Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last part of "Shadow-People Singing Ancient Songs." I'll update the series again with what is likely to be the last part in the summer solstice series of 2022.
Ever On and On
When Harry steps out through the front of Gringotts with a few other goblins, he can see that it's not as simple as the Ministry and the Death Eaters fighting side by side. The known Death Eaters, like Lucius Malfoy, stand next to the Aurors with drawn wands but no bone-white masks or the like. It's more that the Ministry believes these people are on their side, while Harry and his clan know they're on Voldemort's.
Lucius Malfoy catches Harry's eye with an evil stare. Probably thinking that he owes Harry both for his lord and his son. Harry gives him a little wave, making sure it's with a dagger.
"Harry Potter! You will cease this at once!"
They've left Fudge to speak, which only proves they know nothing. Harry sighs and stares at him. "Why are you talking to me as though I started the rebellion? My whole clan had to vote to start it."
"You—you are a human!" Fudge waves a finger at Harry, and that's when his tongue locks up.
Harry shakes his head. "You don't believe that I'm human, even though you believe that I'm somehow in charge of this rebellion that so many of my people voted to start, but that's probably done to residual prejudices about how goblins work. I didn't start this, and I won't call it off." He glances around, pretending surprise at the sight of the drawn wands in everyone's hands. "Why are all of you standing here with weapons? On goblin land?"
There's a stirring and a shoving back in the ranks, and Amelia Bones pushes her way forwards, looking harassed. "My apologies, Mr. Potter," she huffs out, turning to glare at Fudge. "I told them what an insult this would be, and someone—" her glare scorched Lucius Malfoy "—said, 'All the better.'"
"That's because he doesn't really think of goblins as sentient beings," Harry says cheerfully. "Also, I kind of stole his son from him."
"You did what?" Fudge croaks, as his tongue unlocks.
"Draco wanted to swear an oath to me," Harry says, and shrugs. "I told him he couldn't really do that, but he could swear an oath of mutual aid to my clan. So that's what we did. And now he's an ally of the goblins." He beams at Lucius Malfoy. "We can accept even former enemies if they treat goblins the right way."
"You corrupted my son," Malfoy whispers. His arm is shaking.
"Opened his eyes, I would rather phrase it," Harry says, and keeps his eyes on Malfoy's wand.
Malfoy unleashes a jinx that would make Harry wet himself and fall down on the steps crying. Harry counters it with his daggers, and it bounces off and hits one of the Aurors. Harry shrugs at the gaping looks he gets. Not his fault that the lot of them are so ill-prepared.
That's the signal for the violence to begin, it seems. The Aurors all begin firing Stunners and raising Shields, and although Madam Bones shouts at them, they're too busy to pay any attention to the one sensible human. The Death Eaters are right there with them, using the sort of nasty spells they wouldn't get away with using on humans but which will probably be overlooked if they use them on goblins.
Harry bounces a Stunner from his daggers and forges forwards, beside Gravensword, who looks a little nervous. All goblins have to fight when the horns call, but Gravensword isn't a trained warrior.
Harry winks at him and says, "Follow my lead." Then he charges straight at a thicket of Aurors. He hears Gravensword yelp and follow.
Harry reaches out and asks the belts and buttons and buckles on the Aurors' uniforms to help him. They agree, or at least most of them, and suddenly robes are popping open and trousers are dropping and half the people in the crowd of Aurors are yelping and grabbing at themselves to shield groins or bare arses.
Harry grins and whips around to face Malfoy. He owes him for forcing Draco to take the Dark Mark.
Malfoy uses a curse Harry has never seen before, and which he would pause to study if he had more time. As it is, he moves forwards and accepts the way that it splashes through his defenses and spreads intense pain through his chest. Pain is pain. It didn't kill him, and that means he can keep going.
He charges.
Malfoy backs up a step, as if he thought his curse would lay Harry out and can't comprehend why it didn't. Then his face hardens, and he lowers his wand. "Confringo!"
The Blasting Curse hits the stone in front of him and opens a hole, making it groan. It's nowhere near as challenging as the chasms that he had to hurdle in warrior training. Harry leaps over it and nails Malfoy in the leg with Stargazer.
Bright white flames spring up, the way they did around the Horcrux and Fenrir Greyback. Malfoy bends over with a screech, clawing at the wound. Harry tears Stargazer free and leaps back. The last thing he wants to do is lose the dagger with a piece of his mother's soul in it to the clutch of a Death Eater.
Malfoy stares at Harry, panting, his eyes wide. Afraid. Harry nods. Cowardice suits him better than it usually does a human.
"Ready to surrender?" Harry asks softly.
Malfoy's face tightens with rage, and this time, it's the Killing Curse he aims at Harry.
Harry dives and spins underneath it, but hears a body fall behind him. He glances over his shoulder and sees Gravensword sprawled out on the ground, staring up at the sky with glassy eyes.
One of the first friends he ever had—his fellow apprentice under Toothsplitter for years on end—
Harry turns back to Malfoy, and climbs slowly back to his feet. Malfoy is laughing in satisfaction, but falls silent as Harry looks at him.
"You're going to die," Harry says softly, and advances.
Malfoy backs up a pace, and then another. Then he looks furious at himself, maybe for backing away from a seventeen-year-old boy, but he's sweating, and he keeps doing it. "Now, now, Mr. Potter," he murmurs. "Let us not be hasty…just think of what Draco would say…"
"He'll understand my motivations," Harry says, shrugging. Draco despises his father. He'll probably have complicated emotions about Harry actually killing him, true, but he's confessed to Harry in the last month that it's something he fantasizes about doing.
"You can't—Avada Kedavra!"
Stargazer is humming in Harry's hand, and he trusts his daggers more than any other object in existence. He holds it up.
The green curse slams into the shining surface of the dagger, and causes enough rippling reflections for a moment that Harry thinks of a pond with a stone thrown into it. Then the green light springs out and right back at Malfoy.
He crumples, dead.
Harry nods coldly. He supposes he should have known that a blade with a piece of his mother's soul in it would be able to do that. Lily Potter stood in front of the Killing Curse from Voldemort, a much more powerful caster than Malfoy, and defied it. Her blade-self can defy it, too.
Harry turns around and rejoins the battle.
Down the Paths
"The Ministry is suing for peace."
Harry blinks and sits back in his chair on the other side of Gorgeslitter's desk. "That seems…fast," he says.
Gorgeslitter gives him a narrow-edged smile. "I believe a large part of it has to do with the way that Fudge saw you kill Lucius Malfoy. From what I understand, Malfoy had a great deal of influence over Fudge, mostly monetary."
"And the other part is the Killing Curse," Toothsplitter adds, leaning forwards. "There is no counter to the Killing Curse, as you well know."
Harry frowns and lifts a hand to feel around at his scar. "But everyone knows I survived it."
"There is a difference," Toothsplitter says haughtily, although her lips are twitching, "between surviving it as a baby with the aid of magic that your parents are not around to answer questions about, and blocking it with a dagger."
Harry nods. He supposes so. And in some ways, Toothsplitter understands the way humans think about these things better, for all that Harry is human in body and spends a lot of time around humans at Hogwarts. Toothsplitter is still older than he is by decades, and has been dealing with the Ministry politicians for a lot of those decades.
"The peace lays out the terms we want?" he asks Gorgeslitter.
Gorgeslitter nods. "The Creature Culture and Goblin Dueling classes will still be taught at Hogwarts, and the Goblin Dueling one will receive NEWT status. Goblins are to be granted entrance to Hogwarts for the purposes of teaching and taking these classes, and proctoring the exams." He coughs a little. "And Blackeye said that she would be willing to come and teach some of the Creature Culture classes, but not all of them."
Harry grins. That means other goblins of his clan will be coming to Hogwarts. He can't wait to see them.
"The Ministry has issued the formal apology for bringing weapons to our land that we were waiting for, and promised not to pursue any charges for the deaths, of which there were three, not counting Lucius Malfoy."
"And the position of goblins in the Ministry?"
Gorgeslitter cackles. "Can you believe, that was the one they were most unhappy about? I thought it was the classes, based on what Fudge was saying to your Headmaster, but no. They aren't happy about funding the Goblin Liaison Office the same as the rest of the departments."
"But they'll do it?"
"They'll do it." Gorgeslitter taps his claws on the desk again. "You have brought much change to our clan and the Ministry, amaracazh."
Harry bows his head in respect and acceptance of the compliment. All goblins are expected to change the world in some way, if only through their crafts, but few of them manage it at as young an age as Harry.
"If that is all, Gorgeslitter…"
"Yes, of course." Gorgeslitter's face softens as he looks back and forth between Harry and Toothsplitter. "I understand that you wish to honor him. And you should. He fought bravely, for all that he did not attain warrior status."
Harry closes his eyes for a moment, honoring the invocation of Gravensword's spirit, and then he and Toothsplitter stand up and take their leave, heading for the funeral.
The funeral procession begins at Toothsplitter's forge, where Gravensword spent most of his time, but spirals out from that, goblins of the clan who knew him dancing fiercely along the shores of the golden and silver lakes he loved the most.
Harry dances with them, the athletic movements making sweat pour down his face. He ignores that, and ignores the ache in his legs. This is for his friend, for his fellow apprentice. Even the pain he is feeling is a gift to Gravensword's memory.
The procession whirls and splits apart. Now goblins are dancing on air, as it wells up to support them, and on the surfaces of the molten gold and silver, as they quiet themselves so as not to burn the goblins' feet, and on the walls and ceiling of the cavern, as the magic absorbs them and the stone adorns their grief.
Gravensword, Gravensword…
Harry knows his spirit is settling into the Realm of Song, and that it will be at peace among the metal and the stones. But he still dances faster, his heart aching for his friend as a goblin, that form he will never wear again.
The dancers waver and split in his view, and Harry knows that he's wandering away from them, down the paths that open in the intense magic of a funeral. Harry whirls and keeps dancing, even when he has to keep it to just a slow, rhythmic walk thanks to the pain in his legs.
The path that opens for him now is one that exists only in the funeral, that will never exist again, that Harry is the only one to be able to walk. He walks, and walks, and passes alcoves in misty walls that are full of memories.
In one alcove, Gravensword smiles at Harry the first time he forged a blade that Toothsplitter deemed acceptable for another goblin to use. The steam rises and wreathes the alcove, and the forge sings as it did on that day long ago.
In another alcove, Gravensword hugs Harry on the day before he sets out for Hogwarts. Harry was miserable and frightened, despite himself, at the idea that he had to go live among wizards and might make mistakes or act dishonorably. Gravensword was the one who told him it would be all right, the only young goblin Harry had to talk to who understood his fear and didn't mistake it for cowardice. He had other friends, but they were too young for that.
In yet a third alcove, Harry and Gravensword run together through a quaking cavern, leaping as the purple tentacles of a Deep One coil and snap at them. They make it to the far side and whip around with a rousing laugh.
The laugh Harry will never hear again. The laugh that the Realm of Song is richer for having heard.
Harry dances, and the path opens for him, and he walks backwards in time accompanied by Gravensword's spirit as it settles, and once he opens his eyes and finds himself back at the forge as the sun rises far above, he, too, is at peace.
Old Childish Things
"Ginny Weasley."
Harry turns with his wand out when he hears that voice. It sounds so menacing and low that he has no idea who it is, unless Voldemort has somehow Transfigured his face to look like someone different and marched into the middle of Platform Nine and Three Quarters.
But it's not Voldemort. It's Molly Weasley, looming over Harry and Ginny where they've been chatting to each other on the train platform as the Hogwarts Express gets ready to leave.
"Mum," Ginny says. She doesn't sound defensive, but her shoulders slump.
Harry finds his smile turning steely as he faces Ginny's mum. He knows she's not a bad person, and in some ways her concerns for Ginny are justified. There's a war coming up, and Ginny's in Gryffindor, and she's a friend of the Boy-Who-Lived. Mrs. Weasley is right to worry that Ginny will probably be targeted.
But she's wrong to think that that means Ginny should sit out of the war with her hands folded in her lap. And she's beyond wrong to think that Ginny will never have a future because she's been trained by a goblin.
"Back off," Harry says softly.
Mrs. Weasley stops walking, stops moving, in fact, and blinks at him with a long, incredulous expression. Harry knows that she doesn't think of him as a threat. Whether or not she knows he's a trained goblin warrior, she knows that he's her daughter's friend.
But Harry is Ginny's friend, and Fred and George's, not their mother's.
"Young man!" Mrs. Weasley snaps a second later, when she evidently gets over the shock of being addressed that way by someone she'll see as a child. "You know very well that. Ginny can't date anyone while you spend so much time around her! They're afraid to ask her out with you—you brandishing your knives everywhere! And you've passed that nonsense on to Ginny. Which kind of boy will find a girl with blades in her hands attractive?"
"The kind I want to date!" Ginny yells.
Her mother appears to ignore the words, and instead looks triumphantly at Harry, as if she thinks her words will make an impression on him. Harry steps forwards, keeping his hands conspicuously away from his daggers and shoving his wand back into his holster. Mrs. Weasley probably won't understand the movements, but Ginny will, and she's the one he's speaking to.
Harry intends to fight this for her.
"Ginny is one of the best people I know," Harry says flatly. "Open-minded, honorable, brave. If you try to turn her into someone else because you think that she's better that way, then she'll just leave."
Mrs. Weasley stares at him with her mouth hanging open.
"She'll go away, and you'll never see her again, except maybe for some stilted visits at holidays." Harry shakes his head. "Is that really what you want? You want some ideal of Ginny dating a human boy you find acceptable and not dueling because you don't like it more than you want the real Ginny?"
"Of course not!" Mrs. Weasley is pale enough to make her freckles stand out like blood. "But she's—she wasn't like this before you started tutoring her! You're turning her into a goblin!"
"Which means she's no longer your daughter?"
"No! But she was fine her first year, and now this—"
"The year she was possessed?" Harry lowers his voice so he's not shouting the news about that to the whole platform. But he's shaking with fury. He can't believe that Mrs. Weasley believes this. "The year that none of you noticed?"
"I—I, Ginny—" Mrs. Weasley looks as if she's about to reach past Harry to try to get to Ginny.
Harry doesn't draw his daggers, because that would be in full view of a bunch of staring humans and not a good idea, but he steps nearer Mrs. Weasley and stares at her. He doesn't have to look up as far as he would have had to years earlier, although starvation early in his childhood means that he'll probably never be as tall as Ginny's mother. But under his unwavering stare, she drops her gaze.
"Ginny is a fine person," Harry says quietly. "And some of that comes from the way you raised her. But now you're acting as though having a date to Hogsmeade, no matter how badly the boy treats her, is better than Ginny having her own will and learning how to defend herself. You know very well she hasn't given up her wand. She's just added her daggers to it."
"She's so violent," Mrs. Weasley whispers. "I don't understand her anymore."
"Mum, you haven't understood me for a long time." Ginny comes forwards to stand beside Harry, and her voice is so weary that Harry doesn't try to intervene. "I want to speak to you and let you get to know me again. But you have to start listening."
So many things come down to that, Harry thinks. Humans hearing but not listening.
"Ginny, I…" Mrs. Weasley trails off, staring at her daughter as if she really has never seen her before. "You're happy?"
"Yes, Mum." Ginny gives her a soft smile, softer than Harry would be able to manage with a human as overbearing as this. Then again, his only human family is Sirius. "Not so happy when you question me, but happy."
Mrs. Weasley slowly takes out a handkerchief and uses it to blot at the edges of her eyes. "All right, Ginny," she whispers. "All right. I just—I think about how happy I was with your father in my sixth year and to know that you're going into yours and you don't have a boyfriend yet…"
"I'll be fine," Ginny says, and if only Harry sees the edge to her smile, well, that's all right. "I'll live a long time, Mum. And there are boys out there who aren't at Hogwarts. Maybe I'll marry a Muggle. Wouldn't that thrill Dad?"
Mrs. Weasley gives a watery laugh, and hugs her. Harry politely looks away, even though he thinks human parents and children probably don't have the same rules about it being rude to stare at them while they're hugging that goblin parents and children do.
Mrs. Weasley even looks at Harry as if she wants to hug him, but Harry just stares at her with a polite smile until she gives it up. He doesn't particularly want to be touched by someone who thinks it's a bad thing for him to be friends with Ginny, and even if she's given up on trying to force Ginny to date a "suitable boy," that doesn't mean she likes him being a goblin.
"Thanks," Ginny whispers as they get on the train. "I love Mum. I do. Sometimes she's just…"
"Very human," Harry finishes.
Ginny nods, and they let the subject drop.
Hand in Hand
"Mr. Potter, you sent three people to the hospital wing."
Harry smiles innocently at Dumbledore. They've had a few wary conversations over the past few months leading up to Christmas, but honestly, Harry's seventh year has been mostly quiet so far. He keeps hearing rumors of Voldemort gathering his forces from the goblins of his clan, who keep an eye on the Death Eaters coming in to access accounts, but Voldemort hasn't tried to attack Hogwarts or have his Death Eaters do so so far.
Even Snape seems a lot happier than he used to be, maybe because he's teaching Potions, after switching back from Defense, for the last year. Since he's not a Death Eater anymore and can't be one, he's leaving the school at the end of term.
Harry thinks it's the best decision for everyone, especially because Snape, for all that he acted honorably last year, might not again, and Harry would hate to have to kill him.
Then, of course, this morning there was a lot of excitement.
"You put three people in the hospital wing," Dumbledore says, and he's changed his wording a little, as if he thinks that will get Harry's attention.
Harry cocks his head. "They strung up my best friend from the ceiling and stripped her naked," he says simply. He still shakes a little with rage, remembering walking around the corner and seeing Luna like that. But he got revenge, and Luna was okay when she woke up. "You don't care about that, of course."
"I would have assigned them detentions…"
"Except that you would have said we didn't know who he had done it, and clucked and shaken your head about how it was just a prank, and secretly thought that Luna deserved it for being my friend."
Dumbledore opens his mouth, and then shuts it slowly. Then he whispers, "I never would have thought any student deserved that."
"Then why are you upset that I put Silas Edgecombe and Su Li and Jordan Hunter in the hospital wing with broken bones that Madam Pomfrey can heal, even if it'll take a month?" Harry asks, coldly. He leans forwards. "I want to understand, Dumbledore. There's no goblin healer here now to make you nervous or try to heal your mind. Tell me what you think. Tell me plainly."
Dumbledore avoids his eyes. Harry remains quiet, hoping to encourage him to speak in a way that he won't if Harry keeps interrupting. But he really does want to know why Dumbledore is more upset about this than what they did to Luna. His eyes didn't even widen when Harry told him what Edgecombe and Li and Hunter had done.
Finally, Dumbledore clears his throat. Harry leans forwards again.
"I must believe in the prophecy," Dumbledore whispers. "Otherwise, I cannot foresee any end to the war with Voldemort. He will always return. He already has. He was unstoppable until he died in 1981.
"But you—you are not the person I envisioned fulfilling the prophecy. You are not human. You are not a kind or generous or forgiving soul. It seems to me that you grow more like Voldemort every year."
Harry feels himself chilling at the comparison to the murderer of his parents. He opens his mouth, ready to point out that he withdrew his challenge to duel Snape and accepted Draco swearing an oath to ally with his clan. (Draco did stay pale and silent around Harry for a while when the news of Lucius's death came out, but he returned to Hogwarts, and he's told Harry thanks, once, in an out-of-the-way corner where no one else could see. And he helped get Luna down from the ceiling and make sure she was all right).
"He uses violence," Dumbledore hurries on, maybe realizing he hasn't made the right move by invoking Voldemort. "He is certain he is right. He is not open to other ways and means of acting. He despises all people different from him, all other species."
Harry stares at him. He waits for Dumbledore to reveal that he did go to a Mind-Healer after Blackeye stopped speaking to him and is now using irony, but he doesn't. He folds his hands on the desk and looks desperately at Harry.
"You could be describing yourself," Harry says quietly.
Dumbledore recoils hard enough to rattle a portrait on the wall behind him. His desk grumbles again. Harry pats the edge of it commiseratingly. It must have seen a lot of shit down the years.
"I do not—"
"You use the violence of lies and prejudice against us," Harry says, shaking his head. "You're certain you're right. You don't care about other ways and means of acting; you think that I'm like Voldemort because I don't act the way you would prefer. You despise goblins. I don't know what you want me to say, Headmaster."
Dumbledore draws himself up with strength from somewhere. Harry just watches and waits.
"I forgive," Dumbledore whispers. "I allowed Mr. Malfoy to stay in the school last year, while you revealed his Dark Mark—"
"And then I forgave him enough that he might enter into an alliance with my clan."
"You killed his father!"
Harry laughs in Dumbledore's face. "You think that was revenge for what Draco did? I would kill Draco if I still had a problem with that. I killed Lucius Malfoy in revenge for killing a friend of mine."
"There!" Dumbledore points a shaking finger at him. "You believe in revenge!"
"Yes, I do." Harry shrugs. "That means revenge against Voldemort, too. Don't worry. I'll destroy him for you. It just won't be the way that I suspect you would like me to pursue. The human way." He stands. "I think this conversation is done being productive."
"Detention for a month, for what you did to them!"
"Are you going to give detention for a month to Edgecombe and Li and—"
"They've been punished enough!"
Harry nods, and turns around and heads down the moving staircase. It sings to him, a soft, stinging tune, telling him that it could trap Dumbledore in his office.
"He'd just Floo out," Harry murmurs, touching the wall of the staircase. "Thanks, though."
He knows Dumbledore isn't all bad, or Fawkes would never have chosen him for a companion. But he's…deaf. Like Mrs. Weasley before Harry and Ginny talked to her. Only there's no one close enough to Dumbledore to make him abandon his course of believing the war has to be fought his way and that Harry showing anything less than perfect saintliness and perfect forgiveness is wrong.
Harry shakes his head as he steps off the stairs. He'll go home for the New Year, and he'll speak with his people about carrying the war to Voldemort. About figuring out if he has any last Horcruxes that they need to destroy.
He'll exist in the school, without serving detention. He'll teach the Goblin Dueling classes. He'll remain Luna's friend, and Ginny's, and associate with Hermione and Draco. He'll do what he can. He's not on the opposite side of the war from Dumbledore.
But he is on the opposite side of a species gap, one which Harry is beginning to believe will never be bridged.
He smiles wanly to himself, and returns to Ravenclaw Tower to see how Luna is doing.
He finds her sitting on a couch in the common room near the statue of Rowena Ravenclaw, braiding daisies together. Harry sits down and puts his arm around her. Luna leans on him.
"You're all right?" Harry whispers.
"Yes." Luna smiles at him. "The spiders told me you were upset." She lifts the daisies and drops them over his head. Harry bows his head and accepts them, and listens to the flowers chattering about life in the rich grass.
Luna leans against him and hums a little song. Harry leans back and listens to the stones singing of the weight they bear, the couch underneath them telling tales of all the students who have sat on it over the years, the fire speaking hungrily of logs.
There are people in the world who don't listen.
But there are others who sing.
And they're enough.