Harry stood halfway up a wall, parallel to the ground. Ten feet below him a staff meeting was taking place in the Great Hall without him. He was the topic of discussion. This was only partly because he didn't show up.
"So irresponsible!" tutted Professor Sprout, bustling about the table. "And on such an important meeting for him especially."
Professor McGonagall coughed, and knocked her mug against the table for everyone to stop talking. It took a moment, but they broke off their various conversations and returned their attention to her.
"As I was saying, Potter will harness the thestrals to their carriages. Albus had intended you to do it, Wilhelmina, but Potter has insisted for some unknowable reason, and Albus is choosing to indulge him. Instead you will take the first years across the lake in boats."
Up on the wall, Harry grinned. And there was the reason. When Dumbledore had approached him suggesting that he might enjoy seeing some new and very young faces, he'd scrabbled for an excuse to refuse. His life-long desire to meet a thestral it was. Harry was all about magical creatures these days.
Grubbly-Plank made some mutters of indignation, but didn't actually articulate a complaint in words. McGonagall raised an eyebrow at her until she was appropriately cowed into silence.
"Now," she continued, "there is the ongoing and ever troubling matter of Voldemort." Some of the other teachers flinched at the name, and she glared at them. "Perhaps first we should address the name, no? It is the official stance of the Ministry of Magic that anyone wishing to discuss the dark lord should not use evasive pseudonyms, the likes of You-Know-Who or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. The Taboo Curse on the word Voldemort has been broken. This was a victory for the hard-working wizards or witches in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and should be respected. Really," she added, peering down her nose at Professor Sprout in particular, "it has been three years, so we really must be getting used to that."
"Secondly, following a number of altercations in the vicinity of Beauxbatons, a small but significant number of students from our sister school will be attending Hogwarts instead, at the wishes of their parents. Additional support has been provided already to assist them with their proficiency in English. This is an imprecise art, so be mindful of this when assessing the abilities of your charges."
"Third, the administration of both this school and the Ministry do not hold children responsible for the crimes of their parents, real or imagined. Do not attempt to do so.
And finally, following a sizable donation from a group of concerned parents to St Mungo's in the name of the DMLE, a consignment of aurors has been assigned to Hogwarts for the duration of the school year. Officially, there is no expectation that Hogwarts will ever face attack so long as Albus Dumbledore is headmaster, so this will be a team of two and two only, and their identities have not yet been released. Unofficially, it'll be Neville Longbottom and Mordecai Berrycloth."
McGonagall looked up from her roll of parchment, and dropped it on the desk. "That's it for the high level stuff. Now, who knows any of the new intake? We're all dying to know what we're in for," she said, her voice much warmer and informal now that she'd dropped the officious bearing.
Harry tuned out at this point. He wasn't much interested in gossiping about children he was going to do his utmost to avoid. He braced himself against the wall by squatting to his knees, and then pushed off, leaping out into mid-air. About a foot away from the stonework, gravity re-asserted itself. He twisted urgently to bring himself into the right position, grinned at the shocked exclamations from the teachers below, and landed on the Hufflepuff table. The wood groaned ominously at the impact, but didn't splinter.
He slid onto his feet, dusting himself off.
"Good meeting everyone! Keep it up. No hard feelings about all those comments you made about me Sprout; I know you were just concerned for me," He winked in the general direction of the fat old herbology professor, and sauntered away.
"Potter!" shouted Snape.
"Snape!" he shouted merrily back, not stopping or slowing. Snape cursed in the distance, and broke into an uncharacteristic jog to catch up.
"You'll make me run to speak to you, Potter?" he growled in a low tone. Harry gave him a sunny smile.
"It's good to know how much you're wanted, isn't it?" he said nonchalantly. "Did you enjoy the meeting? I was especially fond of the part where Voldemort Voldemorted all over everything."
"The Dark Lord's name is not a verb," Snape hissed.
"Yes, indeed," said Harry. "And were you not in that same meeting as me? No vague pseudonyms. His name is Voldemort."
"The Dark Lord," began Snape, lip curling as his voice slunk into a drawl, "is a title, not a name. Thus the rule does not apply."
"A grammatically correct way of weaselling out of following basic instruction. I commend your creativity, Snape, and yet wonder at the precise nature and origin of its motivations. And even at the same time, I wonder if that is precisely why you call him that. To make me wonder." Harry glanced over at Snape, matching Harry's fast walking pace, albeit with faster breaths as he gasped out words.
"Am I so concerned with your opinion of me to put on such a pantomime?" asked Snape scornfully.
"What are you concerned with? Spit it out, man, I may have all day, but this isn't how I wish to spend it."
"There is a girl," said Snape. Harry froze.
"Oh no. Please no. I'm not doing this."
"Potter, pay attention! There is a girl," Snape began, only to break off when Harry covered his ears with his hands and hummed loudly.
"Okay, fine!" Harry exclaimed, throwing his hands down. "Fine, Snape, fine. Damn it all, but okay. Only because you're my best friend. Where's the body? And do you have a shovel or should I go get Hagrid's?"
Snape bit back a curseword, and then a gleam came into his eyes.
"No, you know what? I'm actually going to curse you. Stay still if you wish. My aim is good enough that it needn't matter." Snape pulled his wand out from the voluminous folds of his cloak with a dramatic flourish. He pressed the tip to Harry's chest. "Brave or foolish?" he whispered in a voice like a dead crow.
Violet light flared from the tip of his wand. Harry locked eyes with Snape, not moving a muscle. A moment passed.
"Was that it?" he asked. He raised a hand slowly. Snape flinched, but Harry shook his head. "No, I'm not going to hit you. I'm just returning this to you He grabbed Snape's hand in his, turning it to face upwards, and placed something in his palm. He gently folded Snape's fingers back over it. The same violet light flared again, this time from Snape's hand.
He screamed in frustration and fury and pain.
"What does that curse do?" Harry asked. "Really, I want to know. I can't tell from your face, only that it tickles."
Snape, red-faced and panting, was moving his wand in a spiral over and over again on his chest, first on one side, and then the other.
"Iron filings in your lungs," he grunted out. Harry winced.
"Ouch. That's a bad way to go." Snape glared speechlessly. "Well, I have chores to avoid. Later Snape!" he called.
"Potter!" Snape shouted, wincing at the pain the effort caused. "There's a girl."
Harry stopped and groaned.
"Alright, if it means so much to you. What's her name and how much are you paying for her hair?"
"She's one of the students coming from Beauxbatons. Seventeen. Girl, obviously. Sister has been causing trouble for supporters of the Dark Lord in France. Threats have been made."
"Okay, I get the idea. Why are you coming to me about this?"
"The Dark Lord's supporters aren't just in France," said Snape. "And as you may have inferred from Minerva's warning, sons tend to inherit the sins of their father," he said in a particularly sour tone. "I will be watching certain individuals very closely. You will watch the girl."
"Do it yourself," said Harry dismissively. "I'm not a babysitter."
"I have enough demands on my time, you selfish prick. I had thought you were self-interested enough to give up some time to ogle a blonde French teenager for a moment here and there, but in even this, you let me down! Oh, I've tried to look past your appearance, but you are just the mirror of your father, strutting about with no care but his own vanity!"
"Come on, Snape, if you know anything about my father you know he preferred a redhead," said Harry. Snape stood stock upright, as if a rod had been rammed abruptly up his arse. Which, knowing Snape, may or may not have been part of the curse Harry had thrown back at him.
"If I see something happen I'll step in," Harry said at last. "That's all you're getting from me. Don't you dare try to pass responsibility for it off onto me if something happens."
"Her name is Gabrielle Delacour. You'll know her when you see her. Tell me at once if anything happens." Harry nodded, and finally made to walk away, but Snape caught his arm. Harry rolled his eyes, but didn't yank it away just yet.
"Wait, Potter. There are other threats that have been made against students. If you prove you're a man, that you can be trusted, I could tell them to you. You could watch them as well."
Harry pulled his arm away, laughing sardonically.
"What the fuck, Snape? You offer me up babysitting jobs as if they're some kind of reward? No. If I see something happen in front of me, to anyone, I'll step in if need be. But I'm not going snooping around for trouble. I know I said that you're my best friend a moment ago, but you know what, old pal?" Harry stepped forwards, putting his face right in front of Snape's, so their noses were almost touching. "I lied."
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
"Lieutenant Teabag, pass the binoculars," instructed Harry. An exasperated elf glamoured to look as if she was wearing a dress with bits of twigs and leaves glued all over it thrust a pair of mail-ordered binoculars into his hands.
"The warning label said that this could have small parts which were a choking hazard," observed Thistle. "Perhaps you should put it in your mouth."
"Tally ho, Lieutenant, we have our target. Ready the sniper rifle." The elf sighed, and handed Harry a paintball gun. "On my mark, three, two, one, and…pause for drumroll, deep breath, fire!"
The paintball landed half a kilometre shy of the target, inconveniencing a deer which had been pissing against a tree.
"I gave it my best shot, and that's all Ol' Snapey asked," said Harry sadly. "The girl lives to reign in terror. Lieutenant Teabag, play a funeral march for the innocents we could not save this day."
"Mr Potter!" shrieked McGonagall. Harry winced, and pulled his army surplus hat down over his eyes. "What on earth are you doing on the roof with all that muggle rubbish? Where in Merlin's name did you get all of that?"
"The binoculars I ordered by post. Two day delivery to a ruined castle in Scotland, no big deal! Everything else was conjured by Dumbledore when I told him why I'd ordered the binoculars - to hunt down a terrible enemy to the peace of Hogwarts."
"Mr. Potter," she said firmly.
"Snape made me do it," Harry wailed forlornly.
"Mr. Potter, are you aware that the first spell I intend to teach my Seventh Year class this year will be the incarcerous spell?" she asked, casting as she spoke without a break in her lecturing tone or any signals before she moved.
Harry's eyes widened, impressed by her style, and caught off-guard. The charm conjured thick ropes which spun and knotted about him, knocking him off balance. He fell onto his face, sliding down the pitched slope of the roof to land on the floor. He missed the grass.
"Would you like me to take you to Madam Pomfrey, or will you be able to take yourself?
"No, I'm good," said Harry, voice slightly muffled from where he was pressed into the flagstones of the courtyard. "My face is pretty tough. Lots of scar tissue from smiling too much." He reached out to the earthseed buried in the Whomping Willow, and channelled the earth into the ropes. Renewed vitality shot through the ropes, hemp seedlings blossoming out from dead fibres, until the tight knots were a loose jumble of greenery. Shaking them off, he climbed to his feet, and thanked McGonagall profusely. "I'm actually glad. Getting down was going to happen facefirst one way or another, and you just helped me confront my fear of smashing my face into a stone."
"Immersion therapy is a success," called Thistles from where she perched, still up on the rooftop. "Next we will confront your fear of knives."
"Your elf appears to be doing better, I see," McGonagall forced out. Harry glanced at her appreciatively.
"Yeah, she is," he said.
"No I'm not," she grumbled. Harry laughed, but then looked at her closely.
"Wait, you look different," he said. "Pointier. In your face, anyway. Your ears look smaller. And your eyes." She frowned, and tugged at the hem of McGonagall's robes.
"You're a real witch, not like this fool. Would you conjure a mirror for me?" The deputy headmistress frowned in turn, but obliged with a flick of her wand and a quiet murmur.
Thistles pressed her face close to the glass, a smudge of condensation forming where her breath warmed the surface. She examined herself from head to toe, turning as much as she could to get a view of her back, as well.
"I think it's time," she said to Harry, after she was done inspecting herself.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"Absolutely. I don't want to wait any longer."
"Then let's do it," said Harry. "Go find your favourite tree."
"A girl's first will always be special to her," she whispered, voice thick with sarcasm.
"The Whomping Willow it is," Harry agreed. "Professor," he said, nodding his head as he followed the elf out of the courtyard.
They stood a few minutes later at the top of the hill which overlooked the Willow. The earthseed hummed on the edge of Harry's awareness. Still just a seed. Still juvenile and not open to its full potential. But it was a start, and he was able to provide the rest.
"Sit," he instructed, pointing to the ground. Thistles obliged. "Okay. So. I'm not completely certain what's going to happen here, but I've got an approximate idea. When I went meddling around with your geas, I broke the part of you that makes you a house elf. And other bits have come forward to plug the gap. Bits from what house elves were before."
"I've accepted my fate. Whatever beast I'm turning into, it needs to be over. The part I can't stand is not fitting in my own skin." Harry worried at a speck on his robes, and then flopped down besides the elf.
"It's not so simple. House elves were made of a whole bunch of things, all blended together. Imps and sprites and erklings and some genuine ancestral fae. We may not just be rolling the dice for one of your predecessors. It could be some new cocktail of the bits left over from them. In fact, I think that's what's likely. And unless you object, it's what I'm going to aim for."
"What makes this any different from the first time around?"
"Back then, I was just poking a ball of magic to see what would happen. This time I'll be casting the magic. Rebuilding you from the constituent parts lying dormant in your soul."
"Playing God with me as the canvas," Thistles said bluntly. Harry winced.
"That's one way to put it."
"I already said I'm in. You can't imagine what it's like," she said, her voice picking up pace as she spoke until she was chattering out words breathlessly. "One moment I need to hide in a pile of leaves and cower at the sound of footsteps, and the next I want to run laughing through the trees, cackling to lure children close enough to strike with darts, then claws, then my teeth with burning red blood running down my chin, so fresh and so bright that the sun of their life has barely begun to rise and it's mine, all mine, condensed into liquid and dripping from my lips. You broke me, Harry. Make me into something new."
Enough stalling, Harry decided. He placed his palm on the elf's head, and she immediately stiled, save for an involuntary trembling. He drew together the far corners of his mind where he was always aware of her, and where he was always aware of the vast weight of the earth, and held them. The remains of the elf's bonds to Hogwarts had begun to stagnate and decay, resembling draped curtains made from promises and potential, ready to be torn apart.
Harry whistled, just one, high note, and the bond shattered. Motes of filmy grey hung in the air before his eyes, growing and falling to the ground. Some landed on his hands, and he noted that they were the severed wings of moths.
The Whomping Willow slammed its branches against the ground in a eerie tempo, matching Harry's heartbeat, and the heartbeat of the elf.
He knelt, palm still on the elf's head, and the other pressed firmly into the ground. Harry focused his will, and with a twist of intent and pleading and hope, buried the spirit of the elf deep inside the overwhelming density of the earth's raw mana.
Stillness. He had no eyes to see with, no hands to touch with. No body at all, only a sense of smallness against the incomparable bulk of the planet he stood on itself. All he knew for an eternity was stone, stone under pressure, and stone crushed into fire. And then a stone broke open, and lifted upwards, and was a seed reaching for the sun. Twin green leaves on the tip of a slender seedling, pushing upwards, breaking through the crust of soil, and then - and then -
Song drifted through the air, a soothing melody which held at once the warmth of the sun and the life from the earth.
Harry opened his eyes, and a phoenix was before them. It tilted its head, letting a single tear fall down onto the earth which was a seed which was an elf which was a - was Thistles.
No longer a tiny elf, a girl only a few inches shorter than Harry sat cross-legged on the ground. Her features were finer than most humans would be, more pointed, and her ears flared upwards like leaves. Her skin was the rich green of holly leaves, and her lips the colour of holly berries.
She shifted, slowly, softly, and Harry took his hand away fearfully. She blinked, and raised her head. Her eyes were the exact same colour as her skin, only with a pearlescent hue to them. It was unsettling to see them move against the same-coloured skin. At the centre, white clouds like thistledown formed her irises. She was lit by an inner fire which illuminated her skin, making Harry feel as if he was staring directly into the sun. His eyes watered, but he wouldn't look away.
"This is…" she whispered, and looked down at herself. Her hands were longer and finer than they had been, slender fingers with a joint more than a human girl would have. "This is me." Her voice grew stronger, and she said it again. "This is me."
She placed a finger on Harry's lips, and tilted her head.
"Are you weeping for me, Harry?" she asked. Her voice rang like bells in the wind.
"If my eyes weren't already watering, I might have been," he answered honestly. She laughed, and the bells chimed.
And then, as if somebody had clapped a muffler to the bells, her laugh became muted, and her glow subsided, and her skin faded to a pale white like any other young woman in Scotland, save for an exotic twist to her features.
"Glamour," she said. "As good now as it was then."
Thistles stood, and stretched, every inch of her naked and perfect, even when human. She caught Harry looking, and gave him a wicked smile with teeth that were slightly too sharp, and then a loose white and green summer dress hung from her shoulders.
For the first time in what seemed like a lifetime, Harry breathed.
Thistles stepped closer to Harry, placing one long-fingered hand over his heart.
"Oh look what a mess you've made of your elf," she said merrily, leaning forwards to speak in his ear. Suddenly she nipped sharply at his ear. Harry winced, clapping a hand to the side of his head. Thistles had already skipped back, licking scarlet drops of Harry's blood from her lips with a tongue which seemed every so slightly too long and thin for a human mouth. "Like a horse," she said, voice rich with satisfaction. "Docked so that everyone who sees will know that you're mine."