Chapter Twenty-Seven: Star of Hope

Harry opened his eyes slowly. He didn't think the odd sight in front of him had anything to do with the blue potion that Snape had given him. At least, he hoped it didn't, or he would refuse to take it again, because the thought of going through the rest of his life while seeing blue sparks was too annoying to contemplate.

A soft voice, skirled with music, said, "Harry? Vates?"

Harry sat up slowly. Draco mumbled and rolled over, which made Harry wonder if he couldn't hear the voice, if it was directed to his ears alone. "Dobby?" he asked. Dobby was who the voice sounded like, but he had never taken this particular manifestation: a swirl of blue sparks like smoke from a fire, a dancing constellation that ran all over the air in front of Harry and braided back on itself like a ribbon.

"Not Dobby," said the voice, and it gleamed and caught fire along its closest edge. Harry had to steel himself not to jerk back from it. "But one like him. You may call me—" It paused, then said, "I like Miranda."

"Miranda?"

"Miranda," said the light and the voice, and then they wove together into the shape of a small, darting green lizard with an enormous crystalline fan on its back, which scurried up the blankets towards Harry and sat there, flicking its long tongue at him. "I was the one who would have been a house elf that night you freed my mother, but when you cut our web, she managed to free both of us."

Harry nodded, remembering now. Dobby had fetched him to the side of a birthing bed; a house elf named Jiv whose owner had given up on the claim to ownership was struggling to birth her child, and might easily have died with him. Harry had cut part of the web, freeing Jiv's magic, which enabled her to save her own life and completely destroy the web waiting to take her child.

"Why have you come?" Harry asked, though he knew the answer might be any number of things. House elves were free beyond the imagination of wizards, at least in their proper forms. Miranda could have come to observe, to have fun, or to do something else that would only make sense to an immortal shapeshifter.

"To help you."

Harry blinked and leaned forward. He had not expected that answer. "Help me in the war?" he asked.

The lizard tilted its head to the side and flicked its tongue again, as if thinking. "Help you with defending," it said. "You need someone to help with the safehouses, don't you? Someone trustworthy. Someone who can defend with more than wind, someone who won't go flying off at every second moment."

"Kanerva will help, but she isn't dependable," Harry murmured.

"And I am." Miranda stamped her small feet and inflated the fan on her back until it gleamed like quartz. "I am very dependable! I want to help! Will you accept my help? Or will you send me away?"

"I would never reject anyone who wishes to help and has good intentions," said Harry, still a little shocked. "But I—well, most house elves would have no reason to want to help wizards, since so many of us still enslave you."

"But I have never been enslaved," said Miranda. "And I have walked many paths already, and been in many shadows, and around many realms of bronze. There is no reason not to come back and want to help you, after that."

Harry tried desperately to look as if he had some idea what she was talking about. "Very—well," he said slowly. "If you're sure that you want to do this, that it wouldn't be a source of constraint for you."

"I'm sure," said Miranda, and scuttled closer, putting one foot on his hand. It was soft and sticky, like half-melted butter. Harry hesitantly touched her head. Her scales were green, he saw, flecked with gold, rather like the sight of his own soul that he'd had sometimes, the colors of Dark magic and Light. "I have never defended anyone before. I have been too busy learning. This will be new. And one cannot have too much newness."

Harry found himself smiling. "There are many people who would not agree with you."

"I do not expect them to agree with me." Miranda's mouth fell open as she yawned, and then she curled close to Harry. "I wish to sleep here. Is there anyone who will object to me doing that?"

"Me."

Harry jumped and glanced up. Argutus had his head curled over the top of the bed, and was glaring at Miranda. The Omen snake so rarely spent nights with him anymore—he preferred to wander the castle and concentrate on learning runes and what little he could of the English alphabet—that Harry had not even thought he was present, much less that he would be able to understand their conversation.

"I thought we were speaking English," said Harry, with a glance at Miranda.

"Oh, I thought it would be more realistic if we spoke in Parseltongue," said Miranda, "since I am a lizard. So I translated. Was that wrong?" She looked back and forth between Harry and Argutus—not anxiously, but alertly, as if she were interested in learning more about this strange new set of manners.

Harry toyed with the idea of telling her that she was a lizard and not a snake, and lizards didn't speak Parseltongue, but decided against it. Argutus was hissing, anyway, complaining that she couldn't sleep in his place.

"Why don't both of you sleep in the bed?" Harry suggested at last. "Argutus on my chest, Miranda curled next to my side?"

Argutus turned his head from side to side, as if examining substandard prey offered to him. "It will do," he said at last. "As long as I am able to crawl up and curl into position first."

"Why wouldn't I let you?" Miranda asked.

As stiffly as a serpent could, the Omen snake flowed up the bed, glimmering folds of scales lapping over Harry's chest and shoulders. Harry stroked his spine, and wondered thoughtfully if Argutus had been ruffled about being ignored. He had said nothing, and so Harry had simply assumed that he didn't mind. Of course, he hadn't sought him out and asked, either.

So much of the war occupies my time and attention. If I have a choice between normal life and war, I seem to choose the war without faltering. I wonder if there is any way to alter that, to make myself remember and value the people—and snakes—around me more. Trusting Snape and Draco enough to tell them what I'm thinking is a good first step, but not enough.

Miranda followed Argutus, curling so close that Harry could barely distinguish her from the blankets and the warm drape of the Omen snake's tail—until the fan on her back poked him in the side. He yelped, and Draco stirred, blinking open eyes that had gone hazy with sleep.

"Harry?" he whispered.

"It's all right." Harry stroked his back. "Just Argutus."

Draco hummed in response, and moved closer, arranging his arm so that it draped over Harry's chest but didn't brush against Argutus. Harry blinked at nothing for a long moment, then let his senses casually extend in several directions, so that he could feel everything around him.

Nothing but warmth, cradling him so close that his eyelids drooped of their own accord, and he barely remembered to think of sunlight so that would be what he dreamed of, instead of having visions. He shifted a bit, or tried, but his muscles seemed to be puddles of mush, and he felt so good that the thought of moving too much hurt.

He was asleep more deeply and swiftly than he had managed in the past several months, enraptured in a warm pile of snake, lover, and transformed house elf.

SSSSSSSSSSSS

"And you think we can trust her?"

"It's not a matter of trusting me," said Miranda, who clung to Harry's arm, before he could respond. "It's a matter of what I want to do. And I want to help." She flicked her tongue out, and the fan on her back inflated, glittering in the midst of the sunlight that poured through the windows of the Great Hall. "I assure you, house elf magic is harder to pierce and drain and detect than ordinary wizarding spells."

Harry could feel dubious glances coming their way. Well, he couldn't entirely blame them.

He and Miranda had decided to make their announcement in full view of all the refugees living in Hogwarts, just after breakfast. Since so many people were caught between fear and fear—not wanting to stay in the school in case Voldemort attacked it searching for Harry, but also not wanting to go to a safehouse after what had happened to Malfoy Manor—Harry thought it would help them make up their minds.

But the glances were glassy, and the murmurs thick, and Harry knew that most of the refugees were probably wondering how exactly a lizard could help them.

"Miranda?" he asked.

She looked up at him and flicked her tongue.

"Could you transform?" he asked, making sure to speak in Parseltongue. "Become something else? Not a house elf, because they wouldn't attribute much strength to that form either, but something that would strike them as beautiful and powerful and capable. They don't think of lizards that way."

Miranda lifted and flexed one foot in surprise. "They don't?"

Harry shook his head.

"Very well," said Miranda, though she still sounded painfully shocked, and then lifted her head. The fan on her back began to glow with captured sunlight. Harry fought the impulse to shade his eyes, even though several people in the crowd were doing so. He didn't want to seem as if he doubted her power, or would look away from her at the very moment she was gathering her strength.

The sunlight expanded and fanned out into a star-shape. Miranda still floated in the middle of it, a pair of large green-gold eyes that reminded Harry of Dobby's, but the shadow of her body was losing its form, expanding to become the edges of the star, while her limbs folded inward and melted. In moments, the star drifted towards the top of the Hall and hung just under the enchanted ceiling, solemnly beaming. Its colors were green and gold and crystal, a combination of Miranda's scales and the fan on her back.

A current of wind and magic blew out of the star just then, and Harry inhaled the scents of jasmine and thyme. He felt as if the light were tugging his spirits up with it, forcefully making him remember there was such a thing as hope in the world, even in the middle of the Second War with Voldemort.

"She is a house elf," said someone in an awed voice.

"And she'll help us protect the safehouses," said Harry quietly, his head still tilted back. Green and gold spots filtered through the light like the spots on a peacock's tail, opening as eyes did, and then shutting again—winking at him, he thought. "She came back because she wanted to help."

He shot a glance at the refugees, trying to see how many of them could read the message inherent in that. Faces grew thoughtful, at least where they managed to look away from the awe-inspiring sight that Miranda made and pay attention to what he was saying. Harry smiled. Well, if I have to choose between their paying attention to me and their paying attention to her, I know what I'll take.

He held out his hand. "Can you show us how you'll protect the safehouses, Miranda?" he asked.

Her light grew brighter, and then a curve of it detached itself from the edge of the star and descended like a great scythe. Harry made himself keep his arm out, though his skin crawled and he had to shove away memories of Bellatrix's blade coming down and cutting off his left hand.

The scythe traveled just overhead, parting his hair, and then rushed back the other way. Now it resembled the great pendulum that Harry had once met in the Room of Requirement, the night that he changed himself and admitted that he hated his parents. Again, memories went back into the mire at the back of his mind, not permitted to rise, and he kept his gaze and his pose steady.

The pendulum traveled back and forth several times, and Harry realized that Miranda was stirring up magic, gathering it to herself. But she wasn't drawing on Hogwarts's wards, nor draining the power of those in the room, the way that Voldemort or Harry would have had to do. She made the wind move instead, and inspired the movement with magic, and took it to herself.

The scents of jasmine and thyme grew thicker, and Harry closed his eyes briefly to prevent the tears from welling up. He could sense nothing malicious in that power. Perhaps it came from Miranda never having been imprisoned the way that Dobby and her mother had been, but it seemed that she had no notion of evil. She certainly had the power to do evil if she wanted, but why would she want to? Every turn of the pendulum, every pulse of light, asked that question, asked what use evil and ugliness were.

The scythe coiled back, now a flying whip of white and green and blue, and blended with the air itself. Then it seemed to pause. Harry craned his neck, trying to make out what the whip had wrapped itself around.

It turned out to be a fist of crystalline light, coming into existence to answer the whip. The fist relaxed into a hand shape, and then spread flat, growing into a white version of Miranda's star.

Harry felt the hand and the whip twirl past his head, and then Miranda reached casually into his head for the location of one of the safehouses—on the Hebrides, near the MacFusty dragon sanctuary.

A vision of the islands appeared before them. Harry shivered at the forbidding image of the stones and the leaping foam, and the cold that gripped and frosted them all year long.

Miranda's hand and whip traveled into the image, and then spread glittering husks of warmth around the isles, and the small building—larger inside than outside—that Harry had chosen for the haven. For a moment, the house elf magic flared so strongly that Harry feared Voldemort would sense it. But then it calmed, and wound itself into rock and water and air in a way that no wizard magic, with its insistence on distinguishing itself from its surroundings, ever could. When Harry blinked, he couldn't make out a trace of it.

"That is the way I will defend that one safehouse," said Miranda comfortably. "Others must be protected in different ways. But this will help. Won't it?" she added, as if wondering if this were a mistake, like her belief that humans would be impressed by the lizard form.

"It will do very well," said Harry, and shot her a smile that made the star-form dance back and forth in midair.

Harry turned to face the refugees again, and said, "I understand that it may be some time before you wish to leave Hogwarts for the safehouses, even now. Or you may wish to visit them and test the protections for yourself. But with Miranda's help, they will be more well-defended than ever before."

"Are you willing to wager our lives on that?" asked someone from the back of the crowd in a doubtful tone.

"More than that," said Harry. "My own." He looked at the vision of the safehouse, and then back at Miranda. "Can you keep that open while I walk through to the isles, Miranda?" he asked.

"I can," said Miranda.

Harry smiled slightly, hearing the teasing tone in her voice. "And will you?"

She bobbed from side to side in affirmation.

Harry stepped through.

SSSSSSSSSSS

He had to catch his breath, or try, as the wind whipped through him. He supposed that it was warmer now than it would be in the middle of September or December, but that wasn't much of a consolation. He took a stumbling step forward, wondering if he should cast a warming charm.

And then he was in the middle of a roaring heat as great as a fire. Harry blinked and looked up.

Above him floated a thin golden canopy, made of what looked like strained sunlight. It was house elf magic, he was certain, the blanket of Miranda's power that surrounded the safehouse. When he turned around and stepped back through the curtain, though, he couldn't feel or see any trace of it, and the cold wind continued whipping past him unabated.

Harry smiled, and it felt—good. Unless Voldemort managed to steal the location from Harry's mind, or a traitor within the safehouse let him know where it was, only great ill fortune would reveal house-elf-protected refuges to him. Harry supposed he might do well to set up Secret-Keepers and Fidelius Charms on the safehouses, too, to restrict the chance of a traitor letting Voldemort know where they were.

If I can find people I trust to be Secret-Keepers, and some way to smuggle food in without using house elves.

The safehouse itself looked like an ordinary boulder now, until Harry actually touched the door. When he moved inside, he nodded to find rooms filled with thicker, warmer blankets than he had left them with, uncomfortable beds shifted into comfortable ones, and—a touch of Miranda's whimsy, he supposed—silver trees laden with amber fruit standing in several corners. The inside of the safehouse smoldered with summer heat, but it eased immediately with a cool breeze when Harry thought distractedly that it was becoming too hot. He suspected Miranda of a spell or a weave of magic that would respond to wizards' thoughts about things like the temperature.

And this is what we can expect when we leave house elves to their own devices, he thought, tilting his head back to gaze out the window at the edges of the storm-lashed island, and let them return to help us as they wish, without coercion.

A spark of light caught on the rocks, and Harry turned his head in that direction, wondering—because it had become instinctive, by now—what malevolence this was, and if Voldemort had managed to slip past Miranda's protections after all.

And then he was reminded that house elves were not the only freed magical creatures who might be inclined to repay kindness with kindness.

A unicorn was standing on the point of the island. Foam leaped around it and then fell back, a duller color than its coat. The horn sticking up from its head looked more like a corkscrew than any Harry could remember, and also shone with more of a warm, milky, pure inner light. It turned its head and briefly glanced at him from an eye that he couldn't catch the color of.

Then it turned and sprang out across the sea.

Harry watched it run, the light spreading from its hooves and rippling across the waves, and felt his heart lift in answer. There might well be other unicorns tearing along the streets of Muggle cities, or the length and breadth of the British Isles right now, and managing to spread as much or greater joy than this lone unicorn had managed to give him in a matter of moments.

He turned and strode back out of the safehouse and through Miranda's gate to Hogwarts, feeling more confident and relaxed than he had in a long time.

SSSSSSSSSS

Snape eyed the blue potion once more, and then flicked his hand, burying the owl feather quill that had been used for three days in the center of the cauldron. A corner of the liquid wrapped around it, drowning it, and the edges of the plume wavered briefly as it sank, looking as if it had been coated by tar.

The potion gave a shushing sound more time, and then settled. Snape relaxed. That was the amount of potion Harry needed for one night brewed, and now he could think about something else.

In particular, what it would take to move this war onto an offensive basis.

No one else seemed to be thinking of it, which meant that he must. Harry, of course, was focused on defense to the exclusion of nearly all else. He did not even spend as much time researching Horcruxes as he did healing spells that would save lives, ways to make the safehouses impenetrable to attack, and dueling spells that would mean wizarding villages had a better than average chance of protecting themselves against Death Eaters, as long as enough of the people living in the village learned the incantations. Others were pursuing their small parts in the war—Rhangnara and Jing-Xi still researching the Horcruxes, Draco training to become better in battle with more skills than simply his possession gift, Regulus sorting through the Black artifacts to find some that might make a difference the next time Voldemort and Harry closed.

Snape could invent potions, but now that the most urgent one, to insure that Harry got rest, had been brewed, he would turn his attention to the purposes of offense.

Of course, the very best offensive tactic would be to destroy the Horcruxes. They knew where two of them were, now, and after hearing Rhangnara's rambling about the blood of Slytherin, Snape believed they knew the way that they could break the Unassailable Curse shielding the Peverell ring. The wand was beyond their reach for the moment, until they knew spells sufficient to remove it from Thornhall, where Indigena Yaxley had almost certainly taken it; Neville Longbottom was apparently working on those, a combination of actual spells and Advanced Herbology. The cup was also beyond their reach unless they managed to lure Evan Rosier close.

Snape knew the truth. If the Horcruxes had simply required a blood sacrifice to break their Unassailable Curses, he would have done his best to capture several of the Death Eaters and shed their blood on the ring and the Sword of Gryffindor. Or he would have controlled them with Imperius and had one walk onto the sword, the other commit suicide in front of the ring when they retrieved it.

Unfortunately, the Imperius Curse could not be used to get around the Unassailable Curses, which would be able to tell the difference between true love of Harry or desire to destroy a Horcrux, and feigned emotion grown in a victim's heart on command. There was also the small matter of Harry not forgiving him if he had found out Snape used the Imperius, but Snape was not worried about that. Harry would never have known. Besides, since he could not use the Unforgivable in any case, he would not be capturing Death Eaters.

Unless…

Snape cocked his head thoughtfully and began to pace back and forth in his office. That was another offensive tactic, of course, though sharply limited by the fact that they did not know where the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters were at the moment. Destroy the strongest parts of his gathering army, and he would not only suffer a disproportionate loss, given how few his servants were, but other Dark wizards might be discouraged from joining him.

But how was Snape to reach them? He had no idea of their location, and few would come to Hogwarts unless they were guaranteed to remain beyond the wards.

Then Snape paused and snorted at himself. What is the one thing all Death Eaters have in common, besides a talent for Dark wizardry and some usefulness to the Dark Lord? Of course. He pulled up his own sleeve and glared at the faded snake and skull on his left forearm.

He used it as a weapon against us. With any luck, it can become a weapon against him.

Snape turned and strode rapidly to the fireplace, casting a handful of Floo powder in as he knelt down. "Silver-Mirror!" he snapped, to establish the connection, and hoped that Regulus did not have it shut.

He didn't, and he must have had a ward with a silent alarm ready to summon him when someone looked through, since he didn't have a house elf. He appeared with black, seamed marks on the side of his face that were not mere soot or dirt, and which made Snape narrow his eyes, forgetting his question for a moment.

"What gave you burns?" he snapped.

"A warded door where the wards were rather stronger than usual, and not spelled to open to the Black heir," said Regulus lightly. "It is mostly grime, and not burns. See?" He pushed at his hair above his temple, and flakes of ash fell out.

"Idiot," Snape muttered, and then pushed ahead into the subject he had come about, refusing to let himself be distracted. "I need to know what happened when your Dark Mark was healed, Regulus."

Regulus lifted his eyebrows in curious question. "The first painting I went into, you mean? You know I can't tell you much about that, Severus. The secrets are to be kept between the Black heir and his heir. Spells will start to choke me if I do more than vaguely hint about it."

"I know," said Snape. "I wish to know what you can tell me. Did the healing remove a trace of the Dark Lord himself, or only flesh and skin and corrupt Dark magic? Did it cross the barrier separating body and soul, or was it a purely physical process? How long did the healing take?"

"I don't know how long the healing took in real-world terms," Regulus admitted. "At a guess, a week or a little more. And it wasn't purely physical, and it did have to dig out a shard of Voldemort himself. Not a soul-shard," he added hastily, presumably when he saw Snape's face darken. "It wasn't a Horcrux. But he had put a fragment of himself in it, the same way that you put a part of yourself in a ward based on blood. It's what allows him to track us, control us, infect—"

He broke off, coughing, his face turning so pale that the ashes on his temples stood out like bruises. He shook his head. "I can't talk about it any more," he muttered. "I'm already treading close to what the Black inheritance will let me reveal as it is."

"Very well," said Snape, as calmly as he could. The potion he would need to poison a Death Eater through the Dark Mark would not be easy; no potion that needed to cross the boundary between body and soul ever was. And if he had to work directly against the magic of the Dark Lord himself, he would need Harry's help.

He told himself that he had not expected it to be easy. And it was at least easier than destroying the Horcruxes, the only other effective offensive strike they could make.

Though even that would be easy if Harry were not afraid to ask people to die for him.

Snape put the thought aside for now. Plans that depended on Harry changing his nature would not come to fruition. Enough of his enemies had learned that over the years that Snape would not balance his own hopes for success on it.

"Severus?"

Snape looked up, cocking an eyebrow. Regulus had wiped more ash away from his forehead, and now looked almost like a normal human being again.

"I don't suppose that you'd care to come to Silver-Mirror this evening, and share dinner with me?"

Snape blinked. He had thought it was early for dinner, but a discreet Tempus charm revealed that he had in fact missed it, too caught up first in brewing and then his thoughts about what he must do to aid the war effort.

He should refuse, he thought. A poison that could affect Death Eaters would not brew itself. He needed to read and study before he could begin. And he needed to ask Harry questions, and figure out some way of experimenting on his own Dark Mark—and Peter's—that would not alert Voldemort to what they were doing.

But Regulus was looking directly at him, with that earnest gaze, as if friendship were real, that he had affected sometimes when they were both Death Eaters, and an hour's, or a few hours', delay would not make much difference to the ultimate progress of the potion. And relaxation was necessary to keep the senses alert and the mind functioning at the level a Potions Master required. Surely, his observations of Harry in the past few days had proven that.

"Very well," Snape agreed mildly, and used another handful of Floo powder to step through the fire.