Thank you for the reviews on the last chapter!

Another chapterlette, born from the need to clarify some of what people saw during Chapter 55.

Intermission: After the Dancing

Draco did find himself enjoying Walpurgis, though the first memory to enter his head was of a Parselmouth raising basilisks, and it startled him badly to realize that the damn snakes were bred that way, rather than springing out of some pit of hidden foulness and evil.

No, he thought a short time later, when the wild dance had calmed a bit. Not quite the first memory.

The first memory had been of himself on the Hogwarts Express, turning and facing Harry with cool speculation in his eyes. He had not realized Harry had seen him quite that way then, had not realized how well he played the perfect Malfoy.

The Malfoy who should not have been there tonight, his father's letter snarled in his mind.

Draco bit his lip, and quite determinedly went back to thinking of the wild progress of the night. He was in bed now, lying with his hands folded behind his head and his eyes fixed on the ceiling of the four-poster. He couldn't believe Blaise and Harry were already asleep. True, they were probably exhausted, but the memories attacked Draco so furiously that he would have thought they would keep them awake, too.

He'd seen the memory of himself on the Hogwarts Express, and a few others too soft and blurred for him to make out, and then the explosion of green light that he already knew about, killing Voldemort and marking both Harry and his brother. And he'd seen some of the wizards' memories that passed through Harry when he managed to release them from the Death Eaters' confinement, too.

The frustrating thing was how quickly the wildness fell away from him, how quickly he started thinking about it instead of thinking of it, and telling himself what it had been like instead of feeling it. He almost felt as though he should have been changed more, though he had been awed by the wild music and dancing of the night, and the Hades-black doorway that appeared in front of them (which, Harry had revealed in a casual way, he'd gone through last year).

But what impressed him the most was that he'd flown in Harry's protection, felt Harry's soul rushing all around him, had actually spoken with Snape once or twice—or were there more conversations, fading away from him now?—and had still come back safely to earth. Harry had defended him without even realizing what he was doing, focused on riding out the storm and freeing the Dark magic from whatever Voldemort was trying to do to it.

Draco wondered if he would always defend Draco, and everyone else, so unconsciously.

It didn't seem fair, somehow, or right. Draco knew he was often a brat; he could admit that. But lying in bed at night, with no one else to see and comment on his behavior, it wasn't something that mattered. He could think as seriously as anyone, if he wanted to.

It probably helped that Harry's emotions were quiet, too, and that Draco was sure he had fallen asleep; he'd been reassured by a trill from Fawkes when he went to check earlier.

Harry deserved more recognition for what he'd done, damn it. He'd pretended not to notice the glances he got after his wild flight, and done his best to slide gracefully out of any conversations that might bring them, and the reason for them, up. Draco, knowing how much he disliked attention, didn't blame him for that part.

But how could he not see what he'd done? How could he be content to protect people and just not—just not receive anything in return? He didn't want the adulation, he didn't want the mindless obedience that someone like Voldemort would have used this night to inspire, so what could be given him?

Draco sighed and rolled onto his side. That was the question that occupied him, and would occupy him, more than the dancing and the consequences that had come out of it. He could give Harry his love, but that was hardly just because of his protectiveness. It was for his overall magnificence.

I wish there was some way of showing him how much good he's doing, how much he means to people.

Draco passed into a restless and troubled sleep, filled with dreams of him trying to explain to a wide-eyed and disbelieving Harry just what his accomplishments meant, until he finally gave up and kissed him silly instead.

The fifth wooden figure went down into flames and ash, and Snape hissed. His magic flared around him, called out by the wildness of the festivities and not yet settled by the paltry destruction he'd given it.

He had not meant to be—affected.

But you were, he reminded himself, and again conjured a line of wooden figures. Normally, he needed his wand for at least that much. Tonight, he did not. His wandless magic danced and lashed around him, eager to sting as a scorpion, not wearing on him at all. Snape flung out a hand, and a line of fire sprang precisely from one finger and chewed through the figure's head.

He did not think, that often, of his own raw power. His art and his obsession lay with potions, which needed cleverness, intelligence, a keen memory, a good understanding of theory, and magic that came with the occasional wave of a wand or conscious, directed effort. When he was in the midst of creating an experimental potion, his mind fixed far more on ingredients than it did on how he worked his magic into the mixture.

Walpurgis Night had changed that. Snape had expected his main focus to be on protecting Harry. But he'd had no choice but to think of other things once the music began and he found himself dancing.

His magic had responded to the savagery around it, and manifested itself.

Snape had stood, panting, on the grass when the dancing was done, and received more than one strange glance from his neighbors. Snape had glared them into submission, but he couldn't blame them. He was stronger than any wizard in the gathering but Harry. That had come as a nasty shock to him, too. He was used to thinking of himself as the third most powerful wizard in Hogwarts alone, under Dumbledore and Harry, always remembering that beyond the walls of the school dwelt many, many war wizards and trained duelers who were more than his match. Such self-knowledge had been a matter of survival during his year of spying on Voldemort. The Dark Lord tolerated no rivals.

He spun, and thought Diffindo, wandless and nonverbal. The figure he'd indicated parted and tumbled to the floor, neatly sliced through the neck.

He thought Sectumsempra, and the wooden figure next in line all but exploded. Not as satisfying, using that one on a wooden opponent, Snape thought, his gaze gone blurry and his heartbeat a distant roar in his ears. The blood pouring out of the cuts it created was by far the aspect most likely to intimidate an opponent.

He had created that one. He'd created others, too, simple spells that nevertheless spoke of a talent most people had preferred to forget he had. It was not every wizard who invented his own spells.

When had he forgotten that?

He could not say that he had focused on Harry too much. He hadn't experimented with spells in the ten years he'd taught before Harry came to Hogwarts, either. He'd slid into a routine of making potions, teaching them, marking essays, sneering at the other professors, brooding on his past, and sniping at students who all thought they had the makings of Potions geniuses until they took his classes.

Tonight had reminded him of what he was: a powerful, capable, talented Dark wizard.

He didn't like that this had been pulled out of him, that he'd forgotten it was ever there.

Snape took a deep breath, and halted, and at last managed to force his magic to lie down again and accept his chains. It snarled at him, wanting to fly and sting, but Snape had created his shields for this very reason. While a Death Eater, he had allowed his power far more leeway. He'd been forced to subdue it when he began teaching, and the shields had let him subdue the side of his personality that had delighted in torture and murder, too.

"Let us all be unbound," Hawthorn Parkinson, who had tortured and murdered beside Snape, had said tonight.

She has no idea what she is asking for, Snape thought bitterly.

He Vanished the rest of the wooden figures, only realizing after he'd done it that that, too, had been wandless, the magic finding release any way it could. Snape cast himself into one of his chairs and stared at the fire, his eyes narrow and crowded with new thoughts.

He had thought to find in Harry someone to protect, and, of course, if the boy changed the world, then he would live happily in that new world. Even there, though, he'd been unable to see himself in anything but the capacities he'd always had: reformed Death Eater, Potions Master, and, recently, guardian.

Now he was realizing that he, as well as the world, could change when Harry started quietly, inoffensively, turning everything upside down.

It was a discomforting realization.

Hawthorn shook her head and let her long, pale hair flood down around her shoulders. She had been wearing it bound for Walpurgis, though it hadn't looked as though it were bound. That was part of the secret, though. She would use it as a silent, private pleasure, and also as a test. Those who noticed that she had her hair bound, those who looked but didn't notice, and those who never even looked were all different classes of people, each useful in their own ways.

Harry had been one of those who hadn't even looked.

Hawthorn paused for a long moment, standing with her head bowed and one hand clutched on the corner of the table where she'd set the hairpins down.

She was already losing her grip on most of what she'd seen in the storm. That was one of the consequences of riding it out and letting go of the magic as it passed her, she supposed. Memories, dreams of unimaginable power, whispers of glory, the songs of the dead, had run past her more fiercely than even the usual dream-like experiences of Walpurgis did.

But she had seen two things that had stayed with her, mostly because she'd gripped them in a choke hold and repeated them over and over to herself until she could at least conjure images to the words, even if they weren't exact replicas of the images she'd seen first.

Harry performing a wandless charm for the first time, and falling exhausted on the grass. What had shocked Hawthorn was not that he'd done it, but the nature of the pride he'd felt. He'd known that he did something great, something good, for the sake of other people. Even that young, it seemed, he had become determined to give himself over to others, rather than leaping up and yelling to his parents to look what he could do, which Hawthorn knew Pansy would have done if she'd achieved the same thing at Harry's age, or even now.

She had wondered who he could be feeling that pride for, and then she'd seen the memory of a red-haired, green-eyed woman—who must surely be Harry's mother, from the resemblance of their eyes—stroking Harry's hair and telling him the words of vows that horrified Hawthorn, and disturbed her profoundly. That the young boy in the memory had not understood them was no matter; he had memorized them faithfully, and his adult listeners could get at the sense of them.

"What are your vows, Harry?"

"To keep Connor safe. To always protect him. To insure that he lives as untroubled a life as he can, until he has to face Lord Voldemort again. To be his brother and his friend and his guardian. To love him. To never compete with him, never show him up, and never let anyone else know that I'm so close to him. To be ordinary, so that he can be extraordinary."

Hawthorn could not name all the emotions that those words had inspired in her, and she found that she did not want to try. Two of them were quite prominent and would do.

The first was incredulity. That Harry could be ordinary was a laughable thing, and his mother must have known it when he was as young as that, because she had been making him promise to be ordinary, instead of just assuming he would be so.

The second was sickened outrage. Why should a child guard another child?

Hawthorn did not think she could see everything yet. Even those glimpses had been small and scattered. She thought she saw the shape of something emerging, especially since it had been Harry's mother who angered him on Christmas night, but she was not sure, and chasing down blind trails in the dark was a very Gryffindor thing to do. She would wait. She would be patient. She would sniff after clues, and drag them into the light when she found them.

A movement in the mirror caught her attention. Hawthorn looked up, and realized she could see a pair of hands over her shoulders, floating in dark sleeves and speaking in the sign language she had learned to cherish.

You look troubled, my love.

Hawthorn studied her own face for a moment as she leaned back against her husband and Dragonsbane put his arms around her. Yes, she did look troubled. Or, as Hawthorn preferred to think of it, fierce. Her eyes were shining, and her teeth bared. Her wolf was close to the surface, called by the wildness of the night, and at present it was not thinking how much it hated her and wanted flesh to rend and tear. It was thinking, instead, how very good a meal traitors made.

"Hawthorn," Dragonsbane whispered. This was one of the two nights of the year when he was permitted to speak aloud. "A spirit came and spoke with me. I cannot reveal his name. But he spoke of grave danger to this young unbinder we have bound ourselves to follow. He died in the cause of holding back that danger."

Hawthorn nodded once.

Dragonsbane studied her from within the folds of his hood for a moment. Hawthorn soaked up the scent of rotting flesh that hung around him while she waited for him to speak. Once an offensive stink, it had become a comfort to her, and that comfort had only increased after she was a werewolf. She always knew him, even in a darkened room, were he ever so silent.

"Then we must do what we can to help him," said Dragonsbane. "All of us, in our places and at our times." And, because it had always been their way on Walpurgis, he guided her to their bed.

"Are you crying? Really, Pansy."

Pansy hastily blotted at her tears, and then lay back in her bed and pulled her covers up over her chest. "I am not crying," she said, though it was useless. Millicent had already seen, and her choked voice would have given her away anyway.

She heard Millicent snort, and then she climbed into her own bed. She had no Lumos or other charm to provide light; Millicent disdained them, preferring to undress in darkness. In her more unkind moments, Pansy thought it came from a desire to avoid looking at her own clumsy, ungainly body. Millicent was taller than any boy in their year, even Blaise, and square-jawed. Pansy pitied her intensely, when she wasn't envying her her observation skills or fearing what she'd noticed.

Right now, Millicent had obviously noticed something that she wasn't about to let go.

"There's no reason to cry," she said, sniffing now and then as though to make sure Pansy understood she was only snorting in irritation, not sniffling from tears at all. "Yes, we could have died, but we didn't. And yes, the storm was intense at its height, but it's over now. Really."

"It's not that," said Pansy, surprised that Millicent could think she'd shed tears over either of those. Intense joy was to be appreciated for what it was; one laughed, and not wept, on Walpurgis Night. And of course Pansy wasn't so silly as to cry over danger that was past. "It was Harry's memories."

There was silence from the other bed. Then Millicent said, "I thought I was the only one who saw them. I thought it was a dream. I thought that—no one mentioned them—" She fell silent.

Pansy made haste to speak. It was so rarely that she had an advantage over Millicent! "I think most people thought the same way you did, and that was why no one mentioned them. No one wanted to run the risk of sounding mad or foolish, and of course Harry was right there. But in silence, I think a lot of people are brooding. I—I don't remember all of them, but I remember the one about Harry's envy for his brother."

And what was there to cry about in that? her own conscience demanded of her. You've seen Pensieve memories like that before, and not wept at them.

It wasn't that, Pansy thought, as she reclined on her pillows and waited for Millicent to answer her. It was the sheer wrongness of what she'd seen. Oh, she could see how Harry's brother was attractive in a certain light and with a strong squint, and she supposed that Gryffindor heroism appealed to some people, and she knew he had endured the trials of being a Triwizard champion thus far.

But he was nothing compared to Harry in power, in cleverness, in strength of soul—in all the ways that most mattered, all the ways that let you survive in the real world. Harry envying his brother indicated something was deeply wrong.

Millicent whispered, "I remember the one about the vows."

Pansy shivered, jolted, as though the memory really had been hiding just under the surface of her thoughts and Millicent's words had called it back for her. The words echoed in her ears, unpleasant, hateful, unsustainable.

"No one could keep a set of vows like that," she whispered. "And Harry especially couldn't. Look at him drawing attention even when he tries not to. What was happening? Why was that memory there?"

"I don't know," Millicent said. "And I think we should know. Both because we're his friends, and because—" Pansy heard the sound of her rolling over, and then she whispered, "Lumos," and Pansy knew it was serious. She rolled over herself, to see Millicent staring at her with a pale face.

"If something's badly wrong with a person who does things like Harry does," said Millicent, "then we are fucked."

Arabella Zabini stood in silence for a long moment, surveying the wreckage of her home.

She'd thought, somehow, that she'd escaped the Dark Lord's notice when she sent off the letter declining service in his ranks. She was a Dark witch, true, but only a moderately powerful one; her reputation came more from the deaths of her seven husbands and her beauty than from the strength of her magic. Voldemort might feel honored to have a Songstress in his service, but even that was a talent he could mimic with his own compulsion. He had no reason to call on her again, every reason to let her stay neutral. Arabella could court Harry Potter's notice, but she'd toyed with the notion of lending only indirect help, not actually fighting beside him in battle. That had been an honored tradition of pureblood families on either side of the Light-Dark divide. Why should they participate in wars where they might have relatives fighting on either side, wars that only destroyed and depleted the wizarding world? The magic must be passed on. That was more important than the blood, always. Let the magic survive, and if that included some of its less powerful practitioners fading quietly into the background, so be it. It was only the fanatics who truly cared about the wars.

But Voldemort was a fanatic, it seemed.

Arabella moved at last, carefully stepping over the shattered glass of her enormous window and into her study. A glance showed her portraits slashed, the subjects mute forever now. She looked at her desk, and found it blasted nearly in two. Then her gaze settled on her bookshelf.

Her Parseltongue books were gone.

Arabella nodded slowly. Of course Voldemort would have sent his minions to seek those, if he knew that she had them, and that information would have been only a little difficult to get a hold of. Arabella had spread the word discreetly over the years, in case a collector wanted them.

She wondered, for a moment, what the Death Eaters thought would happen as a result of this raid. Two answers came immediately to mind: that she would be intimidated into joining them, seeing how easily they'd penetrated her wards, or that she would fade even more into the background and hope that both sides passed her over.

Arabella smiled. It was a smile that was the last thing her fifth husband had ever seen.

She glided quickly and delicately across her library to a panel in the wall, and touched it with her wand. It moved aside, and she reached down and drew out a comb, and a hand mirror, and two small, leather-bound books. Of course she would never leave her true treasures out in the open, only those made for display and little else.

She was not intimidated, and she was not fearful.

She was angry. And now she had chosen her side. Circumstances had conspired to make it so that she could fight against this so-called Dark Lord and yet not turn to the hypocritical, puling, shrieking Light.

She clapped her hands to call her house elves to clean up the mess, and hummed a little tune under her breath. One of the house elves went blind and another deaf as a consequence of her song, but really, that couldn't be helped, and they would heal in time. At least they had left by the time she finished writing her letter, sent it to Lucius, and sat down to watch her face in the mirror and comb her hair.