Thank you for the reviews yesterday!
Reactions chapter, because I really did want to show how many people feel Harry's message and what they're going to do about it.
Chapter Thirty-One: AftershocksPercy Weasley lay on his bed and stared out the window of Gryffindor Tower. He supposed he should think he was lucky. Most people would think he was lucky. He was Head Boy, entitled to help the professors lord it over the other students. He was one of the best students in the school, and got his high marks with a minimum of effort. He was a pureblood wizard, and would have a job in the Ministry immediately after he left school, assuming his NEWTS were high enough—which, of course, they would be.
He had Albus Dumbledore's trust.
Percy buried his head in his pillow. That last was the heaviest burden he had to carry, like some great and fragile ball of glass. He always thought he could drop it, and it would shatter the way that his own peaceful life had shattered the summer before his sixth year, when he received his first owl from Dumbledore.
His mother had been so proud of him, getting private post from Dumbledore.
Percy did not think she would be proud of him now, given the decision he had almost, almost, almost made.
Light abruptly flared overhead, and at the same moment, Percy felt a mad itching in his shoulder blades. He sat up, scratching furiously beneath his robes, while his eyes followed the burst of gold, which renewed itself again and again, over the Forest.
He knew what it meant. Percy had felt that itching more than most of the Weasleys, and knew the different forms it took. Near Dumbledore, the itch was deep, almost savage, extending right to the bone. Near Harry, the itch was light, tickling, like the feet of many tiny spiders running over his skin. And this was Harry's power, a magic that curled like a wind and whispered what would happen if a wizard just reached out and grasped that wind.
Percy knew he never could. And he knew, too, that Dumbledore would probably want to speak to him about this display. It was part of the duty he had almost, almost, almost made up his mind to take, and Percy didn't think the Headmaster would be able to see all of it from his office window.
So he watched, and watched, and watched, and finally the gold stopped renewing itself and the sky was calm and dark again. Percy kept on looking, just to make sure it wouldn't come back, and then stood up heavily. He opened his door and walked down the stairs to the Gryffindor common room, ignoring the speculative stares and chatter of the younger years.
He had an obligation to perform. He had duties they didn't. Once, when he was a prefect waiting to become Head Boy, that would have made him grin in excitement. He knew things that most people didn't know.
Now, the weight of all the accumulated knowledge he had that other people didn't just made his head ache. One nice thing about going to Dumbledore's office was that he actually got to dump some of it, and then his head would feel clear for a while—
Until the next time the impossible decision crept up on him.
Hermione was in the middle of her Arithmancy homework when she began sneezing. She put the book down and pushed it out of the way of the dangerous droplets, intending to return to work the moment this odd attack stopped, but she kept on sneezing. She sat back on her bed and pulled out a cloth from the box of them she kept on the floor, a gift from her parents. They were always concerned that she keep things clean, and Hermione didn't have the heart to tell them that cleaning charms were more common at Hogwarts than handkerchiefs.
"What's wrong, Hermione?" The violence of her sneezing had caught Lavender's attention. She turned around with that expression of vague good will on her face that Hermione reminded herself she was lucky to get from the other girls at all. She certainly hadn't when she attended Muggle school. "Did you swallow something the wrong way?"
That's coughing, honestly, Hermione thought, but the sneezes kept her from delivering the lecture she'd like to. She wiped again and again at her nose, and finally it calmed. Hermione carefully folded the cloth and put it away, and then performed a Scourgify on the bed just in case. She'd read in Hogwarts, A History how all the students had once regularly become sick in the winters, until the professors began to teach cleaning charms in the younger years. Hermione liked to keep things safe.
Except that I don't think it's really safe, now.
She thought herself stupid for not remembering when she'd had a sudden attack of sneezing like that earlier—when Harry had unleashed his magic. She promptly scrambled up and marched towards the door.
"Where are you going?" Lavender and Parvati chorused.
Hermione ignored them as she wrenched open the door and bounded down the stairs to the common room. She didn't much care for either Lavender or Parvati. They giggled all the time. They thought too much about boys as romantic partners and not study partners. And, most of all, they thought Professor Trelawney was brilliant. Hermione would have been ashamed of herself if she'd needed any more signs to recognize them as idiots.
She reached the common room and looked around eagerly. Conversations swirled among the chairs and couches, but no one was moving towards the portrait hole. They looked as though they wanted someone to tell them what had happened, instead of finding it out for themselves.
Hermione put her nose in the air. She couldn't stand that kind of apathy. As Professor McGonagall always said, how was anyone going to learn if they didn't want to?
She stalked across the common room towards the portrait hole, but heard rushing footsteps on the stairs from the boys' room and turned to wait. Ron was running to catch up with her, his face red from the effort. Hermione nodded sharply at him and opened the portrait. She didn't think as highly of him as she had last year, but she supposed someone had to stand beside Connor and try to keep the precious idiot from falling and hurting himself.
Ron had an almost frightened expression on his face. Hermione shook her head. "What's the matter?" she asked.
"Connor and Harry were having a meeting tonight," said Ron tightly. "First day of spring, y'know."
No, Hermione thought, I don't know. She was vastly annoyed every time some casual pureblood reference made her remember that she was Muggleborn. Of course, that wouldn't stop her for long. She intended to have every nuance and ritual of pureblood culture mastered by fifth year, just in case some of it showed up on the OWLS. Then she could move on to learning every spell she might possibly need for the NEWTS. True, she would have only two years' preparation that way, but Hermione was confident that most of her spell skills were already up to OWL level.
"And?" she asked, as Ron turned towards the Owlery. Hermione followed him willingly. She only knew that the explosion of magic had been powerful, and close. She hadn't yet learned to pinpoint its direction. That was another thing she would learn, she had promised herself, and made a mental note now to add it to her private scroll of such things.
"Connor said that he wanted to reconcile with Harry," said Ron, increasing his stride as they passed a few empty classrooms and finally came to the bottom of the Owlery steps. "He wanted to use a pureblood ritual to do it. But the explosion of magic isn't part of the pureblood ritual. So—"
"Surely you're not afraid that Harry hurt Connor?" Hermione couldn't believe that. Harry was devoted to his brother—so devoted that Hermione wanted to smack him sometimes, because there was no way that anyone deserved that kind of devotion when he was being as much of a prat as Connor could be. And other people felt the same way. Hadn't Draco Bloody Malfoy actually approached her and asked her to watch over Harry while he was in Divination, because Malfoy was afraid that Harry wouldn't defend himself against his brother?
"Maybe," said Ron. "Maybe he did it without meaning to. You don't know how strong Harry is, Hermione."
"I do too!" said Hermione indignantly. "I felt it!"
"Well, powerful wizards—" Ron began, in that lecturing tone Hermione hated. She didn't know why he had a right to lecture her. She knew a lot more than he did.
Ron didn't get a chance to finish as Connor abruptly hurtled down the Owlery steps and almost hit them. Ron grabbed their friend's elbows and steadied him, and Connor burst into hysterical sobs.
"He tried to kill me," he whispered. "I really think he would have killed me."
Hermione wrinkled her nose. Something smelled foul. She glanced down and saw the dark stain on Connor's trousers, and gave Ron a commanding look.
Luckily, Ron could understand her without words sometimes. He pulled Connor in the direction of Gryffindor Tower, talking too softly for Hermione to make out after a few steps. "Look, mate, you've had a terrible shock, and…"
Hermione pulled out her wand and waited. Now that she was thinking about it, she could feel the magic descending the steps after Connor, Harry's steps as unhurried as the steps of a prowling dragon. Maybe that was what had panicked him.
Harry came around the last turn of the stairs. He seemed mildly startled to see Hermione's wand pointed at him, but after a few moments he smiled and shook his head. Hermione, meanwhile, was fighting hard not to squint.
There wasn't really a visible aura of magic around Harry; she just felt as though there should have been. There was a shimmer of air around him that her eyes found it hard to focus on, and his eyes shone more vividly and richly than she had ever seen them shining before, even from behind his glasses. And he looked more relaxed than Hermione remembered seeing him, too.
"Are you going to hex me?" Harry asked.
"No," said Hermione, lowering her wand and blinking. I wonder what causes that effect around him? I don't remember seeing it around the Headmaster, but maybe he controls it better. I'll have to find out. "But Connor said that you'd tried to kill him, so I thought I'd best be ready."
Harry's face darkened, and then he said something that made Hermione sure he must be someone else Polyjuiced into Harry. "Connor's a prat, sometimes," he said.
"Who are you, and what have you done with Harry Potter?" Hermione demanded, pointing her wand at him. "Are you Draco Malfoy?"
Harry gave her a small smile and shook his head again. "No, Hermione," he said, and that reassured her a bit, because Malfoy only called her "Granger," and then with a twist in his voice that made it obvious that he was fighting hard not to say "Mudblood." "Just Harry finally seeing the truth."
Hermione blinked, and felt a wash of pure wonder overcome her.
"You'll have to tell me what that's like," she said, putting her wand back in her sleeve. "I don't think I can learn it from books."
"It's brilliant," said Harry, his voice soft as starlight.
Hermione nodded. "But how brilliant?"
Harry laughed. Hermione decided that she could stand not getting the answers to a few questions, since she was hearing that laugh.
Albus stared out the window of his office as the last of Harry's light-show died. He continued watching for long moments before he finally moved over and allowed himself to take his seat.
For the first time in years, he felt old. Not merely weary of battle, not wondering where he would find the strength to fight, but actively aged, and almost ready to think of death as something other than the rest he would take when the wizarding world was finally, absolutely, safe.
He sat behind his desk for a moment and stared at the far side of the office, at Fawkes's empty perch and some of the silver instruments that wouldn't see use for a long time, if ever. He felt, he concluded, as he had the day he realized Fawkes wasn't coming back to him.
One of the three possible pathways for the future had just vanished into smoke. Harry would not fall back under the phoenix web. He would not make everything be as it had been, the safe and secure and predictable future that Albus had envisioned from the moment he heard the prophecy. He would tear further and further away from Connor and the problem would worsen, or…
Or he would hear the prophecy, someday, and realize what it could mean, and become an equal and an ally. Albus did not dare let him be anything other than an ally, not when Harry had that much power, but he knew this was a wizard whom he had bound, conditioned, and encouraged to stay bound and conditioned. Harry was sure to demand a heavy sacrifice of him before he agreed to aid the war effort in one of the two ways that they would have to have him.
Regret struck through him, keener than a lightning bolt, sharper than the thorns of the path he'd once tried—and failed—to walk.
For the first time since the beginning of the First War with Voldemort, since he realized what young Tom Riddle had become, Albus found himself unable to put the regret aside. He wished things could have gone differently, with a sourness that tainted the back of his throat. Even knowing that things could not have gone differently, that what was done was done, he still wished for it.
He pushed the thoughts out of his head when he heard a knock on the door. That would be young Percy Weasley, one of the few Albus still thought he could trust to watch out for the wizarding world before themselves. Albus knew he had to look calm, contained, and regal. Otherwise, Percy might start doubting and falter. He was still unsure that this course really was the best one, however much he wanted to help the Headmaster. He needed a strong leader.
They all do, Albus thought. They will be watching me in the wake of this, trying to see if I am frightened of Harry, if I am making frantic overtures to him. They will all be watching—the Ministry, the students, the professors, those impossible purebloods who seem to think that a child can lead them.
I must give them a show.
The regret was drowned. The thorns were pulled free from his flesh and thrown away. Regrets or not, he had a path to follow.
Albus lifted his head and put on his best smile. "Come in, Mr. Weasley."
Luna didn't know why everyone around her was chattering about the blast of magic. It was perfectly obvious that the blast of magic was Harry's, and that he was fighting a Wrackspurt. Wrackspurts had an interest in him. He'd been possessed by one last year, and had done some awful things under its influence. So, if he was fighting now, another one was trying to possess him.
I should make a necklace for him, Luna thought, and reached down to the basket beside her chair. She kept feathers in there, and small scraps of parchment, and stems from quills, and bits of broken inkwells, and Knuts no one else wanted, and many other treasures that people discarded without noticing the lingering magic in them. She sorted carefully through her treasures now, and found an empty piece of string and some small green scraps of parchment. She nodded. Those would be good. Wrackspurts were scared of small green scraps of parchment.
"Hey, Loony, what you doin'?"
Luna glanced up. It was poor Gorgon, a fifth-year student with a speech impediment. That was the only reason he could have for mispronouncing her name each and every time. "Making a necklace," she said, and held up the string so that he could see. "There are Wrackspurts up in the Owlery."
Gorgon snorted and opened his mouth to say something else, but Jones, who always followed him around, shook his shoulder roughly. "Mate," he whispered. "That explosion came from up in the Owlery."
Gorgon paled dramatically, but it still took him a moment to work out the implications. Luna frowned lightly as she strung the parchment scraps along the thread, the movements so familiar she could do it by feel. She didn't understand why Gorgon acted stupid when he wasn't. He couldn't be stupid, or he wouldn't be in Ravenclaw.
"So that means that Potter—" began Gorgon.
"Yeah," said Jones. "He's more powerful than ever, mate, and Loony—I mean Luna—here is his friend." He jerked his head at Luna.
They both stared at her. Luna didn't know why. Her fingers kept making the necklace while she stared back, calmly. People were always looking at her. She was used to it. She would have gone mad long ago, if she wasn't.
Gorgon licked his lips and swallowed. "You'll—you'll tell Potter that we didn't mean you any harm?" he asked. "That we were just playing?"
"When did you ever intend me harm?" said Luna, and knotted the end of the necklace. She considered the string for a moment, and decided that it could use a few of the swallow feathers she'd found lying beside the lake. She stooped down and got them from her basket.
"Right, right," said Jones, driving an elbow into Gorgon's ribs. Luna thought he was trying to get Gorgon to shut up, and nodded. That's probably the best course. Then he won't say inane things. "Just tell Potter that we've seen the error of our ways and we wish him the very best of luck, all right?"
Luna shrugged at him. "All right. But Harry won't have the best of luck if I can't get these swallow feathers on the necklace just the way I want them."
"Right, right." Jones dragged Gorgon away, and left her alone. Luna looked around, and noted that most of the people in the Ravenclaw common room were trying not to look at her, and failing. She shrugged, and carefully finished the necklace for Harry.
I wonder if they'll be afraid of him? she thought for the first time as she admired the finished necklace.
Then she frowned and shook her head. How could anyone be afraid of him? He's not going to hurt people. I don't understand why so many people don't see that.
Of course, most people refused to admit that Heliopaths and Wrackspurts were real, too. Luna supposed that some of that was fear of what the Ministry would do to them if they admitted it, but some of it could be the same reason they were afraid of Harry—they thought something might happen if they drew their attention.
People are very strange, Luna thought, as she put down the necklace and picked up the book on Arithmancy she'd been reading again. So few of them see the world for what it is.
Remus jolted out of a doze as the magic swept the castle. He could smell it, which was more than he'd been able to do in a long time. He dazedly lifted his head from the pile of second-year essays and blinked at nothing.
The wolf inside him snarled and muttered its hate. By that alone, Remus suspected the magic came from Harry and not Albus. The wolf approved of Albus, for the same reason it approved of Sirius: it could sense kindred in them.
Remus ignored it as he sniffed, and his nose reported to him what the wolf wouldn't. This magic was joyous, fresh, and smelled like green shoots pushing up through mud—like the beginning of spring, in fact. Remus felt his body twitch. He wished he could transform into a beast that wouldn't kill people and run through the castle, exercising his elation through his muscles.
He stood and rapidly made his way to the door of his office, shutting the wolf up when it protested. It was not yet the night of the full moon, and he had more control when he was further away from it. He locked the wolf behind a door he'd learned about long ago, and stepped out into the hallway.
He saw Sirius, hastening away from him towards the top of the school, and called out, "Sirius! Wait!" Surely, if anything could reconcile them, it was this, Remus thought. The air smelled like spring. It breathed possibility. Surely Sirius would realize that any magic that felt like this couldn't possibly be Dark?
Sirius turned around, and Remus recoiled. Sirius's face was a mixture of desperation and fear.
"What do you want, Lupin?" Sirius snarled, the sound of a dog in the back of his voice. The wolf whined in appreciation, and Remus shut it up again. "I have to go find Connor. I think Harry must have done something awful to him. They were having a meeting tonight, you know. The vernal equinox. A reconciliation meeting. I'd been training Connor hard for it."
Remus felt his eyes widen. "Sirius—you didn't advise Connor to use compulsion on Harry, did you?"
Sirius glanced sullenly away from him.
Remus strode forward and grabbed his old friend's shoulders, shaking him slightly. He could, if he concentrated, forget that the last time he'd been this close to Sirius, he'd been trying to kill him. "Sirius, wake up. Harry isn't going to be a slave, not ever again. I would think that you would welcome that and cheer him on. You were enslaved by your family's expectations for so long, until you ran away and hid with James at Lux Aeterna. Why won't you feel grateful that he managed to escape, and even younger than you did?"
"You don't understand anything, Lupin." Sirius's voice didn't sound like him, low and chill and dusty. He wrenched himself free from Remus's hands. "You don't understand anything of what I have to do, what Albus has asked me to do, what it means that—" He cut himself off, and hurried up the hallway again.
Remus watched him go, actually limping slightly, as though he favored his left side. Around his neck, the golden chain of the ornament Dumbledore had given him clinked and shone.
Remus found that he was no longer quite as joyful as he had been.
Draco had planned many fine speeches for when Harry got back to the dungeons.
One of them would definitely start with Did you think I'd be fooled for long? That one was because of the illusion of himself that Harry had created to follow Draco down to dinner and then back to the dungeons before it dissolved. The illusion couldn't do much more than smile and nod and make small talk like "Really?" and "You don't say!" but that had been enough to convince Draco, who was in a talkative mood, that it was Harry. Of course, then he turned around and Harry was dissipating into small motes of light. Draco had panicked for a minute until he realized that Harry had done it so that he could attend the meeting with Connor in private.
So that meant he thought of a second speech starting with I'm really angry with you, and containing many terms that sounded like insults but were, in fact, absolutely and utterly true. He would make Harry look at the floor in shame before he was done. One didn't fool a Malfoy like that.
The third speech consisted of I've been to see Professor Snape about your little stunt at dinner, you know. Then he could pause and watch the expression on Harry's face.
And there was his favorite so far, Harry? I was so worried about you. Let Harry's guilt bring him low, Draco thought, as he kicked viciously at the side of the bed. Then he would spend some time extracting promises from Harry, including never, ever, ever to create illusions of himself again, while Harry was vulnerable and prone to giving them.
But that was before the explosion of magic sprang from atop the Owlery, and Draco fell back on the bed, overwhelmed by the scent of roses that had filled his nostrils and half-drugged him. When he had partially regained consciousness, he rolled over, sat up with one elbow leaning on the bed, and stared at the door.
There were many good points to being a Malfoy. At the moment, Draco couldn't decide whether his bloody sensitivity to magic was one of them or not. At least being overwhelmed by the scent of roses was better than being overwhelmed by a headache, he supposed.
The door of their room opened, and Harry came in. He carefully shut the door before he turned and met Draco's eyes.
Draco found himself utterly arrested by the expression on Harry's face. He had never seen him shine like that, his eyes the green of affection in Draco's bottle, his mouth moving in a free and open smile that had decision and wisdom and knowledge behind it, the lines of tension in his cheeks and forehead almost gone.
"Hi, Draco," said Harry quietly.
"What happened?" Draco whispered, the only words he could manage.
"Connor tried to compel me," said Harry. "And when I resisted it, that took care of the rest of the phoenix web." He hesitated, then stepped forward. "And it might, um, possibly have made me decide that I don't see the world the same way anymore, and that some things could be more important than my brother."
Draco couldn't breathe. For the first time since they'd been Sorted, he thought, he had the sensation that Harry was thinking solely about him, and not Connor.
Well, it's only fair, he tried to think. I've spent so much time and emotion worrying about him, it's only right that he start returning it. Go on, Draco, tell him that you haven't forgiven him for his little stunt yet. Make him beg for your forgiveness.
It was what his mother would have done, or his father. But neither Narcissa nor Lucius was here right now.
"Forgive me?" Harry asked, with a small, nervous smile, as though he were actually worried that Draco wouldn't.
And someone—certainly not Draco, who had more poise than that—was saying in a half-broken voice, "There is nothing I wouldn't forgive you for right now," and leaning forward to hug Harry. And Harry was hugging him back, his mind, Draco knew, for once not rushing off to think of his brother.
It had been a long time coming.
Snape judged the moment less by the magic he felt sweeping through the school and more by the pain in his Dark Mark.
One moment he was sitting in utter agony before the fire, attempting to mark essays that wouldn't mark themselves, his teeth clenched as he fought the temptation to cast a numbing spell on his arm. He didn't want to. It would be like admitting weakness.
Then the pain was gone, like a beast wounded and sent running, and Snape sat in the absence of agony, blinking.
And then he felt the magic sweeping, and heard it singing.
He stood coolly and laid his quill down atop the essays. He made his way to the door of his private rooms. He was not shaking. He was not fumbling to open the door with hands that would barely obey him. He was not afraid that Harry might have called his magic in such extreme power because he had somehow got into another werewolf attack in the Forbidden Forest, or into other danger.
This is ridiculous, Snape thought savagely, and clamped down on the racing thoughts. He made himself take five deep breaths before he opened the door and stepped into the dungeon corridors. He turned calmly in the direction of the Slytherin common room, and his strides had always covered great amounts of ground; he didn't need to worry that he was almost running now.
He was in time to see Harry and Granger come along the corridor towards the common room, and to hide around the corner to watch them. Granger was leading, bent towards Harry, obscuring his face. Snape fought to temptation to hex her bushy hair off, just so that he could see what expression his ward wore.
Then Granger waved to Harry and started back towards the stairs out of the dungeons, and Snape saw Harry's face.
He felt a breath go deep into his lungs and then pass out of them again, leaving him drained.
Harry was all right. He was more than all right.
His face wore a smile that had no touch of strain or stress. He was humming beneath his breath as he leaned near the stone wall and whispered the password that would let him into the common room. And, more to the point, the magic around him leaped and danced, creating faint images of golden and silver light that dissipated almost before Snape could see what they were. If Harry had been upset, his magic would have been snarling around him, and Snape, with the way that Lucius had taught him to sense power, would have a headache.
Snape stepped backwards and returned slowly to his rooms. He could have gone in after Harry and scolded him, certainly, but he found that he didn't particularly want to. He would wait for Harry to come to him and explain what had happened, and take action only if his ward tried to evade him or lie.
Snape didn't think that would happen. Not this time.
He sat down in front of the essays again, brightened the fire, and smiled with vicious glee. There, in the very first sentence of the next essay, was a glaring grammatical error.
Snape marked it with a flourish.
"Millicent! Millicent, did you feel that?" Pansy was practically babbling, and she'd fallen off the bed to the floor.
Millicent glanced calmly up from her Transfiguration book. "Of course I did, Pansy," she drawled. "I'm neither a stone nor a Mudblood." The air was surging with the scent of a thunderstorm brewing, and Millicent wasn't surprised. Harry was a hell of a powerful wizard, and it smelled as though he'd finally realized it.
Pansy picked herself up and scowled at her. "Sometimes I don't like you very much, Millicent," she said. "What was it?"
"Harry," said Millicent, with a shrug, and turned back to her book.
She could feel Pansy's eyes on the side of her face. She refused to turn around. Pansy wasn't that annoying, most of the time, but sometimes she could be. And Millicent had long ago sensed just what Harry could do, and had her guesses confirmed by her father, whom she trusted more than anyone in the world.
Adalrico trusted her back, and once Starborn had arranged the meeting between him and Harry last summer, he'd told his daughter what Millicent had already suspected: they had someone new to follow, a third option between absolute Dark and absolute Light.
Millicent was no stranger to power, either magical or political. She was her father's magical heir, and he had taught her all sorts of things from the time she was six years old and he realized it. Millicent had realized it earlier. She realized lots of things earlier. She was sometimes amazed at how long it took people to catch up.
Harry had finally caught up, it seemed.
Well, good, Millicent thought, as she turned another page in her Transfiguration book. Maybe that way, we can finally start getting some things done.
She wasn't Slytherin enough to conceal her smile.