Harry had known that he wouldn't have a lot of time before the battle, the vision had felt too immediate. However, hearing that the Greeng rass sisters were gone sent a chill down his spine. He saw every face in the great hall pale and bloody at his hand. He felt the sick pleasure of sending curses and hexes. Of pointing his wand and knowing death followed.

That wasn't him. Those weren't his desires. Voldemort had unwillingly given him some powerful gifts by hiding out in his noggin for fifteen years, such as his parselmouth ability and the permanent magical boost absorbing his core had given him. But nothing in life is free.

Along with the power, Harry had been sacked with the emotional damage of knowing his existence caused his parents their lives and a few potent tidbits of Voldemort' personality. He did have to keep his lust for power on a tight leash; he made decisions that would affect large populations -such as freeing the elves- with absolute certainty that he was right; and he rarely felt remorse, especially not when he had to kill someone. Fudge, who was an imbecile but not a terrible man, was being ousted because his personality ghosts had flexed and gotten that one sentence out to the reporters. Now a secret thrill ran through him every time he saw the papers ridiculing the man. He had given him fair warning.

Thank the pantheon for Sirius. Without a loving parent who craved love and acceptance as badly as Harry did, he would have ended up a monster. He almost did. Those years at the Dursleys had nurtured only his darkest aspects. They'd never been able to keep a pet for more than a few weeks, and once they'd stopped trying, neighborhood animals had disappeared. If they lived in a place with more venomous snakes, Dudley wouldn't have lived to see his fifth birthday. By five years old the rotund boy held the world record for snake bites. No one could understand how. No one but Harry.

Sirius had saved more than their two lives by rescuing Harry from those muggles. Many many more lives.

Now with Hermione stolen, the castle under siege, and two young girls in danger of being sacrificed to bring back the blackest of foes, Harry's hold on his bloodlust and rage was tenuous at best.

A soft cool hand on his cheek broke his brooding. Luna.

"Come back to us Harry. Every soul in this castle depends on you."

He sagged, head held up by that one point of reassuring contact.

"I don't know if I'm strong enough."

I do. For Hermione, Sirius, the students, and maybe even me, you'll do anything."

"Of course for you." He pulled her into a tight embrace. Her breath caught in her chest. "You are far better a friend than I have any right asking for."

She tried to keep her thoughts on finding Hermione rather than how good it felt to be in his arms.

He pulled away, clapped Draco on the back, and visibly shifted his mind back to the task at hand. By both nature and nurture, Harry Potter was a leader. The best leaders showed their followers that even he felt overwhelmed from time to time, but that neither despair nor uncertainty would keep him from giving his all to the cause he pursued. Chatter in the hall as children saw their leader rally and returned to practice with more grim determination than they'd shown after his initial speech.

He was concerned for two of their own and would fight to get them back. So would they.

"Draco, try to make contact. I don't want to jump to conclusions. Garry, Rabby connect with the elves and centaurs in the forest. Make sure their scouts know what the Greengrass sisters look like and help with the search any way you can."

For a few hours, Harry did his best to lose himself in training the students. Many made quite a bit of improvement, but Harry knew they'd be slaughtered if he didn't stop the Death Eaters from summoning the Dark Lady. He itched to bring the fight to them, but his scouts had eyes on the empty clearing. Storming an empty circle would do nothing but scare them off.

Besides, he had to wait until they started, until he could wrestle control of the portal from Lucius. But how? If only he could remember those runes!

"Harry, a word?" Draco dragged him to a corner where they could talk privately. "I made contact with my father."

"And? Do they have them?"

"He sees my concern as weakness. Plus, someone told him we've been chummy this year. Probably one of the oafs' fathers. Didn't think either Crabbe or Goyle would have the brain cells necessary to write home."

"Not important."

"Right. Anyway, I told my father it was a ploy to gain your trust. The only problem is he wants me to bring you to him for the ritual."

"That's brilliant."

"It is? I will have to look like I have the upper hand. Keep your wand. Tie you up. Something."

"Yea, yea. No problem. You just solved all our problems. I could kiss you."

Harry turned to start preparations before he could catch Draco's furious blush.

It took twenty minutes of tinkering and Babbling's help for Harry to figure out a runic array to meld his wand with the bone of his right arm.

"Incredible! Babbling breathed as the wand sunk into Harry's arm. "I can't believe that worked."

"I don't know if it would for many people." He knew his ability to absorb magic had been the crux of at least two of the six runes working. Harry waited a moment until he felt the wand settle into his marrow before testing it out. Ten patronus statues sprung to life in the empty classroom that Babbling, Draco, Luna, and Tonks had joined him in. Each had helped make this possible. Tonks had an intimate knowledge of physiology. Luna's eerily reliable foresight helped steer them away from disaster. Babbling was the only one Harry trusted to look over and apply the runes correctly. Draco was the reason they had a plan at all and refused to leave his lord when he was set on doing something risky and foolish.

Harry had wanted to include Neville, but the young Lord Longbottom had taken on the

role of general and was busy organizing the castle's defense. Harry had given him the job as soon as he saw how good he was at motivating the others and mediating the rare argument.

"It handles alright, but without being able to do all the wrist flicks and whatnot will and intent are going to be a lot more important," Harry mused. "Shame I don't have any time to practice."

"You'll do fine," Luna said." You probably would have survived without your wand, but this helps your chances immensely." She performed a subtle bit of transfiguration to make a chair leg perfectly resemble Harry's wand, if it had been snapped in half. The chair clattered to the ground. She handed the broken replica to Draco. "Besides," Luna said. "You were already gifted at wandless magic."

His eyebrows rose. That was a skill he kept even from his friends.

"And if there is anything you have to do with your wand, do the wrist flicks anyway. They're just a way to focus right? Why do you need your wand in your hand?"

Harry laughed. "Sometimes you're the smartest of us all."

"Ready?" Draco asked, pocketing the fake.

"Are you? Odds are your father is going to die tonight."

Draco's brow twitched, but he schooled his face to unconcerned superiority. Just as his father had taught him. "If he dies it will be a result of his own inability to free himself of a master who tore his family apart."

"That doesn't mean it will be easy."

"It will be right."

Harry grasped his friend's shoulder and nodded.

"Let Neville know where we've gone immediately. Be prepared."

"I want to go with you," Tonks said. "Taking down baddies is my job."

"It would tip them off," Harry said. "Besides, I'll feel much better knowing you're here to coordinate the aurors when they arrive and get the others out if they're too late."

She nodded reluctantly.

Luna steeled her courage and kissed Harry's cheek before stepping back. He gave her a fond smile, nodded to Babbling and Tonks, and vanished.

"My son," Lusius said with open arms. "Proving his true loyalty to the Dark Lord and his family despite some people's doubts." He glared at Crabbe and Goyle's fathers. Draco kept his holier than thou expression and made no move toward his father.

"My loyalty to family and lord comes before anything. My father taught me you test a man's character by the strength of his word. "

"And you've more than proven your strength my son. The Lord's greatest adversary will make a better sacrifice than the Greengrass girls. Too bad that I've heard he is a bit of a whore. I suppose your engagement is back on."

One of the robed figures hurried to untie the girls from the altar. Astoria's eyes were wide. Confusion and betrayal were clear as she looked into the face of the man unbinding her. Daphne's gaze held only rage and disdain. Both were kept gagged. The man, their father, led both to the side of the ritual space, his head bowed.

Draco only spared a quick glance toward the sisters, expression carefully neutral. "As you wish, father."

"Let's begin." Lucius shed his robe, revealing the runes glowing faintly on his torso.

Harry was marched to the altar and bound to the warm rock. The unicorn, eyes rolling, was brought forward. With a rare pang of regret, Harry sent a discreet pulse of magic toward the creature. Instantly it was rendered senseless, though subtle compulsion would make it react as if it could feel tortured. For all intents and purposes, the creature was dead. Its body just kept functioning.

As the ritual began, Harry watched the unicorn wearily. In the vision, it had been prompted to stab the girls in the crotch. Harry couldn't think of a more horrible way to go and hoped it had been more a sign of removing their purity than a necessity. When the unicorn came for him, a sliver of magic sent the horn up into his lower abdomen instead. Still excruciatingly painful and a slow death. That is, for a normal and unprepared magical.

Harry, on the other hand, knew complex self healing. There were several occasions that the knowledge had saved his life. He mentally thanked Sirius for every cent he'd ever spent on his tutors.

Runes of healing and preservation that Harry had carved into his own ribs magically years ago set about protecting and healing his vital organs before the unicorn even slid its horn free. A subtle rune scrawled inside his left armpit kept the blood flowing while a potion he drank right before entering the clearing with Draco replenished his blood as fast as he lost it. His healing runes would gradually overcome the temporary Japanese rune keeping the wound open. Harry hoped that between the gore on his shirt and the fact that corpses don't bleed would distract from the fact that he would have whole unblemished skin in about ten minutes.

The ritual began in earnest. It became an effort to remember to twitch and moan with less regularity as he kept his gaze locked on the patch of sky he knew would open up. After all, he was channeling magic into Lucius's ritual to compensate for the lack of sacrificial magic his very alive body neglected to contribute. Was that a shimmer?

As soon as the crack appeared, Draco and Harry sent stunners in every direction while centaurs bearing house elves dealt with any Death Eaters they missed.

After sending his six curses out, all Harry's energy went to probing the rift with his mind. Searching.

There! He found the familiar warmth of Hermione's mind and gave a gentle tug to get her attention. moments later, flame shot from the rift and coalesced into Hermione's form beside the altar.

Still burning, she unbound him while her flames leapt about, seemingly of their own accord to render screaming Death Eaters to charcoal. Harry dimly wondered how Hermione or her flames chose their victims. Some were fleeing, others bound, and still others unconscious.

After five minutes, a quarter of the roughly thirty death eaters were dead. The centaurs guessed that three had escaped far enough into the woods to apparate, as the ritual space was close to the boundary line of the school grounds. Eighteen of them were captured.

"My father," Draco spat, "is missing."

The rift was closing fast, but Harry hadn't pulled back completely. He sent out one last searching pulse.

The Dark Lady was nowhere to be found.

The rift snapped shut.

Hermione sagged against Harry.

"I knew you'd find me," she mumbled before passing out. Her flames, which had been tickling Harry's skin, winked out.

He covered her naked form with a summoned cloak. The magic took more effort than normal. Healing took a lot of energy directly from his core.

He'd done more magic before and after the rift opened than most of the professors at Hogwarts could handle in a week. The night was only beginning.

With a resigned sigh, Harry spoke in Voldemort's unique parsel tongue dialect. Every parselmouth spoke the common tongue, but often developed quirks and specialized vocabulary so they could key spells or enchantments to only work for them. Harry had his own, but was also in the unique position of knowing a second personal language as a result of having Voldemort in his head for years.

"Give unto me your strength and vitality my loyal cattle," he hissed.

The dark marks were clever pieces of outlawed magic. Before house elves were enslaved, dark magicals branded and sold muggles and even other magicals as slaves. Strong loyalty, obedience, and self sacrifice compulsions were standard, but Voldemort had expertly wove in a magical spiel of sorts that Harry now drove into each of their cores. He could have drained them without the spiel, but it made the process less painful for him as the magic flowed in a controlled stream rather than exploding into him.

If he wished, he could drain them completely and leave them no better than squibs, as he had done to Lucius accidentally the first time he defeated Voldemort. Now, however, he only took about half from each.

Taking any at all guaranteed he would display some odd quirks for a time and that his magic would feel foreign. If he took all the quirks would be permanent and his magical signature forever altered. He didn't know what the consequences of fully draining eighteen magical, in one go would be. Unpleasant to say the least. He'd more than likely go mad.

No. Half from each was enough. More than enough, really but the permanent craving for hunger that absorbing Voldemort had burdened him with wouldn't let him be content with just enough. He gorged himself on power until he knew the upgrade would be permanent. For the next several hours he would literally glow with excess power. In two days the high would even out and he would have permanently gained as much power as if he fully drained one middling magical, such as Lucius.

His victims, for that's all they were now, would never cast anything more complex than a fourth year might. They would be lucky to pass the owls if forced to retake them.

Even knowing the gluttony was dark, he reveled in his new power . He couldn't help delighting in the rush of endorphins and heady knowledge that he could level the forest with less effort than swatting a fly.

By comparison, it took a concerted effort of will to force himself to stop draining the Death Eaters. The greedy part of him snarled, snapped, and finally retreated to sulk in the deepest recesses of his mind.

In the clearing, every eye was on him. His victims looked horrified. Draco looked awed. The centaur's looked caught somewhere in the middle and inexplicably all dropped into bows.