The title of this chapter is figurative; Camlann was, according to some versions of the legend, the place where King Arthur faced and fought his son Mordred.

Chapter Four: Choosing Their Camlanns

"All right there, Harry?"

Harry nodded jerkily as they passed into King's Cross Station. Connor smiled at him for a moment longer before looking away as Lily began reciting a long list of instructions to him. James, on the other side of him, looked about, befuddled, for a moment, before apparently deciding that Connor must have been giving himself a reassuring talking-to. After all, as he had told Connor yesterday, who wouldn't be nervous on going to his third year of school by himself? Sirius would be on the train, but busy arranging team practice schedules with the Quidditch Captains.

Harry closed his eyes and told himself that he had no right to feel hurt or bewildered by this. After all, he was the one who had managed to set things up like this.

"Harry?"

Harry sent a glance sideways to Sirius, who grinned at him and tried to make it look non-nervous. He didn't succeed. Harry had never seen Sirius so jumpy as he had been in the days since Peter's visit, even on the occasions when he was planning a major prank and wanted to be sure that no one interfered with it.

"Yes?" he asked, when he saw that Sirius wouldn't stop staring at him.

Sirius coughed. "I—we'll talk about why your parents are ignoring you at school, all right?" He quickened his pace and moved towards the front of the line, cuffing Connor on the head as he passed. Connor ducked with a muffled protest, and Lily and James laughed aloud.

Harry closed his eyes. He breathed carefully, and reminded himself over and over, You chose this. You know it was the best course. You would have killed them without it. How could anything but this be the right thing to do?

The web gave a little prompting tug on his mind, as it had been doing since they moved out of the house. It didn't seem to think that being near Connor in a wide-open space was the same thing as being across a series of rooms from him. Harry sighed and hurried to catch up.

"Harry."

Startled, Harry turned his head to the side, and gasped to see Peter standing behind one of the Station's pillars. He wore Muggle clothing and didn't look that out of place, at least as long as someone didn't look into his eyes. They remained piercing, and certainly pierced Harry in place. It was a long moment before he could draw his wand, and a longer moment before he could find his voice.

"Don't come near me, traitor," he snarled, leveling his wand in front of him.

"I won't come nearer than this," said Peter, keeping his own voice even. "But I thought that you deserved to know more, Harry, as much as I could tell you without the web assaulting and blinding you. Have you ever heard the name Regulus Black?"

"Maybe," Harry hedged. Sirius had mentioned it once, last year, during his apology to Harry for being an awful godfather. Come to think, he had acted strange during that apology, too. Harry shoved the thought away and concentrated on Peter. He is Wormtail. He only wants to confuse you, to cause treachery. He's probably working with Fenrir Greyback to return the Dark Lord to life. "I don't know who he was."

"Sirius's brother," said Peter. "His younger brother. His beloved younger brother, for all that he became a Death Eater." He paused. "Are you seeing any parallels here, Harry?"

"That's ridiculous," Harry said, and was displeased to note that his voice was little more than a breath. He forced more strength into it. "Someone would have told me about Sirius having a younger brother. They always told me that he was an only child. Why conceal it? Mum could have used the story to strengthen my training and show what might happen to Connor if I didn't guard him."

Peter closed his eyes. Harry didn't know what to make of the expression that worked over his face then. It looked like a mixture of rage and disgust, but what was there in the words he'd said to inspire that?

"That's true, then," said Peter. "I wondered how much was. I only know what I heard that night. So you're guardian to Connor, then? You really are the sacrifice for him, and weren't just raised to be that way?" He opened his eyes and pinned Harry with his gaze once again.

"Of course," said Harry. His web was quiet, probably because he was doing what it wanted. He plowed ahead. Perhaps he could convince Peter how ridiculous it was to try and speak to him and force him away from his family. Then Peter might run away and become someone else's problem. "I know what I am. I'm proud of it. Why shouldn't I be?"

"Harry," Peter whispered, his voice gone longing. "There is so much wrong with someone simply raised to be a tool for someone else, a pawn, concealing his strength in someone else's shadow."

Harry felt the first headache begin, but he fought through it. "I like it. I don't care." His rage stirred in him, joining the web, but he ignored that, too. "I know that I had some things happen to me that made me not care for that duty for a while, but I have to return. Who else is going to do it?"

"Your parents," said Peter. "Connor. Dumbledore himself. Anyone but you."

"Why?"

"Because," said Peter, "they made your choices for you, and you were too young—"

Harry gasped as the pain hit him like a Bludger to the side of the head. He managed to sit down before he fell down, but it was a near thing. He cradled his forehead in his hands, and whispered the words that he dimly remembered his mother using to soothe the pain. "I am sacrifice for Connor. This was freely chosen."

The pain eased after a moment. He looked up to see Peter standing away from the pillar, one hand reaching for him. He dropped it when he saw Harry's glare.

"I feared so," he said soberly. "I shattered my web all in one go. Yours was weakened, but it's getting stronger again. I want to help you break it, Harry—"

And then he cut off, but not because of Harry's pain this time. Harry saw him shiver, saw his face turn gray. A shadow fell on him, and Peter scrambled backward, suddenly the cringing little rat Harry thought he always should have been.

Harry looked up.

In front of him floated a black creature with wispy dark robes, its oval head cocked to one side. A hand with fingers like twigs reached for him, and Harry felt his mind tremble, his thoughts dancing and swirling up and out of him.

He was in the Chamber again. It was freezing, and he knelt before the pure, icy-cold force of the magic. It showed him memories that he could not face, things that he knew could not be true…

Harry slammed his hands down beside him, trying to use the pain of the stone cutting into his palms to force himself to focus. He felt his mind waver and turn, and some of the new certainty that he had, that he really was destined to be Connor's guardian and that was the way things were, cracked and broke apart. Once again, he found the terrible uncertainty, the rage at his parents and Dumbledore.

Someone got between him and the creature Harry knew must be a Dementor, and its terrible regard somewhat lessened. Harry blinked and gasped and looked up to find Peter there, his face white as he absorbed the full force of the cold gaze. One hand reached out and hovered above his shoulder, and Peter made a little crumpled sound and half-collapsed. He never moved from between the Dementor and Harry, however.

Harry began to move forward in a crawl. He wasn't sure what would happen when he got there, but he knew he was going to do something.

Then a voice spoke, like a cold spike piercing Harry's brain. Get away. Back.

Harry cried out, but his voice was a weak and reedy thing in the face of his pain. The Dementor in front of Peter floated weirdly, appearing to turn the top half of its body towards the speaker while keeping its bottom half in front of him. Harry knew it made some response, but this time it was unintelligible to him.

The other speaker, another Dementor who looked more gray than black, drifted up behind the other and said only one word, for which Harry was grateful, since even that word made his head vibrate and seem to freeze.

Vates.

The Dementor holding Peter turned and darted off at once, seeming to hide behind the gray one. The gray one turned its gaze to Harry. He looked up, and forced himself to meet those hidden eyes by a tremendous effort of will.

The gray Dementor reached out and moved one hand in front of him, fingers flicking in a beckoning gesture. Harry felt his rage surge. Then he was half-blinded by a golden glow that seemed to originate from his face. When he could see again, pieces of a golden web were vanishing into the Dementor's fingers. Harry shivered. Why is it freeing me? Why would it? And do I want to be what I will be when the web is entirely gone?

Pain flared in his head, which Harry guessed was the last remnants of the web fighting for life, at the same moment as someone behind him bellowed, "EXPECTO PATRONUM!"

A silvery wolf charged into the two Dementors, making the black one cry out in a high, shrill voice and turn to flee. The gray one lingered for a moment, and Harry knew it was looking at him. He whimpered as the voice spoke again, hammering into one ear and then out the other.

We shall meet again. Vates.

Then they both turned and fled as the silvery wolf came back for another gallop. The wolf slowed to a trot when it saw that it had no more enemies left to face, wagged its tail once, and winked at Harry. Then it tattered into mist and flowed back towards Sirius, who ran over to hug Harry.

"Harry," he whispered. "Are you all right? I'm so sorry. The Dementors are here, hunting for Peter, and I couldn't tell—I didn't know—"

Harry rolled his head slowly to the side. Peter was gone. Harry had expected him to be. He would hardly stay around when first the guardians of Azkaban and then Sirius came for him.

"Are you all right, Harry?" Sirius repeated, drawing back and looking at him again.

Harry looked away from him and took huge, deep, gulping breaths. Part of his control was gone again, the control he had fought so hard to maintain over the summer. He realized now that it must have been built on the crippled but gradually strengthening remains of the web. The Dementor had destroyed that. Harry did not know whether to scream or be grateful.

Well, right now he did want to scream. Sirius murmuring endearments and reassurances was only another reminder of how he hadn't done so last year until it was far, far too late. Harry tried to counter that, tried to remember how Sirius had taken him flying at Christmas and given him a gift that had helped save his life down in the Chamber, but his thoughts were veering, crashing into one another, and his magic was rising quickly.

"Let's get through the barrier," Sirius was saying as he pulled him along. "I'm sure some Muggles saw the Patronus. This is work for the Obliviators, that's for sure."

Harry closed his eyes. He had to do something with his magic. He didn't know what, but it had to go somewhere.

What can I do?

The magic offered several suggestions, all of them ways that would result in his parents' and Sirius's body in several thousand small pieces. Harry shook his head. He couldn't do that. He still couldn't kill them. He didn't want to kill them. Harm them, maybe.

The magic seized on that, and Harry felt his lips almost part over a spell that would have inflicted gaping wounds on his parents, a spell he had read about but never had the insanity to try. With an effort, he closed his lips and fought his temper back under control. But the air around him was chill, and Sirius shivered as they stepped through the barrier and onto Platform 9 ¾.

Harry tried and tried to fight his magic, but it wasn't working. It sped through the familiar channels in his body that he had created at Malfoy Manor, and demanded things to rend and split and burn. Harry could hear a scream of fury building down in his guts, and shuddered. He would cry aloud in a moment.

"Harry?"

And Sirius was making it worse, damn him, touching and touching and probing. Harry kept his eyes closed, knowing he couldn't see him right now. If he saw his parents, he was sure he would strike. His walls were already weakening, and his magic prowled back and forth like a tiger that knew it would be able to escape its cage in seconds.

The only person Harry thought he might be willing to curse was Dumbledore. But Dumbledore was at Hogwarts—

Hogwarts.

Harry seized gladly on the idea and fed it to his magic, bending his will abruptly to that one goal. The magic lost its defiance as it flooded into him. Harry felt a dense resistance to what he was trying to do, but that only made him fight the harder, and kept him from striking someone dead.

Then he vanished, and passed briefly through a freezing cold space, and appeared just outside Hogsmeade with the loud crack of a successful Apparition.

Harry dropped to one knee and gasped, then coughed. Ice crystals fell past his lips. He shuddered. That was how close he had come to using his magic on someone else. He traced his hands up and down his arms, noting faint webs of white and the first traces of frostbite in his fingers. They were quickly warming under the morning sun, but it had been very, very close.

Well, now that he was here, what was he going to do?

Harry raised his eyes to the road that wound through Hogsmeade, towards the castle, and smiled. He suspected it was a grim smile, but he did not particularly care. Apparating this far had somewhat used, and thus calmed, his magic, but it had done nothing about his rage.

What I came here to do.

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"Mr. Potter. What are you doing here?"

Just last year, that voice would have made him tense up. Now Harry could smile and turn around, confident that its owner meant to welcome him, no matter what he sounded like. "Professor Snape. Hello, sir."

Snape stalked towards him, eyes narrowed and nose pointing forward as if to lead the way. The sight eased Harry's rage. He leaned against the wall of the entrance hall and waited as Snape halted in front of him and examined him up and down with one disdainful sweep of his eyes.

"You seem to have lost your parents along the way," Snape sniffed at him. "And a brother. And a certain Black mutt."

"Oh, they'll be along, doubtless." Harry felt his smile widen. Merlin, was it really possible that he could have missed Snape this much? "But I wanted to come ahead of them. Get a little air, you know. See the castle before a bunch of idiot children—" he imitated Snape's voice "—overrun it." He hesitated, then continued, as sure of Snape's loyalty as he was of anything in the world. "Speak to a certain Headmaster," he added, "about certain decisions that he made regarding me."

Snape's eyes narrowed further. Harry held his breath. Perhaps Snape had turned backwards in his loyalty after all. Harry would have said that couldn't happen, after the way they had spoken in the storm, but he had almost tricked himself into becoming a useless pawn for his brother again, too.

The rage flared. Harry told it to lie down. You'll get your chance soon enough. And Connor is innocent. Innocent.

"Good."

Harry blinked, jolted out of contemplation of himself again as Snape nodded and pointed in the direction of the Headmaster's office. "The Headmaster's password is Cauldron Cakes," he added. "I will not come with you, Mr. Potter. I trust that you can leave the school standing by yourself?"

Harry only smiled at the snide tone. "I am fairly certain of that, yes, sir," he said gravely.

"Then get to it," said Snape, and spun the other way, his robes flowing behind him as he strode across the hall. Harry thought he saw him halt to speak with someone when he reached the stairs down to the dungeons, but wasn't sure who it was. Someone from Slytherin come early, perhaps?

I must remember to speak with Snape about brewing the Wolfsbane for Mrs. Parkinson, Harry thought, as he took the stairs to the Headmaster's office. It would be a poor return for all his kindness if I simply took his supplies.

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"Cauldron Cakes," said Harry, and the gargoyle sprang aside. He stepped onto the moving staircase, his shoulders relaxed despite the second storm he could feel brewing inside his head.

He wondered which question he should ask first as the staircase bore him upward. Why did you do it? But he thought it was fairly obvious why Dumbledore had done it: in obedience and answer to the prophecy and the needs of war. Why did you leave the web in my head? But the answer to that question was the same. Did you ever mean for me to find out about this? Well, obviously the answer was no.

He reached the top without deciding. Harry shrugged and pushed open the door to the office proper. He would wait and see what came, then.

Dumbledore was not behind his desk. Harry halted and stared around curiously. He would have thought Snape would warn him if the Headmaster was elsewhere. Perhaps he had gone through a door hidden behind the shelves? Harry moved in to investigate.

A loud trill greeted him before he could move more than a few steps. Harry looked up, and smiled as he saw Fawkes lift from his perch and fly towards him. The phoenix settled on his shoulder, a denser weight than he looked, his head bowed so that his neck brushed against Harry's hair. Harry lifted his hand and stroked those feathers. Fawkes uttered a contented little croon and closed his eyes. Harry briefly wished Dobby were there to translate.

"Harry."

Harry turned quickly towards the desk again. Dumbledore waited there, his face grave and his eyes darting back and forth between his phoenix and Harry's hand. Harry wondered if he was more surprised to see Fawkes welcoming Harry or Harry only stroking the bird and not attacking his office.

Fawkes made a loud, disapproving sound and pressed closer to Harry. He did not look up at Dumbledore.

"He has been doing that all summer," said Dumbledore lightly, apparently deciding that he would play the part of the doting Headmaster. He walked over to sit down behind his desk. "Would you care for a sweet, Harry?"

Harry shook his head. He had gone breathless with rage, abruptly. He took his hand from Fawkes, and the phoenix flew back to his perch. Harry was glad. He thought being in contact with him when his rage began to flare bright and cold might be painful for a creature of fire.

"I want to know why you put this web in my mind," he said, when he thought he could say that and not simply burst out screaming. "I want to know what the fuck you thought you were doing to me."

Dumbledore only nodded, as if he had expected this question, and then bent down. Harry tensed, but he retrieved a Pensieve from the floor and set it on the desk. He nodded to it.

"This Pensieve, Harry," he murmured, "holds the memory of the day that I put the web into your mind. I invite you to enter it and see for yourself. The web can only be enacted on a willing subject, you know. You did choose this fate, though I can see how that might fail to concern you now." He managed to look stern and forgiving both at once.

Harry snarled, and heard one of the silver instruments on the shelf behind Dumbledore snap. The Headmaster did not flinch, only nodded to the Pensieve again.

Harry strode forward and dipped his head into the silvery liquid.

He found himself on the lawn of the house at Godric's Hollow, on a summer day so bright that there seemed to be no shadows. A younger version of himself lay on his back in the sunlight, reading a book. Harry blinked. He didn't remember the book as being so heavy that his arms had to strain to hold it and tilt it to the light, but obviously it had been.

Dumbledore and Lily stood conversing a short distance away, their voices audible but unimportant to the younger Harry. He was studying to protect his brother, and that was the only thing that mattered. Harry edged closer to the adults, looking back now and then. It seemed odd that he had ever been that small, or his green eyes so serious. Harry had had the impression that he often laughed as a child.

"I think it's time," said Lily. Her voice wavered, but strengthened as she went on. "I've—well, I've monitored him as you asked me to do. And his maturity for a boy his age is just astonishing. He knows that an evil wizard is coming for Connor, and that I want him to do his part to protect his brother."

Dumbledore nodded. "And his magic?"

Lily flinched and glanced away from him. Her eyes seemed to dart back and forth between the lawn and her son. Harry waited, his hands clenched.

"It is frightening," his mother admitted at last, her lips barely moving. "I've never felt anything like it. It sleeps most of the time, and so far he hasn't hurt anyone, but I think that's mostly due to his training. He fetches himself toys when he wants them, and never seems to find it strange that he's not using his hands. He poured himself a bowl of porridge the other day, perfectly, and carried it to the table without spilling a drop—and all the while he didn't look up from his book. He Vanished all the dust in the nursery one day when it was making Connor sneeze. His use of magic is casual, and if it goes on much longer, I don't think he'll be able to stop." She shuddered. "And, Headmaster, it's just—it's hard living in a house with a child like that, even when his magic is sleeping. It's like listening to a tiger purr. It might be content right now, but you always know that it could attack you, even if it never does."

Dumbledore nodded. "I understand, Lily. I think you brave to have endured this as long as you have, a true Gryffindor." Lily lifted her chin. "What about the others? Do they suspect anything?"

Lily smiled sadly. "James could look past a herd of stampeding Acromantulas if it meant not having to acknowledge that one of his sons is Dark." Harry felt bile soak his throat. "And Sirius and Remus don't visit often enough to know what it's like. They're just pleased and proud of Harry's 'accidental magic,' as they call it. They don't know what it's like living day to day with it." She shuddered.

Dumbledore patted her shoulder. "It is all right, my dear," he said. "We both know there was nothing accidental about it, and that such powerful magic in a child is unnatural. He will be happier when he is without it, when he is more like other children." He turned to face the younger Harry reading on the lawn, and drew his wand. "Let us be about this business."

Harry fought the temptation to scoop up his younger self and carry him away. He knew this was only a memory, and he had to watch what happened. He stood there with leaden feet as Dumbledore walked over to the little boy and said, far too casually for Harry's tastes, "What are you reading, my dear boy?"

Younger-Harry blinked at him around the cover of his book. "Defensive spells," he said, as though that should have been obvious. Given that the title of the book was A Practical Guide to Defensive Magic, Harry could understand how he'd felt.

Dumbledore nodded. "You want to protect your brother, don't you, Harry? That's the reason that you read about defensive spells and make dust Vanish out of the nursery when he sneezes?"

Younger-Harry flicked a glance to his mother first. Lily nodded at him. Reassured that this man was someone who could know about his protection of his brother, Harry brought his gaze back to Dumbledore. "Yes, I do," he said. "I don't want an evil wizard to come and kill him."

And I still don't want that, Harry thought, sick inside as he stared at his own younger face. That is the hell of it. I still want Connor alive. I still love him. Why couldn't you have just taught me to love him, Mum? Why did you have to make sure that I loved him? Why did you have to bind my magic?

If that was, in truth, what the phoenix web had done. Harry supposed he would find out in a moment.

Dumbledore nodded. "And if I could give you a gift that would make sure you protected your brother all the time, would you take it?" he asked. "It will keep you from wavering or looking aside."

Harry recognized one of the phrases that Lily had taught him was a bad thing. Younger-Harry did, too. His face lit up, and he nodded. "I never want to waver or look aside," he said.

"You choose this freely?" Dumbledore had his wand loosely clasped in his hand now, and golden sparks were racing around it. Harry stifled a snarl as he recognized the sparks. They were the exact color of the phoenix web that shone behind his eyes when he did something that it didn't like.

"Yes!" said Younger-Harry, dropping the book in his eagerness. His eyes shone from behind his glasses. "I want to protect my brother!"

Dumbledore nodded, and then lifted his wand. "Expleo penuriam cum textura!" he said firmly, and the golden sparks went into a wild dance, coalescing around Younger-Harry's head. "Phoenix texturae!"

The gold tightened into a pattern, and Harry recognized one glimpse of the web as he dimly remembered it from his own wild attempts to repair his mind in the storm. He heard Lily gasp, and Younger-Harry stared at the web in fascination. For a moment, Harry saw the web bisecting his own head, as though his skull were only a shadow, or both the web and Younger-Harry were occupying the same space at the same time.

Then the sight vanished, and Younger-Harry gasped and leaned his head forward. Dumbledore nodded, stood, and carefully backed away from the boy. Harry could feel his own heart, beating in his ears as though someone were clenching a fist around it over and over.

"That will hold," Dumbledore told Lily. "Placed when he is this young, it will do more than hold. It will reweave his mind to its purpose." He nodded again. "You need never worry about his magic escaping it again."

Lily bowed her head in relief, and Harry thought he saw the gleam of tears on her cheeks.

He had seen enough. He pulled his head out of the Pensieve, and made out Dumbledore's wand aimed at him in the moment before the Headmaster began to intone, "Expleo penuriam—"

Harry lashed out, angrier than he had ever been in his life. He didn't know what was going to happen. He only knew that he wanted to hurt something, and if that something was the Headmaster, then that was what he would do.

I am barely free, and only because my Locusta died and a Dementor helped me, and he tries to enslave me again? No!

The last word exploded out of his throat as a howl, and the pressure of his magic tore the wand from Dumbledore's hand and forced him back against the shelves. Harry kept up the steady pressure, even when he felt Dumbledore's own wandless magic rising to oppose him. He smiled, and it was surprisingly easy to push that magic back down, simply never allowing it out of Dumbledore's body. Harry knew he would be no match for the Headmaster if once that magic got past his skin, but he could hold it in defensive walls.

"After all," he whispered aloud, "you taught me to be very, very good at defensive magic."

Dumbledore's eyes were still clear, and he still looked at Harry with a mixture of sadness and admonition. "You know the reasons," he said. "You know it was necessary. What if you had hurt your brother in a fit of childish temper, Harry? What if you had hurt your parents, or your godfather, or Remus?"

Harry shook his head. "Why didn't my parents simply teach me to control my magic, then, instead of fearing it and locking it away? I surely wouldn't be tossing you around like a toy if it came to that. I would have better control." He was breathing fast. His power was rising out of a well in the center of him, and urging him to do more than simply hold the Headmaster against the wall.

"There is no way of controlling your power save binding it," said Dumbledore. "We could not trust that a four-year-old child would understand the importance of that, and the phoenix web was the one binding that would work with your will to protect Connor and yet be powerful enough to stand a chance against your magic."

"Free me from the last remnants of it," said Harry. "I'm aware now. I understand the importance of control."

"You are still too young." Dumbledore's eyes were diamonds.

Harry nodded. "I thought you would say that," he said, and then concentrated. All his magic leaped from Dumbledore's skin at once. As the Headmaster slumped to the floor, Harry wrapped his magic around himself.

Wards sprang into place, deep and strong, as Harry's will pushed his power forward. He was far more willing to do this than to destroy something, and so the wards attained a strength that his attempts to kill could not have. And all his experience in defensive magic was there, too, the kind that had made Protego so instinctive to him. It wasn't hard at all to tighten the wards and tie them off.

All this took only a second, as did the Headmaster's recovery and the snatching of his wand. "Expleo penuriam cum textura," he said, so fast that Harry was impressed in spite of himself. "Phoenix texturae!"

The spell stormed towards Harry—

And bounced. Dumbledore had to duck as the web slammed past him, into the wall, and dissolved into a crowd of sparks. He stared for a long moment, then brought his gaze slowly back to Harry.

Harry met his eyes without fear. His wards were wrapped around his mind, too, or there would have been no point. Dumbledore could not use Legilimency on him now unless Harry decided to allow him to do so.

"I'm immune to your magic," he pointed out.

Dumbledore breathed in silence for a moment, eyes never leaving him. Harry stared back. He felt—different. He wasn't sure yet what all the consequences of the difference would be. Among other things, he didn't know all the effects of the phoenix web, nor how to remove the lingering pieces of it from his consciousness. But he thought he'd made a good start.

"What do you plan to do?" The Headmaster spoke in a neutral tone. Harry supposed it might be the voice he used to speak to equals or Professors, which Harry of course would never have heard.

"Nothing yet," said Harry. "I don't want to fight you, really, Headmaster." And that was true. Harry still had his horror of controlling and compelling people, and he would still prefer to use defensive magic rather than offensive. "We're still on the same side. I simply want you to cease trying to control or compel me. I can't trust that you will yet, so my wards are remaining up."

"And your brother?" Dumbledore's voice was a shade cooler.

Harry shrugged. "I love him. You saw to that." He swallowed his bitterness. There were some things he could not change, and some he could not give up. "I'll protect him, but not as blindly or as slavishly as before."

"And your parents?"

Harry shook his head. "I can't see them right now. I don't know what I'd do." He found it refreshing to be honest. His head tingled and his body rang, and Harry suspected he was in shock. Well, he would land in a short time. He had a whole new road to walk now, and doubtless it would be hard. But at least he would be freer than before.

He half-considered asking Dumbledore about Peter, but decided there would be no point. He would meet with Peter again, if he ever showed himself, and see what could be done.

Dumbledore bowed his head. "This is not the way I hoped things would work out, my boy," he murmured.

"Well, it's the way things have," said Harry, and turned for the door.

He knew his face must look strange. He felt strange. Beneath the shock was not fear or anger or bewilderment as he would have expected, but rising exaltation.

I'm closer to being free. I never knew it would feel this good.

He paused when he reached the gargoyle again. Two figures were waiting for him there, not one as he expected. Beside Snape stood Professor McGonagall, her eyes sharp and haunted.

"Harry," Snape said, his voice at once mocking and triumphant, "I believe that Minerva has something to say to you."