A very belated chapter for all of you! Sorry for not getting this up sooner, but NaNo happened and I haven't had time to give this even a cursory look since then. Still, I didn't think it was fair to keep you all waiting too much longer, so I gave this a very quick read-through and now here it is!

I think there's only one chapter and the epilogue left, but I've been thinking that for awhile so I don't want to make myself too much of liar. Nano's going to take up most of my focus this month, and then we have holidays right after, so I wouldn't count on anything new until January, though I will try.

Thank you all so, so much for all the wonderful comments, and every other form of encouragement you've left. Feel free to stop my tumblr to ask any question or just to say hi!

Harry woke the morning of their fifth day of traveling to the gift of a jeweled livery collar, the same dragon motif from his brooch holding the Potter coat of arms. The thoughtfulness of it once again nearly brought tears to his eyes. The first place his gaze went was to Tom, sitting beside him.

For the first time, Harry noticed that his traveling companion had been observing his reaction with desperate interest. Thinking back over the past few days, he had always found Riddle's eyes on him as soon as he turned to look. Tom had been watching him, making a careful study of Harry's reaction to his gifts.

"It's perfect," Harry told him, trying to make it sound as if he was making the observation to a bystander instead of to the gift giver himself. "They're always perfect. Stupidly expensive and beautiful and something I would never in a million years buy for myself, but they're all so damn useful and thoughtful that I just…" he trailed off.

Tom was pleased, but clearly trying to hide it. Harry was appalled at himself that even a day ago it would have worked.

"Why?" Harry asked, unable to help himself.

Tom's eyes snapped to him at once, the dragon in human form staring at him fixedly.

"Why what?" Tom asked, and while Harry was still having trouble reading Tom's expressions on this unfamiliar human face, he looked hopeful. Or perhaps trepidatious. Harry wasn't sure which.

There were lots of whys Harry wanted the answer to. Why Tom hadn't told him who he was. Why Tom had disguised himself as a human. Why Tom was doing all of this in the first place.

"Why is he giving me gifts?" Harry asked.

Tom looked frustrated and affronted, and Harry had to scramble to clarify himself.

"Not in that sense," Harry said. "I know. According to you, gift giving is the first part of courtship. I mean, why? Why is gift giving a part of draconic courting?"

Tom settled, and his expression turned to one of contemplation.

"I would say that the rationale is intended to be twofold," Tom said. He paused, and made a careful study of Harry, a small smile tugging at his lips and satisfaction shining in his eyes. "Though I can think of three reasons easily."

"Go on then," Harry said, settling himself in his bedroll, running his fingers over his newest gift even as he stared at Tom. "Impress me with your hypotheses of the reasoning behind draconic cultural custom."

"Having lived with a dragon for the better part of thirteen months, I am sure you are aware of exactly how possessive they can be."

Harry couldn't help the snort of laughter that escaped him. An understatement. Such an understatement. After the first few weeks, Tom had been unreasonable whenever Harry was out of his sight.

"As such, giving up treasure is a great sacrifice for a dragon," Tom continued. "Doing so for another person is a way for the dragon to show clearly that they value the person being given the gifts far more than the treasure itself. Which, for a dragon is a definitive statement of worth."

That much was true. It was part of the common collective knowledge anyone had about dragons. That had been one of the first things Charlie had ever shared with Harry about draconic behavior, and had even shown him a scar to prove why even looking at a dragon hoard without permission was a bad idea. And now that Harry thought about it, he'd seen the way Tom had looked at the shiny bits he'd collected. But as Tom had never really minded Harry mucking around in his hoard or using pieces of it when necessary, it hadn't really occurred to him before.

"So, the treasure is a way for the dragon to say how much they value whoever they're courting," Harry said.

Tom nodded, though something about his expression suggested that he wasn't perfectly content with the phrasing, for all he seemingly couldn't find anything technically wrong with it.

"That makes sense," Harry said, and he couldn't help but enjoy the situation, for all that the particulars hadn't quite sunk in yet. Sitting here, discussing things with Tom, was such a familiar feeling. He'd always loved these discussions. "So, what are the other reasons? Dragons are fairly sophisticated, and I imagine their mating rituals are a little more…nuanced than that."

"A fair supposition," Tom said, "and one that holds out. But you have to remember that dragons, as a species, are more deeply and directly in touch with magic than any other creature. The mating rituals are largely dictated by this connection. The consequences for going against them, even shortcuts…" Tom's gaze turned somewhat haunted. "It's not worth the risk," Tom said staring at him intently. "No matter your Tom's usual feelings about following convention, these would be guidelines he wouldn't be willing to break."

Harry met those brown eyes, noting how serious he looked, the sense of severity that Tom was trying to impart with his words. He needed Harry to understand this.

Tom had told him earlier that the reason his dragon wasn't around was because of the rules of courtship. That his dragon wasn't allowed to approach until Harry had formally accepted the courtship.

Harry smiled at him. "Which is why, you think, he isn't here."

Tom's shoulders lost some of their tension, though his eyes lost none of their intensity. "Precisely."

Harry filed the remark about consequences away for later. That wasn't a question he felt comfortable asking under the circumstances. He'd find out when Tom knew that Harry was talking to him, and not to Riddle.

"Still, I'm sure the magic itself much have some basis for the way the courtship works? And the specifics can't be entirely dictated. You were just telling me your theories," Harry said, trying to get the conversation back on track so he could mull over this new information.

Tom looked at him intently before he smiled, tensions and seriousness leaving entirely. "I was, it's true. Are you aware of the role treasure plays in draconic society?"

The phrase draconic society struck Harry as odd.

"I thought dragons were territorial, solitary," Harry said, leaning closer to Tom. "What do you mean by draconic society?"

"Dragons are, by and large solitary," Tom answered. "And incredibly territorial, it's true.

"But they can, on occasion, put aside their differences long enough to deal with one another at least temporarily. There are certain magical holidays where they can feel compelled to meet, and certain spaces where there is a magically enforced truce between them."

Harry supposed that made some sort of sense. How else would they have developed the stories that Tom had told him, if they didn't form a society in at least the loosest sense?

"The way dragons establish dominance and worth is by and large through their treasure. Those with the largest hoards are clearly the most accomplished, and are therefore deferred to by the rest."

"Treasure in short, is a status symbol for dragons."

That made perfect sense, actually.

"So it's a sort of 'look at how accomplished I am, look at all this treasure I have'."

Tom nodded, before continuing his explanation. "The overall message is more 'Look what I have, and look what I am willing to give up for you'."

"That's oddly sweet, in a weird way," Harry said, letting his hands run across the various gifts, returning finally to brooch that had started it all.

"Humans give gifts as part of courting, don't they?" Tom asked.

Harry nodded, even as he fought a smile. Slip up, there. Tom had been much more careful than that over the last few days. He had clearly gotten so interested in the topic that he had forgotten to watch his tongue as carefully as he should have. Talking about humans as if he wasn't one.

"Yeah, they can. They do," Harry replied.

"What are the motivations for gift giving under those circumstances?" Tom asked.

Harry had never really given it much thought, but he did now.

"I think some of it is the same, yeah," Harry said, examining the notion critically. "Part of it is about expressing access to wealth. Look what I can afford to buy you, that sort of thing. But the other part, the more important part, as far as I'm concerned, is about showing how well you know the person you're giving the gifts to. For me, it's always about making the person I'm giving the gift to as happy as possible."

And from that perspective, Tom had been hitting the nail on the head in terms of gift giving. Tom clearly thought the same, given the incredibly pleased expression on his face.

"You said that you'd thought of a third reason? For dragons, I mean," Harry said, trying to distract himself from his own observations of how attractive Tom looked in this moment.

How had he gone about choosing his human form, anyway? Had he just decided to make himself as handsome as possible? It was ridiculous and distracting.

"Yes," Tom said, studying Harry, a look of deep satisfaction crossing his features. "Seeing the recipient garbed in things they had picked. Using and trusting tools they selected. That would, I think appeal to the possessive side, provide a primal sort of satisfaction."

Tom stared directly at Harry, and his eyes flashed red for the briefest of moments, that satisfaction clearly visible in his gaze.

Harry looked away to hide the burning in his cheeks and to try and keep his breathing under control. It wasn't fair. It really wasn't fair, the things Tom did to him. That same overwhelming presence that had always made Harry feel safe was almost intoxicating now.

God, how had it taken Harry this long to realize who he was? He should have known it the moment the man approached him. He needed to focus on something else.

"So, the gifts are the first phase of courtship?" Harry asked.

He might as well use this opportunity to understand exactly what he might be getting himself into.

Tom tilted his head in a considering manner. "In a way. The gifts are more a declaration of the intent to court, though they do continue throughout the courtship process. The courtship doesn't begin in earnest until the party being courted gives permission. Still, that doesn't mean that some of the foundational steps can't be taken while the person being courted deliberates. Only that certain steps can only be taken after consent has been given."

Harry took deep breath. God, if this wasn't even the proper start of it, what would courtship in earnest look like? Then the rest of what Tom had said sunk in and Harry had to fight the urge to laugh. Sneaky lizard. If there were any steps that could possibly be taken while Harry was still mulling things over, Harry was certain Tom was taking them.

"Courtship is all a lead in to mating, correct?" Harry asked, thinking things through aloud. "That's the whole purpose?"

Tom inclined his head, his eyes barely concealing deep emotions Harry couldn't allow himself to contemplate in this moment.

"The process of courtship lays the foundation for the magical bond that forms between mated pairs," Tom responded slowly, picking his words with care. "If that foundation isn't strong, the bond itself can end up flawed. Any strain on an improper bond will cause it to break, killing those parties involved. This is especially important in cross-species bonds."

There was a pain and anger in his face during the imparting of this information that made Harry believe there was far more to it for Tom than just a warning not to take shortcuts.

Harry recalled that the first day they had met like this, Tom had told him that both his parents had died. Was this perhaps what had caused their deaths?

Reaching out to Tom in this moment couldn't be justified without revealing that he had made the connection between the man in front of him and the dragon who had guarded him. That was something Harry wasn't quite prepared to do yet. Still, he couldn't do nothing when Tom was so clearly in pain, especially if what Harry suspected was true.

Tom was sitting close enough that all it took was a subtle shifting of Harry's weight, as if he was simply fidgeting, to bring him closer. After that he allowed himself to lean against Tom, not too much, but enough that they were touching. Harry allowed himself to lean as much against Tom as he could vaguely justify by being accidental. Firm enough that it was worth noticing, but not so much that it would demand Tom seek answers.

Suspicions. All Tom would have were suspicions. It would serve the bastard right after the four days of confusion Harry had been put through.

Tom stiffened as soon as Harry came into contact with him, just as he had done the night before when Harry had first embraced him. However, when it became clear Harry would take it no further, he slowly relaxed against him.

"It's the dragon magic, isn't it?" Harry asked. "The bond between two dragons doesn't have to be grounded as much because they're both used to handling it, their magic can interact and counterbalance each other with relative ease, I would think. For humans, especially non-magical humans, that's not the case."

Tom nodded. "That would be my supposition as well."

This was the perfect opportunity to ask about mating. About what it actually meant for the parties involved, what was expected of them, what the effects of the bond were. All important questions Harry would need to know the answers to before he made his decision.

Harry felt his shoulders tensing as he tried to fortify himself to ask those next questions. He needed to know, after all. But he couldn't. He couldn't bring himself to ask them. Not yet.

He needed time to adjust, time to absorb. Tomorrow. He would ask those questions tomorrow. For now, he needed to change the subject to something safer.

"Will you keep an eye out while I meditate?" Harry asked.

He did need it. He hadn't meditated since he'd left the castle. Meditating left Harry exposed and vulnerable, and he hadn't trusted Riddle enough to leave himself exposed like that. Tom was a completely different story.

Tom's eyebrows arched.

"Certainly. Is there anything specific you need from me during this process?"

"I'm exposed and unaware during this process," Harry told him. "I just need someone I trust to make sure nothing happens to me while I do it."

"You haven't meditated since your escape?" Tom asked, and Harry could tell that he was just barely keeping his anger under control. "That is incredibly dangerous, Harry, especially for someone of your strength."

This wasn't anger, though. Not really. This was Tom, concerned for Harry, angry at the thought of what might have happened.

"I haven't been anywhere I felt safe enough," Harry answered simply. "I take that a lot more seriously than I used to."

Tom let out a long exhale through his nose, and part of Harry was surprised that he couldn't see smoke pouring out of his nostrils. When he inhaled and met Harry's gaze again, his anger gone leaving only the concern.

"What's changed, then?" Tom asked him.

"I trust you," Harry said simply as he straightened his spine and positioned himself properly. "You won't let anything happen to me."

"I won't," Tom said, eyes glowing red again for a brief moment. "Your trust is not misplaced, Harry."

"I know," Harry said with a small smile before closing his eyes.

Taking several deep breaths, Harry focused his attention inward slowly. When his mind was clear, when Harry felt himself purely in the moment, he reached for his magical core, trying to determine the state of his magic.

What he saw made him cringe. It was a mess. The aftereffects of magic exhaustion were obvious, and since Harry hadn't had the time to deal with them in any sort of capacity, neither through mediation nor by taking the appropriate potions. Still, the damage wasn't anywhere as bad as it should have been after five days of neglect.

Tom's gifts, Harry realized as he set about fixing the remaining damage. Tom's magic had been working to shore up his own. Harry hadn't made a careful inspection of the belt tags when he'd first received them as a gift. A look at the jewel-adorned ornaments had been more than enough to have him overwhelmed. If they hadn't been a gift, Harry would have refused to wear them. Only his affection for Tom had persuaded him to accept the lavish present. It was gorgeous and beautiful and completely impractical, and Harry had had to fight a smile every time he looked down at the emeralds that matched his eyes and the rubies that matched Tom's.

Focused as he was now, it was clear that the gems themselves were not just for decorative purposes, but had in fact been imbued with Tom's magic. Not enchanted to do anything, but serving as a magical reservoir that Harry could call upon whenever he needed.

That magic had been bolstering Harry's drastically depleted reserves. If it hadn't been for Tom's magic, Harry wouldn't have been capable of doing much of anything the past few days.

Harry reached out for his magical core, encouraged by what he found. Focusing on his core, with every breath he took he brought the energy from his core slowly more and more outwards until it filled him entirely. Taking some strength from the gems around his waist, and using Tom's magic to give himself the boost he needed to fix the mess that his magic had become.

He moved through his body, focusing on correcting the depletion and damages he found slowly, one by one. It was a slow process, one made worse by the fact that things had been left stagnant for so long.

The process had one unexpected benefit. The close magical attention he was paying allowed him to notice the very beginnings of a connection starting to form.

He couldn't tell where the connection lead from his magical senses, but the lack of sensation from the other end was confirmation of who was at the other end. Tom was blocking his magical signature somehow, shielding it from all around him, including Harry.

Connection was a strong word. It was barely there – the ghost of something that had yet to be established.

The discovery of it sent emotions coursing through him, and in this exposed state Harry didn't have the luxury of denial. The idea of being connected to Tom, intimately and magically, for the rest of his life, gave him nothing but joy.

Saving that revelation for further contemplation, exhausted as he was after the meticulous detailed work he had just done, Harry slowly brought his focus back to the world around him.

Harry blinked his eyes open slowly, awareness of his body and the world around him slowly coming back. He winced, both from the harshness of the sunlight and from the soreness he was becoming aware of in his muscles. Muscles that were too sore, given how long meditation normally took. And now that his eyes had adjusted to the brightness of the day once again, he could see that the sun was directly overhead.

"How long was I under?" Harry asked, incredulously, staring up at it even as he began slowly moving his limbs, wincing as the feeling began to reassert itself in the form of pins and needles.

"Just under four hours," a familiar voice all but growled from behind him.

Harry turned slowly, ignoring the protesting of his back as he did so. Tom was seated beside him. To the untrained eye, he might have looked relaxed, but Harry knew better. Tom was ready to spring into action at a moment's notice. He had no weapons, but Harry knew he didn't need them. Tom himself was more than weapon enough. There was a subtle tension in his shoulders and around his eyes that spoke of an anxiety and distress Harry found surprising.

Though it really shouldn't have been. The longest Harry had meditated before today had been two hours, and that had been while guided by Tom after a particularly stressful, exhausting lesson.

"Your timing is impeccable," Tom said, shortly. "I promised myself I would wait until noon before doing anything rash. You came out with an entire quarter of an hour to spare," he all but growled.

"I'm sorry to have worried you," Harry said honestly, reaching out and placing a reassuring hand on Tom's shoulder. "It wasn't my intention, and if I'd known it was going to take that long, I would have done the work in smaller segments or waited until we were somewhere better fortified."

Tom reached out and placed a hand over Harry's own before closing his eyes and breathing deeply. Harry could feel the tension slowly easing out of the muscles beneath his hand as Tom gathered his control around himself like a cloak.

"What exactly did you do to yourself that require that much meditating to put to rights?" Tom asked, his voice an artificial calm that brooked no argument.

"I broke the enchantment keeping us in the castle," Harry replied. "Tom and I, I mean," he hastened to clarify, at the suspicious glint in Tom's eye.

This only seemed to make it stronger, but for all Tom eyed him searchingly, he apparently decided to turn his attention on other things, at least for the moment.

"That's one story you haven't told me," Tom said simply. "And considering the past four hours, it's one I'm very eager to hear."

Harry sighed. Tom deserved to know how they had both escaped, and Harry found himself wondering about his own appearance in Riverdale in the aftermath. Perhaps Tom could shed some light there. Regardless, after the four hours of worrying Tom had no doubt had to endure, the least Harry could do was explain how he'd gotten himself into the situation.

Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes and began his recounting of their last day in the tower.

Harry woke suddenly to the familiar sound of his dragon's growl.

"What is it?" Harry asked, less groggy than the first time Tom had woken him that day, but still not completely there yet.

"Another knight," Tom said, red eyes gleaming viciously in the darkness created by his wing.

Harry sighed. And he'd been having such a nice nap. He tried to focus on the annoyance rather than the worry he could feel building in his gut. Tom could handle himself. Tom had handled himself many times before. Harry still couldn't help but worry.

The fact that even Tom winning ended in death, and that Harry was at least partially responsible didn't help anything. Tom really didn't have much of a choice with the enchantment. Though in the interest of not deceiving himself, it wasn't as if Tom would have chosen to otherwise if given the opportunity. He was a dragon. People weren't really intelligent beings to him.

Besides, after several days spent wracked with guilt after the third time Tom had killed someone, the dragon had sat Harry down before explaining in his usual no-nonsense, incredibly infuriating and condescending way that if Harry blamed himself, he was an idiot.

"I'm the one killing them, after all."

"You don't have a choice, though."

"You and I both know that I'd gladly do it anyway. Humans," Tom sniffed disdainfully, "aren't worth anything. They are a scourge I enjoy eradicating."

"Which makes me what?" Harry asked, torn between being amused and being appalled.

"My little pest," Tom said, his tone fond enough to turn Harry's cheeks red.

"So, you are unwilling to blame me," Tom said, "which is incredibly stupid of you, my treasure, but I'll not complain. But it makes no sense to hold yourself responsible. Blame me. Blame the knights who have chosen to try and steal from a dragon. Blame the man who trapped us both here in the first place. But blaming yourself, my tender-hearted fool, is the one reaction that makes no sense."

Harry had needed to hear the speech several more times, but it had eventually sunk in. He'd gone with the blame-the-sorcerer route. It seemed the most appropriate, and what was one other sin on top of all the rest Harry held him responsible for.

Harry was also slowly coming around to the idea that most of these knights were complete morons. He'd seen their armor in the aftermath. And it wasn't as if Tom was flying around eating people. He wasn't a blight on a town. These people were looking for sport, looking for a payoff.

Harry didn't think they deserved death. Far from it. It was just that he wasn't going to waste too much time feeling guilty about it. Still, he kept a tally. He would pay the man who had locked them both up back for every single one eventually.

Harry's only remaining concern was that one day, one of the knights would be his friends. He knew that they were looking for him. He had no doubt that soon after he'd gone missing, Ron and Hermione, at the very least had poured all their resources into finding him.

He'd confessed this to Tom one day, during one of their early fights about Tom's...eating habits. They'd found a compromise.

"How many?" he asked, sitting up.

"Just one," Tom told him, eyes slightly narrowed and head tilted to one side.

Tom lifted his wing, letting the sunlight in fully, and Harry winced as the harsh midday sun pierced through his skull, hand flying up instinctually to block his eyes.

"Gah" he whimpered. "Too bright."

"It's darker in the tower," Tom informed him, tetchy. "For once, you'll be comfortable while you're torn between fretting and being bored out of your skull."

"You know the rule," Harry told him, slowly removing his hand from his face.

"The rule is tedious and pointless," Tom said.

Under other circumstances, Harry might have thought of him as grumpy, for all that he would never say it aloud. But Tom, when he felt Harry was threatened, was always much more angry than anything else. "Grumpy" was not a strong enough for word for what Tom probably was at the point. As much fun at Harry usually had irritating Tom, now was not the time.

"The rule is there to keep you from killing my friends and pissing me off," Harry said. "If they died trying to get to me...it would destroy me."

Another huff of air, and Tom closed and then opened his eyes in what could have passed as particularly long blink, but Harry was well versed in all the minute ways Tom's emotions manifested on his face. He'd had to be, in order to actually get by in the beginning. This expression meant that Harry was once again winning the argument.

"Magical surveillance only," Tom snapped at him. "And you can do it from inside your tower."

Harry rolled his eyes, but held back the sarcastic quip. Tom needed to be handled carefully in these moments.

"Fine. But you're sticking around until I'm done."

Tom grumbled unhappily, but said nothing in response.

Harry stretched before clambering his way from his perch in the crook of Tom's leg up onto his back with the ease of long practice.

"Are you carrying me or am I walking?" Harry asked.

Tom just shot him a dark look, and Harry had to bite back a grin. It had been a fairly stupid question. Thus far, Harry had only used the stairs in his tower when he was actively trying to escape.

Harry walked his way up Tom's spine before perching comfortably on his head. This was his personally preferred method of getting to and from his room in the tower. Much better than being dragged around like a petulant kitten.

Tom held his snout to Harry's window and Harry stepped down off his head and across his muzzle before climbing his way through his window.

Harry looked around his familiar prison, searching. It would have been easier at the beginning, when the room was essentially empty. Now the limited space was starting to fill with all the trophies Tom kept bringing back after encounters like this. At least he pretended to respect Harry's sensibilities, and so cleaned the blood off of anything he brought back before putting it in his personal storage space.

Harry supposed that a breastplate from one of the pieces of armor could be used in a pinch, but he'd much rather find the mirror he'd specifically enchanted for this sort of thing.

"Where the hell..." Harry muttered to himself, digging though the various pieces of armor and the jeweled swords and the different pieces Tom had combined to make items of his own design. He finally found what he was looking for under a helm.

"Aha!" he crowed victoriously.

Harry pulled out his scrying mirror, being careful not to scratch the surface. The thing was already banged up enough as it was.

He sat on his bed, holding angling the mirror so that both he and Tom could see the image that would form on its surface.

Concentrating hard, Harry reached out his magic the way Tom had taught him to, channeling it until an image formed on the surface.

Harry let out a breath he wasn't aware he had been holding when it finished. Disappointment weighed heavily on his chest.

"It's not them," Harry told Tom, trying to keep his sadness out of his voice.

He didn't mean to get his hopes up every time, but he couldn't quite help himself.

"Oh, little pest," Tom said softly. "I know you keep hoping. Why do hurt yourself like this?"

"They are coming," Harry said firmly. "I know they are."

"I don't doubt that," Tom told him. "Anyone who knew you would want you back. But it's been a year now. If they could find you, I think they would have."

"I know," Harry said, closing his eyes and letting himself fall backwards onto his bed. "I know. This rutting enchantment," Harry spat out the last word, "must be blocking locating spells. If they could have found me by now, they would have. So, I need to break it. Which we already knew. Or free your magic enough that you can do it. Which involves weakening it. So, we're back to square one, which is me messing with the magic that has us both stuck here."

"Yes," Tom said. "That does sum it up rather nicely. Hopefully my continued instruction will only make your task easier. But before we can return to that, I have a knight to deal with."

Harry cracked an eye open and looked at Tom. The expression on his face was incredibly familiar. It meant that someone was going to get eaten.

"Have fun playing with your food," Harry told him.

Tom bared all his teeth in response.

"Oh, I will."

Harry turned his attention back to the canopy of his bed as he heard the loud scuffling followed by the whooshing noise of Tom taking flight. Off to torment the knight mercilessly, and enjoy himself immensely, Harry was sure. There wasn't much to break up the monotony of the day, cooped up as they both were. Still, Harry was pretty sure that Tom would have had the exact same reaction even without the boredom forced on them both.

Well, if Tom wasn't going to be bored, than neither was Harry. He sat up, placing his bare feet on the floor and trying not to flinch at how cold the flagstones were. There wasn't really anything he could do about it. True, he could warm them magically, but given that the entire castle was made of stone, that heat would dissipate very quickly. It would just be wasting magic. And while his captor had seen fit to bestow him with a wardrobe of decent pants, shirts, and underclothes, he hadn't deemed him worthy of stockings or boots. Another deterrent against escape, perhaps, though one that seemed incredibly redundant in the face of all the others.

Normally it didn't matter. Harry spent most of his time lounging on the very warm scales of a fire-breathing creature or in bed. It was only rarely now that he actually ventured inside the castle. Most of the doorways were too small for Tom to get through.

Still, it meant when he did take to wandering, his feet were cold, and there wasn't really anything he could do about it. He gave himself a moment to get adjusted to the floor temperature before hopping to his feet.

Harry was sick of this enchantment. And since he had nothing better to do, he might as well work on breaking it.

Originally Harry had concentrated all his attention on Tom's collar. Not a bad approach, considering that it was what held Tom bound, and Harry had the chance to study it most of the day. But the enchantment wasn't centered around Tom, as Harry had originally assumed. His own attempts to escape had been what had shed light on that. On the few occasions he'd been able evade Tom and make it to the boundaries of the enchantment, it hadn't been distance from Tom that kept him bound, but rather his distance from the castle.

The castle, then, Harry had eventually come to realize, was the center of the enchantment. Yes, it was possible that Tom still could be, but having the castle as a secondary focus just didn't make any sense in that context. Tom's directive was to guard Harry. Having the castle as the center made much more sense in light of what the enchantment forced Tom to do.

Messing with Tom's collar had always been Harry's priority when it came to escape. Freeing Tom's magic would allow them both to be free, Harry was sure. And it was much easier to work on, what with his teacher being practically in his face the entire time he attempted it.

Still, now that he was on his own without Tom looking over his shoulder, there was no reason not to try and obstruct the enchantment on the castle itself. He'd done some exploring, it was true, but he was usually busy spending time with Tom learning magical basics or just talking. As such, he was much more familiar with the grounds than the building itself. He spent very little of his time actually in the castle since those first hellish weeks.

The center of the castle seemed the logical place to start for an enchantment centered on the castle, and so Harry carefully made his way down the stairs, before navigating the twisting passageways over to the most central location in the castle. He only got turned around twice, which was quite a feat considering that he so rarely spent time inside. There was a large, open courtyard in the center, and it was here that Harry had begun his magical examination as soon as the idea had occurred to him.

The courtyard was incredibly large, it was true. Large enough that Harry would have contemplated asking Tom to stay here instead of the central, cobblestoned courtyard where the dragon had decided to make his home. Still, Harry was a bit wary of doing so. This courtyard was smaller than the central courtyard and filled with greenery. There was a garden, and in another corer a place where only magical plants grew. It had all been overrun and weed-filled when Harry had arrived, but back before Tom had made it his mission to have Harry in sight at all times, he'd spent time using the skills the Dursleys had forced him to hone getting things back into working order.

It had been some time since Harry was last here. Things were starting to overgrow again, but Harry found he liked the effect. The plants were still healthy, but had an undeniably wild air to them. Nothing liked the regimented neatness Aunt Petunia had insisted on. Harry found this much more to his tastes.

It was the way the magical plants had seemed to thrive that first made him suspicious. Magical plants were hardy, it was true, and could be grown in entirely normal gardens. But these plants were not just two or three times the size they would have been if planted elsewhere, as magical plants in a magical environment would be, but were instead growing to sizes Harry never would have imagined possible.

The only explanation Harry could think of for their growth was proximity to magic stronger than anything Harry had encountered in his day-to-day life. Magic like the kind that was keeping him and Tom bound here. If the enchantment was anchored somewhere in the courtyard, then the growth of the plants could easily be explained.

It was only a matter of figuring out where exactly the enchantment was anchored, and what it was anchored to.

Harry had been concentrating his efforts with Tom on sensing magic, when he was given the opportunity to choose what instruction he wanted to receive. He wasn't so stupid as to refuse to learn anything a dragon might want to teach him. Still, there were days Tom let him have his pick, and on those days, he learned to better train his awareness of the magic around him.

Harry had always been able to vaguely sense the magic in his surroundings, had always sensed something when a spell had been cast. He simply needed to sharpen that skill.

After several months of Tom's tutelage, and practicing on his own, he thought he was finally ready to begin his search in earnest.

He'd worked his way through the courtyard in sections, and had at least confirmed to himself that it was here somewhere. Now it was just a matter of figuring out where the damn thing was. The magic it was putting off was so powerful that Harry was suffering from a sort of blindness. His senses were overwhelmed.

Harry closed his eyes and breathed deeply, falling into a light meditative trance as he reached out with his sense and felt for the magic around him. He let himself become acclimated, let his eyes adjust, as it were. He simply sat there and breathed for long moments before beginning to reach out with his senses.

The magic was still incredibly strong, but for the first time it wasn't overwhelmingly so. He could actually get a sense for the ebb and flow of things. It certainly helped that the enchantment was currently lit up like a town during a festival.

Because it was active, Harry realized with a start. Not that the enchantment was ever inactive, per se, but at this precise moment it was enforcing one of the conditions that it was designed for, and thus much more active than it would have been at any other time. Because Tom was off hunting the knight, fulfilling his magical directive to protect Harry, Harry was able to see nuances that had escaped him before. He followed the nearly blinding golden flow of the magic back to where it all seemed to be coming from and soon found himself standing in the middle of the courtyard.

Harry stood there, puzzled. An enchantment like this had to be anchored to something physical. He could feel that. The building itself would have made sense, but the magic seemed to be coming from something very specific, rather than the stone of the building itself. It was true that some was coming from the stones, but those were leeching off a central source. Some sort of wardstone would make the most sense.

But there was nothing. Harry was standing in the middle of a bunch of flowers. And while they were beautiful and full of life, they couldn't be the anchor for this sort of spell. There was just no way they could hold that massive amount of energy.

Staring down at the flowers, puzzled, Harry saw something that soon had him flat on his stomach in the dirt, staring in fascination to be sure his eyes hadn't been playing trick on him in his desperation.

Up. The magic was rising up.

Giving a small cry of jubilation, Harry leapt to his feet and sprinted back into the castle proper. The crypt. It had to be in the crypt. He couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it before. It made perfect sense for something like this, so powerful, magically speaking, to be rooted in the foundation. That way it would seep into the essence of the building itself, from the ground up.

He quickly checked the position of the sun in the sky and his own internal clock just before he hurtled inside. Tom never spent less than an hour playing with the knights, but it was rarely more than three. And Harry would want to be back in his tower before Tom came back. If Tom came back and Harry was not only not in his tower underground, somewhere Tom couldn't get to him...Harry shuddered at the thought.

Still, he had plenty of time, if he could trust his own sense of it. Meditating enough to get to the correct point had eaten up some of it, as had the wrong turns he'd take earlier, but he still had at least three quarters of an hour. More than enough to start making a study of thing. And if he went back to Tom with enough information, the two of them could begin working out how to properly break the enchantment together. Harry would have to do almost all of the actual magic, since he was the only one who could physically reach the thing, but that really wasn't that different from what he'd expected. It was only a slightly different justification for the problem he'd already been expecting to have.

He'd never tried to reach the crypt before, but the principal seemed fairly straightforward. He was on the ground floor, so he just had to try and go down.

After a few minutes of searching, he found a set of stairs that lead to a lower level. Taking a deep breath, Harry began his descent.

The narrow stairwell soon deposited him on a floor that wasn't made of smooth flagstones like all the rest, but instead rough stone. Magically smoothed, Harry was sure. Mechanical means would not have done nearly so good a job. The room opened up before him, ceilings high, the room itself dark and cavernous.

And there, in the middle of it all, glowing softly even without his magical sight, was a sword.

Rooted into the stone, magic passed from the sword into the castle itself and upwards from the jewel embedded in the hilt to everything else. Harry took cautious steps forward, part of him concerned that the sword itself would be warded, but he found no resistance.

As he grew closer, rage began to build in his stomach. The sword looked familiar. If that accursed sorcerer had used his own sword to keep him trapped here…

But he was mistaken, Harry realized with great relief. The sword was not his own, merely very similar. Goblin made, then. It would explain why it had been able to anchor such an intricate enchantment as this.

Harry began circling around the sword, studying it intently. The sword itself was what rooted everything to the grounds of the castle, he was sure. What kept him from escaping the perimeter, no mater how hard he tried, and what kept Tom on a slightly longer leash. So if it was the magically forged steel that bound them to the land, then what purpose was the jewel serving?

A visual examination provided a partial answer - the jewel was identical to those that adorned Tom's collar. Harry reached out with his magic and confirmed his suspicion. This jewel was anchored to Tom specifically. And, he realized with dawning horror, not just sealing Tom's magic, as they both suspected, but taking it, using that magic to keep the enchantment fueled.

Harry felt as if he might be ill. This was a violation. It was despicable, and he would not allow it to stand for even another moment.

Harry focused all of his magic on the stone before him. He pushed and pulled, trying to snap the connection this stone had to those on Tom's collar. When that didn't work, he did the only other think he could think to do. Reaching out instinctively, he pushed at the stone with all his might and magic, focusing everything he had and everything he was on physically crushing the thing. Harry could feel himself getting weaker as he poured out his magic, but it didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was the stone.

Just as Harry was about to admit defeat, to come back again to try another day, he reached out and physically touched the stone, giving one last push.

As he pressed his hands inward, it shattered under his hands. For a long moment, Harry's vision grey, there was complete stillness. Then everything was bright, the enchantment broken, the magical energy snapping back.

Harry sank to the floor, exhausted, blackness creeping in at the edges of his vision even as the room filled with a bright white light. The last thing he heard before he lost his tenuous grasp on consciousness was a roar of victory. He felt himself smile, even as the darkness claimed him.

They were free.