Thank you for the reviews on the last chapter!

I am not not entirely happy with this chapter, because it did not turn out the way I originally envisioned it. But hopefully it will still be enjoyable.

Chapter Thirty-Three: Wildest of Them All

He had been right the first time, Draco thought, once he was awake enough to think coherently. This had to stop.

He looked down at Harry, who was still curled up on his side, his breathing deep and relaxed. Peaceful, Draco thought. He traced one finger over Harry's forehead, lightly enough that he wouldn't wake him, and found no trace of blood on the scar. There was no pain in his own brow, either, but he was no longer sure that he trusted that part of his empathy. There were nights where he felt no agony, and yet Harry still had dark circles under his eyes in the morning.

Of course, now I know he probably wasn't sleeping at all.

The thought made Draco narrow his eyes. There were many things that had to stop, really. That was only the most obvious of them—Harry's staying up until all hours because he was utterly convinced that his duties for other people needed to be accomplished immediately. But since it was the most obvious, Draco intended to make sure that it stopped, whether or not Harry was enthusiastic about the idea.

The rest…

You might as well admit it to yourself, you know. You can have all the arguments with him you like, storm around in high dudgeon, hint and yell at him until you go blue in the face. He's never going to realize that you're in love with him until you flat out tell him, honestly, like a Gryffindor.

Draco shuddered. He tried to convince himself that it was all disgust, that it came from the thought of acting like a Gryffindor.

He knew well enough that that wasn't true.

He was nervous. Oh, he knew that Harry cared for him, and was his best friend. He didn't know that Harry was in love with him, and every instinct he had, every Slytherin instinct, screamed at him not to betray himself until he was assured of some equal emotion in return. It would hurt too much to see Harry's eyes cloud over, and hear Harry's voice tell him gently that he was incapable of returning the feeling.

And it's not even that, Draco thought, able to approach the truth, here in the warm bed in early morning, that he'd been denying to himself and ignoring all week. I think Harry could date me, sure. But he'd do it because that's what I wanted. He values me like he values other people, as someone with a soul he never wants to damage and freedom he immensely respects.

He doesn't value me more.

And that's not enough.

I'm never going to be another of his sacrifices. I won't accept any gift he offers me that I can't return. And I won't offer him anything he can't return, either.

Draco laid his head back down on the pillow and closed his eyes, adjusting his arm so that it held Harry more tightly. He could feel Harry, unselfconscious as he only was when asleep, let out a little sigh and move closer to the source of warmth and pleasure. That was another problem, Draco thought, though not as severe as the fact that Harry only held him as important in the way the rest of the world was. When he was awake, Harry seemed to consciously recoil from pleasure of any kind. He took comfort only when he was utterly broken down, and every other touch he offered was a means of giving it.

I don't know how I can overcome that. Even empathy only tells me what he's feeling, not how to make him feel better.

Draco bit the side of his mouth. The books he'd been reading on empathy had defined it further and further from him—unsurprisingly, since it was never something he'd cared to look up before he was cursed with it. They'd made it clear that empathy wasn't just a fool's or a sop's gift, that he was not the helpless bearer of emotions from the wide world. He could choose to tune his empathy to one particular person, and in fact, the books suggested, that would act as a shield against the random dumping of feelings from the masses.

Harry's emotions were sharp and strong, and Draco cared about him. He was the obvious choice.

That was the reason he felt the physical pain from Harry's scar, and why he'd fainted in Transfiguration yesterday from the pain and fatigue he could sense pouring through their link—not from the stress of not knowing where Harry was, which Blaise had taunted him with. He could break the link, if he wanted, but he didn't think he'd be able to. He had to really desire to do that. He didn't.

And that's what it came down to, in the end, the unanswerable answer to all the other objections his mind and common sense might raise to being with Harry.

I can't back away from him. I can't love someone else the way I love him. No matter what the problems to being in love with him are, I'm backed against a wall, and I'll just have to find solutions to the problems.

This helplessness has got to stop, too.

Even though he hadn't found answers, only made a decision, Draco felt sleep creeping back in to claim him. It was still an hour until they had to be up, eat breakfast, and watch the First Task. Harry needed the sleep, and Draco needed to be here, far more than anything else at the moment.

He closed his eyes, and let himself sink into golden-green warmth.

Harry kept his head ducked as he picked at his breakfast. He hadn't really dared to look anyone in the eye since he came to the Slytherin table. He knew, just from sidelong glances, that most of them knew about Hawthorn carrying him to the common room, and so about his breakdown.

He was embarrassed beyond measure to have showed weakness like that.

Hawthorn said it wasn't weakness, the voice that sounded like Snape in his head reminded him, but hers was one assurance against an army of gazes. Harry couldn't control how everyone else reacted, and if they were watching him and reporting back to their parents as he now knew some of them did, then they might report things that could put his allies in danger.

Damn it.

"Harry."

Harry started and glanced up, only to find himself in a small pen of his yearmates. Draco leaned close on his left, Millicent on his right, and Pansy stood behind him. Vince and Blaise sat on the outskirts. Vince looked mostly interested in his plate, but Blaise was watching Harry with palpable curiosity.

"What?" he whispered.

"You remember what I said to you last night," Draco murmured, "about this stopping? That it had to stop?"

Harry nodded. "I don't want to skip as much sleep as I did again." I've learned the consequences of that. "I can promise you. I might need reminders sometimes about when to go to bed, but that won't happen again."

Draco cocked his head. "That's a start, but not all of it. Although I'm pleased that you've learned at least that lesson." His eyes flicked over Harry's head, and Harry suspected that he'd felt a stir in Millicent's emotions. "You had something to say?"

Harry turned expectantly to meet her eyes. Millicent looked startled for the briefest of seconds, before she shrugged and picked up the chance that Draco had handed her.

"Yes, I did," she said, eyes on Harry. "I know that the formal alliance you made with our families runs both ways. However, you're in more need of protection right now than we are. The fact that you're in more danger has something to do with that, as well as the fact that our families will come to our aid if we call, and yours…won't."

Harry nodded, grateful that she'd put it so delicately. "What are you suggesting?"

"Stop worrying so much about your obligations to us," said Millicent. "You've granted our requests. It's time that we granted you something. That's going to be protection, and help, and anything else that we can do."

"You were already doing that," Harry protested, trying to understand why what Millicent proposed was any different from what had been going on. "You tell your parents what I'm doing, and—"

"No," said Pansy. Harry turned and blinked at her. "I haven't written a letter to Mother about you in a week, Harry," she said softly. "She showed up here yesterday on her own. Something about concern and your being better at resisting an attack you knew was coming than one you didn't."

Harry snorted lightly. "I can believe that. But what are you proposing, then?"

"No more letters home about you, as long as something drastic doesn't happen," said Millicent. "If you get critically wounded or we think enemies are hunting you, then yes, of course, our parents should know about it. But we'll refrain from reporting on your every small movement. It only stresses you, and it distracts us from helping you more concretely. Besides, we don't need to do it if you really are going to make an effort to sleep and eat properly." She sounded mildly exasperated.

Harry stared at her.

"We'll help you, instead," said Millicent quietly. "And that's the real reason we're not going to act like minders and spies anymore, but like allies and friends. You're going to be our leader, Harry. We should at least get used to following you."

"Wait a minute—" Harry began, no longer thinking the new bargain was better than the old.

"That's what we're doing," said Draco. "We're going to treat you like an equal, Harry, and we expect you to do the same with us. For example, tell us if something is bothering you so badly that you can't sleep. Offer us the chance to help with any tasks that you might have lying around and want someone else to pick up. That kind of thing." He lifted his head and stared calmly back at Harry. "We discussed this yesterday. We think it's best. Our parents are perceptive and intelligent and dedicated to helping you, but we're the ones who're around you day by day and can see what's happening to you more quickly. Besides, this old way isn't working, just like Millicent said. We'll try it new, because, one way or another, your daily suffering is going to stop."

Harry swallowed. He would be a fool to reject this offer, and not because it would probably increase the other Slytherins' watchful surveillance

Equality. They know it's important to me.

He couldn't refuse a relationship that might protect them and at the same time give them equal standing and freedom. They spoke of being followers, but let them once get a taste of what real freedom and independence were like, and he thought they probably would not go back.

Slowly, he nodded. "All right, then," he said. He managed to produce a smile. "I can't think of anything that I want done today, except holding my hand while Connor passes the First Task," he added lightly.

Draco grabbed his hand at once, and then glared at everyone else. Harry rolled his eyes. Merlin knows why he likes touching me so much. At least he isn't going to be completely overprotective about me this time.

He went back to eating his breakfast. It took him until the middle of the meal to realize what the strange feeling in the center of his chest was.

He was free from a source of tension he hadn't known was there. He was very nearly happy.

"Welcome, professors, students, and judges, to the First Task of the Triwizard Tournament!"

Harry settled back in his seat and looked around the enclosure that had been created to hold the Task. The seats ringed it, as the stands did the Quidditch Pitch, and heavy wards glittered in front of them, protecting the actual grass of the enclosure from interference by spell. A small tent stood at the southern end of the enclosure. Viktor, Fleur, and Connor were in it now, Harry knew, preparing for the Task. He had caught his brother's eyes as they left the Great Hall this morning, and wished him a silent good hunting, but he hadn't actually got the chance to say anything to him. Nor had he seen him since.

Dumbledore stood in the stands on the opposite side of the enclosure, where most of the Hogwarts professors were seated, speaking with his voice enhanced with Sonorus. Harry didn't think it was coincidence that the Slytherins had brought him to sit in the stands facing Dumbledore. He wasn't sure what it meant that most of Slytherin House had come with them, though.

His gaze swept slowly past the stands on the eastern and western sides, and settled on what he hadn't wanted to look at.

The dragons.

There were three of them, all nesting mothers, crouched possessively over their eggs. A narrow corridor of wards led down the center of the enclosure, cutting the pen into thirds and offering restricted access to each dragon. Harry knew that each Champion would face only one dragon, and his nightmares of Connor having to defeat all three could be laid to rest.

Nonetheless, he could not regard the dragons with an easy eye. There were a Welsh Green, a Chinese Fireball, and a Hungarian Horntail waiting on the nests, now and then shifting so that the golden gleam of the false egg the Champions were supposed to retrieve could be seen. They might be distant, and the wards softened the outlines of their bodies and dimmed their roars, but they were still dragons, undeniably.

It didn't help that Harry had been feeling something like a wind in his mind since he had arrived in the enclosure, the same kind of sensation he felt around Connor's compulsion. But this wasn't compulsion. This was a distant roaring sound, like a storm, and it was coming from the dragons.

Harry shivered, and tried to turn his eyes to the tent. Dumbledore was saying something now about the first Champion emerging. He wondered if it would be Connor, and clenched his sweating palms together sharply.

"Ouch," Draco said.

Harry started. He'd forgotten that Draco was sitting beside him, never mind that the other boy had one of his hands clasped inside Harry's. The clench was putting a lot of pressure on his fingers. Harry opened his cramped fists. "Sorry," he breathed.

Draco shook his head, his eyes bright as he watched Harry. Harry frowned at him. What is it with him lately? Anyone would think he was pleased that I'd half-crushed his bloody hand.

The tent stirred, and Viktor Krum stepped out. The cheering from the Durmstrang students, most of them seated around the Slytherins, increased noticeably. Viktor, moving steadily towards the Chinese Fireball dragon, didn't seem to notice, though he did tilt his head slightly in acknowledgment.

Harry had expected Viktor to look awkward on the ground, as many large Seekers did, but he handled himself with both grace and speed as he made his way towards the dragon. His wand was in his hand, his face set in a ferocious scowl. Harry was reluctantly impressed. He didn't think that Viktor regarded the danger he was in, or saw anything but the completion of his task.

The Chinese Fireball snarled and crouched over her eggs as Viktor came near. Harry found his gaze skimming past the Champion and settling on her again. Her scales shone violently scarlet, the same color as the scales he'd used for his disastrous potion that summer—as they should have, since liondragon was only another name for the Fireball. A fringe of golden spikes around her face lifted and lowered with her snarls. Eggs in the Gryffindor colors showed between her talons as they shifted.

Harry was still staring when the dragon slewed her head around, drawing in her breath as she prepared to flame, and Harry caught a glimpse of her eyes.

The roaring of the storm in his head increased. He abruptly felt another mind moving in concert with his, though unaware of it, rolling into his thoughts like an ocean consuming a stream. That mind was almost intolerably vast, and wild, and filled with something better than intelligence. That mind knew wind and flame and stone, and if it did not know water, that was a small loss. It—

Harry tore himself free with a gasp as the Chinese Fireball abruptly shook her head and cried out in pain. She'd barely had time to start her mushroom-shaped cloud of fire before Viktor's Conjunctivitis Curse hit her. Harry watched, his heart in his throat, as she went into convulsions, her long, elegant scarlet body whipping back and forth as Viktor dodged past her, swift and graceful still, and snatched up the golden egg. He was out beyond her reach in a moment, and the stands were exploding with shouts of his name and cries of congratulations.

Harry's eyes were on the dragon; he didn't seem able to look away. He felt small, sharp tingles of pain in his own skin as the Fireball smashed her own eggs, and then reared up on her haunches and pawed furiously at her eyes. He bowed his head, shivering. He was glad that Viktor had survived, of course—he would not have wanted to see someone die in the First Task, or in any of the Tasks—but part of him was still bound to the dragon, hurting as she hurt.

"Harry?"

Draco's hand on his brought him back. Harry nodded and snatched his head up, gasping out air and then breathing it in again, trying to remind himself that he had a human chest and human lungs. He couldn't breathe fire. And he had a human voice, too, in which he whispered, "I'm all right," as the Chinese Fireball crouched over the smashed remains of her eggs and trumpeted her loss.

Harry could hear the judges discussing the matter. In the end, while Viktor received a passable score, he had points removed for the loss of the eggs.

He shouldn't get any points at all, Harry thought, his mind unexpectedly quick and turning, vicious, and then he let out a sharp breath and buried his head in his hands.

What is happening to me? The presence of any other Dark creature has never affected me like this.

He did remember what Dobby had said about dragons being the wildest of all magical creatures, but that didn't mean they should be affecting him like this. He swallowed and turned back to the tent as Fleur emerged, walking towards her dragon, the Welsh Green. He was watching the Task. He was not mourning, with fierce heat and mounting flame, the loss of so many young lives in the smashed eggs.

Draco kept on stroking his hand as Fleur faced the Green, and Harry settled further into his own thoughts. He had no reason to have that same kind of reaction to this dragon. Perhaps the reaction to the Fireball was because it was the first dragon he'd seen in action, Harry reassured himself. It was just the surprise and shock of it all. He was used to it now.

That theory held right up until Fleur, trying to draw the dragon's attention with a flirt of her silver hair, danced towards the western side of the enclosure, where Harry sat. The dragon, as brilliantly green as the Fireball had been scarlet, tracked her movements, and her eyes swept over Harry.

Harry found himself standing on the shore of another enormous mind, this one sharper and stronger than the Fireball, not as nervous, but more vicious. Thoughts rose and fell like waves. There were the eggs behind her, under her, to be protected, but more than that, there was the enemy. A few moments more, and she would be in the perfect position to breathe fire at.

Fleur moved.

The Welsh Green breathed.

Harry opened his own eyes in time to see the narrow jet just barely miss Fleur's face, setting her robes alight, but at the same time, he was feeling heat churn in his belly, flex up his throat, and blast out in front of him. He was seeing the world glittering in a hundred shades that had no names, and everywhere were smaller things than he was, deserving of no respect, and there were the eggs, and he would stamp on this annoying small thing if there was no other way to get rid of it…

The Welsh Green stamped down a talon, lunging off her nest as she did so. Once again, Fleur was too quick.

And this time, she began to sing.

Harry felt the immense mind in front of him begin to frost over, the wildness subsiding as it listened to the song, like the mother's cradle-song. The Welsh Green half-slumped, brilliant eyes shutting, and the spell somewhat broke. Harry closed his eyes, and kept them shut, even when the roar of approbation told him that Fleur had succeeded in snatching her egg.

"Harry?" That was Millicent this time. "If you need more sleep, or if you don't think that you can watch your brother, then we'll take you back to bed."

"No," Harry said, forcing his eyes open. Connor. Connor is next. "I—something about the dragons is affecting me. I don't know what."

Pansy drew in her breath. "Wildness," she whispered.

"What?" Harry blinked at her over his shoulder, glad to have the excuse to look away from the dragons. The Welsh Green was waking up now, and her rage at finding one of her eggs was gone knew no bounds.

"It's the reason that my mother decided not to come today." Pansy's eyes met his, filled with a knowledge that she didn't look like she enjoyed having. "Dragons are so wild that sometimes their minds reach out and touch the minds of wizards who have a certain susceptibility to wildness themselves. She knew the wolf in her would answer the dragons, and she had no mind to transform in front of an audience, which might happen this close to the full moon." Pansy wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. "I didn't know they would affect you like this, though."

"Neither did I," said Harry, remembering what else Dobby had said. The dragons were wild, but they were not free.

Apparently their wildness was enough to let them affect the thoughts of a vates, though.

Harry shuddered, and then his brother stepped out of the tent and made his way down the third corridor towards the Hungarian Horntail.

Harry found that his gaze couldn't leave Connor. His brother had always dealt better with situations in progress than situations he had to anticipate and plan for. And now that he had a plan, he looked perfectly content. He walked with his head up, now and then glancing at the stands. Harry would have waved, but he didn't think Connor could see him, and he thought the motion would be jerky and stiff anyway, more apt to make Connor think Harry was choking to death than wishing him good luck.

Connor drew his wand when he was still a good distance from his dragon, to Harry's relief, and cast. "Aedifico spiritum cum odoratu et vibrare!" Then he repeated it again, and again, and again, even as the first copy faded into being in front of him.

Harry felt a familiar sensation of wind a moment later. Connor's compulsion reached out and grasped the illusions, and they began to run in several different directions, one of them cutting to the left, two to the right, and another sliding in on his belly as though he were going to roll right under the dragon's legs and grab the golden shell. Harry had lost track of his brother in the mess of them.

The dragon roared.

Harry shuddered, and was abruptly inside her head, feeling the heavy tug and lift and shift of wings on her shoulders, the weight of horns on her head, the pressure of flame and wind in her mouth. The eggs, the eggs were beneath her, and so much information came from so many different directions that she could not locate the small thing, and there—

She snapped her jaws down. Harry felt his own terror tear him away from his intense identification with her for a moment, and then he was pulled back in as Connor's duplicate faded out of existence. It hadn't been him.

She turned her head in slow circles, backing and stamping, her feet falling in delicate patterns that of course wouldn't crush any of her children. She was irritated, and so the small enemy would die. There was nothing more to it than that. Things which irritated her died, most often by burning.

She smelled one of the many small enemies coming up on her left side, and she whipped her head around and breathed, the flame striking and bouncing from the magic around her. Another two images faded.

Then she felt pressure, tickling pressure, against her belly. She flicked her tail around and gathered herself, prepared to reach down and secure her eggs the moment she determined what it was.

More duplicates erupted from beneath her belly, scuttling like nesting ants. One of them grabbed at her eggs, and she screamed and lifted her wings, propelling herself into a hovering rear that would protect her children from any imaginable enemy.

Many, many small enemies running in circles. She would kill them all. She took a deep breath, and snapped her head around in a circle, flaming across the ground. The grass caught on fire. Her eggs, of course, used to heat, merely baked and soaked it in, rather than being destroyed.

One of the images rolled over and over, just under the flame, clutching the golden egg close to its chest, and then it was over and under and across the grass, and away, and she had lost a child.

Harry returned abruptly to himself as someone shook his shoulders and slapped his face. He gasped, sitting bolt upright, and blinked around. He saw Connor at the far end of the enclosure again, and heard the cheers, and knew that his brother was safe and had succeeded.

"We've got to get you out of here," Pansy was saying worriedly. "I don't know how you can keep your mind around the dragons when they start using the spells to confine them and transport them."

Harry nodded and stood. He would congratulate Connor later. What mattered now was that his brother had survived, more than that he had won.

Then he felt a wind surge past his ears, and it carried the sound of freedom with it, whispered in a simple word from one of the small ones: Imperio.

Harry turned sharply. The Hungarian Horntail was rearing, and he could feel her mind contained neatly in the chains of the Imperius Curse, directed and given a cunning and intelligence she would not have achieved on her own. She turned broadside to the wards and pressed her hide against them, the hide that protected dragons from most magical forms of attack.

The wards snapped, and then fell, opening up the three lanes and permitting the dragons to catch sound and scent of each other.

And then the wards around the enclosure fell with a crash and sparkling cascade of magic, and the dragons could see the audience. Harry could feel the moment when the Fireball's and the Green's seething hatred turned to decision, the decision that the Imperius-controlled Horntail had already come to. There were many small things around them. They could kill and feast and take vengeance for the loss of their children.

The Horntail spread her wings and breathed, her flame shooting towards the western stands where a large group of Ravenclaw students sat.

Harry was on his feet almost before he realized what was happening. "Protego!"

The Shield Charm had to be enormous to protect all the students involved, but it had Harry's will behind it, and his desperation. The flame splattered out in a shining flower against the shield. The dragon screamed her displeasure, and then she was aloft, circling, her shadow blotting out the sun, her neck lowered and her throat already flexing with the next jet of flame.

The Welsh Green joined her in the air a moment later, roaring hungrily, and the Chinese Fireball turned with frightening speed and power, on foot, towards the eastern set of stands. Adult wizards were hurling spells now, but most of them bounced without effect from the dragons' hides, and they were hindered by the need to protect several hundred running, screaming, crying students.

Harry slammed a hand onto Draco's shoulder. "This is where I need your help," he said, lifting his voice to be heard over the screaming and the roaring. "I know what I'm going to do. Your job is the protect the people around you—get the other people who've had lessons with me to help you—while not hurting the dragons."

Draco blinked at him in disbelief. "Not hurt the dragons? Why?"

Harry smiled. He knew it was a horrid smile, more like the rictus of a corpse. "Because," he said, "I'm going to need all my wit and power to defeat them, and I can feel it when they're hurt. Accio Firebolt!"

The Summoning Charm worked rather like a slingshot, given how desperate he was, snatching up the broom Draco had given him for his birthday and hurling it to him. Harry flung a leg over it and kicked off before anyone could say or do anything to stop him. He felt the wind in his hair and the familiar exaltation rising, which was good. It was something to keep him anchored in his own body as he swept towards the dragons and felt the pressure of three mighty minds.

First to draw their attention.

He spun under the Horntail's belly, the flight of something else in the air with her drawing even her Imperius-controlled eyes, and then dived towards her nest. For a moment, his vision was filled with scales, his nostrils with the stink of dragon-hide and fire, and then he was past again and spiraling down in a long stretch of light and dark straight towards the cement-colored eggs.

Not even an Unforgivable Curse could control a mother dragon's protectiveness of her eggs. The Horntail turned back towards him, free of the spell, screaming, and then she was flying fast, right behind him, the wind from her wings hard and wild enough to blow his broom off-course.

Harry turned his broom upside-down and put on another burst of speed, avoiding both the maddened Horntail's claws and the whip-like tail of the Welsh Green, who'd turned towards him when he soared over her nest. Their minds attacked him, the sensations of hunger and hunting and killing and righteous anger slicing through his thoughts right at the same time as he needed to perform a complicated double roll maneuver.

Harry closed his eyes and let his mind deal with the attack while his body dealt with the flying. Dive and loop and turn and roll and roll, and then he was past and up again, rising like a hawk from the nests, with the Horntail right behind him, tail tucking primly up against her belly so she wouldn't damage her own eggs.

The Welsh Green was in the air and swerving towards him now, drawn by his flying or his contact with her mind or his magic. And Harry could feel the Chinese Fireball turning, too, intent on finding out what had caused the disturbance in the others. A moment of beating wings and nervous scraping at the ground, and then she was aloft.

Great. I have their attention.

Now I just need to figure out what the hell I'm going to do with it.

Draco knew when he could argue with Harry, and now wasn't one of those times. Determination, hard as dragon-hide, had pushed at Draco like a wall when Harry had spoken of what he wanted them to do. And it was true that he couldn't have followed, anyway, since the charms put on the Firebolt would only allow Harry to fly it.

That didn't mean he didn't turn to the other Slytherins with a hard pounding in his ears.

"Pansy," he said, "carry the word to the other people who've been attending lessons with him."

Pansy gave him an eloquent, confused look. There were people milling everywhere around them, uncertain which direction to run. In all this? her eyes said for her, with no need to state it aloud.

"You're a witch, for Merlin's sake," Draco hissed at her, and then turned to Millicent. "You know what he's been teaching in those lessons?"

"I do," said Millicent. "I came along and listened sometimes. Cast a Disillusionment Charm on myself so no one would be too particular about me being there. I think I know how to confuse a dragon." She held out her wand. "Speculum Ardoris!"

A shield of flames spurted out of her wand and shot towards the red dragon; Draco thought it was a Chinese Fireball, though he wasn't sure. The flames curled around the dragon's face, obscuring it from view, and an annoyed roar came from it. Draco swallowed. It would have to work. A dragon wouldn't be hurt by fire. The dragon really was only irritated, not hurt, and Harry wouldn't fall from his broom like a bundle of limp rags at any moment.

Other people seemed to have the same idea. Cries of "Speculum Ardoris!" rose from other places in the stands, and Draco breathed easier when he saw the small, brave, insane figure still on his broom, dodging sweep after sweep of claws and tails and jets of flame.

Draco took a deep breath and began to concentrate, hard, on the strongest protection spell he knew. He had to protect; he didn't know all the spells that Harry had been teaching the other students, and Pansy had finally thought to cast Sonorus so she could shout at people, and he was feeling emotions sweeping over him like a tide, now that Harry was no longer right next to him.

The strongest protection spell he knew happened to be Dark Arts, taught to him by his father just before he left for Hogwarts, in case he encountered more enemies there than he thought.

Too bad. People will live with it.

"Defensor vindictae!"

Waves of black coolness spread out around Draco, inundating the stands and freezing the stupid students who couldn't do anything but run and scream in place. He opened his eyes. Since he was the source of the spell, he could see above it and the dark blanket it cast, and see the form it assumed.

Immense eyes opened in the blanket near the end of the stands, and looked at Draco. Draco nodded, and managed to lift his hands through the mist and clasp them in front of him.

Fists surged up just beneath the eyes. Let one of the dragons, or another hostile force, try to attack those under the Dark spell, and it would pummel them, presumably to death. Draco didn't know, since his father had only permitted him to try out the spell with non-lethal force behind it.

Not this time. This time, he was going to defend people, both for his own sake and because Harry had asked him to.

Harry.

Draco's eyes went back to the sky, where one of the pieces of his life rode his broom in a death-defying dance, and felt his stomach contract. He wanted to be sick, but instead, he stood prepared to defend. Because Harry had asked him to.

Please, you stupid prat, come back alive to see how well I listened.

Hermione wondered why she was the one who had to think of everything. Speculum Ardoris could only do so much, and the Dark Arts spell Malfoy had used only reached across half the stands, and Parkinson was shouting her head off about not harming the dragons, and Harry, the brave, stupid idiot, was circling on high with three incredibly dangerous Dark creatures after him. They might not be able to hurt the dragons, but they had to insure Harry survived long enough to do whatever it was that he wanted to do.

It wasn't that she minded thinking of everything, so much .It would just be nice if other people could assume the burden, too.

She raised her wand, carefully focused on the Hungarian Horntail, who was closest to Harry, and whispered the same spell that she'd heard Connor use when he faced that dragon.

In a moment, there were two copies of Harry in the air, and then three, as she whispered the spell again, and then four. Hermione could feel herself sweating as she concentrated on holding the images steady. It was harder than she'd expected, doing it from this distance, and controlling so many at once.

But she was a powerful witch. She could do this. She hadn't needed any soppy pureblood ritual to do it, either. She only needed her will and her magic, and she already knew she was a match for most of the purebloods in the school.

The Horntail roared in irritation, and left off chasing the real Harry to swat at one of the images. The Welsh Green was getting into the action, too, clamping her teeth down and screeching as the image melted into thin air. Hermione smiled, but she was getting dangerously tired, and she didn't think—

"Aedifico spiritum cum odoratu et vibrare."

Hermione nearly sagged in relief as someone else whispered the spell, and then an arm curled around her shoulders, supporting her. She didn't even mind that much when she looked up and saw it was Zacharias Smith. Smith wasn't really all that bad, once you got used to him and his more annoying ways.

"I can't believe no one else is doing anything to help him," she said.

"Well, the professors are protecting the students on this side," Zacharias said in his cool drawl. "I suspect they thought that was more important than just one student, no matter how powerful."

Hermione scowled at him. "Yes, but none of the other students are doing this, either!"

"Perils of being the smartest, Hermione," said Zacharias, calling her by her first name for one of the few times she could remember. "You get to do all the other work that other people can't even think of. Aedifico spiritum cum odoratu et vibrare."

Hermione fixed her gaze on Harry again and repeated the spell, deciding she was recovered enough to do it now. She would never share, ever, how much Zacharias's words had warmed her.

Harry was grateful for the images that appeared suddenly around him, and for the protective magic he could feel at his back, and the Flame Mirror spells dodging through the air. Grateful, but he didn't know what to do with the time they were buying him. All the dragons were very much focused on him; he could, if he concentrated a bit, get images of himself through three pairs of eyes.

You have a connection to their minds. Use it.

That was the problem, though, Harry thought, as he looped around the Welsh Green's latest attempt to bring him down with fire. The other magical creatures he knew wore webs. He did not know how to free these dragons when they wore none.

But they are wild and not free. They must be bound somehow. What way could they be bound that's outside wards and the spells they were using to confine them in those pens?

Harry concentrated on that, dodging quick little jabs into their minds, trying to figure out the high-strung nervousness of the Chinese Fireball, the cool viciousness of the Welsh Green, the anger of the Hungarian Horntail, and how he could use that to his advantage without falling off his broom if he tried.

He felt what he thought he had to do in a moment. There were boundaries, after all. If the dragons' minds were oceans or lakes, there were still the shores at the edges of them, those things their thoughts would not cross or contain. He wondered what lay beyond them, behind them, what kind of freedom the dragons would manage if they could think beyond their wildness for a moment.

He took a deep breath and pulled up, hovering, on his broom.

The Horntail loomed in front of him, her front legs lifted, her claws spread wide, her head turned broadside to him. Her gleaming eye caught and held his, and Harry let himself be swept as on the wind of Legilimency, or the wind that had borne him through the darkened gate on Walpurgis Night, into her mind.

He brought with him the music he had heard when he circled on the thestral's back above the Forbidden Forest, and he unleashed it into the Horntail's mind, filling her thoughts with a booming chorus that focused on freedom and joy rather than the ravenous anger and hunger and mother-terror that had ridden her.

He slipped through her thoughts, rose on the shore of her ocean-like mind, and then crashed beyond it. The Horntail was listening to music she had long forgotten, or not thought about, since they had brought her to Hogwarts. There were bindings on her after all, though they had come from her own nature and not from any spells that the Dragon Keepers had cast. Prodded into despair and fury over her nest, she had forgotten there might be more to life than the immediate moment. That was the surest way for wizards to make dragons forget themselves so they could control them: just stir up their emotions, and they forgot about freedom.

Harry slipped out and through the other side, and opened his eyes to find himself on his broom again, unconsumed by flame.

The Hungarian Horntail began to sing.

Harry cried out at the sweetness of it, bringing up a hand in front of his face as though to shield his eyes from a physical attack. His scar was tingling and burning, the way it had when the thestral licked the blood off it. The music blew past him, storm after storm of notes, soaring crescendos of sound. It was wild, yes, but it was also free, and the dragon had remembered that she could do things, be things, as well as oppose them.

She dipped her wings and flew around him, in a dizzying pattern that Harry vaguely recognized as an infinity symbol, centered on his broom. He could not draw his eyes from her long enough to confirm the pattern, though. The Horntail was blazing, as though the song she were singing had turned to light, and it edged her scales with burning glory, like the sun flooding through a stained glass window.

The voices of the Welsh Green and the Chinese Fireball rose a moment later, as though in response, and now Harry could feel their music joining with the immense currents of other music that ran just out of hearing, always rising from the Forbidden Forest. The Dark creatures did not cease to exist when the Light came, after all. The stars still shone when the sun had risen.

A dip and a sweep of tail and claws and limbs, all more impossibly graceful than before, and then the Horntail was hovering in front of him. Harry met her eyes, and found them consuming, as they had always been, but this time he plunged into freedom, and something better than freedom.

The dragons were elevated again to the position of calm joy that they should have occupied. They did not need to hurt anyone else, because that sort of killing, mindless destruction was beneath them. They would take their eggs and go home, and there would be no more hurting.

The Horntail exhaled. Flame whirled out from her nostrils, but parted to either side of Harry, so that his broom did not become a Firebolt in truth. Harry felt it lick at his skin, but the touch was gentle, making him think of the warmth he recalled waking up to with Draco that morning, rather than the scorching, vicious pain he'd had every right to expect.

She's saying thank you.

The Horntail turned and stooped towards her nest, snapping up the corners of it in her claws. She hauled it easily off the ground, and then turned and soared east, into the brightening air. The Welsh Green and the Chinese Fireball dived, gathered up their eggs, and followed her, though the Welsh Green parted from the other two after a few moments of flying side by side. Harry watched her wheel west, and heard her voice reach back to him, a calling down of glory from above. The Fireball's song was softer, still hesitant, but full and rich and wonderful nonetheless.

Harry hovered on his broom and watched them until they were both out of sight. His heart hurt in his chest, and he could hear the music vibrating and crooning in his ears, tugging and tempting and calling.

It was no use. He still couldn't give himself to it.

Harry took a deep breath and headed towards the ground. He suspected that he would have a lot of explaining to do.

And he wanted some explanations of his own. Who had cast the Imperio, for example, and whether anyone was hurt.

Draco lifted the protection spell once the dragons were gone. That was partially so that he could avoid being questioned—much—about it, and partially so that he could get to Harry faster.

Harry landed not too far from the stands, and for a moment looked as though he couldn't get his hands to let go of his broom. Then he did, with an effort and a little surprised noise. He lifted his head, blinking, and his eyes sought out Draco.

Draco would always remember that. He was the one Harry looked to first, and part of him preened and gloried and rejoiced in the knowledge.

He smiled slowly, letting Harry know that he wasn't angry, at least for right now. Harry's shoulders sagged in visible relief.

Then Draco was out of the stands, and laying one hand on Harry's shoulder, and he was bathed in welcome weariness (like sand) and satisfaction (sweet candy on his lips) and more determination (like a stone wall). He murmured, because he could not speak of what was really rushing through his soul, "What maddened the dragons?"

"Someone cast the Imperius Curse," Harry breathed, and then laughed abruptly and sagged against Draco. "And now the sleep's all been undone, because I'm just as tired as I ever was."

Draco could tell that wasn't true. He rubbed one hand on the back of Harry's head, anyway, noticing that his scar was a more brilliant red than normal, but not bleeding—

At least, he looked at Harry until a sharp jet of fear summoned his attention. He turned his head, sharply, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the stands where most of the professors had sat. It felt as though it had come from there, which made no sense. Why was someone afraid now, and that strongly?

Dumbledore was watching Harry with a disappointed look on her face, McGonagall with a fiercely proud one. Moody was scowling at him, looking as displeased at ever—though that could be with Draco, and his display of Dark Arts.

Draco shook off the idea that he could find out who had been afraid right now, and cuddled closer to Harry as other people began to arrive. He knew where he most wanted to be, and he was in that place right now. And Harry leaned on him without complaint, even shifting to follow Draco when he moved a bit, murmuring something about being warm and feeling safe.

Those problems will most definitely be solved somehow, because there's no way in hell I'm giving this up. Or him.