
ones who are already allied with me, I hope, Lucius?''

Lucius laughed, a sound as sharp and cold as the wind on Harry's cheeks.
``Not at all, Mr. Potter. Hawthorn is here, and Adalrico, and Elfrida,
though she begs your pardon for not standing. Walking at this stage of
the pregnancy is difficult for her.'' He held out a hand, and another
figure stepped forward from the shadows to take his fingers. ``And, of
course, Narcissa is here, as you might have suspected she would be.''

Harry resolved not to show dismay. He had thought this gift-giving
ceremony would be private. He bowed to Narcissa. ``Mrs. Malfoy,'' he
said. ``I'm sorry, but I did not bring a gift for you, or for the other
guests.'' He had sent one to her already, a book of poetry by a witch
who had written some of the books on her library shelves.

Narcissa smiled at him, though it vanished when Harry moved a step
forward and she could see his face. Harry told himself sternly not to
flinch. If they could see some kind of change on his features, they were
still unlikely to remark on it. ``Harry,'' she said. ``I received your
beautiful book of poetry. Thank you. And I think you have misunderstood
the nature of our coming here. It is not often a truce-dance is
completed, and much less one such as this one, between a Declared Dark
wizard and one who is not Dark. We wished to congratulate you, and to
give you gifts. We ask for no return, however. In fact, we demand
none.''

Harry felt his chest tighten. He could think of only a few times and
places in wizarding history when it would be appropriate not to give
gifts to a powerful wizard. One of them was the formation of a cadre of
guards or companions who would make sure that the powerful wizard was
not exposed to danger while he attended to the business of Light or
Dark.

``I am not a Lord,'' he said quietly.

Narcissa smiled at him. ``We know that,'' she said. ``And we don't want
you to be, Harry, or to Declare for Light or Dark. No matter which you
chose, your choice would disappoint some of your allies. You are already
reaching out across both chasms. I received a letter from Tybalt
Starrise the other day, saluting me and asking formal permission to
consider himself a friend of my family. He thought he should, since he
is aware that you and I are in close alliance.''

``How?'' Harry asked in bewilderment. Tybalt hadn't even sent him a
formal salutation as yet, much less seemed aware of the way that Harry
was joined to the Malfoys. Now, Harry had to wonder how much his
manipulation in the Forbidden Forest had really fooled the son of
Starrise after all.

Narcissa shook her head slightly, her smile brilliant. ``Many people saw
us that day we visited the Ministry after your kidnapping, Harry. It is
becoming known. And now you will have people reaching out to you, asking
permission for formal alliances. And your allies must get to know each
other, of course. What good will it be for you if they do not?''

Harry bowed his head, a bit overwhelmed. Trying to match this happening
with the ideas that his mother had given him, that people would only
gather around him because they had vile magic or wanted something from
him---

He stopped his thoughts and slid them under the pool of quicksilver.
Draco had already noticed the swift burst of emotion, and slid close to
him, one hand reaching out to clasp Harry's. Harry nodded to him in
gratitude, then faced Narcissa again.

``There's still no need for you to dedicate yourselves to me the way
that the Death Eaters dedicated themselves to---'' He choked, unable to
say the name Voldemort just yet, after thinking how much like him he
was.

``We aren't doing that,'' said Narcissa. ``We can't be doing that,
because you aren't a Lord.'' She winked at Harry, as if the logic made
everything better. ``We're simply forming the core of a counterforce, one
that will fight the Death Eaters who go back to \emph{him}, and
Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix. Rosier's attack the other day, and
similar attacks on Hawthorn and Adalrico---both of which failed---taught
us that truth. You need us organized, Harry, not scattered and acting
alone and apart any more. So we shall become part of an organization
this night. We will give you gifts that symbolize that commitment. If
you give them back to us, or do something for us in return, then you'll
be rejecting our allegiance. So please don't do that.'' She ended with a
little curtsey that Harry decided was all right. He had bowed to her,
after all.

``All right,'' he said, swallowing hard.

Narcissa nodded to him, and then turned and gestured to the trees. Harry
saw an odd shadow floating out to meet them. He understood what it
was---a levitating chair---only when he made out Elfrida's shape
reclining in it.

She smiled at him. Harry had seen some pregnant women who looked
absolutely miserable, but, seven months gone, Millicent's mother only
looked radiantly happy. She didn't even appear heavy, more as if her
body had changed into some beautiful creature capable of protecting both
herself and Marian. Blankets thick with warming charms were tucked
around her, and Adalrico stood behind the litter, beaming proudly.

``Hello, Harry,'' Elfrida said, holding out a hand. Harry went forward
and clasped it, Draco moving closely at his side all the way. ``I am
glad that you are the one we're dedicating ourselves to. My commitment
will be less extensive than that of the others, of course, because I
have the oath to my children that must come first, but whatever I can do
for you, I will.''

``Thank you,'' said Harry, feeling ridiculously as if he were about to
start crying at any second.

Adalrico nodded when he caught Harry's eye. ``You need never worry about
my loyalty,'' he said, and then laughed. ``The Dark Lord made sure of
that, when he sent Rabastan Lestrange to kill me.''

Harry scanned him anxiously, but it appeared that he was fine, and had
taken no damage from the attack. ``What about Hawthorn?'' he asked.

``Here, Harry,'' said her voice, and she came forward.

Harry studied the pallor of her face with a frown until he remembered
that the full moon was only a few days past, and relaxed. Hawthorn
sniffed at him, and frowned back. Harry ignored that. He was sure that
his scent glamours would hold up, though a werewolf's nose was strongest
in the week on either side of the transformation.

``Who came after you?'' he asked.

``Bellatrix.'' Hawthorn's voice gave the words a low, snarling twist
that Harry thought was born more of satisfaction than anger. ``She went
away yelping for her pains, trailing blood from the arm that you had
already shortened for her.''

Harry refused to let himself think about taking body parts. He nodded.
``And you're resolved, too, to bind yourself to me?''

Hawthorn caught his eye. Her gaze said clearly that she wasn't about to
let him forget what they'd shared that one Friday she had come to the
school. ``Yes,'' she said, and that was enough.

Harry nodded again, and took a deep breath, and turned to Lucius. ``Then
we can finish the truce-dance, Mr. Malfoy,'' he said.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Lucius could feel a soul-deep thrill racing through his body. The
ancient magic had been growing steadily since Potter came into the
clearing, and now, with his statement, it was time for the end of the
dance.

Lucius was feeling emotions roil up in him now, all the excitement and
frustration and anger and wonder of the two years he and Potter had
danced this ritual. Even for someone who had Declared for the Dark
before he was out of Hogwarts, who had fought beside the Dark Lord in
his war, who had danced the pureblood dances almost before he could
speak, this was not something that happened often. The truce-dance took
a long time, and was fragile in the first stages. Most purebloods
trusted to some other kind of ritual to bind them to their enemies, or
former enemies. Marriage or joining had done the trick in the older
days.

It was the last step of the dance that caused the most consternation in
those who used it.

Lucius had anticipated this, though, since the Midsummer day in his
house when he and Potter had completed the third step of the dance and
he had begun to think that he would see it through to the end. There was
only one set of gifts that was fit to end such a sacred and mighty
waltz. Potter knew it, too, and his gaze lingered on Lucius's as both of
them backed away to opposite sides of the clearing.

He was not about to refuse or back out.

Lucius's heart gave one vivid jump, and then the wave of emotions
crested and broke. It was as himself that he went forward to meet
Potter, feeling young as he had not felt since Draco was born. It made
things even better that Severus was here to see this. Severus had shown
too much disdain for the pureblood dances at times, as was natural
coming from one raised without them.

He strode towards Potter, and the night around him came alive with
glittering blue swords of light. The truce-dance tightened around them,
and compelled them to finish things. The swords cut above Lucius's head,
and then flashed along beside him as he walked, defining a narrow
corridor of which he could not venture. He looked at them once from the
corner of his eye, and nodded. They were frost-blue, the blue of shadows
on snow. Everything was as it should be.

Potter was walking forward, too, his head up and his steps
preternaturally calm. He was no boy, Lucius thought, for all that his
age would have said so, and five years ago he would not have been able
to envision binding himself to someone this young.

But that was the mistake that Dumbledore had made. Lucius was certain of
it. To the old fool, children were pawns and always had been, and he
disdained their ability to be more than mindless soldiers. He had
underestimated Potter, and badly, and now he would pay part of the price
for it.

They met in the middle of the clearing, and the swords escorting Potter
and the ones escorting him met and melted together, into a blade of pure
power that hovered over their heads. It would fall on their necks should
one of them do something to hurt the other now. That was not going to
happen, Lucius thought in amusement as he dropped to one knee. He had
never understood the ancient purebloods who had thought that precaution
necessary.

Why would someone come this far and then back out? The magic around him
was song, was sweet smell, was pleasurable beyond belief. No hatred or
desire to betray could survive that.

Potter dropped to one knee in front of him. With all the growing he'd
done lately, he wasn't much shorter than Lucius in this posture. He met
Lucius's eyes, and Lucius saw no trace of wavering in him. He might have
been the one who started this dance, but Potter was the one who would
finish it.

``No gift is fit to carry the conclusion of a ritual so powerful,''
Potter whispered, ``but magic itself.''

Lucius nodded. Potter would have known that, of course. But usually, the
wizard who gave the gift had the choice of what it would be. Lucius had
demanded the right to specify his gift, though, and Potter was going to
let him.

``I wish you to give me the power to speak Parseltongue,'' Lucius
whispered.

Potter nodded. ``I thought you would say that,'' he murmured, and then
reached one hand towards his chest as the blue glow of the sword above
them brightened and turned deep green, the color of forest leaves in the
darkness. Lucius hid his amusement and curiosity. Potter's soul was that
deep green color, then, primarily. He would have to go back to his books
to identify the many meanings that shade could carry.

Potter touched his chest, and long trails of deep green power flowed out
of his skin and coiled in his palm. He moved his fingers and blew on
them, and the magic drifted towards Lucius, wrapped around him, and sunk
in.

Lucius closed his eyes. The magic joined his heartbeat, a second echoed
beat, and then settled fully into him. Potter still possessed the power
to speak to snakes, of course, but he had shared his gift. Lucius was
now the third living Parselmouth in Britain.

Lucius opened his eyes. Potter, understanding what he wanted, had
already moved so that the serpent badge on his robes was right in front
of Lucius's eyes.

``A pity that snake will not animate,'' Lucius said, and saw Potter's
eyes widen slightly before he smiled back.

``That would be a useful weapon,'' he said, and Lucius could hear the
others gasping, faintly. Even more faintly, he could make out the sound
of the hisses that Potter was actually giving. ``Alas, I hardly think the
Headmaster would approve of \emph{more} snakes slithering around
Hogwarts.''

Lucius nodded once, satisfied. He had barely admitted to anyone, ever,
his admiration of Parselmouths, his wish to be one. Such dreams were for
children, and he had not been a child since he was five. It had been the
reason he had come to hear the Dark Lord speak in the first place,
though not the only reason he had decided to follow him. The languid
hissing sliding out of the Dark Lord's mouth as he conversed with his
snakes was a marvel, and to hear snakes \emph{respond\ldots{}}

Lucius could not wait until the first time that happened.

He noticed that Potter's gaze was fixed on him, calmly, patiently,
waiting, and he reached towards his own chest. Gray-blue power slipped
out and snared his fingers as a solid thing, with a faint cold touch,
like mist. He held out his hand to Potter, and Potter clasped it without
speaking, as was proper, accepting the gift Lucius offered.

As it happened, Lucius had judged this gift carefully, and he did not
think it less valuable than the Parseltongue that Potter had given him,
especially since Narcissa had told him what she believed Harry would do
and think and feel in the end.

Potter blinked, and shuddered, and looked puzzled for a moment. Then his
eyes snapped up to Lucius's face.

``The blue-gray color,'' he breathed. ``That was the color of your Manor
and your old family crest.''

Lucius inclined his head. ``You are now linked to the Manor's wards,
accepted as one of the family,'' he said. ``You will be able to pass in
and out of the house at will, though anyone who comes with you and is
\emph{not} a Malfoy in blood will still need to be verified with the
wards. You are welcome to us, always. You may command our house elves.''
He saw Potter's eyes spark at that, but he listened in patient silence.
Lucius approved. This dance was old, and not the place for whatever new
notions Potter might have. ``You will be recognized by old family
treasures which would not normally respond to any wizard but one born a
Malfoy. In good measure, you are ours now, Harry.''

Potter did not react to the sudden change of name, unless the deeper
inclination of his head sprang from that, and Lucius did not really
think it did. ``Thank you, Lucius. This is a princely gift.''

Lucius smiled at him. ``I feel yours is as well.''

The magic swelled around them at that, the sword descending until Lucius
felt the cold metal on the back of his neck. Then it turned warm, and
ran away like water, and the dance ended, and they were bound.

Lucius smirked at the others as he stood and walked away from Harry.
Narcissa's gaze was soft, as well it might be. Lucius had explained to
her what he meant to do, and she had entirely approved.

\emph{He will be tied closely to all of us, but he is now bound most
closely to the Malfoys. We have the largest claim on him. When the war
is done and the normal round of life resumes, we shall have an advantage
with him that no one else does.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry backed slowly away from Lucius, dazed. He really had not expected
that, and he was still trying to determine just how he felt about it.

Draco caught his eye and smiled at him, and Harry was reminded that he
had wanted to give Draco his Christmas gift when he would feel best that
evening. He did now, the ancient pleasure of the magic, the ritual
repeated so many times that the magic had a life of its own, still
sliding across his skin. He lifted his hands and cast out a skein of
light between them.

He had once calmed his destructive magic by creating things. He had not
determined to do this so that he would have the solace of creation, but
it made the gift he was about to give even better, after what had
happened to him.

``Merry Christmas, Draco,'' he whispered, when he was sure that he had
Draco's attention, and then remembered.

He turned and spun the light, pouring the memories into it much as he
had poured the happy memories of his life with Connor into the memory
album. This time, though, they took the form of images, scenes he had
lived through with Draco.

He chose their first flying lesson, even though at the time he had been
furious at Draco for making him show off in front of other people. Now,
though, it was rather funny to see Draco lob Neville's Remembrall into
the air and himself chase after it, especially because he could remember
the exact infuriating smirk on Draco's face when he caught the little
ball and turned around.

He let that scene waver and melt into one of the many study sessions
he'd shared with Draco that first year. They'd shared the same Defense
Against the Dark Arts book, since Draco had lost his that evening. Harry
still hadn't been very trusting, then, but he had let Draco settle in
the chair next to him and bend his head over the book beside his. Harry
let the colors of the scene slide into a soft light that he knew hadn't
come from the fireplace that evening, just to show Draco how supremely,
deeply content he had been then, though he hadn't realized it at the
time.

Then came the first party after he'd won a Quidditch game against the
Ravenclaw team, and Draco laughing at him when he cast a hex on Blaise,
and him teaching Draco spells, and their meeting in Diagon Alley the
summer before second year, and a conversation in the hospital wing when
Harry had still been trying to keep Draco from realizing that the dairy
affecting his mind had come from Lucius, and flashes of the Chamber of
Secrets tunnel where Draco had walked just behind him into the heart of
danger---nothing closer to the Chamber than that; the direct memory
still hurt too much for Harry to touch it---and some of the time he'd
spent with Draco over the summer afterwards, and how he'd reached out
for Draco when he missed his friend after two weeks apart, and how Draco
had spoken to him before he went home for Christmas last year, and the
way he'd come dashing out of the Manor when Harry had shown up there,
and the talk they'd had in the hospital wing at the end of last year,
and the apology Draco had given him after he'd summoned Julia and been
doused with empathy, and an image of them curled up in bed together.

He ended with a memory he hadn't actually seen from outside, but thought
he could imagine well enough: that of Draco hugging him tonight, just
before they journeyed to the clearing. He smiled at Draco over the top
of the skein of light, and then parted his hands and let it flow away.

He didn't think he could put the memories into a Pensieve and keep them
around. They would be too intense for everyday sight. But as a special
gift, as a way of showing Draco how much he meant to him, he could do
this, yes.

Draco was staring at him with an expression that Harry \emph{knew} he
had never seen on his face before. He looked slightly flushed, and tears
stood glittering in his eyes. But he reached out a hand, and Harry went
to him without hesitation.

Draco didn't try to pull him into an embrace, just looked at him. Harry
forced himself to meet that gaze head-on. If Draco had heard what his
mother had said to him, there would be questions later, he knew.

But Draco just nodded for now, and whispered, ``I have something to tell
you. It's important. Give me---give me a little while, and I can tell
you.''

Harry couldn't keep his brows from arching in curiosity, but his allies
were waiting at their backs, so he nodded back and said, ``All right. I
can wait.''

He turned and met their eyes. Hawthorn and Adalrico had knelt, while
Elfrida had settled further back into her chair. Narcissa, of all of
them, stood in the forefront, her gaze direct and her smile warm.

``To you, Harry Potter, I pledge my loyalty and my faith,'' she said.
``And as a token of that loyalty and my faith, I give you this.'' She
came forward and gently laid something down at his feet.

Harry picked it up. It was a small hand mirror, made of black wood, with
a silvery face. He looked up at her in question.

``This is one of the Black treasures,'' said Narcissa, ``the one I
remember the best from when I was a girl. I couldn't resist picking it
up when we went---where we went.'' Harry almost smiled when he realized
how reluctant she was to mention the name of the Black house in front of
his allies, but he didn't, because it would have been a smile of
amusement, and this was not that kind of moment. ``Look into the mirror,
and it will show you images of the place that my ancestors claimed they
came from. A country of fire and air. It's lovely.''

Harry blinked. ``Why?''

``For when you can find nothing beautiful around you,'' said Narcissa,
and gave him a deep, sad smile. Her voice dropped. ``I felt an explosion
of Dark magic before you came to us, and the trees hindered our purpose
in walking to the clearing. You had an encounter with someone who meant
you harm, and I recognize the look in your eyes from the summer you
spent with us. It was one of your parents.''

Harry hastily dropped his eyes. Narcissa's hand brushed his hair, and
then she turned and walked away so that Hawthorn could come forward.

``To you, Harry Potter, I pledge my loyalty and my faith.'' Hawthorn's
voice was deeper than Narcissa's, laden with a different music, and she
placed a pot with a vine growing out of it at his feet. ``Our home is
called the Garden, and many Parkinsons for the last hundred years have
taken the names of flowers. What I've brought you is a small plant
enchanted to bear hawthorn blossoms. Speak into them, and I will hear
you, wherever I am.''

Harry blinked. ``I thought hawthorn plants were, well, bigger.''

Hawthorn laughed at him, lolling her tongue slowly from her mouth.
``That is why I enchanted one to bear you flowers, Harry, and not simply
brought you a bush,'' she said, and then backed off.

Adalrico came forward, and dipped his head. ``To you, Harry Potter, we
pledge our loyalty and our faith,'' he said. ``I speak for my wife as
well as myself.'' Harry nodded. He'd expected that, given Elfrida's
condition and her training. ``We, perhaps, do not do as well as the
others. One gives you a gift of peace, another a gift that will bring
her aid. We give you a gift of war.''

He handed a small object to Harry that Harry quickly realized was a
sheathed knife. He hissed to himself, but he did not think it was the
same thing as the knife Lucius had sent him for one of his truce-gifts.
He drew the blade, and gasped slightly. It appeared to be made of gold,
though the glittering edge said it wasn't; gold would have been too
soft. He touched it with one finger and glanced up questioningly at
Adalrico.

``One of my ancestors fell in love with a Lady of the Light,'' said
Adalrico softly. ``But she would not have him, which is not surprising,
since he was Declared Dark and had aided the Dark Lord that Lady
defeated. He created this knife to symbolize what he could not have. The
hilt is forged of the same rock that makes up Blackstone's walls. The
knife blade is sunlight that he captured on a Midsummer evening---the
last ray as the sun sank beneath the horizon on the day of longest
light.''

``I can't take this,'' Harry whispered. ``It's too precious.''

``You must,'' said Adalrico, and folded his hands firmly around the
knife. ``My ancestor succeeded better than he knew. The hilt is Dark,
and amenable enough to our hands. But the blade is Light, and she has
never been happy with us. She twists rather than strike true. She shines
more for you already than I have seen her do for anyone else. Let her
stay where she will be happy.''

Harry nodded, and swallowed, and slipped the knife into his robe pocket.
Adalrico bowed to him and stepped away.

``Is there anything else?'' Harry asked, unable to believe it could end
so abruptly, but unable to think of any other rituals that were
required, either. He hadn't even known he would meet the rest of his
allies here, and so he'd planned nothing for greeting anyone other than
Lucius.

``I had one question.''

Harry nodded and turned to face Lucius, who had his head cocked to one
side, his hair slipping over his eyes. ``Ask it.''

``We felt an explosion of Dark magic before you came to us,'' Lucius
said softly. ``We felt it yearning towards the stars, and then it folded
away again. We knew it must have been you. What caused that?''

Harry found himself fighting the temptation to sink to the ground again.
He drew in a deep breath, and said, ``My mother came to speak to me.''

Lucius's eyes widened slightly. Harry wondered why. Had he not thought
that Lily Potter was still alive?

\emph{No. Wait. He knows something about the prophecy now, or at least
the information surrounding the prophecy. That means---}

``Your mother made you that angry,'' said Lucius. ``Most parents do not
do that when they are merely contradicting their children, and you are
not a child who takes so ill to a parent's high-handed decree. She could
not have been in danger, or you would have brought her with you. You did
not meet happily.'' He nodded, as though to say he were satisfied with
his own reasoning. ``What did she do to you?''

Harry could feel Draco trembling beside him, yearning to tell. Snape
said nothing. He \emph{would} say nothing, Harry knew, as much because
he felt out of place here as because he would not betray Harry's
secrets. But Draco was a danger, especially because he had heard so
much. And this was his father. He would see almost nothing wrong with
telling him.

``Lucius,'' said Harry. ``Leave it.''

``We cannot,'' said Adalrico, with a dawning note of horror in his
voice. ``Your mother. What can she have done?''

``You came broken to our home after your mother finished with you last
Christmas,'' said Narcissa, and then her eyes widened as if she were
listening to herself. ``A year and a day,'' she said. ``Did she come to
demand vengeance? And what can she have done? I know you, Harry, and you
are not one to let your magic fly simply because your mother made an
unreasonable demand of you. What did she say? What do?''

Harry shook his head. ``No,'' he breathed. ``I will not speak of this
with you.''

Lucius made a noise. Harry looked at him, and blinked. He had not
realized that Lucius had enough soul left in him to look sickened.
``Harry, was there---''

``\emph{Do not push me, Lucius.}''

Harry allowed a bit of his power to flare out from his shields along
with his words, and that silenced Lucius immediately. Everyone in the
clearing was staring at him now, except Draco, who was clinging to his
side like a monkey again, and Snape, who murmured soothing words while
looking away so that Harry could have at least one gaze off him. Harry
nodded.

``It is over and done,'' said Harry, when he thought he could speak
without hitting someone, either with his fist or with a slap of power.
``I see no reason to speak of it again. I see no reason for anyone to
confront her. It is \emph{done}. Pushing matters further in the past
only resulted in blood feuds, in endless conflicts between families.'' He
was privately impressed with himself for managing such cool words when
his insides were vibrating like plucked harpstrings. ``You are my
allies, and I do not think this an unreasonable request.'' He turned his
eyes to Adalrico, Elfrida, and Hawthorn. ``You swore formal alliance
with me, and so you are my family's friends as well as mine. You cannot
take up arms or magic against them.''

He glanced over his shoulder at the Malfoys. ``You are not my family's
allies, but we are bonded closely,'' he said, ``more closely than ever
now since the completion of the truce-dance. This is the end. It is
\emph{enough}. I want no one to touch my mother again. I want to forget
about her.''

``Your wounds still bleed,'' said Lucius, the strange expression
lingering on his face. ``That is enough reason to destroy her.''

Harry forced his eyes to remain blank and calm as he watched Lucius. ``I
will attack you if you harm her,'' he said softly. ``I'll suffer the
backlash of magic from the broken truce, of course, but I am strong
enough to survive. I am the one she hurt. \emph{I} should be the one to
decide what vengeance is given, and I say there will be no more.''

``This would be the meting out of justice,'' Lucius spat, a more
familiar anger working its way back into his eyes.

Harry shrugged. ``I do not care,'' he said flatly. ``This. Is. Ended.''

Lucius only shook his head slowly, as though he could not comprehend how
Harry thought, but he turned away without another word. Narcissa
lingered, looking hard at Harry. Harry refused to meet her eyes, and in
the end, she followed her husband.

Hawthorn opened her mouth, but in the end, she had to leave, and so did
Adalrico. Both of them had made the terms of their alliance willingly;
neither could harm James, Lily, or Connor. Elfrida did stare hard at
Harry, pressing his hand.

``If you had been my own,'' she said, ``I would have raised you with
love, and with more pride in the strength of your magic than fear of
you.''

Harry couldn't suppress a wince, but he told himself it was only a lucky
guess that let Elfrida pierce so close to the heart of the matter, and
not truth. ``Thank you,'' he said, and kissed her cheek.

Her chair floated away, with Adalrico close beside her. Harry took
several deep breaths, his head clearing, and then turned and met Snape's
and Draco's gazes.

``And now?'' Snape asked, his voice emotionless.

``Now,'' said Harry, picking up the mirror and the hawthorn plant,
shrinking them, and slipping them into his pockets, ``we go to
Dumbledore.''

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Albus knew they were coming long before they reached his office. That
was not solely because of the wards on Hogwarts, either, or because of
the spells he had cast on his moving staircase to let him know when
someone was nearing his door.

He knew they would come when Lily failed. They would know where this had
begun, and they would seek out the one they blamed for this, and
doubtless try to hurt him.

Albus was even inclined to let them---up to a point.

The door opened, and the young Malfoy heir led the way. He walked in
front of Harry, as though he were a guard. At Harry's back came Severus,
his face gone so blank that Albus was reminded of the way he had looked
while awaiting his trial on charges of being a Death Eater and war
criminal.

Harry stepped around Draco Malfoy and looked at Albus.

Albus looked back, his heart aching. He had made a very bad mistake. He
had underestimated Harry, thinking of him as only a mass of needs and
emotions that he understood very well. After all, was not Harry the
product of Lily's training? And had he not himself trained Lily, taught
her to distinguish between selfishness and the world's need, inured her
to sacrifice?

But Harry had changed enough in the period between the time he arrived
at Hogwarts and now that he had become more than those needs. Albus had
been aware of that, dimly, but he had thought that he need only
emotionally exhaust Harry, and then isolate him with Lily, in order to
turn him back into what he had been, the trained savior that the world
so badly needed. People with less damaged minds than Harry had been
turned that way. Albus knew the Death Eaters had used the technique.

Lily had misstepped. Harry's eyes were uncompromising, and Albus
prepared himself for a list of demands.

``I consider that I have no truce with you,'' said Harry, speaking in a
voice of flat, utter calm. Albus had heard wizards use that voice right
before they committed suicide, or induced others to commit it. ``You
have broken it badly enough that I have no more obligations to you. I
ask only noninterference. If you do not hurt me further, then I shall be
content to ignore you.''

``And the war?'' Albus had to ask, since that was the reason he had
sacrificed Harry and Lily and Peter and many other people in the first
place.

``Neutral allies, perhaps.'' Harry looked almost indifferent. He would
not let Albus touch him again; that was plain in his stance and his
voice, even while Draco and Severus looked at him incredulously. ``I
have no objection to your helping Connor and me fight against Voldemort.
That does not mean that I will consider a close working arrangement. And
while I accept that I can do nothing about Connor's being in the
Tournament by now, I will hurt you again if you hurt him.''

Albus sat in silence. This was both more and less than he had expected.
He was grateful that he would not have to pay too heavy a price for his
mistakes, but he could not see what Harry was gaining from this.

\emph{I must be sure,} he thought, meeting those blank, hard green eyes.
\emph{He's a grown man now, I see that, but I don't know what kind of
man he is, and I must, for the world to be safe.}

``And Lily?'' he asked.

``Keep her away from me,'' said Harry, ``unless I ever specifically
indicate that I want to see her again. Save her foot, if you can. Do not
mention her name to me. I have no more interest in seeing this splashed
across the front page of the \emph{Daily Prophet} than you do. But so
far as I am concerned, I am an orphan now. I am going to write back to
my father tomorrow and explain the situation to him.''

``You can't mean that, Harry!''

That was Draco, bursting out with all the passion of one still a child.
Albus had seen how he fought Lily, though. He wondered if he should have
to consider this boy also a young man, and what it would mean if he did.

``You think I should give James another chance?'' Harry looked at Draco
in gentle inquiry.

``Not that!'' Draco waved one hand. ``You have to demand more than that
from this fool! Answers, money, that he let you whip him until he
bleeds\ldots{}\emph{something}!''

Harry turned and met Albus's eyes. Albus flinched.

``But I know why he did it,'' said Harry softly, into the sudden
terrible silence. ``He wanted to keep everything as it had been. And now
he's seen that won't work. He nearly had a second Dark Lord on his hands
this evening. I know that he won't try something like that again. We
understand each other now.'' A faint mocking tone touched his voice on
the last words.

``And I know why it's better to leave him alive and not attack him,''
Harry said. ``He's a Light Lord, though he so rarely uses his magic that
most people forget that. He's stronger than I am. If I tried to destroy
him, he would resist, and that might destroy Hogwarts, Scotland---let us
be realistic, half of Britain. I will hurt him only if I must, only if
he interferes with me again.''

Albus inclined his head. A terrible upset was growing in him, but he
could give it no name as yet.

``And he's Headmaster of Hogwarts,'' Harry went on. ``He's tied into the
wards of the school. In the last extremity, the school will obey him. I
don't fancy giving him hostages to work his will with.''

``You can bring him to court.'' That was Severus, his voice soft, so
soft, and bitter. \emph{Of course,} Albus thought, as he gazed at his
old pupil. \emph{He has been before the Wizengamot twice now, and not
truly believed he deserved it either time.} ``Tell everyone what he has
done. They would prevent him from remaining Headmaster, and the Aurors
do have ways of binding even Lords who have done wrong.''

Albus narrowed his eyes and lifted his head. ``Did you think I would let
you do that, Severus?'' he asked.

Severus's eyes stared through him, dark and still.

``I told you before,'' said Harry. ``I won't have that. I won't have my
so-called parents food for every carrion crow come to feast. I won't
embarrass Connor that way. I won't have everyone knowing what---what
happened to me.'' He shook his head. ``They are not to see.''

Albus felt a sudden surge of gratitude towards Lily. \emph{That she
trained him to shun public notice might yet be the salvation of us all.}

``But they should be punished, Harry,'' Draco insisted.

``I'm not interested in casting blame.'' Harry gave him a flat look. ``I
told you, I want this ended, cut off so it can't grow any further. That
means turning my back on notions of owing them anything else, but it
also means giving up the notion of vengeance.''

``I hate it,'' whispered Draco.

``I know.'' Harry put a hand on his shoulder and kept it there, acting
as if he had forgotten Albus were watching. ``But it's done.''

Albus gave a name, finally, to the feeling rising in his chest. He would
have preferred it if Harry had stormed into the office, denouncing him
and Lily and preparing to extract a pound of flesh in payment. This
quiet, cold way of burying everything in silence was the way a pure
Slytherin would take vengeance.

\emph{If he is everything that Lily made him, then she sculpted him into
a Slytherin, and my advice helped that. We ruined our own plans.}

That was too upsetting to think about for right now, so Albus nodded and
gave his consent to Harry's terms. There was really nothing else he
could do, and this time, he had no notion of violating them. All his
plans so far had foundered on the rocks of Harry's personality. He would
have to rebuild them from the ground up.

For some reason, though, what haunted him when the three Slytherins had
left his office was not Harry's cold gaze or his words, but Severus's
eyes, dark and implacable as the deeps of space.

And as unforgiving.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

He and Draco were back in their room---luckily, with Blaise and Vince
both in the common room bragging about dancing with their dates---before
Harry thought to ask, ``I thought you had a Christmas present for me,
Draco?''

Draco flushed, surprisingly. ``Yeah,'' he said. ``My mum slipped it to
me while you were dancing with my father.'' He looked down. ``But it
feels silly next to the one you gave me.''

``\emph{Draco.}''

The word was enough. Draco took a deep breath and slid a flat box out of
his robes, which must have been enchanted to insure that it didn't bulge
and distort the cloth oddly.

``Merry Christmas, Harry,'' he whispered.

Harry opened the box eagerly. The other gifts he had received this night
had been grand and solemn, and he valued what they represented more than
he could value them for themselves. But Draco was outside that. Draco
was not just an ally to him, and that made his gifts more than just
truce-promises.

Harry found a wizard's chess set inside. He picked up one of the pieces,
and stared. It was a Hungarian Horntail, carved as if it were crouched
over a nest of eggs. As he watched, it flexed its wings and turned to
glance up at him.

Rooting through the rest of the box, he found that all the pieces were
dragons. The queens were Horntails in flight, the kings Welsh Greens
with their wings half-spread, the pawns tiny dragonets, the rooks the
Horntails on their nests, the bishops snarling Chinese Fireballs that
warmed his fingers when he touched them, and the knights rearing
Antipodean Opaleyes. All of them moved on their own, even if it was only
to swivel their eyes and roar, and all were colored in the appropriate
hues for their scales.

Harry shook his head and swallowed, then looked up. ``It's
\emph{wonderful,}'' he said. ``How?''

Draco blushed. ``I owled the instructions to my mother,'' he said. ``She
got it made. But I paid for it out of my own vault. I wanted you to have
it, Harry. The dragons didn't leave you enough of themselves. At least
you can remember them now.''

Harry carefully set the set on the bed and grabbed Draco, tugging him to
him hard enough to make the dragons bounce and snarl in their box. He
held his friend tight, until Draco made a muffled complaint about
breathing. Then he muttered into his ear, ``You idiot. It's perfect.''

Draco shivered, which was odd, and made Harry wonder if he still had a
bit of melting snow down his neck or something. But he pulled back with
a pleased smile and said, ``I'm glad you like it. Do you want to play?''

Harry was more than happy to start playing. It distracted Draco from
asking questions that he didn't want asked, for one thing.

But it also made Draco's face flush further when he found out that the
Chinese Fireballs were resistant to being moved, and he argued with
several of them, while they responded by trying to bite his fingers off.
For some reason, Harry found, he really liked watching Draco when his
eyes were bright and he was animated like that.

\chapter{Interlude: SelfRecording Pensieves}\label{chapter-48-interlude-selfrecording-pensieves}

\emph{Jane Blane}

\emph{Committee On Experimental Potions}

\emph{December 31st, 1994}

Dear Madam Blane:

I wish to register the creation of a new potion with your Committee. I
have completed the necessary forms (see attached packet), and this
letter is only to give a short description of the potion for your
records.

I invented this potion to mimic the properties of a Pensieve. It has the
silvery color and texture of thoughts placed into a Pensieve, and holds
memories, as they do. However, this potion takes the strongest memories
of a certain specific mind in the room with it, the first new one to
enter once its creator has placed it into a bottle made of glass (see
attached packet, especially forms C.1 and D.4, for details on the
necessity of a glass container), and contains them. The creator of the
potion must usually speak to this new person in order to facilitate
certain memories floating to the forefront of the mind. Also, while the
Pensieve Potion can contain a great many memories, and store them very
fast, it is sometimes a tedious task to sort through them. Each
container of the potion can be used only once, and only on the first
person other than the creator to enter the room where it is present;
should a second person enter the room, it will not record his memories.
All these are limitations of the potion that I intend to work out as my
research continues.

Suggested uses: instructing students, testing the veracity of suspected
criminals, providing testimony at trial.

I await your word on whether you will allow the production of this
potion, and hope to find favor in your eyes.

I am,

\emph{Professor Severus Snape}

\emph{Potions Master}

\emph{Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry}.

\chapter{Election Day}\label{chapter-49-election-day}

The Muggles had never been able to see the last tower in the Tower of
London, where the Ministry had kept its voting owls for four hundred
years. Rather than following the usual practice of cloaking it in
illusions of a ruined bit of stonework, the original family that had hit
upon the idea of the voting owls, the Light-devoted Gloryflowers, had
Disillusioned the whole thing.

Rufus steadied himself on the uppermost level of a tower that he'd had
to climb by feel, and shivered in the push of an impatient gust of wind,
and decided that it was still---mostly---an excellent idea.

He turned and extended his hand, helping Amelia out of the last archway,
though his murmured warning to duck her head came too late. She cursed
under her breath, and then climbed up and stood beside him. Rufus heard
her swallow as they looked out over the expanse of Muggle London, draped
in snow and in silence. It was the first day of January, the first day
of the new year.

\emph{And the day of our election.}

Rufus found he was grinning. It was highly unusual for him to smile that
much, but he couldn't really help it. Things were \emph{changing.} He
might love the law, but he had no objection to change, especially when
he thought it would improve the law.

``I never thought I would be standing here,'' Amelia murmured.

Rufus turned to her and raised his eyebrows in an expression of polite
disbelief. Oh, certainly, Amelia had been shocked that Fudge had gone as
far as he had, but she had moved too quickly and smoothly, both before
and after the vote of no confidence, to establish her own candidacy.
Rufus didn't think that he would really believe her if she admitted to
no ambition.

Amelia tossed her head impatiently. ``All right, I didn't know that I
would be standing here \emph{now},'' she said.

Rufus could share that sentiment. ``Neither did I,'' he murmured, as he
began walking carefully along the narrow path of invisible stone set
before them, one hand resting on the outer wall to guide him. The wall
was only up to his waist, not really as high as he could have wished. It
was impossible for anyone but the candidates in a Ministerial election
to alter the Tower, though---another Gloryflower addition---and Rufus
certainly didn't have the inclination or the talent to work stone. ``I
did think Cornelius would be Minister for another good ten years. Or
perhaps not good, not under Cornelius, but at least not intolerably
bad.''

``But he was,'' said Amelia, hurrying after him.

Rufus cast an incredulous glance back at her, before understanding the
gleam in her eyes. She wasn't asking for reassurance. She was
challenging him to say that she could possibly have acted wrongly. Rufus
relaxed.

``He was,'' he agreed. ``And just think, we might not have known until
too late if it wasn't for Harry Potter.'' He saw the gleam of metal
ahead, and stepped back, bowing. Amelia had arranged this election. It
was only right that she go first.

``The child disturbs me,'' Amelia muttered, as she took the honor with a
nod to him. ``Lords don't appear from nowhere like that. Dumbledore's
coming was like a storm slowly rolling over Britain, and there were
rumors of You-Know-Who for a long time before he showed his face.''

``I do not think he has evil intentions.'' Rufus had already had this
argument several times. e He found it amusing that everyone around him
kept thinking he would change his mind about the boy.

``I just find it unnatural,'' Amelia murmured, and this time Rufus
deliberately didn't warn her to duck her head as she passed under the
arched door into the last invisible room. ``Ouch!''

Rufus held his laughter, and followed her, almost crouching. They could
still see outside, but there were walls around them; the wind was cut to
almost nothing. And around them sat the only part of the Tower not under
the Disillusionment Charm: thousands of small, perfectly wrought golden
owls, with emerald eyes.

Rufus froze with admiration. It was one thing to hear about them, or see
one of them flying with a ballot in its belly, another to see them
gathered all together. These were Gloryflower creations, too. The Dark
families had a tradition of making artificial animals of the kind that
crawled on corpses or hid in abandoned houses---spiders, snakes, rats,
centipedes---but the Light ones made beautiful and useful
creatures---horses, unicorns, owls.

He barely breathed as he reached out and touched one of the owls on its
cold breast. A moment after he touched it, it lit with sparks of warmth
under his fingers, and the owl turned its head. Emerald eyes surveyed
Rufus for a moment. Rufus held still and waited, patiently. He had
already passed the first test---the owls would respond only to the touch
of an actual declared candidate for the Minister's post---but he had to
wait for the bird to inspect him. The Gloryflowers had not kept control
of the owls in their family, but bound them to the Tower and the
candidates for the position. Rufus could feel the ancient magic all
around him, surging through owl after owl, awakening them one after one,
singing and roaring in the invisible stone.

The wave met the wave coming from the owl Amelia had touched, opposite
the one he had, and collided with it. For a moment, it was like a
meeting of two breakers, and Rufus thought he felt the Tower tremble.
Then the waves melted into one another, and he and Amelia stood in the
middle of a joined ring.

The owls surged up into the air as one, their wings spreading and
catching the harsh New Year's wind. In a moment, they spun around and
hurtled out the windows that they could see, though Rufus would only
have been able to find them by feel. They exploded in dozens of
different directions the moment they were out, heading off to every
wizard seventeen or older in Britain---well, the ones who weren't
incapacitated by legal restrictions such as being in prison from voting,
anyway. They would coast down to each wizard or witch and spit out the
ballots already growing in their bellies. The wizard or witch must write
down a choice for Minister and return the ballots to the owls. Every
bird would be back in the Tower by nightfall, and Rufus and Amelia,
together, would count the ballots. The owls' magic would keep them
honest, just as it would prevent anyone else from interfering with their
flight.

``Well,'' said Amelia, when the last owl was out of sight, traveling
like a small golden comet flung through stars, ``what now?''

Rufus cast a warming charm, and conjured a chair in the corner of the
room. ``Now we sit down and compare plans for what we're going to do
when we become Minister,'' he said. ``Excuse me. For when \emph{I} become
Minister.''

Amelia rolled her eyes and conjured a chair of her own. ``You can dream,
Rufus. No one ever said that you weren't ambitious.''

``No, they didn't,'' said Rufus, and began, patiently, to outline the
new way the Aurors would work, and how Amelia would have to prepare for
several unexpected losses in that department if he won---or even if he
didn't.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``For whom are you voting, Severus?''

Snape gave McGonagall a distrustful look as he took the ballot from the
voting owl's beak. She had been pestering him since the night of the
Yule Ball for details of Harry's mental state and magic, and when he had
refused to give them to her, she'd retreated into these useless
pleasantries, as if she really thought that they would persuade him to
relax his guard.

``It's none of your business,'' he said, and quickly scrambled the name,
and returned it to the owl. The little creature swallowed the ballot and
lifted, skimming towards the windows of the Great Hall, instinctively
avoiding the other birds, both real and artificial, headed the same way.
Snape watched, almost hoping that someone would try to grab his owl, but
no one did. Too bad. The punishment for interfering with a voting owl
was amusing to watch: a crippling lightning-like shock to the fingers,
which kept someone from being able to write for the rest of the day.

``I might as well tell you that I voted for Scrimgeour,'' said
McGonagall, and leaned back in her chair, surveying the students eating
in the Great Hall with a kind of lazy indolence.

Snape watched her in silence. He had no objection to taking knowledge of
her when she offered it on a silver platter like this, and she might as
well be saying that she'd abandoned the Headmaster. She knew that
Scrimgeour and Dumbledore didn't get along, and she had voted for him
anyway.

``Why?'' Snape asked quietly. He meant several different things by it,
on several different resonances. He wondered if she would pick up on all
of them.

Her smile was ever so slightly bitter. ``I tried to speak to him about
a---problem I had with my upper-year Gryffindors, and I spoke to him
about your imprisonment. Neither helped. He put me off with platitudes,
and with phrases like `the implacable logic of war.' He talked about not
being able to change anything, or disrupt the normal course of law in
wizarding Britain. And then it turned out that he did vote to depose
Fudge and free you, after all, when I hadn't thought he would do so. I
know that I didn't pay the prices for that, Severus. I'm afraid that
Harry did.''

Snape froze. He had been trying to observe all he could of the other
Slytherins and the way they acted around Harry, since he knew it was
different now, but no one had so far hinted that Harry had given any
sacrifices to free him. ``Do you know what it was?'' he asked.

McGonagall shook her head. ``He missed my class the Friday before the
First Task, and Draco Malfoy fainted in it. There were rumors that
Hawthorn Parkinson had escorted Harry back to bed in the Slytherin
common room. He had some kind of tipping point, Severus, but I don't
know what it was.'' She closed her eyes, as though running the events
over again in her mind, then opened them. They had the gleam of a cat
chasing down a mouse. ``He did receive a letter that morning.''

\emph{From his mother, perhaps?}

Snape snarled and stood. He would have to find Harry and have this out
with him, one way or another. In the days since Christmas, Harry had
effectively stonewalled both him and Draco, saying that he didn't want
to talk about what had happened with Lily, that it was done and that was
quite enough. He would talk about spells, Dark Arts, most of what he'd
done during Snape's imprisonment, potions, what he thought of
Scrimgeour's chances to become the new Minister---anything but what was
most important to heal and not just freeze his wounds.

Snape could not imagine Harry breaking down over a letter unless the
letter was from Lily. And if Harry had written back to her as part of
any bargain to get Snape free\ldots{}

\emph{My Slytherins have him accepting help more readily than he would
otherwise. It is now time to make him} listen \emph{when we ask him not
to do things that are sacrifices for him or injurious to his mental
health.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry leaned back on his pillow and thoughtfully turned James's latest
letter over and over in his hands. He had written and explained that he
didn't want to see his father again, nor have him be concerned over
Harry. He would do nothing to interfere in his relationship with Connor,
but he had seen Lily again and she had convinced him that he was done
with parents.

James had sent back this letter, as if he didn't like Harry's cutting
off of contact. Perhaps it would simply say that James would be the one
to decide how and if they cut off contact, Harry thought, with a quiver
of a smile.

He supposed it would not do much harm if he read it. He certainly did
not have to respond, did not feel bound, as he had with his mother---

Harry strangled the thought, which he'd become good at doing, and slid
its corpse under the pools of his mind with the corpses of all the other
thoughts about her. He slit the envelope and drew out the letter. It was
a simple message, and short.

\emph{Dear Harry:}

\emph{You told me that you had not looked into the Pensieve. Until you
do, you will not understand why I cannot allow you to cut off contact.
You must have a parent, Harry, and I'm the best choice for the role.}

\emph{Your loving father,}

\emph{James.}

Harry raised his eyebrows. \emph{Well, part of that's true enough. I
didn't want to see what he might have chosen to send me---probably more
memories of a happy family to bring me back to my senses---but perhaps
it really is important.}

He stretched out a hand and murmured, ``\emph{Accio} James's Pensieve.''

The trunk at the foot of the bed opened, and the Pensieve came skimming
in through the curtains. Harry was grateful that no one else was in the
room. Blaise had gone off to moon over Ginny, Vince to join a snowball
fight in the courtyard that the upper-year Ravenclaws had been talking
about excitedly at breakfast.

Draco\ldots{}

Harry shook his head. Draco had pushed him a bit too far this morning.
He'd tried to reassure Harry that his magic wasn't foul or evil or
awful-smelling, and ignored Harry's quiet requests to stop talking about
it. Harry had finally cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself, and then
cast an illusion at the door, to make it look as though he'd hurried out
of the room. Draco was off looking for him now, while Harry made himself
comfortable in his bed with James's letter and the latest book Snape had
lent him.

Harry drew the Pensieve towards him, and ignored his own fear. Yes, he
had some reason to be nervous about Pensieves, but James was not a
wizard of Dumbledore's strength and skill. Harry didn't really think he
could enchant a Pensieve into a trap, nor that he would want to try.
Besides, his own magic was strong enough to resist most spells his
father could cast.

He plunged his head beneath the surface.

He found himself in a room it took him a moment to recognize: his
father's study at Lux Aeterna. Harry turned in a circle, studying it.
The walls were lined with books, and a desk directly in front of him was
scattered with papers. Harry walked towards them, curious. He could see
no one else in the room just yet.

He bent over the papers, and his eyes widened. They were copies of old
\emph{Daily Prophet} articles, concerning the Death Eater trials. On the
top one was a photograph of Snape, his stare fixed on something unseen
as he sat in the chain-bound chair of the Wizengamot courtroom.

``I've looked and looked.''

Harry jumped and glanced over his shoulder. James had entered, with
Remus close behind him, looking pale and harassed. Harry backed
cautiously away from the desk, though of course they couldn't see him.
James sat down in the chair in front of the desk, and looked wistfully
at the articles.

``I've tried to justify my son's choice of guardian,'' he whispered,
``and I can't. Even when I know he was acting as a spy for Dumbledore,
making his own sacrifices for the war, Snape was still a bastard. Listen
to this.'' He picked up the paper on top and cleared his throat. ``Asked
whether it was true that he had risked his life to stop several Death
Eater attacks on Muggle villages in late October of this year, Severus
Snape told the Wizengamot to `believe what you like. You will
anyway.'\,'' James shook his head and slammed the paper down. ``Can you
believe him?''

``I don't think his general truthfulness is why Harry chose him as his
guardian, James,'' said Remus, and rubbed his forehead.

\emph{You're wrong,} Harry thought, \emph{at least in part.} He glanced
curiously out the study's window. The cheerful colors spoke to him of
early autumn. This would be before Remus had left James to go to the
Seers' Sanctuary, then.

``I've been through all of them,'' said James adamantly, ``looking for
some sign that he displayed any of those qualities he was supposed to
have---courage, strength of will, compassion---to other people.
\emph{Nothing}. I think Harry made a mistake, Remus. He must have done.
Snape puts on a good act, but he only wants Harry with him to get one
over on me. I've looked at it up and down, and I can come to no other
conclusion.''

``I told you what I saw at the school last year,'' said Remus. ``There
are times Snape would have killed Sirius to keep Harry safe.''

``And now he's dead.'' James's voice was an ugly, bitter thing. Harry
winced. \emph{Did he ever mourn like Connor and I did?} His father
pushed the articles around in an agitated manner. ``I don't know, Remus.
I suppose perhaps the papers don't have the most unbiased sources. I'll
look elsewhere.'' He stood up and paced to the door. ``I just can't
believe that a man I've always despised should have more favor from my
son than I do,'' he whispered.

Remus caught himself on what looked like the edge of a vehement protest,
and shook his head. They left, shutting the door behind them, and the
Pensieve shuddered lightly, and Harry found himself in the midst of
another memory.

This next image showed his father alone in his study, watching another
Pensieve. Shrugging off thoughts about an endless succession of mirrors
and becoming trapped in them, Harry edged up beside him and looked down.

A younger James was floating in midair, his robes dangling over his head
as a spell suspended him by his ankle. Harry couldn't hear sounds from
the remembered Pensieve, but he could see the younger version of his
father thrashing and struggling. He could imagine the humiliation that
would be rising off him. James had never liked being embarrassed, which
was one reason Snape's insanity potion had worked as well as it had.

``How can there be anything good in him?'' whispered the memory of the
older James. ``When he invented spells like that?''

Harry stared at his face in wonder. \emph{Does he really think that will
convince me? I know that he and the other Marauders went after Snape,
too. It's not just a one-sided grudge. And if Snape couldn't put it in
the past and have done with it, then neither could he.}

``He's not the right kind of man to be a father,'' James went on
muttering, and then pushed the Pensieve away from him, and Harry was in
another memory, though he did think before he went, \emph{If the papers
aren't unbiased witnesses, what do you say about your own memories?}

This time, James was standing on the very outer edge of Lux Aeterna's
lawn, his arms folded around his chest as he frowned at the wards.

``Harry Potter,'' he said.

The wards went on glowing.

``Draco Malfoy.''

A small spark from the wards, but they remained mostly quiescent.

``Severus Snape.''

The wards snarled and animated, one of them projecting something that
looked like a tooth or a scorpion's sting. James nodded, satisfied, and
stepped back from the projection, which sank into the magic a moment
later.

``They still consider him a Dark, evil bastard,'' he said.

Harry rolled his eyes. \emph{Has he forgotten that the house leans on
him, and adopts his likes and dislikes? Of course it's going to forbid
entrance to Snape. He practiced Dark magic, but so did Draco, and so did
I. James's emotions are also a deciding factor in who gets to enter
there.}

And so it went, through memory after memory, as James apparently sought
evidence for existence of some good traits in Snape, and found nothing.
Harry watched in growing disgust. He could appreciate his father's
determination to make sure that, if he had to yield up care of one of
his sons, he was yielding it to the right person, but his grudge would
have made him blind to a good streak a mile wide. And Snape's was
narrower than that, but still. Harry thought it was the kind he needed.

\emph{If he would only stop trying to talk to me about Lily, at least.}

The memories ended with a sight of James writing the letter he'd sent
along with the Pensieve. Harry pulled his head out with a sigh, and eyed
the Pensieve for a moment, wondering if he should send it back.

\emph{No}, he decided at last. \emph{I don't want him to think I'm
rejecting what he tried to do for me. But I'd better make my letter
utterly clear, and concise, and to the point.}

He summoned a sheet of parchment and a quill, and wrote the letter
braced on his Defense Against the Dark Arts book.

\emph{Dear James:}

\emph{I'm afraid that I still think Snape is a good guardian for me. He
isn't you, and he isn't Lily or Dumbledore, and at the moment, that's
what makes him best. He would fight for me. He does make an effort to
teach me to defend myself. He doesn't think that the war against
Voldemort is more important than I am. He saved my life the other night.
I keep telling you that I'm fine with him. I'll tell you again, and I
hope that this time you'll listen to me, instead of deciding that your
own son can't possibly know what he's talking about.}

\emph{Harry.}

Harry thought a moment, then added:

\emph{P.S. I wouldn't mind keeping up communication with you, but trying
to force me to return is the worst thing you could do right now. I don't
have a problem cutting off the communication, either.}

He was not sure that was the right idea, but James had proven less
hopeless than Harry had thought he would. He was also not Lily, and he'd
shown no sign of knowing about Lily's and Dumbledore's plots. If he ever
\emph{did} reveal that he had, Harry would start burning his letters the
moment they came, and would send no more of his own.

He went to the Owlery to post his letter, accompanied now and then by
the golden gleam of voting owls. They paid no attention to him. Harry
found it rather refreshing.

On his way back down, he paused by one particular sealed classroom, and
swept a hand across the door, sighing.

He would need to speak with Snape about this.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape looked up in surprise as someone knocked on his office door. He
hadn't sent a message to Harry, and no one else would willingly seek him
out on New Year's Day.

``Enter,'' he said.

Harry opened the door. One look at his set jaw, and Snape knew he
wouldn't have to summon his charge for a serious discussion.

He sat back and studied Harry in silence as the boy walked up to the
desk and folded his arms. Snape said nothing. If Harry expected him to
know what this was about, he didn't, and he had learned that speaking
too directly of Lily was the way to make Harry bristle. Best to let him
choose the direction of the conversation, and then Snape would seize and
guide it.

``I want to know what the Meleager Potion does,'' said Harry.

Snape knew that he couldn't hide the widening of his eyes, but at least
he controlled it soon, and no one but Harry was there to see it.
``Why?'' he asked.

``Because Fawkes didn't burn the potion and all your notes after all.''
Harry sounded utterly unembarrassed to admit that he'd lied. ``There's a
sample in a classroom upstairs, sealed with house elf magic. I didn't
dare to destroy it or unlight the candle floating in the middle of it,
since I didn't know what would happen to Minister Fudge if I did. What
\emph{would} happen?''

Snape pinched the bridge of his nose and reminded himself not to get
angry. His goal today was to make \emph{Harry} lose his temper, since he
thought it was the only way to make him speak freely. Besides, he'd
brewed the potion under the influence of the cold anger. That put him in
the wrong immediately.

``It would burn him,'' said Snape. ``Horribly. Painfully. From the
inside out. And it would also burn years off his life, though he
wouldn't know that. Even if I let the candle stay undisturbed for the
rest of his life, that might be only three more years. Or five. Or ten.
Everything depends on my will.''

He looked at Harry, and found his charge frowning softly.

``How could you do that?'' Harry asked.

Snape cocked his head to the side. \emph{You are not getting angry. You
can't let yourself.} ``Do you mean, how could I brew a potion like
that?''

``Yes.'' Harry studied him. ``I know that you're capable of great
things, wonderful things. You're certainly no stranger to compassion, or
healing. Why would you brew a potion like that for the Minister, when
he'd never done you any harm?''

\emph{That} was going too far, Snape decided. ``Do not play stupid with
me,'' he hissed, rising to his feet. ``You spoke what you believed to be
my reasons under Veritaserum at my trial. You know that I did it to
avenge the insult to you, to hurt him for hurting you. You may judge me
as you like for the overweening pride of that response, for my stupidity
in getting caught, for letting my hatred overtake my reason, but you
will \emph{not} pretend that you expected me to forgive him. You know
what I am, Harry. I have forgiven no one who hurt you, unless they have
paid a price already. Black has paid that price. None of the others
have.''

Harry's face was pale. This was leading towards territory where he
didn't want Snape and Draco treading, Snape knew. He did not back up,
though, and tried to keep the conversation on the Meleager Potion.
``What should we do with it?''

``I could brew an antidote,'' said Snape reluctantly. He had come
halfway around the desk, but forced himself to pause. ``But there might
be a problem having the Minister take it. It would be better to brew a
neutralizer, instead, something that can turn the sample of potion we
have into harmless water. I will begin on that soon.'' He scrutinized
Harry in silence for a moment. ``Will that satisfy you?''

Harry nodded. ``So long as you think that Fudge will take no more ill
effects from the potion.''

``No. It works as I have told you.'' And it did. Snape was not holding
back any secrets from his charge, not this time. He wanted his honesty
reciprocated with honesty. ``And I have no reason to use it, not again.
The effects of the various poisons will remain in Fudge's body, but
without my will to act on them, and without the candle burning to act as
an anchor for my will, they will stay inert.''

Harry relaxed slightly, but the tight lines around his eyes remained.
``You still should not have done it,'' he said.

``I should not have,'' Snape agreed readily, and saw Harry blink,
astonished, off-guard. He struck. ``It was a stupid step to take, and
you need a guardian who does not make stupid sacrifices. Just as I need
a ward who does not make stupid sacrifices to free me. Did you answer
letters from your mother so that Dumbledore would vote to depose the
Minister and free me?''

The flush climbing Harry's cheeks answered the question. But he shook
his head a moment later. ``Don't talk about her,'' he whispered. ``It's
done.''

``When I can no longer see the parts she's ripped out of your soul, then
I will consider it done,'' said Snape. ``You made me swear not to hurt
her, Harry, and I have not done so. That she left Hogwarts alive
testifies to that.'' Christmas night had been a sore test of his
self-control. He would have been just as happy to go to the hospital
wing and end everything with a swift \emph{Avada Kedavra}, but Harry did
not need his guardian going to prison again. ``You did not make me
promise to leave you wounded and soul-hurt.''

Harry's eyes flashed with an emotion only half fury. Snape recognized
the panic behind it, too. ``I don't want to talk about it,'' he managed
to say. ``You know a lot already. Draco knows even more. He heard what
she said to me. It's enough that you \emph{know}, isn't it? You don't
need to go on talking to me about it. You don't need to go on
\emph{looking} at me.''

``Harry---''

``I don't want you to look at me,'' Harry whispered. ``Not this part of
me. Promise that you won't.''

Snape shook his head. ``I will not give promises that I cannot keep.''

Harry snarled at him. He'd cracked the boy's shell of cold indifference,
Snape thought, but he had expected more anger than was there. Harry was
\emph{frightened} more than anything else. ``I suffered. There. Is that
what you want to hear? I did suffer, and now I'm not going to suffer at
their hands anymore. They don't need to be punished. Both of you are too
obsessed with casting blame. Draco just won't stop \emph{talking} about
it. Even when I beg him not to say a word about Lily, he still wants to
reassure me that my magic isn't foul.''

``Is that what she said to you?'' Snape asked quietly. If he had known
that Christmas night, he was not so sure that Lily would have lived,
after all. Or she might have, but not as whole as she had been. There
were spells that left no marks, and there was \emph{Obliviate}.

``It doesn't \emph{matter.}'' Harry looked torn between running and
collapsing. ``Please. Stop it. They don't need to suffer. There doesn't
need to be vengeance.''

``I would disagree,'' Snape murmured. ``But I would say that, at least,
there does need to be justice.''

``What does justice do but create more pain? No. Leave it alone. I won't
have anything to do with her again, and I've already taken more than she
deserves to lose. \emph{Leave it.}''

Snape simply watched Harry, saying nothing else, until his charge got
himself back under control. Harry shut his eyes and stood in silence for
a time, then shook his head. When he opened his eyes, he was smiling,
and seemed determined to forget the whole thing.

``Can I help you come up with a neutralizer for the Meleager Potion?''
he asked.

Snape nodded. It was not time to push him on talking, he thought. Not
yet.

But he did not believe that Harry was right. If nothing else, he had
left enemies alive behind him, and that was not a Slytherin thing to do.
And there should be justice, at least, if there could not be vengeance.
And there was always the chance, faint though it seemed right now, that
the Wizengamot might someday force Harry back into the control of his
blood parents.

Snape's gaze strayed often as they worked, going to the cauldron of
clear Pensieve Potion in the corner of the room. Not in a glass
container, it was not yet ready to record memories, and Snape would not
have used it on Harry anyway. But on a willing person who wanted to see
Harry's mother suffer, and who knew more than Snape did about what she'd
said?

\emph{I shall have to see whether Draco is willing to give me some of
his memories.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Rufus lifted his head from a half-doze and blinked. The tower was
ringing like a plucked bell, and there were no empty perches now. The
last of the voting owls had returned, then.

He nodded at Amelia, who stood up and said, ``Release the ballots.''

Responding to the voice of a candidate, the owls opened their beaks and
contracted their bellies. Ballots rained out of them, flying into two
neat, precise piles. One would bear his name, Rufus knew, and the other
Amelia's name.

In silence, they counted the ballots, each taking their own pile first.
Rufus felt his heart speeding up when he passed two thousand, but he
kept quiet. He recorded the final number by carving it on the floor of
the Tower with his wand when he was done.

\emph{Six thousand eight hundred two.}

Then he moved over to Amelia's pile, while she moved over to his, and
they counted again. Amelia had five thousand six hundred nine votes.

Rufus felt an odd light-headedness welling up in him, though he'd both
eaten and slept since they climbed up to the Tower, and he'd expected,
partly, to win. He leaned back, took a deep breath, carved his estimated
number of her votes into the floor, and then shifted the pile of ballots
to the side so that he could see Amelia's number. It was off by a few,
but only by ones, not tens. She agreed mostly with him.

The owls uttered a faint, chiming hoot, signaling that the acceptable
procedure had been fulfilled. Then they turned to face Rufus, bowed
their heads to him, and froze in place until the next time they would be
needed.

He looked over the ballots and found Amelia smiling gently at him.

``Congratulations, Rufus,'' she said, and rose from the floor, groaning
as she popped a muscle in her back. ``I think I knew it would happen.
Not everyone voted, of course, but your victory is decisive.'' She held
out a hand, and Rufus strode over to assist her. ``Which of those
changes you were talking about are you going to implement first?'' If
she felt any disappointment, she hid it well.

Rufus lingered a moment, to look at the owls and then stare out over the
lights of Muggle London. His heart was beating fast, and he still could
not quite believe he was the new Minister of Magic.

Then he thought of the changes Amelia spoke of, and he smiled, and he
believed it.

``First,'' he said casually, ``I'm sacking Kingsley Shacklebolt. He's put
loyalty to a Lord above loyalty to the Ministry or the law, and the one
thing I am \emph{not} going to have is Lords mucking about in \emph{my}
Ministry.''

Amelia laughed at him. Rufus didn't see why. It really \emph{was} his
Ministry, now, and people had to learn that he had no truck with Lords.

\chapter{Spikes in the Head}\label{chapter-50-spikes-in-the-head}

``I can't do it.'' Weasley's whining voice grated on the ears, Draco
thought, as he sat on one of the desks and swung his legs back and
forth. He, of course, had performed the spell that Harry was trying to
show the others right the first time. His major entertainment now was
watching Weasley, rolling his eyes, and trying to get Harry to roll his
eyes along with him. He was irritated that Harry so far appeared
inclined to do anything \emph{but} that.

``Sure you can, Ron.'' Harry's voice was patient. He reached out, gently
scooped Weasley's wand out of his hand, examined it a minute, and then
chuckled. ``That's it. You weren't holding it with the right tension in
your wrist. Try again, but this time make your hand tense.'' He gave it
back, and Weasley clumsily tried to manhandle his wand into the correct
position, which Draco had learned just by watching Harry.

He watched Harry now, and calmed himself down by remembering that Harry
couldn't possibly understand how his closeness to Weasley and some of
his remarks might be interpreted---as flirting. Weasley didn't seem to
take it that way, thank \emph{Merlin}, but then, his gaze was always
tracking Granger and that insufferable prat Smith. Smith was whispering
in Granger's ear. She laughed. Draco had to admit she had a nice laugh,
or he would have admitted it if he were interested in anyone but Harry.
Weasley seethed with poorly concealed jealousy. Harry, oblivious Harry,
went right on showing Weasley what he had done wrong with the spell.

``There,'' he said, stepping away. ``Try it now.''

Weasley gestured forward with his wand. ``\emph{Incendioso!}''

This time, a cloud of fire sprang out of the tip of his wand and grew
quickly, rolling around in several directions before it hit the wards
Harry had set up to protect the furniture. Harry did a nonverbal
\emph{Finite Incantatem} before turning to grin at Weasley. ``There you
go! That wasn't so hard after all, was it?''

Weasley blinked stupidly at his wand. ``No, I guess not,'' he said, and
then darted another glance at Granger and Smith. His jealousy went back
to blasting like raw, cold wind across Draco's face. Draco was just as
grateful that he couldn't feel his own jealousy over Harry, not when it
was one of the more unpleasant sensations.

Harry leaned back against the desk nearest Weasley and smiled at him. On
his way to smile at Smith and Granger, he caught Draco's eyes, and his
expression widened into a grin.

\emph{That's it}, Draco decided. He'd felt far too much of Harry's
slowly bleeding emotions these past few weeks, as Harry struggled to
bury what had happened at Christmas and Draco struggled to get him to
talk about it. Harry wouldn't do it, but in the meantime, he felt pain
and self-doubt and other emotions that made Draco wish he had the Muggle
bitch in front of him, promise to Harry or no promise. He didn't know
that he was assaulting Draco's empathy the way he was. Now, with his
happiness beaming out of him in a rush of pleasure that nearly weakened
Draco's limbs, the difference was palpable, and he should always be that
happy, or at least he should have a fair chance.

\emph{I'll need to tell him}. They would have some quiet time in the
morning, since it was Saturday and Vince always went to breakfast early
on Saturday, to feast on the more abundant food, while Blaise had been
spending every spare weekend minute with his little crush lately. Harry
would find it hard to pretend that Draco was feeling someone else's
emotions when they were alone in the bedroom.

``All right, Hermione, Zacharias?''

``Of course, Harry,'' drawled Smith, putting his chin on Granger's
shoulder. She blushed. Draco sneered. \emph{That does nothing for her
complexion.} ``I think it's Malfoy that's having trouble.''

Harry turned towards him, eyebrows raised, concern washing from him like
the scent of honeysuckle.

Draco half-closed his eyes to enjoy the sensation, barely hearing the
answers he gave to Harry's questions. \emph{Maybe it's time to tell him
something else important, too.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{Harry dreamed.}

``But, my lord, I don't understand.'' That was a desperate whine that
Harry had already come to associate with Rabastan, for all that he
didn't dream about the man very often. He was shivering on the floor in
front of Voldemort's makeshift throne now. Harry thought they were in
the same house as the one Voldemort had chosen for his conversation with
Rosier and Bellatrix before sending Rosier to kill Lucius Malfoy, but
this was a different room. Rather than having a comfortable fireplace
before which the Dark Lord and his snake could relax, it was high-arched
and felt cold, with a dim ceiling showing far above their heads. Nagini
was slithering restlessly about, and for all that Harry knew he was safe
and not really there, he drew back into the shadows each time she slid
past the doorway where he crouched.

``I did not expect you to.'' Voldemort's voice was growing angrier. ``I
expect you to \emph{obey}, Rabastan.''

``But it is---'' Rabastan abruptly stopped his complaint. Harry edged to
the side a bit, keeping a way eye on Nagini, and saw the way the Death
Eater had his eyes clenched shut, shivering, as though he had just
escaped saying something fatal.

``Yes, Rabastan?'' Voldemort hissed a command in Parseltongue, and
Nagini swayed eagerly to his side. ``You had something to say?''

``No, my lord,'' Rabastan whispered. ``It is a brilliant plan. Of course
it is. And of course I will succeed at it.''

``I do hope so, Rabastan,'' said Voldemort. ``Considering that you have a
month to prepare, and that you will have no other duties in that time, I
expect this to be carried off \emph{perfectly}. On certain things, we
must wait on the sun---'' a mad laugh ``---but in others, we may have our
own way. There is nothing quite like causing our enemies worry and pain,
would you agree?''

``No, my lord.'' Rabastan dared to lift his head and give Voldemort a
sickly smile. ``Nothing like it.''

Voldemort was silent for a moment, and Harry wondered what he was
thinking. Nagini appeared to conclude that he had no more tasks for her,
and uncoiled from the side of the chair like a restless whip, crossing
the floor with liquid speed.

She came towards the doorway where Harry crouched in his animal shape.

Harry opened his mouth and hissed, but he kept the noise soundless. He
had no reason for the fear suddenly making his body tremble. No one in
the dreams had ever shown a sign of realizing he was there. Granted, he
hadn't touched any of them, but since they had no reason to suspect an
intruder, they didn't go out of their way to brush into random corners,
either. Nagini had reached the doorway, but was using her long body to
describe figure eights in front of it. She showed no inclination to
venture further.

Harry continued to watch her, since Voldemort stayed silent. Nagini's
tongue flicked out and tasted the air.

Then she paused, her body stiffening as though it had turned to marble.
Harry felt his heartbeat pick up, shaking his small body as it could
never shake his normal human one.

Nagini turned her head towards him, slowly, and hissed. Harry knew she
would have no reason to suspect that anyone other than her Lord could
understand the message she gave. ``\emph{There is an intruder here in
dream-form, Lord. Not quite a ghost, but not quite an imaginary
presence, either.}''

``Rabastan!'' said Voldemort. Harry crouched, his claws shot. He
growled, and this time didn't bother to keep the sound noiseless. Nagini
didn't seem to hear him, but she slid closer, and her tongue flicked
again, and this time her hiss would have been a foul obscenity if she
were speaking in English.

``My lord?'' Harry could see Rabastan lift his head, though he didn't
dare take his eyes off Nagini in order to observe his expression. The
great snake slithered closer and closer to him, flinging loops of her
body over the floor. Harry crouched lower.

``There is an intruder here,'' Voldemort said. ``Nagini says so. Follow
her, find him, and kill him for me.''

``As my lord commands.'' Rabastan sounded startled, but eager. He came
around the chair with his wand drawn, and Harry knew that he could cast
curses which would hurt him if they landed.

Harry decided, reluctantly, that he would learn nothing of any further
use tonight. He was better off backing out of the dream. He turned,
waited until Nagini's head looked a bit to the right of him, and then
sprang into the air as he had when he tore the dream to shreds so that
he could warn the Malfoys. His claws reached out and rent---

Air. He fell back to the room of the deserted house with a thump.

This time, Nagini seemed to feel the vibrations. She pointed her head at
him and uttered a long, satisfied hiss, then lay down on the floor and
came straight for him. Rabastan followed, casting a few hexes to the
left and right of Nagini for the look of things.

Unsure, despairing, Harry sat up and tried as best as he could to ready
himself for battle in an unfamiliar body, against an enemy whose
capabilities to hurt him in this form he knew nothing about.

\emph{I really do need help.}

``Why didn't you say so before?''

Harry turned his head sharply. Draco stood beside him.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Draco had felt pain for some time, but it hadn't been quite strong
enough to bring him permanently awake. He kept rising to the surface of
his sleep, muttering, blinking, resolving to get out of bed and wake
Harry up, and then sliding back beneath the surface. He could wake Harry
in the morning. Harry didn't even like to talk about his dreams; he'd
gone right back to incommunicative silence on that as on most other
things. It drove Draco mad, but if Harry would just turn his back on
sincere concern anyway, there was no reason for him to lose sleep over
it.

Then he felt a surge of pain and panic, and he reached out. His empathy
located the emotions in Harry, and he wanted to soothe them if he could.

Unlike most other times, he didn't encounter conscious barriers when he
reached out towards Harry. He always knew which were his own feelings
and which were someone else's; he had been careful to concentrate on
that when the first books he studied mentioned how often empaths were
lost in a whirlwind of emotions and had their minds tangled with their
unwilling targets'. This time, though, he slid across what seemed no
more than empty air and through a wall of swirling mist, and then he
opened his eyes and saw what Harry saw.

They stood in an abandoned house, with just enough light to see by;
Draco couldn't tell if it came from a spell or a distant fire. In front
of them was a dark floor with an immense snake moving over it, and a
wizard following her. And beside him was Harry, thinking, \emph{I really
do need help.}

``Why didn't you say so before?'' Draco asked aloud in exasperation, and
then looked at Harry, who was staring back at him. He blinked. Harry
wasn't human here, but a grayish cat with long, nervously shifting legs.
His feet bristled with fur, as though he were about to go sliding
through snow. His black-tufted ears turned towards the sound of Draco's
voice, and a short, black-tufted tail lashed back and forth in shock.

Draco didn't have time to question why Harry was in animal form here.
The snake seemed to lose whatever trouble she had with sensing them, and
slid forward. The wizard behind her, whose face Draco didn't recognize,
lifted his wand and cast a curse at them that Draco most definitely did
recognize.

\emph{If he can use his wand in a dream, then I can,} Draco thought, and
found his wand just where he had left it when he'd gone to sleep, tucked
into the waistband of his robe. He drew it and cast the spell that Harry
had taught them today. ``\emph{Incendioso!}''

The fire spread out ahead of him and consumed the curse the wizard was
flinging; that was its primary function. The wizard cursed, slowed, and
began skirting them, obviously trying to figure out some spell that
would get past the guard of this stranger, and how the stranger had got
here in the first place.

Draco turned to grin down at Harry, only to realize that Harry was no
longer at his side. He had jumped, and now he was riding the snake's
back, his mouth and his paws clamped on its body, biting and kicking and
stabbing. The snake let out a shriek and reared back, trying to crush
him in its coils.

Draco took a step forward and aimed his wand, carefully, but was forced
to lower it. There was no way that he wasn't going to hit Harry, with
both cat and snake writhing and hissing and growling all over the floor.
He had to try something else, and he thought he knew what he should try.

He had to take care of the wizard first, though, and he spun to face
him. ``\emph{Speculum Ardoris!}'' He didn't think this fool would know how
to destroy Harry's version of the spell right away, and from the
startled oath he gave as the Flame Mirror popped up around him, he was
right.

Draco turned and ran like hell for the snake. He probably needed to be
near to try what he was going to try.

The hall wavered around him several times---Harry trying to wake up,
Draco guessed. Then it firmed, and Harry shrieked in pain. Draco looked
up sharply to see the snake's fangs caught in his shoulder.

Draco panicked, but beat it back. A fearful empath was one of the things
that his books had taught him to fear. He would pick up more emotions in
such a sensitive state, and spiral further and further towards losing
himself. He would have to act now.

He reached out and slid through the barriers between his own mind and
those of Harry's again, surging into a sea of emotions. They were so
familiar that he could orient himself easily. His own emotions, Harry's
in their strength and power, and another set of them, quite close and
busily at work.

Draco thought quickly, \emph{I'm in Harry's mind, in his dream. Everyone
else is in his dream, too, however real it must be. And that means that
I ought to be able to reach their minds, too, by virtue of being inside
his mind already and sharing dream-space with them.}

It was a weak theory, but it was the best one Draco had, and he acted on
it, sliding out of Harry's mind and into the snake's.

It worked. Draco could feel the emotions churning around him, anger and
fear and protectiveness towards her master, and he knew her name,
Nagini, and he knew that a few more bites would subdue this strange cat
and bring him before her master. Her master had not sensed the intruder,
but she had. Wonder surged, suspicion as to how many times he had
watched.

A snake's emotions were simpler than a human's, Draco found. He was
almost reading her thoughts, which was something that didn't happen with
Harry or anyone else he had practiced his empathy on.

She could sense Harry. Harry's dreams about visiting the Dark Lord were
probably not going to stop any time soon.

That meant she needed to die.

Draco took a deep breath and reached for his wand. He hoped his physical
movements were working, since he couldn't see or sense to guide his
body; his own sensations were all bound up in Nagini's mind.
``\emph{Defensor vindictae},'' he said, the same Dark defensive spell he
had used when Harry fought the dragons.

The black force surged around him. Draco knew the eyes were watching
him, waiting for a command, but he couldn't see them. He could only
clasp his hands into fists and then smash them together, indicating that
the spell was to crush Nagini to death if it was at all possible.

He felt the spell move forward, a wave of freezing pressure, and then
begin to work. Nagini felt pain. Draco felt it, too, but he thought he
could bear it. He was too caught up in his own savage joy at protecting
Harry to worry much about it.

Then claws hooked into his thigh, and someone hissed urgently near his
ear, and he was dragged out and up and away through a madly flickering
hall. Draco cried out in protest. If they left now, then he couldn't
know for certain if Nagini would die.

A sharp yank, and an even sharper pain from below, and then they had
broken the surface and were rising steadily out of the realm of sleep.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry was swearing even before he sat up and blinked away the usual flow
of blood coming from his scar. He swabbed furiously at it, then rolled
over and out of the bed. He could hear Draco's curtains rustling. He
cast a Silencing Charm around the area with a wave of his hand. They
didn't need any witnesses to what was about to happen.

``Draco!'' he said.

``Harry!'' Draco said back, in almost the identical tone, as he tumbled
out of his own bed and stood blinking on the cold stone floor.

Harry stepped onto one of the thick rugs, hoping Draco would follow
suit. He had already hurt Draco badly enough when he dragged him into
his dream. He didn't need him getting frostbite on top of that.

``What in the name of Merlin did you think you were \emph{doing}?'' he
yelled. He resisted the urge to wave his arms, though suddenly he
understood why people made the gesture. At least it let some of the
excess emotion go. ``I can't believe that you took that risk! You could
have \emph{died}, and in a place that I didn't even know was real or
not, and if you'd stayed in her mind when she died, then you
\emph{definitely} would have died, you \emph{moron!} Don't you know
\emph{anything} about your own empathy?''

``I know that I've been feeling your emotions bleeding through your damn
stoic exterior for three weeks now!'' Draco yelled back at him. His face
was flushed, his eyes glittering with tears. It was a little like the
look he had given Harry after receiving his Christmas gift, but Harry
was pretty sure the opposite feelings to those of generosity and joy
motivated Draco now. ``And I can't say anything about it because you
won't fucking \emph{talk} about it! And now you've been having dangerous
dreams, and you could have died, too, and you needed my help, and you're
regretting the danger you involved \emph{me} in? This wouldn't have
happened if you'd just---''

Abruptly, his face changed, and he reached out insistently, pulling at
the shoulder of Harry's pyjama top. Bewildered, Harry let him, and saw
only relief on Draco's face. He looked down, and saw unbroken skin.

``She bit you,'' Draco breathed. ``I thought the wounds might have come
with you from the dream.'' Then he frowned. ``Does that mean that I
didn't really kill Nagini, since I only did it in the dream?''

``I heard Voldemort hiss as we left,'' Harry said. He didn't want to
reveal this, in case it inspired Draco to try further moronic exploits
in his dreams, but he didn't think he could lie, either. ``He was
calling for her. If she wasn't dead, she was at least so badly wounded
that he couldn't contact her mind anymore, or use whatever version of
the familiar bond really exists between them.''

Draco beamed smugly at him. Harry was preparing words to take the beam
away when his eyes narrowed and he said, ``And \emph{you} are the one who
was having insanely dangerous dreams and never bothered to tell me about
them.''

``That never happened before!'' Harry argued, fighting the urge to back
away from the murderous rage on Draco's face. ``That was the first time
she sensed me. I swear. I don't know what was so different this time.''

``Yes, well, if I killed her, it won't happen again.'' Draco reached out
and caught Harry's hand in a death grip. ``I didn't choose to jump into
the dream. I felt your pain, and I was swept in when I tried to comfort
you. That means that you don't need to blame yourself, Harry. But it
means that we're connected, too. You can't deny that any more. You can't
set up some barrier to keep me out.'' He was speaking quickly, as though
he thought Harry would manage to convince him otherwise if he allowed
him to talk. ``I think it would be better if I know exactly what's going
on in your dreams, so that I can defend myself if I'm going to be a
regular guest in them. And I think it'd be best if you tell me exactly
why you're still bleeding emotions all over the place, weeks after you
claimed you were healed of what that bitch of a woman did to you.''

``I did ask you not to talk about her,'' said Harry, turning his head
away, preparing to draw his emotions in after him. He thought he'd found
a way to block some of Draco's empathy and give him peace, a variation
on the Occlumency barriers that Snape used to keep Voldemort from
reading his thoughts.

Draco grabbed his shoulders and shook him. The physical effort
definitely distracted Harry from putting up barriers, and he glared at
Draco. Draco caught and held his eyes with an intensity that Harry
couldn't remember seeing from his friend before.

``I feel those emotions anyway,'' Draco snapped at him. ``I can
\emph{feel} the barrier you've been using, Harry, but it's not enough.''

``Then I don't understand what you want me to do!'' Harry twisted in
Draco's grasp, trying to get away. He could feel the panic rising. If he
leaned back, if he let himself take comfort, there was the possibility
that he might break down. And if he broke down, then he would have to
let some of his emotions go. And if he let some of his emotions go, then
there was the possibility that he might encounter that sadism he knew
now lay just under the surface of his conscious thoughts.

``Talk to me,'' said Draco, pulling him towards him so that Harry's head
rested on his shoulder. ``Heal the wounds, and then they won't be
bleeding anymore, and I won't feel bad, and you won't, either.'' His
hand skimmed Harry's back, so lightly that for a moment Harry hoped he'd
let him go, but then it tightened. ``It's so practical, Harry. Whether
or not I loved you, I'd want to do this, as long as I had the empathy,
so that we'd both stop feeling bad. Surely you can see that? Surely you
can see it's only the sensible thing to do?''

Harry twisted again. He was still a bit shorter than Draco, though not
by much anymore, but he had some training in physical fighting that
Draco didn't. If he could only get the right half of his body completely
free, and stop the stupid tears now blinding him, he could run away.

Draco murmured in his ear, ``Come on, Harry. I can feel what you're
suffering.'' He sounded as if he were about to start sobbing himself.
``I know that you don't care about your own pain, but you care about
other people's, don't you? I know that you wouldn't want to go on
inflicting wounds on me, even if they're the kind of wounds that no one
else can see.''

Harry didn't know when he'd started to cry, but it terrified him. Panic
and sorrow were wild emotions, like rage. He might end up summoning that
deadly rage again if he pursued these emotions long enough.

``Hush,'' Draco whispered. ``Harry, calm down.''

``I'm \emph{trying!}'' Harry struggled furiously to regain his
self-control. He could do it. He had to be able to do it, if he wasn't
to explode in some shameful way again. He couldn't believe what he'd
done to his mother, once he regained some perspective. What she'd said
to him was awful, but how did striking back with his magic, which she
didn't have any of any more, make him any better than she was? How would
wielding his magic over less powerful wizards make him any better than
Voldemort? And he'd known, he'd \emph{known}, that talking about things
like this would send him dangerously close to the emotional edge. His
mother's letters had had the power to do that. So it was better not to
talk about her, or about anything that had happened that night, and then
he wouldn't let his magic loose in an orgy of either fury or self-blame.

\emph{And no one else will stare at me, either, in pity or disgust. That
would be good. And no one will try to hurt her. It would be one thing if
they would just confine themselves to hurting me, but they would hurt
her, too. I can't let this go on spreading.}

But it appeared that he'd been hurting Draco while thinking he'd
protected him, and that just encouraged him to cry further.

\emph{I don't know what to do. No matter which way I turn, I'm going to
hurt someone, or encourage someone to get hurt.}

``Hush, Harry. I've got you.''

Harry clawed his way out of the maelstrom of his emotions by focusing on
physical sensation. That sensation was Draco's arms locked on him, one
around his waist, one around his upper back. They were sitting on the
floor, leaning against the skirt of Draco's bed. Draco cradled him so
close there was no way that he would miss the tremors shaking Harry, and
whispered into his ear. At first it was those same few words, over and
over, but when Harry looked up at him, knowing his own face was probably
sick with fear and confusion, they altered.

``I promise, I \emph{promise}, that I won't do whatever it is that you
fear I'm going to do. Cause pain to other people, isn't it? I
\emph{promise}, Harry, I---'' Draco shuddered as though the words were
torn out of him. ``I promise by Merlin and my magic not to hurt your
mother, never to hurt her. If that's what you need to be safe with me
and trust me, I promise it.''

Harry blinked. Stunned surprise slid over his emotions and numbed all of
them for a moment. That had been something he wanted, and thought none
of his allies would ever give, so it was useless and stupid to request
it from them against their wills.

Then relief crawled like sunlight where the surprise had been, and
melted away its mist. Harry felt his breathing calm. He stopped
struggling, and studied Draco's face for a moment. He no longer felt as
if he were about to destroy the room with his magic. ``Why?'' he asked
quietly.

``Because you matter more to me than she does.'' Draco arched an
eyebrow, as if Harry had asked him in what direction the sun rose. The
silent \emph{of course} was so strong that Harry could feel it ringing
in the chambers of his skull. ``I won't pretend to \emph{like} her, but
it's obvious to me now that you're not trusting anyone because you fear
your revelations might just encourage that person to get angrier against
your mother. So just cast her out of the equation. It's not like she
matters. Besides, I heard everything, Harry. So you don't need to
\emph{tell} me about it. I just want to speak with you about it, and
hopefully prevent pain to both of us.'' He met Harry's eyes full-on, his
own eyelids fluttering with nervousness. ``I swear, you matter more to
me than anything or anyone else.''

``Even with the Dark magic that I poured out that night?'' Harry
whispered.

``You \emph{prat},'' said Draco, and then hugged him tightly enough to
grind breath out from between Harry's ribs. ``You were worried about
\emph{that}? Of course I was afraid, but I was afraid for you and not
\emph{of} you. You must have known that, or you wouldn't have come back
to us at all.''

Harry closed his eyes. Perhaps, perhaps, just perhaps, if it was like
this, he could speak without perfect self-control and not cause a
magical disaster in doing so. ``I'm so tired, Draco,'' he whispered.
``Tired of pretending nothing's wrong, tired of thinking about what
people would think of me if they realized that surge of Dark magic was
me and I wanted so badly to \emph{hurt} someone else, tired of worrying
about what will happen to my mother if I do say something to Snape or
Hawthorn or your mother.''

``You don't have to be.'' Draco's voice was low, but Harry thought he
could have heard it if trumpets were sounding in the room. ``You have at
least one person who's sworn that he won't hurt Lily, Harry. And I'm not
afraid of anything you tell me. I never will be.''

Harry swallowed. He thought, somewhere under the spinning chaos that
occupied the surface of his mind, that he shouldn't let Draco give him
this. It was too big a sacrifice. How could Draco possibly care for him
\emph{more} than \emph{anything} else? What about his parents, his own
life, his own future that he would have after the War that Harry fully
expected he himself would die in?

But he needed it too much, at the moment, to reject it. And the thought
of having someone whose loyalty was to him first was\ldots{}

\emph{Too attractive to give up right now.}

``Thank you,'' he whispered, and relaxed. Exhaustion was creeping over
him. ``But do we have to talk about it right now?''

``No,'' Draco said. ``So long as you understand that we \emph{will} talk
about this, Harry, and that you can't get away from it by pretending
that you've forgotten what happened when we wake up.''

``I know that,'' Harry whispered. He was drowning in rich warmth. The
terror of trusting someone else was somewhere beneath that, like gulfs
of space through rays of sunlight. ``Do we have to move?''

Draco laughed in his ear. ``We do, or we'll both have cricks in our
necks in the morning. Up you get.''

He shifted Harry without taking away from the warmth, somehow, and
crawled into his bed with him. Fawkes was sitting on the edge of the
mattress this time, and radiated warmth at them, coruscating gold
touched with blue. Harry felt his eyes slide relentlessly closed. He
didn't think he would have any dreams this time, either visions of
Voldemort or the more ordinary nightmares he'd had of the confrontation
with Lily.

``Hush,'' Draco whispered in his ear. ``Relax.''

Harry turned his face towards him without opening his eyes. ``You'll be
here?''

Draco's voice this time was, for some reason, fiercely triumphant.
``I'll be here, Harry. I promise.''

``Good,'' said Harry, and drifted away on waves of fire and phoenix
song. Fawkes was crooning a lullaby that gave Harry visions of golden
chicks hatching from scarlet eggs, and singing to greet the dawn.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{Imperio.}

Harry stiffened his shoulders, but kept walking. He could feel the
Imperius Cruse drifting about his head. This wasn't the first time it
had happened in a few weeks, but always before, it had faded
immediately, as though it had only been a test run. Harry was sure that
this was the same person who had cast the Curse to madden the dragons in
the First Task, and he wanted to see if he could track down who it was,
this time.

He caught a glimpse of a shadow following him, and when the voice in his
head said, \emph{Turn into the side room and wait}, he did so. The
shadow strode in confidently a few moments later.

\emph{Moody. Rosier said to beware of him.}

Harry stood as if passive under the Curse, breathing softly, letting
Moody examine him. Moody shook his head after a moment.

``Can't tell why it's so important to know everything about you,'' he
muttered to himself. ``You'd think the Ministry would have learned their
lesson already, and there's been enough demonstrations at Hogwarts to
fill a bloody \emph{Prophet} all by themselves. Why?'' He began walking
around Harry at a slow pace, examining him again. Harry listened, in
hopes of finding out what he was up to, but Moody only muttered
generalities, without revealing whether he really was connected to
Voldemort somehow, or to Fudge, or to someone else.

Harry caught sight of the gleam of the silver collar around his neck,
and suspected it would be useless to try Legilimency on Moody himself.

\emph{And I can't talk to Snape about it because I don't want him doing
anything stupid, and it's useless trying to talk to Dumbledore about}
anything. \emph{Who can I tell about this, someone who will promise to
go at my own pace, until we can figure out what's really happening?}

The thought hit him hard enough to make him smile, and Moody paused and
stared at him.

\emph{Draco, of course.}

Harry let his eyes blink, and he looked up at Moody and asked in a voice
that he kept deliberately calm, ``What are you doing here, sir?''

Moody pulled his wand at once and aimed it. ``\emph{Obliviate.}''

Harry bounced and destroyed the Memory Charm on his Occlumency shields
as he had when Lockhart tried to use it on him in second year, but
pretended to the glazed eyes and gaping mouth that Moody would expect
from the Charm. The professor studied him for a moment, then grunted.
``Enough wandering around the halls, Potter,'' he said. ``Go back to
your common room now.''

``Yes, sir,'' Harry said in a dazed tone, and trotted off, glancing back
only once. Moody was sipping from the flask that hung at his hip, and
frowning.

\emph{I hope Draco's there,} Harry thought, walking faster. \emph{Maybe
it is a bit selfish, but I like having someone else to tell about these
things.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``You wanted to see me, sir?'' Draco opened Snape's office door and
peered warily around it at his Head of House.

``Yes, Draco.'' Snape didn't bother pretending to courtesy or shyness.
``It's about Mr. Potter. Come in and sit down.''

Draco nodded, shut the door, and walked over to the chair in front of
the desk. At once, Snape set a clear bottle of silvery potion in front
of him. Draco eyed it, then squinted at Snape. He knew it wasn't a kind
of potion that he'd seen before, and he could say that with certainty.
He was one of Snape's better students.

``This is a Pensieve Potion, a recent invention of mine.'' Snape folded
his hands in front of him. ``The Ministry has approved its use. In a
glass bottle such as this, it will capture strong memories from the mind
of another person, as directed by its creator. It can happen without the
consent or knowledge of the person involved, but I would like you to
know what I am doing, and to give me your permission. I want your
memories of the night that Lily Potter came here, and what she said to
Harry.''

Draco blinked. ``What do you intend to do with them, sir?''

Snape's eyes turned darker, and Draco fought the urge to shrink back in
his chair. He'd seen his father in these moods, too, but, maybe because
Lucius was more familiar to him, he didn't seem as purely \emph{Death
Eater} as Snape did in this moment. ``For right now? Perhaps nothing.
But I do not think it is wise to let Lily Potter go without paying for
what she has done.''

Draco felt a brief surge of longing. He could imagine the kinds of
things that Snape wanted the memories for. He could imagine Lily drawn
and quartered in front of the wizarding world---it was a shame that
literal drawing and quartering wasn't practiced anymore, he thought,
because it would make a fit punishment for her---and his body fluttered
with pleasure at the image.

\emph{It's too bad. It's really too bad.}

Draco met Snape's eyes and said, ``No, sir.''

Snape blinked, and his surprise traveled in an icy breeze across Draco's
face. ``And why not?'' he asked after a moment, voice descending to a
snapping hiss. ``I thought you would have been quite as eager to see
justice done for Harry as I am.''

``I am, sir,'' Draco said. ``But I'm more interested in seeing mercy done
\emph{to} him, and he needs the mercy of knowing that someone would
never turn against him, in any way. I've sworn to be that person.''

Snape cocked his head to the side. ``If he took that oath from you under
duress, Draco, you are in no need of keeping it.''

Draco narrowed his eyes and rose from his chair. ``How dare you,'' he
said, noting in only mild shock that Snape had flinched. ``How dare you
think he is capable of anything like that. I gave this oath of my own
free will. I am keeping it of my own free will. Find someone else to
give you your memories. I won't turn against Harry like that. No, not
even for his own good,'' he added, as Snape's mouth opened. ``Goodbye,
sir. I'm not telling him about this right now, because he doesn't need
the added stress of knowing his guardian's an idiot, but if you try
anything without my or his consent, and I find out about it, I won't
have any compunctions.''

He shut the door hard behind him on his way out.

\chapter{Neither Snape Nor Harry}\label{chapter-51-neither-snape-nor-harry}

\emph{You must tread carefully.}

Snape had heard that advice many times in his life---not always in those
words, but the fancier words that most Slytherins brewed in their adult
lives always boiled down to that warning. Tread carefully, or he'd be
caught. Tread carefully, or he would give away what he wanted and bring
in some stronger rival to defend it. Tread carefully, or he'd show his
enemies what he was up to, and they would block it just to spite him.
Tread carefully, or the Marauders would find and catch him.

``Severus, what \emph{is} that disgusted expression on your face for?''

Snape snapped his eyes around to the side. \emph{McGonagall is too
perceptive for her own good.} ``Nothing,'' he said smoothly. ``At least,
nothing more than it is every day. Do you not become disgusted at the
thought of teaching good-for-nothing brats who will never learn more
than the basic rudiments of your art?''

McGonagall lifted her head. That was better, Snape thought. He preferred
her when she played the part of the offended Gryffindor to that of the
woman who had been almost put in his House. \emph{Gryffindors have no
business seeing so clearly.} ``Transfiguration is a different kind of
art than Potions, Severus, and you know it. Most of Potions is only
following directions. But a student has to have a true passion to learn
Transfiguration, and a keen eye to keep all the parts of an object or
creature in mind.''

``If my art has less passion involved than yours, mine must at least be
precise.'' Snape finished the last of his juice and stood. He had never
truly liked pumpkin juice, but he had become accustomed to drinking it
for breakfast over the years. The last thing he wanted to do now was
draw attention, and Dumbledore would notice if he stopped drinking it.
``And that is the reason that so many of your little lion cubs stumble
and fall when it comes to their OWL's.''

McGonagall glared at him and muttered something about a snake poisoning
their efforts, but Snape affected not to hear, and swept effortlessly
on. Dumbledore's eyes were on his back the whole way.

\emph{Of course they were. I trod too heavily that night in his office
when Harry confronted him.}

That time was nearly a month ago now, with the last days of January
trickling past, and \emph{still} Snape had not thought of a way to use
his Pensieve Potion, or to make the man pay. Without the memories from
either Draco or Harry, he was effectively stuck. No one else had seen as
much. No one knew as much. He would get the images from James or Lily
Potter only by force, and he had good reasons for avoiding them---Lily
because of his promise to Harry, James because he did not think he would
be able to control his wand once he was in the same room with the fool.

\emph{It must be done, though,} he thought, as he entered his classroom
and heard the muffled snorts and giggles of the Gryffindors calm
immediately. They knew he was never in a good mood during this double
class with the Slytherins, and tried not to provoke him. They didn't
seem to have learned yet that he didn't need provocation to take points
from them.

He turned to face the class, and noticed Harry and Draco sitting near
the front, side by side. That was a good sign, at least. Harry had
worked by himself when they still regularly fought. Now he looked at
Draco occasionally as if trying to guess when the other boy would come
to his senses and run away, but he had at least one person to speak and
listen to.

Snape had to admit that he wished that person could have been him, but
he had made mistakes, and it would take Harry some time to trust him
again. He was willing to wait.

\emph{You have made still other mistakes. You have not told him about
the compulsion the book put on Draco yet.}

Snape stilled his face, and snapped, ``You will make the potion on page
53 of your text. Instructions are there. Begin.''

He began stalking around the classroom, using the time to watch faces.
Pansy Parkinson and Millicent Bulstrode stood at once and went to fetch
their ingredients together, Pansy listening intently to something
Millicent was saying. The Bulstrode girl often found herself agitated
lately, Snape knew. It was only natural, with her mother due to produce
another child at the end of February. Pureblood pregnancies were rare
and treasured things.

Vincent Crabbe leaned towards Blaise to share the instructions with him.
Then he went to get the necessary materials. Blaise took the time to
watch Harry and Draco. Snape had not yet reasoned out the complex
expression that came over his face at such moments. He did not think the
boy was jealous of the bond the two shared---if nothing else, he had a
proclaimed girlfriend in the youngest Weasley spawn---but he did believe
Blaise was weighing where his opportunities lay.

Not only Slytherins did that, Snape saw, as Harry stood in turn and a
few Gryffindor heads pivoted to track him, the purebloods mostly. He had
returned to find his charge at the center of more and more glances
lately, the sun to capture more and more planets.

Draco surged up beside Harry. Snape permitted himself a small smile. The
boy had not yet told Harry of his crush, or Snape believed he would have
known it, but he was not inclined to pursue the deadline he had set on
the telling. It was surprising enough that Draco had persisted in these
feelings, when Snape had expected them to dissipate into the atmosphere.

\emph{Let things take their course. I do not believe that I can hurry
them or change them. On the other hand, I believe Draco must give over
soon. Normal people do not find true love at fourteen years old.}

Were Harry and Draco normal?

\emph{Draco more normal than Harry, assuredly,} Snape thought, as he
finished pacing to the end of the classroom and turned around, \emph{but
I will not let my own personal consideration of them end with my
thinking they are} too \emph{extraordinary. I might start uncritically
believing everything they say otherwise, and I cannot let that happen.
Harry needs a parent. Draco needs someone who will not be carried away
by his name and the thought of what his father once did. Both need
limitations.}

He paused abruptly as he began to make his way up past the Gryffindor
tables. Connor Potter stared at him in silent, mute consideration,
Weasley in open defiance. The Gryffindors were not entirely reconciled
to having him back as their Potions teacher yet.

Two unconnected things had suddenly rolled together in Snape's mind, in
a way they only had a habit of doing when he was in the middle of a
potion.

``Five points from Gryffindor for having an expression unsuitable for
addressing a professor on your face, Weasley,'' he said, to show that
his pause had a point, and went on walking towards the front of the
classroom.

\emph{Limitations. Yes.}

\emph{It will take some work, but not so much as all that. I believe one
advantage I have in this dance is that my partner is all too willing to
guide my faltering steps, and believe they come only from weakness and
not some overarching plan. He is too used to believing that he controls
everything and everyone.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Severus! Come in, my dear boy, come in.''

Snape could hear the pleased tone in the Headmaster's voice. Dumbledore
would believe that he was luring him back, since, after all, Snape had
requested this interview of his own free will.

\emph{Come,} Snape told himself. \emph{It won't do to be too eager. And
you must meet his eyes at some points during the conversation, or he
really will start suspecting that you have something to hide.}

``Headmaster,'' he muttered, taking care to sound as though only
necessity had forced him to the title, and he hated it. He darted his
head up in a quick gesture, and then brought his eyes back down again as
he all but slunk to a chair in front of the desk. He had some practice
in radiating resentment and even hatred of his lot, and he knew
Dumbledore would be drinking in those emotions, believing them all the
more eagerly since he wanted to think that this was the beginning of a
revolution in Snape's feelings.

``Please, dear boy, call me Albus.''

Snape sat down, still keeping his head bowed. ``I don't think I'm quite
ready for that yet.'' To his secret delight, the words were
indistinguishable from Connor Potter's whine when he had given the
blasted boy detention for ruining his potion.

Behind his surface emotions, he was raising his Occlumency shields---the
shields that had fooled the Dark Lord, a most skilled Legilimens, as to
his true allegiances for more than a year. Granted, Snape believed that
the Headmaster was better at reading thoughts than the Dark Lord was. On
the other hand, that desire to see only what he wanted to see would help
blind him.

It was a dance, as so many things in Slytherin life were. And unlike
pureblood rituals, this was the kind of dance Snape understood, the kind
he was instinctively good at, the kind he thrived on. Idiotic
Gryffindors would never believe that Slytherins took risks. They did,
though, for the sake of a greater gain that could come from it.

This was of a piece with the risk that Harry had taken for him in the
Wizengamot's courtroom when he went under Veritaserum, and Snape did not
believe he could answer that statement of trust and faith with anything
less than a similar statement of his own.

He raised his eyes and met Dumbledore's, bracing himself against the
intense rake of that gaze.

He felt the light, probing touches of Legilimency. He rolled with them,
deciding from moment to moment whether to open a shield and let
Dumbledore through, to pretend not to notice him but keep him out, to
notice and take offense. Any choice could be the wrong one, the one that
would end the charade.

None of them were. Dumbledore continued to beam at him, and said, ``I
hope, Severus, that you will someday be ready to call me Albus again.''

Snape sat a long moment in silence, then nodded, slowly. ``Perhaps I
shall,'' he said, and let the hollowness of old conviction and old
despair ring in his voice.

He could feel Dumbledore relaxing. This was the Snape he knew, the one
he'd dealt with since Snape had fled the Death Eaters and come to him in
hope of a last sanctuary. He knew the human weaknesses of that man, the
all-too-human faults and flaws and wants of him. He knew that Snape had
done his stint as a spy as an act of atonement, but that he also
resented Dumbledore for making him do it, when he could have stayed in
safety at Hogwarts. There were debts and obligations and duties
entangled in the relationship between them, too many to ever be
untangled. Dumbledore would believe that the old rope had caught Snape's
neck and was drawing him in again, half-cringing and half-growling,
reminding him of how much he owed the old man.

He did not know that Snape's primary allegiance had changed, and that
enabled him to cut the rope without regrets.

``What did you wish to talk to me about?'' Dumbledore asked.

Snape blinked, slowly, as though he had lost himself in the past. He
turned his head and stared at the far wall. He swallowed. ``I wish to
know your ultimate intentions regarding my ward,'' he whispered.

``Harry Potter, Severus.'' Dumbledore's voice was quick and pleased. ``He
has a last name. He has living parents. And that is part of your answer,
as I am sure you suspected it would be. I intend that Harry someday be
reconciled to his parents, \emph{if} that can be done. I admit that
after the fiasco on Christmas---''

\emph{That is one name for it.}

``---I have less hope of it than ever. But I do not intend that any
family be split apart forever. Lily has given so much to the cause of
the war against Voldemort, her elder son and her magic included. It was
only by a miracle that Poppy managed to save her foot and keep it from
joining the list of sacrifices as well. I always meant to give her back
the family life she should have had when the war was done. There is
every hope, now, that Harry as well as Connor will survive. I would see
them living with their mother, peacefully, until they're of age, and
then visiting her and kissing her with grandchildren in their arms
someday.''

\emph{Not while I live. In the name of Merlin and my magic, I will end
the pain.}

``And James?'' Snape let the name sound as if it were being tugged out
of him by a fishhook tangled in his guts. It wasn't difficult to summon
\emph{that} emotion.

``Ah, yes, James.'' Dumbledore sighed. ``He has not been in
communication with me for months, and so I do not know his mind as well
as I could have claimed to, once. But he has given up much, too. You
know that, Severus.'' Dumbledore sent him a chiding glance Snape didn't
bother answering. ``He gave up his position in the Aurors so that he
could stay closer to and live with his family, protect them against any
Death Eaters hunting them after Tom's fall.''

\emph{I doubt it.} From the memories Snape had sometimes encountered in
Harry's mind during Occlumency training, he believed it far more likely
that James Potter was a coward who had found the wide world too much to
deal with. It would account for his shutting himself up in Godric's
Hollow and then shutting himself up again in Lux Aeterna.

``He has not given up as much as Harry.'' The emotions that filled his
voice were ones that Snape didn't have to feign, either. He was glad of
that. A lie was always stronger when mixed with a bit of truth, the same
way that iron forged into steel was stronger than when left alone.

``You continue to say that, Severus, but I do not think you mean it.''
Dumbledore leaned coaxingly forward. Snape felt an edge of compulsion in
the old wizard's words, and bounced it with expert smoothness from his
shields, winding it down to drown among the quicksilver pools. It was a
method that didn't alert Dumbledore to its having failed. ``After all,
Harry was a child, and he could not have known what he was giving up.
James and Lily were adults. They yielded the whole world to their
children, and to living with them and bringing them up a very certain
way.''

\emph{His words have almost no effect on me, now,} Snape realized. He
had moved beyond Dumbledore's voice as it seemed he had moved beyond the
Dark Lord's when he left him in heart. The rhetoric that had once seemed
so compelling beat against the walls of his mind and rolled down as rain
would.

``I have seen Harry's training, Headmaster. I cannot believe that any
result was worth that.''

Dumbledore's eyes and smile grew brilliant. ``Oh, yes, they were. He has
such skills as he has never yet needed to call upon, and, more than
that, he has the drive to learn that makes sure he will acquire more as
he reaches the limits of the ones he has. And now that I believe his
mindset has changed and his idea of sacrifice extended to the whole of
the wizarding world, I can see where I went wrong. I was attempting to
force him to love, and he already does. Even if he is not the
fulfillment of the prophecy, he will do great things. Surely you can
see, Severus, that any sacrifice was worth it to get him to that
point?''

Dumbledore bore down with the heaviest compulsion he had raised yet, a
clumsy touch that he would have disdained if he didn't need to be
certain of winning, Snape thought. He hovered beyond it, drowned it, and
marveled at how the words did not even raise a spasm of rage within him.

\emph{I have grown beyond that now. I know they are not true, and so
there is no need to waste breath or time in fighting them. They are
valuable only as a portrait of what Dumbledore is thinking.}

``I know that I have often praised his skill in my Potions class,''
Snape murmured. It was the kind of admission that Dumbledore would
expect him to make, the grudging turn back around to admit the truth of
another's words without actually saying that that person had been right.
Dumbledore would see it as the interaction of his compulsion and Snape's
essential personality. Snape did rouse himself enough to add, ``That
doesn't mean that he needed to learn \emph{everything} that he learned.''

``There are lessons I would change,'' Dumbledore said. ``But in the main,
Severus, I think you'll find that he knows \emph{everything} he
\emph{needs} to know.''

\emph{That will be enlightening, when I see it.}

``Perhaps,'' said Snape, and then roused himself to sneer. ``Do you
really think that the boy will be brought near his parents again? I do
not think he would stand for it. He vowed to tell his father that he did
not want to speak with him again, I know.''

Dumbledore winked. ``Oh, but I have my sources, Severus, and I know that
Harry is still writing steadily back to James. They exchange letters
every few days. It is not something, but it is an open connection, and
it shows that Harry would be willing to share his life with his blood
family if he could be convinced they deserved it. He shall know the full
story of his mother soon, I think, whenever he next wishes to contact
her, and that should convince him.''

Snape fought the urge to snarl. \emph{The boy did not tell me he was
still writing his fool of a father!}

But he was a Slytherin, and he rose beyond his immediate irritation and
looked at the implications of Dumbledore's words. \emph{A source. Who? I
do not believe that my Slytherins would be unaware of one of their
fellows coming and going, reporting to Dumbledore about Harry without my
knowledge. Someone would have hinted to let me know about it.}

He had the answer in a moment, when he just bothered to exert himself.

\emph{The wards!}

The Headmaster of Hogwarts could listen from the walls and doors of the
building, if he wished to. It was not often that one made the effort;
the knowledge obtained that way was dizzying, and required constant
monitoring, and constant drain on one's magic. Dumbledore had so many
hooks in so many minds that he hadn't bothered with the wards in years.
But, if he chose, he could renew the ties that bound the Headmaster to
the school, and no one would know when he was listening from doors or
walls, windows or portraits.

Snape wondered if Dumbledore knew about his plan already, then discarded
the idea. He would have to act as if it were unknown, or he was lost. He
had kept much of what he plotted in his own head, as it was the best
way. And the best way to avoid much more scrutiny was to do exactly what
he had done: come to Dumbledore and ``prove'' he could be trusted.

He looked away from the Headmaster and slipped a tone into his voice
that Dumbledore was the only person ever to have heard. ``I do not like
to think of losing the boy, Headmaster. You know that I don't often
become fond of people, and---'' He shook his head as though he had said
too much.

``I know, Severus, I know.'' Dumbledore leaned across the table and
patted his hand. ``But family is an important and sacred thing---in
Harry's case especially, when he spent so many years of his life
exclusively with them. You would not like to deprive him of them if he
made the choice, would you?''

\emph{Yes, I would. If he made the choice to go back to them now, he
would obviously be insane, and I would take appropriate steps.}

``No, Headmaster,'' Snape whispered.

``I know that you, yourself, had a---more delicate relationship with
your mother than you usually acknowledge,'' Dumbledore said, with the
appropriate pause. ``Not that Lily is Harry's only magical parent, but
there are some similarities, I believe.''

\emph{Thank Merlin for Occlumency}. Snape calmly bolted down his rage,
his unthinking reaction. \emph{He is trying to shove me off balance. The
only thing I need do is not let myself be shoved.}

``I did not hand that knowledge to you so you might turn it against me
as a weapon, Headmaster,'' he said, and he snarled as he said it.

Dumbledore raised a hand, looking apologetic, but smug, if one were
looking for it, in the relaxed lines about his eyes. ``I am well aware
of that, Severus. I am sorry.'' He paused for a moment, then said, ``Was
there anything else that you wished to speak about concerning Harry? You
know my intentions now. I would still like to find some way to reconcile
him to his blood family, but I acknowledge that the methods I was using
did not work, and that it will take some time to find the ones that
will.''

``No, Headmaster.'' Snape stood up, keeping his face carefully lowered.
It would not do for Dumbledore to see defiance in the crook of his neck
or the tilt of his head now, not when he had done so well. ``You know my
own intentions. And I---can admit that yours might have their place.''

\emph{If the world were entirely different. If Harry's family were not
the nest of vipers they are.}

``Good, Severus.'' Dumbledore smiled at him. ``I do hope that you will
come back and see me again at some point, as I look forward to speaking
with you and \emph{do} miss you when we have long times in between our
chats.''

\emph{How was I to chat with you these past few months, when I was in
prison?} Snape thought, but said, ``Goodbye, Albus.'' Then he scowled,
as though long habit had made the name slip out when he didn't intend it
to.

He felt Dumbledore's intense delight as he left. Of course the
Headmaster would be delighted. Snape had apparently played into his
hands. He had fulfilled his expectations perfectly, and Dumbledore
trusted too much to himself to think his expectations were false. Look
at how badly his expectations had failed him in the affair with Harry,
and yet he thought that Harry and his parents might reconcile even now.

Snape waited until he was in the dungeons, where he knew that certain
subtle spells woven into the stone somewhat discouraged the Headmaster's
wards. Then he drew the glass bottle from his pocket, and tilted it to
catch the light. The silvery liquid of the Pensieve Potion shimmered
with captured memories. If Snape had guided the conversation aright, and
he thought he had, then those would be Dumbledore's memories of Harry's
training. Snape knew he had often visited Godric's Hollow when the
Potter boys were children.

\emph{Or when Connor was a child and Harry a young adult.}

\emph{I do not yet know what I will do with these. I will be patient.
But I know they will come in useful.}

\emph{Check and mate, Albus. You should be more careful when you are
playing with Slytherins.}

Snape slid the bottle back into his pocket, scowling for the benefit of
the wards, and strode rapidly down the hall.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry would be the first to admit that he didn't always see things
straight the first time. He had mistaken Connor's incompetence for
sweet, childish naïveté for a long time. He had mistaken Sirius's
growing insanity, and then his possession by Voldemort, for changing
moods in the man himself. He had believed his parents when they said
that Peter was guilty, that all Slytherins were evil, that having any
Dark power was the sign of evil. He didn't have some inherent gift to
discern truth from falsehood.

He had the impression now that it had taken him an unconsciably long
time to figure out that something was odd about the way Draco treated
him, different than it had been.

Draco often touched him. Draco had always done that, and Harry had just
accepted it as something he needed to do, a habit, like the way Hermione
tugged on her hair when she was thinking hard. He hadn't thought it
\emph{meant} anything. What could it mean? It just happened.

Draco often seemed irritated when people interrupted him when he was
talking with Harry. Draco had always done that. It was part of him,
signaling a childish desire to always have his thoughts heard first and
foremost. Harry had even felt honored in that he was Draco's chosen
listener. But if he had not been Draco's chosen listener, someone else
would have been.

And now\ldots{}now those two things, if nothing else, had altered. Draco
still did them, but he did not do them in the same \emph{way}. Harry
couldn't see when the change had begun, but he noticed it now.

Draco touched him constantly: light brushes on the shoulder as he walked
past, one hand swatting at his hair in the morning in a vain attempt to
make it lie flat, a steering on the arm when Harry was about to bump
into someone else in the crowded corridors. But now the touches were
odd, soft, reverent, as if Draco didn't believe Harry existed in the
same world that he did. Harry supposed that he could have excused that
as a relic of his habit of fooling Draco with illusions---of course his
friend would want to make sure he was solid---if not for the other
thing.

Draco tilted his head and gave other people this \emph{look}, now, when
they wanted to speak with Harry. It considered them, judged them, and,
most of the time, discarded them. Draco stepped aside without protest if
he thought their presence important, but most of the time, he simply
hovered, waiting impatiently for them to be gone so that he could claim
Harry's attention again.

And now there was \emph{this} thing.

Harry frowned at the glass serpent, which he had found in his trunk
while he searched for a series of notes he'd taken on Dark creatures
last year, to see if they would be any good in helping with the
unicorns' web. It still shone blue, and while purple churned around the
edges, indicating that Draco felt protective of him, the blue was
predominant.

So far as Harry could remember, blue was not a color described in the
spell that he had chosen to make Draco's bottle, and which Draco had
imitated when making the glass serpent.

Harry shook his head and stood. They had no Divination, since Trelawney
claimed to be sick today, and Draco was still in Ancient Runes. This
might be one of the few times that Harry would ever have to sneak away
to the library and research the blue color in peace.

\emph{Besides, I might as well look up unicorns while I'm there.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry settled the enormous tome, \emph{Colors of the Soul: A Look at
Common Methods of Aura-Reading,} carefully on the edge of the table.
Madam Pince had stared hard enough at him when he carried the book off
the shelf. He didn't want to drop it and prompt the fierce witch to
drive him out of her library.

He flipped through the book, carefully skimming each page, looking for a
mention of the spell he had used on the bottle. Other passages briefly
caught his eye, but none of them seemed all that relevant.

\ldots{}\emph{pale frost-blue is often believed to be an indication that
somewhere a beloved is pining for his lover\ldots{}}

\ldots{}\emph{Deep green as the color of a soul has several significant
readings. One is that of a rich life about to come into its summer of
plenty, as the hue is believed to reflect summer leaves. Another insists
that the soul thus marked has a tendency to darkness, as that shade of
green is of all of them closest to black\ldots{}}

\ldots{}\emph{It was once believed that Seers saw souls in colors, but
this is now generally believed not to be the case\ldots{}}

At last, Harry found the description of the spell, and shook his head
when he saw it. The list of colors was considerably longer than the one
he'd seen when reading a description of the spell the first time. Of
course, the books in Diagon Alley wouldn't have had enough information.
He settled down to read, resigned to looking for a time, since the list
was enormous and split into subtle shadings, such as \emph{deep
red-gold} and \emph{pale lime-green.}

To his shock, there was only one entry for blue in the whole of the
list. The description after it made him fall deeper into shock.

\emph{Blue. Deep love; devotion.}

Harry felt his throat dry out. His eyes stung with something that might
or might not have been the beginning of tears. He settled the book from
its slant into a flat position, a movement that didn't even make the
table tremble but caused Madam Pince to scowl at him anyway, and then
leaned forward. He felt disconnected from his body, and his arms shook
with fine tremors.

\emph{I---}

\emph{That's impossible.}

Harry would have thought that it indicated the love of friendship, which
Draco had already told him he felt several times, but there were other
entries on the list for friendship, mostly under various shades of
green.

Blue indicated romantic love.

\emph{But Draco can't love me like that,} Harry thought, and raked a
hand through his hair. \emph{It wouldn't make sense. I---people love
each other in different ways, but they have to have a} reason \emph{to
fall in love with someone, even if they can't articulate them. You don't
go around falling in love with every random person you meet. And Draco
has absolutely no reason in the world to fall in love with me.}

Harry could see why someone would love \emph{Draco}; that was no
problem. He was capable of fierce loyalty. His occasional fits of
childishness were endearing once Harry got used to them. He could admit
his mistakes, as he had after summoning Julia. He did things to change
himself without bragging about it, like trying to learn pureblood
rituals. He shone joy when he was happy, shone rage when he was angry,
and in general acted like a living window on a marvelous land. Most
people did, in Harry's experience---what he had said to Vera about
finding most people wonderful was true---but Draco's soul-land was
particularly vivid to Harry.

Harry could not imagine Draco giving that emotion to him, particularly
because he had said, and Harry had understood too late, that he believed
there was one perfect person for each witch or wizard. Harry was
manifestly not perfect for Draco. He was manifestly not perfect for
anybody. He grieved to think that Draco had trapped himself into
thinking that he was, and wondered if he had done anything, in his
ignorance, to encourage it.

\emph{He wants to love me in a moonlight sense}.

Harry had learned little about pureblood marriage and joining rituals as
a child, since that was not the kind of alliance he would ever make---he
couldn't marry or join with someone, he wouldn't have enough time to do
that \emph{and} live for Connor---and not the kind of alliance his
parents would ever have forced Connor into. He had read about the seven
types of romantic love that ancient pureblood witches and wizards
believed to exist, however, if only because they were mentioned
constantly, and were one of the few beliefs that crossed the divide
between Light and Dark.

There was shadow love, where one partner took care of the other. There
was darkness love, where both partners were locked together in a
self-destructive dance that usually ended with one or both of them
dying---the great passions such as tragedies were built on. There was
starlight love, where the love grew from the desire to make each other's
lives easier and then traveled along in a cloudy mixture of light and
darkness for all the lovers' lives long. Most arranged marriages and
joinings aimed at producing starlight.

There was lightning love, where the emotion flared quickly and usually
ended in elopements and whirlwind courtships, but then faded out and
might leave the pair unhappily chained to each other for the rest of
their lives. There was firelight love, which surged from friendship into
warmth and slow, ordinary surrender to feelings, never achieving the
heights of emotion that lightning or darkness love might, but also never
going out or dying.

There was moonlight love---the perfect, pure, blissful kind of love that
simply erupted one day and grew stronger all the time, shining forever,
always there even when the moments seemed darkest, as the moon was there
even when she waned.

That was the love that Draco wanted, and it was the kind of love that
Harry did not truly accept. If a marriage or joining broke apart, that
did not mean it was imperfect. The partners might find happiness
elsewhere. They might be perfectly happy alone. They might marry or join
again, and still make a mistake. Harry refused to believe that, of all
the variety of souls he had seen already, the only possible choices for
each of them were perfection or unhappiness.

And then there was sunlight love.

Harry picked up \emph{Colors of the Soul} and carried it back to its
place on the shelf, unmindful of Madam Pince's glare now. He walked down
that aisle and up another until he found the book he was looking for,
\emph{Light Lady and Dark Lord}, and took it down. He had read part of
this the other day to reassure himself that the Light Lady Adalrico's
ancestor had fallen in love with and forged the knife for really could
have been none other than Calypso McGonagall. She had destroyed the
Eagle Lord, and yes, a Bulstrode had fought next to him. It was no
wonder that Lady McGonagall had refused to accept his suit.

It wasn't that part of the story Harry was interested in now, though. He
flipped until almost the end, to a passage he had read as a child, and
bent over it.

\emph{Calypso McGonagall had put her power into her voice, and it was
her voice that destroyed the Eagle Lord at last. She drew her enemies
into one place, one battlefield in the north of Scotland. When they were
gathered into that place, all those Dark witches and wizards, she drove
her voice downward, into the earth, singing.}

\emph{And it answered her, with the Deepest of All Songs, and destroyed
the Eagle Lord and his followers in a quake that harmed no one else.}

\emph{The Lady went to walk the battlefield afterwards, with a Seer
close beside her. She wished to see if anything lived in any of her
wounded enemies' souls that could be salvaged.}

Harry had not understood that part as a child, not seeing why Lady
McGonagall would want to have a prophetess with her, but now he
comprehended. This would have been a Seer like Vera, capable of telling
whether someone was worth the effort to redeem.

\emph{Among the wounded and half-destroyed, they came upon Achernar
Black. Now, this witch was the greatest of the Eagle Lord's
followers---not the most powerful, but the most feared, his great
torturer and his second-in-command. Her own power was also in her voice.
She needed no whips, no Unforgivable Curses, to break someone else. She
need only speak to them, and that person would be screaming before the
end. She was badly hurt when they found her, but alive.}

\emph{The Lady of Light looked upon her Seer, and she waited.}

``\emph{She might be saved, still,'' said the Seer, after reading Achernar
Black's soul.}

\emph{Calypso McGonagall waited to hear no more. She picked up the
wounded witch in her arms and took her herself from the battlefield,
nursed her back to health, and kept her in her own house, striving to
rekindle that elusive spark of light and kindness and humanity that the
Seer had seen in the midst of all her great darkness.}

\emph{It took seven years before Achernar would stop attempting to
escape or kill herself, and as for what she and the Lady spoke about in
their private conversations, no one will ever know. However, it is
certain that the two witches joined ten years to the day after the
battle against the Eagle Lord, and through the finding of a girl who
became Lady Calypso's magical heir, and thus heir to the McGonagall
line, their joining became a marriage.}

\emph{They are the prime example of sunlight love, the love that is
equal and fierce and burning always, the love of two so joined that they
seem as one brilliant star. All these components are important, or it is
not sunlight love. Equal: that the lovers might never know unconquerable
uncertainty in each other, even in moments of weakness. Fierce: that it
might never yield or stop burning. Burning: that it sheds light and heat
upon all comers.}

\emph{The world is richer for sunlight love, and whether it burns
between two of Light or two of Dark or one of each, it is valued
wherever it shines.}

Harry put down the book and closed his eyes. \emph{That is the kind of
love I would want to have, could I dream of such a thing as attracting
someone else. That's the kind of love I would want for Draco, did he not
so obviously want something different. He's deceived himself in me.
There is nothing I can offer him, not like he deserves, and not if he
wants moonlight love---or any other kind, for that matter.}

\emph{So I have to tell him that. I know that he's going to hurt because
of it, and so will I, but I can't lie to him like this. However he's
convinced himself that I'm perfect for him, whatever mask of me he's
seeing, he has to be unconvinced.}

Harry gently put \emph{Light Lady and Dark Lord} back into its place,
and then strode from the library towards the Ancient Runes classroom.

\chapter{They Are Dancing}\label{chapter-52-they-are-dancing}

Draco sighed as he finished the last rune drawing. He \emph{did} enjoy
this class, but sometimes the tiny, endless, complicated variations on
the runes made him want to scream. And they wouldn't even create some
kind of amusing effect if you got them wrong, either. They just wouldn't
\emph{work}, and you wouldn't know it until you tried to use them.

Draco wondered why anyone would want to use them in battle, though he
supposed their main use was outside battle situations. And yet there
were those stories of rune-trained war witches and wizards\ldots{}

He shook his head and tucked his thoughts back where they belonged, the
same way he was slipping his book into his schoolbag. There was a time
for thinking about class, and that was when he did homework or was
actually in the classroom. Otherwise, he wanted to think about other
things.

His mind returned at once to its favorite subject, of course.
\emph{Harry.}

Draco smiled slightly as he threaded between the desks and the other
leaving students, heading for the door. He knew it was slow, that it
would probably always be slow, but he and Harry were making progress.
Harry had told him about Moody, and they watched the Defense professor
together, though he made no more spectacular mistakes like trying to put
Harry under Imperius. Harry didn't go provokingly out of his way to talk
to other people just because Draco didn't like it. Harry noticed when
something was wrong with him and asked about it.

Things weren't as perfect as Draco would like them to be, but they were
not as stupid as they had been when Harry wouldn't talk about his
mother, either.

And then, of course, Draco stepped out of the Ancient Runes classroom
and found Harry leaning against the wall, waiting for him with a grave
expression on his face.

``Why are you here?'' Draco's mind sprang into motion, trying to find
some explanation that didn't involve disaster for one or both of them.
``Did you get hurt?''

Harry blinked, as though he thought it strange that that should be the
first thing on Draco's mind, and shook his head. ``Divination was
canceled,'' he explained. ``But I found something, and I wanted to tell
you about it.''

Draco let his shoulders fall, causing his bag to slip, and him to grab
for it. Harry darted forward and steadied it with one hand. Draco
glanced up at him. He felt his stomach tighten when he saw the gentle
look in the green eyes, as though Harry were only waiting to break bad
news.

``You \emph{did} get hurt,'' he breathed.

Harry touched his shoulder, a motion so slight and swift that Draco
barely felt it. He knew it had happened, though. He wasn't about to
deceive himself when Harry made the rare motion to touch him first.
``No,'' he said. ``But I'm afraid that you may be about to. I need to
speak with you in private, Draco.''

Still not sure what this could be about, Draco nodded slowly. ``No one
should be in the further corners of the library at this time of the
afternoon.''

Harry sighed. ``I'm afraid that won't do. Some room really private,
Draco.''

``Why?''

``You might\ldots{}yell.''

Draco linked the gentle look in Harry's eyes together with his behavior
then. The idiot was about to make some other sacrifice. He would be
convinced that it was for Draco's own good, of course, whatever it was.
Probably he meant to end their friendship, or to back out on sharing
things with Draco.

A heat shimmer of anger made its way up his spine. ``There's a classroom
on the second floor that's rarely opened,'' he said coolly. ``Let's use
that one.''

Harry blinked, but looked just as happy not to have to climb staircases
until they reached one of the classrooms on the seventh floor.
``Let's,'' he said, and walked beside Draco as they turned down the
hall. All the while, he looked at him out of the corner of his eye. His
face was downcast but determined, and now and then he chewed on his lip.

\emph{Oh, yes. It's another sacrifice.}

Draco could feel his anger baking his heart until it was hard as a coal.
He did care about Harry, of course he did, but even a caring friend
could get tired of these fits of his. And if what Harry wanted to take
away from him was something that Draco also wanted, then he was prepared
to fight for it. The gentle stubbornness Harry looked ready to exert was
not going to be enough this time.

\emph{If he can't be selfish, I'm perfectly capable of it.}

Draco extended his emotional senses. He'd been trying to keep them to
himself in the past week, learning to drop the crutch of Harry's
feelings and walk among other people, sensing only what he wanted to
sense. The boy he loved was still the easiest target, however. He felt
the slick stone of determination, smelled the honeysuckle scent of
concern for him, and saw a brief flash of pink light that usually
indicated Harry was about to do something ``good'' that he nevertheless
didn't want to do.

Draco nodded briskly. He was only confirming his guess, and he had
nearly convinced himself that whatever he wanted and would fight for
would be what Harry wanted and was willing to fight for, too.

\emph{I'm not about to abandon him in any sense. He'd better not ask me
to.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

They reached the classroom, and Draco entered with a cautious look
around. Moody \emph{did} sometimes use this room to show physical
demonstrations to his students that the ordinary room wasn't large
enough to accommodate, but now it was empty. Harry ducked in, and Draco
locked the door.

\emph{He'll probably try to bolt the moment he realizes how serious I
am.}

Harry turned to face him, his eyes wide and his face open. Draco held
firm against it. It was a beautiful, coaxing expression, and it was
manipulative. Harry had frequently used it to urge Millicent and Pansy
out of bad moods.

``Draco,'' Harry said, ``I saw a new shade, blue, in that glass serpent
you gave me. I went to the library to look it up, and realized that it
meant romantic love. I know that you love me, now.'' He took a deep
breath.

Draco stared at him, his own shock sweeping away the emotional
sensations coming from Harry. This was \emph{not} the way he had
envisioned Harry finding out. He had plans for what would happen when he
finally told Harry, or, as seemed more and more likely, someone in
Slytherin let it slip to him. He had never thought of this.

Then he took in Harry's expression again, and felt the irritation and
anger turn to rage, hard and deep.

``And you've come to tell me that you can't return that love,'' he
interrupted. It was not the end of what he wanted to say---he could
anticipate Harry's answer, in fact---but it was a necessary step in the
conversation.

Harry shook his head, eyes widening even further. \emph{He could make a
killing in politics if he could just use that expression to mean other
things,} Draco thought cynically. ``It's not that, Draco. If I could
afford to love someone else, then I would love you. How could I not?
You're the person I feel I know best, the one person who's managed to
really \emph{correct} your mistakes when it comes to me, and force me to
correct mine, too.'' A brief smile blazed across his face like a falling
star, and vanished again. ``You've been my friend since we came to
Hogwarts, and you went through trials that would destroy any ordinary
person, and you're still right here. But I know that you must have
fallen in love with some imperfect part of me, a part that you're
convinced \emph{is} perfect. So I came to tell you that I'm not really
just that part of me. I know that you'll hurt for a while, but it would
be immoral of me to keep on lying, just because I want to enjoy you love
and your attention.'' He paused and looked at Draco attentively.

Draco was past rage, and into sheerest astonishment, not that far from
amusement. Of course Harry was reacting like this. The \emph{really}
funny thing was that Harry thought Draco would go along with it.

He laughed.

Harry blinked, then bit his lip and looked thoughtfully at him. ``Was I
wrong?'' he asked. ``Did the blue color really mean you love someone
else?''

\emph{Oh, no, he doesn't.} Draco took a few steps forward and grabbed
Harry's hand tightly. It must have hurt, but Harry didn't wince or pull
back. He just stood there, patiently waiting for Draco to explain things
to him. He would not think there was anything wrong with what he'd said,
of course.

``I've gone through a lot, you said,'' Draco muttered to him. ``Trials
that would have destroyed any ordinary person.''

``I did mean that.'' Harry narrowed his eyes, his own temper obviously
stung. ``I'll repeat it as often as you want me to. I don't say things I
don't mean---not to you.''

Draco felt a rising sweetness threaten to distract his attention from
the matter at hand, but he pushed it aside. He had a lot to make clear
to Harry in the next little while. ``I know you meant that,'' he
murmured, leaning closer. Harry just stared straight at him, refusing to
back down or be intimidated. That was one of the things Draco loved
about him, and he let that shine in his eyes even as he glared. ``What
you don't understand, Harry, is that I'm not in love with some imperfect
part of you. I've seen what you really are, all the irritating parts
included, and that's the person I love.''

``You can't,'' said Harry. ``You stand condemned out of your own
mouth.''

\emph{Oh, yes, just try and play lawyer, Harry. You've never been good
at it.} Draco raised his eyebrows in polite question.

``You came to me and had a conversation with me, just before Christmas,
about perfection,'' said Harry, lifting his chin. ``You said that you
felt there was only one witch or wizard out there for every other wizard
or witch. That they could be perfect for each other. We disagreed,
remember? I don't believe in that kind of perfection, Draco. But if you
love me, and if that's what you think you've found in me, it's an
obvious mismatch between what you want and who I really am. I don't
believe in your ideal of perfection, and your perfect witch or wizard
would have to do so.''

Draco found himself closer to the edge of anger than he would have
liked. \emph{Merlin, Harry, you manage to shove me around more
effectively than anyone else ever has.} He caught his breath before he
could blurt out something hurtful.

``I was expressing an ideal, Harry,'' said Draco. ``That's all. I'm not
surprised that you took me the wrong way. I barely knew what I was
saying myself, caught as I was between trying to state what I felt for
you and keep you from guessing that it was \emph{you} I felt it for. But
suffice it to say that I can live with someone who doesn't accept just
the same beliefs that I do. Very easily. I've done it for four years,
haven't I?''

``Three and a half,'' Harry corrected.

``I'm not going to let your pedantry ruin this,'' said Draco. ``I'm not
going to let anything ruin this.'' He was walking a fine line. He
\emph{really} would have liked to yell at Harry about being stupid, or
kiss him, or do something else that would dispense with the need for all
this careful talking. But Harry would find it a lot easier to ignore
those things. These words would go to the heart of him. ``If you tell me
to go away, then yes, of course I will. But everything else is just a
remnant of those idiocies you've been told.'' \emph{I'll keep my promise
not to hurt Harry's mother. I won't even mention her.} ``You said you
would consider me if you could afford to love someone else. What did you
mean by that? Why can't you afford to?''

Harry tugged on his arm, trying to back away. Draco wouldn't let him go.
Harry hissed at him, and still Draco kept him close. He'd noticed that
Harry liked to withdraw into himself when he discussed anything that
touched on his training. A physical hold made it harder for that to
happen, and the one thing Draco absolutely did not want to happen now
was for Harry to find his own logic and start fighting back against
Draco on equal ground.

\emph{Plenty of time for us both to be equal later. Not now. And if that
makes me a sneaky, good-for-nothing Slytherin, so be it. I wasn't fair
when Harry had just woken from that dream, either.}

``You know the answer,'' Harry said at last, seeming to decide that he
would settle for meeting Draco eye to eye if he couldn't back away.
\emph{I'm not scared}, his face proclaimed, while the way his hand shook
betrayed otherwise. ``I'm going to die in this War, Draco. It's almost
certain. And if I survive, I'm not going to have any time for a lover.
I'll have too much to do, for the other magical creatures and for the
surviving wizards. It wouldn't be fair to you, either, to demand that
you become some sort of war spouse who only waits at home for your
husband to come back to you. I \emph{won't} ask that of you. I would
never ask it of anyone, but especially of you. You're as free as anyone
else. You should have the right to choose your own life.''

\emph{Pretty,} Draco had to admit. \emph{I think there are a whole lot
of people who would be convinced by that---either in thinking that they
should choose someone else, or thinking that that meant Harry was just
cold and didn't want any kind of companionship.}

\emph{Too bad for them. I know him better.}

``I'm never going to wait at home, Harry,'' he said. ``I am going into
the battles right alongside you so that I can fight at your side, and
the politics so that I can plot with you, and whatever other arena you
enter. I love you. I love everything that's in you. Nothing about you is
strange to me, and no part of your life is going to be strange to me,
either. I know that we're never going to be \emph{identical}, and I've
seen that since I summoned Julia Malfoy, but we can be \emph{equal.}'' He
paused for a moment, then shrugged. \emph{I've said other things that
could sound stupid if Harry took them that way. I might as well say
this.} ``I want sunlight love with you, if you're familiar with that
term.''

Harry's face washed of color. Then he said, ``But you want moonlight
love.''

Draco blinked at him. He thought he'd done well so far, but he just
couldn't keep up with Harry, the way he rushed up to the edge of a cliff
made of logic, jumped off it, and landed on the far side of a different
ravine altogether. ``Why do you think so?''

``All that nattering about perfection.'' Harry had his eyes narrowed, as
though he were examining a fly someone had dropped in his glass of
pumpkin juice. Draco felt a surge of hope. \emph{You had everything
planned out, didn't you, Harry? And then I rearranged it.} ``It's
moonlight love that's called perfect. Sunlight love burns people,
sometimes. It's too fierce. If you want someone perfect, then you want
love like the moon.''

``No,'' said Draco slowly. He could understand the confusion, but he
didn't understand the pallor of Harry's face when he spoke of it. ``I'm
quite sure. I want love like the sun. I think everyone does, of course,
unless they're mad and want the darkness, but most people have to settle
for what they get. I'm not settling. I've got you, until the moment when
you utterly tell me to go away.'' He clasped Harry's other hand while he
was distracted.

``This isn't---'' said Harry, and then stopped. He tugged against
Draco's grip. Draco ignored the motion. Harry looked away from him for
the first time, staring down at his own hands. ``You want sunlight
love,'' he said, his voice suddenly clipped. ``That's fine. That's
perfect. I hope you find it. But you're not going to find it with me.''

Draco gritted his teeth. He felt sick to his stomach, but he also
remembered all the idiocies that Harry believed about himself. This was
probably directly traceable to another of those idiocies. ``Why is that?
Do you not want it yourself?''

``I want it myself,'' Harry said. ``But it's a stupid dream. A child's
dream, like you said. Most people have to settle for what they get. And
I've got something else. I've got a duty that won't go away, and if I
let myself start thinking that I'll get a spouse or a lover, it'll
disrupt things. I was made to \emph{help} other people, Draco. I stay in
the background, and I make them happier. That's what I'm supposed to
do.'' This time, he pulled violently enough that Draco was forced to
loose his left hand.

It was still going much more positively than Draco had expected it to go
at this point, though. For one thing, Harry could have used his magic at
any time to break free, or pin Draco to the wall, or make him shut up,
and it hadn't even occurred to him. He was vibrating with distress, but
he hadn't called his power.

For another, Draco knew the enemy, now, and he could attack it with
every weapon at his command.

``That's \emph{stupid}, Harry,'' he said, keeping his voice low and
compelling. ``Why should everyone else have a lover, and you don't get
one? What's the big exception about you?'' He cocked his head. ``You're
the one who's said before that other people are far better than you are,
that you weren't anything special.'' That statement had always made
Draco want to laugh himself sick, but he knew it was what Harry himself
believed.

``That's the thing about me,'' Harry said. He was trying to put the
shattered pieces of his mask back in place, and failing. ``They're
\emph{better} than I am, Draco. Everyone is wonderful. You deserve
someone who can make you happy, who can love you the way you want. And
I'm not going to be that person.''

``It's not that you're not that person by nature, Harry,'' said Draco.
``It's not even that you don't want to be that person. What is it?''

``It isn't---'' Harry swallowed. ``There's not---'' He stopped, looking
utterly lost.

Draco understood. Harry saw where this road led as clearly as he did. If
Harry admitted that one fundamental truth like this about himself was a
lie, he would have to admit others were. The house of cards would start
coming down, even if it took years for it to fall completely. Harry
wouldn't be able to hide any more behind stupid, illogical assurances
like everyone else being a better person than he was. He would have to
give in and admit that he was just fine in some ways, and good in
others, and engage with people as a wizard and not some distant, aloof
benefactor.

It was frightening, Draco supposed, and that was why Harry was currently
fighting the realization with all his might. And the method he chose
would have worked, with someone else who knew him less well than Draco
did.

``I've done horrible things, Draco. You know that. I summoned Dark
magic. I haven't cared enough. I've made so many mistakes. I knocked you
out and left you behind last year when you wanted to go with me. I
valued Connor over you until the end of last year, and I know that
always irritated you.'' Harry turned wide eyes on him once again.
``Don't you see? Those are parts of the kind of person I am, too.''

``I know that,'' said Draco. He was feeling calm, past the initial surge
of emotions that had fastened him to Harry's side in the first place.
``And what you don't seem to understand, Harry, is that I forgive you
for those. Your own credo. I know you hate its being used against you,
but there you go. Sometimes we can't choose what our friends do. Or our
lovers, for that matter.''

``Don't you understand?'' Harry wrenched backwards. Draco let go of his
right wrist and took his left one. ``This could happen \emph{again}.''

``Then I'll get angry,'' said Draco. ``And then I'll forgive you, and
then we'll be back here again. Unless you tell me to leave you alone,
Harry, that you don't want to love me in that particular way. I'll leave
you alone, then. But you have to tell me first. Your attempts to
frighten me away don't frighten me in the least.''

Harry glared at him helplessly. Draco rearranged his face in his best
helpful expression.

``Damn you, this isn't \emph{funny},'' Harry hissed at him.

``I know,'' said Draco. ``I never said it was.''

``It's---you can't love me like that,'' said Harry.

``Why?'' Draco asked. ``Is this your telling me to go away?'' He braced
himself. He would hate it, it would hurt, but he honestly felt as though
he would have jumped off a cliff at that moment if Harry told him to.

``No,'' said Harry. ``It's impossible like you flying without magic is
impossible. You \emph{can't}. If you could really see my soul, then you
wouldn't love me. You're still seeing a bit of me, and convincing
yourself that I can be good based on that. But that part isn't me,
Draco.'' He looked a bit calmer now that he was twisting logic back into
tortured shapes, Draco thought. ``I'm not what you think I am.''

``How do you know that?'' Draco asked. ``You're not in my head, sharing
my judgment.''

``Because I know myself,'' said Harry, and smiled slightly. ``And if you
love me, then you must not know the truth. One implies the other.'' He
looked half-relaxed.

``You've looked into my mind, and seen what I feel.'' Draco \emph{could}
keep himself going in the face of this. He \emph{could}. Breaking down
into a tantrum would feel good, but it would not help, and Draco was
past the point when he flew into anger or tears just because it felt
good. ``Can you think me mistaken, after that, Harry?''

``You could believe that I really am as you see me. That doesn't mean
it's the truth.''

\emph{Fight poison with poison, then.} ``And how do you know that your
own view of yourself is correct? Unless you're suddenly manifesting
magical talents that you haven't bothered to share with me, you can't
see your own soul, either.''

Harry's smile withered. Draco lifted his head. \emph{I thought so. He
isn't back in his secure view of himself, yet. I can still take his
wobbly tower down with a statement as simple as this one.}

``Because I know,'' said Harry, his voice growing tight. ``Because I've
been told that all my life---'' He stopped.

Draco rubbed his hand gently, making the motion a contrast to his harsh
words. ``Because your mother told you, isn't that right, Harry? Your
mother whom you know lied to you and abused you?''

``Stop it.'' Harry lunged around him for the first time, heading for the
door. Draco spun, but kept his feet anchored, holding Harry still.

``No,'' he said. ``I won't. I promised that I wouldn't hurt her or insult
her, but I never said I wouldn't speak the truth, Harry. And I certainly
never promised that I wouldn't insult \emph{you}. The truth is that
you're being a coward. You're so scared of what it means if you're
better than you think you are that you want to run away from me.''

Harry turned back around. A soundless scream was issuing from his mouth,
and he panted with tears in his eyes. He shook his head madly as he
backed up from Draco. ``No,'' he whispered. ``This isn't---it can't be
what you want it to be. Because it isn't. And I know it doesn't make
sense, and I know that you'll say that, and I don't \emph{care}, because
that's the way it is.''

Draco took a deep breath. He wanted badly to let Harry go, let him
regroup. They would have the rest of their lives to work these things
out. On the other hand, let him go now, and he didn't know if he would
get this far again. Harry was going to build his walls high and strong,
and come up with more logical arguments to distract Draco's attention
from the illogicalities sitting right in the middle of him. And in
another mood, Draco didn't think he could be as generous and forgiving
as he was right now.

\emph{Or maybe you're just scared of living with Harry when he knows
that you love him.}

Draco acknowledged that, and put the thought away, because it wasn't
useful right now.

``Listen, Harry,'' he whispered. ``Is there anyone whose judgment you
\emph{would} trust to be unbiased, someone who could see your soul and
tell you the truth about it?''

``The Seer,'' Harry muttered. ``Vera. The one you met the night you
summoned Julia. But she's back in her Sanctuary now. There's no one near
me whose judgment I would---''

Abruptly, he froze. Then he said, ``You wouldn't really make me go to
them, Draco, would you?''

``Go to whom?'' \emph{Yes, I will. I'm sorry, Harry, but even if you
don't choose me after all, I want you to have this. Vera might have made
you look at your soul, but then she went away again. This has to be a
gaze you can't back away from.}

``The unicorns,'' Harry breathed. ``They can recognize innocence. They
can recognize goodness. I think I know how to break their web now.'' He
turned those wide, appealing eyes on Draco one final time. ``But that
wouldn't be right, would it? Because I would have a selfish purpose in
breaking the web, and that wouldn't be in accord with what a true
\emph{vates} should do. So we could wait---''

``And then you would have an even more selfish purpose in waiting,''
Draco cut in. ``Besides, Harry, you told me that a true \emph{vates} is
supposed to know himself inside and out, and shouldn't that include
whatever truth the unicorns can tell you?''

Harry closed his eyes. His expression was of someone who knows that he
can't stop the boulder already falling.

``All right,'' he whispered. ``Yes. I---we'll go to them.''

Draco nodded. ``Right now.''

Harry opened his mouth, but obviously saw it would do no good. He gave a
tiny nod.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry was shaking as he walked along the path into the Forbidden Forest,
ducking beneath branches slick and starred with ice-flowers. It wasn't
from the cold, nor yet from the tight grip that Draco had on his wrist,
the grip he hadn't once released, though that felt too good. It wasn't
even from the thought of facing the unicorns.

It was from the thought of facing what came after the unicorns were
free, of not being able to hide any more.

A hoof sounded off to the side. Harry knew it was the centaurs watching
them, and kept his eyes focused dead ahead.

One way or another, he was going to have to go forward from this. This
was a crossroads, and someone had shut the gates behind him.

Harry darted a glance at Draco. \emph{No, not some mysterious someone. I
know his name perfectly well.}

A glimpse of white showed through the trees to one side---a falling
snowflake.

He was not going to be able to change what happened.

A convulsive shiver gripped him, and Harry held himself with his free
arm.

Bells rang through the Forest.

Startled, Harry jerked to a stop, and felt oddly naked for a moment. The
last time he'd been in the Forest, the Many snake had ridden his arm,
and he'd been able to use that to distract Tybalt and John. Since
December, however, the Many snakes had been all together in their den,
tending the eggs about to hatch, and Harry had nothing but his own magic
and the courage of his convictions, which felt like very far from being
enough.

The bells rang again, and a unicorn stallion walked onto the path.

Harry watched him come, his coat catching the quick winter light in
mirror-colored shimmers. His golden hooves rose and fell in odd motions
that didn't seem to echo the chiming sound of them. His head bobbed, his
neck rolled, and his ears twitched in motions that mimicked a deer's
more than a horse's, but all of the motions only seemed to rush into
light that rippled towards that silver horn.

\emph{Unicorns are creatures of clear sight---honesty, Light. He knows
what I've come for.}

Harry put out one hand. The unicorn came to him, but halted just shy of
a touch, his head lowered and his horn pointed towards Harry's left
shoulder.

Harry took a deep breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he
could see the blazing web that crawled over the unicorn and crept into
the Forest to encircle the others. He knew, from hints he'd read in the
books during his research on unicorns, that Dobby had been right in what
he said about that web. Ancient wizards had bound the unicorns because
they were too beautiful.

But they had also bound them \emph{because} they were beautiful. They
wanted unicorns always nearby to look at. They could not bear the
thought of them dispersing, the way they would, naturally, and living
one or two at a time, apart from each other, in places that they would
hallow. They could not bear the thought of going a lifetime without
seeing one, or only catching a glimpse of a white shape darting through
a clearing, and a distant, muffled sound of bells.

But that distant, hurried glimpse by sunlight or moonlight was what
should have happened, and what the unicorns wanted to happen, and it was
what Harry was finally ready to give them.

He forced himself to ignore his own motivation, and Draco standing
motionless, rigid with wonder, at his side. He reached out, and dipped
under the web, and found the weak spot in the center of it.

Wizards were complacent now, knowing exactly where unicorns lived and
what had to be done to keep them that way. They might come and stare a
few times in their lives, but then they would go away again. Those
ancient wizards had been desperate for a glimpse of beauty, and their
desire had kept the web strong. As desire faded, the strands in the
center of the net were also unraveling.

Harry now had to conquer, mainly, his \emph{own} desire to keep that
beauty snared and near.

And it was harder than he had expected. He pictured never seeing a
unicorn again in his life, and though he had seen them only a few times,
and once had been to watch Quirrell kill one, he struggled. It was like
being asked to yield one of the colors he had always known. What would
his world be like if he could suddenly no longer see silver, or white,
or gold? The others would still be there, but they could not take the
place of the one he had lost.

The unicorn stallion made no motion to help him one way or the other. He
stood watching, waiting. A subtle shine permeated his coat.

Harry closed his eyes more tightly, and found the answer in his own
habit of sacrifice and what the unicorns would want. He could give up
this one thing he liked. He had given up things that meant more.

And the unicorns\ldots{}

Harry pictured them as free, which they would be when he was done with
them, and then he was crying, tears streaking his face, and then he
reached out and took hold of the web, and it parted like dead skin in
his hands. Someone had finally, finally, wanted the unicorns to feel
pleasure more than he wanted to feel it himself, and that had been all
it took. Harry mourned, that the unicorns had been enslaved for so long
for so simple a reason.

Then the mourning vanished.

Harry opened his eyes.

And, for the first time, he looked straight into the heart of Light, and
he understood, in that flash, why his mother and Dumbledore both loved
it so much.

The unicorn shone against his surroundings, beauty of the kind that was
higher and brighter and richer than what was around him, beauty that did
not make the bracken and the withered leaves and the ice seem worthless,
but transfigured it and lent back his own light to glorify it the more.
For the first time, Harry knew what color joy had.

Then his own skin began to blaze.

Startled, Harry looked down at himself. His skin had turned transparent,
and he could see a deep, clear green light welling from his arms and his
wrists. It spread, pulsing, down his body, and then acquired a tinge of
gold. Gold-green, the color of leaves in sunlight, the colors that Harry
knew meant, together, a soul on the edge of both darkness and light, but
also one that was entering into the summer of its being, and had a
summer to offer others.

\emph{That} hid inside him. If it was not the color of his soul, it was,
at the very least, a color of who he was.

The realization chopped the legs out from under him. Harry sank into the
snow of the path, and the green-golden light came with him, beaming,
growing brighter now, soaring out of him, bringing a radiance to the
Forest that made it look as if it were bathed in a burning spring. Harry
felt Draco kneel down beside him and embrace him. He tried to speak, but
he couldn't. His throat was tight with sorrow and elation keen enough to
kill him. He couldn't hear what Draco was saying; the world was one
madly thrumming mess, thanks to his heart going in his ears.

That could not cover the sound of his thoughts, though, and they
repeated one thing over and over. \emph{My mother was wrong. Oh, she was
wrong}.

And out of the trees came the other unicorns, their legs bending like
reeds, their necks bobbing like swans courting, every step light enough
to be a dance. They gathered, and then they began to gallop, an
enormous, turning circle around Harry and Draco, each one blazing like a
stained-glass window with the sun shining through it, gratified and
fulfilled and exalted.

Harry felt the lump in his throat dissolve, and he cried again, hard as
he tried to resist the tears. The barriers were broken, and he had come
out of the autumn and winter into summer and spring.

The circle began to blur, gaining speed. The unicorns trailed clouds of
glory now, streaks of blue and red and gold and green as well as the
more usual white and silver. The path and the Forest filled with the
radiance of a hundred thousand dawns, rising straight up into the sky,
like an aurora.

With the light went the unicorns, whirling ascending, not distinct
shapes but winds of light now, the smaller shapes the foals, the larger
shapes the mares and stallions, rippling through an endless spectrum of
shades.

But Light. Always, Light.

They reached a point about a hundred feet into the air, and then they
trembled. For a moment, the whole vision froze. Harry could hear Draco
gasping beside him. He looked up, to remember this. For sure, he would
never see anything like it again. The unicorns were free now.

There came a moment when he wished it could be permanent, and then he
discarded that, because change was the law of life.

Then the image resounded with one musical cry, and broke apart. Burning
streaks raced away towards all the edges of the horizon. The unicorns
were scattering through the world now, Harry thought, and Muggles might
glimpse them speeding along the streets of their cities or grazing in a
back garden as easily as the wizards would see them in wild forests or
galloping along the edge of the sea. Unicorns went where they pleased,
and now, for the first time in centuries, they could do it again.

The silence and the dimness that fell seemed very foreign, after that,
or would have, were it not for the aftertastes of light still lingering
on the bracken and the ice, the leaves and the path.

Harry's green-golden shine gently faded, though some motes flashed,
lingering like last notes of music. Harry could hear his own gasping
now, too. He closed his eyes tightly and strove for some sense of
self-control.

``You know,'' he whispered, ``that it might be a long road to walk
before I can love you just the way you love me.''

``I know,'' Draco whispered. His voice was hoarse. ``But are you going
to refuse to walk that road, now?''

Harry shook his head, and then found the courage to turn, open his eyes,
and look at Draco.

Draco was smiling at him. There was summer in his eyes.

\chapter{Intermission: Glances}\label{chapter-53-intermission-glances}

Millicent glanced up from her book as the door to the Slytherin common
room opened and Harry and Draco came through. She could barely see
Harry's face at first; Draco was bending over him and saying something
in a low, excited tone that instantly made her want to listen more
closely. \emph{People always give away their best secrets when they're
talking like that.}

Harry came into view at last, and Millicent paused. She had thought of
sneaking up to them so that she could hear at least a few words of
Draco's conversation---he was too deep in speech to notice her, and
Harry too deep in listening---but now she gave it up.

\emph{Something happened. At last. Draco told him? No, the shaken look
in Harry's eyes is too deep for that. He looks like he's been picked up
and dunked underwater twenty times.}

But there was a definite difference between them now, and Millicent
wound up watching in silence as they climbed the stairs, her eyes
narrowed in thought.

\emph{Draco} did \emph{tell him, I think. He had to have. That's the
only thing that would start that shaking in Harry. But it was combined
with something else, and they probably aren't inclined to tell me what
it was.}

\emph{Start from what you know, then. Draco told Harry. And Harry didn't
run in the other direction, or Draco would have come back to the common
room alone and with his magic blasting the furniture apart in his rage.}

\emph{This will give the Malfoys an advantage with Harry. I don't know
if Harry would actually join with Draco, but Draco isn't one to let a
door shut if it's even a little way open.}

Millicent stood, thoughtfully, and went to write a letter to her father.
She was no longer reporting to him on Harry's daily movements, but this
was something larger, something that could affect their political
standing in what Adalrico was calling Potter's Alliance for want of a
better name. Her father would want to know what had happened, especially
since Millicent knew that he had a private bet with Lucius Malfoy about
its likelihood. He would appreciate having a few days or weeks to adjust
his mood to losing before Mr. Malfoy came to gloat to him about having
won the bet.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Pansy maintained a properly solemn expression as Harry and Draco passed
her, pretending that her Transfiguration homework was the most
interesting thing in the world. Then she threw back her head and laughed
so hard that Montague, trying to do his homework in a nearby chair,
glared at her and stormed off.

\emph{It's about time! Honestly, I might have made a move on Harry
myself if Draco had waited any longer. Since when is any Malfoy that
patient, or that pigheaded?}

Pansy rolled back over and put her head on her arm, smiling. She watched
Millicent go up to their room, doubtless to write a letter. She took
that kind of thing seriously. She had never been more her father's
magical heir than this month, when her mother was due to deliver a child
who might or might not share Millicent's position in the family someday.

Pansy had no letters to write, at least right now. She was only her
mother's blood heir, and had no need to let her know of Harry and
Draco's obvious attachment to each other until it became more obvious.

\emph{Let them enjoy their privacy}, Pansy thought as she picked her
book up again, her cheeks hurting from the pressure of her grin.
\emph{They'll have little of it soon enough. Draco ought to realize that
dating the Hero of Hogwarts will make him rather more interesting than
he's been so far. Watch him get indignant about it, though, and storm
and fume and complain that the press no longer trembles before the word
of a Malfoy.}

At that she couldn't help herself, and started laughing again.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Albus blinked slowly, roused from a daze he couldn't remember entering.
He was often like that, when he had lost his consciousness to the wards.
He was so busy seeing and hearing around the school, and sorting
information into his merely human mind, that he it took him some time to
realize the import of what he had seen.

Now he did.

His face grave, he paced over to his window and cast the spell that
would let him see the Forbidden Forest. It lay calm and dull under the
heavy February snow, looking as it always had---until Albus raised his
magic and looked at it through the eyes of a man who once might have
been \emph{vates}, and could see webs.

The unicorns' web was gone, and with it, a large part of the beauty and
color of the Forest.

Albus closed his eyes and sighed wearily. He wondered if Harry knew what
he had done, realized how endangered the unicorns would be in the wider
world, from Muggle hunters and wizards intent on getting their hands on
horns. He wondered if Harry even realized that a small part of the
everyday joy at Hogwarts came from the happiness that the unicorns
breathed as they existed in the Forest, that it dispersed across the
grounds and added cheer to the students' moods.

\emph{Of course, he would probably only shrug and say that he values the
unicorns' freedom more.}

Albus shook his head. The boy was too careless, too impatient and hasty.
He could not be trusted the way that Albus, as a Light Lord, should have
been able to trust another powerful wizard to realize what was sensible
and not make waves in the world. But Harry was not sensible, and never
had been, or they wouldn't have had to bind his magic.

Albus turned thoughtfully back to his desk. He would keep his promise,
and not interfere further with Harry in the school. But he thought there
was something else he could do, bread he could cast on the water and see
if it came back to him. There was no harm in \emph{writing}. The one he
had chosen would probably reject his letters, anyway, as he'd had a
habit of doing of late.

But he could try. Much of his life, lately, seemed to consist of long
and patient trying, regardless of whether or not he could see immediate
results.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape glanced up from the law book he was studying. It was nearly time
for double Potions with the Slytherins and Gryffindors, and he wondered,
mind still half-caught up in what he was reading, what Harry would look
like this morning. His face had been pale and shaken last night, but he
had eluded Snape's every attempt to confront him, and simply gone to
bed.

Harry and Draco came in first, most unusually, and were so caught up in
talking that they didn't even realize he was there. Snape watched them
take their seats and continue chatting.

No. Not caught up in talking. Caught up in \emph{each other.}

Snape released his breath on a long hiss, surprised. Harry glanced
sharply at him, then, but turned his shoulder a moment later when Draco
said something in a coaxing tone. Then he laughed, and his face acquired
a rare, vivid openness that Snape had seen only during this past August,
when Harry had been so close to peace.

\emph{He told him. And it was not a disaster.}

Snape stared at them blankly, trying to conceive how that could be.
Harry, from what he knew of his relationship with Draco lately, should
not have taken this so calmly. He might have accepted Draco's friendship
and confidences, but it was a long step from there to being lovers, or
even boyfriends. And there was the fleeting nature of Draco's crush,
which should surely have died a swift death. Crushes did, when one was
Draco's age and of Draco's disposition. He might be possessive, but he
was also temperamental. Snape had assumed he would tire of not having
Harry and move on to someone else, resuming his place as Harry's friend
easily enough.

Of course, he had always been different about Harry.

Snape nearly decided that he would retain his doubts until he saw
something definitive to crush them, but then stopped that train of
thought. Why could he not \emph{allow} himself---that was the word
hovering on the edges of his consciousness---to believe that Draco's
crush would last? Was he really preparing himself to comfort a
broken-hearted Harry?

\emph{Yet he should not have his heart broken at all. It should have
taken far more for him to even consent to the idea, if I know him. There
would be a great deal of nonsense about not being worthy of Draco's
loving him, and how he was sure that no one could love him in that way,
and how he does not have a future. And Draco does not have the patience
to deal with that.}

Yet it had apparently happened. And there was no rupture between the
boys, but no simple friendship, either, not with the way that Harry was
obviously paying attention to Draco's hand on his shoulder, gazing at it
as if he knew why it was there but were trying to assimilate the reason.
He would either have tolerated the touch without notice or swatted it
off before.

Snape decided that he could wait and see what happened. There were far
worse courses.

\emph{And now,} he thought, his gaze briefly darting to the drawer where
he had locked the bottle of Pensieve Potion, while his mind spasmed in
wonder and doubt, \emph{I almost think I should wait on my plan. Speak
to Harry, first, before I do anything rash. Perhaps I should have Draco
with me when I do, if he can soothe Harry so effectively.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Lucius!''

Lucius glanced up lazily from the book he was reading. He had only meant
to look up the color of Potter's soul when he got it down from the
library shelf, but the theory of colors was more interesting than he
remembered, and he'd ended up reading a great deal more. Deep green had
meant just what he thought it did, both in strength of power and
potential and in darkness of the soul. Lucius had been pleased. Either
color meant good things for his family, as long as things fell out in
the way Narcissa said they would.

And now she was entering the room, waving a letter covered with
handwriting that looked like Draco's, her face full of proud elation.

Lucius smiled and sat upright, reaching out to catch and kiss her free
hand. ``Let me guess, my dear,'' he said. ``Our son is now absolutely
sure that Harry will be our son-in-law someday.''

His wife blinked at him, an inch from gaping. Lucius allowed himself a
small---a very small---smirk. It was rare enough to get the drop on
Narcissa that he had no compunctions about doing so, especially when it
made her act like that.

She stood straight at once, of course, her eyes narrowing. ``You
intercepted the owl and read the letter before I did,'' she accused him.

Lucius turned a page in his book. ``No.''

``Draco wrote you another letter, in which he confided his hopes and
fears, so that you knew what the next message would say.''

Lucius glanced up, admiring the defiant flash of his wife's blue eyes.
``No.''

``Then tell me how.''

``No,'' said Lucius a third time, and stood himself, drawing Narcissa
near and kissing her on the mouth to silence her. ``Does it matter, my
dear?'' he breathed as he drew back. ``We will be Harry's favored allies;
we cannot help but be, as long as he returns Draco's love, do they join
in five years or in ten. The position of our family is secure for at
least this generation, and the next as well, as long as Harry and Draco
find a child to be a magical heir. Imagine the power of one who inherits
the magic of a Lord. You were the one who saw the potential in Harry
first. You were the one who told \emph{me}. Can you doubt that the world
will change when Harry Potter is done with it?''

``He will not be a Lord,'' said Narcissa, but she had the
half-comfortable, half-speculative look on her face that meant she was
thinking about what he had said, and fitting it neatly into the world of
her own plans. Or she was thinking about the kiss, Lucius conceded, as
she threaded her fingers through his hair.

``No,'' said Lucius, though privately, he had his doubts about that.
Potter had noble ideals, of course, but every other wizard who had tried
to walk that road had ended up on one side or the other. So long as the
boy chose Dark when he did stumble---and Lucius could not help but think
he would, what with his swearing not to be a Light Lord---then there was
nothing wrong with his middle road. It might even increase his prestige
in the public's eye. They would think him all the more benevolent.

``But he will be Draco's, or so he thinks,'' said Narcissa, and put the
letter on the table beside his chair. ``You will read it later?'' She
started pulling him towards the stairs.

Lucius smiled at her, the slow smile he knew she liked best. ``Of
course,'' he agreed, and let thoughts of politics go for now. Marrying
Narcissa had been good politics, but that was not the reason he was
filled with fierce delight whenever she wanted to go to bed. That was
all, and only, her.

\chapter{A Moment Between Brothers}\label{chapter-54-a-moment-between-brothers}

Harry sighed and shifted back until he sat on the edge of the single
long table that was the only furniture in this particular abandoned
classroom; apparently Professor Flitwick's third-year Charms class had
managed to disintegrate most of their desks, and he'd had to appropriate
furniture from the upstairs classrooms. It wasn't one of their usual
meeting places, and for that reason, Harry knew that Connor was more
likely to come alone.

\emph{Good.}

He had things he had to speak to Connor about, and Connor had had the
same idea, from the note that Godric had delivered to Harry during
breakfast this morning. A private place would be best for both.

The door opened, and Connor entered. Harry could feel the old relaxation
of soul that he had had around his brother since he was a small child.
He was most \emph{comfortable} with Connor, for all that he could feel
different things for other people now. He had to step carefully with
Snape, Slytherin was sometimes a mass of reaction and counter-reaction
and watching, and Draco\ldots{}

Draco kept frightening Harry. He was too sharp-edged, too prone to know
when Harry was doubting his ability to continue along their path and
slide in to reassure him. Harry hadn't been able to hide from him at all
since the freeing of the unicorns nearly a week ago.

In some moments, he felt an almost giddy rejoicing about that. The rest
of the time, he was terrified.

But with Connor, he only needed to think about that insofar as he had to
tell him about Draco. He grinned and held out his arms, and Connor came
to him, hugged him hard, and then stepped back and drew something large
out of his pocket. Harry raised his eyebrows. It was the golden egg
Connor had managed to acquire from the Hungarian Horntail in the First
Task.

``This is the clue to the Second Task,'' said Connor bluntly. ``I have
no clue what to do with it.''

Harry blinked. ``Connor, the Second Task's only two days away.''

Connor sighed and ran a hand through his hair. ``Yeah, I know. And yeah,
it was stupid of me to wait this long to come to you. But I really
thought I could figure it out on my own.'' He paused, then added softly,
``And I don't like thinking about the Tournament, you know? I didn't
choose this, and even with your distracting the attention from me,
everyone still expects me to be Hogwarts's Champion somehow.''

Harry felt a stab of guilt. He had never asked how Connor felt about his
sudden presence in the First Task. He had taken the opportunity to let
it slide into silence when Connor never brought it up. He had enough
other things to think about that he would take quiet when it was
offered.

``Do you---do you resent what I did?'' he asked.

Connor stood there for some seconds, studying his trainers. Then he
looked up. ``Do you want the brotherly answer or the real answer?'' he
asked.

Harry grinned despite himself. ``The brotherly answer is the one that
parents would approve of, right?''

``Right. I tell you how thrilled and proud I am that you're finally
getting some attention, that of course you were right to defend
everybody and without you tons of people would have died, and so on.''
Connor waved a hand.

``Assume that's a given,'' said Harry. ``And the real answer?''

``I was kind of jealous, yeah.'' Connor shifted. ``I mean, Harry, it's
wonderful that you finally \emph{are} getting attention. But I was used
to it for so long.'' He shrugged and tried a self-deprecating laugh that
didn't come out well. ``I suppose I'm not quite as resigned to being in
the shadows as I thought I was. I have no idea how you \emph{stood} it
for so long,'' he added.

Harry shrugged in turn. ``I was used to it. Believe me, I would transfer
all the fame and glory to you in a heartbeat. I have no idea how
\emph{you} stand \emph{that.}''

Connor shook his head. ``All right. So we've established that we'd like
each other's respective amounts of attention, and yeah, I'm jealous, and
on we go. Can you help me with this?'' He reached out and flipped open
the top of the golden egg.

Harry jumped as an enormous screeching sound issued from the egg, then
blinked. ``That's Mermish,'' he said, after listening to it for a
moment.

Connor's mouth dropped open. ``How the fuck do you know \emph{that}?'' he
blurted. ``\emph{Hermione} wouldn't have known that.''

``Did you ask her?'' Harry was trying to make out individual words, but
he knew very little of the language---how to count to ten and a few
greetings, really. It was definitely Mermish, though. Nothing sounded
similar.

``Well, um, no.''

``There you go, then.'' Harry reached out and shut the top of the egg.
He could just make out that the words were repeating, but that didn't
help with knowing them. ``It sounds like ordinary speech underwater.
Take it to the Lake or a bathtub or a pool, and listen to it there.''

Connor abruptly swallowed. ``You think we'll have to go \emph{underwater}
for the Second Task?''

Harry softened. ``I forgot, Connor,'' he said. ``I'm sure it'll be fine.
I can teach you a charm that'll let you see and hear and breathe down
there.''

``That has nothing to do with water being over my head, though.''
Connor's voice had risen a notch.

Harry settled for walking over to his brother and patting him on the
shoulder. ``I'm sure it'll be fine,'' was all he could say.

Connor nodded, shakily.

He'd nearly drowned in the tub when they were three. Lily had left Harry
to watch him while she went to fetch their clothes, but Harry hadn't
realized the tub was full of water already, and had been thinking about
practicing spells. Connor had climbed up on the side to look in,
slipped, and fallen. Harry had run to his side the moment he heard the
splashing and gurgling, but he knew it was his duty to get his brother
out of trouble, and Connor couldn't shriek for help, and Harry wasn't
strong enough to lift him out. His magic had come into play at last,
snatching Connor awkwardly from the water and holding his head out so he
could breathe. Since then, his brother been all right around water he
could stand or sit in, like a shower or a shallow pool or the ocean
along the beach near Lux Aeterna, but he'd panicked whenever the water
went over his head, and he was not a strong swimmer.

``Can you teach me a warming charm, too?'' Connor whispered. ``The lake
will be cold, I think.''

``Of course,'' said Harry quietly, focusing on standing as still as
possible so that Connor wouldn't panic further. He was thinking of
giving up on what he'd come here to tell his brother. Surely Connor
needed help with the Second Task far more than he needed to hear Harry's
secrets.

``What did you want to tell me?''

\emph{Damn}. He'd remembered the note Harry had sent Hedwig with,
requesting a meeting, just before the note from Connor arrived at the
Slytherin table. He took a deep breath and sat down on the edge of the
table again. ``Well, one is that---'' He paused. How \emph{did} he
describe what he and Draco had, or didn't have, right now in words?

``Um,'' he said, and then decided to go for honesty and be damned.
Connor was a Gryffindor. He'd get it. ``Draco loves me.''

Connor stared at him.

``And I---'' Harry looked away. ``I don't know what my own feelings
are.'' \emph{Merlin, I sound like some sort of eleven-year-old crying
over her dead kitten.} He \emph{hated} being honest, because most of the
time it sounded stupid. He was amazed that Draco hadn't got tired of it
yet and let things slip back into their comfortable silence. He was
gradually coming to realize that that wouldn't happen again, though, or
at least not for long stretches, and that was another thing to terrify
himself with. ``But he proved a point to me the other day about my
wanting to run away from what he wants, and I know I'll love him
someday. Right now, I have no idea about it. I want to hide under the
bed.'' He flushed, since he'd not meant to admit that last part out
loud.

Connor was silent for a moment. Harry looked back at him, almost glad to
find a new source of anxiety in wondering what Connor would say about
his dating Draco. At least it would not be as deeply painful as this
attempt to live like a normal person, to remember, whenever he was
tempted to slide back into his old patterns of thought, that Lily was
wrong.

At last, Connor said, ``Well, he'd be mad not to love you, Harry,
honestly.''

Harry stared at him, and then said, because he had to get away from the
seriousness somehow, ``Is this the part where you confess the weird
incestuous crush you've nursed on me for years?''

``No,'' said Connor, as though talking to a small child, though he
flushed a deep red first. ``No. I---well, damn, Harry, I've seen the way
he hangs all over you. I didn't think it was a crush. I thought it was
just hero-worship. But after the last year, I think he would be mad not
to love you, if he can.'' Connor shrugged. ``So there. Was that the big
secret you were shaking to confess to me?''

``One more,'' said Harry, and then he closed his eyes, and he gave
Connor the prepared speech he'd recited in his head about Christmas
night.

He didn't look at his brother during the recitation, and Connor didn't
interrupt. Harry found himself glad that he'd practiced the words. It
drained them of most of the emotion. He could just drown himself in the
patterns of light exploding behind his eyelids. They were the important
things, not how he felt like he was drawing and quartering himself by
telling Connor what their mother had done to him.

\emph{I hate this honesty thing,} he fretted to himself. \emph{Why does
it have to hurt so much?}

But Connor deserved to know the truth, and it would be doubly selfish to
hold something like this back from his brother---selfish in motive, and
selfish because he needed it. Harry finished the recitation and bowed
his head.

Connor was still quiet. Harry sneaked a look at him out of the corner of
his eye, but it wasn't helpful, because he was looking at his twin's
trainers and not his face, and trainers were not notoriously good
reflectors of expression.

Then Connor spoke, in a simple, hard voice that Harry had never heard
from him before. ``I'm never going back to them.''

Harry blinked. ``I don't think James had anything to do with this,'' he
ventured. He didn't \emph{think} so. He'd been exchanging letters with
his father for a few months now, and James was still self-aggrandizing
and badgering Harry about Snape, but he had calmed down and started to
ask actual questions. And Harry knew Connor had been writing letters to
him all along. ``You don't have to cut him out of your life.''

``I want to.''

Connor's face had melted into a mulishly stubborn expression that Harry
\emph{was} all too familiar with. He shook his head, though. ``Why?''

Connor looked at him as if he were mad, then ran his hands through his
hair and started pacing. Harry decided it wouldn't be politic to comment
on how much he looked like James at the moment.

``All of this happened right in the same house where I was living,''
said Connor. ``And I never noticed. I was stupid. I'm tired of being
stupid, Harry. I was stupid about Tom Riddle possessing me, and I was
stupid about Sirius, and I was stupid when I was a kid. I don't want to
be stupid again. Living with Dad would make me stupid, I think. He never
noticed, or he pretended not to notice, and maybe he could make me do
the same thing.''

``And Mum?'' Harry asked quietly.

``You don't have to call her that just to placate me, you know.''

Harry winced, and kept still. Connor would be perceptive at the oddest
times.

``She---she did all that to you.'' Connor waved one hand, as much to say
that he didn't have to speak of it. ``She didn't have to. But she was
willing to, from what you told me. I don't want to live in a house with
someone like that, either. Unless you really think that there's a chance
she'll change her mind.''

Harry shook his head, and forced down the stupid, stupid tears. Talking
about Lily was still hard for him, and harder since Draco wouldn't let
him hide it any more. It had been simpler when Harry could just wall him
out.

``All right,'' said Connor, and exhaled. ``So I'm not going back to
either one of them. And I'm going to try to make an effort to get along
with Malfoy, as long as he makes an effort to get along with me. And
I'll go into the Lake on Saturday.'' He glanced at Harry, and made an
effort at a smile. It was rather ghastly. ``I hope that last `go' works
out well.''

Harry hugged him again, because he could, and then drew his wand. ``I'll
teach you those charms now, if you like.''

``Good,'' said Connor, and managed to ignore the thought of impending
lake water over his head for the next half hour, if the way he performed
the spells was any indication. Harry watched him all the while, his dark
hair falling into his hazel eyes, and his face reflecting his
stubbornness and his determination.

\emph{I have a better brother than I could have imagined.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Mr. Potter? Please come with me.''

Harry nodded reassuringly to Draco, and slipped away from the Slytherin
bench to follow McGonagall. He had noticed that Professor Dumbledore
wasn't at the head table, and wondered if the Head of Gryffindor was
taking Harry to see him. He hoped not. They had avoided each other quite
companionably for the last two months. Harry didn't see why it should
change now.

McGonagall led him into the side room where the Champions had gone after
their choosing by the Goblet, though, and turned to face him. Harry shut
the door behind him, and looked at her in question.

``A requirement of the Second Task,'' said McGonagall quietly, ``is that
each Champion dive under the lake to rescue the person he or she misses
most. You are Connor's twin brother, Harry, and he would miss you the
most. Each person must be put under a sleep spell to stay calm under the
lake. I assure you that you'll be able to breathe, and you'll stay
protected until your head is above the surface again. However, while the
Headmaster will perform the sleep spell on Krum's and Delacour's most
prized people, I know that you would not trust him to perform it on you.
Will you trust me?''

Harry blinked. \emph{So that's the challenge. At least Dumbledore's
being sincere about his promise not to interfere with me in any way.}

``Is the charm strong enough, Professor McGonagall?'' he asked. ``It
might just wear off me otherwise.''

The professor stared at him. ``Why?''

``I trained myself to resist most sleeping charms if I wanted,'' said
Harry, with a shrug. ``It was a precaution against being captured alive.
And if I sense something while I'm under the charm, something I think is
threatening, I might start trying to resist this one as well.''

McGonagall nodded slowly, though there was an ancient sadness in her
eyes. Harry wondered if he was really better off for knowing, now, that
it probably came from her pity for his childhood. It had been less
uncomfortable when he didn't. ``I think I can assure you this one will
be strong enough,'' she said, and raised her wand, and began to murmur
an incantation.

Sleep took Harry like darkness eating the light, and he rather
gratefully let himself collapse into its waiting arms. He did hope that
McGonagall would find some way to reassure Draco. If not, Draco would
probably seek her out and demand an explanation anyway---

He fell.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

He woke with a gasp, and the sense, at once, that something was wrong.
Of course, something \emph{had} to be wrong, or he did not believe he
would have awakened at all until he was above the lake.

He saw confused, hazy shapes wavering around him, and performed a
wandless \emph{Aspectus Lyncis}, which he remembered, just in time, to
make nonverbal. He had no idea if the charm McGonagall had performed on
him would let him speak underwater. He hesitated, then added a breathing
charm, just in case his other one had shattered with the sleep spell.

The shapes around him sharpened at once. Harry turned his head, and
found himself tied to a stone that curved harshly, like a fish's tail.
On one side was a small girl he didn't know, but she had long silver
hair that moved back and forth slowly in the currents. He supposed she
must be related to Fleur. He turned his head the other way, and stared
when he saw Hermione bound to the tail. \emph{Krum? Is that why he was
scowling the way he was at the Ball, and not paying attention to his
date?}

Then the shreds of the sleeping charm uncurled, and Harry told himself
to quit thinking about inane things, and concentrate on the danger that
had awakened him. He stared upward. The water above him was dark, and
shifted constantly in swirling patterns, but the \emph{Aspectus Lyncis}
let him make out the shapes of stone huts, tethered grindylows, and
swimming merfolk. Harry felt his stomach tighten when one of them turned
to look at him, and he saw the brilliant yellow eyes staring down
through the water. He'd had no contact with merpeople so far. He wasn't
sure what they might want of a \emph{vates}. Perhaps they weren't
bound---

As if in denial of that, the lake began to burn with a dull gray fire.
Harry could make out the shape of the web now, more fluid than any he
had seen so far, adjusting to the way that the currents and the waves
moved, Harry supposed. The merfolk spun through its loops, but they
tracked their progress, slowly and patiently, as if they were all the
work of one constantly adjusting spider. Harry shuddered. Was that what
had awakened him? The web was one of the more unpleasant he'd ever seen.

Then he realized the web was trembling. Something \emph{else} was
affecting it, something not immediately apparent, something that made
Harry wonder if a second \emph{vates} could possibly exist in the world
and be unbinding the merfolk.

He didn't have any longer to worry about it. A most peculiar shape came
slicing through the weeds towards the statue to which they were tied. It
took Harry a moment to work out Krum, with his head Transfigured into a
hammerhead shark's. He dodged easily past the merfolk---who didn't pay
him much attention anyway---and the grasping hands of the grindylows,
and used a knife stuck in his belt to saw away at the ropes holding
Hermione. They parted in a moment, and Krum grabbed her hand in his and
hauled her towards the surface. Harry shook his head. \emph{Connor isn't
going to like losing to him, if he does. Of course, Krum is behind him
in points after making the Chinese Fireball smash her eggs, but---}

The web trembled again, alternating ripples of light and dark fire.
Harry cried out, and a stream of bubbles rose from his mouth, though no
sound did. He could feel the ripples in his own body, as though the web
were inside him. Or perhaps he was inside it, by virtue of being down in
the lake.

\emph{Who or what is doing that?}

He closed his eyes, trying to concentrate, and at once heard a rising
song. It was familiar to him. He'd last heard it in the sky where he
circled on thestral-back. Before that, he'd heard it in the wards around
Grimmauld Place. It was the music of the Dark, and it was calling.

But not for him, not this time, though it would gladly take him if he'd
give in to it. Someone far in the distance was making it sing, making it
vibrate as they did---something. Harry jerked his eyes open, and watched
again as the lake filled with a haze of magic. The merfolk were swimming
in a slow pattern that danced opposite the web's. None of them paid the
slightest bit of attention to the gleam of silver that was Fleur's hair
as she fought off grindylows, heading for the statue. None of them paid
attention to Harry, either. He sensed they had something more important
occupying their time.

The web gave a low shudder, and a moan. The merfolk abruptly cried out
in a croaking, chattering way, like a band of hoarse squirrels, and
flowed together in an opening, closing, unfolding fountain. Harry
watched as individual merfolk spun away from each other, long dark green
hair flowing behind them. Their skins were gray, almost the color of the
web, and they waved their tridents and spears with fervor. Harry heard
them take up the song, adding a bass note to the thundering tenor and
soprano of it.

He reached out frantically, not sure what he could do, not wanting to
break the web without understanding it. Heavy water weighted his limbs
as he struggled, and he could see no sign of Connor. He didn't want to
break free of the ropes and cause his brother to lose points in the
Second Task, but it was looking as though it might come to that.

The gray web rang as if struck with a tuning fork. The merfolk gave a
concerted scream that raced up and down the scale. Harry had the
distinct impression that the entire world had taken a sharp lurch to one
side.

When he could see again, he made out the web still in place, but the
outer edges were raveled. Perhaps it had been attached to an anchor, and
the anchor was destroyed? Harry didn't know.

His scar began to burn.

He turned his head, and saw Connor coming at last, darting under the
merfolk and straight through the coils of the web, since he couldn't see
it. His eyes were wide through the bubble of the charm Harry had taught
him, and he was all but fighting back terror. He would use the impulsive
courage to grab Harry and pull him back to the surface, Harry knew.
Nothing would probably persuade him to come under again. That was all
right. Harry knew that if Fleur---caught behind a wall of impressively
determined grindylows---couldn't rescue the little girl, she would still
be all right. McGonagall had reassured him of that much.

Then Harry saw the dark shape swimming around the edge of a stone hut
behind Connor, a long wand clutched in his hand.

His scar burned more fiercely. Harry remembered his vision of Voldemort
sending Rabastan to do a certain task---a month ago.

And now he was aiming his wand at Connor's back, this dark shape who
might or might not be the same man, and a line of boiling water raced
away from it, coming straight at Connor.

Harry made his decision. His brother's life was more precious than his
winning the Tournament.

He forced his wandless magic down and into his limbs---much easier to do
now that he'd learned to confine it to his body---and snapped the ropes.
In an instant, he rolled under and away from the statue, repeating his
breathing charm as he moved, and cast a \emph{Protego} behind Connor.

He had once read that most spells worked differently underwater. So it
proved now. His shield gathered material from the lake rather than
forming a wall of hardened air or magic; weeds spun into it, and stones,
as well as a few startled grindylows. The boiling water hit it and
bounced off. Harry was sure the dark man would have cursed; he could at
least see a stream of bubbles race away from his mouth. He began kicking
forward, obviously desperate to come closer.

Connor was staring at him in astonishment. Harry shook his head to
indicate that he didn't have time to explain, and grabbed Connor around
the waist. He turned his head to the surface. The merfolk were between
them and it, but they were too caught up in their own private
celebration. Harry doubted they'd interfere.

He caught a glimpse of Rabastan from the corner of his eye, and yes, it
had to be him, since his face was the same as it had been in the vision.
That face had turned pale, but it was still calculating, and his eyes
narrowed. Then he turned towards the little girl with silver hair, still
bound to the rock.

Harry groaned in frustration and spun another \emph{Protego} directly in
front of the girl. He didn't think it would hold while he took Connor to
the surface and returned, though, and Connor was already starting to
struggle enthusiastically, not liking the tight hold combined with the
fact that he was underwater. Harry decided the best thing to do was let
his brother fight beside him.

He released Connor's waist and gestured to the little girl and the Dark
wizard. Connor understood. He obviously swallowed fear, but he nodded,
and then drew his wand from his waist. Given the slowness of his
movements, Harry knew he wouldn't swim fast in the attack

\emph{Go first, let Connor come up from behind and catch him unawares.}

Harry called on his magic again. This had to be flashy, to distract
Rabastan from both Connor and the little girl. He cast off bursts of
light, gold and red bursts that luckily still worked the way they were
supposed to. Rabastan turned towards him.

Harry grimly swam forward, letting the starbursts whirl around him, and
thinking frantically. His main disadvantage was not knowing how his
spells would work underwater, and he wanted something with non-lethal
force. The image of Rodolphus dying in a fall of ashes above this very
same lake was still burned into his mind whenever he entered battle.
Harry hated killing. It gave people no more chances to change. If he
could win the battle and protect Connor and the little girl without
killing Rabastan, then he would.

\emph{Use defensive magic, then.}

Harry cast \emph{Haurio}. The jade-green shield engulfed his hand, then
unexpectedly spread further around him, enclosing him in a bright bubble
of air and warmth. Harry dropped to the floor of it, and blinked. The
bubble went on expanding, blanketing the little girl in its protection,
and spreading towards Rabastan.

The Death Eater gestured with his wand and spat a stream of bubbles, and
the shield stopped. Rabastan eyed Harry for a moment, his head lifted
and his lips pinched tight in disdain. Harry stared back. \emph{Was this
all he came to do? Attack who he could, hurt who he could?}

Then he turned sharply, and fired another spell to the side. Harry swung
his head, and saw a puff of blood explode through the water as whatever
spell Rabastan had used cut deeply into Connor.

\emph{No}.

The savage strength that rose up in him then wasn't the wild anger that
had driven him against Umbridge and Lily; this was the old rage, the
kind that had let him fight Bellatrix and Rodolphus on the Quidditch
Pitch in the first year. He had been trained to protect his brother,
forged to protect his brother. He reached out and drew on what was
around him, as he had on the Bludger that returned both Bellatrix and
Rodolphus to Azkaban for a time.

The \emph{Haurio} shield bent a bit, and then exploded. Shards of deep
green bubble danced in the water, formed into a school on Harry's will,
and flew straight at Rabastan. Slice after slice after slice, and he
began to bleed. He was already bubbling as he muttered spells that
probably healed his wounds, but the shards turned and came at him again.
It would be like being caught in a constant rain of falling glass, Harry
knew. At least he wouldn't be able to fire another spell.

He kicked straight for Connor. He was a passable swimmer, and got there
quickly. Beneath the thick red water, Connor floated, his eyes shut, the
charm around his face at least letting him breathe. A long slice ran
from his right shoulder down and across his chest, then turned and
swirled across his abdomen. Harry could see the slick gleam of his
brother's intestines.

\emph{He'll die of blood loss if I don't do something,} he thought,
refusing to let himself feel emotion. \emph{I have to put pressure on
the wound.}

He bore down with all his might, and called another \emph{Protego}, this
time a small one. It forced itself down onto the injury, treating the
blood as the enemy, binding it inside. Harry thought he could depend on
the hardened weave of weed and stones to last until he reached the
surface.

He turned back around, in time to see Rabastan Vanishing the dark green
shards. Then he faced the little silver-haired girl. Fleur, finally free
of the grindylows, was coming up as fast as she could swim, but Harry
didn't think she would be in time.

She didn't have to be. Harry was rather tired of Rabastan, though still
not tired enough to kill him. The tight rage didn't permit that.

\emph{Sleep}, he thought, in a combination of Legilimency and savage
will. He should have done this in the first place, but he hadn't been
angry enough to force his command on another person. Rabastan trembled
and went limp now.

Harry swam for the surface, his arms clasped tightly around Connor. The
\emph{Protego} held. He would save Connor. None of the intestines had
fallen out. His brother was going to be all right. He would hold to
that.

He broke the surface of the lake, and his breathing charm dissipated. He
could hear shouts from the stands, but they fell into a momentary
breathless silence when he hauled Connor onto the shore.

Then shouts rose again, and Harry saw McGonagall coming down at a run,
her face deathly pale. A dark shape intercepted her, though. Snape slid
to his knees beside Connor and stared at him, then at Harry.

``Get him to Madam Pomfrey,'' said Harry, not recognizing his own voice.
He was freezing in the crisp February air. ``Slicing Curse.'' He turned
and plunged back into the lake, renewing his breathing charm, ignoring
the shout of his name in Draco's voice.

He dived down again, kicking, squirming, descending. He ignored the gray
coils of the web, though they felt slimy as they slid along his skin,
and the dancing merfolk, who stared straight through him. Rabastan was
going to be where he left him.

He was. Harry came close enough to see the bubbles rising out of his
mouth. His breathing charm still held.

This close, Harry felt himself begin to tremble. He wanted nothing so
much as to use the Slicing Curse on Rabastan. That much, he thought,
just that much Dark magic, and he could breathe.

Music soared in his ears.

Harry shook his head and closed his eyes, tightly. There were more
important matters at stake here, including questions that Rabastan could
answer only if he was alive. How had he got into the school, past the
wards that Harry had thought were closed to all Death Eaters now? And
what had been his mission? To kill Connor? Did Voldemort want the
publicly known Boy-Who-Lived dead, so there was no chance Connor could
defeat him?

\emph{No. No, I don't think so. Voldemort spoke in the vision of causing
his enemies pain and worry. I think Rabastan was assigned to kill Connor
so that it would affect me.}

The rage was close, if he let it in.

Harry did not let it in. He looped the discarded ropes---Fleur had freed
her sister, or her cousin, or whoever the little girl really was, and
gone---around Rabastan's body and hauled him towards the surface. They
reached it easily enough. Harry floated carefully in the water, hearing
the eager shouts begin again, then swam for the shore. He let everyone
get a good, long look at the floating Death Eater. If his brother wasn't
safe anywhere in the school, Harry wanted everyone to know it.

``Who's that?'' most people seemed to be asking, which was no help at
all.

Harry liked to think that if he were going to be forced into making a
dramatic display anyway, then he might as well \emph{use} it for
something. He pulled Rabastan out of the water and drew back his sleeve,
baring the Dark Mark on his left forearm. He held it high.

The screams were instant. Harry smiled. He knew it wasn't a pretty
expression, but he could imagine the ripples that would spread out from
here. The \emph{Daily Prophet} would be lucky if it reported the news
much before most ordinary wizards and witches heard it by word of mouth.
A Death Eater! A Death Eater in Hogwarts!

Harry let out a sharp breath, then, as someone collided with him. He
realized a moment later that the arms wound about his waist were
Draco's, and that Draco was hugging him as though he were afraid Harry
would plunge back into the lake again.

``Don't do that to me,'' Draco whispered. ``Please, don't do that to
me.''

\emph{This is one of the painful things about loving me,} Harry thought.
All he could really say, as he relaxed into the embrace and rested his
arms on Draco's shoulders, was, ``I'll try not to.''

``Harry.''

Harry glanced up at Snape. His guardian wore an expression Harry hadn't
seen in months: so fiercely protective that he seemed likely to grab
Harry and lock him in a secure room at a moment's notice.

``Your brother will live.''

Harry closed his eyes, and wondered how many of the drops of wetness
starring his eyelids were tears.

``And I think you had best bring your prisoner along for questioning,''
Snape added. ``After relieving him of his wand, of course. We will put
him in the Great Hall.''

``This is to be public, then, sir?'' Harry asked quietly.

``Oh, very much \emph{so.}''

Harry looked at Snape on that last word. Snape was staring at
Dumbledore.

``I would very much like to know,'' breathed Snape, ``how, with the
Headmaster in charge of the wards, Death Eaters \emph{continue} to get
into Hogwarts.''

Harry shook a bit, but he wasn't sure if it was with cold or anger.
Dumbledore's face wore the usual calm smile, as he tried to quiet the
excited shrieks around him.

``I'd like to know that, too,'' whispered Harry.

\emph{And why the hell the gray web in the water was wavering, and what
Dumbledore knows about it.}

\chapter{A Man's Soul May Waver}\label{chapter-55-a-mans-soul-may-waver}

Harry wondered what he \emph{should} be feeling as he followed Snape,
who was levitating Rabastan, into the Great Hall, and as Draco tagged
anxiously after them. He supposed it was almost anything but what he
actually \emph{was} feeling at the moment: a mixture of outrage,
irritation, anxiety over Connor, and low-simmering resentment that it
took him a moment to identify.

\emph{This has happened enough. What else could I do but what I've done?
I can't keep Death Eaters out of the school if the wards aren't watched.
And if Dumbledore is not watching the wards\ldots{}}

He wanted answers so badly he could smell them. But they had to deal
with Rabastan first.

At least Snape was making it public, Harry mused, as Snape bound
Rabastan to the surface of the Hufflepuff table with the ropes that
Harry had brought up from the lake. His guardian's face was almost calm,
but Harry didn't think that would last for long. Snape stepped back when
he was done and glanced once at Harry.

``You have his wand?''

Harry nodded and patted his robe pocket, where Rabastan's wand lay. It
had sparked at him when he picked it up, perhaps reflecting its owner's
anger, but as long as it was actually separate from Rabastan's hand, it
could not harm anyone else. Harry would keep a hold on it just in case
Rabastan had the ability to summon it to him.

``Good,'' said Snape, and then aimed his own wand at Rabastan.
``\emph{Ennervate!}''

Rabastan twitched, once, and then woke up. Harry could see the moment
when he realized he was captive. His eyes widened once, and then he
turned his head and met Snape's gaze with the calmness of someone who
expected torture and was bracing himself to resist it.

``Severus,'' he said. ``I haven't seen you in a while. Still defending
children, I take it? And enjoying it? I suppose such a life \emph{would}
content someone who had the smallness of soul that enabled him to turn
from our Lord.''

Snape showed no reaction to the taunts, but watched Rabastan with a
still face. Harry heard a slight murmur behind them, and glanced over
his shoulder. Most of the Tournament crowd had filed in. Harry could
make out Krum and Fleur and their former hostages near the front.
Zacharias Smith had found Hermione and was expostulating at her.
Hermione ignored him entirely, eyes on Rabastan. Harry wondered if she
was fascinated by the chance to see a real live Death Eater up close, or
if she wanted to see the person who had nearly murdered Connor face
justice.

Draco peered into his face, and Harry gave him a half-smile and touched
his arm before turning back to the interrogation.

``I want to ask you this only once, Rabastan,'' said Snape. ``How did
you get into the school?''

Rabastan snorted at him. ``And what makes you think that I'm going to
answer, Severus?'' He appeared a bit bolder now. \emph{Maybe the lack of
thumbscrews comforts him,} Harry thought. ``The secrets of our Lord are
his secrets alone, and I would rather go to jail than betray them. I've
done it before.''

``You faced Ministry interrogators then,'' said Snape. ``Aurors. Perhaps
Unspeakables.'' He spun his wand through a few lazy revolutions. ``The
difference, Rabastan, is that this time you're facing me.''

Rabastan tilted his head, eyes glinting. ``I'm not going to tell you
anything. I said that already.''

Snape stood still. Harry could sense the coiled strength gathering in
him, though, and wasn't surprised at all when he said only, ``Pity.''

He performed a spell then. Harry supposed that it must have been
nonverbal, which was its own pity, since he didn't recognize the
effects. Rabastan's mouth went slack. He stared at the air in front of
his own face, and then whimpered, an astonishing sound. Harry could see
his eyes dilating with the force of his terror. He trembled, and tried
to lift a hand to shield his eyes, but the ropes had done their work,
and he could only spasm a bit.

``I will give you to them,'' Snape said. ``You know they don't eat
enough, Rabastan. Tell me. How did you get into the school? That is
twice that I have had to ask that question. I shall not ask a third
time.'' He moved his wand a bit, and Rabastan let out a pitiful scream.

Harry searched inside himself for some compassion for Rabastan. He found
none. This was the man who had tried to kill Connor, who had probably
come to kill Connor, who had almost succeeded.

\emph{I don't want him dead, but I want him to suffer.}

And there was the dark rage he had despised in himself, rising again.
Harry took a deep breath, and trampled it down, and took several steps
forward until he stood beside his guardian. Rabastan didn't look at him,
though Harry had thought he would at least merit a glare.

``Professor Snape,'' he said softly. ``Please stop, sir. This isn't the
best way to get answers out of him.''

Snape looked at him, and said nothing. Rabastan was gasping now, sobbing
some words out and choking others. Harry listened, but could make out
nothing more than ``wards.'' This wasn't helping them, and now he
suspected that Snape had wanted to use whatever spell this was partly
because he was angry.

He thought \emph{Finite Incantatem} as strongly as he could.

Rabastan gave one more great jerk and then relaxed against his bonds.
Snape continued watching Harry. Harry ignored him. Let the watchers
think Snape had given in to mercy and ended the spell of his own free
will. He leaned forward and said, in a voice that he at least managed to
make soft if not friendly, ``What was that? How did you get into the
school?''

``Don't ask a third time,'' whispered Rabastan. ``I told you. One of the
Dark Lord's servants helped me find a way through the wards. They were
weak already.''

``Weak already.'' Snape's voice was flat. ``What does that mean?''

``I think that you should let me take over the interrogation now,
Severus.''

Harry could \emph{feel} Dumbledore's power filling the room as he spoke,
as if he carried a cloak of light about him that he had spread and
shaken. The air seemed sweeter, and Harry heard some of the watchers let
out a rising and falling murmur that complemented the subtle song of his
magic. Everything would be all right, said the voice of that magic, as
long as everyone trusted in the Headmaster and let him handle things.
More than just an edge of compulsion was wed to it, and Harry wondered
for a moment how many of Dumbledore's famous speeches, the ones where he
managed to reassure everyone and coax them into facing Voldemort one
more time, came from his magical strength and not his oratory.

Snape wavered. He would be fighting the blow in his head, Harry knew,
but the suddenness of it and the sheer strength made it impossible for
him to oppose Dumbledore immediately. He stood in silence, and made it
look as if he were acquiescing. Dumbledore nodded and turned to
Rabastan.

Harry raised his own power.

At once, the Headmaster turned to look at him. His eyes were narrowed,
his face still deceptively kind.

``Would you make this the kind of contest you spoke of wanting to avoid,
Harry?'' he murmured. His lips barely moved. ``The kind that would
destroy half of Britain if we began it?''

``No, sir,'' said Harry. He stared hard at Dumbledore's eyes, and
wondered what was behind them. Had Dumbledore lost the brilliance once
attributed to him, or had he misplaced it, or had most of it not been
more than trickery in the first place? Of course, that did not matter,
because this was most assuredly trickery now. It was only Harry's
curiosity that made him want to know.

``Then, please, step back and let me handle this.'' Strips of steel
undergirded Dumbledore's voice.

``You didn't care until Rabastan spoke of a weakness in the wards.''
Harry turned back to face the Death Eater. ``What did you mean by
that?''

Dumbledore's magic rose and slid across the room in a silently rolling
wave. Harry could feel his head reeling, as though he were beneath the
lake again, this time without a breathing charm. Compliance suggested
itself in every heartbeat, in every passing moment. It would feel so
wonderful, so right, to yield to Dumbledore's greater power. Everyone
who met him did, save the wild ones like Voldemort, who were madmen
anyway. There was no shame in it. No one would blame Harry. He was
following a wizard older and stronger than himself, and that meant that
whatever happened wasn't his fault.

Harry could feel the sweetness in such yielding. He'd found it a lot
during the first eleven years of his life, when doing something wrong
would have been hard even if he dared to think about it much, and to go
along with the orders his mother gave made the world so simple.

He was too used to fighting now, though. He braced himself, and shook
off the magic, plunging his head back into the clean air.

The strips of compulsion uncurled from his mind. Once again, he could
see Dumbledore as he was: an immensely powerful wizard, with his own
store of wisdom and experience and knowledge of the ways of war and
sacrifice, but not the benevolent god that his magic had presented him
as. Harry folded his arms in towards his body, his panting deep and
strident.

``Don't try that again, sir,'' he said.

Dumbledore merely looked at him in silence, and then said, when some
moments had passed and the loudest sound near Harry was Rabastan's harsh
breathing, ``Try what, Harry?''

Harry closed his eyes. The dark rage was rising again. He really wanted
to \emph{hurt} someone. At this point, though, he wasn't sure if the
impulse came as much from a desire to revel in pain as because he
thought it might finally get things accomplished.

``You are being stupid, and we do not have time for this,'' he said, his
voice clipped. He turned to Rabastan. ``You had help from a servant of
the Dark Lord's. \emph{What} servant of the Dark Lord's?''

Rabastan stopped breathing for a moment. Then he shook his head. ``That
you will have to tear from me,'' he murmured. ``If you do not already
know this, then you shall not learn it from---''

``\emph{Legilimens.}''

Harry didn't tear into Rabastan's mind. He didn't need to. He skimmed in
through Rabastan's eyes, and into a thick, clinging mist that he
suspected was not a protection, but the natural state of the man's
thoughts. Rabastan was an unlikely candidate to be a practicing
Occlumens.

The fog around him writhed for a moment, then blew aside, and the image
that Rabastan was thinking about most strongly whirled up behind his
eyes. Harry saw Moody with the silver collar around his neck, one hand
extended as though he were grasping someone's arm.

Harry rode the wind back out again, and dropped Rabastan back on the
table. The man didn't seem to know quite what had happened. Harry spun,
and intently scanned the crowd, still standing tame and docile under
Dumbledore's power. He could see Professor McGonagall, Professor Sprout,
Professor Flitwick, Professor Sinistra craning her neck to see from the
back\ldots{}

No Professor Moody.

Harry's mind locked on to the obvious. \emph{Rabastan's strike failed.
So} he's \emph{going after Connor instead.}

``Moody,'' he snarled at Snape, and crouched, pressing against the
anti-Apparition wards. In a way, he didn't want to do this, since he
would be shaking when he got to the hospital wing, but Merlin knew what
might happen to Connor in the time it would take him to run up the
stairs.

He felt someone grip his shoulder just as he jumped, and Harry grabbed
the hand back, managing to Side-Along Apparate the person with him.
Unsurprisingly, when he dropped out of the tight-squeezing leap and
rolled on the floor of the hospital wing, it was Snape who fell to one
knee beside him.

``I told you so that you could stay behind and inform the others!''
Harry snarled, forcing himself up again. ``Now what's going to happen if
we both die up here, and no one else except Rabastan knows---''

``\emph{Imperio}.''

The calmly-spoken Curse soared past Harry, though he felt the wind of
its cruel passage. Harry saw Snape's face become incredibly calm. There
was a brief flicker, as though he were fighting against the spell with
all his Occlumency, but it subsided in a few moments.

\emph{Just as the dragons did. It would take someone with an Imperius
Curse of incredible power to do that, and to capture Snape---}

\emph{Mulciber. I should have known.}

Harry turned in time to see Mulciber, no longer Polyjuiced or
Transfigured into Moody, rise from behind the nearest hospital bed.
``Wretched, to crouch like that,'' he remarked, swatting dust from his
robes. He stepped forward. He was wearing a robe fitted for a smaller
man, as Moody was, and the bared Dark Mark on his left arm was enough to
make Harry's scar glow in dull pain. The silver collar still encircled
his neck. ``But I had to be sure that you wouldn't see me immediately
and do something that you would regret.''

``You bastard---'' Harry said.

Mulciber, his eyes fixed on him, didn't speak aloud, but the next moment
Harry heard a dull thunk from his side. He turned to find that Snape had
picked up a knife sitting on a table, no doubt to cut clothes or tight
bindings away from a patient if a spell wouldn't do any good, and stuck
it into his own hand. Blood flowed from the wound, which was deep enough
to cause permanent damage if not treated, but Snape's expression didn't
change.

Harry tried to think of Snape with damaged hands, missing hands, and
felt his stomach rebel.

``I can have him remove his fingers,'' said Mulciber, his voice low. ``I
thought Rabastan would betray me. I have no options left, Potter. You're
talking to a desperate man here. I have nothing to lose. \emph{Do not
push me.}''

He paused, then added in a lighter tone, ``And even if you were willing
to kill your guardian, I don't think you're willing to let me kill
him.'' He gestured at the seemingly empty bed, and the Disillusionment
Charm rolled away, revealing Connor. He was bound in bandages, but Harry
could see that his open, glazed eyes also bore the look of Imperius.

Mulciber turned back to Harry. His face was calm, but there was an
underlying excitement that told Harry he was on the edge, soothing
expression or not. ``I rather think,'' said Mulciber, ``that we should
come to an understanding.''

Harry watched him, breathing hard. He could probably blast Mulciber
before he could order either Connor or Snape to do permanent harm to
themselves.

\emph{Probably}.

But he had heard stories of what Mulciber was capable of doing during
Voldemort's War, including commanding victims to drop dead of heart
attacks. His control of the Imperius Curse was very fine. Harry could
not be absolutely sure that Mulciber would die or fall unconscious
before he sent an order like that at Snape or Connor, and that was an
unacceptable level of risk.

``All right,'' he said. ``Talk to me. What kind of arrangement are you
talking about?''

Mulciber stared at him intently, then said, ``I think you can put the
knife down now, Severus. Stand beside the table where you put it, just
so that Potter here doesn't forget what I could have you do.''

Harry watched as Snape obeyed the order with a perfectly blank face.
\emph{Oh, Merlin, you must be fighting so hard inside your head right
now. I'm so sorry, sir.}

``Now, Potter, I suggest you cast a locking charm on the door,'' said
Mulciber, his eyes hard. ``I have Madam Pomfrey sitting comfortably in
her office, but it won't be long before someone else comes here, and I
would rather not be interrupted. Your magic is more powerful than
mine.''

Hating himself, Harry looked at the doors to the hospital wing and
poured out a flood of pure will, as he had when he made Rabastan go to
sleep. The doors gave a deep shudder and then ground together in a way
that said they wouldn't be opening for a while. Harry felt sick fear
swirling just beneath his stomach nonetheless. Dumbledore would be able
to command the doors to open if he really tried, as the ultimate master
of Hogwarts in times of danger.

``That will do,'' said Mulciber. ``Now, Mr. Potter, do you realize that
you have given me the hardest time in making my decision?'' His voice
was quite cheerful.

Harry turned back towards him, and told himself to ignore whatever he
might think of the encounter's surreality. This was quite real, and
someone was going to die if he forgot it. ``I don't know what you
mean.''

Mulciber moved back near the head of Connor's bed. One hand reached out,
and Harry had to watch as Mulciber stroked his brother's hair. ``I mean
that for some time now, I have been doubting whether the Dark Lord's
service is really what I want to do with my life,'' the Death Eater
said. ``Granted, I went to Azkaban for him, but since my release, I've
had to watch every plan that I was told would work thwarted at every
turn. Even my coming here in disguise as Moody didn't do much good, not
when Bellatrix's first attack on you failed and then I realized you
would sense almost any use of the Imperius Curse the moment I made it. I
tried talking to you, seeing if there was anything in you that we could
use, and of course the crowd at the First Task made the Curse safer than
usual. But you foiled all my tests. You've convinced me that you can
resist my greatest weapon. More, I'm convinced that you can resist the
Dark Lord. I don't want to be on the losing side. I've had enough of
that---thirteen years too much of that. I want to strike a bargain with
you.''

``A damn strange way you've got of doing it,'' Harry whispered. ``I can
trust nothing you say, you realize that?''

``Of course you can,'' said Mulciber. ``Understand, I was meant to make
much more progress here than I have. But I haven't made much, and it's
only partly because my Lord told me it would be easier to get control of
you than it is. I wanted to avoid your notice if I could, but I was also
trying to limit my crimes, so that they wouldn't tell against me too
much when I made my final appeal to you. I had to cast the Curse at the
First Task, and I had to test it on you, and I had to let Rabastan
through the wards, only because my Lord commanded me to, and disobeying
those orders would have revealed my wavering loyalty to him. But,
otherwise, I have caused you far less damage than I could have,
Potter.''

Harry turned and stared at his brother.

``Rabastan was assigned to kill him,'' said Moody, without a trace of
apology in his voice. ``Not me. I did try to persuade him out of it, but
he was adamant that our Lord wanted it done perfectly. He's a coward,
anyway, under pressure. I could never have trusted him. Nor should you,
even if tries to claim that he'll give you evidence willingly.''

``You were here,'' Harry whispered.

``Only because I knew what the consequences would be when you brought in
Rabastan alive, with you a Legilimens, and I wanted to be sure that I
could make you listen to me.'' Mulciber gave Connor's hair another
stroke. Harry choked on his rising gorge. There were other stories about
Mulciber, too, stories that made Harry flinch when he wondered if any of
the younger children were missing memories. ``I'm only trying to secure
my position, Potter, my position and my life. I've seen what you are.
The tests taught me that. I was trying to cast the Curse on you during
that little duel we had, without you noticing under the cover of my
simpler spells, and it didn't even work. Your mind's too well-trained
for my subtler efforts, and I think you remember the one overt effort I
made, don't you?''

Harry nodded. His eyes were fastened on Connor. He had an idea now, but
the time it would take, the \emph{time}\ldots{} It made him despair.

\emph{It's an unacceptable risk.}

``Yes, I thought so. Damn Memory Charms won't work on a damn Legilimens
most of the time,'' muttered Mulciber. He tilted his head, and his eyes
glinted coldly at Harry. ``But, I assure you, let me turn, and I'd be
loyal enough to you. You're going to win the War. You're strong in a way
that the Dark Lord could not be, because he can't inspire enough
loyalty, and Dumbledore's blinded himself. You've accepted other former
Death Eaters. Why not me?''

Harry could have listed the differences between someone like Hawthorn
Parkinson and someone like Mulciber for minutes on end, but he preferred
to say, ``You didn't say anything about Dumbledore noticing your use of
the Imperius Curse. Why was that?''

Mulciber snorted. ``Oh, I'm certain that he must know \emph{something}. I
enchanted Professor McGonagall and told her to put your name in the
Goblet of Fire, back when I thought this waiting game the Dark Lord's
playing had a chance in hell of working. It would have bound \emph{you}
to compete in the Tournament; it should have, since you're the strongest
wizard here. But Dumbledore interfered. He would have known that your
name went into the Goblet, though, when he examined it.''

Harry swallowed, twice, before he could say, ``So he knew that someone
here had put my name in the Goblet?''

``He would have known, yes,'' said Mulciber blandly. ``Of course, he
would have seen that it was McGonagall if he looked, and I
\emph{Obliviated} her after she'd done it, but he would have been able
to find me if he'd looked hard enough.'' He tapped the silver collar.
``Would this have kept a Legilimens as skilled as he is out? Who
knows?''

Harry tried to tamp down the bubble of rage. Dumbledore hadn't been
letting a Death Eater run around the school \emph{knowingly}. The silver
collar was a factor. The ones on the Hounds the Ministry had
interrogated had almost killed them when they came off. Dumbledore might
well have sensed that the collar was linked to
Moody's---Mulciber's---life and backed off from killing one of his
professors. Besides, Mulciber was trying to flatter Harry into accepting
him. He was going to say anything he could to make himself sound wise,
knowledgeable, attractive.

But Dumbledore had known someone had put Harry's name in the Goblet of
Fire, and he had never mentioned it.

\emph{Headmaster, you and I will have much to talk about when this is
done.}

``I want to know about the wards,'' said Harry, carefully letting no
animosity color his tone. ``How did you let Rabastan in? How did
Bellatrix attack, for that matter? I know you must have been the one who
sent her wand back to her,'' he added.

Mulciber smiled. ``Very good, Potter. Well, the wards have been weakened
by a number of things.'' He leaned against Connor's bed, as though he
were in for a long storytelling session. Harry clamped his lips down on
the growl he wanted to give when Mulciber's hand wandered to Connor's
shoulder. ``I've been keyed to the wards as most of the professors are,
and I used that to let Bellatrix through. Of course, I've been casting
\emph{Imperius} when I thought you wouldn't notice, or when you were
absent from the school, and getting some of the professors to weaken the
wards---small holes that no one would notice without a close inspection.
But part of it was caused by Dumbledore's incompetence. That will not
have surprised you, of course. He's been paying attention to the wards
in the school, which he can use to spy on people, and that draws his
attention and energy away from the ones on the outside. The wards of
Hogwarts are linked to its Headmaster in ways that go back to the
Founders' times, and which \emph{I} certainly don't completely
understand. They draw on his strength. Usually, of course, that wouldn't
be a problem, since Dumbledore's so powerful. But in this case, he
overlooked the holes I had the professors create, and he may have made
them bigger, since he was diverting strength normally used outside to
the inside. He's not used to using all these wards in the windows and
the walls. He's overtaxing himself.'' Mulciber gave a nonchalant little
shrug, watching Harry closely.

The rage was choking Harry, sticking strong claws through his skin. He
felt as if he were bristling with thorns. His desires had shifted, and
at the moment, it wasn't just anyone he wanted to see bleeding, it was
Dumbledore.

\emph{So he's been spying on us, too. Or on me, I suppose it's safe to
say.}

Harry closed his eyes and mastered his rage. Just in time, too, as
someone knocked on the doors.

Harry looked back at Mulciber, and saw his eyes flick in the doors'
direction. ``Well, Potter?'' His voice was light, but tense. ``What's it
going to be? Are you going to accept me, or do your mentor and your
brother die? Or worse, you know,'' he added, softly. ``Some of those
people they think are mad from the Cruciatus in St. Mungo's are those I
commanded to act as if they were suffering intense pain.''

Harry stared into his eyes. There could be no question of accepting
someone who did this and showed not the slightest bit of remorse as an
ally. On the other hand, the one plan he had thought of, being able to
enter Connor's and Snape's minds and pick the Imperius apart as he would
a web, was simply not going to work. He wasn't familiar enough with the
Curse. The one time he'd destroyed a mental web without study---the web
of Remus's \emph{Obliviate---}it had nearly been a disaster. And
Mulciber might sense him moving in their thoughts, too, and that would
be the end as soon as he began it.

Mulciber's eyes darkened as he watched. ``Choose, Potter,'' he said
quietly, as steady pounding began on the door. ``I told you, \emph{I}
have nothing to lose. I'll still have the pleasure of making you suffer
if you don't see sense.'' His hand tightened on Connor's shoulder in
silent warning.

Harry shuddered a bit. He could not use Legilimency on Mulciber, or the
same silent command that had made Rabastan sleep, since he could not get
through the barrier of the silver collar. There was really only one plan
he could think of, and he would have liked some extra time to nerve
himself up to doing it.

\emph{No time}.

``\emph{Choose}, Potter.''

Harry gulped and nodded. ``I have,'' he said. ``I---I'll accept you. I
can't not do it.'' He paused, and tilted his head at an arrogant angle.
``Just make sure that you've told me the truth, that's all.''

Mulciber's face melted into a smile. ``I assure you,'' he said, ``you
won't be able to catch me lying.'' He glanced between Snape and Connor.
``Of course, I don't think I'll take the Imperius off them just yet. I
want some guarantee from you first, such as an oath.''

``An Unbreakable Vow?'' Harry asked.

Mulciber blinked, startled, but then nodded. ``That will work,'' he
said. ``Severus can act as our Bonder.''

Harry knew he would get no better chance, with Mulciber turning towards
Snape to call him closer. He had hoped to win his brother and Snape free
of the Curse first, just in case, but there was no time.

\emph{I am the one who will have to live with myself afterwards.}

Harry fixed his eyes on the silver collar around Mulciber's neck and
pushed his wandless magic outwards, hard and fast, giving no warning of
his actions, not changing his expression. \emph{Break}.

The silver collar shattered into a thousand ringing shards, and Mulciber
dropped to his knees with a scream of pain. Harry had already moved, had
already willed it.

He had willed it, and so the silver shards turned, arrested in their
flight, and cut straight into Mulciber's throat.

The scream cut off into a choking gurgle, and then Mulciber's life
poured out of him in a red flood. He landed hard on the floor. Harry
knew the moment when he died; it came within a moment after the shards
pierced him.

He shut his eyes, shaking.

He couldn't just have thrown up Shield Charms in front of his brother
and Snape. That wouldn't protect them from the monster lurking in their
heads. And Mulciber might have been able to concentrate through the pain
of the collar's breaking and reach out at any time, faster than Harry
could get him to go to sleep. Even this plan wasn't without risk; maybe
Mulciber would use that split second to make his enemies suffer rather
than suffering himself.

But he hadn't been able to, as great pain was followed with greater
pain, and then death on its heels.

Harry swallowed, and wondered if it was a good thing or a condemnation
of himself that his eyes were dry. He turned to face Snape, and saw
sense and awareness returning to his face, along with burning fury. He
obviously knew something of what had happened to him, and hated it.

Harry nodded, walked up to him, and clasped his wounded hand. ``You
should get Madam Pomfrey to look at this, sir.''

Snape reached out with the unwounded hand and held Harry's chin tightly
for a moment, staring into his eyes. Harry stared back steadily, until
he thought Snape might have seen what he wanted to see, and then
wrenched away and looked at Connor.

His brother had fallen back into unconsciousness. Harry relaxed.
\emph{I'll tell him eventually, but better if he doesn't remember
anything of this while his pain is so great.}

``Mr. Potter, what---''

Pomfrey's speech died as she saw the body on the floor next to Connor's
bed. She blinked, then turned to Snape, apparently operating on instinct
as she cast a spell to heal his hand.

The pounding on the doors was intense now. Harry wearily willed them
into letting go of each other. They sank back into the natural shape of
the stone, and then opened at once as an excited flood of professors and
spectators poured through.

Harry closed his eyes. \emph{I killed someone else. Someone is dead
because of me.}

\emph{But now I know I would do it again. He was threatening them. He
needed to die. There was no other plan I could think of so quickly.}

``Harry. It was not your fault.''

Harry opened his eyes at his guardian's voice, but didn't turn to look
at him. ``I know,'' he said quietly. ``I did what needed to be done.
Maybe that's one lesson I've learned now, not to leave my enemies alive
behind me.''

He caught a glimpse of a white beard through the crowd, and his rage
spiked.

``Excuse me, Madam Pomfrey,'' he murmured. ``Is Professor Snape fit to
come with me?''

``I am perfectly capable---'' Snape began.

``Shut up, Severus,'' said Madam Pomfrey. ``Yes, Mr. Potter, he will do.
But don't ask him to hold his wand in his right hand for some hours
yet.''

Harry nodded, his eyes still fixed on Dumbledore. \emph{This has gone on
long enough. Dumbledore is going to listen to me this time. And I know
what punishment I'm going to exact on him, once I've determined exactly
what the state of the wards is.}

\emph{There are a lot of things I should have done before and didn't do.
Well. Now I know to do them.}

``It is most unusual of you to wait for someone else, Harry,'' Snape
muttered, as he stepped up beside him.

``I need you with me,'' said Harry simply. ``I want you to restrain me
from killing the Headmaster, if it comes to that. And with the mood I'm
in, it might.''

He set off through the crowd with a determined stride. Dumbledore had
backed out of the room, but he would not go far, and Harry would find
him even if he did.

\emph{It is time to make it clear where we stand.}

\chapter{Harry's Stake}\label{chapter-56-harrys-stake}

Draco had followed everyone else to the hospital wing, though he'd
lingered behind out of necessity. Harry's distress reached across the
distance that separated them, as piercing as the exhaustion that had
made Draco faint on the day before the First Task. This time, though, he
couldn't faint, because the emotions were not exhaustion---a simple
heavy pressure---but the chill slime of guilt, and the stone wall of
determination, and a vision of looking down a long, starless well that
Draco had learned to identify as Harry's self-loathing.

Harry might have survived whatever happened in the hospital wing, but he
would need Draco when he came out.

And he did, for all that when he finally managed to force his way
through the crowd outside the doors of the hospital wing, he didn't look
as if he needed anyone. Draco caught his breath at the sight of Harry's
face, so grimly resolved that he thought his father would have bowed his
head and stepped aside. Harry looked as if he were going to an execution
or a battle. He hated what he was doing, or so Draco knew from the
emotions he radiated, but nothing would stop him from doing it. Events
had finally kicked him past his reluctance to bring attention to
himself, or to interfere with other people. Things were going to happen
now.

Draco pushed himself away from the wall, letting his own pride and awe
and love support him in the face of those overwhelming emotions, and
stepped up to Harry's side.

Harry's green eyes had been absolutely fixed on the path ahead of him,
as if nailed there, but they turned and met Draco's now. They flickered
when Harry realized who it was. He inclined his head in a rapid nod, and
then turned forward and strode on again, as if pushed by a great wind.

Draco smiled and fell into place at Harry's right shoulder. \emph{He may
hate what he's going to do, but not everyone does. I rather intend to
enjoy it. I'm just glad that he doesn't have empathy that matches mine.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry hated on what he had to do as he walked.

He was setting the limits in his mind, drawing them sharply, reminding
himself of what he could not do, no matter how angry he became. There
were Snape and Draco behind him---and he trusted Draco to restrain him
even more than Snape---but they were more flexible on matters of free
will than Harry was. They might think it reasonable for Harry to do
\emph{everything} that was against Dumbledore's will, simply because the
Headmaster was an enemy right now.

Harry didn't want to. He had had enough of that. He would demand
information. He would make absolutely sure that Dumbledore had rules
established for his interaction with the wards and the protection of the
school after this. He would make it understood how very, very displeased
he was that Dumbledore had told him nothing about McGonagall also
entering Harry's name in the Goblet. Dumbledore had rigged it so that
only Connor's name would come out, of course, but that still meant he
had \emph{no} right to ignore the danger Mulciber presented. He should
have told Harry about this on Christmas night, if not sooner.

Harry could feel the throb of the Headmaster's power spreading out
before him. Dumbledore had retreated to the Great Hall, and gone no
farther. He intended to make a stand there.

Harry wondered why at first. The more public this was, the worse it
would be for Dumbledore. But he understood it when he stepped through
the doors of the Great Hall and met a number of skeptical and surprised
gazes. Dumbledore was using mild compulsion on the witnesses. What they
saw might not be what they thought they were seeing.

Harry snarled in spite of himself, and felt the Dark rage,
thestral-like, stamp its hooves inside him. This was why he might lose
control and destroy all his own fine intentions. He could have dealt
with Dumbledore endangering him as only a breach of his promise, the way
he could have dealt with Mulciber threatening him as just what a Death
Eater would do. For someone to threaten his own life was no more than
what he expected. To threaten or hurt other people\ldots{}

\emph{This must be dealt with first.}

Harry took a moment to glance over his shoulder and make sure that Snape
and Draco were free. Snape nodded slightly to him, indicating that he
once again had his Occlumency shields braced against the onslaught,
though he might not be able to speak. Draco moved nearer and rested his
hand on Harry's shoulder. The slight haze in his eyes cleared at once.

\emph{Using his empathy and his focus on me to chase away the
compulsion,} Harry decided, and then turned to face Dumbledore.

``Let them go,'' he said quietly. ``Now.''

The Headmaster watched him in silence for long moments. He had a look
that Harry had never seen in his eyes before. This was probably the way
he appeared on the field of battle, Harry reflected. His gaze was clear,
but testing, and his magic swirled lazily around his body, a barely
visible silver shimmer in the air, gathering and coiling its strength
beneath it like a tiger about to spring.

``I would feel better,'' said Dumbledore at last, ``if I knew what you
were planning.''

``I am planning to make you answer for your crimes,'' said Harry. ``And
that means that you will answer me as to the state of the wards, as to
the state of the gray web holding the merfolk in the lake, as to why a
Death Eater could roam the school unsupervised and cast the Imperius on
the professors, and as to why you never informed me that Professor
McGonagall had put my name in the Goblet of Fire.''

``I did not.''

Harry blinked at McGonagall as she stepped forward from the crowd of
mute, fascinated, staring people. He frowned when he looked at her, and
especially when he saw Dumbledore's frown. Apparently, McGonagall should
still have been under his compulsion. How had she broken free?

A line of blue light crawling down from the ceiling answered that. It
lapped around McGonagall's feet like a pool of spreading water---one of
the wards of Hogwarts, reaching out to her.

Harry gave a smile he was sure was hard, and glanced at Dumbledore.
``The wards seem to prefer the Deputy Headmistress to you, Headmaster,''
he said softly. ``Is that because you've been abusing them?''

Dumbledore's eyes narrowed. ``You do not know what you are saying,
Harry,'' he murmured. ``As always, you think only of the immediate
ramifications of your actions, and not of the consequences that might
lie out of sight. Consider what will happen if you drag private matters
into the public sphere.''

``I hardly think your incompetence a matter for privacy any more,'' said
Harry, moving a few steps forward. ``Professor McGonagall, you were put
under Imperius to place my name in the Goblet of Fire, and then
Mulciber, in disguise as Moody, Memory Charmed you into forgetting that
you'd done it. Dumbledore would have known at least that you had put my
name in, if he had looked. Given that he's using these wards to spy on
people, he could have known far more than that. But he never bothered to
inform either you or me.''

``You cannot trust what a Death Eater tells you, Harry.'' Dumbledore's
voice was deep, a song of flowing water. The people under his control
were swaying slowly back and forth, Harry noted, though the motion was
so slight he would not have noticed it if McGonagall weren't standing
still. ``I did not investigate the matter because I assumed that Minerva
simply wanted you to enter the Tournament. That is all.''

``I do not feel I can trust you either, Light Lord.'' Harry tilted his
head back. ``Release these people.''

``Harry---''

``Do you really fear them seeing and hearing the truth?'' Harry asked.
From the storm gathering in McGonagall's face, he could see why
Dumbledore would, but he could hardly admit it if he wanted to present
himself as acting in good faith. ``Release them. I will not ask you
again.''

Dumbledore just shook his head, his face now wearing a patient smile.
For all his wariness, Harry thought, he still believed he could win, and
that it would just take a few stronger applications of his old tricks.
``Harry, you are a child in age, for all your experience. There are many
things you do not understand about politics in the wizarding world. I
\emph{am} a Light Lord, as well as the Headmaster of Hogwarts, and you
cannot simply command me.''

``I warned you,'' said Harry quietly, and awoke the snake that lived in
his magic.

He hated doing it, but the hatred did not keep him from opening the
snake's jaws and beginning to eat Dumbledore's magic, any more than his
sorrow and rage last year had kept him from pinning Connor to the wall
when he crossed a certain line. This had to be done. Dumbledore would
never believe him in earnest if Harry did not back up his threats. And
the one good thing about doing this was that Harry spared anyone else
from having to make the same decision.

Lily had often told him that what set Dumbledore apart from other
wizards was his capacity for making the hard choices, the ones that
other people would dither over until it was too late. Harry would have
to be able to make them, too.

\emph{And it is harder than I ever believed it was, away from the
comforting security of knowing what my place is in the world, and
knowing that there's an absolute good in protecting Connor and fighting
the Dark Lord. I have to judge what's good and what's evil on my own,
now, and there is so much chance of making a mistake.}

\emph{So I'll decide, and if I make mistakes, I will face them.}

Dumbledore's power washed towards him, and poured smoothly down the
snake's throat. Harry had done this once before, though then he hadn't
realized what he was doing; he had simply ripped and torn at
Dumbledore's magic, seizing it indiscriminately. Now, he had learned a
bit better, and directed the snake to eat the compulsion on the
witnesses. Witches and wizards stirred and began to buzz as the snake
steadily swallowed more and more.

This power, unlike that which he had stolen from Voldemort and the Death
Eaters last year, did not make Harry ill. It \emph{was} the magic of a
man who had dedicated his life to Light, after all, no matter how much
he had slipped up in these last years. Harry therefore did not vomit it
back up, or need to use it for something else immediately. He made it
part of himself, pressing the alien power into his own until they
blended seamlessly together.

The raw power pouring from his body grew stronger and stronger, strong
enough to sing in his ears, and Draco gave a drunken little giggle
behind him and whispered, ``Your magic smells like roses.''

\emph{Odd,} Harry thought, but then could pay it no mind as Dumbledore
began to fight back.

The magic glimmering around the Headmaster formed into a vortex and
headed straight for Harry. He didn't know if it was the result of a
spell or a specific gift of Dumbledore's, and he had no time to find
out. He lifted a hand, and his wandless magic poured easily through his
skin and formed a Harry-shaped barrier that extended out and in front of
him. The vortex met it, and both it and the barrier shimmered and
vanished as though they were mist burned away on a summer morning.

Harry lifted his head with difficulty, and fixed his eyes on
Dumbledore's. The snake hissed, wanting to eat more of the Headmaster's
magic, but Harry restrained it. He had made his point, from the terror
behind the mask of calmness on Dumbledore's face.

Besides, he'd eaten enough that he would really hate to absorb more, at
this point. He felt top-heavy. It would take him some time to become
accustomed to the new weight of power.

``I can stop now,'' he said quietly, though he knew Dumbledore would
hear every word, even under the excited, confused buzz coming from
behind him. ``You have two choices, Headmaster. Oppose me, and you'll
lose more of your power. Yield to me, and you at least have a chance of
getting out of here with some of your magic intact.'' He forced his lips
to move into a smile. ``I promise nothing about your dignity.''

Dumbledore continued staring for a long moment. Harry could all but feel
his mind racing, as though he had swallowed some of his thoughts, too.
There were other plans he could make. There \emph{must} be other plans
he could make. Dumbledore was used to fighting back, through war after
war when it must have seemed as though the Dark would win. Normally,
nothing could stop him. There must be some third option he could find,
some way out of the tight bargain Harry proposed.

Perhaps, if he had had more time or hadn't been in front of a crowd of
staring outsiders, including his own outraged Deputy Headmistress,
Dumbledore might have found a way. As it was, he bowed his head, once,
his eyes still glimmering with battle-readiness. ``Ask your questions,
then,'' he said.

Harry nodded, once, and put the snake to sleep. ``Why did you leave
holes in the outer wards?''

``I did not know they were there until I began to inspect them after you
captured Rabastan Lestrange.'' Dumbledore was trying hard to make it
sound as though this were not his fault, but his voice was not as
melodic and reassuring as usual; Harry had stripped him down to near
bone, and it showed. ``Then, yes, I found many small holes that Mulciber
must have worked to expand into larger tears, and others that had not
registered as holes, but as doorways opened by professors keyed to the
wards. Those are ordinary occurrences, as when Professor Snape wishes to
bring in potions ingredients that the protective spells in the wards
might object to. Normally they are closed at once. That did not happen
this time.''

``And you did not sense it?'' Harry demanded. He had to raise his voice
slightly as the voices of the witnesses turned into shouts of anger and
disbelief. ``You did not close the doorways when they didn't shut on
their own?''

``I did not pay as much attention to them as I should have,'' Dumbledore
admitted. ``I was concentrating on the inside of the school, and I can
only spend so much time in contact with the wards before I must retreat
and rest. That is why the professors are keyed to the wards in the first
place,'' he added, obviously trying to regain some face. ``They are
responsible for making sure they shut the doors they open, rather than
leaving such duties entirely up to the Headmaster.''

``Rather hard for them to remember it, when a Death Eater is using
Unforgivable Curses on them. Why did you pay more attention to the inner
wards, at the expense of the outer?'' Harry heard at least some people
muttering in confusion about the Death Eater and the Unforgivable
Curses, but he would make them understand in a moment. For now, he
wanted to hear the reasons from Dumbledore's own mouth. Mulciber would
have said anything to save his life. He could have been lying.

``I was watching matters inside the school,'' Dumbledore began.

``Spying,'' said Harry coolly, and heard several outraged gasps.

``I was \emph{watching},'' Dumbledore corrected him, tone going frosty.
Harry suspected they were near the limit of how much he could push the
Headmaster without backing up another threat. ``I wanted to be sure that
the students inside the school were safe. Matters are delicate in the
time of the Tournament; it's not unknown for students from different
schools to develop intense rivalries, when they are quartered so close
together. And, of course, when we have a fourth-year student with the
power of a Lord walking about, it pays to keep a close eye on him.''

A few gasps trod on Dumbledore's announcement. Harry wondered if it came
from his admission, or if there were some people who had not believed
that Harry's power was Lord-level until Dumbledore confirmed it.

\emph{He will turn this back against me if he can. I must not let him}.

``You devoted so much attention to the inner wards that you neglected
the outer ones,'' Harry summed up. ``It was negligence, and not
malice.''

Dumbledore obviously wanted to find something to say against that, but
with Harry cutting down the options to two---negligence or malice---he
must have realized that a denial would make it seem as if he had done it
on purpose. The best he could do was say, ``Yes. I should have paid more
attention.''

Harry shook his head. ``Do you think, Headmaster, that you deserve to
remain in charge of a school where you care more about watching the
students than the students' enemies?''

Dumbledore's eyes widened. Harry simply stared at him. He did not know
if he could get Dumbledore actually backed out of the Headmaster
position---he suspected not, not when the admission was negligence and
not malice---but if he made one broad threat, then he could look
compassionate and humane when he put restrictions on Dumbledore instead.

\emph{Yes, I can look that way. And I make myself sick with these lies.
Of course, I don't like being honest, either. I wish that I could sit in
a corner and not have to speak at all. I wish everyone would leave me
the hell alone and not pay attention to me.}

Someone moved at the edge of the crowd behind Dumbledore, where
McGonagall still stood with the ward coiled around her feet. A moment
later, Lucius Malfoy was bowing with poise Harry had never seen from
him, his voice helpful and solicitous.

``Forgive me for interrupting, Mr. Potter, Headmaster Dumbledore,'' he
said, ``but I came to witness the Second Task. I sit on Hogwarts' Board
of Governors, and I considered it my duty. Mr. Potter, I am sure that
the other members of the Board could be called together, if it is deemed
necessary. Most of them are deeply concerned with the school's safety,
as their own children---and my own son---live here ten months out of the
year. We could hold a vote. The Governors, voting unanimously,
\emph{can} sack the Headmaster.''

Harry met Lucius's eyes for a moment, and saw a chill gleam of amusement
dart out of them. He was playing the game, then, and would follow where
it led. He would not push for Dumbledore's sacking if it proved
impossible, but he had added a new pressure, to show that the Headmaster
had more opponents than one child.

``I made a mistake,'' Dumbledore was saying now. Harry felt his power
briefly flex, as if he were about to throw it over the minds in the room
or add it to his voice, and then he obviously remembered what Harry had
done to him the last time he compelled people. His magic settled back
down again. ``I must confess, I am old and sometimes do not think as
closely about things as I should, but I would \emph{never} willingly
endanger Hogwarts.'' Harry could hear the ring of sincerity in his voice,
and knew that that alone, along with Dumbledore's reputation, would
convince a great many of those watching. ``It was the result of
carelessness on my part, and not malice. I have already admitted that. I
do not see that I should be sacked for a mistake.''

Harry lifted his head consideringly, and glanced at Lucius. ``Hmm. What
do you think, Mr. Malfoy? Is the Headmaster of Hogwarts allowed
mistakes?''

Lucius curled his lip to hide laughter, but gave a judicious nod. ``I
think so. He is only human.'' That would strike a blow against
Dumbledore's invincibility in some of the listeners' minds, Harry knew.
``I am sure the other governors will agree.'' That would mean Lucius was
not sure of persuading everyone else to vote against Dumbledore, Harry
knew. ``But what are we to do to make sure Hogwarts is safe? I would not
leave my son in a school where Death Eaters can intrude at will.'' There
could be no doubt that Lucius was laughing on those last words, not if
one knew him.

``The Headmaster has many burdens to bear,'' said Harry. ``He has
already admitted that. Perhaps some help?'' He faced McGonagall, and saw
her eyes slowly widen as she realized what he would ask of her.
``Professor McGonagall, you are Deputy Headmistress. The wards seem to
like you. Would you object to being more keyed into the wards? Perhaps
bearing some of the burdens that Headmaster Dumbledore now carries all
alone?''

McGonagall slowly inclined her head.

``Minerva has many tasks of her own,'' said Dumbledore, now attempting a
jovial tone. ``She is Transfiguration professor, and the Head of
Gryffindor House. Would you make her busier yet, Mr. Potter?''

``I am willing, Albus,'' said McGonagall firmly. ``I should not have
left it this long, truly.'' She drew nearer the Headmaster and patted
his arm tenderly. Harry could not help but be impressed, to see any
Gryffindor act so well in the face of open stares. ``I should have
sensed what you were struggling through and helped you before this. I am
sorry for my own negligence.''

Dumbledore's face reflected his inner struggle, but in the end, as Harry
had known he would, he had no choice but to give in gracefully.
Admitting he had made a mistake was one thing, refusing help for it
another. He nodded and said, ``I will key Minerva to some of the wards.
I swear it by Merlin and my magic.''

Harry lifted his head. ``Now, Headmaster, will you still find it
necessary to watch the students inside more than the enemies outside?''

Dumbledore looked at him, narrow-eyed. Harry looked back. In some ways,
of course, their respective positions were absolutely ridiculous: a
fourteen-year-old boy chiding a wizard over a hundred and fifty years
old, the defeater of Grindelwald, a Light Lord and Headmaster respected
by thousands. But Harry knew---had realized, in a way he had not,
before---that strength of magical power was a trump card to nearly
everything else. He might not be able to demand that Dumbledore step
down as Headmaster of Hogwarts, but he could demand some consideration
from him. And Dumbledore would have to listen. Harry's right to demand
this much was in every breath of the magic that radiated from him.

\emph{I hate it.}

Harry shoved the thought away. There was no time for it right now.

``I will not,'' Dumbledore said at last, ``I am certain, if I have
someone at my side to share the burden.''

Harry nodded. ``And now, Headmaster, about the Death Eater roaming the
halls---''

``What is this?''

Harry turned his head, and caught Rita Skeeter's eye through those
enormous glasses she wore. He stifled the temptation to shake his head.
She had her quill hovering above her notebook, poised to take down
whatever he said.

``Professor Moody, hired to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts at the
beginning of the year,'' said Harry, his voice as steady as he could
make it, ``turned out to be the Death Eater Mulciber, one of Voldemort's
servants, who escaped from Azkaban last year.'' He ignored the gasps and
flinches when he mentioned Voldemort's name. Possibly he could have been
more diplomatic and used one of the evasive titles instead, but he
hadn't thought of it, and he wouldn't change it now, which would make
him look weak. ``He was the one who helped Rabastan Lestrange get through
the wards, and used Imperius on various professors to bespell them into
creating still more holes in the wards. Then he used \emph{Obliviate} to
make them forget what they'd done.''

``Where is he now?'' asked Skeeter, her voice trembling with something
Harry suspected was eagerness. He wondered if she would have tried to
track down Mulciber and interview him, if he was still alive.

``He is dead,'' said Harry quietly. Gasps sounded around him. ``He faced
me in the hospital wing and tried to make me a bargain for his freedom
and life, bragging all the while that the Headmaster had not the least
idea of what he'd done. I made a collar he wore to protect his mind
explode, and the explosion killed him.''

Some of the members of the audience edged backward, and Harry understood
that, too. If this was going to be utterly in the public eye, then his
own reputation would suffer along with Dumbledore's. This was why it
would take some time to move Dumbledore out of the Headmaster's
position. Some governors were likely to vote for him to stay not out of
approval of his actions and motives, but out of distrust of Harry's.

``So we have only your word for it, then,'' said someone from the side.
Harry glanced towards her, and made out the eager brown eyes of yet
another witch holding a notebook. This was probably one of Rita's
rivals, he thought, perhaps even another reporter for the \emph{Prophet}
itself.

``I was there,'' said Snape softly, his hand tightening on Harry's left
shoulder. ``I can confirm his story, and both of us would be willing to
testify under Veritaserum.''

``But aren't you Professor Snape?'' asked the woman, her quill
scribbling away furiously in her notebook. ``The boy's guardian? I don't
think that you would have an unbiased view of the matter.''

``Show me someone who has an unbiased view of Death Eaters who hold them
under the Imperius Curse, madam,'' said Snape, his voice growing
extremely dry.

She blinked at him, obviously uncertain.

``Headmaster,'' said Harry, before they could wander too far afield. ``I
want to know why you never sensed Mulciber's deception.''

``The collar,'' said Dumbledore at once. ``The Hounds in the Ministry
wore similar collars. When they were removed, they nearly killed them. I
did not wish to harm Professor Moody. I had no reason to doubt that he
was the real man, as he had picked up odd habits in his old age and his
paranoia. I believed the collar to be merely another of them.''

Harry nodded. It was the answer he had anticipated Dumbledore would
give. ``And you picked up nothing strange about him in all your spying
through the inner wards?''

Dumbledore winced and gave him a helpless glare. Then he said, ``No.''

``So perhaps watching through the inner wards is not as profitable as
you deemed it to be, then?'' Harry pressed. ``Perhaps it should stop?''

There came a sharp inclination of Dumbledore's head. He would have said
something different if they were not in front of an audience, Harry
thought. But then, \emph{everything} would have happened differently if
they were not in public.

``Good. I'll hold you to that, Headmaster.'' Harry pressed onto another
subject. ``And why did you not inform me about my name being placed in
the Goblet of Fire? Didn't it concern you that someone submitted my
name?''

``No,'' said Dumbledore quietly. ``You are the most powerful student in
the school, my dear boy.'' The word \emph{student} was stressed just
slightly. ``It is not unusual that someone should be convinced that you
would win if they submitted your name. The competition between the three
schools has always been intense. If you could win the Tournament, you
would bring honor and glory to Hogwarts.'' He paused, his eyes
challenging. ``But the Goblet chose your twin instead.''

``Yes, it did,'' said Harry. He wondered if he should reveal that it had
been Dumbledore who had made sure of that.

A movement off to the side caught his eye. He turned his head, and James
was there, standing on the edge of the crowd where Lucius had been, his
face helpless.

\emph{He came.}

Harry swallowed. Explain Connor's name in the Goblet, and then he would
have to explain why Dumbledore was so insistent that his twin compete,
and that would lead to the reasons he had for wanting to control Harry,
and that would lead to the whole mess of Lily and James and Harry's home
life and his training.

He held the power to destroy both Dumbledore and his father right now,
not to mention Lily. Child abuse was a taint that would stick and stink,
not a mistake to be excused with a claim of an old man's forgetful
memory. Harry had seen reports of child abuse trials dragged on for
months and months in the \emph{Daily Prophet}, and even in cases where
the allegations turned out to come from a misunderstanding, a reek clung
to the names of the parents involved forever after.

He would drive Dumbledore and his parents from any semblance of a normal
life if he revealed the truth now. That would alienate James,
permanently, just when he was making some kind of gesture of
reconciliation. It would turn Dumbledore into the kind of man Mulciber
had been in the last moments of his life, with nothing else to lose, and
no reason to hold back on doing the utmost evil he could.

And it would bring him into contact with Lily again, and hurt her when
Harry only wanted to be done with her. And it would all but ruin
Connor's life, at a time when he was still under the stress of the
Tournament.

And it would have everyone staring at him. It would convince most people
that he was a victim, that he was deserving of pity.

Neither Harry nor his allies could afford that, at this juncture when he
had to be strong. Harry himself did not think he could take it. He never
wanted anyone to think him weak, that he was in some need of comfort or
coddling.

Harry turned away from that poison, and said only, ``And the web on the
merfolk, Headmaster? I could see it coiling when I was under the lake.
\emph{Something} was happening. The merfolk barely interfered with the
Champions when they came to rescue their prized people. Why?''

Dumbledore sighed and closed his eyes. ``The webs and spells which keep
us safe from the merfolk,'' he whispered, ``are three-cornered. One is
linked to the selkies of Britain, one to the merrows of Ireland, and one
to the sirens of Greece, as they are the three most vicious tribes of
their kind, and the three most likely to harm humans.'' He opened his
eyes again. ``One of the webs has been torn free from its anchor. From
the immense distance involved, I would say that the sirens of Greece are
free, and that they have become part of Lord Voldemort's armies.''

Harry shivered. He closed his eyes as shouts and loud denials exploded
around him---wizards denying everything from Voldemort still being alive
to sirens being of any good to anyone, since all they wanted to do was
sing and enchant humans.

\emph{They are Dark creatures, then. Their voices compel people. No
wonder I was hearing the Dark music sing under the lake water.}

\emph{Voldemort does have the power to destroy a web. He can't manage
most spells without a wand, but if he simply sent raw power flowing at
something\ldots{}who knows what he could accomplish? Or perhaps he
possessed someone else and lent them magic enough to break the spell.}

\emph{I wonder why I didn't dream of this?} Then Harry grimaced as he
remembered the sleeping enchantment McGonagall had put on him.
\emph{Perhaps the vision did try to come, but it couldn't get through
the barrier of that spell.}

``I believe the webs on the selkies and the merrows should hold,''
Dumbledore was saying, when Harry opened his eyes again. ``They have
been destabilized, but not completely torn. They will hold firm. That
is, as long as no one interferes with them.'' He gave Harry a warning
glance.

Harry stared steadily back at him. He hardly intended to dash out to the
lake and free the merpeople there. He had no idea how they would act
once they were free; at least he had made sure the Dementors could harm
no one, and the unicorns were creatures of Light who never would. He
knew so little about merfolk that he would have to study them before he
decided what to do about the webs.

He looked around the room, and realized that the news of the sirens'
freedom and Voldemort's return had put a stop to the questioning. Most
people looked ill. They wanted to go away and chew on everything they
had heard. Skeeter was already gone, and so was her brown-eyed rival,
presumably to write up their articles.

``Can I trust you to keep honest?'' Harry asked Dumbledore. ``To accept
restrictions on your use of the wards, and Professor McGonagall's being
keyed into more of them? To not use compulsion any more?'' He let the
snake flex around him, reminding Dumbledore of what would happen if he
did not comply.

Dumbledore bowed his head, slowly, proudly.

``He will have me to keep him honest, Mr. Potter,'' said McGonagall,
sliding an arm through Dumbledore's. ``I will make sure of it.'' Her
eyes met his, still angry.

Harry nodded to her, and turned on his heel. He could see James coming
towards him, but he couldn't spare the time to deal with his father just
yet. There was someone else who needed his help.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``But what makes you think that Moody is still alive?'' Draco
complained, then ducked as Harry lost patience with the locking spells
on Mulciber's door and simply blasted the damn thing open. Harry
collected the splinters of wood as they tried to fly into the hall, and
shifted them into a pile on the floor. Snape stepped up beside him, wand
drawn, though he relaxed when they found themselves looking into a
fairly normal room. Harry hadn't thought that Mulciber would have any
Dark artifacts lying about anyway---the possibility of discovery was too
great---but the delicate wooden tables, silvery carpeting, and large bed
seemed \emph{too} innocent.

His gaze drifted over and fixed on a large trunk at the foot of the bed.
It had enough locks on it to qualify it as suspicious. He strode towards
it, while behind him Snape lectured Draco.

``Mulciber was using Polyjuice to resemble Moody, Draco. What have you
learned about Polyjuice?''

``That it takes a month to brew,'' said Draco, sounding confused. ``That
it requires hair from a living subject, though the---'' He paused.
``Oh.''

``Oh indeed,'' said Snape, and then came up beside Harry, who was
studying the locks. ``Perhaps you are looking for these, Harry?''

Harry glanced up as Snape handed him a bunch of keys. He blinked.
``Where did you get these?''

Snape nodded at one of the wooden tables. ``There, under a
Disillusionment Charm.'' He raised his eyebrows. ``You did not notice
the Charm?''

Harry felt his cheeks heat up, and shook his head. He was simply moving
too fast, running on too much adrenaline. He sighed, murmured,
``Thanks,'' and fitted the first key into the first lock.

That revealed a bunch of books, but unless Mulciber had Transfigured
Moody---and Harry did not think he had, as he would have to have hair
for the Polyjuice---he wasn't there. Harry shut the trunk lid, as it was
the only way he could fit the second key into the lock, and this time
revealed a goodly number of quills, pieces of what looked like a smashed
Foe-Glass, and a subtle shimmer that proved to be an Invisibility Cloak
when he thrust his hands into it.

Harry shut the lock with a shake of his head, then tried the last key on
the ring, and the last lock on the trunk. This opened into a chamber
that seemed to spiral straight down into the middle of the floor, though
really, Harry knew, it led into the middle of the trunk. He had started
to set one foot on the series of steps curving along the stone wall when
Snape seized his arm.

``Where do you think you are going?'' he hissed in Harry's ear.

Harry stared at him, then stepped out of the way while Snape cast
several sensing spells on the stairs to reveal any traps. He rubbed his
face. He could have done that if he'd thought of it. He just wasn't
\emph{thinking}. His entire body seemed to be twitching, consumed by the
need to move, to \emph{do} things.

He jumped when a hand came to rest in the middle of his back. He
relaxed, however, when it started to rub. ``Hush,'' Draco whispered to
him. ``It's all right.''

Harry wanted to say it wasn't, but he could feel the hand relaxing him,
and he nodded and waited in forced patience while Snape finally,
grudgingly, conceded that Harry could go down the steps, as long as both
Draco and Snape followed him.

They descended into a stone room that would have fit seamlessly into one
of the dungeons at Hogwarts, and was equally bare of decoration. On the
floor, senseless, lay a thin and heavily scarred man, half-naked. Harry
winced at the sight of him. His hair was ragged from multiple cuts, and
his ribs stood out under his skin, and he was covered with bruises and
minus his wooden leg and magical eye, but there was no doubt that this
was Moody.

Harry knelt down beside him and shook him gently, ready to jump out of
the way if he struck; it wasn't a good idea to wake a trained Auror too
suddenly. However, Moody's eyes slid open to reveal a glazed expression,
and Harry nodded. He'd guessed that the man would be under the Imperius
Curse. Mulciber wasn't one to leave a dangerous opponent lying around
without it.

``\emph{Finite Incantatem},'' Harry whispered, and his magic surged out
and wiped the Curse from Moody's mind. Moody blinked his one eye at him,
then abruptly growled and reached for a wand that, of course, wasn't
there. Harry made a mental note to find it.

``Who the bloody hell are you?'' was the first thing the real Moody said
to him.

Harry smiled in spite of himself. ``Someone come to rescue you, sir,''
he said. ``You've spent months at the bottom of a trunk that I guess you
own. Mulciber, one of the escaped Death Eaters, impersonated you and
used your hair for Polyjuice Potion. I'd guess he kept you under
Imperius most of the time.''

Moody reached up and felt at his hair, then grunted, seeming to accept
the truth of Harry's story. For all his mistreatment, he sat up with an
agility that impressed Harry, and scanned the bottom of the trunk. He
dismissed Draco, but his eye locked onto Snape, and he issued a low
growl. ``Death Eater bastard,'' he said.

``Moody.'' Snape didn't sound best pleased, and he kept hold of his wand
as though he were about to use it the same way he had on Rabastan. Harry
made a mental note to find out what that spell that had so unnerved the
Death Eater had been. ``You know full well that I was part of the Order
of the Phoenix, and that I spied on Dumbledore's orders.'' He paused,
then added delicately, ``Though no longer.''

Moody laughed, a sound that reminded Harry of one of Sirius's bark-like
chuckles. He held out an arm, and Harry supported him without further
question, holding him upright as he swayed on his one leg. ``Who do you
serve now, Snape? Changed your mind and decided to go crawling back to
Voldemort?''

``No,'' said Snape. ``I \emph{walk} at Harry Potter's side. The boy who
rescued you, Moody.''

Moody turned his eye sharply back on Harry. ``I did ask who the bloody
hell you were,'' he said, as if it were Harry's fault for not telling
him earlier. ``Potter, eh? I know your father, and I remember reading you
about in the \emph{Prophet} before---all this happened.'' He grimaced as
if he'd bitten into something foul. ``Where's Mulciber, anyway?''

``Dead,'' said Harry quietly.

``Harry killed him,'' Snape elaborated, ignoring Harry's glare
effortlessly.

Moody paused a moment before he turned his head back to Harry, as if
he'd been waiting for his magical eye to look at him first. ``I bloody
hate having a blind spot,'' he said. ``You killed a fully-trained
wizard? A Death Eater?''

``Only because I had no choice,'' said Harry. ``Can you walk, sir? I'm
sure that your wooden leg and your magical eye can't be far away. We'll
get you out of here and reunited with them, and then you should go to
St. Mungo's, I think. They can treat you there.''

``No need, Potter.''

Harry jumped in shock, though he couldn't do much of that when he was
under the weight of Moody's arm. Luckily, Snape and Draco had both
pivoted already to point their wands at the two women who'd descended
the stairs. Harry wondered if he should be reassured or not that he
recognized both: Auror Mallory and Tonks.

``What are you doing here?'' he asked, ignoring Moody's muttering about
his secret room becoming a ``blasted parade ground.''

``The Minister is here,'' said Mallory. ``So of course we came along.
The reports of Death Eaters at Hogwarts have reached us by now.'' She
bared her teeth a bit. ``I regret to say that I can't do it myself all
the time, since I am the Head of the Auror Office now, but the
Minister's decided that there need to be Aurors in Hogwarts. A rotating
guard of, say, five should be sufficient.''

Harry blinked his eyes. ``And you'll take Moody and Lestrange?'' he
asked.

``Of course.'' Mallory bowed to Moody. ``Auror Moody is an old and
valued comrade. And we should have Lestrange anyway, for questioning. We
should have had him from the beginning.'' She gave Snape a mildly
disapproving glance. Snape ignored that, too, focusing on something that
he looked far more interested in.

``What has the Headmaster to say about Aurors in his school?'' he asked.

``He isn't being given a choice,'' said Mallory. ``The Minister's
assigning them, and his authority to assign the Aurors to such guard
positions overpowers the Headmaster's right to object. Besides, who can
object to guardians who will add to the children's sense of safety? I'm
sure most parents will be in favor of the move.'' She had a
self-satisfied look, Harry realized, and he doubted that it was a
coincidence Scrimgeour had chosen her to head the Auror Office.

``Indeed.'' Snape resembled Auror Mallory more than a touch in that
moment. Harry let out a cautious breath of relief. He still needed to
speak with Snape, that much was plain, but perhaps his guardian would be
satisfied with this form of revenge and not go against Dumbledore.

``I assume the Minister wants to speak with me?'' Harry asked.

Mallory nodded, and moved over to assist with Moody. Tonks, her hair
bright green, started forward to help, but tripped over her own feet, so
Mallory sent her up the stairs to find Moody's wand. ``He wants to ask
you some questions about Mulciber's death, Potter, and how Lestrange
intruded.''

Harry wiped at his eyes. \emph{Scrimgeour, James, Snape\ldots{}then I
can go off by myself and think about this.} ``Of course.''

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

As it turned out, the interview with Scrimgeour was mercifully short. He
asked a few pointed, penetrating questions that Harry suspected came
from Auror interrogations, then pronounced Mulciber's death a clear case
of self-defense. He would have to speak with Amelia Bones, still the
Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, but he didn't think
she would demand a trial. Harry sagged in relief.

The only remotely worrying thing the Minister said came as he was
leaving. He said, his eyes studying Harry's, or perhaps the lightning
bolt scar on his forehead, ``I think I told you once that I had an
ability to sense Dark magic, by virtue of using only Light spells all my
life.''

Harry nodded.

``I sensed an enormous explosion of Dark magic here on Christmas
night,'' said Scrimgeour quietly. ``It must have been powerful indeed,
for me to receive so many echoes in London. Would you care to explain
what that was about, Mr. Potter?''

Harry swallowed. ``No one died, Minister. One person was hurt, but Madam
Pomfrey healed her.''

``No one died,'' Scrimgeour said. ``But I think you are wrong about only
one person being hurt, Mr. Potter.'' He paused a moment, as if debating,
then said, ``The Ministry keeps records of travel through the Floo
network, you know. There was one name on the list of arrivals at
Hogwarts on Christmas Eve that caught my eye. \emph{Lily Potter.}'' He
looked hard at Harry. ``Could that have something to do with it, do you
think?''

``She's resting at our old house in Godric's Hollow,'' said Harry, his
own voice sounding hollow and mechanical to his ears. ``You could go
visit her if you like. I'm sure that she would tell you she was fine.''
She would, Harry knew. Lily and Dumbledore would hardly admit what had
really happened that night to anyone; it would ruin them as well as
Harry.

``I'm sure,'' said Scrimgeour. ``But she made you powerfully angry, Mr.
Potter. And given that, and what you said at your guardian's trial only
a few days before, I have been turning certain things over in my mind.
Piecing the evidence together, you might say.''

\emph{Shit.} Harry had confessed to not feeling safe with his parents at
Snape's trial. He kept his face as bland as possible. ``I hope that you
catch the perpetrator, Minister,'' he said.

Scrimgeour smiled. It was a faint expression, with his lips pressed
together, and as dangerous as a mouthful of teeth. ``I'm sure I'll run
them to ground eventually. Good day, Mr. Potter.'' He turned and swept
out of the Great Hall, trailing several Aurors who'd come along behind
him. Moody and Rabastan floated in their midst on conjured stretchers,
as did Mulciber's body. Mallory remained, with Tonks, assigning some
others to guard positions.

Harry stood where he was for a few moments, calming his breathing. Then
he turned. James would be up in the hospital wing, with Connor.

``What did he mean, Harry?'' That was Draco's voice, low in his ear.
``You're radiating panic hard enough to---'' He paused. ``Do you think
that he knows about your parents?''

``It's not that I'm afraid of that,'' Harry whispered back. ``But I'm
afraid of what he might do with the knowledge.'' And he was. Scrimgeour
was relentless---patient, but relentless. Harry did not want to think
what would happen if he brought James and Lily up on charges.

The only thing that Harry couldn't figure out was why Scrimgeour would
expend the effort. He was Minister now, with dozens of more important
tasks occupying his mind. He and Harry had done each other favors in the
past, but this would be something more than a favor. He would probably
put other investigators on the case instead, Harry concluded, and they
would be unlikely to find as much. He made himself stop worrying about
it.

``He would do only good things, I am certain.''

Harry abruptly turned. \emph{Perhaps I should have my conversation with
Snape now}. Most of the spectators had left the Great Hall before his
conversation with Scrimgeour, hurrying home to spread the news by
firecall or owl post, and many others had been herded away by the
Aurors. Not too many people would be around to see him and Snape
talking.

``Sir,'' he said, ``I think there are some things you should
understand.''

Snape's eyes widened minutely, but he nodded. ``I am listening, Harry.''

Harry glanced at Draco. ``Do you want to tell him about what you gained,
or should I?''

Draco gave him a dirty look, but nodded and stood a bit taller. ``Sir,
I'm an empath now,'' he said. ``Julia Malfoy, whose ghost I summoned on
Halloween, gave me that gift. I'm a Malfoy magical heir now.'' He
smiled. ``My father will wait at least a year to be certain about it,
but he'll introduce me as his own heir soon.''

Snape nodded, face shadowed. ``Congratulations, Draco. I fail to see why
Harry would wish me to know this, however.''

``Because Draco is aware of my emotions,'' said Harry. ``That means that
I accept I can't hide from him, and I trust him with more of myself than
anyone else.'' Draco sidled a step closer to him. Harry couldn't feel
emotions himself, but was fairly sure that Draco would be radiating
delight. ``And I know he loves me, too.'' His voice still cracked when
he spoke the words aloud. He determined to ignore it. ``What I say to
him, or what he says of me, is the truth. I know that we haven't been
very close since you came back from your trial. I would like to be able
to trust you again, the way I trust Draco. For that to happen, you'll
need to stop planning revenge on my parents and Dumbledore.''

Snape stilled. Then he said, ``May I ask why?''

``Because I don't want anything to happen \emph{just} because of what
they did to me,'' said Harry. ``Never again. That period of my life is
closed. And if---'' \emph{Merlin, this is hard. I hate honesty.} ``I do
want a parent, you're my best choice, but I can't have you planning
revenge on all and sundry. I can't trust you if I think that you're
going to hurt me by making me relive my past at any moment.'' He took a
deep breath, and met Snape's eyes. ``I want to stay with you this
summer. I want to have a proper guardian, not just in a legal sense, or
just one who's opposed to my parents. I need to know that I really am
more important to you than your grudge against James.''

Snape made a low sound. ``Of course you are, Harry.''

``But it doesn't feel like that.'' Harry moved a step forward, and felt
Draco lean fully against him, arms falling to clasp together around his
waist. He resisted the urge to wriggle out of the hold. ``Please,
Professor Snape. Promise me that you won't seek revenge against them.''

Snape dropped to one knee. ``They deserve justice for what they did to
you, Harry,'' he said quietly. ``And I fear that you will never heal
until they receive that justice.''

``I \emph{am} healing,'' Harry objected. ``Draco won't let me be anything
but honest with him now. And I can heal even more with two people I can
be honest with, as long as I know that you aren't doing something I
really, really don't want you to do.''

Snape sighed, a sigh that seemed to drag out most of his grief and set
it hovering in the air between them. ``This matters that much to you,
Harry?''

``It does.'' Harry feared what Scrimgeour would do if he discovered the
truth about his parents, but he feared more where and how Snape would
strike if he kept running this path of vengeance. Scrimgeour was at
least scrupulously loyal to the law. With him, it would be a trial. With
Snape, it could well be torture. Harry had seen how close his guardian's
Death Eater side sometimes was to the surface. He did not want to
encourage it---for Snape's sake as well as his own and his parents' and
Connor's.

``I promise.''

Harry blinked. He'd been so caught up in his thoughts that he had barely
heard the whisper. ``What?''

``I promise,'' said Snape. ``So long as you are in need of healing and
safety and a guardian first and foremost, Harry, I swear that I shall do
my best to protect you. In the name of Merlin, you are more important to
me than a stupid grudge from my schooldays.'' He paused, and seemed to
be fumbling for words. ``It will be hard to be civil around your parents
or the Headmaster, but I promise that I will not hurt them.''

Harry stepped forward, pulling gently away from Draco, and put a hand on
Snape's shoulder. He didn't want to force him into a public embrace
right now. ``Thank you. That was what I wanted to hear.''

And he \emph{did} believe Snape. His own shoulders felt lighter, and the
thought of dealing with his father in the hospital wing was no longer so
terrible.

``Do come talk to me soon,'' Snape murmured as he clasped Harry's hand.
``I would like to hear about Draco's empathy, and---much of the rest of
it.''

Harry nodded to him. ``I will.'' Then he turned and made for the
hospital wing. Halfway there, he noticed Draco walking beside him. He
gave him a strange glance.

Draco gave him another one back, as though to say Harry had been stupid
to think he'd let him go anywhere alone.

Harry rolled his eyes and continued climbing the stairs. He just hoped
Draco didn't make his conversation with James any harder than it had to
be.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

James started up anxiously from beside Connor's bed when Harry entered.
He came a step forward, then stopped when Draco followed and looped his
arms possessively around Harry's waist again. Harry couldn't help a
fretful wriggle this time, since this felt too good and he didn't like
the temptation to lean back against Draco, but the arms stayed in place.

``I promise I'll be good,'' Draco whispered coaxingly, and Harry gave
in. To have Draco behave was well worth the potential discomfort. He
raised his eyes to his father's.

``I was watching the Second Task,'' James whispered. ``I---decided I
should come and see it, since my sons were in it. But I couldn't see
clearly when Connor was injured, and then I had no idea what was
happening until after you came back to the Great Hall.'' He let out a
sharp breath and glanced over his shoulder at the hospital bed.
``Lestrange could have killed him.''

``He almost did,'' said Harry. ``I'm only going to ask you this once.
Did you know anything about Lily and Dumbledore's plan on Christmas
night?''

James shook his head. ``No. I---Lily sent me a letter telling me about
it, in detail, afterward. But I swear to you, Harry, in the name of the
sunrise our ancestors came from, I didn't know.'' His eyes, large and
too dark in his pale face, met Harry's entreatingly.

Harry nodded, slowly. ``And are you going to be a pain in the arse about
Professor Snape being my guardian, or not?''

James said nothing for a long time. Draco muttered something inaudible,
but Harry nudged him, and he shut up. Harry didn't think his father was
refusing. He was thinking, and sometimes, that took him a long time.

James turned to look back at the bed again, then at Harry.

``I saw what you did today,'' he said. ``And I---I don't think I
\emph{can} object any more, Harry. There's no point in trying to rebuild
the kind of relationship we had when you were a child.'' Draco muttered
something else, but James didn't pay any attention, and Harry forced
himself not to. ``You're a young man, not a child, and while I'd still
like to be part of your life, I can't replace what Snape is to you.''

``What about Connor?'' Harry asked.

``He'll have to decide for himself.'' James paused, then said, ``I was
going to suggest in my next letter that you two consider coming to Lux
Aeterna for the Easter holidays, but I don't know how well he'll take
it. He said---he wrote me a letter yesterday that---'' James shook his
head and broke off.

``He \emph{will} have to decide for himself,'' said Harry, unsure how well
Connor's decision to forsake his parents would stand up in the face of
this subdued, quiet James. ``So will I, for that matter.''

James nodded. ``What do you want from me right now, Harry?''

Harry had to study James in silence before he could say anything. James
looked sincere enough now, but he'd looked like that before, at the end
of last year, and that hadn't turned out to mean anything. Harry had no
obligation to give him a second chance. After what he'd done, bringing
charges against Snape and then sending only silence, and then the
Pensieve, and then the sharp letters, Harry knew that most people would
think him totally justified in throwing his father over.

But he'd trusted Snape when he said that he would change, and he did not
truly think James could be trusted \emph{less} than Snape, altogether.
Harry certainly had less trust in him at this moment, but he trusted no
one with much except Draco.

\emph{I could do worse than to set limits.}

``I want you to go home,'' said Harry. ``I want you to write letters to
me that actually talk about \emph{you}, and what \emph{you're} doing,
rather than trying to convince me to abandon Snape. I don't want you to
come and visit me unless I specifically invite you. I don't want you to
mention the Easter holidays again, or press me about them, and I don't
want you to mention Snape at all.''

James nodded. ``I can do that.''

He didn't ask for more, didn't press, and Harry marked that down,
carefully, as one possible difference between him and the old James.

``Connor will have to make his own decisions,'' he said. ``But if I find
out that you're trying to use or pressure him in any way, then that's
the end. I'll cut off all contact between us.''

``I understand,'' said James.

He didn't make another move, didn't say another word, just continued to
gaze at Harry beseechingly. Harry wondered what he wanted from him.
There was no way that they could have anything normal.

In the end, Harry didn't want to try that, either. He didn't have
anything else to say to this man whom only blood connected him to.

He turned and walked calmly out of the room, his pace forcing Draco to
loosen his hold around his waist. Behind him, he heard James move to
resume his place at Connor's bedside.

Harry would have thought about staying, too, but he didn't want to stand
in awkward silence with James, and Madam Pomfrey had assured him that
Connor wouldn't awaken before the morning, anyway; she'd put him under
strong sleeping charms to give the healing magic time to work. He
wanted, more than anything else, to go to his room and consider the
events of the day and be alone.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

His plan, he quickly discovered, wouldn't work, and that was because of
Draco.

Oh, Draco glared Blaise and Vince out of the room quickly enough, his
face telling them that now was \emph{not} the time to press Harry for
the details of any of his exciting adventures. But then, when Harry sat
down on his bed and said, ``I'm fine, you can go now,'' which should
have been his cue to leave, Draco sat down beside him instead.

Harry stared hard at him. ``I said, I'm fine, and you can go now,'' he
repeated.

``You didn't have an `and' in there the first time,'' said Draco. ``That
proves I heard you. And I don't care, Harry. You shouldn't be alone
right now.''

``I should,'' Harry said. He could feel the emotions he'd pushed away
waiting to swamp him. He would probably break down, the calm part of his
mind noted. He didn't want anyone seeing that. He wanted to curl up and
lick his wounds, and the easiest way to do that was by himself. ``I have
to think things through.''

``You mean, brood on them.''

Harry shrugged. ``There will probably be some of that in there, yes,''
he said, and closed his eyes. Mulciber was dying, and the water was
filling with blood as Connor caught the Slicing Curse across his
abdomen, and Scrimgeour's yellow eyes were shining thoughtfully as they
tracked the path of pieces of information to its logical end.

``You're forgetting again, Harry,'' Draco whispered, as his arms slid
one more time around Harry's waist. ``I'm an empath. I felt your emotions
earlier. You hate yourself for what you've done. You hate \emph{all} of
this, violently---being a leader and putting yourself in the public eye
and the attention that's going to come along with it. And I don't think
that it works for you to bury this and sit on it in silence. It didn't
work with your mother.''

Harry flinched. ``Don't touch me, please,'' he said.

Draco let him go at once, but Harry could feel his gaze on the side of
his face. He refused to open his eyes. Not only would looking at Draco
make things worse, but that wouldn't allow Harry to see his own visions
of what had happened today as clearly. He had to look at them, to
categorize the emotions that had come with them and decide how he was
going to think of them, so that he could put them away.

``Why not?'' Draco asked.

It took Harry a moment to connect the question with his declaration. He
hesitated, but Draco had become scarily good at telling when he lied,
and anyway, there weren't many deceptions he could use that Draco would
believe. ``It feels too good,'' he said. ``I'm going to---I don't know,
do something like lean against you and cry if you touch me, and I don't
want to.''

``Why not?''

``Because I don't want to be weak,'' Harry snapped in exasperation.
\emph{That} much, Draco should have known. Mulciber died behind his
eyes, and Harry wondered if there was anything else he could have told
them about Voldemort's plans. That was a reason to regret killing him,
but not the strongest one. He had still been a living wizard, capable of
changing. Harry still did not see what else he could have done in that
situation, but he was determined to think of it with horror, so that he
would never use his power casually, the way Dumbledore and Voldemort had
done.

``Why not?''

``Will you ask \emph{something} else?''

``All right,'' said Draco, calmly. ``Why do you think you'll be weak if
you do something like lean against me and cry? I've seen you cry before.
I don't think you're weak, Harry.''

Harry let out a harsh breath. \emph{This will be hard to answer, but if
it gets Draco to go away and leave me alone, it's worth it.} ``Because
this is only the beginning of the war,'' he said. ``Things like this are
going to happen all the time---people getting hurt around me, people
dying, me killing people, people staring at me.'' \emph{People} seeing
\emph{me. I hate that.} ``I can't get used to crying about it now, or
I'll never be able to stop. I thought it would be easier than this,
because I had the training to prepare me. But it isn't, and that means
that I'm not as strong as I should be yet. So I'm trying to finish the
process.''

``Fuck \emph{that},'' said Draco, his voice rough, and grabbed Harry and
dragged him towards him.

Harry struggled for a moment, but then, just as he had been afraid would
happen, the warmth crept in around him, and he found that he didn't
really want to move. And oh, \emph{Merlin}, he was going to do something
soppy any moment. And he just couldn't afford that. He \emph{had} to
make conscious decisions, analyze what he had done, and know his own
reasons for his own actions. He regulated his breathing and refused to
let the tears burning behind his eyes fall.

\emph{Why am I crying anyway? I learned a valuable lesson from
Mulciber's death. Connor will live. The Aurors took Lestrange away.
Moody was rescued. Snape and Dumbledore and James all know what they
have to do now. I have nothing to cry about.}

The most satisfactory answer that came to him was exhaustion, but he'd
slept deeply under the influence of the sleeping charm, without
interruption, until the moment when he awakened under the lake. That
couldn't be it. He hadn't had anything to eat today. Maybe that was it.

And if Draco would just stop \emph{touching} him, Harry thought he could
hold on. At the moment, Draco had shifted to lean against something, the
pillows or one of the bedposts, and tilted so that Harry's head was
tucked in under his chin. He was cradling Harry's shoulder with one arm,
and running his free hand up and down Harry's back, and it felt
incredibly good, and it terrified Harry beyond measure. He tried to curl
in on himself, but the position Draco had him in wasn't a good one for
it. He could feel his breath quickening with panic. He didn't think he
could hide anything like this, even the few things he'd managed to
conceal successfully from Draco.

\emph{I don't want someone seeing me. This is} stupid. \emph{I can't do
this. I'm supposed to be strong, and no matter what I am, a} vates
\emph{or an ally or a leader or a rescuer, that's true. I can't be
strong like this.}

What terrified him the most was that he couldn't just lash out with his
magic and get free of Draco that way. His own reluctance to hurt Draco,
and his own shameful desire to stay exactly where he was, got in the
way.

``Please,'' he whispered. ``Please, Draco, let me go.''

``Not this time,'' Draco whispered back. ``Most of the time, Harry, I
would. But sometimes you make the wrong decisions. And this is one of
those times.'' He rubbed at Harry's shoulders, making them hunch because
his skin was prickling. ``I promise you, I'll be here if you wake or
sleep, cry or don't. I'll do anything for you right now, except let you
go or leave.''

Harry tried to curl in on himself, but he couldn't. He tried to prevent
himself from being seen, and didn't think he could.

\emph{This is wrong. I can't have it. It's only a double-edged dream
that'll slice us both open in the end\ldots{}}

And then he realized it didn't matter anyway, because frustrated,
furious tears were already making their way down his face, and he'd
shifted so that one of his arms was clutching at Draco with a death
grip. Draco didn't wince, refused to wince, no matter how hard the
pressure got.

``I hate this,'' Harry whispered. ``I hate almost everything about
this.''

``I know,'' said Draco, and didn't say anything else.

Harry closed his eyes. \emph{I have to say this. He needs to know.}
``But I don't hate you,'' he said. ``I can't.''

Draco still didn't say anything. Harry felt another mixture of shame and
guilt and self-loathing well up. \emph{How can I keep on taking from him
like this? What can he possibly be getting out of this? We're not
equals. I don't give him as much as I take. Shit. How can this possibly
last?}

``Stop that,'' Draco whispered into his hair. ``I can \emph{feel} you
feeling that, you know. And I want to be here, Harry. You're giving me
everything I want right now.''

Harry swallowed, and forced himself, slowly, to believe that that was
true. It didn't need to be true tomorrow, or for the rest of their
lives. It might be true right now, and he didn't really think Draco
would lie to him.

Slowly, imperceptibly, he relaxed.

\emph{Maybe it's not such a bad thing, being seen.}

\chapter{Interlude: Shall I Offer Thee}\label{chapter-57-interlude-shall-i-offer-thee}

\noindent \emph{February 22nd, 1995}

\noindent \emph{Potter:}

I suppose you will want me to offer you congratulations. After all, you
managed to uncover and destroy a Death Eater, and to prevent another
from killing your brother on the same day.

I shall {not} offer you congratulations. There is no reason to. If you
had paid attention to my warning, and if you had been wary of the man
who called himself Moody from the beginning, none of this would have
happened.

You will argue that you cannot trust me. What motive had I for warning
you? You will want to know that, and say that nothing makes sense
without it.

I have told you that motive. Of course I have. You just have chosen not
to pay attention to me. I am {bored}, Potter, bored with all that my
Lord and Bellatrix make me do, the useless missions they send me on, the
useless curses they inflict on me which no longer hurt any more. You, at
least, promise the interest of some excitement. You do things
differently. I cannot always predict what will happen around you. You
will be glad to know that my leg is intact, that the curse I caught at
Lucius's home did not manage to sever it, but the fact that it happened
is a source of intense joy and delight to me, because it is not
something that my Lord or Bellatrix would have done. I cannot wait to
see what wounds I might take the next time I fight against you.

You are an entertainment to me. You very much were at the Quidditch
World Cup, which is why I gave you the warning about Mulciber. And then
you chose to disregard it! I am disappointed in you, Potter. Keep this
up, and you will not be interesting any more.

For now, though, you are still interesting, especially because Bellatrix
clenches her teeth and wails about Mulciber never coming back, and
worries that we are too few to continue our Lord's work. Why does she
worry? She must know that our Lord's work, this year, is not up to us.

I will give you another warning, because you amuse me so. See that you
do not misuse this one.

Watch the sun, Potter, and fear it.

With all the regards of self-interest,

\emph{Evan Rosier.}

\chapter{The Bloody Bed}\label{chapter-58-the-bloody-bed}

\noindent \emph{February 22nd, 1995}

\noindent \emph{Severus:}

\emph{Tell your young charge to take better care of himself. Really,
letting him receive letters from} Death Eaters? \emph{What kind of
guardian are you? And yet, I have written him several times throughout
the year, and no one has been able to prevent me from doing it. Then I
used the Burning Heart Curse on him just outside Lucius Malfoy's house,
and where were you? In jail, because you got yourself caught, like a
bloody fool.}

\emph{Watch out for him, Severus. Be sure that I am not the only one who
considers him a fine toy, and who would like to play with him if they
can get at him. Tell him to watch the moon. That is what my lord is
waiting on. He will say the sun, I might even have said the sun in the
letter that I wrote your ward, but it is the moon. Watch it from full to
dark, from dark back to full again, and above all for the times when it
might permit someone else access to the school.}

\emph{After all, there was a werewolf on the grounds last year, was
there not?}

\emph{In memories of old fellowship,}

\emph{Evan Rosier.}

Harry looked up from Rosier's letter, and sighed. ``So you don't believe
that his letter to me---or even the mentions of the sun that Voldemort
makes in my nightmares---holds any merit?''

``I believe that we will drive ourselves mad in trying to figure out
what merit they might hold,'' said Snape flatly, his arms folded as he
paced back and forth, his robes snapping behind him. Draco, sitting on
the couch beside Harry, nudged him the moment Snape's back was turned,
and Harry handed him the letter. Draco read it, frowning.

``Which is it, then?'' he asked, looking up when he had finished. ``The
moon or the sun?''

``That is the point!'' Snape snapped, spinning around. ``It might be
neither. It might be both. It might be one or the other, but we would
fall dead from frustration before figuring it out. This is Evan. He was
mad before Azkaban. He was always mad. And his favorite game has always
been torturing those whom he wishes to play with mentally. Despite his
love for curses that cause physical pain, he prefers seeing someone
writhe in the torment of doubt and uncertainty. I watched him fill the
heads of Muggle prisoners with so many false beliefs about magic that in
the end they committed suicide or submitted in silence to the Killing
Curse, unable to tell what was real and what was not.''

Harry hesitated, then decided he had to say something. ``He did give me
a true warning about Moody.''

``And you were wary of him.'' Snape practically lunged towards his desk,
looking through the drawers for something. Harry wasn't surprised to
recognize the blue vial of a Calming Potion when he held it up. Snape
swallowed it, stood still for a few moments as it worked through his
body, and then said, ``Much good it did.''

Harry sighed. ``That's true. What would you suggest I do about it, then?
I suppose it would do no good to reply to him---''

``Try it, and I will give you detention every night for a month,'' said
Snape, the calm monotone of his voice making the threat more effective.

Draco muttered something uncomplimentary, but Harry couldn't decide if
it was uncomplimentary towards himself or Snape, and decided not to push
it. ``All right. Are there any spells that will stop him from sending
owls to me, then?''

``None that would not work to turn post owls away from you completely,''
said Snape in disgust. ``And especially, none that would not interfere
with Hogwarts' wards, probably at an unacceptable level of risk.''

Harry nodded in resignation. He could feel raw magic muttering in the
school as the wards realigned themselves around both the Headmaster and
Professor McGonagall. ``What do we do, then?''

``We pretend that Evan Rosier does not exist.'' Snape took up both
letters and cast them into his fireplace without pause. ``For fourteen
years, I believed him dead, and did very well without dwelling on him.
Unless he presents himself to our notice again, we can do the same thing
now.''

He turned to face Harry. ``Though I \emph{am} curious to know if his
comment about using the Burning Heart Curse on you holds any truth.''

``Uh.'' Harry knew he had forgotten some things in the recitation he'd
given to Snape of what happened during the two months he was in the
Ministry, but there was so much; surely he was not expected to remember
it all off the top of his head? The night he and Draco had dashed to
Malfoy Manor was one of those things they hadn't mentioned yet. ``Well,
it's true that I had a vision that Voldemort was sending Rosier after
Mr. Malfoy, because he wanted to know what had happened to the diary Mr.
Malfoy retrieved in second year. We got there in time, but Rosier sent
an owl with a letter charmed to act as a Portkey, and dragged Mr. Malfoy
outside. I went after them, and he---Rosier, I mean---wound up casting
the Burning Heart Curse on me.''

``How did you heal from it?'' Snape asked quietly.

``My father wouldn't have left him to \emph{suffer.}'' Draco gave Snape a
hard glance, and shoved his shoulder against Harry's.

``Mr. Malfoy rescued me,'' Harry agreed.

Snape stood in silence, thinking. Harry wondered if he would dispute
Lucius's good intentions again, but he said only, ``And did Rosier ask
him about the diary?''

``Huh?'' Harry knew it wasn't the most eloquent response, but then, this
wasn't a question to which he'd ever given any thought.

``Did Rosier ask him about the diary?'' Snape queried patiently. ``At
all?''

Harry swallowed. ``I don't know,'' he said. ``He could have done it
during the moments before I joined their duel, I suppose. Or Mr. Malfoy
just refused to tell him, and started firing curses. Does it matter?''

Snape waved a hand. ``It might,'' he said. ``But with Evan Rosier, as I
told you, it might just be another trap designed to lead us into a maze
of guessing and counterguessing, which will waste our time.'' He tilted
his head and fixed a meditative glance on Draco. ``You may wish to
leave, Draco. Harry and I will be practicing dueling spells, and---''

``I want to stay.'' Draco folded his arms.

``You are sure?'' Snape drew his wand and banished the table in front of
the couch, leaving the couch itself there only until Draco rose to his
feet. As he cast protective charms in front of the bookshelves, he
added, ``You will feel the pain that Harry does when the curses get
through to him.''

``I would feel that anyway,'' Draco said, and gave Harry a sharp smile.
``This way, I can get some training myself, and share a little more of
his life.''

Harry rolled his eyes. There was no point in denying what Draco wanted
to do. Harry hadn't sensed any betrayal from him, and doubted he ever
would. But that meant that, having let Draco see his weakness, there was
no point in keeping him out of further situations where he might see it.
He would trust Draco unless he encountered some indication that he could
not.

As he and Snape backed away to opposite sides of the room, Harry
wondered if he was naïve to think that Draco would never turn against
him.

\emph{I don't think so. Just realistic.}

``This curse is one that Dolohov would have been the most likely to use
against you, were he still alive,'' said Snape, and shook his head.
``Had not Rosier pretended to die, and impersonated him.'' He lifted his
wand. ``But other Death Eaters will use it as well. The Shield Charm, and
most other wards and shields, cannot block it. \emph{De Profundis!}''

For a moment, Harry felt nothing in particular, and wondered if Snape
had miscast the curse, or weakened it.

Then he heard a wind blow around the room, and saw the spells protecting
Snape's bookshelves buckle. At the same moment, wild, screaming Dark
rage reared up in his mind, the same kind he had felt when he faced
Lily, and the music rose and played in his ears. Harry closed his eyes,
fighting hard to control it.

Beyond the rage, Snape explained calmly, ``This curse drags your
strongest emotions out of the depths of you, and forces you to combat
them. It makes enemies go mad, or run away, or begin to pay attention to
almost anything but the caster of the curse. You must face and fight it.
Once you have conquered it, no one else can use it against you again.''

Harry's consciousness of anything outside his own emotions vanished,
then. He vaguely thought he could hear Draco screaming at Snape in the
last moments, but he couldn't understand the words. And then they, too,
were gone, and he was left alone with the Dark.

The urge to smash, to destroy, to fly, to do anything that would express
his hatred and his wildness\ldots{}

This was part of him, and Harry knew that the longer and harder he tried
to push it away, the more trouble he would have facing it if it ever
broke free.

He had faced something of this power only once before, the night of the
Chamber, when Sylarana's death broke the barriers in his mind apart and
loosed the silent self and the cold self. So Harry thought he could do
worse than handle this rage by the same method with which he had handled
them.

He began to build a new part of his mind for the rage to reside in. He
made it beautiful, but sharp-edged, a glittering cage of blades. The
Dark music rattled the icicles that hung from it like bells, and then,
pleased, curled back around and rattled them again, listening to them
chime. Harry made the cage as attractive as he could, before he moved
inside it and cast an illusion of limitlessness there.

The image of open sky, of open plains, of open sea, all the boundless
things stretching out of sight he had ever seen, went there. And the
rage sensed it, and came bounding, eager to stretch itself out in a
place where there were no constraints.

Harry shut the cage door after it, and then opened his eyes. Snape and
Draco were both at the far end of the room, behind a strong ward. The
bookshelves sagged against each other, and a few books had spilled from
them, to lie open-faced or with pages pitifully trapped beneath them on
the floor. Harry took a deep breath and climbed to his feet, wondering
when he had fallen. He wiped at the mixture on his face, of rime from
ice and tears from the wind and drool from his mouth.

``And there was a point to that, I suppose?'' he murmured.

Snape lowered the ward and stepped towards him. ``I mean to begin your
training in earnest, Harry,'' he said. ``I will show you the various
curses that the Death Eaters are likely to use against you, and how to
defend against them. I will also show you applications of Light spells
that they will not expect.'' His eyes glinted, hard. ``The war is
beginning in earnest, and, as you have said, our enemies are not limited
to your blood family and Dumbledore. Will you accept this?''

Harry nodded.

``I wish you would bloody well have warned \emph{me},'' Draco muttered,
massaging his skull. ``I got an overdose of pain when Harry's emotions
went wild like that.''

Harry moved towards him in concern, but Snape got there before he could,
looming over him and staring down.

``Mr. Malfoy.'' His voice had gone icy. ``Now that I know you have
empathy, I can teach you attacks that will increase your advantages with
it in battle and defenses that will decrease your disadvantage. But
there is no place for whiners in this classroom, as in any other. You
will become used to taking in pain, as a result of this gift-curse that
you brought on \emph{yourself}, or you will leave and not attend Harry's
training. Do you understand?''

``That you helped me bring on,'' Draco said softly, his eyes glinting in
the way that they did when Harry knew he wanted to hurt someone else.

``What does that mean?'' Harry asked.

Snape turned with a swift flare of his robes and studied him. Then he
said, ``I was the one who gave Draco the book with the potion in it
that, apparently, allowed him to summon Julia Malfoy.'' He gave Draco a
dark look. ``Of course, if had researched more, he would have found
someone \emph{else} whose gifts were more compatible with his---a better
ancestor to make a magical heir out of him.''

Harry narrowed his eyes. ``Then you were the one who put a compulsion on
him?''

Snape stared at him. ``What do you mean?''

``Draco had a compulsion on him when I was helping him with the
potion,'' said Harry, taking a step forward. ``One that drove him to
complete the potion, and ignore nearly everything else while he was
doing it. Did you know that that would happen?'' He could feel rage
unlike the caged Dark fury rising in him. Snape knew how he felt about
compulsion. That he should have used it, and that he should have used it
on \emph{Draco\ldots{}}

\emph{I like to think I'd feel just as upset about him using it on
anyone. But that's lying to myself again, which I've got to stop doing.
I'm more upset about it being Draco than I would be about anyone else.}

Snape slowly shook his head. ``I knew the book would guide him to what
he sought,'' he said. ``I did not know about the compulsion.''

``Have you ever used the book before?'' Harry demanded.

Snape nodded. ``Once, to brew a potion that allowed me to see my soul,''
he said quietly. ``The book gave me the potion. However, I took my time
preparing it. It did not drive me the way it appears to have driven
Draco.''

``So it was an accident,'' Harry whispered, wanting to believe, needing
to believe, that his guardian had not really done something that stupid.

``It was,'' said Snape. ``I can only surmise that Draco's desperate
desire to be a magical heir must have interacted with the magic of the
book, and that that prompted the compulsion.'' He paused for a long
moment, then added delicately, ``And, of course, the compulsion that
your brother put on him last year, to protect you, has sunken into his
mind and twined tight around it.''

Harry shuddered. \emph{That means that---}

``Sometimes, \emph{sir}, you need to keep your mouth shut,'' said Draco,
and scrambled across the room to stand in front of Harry. ``I promise,
Harry, that compulsion has nothing to do with the way I love you now. I
manage to leave you alone when you want me to, don't I? And I wasn't
protecting you when I made you go out to the Forbidden Forest and face
the unicorns.''

``Unicorns,'' said Snape flatly.

Harry swallowed, and then managed to smile. ``I don't really believe all
this is the result of a compulsion,'' he murmured. ``I've been down that
road before, and I was wrong then, too. Thank you, Draco, for making me
see reason.''

Draco grabbed his hand and held it as they both turned to face Snape.
``I think we'll accomplish more if we're honest with each other,'' said
Harry. ``Completely. As long as you promise that you had no idea that
that compulsion would come from the book, sir, then we can proceed, and
we'll tell you about the unicorns, and you can tell us about what else
happened to you during your confinement.''

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape stared hard back at Harry, at the trust shining in the boy's
eyes---trust with a reserve of wariness behind it.

\emph{Tell him that I know about the compulsion, and I do not think he
will trust me again. He is not rational about compulsion, at all. That
is the reason he ate Dumbledore's magic, because he compelled others.}

\emph{He needs one adult he can trust right now. Totally. Completely.
Speak the truth now, and I will shatter that trust more than a lie ever
could. He will close up on me, and begin to treat me much as he treats
Dumbledore. Lie to him, and if he finds out about it, he will be upset
with me. But I believe that the moment when he finds out will be less
dangerous than this one. He has suffered so many wounds in the last
week. He needs my support more right now than he will again. When he has
grown beyond this a bit, then I can think of telling him the truth.}

Snape made his choice.

``I did not know that that would happen to Draco, no,'' he said quietly.
``As I said, it did not happen to me with the potion that the book chose
for me to brew.''

\emph{That potion left me with no illusions. I know what I am. I am by
no means pleasant, or nice, or without my contradictions.}

\emph{But I am true to deeper loyalties,} he thought, as he watched
Harry's eyes brighten with his trust. \emph{I will give him what he
needs most right now---support---and the truth later. The same way that,
though it would cost me his trust and his love, if I thought that his
parents were going to damage him through his hiding of his past, I would
expose that past. I care more for his life than for his regard. I would
break my promise before I would see him hurt because of it. I spied for
the Light when others thought me a traitor and a Death Eater, and Harry
matters more to me than that ever did or will.}

``I knew that you wouldn't,'' said Harry. ``I knew that you weren't that
kind of person.''

\emph{You know very little of me,} Snape thought, but repeated,
``Unicorns?''

``I freed the unicorns,'' Harry began.

``Because I made him go out to the Forbidden Forest and do it,'' Draco
chipped in.

Harry gave him a disgusted glance, but went back and started telling the
story from the beginning. Snape listened, and watched Harry's eyes grow
brighter still, and the smug, possessive look on Draco's face.

\emph{This} is \emph{love, then. Ah. Well. That explains a great deal.}

\emph{I suppose I must also see to the protection of young Mr. Malfoy,
since he is now necessary to making Harry happy. First guard and last
defense, and it will probably turn both of them against me in the end. I
am prepared to face that.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Someone banged on the door of his room hard enough to make Harry sit up
straight, gasping. He glanced around the room, and caught a glimpse of
light from Blaise's bed as he cast a \emph{Lumos} charm. A moment later,
Vince's voice called, ``What the hell?''

``Harry has to come out now,'' said Millicent from beyond the door. She
didn't sound as if she had slept at all. ``He should be dressed and
ready for a long journey.''

``What's wrong with Millicent?'' Draco said, sounding sulky, the way he
always was when someone woke him up in the middle of the night. ``Long
journey? What---'' He seemed to give up the sentence as a bad job, if
the sound of his rolling over was any indication. ``Can't it wait until
morning?'' he muttered.

``I don't think it can,'' said Harry, memory firing at last, and chasing
away the last shreds of what could have been a vision of Voldemort, if
it had had time to form. He rolled out of bed and hurried to his trunk,
searching for a set of robes he could dump on. ``I think Mrs.
Bulstrode's having her baby. She asked me to be there when she was born,
and this would be nine months since she got pregnant, I think.''

``Some of us are trying to \emph{sleep}, Potter,'' Blaise said, and his
\emph{Lumos} charm went out, as if he could ignore what Harry had just
said by sheer force of will.

``Harry?'' Draco stuck his head through his curtains as Harry finished
pulling on his robes, not bothering with the Slytherin tie. ``Do you
need someone to go with you?''

Harry shook his head quickly and yanked a hand through his hair, hoping
that he looked at least somewhat presentable. ``No offense, Draco, but
you weren't invited,'' he said. ``I don't think the Bulstrodes would
want you there.''

Draco sighed. ``If you're sure---''

``\emph{Potter},'' Millicent said from beyond the door. Harry knew she
only called him by his surname when she was angry at him.

``Sure,'' said Harry, smiled at him, and slipped from the room.
Millicent caught his hand at once and started tugging him down the
stairs. Harry frowned. He had seen she was clutching a small object in
her hand, but he didn't know what it was.

``We're traveling by Portkey?'' he asked. ``Or Floo?''

``Neither. There are permanent wards on Blackstone insuring that no
Portkeys work there,'' said Millicent, and then turned around and let
him see what the object was. A small stone, veined with black, but
mostly gray, it looked a bit like the device she'd used to take them to
the site of the Walpurgis Night fire last year. Harry blinked.

``What is that, then?''

``Something that works like a Portkey, but isn't,'' said Millicent. She
didn't explain, only grasped the stone and twisted the top, which
suddenly began to whirl. The air in front of Harry opened as a door
would and swung back. Harry stared into the dark corridor beyond it.

``Walk!'' Millicent gave him a violent push. Harry managed to save
himself from stumbling on the threshold, and began to hurry down the
hall. Locked doors passed him, silent and foreboding, with coats of arms
on some of them that made him wonder if they led to the houses of other
pureblood families. He had never heard of magic like this.

He turned to ask Millicent a question, but she pushed him up the hall
again, one hand firm on his shoulder. The door behind them had closed,
Harry noticed, and showed only an endless expanse of dark hall,
identical to the one in front of them in every way.

``Go, Harry,'' said Millicent. Harry blinked, noticing for the first
time the shine of tears in her eyes. ``Mother wanted you there. But she
wasn't the one who called me. It was Father, and he said---'' Millicent
closed her eyes and shook her head. ``It's bad. He said it's bad.''

Harry sped up, though he wondered what the hell he could do to help
Elfrida even if they got there in time. He knew nothing about childbirth
or helping babies survive after it.

\emph{Does ``bad'' mean bad for Elfrida? Or Marian? Or both?}

He and Millicent ran down the dark, silent hall, not even their
footsteps raising much noise, until Millicent tugged him to a halt in
front of a huge black door. The coat of arms wasn't a formal design,
only a dark silhouette of a castle. Millicent grasped the lock, and it
sparkled and melted under her hand. The door swung open, and this time,
Harry did stumble on the threshold as they came into a room bright with
light and noise and the scent of blood.

``Millicent,'' said Adalrico's voice, sounding tense and exhausted.
``And Potter. I am glad that you came before Elfrida passed.''

Harry shook off Millicent's hand---easy enough, since she'd moved over
to stand next to her father---and forced his eyes to focus on the sight
in front of him. Elfrida lay on a bed absolutely soaked with blood. A
blanket discreetly covered her legs, but only partway, and Harry could
make out that most of the blood must have come from her. Elfrida's pale
hair was spread around her face, and she panted, eyes wide open. The air
around her stirred uneasily with magic, powerful enough to raise the
hair on his arms. Harry swallowed. This was the result of Elfrida's
\emph{puellaris} training; not using much magic during the course of
daily life, she stored her power up until the moment she could wield it
to benefit her children.

\emph{But the magic is strong enough to save her life,} Harry thought in
confusion, as he turned towards Adalrico. \emph{She's not in danger of
dying. Or is the baby so badly off that they need the magic to feed to
Marian?}

The infant cradled in Adalrico's hands, though, and still slimed in
blood, looked healthy enough. Her cord had been cut, and she was crying,
face still squashed in on itself, her newborn magic jumping and pulsing
around her in its inchoate efforts to soothe her. Harry forced himself
to calm down, and look past the expressions of stony sorrow and
desolation on Adalrico's and Millicent's faces, and get some answers.

``Why is Mrs. Bulstrode going to die?'' he demanded.

``Because,'' said Adalrico softly, ``she has felt that Marian could be
her magical heir. Her suspicions grew as the pregnancy came to
completion. But the sympathy between her and Marian is of a fleeting,
limited kind, as such childish ties often are. Most magical heirs
manifest later in life.'' Marian wailed, and Adalrico gently adjusted
his position, rocking her back and forth. ``Elfrida will have to pass her
magic to Marian \emph{now} if she is to make her her heir. And that
means that she won't have enough left to keep herself alive.''

Harry blinked, once, twice. ``You---you really think magical heirs are
that important?''

``Of course, Potter.'' Millicent snapped the words out without looking
at him. Her eyes, and all her attention, were fixed on her tiny sister.
``Blood is important, but magic is more so. It's extremely rare for a
family to have \emph{two} magical heirs in it, one for the father and
one for the mother. We're lucky.'' Harry thought he would have said that
she didn't sound lucky, but he didn't dare speak a word at the moment.
``No pureblood family---well, no Dark pureblood family, because the
Light ones consider taking a magical heir barbaric, mostly, and stick to
blood ones---would give up a chance like this. My mother will sacrifice
her life so that Marian can be a more powerful witch.'' Millicent let
out a shuddering breath. ``I knew it might happen when Mother told me
that she could sense sympathy between her magic and Marian's while she
was still in the womb. That's rare. It's very rare.''

Harry turned his head and met Elfrida's eyes. ``And that is what you
want, my lady?'' he asked. The title was old, not in use anymore among
the human denizens of the wizarding world, but he could not think of
what else to call the woman in the bed, so very alive still, her magic
soaring around her like a flight of dragons.

``I do wish I could stay alive to comfort my children,'' said Elfrida in
a much stronger voice than Harry would have expected, given the pallor
of her face. ``It will be a hard thing for Marian never to know her
mother. But the magic is more important. What makes us wizards and
witches is our magic. Next to that, the shelter of blood is pale and
comfortless.'' It sounded as if she were quoting some catechism, though
not one Harry had ever heard.

``But you want to live,'' Harry clarified.

Elfrida gave a slow, languorous nod, and fixed her eyes on Adalrico's
arms. ``Bring her closer,'' she murmured. ``I'll have to pass my magic
to her from just a few feet away.''

``Wait,'' Harry said, and Adalrico turned to look at him, though he also
hurried Marian nearer the bed. ``If Elfrida wants to live, then she
should live.''

``You cannot stop this, Potter,'' Adalrico said. ``You might not
understand it, but you gave an oath to be a witness to Marian's birth,
and you are an ally of our family. You cannot interfere with the free
choice of a woman of that family.''

Harry rolled his eyes. ``I'm honoring her choice,'' he snapped. ``I'm
going to make sure that she can pass her magic to Marian and still
live.'' He stepped up on the left side of the bed and reached down,
gripping Elfrida's arm. She rolled her head to look at him. The white
pillow under her hair was stained dark with sweat.

``How can you do that?'' she whispered. ``You might be able to keep my
life in my body, perhaps, but I would be a Squib or even a Muggle. I am
a witch, Mr. Potter. I would rather die than live without magic.''

``I don't intend that you have just your life,'' said Harry. ``I need to
know first of all if this connection will work. Mr. Bulstrode, I should
have just as strong a connection to your wife as to you, shouldn't I? I
don't need to touch your alliance scar to work with her?'' He was
prepared to bring Adalrico into the connection if he had to, but he
would prefer it if he could do this without a fourth person. The link he
was basing this on had used only three.

``Yes, you should be able to,'' said Adalrico, sounding bewildered.
``Mr. Potter, what---''

``No time!'' Elfrida whispered suddenly. ``Put her on my arm, Adalrico,
\emph{now}.'' Her magic made her voice into a command just this side of
compulsion, Harry thought. Her husband hastened to lay Marian on her arm
and then step away.

Elfrida seemed to have forgotten about Harry. She smiled into her
daughter's face, and murmured an incantation that Harry did not
recognize, in a language he thought wasn't even Latin; it sang too much.
A conduit snapped into place between her forehead and Marian's. The baby
wailed all the louder. The magic swirling around Elfrida flowed towards
the conduit, ready to pass on into the infant.

Harry took a deep breath, firmed his grip on Elfrida's arm, and waited.
His body was in the bloody room, feeling Millicent's and Adalrico's
tense, worried gazes, but his mind was back in the Chamber of Secrets,
remembering the trap that Tom Riddle had sprung on him, using the links
between Harry and Connor and himself to come to life. He had hurt
Connor, which hurt Harry thanks to their twin bond, and pulled Harry's
magic out through the scar his older self had caused.

Elfrida was feeding Marian her magic, and Harry thought his own
connections to the Bulstrodes, mother and newborn daughter as well as
father and older sister, should work for the other two sides of the
circle. Otherwise, he would be pulling power from Marian when he acted.
But because he had a connection with Marian and Elfrida based on trust
and alliance, not pain and hatred, and he did not want to drain Marian
to save her mother's life, this should work the way he wanted it to.

He hoped.

Elfrida slumped a bit, and Harry knew that she was getting closer to
empty. The magic would leave her, and she would perish, perhaps as much
out of desire not to live magicless as because she would not have the
strength to keep herself from bleeding to death.

\emph{Now.}

Harry reached down inside himself and began to pull power from his
immense store, reversing the process that allowed him to eat magic from
people like Dumbledore and Voldemort.

This time, it was rather like milking a snake of its venom, rather than
swallowing power with a snake. The creature gurgled lazily and filled
his working hands with magic, which pooled down Harry's fingers and into
Elfrida's arm. She made a soft, questioning sound, but didn't look away
from her daughter. The conduit between their foreheads shone like a
strand of solid diamond now, illuminated from without and within.

Harry drained his magic, careful to feed Elfrida only benevolent or
neutral power; he would not want to see what untamed Dark magic might do
so near Marian. It was easier than he had thought it would be. His magic
unfolded in layer after layer, and he could pick through the layers,
choose what he wanted, and siphon it down the link created by their
formal alliance. Elfrida's breathing grew louder, and Harry felt her
muscles gaining strength and consistency again, her body surging as it
replenished her blood.

For one sudden, wild, beautiful moment, he felt as if he \emph{were}
her, looking out through her eyes, breathing with her lungs, feeling her
heart beat with aching familiarity. He could feel her love for Marian,
and for Millicent, and for Adalrico---still present and there, that last
emotion, but a distant thing compared to her fierce protective love for
her children. Harry had never experienced anything like it. The closest
things were the sensations he had shared when gazing out through the
Hungarian Horntail's eyes.

He had been afraid for a time that Elfrida's body would reject his own
magic as unfamiliar, but the moment it settled deeply into her muscles
and veins, they changed it to suit themselves. She would be a different
kind of witch than before, Harry could see that. But as he watched
glinting trails of white power changed to a softer gray and snatched
into place, cradling her and soothing her and conjuring her softly back
to life, he did not think the difference would be that noticeable.

Abruptly, someone broke the link, jerking his hand from Elfrida's arm.
Harry blinked, and looked up. Adalrico was holding his wrist, and
staring at him as though he were an intruder, an enemy---

Or something unbelievably strange.

``She will live,'' he whispered.

Harry glanced over at Elfrida, and his heart jumped for a moment as he
saw that her eyes were shut. Then he realized she was breathing
regularly, stirring the sheet that covered her with deep, healthy pants.
Little Marian was fast asleep on her mother's arm, the conduit between
their heads faded. She did have some sort of marking on her brow, Harry
saw dazedly. He thought it was star-shaped.

``What did you do?'' Adalrico whispered. ``Were you actually---were you
actually giving Elfrida magic that would save her life?''

Harry nodded at him. ``Of course.''

``But that would mean sacrificing your power.'' Adalrico said it as he
might speak of the rape of a child.

Harry smiled tiredly at him and sent his wandless magic traveling around
the inside of his skin. ``I still have plenty. I'm not noticeably
weaker. I promise you, I wouldn't have killed myself trying to save her.
I wouldn't have done this at all if I wasn't sure that both of us would
live.''

``But that you would do it at all\ldots{}'' Adalrico trailed off and
shook his head. He was profoundly pale.

``People matter more to me than magic,'' said Harry, wondering why it
shocked the man so. \emph{Surely he should know it, after allying with
me?} He moved around the bed and bent over to look into Marian's face.
She looked slightly less like a red, squashed monkey now, and more like
a normal baby. The marking on her forehead was blue and, indeed, faintly
star-shaped. Harry gently stroked her blood-soaked, naked head. ``Hello,
little one,'' he whispered. ``Welcome to the world. I hope that your
scar brings you more joy than mine has brought me.''

He felt Millicent's hand on his shoulder. ``Let me take her, Harry,''
she said.

Harry nodded, and stepped out of the way so Millicent could pick the
baby up. Marian didn't even wake as her sister took her over to a basin
of water standing ready in the corner and began to wash her free of
blood and birthing fluid.

``Mr. Potter.''

Harry blinked at Adalrico.

``You have done a great thing for us this night,'' Adalrico said, ``and
we cannot pay the debt we owe you.''

``There is no debt,'' said Harry, and yawned. He smiled sheepishly.
``Sorry. I just---'' The words got lost in another yawn.

``We understand,'' said Adalrico, and steered him to a divan in the
corner. ``Rest. Millicent will take you back to Hogwarts in the
morning.''

Harry nodded at him, and then lay down on the divan and closed his eyes.
In seconds, he had lost the soft splashing of water and the murmurs of
Millicent talking to her new sister to darkness.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Millicent gently wrapped Marian up in a loose white cloth they'd had
lying ready and carried her back to rest on Elfrida's chest. House elves
had already come, tidied the bed, clothed her mother in a clean
gown---without disturbing or waking her---and piled new pillows behind
her head. Millicent touched her mother and her sister both on the cheek,
and then stepped away. Her father looked up from staring at Harry. He'd
put a blanket over him.

``Why?'' he asked.

Millicent understood the question behind the question. She moved over to
join her father in watching Harry for a few moments before she answered,
though. Harry's face was neutral in sleep, not entirely relaxed and not
entirely innocent---just ordinary. He slept like someone who had no idea
at all what he'd done.

He didn't, Millicent knew. He hadn't been raised in a Dark pureblood
family, where three kinds of pride were strong: that of tradition, that
of blood, and that of magic. He didn't realize what one of their
families would go through to have magical heirs and not just ordinary
blood ones, children who could share their parents' \emph{powers} and
not just the descent that was the heritage of every child, those of
Muggles and Mudbloods as well as purebloods. Millicent had been
preparing since the new year, when her parents told her that Marian
might well be Elfrida's magical heir, to lose her mother. Of course she
would sacrifice her powers to give her daughter a chance at carrying
them and being a strong witch, and of course she would not want to live
as a weak shell afterwards. If the transfer of magic itself did not kill
her, she would have committed suicide.

And now Harry had come along, with his magic that any Dark pureblood
would have killed and tortured dozens of people to wield and that any
Dark pureblood family would have lost half its members to claim for one
of their children, and given part of it to Elfrida, easily, without
hesitation, not even seeming to know that it was a sacrifice.

It was so easy that it would have been an insult, if what Harry said had
not been true, Millicent thought. He cared more about people than about
magic. He saw a chance to save her mother's life, and, more, to insure
that she still lived as a witch, and he took it.

To him, it was just the right thing to do; he had the capability and
opportunity to do it, so he did. He didn't seem aware that he'd just
tied the Bulstrodes to him with bonds stronger than steel.

``Millicent.''

Millicent glanced up. Her father rested one hand on her shoulder and
drew her near him, as he always did when he was about to say something
particularly important.

``It doesn't matter if he never Declares for the Dark,'' her father
whispered. ``We \emph{cannot} lose him. He will be more than just another
Lord to follow, or someone to reclaim the wizarding world for the Dark
in our generation. Stand firm in your guardianship over him. If it comes
to it, you may use any and all of our gifts to rescue him or help him
continue to live. I give you formal permission.''

Millicent blinked rapidly, then smiled. The Bulstrodes, like most Dark
pureblood families, had several gifts that supposedly ran from magical
heir to magical heir. They kept them secret as a matter of course, and
none of their enemies, or even most of their allies, would ever be quite
sure which heir could do what.

Millicent had manifested as Adalrico's heir when she was six, and was
able to do everything that he could do. He trusted her absolutely, but
he had never given her leave to use any of the gifts outside Blackstone
before.

``I promise, Father,'' she said.

Adalrico kissed her on the forehead and went to sit with his wife and
newest child. Millicent sat down beside the divan to watch Harry. She
knew that she couldn't have slept that night, even if she wanted to.

\emph{You don't even realize that what you did was unusual,} she
thought, in mingled exasperation and fondness for the boy on the couch.
\emph{And that's one of the reasons, though far from the only one, that
we'll lay down our lives for you.}

\emph{Whether you want us to or not. You've got yourself allies, Harry
Potter, and we don't intend to let you go.}

\chapter{Irrevocably Changed}\label{chapter-59-irrevocably-changed}

``Your magic feels less powerful,'' was the first thing Draco announced
the next morning.

Harry dropped his spoon into his porridge, and hissed at Draco around a
mouthful of it. Several of the Slytherins had turned to look at them:
Blaise with that bemused look he affected since Harry had learned Draco
was in love with him, Millicent with smug satisfaction, Pansy with a
smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, and Montague with the
sullenness he showed towards anyone who wasn't Pansy.

``It is not!'' Harry hissed, when he'd finally managed to swallow. ``I
gave up part of the magic I took from the Headmaster. Nothing else.'' He
started eating again, to show how little stock he put in Draco's
ridiculous suppositions.

``But it \emph{feels} less powerful,'' Draco persisted, with that special
emphasis he usually only gave to judgments in which his empathy was
involved somehow.

Harry gave him a dark look. ``I know that your gift doesn't let you
sense that,'' he whispered.

Draco shrugged at him. ``You've nearly intoxicated me since you took the
magic from Dumbledore,'' he said. ``And now I can think with a bit of a
clearer head. That's all I'm saying.''

``Thank Merlin for that,'' Millicent muttered. ``Does that mean that
we'll get a bit fewer of the lovelorn looks and sighs and mutters about
`Harry darling?'\,''

Draco's face turned nearly the color of a ripe apple. ``I have
\emph{never} called Harry that,'' he said.

``Yes, you have,'' said Blaise helpfully. ``Usually in dreams, that's
true, and not when you're awake, but you \emph{have}. At least you don't
have to share a room with him,'' he added to Millicent. ``Bloody
disgusting, it is.''

``I \emph{do not}!'' Draco howled.

Harry winked at Millicent, thanking her for distracting Draco from the
subject he'd been trying to talk about. Unfortunately for him, Draco
caught the wink, and pinned him with a deadly glare.

``You're sure that you only gave up the magic that you took from
Dumbledore?'' he asked.

Harry rolled his eyes. ``I'm sure. Besides, I don't see why everyone
thinks it's such a large sacrifice. The magic is doing Millicent's
mother more good than it ever was just sitting around inside me. And I
can siphon off Dumbledore, or someone else, again if I ever want more.''
He was beginning to realize that that was a large part of the reason
Dumbledore feared him. Harry could take magic from another person, and
in that case, the other wizard or witch was permanently weakened. Harry
truly could have drained Dumbledore down into a Squib or worse if he
wished.

\emph{Just like Lily warned me I could, right before she tried to cast
the phoenix web on me again.}

Harry shook his head, and set the memories aside. They wouldn't do him
any good, and he wasn't about to start casually draining other people.
Besides, Draco had gone back to the interrogation.

``Millicent's \emph{mother}?''

Millicent wore a broad smile. ``Harry saved my mother's life last
night,'' she announced. ``My little sister Marian is my mother's magical
heir, but you know what it means when a baby is a magical heir: the
sympathy between child and parent doesn't last that long, and there's
almost no chance of her regaining the sympathy later in life.'' Heads
nodded around the Slytherin table. ``Mother gave her magic to Marian,
and Harry gave some of his magic to my mother, so that she could
continue living.'' She bit into her toast and didn't look up as whispers
ran around the table.

Harry rolled his eyes when awed and shocked and disbelieving glances
came his way. \emph{Why the hell is this such a big deal? Wouldn't most
people take the chance to save a life if they could? I'm just lucky that
I have the power to do something about it when the chance comes up.}

``Why did you choose Dumbledore's power to give up?'' Draco whispered to
him.

Harry shrugged. ``It was nearest the surface, and it was Light, so it
wouldn't hurt Mrs. Bulstrode or Marian.''

Draco nodded, then joined the staring. Harry shrugged once more and
started eating his porridge. He'd become better at dealing with stares
in the days since the Second Task, when it became clear that they
wouldn't stop any time soon. Harry thought they would have to stop at
some point, though. The \emph{Daily Prophet} would start carrying
stories that people thought more interesting. People would start
realizing that \emph{killing} someone was not something they should
honor him for.

\emph{I may be living in a mad world at the moment, but it will steady
itself.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Mr. Potter. A word with you, please?''

Harry wasn't surprised that Draco stayed at his side as he turned
around. After all, he'd hardly had good things happen to him when he was
alone with Defense Against the Dark Arts professors in the past, except
for Remus.

Karkaroff, who'd taken over the Defense classes gradually during the
last week, stood surveying him expectantly for a moment, as though he
already thought Harry should know what he wanted to talk about. His
fingers played with his left sleeve. Harry didn't have to see the arm to
know what rested there: the Dark Mark. Karkaroff had been a Death Eater.

\emph{I seem to be surrounded by them.}

``I wanted to reassure you,'' Karkaroff blurted suddenly, ``that I'm not
going to do the same things Mulciber did.''

Harry couldn't help snorting as he raised his eyes to the professor's
face. ``I should hope not, sir,'' he said. ``One Death Eater cursing the
professors and opening holes in the wards is \emph{enough.}''

Karkaroff flinched, then nodded eagerly. ``Yes, yes, that's it
exactly,'' he whispered. ``I---I would not do anything like that. I
repented of being a Death Eater in the end, which is why I've been
Headmaster of Durmstrang and not in Azkaban or Obscuratio, the German
prison. I know that you have no reason to believe me, but---''

``I believe you because you're free,'' Harry interrupted him. ``You
would hardly go running back to Voldemort now, I think.''

Karkaroff flinched again, though this time Harry knew it was from the
pronunciation of the Dark Lord's name. ``Yes,'' he whispered. ``I---but
it is more than that. I want it to be more than that.'' He paused,
visibly gathering his courage. Harry studied him, and wondered that he'd
never noticed the man's fear before. He had always seemed large and
blustering, and he was a competent, if monotonous, teacher who betrayed
little of his emotions in his class. Of course, Harry hadn't had any
reason to pay him much attention before this. ``I want you to know that
you can trust me as more than just someone who ran because he was
frightened.''

``Liar,'' said Draco, so quietly that Harry didn't think Karkaroff
heard. He looked at Draco, but he just shook his head, so Harry resigned
himself to waiting for the explanation.

``I want---I want to become something more than that,'' said Karkaroff,
and gave a gusty sigh. Harry wrinkled his nose. \emph{Has he been
drinking? Smoking? His breath smells foul.} ``I want to become part of
the fight against my Lord, if he---if he returns.'' He swallowed, and
his voice cracked on the words. ``Do you understand?'' He was obviously
appealing to Harry now, eyes wide. ``A true fighter, not a neutral. I
want you to know that you don't have to distrust me just because I bear
the Dark Mark.''

Harry studied him in silence for a moment. He could grasp what Karkaroff
was saying, though the man's trembling nervousness made Harry wonder how
much his promise would really hold up in battle. At least Peter, who'd
also been a Death Eater with a cowardly reputation, had proven to be
much stronger than Harry had thought he was.

More than that, though, he wondered something else.

``Why aren't you telling this to Headmaster Dumbledore, sir?'' he asked.
``Or Professor McGonagall? They're the ones who are in charge of
strategy and planning for the War. They're the ones who fought in the
first war against Voldemort. They're the ones you'd need to convince.''

Karkaroff gave a hysterical little laugh. ``They are not the ones who
killed one of my former comrades,'' he said, his accent becoming
steadily thicker. ``And they are not one of the two wizards setting Dark
magic on fire across Europe right now.''

Harry swallowed, slowly. He had not realized that the Dark singing he'd
heard under the lake could be heard by other people.

\emph{So Voldemort is one\ldots{}and I am the other.}

``You think that you need to convince \emph{me},'' he said, and Karkaroff
nodded at once.

``I am a coward,'' he said, voice marginally calmer. ``I admit that. I
tried to trade the names of other---of Death Eaters for my freedom. I
admit that. But I want to change things, now that I know it is not just
bad dreams that my Lord is returned. I want to fight at your side. But,
to do that, I know that you might distrust me at first, so I must soothe
your distrust.''

Harry sighed. He didn't think that anything would actually test
Karkaroff as much as the stress of battle, and he had no idea how long
it might be before he and Voldemort actually clashed in open war.

``I'll keep it in mind,'' he said, unsure of whether he would have
thought of Karkaroff at all if the man hadn't pressed his presence into
Harry's mind. ``Thank you for telling me.''

Karkaroff nodded at him, and then turned away to spell the board clean
for the next class. Harry walked out the door, frowning and wondering
what was stranger: that Karkaroff should have approached him at all, or
that there might be people out there beyond Britain watching his every
move. To have his actions tested on the stage of Hogwarts, or Britain,
was frightening enough.

``He's a liar,'' Draco whispered.

``You said that,'' Harry murmured, recalled to himself. ``About which
part?''

``He \emph{did} run because he was frightened,'' said Draco. ``He ran from
several battles, including one that happened not long before the night
you brought down---You-Know-Who.'' Harry hissed at him to keep his voice
down, and Draco paused to roll his eyes at him. ``You know that people
will have to find out about you being the Boy-Who-Lived someday, Harry.
My parents already know,'' he added, as if that were supposed to help.

``Your parents are special cases. Now, tell me more about Karkaroff.''

``He was captured crouching in a dark hole and shaking in his boots,''
said Draco. ``And soaked in piss, apparently. And that wasn't the first
time. He was actually captured by the Aurors once before his trial, but
they let him go because they couldn't believe how pitiful he was. He's a
wet rag, and though you might get some good use out of him if you twist
him, you'll mostly get water.''

Harry shrugged and worked his way over to the wall so that a couple
Ravenclaw sixth-years could pass. They sneered at him, but there was
fear behind their eyes. Without much surprise, Harry recognized Gorgon
and Jones, the bullies who used to torment Luna. ``I don't know if I'll
make much use of him at all, but thank you. I'll keep it in mind.''

``Hey, Potter!''

Harry looked slowly over his shoulder. Gorgon was standing slightly
apart from Jones, his wand in his hand. Harry remembered the duel they'd
had earlier that year over the Hound with the surname of Gorgon, and
braced his legs.

Gorgon didn't attack, though. He just sneered again, and said, ``I
suppose that you think you're all high and mighty now, bullying the
Headmaster.''

Harry winced. Skeeter's articles, if no one else's, had played that
angle up. ``I didn't bully the Headmaster,'' he said. ``He was
compelling people. I just wanted him to stop, and he did when I showed
him I was serious.''

Gorgon came a step forward. ``And now what? What are you going to do for
an encore? Drain more people?'' He waved one hand in front of himself as
Jones laughed. ``Here's my magic. Come and take it, if you think you can
defeat me.''

Harry looked past the mocking words, studying Gorgon's face. It was
convulsed with laughter, but the laughter had a desperate edge to it.

\emph{He's afraid. I'm not surprised. If I can feed on anyone's magic,
why would they think I'd limit myself to Dumbledore?}

That just made Harry weary. He shook his head. ``I don't have a reason
to, Gorgon,'' he said.

``You're \emph{giving} him a reason, you fool.''

Harry jumped slightly, and then recognized Cho standing behind Gorgon
with her hands on her hips. Jones was gaping at her. Gorgon turned
around and sneered at her in turn.

``What do you know? You've read the articles. What makes you think that
we won't be his next---''

``Because he only does that when he's angry,'' Cho said. ``Really
angry.'' She looked at Harry. ``Isn't that right, Harry?''

Harry nodded slowly, trying to work out why she was defending him.

``There,'' said Cho, to Gorgon. ``I trust Harry. I don't have any reason
not to trust him. He saved my life.'' She flicked her head, tossing her
long dark hair over her shoulder. ``And until I see him drain someone
he's not angry at, then I won't consider him a danger to me.'' She
smiled at Harry. ``Is the lesson that you're teaching still scheduled
for tonight after dinner, Harry?''

``Um, yes,'' said Harry, and heard Draco give a possessive little growl
beside him that was probably inspired by Cho's smile.

``Good,'' said Cho. ``Cedric and I will be there, and I'll drag Marietta
away from her books if I have to. She's not going to learn any more
Charms that way. They're already overflowing from her ears as it is.''
She smiled once more at Harry, and then turned and strode up the hall.
Gorgon and Jones stood there and looked like fools in her wake.

Harry tugged on Draco's arm and got him walking again. He still looked
murderous.

``She has a boyfriend,'' Harry whispered. ``She and Cedric Diggory, from
Hufflepuff, went to the Yule Ball together, and they're officially
dating now. Relax.''

``She just looks at you too intently,'' Draco whispered back. ``They
always look at you too intently, Harry.''

Harry couldn't help chuckling, even if the sound was sharp and
bitten-off. ``Welcome to my entire life at the moment, Draco.''

Draco tugged on his arm, stopping him. Harry turned and waited patiently
as Draco studied him. Harry's skin still crawled when he did that, but
he was learning to get used to it. Draco saw things about him that no
one else would, things that Harry allowed him to see, and so it was
silly to object to these moments of silent scrutiny.

``It really \emph{bothers} you, doesn't it?'' Draco said at last. ``Not
just when someone makes baseless accusations at you, like Gorgon and
Jones, but when someone calls attention to you in any way.''

``Yes,'' said Harry. ``And now, come on. We're going to be late for
dinner if we don't hurry.''

He tugged at Draco's hand, but Draco held him still. ``I'll try not to
do that anymore, then,'' he whispered. ``Now that I really \emph{know}.''
He gave Harry a quick hug and pulled away. ``Sorry for this morning.''

It took Harry a moment to work out that he was talking about calling the
Slytherin table's attention to Harry's diminished magic. ``You don't
need to apologize,'' he said. ``Really, Draco.''

``Hush, I want to,'' Draco responded, and got him moving again. Harry
eyed him sideways, and then shook his head.

\emph{Sometimes, Draco Malfoy, you are very strange.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Dinner was never a quiet affair for Harry anymore, because of the post
owls.

There had been the streams of Howlers after Skeeter's article and the
others about the Triwizard Tournament came out: some of them scolding
him for taking the spotlight from the true Champions, believing he was
really Connor's jealous younger brother, but most of them upset that
Harry had dared to go against the Headmaster. Harry had listened to them
and hadn't flinched, not really. It was no more than he expected.
Dumbledore's reputation was still too bright in most of the wizarding
world for Harry to destroy him without darkening his own.

\emph{Unless you used the accusations of child abuse\ldots{}}

Harry swallowed and put the thought away. If he had his way, no one
would ever learn about that who didn't already know. \emph{Ever.}

There had been the letters congratulating him for defeating Death Eaters
or rescuing Moody or standing up for his beliefs, gushing, praising
things that Harry pushed aside and buried his head in his arms over when
Millicent or Pansy read them aloud in high, girlish voices. Harry
couldn't understand why people \emph{wrote} the damn things. At least
the Howlers were understandable, if embarrassing. These\ldots{}these
people didn't \emph{know} him, and sometimes they asked for
incomprehensible things, like for him to write back and tell them how he
became so wise. Harry so far hadn't answered a single letter. The mere
thought of doing so set shame burning on his cheeks, because there was
no way that he could give them what they wanted. What they wanted was
impossible. They'd created some illusion who didn't exist.

Draco carefully gathered all those letters and put them away. Harry
refused to ask what he did with them.

But dinner tonight was different, and actually useful, because Harry
received three letters he'd been waiting for. The first came on the leg
of a gray owl that Harry had already learned to recognize as one of St.
Mungo's preferred messengers. He extended bits of his pudding to the owl
in thanks while he read the letter.

\emph{March 1st, 1995}

\emph{Dear Mr. Potter:}

\emph{As you requested, we have begun tests on the patients we believed
to have been tortured into insanity by the Cruciatus or other similar
curses during the first war with You-Know-Who. We have discovered
anomalies in the minds of several. As Mulciber was an Imperius Curse
specialist, we believe that he may have adapted and modified the spell
to outlast not just his death, but the passage of time and most efforts
to relieve the spell with} Finite Incantatem.

\emph{We have, however, managed to heal two witches who were victims of
Mulciber's last recorded attack before his capture by the Aurors in late
1981. We believe that their lesser length of time spent under the spell
has something to do with our success, but we eventually hope to apply
the technique to the minds of other sufferers. A} Finite Incantatem
\emph{cast cooperatively, through the means of a Light ritual, provided
the means we sought.}

\emph{I am grateful beyond words for your suggestion to us that we look
into the minds of some of Mulciber's victims. While some are indeed
insane, that others might come back to themselves is a gift.}

\emph{Sincerely,}

\emph{Miriam Strout}

\emph{Head Healer}

\emph{Janus Thickey Ward.}

Harry couldn't help smiling as he ruffled the owl's feathers one more
time and borrowed a sheet of parchment from Pansy to scribble an
enthusiastic reply to Healer Strout. The owl took wing the moment he
finished binding the letter, as if eager to be away from the table. Of
course, Harry considered, that might have something to do with the
large, elegant black bird bearing towards him.

This owl landed and refused to take any refreshment, eying Harry
haughtily as she extended her leg. Harry knew better than to pet her
feathers, either. This was Narcissa's new owl, Regina, and she had made
it quite clear that she only tolerated delivering messages to Hogwarts.
Nor did she like the food, the company of other owls, people touching
her, people remarking on her, or people asking her if a reply was
expected. She would wait for a reply if she was expected to take one,
and spent most of her time twisting her head around and glaring at every
other student at the Slytherin table with large orange eyes. She did not
look at Harry himself, as if he were beneath her contempt.

Harry unfolded the letter curiously; he had a notion why Narcissa might
be writing to him, but he had hardly expected any new news on this
front.

\emph{Dear Harry:}

\emph{I wish to know if you have any time free this weekend. I have been
to most of the easily accessible Black houses by now, and the wards have
permitted me free passage into all of them. I believe that Regulus may
be somewhere nearby, self-aware enough to have recognized me and lowered
the wards of his own free will. Our best chance for finding his body is,
I believe, Wayhouse, a small place used as a private summer home by my
cousin Arcturus Black in the early part of this century. I have found
signs of Regulus's presence there, though I have not been able to sense
the presence of any human flesh or blood.}

\emph{Please write back. The tapestry in Grimmauld Place reassures me
that Regulus is still alive, and he may yet need our help.}

\emph{Yours in grace,}

\emph{Narcissa Malfoy.}

Harry didn't need to write a long reply to this one, either, only a
formal statement of his consent, and Regina hopped off and into the air
with it inside a minute. The offended wriggle of her tail showed that
she thought the reading and reply had taken rather too long for her
delicate sensibilities.

The third letter didn't ride with an owl, but with a gyrfalcon. She
landed right beside Harry's plate and commenced to eat half his pudding
before he could remove the letter from her leg. He paused when he saw
the formal crest on it: rising sun and stars.

\emph{Salutations, Mr. Potter.}

\emph{I suppose that you think it has taken me a very great time to get
back to you, especially as I spoke of contacting your Dark allies at
Christmas. However, I did not wish to write to you again until I had a
substantial victory to report, and here it is: Dolores Umbridge is on
the verge of losing her position as the Head of the Department for the
Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.}

\emph{No Dark spells were used. None were needed. I merely made sure to
expose Madam Umbridge's insufficiencies in the right places and to the
right people, and even her allies began to abandon her in disgust. I
anticipate having her out of the Ministry in no more than two months at
the most. They may shuffle her to another position first, but she no
longer has any substantial power.}

\emph{Now, on to the meat of this letter, which I promised you when
first we met in the Forbidden Forest. I, Tybalt Starrise, elder son of
Alba Starrise and Tiberius Griffinsnest, joined partner of John
Smythe-Blyton, plight my loyalty and my faith to you, in Merlin's name,
under the Light, unto the Light unending.}

\emph{I should warn you that you must not expect the allegiance of the
rest of my family to come with me. My brother Pharos is our uncle's
heir, and is wary of doing anything that might upset him. At the moment,
pledging allegiance or help to someone who is in any way a Dark wizard
would upset him.}

\emph{My uncle\ldots{}Augustus Starrise hates what he cannot control.
That includes me, and it is the reason that he accepted Pharos as heir.
He is barred from participation in politics until this October. Then I
fear that he will make trouble for you again, unless I can bring him
around in the meantime. I will try, but I am not sure if I can manage to
do so. Most of our so-called discussions wind up as shouting matches.}

\emph{I want from you, Lord-who-will-not-be-called-so, assurance that
the assistance of Light wizards does not disgust you, and that you will
not require us to give up our principles if we fight beside you. I am
not and never can be of the Dark.}

\emph{You may think that you had fooled me completely that day in the
Forest, but you did not. I went along with you, Harry Potter, out of
curiosity, agreement with you about the disgusting nature of people like
Madam Umbridge, and eagerness to see what would happen next. I see with
clear eyes, and so does my John, and both of us are waiting to see what
you will do next.}

\emph{Yours under the Light,}

\emph{Tybalt Starrise.}

Harry raised his eyebrows when he was done, and wrote a slightly longer
reply this time, though he had to shove the greedy gyrfalcon's head
aside to do so.

\emph{Dear Mr. Starrise:}

\emph{I will not require you to give up your principles if you fight
beside me. Nor am I disgusted with Light wizards, though between
Headmaster Dumbledore and wizards like the former Minister, I have known
little good from them. If you pledge me loyalty and allegiance, I will
do the same for you.}

\emph{I am sorry to hear about your uncle, and am hesitant to cause any
family quarrels. Will it damage you irreparably in his eyes to hear that
you have written me, fought beside me, promised me your help? If the
answer to any of those questions is yes, I will understand if you break
off this alliance.}

\emph{I am gratified to hear that you were not taken in by my
manipulations. One always wants one's allies to be intelligent.}

\emph{I am at your disposal for the answering of questions.}

\emph{Yours sincerely,}

\emph{Harry Potter.}

Harry signed with a flourish, bound the letter to the gyrfalcon's leg,
and forcefully pushed her away from his plate. She gave him a hurt look
and bounded aloft. Heads craned back to watch her go, then turned to
look at Harry.

Harry was glad enough to stand, clear his throat, and hurry on to the
lesson he had promised to give for students of all the Houses after
dinner.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Harry!''

Harry had been concentrating on ignoring the stares as he walked with
Draco to the abandoned classroom designated for that evening's lesson,
but he turned around at this voice. ``Connor!'' he said, and felt a
smile sweep his face of the kind he hadn't given since his brother took
the Slicing Curse. ``Finally out of the hospital wing?''

``Yes.'' Connor winced slightly as he walked towards Harry, but he was
\emph{walking} again, and his gaze was free of the delirium that had
overtaken him for nearly a week when the Slicing Curse, the Imperius
Curse, and the healing potions that Madam Pomfrey had given him had
reacted together. ``And ready to attend this lesson tonight.'' He cocked
his head stubbornly at Harry.

``We're not going to be doing any spells,'' said Harry. He didn't want
to do something active that Connor couldn't participate in because of
his wounds. ``Just pureblood history tonight.''

Connor uttered a long-suffering sigh. ``If I \emph{must.}''

``You're damn lucky to be able to sit in on it at all, Potter,'' Draco
said, voice low and vicious. ``Most people who have as much knowledge as
Harry does don't just spread it around to all and sundry.''

Harry rolled his eyes at Draco, especially when he saw Connor struggling
to maintain, and then maintaining, his calm. ``Don't mind him, please,''
he told Connor. ``He's just pissy when he thinks someone else is getting
more than his fair share of my attention.''

``I am \emph{not},'' Draco began.

``Yes, you are,'' said Connor, relaxed again, and giving a smile that
was dangerously near a smirk. ``Harry told me that you declared your
love for him. Congratulations. I told him you would be mad not to be in
love with him by now.'' He paused significantly. ``Of course, you should
still be careful, Malfoy. With all the foot-stomping and face-flushing
go on right now, someone might think you're acting a bit like a girl.''

Draco drew his wand. Connor grinned and reached for his.

``Stop it, the both of you,'' said Harry, not looking forward to being
trapped in a small room with them for the next few hours. ``Connor, stop
teasing Draco. Draco, stop acting as though Connor is going to do
something to hurt me at any moment. He's my brother, of course he's
going to tease us about this.'' He rolled his eyes and moved on down the
hall, feeling like a parent scolding two unruly children.

``Harry,'' Draco said softly, catching up with him, ``he really hurt you
last year.''

``And I've forgiven him for it,'' said Harry. ``And other people for
worse things.'' He didn't have to speak Lucius's name for Draco to know
it was hanging there in the air between them. ``So leave off, all
right?''

Draco nodded, subdued, and stepped into the room beside him. A good
number of students were already there, Harry saw, including some who
hadn't come the other times. Millicent sat in one of the front desks,
swinging her legs, her gaze calm and inquisitive. Blaise lounged in a
chair in the second row, with one arm around Ginny Weasley, who seemed
caught between enjoyment at his actions and annoyance at the way Blaise
was eyeing Ron---or maybe at the way Ron was watching them, Harry didn't
know. A few Durmstrang students sat beside Blaise, their expressions
cautious. Hermione and Zacharias were in the third row, where they
usually sat, but arguing in low, furious voices. Cho grinned and waved
from the back of the room, where Cedric was massaging her shoulders.

``History lesson tonight,'' Harry announced, and ignored the chorus of
groans that resulted. ``Anyone who doesn't like that is welcome to
leave.''

No one did. Luna did say from the back of the room, though, her voice
soft and sweet, ``Are you going to tell us the story of Rowena and
Salazar?''

Harry smiled at her, and ignored Draco's exasperated sound. Some things,
Draco was just going to have to get used to. Harry knew of no other way
of soothing his jealousy than by actions like letting Draco touch him
where no one else was allowed. Words certainly didn't work. ``I don't
know that story well enough to tell it, Luna.''

``Too bad,'' said Luna, sounding dreamy. ``It is a very pretty story.
They had words about Muggleborns, but Rowena also put a blanket over
Salazar one night when he had fallen asleep from studying too hard, and
he did the same for her. The chairs remember.''

The rest of the room seemed to want to fall into an embarrassed silence
after that, but Harry started talking instead. ``I'm going to tell a
story that I do know, though I suppose you might call it a legend and
not history. How many of you know what happened to divide Light and Dark
wizards in Merlin's time?''

A few foreheads wrinkled, and one or two hands rose, wavering, and
dropped. Harry nodded. He had suspected that most people would know
stories much nearer to them in history---taking the feud as coming from
Gryffindor's and Slytherin's struggles, for example, or from the
Declaration of the first truly historical Dark Lord not long before the
founding of Hogwarts.

``I read about this in a book that my godfather fetched for me out of
his private collection.'' He didn't say Sirius's name. It was still hard
to do so, and he wanted a storytelling voice, not one wavering and
cracking with emotion. ``Merlin was a force for unity among wizardkind,
the most powerful Lord that anyone had ever seen---or ever has, really.
He himself knew and used both Light and Dark magic, and he was probably
the one who established some of the definitions of them. For that,
wizards and witches honored him.''

``He had two children---though the legend didn't say if they were
adopted children, or relatives of his, or actual daughters, or just
witches whom he knew and cherished. He thought that he would teach both
of them all his knowledge, so that they could be the leaders among
wizards and witches when he at last passed. But while he did so, the two
sisters were convinced that he had not done so. Partly that was Merlin's
fault, since he was a Seer of the future and couldn't tell them the
truth about things like prophecies, which made them believe he was
always keeping secrets. But partly that was the sisters' fault, because
they let the promised position of leadership go to their heads, and they
wanted more and more, knowledge of spells that didn't exist and gifts
that Merlin didn't possess and control of magical creatures that weren't
theirs to bind.'' Harry felt his voice waver on that last, in spite of
himself. It made him far angrier than it had the first time he read the
story.

He paused to study the faces of his audience. Hermione's voice had grown
a little louder, but otherwise, everyone was absorbed in the tale.
Someone muttered something about this being loads better than Professor
Binns, and a murmur of agreeable laughter ran around the room.

Harry smiled and continued talking. ``When Merlin died, his daughters
were with him, and he believed they would go from his deathbed out to
lead the people. What happened was that they declared war on each other,
in full sight of all the wizards and witches who had come to see Merlin
pass. They used all the magic they knew. They were both such powerful
Ladies that they destroyed each other almost at once. But each, when she
saw that she was dying, worked a mighty enchantment, a spell whose name
has been forgotten because it was too dangerous to keep alive.''

``That spell bound their hatred and their cause and their magic into the
watching wizards and witches, making everyone their magical heirs, in a
way. However, because the two sisters were equal in strength, the
enchantments ripped their power, which was the sum of all power, in
half, and one set of wizards and witches was infused with Light
principles and spells, the other with Dark principles and spells.''

``I never heard of anything like that,'' said Padma Patil, her brow
slightly wrinkled as she leaned forward. ``That would mean---that would
mean that most of the divisions between us are just the product of
jealousy and hatred, and that we're just acting out a feud centuries
old.'' She sounded uncertain, even disgusted, but her voice gained
strength as she continued. ``The differences between Light and Dark
wizards are greater than that.''

``Oh, yes, \emph{now},'' Harry agreed, raising his voice slightly to be
heard over Hermione's hisses at Zacharias. ``But that is what the story
claimed was their origin. And it doesn't pretend to explain everything
like the way that Light and Dark families handle themselves in battle.
It does say, though, why so many attempts at reconciliation have failed.
The sisters couldn't forgive each other, and they sent their hatred
through their spells. Even when someone does make a motion, on one side
or the other, to give up a grudge or make a marriage across magical
lines, it doesn't matter. The hatred just suffers a little interruption,
and goes right on affecting people in more subtle ways, such as making
them think the people who forgive grudges are weak, or turn their backs
on the newly married couple.''

He could see by the looks on most people's faces that he'd displeased
them greatly with that story. Harry shrugged. ``I don't know if I should
believe it myself,'' he offered. ``\emph{I} like it because it suggests
that wizards are all the same, really, and the differences between us
aren't unconquerable. If everyone could give up their grudges at once,
perhaps we could break the spell.''

Privately, Harry thought that the story probably wasn't true, or that he
couldn't afford to believe it if it was. If nothing else, it might give
him too much hope.

``What about you?'' That was Neville, his face flushing as people looked
at him, but his courage firm as he held Harry's eye. ``Do you think that
you could break the spell? Do you think you're strong enough?''

Harry blinked, and shifted uncomfortably as gazes turned towards him,
\emph{again}. ``I don't know,'' he said. ``I don't think so. Those
sisters were the strongest Ladies who ever existed, if the story is
right, Merlin's heirs. I know my place. I'm nowhere near that
powerful.''

``I don't know if power matters so much as determination,'' said
Millicent. ``And when you are determined, Harry, you can do nearly
anything.'' She turned towards the class. ``Harry saved my mother's life
last night, when she gave her magic to my newborn sister and Harry gave
part of his magic to her.''

Hermione's head whipped around, and she was the first one to ask a
question. ``What does that mean, Harry? Does that mean that she's not a
witch now? Or is she a truly powerful one, like you?''

Harry could see that new thought taking fire in the eyes around him.
Most people had been frightened at the thought that he might absorb
their magic. They hadn't thought it was possible for him to give it
back.

``I gave her enough to bring her back up to average levels,'' said Harry
firmly. ``I used some---some of the magic I'd taken from the
Headmaster.'' He swallowed against the way their looks sharpened. ``She
\emph{is} a witch, but not connected to me in any way. I surrendered
that magic, not lent it. I made it part of her.''

Millicent grinned at him. And Harry realized, too late, as the murmurs
raced around the room, that she'd probably done this on purpose, to make
people notice and realize what he'd done.

He wondered, then, if his position among the students had irrevocably
changed, so that no matter what he did, it would be impossible to hide
himself again.

``\emph{No}, Zacharias!''

Harry jerked his head around. Hermione was on her feet, hands planted on
her hips, her face an angry red.

``No, I haven't been dating Krum, and no, I don't know why he chose me
for his hostage, and \emph{no}, I don't care for you to tell me
\emph{yet again} that there must be something between me and Krum
because of it! You're not being rational \emph{or} intelligent about
this, you \emph{prat!}'' Her hand connected with Zacharias's cheek in a
ringing slap, and she marched out of the room, slamming the door behind
her.

Harry sat in silence as the snickers began, sorry for Hermione and
Zacharias, but relieved that no one was staring at him now. \emph{Maybe
not so irrevocably changed, after all. People will always find something
else to focus on.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``It's smaller than I imagined,'' Harry breathed, looking around
Wayhouse.

And it was---certainly smaller than Grimmauld Place. But it was more
intensely magical. Harry could feel the staircases themselves thrumming
with latent power, both Light and Dark. The walls, made of a smooth,
polished silvery wood that he didn't recognize, and without a splinter
or knot when he ran his hand across them, sang a bass note that was
calmer than most of the wild singing he'd heard of late. The rooms had
ceilings barely high enough to clear Narcissa's head, and were almost
all rounded at the corners, formed like chambers in a hollow tree.
Objects were everywhere, ordinary ones strewn carelessly among magical
artifacts.

``It's beautiful,'' Harry told Narcissa, as they entered a room with a
large table in the middle, scattered with books. It had no other
furniture, so Harry didn't know if it was meant as a reading room, or if
someone had carted the books in and left them here. ``Did you spend any
time here when you were a child?''

Narcissa smiled a bit, and reached out to touch one of the walls. Harry
blinked as her finger vanished to the first knuckle, before the wall
spat it out again. ``A few summers, or parts of summers. We usually
wound up leaving early. Wayhouse has a---unique sense of humor. Rather
like Cousin Arcturus,'' she added dryly, as if reminded of something.
``If it had really wanted to reject us, then it wouldn't have mattered
if Regulus lowered the wards. We still wouldn't have been able to get
in.''

Harry nodded, and turned his attention to the books as Narcissa cast a
few more sensing spells, trying to find any trace of Regulus's body. He
caught his breath when he saw the top one, and reached out to stroke it
with a shaking hand. He understood why Narcissa had wanted him to see
it.

The book looked like a journal, and on the front had a silvery sketch of
a lion, highlighted here and there with twinkling points Harry thought
were meant to represent stars. That in itself wouldn't have been
significant, but Harry knew what Regulus had been named after---the
heart of the lion, a star blazing in the constellation Leo.

``Why do you think no one found this before us?'' he whispered to
Narcissa.

``I don't know,'' Narcissa admitted, looking up from what must have been
yet another failed spell, judging by the expression on her face. ``It
was hidden in a small compartment at the foot of the stairs, but
Bella---Bellatrix could have found it there. I did find signs that she'd
been here, too, years ago, but that she left in haste. Perhaps she just
didn't have time to search.''

Harry nodded, and opened the book.

He faced a multitude of scraps of paper, as though Regulus or someone
else had torn out many pages. There were two or three pages still loaded
with shaky handwriting, though. Harry bent over and, squinting, managed
to read them.

\emph{May 1st, 1981}

\emph{Oh, Merlin, am I really going to do this? I think I am, or what
was all that planning about? But V. doesn't know I know about L. That
won't last long.}

\emph{L. Why did I pick that one? Because I don't know where the others
are, of course. Stupid question.}

\emph{Going to the c. shouldn't take much more than three days. Have to
take someone else. Can't trust anyone. Suppose I'll take R., then.
There's no one to miss him.}

\emph{S. got in trouble again last night. P. helped him---but I don't
know if it was helped him get in trouble, or helped him get out of it. I
wish I could dare trust them. They're the most competent out of all of
us. I wish there was something I could say that wouldn't get me killed
on hearing of it.}

\emph{May 5th, 1981}

\emph{I meant to go to the c. last night. Had the perfect opportunity.
Got R. drunk and everything.}

\emph{And then I couldn't do it. I looked at R., and then S. came in and
said V. wanted me for something, and my courage fled. That's always been
my problem, lack of courage. Wish I were more like Sir. He had the
courage to cast our parents away, everything about the fucking Most
Ancient and Noble House of Black. Would that I could do the same.}

\emph{June 21st, 1981}

\emph{Still haven't gone to c. I have to go soon. V. still doesn't know
I know about L., but that can't last long. And now there's some
muttering about a prophecy. P. has apparently suggested that the Potters
have something to do with it, or the Longbottoms. I know that I should
despise him, hate him. He's betraying Sir. and his friends. So why can't
I shake the feeling that he's among the best of us? Except maybe S.}

\emph{Certainly better than me.}

\emph{July 17th, 1981}

\emph{Done. Done.}

\emph{I couldn't take R. after all. My courage failed me. I took an M.
and crossed to the c. Merlin, it was horrible. I wouldn't have gone at
all if I'd known what it would cost. But I went, and I've got L.}

\emph{It can't be long now. I only have a few days to live. I have to
figure out how to destroy L., before V. starts noticing it's gone.}

\emph{Merlin help me.}

\emph{July 19th, 1981}

\emph{No time. No time. V. found out, and they're coming for me. I have
to take L. where I know it will be safe.}

\emph{They're coming.}

\emph{They're at the door.} \emph{Just enough time to hide this.}

\emph{If someone actually finds this and knows what the hell I'm talking
about, then search for the others by the light of the fourth brightest
one of us.}

Harry took a shaky breath and leaned away from the journal. Narcissa met
his eyes.

``You should take the journal with you,'' she said quietly. ``Now that
the wards are down, Bellatrix may be able to come here any time she
wants, if she thinks of it.''

Harry nodded, and slid the journal into his pocket. ``The Death Eaters
caught him here, then.''

Narcissa nodded in turn. ``I think they did. But I have no idea what he
was talking about. Do you?''

Harry thought about it, but had to shake his head. He thought he knew
who at least a few of the coded references in the diary must be to---P.
had to be Peter---but R. could have had several identities, and the torn
pages of the journal must be carrying the secret of the c. and the L.
with them.

``And I can't find any trace of him here,'' Narcissa continued, the
frustration breaking through her voice like sharp rocks through water.
``Maybe they didn't place his body in Wayhouse. There may be places in
Grimmauld that we haven't tried yet, or Silver-Mirror, or
Cobley-by-the-Sea.'' She shut her eyes in thought a moment. ``We might
as well search, though.''

And search they did, but turned up nothing. Harry passed through a room
filled with maps and books, another with portraits that winked at him or
leered or loudly demanded their tea, a room strung with delicately
colored cobwebs on which silver spiders kept up a shining patrol, a
nursery strewn with blocks and dolls and carved wooden and brass
figurines, a bedchamber filled with small nasty things that darted out
to bite his ankles and then went back to hiding under the bed, and
numerous others, but could find nothing that would point to Regulus.
Narcissa investigated the hiding places she knew, and also came up
empty.

Narcissa clasped his hand before she Apparated them back to Hogwarts.
``We will find him, Harry. We have come closer today than ever before.
At least we know that he was in Wayhouse as late as July 1981.''

Harry nodded. \emph{He was captured just a few days before Connor and I
turned a year old. That's odd to think about.}

``Thank you, Mrs. Malfoy,'' he said, and, as they Apparated back, braced
himself for a scolding from Draco for leaving him behind, though it was
Draco's own fault that he hadn't woken up to repeated shakings and
invitations to come along.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Minerva sat down, slowly and shakily, behind her desk, and rubbed one
hand over her eyes. Both the tasks of readjusting the wards to take
notice of her and keeping an eye on Albus Dumbledore were exhausting,
and she was not truly sure which one was worse.

The wards were difficult to coax and persuade. Many of them were not
really sentient, only devoted to their task of protecting the walls and
windows and grounds of the school---protective spell piled on protective
spell, until they became not just a compendium of defenses but a
separate thing. The Founders had created most of them, and then
Headmasters down the centuries, and Dumbledore had woven more. The ones
that Dumbledore had created were particularly sulky when asked to notice
her. If it were not for that first ward in the Great Hall, which tended
to follow Minerva as a crawling snake of blue light, she thought she
would have given up in discouragement.

And then there was Albus, constantly speaking of the first war and
reminding her of what good the Light had done then, and was she really
going to turn her back on the Light now, with Voldemort rising again? He
tugged up so many memories that sometimes Minerva thought she had spent
more time that day looking at them than the wards. And the hell of it
was, some of what he said was right. The Light \emph{did} have a part to
play in the war, and it did need a strong leader, one who, if not
unquestioned, at least had enough weight of reputation and trust from
the people around him to get things done without waging a dozen
arguments.

\emph{What he's blind to,} Minerva thought, as she warmed herself a cup
of tea and prepared to settle down to neglected marking, \emph{is that
that leader can't be him anymore. I wonder if it could have been from
the time he decided to bind Harry with a phoenix web.}

The full truth of that had come out in the past two weeks, as well.
Minerva swallowed sickness and bowed her head as she considered it.

Something soft and warm nudged her hand. Minerva blinked down, and saw
the blue ward there. It crawled into her lap and curled up like a
kitten, demanding to be patted with another push of its ``head'' against
her hand. Ordinarily it protected the Gryffindor table, but now it
seemed to have adopted her. Minerva smiled slightly and caressed the
ward. A tingle like lightning ran up her arm.

``You will become the leader we need.''

Minerva jerked her head up with a startled gasp. Someone was standing in
the corner of her office, a cloaked and hooded figure. Minerva started
to lift her wand from the desk, until she realized that the ward was
curled up in her lap, still purring, and not deigning to notice the
figure.

``Who are you?'' Minerva hissed, smelling smoke and fire.

``My name is Acies,'' said the figure, in a deep, hoarse voice that
Minerva couldn't be certain was a woman's, though her instinct was to
say so. ``I shall not give you my surname at the moment. It would cause
problems. Suffice it to say that I can pass in and out of the Hogwarts
wards, and I have been observing you and Harry, and I like what I see in
both cases.''

Minerva picked up her wand, ward be damned. ``If you hurt anyone
here---'' she began.

``I do not want to,'' said Acies. ``I came only to establish the
beginning of a connection that we must have. I can see that.''

``Are you a Seer, then?'' Minerva asked, her annoyance rising.
\emph{Merlin knows we do not need another Trelawney running about the
grounds.} Minerva despised Divination, mostly because its practitioners
claimed so much for it that was not even possible.

``I can see around some corners that concern myself,'' said Acies. ``Not
all. This time, I wanted to see you. I have seen you. I will go now.''
She turned and walked through the wall.

Minerva stared hard, then rubbed her eyes to make sure she wasn't seeing
things. No, the figure was gone, and the wards in the stone, some of the
first to be attuned to her, hummed on happily. Minerva picked up her cup
of tea and took a sip without removing her eyes from the spot on the
wall where Acies had vanished.

\emph{The beginning of a connection we must have.}

\emph{You will become the leader we need.}

Minerva almost wanted to believe the words, because there was something
hopeful in them.

But anyone who could pass in and out of the wards was bound to cause
trouble. Minerva was responsible for part of the safety of the school
now, and she was ashamed enough about the part she had played in
weakening the wards earlier in the year, even if that part had been
unwitting.

She turned back to her students' essays, her lips pursing. \emph{Damn
Seers and their superstitious nonsense! It's not enough to have to
listen to Trelawney's babbling at the head table, now I have to do it in
my own office\ldots{}}

\chapter{Must You Remind Everyone}\label{chapter-60-must-you-remind-everyone}

Harry was very pleased with himself when he shut his eyes that night in
the third week of March. He had had another guarded conversation with
Karkaroff, in which, while he hadn't promised anything, the man seemed
predisposed to ally himself more closely with Harry. He was getting
along with Snape, at least vaguely, and Draco. James's letters were not
too awful. Dumbledore kept his distance and muttered every now and
again. The amount of post had diminished, probably because there had
been only one article about him in the \emph{Daily Prophet} this week,
and that had been mostly Skeeter digging up and rehashing old facts.
Connor was doing well with Parvati, and if Hermione was avoiding
Zacharias right now, it was no more than the prat deserved. The other
Slytherins had mostly fallen into comfortable routines in which they
ignored Harry's newfound prominence, at least to his eyes. His friends
were happy. He felt he could sleep the sleep of the just.

Of course, that meant his sleep was all the more likely to be
interrupted, and he really should have known that.

``\emph{Wake up.}''

Harry blinked his eyes open, and saw one of the Many clinging to his
arm, its agitated swaying back and forth bringing him out of sleep more
effectively than even Millicent's banging on the door a few weeks ago
had done. This was a snake that could spit poison in his eyes if it felt
that he wasn't waking up fast enough. Harry touched its back to calm it,
and said, low enough that he wouldn't wake the other boys, ``What is
it?''

``\emph{Our eggs! They are hatching! We thought that you would like to
watch the birth of a new hive.}'' The snake curled back on itself, as
though it thought Harry would really refuse an invitation like that.

Harry paused before accepting it, though. His instincts might be wrong,
but in that case, the worst that would happen was that Draco would
mutter about being woken up and say no. ``Can I invite a friend to come
witness the hatching with me?''

``\emph{As long as he does not break the eggs.}'' The Many snake tightened
its tail around Harry's left wrist. ``\emph{And as long as he hurries.}''

Harry nodded, then dragged on his robes again, performed a warming
charm---edge of spring or not, it would be cold in the Forest---and then
padded over to Draco's bed. When he opened the curtains, Draco was lying
there with a silly smile on his face. Harry hesitated again, but decided
Draco could have pleasant dreams almost any night of the week, while the
birth of a Many hive was not something that would happen often. He
reached out and shook his shoulder.

``Harry,'' Draco muttered, coming awake. Harry wasn't sure whether he
was talking to his real or his dream self, at least until Draco blinked
and focused on him. ``What's the matter?''

``Must something be the matter every time I'm awake in the middle of the
night?'' Harry asked.

``Yes, it must,'' said Draco, sitting up and swatting at invisible
things in his hair. ``It always has been so far.''

Harry shook his head and gestured so that Draco could see the snake on
his arm. ``I've been asked to attend the hatching of their eggs. Do you
want to come along?''

Draco stared at him for so long that Harry started to get worried.
\emph{Should I not even have asked him? What is the matter?} ``Draco, if
you don't want to, then you don't---''

``Thank you,'' Draco said, low and heartfelt, and then hurried to put
his own robes on. Harry watched him in puzzlement, which only increased
when Draco turned and flashed him a dazzling smile.

\emph{He is acting strange again.}

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``Here we are.''

Draco had followed him mostly in silence, though once or twice he had
commented on how cold it was, and he had complained about tripping over
his feet until Harry had cast a mild light spell. Now, though, he
blinked and stared at the hole in the ground. ``If the nest's
underground, then how can we see the hatching?''

It wasn't something Harry had thought to ask the Many snake. He hissed
at it, and the cobra gave a slight wriggle of irritation. Harry
suspected most of the hive's attention was on what was happening beneath
them, and they resented having to spare a bit of themselves to answer
him. ``\emph{You will be shown.}''

Harry repeated that to Draco, who didn't look impressed. ``What do you
mean, shown---''

The dirt beneath their feet abruptly turned both green and gold. Harry
gasped aloud as he watched it. This was not the clear, shining light
that had poured forth from his skin the day he freed the unicorns.
Instead, it was gold and green darkness, if there was such a thing, the
color of the Many snakes' scales. The cobra wrapped more tightly around
Harry's arm, and as he gazed into the darkness, he could make out the
writhing bodies of the hive. Beneath and on and around them were the
eggs, a deep green, like unbroken emeralds.

``\emph{Tell your friend to take hold of you.}''

Harry reached out his right hand, and Draco came over and took it
without being asked. He only seemed to see the light and the nest then.
Harry felt him give one incredulous shiver before he stood stock still.

Harry, for his part, watched raptly as the snakes writhed. They were
hissing---not Parseltongue, because he could hear this quite clearly,
and it wasn't words. It was rather like the concerted sound they'd used
to frighten Tybalt and John the day Harry met them in the woods. They
sang in unison to welcome their children to the world, and, well, if the
song was sibilant and discordant and tuneless, at least it made for an
impressive fanfare for a birth.

Then a sound as of drums answered them. Harry jumped before he realized
that the hammering came from within the dark green eggs. The small
snakes were writhing back to their parents, or perhaps responding to the
song of the hiss, and driving their heads and bodies against the shells
that imprisoned them.

Singing and drumming, the hive raised their mingled music in the
Forbidden Forest on the edge of spring. Harry felt a quieter wonder that
he had on the day he freed the unicorns, but it was wonder nonetheless.
Draco's hand tightened its grip on his. Harry clutched him back without
looking at him. He didn't think he could have removed his gaze from the
Many if he tried.

The pounding became so intense that Harry was surprised the eggs had not
fractured yet. As if sensing his confusion, the snake on his arm spoke
words that mingled effortlessly with the communal hiss. ``\emph{A hive of
the Many begins their lives as one. The eggs are laid at different
times, but that is the last moment they will ever be apart.}''

As the snake had said, the eggs burst all at once, clusters of emerald
shell springing into the air and flying away, though they dropped back
from the dirt roof Harry had almost forgotten was there. The tiny
snakes, about a third of the size of their parents, sped out and wrapped
around each other, forming a great ball. Harry could hear their
greetings to each other, in voices that were probably not shriller than
those of the adult Many, but sounded like it.

He smiled, watching them, and so he saw the moment when the web erupted
from the dirt and tried to take them.

Harry stretched out a hand and caught the web on a wind of his magic.
The bright orange thing snapped at him, splitting itself apart into jaws
and talons and then running together again. Harry ignored that, and
studied the construction of the damn thing. The Many had acquired a web
when they came into the Forest, and he had not had the chance to see it
before it took them. Now, though, he didn't intend to lose the
opportunity of seeing one close at hand.

It was surprisingly simple. Of course, most wizards wouldn't want much
from the Many, only that they stay far away and leave them alone. Harry
could see, as the Many had specified, that the web would prevent them
from using their magic or venom to defend themselves outside the Forest,
unless they were also defending a wizard.

The orange web pressed forward, mindless, against his constraints,
wanting the tiny new hive. Harry frowned, and made his decision. They
were born free. They should remain so.

He clasped his hands together and squeezed. The web closed together into
a ball as well, shrieking in agitation. Now that Harry's wandless magic
was bound more closely to his body, he found it easier to use gestures
to command it, and as he bore down, mashing his palms together, the web
shrank into a concentrated ball of orange light and then winked out.

``\emph{Thank you.}''

Harry nodded absently at the snake on his arm. Draco's hand on his shook
him back into awareness, and Harry glanced at him. ``What did you just
do?'' Draco whispered. His eyes were wide, his hands shaking as if he
couldn't decide whether to ask the question or not.

Harry grinned at him. ``Destroyed a web.'' Gently, he removed his wrist
from Draco's grasp and took a step forward. The music of the hissing
still wove around him, calmed from its earlier height but by no means
forgotten. Harry could sense the orange web around the Many. It was not
so complex after all, though made to seem so by the constant motions of
the snakes it bound.

``What would you do if you were free?'' He spoke to the snake on his arm
with confidence, knowing that the mind that listened to him was the mind
of the hive itself.

The answer was a long time in coming. Harry wondered if they had to
think about it that much, or if they simply wondered what \emph{he}
wanted to hear. He hoped it was the first and not the latter. They
deserved the ability to think for themselves. Every wizard and magical
creature born did.

``\emph{We would stay here in the Forest. We would hunt. We would not
attack wizards unless they came along and attacked us. The Forest is
more than wide enough for us, and now that we have hatched a new hive
here, we have made it home as it has not been. We can bear the taste of
webs a bit longer as yet. We no longer wish to return to the home where
we were born. We would stay here and refrain from roaming and biting
wizards.}''

Harry nodded. Even in Africa, Many hives usually did not roam about and
bite people; they stayed in their dens in remote areas, and killed
rodents, and communed with their own thoughts. ``Then I shall free
you.''

He knelt down and laid his hands on the dirt, still glowing with that
dusky green-gold light that let him see the underground nest. Most of
the adult snakes had ceased dancing now, and lay where they were,
looking up at him. Harry felt the regard of dozens of clear golden eyes.

Their stillness made it easier. He reached out and gathered up the
corners of their web with his will. So long as he wasn't actively
preventing it from doing what it was made to do, it passively let him
take it.

Harry checked the positions of his fingers, took a deep breath, and then
ripped his hands backwards.

He felt resistance almost at once, as if the web really bound his hands
and were not down there, tied around the adult snakes. The very air
screamed and fought him. The snake on his arm hissed and thrashed. The
web stiffened and struggled to maintain its strands, part of an
enchantment so old and strong that Harry did not know who had set it,
one Lord or Lady or many wizards working in cooperation. Harry could
feel sticky, slimy strands sliding across his mouth and nose. He
suspected that he felt what it was like for one of the hive to dwell in
the web.

\emph{No longer. I will this to crack. I will it to shred. It is no
longer a necessary prohibition. They have given their word, and anyone
who ventures into the Forbidden Forest and hunts them is taking the risk
associated with free will.}

The web went taut. It might be simple, but it was very deeply-rooted,
Harry knew, if a new one could spring to life every time a lot of
dangerous new creatures were born in the Forest. He was struggling with
the roots of a mountain, trying to tear up a tree with his bare hands,
trying to separate the clouds from the sky.

\emph{I will this to crack. I will it to shred.}

His hands trembled and shook, and slowly inched towards each other. If
he could just bring them together behind his back, Harry thought, he
would break the web. And as he channeled his will and his magic towards
that task, his belief made it so, and his hands moved towards each other
with more confidence.

The web was shrieking now, and Harry could feel wind stirring the
branches of the Forest. There were secondary enchantments attached to
the web, ones that were supposed to alert the Headmaster of the school
that it had been tampered with. But Dumbledore, Harry hoped, would know
better than to interfere.

\emph{I will this to crack. I will it to shred.}

His fingertips brushed each other.

\emph{Now.}

The web tore with a shattering symphony of hisses. Harry's hands slammed
together hard enough to make his arms ache. The web around him screamed,
and screamed, and splintered apart into nothingness.

The silence that followed, though not really silence because of the
Many's hissing, still felt deafening. Harry panted, more exhausted than
he had thought he would be. He had fought no web before that was so much
an effort of sheer will. He felt Draco's hand on his shoulder, and
leaned against it willingly, unable to move his arms or stand as yet. He
felt his heart bounding strongly in his chest, and concentrated on that,
until he felt the snake on his arm slide down his skin.

``\emph{Thank you,}'' said the mingled voice.

Harry opened his eyes and focused on the snake. ``Of course,'' he
murmured, and watched it slide over to the hole in the earth and
downward. The green and golden darkness flared once more and showed him
the sight of the old Many surrounding the new Many and welcoming them,
before it dissolved. Harry and Draco stood on what was, to all
appearances, an ordinary patch of earth, except for the hole in the
middle of it.

``Come on,'' Draco whispered at last, when Harry could feel his eyes
falling shut. ``We can't sleep in the Forest. I'm sure it's unhealthy.''

Harry laughed at that, and even his voice sounded raspy and used, though
he hadn't been aware of screaming. He stood. ``You're right. Let's get
back to our room.'' He sneaked a glance at Draco, whose expression he
could see well enough in the \emph{Lumos} light, though sometimes with
odd shadows at the corners of his mouth and jaw. ``Worth coming out here
to see?''

``Oh, yes.'' Draco smiled at him. ``Even if I couldn't see half of what
you did. Watching them hatch was---'' He shook his head and broke off.
``Thank you,'' he said at last, in the same tone he had used in their
room.

``I didn't arrange for it to happen,'' said Harry, a bit bemused.

Draco faced him for a moment, though he continued walking sideways so
that Harry didn't have to slow---a good thing, since he didn't know if
he could convince his tired feet to start this long journey more than
once. ``Not for that,'' he said. ``For asking me to come with you.''

Harry smiled. ``I thought you would enjoy it. Besides, I wanted you here
with me.''

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{He should have a snake. It's wrong that he doesn't.}

Harry had fallen asleep almost instantly when he crawled into his bed.
Draco had thought he would. The clearing had filled with the
overpowering scent of roses as he worked his magic on the invisible---to
Draco---webs, and then he had stumbled on his way out of the Forest,
numerous times. He slept deeply now, his chest rising and falling in
rhythmic breaths.

Draco lingered for a moment, though, watching him, since there was no
one awake to tell him off and make him go back to bed.

\emph{He enjoys the company of snakes so much. He should have one. But
what kind? Not a Locusta. I don't think he could stand to have one
again, and besides, they're illegal and they can speak into his head. I
don't want a snake to be closer to him than I am.}

\emph{Runespoors are illegal to keep as pets, too. Are ashwinders? I'll
have to check. They're hard to keep alive, though, I think. But it
should be a magical snake. He'd appreciate it more.}

Draco grinned as he climbed back into his own bed. It wasn't often he
had an idea for a birthday gift months in advance.

\emph{But that's what I want him to get, so that's what he gets. Not to
mention that it'll be good for him.}

Draco was quite sure that he slept the sleep of the just that night.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry dropped his fork when someone prodded him in the ribs. ``Ow!'' he
complained, rubbing his side. ``Keep your elbows to yourself,
Millicent.'' Having her poke him this early in the morning could leave
him short of breath for the rest of the day.

``Look at this,'' she insisted, and pushed the \emph{Daily Prophet}
across the table at him.

Harry sighed and peered at it, wondering what Skeeter or Melinda
Honeywhistle, her main rival in reporting lead stories, would say now.
It would probably be something about the Tournament, or Death Eaters,
since they had nothing new to report.

He stared when he realized that the lead story featured a blurred
photograph of himself crouched on the ground in the Forbidden Forest
with his hands clasped behind his back, and that Draco stood beside him,
bending over him. A Many snake obviously encircled his arm, and the
headline above the photograph read:

\textbf{{\emph{HARRY POTTER SAVES HOGWARTS FROM THE WRATH OF SNAKES}}}

The byline was Skeeter's, of course. Harry shook his head, eyes
narrowing. He had started thinking she must have \emph{some} magical
advantage to keep reporting stories like this when he would have been
sure to see her normally, and it was about time he found out what it
was.

He became aware of the nervous edge to the students' stares then---he'd
already forced himself to ignore so many stares that he'd missed the new
emotion animating most of these---and rolled his eyes at them. Most of
them looked away hastily, as though they thought the supposed
Parselmouth savior would set his snakes on them if they weren't careful.
Others continued looking, particularly among the Durmstrang students.

``So, is it true?'' Millicent persisted.

``Of course not.'' Harry handed the paper back to her. ``I freed the
Many hive from a web on them. I wasn't protecting the school from them.
More like the other way round,'' he muttered, and dug into his food.

He got about three bites in when he became aware that most of the
Slytherin table was still staring at him. He slammed the fork down. He
knew he was being petulant, but Merlin, he hadn't done anything
remarkable, and they knew that he hated being looked at. ``\emph{What}?''

``You still went out to the Forbidden Forest last night and did
something with snakes,'' Pansy summarized. She shook her head. ``What
you did doesn't really matter, Harry. It's newsworthy.'' She folded her
arms, and looked, for a moment, remarkably like Hawthorn. ``Really, I
think that you should be taking advantage of this publicity, not
resisting it. You could do all kinds of things with it. Convince people
that not all Slytherins are evil. Refute the idea that you're evil in
any way.'' Her eyes drifted to the head table, and she lowered her
voice. ``Get rid of Dumbledore, or at least lessen his power.''

``It's a kind of false power,'' said Harry impatiently. ``You've already
seen how fickle most people who read the articles are. They'll turn
around when a better story comes along. I much prefer to rely on magic
and alliances and the good opinions of people I can actually trust.''

``False or no, it's still attributed to you.'' Pansy poked him now, and
Harry wondered when she'd become so bossy. ``One thing I learned from my
father is that you shouldn't give up any kind of advantage that you
received through your own efforts, even if you didn't know you were
going to receive it.''

Harry thought that Dragonsbane probably knew what he was talking about.
Necromancy required so many sacrifices that only a driving passion could
take a wizard very far into it, and Pansy's father had probably seen
many spells and rituals that didn't work out exactly as he thought they
would, thanks to the lack of common knowledge about the discipline. Some
of them would have to have worked out well for him, or he wouldn't be
alive. ``I'll think about it,'' he said, one of his favorite phrases
when he wanted to fob off attention.

Pansy frowned at him and started to say something else, but shrieks from
the front of the Hall interrupted her.

Harry blinked and frowned in that direction, only to see a large
green-golden ball rolling out from under the Hufflepuff table. It made
its way directly towards him. Harry could tell it was the new Many long
before they arrived.

``What would you like?'' he asked them, a bit surprised that they'd
come. Even some of the Slytherins jumped and gasped at his sudden use of
Parseltongue. Harry rolled his eyes, stood, and stepped around the
table. He could worry about what damage this was doing to his reputation
later. For now, the main thing was to make sure that the hive left
without biting anyone, and without any of the tiny cobras getting
stepped on.

``\emph{We wish to thank you for making sure we were free.}'' No, it
wasn't his imagination; the hisses in his ears were definitely high and
piping. ``\emph{Our parents said thank you, but we did not.}''

Harry blinked. He had not imagined that the hive cobras had such a
notion of manners. ``Well, you've said it, and I thank you in turn,'' he
murmured. ``Now, don't you think you should be in the Forest? You will
need to hunt.''

``\emph{But that is not all,}'' said the hive. ``\emph{We wish to give you
a gift for freeing us.}''

``That's quite unnecessary,'' said Harry, feeling the first faint
stirrings of alarm. ``Your thanks is more than enough.''

The Many ignored him. Harry supposed each hive had a distinct temper;
this one already felt different, more independent and prone to doing
whatever the hell the hive mind wanted. ``\emph{We can smell animosity
rolling off the powerful one at the high perch. We could bite off his
head and bring it to you.}''

Harry blinked in Dumbledore's direction. Dumbledore had a frown like a
thundercloud, and he gave Harry a glance that said if he did not move
the Many out of the Hall, \emph{now}, there would be
\emph{consequences.} ``That's, um, really not necessary,'' he said. ``I
don't eat heads.''

``\emph{Ah}!'' said the Many, in a tone of happy discovery, and the small
bodies that made up the top of the hive lashed. ``\emph{Then we could
bring you his heart.}'' The ball started to roll towards the high table.

``No!'' Harry yelped, and stumbled after them. The hive came to a halt
and waited patiently for him, though some hisses were muttering about
stupid snake-speaking humans who didn't know what they wanted. ``Really,
nothing from him. He, ah, he already gave me a gift of magic.''

``\emph{Hm. Then tell us someone stupid, and we shall bite them for
you.}''

Harry could not quite keep from glancing in the direction of the
Ravenclaw table, where Gorgon and Jones sat petrified at the far end.
The hive practically bounced as they rolled towards them, and their
chatter now concerned the desirability of ridding the world of idiots.

``No, not them, either,'' said Harry wearily.

The hive pulled up, and now its collective voice was haughty. ``\emph{We
do wish to thank you, but you are being most ungrateful in return.}''

Harry looked around the Hall. Most eyes were fixed on him, though their
owners had ceased to scream and sat in outraged silence. ``Most people
here are afraid of me,'' he said. ``Could you do something that would
reassure them?''

``\emph{Why?}'' The Many were most definitely sulking. ``\emph{Let them be
afraid. It is not our fault that they are stupid and will die if we bite
them.}''

``Something beautiful,'' Harry said as persuasively as he could.
``Something that will show you off, and let them see you to advantage.''

The hive paused only a moment then. Then the great ball of it broke
apart, and snakes raced in every direction, climbing the stone walls.
Others slithered over to Harry and climbed his legs and body the way
their parents had in Knockturn Alley. Two of them looped lazily around
his head and hissed at those people who screamed.

Harry, his heart in his throat, hoped that the snakes were not going to
make themselves the last beautiful sight most of the people here would
ever see. From the height the great majority of them had climbed to on
the walls, they could hit many eyes with their spray of venom.

But they did not. Instead, they paused, and then began to glow with
vivid patterns of green and golden darkness, the same kind of light that
had illuminated their nest last night.

Harry caught his breath in wonder. Around him, most people did the same.
Where Harry's platitudes in English, and certainly the sight of the
Many, would not have reassured them, the sight of the hive glowing like
jeweled sculptures did. Beauty had a way of getting through to people,
Harry had found.

The light varied, rippling across the room, shading from brilliant gold
near the head table to deepest emerald near the back of the Slytherin
one. The snakes coiled on Harry's head beamed yellow light in one
direction and green in the other, crawling in circles to insure the
beams varied. The ones on his body created a chaotic medley of flashes
and glimmers and gleams, appearing as one color and then another
whenever they wanted.

Harry heard some gasps and sighs by the time the snakes descended from
the walls and him, gathered themselves into a ball, and rolled out the
door again. He called a soft farewell, and received a hiss that said he
was lucky to have seen the light, and that he should visit them sometime
in the Forest.

The silence when the Many had left at least did not resolve into screams
or yells of protest immediately. Instead, the students chattered, and
gave broken sighs, and muttered among themselves as they watched Harry
walk over to the bench at the Slytherin table and start eating again.

They might be frightened, Harry knew, but the fact remained that Harry
had managed to get the snakes to leave without biting anyone. At least
some people had to think that meant more than just the prelude to an
attack, or a showing-off of his power.

At least some of them.

Since he refused to raise his eyes from the plate for the rest of the
meal, however, he really didn't know what percentage of the stares were
frightened, which angry, which resentful, and which hopeful.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry took a deep breath of the clean, cold air and folded his arms on
the windowsill of the Owlery. Hedwig coasted down to him, sat on his
shoulder, and nibbled at his ear.

Harry looked out over the Forbidden Forest, then closed his eyes. The
pressure of the stares had got so much that he'd finally come up here to
be alone, asking even Draco to stay behind. Draco had looked a bit put
out, as though he'd thought ten people would wrap themselves around
Harry and declare their love for him the moment his back was turned, but
had let him go.

Harry had another reason for wanting to come up here. It was a year ago
today, the first day of spring, that he'd met Connor up here and
accidentally had the last of his phoenix web shredded by his brother's
compulsion.

Hedwig demanded petting. Harry obliged her, his mind tumbling back over
the last year and wondering if what he'd endured had been worth it. He
thought so.

\emph{I haven't entirely kept the promise I made to myself, though,} he
thought, as Hedwig grabbed his hand and pulled it to the spot on her
neck where she wanted to be stroked. \emph{Not to lie, or to seek out my
lies if I did, to try to catch sight of all the places I could stumble
and make mistakes, to see all the hidden corners of my being and expose
them to the light. I have to do that to be a good} vates \emph{and
leader---the kind it seems I'm going to be whether I want to be or not.}

\emph{I have to do better as far as that's concerned,} he thought, as he
watched the sunset.

\emph{Take} that, \emph{you bastard!}

Harry jumped. That last thought had no reason to be in his head. He
turned cautiously, peering around, and wondering if Dumbledore had come
up to the Owlery and inflicted him with it for some reason.

\emph{Has it been so long,} the injured voice said, \emph{that you've
forgotten who I am, what I sounded like, the very voice of your old
comrade?}

Harry swallowed, and, though he had no reason to speak aloud, felt he
had to. ``Regulus?'' he whispered.

\emph{Yes.} Merlin, did Regulus sound smug. \emph{It took me a while,
but I managed to fight free of Voldemort. He thought he was so smart,
tucking me in a little dark place again. But I'm used to little dark
places, thanks to him. I struggled and cursed and cursed and struggled
again until I was free.}

Harry laughed in spite of himself, feeling his heart lift. ``I heard you
scream when you were torn away from my mind. I thought Voldemort must
have hurt you, maybe destroyed you.''

\emph{He couldn't hurt me that badly, not in that diminished state he's
in. Seen him in your dreams yet?} Harry felt flickers of visions teasing
the edges of his consciousness, as Regulus apparently went through his
memories of the last six months. \emph{No, I see you haven't. Good on
you. He looks like a deformed baby.}

``I haven't seen what he looks like, so you're going to tell me?'' Harry
protested, leaning against the windowsill. Hedwig obviously gave up on
the prospect of getting properly petted, and flew back to her perch.
Harry could not seem to stop grinning. ``I don't want to know what he
looks like.''

\emph{You have to,} said Regulus, voice unexpectedly soft. \emph{You'll
have to fight him at some point---holy Merlin, please tell me that you
did not duel Rosier again.}

``That and lots of other things,'' said Harry wryly, clenching a hand on
the back of his neck. He was overjoyed to have Regulus back, but there
would be a lot of adjusting to do as he got Regulus used to some basic
facts of his life. ``You---missed quite a bit. And I missed you.''

\emph{So I see, and so I communicate to you.} More rummaging, and then
Regulus paused, though Harry didn't know what memory he was seeing until
he whispered, \emph{If I had a body, I would kill your mother.}

\emph{Not you, too,} said Harry, switching to silent speech as a
Hufflepuff first-year came up the stairs and slipped over to a barn owl
on a perch. She kept giving him awed glances. Harry stared out the
window and did his best to look like an ordinary tormented hero until
she was gone. \emph{Everybody wants to punish my mother, for some
reason.}

\emph{Some reason. This is lots of reasons. How dare she say---}

``I don't want to hear it again,'' Harry whispered. ``Please, Regulus,
don't make me live through it. She's been punished. It's enough.
Everybody else has agreed to leave it alone.'' \emph{Well, except for
Scrimgeour. And Lucius. And Narcissa. And Hawthorn. And Adalrico. But
everybody else has.}

Regulus gave a gusty sigh, but gave up that tangent. Harry smiled
slightly as he muttered his way through more of Harry's memories, then
began laughing. \emph{I see that your little Malfoy nemesis finally
gathered his courage to tell you that he loved you.}

``He's not my nemesis,'' Harry protested. ``He's quite calm when he gets
his own way. And why the `finally?'\,''

\emph{He's a menace to other people,} said Regulus firmly. \emph{And I
knew before I---left---that he loved you. I was just waiting, somewhat
impatiently, for him to have both the time and the lack of
self-absorption to say it.}

``Believe me, I know how lucky I am,'' Harry muttered.

\emph{Both of you are lucky,} said Regulus absently, and then went
through the rest of Harry's memories, while Harry grinned out the
window, and reflected that, the Many's misguided notion of a gift aside,
he was enjoying this first day of spring much more than he had the
corresponding day last year.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Draco had forced himself to concentrate on Defense Against the Dark Arts
homework after Harry went upstairs. Karkaroff's teaching style was far
different than Mulciber's, and he believed in having students read their
textbooks and then copy passages out of them. Draco had sometimes
managed to read five sentences without looking at the door to their
room.

When he looked up as the door opened, therefore, he told himself that he
really deserved to set the book aside, as a reward for being so good.

Harry came in with his head bowed for some reason, but he looked up soon
enough, and Draco's breath caught at the way his eyes shone. Harry had
looked harassed most of the day, but now he appeared as he had last
night, with joy overflowing him.

``Guess what,'' he said.

``I can't guess,'' said Draco, bouncing a hand off his knee. He wouldn't
go over to Harry, not when getting closer might change the expression on
his face, but he needed to move in \emph{some} way. ``I'm horrible at
guessing. Tell me.''

Harry bounced over to Draco's bed, plopping himself down on his back. He
grinned up at him from that angle, upside-down, and Draco felt a few
threads of his self-control fray.

``Regulus came back!'' Harry said triumphantly. ``And he's all right!
And I actually had some Ravenclaws stop me in the halls on the way
back---'' Draco wondered if Chang had been there, but couldn't bring
himself to ask while Harry was smiling so brilliantly ``---and apologize
for being idiots like they had been! And so now I know the whole school
doesn't hate me! And this is a \emph{wonderful} day.'' Harry tilted his
head back and laughed softly, closing his eyes as he did so.

Abruptly, before Draco could even react to him sounding as if he'd put
exclamation marks after every single one of his sentences except
possibly the last, Harry popped one eye open again and smiled at him.
``And Regulus said that he knew since September that you were in love
with me,'' he said. ``So you were patient and willing to wait for a much
longer time than I thought you were, even if part of that \emph{was} the
potion and the compulsion. I just wanted to say thank you, Draco.'' His
smile grew wider.

He was \emph{smiling}, for Merlin's sake. His eyes were shining, and
he'd \emph{bounced.} His emotions were all but \emph{purring.}

Draco leaned over and kissed him.

He would have exploded in panic immediately afterwards if he'd
\emph{allowed} himself to explode in panic. As it was, he refused for a
single moment to think that what he'd done was wrong. He took his time,
neither too long nor too short, and then raised his head and looked
serenely at Harry.

\emph{That wasn't wrong. It was begun in joy. It can't be wrong.}

Harry blinked, once, twice, and then acquired a puzzled expression, as
though he didn't know what had happened. Draco swallowed. \emph{Well, he
might ignore it, I suppose. If that's the case, I won't push him.}

Harry took a deep breath, and Draco recognized the flare of courage in
his eyes that had been visible just before he leaped on his Firebolt and
flew at the dragons. Then he lifted himself up into an awkward position,
half on his leg and half on his elbow, and kissed Draco back.

Draco felt as if he were spinning down a golden abyss, and so great was
his surprise and elation that it was hard to feel half the embarrassment
he'd expected. He let Harry break the kiss and draw away, and then
watched him carefully.

Harry tilted his head to the side, and studied him back. Then he grinned
again.

``I liked that,'' he said.

Draco swallowed, and tried to think of something magnificent to say, and
realized that he could think of absolutely nothing. Apologies were
obviously beside the point, and he wouldn't have meant them anyway.
Asking if Harry had liked it was pointless. Explanations would sound
stupid.

Harry said the words instead, taking his hand and gripping it hard
enough to hurt. Draco could feel the oddest mixture of emotions pressing
against his empathy: the cold wind of fear, backed and countered by a
warm one. Judging from the expression on Harry's face right now, the
warm wind was awe.

``I'm terrified of this half the time. That doesn't \emph{mean} anything,
Draco, and it's certainly not occasion for you to coddle me.' Harry
lifted his head, and his eyes flashed. ``And I'm not doing this because
I think I owe you for falling in love with me, so put that out of your
head if it's there. I always thought that love like the sun can't be
based on people owing each other compensation for something. It wouldn't
work. I just didn't think I would ever have that kind of love, or the
chance at it.''

He swallowed, then said, ``And if that really is within my reach, then I
want to strive for it. It's---it's easy to say this, right now, when the
fear is being kept at bay. I'm sure there are times I'll tumble and want
to hide. You've seen them already. And this will probably take a long
time. But I promise that I'll keep on going. I promise you.'' His breath
came faster, and the cold wind increased, as if he were about to say
something more terrifying than all the rest. ``I want this.''

Draco had the sense, then, to let Harry give him a quick, nervous smile,
climb into his own bed, and draw the curtains shut. It was best not to
say more, anyway. It \emph{still} would have sounded stupid or been
pointless.

He closed his eyes, and smiled.

That was all that needed to happen right now.

\chapter{Demands, and Harry}\label{chapter-61-demands-and-harry}

\emph{Harry dreamed.}

This time, he was in a place that he didn't recognize, unless it was
another room of the old house where Voldemort had been the last time
Harry had seen him. He flattened himself to the ground at once and
cocked his ears forward, listening and looking for some sign of Nagini.

Nothing. She was probably dead.

Harry refused to take much for granted in these visions again, however.
He slunk forward with his belly against the floor, and twitched his
whiskers from side to side, in hopes that his nose would give him some
useful information. The scent of the fire, and some sweet, spicy smell
that he didn't really want to think about overpowered everything else,
however.

``Evan.''

Harry felt the fur along his spine stand up. \emph{That} voice, he knew.
If he ever met Voldemort in person, he wouldn't need to see him to
recognize him---which was good, since, as Regulus had pointed out, he
hadn't seen him in his dreams yet anyway.

His eyes revealed a divan ahead now, with its back to him, as usual. The
fireplace was in front of that, sending dim light and shadows flickering
around it. The floor under Harry's paws had a threadbare rug, with no
recognizable design, even though Harry thought his eyes were better in
this form than in his human one. Voldemort must be sitting on the divan,
and Rosier was standing in front of him, his head half-bowed, as though
he wanted to take a posture of humility, but was not sure it was worth
it.

``Yes, my lord?'' Rosier sounded bored. \emph{Just as he claimed in his
letter,} Harry thought, and then reminded himself that Snape had said
not to trust anything that Rosier wrote. He stayed where he was, still
sniffing for some sign of Nagini, locating nothing, and listening to the
conversation.

``I have a new task for you.'' Voldemort's voice all but caressed the
air. ``My loyal Death Eaters went to prison for me once. I would not
have any of them remain there longer than necessary. Contact Greyback.
You and he will free Walden and Rabastan from their confinement in the
Ministry's prison.''

Rosier jerked his head up, and his eyes burned brightly. ``Thank you, my
lord,'' he said softly. ``That is truly a task worthy of us. You have
always tended to reward me well.'' Harry wondered if he imagined the
unspoken words that followed that sentence: \emph{when you bother to
reward me at all.} He paused, then added, ``Bella will not be joining
us?''

``No,'' said Voldemort. ``She is quite busy preparing the correct
incantations. You know what she wants to do?''

``Yes,'' said Rosier simply. Harry lashed his tail. \emph{What does she
want to do?}

``I find it a fitting plan,'' said Voldemort. ``Do you, Evan?'' His
voice was direct, and cold, and horrible, but Rosier merely laughed as
though he could think of no finer play than answering questions from the
Dark Lord.

``Of course, my lord,'' he said equitably. ``It entertains Bella, and
Merlin knows that she needs to be entertained.''

The cold voice altered. ``I will not have you making fun of the others
this time, Evan. We are not numerous enough that we can afford to lose
anyone, on a mission or at any other time. Do you understand me? There
will be no more torturous spells practiced on your fellow Death
Eaters.''

``Of course,'' said Rosier. Harry scraped one paw across the floor.
\emph{Even I can hear the mockery in his voice. How is it that Voldemort
does not hear it?} ``Our mission is different this time. Your most
elaborate plans are going forward, and we must adapt our tactics to
those plans. This time, you intend to win the war, and to kill the
Potter brat who foiled you before.''

Perhaps it soothed Voldemort to have his own schemes repeated back to
him, because he said a moment later, ``That is it exactly. Yes. Go,
Evan, and when you are finished, then return at once with Walden and
Rabastan. I will need to speak with them about future raids. There are
books I want, which are currently under the protection of those who will
not deign to give them to me freely.'' Harry heard anger that could
crack stones in those words.

``And Greyback?'' Rosier asked.

``The next full moon is not for several days,'' said Voldemort. ``That
should give him time to position himself. The north, Evan. It is time
that some of our enemies learned the cost of defying me in secret.''

``Of course,'' said Rosier, a deep delight in his words. He started to
step around the divan.

Harry decided the conversation must be done, and prepared to withdraw,
brain whirling with all the information he had learned. But he paused
when he realized that Rosier had indeed come around the divan---and was
looking directly at him.

Harry froze, his heart loud in his ears.

Rosier saw him. His eyes widened, and then narrowed, and then he opened
his mouth. Harry prepared to tear his way out of the dreamscape.

Rosier shut his mouth again, tossed Harry a wink, and then kept walking.
Harry cringed back to avoid touching his robes, staring after him the
while.

\emph{What is he playing at? He obeys the orders of his lord eagerly
enough. Can he really want me free to roam the connection between
Voldemort and me, just so that he can have some entertainment?}

Then Harry told himself to forget about that. \emph{Rosier and Greyback
are going to hit the Ministry,} he thought, even as he scrambled back
into the darkened part of the room, further from the divan, and tugged
against the bond that tied him to Voldemort, trying to wake up. \emph{I
don't know if I can firecall in time. I certainly can't owl. And I don't
know where the prison is.}

\emph{I'll fetch one of the Aurors guarding the school instead. It's the
best plan.}

At last, the bond parted like raveled rope, and the vision rained down
in pieces around him, allowing him to wake in his own bed.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry blinked stupidly for a moment. Luckily, that didn't last very
long. He leaped to his feet and dashed for the door. Since he wasn't
going into the Forbidden Forest, he didn't bother with robes and warming
charms. They would only take precious moments that he didn't have.

``What the hell---'' somebody was already saying, but Harry ignored
whoever it was as he shut the door behind himself and slid as fast as he
could down the stairs to the common room. His scar was pouring blood
into his eyes, and there was the usual headache, almost unnoticed by
now. He didn't know why Draco hadn't come into this dream, perhaps
simply because he hadn't woken up in time, but they could discuss it
later. Everything would have to wait until later, or at least until
after he had warned the Ministry.

He became aware of a buzzing noise near his ear, and frowned. As he
opened the door to the common room and plunged into the corridor beyond,
he whispered, ``\emph{Claudo inimicum.}'' It wasn't a very powerful spell,
but it sounded as though someone had sent a tracking charm along with
him. This wouldn't have to be very powerful to contain something like
that.

A jar formed in the air beside him and shut firmly around the thing
buzzing next to his ear. Harry turned and caught it, then stared as he
saw a beetle crawling around the inside of the glass.

\emph{No time.} Harry shook his head, stuffed the jar down the pocket of
his robes, and then pulled up a map of the school in his head.
\emph{Tonks is patrolling the entrance hall tonight. She's closest.}

He took the stairs from the dungeons two at a time, and slid out into
the open, glancing around frantically. He grimaced when he realized that
Tonks was nowhere in sight. \emph{Did she trip over something and hit
her head again?} he wondered. That had happened three times in the last
week alone.

He narrowed his eyes as he thought some more about it. \emph{Feverfew's
on the second floor.} He took off again, and then someone grabbed his
shoulder and nearly earned himself an early death.

Harry turned with a sharp hiss, only to see Snape behind him, his arms
crossed and his gaze stern.

He didn't say anything, perhaps because his eyes had caught sight of the
blood on Harry's face. ``What do we need to do?'' he asked. ``What are
the requirements of your vision?''

``Voldemort's sending Rosier and Greyback to the Ministry prison,'' said
Harry. ``I need to find an Auror to let the Ministry know, but I can't
tell where anyone \emph{is.}'' He darted a glance around, just in case
Tonks appeared out of a corner, and wound up shaking his head. ``I'm
going to Feverfew. Come \emph{on}.''

Snape said nothing to dispute him, but glided swiftly at his right
shoulder as they made for the stairs. Harry realized, uneasily, that the
school was more silent than he had ever dreamed at night. Of course,
most of the time he was outside the castle if he was awake now, but
still, it was disconcerting.

The stairs cooperated, for once, and they came out on the second floor
without being forced to backtrack. Harry's mind kept trying to calculate
times and distances the while, and kept giving up. Without an idea of
where the Ministry prison was and how heavily warded it was, he had no
idea when Rosier and Greyback might get there and manage to break in.

Harry risked a call down the corridor, since not many people actually
lived on this floor. ``Feverfew!''

No answer. Harry shot a glance at Snape, whose eyes were narrowed, and
who cast a spell that Harry didn't recognize, but which made his wand
glow red. Snape cursed a moment later.

``What?'' Harry demanded, thinking again. Haverbull was patrolling the
third floor, if they really had to go that high.

``Feverfew is incapacitated, wherever he is,'' said Snape shortly.
``Asleep or injured---enough that he cannot respond to us.''

Harry stiffened. ``And you think Tonks is---''

``Almost surely the same way, yes.'' Snape was staring into the shadows
the torches cast now, looking as if he would like nothing better than to
bring the walls down. ``I presume it will do us little good to go to Mr.
Haverbull and the others. Whoever did this would not be stupid enough to
miss any of our happy crew of Aurors.'' His voice was thick with
disgust.

Harry took a deep breath. ``Second best plan, then,'' he said, and
turned to Snape. ``Do you think that I could firecall Scrimgeour from
your rooms?''

``You may do it from mine, Mr. Potter.''

Harry jumped, and then turned around. Professor McGonagall stood behind
him, her eyes narrowed and a candle in her hand. Around her ankles
twined the blue line of a ward, purring like a cat when Harry glanced at
it.

``Quickly now,'' she added, when both Harry and Snape stood there. ``I
felt something wrong earlier this evening, when the wards began to
whine. However, they could not tell me the nature of the threat.'' She
frowned. ``Or perhaps I am not attuned enough to them to read it.''

``And Dumbledore?'' Harry asked, sliding around her and towards the door
of her private rooms.

``I do not know,'' said McGonagall. ``When I approached the Headmaster's
office, I saw a dark figure moving down the corridor. I turned to chase
it, and lost it on the third floor. I can confirm that I saw no sign of
Auror Haverbull.''

Harry nodded shortly, and then went into her rooms. They were bright and
warm and cheerful, as he saw out of the corner of his eye, but he didn't
care about anything in them now, save for the fireplace. He took a pinch
of Floo powder from the dish on the mantle and cast it into the flames.
``Minister of Magic's office!'' he called out.

For a moment, the flames danced with a bright green color, and then they
tossed the Floo powder abruptly out of the fireplace. Harry coughed and
covered his face as he was dusted with it. He whirled around, not caring
that he was making a mess of McGonagall's carpet. ``What happened?'' he
demanded. ``Is that what happens when the Minister's office has its Floo
network shut?'' He supposed he should have anticipated that. It was the
middle of the night, after all.

``No,'' said McGonagall, her face pale. ``That's what happens when
someone has blocked a fireplace from accessing the Floo Network
altogether.'' She strode over and stared into her hearth as though she
could see the problem from here and know how to fix it.

Harry cursed, ignoring the way both professors said, ``Potter!''
practically as one being. ``Someone's blocked the Floo Network and taken
down the Aurors, then,'' he said. ``That leaves Apparating to the
Ministry, maybe---''

Snape's hand descended and clenched on his shoulder. ``You are not going
anywhere, Harry,'' he said, in the voice that made it seem less like an
order than a declaration of fact. ``There are few areas in the Ministry
that are not warded against Apparition, and I do not think that you can
picture any of them clearly. I will \emph{not} have you splinched.''

``But I have to warn Scrimgeour,'' Harry argued, tilting his head back
and glaring at Snape. He saw his guardian flinch, and wondered why.
\emph{Perhaps he doesn't like to see my face bleeding. I don't know why.
It's not like it doesn't do this all the time.}

``You may do so by owl post,'' said Snape.

``That's too \emph{late---}''

``Harry.'' McGonagall stepped in front of him. ``How did you get this
information?''

Harry sighed. \emph{I should have known she would demand to know that
sooner or later.} ``Sometimes I have visions of Voldemort,'' he said.
``In this one, I heard him ordering Rosier and Greyback to attack the
new prison the Ministry's built.''

``Then warning the Ministry would not do much good anyway,'' McGonagall
told him quietly. ``It would take some time for them to alert the
prison, if what I have heard is true. It is deliberately kept at a
distance from the Ministry, warded and made nearly inaccessible. In
fact, Rosier and Greyback---'' she grimaced as if she'd swallowed
something foul when she said that name ``---may not be able to
\emph{find} it. I know that Minister Scrimgeour has concealed its
location from all but those who most need to know.''

``Rosier will find a way if anyone will,'' said Harry, and then
hesitated, wondering if he really wanted to tell Professor McGonagall
about his duels with Rosier.

Snape knelt down in front of him and made Harry look at him with a
steady, penetrating gaze. ``Harry,'' he said. ``You cannot let your
enemies convince you of their omnipotence. Rosier is playing a game. He
always does that. I find it far more likely that, as Minerva said, he
will be baffled by the wards around the prison and fail in this mission.
What we should be concerned with now is the safety of the school. Do you
fail to remember that a person, perhaps people, has managed to take down
trained Aurors inside the school and block the Floo Network?''

Harry let out a slow sigh, then froze as Regulus said in his head, in a
tone of sleepy incredulity, \emph{Show them that beetle in the jar that
you captured.}

``Wait,'' Harry said distractedly, and fumbled in his robe. He drew the
jar that the \emph{Claudo inimicum} spell had created out and held it up
to the light. The beetle crawled determinedly around the inside of it,
as though determined to find a crack in the glass that would allow it to
break out. The insect didn't look like anything special, save for a
faint spectacle-shaped marking around its antennae, but Harry could
remember other times when a beetle had buzzed by his head, and he
thought that might have \emph{something} to do with this. ``Professor
McGonagall. I caught this beetle as I was coming out of the Slytherin
common room. Do you know what it is? Someone's unregistered Animagus
form, maybe?''

The Transfiguration professor nearly snatched the jar from his hand. She
examined it, and then let a sharp frown pull her lips into a pursed
line. ``Indeed, Mr. Potter,'' she said, and then placed the jar on the
floor, Vanishing the glass. The beetle made a bid for freedom at once.

McGonagall snapped out a complex incantation that Harry couldn't follow
half of. A sharp flash of light eclipsed the beetle's fleeing form, and
the next moment, Rita Skeeter collapsed heavily to the floor. Her
clothes were in disarray, her glasses almost coming off her face.

Harry narrowed his eyes. \emph{Damn, I should have known. She was in the
interrogation room when Fudge and Umbridge questioned me. No wonder she
could know exactly what went on there.}

McGonagall loomed above Skeeter, her wand unwavering. ``You will explain
yourself,'' she said, apparently needing no help in recognizing the
other woman. ``How did you get inside the school?''

Skeeter gave Harry a pleading look. Harry only stared back. Their deal
had not covered anything like this. Skeeter pasted a sickly smile on her
face and turned around to look at McGonagall again.

``Did you know an unregistered Animagus can get inside the Hogwarts
wards if carried against a student's skin?'' she said. ``Quite a
discovery, that one. I rode against Mr. Potter's neck, usually.'' She
made her voice into a stream of bright chatter as she looked around the
room. ``You live differently than I always thought you did, Professor.
Gryffindor colors everywhere and only that, I was thinking. But you've
done a nice job of---''

``Did you put the Aurors to sleep and shut off the school's Floo
Network?'' McGonagall asked levelly. ``Answer me before I Transfigure
you into an egg and step on you.''

Harry had to duck his head to hide a grin.

``No!'' Skeeter all but squeaked. ``Of course not! I didn't even know
something was wrong until I heard you talking about it!'' She shrank
back into a smaller pile, her eyes wide and her hands quivering. Harry
wondered if they were twitching because she wanted a notebook and quill.
Skeeter's reporter's instincts were still strong. She would write about
this if she could.

That led to another idea.

``Did you \emph{see} who did it?'' he asked.

Skeeter sighed and turned to face him, shaking her head mournfully.
Harry might have believed her sad expression if he didn't know her at
all. ``No. I was with you the entire evening. You're usually the center
of the action,'' she added.

Harry just rolled his eyes. ``I suppose you know that this means we'll
have to renegotiate our bargain,'' he said.

``Bargain?'' asked McGonagall.

``Rita and I made a bargain,'' said Harry, his anger growing slowly as
he remembered all the things and actions he wouldn't have wanted
observed by anyone. ``Didn't we, Rita? I said that I would feed you
stories, and in the meantime, you'd consult me about the way you wrote
them. There was absolutely nothing in there about you spying on me and
getting fresh stories that way. And there was certainly nothing in there
about you being an unregistered Animagus. I think I deserve another
bargain. This time, be assured, it'll tip a little more to my side of
things.''

Skeeter frowned at him, but dipped her head. She knew when she was
beaten, Harry saw, though doubtless she'd still try to twist the deal as
much to her advantage as she could.

``Mr. Potter,'' said McGonagall, her voice weary. ``Do I even \emph{want}
to know why you're bargaining with Ms. Skeeter instead of reporting her
to the Ministry at once?''

``Because she's useful,'' said Harry simply. ``Although,'' he added, as
memory caught up with his present thoughts and Regulus poked him again,
``I really should warn Minister Scrimgeour about this whole mess first,
by owl post if I can't do it any other way. I trust that you'll stay
here, Rita? If I find you gone, I just might have to write the Improper
Use of Magic Office after all.''

Skeeter nodded.

``Mr. Potter,'' said McGonagall, as Harry put a hand on the doorknob,
``where do you think you're going?''

\emph{Is she deaf?} Harry didn't bother turning around. ``To owl the
Minister. I just said that.''

``With an unknown threat running around the school and disabling Aurors
and the Floo Network.'' McGonagall's voice didn't make that a question.
``I think not, Mr. Potter. You will stay here where you are safe.''
Harry turned around in time to see the wards on the stone begin glowing
red and yellow. ``Save for the Headmaster's office, my room is currently
the safest one in Hogwarts.''

Harry fought the urge to growl. As important as McGonagall's assistance
had been, in some ways he wished she hadn't found him. He turned and
looked at Snape.

Snape's face was blank. ``Harry,'' he said softly, ``do you not think
that the Minister will want to know how you discovered this? We have yet
to think of a convincing lie. Unless you wish to reveal the existence of
the visions---'' He paused when Harry frowned at him. ``I did not think
so. Either Rosier and Greyback's attack will fail, which I think the
likeliest option, and the Minister will be warned that way, or it will
succeed, and your warning about it would only make you seem to be in
collusion with them. Were it not for the enemy being in Hogwarts itself,
I would help you to think of a lie, but it is best to stay here. I will
not lose you.'' His voice was growing deeper as he went on, his face
more set.

Harry closed his eyes and forced the words through his teeth and the
lump in his throat. ``Fine, then. I'll let the Minister know about the
visions. Can we go to the Owlery now?''

``That does not solve the problem of the enemy in Hogwarts,'' said
Snape.

``Damn it---'' Harry turned to the door, and Snape performed a locking
charm on it. A moment later, heavy school wards crawled across it. Harry
glanced over his shoulder to see McGonagall flaring with red and yellow
light. She dropped her hand and gave him a stern glance.

``You are the likeliest target, Mr. Potter,'' she said. ``Other than
your brother, perhaps, and I have made sure the wards are thick and
active in his room in Gryffindor Tower. This trip to the Owlery is not
as important as making sure that you stay alive.''

``But there could be people who die tonight because of me!'' Harry
didn't understand why \emph{they} wouldn't understand. He clenched his
fists, and felt his rage stir, though luckily it was only ordinary
anger, and not the Dark rage that he had put in the prison of icicles.
``Rosier and Greyback \emph{could} find their way into the prison, and
kill some of the guards. If not, then they might at least kill some of
the Ministry officials in frustration. Don't you realize that---''

\emph{Harry.}

Harry slammed his mouth shut, because that was Regulus, and Regulus
might be able to give him some good arguments. \emph{You see that I'm
right, don't you, Regulus? I have to go.} He began gathering his
strength to fight Hogwarts' wards. He'd never tried that before in a
room where so many of them were awake at once, but he was willing to
try. There were lives at stake, and he could do something to save them.

\emph{No, I think they're right,} said Regulus. \emph{This disabling of
Aurors and the Floo Network has the feel of an attack directed
specifically at you. And is it a coincidence that it comes on the night
that Voldemort is planning his first raid? No to that, too. Stay here,
Harry.}

``If someone's hunting me,'' said Harry aloud, ``then they might head
for the Slytherin rooms---''

``Wards are active there as well,'' said McGonagall, with a tinge of
amusement in her voice. ``When I thought you were safe in your common
room, Mr. Potter, I activated them to guard you. You must already have
left. But, I assure you, if someone threatens Mr. Malfoy or the rest of
them, I shall know at once.''

Harry tensed again. They were cutting down all the reasonable,
persuasive arguments that he might have used to convince them. That left
fighting the wards and springing to the Owlery. He would have liked to
jump to the Ministry itself, but Snape was right: the few rooms he had a
clear picture of there were almost certainly warded against Apparition,
and trying to jump the immense distance from Scotland to London when he
didn't know any unwarded places for certain was suicide.

``Mr. Potter,'' said McGonagall, and her voice had gone cold now. ``Stop
that. The wards are already in a weakened state, both from Mulciber's
tampering and from the transfer between the Headmaster and me. What do
you think will happen to them if you rip them apart now?''

Harry cursed and spun, creating a wooden figure with a gesture of his
hand, and then setting it on fire. He could feel McGonagall jumping, as
the wards spasmed with her, but none of the ashes and flames touched her
carpet or walls. Harry created and burned a few more figures, just to
relieve his temper, and then turned around again.

``Fine,'' he said. ``I'll stay here. Happy?'' \emph{He} wasn't, he could
feel his heart pounding heavily at the mere thought of people dying when
he could have warned them, but he had obligations to others, too.
Keeping himself alive and not tearing the wards that kept Death Eaters
out when properly attended to were among them.

``Happier than I was,'' said McGonagall. Her voice softened. ``Harry,
you must sometimes consider your own safety first, and leave other
duties to other people. Do you understand me?''

Harry understood her. He just hated it, with a violent passion.

He had to do something to make himself useful, he thought, beyond pacing
a hole in the carpet or burning more wooden figures. He turned to face
Skeeter, who looked as though she were happy to have escaped further
questioning. She shrank when she saw his expression.

``Ms. Skeeter,'' said Harry, and his voice was all kinds of false
politeness. ``As long as you're here, I think we should renegotiate the
terms of our bargain.''

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape lengthened his stride the moment he was away from Harry. They had
left McGonagall's office near morning, when Auror Feverfew had knocked
on the door and asked in a confused voice whether they were quite all
right, and if they knew why he had a large bump on his head and no
memory of the last few hours. Snape had escorted Harry back down to the
dungeons, not letting him out of his sight, and said that he was going
to get what rest he could before classes began. Harry had nodded
drowsily, obviously feeling the same way.

Harry's bloodstained face remained with Snape as he waited for the door
of the Slytherin common room to slide shut. Harry had not even seemed
conscious of the blood much of the time, apart from mutters on its
causing Snape's and McGonagall's stares at him. He was getting used to
the visions, Snape supposed.

\emph{I would not have him get used to them.}

Snape knew whom he suspected of this business with the Aurors and the
Floo Network, and he was not about to let him get away with it.

He was already casting spells when he stopped outside the office of the
Defense Against the Dark Arts professor and rapped smartly on the door.
He saw no trace of the spells he suspected had been used on the Aurors,
but that meant nothing. Karkaroff was Headmaster of Durmstrang. He
almost certainly knew and taught Dark Arts that were not common at
Hogwarts.

Karkaroff opened the door, concealing a yawn with one hand. He froze
when he saw Snape, and that gave Snape time enough to lock eyes with his
old comrade-in-arms and bear inward with his Legilimency.

He stood in the representation of Karkaroff's mind: a deep pine forest,
thick with drifting mist. Memories drifted by, not at all guarded, and
Snape snatched at the first one.

\emph{A nightmare, a dream of Voldemort calling his Death Eaters. With
an effort, Snape recognized one of the abandoned houses they had used as
headquarters before the first fall of the Dark Lord. Karkaroff
remembered shivering on the floor, having convulsed already from
numerous Cruciatus Curses, wondering what he was doing there.}

Snape backed out of the nightmare with a snarl, and snatched at another.

\emph{A more ordinary dream, a senseless stream of soldiers marching
over a mosaic.}

Snape snatched himself free of that, and pushed further into the forest,
intending to find out whether Karkaroff had any memories of disabling
the Aurors and the fireplaces. But then Karkaroff's mind started
struggling, pushing against him, and the cold mist curled around his
legs and tried to force him out. Snape knew that he could stay in his
place, but not without damaging some of his victim's ability to
remember.

He snapped out of the trance, focused his eyes, and surprised an angry
expression on the other man's face.

``What do you think you are doing, Severus?'' hissed Karkaroff. He had
crossed his arms, as though that would help ward off the intrusion into
his thoughts. ``I told you, I no longer serve the Dark Lord. I have not
since the last war. What is the meaning of this?''

Snape narrowed his eyes. It was true that Karkaroff remembered only
dreams near the top of his mind, and that he had never been a good
actor. He would have had trouble concealing his true intentions, if he
really meant to betray the school. The memory of the Auror attack should
certainly have been floating among the first ones that Snape reached
for.

``There was an attack last night on the five Aurors patrolling this
school,'' he said coolly. ``The Aurors here to guard Harry Potter, who,
you will know, is my ward. I remember old raids, Igor, and I remember
that you were assigned to disable the guards and sentries whom the Dark
Lord thought it a waste to kill.'' \emph{Because you were good for
nothing else,} his memory added, in silent malice.

Karkaroff flushed, as though he'd heard the mocking words. ``And I've
changed,'' he retorted. ``Ask \emph{your ward} if he hasn't had several
conversations with me about this already.'' He drew himself up, though
that was a ridiculous gesture at this point, since he was shorter than
Snape was. ``I've had fourteen years to decide that, yes, I \emph{don't}
really like living as someone always marked---or Marked---and ready to
run. If the---the Dark Lord is returning, then I will help fight him.''
He ended with a shiver, but with his eyes burning with a determination
that Snape had to respect, never having seen it in him before.

Snape concealed a snarl. \emph{Harry did not mention that he had been
talking with him. It explains, at least, why Harry did not mention his
name as a suspect at once. He must not suspect him at all.}

\emph{But why should he not? He is a former Death Eater with a black
reputation---}

\emph{Rather like you, Severus?}

Snape hissed and wheeled away from the door. He wanted to find something
to fault Karkaroff's story, but his own Legilimency should have told him
if the man was lying, and he did not think he was.

\emph{People can change in a decade and more.}

Snape shook his head free of the thought, which was just a step up from
the kind of sentimental nonsense he'd felt when he stood trial before
the Wizengamot, and focused on the more important one. \emph{That means
there is still someone in the school who wishes Harry harm.}

``If I find you have done Harry harm, Igor---'' he whispered.

``You'll hunt me down. I know.'' Karkaroff actually looked bored as he
shut his door.

Snape made for his rooms, despite the fact that he knew he was too tense
to sleep. He still had a particularly bad batch of Potions essays to
mark, mostly by third-year Hufflepuffs, surely the stupidest bunch of
students in the school. Those in fourth year and above had some sense
about Potions, those in first and second were too awed of him to be very
stupid, but in third year all Hufflepuffs seemed to go quite mad and
scribble essays full of nonsense.

They would relax him if anything could, and prepare him to appear in
classes.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry was expecting the stares that morning. He had dictated the article
that he wanted Skeeter to write before letting her go. He marched
resolutely to the Slytherin table, appearing to ignore them, but this
time listening keenly to the murmurs that raced alongside him.

He took his seat with a faint smile. Most of the whispers were of the
``Does he really mean that?'' variety. But most of the students here had
also seen the Many's display two weeks ago, and knew that, yes, he was
serious. Harry poured himself a glass of pumpkin juice, pleased to
notice that his hand wasn't shaking. Publicity was not so bad if he
could control it.

\emph{And I have to do this. Voldemort is spreading his wings. I have to
be prepared to do the same.}

``Tell me you don't mean this,'' said Millicent, and slammed down the
paper in front of him.

Harry glanced calmly at the headline, which was on the second page.

\textbf{\emph{{HARRY POTTER TO FREE MAGICAL CREATURES.}}}

\emph{By: Rita Skeeter}

In an exclusive interview with the \emph{Prophet} last night, Mr. Harry
Potter, already famous for his exploits in the Triwizard Tournament this
year, revealed that he has great compassion for the magical creatures of
the wizarding world.

``Most of them are bound with webs,'' he explained. ``Webs to make them
docile, or make them serve us, or keep them from hurting us. Sometimes
simply webs to make them stay in one place so that we can look at them.
And nearly all the magical creatures I've met so far have webs like
this: house elves, unicorns, centaurs, Runespoors, merfolk---there's no
end to it.''

Asked who had established the webs, Potter said that they were ancient.

``I don't think it really matters who established them---who's to blame,
that is,'' he said. ``What matters is getting \emph{rid} of them. Most
magical creatures don't want to have a large amount of contact with the
wizarding world anyway, or they're open to negotiations about it.''

Potter should know if anyone would. He freed the Dementors last May,
sending them back into nightmares, and obliging the Ministry to find new
guards for Azkaban. He also confessed to having freed the unicorns who
lived in the Forbidden Forest outside Hogwarts, and added that he
considers using his immense power to break webs an important part of his
life's work\ldots{}

``Show him the article on the front page,'' Pansy whined, poking
Millicent with an elbow.

Millicent flipped back the page, and Harry winced at the headline there,
which bore Melinda Honeywhistle's byline.

\textbf{\emph{{MINISTRY PRISON ATTACKED, TWO DEATH EATERS ESCAPE}}}

Harry quickly skimmed the article, cursing under his breath. The only
good thing was that there had been no deaths. Though no one seemed to
recognize Rosier and Greyback as the raiders, they were quite sure that
they had broken into the prison, and freed Walden Macnair and Rabastan
Lestrange.

\emph{I should still send an owl to Scrimgeour about it,} he thought,
and then rubbed his eyes. \emph{Now I just have to remember it.}

``Something to do with you, too, isn't it?'' Draco, who'd just sat down
beside him, whispered in a low voice.

``Of course,'' said Harry with a sigh. He gave Draco a sideways glance.
``Sorry I couldn't involve you, but, well, it happened rather
suddenly.''

``I thought so,'' said Draco, and cocked his head, studying Harry
intently. ``If it had happened slowly enough for you to involve me, and
you didn't, then I would be upset.''

Harry nodded, understanding the message, and the import Draco was giving
it. Satisfied, Draco turned to eat his breakfast.

Regulus snickered in his head and said something extremely immature
which Harry didn't bother responding to.

He turned back to the plate of kippers, and breathed slowly. It wasn't
even all the stares coming his way that made him feel off-balance.
Events had seized him by the scruff of the neck last night and dragged
him forward, and now he felt as if he were in a race with Voldemort,
both seeing who could gather allies the fastest.

\emph{And maybe who can keep them,} Harry thought, as he remembered
Rosier's wink in the vision.

\emph{Stop thinking about him. He's crazy anyway. He only wants you to
imagine that he's important. Which doesn't answer the question of how he
could see you, but then, it doesn't answer any question about him.}

``\emph{Potter.}''

Harry jumped. Millicent had evidently been trying to get his attention
for a few minutes, because she leaned further forward and frowned at
him.

``I asked you if you really meant it,'' she said. ``If you really want
to free all magical creatures.''

Harry deliberately ate a kipper before he answered. ``Eventually,'' he
said. ``I think I explained how complicated it was in the article.''
He'd specifically told Skeeter to include that, how he didn't wish to
step on anyone's free will in undoing the webs. ``I know I can't just
run around freeing house elves all at once, for example. They'll
probably be the hardest case, and take me the longest. Except for
werewolves, maybe,'' he added with a frown, remembering the snarling
hatred Remus's wolf had held for him. ``Maybe I won't even achieve
everything I want before I die. But I've got a good start, and that
means that---''

``And that's your ultimate allegiance.'' Millicent's voice was flat.

Harry blinked. ``Not my \emph{ultimate} one. One of my allegiances. I do
want to free the magical creatures, yes. You knew that. Did you think
that I would abandon your family? I don't intend to. If you need to
tell---''

``We thought your ultimate allegiance was to the Dark.'' Pansy's voice
was a whisper as she leaned towards him. ``Or the Dark pureblood
families. They're your most prominent and closest allies, and you took
magic from the leader of the Light, Dumbledore. You're eventually going
to declare for the Dark, aren't you?''

Harry narrowed his eyes. ``I see we have a small problem,'' he said.

``I was in that meeting, Potter,'' Millicent breathed, making sure not a
word went further than her, Harry, Pansy, and Draco. ``I know that you
promised Arabella Zabini you'd never become a Light Lord.''

``Yes,'' said Harry. ``And I'm going to keep that promise.''

``But then,'' Pansy said, ``don't you \emph{have} to be---''

``Not really,'' said Harry, and turned back to his breakfast.

Their eyes remained on him. This time, Harry steadfastly refused to look
up at them because he was annoyed with them. \emph{I was sure they
understood. Millicent should have, after what she heard me say about
people being more important than magic. Or maybe they heard, but they
think they know better. I suppose I shouldn't have expected some of the
Dark skulls to be any less thick than some of the Light ones.}

He finished breakfast and hurried to Potions. He was composing the
letter to Scrimgeour in his mind as he went. Not only would he mention
Rosier's and Greyback's names and warn about Greyback's possible raids
in the north and Macnair and Rabastan's instructions to go after
books---he'd thought of a way to disguise the origin of the information,
since Scrimgeour already knew that Harry had a friend called Starborn
who sometimes passed him warnings---but he intended to warn Scrimgeour
about something else. It was only fair that the Minister know Harry
wanted the anti-werewolf legislation obliterated. The article he'd had
Skeeter write was a declaration of war, but this would be the formal
announcement.

Gazes trailed after him, and so did lingering, rushing whispers. Harry
put his head up and rode them all out, pushing away his terror of the
attention.

\emph{I'm actually looking forward to this,} he thought. \emph{Pansy,
and Dragonsbane through her, were right, in a way. If all of these
people give me power, even if it's a fickle, changeable power, they do
it by their own choice, and they take it away by choice, too. I ought to
use my fame to benefit my allies as much as I can.}

\chapter{Troubled the Twilight}\label{chapter-62-troubled-the-twilight}

Millicent waited, patiently, her hands linked together on her lap. Both
her parents would have been proud of her, she thought. Mother would have
said that her daughter was showing the calm determination that any good
pureblooded witch should, and Father would have sensed the busy activity
of her mind and nodded at her for concealing it.

Millicent's body was patient, but her mind was indeed racing around,
snatching at ideas and dragging them forward.

\emph{I knew that Harry might have some allegiances to magical
creatures. Of course I did. It isn't surprising.}

\emph{But I thought he only wanted to free\ldots{}centaurs, and
unicorns, and all the others who might be pretty but aren't really} good
\emph{for anything. I didn't realize that he was mad enough to want to
free house elves.}

The door she was listening for opened. Millicent sat up a bit and peered
towards the stairs. Draco came down first, of course, turning around and
talking to Harry, who walked behind him. Harry had been a bit warier
since yesterday, when he had begun to realize that not everyone greeted
his announcement with wide smiles and gestures of surrender.

``Potter,'' said Millicent, not indicating anything by her tone. She
would use his surname instead, and then Harry would know that she was
angry with him. ``I want to speak with you.''

Draco turned around, hovering between her and Harry like he was a bloody
dragon. Millicent rolled her eyes. \emph{It's not as though he needs
protection from his own Housemates. I just want to ask him a few simple
questions.}

``Of course, Millicent,'' said Harry, stepping around Draco. His
expression was blank, more neutral than it was usually, but his voice
was utterly polite. ``What did you want to talk with me about?''

``Oh, you know very well.'' Millicent folded her arms.

``I'm afraid not.'' Harry looked as he sometimes had in second year, an
impression that the unnerving lack of emphasis in his words only added
to. ``You're the one who began the conversation, so you're the one who
should introduce the subject, properly speaking, Millicent.''

Millicent took a deep breath. Speaking so directly went against all her
instincts as a Slytherin, but though a few people were watching their
conversation, as always, most were at breakfast already. \emph{Really,
boys are always so abominably late.} ``Your little declaration of war in
the paper yesterday,'' she said. ``I want to know if you mean to free
house elves.''

Harry tilted his head. ``I intend everything that I said in that
article, Millicent.''

\emph{Not working.} Millicent narrowed her eyes. ``I want to know your
schedule, Potter. How soon do you intend to free house elves?''

``I don't know,'' said Harry. ``It'll depend on the individual free
wills of the wizards involved.'' His face grew more animated now, and
Draco, who had been looking as though he wanted to hex Millicent,
relaxed a bit. ``I want to persuade them to release them, or get their
permission to cut the webs.''

``Don't you need the elves' permission, too?'' Millicent forced an arch
tone into her voice. ``I would think you would want it, since you're so
big on magical creatures having their own way.''

``They wear a web that makes them think they like slavery, as well as
one to make them serve.'' Harry's eyes had a depth and clarity that she
had never seen before, not even the day they went into the Forest to
visit his little nest of snakes. ``When I cut the one, then yes, they
want to be free. One of Mr. Malfoy's house elves had a raveled web, and
I was able to make out that he had more free will than the other elves,
too. He begged me to free him. I did.''

Millicent felt a deep thrill of terror move through her veins. If what
Harry was saying was true, then that meant house elves might strike back
at the wizards and witches when released, as vengeance for their long
imprisonment.

``That's---it'll change too much.'' Millicent swept her hand in a circle
around the Slytherin common room. ``Do you know how much of the labor in
Hogwarts is done by house elves, Potter?''

``I have some idea, yes,'' said Harry. Millicent had often thought him
insufferable, but never more so than now, now that he was just refusing
to get angry. ``I did research on it when I was working out a way to
free Dobby. They cook the meals, do the laundry, clean our bedrooms and
all the other rooms, tend the fires, dust, take care of any items that
we don't want anymore, light the torches, return lost items to their
owners, care for our---''

``So you must see,'' Millicent interrupted, ``what a great change you'll
be producing.'' Her skin crawled at the thought of what would have
happened the night Marian was born, if they hadn't had house elves to
change and clean the bed. Mother might have died before they were able
to save her. ``You can't want that, Potter. You benefit from everything
that they do, too.''

``I know,'' said Harry. ``I'm as guilty as everyone else. And the most I
can do right now is try to persuade other witches and wizards that
things will be better with elves freed.''

``But they won't,'' said Millicent. ``And, anyway, Potter, if you wanted
to, you could make freeing their house elves part of the price of
alliance with pureblood families. Or you could use your magic to
\emph{make} them free them.'' She supposed she was pushing in a stupid
direction, but anything that would wake Harry from his calm
contemplation was something to be desired. He couldn't be aware of the
consequences to what he was saying. He just couldn't.

Harry stilled for a moment. His eyes at last burned, but not with the
emotion that Millicent had wanted to see there. Instead, he simply
looked angry and half-contemptuous, as if he would scorn her, but
understood too well what had motivated her to act as she had. Millicent
had got that look from her mother sometimes during her childhood. She'd
always hated it.

Harry said in clipped tones, ``I'll never do that, Millicent. The whole
point of this is to do it without stepping on anyone's free will. If a
family voluntarily offered to give up their house elves, I'd take the
offer gladly. Until then, all I can try is persuasion.''

``But you aren't going to \emph{win}.'' Millicent hammered the point home
with a sharp tap of her voice on the final word. She hated the thought
of Harry pouring half his power and time down the hole of a useless
cause. He had enough battles to fight that were going to take all his
concentration and perseverance.

Harry snorted at her. ``You can't know that,'' he said. ``Maybe I can
win.'' He stepped around her and made his way towards the door. Draco
was talking to him about Karkaroff before they got out of the common
room.

Millicent stared after him. She still thought that it was useless, that
Harry would fail. House elves were a necessity, not a luxury, to keep
places like Hogwarts and most pureblood family homes running. She was
sure that he would lose.

On the other hand, she'd also thought that he would acknowledge his ties
with the Bulstrode family to be more important than he'd so far showed
he thought them, and that he would say he chose the Dark pureblood
families first and foremost, over any of his other allies. They'd given
him the most, so far. Surely he should feel the claims of a reciprocal
obligation. And she'd been wrong.

She briefly envisioned a future where Harry had won, and changed her
family along with the rest of the world, and made them \emph{like} the
change. And he wouldn't have accomplished it with compulsion or any of
the other forcing magic he could have used. He would have accomplished
it with their full compliance.

Millicent shuddered, and swallowed. Then she turned towards the Owlery.
She could miss breakfast to send a letter to her father. She badly
wanted his reassurance. She'd been wrong so far about what she thought
Harry would do. Maybe he thought about it differently.

\emph{He did say that we couldn't lose him no matter what happened. I
thought that he meant he didn't want Harry dying in battle or going to
Light families, but maybe he meant that we can't lose him because of
what he could do for us, rather than just because of what he could do
for someone else. What he could do for us with our full and loving
cooperation, even.}

Millicent lengthened her stride. She would ask.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Pansy disdained Millicent's tactics. She didn't know why the other girl
had chosen the Slytherin common room to speak to Harry. It was exactly
the wrong environment. Of course Harry would hurry out of the
conversation, not wanting to be late to class. And of course he would
say some things, whatever they were, that turned Millicent's face a very
unhealthy shade of pale.

And Draco was with him. That was the biggest mistake. Harry always spoke
more confidently if Draco was there. Pansy thought he spoke those things
whether or not he \emph{meant} them. With a little persuasion, a little
luck, and a little contrivance, then he might be pressed to admit any
insecurities, if he had them.

The persuasion would have to come from Pansy herself, but the luck came
from Professor Karkaroff releasing them early from Defense Against the
Dark Arts, so that they didn't have to run quite as hard to their next
class, and the contrivance came from Blaise, who still rolled his eyes
at Harry and Draco most of the time. Pansy got him to agree to drop
behind and ask Draco a series of flattering questions. Draco, caught up
in the novelty of Blaise actually wanting to listen to what he had to
say, fell for it like a Squib woman for a pureblood wizard.

That left Harry walking by himself, listening behind him with an amused
ear, and Pansy falling into step beside him, as if by chance.

``Harry.''

Harry's head shot up, his eyes turned to her, and, to her surprise, he
shut his eyes and groaned. ``Not you, too,'' he said.

Pansy narrowed her eyes. \emph{Did someone already try this way of
getting him alone?} ``What do you mean?''

``You want to talk to me about that bloody article, too,'' said Harry.
``I'm sure of it. That's all anyone wants to talk to me about today,
except Draco.'' He frowned at her. ``Well, say your piece. I'm sure that
you'll have a few pertinent points to make, even though they're no
different from anyone else's.''

Pansy tossed her head. She wasn't about to back down just because she'd
been caught, however. ``I just wanted to know how you could do this,
Harry. I can see allying with some of the magical creatures, the ones
who could be useful in battle, and of course I want you to work on
freeing the werewolves, so that my mother can find some way to escape
her curse.'' She kept her voice low on that last; Hawthorn Parkinson's
condition was still not common knowledge, or she would have been forced
to go to the Ministry and register long before now. ``But \emph{all} of
them? Really, why? I don't understand.'' \emph{Oh, I understand, but that
talk about free will is a romantic vision that I would never have
expected of him. He's never shown any inclination to offer ``free will''
to the Light families, and he doesn't just dash about tearing webs
randomly. It has to be something different. I can understand saying that
so he'd look good for the article, but his real motive has to be
something else.}

Harry's anger bled away. Pansy wondered what she'd said, and whether she
should try to find out for future reference. It was true, of course,
that Draco had told Harry he loved him and they'd somehow both survived
it, but his tricks with Harry weren't a set that Pansy could
imitate---unless Harry really did get tired of Draco someday and looked
elsewhere for a bit of companionship.

Harry's voice recalled her from her wondering. ``I mean to offer freedom
to as many people as I can, Pansy, in the end. That includes Light
families, and it includes Light magical creatures, and it includes the
ones who want to be free but don't want to fight with us---so long as
their vision of freedom doesn't involve stepping on the free will of
others, of course. If they do that, or if they join Voldemort and fight
at his side, then I'll battle them, too. But I can't know until I ask,
can I?'' He paused, then added, ``That's the reason for the publicity of
the article, too. Everyone deserves to know what's coming. I don't want
to sneak up on people, not with this. I want them to know what I'm
saying, and what I'm asking, and what I stand for.'' He smiled.
``Offering so many possibilities to so many people is the thing I'm most
serious about.''

Pansy gnawed her lip. She \emph{had} wanted to know why Harry had so
suddenly struck out for publicity after shunning it. But that wasn't her
main concern.

``You don't want to just do what's useful, then,'' she said.

Harry shook his head.

``Then you want to do what's right?'' Pansy wasn't sure how she felt
about that. Of course, she knew Harry wasn't some idiotic Gryffindor,
but she'd thought he was acting more Slytherin since he took the old
fool's magic from him. And if he wasn't, if he did want to do what most
people thought of as right, then she wondered if he really knew how the
wizarding world was liable to look at him. Light was a synonym for
``good'' in most wizards' minds, even where it wasn't. The Dark families
and wizards had been a political minority for a long time. Conform to
Light standards in any way, and Harry was stepping into a slavery that
wouldn't let him go.

Harry shook his head. ``There's no convenient word for what I want to do.
\emph{Vates} comes closest, maybe. Is there a \emph{vates} for wizards
and witches as well as for magical creatures?'' He shrugged.

``But a \emph{vates} is someone who unbinds magical creatures.'' Pansy had
studied a bit over the summer, since her mother had insisted that she
understand certain key concepts anew. She'd had to learn more than how
the Dark families had lost power to the Light families over the
centuries, more than the history of Dark Lords and Ladies. ``That much,
I know.''

Harry shrugged again. ``I told you, there's no name for it. Freedom and
possibility, and I want to offer those even to the people who oppose me.
At least they'll know what they're doing. Then, if they choose to fight
me, I can fight them, too, with a clear conscience.''

Pansy shook her head slowly. She wasn't sure if that was better or worse
than what she had suspected Harry of doing: acting Slytherin and Dark.
``Do remember that if you do something the newspapers disapprove of,
they can as easily flay you alive as applaud you, and then there will be
an awful lot of people angry with you,'' she murmured.

``I know that,'' said Harry. ``That's why I'm not going to depend on
just the newspapers.'' He turned around and dropped back smoothly, and
Draco joined him, giving Pansy a suspicious glance.

Pansy had said what she wanted to say. She went down the corridor, her
brain busily working. Perhaps she would owl her mother later and ask for
her opinion, but she believed she already knew what Hawthorn would say,
because she knew what Dragonsbane would say. On this subject, and always
assuming that Harry was sincere and really did know something about the
way the world worked, her parents would speak as one.

\emph{Leave him to it. There is no one else in the world who can
understand what magic he is doing so well as the wizard who does it. And
do you really think that you could stop him anyway?}

Pansy shook her head ruefully. \emph{All right. So the project's much
bigger, and Harry's much more complicated, than I ever thought him. I
believed he was becoming more Slytherin by deciding to take advantage of
his fame and draining Dumbledore's magic, but maybe those were just
steps along a much longer road. And he doesn't even seem to care if he
dies before he reaches the end of it.}

\emph{Best leave him to it.}

She did add one phrase to the end of that sentence, one that she thought
neither of her parents would dispute. \emph{And do what I can to help.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry sighed and pulled his plate out from under the ashes of the eighth
Howler he'd received that evening. He determinedly went on eating as the
voice ranted and raved around his head, demanding to know what he
thought he was doing by insisting that wizards give up house elves.

Regulus made sarcastic comments in his head the while. \emph{Insisting
that they become less like the pompous windbags they are and learn some
simple cleaning charms is more like it.}

Harry managed a half-hearted smile, but he was far less amused than he
appeared. Draco and Regulus, at least, could feel it. Regulus made a
wordless sound of sympathy, and Draco leaned across to whisper to him,
``What's the matter?''

``I didn't expect \emph{this} much attention,'' Harry whispered back.

He had been sure that the article was the best step yesterday, that his
possible opposition deserved to know what he was doing so that they
could respond. A political machination might be hidden, or a simple
alliance. But what Harry wanted to do was larger than that, and he had
no intention whatsoever of hiding that he wanted freedom for magical
creatures.

It seemed he'd underestimated how many other wizards \emph{didn't} want
freedom for magical creatures.

He wondered for a moment, dismally, how many Howlers he'd received that
day.

\emph{Thirty-two}, Regulus answered promptly. \emph{And you've had
seventeen conversations trying to explain what you meant, and received
about seven hundred odd looks.}

Harry nodded. Then he sighed as another post owl bore towards his table,
wondering who could be writing to him now. At least the envelope this
owl carried wasn't red.

It landed beside him, and Harry caught his breath as he recognized the
official Ministry crest on the seal. Of course Scrimgeour would respond
that way, rather than as the Head of the Auror Office. Harry kept
forgetting his new position, even if he \emph{had} helped him achieve it
in some small way. Scrimgeour was busy cleaning up the Ministry, from
all accounts, sacking and hiring like mad, and had not yet had time to
turn his attention to the outer wizarding world except for the most
important things, like the incidents after the Second Task.

As he opened the letter, Harry wondered if his message about the Death
Eaters' probable attacks had changed that, and redirected the Minister's
focus.

\emph{Dear Mr. Potter:}

\emph{I would like to thank you for your invaluable warnings. Your
dangerous friend has risked his life to gather this information, you
said, and I can well believe it. Now that we know that one of the
raiders was Fenrir Greyback, we can guess how he penetrated the wards
around the prison. They were not guarded against a werewolf's nose. That
has been corrected. As for his attacks in the north, we will warn
northern wizarding families, though without specifics we can do no more
than that. Please let me know if you uncover any other details.}

\emph{I must admit I was rather surprised at your article in the paper
yesterday. I shouldn't be, since you often have the effect of producing
sudden and unexpected shocks, but this one was from a direction so
unexpected that it astounded me. Free all the magical creatures, Mr.
Potter? I think you know the general state of regard for nonhumans in
wizarding Britain, and even for those unfortunate individuals born human
but afflicted with a curse like lycanthropy.}

\emph{I must know what you expect me to do about the anti-werewolf
legislation. Fine words about free will aside, you know that you could
interfere with the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical
Creatures quite easily. You have already done so, in fact, using the
Starrise boy as your stand-in. This became obvious once Umbridge was
removed from power completely.}

\emph{As odious as Dolores Umbridge is and was, you were mucking about
in my Ministry. I have warned you about that. (I think you should also
find a better tool to use than Tybalt Starrise, as the boy is utterly
wild and will not follow the rules no matter what happens, but that is
neither here nor there).}

\emph{I understand your motives and your emotions. I could wish I did
not understand them so well, since that makes my duty harder than it
should be.}

\emph{Do it again, Mr. Potter, and you may consider me your enemy.}
\emph{The Ministry should remain a place for ordinary wizards. I will
tolerate no Lords interfering in it. Leave the softening of the
anti-werewolf laws to me. I intend to bring them back down to what they
were before Cornelius in his fear pushed them to a ridiculous height,
but} I \emph{intend to do it. Your urging only raises my hackles.}

\emph{Rufus Scrimgeour,}

\emph{Minister of Magic.}

Harry had lost his appetite entirely. He stood, pushing his chair back
from the table, and made for the door of the Great Hall.

Draco caught up with him before he'd left, of course. ``Problem?'' he
inquired lightly.

Harry handed him the Minister's letter without speaking and bowed his
head. He had a dull pulse of regret working in his throat. He had not
even considered that sending Tybalt Starrise and John Smythe-Blyton
after Umbridge would constitute interfering in the Ministry. He had
simply done it, determined to stop the hunting of the Many, and roused
Scrimgeour against him as a result. He could not say that he'd not been
warned, not when he'd known Scrimgeour's feeling about Lords in the
Ministry from their first meeting.

\emph{It's stupid,} said Regulus in his head. \emph{He's reacting to
something that happened even before he became Minister. And he's mucked
around himself, hasn't he? What's he so upset about?}

\emph{That was him,} Harry thought back in misery. \emph{A Ministry
person, someone who would give his life to defend it---or at least what
he thinks it could be, if it was under the proper guidance. And I think
he did try to ignore it as long as he could; the letter implies that by
saying that my deception became obvious once Umbridge was out of power.}

\emph{Deception? Do you really regret what you did?}

Harry sighed. \emph{No. But I regret making him angry, and I regret what
it may cost us in the future.}

Regulus made a disgusted sound. \emph{You're too young to be thinking
about this, Harry. Politics and compromise and the be-damned Ministry.
You should be thinking about Quidditch and classes instead.}

\emph{No Quidditch this year, and I skim through classes, you know that.
My mother foresaw that. She couldn't teach me everything, but she wanted
me to be as prepared as I could be, so that I could devote more time to
guarding Connor and less to worrying about schoolwork.}

``What are you going to reply?'' Draco asked quietly, handing the letter
back to Harry. He tucked it into his robe pocket.

``I don't know,'' he responded, just as quietly. ``Not yet. I'll have to
think about it. After all, I don't intend to stop pushing for an end to
the discrimination against werewolves. I don't want to alienate
Scrimgeour---Merlin knows this would be an easier battle with him on our
side---but I think I'm going to end up doing it anyway.''

Draco half-closed his eyes and shook his head. ``Sometimes I think you
\emph{should} act more Slytherin, Harry,'' he murmured. ``Couldn't you
just promise him that you won't push right now, and then do it later? Or
offer him a compromise, a trade, doing something he'll want in exchange
for his softening anti-werewolf laws?''

``Both of those would only make him distrust me more in the end,'' Harry
pointed out. ``And I don't think he'd believe me, anyway. He knows me,
and he's an honest politician. We have an honest Minister at last,
Draco, someone who really does want the Ministry to do what it's
supposed to do.'' \emph{I just never thought one of the things he wanted
the Ministry to do would be this.}

``Trust you to find the one honest politician in Britain, Harry.'' Draco
shook his head in mock regret. Then he reached out and clenched his hand
on Harry's shoulder. ``I'll help you.''

That he didn't specify what he would help with made the offer more
precious to Harry. He lifted his hand and squeezed back, enjoying
Draco's look of delighted surprise. It still wasn't often that Harry
made a move to return one of his touches. ``Thank you, Draco.''

They went to their room then, and Harry felt contented for the half
minute it took him to identify the stink of a Dungbomb. Several
Dungbombs, probably. He put a hand over his nose and stared at his bed,
which was soaked with the odor and the remains of the bombs. A mocking
message floated above the bed, written in green letters that Harry
couldn't help comparing to the light that created the Dark Mark and
\emph{Avada Kedavra.}

\emph{Welcome to a world without house elves, Potter!}

Harry sighed, then coughed as the odor infiltrated his lungs. He
supposed he should have expected something like this. Conversations and
odd looks were not enough to express some of the students' antipathy
towards him, and all the Howlers so far had come from outside the
school. He cast several spells to remove the odor and clean the sheets,
then paused and eyed his bed thoughtfully. The mocking message vanished
along with the rest as he considered the idea that had just come into
his head, and reconsidered his conversation with Millicent from this
morning.

\emph{Yes. Why not? I'm a wizard.}

\emph{Harry---}Regulus complained in his head.

Harry shook his head at him. \emph{You were the one who said that people
who didn't want to use simple cleaning charms were a lot of pompous
windbags.}

He sat on the bed, and only then turned to face Draco. To his surprise,
Draco's hands were locked into fists, and he was shaking.

``If I knew who did this, I'd kill them,'' he whispered.

Harry rolled his eyes and leaned back, sniffing carefully. No, no trace
of the odor. That spell would do nicely, he thought. ``It was just a
Dungbomb, Draco. Or Dungbombs. And a message. That's all.''

``But it must have been one of the older Slytherin students,'' Draco
insisted, sitting down on his own bed with a thunderous frown. ``They're
the only ones who would have a chance of access to our rooms.''

Harry rolled his eyes. ``I don't think so, not for certain,'' he said,
thinking of the Weasley twins. ``Listen, Draco, it's all right---''

``It is \emph{not}.'' Draco lunged upright and glared at him. ``You
shouldn't have to endure this treatment!''

Harry raised his eyebrows. ``But I asked to endure it, didn't I, with
that article? Complaining about it would only let people see that it
bothers me. Besides, they gave me an idea. Don't you want to hear what
it is?''

Draco paused for a long moment, obviously conflicted between that and
the need to keep urging revenge on Harry, and finally said, grumpily,
``Yes.''

``I'm going to put a ward around my bed so that no house elves can touch
my things,'' said Harry firmly. ``Then I'll use cleaning spells on my
own sheets and robes, and care for my own part of the room.'' He
concentrated, remembering the blue cage of light he'd used on Dobby when
he first met him, and one of them sprang into being around his bed.
Harry stretched out a hand and passed it through the barrier, which
didn't hinder him at all. He smiled at Draco's stunned expression.
``Humans can still get to it, but no house elves.''

``But why are you doing this?''

``Because I do depend on house elves for plenty of things I can do
myself, and I really shouldn't.'' Harry squinted thoughtfully at the
ceiling of his four-poster. ``I'm not sure what to do about things like
the torches and the fires and the meals. I can't cook very well, and
conjured filled isn't very filling. And I can't insist that everyone
else light their own fires and so on just because I want to live that
way.''

``But don't you expect me to do it?''

Harry frowned at Draco. ``Of course not. Why would I? This is my
decision, but you know that you're free to do whatever you want. That's
always been true, Draco.''

Draco climbed into his bed and tugged his curtains shut. Harry
hesitated, thinking about calling out to him, but in the end he shook
his head and let it go. He was more exhausted than he had realized he
would be. Dealing with the Howlers and the stares and the conversations
and this prank was enough without dealing with an angry Draco as well,
angry for one of those reasons that Harry had to just leave him to be
angry about, because Draco would bounce back from it more easily than
Harry could understand it.

Usually, at least.

Harry ran his last words through his head again, and then sighed.
\emph{I said he could do whatever he wanted. He probably imagined that I
was implying some sort of disregard for him with that, like it doesn't
matter to me what he does.}

\emph{This normal thing is hard. There's so much I don't understand
about what normal people want and think and need.}

Harry hesitated a long moment, and then climbed out of his bed and
padded over to Draco's. A tug on the curtains revealed a startled and
blinking Draco, trying to muster a scowl and not succeeding very well.

``Listen,'' said Harry, leaning on one of the bedposts so he could study
Draco. ``I didn't mean you don't matter to me. You do matter.'' Terror
crawled up his spine, but he managed to go on. ``I was thinking the
other day about what it meant to me that Snape might have used
compulsion on you on purpose. I got angry.''

``You always do that when you think about compulsion.'' But Draco had
inched a little nearer the edge of the bed and was looking at him
intently.

``But I got angrier than usual,'' said Harry. ``Angrier than I would
have---'' \emph{Merlin, this is hard.} ``If he'd used it on Millicent or
Neville or Luna,'' he finished in a rush. ``I thought you should know
that. What you do matters to me.'' That was easier, because he'd already
said it. ``You're more important to me than a lot of people, Draco. I
don't know if I should want it to be like that, since I'm supposed to
give equal weight to everyone, but that's the way it is.'' Harry looked
away, tense and miserable. It \emph{was} true, but he often wondered
what it meant, that he gave Draco preferment in the way he'd once given
Connor. At least he'd known that putting his brother before so many
other people was right, and permissible. Here, he was floundering along
on a muddy road, and he knew some of his allies would be displeased with
him for thinking of Draco first, before them.

Draco reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. Harry hunched before
he could help himself. It felt too intimate right after he'd made a
confession like this, too much like something he wanted.

Draco pulled his hand back. ``Thank you, Harry,'' he said softly.

Harry didn't have empathy, but there was no mistaking the depth of
gratitude in those three words. He nodded and walked back to his bed,
climbing into it and leaning his head back. He was more exhausted than
before.

He had to wake up and face another day like this tomorrow. And, from
certain stern glances he'd got today, Harry was pretty sure that
Dumbledore would break his long silence and approach him about the
article soon. And now he'd started doubting that what he'd done was the
right course, after all. Perhaps he should have waited to launch an
article like that.

Harry closed his eyes. \emph{I'm so tired.}

\emph{Then go to sleep.} Regulus's voice was gentle. \emph{Nothing to
hurt you here.}

Harry remembered his scar, but he was so exhausted---as much by the
thought of the future as by the thought of the present---that he curled
up and took Regulus's advice.

\chapter{Interlude: Son of Mine}\label{chapter-63-interlude-son-of-mine}

\emph{February 22nd, 1995}

\emph{Dear Harry:}

It's quiet here. I don't think I've ever realized how quiet. Snow is
melting from the fall we had last night, and I can hear the drops of
water coasting down the sides of the house in between my own heartbeats.

I could liven up the silence, but I find I don't want to. I sit and look
out the windows for at least half an hour each morning, using the sight
to relax me and fortify my mind for the day. Even in the winter, Lux
Aeterna is beautiful: a stern place, of stone and sere grass, but
shining like a mountain. I almost don't want to look away from the sight
of the courtyards and the yew trees all draped in snow.

Then I go up to the study, and write any letters I need to, and begin
reading. I've ordered books on modern Auror training and the history of
the last ten years from Flourish and Blotts. I said once that I wanted
to become an Auror again, join the fight against Voldemort, but it's
painfully obvious that I can't do that until I know what they do
differently now. Ten years of ignoring the outside world left me
woefully behind, and the official Ministry pamphlets are no help at all.
(They never were. They trick trainees in by promising them a life of
fame and respect without mentioning all the hard work. Half the wizards
and witches I trained with never made it past the first two months).

It's fascinating work, though hard. I practice the dueling spells by
myself, and it's a good thing that some of my study includes healing
spells. Not only are they useful in the field, they help me when I'm
recovering from a hex bounced off one of my own shields.

Precisely at noon, the brownies serve me a light lunch; this never
varies. Then I go flying outside. It's the active equivalent of the
staring I do in the morning, I think. It suspends me in chill air above
the grounds, which are all white and silver metal laid out below me.
February changes this country more than any other month. I find it hard
to hold on to any discouraging thoughts that might have crept in during
my morning study, like ones mocking my hope of becoming an Auror again
at all.

Then I return to my study, though usually I spend more time with history
in the afternoon. A light tea comes at two, and dinner at five'o'clock.
Then I write until I go to bed.

I'm not sure I should tell you what I'm writing yet. It might sound
wrong. But this is a description of my daily routine, which I wrote
because I didn't know what else to write.

Sincerely,

\emph{James Potter.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{February 24th, 1995}

\emph{Dear James:}

Thank you for the description of your day. This is the kind of thing I
want to know about you: simple, seemingly nonsensical things that will
give me a glimpse into who you are when you're not trying to just be a
father to Connor and me.

I could try to give you the same courtesy, but it would be silly because
my days are so varied. I wake up at almost the same time every day, eat
breakfast, go to class, eat lunch, go to more classes, and eat dinner.
Those are usually the only things that are remotely the same. Oh, and
Draco's always with me. That's the same, too.

Sometimes I study. Sometimes I teach lessons. Sometimes I have tense
conversations that usually teach me more about the other person than
they learn about me by the time they're done. Sometimes I free magical
creatures. Lately it seems I've spent a lot of time listening to people
complain about their love lives. Connor complains to me about his
girlfriend, and Blaise moans that {his} girlfriend is too
temperamental---she's a Weasley, and she stands up to him as well as her
brothers---and Hermione rattles on at me about her jealous boyfriend. I
offer advice that they never take. Of course, perhaps I'm not in the
best position to be offering advice, but they act as if they want it.
Mine mostly consists of being honest, which is too hard for most of
them, and, Merlin knows, nearly too hard for me most of the time.

I want to know what you write every evening after dinner.

Sincerely,

\emph{Harry.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{March 1st, 1995}

\emph{Dear Harry:}

I'm sorry for the delay in responding. I found myself nervous, and
hesitated for a long time before I wrote anything at all. That's a joke,
considering how much I write every day anyway, until my hand cramps, but
it's the truth.

I write about you and Connor. I want to put down all the memories I have
of you. Sometimes I just make lists: what I remember you doing on your
birthdays, how fast you two could run, how many books were in your room
at Godric's Hollow. Sometimes I try to cast the memories into a story,
so that someone looking over my shoulder could read it as if it happened
very far away and long ago. (The longest, and the one I'm proudest of,
is a retelling of a wizarding legend with the two of you as the heroes).

Sometimes I think about everything I've forgotten, and then try to
remember it. Those entries are the messiest, and they degenerate into a
scrawl quickly. I usually give up on them and go to bed early on those
nights.

Is it all right to ask how you feel about the newspaper articles? I know
the {Daily Prophet} won't stop yammering about you.

Sincerely,

\emph{James Potter.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{March 4th, 1995}

\emph{Dear James:}

Thank you for telling me. I don't know if you would like to show me the
book that you've written those memories in, or even if I would like to
read it, but it helps to know that someone is writing down the memories
of our childhoods.

Yes, the newspaper articles are annoying, but I'm bearing up under them.
Really, they're more tiresome than anything else. The Howlers are worse,
but even {they} are more tiresome than not. People have a perfect right
to object to me, and who could stop them? I can see why some people
think I'm taking the glory away from Connor.

Connor doesn't think I'm taking anything away, though. He scowls when
most people mention the Tournament, so they shut up. Or perhaps that's
pity for him having been laid up in the hospital wing for so long. I
don't know for certain. Perhaps I shall mention that possibility to him
and see where it leads.

Fewer people speak to me about their love lives, now. Connor is still
dancing around Parvati Patil, but Zacharias and Hermione had an argument
that ended with her slapping him, and Ginny Weasley hexed Blaise for one
remark too many about her brothers. Finally, some peace!

What do you dream about?

Sincerely,

\emph{Harry.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{March 8th, 1995}

\emph{Dear Harry:}

I dream about a lot of things.

At night, I mostly dream nonsense. I always did. I know that some people
have the most amazing, connected, story-like dreams, but that's not a
gift I possess. The other night there were wooden gargoyles chasing me
while I wielded a diamond sword. The night before {that}, I was trying
desperately to find a box that would keep me from turning into a cat,
and I know there were also dragons in there somewhere, but it's as much
as I remember.

During the day, I concentrate on my ambitions of becoming an Auror
again. The more I learn, the more it seems I have to learn. I'm studying
law now. How many edicts did the Ministry pass in the last ten years,
anyway? And do they really expect all their Aurors to be conversant with
{every} single one of them? Sometimes it seems that way.

When writing, I dream about you and Connor.

Sweet dreams, Harry.

Sincerely,

\emph{James Potter.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{March 15th, 1995}

\emph{Dear James:}

Now it's my turn to be nervous about writing you a letter, but I thought
I owed you this much honesty for being so honest with me. I dream quite
a lot, and I can't remember the last time I had a normal one. Or maybe I
do have normal ones, and they just shred before I wake up.

I keep having visions of the Dark Lord. I see him---or, at least, I see
the place where he's sitting---and his Death Eaters. So far, it's an
advantage, because I can hear his plans, and he doesn't seem to notice
me. But listening to his voice is disgusting. When I wake, my scar
bleeds and my head hurts. It happens every single time, and I can't
account for it. You'd think I'd get used to it at some point. At least
I'm tolerating the headaches now. You should hear Draco fuss about them.
It quite fulfils my quota of pointless fussing for the day.

Not that anyone else believes I've reached that quota. Blaise apologized
to Ginny, and now they're happy again, so he complains about Ron almost
hexing him in the corridors. Parvati said something cutting to Connor,
so he mopes at me. The only really amusing romance is watching Zacharias
try to take a seat at Hermione's table in the library without her
noticing him. He waits until she's deep in a book and then sneaks over.
She always notices him and moves. It's like a very slow game of musical
chairs.

I'm not sure why I'm everyone's romantic woe repository. Perhaps because
I listen well?

Is the landscape around Lux Aeterna changing now that there's less snow?

Sincerely,

\emph{Harry.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{March 17th, 1995}

\emph{Dear Harry:}

Have you been to see Madam Pomfrey about your headache or your scar
bleeding? I'm honored that you gave me your confidence about your
visions, so I know that I have no right to press you, but if she could
help you at all\ldots{} I don't like to think of you suffering.

The landscape around Lux Aeterna looks oddly fragile right now. The
first bits of grass are stirring, but they always get buried again by a
faint snowfall or a frantic rain. The severe gray and silver grids are
gone. The landscape wavers back and forth between mud and dirt. I
remember loving this time of year when I was a boy. It made me think
that spring was coming every day.

I changed into Prongs and ran today along the beach where we performed
the Midsummer ritual. I'd forgotten how much I love running as a stag.
The sheer song of the wind in my ears and the weight of antlers on my
head and scent in my nostrils is something I should really always
remember when I change back to human, but I don't.

Afraid I can't help you much on the romantic front! I was always the one
who poured out his woes into other people's ears. Remus was the one who
had to hear them.

Sincerely,

\emph{James Potter.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{March 22nd, 1995}

\emph{Dear James:}

You've probably heard about my having a bunch of snakes come into the
Great Hall and hiss at people by now. But they're {free}. Free, and I
shattered the web on them! And it was a great day in other respects,
too. Regulus came back! And something else happened that, well, it's
important, but I think I'd rather hold the joy to myself for a while
yet, because it still makes me nervous.

There's so much beauty in the world, Dad.

Did you perform a special Light ritual for the birth of spring?

Sincerely,

\emph{Harry.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{March 27th, 1995}

\emph{Dear Harry:}

Thank you very much for your last letter, Harry. It means the world to
me to know that you're happy.

For the birth of spring, there is a ritual, but it's one that each
member of a Light family has to perform by himself. It's silence around
the moment of sunset, when there's equal Light and Dark, day and night,
for a single poised instant of time. For that moment, we remember the
ancient time when Light and Dark didn't war with each other. We're
dedicated to our Declared side the rest of the year, but we can pause
and step outside the year just once.

I performed that ritual on the beach, too, and though it shouldn't have
felt silent with the sea sighing and crashing all around me and gulls
screaming in my ears, the absence of a single human voice really did
matter.

I hope you continue happy.

Sincerely,

\emph{James Potter.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{April 4th, 1995}

\emph{Dear James:}

I suppose you've heard about my article by now, and the attack on the
Ministry prison. I dreamed about it, but I couldn't warn anyone in time
to prevent it. I thought the article would be a good first step, but now
I'm getting pelted by Howlers and Dungbombs.

I'm cleaning my own clothes and blankets now, because I thought it would
set a good example to not have house elves serving me. (They're all up
in arms about house elves---most of the people I've upset, I mean. I
didn't foresee that). I haven't decided what to do about meals yet.

I never realized that I would {upset} everyone so much. That wasn't my
intention. Some discomfort if they fought against me, sure, but I
thought I could approach them on rational ground. Apparently not.

A few Slytherins are urging me to retract the article, but I won't. I do
think I need a little time to recover, though. I'm so exhausted with
dealing with everyone every day that I need a place where no one can
come up to me and start a debate on the morals of freeing house elves.
And being away from the romantic fits would be a fringe benefit.

Could I come to Lux Aeterna for Easter?

Sincerely,

\emph{Harry.}

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{April 6th, 1995}

\emph{Dear Harry:}

You are more than welcome here. I am proud of you for standing up what
you believe in, but I can understand the need to retreat for a few weeks
and build up your tolerance for stupidity.

Connor has already written and told me he'd come, because he wants to
give me a piece of his mind. Whether for that or any other reason, I am
always happy to have you near me.

Sincerely,

\emph{James Potter.}

\chapter{Walking on Eggshells}\label{chapter-64-walking-on-eggshells}

Harry stretched his hands above his head, and tried to ignore Draco's
gaze burning on the side of his face.

``When were you planning to tell me about this?'' Draco's voice pushed
at him, demanding his notice. Harry looked down at his toast instead,
and started eating as though it were the most interesting meal he'd ever
had. In a sense, it was. He didn't think he'd ever eaten another meal
with Draco staring at him quite that hard.

``A bit later,'' said Harry, and cast a \emph{Tempus} charm with one
hand, pleased that the wandless magic obeyed him so easily. \emph{It is
much more convenient to have it come through my fingers than my
shoulders or my eyes or my feet or wherever it likes.} ``In about two
hours, actually.''

Draco hesitated a moment, caught flat-footed by Harry's admission. Harry
kept on eating. He refused to feel bad about Draco's reaction. It wasn't
Harry's fault that Blaise had noticed Harry packing his trunk while
Draco was in the loo and opened his mouth about it when he came out.
Then Draco had asked Harry where he was going for Easter, and Harry had
said that he was going to Lux Aeterna, with perfect truth. Draco hadn't
asked why before starting to fire other angry questions, so he might as
well put up with the inconvenience of Harry answering calmly and when he
wanted to.

Draco grabbed his wrist. Harry turned and looked at him. Draco's eyes
were blazing. \emph{That's unusual}, Harry thought, leaning back enough
that the hold on his wrist didn't hurt. \emph{He normally doesn't show
emotion that way, but through the flushing of his cheeks and the way he
sits in his chair.}

``I want to know why you're doing this, Harry,'' Draco said.

``You'll know in two hours.'' Harry tugged lightly on his hand, but
Draco wouldn't give it up. Harry shrugged and returned to eating. ``I
was planning to tell you and Snape about it at the same time, and I
don't see any reason to change that plan.''

Draco was silent for a long time. Then he said, in a voice so low Harry
had to strain his ears even though he was leaning close, ``I thought you
wanted to come back to the Manor with me.''

``You didn't ask,'' said Harry quietly, even as the toast turned to a
sticky little lump in his stomach. ``I would have told you the truth if
you'd asked, Draco, though I still would have wanted to wait to explain
my reasons. You just assumed I was coming with you, and now you're upset
because I messed up your schedule.''

``That's not the only reason.'' Draco brushed the back of his hand
across Harry's cheek, and Harry shivered, because that wasn't playing
\emph{fair}, damn it. ``How can you think that's the only reason?''

\emph{Great}, Harry thought in dismay. Now he'd hurt Draco, when the
whole reason he'd waited was so that he wouldn't have to. He was going
back to Lux Aeterna for Easter, with Connor, and he wouldn't bring Draco
or Snape along. He was going to tell them both at once on the last day
of term, so quickly that their major emotion towards him was anger and
not hurt. If Blaise had kept his big mouth shut, then everything would
have been fine.

A post owl appeared with another Howler at that moment, and Harry had
never been so glad to see a distraction. He reached out with his free
hand to accept the letter, which began yelling at him about the
dangerous irresponsibility of a boy of fourteen wielding such power.

Harry's determination to get away increased as he listened to it. The
major reason was peace, just as he'd written James. He'd been inundated
with so many insults and pranks that they had started to blur together
in his memory, which normally never happened. He wanted a place where he
could take some deep breaths unhindered, and Lux Aeterna was that place,
from James's letters: quiet and peaceful, stern and austere, with wards
that no Howlers could get through.

But the other reason had taken root in his mind two days after he had
Skeeter release the article, as he received more and more evidence that
moving so boldly, and in a way that impinged on so many people's lives,
was a mistake. He had to switch tactics. He knew a way to do that, a way
that would draw on him and a few people who might want to help him, no
one else. It had several steps, and the first one he could only
accomplish by going to Lux Aeterna.

However, he was almost certain that neither Draco nor Snape would let
him go through with the tactics switch, because they would worry he was
endangering himself. There was a simple solution to that. He was not
going to tell them he was doing it. The decision had seemed so simple to
him when he was lying in bed the night he made it, aiming for a greater
goal and stepping over a few obstacles in the way.

But he was being reminded now that Draco wasn't an obstacle, but a human
being who, Merlin knew why, loved him, and was listening to the Howler
with an expression that truly frightened Harry.

Harry turned his head away, and pretended that his upset came from the
insults when Draco asked him.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Draco had dragged Harry to Snape's office immediately after Potions---it
was a half day of classes---and settled him on one of the Transfigured
chairs with a forbidding expression. Harry nodded and faced his
guardian, who already looked grim.

``It is obvious that you have something to say to me, Harry,'' he said.
``The way you were squirming throughout class rather confirmed it.
Now.''

Harry nodded again. ``Draco already knows this,'' he said. He had
decided that he could get through this best if he adopted an expression
and tone of gentle regret. It was perfectly true that he regretted
hurting them. It was also perfectly true that that wasn't going to stop
him from staying with James for Easter holidays. ``I'm going to Lux
Aeterna for Easter.''

Snape's nostrils flared like a Grim's scenting prey, but he simply
inclined his head, as though the news had not been unexpected. His voice
was clipped, staccato. ``Why?''

``I need some peace,'' said Harry, and made a vague gesture that he knew
would encompass the Howlers and the pranks and the rest of it in both
Draco's and Snape's minds. ``I didn't know what I was doing with this
article. I admit that.''

Snape tilted his head to the side. ``I knew you were calling a storm,''
he murmured. ``I did not anticipate all the winds.''

Harry nodded back. Snape had listened to him when he complained and
offered him dueling lessons to distract him from his troubles, but he
hadn't mentioned a desire to ignite the people who sent the Howlers and
the Dungbombs like Draco had. Snape thought he should know the
consequences of his own mistakes, Harry knew. ``And Lux Aeterna \emph{is}
peaceful. It keeps letters out if my father doesn't want them to come
in, and I know that he'd keep the Howlers away from me. And it's a very
different environment from school. That's what I need most of all.''

``It was not peaceful this summer,'' said Snape quietly, ``when I
rescued you from the Blood-Burning Curse.''

Harry sighed and bowed his head. ``I know. I've learned my lesson, sir.
I don't intend to venture outside the wards this time.''

``Nor was it peaceful inside the house,'' Snape went on, with a mildness
that Harry was coming to fear more than his sharpness, ``where your
father and your brother sent you into a near-frenzy.''

Harry shrugged. ``This time, James knows more about me. We've been
writing back and forth. He's changed now, I think. I was the one who
suggested coming home for Easter. He never would have said anything
about it, because he promised not to. It'll be awkward in close
quarters, but awkward's a lot better than the closeness he thought we
had and which I feigned this summer.''

``A man may appear one thing in letters,'' Snape murmured, ``and another
when you actually meet him.''

Harry let out his breath. ``I know that, sir. But I really think he
\emph{has} changed. Connor's still angry with him---''

``I thought you said you needed peace,'' Draco interrupted him. ``This
doesn't sound like you'll get any, if your brother's going to be yelling
at your father.'' He'd taken Harry's wrist again, and stroked it in
small, soothing circles.

``I talked to Connor yesterday.'' Harry could still see his twin's hazel
eyes widening in surprise when Connor realized that he intended to come
home, and why. ``He said that he would make sure not to yell at James in
front of me. Really, what they need is to clear the air. A big fight,
and they'll be back on the road to healing, although not quite there
yet. They've talked to each other in letters except for James's visit to
the hospital wing after the Second Task, and then Connor was still weak
and woozy from his wound. Once they can see each other and have a long
talk, or maybe shouting match, then they should be able to---''

``Harry.''

Harry jumped. He'd actually forgotten Snape, occupied both with memories
of what Connor had said to him and with Draco rubbing his wrist. He
glanced up and found his guardian leaning forward, watching him with
eyes that made Harry drop his gaze at once. Snape was simply too good a
Legilimens. He might enter Harry's mind without even realizing it and
spy out his hidden motive, and then there would be no way he would let
Harry go.

``I do not care that much about your brother,'' Snape said. ``I still
want to know how this visit will affect you, whether you think it is a
wise thing. You need peace, but I could give that to you. I did so this
summer.'' He lifted his chin slightly, as though daring Harry to deny
it.

Harry swallowed. \emph{That does sound wonderful.} That August, bar
Rosier's attempt to kill him at the beginning of it and the kidnapping
at the end of it, lingered in his mind as one of the best times of his
life. He knew he could relax here, that he would sleep more deeply than
usual, and that he might actually be able to forget about the article
and the shame of the mess he'd created---

But then he remembered the Howlers, and sighed. ``I'd still get a
barrage of post each day,'' he pointed out, lifting his eyes to Snape's.
``You told me that you couldn't ward me against Rosier's letters
reaching me, sir, without driving post owls away altogether. That means
that you couldn't ward against Howlers either, could you?''

Snape slowly shook his head.

``Malfoy Manor has the necessary precautions, Harry,'' said Draco. He'd
leaned against Harry by now, and Harry wondered what it meant that he
hadn't even noticed Draco's face so close to his. ``You could receive
ordinary post there, but not Howlers. And you know that the wards will
let you through.'' He touched the back of Harry's neck. ``And we'd be
together there.''

``With your parents,'' Harry pointed out, tamping down on the little cry
of loss that wanted to rip out of him. ``I'm more uneasy around your
father than I am around my own.''

``He would stay away from you if you wanted,'' Draco promised. ``He's
your formal ally now, Harry, and that's a small request. Besides, he's
busy with some secret project of his own, always bustling in and out of
the house. And I know that you don't mind my mother.''

Harry felt his resolve waver. \emph{A holiday with Draco and Narcissa
when I'm not out of my mind with pain. Merlin, that sounds wonderful. I
want to.}

But though that would give him the rest he needed, it wouldn't move him
a step towards his final project, his more important goal, of switching
tactics so that he could actually free the magical creatures without
stamping on so many wizards' free will.

\emph{This is stupid,} Regulus snarled in his head. \emph{Harry, for
Merlin's sake, no one expects you to solve the problem of the magical
creatures tomorrow. They've been imprisoned for centuries. Go to Malfoy
Manor and relax. If James has really altered, he won't mind if you
change your mind.}

Harry ground his teeth. \emph{Are you ready to tell me about the journal
yet?}

Regulus gave another snarl, this one wordless.

Harry nodded back. \emph{You don't want to talk about that, and I don't
want to talk about this. So be quiet.} He glanced back at Snape and
Draco. Draco had a hopeful look on his face. Snape's was closed, and his
eyes held nothing but blankness.

``I do not think that this is a good idea, Harry,'' he said.

``I do.'' Harry kept his voice firm, and as gentle as he could. He
turned to face Draco, who was blinking as he realized that he wouldn't
be able to persuade Harry to come to the Manor after all. ``I promise,
this isn't a reflection on you. Neither of you. I just want to step away
for a while, into a different place, and think about different things.
I'll come back the stronger for it.''

``With a man who abused you,'' Draco said. ``I don't call that a
different place, Harry, or one likely to make you stronger.''

Harry felt the fretful panic lash at him again. ``Draco, you said---''

``I promised about your mother, Harry,'' Draco said. ``Not about James.
Let's be honest, here, the way you're always telling me we need to be.''
He met Harry's eyes squarely. ``I think you'll come back broken.''

``I am willing to trust Harry when he says he will not.''

Harry gave Snape a quick, grateful glance, but his guardian's face had
not altered. Nor had his opinion, as he proved when he added, ``If he
comes back broken because of something James did, then he will not see
James Potter again.''

Harry opened his mouth, then ducked his head. \emph{I can't blame him
for saying that. Besides, argue too much, and he might think there's
something I want to see there beyond James.}

``Thank you for trusting me,'' he said, and then glanced at Draco.

Draco's face wavered several times, before he looked away. Harry
squeezed his shoulder. ``Draco, I promise I'll come back. Trust me?''

``I do,'' Draco whispered. ``But sometimes I think you trust yourself
too much. You might try to bear more than you really can.''

``Connor's going to be there, and he wants to yell at James,'' Harry
pointed out. ``He should protect me.''

\emph{And I will be there, too,} said Regulus in the depths of his mind.
\emph{If I cannot persuade you out of this, I will at least go along and
make sure nothing too terrible happens.}

Draco muttered something about Connor not being able to protect a fly
from spiders, then sighed. ``I understand,'' he said. ``Come back
safe.'' He gave Harry a quick, rough hug, but pulled away when he tried
to return it, and trotted out the door. Harry understood. His empathy as
well as his own emotions would be telling him there was no chance for
Harry to change his mind, and he wanted to deal with his disappointment
in private.

``I do wonder, sometimes,'' said Snape, his voice gone remote, ``if
Draco is right, if you subject yourself to pressures that you cannot
bear.''

Harry faced him. \emph{I can't give up now, not when I'm so close to
winning my goal.} ``Does that mean that you'll forbid me to go after
all, sir?''

Snape raised his eyebrows. ``Of course not, Harry. I trust you, as I
said. I was merely echoing an interesting observation.'' His eyes locked
on Harry's face for a moment. ``I doubt Draco realizes how interesting
it is.''

Harry looked away. Snape had been much better lately---dueling with him,
not mentioning his family at all, quietly giving him headache potions
when he awakened from another vision. But there were moments like this
when he \emph{would} go quiet and thoughtful, and the things he said
made Harry feeling as if he were looking straight at Harry's heart and
soul.

``Thank you, sir,'' he said, choosing to respond to one part of Snape's
declaration and not the other, and then slipped out the door.

\emph{This has to be the right thing to do,} he thought, as he made for
the Slytherin common room and his trunk. He would join Connor in the
hospital wing, and they would Floo to Lux Aeterna from there. \emph{I
made a mistake. I see that now. I'm going to make up for that.}

\emph{Your priorities disturb me}, Regulus said at him, but sulked when
Harry brought up the image of the journal again. He'd refused to say
anything about it, retreating into a stubborn silence that had a strong
tint of shame. Harry decided that he could wait until Regulus was ready
to speak. For now, he seemed safe, and Harry believed him when he said
that he still had no idea where his body was, and that the journal could
provide no clues to that.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape leaned back against his desk and followed Harry's departure with
his eyes, in silence. Harry was hiding something, he was almost certain
of it, but he had trained the boy too well. Harry could raise the
Occlumency shields without thinking now, and they kept almost all of his
emotions in check and a good portion of his motives. Snape would have
pushed, and Harry would have felt it, and that would be another chipping
away at the trust between them.

Snape was willing to wait. He \emph{did} trust Harry, but he did not
have quite the same level of blithe trust in his ward's ability to
recover from shattering events. Harry seemed to think that because he
survived, that made everything all right, without realizing that
suppurating wounds were not, in general, a sign of good health.

And if Harry had stewed and brooded on that article, as Snape knew he
had, then he would almost certainly have come up with some plan to use
instead of it, or, as Harry would conceive of it, to make up for his
stumble. And if he was not telling them about that plan, it was risky or
dangerous or both.

Snape clenched his hands. \emph{I promised. I will wait. I will hold
back. He needs an adult he can trust absolutely.}

\emph{But let him return in pain from any abuse or neglect, and I meant
what I said. He need not concern himself with James Potter again. Nor
will I kill him, though I am sure Harry would fear that I meant that.}

Snape's gaze went to the innocent-looking desk in the back corner of his
office. One drawer held the Pensieve Potion. Another held rolls of
parchment covered in close writing. Another contained books.

\emph{I have my weapons. I need not use them if there is no need, but I
have them ready if there is.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

James wiped his hands on his robes. It was the fourth time in five
minutes. They were so sweaty that if a troll had appeared in Lux
Aeterna's waiting room at that moment and charged him waving its club,
James wouldn't have been able to fumble his wand up to react in time.

His sons were coming through the fireplace in a few minutes. Harry and
Connor were coming home.

He'd wanted to go to Hogwarts and meet them, but Connor had sent him a
letter that forbade even the possibility of that, and James was not
anxious to push. His letter-writing in the last month and a half had
been an exercise in holding back, in not mentioning Snape, or Lily, or
the past, or anything that might hurt or anger Harry or Connor. Surely,
now that he was finally going to see his boys again, he could exercise a
bit more patience.

It was harder than he thought. James supposed the letters and the
writing he'd done had moved him closer to Harry and Connor in a way that
neither could appreciate yet, because it was all in his own mind. He
would \emph{remember} that. He would be conscious of that this time. Too
much of the pain in the past had resulted from his ignoring what he
should have paid attention to. This time, he would wait for one of his
sons to make the first move, and when they did, then he would let his
own moves be guided by theirs.

The fireplace flickered to life, and the flames glowed green. James took
a deep breath, as much to reassure himself he wasn't hyperventilating as
to be ready to say something when Harry and Connor stepped out of the
fireplace.

Harry came first, springing adroitly out of the hearth and over the
slight step that might have tripped him. He whirled his trunk out of the
way, dusted soot from his robes with one hand, and still had the other
free to help Connor as his brother stumbled out, coughing and choking.

James swallowed. He discovered that he wasn't ready after all. He'd
dreamed of his sons at all different ages throughout the late winter and
early spring, but it was nothing to seeing them now, turning and looking
up at him as the teenagers they really were at this point.

\emph{Well, Harry's eyes are nothing like a teenager's}, James corrected
himself, as he noticed the glaze of exhaustion on Harry's face, and the
deep circles beneath his eyes. \emph{They never were, really.}

He held out a hand, not ready yet to risk an embrace, and Harry took it.
``Welcome to Lux Aeterna,'' James said, not quite daring to call it
``home'' either. ``Do you want the room that you had this summer?''

Harry smiled at him, which was a much more pleasant expression than he'd
worn in a lot of the ways James had imagined this moment. ``Thank you,
that'd be fine,'' he said. ``I'm very tired, and I'm going to lie down
and go to sleep right away, if it's all the same to you.''

James nodded. His self-consciousness felt awkward, but this was still so
much better than he'd done with Harry during the summer. ``Of course. I
do think that you'll find you have a visitor soon.''

Harry paused, so arrested that James felt a bit bad for trying to make
it a surprise. \emph{He's trying to figure out who it is, what he'll
have to do to deal with it.} ``Who?'' Harry asked at last.

``Fawkes,'' said James. ``He showed up here yesterday, and he's been
flying the grounds most of the time, singing. But he spent the night in
your room, and I think he'll be happy to see you.''

Harry blinked in wonder. ``I---yes, and I'd like to see him.'' He smiled
at James. ``Thank you.'' He dragged his trunk out of the room without
waiting for anything else. James watched him go for a moment, then
turned to face Connor.

The moment he saw his younger son's face, he had a good idea why Harry
hadn't wanted to wait around. James swallowed. Connor glared at him. In
some ways, Connor looked more like him than Harry did, and eye color was
a minute part of it. James knew, very well, that expression of mulish
stubbornness. It was the kind he'd seen in mirrors just before battles.
Connor didn't intend to abandon this battlefield, that much was certain.

James nodded at him. ``Hello, Connor,'' he said.

``Oh, \emph{that's} a good beginning,'' said Connor, and James flinched.
He'd only heard Connor use that sarcasm on a few occasions. Most of the
time, he didn't need it. He'd been an indulged child, and he tended to
get his way by fussing or yelling---straightforward, honest anger. Harry
was the one who'd had the tongue dipped in acid, or at least James had
thought that when he allowed himself to notice anything strange in his
elder son's behavior. ``At least you're not going to pretend that I'm a
statue or a chess piece. What, got tired of having one of them to pick
up and move around?'' Connor's eyes flickered in the direction Harry had
gone.

James stiffened. \emph{That was unfair.} ``He and I have been much
better to each other,'' he said. ``It's the reason he agreed to come
home. And---''

``But see,'' Connor cut in, ``I don't trust you.''

James flinched again, more sharply this time. He had not imagined that
Connor would say the words, nor that they would cut so deep.

``You've changed your mind before, apparently.'' Connor's eyes were
narrowed, steady with something that James thought was dislike. ``You
were going to be different when Harry was in the hospital wing second
year, and then you weren't. You changed your mind at the end of term
last year, and then you slipped right back into hurting Harry and
insulting Snape. Oh, yeah, some of it wasn't deliberate, but a lot
\emph{was.} And then you didn't write Harry for months and months, just
because you were childish enough to want him to write you first. And
then you wanted to start over again. But how do I know that this is the
real starting over this time? Maybe you'll collapse again and run like
you did after---after Harry took Mum's magic away.'' Connor took a deep
breath, and the soul-deep horror in his eyes sliced off another piece of
James's heart. ``Do you even know what that was like?'' Connor
whispered. ``You don't. You just ran. Harry had a reason for leaving, but
\emph{you} didn't. You should have stayed and helped me.''

``Connor---'' James began.

``But this isn't even about me,'' said Connor, pulling himself back
together again with a snap. James felt another pang, that both of his
sons had had to learn to do that. ``It's about Harry.'' His eyes burned
as he took a step forward. ``This had \emph{better} be real, this change
of your mind. You'd better want what's best for him. You'd \emph{better}
not let something happen to him through negligence. Frankly, I think I
have to be more afraid of that than of you hurting him on purpose,
though after you brought charges against Snape, I don't know that for
certain.''

James bowed his head. ``I didn't---I didn't realize that affected you so
deeply,'' he whispered.

``Harry's never talked to me about it,'' said Connor. ``He knows that
Snape and I don't get along. But of course it affected me. He's my
\emph{brother.} And I've made plenty of stupid mistakes in the past, but
I've changed my mind now, and I'm not some stuffed toy that he has to
protect, either. I can protect him \emph{back}.'' He paused for a moment,
breath heaving in and out of his lungs, and then added, ``And I will.
Protect him back, I mean. Harry's too Slytherin, sometimes, and way too
forgiving. He'll hold back and try to placate someone who wants to hurt
him, to see if he can calm them down and get out of the situation.
That's why it's a good thing I'm in Gryffindor. I can just launch a
good, hard hex if there's need.''

James let out a breath that seemed to catch at several places in his
throat. Then he nodded. He was sadder, and prouder of Connor, than he
could say. ``I know,'' he whispered. ``I'm sorry.''

Connor studied him for a moment, then nodded in turn. ``I hope that'll
be good enough this time,'' he said quietly. ``That's another way I'm
not as good as Harry is. He just keeps giving people chances, you know?
But it's more limited with me. And a damn good thing, too. Sometimes you
have to stop forgiving people.''

James smiled at him and said, helpless to stop it, ``I'm so glad you've
grown up this way, Connor.''

Connor blinked twice, then relaxed with a huge \emph{whoof} of air.
``Good,'' he said, and his speech wavered for the first time. ``I---I do
want us to be a family again, Dad. I'd like that. You and me, I mean. I
don't think you and Harry can. But I can't do that if I think you're
going to hurt him.''

``I won't,'' said James. ``I promise it, in Godric's name.''

Connor scanned him intently. James looked back, and wondered if Harry
really was, all the time, the more complicated of his sons.

``Good,'' Connor said, and then abruptly stepped forward and hugged him.
``I did miss you,'' he whispered against James's robes.

James slowly, carefully, put his arms around Connor, and thought of him
as he'd been the last time he saw him, lying in a hospital bed with
bandages swathed all around his chest and belly. ``I missed you, too.''

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry had barely put his trunk down on the floor of his room when a
bright burst of flames coalesced over his pillow, and transformed into
Fawkes. Harry put out a hand, smiling, and the phoenix soared over and
landed on his shoulder, a warm, comforting weight, nudging him until
Harry petted his neck. Fawkes closed his eyes and crooned.

\emph{What's he doing?} said Regulus abruptly. \emph{Go away, bird! I
was here first!}

Harry blinked. \emph{What are you talking about?} he asked, but felt it
a moment later. While Regulus's presence in his head was limited to a
voice and occasional touches on his memories, he could feel a presence
of light and heat now. He closed his eyes, and saw a brilliant orange
glow behind his eyelids.

For a moment, he panicked, thinking of the phoenix web. But the orange
glow was different from the golden one, and Fawkes trilled reassuringly
into his ear. Harry relaxed. The warmth spread around his brow, soothing
away a tension headache he'd barely noticed he had, so constant was it
now. Harry let out a long breath and sat slowly down on the bed.

\emph{I think he's bonding with you,} said Regulus in awe.

Harry blinked and tried to move, but the warmth had bound his limbs like
the cocoon of sheets that tied him on a lazy summer morning. Then it let
him go, and he found himself leaning back against the pillows. Fawkes
sat on his shoulder chirping at him, and Harry could see visions in his
head when he listened, rather like the images that might form from a
vivid piece of music.

He could see Fawkes winging above an unfamiliar sea dotted with
brilliant islands. Fawkes dipped and skimmed over one of them, and Harry
caught his breath as a woman's head covered with snakes thrust into
view. Fawkes sang to her, and though Harry didn't catch a sense of words
from the music, he knew that the phoenix was telling her that a
\emph{vates} was abroad in the world. The woman cocked her head as she
listened, and the snakes ceased to snap and hiss at each other and lay
down tamely.

Fawkes coasted above a wide expanse of sand, and an enormous creature
bounded into view. Harry caught his breath. It was a unicorn, he knew
that, but its tail streamed out like a lion's instead of a horse's, and
its feet revealed multiple hooves on each one, and its horn was black.
It reared up challengingly at Fawkes, screaming and trying to stab him
with its horn, but Fawkes sang, and implanted a vision of freedom in the
unicorn's mind that stayed with it when it lowered its head and began to
run again. Fawkes soared along above its back, casting his shadow down
to mingle with its and releasing a chorus in praise of stern, proud
power.

Fawkes sat on a branch in silence, until a giant leopard prowled beneath
his perch, paws shaking the ground with soft thunder. Harry gasped as he
recognized a nundu, which could destroy whole villages if it wanted, and
which a hundred wizards working together could barely bring down. Fawkes
chose a different song, understandably, a darting, trilling thing that
made the nundu whirl about, chasing shadows that gradually resolved into
an image of the \emph{vates.} Fawkes vanished in a ball of flames that
time. The nundu was so dangerous that he could only plant the idea in
its wild mind and hope it took root eventually.

More and more images, and Harry knew Fawkes had been all over the world,
and given the message to more and more magical creatures. There was a
\emph{vates}, and while he might never reach them or free them, they
deserved to know that he existed. It might at least bring some hope and
make the waiting in confinement easier.

Harry opened his eyes, and let out a long sigh.

\emph{It's so big,} Regulus said quietly. \emph{How can you do this?}

Harry shook his head. ``I don't know yet,'' he whispered aloud. ``Step
by step along the road, I think.'' He thought of the letter he'd sent to
Scrimgeour, proposing that they meet some time after Easter and discuss
their differences. It wasn't the perfect solution, but it was a step to
a solution. ``Bit by bit.'' He reached up and gently stroked Fawkes's
feathers. ``I'm honored that you chose to bond with me,'' he told the
phoenix.

Fawkes crooned at him, as if to tell him to stop being silly, and then
began the soft song that had lulled Harry to sleep before. Harry smiled,
and lowered his head to the pillows, and obliged, taking the seed of
hope that Fawkes had meant him to have, rather than the idea of duty.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry took a deep breath of wonder. From what James had said in his
letters, he'd thought that Lux Aeterna would still be caught up in that
muddy vision of half-spring, somewhere between seasons, and that he
would see only the most stubborn and earliest of flowers, if any at all.

Instead, Fawkes had led him straight to a flourishing patch of blossoms
in a corner of the lawn, flowers with delicate red-gold petals
surrounding a blue center. They had shot up through the mud as if
disdaining its power to hold them back, and now they rippled and shone
like---

Like flames, Harry realized. He touched one of the petals, and found it
softly warm. He gave Fawkes a suspicious glance. ``You had something to
do with this?''

Fawkes lifted with a cry and hovered over the flowers. They twitched and
rippled as if called by the wind from his wings, and when Fawkes began
to sing, they spun around on their stems, increasing their resemblance
to small, dancing fires.

Harry wasn't sure exactly how Fawkes had made the flowers grow, but
James had said he was flying over the grounds the day before Harry and
Connor arrived. He might have had time to make them grow. Maybe.

Fawkes interrupted his song long enough to give the smooth warble that
Harry already recognized as a smug equivalent of \emph{I'm a phoenix,
therefore I make the impossible possible.}

Harry leaned back against the yew standing nearby and enjoyed the song
and the flowers, feeling the memory of Howlers crisp away into ash and
leave him at peace.

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{\ldots{}and they protected each other, and they taught each other,
and they lived happily ever after.}

Harry very gently closed the book and stared at it a moment. He knew his
cheeks were wet, and he was very aware of James's tense, nervous
stillness on the other side of the room. He hadn't refused when Harry
asked him if he could look at the journal in which he wrote about Harry
and Connor each night, but he had hesitated, and hadn't seem that
relieved when Harry had told him he'd only wanted to read the retelling
of the wizarding legend.

Harry knew the legend, of course, about the wizarding children who had
brought the unicorns out of the sun. The original children were
brothers, not twin brothers, but the story worked even better when they
were. Harry hadn't got used to his name appearing on each page, along
with Connor's. He touched the book's cover as if he were touching
something sacred.

\emph{Or is it that I haven't got used to knowing James cares enough to
write about us like that?}

He met his father's eyes, and felt a deep, satisfying lurch somewhere in
him, as though something in flight had finally settled. He smiled, and
for all that James couldn't possibly have known the reason for it, he
smiled back.

\emph{We'll be all right,} Harry thought in wonder. \emph{We really will
be. Not father and son, but something else. Even friends, maybe.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry woke, slowly, and stretched luxuriously. He'd gone to sleep at
seven that evening, tired beyond bearing, and though it was five in the
morning now, that still meant he'd got ten hours of sleep. He stood and
looked through the window of his bedroom briefly, wondering what Draco
was doing.

\emph{Probably still dead to the world,} he had to admit, as he reached
out gently towards his sense of Connor's and James's magic. Still in
their bedrooms. What had been an oppressive sense of constant presence
during the summer was comforting now, even though he'd only been in Lux
Aeterna two days. \emph{Draco is not a morning person.}

In a way, it would have been a comfort to have Draco with him now. Harry
took a sharp breath as he reminded himself why that was impossible.
Draco would never have let him do this.

Fawkes let out a soft noise, and settled gently on Harry's shoulder.
Harry scratched his neck. The phoenix ducked his head, and rubbed it
against the side of Harry's throat.

\emph{I suppose that you have to do this, if you're ready,} said Regulus
reluctantly.

``I'm ready,'' Harry whispered aloud. ``As ready as I'll get. And I want
to. I do have to make up for my stumble with the article, but more than
that, I want to know more about myself. Snape and Draco help, but they
can't force me to be honest with myself, just with them.''

Regulus stayed silent, making his opinion quite clear, but Fawkes
crooned and took off, soaring ahead of Harry to his bedroom door.

Harry left his room, and went downstairs, and traveled the appropriate
corridors, and opened the right door.

In the room before him, glittering, silver-edged, he felt the Maze's
alien awareness open one eye.

\chapter{May The Maze Be Unending}\label{chapter-65-may-the-maze-be-unending}

Harry felt sunlight on his face, sunlight shining on his skin, sunlight
all around him, as he stepped into the room where the Maze waited. He
had seen the artifact before, of course, so he knew what it looked like,
but he had never realized, or perhaps just not remembered, that the
radiance it shed was this intense.

Or perhaps the radiance really had increased, Harry thought, as he
lifted a hand to shield his eyes. Ahead of him, the Maze glittered and
twined. The light made it hard to see where one wall slid into another,
and Harry no longer thought it looked like a jumper someone had dropped
on the floor. It had the look of a restless, surging sea instead, as if
he were back on the Northumberland beach and watching the waves dash
towards him. The sun somewhat dazzled him and kept him from making out
what was foam and what was driftwood, what silver and what white.

On his shoulder, softly, Fawkes began to sing.

The Maze sparked once, as though accepting a reply Harry hadn't been
aware he was making, and then some of the silvery lines of light
dropped. Harry found that he could walk nearer than he had been able to
before, though he still couldn't see very well. He lifted his glasses
off and looked at them, but that didn't help, unless he considered his
eyes watering an improvement.

He stopped and waited, wondering if he had to give a special signal to
approach the Maze. James had spoken of using a mirror and shedding three
drops of blood, but in vague terms; he hadn't wanted to reveal much of
his time in the Maze, which Harry could understand. Harry could fulfill
those conditions easily enough with his magic, if that was what the Maze
wanted.

Fawkes's music poured over him, and Harry understood that Fawkes
believed the Maze had already accepted, and approved, his intention of
approaching it. He did need to show that he was Potter blood, but in the
tense, eager awareness the Maze projected towards him, Harry could feel
no doubt.

He held up his hand, hardly aware of what he was doing. He felt as if he
stood on some high mountain in the sunrise, looking to the east, and the
light filled his mind with a golden haze. He felt one of Fawkes's talons
score his wrist, and then three drops of blood were shining up at him;
he hadn't been aware of starting to bleed, or of the pain. He tilted his
hand, and the blood splashed on the floor.

\emph{What are you doing, Harry?} Regulus whispered.

``I don't know,'' said Harry honestly, and lifted his head as he saw
more of the silvery barriers, invisible until now, fall away like folds
of gauze, leaving the Maze in all its unwrapped glory.

His steps were soft as he once more approached. He had considered
consequences, endlessly, before he stepped into this room. He had known
that he might be gone for months, as James had been, though he didn't
really think it likely. According to his father, what had cost him the
most time was his refusal to face certain of his mistakes. Harry
intended to face them all, as painlessly as he could, because he was
willing to accept that he had made them. Besides, he hadn't lived as
long as James had, and his life would take less time to relate.

He could die in the Maze if he refused to go on, but that was simple. He
would not refuse to go on.

But now, the thought of consequences tumbled away from him. The Maze was
a great and living thing, like the sky, like the sea. Harry felt a kind
of vertigo sweep him, as if he were about to plunge off a cliff and into
the heart of a fall.

Besides, Fawkes continued to sing, quietly, and seemed to think it was
quite a good idea for him to go forward.

In that cocoon of music and light, Harry stepped into the Maze.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

It both was and was not what he had expected, Harry realized. He had
known he would be in a tunnel of mirrors, and indeed he was. He had
expected a floor beneath his feet and curved walls on either side, and
that was the way the Maze was shaped. He had thought images would begin
appearing on the walls, and that was what happened.

He had not imagined the slight warmth of the floor beneath his feet, as
if he walked on silk instead of metal, or the way that pulses of light
raced beside him and then trailed away, like constant small sunrises, or
the way that Fawkes's song seemed to soften and calm the extreme edges
of the Maze, glittering diamonds that Harry knew could cut him if he
tried to climb out.

He walked, and the pulses of light resolved into images.

Harry saw himself at four, almost five, struggling to lift a heavy book.
He dropped it, and the crash brought Lily running. Harry sighed as he
watched his mother kneel down beside him and give him a smile he knew he
would never see again.

``Harry, what have I told you about conserving your strength?'' she
asked.

``That I should do it.'' His younger self looked up at his mother, and
Harry was startled. He had not thought his face would look like that.
Closed in concentration, he'd expected, but there was an underlying
tension to the expression that made him look as if he might burst out in
rebellious defiance. \emph{Well, I hadn't been under the phoenix web for
long then,} Harry reasoned. \emph{I probably still had some thoughts of
my own close to the surface.}

``Yes, and what else?'' Lily prompted.

``That I should decide what's necessary and what's not,'' said the
younger Harry. He looked at the huge book lying on the floor. ``And find
the best way to do things,'' he added, with a sudden weight of
inspiration. ``Always use what's around me to my benefit.''

He held out a hand, and struggled for a moment. His magic was no longer
as great as it had been when he was younger, Harry decided while he
watched, because so much of it had gone tame under the web. But it was
great enough to lift the book in the air, wobbling, and return it to its
place on the shelf.

Lily smiled at him and stroked his hair. ``Good,'' she whispered.
``That's good, Harry. When you levitate an object over an enemy's head
and then drop it, that will serve your brother. And you love your
brother, don't you?''

The younger version of Harry turned his head so that it was pressing
against his mother's robe and nodded.

The image dissolved. Harry blinked, unsure why the Maze had wanted him
to see that. \emph{I made a mistake trying to put the book away with my
hands. Is that it? I had thought I'd forgiven myself for that already.}

The Maze sparked at him. Fawkes's song rose and dipped, and the answer
formed in his head.

\emph{No}, Harry realized suddenly, with a wave of diamond-like terror
rising inside him. \emph{No, the mistake was thinking that that was a
demonstration of my mother's love for me, when it was nothing more
than\ldots{}training.} He knew the names that Snape and Draco and the
rest of them would call it, and the Maze could not make him use the
word.

But it could dig at his heart, and make him realize that the emotion
he'd thought he'd seen his mother expressing in that scene wasn't pride
in him as a child, but the kind of pride that a person showed for a
well-trained dog.

\emph{She didn't love me.}

Harry shook his head at once. \emph{I---that's not possible. It's true
that her love did me no good, but I know that} she \emph{believes she
loves me. Why would the Maze say that she didn't?}

Silence, and then the light and the song, or perhaps just his own
understanding, which was never quiet when he wanted it to be, batted the
answer back at him.

\emph{Because it's the truth. And the Maze is absolute truth, Light,
honesty.}

\emph{She didn't love me.}

Harry felt tears gather like hot dust in the corners of his eyes. He
swallowed, once, twice, and no longer wondered at his father's vague
hints that he'd often collapsed, vomiting or weeping, and perilously
near refusing to go on.

Harry breathed deeply, once and then again, and wrenched himself a step
forward in his journey. He had to get along with this, and he could no
more question the Maze on this point than he'd been able to question the
justice ritual when it took his mother's magic away, or the unicorns.

\emph{I\ldots{}that's true, then, I guess. She never loved me. Maybe she
thought she did, or maybe she even did, but it was a different kind of
love. Maybe she loved me as a sacrifice. Maybe she loved me as a pet, or
a useful object. But not a child. Not a human being.}

And Vera had told him that he didn't really see himself as human. That
no longer seemed a wonder to Harry.

Harry shuddered once and opened his eyes, refusing to let more tears
fall. He knew the truth, then, and he could accept it. There were events
in his past that had prepared him to accept it. The revelation, and what
it might do to him, mattered little to him next to the ideas he might
get from the Maze.

``Thank you,'' he whispered, and then shuffled along his path. Light ran
ahead of him, beside him, around his head, and Fawkes sang.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry winced as he watched his seven-year-old self take a tumble from a
large rock next to the house in Godric's Hollow. He'd watched several
more scenes out of his past, with minor mistakes about himself and the
world around him and times that he'd become impatient with Connor or
James, but none with the devastating impact of that first image. He had
known this one would probably be coming, though, as his mind came alive
with memories of things Lily had actually said to him, lessons she'd
stated outright.

Harry-the-younger didn't cry; by then, he'd already learned to cast mild
hexes on himself and endure pain under a certain threshold, which this
easily was. He just blinked and picked himself up, watching the large
gash in his knee pool with blood. He didn't know a healing spell,
though, and so he did go to find Lily, once he'd checked that Connor and
James were flying a kite in the yard and wouldn't see him.

Lily saw him and came over at once, kneeling and extending her wand. A
whispered, ``\emph{Integro},'' and the cut healed. Harry watched her in
wonder and silent delight. When his mother cured him like this, he
imagined they had a bond, just as they did when she explained the vows
he made to Connor to him, or when she impressed on him, again, the need
for secrecy and for him to learn as much as he could, even when he was
certain that he couldn't learn any more.

``Will I be able to perform healing spells someday?'' he asked.

Lily sat back and looked up at him with large green eyes. ``You will,
Harry,'' she said gently. ``Healing spells would aid the war effort.
It's a great advantage to know how to cure yourself on the battlefield.
But they're more powerful than the magic you're learning right now. It
will take some time.''

Harry nodded. Then he thought about another thing. ``Can I perform
healing spells on my children someday?''

Lily's face changed so rapidly that Harry-the-elder winced right along
with his younger self. He knew what was coming, and he suspected he knew
why the Maze had wanted him to see it, and he was filled with an
overwhelming, consuming sorrow, and he didn't know for certain whether
it was for himself, or for the boy in the image, or for the woman who
actually rose, and put her hand on his shoulder, and whispered what she
did to him then.

``Harry, you'll never have children.''

Harry-the-younger blinked at her. ``Why not, Mum?'' He rather thought he
might want to have children, so that he could teach someone else all the
things he was learning. Right now, he had no one to teach, because he
had to keep his skills secret, and Lily already knew all his spells and
tricks.

Lily gently smoothed his hair. ``Because children take time,'' she said.
``They take almost all your time when they're little, and they would be
little for several years. Do you remember being little for several
years?''

``Some of it,'' said Harry.

Lily nodded. ``And you would have to devote all your time to them, and
to your spouse or partner.'' She paused, waiting for him to reach the
natural conclusion.

Harry could, of course. His vows sang in his head, and he gasped. ``I
wouldn't have any time for Connor!''

``Of course you wouldn't,'' whispered Lily. ``And it wouldn't be fair to
your spouse or your partner, would it? Just like it wouldn't be fair to
your father if I had someone to serve like you have Connor, and I spent
all my time away from him.''

Harry nodded, soberly, understanding now. ``Connor has to come first,''
he said. ``To be his brother and his friend and his guardian. To never
let anyone else know that I'm so close to him.'' It was permissible for
him to only say parts of his vows sometimes, in order to make a point,
since he knew them so well in their original form.

``Exactly,'' Lily whispered back. ``So it wouldn't be fair to anyone.
You couldn't spend time away from Connor, and a husband or wife would
want to know why you were so close to him, and you'd have to break your
vow to tell them.''

Harry nodded. ``Besides,'' he said, wondering why he hadn't thought
about this before, ``I'll probably die protecting Connor, so there
wouldn't be time for children, because I'd be too young to have them.''

Lily hugged him, briefly. ``That's my brave boy,'' she said. ``Now, go
practice the spells in the second book I showed you the other day. I
think you're ready for it.''

Harry nodded happily at her and trotted off. The image wavered into
clinging white shreds of mist, and dissolved.

Harry-the-older---no, he was just Harry, just himself, no matter how
involved he had been in the consciousness of the child the Maze had
shown him---shook his head and closed his eyes.

\emph{So, yes, it was a mistake to go on believing her, to think I'd
never have a future. In fact, I thought I'd accepted that, since I'm
letting myself spend time in Draco's company instead of driving him
away.}

\emph{I did accept it, didn't I?}

Harry swallowed thickly when he realized that perhaps he hadn't. When he
thought about the future, the first thing that came to mind was
duty---maintaining his relationships with his allies, being
\emph{vates}, trying to defeat Voldemort or help Connor defeat
Voldemort. Look at how easily he'd put Draco aside to come to Lux
Aeterna. That had been as big a mistake, in its own way, as getting
Skeeter to write the article about his stance towards freedom for
magical creatures in the first place. He thought of the future in terms
of how he could serve people, and that was the main reason he'd come
into the Maze.

Harry sighed, softly, and opened his eyes. \emph{I really have just
transferred my longing to serve Connor to my longing to serve other
people.}

\emph{I'm not sure how I can change it, though. Trying to enjoy myself
with Draco and think of a future we can share together will just turn
the enjoyment into another duty.}

Fawkes trilled at him. Harry smiled faintly. The image of a path
appeared in his mind, clear for a moment as the Maze before him was, and
he suspected that both of them were pushing at him for a reason. The
answer lay somewhere up ahead. The Maze would not only drag him through
his mistakes, but make sure that he received the answers he needed.

As long as he could go on facing his mistake.

Harry shot a glance back at the wall where the image of himself at seven
had been, and nodded. The Maze had not yet told him that his desire to
help other people was a mistake, only certain manifestations of it. So
he could keep going, he could face himself, for the sake of other
people.

He turned and strode on.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Most of the mistakes after that were the ones Harry expected. Mistakes
in spells, in schoolwork, in the efforts he'd made to spare himself
notice and give Connor glory in first year. He watched calmly as he lied
to Dumbledore after the second time they faced Voldemort together, and
pretended that his magic had done nothing to help in the battle. Yes,
that had been a mistake. Of course, perhaps telling the truth would only
have alarmed Dumbledore and caused the Light Lord to \emph{Obliviate}
him, but the Maze was interested in showing him what he had done wrong,
not in suggesting fixes for the past.

Fixes were for the future.

Lies, and deliberate attempts to make sure people couldn't hurt him that
hurt people in return, and lies of omission, and casting aside attempts
to help him. Most of those, Harry thought as he watched the image of
himself leaving Malfoy Manor early the summer before third year, he'd
accepted just before or after Sirius's death. The destruction of the
phoenix web had destroyed a good number of his compelled loyalties to
his brother, and learning what Dumbledore and Lily had actually done had
inspired him with anger deep enough to reject some of the conditioned
ones, too.

He did wince as Sirius slipped steadily under Tom Riddle's control, as
he committed suicide, but though he would always mourn Sirius and wish
he had seen the signs of something wrong earlier, he knew that had not
been his sole fault. He suspected the Maze would have made the memory
much more painful for Connor.

To his surprise, though, the next scene that appeared after that one was
not, as he'd expected, himself releasing magic outside Lux Aeterna's
wards and so summoning the Death Eaters. In fact, he walked for a long
time, expecting at any moment that his duels with Rosier or his hiding
of his nightmares or his lashing at Umbridge and Fudge with Dark magic
would appear, and nothing happened.

The cool light and air of the Owlery opened around him, and Harry saw
Rita Skeeter eagerly taking down the article he dictated to blackmail
James into dropping his charges against Snape. Harry nodded. It was a
mistake because he should have found some better way of handling the
situation. Then perhaps he would not have exacerbated the friction with
his father so much.

But the image remained steady, and this time the Maze forced Harry to
see the widening of Skeeter's eyes as she asked him if he had been
abused, and the suspicion that remained in her face when he denied it.
Harry's heart pounded loud in his ears as he realized that he hadn't
really convinced her, though he'd thought at the time that he had. She
still had thoughts of her own on that particular subject, even though
she'd said nothing about it since.

\emph{Shit.} Skeeter might not seek to cause Lily and James harm if she
knew about his training in the way that Harry was almost certain Lucius
and Narcissa would, but she had the power to make a taint cling to their
names, if she only desired it.

\emph{If I'd known}, Harry thought in misery as the Owlery faded away,
\emph{I would have kept my knowledge about her being an illegal Animagus
quiet in exchange for her silence on this subject, instead of her
writing that article.}

Too late, now. Harry bit his lip until it bled, and moved steadily
forward. At least the Maze had made him aware of that vulnerability.

``Thank you,'' he whispered.

As expected, the Maze did not respond, and as Harry expected, it showed
him Grimmauld Place, where he had almost succumbed to the singing
creature behind the door---somewhat to his disappointment, it did not
show him what the singing creature actually was---and his driving
himself further and further into exhaustion, rendering him near useless
to anyone else. He had to wince and stand with his eyes shut for a
moment before the image of himself refusing Vera and Peter's
``invitation'' to the Sanctuary. The image simply remained still,
however, until he opened his eyes and viewed it again. The Maze quite
obviously thought he should have gone.

``I wonder if Seers built you in the first place?'' Harry muttered as he
accepted that he'd made a mistake, and even why he had made it---that he
didn't want anyone seeing him and knowing him that well. ``You certainly
have enough in common, and Merlin knows you keep making me think of
Vera.''

Fawkes's song turned, and brought back to Harry a memory of James
telling him the Maze had come from elsewhere, that certainly no human
hand had constructed it, though human wizards might have summoned it
here.

Harry nodded. ``All right,'' he said, and slogged forward grimly through
more memories, mostly slight insults done to other people, until he
rounded one corner and saw the darkness he had expected ahead. It had a
faint silvery sheen to it, like stars. Harry drew in his breath and
crossed the final distance between himself and this memory, one he had
been dreading.

Once again, he stood just outside the rose garden on Christmas night,
and saw himself reach out towards Lily with magic driven by hatred.
Harry watched as coolly as he could. It was quite something, to see how
feral his eyes were from outside, narrow and nearly empty of sanity. He
had come within a hairsbreadth of simply giving himself to the Dark
music and exploding outside of all bounds. Of course it had been a
mistake. Though it hurt, again, to hear his mother's words resonate in
his ears, he was not surprised that the Maze had chosen to show this to
him. He had lain awake in his own bed regretting it enough.

The Maze sparked, and Harry froze, lifting his chin. Once again, as with
the image of himself levitating the book, when he had misunderstood what
the Maze was showing him, he felt a pendulum of truth swinging and
coming in hard at him.

It hit him.

\emph{Using magic borne of hatred and pain was a mistake only in the
sense that I could have hurt someone else with it. I was mistaken to
think that---}

No. He couldn't---that wasn't true.

Fawkes's song swelled.

The Maze could not lie. It could no more lie than a justice ritual
could, than Seers could, than unicorns could. Doubt that, and he would
have to doubt the certainty of all that other magic.

The truth landed in his brain and pushed its way relentlessly forward.

\emph{I was mistaken to think that there was any truth in her words at
all. I was mistaken to think that my magic is foul, and that other
people only tolerate it because they pity me or there's something foul
and twisted in themselves. She is utterly blind to me. She doesn't
understand the person I became. Plant me in front of her and ask her to
predict my behavior, and she will be mistaken every time.}

\emph{She not only never loved me, she has no idea who I am now.}

Harry shuddered softly and closed his eyes. Hadn't he faced this before,
with the unicorns? Hadn't he accepted that his mother was wrong about
him? Then why was it so hard for him to face this now?

The truth crawled determinedly out of his thoughts and sat there staring
at him until he had to meet its eyes.

\emph{I was thinking that she might still be able to know some things
about me. She did train me, and I'm still a product of that training.
She was wrong about my magic being as foul as dog vomit, but she could
be right about the way I'd respond when she asked me a certain question,
or how I've just changed my desire to serve Connor into desire to serve
other people.}

\emph{I am more than that. I have made mistakes like those, but there is
still more to me than those mistakes. None of what she taught me makes
me able to hold back from charging to the Ministry prison when people
were in danger or to love Draco\ldots{}}

Harry cried out, and the light around him swelled, gorgeous
golden-white, and Fawkes's song soared after it like a comet arcing
around the sun.

The Maze had crept up on him with these two truths, perhaps unable to
find a single memory that embodied them, perhaps unable to work through
the thick intricacies his thoughts twined them in. They were alive in
Harry's head now, though, twisting around and braiding with each other
like the Many during the hatching of the new hive, and dragging in the
first one, so that there were three snakes of truth circled in his head,
without beginning and without end.

His mother had been and was wrong about him---so wrong that he did not
have to keep thinking he owed her a debt because of all that his
training had planted in him.

He was more than a sacrifice. He always had been.

He could love Draco, and in many ways, he already did.

Harry shuddered, barely aware that he'd dropped to his knees on the
Maze's floor. Fawkes's song had slowed to a warbling croon, and Regulus
was whispering something that Harry couldn't make out under the
waterfall-tumble of his own thoughts.

He knew that he was crying. It didn't seem to matter right now.

\emph{She can't hurt me again. Never again. That last weapon she had
against me, the most potent one, the conviction that I was only worth
something if I was helping people, has been taken away.}

\emph{I cannot stop being a sacrifice all at once. But now I} know
\emph{I can, eventually. It's not the same thing as getting there, but
now I know the road exists.}

\emph{And all those little things like worrying when Draco was angry and
preferring him to most people and not wanting him hurt and being able to
dare to kiss him back when I would have run away from anyone else are
all right, they're perfectly all right, and oh Merlin I was wrong and
this is all right and I can have a future I can have a} life \emph{I can
have love\ldots{}}

His breath came and went in sobs. Tears clogged his throat. He knew he
was sniffling, and though his hand came up to shield his face and
prevent anyone watching from seeing the tears and snot, in response to
long-ingrained instinct, he knew that it didn't matter, because everyone
here had already seen far more than that.

It was all right. Regulus was not going to betray him. Fawkes was not
going to betray him. The Maze had known this was there from the moment
he entered, and had given him the ability to see it, too.

Harry slowly stood. As much as the realization had struck him and
cracked him wide open, kneeling there would only waste time, and he
didn't want to spend months in here. He felt a rushing impatience now,
like a warhorse tossing its head and pricking its ears on the edge of
battle. He wanted to be out of here so he could continue living,
continue accepting the truths the Maze had shown him, and continue---

Oh, Merlin.

Did that mean that \emph{he} could have the same kinds of possibility
and freedom that he envisioned for other people? That his will mattered,
too, and not just if it was guarding someone else's will or opposing an
injustice?

Harry didn't know how long it would last, he suspected it would start
fading the instant he left the Maze---the Maze could not \emph{compel}
good behavior, or James's resolve would have remained iron---but for
just a moment he caught a glimpse of himself as one of those people he
admired and valued so much, all the illogic torn, all the ill reasoning
gone, able to see himself as human in the way that Vera had said he
didn't, and the revelation pierced him like a lance of sunlight.

The vision faded in the next moment, leaving old doubts and
uncertainties to plague him, but he had seen it.

\emph{Like a vision from a mountain, looking east as the sun rises.}

``Thank you,'' he whispered, a third time.

The Maze waited, gently, and then led him on through the few minor
mistakes he had yet to make, had made, had made and could correct.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry felt the Maze exhale around him, and breathe him out. He stood on
the other side of it, not such a long distance from the door after all,
though there were so many bends in the silvery coils that he knew he
could have walked for miles, appearances aside.

The distance he had walked was far longer than that.

Harry turned towards the door, his head light and buzzing with ideas.
The Maze had shown him, after the mistake he'd made just spreading all
his intentions in front of the world with that article, a path he hadn't
considered. After all, if he might be human, if he might have the chance
to consider himself so, that might mean that other people would be
willing to aid him out of love and loyalty, and not just because they
owed him debts or had made bargains with him. And there were rituals he
could use working with people in cooperation that he could not if he
tried to do everything all by himself, or with just Draco and Snape
helping him.

Now that that simple idea had got into his head, he knew a few rituals
he could look up that should prove of extreme help in freeing the
southern goblins. Slytherin had cursed them, bound their web to the
interchange of money. Harry knew he would hardly convince anyone to
close Gringotts, but he didn't have to. What he \emph{could} do, with
the help of other people to have a chance of equaling Slytherin's web in
raw power, was create a substitute for the web to be tied to instead of
actually destroying it. It amused him to know that this couldn't be just
a Light ritual, even though most cooperative spells were, because he
would have to convince the goblins' web that it was still attached to
Gringotts even as it fastened to the copy. That would involve
subterfuge, and lying, and thus probably some glamours or
illusions---Dark magic if one wanted to stretch the definition.

His magic roiled eagerly under his skin, like a school of fish. It
wanted to be about creating things. Fawkes trilled as if in agreement.

Harry cast a glance over his shoulder at the Maze, and stopped. He could
feel it regarding him---happy, proud, satisfied, and amused at him.

Harry took a deep breath. ``Thank you,'' he whispered, one more time.
``I'll try to remember. I don't know if I can---'' already the sheer
clarity of the memories was rushing away from him, obscured by the mask
of time and everyday reality, as visions and inspirations tended to
be---``but I'll try.''

The Maze gave a soft rumble, like a nundu, and then closed its eyes and
went back to sleep. The silvery lines of light sprang up again behind
Harry as he made his way confidently to the door.

He opened it, and James grabbed him by the shoulders in a fierce hug,
apparently too far gone to remember that they were being careful with
each other. ``Harry,'' he whispered. ``I didn't know if I was ever going
to see you again. You've been gone a week.''

\emph{A week, only? Better than I could have expected.} Harry closed his
eyes and leaned against his father, unable to prevent a silly smile from
crossing his face. Fawkes flew off his shoulder and soared around them
both, trilling.

\emph{A week is better than you had any right to expect,} Regulus
grumbled at him. \emph{You are lucky.}

\emph{I am,} Harry said. \emph{Merlin, I am, aren't I, Regulus? At
least, I feel lucky for right now. I could sing. I wish Draco were here
so I could kiss him.}

Laughter swelled in him and bubbled out, and James jerked back, looking
startled.

``Sorry,'' said Harry, smiling at him.

He wasn't that sorry. Oh, yes, there was scolding to come, of course
there was, but he could get through it. The Maze had burned away a great
deal of the thick ugly foliage on the forest of his mind, and sunlight
was falling through the branches, awakening the withered grass, coaxing
up young trees in place of the vanquished old ones.

At the moment, at least, the world was heavy with possibility, vivid and
young and full of the morning.

\chapter{Expanding the Covenant}\label{chapter-66-expanding-the-covenant}

Snape did not like to think of how much the past two days had hurt him,
when the term began again and Harry was not there for it.

He did not like to think of it partly because he was bound to start
blasting things apart if he did, and partly because he was already busy
setting things in motion for vengeance on James Potter, and partly
because it was obvious that Draco Malfoy was suffering worse than he
was.

Draco had trailed into Potions class that day with eyes so blank that
Snape had thought at first he must be sleepwalking. He'd assigned Draco
to partner with Blaise Zabini, only to rouse the boy into a screaming
temper tantrum, of which the only distinguishable words were ``regular
partner'' and ``Harry.'' Blaise had confessed that Draco had been
impossible to live with for the past few days. He was liable to flicker
between savage sorrow and equally savage hexing. Snape had given him a
Calming Draught and sent him to the hospital wing.

He tried to imagine what had happened, and wound up setting those
thoughts aside, too. What mattered was dealing with what Harry had left
behind---a thoroughly shattered Draco and a brother who had returned to
school saying he had no idea where Harry had gone.

And James Potter, of course---James Potter who had responded to Snape's
letters about Harry by turning post owls away from Lux Aeterna.

Snape wondered if he was thinking of taking vengeance because it was the
easier course, but then pushed it aside, because that was of a piece
with thinking about how much the last two days had hurt him.

He was checking the temperature of the potion he'd chosen as the first
part of his revenge when someone knocked on the door to his office.
``Come in,'' Snape snapped, not looking away from the potion. When it
bubbled, then he would able to dip out a vial of it and douse the fire
under the cauldron, but he had to watch for the \emph{exact} moment when
it bubbled. This was probably only a student come for a detention,
anyway, which made it less important than this was.

The potion bubbled. Snape dipped out his vial, and then flicked his wand
to douse the fire and turned to deal with his erring student.

Harry bit his lip and looked up at him. ``Um, hi,'' he said.

Snape cast a spell that should remove a glamour. Harry remained
stubbornly the same. He cast one that should dispel the solid illusions
that Harry had used before to trick him and Draco. Nothing happened. He
murmured, ``\emph{Legilimens},'' and found himself pushing into a startled
but accepting, and very familiar, mind.

He caught a glimpse of a shining maze of silvery light, and Harry
walking along its twists and turns, before Harry gently firmed his
Occlumency shields and pushed him out. ``I want to tell you about it,''
he was saying, ``rather than just having you read it out of my
memories.''

Snape came back to himself, and stood breathing for a moment, unable to
think of anything else to do. He had been tipped from vengeance,
something he understood, to a moment full of violent fear and relief and
joy. He wasn't used to being here. What was the right course of action?

Harry settled that by moving forward and embracing him. ``I missed
you,'' he muttered, in a voice like and unlike his own. The Harry who
had left them for the Easter holidays could not have said anything like
this. ``I'm sorry that I caused you so much worry, but I honestly
thought I needed to enter the Maze. And it did work. I know what to do
next, and it helped me and healed me and---'' Harry let out a sharp
breath and shook his head, a movement that Snape felt against both his
chest and his arms. His arms had somehow risen without his own volition
and settled themselves around Harry. ``It left me this way,'' Harry
said, and moved forward and lifted his head so that Snape could see his
face again.

His eyes shone. There were lines of relaxed tension around Harry's
forehead that Snape had never thought to see relax in his lifetime. He
gave a smile, and it was the smile of someone who had witnessed
something very good and great.

Snape stared some more, and was about to speak when a burst of light
came into being above Harry's shoulder. Fawkes appeared and landed
there, his head twisted as he combed his feathers with his beak. Then he
seemed to notice Snape for the first time, and gave a casual trill.

``Fawkes bonded with me,'' said Harry, as if that were the most normal
thing in the world, and stroked the phoenix's shoulder affectionately.

Snape spent a moment waiting for the boulder to fall. His life did not
change this way, moving towards joy. There had to be a counterweight.
Perhaps his left arm would begin to burn in a moment, announcing the
Dark Lord's full return to strength.

But Harry smiled at him, and Snape found his tongue.

``You stupid, idiotic, imbecilic, moronic, idiotic---''

``You said that one already,'' said Harry, and had the audacity to laugh
at him.

``You did not tell me about entering this Maze!'' Snape roared, finding
his tongue at last. Vaguely, he was aware of raising his voice, which he
normally never did. Mostly, he was just aware that Harry appeared to be
merrily mocking his fine display of temper. ``You did not tell me that
you intended to endanger your life and sanity and disappear for what
could have been months!''

Harry eyed him patiently. ``Of course I didn't,'' he said. ``You
wouldn't have let me go to Lux Aeterna if I had.''

``That is not the point!'' Snape hissed, finally getting control of his
voice. ``Do you know what it did to those of us you left behind, those
of us who had no way of knowing what happened and no reason to believe
you would ever return? I am badly off enough---'' the admission burned
his tongue, but he knew what he had to say next would shatter any
concern just for him in Harry's mind ``---but Mr. Malfoy is in the
hospital wing, and even your brother goes about as pale as if he had
just realized his own stupidity.''

Harry's grin disappeared. ``Draco's in the hospital wing?''

``Of course.'' Snape folded his arms. ``You did not believe he was here?
He would not have let me speak with you so long without interruption,
but sprung on you and perhaps done something unforgivable, or
Unforgivable.'' He shuddered slightly. He did not wish to be there to
see the two boys' reunion. He was sure it would be even more emotional
than this one, and this one was already too much so.

``I---I didn't know.'' Harry turned distractedly for the door, obviously
meaning to burst through it at once and pester Madam Pomfrey for
permission to see Draco.

``Harry.'' Snape reached out and caught the shoulder Fawkes wasn't
sitting on. Harry turned and looked up at him.

Snape took a deep breath, and burned his own tongue again. ``I was
worried about you. I missed you. I am glad that you found peace and
happiness in your Maze, but you could have told us that that is what you
were seeking.''

``You wouldn't have let me go.'' Harry gave a fretful tug against the
hand on his shoulder.

Snape ruthlessly buried any hurt that caused him, making himself
remember that Harry had hugged him of his own free will. ``Perhaps not,
but you might have been able to persuade me. And as I do not enjoy
feeling constant worry like that and having my ability to work
destroyed,'' he said, moving back onto territory he understood. ``You
will have detention every Tuesday and Thursday night for the rest of the
year, starting at eight'o'clock.'' At least then he knew where the boy
would be for a few hours a few times a week.

``Professor Snape---''

``In this matter, I am not your professor,'' Snape interrupted. ``I am
your guardian. And I do not wish you to think that I will simply nod and
stand back while you risk your life.''

``I've never thought that,'' Harry muttered, and gave another little tug
towards the door.

Snape restrained him. ``And what did you believe would happen when you
came out of the Maze? Or what did you think would happen if you died
there, and never returned, and we did not know what had occurred?''

``I---'' Harry's exuberance dimmed for the first time, and he lowered
his eyes. ``I didn't know,'' he whispered. ``I thought I needed to find
some solution to my problems in freeing the magical creatures, and I
didn't think beyond that. I'm sorry.''

``You must accept some restraint,'' Snape said quietly. ``If it is the
restraint of those who care about you, that makes it more precious than
the impersonal grip of hands which do not.'' That was something
Dumbledore had told him long ago, and though the man had altered, that
saying was still wise. ``I have asked for promises from you, Harry, and
you have broken them. I have trusted to your own emotions to restrain
you, and they have not worked. Your other emotions, the ones that tell
you you must be a sacrifice to be worth something---''

``The Maze taught me I didn't,'' Harry whispered, and lifted his head to
smile at Snape through tears in his eyes. ``I'm going to have trouble
remembering that, but I can think about it now, since I just came out of
the Maze. It showed me that I didn't have to be a sacrifice, and that my
own life is just as important as other people's lives. If I can keep
hold of that, I can live a very different life.''

Snape closed his eyes, and this time he was the one who pulled Harry
close to him and held him there, making Fawkes utter an indignant little
squawk and vanish. Harry remained obediently still for a moment, even
hugging back, before he wriggled. ``I should go to Draco,'' he
whispered.

Snape nodded, and let him go. ``You did not see him when you came
through the Floo in the hospital wing?'' he asked, because it still
seemed strange.

Harry blinked. ``Oh. We didn't return by Floo. Dad Apparated me to
Hogsmeade, and we walked from there.'' He held up a hand before Snape
could say anything, and went on, ``And I know that you think this is his
fault, somehow. It's not. He didn't know I was going to go into the
Maze, and neither did Connor. I never mentioned it. Please don't take
vengeance on him for this.''

\emph{For this.} Snape grabbed hold of and treasured that phrase. In a
way, it was easy for him to promise this. The notion that James Potter
had no connection to Harry's face looking as if he'd bathed in sunrises
was pleasing. ``I promise,'' he said gravely. ``And now, go see Draco.
He is longing to see you.''

Harry gave Snape a quick nod and smile, and then slipped out of his
office.

Snape turned towards his cauldron, and looked at it and the vial of the
potion in his hand.

He waved his wand, and Vanished both.

If he was going to keep his word to Harry, better that he did not have
such a temptation nearby.

He kept his glance away from the locked desk in a corner of his office,
too, because there the temptation was greater still, inspired anew each
time he looked at another memory in the Pensieve Potion.

Snape shook his head and forced the thoughts away for one night. Harry
was back, and he was free. That would suffice.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Draco woke slowly. He knew something had changed, that something was
right which had been wrong, but the Calming Draught covered his mind
with such a maze of oblivion that it took him long moments to force his
eyes open and focus his empathy on the new presence in the room.

No, not new at all. Old, and familiar, and beloved.

Draco put out a hand, and felt it claimed and securely held. Another
hand touched his forehead, shaking with something that might have been
hesitancy or might have been remorse, but it was there. And Draco knew
something of what it meant. Harry had not often touched him first.

``Harry,'' he whispered, and didn't make it a question. The Calming
Draught was almost gone, he discovered, and his empathy was not swinging
wildly now, trying to find its focus, as had happened earlier today. It
had its focus. He sat up in bed, slowly, and turned his head, slowly,
and opened his eyes, slowly.

Harry jerked his head up. He'd been sitting with it bowed. He looked at
Draco now with wide eyes.

``Can you forgive me?'' he whispered. ``I---''

Draco narrowed his eyes and looked past the words, which didn't matter
anyway, to the emotions. Harry was feeling sorrow like cool green ivy,
but just beyond that was something else, something hardly dimmed,
something that---

Draco cried out and put a hand over his eyes as sunlight appeared to
explode on his face. Sunrise, from a mountain. Warm sun on deep green
leaves. Joy, and wonder, and relief so great that Draco thought he might
have fallen into a coma if he'd been near Harry when it was new.

Harry let out a choked laugh and hugged him fiercely. ``Yes,'' he
whispered. ``I went into the Maze, Draco, and it showed me---it showed
me a bunch of things that I never knew were true. That my mother didn't
love me.'' His voice sank on that, as if he hadn't much practice saying
it aloud. ``That I'm worth just as much as other people. That I don't
have to constantly sacrifice myself in order to justify my existence.''
He faltered and fell silent.

Draco opened his eyes. Harry held and met his gaze. Terror tightened the
lines of his face, but that joy still mingled with it, so that Draco
thought he might know what it was like to sit on a broom a thousand feet
above the ground and then push out and fall into the clear morning air.

``That I love you,'' said Harry steadily, ``and that I can love you.''

Draco blinked, rapidly. He hoped that Harry didn't expect him to lean
forward or lie back down. He didn't think he could move at the moment,
with emotions storming his body like soldiers at a gate.

Harry did it for him, leaning forward and gently kissing him. It was the
same sort of light caress that they'd shared on the first day of spring,
and Harry blushed fiercely as he pulled back again.

``I shouldn't be doing this, you're sick,'' he whispered, and eased
Draco back so that he lay flat on the bed again.

Draco caught and held his hands, and said, ``Madam Pomfrey might not
agree, Harry, but for my part, I think you can do it as often as you
like.''

Harry just muttered something about Malfoys and their notions of
mediwizardry, and then squeezed Draco's left wrist and let it go. He
left his right hand tangled with Draco's, though. ``What happened?'' he
asked softly. ``Madam Pomfrey said you'd gone hysterical.''

Draco frowned at him. ``You didn't come back, you \emph{prat}. What was I
supposed to do, assume you were having a happy holiday somewhere and
just forget about you? My empathy went out of control. I was feeling too
many emotions and had no place to put them. The worry and the magic
combined, and of course they dropped me.'' He didn't care if he was
ranting by the end. Madam Pomfrey's only other patient was a sixth-year
Ravenclaw student who'd somehow managed to Transfigure her arm into a
chicken wing, and Draco didn't care if he woke her up. He was entitled
to shout. Harry had \emph{left} him here, damn it.

Harry frowned at him, and said the last thing that Draco had expected at
that particular point in time. ``Draco, you can't control your empathy
when I'm not around?''

Draco looked the other way. ``I didn't say that,'' he muttered. ``I
didn't---that wasn't the point of my rant, Harry.''

``Answer me, Draco.'' The grip on his right hand firmed.

``It's a lot easier when you're around,'' said Draco. ``You provide me
with a level of familiarity and focus. I'm interested in what you feel,
and you have strong emotions, so of course I can concentrate on you. And
it's fine at a place like the Manor, where there are only a few people
around and I can separate out each person's feelings and learn who they
are quickly.''

``But in Hogwarts without me,'' said Harry, not even bothering to let
the question trail off. Draco could feel him staring at the side of his
head. Having Harry's full attention had always been pleasant for him. He
hadn't realized how overwhelming it could be when he didn't want to
answer the question.

\emph{I don't have to lie here and listen to this,} Draco thought
abruptly. \emph{He's the one who did something wrong, not me. He's the
one who went away and led to this collapse in the first place.} He
dragged himself up and narrowed his eyes at Harry. Harry already had his
narrowed, so this led to a staring contest for over a minute before
Draco shook his head furiously.

``You can't intimidate me like that, Harry,'' he said. ``You left us. You
\emph{lied.}''

Harry nodded, but his eyes didn't fall and his face didn't look less
mulish. ``I did,'' he said. ``I was wrong, and I'm sorry for that. And I
thought you were working on controlling your empathy, Draco, so that you
didn't need one person near you all the time to act as an anchor. I
certainly \emph{believed} that you could distinguish other people's
emotions from your own, and even bear them when you were agitated
yourself. I suppose I was wrong about that.''

Draco winced. ``Harry\ldots{}''

``The Maze changed that for me, Draco.'' Harry leaned nearer, and Draco
squirmed. \emph{Is this the way he feels when everyone in the Great Hall
is looking at him? I mean, I've felt it} from \emph{him, but being
stripped naked myself is no promenade.} ``I know something, now, about
how you might love me, and feel when I'm in danger. That's why I'm more
remorseful now than I would have been about this just a week ago. And I
know that I love you. That means that I \emph{am} concerned about you,
damn it, and what happened to you. Just as concerned, just as worried,
and with just as much right to get angry if you let something like this
happen to you because you weren't working on controlling your empathy.''

Draco swallowed, and tried to keep up the anger. It didn't work that
well when he felt as if he were rolling in warmth.

``So,'' Harry went on, seeming to ignore the change of expression in
Draco's face, ``I want you to work harder on the empathy. Try to control
it when I'm not around the way you would if I were there. Learn to
distinguish between other people's feelings and your own. I believe it's
changed you, but I don't want it to change you so much that you keep
fainting in class.'' He raised his eyebrows. ``That wouldn't really be
becoming to a Malfoy, would it?''

Draco flushed at the thought of what his parents would say when they
found out he'd fainted in class, and why. ``Um,'' he said. ``No.''

Harry nodded. ``Then I think that you should learn this, Draco. I'll
help you.''

``I don't want to add another duty to your---''

Harry had the audacity to laugh at him. ``Do you even realize what you
sound like, Draco?'' he said. ``Like a Gryffindor trying to convince me
he can stand on his own when he's bleeding from both legs.''

``I am \emph{no} Gryffindor,'' said Draco, wincing as he remembered his
unsuccessful attempts to get Connor Potter to go away and leave him
alone this afternoon. Connor had acted as though \emph{someone} had to
be there at Draco's bedside, so it might as well be him. That he'd been
doing it out of a sense of obligation to his brother made it
intolerable. Draco had finally snarled at him and driven him away, but
the length of time it took had also been intolerable.

``Good,'' said Harry. ``So that means that I'll help you learn to
control your empathy, then.''

Draco blinked. ``When did I agree to that?''

``When you didn't speak fast enough to prevent it,'' said Harry. ``And
also when you didn't go far enough in your resolve to control it.'' He
gave Draco a stern glance, and stood. There was still a sense of
sunshine as he looked down at him, though, and Draco smiled, deeply smug
that he'd managed to coax this emotion out of Harry. Harry shook his
head at him, and then broke into a reluctant smile himself. ``We'll make
an excellent empath out of you yet,'' Harry muttered, as he covered
Draco up with one of his blankets.

``Stay here with me,'' Draco whispered, catching at Harry's wrist.

Harry hesitated, and then shook his head and sat back down. ``Just until
you fall asleep, then.''

It turned out that Draco had wanted Harry to lie down in the bed next to
him, while Harry preferred to stay in the chair, and there was a short
argument about that. Harry won it by default when his amusement and joy
grew so warm that Draco slipped into a half-doze, which gradually turned
into real sleep. He felt one hand holding his wrist and the other
slipping through his hair to bare his forehead, as though he had a scar
there himself. Draco sighed, and reminded himself that Harry was alive
and safe and loved him, and let his fears be lulled.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``I should have known.''

Harry started and turned around. Connor was standing behind him, arms
folded across his chest, shaking his head slowly from side to side.

``I should have known that you would come to his side the moment you got
back,'' he said.

Harry ducked his head. ``I didn't, at first. I thought he was with
Snape, and it took me a little while to find out he wasn't.'' He
hesitated, unsure of what to say to his brother. He didn't know how
angry Connor was with him.

``Let's put it this way,'' said Connor. ``Your going into the Maze made
me frantic, and made Dad frantic, and made the rest of my Easter holiday
tense, and lost Gryffindor a hundred points in Potions today, and had me
sitting beside Draco bloody Malfoy this afternoon and trying to comfort
him.''

Harry blinked at Draco, who had gone to sleep with a faint smile on his
lips but didn't show any sign of relinquishing Harry's hand. ``He didn't
mention that.''

``Yes, well, it was a highly uncomfortable experience for both of us,''
Connor snapped. He ran a hand down his face and sighed. ``Harry, when
are you going to stop doing stupid shite?'' he asked wearily.

``I don't have as much need to do it any more,'' said Harry. ``The Maze
showed me the past, and the present, and it---well. It taught me a lot
of things.'' He took a deep breath. ``Most especially, it taught me that
I don't need to do things like go into the Maze just because it might
benefit someone else.''

``That's why you went into the Maze,'' said Connor.

Harry nodded.

``Harry, you don't have to save the whole bloody world,'' said Connor,
and then stopped and listened to his own words. ``Well,'' he conceded.
``Maybe you do. But that doesn't mean you have to do it \emph{alone.}'' He
turned his head, and his eyes pierced Harry. ``Just because not everyone
agrees with you about house elves doesn't mean you've lost. Did you know
that Hermione and I are both refusing to let house elves clean up after
us, and it's only a matter of time before we make Ron break down and
learn the charms that he needs?''

Harry swallowed. ``I didn't know that, no.''

``That's because you never bloody \emph{ask},'' said Connor. ``Bloody
Slytherin prat. You just assume you're alone, and you don't \emph{ask.}''
He paused and studied Harry with a sharp gaze that made him acutely
uncomfortable. ``So ask from now on, and we'll be glad to tell you when
we think you're making sense and when you're being an idiot.''

Harry only nodded again, unable to think of what else he would say.

Connor sighed. ``I knew you would come back,'' he said. ``I tried to
tell Malfoy that, but he doesn't listen to me. Something about only
needing to listen to one Potter, and I wasn't him.''

Harry snorted in spite of himself. Connor squinted at him. ``Oh, yes,
you think it's funny,'' he said. ``That's because you weren't here when
I was trying to talk to him. Gryffindors and Slytherins can get along
fine, I think. It's just Gryffindors and Malfoys who don't.''

Harry grinned at him. ``Thank you for trying, Connor.''

``Don't run off like that again, and I won't have to.''

``I'll try not to.''

Connor shook his head. ``The best I can hope for, I suppose.'' He
stepped up to Harry and hugged him tightly. Harry hugged him back with
one arm, since Draco still wouldn't let go of his other hand. ``And if
you tell Malfoy that I came back here to check on him, then I'll hex you
in the Great Hall tomorrow.''

Harry tried to say something, but Connor squeezed him hard enough that
he lost his breath, and then left the hospital wing.

Harry leaned back against Draco's bed, and smiled.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Mr. Potter. Thank you for coming.''

Harry nodded calmly at Scrimgeour as Snape followed him into the
Minister's office. This was a much larger office than the Head Auror's
had been, Harry thought, but it didn't really look much different. The
broader walls just meant Scrimgeour had more room to hang his
photographs and his maps, and to put up a large portrait of a woman with
shockingly red hair and direct blue eyes. The witch tilted her head when
she saw Harry looking at her, and then stuck her tongue out.

``Don't mind Grandmother Leonora,'' said Scrimgeour, as he stood up and
extended his hand. ``She was Muggleborn. She couldn't help it. No notion
of proper breeding at all.''

The witch in the portrait made an insulting gesture at him.

``Why do you keep such an ill-bred portrait on your wall?'' Snape asked,
as he took the chair next to Harry's. He hadn't offered to shake hands
with the Minister, and Harry didn't think it wise to press. He did clasp
Scrimgeour's wrist, and then sat down in his own chair as Scrimgeour
limped back to his desk. Percy Weasley sat at a smaller one behind him,
scribbling something furiously. Now and then he lifted his head and
peered at them like a rabbit looking out of its hole.

``I like her,'' said Scrimgeour. ``Reminds me that I'm human, sometimes,
no matter how high and mighty I become.'' He turned his mild gaze on
Harry. ``And I think that you're here for the same reasons, aren't you,
Mr. Potter?''

Harry took a deep breath. He'd asked for a face-to-face meeting, knowing
it would be difficult, but unable to believe that he could say the kinds
of things he needed to say in a letter. Before the Maze, he knew, he
would have found this much harder.

``I am, Minister,'' he said. ``I have to know if you're my enemy now,
and if so, what the means for the cause of the magical creatures of
Great Britain.''

Scrimgeour lifted an eyebrow. ``I wouldn't have minded if this were just
another of Tybalt Starrise's wild schemes, you know,'' he said. ``Or if
Umbridge had pushed far enough to lose her friends, and leave herself
vulnerable to her enemies \emph{in the Ministry.} But you are outside
the Ministry, Potter, and, traditionally, it's been a very bad thing for
my poor Ministry when a wizard with Lord-level power starts manipulating
people inside her.''

Harry nodded, once. ``You've got to know that I won't stop, sir,'' he
said quietly. ``I want the anti-werewolf laws utterly gone. I want the
webs that enslave the house elves and all the others gone. I'm perfectly
willing to wait as long as I have to, but that's for the cause of making
sure other people's free will is intact, not for making sure I comply
with Ministry laws.''

Scrimgeour leaned back and steepled his fingers. His yellow eyes were
calm. ``Why you, Potter? Why have the magical creatures chosen you as
their champion? Or why did you choose to champion them?''

``It's both,'' said Harry, with a shrug. ``Partly, of course, they need
a powerful wizard to fracture the webs, and neither Dumbledore nor
Voldemort are going to do it without making some bargain that would
leave them worse off.'' He suppressed a groan of frustration when
everyone in the room twitched at Voldemort's name. \emph{Really, it's
just a word!} ``And partly, I want to see them free.'' He took a deep
breath. \emph{Courage. You can do this.} ``I love free will, Minister. I
love the idea of giving as many people as I can as many possibilities as
I can.''

``You could do that without freeing the magical creatures.'' Scrimgeour
tilted his head. ``In fact, some people might say that you could do it
better by leaving the magical creatures tied in their webs. That way,
there's no chance of, say, someone getting crushed by a giant's club, or
raped by a centaur, unless they actually go to the places where those
creatures live.''

Harry winced. \emph{The centaurs are going to be problematic, too,
aren't they?} ``Sir, I don't understand. What do you---''

And then he paused. They were using different definitions. He had never
realized they would cause so much trouble.

``Sir,'' he said, ``I consider the magical creatures people as much as I
do wizards and witches. I think that might be the difference between us.
You see your primary responsibility as being to humans. I see it as
being to everyone. Of course the Ministry should provide services for
them---that's what it says it does, anyway---but I think the services
should be of the same kind as the ones it gives to humans.'' Harry
leaned forward, feeling his heart bound and surge while Scrimgeour
stared at him. ``Don't just `control and regulate' werewolves, for
example. Give them the resources to bring someone who hurts them for
being werewolves to trial. Don't just talk to the goblins, but negotiate
with their \emph{hanarz} as if she were a powerful witch or the leader
of a foreign country. That's what I want to see happen, and what the
Ministry really should want to make happen, since it claims to serve the
wizarding \emph{world} and not just wizards. You're not just Minister of
witches and wizards, sir. You're Minister of centaurs and house elves
and merfolk and unicorns and all the rest. Expand the covenant you've
made with yourself and your duties. It's easy enough.''

Scrimgeour went on staring at him. Then he said, ``Mr. Potter, what you
are asking is---'' He went still, and looked at the far wall. Percy had
stopped even pretending to scribble, and watched them openly.

``Big, I know,'' said Harry. ``But it's really something that should
have happened already. Think about it, sir.'' He could feel his
impatience stretching, and forced himself to sit on it. He couldn't
hurry Scrimgeour. Bad things happened when he did. ``You want the
Ministry to live up to its potential, its claims. It claims that it
regards magical creatures just the same as wizards and witches. Everyone
knows that's not true, but it \emph{sounds} good, and there hasn't been
a Minister who was concerned about making that part of its reputation
true. You could be the first.'' He smiled as Scrimgeour glanced sharply
at him. ``And, yes, of course I'm saying that because I want them free.
But if you want your Ministry to be everything it says it is, then I
think you have to be willing to make those empty promises real.''

Scrimgeour closed his eyes and held still for a long moment. Then he
said, ``We have wandered a long way from the original discussion of your
manipulating people in the Ministry, Potter.''

Harry shrugged. ``This is the cause for which I'm most likely to
manipulate them, Minister. Ministry laws about most of the creatures are
outdated and ridiculous. As for Umbridge, she was part of the reason
that I was sent to the Department for the Regulation and Control of
Magical Creatures to register myself as a Parselmouth. Putting her in
charge of negotiating with them and protecting them was especially
ridiculous. Of course I was going to strike back at her, to protect my
allies and myself, but I didn't see any reason to stomp in with magic
flaring around me. There are subtler ways.''

``You are telling me that you would oppose me,'' said Scrimgeour.

``If you keep on going the way you have been.'' Harry met his eyes
evenly. Snape was tense beside him, but he had not interfered. Harry was
glad. ``Minister, the world is going to change around me. I've finally
accepted that. I want to change so much for magical creatures that the
ripples are going to spread from that and affect other things and people
in the wizarding world, no matter how much I might want to confine them.
This is revolution. I'm going to try and make it as graceful and gentle
a revolution as I can, but it's coming. I know that you have the ability
to guide the Ministry through that intact. I'd be sorry to lose you as
an ally. But I would rejoice if you could set the Ministry flowing with
this new current.''

Scrimgeour blinked several times. Then he closed his eyes, and said,
``This is a grander vision than anything I came into office with.''

Harry bowed his head, struck by the honesty of the admission. ``I
understand that, sir. I'm asking you to look beyond the Ministry and
think even more about the wizarding world. But your people and your laws
are all part of this. They're going to shift, and I think it should be a
guided shift. And you'd be the best guide I know.''

Scrimgeour sighed. ``To make such a change, at my time of life,'' he
said.

But Harry heard the undertone in his voice, and found a smile spreading
across his face. Scrimgeour wasn't completely convinced, not yet. He
would probably still hate Harry telling anyone in the Ministry what to
do. But the vision had caught him. He was not the sort of person who ran
from a problem. He made the impossible work when he thought it needed
to, like keeping Harry from simply being returned to his parents once
the \emph{Fugitivus Animus} spell ended. And now Harry had fascinated
him with this impossibility, and he wanted to see what he could do to
make it work.

``The whole wizarding world is going to change, sir,'' said Harry. ``And
I think it'll take many years, longer than I'll live, even. But you can
help start it.''

Scrimgeour laughed abruptly, a deep and joyous sound. ``Tybalt Starrise
was in here babbling about revolution,'' he said. ``I didn't listen to
him. I owe the boy an apology for that, though not for threatening to
curse me into invisibility and silence if I didn't stop questioning
him.''

Harry rolled his eyes. \emph{Tybalt, honestly.} ``To slow revolution,
then, sir?'' he asked, holding his hand out.

Scrimgeour met his eyes and clasped his wrist firmly. ``Indeed,'' he
said. ``Merlin knows how we're going to do it, Potter, but you've
convinced me that we're going to do it.''

Harry caught a glimpse of Percy Weasley's face as he stood, and smiled
to himself. Percy was caught between fiercely conflicting emotions,
obviously. But then his shoulders straightened, and he gave Scrimgeour
the look of someone who would follow him to the ends of the earth if
necessary.

\emph{I'm glad that he has something of his own, now, and not just
loyalty to Dumbledore,} Harry thought, as he nodded to Scrimgeour and
followed Snape out of the room. He switched the path of his thoughts
then. He was wondering why his guardian had been so quiet during the
conversation, when quite a bit of it must have been surprising for him.

``Sir?'' he asked, and Snape looked at him. ``Do you think that what I'm
doing is mad?''

``No,'' said Snape. ``I could see where you would lead us, into
revolution, as early as second year, and I made the decision to follow
you then.'' His voice was tranquil, though his eyes reflected a bit of
amusement.

``Second year?'' Harry tried to think of a time when he might have shown
Snape a glimpse of the future in between being possessed by Tom Riddle
and going mad, and couldn't identify it. ``\emph{How}?''

``Some people see with clearer eyes than others, Harry,'' said Snape,
like the smug bastard he was, and then ushered him ahead of him and out
of the Ministry, refusing to answer any more questions.

\chapter{Down, and Down, and Down}\label{chapter-67-down-and-down-and-down}

\emph{Harry dreamed.}

``I am well pleased with you, Fenrir.''

``Thank you, my lord.''

Harry edged forward, light on his paws, watching every moment for some
sign of a snake or Rosier. However, he could see only the man who must
be Fenrir Greyback, in human form, kneeling in front of Voldemort's
divan with a look of adoration on his face. This was the same room Harry
had seen once before, from which Voldemort had sent Rosier to attack
Lucius Malfoy. Harry stopped when he was next to the divan. Not only
might Voldemort see him if he came around it, but Harry might see
\emph{him}, and he had no desire to do that.

Greyback sat on his heels and looked up at his master. Harry could see
that his hair was heavily streaked with gray and hung in front of his
face; his body was powerfully muscled, and his teeth were yellow. Harry
bared his own teeth and spat a bit. Greyback looked far more like a
werewolf than Remus did, but the comparison was flattering to Remus, not
the other way around. Along with the wildness came a sense of mindless
brutality, as though Greyback would be as likely to savage someone
important as obey a plan.

``Fenrir has accomplished his mission,'' Voldemort announced in his
high, cold voice to the rest of the room. ``The three Light families who
thought to defy me in secret have been taught how futile it is to oppose
me.''

Harry felt his heart bound, once and hard. It didn't sound as though the
Ministry had managed to alert the right families when Greyback came
hunting on the full moon, then.

``That is assuredly good news, my lord,'' said Rabastan, moving into
sight and then kneeling. ``What are their names, if a servant may be so
bold as to ask?''

Voldemort must have made some motion for Greyback to answer, because he
did in a low snarl. ``Gloryflower. Griffinsnest. Opalline. They had been
persuaded to withdraw from the war, but still they would not give up
less active means of defiance. Now, when they have werewolves of their
own---in the family, so to speak---to deal with, they will know the
weight of my lord's hand.'' Greyback grinned, and then laughed, a laugh
that trailed off into a howl.

Harry carefully committed the names to memory. He did not know any of
the families personally, but he recalled Tybalt Starrise saying that his
father had been a Griffinsnest. Perhaps he could use Tybalt as a contact
to send the victims the Wolfsbane Potion they would need.

``But what is this, Fenrir?'' Voldemort was apparently trying to sound
playful. He only sounded like a half-strangled child, Harry thought.
``You did not deliver all the bites yourself? You left part of the work
up to someone else?''

``Yes, my lord,'' said Greyback, sounding unabashed. He reached out a
hand towards a darkened corner of the room, and a woman Harry hadn't
smelt before under Greyback's musk approached him. ``Meet my consort,
Cynthia Whitecheek.''

Whitecheek knelt in front of Voldemort, her golden eyes upturned to him.
Harry felt himself twitch at the sight of her. She had a fixed stare,
only slightly less mad than Rosier's, and her movements were quick and
lithe and too graceful, a predator's. Her heavy brown hair swung to one
side, and revealed that her right ear was missing, evidently chewed off.

``You have not come to my side before,'' said Voldemort.

``I would have, my lord,'' said Whitecheek in a murmur, ``but I was but
newly turned that horrible night of your fall, and then I fell prey to
the deceptions of Light wizards and Ministry officials for a time.
Fenrir was the one to convince me that that defiance of their senseless
edicts, not submission, was the best course of survival.'' She leaned
against Greyback and closed her eyes. Greyback licked her cheek.

Harry grimaced. \emph{More werewolves. Great. Is he building a pack?}

``Then welcome, Cynthia Whitecheek,'' said Voldemort. ``I shall test you
for loyalty later.'' Whitecheek merely nodded, and then crawled backward
into her corner again. Voldemort turned and studied Rabastan. ``And the
books?'' he demanded, voice turning into a hissing lisp. ``You have the
books for me?''

``We do, my lord,'' said Rabastan, inclining his head. ``They were not
as well-guarded as we assumed, and a single raid managed to snare them
all.''

Voldemort laughed. Harry winced. His scar felt like a burning brand.
``Excellent,'' he said. ``Meanwhile, Bella proceeds in her incantations,
and our long wait is nearly done.'' Then he paused, and both the Death
Eaters Harry could see seemed to shiver, as though Voldemort's
expression had changed. ``We have a matter of great importance to attend
to now,'' he said, and raised his voice. ``Walden, bring us the
traitor.''

A burly Death Eater Harry suspected was Walden Macnair dragged someone
else into sight. Harry couldn't make out who it was until Macnair flung
him on the floor in front of Voldemort.

Evan Rosier pushed his hair out of his eyes and raised his brows. ``What
is this, my lord? I was napping. I was also dreaming of a pie, a most
delicious blueberry pie, and I was about to eat it.''

``You are a traitor, Evan,'' said Voldemort, enunciating every word like
a tap on a drum made of glass. ``I know that you have been writing to
Harry Potter and to Severus Snape. You have sent them information.'' His
voice altered further, and Harry laid his ears against his head in
protest of the pain. ``You will tell me what you have told them, and
immediately.''

``I would rather that you pulled the information from my mind, lord,''
said Rosier. ``That way, you may trust to its accuracy.'' He fluttered
his eyelashes and leaned forward to lock gazes with the Dark Lord.

Harry watched as Rosier remained, motionless, like that, not giving the
slightest wince, though he was sure Voldemort had accepted the
invitation. At last Rosier sagged slightly, and Harry waited in the
tense silence that followed for some declaration of death, or at least
maiming. He was not sure that he should stay here to watch that, and not
just because Rosier had demonstrated some ability to see him in the last
vision.

Then Voldemort began to laugh.

Harry cowered. This was worse than the last time, and not least because
the other Death Eaters joined in---except Rosier. He kept hopeful eyes
fixed on Voldemort's face, stroking his left arm as if caressing the
Dark Mark, but had only a small, tranquil smile.

``Are you going to kill me, my lord?'' he asked. ``Will it be in an
exciting way? Please tell me it will be exciting. I all but perish from
boredom here.''

``I can see that you do, Evan,'' said Voldemort, wrestling his merriment
back under control at last. ``And you have been playing a game.''

``Everything,'' said Rosier, his eyes flashing intently, ``is a game.''

``Nevertheless,'' Voldemort said, as if he hadn't heard him, ``this is a
game that benefits me. So I will allow you to continue. Do speak your
mind on paper to Harry Potter and Severus Snape. They will never learn
the rules of your game until too late, and if my enemy and his pet
traitor shiver in anticipation of their inevitable end, so much the
better.''

Rosier simply inclined his head, and then stood and moved behind the
divan. He promptly grinned and waved at Harry.

Harry crouched, ready to rip out of the dreamscape, but Rosier didn't
alert anyone else to the fact that he could see him. He just moved his
lips, mouthing several words so quietly that Harry knew no one else
would see them if they weren't looking at his face.

``I am mad because I see what's really there.''

He turned away after that, and ignored Harry entirely. Harry shivered
and returned his attention to Voldemort, though he kept one ear cocked
for the sound of Rosier whispering his name or location to someone else.

``The time of waiting is nearly done,'' said Voldemort, ``the time when
we wake the sleeper and set our plans in motion. However, before that,
there is one more great opportunity to raise our power. The night will
be wild. I wish you to be on hand with some of the treasures that you
brought us from the Ministry, Walden. Capture as much magic as you
can.''

``My lord,'' said Macnair with a bow.

\emph{The night will be wild,} Harry thought. \emph{What night does he
mean?}

Abruptly, the answer occurred to him. \emph{Walpurgis. Walpurgis Night
is coming up, and there will be wild Dark magic there.}

He could not tell exactly what Voldemort planned to do, but he knew that
he had heard enough information for now---especially as Rosier was now
crossing his eyes at him, and someone would be sure to notice any
moment.

Harry jumped and lunged, and the dream fractured around him. This time,
he didn't hesitate before he found parchment and quill and began writing
a letter to Tybalt Starrise. He did have to swat at the blood that ran
down his face from his scar, but that was just so that he could see.

\emph{Maybe he can help, maybe he can't, but at least he might act as my
go-between. No one will suffer unduly from being a werewolf if I can
help it.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

This time, because he knew what to look for, Harry saw the stirrings of
Walpurgis Night before they properly began. A few days before, most of
the students in Slytherin were lifting their heads higher, answering
questions in class more crisply than usual, and laughing for no
particular reason at meals and in hallways between classes, their faces
bright with undefined excitement. Harry saw Pansy clutching her books to
her chest and smiling as they walked to Defense Against the Dark Arts,
and abruptly decided that he might as well talk to her. She might know
more about mysterious magic than most of the students, since her father
was a necromancer.

``Just a minute,'' he mumbled to Draco, and broke away to talk to Pansy
before Draco could react.

Pansy looked up as Harry neared her, and her face rearranged itself in a
mask of respect. Harry smiled slightly. Most of the Slytherins had
reacted like that since he came back from the Maze. They could feel his
new sense of self-direction, if nothing else, Harry thought, and there
had been no more Dungbombs in his bed, though Howlers were still a daily
occurrence.

``Pansy,'' he said, ``do you know what kind of artifacts someone would
have to use to capture magic on Walpurgis Night?''

To his surprise, her face turned utterly pale, and she snatched his
wrist in one hand and dragged him a short distance away from the flood
of students. Curious eyes turned towards them, as they always did
towards Harry, but Pansy gave them a glare that would have done Medusa
credit and got them to look away.

``Where did you hear that?'' Pansy whispered. ``What do you think you're
doing, Potter?''

``\emph{I'm} not going to do it,'' said Harry, shaking off her grip.
\emph{I understand her panic, but there's no reason to let her hurt me.}
``I've received information that indicates Voldemort's going to try,
though.''

Pansy's face gained a high tinge of color along the cheekbones. ``It
should be impossible,'' she whispered. ``But the Ministry's always
meddling with things they shouldn't be, and if he got a hold of some of
the devices they have\ldots{}''

``We think that's it,'' said Draco over his shoulder. Harry reached back
and held his hand. Draco gave him a reprimanding squeeze on his wrist.
After all, Harry had told him about the dream, so, said the squeeze,
there was no reason to try and talk to Pansy in private. ``Through
Walden Macnair, he has some, but we don't have any idea what they are or
what they do.''

``This is bad,'' Pansy muttered. ``If he does try to capture the magic on
Walpurgis itself, then he'll disturb the natural order of things. That
magic is always supposed to be free, and you don't \emph{control} it.
That's the point. That's what makes Walpurgis different from other
holidays. You go dancing naked in the wildness and trust the magic to
take care of you.'' Pansy closed her eyes and stood still for a long
moment. ``I'll have to talk to my father,'' she said at last, shoving
away from the wall. ``I know that it's bad, and why, but I don't know
what the actual consequences would be.'' She locked eyes with Harry.
``You're absolutely sure of this information?''

Harry couldn't blame her for distrusting him. He took a deep breath and
lifted his fringe, tracing the lightning bolt scar with one finger and
watching as Pansy's eyes widened. ``I'm very sure,'' he said.

Pansy locked her mouth into a thin line. ``I don't know all your
secrets, Potter, and I don't want to know them,'' she said. ``But I'll
do what I can.'' She turned and almost ran down the corridor, calling
over her shoulder, ``Tell Professor Karkaroff that I'm sick and won't be
able to attend class today.''

Harry nodded, and ushered Draco along. Draco did give him a punch on the
shoulder before they entered the Defense Against the Dark Arts
classroom, though.

``I already know everything,'' he whispered. ``You could have just taken
me along to talk to Pansy in the first place.''

Harry gave him a faint smile and a shrug. As the days slid past since
the Maze, the answers he had received there had lost some of their
power. Most of the time, he still remembered---as he had when he told
Draco immediately about the dream---but old habits were reasserting
themselves.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Potter, a moment, please.''

Harry turned, and forced himself to wait patiently. Over the two months
since Moody had been exposed as Mulciber, he and Karkaroff had had
several of these little chats. Draco would linger near the door, as much
to make sure no one else would come in as to oversee Harry. Karkaroff
had his hands folded in his sleeves this time, and was shivering, making
Harry sure that something about this conversation was unusual even
before he began.

``I plan to attend the celebration of Walpurgis Night,'' said Karkaroff,
letting the sentence fall like a hammer. ``Do you believe that I would
be welcome there?''

Harry opened his mouth as he thought about it. He knew that many others
would distrust a former Death Eater, especially one who had such a
reputation as a coward. On the other hand, from what he knew, Walpurgis
was a celebration for any Dark wizard, regardless of his affiliation.
Certainly, the witches and wizards who had not been Death Eaters had not
flinched last year from the ones who had been.

Harry looked into his eyes and gave a small shrug. ``I think the magic
would welcome you, sir,'' he said. ``Perhaps not all the other
celebrants, but who cares about them?''

Karkaroff didn't look reassured. ``That was what I meant, Potter,'' he
said, leaning nearer to whisper urgently. Out of the corner of his eye,
Harry saw Draco take a few steps closer. ``I told you once that you are
one of the two wizards setting Dark magic on fire all across Europe.
You\ldots{}know who the other is.'' He shivered again, and his hand
hovered protectively over his left forearm. Harry inclined his head in a
short nod. ``I need to know if you think I would be safe there. This
Night will already be wilder than the others. I can feel it.'' Karkaroff
bowed his head and said no more.

Harry blinked. \emph{Is that the reason I'm sensing it so much more than
I did last year? I thought it was just familiarity and the anxiety of
thinking about what Voldemort might do, but maybe I am sensing something
that wasn't there before. Of course, if Dark magic is really on fire, in
Karkaroff's words, then it might be more violent than last year.}

Hesitantly, Harry reached out towards the Dark music for the first time.
He had a sense the song was always there, not just when webs were
tearing, but most of the time, he didn't try to hear it.

Now, though, he did, the chorus echoing in his ears the moment he
reached for it, and he knew at once that something had changed. The
music had always been frenzied, but now it played so fast that Harry
could barely distinguish individual notes. Throats screamed it, and
Harry could hear the voices changing often. It sounded as though the
singers were frequently collapsing in exhaustion, while others took
their places.

\emph{Or they are dying,} Harry thought, queasily, and fixed his eyes on
Karkaroff's face.

``I can't say that it's safe,'' Harry whispered. ``But then, I don't
think that this holiday was ever safe. It's wilder this time, though.''

Karkaroff gave a choked little sound, and bowed. ``I shall rethink
whether I want to attend, then,'' he whispered back. ``Thank you.''

Harry nodded to him, and then stepped out of the classroom. Draco's hand
was firm on his shoulder, and he said, ``I saw your face, Harry. You
think there's some danger on Walpurgis, something even stronger than
what the Dark Lord's planning, don't you?''

Harry nodded, though he checked up and down the corridor automatically
to make sure that no one was near them. Draco rolled his eyes at him.
``I already did that, Harry,'' he said. ``Now. Tell me about this.
What's the matter?''

``Wild music,'' said Harry. ``Dark magic isn't just singing, this time,
it's \emph{screaming.} Something is going to happen on Walpurgis that I
don't think Voldemort is controlling, just planning for.'' He squashed
the yearning he could feel in his heart to give himself over entirely to
the music. That was not a strong temptation for him any more, not since
Christmas night and the last time it had been, but still\ldots{} The
vision of what it must be like to dance along to this kind of music was
imperative, tugging at him.

``But you plan to attend the celebration anyway,'' Draco finished in a
resigned tone.

Harry nodded at him. ``I do. I'm sorry. I know that you don't like it,
and that you won't go with me---''

Draco snorted at him. ``I \emph{am} coming with you.''

Harry frowned. ``Why?'' And then he felt stupid at the look that Draco
gave him.

``To protect you, of course.'' Draco linked his hands together behind
Harry's head and briefly drew his face to his, so that they rested
forehead to forehead, in a gesture he'd been using lately. Harry almost
thought Draco was trying to take some of the pain away from his scar. ``I
am never letting you walk alone into danger again if I can help it. And
this time, since you've done me the courtesy of letting me know about it
in advance, I \emph{can} help it.''

``You're an empath,'' Harry whispered in concern, ``and this night is
wild. Are you sure that you can stand it?''

Draco gave a half-bitter, half-wry smile. ``I'm a better-trained empath
now, thanks to you,'' he said. ``And yes, I'll stand it. I trust
\emph{you} to protect \emph{me} if something goes that badly wrong.'' He
gave Harry's head a little shake. ``We protect each other, Harry,
remember? The shielding doesn't just go all one way. I \emph{know} that
you learned that in the Maze, and I'm not about to let you forget it.''

Harry nodded, and they stood there like that for a moment more before
the hallway filled with hurrying students. Harry slipped away from Draco
before murmuring, ``Come on, let's see what Pansy's found.''

Draco held his left arm lightly as they sped back to the Slytherin
common room. Harry didn't have the heart to tell him that he was holding
it in the exact place where the Dark Mark would be put on, if Harry was
ever to be branded like that.

\emph{On the other hand,} he thought, as Draco's thumb ran over the
skin, \emph{his father wears one. Perhaps he does know.}

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``He says it's bad, Harry.''

Pansy kept her voice low. They were sitting in a corner of the Slytherin
common room, not far from the fire that Pansy had used to speak to her
father. She'd been done before Harry and Draco arrived, but even though
the conversation hadn't been long, it had obviously shaken her. She
clasped her hands together, and her gaze couldn't seem to rest on one
spot for long, darting around in dizzy, butterfly-like circles.

``Voldemort could try to take some of the magic that naturally runs free
on Walpurgis Night,'' Pansy whispered, ``the magic of dead witches and
wizards which comes back to us. There are---boxes---that will let him do
that. My father hates them. He speaks to the dead and moves freely among
them, and he hates the thought of anyone caging them. He says it's a
slim chance that Voldemort could actually \emph{use} that magic, but
even his trying to capture it will be like breaking a dam and causing a
flood. And the magic is already wild.''

``Did he say why that is?'' Harry asked, wondering if he could calm down
the magic in any way when Walpurgis happened.

Pansy gave him a level glance. ``There are two Lord-level Dark wizards
in Britain right now, Harry,'' she said. ``The magic is \emph{excited}
about that. It's going to dance around you and---the Dark Lord both, and
be attracted to you, and try to be friends with you, as my father put
it. But this is Walpurgis, and that means the magic is strong not in the
sense of compulsion or deception or solitude, but in the sense of
wildness, like it was with the dragons in the First Task. So an attempt
to control it is going to distort that naturalness, and anger the magic.
And this on a night when it's \emph{already} wilder than normal because
it's so excited.'' She took a deep breath and clasped her hands until her
knuckles whitened. ``My mother doesn't think you ought to go to
Walpurgis, Harry.''

``And your father?'' Harry asked.

``He says you should go,'' Pansy murmured, bowing her head. ``He says
that you have to be there as a counterweight, to keep the magic from
hurting other people. But he also says that the distortion is so great
that this isn't going to be a normal Walpurgis. He doesn't know
\emph{what} the hell is going to happen when we start trying to travel
to the silver fire. The rituals that normally happen won't, because the
magic is shaking itself out of all those old ordered patterns. They'll
probably come back next year, when the Dark's had a chance to get used
to both of you, but for this one\ldots{}there's no telling.'' Pansy
spread her hands. ``So, the choice is yours, I suppose.''

Harry closed his eyes. ``Your father didn't know what exactly I could do
to counter these boxes, other than being there?''

Pansy said nothing, but when he looked at her again, he saw she was
shaking her head. ``He had no idea. He thinks your going is necessary,
but---well, even if he knew more than that, he might be forbidden to
tell me.''

Harry nodded. Necromancers were full of secrets, one of the sacrifices
they made in order to be able to speak to the dead and know so much.
They saw the death of every wizard and witch they met, but were
forbidden to tell them about it. Dragonsbane might well have seen
something which the dead would reveal to him but no one else.

``I'm going,'' he said.

Pansy nodded slowly. ``I thought you would,'' she said. ``Even Mum
thought you would, and she's planning to be there, too.''

Harry made a mental note to ask Hawthorn if she'd heard anything of
Fenrir Greyback's building a werewolf pack---always assuming he had the
chance in the midst of the wildness.

``How are you going to get Professor Snape to let you go?'' Draco asked,
into the silence.

Harry let out a slow breath. ``I don't know.''

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``Absolutely not,'' said Snape, not even looking up from the potion he
was stirring.

``But, sir---''

``No.''

Harry controlled his temper, and stepped forward with a deliberate pace
that forced Snape to look at him. One hand kept up the stirring, though,
and Harry wondered how long it had taken Snape to acquire instincts like
that.

``Sir,'' he said quietly, ``even if I stay here, there's no guaranteeing
that I'll be safe. The Dark magic might reach me anyway, and the
backlash from the spell that Voldemort intends to perform could, too.
That's one thing Millicent thinks will happen.'' Millicent had been in
contact with her parents, and though they didn't plan to attend the
celebration because of Marian, they'd given her what information they
could. ``Once Voldemort gets the magic angry, it'll race away from him
and to the next strongest target.'' He took a deep breath. ``Me.''

Snape remained silent for a long time. Then he ceased to stir the
potion, and leaned forward. Harry braced himself for a lecture or some
sort of lament about how often he got in trouble.

``Then I shall have to come with you,'' said Snape, without changing
expression, and picked up a vial of delicate flower petals to scatter
into the liquid.

Harry blinked. ``Sir?'' He found it impossible to imagine Snape at
Walpurgis Night. His guardian was too strict, too stern, too controlled.
The mere expression of emotions was still incredibly difficult for him.
To attend a celebration where he would be expected to dance, to whirl
around with partners of many different kinds, to lie on the grass and
laugh\ldots{}

Snape glanced up, and Harry froze. In the face of that direct dark
glance, he felt his protests turn into ice, and shatter, and fall away.
Snape looked fiercer than he had ever seen him, even when he was facing
Neville Longbottom's potions in their classroom. He looked as if he had
been gazing into a mirror full of horrors, in fact, and Harry wondered
what the hell he'd seen.

``I am going,'' said Snape quietly, every word loud as a knock on the
door of death. ``I will make sure that you are safe, Harry. By blood and
bone and breath I have sworn it, and I shall keep that vow.''

Harry swallowed. ``Sir,'' he said. ``I---thank you, but why?''

``Because I know more about what you have suffered now,'' said Snape.
``It is \emph{enough}, as you yourself are fond of saying.''

Harry bristled, wondering if he was about to start talking of Lily
again. Since the Maze, Harry had been more reluctant to discuss her than
ever, because he didn't see the point. He knew the truth now, all the
truths that Snape and Draco had been pushing so hard to teach him. What
more did it have to do with him? He'd made his peace with his past. Let
it go and die in the grass like a beheaded worm.

But Snape said only, ``I would not see you suffer again,'' and then
stirred his potion sharply three times counterclockwise. The potion gave
a puff of purple smoke, turned blue, and then lay calmly in the
cauldron.

Harry nodded, a bit mystified, but willing to comply. He had thought
this conversation would end with his having to lie to his guardian and
sneak away again. ``Thank you, sir.''

Snape nodded at him, and watched him out the door. Harry couldn't help
looking back at him before he left.

\emph{By blood and bone and breath. Honestly.}

That vow was the older one, the one that the vow by Merlin and magic had
replaced. Breaking the vow to Merlin would imply intense dishonor, but
not consequences in the way the old one would. If harm happened to Harry
that Snape could have prevented, Snape's blood would boil, his bones
would snap, and he would stop breathing.

If one believed in the vow, at least. Plenty of wizards did not.

\emph{He's just a bit paranoid.} Harry shook his head. \emph{I need
protection, Merlin knows, but not that much.}

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Snape closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall when Harry had
gone. It had taken all his effort to keep brewing the potion as usual
when Harry had explained what he meant to do, and requested his
permission to go. Of course, the only reasonable thing to do under the
circumstances was to go with Harry, but Snape knew it would be hard.

Even harder, though, was seeing the things that he did in the Pensieve
Potion day after day. He faced them, and he transcribed them, just in
case something ever happened to that vial of the potion.

He had not known, though, just how many memories of Harry's training
would be dragged forth from Dumbledore's head, and he had not know how
they would enrage and sicken him, or convince him that Harry had already
suffered enough without suffering more in the future that Snape could
prevent.

\emph{Enough,} he commanded himself, opening his eyes. \emph{Harry does
not know that you are seeing these memories of the past, and he will not
understand your behavior in that light. You have to present him a calm
mask.}

Snape composed himself, and went back to his potion, tamping down, as
usual, the horror he felt when he looked at those memories\ldots{}

And the howling desire for vengeance that they inspired. Harry did not
want him to take revenge right now, so he would not.

\emph{Right now.}

If that ever changed, if he was ever allowed to share his horror and
make sure that everyone knew the pain Harry had suffered\ldots{}

Snape snarled softly to himself. Dumbledore, James, and Lily Potter
would never know what had struck them.

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Harry shivered slightly and stamped a foot on the floor. He stood in the
Slytherin common room with the others going to Walpurgis Night. This
time, he was able to see that a few Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff students
had joined them, and even one Gryffindor. He noticed more than he had
last year, especially because he was over the newness of what had
happened then, and because his eyes were running nervously in every
direction, trying to guess what would happen next.

Snape stood at his right shoulder, arms folded, waiting in silence.
Draco stood next to him, one hand around his. Harry squeezed back when
Draco's grip tightened, seeking reassurance. Draco had received
permission from his mother to go. Harry didn't know what Lucius's letter
had said, but it had turned Draco white around the lips. Harry suspected
that the man didn't approve of a Malfoy, and in particular his son,
attending a celebration as wild and against supposed pureblood dignity
as this one.

\emph{Wilder than ever, tonight,} Harry thought, and squeezed back one
more time. \emph{And yet, Draco agreed to come with me. He loves me. I
may trust in that, in him.}

Millicent was holding the dark green stone that had transported them
last year. Harry noticed that her face was pale, and she kept looking at
him even as she extended her hand, palm flat, before her. He raised his
brows, and Millicent flushed and looked away. She obviously hated being
caught out in a weakness.

Harry knew exactly how she felt.

He watched as the green stone began to glow with silver light. He felt a
faint touch of coldness on his skin, as if the silver light were
frostfire---

And then the magic seized them, and everything changed.

Harry felt the hair on his arms stand on end as the silver light grew
dazzlingly bright, instead of falling into a cage around them like last
year. They were caught in the middle of a sunburst, if any sunburst had
ever been this pale and this cold. Harry saw his breath plume in front
of him, and then that vanished. He could see nothing but eye-watering
silver light which he could not even blink against. The stone had frozen
them all entirely.

Nevertheless, he had the sensation of being borne along at a great rate,
whirled through space, tossed from point to point.

Then they sagged as the light released them, and Harry felt Draco's grip
on his hand, tight enough to numb him even when the cold was gone.
Snape's hand clamped down on his shoulder.

``Is that supposed to happen?'' he demanded.

``No,'' Harry gasped, and looked up, wondering where they were. Last
year, the magic had brought them to a clearing where a silver fire
blazed in the dark green grass, and he had been filled with a dizzy,
giddy laughter.

This time, things had changed. Harry saw that they stood in a field of
silver flowers, so thick that they obscured all sight of any grass
below. The flowers brushed against his arms, insistent, and left a
faint, tingling chill in their wake. Harry glanced at them, and realized
each blossom was shaped vaguely like a snowflake, though no more like
the others than one snowflake was like another.

He turned, searching, trying to ignore the murmurs of rising panic
around him, and finally saw a dark green fire blazing in the distance.
It didn't look as though anyone else was there yet. Harry took a deep
breath, about to suggest they should move nearer the fire and wait there
as the best plan.

The magic swept him up.

Harry gasped. His own magic, so carefully tamed to his body, abruptly
escaped its confines and bounced up and down around him the way it used
to do. Harry reached out a hand, hardly knowing what he did, and felt a
brush of alien power. The Dark magic, gone mad on Walpurgis Night,
rubbed against him, and then shot away and formed itself into a dark
horse galloping across the silver flowers.

Harry stared, thinking that this was another manifestation of the power
of the dead that had showed itself forth last year. This time, though,
the shape didn't remain a silhouette, but gained definition, and it
didn't turn around and fill him with the memory of some miraculous
long-dead wizard's work. It really \emph{was} a dark horse, without
wings but nevertheless skimming the silver flowers with only the tips of
its hooves, and it had a rider. The rider wheeled around and came
charging back towards Harry, tall and clad in pale silver clothing. His
skin was dark green, though, and his face, though changed to something
far more elegant than it had been, still familiar.

``I welcome you, Harry Potter,'' said the elf who had been Dobby,
pulling up so that he hovered above the flowers and nodding to him.
``And the others who have come with you.'' His gaze darted between the
motionless Slytherin students who had gathered behind Harry, Snape, and
then back to Harry. ``It is wild tonight,'' said Dobby, ``and once, this
would have been a holiday of my people just as much as yours.''

``Do you know where we are?'' Harry asked, looking around again, just in
case something else known to him revealed itself. It was getting harder
and harder to speak in English, though, or look through ordinary human
eyes. The magic was calling him, tugging him, urging and coaxing him to
fly.

``Within the magic,'' said Dobby simply. He tilted his head and fixed
Harry with one eye. ``And you can feel it.''

Harry swallowed. ``You could say that.'' The magic filled his head with
images of dark wings, and how he could fly with them if he wanted to.

``May we all be unbound,'' Dobby murmured. ``Your wizards say that this
night, though they think they are referring merely to the night. They
are not. You were right, Harry Potter. There may be a \emph{vates} for
witches and wizards as well, though you will be liberating them from the
webs of their misconceptions and not from slavery inflicted on them by
others.'' His eyes sparked violently for a moment, but he seemed to
regain control of himself in the next. ``Do you accept that
responsibility? Will you allow yourself to be bound so that others can
be unbound?''

``I always have,'' said Harry, ignoring the way that Snape and Draco
both pressed down disapprovingly. ``I accepted that fate long ago.''

Dobby tilted his head further to the side. ``Then this night will be
more temptation than gift to you,'' he said, and reared his horse. Harry
saw that its hooves shone moon-pale, just like its eyes and mane and
Dobby's clothing, and then he followed the way it pointed, like an
arching blade, into the sky.

Harry looked up.

There was a maelstrom moving there, a deep pool of blackness,
upside-down, so that its surface was closer to the ground and its depths
extended back into the sky. Or perhaps they were the ones in the pool,
and the maelstrom was only normal land, Harry thought, dizzied by the
perspective. He clenched his hands together and tried to breathe
normally, but it was hard.

``The Dark One is drawing on all the magic,'' whispered Dobby, though
Harry couldn't take his eyes from the pool. ``He can destroy this place,
and send the dead witches and wizards into violent anger. He can make
you suffer, Harry Potter. But there are two things he does not know.''

Harry managed to yank his gaze away from the pool and return it to
Dobby. ``And what are those things?''

``That I am free,'' said Dobby, and stroked his hands across his horse's
neck. It tossed its head, and the moon-pale mane blew behind it. ``That
will make a difference. As you helped me with freedom, I will help
you.''

Harry inclined his head, accepting the information. ``And the other?''

``You do not want to bind the magic,'' said Dobby softly. ``You must
ride it, Harry Potter, and not attempt to hinder it in any way. It will
be angry when the Dark One reaches out and begins to bind it. It will
recoil in its anger, and you must show it that, to you, its freedom
matters.''

Harry was not entirely sure that he understood what Dobby was saying,
but he nodded. ``And everyone with me?'' he asked, squeezing Draco's
hand and leaning back against Snape.

``They will---they must---let it remain unbound as well,'' said Dobby.
``It will be a great temptation, the magic passing through them, but if
they attempt to grab it and understand its secrets, they will be torn
apart. They are used to being the children of the wild this night. May
they remember it.'' He eyed the other witches and wizards sternly. Harry
glanced back, and saw a chorus of nods racing through the students like
wind through the flowers.

``Harry!''

Harry blinked and looked around. Hastening through the blooms came
Hawthorn Parkinson, clad in a gown similar to the one that she had worn
last year. Behind her were Arabella Zabini and others Harry recognized
from last year. He bowed to them, and then Hawthorn was at his side,
kneeling down to take Pansy in her arms.

``My husband has felt the call of his magic,'' she whispered. ``He and
every other necromancer in Britain. He told me they must let the dead
run through their fingers, so that they do not damage other people.''

Harry nodded. He had expected something like that. His fear was falling
away, and what was left was only anticipation. He looked up at the
maelstrom, and felt it stretch its claws, prancing, not yet touched by
anger against Voldemort.

\emph{Wild does not always mean the same thing as free,} he thought.
\emph{But it does this night.}

``All of you,'' he said, and his voice was louder than it would have
been normally. ``\emph{Listen} to me. You must let the magic pour through
you, and not attempt to restrain it. For tonight, you must be purely
Dark, in the sense of wildness, in the sense that dragons are. Do not
fight it. Do you hear me?''

``That could destroy us,'' one of the adults complained.

``The other option surely \emph{will} destroy you,'' said Harry. ``At
least, this way, we have a chance of surviving.''

Dobby nodded at him, and then hit his horse with a silver whip. The
horse reared, and carried him into the sky, towards the dark maelstrom.
Harry saw him rising up a silvery spiral, as though his steed's hooves
froze the air behind him. The spirals traced straight into the heart of
the dark maelstrom, and then vanished within it. Though Harry could no
longer see Dobby, he trusted him to keep his word.

He could hear Hawthorn speaking to Pansy, Arabella speaking to Blaise,
and a few other adults murmuring comfort or questions to their children.
Snape and Draco were still with him, but neither tried to talk. Harry
wondered if they, like him, were lost in the wonder of it all, if they
could feel the magic pressing around them like newly-hatched dragons, or
if they were afraid, and sought merely to remain close.

There came a breathless pause.

And then Harry felt someone, far away, reach out and try to snare some
of the maelstrom circling above him.

The magic screamed in rage, stirred, like the dragons, to pride and fury
the moment someone contradicted their will. Harry took a deep breath,
and spread his arms, inviting, accepting, welcoming what would happen
next.

The magic boiled, and then lashed down and towards him, tracing the
silver spiral that Dobby had made. Just before it struck him, Harry had
time to see that it was not really black, as he had assumed, but dark
green, like a reflection of the fire that blazed in the distance.

``Ride it!'' he remembered to shout.

And then the magic hit him.

Harry felt his feet leave the ground, though he had no idea if they
really did or if that was just the impression he received. Then he was
aloft, borne and ripped about by the wind. That wind reached into him,
anxiously seeking, trying to find out if he wanted to cage it like
Voldemort did.

Harry shook his head and let his fingers fan apart, presenting no
obstruction to any power that wanted to pass that way. He tilted back
his head, and looked into the heart of the storm with eyes open.

The magic \emph{sang} to him, a fierce and frenzied symphony, demanding
some sign that he was like the Dark Lord.

Harry did not give it what it wanted. Instead, he gave it what it
needed, unbound channels to sweep through and around him, the assurance
of freedom, his sweetest memories---of breaking webs and waking from his
own phoenix web---the steady repetition, over and over, of what he was.

\emph{Vates, vates, vates.}

The magic reared and coursed around him, and Harry caught a brief
glimpse of Dobby, wielding his whip. That seemed to call the winds to
him instead of keep them away, and his horse's mane was a cocoon around
its head. Dobby met his eyes and nodded to him briefly, and then he was
gone, racing into the dark as steadily as if there were a stone road in
the sky.

Harry felt the magic lift him and cast him out over the sea. He looked
down and watched the waves leaping---dark green, of course, capped with
silver foam---and the magic offered him the power to control it. He
could make great waves rise and inundate his enemies. Didn't he want
that? Didn't he want to destroy things? So many wizards believed that
Dark magic was purely evil, and used it for evil purposes. Didn't he
want to?

Harry only bowed his head, in awe of the force as he would be before a
storm, and replied that its will was its own.

In the distance, he felt Voldemort try to trap more of it.

The magic shuddered in repulsion, and then drove into him, ripping up
memories and scattering them in front of his eyes as it tried to dig out
a home for itself in the midst of his heart.

Harry watched the memories, and made no attempt to subdue the magic or
tell it to back away. He only hoped the others were remembering to do
the same, but he thought everyone was caught in the midst of his or her
own isolated trial now, and it was all he could do to stand his own.

\emph{Draco eyeing him speculatively on the Hogwarts Express that first
year, seeming to know more about him than Harry did about
himself\ldots{}}

\emph{Harry casting a wandless charm successfully for the first time,
and dropping to the grass outside Godric's Hollow exhausted, but also
with a definite sense of accomplishment\ldots{}}

\emph{Harry swallowing a jolt of envy that he could not be like Connor
and relax more often\ldots{}}

\emph{Lily holding him and stroking his hair, teaching him to repeat his
vows for the first time when he was three\ldots{}}

\emph{A flash of green light and a raging scream that he had not known
he remembered\ldots{}}

The magic paused, and then it dug at that memory, grabbed it in its
teeth and hauled it around like a dog with a rat. Harry gave the image
up to its hold, catching only distorted flickers as it swung in circles.
The magic looked at it, and then turned and plunged into his head and
came up with his memory of Voldemort's Pensieve, what had happened when
he came to Godric's Hollow on that Halloween night when Harry and Connor
were a year and a half old.

The magic uttered a triumphant scream, and then it boiled away from
Harry, dragging him with it into a new perspective. Harry didn't think
he was in his body anymore, but flying as though held in the teeth of a
gigantic beast, more furious and swifter than any dragon.

The air around him roiled and churned, and then the magic dived out of
it and into a place that looked halfway normal---part of the Britain
Harry knew, he thought. It spread enormous dark wings, and the two
wizards beneath looked up at it and let their mouths gape in witless
surprise. They both held small black boxes, Harry saw, each with its lid
open, each ornamented with silver filigree. The top of each box appeared
to contain a miniature lightning storm, though when Harry looked
closely, he could see that the clouds of those storms held the shapes of
the creatures he had seen last year, the memories of dead witches and
wizards. The Death Eaters had snared some of the magic of the dead,
then.

Not for long, Harry surmised as the magic rolled straight down and raked
over the Death Eaters' heads, bearing towards something just beyond
them.

There was a small, throne-like chair, and in the chair sat something
swaddled in blankets, something that made Harry shiver in disgust. It
lifted its head, and cold pain ran through him, and he knew this was
Voldemort.

The magic dived at him, and then Harry began to whirl round and round,
as though he were a pendant on a chain. Then he was flying, and
Voldemort was growing closer and closer, his pale eyes filling all the
world.

Harry, or the thing that had been part of Harry, struck Voldemort, and
the memory blazed in his head, reminding him of the person he hated the
most in the world, the night he hated the most in the world, the night
he had been defeated by a baby.

Voldemort screamed, and tried to snatch at Harry, or whatever part of
him the magic had brought here, and Harry found himself abruptly back in
his body, letting Voldemort's grip slide through him even as the magic
had. Laughter like thunder cracked in his head. He knew it was the magic
itself, as it resolved into the music of the Dark, laughing to see the
Dark Lord so disconcerted.

Perhaps there was Dark magic that Voldemort had made purely his own, but
Walpurgis Night was not full of it. There were different kinds of Light,
Harry thought, as he felt the power gathering itself in him, using him
as a launching point. The Maze was the definition of honesty, while the
webs were the definition of tameness. And there were different
definitions of Dark magic, and Voldemort wielded the gift of at least
one of them, compulsion, very well.

This was wildness, though, and it did not take kindly to being
restrained. It snarled at Harry, and a question formed quickly in his
mind.

\emph{Help us?}

Harry nodded, and put his own magic behind the blow.

The Dark leaped, striking at Voldemort, rending him apart with its
claws. Voldemort screamed, and his pain flowed out and through the Dark
Marks on his Death Eaters' arms. The magic boiled along that pathway,
too, and the dark boxes in their hands shattered. The power of the dead
flooded free and back into the sky, where it belonged.

Harry rode with it.

His head filled with churning memories, the discovery of spells and the
creation of half-thestrals and the miracles of necromancy, but all of
them whirled away as soon as they came. He had no care to hold them, so
they would not remain.

The Dark magic hovered over them, still in the shape of an enormous
beast with wings and talons, and asked Harry if he would not join it.
Its voice was crooning music now, soft, far more compelling than the
song he had heard from Grimmauld Place's wards or on the night he had
freed Dobby, because it asked him, rather than demanded that he come
along.

Harry slowly shook his head. He still had a will of his own, for all
that he had let the magic have its way with him, and he wanted to return
to his body and the mortal world. Nor did he have a desire, like
Voldemort, to wield the magic for any particular purpose, or to ride the
storm and see people cowering in terror of him.

The magic nudged at him, and sang one more time, but, when it saw that
he was firm, it bowed its head and flung him down a long, whirling
silver tunnel. Harry saw dark green and silver flash past him, and
caught a glimpse of Dobby with his whip raised in salute. He nodded
back. He knew that without the elf, this night would have been far
worse.

The Dark spoke one more time, in an enormous voice, before Harry dropped
back into his body.

\emph{Perhaps one day, when your task is done, you will come with us.}

\emph{Perhaps,} Harry answered, and then fell down, and down, and down.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

He opened his eyes to find himself lying on thick, dark green grass, not
far from a silver fire. He jerked his head up and breathed, deeply,
trying to get used to both the familiar sensations of having a body once
more, and the inevitable sense of loss and disappointment that the
fading of the magic had given him.

\emph{I can't believe you did that.}

Harry snorted when he felt Regulus whisper into his head. He'd been gone
the last several days, trying to figure out any more clues that he could
about where his body was hidden. Harry drove his hands into the grass
and forced himself to his feet, which was easier than he would have
thought, as the usual joy of Walpurgis Night was bubbling up in him.
``You can't believe I do lots of things,'' he said. ``The Maze, and now
this. Why would I go into the heart of the Light and refuse to go into
the heart of the Dark?''

\emph{Usually people choose one or the other,} said Regulus, voice
tipped with acid.

``Don't want to,'' Harry murmured, and rubbed his face, looking around
for Draco. He found him lying on the grass, and went to him. Draco sat
up at once, blinking, his eyes fixed on Harry's.

``That was---that was incredible,'' he whispered.

Harry smiled slightly. ``You weren't overwhelmed by the emotions
involved?'' He leaned forward and peered into Draco's face, but saw none
of the tight lines of tension around his eyes that would have indicated
a headache from the empathy.

Draco shook his head. ``Harry\ldots{}this is going to sound strange, but
I don't think anyone was overwhelmed, and no one died,'' he murmured.
``We were all riding \emph{with} you, part of the magic that burned
through you. I could see and feel what you did, and so could the others.
I spoke with Snape at least a few times about it, as odd as that sounds.
I don't know if he'll remember all the conversations. I'm already
starting to lose the memory of them,'' he added. ``But we were there. You
protected us by going in front of us.''

Harry froze, and glanced around the clearing. The other witches and
wizards who had been lying motionless were waking up, Snape included.
He, of course, said nothing, only sat up and fixed Harry with an
inscrutable gaze.

The others were \emph{looking} at him.

Harry forced himself to hold his head high. It wasn't as though he could
have planned this, either to gain or avoid attention. This was an
experience so vast and strange that he didn't think many of those here
would quickly find it a way to turn it to political advantage, either.
He would not worry about what they had seen, whether many people now
knew he was the one who had deflected Voldemort's Killing Curse or not,
until someone actually approached him about it.

Besides, there was the joy waiting, the magic once again settled back
into its predictable wild patterns.

``Come on,'' he said, extending a hand to Draco and pulling him from the
grass. ``The night isn't done yet.'' He felt a smile breaking across his
face in spite of himself, as the magic went to work on making him happy.
``Let's dance.''

\chapter{Intermission: After the Dancing}\label{chapter-68-intermission-after-the-dancing}

Draco did find himself enjoying Walpurgis, though the first memory to
enter his head was of a Parselmouth raising basilisks, and it startled
him badly to realize that the damn snakes were \emph{bred} that way,
rather than springing out of some pit of hidden foulness and evil.

No, he thought a short time later, when the wild dance had calmed a bit.
Not quite the first memory.

The first memory had been of himself on the Hogwarts Express, turning
and facing Harry with cool speculation in his eyes. He had not realized
Harry had seen him quite that way then, had not realized how well he
played the perfect Malfoy.

\emph{The Malfoy who should not have been there tonight,} his father's
letter snarled in his mind.

Draco bit his lip, and quite determinedly went back to thinking of the
wild progress of the night. He was in bed now, lying with his hands
folded behind his head and his eyes fixed on the ceiling of the
four-poster. He couldn't believe Blaise and Harry were already asleep.
True, they were probably exhausted, but the memories attacked Draco so
furiously that he would have thought they would keep them awake, too.

He'd seen the memory of himself on the Hogwarts Express, and a few
others too soft and blurred for him to make out, and then the explosion
of green light that he already knew about, killing Voldemort and marking
both Harry and his brother. And he'd seen some of the wizards' memories
that passed through Harry when he managed to release them from the Death
Eaters' confinement, too.

The frustrating thing was how quickly the wildness fell away from him,
how quickly he started thinking \emph{about} it instead of thinking
\emph{of} it, and telling himself what it had been like instead of
feeling it. He almost felt as though he should have been changed more,
though he had been awed by the wild music and dancing of the night, and
the Hades-black doorway that appeared in front of them (which, Harry had
revealed in a casual way, he'd gone through last year).

But what impressed him the most was that he'd flown in Harry's
protection, felt Harry's soul rushing all around him, had actually
spoken with Snape once or twice---or were there more conversations,
fading away from him now?---and had still come back safely to earth.
Harry had defended him without even realizing what he was doing, focused
on riding out the storm and freeing the Dark magic from whatever
Voldemort was trying to do to it.

Draco wondered if he would always defend Draco, and everyone else, so
unconsciously.

It didn't seem fair, somehow, or right. Draco knew he was often a brat;
he could admit that. But lying in bed at night, with no one else to see
and comment on his behavior, it wasn't something that mattered. He could
think as seriously as anyone, if he wanted to.

It probably helped that Harry's emotions were quiet, too, and that Draco
was sure he had fallen asleep; he'd been reassured by a trill from
Fawkes when he went to check earlier.

Harry \emph{deserved} more recognition for what he'd done, damn it. He'd
pretended not to notice the glances he got after his wild flight, and
done his best to slide gracefully out of any conversations that might
bring them, and the reason for them, up. Draco, knowing how much he
disliked attention, didn't blame him for that part.

But how could he not see what he'd done? How could he be content to
protect people and just not---just not receive \emph{anything} in
return? He didn't want the adulation, he didn't want the mindless
obedience that someone like Voldemort would have used this night to
inspire, so what could be given him?

Draco sighed and rolled onto his side. That was the question that
occupied him, and would occupy him, more than the dancing and the
consequences that had come out of it. He could give Harry his love, but
that was hardly just because of his protectiveness. It was for his
overall magnificence.

\emph{I wish there was some way of showing him how much good he's doing,
how much he means to people.}

Draco passed into a restless and troubled sleep, filled with dreams of
him trying to explain to a wide-eyed and disbelieving Harry just what
his accomplishments meant, until he finally gave up and kissed him silly
instead.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

The fifth wooden figure went down into flames and ash, and Snape hissed.
His magic flared around him, called out by the wildness of the
festivities and not yet settled by the paltry destruction he'd given it.

He had not meant to be---affected.

\emph{But you were,} he reminded himself, and again conjured a line of
wooden figures. Normally, he needed his wand for at least that much.
Tonight, he did not. His wandless magic danced and lashed around him,
eager to sting as a scorpion, not wearing on him at all. Snape flung out
a hand, and a line of fire sprang precisely from one finger and chewed
through the figure's head.

He did not think, that often, of his own raw power. His art and his
obsession lay with potions, which needed cleverness, intelligence, a
keen memory, a good understanding of theory, and magic that came with
the occasional wave of a wand or conscious, directed effort. When he was
in the midst of creating an experimental potion, his mind fixed far more
on ingredients than it did on how he worked his magic into the mixture.

Walpurgis Night had changed that. Snape had expected his main focus to
be on protecting Harry. But he'd had no choice but to think of other
things once the music began and he found himself dancing.

His magic had responded to the savagery around it, and manifested
itself.

Snape had stood, panting, on the grass when the dancing was done, and
received more than one strange glance from his neighbors. Snape had
glared them into submission, but he couldn't blame them. He was stronger
than any wizard in the gathering but Harry. That had come as a nasty
shock to him, too. He was used to thinking of himself as the third most
powerful wizard in Hogwarts alone, under Dumbledore and Harry, always
remembering that beyond the walls of the school dwelt many, many war
wizards and trained duelers who were more than his match. Such
self-knowledge had been a matter of survival during his year of spying
on Voldemort. The Dark Lord tolerated no rivals.

He spun, and thought \emph{Diffindo}, wandless and nonverbal. The figure
he'd indicated parted and tumbled to the floor, neatly sliced through
the neck.

He thought \emph{Sectumsempra}, and the wooden figure next in line all
but exploded. Not as satisfying, using that one on a wooden opponent,
Snape thought, his gaze gone blurry and his heartbeat a distant roar in
his ears. The blood pouring out of the cuts it created was by far the
aspect most likely to intimidate an opponent.

He had created that one. He'd created others, too, simple spells that
nevertheless spoke of a talent most people had preferred to forget he
had. It was not every wizard who invented his own spells.

When had he forgotten that?

He could not say that he had focused on Harry too much. He hadn't
experimented with spells in the ten years he'd taught before Harry came
to Hogwarts, either. He'd slid into a routine of making potions,
teaching them, marking essays, sneering at the other professors,
brooding on his past, and sniping at students who all thought they had
the makings of Potions geniuses until they took his classes.

Tonight had reminded him of what he was: a powerful, capable, talented
Dark wizard.

He didn't like that this had been pulled out of him, that he'd forgotten
it was ever there.

Snape took a deep breath, and halted, and at last managed to force his
magic to lie down again and accept his chains. It snarled at him,
wanting to fly and sting, but Snape had created his shields for this
very reason. While a Death Eater, he had allowed his power far more
leeway. He'd been forced to subdue it when he began teaching, and the
shields had let him subdue the side of his personality that had
delighted in torture and murder, too.

``\emph{Let us all be unbound},'' Hawthorn Parkinson, who had tortured and
murdered beside Snape, had said tonight.

\emph{She has no idea what she is asking for,} Snape thought bitterly.

He Vanished the rest of the wooden figures, only realizing after he'd
done it that that, too, had been wandless, the magic finding release any
way it could. Snape cast himself into one of his chairs and stared at
the fire, his eyes narrow and crowded with new thoughts.

He had thought to find in Harry someone to protect, and, of course, if
the boy changed the world, then he would live happily in that new world.
Even there, though, he'd been unable to see himself in anything but the
capacities he'd always had: reformed Death Eater, Potions Master, and,
recently, guardian.

Now he was realizing that he, as well as the world, could change when
Harry started quietly, inoffensively, turning everything upside down.

It was a discomforting realization.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Hawthorn shook her head and let her long, pale hair flood down around
her shoulders. She had been wearing it bound for Walpurgis, though it
hadn't looked as though it were bound. That was part of the secret,
though. She would use it as a silent, private pleasure, and also as a
test. Those who noticed that she had her hair bound, those who looked
but didn't notice, and those who never even looked were all different
classes of people, each useful in their own ways.

Harry had been one of those who hadn't even looked.

Hawthorn paused for a long moment, standing with her head bowed and one
hand clutched on the corner of the table where she'd set the hairpins
down.

She was already losing her grip on most of what she'd seen in the storm.
That was one of the consequences of riding it out and letting go of the
magic as it passed her, she supposed. Memories, dreams of unimaginable
power, whispers of glory, the songs of the dead, had run past her more
fiercely than even the usual dream-like experiences of Walpurgis did.

But she had seen two things that had stayed with her, mostly because
she'd gripped them in a choke hold and repeated them over and over to
herself until she could at least conjure images to the words, even if
they weren't exact replicas of the images she'd seen first.

Harry performing a wandless charm for the first time, and falling
exhausted on the grass. What had shocked Hawthorn was not that he'd done
it, but the nature of the pride he'd felt. He'd known that he did
something great, something good, for the sake of other people. Even that
young, it seemed, he had become determined to give himself over to
others, rather than leaping up and yelling to his parents to look what
he could do, which Hawthorn knew Pansy would have done if she'd achieved
the same thing at Harry's age, or even now.

She had wondered who he could be feeling that pride for, and then she'd
seen the memory of a red-haired, green-eyed woman---who must surely be
Harry's mother, from the resemblance of their eyes---stroking Harry's
hair and telling him the words of vows that horrified Hawthorn, and
disturbed her profoundly. That the young boy in the memory had not
understood them was no matter; he had memorized them faithfully, and his
adult listeners could get at the sense of them.

``\emph{What are your vows, Harry?}

``\emph{To keep Connor safe. To always protect him. To insure that he
lives as untroubled a life as he can, until he has to face Lord
Voldemort again. To be his brother and his friend and his guardian. To
love him. To never compete with him, never show him up, and never let
anyone else know that I'm so close to him. To be ordinary, so that he
can be extraordinary.}''

Hawthorn could not name all the emotions that those words had inspired
in her, and she found that she did not want to try. Two of them were
quite prominent and would do.

The first was incredulity. That Harry could be \emph{ordinary} was a
laughable thing, and his mother must have known it when he was as young
as that, because she had been making him promise to be ordinary, instead
of just assuming he would be so.

The second was sickened outrage. Why should a child guard another child?

Hawthorn did not think she could see everything yet. Even those glimpses
had been small and scattered. She thought she saw the shape of something
emerging, especially since it had been Harry's mother who angered him on
Christmas night, but she was not sure, and chasing down blind trails in
the dark was a very Gryffindor thing to do. She would wait. She would be
patient. She would sniff after clues, and drag them into the light when
she found them.

A movement in the mirror caught her attention. Hawthorn looked up, and
realized she could see a pair of hands over her shoulders, floating in
dark sleeves and speaking in the sign language she had learned to
cherish.

\emph{You look troubled, my love.}

Hawthorn studied her own face for a moment as she leaned back against
her husband and Dragonsbane put his arms around her. Yes, she did look
troubled. Or, as Hawthorn preferred to think of it, fierce. Her eyes
were shining, and her teeth bared. Her wolf was close to the surface,
called by the wildness of the night, and at present it was not thinking
how much it hated her and wanted flesh to rend and tear. It was
thinking, instead, how very good a meal traitors made.

``Hawthorn,'' Dragonsbane whispered. This was one of the two nights of
the year when he was permitted to speak aloud. ``A spirit came and spoke
with me. I cannot reveal his name. But he spoke of grave danger to this
young unbinder we have bound ourselves to follow. He died in the cause
of holding back that danger.''

Hawthorn nodded once.

Dragonsbane studied her from within the folds of his hood for a moment.
Hawthorn soaked up the scent of rotting flesh that hung around him while
she waited for him to speak. Once an offensive stink, it had become a
comfort to her, and that comfort had only increased after she was a
werewolf. She always knew him, even in a darkened room, were he ever so
silent.

``Then we must do what we can to help him,'' said Dragonsbane. ``All of
us, in our places and at our times.'' And, because it had always been
their way on Walpurgis, he guided her to their bed.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Are you \emph{crying}? Really, Pansy.''

Pansy hastily blotted at her tears, and then lay back in her bed and
pulled her covers up over her chest. ``I am not crying,'' she said,
though it was useless. Millicent had already seen, and her choked voice
would have given her away anyway.

She heard Millicent snort, and then she climbed into her own bed. She
had no \emph{Lumos} or other charm to provide light; Millicent disdained
them, preferring to undress in darkness. In her more unkind moments,
Pansy thought it came from a desire to avoid looking at her own clumsy,
ungainly body. Millicent was taller than any boy in their year, even
Blaise, and square-jawed. Pansy pitied her intensely, when she wasn't
envying her her observation skills or fearing what she'd noticed.

Right now, Millicent had obviously noticed something that she wasn't
about to let go.

``There's no reason to cry,'' she said, sniffing now and then as though
to make sure Pansy understood \emph{she} was only snorting in
irritation, not sniffling from tears at all. ``Yes, we could have died,
but we didn't. And yes, the storm was intense at its height, but it's
over now. Really.''

``It's not that,'' said Pansy, surprised that Millicent could think
she'd shed tears over either of those. Intense joy was to be appreciated
for what it was; one laughed, and not wept, on Walpurgis Night. And of
course Pansy wasn't so silly as to cry over danger that was past. ``It
was Harry's memories.''

There was silence from the other bed. Then Millicent said, ``I thought I
was the only one who saw them. I thought it was a dream. I thought
that---no one mentioned them---'' She fell silent.

Pansy made haste to speak. It was so rarely that she had an advantage
over Millicent! ``I think most people thought the same way you did, and
that was why no one mentioned them. No one wanted to run the risk of
sounding mad or foolish, and of course Harry was right there. But in
silence, I think a lot of people are brooding. I---I don't remember all
of them, but I remember the one about Harry's envy for his brother.''

\emph{And what was there to cry about in that?} her own conscience
demanded of her. \emph{You've seen Pensieve memories like that before,
and not wept at them.}

It wasn't that, Pansy thought, as she reclined on her pillows and waited
for Millicent to answer her. It was the sheer \emph{wrongness} of what
she'd seen. Oh, she could see how Harry's brother was attractive in a
certain light and with a strong squint, and she supposed that Gryffindor
heroism appealed to some people, and she knew he had endured the trials
of being a Triwizard champion thus far.

But he was nothing compared to Harry in power, in cleverness, in
strength of soul---in all the ways that most mattered, all the ways that
let you survive in the real world. Harry envying his brother indicated
something was deeply wrong.

Millicent whispered, ``I remember the one about the vows.''

Pansy shivered, jolted, as though the memory really had been hiding just
under the surface of her thoughts and Millicent's words had called it
back for her. The words echoed in her ears, unpleasant, hateful,
unsustainable.

``No one could keep a set of vows like that,'' she whispered. ``And
Harry especially couldn't. Look at him drawing attention even when he
tries not to. What was happening? Why was that memory there?''

``I don't know,'' Millicent said. ``And I think we should know. Both
because we're his friends, and because---'' Pansy heard the sound of her
rolling over, and then she whispered, ``\emph{Lumos},'' and Pansy knew it
was serious. She rolled over herself, to see Millicent staring at her
with a pale face.

``If something's badly wrong with a person who does things like Harry
does,'' said Millicent, ``then we are \emph{fucked.}''

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Arabella Zabini stood in silence for a long moment, surveying the
wreckage of her home.

She'd thought, somehow, that she'd escaped the Dark Lord's notice when
she sent off the letter declining service in his ranks. She was a Dark
witch, true, but only a moderately powerful one; her reputation came
more from the deaths of her seven husbands and her beauty than from the
strength of her magic. Voldemort might feel honored to have a Songstress
in his service, but even that was a talent he could mimic with his own
compulsion. He had no reason to call on her again, every reason to let
her stay neutral. Arabella could court Harry Potter's notice, but she'd
toyed with the notion of lending only indirect help, not actually
fighting beside him in battle. That had been an honored tradition of
pureblood families on either side of the Light-Dark divide. Why should
they participate in wars where they might have relatives fighting on
either side, wars that only destroyed and depleted the wizarding world?
The magic must be passed on. That was more important than the blood,
always. Let the magic survive, and if that included some of its less
powerful practitioners fading quietly into the background, so be it. It
was only the fanatics who truly cared about the wars.

But Voldemort was a fanatic, it seemed.

Arabella moved at last, carefully stepping over the shattered glass of
her enormous window and into her study. A glance showed her portraits
slashed, the subjects mute forever now. She looked at her desk, and
found it blasted nearly in two. Then her gaze settled on her bookshelf.

Her Parseltongue books were gone.

Arabella nodded slowly. Of course Voldemort would have sent his minions
to seek those, if he knew that she had them, and that information would
have been only a little difficult to get a hold of. Arabella had spread
the word discreetly over the years, in case a collector wanted them.

She wondered, for a moment, what the Death Eaters thought would happen
as a result of this raid. Two answers came immediately to mind: that she
would be intimidated into joining them, seeing how easily they'd
penetrated her wards, or that she would fade even more into the
background and hope that both sides passed her over.

Arabella smiled. It was a smile that was the last thing her fifth
husband had ever seen.

She glided quickly and delicately across her library to a panel in the
wall, and touched it with her wand. It moved aside, and she reached down
and drew out a comb, and a hand mirror, and two small, leather-bound
books. Of course she would never leave her true treasures out in the
open, only those made for display and little else.

She was not intimidated, and she was not fearful.

She was \emph{angry.} And now she had chosen her side. Circumstances had
conspired to make it so that she could fight against this so-called Dark
Lord and yet not turn to the hypocritical, puling, shrieking Light.

She clapped her hands to call her house elves to clean up the mess, and
hummed a little tune under her breath. One of the house elves went blind
and another deaf as a consequence of her song, but really, that couldn't
be helped, and they would heal in time. At least they had left by the
time she finished writing her letter, sent it to Lucius, and sat down to
watch her face in the mirror and comb her hair.

\chapter{Laying the Ground}\label{chapter-69-laying-the-ground}

Harry laid down his quill and blew across the ink of his notes to dry
them. Then he sat back and looked carefully at the scroll.

\emph{That should work.}

\emph{It should,} Regulus agreed from the corner of his head, \emph{if
it were possible to tell what you were talking about.}

Harry snorted, but had to concede that the complicated diagram and
abbreviations he'd used would be beyond anyone who hadn't already read
\emph{Light Rituals and Ways to Adapt Them.} ``That's why I'm going to
send a letter to Madam Marchbanks asking for a meeting, instead of
trying to explain in a letter,'' he murmured, and then chucked Fawkes
under the chin as the phoenix appeared on his shoulder.

\emph{I'm still not sure why this should work,} Regulus whined in his
head. \emph{You're relying an awful lot on technicalities.}

``So do a lot of rituals,'' Harry whispered. He had the library almost
to himself, since it was early Saturday morning, but he didn't want to
test Madam Prince's patience, and someone coming up and listening to him
now was cause for concern, as always. ``This ritual calls for twelve
people, perfectly balanced in three ways. I've got twelve people, and
two of the balances pertain throughout them. For the third one, I don't
think it'll matter, and it's not like I have much choice---unless you
could somehow change your gender.''

Regulus snarled at him wordlessly, and withdrew to sulk, which he'd been
doing a lot of throughout this procedure. Fawkes remained in place,
though, letting out a subdued song. Harry stroked his neck, grinning.

He \emph{would} have to arrange several meetings, and probably spend a
lot of time explaining. But still, he thought this would work.

He was sure he knew how to free the southern goblins now.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry received Griselda Marchbanks's response not long after the
beginning of breakfast the following day. He leaned back and read it by
the rich fall of May sunlight through the Great Hall's windows,
scratching the owl gently on the head and offering it a bite of toast
from his plate. It was surprisingly polite for a Ministry owl, eating
only what he gave it and not trying to snatch any extra treats.

\emph{Dear Mr. Potter:}

\emph{I must admit, I find myself so intrigued at your proposal that I
would arrange the meeting from sheer curiosity alone! I have included a
Portkey in the letter, a small bottle cap. This will bring you to the
meeting place with myself and the two other people you requested. Both
of them have agreed to come without protest, which makes me even more
curious. I trust that you shall have a good explanation when all of this
is over.}

\emph{Griselda Marchbanks,}

\emph{Elder of the Wizengamot.}

Harry chuckled under his breath, and picked up the Portkey, writing out
a short response and handing it over to the owl, along with another bit
of toast for a job well done. The owl launched itself into the air, and
Harry slid the Portkey into his pocket and returned to eating his
breakfast. He couldn't seem to stop smiling. Things were going the way
he wanted them to, and though he fully suspected it would take the full
month of May before the goblins were free, because of all the meetings,
he was sure it would be worth it.

``What are you smirking about?'' Draco demanded.

Harry raised an eyebrow at him. ``That thing I tried to explain to you
the other day, and which you said was too complicated for you to follow.
I'm getting the cooperation of other people first, before I ask you
again. Maybe they can explain it better than I can.''

Draco blinked, his face oddly vulnerable for a moment. ``You---you would
get other people involved, just to explain this to me?''

Harry rolled his eyes and shoved his shoulder. ``Of course not, you
prat. These are the other people who are going to be involved in the
ritual.'' He started on his sausages with a will and an appetite he
hadn't felt in a long time. Things were moving forward now. He could
\emph{do} this. It was true that he'd managed to break other webs with
less bother and fuss, but those webs hadn't been this complicated,
either, or so tied into the functioning of a major wizarding
institution.

``A cooperative ritual, Harry?'' Millicent whispered from her seat on
the other side of him. ``Light magic? Whatever will you think of next?''

Harry laughed at her. ``It's nothing that's going to damage my standing
with your family,'' he said. ``It's about the goblins, and I promise
that it won't cause a goblin rebellion, either.'' He hummed as he
swallowed the last of his sausages. He loved mornings like this, full of
sunlight and possibilities, even though he \emph{was} going to
Karkaroff's Defense Against the Dark Arts class today and there would
probably be a quiz that would bore him.

``Hm. I'll trust to your promise, then.'' Millicent hesitated, as though
wondering whether she should say the thing obviously poised on the tip
of her tongue, and murmured, ``Your vow. You keep your vows, don't you,
Harry?''

Harry lowered his fork to the table with a bang and turned to stare at
her. He was not sure what was worse: the way she was looking at him, or
the way that Pansy was staring at him, too, her eyes full of sorrow and
awful knowledge. They didn't know everything, he thought, but they knew
enough.

How did they know?

And then he remembered the memory that had flown along with him on
Walpurgis Night, and cursed to himself. Of course that was it. Neither
Draco nor Snape would betray him like that, and Dumbledore and his
parents would have no reason to do so. They had never wanted anyone to
know that he had made the vows to protect Connor. That was the whole
point of making the one to hide what he was.

``I can't prevent you from knowing, Millicent,'' he said at last, when
he'd had a chance to get his breathing under control. He was \emph{not}
going to let this ruin his whole mood for the day. He'd done enough
brooding and worrying. He had a plan now, a good one. If Millicent and
Pansy were part of the group of people who knew something about his
training, then he would just deal with it, and move on. ``But I can tell
you the conditions for knowing. You don't talk about this with me, ever,
and you mention it to no one else. You're right. I was very good at
keeping my vows, until I came to Hogwarts. I'm better at promises now.''
He gave her a slit-eyed glance that made her blink and sit back from
him, and Pansy blanche. ``And I promise that you will not like what
happens if you try to act on this knowledge.''

``But it's---'' Millicent started.

``It doesn't matter,'' said Harry. ``It happened. That's all. It doesn't
matter any more than a flood ten years ago matters now.'' He stood and
stretched his arms above his head. Draco rose beside him, looking
concerned. Harry nodded to him, showing he was all right. He \emph{was}.
He would not let fear of his past control him. It wasn't fear he had for
his past; it was \emph{contempt.} The Maze had shown him the truth of
that. There was no point in paying attention to it, not next to the
future. There were so many more important things that needed his
attention now.

``Not a good comparison, Potter.'' Millicent's voice was far more
subdued than it usually was when she called him by his surname. ``A
flood ten years ago can leave plenty of damage. Uprooted trees, for
example. If you're carrying around as much damage as it seems that those
vows should have caused, then---''

``Shut up.''

Millicent went still. Harry wasn't sure if it was the quietly-spoken
words that had done that, or the fact that the porridge left near his
plate had iced over.

``This conversation is ended,'' said Harry, and strode out of the Great
Hall, one hand clutching the bottle cap in his pocket. Regulus murmured
soothingly in his head, and Draco hurried beside him. They, along with
the Portkey, reminded Harry of what was important. He shook his head and
blew both his anger and scorn away in a great, heaving breath.

\emph{It doesn't matter. Let it go. It's ended. And it's not as if
there's anything they can do about it, even if they tried. They're bound
from attacking my parents through the ritual of the formal alliance.}

\emph{Think about the meeting on Saturday instead.} Harry felt his face
smooth out again, into a small smile. \emph{I wonder what their faces
looked like when they received Madam Marchbanks's message?}

\emph{Thinking of which, I need to send messages to Lucius and
Hawthorn.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry staggered a bit, and then looked around the office where the
Portkey had brought him. It was a much smaller and neater place than
he'd expected an Elder of the Wizengamot to have. The walls were bright
with only a single portrait, one of an exquisite young pureblood woman
with pale hair and odd lightning-blue eyes. She was holding a cup of
some sort in her hand and staring off to the right side of the portrait.
She turned and nodded a little at Harry when she saw him.

Harry turned around when someone coughed behind him, and found Madam
Marchbanks sitting behind an equally small and neat desk. A chair stood
in front of it, for him, and a chair off to each side, where sat the
Light wizards he'd asked Madam Marchbanks to summon.

``Thank you for coming,'' he said simply, and sat down. ``I suppose this
must have taken you by surprise.''

Moody, seated in the chair on the right, grunted and shifted his wooden
leg so that it came down with a decisive tap on the floor. ``Surprise
isn't the word, Potter,'' he said. ``I didn't expect to see you again at
all. Didn't think your \emph{guardian} would like you coming near me.''
He looked around suspiciously, as though he expected Snape to pop out of
the woodwork in a moment.

Harry shrugged. ``He agreed to let me come alone.'' He'd had a shouting
match with Snape before obtaining that ``agreement,'' but in the end it
had come down to honesty. He'd asked Snape if he thought he could get
through a half hour, or even ten minutes, without hexing Moody, with his
temper as foul as it had been lately. Snape had admitted that he could
not, and added that he would have to trust Harry sometime, and then
spent the next ten minutes describing the mayhem he would inflict on the
Ministry if something happened to Harry.

Moody grunted again, but said nothing coherent, which Tybalt Starrise
seemed to take as his cue to speak. He was leaning forward now, grinning
in a way that reminded Harry oddly of Evan Rosier. \emph{Wild,
Scrimgeour said about him.}

``I'm not surprised at all,'' Tybalt declared. ``I knew that you would
summon me sometime, and I'm eager to help with whatever you want me to
help with.'' He arched his brows. ``I'm only surprised that you didn't
contact me directly.''

``Because I didn't know if that might be seen as interfering in the
Ministry, which the Minister has already chastised me for,'' said Harry,
and shrugged a bit. ``I know that the Elders of the Wizengamot have a
bit more, ah, freedom in that direction. And though Scrimgeour is in
support of me, I don't know if he would back me as far as I want to go
on this.'' He faced Madam Marchbanks and raised his brows in challenge.

The tiny old witch gave him a faint smile. ``The Minister has known me
most of the decades he's worked for the Ministry,'' she said. ``He knows
better than to interfere with me. So, talk, please, Mr. Potter. I have
the feeling that this is far more complicated than you managed to
explain in your letter.'' She leaned forward, folded her hands
patiently, and fixed him with a stern gaze.

``Yes, madam,'' said Harry, and prepared to recite the simple form of
the explanation.

\emph{That's not simple, it's bloody complicated,} Regulus whined at
him.

\emph{It's as simple as I can make it. If you don't like it, go find
some other head to inhabit,} Harry thought at him in irritation. Regulus
was becoming more and more sulky without a body, but, on the other hand,
he couldn't come up with any helpful clues either, and he refused to
discuss the journal, and Harry had other things to do. If Regulus
wouldn't bloody help, then he could shut up.

Regulus shut up.

``What I want to do to help the southern goblins is an adaptation of a
Light ritual,'' Harry began. ``It requires twelve participants, just
under thirteen.'' He saw Moody nod, as though only by that sign could
the old Auror know the ritual for Light magic. ``The participants have
three balances between them: Light and Dark, male and female, and their
degree of connection to the person initiating the ritual. I have twelve
participants who are divided equally between Light and Dark, or I will
if all of you agree.'' He nodded to Moody and Tybalt. Tybalt smiled at
him; Moody didn't. Harry wasn't worried. The crusty old Auror owed him a
debt, but he wasn't as fond of Harry as Tybalt was. It was one of the
reasons that Harry had asked Madam Marchbanks to contact him. ``You also
all have a different connection to me. The gender balance isn't exactly
equal. It will be among the eight major participants, but with the
others, I just have to work with what chance has handed me.''

\emph{I'm not just chance,} Regulus sulked in his head.

\emph{You're in my head, I have to include you, and it's very
inconvenient for the ritual's sake that you're male,} Harry responded.
He thought he was learning how to handle Regulus. \emph{So stop
whining.}

Regulus went off to whine in silence. Harry faced the Light wizards and
witch again, and waited for the questions.

``What is this ritual going to do, exactly?'' Madam Marchbanks's voice
was calm and clear. ``That was the part I did not quite understand, Mr.
Potter.''

Harry let out a sharp breath. ``The web on the southern goblins is bound
to Gringotts itself,'' he said. ``The daily business of the bank
reinforces and renews it. That means that I can't just destroy it, not
without bringing the exchange of money to a grinding halt and irritating
a lot of people. But the web can be transferred, via the ritual, to
another thing---a construct or copy of Gringotts. That was what the
ritual was initially intended to do. It would remove deadly curses and
place them on a volunteer who had agreed to suffer the curse in place of
the original victim.''

Moody uttered a sound somewhere between a grunt and a growl. Harry was
glad to find that he was a little more expressive than he had seemed at
first. ``A ritual of sacrifice.''

``A lot of things I do are,'' Harry agreed calmly. ``This time, though,
it doesn't have to attach to a person. It has to attach to inanimate
objects charmed to act in the same way as the transfer of coins in
Gringotts, which is the basis of the goblins' web. I'll fool the web
into thinking it's still holding on to the real thing, and then the
ritual will transfer it.'' He sat back and looked at them. ``Of course,
it will help immensely if you would all agree to be part of the plan.''

``I will,'' said Tybalt at once, a wide grin on his face. Harry wondered
how he could have missed seeing this man that day in the Forbidden
Forest. He took a wild, fierce delight in life. Of course, Tybalt had
probably thought it best to play it sneaky when facing a Slytherin. ``Not
least because it will annoy my uncle like \emph{anything.}'' He cocked
his head at Harry. ``What role do you intend me to play in the ritual?''

``Contracted ally,'' said Harry. ``We've pledged faith to each other,
but not gone through any particular ritual. Some of the other people
participating in the ritual are ones who have.''

Tybalt nodded, as though satisfied. ``And them?'' he added, lounging
back in his chair as he pointed at Moody and Marchbanks.

Harry looked at them carefully. ``Auror Moody owes me a debt,'' he said.
``One I'll consider fully paid if he helps me in this,'' he added,
seeing Moody's skeptical stare. ``And Madam Marchbanks will be the
representative of the southern goblins. They trust her more than they do
me, don't they, madam?''

Madam Marchbanks inclined her head. ``That is true, Mr. Potter,'' she
said. ``You must understand. While they look forward to freedom and have
been longing for a \emph{vates} as impatiently as any of the other
magical creatures, they have been betrayed again and again in their long
struggle with wizardkind---far more than most of the magical creatures
have, because they have been in closer contact with us.'' Her eyes shone
with passion. Harry was sure, then, that she would agree to participate
in the ritual. ``They trust only proven friends, and then only after a
long and hard proving. I have been known to them more time than you
have. The webs you have shattered so far speak immensely for your
record, of course, but they would still want me there.''

Harry smiled at her. ``Thank you.'' He turned and waited on Moody's
answer.

Moody's magical eye was fixed on him, while his normal eye stared off to
the side in contemplation. At last he said, ``I want to know who the
other participants in the ritual will be.''

Harry let out his breath. \emph{He won't be pleased, but better he know
now than when the ritual's been set up and we couldn't find someone
else.} ``Minerva McGonagall will be the other Light witch involved,'' he
said. ``If she agrees, and I think she will. She and I have a bond of
affection, through free choice on either side, and I helped her move
into her present position, with more responsibility for the wards of
Hogwarts.''

``The Dark ones, Potter,'' Moody said softly. ``I want to know about
them.''

Harry sat ramrod straight in his chair. \emph{I am not ashamed of any of
them. I will defend them to Moody as I would defend Moody to them. This
is part of the price for balancing between them.} ``Professor Snape,''
he said, and watched Moody grimace. ``My guardian. Narcissa Malfoy.
She's risked her life for me on more than one occasion, and she also
owed me debts through her family.'' Tybalt peered at him, but Harry
ignored that. \emph{If Narcissa wants to tell him about her dancing,
that's her business.} ``Lucius Malfoy---''

``\emph{What}!'' Moody all but exploded to his feet.

Harry made sure to keep a bored expression on his face. ``He's my formal
ally through a truce-dance.''

``Potter, he was a \emph{Death Eater,}'' said Moody, stressing both words
separately, as though there were somehow a way that Harry wouldn't have
known that already.

``Yes, I know,'' said Harry. ``So was Hawthorn Parkinson, for that
matter, the other Dark witch I'm going to ask to stand with us. She's an
ally of my family.''

He didn't quite understand the look that came over Moody's face at that.
He wondered if Moody had hunted Lucius and Snape, but not Hawthorn.
Perhaps his antipathy for her was not as great as it had been for the
others.

``Only you, Potter,'' said Moody, whatever that was supposed to mean,
and sat down again. ``Who are the other four?''

``The ones who screw up the gender balance,'' said Harry, and Regulus
whined at him. Harry ignored that, too. ``Myself, of course, as
initiator of the ritual. Draco Malfoy, the---my best friend.'' He still
didn't think he had another word for Draco, at least not one he was
comfortable telling people. ``He's from a Dark family, and I'm from a
Light one, and he has to be part of the ritual, anyway. I trust him too
much for him not to be. And then Fawkes, the phoenix bonded to me, for
Light, and Regulus Black, for Dark. Once again, not much I can do about
it. Fawkes's bond and Regulus's bond make it imperative that they be
included somehow.'' He held up his hands in a helpless gesture.

Madam Marchbanks was nodding, as though that explained everything to
\emph{her} satisfaction. Tybalt was grinning and bouncing one foot off
the floor. Moody was frowning, and obviously looking through a list of
names in his head.

``Potter,'' he said slowly. ``Regulus Black was also a Death Eater, and
he's dead. I understand that you consider the one no obstacle, but that
other should give even you pause.''

Harry sighed. If they thought the ritual explanation had been
complicated, they were not going to like this.

``Regulus didn't die,'' he said quietly. ``He betrayed Voldemort, and
was taken and tortured. Then his body was confined somewhere, with
preservation spells on it, and his voice was bound to his brother
Sirius's mind, though most people thought he was dead and Sirius was
just having bad dreams. When Sirius died last year---'' no need to go
into all the details of what had happened there ``---Regulus's voice was
bound to me, because I share a connection to Voldemort through my
brother.'' \emph{No need to tell them the nature of that connection,
either.} ``He's here, and he's not leaving. He has to be part of the
ritual.''

They were \emph{all} staring at him, now. Harry leaned back and waited.

``I'm still in,'' said Tybalt. ``It will vex my uncle even more when he
hears that you have a phoenix bonded to you, Harry. He considers them
creatures of highest Light.''

``You're going to tell him, aren't you?'' Harry asked, still reluctant
to cause family quarrels, but resigned to the fact that Tybalt was going
to do whatever the hell he wanted.

Tybalt smiled slightly at him. ``Of course.''

``I am still in, as well,'' said Madam Marchbanks, with a slight nod.
``As long as you think that your allies are likely to agree.''

``I still have to speak with Mr. Malfoy, Mrs. Malfoy, and Mrs.
Parkinson,'' Harry admitted, rubbing one hand over his face. That
meeting was one that he was not looking forward to, for a variety of
reasons. Hawthorn had also been at the Walpurgis gathering. If she had
seen something of what Millicent and Pansy had seen\ldots{}

He pushed the thought away. He would deal with that if and when it came
up, in the same way he had when it had come up with his yearmates.

``I am fairly sure that Professor McGonagall will agree,'' he said,
yanking his mind back to the proper path. ``As I said, we share a bond
of affection. The others already have.'' Snape had merely stared darkly
at him for even proposing to venture into a dangerous situation by
himself. Draco had murmured sleepily into his shoulder that of course he
would be part of this ritual, and then repeated his vow more fully when
he'd woken up. Harry knew he had Fawkes's and Regulus's agreement.

\emph{Only because I can't prevent you from doing this damn fool thing,}
Regulus said.

\emph{True.}

``Then I stand with you.''

Harry stared hard at Moody. He'd expected a much more difficult
agreement before the old Auror gave in, and had even thought he might
need to ask another Light wizard---perhaps Scrimgeour, as much as he
hated compromising the Minister. ``Why?'' he asked. ``My allies'
allegiances haven't suddenly changed.''

Moody gave him a wintry smile. ``I know that. But I also know that this
is an opportunity for me to see exactly what you're made of, Potter, and
what your allies are made of. You're going to take on the Light role,
you said. If you do it well, that will prove something to me. If you
don't do it well, that will prove something, too. That you're a sham,
for example.''

Harry eyed him thoughtfully as Regulus called Moody a rude name. Well,
he was blunt, but it also sounded as though he were evaluating Harry as
another ally. Far be it from Harry to discourage someone from doing
that.

``Very well,'' he said. ``Thank you for agreeing with me, sir.'' He
stood up and looked at Madam Marchbanks. ``I'll need to meet with the
goblins soon, to discuss where we should establish the copy of
Gringotts.''

``The \emph{hanarz} will be glad to speak with you whenever you are
available,'' said Madam Marchbanks, with a slight inclination of her
head.

Harry caught Tybalt's eye while Madam Marchbanks enchanted another
Portkey for him to return to Hogwarts with, and Tybalt nodded. Harry
relaxed. That meant that Delilah Gloryflower, Claudia Griffinsnest, and
Fergus Opalline had indeed received the Wolfsbane Potion he'd brewed
during his detentions with Snape.

\emph{With luck, we can at least make their transformations not a horror
to them.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Minerva was glad to invite Harry in for a cup of tea when the boy asked,
gladder to listen to something other than the two subjects that occupied
her mind all day: the wards and marking. What Harry proposed was
something that stirred her interest. She found herself smiling as she
considered it.

\emph{A switching spell. An adapted switching spell, at that. Tricky.}
She looked at the boy sitting calmly and proudly in the chair in front
of her, and made up her mind. \emph{All the more reason for someone
experienced to help him with it, and to be available to contribute
strength if something goes wrong.}

``Of course, Mr. Potter,'' she said. ``I shall be honored to stand
opposite you. Or Severus, or wherever you wish to put me.''

``Opposite Professor Snape, I think,'' said Harry, relaxing with a
little sigh. Minerva was pleased to see that he didn't have as far to
relax as he once would have. Young Draco Malfoy had been good for him,
no matter that Minerva cordially detested the boy. ``You're the
strongest of the four participants in the Light side, and he's the
strongest of the Dark ones. Besides, Draco has to stand opposite me.''
Harry grinned and sipped at his tea.

Minerva nodded, her mind trying to envision how this would work. ``What
is the pattern that you're using?''

Harry extended a hand casually, and several pins and other small objects
on Minerva's desk fountained up and danced into position. Minerva raised
her eyebrows. Harry was choosing the pattern called three-lace: four
participants on either side of an aisle, facing each other; two at
either end of the aisle, also facing each other; and two linked in a
circle in the same space as the initiator of the ritual.

``You'll be on one side with the other Light witch and wizards,'' Harry
explained. ``The Dark ones will face you. I'll be at the initiator's
end, with Draco facing me. Fawkes and, um, Regulus Black will be with me
in the circle.'' He paused and looked nervously at Minerva.

She accepted the information with a shake of her head. \emph{Nothing is
ever normal with him. Why should this be?} And after what she had
learned about Albus, his phoenix bonding to Harry was no great surprise.
``I'll want the full tale of that someday, Mr. Potter,'' she said. ``But
for now, yes, that is acceptable.''

Harry nodded to her once, and then said, ``Excuse me, Professor
McGonagall, but I have another meeting to attend.'' He paused, studying
her face. ``And you look as if you should get some rest.''

Minerva bit her tongue to keep from taking points from Slytherin for
impertinence. It was only true. ``I shall, Mr. Potter. Attend your
meeting.''

Harry smiled at her, and slipped out the door. Minerva allowed herself
to lean back in the chair and close her eyes then. Her mind returned to
the wards again, and the absolute \emph{mess} she'd found when she
started digging into the older ones that guarded the original parts of
the school.

\emph{Albus, Albus, what have you done?}

The wards that should have recognized her did not. The ones that should
have transferred easily fought and snarled like Minerva would if someone
tried to confine her to a traveling cage in her Animagus form. The ones
that were simple accumulations of defensive spells had had an extra
twist and fillip added to them, one that marked them as Albus's, not
anyone else's, and made them of a piece, almost, with the Headmaster's
own magic.

Minerva was deeply angry, and not only because she was trying to take
part of the burden of the wards on herself. If Albus had died suddenly,
the school might well have refused to recognize her as Headmistress.
Albus had bound himself to Hogwarts as if he expected the school to
remain his forever, and Minerva hated the idea of that.

\emph{The man I loved and followed is gone.}

She was untangling the mess, but slowly, so slowly, and it gave her
headaches and invaded her dreams. Minerva gave a little shudder and sat
upright in her chair. She would go on because she had to, and her fury
gave her strength, but the weight of her rage made her breathless
sometimes, too, as did the weight of weary, grinding, endless sorrow.

``You are doing well.''

Minerva did pick up her wand. The woman who had called herself Acies
stood in a corner of the room again, and this time Minerva could catch a
glimpse of long, pale hands. Acies continued before she could speak a
spell, or indeed anything else.

``You will be needed. Needed so badly. And when the storm comes, you are
one of the reasons we will give battle well.''

``Will we win the battle?'' Minerva asked, because she had to discount
the rest as superstitious nonsense, as usual. But battles were great
events, ones that distorted the weight of history and sometimes inspired
more correct Divination than the flow of ordinary, everyday life.
Sometimes, of course. When Divinations were not superstitious nonsense
altogether.

``I did not say that,'' Acies whispered. ``When the \emph{storm} comes.
That is the important thing, Minerva. Already the wind is blowing. It
will come to a head in two great storms. One, you will be powerless to
affect. The other is a storm of Light, and that is your element, and it
will be your day. Oh, not this one, but the next.''

``You make no sense, at all,'' said Minerva.

``You will learn to know me better when the time comes,'' said Acies,
and flickered like a shadow caught by a lifting lamp, and vanished.

Minerva lowered her wand, and reflected whether her life was better or
not for the intrusion of mysterious babbling figures. On the one hand,
she could not hex Acies as she could Trelawney, and that made it
unsatisfying.

On the other hand, this had inspired her with enough irritation to push
her fatigue away and go to work on the wards again.

Minerva smiled grimly, and began.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry tilted his head back and absorbed the gentle warmth of the deep
spring night into his skin. He stood near the edge of the Forbidden
Forest, where he'd agreed to meet Lucius, Narcissa, and Hawthorn, and
the darkness around him sprang and sang with deep green rustlings that
hadn't been there a month before.

\emph{It's almost a year since Sirius died.}

Harry swallowed, a little, and pushed the thought away. Sirius had died
beautifully, died in reckless abandon, died like a Gryffindor. He would
not want Harry to let the thought of his grief distort something this
important.

``Harry.''

Harry turned and smiled as Narcissa emerged from the trees, holding out
a hand to him. He took it, and bent to kiss it. ``I trust that the trees
gave you no trouble this time?'' he asked.

Narcissa laughed softly, but it was Lucius who answered, stepping out
and putting one hand on his wife's shoulder. ``Not this time,'' he said,
as he gave a cool nod to Harry. ``It would seem the old fool has learned
his lesson.''

``I hope so,'' said Harry, turning to Hawthorn as she came out to
Lucius's right side. He studied her eyes, but saw only the same concern
that she always had for him, not anything new. He relaxed a bit.
\emph{She didn't see anything, or Pansy didn't tell her, and she won't
push. That's good.}

``What did you want to speak with us about?'' Lucius asked, direct and
calm. ``I was reading a rather interesting book, and while what you
describe sounds equally interesting, the explanation was rather
confused.''

Harry explained as he had with everyone else, and had the satisfaction
of seeing their faces tighten in thought before they gave their answers.
Narcissa and Hawthorn agreed before Lucius did. He tilted his head,
fixing his eyes on the Slytherin badge on Harry's robes, and hissed his
answer in Parseltongue, presumably to keep it private.

``You understand that this goes beyond the obligations of being your
formal ally?''

``Of course it does,'' said Harry, blinking a bit, and then surging into
amusement. \emph{Does Lucius want me to feel his independence?} ``I
wouldn't expect you to participate if you don't want to, Mr. Malfoy.''
He was not as worried about finding replacements for reluctant Dark
participants as he was for Light ones. Adalrico Bulstrode would do as
well, if Lucius refused.

Lucius considered that, then nodded and moved his eyes away so that he
spoke in English. ``I accept.''

Harry let out a little sigh. ``Thank you,'' he said, and felt a shining
burst of happiness that he could count on people like this, that he
didn't have to search for a way to end the bonds that tied them the
moment their obligations were made. And these were Dark wizards, two of
them former Death Eaters, to boot.

With the feeling that the world was a strange and wonderful place, Harry
bowed to them and then turned to walk back to Hogwarts. Draco and Snape
would be missing him, for all that they'd agreed to let him go to this
meeting alone; Snape's presence, in particular, would have been an
insult, an implication that Harry did not trust his allies. This dance
was still delicate, for all that Harry felt he understood most of the
moves better than any other circumstance of his life.

``A moment, Harry.''

Harry blinked and looked over his shoulder at Hawthorn. And this time
there was extraordinary concern on her face, and he felt himself flush
and fall back a few steps into a defensive posture.

``What?'' His voice was close to a snap. All the while, he told himself
that it might not be what he thought it was, that she could have other
things to talk to him about, that---

``I feel that we must speak of your past now,'' said Hawthorn, slowly,
but with determination. ``There have been clues that all is not right,
but now I have images.'' She took a deep breath and pushed forward.
``Harry, I would like to know what those images meant.''

\emph{She did see the memories at Walpurgis.} Harry straightened his
shoulders, aware of Lucius's and Narcissa's devouring, inquiring gazes,
his mind collecting and ordering the information they knew. There was
what he had confessed to the night of Rosier's attack on Lucius, and
there were the memories of his training that Lucius had seen that first
Christmas at Malfoy Manor, and there was Narcissa's knowledge of his
emotional condition after last Christmas.

``They meant things that are over and done with,'' he said, keeping his
own voice calm and polite, as blank as possible. ``I thank you for your
concern. It shows that you honor me beyond the obligations of formal
family alliance. But we need not speak of them.''

``I think we must.'' Hawthorn's eyes shone, but Harry could detect
nothing save concern in them, even now. Even still. \emph{Why can't she
leave me alone?} Harry wondered, with a flash of desperation. ``Harry,
what I saw---it was not right.'' A growl slipped out of her throat, and
Harry realized that she was getting angry.

At his parents, who had been punished enough. At his parents, who were
the pitiable things that the Maze had shown him they were. At his
parents, who did not deserve to have their lives ruined like this---not
to mention the consequences that it would bring down on Connor's life,
and on Harry's own. He was not a victim, and he would not allow his
allies to make him into one.

\emph{And what would it do to my reconciliation with James, to push him
like this? Nothing good. If they intend to bring this up in the first
place, they won't understand the subtle distinctions I want to make.}

``Leave it,'' he said softly.

Hawthorn growled again, and Harry saw her as she had been the one time
he ever met her in werewolf form, a gleaming fawn bitch, her amber eyes
wild and resolute. ``It is wrong. I cannot.''

``I would like to know, as well,'' said Lucius, all cool, balanced
eagerness, and Narcissa's gaze was open and gentle.

``\emph{No},'' said Harry. ``I will not tell you this again. Nearly any
other sacrifice, you may ask of me. But those that involve harm to other
people, I will guard against with all my life and will. That is a
promise.'' He let his magic rise just enough to add a tinge of danger
and wonder to the night.

Lucius bowed his head slightly. Narcissa sighed at him. Hawthorn
remained studying him, eyes narrowed.

``Doesn't it matter to you?'' she asked. ``What they did? I never
thought you one to oppose justice, Harry.''

``I prefer mercy,'' said Harry, and let his voice take on the snap of
breaking ice. ``And this is merciful. I thank you for your concern, but
this is the end of it.'' He waited calmly, holding her eyes, letting her
think things over. He was sure of what she would choose, even before she
dropped her eyes and nodded. They had the future to think of, and the
formal alliance, and the affection that she and Harry shared outside the
alliance. That trumped the past.

``Thank you,'' said Harry, and bowed to them a second time, and made his
way back to Hogwarts.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Hawthorn followed Harry's departure with troubled eyes. She had given in
for right now because she had seen it was no use in going against
Harry's will, but that was not going to last for long. Harry had spoken
like ice, but already the cracks were racing away from him, breaking
apart whatever frozen place he'd tried to store his past in. Merlin knew
how many witches and wizards had seen or guessed at the truth on
Walpurgis Night. Not all of them would rest in silence. They would all
move cautiously, Hawthorn thought, not sure at first what to do with the
knowledge, and wary of incurring Harry's wrath, but in the end, they
would move.

\emph{He is better off trying to control this information than backing
away from it.}

\emph{And so long as he ignores it,} she thought, the memory of the vows
returning to her, \emph{he is still doing what his mother desired him to
swear to. He is still hiding a great deal of who and what he is, the
strength which it must have taken to survive that.}

``It will come out,'' said Lucius, softly.

Hawthorn glanced at him, and caught his eyes along with Narcissa's. They
were united in their purpose of easing the truth into the light, and
making sure that Harry suffered as little as possible from it.

Hawthorn saw an extra motive in Lucius's eyes, too, one that she could
not enact herself. Lucius had been one of the Dark Lord's best and most
inventive torturers. He did not use the pain curses with relish, like
Bellatrix, but he was adept at twisting common spells into purposes
never meant for them to serve, and his coolness meant he was capable of
remaining at an emotional distance from his victims that Bellatrix never
could. That made him all the more frightening, and all the more
merciless when he did choose to torture someone.

When he found out what had actually happened with Harry, and what
measure of responsibility his parents bore for it, Hawthorn thought, he
would move. And then---then she pitied the Potters, the more because
Lucius would not kill them.

She happened to look at Narcissa, though, and paused. Perhaps Narcissa
would get to them first, and while Hawthorn did not know Lucius's wife
as well, she thought Lily and James Potter might be more deserving of
pity under Narcissa's hands than if her husband made the catch.

As for Hawthorn\ldots{}

\emph{I cannot hurt any of Harry's family, but there is no alliance
binding me from going after Dumbledore,} she thought, and bared her
teeth to the moonlight.

\chapter{Blood of the Basilisk}\label{chapter-70-blood-of-the-basilisk}

``It will do?''

Harry blinked several times, and then glanced over his shoulder, where
the \emph{hanarz} and ten goblins, all armed with silver arrows, waited.
``It will more than do,'' he said. ``It might have been made for this
purpose.'' Then, because no one else was trying to speak to him right
now, he returned his admiring gaze to the room in front of them.

It was made of stone, of course, as was the case with all the rooms in
the tunnels around Gringotts, and large enough to make Harry feel like
an ant moving across a sandwich. The walls that held it up curved
slightly, like the ribs of an enormous beast, but contained no
distracting pillars that might get in the way of the three-lace pattern
Harry planned to use. There were no decorations, either, which might
also interfere with the ritual once they became intricate enough. Harry
would have to mark out an aisle for the Light and Dark wizards to stand
on either side of and for him and Draco to stand at either end of, but
that was no trouble, not compared to what he would have had to do in a
less suitable place.

``When do you believe that you can free us?'' the \emph{hanarz} asked,
jolting Harry out of his contemplation of the room once again.

``This weekend.''

Silence from behind him, and it went on until Harry had to peer and see
what they thought of that timeframe. He discovered the \emph{hanarz}
standing upright, as if moving would cause her to collapse, her hands
clasped tightly in front of her.

``At last,'' she whispered. The words moved only a short distance in the
high-ceilinged room before dying. ``At last.''

Harry smiled.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry considered the diagram in front of him one more time, and then
nodded. He knew it by heart now, but a final study was never out of
place, he thought, tracing one hand over the sketched lines.

He and the other wizards would form the three-lace pattern. The goblins
would be underground with them, save for the few who would have to
remain in Gringotts to make sure that the business of the bank went
ahead as usual. By the time the weekend came around, Harry knew they
would also have forged the metal ingots that were meant to act like
coins in his replacement model of Gringotts. Goblins worked metal all
the time, for their own pleasure as much as because the web compelled
them to attend to wizards' money. The \emph{hanarz} had assured him that
many of their products, from the roughest to the most beautiful, would
serve in the model the web would transfer to.

That left vaults, of course, but Harry knew his magic could carve them
without trouble. The replacement vaults did not have to be as large as
the originals. What mattered was that they \emph{felt} like them, were
cloaked in illusions of belief, to fuel the deception he would practice
on the web.

\emph{It is going to be complicated, then.}

\emph{I told you that,} Regulus brooded in his head. \emph{I told you.
But you never seem to listen to me any more.}

Harry shrugged at him. \emph{Maybe if you told me something worth
listening to, rather than just making complaints about a ritual that has
to go ahead anyway, then I would.} He gently shoved the sketch under a
piece of homework from his Charms class and closed his eyes. The diagram
was still perfect behind his eyes.

A soft trill announced the presence of Fawkes. Harry scratched the
phoenix's head as he landed on his shoulder, and glanced at him with a
faint grin. ``Are you going to complain about the complication of this,
too?'' he asked.

Fawkes leaned against him and stayed there. His only music was a low,
trilling hum, by which Harry understood that the phoenix was pleased and
excited about the ritual. Of course he would be, Harry thought, as he
stood to get ready for bed. He was a creature of Light, and he supported
Harry's \emph{vates} cause, and had from the beginning. If he could play
an active part in the freeing of another kind and not just carry the
message that Harry wanted to try it, then he would be happy.

Harry felt little tingles racing through his body that seemed to make
even the brushing of his teeth and the washing of his face into
important secrets. He wondered, when he came out of the loo, that Draco
could already be asleep in his bed, blond hair thrown over his face and
his breathing calm. His heart galloped like a thestral. If it hadn't
been for Fawkes, he might not have found any rest when he closed his
eyes.

\emph{Tomorrow, we do something grand.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry swallowed another piece of toast, then pushed away the rest of his
breakfast, even though Fawkes gave a reprimanding croon on his shoulder.
Millicent dared to stroke the phoenix's tail feathers. Fawkes warbled at
her, and then cast a dark eye on Harry. \emph{See?} said the eye.
\emph{I think she would eat breakfast if I told her that she had to.}

Harry gave an irritable shrug, nearly unseating Fawkes. He had done what
he was told to. He had slept well. He'd eaten well. What he had to do
today was more important than either of them, however. What did one
missed meal and a few hours' missed sleep matter next to the ability to
set another species free?

``You're irritated at yourself again,'' said Draco, without looking away
from his plate. ``I wish you'd stop it. It feels like sand crunching in
my teeth.''

Harry shook his head and tried to calm down. A glance at the head table
showed that Snape was still eating at a sedate pace, and wouldn't be
ready to take him and Draco anywhere by Portkey in the next ten minutes.
Harry clenched his hands behind his back and breathed as normally as he
could. ``Sorry,'' he whispered. ``But it just annoys me at times like
these that I've got a body to be fed and rested. Wouldn't it be easier
if I was just a creature of pure magic, able to help whenever I wanted,
without worrying about silly things like that?''

Draco gave him a full-on glance of pure incredulity for a moment. Then
he shook his head and said, ``I don't know about you, Harry, but I
rather like the fact that you have a body.''

Harry felt his cheeks heat up, and then was further irritated at himself
for feeling that way. \emph{You've heard people say things like that
plenty of times without caring.}

\emph{But this time, it's about me.}

Draco \emph{deserved} feeling like he had a mouthful of sand for that,
Harry decided, and cut his toast into small, elaborate pieces until he
saw Snape stand up and proceed towards the doors, for all the world as
if this were a normal Saturday. Harry rose to his feet, and Fawkes
spread his wings for balance, crooning all the way. Draco stood up
beside him, and laid a hand on Harry's arm.

``Relax,'' he murmured. ``It's just a ritual, and I know that you'll do
fine, creature of pure magic or not.''

Harry fought the urge to pull away from the touch. Draco had made him
too conscious of himself again. But the last thing he wanted to do was
unsettle Draco's mind so much that the ritual didn't work, so he gave
him a sickly smile instead and walked towards the door of the Great
Hall. Gazes burned after him. They no longer hurt as much as they had,
but Harry always knew when someone else was paying attention to him.

\emph{One person in particular,} he thought, as he reached the doors and
briefly glanced back in Dumbledore's direction. The Headmaster drank his
goblet of pumpkin juice, but his stare above that was grave and
thoughtful.

\emph{He's been so quiet. I wonder if he really does want to make peace
with me, or if he does think that he deserved to lose some power and
prestige?}

It was probably neither of those, Harry knew, and that meant he would
have to guard his back against the Headmaster at some point in the
future.

For now, though, Harry forced himself to shake his head and think of
other things. This was a great thing, what they were going to do, and
the impatience bucked and jogged and kicked in him as McGonagall
followed Snape.

\emph{It makes me feel the way I did when I came out of the Maze,} he
thought. \emph{I know that what I'm going to do is right, and no one can
intrude and question that, and my own conscience can't sting me,
either.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

The six of them---well, six counting Regulus's voice in Harry's head and
the phoenix on Harry's shoulder, who had to be counted because they
would be part of the ritual, like it or not---arrived in the enormous
room at the same time as Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy. Snape exchanged a
guarded nod with Lucius, and Harry was simultaneously puzzled and amused
to see a similar gesture pass between Narcissa and McGonagall. It was
just as well that neither pair would be standing across from each other,
he thought, where the balances were the most delicate.

``Harry,'' said Narcissa, glancing away from McGonagall in the next
instant and seemingly trying to pretend that she'd never looked. ``How
are you? You look much better than you have done in the past.''

Harry winced. \emph{Did she have to draw attention to that?} ``I've been
trying to keep my strength up, Mrs. Malfoy,'' he said, as politely as he
could at this time, with the restlessness and his magic both bouncing up
and down in him. ``I know this is important, and I wouldn't like to let
the reins slip from my control because of lack of food and sleep.''

Lucius whispered something in his wife's ear. Narcissa listened with a
slight frown and a nod, but didn't bother to let Harry in on what had
been said. Harry felt a spike of irritation.

Draco placed a hand on the back of his neck and squeezed gently. ``Calm
down,'' he whispered. ``We're going to do this, and then I'm going to
make Mother take us to Florean Fortescue's. We're near Diagon Alley
anyway, and that slop the house elves fix at Hogwarts can't compare to
\emph{real} ice cream.''

Harry chuckled in spite of himself, and in spite of the reminder of
house elves, and then looked up sharply. A door had opened on the far
side of the chamber, and Griselda Marchbanks had entered with the
\emph{hanarz} of the southern goblins beside her.

``Mr. Potter,'' she said, though she nodded at the others. ``The ingots
that you required are assembled.'' She nodded over Harry's shoulder, and
he turned to look, catching his breath at the sight of the piled metal.
Some of the pieces of it really were coins, though not in any
denomination handled in the wizarding world, but much was simple worked
metal, wrought to artistic patterns that goblins understood and humans
did not.

``Thank you,'' he said, and then looked up as another three Portkeys
tugged in another three people. Hawthorn arrived first, at once standing
and moving smoothly away from the wall where her coin had brought her,
her eyes fastening on Harry's as though she wondered whether he had
managed to hurt himself since they had last met. Moody came in behind
her, growling softly at the sight of Lucius and Hawthorn, who both
proceeded to ignore him. Tybalt was bouncing his wand in his hand and
grinning at everyone. He had a bell tied to his hair just above his ear,
but Harry couldn't tell if that meant something or was just to mock and
imitate his uncle.

``Thank you for coming,'' said Harry, inclining his head. The
restlessness had soothed itself a bit when he came closer to his goal.
It was replaced, now, with determination, which Harry thought could
match the roar of blood in his ears for relentless movement. ``There's
no reason to delay, I think, so we should move.'' He looked at the
\emph{hanarz}, just to make sure the goblins did not need more time, and
was met with a faint smile and a click of her nails.

``We have waited centuries,'' she said. ``You made a golden promise. We
are ready.''

Harry nodded to her, and then raised a hand. Nearly everyone jumped as
his magic boiled out of his body, following the movement of his palm, as
he cut a rectangle into the floor. The goblins only watched, though, as
if they had expected something like this. Harry concentrated on making
sure that the rectangle's sides were exactly equal. It was important to
the ritual, and it was good practice for the cutting of the vaults he
would have to undergo in a few moments.

``Does anyone have any questions?'' he asked, as the final chip of stone
soared out of the floor and his magic stopped cutting.

No one did, though Harry thought that Moody and Tybalt, at least, looked
as if they were wondering what the hell else he could do, if he wanted
to. Harry gestured, and the others moved into their places as he had
discussed with them in further meetings after that first one: Draco on
the far end of the rectangle, across from Harry; Snape next to him and
across from McGonagall, as they were balanced by being the strongest
each in power of their respective sides; Hawthorn next to Snape and
across from Tybalt, balanced as they each were by the wildness of their
personalities; Lucius next to Hawthorn and across from Griselda
Marchbanks, as the odd ones out otherwise; and Narcissa next to her
husband and across from Moody, made necessary by Moody's intense dislike
of all the other three declared to the Dark. Harry took his place at the
far end of the rectangle, Fawkes on his shoulder and Regulus at the
ready in his mind.

He felt the sharp hum as the three-lace pattern closed and called the
ritual's attention. Magic was already pouring into him, or perhaps
rising from within him; Harry had read so much about rituals in the last
little while, the theoretical arguments as to whether they filled with
power from the outside or simply gave a mental mold to the wizard's own
strength, that he was not sure which he believed. The three-lace
pattern, at least, was old enough that the ritual had required little
work to adapt.

No, the complicated part would come with the conjoining of the other
wizards' powers---which Harry had to guide, as the initiator of the
ritual and the only one here that everyone else was bound to---and the
creation of the replacement for Gringotts. Oh, and the actual transfer
of the web, and convincing it that it still bound the goblins.

Harry extended his hands, aware of Fawkes's warmth behind his eyelids,
Regulus waiting and not whining now, and the watching goblins, who had
almost all crowded in at the door of the enormous room. The web blazed
into being above them, the fierce white thing Harry had seen once
before. He knew about it this time, so he could avoid being blinded by
it.

He took a deep breath, and calmed himself, and then uncoiled his magic
from out of the center of his body, rising like a whip, like a dragon.

\emph{Now.}

Magic surged out of him and into Draco, on the other end of the
rectangle. For a moment, it wavered. They were balanced by their bond
and by their respective families' allegiances to Light and Dark, but the
ritual was seeking, ideally, for a Dark witch, and not finding her.

Draco gasped a bit, but met Harry's eyes and held them with a faint
smile. His trust was absolute, a bond too strong to be ignored. Harry
saw it create the first basis of the pattern between them, a wavering
link, tinged deep green on Draco's end and gold on his, fading to gray
in the middle. The light flickered and danced before settling into those
colors, though. Harry supposed it came from his use of so much Dark
magic in the past.

He concentrated calmly on the fact of how much he wanted this ritual to
work, and the tie firmed. He could do this, Harry thought. The unicorns
had shown him his deep green soul tinged with gold---the color of
sunlight, the color of Light. He was both. He could play host to one as
easily as the other.

The bond firmed, and \emph{sang}, a deep musical vibration that jolted
the chamber and made the wizards and witches in the pattern flinch,
again. Fawkes crooned. Harry smiled.

A faint chiming sound joined the music for a moment, making Harry turn
his head curiously, but then it faded. He shrugged. \emph{Maybe that's
just a side effect of the ritual that I didn't read about.}

It had not destabilized the bond, at least, and Harry reached out to
Fawkes and Regulus in turn, speaking with words this time. His and
Draco's trust was too deep a thing to need them. \emph{Phoenix, loyal
creature of Light, unselfish giver to my} vates \emph{work. Regulus
Black, once Death Eater, brother of my godfather---}sorrow shook in his
mental voice, but Harry forced it steady---\emph{voice in my head, son
of the Dark.}

They heard him, and they answered, Fawkes's answer audible and Regulus's
a whisper at the corners of his brain. Harry felt the bond shoot from
him, and this time there was an audible gasp---from McGonagall, he
thought. Harry blinked and looked to the side.

This bond was orange and black, also fading to gray in the middle, and
joined at one end to Fawkes's throat. The other end emerged from his
temple. Harry swallowed, a bit. He could see how it would be startling.

That bond began singing, too, a clear, pure melody that turned sharply
in the middle to a sobbing note. Another chime followed it, slightly
louder this time, but no one else voiced concern, and Harry decided that
must be normal for this ritual.

Wavering slightly from the sheer power of the magic currently channeled
through him, he turned and looked at Moody and Narcissa, the nearest
pair to him. Narcissa gave him the barest smile, a curve of her lips.
Moody grunted at him---no surprise. His magical eye was fixed intently
on Harry, as though he was trying to discover the way the bond going
into his head worked.

``Alastor Moody,'' Harry said aloud. ``Light wizard, old Auror, hunter
of Death Eaters, in debt to me. Narcissa Malfoy, daughter of the Black
house, mother of Draco Malfoy, never a Death Eater, Dark witch, loyal
dancer.''

The bond coalesced without music, but with an angry hum, which Harry
thought came from the difference of two contrary souls beating against
each other. On Narcissa's end, it was a dreamy gray, shot through with
sparks of black. On Moody's, it was a harsh, clear yellow that reminded
Harry of tinted Veritaserum. Like the others, it was gray in the middle.
A thread snaked away from it, coalescing around Harry's right wrist.

The buzz faded, and a deep chime shook the chamber. Harry waited for it
to trail off, and lifted his eyes to the next pair in line. Madam
Marchbanks looked pleased and hopeful, though Harry thought she was
trying to hide the expression. Lucius tilted his head and stared Harry
down, revealing no emotion at all.

``Griselda Marchbanks,'' said Harry, ``Light witch, Elder of the
Wizengamot, older than Albus Dumbledore, friend of the \emph{hanarz}.
Lucius Malfoy, Dark wizard, Death Eater, truce-dance ally of mine---'' He
might have tried to stop what he said next, but the ritual compelled a
litany of titles from him, and it slipped out before Harry could stop
it. ``Smug bastard.''

Lucius raised his eyebrows, even as the bond between him and Madam
Marchbanks sprang eagerly into being. On his side, it was gleaming
black, with perhaps just a hint of purple, the color of a Hungarian
Horntail's scales. Madam Marchbanks shone gold and silver, as like a
unicorn as anyone human Harry had seen. This bond aimed for Harry's
brow, and tied itself there.

This time, the accompanying chime made Hawthorn nearly falter from her
place in the ritual. Harry frowned. \emph{That really is not supposed to
happen.} He turned cautiously to Hawthorn and Tybalt, keeping one eye on
the walls as he spoke, wondering if perhaps this room had traps on it
that he hadn't detected when he chose it. But why would the goblins not
have known about them? And why would they have let him use this place if
they had known?

``Tybalt Starrise,'' he said, and Tybalt all but preened. ``Son of Alba
Starrise, annoyer of Augustus, pledged ally of mine, wild Light wizard.
Hawthorn Parkinson, Dark witch, Red Death, formal ally of my family,
runner by the light of the moon.'' He felt the bond swelling into being,
and the last words were abruptly hard to speak. Harry pushed himself
through. He had known \emph{this} would happen, at least, as the ritual
went on and he handled more and more magic. This was nothing compared to
what he would feel when he had to join the bonds all together and then
use them to transfer the goblins' web. He shut his eyes for a moment, to
let him endure.

This bond howled, like Hawthorn hunting on a full moon night, and was
unexpectedly pale on her end, though Harry supposed it might be the
sheen of light off a knife. Tybalt blazed both gold and black, like a
bumblebee. Harry staggered a little as a secondary bond shot away from
it and towards his heart, but managed to keep his feet.

This chime came into his bones, and Harry heard a hiss, deep and angry,
that of a defensive guardian. He snapped his head up and searched the
room anxiously with his eyes, but there was nothing save the waiting
goblins---who weren't alarmed---and the waiting wizards and witches,
peering at him curiously.

Harry nodded, and faced Snape and McGonagall, and began speaking. The
hiss remained, growing louder, rushing at him. Well, he would deal with
it when it got here.

``Minerva McGonagall, Light witch, descendant of Lady Calypso, Deputy
Headmistress, chosen friend.'' The last words had to well out from
between his tightly clenched teeth. Abrupt pressure had gripped his
head, as though someone had fastened a crown of iron there. Harry could
feel Regulus shouting something, but he had to go through the ritual,
and couldn't attend to his words. ``Severus Snape, Dark wizard, Death
Eater, Potions Master, beloved guardian.''

The bond between Snape and McGonagall exploded into being, a waterfall
of deep, poisonous green racing away from Snape's side and meeting the
deep red hue from McGonagall, twining and then snapping, a sound like
teeth or claws on rock. The secondary bond from it coiled towards
Harry's left wrist.

The chime hurt Harry's head this time, and the hiss grew louder, and
when he opened his eyes, a phantom basilisk was slithering towards him
along the bond, straight for his left hand.

Immediately, Harry felt stupid for not seeing it before. \emph{Salazar
Slytherin established this web. Of course he would have put some
measures into place to insure no one could simply destroy it.}

The basilisk was growing more present every moment, a snake with dark
purple scales and gleaming yellow eyes. Harry felt himself shake as the
eyes locked on him. It was not yet real enough to destroy him, but it
would be soon, and then it could easily turn on and kill the others.

There was one thing that Slytherin could not have possibly guessed about
the destroyer of the web, though, and Harry used that advantage now,
hissing at the basilisk in Parseltongue.

``What is the meaning of this? Will Slytherin's pet harm one with
Slytherin's talent''

The basilisk gave a vicious, whip-like motion of its neck, and then shut
its eyes. Harry was vaguely aware of the shouts from the others, and of
silver flashes next to them which were probably goblin arrows. The bonds
weren't disrupted, though. Harry and the others had passed too far into
the ritual to move from their places now. The thread between Snape and
McGonagall lashed around his left wrist and coiled there, hard enough to
cut off his circulation. The basilisk lay in the rectangle between the
Light and Dark sides---only about ten feet long, nowhere near as large
as the one in the Chamber of Secrets---and hissed softly at him.

``\emph{Beg pardon. I did not know that you could speak to us. I was told
that when someone disrupted my lair, that person was my rightful prey.
My master told me so,}'' the snake added, as though attacking a
Parselmouth were such a severe breach of etiquette that this was the
only way to answer it.

Harry felt his lip curl in spite of himself. He could only imagine what
Sylarana or the Many would have said about a snake so willing to crouch
at someone else's feet and accept a Parselmouth as a master rather than
a partner.

``Your master is long dead,'' he said. ``And I want to change your
residing place. You reside within the web, do you not?''

``\emph{Within the realm of the spider,}'' said the basilisk. ``\emph{Yes.
And that realm cannot be shredded. My master told me so.}'' It was
swaying faintly faster now, and the false eyelids that dimmed its deadly
gaze were pulsing with flickers of light. Harry suspected the impulse to
open them and gaze was becoming hard for the snake to resist.

``I am changing that realm,'' he said. ``Not destroying it. If you help
me, then I will leave you alive. If you do not, then you will die. Do
you understand me? I bear you no ill will, but I will not allow you to
harm or hurt anyone around me, either.''

``\emph{Why not?}'' the basilisk demanded. ``\emph{They are not all of the
Dark, and only one of them can speak to me.}''

Harry did shoot a short glance at Lucius then, just visible over the
basilisk's intensely agitated coils. Lucius had a very odd expression on
his face. He could understand the conversation, certainly, but he didn't
seem to know what to feel about it.

``Because I say so,'' said Harry. ``And I could kill you. Do you need
any better reason? I am offering you a choice, which is more than your
master gave you when he put you here.''

``\emph{I understand,}'' the basilisk hissed softly. ``\emph{I choose to
help. And it feels so wonderful to be real again, to sense and hear. Let
me stay. I will help.}''

Harry was unsure if the snake \emph{could} help, since the addition of a
thirteenth presence to the ritual would unbalance it in favor of the
Dark. ``As you will,'' he said. ``Be ready to assist me.''

The basilisk slithered smoothly out of the center of the
rectangle---crossing the boundaries of the ritual without disrupting it,
as it was part of the web and not part of this new formation of
bonds---and around behind Harry. ``Keep your eyes shut,'' Harry added,
remembering just in time that he wouldn't be able to see the basilisk
now if it decided to stare at the others, and then turned his attention
to the bond around his left wrist.

With some persuasion, it loosened and became more like the others. Harry
suspected at least part of the resistance had come from Snape, who was
scowling ferociously at him and had probably wanted to destroy the
basilisk. Harry gave him a reprimanding glance, and then jerked his
attention back and focused carefully on the bonds on his wrists, around
his brow, at his heart, at his temple, and the one that sprang from the
center of his chest, just below his heart bond, and connected him to
Draco.

This was too important, too delicate a task, for him to leave any bit of
his focus dangling outside the middle.

Harry took a deep breath, and then threw his magic forward, and to the
side, and upwards, and down, and to the left, and to the right. The six
bonds shimmered and shone ferociously, and then Harry was seeing them
all gathered in an equally fierce lump behind his eyes, their colors
running together.

He gripped them and conjoined them, all of them at once, every way that
the twelve presences in the ritual could possibly be bound, himself to
Hawthorn and Fawkes to Draco and Moody to Lucius and McGonagall to Madam
Marchbanks and Narcissa to Regulus and Tybalt to Snape and himself to
Lucius and McGonagall to Hawthorn and Narcissa to Tybalt and\ldots{}

He made himself a crossroads, forcing his thoughts to hold all the
myriad, beautiful patterns in his mind's eye. His own magic rose to take
up more and more of the burden, supporting the bonds, maintaining them,
keeping the other ritual participants' minds from panicking at the
sudden intimacy, helping him memorize the patterns instead of go crazy
thinking about them. More and more rose, and he had only more to give.
And the ritual itself helped, of course, hammering the molds into his
mind and telling him what to do next and pulling on his magic.

Harry took a deep breath when he thought he had it. All those bonds, all
the possible similarities between them and all the differences smoothed
over into similarities, trembled and glowed before him. He could know
the thoughts of any witch or wizard in the room at the moment, and,
through Madam Marchbanks, the thoughts of any goblin.

This was part of the reason this was a Light ritual, of course, aside
from the sense of cooperation inherent in it. It required a trust that
many Dark wizards, proud and solitary, would never give to one another,
and an initiator capable of resisting the temptation to stare into other
minds.

Harry held the ball of all their thoughts for a moment, and wondered if
this was what it was like to be a Light Lord, a \emph{true} Light Lord,
not the pitiful imitation that Dumbledore was, living from moment to
moment with power and exquisitely aware of how one could affect others
at all times.

Then he smiled. \emph{No. Because even Light Lords use compulsion, if
they think it's best. This is what it's like to be} me, \emph{acting the
Light part in the middle of this particular ritual.}

He knew the patterns. He took a moment more to breathe.

Then he called on his magic, called on it as he had not since his battle
with Tom Riddle in his second year, drew more and more of it up from the
middle of himself, and spread it out and to the pile of coins that lay
waiting in the corner of the room, and the web on the goblins, and the
stone walls of the chamber.

And the coins and the web and the stone answered.

He felt the coins lift, spinning around each other, hurrying into
precise lanes. In moments, his magic expanding his thoughts so that he
could conceive what would normally not have been possible, or possible
only in isolated moments, he knew they had formed the patterns of
exchange in Gringotts. They were moving in imitation of the way that
they passed from wizard to goblin hands, in and out of the bank. This
was a necessary component of the web's replacement, since it was bound
to the way that the bank did business, every removal and every deposit
of money reinforcing it.

Harry knew he could not hope to mimic all the millions of transactions
down the centuries since Slytherin had tied the web. That did not
matter. He had only to convince the web that this was the real thing.

The web trembled, and began to move. Harry slitted his eyes, and saw the
white glow around the goblins mounting like a sunrise, soaring up and
up, turning the air around the ritual participants clear. It was rising,
loosing them of its own free will, drifting up and wafting towards the
coins. The goblins themselves were almost all standing still, and doing
nothing interesting right now. The illusion of busy money attracted the
web instead.

Harry felt his mind, or, more properly, his magic, strain. There was no
way that he could be holding all these patterns in his memory at once,
naturally. But the magic could contain the ritual bonds, which provided
the power for the lifting of the web, and the patterns of the coins,
which provided a place for the web to go. Harry did not feel quite human
right now. He suspected he wouldn't be able to remember exactly how he
felt afterwards, either, as he hadn't been able to remember exactly the
experience he'd gone through in the Maze.

He asked his magic for still more.

He felt his heart give a single hard beat, but the magic answered him,
deep and welling, lifting and pouring through him from his reserves.
Harry reached for the stone walls, and began to blast imitation vaults
in them.

Chips of stone soared past his face, when he could see what was in front
of his face. His vision pulsed in and out, sometimes showing him what
was happening in the room, sometimes showing him what was actually
\emph{behind} his head---the web hovering over the zooming coins and
watching them in fascination---and sometimes showing him that immense
ball of gathered bonds and magic and trust. Harry could hear, though,
his breathing lifting and becoming more and more labored. His magic
might give out before the end, at the rate he was going.

\emph{What magic cannot do, will must.}

Harry locked his will and pushed it forward. The last of the vaults were
blasted now, and he remembered what the \emph{hanarz} had told him.
Every use of a key in a vault increased the web, too.

He reached out, confidently weaving a glamour, and his vision and the
world were steady but beating, like a heart, repeating what he saw in
ordered patterns, \emph{bonds} and \emph{coins} and \emph{web} and
\emph{illusion}---

The illusion put what looked like metallic doors into place over the
vault entrances, and then conjured keys. Harry tied off the glamour, and
watched in amusement as the keys began to bustle about, ``unlocking''
the vault entrances and then ``locking'' them again, all a shadow-play
to attract and hold the web's attention. Harry was panting from the
strain, but he did enjoy the irony of employing what was technically
Dark magic, because it was deceptive, in the midst of a Light ritual.

The web turned to look at the vaults, and Harry felt it writhing, the
white tendrils uncurling behind it. Its main object was not confinement
of the goblins, but to reinforce itself through the business of the
bank. Slytherin had made sure of it, and had, through that, made it
seemingly impossible that anyone could free the southern goblins without
shutting down Gringotts itself.

Now, though, that was working against his intentions. The web was a
mindless thing, not sentient, a creature of fascinations and shallow
emotions. It moved slowly, slowly, closer to the whizzing coins and the
phantom doors.

Harry could feel his arms trembling. He told himself that was only an
illusion, too. He was feeling the strain in his body, particularly his
chest, but he wasn't holding anything up. He spun more and more magic
out of himself, and into the temptation for the web.

The web \emph{sprang}.

Harry cried out as its tendrils uncurled from the goblins altogether,
and wrapped greedily around the new illusion of the bank. He moved,
timing things precisely, letting the web settle into place and hum
happily before he held up the ball of all the conjoined bonds, all the
conjoined magic, and flung it into the center of the illusion.

It landed, freely given magic, freely given sacrifice, which in the
original ritual would have tied the curse into place on the new
volunteer. Instead, here, it gave the illusion of the bank a heart, and
made it permanent. Harry could feel the web's ``belief'' in the illusion
form fully and formidably, and knew the goblins' freedom was complete.

He took a deep breath of relief.

``\emph{Thank you. That was a beautiful place of magic to see. I have
missed magic. And now I shall guard the web, which is what my master
asked me to do.}''

Harry lifted his eyes, blinking, and saw the basilisk slithering rapidly
towards the newly-placed web. It grew less real as it moved, tattering
into purple-black strands of mist and one glimpse of yellow eyes that
still made Harry shiver. Then it wrapped itself around the web and
vanished.

Harry managed a tired grin. If anyone \emph{did} try to tamper with the
southern goblins' web after this, perhaps move it back to them, they
would find the basilisk hissing and probably staring or biting them to
death before they could do anything about it. And it was extremely
unlikely that Voldemort, the only other Parselmouth in Britain, would
care enough to do anything about it.

And now he had to turn around and look at other things, because he was
not done yet.

Harry reached out, carefully, and began unbraiding the bonds that still
tied to him, going in reverse order. A hissing twist, and the bond
around his left wrist parted, and McGonagall and Snape sagged. A howl,
and Hawthorn and Tybalt were blinking at each other, as if they didn't
know what had happened. A roar, and Lucius and Madam Marchbanks were
stepping away from each other with mutual expressions of distaste. A
buzz, and Narcissa and Moody were free; Moody showed more relief than
Narcissa at their parting.

Fawkes trilled, helping Harry ease the bond between Regulus and himself
apart. Regulus sighed. \emph{Thank goodness. That phoenix was singing at
me all the damn time. I don't know how you stand it, having him bonded
to you.}

Harry shrugged, a motion that made him gasp in pain---he had not
realized how tense his body was---and reached out to the bond between
himself and Draco. Though he had not thought much on the other boy while
they were bound together, this ritual would have been impossible without
him, he thought, meeting Draco's eyes across the rectangle. That steady,
fundamental tie of trust had let him do everything else.

Draco laid his hand gently on the bond. Harry shivered. It felt as
though the hand had reached into his chest and pressed upon his heart.
It felt---not so much good as \emph{sweet}.

``Can't this stay?'' Draco whispered. Harry heard him clearly, despite
the distance between them. ``I wouldn't mind.''

Harry shook his head slightly, and smiled, and released the connection.
He caught a look of disappointment on Draco's face before he turned
away, but he was sure he had made the right decision. Both he and Draco
would have sickened of each other before long, forced to live in such
intimacy. It would have made Draco's empathy seem like nothing.

Harry used the moment when the ritual still buzzed and hummed through
him to look at the \emph{hanarz} near the doors. Her face was painted
with an expression of joy that even he, inexperienced at reading
goblins, could recognize. She bowed her head slightly to him. Earlier,
she had confirmed to Harry that she and her people would not be hasty.
They would keep up the business of Gringotts as usual at first. Slowly,
they would begin changing the terms of their relationship with wizards.
Now that they were free, they could afford to take their time. It had
been the web, the lack of choices in dealing with wizards, which made
them impatient.

Harry whispered the words that would end the ritual. ``In the name of
sunrise, this ritual is done, and the transfer complete.''

The buzz in his head ended as the power withdrew, slipping away from him
like water, and the very last expanded boundaries of his mind contracted
violently. Harry dropped to his knees, shaking. His body ached
viciously. He could actually \emph{feel} his lungs working to take in
enough air, and his vision blurred and swam. Magical exhaustion, he
knew, the kind he had experienced when he aided Connor on the Quidditch
Pitch in first year.

He heard Snape snapping something out, and hoped, fuzzily, that his
guardian was hurting no one's feelings as he scooped him off the floor.

He had done what he came here to do. The goblins were free, and he had
exerted himself to the utmost in freeing them. That meant that he had no
reason to stay awake. He really \emph{had} done all he could, with no
selfish holding back.

Harry slipped into sleep, fully aware that he would be smiling. There
could be no better cause for tiring himself out than this.

\chapter{Interlude: And Soaring Ever Singest}\label{chapter-71-interlude-and-soaring-ever-singest}

\emph{June 1st, 1995}

\emph{Dear Potter}:

Hello! How are you? Have you had any dreams of blueberry pies lately? My
lord continues to wake me up when I am about to reach mine, so I must
confess that the taste of blueberries is something my mouth has sorely
missed, almost as much as it misses the taste of blood.

But that is not what I was writing to talk to you about. I am quite sure
that you do not care about Death Eaters who miss blueberries. You might
care about the blood, and I hope someday to taste a {Crucio} from your
wand and see whether the taste you put into my mouth is different from
the one my lord and Our Lady of Pain create.

No, I am writing to tell you three things. They are all important, so
perhaps you should pay close attention. On the other hand, perhaps I am
crossing my eyes at you on the other side of the parchment. After all,
you cannot be sure, can you? I often sit with the letters I receive and
try to imagine the expressions on the faces of those who sent them to
me. I am never sure if I am right.

First, what you have accomplished so far is quite impressive. {Higher
still and higher from the earth thou springest, like a cloud of fire;
the blue deep thou wingest, and singing still dost soar, and soaring
ever singest.} So sang the poet whose heart would not burn, the one who
by the time he was nineteen had already begun to sing of revolution, and
who died when he was not quite twice your age, drowned in roaring water.
Impressive accomplishments for one so young, and your own heart is a
soaring, singing thing by now, I imagine. It should be. The summer is so
near, the summer of your soul.

{Teach me half the gladness that thy brain must know}. I wish you could.
It would make my own madness more harmonious.

Second, you should still watch the sun, always. On the other hand,
perhaps you should watch the moon. Or was it the stars? I am afraid I
always mix these things up. Dire warnings are not my forte. On the other
hand, I am quite good at causing pain, and playing games.

Everything is a game, Potter. Never forget that.

Third, I wish to extend an invitation to you. The time is not important;
I will name the time in some future letter. But the place {is} dearly
important to me. I wish to meet on that beach in Northumberland where we
first danced together.

Tell me you will be there. Perhaps you will bring blueberries? Or blood?
Either will be good.

In the game,

\emph{Evan Rosier.}

\chapter{One Sacrifice Too Many}\label{chapter-72-one-sacrifice-too-many}

Draco leaned against the wall outside the classroom door and waited
patiently. He could have gone into the room and been closer to Harry,
but Harry was only telling a story that Draco already knew to another
class of students from all Houses. Draco knew he would have felt less
comforted by Harry's presence than annoyed with all the other people who
were sharing it.

Besides, the fact that he'd stayed away from Harry all day would lend
his request more weight when he made it.

The lesson shifted as he listened. Now Harry was teaching the other
students simple dueling spells, allegedly because their Defense Against
the Dark Arts curriculum was inadequate with two teachers in one
year---and a third one having to take over next year, when Karkaroff
would go back to Durmstrang. Draco knew the truth, of course, because
Harry had confessed it to him when he asked. Connor had supposedly heard
from Krum that for the Third Task, it would be useful if the champions
knew plenty of dueling spells. To avoid letting on that he knew anything
about it, Connor had asked Harry to tutor him in common with the others.

Draco couldn't quite forbear edging nearer the door and peering in at
Harry, to see what he was teaching them now.

Harry's brother had just managed to deflect a simple cutting hex with a
Shield Charm. He was laughing out loud, as if that simple accomplishment
was worth startling a whole room full of other people. Harry stood
across from him, smiling at him and shaking his head.

Draco smiled in turn and tilted his head so that more of the sunlight
from Harry's emotions fell on his face. Simple things like this made
Harry so happy. Draco thought, with one part of his mind, that Harry
really should find some employment more fit for him---he couldn't strike
with one tenth of his power, since the other students were so weak---but
he'd been distant and preoccupied since a few days after the successful
completion of the ritual to free the southern goblins. It was only right
that he have some joy now.

Harry was dancing attendance on Loony Lovegood next, urging her to make
a trial of the Shield Charm against his cutting hex. Loony only got
halfway through the spell before she started talking dreamily to her
scarf, and Harry had to pull up his hex. For a moment, his emotions
shifted towards worry like snow blowing in Draco's face. Then they
steadied, and he shook his head and moved towards Smith and Granger,
who'd apparently patched up their little love affair when Draco wasn't
looking.

Draco tensed his shoulders. \emph{I do want to just drag him out of
there. But wait. Be patient. Once he hears what I want, I know he'll
need a few hours to think about it. Best if I just let him have this
time now, and he doesn't get irritated at me for pushing too soon.}

Draco waited, immobile, and patient, really, even if he had to chew on
his tongue to stay quiet more than once as Harry responded with deep
calm to Smith's sniping comments. Draco was an expert at reading Harry
in a way that none of the others in the classroom were, and he could see
that the calm was as false as his own patience. Harry's shoulders kept
tightening, and he smoothed out the cruel edges that tried to wrinkle
his voice again and again.

\emph{I think he'll agree to this,} Draco thought hopefully.
\emph{Merlin knows that he needs this as much as I do.}

Finally, the other students left the classroom for dinner, but not
before asking Harry for more lessons the next day. Harry waved them off
with talk about studying for exams in the library. Draco's eyes
narrowed. \emph{He's been doing that for the past week, and he always
looks paler afterward.}

\emph{Not this time.}

More than one person gave him an odd glance as they streamed past him,
but Draco ignored them. The only other student whose opinion he cared
about was waiting until everyone had left. He could see that, and that
would just mean Draco would wait until everyone had left, too.

Harry peered around the door, finally, fully five minutes after his
brother and the Weasel had gone to dinner, cracking immature
Gryffindorish jokes. He stared around the corner, then jumped when he
saw Draco. Draco straightened up and looked at him calmly.

``You could have come in, you know,'' said Harry, after a few moments of
silence. ``No one would have minded.''

Draco sighed. ``I have something to ask you,'' he said. ``Something that
needs to be said in private, but I don't know if I could have waited if
I'd come into the classroom.'' He studied Harry's tight, pale face, and
nodded, fully convinced that this would help Harry as much as him.

Harry grinned. ``Is this about your birthday gift, Draco? Yes, I
\emph{know} it's your birthday tomorrow. I'm not going to tell you what
I got you beforehand.''

``It's about my birthday,'' said Draco, ``but this time, I wanted to ask
for a specific gift.''

Harry arched his eyebrows. ``You don't trust me to get you something
you'll like?''

Draco had not actually counted on Harry having bought or made a gift
already. Greed warred with stronger greed. Really, he wanted both
presents, if he could be assured of a reasonable chance of getting them
both\ldots{}

But the stronger greed---which, Draco told himself, had its roots in
concern for Harry as much as anything else---won. He shook his head.
``It's not that. But I \emph{really} want something that only you can
make for me.''

``Something magical, then,'' Harry summed up. ``Not a nundu, Draco, or a
way of casting multiple hexes at people who annoy you.''

\emph{That would be useful.} Draco squashed his longing. ``No, not
that.''

Harry nodded at him. ``All right. What do you want, then?''

Draco found that it wasn't as easy to ask for it, after all, confronted
by those wide and utterly quizzical green eyes. But where courage might
have failed him, love and desire stepped in. ``I want you to create the
same kind of magical bond that we shared in the ritual to free the
goblins,'' he said, ``just for one day. From midnight tonight to
midnight tomorrow. That should do it.''

Harry's face turned pale, and Draco saw a brief flash of green light,
one of Harry's usual signs of wanting to back away. Draco nodded slowly.
That clinched it, then. Harry hadn't ended that bond for a reason that
had anything to do with Draco. It was his \emph{own} fear he'd been
thinking of, his own reluctance.

Draco held his gaze and waited. He knew exactly why Harry was
frightened. The bond had connected them so nearly that they'd shared
physical sensations along with emotions; Draco had even received a brief
glimpse of what it must be like to hold as much magic as Harry had. It
wasn't something that could be hidden or backed away from. Harry
retained some secrets even now, looked away and sent people's gazes in
the other direction. Draco thought he had good reason for some of it,
but he didn't see why \emph{he} should be shut out. \emph{He} was the
one who had made the promise never to hurt Harry's mother, and had since
made it about Harry's father as well. \emph{He} didn't go around
betraying Harry's secrets to other people. \emph{He} could feel Harry's
trust in him during the ritual, rock-solid, so deep that it hadn't even
required a description of him to cement the bond, the way it had with
the others. He thought that this link was a perfectly fine birthday
gift. It didn't press Harry too far, because it built on what Harry had
already given him.

And it would give Draco back something, if only for a day, that he'd
been longing for and missing since the ritual. Perhaps it was
un-Malfoyish to admit how deeply that hour of connection had affected
him. He didn't really care. It wasn't as though Harry was about to run
to Lucius and spill this secret, either.

Harry closed his eyes and let out a low, shuddering breath. ``I---why do
you want this, Draco?'' he asked.

Draco scowled at him. ``Now you're just acting stupid, Harry. You
\emph{know} why I want this. I understand that you're afraid, and---''
his throat burned to say it, but only from reluctance, not from speaking
the truth ``---if you really want me to, I'll choose something else. But
I'm not going to let you lie and play dumb and say that you don't know
something you know perfectly well.'' He tapped the side of his head with
his finger. ``Exams are coming up, you know. You ought to practice
retaining facts, not ignoring them, or else they'll slip out of your
head in the middle of the test.''

Harry laughed, though the sound was hollow. He looked up slowly,
blinking. ``I---let me think about it, Draco, all right?'' he asked.

That was the period of a few hours Draco had expected. He nodded, and
fell into step beside Harry as they walked down to dinner. He didn't
make an attempt to touch him. Since Halloween, he'd become adept, again,
at knowing when to back off, and he knew Harry would see a touch right
now as pushing his case.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry shoved his dinner around on his plate. Normally, he was quite all
right with shepherd's pie, but now he didn't feel like eating.

He darted a glance at Draco, and then looked away. Draco was steadily
eating, pretending that nothing was wrong. He'd made his request, and
Harry knew he wouldn't take it back unless Harry asked him to take it
back. And Harry didn't want to.

\emph{But if I let him that close to me, then he'll probably find out
about my plan,} he thought.

\emph{Good,} said Regulus, startling him. They'd had another argument a
week ago, and he hadn't been around Harry's head much since then.
\emph{It's a stupid plan. I hope he has a go at you and makes you see
reason.}

\emph{You know I can't think of any other way to accomplish it,} Harry
thought, and stabbed viciously at a piece of pie. Millicent glared at
him as the bits splattered her. Harry ducked his head and remained like
that until she looked away. \emph{I've tried and tried. I don't like
this way, either, but the northern goblins have to be free, and their
web is unmanageable otherwise.}

\emph{You don't have to do this so quickly,} Regulus urged him,
reiterating the terms of their argument a week before. \emph{The goblins
will wait. Just because their cousins are free doesn't mean they'll
demand you free them the next month. You can study some more and find
out another way with time. It's your own sense of the fitness of things
that's rushing you, Harry, not anyone else.}

Harry couldn't say anything to that, but he didn't see that it mattered.
So his own sense of the fitness of things had made him study the web
linked to the linchpins and decide to remove it in this way. It had also
made him tutor Connor in dueling spells, and try to reconcile with their
father, and befriend Draco. His sense of the fitness of things was
usually correct.

And he feared that he was giving Draco's request such serious
consideration because he wanted that sense of connection back, too, and
that was weak and silly, to give in just because he wanted to.

He managed to force some of the pie down his throat, and wondered what
he was going to say to Draco.

In particular details, at least. In general outlines, he already knew.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Draco sat on his bed, swinging his foot and waiting for Harry to come
out of the loo, and wondered why everything in his life had to be so
bloody complicated.

Well, not \emph{everything.} But, right now, both his relationship with
his father and his relationship with Harry were complicated, and those
were bloody \emph{enough.}

Lucius was still not pleased that Draco had gone to Walpurgis Night.
Malfoys didn't do that. They didn't dance around like idiots, and they
didn't expose themselves to wild magic that could make them behave like
idiots, either. They stayed safely inside their homes and ignored the
wild Dark, Draco supposed. His father had not actually said what they
did, only relayed several stern injunctions concerning what they would
not do.

Draco had written him a rude letter back, and ignored his father the day
of the ritual to free the goblins. Silence had settled between them
since then. He knew one of them would have to break it eventually, but
he was determined not to be the one. He was going to be fifteen
tomorrow. That was old enough to have a say in his own actions. His
father certainly demanded he be responsible when dealing with
consequences, and had since he was seven years old. Draco didn't see why
choosing to court a certain set of consequences was an exception to that
rule.

And Harry\ldots{}

Draco leaned back on his pillow, and folded his arms behind his head,
and thought.

He might have pushed Harry too far, asking for this bond to be restored.
Everything was so delicate, so on a middle path between too far---when
Harry would back away from him---and not far enough---when Harry might
be willing to give him more, but wouldn't unless Draco asked for it.

And all the way through, there was the undercurrent of fear that he was
pushing for things Harry really wouldn't give him, but which his bloody
sacrificial instincts demanded he hand over anyway. And of course Harry,
the idiot, didn't have any ability to just say \emph{no} where someone
else would have when he felt unduly pressured.

And Draco did sometimes resent that he had to do so much work, and that
he could feel Harry's emotions, but Harry still lied by omission or just
refused to tell him certain things that were on his mind.

\emph{So complicated}, Draco thought, even as the loo's door swung open
and Harry walked out. \emph{But I love him.}

And by the look on Harry's face and the wind pouring around his body,
he'd nerved himself up to an answer, one way or the other. Draco sat up
and tried to look as neutral as possible.

``Yes,'' Harry whispered. ``All right.''

Draco smiled. It would be dishonest not to, since Harry knew this would
make him happy. And being honest with Harry was always better, except
when he \emph{did} push too far and put him in a situation that would be
uncomfortable\ldots{}

\emph{Bloody complicated thing,} Draco thought, and nodded. ``All right.
Do you want to do it at midnight?''

``No,'' said Harry. ``From now---'' it was nearly eleven'o'clock
``---until midnight tomorrow is fine.''

He put out a hand, and gathered his magic around himself. Draco watched
him in silent awe. He wondered if Harry even had a clue how
\emph{beautiful} he was when he did this. Since he'd confined his magic
to his body, it no longer burned around him in an aura of roses, but it
poured out of him more smoothly, and the bond that stretched a moment
later from Harry's chest to Draco's, gold and green, curved like a
leaping dolphin. Draco could not imagine anyone turning away from it in
disgust, the way that Harry's mother had implied most people would.

Draco felt the bond settle into place, and the impatient longing that
had gnawed at him, bad as a craving for a nap in History of Magic,
washed abruptly away. He took a few deep breaths. The feeling was deeper
than he'd thought it would be. Of course, with no ritual to take
attention away from it or mask it this time, he could feel the full
glory of it.

From the expression on Harry's face, so could he, and he was caught
somewhere between wonder and terror. He did want this, Draco realized
with a blink, and that was another reason he hadn't wanted to grant the
request.

\emph{Bloody prat,} Draco thought with affection. \emph{He never does
think he can have anything he wants.}

Harry swung his head sharply and met his eyes. Draco blinked.
\emph{Well, yes. He heard my thoughts, didn't he?} Draco didn't think
it'd been all of them, but Harry nodded his head a moment later, and
that confirmed that at least focused, directed thoughts could make it
across to him.

\emph{I like this,} Draco thought gleefully. \emph{Too bad exams aren't
tomorrow, or we could cheat, and no one could catch us.}

Harry rolled his eyes, and, to Draco's delight, responded comfortably in
mental speech, without even trying to speak aloud. Perhaps it came from
practice with Regulus Black and his phoenix, but it was still a good
sign. \emph{It'd be pretty obvious. The bond is visible, remember?}

\emph{Can you hide it?} Draco wasn't at all ashamed of the visible link
being there, but he would rather be the only one who knew the degree of
his connection with Harry tomorrow. He could feel Harry's mind opening
gently, and the effort of speaking with each other this way was becoming
less and less all the time. His emotions were stronger and clearer, and
when Draco raised a hand and touched the bond, Harry started and
shivered as though a hand had run across his hair.

\emph{I---yes}. Harry peered at him. \emph{You're sure?}

Draco sent a wordless answer of happiness this time, and watched Harry
blink as he realized he'd just felt it, rather than read it. He shivered
again, and murmured a glamour incantation aloud, as though trying to
step out of the unusual intimacy the bond had given them. The bond
shimmered and dimmed to a thin green and gold thread which could easily
be mistaken for a sheen of drifting sunlight.

``There,'' said Harry, also aloud.

\emph{Pleasant dreams,} Draco whispered, and discovered another side
effect of the bond in that moment. He could shade his voice so that
Harry could tell he was absolutely sincere, and the statement arrived in
his mind without any sign of a lie. Draco smiled at Harry. He was
delighted, and saw no reason to hide it. For once, Harry would have to
stop driving himself into a frenzy about his secrets, whatever they
were. Draco thought it would be good for him. He was sure that Harry's
pallor and agitation this last week had something to do with a secret.

Harry swallowed. \emph{Thank you}, he said, also sincere, and
\emph{Happy birthday,} and made his way to his own bed.

Draco touched the bond again. It gave a low hum, and he felt a shiver of
sweetness in his own chest. He rolled under the covers, and knew when
Harry settled into place in his bed, the physical sensations arriving a
moment after his did, like an echo.

\emph{This is only for one day,} he told himself sternly. \emph{Don't
get used to it.}

But even that was not enough to keep him from slipping into the deepest
and most content sleep he'd had for two weeks.

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Harry woke early the next morning, and lay there listening to the bond
hum.

He didn't want to move, and not only because Draco's mind was curled in
a purring, dreaming ball in his head, or because he could feel the extra
warmth and comfort of blankets beyond those around his own limbs.

Merlin, the bond felt so \emph{good}.

Harry shivered. He hadn't paid that much attention to Regulus when he'd
spoken yesterday, occupied more with his own feelings about what would
happen when the bond was reinstated, but now Regulus was quiet, and
Fawkes had his head tucked beneath his wing, and Harry had memories and
fragments of dreams scattered in his head, dreams in which Draco had
participated. There was no one to argue with, and no one to make him
deny what he really thought by bringing it up first and forcing him on
the defensive.

He had wanted this back. He had wanted the bond to be with Draco, and
not anyone else. For all that their presence and magic in his head had
been fascinating, he hadn't missed Hawthorn or Tybalt or even Snape the
way he'd missed Draco.

He could pretend this request was a sacrifice, but it wasn't, not
really. He had done this \emph{mostly} because he wanted to.

And that frightened him. If he chose one thing he wanted, not because
someone forced him to it but in preference to other things, what might
that not lead to?

Harry had the dim feeling that he'd had an answer to this before, that
he'd seen in the Maze that it would lead to nothing bad, but it was hard
to remember when the bond was actually \emph{there}, and the prospect of
spending a whole day with Draco opened up before him like the vision of
sunrise from a mountaintop. The answers weren't simple, no matter how
much he wanted just to say that this was right or it was wrong. He
shook, despite the warmth, and closed his eyes tightly.

The ball of emotions in his mind expanded, and then Draco was awake. He
took a moment to feel around for the bond, and Harry jolted as that
chord in his chest was touched. He lifted up his head and looked through
the curtains of his bed, to find Draco grinning at him from his own.

\emph{Good morning}, said Draco's voice cheerfully in his head.
\emph{You had sweet dreams, didn't you?}

Harry nodded unwillingly.

\emph{So now we'll have a good breakfast.} Draco paused for a moment,
then added, \emph{And I promise at some point that I'll stop acting so
much like a child, but let me enjoy it for the moment. I feel like a
first-year. All I want to do is giggle and run around.} He winked at
Harry and climbed out of bed.

Harry let out a careful breath. The thought that Draco had been acting
like a child was one that he'd barely been conscious of himself,
certainly not one he'd sent to Draco on purpose along the bond. This was
leaving their minds more and more open to each other. By nightfall,
Harry wondered if he'd have any secrets at all.

\emph{I don't see why you need to have any secrets from me, unless you
really want to,} Draco said. \emph{Do you want to? I meant what I said,
Harry. You can end the bond, if it makes you too uncomfortable.}

It made him uncomfortable, Harry thought, but also more comfortable than
he'd been since the ritual, or at least since he awoke from his magical
exhaustion and found himself missing Draco.

\emph{Good.}

Draco padded in to use the shower, as Harry deduced from the ghostly
feel of warm water on his skin a moment later. He decided to remain in
bed for right now, even though he was very thoroughly awake. He needed
some time to consider the situation, to prepare himself to get through
the day, and to try and decide what the hell he wanted---for Draco to
find out what he was hiding, or not. It was impossible that he should
want two contradictory things at the same time, and yet it was
happening.

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Draco found himself quickly getting used to the doubled sensations at
the breakfast table. Harry's taste buds were different from his, finding
less blandness in the porridge and more taste in the sausages, but just
enough to add a piquancy to the meal. Draco enjoyed it more than he had
any breakfast in a long time.

He sneaked a glance at Harry, and caught him looking at him. Harry
ducked his head. A blush spread over his cheeks. Draco blinked in
amusement. He got both the faint sting from the echoed heat, and the
sensation of sand in his teeth that always showed up whenever Harry was
irritated with himself.

``Problems?'' he asked mildly.

``I'm having a hard time adjusting, I guess.'' Harry stirred his spoon
through his porridge. ``I don't know how you live with the empathy all
the time. I suppose I can't blame you for focusing your emotions on just
me. Imagine feeling these sensations from everyone all at once.'' He
looked revolted, and Draco could touch the underlying tenor of his
thoughts. \emph{I wouldn't be able to stand it.}

``I had no choice but to get used to the empathy,'' said Draco, with a
shrug. ``With this, though\ldots{}'' Because he couldn't help himself,
and he'd always been more inclined to indulge his whims than suppress
them like a good little boy, he touched the cord that extended from the
center of his chest again.

Harry gave another one of those shivers, but this time, Draco knew it
was a motion of pleasure. His thoughts murmured and twitched and
collided. Harry seemed to have a constant running argument in his head,
the thought of which wearied Draco far more than feeling someone else's
emotions. It was fascinating as an outsider, though, and he watched
Harry arguing that of course it was natural he should spend so much time
thinking of the bond when it occupied so much of his attention, and then
arguing that he should think about other things in case other people
needed his help, and then arguing that he was helping Draco, and did it
matter that he was also helping himself in the process?---

\emph{When do you get any rest?} Draco asked, amazed and amused, and
letting both the emotions flow into Harry. It wasn't as though he could
hold them back. Unlike Harry, he saw no reason to try, either.

Harry jumped, but responded in the same way, evidently not willing to
reveal the existence of the bond to their yearmates by answering a
question Draco hadn't asked. \emph{At night, when most other people do.}

\emph{I meant during the day. That argument in your head would wear me
out}. Draco chewed thoughtfully on an unidentifiable bit from his
porridge while he awaited an explanation. Actually, he could feel out
the edges of that explanation, but he wanted to hear the words Harry
would put it in.

Harry stared at his plate in silence for a moment, then shrugged.
\emph{I don't know. I suppose I'm always keeping an eye on myself.}

\emph{Why?}

Harry turned his head sharply, and the answer, half-formed, slid
straight into Draco's head. Harry was afraid of what he might do if he
wasn't constantly weighing the consequences to every small action. His
magic was too great, and he didn't know enough about acting like a
normal wizard to avoid constant mistakes. He was afraid\ldots{}

He was afraid of being selfish.

Draco blinked. \emph{Oh. Well, now that I know that, that makes the
argument in your head easier to settle.}

\emph{Does it?} Harry was all but snapping at him now, drawing his head
up and his shoulders back in offended pride. Draco found that adorable,
and Harry picked up on that, and reacted strongly, and Draco reassured
him, all without much more than glimmers of half-conscious thought
flashing between them.

\emph{Of course. Your selfishness isn't something to be afraid of,
Harry. You're a good person. You wouldn't suddenly start hurting
everyone else because you decided to take one thing you wanted.} Draco
reached out and caught his hand, turning it over so that he could see
the pulse in Harry's wrist. It was jumping erratically. He could feel
it, somewhere in the roof of his mouth, if he really concentrated. Draco
wondered what he would be feeling by the time that night came, if they
would even be two distinct and separate people anymore. \emph{And with
me right here, I could tell you if you made a mistake or did hurt
someone else and didn't notice.}

\emph{But why should you have to bear that burden? I lean on you for too
much already.}

Draco made an exasperated noise, though he wasn't sure if it was aloud
or only in his head. \emph{I'll tell you when it's too much, Harry. And
the bargain goes both ways, you know. I intend for you to tell me when
I'm making mistakes, like turning my empathy too much on you. I intend
for you to give me things} I \emph{want. You seem to think you'll
swallow me alive. Not when I'm sticking in your throat and rather
protesting all the way down, I think, and not when I'm trying to embrace
you in the same way.}

Harry tried to pull his hand free. Draco asked why, and caught a jumble
of frayed words. \emph{Stupid\ldots{}this sounds silly\ldots{}doesn't
make sense\ldots{}}

And it did, Draco answered him, and if the words were stupid, oh well,
it wasn't as though they had to say them all the time.

Harry swallowed, and lifted his eyes slowly to lock with Draco's.

Draco delighted in the surrender he saw there, in the acceptance of this
bond for at least one day, and his own delight flooded back to him from
Harry, accomplished and embraced and made manifold.

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Harry \emph{knew} he was supposed to be paying attention to History of
Magic, but even he grew rather weary of all the recitations of goblin
rebellions---other things had happened in wizarding history, too, and if
Binns would address them, perhaps Harry wouldn't have had to in his
evening lesions---and besides, this morning there was all the
distraction of Draco's mind before him, rich and shining.

He caught a hint of \emph{birthday, fifteenth birthday!} And that slid
him, naturally, into a memory of Draco's sixth birthday, the one he
always treasured as the day that meant the most for itself. He'd gone
riding on a broom early in the morning, the first time he'd been trusted
off the ground without a guardian---even if his father did hover below
him and watch him soaring and looping, ready to fly to the rescue if he
got in trouble. It was still an important sign of independence. The
memory of the taste of the wind was in his mouth even nine years later.
It became more real, for Harry, than the taste of sleepiness in his own
mouth, or the murmur of drowsy students around him.

Then his mother had brought him into the house and given him a cake
she'd baked with her own hands, instead of having the house elves do it.
That was how Harry learned that Narcissa Malfoy, undoubtedly skilled in
Dark magic and in politics, was not at all skilled in cookery. The cake
was lopsided and half-burnt and fell sloppily all over the table, but
Draco didn't care. He ate it all, and kissed his mother on the cheek
with a mouth made pale by the excessive amount of sugar Narcissa had
ended up putting in the cake, reasoning that more sweetness was always
better.

Then Draco's father had taken charge of him again, and led him to an
inner room in the Manor. There was the skeleton of the dragon that one
of their distant ancestors had killed long ago, winning glory and a
hefty portion of gold from grateful wizards. Lucius pointed out all the
teeth and all the spines to his son, and told him stories of Malfoys in
the past who had briefly claimed each part of the skeleton, ventured
into the outer world with it, and made their fortune. Draco listened
attentively to all the stories, eyes wide. Harry did, too. He supposed
it was possible that these weren't the exact tales Lucius had
told---Draco had replayed this memory so many times down the years that
he'd altered little details of it to suit what he wanted it to be---but
they were certainly more fascinating than yet another goblin rebellion.

Narcissa led Draco outside at sunset, and cast a spell that let him see,
for just a moment, a beam of green light shooting up from the sun. It
rose and shone at sunset, for two seconds only, and then vanished. Most
people would miss it all the time, but the spell showed Draco exactly
where to look, and made the beam glimmer in his eyes like fire. Draco
squealed, and Narcissa hugged him and whispered that the beam must have
been shining when he was born, because he'd been born at the exact
moment of sunset. She kissed him on the forehead, and put him on the
ground to run back inside.

He sat by the fire with his parents that night, and carefully opened his
gifts: books, and a new Slytherin shirt that did not at all look like
baby clothes, and a pair of silver serpents that would crawl around if
he spoke one word and defend him if he spoke another, and a Kneazle
kitten who proceeded to be the most spoiled cat in the world for the
next year and a half, until he wandered away outside the wards and
didn't come back.

Harry lingered in that last scene for a while, watching the fire and the
calm expressions on the faces of Draco's parents. An emotion he managed
to acknowledge was envy rose up in him. It felt wonderful just to be
there. He didn't know what it would be like, to have a memory like this
to fall back on every time one doubted a parent's love.

He opened his eyes, and blinked, and shook his head, and found Draco
looking at him with an expression somewhere between sadness and awe.

``So that's why you love your brother so much,'' he whispered aloud, and
touched the cord of the bond again.

Harry gasped aloud this time, since it felt like the purring Kneazle
from Draco's memory had just wound around his lungs and smothered them
in sweet warmth. When he'd recovered, he said, ``What did you see?''

``Enough,'' said Draco, and the memories rushed through Harry's mind,
all of Connor, all filled with the bright shades of the affection he'd
conceived for his brother in the years they spent in Godric's Hollow.

Harry bowed his head, acknowledging the statement, and then the class
ended and they stood to make their way to lunch.

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Arithmancy was more torturous than Draco had thought it would be. He'd
anticipated vanishing almost completely into Harry's memories, the way
he had that morning, and known there would be trouble with Professor
Vector over it. She was far more attentive than Binns, for one thing,
and would want to know why in the world they weren't doing their
calculations.

Instead, the bond began alternating his viewpoint. Sometimes he saw
things through his eyes, sometimes from Harry's. It was a startling
thing to find out just how fuzzy near-sightedness and glasses could make
him. It was even odder to find out that Harry's hands, although larger
than his were, \emph{felt} lighter. Draco supposed that was one reason
he was able to catch the Snitch so easily.

Harry shifted around in his head, distressed, from his mind, and
intrigued, and worried that someone would notice something was odd with
them. Draco concealed a smile as he bowed his head over his problems,
which abruptly became Harry's (with the wrong answer to one of them, he
noticed, no doubt caused by his distraction). His empathy was usually a
clear illustration of Harry's emotions after spending seven months with
it, but this was like having both music and words, to \emph{know} for
certain what he was feeling and why, and not just have to guess from the
sensations that blew against his skin or flashed in front of his face.

\emph{Calm down}, he whispered, into Harry's head, taking the
opportunity to view a few more memories. They were of the Shrieking
Shack, and the confrontation with Sirius Black last year. Draco was just
as glad that Harry didn't know he was reliving them. Draco was
determined to know just what it was like to have been there, so that
Harry's brother couldn't have that part of Harry all to himself any
longer. He repressed horror with amusement at how badly Harry was taking
this. \emph{No one else has noticed, not even Pansy when she walked
right through the bond. I don't think it really exists for anyone but
us.}

\emph{But our behavior\ldots{}}

\emph{Hush. It's all right.}

Draco watched some more of those memories, alternating them with
glimpses of his own problems when Professor Vector walked past and
peered sternly at him, and of Harry's when the bond insisted on putting
those in front of him. He was happier and more content than he had been
in a long time, though he ached with Harry's remembered pain. He knew
Harry was hiding something else, some secret that so far he'd been adept
at moving out of the way, but he also knew that Harry was almost wholly
consumed with him. It was a nice thing to \emph{know} that.

\emph{Which memories are you looking at---Draco!}

Draco raised an eyebrow. \emph{You told me about it already.}

\emph{Yes, but---}

\emph{There is nothing that can make me turn away from you in disgust,
Harry.} Draco thought it was time for another honest, outright statement
like that. \emph{Nothing at all. You don't have to worry about hiding
from me.}

He felt Harry wavering. It wasn't that he didn't believe Draco, more
that he didn't think he could afford the self-indulgence of such a
belief, or the self-indulgence it might lead him into.

\emph{I love you}, Draco said, softly.

Slowly, tentatively, while they went on working Arithmancy problems and
Draco watched memories, Harry was working himself towards a trust so
absolute that it surpassed anything he'd arrived at so far. Draco
couldn't remember a more pleasant afternoon.

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Harry knew the exact moment when Draco found his plan to free the
northern goblins. They were eating dinner---well, they were supposedly
eating dinner, while Harry got distracted by thoughts he hadn't known
Draco had and Draco talked at, more than with, Regulus---when the
reminder darted innocently through Harry's head.

Draco gasped, and his hand clenched down on Harry's wrist to the point
of pain. Harry jumped. Pansy turned around and frowned at both of them.
``What's wrong with you?'' she demanded. ``You've been acting off all
day, Draco.''

``Nothing,'' said Draco. ``I just remembered that I forgot to write that
Charms essay.'' He rose to his feet, and for a moment Harry hoped he
would let this go, but then his hand tugged insistently on Harry's
wrist, and Harry reluctantly stood up with him. ``Harry's going to help
me with it.''

Pansy snorted and poured herself more pumpkin juice. ``Whatever you say,
Draco. Harry's going to help you half-write it, you mean.''

``No, really,'' said Draco, his teeth shining in what would have seemed
like a smile to anyone who didn't know him well as he drew Harry out of
the Great Hall. ``I just want to \emph{talk} with Harry.''

That word came out as a snap, and Harry ducked his head. He couldn't
look up at Draco as they went towards the dungeons together. Of course,
with the bond and thus Draco in his head, it didn't matter. He could
feel rage and disappointment all the way down, and only part of it was
rage and disappointment at himself for not being able to keep that plan
hidden. He'd done his best by not thinking of it deliberately, and Draco
had seemed so fascinated by everything else in his head that Harry had
thought this day might pass and they'd be done with it.

And now he was feeling those stupid contradictory emotions again, anger
that Draco had found it out---and relief that he had.

Draco didn't bother going back to the common room, maybe because they
both knew it would be filled with other students. Instead, he drew Harry
into a small side tunnel in the dungeons, and held his wrist with one
hand and his chin with the other. Harry concentrated on ignoring the
doubled physical sensations, and held Draco's eyes, and waited.

``Tell me about why you think you need to do this,'' said Draco.

\emph{Well, that's a better beginning than I could have hoped for.}

\emph{Don't worry, Harry.} Harry winced as Draco stepped fully into his
head through the bond. \emph{I can do it this way if you want. In fact,
I think it will. It makes it impossible for you to lie to me.}

Instead of responding in words, Harry shared the image what he'd learned
about the northern goblins' web from the southern goblins and Helcas,
both of whom were happy to answer his question. The web couldn't be torn
without destroying the linchpins, the ancient family homes, mostly of
Light pureblood families, that held it together. Nor could it be
transferred to something else as easily as Harry had shifted the
southern web to an imitation of Gringotts. Instead, something would have
to take the linchpins' place, moving into the embrace of the web itself,
holding the net down like stakes and allowing the goblins to slip free
in the moment of replacement.

Harry could think of only one thing that would be strong enough and
large enough to take the linchpins' place: torn bits of magic, set free
forever from the wizard that had held them, and freely given up without
grudging or resentment, which would add to the power of the sacrifice.
He was the only wizard with Lord-level power who might make a willing
sacrifice of his magic like that.

\emph{It could kill you,} said Draco. \emph{It would certainly deprive
you of magic, and the ability to help other magical creatures get free.
You know that, don't you?}

\emph{He knows that,} said Regulus. \emph{I told him that. But he isn't
listening to me. He thinks he has to do it right now, and he won't wait
to find some better solution.}

\emph{Why not?}

The answer flooded up and out of Harry before he could stop it, called
from him by the deep stare of Draco's eyes.

He could not rest. He could not relax. He distrusted everything he was
doing, unless he was sure that he was doing it to help someone else. The
success he'd had lately with the webs meant that he wanted to keep up
the same pace, freeing the other species as rapidly as he'd managed in
the last few months. He had to do that, or he would start feeling
contemptible, as if he were wasting his life.

Draco let out a sharp breath. ``No wonder it was hard for you to agree
to this bond,'' he whispered aloud. ``You knew that you were doing it for
yourself as well as for me, and you knew that you'd spend a full day not
thinking about being \emph{vates.}''

Harry nodded. Perhaps Draco would drop his anger now---

``I will not,'' said Draco. ``What you're thinking of doing is
\emph{stupid}, Harry, and it's all right to be a little selfish. The
goblins encouraged this, didn't they?''

``I proposed it to them,'' Harry murmured.

``And they probably thought you would stop yourself if you were making
an irreparable sacrifice,'' said Draco. ``They don't know \emph{anything}
about how much it would cost you, do they? Because you keep hiding how
much it would cost you. Merlin, Harry, that has to \emph{stop}. I said
it would, once, last year, when I made you start sleeping more. And this
is going to stop, too.''

Harry twisted, trying to withdraw, not wanting to, but absolutely sure
that he had to. How could he ask this much from Draco? And how could he
stay this close, let someone know him this well, delay doing something
to help someone else when it was in his power---

Draco surged forward along the bond, and showed him how.

Sight dropped away entirely, this time. There was only the bond between
them, pulsing with mingled gold and green, and that deep trust that had
permitted the link to form in the first place, both times.

\emph{If we make a mistake, Harry, it's not forever. We're stronger than
to be shattered by one accusation of selfishness or one argument. Guilt
passes over us and goes away just as much as happiness like this does.
We're part of the future, not only the present, and not only the past.}

Harry felt dizzying waves of gold and green crash around him, and for a
moment, it was as if he were back in the Maze, and seeing the truths
written there in letters too bright for him to deny.

Thinking of Draco and himself was---thinking of Draco and himself. It
didn't mean that he was taking time and attention away from other people
who deserved it more. He didn't have to keep a constant guard on his
thoughts to avoid slipping into evil. There was good to be found outside
self-denial.

\emph{Why does selflessness equal goodness?}

\emph{I---I don't know.}

Draco promptly pounced on the illogic and swatted it away, just as he
had other pieces in the past. It was all right to be a little selfish,
he repeated firmly, and poured light and warmth and happiness down the
bond until Harry was shaking in pleasure, gasping and sure that he was
only going to want more of this.

He opened his eyes, slowly, when the tide receded a bit, and found Draco
standing in front of him, arms around his waist and smile smug.

``Convinced, now?'' Draco asked.

Harry nodded. Already he was finding it hard to remember why he'd wanted
so much to sacrifice his magic, perhaps his life, to freeing the
northern goblins. He could find some other, better way. He could wait.
And the goblins could live with their disappointment if he had to send
them a letter telling them so, and so could he.

\emph{That's why you should always bring problems like that to me,}
Draco said, more smug than ever. \emph{I can point out the obvious.}

Harry moved forward and quietly embraced him. The bond was not so bad
after all.

He still could not live like this, with his mind sliding so completely
into Draco's, and he would end the bond at midnight, as they'd planned.
But he would not be so terrified again, and he could feel possibilities
expanding ahead of him, as if he were a dragon new-hatched from the egg
and drying its wings in preparation for flight. He would find cold wind
currents and falls aplenty, he knew that, but that didn't diminish the
value of the warm skies, and the happiness and hope of the first leap
into the air.

``Thank you,'' he whispered. ``Happy birthday. I love you.''

Draco held him tighter, and said not a word, though his smugness had
expanded to batter at the inside of Harry's skull.

\emph{I rather like Draco self-satisfied,} Harry thought, as they walked
back to the dungeons together.

\chapter{First Guardian}\label{chapter-73-first-guardian}

Snape sat down slowly. He had become very good at putting off this
moment, this necessary but horrible part of his day. He would mark
essays, cast cleaning spells on his quarters---unneeded, as he continued
to permit house elves into them---number his potions ingredients, brew
complicated experimental mixtures that usually came to nothing, read
books on history from the Hogwarts library. He would count the minutes
remaining until another class began or he could go to the Great Hall and
eat. His free hours, once a precious, jealousy guarded time that always
ran away from him, now dragged.

Until he approached the desk, of course, and pulled out the glass bottle
filled with flowing, silvery liquid and the parchment and quill he was
using to write down the memories he had seen.

He had not realized, when he created the Pensieve Potion, how well it
would work. Not only were the memories as sharp and clear as they were
in an ordinary Pensieve, but they responded to the touch of Snape's
mind. If he cast his thoughts into the liquid while concentrating on
something Harry had done in Potions class, they would fetch the memory
in which Harry had most probably learned that behavior, or one like it.
If he thought about Draco Malfoy, the Headmaster might appear reading a
letter from Lily in which she mentioned Draco. He could also tell in an
instant whether he had seen one of the memories before, and slide into
another.

It was useful in that it let him create a record of the Headmaster's
memories of Harry's childhood, without repeating incident after
incident.

It was terrible in that it drove him closer and closer to the edge of
rage, and he could not tell anyone of it. McGonagall or Narcissa Malfoy
might have been willing to help, but Harry would never forgive him for
betraying his trust like that. Dumbledore was obviously not an option.
Draco, who would have understood best, had refused to give Snape his own
memories.

Alone, Snape sometimes wondered if he should stop recording the
memories. The scrolls and scrolls he had so far would have been more
than enough evidence for any plan of revenge he cared to enact. And it
would release him from the dread of sitting down to do it again each
night.

But still a compulsion, strong as any magical one that Dumbledore or
Voldemort might have fashioned, drew him on, made him take up the quill,
and lower his face, and open the bottle, and enter into a world he had
never known existed quietly beside him during the ten years he'd taught
at Hogwarts before Harry came there, lying like a coiled basilisk in
Dumbledore's head.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Lily Potter came striding across the lawn of Godric's Hollow, her eyes
anxious and her hand already held out to clasp Dumbledore's. The older
wizard took her wrist and peered keenly into her eyes. The memory did
not show Snape whatever he saw, since he was standing on the grass and
observing them both from the outside, but he saw Dumbledore's face grow
weary.

``I thought you might have exaggerated in your letter, my dear,'' he
said, gently patting her hand. ``I came here intending to soothe your
fears. I see that I was wrong. Of course you would know your own son
best.''

Lily nodded. ``I wouldn't have contacted you if it were just the once,
Albus,'' she whispered, turning and looking at the house. Snape followed
her gaze. He had learned to hate the sight of that place, Harry's
prison, even though right now it was doing nothing but slumber quietly
in the sun. ``Or even just for a week. But it's been two weeks now, and
he's \emph{still} doing it.''

``I understand, my dear,'' the Headmaster said. ``Can you describe
again, for me, exactly what happens when young Harry gets angry?''

Lily shivered. ``The air around him boils,'' she said. ``I can feel the
web bucking, as if his magic's trying to force its way out. And, of
course, I smell dog vomit. I always do, when he's exercising his
strength.''

``That \emph{is} a concern,'' Dumbledore murmured, his brow wrinkled.
``The web should hold at all costs. And you are certain that it happens
only when he gets angry, and at no other time?''

Lily nodded.

``Why has he had so much occasion to get angry in the past two weeks?''
Dumbledore asked, and Lily immediately turned her head and stared
intently at a spot on the ground. Snape did the same thing, not because
he expected to see any explanation for her fixed gaze, but because it
kept him from trying to draw his wand and curse either one of them,
which always interrupted the memory.

``Lily?'' Dumbledore prompted, after a few minutes' silence.

``I was trying to teach him that, even in front of people whom he
trusts, he needs to keep his guard up at all times,'' Lily replied in
soft tones. ``I was making little threatening motions towards
Connor---oh, not anything that other people would interpret as a threat,
but gestures as if I were going to draw my wand, gestures linked to
specific hexes. Harry, though, has to hold still and not respond,
because I was doing it in front of James and Sirius, and he's been told
not to show what he is to them. Afterwards, he's always very angry. The
instincts I placed in him are being thwarted, I know. But I thought he
had better control than this, or I would never have tried it.'' Lily
crossed her arms and shivered. ``He is \emph{foul}, Headmaster. I smell
that all the time. I don't want to have that magic turned on me.''

Snape wanted to scream. No, wait, he thought, as his anger acquired a
cold and dangerous edge that he hadn't felt in years. He wanted to make
\emph{them} scream. He had once seen Lucius Malfoy and Bellatrix
Lestrange, trading off in smooth coordinated movements, keep a
Muggleborn witch alive for seventeen days. He would better their record,
if he could have had his way with Lily Potter.

``I don't think anyone would,'' said Dumbledore. ``And you are bearing a
burden greater than anything he has, Lily. Living alone with your sons,
raising one to be a hero and trying to train the other out of being a
Dark Lord, deprived of the support of your husband and your
friends\ldots{}I know no one who would envy you.''

Lily slowly raised her head, her green eyes acquiring a tinge of
determination and stubbornness that Snape had seen far more often on her
son's face. ``Thank you, Headmaster. What should I do about Harry's
anger, though?''

``Let me talk to him.''

They went into the house, and found Connor asleep, taking a nap on one
of two beds in a bedroom that Snape had also learned to hate and detest.
Harry was sitting on the other, crouched above a book. He looked up when
the two adults---not including Snape, whom he couldn't see---entered the
room. His face was blank, emotionless, until he caught sight of Lily.
Then Snape saw a wind make the pages of his book tremble. He went on
staring at Lily, and his eyes held very nearly the same feral gaze that
Snape had seen on Christmas night.

``Harry. Harry, look at me.''

Carefully, Harry looked away from Lily and at the Headmaster. Dumbledore
shook his head, and spoke in a chiding tone.

``Harry, you are old enough to know that getting angry with your mother
will do no good. Why should it? She's the one who has to raise both you
and Connor, and she's the only one who can tell you everything that you
need to know. And she loves you. Don't let the anger get the better of
you.''

Harry cocked his head to the side, in silent question as to what he
should do instead. Snape thought he was about six in this memory. They
had already turned Harry into someone who went quiet and watched the
world. Snape wondered whether that mask would have shattered so easily
if not for the near-complete destruction of Harry's mind at the end of
his second year.

``Learn to put your anger away,'' Dumbledore told him quietly. ``Imagine
a box into which you put your rage. Your mother told me that you have
one for bad thoughts about your brother. Can you put your rage into that
box?''

Harry lowered his head and closed his eyes. The wind died in the next
moment, and the pages of the book fell flat again. Then Harry murmured,
still without opening his eyes, ``It worked.''

``Of course it did,'' said Dumbledore, and touched his arm, and smiled
at Lily over his head. ``You're growing into a proper wizard, Harry.
Getting angry at people isn't productive, and you've learned that.''

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape watched the boy the day after he saw that memory, and noticed that
Harry simply slid aside, calmly, from most confrontations that might
have provoked irritation in another boy that age. He did get angry with
himself fairly often, but even that was soothed when Draco complained
about the sensations it caused. His rage no longer went into a box, but
Harry did send it away.

It was no wonder, Snape thought, that Harry lost control in situations
where he was angry but had no immediate goal to take up the magic that
that emotion raised. He could fight for others' lives, he could attempt
to subdue Voldemort if he faced him, he could use the strength of his
own convictions to cow Dumbledore into backing down, but outside that---

His fury simply went wild.

Snape was sorry, now, that he had taught Harry to resist the \emph{De
Profundis} curse, and shut those emotions in a cage, another version of
the box. Harry had put them there by his own choice, but that didn't
matter. He still had no idea how to handle them.

And if the cage was ever broken\ldots{}

Snape shuddered to think.

That emotion pounded his hatred into iron-hard determination to take
revenge, someday, when Harry should have seen the light and understood
that his parents and Dumbledore would have to suffer for what they had
done. But Snape was still a young wizard, having lived only thirty-five
years compared to the lifespan of more than a hundred that he might see.
He could wait. He \emph{would} wait. He would take revenge the moment
Harry gave him permission, and not before.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

This was a memory that Harry would not have known included Dumbledore's
presence, because Lily had sent him a proud letter informing him of
Harry's progress, but not told Harry that he was coming. The Headmaster
stood under a Disillusionment Charm near the corner of the house, and
watched Lily come out of the door and move towards Harry, who stood on
the lawn studying the stars. His mother had told him to be here at this
hour, just after dinner, and not to bring a book, but he was never one
to waste any time when he might get \emph{some} studying done.

Lily crouched down behind Harry and called his name. Harry turned to
face her. He was eight, Snape thought, his face pale and utterly calm.
If his magic had escaped his control any time in the last two years, it
was not evident. He still had an aura of power, but judging from the
tender smile his mother cast at him, it was not one that disgusted her.

``It's been two months, Harry,'' said Lily. ``You've passed this test.''

Harry blinked a few times. Then he shuffled a foot as if he would walk
towards his mother, but in the end kept still. Lily nodded at him.

``It's all right,'' she said, and held out one hand, at the height,
Snape thought, in his storm of fury and contempt, that she would use to
pet a dog.

Harry walked over to her and took her wrist in a firm grasp. Snape could
see a fine shiver run over his frame. He bowed his head and stood still
for a moment, while Lily stroked his hair.

Snape glanced at Dumbledore's face. The Headmaster was smiling, pleased,
just like Lily was, that Harry had got through this particular test.

Lily had not touched Harry for two months, and had also charged him to
resist anyone else's attempt to touch him, in such a way that neither
Connor nor James nor Lupin or Black would realize that Harry was
shrugging off their embraces, ducking away from friendly punches or
rufflings of his hair, managing just not to be there when they reached
towards him. He'd done it expertly. Perhaps Sirius had thought something
was strange a time or two, Lily had said in her exultant letter to
Dumbledore, but he'd dropped all suspicions after a few days when yet
another of his numerous love affairs preoccupied his attention.

They were training Harry to stand by himself, and not show others that
he was doing it. Both parts of the lesson were equally important.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape had come nearest to shattering the bottle of Pensieve Potion that
night. He had thought Harry's inability to casually brush against other
people was a consequence of his other training, not something that Lily
had specifically drilled into him. And now, to learn it was not\ldots{}

Lily and Dumbledore had had the justification that Harry couldn't let
himself be distracted by other people, not when he needed to focus on
his brother. Besides, a casual touch from a Death Eater could disguise
the wand that would press against his side or the knife that would slip
between his ribs. He had to avoid most contact out of simple common
sense.

Snape did not care about their justifications. He did not care about the
twisted, poisoned little world in which Harry had been raised beyond the
isolation wards at Godric's Hollow. He needed to understand it, so that
he might help heal Harry when the moment came, but he would never admit
that what had happened there had been in any way excusable, in any way
rational.

He raged, and he stared at the wall when it was done, and he let the
fires die within him.

He still needed to wait for Harry's permission before he did anything,
or, failing that, some sign that Harry was being abused again and would
not rescue himself.

But sometimes it was hard, and he did not think he could be blamed a
bloody fantasy or two of the Headmaster dying throughout the day.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

This memory was one that Lily had sent Dumbledore in a Pensieve of her
own, and which had therefore become part of his mind concerning Harry's
training even though he'd never witnessed it in person. Harry was seven.
He sat beside the window of his bedroom on a summer evening, his eyes
closed and his hands clasped in front of him. Lily sat across from him
on his brother's bed, reading. Snape could hear a child's eager shouts
from beyond the window. Probably Connor Potter was outside playing; he
seemed to spend a great deal more time immersed in games and pranks than
Harry did.

Harry had timed even his breathing to be quiet, and so the loudest sound
in the room was Lily's voice.

``\ldots{}held near Ottery St. Catchpole. The names of the Death Eaters
who began it are unknown, but almost certainly they did so at
You-Know-Who's suggestion. The Dark Lord did not take kindly to his
servants claiming initiative that he himself would not have given
them.''

Lily paused to turn a page. A bird's piercing whirr came through the
window. Harry nodded his head a little, as though he were falling
asleep, though Snape doubted that; he would be memorizing everything he
had heard, more than likely. Meanwhile, he himself stood in stupefied
silence that a mother was reading this to her child. He knew what had
happened at Ottery St. Catchpole when the Death Eaters still ran free.
Everyone did. Harry could have waited until he was fourteen to know the
details, and his life would not have been marred.

``The Death Eaters took dozens of Muggleborn children from their homes,
and, most unusually, did not kill their families. It was believed they
did this as part of their strategy, to encourage desperate hope and
anticipation, and even to encourage their families to withdraw from the
war. Of course, when the news of the Children's Massacre came a few days
later, all thoughts of strategy vanished in a tide of overwhelming
grief.''

``The Death Eaters raised crosses from the ground near Ottery St.
Catchpole, and crucified the Muggleborn children upon them. They used
spells that heightened the pain of the nails being driven through their
wrists and ankles, and other spells to make sure that they stayed alive
throughout it and did not die from the shock. Finally, they set a ward
around the crosses in one of the rare examples of Dark wizards
cooperating during You-Know-Who's War. The ward took hours to knock down
when the Light wizards and the Aurors finally reached it. When it
finally fell, lines of lightning lashed from it and struck every child
dead before they could be rescued. The emotional destruction of many
families was complete, and far fewer Muggleborns remained in the war;
instead, they applied for sanctuary from the Aurors and Headmaster Albus
Dumbledore, and retreated into hiding.''

Lily paused in her reading. Harry still sat before her with his eyes
closed, but he blinked them open when she softly called his name.
Snape's stomach was clenching, with revulsion and with memory. He hadn't
participated in the Massacre---that had been Evan Rosier's
brainchild---but he had seen the aftereffects of it. That was enough. It
was one of the foulest, bitterest memories of Voldemort's War.

It was nothing a child Harry's age should have heard.

``What have you learned, Harry?'' Lily whispered.

``That this is war,'' Harry said, in the same calm, neutral tone that
Snape had heard many times during his first year. ``That I can only
trust former Death Eaters if they come to me on formal terms of
alliance. That our enemies will stop at nothing to take down the
Light.'' He paused a moment. ``And since Connor's the heart and center
of the Light, they'll stop at nothing to take him down.''

``That's right,'' said Lily earnestly, and laid the book aside to lean
over her son and clasp his cheeks in her hands. ``That is why you have
to be so carefully prepared all the time, Harry. You're the first
guardian and the last line of defense. Most people won't think you're
dangerous, since you're Connor's brother and just the same age as he is.
And if you can keep up your façade, then they'll never know. But you can
be right there, and you can shield him from Death Eater attacks.''

Harry nodded. ``When do you think Voldemort will come back, Mum?'' he
asked her, looking supremely contented as Lily kissed him on the
forehead. If this was the most contact he had with his mother, Snape
supposed, this might well be one of his happiest memories.

\emph{I am going to make myself sick if I keep on thinking like that,}
he realized, and twisted his thoughts as firmly as he could back onto
the familiar track. Hating Lily Potter was far more refreshing than
dwelling on all the piled scars Harry had accumulated.

``He might return at any time,'' said Lily softly, seriously. ``He might
wait years, or he might strike before you and Connor enter Hogwarts.''
She paused a moment, and turned her head from side to side. ``Speaking
of that, do you know where your brother is right now?''

Harry's eyes widened, and he leaped to his feet. A laugh came through
the window, though, and made him spin around in relief. ``There,'' he
said. ``He's outside, with Dad.''

``You should go and check,'' said Lily. ``Always check on him first,
Harry, and you'll be doing your duty. You don't know what condition he's
in, wounded or fine. Or he might be dead, and one of the Death Eaters
might be imitating his voice with a spell, and then you'll have
failed.''

Panic flashed in Harry's eyes, and he charged out the door. Lily
remained sitting where she was, head bowed and an expression on her face
that made her old before her time. A litany of spells ran through
Snape's head, all of which would kill her, and he saw at least five
places in the room to hide the body so that her disappearance would not
lead to immediate conclusions of murder.

He controlled himself with an effort. This was a memory, only a memory,
and what she had done to Harry was already done.

Harry came back into the room a few minutes later, looking relieved.
``Thank you, Mum,'' he said. ``He was all right, but you're right. I
should never take it for granted. I should always check.''

He kissed her on the cheek, a gesture that Lily only tilted her head to
passively accept, and then whispered, ``I love you, Mum,'' and ran back
out of the room to watch his brother some more.

Lily bowed her head into her hands and wept.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape recorded that memory with a steady hand, unlike many of the
others, where his fury made his quill shake and blot the parchment. He
had gone out beyond anger into some place on the other side of it, and
when he was done, he pushed his chair back from the table and left the
school by a secret way he knew, walking on the grounds near the edge of
the Forbidden Forest and looking up at the stars.

It was May now, season of life, season of spring. Snape had danced at
Walpurgis Night two weeks ago. He could feel his own power rearing up in
him at all hours now. It had never gone completely to sleep since the
wild Dark magic summoned it. It remained patiently within call, and it
eagerly took to any task that he might be able to find for it.

Snape stopped at the very edge of the Forest and breathed. The scents of
thick, growing grass and turned earth filled his nostrils. Hagrid was
making a garden of some kind, probably for the insanely dangerous
creatures he would acquire for his Care of Magical Creatures class over
the summer. Snape could hear the wind brushing through the leaves,
restless and always in motion. It came close enough to him to stir his
hair, though it did not ruffle his robes. There were certain sins even
the wind knew better than to commit.

Snape looked up at the stars some more, and thought he could hear a
twitch, a tingle, of frenzied music on the edge of hearing. He'd heard
it a few times as a child, before his mother had given him a wand and
taught him sternly to use that instead of giving in to his own
accidental magic. It called to him now, and promised surrender, and
wonder in the surrender. Riding that magic, he could do anything, be
anything.

Snape knew it was a lie, of course. He would lose himself in that
wildness, lose his self-control and his prepossession and all the other
cold virtues he had spent a lifetime constructing. He had seen that much
on Walpurgis. Any wizard attempting to master that sheer rush of power
would die. It was not meant to be mastered.

Besides, he wanted to use his own magic to punish the Potters and
Dumbledore, if it was allowed, or at least his own means of revenge, the
Pensieve Potion and the scrolls he'd been carefully compiling and the
knowledge of minutiae in the raising of a pureblood child that he'd
painstakingly assembled from the books he read.

But he did wish, for just a moment, that the wild Dark had swooped down
on Godric's Hollow years ago, shattered the isolation wards, and borne
Harry away, even if it meant that Snape would never have known him.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

This was another occasion when Dumbledore had come to Godric's Hollow to
witness the culmination of a test that Harry had carefully gone through
for months. Like the one with not touching anyone, it was a conscious
test. Snape knew the perimeters already, and stood behind Dumbledore in
his Disillusionment Charm, faint and sick and attempting to deal with
his own faintness and sickness before Harry appeared, so that he could
remember everything properly.

Harry and Lily at last stepped out of the house. It was another
nighttime scene, but rainy this time, sullen drops dripping from the
clouds and plopping on Harry's cheeks. The boy didn't appear to notice.
Of course, by this time, when he was almost ten years old, Snape knew,
he had been through pain curses more debilitating than any rain, and had
trained himself to ignore sensations like cold, wetness, and heat, long
past the point when another child would have been whining. He had to
keep going, as Dumbledore and Lily thought of it. He had to learn to be
a soldier, and a soldier might have to fight in any and all sorts of
conditions.

Lily faced him now, and waited. Harry copied her stance, his head tilted
up towards her, and his hands loosely folded in front of his body,
seemingly awaiting a direction or a command.

``Good,'' said Lily, and then cast a charm that Snape recognized as one
that mediwizards used to ease patients who had suffered from the cold
touch of a malicious, powerful ghost. It would warm the person, and
usually the blankets around him, up, and make him fall asleep more
easily.

Harry at once wriggled his shoulders uncomfortably, and then murmured,
``\emph{Finite Incantatem},'' throwing it off with a wave of his practice
wand.

Lily smiled, the smile that Harry lived for and drank in as if it were
ambrosia, and then proceeded through a series of other charms and
incantations. Some of them gave Harry a pleasant taste, as if his mouth
were filled with chocolate. Some mimicked the effect of Calming
Draughts. Others were used to create entertaining illusions, or to fill
a wizard's ears with sweet music, or to cause dazzling lights and
shadows that Snape remembered running after in mad busts when he was a
child, some of the few moments of happiness he'd ever had.

Harry dismissed each of them with various signs of discomfort, none of
them, so far as Snape could tell, feigned. Then he met his mother's eyes
and waited for the final verdict that she would give him.

Lily walked forward and knelt in front of her son without trying to
touch him. Harry lifted his head. Snape could see the pulse beating
faster in his throat, but that was the only sign that he was at all
agitated or worried about what his mother might say.

``You did it,'' Lily whispered. ``You pass, Harry. The last two years
are the best you have ever spent.''

Harry bowed his head, making no sign of relief; the very small sigh he
let out might have been mistaken for weariness or even disappointment.
Lily stroked his hair, once, then stood and walked back inside the
house.

Harry turned and walked thoughtfully away, sitting down at a distance
from it. The position he took was one that Snape knew sentries
practiced, to remain unmoving as long as possible. He gazed into the
distance, and Merlin alone knew what he was thinking about. His eyes
shone, but his face gave no clue.

The memory ended there, since Dumbledore was well-satisfied that he and
Lily had accomplished their purpose, and he had no reason to stay
longer.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape found himself back in his own office, the Pensieve Potion floating
dangerously off to the side. His wandless magic had arisen and flared
out around him, and was prepared to drop the bottle if he wanted it to.
It would shatter all over the floor, and there would go the memories
that tortured him so, the memories that weren't even his and which he
could tell no one he had seen.

Snape sat down, though he let his magic hover the bottle over the floor
to wear itself out, and calmly wrote his conclusions into place. They
started with an exact account of the memory first, much aided by the
year he'd spent as a spy, training his mind into recalling many details
that no one else would have even noticed; on such small things did
survival in the Dark Lord's service depend. Then Snape added a note at
the end, in the place where he always put what that particular test or
piece of abuse had been meant to accomplish with Harry.

\emph{They trained him to be afraid of things that feel good.}

Snape did snap the quill after that, and allowed his magic to set it on
fire, because there was nothing else that he could have done to ease the
crowding pressure. That made the bottle of the Pensieve Potion start to
fall, though, and he had to put out a hand hastily to catch it before it
hit the floor.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape sat at the head table on the morning of the twentieth of June, the
day before the Third Task, and watched Harry sitting with Draco as if he
hadn't a care, moving one hand in a gesture that made Draco pretend to
cower and then burst out laughing. Harry joined him. It was a wonder
that he could laugh, nearly a miracle, and it added the final hammer
blow to the iron will Snape had been forging for himself throughout the
last few months.

In silence he'd borne it, though he knew Harry had suspected something
was wrong from the flashes of temper he'd displayed these last months.
He'd been angry again and again that he couldn't simply go out and take
revenge on the Potters and Dumbledore, but he'd promised. The iron will
was as much to restrain himself as it was to bind him to his most
crucial task.

It all only confirmed that vow he had made months ago, before he began
thoroughly investigating the memories in the Pensieve Potion.

So long as he could best help by making sure that Harry was protected,
then he would do that. Harry needed to trust him, and his trust would be
broken if Snape even spoke to him about punishing the people who had
abused him.

If the moment ever came when Harry was in danger from Lily and James and
Dumbledore again, and could not protect himself, then Snape would move.

\emph{To hell with whether he hates me after that,} he thought, each
word a distinct, ringing strike on the surface of his mind. \emph{He has
come through too much, survived too much. I will not let them take that
away and reverse his progress, even if Harry wants me to.}

\emph{Better he hate me and be able to laugh like that than to love me
and be silent.}

\chapter{Intermission: Five Months}\label{chapter-74-intermission-five-months}

\emph{February}

It was disrespectful, of course. The boy had faced him in front of
everyone and dreamed, for at least a moment, of revealing everything
that he had been trained to keep secret. Albus was most astonished and
dismayed at that, that Harry could think of betraying them, after all of
this, after---everything.

Dismayed, and perhaps a bit frightened, if he were honest with himself.
The web was gone, of course it was, and Harry was someone Albus would
have to negotiate with, of course he was. But Harry's tendency to
silence had saved his mother and Albus's reputation after Christmas.
Albus had assumed, perhaps foolishly, that that silence would still
hold. To see even the consideration of telling all the truth flash
through Harry's eyes, for the scant moment that it had\ldots{}

Albus needed to write a letter. His first one, summoning James to
Hogwarts and telling him that his sons would like to see him there for
the Second Task, had failed. James had come, but he'd let Harry pressure
him into cringing compliance with his wishes. Albus needed someone who
would see the danger Harry presented and have the strength to help.

There was only one person he could think of who might believe the one
thing and possess the other, and he was someone Albus had not spoken to
in so long that he had given up thought of ever writing to him again.

But this was an emergency. The boy was something worse than an incipient
Dark Lord; he was someone who might undo all Albus's careful work by
accusing him of child abuse and eating his magic. And then he would try
to lead the wizarding world, a task no fourteen-year-old wizard could
accomplish, and the last beautiful things in the world Albus had loved
and fought for for so long would fall to wrack and ruin.

Albus sat down and wrote the letter. He did not try to conceal any of
the truth. He confessed all his mistakes, and all the things that might
make his old friend think badly of him, and then included a plea for
help. He sealed the letter, and sent it off with a school owl, missing
Fawkes sorely. Fawkes could have made the journey in seconds and
returned to him with a reply as fast, always assuming that his old
friend was in the mood to reply. Albus would have to wait for an answer.

And he feared that in this case, time was of the essence.

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{March}

Albus laid the return letter gently on the table. It had taken his old
friend weeks to respond, as Albus had thought it might. He would have
had to think, and as old as he was, he no longer moved fast.

It was a good thing the letter had come today. Albus had seen the boy
converse with snakes in the Great Hall, the Many, who were free from yet
another shattered web. The boy was destroying the wizarding world as
Albus watched. The Many could so easily have bitten any of the children
in the Great Hall. Of course, Harry, with his misguided ideals, did not
care about that, and it had not happened.

But it had nearly happened.

Unable to wait any longer, Albus tore open the letter and read what was
printed there.

\emph{Old friend:}

\emph{I am surprised that you have contacted me on a matter of this
importance only now. I ought to have been by your side from the
beginning, offering you advice and guiding you in your care of this
young Lord.}

\emph{I fear it may already be too late, as you warned me, but I will
offer you two suggestions. One is to be subtle. Move as slowly as
possible, for all that you fear young Harry will accuse you any day now.
If it were truly going to be ``any day now,'' I think he would have done
it already. From what you told me of the way you raised him, his
forgiving impulse runs deep. He will give you time, because you could
still be of use to him in the war that is coming, and he can dismiss any
crime against himself, as long as it is only against himself.}

\emph{For the second suggestion, remember the discipline I once taught
you. The bravest, boldest weapons are the ones that look best on a
battlefield, but the careful ones are those that insure there need be no
battlefield in the first place. You were too light-handed with Tom
Riddle, and too heavy-handed with young Harry. Take the middle road now,
and court the mist.}

\emph{With all due affection,}

\emph{Your old teacher.}

Albus sighed and put the letter gently aside. The news was not
\emph{quite} as good as he'd hoped---if it were, his old friend would
already be at his side---but he had received sensible advice. Now that
he could step back and look at things rationally, he saw that someone
else was far more likely than Harry to accuse him of wrongdoing. Harry
had let matters go in their course for nearly a month.

\emph{Court the mist}.

\emph{He always did have the best advice,} Albus mused, and set about
doing it, and being subtle for once in his life.

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{April}

Tonight was a night to mourn old comrades.

Tonight was the night that he knew he had lost Minerva forever.

Albus sat meditatively in front of the hearth and looked at his glass of
firewhisky. It shone when he turned it back and forth, and caught the
colors of the flames. Albus swallowed a sip of it, and remembered old
battlefields, old battles, and the fallen, and those still alive.

Minerva McGonagall had come to Hogwarts a few years ahead of Tom Riddle,
eyes bright and shining with the determination of the \emph{fiercest} of
the Light pureblood lines. Albus could remember the proverbs of his
youth, and it was true, what they said: one wanted a Starrise for pretty
words, a Gloryflower for cleverness, and a McGonagall for sheer
bloody-minded stubbornness and refusal to give up.

She'd gone into Gryffindor. She'd belonged there. She'd had natural
talent at Transfiguration. She deserved it. There was nothing hidden
about her, nothing duplicitous, for all that her Animagus form was a
cat, creature of shadows and secrets. She became one of the youngest
Animagi ever, before the first echoes of Grindelwald's War were quite
dead, and Albus had not been surprised. Minerva McGonagall had always
distinguished herself. It was a combination of knowing where she
belonged, admiration, and hope for her friendship that made him hire her
for the Transfiguration position when that became open, and of course
she had to be Head of Gryffindor; no one else would do.

She'd fought like her namesake on the battlefields in Voldemort's War:
led charges, organized retreats, saved wounded comrades, and, in a rage,
Transfigured more than one Death Eater into a fish far from water. She
was the best kind of warrior, Albus thought. She was the kind who never
forgot that what they fought for was ultimately peace, and she could
gladly let the pomp and noise of war go and embrace that peace when it
came around again.

She was the kind of person who would gaze on the tangled nests and knots
of the wards that Albus had filled with his own power, so as to have
certain areas of the school more firmly under his control, and raise
accusing eyes to his, and make him feel, for a moment, small and
cowering as a mouse under her paws.

``To absent friends,'' Albus said quietly. ``To fallen ones. And to
those whose paths have parted from mine.''

He downed the rest of the firewhisky in one gulp, already putting the
regrets away and moving to the unwilling position of considering Minerva
his enemy.

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{May}

Albus sat in his office, eyes closed, and, carefully, courted the mist.

Most compulsion was a straight-out, forceful blow. That was the way Tom
often used it. Or one could wield it like a whip, flaying an order into
another mind and then springing out again. Or it could be used
unconsciously, as Connor Potter had before he discovered he had the
gift, but that usually made the other people around the compeller
suspect something.

There were far more subtle practices of it. Albus had usually put his
own into his voice. He had felt bad, the first time he made a speech and
seen other people fall into line with his own beliefs, but his old
friend had taught him better than that. Many so-called Dark gifts were
not that Dark, at bottom. Nor were they Light, precisely. What mattered
were the motives of the user. Dark might seem all compulsion, at first,
but then one became aware of the definitions of wildness, and deception,
and solitude. And the world was always more complicated than people had
realized.

Thus Albus spread his compulsion like a thin, gentle mist throughout the
castle, drifting, mingling with the air, no more noticeable than a brief
smell of food from the kitchens would be. People would turn their heads,
find their desires inclined in the direction of one particular thought
for a few moments, and then shake themselves and hurry on.

Most of the time. When the compulsion had penetrated far enough into the
air, became one with it, then each student and staff member would
breathe it in all the time. Their hurrying away would only carry them
into the midst of it once more. Like the windy sensation of normal
compulsion, it would twine with their thoughts, ride in undetectably,
and sway them in the direction of Albus's opinion.

It was a risky thing, because it was not true compulsion; it only made
people suggestible, not controlled them. That was why Tom had never used
his compulsion this way that Albus knew of, for all that he was
perfectly capable of it. It took too long, and it wasn't impressive
enough for him. He preferred intimidating people with one messy and
drastic raid to waiting years for a fragile ascendancy that he might
never gain at all.

Albus, though, thought it his best course. He had the time, now that he
no longer believed Harry would denounce him any moment. And the
compulsion was so soft and thin as to go undetected by someone who
wasn't a very watchful compeller himself. And it would not affect those
minds strongly set against him---Harry, Severus, Minerva---for a very
long time if ever. That made them unlikely to suspect what he was doing.

Albus might have disdained serving the wizarding world by subterfuge,
once. But the last fourteen years had accustomed him to sacrifices of
all kinds.

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{June}

Albus shaded his eyes with one hand and watched the rising sun. He stood
on the Astronomy Tower, and it was the day before the Third Task. Exams
had ended a few days ago, but the students remained, eager to see the
outcome of the Tournament.

So much else had happened in the past few months that Albus found it
hard to believe that he'd once found the Tournament an overriding
concern.

He heard a footstep behind him, and turned to see Sybill Trelawney
approaching him. She shivered, though it wasn't cold this late in the
season, and clutched her shawl around her.

``I'm here as you asked, Headmaster,'' she said, with the cringing
half-defiance that she offered him alone of the staff, and which Albus
thought was the truest reflection of her inner self.

He surveyed her kindly. He could afford to be kind to the victims of the
world, and Sybill Trelawney was most assuredly among them. He'd thought
so ever since he hired her after her first successful prophecy, and he
felt even sorrier for her now. It could not be pleasant to have one's
gift of Seeing change on one so suddenly.

``The prophecy again, if you please, Sybill,'' he said, quietly.

The Seer sighed and stared off into the direction of the sunrise, not
blinking, though the light must have been stinging her eyes. She had
made a prophecy the other day that she was actually able to remember,
and she recited it now, her voice going flat and monotonous.

``\emph{Three on three the old one coils,}

\emph{Three in its times, three in its choices,}

\emph{It bears his rivals to silence and stillness,}

\emph{And the wild Darkness laughs, and the Light rejoices.}''

``\emph{Two on two the storms that are coming,}

\emph{Two for the day, and two for the year},

\emph{The storm of darkness when no moon will shine,}

\emph{And the storm of light that will blaze most fiercely here.}''

``\emph{One on one all the prophecies bear down,}

\emph{One is their center, and one is their heart},

\emph{And from my mouth comes no Divination again}

\emph{Except those prophecies in which he has a part.}''

Trelawney finished with a pensive sigh. Albus stood in silence for a
moment, his head half-bowed.

``Tell me, Sybill,'' he said at last, ``have you ever heard of a storm
appearing in a prophecy before?''

``Only as a harbinger of something else, Headmaster.'' Trelawney's voice
had recovered its pomposity. ``They are common metaphors for battle, of
course. Mere weather events have no place in prophecy.''

Albus nodded. He had thought the same thing before she spoke. ``And you
have no idea what the first stanza of that prophecy means?''

Trelawney shifted uneasily. ``I have heard other prophecies in which
`the old one that coils' was mentioned, Headmaster.''

``And?''

Trelawney swallowed. ``It always refers to a snake in some way. A
descendant of Slytherin, often, or the Founder himself; there was one
that prophesied a daughter of his line finding his ring in the fifteenth
century. Another predicted Lord Golddigger's battle with dragons on the
coast of Wales. Something serpentine, at least.''

\emph{Tom}. Albus could not say he was surprised, though he would have
to think for some time before he managed to tease out all the secrets of
this riddle. He missed the clear prophecy that had told him so exactly
what should be done with Connor's and Harry's childhood. The rhyming
ones were always harder to figure out.

\emph{She may make more useful prophecies in the future, though, if she
can see no visions again but those in which Tom has a part.}

``Thank you, Sybill,'' he said, and watched as Trelawney hurried away in
relief. Once again, he studied the sunrise.

He would have to move more carefully than he had in the past. He had
known that for months now.

But at least he would have the assurance that things were going his way
again---in one case because he wielded a weapon too subtle for Harry to
suspect, in the other because he had an advantage, in the knowledge of
the prophecy, that no one else did.

He started to turn towards the staircase, and then paused, his eyes
narrowing. He had seen a dark figure flicker beneath him for a moment,
he thought. If he had not known better, he would have said it was a
woman in a dark cloak, and that she smelled of smoke and fire.

And surely there was an echo in his ears, like a dragon's wild roar?

But then he touched the wards, and relaxed. He still had his little
spies in among the ones that Minerva had supposedly tamed, and those
told him that there had been no figure, woman or otherwise, on the side
of the Tower.

Albus went on to breakfast, his stride firm and sure. It had cost him
some uncertainty and some standing in the eyes of the wizarding world,
but he was back in the game.

\chapter{Day of Longest Light}\label{chapter-75-day-of-longest-light}

\emph{A full year ago today}, Harry thought in wonder, as he, and James,
and Connor, walked to the edge of the Northumberland beach with their
boats in their hands. \emph{A full year ago today was the last time we
performed this ritual.}

He paused a moment to lift his head and take in the sights and smells of
the world all around him. The gulls were riding high again, and there
seemed to be more of them today, as though they felt the year gone by
deserved a salute of their cries. The waves crashed and hissed on the
shore with an intonation that had become familiar to Harry from the
constant way his heartbeat seemed to resemble it. The foam sparkled
blindingly in the sun, which almost sat on the waves, filling all the
eastern sky with a dazzle-storm. It was Midsummer, longest day of the
year, the day of longest light.

The day of the Third Task.

Harry turned around so that he could walk backward and look at Connor.
His brother's hands were steady, though his face was pale, and sometimes
he got a distant, thoughtful look in his eyes, as though he were
imagining the horrors that might come up and overtake him. Harry didn't
blame him. Neither the First nor the Second Task had been uneventful.

They reached the edge of the water without incident, though, and Harry
was glad. Connor wasn't a Champion at the moment, and he wasn't a
worried, anxious brother. They were both Potters, listening as James
held up the little ship that he had created for this year's ritual and
began.

``This is the holiest time. This is the time of longest Light.''

Harry was pleased to hear that his father's voice was calmer than it had
been last year; then, he had been about to spend a summer with sons whom
he knew very little about, who had just witnessed the death of a
godfather and family friend. Now, though, they were stronger for the
trials they had come through, and things had been going well lately.
Harry knew that Connor had passed his exams and made up his latest
argument with Parvati. If he could just get through the Third Task
without disgracing Hogwarts, then he would consider his year complete.

Harry himself\ldots{}

Harry shrugged as he followed his father into the water, which shoved
and pulled at his ankles like the Dark magic, urging him to come deeper.
\emph{I've been better, but at least northern goblins don't send
Howlers, and Draco's guardianship is not as irritating as it was.}

``This is Midsummer morning, the moment when the sun shines in all its
power, and magic can happen with its rising.'' James almost whispered
the words as he set the little ship on the water.

This time, a wave lifted the boat higher right away. Its mast was not a
yew twig this time, but laurel, and Harry didn't know where James had
found it; no laurels grew near Lux Aeterna. The sail was cloth torn from
the back of a painting, soft and black, and the sides were still
ordinary parchment.

The black sail curved and gave back a faint reflection of the sun, and
then Harry realized the sides had caught the light so brightly that it
looked as though it were on fire. One sunbeam swept around the boat, and
under it, and lifted it so that it just barely skimmed the waves as it
sailed east.

James's face broke into a smile. He whispered, ``We sail our ships, to
welcome in the sun, to salute it, as we once sailed out of the sun on a
Midsummer morning.''

Harry knelt down and made that boast true for not just one Potter, but
two. Connor's boat followed theirs the next moment, almost leaping out
of his grasp. Harry, though, wasn't sure if that came from his brother's
eagerness to participate in the ritual so much as the tremor that
appeared to have taken possession of his hands.

Harry edged towards him, and caught his left hand, and stood there,
holding it, as they watched their boats take the same sunlit road as
James's. Harry was certain he could see the black sail of his father's
boat long after it vanished, but at last it was gone completely, and he
couldn't pretend anymore.

``I'm frightened,'' Connor whispered.

Harry felt his heart soften with the thought of how much it must have
cost Connor to admit that. He wouldn't have been able to in Gryffindor
Tower, and most of the time, he wouldn't have wanted to, either. Harry
turned towards him and hugged him, his arms locking around his brother's
shoulders.

``Do you remember your dueling spells?'' he asked.

``Yes. It's not that.'' Connor shivered. ``If I forgot a spell, then I
would deserve what happened to me, after you've drilled me so long and
hard. But I'm afraid of something unexpected happening. Of embarrassing
myself in front of the school. Of---'' He cut himself off with a little
gasp.

Harry lifted his gaze quickly, to make sure that James still stood at a
distance, but he was watching the sunrise with his hands in his pockets
and didn't appear to notice his sons' preoccupation. Or maybe he knew
and was courteously giving them space, Harry thought, as he touched
Connor's heart-shaped scar. That would fit with the careful way that
James was acting around them lately.

``Of your needing to rescue me again,'' Connor muttered.

``I didn't need to rescue you during the First Task,'' Harry pointed
out. ``The dragons would have hurt everyone, not just you.''

Connor gave a sound somewhere between a snort, a sob, and a laugh. ``The
Second Task was bad enough in that respect, thanks.'' He hesitated for a
long moment, then said, ``I know that I can't make you promise not to
interfere, but please don't do it just because you \emph{think} I might
be in danger, all right?''

``Of course,'' said Harry, and held him tighter again for a moment,
before releasing him. ``Now, come on. I think Dad wants to treat us to
breakfast.''

Connor scrambled out of the water, wiping one hand across his face.
Harry knew it would take care of any tears that had gathered in his
eyes. Connor was obsessed with being someone strong, and a strong boy
would not cry. In fact, he smiled at James so brilliantly that James's
smile faded a bit in return, as though he were trying to figure out what
Connor wanted.

``You said we could eat breakfast on the beach,'' Connor reminded him.
``Are we going to?''

James relaxed. ``Of course,'' he said, nodding to the picnic basket that
stood further up the sand. Connor's face brightened, and he went after
it, drawing out a round of fresh apples wrapped in slices of cheese that
the brownies had packed. He'd spent the last weekend with James, Harry
remembered, and come back to Hogwarts gushing about the treat. Harry
didn't think cheese and apples tasted so good himself, but if they would
make his brother happy and take his mind off the evening for some time,
then he was welcome to all of them he liked.

``Harry.''

Harry turned and looked calmly up at James. Their father was chewing his
lip, a gesture that made him resemble Connor much more than he normally
did. He studied Harry as if wondering whether he would blow up or turn
green, or perhaps inflict those things on him.

``What is it?'' Harry asked, when the staring had gone on for some time.
It must be important, for James to bring it up. Usually, when they were
together, he let Harry guide their conversation.

James let out a sharp breath. Then he said, ``Your brother asked me this
last weekend, and made me promise that I would tell you my answer.''

Harry blinked. Connor hadn't mentioned any important question to him.
``All right,'' he said.

``I still love your mother.''

Harry felt his shoulders try to hunch in defensive protection against
his mother's name, and then told himself he had to relax. James wasn't
intent on punishing Lily the way the rest of them were. He knew
something about what Lily had done, and yet, obviously, it hadn't killed
his love. That meant that Harry might have another person he could feel
safe with, like Draco---someone who knew the truth but was going to be
reasonable about it.

``Why are you still living apart from her, then?'' he did have to ask,
since, as far as he knew, James hadn't made any move to contact Lily or
even visit her for nearly a year and a half.

``We've been writing,'' said James. ``We wanted to work everything out
before we saw one another again. Or, at least, I did, and she finally
agreed to it. There are still some attitudes of hers I'm finding it hard
to get through.'' His eyes fixed on Harry. ``The ones about you, in
particular.''

Harry nodded. He'd expected that. He plunged some of the emotions that
were circling around in him at the mention of Lily into quicksilver
pools. He could get through this. ``And what point do you think you've
reached?''

``I don't know yet,'' said James. ``Maybe the point at which I can visit
her by August or so.''

Harry nodded again. His own breathing was fast, and he felt
light-headed. He didn't know why. This was entirely James's decision. It
had nothing to do with him. And his father was going into this situation
with his eyes open. He wouldn't be fooled again. He was only desirous of
making up with as many people as possible, and why shouldn't he be?
Harry knew that he himself would face his mother if he was a braver or a
stronger person.

``I won't ask you to visit her,'' James said softly. ``Not unless you
asked me to take you with me. I promise. No forcing you into confined
quarters with her. No trusting you alone with her. No bringing her here.
You'll never have to see her again, Harry. I wouldn't expect that of
you.''

Harry inclined his head. ``Thank you. In truth, though I know I'll be
visiting Lux Aeterna for the summer, I don't know if I'll be living here
yet, so you could bring her here as long as you warned me about it
beforehand, in time to get away.'' He turned and looked at the picnic
basket. He knew there were corn beef sandwiches in there as well, but he
wasn't sure if he wanted anything to eat now. His stomach churned, and
he had to swallow several times to convince what remained of last
night's dinner to stay down.

``Where else would you---'' James cut himself off. ``Oh. You'd be staying
at Hogwarts with \emph{him}, then?''

The sound of his voice brought Harry back to reality, and Harry was
suddenly glad that he'd made James promise not to mention Snape in his
letters. Anger and what sounded like jealousy still bubbled under the
surface of his words. It might have ended the letters if they were
talking about Snape any more openly, and Harry did want this
relationship with James. He wanted all the cracked places in his life to
be healed, if he could, and James was trying so \emph{hard}. It was not
fair to scold him for this lapse now.

``I don't know,'' Harry said again. ``Not for the whole summer, I don't
think. The Malfoys have also invited me to visit.'' There had been a
third invitation, too, but Harry had put it aside without reading it all
the way through, and written a polite refusal. There was no way he was
spending the summer at the Sanctuary, even if he would get to see Peter
and Remus there. He didn't need people peering at his soul and telling
him all the means of fixing it. Besides, he'd be too distant from his
allies and the rest of the world that might need his help.

``Oh.'' James sighed. ``Harry, I wouldn't bring your mother into Lux
Aeterna without warning you. I promise.''

``I know,'' said Harry, giving him a small smile. ``But I still don't
think I want to spend the whole summer here.''

``Why \emph{not}?'' Some of James's frustration broke through this time.
``Do you still not trust me?''

``No,'' said Harry, and let James take that how he would as he went on.
``The main problem is the wards. They'll let Draco visit, but not Snape,
and probably not most of my allies whom I might want to see.''

James glanced away with a frown.

``You won't consider lowering them?'' Harry asked.

``I can't,'' said James. ``The wards aren't entirely under my control.
They're part of the nature of Lux Aeterna as a linchpin. They can't come
down unless they're obeying my true inclinations, and things like
subconscious hatreds are a bitch when it comes to that.'' Harry chuckled
in spite of himself at his father's language. James said things when he
was pouting that he never would have otherwise. ``I might tell you that
I could like Snape now, but the wards would know whether I really did or
not, and refuse to fall if I didn't.''

Harry nodded. He had expected that, and he even found it difficult to
blame his father for it. He himself didn't do well with subconscious
inclinations and tests based on them, or he would have found some way to
free the northern goblins that didn't involve that stupid plan he'd
first come up with. And he would have stopped missing the bond with
Draco desperately when he removed it at midnight on the sixth of June.
He should be able to conquer the things he was so weak about, he
thought, but he couldn't.

And how could he scorn the weaknesses of other people that he found in
himself?

``Dad,'' Connor called through a mouth nearly glued shut. He'd obviously
found the peanut butter, Harry thought in amusement. ``Harry. Are you
'ver coming to break'ast?''

James squeezed Harry's shoulder. ``I just wanted you to know that,'' he
whispered. ``That I might see her again, speak to her.''

Harry forced out a breath. ``I hope you do,'' he said, and carefully
controlled the emotions that wanted to pour into his words. ``You both
deserve to be happy.'' And they did, he told himself. Revenge could only
go on for so long. He wouldn't willingly see Lily again, but he could
rejoice, in an abstract way, that she lived somewhere away from him and
was getting on with her life.

``Should we eat breakfast?''

Harry nodded, and in the end he did manage a corn beef sandwich and a
few pieces of the cheese-and-apples that Connor liked so much, even
though his appetite was entirely gone.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry shifted around anxiously, and tried not to resent it when Draco
adjusted his position without a pause, so that he could keep his arms
looped securely around Harry. They were sitting on the Slytherin
Quidditch stands outside the hedge maze that would contain the Third
Task, and Draco had deliberately taken a seat behind and above Harry, so
that he could hold him. Harry shivered and shifted to the side again. He
wanted to be free, ready to move, so that he could help Connor if he
were hurt.

It didn't help that they were outside the maze and could not see what
was happening within, but then, Harry supposed, the people above the
lake wouldn't have been able to see what was happening under the water,
either. Besides, he had a spell that would take care of that. Harry
touched his wand, which he'd brought along in an attempt to get used to
casting spells through it again, and stood up as if that would let him
see over the hedges.

``Connor isn't even in the maze yet,'' Draco said in his ear, and yanked
him back down, so that Harry plopped onto the bench ungracefully. ``And
I think he'll be fine. You've been training him hard enough.''

``I don't know,'' Harry whispered in misery.

It was nearly twilight, but Draco was right; none of the Champions were
in the Maze yet, let alone Connor. The sky was just turning the rich,
deep purple that Harry had associated with summer sunsets ever since he
was little. The air was thick and warm, and filled with the excited
chatter of those students from all three schools come to see the
conclusion of the Tournament. Harry had already seen several people
glancing at him and shaking their heads. They thought he was stupid to
be so upset about what seemed like the simplest of the Tasks, he knew:
enter the maze, get past the obstacles, and find the cup in the center
of it. Or maybe they were just waiting to see what way he would manage
to interfere this time.

The judges were seated at a table near the entrances into the maze:
Dumbledore, Karkaroff, Madame Maxime, and a few other witches and
wizards whom Harry didn't know. They were perfectly calm, of course.
They could afford to be, Harry thought petulantly. They didn't have a
brother about to enter a maze and compete in a dangerous Task.

``Hush, Harry,'' Draco whispered in his ear, and then altered the
position of his hands. Harry thought, for a moment, that he might be
leaving him alone so he could move about more freely, but then Draco's
fingers positioned themselves near his spine and dug in, massaging at a
knot there.

Harry wriggled and tried to get away, but the Beauxbatons girl settled
on the bench next to him made a face and shoved him back. Harry had to
sit back and try to enjoy the massage as he waited for the Champions to
be led to the front of the maze.

Connor had the lowest number of points right now, since he hadn't
properly rescued his brother in the Second Task, so he waited at the
back while Karkaroff announced the Third Task to all and sundry. Krum
was edging towards the front, up to the very limit of the distance he
was permitted to go right now, and scanning the Quidditch stands with
his eyes all the while. Harry suspected, since he faced the Gryffindor
stands, that he was looking for Hermione.

``Welcome, welcome, to the Third Task of the Triwizard Tournament!''
Karkaroff was speaking in a clear, resonant voice that belied the
cowardly whimpers he'd used in every conversation with Harry thus far.
``As you know, our brave Champions have undergone confrontations with
dragons and merfolk beneath the lake, to test their courage and their
compassion. We now face a task that will challenge their cleverness. Who
can make it through the maze first, and overcome the obstacles that they
will find there? This is not a Task in which just one spell will avail
them. They must rely on their cunning to adapt their repertoire to the
requirements of\ldots{}''

Harry lost the thread of the speech as he watched Connor. His brother
was less pale than he had been that morning, and he had his wand gripped
in one firm hand. As the Task came closer and closer, he'd seemed to
accept that there was no way he could get out of it, and that he might
as well be brave. Harry wondered if he was the only one who noticed the
way his brother's eyes kept going to the maze and then darting away
again. Certainly the only one who cared that much, he thought, and wiped
his hands on his robes, then groaned a bit as Draco managed to soothe
one knot along his spine away. The Beauxbatons girl gave them an annoyed
glance---presumably she was also missing the speech under the noise of
Harry's groans---and edged away from them officiously, craning her neck.

``---and that is the Third Task of the Tournament,'' Karkaroff
concluded. ``Our Champions will enter the maze in order of points
scored. First goes Viktor Krum, of Durmstrang.'' Unmistakable pride
blazed in his voice as he stepped out of the way and nodded to Krum.

Krum nodded significantly at someone in the Gryffindor stands, and then
raced into the maze. Harry watched the green leaves of the hedges
waving, and pulled his shoulders away from Draco. He had to cast the
spell as undetectably as he could, so he had to lean as close to the
maze as possible. Draco gave in with a resigned sigh, and leaned down to
kiss the back of his head instead.

``In second place, Fleur Delacour, for Beauxbatons, will enter the
maze,'' Karkaroff announced.

Fleur drew her wand and walked into the maze with a flirt of her silver
hair. Harry privately wished her luck. If Connor couldn't win, then he
would prefer her to Krum as Champion. She was doing it for other reasons
than just to impress one person.

A few more minutes passed. Once Harry heard a scream, cut quickly off.
The other students shifted and murmured at that, but then went back to
staring at the maze, as though they could really see through the hedges
without the help of the spell Harry was going to use, or one like it.

The moment came, then, when Karkaroff cleared his throat, and said, ``In
last place, Connor Potter, for Hogwarts, will enter the maze.''

The name made another wind of murmuring move through the spectators, as
though hearing it without the customary title, ``Boy-Who-Lived,'' made
them think about Connor in a new light. Harry saw his brother's face
flush with color, but he was ready, and all but plunged into the maze
the moment that Karkaroff finished speaking.

``\emph{Specularis fraterculi},'' Harry whispered, and gestured with his
wand.

To his pleasure, the spell worked, and made the hedges transparent in
one particular area, the one where Connor was walking, and only to him.
Harry settled back against Draco, who promptly wrapped his arms around
him again. Harry felt far more relaxed now, able to move in a moment if
Death Eaters showed up. Connor was all right so far, simply walking
along a corridor thick with leaves and open to the sky, with nothing
threatening in sight.

Harry did crouch down in his seat a little as Karkaroff shot a
suspicious glance towards him; as the closest to the maze, he stood the
most chance of feeling a spell slide through the wards. Harry hadn't
cast a spell to help the Champion of his choice, though, and the wards
had been erected mostly to prevent the audience from interfering in the
competition. Thus they registered the passage of his magic, but didn't
forbid it. Karkaroff wound up frowning and turning back to the entrance
of the maze, craning his neck slightly, as though he could see over the
walls and make out Krum that way.

With that suspicion dismissed, Harry could focus on Connor. His brother
had reached a turning where a shimmering wall of solidified air barred
his way. Harry held his breath. They had trained in no spells that were
specific to this kind of barrier, and sometimes Connor could be very
literal, probably from Hermione's influence; he would want to know the
exact countercurse for a spell, when any that got rid of the obstacle
would probably be just as good.

Connor only hesitated for a few moments, though, before lifting his wand
and shouting, in a confident voice, ``\emph{Reducto!}''

The spell soared away from him, the barrier shattered, and Connor
stepped through---

Straight into a mist that made him pant and drop to the ground,
clutching at his throat.

Harry's fingers twitched on his wand, and he found himself wishing,
oddly, for Regulus, who would know the source of his anxiety; Draco
could only clench his hands on Harry's shoulder and hold tight. But
Regulus was away, fastened to his body again, this time determined not
to come back until he could reveal the location of his body beyond a
doubt.

\emph{He has to be all right,} Harry told himself, even though he hadn't
tutored Connor in a spell that would get rid of obstructions like this
at all. \emph{If he isn't, if he stands some chance of dying, then I'll
intervene. I'd rather have him disqualified from the Tournament than
dead.}

But Connor proved to have a better memory than Harry anticipated. He
called up a spell they hadn't practiced since last summer.
``\emph{Specularis!}'' he exclaimed, waving his wand in front of him.

The word was half-choked by the gas, but it worked nonetheless, clearing
a little window of air in front of him. Most wizards would use the
window to see, but Connor used it to breathe, gathering his strength and
flinging himself beyond the mist. Harry sat back again.

``Can you tell me anything about it?'' Draco whispered into his ear.

Harry kept his own voice low, though he turned his head to the side
instead of facing Draco directly, so that he could keep one eye on
Connor even now. He was trotting down a broad aisle that appeared to
lead directly to the center of the maze, though Harry knew that there
was no way the obstacles would be over so soon. Krum or Fleur would have
already grasped the cup by now if they were. ``He was in the middle of a
choking mist. He got himself free, and I thought he wouldn't.''

``You really should trust him more,'' Draco said, and let one hand run
through Harry's hair. Harry didn't understand the fixation with touching
him, but Draco seemed to have done it more since the bond ended. ``I
think he's more competent than you give him credit for being.''

Harry did face Draco then, staring at him. Draco \emph{never} had a good
word to say about Connor.

Draco frowned at him, flushed, and jerked his chin up haughtily. ``I
\emph{can} see when he's improving in dueling spells, Harry. He was so
hopeless before that any improvement would be marked.''

Harry wound up shaking his head and turning back to the maze. Connor had
reached the end of the broad aisle in a seeming wall of leaves. Harry,
however, trained in searching out tiny details, saw the recent signs of
someone else having passed that way, even through his small window.
Connor brightened a moment later, having discovered it, and reached out
to swat the leaves aside.

A clawed paw shot through the leaves and dragged at him, pulling him
into another place.

Harry gasped and half-jolted to his feet, then saw people turning around
to stare at him. He ended up sitting down again, since he didn't want to
reveal that he'd cast any spell at all towards the maze and Connor, but
kept his gaze fixed straight ahead, as the window revealed a grassy
corner covered with thick leaves and with a fountain in the center of
it.

Connor was probably not in the position to notice much of it, though,
because he was facing a wyvern.

Harry winced and leaned forward anxiously as Connor tumbled free from
the creature's hold and rolled to his feet. The wyvern faced him,
snarling and scraping menacingly at the ground with the talon it had
used to haul Connor in. It was dragon-like, but it had only two legs,
huge bat-like wings in the place of forelimbs, and, most dangerous of
all, a darting, scorpion-like tail tipped with deadly poison.

Harry saw his brother's face pale at the sight of it. This was more
dangerous than any creature he had faced before; at least he had not had
to actually wound or destroy the dragon whose egg he took. He hesitated.

The wyvern leaped slightly in the air and came down at him, wings spread
wide to prevent a dodge, claws grappling for him, tail whipping down and
past its neck.

Connor flung himself into another roll, this one backwards and
desperate, and came up on the wyvern's left side. The creature would
have had him even then, but its wing caught on the fountain. It screamed
and reared back, its tail coiling like Nagini at the height of its
throat.

His brother had had a chance to regain his feet, though, Harry saw, and
with it his confidence. ``\emph{Speculum Ardoris!}'' he called, using the
spell offensively, and a shield of fire whirred into being from the end
of his wand.

The wyvern, unlike the dragons, had no immunity to fire. It cried again
as the spell burned the edge of one wing, and snapped at it with useless
jaws. Then it was the one backing up, its wounded pinion held close to
its side, its sulky yellow eyes fixed on the flames.

Connor moved towards it, instead of past the fountain and to the maze
entrance on the other side of the garden.

``You idiot!'' muttered Harry.

``What's he doing now?'' Draco whispered into his ear, massaging his
shoulders.

``Attacking something he should be running from while it's still
baffled---''

Luckily, Connor seemed to get his common sense back at that moment, too.
He shook his head, turned, and ran across the garden, ducking into the
maze entrance. Harry relaxed for a moment, and then tensed up again when
Connor made several hasty twists and turns, and brought another magical
creature into view.

``Hello,'' said the sphinx he'd met, carefully raising her long leonine
body up and padding forward. Her face was human in general details, but
with subtle differences, rather like the ones that had attended Dobby's
changed elven features. She had a literal mane of lovely red hair. She
shook the hair out of her face and smiled at Connor. ``I suppose that
you want to pass me?''

Connor blinked, obviously nonplused by the creature's politeness.
``I---yes, that is. If you'll let me.''

``Just answer the riddle,'' said the sphinx. ``Answer it correctly, and
then I'll let you pass.''

``What riddle would that be?'' asked Connor. And then, just as Harry had
known he would, he added, ``And what happens if I don't answer it
correctly?''

``I eat you,'' said the sphinx, in the dreamy manner of a young girl
who'd heard that she was to have chocolate biscuits later that day.

Connor's face went pale again, and he swallowed hard. To Harry's relief,
though, he didn't try something stupid, like darting around the sphinx,
all of whose four paws looked swift enough to catch him in seconds. He
said, ``What's the riddle?''

The sphinx arranged herself with a little cough, and began to speak in a
voice both more piercingly lovely and more alien than the mostly human
voice she'd been using so far:

``\emph{We are always dancing, we are always there,}

\emph{But you shut us away beyond the walls of the air.}''

``\emph{You adopt our name for the brightest lights among you,}

\emph{But we are the originals, and we are always true.}''

``\emph{Glimpse us only half the time, it will not our beauty mar,}

\emph{For we have always been more steadfast than all humans are.}''

Connor frowned intently and considered it for some time. Harry could
almost see the moments when he might have blurted an answer out, but
each time he shut his mouth and frowned again.

The sphinx cleared her throat at last and said, ``No offense, but if you
don't come up with an answer in the next five minutes, then I get to eat
you.''

Connor jolted, and his head lifted as if he were going to stare right
into her eyes and dare her to do her worst. But his eyes fixed on the
sky above the walls of the hedge maze instead, and his face broke into a
smile.

``Stars,'' he said. ``The answer is stars?''

The sphinx cocked her head and said, ``Is that a question?''

``It's an answer,'' said Connor, though his smile had wilted a bit.

The sphinx inclined her head and stepped gracefully aside, bending the
hedge wall with her weight. ``Pass.''

Connor whooped and surged past her, turned a corner, turned another
corner, and came into a wide, grassy plot, darker than the rest of the
maze---but that, Harry thought, might have come from the fact that the
sun was setting at last. In the center of the plot, on a block of
gleaming ivory, stood the cup.

Fleur was there already, closer to the cup than Connor was, but she was
staring, entranced, at something hovering in front of her. They were
star-like lights, Harry saw, whirling around each other in
constellation-like patterns to draw and hold the eye. They were
physically harmless, but if they could enchant the Champions and prevent
them from reaching the cup, then they would serve their purpose.

Connor slowed when he saw her, and stared when he saw her predicament.
Then the lights split in one half, and one stream came straight for him,
the rest still bobbing and dancing in front of Fleur.

Connor closed his eyes, and Harry saw him aim straight for the ivory
block without opening them. The star-like lights accompanied him all the
way, but since they seemed to work by sight alone, they served no
purpose except to form an honor guard as Connor made his way to the cup.

Harry still didn't believe that this was happening until Connor's hand
reached out and grasped the cup, and all the hedges turned transparent
at once---revealing Krum only a few steps from the grassy plot---and the
wards fell.

There was a moment of stunned silence, by which Harry conjectured that
no one had expected Connor to actually win. Then the people in the
stands surged to their feet, cheering. Even some of the die-hard
Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students, who'd made sure to sneer at Connor
in the past, were applauding.

Harry let out his breath, and used his window spell one more time to
make sure that Connor was actually all right. His brother looked winded,
but he'd taken no wound from the wyvern---who he probably owed for
getting to the cup so fast, since he'd skipped some of the more
obviously twisty passage by going through its garden---and the star-like
lights had dissipated.

Fleur shook her hair out, blinked, and grasped the situation with one
glance. Harry saw her mouth twist, but she walked towards Connor and
shook his hand, murmuring a few words too soft for Harry to make out.
Connor smiled at her and squeezed her wrist for a moment, blushing as
she smiled back.

Krum had to gather himself for a few moments, probably to master his
disappointment, but he inclined his head shortly at Connor. Connor
nodded at him and said something about ``wonderful Seeker,'' which made
Krum grunt.

``The Champion of the Triwizard Tournament,'' said Karkaroff, in that
same deceptively resonant voice he'd used before, ``is Connor Potter of
Hogwarts. Will the Champions come out of the maze, please?''

Connor was content to follow Fleur's lead along the path she'd taken,
Harry saw. He still looked dazed. He had come very far from making an
embarrassment of himself, Harry thought, nearly ready to burst with
pride. He'd \emph{won}, and that was something that not even Harry had
expected.

He felt Draco hug him exuberantly, and he gave him an absent hug back.
His attention was fixed on his brother, and getting to the front of the
maze in time to welcome him. A lot of people were crowding up behind the
judges, but Harry was sure they would let him through, once they
recognized his relationship to Connor.

They left the Slytherin stands and migrated across the Pitch, stepping
around several groups of people who were chattering in low, sullen
voices, and kept their backs turned to the maze. Harry snorted at them.
They just couldn't be happy for someone who'd won against all the odds,
could they?

Draco kept pace at his side almost all the way there, but at last shook
his head and let Harry go in front of him with an amused smile. Harry
nodded at him gratefully and then lengthened his stride. Magic helped
him dodge between grass blades and over small holes that might have
tripped him up, reaching Connor quickly.

Connor saw him and smiled like a lightning bolt. He grabbed Harry in a
tight hug, which was uncomfortable, as he hadn't let go of the
Tournament cup, but which Harry was more than willing to endure. ``Thank
you,'' he whispered into Harry's ear. ``I couldn't have done this
without you.''

Harry couldn't deny that, since he'd taught so many of those spells to
Connor, and hugged his brother fiercely back. Then he stepped out of the
way, since the other judges were coming forward to congratulate Connor.
Madame Maxime in particular had her hand out, seeming to decide that she
should be the epitome of graciousness, no matter how much she might wish
her own Champion had won.

``A shame Viktor did not get it,'' said Karkaroff, from behind Harry.
``Alas, that he was too slow.'' He sounded more resigned than angry.

Harry grinned at Karkaroff, willing to forget their usual guarded
conversation in the wake of his brother's triumph. ``It was a good try,
though. I'm sure he would have been a worthy winner.''

Karkaroff nodded. ``I would have enjoyed congratulating him,'' he
sighed. ``But I should not have thought he would win. I did not spend
enough time instructing him in the spells he would need.''

``Why not, sir?'' Harry asked, curious that Karkaroff would blame
himself. He hadn't been able to see what was happening in the maze,
after all, and he should fault Krum's slowness more than his own
instruction.

``Because I was doing other things,'' said Karkaroff, mistaking the
intent of his question. He sighed again and lowered his voice. ``Waking
the sleeper, for example.''

Harry blinked, trying to remember where he had heard that phrase for a
moment.

He was a moment too slow.

Karkaroff's right arm latched firmly around his waist. Harry tried to
lunge away, but Karkaroff's left hand was already on one of the buttons
on his robe, twisting it sharply.

Even as Harry tensed himself to resist Side-Along Apparition, the
Portkey went into motion, snatching them both from Hogwarts and bearing
them towards an unknown destination.

Harry flew, and tasted bitterness on his tongue while he listened to the
exultant laughter ringing in his ears. \emph{I was wrong. Karkaroff
hasn't forsaken his old allegiance after all. He was their sleeper.}

He did not doubt that he was going to the Death Eaters, and Voldemort.
Grimly, Harry began preparing himself for what he would find there.

\chapter{Crucio, and Worse Than Crucio}\label{chapter-76-crucio-and-worse-than-crucio}

Harry was ready when the Portkey deposited him and Karkaroff into the
middle of some cool, dark place, obviously far from Hogwarts. He reached
out with his wandless magic, ready to snatch Karkaroff's feet from
beneath him and roll him over, imprison him in a cage of blue light, and
demand that he tell Harry where they were---

And his wandless magic slammed into a barrier a few feet from him and
fell back into his body, leaving him stunned and gasping, panting in so
much pain that he didn't even notice for a moment that Karkaroff had
snatched his wand from him.

``No insolence out of you, now,'' the wizard said, as he grabbed Harry's
arm and dragged him forward. ``My lord said that you won't be any
problem, and so you won't.'' He spoke with a gay cheerfulness that Harry
now thought was much closer to his true self than the cowering mask he'd
presented.

Harry looked wildly around, trying to figure out what was going on. He
saw neat grass clipped close, and headstone after headstone. They were
in a graveyard. Of course they were. What other stronghold would
Voldemort choose?

But Harry was, at the moment, trying frantically to figure out what the
fuck kind of barrier was confining his magic.

Perhaps it had only been in the place where they landed. Harry made
another frantic bid for freedom, thinking that he wanted Karkaroff's
left hand, which gripped his upper arm, to start burning---

And, once again, something threw his magic back into his body, harder
this time. Harry doubled over, gasping, and stumbled. Karkaroff grunted
at him in annoyance, and then picked him up and gripped him in a hold
that Harry couldn't remember having learned, one that afforded him no
chance to slip free.

``He's stubborn, my lord,'' Karkaroff called ahead into the darkness.
``Keeps trying to use his magic even when he knows he can't.''

Voldemort's voice responded, slick and cold, sharp, the first time that
Harry had ever heard his voice in person since first year. ``Potter
would be like that. Bring him here, Igor.''

Karkaroff bore forward. Harry used his eyes on the headstones and
monuments they passed---rounded markers, angels, a few rearing blocks
carved with words that blurred past too quickly for him to make
out---looking in vain for some sign of wards that would explain his
weakness.

Then they rounded a final corner, and Karkaroff carried Harry towards a
gravestone marked with neatly cut words and half-overgrown with tangled
weeds.

\emph{Tom Riddle.}

Harry began to have a dim idea, then, of what kind of ritual Voldemort
had brought him here to do. His stomach revolted, and he managed a few
kicks before Karkaroff tightened his grasp so that even that was
impossible.

On the ground next to the headstone was a large block of red-black stone
that Harry didn't think was native to the graveyard. Beside it crouched
a woman whom Harry recognized as Bellatrix Lestrange when she looked up.
Her face was distorted with a creeping madness greater than she had ever
worn, but she smiled at him gently.

``It won't be long now, baby,'' she said, and went back to wielding a
silver knife awkwardly over something small and furry with her left
hand.

Beside her was the chair that Harry knew contained the Dark Lord.
Karkaroff dropped to a knee in front of it and held Harry close,
twisting his neck so that he was forced to look closely at Voldemort.

Harry's scar burst into fire, a pain so sudden and devastating that he
couldn't even cry out.

``Hello, Harry,'' said Voldemort, and stirred a bit. Harry could see
that his skin was red-black, the same color as the stone in front of the
grave marker. His arms and legs were thin and wispy, like pieces of
seaweed attached to a great fish. His eyes were hungry and staring, as
red as the brighter parts of his skin. ``So long I've waited,''
Voldemort whispered. ``So long I've waited for this.''

Harry managed to roll under the pain of his scar. Lily's techniques for
resisting torture ran through his head, in the calm voice his mother had
always adopted when she recited them. \emph{Don't let the pain break
you. Do whatever you can to get used to it and move to another level.
Moments when they keep you at the same amount of pain are a blessing,
because they allow you to adjust. Don't be afraid to scream.}

He managed to say, forcing his jaw slowly open, ``Didn't
know\ldots{}that you wanted me\ldots{}instead of my brother.''

Voldemort laughed, and Harry did scream this time as his scar lashed
pain down from his forehead through his cheeks and his face, making him
feel as though his teeth had turned to embers. Bellatrix laughed, too,
rocking back and forth on her knees and clapping her left hand into her
hidden right wrist, and Karkaroff gave a deep, rumbling belly chuckle
that nearly made him drop Harry. Harry tensed, ready to seize the chance
if it happened again, but he didn't think it would.

``Oh, Harry,'' said Voldemort, his laughter trailing off into squeals
like a dying pig. ``The time for such pretense is past. I know that you
were the one who bounced my curse thirteen years ago and condemned me to
a lifetime of suffering. \emph{Your} lifetime, Harry. And that time is
nearly over. The debt is nearly paid.'' His voice surged with pride and
deepened to something more like a hiss than a squeal. ``As for why I can
hold you so effortlessly\ldots{}Bella, show him what you have with
you.''

``Certainly, my lord,'' said Bellatrix, and then turned and drew a
silvery tray resting on the ground beside her forward.

Harry grunted when he saw the objects there, so much did they shock him.
He recognized the ring made of ice enchanted not to melt, the triangular
piece of ebony, the green stone, the red stone, the crystalline
five-pointed stars\ldots{}

Voldemort had performed a corrupted truce-dance. He was near the middle
of it now, from the number of gifts, and that would mean---

Harry's eyes rose and shot over the gravestones to the faint, going
gleam of the sun in the distance.

Sunset, on Midsummer Day.

\emph{Watch the sun}.

Harry could feel his breath rushing fiercely up his throat as he gagged.
The pain of his scar was not greater than his fear now, which made his
nose ache and his stomach heave with bile.

Voldemort had tied his power to the sun. He must have begun it with the
last Midsummer Day, the very day that James took Harry and Connor to the
beach to perform the Potter ritual for the first time. So long as it
remained sunset, he would have the power to enforce his will, and
obviously, he now wanted Harry's magic bound.

Harry wanted to scream as his mind raced back along the line of the
year, and certain coincidences that were not coincides at all came
forward and hamstrung him.

Regulus had vanished from his mind on the autumnal equinox, at sunset on
the autumnal equinox, the very moment when light and darkness ceased to
be equal and the power went to the night.

He had come back on the vernal equinox, again at sunset, as the light
returned to the world and lessened Voldemort's power.

\emph{I am an idiot.}

The only thing Harry could not account for was the lack of Voldemort's
activity at Midwinter, the darkest part of the year and the one time
when he would have even more power than Midsummer. But he suspected that
Voldemort might have been lying low, or performing some ritual with
effects that Harry wouldn't feel. It was perfectly possible, given how
preoccupied he had been with certain other events at the same time.

``Now you understand,'' Voldemort said, and laughed aloud. Bellatrix
joined him again, and Karkaroff, and another figure striding out from
behind a tall stone angel. Harry lifted his head and saw Evan Rosier
smiling at him, his fingers idly twirling his wand. ``Corruption,
indeed,'' said Voldemort, when he was done, ``but I have had patience,
and I have waited, honoring the cycle of the sun. In this moment, the
day of longest light itself will serve my plans. For as long as it is
sunset.'' His voice altered. ``Igor, Evan. Tie him to the stone.''

Karkaroff nodded and turned around. Rosier was already in front of him,
whispering and performing an incantation that made straps sprout from
the four corners of the makeshift altar. Karkaroff forced Harry flat,
and though he kicked and squirmed and tried to get away, he and Rosier
were able to bind him spread-eagle, held firmly enough that there was no
chance he could get away.

Harry caught Rosier's eye as he adjusted the strap around his left
wrist, and whispered, for the sake of trying to keep his mind off what
was coming, ``You told us that it was both the moon and the sun we
should watch.''

Rosier blinked a bit, then smiled and shrugged. ``I lied,'' he said. ``I
do that, you know.''

He turned in a swirl of robes and made his way over to the chair,
stooping and lifting the child-Voldemort in his arms. Behind him,
Bellatrix stood up, clutching a silvery bowl in front of her. Harry
couldn't see what was in it from this angle. Karkaroff was hastening
back from a corner of the graveyard, dragging a large cauldron with him

``Hurry,'' said Voldemort, hissing slightly as Rosier carried him over
to the western corner of Harry's stone.

``Here, my lord?'' Rosier gently set the childlike form on the ground.

``That will do, Evan. You must take the east,'' Voldemort snapped.
``Hurry! Pass Igor Bella's bowl, and \emph{hurry!}''

\emph{The moment of greatest power won't last long.} Harry tensed his
limbs and tried to buck his body to the side, but his head was the only
part of himself he could move, so tightly did the straps hold him. Once
again, his magic roared up within him, but this time, it couldn't even
move beyond the outer limits of his skin. \emph{They don't have long to
bind me, and do---whatever they're going to do with Voldemort. I'll hurt
them again as soon as I can.}

He used thoughts like that to calm himself as he watched Rosier take up
a position to the east of him, Bellatrix to the north---behind his
head---and Karkaroff to the south, at his feet.

Karkaroff began the ritual, his voice deep and urgent. ``We bespeak the
powers of the sun, the powers our lord has honored for the past year. By
the power of the south and the summer, we offer the bone of the
father.'' He scraped up a handful of white dust and poured it into the
cauldron near him, which bubbled and smoked.

Harry stared. \emph{Bone of the father\ldots{}they opened Tom Riddle's
grave and removed it?} Once again, he had to gag on his own bile.

Rosier spoke, sounding less urgent than Karkaroff, even a bit amused.
``We bespeak the powers of the sun, the powers our lord has honored for
the past year. By the power of the east and the spring, we offer the
heritage of the enemy.''

He lifted something he'd taken from his robe pocket and blew it forward.
Harry's heart constricted when he saw that it was a small boat, its
sides made of parchment and its sail constructed of what looked like
Slytherin green cloth. The twig holding the sail would be yew, he
guessed, symbol of resurrection. The boat drifted along as though
carried by an invisible wave, and plunged into the cauldron. More smoke,
more bubbles emerged, and then an invisible force like a steel bar
lashed across the middle of Harry's chest. He could not have spoken now
even if he tried.

He could feel the power rising around him, deep and primeval, twisted
Light magic, powerful as the Dark magic at Walpurgis had been. He
remembered his father telling him that sunrise and sunset at Midsummer
were moments of great power. For a moment, he had to close his eyes.

Bellatrix spoke in an oddly pretty voice, more feminine than anything
Harry had ever heard from her. ``We bespeak the powers of the sun, the
powers our lord has honored for the past year. By the power of the north
and the winter, we offer the flesh of the servant.''

Harry opened his eyes in time to see Karkaroff tip the silver bowl
Bellatrix had given him. Slivers of skin, with muscle and flesh still
attached, slid down and into the cauldron. Harry shivered as a deep,
foul smell filled the graveyard. \emph{Did Bellatrix cut those off her
own arm? She must have.}

Voldemort's voice spoke, filled with the feverish excitement of a child.
``We bespeak the powers of the sun, the powers I have honored for the
past year. By the power of the west and the autumn, I offer the blood of
the enemy.''

Harry thought he was prepared for anything, but that ended up not
including the slight scramble of hands on stone and Voldemort climbing
onto his chest. Voldemort stared down at him with gleaming red eyes for
a long moment, and then chose his target and opened his mouth. His teeth
were jutting things, spikes, barbs.

He bit into Harry's left shoulder, ripping down and hard to the side.

Harry screamed, forcing the sound around the two crushing weights on his
lungs. He felt blood pour out of the wound, but what hurt most was the
way those barbed teeth grabbed and caught and pinched at his flesh like
hooks even as they worked their way out of it. He bucked and shuddered,
and Voldemort slid towards the side of his chest, staring at him all the
while. Harry's scar began to burn again, and this was the most physical
pain he'd ever been in in his life.

``Evan,'' said Voldemort.

Rosier took a single stride forward, dipped a bowl into Harry's blood,
picked up Voldemort with the other hand, and then turned towards the
cauldron. Harry lifted his head and forced his eyes to focus through the
haze of tears, wanting to see what happened. It might be important
later. Maybe there was some way to reverse the ritual.

Rosier ceremoniously poured the blood into the cauldron. Then, not so
ceremoniously, he tossed Voldemort in.

Harry stared as the baby-shape vanished. The smoke that immediately
boiled free from the cauldron engulfed them all, and Harry had to close
his eyes as it stung at them. The pain of his wound immediately sprang
back to his attention and throbbed fiercely at him. Almost worse than
the agony was the sheer sense of \emph{violation}. Voldemort had bitten
him, torn part of him away, disrupted the integrity of his body. Harry
felt faint and sick, and not sure that he could have summoned his
wandless magic even if the moment of sunset had passed and he were free.

The smoke soaring from the cauldron rose higher and higher, and Harry
stiffened in shock as he heard a thin call breaking from it. It sounded
like the wail of a baby, coming closer and closer.

Then the sound was in the graveyard with them, and it was no longer the
cry of a baby, but the laughter of a man who just happened to have a
high voice.

Harry felt power erupt from the cauldron as though it were a cresting
wave, and lap over the headstones. He was shaking, vibrating, under the
onrush of it. It was Voldemort's magic, and unless Harry was much
mistaken, it was now \emph{stronger} than it had been when he faced the
bastard in first year. Voldemort's laughter rose with it, slick and
dark, high and cold, like glass over stone.

Then a shape moved in the smoke, and Voldemort climbed out of the
cauldron.

Harry had seen him as he was in the Pensieve memory of that night in
Godric's Hollow. He looked much the same now: smooth, pale skin; a flat
face without a projecting nose; thin lips; glaring red eyes. His hands
patted at his body as Bellatrix rushed forward with a dark green robe to
cloak him. Harry watched those spider-like fingers fluttering, and
wished he could muster the breath or the strength for a scream of
defiance.

``Yes, yes,'' said Voldemort, softly, as though he were well-satisfied
with his body. ``This is what I should look like.''

He lifted his head, and his eyes locked on Harry's.

Harry felt, helpless to stop it, the curling claws of Legilimency
ripping into his mind. He was a practiced Occlumens, but nowhere near as
strong as Snape, and his defenses were further lowered by his shock and
his pain and his lack of any means to defend himself. Voldemort studied
Harry's memories, whatever he was looking at, in great interest. He
moved too quickly through his mind for Harry to see more than a flashing
glimpse of shapes and colors.

``Interesting, indeed,'' said Voldemort a moment later, when he had
withdrawn from Harry's mind and left him shaking, violated once more.
``There will be five Death Eaters not returning to us, then.''

``Five, my lord?'' Bellatrix looked up at him from where she knelt at
his feet, once again moving the silver knife up and down over the small
animal. Harry had no heart to try and see what it was. He turned his
head as much as he could to watch the sunset bleeding in from the west,
cursing, now, the fact that sunset on the Solstice was long and slow.

``Severus,'' said Voldemort, hissing on that name. ``Lucius. Hawthorn.
Adalrico. And Peter.'' He cocked his head to the side, eyes locked on
Harry's for a moment. ``And Mulciber was betraying me in the moments
before he died. It seems that our Mr. Potter here has a talent for
convincing my servants. That shall not matter, after this night.''

He turned. ``Igor, your arm!''

``My lord.'' Karkaroff stepped forward, baring the Dark Mark on his left
forearm. He sank to one knee, bowing his head, as Voldemort touched it.

Harry felt a call whip out from the Mark in the direction of the wider
world, passing through the power that sealed the graveyard against
Harry's use of his magic---and, he guessed, the appearance of any of his
allies, or else they would have been here by now---as if it didn't
exist. Voldemort tilted his head back, and whisper-hissed words that
Harry could hardly make out.

``My loyal Death Eaters. Loyal to me, to no other, hear and heed the call
of your master, and \emph{come to me!}''

Harry had no doubt that the Death Eaters would be here soon. Voldemort
meant to kill him in front of an audience.

\emph{If he will only delay until the moment of sunset is past, then I
will give him a good fight.} Harry was not sure that he could actually
win. Voldemort's magic was everywhere around him, and he was reminded,
if he had ever forgotten it, that the Dark Lord was stronger than he
was. So much raw magic, of a temper entirely different from Harry's own,
clawed and fanged and of a quickness that saw exactly what to do to make
things hurt most.

Harry lay there, and waited, and hoped against hope that Snape would not
try to follow the Dark Mark's call. He would be killed the moment he
appeared, or, at best, held for torture later. The same thing would
happen to any of his allies. Harry closed his eyes, and hoped, and tried
to gather his strength against the aching anguish of the wound on his
shoulder.

Someone moved close to him, and Harry opened his eyes, expecting to see
Voldemort looming over him. Instead, Rosier crouched there, examining
the bond on his left wrist to see how tight it was. Harry waited. He had
no idea what to expect, now. Perhaps Rosier would loosen the strap.

He didn't do that, but he did smile at Harry, his dark eyes gleaming
like daggers, and he said, ``Everything is a game, Mr. Potter.''

Harry recognized the phrase from the last letter Rosier had sent, but he
didn't see what that had to do with anything. ``Yes, you said,'' he
murmured, turning his face aside. Rosier gripped it by the chin and
turned it back. Harry jerked away as much as he could, though at the
price of knocking his head on the stone and making his wound flare with
hungry pain. His skin pimpled with disgust and distaste where the Death
Eater had touched him.

Other Death Eaters were Apparating in now, constant sharp \emph{cracks}
making sure that Rosier's voice would not travel far from Harry's ear as
he whispered, ``You would do well to remember that. \emph{Everything} is
the game, do you understand, Mr. Potter? Every move that someone makes.
Every word that he speaks. Every action he seems to take to proclaim his
allegiance.''

``I am not playing,'' Harry snapped.

Rosier raised his eyebrows. ``Of course you are, Potter. The only ones
who are not playing are dead.'' He winked, and then rose and swirled
away from Harry to take his place in the circle forming around the
stone.

Harry lifted his head and studied the Death Eaters in their anonymous
dark robes and white masks, since he had nothing else better to do. He
recognized the shapes of many more men than women, some squat and bulky,
most of them more slender and moving with the innate, trained pureblood
grace. Harry wrinkled his nose. There were Muggleborns and halfbloods
who served Voldemort, of course, but these all seemed to be of the
pureblood stock, with their useless prejudices and their memories of
life lived to a higher standard that could only be had by actually
\emph{living} it, not following the actions of a monstrous madman.

Harry had not thought he would despise them so much. Perhaps he would
not have, had he not, in many respects, been raised pureblood. He knew
exactly what they were turning their backs on, what dances and history
they claimed to respect and want back. Of course, they didn't want to
have to live by those dances themselves, which would have demanded much
harder negotiations with a Lord like Voldemort, rather than simply
surrendering to his will. They merely wanted the world cleared of people
who definitely didn't live by them.

Harry felt scorn coiling like a hot serpent in his belly, and used that
to ride out the newest wave of pain from his wound.

In time, the \emph{cracks} ceased, and the circle of Death Eaters
tightened around Voldemort. He stood in silence for a moment, surveying
them, and then nodded once.

``I have returned,'' he said. ``\emph{Kneel.}'' The word was a command,
but, more than that, Harry noticed, an edge of compulsion rode it. He
tugged at his bonds, wishing he could be free somehow. Then they might
notice that at least one person wasn't kneeling to this Dark Lord who
was misusing his power.

Everyone fell to one knee without hesitation, save Karkaroff, who was
already kneeling by Voldemort's side. Voldemort smiled at them. Harry
shuddered. His teeth were more horrible now than they had been when he
crawled onto Harry's chest and bit him, because they appeared to fit
more naturally into his mouth.

``I have returned,'' Voldemort repeated softly, stroking Karkaroff's
arm, ``because of the loyalty of Bellatrix Lestrange, Evan Rosier, and
our very own sleeper, who spent years making the enemy trust him and
despise him and think him weak.'' He clenched his hand down. ``Rise,
Igor Karkaroff, Headmaster of Durmstrang, Occlumens and Legilimens.''

Karkaroff stood. His face had entirely transformed now, Harry saw, and
it was relaxed and confident. He stood as though the idea of cowering
had never occurred to him. He turned and bowed to Voldemort, his eyes
fixing briefly on Harry. Their glance shone with mirth.

``No one has suspected me, my lord,'' he said. ``I can assure you of
that. And within Durmstrang even now are a small clutch of fledgling
Death Eaters, wanting nothing more than to serve the great Lord of whom
they have heard so much.'' He bowed again, and stood there like that
until Voldemort whispered to him.

``Rise.''

Karkaroff looked up.

``I am much pleased with you, Igor,'' said Voldemort, and Karkaroff
nodded to him and fell back to join the rest of the circle. Voldemort
turned and scanned the circle slowly for a moment, then said, ``I am not
so pleased with some of the rest of you. Crabbe. Come to me.''

One of the heavyset figures gave what looked like a start, and then took
a step forward. Voldemort's voice snapped out at once, like breaking
ice. ``Did I give you permission to \emph{walk} to me? \emph{Crawl}.''

The figure went down at once, and Harry watched in disgust as Vincent's
father crawled forward to the hem of Voldemort's robes. Voldemort let
him get that far before he gestured with the long yew wand that
Bellatrix or Karkaroff must have handed him when Harry wasn't looking
and said, ``\emph{Crucio.}''

Crabbe began to writhe and scream under the curse. Harry forced himself
to watch as the robe flew back and forth, revealing pale skin underneath
it, and as Crabbe's limbs jerked and convulsed. He would be suffering
the curse himself in a short time, he thought, and this way at least
someone was witness to the suffering of others, as they would be witness
to his. It was an odd bond to have with the Death Eaters he despised,
but there it was.

Voldemort ended the curse when a line of drool began to run from
Crabbe's mouth to the ground, and said, ``You thought I would not
return, did you not, Vincent? You believed that you were free of the
service you once swore your life to. You are not, and never shall be.
You will take your son at once from Hogwarts, Vincent, and raise him
properly to be a Death Eater and follow me. I intend for him to have the
Mark before a year from tonight.'' For a moment, he turned his head, his
eyes gleaming as they fastened on Harry. ``And I intend his first victim
to be Draco Malfoy.''

Harry gave another great heave against his bonds, but it was useless.
Rosier had certainly not loosened them. He watched in helplessness as
Voldemort sent Crabbe, blubbering protestations of loyalty, back to the
circle, and then summoned and tortured a few others who appeared not to
have pleased him. All of them broke and cried under the pain. Voldemort
gave all of them tasks---mostly trying to recruit other Dark pureblood
families---and sent them back into the circle.

Harry memorized the information, and watched the sun.

\emph{Voldemort doesn't intend for me to survive, but I will, in spite
of him, and then this information will be important.}

``And now,'' said Voldemort, his voice oddly sprightly, ``we have a new
Death Eater to be initiated. Cynthia Whitecheek, come forward.''

Harry blinked as the brown-haired woman he had seen in his vision
crawled out from the shadows, more flexible and graceful on all fours
than most of the Death Eaters had been. She halted at Voldemort's feet
and tilted her head up. Harry could see her crazed eyes fix on his face,
and she took a long, deep sniff, as though she appreciated the
snake-like scent that hung around him.

``Cynthia Whitecheek,'' said Voldemort, ``werewolf, consort of Fenrir
Greyback, do you consent to serve me all the days of your life?''

``I do,'' said Whitecheek, her voice a growl.

``And do you consent to be loyal to me, putting my goals and not your
own first, for as long as you shall live and carry the Dark Mark?''
Voldemort held out his wand near her left arm. There was no robe sleeve
for the werewolf to push back, since she was naked.

``I do.'' Whitecheek held up her arm, steadily.

``Do you consent to wear my Mark upon your skin, and take no steps to
remove or alter it?'' Voldemort's voice was barely a whisper now.

``I do.''

Voldemort laughed, and then shouted, ``\emph{Morsmordre!}''

Whitecheek howled as a jet of black light shot from Voldemort's wand and
coalesced on her arm, weaving into the snake and skull. Harry watched it
form and tried not to care, tried to make his mind float in a distant
place from his body, but he knew what happened next, from reading the
histories of Voldemort's War, and his panting shook him.

``Your service is sealed in flesh,'' said Voldemort. ``Let it be sealed
in blood.'' He nodded over his shoulder, and Fenrir Greyback appeared,
bereft of his mask. By the arm, he pulled a small boy. Harry guessed he
was about eight years old, and couldn't tell if he was Muggle or wizard.

\emph{Did it matter? They are going to kill} a child.

Harry threw himself furiously against his bonds, grunting. They did not
give. He reached out relentlessly, again and again, with his magic,
testing the barriers, hitting them, and falling back with an effort that
made his eyes blur and his head swim.

Voldemort eyed him, and laughed, and Harry's scar burst into enough pain
to cloud his vision even further.

Nevertheless, he saw the moment when Greyback released the dazed,
sobbing boy, and Whitecheek edged forward, growling, then charged.

The boy tried to run.

Whitecheek was on him in moments, burying his small body beneath her own
larger one. Harry watched, because he could do nothing else, and the boy
should have at least a witness to his death. He saw yellowed teeth flash
and bite down, tearing off the boy's right ear.

The boy screamed, so much pain in that sound, so much hurt that he
couldn't understand the reason for. Harry, half-maddened, threw himself
against the bonds again. Nothing happened at all.

Whitecheek tilted the boy's head to the side and used her thumb to pop
out one of his eyes. She swallowed that, while the child wailed and
pleaded, gone beyond coherent words now into one senseless world of
agony. Whitecheek wasn't trying to torture him, Harry knew. She had no
interest in prolonging the kill. She was eating him, and that was quite
bad enough.

Whitecheek rolled the boy over, gripped the skin of his throat in her
teeth, and ripped her head sharply to the side. Wail, and scream, and
gurgle, and then the sound was drowned in blood, as the boy's jugular
split and he died. Whitecheek lowered her head, rubbing her face in the
blood, licking at it frantically, as though she didn't want any of it to
escape. Then she rolled on her back, bathing her hair in it, and drew
one of the boy's arms to her mouth so that she might bite off his
fingers.

``Well done,'' said Voldemort, while Harry panted and felt his gorge and
his guilt rise, ``my newest disciple.''

Whitecheek looked up at him, and then rolled on her back, baring her
belly in submission. Voldemort laughed, and gestured for Greyback to
cover her with the robe he held. The other werewolf hurried to do so,
murmuring in her ear. Then they turned and began feeding on the boy
together.

Harry closed his eyes, because he could now, and guilt was eating him
like a werewolf of his very own.

\emph{He died. He died right in front of you.}

\emph{And you did} nothing.

Harry didn't think it really mattered that his magic was bound. He
should have done \emph{something}. What was the good of having all this
power, if he couldn't even use it to save a child?

``And now,'' said Voldemort, ``we have another entertainment planned for
you, my loyal servants. A matter of vengeance, too long delayed.''

Harry sat on the guilt and lifted his head, fixing his eyes on
Voldemort. \emph{He's going to duel me. He must. He wants to. And then
I'll be free.} The sun was still setting, but it could not be very long
now before it set completely, and the barriers on Harry's magic would
fall.

Bellatrix crept forward to kneel at Voldemort's feet, staring into his
face. ``May I?'' she whispered. ``Oh, my lord, may I?''

Voldemort nodded, with a smile, at her. Bellatrix stood up and came
towards Harry. Harry braced himself to resist a few \emph{Crucios} from
her wand.

``Oh, and Bella?'' Voldemort asked.

Bellatrix turned and looked back at him.

Voldemort smiled, a sharper chop of his mouth than he had shown so far.
``Leave him his wand hand.''

Dim, crawling horror woke in Harry, as at the approach of a fanged
beast, when Bellatrix said, with a simper, ``Of course, my lord.''

She turned towards him, and in her left hand she carried a knife.

Harry tried to struggle. He might as well have tried to push the world
off course. He had to lie there as Bellatrix knelt next to him and held
up the blade, admiring it. It shone and sparkled with an edge that Harry
suspected must have come from the mysterious incantations that she put
into it.

``You took my right hand,'' she whispered to him. ``It seems only right
that I should claim a similar price from you. But since my lord wants me
to leave you your wand hand, and that is your right one\ldots{}'' She
shrugged, and let out a little giggle. ``One must make do.''

Voldemort moved to stand at the foot of the stone as Harry kept
struggling, arching his back and chest up. Voldemort observed him in
silence for a moment, amused. Under the direct glare of those red eyes,
Harry felt his scar begin to burn again.

Then Voldemort drew his own wand and whispered, ``\emph{Crucio.}''

Pain broke out in the middle of Harry's chest and raced up and down. He
couldn't convulse to relieve it as Crabbe could, so closely was he held.
He could barely tell when it joined with the agony radiating downward
from his scar.

He felt the moment when Bellatrix took hold of his left hand and began
to cut through his wrist, though, notwithstanding that the tightness of
the straps should have numbed his circulation.

He screamed.

Voldemort laughed.

The \emph{Crucio} burned.

The scar flamed.

Bellatrix cut.

Harry felt himself falling deeper and deeper into the pain. Lily's voice
whispered in his head---\emph{Don't let it break you, ride it, roll
under it, rise above it---}but the words no longer mattered. Everything
was pain, glowing incandescent red-and-black, rolling like stormclouds
above him. Everything \emph{hurt,} it hurt so much\ldots{}

He screamed.

Voldemort laughed.

The \emph{Crucio} burned.

The scar flamed.

Bellatrix cut.

There was a bottom to the pain, and Harry hit it as he felt the bone and
flesh begin to part. The knife bore straight down, and carried him to
that point. Harry knew that he was not going to be able to do anything
to stop it, even as he could not have done anything to stop the eating
of the boy by Whitecheek.

His rage boiled, and then dived straight down into him with a scream.

He screamed.

Voldemort laughed.

The \emph{Crucio} burned.

The scar flamed.

Bellatrix cut.

Harry felt his wrist part with a snapping, snarling sound, and knew his
left hand was gone. He knew it, as much as anything, by the sudden
increase of his hatred, by the way his wandless magic gathered and
rushed towards what seemed like an escape from his body---

And found it only a trap, as it sparked and spun and spat out of
control. Harry tried to harness it, reaching for the instinctive command
he'd gained of it over the past two years, and it escaped him, running
through his grasp like water.

Harry understood a moment later, in a single, despairing breath. He had
bound his wandless magic so closely to his body, kept it so fastened to
his skin, that a change in the structure of his body, a permanent hole
opened like that, made it spill out wildly, untamed, unfathomable. He
had lost control of his power, and there seemed to be no getting it back
any time soon.

He screamed.

Bellatrix laughed, and Voldemort laughed, and moved away from the stone,
lessening the pain from the scar and dismissing the \emph{Crucio} with a
flick of his wrist. Harry turned his head, inch by inch, to see the hand
Bellatrix held.

She smiled at him, and then gestured with her knife and whispered
something. Harry cried out again as the spell cauterized his wound,
preventing the bleeding from killing him and sealing his wrist as a
stump.

He hoped that might help him regain control of his magic, but no such
luck. It only went on spilling out of him, spitting uselessly, creating
small whirlwinds in the grass. Harry tried to tell it to untie his
bonds, to strike at Voldemort, to hit and kill Bellatrix.

Nothing happened. The magic did not have to listen to him, so it did
not.

Panting, more helpless than he had ever been, with his wrist on fire,
Harry stared as Bellatrix whispered to him.

``I've put spells on the knife, baby, incantations I worked months on.
You'll never be able to fasten a hand on that ugly stump again. No spell
will take, every false hand will fall off, and mediwizardry will just
slide off it.'' Bellatrix laughed aloud, and then held up the hand she'd
cut off.

``As for what I'm going to do with this, that's another part of the
incantations.''

She slid back her sleeve, and Harry saw the ruin of her right hand,
where he'd severed her wrist with the \emph{Sectumsempra}. Other slivers
of flesh were gone from it, too, where she'd cut the meat and muscle
from her arm for Voldemort's resurrection. She slid Harry's hand down to
rest against the arm, and then chanted three sharp words that Harry
didn't think were Latin.

His hand squirmed, and melted, and changed shape, and turned in the
other direction. It was a right hand that settled against Bellatrix's
right wrist and melted into it, until only the different color of her
skin let Harry tell where his old hand had begun. Bellatrix smiled at
him, and shook her fingers, and took the knife into her right hand.

``A pity I will not get to do anything else with you,'' she whispered.
``My lord wants to duel with you, and will give you back your wand.''

Harry turned his head to see Voldemort standing there, Harry's cypress
wand in one hand, a smile on his mouth.

``Come, Potter,'' he said, and broke Harry's bonds with nonverbal
severing spells. ``We will dance.''

Without control of his wandless magic, Harry knew, Voldemort would kill
him. He would die here, with so much left unaccomplished, suffering from
the pain they caused him, and Voldemort would be free to walk the world
again and cause more suffering, especially if Harry really had been the
Boy-Who-Lived that the prophecy had chosen.

He would die.

And he would not be able to help anyone anymore.

The diving, screaming pain in him hit the icicle cage in which he'd
confined his Dark fury and broke it wide open. Harry felt the emotions
spill through him, making his face contort and his right hand---his only
hand, now---reach out and catch the wand that Voldemort threw him.

He \emph{hated}.

Oh, how he \emph{hated} them.

There would be no one coming to save him this time, Harry knew, no one
who would prevent him from unleashing his rage and hatred as he had done
against Umbridge and against Lily. No Snape, no Draco to bring him back.
He would die here, spending himself in fury and loathing.

And part of him---the part that had screamed at his own uselessness when
he lay there watching the boy die under Whitecheek, the part that was
sickened by his own folly in not controlling his wandless magic some
other way, the part that had opened the cage and let the fury out---was
fiercely glad of it.

\chapter{Deep Death Waits}\label{chapter-77-deep-death-waits}

\emph{I never knew,} Harry thought, as he stepped away from the altar
and approached Voldemort with his wand clutched tightly in his hand,
\emph{that I could hate this much.}

The hatred stole his breath. It rushed and throbbed in him like another
heartbeat, or like the love that his mother had once trained him to have
for Connor. It was everywhere he looked, making the sight of the
gravestones or the Death Eaters pale into insignificance next to the two
largest things in his life. There was Voldemort, and there was his
pain---the one present in front of Harry, the other something he wanted
to achieve.

Voldemort watched him come, head cocked to the side, smile lazy. His
voice, when he spoke, was low and had just a slight twist that Harry
knew meant he was probably speaking in Parseltongue.

``Do you not understand what will happen here, Harry? You are done with.
Your chances are dead. Your magic is spilling out of you, and will run
wild until you die at the end of my wand.'' He lifted his own wand
slightly. ``And there is no doubt that you will die. Have you thought
about what our respective wands are made of?''

Harry halted a few feet from him and stared at him in silence. He didn't
say anything back. He didn't think that Voldemort wanted a response, and
besides, he couldn't have given one. The words would have emerged from
his mouth not as words, but as a shriek. He could feel the magic he
still had control of, the magic that could be channeled through a wand,
gathering itself like a leopard ready to spring.

Voldemort swung his wand back and forth. ``My wand is yew,'' he said.
``Symbol of resurrection, of returning from death. And the phoenix
feather within it is simply an extra promise. I was always going to
return, Harry, and I was always going to defeat you.''

``Whereas \emph{yours\ldots{}}'' Voldemort made a grotesque motion with
his mouth that Harry supposed was symbolic of curling his lip, since he
had no lip to actually curl. ``Your wand is cypress, Harry. Do you know
the legend of cypress? It is the death tree. Cut it once, and it grows
not again. The branches are hung in mourning, and for remembrance.''
Voldemort lifted his wand higher, smiling. ``I shall enjoy facing and
hurting you one more time, my young nemesis. But remember. This was only
ever going to end one way.''

He moved a step forward and swung his wand in a sharp cutting motion.
``\emph{Imperio!}''

Harry opened his mouth as the Unforgivable Curse hit him. He was
laughing, but the laughter sounded like nothing he'd ever heard before.
It was the choking sound of an animal dying in a trap.

He felt only intense contempt, flaying his throat from the inside out as
it rose.

\emph{Does he think to take me with} that? \emph{Does he really think my
will can bend now?}

The Imperius Curse hit his shields and faded into oblivion. Harry raised
his eyebrows to Voldemort's stunned stare and smiled mockingly. This
time, he thought he could manage to speak, and in fact, words came out
when he strained for them. ``I'm not bowing to you, \emph{Tom.}''

As he had suspected it might, the name made Voldemort bare his teeth in
a silent snarl. He spoke in Parseltongue instead of English, again, his
voice a low and intimate hiss. Harry wondered, faintly, if even
\emph{Voldemort} thought his words were ridiculous, and that was the
reason he was speaking like this, instead of announcing it in such a way
that all his Death Eaters could understand. ``You have no idea what you
are doing, boy. You will pay in a thousand waves of pain for every
insult you have flung at me.''

Harry lifted his head. He could feel hatred pouring from him in waves,
as though he had just climbed out of a dark ocean. It was wonderful how
it felt not to care about anything anymore, not to know or feel it when
he surpassed a boundary. He was out of control anyway, his greatest
weapon still spilling uselessly from his cauterized wrist. Why should he
give a damn?

He aimed his wand at Voldemort, and called. His wand magic, old,
faithful friend, the one he'd mastered long before he tried wandless,
came rushing at his call as he whispered the words, remembering the
beach last summer.

``\emph{Accendo intra cruore.}''

The Blood-Burning Curse came from him easily, fluidly, and he saw
Voldemort's eyes go briefly wide before he waved his wand and countered
it. Harry didn't mind. He'd expected that this would be no easy fight.
Voldemort was newly returned to power, and he had always had more
strength than Harry did. The trick was to keep moving, and to have
another spell at the ready on your lips, and he did.

\emph{That acquaintance with Rosier was quite useful, after all.}

``\emph{Cor cordium flammae!}''

Voldemort hissed briefly, but countered it with a spell that Harry had
never heard of, and which made him decide that Lucius must have been
lying about there being no countercurse to Burning Heart but from
another wizard's wand. Harry shrugged lightly. He didn't care.
Everything around him felt light, drifting, and he didn't know why he'd
been so frightened of madness in the first place. He was going to die,
Voldemort had seen to that, so why shouldn't he have some fun before he
went?

``\emph{Crucio},'' he cast, and the hatred was there to fuel the
Unforgivable, and, perhaps because Voldemort hadn't been expecting it,
that actually made him stagger for a bit. Then he dismissed it with a
\emph{Finite} and glared hard at Harry.

It came to Harry that he had an advantage in being so much smaller and
lighter, and he really should use that. As Voldemort cast a Blasting
Curse at him, he dropped to the ground and rolled behind a headstone.

The headstone took the force of the curse instead, which Harry thought
was nice of it. He patted the stone in thanks, and then rose up from
behind the marker, facing Voldemort again. He had had a thought. He
turned it over in his head and admired it. It was pretty, if sharp.

``What do you think you are doing, Potter?'' Voldemort whisper-hissed.
``Do you really imagine that you can escape, even now?''

``No,'' said Harry absently. His thoughts continued to turn. He had lost
control of his wandless magic, and right now it was doing nothing more
than flashing in useless purple lights around him. But wand magic was
controlled with incantations and movements of the hand. He \emph{should}
be able to accomplish what he wanted to do, as long as he wrapped it in
a unique word and wrist movement. Intention was usually a third
component of spells, but, given the hatred baying inside him right now,
Harry didn't think that he would have a problem with that.

``Then what are you \emph{doing}?''

``Hurting you,'' said Harry, and smiled at him, and decided that he had
never heard of a spell that used this word before. Not cleaning charms,
and not mediwizardry, and not ordinary spells. And the wand
movement---hm. A quick swish to the side and then back up again at a
ninety-degree angle would work, he thought. Most spells used angles less
than that.

Harry heard himself, as if from far away, begin to hum.

Voldemort narrowed his eyes at him, but, this time, cast a spell in
Parseltongue. Harry didn't recognize it, and had no preparation against
the blow that caught his chest and began to squeeze about his lungs. It
was literally turning the air in them to something else, he thought from
his distance. Perhaps lead.

He concentrated, and said \emph{Finite Incantatem} in his head, moving
his wand in the proper motion. That spell was an old one, learned early
in his training, and nonverbal magic was still magic that had to be done
with a wand, most of the time. The sensation in his chest faded.

Yes, his word and his wrist movement were ready, and the intention aimed
itself as Harry began to walk towards Voldemort.

Why not?

Harry lifted his wand. He could almost feel the dragon heartstring core
tingle as he released his power in a stream through it, and he sang out
the word he had chosen for his spell. ``\emph{Exsculpo!}''

The spell was new, and for just a moment, Harry could feel his magic
fighting to take the shape he wanted, seeking a familiar incantation and
not finding it. He gave a little sigh and pushed his will forward.
Really, he wanted Voldemort to suffer. Was that so hard to achieve?

The spell trembled, and then obeyed him. A jet of purple light shot from
his wand and landed on Voldemort's stomach, while the Dark Lord laughed
aloud.

``You are trying to erase me as you would a slate, boy?'' He sneered.
``It is not that easy to get rid of me.''

``Not erase,'' Harry whispered, smiling. ``That's not the only thing
that word means.''

Voldemort had exactly half a second to look suspicious before his belly
split open and the spell started trying to scoop his internal organs
out.

Harry watched as a soup of gray and green and white---and really, why he
had he expected Voldemort's insides to look at all like a normal
person's?---started to fall to the ground. Voldemort tried to cast a
healing spell on himself, but his voice was trembling with pain and
shock and, Harry suspected, wounded pride. Little boys he'd set himself
the task of killing were not supposed to do things like that.

Harry might have been content to watch and wait until Voldemort
recovered, so that he could go on chipping at the man little by little
and bit by bit, but just then something else happened.

The barriers around Harry, the ones that had bound his wandless magic in
his body until Bellatrix cut his hand off and kept his allies away from
him, fell.

Harry turned his head in that moment of deep silence, even though he
knew he didn't have to look. He already knew what he would see.

The sun had set. Voldemort's sun-tied power, enormous though it was, had
gone, and he had no ability to will Harry's magic motionless in the
graveyard anymore.

Harry felt a smile flood his face, brilliant, dazzling, strong. He knew
this was going to change nothing; he still expected Voldemort to kill
him in the end. It was inevitable. Cleverness could only hold out
against raw strength for so long, and Harry knew that this was the Dark
Lord, who had spent years on years studying Dark magics, and doing
sickening things to his body to keep himself alive at all costs. Of
course he would win any duel they had.

But, for now, Harry was free to take a more complete vengeance than he
had so far. He would give Voldemort something to remember him by.

He whistled softly, and got the attention of his wandless magic. It was
no longer under his control, but it would at least pay attention when he
called. Harry could feel its focus, as though it were a feral dog
perking its ears to a once-familiar cry and deciding whether to come.

Harry asked if it was interested in hurting someone.

Tainted by his spiraling hatred, driven mad by his pain, it was.

Harry lifted his head, and fixed his eyes on Voldemort, who had repaired
his belly. Through his eyes, from the bite on his left shoulder, from
his severed wrist, the magic exploded. Harry didn't try to master it. He
just threw a blast of absolute final force at Voldemort, and was happy
in the doing of it.

The force caught Voldemort, wrenched him twice, spun him once, and
tossed him into one of the grave markers. Harry heard a snap, though it
wasn't the sound of a breaking bone; it sounded more like a twig. When
Voldemort rolled back over, his left arm hung oddly.

Harry smiled at him.

Voldemort bared his jagged teeth in a soundless scream.

And his own magic rose around him, a Dark tsunami, deep and impossibly
strong and unstoppable.

Harry found himself on his back, the magic swarming over him like
snakes, held down by the strength of it just as he had been in first
year. Knowledge and experience and old, old cruelty crouched over him.
If Voldemort had ever been human, he had lost that distinction long ago.

\emph{Shall I teach you, child?} his voice hissed from everywhere and
nowhere, inside Harry's head and into his ears and just above his body.
\emph{Shall I teach you what it is to hate?}

And Harry felt it grab him and drag him and plunge him into foulness.
This was Dark magic gone wrong, the force that had twisted and mutilated
and fooled the Light magic into granting Voldemort the power to link to
the sun through a false truce-dance. This was a force that bred webs, or
broke them only for the Dark Lord's selfish ends. Harry felt dog vomit
overcoming him, rising up, flooding his nostrils, filling his mouth and
his ears with its weight and its stink.

He knew how his mother must have felt about him, now.

Drowning, he whistled again, and his magic cocked one ear.

Harry took a deep breath, gagging on the stench of evil not even
present, and opened his siphoning ability.

The snake opened its jaws because it had decided that it wanted to, and
began to swallow. The foul magic fell down its throat, and was not
transferred to Harry, but borne elsewhere. Harry was just as glad. He
was mad, maybe, but there was only so much of that stench and
contamination that even he could take. He lay, and breathed, and felt
the weight grow less and less.

Voldemort paused in that moment, and his inaudible voice laughed.

\emph{Harry, Harry, dear Harry. You are my magical heir, aren't you? I
don't know how it happened, but that night, when I confronted you, I
must have given you some of my own magical gifts. The Parseltongue was
only one of them.}

\emph{What you have forgotten, my heir, is that the ancestor is always
better, faster, stronger.}

Voldemort's own magic-eating ability became active. At least, Harry
thought that must be what it was. It had teeth, though, not like his
swallowing snake, and it swarmed his magic and ripped pieces out of it.

Harry screamed. This did not hurt as much as having his hand cut off,
but it increased the sense of violation. His hand and his stump
scrabbled at the ground, trying to stop the swallowing process. He did
remember not to let go of his wand, but just barely.

\emph{So young,} Voldemort's voice echoed gleefully in his mind.
\emph{So innocent. So} pure.

Harry drew a deep breath and reached out automatically to pull his power
back into his body and out of danger. Once again, it slipped out of
reach. Harry cursed, and sobbed, and asked the magic-swallowing snake to
open its mouth wider, politely, the way he would have asked a magical
creature.

The snake obliged, and swallowed more, faster and faster. As Voldemort's
magic grew fat and swollen with what he was stealing from Harry, it also
lost that strength right away into Harry's magic. They'd become a snake
eating its own tail, Harry thought dazedly, or perhaps, given the stink
of Voldemort's evil, a snake eating its own shit.

Voldemort snarled at last, ``Enough!''

Harry was not sure whether the command was in English or Parseltongue,
but it had its effect. The creature that his magic formed stopped
ripping and sucking at Harry's magic. Voldemort turned, instead, to
defend himself against the loss of more power.

The snake swallowed a bit more, but then Harry asked it to shut its jaws
and stop. It obeyed. Harry gasped, trembling with the force of the
relief, and wondering what would happen next. His magic lay next to him,
swollen, grown, and diminished. Since he could not touch it or estimate
it any more, he could not know by how much.

What happened next was a high, clear song.

Harry tilted his head back. A spot of golden light circled above him. It
descended nearer to the graveyard, and Harry recognized Fawkes. He
stifled a groan. Why had the phoenix come? Neither of them could escape,
and Harry was sure, now, that he would soon have another death on his
conscience.

Therefore, Harry thought, as he scrambled back to his feet, the best
thing to do was ignore the phoenix.

Besides, he had the feeling that Fawkes would want him to stop feeling
hatred. And he couldn't do that. He stared at Voldemort, and the hatred
became intense desire to destroy---anything the man held dear, anything
he valued. The trouble was, Harry didn't think he valued his Death
Eaters all that much, and there was no chance of breaking his wand.

Perhaps memories would do just as well.

``I heard you were looking for your diary,'' said Harry casually, as
they fell into a circling pattern. He didn't know if he spoke in English
or Parseltongue. Certainly looking at Voldemort's inhuman eyes was
enough to make him think of snakes and speak their language. ``Did you
ever find it?''

Voldemort's gaze snapped to his face, and he sucked in a deep breath.
``Where is it?'' he hissed.

``Somewhere you can't find it.'' Harry twirled his wand between his
fingers, and circled to the right, and smiled. ``Too bad that you're
going to kill me before I can tell you about it, isn't it?''

Voldemort might have replied, but Fawkes swooped over him, golden claws
aiming for his face. Voldemort ducked, and Fawkes swept around in a
circle, voice loud and sweet and urgent.

Harry shook his head regretfully at him. Fawkes represented something
wonderful that he couldn't ever go back to. His emotions refused to be
caged. He would die spending his anger. There was at least that
consolation. He would die with his guilt and his shame safely buried,
too, because death would pay for the death of the child he had not saved
and cover up the shame of failing so badly as to lose his own hand.

Voldemort hissed a curse at Fawkes, but Fawkes dodged it easily and came
to hover over Harry, singing loudly.

Harry shoved at him. ``Go away, stupid phoenix,'' he muttered absently,
more interested in the spell Voldemort was readying than what Fawkes
might think about this treatment. ``You should have bonded to someone
more worthy of you. I can't help anymore, sorry.''

Fawkes chirped angrily. Harry looked up, his eyes narrowed. \emph{I'm
tainted. I can't go back. Can't he see that?}

It was a small thing, really, his irritation at Fawkes compared to his
hatred of Voldemort, but that was the emotion his wandless magic chose
to answer, and it abruptly leaped out of his severed wrist and attacked
the phoenix.

Fawkes sang a lament as his tail feathers frosted over, and he flew
higher and higher, still singing, and probably, Harry thought, shedding
tears. Harry shrugged, glad that he was beyond any danger now. Harry
wasn't worth saving.

Voldemort's spell hit him then---a simple Blasting Curse, but it flung
Harry several feet. He rolled, standing up almost immediately, glad to
have a situation that he understood better than most. He had trained for
this. He had known that one day he would die fighting. He really never
should have let anyone convince him otherwise.

For the next few minutes, he was blind to everything but the battle.
Voldemort flung curses, and Harry dodged them or raised Shield Charms
against them. He threw hexes, and Voldemort turned them aside, or caught
them, changed them in midair, and threw them back at him. Harry decided
that would be a useful skill to learn, and he should try and learn it---

Before he remembered that he was going to die here, and parted his mouth
in a soundless laugh. That did rather make all his worries about his
future seem pointless. And, well, he was sorry for Draco and Connor and
Snape and the others---for Draco most of all---but he could already feel
the gathering power around Voldemort, and knew the man was almost done
playing with him. He was preparing a strike that would take Harry's life
once and for all.

\emph{Dying in battle against the Dark Lord. The fate I wanted, the fate
I chose the moment I dedicated myself to serving Connor. How can I say
that I didn't see this coming, or that I'm not happy to be here now?}

He decided that he might as well go out in a meaningful way, and that
meant that he did want to take one of Voldemort's Death Eaters with him,
after all. He turned his head, and saw Bellatrix leaning forward from
the circle, her lips parted as she watched the duel. Harry narrowed his
eyes at her, even as one of Voldemort's cutting hexes, like small knives
flaying him all over his body, cut open the wound on his shoulder again.
She wasn't good at defense. He didn't need his wandless magic to defeat
her, the way he would have to have a chance against Voldemort.

He whirled to the side, presenting a tempting target for Voldemort. He
knew the Dark Lord would hesitate a moment, though, unable to believe
that Harry did not have some trick up his sleeve.

And Harry did. The trick just wasn't for Voldemort. He gripped his wand
and raised it, aiming at Bellatrix, picturing her dead and glad of it.
He opened his mouth, prepared to utter the Killing Curse for the first
time.

``I'm bored,'' Evan Rosier, standing to Bellatrix's right side,
announced abruptly, and then drew his wand and flung a hex at her.

Bellatrix, focused on Harry, didn't dodge it in time, and it caved in
her ribs. As she fell to the ground, bubbling, Rosier winked at Harry,
said, ``I told you, \emph{you're} interesting,'' and then turned to
counter curses coming from the general direction of Greyback and
Whitecheek.

Harry didn't have time to worry about Rosier. Voldemort was striding
towards him, and this time, his magic rose like wings around him. Harry
faced him, and knew this was the end. Voldemort might use the Killing
Curse, or he would use something else---he probably would, so that Harry
died in suffering---but his magic was like a looming wall, blocking out
the last gleam of sunset and the last of Fawkes's song. Harry looked
into death, and it looked back at him.

He didn't find it as fearsome as he might once have. Something had died
within him when that boy did.

Voldemort smiled at him and made to speak, but then jerked his head to
the side. Harry slowly followed his gaze, aware of a patch of silence
there, but not knowing what he would see.

Dragonsbane Parkinson was striding forward between the gravestones, his
black wrappings fluttering about him as if in a chill wind.

Words that Harry had nearly forgotten blazed into his head, words that
Dragonsbane had spoken at last year's Walpurgis Night, when his
prohibitions lifted and allowed him to talk to others with his mouth.

\emph{We will see each other again. And the next time but one is in a
home of my kindred.}

Harry had seen him with Hawthorn in the meeting in the Ministry at the
end of August. And now he was here again, striding through a home of his
kindred, a necropolis, a\ldots{}

A graveyard.

The necromancer halted between two stone angels, and bowed to Harry, and
lifted his hands.

And the dead arose.

Stone and earth cracked and creaked and groaned and shifted aside. Harry
saw hands wrapped in bone, clad in cloth, wearing shards of wood as
fingernails, scramble and tip aside the angels. Both of them missed
Dragonsbane, who simply stood where he was, perhaps with his head
bowed---it was hard to tell, given how swaddled he was---as the corpses
stood and staggered past him, heading for the Death Eaters.

Most of the graves were breaking open now, and spilling out concoctions
of dust and flesh, skeletons, nearly fresh bodies wrapped in shrouds, to
advance on Voldemort's followers. Harry saw a few of the graves open but
loose nothing save silver vapor. He supposed those were the ones with
bodies so old that they had nothing to contribute to zombies, and could
only produce something like spirits.

Dragonsbane stood in the middle of his kindred, and his hands flashed
into view, pale and gleaming blue with the stone of his great ring, and
he made several repeated motions, which Harry thought were part of his
sign language. When he reached the end of the sequence, he began again.

Harry shook his head, not understanding, not wanting to understand, and
turned back towards Voldemort. It didn't matter that Dragonsbane was
here, any more that it mattered that Fawkes had appeared or Rosier had
turned. None of them would manage to stand against Voldemort's magic. At
best, the dead might take some of the Death Eaters, and Harry was
vaguely glad of that.

He could feel an equally vague fear that if he allowed the arrival of
his allies to matter, then he would have to live, drowning in his shame
and guilt all the way. He thought he would prefer to die.

Voldemort aimed his wand. Harry could see that he was no longer playing,
the arrogance that had driven him to this in the first place pressed
flat by the weight of cold facts. He began to intone the spell that had
no counter, no shield, and Harry knew he would not survive it this time.
There were no barriers on his magic to be broken any more.

``\emph{Avada Ke---}''

Something hit Harry full force and rolled him over. Harry found himself
beneath a cold, solid weight, one that barely yielded when he pushed and
struggled. Dragonsbane rolled off him at once, but he had done what he
wanted to do. The Killing Curse had missed Harry, the green bolt of
light soaring over his head to strike one of the masked Death Eaters and
fell him. Harry heard Rosier's laugh, and knew that he yet lived, as if
that would matter to him.

Harry glared at Dragonsbane. The necromancer was making no move to rise,
lying on his back and making the same sequence of motions with his hands
again and again. Harry found himself irritated that Dragonsbane was
keeping his vows even now, as if they mattered more than telling Harry
what the bloody hell was going on, but more annoyed still that
Dragonsbane had deprived him of a relatively easy death.

A slight snarl was all the warning he had.

His wandless magic, the magic he could no longer control, sprang and
then came down on Dragonsbane, howling as though Harry's irritation had
been a surge of Dark, irrational fury.

Harry screamed and reached out his left wrist, without thinking. More
magic spiraled loose from the stump and attacked Dragonsbane, ripping
and snarling and clawing. In desperation, frantic, Harry tried to grab
it and hold it back, snatching at it in any way he could imagine---with
reins, with words, with his wand, with a web.

Nothing availed. The magic might as well have been a completely separate
entity from him, even as it fulfilled the wishes it must have thought he
had.

It tore Dragonsbane's chest apart, and Harry knew before he saw the pale
hands stop moving and drop to the blood-matted grass that his ally was
dead.

And as if someone had turned a key in the lock of his head, sanity
returned to Harry with a click and a snap.

Harry went to his knees, screaming. He didn't know what emotion most
drove the scream: fury, grief, guilt, self-loathing. But all of them
were in there, and all of them made him feel, once again, as if he would
rather die, notwithstanding Fawkes's song ringing overhead or
Voldemort's delighted laughter behind him or what was happening to the
Death Eaters.

\emph{You can't die.} The thought returned to him with brutal
suddenness. \emph{You thought you could, but you can't. There is yet one
more way that you might get out of this, one thing you haven't tried.
You should have thought of it before, and you didn't, and now he's}
dead\emph{, but you've thought of it now and you're going to use it now,
damn you.}

\emph{If nothing else, you owe Hawthorn and Pansy an explanation for how
Dragonsbane died, and you'll have to get out of here to give it.}

Harry turned. He lifted his wand. Voldemort had stopped laughing and
watched him thoughtfully, his red eyes narrowed.

He understood what Harry intended in time to join in, but not in time to
stop it. That was fine with Harry. Determination was riding him now,
driving him as simple will to survive could not have done. He bore
guilt, and he must pay the enormous debt he'd just incurred to the
Parkinsons.

``\emph{Legilimens.}''

``\emph{Legilimens.}''

Harry and Voldemort spoke the spell at the same time, and, leaping,
passed into each other's minds at the same moment. Harry rode the
sensation of wind inside Voldemort's thoughts, clutching his goal to
himself all the while.

\emph{Damage him. Wound him deeply enough that you can escape with your
knowledge and he can't just follow you, or break loose from the
graveyard and start hurting other people.}

\emph{Hurt him.}

\emph{Yes, I think I can do that. I'm already a murderer, aren't I?}

\chapter{Of Hedges and Plains of Ice}\label{chapter-78-of-hedges-and-plains-of-ice}

Harry found himself standing in cold darkness. He shivered and squinted,
expecting that at any moment he would grow warmer, or the light would
lift and show him what sort of place Voldemort thought of his mind as.

Neither happened. Instead, Harry's eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness,
and he realized that there were faint lights overhead---glaring arctic
stars. He lowered his gaze slowly and moved his head from side to side.

He stood on a plain of ice, covered with snow, stretching off in every
direction. Harry could see no hill or tree marking it, no place where
the ground altered in any way. He edged his way forward, afraid that he
would trip into a hole by the starlight, but though he stumbled, that
came only from the slickness of the ice under the snow.

There was no sign of Voldemort's memories, or his weak points, or his
defenses. Nothing but barren stillness wherever Harry looked, lying
under a barely lit dark sky.

That was its defense, of course, Harry realized a moment later. In a
place where nothing showed, nothing could be attacked. Any Legilimens
who did manage to fight his way into the Dark Lord's mind would have
frozen in bafflement, unable to conceive where he should search, and
perhaps believing that his enemy \emph{had} no emotions, no weak points,
to attack.

Harry did not believe that. He had seen emotion on Voldemort's face, and
even though it was covered over by Occlumency shields now, those shields
had to be \emph{somewhere}.

He lifted his head, but the arch of dark sky continued uninterrupted
overhead, without a trace of a cloud that might have hidden anything
vulnerable. There were the stars, of course, all isolated from each
other. Harry contemplated calling up a wind and flying to them.

Hysterical urgency tried to pound in the back of his mind, telling him
that he had to find the Dark Lord's weak points \emph{now now now}, but
Harry managed to dismiss it. Yes, the stars were a possibility, but he
didn't know if they would work. It wouldn't be like Voldemort to use
light to hide his innermost weaknesses. Harry knew he hated using Light
magic. He would have harnessed his powers to the sun only in utmost
extremity.

Harry's gaze lowered to the ice and snow beneath his feet again.

\emph{Yes,} he thought, \emph{that's a much more useful possibility.}

He knelt and scooped up a handful of powdery snow, then shivered when it
stung his fingers. The sensations here were much keener than he'd felt
when he was in Draco's mind, or Connor's, or Snape's. It probably had
something to do with Voldemort's status as a master Legilimens.

Harry didn't think he would make much progress trying to scrabble
through the frozen ground with his hand alone. Luckily, he had another
option open to him, if he could call it to him here.

Harry closed his eyes and remembered the animal he had been during his
visions: mid-sized, covered with thick, warm fur, his paws draped with
feathery hair. Perfect for balancing on snow, those paws, and tipped
with powerful claws. They could help him both with running in this
strange place, should he have to, and digging.

The transformation surged over him, taking him by surprise. Harry
grunted slightly as he shrank, and shook his head as warmth enveloped
his body. It was only something imagined, here, but imagination was as
powerful as reality in a situation like this. It only remained to keep
convincing himself that he really was warm, and not dissipate the
protection.

He opened his eyes, and saw a right paw and a foreshortened left leg on
the ground before him. Harry grimaced. It seemed that the trauma
Bellatrix had inflicted on him had affected him enough that he couldn't
shed the remnants of it, even here.

\emph{Maybe that's a good thing,} Harry thought. \emph{Teach me to live
with it sooner. And there are a whole bunch of things I'll have to live
with.}

He began to dig.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Turn. Spin. Lift head. Seek. He was a in deep green place, crowded with
rustlings that laughed at him.

He hated being laughed at.

He lifted his wand and fired off a curse. It hit something in the
general deep green darkness of it all, but only one of the rustlings
ceased; the rest kept on, quieter but as obstinate and stubborn as
before.

He hated all things obstinate and stubborn, unless they were so in
service to him. Then the world had his permission to be as stubborn as
it liked.

Move forward. Sniff. No smell but leaves and turned earth. Wrinkle of
mouth; of course the boy smelled that way, since he took care to keep
himself so innocent and \emph{pure}, like the magic he'd swallowed
earlier. No, he would think a bit of mud or corruption the stink of Lord
Voldemort.

He might show that Lord Voldemort had been here.

As his eyes adjusted to the bit of light falling through the trees, he
found that he was not in a house surrounded by trees, as he had
assumed---of course the boy would have a house as a mind, or maybe a
replica of Hogwarts---but a strange construction, partially hedge maze
and partially forest. As if the hedge maze had been allowed to grow
wild, he thought, staring at something that might almost have been the
wall of a lane, thick green leaves scattered with gold. He reached out
and ripped off one of the leaves, and was satisfied to hear a small,
sharp shriek.

He moved a few steps further forward, cursing aside one of the sturdier
trees when it got in his way. It fell with a crash.

Dark green and rustle and smell of earth and feel of leaf-flesh beneath
his feet and taste of dark green in his mouth. Contempt and hatred and
scorn and laughter and no doubt, no doubt at all, because how could he
doubt himself, Lord Voldemort, the mightiest Dark Lord and the mightiest
wizard to walk the earth? Dumbledore was nothing to him, was nothing,
had been nothing, would be nothing, will be nothing.

Somewhere, the hedge maze, the forest, would have a heart. Voldemort
would find it and destroy it.

Move forward. Lift head. Curse aside a branch. Laugh at the foolishness
of an enemy who truly thought that he could battle Lord Voldemort,
master and accomplished Legilimens, on mental ground.

\emph{Begin.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry was aware of distant pain. Voldemort was no doubt adventuring
around the inside of his head, finding things to disturb, and there was
the wound on his shoulder, which he knew one of the Dark Lord's spells
had reopened, and there was the sharp pain of his claws scrabbling on
the ice in front of him.

But he kept digging. He lowered his head and used his teeth when he
thought it would help, moving aside frozen soil and particles of ice
that clung with irritating persistency in his mouth. When he spat, they
should have either flown out or melted and run away, but all they did
was cling to his jaws as cold water. Harry snarled and lashed his tail,
and kept digging.

The rim of ice abruptly cracked, and Harry found a tunnel underneath.
The tunnel was not filled with wetness, as he had thought it might be,
but it was cool and dark, stone with a roof of earth. Harry gave a glad
little growl and kept on tearing, scrabbling, ripping, widening, opening
the tunnel more and more up. It might have taken a far longer time to
open a hole for a human, but in his small new body, he had a suitable
entrance in just a few minutes. He flattened himself to the ground and
squirmed in and through.

He found himself in an intimately familiar place when he landed, his
thick paws cushioning him from the fall, though he staggered off balance
on his left foreleg for a moment. The tunnel was quiet and dark, lit
only by a faint radiance like that from a \emph{Lumos} spell, and filled
with tiny bones and skulls when Harry shifted. When he sniffed, an
overpowering stink of rottenness assaulted his nostrils. Harry hissed
and spat again, but this time he could be happy.

Voldemort's mind resembled the tunnel that led to the Chamber of
Secrets.

Harry knew where he was going now.

He trotted forward, his tail up and his paws picking their way carefully
among the skulls. His going was somewhat awkward with a left forepaw
missing, but three legs and determination could do wonders, and soon
Harry halted before a door marked with emerald-eyed serpents.

Fear paralyzed him for a moment. Though the graveyard had probably
surpassed it by now, the Chamber was still the scene of what he
considered his worst memory, the one he had seen when Dementors
approached him.

Harry pushed aside his memories. He was good at doing it when someone
else needed him to, and this was one of those times. He lifted his head
high, and hissed out the command for the door to open in Parseltongue.

The door folded back at once, and Harry stepped into a place darker than
the Chamber had been, darker than the sky above the ice plains, though
still lit with that faint, moving yellow radiance, which Harry finally
realized was focused on him, and shone from his fur. Perhaps because
Voldemort's mind really was dark, perhaps because he was convinced it
would be, he had conjured up the light and drawn it along with him.

Objects lay everywhere: carved cups, scepters, thrones, crowns, jeweled
lockets like the one with Slytherin's mark that Sirius had found and
which had possessed him, wands of rare woods, old books, jeweled swords,
rings set with enormous stones, statues of emerald serpents with silver
eyes and silver serpents with emerald eyes, bronze sculptures marked
with grotesque signs of suffering and death. Harry hissed, knowing a lot
more than he had ever wanted to about what Voldemort valued, and worked
his way towards the back of the room, where the statue of Salazar
Slytherin had stood in the real Chamber.

He saw what he was looking for almost at once. Snape's voice flowed
through his head, deep and resonant.

\emph{You'll find memories the most plentiful things in another wizard's
mind. But don't be distracted by them if you ever get the chance to
enter the mind of someone you truly want to hurt. You can look for the
heart---the anchor of their sanity---or you can look for the center of
memory. It's extremely hard to destroy, but if you can locate it, you
can at least damage it. You'll recognize it as looking like a larger
version of the memories, but there's only one of it, and it shines.}

This did indeed shine, Harry found. It was a giant sword, plunged into
the stone and held upright by a crack that gripped the tip of its blade,
and covered with five jewels. One of the jewels was shaped like a cup,
one like a book, one like a wand, one like a locket, one like a ring.
Harry was not sure what the significance of that might be, but they did
resemble some of the treasures scattered around the floor, and those
treasures had to be Voldemort's memories.

Now, he only had to figure out how he would damage a giant sword made of
what looked like to be hard steel.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Twitch of an ear. Lift of a head. Taste of the air ahead. He could do
that, had adapted his tongue to do that, adapting his senses to be like
the senses of poor dead Nagini.

The thought of her made him lash out, and another tree fell. He smiled,
as the shriek of pain was louder this time. He intended to destroy the
heart of Potter's mind, but that didn't mean he couldn't inflict many
small wounds along the way.

Harry. Dear Harry. Dear dead Harry, who should have known not to
challenge him on his own ground.

Deeper into the maze. Deeper. Around corners, pushing through walls of
leaves, stepping past fallen logs overgrown with moss. Had to be a
center of this, had to be a heart. Had to be something around here.

A dart of movement to the side! Lifting of the head, narrowing his eyes.

Something living. Something unaltered, something that might die. He
would never die, no, of course not. Death was for lesser creatures,
creatures who were still mortal.

He followed, moving through the leaves like a predator. The living thing
ran, and he hunted. He was always a great hunter, was Lord Voldemort. In
days before he grew too many for such things, had too many followers to
have to do it himself, he had enjoyed hunting the victims he sacrificed
for power and knowledge. There was a thrill in the blood, the hunt, that
was like nothing else.

Dart. Anticipate. Turn. The creature was going this way, he would go
this way, and he would catch it.

He stepped out into the middle of the lane of leaves, and waited. The
living creature would have to come this way.

But it didn't. He stood in the midst of green darkness, touched with the
faintest hint of gold, and waited, and listened, and still the living
creature did not come at all. Child or rabbit or dragon, it didn't come
out, and then the bit of light faded altogether.

He lifted his wand and conjured a light. Leaves shifted around him, and
there was more of the impertinent rustling. He cast again and again, and
the rustlings cried out and fell silent.

But they had done their work. When he could see again, he stood in a
completely unfamiliar place, the maze, the forest, having reassembled
itself into a new construction and hidden away the darting living
creature that he was now sure was the heart of Potter's mind.

With a snarl---what right did a boy like this have to defy a master
Legilimens? He should have rolled over to bare his belly at the mere
chance of being near such greatness!---he forced his way forward,
determined to find the path back to the living creature. He would catch
it, and he would strangle it. Make Potter feel the pain and pay the
price, as he had done for thirteen years of agony.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry walked around the sword several times, and still he could see no
way of damaging it. He could not climb it; the edges were too sharp and
too sleek, it really was nothing more than a great blade, and he would
cut himself in doing so. Harry did not want to think about what would
happen if he wounded himself in Voldemort's mind. The hilt was too far
from the floor for him to jump to it and safely land on the crossguard,
and scratching or tearing at the steel would have no result.

He sat down and lashed his tail, and then a thought came to him and made
him feel very stupid.

\emph{I might have flown to the stars. What I imagine is real, here, and
what I imagine right now is needing to be at the top of the hilt.}

Harry thought determinedly about it, bending his mind in that direction,
and ignoring all the ``rational'' thoughts that wanted to point out
things like lynxes not being able to fly. He concentrated on the feeling
of smooth metal rather than stone under his paws, and the floor being
curved instead of straight, and how much he wanted to be able to do this
and leave, instead of lingering here\ldots{}

And it worked. The world jolted around him, and then he stood on the
hilt, struggling awkwardly to balance on the immense curved guard that
flanked the pommel. He snarled in triumph, and then lowered his head.

He had known, all along, if he could get to the hilt, that the easiest
course would be to damage the sword by tugging out the jewels.

He locked his teeth on the yellow, cup-shaped stone, which might be a
topaz, and began to tug. The stone barely projected from the metallic
surface. His teeth were weary from biting through ice and the
complicated, tangled root system that had underlain it. His body
throbbed with exhaustion and pain and the longing to simply collapse and
let something else happen that he had no part in. But he locked his hind
paws and his right front one into place and kept on pulling, thinking of
what price he had paid---and which other people had paid, too---to get
him this far.

The stone trembled, at last, and began slowly to tip out from the socket
where it had been placed. Harry went on prizing at it until he was sure
that it would come out, and then released it and turned sideways to
stand on the hilt.

Just in time. The jewel uttered a loud groan and slipped out of its
place, tumbling to the floor of the Chamber of Secrets far below. It hit
the flagstones and shattered, sending large pieces of itself rolling
away to hide among the treasures of Voldemort's memories.

Harry felt the effect at once. The Chamber around him shuddered, and a
good portion of the cups and jeweled statues on the floor grew
tarnished. He snarled, let himself have a moment of gloating, and then
turned to attack the locket-shaped stone.

\emph{}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

\emph{Pain!}

The pain took him off guard, and that made him furious. What right did
the boy have to hurt him? Pain was for lesser mortals, living creatures
who were going to die. He was Lord Voldemort, and he was never going to
die. He had taken enough steps to prevent it.

He turned his head, blindly seeking, and the leaves behind him creaked.
When he turned around again, they were pressing into his face, covering
his mouth and his eyes. He snarled and pushed them away, but his hand
slipped over their slick surfaces. They were weak, and fragile, and they
had \emph{no right to oppose him}, but they were doing it anyway, and
they did not seem to care when he began firing curses into them, burning
and blasting many of them away.

He fell back a step, only to recover his ground, and felt a dart of
motion near his heels. This time, \emph{this} time, he spun, and lashed
out with one arm, catching the creature by its shoulder. It tripped and
stumbled and fell, and then he had it, and it was staring up at him, the
heart of Potter's mind.

It was a boy, about the same age as Potter, with blond hair and a pale
face. Looked rather like Lucius, it did. He bared his teeth in a snarl.
He had no idea why the heart of the boy's mind would be a Malfoy, but he
had already paused to wonder too many times this evening. He should have
killed Potter when he was tied to the rock.

He lifted his wand, prepared to cast the Killing Curse that would
destroy the boy and the remains of Potter's sanity with it.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

The locket-shaped stone smashed, and Harry lashed his tail. Then he
paused, lifting his head, twitching his nose.

\emph{Something is wrong. Something in my mind is in danger.}

Harry could only guess that Voldemort had somehow found the heart of his
own mind, or perhaps the place where all his memories were stored. He
had no time to lose, and he knew what to do, as though someone had
whispered a plan in his ear. He imagined himself with lead weights
fastened to his paws, and he leaped into the air and then came down
again on the hilt of the sword.

The sword shook with the weight, and groaned, and then tilted slowly to
one side. Harry bared his teeth and jumped again, though he came near to
staggering and slipping off this time. He didn't know how much time he
had left before Voldemort permanently damaged him, and he couldn't worry
about it.

\emph{Focus my gaze on the path forward. That's what I have to do right
now.}

He jumped one more time.

The sword tilted and began to crash down.

Harry jumped. This time, he fastened his mind on a destination not part
of the Chamber of treasures that surrounded him. He fixed it on his
body, kneeling motionless on the grass of the graveyard, and built the
image in his memory. Wand clutched in his hand, head twisted so that he
faced towards Voldemort, legs folded beneath him, skin enfolding
him\ldots{}

\emph{I am here.}

\emph{I am real.}

\emph{I am home.}

Harry gasped and opened his eyes, in time to see Voldemort begin
spasming, as if the whole of his body were a single muscle that someone
else had ordered him to contract.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

He couldn't remember what he was about to do. There was a boy in front
of him, but he couldn't remember who the boy was. He looked around, and
stared at the leaves gathered near him, and wondered where they were.
Had he come into the midst of a maze? The Forbidden Forest? Was he back
in Albania, or perhaps in the untamed jungles of Africa?

The boy backed away from him, and then turned and ran. He stood where he
was, not following. Other memories were shredding and diving around him,
spiraling like stormclouds.

Where had he been? What was his name?

He had only one thing left to him as it seemed that all his memories
might drain away forever: the fear of death, and the knowledge that,
come what may, he \emph{could not} die like this. Death was not for him.

He reached out, not in memory, but with an assured, guiding motion, the
same way he would move his right hand. He touched a link that bound him
to a secret place, a place that held one of the centers of his life. He
tugged on the link, and it responded, the object it was bound to pulling
him towards it.

He vanished, along the link, his mind folding into sleep, preserving the
tatters of memory just as they were.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry stared as Voldemort's motionless body wavered, blurred, and then
vanished. His blank red eyes closed in the moment before he faded. Harry
knew this was no normal Apparition, and suspected that he had done
something to prevent himself from losing the rest of his memory.

\emph{Of course he would}, he thought bitterly, leaning on his left
elbow and panting in and out with steady breaths. \emph{It would be too
easy otherwise.}

``Potter.''

Harry turned swiftly, bringing his wand up in front of him. Rosier
lifted his hands before his face, mock-cowering behind them. His
laughter was deep, and assured, and amused.

``Good to see you that survived,'' he said. ``I shudder to think of how
boring my life would become if you hadn't.''

``What game are you playing?'' Harry whispered, turning his head from
side to side to see about the rest of the Death Eaters. They were gone,
and most of the motionless forms on the ground looked to be the dead
that Dragonsbane had raised, fallen when his necromancy dissipated or
their foes fled or their raiser died. Only one robed body lay still, the
mask half-off; it was one of the male Death Eaters Harry didn't know by
sight. Harry drew in a huffing breath, and wondered whether or not he
should be glad that Bellatrix Lestrange wasn't dead.

``The game of life,'' said Rosier, with no irony in his voice. ``The one
I told you about, the one everyone plays. The one you could play
yourself, Potter, if you were dedicated more to living than dying.'' He
cocked his head and studied Harry's face. ``Or perhaps you're awake to
living now. I should be \emph{so} glad if you were.'' He clapped his
hands and smiled like a delighted child.

Fawkes circled down just then, his trilling song covering any reply that
Harry might have wanted to make. He turned as the phoenix settled on his
shoulder, and met his gaze. Fawkes stared at him with tears falling
gently from his dark eyes. Harry studied them for a moment, and
considered whether he should allow them to fall on him in the moment
before they did.

He chose to let them. He would need \emph{some} spiritual healing
after---after. And he knew that he had to live now. He needed to get
back to Hogwarts, reassure Draco and Snape and Connor that he was still
alive, give everyone the information about Voldemort's return and about
the actions he had commanded his Death Eaters to perform, and contact
Hawthorn and Pansy about---

About.

Harry forced himself to turn and study Dragonsbane's body.

There could be no doubt that he was dead. Even necromancers weren't
going to live with their chest cavities hollowed out and most of their
major internal organs torn into small shreds. Harry felt a stir of magic
in the air, and knew that his power was watching, half in and half out
of his body, no more understanding that what it had done was wrong than
a wild beast would.

Harry felt the edges of his grief soften and blur under Fawkes's tears.
He bowed his head, and choked back the overwhelming bitterness of it.

Fawkes sang, and Harry saw the vision of what the phoenix wanted in his
head. Fawkes wanted him to see that the ice on his tail feathers had
turned to water mere moments after it formed, and that Harry had done
him no lasting harm. He wanted Harry to cry out his grief, and then go
back to Hogwarts and rest in the arms of people who loved him. He wanted
Harry to sleep, and go somewhere where he would be safe, and learn to
come to terms with what he had done, and lie down and rise up with peace
in his soul.

``I'm sorry,'' said Harry, keeping his voice gentle. Fawkes meant well.
Of course he did. A phoenix would not lie, though he might speak or sing
in terms that would be misunderstood by any human not bonded to him. ``I
can't do that.''

``Can't do what?'' Rosier asked, sounding interested.

Harry lifted his head, and his magic snarled around him, remembering the
way that Rosier had tested the bond on his left wrist for tightness.
``Go away,'' said Harry. His voice was, perhaps, not so much gentle as
weary, and Fawkes's song increased in distress. ``I can't deal with you
right now.'' He lifted his wand.

Rosier gave a little huff. ``All right then. There's no need to be so
dramatic about it.'' He cocked his head, and met Harry's gaze directly.
Harry was a little startled to find himself skimming across the surface
of the Death Eater's thoughts. It appeared that his Legilimency extended
beyond his eyes right now, floating unbound in the air around him, much
like the rest of his wandless magic. Or maybe the magic was simply
venting itself through this skill because it provided something for it
to do.

Either way, Harry could make out implications of entertainment and
pleasurable excitement beyond Rosier's eyes. No matter what happened to
him, his life would be a lot more interesting now. He thought the Dark
Lord still alive, and Harry was alive in a very interesting way. He
would have to run, with his former comrades after him. This was so
\emph{fun.}

Rosier broke their gaze and turned away, sounding slightly amused. ``My
Lord created a false truce-dance,'' he said casually. ``He fooled the
Light into thinking he had a right to the power the sun gives on the
equinoxes and solstices. I did tell you to watch the sun. Now I tell you
to watch the sky. The primeval forces of the Light will find out the
truth soon, and they no more like being tricked than the Dark magic of
Walpurgis Night likes being confined.'' He grinned over his shoulder at
Harry. ``They will snap back upon my Lord. Already, I think, a wind has
been summoned, and it will stir other winds. We shall have a storm,
perhaps more than one.''

``Why are you telling me this?'' Harry asked.

Rosier's face sprouted a wider grin. ``I keep telling you and telling
you, Potter,'' he said. ``It is a shame you never listen to me.
\emph{Everything} is a game.'' He Disapparated with a sharp crack.

Only after he had gone did it occur to Harry that he probably should
have killed him. Harry shook his head. He---did not feel up to causing
more death right now. He was a murderer twice over this night, once by
fact and once by omission.

He fixed his eyes on Dragonsbane, while Fawkes shed more tears. Harry
did not use the clarity of mind those gave him the way the phoenix
wanted him to. Instead, he used it to lay out all the facts before him
and examine them, calmly, needing to know exactly what he was going to
do when he left the graveyard.

One thing was clear. He bore the guilt of what had happened here. He
should have been able to stop it, and he had not. He had failed his
tests, and others had paid the price. Dragonsbane had sacrificed his
life to bring him back to sanity, to recall Harry from being a Dark
Lord---something he should have been able to do on his own.

\emph{How many failures?}

\emph{Five.}

Harry turned his head and looked at his left wrist. The physical
failure.

He glanced at Dragonsbane. The emotional failure, and the magical one,
and the moral one, that last shared with the half-devoured body of the
poor boy next to Tom Riddle's gravestone.

And the mental failure, to let Voldemort inflict damage on his mind.

Harry shook his head, and closed his eyes. Two things were clear. He
bore the guilt of what had happened here, and he meant to make sure this
\emph{never} happened again.

He would move forward from this point on. He would be strong. He would
not fail another test. He would summon Hawthorn and Pansy at once, and
tell them the truth of what had happened to Dragonsbane. He suspected
that their alliance with him was ended now, that they would become among
the deadliest of his enemies. That was as it should be. He accepted it.
If it would not end his usefulness to other people, he would let them
kill him. As it was, he would have to offer some other price, and resist
only if they demanded his life.

He would return Dragonsbane's body to them. He whispered now,
``\emph{Mobilicorpus},'' and cast a Disillusionment Charm on the body as
it rose into the air. He did not want everyone gawking at Dragonsbane's
wounds and wondering how he had received them when Harry Apparated back
to Hogwarts. Voldemort's anti-Apparition wards had fallen when he
vanished, so he could do that now.

Fawkes abruptly, frantically, grabbed Harry's chin in a talon and turned
his face around. Harry blinked at him, wondering.

Fawkes sang again, and rubbed his plumes along Harry's cheeks. Harry
could feel the temptation there, to fall into tears and what the phoenix
considered healing.

``I'm sorry,'' Harry whispered. ``I told you, I can't. I can't afford
it.'' He closed his eyes, and returned to his mantra.

Three things were clear. He bore the guilt of what had happened here,
and he meant to make sure this \emph{never} happened again, and he had a
much better idea of his own weaknesses now.

He knew he would have to go to Draco, and to Snape. He needed their
comfort after what had happened here. He would have been a stronger
person if he did not, but he also knew he would collapse if he tried to
go without it. So he would go, and accept this weakness into his
personal list of them, acknowledging it and knowing it was there in the
future.

He tasted thick bitterness for a moment, but he forced it away.
Bitterness wouldn't help. Bitterness would drag him backward, and stand
a strong chance of pulling him again into madness. Madness didn't help,
either. He would go forward. He would do what would help, and he would
force himself to be rational about matters.

He would explain to them his magical failure---because his magic could
endanger others, now, until he had a chance of getting it back under
control---the emotional failure---because that was what made his magic
dangerous---and the moral failure---because they deserved to know what
he had done.

The physical and the mental failures\ldots{}

\emph{Those are my own.}

Harry knew he couldn't explain them, yet. He would need some time,
himself, to assimilate and deal with them, and if he explained them to
Draco and Snape, they would insist that he relax and heal in the way
that Fawkes wanted him to. Harry \emph{couldn't}. Part of that was the
time factor, because there was a war on, now, and the war needed him,
and he just didn't have the time to collapse and work himself into a
frenzy and then work himself back out of the frenzy.

Part of it was just another weakness.

\emph{I can't. That's all. I can't stand to see their pity for those
failures right now. The others, yes, because I'm more likely to endanger
someone else with them, and they're more likely to condemn them.
Accusation is easier to deal with than pity. I will tell them the truth,
eventually. But not right now.}

Harry glanced sideways at his left wrist and wondered. Bellatrix had
said that all efforts to replace his hand would fail---probably an
attempt to increase his suffering and mental anguish to parallel hers in
the months since he had taken her hand---but she had not said that he
could not conceal it.

``\emph{Dissimulo manus!}'' he murmured, and waved his wand at it. The
glamour of a hand grew from just above the stump. Harry carefully fitted
it to the way he remembered things, and, soon enough, he thought
proudly, no one could have told the illusion from the real thing.

\emph{I will tell them}, he repeated, to soothe Fawkes's furious,
sorrowful crooning. \emph{Just not right now. Later, when I can deal
with it. I can't afford the time to break down, but I can think about
it, little by little, and when I'm ready I'll tell them.}

He hesitated, considering for a moment whether he should bear the little
boy's mutilated body with him as well, but he had no idea where the
child had come from or who he belonged to. Dragonsbane's body he could
at least be sure of delivering to his survivors. He might be carrying
the boy further away from home, not towards it, if he took him to
Hogwarts, especially if he had been a Muggle. In the end, Harry gently
cast a glamour over the boy's corpse, to be sure it wouldn't be
disturbed, and knew that would be one of the things he would include in
the story of this night he sent to Scrimgeour.

The tale of his failures, he would tell to those he needed to know. The
information that Voldemort was back, everyone who was important must
know, as soon as possible. The loss of his hand and the damage to his
mind would remain between him and Fawkes and the Death Eaters for now.

Harry shook his head, and took a deep breath, and gathered his strength.
No trying to break the wards around Hogwarts so he could Apparate in, he
knew. They were more important than ever, with the Death Eaters back and
Voldemort moving. Harry didn't think he had damaged the Dark Lord's
memory permanently, only enough to buy a little time.

``Ready?'' he asked Fawkes.

Fawkes cried at him.

Harry shook his head slightly, and let his right arm rest on
Dragonsbane's floating corpse, and Disapparated them all, Harry and body
and phoenix, with a crack.

\chapter{All Fall Down}\label{chapter-79-all-fall-down}

Albus felt the pull of the boy's magic the moment he Apparated back to
the outskirts of Hogsmeade.

There had been indications before then, of course: the sudden roar of
rising Dark magic that made him fear Harry had died; the surging,
triumphant laughter in his head that he heard, real or not, when Tom
called his Death Eaters; the blazing of wards that were meant to alert
him in the case of a concentration of Dark wizards in a certain area.
But he had been able only to wait and to hope. He had not \emph{known}
what was happening from the moment of Harry's abduction\ldots{}

Until now.

Harry was radiating uncontrolled magic like light, like heat, like fire,
all the way up to the castle. Albus, sitting in his office and trying to
think of strategies to combat Tom, felt him start to come closer as he
would the tread of a nundu, or a rolling storm. Something had happened,
something momentous, and Albus knew he would either fall before
it---perhaps---or ride it---if he took the chance.

He closed his eyes and gathered the swirling mist of his compulsion,
drawing it calmly back into himself. Perhaps a few people here and there
in Hogwarts would blink or stare around in a daze, trying to remember
what they had just been thinking about. Perhaps a few others would miss
dreams they had grown accustomed to. For most of those who had slowly
been turning to meet his opinion like flowers towards the sun, however,
the influence had been too subtle. They would not notice it missing any
more than they had noticed it present.

Albus had a better use for his compulsion, if what he imagined from
Harry's slow approach was true. He held back until the boy was closer to
the castle, within the wards, and he could open one of them as an eye on
the outer grounds and actually see Harry's face.

The calm stoicism, laced through with pain to those who looked with
clear eyes, told him all he needed to know. The constant soft tears of
the phoenix on his shoulder---and Albus had to push back a flash of
jealousy---were an even clearer sign. Something had happened to deprive
Harry of his balance, and he would be some time getting it back again.

Time during which a master compeller might be able to influence Harry's
actions, if he acted quickly and ruthlessly enough.

Albus had only moments to choose his course. He did not trust what would
happen if he tried to use his compulsion when Fawkes was not distracted
by Harry's pain. And without complete information, he could not know
that he was choosing rightly.

But he thought he was, acting on what he knew of Harry's past. And if he
was wrong, there was at least one chance that could \emph{not} do
anything but help him, no matter how far down the road its consequences
might play out.

He acted, and breathed out the compulsion in a concentrated, swirling
mass into Harry's mind. Not even then, however, was it going to force
him to choose one course of action. It would only make it more likely
that he think of something he was probably thinking of anyway\ldots{}let
his thoughts spill to the side, down a certain well-worn
track\ldots{}seek refuge in a place he had often sought refuge in
before\ldots{}

And then it was done, and Albus sat back in his chair and opened his
eyes, exhausted. A smile worked its way across his face in spite of
himself.

The war had come. Tom had returned.

But the one disaster the Light could not afford---to have two Dark Lords
working against it---had probably just been averted.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry hated to admit it, but Fawkes's tears were getting on his nerves.

The phoenix would not stop crying. He had not stopped even as Harry
walked wearily back towards Hogwarts, noting along the way that no one
appeared to have waited outside the castle. Of course, he thought, most
of them would have no idea what Karkaroff kidnapping him had meant, or
that Voldemort was back, as yet. The students would have retired to the
school, and the outside observers would have gone home. His
disappearance would be a matter of concern to a very few. Probably
Dumbledore had felt that Voldemort had returned, and the former Death
Eaters, and the Durmstrang students would be looking for Karkaroff, and
Draco and Connor would notice he'd vanished, but otherwise, the
wizarding world was in ignorance right now.

\emph{A pity that cannot last very much longer,} he thought, and then
stopped with a sigh as Fawkes gripped his chin yet again in one talon,
turned it to face him, and began to sing. Harry stopped, since he didn't
trust himself to keep walking forward and guide Dragonsbane's floating
body around obstacles when he was like this.

Fawkes tried a softer song, warbling and drifting, ghosting gently
across the surface of his mind. This time, the visions that appeared
were more like dreams and less like messages. Fawkes was singing of the
sun, Harry saw, and long, peaceful afternoons soaked in the sun, and
white corridors. The white corridors coalesced as he focused on them.
Harry had the impression that they were the image of a specific place,
and that he had seen that place before.

Indeed he had. He recognized it in a moment as the Seers' Sanctuary,
which Peter's mind had resembled.

Harry jerked himself backward, interrupting Fawkes's grip and sending
him fluttering into the air. Harry recovered his balance and his breath,
and shook his head at the distressed phoenix.

``I'm sorry,'' he said. ``I \emph{can't}. I told you that. Please don't
ask me again.''

``Harry.''

Harry started and turned around. He would have expected either Connor or
Snape to be the first one running to greet him, since his emotions had
probably incapacitated Draco enough to put him in the hospital wing. But
Draco, oblivious to what \emph{should} have happened, stood behind him
on the path past the lake instead, and then hurtled forward and grabbed
Harry tightly in his arms in the next moment.

Harry hugged him back, letting his hand rest on Draco's spine, and
holding his glamoured wrist just off to the side. He would have to be
careful. Draco knew his emotions better than anyone alive, and Harry was
sure that he was radiating pain and terror and rage and other things he
couldn't anticipate even now.

``I felt pain,'' Draco was whispering into his ear. ``But it was so
distant. I think the connection between us decreases in intensity with
distance. I knew that someone was hurting you, and I wanted to go help
you, but Snape wouldn't even let me out of the dungeons until the pain
stopped. Then he only told me that I could watch for you, and I had to
stay within the wards to do that, and I had to come back inside at
midnight if you hadn't shown up, or before then if any danger
threatened.'' He drew back, staring anxiously into Harry's eyes. ``What
\emph{happened}, Harry?''

``Voldemort came back,'' said Harry.

Draco's face paled, and he took a deep swallow.

Harry went on talking, trying to strike a balance between telling Draco
what he needed to know and not choosing words that would send him into
hysterics. ``He took me to a graveyard and performed a resurrection
ritual that used my blood to raise himself again.'' He closed his eyes,
and the vision of Voldemort crouched on his chest and biting him seared
in the blackness of his mind as if it had never left. Harry jerked his
head back, not going far in the tight hold of Draco's arms, and then
shook it and went on in a calmer voice. ``Then he called the Death
Eaters. He gave them---certain instructions.'' He opened his eyes and
looked carefully at his friend. ``Draco, I'm so sorry, but Vince's
father is going to pull him out of school, and he's supposed to be
trained to kill you before next Midsummer.''

This time, Draco went white to the lips---yet, strangely, Harry thought
some of that pallor was fury and not fear. ``I thought he had given it
up,'' he said. ``I really thought he had. He told me that his father
wasn't willing to follow the Dark Lord anymore, and I thought\ldots{}I
thought that meant\ldots{}'' Draco shook his head, and said, ``Never
mind. What happened then?''

\emph{Tread carefully now.} ``Voldemort tried to fight a duel with me.''
Harry laughed at the expression on Draco's face, but cut the laughter
off. The sound of it made Draco stare at him and Fawkes let out a
sobbing cry of distress. ``Yes, I know. Stupid of him. But he's stronger
than I am, and he thought he could take me. And he probably could have,
because they killed---I didn't tell you that, they killed a little boy,
a werewolf \emph{ate} him, and I couldn't do anything, and I wanted to
die.'' Harry had to close his eyes again, to smother the pressure of the
tears on them.

``Harry,'' Draco said, and squeezed him until he could hardly breathe.
``Harry---you're blaming yourself for that, aren't you?'' His voice
tilted and crashed down into a mixture of anger and horror and pity that
hit Harry like a lash and made him struggle to pull back a bit. Draco
only tightened his grip, and Harry, weak with magical exhaustion and
emotional drain, didn't have much choice but to stay. ``Oh, Harry,
\emph{Merlin}, don't. I know you would have saved him if you could,
because that's the kind of person you are.'' He stroked Harry's hair.
``So you really couldn't save him. It's not your fault. Please, stop
blaming yourself. Merlin, no wonder you hurt so badly.''

Harry let his head fall forward so that it rested on Draco's shoulder.
He needed this, he told the parts of himself that wanted to stand back
and not be so weak, he needed this time to have some chance of keeping
it together long enough to fight this war, and it was a convenient
excuse. Let Draco think all Harry's pain had been emotional, and he
would not look for a physical cause.

``Not only that,'' Harry whispered. ``I was gone during the fight,
Draco. I lost control of my magic, and my emotions. My magic still isn't
entirely back under my control. Dragonsbane Parkinson showed up, and,
well---'' He lifted his wand and canceled the Disillusionment Charm.

He heard Draco gag, and turned resolutely to look. It was worse than he
had remembered. The carnage had seemed almost natural in the graveyard,
a home of death and the dead. In the clear starlight and wan moonbeams
of a Hogwarts night, Dragonsbane's wounds---the wounds he had caused and
created, he must never forget that---were an obscenity.

``My magic killed him,'' Harry said quietly. ``He came to help, and my
magic thought of him as a threat to me, and did \emph{that} to him. He
sacrificed his life to bring me back to sanity.''

Once again, he lost his breath as Draco squeezed him, and murmured
fiercely into his ear.

``You didn't do it. It's not your fault. You couldn't have known that he
would show up like that. They'll \emph{understand}, Harry. They have to.
And meanwhile, \emph{you} have to understand. You didn't mean to do
this. You're not a murderer anymore than someone who accidentally spits
someone on his sword is a murderer. You would only willingly kill to
protect yourself or other people. Merlin, I love you.''

Harry found the words only small comfort---he would until he came to
terms with what he had done, he suspected---but he pulled them around
himself and held them close nonetheless. At least they meant that he had
someone to whom he mattered, someone to whom his comfort was important
just because he was \emph{him}, and not because of the part that he
could play in the war.

\emph{It would be so different if this were my mother\ldots{}}

He nuzzled his head into Draco's shoulder and soaked up what the warmth
and words could do for him, without demanding that they be something
they weren't. At last he lifted his head and nodded to show he
understood.

``I have to summon Hawthorn and Pansy,'' he whispered. ``I have to tell
them about Dragonsbane.''

``I know.'' Draco smiled at him as he stepped away. The smile was
wrenched to the side by a sorrow that Harry knew was almost as great as
his own, as accepting of the consequences and foresighted about the
future. ``But, Harry, they'll understand. I'm sure of it.''

Harry smiled at him, and then an accident happened, natural and
unavoidable. Or maybe it was. Harry would have thought nothing of it on
any other day, and that was why he allowed it to happen now.

He scolded himself afterwards, told himself to remember that he was
living another life, one in which he had to deal with certain realities.

Draco reached out to take his hands. He confidently closed his fingers
over Harry's right wrist.

His fingers passed right through the glamour of the left one.

Draco blinked and stared. Harry jerked his wrist backward, feeling
hysteria pounding abruptly in his throat. \emph{No. I can't do this
right now. I can't. I can't talk to him about this---}

Then he heard the warning snarl from the side, and slammed himself back
into calm, draining his anger into an Occlumency pool. \emph{I can't get
upset, or my magic will attack Draco. Merlin, I couldn't bear that. Hold
still, Harry. Maybe he doesn't know what this means. After all, it's not
like anyone's mind would just turn to Voldemort cutting off your hand as
a natural thing to have happen.} Someone might think that if he knew the
history of Voldemort's War, but Draco had been sheltered in that
respect.

Draco blinked a bit more, his face still filled with blank surprise, and
Harry summoned a smile. He might get out of this after all. He feigned a
laugh. ``Can't believe that happened!'' he exclaimed, and aligned his
hand more carefully this time, so that Draco would grasp the solid part
of the stump that was still there. ``We must have slipped in---''

Draco made a swift, darting motion, seizing his wrist this time and
turning the replica of his left hand back and forth. Harry held still,
and even raised his eyebrows as though asking \emph{what} in the world
Draco was doing. He thought he could escape this yet. It was not as if
Draco knew his hands that well.

``Your left thumb doesn't curve that way,'' said Draco, sinking his
hopes, and drew in a thick breath that rattled along his throat as
though his mouth were made of sheet metal. He lifted his head, inch by
inch, and Harry shivered as their eyes locked. Draco's had a sheer
intensity that Harry had never seen matched, except by the keenness of
the surface thoughts that Harry's involuntary Legilimency showed him.
``Harry,'' he said, each word carefully intoned, ``remove the glamour.''

Harry could hear his own breathing, rushing along his lungs. He shook
his head. ``There's no glamour.''

``Do not lie to me,'' said Draco, in exactly the same way. ``Harry,
remove the glamour, and remove it now.''

``I don't---'' Harry turned his head away, feeling his face flush and
the pressure of tears increase against his eyelids again. \emph{Merlin,
why does this have to happen? It isn't right.} He bit his lip to hold
back a sob. ``There's nothing there,'' he said, when he could force his
mouth open again.

``I know that,'' said Draco, taking and twisting his words to have a
meaning that Harry never intended for them to have. ``\emph{Now}, Harry.''

Harry thought he should have held out against this. He was weak, so
weak. Why couldn't he resist what was happening to him? Why couldn't he
pass any of the tests that anyone made of him tonight? Should have been
stronger, to resist Draco's pleas. Some have been faster, to prevent
Draco from ever catching hold of his wrist in the first place and
pressing matters this far.

``I'm waiting.''

Harry swallowed, and acknowledged the failure, and removed the glamour.

He heard Draco hiss out his breath. Then he took up Harry's severed
wrist and moved his arm carefully in a circle, no doubt examining the
stump from all angles. Harry bowed his head, shivering. Draco's touch
hurt where Bellatrix had cauterized the wound, but not much more than
the bite Voldemort had given him. What really cut and flayed him were
Draco's eyes, the knowledge that someone was seeing what he really was,
and that he was too weak to hide evidence of his failure.

Instinctively, he tried to retreat, to curl his left arm close to his
chest. Draco braced his feet and pulled, and Harry found himself
stumbling forward, ending up in Draco's arms again. Draco was gripping
his wrist with one hand, the back of his neck with the other, and
murmuring a ferocious litany in his ears.

``Never hide from me, do you understand? I want to know everything you
are. I don't \emph{care} that you think you failed. You didn't. Come to
me with things like this, Harry. Don't retreat.'' Draco's hand stroked
his wrist, and Harry jumped. ``Now, we can get a replacement hand---''

``We can't,'' said Harry. The words sounded choked. He hated himself for
that. ``Bellatrix cast spells on it so that I couldn't grow another hand
there, or heal the wound, or get a replacement.''

Draco stood in silence for a moment.

Then he said, ``That \emph{bitch.}''

Harry shivered at the vehemence in his voice, and the more so because it
was the only word Draco called her, as good as a vow of vengeance. He
pulled back a moment later and stared into Harry's eyes, his gaze still
strong and honest as a blade.

``It's going to get better, Harry,'' he said. ``We're both going to make
it better.'' He didn't seem to feel the need to add the words \emph{I
promise} or any equivalent. Like his epithet for Bellatrix, Harry
supposed, they implied the rest of what they could mean by the simple
virtue of being said.

Harry nodded. He couldn't speak around the lump in his throat, but he
could nod.

``You'll come to the Manor for the summer,'' Draco went on, speaking
with a calm, absolute authority that reminded Harry of Lucius. ``We'll
work on breaking the spells on your wrist. And then---''

``What? Draco, I can't!'' Harry twisted, using some of the moves Lily
had taught him when Draco tried to restrain him, and broke away. They
stood there for a moment, Draco with his head cocked slightly to one
side and his gaze drifting back and forth between Harry's eyes and his
wrist, Harry with his feet braced to resist an attack. His magic stirred
around him, then settled uneasily, like disturbed mist. Harry took a
deep breath and explained, even as he sprouted the glamour of his left
hand again. ``Look at it from my eyes. Your parents wouldn't rest until
they found out the truth about my hand, would they?''

``Of course not,'' said Draco, but it was obvious he didn't understand
how that connected to Harry's not staying with him for the summer.
``There are several rooms in the Manor that are charmed to remove any
glamours that visitors are wearing, in fact. It wouldn't be long before
they noticed.''

Harry nodded. ``And while I could trust your mother with that
knowledge---'' \emph{maybe, if I had to} ``---I wouldn't trust your
father. It might even convince him that I'm weak and no longer worth
allying with.''

Draco opened his mouth. Harry waited.

Draco closed his mouth. Harry nodded.

``Maybe it would,'' Draco conceded grudgingly, and rubbed his forehead.
``I don't think so, but it's at least possible that he would use the
knowledge to gain an advantage in some way. He can't abandon you right
now. I shudder to think of what else he could do within the terms of the
truce-dance, though.'' Draco nodded, slowly. ``Then you'll stay with
Snape.''

Fawkes gave a sad little croon, and from Draco's startled glance upward,
Harry thought he, too, must have had a fleeting image of the pale
couches and sunlit rooms of the Sanctuary.

``With Snape,'' said Harry firmly. ``Not with the Seers.'' He frowned at
Fawkes and kept walking. He would meet with Snape as soon as he got back
to the castle, if possible. His guardian deserved to know that he had
returned safely. Or, if he ran into Connor first, then he would reassure
him. Either way, after those meetings, he would need to write a letter
to Scrimgeour and one to Hawthorn.

Things turned out rather differently than he expected, though, because
the cowled figure waiting for him near the doors to the entrance hall
was Hawthorn Parkinson.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Draco had slipped away without a word, other than the faint whisper to
Harry that he would tell Snape and Connor he was back. Harry nodded, and
followed Hawthorn in silence to a small room he hadn't known existed on
the third floor, Dragonsbane's body floating behind him. Hawthorn hadn't
yet glanced at her husband's corpse. Harry couldn't tell what that
meant. Perhaps she was so angry that she thought she would kill him if
she looked?

Hawthorn opened the door to the room. Inside, a fire blazed on a hearth
just swept free of dust and dirt. Three chairs waited in a triangle, one
of them in front of the other two. And Pansy sat on one of those chairs,
her hands folded on her lap and a very faint frown on her face.

Harry would have halted, warned her, cast another Disillusionment Charm,
done anything he could to prepare her for the sight of Dragonsbane.
Hawthorn did not. She simply took over the \emph{Mobilicorpus} and
guided Dragonsbane into the room, then set him floating in front of the
hearth, next to Pansy's chair.

Pansy's face turned the color of whey, and then she began to cry. Harry
bowed his head. He had resolved to himself to face this, or he would
have run away already, but it was hard to be here. He had to call up
images of several quicksilver Occlumency pools to keep himself still.

Hawthorn turned around. Harry saw that she was white around the lips,
but the rest of her face was almost normally pale. She crouched down
beside Pansy and put her arms around her. Pansy turned and buried her
face in her mother's shoulder, winding her arms almost tight enough
around Hawthorn's neck to strangle her, all the while weeping and
weeping and weeping.

Of all the unworthy emotions to feel in that moment, the last Harry
would have thought himself capable of was envy. But he felt it, and he
acknowledged it, and then he put it back in the Occlumency pool. He
lowered his gaze and waited.

At last, Pansy's tears faded. She sat back up, and her mother conjured a
handkerchief for her to wipe her face. While she did so, Hawthorn stood
and took the chair beside her daughter. Harry sat down in the one in
front of them at her slight motion.

``Tell us,'' said Hawthorn, her voice clipped and quiet, ``what happened
in the graveyard.''

Harry blinked, wondering how she had known it was a graveyard, but
began. He gave them the same recitation he had given Draco, minus the
cutting off of his hand, and told the story of Dragonsbane's murder. He
never looked away from Hawthorn's face, and she never changed
expression.

Pansy's choked little sob in the middle of the story was almost enough
to undo him, but Harry told himself he had no right to shed tears. He
had broken the alliance. He had murdered Hawthorn's husband, Pansy's
father. He had no reason to be here but to face his crime. So he told
the story with his own white face and iron determination, and lapsed
into silence when it was done. He wondered what they would do with him.
He had already resolved to defend himself against nothing but a deadly
curse, and then he would run from the room, more to spare his magic
attacking either of the two women than to protect his own life.

\emph{Yes, women}, he thought, teased by a stray thought, as he met
Pansy's eyes at last. \emph{She is now}. Every trace of girlhood was
gone from her face.

Hawthorn said at last, ``Tell me, Harry, were the signs that my husband
repeated these?'' She lifted her hands and began to guide them, slowly,
through a sequence of motions. Harry squinted, making sure that the way
her left palm turned was really the way Dragonsbane's had, and that she
had made three snaps with the forefinger and thumb of her right hand,
not two.

``Yes,'' he said at last. ``He showed them to me several times. I don't
know why he showed them to me, though.'' He swallowed. ``I couldn't
understand his sign language.''

Pansy hissed, a sound that seemed to start from a long distance away and
gradually come closer, rather like Voldemort's laughter at his
resurrection. Harry shivered and shrugged away the comparison. ``What
makes you believe that it matters if \emph{you} understood it?'' she
spat. ``Selfish---''

``Pansy, that is \emph{enough.}'' Hawthorn embedded her last word in the
middle of a growl. The look Pansy flashed her mother was full of
betrayal, but Hawthorn took no notice. She only went on steadily looking
into Harry's eyes, and Harry thought that he was seeing the Red Death
for the first time. ``Harry. Dragonsbane repeated those signs to you on
purpose. They mean, `Do not mourn me. This is my fate. Thus I die.'\,''

Harry could feel himself shrinking in his chair. ``I---that's not
possible. Why---''

Hawthorn closed her eyes, seemingly the only concession to weakness that
she would make. ``Necromancers foresee the death of any wizard or witch
they come into contact with, Harry,'' she said quietly. ``They cannot
tell them the time or manner of it, however. It is a lonely life. But
they also foresee their own deaths. And they keep living in spite of it.
It is a life that takes more courage than I can understand.'' She opened
her eyes, and the first signs of tears marred them. ``Did I tell you,''
she murmured, ``that my husband was not in Slytherin, though many people
assumed and claimed he was, and even I almost believed so at times? He
was a Gryffindor.''

``He didn't---'' Harry stopped. The conclusion was inescapable. \emph{He
came to the graveyard knowing he would die.}

``I suspected,'' Hawthorn went on, her voice quiet, implacable. ``They
are forbidden to tell us lesser mortals outright, but it was there, in
his signs for the last year. He wrote many long letters to those he had
known and left behind in his former life as---well, it does not matter
what his name was now, since he gave it up to choose a name that echoed
mine and to take my surname. He prepared his accounts. He spoke often
and often with a certain spirit he could not name to me, but whom he
said had told him tales of you, because he died defending you from a
certain menace.''

Harry bowed his head. \emph{Sirius.}

``I suspected,'' said Hawthorn softly. ``When my Mark began to burn this
evening, he had me Apparate with him to Hogwarts, and then he---followed
the link between my Mark and the Dark Lord. Somehow. I still don't know
how he did that.'' She sniffed slightly, as though taking in the scent
of sorrow. ``That was when my suspicion coalesced into certainty.''

``How could you have known what signs he would use to talk to me?''
Harry whispered.

``Because I have seen another necromancer use them,'' said Hawthorn.
``They are always the same, a sign that any necromancer will give before
he or she dies, whether or not there are any around to interpret them.''
She reached out a hand and held it motionless in the air between them.
Harry had no idea whether or not she wanted him to take it, and didn't
move. ``You \emph{must} understand, Harry. Necromancers do not regard
death as we do. It is not an ending to life, and they know that very
well. It is only another stage, and in many ways, they revere it
\emph{more} than life. By saying `Thus I die,' they are claiming their
part in a ritual greater and more sacred than anything the living can
grant them. That is why no necromancer would try to step aside from his
death, even if that is possible, which I am not sure it is. That is the
moment of inevitability, the moment when their vision ends.'' Hawthorn
turned her head away. ``Harry, you were part of the instant when my
husband closed his eyes to the world. You actually gave him the passage
into death. You have done him more honor than you can imagine.''

Harry buried his head in his arms. The idea that he was not a murderer
was too shattering for him to deal with right now. He had to think about
something else instead, and he found it in the words, ``How did you know
that it would be in a graveyard?''

``I heard his words to you last Walpurgis Night,'' said Hawthorn. ``When
he left me to go to you, I knew it would be in a home of his kin. He
died in a \emph{graveyard}, Harry, among those he loved and honored. No
necromancer could ask for better.'' She paused a moment, then said,
``Harry. Look at me.''

Harry lifted his head, blinking. Hawthorn had her left sleeve pulled up,
and was tracing the silver scar that bisected the Dark Mark's skull.
Harry shivered as he felt a tickling sensation start along the
complementary scar on his own skin.

``The alliance hasn't broken,'' Hawthorn said, ``or this would have
burst open, and you would have bled to death. You did not. I think that
is because my husband was a necromancer, and knew long before even you
were born how and where he would die. You could have killed him
deliberately, and that would have kept the terms of the alliance.'' She
tipped her head, amber eyes full of light. ``We are still allies.''

Harry stared at him, and couldn't imagine what he would say next.

Someone else could.

``I'm not,'' said Pansy, her voice high and jarring.

Hawthorn looked at her daughter. ``What?''

``I don't want to be allies with him any more.'' Pansy rose to her feet
and crossed her arms. Her eyes cut at Harry in the moment before she
turned her head away. ``He killed my father. And maybe he chose it, and
maybe it was always going to happen, but he was my D-Dad, and I
\emph{loved} him, and Harry \emph{killed} him, and I don't want to be in
the same alliance with him any more.''

Harry listened in silence as Hawthorn tried to talk her daughter out of
it. Pansy would not be moved. Harry had known it before Hawthorn tried
to convince her otherwise. It was all right. He had received more than
he deserved, with Hawthorn still believing in him. Both of them had
known Dragonsbane was going to die, he thought, even as Dragonsbane had,
but Pansy had thought of it as ``dying someday'' and Hawthorn had
suspected an actual date. Pansy was doing nothing more now than
following her own beliefs and inclinations. It was as it should be. If
she was recoiling from the shock that the sight of her father's corpse
had dealt her\ldots{}well, that was also her choice, even as it had been
her mother's choice to reveal Dragonsbane's death like that.

In the end, Pansy bared her left arm and pressed it to the scar on her
mother's, while Hawthorn murmured in sorrow, ``Released from bonds of
blood, released from bonds of flesh, released from bonds of alliance.
May your solitary path be prosperous, my child.''

Pansy staggered a little when the ritual was done. Harry felt the same
thing, like the snapping of a cord he hadn't known was taut between
them. Pansy nodded coolly at him and turned for the door.

When she reached it, she turned back. ``I am going to honor my father,''
she announced. ``I am going to do what he would have been proud of me
for.''

He met her eyes, and once again his Legilimency darted out in front of
him, reading Pansy's intentions there. She was going to become a
necromancer.

Harry blinked as Pansy slipped from the room. It was an unusual
ambition, and one that he didn't know if she had the tenacity to hold
to. But he wished her luck.

``Harry?''

Harry turned to Hawthorn and bowed from the waist. ``Thank you,'' he
said simply. ``I---perhaps that wound will not go so deep, now.'' He
didn't know that for certain, but it at least might help bleed off some
of the venom, to know that Dragonsbane had known this fate was coming,
and even embraced it.

Hawthorn eyed him narrowly. ``Are you well?'' she asked. ``There is so
much pain and weariness in your scent.''

Harry dredged up his smile. ``I'm all right,'' he answered. ``In pain
and weary, but as soon as I've seen my guardian---'' he could not quite
deny himself a visit to Snape, not now ``---then I'll go to the hospital
wing and rest, I promise.''

``See that you do.'' Hawthorn stood, and then reached out for him. Harry
let himself be hugged because he was too surprised to prevent it. ``Keep
yourself safe,'' she whispered into his ear. ``You do not know how glad
I am that you are alive, or how much we need you.''

``I think I might have some idea,'' Harry murmured, thinking of what use
he could be to the war effort. There was a small part of himself, a very
small part, that really was excited at what was coming.

\emph{This is the war that I've been training all my life to fight.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry met Fawkes not far past the door of the room where Hawthorn had
taken him. She had let him go, finally, with one more solemn promise
extracted from him to take himself to the hospital wing as soon as he
was done with Snape, and gone to bear both herself and Dragonsbane's
body to the outskirts of the wards, so they could Apparate back to the
Garden. She had shown no sign of noticing his lack of a left hand, for
which Harry was profoundly grateful.

Fawkes scolded him with a stream of notes as he walked towards the
dungeons. Harry had so many images in his head that he couldn't even
tell what he was being scolded for.

``Will you shut up?'' he muttered at the phoenix as he passed down the
main corridor towards Snape's office.

``I think he is very wise,'' said his guardian's dry voice. ``After all,
you bear many wounds that you have shown yourself capable of ignoring.''

Harry looked up with quick gladness. Snape was striding towards him from
an alcove along the wall. He met his eyes---

And his Legilimency darted out, picking up memories from Snape's mind in
a swift trawl. Images sped past Harry's eyes, thoughts of how Snape was
guarding him from himself and regrets over having taught him to resist
the \emph{De Profundis} curse and worry that Harry would find out about
the compulsion on Draco---

\emph{Wait.}

Harry felt himself begin to shake. His eyes stayed fixed, though, and
now that his Legilimency had a likewise fixed purpose, it sped forward,
fleetly snatching more and more of the memories he wanted to look at.

Snape had given the Potions book to Draco. He had known, all the while,
that the book bound anyone who opened it to complete a certain potion.
It put a compulsion on them, one that made them ignore most other
important things until the potion was safely brewed.

It put a compulsion on them.

A compulsion.

And Snape had known.

He had \emph{known.}

Harry felt his mouth open, so that he was screaming without breath,
without sound. His magic blew out past him and grabbed Snape, not
hurting him for the moment; Harry was too deeply in shock to wish anyone
pain. The magic simply suspended Snape in midair and twisted him around,
watching him all the while as if he were some loathsome, tiny insect.

And then Harry's rage came bounding up behind the shock, and smashed
into him.

He took a step forward, and saw Snape begin to choke, the magic forming
into a pair of hands that gripped his throat. Harry thought someone else
was present and speaking for him, until he realized that, yes, that
really was his own voice coming out of his own mouth. Apparently, the
magic had decided that he needed no help with this particular task.

``You knew,'' the voice said. ``And you gave him the book anyway, and
when I gave you the chance to tell me the truth about the compulsion,
the night Draco blurted it out, you lied to me. On purpose.
Deliberately.'' Harry could feel his rage rising, knew how easy it would
be to kill, and knew exactly \emph{why} he would kill, too. ``And you
used compulsion, and you used it on \emph{him}.''

``Do you have the slightest idea of how much he means to me?''

Snape's face was turning black. Harry wondered why for a moment, because
the hands hadn't gripped him that long, and then reminded himself that
it was the pressure and not the length of time that mattered.

His rage trembled. The magic whispered about him. It would be so easy,
so easy to kill him---

But that would only bring him pain, and Harry was in enough pain
already, as one of the people he had counted on being able to trust
pulled back a mask to reveal a traitor's face, and the trust itself
crumbled and crazed and cracked into ruin.

He opened his hand, actually trying to make the same motion with both of
them as he showed the magic what to do, and the fingers on Snape's
throat parted. Snape dropped limply to the floor, and lay there for a
moment. Then Fawkes left Harry's shoulder and soared over to him,
shedding tears on his bruises. Harry knew he would live.

And the pain had overcome the rage now, and his magic was simply howling
around him, the cry of a maddened, wounded beast.

``I trusted you,'' he whispered, and then he turned and ran.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

He burst out of the school, sobbing, having got his breath back by now.
The magic made enough noise for the both of them, though, sweeping
around him and rising up into towering wings as they came out from
between the walls, howling steadily, the sound of a werewolf in
mourning.

Harry stumbled towards the Forbidden Forest, tracing, he thought, the
path he had used in second year when his magic had similarly gone out of
control and was pulsing around him. He didn't make it that far, though.
He fell to his knees and wept, while around him his magic swayed and
sang and howled.

Something sang back.

Harry wiped frantically at his tears with his hand and lifted his head
to the black sky. The moon had gone behind a cloud. Even the stars
seemed dimmer. It was the darkness between the stars that pulsed and
shimmered and shook, and Harry could hear the song of the Dark magic
growing closer and closer, reaching eagerly out to him.

\emph{Come with us. Ride with us. What need have you to hold back now?
You know the joys of unrestraint, and they will never accept you back
anyway, all those creatures who live so willingly within walls and
limits. Come.}

Harry trembled, wrapping his arms around himself and bowing his head. He
knew that he would never have to worry about hurting anyone again, not
if he went into the Dark music. It might still happen, but he wouldn't
care. Or he would lose his magic into the great wash of power around
him, becoming one with the river, the wind, the song.

He would escape accusations of murder.

He would escape knowing that Snape had lied to him, and that he could
only ever trust one person again, and that the refuge he had counted on
obtaining was gone, swept away like a house in the flood.

He didn't really want to, not with the part of him that thought he
should stay alive for the war and concentrate on his mistakes and making
sure they never happened again. But that was not quite as strong as the
part of him that longed for escape, any escape, in the wake of this
latest fanged epiphany.

He felt the Dark magic land close beside him and pace towards him. Harry
looked. It had the form of an enormous black wolf, with his own green
eyes, marked with a bolt of silver lightning on its forehead. It snarled
at him and danced its forepaws in invitation, tilting its head back so
that it could look up at the sky. Harry stood, shivering, and moved a
step forward. He would never have to be cold again if he went with it,
because he would forget what warmth was.

Fawkes flared into being above him, song loud and defiant. The wolf
screamed as the light fell on it, and stumbled a step back, crouching as
though it would leap and engulf the phoenix.

Harry gained his sanity back again for the second time that evening. Or
should it be third, since he'd slipped from it twice? He thought that,
and other such irrelevant things, even as he turned and ran into the
Forbidden Forest.

His magic bounded beside him, puzzled but still attached to him. Fawkes
soared along above him, singing. Harry could feel magical creatures who
might have bothered him ordinarily drawing back from them, not willing
to tangle with someone accompanied by the fiercest of both Light and
Dark fury.

Then he became aware of movement off to the side, and turned his head. A
three-headed snake slid there, heads all turned towards him. A
Runespoor.

``\emph{Have you come to us at last?}'' was its excited greeting.
``\emph{We told you to come back to us when you could hear the singing.
We mean you to listen.}''

Harry caught his breath in a sob, and stopped running. He had not
remembered that part of the meeting in the Forest for months, but now it
blazed in his memory, hard and clear as lit notes of music. He nodded,
slowly. His magic danced beside him, and looked back and forth between
him and the snake.

``\emph{Follow},'' the Runespoor ordered briskly, and then slid into the
woods. Harry followed, now and then stumbling on holes in the Forest
floor. Even with the light from Fawkes's feathers, which was brighter
when he actually settled onto Harry's shoulder, it was as dim under the
thick branches as it had been under the lake.

He at last reached the hill where he had met the Runespoors in the
autumn. They were gathered in a half-circle now, and when they saw him,
they lifted their heads and hissed deeply.

``\emph{Break our web,}'' said the one who had led him, whipping around
and looking up at Harry. All three heads hissed as one, lending the
Parseltongue a slight echo effect---comparable to, but not as strong as,
the rippling voices of the Many. ``\emph{It was wrought of song, the
Light music that we can hear but not sing. We will teach you the Dark
music, the means of hearing it and yet resisting it. The Runespoors were
great singers, once. With your help, we shall become so again.}''

``Very well,'' said Harry simply, not even sure what he was agreeing to
but knowing it would keep his thoughts off the reason he had come out
here, and then knelt so that he could rest his body while occupying his
mind.

He could see the web almost at once, a thicker-stranded one than the
Many's, splitting into small shining threads near each Runespoor, so
that it could snare all three heads on each snake---or two in the cases
where the Runespoor's other two heads had bitten the critical one off.
Harry reached out and laid his magic carefully along the webs. It went
along with him, seeming concerned more than sorrowful now, not sure what
he was doing.

Fawkes began to sing.

Harry took a deep breath as the song was answered by a hissing croon
from the Runespoors, turning to a discordant music like peas being
rattled about in a drum. The two songs mingled, flowing around each
other and coming in two distinct streams to his ears. One was the
frenzied symphony of the Dark music he was already familiar with.

The other was strong, and bright, with an undertone of rage. The song of
the Light magic, Harry supposed, and it was angry with Voldemort for
tricking it, getting ready to recoil upon him.

He followed the path of Fawkes's song. There was no other way to
describe it. As the phoenix was bonded to him through their established
connection and to the Light song through his voice, so Harry could
follow that three-link chain and find himself in the midst of a roaring
golden river, singing as it ran to the sea, as the sun and the moon rose
and turned and fell. This was the music of the spheres, Harry thought,
generated by the movement of the lights of heaven. The stars sang, too,
but in voices too high and cold to be of much use. It was the sun the
phoenix especially sang to, and the moon could serve as another
chorister, gathering the sun's light and reflecting it back.

Harry wondered how many creatures were singing in the world that he
never heard.

A small golden tributary stream ran into the mighty river, and Harry
located it easily, not only because it was there at all, but because it
was befouled. The web stretched across it as a dam, and streaks of black
curled into it. Harry wrinkled his nose. This was a corruption of Light
magic. Whoever had done this had been in haste, and had simply slapped
tangled webs and bits of twigs and moss together and then dropped the
whole thing in the stream.

He gently scooped up the dam, and step by step began putting its
materials to the side, on the bank of the stream. He could sense the
web's threads around the Runespoors fracturing as he did so, and the
Light music itself helped him, the stream eager to run clear and free
again. Harry gathered and scooped, gathered and placed, and slowly,
slowly, the swirls of black in the gold faded. The tributary chattered
at him and sang like a bluebird at dawn.

As he worked with the Light music, the Runespoors touched the Dark song,
he thought. They were working it into him, showing him the patterns that
underlay the seeming chaos. It was the chaos that made the Dark music so
hard to resist. It seemed ever-changing wildness, and as long as that
was the case, then a human mind became lost in it---and intrigued by the
thought of no two moments ever being the same. But there were some
patterns there, some notes insistently repeated, some others coming and
going with less frequency, and once he knew what they were, he could
listen to the music without fear.

His wandless magic went along with it.

Harry felt the magic pursuing the knowledge of the Dark music inside
him, intrigued and impressed and lulled by the thought of understanding
it at last. As the Runespoors sang and taught him, chorus by chorus and
verse by verse, his magic learned it, too. As Harry stooped and gathered
material from the stream to place on the bank, all the while using one
hand, the magic became used to the thought of doing labor with one hand
and did not find it so bad. As Fawkes sang, his magic nudged at the bond
between him and the phoenix, and accepted it, and curled up inside his
body again like a restless cat come back home.

Harry sang and worked and learned, refusing to acknowledge the coming of
the magic, until it was unmistakable. Then he opened his eyes, and found
the Runespoors slithering freely around him, and Fawkes just coming down
from the song on his shoulder, and his wandless magic once more bound,
part of him, losing its free will in the wonder of knowing what he knew
and being \emph{his} magic.

``\emph{Thank you,}'' said the Runespoors. ``\emph{Thank you. We will not
attack the other humans now. We have our song back. That is all we
wanted. And now you can go to sleep, little one, now that you are
returned.}''

Harry wanted to protest that he didn't need to sleep---until he tried to
stand up and fell over, and Fawkes bit his ear hard enough to draw
blood. Then he decided that maybe he did, after all.

He curled up in the middle of the clearing, Runespoors piled warm and
lazy around him, and drifted into sleep on a music like drumming peas
that did not let him think about anything else that had happened to him
that Midsummer night.

\emph{No matter what else happens to me, I am still} vates\emph{. There
is still that.}

\chapter{Call It Compulsion, Call It Madness}\label{chapter-80-call-it-compulsion-call-it-madness}

Albus frowned slightly. It seemed that his compulsion had not been as
successful as he would have liked. Nightfall, and Harry had fled outside
Hogwarts and was sleeping in the Forbidden Forest, as he saw when he
focused his eyes through a knothole in one of the trees.

Perhaps he should be patient. After all, assert the compulsion too
strongly, and Harry would be sure to feel it. He must keep the reins
light and loose until he could pull Harry up and arrest him in his
plunging course.

But an intuition itched behind his eyelids, telling him that he didn't
have much time. Yes, he might catch Harry in a carefully constructed
trap, and the boy's fight with Severus---Albus had felt the echoes of
angry Dark magic all the way up in his office---suggested that it was
working. Still, all the students left the school in a few days, and
Harry wouldn't have an excuse to remain here if he was not staying with
Severus. He would travel away, and then Albus would have, at best, the
uneasy knowledge that his compulsion was working in him without knowing
why or how.

No, he would have to take the chance. At least Fawkes was asleep now,
and so was Harry, and it was easier to make an impression on a dreaming
mind than a waking one. Albus drew in more of his gift and then exhaled
it in a great, sweeping miasma over the boy resting among the
Runespoors.

Harry stirred and murmured fretfully, but sank back into slumber again.
Albus continued to watch. He had pushed as much as he dared. Now he had
to wait and see whether his designs would be frustrated or answered,
whether Harry would save the world or damn it.

He hoped he would not wait long.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry woke to something pecking him. He sat up slowly, assuming it was
Fawkes, until he realized the phoenix sat with his head beneath his wing
on a branch not far from him. Harry frowned and looked about until he
noticed the pale belly of a barn owl hovering beside him. Carefully,
Harry adjusted his glasses and reached out to make his left arm a perch
for the owl.

The talons scored his bare skin and drew faint lines of blood. Harry
supposed he should really go inside to the hospital wing soon and have
those and the other wounds treated. For now, though, he was too busy.

He unrolled the letter, slowly and clumsily, and grimaced when he
recognized the handwriting.

\emph{I will not bother with greetings. We cannot afford the time, and
you would think it insincere of me anyway.}

\emph{My old siblings are not helpless without my lord. They are going
to cut off the head of the serpent, and watch the body thrash in
helpless convulsions. Do you want to come and protect the snake, or hear
of it later? I would be most pleased to bring you a personal report from
the Ministry. I am going in early to watch the fun. Do let me know if
you want to come with me. I know two areas free of anti-Apparition
wards.}

\emph{Still playing the game,}

\emph{Evan Rosier.}

Harry rubbed his face with the letter and tried to get rid of sleepiness
and the sickness that wanted to assault him as he remembered Snape's
betrayal. It was still hours from dawn, by the position of the moon. He
hadn't slept long. He didn't want to waste time figuring out riddles
handed to him by a Death Eater who was probably mad anyway.

But something about the wording lingered in his brain, tickling it. This
was a wizarding proverb, not one of Rosier's poetry quotes.

In a moment, he remembered. There had once been a plot to assassinate a
Slytherin Headmaster of Hogwarts that used the same words. In the end,
the assassins had had to give up their plan because they couldn't get
close enough to the Headmaster through the walls of the wards.

\emph{Cut off the head of the serpent, and watch the body
thrash\ldots{}}

Harry's eyes popped wide, and he heard a gasp rip from his throat. He
shook out the letter again and stared at it.

Yes. Rosier did mention the Ministry.

\emph{Scrimgeour. They're going for Scrimgeour.}

Harry stood, sending the barn owl into flight with an irritated hoot,
his mind scrambling around his skull. Somehow, he had thought the Death
Eaters wouldn't want to move while Voldemort was still in hiding and
healing, which was stupid. Of course they could have had plans that he'd
directed them to put into practice even before his resurrection. And of
course someone like Karkaroff was clever enough and high enough in
standing with the Death Eaters to force them into motion, even if the
others wanted to wait.

\emph{They want to assassinate the Minister. Of course they do. What a
bold move, what a statement of power! And the country would thrash
around like a snake with its head cut off.}

Harry tossed the letter hastily to the ground, struggled away from the
last of the Runespoors, and began running through the Forest towards the
limit of the wards. Even now, he would not try to Apparate within them,
lest he tear some of the most-needed protections against Voldemort. But
he could Apparate from outside them, and that would get him to the
Ministry in time to warn Scrimgeour. Harry thought he could remember the
gray room where the Hounds had brought him. That had been free of
anti-Apparition wards, though they might have been put back up by now
with the disbanding of the Hounds.

So be it, then. Now that he had control of his magic back, Harry thought
he could survive even a bounce from wards like that without splinching.

\emph{Probably.}

He pushed away the small snarl of uneasiness in the back of his mind. He
would preserve his life, oh yes, he had to, because this was for the
war, and he had to answer the training his mother had given him. But he
would preserve other lives, too. He had failed tests in the graveyard,
and even before then. He hadn't figured out that it was Karkaroff who
must have downed the Aurors and blocked up the Floo Network the night of
the raid on the Ministry prison, even though he should have. He hadn't
kept Sirius alive, even though he should have.

He was not about to let Scrimgeour die.

He reached the outer limit of the wards and slowed his run abruptly as
he noticed someone standing in the light of a \emph{Lumos} glow. He
stared when he recognized the dark eyes and the mad grin. Evan Rosier
bowed to him.

``You are taking me up on the offer of Apparating to the Ministry after
all?'' he called cheerfully.

Harry bared his teeth, unable to help it. His determination was surging
along the edge of rage, and the sight of a Death Eater now called up
memories of just a few hours ago that he would much rather avoid. ``Not
on your life. I'm going, but I'm going to Apparate to an area that
\emph{I} know of.''

Rosier laughed at him. ``I didn't mean that you should actually come
\emph{with} me, Harry---may I call you Harry?''

``No,'' said Harry curtly, and closed his eyes, trying to remember the
exact size and shape and color of that bare little room.

``I would just give you the description of the room, and then you could
Apparate there yourself,'' Rosier continued smoothly, interrupting
Harry's memories. ``One of them is a little-used room off a private
office of the Minister's. It has four close gray walls, and a table
that's bolted to the floor in the middle of it and can't go anywhere.
The smell is that of blood, from when they cut into a unicorn in there
one time and couldn't get rid of the reek. Can you see it?''

Yes, Harry could, far more clearly than the ten-month-old memory he'd
been trying to call up. For a moment, he weighed whether he could trust
Rosier against the need to get to the Ministry on time.

His mother's voice whispered in his head, chasing away all doubts.
\emph{You will sometimes have to make allies of your enemies. You can
trust them to act in their own self-interest, as long as you know what
they want. When their goals and yours no longer coincide, then you may
drop them. There is no shame in doing so. They are evil if they would
oppose your brother, and have no sense of honor to lose.}

Harry nodded, once, and then, holding the image of the room clear before
his eyes, he Apparated.

It felt as though someone had shoved him down a tube and were slowly
squeezing him out. Harry had Apparated before, and even from London to
Scotland, but then, he'd known both the place he left and the place he
arrived in very well, and he'd had rage at Dumbledore driving him. Now
he was aiming for a place he didn't know very well, and he could almost
feel the magic tumbling through space beside him, anxiously seeking a
way for him to land safely, seeking a room that matched the description
in his head.

Then it was there. The stink of unicorn blood wrongfully spilled,
familiar from the Forbidden Forest in first year, hit his nose, and
Harry opened his eyes to find himself in the room Rosier had described.
He'd landed just a few inches from the table. He moved towards the door
at once, even as he heard a \emph{pop} from behind him that was probably
Rosier. Harry ignored him. He would harm the man if he attacked, and if
he did not, then Harry saw no reason to encourage him or pay attention
to him.

``Oh, good,'' said Rosier. ``No one else is here. I hoped that no one
else would be. They must be using the other one.''

Harry knew, distantly, that he should have flinched or had \emph{some}
reaction to the information that the Death Eaters could have been here.
He didn't, not really. Even the thought of seeing Bellatrix barely
infuriated him. He was busy casting the reverse to the locking charms on
the door, and then stepping out into the office beyond.

It was well-lit, and when Harry moved up to the padded chair behind the
desk and touched it, it was still warm. Of course, Scrimgeour must have
been working late, he thought, or the Death Eaters would have aimed for
his home, wherever it was.

He turned and looked at Rosier. ``What else do you know about this
plan?''

Rosier lifted a shoulder with a faint smile. ``Only that a spy was
supposed to lure the Minister out of his office, Harry. Something about
wanting to expose a few more Death Eaters pretending to be loyal
Ministry officials, like Walden Macnair, to him.'' Rosier chuckled.
``Oh, he's going to meet Death Eaters, I suppose. Just not the ones he
expects.''

``Where was the other place we could have Apparated in?'' Harry
demanded, thinking it reasonable that the traitor would walk Scrimgeour
in that direction.

``One of the offices on the second floor, which Walden secured for us
bit by bit,'' said Rosier. ``This particular office is on the third.''

Harry ran for the door again. He could feel the hum of wards around
them, and the very least the wards would do is prevent Apparating. He
suspected that a few of them were already calling alarms about unwanted
intruders in this office. Once again, it wasn't something he had time to
stop and worry about.

He found an empty corridor, decorated with sleeping portraits, beyond
the office, but even as he began walking down it, a figure stepped out
of a door to his left. Harry gripped his wand and spun into a
battle-crouch, almost flinging a hex before he realized it was Tonks.

She stared at him, her hair changing from blue to pink. ``Harry?'' she
asked. ``What are you doing here?''

``Hello, sweet girl,'' said Evan Rosier from behind her. ``I bet you
taste like blueberries.''

Harry flung a body-bind at Rosier, yelled at Tonks, ``He's a Death
Eater, extremely dangerous, leave him alone,'' and then ran up the
corridor, looking for \emph{some} sign of a staircase or the lifts. He
knew he should be able to remember---his mother would have been so
disappointed in him that he could not---but his mind was blurring and
racing, and Ministry geography was the last thing on it right now.

At last, the hallway ended in a door that opened on stairs leading up.
Harry ran up them. The only sounds, bounced back from the walls, were
his own footsteps and labored breathing. Dimly, he was aware that the
wound Voldemort had given him had torn open again.

\emph{Stubborn thing}, he thought, and opened the door at the top of the
next flight of stairs, sure that he had found the second floor.

Sounds of fighting at once worried and reassured him, and he hurtled
forward, running possible battle arrangements over in his head, trying
to calculate how many Death Eaters were likely to be there, and telling
himself over and over that the sounds meant Scrimgeour was not yet down
and dead.

He turned a sharp bend, and came out into the mass of Auror desks that
he remembered from his visits to Scrimgeour when the man was still the
Head of the Auror Office. Hexes and curses fizzled steadily from the
middle of it towards the right side, where Harry could see a small group
of frazzled Aurors making a valiant stand.

Among the Death Eaters attacking them were Fenrir Greyback, Walden
Macnair, Karkaroff, and a few other heavyset men Harry didn't recognize.
A seventh man lay motionless on the floor not far from them. Harry
didn't have time to see whether it was a Death Eater or an Auror.

What \emph{he} cared about was that the attackers were a good distance
from the defenders---one of the Aurors had raised a ward that, while it
couldn't deflect all the hexes, was forcing the Death Eaters to remain a
dozen feet away---and they had shelter from their desks, as well. No
matter what spells Harry chose for this fight, they were unlikely to
hurt Scrimgeour or his allies.

His magic snarled in happiness, or maybe that was him. Harry moved
forward and aimed his wand.

``\emph{Exsculpo!}'' he hissed, this time using a different intonation
than the one he'd used on Voldemort. The spell surged through him and
out, still unfamiliar and exciting for its very unfamiliarity.

The purple light hit one of the unfamiliar Death Eaters in the leg, and
the leg abruptly ceased to exist. He cried out and listed to the side,
then fell hard and knocked his head on one of the desks. He was out,
Harry thought, at least for now.

Karkaroff whipped around and saw him. The man's eyes narrowed at once,
and he snapped, ``Greyback. Avery. Macnair. Take him. I'll kill the
Minister.'' He turned again to face Scrimgeour, while the other three
began blasting desks aside to get to Harry faster.

Harry took a brief moment to survey the Aurors. Two of them were
wounded, but the others looked well. Scrimgeour, in particular, was
still hearty, and Harry could see his yellow eyes lock onto Karkaroff's
as if he could sense the strongest Dark magic there.

Then Harry had other things to worry about, because the lead Death
Eater---who was a stranger, so he must be Avery---was almost on him,
calling up a Blasting Curse that would probably hurt Harry if it hit.

If it hit.

Harry rolled to the side and under one of the desks. He was just small
enough to make it, and he knew he was lucky that the desks were hollow
underneath. He curled up tight and heard Greyback snarl and Macnair
answer some question Avery had asked with a curse. Apparently, they had
lost track of him for at least one precious moment.

Harry smiled, and knew it was a feral smile.

\emph{Always use what's around you. That's what she taught me.}

He gestured with his right hand in the direction of the desk, and
intoned a nonverbal Levitation Charm. The desk rose in the air, rotating
slowly. Avery let out a triumphant yell as he caught sight of him.

Harry winked, smiled, and then flung the desk at them as hard as he
could.

Greyback ducked out of the way with all the agility of a werewolf, and
Macnair raised a Shield Charm that would keep out heavier weights than a
desk. Avery, stunned and already stepping towards Harry, wasn't so
lucky. The desk hit him in the face and body, and blew him backward,
sending him spinning into the wall. Harry pulled up the desk so that it
didn't crush his legs, turned it, and this time threw it at the back of
Karkaroff's head.

Macnair had caught on to what he was doing, though. He cried out,
``\emph{Wingardium Leviosa!}'' and seized control of the desk. Then he
sent it flying back at Harry.

Harry's own Shield Charm bounced the desk off quite handily, and it hit
one of the others hard enough to snap its legs. Harry stood, glancing
down. Papers had spilled out of the desk, hardly sharp missiles, but
able to be used as distractions if he picked them up with magic and
flurried them around the room---

Then he caught sight of Fenrir Greyback, crouched in the aisle next to
him and snarling. He was already rising to his feet, and Harry moved to
pour strength into his Shield Charm. There weren't many spells that
would affect a werewolf, even in human form, and he would need the
moment to think of one.

``Here, puppy, puppy, puppy!'' sang a voice from the back of the room.

Harry stared even as Greyback spun around. Rosier stood near the door,
swinging his wand in his hand and clucking his tongue.

``Does poor lost little puppy want a treat?'' he asked, and held up what
Harry thought was a sweet shaped like a bone.

Rosier knew his opponent. Greyback howled in utter fury, sprang up onto
the nearest desk, and dived at Rosier. Rosier sprang aside, laughing,
and set Greyback on fire.

Harry turned around, thinking that no matter who won the fight, it could
only be better for his side. He scanned quickly for Macnair, using his
magic to lift up the papers---

And saw that Macnair had stepped around to the side, angling to get
within reach of the ward protecting the Aurors. Karkaroff was still in
front of them, exchanging spells with Scrimgeour. The Minister had
fallen fully into the duel, and Harry doubted that he was noticing
Macnair. His Aurors were watching him.

Harry shouted a warning, but his voice went unheard in the noise of
Macnair intoning, ``\emph{Sanguinolentus!}''

The Bloody Cut Curse was a red, hissing, spluttering thing. Harry saw it
take flight from the end of Macnair's wand and aim straight for
Scrimgeour's shoulder like an evil star. Harry flung out a hand and
tried to take control of and turn the curse the way he had seen
Voldemort do, but he suspected he had failed, or did not yet know the
skill, when it did not even wobble in its path.

Scrimgeour was going to die.

And then someone dived between him and the curse and took it on his own
shoulder. He went down fast, bleeding ferociously, but not before Harry
had time to see that his hair was red.

\emph{Percy.}

Macnair let out a wordless shout of frustration, Harry one that echoed
it, and Scrimgeour a battle cry. He forced Karkaroff back with a
Blasting Curse aimed at the floor under his feet, spun on his bad leg,
crouched over Percy, and aimed his wand at Macnair. Harry could see the
longing to kill burning in his eyes. With one of his staff bleeding to
death, it would have been so easy.

Instead, he remained an Auror, and the only spell he took Macnair down
with was, ``\emph{Petrificus Totalus!}''

Macnair collapsed. Harry turned sharply to deal with Karkaroff, but he
was already running. Greyback and Rosier were gone from sight, and the
last unfamiliar Death Eater who had come with Karkaroff lay still beside
the one whose leg Harry had taken, bleeding from a head wound.

``Feverfew, Mallory, get him,'' said Scrimgeour, efficient as always,
and then knelt down beside Percy.

Harry hurried towards them, ignoring the looks that Aurors Feverfew and
Mallory gave him as they ran past. They might think it strange to see
him here, and perhaps even stranger that he wouldn't hunt beside them,
but Harry knew his duty. Karkaroff was only one capture, in the end.

Percy's life was more important.

Harry stepped around the desk and crouched down beside Scrimgeour. The
Minister, his face pale and utterly devoid of all emotion, was pressing
furiously on the cut in Percy's shoulder, trying to stop the blood. It
wasn't working. That was impossible, Harry knew, with
\emph{Sanguinolentus.} The wound simply kept bleeding, resisting any
pressure or clotting, until the patient died.

It resisted most healing magic, too, and Harry knew only the most basic
medical spells. But he had something else he thought might work.

He closed his eyes. \emph{Fawkes?} He tried to summon the phoenix for
the first time. \emph{Fawkes, I need you now!}

The phoenix popped into being above him, with a startled squawk, as
though Harry had woken him out of a sound sleep. But he fluttered down
to Harry's arm when Harry held it out for him, and saw the situation at
a glance.

Tears welled up in his dark eyes, and fell on the wound, Scrimgeour
pulling back his hands in silence so they wouldn't obstruct the way.
Harry held his breath for a moment, and then closed his eyes as he
realized the bleeding had begun to ease off. The Bloody Cut Curse had
come very near costing Percy his arm, but it would heal, if slowly,
under the phoenix's tears. Percy would have to spend some time in the
Ministry's infirmary or St. Mungo's for blood loss, but that was so much
better than what it could have been.

Harry felt Scrimgeour touch his shoulder. He blinked his eyes open, and
looked at the Minister.

``You're wounded, too,'' said Scrimgeour, without any particular
emphasis, his eyes on Harry's chest.

Harry blinked and looked down. His robes had fallen open, and his shirt
underneath it was soaked with blood. He tugged the cloth slowly away
from the gaping bite, and winced when he realized that the edges of it
had turned black and begun to stink. \emph{Some poison that Voldemort
carried in his teeth, probably.}

He remembered, abruptly, that Fawkes had cried on the wound earlier, and
though it had closed and almost ceased to ache, it had not healed.

``What curse did that?'' Scrimgeour asked, dividing his attention
between Harry and Percy. Fawkes's tears were coming more slowly now.
Scrimgeour wiped the blood away from the cut, revealing a long, wicked
scar that ran like a rope around Percy's upper arm. His eyes held plenty
of emotions now, hope and pride and fear, as he stared at the young man
who had nearly died saving his life. Harry glanced politely to the side,
to let them have their private moment, as he answered.

``No curse. Voldemort bit me.''

He looked back to see that Scrimgeour had jumped as if jolted by
lightning, and so had the Aurors who remained with him behind the desks.
Harry rolled his eyes. \emph{It's just a name. What I have to tell them
next is what should really shock them---or maybe not, since they just
survived an attack by Death Eaters.}

``Voldemort has returned,'' he said quietly. ``He resurrected himself in
a dark Midsummer ritual---''

``There are no dark Midsummer rituals,'' interrupted one of the taller
Aurors. She looked as though she were spoiling for a fight.

Harry rolled his eyes at her. ``A \emph{corrupted} Midsummer ritual then,
I should have said.'' He could feel his breath coming faster, but he
refused to let it. He would not permit his emotions to take him over and
make him react like a child in front of the Minister. The dryness he
could put into his tone did counteract them, somewhat. ``I was under
such temptation to notice semantics at the time, since I was tied to an
altar in the middle of a graveyard.''

``Go on.'' Scrimgeour's eyes were narrow, and drinking in light and
information. The eyes, Harry thought, of a man preparing for war.

Harry described the ritual as concisely as he could, telling all the
details of Voldemort's plans, and the fact that he was incapacitated due
to memory loss for right now, but that that couldn't last for long. In
the middle of his story, Aurors Feverfew and Mallory returned, with
Tonks beside them, to report they had lost Karkaroff, and there had been
no sign of Rosier or Greyback. Avery, Macnair, and the two heavyset
Death Eaters were their only captures, since the traitorous Ministry
official who had led Scrimgeour here had died in the first round of
curses.

Harry warned them about the two unwarded rooms.

``I will take care of it,'' said Scrimgeour.

Looking at him, Harry thought he could almost relax. \emph{Yes, he will.
I am proud to have such a man on my side as we go into war against
Voldemort.} Even thinking about how Fudge would have mishandled things
made him want to shudder.

Percy chose that moment to groan and open his eyes, and the look on his
face when he realized that both he and Scrimgeour were still alive
completed Harry's contentment.

\emph{There's such courage, such goodness, in the most unexpected
places,} he thought, watching the moment that he was sure had just
completed whatever silent test Scrimgeour had been making of Percy.
\emph{That's the thing to remember as we go into this war. That's the
thing that will lead us back to peace.}

He ignored, as best he could, the fact that Fawkes had wept on his bite
wound and only managed to close it again, not ease the blackness or the
stink of it.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry trudged wearily towards the castle for the second time that night,
Fawkes perched heavily on his shoulder. At least he had no dead body
floating behind him this time, Harry thought. He supposed that was an
improvement.

He rounded the last bend in the path, and Snape was waiting for him.

Harry snarled. His magic boiled around him for a moment, before he
calmed it down. He wouldn't try to confine it to his body this time, and
it was in no danger of wildly attacking people as it had been, but he
still didn't want to choke or burn or fling Snape into a wall. The man
had betrayed him. That meant he didn't deserve even that much of Harry's
notice.

He made to walk around him, but Snape said, as if he had a right to
demonstrate his concern, ``Where have you been?''

Harry ignored him, and only stepped further to the side. Snape stood
motionless. Harry took that to mean he wouldn't touch him, and thus was
taken completely by surprise when Snape sniffed once, then reached down
and wrenched his robes and shirt---which was stiff with dried blood---to
the side.

``What is this?'' Snape whispered, staring at the bite wound.

``None of your business.'' Harry ducked his head and pulled sharply
away. ``Go back to sleep, why don't you, Snape? You can hear all about it
in the morning, as much as Madam Pomfrey ever tells anyone about someone
else's wounds. I'm going to her. Good \emph{night}, Snape,'' he added,
when Snape didn't move.

``Where were you?'' he demanded again.

``You. Can't. Know.'' \emph{Perhaps he is feeling a bit thick-headed
after all the loss of air to his brain when I choked him, and needs that
reminder.}

``I would like to know.'' That was Draco's voice, and he had appeared
behind Snape, a \emph{Lumos­}-lighted wand of his own in his hand,
competing with the dawn's faint radiance in the east. Something was
wrong, though, because his face was tight and pale, and his voice was
hoarse with fury. Harry raised his eyebrows. \emph{He's angry with me?
Why? Surely Snape told him why I ran away earlier, and I'm back safe
now.}

``I went to the Ministry,'' said Harry. ``I received warning that the
Death Eaters were trying to assassinate the Minister. I went to help
stop them.''

``Where did you get this warning?'' Draco stepped closer and closer, and
Harry stifled the temptation to back up. He knew he hadn't done
something wrong. How could he have? He'd risked his life to help save
someone else's, and though in the end he wasn't the one who'd taken the
\emph{Sanguinolentus} curse, his aid had made a difference in the fight,
and he'd got the chance to tell Scrimgeour about the Dark Lord's return.
Harry considered that a win-win situation.

``Rosier sent me a letter---''

``You trusted the word of a \emph{Death Eater?}'' Draco was yelling now,
from only a few feet away, and that was disconcerting as hell, because
Harry still couldn't figure out what he'd done wrong. ``Harry, why in the
name of Merlin didn't you come back and get me? Get McGonagall? Get
\emph{Dumbledore}, for that matter? Why didn't you raise the alarm,
instead of running straight into what could have been a trap?''

``But it wasn't a trap,'' said Harry.

``You trust Rosier, then?'' Draco looked as if he were going to tell him
how foolish he was, if he said yes.

``Of course not,'' said Harry. ``But he offered to tell me about one of
two rooms in the Ministry that weren't warded against Apparition, and
I---''

``You do realize that they would have been Apparition points known to
\emph{Death Eaters}?'' Snape had the gall to step into the argument, his
face gone so pale that he looked almost sick. Harry stared at him in
scorn under which he'd forced the pain. \emph{What does he want? He
doesn't care about me, he's made that obvious, and I don't think he'd
have any other reason for sticking his big nose in.}

``I knew that,'' Harry snapped. ``But when it was a choice of save the
Minister's life or dither around---''

``You could have been \emph{killed},'' said Draco, and seized his left
wrist in a silent reminder of what else could have happened to him if
the Death Eaters had taken him. ``Merlin, Harry, don't you ever think?''
The anger was gone out of his voice, but left in it was a cold
disappointment that hurt worse. ``Getting kidnapped isn't your fault, I
know that, but you willingly went out of your way to put your life in
danger \emph{again} tonight. And now there's this.'' He nodded towards
the bite wound at the juncture of Harry's neck and shoulder. ``You
didn't go see Madam Pomfrey at all this evening.'' He checked the light
in the east. ``Last night.''

``I was a bit busy,'' Harry said.

``Doing what?'' Draco leaned towards his face. ``Do you know how frantic
I was? Searching every room in the castle, worrying when I could feel
you and then suddenly not feel you---''

``Freeing Runespoors,'' said Harry, so that he could concentrate on
answering the question and not on what he'd done to Draco.

Draco closed his eyes. ``Harry,'' he said. ``Merlin. No one's asking you
to start fighting the war tonight.''

``But the first strike of the war came tonight,'' said Harry. He was
trying to understand, really he was, but their concerns seemed so far
away from his. Yes, he knew he had hurt Draco, and he hadn't wanted that
to happen. But Draco was speaking as if Harry could really have taken
the time to run back to the castle and talk with him---and Harry knew
Draco wouldn't have let him go to the Ministry if that had happened, any
more than McGonagall and Snape had the night of Rosier and Greyback's
raid on the jail. Didn't Draco see that everything was \emph{different}
now that Voldemort had come back, that Harry had to fight his evil when
and where it appeared? ``I didn't plan that, either.''

Draco startled him by wrapping an arm around his shoulders, and bending
his face close to him to whisper in his ear.

``Harry, you're wounded and exhausted, and you haven't even taken the
time to cry over Dragonsbane, I don't think, and you've had a fight with
Snape. You \emph{have} to get some rest, or you're going to break down.''
Draco hesitated for a moment, then added, ``I think you might actually
need the breakdown, but I know that you don't think it can happen right
now or right here. Come back to the Manor with me this summer. I've been
doing some thinking, and I don't really believe my father would turn his
back on you.''

``Yes, he \emph{would}.'' That was another certainty that Harry felt drawn
to, even though it had emerged from inside his head like an iceberg
coming out of the fog. ``I just don't want to risk it, Draco. Please.''

Draco shook his head slowly. ``Your second best option was Snape, and
now he's not an option anymore. What else are you going to do for the
summer, Harry?''

``I don't know.'' Harry tugged against the arm which held him. ``I'll
decide later. I promise. I'll decide later.'' He could feel tears
gathering behind his eyelids, and they alarmed him, when he'd been
feeling so calm and confident half an hour ago. Probably Draco was
right, and he did need some time and place to recover from the storm.
But he didn't think, at least at the moment, that he could bear the
intimacy of spending eight weeks with Draco. If nothing else, he would
begin feeling insanely guilty every time he had to run or Apparate into
battle and didn't take Draco along---and then he would feel insanely
fearful that Draco, who had his empathy, would take too many wounds of
one kind or another in the fighting. There had to be a solution that
wasn't the Sanctuary and wasn't Malfoy Manor and wasn't Snape, but Harry
didn't know what it was, yet.

Draco sighed at him. ``I'm walking you to the hospital wing,'' he said.
``And then I'm staying with you. It's not like we have classes
tomorrow.''

He turned to guide Harry up the path. Snape fell into step on the other
side of them. When they were only a few paces from the doors into the
entrance hall, Snape cleared his throat and said, ``Harry---''

``Don't.'' Harry refused to look at him. ``I have nothing to say to
you.''

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry was tired.

He was tired, but he didn't want to sleep. He lay on a bed in the
hospital wing, staring at the ceiling. He'd kept his eyes closed long
enough to fool Madam Pomfrey, who'd applied several antivenin spells to
his wound, exclaiming in shocked tones about its state all the while,
and considered giving him Dreamless Sleep, until Harry convinced her
he'd already tumbled into slumber on his own. Draco had remained with
him, as promised, but he hadn't had much rest, either. It hadn't taken
long for him to let his head droop on his crossed arms and fall asleep
in the chair next to Harry's bed.

Meanwhile, Harry's mind raced busily along a track of thoughts that
seemed to emerge from that selfsame fog in his head, but be clear and
distinct.

\emph{They won't stop pushing at me. Snape is acting like I'll forgive
him. If I stay at Hogwarts, I even might, because that's how weak I am,
and he'd always be interfering when I needed to do something for the
war.}

\emph{Narcissa will push, too, and Draco, if I go to Malfoy Manor. I
don't care what he says about Lucius. At the very least, he'll probably
think the loss of a hand disfigures me.} Harry shifted his severed wrist
carefully to the side. He hadn't shown it to Madam Pomfrey, either, to
Draco's palpable displeasure. As understanding as he said he was of
Harry's desire to hide the wound, it was obvious that he thought it
would be better if Harry told someone else. Harry thought he might
yield, too, if Draco kept up the pushing in his moments of emotional
collapse. And that would be disastrous, with some of his other allies as
well as Lucius. There were old pureblood prejudices among the Dark
families about the ugly, the disfigured, the broken. Wizards with a
false leg and eye like Moody's, or a limp like Scrimgeour's, were
welcome---among the Light. The Dark purebloods often liked to pretend
that such casualties never happened to them, the same way they liked to
pretend that divorces and second marriages and powerful Muggleborn
witches and wizards never happened.

\emph{And I can't go to the Sanctuary, whatever Fawkes thinks,} Harry
concluded. \emph{They'd push me, too, and they really wouldn't let me
leave if I wanted. I'm not even sure that I could, if what Peter said
about shadows and illusions around the Sanctuary is true. And it would
take news forever to reach me. I can't be that far away from the rest of
the wizarding world right now.}

He needed a place where he could collapse and work his way back up. That
much was obvious. He also needed a place where people wouldn't push at
him to speed up the collapse, and wouldn't push at him to prolong it,
and where he could go forth to battle when he received a vision or a
warning from his allies. He needed, in fact, a place where the people
around him were blind to him, and what he really was.

His body stiffened, and his breathing grew rapid.

\emph{Lily.}

The thought seemed mad at first, but when he tried to chase it away, it
circled back, and hovered in the front of his mind, and demanded that it
be considered.

\emph{She doesn't know me. She's blind to me. The Maze told me that. She
wouldn't see anything I didn't want her to. She's never going to notice
that my left hand is missing. She wouldn't notice my emotional
collapses, either. I could appear before her in tears, and she wouldn't
care. She'd probably urge me to dry them up and participate in battles
like the guardian I was raised to be, in fact.}

The more Harry thought about it, the more reasons he seemed to see, the
fog peeling away from them as they crowded into his head thick and fast.

\emph{When I went into battle, she wouldn't try to hold me back. I
understand why Draco got worried, really I do, but I also didn't realize
he would have wanted me to come to him about this. And he} would
\emph{insist on either both of us going into battle, or neither. If he
gets killed\ldots{}}

He had to stop thinking for a moment. The tremor that racked his body at
the mere thought would have broken him otherwise.

\emph{I can't risk that.}

\emph{And there's another thing, another advantage that I wouldn't have
anywhere else. I need to recover my strength and my confidence. I failed
too many tests in the graveyard. I have to find some I can pass. Lily
would set me tests that I already know I can pass, because I've resisted
her attempts to break me before.}

His mind churned and shifted, and briefly seemed to turn upside down.
Was he \emph{mad}, to be considering this? What kind of idiot was he? He
should go to Malfoy Manor with Draco. What prestige he stood to lose in
Lucius's eyes was nothing compared to the damage his mother might do to
him---

And then the fog rushed back, or, rather, peeled back from more
thoughts, and Harry shook his head.

\emph{Not mad, though the rest of them will think it. I need a rest
period with someone who} doesn't \emph{care about me, who's blind to
what I really am, and the Maze reassured me she was both those things.
And she's the only possible candidate. If I went to the Garden or to
Blackstone or the homes of any of my other allies, I might not get the
same level of caring I would at Malfoy Manor, but I would get pushed.
And Snape could invoke his legal guardianship to get me back from them,
if he really tried. On the other hand, if I said that I was going back
to my parents of my own free will, then he couldn't do anything.}

And then he remembered another fact that made the whole thing perfect.

\emph{James still loves Lily. That means that he'd support me, if I told
him that I really did want to reconcile with her. He'd like to have both
his wife and his son in the same house. I saw that on the beach
yesterday morning.} For a moment, Harry felt incredibly old, and weary,
and changed, that all this had happened in only a day, and then the
sunlight of certainty came back. \emph{With both of my parents backing
me, Snape wouldn't stand a chance, legal guardian or not, and Draco
promised not to hurt both of them or talk to anyone else about what they
said, so he couldn't oppose me, either.}

Harry nodded, the course consolidating itself in his head. It would seem
like madness to many---it had seemed like madness to him only a moment
ago, a foreign presence in his head---but now he saw his way clear. He
would do this in order to recover, in order to have an eight-week period
of time to come to terms with what had happened without anyone else
pushing and pulling at him.

He created an illusion of himself to lie in bed and slipped off in
search of parchment and ink. He had two letters to write.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

In his office, Albus toasted the fire, and the air, and himself.

It had been an incredibly difficult dance, and worn on him badly, to
struggle with the boy's will, but the mist had slipped in through the
cracks in Harry's emotional exhaustion and uncertainty. The compulsion
had worked.

\chapter{Harry and Lily}\label{chapter-81-harry-and-lily}

\emph{``Mr. Potter.}''

Harry jumped. Of all the people he'd expected to catch him halfway to
the hospital wing---his letters safely written and sent to his
parents---McGonagall hadn't been one of them. He turned and looked up at
her, checking automatically that the glamour of his left hand was still
in place.

``Professor,'' he told her, inclining his head. ``Is there something
wrong?''

``Yes,'' said McGonagall. For some reason, Harry hadn't appreciated
quite how severe she could look before this moment. Her glare was still
not as icy as Snape's, but it contained a deeply personal disappointment
that made Harry fight the urge to squirm. He knew he was doing the best,
the only, thing he could do. That would have to content him against the
disappointments of those who thought they knew a better way. ``You know
very well that Madam Pomfrey did not want you to leave the hospital wing
before several days had passed.''

Harry blinked. That hadn't been something Madam Pomfrey had said
herself, though, to be fair, he might have missed it in the rush of
information she muttered last night. And he was feeling rather
light-headed from lack of sleep, too, which could explain it.

``I'm doing well, Professor,'' he said, and gave her a smile he knew he
needed no glamour to disguise. He had been far more at peace since he
made his decision.

``You are not,'' said McGonagall. ``Mr. Potter, you forget I am an
Animagus.'' Her eyes narrowed down at him. Harry wondered if she had
that look in front of a rathole. ``I can smell something stinking on you
that should not be.'' She reached out, and made almost the same gesture
that Snape had, prying aside his robe and shirt to study the bite wound.

Harry looked down, ready to explain the smell as something Madam Pomfrey
had rubbed on him. He did have to stare when he saw the blackness
creeping back around the edges of the wound, though. So far as he knew,
that shouldn't have happened. The antivenin spells were supposed to take
for anything short of a nundu's breath.

``Come with me, Mr. Potter,'' said McGonagall, and grabbed his left arm,
luckily above the glamour. Harry really would have to get used to
telling when other people were about to do that, he thought, and
adjusting his own position accordingly. ``Since you cannot be trusted to
take care of yourself, I will escort you back to Madam Pomfrey.''

Harry knew it would be no good protesting, so he went along quietly.
Besides, the letters were sent. He had made arrangements that would
allow him to recover his balance. Dealing with an irritated professor
was nothing, compared either to what he had faced last night or what he
would deal with once he saw Lily again.

A tremor ran through his frame, and Harry realized he was afraid.

\emph{Well, I was afraid with Voldemort, too, and I failed the tests.
This time, I just have to be sure that I pass.}

McGonagall was as good as her word, marching him straight back to his
bed. The illusion of himself had dissipated, but there was no need for
it, Harry saw; Draco hadn't awakened. He must have been too deeply
asleep for his empathy to rouse him when Harry moved. Besides, the
empathy would have reported only happy emotions to him, worry succeeded
by calmness.

\emph{That is the way to fool him,} Harry thought, as he let McGonagall
arrange him on his pillows and call for Madam Pomfrey. \emph{Just show
him my true emotions. He's not going to know until too late that I'm not
happy about going to Malfoy Manor, but happy about going home.}

\emph{Home.}

The word sounded wonderful, and it had settled into his mind with
indelible weight. Of course he should be happy to be going home. His
mind still did give odd jerks and twitches, during which he thought
himself mad, but he recognized madness from his touch of it in the duel
with Voldemort, now. He was sure that he was sane. He was sure that he
was taking the best steps he could. Nothing but desperate need would
have induced him to summon his mother in the first place, so that must
obviously mean that desperate need was working now, and he really
\emph{needed} her.

Madam Pomfrey came bustling out, a smile lighting her face, but it died
when she saw Harry's wound. She pointed her wand at it, and let out a
sharp breath when a black, swirling mist soared up from it.

``What is that?'' demanded McGonagall, squinting at the cloud. Harry was
grateful that she asked. He didn't want to go about drawing extra
attention to himself right now. He kept his hand folded and his eyes on
his hand, his breathing sonorous and as deep as he could force it to be.

``The bite's infected with a changeable venom,'' Madam Pomfrey said, her
voice taking on an almost detached tone at first, but speeding up as she
grew more and more worried. ``It \emph{was} poison at first, but now it's
become a Dark Arts curse. And I suspect that if I counter the curse, the
bite will attain another poison, a different kind this time. And with
each counter, the spread of the infection becomes faster.''

She looked sternly at Harry. ``I've got some books on changeable venoms,
but it's been a long time since I looked at them,'' she said. ``For now,
since the curse is only having the same slow effect as the original
poison, I'll leave it be. I'll need at least a day to look at the books
before I try to heal you permanently, and then you'll need to rest here
for at least four days. In the meantime, Mr. Potter, \emph{stay in bed.}
Your own magic levels become prey for the curse as it advances, unless
you can manage to sleep and restore them.'' Her eyes grew even sterner
then, as though she suspected Harry had gone elsewhere that morning, but
she turned and went into the back part of the hospital wing.

``I'll bring you and Mr. Malfoy food and something to drink, Harry,''
said McGonagall softly, bending over him. ``So that you don't need to
leave the hospital wing for \emph{any} reason.'' Her glare was still
worse than Madam Pomfrey's, but when Harry kept mute about any possible
explanation for his being out of bed, she turned and stalked away with
feline dignity.

All the noise had awakened Draco, as Harry had suspected would probably
happen, though he fortunately didn't appear to have heard anything about
changeable venoms. He blinked and rubbed at his eyes, then frowned at
Harry. ``You were out of bed this morning?''

Harry looked carefully away from him, and smoothed his emotions into
serenity and happiness. Draco was not going to find out anything from
his empathy, if Harry could help it, but he might be able to figure out
that something was wrong from Harry's actions.

``I was,'' Harry admitted. ``I had to think, and I had to come to some
conclusions.'' He smiled at Draco, allowing himself to take joy in his
friend's expression of cautious relief. Harry really did want Draco to
be all right with where he would stay for the summer, and not angry at
him any more for venturing to the Ministry. He had the five days he'd
stay in the hospital wing to soften him, at least. ``I came to them,
and, well, I'm not as upset as I was.''

``Good,'' Draco whispered, deliberately taking hold of his left wrist.
``That's good.'' He hesitated a long moment, then said, ``Harry, we
\emph{do} have to talk about what you did wrong in going to the Ministry
last night.''

Harry sighed. ``You really did want me to come and get you, then?''

``How could you even \emph{think} I was joking about that?'' Draco sounded
something between hurt and furious. ``Of \emph{course}, Harry. Always,
always, always. I was hunting frantically for you, and you'd just been
through hell.'' He paused again, then said, ``You've said more than once
that you feel like you're taking too much from me. Well, if you keep
doing things like run off to the Ministry and endanger your life
recklessly, that might be true.''

Harry instinctively tried to move away from him. Draco countered the
motion, leaning back in his chair and staring at Harry until Harry had
no choice but to glance at him. Draco looked at least as grim and
determined as he had the day he convinced Harry that he loved him, the
day he freed the unicorns.

``I won't say I can't live like this,'' said Draco, ``because that's
obviously not true. I'm still alive when you get back from your mad
expeditions. But I don't want to live like this. It's not fair to me,
Harry, and there's no reason for it, not when you can come tell me the
reason for your running off and we can figure out a plan together.'' He
chewed on his lips, then said, ``You're not the only one who worries
about sounding strange. \emph{I} think I sound strange. But this is the
only way I know how to talk about this.'' He covered Harry's stump
carefully with his own hand. ``I haven't done anything like this so far,
because I know that you don't want to be forced, but if you keep
endangering your life recklessly, then I \emph{will} force you to stay
put, Harry.''

\emph{Shit. There's no way that he would understand if I talked to him
about wanting to go home for the summer. I'll have to hide.}

Harry lowered his head. ``You wouldn't put compulsions on me, would
you?'' he asked.

``No,'' said Draco. ``And I won't break any of the promises that I made
you, such as not speaking ill about your mother. But anything else is
fair game, Harry. Sleeping potions, body-binds, glamours---lying to you
if I have to. I won't allow this to go on. I think you should have the
choice to do the right thing of your own free will, which is why I'm
telling you this at all. Otherwise, I'll just hit you with
\emph{Consopio} or a bit of Dreamless Sleep in your food the next time I
think you're doing something stupid, and when you next wake up, it'll be
in Malfoy Manor.'' He leaned closer to Harry. ``\emph{Without} the
glamour,'' he added.

Harry swallowed. \emph{I'll have to be more careful than I thought. Not
only will he not let me go if I tell him the truth, but I have to make
sure he doesn't even suspect that something is off.}

\emph{Well, better I give him a carefully worded promise now than suffer
later.}

``All right, Draco,'' he whispered. ``I---you win.''

Draco raised his eyebrows. ``Just like that? Somehow, Harry, I don't
think that you've just sworn off all impulsive and stupid heroic action
with a few words,'' he drawled.

Harry shook his head. ``No. But I know what you want from me now, and I
won't---I won't blame you if you use sleeping potions or body-binds or
whatever you think you need to on me, \emph{if} you really think my life
is in danger.'' He glared sternly at Draco. ``For no other reason.''

The relief filling Draco's eyes was painful in its intensity. He bowed
his head. Harry looked the other direction, and hoped that Draco would
understand when the truth emerged. He didn't like to think he was
risking his bond with Draco by lying. On the other hand, he could be
risking his only true chance to heal and help other people if he told
the truth now.

\emph{And my mother always taught me to think of others first.}

``Thank you, Harry,'' Draco whispered, and then McGonagall came back
with breakfast for both of them and a stern injunction for Harry to rest
and Draco to go back to the Slytherin common room, and there was no more
time to talk, and no more moments in which Harry had to fool Draco,
either. He ate the eggs and sausage McGonagall had brought hungrily
enough, remembering only now that his last meal had been with James on
the beach yesterday morning. He hadn't been able to eat other meals as
the day wore on and the time got nearer for Connor to brave the Third
Task.

That was another thing that made him wince, the thought of his brother.

\emph{He'll just have to understand, too.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Lily slowly smoothed the letters in her hands and let out a little
painful breath. She was standing in the kitchen of the house at Godric's
Hollow, the same place where her life had changed forever a year and a
half ago, with summer sunlight pouring in through the windows. The sun
could have been a thousand times brighter, though, and its radiance
could not have matched the brilliance of her mood at the moment.

Dumbledore's letter had come first, telling her that she would have good
news in a short while, and to prepare for a journey to Hogwarts. And
then had come the letter from Harry, in which he told her that, now that
Voldemort was arisen, he thought it appropriate he should return home
for a little more training. Could she come and talk to him? There were
questions he wanted to ask her, first.

Sometimes, \emph{sometimes}, oh how she hated to admit it, her long
faith had wavered and almost cracked during the months she spent here,
alone except for the house elves Albus granted her. James's letters, and
Albus's, could barely reassure her, not without word from her sons. She
had started thinking, sometimes, as she sat by herself in the silence,
that perhaps she had done something wrong in raising Harry and Connor
the way she had.

She did not want to think that way, because she had gone too far down
this path to be wrong now, \emph{if} she were wrong.

But now her faith was restored, glittering like a diamond in her mind,
and her heart had been healed in the sunlight.

\emph{Albus was right. Harry always was going to come home at last. And
if I'm alone with him, or just him and James, for eight weeks, then I
can set to rights all the bad lessons he's learned in the outside
world---tell him the truth about himself, and get him to acknowledge it,
and help him avoid being a Dark Lord.}

\emph{All my sacrifices are recompensed, all my mistakes are paid for.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry opened his eyes slowly. He had known for some time that there was
another presence in the room, and even who it was, but he'd wanted to
wait until he was sure that no one else was coming in. But no, it seemed
that Draco was in the Slytherin common room, and Snape would know better
than to visit him, and Madam Pomfrey was fully occupied with trying to
learn something about changeable venoms in her books. Harry wasn't even
sure that Connor knew about his condition yet---Draco had admitted to
not being able to find him last night, and he might just think that
Harry was somewhere around the school---so he didn't truly fear a visit
from his brother.

Harry sat up at last and nodded to Dumbledore. ``Sir,'' he said. ``I
trust that you know I've written to my mother?''

Dumbledore blinked. Harry blinked a moment later. \emph{Why did I think
he knew that?} He wasn't sure, but there it was, a certainty as
unshakeable in his head as the idea that Lucius would turn his back on
him once he saw the disfigured hand.

``Ah, yes, I do, Harry,'' said the Headmaster a moment later. ``And as
you have no doubt surmised by now, I have the hospital wing under a
variation of the spell that protects Hogwarts from Muggle eyes. Anyone
but your mother thinking to visit you right now will find themselves
caught up in other plans instead, and they will not return to thinking
about you until your interview with Lily is done.''

Harry relaxed. ``All right. Thank you, sir.'' He felt, because he could
not prevent it, the tickle of uneasiness that ran through him at the
thought of being alone with Dumbledore, or even with Lily, in a room
where no one else could reach him, but then he told himself again that
this was for the best. It was a harder road than just going back to
Malfoy Manor would have been, but wasn't the harder road the right one,
most of the time?

\emph{Yes,} he answered himself firmly. \emph{Negotiating compromises
for the magical creatures is harder than binding them with webs.
Creation is harder than destruction. Forgiving someone is harder than
just being angry at them all your life. And it seems that I'm born for
the hard road, one way or the other.}

``I will leave you alone with Lily during your interview,'' said
Dumbledore, pulling Harry's attention back to himself. ``She expressed a
desire to speak to you with no one else listening.''

Harry nodded. It was what he'd been hoping for, but hadn't been sure he
had a right to demand. ``Thank you, sir,'' he repeated. Then he drew in
a deep breath. His mother was probably here already, or Dumbledore would
not have cast the spell. Of course, since Lily lacked magic now, he
couldn't distinguish her approach from that of anyone else. ``I'm ready
to see her now.''

Dumbledore eyed him in silence for a long moment. Harry kept his face
calm and his will resolute. He \emph{was} ready for this, no matter the
mad itching in the back of his head that said he wasn't.

``Very well, Harry,'' said Dumbledore at last, and went to the doors of
the hospital wing. ``Then I will let her in.''

Harry lay back against his pillows and waited. His wound was only a bit
more painful than before; what Madam Pomfrey had said about the curse
spreading no differently than the poison, as long as it wasn't
counteracted, was true. There was so much sunlight coming through the
windows of the hospital wing. He watched it, and heard a distant song,
so pure that it reminded him of Fawkes, in the moment before it faded
and diminished.

``Hello, Harry.''

Harry drew in his breath and faced his mother.

She looked more fragile than she had been when he saw her last. She held
no light-globe this time, but only a thin sheet of parchment Harry
thought was his letter. She walked with no limp from the bite his snake
had taken out of her ankle, Harry was glad to see. Her eyes met his
steadily as she took the chair that Draco had sat in earlier.

``You said that you wanted to ask me some questions,'' she whispered.
``Anything, Harry. Now that you are coming home, I will give you
anything that you want, with no holding back.''

Harry nodded tightly. He should be glad of her declaration, given that
he wanted to ask her some extremely searching and personal questions. He
didn't know why his throat had swollen shut, why he had to cough to get
the words out, why Lily's watching him with patient, anxious eyes only
made nausea boil up in his stomach.

The song shimmered in his ears. Harry shook his head, and his throat and
head were clear, and his stomach was calm, and why had he ever thought
that he felt as bad as he did?

``I want to know why you agreed to sacrifice us in the first place,'' he
said quietly. ``What persuaded you that Godric's Hollow should be left
open to Voldemort the night that he attacked us? Why did you become
dedicated to the war effort in \emph{this} particular way?''

Lily blinked at him, her mouth briefly falling open. Then she said, with
a rusty chuckle, ``I must admit, I didn't think that would be what you
asked.''

``I know the training you gave me,'' said Harry. ``I know the philosophy
behind it. Now I want to know where you got that philosophy. Why do you
believe the way you do?''

Lily sat back, nodding slowly. She linked her hands together on her
stomach and said, ``All right, Harry. You know I've told you before that
I didn't know anything about magic before my eleventh birthday. I came
from a Muggleborn family, yes, but this wasn't even a family who
indulged my sister Petunia and me with stories like Santa Claus. My
parents were very clear-minded people who didn't hold with what they
called `superstitious nonsense.' Nevertheless, they believed in
something when they could see it happen, and they had to admit that
magic was real when they saw it happen. So they were happy and proud to
have a witch in the family.''

Lily paused to draw breath. Harry turned his head again. He didn't know
why he expected the sunlight to be glaring on the windowsill, actively
burning a hole in the stone, rather than just lying there tamely.

``My sister wasn't very happy,'' said Lily softly. ``I tried not to let
it bother me, but we'd been close as children, and her jealousy
\emph{did} hurt. She kept saying that it was like fairies stealing me
away. So I came to the magical world determined to embrace the people
here, since I didn't really have a sister after I found out I could do
magic.''

``And I found out that I was in the middle of a world where everything
was polarized, and there couldn't be that kind of happy acceptance I'd
craved and looked for. Voldemort was just rising then---not much more
than a rumor and a name, but most people above the age of sixteen knew
war was coming. Even we first-years knew there was something wrong,
something dark and burning in the very air.''

``And I found out that the fact I was Muggleborn still mattered, even
though I was in Gryffindor. Students who wanted to show the right kind
of beliefs loudly welcomed me, even when they weren't people I would
have chosen as friends. Other students sneered at me, played pranks on
me, called me names, all for a heritage I had no idea existed until just
a few months before I entered Hogwarts. I was alone in a world I didn't
understand, and even when I studied or asked questions, it didn't help.
Even as they reacted to the war, most people didn't want to talk about
it, as if that would somehow draw the war to them.''

``You were alone,'' said Harry, feeling that he understood. The song was
back, and he had to close his eyes for a moment. Sunlight lay on him, as
heavy as a hand. ``Did you start reading about pureblood history then?''

He opened his eyes to see Lily nodding. ``Yes, I did. And I grew to
understand my enemies better, and to realize that not every pureblood
was an enemy---but also to realize that I could never be one of them.
Oh, Harry, James's family was kind and welcoming to me, and so were
children of other Light wizarding families, but they showed with every
little speech and every little word that I wasn't, quite, their kind.
They were all lordly condescension, and I was nothing but a peasant, and
there were stupid beliefs about Muggleborn witches and wizards being
less powerful than purebloods---never mind that pureblood families could
have Squibs from inbreeding too closely. There was a stretch of time in
my third year when I considered abandoning the magical world
altogether.''

``And then?'' Harry asked. This mattered to him, he thought, of course
it mattered to him. He had wanted to hear his mother's story before he
went home, to understand more about what \emph{she} had sacrificed and
to see what effect her words would have on him. He had thought, hoped,
that her words would hurt him. Then being in her presence would be a
test to pass.

He hadn't expected to find himself thinking more about song and sunlight
than about her words.

``And then Albus summoned me to his office, along with a small group of
other Muggleborn students, and talked to me about what part I could play
in the war.'' Lily smiled dreamily at the wall. ``He told us that he'd
noticed we wanted to do something, but were frustrated by our lack of
knowledge of the magical world, or just our lack of ability, since we
were still children. He asked us if we wanted to be more than children.
And I and a few of the other students said yes.''

Harry could feel his breath rushing in and out of his lungs. But he
wasn't breathing hard as he had been when trying to suppress tears.
There was a pressure of warmth growing in the center of his chest---far
below the wound, so it couldn't be that---and an uneasy shifting and
churning of thoughts in his mind.

Lily continued, obviously fully caught up in her tale. ``And so we began
secret training, not so much in spells---Albus didn't want us to
actually take the field until we were old enough---as in the ethics of
sacrifice. Albus told us what would be coming, and a lot of what he
predicted came to pass, like the specific Dark Arts spells Voldemort
used. He told us the future would be terrible, but we could glow like
beacons to brighten it. Many of the adult wizards were caught in the
same trap of fear as our fellow students, and they wanted to stay
neutral in the hopes that Voldemort wouldn't notice them.'' Lily
snorted. ``Fine policy \emph{that} was when he began to slaughter them.
But they still tried, always thinking that it might happen to the family
two linchpins away, but it wouldn't happen to them. So we were the ones
who had to take up the burden of hope. Albus told us that the younger we
became accustomed to carrying it, the easier a time we would have of
it.''

She stretched out her hands before her and pulled them in towards her
chest, as if gathering an invisible child there to hug. Harry watched
her in a haze. Song was burning in his ears, buzzing in his stomach, and
there was a slow, faint white glare of light before his eyes, like an
afterimage that was growing instead of fading.

``By the time we left school, we were ready to fight, and so were the
other young Gryffindors Albus had trained. And then one day he told me
of the prophecy---he always trusted me more than any of them---and then,
when you boys were born, I knew there was a good chance that it could
apply to you.'' Lily took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Harry found
that he missed their clear, bright green, stained with tears though it
was. It had been helping him focus beyond the light. ``It was a hard
struggle, but I nerved myself to leave you alone to face Voldemort in
the end. Albus was the one who gave me my courage, my place in this
world. And it all fell out as he said. You survived. The path to
Voldemort's destruction was laid. Do you know what it means to me,
Harry, that it's partially through my sacrifices that you're going to
destroy the monster who made my childhood in the wizarding world so
hellish?''

Harry couldn't have responded if he tried. The light was burning all
around him now, and inside his head, if the song was any indication. He
thought it might have something to do with the phoenix web, but he
couldn't imagine why Dumbledore or Lily would be trying to put one on
him now, when he'd already agreed to listen to his mother and go home
for the summer.

The light drew closer to him. In panic, he lashed out with his will in a
mental blow, trying to prevent any web from ever gaining a hold on his
mind.

He hit a block he hadn't even known was there. It was rather like
falling across a chair in a darkened room. He let out a sharp breath,
and then struck once more, instinctively, trying to destroy that block.

It broke.

The compulsion fell apart, and the sunlight rushed in.

This time, he could hear the song, rich and vivid and clear.
\emph{Fawkes}, of course it was, and he'd been singing along their bond,
sending the sunlight all phoenixes were bound to along their connection,
trying to wake Harry up. Harry didn't know if he'd actually wanted to
panic Harry so much he struck out or just raise him into the clarity of
sight, but either way, it had worked.

Harry opened his eyes, to see everything around him bathed in the clear,
merciless light, and looked straight at his mother.

He saw her as she was to him now, and fell back against his pillows in
shock. It was no wonder he hadn't been affected by her words. She
was\ldots{}

She was\ldots{}

She was \emph{small}.

Everything about her was small, and not just because she had no magic.
The posture she'd taken in the chair, which before he might have thought
was a noble bowing of her head and neck before circumstance, was a meek
cringing. There was no honor and no pride in her face, only fear and a
humiliated hope that she might yet get back something of what she'd
lost, power or contact with magic. The hand she put out to him did not
reach, but grasp.

Harry couldn't understand. \emph{I was angry and hurt at her at
Christmas. Why have I managed to change my mind about her so
completely?}

Because he had been happy in the months between, he realized, Fawkes's
song thrilling through him and carrying the truth along his veins like
blood. He hadn't reserved a spot for Lily in his life. He had no need of
her, not any more. Perhaps a month, two months, ago he might have turned
back to her, but since then, he'd freed the southern goblins and had the
bond with Draco and realized\ldots{}

Realized that Snape had betrayed him, and lost his hand, and done and
seen murder.

Harry grimaced. \emph{Not every experience in those months has been
happy.}

But he had grown beyond her now. He would always carry the marks of her
training. That was true, and that was probably what people like
Millicent were thinking of when they insisted that Harry was marked by
his past.

But he needed her no longer. And now he had heard her story.

And what came upon him then, a stream of warm emotion quite separate
from the freedom that Fawkes had handed him, was compassion.

Lily had, in a way, been under a web of her own, though Harry doubted
that Dumbledore had used compulsion on her. He couldn't have known, so
long before the prophecy, that this one Muggleborn girl would become
that important, and he had keener and less chancy weapons to hand. Harry
had no doubt that Dumbledore had trained Lily even as she said he had
and that that training was the web on Lily's mind, imprisoning her free
will and making her think that she mattered only in the context of war.

\emph{She is so small. She has sacrificed her free will and foisted
sacrifices on others for a false ideal. She's wasted her life. Why
should I not pity her? She hurt me, yes, but I can choose to forgive
that. And I} do \emph{so choose.}

\emph{For that matter, where did Dumbledore learn those ethics of
sacrifice? Could he have been a victim of his own mentor, and that
mentor a victim of his own, and so on back down the line?} Harry drew in
a deep breath. \emph{Then, if that's the case, what they did to me,
deliberate as it was, was really only the end result of a long line of
people making sacrifices. Perhaps none of them ever escaped it. But I am
the lucky one, the one who can choose to end the chain here.}

\emph{I am} vates\emph{, and I can step away.}

Even as Fawkes materialized on his arm, however, Harry had two other
realizations.

\emph{I can't let on to Dumbledore that I've broken his compulsion, or
that I even know about it. He would only try to imprison me again. I
can't go and live with Lily for the summer---I see that now---but he'll
try to force me if he thinks I'm not going. I have a grace period, those
days that Madam Pomfrey says I have to stay here and heal my wound. I'll
pretend to be under the compulsion for that length of time, and think
about where I'm going to go instead and how I'm going to keep Dumbledore
out of my mind when I do.}

The second realization was more startling. Even as Harry bowed his head
and said softly, ``I understand, Mum, and thank you,'' he was reeling
under the implications of it.

\emph{A} vates \emph{is a} vates \emph{to everyone and anyone, breaking
any webs. Perhaps my greatest responsibility is to the magical
creatures, but that doesn't mean that I'll only free them. I have to
consult the free wills of wizards and witches, and try to unbind them
where I find them tied. Doesn't that mean---doesn't that mean that I
have to be} vates \emph{to Dumbledore and Lily, too, and try to break
them free of these webs of absurdities that imprison their minds?}

It made him sick for a moment, as Lily leaned across and clasped his
hand and murmured thanks to him in a broken voice, but he could see no
way around it. If he started making exceptions, then he would be forever
doing so---saying the northern goblins were too hard to free, for
example, and must simply remain imprisoned. He would have to be
\emph{vates} for even Voldemort and Bellatrix, if they came to him and
were sincerely repentant, unlikely as that was to happen. So he had to
be \emph{vates} for Dumbledore and Lily.

\emph{But that also means that I have to keep them from impinging on the
free wills of others. And I have to start doing it immediately. Lily
will be easy. I'll just tell her that I'm coming home for the summer,
and she'll go back to Godric's Hollow contented for a little while.}

\emph{Dumbledore, though\ldots{}}

Fawkes gave him an encouraging croon, and Harry smiled down at him and
stroked his feathers.

``He must have come to you after you knew you were the Boy-Who-Lived,''
said Lily. ``He did, didn't he? A reminder of your allegiance to the
Light.''

Fawkes squawked indignantly, but Lily would not know he was indignant.
Harry just nodded, while his mind turned to Dumbledore.

\emph{If Fawkes will help me, I think I can manage to contain his
compulsion. And my deception should help me with him, too. He's still so
focused on controlling me that I don't think he'll trouble looking
elsewhere. Play the good little puppet for the next few days, and that
will make him complacent. Then I can think more seriously about how to
set him on the road to realizing what he's done, and healing.}

The thought, the plan, was like a lifeline, towing him to shore. Harry
could feel himself relax completely for the first time since Karkaroff
had Porkeyed him away yesterday. He had always done his best healing
when he was helping other people. He could do it that way this time,
too.

\emph{Of course, if I'm going to act like an unbinder, then I have to
unbind all the unnecessary deceptions.}

It was a necessary one, he told himself, that made him kiss his mother
on the cheek and say, ``I've decided to come back home with you, but I
need to stay here for five days while Madam Pomfrey heals my bite wound
from Voldemort.'' He touched his chest. ``I'll see you again then?''

Lily smiled tenderly at him. ``Of course, Harry.'' She briefly skimmed
his shoulder with her hand just above the wound. ``If I still had my
magic, I think I could have healed this,'' she said softly.

Harry just bowed his head, and sat in silence until she was gone.

\emph{There have been so many sacrifices, and they haven't made her any
more courageous or Dumbledore any wiser. They have to stop.}

\emph{And that means that I have to go have a little talk with Draco.}

\chapter{Only Forward}\label{chapter-82-only-forward}

Harry met Draco in the hallway outside the hospital wing. Draco had a
worried look on his face, but, to Harry's surprise, it didn't relax into
relief on seeing him. Instead, he narrowed his eyes and hissed, ``What
are you \emph{doing?} Madam Pomfrey told you to stay in bed the rest of
the day!''

Harry shook his head. He'd honestly forgotten his promise to the matron,
and had only wanted to see Draco and tell him the decision he'd come to.
``I'm sorry. I---''

Draco took his hand and pulled him back towards the door of the hospital
wing. At least he kept his voice low as he snapped at Harry. ``I think
you should show her that hand. What if the wound becomes infected?''

``It was cauterized---''

Draco closed his eyes. ``I either didn't know that, or I'd forgotten
it,'' he whispered. He nudged the doors of the hospital wing open and
pulled Harry back to his bed. Harry rolled his eyes, but complied with
the motion. It seemed like something Draco needed to do.

Once he was arranged to Draco's satisfaction, Harry took the opportunity
to begin his speech before Draco could go off into some rant about how
inappropriate it was to be running around with a missing left hand and a
cursed bite wound. ``I wanted to let you know that you won't need the
sleep potions and the body-binds and whatever other spells you had
ready,'' he said. ``I'm not going to go off into danger without telling
you again.''

Draco stared at him. Harry stared back. He \emph{did} consider this a
true resolution, and if he didn't yet dare tell Draco
everything---Dumbledore could be listening through the wards, and was
almost certainly doing so---he could promise this much. It would relieve
the most pressing worry Draco had about him.

``You can't just change your whole behavior like that,'' Draco said at
last, revealing the source of the disbelief in his eyes.

``Yes, I can.'' Harry balled his hand into a fist, and it \emph{felt} as
though the left one were doing the same, even though he knew it wasn't.
Fawkes, who had briefly vanished when Lily had gone, popped into being
on his shoulder again and let out a soft, reassuring croon. Harry let it
soothe him back into a faint smile at Draco. ``If I concentrate. If I
\emph{try} to remember, instead of just dashing away. I can't say I'll
stop trying to save other people's lives, but I'll talk to you about it
and take you along.'' He imagined what Dumbledore would be thinking as he
listened, and made his voice soft and submissive, a sop for his
invisible audience. ``It's the least I could do, after---after the
graveyard---'' He turned his head away as though overcome.

Draco leaned forward at once, his confusion evident. ``Harry?'' His
empathy would be telling him something much different than Harry's words
and expressions, Harry knew.

``I can only ask you to trust me, Draco.'' Harry raised his eyes and
made his gaze as intense as he knew how. ``I made you the promise you
wanted. Now will you please leave me alone?'' He dropped a whine into
the middle of his tone. That would help fool Dumbledore, too, to think
that Harry was recoiling into himself instead of reaching out.

Draco blinked, once, twice. He knew Harry was passing some sort of
hidden message along to him, but seemed unable to make much more of it
than \emph{Trust me.Wait.}

Since that was the only message Harry intended to give, he was
satisfied, or he would be if his friend just accepted it, gave in,
trusted him, and waited.

Draco bowed his head. ``All right,'' he whispered. ``But I don't believe
that you'll keep this promise yet, Harry.''

``That's understandable,'' said Harry. ``You'll have to see me keep it
first, right?'' He closed his eyes. ``I think I'll rest for a little
while,'' he said. ``I went---I mean, my mind feels tired. Thinking, you
know.'' That was another silent gift to Dumbledore, to make him think
Harry was tempted to talk about the conversation with Lily, but
wouldn't. He let his breaths sidle closer and closer to true sleep.

Bewildered silence from the side. Harry rested, and waited, and hoped
that Draco did not push it. He did mean his promise, as it happened, but
Draco being too suspicious could mean a renewal of the compulsion, and
then he would fail to keep his promise, because he would be dashing into
danger all the time.

Besides, Draco would want to kill Dumbledore and Lily if he knew about
the compulsion or the visit. Promise or no promise about Lily, Harry
trusted him to find some way around his words if he felt strongly
enough. Telling his parents was an option, as well as abducting Harry to
Malfoy Manor.

It would take Harry some time to persuade him that forgiving Lily and
Dumbledore, helping them heal, was best, rather than angrily opposing
them. What they had done was---well, done. What they could do in the
future was what concerned Harry, and the moment Draco let himself be
persuaded Harry wanted to rest, he would start changing Dumbledore's
actions.

``All right,'' Draco whispered at last. ``All right. Since I didn't tell
Connor about you yet, and it's not common knowledge you're in the
hospital wing, I'll go and do that.'' He paused, but Harry didn't open
his eyes to see the expression on his face, which left him with the
gesture when Draco leaned down and kissed his forehead. ``I love you,''
he whispered, and then departed.

Harry breathed, and breathed, and breathed, and then reached out along
the bond to Fawkes. \emph{Fawkes, is Dumbledore paying attention to us
at all?}

The phoenix began softly singing a song that Harry thought was a
lullaby. It formed a vision in his mind, however, of the Headmaster
reading paperwork with a smile on his face. Harry gave a shallow nod.
Yes, he thought Dumbledore had been watching him after all during the
conversation with Draco, but now he wasn't.

Slowly, carefully, Harry explained to Fawkes what he wanted to do,
altering his opinion several times when the phoenix gave a little croon
of approval or chiding. Then he reached out, even as Fawkes lifted his
voice in more glorious music, and carefully touched the outer edges of
Dumbledore's mind.

The Headmaster was a floating presence in the school, a much more
powerful one than anyone else. His gifts of magic and compulsion, as
well as his mind, extended beyond the edges of his body like an aura.
Harry walked carefully through them, guided by Fawkes, who lived in this
world of light and color and fire all the time. He was alert to any
small twitch that would reveal Dumbledore had noticed them and they
would have to leave before he could sense who it was.

Dumbledore kept concentrating on his paperwork, though, and Fawkes found
Harry an old door from the time when he used to be Dumbledore's friend.
In a few minutes, Harry stood in an unfamiliar mental world, shaped like
Hogwarts, but with odd decorations: much wider windows, mirrors
reflecting the constant flow of sunlight through them, and only three
House crests, repeated separately and in a twining flow of lion, badger,
and eagle. Harry was unsurprised to see that the lion was the largest in
the shared pictures, rearing over the eagle and the badger as they
crouched and looked up at it.

\emph{No place for the snake here,} he thought, then shook his head.
Sarcasm wouldn't put him in the right mood to start gently rendering
Dumbledore's compulsion powerless, and such an odd thought might shove
his presence to the forefront of Dumbledore's mind.

Carefully, with Fawkes a mental presence beside him, he sought out the
compulsion, here represented by Hogwarts's wards. The Headmaster had
used this particular gift to enforce his will so often that it underlay
all his other magic. Harry had a hard time thinking of a way to tame it,
until he remembered that Dumbledore was a Declared Light wizard.

He reached up and touched the mental analogue of Fawkes, asking to
borrow one bright feather---not actually a feather, of course, but the
phoenix's magic and will concentrated into images. Fawkes crooned
happily and let one drop into his hand.

Harry began waving it, lighting a small fire at the tip of it. The wards
came alive at once, Dumbledore's compulsion reacting first to a mental
intruder, and Harry felt the Headmaster lift his head, blinking.

Harry reacted back, drawing up the fire from Fawkes's feather and
sending it in shining strands to loop around the compulsion. Even then,
however, he did not create a web; he did not think he could do so and
still keep a clean conscience about the healing. He set the light
flowing in streams, delicate and fascinating---and familiar to
Dumbledore. He would think his phoenix was trying to reconnect with him.

The wards turned to follow the streams. Dumbledore was thinking about
Fawkes now, Harry knew, as memories of the phoenix flashed past him. He
did not realize---of course, he couldn't unless he was actually in his
own head now and witnessing what Harry was doing---that the wards of
compulsion were flowing alongside the streams of light, subdued by their
interest. There was another presence here, they knew now, but it was one
who had been once been friendly. And the light was so \emph{brilliant}.
Anything that added friendly radiance to the inside of their master's
head was welcome. Part of Dumbledore's gift would focus on following the
extra light around, some of his thoughts would shift in that direction
instead of focusing on other things, and he would never know what was
truly happening.

And since the part of his mind taken up like that was the one that did
most of his compelling, that would greatly lessen his intention of
compelling other people.

\emph{It's a delicate defense, but it will do for now,} Harry thought,
as he slipped out of Dumbledore's mind and back into his own. Fawkes
came along with him, song low and peaceful. This had been a good idea,
and he was happy to have helped.

Harry did feel a faint pang of guilt. He wished he could simply have
spoken with Dumbledore, instead of interfering with his free will in any
way. But he didn't think Dumbledore would listen to him the way he was
now, and he would almost certainly renew the compulsion. Harry had to be
careful, had to hide. In time, he would, he thought, free the Headmaster
from the cage he'd put himself in.

\emph{I suppose Snape would think that unworthy,} he reflected drowsily,
the mental effort combining with the magical to relax him. \emph{But I
can forgive his crimes against me if I want, and I'm not the one who has
the right to punish him for his crimes against others. What I can do is
make sure he won't commit any more. That} is \emph{more worthy than any
other course of action, whatever Snape thinks.}

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry woke up near evening. For a few moments, he lay in silence,
enjoying the slanting, purple light, his mind perfectly blank and
perfectly at ease. The only person with him in the hospital wing was
Fawkes, and that helped increase the sense of rest.

Then the hospital doors were flung open, and Connor came storming down
the middle of the aisle of beds, staring at Harry all the way.

Harry winced when he sat up, and saw his brother's eyes go immediately
to the side of his chest where the bite mark was, and then to his left
hand. Harry winced again, and stifled the urge to moan. \emph{Draco told
him everything, didn't he?}

``I asked Malfoy to set a spell telling me when you'd wake up,'' said
Connor casually, as he sat down in the chair next to the bed. \emph{That
chair is seeing a lot of traffic today,} Harry thought, attempting to
take his mind off the misery of the impending conversation. ``And then I
asked him to leave us alone while we talked. He did both those things.
That's good of him, I think.'' He paused. ``There was one thing I didn't
tell him.''

Harry frowned, unable to imagine what that could be. \emph{Was it how
worried he was about me?} That was flattering, to think his brother was
that worried about \emph{him}, but from the fixed stare Connor went on
giving him---for one moment, and then another, and then another---Harry
doubted that was it.

``Well?'' Harry asked at last, and tried to make a joke. ``I've had
enough suspense in the last day, Connor. Don't leave me in it now.''

Connor ground his teeth with an audible sound. ``I had a letter from
James,'' he said. ``It was a short letter. He didn't need long to babble
at me and tell me that everything was fixed, that everything would be
all right over the summer.'' He leaned forward, until he was
approximately three inches away, staring at Harry. ``He said that you
wanted to come spend the summer with him and Lily at either Godric's
Hollow or Lux Aeterna.''

Harry sucked in a breath between his teeth. He would never have thought
that James would be so stupid as to write to Connor. Of course, perhaps
he thought that Connor would agree as long as Harry sincerely
\emph{wanted} this.

Connor had got to be more like Draco and Snape than James in the last
few months, though. There were times that he would distrust and oppose
Harry because he thought that would do the most good, Harry thought.

And he knew, none better, how stubborn his brother could be.

``Look, Connor---'' Harry began, soothingly. Dumbledore would understand
if he talked like this, he thought. Having Connor tell what he thought
was the truth to other people would interfere with the summer plans, and
that was not something Harry wanted to deal with, particularly if Snape
found out.

\emph{I hate this secrecy. But I have to hold to it, or the thing they
all think is true} will \emph{be true. Dumbledore will probably panic
and put me under a compulsion strong enough that I can't break it---}

\emph{Wait. McGonagall. She has some control of the wards. As long as we
do it when the Headmaster is occupied, or Fawkes and I strengthen our
hold on him a little bit more, then I can ask her to manipulate the
wards so he can't hear us. Then I can tell Connor and Draco the actual
truth.}

Harry relaxed. Connor didn't miss the change. He'd had his mouth open to
rant, but now he sat up and shut it, his hazel eyes hard. ``What?'' he
demanded.

``Professor McGonagall already gave me a lecture today,'' said Harry,
letting his voice whine again. ``If you really want to lecture me, go
get lessons from her. Or just bring her here.'' He rolled his eyes, then
pinned Connor with the same intense glare he'd given Draco, trying to
talk with his gaze. ``I'm sure that she'll be just thrilled to hear what
you have to say. And so will Draco. And all of you will be \emph{so}
thrilled to hear my response.'' He let his head fall back on the pillows
and turned away as if sulking.

He could feel Connor's silent bewilderment. But he must have thought he
had nothing to lose. Harry certainly wasn't going anywhere.

``All right,'' he said. ``All right. I don't know what's going on, Harry,
but something obviously \emph{is.}'' His voice grew firm again, as though
he was not about to let whatever Harry had to say change his mind. ``And
when I come back with them, I really do expect to hear all about it.''

He stood up and left the hospital wing, less dramatically than he'd
entered it. Harry rolled back over and slowly exhaled.

\emph{Is he busy, Fawkes?}

The phoenix let out a reassuring croon, and Harry braced himself to
wait, hoping that it wouldn't take Connor long to find Professor
McGonagall and Draco and return with them.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

The three of them entered sooner than Harry would have liked---sooner
than he was ready for, at least. He tried a nervous smile, but it fell
flat at the dangerous gleam in Draco's eyes. Connor had told him about
James, then. Harry swallowed.

Draco didn't even wait. He had his wand drawn as they approached the
bed, and he tried to cast a body-bind on Harry.

``\emph{Expelliarmus! Mr.} Malfoy!'' McGonagall did not so much bark the
words as hiss them. She grabbed Draco's wand and fixed him with a steady
stare. ``I suppose you have a good reason for trying to hex Mr.
Potter?'' Harry could see dislike in the lines of her face. McGonagall
never had liked Draco, and Harry wasn't sure why, other than the fact
that he secretly sneered at her, and had mocked her behind her back, and
made it plain that he thought he could do Transfiguration better without
her instruction\ldots{}

\emph{Yes, come to think of it, that might be enough reason.}

``He's clearly acting irrationally, Professor,'' said Draco coolly. ``I
told him what would happen the next time he did that. And he doesn't
keep his promises, either,'' he added, with a harsh glance at Harry that
didn't hide the hurt behind the anger.

``Deputy Headmistress,'' said Harry, earning McGonagall's scrutiny. He
knew Dumbledore wasn't paying attention right now, but he could start
doing so at any moment, and that made it so hard to ask for what he
wanted. ``Could you---that is, you're making progress with the wards,
aren't you?''

Connor stared. Draco blinked, and then nodded as if he got it.

McGonagall had seized it faster than either of them, by the slight
widening of her eyes. Harry wondered if she was as completely Gryffindor
as he had always thought she was.

``Yes, I am, Mr. Potter,'' she said. ``Would you like a demonstration?''

``If you don't mind,'' said Harry, slumping back against the pillows in
relief. He fought not to wince as that strained the bite wound. That
would be healed tomorrow, Madam Pomfrey had said, or possibly tonight,
and that meant that he had to just live with the pain until then.

McGonagall nodded once, and then lines of red and gold coiled around the
bed. Harry studied them, but wasn't familiar with them; many complicated
wards were really layered defensive spells, not single ones in and of
themselves, and could only be understood by wizards who cast them or
integrated their essences into them. Harry asked Fawkes in his head if
the wards would prevent the Headmaster from listening in, and Fawkes
warbled his approval. Harry relaxed a little further.

``The Headmaster thinks I'm his good little dupe,'' he said. ``I'm not,
not really. But I have to pretend to be for the next few days, or he'll
think something's up.''

``And that would have something to do with you going back to your
parents?'' Draco's voice was a hammer blow.

``I've decided not to do it, now,'' said Harry quietly. ``I don't know
where I'll stay for the summer yet, but that option's definitely out.''
He hesitated, then decided that no explanation would be good enough
without the full truth. At least with McGonagall, a responsible adult,
there, Draco was unlikely to go storming off to the Headmaster's office
and try to hex him. ``Dumbledore put a compulsion on me that took
advantage of my weakened emotions, and worked with my training to make
me think this was a good idea. Fawkes finally broke me free of it this
afternoon.''

``Was that when Lily visited?'' Connor demanded. ``James said she was
going to.''

Harry frowned. \emph{I'm disturbed that he's taken to calling them by
just their names, instead of what they were to him. He was calling James
Dad just a short time ago. Really, I can't blame him for not wanting to
be around Lily---and I wouldn't want him around her either---but I hope
his relationship with James can be salvaged.}

He had another reason to wish that Connor had kept quiet a moment later,
when Draco made a sound that resembled a groan and a sigh and a whimper
all mixed. ``Harry,'' he whispered. ``You would have gone \emph{that} far
backward?''

``Only forward, now,'' said Harry impatiently. ``It was the compulsion,
I told you.''

``And where are you going to stay for the summer?'' McGonagall's lips
were pursed, but her face wasn't pale, as Harry had half thought it
would be. Instead, her eyes shone. She looked as if she were going forth
to battle.

``I don't know,'' said Harry. ``I haven't decided that, yet.''

``The Manor,'' Draco whispered. ``Harry, you have \emph{no other choice},
unless you change your mind about Professor Snape.''

Fawkes crooned helpfully on Harry's shoulder, and once more poured his
choice---the vision of the Sanctuary---into his mind. Harry shoved the
vision away, splintering it into shards of light, not hard enough to
hurt the phoenix, but hard enough to make his rejection plain. ``No,''
he said aloud. ``Either the Seers or Snape would make me go backward.
They're too obsessed with the past. I \emph{have} to go forward. I can't
go crawling back to Lily, and I can't obey Dumbledore the way he wants
me to, and I can't dwell on the past. I've decided to forgive Lily and
Dumbledore---''

``\emph{What}.''

Draco said it as if he could not believe it, as if it would not dare to
be true, as if the reality of the universe would bend and change with
his words, and make Harry the unforgiving kind of person who would
insist on punishment. His eyes were large now, and not less bright than
McGonagall's, though Harry knew the cause was different.

Harry drew in a deep breath. ``Draco, listen to me.''

``I don't want to,'' Draco whispered. ``I don't \emph{want} to, Harry.
That---that's \emph{insane.} You've left them alive behind you how many
times, and they've come back up to stab you in the back \emph{how many
fucking times?}'' By now he was shouting, and if Harry had had empathy
himself, he was fairly sure he would have been overwhelmed by Draco's
emotions. ``No. No. I refuse to allow this, Harry.''

``Draco,'' Harry repeated. He hated to do this, but it was the only way
to arrest Draco in the middle of an action that might otherwise cause
everyone more pain. ``You promised to leave her alone.''

``I never said anything about him,'' Draco snarled.

``I'm handling him.'' Harry almost laughed at the expression on his
face, but the first ripple through his muscles made the bite ache like
hell, and he muffled it. ``Did you think I would make the resolve to
move forward and then leave him alone? No. I'm confining his compulsion,
first. I'll have to move slowly. He's so alert, and I have to access his
mind through Fawkes. But I can handle him. I want to keep him from
hurting others, and me, too. Then I'll do what I can to get him to
listen to me, and see that what he did was wrong.''

``And her?'' Draco's voice was low and ugly.

``I'm not sure yet,'' Harry admitted. ``It will probably depend on where
I stay for the summer. I'll ignore her for the eight weeks if I can, so
that I can get some rest and decide on a better course of action.
Otherwise, I'll make sure that she can't touch my brother or anyone else
she might go after, and then handle her by letter. I think, so long as
she believes that she might have some chance of influencing me, I'll
always be her prime target.''

``You're handling this all wrong,'' Draco whispered.

``And how would you suggest I handle it?'' said Harry, then held up his
hand. ``No, wait, never mind. You would suggest that I expose everything
that happened to the wizarding world.'' He shook his head. ``That
wouldn't get them justice, Draco, nor healing and understanding. That
would get them ripped into \emph{bloody shreds.}''

``That's what they deserve!'' Draco didn't even seem to realize that he
was breaking his promise not to speak ill of Lily. His face had gone so
savage that Harry didn't recognize him. Of course, he was still
Draco---just a part that Harry had never met until now. Draco was
usually gentle with him, understanding so much and urging him to take
steps only as he felt ready for them. Not now. Very much so, not now.

``Pardon me if I don't think seeing the Headmaster of Hogwarts ripped to
bloody shreds would do the war effort much good,'' said Harry, freezing
his own voice. ``Pardon me if I don't see what good it would do Lily, who
doesn't even have magic to defend herself any more, forced to act out
her shame on the stage of the \emph{Daily Prophet.} No. I'll handle
this, Draco. I won't be kind in forcing them to face up to their
delusions. And I am going to use force on them, the same way I would on
Voldemort and other people who've proven they won't stop at certain
limits. I'll feel guilty about it, but I'll use it. \emph{I'll handle
this.}''

Draco just stared at him, breathing hard.

``And now I have to ask you to make another promise,'' said Harry.

``I don't care what you make me swear by.'' Draco had never resembled
the dragon he was named for more than at that moment, Harry thought. He
reminded Harry of the Welsh Green, as much disdainful pride as anger. ``I
am \emph{not} going to swear a vow not to hurt Dumbledore.''

``That isn't what I meant, you prat,'' said Harry, rolling his eyes.
``I'm going to ask you not to tell Snape about any of this.''

Draco went quite still then, as if he had thought of something Harry
didn't know. He bowed his head. Harry felt the struggle happening inside
him, and knew it would be a mistake to try and influence it. He waited.

At last, Draco lifted his head, and hissed out between his teeth, ``All
right. All right, damn you. But \emph{only} because you have a plan, and
you made that promise not to go into danger any more. It's off if you
ever, \emph{ever} do anything like let your mother visit you without
warning me again.''

``I was under the compulsion then, and that's not going to happen again,
so Lily visiting won't, either,'' said Harry, vast relief flowing
through him. ``Thank you, Draco.''

He looked up at Connor and McGonagall. ``I'm not going to them for the
summer,'' he said. ``I promise you that. Are you satisfied? Are there
any other questions that you need to ask?''

Both of them shook their heads. Harry didn't know if they were truly
satisfied, or if they simply needed the time to assimilate this new
information. McGonagall would probably ask him more questions later,
Harry thought, but she already had some hints about his past anyway. He
would deal with telling her new information.

``Do you want me to leave the wards up around your bed, Harry, so that
Albus cannot spy on you?'' McGonagall asked.

Harry shook his head. ``No. He would notice if he couldn't see me at
least sometimes. Thank you, though, Professor.''

McGonagall nodded, and handed Draco's wand back to him, with a warning
look. The wards came down---just in time for Madam Pomfrey to bring in a
tray of food, murmuring words about changeable venoms and the position
of the moon, and then hurry away again. Connor squeezed Harry's hand
tightly, once, and strode out of the hospital wing. McGonagall followed
more slowly, turning at the doors to face Harry.

``You know that you can talk to me if there is ever anything you need,
Mr. Potter,'' she said. ``I hope you know that.''

``I do, Professor,'' said Harry, reluctantly admitting that even the
beef broth Madam Pomfrey was serving him smelled delicious. ``Thank
you.''

She inclined her head to him, keeping it bowed longer than strictly
necessary, and left.

Harry tried to share his meal with Draco, as he moved around to the
chair, but Draco shook his head. ``I ate earlier,'' he said, ``because I
thought that you might try that. You'll eat all of this, Harry.'' He
paused, and then reached out and stroked Harry's hair back from his
forehead. Confused, wondering if Draco wanted to see the lightning bolt
scar, Harry kept still.

Draco was indeed staring at the scar, but Harry didn't think he was
really \emph{seeing} it. He was looking at something else. Then he
closed his eyes and put his hand on Harry's shoulder.

``Merlin, Harry,'' he whispered. ``Aren't you ever going to get any
rest? Any peace?''

Harry could understand why he said that. There had been an awful lot
happening in the past few days. But he knew just how to answer---with
the truth, in fact. ``That's the reason I've made the plans I have,
Draco. In the end, I am going to have peace, because I'll help other
people. And I love being \emph{vates} and helping others, you know
that.''

Draco sat down heavily, keeping his eyes closed. ``I meant just a rest,
now,'' he whispered. ``Some chance to recuperate yourself.''

Harry frowned in confusion as he started eating. ``I'm in the hospital
wing,'' he said, around spoonfuls. ``I \emph{am} resting.''

Draco gave a little half-laugh, half-sob, and opened his eyes again. His
gaze startled Harry. It looked much like his own, older than the eyes of
most of the teenagers around them.

``Of course you are,'' he said. ``At least I can be here to make sure you
really \emph{do} rest.''

He sat there, holding Harry's hand and talking softly to him. Millicent
came to visit, and Blaise, and since Draco refused to leave Harry's
side, they got sent to the library for books Harry wanted to read:
mostly books on removing Dark incantations, as it happened. Harry didn't
know if he could break the spells that Bellatrix had put on his wrist,
but he was going to try.

It was only when he was falling asleep in the middle of a page that he
realized he had made an important tactical error.

Neither McGonagall nor Connor had promised not to tell Snape.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Mr. Potter. Mr. Potter, can you hear me?''

Harry stirred drowsily and opened his eyes, flexing his hand. It felt
wrong, oddly cold, until he realized that Draco had been moved from the
chair and levitated into a second bed, so that he couldn't be gripping
it. On his shoulder, Fawkes gave a sleepy croon. Madam Pomfrey stood
near Harry, holding her wand high. It was lighted with \emph{Lumos}, and
her face was haggard.

It took Harry a long time to focus on her. He'd been hearing a call in
his dreams, a rising, rushing, and falling voice. It reminded him of the
ocean, but the ocean didn't sing like that. It was enough to occupy all
his attention.

``I am sorry to wake you so early,'' the matron whispered, ``but the
most powerful incantations to end a changeable venom need to be
performed at sunrise.''

That made sense to Harry. Sunrise to oppose sunset, the passage from
darkness into light made to undo the damage that the passage from light
into darkness had done. He sat up, nodded, and waited as Madam Pomfrey
gently peeled his pyjama top away from the wound. It occurred to Harry
that he didn't remember getting into pyjamas. He frowned a little.

``Fawkes?'' Madam Pomfrey said softly. ``This is very delicate work. If
you would please move?''

The phoenix uttered a sad little sound, but did lift and fly away from
Harry to perch on the back of the chair. Madam Pomfrey stood over Harry,
still, only turning a little so that her shadow from the \emph{Lumos}
spell fell over the wound. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
It occurred to Harry that she was struggling against some keen emotion,
perhaps fear.

``Mr. Potter?'' she whispered. ``This will hurt. You may see
uncomfortable things.''

``I knew that,'' said Harry. ``I don't think it can hurt more than
getting the bite in the first place, or\ldots{}seeing what I did.''

Madam Pomfrey smiled a bit. ``Yes,'' she said. ``There is that.''

She opened her eyes, and then lifted her wand. ``\emph{Resecro!}''

Harry felt a shock run through his body. He shivered, and then bowed his
head. It felt as though Madam Pomfrey had reached into the bite wound
and touched his heart, which beat not far from the blasted thing. And
now she was pulling, or the spell was, tugging at something dark curled
in the center of his chest that had wanted to stay there. The thing
snarled and dug its claws in, like a disturbed beast.

``\emph{Resecro!}'' said Madam Pomfrey a second time, and moved. Harry
opened his eyes to see that she'd taken her shadow from the bite wound.

The dark thing began unfurling along the path of the incantation,
fighting all the while. Harry felt an echo which he thought was the
memory of Voldemort's teeth digging into him, and shuddered. Then he
cried out in spite of himself as sudden sharp, hot pain surged through
the center of his chest.

An image of teeth shone before his eyes. \emph{Fangs,} it had fangs, and
it was fighting with all its might to hold onto him, they were ripping
his flesh the way that Voldemort's barbed teeth had\ldots{}

``\emph{Resecro!}'' Madam Pomfrey shouted, and her voice had risen to a
battle-cry, a bugle, no longer entreating or pulling, but commanding.

Desperately trying to focus on something other than the image of teeth
or the scream resonating in his ears---a scream that was not his
own---Harry opened his eyes and focused on Madam Pomfrey. He was
startled to see that she was blazing, surrounded by a shimmering white
corona, cutting like glass, like adamant. The magic was unfamiliar to
him, and he supposed that it must come from her training as a mediwitch.

She put out a hand, and this time, her voice was contemptuous,
dismissing the enemy from the field of battle. ``\emph{Resecro.}''

The curse \emph{screamed}, and then it flew out of Harry, coiling and
winding in Madam Pomfrey's hand rather like a tapeworm. Madam Pomfrey
strode across the hospital wing and lifted the writhing, squirming,
biting curse into the light of the sunrise coming through the window.

Harry saw the moment when the thing combusted and began to burn from the
inside, because the flames were at first a dark green, the color of
\emph{Avada Kedavra}, turning to the living green of his own soul. Madam
Pomfrey held her hand away from her as it burned, her face disgusted,
and then, when it turned into green ash, continued holding her hand
there as she turned her head and smiled at Harry.

``It's gone,'' she whispered. ``I'll have to do a lot of washing, but
it's gone. Rest now, Mr. Potter.''

Harry nodded dazedly. He was aware of Draco beside him, asking worried
questions, awakened by the screaming, but he found that he couldn't keep
his eyes open. Fawkes returned to the shoulder and crooned, and just in
case there had been a doubt that Harry could resist sleep, the sudden
warm presence near his head banished it. He fell comfortably into deep,
peaceful slumber.

And he did not dream, but the rising, rushing, falling call was in his
head all the same. This time, its message was unmistakable.

\emph{Come to us.}

\chapter{A Toy and a Coin}\label{chapter-83-a-toy-and-a-coin}

\emph{Harry? Harry, I found my body!}

Harry blinked and stirred, slowly opening his eyes. He hadn't heard from
Regulus in so long that it took him a moment to recognize the voice.
Then he smiled, as he realized that Regulus had really only left a few
days ago to find his body and stay there until he knew where it was. It
simply seemed longer than that, because of everything that had happened
since then.

``Welcome back,'' he whispered, making sure to keep his voice low enough
not to wake Draco. It was afternoon from the slant of the light, but
both of them had irregular sleep schedules by now. What with the removal
of the curse in his shoulder wound this morning, Harry thought that he
could sleep for a week solid. ``Where is it?''

\emph{In Wayhouse, Transfigured!} Regulus would probably have done a jig
if he could. \emph{I finally figured it out. I nosed and nosed and
nosed, and still couldn't sense any trace of a preservation spell. And
then I realized that I could sense some of the old and familiar magic
from the summers I spent in Wayhouse. Spells on the room that used to be
the nursery, in fact. I was just always in too much pain before to sense
it, or I didn't stay with my body long enough, because it was boring.
I'm Transfigured into a toy, I think.}

``Of course,'' Harry breathed, remembering the room full of figurines
that he and Narcissa had passed through when they were there. ``Do you
know what kind of toy you are?''

\emph{No. But it shouldn't be that hard to figure out. Once you can go
to Wayhouse and I see it, I think I'll know it---}

His voice paused abruptly. Harry shut his eyes, knowing what was coming.

\emph{Oh, Harry,} Regulus whispered. \emph{No.}

Harry sat in resigned silence as Regulus searched through his memories,
growing more and more indignant at each one. He retreated into
incoherent promises of vengeance on some of them, moans of pain on
others, and Harry was startled, when he found the image of Dragonsbane
dying, to feel a warm silence much like a sensation of arms surrounding
him. He shifted, wanting Regulus to go on. Being held like that
occasioned a sense of faint unease in him even when Draco did it.

Regulus at last reached the last clear memory he had, of Madam Pomfrey
removing the changeable venom from his body, and sighed out. \emph{Why
do the worst things happen to you when I'm not there to prevent them?}
he whispered. \emph{And why do the worst things always happen to you?}

Harry shrugged, then hissed as pain and exhaustion both punished him for
the too-sudden movement. He couldn't believe that he was still so tired
that even a few minutes awake wore him out. ``Just lucky, I guess,'' he
murmured. He knew he could speak in his head to Regulus, and he would
switch to that if Pomfrey entered, but just now, he didn't want the
intimacy of it. He could feel Regulus's rage and pity, sweeping through
him in unending waves. That was bad enough.

If you can even joke about being lucky---

``Bad fortune is luck, too.'' Harry lay back, trying to make plans. It
didn't help that his thoughts were swirling like paint splattered with
water, moving in constant, lazy colors, dragging him towards sleep. He
hated it, but it seemed like he was going to have to rest some more.
``We have to get you out of Wayhouse,'' he muttered, his eyelids
drooping. ``Now that the wards are down like that, someone might already
have walked in. Unless you can raise them again?'' he added hopefully.

\emph{I tried. But Wayhouse is having one of its moods again. I could
raise the barriers on Grimmauld Place and the others. That one is just
going to have to remain unprotected for right now.}

Harry nodded. Merlin, even that made his head feel hot and heavy, as if
he had a fever. ``Then I'll write to Narcissa. Can you communicate with
her?''

\emph{Well, no. She has no link to the Dark Lord. She was never Marked.}

``We'll work a solution out somehow,'' Harry muttered. ``I think I
should go with her to Wayhouse, but---''

\emph{You are not going} anywhere \emph{for the next four days except to
sleep.}

Harry blinked. The sense of the words was sliding away from him, and he
had to carefully form and hold the next sentence in his head for a few
moments before he spoke. ``You need to be protected.''

\emph{Let the adults take care of this for once, Harry. Go to sleep.}

Harry yawned, and burrowed into his pillows. The last thing he felt
before he fell asleep again was a hand stroking his hair, and he
honestly didn't know if it came from outside or inside his head---if
Draco had awakened and come over to soothe him, or if Regulus was
causing it. He didn't find out, either, because he was gone before he
could open his eyes to check.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Harry opened his eyes, already feeling much better. As he should, he
saw, with a quick glance out the windows of the hospital wing. It was
already evening, and he hadn't done anything productive with his day
except for his brief conversation with Regulus. (He didn't count lying
passively under the spell that removed the changeable venom, because
there Madam Pomfrey was doing all the work, and he had only to endure).
He turned his head, his stomach rumbling, planning to ask for food and
then parchment and ink so he could write to Narcissa.

He checked, sharply, when he saw her sitting in that damnable convenient
chair next to his bed. Her hands were clasped on top of her folded
knees, and except for her expression, she might have been a statue. Her
blue eyes were alive, though, and alight, and fixed on his face. She
gave a faint nod when she saw him awake, as though they were continuing
a talk they'd already begun.

``I came to see what had happened to you,'' she said quietly. ``We have
had letters from Draco, of course, and the warning that came when
Lucius's Mark burned. And the Minister made an official public statement
that the Dark Lord had returned yesterday. But I still wanted to know
what you had suffered in person.'' She leaned across the bed and put one
hand on Harry's forehead. Harry winced, even though he'd had no pain
from his scar or visions about Voldemort since he worked such damage on
his memory. The cool touch of Narcissa's hand, combined with that look
in her eyes, said that there was someone else here worried to death
about him, though.

``I promise you,'' said Narcissa, her voice eerily formal even though
she wasn't making one of the old binding oaths, so far as Harry knew,
``that my sister shall suffer for what she has done.'' Then her voice
\emph{did} take on the cadence of an oath. ``Suffer to the ends of the
earth and back again, suffer as salt in her wounds could make her
suffer, suffer what she has done answered and given threefold.'' She
paused, then gave Harry a beautiful smile. The beauty could not hide the
coldness of it. ``When I am done, she will never laugh again.''

Harry couldn't speak, and in his head, from his chill gasps of shock,
Regulus was in the same state. In spite of the fact that he could be
giving Narcissa an important clue if she didn't already know about it,
his eyes darted to the glamour of his left hand, only to find it gone.

``Draco did not tell me,'' said Narcissa, answering his unspoken
question. ``He's not even here right now, because I made him go eat
dinner on his own. I cast a spell that banished glamours when I entered
the hospital wing, Harry. I wished to know if you were hiding wounds
worse than what Draco had told me you had. From there, my magic
confirmed my sister's handiwork..'' She paused a long moment in silence.
Then she said, words viper-quick, ``I suppose that you can tell me the
purpose of this foolish, dangerous farce?''

Harry lifted his head. Narcissa, of all people, had no right to reproach
him. He had done this to avoid the scrutiny of the world she had grown
up in. ``I suppose you think that Lucius will accept me with a missing
hand?'' he spat. ``That the other Dark pureblood families would think a
crippled wizard any kind of a leader? I did this for a very good reason,
and you know it.'' He summoned the glamour back with a thought, this
time making sure that his thumb curved the right way. He had adjusted
the look of the illusion in the past day, with Draco's reluctant help,
and soon he was satisfied that he would have it perfect. ``Kindly don't
lecture me on hiding it.''

Narcissa blinked slightly, her mouth falling open. Harry wondered why,
until she reached out, grasped his chin, and carefully tilted his head
so that she could look into his eyes. Harry stared back at her,
determined that no matter what she might say, he would not crack.

So, of course, she had to say something that made sure he did.

``Harry,'' she breathed, ``how could you think that would \emph{matter},
next to what you promise us?''

Harry jerked himself roughly away. \emph{Merlin, not again.} He could
feel tears burning and trembling near the back of his eyes. He scrubbed
at them roughly. He was so \emph{fucking sick} of crying, He was not
going to do it again. And he wasn't going to pay attention to Narcissa's
attempts to soften the blow. He knew that she only spoke of her own
opinion, not the opinion of wizardkind in general. He would look weak
enough when word of his confrontation with Voldemort got out---and he
was sure that the Death Eaters would find ways to send that information
slyly among the Dark purebloods. He would not add a weakness he could
hide to the list.

``It's true,'' Narcissa went on, her words dripping down like water
wearing on a stubborn rock. ``Yes, Harry, you are right, and many average
wizards are forced to wear a glamour when something like this happens to
them, or else get a replacement. But with someone of Lord-level power,
that has never \emph{mattered}. There was Lord Guile in the seventeenth
century, who lost his left leg and simply used his magic to levitate
him. He never hid it, and chose his allies from among those who showed
no reaction, and his strongest friends and counselors and Inner Circle
from those who were wounded in similar ways. The Broken Guard, they were
called, and it meant nothing but respect.''

Harry shivered. He had heard of the Broken Guard, but he had not thought
to apply that precedent to himself. It didn't matter, because---``He had
the will to demand respect. He was a compeller. I don't want to
\emph{force} people to respect me.''

``Not will,'' said Narcissa. ``Magic. Haven't you noticed \emph{yet},
Harry, how honor is done you that would not be done anyone else at your
age, because of your magic? And then, once someone gets inside that
magic and sees and knows more about you, and sees what you have done for
others, they will become your allies because of who you are. Believe me,
most of the Dark purebloods would dismiss you as a child if not for your
power.'' She leaned forward and clasped Harry's hand. ``They have not.
They might be shocked at this, but they are far more likely to swear
vengeance as I have done.'' She smiled a bit. ``It is too bad that I am
the only one who can swear that particular oath on Bellatrix. The others
will have to content themselves with other Death Eaters. Lucius in
particular\ldots{}oh, Harry, he will be \emph{so} angry.'' Her smile
widened and became dreamy. ``You have never seen Lucius when he is
really, truly in the grip of one of his overpowering rages. He's so cold
most of the time that one forgets he can torture with passion as well as
detachment.'' Her eyelashes fell, once, as she closed her eyes in some
intense memory. ``It was when I saw him fly into one of those rages
after Crispus Rosier insulted me that I knew I really wanted to marry
him.''

Harry couldn't speak, couldn't think. The thought of finding himself
embraced and held close by those he had been sure would be among the
first to push him away if they found out about the loss of his
hand\ldots{}

But then he did find his breath, and blurted out, ``Do you really mean
to tell Lucius about this?''

Narcissa sighed, the way she would if Harry had disappointed her. ``Of
course,'' she said. ``I mean to tell everyone, Harry.'' She reached into
the pocket of her robe and drew out a long scroll, which she opened with
some ceremony and laid down before him. Harry looked down, and saw name
after name in shining silvery ink, like moonlight. At the bottom was a
blank space, a deep green line.

``These are the names of Dark pureblood wizards I have won to your cause
with my dancing,'' said Narcissa simply. ``Some of them I approached as
myself, some as Starborn, but all of them know the truth now, and all of
them agreed. The majority of these particular agreements came after
Walpurgis Night. When it comes down to it, Harry, magic is more
important to us than blood. And we have seen how highly you value that
old, wild Dark magic, and how much you would risk to protect both it and
the people who use it.''

Harry stared at the list in a daze. Most of the names were familiar,
though not together. The first names were ones that had occurred and
reoccurred in pureblood families for generations, the surnames ones that
he had studied for days and weeks and months and years, reclining on his
back with his books on the lawn of Godric's Hollow.

\emph{Charles Rosier-Henlin. Mortimer Belville. Henrietta Bulstrode.
Ignifer Apollonis. Edward Burke. Thomas Rhangnara. Honoria
Pemberley\ldots{}}

And on, and on, and on.

Harry swallowed as he looked at the line of dark green ink at the bottom
of the page. He knew that was where he would sign, binding himself to
these wizards and witches. ``And you are absolutely sure that they would
remain with me in spite of my missing a hand?'' he whispered.

``There is nothing that you could do that would deter them,'' said
Narcissa, ``short of betraying your ideals, and turning out to be
someone who would, say, Declare himself a Light Lord.''

``No,'' said Harry. ``But I have no intention of Declaring myself a Dark
Lord, either.''

``I told them that.'' Narcissa's eyes were large and calm and just the
slightest bit triumphant. ``They did not care. In fact, some of them
have had enough of Dark Lords to last them a while. The Dark Lord has
intimidated them and punished them when they dare to do anything but
send their children to be Marked. They've had their homes raided and
valuable books taken.'' She paused, and her lips pursed. ``Arabella
Zabini, in fact, gave me this message for you. She said that she is your
firm ally now, because Death Eaters took her Parseltongue books.''

Harry experienced a brief stab of regret, but he was feeling too much
else for it to make an impact. He stared at the scroll again, and shook
his head. He had always intended to move forward, of course, and make
more allies, and take more people under his protection, but he had
resigned himself to the thought of wearing a glamour while he did it.

The thought that he might not have to, and it would make no
difference---

He could not assimilate it right now, he thought, and he rolled up the
scroll and handed it back to Narcissa. Then he had a sudden thought, and
sat up in alarm, looking around. \emph{Is Dumbledore listening to this
conversation?}

Fawkes appeared above him, and gave a run of notes that sounded like a
chuckle. A vision formed in Harry's mind of Dumbledore bent over his
paperwork again, vaguely wondering why he took more satisfaction in it
than ever. Fawkes had kept an eye on him while Harry rested and
recovered. Harry really should learn to trust him, in fact, since he
would have let him know at once if Dumbledore had suspected anything
about Narcissa's intrusion.

Harry relaxed. Then he looked at Narcissa as Regulus nudged him and
whispered, \emph{You know that you can't go to Wayhouse in this
condition. Besides, I'd knock you out if you tried. So ask her to go.}

Harry sighed. ``Narcissa, Regulus is with me, and he knows the location
of his body now. He thinks that he was Transfigured into a toy and left
at Wayhouse. Could you---''

Apart from the slight widening of Narcissa's eyes, there was no sign
that she had been startled by the news, and she nodded, interrupting
him. ``I would be most happy to, Harry.''

``He thinks he's in the nursery,'' said Harry. ``Other than that, he's
not sure what kind of toy he might be.''

``I will simply fetch them all, then.'' Narcissa stood with a graceful
motion. ``Rest for right now, Harry.'' She leaned over him and kissed
his forehead. ``I have seen you,'' she said, ``and I will carry a report
back to the others.'' She turned and strode towards the doors.

Fawkes let out a warning chirp, to show that the Headmaster was paying
attention again. Harry opened his mouth to warn Narcissa, but without
even looking, she touched something in her pocket---a Portkey, it must
be---and was gone, smoothly vanishing in a whirl of color.

Harry let himself fall back on the pillows, and sigh, and wait until
Madam Pomfrey, still looking haggard from the magic she'd performed that
morning, came out of her office and smiled at him. ``Would you like some
dinner, Mr. Potter?''

``Yes,'' said Harry, and let himself whine. He wanted to, and besides,
it would help convince the Headmaster that he was still weak and acting
like a child. ``Can I have something other than beef broth, this time?''

Regulus snapped at him at the same time as Madam Pomfrey did. \emph{Beef
broth makes you strong.}

``Beef broth makes you strong, Mr. Potter,'' said Madam Pomfrey, and
then paused as if wondering why Harry was trying not to giggle. ``It's
what I will bring,'' she ended firmly, and went towards the fireplace to
call a house elf.

Harry squirmed, unsure if he could take food from house elves right now,
but just then the doors opened and Draco came in, and he stilled,
because Draco would get upset if he raised those scruples now, and it
really wasn't worth it.

\emph{Why will you listen to him but not me?} Regulus said in injured
pride.

Harry thought that was ridiculous enough to deserve the jab he gave
back. \emph{Because he's a much better kisser.}

That did, indeed, shut Regulus up.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Albus frowned thoughtfully as he studied Harry through the wards. He'd
had the impression of someone vanishing just before he looked in on him
again, but if so, it hadn't been someone whose visit had managed to
influence the boy unduly. His eyes looked swollen, but Albus welcomed
that. Keep him emotionally off-balance, and then he would not question
his sudden inclination to visit Lily again.

Albus watched a longer time, and was pleased to see that every time
young Mr. Malfoy brought up the issue of where Harry was going to spend
the summer, or made some supposedly casual remark about Harry staying at
Malfoy Manor, Harry slid smoothly away from it. He didn't address them
if he could help it, and other times he was so neutral as to soon send
the easily bored Malfoy onto other topics of conversation.

\emph{Good. That is the way to do it. Let anyone suspect the truth
beforehand, and we would not be able to move him in time. I will summon
Lily to come back three days from now, when Madam Pomfrey has said he
may leave the hospital wing. We will whisk him away before either the
Malfoys or Severus get ideas.}

It might be that he didn't have to worry about Severus, though, Albus
would admit. The man had been looking into a Pensieve and writing most
of the time lately. Albus could see that much, though he could not tell
what Severus was writing; the errant professor had exiled Hogwarts's
wards from his rooms almost entirely and woven his own.

And, as more good news to be added to a surfeit of it, it seemed that
Fawkes was trying to reconnect with him, creeping back bit by bit. Albus
didn't try to rush it, didn't hurry him. He just let images of the
phoenix flash across his mind whenever they could be persuaded to enter,
and the rest of the time worked in happy silence, content with his
visions of the Light becoming strong.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Narcissa stepped carefully into Wayhouse and looked around once. The
changeable house had a knothole in the wood above the main staircase.
Narcissa paused, looking at it, and then walked up the stairs and
further into the house. Cousin Arcturus's distinctly odd sense of humor
for once failed to materialize, and she did not go sliding down the
stairs to land in an ungraceful heap at the bottom of them, or begin
dancing a jig that she could not calm.

When she reached the reading room at the top of the stairs, she found
one of the boxes from which she had taken certain small treasures on her
last visit to Wayhouse shifted a few inches to the left. Narcissa paused
again, and let her fingers brush across the top of the box, wiped free
of dust. It might only have been the house's whim, of course, which had
lowered the wards in the first place and would insure that some parts of
it were clean and others dirty at a moment's notice.

Narcissa didn't think it was.

She let a smile play across her lips, and ducked out of the reading room
and into a low-ceilinged sitting room. She had come to the house only
for the Transfigured Regulus. She must remember that. She knew where the
nursery was, and it would be the work of a moment to levitate the toys
and float them after herself. She was sure that no one would have
disturbed \emph{those.} Ingenious of the Dark Lord, really, to make
Regulus a common object that might be lost among a thousand others and
not a magical one, one that might be touched or disturbed. It might have
amused him to keep a traitorous, Transfigured Death Eater in the hands
of someone else and see him used constantly, but obviously in this case,
a different sense of the fitness of things had ruled.

She had come to the house for that reason, and that reason only.

No, not really. That was the only reason \emph{Harry} had asked her to
come. In truth, Narcissa had another, and she moved lightly through room
after room, following a faint trail in the dust, gratified to see that
her suspicions were correct.

Of course, she did not take her unawares. A certain kind of silence
ceased ahead of her as she passed through Cousin Arcturus's
bedroom---his portrait blew her a kiss---and a different kind of silence
took its place. Narcissa quickened her pace. The plan hadn't been to
take her by surprise.

The plan had been to take her.

She swept into a circular room, oriented around the delicate mosaic on
the ceiling, one of planets moving around the sun in an endless waltz.
Cousin Arcturus had been ever so proud that he'd known Pluto was there
before the Muggle astronomers did, and the three planets he'd discovered
and they still hadn't danced merrily in the outer rings.

Of course, the spell came at her from behind, a curse that they'd used
again and again in their childhood, one that would cause small sharp
pinches all over the skin of whoever it struck. Should the curse
continue, the pinches would move inward and start squeezing the heart
and lungs---something that was never allowed to happen when they were
children and their parents were always just a breathless, frightened
scream away.

\emph{She chose it because of where we are,} Narcissa thought, as she
performed the countercurse and turned around. \emph{This is a place for
family.}

``Hello, Bella,'' she said.

Her oldest sister edged into view from behind the bookcase where she'd
hidden, her teeth bared. Narcissa regarded her with a pleasure she had
not thought she would feel. When they were children, and her mother had
told her in confidence that Bellatrix appeared to have inherited all the
madness of both the Black and the Rosier lines, Narcissa had been
divided between fear that Bella would hurt her someday, and horror that
she would disgrace the family in public. Now, she saw the madness as the
beginning of a payment for the debt that Bella owed Harry.

``Cissy,'' said Bella, her voice a broken echo of its old sweetness.
``You're here. You came. You're here.''

``I did,'' said Narcissa, and touched the thing riding in her pocket,
next to the Portkey. Exaltation surged and rode her. She had thought she
would use it for a different purpose before she cast the \emph{Finite
Incantatem} and watched the glamour of Harry's left hand vanish, but now
she had changed her mind. There was no doubt of the appropriate
punishment for Bella. ``Did you know that I would be here, sweet, sweet
Bella? I wondered.''

``No,'' said Bella. ``You were already here. Took the weapons, I know.''
She smiled, revealing a mouthful of cracked teeth, and held up her wand.
Her dark eyes gleamed with dazzling excitement. They'd always been her
most beautiful feature, Narcissa thought, at least when her long black
hair was a rat's nest, like it was now. ``Tell me where they are, Cissy.
Or, better, come join \emph{him}. He is the one you should have been
serving, if you held to the true ideals. Not like our cousins.'' Her eyes
clouded over with anger. ``Not like our sister.''

Andromeda had always been Bellatrix's nemesis when they were children,
biting her lip and keeping stubbornly silent when Bella tried to hurt
her, and then she had delivered the most stinging insult possible: she'd
slipped out of Bella's guard when their parents were trusting her to
keep Andromeda from eloping with Ted Tonks. Narcissa remembered walking
into the room where they'd kept Andromeda prisoner and finding Bellatrix
on the floor in a variation of the Full Body-Bind that took eight hours
to undo. The next word they'd had was that of their sister's marriage,
and then her name had been burned off the family tapestry. Narcissa
smiled more widely now, thinking of that, thinking of what their quiet,
proud, far too bitchy middle sister would have given to be standing here
with her now.

``I hold to the true ideals,'' she said, and began moving left, so that
Bella would think Narcissa was trying to draw her into a dueling circle.
``The ideals the Black family had before the Dark Lord arose. This is
only one Lord, Bella, you know that, and in the end he'll die like they
all die. It's not worth betraying what we are to serve him.''

Bella's eyes flew wide, and she shrieked, sending a mouthful of spittle
flying. ``He is \emph{invincible},'' she said. ``He has conquered death.
He is my lord, and he is my master.''

Narcissa laughed at her. ``One invincible lord, defeated by a baby and
then by a fourteen-year-old,'' she said, shaking her head. ``Bella,
really, I would have thought better of you. At least choose a master
that a twenty-year-old wizard alone could have destroyed.''

Bella shrieked, and charged her.

Narcissa pulled the weapon out of her pocket. It was nothing, really, if
you just looked at it, a small silver coin with an imprint of a wizard's
head on one side and the Black family crest on the other---an odd
Sickle, perhaps. But Cousin Arcturus had made it, and Cousin Arcturus
had had a peculiar sense of humor, and an obsession, in his later years,
with the difference between chance and fate. He'd made a weapon that
carried both with it.

Narcissa flipped the coin into the air, calling, ``Heads!''

Even if Bella recognized the coin for what it was, she was too far gone
into madness to stop her charge---or speak coherent spells, for that
matter, since she was shrieking threats, instead.

Narcissa whirled aside from her, and ducked behind the bookcase. She
watched the coin complete its twinkling tumble, and land on its side,
and roll in three circles before falling over with the wizard's head up.
Then it gave a brief black sparkle, letting Narcissa know it was ready.

Narcissa waited until her sister turned around and looked at her again.
She stared her directly in the eye, and smiled, and said, ``What you did
to Harry in the graveyard, I wish revisited upon you, threefold.''

Black lines of power lashed from the coin, leading directly to
Bellatrix's left hand. She began to scream as a line of blood spouted
across her wrist, and then an invisible knife began to cut, straight
down.

Narcissa leaned against the bookcase and watched, calmly, as muscle tore
and parted, as bone appeared, as the magic revived Bellatrix when she
would have fainted from the pain, as the incantations Bella had
performed must have kept Harry awake to feel the trauma in the
graveyard. Draco's letters had hinted only, never being explicit. But
they, combined with the fact that Harry's hand was gone and he had
certain exceptionally difficult Dark spells wound about the stump,
satisfied Narcissa that what she was seeing now approximated the reality
of what had happened there.

Only threefold, of course.

The hand sagged free at last, and a flash of fire cauterized the wound.
Bella slumped with a low wail of pain as the black magic consumed her
hand and soared away into the coin again, lying in a pool of her own
blood.

She looked up at Narcissa, and, amusingly, among all the other emotions
in her face was a spark of betrayal.

She vanished, Apparating.

Narcissa gave a smile she knew would be faint and distant, and stood
away from the bookcase. She could not try to pick up the coin.

Dear Cousin Arcturus and his obsession with the unusual. The coin could
be flung by any person of the Black bloodline once, though they had to
call out the name of the side they wanted, heads or crest, in
mid-flight. If it landed with their side upwards by chance, then their
wish was as fate---for that one wish only. Afterwards, if that same
person tried to touch the coin again, he or she would simply die.
Likewise, someone who tried to touch the coin and didn't share the Black
blood would perish.

Narcissa had intended to try and use the coin to persuade one of her
reluctant, wavering potential allies to come to Harry's side. She'd
toyed with the idea of using it on the Dark Lord, but then remembered
that Regulus had been in his service. The Dark Lord had been in the
habit of asking questions of any pureblood follower whose family might
possess weapons that could hurt him. He would have protected himself
against the coin long ago, or else he would have confiscated it without
touching it and hidden it away. The fact that it had been in Wayhouse
proved he was protected against it.

Narcissa gently levitated the coin behind her. She could no longer use
it, but Draco could, or Andromeda, or her niece Nymphadora. And she was
certainly not going to leave it here for Bella to find, though Bella had
used it already, in her childhood.

She gathered a few more weapons as she made her way through the house,
noting the absence of those she had expected to find. Bella would have
them, then. Narcissa would mention that to Harry.

She reached the nursery, shook her head at the jumble of toys, and swept
them all up in one whirlwind. Then, with them hovering obediently behind
her, she reached for the Portkey that would take her back to the Manor.

She landed gracefully in the small library. Lucius laid down his book
and looked at her, carefully raising an eyebrow at the jumble of objects
floating behind her, but not saying anything.

Narcissa went to him and kissed him hard, without speaking. Lucius
laughed soundlessly at her beneath the kiss, and, when she pulled away,
took her hips in his hands and looked up at her with an expression
combining eagerness and affection.

``Whom did you hurt?'' he asked.

``Bellatrix,'' said Narcissa, and sat down to tell him all the details.
He would enjoy hearing them as much as she had enjoyed seeing them, she
thought.

Besides, by telling him about this first, then she would have two
enjoyments unalloyed. She would tell him about Harry's hand next, and
the other signs of suffering she had observed, and get the pleasure of
watching him go into a rage.

She wondered whom he would swear vengeance against.

She hoped she would get to watch him exact it.

\chapter{Trying Again}\label{chapter-84-trying-again}

Snape's world had become a blur of Pensieve memories, of writing so that
his fingers were splashed with ink as they usually were with crushed
Potions ingredients, of hastily snatched meals and sleep and hasty trips
on the sly to look at Harry in the hospital wing. Not even the burning
Mark on Midsummer evening had made him as urgent as this. He had the
feeling that he was running out of time. He had to finish transcribing
Dumbledore's memories of Harry's training from the Pensieve Potion soon.
He did not know why, but he \emph{must}.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

``Now, Harry. Sit down on the grass, and we'll tell you a story.''

Harry sat down on the grass of the lawn at Godric's Hollow. He was about
five or six in this memory, his green eyes permanently wide and taking
in information about the world. You wouldn't know that unless you'd
known him for a while, though, Snape thought. Already he had learned to
hide almost all emotion behind a mask that only truly softened and
glowed when his brother was near.

Lily sat down in front of Harry on his right, Dumbledore on the left.
Snape moved up to stand between them, and wished impatiently, once more,
that this was not a memory. He could take Harry away from this if it
were reality. Then Harry might still be this age, and a good deal of the
damage that Snape had seen might be reversed.

But it was not to be. Instead, he stood there and watched Lily tell the
boy a story, supposedly, her voice soft and hypnotic.

``There was a Slytherin girl who used to torment me, Harry. Charlotte
Snoddard was her name, though I used to call her Charlotte Snot-Nose.''
A fleeting smile played across Lily's face, and then went away, back
into the depths of stillness. ``She knew that she could get me to cry
with just a few words about Mudbloods in the right vicinity.''

``But I learned to ignore her. Do you know what I did?''

Harry shook his head, his hair flopping into his eyes. Dumbledore was
leaning forward now, as if he wanted to hear Lily's story better---or
simply wanted to study Harry's face, and watch him listening to it.

``I learned to turn the conversation back on her,'' said Lily
triumphantly. ``I learned to find out about \emph{her}, where \emph{she}
went and what she did during the day, and then I would ask her about
problems I knew she was having, the boys she fancied, the lessons that
she missed because she was lazy and often didn't get out of the dungeons
until class had already begun. She was suspicious at first, of course,
but I never laughed at her, and finally I got her to seek me out and
just babble at me about the course of her day. She might open with a
taunt, but when I asked her about the things that were important to her,
she was more willing to talk about that. Finally, she never used another
taunt. I'd moved into another capacity as far as she was concerned, the
listening ears. And I was bored, most of the time, but I never cried
because of her again.''

Lily leaned forward and lightly tilted Harry's chin up. ``And that is
something that you can do, Harry, if someone asks about you and won't be
quiet. You can learn to ask about the things that are important to them,
the problems they have and the people they care about. Most people are
far more interested in talking than in listening, far more interested in
themselves than in you.'' She paused and smiled. ``Especially because
you are---''

``Connor's guardian, and guide, and protector,'' said Harry, with the
air of something long rehearsed. ``There's no reason for them to be
interested in me.''

``Very good, Harry.'' Lily patted his cheek. ``So Albus is going to test
you and see how well you've learned this particular lesson. When he
starts talking about you, turn the conversation back towards him.''

Snape had to watch as Dumbledore led Harry through a simple
conversation, trying to talk to him about his training, his day, what
his favorite colors were, what he liked about the sunlight. Harry was
clumsy in return at first, and gave answers that his mother gently
scolded him for, but he learned as the afternoon wore on, and managed
several smooth transitions that led Dumbledore to talk about his own
experiences instead.

Here was the source of much of Harry's evasion, then, Snape thought,
trying to keep calm and rational, much of his ability to dodge
undetectably around concerns about his health or state of mind. Most
people \emph{were} more interested in themselves than in him, and they
were gratified, as well, by the sense that Harry was a sincere and
patient listener---something that Charlotte Snoddard could not have been
satisfied of with Lily, for all the times Snape had heard her brag about
her ``pet Mudblood.'' They would listen, and talk to him, and reveal
more and more of themselves, at the same time that they never noticed
Harry was receding from them.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape slowly finished writing out the last lines of that memory, and
then stared at the parchment, followed by a stare at the bottle of
silvery Pensieve Potion.

That was done. That was it. He had transcribed all the memories of
Harry's training that he had stolen from Dumbledore.

Snape let out a deep breath, and then began muttering copy spells at the
reams and reams of parchment, just in case. He was about a quarter of
the way through when someone rapped on the door of his quarters. Snape
jerked his head up, glaring. Not many students knew where his private
rooms, as opposed to his offices, were, and he knew that Harry and Draco
would still be in the hospital wing. This was far more likely to be a
professor.

``Come in,'' he called, after a tense moment, and dismissed the wards on
the door.

To his surprise, the first person who entered the room was Connor
Potter, the Gryffindor brat, with McGonagall right behind him. The brat
planted his fists on his hips and gave Snape a harsh stare that reminded
him, strongly and unpleasantly, of the original Potter. He felt his lip
curl back.

``Potter---''

``Severus,'' said McGonagall, with a quick nod at him. ``A moment,
please.'' She raised her hand, and writhing gold and red lines draped
his room in Gryffindor colors, encircling them. Snape stared. He had not
thought that she had gained \emph{that} amount of control over the
wards.

A moment later, as he watched the wards work their way into the stone of
the walls, he was furious. ``How dare you!'' he hissed at her, standing
and reaching for his wand. ``I have only just removed the wards so that
Albus could not spy on me, and now---''

``He has been spying on Harry, too,'' said McGonagall, folding her arms
and regarding him sternly. ``This is the only way to be sure that we'll
get a bit of privacy from him. I'll take these down when I leave,
Severus, but for now, you \emph{are} going to leave them where they
are.''

Snape blinked, then nodded. ``And what did you want to say to me?'' He
gave the boy a harsh glance. ``And why did you bring this brat along?''

The brat's face flushed, but he seemed to realize it would be a good
idea not to reveal how irritated he was. He took a deep breath instead,
and said, ``It's about Harry. I got a letter from James. He told me that
Harry was coming home to stay with him for the summer. Him and Lily.''

Snape felt the explosion of rage in his chest as though it were
happening to someone else. He dimly saw one of the Transfigured chairs
go flying across the room and smash into his bookshelves as his wandless
magic reacted, but it wasn't until McGonagall said sharply,
``\emph{Severus!}'' that he was recalled to himself.

Breathing hard, he sat back in his chair and stared at Potter. ``You are
not lying?''

Potter shook his head. ``I'm not. But when we confronted
Harry---Professor McGonagall and Malfoy and I---under this kind of ward
so that Dumbledore couldn't hear, he told us the truth. Dumbledore put
another compulsion on him when he came back from the graveyard, and he
was in such physical and emotional shock that it took hold. Harry had an
interview with Lily, and he did think that he wanted to go back to
either Godric's Hollow or Lux Aeterna with her. But then he broke
free.''

``He spoke with his mother.'' Snape could feel his words slur, mostly
because his tongue and lips felt numb.

McGonagall nodded. ``He did. And, Severus\ldots{}I have let Mr. Potter
tell this story because he knows more than I do, but I would know more.
Why do you fear so much to let Harry go home with his parents?'' Her
eyes were steady, and her arms had assumed a folded posture that meant
she wasn't leaving until she got an answer.

Snape nodded towards the paper he'd been copying. ``Read those. They're
transcriptions of scenes that I got from a Pensieve full of Albus's
memories.'' He turned back to Potter as she started reading. ``Go on.''

``He told us that he had no intention of going to back to them for the
summer, not now,'' said Potter, with a slight shake of his head. ``But
he had to pretend to have it, because that would mean that Dumbledore
was fooled into thinking him still under the compulsion. And---well. He
made Malfoy promise not to tell you about this, because he seemed to
think that you might do something to Lily and James.'' He looked
searchingly into Snape's eyes.

``Not myself,'' said Snape. He had already decided that. His vengeance
hung suspended by such a slender thread now, but he knew that the way to
break Harry's trust forever and have no hope of regaining it would be to
torture Harry's parents himself. ``I am going to hand the information
about his childhood over to someone else who will be able to use it as
it should be used.''

``Harry doesn't want anyone to know,'' said Potter, so softly that Snape
could barely hear him.

``I don't care,'' said Snape. And he didn't, not anymore. The boy could
hate him, but he hated him already. And the knowledge that Harry had
been in enough trauma to slip backwards that far, to look for comfort in
his parents and even accept and believe another of Albus's compulsions
for a time\ldots{}

\emph{No. Wait. There is one thing that does not make sense. If he broke
the compulsion, why would Albus still be alive? Harry hates compulsion
enough to attack anyone who uses it violently.} Snape lifted a hand to
touch the fading bruises around his throat. \emph{I should know that.}

``Why is the Headmaster still alive and sane?'' he demanded of Potter.

Potter's face assumed an expression of disgust, and that, of all the
possible looks he could wear, made him most like his brother. ``Because
Harry has this mad plan to \emph{redeem} them,'' he said flatly.
``Dumbledore and Lily, at least, and probably James, too, though he
didn't say that. He's confining Dumbledore's compulsion. He wants to
talk to them, apparently, and forgive them.''

``They can't be forgiven,'' said Snape, not caring that he was speaking
about Potter's mother in that deep tone. ``They have hurt him one too
many times, and they represent too great a source of temptation and
danger for Harry. I will destroy them.''

``I quite agree,'' said Potter.

Snape shot him a sharp glance. The hazel eyes that met his shone with
reckless anger and courage. Gryffindor qualities, both of them, but at
this moment, Snape supposed, they would serve.

``Where has Harry decided to stay for the summer?'' he made himself ask.
``And you?''

``I'll be with the Weasleys,'' said Connor. ``Arthur Weasley has friends
in the Ministry who helped him strengthen the wards on the Burrow, so
that I can stay there and not have to ask for help or permission from
Dumbledore.'' He grimaced. ``I think my father assumed I would be staying
with him and Harry, but he didn't really ask me, and now I can just say
that I made prior plans.''

``I almost asked Harry if he would come with me, but I knew he'd refuse.
He doesn't want to be around that many people. He doesn't want to stay
with you, either,'' he added, ``or with the Seers in their Sanctuary,
even though I know they invited him. He doesn't want to be around people
who would make him go backwards, he said. He thinks you focus too much
on the past.''

A strangled gasp behind Snape interrupted him before he could reply. He
turned sharply, and saw McGonagall lifting her head from reading the
records of the memories, a shocked look on her face that could not have
been deeper if she had looked into the actual Pensieve Potion.

``They trained him like this?'' she whispered. ``He suffered like
this?''

``Yes,'' said Snape.

McGonagall went on staring at the papers for a moment, as though she
expected them to rear up and pull her back in. Then she nodded once, and
turned to Snape.

``I trust you to take care of this, Severus,'' she said. ``Harry must
never be allowed to return to his parents, and you must make sure that
Lily and Albus are punished for their actions.'' She closed her eyes.
``To think that I once thought them the perfect Gryffindors, the epitome
of our House,'' she murmured.

The urge came to Snape to say something ridiculous and sentimental then,
something like McGonagall being the epitome of Gryffindor now, but he
squashed it. \emph{Not with Potter in the room.} ``I plan to show the
evidence to those who can take care of it,'' he said, and then looked at
Potter. ``You do realize that word of this will get out and make your
life difficult, as well?''

``I would have cared a few days ago,'' Potter whispered. ``But I
survived the Tournament whole and healthy, and Harry\ldots{}didn't.'' He
closed his eyes, and stood there for a long moment, as if debating. Then
he sighed, and said, ``Harry's already going to be as mad as hell at me
for coming here and talking to you. So I might as well reveal this, too.
He's lost his left hand.''

Snape staggered, and caught himself on the back of his chair. ``What?''

``Malfoy told me,'' said Connor. ``Bellatrix cut it off at the wrist,
and made it so that he couldn't get a replacement. Harry's wearing a
glamour all the time now.'' He lifted his head and looked at Snape
imploringly. ``He wants to hide it. He's barely told anyone about it.
Even Malfoy only found out on accident.''

``I must see him,'' said Snape, in a voice that he knew didn't sound
like his own. He was out the door and striding for the hospital wing
before either McGonagall or Potter could react.

\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}

Snape paused when he reached the hospital wing, because he had no
choice. Madam Pomfrey opened the doors to him with a forbidding
expression and a slight shake of her head. And more, Harry was tucked
into his bed, thoroughly asleep. He was breathing soundly, too, as
though the nightmares and visions had finally ceased to plague him.

``Is it normal for him to sleep so much?'' Snape had to ask the matron,
without taking his eyes off Harry. He wasn't that short any more, but at
the moment, with Snape's knowledge of his past and his missing hand, he
looked small. He tended to make himself smaller, too, curling into
corners and ducking to escape people's gazes and taking any excuse to
diminish his own accomplishments.

``Severus,'' said Madam Pomfrey, drawing his gaze back to her. ``Sleeping
curses are difficult to cast or reverse, but they are relatively easy to
\emph{detect.} I've found none on Mr. Potter. He simply needs to rest.''
Her face softened for a moment. ``That's why he's spent most of his time
in the hospital wing so far. I've healed him of the bite on his shoulder
that You-Know-Who gave him, but that exhausted him further. And he needs
so much more rest than that,'' she mused, shifting her hands on the tray
of potions that she held. ``He hasn't slept well all year, I know that,
and he needs time to recover from what happened to him in the
graveyard---time that I know he's not going to allow himself.''

Snape nodded curtly and moved forward, sitting down next to Harry's bed.
His eyes lingered on Harry's left hand, and he nodded again. He noticed,
now, that there was a callus missing on the boy's thumb from gripping
his broom that should have been there if his hand was exactly the same
as it had been.

\emph{He should remove the glamour. He should let Madam Pomfrey make
sure the wound isn't infected.}

It was difficult for Snape to even think about Bellatrix cutting off
Harry's hand. He knew how brutal she was with Muggle and Muggleborn
victims, even purebloods who defied their Lord. The thought of what she
would do to Harry if she got the chance, and in revenge for removing her
right hand as Harry had earlier in the year\ldots{}

Snape felt a surge of helplessness that was becoming familiar to him. He
wanted to snatch Harry up and hold him close against all the wrongs of
the world. He wanted to make sure that no one else could ever hurt Harry
again. He wanted to force Harry into a set of calm, quiet rooms where he
couldn't find anyone else to help or any war to worry himself about, and
force him to face his past. He knew that he couldn't do any of those
things, and that was coming closer to driving him into madness than
anything since his Death Eater days had.

\emph{This is what it is like to be a parent,} he thought. \emph{It's no
wonder that I never wanted to be one.} But then his eyes went back to
Harry's face again, and he shook his head. \emph{No, I want to be one
now. If Harry will let me.}

Harry stirred, just then, and woke. Snape was familiar with that little
yawn and the subtle stretching Harry did from this past summer. After
seeing the memories in the Pensieve Potion, he knew more about where it
came from. Lily had taught Harry to wake slowly and not to let anyone
know he had returned from slumber until he was ready, just in case there
were enemies lurking nearby. Only after Harry could see no foes in the
hospital wing did he relax and roll over.

Of course, he tensed again once he saw Snape.

``Harry,'' said Snape softly, because there was no way around this. ``I
know everything.'' He let his eyes dart to Harry's left hand, and looked
up to surprise an expression of sick horror on the boy's face. He tried
to tell himself that it came from anyone, not just him, knowing about
that particular weakness, but he couldn't help the hammer blow of
rejection that slammed into his gut. ``You need not pretend. I want to
know why you won't forgive me. I want to know why you can see your
mother again, and yet you cannot bear to see me.''

There. That would not reveal to the Headmaster's listening ears that
Snape knew any of the truth about his compulsion, but it would tell
Harry what he needed to know. And, of course, Harry was quick enough to
figure out who must have told Snape all of this, from the widening and
narrowing of his eyes.

He spoke in a low, furious voice that Snape didn't think owed anything
to pretense. ``Why should I want to see you again? I don't care that you
hurt me. That would have been all right, if you'd just lied to \emph{me}
about something that hurt \emph{me}. But you \emph{put a compulsion on
Draco.}'' A brief wind ruffled the curtains of the hospital wing before
Harry struggled and got his magic back under control. Snape felt relief,
and then shame because of the relief. ``You hurt other people,'' Harry
went on, his voice deepening even further. Snape thought he could hear
what Harry would sound like as an adult in that voice, and shivered. He
would not want to be on the wrong end of this man's wand. ``I can't
forgive that.''

``And your mother hurt your brother,'' Snape said.

``He's made his own decision on that,'' said Harry. ``He's breaking off
relations with her and my father. I think he's crazy---'' that would be
for Dumbledore, Snape knew ``---and he thinks I'm crazy. We're even. But
I asked you directly about Draco, and you \emph{lied to me.}'' He turned
his head away, and Snape was startled to realize, from his harsh
breathing, that he was near tears.

\emph{He needs rest even more than Madam Pomfrey thinks he does.}

``Harry?'' Snape asked quietly. ``I know that I have done worse things
than lie to you. Your mother has done worse things than lie to you.''
\emph{Gone without touching you for two months, trained you to despise
soft and pleasant things, told you that not passing one of her tests
meant that you should feel shame for the rest of your life\ldots{}}``Why
is this so unforgivable?''

Harry remained still for a moment. Then he turned back, and his eyes
were too bright, and Snape knew he was getting the unvarnished truth.

``Because you mean more to me than she does, goddamn you,'' Harry
whispered. ``Of \emph{course} it hurts more.''

Snape stared at him, and hardly cared that Fawkes had just exploded into
being over Harry's head, chirping worriedly, or that Harry closed his
eyes and went rigid as if his mind were reaching out to some distant
target. He was too busy dealing with the knowledge that he had not
sacrificed Harry's love and respect.

\emph{Not yet.}

Harry sat like that, barely breathing, for a few moments, until he
opened his eyes, and sighed, and came back to himself. ``It's all
right,'' he said. ``We turned his suspicions away, changed his memory a
bit. He won't be paying attention to this conversation for the next few
minutes, so we can talk freely.'' He leaned forward, and looped his arms
around his knees, and stared at Snape. ``I've seen, now, what you can
do,'' he said bluntly. ``What you \emph{would} do. And I know what my
summer would be like if I stayed with you. You'd try to force me to
focus on the past, wouldn't you?''

``I would help you heal, yes.'' Snape forced his reeling emotions back
under control, as well as the idea that he could not possibly do
anything else that would push Harry away from him. He might have to.
Parents had to do many things that their children didn't like, and so
did guardians. ``You can alter the future, Harry, but not the past, and
that is why it will chain you until you face it and change your feelings
about it.''

``You sound like one of the Healers at St. Mungo's.'' Harry shook his
head, his hair bouncing. ``No. I'm not staying with you.''

``But you are not as angry at me as you pretended to be,'' said Snape.

``Not once my emotions settled down, no.'' Harry tilted his head to the
side. ``The sleep helps. But you did endanger Draco's life, and you did
lie to me, and I know that you might do the same things again if you
really thought it was necessary to protect me.''

``There is nothing I would not do to protect you,'' said Snape, and,
with regret, he saw the path they would follow for the rest of their
conversation, stretching away before them. He saw where it led, and it
was a hard and bitter thing, to know that he would have to walk it after
all, to make the sacrifice of Harry's good will that he thought he had
already made.

\emph{It is a bitter thing,} he thought, \emph{for a man not to know
himself and his own reactions to intense pressure. I believed I would
bear this far better than I have borne it}.

Harry nodded. ``I \emph{understand} that.'' He let his breath hiss between
his teeth. ``But some of those things would interfere with the war, and
others would break down this resolve that I've been building. I might
find that I hate my mother far more than I do right now, if I dwelt on
all that she'd done to me.''

``And yet you're determined to ignore it,'' Snape summed up. \emph{No,
this is not the Harry I thought I would be dealing with.} ``You're
determined to use this anger of yours at my actions to force yourself
away from me and go about the business of the war.''

``Yes.'' Harry tilted his head. ``I won't pretend that it doesn't hurt.
Of course it does. But I know you now, sir, better than I did. And I
can't let someone like you be my guardian. You would\ldots{}\emph{guard}
me too closely. You would prevent me from forgiving Dumbledore and Lily,
which I have to do. You might still let your grudge at James make you
react in inappropriate ways.''

``Not that last,'' said Snape. ``Never again.'' \emph{I hate this road
far more than any I have walked, and yet I will proceed to the end.}

Harry examined his face, then shrugged a little. ``Maybe not,'' he
agreed. ``But we have different priorities. You know me too much and too
well. My other allies will follow me because they don't know everything
you do. And I'm not going to tell them, either,'' he added, as Snape
opened his mouth. ``And you aren't, either, because you \emph{know} I
would never forgive you if something happened to Lily because you, oh,
let the wrong bit of information out of your mouth in front of
Hawthorn.''

\emph{Harry. You think your forgiveness matters more to me than seeing
you safe, and content, and happy. It does not. On this, you have very,
very badly underestimated me.}

Or perhaps he was simply relying on what he knew of the past Severus
Snape, Snape thought, watching Harry's eyes shine as he steadily laid
down the truth he understood. That was perfectly plausible. Snape had
only recently acknowledged his own change.

``So this is the way it will be,'' Harry was saying. ``I go where I have
to go for the summer---''

``And that is?'' Snape cut in.

``I don't know yet,'' said Harry impatiently. ``Someplace where I can
still fight the war, and still forgive Dumbledore and Lily. With people
who won't press me too much. Someplace where I \emph{know} that I can do
what I have to do.'' He stared directly into Snape's eyes for a long
moment.

``Maybe, someday,'' he whispered, ``we can reconcile. I told you the
truth. Because I understand what you did and why you did it, I'm already
partly reconciled to you. But I'm not going to forgive you, not now,
because then you would feel that you had license to do whatever you
wanted. And I can't let you do that.'' He paused. Then he said, ``I
think you understand me now. Necessity, not choice, is forcing me into
this. So I'll tell you something that would otherwise have come as a
surprise. I'm going to write Scrimgeour and ask him to strip you of
legal guardianship of me in a few days.''

Snape closed his eyes.

``And who will be your legal guardian instead?'' he forced himself to
ask.

``I don't know yet,'' Harry repeated. ``I'll find someone.''

``Why?'' Snape heard his own voice say, when he had meant to say
something distinctly different. ``Why are you doing this?''

He looked at Harry. Harry had his head tilted slightly to the side, his
eyes steady and bright and full of regret.

``Because even after everything, even knowing you lied to me, and how
much that hurt, and even knowing that you endangered Draco's life, I
still don't trust myself,'' said Harry evenly. ``I could \emph{still}
forgive you, and that would mean that I'd give you back power over me.
I'd do things like maybe hate Dumbledore and Lily again, because you
could persuade me into it. So I'm going to make sure I don't have an
excuse for that.''

Snape felt a snarling revulsion curl up inside him, and closed his eyes.
\emph{No one should be that in control of his own emotions, so willing
to abandon those he loves. Of course, I know why he is like that.}

``I am going to have Draco at my side,'' said Harry calmly, ``from
knowing myself, and him. I can't go through this without him---I love
him too much---and he wouldn't leave anyway. But he's going to have to
be enough, along with my allies. You---'' Harry's voice broke for the
first time. Snape did not look at him. ``You are \emph{too} much. There's
no way I can accept parenting from you. I can't accept the kind of
healing that you want to give me, either. It would take too much time.
I'm sorry, but I've made my decision, and that's the way it has to be.''

They sat in silence for a moment more, and then Snape asked the question
that had been haunting him. ``Would you really ever go back to Lily?''

``Only to forgive her, and help her heal,'' said Harry softly. ``That is
the only reason.''

``But as long as she lives, she is a danger to you,'' said Snape. ``At
the very least, she might try to gain custody of you again if you have
no legal guardian.''

``She is not a danger to me anymore,'' said Harry. ``She's small and
broken. She only has the power over me that I permit her to have.''

\emph{You are wrong, very wrong, about that, or you would never have
folded under the compulsion for as long as you did,} Snape wanted to
say, but he did not say it. ``And Dumbledore? He is neither small nor
broken.''

``But I'll forgive him,'' said Harry, the impatience creeping back into
his voice. ``I'm handling him. I'll do it---''

Fawkes chirped, and Snape knew Dumbledore was again listening.

``Go away, Professor,'' said Harry, sounding brisk, but unable to keep
out a tone of gentleness. ``You know what I'm doing, and why. Go away.''
From the sound of it, he had rolled back over and burrowed into his
blankets.

Snape stood and walked away from the hospital wing, slowly opening his
eyes, his mind a torrent of emotions.

He had thought Harry hated him. It seemed he did not. He had thought
Harry incapable of forgiving him. It seemed he was not.

And now he would have to damn that love and that forgiveness, because
when Harry saw what Snape meant to do with the memories of his past,
they would \emph{undoubtedly} crisp and blacken and burn.

\emph{But as long as his mother lives free, she is a danger to him. So
long as most of the wizarding world still respects Dumbledore, or thinks
him guilty of no worse crime than senility, he still has too much
power.}

\emph{So long as Harry refuses healing, he will be crippled, and in his
mind far more so than in his body}.

It had been easier to contemplate this when he thought that he already
possessed Harry's hatred.

Snape lifted his head. He had thought that it was better for Harry to
laugh and hate him than it was for him to love him and be silent, hadn't
he? He thought it was better for Harry to live healed, even if that
meant that Snape gave up all claims to any thought of reconciliation or
forgiveness in the future.

With eyes open, knowing what would happen the moment his plan came to
fruition and Harry heard of it, he stepped onto his road.

\emph{Neither of us were born for the easy way.}

\chapter{Interlude: The Invitation}\label{chapter-85-interlude-the-invitation}

\emph{To: Peter Pettigrew}

\emph{June 25th, 1995}

\emph{Dear sir:}

While we have not often corresponded, and you may indeed be surprised to
receive a letter from me, I think I am right when I say that we have a
common interest in Harry Potter, and in seeing that Albus Dumbledore
receives justice. Not vengeance, not mercy, but {justice}.

I have seen the Pensieve record of your trial; I requested it from the
Ministry two years past, and saw the events that transpired in it. I
have never been in doubt, even before Harry informed me of the true
state of affairs, abut your trial being mishandled. Now that I know you
were wronged, I would like to extend an invitation to you.

Albus Dumbledore shall soon find himself called to justice for his
monstrous mistakes in handling Harry Potter. It is only right that he
should also be called to justice for what happened to you. Will you
return from your exile and testify against him?

I am not asking you to do this for my sake, or even for Harry's. But it
is because of him that I dare to write to you at all, and to ask for a
final cutting out of suffering as an end to all suffering. We have other
common bonds I might call upon---we have both worn a brand on our left
arms that identified us, for the rest of time, in the eyes of the
world---but I would like you to make the decision on your own cognizance
alone. I have learned some things from Harry, though he does not think I
have.

I remain, sir,

\emph{Severus Snape.}

\chapter{The Clear Sea For Miles}\label{chapter-86-the-clear-sea-for-miles}

Harry woke with a gasp. He wondered, for a moment, as he lay panting on
the hospital bed, whether Voldemort had returned to his full strength
and possession of memory, and if he had had a nightmare.

But no, he usually remembered the visions distinctly, and now, he did
not feel any blood pouring from his scar. In fact, he lay still, for a
long moment unable to remember either the dream or what had awakened
him.

Then the sensation came down on him again---the calling voices in his
head, relentless as the surf.

\emph{Come to us.}

Harry shook. It felt as though a cord had lashed to the center of his
chest and were tugging him helplessly in one direction. He was half out
of bed before he knew it. He did manage to pause once he thought about
it, and stood shivering on the cold floor. He still wore pyjamas, and it
was not yet dawn.

``Harry?''

Draco's head poked up, hair mussed with sleep, from the hospital bed
that had become his over the last few days. He blinked at Harry, and
then shook his head. ``Do you need to go to the loo?''

``No,'' Harry whispered. The call echoed in his head, stealing his next
words, and a longing sweetness surged up in him in answer to it. He made
his decision then. He had promised to tell Draco when he might be going
into danger, after all. ``Something's calling me.''

``What do you mean, \emph{something}?'' Draco demanded, alert in a moment.
``And where were you going?''

``I just got out of bed when you sat up,'' said Harry. ``That's why I'm
telling you now. I think that it's going to pull me along whether or not
I really want to go.'' And now, now he \emph{did} want to go. There was
a taste in his mouth like water and sunlight mingled, and the
imperceptible promise, roaring through the voices, that he would have
more of it once he reached the place the voices wanted him to come.
``But I want you to come with me.''

``Of course you do,'' said Draco, decisively, and made his way over to
him, putting an arm around his waist. ``You shouldn't even be out of bed
yet.'' He gave Harry a concerned glance. ``Are you sure that you can
stand?''

Harry smiled slightly, and used his magic to force strength into his
limbs. After several days of lying there with nothing to do but renew
the glamour on his hand after Narcissa had taken it off, and blow around
the hospital wing when he was angry at Snape, it responded eagerly.
``Now I can,'' he said.

Draco nodded, and, to Harry's relief, didn't raise any other silly
objections, like rousing Madam Pomfrey from sleep to tell her something
that she could neither prevent nor should have to worry her head about.
``How are we going to get there? Apparating?'' He blinked and swallowed
when he said the last word.

Harry shook his head. ``These people still haven't given me a clear image
of a place yet. I don't think I \emph{can} Apparate. It's really just a
bunch of voices in my head calling to me, and---''

\emph{Come to us!}

The summons fell over him, bathing him in a crash, and Harry grabbed
tight hold of Draco as he felt it sweep him up. The cord in his chest
tightened like a sling, and then he was flung forward, tumbling through
space. All the while, Draco followed him, determinedly; Harry almost
thought he might have found a way to even if he hadn't had his arms
around Harry's waist when the pull came.

Sand crunched under Harry's feet, and suddenly gulls' cries were in his
ears, piercingly loud if not piercingly sweet. He stumbled, but the
disorientation wasn't even as bad as that from Flooing. He opened his
eyes, and the moment he recognized where he was, he managed to stand.

Not far from him, the sea roared and crashed, ran in endless ascending
and descending patterns, over the sand of the Northumberland beach where
he had come to practice his Midsummer ritual with his father and
brother.

``Where are we?'' Draco whispered.

``Some place I didn't expect to come,'' said Harry, and reached for his
wand, which he always kept in his left pocket now, to be able to draw it
more quickly with his right hand. He remembered the letter that Evan
Rosier had sent him, about meeting on this beach someday, and was
already more than half-sorry that he had obeyed the summons---though he
hadn't had much choice about that---or let Draco come---though he had
promised not to leave him behind.

Now that he was here, the voices were silent. The beach faced east, of
course, and Harry could just make out the first glimmer of sunrise on
the waves. Harry cleared his throat when no one approached or offered
any explanation.

``All right, Evan, you've had your fun,'' he said, making sure to keep
his tone light and chiding. ``I didn't bring any blueberries, and I
didn't want to duel you, either, so why don't we call it even, and I'll
go back to the hospital wing at Hogwarts now?'' He closed his eyes and
remembered the outskirts of Hogsmeade, prepared to Apparate both himself
and Draco back.

``Harry.''

Draco's voice stopped him. It was soft, a bare whisper, but not
frightened. Harry would have Apparated in an instant if it were.

He opened his eyes, and followed Draco's pointing finger---not to one of
the slight hills behind them that might have hidden a Death Eater, but
out to sea. Harry turned, following it, not sure what he was supposed to
see.

In fact, for long moments he saw nothing. The foam just barely reflected
back the golden light, glimmering and casting sparks as it dashed itself
to its death on the sand. The waves themselves were picking up strength
and speed, seemingly as Harry watched; he thought the tide was coming
in.

Then he saw two speaks of foam that formed a glittering silver mirror,
not a golden one. Harry squinted, trying to make it out, but it ducked
behind the crest of another wave. He took a step nearer, though he had
to drag Draco along; he seemed warily fascinated, but not enough to let
go of Harry's waist and let him stand on his own.

Harry heard the hum of sweet voices in his head then, not words, but
wordless music that reminded him of---something, something he could not
quite grasp or comprehend. He blinked. He listened, but the symphony did
not rise much higher, and then he had something else to distract him.

The silver glint returned, and reformed, and this time Harry could see a
long spread of light taking form and shape. A head of hair was riding in
the foam, keeping shape even as it was jostled by the incoming tide.

Then shots of white in the gray water gathered together, and shone like
legs, and coalesced into them. The silver hair rose, and shook. Light
lashed down from the rising sun that seemed to spin a head into
existence.

And a unicorn came out of the sea.

The song exploded inside Harry's head. He found himself falling to his
knees as the unicorn's hooves hit the sand with the sound of small
bells. A powerful stallion, he stood there a moment, shaking the foam
from his horn, and then made his way towards Harry in a high, floating
trot.

Harry blinked back tears. He didn't know if it came from the music in
his head, a chorus of flutes backed by song such as he knew, now, that
the sun and the moon sang, or the sight of the unicorn, or the warmth of
Draco's arm around his waist as he sank down beside Harry, overwhelmed.

Or the sudden knowledge in his head, which took the form of a quotation
he had once read in an old book on magical creatures.

\emph{The unicorn is the oldest enemy of the serpent.}

The stallion had come to a halt in front of him by now, and stood
watching him with eyes like stained glass.

\emph{When the serpent comes to drink from the pool and release venom
from his sly mouth into the water, all the animals await the coming of
the unicorn. He always appears, the next night, and with him always
comes the moon, even if that night the moon has turned her face from
earth. He plunges his horn into the pool, and the healing light spreads
from it---for the unicorn's horn is proof against all poison---and the
water is pure and clean again.}

The stallion bowed his head, and the same gently irresistible force that
had compelled Harry to come in the first place lifted his arm high now.

His left arm, with the glamour at the end of it, which vanished as the
unicorn's horn approached it, unable to stand against the honesty of a
creature of such pure Light.

Harry watched the tip of that horn brush the stump of his severed wrist.
A star of radiance at once sprang up, rippling across his wrist like the
flow of moonlight across a still pool. It wrapped tight, and Harry could
see strands of poison-green and black floating in it, gathered by the
silver coils of the unicorn's magic.

The power, pure and tainted alike, flowed back to the unicorn. The
stallion gathered them on his horn and held his head high for a moment,
whipping his mane behind him. Harry could see how the sun illuminated
and thus diminished the spells that Bellatrix had put on his arm, making
them seem small and not so much troublesome as pitiful.

He did not think the unicorn had taken them all, but he had taken a good
number, and as Harry watched, he whirled, slinging the Dark incantations
from his horn into the sand. Then he raised his left hind hoof and
stamped on them, crushing them to death. Harry watched the axe-like hoof
cleave the curses apart, and saw them try to attack the unicorn, and saw
how they dissolved and ran away, melting into the sand and harming
nothing and no one any more.

The song in his head soared to a fever pitch of triumph.

The sun was rising.

The stallion came near again, and bowed his head near to Harry's chest,
reminding Harry of that moment in the forest in autumn when he had
thought he would die of a horn in the heart. This time, though, the horn
simply brushed the wound from Voldemort's bite, and it shone and closed
a little more.

Then the unicorn dropped to one knee in the sand, more graceful than any
horse alive, and turned his head to fix Harry with a shining eye.

Harry would have refused what he thought the stallion wanted, but one
didn't refuse a look like that. Carefully, he worked his way away from
Draco---who, staring in silent awe, didn't protest---and climbed, his
hand fisted in the unicorn's mane, onto his back. If his pulling gave
any pain, the stallion showed no sign of it.

Then he rose and began to canter along the edge of the sea.

Harry had, somehow, not thought that riding a unicorn would be very
different from riding a horse. He had never realized that he would have
the opportunity, but if someone had asked him, then he would have
shrugged and said that it must be much like a horse, mustn't it?

But it was not. The strength of the rolling muscles under him was more
like a dragon's, as though every movement could as easily be a
preparation for flight, for a dance, for the rising into light that
Harry had seen the unicorns do when he freed them, as another step. The
skin beneath his gripping legs was incredibly soft, a softness that silk
could only aspire to, and as warm as the coming sun. The sounds of his
hooves, quiet though the bells rang on the sand, mingled with the music
in Harry's head until he had to close his eyes against it, and against
the light shining off the stallion's horn.

The unicorn changed to a gallop. Now they were truly running, and Harry
could feel the speed piercing through the shadows in his mind, shoving
aside the justifications and explanations that he had given himself and
everyone else, striking down and severing the cobwebs he had hung up to
guard the truths he wanted to hide \emph{from} the truth.

He suspected, then, why the unicorns had brought him there, but it was
far too late to withdraw or shout that he wanted down.

Gleams of light to the side caught his attention, and when Harry turned
his head, he saw other unicorns running there: pretty young mares,
another stallion with long, shining silver scars down his flank that he
wore with pride, foals with horns barely sprouted and eyes still large
and trusting. They all carried with them that blaze that transfigured
other people, lifting them to the same glorious height as the unicorns
ran on, if only for a little while.

On and on they ran. And the lies and deceptions in Harry's mind
collapsed and burned and tore themselves apart.

The stallion wheeled abruptly, and then Harry heard his hooves stop
ringing. They had risen in flight, he realized, and were burning out
over the sea like a low, silvery comet.

Harry wrapped his arms around the unicorn's neck and bowed his head.
Tears were burning on his cheeks. He'd tried to resist them for so long,
but they were coming out now, and he didn't think that he could stop
them until he had wept them all.

It helped that he wasn't crying simply from sorrow or self-pity, but
from the exaltation of the beauty all around him.

The stallion dipped down, and then they landed on a sunlit wave and
dropped gently into it. Harry could feel the seawater soaking his pyjama
legs, though with the unicorn's warmth beneath him, it wasn't cold. The
other unicorns accompanied them, playing in and out of the waves, piping
music through their horns and singing back and forth in joy that Harry
didn't think any human could ever quite understand, because no human
would ever be that innocent.

\emph{I'm not}, he thought, but he didn't try to stop the tears, because
he understood it would do no good.

The stallion swam with him directly towards the sun, and Harry tilted
his head back, feeling the warmth sear into and strike and bedazzle him.
And the tears continued coming to the surface, and along with them came
shame and regret, grief and guilt over the deaths of Dragonsbane and the
little boy, self-loathing and self-denial, drawn out of him like the
poison they were and absorbed harmlessly into the vast wash of beauty
and purity and water around him.

The words he could not have faced at any other time echoed in his head
now, given gentleness by their surroundings.

\emph{If sacrifice is not the way anymore, Harry, then why do you still
insist on sacrifices? Why do you demand things from yourself that you
would never demand from anyone else, that you would think them mad and
sick to demand from others?}

Harry took a deep, hiccoughing breath, and answered from the center of
that knot of tightness in the middle of his chest that he always felt
when he cried.

\emph{I don't know.}

The uncertainty swept him up and dissolved the knot. Harry fell forward,
and the unicorn's mane crept like tendrils of sweet mist around his
face, filling his nostrils with more than the scent of flowers, making
him faint with the glory of it.

\emph{You are part of the reason that this beauty is back in the world
again,} said that voice that might have been his and might have been the
voice of the magical creatures swimming, utterly free, around him.

\emph{I know.}

A pause, and then the voice said, gentle even as it pushed, \emph{You
might act more like it, sometimes.}

Harry covered his face with his hand, but it didn't really help. He knew
the light was still there, and the unicorns, and the sea, vast miles of
it, more beautiful and more relentless than any magic, immortal and
terrible.

And the unicorns, who judged him, who could judge him if anyone could,
and did not find him wanting.

The knot broke apart, the hatred at the center of it---for his failures
in the graveyard, for what had been done to him, for what he had do in
consequence of it---gone at last, and Harry \emph{breathed}.

He lifted his head, and removed his fogged glasses. The sun still
blinded him, but the softer glow from the white coats of the
unicorns---not at all like the gleam of polished snow he had once
thought it was---and the shine from his own soul, steady and green-gold
through his skin, calmed him.

He could do this. He could go on.

And some things were \emph{not his fault.}

Harry closed his eyes. He knew that the unicorns would turn around,
eventually, and carry him back to Draco. He knew he would have to answer
questions, and resist some more badgering to go to Malfoy Manor, and
that Draco would want him to Apparate them back to Hogwarts at once. He
would have to endure fussing from Madam Pomfrey, too, for breaking his
promise not to leave the hospital wing.

And beyond that was the harder road, peppered with uncertainties: about
where he would stay with the summer, about who would become his new
guardian, about how he could fight the war against Voldemort without
losing himself to hatred and rage, about how he was going to deal with
things like Lucius knowing about the loss of his hand.

But he thought he could walk that road. He need not know everything, not
right away. There was this abeyance, this pause of sweetness, before he
fell back into the madness of it.

Around him, the sun blazed, and shone, and flared, and the sea rose in
the morning, and the unicorns swam, beauty that had come dancing up to
him, fearless, because it knew that he would never try to chain or hold
it or prevent it from dancing away again.

For a moment, in which he rested, both freedom and peace coalesced for
him.

For a moment, there was only beauty, and \emph{light}, and the clear sea
for miles on glimmering miles, and his heart was still with wonder.

The sun was rising.

\end{document}