Thank you for all the responses on the last chapter! Review responses up in LJ later.

For now, enjoy this chapter, and Harry's attitude. Or not, as it pleases you.

Chapter Sixteen: Battle Plans

Harry knocked on the door to Snape's office in high good humor, and felt the man's presence inside his mind grow cruel with suspicion. Harry was never in a good mood when he came for his lessons. Either he was stressed, after dealing with the emotions that swam his thoughts and the other students all day, or he simply was grim and determined, wanting to master the new Occlumency techniques as swiftly as possible.

"Enter," Snape said after a moment, and Harry stepped inside, glanced quickly around just to make sure that no one else was here, and shut the door behind him.

"Professor Snape, sir," he said, feeling rarely-used emotions of excitement and hope rise to the surface of his mind. Snape leaned forward from behind his desk, eyes intent. Harry suspected he was about to get some lecture on how Occlumency was an art of motion again, and that he had to be able to shut away happiness as effortlessly as he was working to shut away grief and anger. "I have an idea for a plot on how to defeat Tom Riddle."

The box bucked in his mind, and Sylarana hissed at him. Could you avoid talking about him unless you absolutely must? You know how he gets.

I do know, Harry told her, and stroked her back where she lay on his arm. And you are a wonderful snake, a magnificent snake, for holding him in so effectively.

Sylarana made a small suspicious sound under her breath, but accepted the praise and the petting. Harry looked back at Snape, who had his head on one side and had already stood up from behind his desk.

"You think you know a way, at least, Mr. Potter," he whispered. "Can you keep thinking of it even as I attack? Legilimens!"

Harry rolled his eyes and leaped aside in his mind as Snape started to probe it. Their training lessons were always like this, now. Snape provoked Harry's anger and frustration on purpose, and then told him to keep that concealed or steady while he searched Harry's thoughts. Harry suspected it was indeed useful training, but Snape was growing predictable in the way he maneuvered.

He shouldn't be predictable. That could be bad news for Connor as well as for me. Snape is the only well-trained Occlumens I can persuade, certainly the only one Dumbledore and other adults would be inclined to listen to. I have to make sure that he keeps up with his own training, too.

He launched his plan as hard as he could, into Snape's face. Snape gasped and reeled back from him, and Harry could see something other than darkness swarming with colors. Snape sat down hard in his seat and blinked at Harry, then shook his head.

"That was—impressive, Mr. Potter," he said, in a tone from which all colors had been bleached.

Harry rolled his eyes again. "Thank you. But what do you think of the plan? Or are you referring to the plan as well as your expulsion from my thoughts?"

"You would want to kill me, of course, if I were a real enemy, or at least disarm me," Snape went on, sitting up in his chair and folding his hands in a lecturing pose. "After all, if I escaped knowing your plan, you would not be pleased."

Harry nodded. "And what do you think of the plan?"

Snape clenched his hands in front of him. "That is insanely dangerous," he said. "The kind of risky scheme more likely to be concocted by a Gryffindor. In a fever dream."

"If you compare me to my brother, Professor Snape, you're complimenting me, not insulting me," Harry said, his tone pleasant with sheer determination. "And having Tom Riddle in my head is already insanely dangerous."

"That it won't work," said Snape. "The whole thing depends on a combination of timing and skill that is hard in the extreme to achieve."

"I believe it can work," said Harry, meeting and holding his eyes. The fact that Sylarana had not objected to it gave him hope. Her support would probably be the most important element of this. "No, we can't do anything about his growing restlessness, but we can make sure that I defeat him."

Snape leaned forward across the desk. "That it requires—a depth of magic that you do not have yet, Harry. Strength, yes, of course, but you cannot fight the Dark Lord on the grounds of magical strength alone. He knows more. He knew more even when he was his present age, and he may have drawn more of your magic through the box. It is impossible to know that without venturing past the shields, which I will not do."

Harry nodded. "By depth, sir, do you mean something like this?" He closed his eyes and brought his magic up around him, the way he had in Dumbledore's office. He smelled the clean scent of the waterfall again, and heard the bells ringing, and the voice singing in the distance.

The magic was coming from some place under him, for lack of a better word, he thought. If his mind was a series of webs, the way that both Draco and Snape insisted, then this came from beneath the places where the webs ran out, slender bridges over a black gulf. This was the magic beneath, the magic embedded in his body and his bones and his heart.

"Mr. Potter."

Harry opened his eyes. He could just barely see Snape through a shimmering, swimming haze of power. The professor's eyes were slits, and he had his wand in one hand. Harry hoped that he wouldn't try to read Harry's mind right now. Harry was not entirely sure whose mind he would get.

"That is something like what I meant, yes," said Snape quietly. "Put it away now."

Gently, Harry folded the magic back into its proper place, tucking the folds of cloth and wings in place over each other. His magic grumbled about it. Now that it was properly awake, it wanted to be used. There were spells he could do with it about him like this, protections he could create, small discontinuities in space that it could mend for him if he wished…

But it listened to him when he told it to go, and sank away from sight.

Harry shook his head. He felt diminished, somehow, after standing in the midst of all that power. But he reminded himself, as Lily always had, that there were greater things than power, greater things than magic. Love was one of them, and he had to love Connor, for his innocence, his purity, even his stupidity that insisted standing with Slytherin House equaled to being Dark. So long as his brother could think those things, he was still a child, his heart unstained.

Harry, meanwhile, made insanely dangerous plans for getting Voldemort out of his head.

He felt Tom Riddle buck in the box again, but ignored it. He looked up and held Snape's eyes, and waited for his verdict.

Snape shook his head once, slowly. His eyes were the least blank that Harry had ever seen them, though he could not tell what emotion struggled behind them. He was still not good at reading anyone else's feelings save for Connor's. "I could wish that you had no necessity to do this," he murmured. "That you had never been trained into the warrior that it seems you are becoming."

Harry tilted his head to the side. "That's an odd thing for you to wish, sir. If I were more like my brother, you would hate me. If I were not what I am, then you would not like me as well as you do."

Snape flinched at that, actually flinched, though Harry supposed his chances of seeing it that way were heightened by Snape's presence in his head. The professor closed his eyes and shook his head.

"It is a dangerous plan," he said. "And one that depends too much on power. And I think that once such magic as you possess is summoned forth, it may not tamely lie back down in its place again."

Harry waited.

Snape opened his eyes and nodded to Harry. "But it is the only plan that will work. We will work on it. In the meantime, I suggest you go to the Headmaster. You will need to stay in the school over Christmas holidays for it to have any chance of working."

"Yes, sir," said Harry. "Thank you, sir." He turned and left. It wasn't very late yet, but the Headmaster might go to bed soon. Harry didn't know what kinds of hours he kept.

That's bad, he thought as he trotted along the entrance hall. I have to know his hours, He's not my enemy, but he could not be my friend without a strange twist in circumstances, and I should know him better than I do.

"Brother."

Harry turned slowly. He realized, finally, that he hadn't renewed the Muffliato spell when it ran out after dinner. He had gone to see Snape, unable to think of anything else, and now it was being taken advantage of.

A huge crowd of students stood around the hall, an obviously arranged crowd. They formed a rough circle. Harry had walked into the middle of it without so much as noticing.

He bared his teeth despite himself, fury and anxiety surging to the front of his mind. Connor, who was stepping forward from the far left side of the circle, flanked by Ron and Hermione, smiled thinly at him.

"See how he shows his teeth like a beast?" he asked the other students, mostly Ravenclaws and Gryffindors. "I can't believe that the professors let him stay here in school with us. It's only a matter of time before he loses control completely and attacks someone else."

Harry held his brother's eyes. He saw nothing of compassion in them, nothing of mercy, nothing of forgiveness. He saw nothing of the innocence he always looked out for. Connor looked like nothing so much as a bully getting ready to enjoy the tears and wails of a captive victim, like the Ravenclaw bullies who had tormented Luna. Harry thought he could see them out of the corner of his eye, in fact—Gorgon and Jones, pressing forward and ready to enjoy the show.

Harry's resolve hardened and pinned down the other emotions. He had his new plans and his new priorities and Tom Riddle in his head, yes, but his first and oldest duty was taking care of Connor. He had indulged his brother thus far. They had been childish games, things that could not truly hurt him.

But now Connor was getting ready to make the kind of mistake that his future leadership in the wizarding world might never recover from. Harry had to stop him.

Sylarana started to stir on his arm. No! Harry snapped at her, and she stopped. She said nothing, knowing better than to contest him.

Draco felt his danger then, and sat up in his bed down in the Slytherin dungeons. I can be there in two minutes with five other Slytherins, Harry. Just say the word.

There are too many of them, Harry disagreed calmly, his eyes never moving from his brother's. And I want to handle this one by myself. It's been a long time coming.

Draco grumbled in his head, but said nothing else. Snape's presence was watchful and silent. Sylarana coiled herself about the box and said nothing, either.

Because he was looking for it, Harry saw the motion near the edges of the crowd. He turned his eyes in that direction without turning his head. Sure enough, Justin and several other Hufflepuffs stood there, watching intently. He could not tell if they were more interested in him or Connor.

Equally, probably, he thought, and then turned back as Connor pulled a piece of parchment out of his robes and began to read aloud.

"We, Connor Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger," he began officiously, "have compiled the following list of evidence that Harry Potter is a Dark wizard, and should be banished at once from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, for the good of all other students."

Harry sighed. Sometimes his brother crossed the line into foolishness, and this was one of those times.

"Who are you going to present the list to?" he asked, cutting his brother off in mid-pontification. It wasn't even hard. His voice was mild, but it could slice through the crude logic Connor was spouting. "By law, a list like this has to be presented to the Headmaster if you're on school grounds, or to the Ministry if you're not. You should know that, Connor. Several Dark wizards were removed from school grounds during the First War. There's a procedure for it." He let his eyes flick sideways and catch Hermione's. "Someone should have told you about the legal precedents."

Hermione flushed in such a way that Harry thought she knew exactly what the list should have done. He held her gaze for a long moment, wondering why she had gone along with this. Was it just because Connor was the Boy-Who-Lived? Or was her friendship with him deeper than Harry had thought? That satisfied him, if so, that she would think she should break the rules for the sake of friendship, but he wished she had chosen some less conspicuous way of doing so.

"Shut up," said Connor, his face flushing. "I know that it has to be presented to the Headmaster to be legal. But I'm reading it out here first because I want the whole school to know your crimes." He drew in a breath to continue.

"The whole school?" Harry looked around again, but his first impression had not been wrong. The students standing there were Ravenclaws and Gryffindors, with a smattering of Hufflepuffs on the edges of things. Not a single Slytherin, nor most of Hufflepuff House, nor even all of Ravenclaw and Gryffindor; Harry knew that the two prefects Dumbledore had assigned to watch him, Percy Weasley and Penelope Clearwater, were missing. "No. I think that you should have done it in the Great Hall at mealtime if you wanted to catch everybody—"

"Shut up!" said Connor again, and this time rattled the parchment for emphasis. "Unless you fear the proof that we have made up to convict you."

"Made up," said Harry, turning back and smiling at Connor. He was starting to enjoy himself now. Guilt lay twined with the enjoyment, running alongside it, and yet he did not think he could have kept himself from speaking if he had tried. "That's an interesting slip of the tongue, brother."

"Shut up!" Connor yelled, and then began to read hastily. "We have reason to believe that Harry James Potter is responsible for the Petrifications occurring in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. One victim was Luna Lovegood, a pureblood Ravenclaw first-year whom the accused was often seen near in the weeks before her Petrification. The other was Neville Longbottom, a pureblood Gryffindor second-year whom the accused often worked with in Potions. He was found near Lovegood's body, and could easily have been found near Longbottom's body."

"Opportunity doesn't mean that I did it," said Harry calmly.

Connor's eyes flashed viciously at him over the top of the paper. "The accused would also have had the time and opportunity to do it against his own will. He was possessed by an artifact, a book, which apparently whispered into his head and made him forget his surroundings. Could that book be involved in the Peterifications that followed? Could the possession have made the accused into a Dark wizard? Investigations are pending."

Harry froze for a long moment as the whispers escalated around him. That Connor would expose this secret to the people around him…

He had gone too far. He had forgotten family loyalty and the forgiveness of enemies, justice and mercy both, in his pursuit of this silly rivalry.

Harry closed his eyes. A moment later, his brother yelped. Harry looked again to see the paper flickering and flashing and falling to ashes.

"I can guess the other things that were on there," Harry said softly, his eyes never straying from Connor's face. His magic trembled around him, raised wings, wanting to strike. Harry ignored that impulse. He was always going to defend Connor, never hurt him, even if right now his brother would have a hard time seeing how Harry defended him. "Beating you at Quidditch. Not letting Ron hurt Draco. Speaking to snakes. Casting Silencio on you. Not trusting you as much as I should have." He paused, then added, "Being Sorted into Slytherin. Did I get all of them?"

Connor's face drained of blood. "How did you—"

Harry sighed aloud. "Has it occurred to you that only possession and Parseltongue are Dark traits out of those, Connor? I could defeat you in Quidditch and still not be Dark. I prevented Gryffindor from losing massive House points by protecting Draco from Ron and not hexing Ron myself—or you. I cast Silencio on you because you were being a prat, and you know it, ordering Professor McGonagall around. I didn't trust you because I thought you would probably do something like this, something that's going to damage your reputation with adults and Slytherins alike." He let out a soft breath. "And if being Sorted into Slytherin means I'm Dark, why were you telling me last year that I was still good, still part of the Light, still a potential Gryffindor?"

He could feel his riled emotions calming. He was still speaking back to his brother instead of bowing his head and taking this in silence, but he was not striking back. That should work. It would work, he thought, since he could feel the insistent brush of magic along his sides and knew he could do much worse than this, should he choose.

"You were good then, I think," said Connor, his face a horrible mixture of red and green and pale. "But not now."

"You didn't start getting upset at me until after I beat you at Quidditch, though," Harry pointed out.

"That's not true," Connor argued. "I was upset about Luna's Petrification."

"But the first thing, the very first thing, even before that, was about my not moving out of the way so that Ron could hex Draco," said Harry. "You were telling me to give up my friends for you. What kind of brother does that make you?" The other students were being very quiet, he noted. Not even Ron and Hermione looked as if they would interfere.

"A true brother!" said Connor, clenching his fists. "I put loyalty to family first. You should have, too!"

"Ah." Harry nodded slightly. "Then you would have let Draco hex Ron, if I had asked you to?"

Connor's face turned entirely pale, and he clenched his hands. He knew what he had to say next, Harry thought, lost somewhere beyond the swirl of both his emotions and his magic, in the plotting that he knew exemplified pureblood wizards. Connor knew what the situation would demand of him. And he was self-aware enough to realize how utterly ridiculous it would sound. It could have drama in the right situations, but this was not one of them. It had ceased being one of them the moment Harry argued back with logic instead of falling on his knees and begging forgiveness, or striking out with Dark magic to slay them all.

"But I'm the Boy-Who-Lived," said Connor, and then flushed.

"I know," said Harry. "But even the Boy-Who-Lived doesn't have the right to demand everything from his brother that he likes. He certainly doesn't have the right to demand that his brother let him hurt other people." He swallowed, since he would have argued with that if Draco or someone else brought up it to him, but they weren't speaking of Harry and Connor here, a Harry who had been trained to serve his brother that way and a Connor worthy of being served. They were speaking of Boys-Who-Lived and brothers in the abstract. So long as Harry thought of it like that, and focused on the fact that this would, eventually, make Connor a better leader, repaying him in the future for what it would cost him now, then he would not go mad. "The Boy-Who-Lived is shining forgiveness and compassion, Connor. Where has that gone with you?"

"But you—you're a Slytherin," said Connor.

"The Boy-Who-Lived should reach out and unite all the Houses in the school," said Harry. Breathe. Breathe. Think of the future. Don't think of the dawning look of betrayal in his eyes. "Or doesn't that matter to you? Are you only going to recruit Gryffindors and Ravenclaws because one's your House and the other hates me? And then what happens when I die? The Ravenclaws have no other reason to hold with you. And what about the Hufflepuffs and the Slytherins? Do only Gryffindors fight with you on the final battlefield, Connor?"

"That's a long way in the future," said Connor.

"The War is here now," said Harry. "And you made it a legal matter when you accused me of Petrifying Luna and Neville." He turned his head to look upstairs. "I'm on my way up to see the Headmaster. Did you want to come and recite your accusations to him, so that you can get me taken out of school?"

His brother made a tiny little sobbing sound. Harry looked back at him, and saw Connor's face crumpling as his head turned away.

And then Harry understood.

It really had been about what Justin had told him it was about: jealousy and a child's wailing uncertainty over the new place of things. Connor just wanted Harry to break and admit he was wrong. That was all he wanted. He hadn't prepared for opposition at all, even for Harry to take this seriously as a legal matter. He just wanted his brother to say he was wrong. He just wanted to win the argument. No one more stubborn than a spoiled child sure he was right, after all.

Harry felt an enormous weariness come over him. While Connor's failure to take this as seriously as he should have meant there was no deep and irreconcilable rift between them, it did mean that Connor still wasn't thinking about the War, about the future. He still thought as a boy. That would have to change.

"Connor," said Harry softly, taking a step forward.

"Don't talk to me," he wailed in Harry's direction, backing away a step. "You were right, all right? You were right." He turned and fled in the direction of Gryffindor Tower, crying. Harry knew he could have done nothing else, as strongly as he was feeling right then, but he also knew what Connor would feel when he came back to his senses. He had started crying in front of everybody.

He would only be more embarrassed and furious than ever.

Harry sighed and glanced at Ron and Hermione. Ron's eyes were wide, and he couldn't seem to say anything. Hermione glanced away from him.

"You should have known better," Harry said, speaking mostly to her. "If you were going to accuse me legally, then you should have made sure it was legally, and that all the proper forms and procedures were followed."

Hermione nodded once, her lips pressed together.

Harry shook his head and turned to go up to the Headmaster's office. Gorgon and Jones were in his way. They scrambled out of the way when Harry made a little impatient gesture, but they looked stunned as their eyes followed him.

Harry was stunned himself. That wasn't what he had expected to happen. He had thought he would explode at any moment, or use his magic to strike out at Connor, or give in and just do whatever his brother wanted of him. Any of those would have suited what he knew of himself lately—emotional, obsessed with his power and in danger of being corrupted by it, still obedient to Connor's every whim if Connor was deserving of such obedience.

Deserving.

Harry breathed more easily. His vows.

To be his brother and his friend and his guardian.

Only one of those was a term of blood relation, and only one of those a term of companionship. Harry's responsibility as a guardian came first, given the weight of his other vows. His primary duty was to protect Connor, not make him happy. He had made his brother unhappy last year in the name of performing his duty. He could do it again.

He could ride out this strange course his life had taken and return to what Connor needed him to be. At the end of the year, if no sooner, he could explain to Connor what had happened and receive him as a brother again.

For now, he had a Headmaster to talk to about staying over the Christmas holidays.

He climbed.

"Of course, my dear boy," Dumbledore agreed calmly. "I would have suggested your staying here over the holidays myself, if you had not. I think that Hogwarts's wards are the best protection for you in any event, and that it would not be wise to take Tom Riddle within the walls of Godric's Hollow."

Harry sat back in his chair and narrowed his eyes slightly. The Headmaster beamed at him. His face showed nothing wrong, while his hand moved steadily to a bowl of sweets on his desk and popped them into his mouth. Harry could smell the strong tart scent of them from here.

But around Dumbledore, his magic was coiled, ready to strike or enforce his will. Harry didn't know why. Was it simply because he had walked into the office with his own magic roaring around him?

"May I ask what your plan to deal with Tom Riddle is?"

Harry did not want to tell the Headmaster. Ducking his head slightly, so that he didn't meet Dumbledore's eyes well enough to let the man read his mind, he murmured, "I have it set, sir. Tom Riddle has one particular weakness, and I'm playing to that. I'll make sure that he's taken care of and that no other students are in danger, sir."

"And what about you, Harry?" Dumbledore leaned forward over the desk, the very picture of a concerned mentor. "You would be in danger, still."

Harry decided abruptly that he wanted to know something. He raised his eyes fully to Dumbledore's and asked, "Sir, you know what my mother raised and trained me to be, don't you? You must."

Dumbledore's eyes widened in brief surprise. Harry felt his mind pass effortlessly into his thoughts. His Occlumency technique was different from Snape's. Instead of swimming and hunting among the various memories, he shone light instead, and called up certain thoughts so gently that Harry barely felt them hum along the surface of his mind, barely glimpsed them himself.

Harry waited for him to see and sense the box, and Snape's shields, and comment on them.

To Harry's astonishment, Dumbledore didn't seem to sense them, or even Draco's and Snape's presences in his mind. He merely looked about, humming, and then floated back out again. When Harry blinked and looked, Dumbledore was crunching sweets behind his desk again as though nothing had happened.

"It happens that I do," said Dumbledore. "A powerful warrior of the Light. You know defensive magic and wandless magic well already, I think?"

Harry swallowed slowly. Is he playing with me? How could he not know about the Dark that's hiding within me? "A guardian of Connor first and foremost, sir," he said. "And I couldn't let him just accuse me of being a Dark wizard and possibly get me taken out of Hogwarts. Do you understand that?"

Dumbledore chuckled. "Of course I do, my dear boy. It is as I told Connor when you first revealed you were a Parselmouth: he must learn to unite the Houses and lead the wizarding world. And throwing a Slytherin out of the school, and encouraging House prejudices, is hardly the way to do that."

Harry leaned forward in his seat. His emotions had let him have too much peace, apparently, as they were now returning with a vengeance. Anger and worry and something perilously close to hatred choked his voice as he spoke. "Then why didn't you tell him that, sir? Why did you let him go around spouting this nonsense that I was Dark and that Slytherins were evil? For that matter, why do you let the other students say that so often?"

"Because Connor must be the one to unite them, and not I," said Dumbledore, and his face became ancient and sad. "You know that many people follow me, Harry, but I will not last forever. Connor must take my place as the leader of the Light. It will do no good if someone else earns that loyalty and then transfers it to him. It must be him. I have done what I can and remained out of the way." He turned his head and fixed his eyes to Harry's face. "But rest assured, I would not have done so if he were attacking students who could not bear it, true innocents. You know far more about the world, Harry, and you are well-trained to be anything that Connor needs you to be, including a target. You could bear what he was doing to you."

Harry felt the breath rush out of him. The Headmaster regarded him as a sacrifice, much the same way that Lily did.

He understood.

That had been what Harry really wanted to know. Anyone could know about the extent of his training, as Snape did, and still not understand. It was the concept of sacrifice they needed to grasp, that Harry was secondary in emotions and everything else to Connor's need of him.

"You have given up much," Dumbledore went on quietly, never looking away. "That includes your brother's good opinion of you, for the moment. But it will return, and it will be the stronger for what you have done tonight. Connor needed to look in a mirror and see himself reflected. He will sorrow for it, but he will be stronger in the end. Thank you, Harry. You are doing as you should. You are fighting your part in this War. If you gave in and did as Connor the boy demanded of you, you would not be strong-willed enough to be of use to Connor the war-leader."

Harry bowed his head. It was comforting to have someone say that to him, and really believe it. It made up for the breaching of the box, for having Tom Riddle in his head, for his parents' and Connor's tangled opinions of him.

"Thank you, Headmaster," he whispered.

"It is my pleasure, my dear boy," Dumbledore replied, beaming at him. "Now, pursue your plan for getting rid of Tom Riddle however you must. I will leave the details up to you. I trust you."

Harry was not sure, as he slipped out of the office, that that was true. He and Dumbledore were not allies, not really, not yet.

But they were something like it.

Fawkes barely waited until the door had closed behind Harry before giving a trill of disapproval and turning his back.

Dumbledore blinked at the phoenix. He had been feeling relieved again—Harry was doing as he should, Connor had learned a lesson, and having Tom Riddle in Harry's head would not prove so disastrous after all, even if Dumbledore had been unable to see Harry's exact plan, wrapped and shrouded as it was in Dark magic he would not touch. But Fawkes rarely expressed disapproval so obviously unless something was wrong.

"What is it, old friend?" he asked softly.

Fawkes tucked his head under a wing and said nothing.

Dumbledore stood. "I know it is unjust that a child should have to pay such a cost," he said, walking over to the perch. "But he is willing. And he will spare many others from having to pay a similar cost." He reached out to stroke Fawkes's feathers.

Fawkes fluffed his tail and edged along his perch, then stuck his head back under his wing and went firmly to sleep.

Dumbledore was left to wonder what he had done wrong, if something was wrong, and what it might be. Phoenixes often had too pure a view of the world, but he had come to trust Fawkes's judgment.

In the end, when nothing was forthcoming, he shook his head and went to prepare for bed, leaving the slight uneasiness behind him. Matters were unfolding as they should, given the sacrifices and that they were living in a time of war.

It didn't help that he dreamed of disapproving phoenix eyes that night. But he had lived a long, long time, and dreamed of them before, most often twelve years ago during the height of the First War with Voldemort. As the Second War began, it was only natural that he would begin dreaming of them again.