This chapter is very odd, so I'm just going to say that and leave it at that.

Chapter Forty-Seven: The Bloody Bed

February 22nd, 1995

Severus:

Tell your young charge to take better care of himself. Really, letting him receive letters from Death Eaters? What kind of guardian are you? And yet, I have written him several times throughout the year, and no one has been able to prevent me from doing it. Then I used the Burning Heart Curse on him just outside Lucius Malfoy's house, and where were you? In jail, because you got yourself caught, like a bloody fool.

Watch out for him, Severus. Be sure that I am not the only one who considers him a fine toy, and who would like to play with him if they can get at him. Tell him to watch the moon. That is what my lord is waiting on. He will say the sun, I might even have said the sun in the letter that I wrote your ward, but it is the moon. Watch it from full to dark, from dark back to full again, and above all for the times when it might permit someone else access to the school.

After all, there was a werewolf on the grounds last year, was there not?

In memories of old fellowship,

Evan Rosier.

Harry looked up from Rosier's letter, and sighed. "So you don't believe that his letter to me—or even the mentions of the sun that Voldemort makes in my nightmares—holds any merit?"

"I believe that we will drive ourselves mad in trying to figure out what merit they might hold," said Snape flatly, his arms folded as he paced back and forth, his robes snapping behind him. Draco, sitting on the couch beside Harry, nudged him the moment Snape's back was turned, and Harry handed him the letter. Draco read it, frowning.

"Which is it, then?" he asked, looking up when he had finished. "The moon or the sun?"

"That is the point!" Snape snapped, spinning around. "It might be neither. It might be both. It might be one or the other, but we would fall dead from frustration before figuring it out. This is Evan. He was mad before Azkaban. He was always mad. And his favorite game has always been torturing those whom he wishes to play with mentally. Despite his love for curses that cause physical pain, he prefers seeing someone writhe in the torment of doubt and uncertainty. I watched him fill the heads of Muggle prisoners with so many false beliefs about magic that in the end they committed suicide or submitted in silence to the Killing Curse, unable to tell what was real and what was not."

Harry hesitated, then decided he had to say something. "He did give me a true warning about Moody."

"And you were wary of him." Snape practically lunged towards his desk, looking through the drawers for something. Harry wasn't surprised to recognize the blue vial of a Calming Potion when he held it up. Snape swallowed it, stood still for a few moments as it worked through his body, and then said, "Much good it did."

Harry sighed. "That's true. What would you suggest I do about it, then? I suppose it would do no good to reply to him—"

"Try it, and I will give you detention every night for a month," said Snape, the calm monotone of his voice making the threat more effective.

Draco muttered something uncomplimentary, but Harry couldn't decide if it was uncomplimentary towards himself or Snape, and decided not to push it. "All right. Are there any spells that will stop him from sending owls to me, then?"

"None that would not work to turn post owls away from you completely," said Snape in disgust. "And especially, none that would not interfere with Hogwarts' wards, probably at an unacceptable level of risk."

Harry nodded in resignation. He could feel raw magic muttering in the school as the wards realigned themselves around both the Headmaster and Professor McGonagall. "What do we do, then?"

"We pretend that Evan Rosier does not exist." Snape took up both letters and cast them into his fireplace without pause. "For fourteen years, I believed him dead, and did very well without dwelling on him. Unless he presents himself to our notice again, we can do the same thing now."

He turned to face Harry. "Though I am curious to know if his comment about using the Burning Heart Curse on you holds any truth."

"Uh." Harry knew he had forgotten some things in the recitation he'd given to Snape of what happened during the two months he was in the Ministry, but there was so much; surely he was not expected to remember it all off the top of his head? The night he and Draco had dashed to Malfoy Manor was one of those things they hadn't mentioned yet. "Well, it's true that I had a vision that Voldemort was sending Rosier after Mr. Malfoy, because he wanted to know what had happened to the diary Mr. Malfoy retrieved in second year. We got there in time, but Rosier sent an owl with a letter charmed to act as a Portkey, and dragged Mr. Malfoy outside. I went after them, and he—Rosier, I mean—wound up casting the Burning Heart Curse on me."

"How did you heal from it?" Snape asked quietly.

"My father wouldn't have left him to suffer." Draco gave Snape a hard glance, and shoved his shoulder against Harry's.

"Mr. Malfoy rescued me," Harry agreed.

Snape stood in silence, thinking. Harry wondered if he would dispute Lucius's good intentions again, but he said only, "And did Rosier ask him about the diary?"

"Huh?" Harry knew it wasn't the most eloquent response, but then, this wasn't a question to which he'd ever given any thought.

"Did Rosier ask him about the diary?" Snape queried patiently. "At all?"

Harry swallowed. "I don't know," he said. "He could have done it during the moments before I joined their duel, I suppose. Or Mr. Malfoy just refused to tell him, and started firing curses. Does it matter?"

Snape waved a hand. "It might," he said. "But with Evan Rosier, as I told you, it might just be another trap designed to lead us into a maze of guessing and counterguessing, which will waste our time." He tilted his head and fixed a meditative glance on Draco. "You may wish to leave, Draco. Harry and I will be practicing dueling spells, and—"

"I want to stay." Draco folded his arms.

"You are sure?" Snape drew his wand and banished the table in front of the couch, leaving the couch itself there only until Draco rose to his feet. As he cast protective charms in front of the bookshelves, he added, "You will feel the pain that Harry does when the curses get through to him."

"I would feel that anyway," Draco said, and gave Harry a sharp smile. "This way, I can get some training myself, and share a little more of his life."

Harry rolled his eyes. There was no point in denying what Draco wanted to do. Harry hadn't sensed any betrayal from him, and doubted he ever would. But that meant that, having let Draco see his weakness, there was no point in keeping him out of further situations where he might see it. He would trust Draco unless he encountered some indication that he could not.

As he and Snape backed away to opposite sides of the room, Harry wondered if he was naïve to think that Draco would never turn against him.

I don't think so. Just realistic.

"This curse is one that Dolohov would have been the most likely to use against you, were he still alive," said Snape, and shook his head. "Had not Rosier pretended to die, and impersonated him." He lifted his wand. "But other Death Eaters will use it as well. The Shield Charm, and most other wards and shields, cannot block it. De Profundis!"

For a moment, Harry felt nothing in particular, and wondered if Snape had miscast the curse, or weakened it.

Then he heard a wind blow around the room, and saw the spells protecting Snape's bookshelves buckle. At the same moment, wild, screaming Dark rage reared up in his mind, the same kind he had felt when he faced Lily, and the music rose and played in his ears. Harry closed his eyes, fighting hard to control it.

Beyond the rage, Snape explained calmly, "This curse drags your strongest emotions out of the depths of you, and forces you to combat them. It makes enemies go mad, or run away, or begin to pay attention to almost anything but the caster of the curse. You must face and fight it. Once you have conquered it, no one else can use it against you again."

Harry's consciousness of anything outside his own emotions vanished, then. He vaguely thought he could hear Draco screaming at Snape in the last moments, but he couldn't understand the words. And then they, too, were gone, and he was left alone with the Dark.

The urge to smash, to destroy, to fly, to do anything that would express his hatred and his wildness…

This was part of him, and Harry knew that the longer and harder he tried to push it away, the more trouble he would have facing it if it ever broke free.

He had faced something of this power only once before, the night of the Chamber, when Sylarana's death broke the barriers in his mind apart and loosed the silent self and the cold self. So Harry thought he could do worse than handle this rage by the same method with which he had handled them.

He began to build a new part of his mind for the rage to reside in. He made it beautiful, but sharp-edged, a glittering cage of blades. The Dark music rattled the icicles that hung from it like bells, and then, pleased, curled back around and rattled them again, listening to them chime. Harry made the cage as attractive as he could, before he moved inside it and cast an illusion of limitlessness there.

The image of open sky, of open plains, of open sea, all the boundless things stretching out of sight he had ever seen, went there. And the rage sensed it, and came bounding, eager to stretch itself out in a place where there were no constraints.

Harry shut the cage door after it, and then opened his eyes. Snape and Draco were both at the far end of the room, behind a strong ward. The bookshelves sagged against each other, and a few books had spilled from them, to lie open-faced or with pages pitifully trapped beneath them on the floor. Harry took a deep breath and climbed to his feet, wondering when he had fallen. He wiped at the mixture on his face, of rime from ice and tears from the wind and drool from his mouth.

"And there was a point to that, I suppose?" he murmured.

Snape lowered the ward and stepped towards him. "I mean to begin your training in earnest, Harry," he said. "I will show you the various curses that the Death Eaters are likely to use against you, and how to defend against them. I will also show you applications of Light spells that they will not expect." His eyes glinted, hard. "The war is beginning in earnest, and, as you have said, our enemies are not limited to your blood family and Dumbledore. Will you accept this?"

Harry nodded.

"I wish you would bloody well have warned me," Draco muttered, massaging his skull. "I got an overdose of pain when Harry's emotions went wild like that."

Harry moved towards him in concern, but Snape got there before he could, looming over him and staring down.

"Mr. Malfoy." His voice had gone icy. "Now that I know you have empathy, I can teach you attacks that will increase your advantages with it in battle and defenses that will decrease your disadvantage. But there is no place for whiners in this classroom, as in any other. You will become used to taking in pain, as a result of this gift-curse that you brought on yourself, or you will leave and not attend Harry's training. Do you understand?"

"That you helped me bring on," Draco said softly, his eyes glinting in the way that they did when Harry knew he wanted to hurt someone else.

"What does that mean?" Harry asked.

Snape turned with a swift flare of his robes and studied him. Then he said, "I was the one who gave Draco the book with the potion in it that, apparently, allowed him to summon Julia Malfoy." He gave Draco a dark look. "Of course, if had researched more, he would have found someone else whose gifts were more compatible with his—a better ancestor to make a magical heir out of him."

Harry narrowed his eyes. "Then you were the one who put a compulsion on him?"

Snape stared at him. "What do you mean?"

"Draco had a compulsion on him when I was helping him with the potion," said Harry, taking a step forward. "One that drove him to complete the potion, and ignore nearly everything else while he was doing it. Did you know that that would happen?" He could feel rage unlike the caged Dark fury rising in him. Snape knew how he felt about compulsion. That he should have used it, and that he should have used it on Draco…

I like to think I'd feel just as upset about him using it on anyone. But that's lying to myself again, which I've got to stop doing. I'm more upset about it being Draco than I would be about anyone else.

Snape slowly shook his head. "I knew the book would guide him to what he sought," he said. "I did not know about the compulsion."

"Have you ever used the book before?" Harry demanded.

Snape nodded. "Once, to brew a potion that allowed me to see my soul," he said quietly. "The book gave me the potion. However, I took my time preparing it. It did not drive me the way it appears to have driven Draco."

"So it was an accident," Harry whispered, wanting to believe, needing to believe, that his guardian had not really done something that stupid.

"It was," said Snape. "I can only surmise that Draco's desperate desire to be a magical heir must have interacted with the magic of the book, and that that prompted the compulsion." He paused for a long moment, then added delicately, "And, of course, the compulsion that your brother put on him last year, to protect you, has sunken into his mind and twined tight around it."

Harry shuddered. That means that—

"Sometimes, sir, you need to keep your mouth shut," said Draco, and scrambled across the room to stand in front of Harry. "I promise, Harry, that compulsion has nothing to do with the way I love you now. I manage to leave you alone when you want me to, don't I? And I wasn't protecting you when I made you go out to the Forbidden Forest and face the unicorns."

"Unicorns," said Snape flatly.

Harry swallowed, and then managed to smile. "I don't really believe all this is the result of a compulsion," he murmured. "I've been down that road before, and I was wrong then, too. Thank you, Draco, for making me see reason."

Draco grabbed his hand and held it as they both turned to face Snape. "I think we'll accomplish more if we're honest with each other," said Harry. "Completely. As long as you promise that you had no idea that that compulsion would come from the book, sir, then we can proceed, and we'll tell you about the unicorns, and you can tell us about what else happened to you during your confinement."

Snape stared hard back at Harry, at the trust shining in the boy's eyes—trust with a reserve of wariness behind it.

Tell him that I know about the compulsion, and I do not think he will trust me again. He is not rational about compulsion, at all. That is the reason he ate Dumbledore's magic, because he compelled others.

He needs one adult he can trust right now. Totally. Completely. Speak the truth now, and I will shatter that trust more than a lie ever could. He will close up on me, and begin to treat me much as he treats Dumbledore. Lie to him, and if he finds out about it, he will be upset with me. But I believe that the moment when he finds out will be less dangerous than this one. He has suffered so many wounds in the last week. He needs my support more right now than he will again. When he has grown beyond this a bit, then I can think of telling him the truth.

Snape made his choice.

"I did not know that that would happen to Draco, no," he said quietly. "As I said, it did not happen to me with the potion that the book chose for me to brew."

That potion left me with no illusions. I know what I am. I am by no means pleasant, or nice, or without my contradictions.

But I am true to deeper loyalties, he thought, as he watched Harry's eyes brighten with his trust. I will give him what he needs most right now—support—and the truth later. The same way that, though it would cost me his trust and his love, if I thought that his parents were going to damage him through his hiding of his past, I would expose that past. I care more for his life than for his regard. I would break my promise before I would see him hurt because of it. I spied for the Light when others thought me a traitor and a Death Eater, and Harry matters more to me than that ever did or will.

"I knew that you wouldn't," said Harry. "I knew that you weren't that kind of person."

You know very little of me, Snape thought, but repeated, "Unicorns?"

"I freed the unicorns," Harry began.

"Because I made him go out to the Forbidden Forest and do it," Draco chipped in.

Harry gave him a disgusted glance, but went back and started telling the story from the beginning. Snape listened, and watched Harry's eyes grow brighter still, and the smug, possessive look on Draco's face.

This is love, then. Ah. Well. That explains a great deal.

I suppose I must also see to the protection of young Mr. Malfoy, since he is now necessary to making Harry happy. First guard and last defense, and it will probably turn both of them against me in the end. I am prepared to face that.

Someone banged on the door of his room hard enough to make Harry sit up straight, gasping. He glanced around the room, and caught a glimpse of light from Blaise's bed as he cast a Lumos charm. A moment later, Vince's voice called, "What the hell?"

"Harry has to come out now," said Millicent from beyond the door. She didn't sound as if she had slept at all. "He should be dressed and ready for a long journey."

"What's wrong with Millicent?" Draco said, sounding sulky, the way he always was when someone woke him up in the middle of the night. "Long journey? What—" He seemed to give up the sentence as a bad job, if the sound of his rolling over was any indication. "Can't it wait until morning?" he muttered.

"I don't think it can," said Harry, memory firing at last, and chasing away the last shreds of what could have been a vision of Voldemort, if it had had time to form. He rolled out of bed and hurried to his trunk, searching for a set of robes he could dump on. "I think Mrs. Bulstrode's having her baby. She asked me to be there when she was born, and this would be nine months since she got pregnant, I think."

"Some of us are trying to sleep, Potter," Blaise said, and his Lumos charm went out, as if he could ignore what Harry had just said by sheer force of will.

"Harry?" Draco stuck his head through his curtains as Harry finished pulling on his robes, not bothering with the Slytherin tie. "Do you need someone to go with you?"

Harry shook his head quickly and yanked a hand through his hair, hoping that he looked at least somewhat presentable. "No offense, Draco, but you weren't invited," he said. "I don't think the Bulstrodes would want you there."

Draco sighed. "If you're sure—"

"Potter," Millicent said from beyond the door. Harry knew she only called him by his surname when she was angry at him.

"Sure," said Harry, smiled at him, and slipped from the room. Millicent caught his hand at once and started tugging him down the stairs. Harry frowned. He had seen she was clutching a small object in her hand, but he didn't know what it was.

"We're traveling by Portkey?" he asked. "Or Floo?"

"Neither. There are permanent wards on Blackstone insuring that no Portkeys work there," said Millicent, and then turned around and let him see what the object was. A small stone, veined with black, but mostly gray, it looked a bit like the device she'd used to take them to the site of the Walpurgis Night fire last year. Harry blinked.

"What is that, then?"

"Something that works like a Portkey, but isn't," said Millicent. She didn't explain, only grasped the stone and twisted the top, which suddenly began to whirl. The air in front of Harry opened as a door would and swung back. Harry stared into the dark corridor beyond it.

"Walk!" Millicent gave him a violent push. Harry managed to save himself from stumbling on the threshold, and began to hurry down the hall. Locked doors passed him, silent and foreboding, with coats of arms on some of them that made him wonder if they led to the houses of other pureblood families. He had never heard of magic like this.

He turned to ask Millicent a question, but she pushed him up the hall again, one hand firm on his shoulder. The door behind them had closed, Harry noticed, and showed only an endless expanse of dark hall, identical to the one in front of them in every way.

"Go, Harry," said Millicent. Harry blinked, noticing for the first time the shine of tears in her eyes. "Mother wanted you there. But she wasn't the one who called me. It was Father, and he said—" Millicent closed her eyes and shook her head. "It's bad. He said it's bad."

Harry sped up, though he wondered what the hell he could do to help Elfrida even if they got there in time. He knew nothing about childbirth or helping babies survive after it.

Does "bad" mean bad for Elfrida? Or Marian? Or both?

He and Millicent ran down the dark, silent hall, not even their footsteps raising much noise, until Millicent tugged him to a halt in front of a huge black door. The coat of arms wasn't a formal design, only a dark silhouette of a castle. Millicent grasped the lock, and it sparkled and melted under her hand. The door swung open, and this time, Harry did stumble on the threshold as they came into a room bright with light and noise and the scent of blood.

"Millicent," said Adalrico's voice, sounding tense and exhausted. "And Potter. I am glad that you came before Elfrida passed."

Harry shook off Millicent's hand—easy enough, since she'd moved over to stand next to her father—and forced his eyes to focus on the sight in front of him. Elfrida lay on a bed absolutely soaked with blood. A blanket discreetly covered her legs, but only partway, and Harry could make out that most of the blood must have come from her. Elfrida's pale hair was spread around her face, and she panted, eyes wide open. The air around her stirred uneasily with magic, powerful enough to raise the hair on his arms. Harry swallowed. This was the result of Elfrida's puellaris training; not using much magic during the course of daily life, she stored her power up until the moment she could wield it to benefit her children.

But the magic is strong enough to save her life, Harry thought in confusion, as he turned towards Adalrico. She's not in danger of dying. Or is the baby so badly off that they need the magic to feed to Marian?

The infant cradled in Adalrico's hands, though, and still slimed in blood, looked healthy enough. Her cord had been cut, and she was crying, face still squashed in on itself, her newborn magic jumping and pulsing around her in its inchoate efforts to soothe her. Harry forced himself to calm down, and look past the expressions of stony sorrow and desolation on Adalrico's and Millicent's faces, and get some answers.

"Why is Mrs. Bulstrode going to die?" he demanded.

"Because," said Adalrico softly, "she has felt that Marian could be her magical heir. Her suspicions grew as the pregnancy came to completion. But the sympathy between her and Marian is of a fleeting, limited kind, as such childish ties often are. Most magical heirs manifest later in life." Marian wailed, and Adalrico gently adjusted his position, rocking her back and forth. "Elfrida will have to pass her magic to Marian now if she is to make her her heir. And that means that she won't have enough left to keep herself alive."

Harry blinked, once, twice. "You—you really think magical heirs are that important?"

"Of course, Potter." Millicent snapped the words out without looking at him. Her eyes, and all her attention, were fixed on her tiny sister. "Blood is important, but magic is more so. It's extremely rare for a family to have two magical heirs in it, one for the father and one for the mother. We're lucky." Harry thought he would have said that she didn't sound lucky, but he didn't dare speak a word at the moment. "No pureblood family—well, no Dark pureblood family, because the Light ones consider taking a magical heir barbaric, mostly, and stick to blood ones—would give up a chance like this. My mother will sacrifice her life so that Marian can be a more powerful witch." Millicent let out a shuddering breath. "I knew it might happen when Mother told me that she could sense sympathy between her magic and Marian's while she was still in the womb. That's rare. It's very rare."

Harry turned his head and met Elfrida's eyes. "And that is what you want, my lady?" he asked. The title was old, not in use anymore among the human denizens of the wizarding world, but he could not think of what else to call the woman in the bed, so very alive still, her magic soaring around her like a flight of dragons.

"I do wish I could stay alive to comfort my children," said Elfrida in a much stronger voice than Harry would have expected, given the pallor of her face. "It will be a hard thing for Marian never to know her mother. But the magic is more important. What makes us wizards and witches is our magic. Next to that, the shelter of blood is pale and comfortless." It sounded as if she were quoting some catechism, though not one Harry had ever heard.

"But you want to live," Harry clarified.

Elfrida gave a slow, languorous nod, and fixed her eyes on Adalrico's arms. "Bring her closer," she murmured. "I'll have to pass my magic to her from just a few feet away."

"Wait," Harry said, and Adalrico turned to look at him, though he also hurried Marian nearer the bed. "If Elfrida wants to live, then she should live."

"You cannot stop this, Potter," Adalrico said. "You might not understand it, but you gave an oath to be a witness to Marian's birth, and you are an ally of our family. You cannot interfere with the free choice of a woman of that family."

Harry rolled his eyes. "I'm honoring her choice," he snapped. "I'm going to make sure that she can pass her magic to Marian and still live." He stepped up on the left side of the bed and reached down, gripping Elfrida's arm. She rolled her head to look at him. The white pillow under her hair was stained dark with sweat.

"How can you do that?" she whispered. "You might be able to keep my life in my body, perhaps, but I would be a Squib or even a Muggle. I am a witch, Mr. Potter. I would rather die than live without magic."

"I don't intend that you have just your life," said Harry. "I need to know first of all if this connection will work. Mr. Bulstrode, I should have just as strong a connection to your wife as to you, shouldn't I? I don't need to touch your alliance scar to work with her?" He was prepared to bring Adalrico into the connection if he had to, but he would prefer it if he could do this without a fourth person. The link he was basing this on had used only three.

"Yes, you should be able to," said Adalrico, sounding bewildered. "Mr. Potter, what—"

"No time!" Elfrida whispered suddenly. "Put her on my arm, Adalrico, now." Her magic made her voice into a command just this side of compulsion, Harry thought. Her husband hastened to lay Marian on her arm and then step away.

Elfrida seemed to have forgotten about Harry. She smiled into her daughter's face, and murmured an incantation that Harry did not recognize, in a language he thought wasn't even Latin; it sang too much. A conduit snapped into place between her forehead and Marian's. The baby wailed all the louder. The magic swirling around Elfrida flowed towards the conduit, ready to pass on into the infant.

Harry took a deep breath, firmed his grip on Elfrida's arm, and waited. His body was in the bloody room, feeling Millicent's and Adalrico's tense, worried gazes, but his mind was back in the Chamber of Secrets, remembering the trap that Tom Riddle had sprung on him, using the links between Harry and Connor and himself to come to life. He had hurt Connor, which hurt Harry thanks to their twin bond, and pulled Harry's magic out through the scar his older self had caused.

Elfrida was feeding Marian her magic, and Harry thought his own connections to the Bulstrodes, mother and newborn daughter as well as father and older sister, should work for the other two sides of the circle. Otherwise, he would be pulling power from Marian when he acted. But because he had a connection with Marian and Elfrida based on trust and alliance, not pain and hatred, and he did not want to drain Marian to save her mother's life, this should work the way he wanted it to.

He hoped.

Elfrida slumped a bit, and Harry knew that she was getting closer to empty. The magic would leave her, and she would perish, perhaps as much out of desire not to live magicless as because she would not have the strength to keep herself from bleeding to death.

Now.

Harry reached down inside himself and began to pull power from his immense store, reversing the process that allowed him to eat magic from people like Dumbledore and Voldemort.

This time, it was rather like milking a snake of its venom, rather than swallowing power with a snake. The creature gurgled lazily and filled his working hands with magic, which pooled down Harry's fingers and into Elfrida's arm. She made a soft, questioning sound, but didn't look away from her daughter. The conduit between their foreheads shone like a strand of solid diamond now, illuminated from without and within.

Harry drained his magic, careful to feed Elfrida only benevolent or neutral power; he would not want to see what untamed Dark magic might do so near Marian. It was easier than he had thought it would be. His magic unfolded in layer after layer, and he could pick through the layers, choose what he wanted, and siphon it down the link created by their formal alliance. Elfrida's breathing grew louder, and Harry felt her muscles gaining strength and consistency again, her body surging as it replenished her blood.

For one sudden, wild, beautiful moment, he felt as if he were her, looking out through her eyes, breathing with her lungs, feeling her heart beat with aching familiarity. He could feel her love for Marian, and for Millicent, and for Adalrico—still present and there, that last emotion, but a distant thing compared to her fierce protective love for her children. Harry had never experienced anything like it. The closest things were the sensations he had shared when gazing out through the Hungarian Horntail's eyes.

He had been afraid for a time that Elfrida's body would reject his own magic as unfamiliar, but the moment it settled deeply into her muscles and veins, they changed it to suit themselves. She would be a different kind of witch than before, Harry could see that. But as he watched glinting trails of white power changed to a softer gray and snatched into place, cradling her and soothing her and conjuring her softly back to life, he did not think the difference would be that noticeable.

Abruptly, someone broke the link, jerking his hand from Elfrida's arm. Harry blinked, and looked up. Adalrico was holding his wrist, and staring at him as though he were an intruder, an enemy—

Or something unbelievably strange.

"She will live," he whispered.

Harry glanced over at Elfrida, and his heart jumped for a moment as he saw that her eyes were shut. Then he realized she was breathing regularly, stirring the sheet that covered her with deep, healthy pants. Little Marian was fast asleep on her mother's arm, the conduit between their heads faded. She did have some sort of marking on her brow, Harry saw dazedly. He thought it was star-shaped.

"What did you do?" Adalrico whispered. "Were you actually—were you actually giving Elfrida magic that would save her life?"

Harry nodded at him. "Of course."

"But that would mean sacrificing your power." Adalrico said it as he might speak of the rape of a child.

Harry smiled tiredly at him and sent his wandless magic traveling around the inside of his skin. "I still have plenty. I'm not noticeably weaker. I promise you, I wouldn't have killed myself trying to save her. I wouldn't have done this at all if I wasn't sure that both of us would live."

"But that you would do it at all…" Adalrico trailed off and shook his head. He was profoundly pale.

"People matter more to me than magic," said Harry, wondering why it shocked the man so. Surely he should know it, after allying with me? He moved around the bed and bent over to look into Marian's face. She looked slightly less like a red, squashed monkey now, and more like a normal baby. The marking on her forehead was blue and, indeed, faintly star-shaped. Harry gently stroked her blood-soaked, naked head. "Hello, little one," he whispered. "Welcome to the world. I hope that your scar brings you more joy than mine has brought me."

He felt Millicent's hand on his shoulder. "Let me take her, Harry," she said.

Harry nodded, and stepped out of the way so Millicent could pick the baby up. Marian didn't even wake as her sister took her over to a basin of water standing ready in the corner and began to wash her free of blood and birthing fluid.

"Mr. Potter."

Harry blinked at Adalrico.

"You have done a great thing for us this night," Adalrico said, "and we cannot pay the debt we owe you."

"There is no debt," said Harry, and yawned. He smiled sheepishly. "Sorry. I just—" The words got lost in another yawn.

"We understand," said Adalrico, and steered him to a divan in the corner. "Rest. Millicent will take you back to Hogwarts in the morning."

Harry nodded at him, and then lay down on the divan and closed his eyes. In seconds, he had lost the soft splashing of water and the murmurs of Millicent talking to her new sister to darkness.

Millicent gently wrapped Marian up in a loose white cloth they'd had lying ready and carried her back to rest on Elfrida's chest. House elves had already come, tidied the bed, clothed her mother in a clean gown—without disturbing or waking her—and piled new pillows behind her head. Millicent touched her mother and her sister both on the cheek, and then stepped away. Her father looked up from staring at Harry. He'd put a blanket over him.

"Why?" he asked.

Millicent understood the question behind the question. She moved over to join her father in watching Harry for a few moments before she answered, though. Harry's face was neutral in sleep, not entirely relaxed and not entirely innocent—just ordinary. He slept like someone who had no idea at all what he'd done.

He didn't, Millicent knew. He hadn't been raised in a Dark pureblood family, where three kinds of pride were strong: that of tradition, that of blood, and that of magic. He didn't realize what one of their families would go through to have magical heirs and not just ordinary blood ones, children who could share their parents' powers and not just the descent that was the heritage of every child, those of Muggles and Mudbloods as well as purebloods. Millicent had been preparing since the new year, when her parents told her that Marian might well be Elfrida's magical heir, to lose her mother. Of course she would sacrifice her powers to give her daughter a chance at carrying them and being a strong witch, and of course she would not want to live as a weak shell afterwards. If the transfer of magic itself did not kill her, she would have committed suicide.

And now Harry had come along, with his magic that any Dark pureblood would have killed and tortured dozens of people to wield and that any Dark pureblood family would have lost half its members to claim for one of their children, and given part of it to Elfrida, easily, without hesitation, not even seeming to know that it was a sacrifice.

It was so easy that it would have been an insult, if what Harry said had not been true, Millicent thought. He cared more about people than about magic. He saw a chance to save her mother's life, and, more, to insure that she still lived as a witch, and he took it.

To him, it was just the right thing to do; he had the capability and opportunity to do it, so he did. He didn't seem aware that he'd just tied the Bulstrodes to him with bonds stronger than steel.

"Millicent."

Millicent glanced up. Her father rested one hand on her shoulder and drew her near him, as he always did when he was about to say something particularly important.

"It doesn't matter if he never Declares for the Dark," her father whispered. "We cannot lose him. He will be more than just another Lord to follow, or someone to reclaim the wizarding world for the Dark in our generation. Stand firm in your guardianship over him. If it comes to it, you may use any and all of our gifts to rescue him or help him continue to live. I give you formal permission."

Millicent blinked rapidly, then smiled. The Bulstrodes, like most Dark pureblood families, had several gifts that supposedly ran from magical heir to magical heir. They kept them secret as a matter of course, and none of their enemies, or even most of their allies, would ever be quite sure which heir could do what.

Millicent had manifested as Adalrico's heir when she was six, and was able to do everything that he could do. He trusted her absolutely, but he had never given her leave to use any of the gifts outside Blackstone before.

"I promise, Father," she said.

Adalrico kissed her on the forehead and went to sit with his wife and newest child. Millicent sat down beside the divan to watch Harry. She knew that she couldn't have slept that night, even if she wanted to.

You don't even realize that what you did was unusual, she thought, in mingled exasperation and fondness for the boy on the couch. And that's one of the reasons, though far from the only one, that we'll lay down our lives for you.

Whether you want us to or not. You've got yourself allies, Harry Potter, and we don't intend to let you go.