Thank you for the reviews yesterday! Just as a note, I had slight trouble uploading today, but I will still post new chapters on my LJ (address available in my profile) and at Skyehawke if I can't update here.

And here we go! Ready?

Chapter Thirty: Choose, Harry

Harry wondered for a long moment if he should begin the conversation, or let his brother speak. Connor seemed content to wait and let him decide, his face turned a gentle gold by the light of sunset through the window.

Harry didn't know what his brother's main purpose in coming here was, though—reconciliation, or something else. Given that Connor didn't know the dances, he thought it might be something else. In the end, he waited. Let him be in control of the situation, he thought, his eyes watching the way Connor's gaze darted at and then flickered away from him. I think he needs the confidence.

Connor finally let out a deep breath and met Harry's eyes.

"I was really angry about what you did to Mum," he began.

Shaking in his voice, but past tense. Harry cocked his head. Does that mean he has moved closer to forgiving me, after all?

"I didn't know what you meant about a ritual." Connor managed to make his voice apologetic and defensive, both at once. "So I looked it up, and I talked with Ron about pureblood dances." He wrinkled his nose. "He told me that you could do things I never knew you could do. I don't like most of them. But he also told me that what happened to Mum was right. She couldn't have lost her magic unless she did something really awful to you."

Connor folded his arms and leaned against the wall. "So tell me what she did to you, Harry. I'm waiting."

Harry let out his breath by degrees. Thank Merlin. It seems he's willing to listen instead of punching me this time.

"She trained me from the time I was a child, from right after Voldemort's attack, to watch over you and guard you," Harry began. He'd had time to think over how he would say this, since all his attempts to explain before had failed, and was confident that this speech would make the most sense to Connor. "But my magic frightened her. When I was four, she had Dumbledore cast a phoenix web on me."

"She told me about it," said Connor. "But it was just to keep you from hurting other people."

"No," said Harry, as gently as he could. "It was more than that. It was to keep me loving you, to consider your welfare before my own, to make me love you and care for you in ways that I wouldn't have if not for it."

Connor shook his head. "But you've always done that, Harry. You've always protected me. Remember the troll and the Lestranges in first year? Why did that make you want to take Mum's magic away?"

Eyes looking away from me, Harry noted. I think that he does have some inkling of the truth, after all, but doesn't want to confront it.

"I only wanted to protect you so much because of the web, Connor," he said. "And my training. Mum told me I could never have a life of my own. I always had to put you first."

Connor stared at him. Then he asked, as if testing it, "No friends of your own?"

Harry shrugged. "I think she mentioned once that I could share your friends. I was certainly to make myself agreeable to them, since they would be your friends and important to you, and fulfill your needs for companionship. But she never envisioned me having friends that were only mine and not yours." He wondered, for the first time, if that would have been a bad thing about his going into Gryffindor. Would he have managed to make friends on his own? He had no idea, since being in the same House as Connor would have meant being far more constantly in his shadow, under his influence, and compared constantly (and probably unfavorably) with him in the eyes of the other Gryffindors.

"No getting married?" Connor asked.

Harry shook his head. "How could I do that? If a wizard gets married, he should love his spouse as he loves nobody else. And I would be loving you, watching over you, protecting you. I should protect your spouse and your children, too. I wouldn't have time for a lover or a family."

"What about a life after the War?" Connor whispered.

"I mostly didn't expect to survive the War," said Harry. "After it, if I did, then I would be engaged in getting you whatever you wanted. If you wanted to be Minister, I would support you. If you wanted to have a quiet life completely separated from the world—after all, I don't know if the Boy-Who-Lived would ever get any private time after his defeat of Voldemort—then I would create wards that completely cut you off from everyone else, stronger than the wards on Godric's Hollow. If you wanted a life as a star Quidditch player, I'd arrange that, too."

Connor kicked at the stones of the floor, scowling. "But I would want to become a star Quidditch player on my own," he said.

Harry nodded. "And if that was what you wanted, then I would stay out of the way, and only make sure that you got to practices on time and did other things that wouldn't jeopardize your chances."

Connor put his hands in his robe pockets. "I still don't see why any of this leads to your taking magic from Mum."

"If it weren't for Tom Riddle, I wouldn't have," Harry admitted, noting with a frown how Connor flinched at the name. Tom Riddle was only a fragment of Voldemort. If he flinches from the memory, then how can he face the whole? "He tore up my mind. He released the phoenix web. And then Sylarana died last year, in the Chamber—" His voice wavered, and he looked away from Connor. "And she was so entwined with my web that she shredded it when she died. I had to rebuild my mind. That's why I spent so much time with the Malfoys last summer. I still have the phoenix web now, or part of it, but I can see around it, and I know that I don't ever want to go back under it again.

"Mum pretended to reconcile with me, and then cast the phoenix web on me again. I couldn't take that. I stripped her of her magic. That way, she can never cast the spell again."

There was a long silence. Harry listened to the wind blow around the stones of the Owlery, and fought the sadness that came with reliving the loss of Sylarana. How ridiculous was he, to want to mourn when he was on the verge of reconciling with his brother, the one person he loved most in life?

Then Connor said, "But, Harry, I don't think that what she did to you deserved the loss of her magic."

Harry looked back at him. His brother's eyes were earnest, shining, and his words came slowly, as though he were stepping over the thoughts that he needed to think like scattered sticks.

"Don't you see?" Connor asked, with a sharp gesture. "She was trying to make you a better person. She was trying to make you a Gryffindor. She was trying to make sure that you knew how to love other people, that you knew what courage and duty and sacrifice were like, that you could protect me until I was ready to protect myself."

"Yes," Harry acknowledged unwillingly.

"So you must have misunderstood," Connor said. "You thought she'd done something really wrong, and the ritual believed you and took her magic. But she hadn't, so that means that she deserves her magic back!" His eyes were brilliant, and he surged forward to grip Harry's arm. "We can have a family again! We'll get Dad to come back and stop being such a git, and then—"

Harry stepped gently backwards. It was a small motion, but enough to quell the smile on Connor's face. "No?" he whispered.

"No," Harry repeated. "The justice ritual doesn't work like that, Connor. She must have done something really wrong, objectively wrong, for me to use it and have it work. If I'd only believed that it was wrong, and used the ritual anyway, it would have eaten up my magic. I know that she's wrong. I know that she hurt me. It doesn't matter what she thought she was trying to do. I can't give her her magic back, and I don't want to. I want to stay away from her."

"You don't understand," said Connor, his voice sharp with disappointment and anger. "Mum told me about this. She said that she regretted what she'd done. She knew you would be angry, but she had the best of intentions. She wants you back, Harry. She wants us all to be a family again, the way we were at Christmas—"

"When she was ignoring me?" Harry asked. "When Dad was ignoring me?"

"They were doing that because you cast a spell." The red of fury was mounting in Connor's cheeks.

"Yes, I know," said Harry, "and now she wants her magic back, which can't happen. She doesn't really want me in the family, Connor. She wants someone who can be controlled. She wants the person she made me into."

"But that is you, Harry," said Connor. "You do protect me, and you do love me, and does it really matter if the web broke? The other things are still part of you. You can protect me even better if you give Mum her magic back. Then she can guard me during the times when she's there and you're not."

"I do still love you," said Harry. "I do still want to protect you. But it matters to me how she tried to get me to do that, Connor. It matters very much."

"Why?"

Harry wondered if he could explain it. As he had told Snape and Draco, it was still hard. He could imagine Draco in this situation, and the howls of outrage that he would release at Lucius Malfoy if he'd put a phoenix web on his son. He could imagine Connor in that situation; the very idea caused a hot anger at the Muggle to build up. He could even imagine Hermione in this situation, though since her parents were Muggles they'd probably have been beating her instead, and how he would make sure that they understood what happened when a powerful wizard got angry in the defense of his friends. But put himself in the same situation, and his anger diminished. He'd survived, after all. It was the training, if not the phoenix web, that had made him into this person that Draco claimed to be friends with, that Snape had become guardian to, that Lucius Malfoy had chosen to truce-dance with, that the Bulstrodes and the Parkinsons had bound themselves to. Could he really complain about that? Did he have the right? Would any of them have looked at him twice if he were ordinary? Would anyone care at all?

Harry did not believe so.

But Connor was waiting for an explanation.

Harry used the arguments that Snape and Draco had used with him. "Because she didn't have my true consent to do that," he said. "Choice is important, Connor. She started training me so young that I never had the chance to really say yes. And then Dumbledore put the phoenix web on me when I was four. So my mind was changed and twisted and warped. Would you like having your mind changed and twisted and warped?" He thought he might win the argument by appealing to Connor's empathy, which Harry knew he had. He had watched Connor rescue butterflies from drowning in the small pond behind their house. He had watched the way that Connor kept offering compassion to Sirius when Harry himself was incapable of doing so. Even Connor's love for their mother was a sign of it.

Connor blinked. "Of course not," he said. "But I'm me now, and I'm thirteen. And you're you, and you grew up with the phoenix web. Why can't things just go back to the way they were?"

"They can't, Connor," said Harry, despite his own longing to have his simple, clear, happy life back. "I'm sorry."

Connor turned abruptly away from him and stared out the window. Harry watched his back. He wanted so badly to say something to make things better. He didn't know what he could say, though. He didn't really believe in the things that Snape and Draco would have said. Neither could he tolerate going back under the web.

It will have to be his move, Harry thought, and waited.

Connor turned back around at last, and faced him. Harry met his eyes.

"I saw Mum when the ritual was done," Connor began. "I've never seen such an awful sight.

"She was lying in the middle of the floor. She raised her head when she saw Dad and me, and started crying." Connor drew in a sharp, nervous breath. "She tried to Accio one of the cloths on the far side of the kitchen. She couldn't. All her magic was gone.

"Dad rushed to her, and demanded to know what had happened. She whispered something about a box and her magic, and you. I saw Dad's face freeze. I didn't know then that he would leave. I knew that he remembered you, and he thought the ritual meant something bad."

Connor took a single step forward, eyes never leaving Harry's. Harry didn't think he'd blinked since beginning his litany. Harry went on listening. He had to know what had happened. Besides, Connor probably hadn't told anyone else this. He needed a chance to purge the poison, to pour out the sorrowful tale into willing ears.

"Dad carried her to bed. She couldn't walk. Her whole body had been raided." Connor raised his voice. "No, raped. You raped her, Harry."

Harry held himself still. He knew that couldn't be true. The ritual was the foundation of his sanity. He trusted it to be right.

So it didn't matter that the words went home like scythes. He could still listen to this. Connor needed him to listen to this.

"She cried for the first day," Connor whispered. "And then Dad left. He left on Christmas evening, and I still have no idea where he went. Sirius was there, and he took care of Mum and me.

"She raged for the second day. She wanted her magic back. It was the most horrible thing I've ever seen, Harry.

"She got a letter from Dumbledore on the third day, promising he'd talk to you. She cried again after that.

"But then…"

Connor took another step forward. Harry became aware that they were standing less than a foot apart. Connor's eyes were very deep, the hazel more intense than Harry had ever seen it, swarming with flakes of gold and green.

"Then," Connor whispered, "she changed her mind. She said that she wanted to have you back. That's what she wanted, more than her magic or Dad or a happy family Christmas. She wanted you. She wanted the son who'd hurt her. She has the greatest capacity to forgive that I've ever known, Harry."

Connor lifted his head. He was shaking lightly. "I'm afraid of you," he said. "I'm afraid of your magic, and the way you tore Mum apart, and the way you trample on all the lives around you. But I promised Mum that I'd talk to you, and that I'd try to get you back for her. Will you come back?"

Harry felt as though he were falling through space. The world around him was too large, too endless. He knew that he could give Connor back the family he'd dreamed of. The broken remains of the phoenix web pulsed in his head, urging him to give in. Everything could be back to normal. He'd wanted that, when he had spoken with Lily about his dream of a happy family.

And what about Draco? And Snape? And Remus? And Peter? And the purebloods? And all the magical creatures?

Harry shook his head. "I'm sorry, Connor," he whispered. "I can't. The ritual is forever. I can't give her back her magic, and I can't give her back the son she had. I don't trust her, and I think that she sent you mainly because she wants everything the same as it was, not because she really loves me. She's afraid of me, too."

Connor's breath hitched. He closed his eyes. Harry wondered if he felt like he was falling through space as well.

Then he opened his eyes, and his gaze was incredibly direct, clamping on Harry's eyes like iron bands.

"I promised that I would get you back for her," said Connor. "I would talk to you and give you the chance. But since you're refusing, then I can't trust that you'll ever see sense. So." He took another breath, this one seeming to penetrate more deeply into his chest. "Come back with me, Harry."

Harry felt his brother's compulsion leap and coil in his head, far smoother than it had been last year, when he first felt it. It neatly dodged most of the Occlumency shields that he raised before it, aiming for the phoenix web. Once it joined with that, Harry knew, it could probably convince him.

He lunged backwards, pulling with all his will to remain free, to destroy the tendril of compulsion in his head, the desire to obey Connor's order.

The phoenix web shredded, broke apart, dissolved, and was gone.

Harry gasped. The gasp traveled through him, expanding like a cloud in new directions, finding new spaces and filling them up with new, soft fog and mist.

This wasn't the sudden sundering that had marked the end of his ability to trust his mother, nor yet the sensation of triumph and wings that he had encountered when the gray Dementor freed his magic. Instead, the world swung around, and around, and then Harry realized he stood atop the Owlery, and saw in a thousand directions.

His sight sparkled with clarity. He had never really seen before, he thought in wonder. He was seeing now.

He could see how the stones fit together, how they blended at the edges into strength, how they rested on each other in sturdiness, how they clung together to resist the blast of the wind. He could see the tracks that owls would probably take when they flew out the window, and, if he concentrated, he could see the bindings that ran from owls to wizards, and the other way, too.

He saw how beautiful those small and ordinary things were, and he was filled with wonder.

He turned and looked at his brother.

Memories suffocated him, blowing up in his head like thick, choking fog.

He remembered how Hermione had looked when she stamped out of Trelawney's Tower on the day Trelawney had given the prophecy. His brother had spoken sharply to her then, said something that Hermione found unforgivable, and they hadn't yet made up. Hermione was waiting, bristling, offended, for Connor to make the first move, and since he had given the insult, he really should have. But he hadn't.

Was that the act of a compassionate, gentle, giving person who only wanted the best for everybody?

No.

He remembered the way that Connor had attacked him last year, when he had thought that Harry was the next Dark Lord, and he was discovering his own compulsion gift and his fear of it. Was that the act of a war leader, courageously facing his enemy the best way he knew how, on a battlefield that would match them equally?

No. It was the act of a frightened child.

He remembered the way that Connor had offered him the Marauder's Map that summer and suggested that Harry could let his magic work on it, or create copies of it, so as to use up the power that raced restlessly around him. Was that the act of someone completely irredeemable?

No. It was the act of a brother who was concerned for me, and for the safety of other people in the house, too, since my parents didn't even remember me to defend themselves against.

He remembered the way that Connor had woken up at his bedside after the events of last year, after spending Merlin knew who many hours there, and told him about his possession by Tom Riddle. Was that the act of a coward who would never know courage in his life, who had been placed in Gryffindor House solely because of arrogant rashness?

No. It was the act of someone who knew he was wrong, and was brave enough to confess the mistake to me.

So many things I didn't know, Harry thought in wonder, and had the feeling that he was truly seeing his brother for the first time, not making excuses for him, not forgetting the things he had done that were worthy of praise, able to evaluate and judge. Had the phoenix web that bound him to brotherly duty really bound that much of himself up, all his critical faculties where Connor was concerned, all his thoughts? It seemed so, and yet Harry could hardly believe it. It seemed so obvious, now that he was looking. Now that he was seeing.

He became aware that Connor was staring at him. He wondered if he was waiting for some reaction to his compulsion, or if he simply didn't know what had happened. Harry had no idea how much time had passed since his eyes had opened.

He isn't perfect. He isn't unforgivable. He's nowhere near ready to become the Boy-Who-Lived, the leader we need, or at least the leader that people will expect him to be. He's human. The Muggle and Dumbledore did us both a disservice with the phoenix web. I could have helped teach him better, if they hadn't been so worried that I would turn on him or try to take his place.

But it takes more than power to be the Boy-Who-Lived. I think it takes more than power to be anything important.

Harry took a step forward, and Connor backed away, fast enough to bump his shoulders hard on the wall of the Owlery. His voice had turned hoarse when he raised a shaking hand between them.

"Don't come near me," he whispered.

Of course, Harry thought, after a moment of regarding him curiously. He's still afraid of me. He believes the lies the Muggle told him, and who knows what Sirius has been teaching him, alone in the Shrieking Shack?

"You'll have to stop the private lessons with Sirius, you know," he told Connor. "I think he's been teaching you a lot of nonsense. Slytherins aren't evil."

"Voldemort came from that House!" said Connor.

Harry shrugged. "And Dumbledore came from Gryffindor, and he was the one who bound me with the phoenix web. You can't just assign everyone to Houses and have them be good and evil that way, Connor. It would be too simple. And if it's one thing the world isn't, it's simple."

He waited for a moment. Acknowledging that yesterday, or even last night, when Dobby and Fawkes had shown him the webs in the wizarding world, would have sent him into a panic. He wanted the simple. The easy. The clear. His early life had been so clear, with the path of duty laid out before him.

But instead, he felt a wild gush of glee, and began to laugh. If things were complicated, then that meant he had more things to do, more possibilities spreading out around him, more problems for his magic to tackle. There was Connor, and the vates, and Sirius, and his family, and the tension between Slytherin and Gryffindor, and figuring out how to live now that the phoenix web was gone, and defeating Voldemort, and maybe doing things like making more friends and getting married himself someday, and the alliances with the purebloods, and reconciling with his father if he could, and deciding what to do about the werewolf in Remus, and, and, and…

The Owlery burst into brightness around him as his magic began to dance, creating several small and mad golden vortices that spun in on each other, collided, vanished in a spangle of sparks, and then came back into being again. Harry held out a hand flat, and heard himself laugh as some of the golden light formed into a winged shape that might have been a Snidget or a really tiny phoenix. He threw it out the window of the Owlery.

The sun had fully set by now, though traces of gold and green still lingered behind it. The light that rose from Harry's creation flooded the grounds and made Hogwarts look as if day had come again. Harry heard a song begin, and felt a wind rush past him and swirl out the window. The scent of roses was in his nose, and the taste of honey on his tongue. He laughed, and the sound briefly became visible as notes that sparkled and popped like bubbles. He did not think he had ever been so purely happy in his life.

He had been wrong about so many things, and caused so much harm by encouraging Connor to persist in his blindness. And he had been right about so many things, and he was going to have the chance to make up for his mistakes. He had been wrong about what being free and living in a complicated world would feel like, too.

It felt wonderful.

The golden light lofted higher, and higher still. Now it appeared as a round lump, like a lamp, in the middle of traceries stretching to the horizon that it renewed again and again. The song had grown stronger and stronger, and by now, it was a deep and booming voice singing cheerfully over Hogwarts.

Ron told me to hang up signs announcing what I intend, Harry thought, dizzy more from the exaltation than the magic, but why? I think this is a much better message.

I choose to be free. I choose to live. I choose to repair what mistakes I can, and try to learn when I can't repair them any more. And oh, I haven't stopped lying to myself and I might never do that, and learning to love Connor for the right reasons is going to take an awful lot of work, and I'm nervous and I so might fall down and fail.

I don't care. This is wonderful, being free and facing the fear. Dumbledore really ought to try it sometime.

And because he knew that, he turned his gaze on the webs that Dobby had shown him in his own body, the sullen red ones that burned like coals. Harry reached down and felt the same faint sensation of heat. He knew that he could break them, if he wanted to. It had never been a matter of power that kept them there, but his own will. He hadn't wanted to face what he had bound.

Snape's cautions echoed in his head, and Harry knew he didn't want to rush into this the way that he had rushed into shattering Remus's Obliviate. Therefore, he carefully unbound the largest web, rather as though he were unwrapping a gift.

Darkness rushed at him. Harry understood a great deal, in that moment. He did have the ability to eat other wizards' magic. He didn't know if he would ever have hurt his parents and his brother when he was a child, but he might have. The phoenix web had tied it at first, and then Harry had, because the thought horrified him so much. He suspected the red web had originated the moment he heard about the possible power at Christmas, or perhaps the time that he stole a bit of Dumbledore's magic while protecting Draco.

Well, yes, but hiding doesn't solve anything, he thought, with a mad happiness that reminded him of Gryffindors, and jumped on the ability as it tried to spread out around him and eat Connor's magic.

The darkness fought him. It was rather like riding a writhing snake, perhaps a basilisk, and that brought up memories that were just so distracting, and Harry had to fight his own tendency to think about Sylarana so that he could corral the damn thing. But he fought them. He let the memories pass through his head, and he endured beneath them.

I am the wizard, not you, he thought at his magic, as he threw bits of his own being around it—not webs, but reins. I don't want you to run wild and eat other people's magic, and so you won't.

The darkness roared and hissed and plunged. Harry was unimpressed. Just because he could eat magic didn't mean that he should, or that he was going to.

That was the lesson that Dumbledore and the Muggle never learned about me, he thought, sadly, as he bridled the damn ability and wrapped it around him. It was his. He would do what he wanted with it, not the other way around. They thought I might eat their magic. They didn't trust me to have control, so they tied me.

It made him regret, for a moment, all those years that he could have been growing, wrapped in his own magic, learning to control it, but then he sighed and gave up the regret. Time was never going to turn backwards. What he could do now was learn to grow within his magic, and make up for the time he'd lost. That was the past, and this was the future, and he was going to live.

And he was going to make sure that he saw his brother the way he really was. No one could afford the way that he'd used to see him. Connor couldn't become the Boy-Who-Lived that way, and they couldn't be normal, loving brothers that way.

Oh, Harry knew he would still make more excuses for Connor than were natural or necessary, and he knew he would probably feel some guilt, at some point when he wasn't thrumming with magic, at the way he had made excuses in the past. But he knew about it now. The phoenix web was gone, and now he could at least acknowledge the mistakes as mistakes.

He looked at Connor, and sighed when he saw his brother's horror-stricken gaze. Harry took a step closer, and held out a hand.

"Connor," he whispered.

Connor stood where he was, trembling, and then Harry saw a dark patch on his trousers, where he'd let his bladder go in his fright. And then he turned and ran away.

Harry sighed. This will still take some work.

He looked out the window, to where the light he had created and the sunset alike were fading, and couldn't help smiling. And I'm ready to do it.

Calmly, he made his way down the Owlery steps.