Um. Cliffhanger at the end of this one, too. Sorry about that.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: A Visit From DobbyHarry opened his eyes slowly. He knew something was poking him, but he didn't immediately know what it was. It felt like a long, narrow finger, and the eyes peering down at him from above looked like house elf eyes. But why would they be? House elves never came and woke students in the middle of the night, and it was the middle of the night now. In the morning, Harry had to receive Lucius's vernal equinox gift. At sunset, he had to face his brother. He wanted to get all the rest he could before then.
But then he realized the house elf was Dobby, and the fogs of sleep cleared from his mind. He sat up, keeping his voice low. "What's the matter, Dobby? Did something happen to Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy?"
Dobby shook his head so hard his ears flopped. His eyes were enormous, and seemed to glow, Harry thought. "No, Dobby came for Harry Potter sir," he said. "Harry Potter sir must get up."
"Did something happen to Draco, then?" Harry asked, as he reached for his glasses. He managed to slip them on and listen to the noises behind the curtains at the same time. He could hear nothing but the familiar breathing of his roommates. Draco sounded deeply asleep.
"No," Dobby whispered, and then gestured. Harry looked. Fawkes sat on the end of his bed, not asleep as usual, but watching him with bright, grave eyes. He inclined his head slightly when Harry stared back at him, and crooned.
"Harry Potter must come walk with Dobby and Fawkes," Dobby translated. "We have something to show you."
Puzzled but obedient, Harry nodded. "Let me get a cloak on. If we're going outside, then I'll need it."
Dobby said nothing to contradict that, so Harry ghosted around his bed and to his trunk. He listened intently to the breathing around him as he got the cloak out and slung it around his shoulders. Greg, Vince, Blaise, and Draco seemed convinced that nothing was happening.
Harry winced when he thought of what Draco and Snape would say about this outing, but it wasn't as though he would be unsafe with Fawkes. He was sure one of them would have said something about the phoenix accompanying him as an approved guardian, if only they had thought of it.
Thus having satisfied his conscience, Harry turned around. He assumed they would walk out of the room, but Dobby firmly grasped his hand.
"Harry Potter sir must hold tight," he said.
Harry had barely nodded when they appeared to leap sideways into the air and stand still at the same time. Or perhaps everything else had moved around them, Harry thought, impossible as that was. He used the thought to keep his dinner down. His brains and his stomach violently sloshed against the insides of their respective containers. He blinked when he was able to see again, and stared around at the place that Dobby had brought him, probably by house elf Apparition.
It was familiar, but he still couldn't get a grasp on it until Fawkes burst into being above them and illuminated it with his flames. Then Harry recognized the clearing where he had once bargained with centaurs for Draco's life. He stamped his feet and shivered. It was colder now than it had been when he made that bargain, and slushy snow still huddled sullenly in the shelter of the bare trees, spring tomorrow or not. The ground felt like iron, like nothing alive.
"Harry Potter must be seeing," said Dobby in his squeaky voice. "And this is the best place to see." He looked expectantly at Harry.
"What do you want me to see?" Harry looked around again. There were the large stones the centaurs had used to form their impromptu gallows for Draco, and the path that dipped over the crest of the hill with the gallows on it and then continued on. He saw no waiting centaur, no impossible tree, nothing that he thought a house elf and a phoenix might have taken him out of Hogwarts to show him.
Fawkes crooned, and Dobby ready translated. "Harry Potter sir is to see what he saw in the journey with Fawkes."
The flames? Harry thought, but he realized the truth in a moment.
The nets.
He thought back to what he'd felt during the journey with Fawkes, and immediately his emotions about the Muggle tried to rear up and attack him. Harry breathed calmly, and subdued them with his Occlumency. He reached back with pure memory instead, thinking of the emotions pinned between glass panels like the butterfly collection the Muggle had described having once. He had always had a good memory, letting him retain information about spells and history and Connor's enemies and pureblood dances.
When he felt sure that he was as raw, as open to seeing another world behind the wizarding world, he glanced up.
He stared. He had not expected to see so many different webs. They were the gold of the phoenix web in places—and Harry felt the shattered remnants of the one in his mind stir briefly, as though feeling the kinship—but a great, intricate pattern at the center of all them shone a subtle, heartbreaking silver, and there were spiky patterns of dark green that made Harry want to hiss. He thought those probably bound magical snakes. He turned around slowly, and watched the webs soar around him. It was like standing in the center of a snowflake, if snowflakes shone like rainbows and with more colors than had appeared in any rainbow.
"What are they?" he whispered.
Fawkes crooned, and Dobby spoke in a subdued tone. "What Harry Potter saw once before. The nets that bind us."
Harry turned, squinting hard at Dobby, and saw the net that circled around him, a bright ice-blue. It ran away towards Malfoy Manor in the distance. He cocked his head. "They bind the house elves into service?"
"Yes," Dobby hissed, and for a moment, he looked feral, almost frightening. Harry thought about the magic of house elves, who could Apparate even in areas, like Hogwarts, that human wizards could not, and who didn't need wands, and wondered if this was what the wizards who bound them had seen. But Dobby calmed in a moment and peered mournfully at Harry. "And worse than service. They make elves like the service." He clapped his hand over his mouth then and wailed through his fingers, something about being a bad elf.
Harry nodded grimly. Genius, really. It means they won't try to lift the web themselves. He turned back to the maze of nets again and waved a hand. "And these?"
"Different magical creatures," said Dobby, and pointed to the silver web. "The unicorns."
"Unicorns?" Harry echoed blankly. "What did they ever do to wizards?" He could understand the nets being used on dangerous creatures like giants or dragons, and of course house elves lived among wizards and made their lives easier, but binding unicorns seemed pointless.
"They were too beautiful," said Dobby.
Harry ground his teeth. "And this one?" he said, squinting at a dim blue web he could barely see, the color of the sky at sunset.
"Centaurs," said Dobby. "To prevent them from showing themselves to Muggles, to prevent them from harming wizards, to prevent them from using much of their own magic." He shrugged apologetically. "Dobby only knows some of the effects. Dobby is sorry. He is not studied in history."
"Do all house elves know about this?" Harry felt a little sick. So easily this could have been set to rights in the past, perhaps, by any powerful wizard, if only they had thought to ask the house elves. He wondered if Dumbledore knew, and if he would really leave the webs in place if he knew.
Well, he used one on me. Probably, the answer is yes.
"Yes," said Dobby. "Elves were the first ones bound, Harry Potter sir." For the first time, Harry noticed how the elf gave a little jerk when he added the title. In a human, Harry would have called it a flinch of disgust. "Elves can see the other webs. Elves know what they do."
"But you can't rebel," Harry surmised.
"Only bad elves rebel," said Dobby, and then put a hand over his mouth again and gave Harry an appealing look from wide eyes.
Harry took a deep breath to calm himself down. "And you want me to unbind the webs and set you free?" he asked.
"It is not that simple, Harry Potter sir," Dobby squeaked.
Of course not, Harry thought, and waited for the reason. I think I would die of shock if anything in my life were ever simple.
"Harry Potter sir can be a vates," said Dobby simply. "Prophet, singer, poet, seer." His words were hushed with reverence, and had the sound, Harry thought, of a litany, a chant, a mantra. "Harry Potter can see ways for us out of the webs. And he can do it while respecting free will." He waited, eyeing Harry expectantly.
Harry grasped the truth soon enough. "I have to set you free without trampling the free will of anyone else," he said. "And that includes the wizards who benefit from having you bound and wouldn't want you to go free."
Dobby bobbed his head, and one of his ears hit him in the eye. "Now Harry Potter sir sees," he said, and clapped his hands.
Fawkes flew to Harry's shoulder and settled, his body a warm presence near Harry's right cheek. Harry stroked his back, neck to tail, without really thinking about it. He was thinking fiercely on what they had told him instead.
I have the ability to compel other people. It might be easy to charm or enchant other wizards into releasing the magical creatures. But then I would never forgive myself. And most of the wizards aren't the ones who set the webs. And I have no idea what releasing the webs would do. Would the house elves turn on them—
Us, Harry. I benefit from this too. It's not like I've never eaten food that house elves cook, and I depend on them to clean my room and my clothes and my sheets.
Harry sighed. I bet it really is simpler, being Dark. You just do whatever you want to do without thinking of the consequences to others, and if someone complains, then you compel them again. Or you could be a Light Lord and think you were doing good, and not care about what others thought, because obviously they aren't seeing clearly if they disagree with you. You're good.
No wonder that Starborn said so many Light and Dark Lords went insane or gave up on this. How am I going to do it?
To take his mind off the seeming impossibility of his task, he asked Dobby, "What made you think that I might be a vates? My brother found some information in a book about goblins that made it sound as though he were one." Only it didn't sound much like it, now that Harry thought it over. Could a vates ever use compulsion, much less as naturally and freely as Connor did? If the goblins were bound as well—and Harry suspected they were—then would they really only follow a wizard, or would they be compelled to do so by the nets they wore and nothing else?
"Connor Potter sir is not a vates," said Dobby. If a house elf could snarl, Harry thought, Dobby would be doing so. "Connor Potter sir is a compeller, and happy to be so. A vates can never compel. He cannot compel wizards. He cannot compel house elves. He cannot compel centaurs. He cannot compel phoenixes."
Harry shook his head. "Then I can't be one, either. I can compel people, and I've done it."
"But Harry Potter sir is sorry," said Dobby promptly. "And Harry Potter sir did not mean to. And Harry Potter sir is watching out, now, and watching how his will impacts on other people."
Harry blinked. It was true that he was training with Snape to try and find the limits of his odd compulsion, so that he could bind that part of his magic without binding the magic itself, but he had not thought that would qualify him for Dobby's title, even so. "And is being sorry enough?" he asked quietly. "Surely other wizards would be sorry, if they knew about this."
Fawkes went off into a long, complicated series of chirps and trills. Dobby waited until the phoenix had finished before he tried to translate. "The vates cannot be compelled, either. Dobby and Fawkes could not tell Harry Potter sir what he was and what it meant until he began to learn it for himself, for fear of shoving him down the wrong path. To force the vates to make a choice before his time is to destroy the vates. But now you have seen the nets, and Fawkes has felt your horror at them. And a vates must hate compulsion with all his soul." Dobby nodded at him, as though to say that that part was self-evident. Harry nodded back, though he was less confident on that score. On the bad days, he still wanted the reassuring security of his phoenix web, for all that he knew he would fight anyone who tried to cast it on him again, because it would make things so much simpler. "Many other wizards have said they would be a vates. But they stumbled on the path, and decided to use compulsion to achieve their ends, or they liked compulsion enough that they could not give it up." Dobby hesitated, then added reluctantly, "Or the magical creatures pushed them too hard, and they ended up choosing to act as vates out of a sense of duty and obligation. The vates must choose, always. He must make decisions. He must not flinch from choices. And he must be free will."
Harry let out a shaky breath. "Is Dumbledore a vates?" he asked. "My m—the Muggle who bore me once said that he made the decisions that no one else could make, the hard decisions of sacrifice and war."
"Dumbledore could have been a vates," Dobby said. "But he compelled others, and told himself it was well."
So I won't be able to lie to myself, either, if I do this, Harry thought. I will have to be absolutely honest. I will have to know when I might make excuses for my shortcomings, when I'm doing things just because they're easy and not because they're right, when I'm protesting too much and taking too much blame on myself. I'll have to read myself out loud to myself all the time, with never a lapse.
It sounded, Harry had to admit to himself, really fucking terrifying.
And I can't do it, he realized with a sigh. I still lie to myself about plenty of things. Draco and Snape say so, all the time, and I suppose they would know better than I would.
He explained that to Dobby, who nodded as he listened. Under the light of phoenix fire, Harry found himself thinking, the house elf looked neither silly nor stupid. There was a light of his own in his eyes, one that Harry thought would go out when he finished his explanation. But Dobby only grinned up at him.
"A vates is not being," he said. "A vates is not a vates only once, and then never again. A vates chooses again and again every day of his life, and makes some wrong choices, but always comes back to the right path."
"It's a thorny path," Harry muttered.
Fawkes crooned at him.
"Fawkes says that there are roses among the thorns." Dobby had his hands clasped in front of him. "Fawkes says that Harry Potter sir must not choose to help elves and phoenixes and others out of duty, but only because he wants to. And it must be a choice. Harry Potter is not all of a vates right now. He may be in the future." He made a gesture at Harry. "But first he must stop lying, as he said, and he must be free of his own webs."
Surprised, Harry touched his temple. "Do you mean the phoenix web?"
"And others," said Dobby, pointing insistently at Harry.
Startled, Harry looked down. He hadn't noticed the webs cutting through his own body, seeming to run in and out of, and tangle with, the ones in the Forbidden Forest beyond. He didn't recognize them. They were a deep, sullen red, not a color the phoenix web had achieved even in the fullness of its power. He rested a hand on one, and felt a faint sensation of heat, but nothing else. "What are they?" he asked.
"Barriers that Harry Potter sir has put on himself," Dobby said, sounding sad. "Barriers that he has not chosen, barriers that he has not thought about. Barriers of fear." He met Harry's eyes. "Barriers that Harry Potter has reinforced with his magic, because he cannot bear the thought of certain things being true."
Harry closed his eyes and turned his head away. It was true that there were things he did not want to think about. But to hear that he had used his magic on himself, and that he hadn't even been aware of it…
It stunned him.
He took a deep breath, and asked another question that had been drifting in the back of his head since Dobby began to explain what a vates was. "Does this have to be the most important thing in the world to me, once I begin to do it?"
"Not has to," said Dobby. "Never must, or has to, or compelled to be. Only want and will."
Harry nodded. "But a vates concentrating on other duties wouldn't be one that you wanted as your unbinder," he said.
Dobby shook his head.
Harry sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Then I don't see how I can be. You know how much of my focus goes to my brother. He's the most important thing in the world to me, Dobby. I would care more about him than others. I would sacrifice some of the magical creatures for his safety and happiness." He wondered if this was being honest with himself. Honesty often involves a good deal of ugliness, he thought, memories of the incident with the Muggle once again filling his mind. "I love him too much. I'm sorry. I don't think I would make a very good vates."
He offered a weak smile and opened his eyes. He almost thought Dobby would be gone in his disappointment, and Fawkes, too. But the phoenix remained, a warm, content presence on his shoulder, and Dobby still stared at him intently.
"Becoming," said Dobby. "Harry Potter sir can become the vates, even if he is not that right now. He can change. Unless he thinks that he will never change?"
Harry shuddered. "After everything that's happened since first year, I can't say that," he muttered. "But are you sure that you want to wait around for me to, possibly, become the unbinder that you need so much? You could be wasting a lot of time on me, when someone else would be a better candidate."
"There are no better candidates," said Dobby imperiously. "Harry Potter sir is the best since Dumbledore failed us." He gave a brief shudder of his own and pulled on his ears. "And the D-Dark Lord was never an option."
Harry tilted his head. "Is it only powerful wizards? Wouldn't someone like Connor serve you just as well, if it weren't for his liking compulsion so much?"
"Powerful wizards," said Dobby.
"But we're the ones who can compel others most easily," said Harry.
Fawkes gave a twist of his neck and a bubbling trill that ran up and down the scale. Dobby gave Harry a smile as he translated. "Fawkes knows this. We all know this. The power that makes Harry Potter sir able to be vates is what makes him dangerous. And it keeps him safe from others. Others cannot compel Harry Potter."
"They can try," muttered Harry, thinking about Dumbledore, and Tom Riddle's possession. Then he lapsed into thought again, while Dobby and Fawkes watched him expectantly.
If he took this gauntlet up, so much would have to change. He would have to think about other people as more important than Connor was. There were some people he would have to fight against instead of forgive, he knew, and he didn't like the thought of that. He had no idea in the world how to free magical creatures without trampling on the free will of wizards, and no idea how to persuade or coax wizards along without trampling on the free will of magical creatures. And what would happen if, say, giants or Dementors caused something harmful to happen when they were freed? On the other and, could he really justify freeing only some of the magical creatures, the ones that might be harmless to wizards?
My life's never been simple, granted, but this would be the most complex thing I've ever done. And…I can't do it right now. My life is still Connor. He's still the important one.
"I can't do it right now," he said. Fawkes gave a prompt, impatient chirp, and Dobby translated as promptly.
"Harry Potter sir can wait. But Harry Potter sir had not thought about the webs since his night in the fire, had not looked for them. Dobby and Fawkes wanted to make sure Harry Potter sir did not forget."
Harry nodded. "I don't see how I can forget, now," he said. Fawkes uttered another croon that Dobby didn't translate, probably because he figured there was no need for it.
"Harry Potter sir is welcome to ask Dobby questions at any time," said Dobby, and bowed slightly. "Dobby's webs are weaker than others, because Dobby was born in an odd way, and then one of his old masters was odd and tried to free him. So Dobby can answer questions, and come from his masters at times to answer them."
"Thank you, Dobby," Harry said. He was trying to figure out when he might be ready to ask more questions. He had the pushing feeling that he should try to ask them immediately, that it was important that the magical creatures be freed at once, but if he did that, then he was not being a vates. Dobby had said he could not feel it as a duty. It had to be a decision.
But then how am I ever going to do it? Duty and sacrifice are the ways I think of things.
He let Dobby Apparate him back to his bed, and nodded to return his farewell. It wasn't far from dawn, at least from the glimpse he'd got of the sky, and that meant it wasn't worth it to try and return to sleep. He lay with his arms folded behind his head instead, and Fawkes asleep near the edge of the pillow.
He kept trying to imagine the wizarding world without house elves, and couldn't do it. Then he tried to imagine it with predatory or feral house elves instead of tame ones, and couldn't do it. Maybe that was yet another part of the problem: if he wanted hope for the future, he would have to learn what it looked like first. Right now, his mind was a blank.
Harry put the thoughts away when he heard the other boys stirring. He had other obligations to attend to today, and the first of them was waiting for the sweep of a great horned owl's wings across the Slytherin table.
Halfway through breakfast, Harry became aware that he wasn't the only one awaiting the appearance of Lucius's owl. Pansy and Millicent murmured together as they often did, but paused and waited expectantly whenever the shadow of a post owl crossed the plates. Blaise jumped now and then, as though he'd let his attention wander from the windows to his food for too long. Draco just appeared tense and unhappy.
"Your father will choose the perfect gift," Harry reassured him, and Draco simply looked at him.
"I know, Harry," he said. "That's the problem."
Finally, when the suspense had built almost to breaking point, Julius came through the window. Then he took his time circling. Harry heard mutters of agitation from around him; even some of the older Slytherins had risen to their feet and craned their necks towards him, which made Harry wonder when they'd taken an interest in the things a lowly third-year did.
Julius finally hurtled down to land precisely in front of Harry. His eyes fixed him and wouldn't let him move. The leg he thrust out with the bundle attached to it almost scraped the back of Harry's hand with his claws.
Harry inclined his head, losing the sensation of being a mouse, and retrieved the bundle without looking away from Julius. The owl continued to stare hard at him for the next moment. Then he rose and gathered speed and power, traveling from the far end of the Hall to the windows as though someone had thrown him from a slingshot.
The bundle was slender enough, and long enough, that Harry wondered if it contained a wand. But he wouldn't find out until he unwrapped it, so he did.
A blade tumbled to the table, making a dull thump as it landed. Harry picked it up, careful not to touch the edge, or the green jewel in the hilt. It was a knife—a skinning knife, about ten inches long. Harry studied the edge with intent care, catching a subtle glimmer now and then, as though the maker had put diamonds among the steel. Then he examined the jewel.
It was in the shape of a hangman's noose.
Harry had the inkling, then, of what this was. He didn't quite dare to look at Draco's pale face. Instead, he took Lucius's neatly folded letter from the bundle. It was far longer than the note he'd sent with the last vernal gift.
Mr. Potter:
When one powerful wizard allies with another, it is often to repair mistakes made in the past between the two of them, or between their two families. The Malfoy family has no especial quarrel with the Potter family, though we have always despised them. I suspect you may be wondering why I began this truce-dance.
I began this dance to ally with you, Harry Potter, not your family. As time passes by, and I observe what has become of your coward father, your weak brother, your Mudblood of a mother, I am more sure than ever that I have made the right decision.
What I cannot understand is why you have taken so little justice from your family in return for the way they have treated you. Depriving the woman who bore you of magic hardly counts. Under the old laws, you could have demanded her death, and the death of everyone else in your family, as recompense. They bound you, a powerful wizard. The stronger the magic of the wronged, the more justice he is entitled to. And you are the most powerful wizard now living.
Harry narrowed his eyes. He was sure that wasn't true. Dumbledore could still overmatch him, and Voldemort's power was a fearful and awesome thing. He wondered if Lucius was simply trying to flatter him, and, if so, why he thought Harry would be susceptible to that particular brand of flattery.
This knife is a way to insure that you may take justice from your family. When you give it a name, it will listen to you. When you command the knife by name to take those who should have loved you and did not from you, it will sever the bonds that tie you to your family, whether they are of affection, magic, or blood. From that moment forward, you are free. You may use this blade to stop yourself from loving your weakling of a brother, your coward of a father, your Mudblood of a mother. You may use it to cut yourself from their family, and then no force in the wizarding world, including the Ministry, will be able to claim that you legally belong to them. And you may use it to sever whatever bonds and limits living around them has put your magic within.
Merry first day of spring, Mr. Potter. I eagerly await your response, and to see what you what will do with your newfound freedom.
Lucius Malfoy.
Draco was leaning over his shoulder, reading the letter. His hand tightened convulsively on Harry's elbow. Then he pulled back and stared at him with his mouth open.
"Your father is a bastard, Draco," said Harry conversationally.
"You could be free, Harry," Draco whispered. "And he gave you a priceless gift. I know what that knife is. It's been in the Malfoy family for centuries. We used it to cut ourselves free from marriage alliances that didn't work out, when the families we'd married into turned against us. I know that it works. I've heard the stories. Think, Harry! You could be free. This is the greatest gift that he could have given you." Draco's face shone like the moon.
Harry glared at the knife. It shone dully at him. Harry wondered if it was aware even now, unnamed. It felt as though it were watching him.
"I'm never going to use it," said Harry, and swept the knife and the letter off the table and into his robe pockets, not caring that he almost cut his hand with the edge. "I don't want—that's obscene, Draco, that something exists which can cut those ties."
And you want to do it. Part of you wants to do it.
Harry acknowledged that, and stepped over the acknowledgment. Just because he wanted to use it did not mean he would. He was very certain on that point. The knife was obscene, and his desire to use it was obscene. One couldn't just sever love like that.
Or perhaps he could, but that didn't mean he should.
"But, Harry—" Draco whined, following him.
Harry shut his ears. He was not going to listen. He had a reconciliation with his brother to look forward to.
Step, and step, and step, and then Harry completed the climb to the Owlery. He stood there for a moment, listening to the rustle of the birds and the ruffle of feathers. He looked through the window, and nodded to see the sun just touching the horizon.
Sunset, in a sky so deep a blue it looked almost green.
On the vernal equinox.
He'd kept his word, and not sought Connor out during the weeks between the delivery of his message and the time of their meeting. It remained to be seen if Connor would keep his side of the bargain.
"Hello, Harry," said Connor's voice from behind him, calm and controlled.
Harry took a deep breath and turned to face his brother. "Hello, Connor."