Thank you for the reviews on the last chapter! I agree that it was angsty, but this one is slightly less so.
Chapter Thirty-Five: Walpurgis NightHad no one else spoken to him yet?
Millicent couldn't believe it. Then she recalled what she knew of her peers in Slytherin, and snorted. Oh, yes, of course she could believe it. After all, they mostly existed in some strange sort of limbo where they thought Harry could be trusted, and yet didn't want to reveal any of the secrets he would need to know to him. There was Draco, but the Malfoys hadn't joined in this celebration for years, disdaining it as too common and too plebian.
Too wild, Millicent thought, as she watched Harry composing a letter to Lucius Malfoy on one of the couches and Draco stretched out on the one nearest, watching him, is nearer the right word.
Well, she wouldn't allow it to continue. She waited until Harry twitched, indicating that he knew she was watching him, and looked up. Then she put on her most gracious smile, the one that her mother had taught her for welcoming Death Eater guests.
"Harry," she said. "Has no one invited you for tomorrow night?"
"Tomorrow night?" Harry looked blank. Draco, Millicent saw from the corner of her eye, had narrowed his gaze until it could have burned a hole through her—if Millicent was the kind of person who ever paid attention to Malfoy glares. She turned her head fully towards him and smiled, and Draco scowled and looked away.
"Yes," said Millicent, sitting down on the couch next to him. Harry moved to shield the parchment from her view. Millicent didn't care. She already knew it was a letter to Lucius, and beyond that, she didn't need the details of the truce-dance. At least, as her father would say, Lucius was no longer acting like an idiot. "This is April twenty-ninth, Harry. And tomorrow is April thirtieth." She leaned nearer to him and lowered her voice. "Walpurgis Night."
Harry's eyes widened behind his glasses. "That was where you went last year, then?"
Millicent nodded, impressed that he could connect the night last year that most of the Slytherins had quietly vanished from their common room to this date with such accuracy. They had done it the first year Harry was here too, of course, but he had been too absorbed in his brother to notice at all. Last year had been a bit better as far as Harry's attention was concerned, but they still didn't want to take the risk of inviting him. This one, Millicent fervently hoped, would finally see Harry taking the place he had to take if he was going to be more than an unbound house elf wandering around and getting into trouble. "Yes. We'll leave the school and travel to a—well, a place whose name you don't need to know if you don't come. It's a Dark wizards' holiday, or used to be. Some of them," she added, with a glance at Draco, "think themselves too good to celebrate it any more."
"It's a random holiday," Draco said darkly. "It makes no sense."
"It stands opposite in the year from Halloween," said Millicent. "That doesn't make it random, Draco."
"I don't understand what happens," Harry broke in gently. At least he wouldn't have to be taught the skills of graceful interrupting, then. Millicent favored that. The less they had to teach him, the sooner Harry could get out there and start doing things. "If it's just a party, why couldn't you have it here in your rooms?"
Millicent smiled, and Harry leaned a bit away from her. She guessed her smile was Adalrico's wild one, then, the one that said things were finally moving on some investment or intrigue he'd worked out. Well, she was his heir, so that shouldn't come as a surprise. "It's not a party, Harry. It's a festival. And…well. You know that on Halloween, there used to be a belief that the spirits of the dead came back, even if they weren't ghosts?"
Harry nodded cautiously.
"Well, you can't see the spirits of the dead unless you make the proper sacrifices, and very few wizards or witches are willing to make those any more." Millicent shrugged. "But everyone can see the magic of the dead. And that's what comes back on Walpurgis Night, Harry."
She knew from the brewing thunderstorm smell in the room that she'd caught him. Harry was possessed of magic, and possessed by it. He always leaned towards the most powerful spell someone else was practicing at the moment, and lifted his head if someone else's power flared out of control. Millicent didn't think he had any idea he was doing it, but she noticed, because she was observant.
"I don't know what that means, exactly," said Harry. "But I'd like to find out."
Millicent cheered silently, and inclined her head to him. "Then we'll take you with us."
"How do we leave the school?" Harry asked. "Don't the professors notice?"
Millicent gave him her mother's smile again as she stood. "Granger isn't the only one to have a Time-Turner, Harry."
As she walked away, she could hear Draco arguing with Harry behind her. Draco was repeating all the arguments the Malfoys had against Walpurgis Night, the reasons they had abandoned the holiday. It was too wild, it was too violent, it did nothing for anyone but make them drunk on magic and think they could conquer the world, and anyway, how could Harry want to be alone with several dozen Dark wizards and their children, at least some of whom would be Death Eaters?
Harry made a calm answer, and Millicent knew he would be coming. She supposed there was the small chance that Draco might come, too, for his sake, but she doubted it. The Malfoys were too proud, and the thought that someone else might see them look undignified, even for a moment, was anathema to them.
Draco could unbend for Harry in private, Millicent had no doubt, but not in public.
It seemed that Harry had recognized the same thing. At least, Millicent thought it from the glimpse of his letter to Lucius that she'd received when he carelessly moved his hand.
Well, really, she defended the action to herself as she started studying for Charms again. I'm a Slytherin. I don't really care what the letter says, but it might be good to know, someday.
"Harry, I wish you wouldn't," Draco whined. They were on their way back from the Owlery, where Harry had just attached his letter to Lucius to Hedwig's leg and asked her to carry it to Malfoy Manor.
"I know," said Harry. "But you can't always get what you want, Draco."
"Why not?"
Harry concealed a smile—grinning now would only encourage Draco to whine further—and shot him a sidelong glance. "You know, you can come with me. It doesn't seem as if you would be out of place at this celebration, given what it's meant to do."
"No." Draco's face had closed. He shook his head, his eyes remote. "It's…it's a Malfoy family tradition to stand back from this, Harry. We have our pride to maintain."
"Yes, I know," said Harry, and couldn't keep his lips from curling in a vicious smile as he thought of the letter he'd sent to Lucius.
He imagined Draco's father receiving the letter and blinking at the small silk pillow that Harry had sent along, plucked from a couch in the Slytherin common room. Then he would read the letter.
Dear Lucius:
I salute your choice of vernal equinox gift. I must consider carefully what it says about you, that you believe my family is my weakness, what holds me back, and that you would send me a gift capable of severing those ties.
I have sent you a gift that should allow you to do the same thing. When and if you unbend your stubborn neck and learn that some things are more important than Malfoy pride, the pillow should provide a comfortable resting place for it. It was designed to support someone lying completely with a curved neck, not one straight enough to cost us both our sanity and our truce.
Our definitions of pride are very different, Lucius, and so are our definitions of family.
Merry Walpurgis Night.
Harry Potter.
"How do we get there?" Harry asked Millicent, as he waited with a milling group of Slytherin students later that night after dinner in the Great Hall. Blaise Zabini was in the group, and Pansy, and Marcus Flint, and everyone else on the Slytherin Quidditch team, and other students from other years whom Harry didn't know nearly as well. Draco had pointedly retired to their room earlier, as had Vince and Greg. Harry wondered if their families didn't celebrate the holiday, either, or if they were simply showing solidarity with Draco.
"This way," said Millicent, and unfolded her hand to reveal a smooth black stone. Harry thought it had been carved, but he wasn't sure. It rose in a tiny pyramid from a round base, looking rather like a half-melted candle. As he peered more closely at it, he saw it wasn't black, but a dark green.
"A Portkey?" he asked.
Millicent smiled slightly. "Not really. With a Portkey, there's always the chance that someone could intrude on the holiday whom we don't want there. A Light wizard, for example." She breathed on the stone, and traceries of silver ran down it, as if her breath had been frosty. "This calls out to the Dark magic in you, and pulls you to the largest concentration of Dark magic in Britain—which will be our Walpurgis celebration. Tonight, at least." She looked up and winked at Harry. "You wouldn't like some of the places it would take you other nights of the year."
Harry shuddered, staring hard at the stone. "Um, Millicent," he said quietly. "I'm not sure it will work for me. I haven't used that much Dark magic."
"You're thinking of Dark in terms of compulsion, the way that Professor Lupin taught us, aren't you?" Millicent asked. The strands of silver on the stone were pulsing now, spinning and writhing about. Harry found it hard to look away from it and focus on Millicent's face, but he made himself.
"Yes," he admitted.
"There's another sense of Dark, Harry," said Millicent calmly. "And it holds tonight. Dark magic is wild." She abruptly tossed the stone into the air.
It hung there like a small dark sun, though its rays were silver instead of gold. It spun faster, and faster, and faster, and this time Harry didn't think that he could pull his eyes away. He found himself bracing as if for a blow. His magic was creeping out of him, rising off his body like steam.
But that wasn't because he was afraid, he realized a moment later. The stone was calling to it, and his magic answered, stretching luxuriously. He could feel the magic from the witches and wizards around him doing the same thing. Blaise was trembling. Pansy hopped up and down in place. Millicent watched the stone with a slight smile, eyes half-closed as her power rose singing around her.
Then the silver slanted away from the stone like the Muggle fireworks Harry had seen once when his family visited his mother's sister, and came down around them, forming an enormous net, or cage. Harry had the impression that things were changing rapidly behind the silver bars, but he couldn't remove his gaze from the stone to make sure. The deep green was growing, absorbing his gaze, reminding him of the Forbidden Forest. He had the insistent urge to reach out and touch the stone, and he trembled. This was Dark magic of a kind he had never even considered, powerful and chaotic but not malicious.
"Here we are!"
Harry blinked, hard, and came out of his daze. They were standing in another place entirely, on a steep bank, thick with gorse and heather, which led down towards a clearing. A nearly full moon shone overhead. Harry turned and looked at the clearing, and caught his breath.
The clearing's grass was a deep, unnaturally smooth green, and the fire that blazed in the middle of it, giving the light to see it, was silver. Leaping ghostly flames intertwined with each other, now the color of frost, now pale gray, now the hue of polished Sickles.
Harry wondered if that was the reason that Slytherin's colors were green and silver.
"Come on!" Millicent yelled at him. Harry turned towards him and saw that she had caught the stone, or disposed of it somehow. She grabbed his wrist and tugged on it. Her face was flushed, her eyes glittering as if she had a fever. "No one else is here yet, so we get to claim the best spots."
The other students seemed to be thinking the same thing. They all but hurtled down the hill, laughing as though they were about to collapse in a moment. Harry staggered, but quickly regained his balance, and managed the run even with Millicent not letting his hand go. He found he didn't mind it. A subtle touch of hysteria had entered his mood. It was very, very easy, he found, not to think about his brother, or Draco, or being a vates, or any of the one hundred and one other things that he had to think about when at Hogwarts.
He felt free.
They reached the clearing, and their feet made no sound as they ran over the grass. Harry flung himself down in front of the fire with the others, and put out one hand. The flames licked just past it, now cool as a wolf's wet nose, now warm as its breath. Harry shuddered once, and then laughed again. He thought he laughed for a few minutes, but no one shrieked at him to stop, as they would have anywhere else. He rolled on his back—at some point Millicent had let go of his hand—and simply laughed and laughed until his breath came short and his throat was sore.
He took a deep breath, caught Millicent's eye, and asked, "Why am I feeling like this?" He meant it as an accusation, since after all she hadn't told him about this, but the effect was ruined when he was giggling like a maniac half the time.
"Because of the magic," said Millicent, almost matter-of-factly. At least her face was flushed as though the night around them were much colder than it actually was, though, or Harry would have felt inclined to hurt her for being so unaffected. "It's all around us. You're feeling it much more than anyone else, Harry, because you're so strong. You have your own magic to deal with, and the magic around us is drawn to you." She smiled slightly and inched nearer to him. "Right now, it really, really wants to make you feel happy."
Harry blinked and turned his head to study the fire. He was still smiling hard enough to make his face hurt, but at least he seemed to be back in control of his voice. The other Slytherin students were sprawled around the fire, talking to each other with a casual ease Harry had never seen them exhibit in the common room. One of them, a boy Harry thought was a sixth-year, gestured lazily, and a rock flew from the ground into his palms, where he began playing with it. Harry blinked again. He might still have trouble distinguishing the power from his mood, but it was clear that there was quite a bit of it in the air tonight, to let people perform wandless magic.
He wondered what he could do, but decided he should wait to experiment. He was almost stupefied with joy as it was.
He looked at Pansy, who was lying with her head resting on his shoulder, humming a nonsense tune. "Hey, Pansy?" It seemed to take forever for her to look at him, but she did, smiling. "Who lit the fire, if we're the first ones here?"
Pansy blinked slowly. "It lit itself," she said, and gave a careless shrug. "It always does." Abruptly, her gaze cut past Harry, and she sprang to her feet like a fawn. "Mum! Daddy!" she cried, and ran across the grass towards them.
Harry turned and saw the pair descending another slope than the one they had taken, moving slowly and regally. The clearing was really a dip in the land, he realized now, surrounded by hills on all sides.
Millicent tugged on him. "Come on. You should stand and greet Pansy's parents. You've formally allied with them, and you've done so much for Hawthorn, and you haven't met her father yet."
Harry nodded and ambled to his feet. Part of him wanted to force this drugged feeling out of his head. The other part was enjoying the relaxation, and allowed him to feel nothing stronger than curiosity as he went forward to meet Pansy's parents.
Hawthorn looked resplendent in a pale green gown, though when he got close enough, Harry could see that her face was still white and tired from the full moon a few days before. She turned and gave him a slight gesture as he approached, a cross between a bow and a curtsey. "Harry," she said, and looked proudly at the man on her arm. "This is Dragonsbane Parkinson, my husband and Pansy's father."
Harry turned and looked at Dragonsbane, and shock cut through some of the haze of the magic. The man was entirely wrapped in black cloth, from head to foot; only his hand was visible, where it rested on Hawthorn's arm, and his index finger bore a ring with a large, pale blue stone. The black cloth drifted as though caught by wind, though Harry could feel no wind blowing in most of the directions it drifted. There was a very faint smell around him, sickly sweet. Harry identified it after a moment as the smell of rotting flesh.
Awe replaced his shock. "You're a necromancer, sir?" he whispered.
"I am." Dragonsbane's voice was deep and smooth, with only a trace of an emotion. Harry couldn't tell what the emotion was, amusement or courtesy or curiosity or something else—though he assumed he would have already known if the man was displeased.
Harry went on staring. He hadn't expected to meet a necromancer. Few wizards became them anymore, since the sacrifices to do so were enormous. Dragonsbane would have to shield his face from the sight of anyone but his wife and children for the rest of his life. He could only speak aloud on two nights of the year, Halloween and Walpurgis (though Harry hadn't been sure about the date of the second one, knowing next to nothing about Walpurgis). He would see how long every wizard or witch he met was destined to live, but was forbidden to speak of it. He would even have to give up his birth name, whatever it had been, choose a new first name, and take on the surname of the family he had married into. That would have been the reason Hawthorn made the alliance with him, Harry realized then; she was the one born with the Parkinson name.
At least, Harry thought in wonder, as he looked back and forth between Dragonsbane, whose eyes he could feel resting on him, and Hawthorn, who was beaming at him, he could understand now why Hawthorn's husband hadn't reacted badly when he found out that she was a werewolf. And he had his silent, nagging question answered, about what sort of wizard would be willing to marry the Red Death.
"I'm very pleased to meet you, sir," said Harry, finally remembering his manners. He only half-remembered the formal greeting that one gave to necromancers, since he had never expected to meet any. He hesitated, then decided that it was worth the risk. "I wish you basalt, and the ash of the volcano, and fires that no water can put out, and the black wind that blows between the stars."
Dragonsbane cocked his head, or at least Harry thought so. His clothing was so shapeless that it was hard to tell. "The dead approve of you," Dragonsbane whispered at last. "They have been talking about a magic rising that stirs their sleep. You are one of the components of that magic."
Harry suppressed a shiver, and nodded. "Thank you, sir." For a necromancer to respond at all to the greeting was a rare honor.
Pansy giggled at him. Harry saw that she had her arms wrapped around her mother's waist, and she was grinning in his direction. "You look as though you just met a ghost, Harry."
"I met one who speaks to them," said Harry, and bowed to Dragonsbane. "I am very glad to have seen you, sir."
Dragonsbane gestured once with the pale hand that had not let go of Hawthorn's arm. Harry made sure not to look too directly at the stone of his ring. "We will see each other again," he said. "And the next time but one is in a home of my kindred."
Harry nodded slowly, wondering when he would have occasion to visit a necropolis or a graveyard. "I'll remember that, sir."
Hawthorn smiled at Harry and led Dragonsbane down into the dell, whispering to Harry as she passed, "I am so glad that you could join us at last. It is time that you learned more about the Dark."
I suppose so, Harry thought dazedly as he watched them go. Pansy skipped back and forth between her mother and father, babbling like a child, her hands sometimes flashing in what Harry guessed was the sign language Dragonsbane would use to communicate with his family the rest of the year. He shook his head.
"Potter."
Harry turned swiftly. Other people had begun arriving while he talked to the Parkinsons, and while most of them had simply trailed past him with curious looks, it seemed that there was someone Blaise wanted him to meet.
"May I present my mother, Arabella Zabini?" Blaise said. He gave a stiff bow, then stepped out of the way.
Harry met the witch's eyes steadily, to be met with a quirk of her lips in return. Arabella, he knew, was a Dark witch who had never been a Death Eater, and she looked it. Her skin was smooth and utterly black, her eyes large and darker than Snape's. She wore her dark hair coiled in so many intricate braids around her head that Harry had no idea how long it was. She was easily the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
That beauty had snared seven husbands, one of them Blaise's father. They had all died, one by one. Supposedly it was of poison. There was no evidence incriminating Arabella Zabini, of course. There never was. The most the Ministry could do was hold her for a short time and then let her go. On one of those journeys to the Ministry, Harry remembered, she had managed to get Sirius sacked.
"Mr. Potter," she said now, and her voice had an odd musical quality to it that instantly made Harry alert. She extended her hand. "My son has told me so much about you."
Harry warily took her hand, his eyes traveling her hair. Yes. There. A tangle of small bells coiled demurely around the end of one braid, bound so they wouldn't jangle. They testified, to anyone who looked for them, that Arabella Zabini had mastered musical magic. She could use it in her voice, doubtless to seduce people and put them off their guard.
"Good evening, Mrs. Zabini," he said, bringing his attention back to her face. "Are you going to sing for us later?"
Arabella's eyes widened briefly, then narrowed, and a pleased smile appeared on her lips. "I had no idea that you had such superb taste in music, Mr. Potter," she said.
"We have a Songstress among us," said Harry, letting go of her head and stepping back into a deep bow, while surreptitiously checking his hand to make sure that there were no small pinpricks on it, such as might come from spider bites or poisoned rings. "It would be crass of me not to suggest it."
Arabella studied him in silence for a moment, then nodded. "It has been years since anyone dared to ask me to make music on a Walpurgis Night," she said, putting the slightest emphasis on the verb. "I should be happy to, Mr. Potter."
She gave him a calculating smile and swept past him towards the fire. Harry looked at Blaise, raising his eyebrows. Blaise's jaw was hanging open, but he quickly shut it and nodded, a faint grin curling his mouth.
"You impressed her, Potter," he said. "That's damn hard to do."
Harry let his breath out. "I'm glad." His body was thrumming with energy now, and he didn't know for certain how much had to do with the magic in the air. He felt as though he had just escaped alive through a deadly trap.
Of course, you knew it was going to be like this when you agreed to come, he reminded himself, turning back towards the circle of celebrants around the silver fire. Dark wizards and Death Eaters don't make the best of company.
Yes, but no one said anything about the necromancer and the Songstress.
"Come on, Harry!" Millicent called. She was standing near Adalrico and a pale, blonde woman Harry supposed was her mother. "The festival is just about to get started!"
Harry shook his head, braced himself, and plunged back into the fray.
Hawthorn stepped forward, her hands held in front of her. Harry thought she was cradling something, but he couldn't be sure what it was. It sparkled and shifted and changed shape when he tried to focus on it. It was either silver or green, though, he was certain of that.
"This is Walpurgis Night," said Hawthorn, her head lifted and her voice clear as it cut across the crowd of witches and wizards, stilling any chatter at once. "This is the night that the magic returns, the night when the magic renews, the night when the Dark cries out in its power. I claim the right to speak by virtue of having survived Darker magic than anyone else here this year."
Her face turned haggard for the briefest moment, and then she shook her head and smiled, and it was gone. Harry glanced at Pansy, who was standing with her eyes fixed adoringly on her mother, and shook his own head. If someone had asked me before I met her, I would never have thought that the Red Death could smile like that, or that someone could love her so.
Hawthorn lifted her hands high. "There is magic coming again," she said, voice growing clearer still, until it remind Harry of the cry of a great bird. "There is power coming again. Some of that power stands among us now, not confined by compulsion in that poor understanding of Darkness that we know best, but free in a manner that we can only half-understand and must trust."
She cast her hands into the air, the whatever-it-was she held pinwheeling across the sky. It changed shape and burst as it expanded, and Harry finally made it out. It was a rain of flowers, with silver petals and green leaves. It was a flock of birds, their silver wings beating steadily around green bodies. It was a shower of dust, both silver and green, that lifted his head and his heart and shook him to the depths of his being.
"May we all be unbound!" Hawthorn cried.
The atmosphere changed as the flowers/birds/dust fell, from solemn to abruptly frenetic. Harry felt the dance begin, but he couldn't have said the moment when he was pulled into it. Suddenly his feet were moving, and wild music poured out of the air, coming from Merlin knew where, surrounding them and snaring them and pulling them on.
Harry found himself dancing opposite Hawthorn, who smiled at him and spun around, her gown and hair flying wildly, her face shining with a joy that was almost wolfish.
He found himself dancing opposite Millicent. She gave him a smug grin that said, "See? Aren't you glad that you came?" But the dance took her away again before Harry could make up his mind how to answer.
He found himself whirling in a tight ring with Arabella, who moved like a swan landing on the water. Harry heard the music shift, and was certain that she was adding her voice to it. She didn't stay long enough for him to be sure, only leaped and skimmed with her dark gown rising like wings, and then came down again and was gone.
He found himself dancing opposite Dragonsbane, and the music grew muted and he felt the intense cold of death brush against his fingers; they turned blue.
He found himself dancing opposite Pansy. For the first time since the article about the Ministry's anti-werewolf legislation appeared, she looked completely relaxed. She spun in a circle and clapped her hands above her head, sparkling trails of dark green and dark blue magic outlining her body, and Harry saw the witch she would become in that moment, several years on, graceful and confident as her mother was.
The dance continued until Harry couldn't tell when it had begun, though he was certain his feet ought to be more tired than they felt. He was broken from his utter trance when he heard ecstatic, wordless cries, mingled with a few names. He lifted his head.
Black silhouettes of beasts were springing down the hills, and curving through the air above them, and rising up from the ground, all moving towards the silver fire.
Millicent's words returned to Harry. "But everyone can see the magic of the dead. And that's what comes back on Walpurgis Night, Harry."
And, indeed, these did look like the odd form, half-snake and half-lizard, that Harry's magic had assumed in the Chamber of Secrets when it first broke free. He could make out the shadow of a dragon, and a trotting beast that looked like the bastard child of a unicorn and a thestral, and a fleeting shape that might have been a banshee. They swirled around the fire, joining with the dancers, brushing against them sometimes. Harry continued dancing, and wondered what would happen if one of them touched him.
He had the chance to find out when the dragon swerved in midair, stuck its silhouettes of claws out before it, and scraped them through his own shadow.
Gold sparkling so deep that it nearly sickened him and nearly made him sing, gold spinning itself out of the lead, gold springing and dancing as it finally answered the call of the potion he had made…
And then the dragon flew on, and Harry, his throat rasping with shock, found himself stopped, the dance having let him go at last. He stared up at the memory, and shook his head. That had been the magic of an alchemist, then, one who had managed to turn lead into gold.
These were memories, he thought, all of them, though he didn't know of any way to distinguish which dead Dark wizards they belonged to.
The unicorn-thestral charged him, its horn spearing his shadow.
Serpents rising, hissing, calling, crowding around a pool of molten gold, piling on top of it in a wriggling, sliding mass, pulsing, shifting, beating like a heart, and then coalescing abruptly into an egg of heartstopping beauty…
Harry gasped as that one let him go. The magic shaped into the unicorn-thestral had been a Parselmouth's once, then, and still held the memory of creating a basilisk. He watched in wonder as it wheeled, tail swaying behind it like contours of ink, and sought another wizard to share the memory with.
Other witches and wizards around him cried out, or tilted their faces back and absorbed the memories in silence, or shook before them. Harry took a few steps forward, willing to seek out any who would speak to him, halfblood that he was.
They all spoke to him, or so he thought; it was hard to distinguish some of the shadow-shapes one from another. He caught glimpses of exquisite, unique potions; of magically-bred plagues; of spells that did three things at once; of people turning to stone statues from the gaze of a wizard who had given himself Medusa's abilities; of a wave rising hard and high enough to smash an island to pieces in a roaring storm; of a sword enchanted until it could cut the very air. All of those and more, and it felt as though the boundaries of his being rippled and expanded outwards, filled with a heritage he hadn't even known was there.
At last it ended, and the shadow-shapes leaped high and dived deep and ran fast and vanished. Harry noticed he wasn't the only one on the ground, shaking. Some of the wizards and witches had their hands over their eyes, and Harry heard low murmurs that sounded like prayers or curses.
Then Arabella Zabini began to sing.
Harry had never heard a Songstress; he had only read descriptions of their voices. It was nothing like the real thing.
Dark, the books had warned gravely, but Harry found that he willingly yielded his thoughts to be sculpted into new images. He, along with everyone else there, saw a hillside turned purple by the light of the setting sun, already scattered with bodies. He, along with everyone else, saw the blood among the flowers, and the Dark wizards retreating frantically before the Light ones, blocked by powerful Light artifacts from using their full power.
Dangerous, the books had insisted, but Harry presently couldn't see the danger as the notes plunged and twisted and turned, taking him into minds and whisking him out again, giving him glimpses of wives and sons and daughters and husbands and mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers, letting him see and understand those who were on the verge of dying.
The song rose, reaching steadily for its crescendo, and Harry felt his mood spin upward with it. Shining patches of light cut past him, reflected in darkness, as if he were underwater and swimming for the surface. The world trembled and splashed and broke apart, and he reached that surface.
The Dark wizards joined hands, sinking their feet into the earth and clasping their magic in an unbreakable wall. They shed fear, shed panic, resolved not to be ruled by it, and gave their trust to leaping wild magic.
The magic soared out of them, joyous, snarling, free, and ripped the Light wizards in half like a sweeping sword cut. Abruptly, the scene of battle on the hill by sunset changed from a victory for the Light to a victory for the Dark.
Harry found himself cheering as the song ended, along with everyone else, and blinked, sitting back. He probably shouldn't have been cheering a scene of such violence, but it had seemed like the only sensible thing to do.
He glanced up, and met Arabella Zabini's gaze. She looked satisfied.
That was a test, Harry realized abruptly. She wanted to see how I would react to a scene of Light wizards being slaughtered.
He attempted to give back a glare that said his reaction was more an indication of her song's power than his sympathies.
She chuckled at him and turned away in a sweep of her dark gown.
Harry shook his head and stood, slowly, his legs wobbling. Millicent was beside him in an instant, whispering, "So what do you think?"
"I…" Harry shook his head. "How much more of this is there?"
Millicent laughed. "Not much more. Just one more major ceremony, and then it'll be done. Most of us stay for a little while, eating and talking, but we go back early to the school anyway, so we don't have to use the Time-Turners for more than a few rotations." She cocked her head at him. "No one would think badly of you for going back now," she whispered. "They're already impressed."
Harry shook his head again. "No. I want to see what this ceremony is."
Millicent said, as they walked back towards the center of the circle where the silver fire blazed, "You know, Harry, you would make a very good Dark wizard."
Harry chose to ignore her.
By the time they reached the fire, the ceremony had already begun. At least, he thought that was why there was a circle of absolute blackness on the grass in front of the fire, slowly pulsing and expanding. The wizards and witches who had come to celebrate stood around it, moving back only slightly as it consumed more and more of the grass.
Abruptly, the circle extended upward as well as across, rising into a tall, slender black cylinder. Harry stared at it hard, and shivered. His eyes ached just trying to pierce the blackness.
The shape focused itself some more, and then a shape like an awning molded out from the top. Harry squinted, but still didn't know what it was until it stopped moving. A doorway.
Hawthorn stepped forward, her voice gone back to the clear one that she had used at the start of the evening. "This is the circle of unbinding. Whoever goes into this is entirely unbound, entirely free, for one instant—body, magic, mind, heart, and soul." She paused for a moment, her eyes cutting across the crowd. If they lingered on Harry, he really didn't feel it. "There is, of course, the possibility that you will not come back to yourself," she added softly. "But perhaps vanishing is worth it, for the one moment of perfect freedom."
Shit, Harry thought, as he stared at the black thing. He could hardly risk death, not when other people needed him so much.
But the temptation to enter it was present from the moment Hawthorn finished speaking, and even in the silence that followed, when everyone else regarded the cylinder with solemn expressions and made no move.
"Does someone have to enter it?" Harry whispered to Millicent.
Millicent shook her head. "No. This is the part of the ceremony that most often gets neglected, in fact. It does kill people." She leaned towards him earnestly. "It separates you entirely, Harry. Every part of you. It detaches your soul from your body, and your magic from your mind, and so on. And whether it puts them back together…well, that's up to you, really."
Harry stared at the dark thing. It sat there. "How long before it vanishes?"
"An hour," said Millicent. "We can go back to Hogwarts—"
"No," said Harry, and stepped forward. His heart was pounding crazily. He could see almost nothing but the doorway, but he was aware, in other ways, of the gazes swinging to embrace him, of Millicent's expression—not quite awe and not quite pride—as she helped him forward, of Hawthorn stepping out of the way.
"You risk your life freely?" Pansy's mother asked him.
"I do," said Harry, and then he stepped forward and through the doorway before his caution could eat his desire to be free.
He whirled free.
He found himself drifting in darkness, with a gulf beneath him and on either side so vast and terrible that his mind would break trying to comprehend it. So he didn't try to comprehend it. He drifted, and gazed down and up and around until the directions broke, and he could no longer tell which was which.
It didn't matter which was which. They were only part of his human perception. He closed his eyes, or he opened them, and he whirled.
He whirled, bound to a wind, cutting beneath small points of light in a blackness so huge that it made his soul ache. Stars, he thought, and this is the black wind that rides between them. Whenever he looked up at night, the impression he had was of millions of stars, but now he realized how wrong that was. His eyes sought out the stars only because they were prejudiced by being able to see light. In truth, darkness was the vaster creation, space unending and wondrous, empty void with nothing to fill it but more darkness. And darkness always came, unspent, inexhaustible, created and born and generated of itself in a way that light would never manage.
There was darkness before there was light, and there will be darkness when the light is all gone.
There was darkness in his heart, too, despair and hatred and rage that he had fought so hard to suppress. Harry found himself gazing at those emotions, and he was unafraid. Yes, they were there. Yes, he would feel them. Yes, he could see the fine cracks running through his conceptions of the universe, places where someone could hit him and fracture him. But they were whole and unbroken as yet, and he was free to look at them and accept them calmly.
He climbed as if he had wings. Webs seethed around him, and Harry knew them all, the webs of his ordered thoughts. He touched them and crawled them and felt the sheer stickiness of them, and was unsurprised to see how many of them led back to Connor, even now. That would change. His mind was already changing, moving into the forest where strange and wild creatures could run. That meant the webs would have to find new places to attach, and if those places were still on Connor, then Harry would be more than surprised.
He danced among his magic, which refused to form one beast as the magic of the dead wizards had, or one memory, but formed many, all alive, all shifting, pulsing, changing like the snakes in the vision of the basilisk egg. From moment to moment they changed, from moment to moment they were different, and Harry caught glimpses of what his magic could do, and he laughed in wonder, and again he was unafraid. It was not the same thing as courage, this unfear, being far calmer. He didn't have to brag or fear what he could do, because he knew.
He couldn't keep hold of the insights. They whirled away from him, flew away from him, danced away from him, and he spun back together, bindings once again taking hold, body and mind and soul and magic and heart to each other.
He found himself on the grass, on his knees, on the other side of the black cylinder. Harry took a deep breath and climbed slowly to his feet, then walked around the cylinder to join the witches and wizards again. The silver fire was almost out, he noted.
They stared at him solemnly, and then they began nodding, and whispering, their voices like wind in a large grassy plain.
Harry found it easy to ignore them. He stared at the stars, his gaze this time picking out the voids between them instead of the points of light. Had he really ignored darkness that easily, all his life? Had he really disdained Dark magic as only compulsion, and Light magic as only free will?
It was more complicated than that. Dark magic was also wild, and Light magic was also tame. And yes, compulsion and wildness did not seem to sit side by side easily, but they were both true.
Harry's eyes came back from the heavens when Millicent touched his arm. She was smiling at him softly.
"A bit of refreshment, and then we'll go back to Hogwarts," she said.
Harry nodded, and let her pull him back into the circle of chattering Dark wizards and witches, part of him still free and gone flying.