Thank you for the reviews yesterday!

Some people are in for some surprises in this chapter.

Chapter Nineteen: On the Wings of War

Harry had never realized how hard it was to fall asleep deliberately. Of course, he couldn't remember ever being this desperate to do it before, even when he wanted Christmas or their birthday to come as a child so that he could see Connor open his presents. He lay with his hand clenched behind his head and waited for several minutes, not moving any of his muscles and breathing with perfect calm, and still nothing happened.

Well, when have I had the visions before?

That didn't answer the problem, though, because Harry knew full well he had tended to have the dreams at different times—when he was stressed, when he was relaxed, when he had expected nothing more than a night of ordinary sleep. He couldn't will or create a condition that would allow him to go to sleep and have a vision.

So reach through the scar link. It was what you planned to do when you were in Voldemort's head, anyway. Just do it now. Try to open it while you lie here.

Harry reached carefully through the shades and shadows of his own mind towards what he thought was the scar link, a piece of Occlumency-shaded pain that he didn't like to think about, and usually didn't until it exploded. Almost at once, he felt the warm, pulsing bond that Fawkes shared with him become active, and the phoenix appeared above his bed in a burst of light that brought complaints from Blaise and a sleepy half-mumble from Draco. Fawkes settled on his shoulder, the one where Argutus hadn't coiled, and warbled at him. In Harry's mind formed the distinct vision of not trying to go off and do anything by himself.

Even Regulus, whose connection with him grew fainter and fainter as more of McGonagall's work called him back to his body, was awake now, calling his name. Harry! Harry, what are you doing?

Harry grimly reached out and touched the scar link again. He could control it, he could bring it to life, he thought. He had simply never tried before, because he had never had the nerve.

Now he did. He should have had it some time since, because he was depending on it so much to help win this war, but he would forget about the guilt. He reached for it, and had a brief, flickering sensation of falling down a tunnel.

The warmth of his bond with Fawkes faded from his mind, and then the sound of the voice calling his name. Harry gathered his feet—they were paws, of course, which reassured him he had got some part of this right—and looked around, expecting to see Voldemort's bedroom, or maybe a pair of staring basilisk eyes or a gathering of Death Eaters.

Instead, he found himself in a very familiar stone corridor. Harry's whiskers twitched in surprise, and he gave a little hop forward; his missing left forepaw made him grateful that he wasn't missing a foot in his own body. This was Voldemort's mind, the tunnel that led to his imagined Chamber of Secrets. But why was he here? Had he not touched the right part of the link that bound them after all?

He considered, and dismissed, the idea that Voldemort would have allowed him to come this far only to trap him. This part of the corridor was too near the seat of the man's memory, which Harry had badly damaged before, sending him into a retreat and a coma for several days.

Harry wondered if lynxes could grin devilishly. If they could, then he would be doing so now. He didn't quite know how he had come here, but as long as he was here, then he could hurt Voldemort. He began working his way forward, past the mass of bones that announced the entrance to the Chamber.

A disturbance in the mind, shifting in the pool, and he lost track of what Bella was saying about their allies. He leaned back his head and closed his eyes, and he located the stirring at once, because was he not a master Legilimens? It would have been beneath him to take longer than a moment, and no one would ever say that Voldemort, the proper Dark Lord of Britain, had taken longer than a moment.

The presence was within his mind, close to the seat of his memories, and moving forwards with definite hostile intent.

Potter. There was no question in him, even before he saw the cat-form that Evan had told him had watched their plans several times. No other would have been so impudent as to bring pain and destruction here. Potter did not know what was right, or what was beautiful, and that included the sanctity of a Dark Lord's mind.

Of course, he had Potter on his own ground, and he, Lord Voldemort, was aware of him. That meant he could crush him to death in his mind, tightening the walls of the tunnel around him, and Potter would perish. It would take only a moment.

But that was not the way one of his enemies ought to die. It was not right, and it was not beautiful. He, Lord Voldemort, could feel himself smiling. He would show Potter how a true Lord treated his most persistent foes.

He reached, gently, down the tunnel that bound them both together, and then slipped inside Potter's mind, even as Potter padded through his.

Harry paused and flicked his ears. He'd had the impression that something had just brushed against his head and stung him lightly, like a biting fly, but he knew that nothing lived in this part of Voldemort's head, so he decided he might have imagined it. Or perhaps the sensations that lingered in another mind, when he had time to notice them and wasn't engaged in a frantic search for some way of crippling that mind's possessor, were different from those in the physical world. After all, he imagined most of the things he felt here, and his thoughts were prone to go in many strange directions.

He rounded the final corner before the doors to the Chamber, and then flattened himself to the ground and snarled. Before him, overwhelming the corridor, were the black-purple, overlapping coils of an immense snake. Voldemort had obviously imagined this guardian since the last time and put it here to protect his memory. Merlin knew what it was in reality—some sophisticated Occlumency technique, probably.

Harry shot his claws. He thought he could take the snake, with as much mental flexibility as he himself had, but he would prefer not to fight. He could make out no head, which made him think it was buried somewhere in those coils, and the snake might be asleep. If that was the case, then he could creep by with his back against the wall, and perhaps the giant creature would never notice him.

There was a slight corridor of clear stone and air to the left. Harry walked towards it, his claws retracting, grateful, and not for the first time, that his form here was feline. He could never have managed so soft a walk as he did on these padded paws, and the lynx body was much lighter than this own.

All seemed to be going well until he tried to take a step forward and found himself unable to move. He glanced over his shoulder, wondering what had trapped him.

He found a coil he hadn't even felt draped over his back, twitching slightly. It had the look of one near the tail, and, in fact, one end of it did first taper and then swell, into a purple bulb that Harry thought was a rattle.

It began to shake as he watched, and then the body in front of him moved gently and lazily, the head lifting out of the middle. Harry flattened himself, and let the magic he possessed here swell around him. He was healthy now, able to use his own power, which hadn't been the case the last time he was in Voldemort's mind. Besides, if the snake could touch him, then he could touch the snake, so he wouldn't be reduced to the frustrated impotency of vision.

The snake's head was a beautiful thing, moving slowly from side to side, much like the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets. Harry saw no hint of a killing yellow gaze when it met his eyes, though, only one as deep a green as the forest of his own mind had once been. He hissed and prepared to spring.

The snake opened its mouth first, and loosed a cloudy spray of poison that darkened the tunnel and fell in a stinging spray upon Harry.

Pain like acid dug into his sides and shoulders, and Harry screamed.

He felt his impudent enemy scream, and smiled in satisfaction. Then he was fully within his adversary's mind. He expected to see the hedge-maze he had taken such great delight in defiling last time. And he remembered the darting boy who had been the center and heart of Potter's sanity. This time, he would make sure to torture that boy, and let Potter watch it.

But there was no hedge-maze. There was no green and rustling depth that watched the Lord Voldemort suspiciously and tried to overwhelm him with stubborn, fragile life. Instead, Lord Voldemort found himself standing on one great metallic branch, one of many projecting from a slender tree of steel, which spread in all directions around him and rose up and out of sight.

Scan, turn his head, look carefully, tilt his head. Still the impression around him did not change. If it was an illusion that Potter had fabricated to conceal the reality of his mind—but no, any illusion would have shattered by now before the gaze of the great and mighty Lord Voldemort. This was the reality of his mind.

The metallic tree did bear living leaves, green shoots embedded in the steel, but not all of them were done growing. And around the Lord Voldemort was not emptiness, but darkness, constellations of memories and emotions and truths, with spaces that Potter had left blank to fill later. It looked for all the world like he had ripped down and rebuilt his mind, but that was not true, could not be true, because Legilimency could not be employed that way, and no wizard would attack his own thoughts.

He could only think that somehow, Potter had hit on an illusion that defied him, one that only seemed the more and more solid the more he looked, and his body was cold with rage and the rage was magnificent.

He heard a rustling sound above him, and glanced up. There was a small shape swinging on the branch above him. Lord Voldemort had no doubt that that was Potter's sanity. He would not have woven the illusion that well, then, and the boy was, on some level, no doubt, still running through a hedge-maze.

The Lord Voldemort aimed his wand.

And then Potter was in his mind with him, and things briefly became confused and then very chaotic.

Harry writhed, the pain of the venom worse than any he had experienced—

Well, no, that was not quite true. Whenever he was tempted to make extravagant comparisons, he remembered the pain of his left hand being cut off, and then he usually dropped them.

Still, he knew he couldn't stay here. He had to flee. The poison would kill him if he remained. It was frustrating to be forced to flee when he knew that Voldemort's most vulnerable memories were only a few spaces of thought away, but he could not reach them, and he would not die for this.

He jumped back to his own mind.

He became aware of the intruder at once. Voldemort had made no effort to disguise his presence, in the way that Harry had. He was caught out in the open, and he was taking aim at something, probably Harry's sanity or memories. Harry took in that much at a glance.

Then Voldemort became aware of him, and their perceptions twisted and bounded as they regarded each other. They had never been in such close contact before. When they first journeyed into each other's minds, they had left barely any awareness in their own thoughts, and Harry had always seen himself in the physical world when he was close to Voldemort in the visions.

Harry recovered first. And since he was on his home ground, his imaginings of what could happen here, his conceptions of possibility, were the stronger. He was used to his own mind. He knew what he usually thought about. He imagined Voldemort trapped, pinned, crushed and held down, unable to escape and get out of sight.

Voldemort, of course, slithered free of the trap, though not without a hiss of pain. He was concentrating on hiding himself now, but what Dumbledore had once told Harry held true: he was not as good an Occlumens as he was a Legilimens. Harry used that against him, turning the whole of his mind into transparent representations of the metallic tree and the silver pools that hovered around it, easily showing him the writhing wisp of Voldemort's alien intrusion.

From the Dark Lord came compulsion, like a blowing wind, trying to grab and control Harry.

And the whole of Harry's mind rose in revolt against that.

He heard himself snarl, and honestly wasn't sure if it had only happened in his head, or if he had done it physically. This time, he imagined arrows going after Voldemort, spike after spike of pain and hatred, pinning him and striking him and filling him with the same kind of agony that the snake's poison had given Harry. Gone were the thoughts of holding him prisoner or trying to figure out how the link between them worked. Harry only wanted him out of his head, now. Compulsion, a binding on his will, was not to be tolerated.

He heard, more distinctly this time, the hiss of pain, and then Voldemort said in that high cold voice Harry thought of as the embodiment of nightmare, "You have not killed me. I cannot be killed."

Harry didn't bother to answer. The warmth of his bond with Fawkes was rising around him now, and then the phoenix was there, flapping his wings strongly in Harry's head, the sunlight showering down. Voldemort could perhaps have stayed and fought, but he obviously saw no reason to challenge the fire of a phoenix. In moments, he was gone, slipped free from Harry's mind and back down the link to his own body.

The madness of his revulsion faded a moment later, and Harry lay panting, taking stock of his pain. He knew that some of his control over his emotions had been abraded; that was probably the practical effect of the snake's venom. He knew that his head felt simultaneously as if it were splitting and as if it were on fire—his scar again. But nothing else was hurt.

He rose slowly out of the dream, to find Fawkes sitting on his chest, Argutus curled up near his face, and Draco shaking him frantically. Regulus's voice lurched in and out of hearing, as if he were on a distant ship and calling to Harry through the wind and the waves. –hear me? Harry? Can you—damn it, don't do this—

I'm all right, Harry thought at him, and then ran his hand through the blood that slid down his cheek, grimacing. He hadn't had a vision that made his scar open like this for a while. He sighed and sat up slowly, rubbing at his face and trying to decide whether he should attempt medical magic on his head or not.

Draco didn't give him the chance to, since his worry had already gone straight into anger. "That was another stupid mistake, Harry," he said. "Wasn't it? I could feel what you were doing, although not see it clearly. It was like I was along for a ride in a dream."

Harry stared at him. Damn. Is this a side effect of his having possession? Or perhaps just a side effect of him practicing his possession in my head and only my head so far?

"I felt the pain," said Draco evenly, and then touched the side of his head. For the first time, Harry became aware that there was blood staining the white-blond hair, as if Draco had a lightning bolt scar of his own in a different place. "Good work, that," Draco said, and the drawl in his voice wasn't one Harry had heard in a long time. "You'll find ways to punish the people who love you even lying flat on your back in a bed, Harry. I can't wait for the day when you'll manage to make me bleed while you're brushing your teeth in the morning. That's something to look forward to."

"I didn't know that was going to happen!" The words broke forth from Harry, sparking from between his lips, before he could stop them. He immediately ducked his head and turned away, breathing harshly. He tried to slide the emotions into the Occlumency pools, but they weren't accepting them. He supposed that was of a piece with his degraded emotional control. He knew, he knew, he should be quiet, but it was hard when Draco went on.

"No, you didn't. But you knew it was a stupid idea to go hunting for Voldemort with your mind, and you did it anyway, without even warning me that it was a possibility. Why, Harry? Normally, you're not stupid." Draco paused. "Well, not as stupid as this, anyway," he corrected himself, with a small sigh.

"Will you shut up?" Blaise asked from the other side of the room. "We have Potions first thing tomorrow, and some of us can't count on the favor of the professor to make it through the class without doing anything."

Harry really, really didn't need the reminder that he would have to face Snape with his shields down in just a few hours. He put his head between his knees, and forced himself to concentrate on nothing more than the breath sliding in and out of his lungs. Fawkes, who'd fluttered up to sit on the pillow, let out a long, moaning note, and Argutus flickered his tongue out to catch one of the tears on Harry's cheeks.

"You cry from pain," he noted. "You cry from anger. You cry from fear. I wonder if there is any emotion that you do not express by crying? What is it? I would like to know. The tears taste good. Do they always?"

"They always taste the same, I think," Harry whispered back in Parseltongue. "And no, I don't think there's any emotion that I don't cry from."

The intense pain in his head was finally beginning to recede, though his scar still felt like a fresh brand. Harry gathered himself with a small shake. He had deserved what Draco said, and he knew it. And he absolutely had to get his control back, or Merlin knew what would happen when he faced Snape.

Well, no, it didn't have to be just Merlin who would know. Harry knew. And it would be a scene of shouting, and quite correct accusations of childishness, and then Snape would go on thinking that he needed a guardian after all, even if Harry didn't end up forgiving him before the class was done. A scene like this would not do wonders for Harry's independent appearance and sense of good judgment.

His emotions shifted and wavered again, and the next one that surfaced struck Harry dumb with astonishment, though a moment before he'd been ready to apologize to Draco. He watched, from the distance that Snape had taught him with regard to his own mind, as it rushed through him and made him shake.

Need. Longing. Loneliness. He really just wanted to lean against someone for right now and let them take care of everything, wanted to go to sleep with no worries and rise up in the knowledge that that other person had helped arrange everything so that they would handle it, together.

Of all the emotions he could feel at the moment, this was the most dangerous, Harry knew, the one that could most easily lead to him reaching for that help. He was furious with himself for feeling it.

But no, no, he couldn't be furious, because that would just result in yelling at Draco, who didn't deserve it, and it was another opportunity for his mind to feed on wild and raw feeling. Harry had known how to master that feeling since long before he learned Occlumency. His training was no longer as instinctive as it had once been, but he remembered it.

He focused his entire attention on something else, let the smallness of his own need drown in the intensity and interest of that focus, and felt the tension ebb out of his body. He lifted his head and smiled at Draco, who just stared back at him, apparently thrown off stride by Harry's reaction.

"You were right," Harry whispered. "That was stupid of me. I won't do it again. I'm sorry." He sighed. "I endangered my own life, or at least my own sanity, and accomplished nothing. And now that I know some of the dangers of the possession gift, it would be completely irresponsible of me to do it again, since I would willingly pull you along with me." He took up Draco's hand and squeezed. "I'm sorry," he repeated.

Draco tore free. "You know that I'm still angry with you," he said.

Harry nodded. "I know."

"You know that I still think you could do that again, and that I won't really trust you not to repeat it for a while."

"I know."

Draco just frowned a little more, and then turned and walked back to his bed. "Clean the blood off your face, for Merlin's sake," he added, over his shoulder. "Unless you want to go down to breakfast like that in the morning and scare the first-years. And you're already doing a good enough job of frightening people."

Harry stayed still for a long moment, listening to Draco's sheets rustle as he climbed back into them, and hearing Fawkes croon, so distressed that only tattered visions from the sound appeared in Harry's head. When he was sure that he was calm, he climbed out of bed and went into the loo.

The sight of his own face in the mirror made him shake his head—blood-streaked, pale, grave. He'd failed, and yes, that had been a stupid idea. Since he hadn't accomplished anything, he could agree with Draco in that much. Insane risks should pay off.

But he took heart in the determination shining behind the defeat. At least he hadn't lost much, either. Even the pain from his scar was fading now. The worst that could happen was that Voldemort would try to exploit the link between them again, and this time Harry would be ready. More likely, he thought, the Dark Lord would leave it open, trying to lure Harry into entering his mind and a trap once more.

"I'll help Draco train his possession gift," he whispered to the reflection as he washed the blood off. "Who knows what he might be able to achieve, riding beside me in my dreams that way? Maybe even possessing Voldemort. And it'll show that I do trust him."

He went back to bed with twin goals: keeping a close watch on Draco tomorrow, so that he could know how he might make this mistake up to him, and keeping a close watch on himself. Harry did fear Draco's disappointment and anger, but more than that, he feared that that drowning need for companionship and protection would surface again.

It was his own nature that might make him forgive Snape before he was ready. Harry was master of himself, though, not the other way around, and no childish emotions were going to make him do what they wanted. He could so be a rational human being, an adult who could treat with other adults on equal footing and needed no one to guard him or injure others in the guarding of him. They would see.

"The first day is always a challenge, as I see how much you have forgotten over the summer." Snape was stalking in a circle around the classroom, his eyes lingering over the newly mixed group in the dungeon. Draco and Harry were still together, a fact that Harry found himself deeply grateful for, but Connor and Hermione were missing Ron, and in the back of the room sat Blaise, Padma Patil, a few other Ravenclaw girls whom Harry didn't know, Zacharias, Hannah, and Justin. "You will pull out your books and brew the potion on page 183." He had a slight smirk curling the corners of his mouth. Once, Harry would have found that intriguing, as he wondered what about the potion on page 183 was so awful that most people would have trouble brewing it.

Now, he felt only a faint stir of interest. Snape was outside him, no more important to him than any other professor. Granted, he was Harry's Head of House, but Harry refused to think that he had to find him interesting for that reason. Harry intended to go to Remus if he really felt that he needed to talk to an adult, and of course there was always the Headmistress, if it was just something as simple as preventing reporters from getting onto Hogwarts grounds.

He checked page 183 of the Potions book; he and Draco had partnered up, of course, leaving poor Blaise to pair with Padma. He saw the problem almost at once—or well, what would be a problem for most of the students in the class except him, Draco, and Hermione. The potion, which depended on numerical mysticism and was supposed to make it easier to calculate equations in one's head, required twice as much stirring as normal, and it went in alternating directions, once clockwise, once counter, twice clockwise, twice counter, and so on. One mistake in the count would mess up the whole potion.

"Do you want me to go get the ingredients?" Harry asked Draco. He could feel Snape looking at him, and then away. Now he was prowling the back of the classroom, pausing to check Justin's cauldron and, from the sound of it, make a few sarcastic remarks.

"I don't think so," said Draco.

Harry blinked. "Why not?" Draco had an odd note in his voice, and he rose and leaned towards Harry as if he had some great confidence to impart. Harry watched him with a wrinkled brow. He'd apologized during breakfast, where other people could hear him, and endured much good-natured teasing from the others about what he might have to apologize to Draco for. He'd made it abundantly clear, on the private moments during the walk to Potions class, that he wasn't about to do anything like that again. He'd already sent Hedwig with a note to McGonagall, explaining the trick that Mulciber had pulled last year and that he'd tried to do something about crippling Voldemort, but been unable to.

"Because I don't think having you that close to Snape would be a good idea right now," said Draco simply.

Harry blinked, smiled, and relaxed. So it wasn't that Draco thought him in the wrong after all. He was merely trying to protect Harry. "He's going to come over and want to see our potion eventually, you know," he said.

"I know. But I think we can wait for him to come to us." Draco's hand squeezed his shoulder, and then he slipped off to the storage area to get their ingredients. Harry started preparing the cauldron.

He was involved in what he was doing, but he had known Snape for years now, and had had time to get used to the feel of his magic and the weight of his eyes. He knew long before Snape said anything that he was standing behind his chair, watching him.

"It seems that you're taking a long time over the cauldron, Potter," said Snape, a neutral observation. "Odd, for someone of your skill in this subject."

Harry readied himself. He remembered that the worst thing he could do would be to betray excess emotion. So long as he didn't let Snape get to him, then he would win this strange little game they were playing. He would have preferred it if Snape had just ignored him—he could have respected Snape for that—but he wanted to put Harry in emotional mazes, as he had with his odd statements about missing him in the Headmistress's office the other day. Harry would thread the mazes and come out again.

He turned around and simply nodded at Snape, wearing the same face as he would have in Transfiguration or Herbology. "Professor Snape, sir," he said. "I know that this particular potion can stick to the sides of the cauldron if one isn't careful, so I wanted to cast the appropriate spells so it wouldn't." He held his hand over the inside surface and concentrated. The metal gleamed a moment later with the sheen of the spell settling into place. Harry thought a moment, then added one so that the ingredients wouldn't clump, also a danger with this potion.

"Impressive, Mr. Potter," Snape murmured. "Five points to Slytherin."

Harry just nodded. Let any other teacher assign him points for his House, and he would accept them. Snape was just another teacher.

"I wonder," Snape went on meditatively, "if other students will think to do that?"

Harry shrugged. "You could always tell them, sir."

"Ah," said Snape, his eyes focused intently on Harry. "But I prefer to use some potions as a test of more than just ordinary brewing skill. They often let me see which students of mine possess unusual intelligence or aptitude."

There is no reason, Harry told himself, for you to be shaking inside, and so he didn't shake. He just nodded and murmured, "That's very interesting, sir."

He looked to the side as Draco approached with the three different kinds of stones they needed to crush for the potion, and smiled at him. He could feel Snape's wondering stare on the back of his neck.

This isn't that hard, Harry thought, as he began to crush the first stone in his pestle, bracing its base against the stump of his left hand. Snape makes his own rules, of course, but I can make my own, too. And I was acting like a child yesterday. So long as I keep the sarcastic comments and the emotional outbursts to myself, then some kind of bond might come back sooner, because I'll convince him that I'm not a child, and so he can't be a guardian.

Harry stepped out onto the grounds after dinner and stretched his arms over his head, yawning. It was an unexpectedly sunny day for September, and not chill, yet. Harry couldn't think of any better day to meet outside for the first formal assembly of their little dueling club. He was tired of abandoned classrooms, and this would give them a chance to discuss the meeting place and decide on a permanent one.

He walked towards the lake, more aware of the absence at his right shoulder than he wanted to be. Draco had excused himself from the dueling club on the grounds that he needed to look up a few more Arithmancy calculations for the next spell he wanted to perfect. Of course Harry hoped he had fun—and didn't get himself trapped in a rune circle this time—but he felt a bit lonely.

Stop it. You do not.

He still hadn't managed to slide his emotions all the way beneath the Occlumency pools yet, but he could concentrate on something else, and then he would stop feeling the way he did. Right now, he was concentrating on the unexpectedly large number of students gathered around the lake, some sitting, some standing, most talking quietly. They turned their heads as he came up to stand on the fringes of the group, and Harry shifted as he felt the intensity of their eyes.

There was an uninvited guest, too, as Harry found out when a loud cry interrupted his first attempt at speech. He looked up in annoyance. A white bird circled overhead, with another mocking screech, and then settled in a tree near the edge of the lake, fluffing its feathers at him. It was a gull, Harry saw, with dark shoulders and rather offensively bright eyes. It cocked its head at him and watched, then once again screamed when he opened his mouth.

Harry shrugged at it and went on. "All right. Most of you heard Zacharias Smith ask me about a dueling club, and some of you have been in the one we had last year." No more than half of the students there looked to have been regular attendees, though, Harry thought, as he met the eyes of people he knew only slightly or not at all. Cho Chang gave him a reassuring smile and a little wave from the middle of the Ravenclaw clump. After that, Harry used the trick of focusing more on those he did know to keep himself moving forward. "And you probably heard him ask me about offensive spells, too. I'll teach them to you."

He raised his eyebrows, and listened to the intense gasps that came from some of the people near the gull's tree. Was that the official seat for people who didn't think I'd dare do what Zacharias asked of me? "I'll teach them to you, if certain conditions are fulfilled," Harry emphasized. "First, if you practice them on other students outside the club and it's not a clear-cut case of defending yourself or a professor asking you to demonstrate, then you're out of the group. Permanently. Second, some of you will have to get permission from your parents to learn the Dark Arts spells—"

"You can't teach us Dark Arts," said a Ravenclaw girl Harry remembered distantly. He thought he'd had some trouble with her in second year, when she'd got upset with him for hexing one of her Housemates. Harry winced as he remembered Tom Riddle, in his head, turning the girl's hex back on her and sending her to the hospital wing. Her name was Margaret, he thought, and she had an impressive glare. "That's against the school rules."

Harry had prepared for that. All he'd had to do was ask Hermione, and she'd gone digging for the answer during lunch and given it to him at dinner. "Not technically, it isn't," he said. "Or we wouldn't have been able to learn them in Defense Against the Dark Arts last year. What it does mean is that we have to keep it in the class, and it has to be a teacher-student situation. And the parents have to agree to let their children learn them. There's a blanket exception for Defense, always has been. But if a student is younger than sixth year, he or she has to have direct permission to learn them anywhere else."

"That can't be right." Margaret looked ready to fight it out if need be. "How could that possibly be right? That's the kind of thing Headmaster Dumbledore fought to stop, the learning of Dark Arts at Hogwarts." She paused a moment later, as though she'd just realized what she'd said, but she gave Harry a hard, challenging glare.

Harry raised his eyebrows. "Yes, he did," he said quietly. "But he permitted them again last year. The Headmistress told me that she would continue that policy for as long as the war was in motion." And she isn't happy about it. McGonagall had sent him a long, stiff note that both thanked him for his warning about the Muggleborn children and outlined exactly what she would and would not tolerate in his little dueling club. "Things are different now. We have to fight. And I'm going to assume that everyone here wants to learn to fight. If you don't, you can stay out of the Dark Arts lessons."

Margaret sat down with a huff and folded arms. Harry shook his head at her, and turned and looked at the others. "Third, we have to have someone nearby who can cast medical magic, just in case someone gets hurt." He looked over his shoulder, and smiled when he saw the figure striding across the lawn from Hogwarts. "That would be the professor who's agreed to help supervise us, Remus Lupin."

A few of the students shrank as Remus came up, but not many. Too many of them remembered him as more of a Defense professor than a werewolf. Remus smiled at them all, but saved especial smiles for Connor, who sat with Parvati's hand tightly in his at the edge of the lake, and Harry. Harry felt a small ball of tension uncurl in his stomach. He liked to have an excuse to spend time with Remus, without pretending that he needed to be cared for.

"So," Harry went on. "For tonight, I'm just going to show you standard defensive magic. And Remus agreed to duel me." He grinned at Remus and pulled out his wand. He would be teaching people who used their wands, after all.

"Duel, indeed," said Remus mildly, his own wand already in his grip. "I'm sure that it will be more like a demonstration in how to lose, Harry, with all the losing on your side." His amber eyes glowed with a relaxed playfulness that Harry could easily see irradiating his wolf form, too.

"Oh, you think so, do you?" Harry asked, and then pointed his wand straight at Remus. "Tarantallegra!"

Remus had a Shield Charm up before the spell was more than half out of Harry's mouth, using it nonverbally. Several of the students who hadn't yet learned nonverbal magic gasped. Harry grinned as his own hex came right back at him, and held out his stump, around which he'd cast Haurio, letting everyone see and hear him doing it. The small jade-green shield ate the hex, and Harry took a moment to explain, vaguely aware of Remus circling around him, but not thinking he'd do anything while Harry was giving a vital lesson to the others.

"The difference between the Absorption Charm and the Shield Charm is how much you want to wound the people around you," he said. "Protego bounces the spell right back at the caster. But the Absorption Charm eats them. That means that you don't have the spell to reflect back, of course, but when you're trying not to hurt a friend on the battlefield, it's the better choice."

Remus abruptly spoke from the side. "Pedica!"

Harry found himself trying to fight his limbs free of an invisible, snapping, flailing net, which was just as determined to snare and hold him. The Snare Spell did that, fiercer and nastier than any Body-Bind, and especially useful with holding a moving opponent; it would chase someone even if he moved away from the site of the spell.

Remus means it, then. The thought made gladness grow in Harry. He could use a little exercise.

He thought Finite Incantatem! At the same time, he cast, "Clangor incommodus!"

Remus promptly winced and clapped his hands over his ears. They would be buzzing and ringing, Harry knew, probably with a sound of many bells. And since Remus had a werewolf's hearing, they would bother him even more than an ordinary wizard. It was a wonder that he managed to cast the next spell at all.

"Stupefy!"

A wonder, but not a wonderful spell, Harry thought as he rolled away from it. Then, because Remus obviously hadn't managed to shake off the sound yet, and he wanted to show the other students how easy it was to incapacitate someone with a relatively simple spell, he chose variations of the Clangor incommodus spell, targeting Remus's eyes and nose.

Remus gave a pained sound when the spells took effect, doubtless seeing—because Harry had wanted it for him—dozens of disagreeable little flies and smelling the reek of carrion. Harry took the time to add in another explanation around his panting.

"Even though the spells are minor, each one piles another distraction on him that he has to deal with as he tries to cast the Finite to end them. And, of course, each one needs a new spell to get rid of it—"

"Finite Incantatem!"

Remus cast so fiercely that Harry suspected he was fully recovered. He started moving at once, hoping a few of the students would take lessons from the way he kept his head up and his feet never in the same place for long, but so occupied and so happy that he didn't much care if they paid attention or not. He could always explain things again later. This was a good beginning for their club, anyway. Nothing like a practical demonstration.

Remus narrowed his eyes, and Harry knew his next spell would be nonverbal. He began whispering Protego over and over under his breath, concentrating the Shield Charms around the silver bracelet with the Malfoy and Black family mottos united that he wore on his right arm.

Remus's spell came flying at him, a dark green ray that signaled a combination Harry had heard of Aurors using. It would both knock him unconscious and tie him up with ropes that no blade could cut.

If it hit, of course.

Harry lifted his arm, and the hex slammed into the combined Shield Charms on his bracelet. For a moment, the green light clung, shimmering, as if it would force its way through after all; it was a powerful spell, and Remus had doubtless been annoyed when he cast it.

Then it turned around and flew back at Remus, who, a moment later, was stunned and tied up, the ropes binding his arms together behind his back and his legs out in front of him. Harry heard a few students gasping, others laughing or clapping, but most of them just stared in stunned silence.

Harry turned around and bowed his head. "Another useful defense is nested Shield Charms," he said casually. "They'll provide more strength and protection, even against really nasty hexes and Dark Arts, than just one will. Of course, you've got to have the time to cast them, and you have to be powerful to cast and maintain several in a row. Focusing them on an object helps." He displayed the bracelet, and thought, Weaving them in between isolation wards at your old abandoned house works, too.

"I want to know how to do that," Hermione demanded. "I've never heard of it."

Harry glanced at poor Remus. "Let me get Professor Lupin revived first, and then I'll teach you all you like," he said, and concentrated on making the ropes vanish and Remus return to consciousness. Remus was properly embarrassed about it all, but held no grudge, and settled down to working with the students who wanted to try the Absorption Charm. Harry kept an eye on them, and was satisfied that even those who first stared at Remus and trembled soon warmed up to him.

He kept making circles of the group, adjusting dueling partners when one of the pair got the spell right away or was too obviously powerful, patiently coaching Neville not to stutter on the Protego incantation, reminding two third-years who wanted to learn Dark Arts that he needed their parents' permission. It was on his fourth or fifth circle that he became aware of someone near the other side of the lake, watching, and turned to look.

He scowled when he saw Snape, and turned away. He doesn't need to watch. I'm not going to get myself killed, not with Remus here. And he should go talk to Pansy, anyway. She needs his help, and she'd talk to him, since he's Head of Slytherin House.

I think I'll suggest that to him when we have to go inside, in fact.

Harry would have felt better about his little joke if the speed with which darkness fell hadn't reminded him of the nearness of the autumnal equinox, and the attack that Voldemort intended to launch then.

Entertaining, Honoria Pemberley decided, stretching out her wings and shaking them once as she saw the dueling club breaking up to go back inside Hogwarts. Our little leader is a good teacher, too.

She'd carefully watched everything from the time she got there in her gull form—well, at least from the time she'd stopped deciding it was fun to interrupt Harry as he talked. Yes, he was a leader. He was alert enough to know when his opponent was going to cast a nonverbal spell, and to prepare an all-purpose defense against it. He faced and met challenges head-on. And even his very interesting scowl at the Potions Master didn't interrupt his pace or his talk; Harry's voice was still as low and placid, his stride as firm, as before. He really did like helping others, Honoria thought, as she saw him absorbed in the teaching. He went outside himself, forgot whatever troubles plagued him, and became more interested in others' efforts than Honoria had managed to be even when she was a student.

She wondered if that was such a good thing or not, then clacked her break. Tybalt and John and I will just watch out for him if he can't watch out for himself.

She took off across the lake, debating her course as she went. Shoulder or hair? Shoulder or hair?

In the end, the wind made the decision for her as she passed above the Potions Master and lifted her tail. The white splatter she meant to hit his hair blew sideways and struck the shoulder of his robes instead. Snape reared back, glaring, and pointed his wand at her, but Honoria was already out of reach, cackling the gull-laughter she knew most people despised.

That's for too many Potions exams that you marked down, she thought, as she wheeled home, as well as for whatever upset you've caused our beloved and glorious leader.

She couldn't wait to get home and contact Tybalt. He would wonder how she got onto Hogwarts grounds and stayed there so undetected.

Honoria would smile, and smile, and never tell.