Thank you for the reviews on the last chapter!
I won't be updating tomorrow, but I'll be back Saturday/Sunday (depending on what part of the world you live in).
Chapter Twenty: Like a Very Chiron
Harry could not say how relieved he was when Acies finally swept into the Defense classroom. He was sure that these mixed classes of McGonagall's were a good idea. He could cling to that in the abstract, and, of course, he could always take comfort in the fact that there were a few other Slytherins with him; McGonagall seemed to have arranged things so that Harry always attended class with at least two of his yearmates.
But for him personally, most of the classes were a stew of violent emotion. There were always people with pity on their faces. There were a few people who asked him each time why he had accused Dumbledore of child abuse, why it couldn't have been handled more quietly, and their numbers were growing. There were those who grumbled and muttered and questioned why Harry himself appeared to have been so instrumental in the Dark Lord's return, and Harry thought he could almost see their emotions spreading from one to another like a disease. He would have thought it was a spell, but no spell he knew of answered the description of this.
He put most of the emotions down to his oversensitivity, which thought any mutter lately had to do with him, and did his best to relax and calm himself. But Defense, he knew, was going to be particularly bad, and it was only the first class they'd had. Margaret from Ravenclaw was in that class, and Millicent and Pansy, but not Draco. Margaret was stirring up suspicion of him, currently, by telling others that Harry intended to teach Dark Arts in the meetings of the dueling club, and Pansy was a cold stiff presence at his side.
Harry could feel himself relax when Acies walked through the door. She was still wearing the pale, gown-like robes she had since the first day at school, but this time, Harry could see that the sleeves were tipped with green, a Slytherin color. He frowned, wondering how many people would note the subtle symbolism, both of the hue and of the two colors working together. Together, they signaled the end of winter and the coming of spring.
Never mind that this is entirely the wrong season of the year to be wearing them, Harry thought, and lifted his eyes to Acies's face. For just a moment, her gaze met his—not enough to flash the wild power he knew was in it down his throat. Instead, Acies turned away and paced to the front of the room. Most of the students were silent, watching her. Harry knew they were curious about this Professor Merryweather. The reports coming out of the other classes had been strangely mixed. Some of them liked her, and some of them were terrified.
"I will ask you to tell me," Acies said abruptly, voice breaking the silence with a low hiss, "what you know of the nature of sacrifice."
Harry told himself that most heads did not turn to look at him. That was just his oversensitivity at work again.
Pansy clasped his arm. Harry leaned towards her, and she said into his ear, "I wish you to tell the professor that I know sacrifice very well. It is at the core of the necromantic arts. Without giving up our ability to speak, and our names, and our connections with the outside world, we would not gain the privilege and honor of speaking with the dead." She paused, with a slight sneer. "Make sure that she knows the answer comes from me."
Harry nodded, and then turned towards Acies and raised his hand. More people stared. Harry ignored that, and concentrated on not looking Acies too directly in the face when she called on him, relating what Pansy had said word for word.
"Three points to Slytherin," said Acies, and that was another thing they had heard about her, Harry remembered, that she always gave points in threes. "Ask Miss Parkinson if she knows why giving up these particular sacrifices is so powerful, Mr. Potter."
Pansy was ready with the answer when Harry turned to her. "Because they're things that normal people can't do, and necromancers have to give up being normal people."
Acies just shook her head when Harry repeated that, though. "No. Any sacrifice would do. These happen to be the ones that the studies demand, and have demanded over long years, so that they are hallowed by tradition. But the most important nature of the sacrifices, one way to separate them from what the Dark Lord did in cutting Mr. Potter's hand off, is their willingness. A willing sacrifice is always more powerful."
Harry flushed as more people turned to look at him, but kept his head high. He'd been the one who chose not to wear a glamour.
And what Acies was saying made sense, and was ancient magical theory. A shame so many people, even Margaret from Ravenclaw, were scrambling to write it down as if it were new, he thought.
"A life laid down," Acies said, pacing back and forth in front of the class with a swirl of her robes, "a limb cut off willingly, a privilege yielded without grumbling, forms the corner and the core of all sacrifices that most wizards trust. Without that corner and that core, sacrifice is usually seen as evil, or, at most, dubious magic. What can be done with blood and flesh and other things not given willingly? A great deal, but not as much as can be done with that yielded. The wizard's will adds its own sanction to the spell or the potion or the ritual performed with that willing sacrifice." Her eyes lingered on Harry's face for a moment. "The one the sacrifice is performed for grows more willing himself, more able, more powerful. Perhaps he will even be able to survive whatever storm comes after that yielding."
Harry's heart was beating oddly. Though he had lived with sacrifice all his life, he hadn't thought about that particular aspect in any depth, no more than he thought about making wands because he carried one. He wondered, in a sudden, searing realization, if Sirius's and Sylarana's willingly given lives had been one reason he was able to fight and defeat Voldemort after they died.
"I want you, all of you," said Acies, "to think about what you have given up yourself, and whether it was willing or not. Make me a list." She drew a parchment from no place Harry could see, perhaps one of the long sleeves, and slammed it down in the middle of the table before her. "Tell me now."
More people scrambled for quills, Harry among them. He braced the paper with the stump of his left hand and began to write. Some of them, like his hand and the loss of time to help other people, were easy.
Others, he had to think about. Was it really a sacrifice, for example, what he had done for Connor? Sometimes it seemed that way, and sometimes it seemed as though it could not have been because he'd been tricked into it, not allowed to truly make up his mind about what he wanted to yield to help his brother. But that would just be an unwilling sacrifice, he supposed. He bit his lip and wrote.
"Read your list aloud to me," said Acies after about five minutes, and pointed a finger at the back of the classroom. "You."
Harry turned, and was distantly amused to see that Acies had called on Margaret. She flushed and started to read in a mumble, but Acies cut her off. "Stand and read in a loud, clear voice," she said. "I will not have you crouch in a corner and talk as if you are ashamed. This class is not the place for anyone ashamed of what they are. You have made sacrifices, taken from you or willingly laid down. We are going to talk about them in a spirit of defiance and pride."
Sidelong glances towards Professor Merryweather were becoming more and more frequent. Harry could see now why everyone, from the sixth-year students to the first-years, had such a mixed opinion of her. Some would regard her with awe. Some would think she wasn't being serious and would look for the joke, only to realize slowly that there wasn't one.
Margaret coughed, and stood. She began to read out an ordinary litany of parents' time surrendered to younger siblings, toys broken or lost, privileges revoked when she'd become sulky. Harry tried to listen, but most of his attention was on Acies, standing with her hands behind her back like a soldier.
Then Margaret read out, "And a day's time of study and classes lost in my second year, because Potter cast my hex back at me, and sent me to the hospital wing." She lowered her list and scowled at Harry.
Harry looked back at her. He didn't know what to say. But then, lately, that wasn't an uncommon occurrence. With Snape and with Draco, he didn't know what to say, ether, and as he watched McGonagall's face grow grimmer over breakfast and Fawkes scolded him for his foolishness in entering Voldemort's mind every day, he felt increasingly lost.
"Mr. Potter?"
Harry blinked and glanced over at Acies. "Yes, Professor Merryweather?" He was glad that he'd practiced her name, or he would probably have called her Professor Lestrange without thought. It wasn't every Light witch that could look that commanding.
"What Miss Parsons says," said Acies implacably. "Is it true? Did you cause her to lose a day of her time in the hospital wing?"
Harry was grateful just to be able to say a solid, "Yes," without wavering. That part of it was objective fact, and most people knew it, though right now they were murmuring as if the reminder could not have come at a worse—or better—time. He waited, never looking away from Acies, even to meet Margaret's glare.
For a moment, he caught a glimpse of dragon. Then Acies looked back at Margaret, and asked, "And what were your motives for doing so, Mr. Potter?"
Here's the tricky part. But Harry knew that if he lied now, or even said anything less evil than the truth, no one would believe him. And even after just a week, he was sick of drifting frantically among the shards of his emotions and wondering what to say. Everyone—Draco, Snape, Remus, Argutus, Fawkes, Pansy, Regulus—advised something different, told him that I'm sorry wasn't enough but wanted it said, or desired something from him that Harry didn't know how to give, mostly Snape. Harry had kept this weakness quiet, since every time he did reach out, he got all those contradictory answers.
"At the time, I was possessed," he said quietly. "That was the year several students were paralyzed and placed in the hospital wing. For the first part of the year, I carried the possessor, Tom Riddle, in my head. He was the one who turned the hex. I didn't know how to do it."
The class buzzed and sang. Harry sat still and watched Acies's eyes.
"Liar," said Margaret loudly, stirring a bit of anger in Harry. He had spoken the truth. What did she want or expect him to say? That he'd hated her personally, enough to want to hex her into pain? "You don't need another presence in your head to want to do that," she continued. "You carry enough evil to do it all on your own."
Harry wondered if he should say something in response to that—both Millicent and Pansy were staring at him as if he should—but Acies got to it first, as she swung her head crisply around to face Margaret.
"You cannot lie to me," she said. "None of you can lie to me. My eyes see truth. I am named for insight, keenness of mind. And I know that you do not believe what you are saying right now, Miss Parsons. I see the lie resting in your mind, the frightened worm crouching behind your eyes. You heard the rumors of possession later in the year, and believed them.
"Even as Mr. Potter should respect your sacrifice, and know what he cost other people around him, you should respect his, and know what evil he was condemned to carry in his head. Making a sacrifice does not exempt you from acknowledging that other people have done the same." Acies held her hand above her head, and her fingers began moving oddly, as though something were trapped in her palm. Harry saw a feathered head project above her knuckles a moment later, and then a green bird was perched there, a bird whose feathers, if you looked at them too closely, resembled scales. It had a blue crest of feathers, which it laid back as it screamed at the startled students, and brilliant red eyes, mad in the way that only a bird's eyes could be mad. It took off and fluttered towards the ceiling of the room, not distracting attention from Acies's words but seeming to draw the students back towards them.
"I created that bird from my magic. If any of you were to destroy it now, you would be wasting my sacrifice and not respecting it.
"This is what we are prone to forget. As we move through the world, caught up in what we have given and will give, we forget that others have made sacrifices similar to ours, sometimes larger, sometimes more willing. We compare, and always find ourselves in the favored positions, those who have given the most and deserve to be treated with the most respect. Or we degrade ourselves, and say that others have given more, but imagine that some reward for the degradation still awaits us. We will show them, someday. Someday, the people we gave up the sacrifices for will turn to us with tears and love in their eyes. The idea of future reward makes far too many gifts less valuable than they should be.
"Remembering that sacrifice lies everywhere, threaded and torn through every soul, and forgetting to compare, is what I will teach you this term."
The green bird dropped down from the ceiling and circled Acies's head. She lifted up her arms. For a moment, just a moment, Harry had the impression that the shadow of enormous wings was passing over him, even though he could not actually see it. He saw the way Acies looked at the bird, and knew one of her sacrifices, at that moment, as surely as if she had told him.
Acies carried part of a dragon within her, and with that, she had given up part of what it meant to be human.
Harry closed his eyes. Awe, an emotion he hadn't felt in far too long a time, was beating in his ears like a drum. He had been lifted and transported out of himself, far away from the confusing, dizzying assault of emotions, and he had badly needed it. For a moment, he thought he could catch a glimpse of the gifts and the sacrifices around him, and he was filled with wonder.
"On Thursday," said Acies, "I will begin to teach you the meaning of sacrificial ethics, and how easily they can be twisted, and what the Dark Arts do to those who give up too much of themselves. Class dismissed."
Harry shook his head and slowly stood, still caught in a waking dream. Thus, it did not seem strange when Millicent, whom he'd asked to be his delegate to the centaurs last year, leaned over to him and whispered, "Potter, one of the centaurs contacted me this morning. He wants you to meet with him in the Forbidden Forest at sunset tonight. His name is Firenze."
"I know him," Harry said, and felt his heart pick up the pace, bounding, quickening. He did not know what the centaurs wanted, but at the moment, he felt more bound to them than he had in a long time—and with no evil, wizard-planted web, either, but with the common interest he'd once told the Seer Vera he felt. The wonder, that other people existed in the world and were what they were, beat in his throat like a second pulse.
On the way out of the classroom, he glanced at Acies. She had the green bird in her hands, and was staring at it. She smelled of smoke and fire, and one of her sleeves was partially singed away.
Harry smiled slightly. He suspected that a mixed report of this class would spread around, too.
Harry walked calmly through the edge of the Forest, Draco at his side. He'd told Draco what he intended to do at sunset, and asked if he wanted to come with him. Draco had chosen to do so at once, though scolding Harry, all the while, about taking another potentially stupid risk.
The words rolled off Harry as they would not have only a few hours earlier. He was remembering Draco's own sacrifices, the danger he'd put him in by going into Voldemort's mind a week ago, and feeling his affection surge, keen and strong as sunlight on the waves. That was the best reason to avoid taking that kind of risk. Not because someone else would be angry at him if he did something stupid, but because he knew it would mark and endanger another person in a way that Harry didn't want him marked and endangered. Add that it was Draco, and Harry wanted him to have even more freedom and choice than he might want for others, and Harry knew, with a quiet strength that impressed him, that that kind of risk would not be happening again.
The steady beat of hooves made Harry lift his head from the path of crumpled, faded leaves at his feet. The centaur Firenze stood in front of them, tail swishing slightly. He had a palomino body and blue eyes that marked and pierced Harry from where he stood. Harry stared back, and felt the double heartbeat of anticipation and wonder pick up in him.
"Harry Potter," said Firenze. "The stars are bright tonight, and we have found how to lift our web."
Harry had suspected something like this when Firenze took the trouble to notify Millicent. He didn't shout out objections, like the one Scrimgeour had given him, about the centaurs raping people if they were freed. This was too sacred for that. He just nodded.
"Show me," he said.
Firenze reared, planting his hooves solidly when he came down, and then wheeled and trotted into the Forest. Harry followed, feeling Draco, behind him, reach out and place a hand on the small of his back, much the way he had done when escorting him towards the dungeons last week. He smiled slightly and leaned into the pressure, but kept his eyes always ahead, on Firenze's swishing, pale tail.
They turned away from the parts of the Forest that Harry was familiar with—the clearing where he had once dueled Voldemort, the bend in the path where he had seen Quirrell drinking unicorn's blood, the hill where rocks like a gallows awaited. They walked for a long time, long enough that darkness fell and Harry called Lumos into being on the end of his wand. Draco kept muttering words, but they were low enough under his breath that Harry thought he was frightened.
He didn't turn and reassure him, though. Draco wouldn't want this kind of fear acknowledged.
At last, the trail dipped violently, and Harry realized they were heading into a wide hollow, on a considerably lower level than the rest of the Forest. Draco stumbled. Harry reached back, gripping his arm and holding him upright, even as he stared, trying to make out the dimensions of the place they'd come into.
The sides of it were stone, the tree roots running out about halfway down the wall. The more he looked, the more Harry thought those stones, though they looked natural, had still been cut and fitted into place. They shone fiercely, and here and there a rippling shadow like a four-legged shape slid across them and was gone. The path down into the made valley was also meant for a being with four legs and not two, Harry thought, as they carefully negotiated it. Draco had drawn his wand, but luckily wasn't aiming it at anything.
Firenze waited for them at the bottom of the trail. His hooves were planted deeply in lush grass that Harry could smell summer leaking from. He paused and looked up at Firenze in question.
"We were given this place," said Firenze, his voice seeming to echo from the stones. "We were not meant to stray from here. It is summer here, and there are enchanting sounds and sights that were supposed to contribute to keeping us prisoner." He reared, and he did not look at all like a horse—or, if he did, Harry thought, it was a warhorse, trained to bite and kick and trample, as dangerous as its rider. "We have not stayed here, but we find ourselves drawn back. That ends tonight." He walked towards the center of the valley.
Harry could sense the glamours trailing them as they followed. Glimpses of indescribable beauty appeared and brushed against his face—seas, high and lonely deserts, hills shining with rain. Draco's pace slackened once or twice, but Harry always pulled gently and got him moving again. Draco muttered each time, to say that he hadn't been fooled and was coming, just a minute.
Something awaited them in the middle of the valley. Harry studied it as they drew nearer, but only when they were a foot or two away from it did all the impressions seem to rush together and show him what it was at once.
A vaguely familiar chestnut centaur was kneeling between two upright stones, his forelegs folded under his chest. Ropes held up his arms and tied them to the stones. Harry remembered the noose that the centaurs had used on Draco that first year, and suspected that this was more of the same stuff. Above the stones, from one to the other, ran a metal crossbar, and more ropes extended from it, lashed around the centaur's hind legs, which were splayed behind him.
The centaur glanced up. Harry struggled to recall the name that belonged with those dark hair and blackberry eyes, and finally managed to say, "Coran."
"The same," said Coran. "You have come, vates, in sight of the stars and in sight of the stones."
The moment he finished speaking, a kind of magic Harry had never felt before sang out from the rocks. Harry shivered. This was not precisely music, but stabbing spikes of sound that drove in through his eyes and ears both and made the teeth ring in his head, shrill and alien as the—
As the tap of hooves on metal.
Harry turned his head to the side as similar sounds answered the music of the magic. Centaurs were coming out of the trees, each one wearing a steel drum on a strap around his neck. The strap was long enough to let the instrument dangle nearly to the level of his hooves, and so each one would advance a step, then curl up one foreleg and bring it down on the drum's surface, then advance another step. The magic fed from the sounds, and Harry's breath grew short as the power dizzied him.
"What the hell is going on?" Draco whispered.
"The breaking of our web," said Firenze, hearing and answering him. He gestured to the bound and helpless Coran. "We have looked at our web, and we know what the power of a willing sacrifice can do. We wish to alter our nature. When we are no longer a danger to others, then we can be free, and we will harm no one." For a moment, he turned his head, his blue eyes catching Harry's. "The vates will no longer hesitate for fear of our committing rape."
"I would fear to set you free when such freedom seems a submission to the wizards who bound you, though," said Harry quietly. "If you change what you are, then will they not have won?"
"We were bound long, long ago," said Firenze in return, even as the centaurs halted and there came an end to the painful drumbeats, though not the piercing, sticking sensation of the magic. "We cannot remember precisely what we were when free. Freedom alone is what remains in our memories, as a dream hungered and hoped for and sent from the stars. We have changed, Harry Potter, vates. We know what we are now, and what we are would not wish to rape. We know only that we would, set free. And so long as you fear that would happen, you will not break our net."
Harry had to nod. That much was true. He would not impinge on the free will and safety of others by simply snapping the centaurs' web when he knew the consequences that followed would be his fault.
"So we have chosen," said Firenze. "Legend after legend, across the centuries, bespeaks the power of sacrifice. And one of the legends bespeaks more. There was a centaur named Chiron, it is said—almost alone among the centaurs of Greece, wise and kind, while the others were drunkards and rapists." Harry darted a quick glance at Firenze's face, but it was blank, and his voice as he spoke was calm. "And he was immortal, and a tutor of heroes. But he took a wound at the hands of Heracles, and because he could not die, he suffered from it endlessly. In the end, he sacrificed his immortality and earned peace from his pain—but he used the sacrifice to free Prometheus the bound and suffering, to insure that someone else could continue in painless life."
Firenze slammed a hoof into the earth. "So says that legend. Other legends speak of different motives for Chiron, and even immortality coming to him after death. But we are not immortal, and we choose to take this legend as our inspiration.. We are centaurs, we wish to be free, and we have chosen to change ourselves to become like Chiron. Every one of us has freely consented." He turned his head again, and his eyes were fiercer and brighter than Harry had ever seen them. "That consent is part of the sacrifice, that we give up part of what we were to transform ourselves into something new. And the other part of it is a willing death, and a willing hand to take that life." He was staring at Harry without blinking now.
Harry swallowed. "You want me to kill Coran," he said, not making it a question.
"You can't do that," said Draco angrily, from behind his shoulder. "You can't make him do that."
"No," said Firenze. "No one can make a vates do anything, or he becomes less than a vates. We can but ask."
Harry studied the centaur's face, aware of Draco taking furious breaths behind him, and his own emotions, a boiling mixture. He wondered how long it had taken the centaurs to decide this, and Coran to come to the notion of sacrificing his life. He had no doubt they were telling the truth, though. If they were not, then the magic would fail. Something like this had to be willing. Acies was perfectly right. Willing sacrifices raised the power of the spell. Conceivably, someone could take Coran's blood against his will and attempt the transformation, but the ritual would be much weaker.
So, now, what they waited on was his consent.
Harry looked at Coran. He had not known him very well. He hated the thought of killing. He hated the thought that his hand would take a life even in war, which was the reason he had tried not to fight any of the Death Eaters but Voldemort with lethal force. And perhaps if he had never killed at all, he would have found this impossible.
As it was, he had no innocence to lose. And he knew what murder looked like. Murder had stared at him with bulging eyes as shards of silver sliced his throat open, and broken apart in a rain of ashes over the lake.
This was not murder. This was a task that they were asking him to fulfill.
Acies's words about respecting sacrifice rang in his head, and Harry nodded. "Tell me what I must do," he said, bringing his eyes back to Firenze's.
Draco grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. "Harry," he whispered. "You can't. It'll destroy you." His face was pale and strained. "I ought to stun you and drag you back to Hogwarts."
"Draco, you wouldn't get out of here alive if you did that," said Harry, knowing he spoke the truth. The centaurs had been ready to hang Draco in first year to test Harry. They would not kill out of malice, but they would bring about the death of anyone who interfered in this ritual, because it was too sacred to be disturbed. "And I want to do it."
"Why, Harry, for Merlin's sake?"
Harry found himself smiling. He thought it must be an odd smile, from the way Draco stared at him. He didn't care. "Because I respect them," he said. "And I honor them, and I can only imagine the honor they're doing me, the only wizard they felt able to call on for help." He gentled his voice when he saw the frantic concern in Draco's eyes. For the first time in a week, the lingering remnants of anger had come down from between them, and Harry knew that Draco was purely worried for him. It felt, sneakily, wonderful. "I promise that I'll be all right, Draco. I wouldn't do this if I thought it could destroy me."
"You tend to overestimate what you think you can bear, Harry." Draco's hand settled on his shoulder again. "Please, don't do this."
Harry raised his eyebrows. "That's true, Draco, but in this case, they're also making sacrifices, ones that are dependent on and entwined with the ones that I make. I won't fail them."
Draco clenched his wand, and Harry could see the notion of interfering flicker across his face. Then he looked around at the centaurs, and closed his eyes and gave a little grimace.
"Promise me that you'll pull out of there if you think you're faltering," he whispered.
"I would have to," said Harry, and reached up to kiss his forehead. "I wouldn't have a choice. That would just waste Coran's life and their commitment."
Draco nodded, but turned his head aside as Harry walked towards the stones, as if he couldn't watch. Harry understood that. He knelt down in front of Coran, facing him, according to Firenze's soft instructions.
Coran looked back at him. He was not quite calm, the white of his eyes standing out like a horse's, but he had an expression of fierce determination on his face. Harry felt near helpless with admiration.
"Here is the blade."
Firenze gave Harry a knife. Harry moved it through a patch of moonlight, and blinked as it seemed to disappear. Then it reappeared again when he held it towards Coran, a thin edge of blue-silver. Made of light, he thought. Could a blade made of light hurt someone?
Then he thought of sunshine focused through a prism, and how it could burn, and nodded. It can if it's intense enough.
"First you must cut a lock of his hair," said Firenze. "It was a custom of mourning, to cut the hair. It says farewell to the past, and what we have been. Cut by your hand, taken from his head, symbolizing our decision, it binds all three of the sacrifices undertaken this day." He was chanting the words by the end, and when he stopped, the tapping of the hooves on the metal drums began again.
Harry nodded, then reached up, bracing his stump against Coran's forehead, to cut the nearest dark lock. The knife severed it almost before he knew what was happening, and it fell into the heel of his hand as he tilted it hastily to catch the slight weight.
It should have been slight weight, at least. Harry gasped. The lock felt like a stone instead, weighing his hand down, moving it towards the center of the world. He knelt again, and felt the air thicken, the magic dancing around him like a wind, like a storm. The only sensation he could compare it to was that of a prophecy coming true.
"The hair is taken," Firenze intoned. "It must be placed into the mouth of the sacrifice."
Harry stood up. Coran had his mouth open. Harry gently placed the piece of hair between his teeth, and Coran closed his lips and held on.
"We do this in memory of Chiron," Firenze chanted. "And as he was a healer in life, he dealt with blood, and he bled before he could die. Take the blood of the sacrifice from the right shoulder, where we believe Chiron was wounded."
Harry took a deep breath, and then turned and sliced the knife across Coran's shoulder. He winced at the first sight of the blood, but forced himself to glance at Firenze, who had trotted forward to stand beside him. Firenze's gaze was ancient, cold, emotionless as the stars themselves, looking from above.
"Smear your hand with the blood," he told Harry, "and anoint his throat."
Harry obeyed, curling his fingers awkwardly to keep from dropping the knife. The blood felt odd, warmer on his hand than it should have. He found Coran looking at him as he smeared it into place, and he stared back, wondering all the while what kind of life the young centaur had had. What had made him decide to do this? Love for what his people could be? Desire for freedom? Because he could do nothing else?
Harry was never going to know, and that increased his awe and his sorrow, so that they bled into and fed off each other, and increased his determination to do this right.
The magic closed in with a roll when Harry finished smearing all the blood. Now all Harry could see was himself, Coran, the device of stones and rope that bound Coran, and Firenze.
"We do this in memory of Chiron," Firenze repeated. "And now the hair is placed in the sacrifice's mouth, and the blood is smeared upon the sacrifice's throat. Coran, whose very name resembles Chiron's, has given his life. We have given our will." The pressure of the magic grew so tight that Harry could hardly breathe. "And the vates gives his consent."
"I do," said Harry, unsure if he should speak, but finding the words pulled from him.
"Then cut the sacrifice's throat," Firenze whispered. "Follow the path of the blood."
Harry shivered, and stood to his full height. Even with Coran kneeling, it still wasn't easy to reach his throat. Harry wished he was taller, and then felt an odd spasm of amusement. This was certainly the strangest reason he would ever have to wish that he had grown already, he thought.
He let his breath rush in and out of his lungs, and listened to Coran's breathing, and recalled Acies's words. As we move through the world, caught up in what we have given and will give, we forget that others have made sacrifices similar to ours, sometimes larger, sometimes more willing.
Coran's sacrifice was willing. Harry had to trust that, and to think that there was no reason he would try to trick Harry, and the same thing with the centaurs' giving their consent to this.
Wonder made him squeeze his eyes shut. When all that had been given, dare he falter now and refuse to do his part, or claim that he could find a better way of doing things? He had to recognize his limitations sometimes, had to yield his judgment to the will of others sometimes.
He reached up, and Coran tilted back his head, showing the path of the blood clearly in the strange, intense, limited light they were enclosed within. Luckily, the path of the smear included his jugular vein.
Harry took a last deep breath, feeling as if he were drawing it for both of them, and then sliced along the path.
Blood rushed forward.
The life flickered once in Coran's blackberry eyes, but the intensity never ended until he did. Then his head dropped forward, holding the sliced throat.
Silence rushed over them.
Harry found himself utterly alone. Darkness was above him, and darkness below, and clouds pressed in on his ears and his chest and his heart. The knife had slipped from his fingers; he did not know where it had gone. Above him, when he tilted his head back, he saw the stars gleaming, in the image of a centaur with something in his arms.
Centaurus, he thought, distantly. The constellation Chiron was made into.
The darkness and silence broke apart, and noise and light returned with a crash.
Harry cried out as he felt the magic snap past him like a newly released flood. Part of it came from him, he thought, fueled by his will, and another part from the body of Coran hanging by its ropes, and another part from the centaurs grouped in the clearing. It slammed together, and leaped and cut through itself like foaming waves, and then it turned and dug into the centaurs.
Harry could feel the emotion propelling the rush: stern and unrelenting joy. He drew in breath that was hurried and frenzied, both because he could not take in enough of air that had joy, and not wind, as its supreme element, and because the magic continued to draw ruthlessly from him. He had promised to this, committed to this, and so had Coran, and so had the centaurs.
Made threefold, given three times over, this was not a flow of will that could be stopped or turned aside.
Harry felt the moment when the centaurs changed, when the magic performed the transformation they had committed to, took away the wild brutality that made them rape, and made them wise and gentle. It was a wrenching sideways snap, out of a world that had been and into a new one. It was a birth. It was an awakening, and a rising of a phoenix on fire-born wings. The centaurs cried out, and their voices changed as they did so.
The power pierced Harry again, and pulled more and more magic from him like blood. For the first time, he felt it working completely independently of him, to undo the web that bound the centaurs. He had promised, and meant the promise, and that was all he had had to do. The centaurs had promised, and meant the promise, and they were changed. Now the magic glimmered, tracing out the threads of the web in white fire, and then sinking into and burning them from the outside, raising inner flames that made them implode at the same time. Harry felt that stern joy dismiss the strands of the web as something ugly, unneeded, and unable to stand against the power that it could summon.
And then it was over, too abruptly. Harry felt as if he were in freefall for a moment, until he landed. He found himself panting, kneeling again, back in his human body, and the light was gone. He swallowed to keep from crying out at the loss.
He lifted his head to find the clearing transformed. The walls were roots and dirt now, and looked the better for it. The grass was as brown as it should be with the approach of autumn, and covered with dead leaves.
Coran's body hung on the stones, and glimmered, the last remnants of the joy withdrawing into him. He looked nothing more, and nothing less, than dead.
Firenze's hoofbeats recalled Harry's attention to him. The centaur had a smile on his face, a true smile, the first time Harry could remember seeing one. He scooped Harry gently up in his arms and set him on his back.
"We are more of this world now," he said, "more of the earth than the stars, though they shall always speak to us. Come, vates. Let us get you home." Harry looked around for Draco, and saw another centaur kneeling to collect him. He nodded, and clung to Firenze's mane, and closed his eyes.
Awe was still shaking him, a continuation of that humility that had snatched him out of himself in Defense, but deeper, darker, more radiant, more sacred. Harry found himself keenly alive to the centaurs around them, wondering what they were thinking. Did they miss what they had been? Or would they, once the shock and thrill of the newness wore off?
It was good of Firenze and his fellow to let Harry and Draco ride them back, a generous gift, a sign of pride and honor. Harry felt part of his awe turn into gratitude.
What was Draco thinking? Harry found that he could not wait to know. He would ask once they got back to Hogwarts, and give what assurances were needed. Perhaps he would do the same thing with other people, if they had questions. Would Millicent still want to be his delegate to the centaurs? Perhaps they would not need one. What was Pansy thinking about this? Would McGonagall be relieved to know that she no longer had to worry about the centaurs attacking people who went into the Forest?
What was Snape thinking?
Harry blinked, and licked his lips, and opened his eyes to see the edge of the Forest looming closer.
He did not feel like someone who had just killed, whose parents were on trial for child abuse, who had felt betrayed by his guardian only that morning. He was exalted, at peace, lifted into the heights and wrapped in comforting darkness.
He had been reminded that there was a world outside himself again, one he could take a vital and active interest in, and that one mistake did not mean the end of everything.
On anyone's part. No one's mistake means the end of everything. We can inflict deep wounds, but the wounds can heal.
Harry nodded, a small, decisive movement of his head against Firenze's neck, and closed his eyes. The resolve he made then had worry behind it, of course, but also its own stern, deep joy.
I'll talk to Snape tomorrow. It is time I respected his sacrifice.