Thank you for the reviews on the last chapter!

Fair warning: This chapter ends with a cliffhanger. Also, it is fairly painful.

Chapter Twenty-Seven: What Light is Like

Harry stepped out of the Room of Requirement, and realized abruptly that Peter hadn't said where he and Vera would meet him. Well, it will have to be somewhere outside the school, at least, since I think Dumbledore still has those wards up to prevent Peter from entering.

He took the wand out from his pocket and murmured, "Point Me Peter Pettigrew."

The wand spun once, then pointed steadily towards the school's front doors. Harry nodded and took a step to follow it.

Millicent's hand grasped his shoulder, pulling him to a halt. "Where do you think you're going, Harry?" she asked, with false cheeriness. "You said that you'd been trying to sleep better lately. I think you would sleep better if you returned to our common room, instead of traipsing around the halls."

Harry gritted his teeth and jerked hard, a twisting motion that his mother had taught him for when an enemy had hold of him. It worked now, and Millicent's hand fell away. "I have another meeting," he hissed at her. Her eyes had gone wide as she watched him, the first time Harry had seen them do so. "I don't need you to accompany me everywhere, and I certainly don't need you interfering with those things that I've promised other people I'd do."

Millicent merely watched him go. Harry wondered if she planned an interrogation for when he returned to Slytherin, or had just decided there was nothing she could do for right now. It was too much to hope that she would really never try to delay him or interfere again.

Harry ducked past patrolling prefects and Professors, shading himself with a Disillusionment Charm when he needed to. The great doors of Hogwarts were still open, and he stepped outside. He did force himself to pause and draw the sweet air of the outdoors into his lungs.

Well, perhaps not that sweet, after all, he thought with a grimace, as the rich horsey smell of the giant beasts that pulled the Beauxbatons carriage came to him.

Harry turned and swept the lawn in front of him with his eyes, where the wand pointed, but could see nothing. Of course, Peter was probably a rat, and he wouldn't be able to see Harry under the Charm anyway. Harry shook his head and dropped the Charm, then called, "Peter?" as loudly as he dared.

Movement shimmered off to the left, and Harry saw the flash of a gray rat running close to the ground—a motion he'd learned to identify easily after last year. The rat sat up briefly as if to groom its whiskers, and motioned to him with one paw. Harry smiled and followed.

Peter led him along the wall of the castle towards Gryffindor Tower and out of immediate sight of the front doors before he changed back. Then he spent a moment shuffling and adjusting his limbs before he faced Harry and held out his hand.

"Peter," said Harry, as he clasped the hand. "You look well."

And he did. His face was no longer as thin and as haunted as it had been last year, and his blue eyes were bright with good humor. Just a short time of living away from the Dementors and the Aurors hunting him had made a difference, Harry thought. Even his smile was slower, deeper, warmer.

"Harry," said Peter. "Yes, I am feeling better—even better now that I can see you. The Sanctuary's a remarkable place. Rest there is true rest, without the ashy feeling of too many snatched hours of sleep that I'd been having before I went. The Seers know exactly what kind of light you need, the number of cushions that are comfortable on your bed, when you're suffering from bouts of fear or dreamlessness, and one of them is usually awake to talk to. The Sanctuary has no normal night and day, surrounded by its shadows as it is." Peter gave a dreamy smile. "I never thought I could like an enclosed space after Azkaban, but I was wrong."

Harry could feel himself relaxing, both at the obvious joy and peace in Peter's voice, and the fact that there was no Seer around yet. "Where is Vera?" he asked, to make sure.

"She'll be along in a while," said Peter, and then smiled at him. "I'm almost completely healed. But the phoenix web is still there. Since it's a web, and you're well on your way to becoming vates, they thought you could break it."

Harry blinked, wondering how Peter had known about his progress towards becoming vates, and then remembered that Peter had said Remus had come to the Sanctuary. Of course. He'd be able to tell him about my breaking the web of his Obliviate. "I'll try," said Harry. "But if I'm hurting you, then you'll have to tell me. I still haven't broken many webs."

Peter chuckled. "I made my pain known last year whenever it happened, Harry," he said, sitting down. "I've only learned to be more honest in the Sanctuary. Come, I give you permission to use Legilimency on me."

Harry nodded and took Peter's head between his hands. Peter gazed back at him trustingly. That gave Harry much more confidence than he otherwise would have to lean near and murmur, "Legilimens."

The familiar sensation of wind sweeping him forward caught him up, and then he hovered in a place entirely unfamiliar to him. Peter's mind last year had looked like Azkaban, down to dirty gray walls and long corridors filled with locked cells.

This place was white, and opulent in a way that made it seem like a true home, with arched doorways and doors that stood half-open as if inviting a visitor inside. Harry could see glittering treasures beyond the doors that he supposed made up Peter's most recent memories. Others lay further back, in shadow, but that didn't seem to matter as much; Peter would probably share them if Harry just coaxed him a bit. The light came from no visible source, but sparkled on off-white pillows and cream-colored divans and many other pale shades that varied enough to never become monotonous. Harry wondered if Peter had modeled his mind after the Sanctuary, or if it was just the natural influence of the place creeping in. Either way, his words about how peaceful it was there rang even truer now.

The one thing out of place in all that white was the phoenix web, a harsh, ugly golden spider crouched on one of the divans. Harry frowned at it and strode towards it, one hand extended.

"You need to leave," he told it.

He received a clacking, hissing refusal in return, and the web curled up, demonstrating its mastery of the one part of Peter's mind it could still hold. Harry shook his head and crouched over the web, studying it. It had a single tiny figure stuck in it. After a moment, he recognized it as a replica of himself.

Harry blinked, then nodded. Of course it would be. Peter broke free of Azkaban by focusing the web around a duty to protect and save me instead of a duty to protect and save his friends. It only makes sense that I'm an anchor for one corner of the damn thing.

Harry lowered his hand and put it on the web. The web hissed at him, and made as if to coil about his arm.

He summoned what he thought of as his vates mindset in retaliation. The web's strands touching him withered and died. The golden thing trembled and gave a little warbling song of distress that might have changed Harry's mind if he hadn't heard the net in his head sing the same way.

"No," he said. "You should never have been here at all. You certainly shouldn't have lasted so long. You are going."

He moved a step backward and wound his other hand into place. The web shone with desperate strength, shooting out a new tendril to curl around the back of the divan. Harry yanked to the side, and that tendril was forced to retract before it found an anchor. Harry closed his eyes.

He concentrated on the sound of true phoenix song, as he remembered it soothing him to sleep this summer, before the abduction and the Death Eaters and Snape's arrest and the other parts of this mess. The song swelled in his imagination, clear and pure, and overrode the whining dissonance the web was trying to use to protect itself.

In moments, the real song conquered the pretense, and then the web withered in his fingers. Harry opened his eyes to see that he held nothing more than a handful of golden dust, and the replica of himself had taken its place among the other memories somewhere in one of the white rooms, no more or less important than the rest—certainly no longer the purpose that Peter lived for.

Harry smiled, blew the dust carefully into the shadows so that it had no chance of forming as a web again, and stepped backward, sliding out of Peter's wonderfully warm and well-lit mind with a murmured word.

He opened his eyes, blinked a bit, and then met Peter's wondering gaze. Peter was feeling the side of his head as though someone had hit him with a hammer and then the lump had sunk again to become part of his skin.

"That feels—wonderful," he murmured. "Like freedom." He met Harry's eyes, and Harry was torn between pride and embarrassment at seeing awe in his face. "I never imagined it would be so easy."

Harry shrugged and turned slightly so that he wouldn't need to meet Peter's eyes. "It wouldn't have been, last year," he said. "I tore Remus's own web on his memories too swiftly, and let all the emotions flow back in. And the Seers must have weakened your web quite a bit. This one wasn't hard."

"Thank you for my freedom, Harry," said Peter. "And now, to the reason that I came." He sat down on the grass.

Harry turned to face him. "Don't you think we should get under shelter?" he asked.

Peter shook his head. "I don't believe that anyone else has reason to come here, and if they do, then you and I can both hide well enough." He laid emphasis on the word "hide" that Harry didn't understand, staring at him all the while.

Harry nodded slowly, perplexed. "And what do you mean, the reason you came?" he added, his ears finally delivering what they'd heard to his brain. "I thought you came to have the phoenix web removed."

"And to see you." Peter leaned forward, one hand washing over the other. "Harry, you can't just have absorbed all the blows you took in the last few months and gone on."

Harry blinked, mildly insulted that Peter would think that. "Of course I can," he said. "I was trained to be strong and resilient, and I've added more strength to that lately. I'm glad that you were concerned." That much was true. Knowing someone else still cared about him when his father, Snape, and Draco had turned odd mattered more than Harry wanted to admit. "But really, there's nothing to be worried about. I'm doing better, I promise. I have some hope that the Minister will be voted out of office and Snape will come home after his trial."

Peter just shook his head.

"What?" Harry had to swallow the shout he wanted to make. "What?" he repeated more insistently. "Did one of the Seers prophesize that Snape is never coming home?"

"They aren't that kind of Seer, Harry, remember?" Peter smiled at him, but there was something incredibly weary behind the expression. "They See the present, not the future. And no, my headshake has nothing to do with Snape, though he deserves a bite on the ankle if anyone does. I'm worried about you. What would you think of someone whom all of your experiences in these past few months had happened to? Would you really think that he was all right or doing better?"

Harry lifted his head. Here it comes again, he thought in irritation. At least I don't think he did bring the Seer the way he said he did. "Of course not," he said. "But those are most people. I'm me."

"Better than most people, then?" Peter's voice was extremely dry.

"Of course not."

"Stronger than they are?"

Harry shook his head, trying to convey what he really felt. The truest words were also the ones that other people tended to dismiss, because they didn't understand them like he did. "It's just—I don't know them from the inside out like I do myself," he said, in sudden inspiration. "I wouldn't know for sure what they really felt. And if someone said that she wasn't afraid any more and then demonstrated signs of fear, I would suspect her of lying. But I know what I feel, and I feel fine. And I know that I can keep going." He smiled at Peter. "I know that you said you trusted me last year, enough to reveal secrets to me that you'd carried for twelve years. Can't you trust me now? Can't you see that I'm fine?"

"You are most assuredly not fine, Harry," said a light voice from behind him. "You have not been since you were a year and a half old."

Harry shot to his feet, moving instinctively in front of Peter. Then he realized that Peter hadn't moved, hadn't started, hadn't seemed upset at all. He gave him a betrayed glance.

Peter stared back at him without remorse. "Vera wanted a chance to observe you from afar for a while, Harry," he said. "Seers need only one glance to gather the truth of a human soul, but they need time to absorb it, to understand what they're Seeing. She agreed to remain back while you took the web off me."

"You lied to me," Harry snarled, his eyes tracking the progress of the short, plump witch walking towards them along the castle wall. She wasn't close enough for him to see her face yet, but he was sure it would wear an expression of concern—concern she would be better off spending elsewhere, concern that would reveal his deepest secrets if he let it, concern that would encourage him to weakness if he spent too much time around it. He backed away from Vera. "I trusted you, and you lied to me."

Peter simply looked at him. "I didn't lie, Harry," he said quietly. "I warned you we were both coming. I said that she would be along in a while. I told you that Seers have a gift of absolute honesty, and absolute Light. I don't know why you thought you could hide from that, and frankly, I don't understand why you wish to. If you're going to be vates, then you should want to understand yourself. You won't have another opportunity to understand yourself like this."

Harry ground his teeth. Merlin, I hate this. He always hated the moments when two opposite obligations tugged at him.

If he did want to be vates, then yes, he should try to understand himself, and he had even said he would try in the Owlery on the vernal equinox, when his own phoenix web broke. And his doing what he could to free the magical creatures was important to so many people, even wizards. It was certainly not a set of principles or a duty that he wanted to abandon.

But he needed to keep others' secrets, too—most especially his parents'. If this Seer really had Seen everything, she would know about what Lily and James had done now. Harry didn't want that. He wondered, dismally, what the chances were that Seers were absolutely trusted witnesses in court, and wouldn't even be required to take Veritaserum to validate their testimony.

He turned to Vera as she came up to him, and inclined his head, not meeting her eyes. He wouldn't run away, but he didn't need to show politeness to her, either. "How do you do, ma'am?" he asked, deliberately keeping it to a mumble.

"Much better than you do," said Vera, and the sharp, crisp tones of her voice made Harry lift his head to look at her. Vera was a woman he could have passed in the streets of Hogsmeade without noticing. Her face was calm and ordinary, marked with wrinkles from laughter and frowning and squinting at parchments. Her eyes were deep brown, but not nearly as dark as Snape's. Her hair was brown and tied in a neat bun on the back of her head. There was no sign that she was someone who could just rip the secrets of another wizard's soul away from him.

"I don't know what you mean," said Harry, determined to bluff it out to the end. Perhaps, if I can show her just how much I don't want this, then she'll give up and respect my privacy. "I've achieved several last things in the last little while that I'm very proud of. One of my friends has finally stopped being stupid. I've met with my allies and sent them home happy. I think I'm going to get my guardian back from the Ministry unharmed."

Vera heard him out, her hands folded. She was a solid presence. Harry was sure now that he could have passed her without noticing anything unusual about her, but at least she would have drawn his eye. She did not look as though any blow could rock her, or anything she had seen could ultimately shock her. Harry supposed that was a good characteristic for someone who went around peering into people's skulls and being a busybody about what she found there.

"You've achieved them all at costs to yourself," Vera said, when she seemed sure that he'd finished. "You've given up time and effort, which anyone might have done, but you've also agreed to answer a letter from someone whom you don't want to hear from again, and you've spent an awful lot of time lying to other people, haven't you? You don't want anyone to worry about you. Why is that? Why wouldn't someone who wore himself out in the service of others at least want that service understood and appreciated for what it is?"

"Shut up," said Harry, and then clamped his lips together. He hadn't meant to be that impolite, really he hadn't, but this—this was too much. He backed a step away from her, and felt Peter's hand close on his arm, light but undeniable.

"Harry," Peter murmured, "just listen to her. She was the one who convinced me that I wasn't evil for following the orders I was given out of love and a need to protect my friends. I remembered those words the whole time I was in Azkaban, and they were one of the things that gave me the courage to break out."

"I don't want her looking at me," said Harry.

"It's too late, Harry." Vera's voice was gentle. "I already have. And you don't want anyone looking at you, isn't that so? That conditioning of your mother's still lingers very strongly. You bounce attention from yourself to other people whom you think have worse problems. You want everyone to look at Connor and not at you, even when you do something truly remarkable. You don't want anyone to see the immense load of secrets you're carrying, even when they almost break you."

Harry heard his own breath rushing out of his lungs in a frantic, awkward mess. He controlled the temptation to step back or bolt or do something else unfortunate. He had to brazen this out, especially if Vera already had all his secrets. He had to at least persuade her not to spread them any further.

"It wasn't her fault," he told Vera. "It was—it wasn't the best thing she could have done, but it was necessary, she thought, to protect Connor. I had to be hidden so that no one would notice me when they were making plans to take my brother down."

"And now?" Vera asked. "Now that you have accepted that your brother might not be the only one who needs protection, why do you insist on staying hidden? Your magic is very powerful, Harry. You could accomplish much if you acknowledged that and accepted the position of leader that others want to give you."

Harry bared his teeth. I can explain this, but they won't understand. "People are so wonderful," he told Vera. "And this already sounds stupid."

Vera simply raised her eyebrows. "I've already seen your justifications, Harry," she said. "Explain. I can promise, I won't tell you that it sounds stupid. Many other things in your soul have far less sense backing them, such as what your parents did to you." Her face darkened for the first time, and she narrowed her eyes. "I would like to look into their souls, if they were here, and see what this looks like to them. I am sure I would find some of the most cramped and twisted reasoning ever woven."

"Do you want to hear what I'm saying, or do you want to insult my parents?" Harry demanded.

"The first, of course," said Vera. "This is the first time you've ever really said this aloud, Harry. It's an event, I think."

Harry scowled at her. I know what I'm saying, and I'm the only one it should matter to. Why does it matter if others hear it or not? "People are so wonderful," he said steadily, and ignored the whining pulse in his head that reminded him how idiotic words like this sounded when he expressed them. "They have—they have their own souls, their own inner existences. It matters that they exist in the world. They're all beautiful, looked at in the right way. Even when they hurt other people, few of them are doing it just to hurt others, like Voldemort or Bellatrix Lestrange. They have their reasons. You can listen to those reasons and understand them.

"I want to protect them. I want to prevent people who hurt others from hurting them, of course, but I also want to forgive them, and find some way for them to go on living and forgive themselves, instead of just crumpling them up and putting them in Azkaban or someplace like that. Azkaban is such a waste. There's so much potential in someone like Snape, whom people would dismiss just because he was a Death Eater at one point, or Draco, whom someone might dismiss because of his name and his family's reputation, or Peter, whom everyone thought was a criminal." Harry looked hard at Vera, willing her to understand. "I think that most people can heal of the damage they've done themselves and come back and change again. No one ever stops changing until they're dead. And that means that everyone deserves as much freedom as possible, if they aren't damaging other people's freedom with it, so that they can make decisions as freely as possible. They should have lots of choices. They should have lots of paths. That applies to everyone. And my being a leader would cut paths off for people, because they would think they owed me obedience or something because of my power." Harry snorted and shook his head. "Power's only good if it's used to give people choices and paths, not if it's just—I don't know, tossed around and shaped into pretty lights."

Vera regarded him in silence for a long moment. Harry watched her back. She really did seem to understand, he thought, as the seconds passed in silence. He couldn't do anything about the secrets she'd already discovered, but perhaps, if one person really did understand what he believed…

Then Vera said softly, "Everyone, Harry? Everyone deserves that?"

Harry frowned. "Perhaps your Sight is deficient, then," he said. "Yes, everyone. Former Death Eaters included. I would have thought you would understand that, since you offered the Sanctuary to Peter." He felt Peter's hand close tightly on his wrist for a moment, but didn't look at him. He was still irritated with him.

Vera came a few steps nearer and then sat down on the grass, not seeming to notice how cold and wet it was. Her eyes were gentle, deep with sadness.

"If everyone deserves that," Vera whispered, "then why don't you deserve it, Harry?"

Harry turned his head away from her.

"I was just asking," said Vera. "It seems a simple question, Harry. You're encouraging other people to be selfish, to a certain point, and discover all the wild beauty they can spin out of themselves. Why, then, don't you want to discover what you can spin out of your own soul?"

"It's different," said Harry. "For me, it's different." Oh, Merlin, how he hated this. He felt as though someone were peeling his skin off in strips, leaving his soul exposed. No, it would have to be something deeper than my soul. She's already seen that.

"Tell me how," said Vera.

"If you've Seen it, why don't you tell me?" Rudeness should make her go away, Harry thought. It worked on most people. It was one of his favorite distraction techniques. They would start getting angry at a rude person, and not think clearly, or decide that a rude, sullen person was not worth helping.

"All right," said Vera.

No! No, Merlin damn it, I didn't mean to make her do that! Harry whipped around again, not sure what he was going to do. Maybe there was a spell on his lips, maybe he was going to strike at Vera. He didn't get a chance to find out, since Peter wrapped him tightly in his arms, and Harry couldn't do anything that would also hurt Peter. He struggled miserably for a moment, but Peter held him fast.

"You really can't fathom that you're the same as anyone else," said Vera, her voice low and relentless. "You don't think you're worthy of love unless you're doing things for other people, and even then, you expect the love to be taken away the moment you fail a task or disappoint someone else. You want others to maintain their health, but if yours is worn down, you don't care, as long as the wearing out benefits or frees another person. You're willing to forgive others for the most extreme insults and harm against you, even abuse that should never be forgiven, but you castigate yourself to death for the slightest faults. You would intervene in a moment if you found someone else suffering what you did. For yourself, you see it as normal. You are interested in other people's souls to the extent of drowning yourself in them, but you think that no one can know your own, because it's ugly and uninteresting." She paused. "I think that's most of it, Harry, the core. You don't really see yourself as human, do you?"

Merlin, this hurt, and Harry wanted her to stop. He caught his breath and did what he could to push the hurt away from himself, especially since Peter's arms had tightened around Harry and he was making some absurd noise of horror. "Of course I do," he said, throat so tight that it pained him to speak. "I have one head, two arms, two legs, eyes and nose and ears in the right place—"

Vera reached out and placed a hand on his forehead. "Harry," she said. Her voice had a sound of tears. "You have never allowed yourself to heal. You have broken some webs and some barriers holding you back, but those are only some of them—in fact, the ones you have broken are almost all the ones that would prevent you from being of service to as many people as possible. You've turned your focus from serving your brother to serving others. You have not come to consider yourself worthy of rest, or peace, or relaxation, or love. And there is no reason for that, not the logical ones that you convince yourself are there. You know it, even, and that is why you did not want me to voice them aloud. Laid before you like that, you know they're illogical."

Harry twisted his head away from her hand, but then the only option was burying his face in Peter's shoulder. He stiffened and held still instead. "You don't understand," he whispered, making sure they could both hear his words. "You're wrong. It's just—this is just the way it has to be."

"It does not," said Vera. "You cannot do everything, Harry, and no one expects that of you—save your mother, whom I would like to do more than slap." Her voice deepened and darkened for a moment, then returned to normal. "You can indeed deserve what you would give others. And I think, when we leave, you will see that."

Harry turned back around to stare at her. He had to resist the temptation to cuddle back into Peter. I knew that would happen. I do want comfort, and that's a weakness I can't afford, now or ever. "What do you mean?"

Vera raised her eyebrows. "Why, we are taking you back to the Sanctuary with us, of course," she said. "Your soul is torn nearly in two. I do not need permission from my brothers and sisters in a case as bad as this. You need the rest and the peace that you can find there to keep from collapsing. And in a place where you can't hide, you will have no way to avoid healing."

Harry snarled. A wind blew past him, stinging his cheeks and stirring Vera's neat bun, as his magic surged. "I won't go," he said.

"Because people need you here," Vera surmised.

"Yes, exactly."

"Are you not allowed to be selfish, then?" Vera asked. "Are you not allowed to think about what you need every once in a while, Harry?"

"Please stop talking to me that way," said Harry.

"What way?"

"As if you actually cared. You can't. You're a stranger."

"A Seer is no stranger to anyone she meets," said Vera quietly. "Not when she can cast one glance and know your soul. And I've had to learn compassion across long years, since the first soul any Seer looks at is her own, and I was—rather wanting, then." Her voice was wry. "I know that Peter told you Seers can't lie, Harry. And I'm not lying now. I do want to take you back to the Sanctuary. I do think that you need to rest, and that the outside world can do without you for at least a month. And when the others gaze upon you, they will understand why I think so. There is no one in the Sanctuary who will not care for you, Harry."

"Imagine it, Harry," Peter said gently. "You can be with me and Remus. We're reconciling, step by step. I mentioned that in my letter. I know he'd like to see you."

Harry realized, abruptly, that part of him did want to go, rather savagely. But there was no way that he could let his commitments lapse like that.

"No," he said.

"Harry—" Vera began.

Harry's heard jerked abruptly to the side, and he gasped. Peter tightened his arms around him as if he were preparing to Apparate right there and there.

"Harry?" he said, somewhere beyond the distant, watery world of agony in which Harry was now immersed.

Harry felt as though a fishhook had lodged behind his cheekbone. He understood it a moment later. Draco needed him—didn't just want his presence, but genuinely needed him. A moment after that, Harry could hear him screaming in intense pain, a sound that made Harry's own ears ring and his body clench.

"I can't," he said, to Peter and Vera and anyone else who might be listening, and gathered himself, and jumped, pushing against the anti-Apparition wards as he headed straight to Draco's side.