This chapter includes some nice conversations, and some arguments.
Chapter Fifteen: Sitting on Voldemort"Ready?"
Draco breathed out slowly and wiped his hands on his shirt. Harry blinked. He had realized that Draco was nervous, but for some reason, he hadn't thought he was that nervous. "Yeah," he said at last, voice lower than usual. "I am. What about you?"
"I wouldn't have asked if I wasn't," said Harry. He kept his voice low, soothing. He could already see that most of the calmness and composure in this exercise would have to depend on him. Draco was going to do it, but he would be struggling against the weight of his own panic. Harry wouldn't give him any extra fear to worry him.
He leaned backward and fixed his eyes calmly on Draco's, keeping them open to their widest extent and putting all the trust he could in them. Draco shivered, once, and then took a deep breath and returned the gaze.
Harry felt an odd push on his mind. It wasn't like compulsion, which had always resembled a wind to him when he noticed it at all. He lowered some of his shields and let it through, and then Draco was inside his mind.
It was a clenched fist-like presence, uncomfortable. Harry kept looking at Draco's face, focusing on the details of the line of his nose and the wisps of pale hair around his head, to keep himself from panicking. Draco, of course, startled and tried to withdraw.
"No," said Harry aloud, and let the negative ring in his thoughts, too. Draco hesitated. "I made the decision to open my mind to you," said Harry, and thought of the swirling patterns in Argutus's scales, of unicorns dancing, of Fawkes singing some of his calmer songs. "I want you to stay until you manage to possess me, Draco."
Draco didn't nod, because his body appeared to go utterly rigid when he was in possession of someone else's mind. They would have to do something about that if they were ever to use this power in battle, Harry thought. Draco couldn't just abandon his body in the middle of the field, or someone would hex or kill him as he lay helpless.
Carefully, Draco reached out. Harry didn't know exactly what he was doing until his own hand rose into his field of vision. He certainly hadn't commanded it to do that. He breathed tightly, and knew that reaction, at least, was entirely his.
Draco moved his hand towards his face. Harry thought he was trying to make him scratch his nose.
Let him. It's all right. You trust him, don't you? And you know that he wouldn't hurt you. This is nothing like being bound in a web. This is more like being tangled in a net and trusting Draco to get you down.
Save that, this time, Draco was the one who had put him in the net, too. The fist-like pressure on his brain grew worse, as if Draco were gripping and squeezing some of his thoughts. Harry narrowed his focus to his breathing.
His hand scratched his nose on the second try; before that, it had almost poked him in the eye. Draco lowered it back to his side, and made Harry's throat swallow. Harry beat down the reflex of his Occlumency shields to grab Draco and throw him out of his head.
Tentatively, Harry's body took one step forward.
His right foot came down wrong, Draco obviously used to using a slightly longer leg, and he sprawled on the carpet. Harry lost control of his reflexes, and abruptly he was alone in his head save for the slight warm presence of Fawkes's bond, panting, while Draco's body shook, nearly sprawled itself, and then straightened with a gasp that indicated Draco was back in possession of his own mind.
He turned his head away, looking miserable. Harry took a moment to recover, then went over to him and hugged him tightly. Draco squeaked a bit as the air went out of his lungs, then relaxed and hugged Harry back.
"You don't—blame me for that?" he whispered.
"Of course not," said Harry. "It'll just take a little more time than we thought to work up to walking, that's all." He smiled as Draco huffed indignantly. "Next time, I should be sitting in a chair, and we'll have you try other, smaller steps before you use so many of my muscles at once."
"I could feel you fighting," said Draco. "You didn't like it. You don't like being held and restrained."
"Well, no," Harry admitted, memories of being strapped down on the stone in the graveyard flashing through his head. "But that doesn't mean that I can't tolerate you in my head, Draco. It'll get easier with time. I'll relax and trust you even more than I do."
Draco looked at him thoughtfully. Then, without speaking, he reached out and ran his hand down Harry's cheek. Harry blinked at him in confusion. There didn't seem to be any particular reason to do that. Granted, he couldn't feel Draco's emotions or even his presence in his head now, but he thought he could guess reasons for a shared touch pretty well.
Draco stepped behind him. Harry tensed, but waited. This was a silent test of trust, too, he thought. He didn't believe Draco would ever stab him in the back, either figuratively or literally.
Fingers ran up Harry's spine, then down and along his sides. Harry squirmed, but waited again. There surely had to be more to it than this. When Draco reached the point, then he would know what it was.
Draco leaned in and gently breathed on the back of his neck, then tightened his arms around Harry's waist and moved his hair so that it brushed Harry's. Harry shivered. The pressure was on the brink of turning into something else, something that he found harder to tolerate—
Something he couldn't tolerate. He abruptly broke away from Draco and whirled around. Draco didn't appear alarmed. He was only watching Harry, and nodding as if he had expected this.
"What?" Harry demanded.
"Something I'd suspected for a while, but not known for certain until I was in your head," said Draco calmly. "It wasn't really me making you uncomfortable, Harry, or even the fact of someone controlling your body. You were all right with that until I made you fall and your reflexes kicked in. It was the way you felt it. A touch."
"Yes. So?" Harry folded his arms, feeling his panic subside as quickly as it had come. He didn't really understand the reaction, either, but he didn't think it important to talk about.
"You're not comfortable with my touching you," said Draco. "You put up with it. But when it turns pleasurable…" He shrugged, as if Harry should know exactly what he was talking about from those few clues.
Harry waited. Draco waited, and stared at him.
"I don't understand." Harry was aware that he was whining like a child, but he couldn't help it. Draco wasn't explaining this at all well. He turned away and stalked over to the far side of Draco's bedroom, scowling at the door.
"You're afraid of things that feel good," said Draco, as if he were discussing the weather. "I suppose that's only natural, Harry, after all the training your mother put you through. But it's something damaging, something I don't think can be allowed to stay the way it is."
Harry stiffened and glanced over his shoulder. Draco only looked more serene than ever. How dare he? "It has to be something else. I would have rooted out that training when I rebuilt my mind."
"You destroyed what you were aware of, Harry," said Draco. "And even then, you still have to reinforce what you did with promises and conscious attempts to do better. I know. I read a little about Occlumency and Legilimency last year, when I researched my empathy, remember? You wanted me to learn how to shield. And I read that Legilimency works best with conscious thoughts and memories. You did a great thing, but I don't think it's complete yet."
Harry was quiet. He could remember some aspects of his training that he supposed might have caused this, but he wasn't used to thinking of them that way. The year before Hogwarts, he'd learned to do without things like warmth after it rained, and he knew that he'd dulled the taste of chocolate in his own mouth until he couldn't understand the fuss others made over Chocolate Frogs. That was just to keep him from being distracted from his task of protecting Connor, though.
He had never thought that it might hinder him from feeling physical pleasure. Of course, he'd never planned on having a lover or spouse, either. There simply wouldn't be enough time, not with Connor as the focus and center of his life.
And now—
Now, his immediate impulse was to say that there wasn't time, either. He was a guardian, and a protector, and a teacher, and a vates, and a brother, and to some extent the Boy-Who-Lived, and Voldemort's enemy.
But he knew that wasn't true, and if it had been, he would never have kissed Draco, would have told him that he loved him but wasn't in love with him. That would have been lying on a level that Harry, at his least self-aware, didn't think he could have maintained, because it would cause too much hurt to Draco.
He slowly turned around again. Draco nodded before he could say anything.
"Yes," he said quietly. "This is part of the pushing I was talking about, Harry. I love competing with you and talking with you and trying to work out possession with you, Merlin knows, but I'd also like to go to bed with you at some point." He flushed, but didn't look away. Harry had the impression that he must have practiced these words, to give himself the courage to say them. "I'll let you think about it. But I'm not going to let you stop thinking about it, and I'm not going to give up just because you're uncomfortable feeling that good for right now."
Harry stamped on the panic that wanted to well up. He could do this. He would do this. What kinds of struggles had he been nerving himself to face when he rebuilt his mind, if not these?
And, on the other side of obligation to Draco and accepting this as a necessity of the bond they would have to have, there was the hope that he really could feel good someday, really do it for his own pleasure. Harry flushed as he thought about it. At least, though, he was thinking about it.
That that wasn't going to be enough…
Well, it just wasn't.
He met Draco's eyes and nodded.
Draco smiled at him. "I think I'm going to enjoy those lessons even more than the ones on possession," he said.
Harry flushed anew, but did his best to smile back.
"Tell me what you've been doing this week, Harry."
That was always the way Elfrida began one of their weekly meetings. This time, though, she'd added a new action, bringing Marian along and placing her gently in Harry's arms before he could object. Harry dandled her on his knee, blinking into her eyes. Marian already seemed changed from just a few weeks ago. She was more active now, her eyes going in several directions at once, but focusing longer on different things, too. She reached determinedly for his glasses, and Harry had to shift her about a bit to prevent her from reaching them; his hand was fully occupied in holding her head up. Marian stuck her lip out at him with a soft popping noise, as much to say that he was no fun.
Harry looked across the sitting room at Elfrida, who had taken one of the other chairs and was watching him in silent patience. She would be quite happy to go on watching him until Merlin woke, Harry thought.
"Studying, mostly," said Harry. "And helping Draco study." He hesitated for a moment, since he wasn't going to tell Elfrida about the possession gift without Draco's permission, but he could tell her about other things. "He wants to have some interests independent of me. So I find some books for him, and then he reads them. Sometimes he talks to me about them." Harry cocked his head to the side, wondering if this was something he could ask Elfrida about. "How did you make sure that you didn't drown in Adalrico and your children, Mrs. Bulstrode?"
Elfrida smiled. "I built myself around an impulse, Harry. The impulse to protect and to have my way in the house." She blushed and lowered her eyes. "Of course I didn't ever try to have my way in public. That wouldn't be right, for a puellaris witch. But no one else in my family has such a strong desire to protect. Adalrico's genius is for battle, and my girls are, of course, children, and still need protection themselves." She gave an indulgent glance to Marian.
"And that never discontented you?" Harry asked, unable to imagine it.
"No. But I chose to become a puellaris witch. Are you encountering difficulties in trying to make Draco more independent?"
"Yes." Harry shifted position, and then had to scramble to catch Marian when her legs went in a different direction. She only laughed, as if this were great good fun. "I don't know how to make sure that I'm not doing things that will influence him unduly. And he wants to achieve ambitions of his own, but as long as he spends all this time with me, can he, ever?"
"I am not lost, though I know many people who would say so," said Elfrida serenely. "What you must do, Harry, is attend to his choices, first and foremost. In the end, if he is not interested in certain things, then he will not choose to be interested in them. And if he chooses to focus most of his being on you, then that is the way it should be."
Harry frowned. "It sounds like someone choosing to be a slave."
"Do you think I am?"
Harry shook his head. "No. But you didn't meet your husband for years, did you, Mrs. Bulstrode? And then you could split your focus between him and your children, when you needed to." He looked down at Marian in his arms again. He wondered how anyone could avoid giving their full attention to a child this young.
Lily did when she raised you. She paid more attention to Dumbledore and the ideals she was sacrificing for.
Harry carefully skirted around the thoughts. They would only lead him to useless blaming of his mother. Sobbing and raging about the past was next to useless. Calm discussion would do the most good.
"All of that is true," said Elfrida, startling him and pulling his attention back to the present. "But if you truly fear that Draco is too bound to you, drowning in you, as you put it, then only give him the time and space to make his choices. That is all you can do, Harry. Sooner or later, you must stop distrusting someone else's motives. If Draco chooses to think a good deal of you even after time and space and prompting to do otherwise, then you must trust that that is what he wishes to do."
It sounded so similar to what he'd said about Draco needing to trust him and stop thinking he always acted out of motives of sacrifice that Harry flushed. He looked down at Marian, and nodded, and joggled her on his knee.
"Tell me what else you did." Elfrida's voice was gentle.
Harry obliged, but wondered, as he always did, what she was getting out of this. He didn't intend to ask. She had chosen to enter these sessions with him, and he had the feeling that her answer would only make him uncomfortable, in any case.
"How would you handle a battlefield like this?"
Harry leaned forward, intently studying the map Adalrico had put before him. It showed a wide, flat plain, with hills on the eastern edge of it, sloping down to meet the plain. On the west, the grass ended abruptly in a long fall to the seashore. Harry studied it carefully for several minutes, until he could be sure that there were no dots representing trees on the plain, and that the cliffs were too steep to let anyone else attack from that route, unless they were flying.
"As a known battlefield that someone else was trying to invest at the same time, or as ground I could choose?" he asked, glancing up from the map.
Adalrico stood slightly to the right of him, hands folded behind his back and eyes looking at Harry the way Harry had looked at the map. "As ground that you could choose," he said.
Harry nodded, and let himself get absorbed in the map again. Adalrico had volunteered no more information about why he had chosen to take this teaching up than Elfrida had about their weekly sessions, and Harry supposed he could be contented with the motives he knew. Certainly, teaching him battle strategy could only be a good thing, at least from Adalrico's point of view.
"I'd have a group of wizards and witches on brooms, ready to come over the cliff, where the enemy wouldn't be looking," he said. "Hopefully at noon, when they could dive out of the sun. The enemy would almost have to come out of the east, since the north and the south are too bereft of cover. I'd have prepared the plain with traps—spells designed to go off when someone steps on them, ordinary pit traps and tripwires that can't be detected with magic, and some harmless attention-getting things like firecrackers, so they'd be off-balance and looking in other directions when we showed up. I'd probably have the army already lying in those areas clear of the traps, with Disillusionment Charms over them. Then they'd stand up and begin the battle the moment the traps started disordering the other side."
"Why not just Apparate in?" Adalrico argued.
"I'd have spells around the plain already, to take care of Apparition," said Harry. "Portkeys, too. It'd be difficult to do that if I didn't know where the battle was going to be, but it's one of the first steps I'd take the moment we chose the ground, so that our enemies couldn't just show up beforehand and start harassing us. Force them to come to us at a certain time, too, since we also chose the ground. They'd have to gather their allies first."
"What if members of your own side started taking heavy casualties? Would you keep the anti-Apparition wards and the other defenses up?"
"For as long as I could," said Harry, and then an idea that hadn't shown up before occurred to him. "At least some of the wizards and witches waiting on brooms should be ready to take the wounded out of there. I'd want professional Quidditch players if I could possibly get them, since they'd be able to dodge spells better."
Adalrico was smiling slightly, but he still looked inclined to argue. "How heavy would the casualties have to be before you dropped the wards and gave the signal to retreat?"
Harry closed his eyes. "Half," he said. "Most of the time, at least. But it would also depend on how many losses the enemy was taking. If they were taking heavier, then I'd encourage my people to stay and fight them. If not, then we're not just losing people, but also morale." He hesitated.
"Say what you're going to say."
"And it would depend on if Voldemort was with them," Harry finished quietly. "He could break most of the spells on the battlefield, and kill people with a single strike." He braced himself and looked up at Adalrico. "Is it true that you helped him design the Black Plague spell, sir?"
Adalrico's face tightened for a long moment. Then he let out his breath. "Yes," he said. "That, and other things, to my everlasting shame." He paused, eyeing Harry. "You are asking if he would have a spell like that with him, to try and wipe out all our people?"
"Yes."
"It's possible," said Adalrico quietly. "My guess is that he won't use the Black Plague spell again. The Healers in St. Mungo's have come up with defenses against it, and last time it took us almost a year to grow the—spores it came from. All of those were destroyed or carried off by Death Eaters when our Lord fell." He hesitated, then said, "I retrieved some of them, Harry. Would you—"
"No."
"But you could—"
"No."
Adalrico observed him narrowly for a moment, then shook his head. "You will have to use some spells you don't want to, you know."
"I know," said Harry. "But not the spells that gave people nightmares during the First War. The Black Plague spell destroyed countless lives, countless families, countless Aurors. Most of the people I want to ally with me wouldn't trust me if I used it."
"Most of the Light families won't trust you if you use Dark magic, either." Adalrico folded his arms and studied him disapprovingly. "I think you have turned your back too strongly on sacrifice, Harry. You've decided to use Dark magic. I don't see why this is so different."
"It's the specific spell," said Harry calmly. "You said that it would take almost a year to grow the spores—"
"Not in the condition I've preserved them," said Adalrico. "We could have a Plague inside a month."
"It's a spell that's good only for killing," said Harry. "Not for healing, not for growing, not for defending lives. I won't use it for the same reason that I won't use Cruciatus. They're cruel and evil without any means of redemption. And what would you say about the person who used them?"
Adalrico's eyes were shuttered. "I would say that there are many people like that in your ranks already, Potter." Not a good sign that he's retreated to my surname, Harry thought. "And I wonder how you will deal with having them as allies, if you truly think that some spells are evil and not just Dark."
"Because they are people," said Harry. "Not spells. And people can change their minds. Tell me, Adalrico. Is it a surprise to you that I won't manufacture a Plague? That I would try to kill the Death Eaters only if I had to, bind them and bring them to a fair trial if I could, rather than just damning them with Voldemort?"
"Yes," said Adalrico. "It is. I have seen more of your practical and pureblood side than your moral side, Potter. I thought you understood war better than this. You should use every advantage you have."
"Only the ones that actually are advantages, not disadvantages that would prejudice some of my allies against me," said Harry. "I won't pay as high a price as I would have to for that single spell. I want to end the War, of course, but I don't think you really understand me. Speed isn't the most important factor. I don't want to engender bitterness that would grow against me like the bitterness that's grown against Voldemort and Dumbledore. They both did what's efficient instead of what's right. I won't."
Adalrico shook his head and turned away. "Some of your allies will not accept this," he said in a warning voice.
Harry waited until he turned around again. Then he said, in a measured voice, holding Adalrico's eyes all the while, "I am more than what my allies think of me, or even what the magical creatures think of me. I have my own goals, and my own things that I won't do. For example, some of my allies are going to be Muggleborn."
Perhaps it was just because Harry was watching for it, but he saw the expression of disgust flash across Adalrico's face.
Harry nodded. "Think about the reasons you hate them. Really, truly think about them. You've come up with clever arguments why someone shouldn't be prejudiced against you just because you were a Death Eater, or because you're a pureblood, or a Dark wizard. Now turn that around and apply it to the Muggleborns." Deciding he'd said all he could for right now, he turned and walked to the door of the small room Lucius had set aside for these weekly lessons.
"Some of us will need better answers than that," said Adalrico to his back.
Harry turned around. "And some of you will have to learn to live with what you get," he said gently, and then left the room.
"I have an aunt in France. I could go to her."
Harry leaned back and looked hard at Vince for a moment. Vince didn't meet his eyes. He was staring around the library instead, his expression set in misery, but his gaze seemingly unable to rest in one place.
"All right," said Harry quietly. He ignored Draco's shifting behind him. Harry and Vince were both sitting. Draco had insisted on standing. Harry wished he wouldn't, since he thought that was increasing Vince's nervousness, but he understood. Draco still didn't think that Vince was an innocent victim, and judging from the binding charms that Lucius and Narcissa had put on him when they arrived back at the Manor—charms that wouldn't allow him to do magic or wear any glamours as long as he was inside its walls—neither did they.
"It's no trouble," Vince whispered. "She can help me. She would have helped me, if she knew I was in trouble. But the letters I sent to her never made it. Only the one I sent to you did." He stared hopelessly, appealingly, at Harry, and then looked away again. "And I thought my father didn't find that one. Now I knew that he was trying to trap you, hoping you would arrange to meet me somewhere."
Harry inclined his head. "I knew that."
Vince stared at him, and Draco pressed down on his shoulder. "You did?" Vince asked in bewilderment.
"Of course," said Harry. "Even if your letter got out without being noticed, I didn't think mine would get in without your father seeing it. But I couldn't think of any other way to get you to meet me. I didn't know where you lived, and I don't think your father would have let you send a Floo name."
Vince shook his head, then rubbed his face with one hand. Harry didn't think he'd been sleeping well. Apart from the battle and the fact that he could have died, there was the distrust from the Malfoys and the idea that his father had been quite willing to sacrifice him, Harry thought. That had to hurt.
"No," Vince whispered. "He wouldn't."
"Are you going to be all right?" Harry asked.
"Yes," said Vince, with emphasis. "I'll go to Beauxbatons. It'll be lots better than Durmstrang." He looked at Harry again. "Thank you for saving my life."
It occurred to Harry, then, something he should have asked much earlier. "What about your mother, Vince? Does she need to be rescued, too?" Draco seemed as if he were now intent on grinding the bones in his shoulder together. Harry ignored him as best he could. This time, the rescue would be a lot less risky. Vince could give them details of the house and the best way to go in.
"No," Vince whispered. "She went away when You-Know-Who called my father back. I went into her bedroom when I came home from school, and it was just—abandoned. I don't know where she went. Maybe to my aunt. She's her sister."
Harry nodded, concealing his contempt for a woman who would run and abandon her own son like that. He hardly had space to talk about motherly behavior. "All right, then. When do you want to go to your aunt's house?"
"I'll owl her today."
Harry waited patiently for more, but Vince had lapsed into silence again, staring at things only he could see. Harry had to lean forward, feeling inexplicably like Madam Shiverwood as he did so, and ask quietly, "Vince? What happened? Can you speak about the things your father did to you?"
"It wasn't anything too bad," said Vince quickly, and rubbed at his eyes as if he were tired—or about to cry. "Just Imperio a few times, really, and talking about how I was going to become a Death Eater and have to kill D-Draco. He was trying to convert me before he tortured me." He shut his eyes. "I was just too afraid, and I didn't know how I would get away when I went to Durmstrang. The D-Death Eaters are strong there."
Harry nodded, remembering Karkaroff's claim that a nest of fledgling Death Eaters were in the school. "I can understand that." He hesitated again, then said, "And there's nothing I can do for you before you to go to your aunt's?"
"No," Vince whispered. "I know it doesn't sound like much." He said those words in a loud, abrupt voice, and stared at Draco as he said them. "Compared to what you've survived, I mean. But I was so terrified. I woke up and I went to bed in fear. My mother was gone, and my father was changed, and of course the house elves were no help. I had no one to depend on. I knew writing to you was risky, Harry, but it was the only thing I could think of."
"I understand," said Harry. And he did. People had different breaking points. Other people would have gone mad after the graveyard, and other people wouldn't have got quite so jumpy when Draco touched them. "I hope you'll be happy at your aunt's, Vince. I'll let you use Hedwig to write her."
Vince nodded to him, and then stood and walked unsteadily out of the library. Harry watched him until the door closed behind him, bringing the lecture that he expected from Draco.
"You can't trust him, Harry. He could still be lying, or maybe his father put him under Imperius and sent him here to do something."
"Your father's had the house elves watching him," said Harry. "Are you saying that they wouldn't have noticed evidence of things like that? Or that Vince is a good enough wizard to break your mother's and father's spells?" He leaned back and looked up at Draco, who pressed his lips together.
"No. Of course not. But—it just isn't right, that's all. Why did his father bring him along to Diagon Alley at all?"
"Because he wanted to torture him, I think," said Harry quietly. "And me, with the knowledge of my not being able to save him. Besides, remember that one of the Death Eaters acted like he wanted to capture me, and another like he wanted to hurt me. I think there are divisions in the Death Eaters, Draco."
As he had hoped, that got Draco off the subject of suspicions about Vince, suspicions that Harry saw no use in entertaining until metallic proof of them showed up. "Really?"
Harry nodded. "Yeah. Some of them would be happy with Voldemort, but others wouldn't. And then he dueled me, and got crippled. I think some of them will be less than impressed with that. Then there's Rosier turning. That might have put the thought into some others' minds. And their positions have changed, now. Some of them have different lives, where their Death Eater affiliation can't be suspected without its destroying them, and some of them won't be happy that Karkaroff has such a good position with Voldemort now. These Death Eaters aren't the same ones the Aurors faced in the First War."
Draco settled down to listen happily to Harry's tales of what he thought might happen, which Harry could speak in his sleep; they were largely what he'd thought of while lying awake at night. Meanwhile, his thoughts dwelled on Vince, and the thought of waking up and going to bed in fear, while a father he'd always loved did incomprehensible things to him, in the name of an even more incomprehensible loyalty.
I can only hope that he finds life in France happier.
Harry woke.
He opened his eyes slowly. He already knew that what woke him was nothing so ordinary as a knock at the door or a vision from Voldemort, or even Argutus slithering across him in an attempt to get warm. The room was full of the feeling of powerful magic, surging and breathing out like mist, like light.
Harry lay still, waiting. Whatever the magic was, he thought it would reveal itself sooner or later.
It did, coalescing near the foot of his bed, light after mote of light winging in and then becoming part of the body of something golden. Harry stared, wondering for a moment how the creature could have a cruel, curved beak and yet four legs. Then it turned its head and stared at him, and he realized it was a gryphon.
The gryphon came slowly forward on its lion-like legs, and stood staring down at him with fierce, eagle eyes, wings half-spread. Harry met its gaze. He didn't think it was a real gryphon—they were considerably bigger—but he longed to know what it was, and why it would have chosen to take the form of a gryphon.
The gryphon opened its beak, and breath deep and sweet as a roll in a meadow of summer flowers bathed Harry's face.
The breath did not carry words with it, nor visions like the ones that Fawkes's songs inspired, but Harry understood it nonetheless. This gryphon was a part of the Light magic that Voldemort had done a deep injury with his enslaving of the Midsummer sunset. It had finally risen in enough majesty and anger to pay him back, and it insisted that Harry come with it and see what that entailed.
Harry swallowed slightly. He understood that this was a command, not a request, and thoughts of delaying or asking for Draco to come along with them dissolved from his tongue. The Light magic was taking only him, though the gryphon eyed Argutus tolerantly when he climbed to Harry's left shoulder and coiled fiercely around his neck.
The raptor's beak descended, large enough to split open his skull in a single driving blow, and gently clamped around his waist. Harry was lifted irresistibly into the air, and then deposited on the gryphon's back, just where eagle feathers melted into leonine fur. He settled down, shivering a bit, but only in surprise. Unlike riding a broom, this was deeply warm.
The gryphon sprang into the air. Harry worried for a moment how it would get out of the Manor, and what the effects on the Manor might be of it spreading its wings inside such a small room as the one he had—
And then found he need not have worried. The magic that had him now was at least the equivalent of the wild Darkness of Walpurgis Night, but it was present in greater amounts and in different places. Light surrounded them, and tugged them, and Harry realized they were hurtling along beneath the stars, hundreds of feet off the ground, the dark mass of Britain passing beneath them. He saw how each individual starbeam slanted down to make the gryphon's wings, how it changed in color from gold to silver, and shivered again at the knowledge that only starlight was holding him up. He hoped no clouds came to cover it.
He need not have worried, though. The gryphon was faster than any cloud, and this was a clear summer night. It moved rapidly to the north, and then turned in a direction Harry still thought, though he was dazed by the speed, was west, from the moon. Still they rode from star to star, reformed and recreated from moment to moment. Harry felt the power surging around him all the while. Just because the Light magic chose to use its powers to create a steed and bear him along right now did not mean it wasn't mighty. Indeed, Harry thought that in some ways that the restraint holding it back, confining it to a human scale for the moment, was stronger than the wildness he had witnessed on Walpurgis Night.
Then they slanted down, falling rapidly past trees, and into rolling hills. Harry saw the shape of a house up ahead.
Voldemort and his Death Eaters were outside the house, standing around a blazing bonfire. Voldemort was laughing, and his own power rose around him, a deadly blot on the night.
The gryphon tucked its talons close to its breast. Harry realized they were about to hurtle downwards just in time to ready himself for it, the way that he would when diving on a broom.
The gryphon stooped in at a sharp angle, so sharp that few of the Death Eaters looked up in time to see it come. Of course, few people looked overhead anyway, Harry found. They ducked and cried out once they saw what it was, and Harry saw Voldemort alone calmly hold out his wand and cast a spell, the sound of which was lost in the screams and cries from around him.
The gryphon snapped its head forward, and the beak closed on a tendril of power just extending from Voldemort. Harry held on as the gryphon wheeled hard to the side, talons scraping through the top of the bonfire, drawing substance and strength from the light of the flames.
Magic unraveled from Voldemort along the path of that one trailing thread, and Harry watched in wonder mingled with fear as Voldemort began to lose more and more of the dark aura that had hovered around him. The gryphon rose higher, wings beating madly, scattering sparks from beneath it and starting small fires in the grass, which only built the gryphon's shape as the brightness built. Magic swirled around it, and Harry caught a sense of it, foul and perverted, just like all the power he had ever swallowed from Voldemort had tasted.
The gryphon swallowed it, and then spread its wings wider. The power unspooled from them, cleaned by the passage through its body. It didn't flow back to Voldemort, though, but soared up to the sky, in springing waterfalls and fountains that reminded Harry of the waterfalls and fountains of light when the unicorns were freed. The magic flew back towards the stars, the sun, the moon, the places it had come from first, before Voldemort did whatever he had done to steal it from the Light.
The gryphon had taken only as much magic from Voldemort as he stole, Harry thought, as they swung around again and then took off, soaring upward. It would not care to do more, because its sense of justice was strict. It would answer the crimes against itself. Others must claim their own share of justice. The Light could not judge for them.
Rather like me, with my parents and Dumbledore, Harry thought, driving his hand deeper into the fur and feathers as they flew. The Death Eaters were crying behind them. Voldemort was not dead, but he had been crippled. Harry found himself smiling. He could hope that this would produce even more divisions within their ranks, as some of them rallied around their Lord and others began to see him as weak—and Dark wizards and witches were not forgiving of weakness.
The gryphon soared from star to star, and it was not long before they reached Malfoy Manor again, and passed in that same ephemeral manner from the light of the stars to the soft moonlight falling through Harry's window. He landed softly in his own bed, lowered by the beak as he had been lifted, and stared into the gryphon's intense eyes.
"How did Voldemort get that magic in the first place?" he whispered. "What did he do?"
The gryphon breathed over his face again, and the answer came to Harry. Voldemort had pretended to be conducting the truce-dance with a being who stood high in the Light, rather like the house elves had once been, using illusion and glamour spells he'd produced even before his fall and had his Death Eaters add to. Pleased by the thought of one of their own dealing with him, and by the thought of a powerful Dark wizard turning to the Light, the ancient rituals had answered, giving him power linked to the sun and the solstices and equinoxes. The linkage to time they could not take back; Voldemort would keep on performing his corrupted truce-dance, sending gifts to the illusionary being at the proper times, and that meant he would gain the closeness to the seasons that any wizard in a similar ritual would. But they could take back the Light magic he had stolen and put to twisted uses, the magic that had kept Harry's own wandless power imprisoned in the graveyard.
Voldemort was still likely to time his attacks on the solstices and equinoxes, Harry understood, following the round of the sun. But the stolen magic meant his raids would no longer be the devastating force they could have been. He could no longer will something to happen at the moment of sunset as he had in the graveyard.
There was still Dark magic rising, still a storm coming, not least because the Dark magic did remember Voldemort's attempt to cage it at Walpurgis Night, and would not be so forgiving as the Light had been. Harry must watch out at Midsummer, of course, but Midwinter would be worst and wildest, the shortest day, the longest night, the night when the storm of unleashed Dark magic would come for Voldemort—and anyone else who might happen to be standing in its way.
And it would be worse than usual, because there would be no moon on that solstice, no light to counteract the Dark influence. Harry must watch out.
Harry blinked, and there was no gryphon standing in his room, only the moonlight. He let out a deep breath and rolled over, trying to think of what he should do.
For now, he decided at last, go back to sleep. He would wake and confirm the information, and decide what to do with it, in the morning.
"That was fascinating," Argutus said.
Harry jumped, sending his snake to the bed. He'd forgotten that Argutus was there. "You enjoyed it?" he asked.
"Yes. I like it. You are interesting, and you are around interesting things and forces. Interesting things happen to you." Argutus lifted his head back up and touched his tongue to the stump of Harry's left hand. "I like you. I choose you to be my friend."
Harry smiled, extended his arm for the Omen snake to climb up, and rolled over so that both his arms rested on his stomach. For right now, sharp, piercing exhaustion made him too tired for any grander gesture.