Thank you for the responses on the last chapter!
Um. I didn't mean to finish this whole chapter, but I did, so it's being posted tonight. That means that there will be no chapter tomorrow, because I'm traveling.
Also, I need to recover from this. My god.
Chapter Fifty-Three: May The Maze Be Unending
Harry felt sunlight on his face, sunlight shining on his skin, sunlight all around him, as he stepped into the room where the Maze waited. He had seen the artifact before, of course, so he knew what it looked like, but he had never realized, or perhaps just not remembered, that the radiance it shed was this intense.
Or perhaps the radiance really had increased, Harry thought, as he lifted a hand to shield his eyes. Ahead of him, the Maze glittered and twined. The light made it hard to see where one wall slid into another, and Harry no longer thought it looked like a jumper someone had dropped on the floor. It had the look of a restless, surging sea instead, as if he were back on the Northumberland beach and watching the waves dash towards him. The sun somewhat dazzled him and kept him from making out what was foam and what was driftwood, what silver and what white.
On his shoulder, softly, Fawkes began to sing.
The Maze sparked once, as though accepting a reply Harry hadn't been aware he was making, and then some of the silvery lines of light dropped. Harry found that he could walk nearer than he had been able to before, though he still couldn't see very well. He lifted his glasses off and looked at them, but that didn't help, unless he considered his eyes watering an improvement.
He stopped and waited, wondering if he had to give a special signal to approach the Maze. James had spoken of using a mirror and shedding three drops of blood, but in vague terms; he hadn't wanted to reveal much of his time in the Maze, which Harry could understand. Harry could fulfill those conditions easily enough with his magic, if that was what the Maze wanted.
Fawkes's music poured over him, and Harry understood that Fawkes believed the Maze had already accepted, and approved, his intention of approaching it. He did need to show that he was Potter blood, but in the tense, eager awareness the Maze projected towards him, Harry could feel no doubt.
He held up his hand, hardly aware of what he was doing. He felt as if he stood on some high mountain in the sunrise, looking to the east, and the light filled his mind with a golden haze. He felt one of Fawkes's talons score his wrist, and then three drops of blood were shining up at him; he hadn't been aware of starting to bleed, or of the pain. He tilted his hand, and the blood splashed on the floor.
What are you doing, Harry? Regulus whispered.
"I don't know," said Harry honestly, and lifted his head as he saw more of the silvery barriers, invisible until now, fall away like folds of gauze, leaving the Maze in all its unwrapped glory.
His steps were soft as he once more approached. He had considered consequences, endlessly, before he stepped into this room. He had known that he might be gone for months, as James had been, though he didn't really think it likely. According to his father, what had cost him the most time was his refusal to face certain of his mistakes. Harry intended to face them all, as painlessly as he could, because he was willing to accept that he had made them. Besides, he hadn't lived as long as James had, and his life would take less time to relate.
He could die in the Maze if he refused to go on, but that was simple. He would not refuse to go on.
But now, the thought of consequences tumbled away from him. The Maze was a great and living thing, like the sky, like the sea. Harry felt a kind of vertigo sweep him, as if he were about to plunge off a cliff and into the heart of a fall.
Besides, Fawkes continued to sing, quietly, and seemed to think it was quite a good idea for him to go forward.
In that cocoon of music and light, Harry stepped into the Maze.
It both was and was not what he had expected, Harry realized. He had known he would be in a tunnel of mirrors, and indeed he was. He had expected a floor beneath his feet and curved walls on either side, and that was the way the Maze was shaped. He had thought images would begin appearing on the walls, and that was what happened.
He had not imagined the slight warmth of the floor beneath his feet, as if he walked on silk instead of metal, or the way that pulses of light raced beside him and then trailed away, like constant small sunrises, or the way that Fawkes's song seemed to soften and calm the extreme edges of the Maze, glittering diamonds that Harry knew could cut him if he tried to climb out.
He walked, and the pulses of light resolved into images.
Harry saw himself at four, almost five, struggling to lift a heavy book. He dropped it, and the crash brought Lily running. Harry sighed as he watched his mother kneel down beside him and give him a smile he knew he would never see again.
"Harry, what have I told you about conserving your strength?" she asked.
"That I should do it." His younger self looked up at his mother, and Harry was startled. He had not thought his face would look like that. Closed in concentration, he'd expected, but there was an underlying tension to the expression that made him look as if he might burst out in rebellious defiance. Well, I hadn't been under the phoenix web for long then, Harry reasoned. I probably still had some thoughts of my own close to the surface.
"Yes, and what else?" Lily prompted.
"That I should decide what's necessary and what's not," said the younger Harry. He looked at the huge book lying on the floor. "And find the best way to do things," he added, with a sudden weight of inspiration. "Always use what's around me to my benefit."
He held out a hand, and struggled for a moment. His magic was no longer as great as it had been when he was younger, Harry decided while he watched, because so much of it had gone tame under the web. But it was great enough to lift the book in the air, wobbling, and return it to its place on the shelf.
Lily smiled at him and stroked his hair. "Good," she whispered. "That's good, Harry. When you levitate an object over an enemy's head and then drop it, that will serve your brother. And you love your brother, don't you?"
The younger version of Harry turned his head so that it was pressing against his mother's robe and nodded.
The image dissolved. Harry blinked, unsure why the Maze had wanted him to see that. I made a mistake trying to put the book away with my hands. Is that it? I had thought I'd forgiven myself for that already.
The Maze sparked at him. Fawkes's song rose and dipped, and the answer formed in his head.
No, Harry realized suddenly, with a wave of diamond-like terror rising inside him. No, the mistake was thinking that that was a demonstration of my mother's love for me, when it was nothing more than…training. He knew the names that Snape and Draco and the rest of them would call it, and the Maze could not make him use the word.
But it could dig at his heart, and make him realize that the emotion he'd thought he'd seen his mother expressing in that scene wasn't pride in him as a child, but the kind of pride that a person showed for a well-trained dog.
She didn't love me.
Harry shook his head at once. I—that's not possible. It's true that her love did me no good, but I know that she believes she loves me. Why would the Maze say that she didn't?
Silence, and then the light and the song, or perhaps just his own understanding, which was never quiet when he wanted it to be, batted the answer back at him.
Because it's the truth. And the Maze is absolute truth, Light, honesty.
She didn't love me.
Harry felt tears gather like hot dust in the corners of his eyes. He swallowed, once, twice, and no longer wondered at his father's vague hints that he'd often collapsed, vomiting or weeping, and perilously near refusing to go on.
Harry breathed deeply, once and then again, and wrenched himself a step forward in his journey. He had to get along with this, and he could no more question the Maze on this point than he'd been able to question the justice ritual when it took his mother's magic away, or the unicorns.
I…that's true, then, I guess. She never loved me. Maybe she thought she did, or maybe she even did, but it was a different kind of love. Maybe she loved me as a sacrifice. Maybe she loved me as a pet, or a useful object. But not a child. Not a human being.
And Vera had told him that he didn't really see himself as human. That no longer seemed a wonder to Harry.
Harry shuddered once and opened his eyes, refusing to let more tears fall. He knew the truth, then, and he could accept it. There were events in his past that had prepared him to accept it. The revelation, and what it might do to him, mattered little to him next to the ideas he might get from the Maze.
"Thank you," he whispered, and then shuffled along his path. Light ran ahead of him, beside him, around his head, and Fawkes sang.
Harry winced as he watched his seven-year-old self take a tumble from a large rock next to the house in Godric's Hollow. He'd watched several more scenes out of his past, with minor mistakes about himself and the world around him and times that he'd become impatient with Connor or James, but none with the devastating impact of that first image. He had known this one would probably be coming, though, as his mind came alive with memories of things Lily had actually said to him, lessons she'd stated outright.
Harry-the-younger didn't cry; by then, he'd already learned to cast mild hexes on himself and endure pain under a certain threshold, which this easily was. He just blinked and picked himself up, watching the large gash in his knee pool with blood. He didn't know a healing spell, though, and so he did go to find Lily, once he'd checked that Connor and James were flying a kite in the yard and wouldn't see him.
Lily saw him and came over at once, kneeling and extending her wand. A whispered, "Integro," and the cut healed. Harry watched her in wonder and silent delight. When his mother cured him like this, he imagined they had a bond, just as they did when she explained the vows he made to Connor to him, or when she impressed on him, again, the need for secrecy and for him to learn as much as he could, even when he was certain that he couldn't learn any more.
"Will I be able to perform healing spells someday?" he asked.
Lily sat back and looked up at him with large green eyes. "You will, Harry," she said gently. "Healing spells would aid the war effort. It's a great advantage to know how to cure yourself on the battlefield. But they're more powerful than the magic you're learning right now. It will take some time."
Harry nodded. Then he thought about another thing. "Can I perform healing spells on my children someday?"
Lily's face changed so rapidly that Harry-the-elder winced right along with his younger self. He knew what was coming, and he suspected he knew why the Maze had wanted him to see it, and he was filled with an overwhelming, consuming sorrow, and he didn't know for certain whether it was for himself, or for the boy in the image, or for the woman who actually rose, and put her hand on his shoulder, and whispered what she did to him then.
"Harry, you'll never have children."
Harry-the-younger blinked at her. "Why not, Mum?" He rather thought he might want to have children, so that he could teach someone else all the things he was learning. Right now, he had no one to teach, because he had to keep his skills secret, and Lily already knew all his spells and tricks.
Lily gently smoothed his hair. "Because children take time," she said. "They take almost all your time when they're little, and they would be little for several years. Do you remember being little for several years?"
"Some of it," said Harry.
Lily nodded. "And you would have to devote all your time to them, and to your spouse or partner." She paused, waiting for him to reach the natural conclusion.
Harry could, of course. His vows sang in his head, and he gasped. "I wouldn't have any time for Connor!"
"Of course you wouldn't," whispered Lily. "And it wouldn't be fair to your spouse or your partner, would it? Just like it wouldn't be fair to your father if I had someone to serve like you have Connor, and I spent all my time away from him."
Harry nodded, soberly, understanding now. "Connor has to come first," he said. "To be his brother and his friend and his guardian. To never let anyone else know that I'm so close to him." It was permissible for him to only say parts of his vows sometimes, in order to make a point, since he knew them so well in their original form.
"Exactly," Lily whispered back. "So it wouldn't be fair to anyone. You couldn't spend time away from Connor, and a husband or wife would want to know why you were so close to him, and you'd have to break your vow to tell them."
Harry nodded. "Besides," he said, wondering why he hadn't thought about this before, "I'll probably die protecting Connor, so there wouldn't be time for children, because I'd be too young to have them."
Lily hugged him, briefly. "That's my brave boy," she said. "Now, go practice the spells in the second book I showed you the other day. I think you're ready for it."
Harry nodded happily at her and trotted off. The image wavered into clinging white shreds of mist, and dissolved.
Harry-the-older—no, he was just Harry, just himself, no matter how involved he had been in the consciousness of the child the Maze had shown him—shook his head and closed his eyes.
So, yes, it was a mistake to go on believing her, to think I'd never have a future. In fact, I thought I'd accepted that, since I'm letting myself spend time in Draco's company instead of driving him away.
I did accept it, didn't I?
Harry swallowed thickly when he realized that perhaps he hadn't. When he thought about the future, the first thing that came to mind was duty—maintaining his relationships with his allies, being vates, trying to defeat Voldemort or help Connor defeat Voldemort. Look at how easily he'd put Draco aside to come to Lux Aeterna. That had been as big a mistake, in its own way, as getting Skeeter to write the article about his stance towards freedom for magical creatures in the first place. He thought of the future in terms of how he could serve people, and that was the main reason he'd come into the Maze.
Harry sighed, softly, and opened his eyes. I really have just transferred my longing to serve Connor to my longing to serve other people.
I'm not sure how I can change it, though. Trying to enjoy myself with Draco and think of a future we can share together will just turn the enjoyment into another duty.
Fawkes trilled at him. Harry smiled faintly. The image of a path appeared in his mind, clear for a moment as the Maze before him was, and he suspected that both of them were pushing at him for a reason. The answer lay somewhere up ahead. The Maze would not only drag him through his mistakes, but make sure that he received the answers he needed.
As long as he could go on facing his mistake.
Harry shot a glance back at the wall where the image of himself at seven had been, and nodded. The Maze had not yet told him that his desire to help other people was a mistake, only certain manifestations of it. So he could keep going, he could face himself, for the sake of other people.
He turned and strode on.
Most of the mistakes after that were the ones Harry expected. Mistakes in spells, in schoolwork, in the efforts he'd made to spare himself notice and give Connor glory in first year. He watched calmly as he lied to Dumbledore after the second time they faced Voldemort together, and pretended that his magic had done nothing to help in the battle. Yes, that had been a mistake. Of course, perhaps telling the truth would only have alarmed Dumbledore and caused the Light Lord to Obliviate him, but the Maze was interested in showing him what he had done wrong, not in suggesting fixes for the past.
Fixes were for the future.
Lies, and deliberate attempts to make sure people couldn't hurt him that hurt people in return, and lies of omission, and casting aside attempts to help him. Most of those, Harry thought as he watched the image of himself leaving Malfoy Manor early the summer before third year, he'd accepted just before or after Sirius's death. The destruction of the phoenix web had destroyed a good number of his compelled loyalties to his brother, and learning what Dumbledore and Lily had actually done had inspired him with anger deep enough to reject some of the conditioned ones, too.
He did wince as Sirius slipped steadily under Tom Riddle's control, as he committed suicide, but though he would always mourn Sirius and wish he had seen the signs of something wrong earlier, he knew that had not been his sole fault. He suspected the Maze would have made the memory much more painful for Connor.
To his surprise, though, the next scene that appeared after that one was not, as he'd expected, himself releasing magic outside Lux Aeterna's wards and so summoning the Death Eaters. In fact, he walked for a long time, expecting at any moment that his duels with Rosier or his hiding of his nightmares or his lashing at Umbridge and Fudge with Dark magic would appear, and nothing happened.
The cool light and air of the Owlery opened around him, and Harry saw Rita Skeeter eagerly taking down the article he dictated to blackmail James into dropping his charges against Snape. Harry nodded. It was a mistake because he should have found some better way of handling the situation. Then perhaps he would not have exacerbated the friction with his father so much.
But the image remained steady, and this time the Maze forced Harry to see the widening of Skeeter's eyes as she asked him if he had been abused, and the suspicion that remained in her face when he denied it. Harry's heart pounded loud in his ears as he realized that he hadn't really convinced her, though he'd thought at the time that he had. She still had thoughts of her own on that particular subject, even though she'd said nothing about it since.
Shit. Skeeter might not seek to cause Lily and James harm if she knew about his training in the way that Harry was almost certain Lucius and Narcissa would, but she had the power to make a taint cling to their names, if she only desired it.
If I'd known, Harry thought in misery as the Owlery faded away, I would have kept my knowledge about her being an illegal Animagus quiet in exchange for her silence on this subject, instead of her writing that article.
Too late, now. Harry bit his lip until it bled, and moved steadily forward. At least the Maze had made him aware of that vulnerability.
"Thank you," he whispered.
As expected, the Maze did not respond, and as Harry expected, it showed him Grimmauld Place, where he had almost succumbed to the singing creature behind the door—somewhat to his disappointment, it did not show him what the singing creature actually was—and his driving himself further and further into exhaustion, rendering him near useless to anyone else. He had to wince and stand with his eyes shut for a moment before the image of himself refusing Vera and Peter's "invitation" to the Sanctuary. The image simply remained still, however, until he opened his eyes and viewed it again. The Maze quite obviously thought he should have gone.
"I wonder if Seers built you in the first place?" Harry muttered as he accepted that he'd made a mistake, and even why he had made it—that he didn't want anyone seeing him and knowing him that well. "You certainly have enough in common, and Merlin knows you keep making me think of Vera."
Fawkes's song turned, and brought back to Harry a memory of James telling him the Maze had come from elsewhere, that certainly no human hand had constructed it, though human wizards might have summoned it here.
Harry nodded. "All right," he said, and slogged forward grimly through more memories, mostly slight insults done to other people, until he rounded one corner and saw the darkness he had expected ahead. It had a faint silvery sheen to it, like stars. Harry drew in his breath and crossed the final distance between himself and this memory, one he had been dreading.
Once again, he stood just outside the rose garden on Christmas night, and saw himself reach out towards Lily with magic driven by hatred. Harry watched as coolly as he could. It was quite something, to see how feral his eyes were from outside, narrow and nearly empty of sanity. He had come within a hairsbreadth of simply giving himself to the Dark music and exploding outside of all bounds. Of course it had been a mistake. Though it hurt, again, to hear his mother's words resonate in his ears, he was not surprised that the Maze had chosen to show this to him. He had lain awake in his own bed regretting it enough.
The Maze sparked, and Harry froze, lifting his chin. Once again, as with the image of himself levitating the book, when he had misunderstood what the Maze was showing him, he felt a pendulum of truth swinging and coming in hard at him.
It hit him.
Using magic borne of hatred and pain was a mistake only in the sense that I could have hurt someone else with it. I was mistaken to think that—
No. He couldn't—that wasn't true.
Fawkes's song swelled.
The Maze could not lie. It could no more lie than a justice ritual could, than Seers could, than unicorns could. Doubt that, and he would have to doubt the certainty of all that other magic.
The truth landed in his brain and pushed its way relentlessly forward.
I was mistaken to think that there was any truth in her words at all. I was mistaken to think that my magic is foul, and that other people only tolerate it because they pity me or there's something foul and twisted in themselves. She is utterly blind to me. She doesn't understand the person I became. Plant me in front of her and ask her to predict my behavior, and she will be mistaken every time.
She not only never loved me, she has no idea who I am now.
Harry shuddered softly and closed his eyes. Hadn't he faced this before, with the unicorns? Hadn't he accepted that his mother was wrong about him? Then why was it so hard for him to face this now?
The truth crawled determinedly out of his thoughts and sat there staring at him until he had to meet its eyes.
I was thinking that she might still be able to know some things about me. She did train me, and I'm still a product of that training. She was wrong about my magic being as foul as dog vomit, but she could be right about the way I'd respond when she asked me a certain question, or how I've just changed my desire to serve Connor into desire to serve other people.
I am more than that. I have made mistakes like those, but there is still more to me than those mistakes. None of what she taught me makes me able to hold back from charging to the Ministry prison when people were in danger or to love Draco…
Harry cried out, and the light around him swelled, gorgeous golden-white, and Fawkes's song soared after it like a comet arcing around the sun.
The Maze had crept up on him with these two truths, perhaps unable to find a single memory that embodied them, perhaps unable to work through the thick intricacies his thoughts twined them in. They were alive in Harry's head now, though, twisting around and braiding with each other like the Many during the hatching of the new hive, and dragging in the first one, so that there were three snakes of truth circled in his head, without beginning and without end.
His mother had been and was wrong about him—so wrong that he did not have to keep thinking he owed her a debt because of all that his training had planted in him.
He was more than a sacrifice. He always had been.
He could love Draco, and in many ways, he already did.
Harry shuddered, barely aware that he'd dropped to his knees on the Maze's floor. Fawkes's song had slowed to a warbling croon, and Regulus was whispering something that Harry couldn't make out under the waterfall-tumble of his own thoughts.
He knew that he was crying. It didn't seem to matter right now.
She can't hurt me again. Never again. That last weapon she had against me, the most potent one, the conviction that I was only worth something if I was helping people, has been taken away.
I cannot stop being a sacrifice all at once. But now I know I can, eventually. It's not the same thing as getting there, but now I know the road exists.
And all those little things like worrying when Draco was angry and preferring him to most people and not wanting him hurt and being able to dare to kiss him back when I would have run away from anyone else are all right, they're perfectly all right, and oh Merlin I was wrong and this is all right and I can have a future I can have a life I can have love…
His breath came and went in sobs. Tears clogged his throat. He knew he was sniffling, and though his hand came up to shield his face and prevent anyone watching from seeing the tears and snot, in response to long-ingrained instinct, he knew that it didn't matter, because everyone here had already seen far more than that.
It was all right. Regulus was not going to betray him. Fawkes was not going to betray him. The Maze had known this was there from the moment he entered, and had given him the ability to see it, too.
Harry slowly stood. As much as the realization had struck him and cracked him wide open, kneeling there would only waste time, and he didn't want to spend months in here. He felt a rushing impatience now, like a warhorse tossing its head and pricking its ears on the edge of battle. He wanted to be out of here so he could continue living, continue accepting the truths the Maze had shown him, and continue—
Oh, Merlin.
Did that mean that he could have the same kinds of possibility and freedom that he envisioned for other people? That his will mattered, too, and not just if it was guarding someone else's will or opposing an injustice?
Harry didn't know how long it would last, he suspected it would start fading the instant he left the Maze—the Maze could not compel good behavior, or James's resolve would have remained iron—but for just a moment he caught a glimpse of himself as one of those people he admired and valued so much, all the illogic torn, all the ill reasoning gone, able to see himself as human in the way that Vera had said he didn't, and the revelation pierced him like a lance of sunlight.
The vision faded in the next moment, leaving old doubts and uncertainties to plague him, but he had seen it.
Like a vision from a mountain, looking east as the sun rises.
"Thank you," he whispered, a third time.
The Maze waited, gently, and then led him on through the few minor mistakes he had yet to make, had made, had made and could correct.
Harry felt the Maze exhale around him, and breathe him out. He stood on the other side of it, not such a long distance from the door after all, though there were so many bends in the silvery coils that he knew he could have walked for miles, appearances aside.
The distance he had walked was far longer than that.
Harry turned towards the door, his head light and buzzing with ideas. The Maze had shown him, after the mistake he'd made just spreading all his intentions in front of the world with that article, a path he hadn't considered. After all, if he might be human, if he might have the chance to consider himself so, that might mean that other people would be willing to aid him out of love and loyalty, and not just because they owed him debts or had made bargains with him. And there were rituals he could use working with people in cooperation that he could not if he tried to do everything all by himself, or with just Draco and Snape helping him.
Now that that simple idea had got into his head, he knew a few rituals he could look up that should prove of extreme help in freeing the southern goblins. Slytherin had cursed them, bound their web to the interchange of money. Harry knew he would hardly convince anyone to close Gringotts, but he didn't have to. What he could do, with the help of other people to have a chance of equaling Slytherin's web in raw power, was create a substitute for the web to be tied to instead of actually destroying it. It amused him to know that this couldn't be just a Light ritual, even though most cooperative spells were, because he would have to convince the goblins' web that it was still attached to Gringotts even as it fastened to the copy. That would involve subterfuge, and lying, and thus probably some glamours or illusions—Dark magic if one wanted to stretch the definition.
His magic roiled eagerly under his skin, like a school of fish. It wanted to be about creating things. Fawkes trilled as if in agreement.
Harry cast a glance over his shoulder at the Maze, and stopped. He could feel it regarding him—happy, proud, satisfied, and amused at him.
Harry took a deep breath. "Thank you," he whispered, one more time. "I'll try to remember. I don't know if I can—" already the sheer clarity of the memories was rushing away from him, obscured by the mask of time and everyday reality, as visions and inspirations tended to be—"but I'll try."
The Maze gave a soft rumble, like a nundu, and then closed its eyes and went back to sleep. The silvery lines of light sprang up again behind Harry as he made his way confidently to the door.
He opened it, and James grabbed him by the shoulders in a fierce hug, apparently too far gone to remember that they were being careful with each other. "Harry," he whispered. "I didn't know if I was ever going to see you again. You've been gone a week."
A week, only? Better than I could have expected. Harry closed his eyes and leaned against his father, unable to prevent a silly smile from crossing his face. Fawkes flew off his shoulder and soared around them both, trilling.
A week is better than you had any right to expect, Regulus grumbled at him. You are lucky.
I am, Harry said. Merlin, I am, aren't I, Regulus? At least, I feel lucky for right now. I could sing. I wish Draco were here so I could kiss him.
Laughter swelled in him and bubbled out, and James jerked back, looking startled.
"Sorry," said Harry, smiling at him.
He wasn't that sorry. Oh, yes, there was scolding to come, of course there was, but he could get through it. The Maze had burned away a great deal of the thick ugly foliage on the forest of his mind, and sunlight was falling through the branches, awakening the withered grass, coaxing up young trees in place of the vanquished old ones.
At the moment, at least, the world was heavy with possibility, vivid and young and full of the morning.