Thank you for the reviews on the last chapter!
Okay. This chapter has a potentially horrible cliffhanger. To avoid it, just don't read past the line "Harry was tired," and then you can read the rest of the chapter, along with Chapter 66, tomorrow. This is also the part of this sequence of ten chapters that I like to call the "Harry Is Irrational" part. There are reasons for his irrationality, as revealed in this chapter, but it's severe enough that I think it deserves a warning.
Chapter Sixty-Five: Call It Compulsion, Call It Madness
Albus frowned slightly. It seemed that his compulsion had not been as successful as he would have liked. Nightfall, and Harry had fled outside Hogwarts and was sleeping in the Forbidden Forest, as he saw when he focused his eyes through a knothole in one of the trees.
Perhaps he should be patient. After all, assert the compulsion too strongly, and Harry would be sure to feel it. He must keep the reins light and loose until he could pull Harry up and arrest him in his plunging course.
But an intuition itched behind his eyelids, telling him that he didn't have much time. Yes, he might catch Harry in a carefully constructed trap, and the boy's fight with Severus—Albus had felt the echoes of angry Dark magic all the way up in his office—suggested that it was working. Still, all the students left the school in a few days, and Harry wouldn't have an excuse to remain here if he was not staying with Severus. He would travel away, and then Albus would have, at best, the uneasy knowledge that his compulsion was working in him without knowing why or how.
No, he would have to take the chance. At least Fawkes was asleep now, and so was Harry, and it was easier to make an impression on a dreaming mind than a waking one. Albus drew in more of his gift and then exhaled it in a great, sweeping miasma over the boy resting among the Runespoors.
Harry stirred and murmured fretfully, but sank back into slumber again. Albus continued to watch. He had pushed as much as he dared. Now he had to wait and see whether his designs would be frustrated or answered, whether Harry would save the world or damn it.
He hoped he would not wait long.
Harry woke to something pecking him. He sat up slowly, assuming it was Fawkes, until he realized the phoenix sat with his head beneath his wing on a branch not far from him. Harry frowned and looked about until he noticed the pale belly of a barn owl hovering beside him. Carefully, Harry adjusted his glasses and reached out to make his left arm a perch for the owl.
The talons scored his bare skin and drew faint lines of blood. Harry supposed he should really go inside to the hospital wing soon and have those and the other wounds treated. For now, though, he was too busy.
He unrolled the letter, slowly and clumsily, and grimaced when he recognized the handwriting.
I will not bother with greetings. We cannot afford the time, and you would think it insincere of me anyway.
My old siblings are not helpless without my lord. They are going to cut off the head of the serpent, and watch the body thrash in helpless convulsions. Do you want to come and protect the snake, or hear of it later? I would be most pleased to bring you a personal report from the Ministry. I am going in early to watch the fun. Do let me know if you want to come with me. I know two areas free of anti-Apparition wards.
Still playing the game,
Evan Rosier.
Harry rubbed his face with the letter and tried to get rid of sleepiness and the sickness that wanted to assault him as he remembered Snape's betrayal. It was still hours from dawn, by the position of the moon. He hadn't slept long. He didn't want to waste time figuring out riddles handed to him by a Death Eater who was probably mad anyway.
But something about the wording lingered in his brain, tickling it. This was a wizarding proverb, not one of Rosier's poetry quotes.
In a moment, he remembered. There had once been a plot to assassinate a Slytherin Headmaster of Hogwarts that used the same words. In the end, the assassins had had to give up their plan because they couldn't get close enough to the Headmaster through the walls of the wards.
Cut off the head of the serpent, and watch the body thrash…
Harry's eyes popped wide, and he heard a gasp rip from his throat. He shook out the letter again and stared at it.
Yes. Rosier did mention the Ministry.
Scrimgeour. They're going for Scrimgeour.
Harry stood, sending the barn owl into flight with an irritated hoot, his mind scrambling around his skull. Somehow, he had thought the Death Eaters wouldn't want to move while Voldemort was still in hiding and healing, which was stupid. Of course they could have had plans that he'd directed them to put into practice even before his resurrection. And of course someone like Karkaroff was clever enough and high enough in standing with the Death Eaters to force them into motion, even if the others wanted to wait.
They want to assassinate the Minister. Of course they do. What a bold move, what a statement of power! And the country would thrash around like a snake with its head cut off.
Harry tossed the letter hastily to the ground, struggled away from the last of the Runespoors, and began running through the Forest towards the limit of the wards. Even now, he would not try to Apparate within them, lest he tear some of the most-needed protections against Voldemort. But he could Apparate from outside them, and that would get him to the Ministry in time to warn Scrimgeour. Harry thought he could remember the gray room where the Hounds had brought him. That had been free of anti-Apparition wards, though they might have been put back up by now with the disbanding of the Hounds.
So be it, then. Now that he had control of his magic back, Harry thought he could survive even a bounce from wards like that without splinching.
Probably.
He pushed away the small snarl of uneasiness in the back of his mind. He would preserve his life, oh yes, he had to, because this was for the war, and he had to answer the training his mother had given him. But he would preserve other lives, too. He had failed tests in the graveyard, and even before then. He hadn't figured out that it was Karkaroff who must have downed the Aurors and blocked up the Floo Network the night of the raid on the Ministry prison, even though he should have. He hadn't kept Sirius alive, even though he should have.
He was not about to let Scrimgeour die.
He reached the outer limit of the wards and slowed his run abruptly as he noticed someone standing in the light of a Lumos glow. He stared when he recognized the dark eyes and the mad grin. Evan Rosier bowed to him.
"You are taking me up on the offer of Apparating to the Ministry after all?" he called cheerfully.
Harry bared his teeth, unable to help it. His determination was surging along the edge of rage, and the sight of a Death Eater now called up memories of just a few hours ago that he would much rather avoid. "Not on your life. I'm going, but I'm going to Apparate to an area that I know of."
Rosier laughed at him. "I didn't mean that you should actually come with me, Harry—may I call you Harry?"
"No," said Harry curtly, and closed his eyes, trying to remember the exact size and shape and color of that bare little room.
"I would just give you the description of the room, and then you could Apparate there yourself," Rosier continued smoothly, interrupting Harry's memories. "One of them is a little-used room off a private office of the Minister's. It has four close gray walls, and a table that's bolted to the floor in the middle of it and can't go anywhere. The smell is that of blood, from when they cut into a unicorn in there one time and couldn't get rid of the reek. Can you see it?"
Yes, Harry could, far more clearly than the ten-month-old memory he'd been trying to call up. For a moment, he weighed whether he could trust Rosier against the need to get to the Ministry on time.
His mother's voice whispered in his head, chasing away all doubts. You will sometimes have to make allies of your enemies. You can trust them to act in their own self-interest, as long as you know what they want. When their goals and yours no longer coincide, then you may drop them. There is no shame in doing so. They are evil if they would oppose your brother, and have no sense of honor to lose.
Harry nodded, once, and then, holding the image of the room clear before his eyes, he Apparated.
It felt as though someone had shoved him down a tube and were slowly squeezing him out. Harry had Apparated before, and even from London to Scotland, but then, he'd known both the place he left and the place he arrived in very well, and he'd had rage at Dumbledore driving him. Now he was aiming for a place he didn't know very well, and he could almost feel the magic tumbling through space beside him, anxiously seeking a way for him to land safely, seeking a room that matched the description in his head.
Then it was there. The stink of unicorn blood wrongfully spilled, familiar from the Forbidden Forest in first year, hit his nose, and Harry opened his eyes to find himself in the room Rosier had described. He'd landed just a few inches from the table. He moved towards the door at once, even as he heard a pop from behind him that was probably Rosier. Harry ignored him. He would harm the man if he attacked, and if he did not, then Harry saw no reason to encourage him or pay attention to him.
"Oh, good," said Rosier. "No one else is here. I hoped that no one else would be. They must be using the other one."
Harry knew, distantly, that he should have flinched or had some reaction to the information that the Death Eaters could have been here. He didn't, not really. Even the thought of seeing Bellatrix barely infuriated him. He was busy casting the reverse to the locking charms on the door, and then stepping out into the office beyond.
It was well-lit, and when Harry moved up to the padded chair behind the desk and touched it, it was still warm. Of course, Scrimgeour must have been working late, he thought, or the Death Eaters would have aimed for his home, wherever it was.
He turned and looked at Rosier. "What else do you know about this plan?"
Rosier lifted a shoulder with a faint smile. "Only that a spy was supposed to lure the Minister out of his office, Harry. Something about wanting to expose a few more Death Eaters pretending to be loyal Ministry officials, like Walden Macnair, to him." Rosier chuckled. "Oh, he's going to meet Death Eaters, I suppose. Just not the ones he expects."
"Where was the other place we could have Apparated in?" Harry demanded, thinking it reasonable that the traitor would walk Scrimgeour in that direction.
"One of the offices on the second floor, which Walden secured for us bit by bit," said Rosier. "This particular office is on the third."
Harry ran for the door again. He could feel the hum of wards around them, and the very least the wards would do is prevent Apparating. He suspected that a few of them were already calling alarms about unwanted intruders in this office. Once again, it wasn't something he had time to stop and worry about.
He found an empty corridor, decorated with sleeping portraits, beyond the office, but even as he began walking down it, a figure stepped out of a door to his left. Harry gripped his wand and spun into a battle-crouch, almost flinging a hex before he realized it was Tonks.
She stared at him, her hair changing from blue to pink. "Harry?" she asked. "What are you doing here?"
"Hello, sweet girl," said Evan Rosier from behind her. "I bet you taste like blueberries."
Harry flung a body-bind at Rosier, yelled at Tonks, "He's a Death Eater, extremely dangerous, leave him alone," and then ran up the corridor, looking for some sign of a staircase or the lifts. He knew he should be able to remember—his mother would have been so disappointed in him that he could not—but his mind was blurring and racing, and Ministry geography was the last thing on it right now.
At last, the hallway ended in a door that opened on stairs leading up. Harry ran up them. The only sounds, bounced back from the walls, were his own footsteps and labored breathing. Dimly, he was aware that the wound Voldemort had given him had torn open again.
Stubborn thing, he thought, and opened the door at the top of the next flight of stairs, sure that he had found the second floor.
Sounds of fighting at once worried and reassured him, and he hurtled forward, running possible battle arrangements over in his head, trying to calculate how many Death Eaters were likely to be there, and telling himself over and over that the sounds meant Scrimgeour was not yet down and dead.
He turned a sharp bend, and came out into the mass of Auror desks that he remembered from his visits to Scrimgeour when the man was still the Head of the Auror Office. Hexes and curses fizzled steadily from the middle of it towards the right side, where Harry could see a small group of frazzled Aurors making a valiant stand.
Among the Death Eaters attacking them were Fenrir Greyback, Walden Macnair, Karkaroff, and a few other heavyset men Harry didn't recognize. A seventh man lay motionless on the floor not far from them. Harry didn't have time to see whether it was a Death Eater or an Auror.
What he cared about was that the attackers were a good distance from the defenders—one of the Aurors had raised a ward that, while it couldn't deflect all the hexes, was forcing the Death Eaters to remain a dozen feet away—and they had shelter from their desks, as well. No matter what spells Harry chose for this fight, they were unlikely to hurt Scrimgeour or his allies.
His magic snarled in happiness, or maybe that was him. Harry moved forward and aimed his wand.
"Exsculpo!" he hissed, this time using a different intonation than the one he'd used on Voldemort. The spell surged through him and out, still unfamiliar and exciting for its very unfamiliarity.
The purple light hit one of the unfamiliar Death Eaters in the leg, and the leg abruptly ceased to exist. He cried out and listed to the side, then fell hard and knocked his head on one of the desks. He was out, Harry thought, at least for now.
Karkaroff whipped around and saw him. The man's eyes narrowed at once, and he snapped, "Greyback. Avery. Macnair. Take him. I'll kill the Minister." He turned again to face Scrimgeour, while the other three began blasting desks aside to get to Harry faster.
Harry took a brief moment to survey the Aurors. Two of them were wounded, but the others looked well. Scrimgeour, in particular, was still hearty, and Harry could see his yellow eyes lock onto Karkaroff's as if he could sense the strongest Dark magic there.
Then Harry had other things to worry about, because the lead Death Eater—who was a stranger, so he must be Avery—was almost on him, calling up a Blasting Curse that would probably hurt Harry if it hit.
If it hit.
Harry rolled to the side and under one of the desks. He was just small enough to make it, and he knew he was lucky that the desks were hollow underneath. He curled up tight and heard Greyback snarl and Macnair answer some question Avery had asked with a curse. Apparently, they had lost track of him for at least one precious moment.
Harry smiled, and knew it was a feral smile.
Always use what's around you. That's what she taught me.
He gestured with his right hand in the direction of the desk, and intoned a nonverbal Levitation Charm. The desk rose in the air, rotating slowly. Avery let out a triumphant yell as he caught sight of him.
Harry winked, smiled, and then flung the desk at them as hard as he could.
Greyback ducked out of the way with all the agility of a werewolf, and Macnair raised a Shield Charm that would keep out heavier weights than a desk. Avery, stunned and already stepping towards Harry, wasn't so lucky. The desk hit him in the face and body, and blew him backward, sending him spinning into the wall. Harry pulled up the desk so that it didn't crush his legs, turned it, and this time threw it at the back of Karkaroff's head.
Macnair had caught on to what he was doing, though. He cried out, "Wingardium Leviosa!" and seized control of the desk. Then he sent it flying back at Harry.
Harry's own Shield Charm bounced the desk off quite handily, and it hit one of the others hard enough to snap its legs. Harry stood, glancing down. Papers had spilled out of the desk, hardly sharp missiles, but able to be used as distractions if he picked them up with magic and flurried them around the room—
Then he caught sight of Fenrir Greyback, crouched in the aisle next to him and snarling. He was already rising to his feet, and Harry moved to pour strength into his Shield Charm. There weren't many spells that would affect a werewolf, even in human form, and he would need the moment to think of one.
"Here, puppy, puppy, puppy!" sang a voice from the back of the room.
Harry stared even as Greyback spun around. Rosier stood near the door, swinging his wand in his hand and clucking his tongue.
"Does poor lost little puppy want a treat?" he asked, and held up what Harry thought was a sweet shaped like a bone.
Rosier knew his opponent. Greyback howled in utter fury, sprang up onto the nearest desk, and dived at Rosier. Rosier sprang aside, laughing, and set Greyback on fire.
Harry turned around, thinking that no matter who won the fight, it could only be better for his side. He scanned quickly for Macnair, using his magic to lift up the papers—
And saw that Macnair had stepped around to the side, angling to get within reach of the ward protecting the Aurors. Karkaroff was still in front of them, exchanging spells with Scrimgeour. The Minister had fallen fully into the duel, and Harry doubted that he was noticing Macnair. His Aurors were watching him.
Harry shouted a warning, but his voice went unheard in the noise of Macnair intoning, "Sanguinolentus!"
The Bloody Cut Curse was a red, hissing, spluttering thing. Harry saw it take flight from the end of Macnair's wand and aim straight for Scrimgeour's shoulder like an evil star. Harry flung out a hand and tried to take control of and turn the curse the way he had seen Voldemort do, but he suspected he had failed, or did not yet know the skill, when it did not even wobble in its path.
Scrimgeour was going to die.
And then someone dived between him and the curse and took it on his own shoulder. He went down fast, bleeding ferociously, but not before Harry had time to see that his hair was red.
Percy.
Macnair let out a wordless shout of frustration, Harry one that echoed it, and Scrimgeour a battle cry. He forced Karkaroff back with a Blasting Curse aimed at the floor under his feet, spun on his bad leg, crouched over Percy, and aimed his wand at Macnair. Harry could see the longing to kill burning in his eyes. With one of his staff bleeding to death, it would have been so easy.
Instead, he remained an Auror, and the only spell he took Macnair down with was, "Petrificus Totalus!"
Macnair collapsed. Harry turned sharply to deal with Karkaroff, but he was already running. Greyback and Rosier were gone from sight, and the last unfamiliar Death Eater who had come with Karkaroff lay still beside the one whose leg Harry had taken, bleeding from a head wound.
"Feverfew, Mallory, get him," said Scrimgeour, efficient as always, and then knelt down beside Percy.
Harry hurried towards them, ignoring the looks that Aurors Feverfew and Mallory gave him as they ran past. They might think it strange to see him here, and perhaps even stranger that he wouldn't hunt beside them, but Harry knew his duty. Karkaroff was only one capture, in the end.
Percy's life was more important.
Harry stepped around the desk and crouched down beside Scrimgeour. The Minister, his face pale and utterly devoid of all emotion, was pressing furiously on the cut in Percy's shoulder, trying to stop the blood. It wasn't working. That was impossible, Harry knew, with Sanguinolentus. The wound simply kept bleeding, resisting any pressure or clotting, until the patient died.
It resisted most healing magic, too, and Harry knew only the most basic medical spells. But he had something else he thought might work.
He closed his eyes. Fawkes? He tried to summon the phoenix for the first time. Fawkes, I need you now!
The phoenix popped into being above him, with a startled squawk, as though Harry had woken him out of a sound sleep. But he fluttered down to Harry's arm when Harry held it out for him, and saw the situation at a glance.
Tears welled up in his dark eyes, and fell on the wound, Scrimgeour pulling back his hands in silence so they wouldn't obstruct the way. Harry held his breath for a moment, and then closed his eyes as he realized the bleeding had begun to ease off. The Bloody Cut Curse had come very near costing Percy his arm, but it would heal, if slowly, under the phoenix's tears. Percy would have to spend some time in the Ministry's infirmary or St. Mungo's for blood loss, but that was so much better than what it could have been.
Harry felt Scrimgeour touch his shoulder. He blinked his eyes open, and looked at the Minister.
"You're wounded, too," said Scrimgeour, without any particular emphasis, his eyes on Harry's chest.
Harry blinked and looked down. His robes had fallen open, and his shirt underneath it was soaked with blood. He tugged the cloth slowly away from the gaping bite, and winced when he realized that the edges of it had turned black and begun to stink. Some poison that Voldemort carried in his teeth, probably.
He remembered, abruptly, that Fawkes had cried on the wound earlier, and though it had closed and almost ceased to ache, it had not healed.
"What curse did that?" Scrimgeour asked, dividing his attention between Harry and Percy. Fawkes's tears were coming more slowly now. Scrimgeour wiped the blood away from the cut, revealing a long, wicked scar that ran like a rope around Percy's upper arm. His eyes held plenty of emotions now, hope and pride and fear, as he stared at the young man who had nearly died saving his life. Harry glanced politely to the side, to let them have their private moment, as he answered.
"No curse. Voldemort bit me."
He looked back to see that Scrimgeour had jumped as if jolted by lightning, and so had the Aurors who remained with him behind the desks. Harry rolled his eyes. It's just a name. What I have to tell them next is what should really shock them—or maybe not, since they just survived an attack by Death Eaters.
"Voldemort has returned," he said quietly. "He resurrected himself in a dark Midsummer ritual—"
"There are no dark Midsummer rituals," interrupted one of the taller Aurors. She looked as though she were spoiling for a fight.
Harry rolled his eyes at her. "A corrupted Midsummer ritual then, I should have said." He could feel his breath coming faster, but he refused to let it. He would not permit his emotions to take him over and make him react like a child in front of the Minister. The dryness he could put into his tone did counteract them, somewhat. "I was under such temptation to notice semantics at the time, since I was tied to an altar in the middle of a graveyard."
"Go on." Scrimgeour's eyes were narrow, and drinking in light and information. The eyes, Harry thought, of a man preparing for war.
Harry described the ritual as concisely as he could, telling all the details of Voldemort's plans, and the fact that he was incapacitated due to memory loss for right now, but that that couldn't last for long. In the middle of his story, Aurors Feverfew and Mallory returned, with Tonks beside them, to report they had lost Karkaroff, and there had been no sign of Rosier or Greyback. Avery, Macnair, and the two heavyset Death Eaters were their only captures, since the traitorous Ministry official who had led Scrimgeour here had died in the first round of curses.
Harry warned them about the two unwarded rooms.
"I will take care of it," said Scrimgeour.
Looking at him, Harry thought he could almost relax. Yes, he will. I am proud to have such a man on my side as we go into war against Voldemort. Even thinking about how Fudge would have mishandled things made him want to shudder.
Percy chose that moment to groan and open his eyes, and the look on his face when he realized that both he and Scrimgeour were still alive completed Harry's contentment.
There's such courage, such goodness, in the most unexpected places, he thought, watching the moment that he was sure had just completed whatever silent test Scrimgeour had been making of Percy. That's the thing to remember as we go into this war. That's the thing that will lead us back to peace.
He ignored, as best he could, the fact that Fawkes had wept on his bite wound and only managed to close it again, not ease the blackness or the stink of it.
Harry trudged wearily towards the castle for the second time that night, Fawkes perched heavily on his shoulder. At least he had no dead body floating behind him this time, Harry thought. He supposed that was an improvement.
He rounded the last bend in the path, and Snape was waiting for him.
Harry snarled. His magic boiled around him for a moment, before he calmed it down. He wouldn't try to confine it to his body this time, and it was in no danger of wildly attacking people as it had been, but he still didn't want to choke or burn or fling Snape into a wall. The man had betrayed him. That meant he didn't deserve even that much of Harry's notice.
He made to walk around him, but Snape said, as if he had a right to demonstrate his concern, "Where have you been?"
Harry ignored him, and only stepped further to the side. Snape stood motionless. Harry took that to mean he wouldn't touch him, and thus was taken completely by surprise when Snape sniffed once, then reached down and wrenched his robes and shirt—which was stiff with dried blood—to the side.
"What is this?" Snape whispered, staring at the bite wound.
"None of your business." Harry ducked his head and pulled sharply away. "Go back to sleep, why don't you, Snape? You can hear all about it in the morning, as much as Madam Pomfrey ever tells anyone about someone else's wounds. I'm going to her. Good night, Snape," he added, when Snape didn't move.
"Where were you?" he demanded again.
"You. Can't. Know." Perhaps he is feeling a bit thick-headed after all the loss of air to his brain when I choked him, and needs that reminder.
"I would like to know." That was Draco's voice, and he had appeared behind Snape, a Lumos-lighted wand of his own in his hand, competing with the dawn's faint radiance in the east. Something was wrong, though, because his face was tight and pale, and his voice was hoarse with fury. Harry raised his eyebrows. He's angry with me? Why? Surely Snape told him why I ran away earlier, and I'm back safe now.
"I went to the Ministry," said Harry. "I received warning that the Death Eaters were trying to assassinate the Minister. I went to help stop them."
"Where did you get this warning?" Draco stepped closer and closer, and Harry stifled the temptation to back up. He knew he hadn't done something wrong. How could he have? He'd risked his life to help save someone else's, and though in the end he wasn't the one who'd taken the Sanguinolentus curse, his aid had made a difference in the fight, and he'd got the chance to tell Scrimgeour about the Dark Lord's return. Harry considered that a win-win situation.
"Rosier sent me a letter—"
"You trusted the word of a Death Eater?" Draco was yelling now, from only a few feet away, and that was disconcerting as hell, because Harry still couldn't figure out what he'd done wrong. "Harry, why in the name of Merlin didn't you come back and get me? Get McGonagall? Get Dumbledore, for that matter? Why didn't you raise the alarm, instead of running straight into what could have been a trap?"
"But it wasn't a trap," said Harry.
"You trust Rosier, then?" Draco looked as if he were going to tell him how foolish he was, if he said yes.
"Of course not," said Harry. "But he offered to tell me about one of two rooms in the Ministry that weren't warded against Apparition, and I—"
"You do realize that they would have been Apparition points known to Death Eaters?" Snape had the gall to step into the argument, his face gone so pale that he looked almost sick. Harry stared at him in scorn under which he'd forced the pain. What does he want? He doesn't care about me, he's made that obvious, and I don't think he'd have any other reason for sticking his big nose in.
"I knew that," Harry snapped. "But when it was a choice of save the Minister's life or dither around—"
"You could have been killed," said Draco, and seized his left wrist in a silent reminder of what else could have happened to him if the Death Eaters had taken him. "Merlin, Harry, don't you ever think?" The anger was gone out of his voice, but left in it was a cold disappointment that hurt worse. "Getting kidnapped isn't your fault, I know that, but you willingly went out of your way to put your life in danger again tonight. And now there's this." He nodded towards the bite wound at the juncture of Harry's neck and shoulder. "You didn't go see Madam Pomfrey at all this evening." He checked the light in the east. "Last night."
"I was a bit busy," Harry said.
"Doing what?" Draco leaned towards his face. "Do you know how frantic I was? Searching every room in the castle, worrying when I could feel you and then suddenly not feel you—"
"Freeing Runespoors," said Harry, so that he could concentrate on answering the question and not on what he'd done to Draco.
Draco closed his eyes. "Harry," he said. "Merlin. No one's asking you to start fighting the war tonight."
"But the first strike of the war came tonight," said Harry. He was trying to understand, really he was, but their concerns seemed so far away from his. Yes, he knew he had hurt Draco, and he hadn't wanted that to happen. But Draco was speaking as if Harry could really have taken the time to run back to the castle and talk with him—and Harry knew Draco wouldn't have let him go to the Ministry if that had happened, any more than McGonagall and Snape had the night of Rosier and Greyback's raid on the jail. Didn't Draco see that everything was different now that Voldemort had come back, that Harry had to fight his evil when and where it appeared? "I didn't plan that, either."
Draco startled him by wrapping an arm around his shoulders, and bending his face close to him to whisper in his ear.
"Harry, you're wounded and exhausted, and you haven't even taken the time to cry over Dragonsbane, I don't think, and you've had a fight with Snape. You have to get some rest, or you're going to break down." Draco hesitated for a moment, then added, "I think you might actually need the breakdown, but I know that you don't think it can happen right now or right here. Come back to the Manor with me this summer. I've been doing some thinking, and I don't really believe my father would turn his back on you."
"Yes, he would." That was another certainty that Harry felt drawn to, even though it had emerged from inside his head like an iceberg coming out of the fog. "I just don't want to risk it, Draco. Please."
Draco shook his head slowly. "Your second best option was Snape, and now he's not an option anymore. What else are you going to do for the summer, Harry?"
"I don't know." Harry tugged against the arm which held him. "I'll decide later. I promise. I'll decide later." He could feel tears gathering behind his eyelids, and they alarmed him, when he'd been feeling so calm and confident half an hour ago. Probably Draco was right, and he did need some time and place to recover from the storm. But he didn't think, at least at the moment, that he could bear the intimacy of spending eight weeks with Draco. If nothing else, he would begin feeling insanely guilty every time he had to run or Apparate into battle and didn't take Draco along—and then he would feel insanely fearful that Draco, who had his empathy, would take too many wounds of one kind or another in the fighting. There had to be a solution that wasn't the Sanctuary and wasn't Malfoy Manor and wasn't Snape, but Harry didn't know what it was, yet.
Draco sighed at him. "I'm walking you to the hospital wing," he said. "And then I'm staying with you. It's not like we have classes tomorrow."
He turned to guide Harry up the path. Snape fell into step on the other side of them. When they were only a few paces from the doors into the entrance hall, Snape cleared his throat and said, "Harry—"
"Don't." Harry refused to look at him. "I have nothing to say to you."
Harry was tired.
He was tired, but he didn't want to sleep. He lay on a bed in the hospital wing, staring at the ceiling. He'd kept his eyes closed long enough to fool Madam Pomfrey, who'd applied several antivenin spells to his wound, exclaiming in shocked tones about its state all the while, and considered giving him Dreamless Sleep, until Harry convinced her he'd already tumbled into slumber on his own. Draco had remained with him, as promised, but he hadn't had much rest, either. It hadn't taken long for him to let his head droop on his crossed arms and fall asleep in the chair next to Harry's bed.
Meanwhile, Harry's mind raced busily along a track of thoughts that seemed to emerge from that selfsame fog in his head, but be clear and distinct.
They won't stop pushing at me. Snape is acting like I'll forgive him. If I stay at Hogwarts, I even might, because that's how weak I am, and he'd always be interfering when I needed to do something for the war.
Narcissa will push, too, and Draco, if I go to Malfoy Manor. I don't care what he says about Lucius. At the very least, he'll probably think the loss of a hand disfigures me. Harry shifted his severed wrist carefully to the side. He hadn't shown it to Madam Pomfrey, either, to Draco's palpable displeasure. As understanding as he said he was of Harry's desire to hide the wound, it was obvious that he thought it would be better if Harry told someone else. Harry thought he might yield, too, if Draco kept up the pushing in his moments of emotional collapse. And that would be disastrous, with some of his other allies as well as Lucius. There were old pureblood prejudices among the Dark families about the ugly, the disfigured, the broken. Wizards with a false leg and eye like Moody's, or a limp like Scrimgeour's, were welcome—among the Light. The Dark purebloods often liked to pretend that such casualties never happened to them, the same way they liked to pretend that divorces and second marriages and powerful Muggleborn witches and wizards never happened.
And I can't go to the Sanctuary, whatever Fawkes thinks, Harry concluded. They'd push me, too, and they really wouldn't let me leave if I wanted. I'm not even sure that I could, if what Peter said about shadows and illusions around the Sanctuary is true. And it would take news forever to reach me. I can't be that far away from the rest of the wizarding world right now.
He needed a place where he could collapse and work his way back up. That much was obvious. He also needed a place where people wouldn't push at him to speed up the collapse, and wouldn't push at him to prolong it, and where he could go forth to battle when he received a vision or a warning from his allies. He needed, in fact, a place where the people around him were blind to him, and what he really was.
His body stiffened, and his breathing grew rapid.
Lily.
The thought seemed mad at first, but when he tried to chase it away, it circled back, and hovered in the front of his mind, and demanded that it be considered.
She doesn't know me. She's blind to me. The Maze told me that. She wouldn't see anything I didn't want her to. She's never going to notice that my left hand is missing. She wouldn't notice my emotional collapses, either. I could appear before her in tears, and she wouldn't care. She'd probably urge me to dry them up and participate in battles like the guardian I was raised to be, in fact.
The more Harry thought about it, the more reasons he seemed to see, the fog peeling away from them as they crowded into his head thick and fast.
When I went into battle, she wouldn't try to hold me back. I understand why Draco got worried, really I do, but I also didn't realize he would have wanted me to come to him about this. And he would insist on either both of us going into battle, or neither. If he gets killed…
He had to stop thinking for a moment. The tremor that racked his body at the mere thought would have broken him otherwise.
I can't risk that.
And there's another thing, another advantage that I wouldn't have anywhere else. I need to recover my strength and my confidence. I failed too many tests in the graveyard. I have to find some I can pass. Lily would set me tests that I already know I can pass, because I've resisted her attempts to break me before.
His mind churned and shifted, and briefly seemed to turn upside down. Was he mad, to be considering this? What kind of idiot was he? He should go to Malfoy Manor with Draco. What prestige he stood to lose in Lucius's eyes was nothing compared to the damage his mother might do to him—
And then the fog rushed back, or, rather, peeled back from more thoughts, and Harry shook his head.
Not mad, though the rest of them will think it. I need a rest period with someone who doesn't care about me, who's blind to what I really am, and the Maze reassured me she was both those things. And she's the only possible candidate. If I went to the Garden or to Blackstone or the homes of any of my other allies, I might not get the same level of caring I would at Malfoy Manor, but I would get pushed. And Snape could invoke his legal guardianship to get me back from them, if he really tried. On the other hand, if I said that I was going back to my parents of my own free will, then he couldn't do anything.
And then he remembered another fact that made the whole thing perfect.
James still loves Lily. That means that he'd support me, if I told him that I really did want to reconcile with her. He'd like to have both his wife and his son in the same house. I saw that on the beach yesterday morning. For a moment, Harry felt incredibly old, and weary, and changed, that all this had happened in only a day, and then the sunlight of certainty came back. With both of my parents backing me, Snape wouldn't stand a chance, legal guardian or not, and Draco promised not to hurt both of them or talk to anyone else about what they said, so he couldn't oppose me, either.
Harry nodded, the course consolidating itself in his head. It would seem like madness to many—it had seemed like madness to him only a moment ago, a foreign presence in his head—but now he saw his way clear. He would do this in order to recover, in order to have an eight-week period of time to come to terms with what had happened without anyone else pushing and pulling at him.
He created an illusion of himself to lie in bed and slipped off in search of parchment and ink. He had two letters to write.
In his office, Albus toasted the fire, and the air, and himself.
It had been an incredibly difficult dance, and worn on him badly, to struggle with the boy's will, but the mist had slipped in through the cracks in Harry's emotional exhaustion and uncertainty. The compulsion had worked.