Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the end of the story. I hope you've enjoyed.

Part Nine

"Are you sure that you aren't a bit more concerned about Mr. Malfoy, Harry?"

Harry snorts and leans back in the chair that's long been his on the other side of Albus's fire. He's taller than the back of the chair now, though, something Albus once thought would never happen. "I've seen him lurking around and watching me a few times, but he hasn't dared to try and approach me."

"Just because he has not yet does not mean he will not someday," Albus cautions him. He is wary of Lucius Malfoy, still, despite the fact that the man has not been able to do anything to stop the spreading of the rumors about soul-marks. It is entirely possible that Lucius has passed his ruthlessness and desire to take risks to put down an enemy on to his son.

Harry's lip curls. "I think his caution is working against him. He hasn't approached me because he can see that I'm not alone."

"Misty?"

The house-elf pops into the room at the sound of her name, looks closely at Albus for a second, and asks, "Master Albus was not calling for Misty?"

"No, just mentioning you," Albus says, keeping his voice as calm and friendly as he can. Merlin, he wonders now why he put up with elves calling him "Master" for so long. After hearing the way they address Harry, there simply is no comparison.

"All right." Misty turns to Harry. "Harry Potter is resting better tonight?"

Harry toasts her with his cup of tea, which Albus did notice smelled different from Harry's usual blend, although he wasn't able to identify it. "Yes, thank you, Misty. I promise that I'll sleep in. I know why tomorrow is important."

"Why is tomorrow important?"

Harry peers at Albus for a second. Albus sits still and lets himself be studied. Harry is like that, sometimes, all openness and cheerfulness and then suddenly showing he has a secret in a way that reminds Albus Harry was meeting with goblins and house-elves in secret as a first-year.

"I don't know that I should tell you," Harry finally responds. "I think you'll disapprove."

"Only if you're in danger."

Harry smiles. "I promise, I'm not. I just have to go to Gringotts and meet with a goblin called Silverblade about a small matter."

Albus recognizes the name Silverblade and tenses a little, but it's obvious that Harry isn't going to tell him more, and Misty looks at him and says, "Master Albus should not be worrying. Misty will be with Harry Potter." So Albus has to be content.

Not long after that, Harry goes to bed. Albus waits until he's sure that Harry's door is shut and he isn't about to come out for a last cup of tea or immediate trip to the bathroom to draw back his sleeve.

His soul-mark has faded and run as though it's a watercolor painting that someone spilled more water on. It's a gradual process; it looks much more washed-out now, near Easter, than it did back near Christmas, right after Harry and Hermione had completed the ritual. But he already can't tell the waterfall from the pool it was crashing into, or make out the tiny spot of blue sky that used to be in it.

The Prophet no longer publishes extracts from the journal Hermione found. In truth, Albus thinks she ran out of them a while ago, although Astoria may have supplied her with another one. Now, the Prophet publishes frantic denials of what is happening, "diagnoses" of the mysterious "Fading Disease" made by renowned Healers, and firm statements that nothing is happening and the population shouldn't panic.

There has been unrest in a few apothecaries that claim to have treatments for the disease, but honestly, Albus thinks they brought that on themselves. Otherwise, most British wizards and witches are shivering in terrified misery, much the same way as they did during Voldemort's rise.

Albus does not feel sorry for them.

Harry pops with Misty to the edge of the graveyard and spends a long moment standing there, listening. However, there's no sign of a response to his sudden appearance, either shouts from startled Muggles or an owl from the Ministry. Harry nods and walks towards the house at the edge of the graveyard.

He told Albus he wouldn't be in danger and that he would be visiting Silverblade, and both things are true. He just neglected to mention that he had another stop to make first.

The house where Voldemort came hunting him and his parents is a wreck and ruin, although not as bad now as it was a few months ago, before he and Misty began to work on stabilizing it. Harry did ask Albus if he knew what became of the Potters' research, but Albus just shook his head.

"I think Voldemort may have destroyed it, my boy, but I honestly don't know."

Harry thinks there's at least a chance the research is in the house, and today, it's finally stable enough that he thinks he and Misty could find it.

The house has a wildly hanging door, still, but Harry and Misty have repaired the holes in the flooring and the stairs that lead up to the first floor, to the nursery where his mother stood in defiance of Voldemort. And today, Harry is going to perform a spell that takes a long time and a lot of concentration, and which he couldn't have managed if he had to be worried about the roof falling on his head.

Harry closes his eyes and stands still, aware of Misty's quiet, intense presence at his side. She wants to find that research, too, especially if it can protect house-elves against any attempt to rebind them.

Harry flexes his arms, rolls his neck, and draws his wand. He begins tracing it through the air; the wand movements are the longest part of the spell.

Cross, circle, knot, counterclockwise circle, sharp spin, jagged lightning bolt trace. That last part was hard to figure out, too; the spell has to be customized for each building it's used in, to include a symbol that's important to the building and the people who live in it.

Harry can think of no more relevant symbol for the building where he received his lightning bolt scar than this.

The last movement sends power flowing through him, something like the power that he summoned in the last unbinding ritual, and Harry cries out, "Loquere, casa!"

The house shudders, and Harry feels Misty tense, ready to raise a shield of magic if she needs to, against the risk of tumbling stones or brick. But all that happens is some dust drifting down to settle on Harry's head.

And, when he opens his eyes, the walls giving out their final memories.

Harry watches with hard, tearless eyes as the door breaks open and Voldemort plunges through. He's a tall, pale being with burning red eyes, a pale wand clutched in one hand, and a long scar stretching down his arm where he must have fractured his soul-mark.

Harry sneers. There goes someone who might have sought freedom for others, but only sought it for himself, and look what happened to him.

Harry's father, a shorter man than Voldemort with bright brown eyes and glasses and hair an awful lot like Harry's, runs towards Voldemort, waving his hands and shouting. He appears to be wandless. Harry blinks hard as he watches Voldemort strike him dead with a Killing Curse and turn towards the stairs.

A small, shivering man follows him inside.

Harry frowns at the small man. He supposes this must be Sirius Black, but he makes a note to ask Albus about it. Then he follows Voldemort.

Voldemort's shade seems to walk slowly, but Harry knows that's because of the time sense of the spell. He is in control of it, since he's the one who called it, and he can restrict or speed it up as he wants. He slips through Voldemort's shade and into the nursery, opening the door as he goes.

He's in time to see a lovely woman with red hair who must be his mother stuffing a thick sheaf of papers into a crack in the walls.

Harry hisses out his satisfaction, and turns to look at his baby self in the cot, walking towards him. This is—more for his own curiosity than anything else, but he's marked the place of the papers well enough. He deserves something for himself.

He bends over the small, fat baby he can hardly believe was once himself. The baby is wearing a shirt that leaves his arms bare.

Totally bare.

It doesn't matter, not that much, but something settles and pulses in Harry as he confirms that he was born free.

He makes himself watch the death of his mother and the casting of the Killing Curse at himself and the death of Voldemort, just in case it will give him any more information on soul-marks and how to break the binding. It doesn't, however. It's simply his mother falling dead—Harry blinks harder—and the curse bounding at Harry and reflecting back from his forehead, blasting Voldemort's body to ash.

The small man does scoop up Voldemort's wand before he runs, however.

Harry opens his eyes and finds himself standing in the half-broken nursery, near the repaired floor, with Misty beside him. She looks from the air where the images danced to him, her eyes piercing.

"You are getting what you needed, Harry Potter?"

Harry nods. He touches Misty's shoulder with one hand. "Are you all right?"

"Misty is knowing what happened in general terms," the elf murmurs in a subdued voice. "It is being different, to see it happen in front of her."

Harry squeezes her shoulder and goes to the crack in the wall where Lily put the papers. For a moment, he's afraid that the rumbling and shaking the house went through in the backlash of the Killing Curse might have destroyed them, but probably there was some magic protecting them, because they come free and crisp and crackling into his hands, without even dust on them.

Harry rolls them up and places them with careful reverence in the deepest of his robe pockets, then grins at Misty. "Let's go see Silverblade."

"Your relatives are here."

Harry's glad that Silverblade warned him before he walked into the room where the Dursleys are. It means he can savor the moment of staring at them from the doorway instead of walking in and getting blindsided.

It's a small stone room with a fireplace and a few chairs. The Dursleys aren't sitting in the chairs. Vernon is roaring imprecations at the fireplace, which the goblins might have brought them through, to come in here and do something. Aunt Petunia is staring at a mirror hanging on the wall and rubbing frantically at her face. Dudley is beside her, saying, "Get it off, Mum! Get it off!"

They turn around as the door opens, and Harry bursts out laughing as he sees what Silverblade's done.

She's stolen their normality from them.

They have bright soul-marks across their faces. Not just bright, iridescent. The colors practically sparkle on their skin, an image of a mangy, barking dog for Dudley and what look like a landscape of dead plants for Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. (Harry appreciates that they appear to match perfectly). They sprawl across the Dursleys' cheeks and noses and up towards their eyes; Harry thinks he would see the complete pattern only if they closed their eyelids.

They look like tattoos, but incredibly well-done ones. No one is going to think that the Dursleys didn't have them done themselves, and more than that, took a lot of time and paid a lot of money to ensure that they were just right.

"How did you make them appear?" Harry asks Silverblade.

She shrugs, grinning. "With as much time as we spent researching the bindings on the house-elves, it was simple to create these kinds of marks afterwards."

Harry nods his appreciation, at the same time as Uncle Vernon barks, "You, boy!" and points a meaty finger at him. "You get rid of these right now!"

Harry can remember a time when he would have found that intimidating, but he's simply so much more now that he doesn't feel that way. He smiles a little and says, "I'm not the one who made them. And I'm not the one who has the right to ask Silverblade to get rid of them." He tips his head at Silverblade.

He's never had the chance to see Muggles react to goblins, but honestly, he isn't surprised by what Uncle Vernon does. He refuses to look at Silverblade, as if she doesn't exist or she's not a person, and he completely ignores Misty. He leans forwards and bawls into Harry's face, "Do it right now!"

Harry turns around and walks out of the room, Silverblade and Misty at his sides. The door shuts behind them and holds against the incredibly heavy thumps that Uncle Vernon immediately lays on it.

"Will those marks last past the moment when we destroy the binding?" he asks Silverblade.

"Oh, yes." Silverblade's smile has the most teeth he's ever seen on a goblin, which also makes it the one Harry admires the most. "They aren't true soul-marks, of course, and not involved in the binding. They will cover their faces for the rest of their lives, until I am satisfied or—" She glances sideways at Harry.

"When?"

"When you say that you want them removed."

Harry shakes his head. "I yielded my right to vengeance to you. I have better things to worry about than Muggles who abused me, in any case."

Silverblade's grin is wide and delighted. "Always a pleasure to do business with you, Harry Potter."

Albus sits with his head in his hands for a long time after Harry tells him about the "shivering man" he saw in the memories of the walls at the Potter house.

"Albus? Are you okay?"

Albus takes a deep breath and removes his face from his hands. Harry is looking at him in concern, and Misty looks ready to jump out of her skin if Albus doesn't tell them what's wrong.

"The man you described," Albus whispers, "is Peter Pettigrew, the man your godfather Sirius Black supposedly killed. The e-evidence suggests he was the real traitor. And—and perhaps Sirius has gone to prison for no reason, and has been left there unjustly."

He looks up in time to see the fires of fanaticism blaze to life in Harry's eyes. He already knows how strongly Harry is committed to righting injustices. It seems Albus has given him one more to cure.

"Well." Harry smiles and leans forwards. "Then why don't we go get him out?"

Of course, it's not as simple as "getting him out." For Albus, anyway.

Albus speaks of finding ways to give Sirius a trial, of forcing purebloods to pay attention with old secrets he knows about them and old fondnesses that some of them might still have for him, of bargaining chips and politics. Harry ignores this entirely. Not only does he think the purebloods in the government and the Ministry would just ignore them, especially since they don't have Pettigrew, dead or alive, to produce.

It's just too slow. The world is probably going to go mad when Harry and the goblins perform the final ritual to release the house-elves' binding. Harry doesn't want his godfather anywhere in the middle of a place that might go entirely mad, especially since Dementors eat souls and have some complicated relationship to soul-marked prisoners that no one who doesn't work there understands. It's part of confining them.

"But how are we going to get past the defenses of Azkaban, Harry?" Albus pleads. "I don't know everything about them, either, any more than I know how they keep people there based on soul-marks."

Harry blinks at him and holds out a hand. Misty appears next to him, takes his hand, and sniffs at Albus.

"House-elves are being more than a match for Dementors," she says, and pops Harry away.

They're standing in instants in a cold, bleak stone corridor that rivals anything in the dungeons at Hogwarts. Harry shivers and wraps his arms around himself. He can feel what must be the presence of Dementors at once, beating against him like a chill wind, and moving as if coming nearer.

"Did you bring us to the right cell, Misty?" Harry whispers, since all the cells around him look alike: cramped, low, barred, filled with huddled and miserable people. The sight ignites another kind of fire in his chest.

His anger beats back the Dementors, the way it beat back the temptation to crumble beneath the Dursleys and the bullies at Hogwarts.

"Misty is feeling the presence of Master Sirius Black in the Potters' house." Misty waves a hand as if fanning away the steam of a pot rising to her nose. "Misty is knowing where he is. He is being this way." She trots down the corridor, and Harry follows, winding around a few corners until they reach one particular cell.

Lying in the cell is a ragged black dog, curled up so tightly that Harry can't see its face under its tail.

Harry stares at it hard. Other memories are surfacing, ones that he doesn't remember having. It's as if someone has opened a door in his head that goes back before the Dursleys, and he knows—he knows this dog.

For a long moment, he just stands there, the name tripping on the tip of his tongue, until Misty gives him an exasperated glance and a poke in the side, looking towards where the sensation of Dementors is coming from.

That jolts the name loose. "Padfoot?" Harry whispers.

The dog whips to its feet, staring at him. Harry can see the moment when it—he—recognizes Harry. He bounds to the front of his cell, wagging his tail so hard that it probably hurts, whimpering in joy. Harry grinds his teeth as he sees the matted patches of fur, the hooped ribs.

"Come on," Harry whispers. "We're going to get you out of here."

And with Misty's help, he reaches in, and dissolves the bars, and grasps Sirius's fur, and brings him home.

Sirius's sleep is filled with nightmares, his days with stumbling memories. Albus can see how damaged his mind is, and his heart aches with pity. If only he had known…if only he had done something…

Well, now he can.

Harry doesn't want to believe it; he wants to think that his godfather being innocent and being rescued now means everything is okay. But Albus can see how very badly hurt Sirius is, and while being innocent and spending a lot of his time in Animagus form probably has protected his sanity more than it would have otherwise been protected, he won't heal without expert help.

(Besides, although the Ministry isn't advertising the escape of an Azkaban prisoner in this time of growing unrest, there have been reports of Dementors seen here and there in unexpected places, and Albus still has a few contacts in the Ministry, like Elphias Doge, who are passing him vague warnings).

"He has to have Healing, Harry," Albus tells Harry one evening, as they're watching Sirius sleep. Harry has to go back to Hogwarts the next day, as it's the end of Easter holidays. "And he doesn't dare go to Healers in Britain."

Harry's hands flex back and forth. Albus waits quietly. Harry trusts him, loves him; he knows that. But Harry is also used to handling things by himself, or with house-elf and goblin help. It's hard for him to trust humans other than Albus.

"You'll find a place?" Harry finally whispers.

Albus doesn't close his eyes in relief, but it's a near thing. "There are still people in Germany who are grateful that I defeated Gellert," he says. "If they can't give Sirius Healing safely themselves, they'll find a place where someone can. Thank you for trusting me, Harry."

Harry nods slowly to himself, and touches Sirius's fur. He's a dog again, sleeping close to the fireplace as if he can't get enough of the warmth. "And you'll convince Sirius to go?"

"Yes, I will." Albus doesn't like knowing this, but Sirius still retains a lot of trust in him as the head of the Order of the Phoenix. His mind has more or less frozen as it was when he went to prison (one reason he keeps being confused that Harry doesn't ride his toy broom around). "Please, Harry. Trust me."

Harry's mouth trembles, and he whispers, "I do." Then he looks up, and his eyes are bright and vicious.

"And someday," he says, "when the elves are free, I'm going to destroy Voldemort."

"It's scary," Daphne whispers into Astoria's ear, "even knowing what's coming."

Astoria nods as she sits beside her sister in an obscure corner of the dungeons where no one should bother them. Their eyes are glued to Daphne's mark, which is a ghost of what it once was. Astoria privately thinks that their parents must have altered Daphne's mark more than hers, but that's not the kind of thing she's going to ask about.

Daphne rubs the mark on her skin and checks her fingers a second later, the way she always does, as if it's paint that might rub off. It makes Astoria smile. Then Daphne turns to her and nods. "All right, little sister, what did you bring me out here for?"

Astoria blinks and looks up at her, aware of her heart ringing in her ears. "I—I wanted to make sure we could look at our marks and discuss them without anyone overhearing us."

"And we could have gone to the library for that, or somewhere closer to the common room. Come on, Astoria, tell me."

The ringing gets worse, but Astoria can feel her courage rising—something that she thinks might have rubbed off on her from Hermione. The girl is such a Gryffindor, but she's also someone who tried to fight for Astoria when no one else did. Astoria won't forget.

"I—I like girls, Daphne."

The words are blunter and barer than she planned on. They sit in the air between them with their own kind of ringing noise. Daphne's eyes widen.

Astoria braces herself. She doesn't think Daphne will reject her, but it's possible. And she wants to make sure that she's reminding herself, all the time, that other people care about her, and she's participated in a powerful magical ritual to break the bindings on house-elves and erase soul-marks, and she'll never have to marry Draco.

That's a blessing worth everything else.

"I." Daphne reaches out and delicately touches Astoria's forehead, as if she's checking for a fever. Astoria nestles gratefully against her. Even before the truth about their soul-marks started coming out, Daphne touched her more often than their parents did. "A-are you sure, Astoria?"

"I'm sure," Astoria whispers, her chest aching with the force of her dizziness. "It's how I knew there had to be something wrong with my mark. I was supposed to marry Draco, but I couldn't, and how could the mark have matched me with someone who wasn't a girl? And I tried to stop liking them, but—"

"Shhh. It's all right, Astoria. I'm glad you told me." Daphne gathers her close.

Astoria wraps her arms around her sister and holds on fiercely. It's likely that Daphne doesn't know how to react to this yet, and doesn't want to know any more, which is why she cut Astoria off instead of listening. But honestly, Astoria doesn't care.

It seems like her sister is going to accept her, and that, too, is a blessing worth more than any soul-mark.

"Hermione, can we go to the lake and talk?"

Ron asked that more than fifteen minutes ago, and they've been pacing around the edge of the lake for five, but he hasn't said anything yet. Hermione stuffs her hands into the ends of the scarf she's wearing; it's nearly the end of April, but there's still a brisk chill in the air.

"I have to know," Ron says at last, when the silence has gone on so long that Hermione has almost decided he won't say anything, "whether you still love me."

Hermione takes a deep breath, stops, and turns to face him. Ron's eyes are wide and distressed, and she wants to reach out and comfort him. But it would feel hypocritical.

"You mean, because the marks are changing?"

Ron nods sharply. Now he looks haunted.

"I don't know," Hermione says, because it's the only true thing she can say.

She thought she loved him because she liked him, and liked spending time around him, and he treated her well, and they had secrets. And love was the emotion all people with matching soul-marks were supposed to feel, wasn't it?

Now…she doesn't know. She knows she still likes him, but she also hasn't been able to trust him with the most important secret in her life; she doesn't think he would react well. And even though his family doesn't have house-elves, he probably wouldn't want to free them, either. He would probably say that they seem happy to serve Hogwarts and they don't have marks, so what does it matter?

Not a bad person. Not evil. Just…careless. Thoughtless, because he's never had to think about it.

"How can you not know?"

"I don't know that, either." Hermione shakes her head as she watches Ron lean forwards a little, crouched like he wants to run at her. "I don't know what else to say, Ron. I thought I loved you. But I thought the marks were real, and permanent. I know that I want to—to keep on trying. But are you going to want to try if the marks don't guarantee us a good life together?"

Ron looks stricken, as if he hasn't considered the question. Hermione didn't think he had. She stands still, and holds his hands, and he blinks and looks back and forth between their covered arms as if the blurring marks will tell him the answer.

Predictably, when Ron doesn't find the answer right away, he gets angry.

"If you don't want to be with me, then I don't want to be with you," he snaps, and jerks his hands free, and storms away.

Hermione sighs. She knows Ron well enough to realize that he'll come around in a few days, and apologize, and ask to work on it again.

And she does want to try. She knows she likes Ron, and that he's a good person. He doesn't scare her, the way Harry does.

But she's also aware that the third ritual to break the binding and the soul-marks' hold on the world is coming, and that Ron might not want anything to do with her when they both have bare arms. In the end, a lot of it will come down to who they are without that guarantee of love that the marks seemed to promise.

"Harry Potter, Harry Potter!"

Once again, Dobby has come to wake him from a sound sleep, Harry thinks with some exasperation. He shakes the sleeves off his arms and yawns, pets Bast when she complains, and looks over at Dobby without rising from his bed. It's near the end of the last term of his sixth year, almost summer, and he expected Malfoy to take longer with the ritual preparation.

"Is Malfoy getting ready?"

Dobby wags his head and bounces in place. "He is telling Dobby to capture Harry Potter and get the circle ready!" He pauses and gives Harry an intense look. "He is not saying that Dobby cannot be stopping to warn Harry Potter."

Harry chuckles and stands up. Bast wakes and jumps to his shoulder. Harry doesn't question it. After he makes sure that he has his wand, he reaches out a hand to Dobby. "Well, you still have to partially obey the Malfoys' orders, right?"

Dobby's eyes go huge and wide. "Harry Potter is coming along?"

Harry nods. "I don't know if he might not send one of the other house-elves to fetch me if I didn't, and they would probably still have to obey him. And I know that I'm no match for a motivated house-elf." He tilts his head at Dobby. "Let's make sure that we can end this threat and catch him by the right kind of surprise, hmm?"

Dobby pauses for only a second before he catches hold of Harry's hand, and they vanish.

Draco looks slowly around the ritual circle that he's prepared at the top of the Astronomy Tower, nodding. The symbols of innocence to be stained, like the unicorn hair and the handful of fresh snow preserved under a charm in a glass jar, are off to the left side of the circle. The vial of phoenix tears sits in the middle, where he'll break it over Potter once Potter is unconscious and laid out there, and the symbols of corruption, like the thestral hair and the jar of werewolf's saliva, sit to the right. Everything is there except the final ingredient.

Potter himself.

Draco turns expectantly as Dobby pops into view with Potter in hand. He expects Potter to be dazed. It would be ideal if he were unconscious, but Dobby isn't smart enough to do that without explicit orders, and Draco didn't know what condition he would find Potter in and whether rendering him unconscious was something he could figure out to do if Potter was awake.

He does not expect Potter to be alert and grinning at him, with a cat on his shoulder who stands up straight and hisses at Draco.

"What the—what the hell—"

"What a naughty Malfoy," Potter says, eyes tracking around the ritual circle. "You really did think it was going to be this easy to trap me and take control of my mind, didn't you?"

"I d-didn't know—I don't know—"

"You don't know lots of things," Potter agrees, and casually Disarms Draco before he can even think to lift his wand. "But don't worry. You'll do a lot of that over the next six months, not worrying." He smiles at Draco.

Draco straightens his shoulders. He might not have Astoria's love now that their soul-marks are changing, but he still has his parents' love, and he knows what they'll do to Potter if he does something to Draco. "My father will destroy you."

"Not when I send him an owl telling him that you're still alive and you'll stay that way unless he does something hasty," Potter drawls, and then turns to the side. Air shimmers there, and the house-elf Draco always knew was following Potter around appears. "Can you knock him unconscious, please, Misty? And keep him that way, in that torpor state you told me about. We'll brew the Draught of Living Death and get it down his throat in a few days."

"Harry Potter is having a good idea," the house-elf says, and turns to Draco.

Draco opens his mouth to yell about being touched by a filthy little beast as she reaches out to him—

And then comes the long fall, into darkness and silence.

Midwinter night.

Harry stands in the extremely simple ritual circle in the goblins' smallest ritual room. At his feet lies Draco Malfoy, who has spent the last six months unconscious, first under house-elf torpor and then under the Draught of Living Death. Harry's administered the antidote, and Malfoy is twitching as he comes back to himself.

The world is poised on a knife's edge, to use a phrase the Daily Prophet is fond of. There have been more and more riots, around St. Mungo's and apothecaries, as the Ministry and the papers claim the destruction of soul-marks is some kind of disease, and people demand a cure for it. There are people who have fled the magical world, and people who have claimed this is the fault of Muggleborns, and people blaming purebloods, and people convinced it's a foreign plot from France or the like. (Harry is gladder than ever that Albus did manage to find a sanitarium in Germany for Sirius, and he's well out of it, writing increasingly cheerful letters to Harry the while).

No one has ever looked in the direction of the goblins or elves, which is amazing to Harry. But, well, it just proves how little humans think of those who aren't human in their eyes.

Like Harry.

He turns to the extremely complicated pattern woven into the floor with silver poured between the stones. It took a lot of Galleons to pay for that, not that Harry really minds. This is a visual representation of the binding, and tonight—

Tonight they are going to destroy it.

Harry can feel how rough his grin is. He doesn't care. He bends down and nudges the bound Malfoy with his foot. Malfoy's mouth is open, and he appears to be screaming, but Harry already Silenced him. They can't afford to have Malfoy interrupt the ritual at its most delicate moment.

Harry looks up and across the circle, to where Misty stands. Her eyes are bright and savage, and her fingers seem longer than they did before, her stature taller. Harry does wonder if the binding physically changed the elves, made them into smaller creatures that wizards and witches could feel superior to.

Maybe.

Soon, they'll know.

Harry looks over his shoulder. Griphook stands there, and he gives Harry a little nod. It's fitting that a goblin and house-elf help Harry now, and the first ones, the ones who came to him in his first year and started it all.

Bast is on his shoulder. Harry reaches up and caresses her fur. In return, she headbutts him, and then sits up and begins to purr.

Harry draws the knife that Albus gave him on his birthday, iron, with bone for the hilt. Bast's purring speeds up. Griphook begins to chant. Misty provides the silence, yearning and waiting, pulling Harry towards the future yet to be born.

Harry has already removed his shirt. He glances down at the representation of the binding on the floor and begins to carve it into his chest.

He would never be able to duplicate it if it was a normal night. If the binding hadn't already been fractured. If this wasn't the winter solstice. If Griphook's chant and Bast's purr weren't protecting him against the effects of too much blood loss. If he was less determined. If he didn't know Misty's silence was waiting.

Like this, it's—not easy, but manageable.

Harry falls into the binding, into the complex paths and interlaced knots, in the twists of it that echo the twisting the old wizards did to hide the secret of the binding and the soul-marks from detection. His wrist aches, but it's a distant thing. The cutting hurts, but it's a distant thing. He hears the chant, the purr, but they're distant things.

The binding isn't distant. Misty's silence isn't distant. They're there, and they're with him as he continues the carving.

Harry doesn't know what prompts him to know that he's done. The binding itself certainly doesn't tell him. Weak as it is now, Harry can feel the patterns snapping at him with hostile energy. They would drag him into themselves and imprison him there forever if they could.

But they can't. And Harry knows that he's finished the pattern, carving behind the first lines of his chest. In a very real way, the pattern extends into his soul now.

Which means it's time for Malfoy's part in the ritual.

Harry kneels down beside him. Malfoy flinches and screams harder, for all that he's still Silenced, and the loudest noise he can make is his heels drumming the stone. Even that has a pattern, of sorts, Harry thinks, fitting in around the chant and the purr and the waiting silence.

Malfoy obviously thinks his throat is about to be slit. But it's not a sacrifice that Harry wants.

It's his mark.

He digs the knife into Malfoy's arm and cuts the mark—reduced to a tiny colored patch with a glimpse of what might once have been an eye or a leaf here and there—off.

Malfoy screams even louder at that, or harder, his head shaking and his body shuddering. He probably would rather that I'd slit his throat, Harry thinks absently, as he stands up and turns around with the damaged mark in his hand. The lines of the binding pattern shimmer sullenly on the floor, and Harry smiles.

He touches the flap of cut skin to the binding pattern that he's carved on his chest, and there's a flare of magic so deep and dark that Harry feels for a second as if the solstice night has come into the room with them. He holds the mark there until, again, the magic tugs at him to tell him it's done.

Then he casts the flap of skin down onto the pattern etched among the stones.

There's a scream that seems to start a longer distance away than is physically possible, and then a flare of darkness from the floor that really reinforces Harry's impression that the night is indoors with them. He steps back, but makes sure he stays within the limits of the circle. The goblins' research said he had to.

There's another scream, and this time, Harry thinks he can hear dozens of voices as part of it. No, hundreds. No, thousands. Tens of thousands.

The sound builds on itself until the room is shaking. Harry clenches his hands and watches the darkness dancing up from the floor, spinning in on itself like a tornado, embracing the pattern of the binding and—

Crack.

The sound flings Harry to the floor with its force. He hits his head, and goes woozy, but the magic cradles him and sustains him. Bast rides his shoulder down and never stops purring. Griphook's chant doesn't falter.

There's a long spiral of silence that follows the darkness down and hangs in the air, and does eventually hush both the purr and the chant. Harry lies there, blinking, the shudder of immense energies dying around them, and wonders how they'll know that it worked.

Then Misty laughs.

Harry spins around. Misty is—

Is taller, has longer fingers, has a mane of silver hair growing up her neck, and a paler green color to her skin, and fingernails like claws, and teeth that are meant for chewing and spitting meat.

But she still has the look of his friend, and as Harry stares at her, wondering if she really is free, she meets his eyes and smiles a smile that he knows.

"Thank you, Harry," she says. "I need never say master to anyone again." She tilts her head. "Nor do any of my kind. Come and see."

Harry follows her out of Gringotts, and joins the goblins on the steps of the bank, staring out into Diagon Alley.

Everywhere, there are pulses of brilliant green and black magic as the freed house-elves step out of buildings. Everywhere, there are shrieks and screams as wizards and witches without soul-marks flee from them. Everywhere, there are sobs as some people kneel in the streets and stare at their bare arms.

Everywhere, there is chaos.

Harry takes a deep breath and looks up at the sky. The stars are serene, watching all of them. He thinks of Sirius, who he hopes is safe in the sanitarium where Albus found sanctuary for him. According to Albus, he is. The Healers there do the work themselves, and while they'll be stunned by the loss of their marks, the countries outside Britain have at least acted more sensibly about this. Viktor says that people were already preparing themselves for transition to a life without marks, since smart people saw where the fading of them was leading.

But probably, no one is completely safe anymore. Malfoy, Stunned down below in the ritual room, might be the safest of anyone in Diagon Alley right now. He'll be returned to his parents in the morning.

Or Albus might be safe, in their hidden cottage where an elf has never set foot except for Harry's friends. Hermione is hopefully safe at home in the Muggle world. Viktor has taken his family into hiding, Harry knows, and they didn't have elves in the last few years anyway. Astoria has friends among the elves who can hopefully protect her and Daphne.

Will there be a Hogwarts to go back to at the end of the holiday term?

Harry doesn't know.

He does know that he's broken the binding, and although he'll carry the scar of it on his chest forever, that's better than the marks others bore.

Things aren't done. There's Sirius to recover. There's people like Astoria and Albus to try and integrate back into whatever wizard society rises from the ruins. There's the panic that will attend the discovery that goblins and centaurs, and a few merfolk, now wield wands. There's his parents' research to investigate, which actually didn't find that the soul-marks had ties to house-elf slavery at all, but did look in the direction of how soul-bonds might be created without marks, and between people of different species, and people in the past and present.

There is still Voldemort to hunt. And Pettigrew, whom Sirius insists might be alive.

Harry nods, shakes Misty's hand, and walks towards his next task.

The End.