Thank you for the reviews on the last chapter!
This is the battle chapter- long, and immensely complicated, and gory. And stuff.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Killing Moon
Minerva closed her eyes. She had been looking out across the Great Hall, and found her eyes drawn again and again to the Slytherin table, despite her attempt to look for problems in all the Houses.
This will never do. You know that you cannot favor one set of students, as Headmistress.
She took a deep breath, and sat in silence with her eyes shut for a few moments, hoping it might recall her balance. It didn't, though. Indeed, without looking at anything else, her mind had free rein to show her memories: both of the meeting last week when Harry had planned to attack Woodhouse, and of the battles that she herself had fought in the First War, when the needs of the Light had drawn her out of Hogwarts.
Her fingers twitched. She wanted a wand. She wanted to go to war.
But she had always been sensible. Even then, she had known that Albus called on her only because she was a Transfiguration specialist, and they desperately needed her, since several of the Death Eaters fighting on Voldemort's side were also skilled at transforming humans into animals. She'd even been meant to play a defensive role at first, transforming their fighters back and no more. And then the War had taken a sharp turn for the worse when Voldemort coordinated a series of attacks that left more than a hundred of the Light's best wizards dead, and the Order of the Phoenix became the most important and organized force still fighting.
She'd been on the front lines, then. It was the proper place for a Gryffindor, she thought. We weren't meant to cower behind the lines, to carry out sneak attacks, to hide our strength.
But Albus had been with them then, strong in heart and uncorrupted in principle. Minerva had been able to rely on him to defeat Voldemort when the Dark Lord took the field himself, and she'd known her place: a follower, at best a second-in-command once the War ended and she was Deputy Headmistress, not a leader.
The Headmistress of Hogwarts has to stay behind. And, of all things, the force attacking Voldemort this time is mixed Light and Dark, and has a Slytherin leading them.
At that point, Minerva couldn't help herself; she opened her eyes and looked over at the Slytherin table again. Harry was speaking with young Malfoy, his eyes wide and his movements sharp. He looked as if he would leap to his feet and prowl back and forth behind the table at any moment. Minerva smiled slightly. She knew the signs. Should Harry ever master the Animagus transformation, his form would be feline. His quick reactions, the way he moved, his surges of adrenaline, all confirmed it.
Things are different now, she thought, and the realization settled into the pit of her stomach as it never had before. I am a leader, of a sort, and I must stay here so that the wards cannot fall again. Harry has reached out to people on both sides of the fight. And just as Gryffindor soared into prominence when Albus defeated Grindelwald and during the First War, now Slytherin is rising.
She looked up the table at her Deputy Headmaster. When Severus realizes that, it should make him happy, at least. He's waited a long time to see his House overcome Voldemort's taint.
Severus did not look happy; he had barely touched his food. Minerva slid a plate of the scones she knew he favored towards him. He turned his head and fixed her with a sharp, flat stare.
"Always the mother lioness with her cubs, Minerva?" he snapped.
"If Slytherins starve themselves, who fights tonight?" Minerva murmured back.
Severus blinked, and then examined her more closely, as if he had not known that she recognized the terms on which the battle was being fought. Then he nodded, murmured, "I would be foolish to become like Harry," and began to eat.
Minerva sat back, satisfied that she had done almost all she could. Her fingers still itched, but she would content herself with strengthening the wards tonight.
And doing what she could to keep an eye on the behavior of her students, as well. The antagonism towards Harry was becoming more deliberate, and more worrying. Minerva would almost have said it was the result of a spell, save that she was sure a spell in Hogwarts would target her as well, and she had felt nothing of the effects. Perhaps Godric would know something of it.
Harry tossed back his head and took a deep breath of the night air. It made his breath steam in front of him, and he was grateful for the gloves and Quidditch gear he wore. If it was cool down here, he could only imagine how cold it would be when he was on his Firebolt.
He turned to Draco. "Ready?" he murmured.
Draco nodded. His face was pale, but it was always pale anyway. Harry knew he would certainly be composed enough to fly. He looked around one more time, then strode forward as if he were the one leading the way. Harry snorted and caught up with him inside a few steps.
His own mood was the opposite of Draco's. His nervousness had faded as the week wore on—helped by the fact that he was no longer at odds with anyone, except Snape, who continued to bother him about talking—and a mixture of excitement and wild joy had taken its place. He could feel his heart beating everywhere in his body, in his throat and his ears and his fingertips as well as his chest. He saw everything when he turned his head, minute details he would never have noticed ordinarily, so that he kept starting at the glimpses of things caught from the corner of his eye. He had an answer for every question someone asked him, so much so that he'd quite astonished both Professor Flitwick and Professor Sinistra.
This was his war, the war he'd trained so long and hard to fight. This was the first major battle of it. Harry felt his blood and his mind and his instincts turning towards it like a flower towards the sun.
He spun around and uttered a loud whoop as they walked towards the middle of the Quidditch Pitch, where they were to meet John, Regulus, and Henrietta. Draco gave him a hard look. "Do I want to know what you're so happy about?"
"Probably not." Harry dropped his arms, shifting his hold on the Firebolt so that his fingers weren't quite so cramped, and grinned at him. "You'd probably start scolding me about recklessness again."
Draco narrowed his eyes. "Merlin help you, Harry, if you take one unnecessary risk on that battlefield tonight—"
Harry just hummed and didn't listen to him. He knew the lecture by heart, anyway. He'd got it with every meal and every bedtime since Wednesday.
Draco didn't quite understand, he thought, that battles were chaos once past the initial engagement. Harry sincerely hoped their plans would result in everyone getting alive out of Woodhouse tonight, but he accepted that those plans themselves would shatter when chance and the cruel creativity of Dark wizards went to work. That was why he had at least one weapon in reserve he hadn't told anyone about, two if one counted what Regulus was bringing along. He patted his robe pocket, hearing the crimp and crackle of parchment.
"Harry? Are you listening to me?"
With a start, Harry focused back on what Draco was saying. "Um. No?"
Draco stopped, put out a hand, and snagged his arm, dragging him close. "Pay attention," he snapped. "Keep your mind on what you're supposed to be doing, not on taking curses for people. Fight like a Lord, or a vates, or a hellishly powerful wizard—whatever you want to call yourself, I suppose. Remember that we're there to protect you, and trust us."
"I do," said Harry. "At least, I trust you. I trust you more than Connor, Draco."
That caused Draco to blink and stare at him, but a shout from the Pitch, hailing them, prevented him from saying whatever he wanted to say. Harry broke into a trot, and saw Regulus come striding to meet them. He was wrapped in close dark robes that Harry hoped would keep him warm enough. He had refused to even consider the idea of Quidditch gear, which he insisted he wasn't comfortable in.
Harry scanned him for a moment, looking for the secret advantage that Regulus had said he was bringing along. Yes, there it was, a large sack tied to his belt. The sack quivered now and then. Harry grinned and accepted the half-embrace that Regulus gave him with his left arm. His right hand held his broomstick, a Nimbus.
"Ready?" he whispered into Harry's ear.
"Hell yes." Harry pulled away from him and turned to regard the other two who would be flying with them tonight. John was standing a pointed distance from Henrietta, his head slightly turned away, as though she smelled bad. Henrietta grinned at Harry. She wore Quidditch gear, and shrugged when she saw Harry looking at her.
"I was a Beater for Slytherin," she said simply.
Harry carried on looking at her a moment longer, seeing something familiar in her face. He finally managed to identify it as the same feral excitement that he felt. "You like fighting, Mrs. Bulstrode?" he asked softly.
"Yes," Henrietta hissed. "I would have gone out for a war witch if I didn't have ambitions of actually surviving past my thirties."
Harry grinned, feeling close to the Dark witch for the first time. He nodded to John, and then said, "Stay close to me. We'll be flying beyond the wards of Hogwarts, then Apparating to that glen that Mrs. Parkinson had us memorize. You remember the looks of it?" Everyone except Draco, who would be Side-Along Apparating with Harry, nodded. "From there, it's a straight flight to Woodhouse. We should be able to feel it the moment we Apparate in, thanks to its magic, and we should arrive at nightfall. Then I'll concentrate on dropping the anti-Apparition wards, and we'll get to the ground as quickly as possible." He knew they knew this, but it never hurt to review; Harry thought this plan had more chance of surviving than some aspects of the ground strike did. "Are there any questions?"
Four heads shook. Harry felt like howling as he swung a leg over his Firebolt. He wondered how Hawthorn and the other werewolves, who would actually transform when the moon arose, handled the intense excitement.
"Let's go," he said softly, and they rose from the Pitch.
It had been a long time since Hawthorn had stood on this particular hillside outside Woodhouse, but she remembered it still, and the others, she saw with no little relief, had memorized the image well enough. They Apparated in not long before moonrise. Hawthorn had already taken the Wolfsbane, but she could feel her wolf stirring in her, speaking words of blood and hatred. This close to the transformation, her skin itched horribly.
Hawthorn turned to glance at the others, resisting the urge to scratch. Laura Gloryflower was the calmest of all of them, her hands linked together and her gaze fixed on the sweep of scree that would lead them downwards and to the west, towards the forest entrance of Woodhouse. Fergus whispered incessantly to Delilah. Claudia stood a short distance from them, trying to make it seem as if she weren't listening in.
And Remus Lupin…
Hawthorn eyed him cautiously. She did not know what to make of him. He had suffered Greyback's bite, as they all had, but he'd been a child then, and a werewolf all his life afterwards. Hawthorn had felt like an old soul when she met the three young Light werewolves, since she'd endured multiple transformations while they had yet to go through their first full moon. But Lupin moved with the wolf buzzing under his skin and in his soul, so that Hawthorn half-expected to see his face lengthen into a muzzle even before the moonlight touched him. She kept smelling him at odd times, too, as though his scent were stronger than the rest of them. Cool earth and water, leaves and raw fur—the closest to a natural wolf's scent that she'd caught since she became a werewolf.
"Stay close together once we go in," she whispered, calling the attention of others to herself. "We shouldn't face any opposition, but if we do, bunch and drive forward. The others are depending on us to distract the Death Eaters. We can't get caught up in a petty battle and slowed."
Claudia gave a little half-yelp in answer; the others nodded. And then Hawthorn stiffened and pivoted, her head turning to the east.
The full moon was rising.
Hawthorn closed her eyes and dropped to all fours as the transformation took her. The wolf stirred madly in her belly, and then rushed out and over her in a drowning tide. Hawthorn could just remember that during her first change, when she didn't have the Wolfsbane, savagery and the desire for blood had come with that first wave, burying her humanity entirely.
Now, though, the wave quieted the wolf's snarling voice, and only resulted in a deep and profound stillness shattered a moment later by the arrival of the second wave. Hawthorn's body rippled and cramped, and then became the center of a star of pain.
Her scream became a howl, mingling with the cries of the others. Hawthorn had only run with Fergus, Claudia, and Delilah once before, on the last full moon, but she had found she took comfort in hearing the voices of a pack.
The agony surged, darkening her vision. Her bones floated like sticks of wood on the sea, altering their shape and composition. But the moment passed, as it always did, and her memory relaxed; she simply couldn't remember what that much pain actually felt like, and the relief was always so blessed.
A third wave, and the color slid out of the world. Scent rushed in to take its place. Hawthorn filled her nostrils with the grass, her companions, and a certain cool something that only seemed to exist in the world during the first moments of a full moon night.
A musky reek assaulted her from the side. Hawthorn turned her head, snarling, and then shut her jaws as she met the gaze of a great cat. The lioness who had taken Laura Gloryflower's place paced forward a step or two, her tail swishing, and then turned and leaped downhill, towards the forest.
Hawthorn gave tongue to the others, briefly—it wouldn't do for the Death Eaters to be alerted ahead of time by hearing a werewolf's howl, hard as it was to control her voice—and had the satisfaction of hearing them follow her as she trailed the lioness. They bounded steadily south for a short time, then turned west. Now trees were looming ahead of them, and Hawthorn wagged her tail by instinct. She loved being among trees when she was in this form. It was right to feel branches brushing by over her head and briars almost snagging on her coat.
Something shoved up to her right shoulder. Hawthorn started and almost showed her fangs before she realized it was Lupin. He made a handsome, heavy gray werewolf, his ears pricked forward and his steps confident. He caught her eye briefly, and Hawthorn found herself looking away.
That gave her the chance to check on the others, so she didn't mind. Fergus, his coat as pale as his hair, trailed Delilah, who had become a werewolf whose fur showed as a dirty white to Hawthorn's altered eyes. She knew that, in reality, the war witch's coat was golden. That wasn't supposed to happen. Delilah's magic did not seem to care.
Claudia, a heavy black bitch, her scar even more noticeable in this form since it meant one pointed ear was gone, loped at Hawthorn's heels. Her teeth were wrinkled in a silent snarl, not aimed at any of her companions. She always looked like that, Hawthorn knew. Becoming a werewolf had altered her immensely. Once talkative and proud of her beauty, she was now silent and vengeful.
Hawthorn turned forward again as they entered the forest. The wind was against them now, carrying their scents forward, but the feel of Woodhouse's magic provided a sure guide. Hawthorn kept her ears cocked and turning, seeking out the sounds of traps, but she did not greatly fear anything they might encounter here. Werewolves were immune to so many spells that a trap would have to contain silver or a Killing Curse to be of much use.
A slight snarl was all the warning they had before twelve sleek shapes broke the darkness ahead of them, springing from ambush and hurtling to encompass them. Werewolves, Hawthorn knew at once; they were so close that she could smell them now, though she hadn't before, with the turned wind.
Snarling in rage, she met the charge of the two trying to bowl her over, dodged in a flurry of fur, and snapped her jaws down twice. That left one dragging his intestines and the other hamstrung. The hamstrung bitch tried to whirl and tear her apart anyway. They didn't have the benefit of Wolfsbane, and they were gone into the wildness that would naturally encompass a werewolf when the moon rose.
Hawthorn grabbed the bitch's throat. Slick fur, salty flesh, and then blood as she wrenched her head sideways and tore out her throat. That made the bitch sag. Her companion had tangled his forepaws in his guts and lay dying on the ground. Hawthorn turned to check on her pack.
Three of the werewolves had hit Fergus. Hawthorn saw him die, as two of the attackers held him down at the shoulders and the other sliced through half his neck with cruel fangs. Hawthorn wondered if it was clever or abominable of her that her first thought was, That will bind the Opallines to us for certain. Paton will never forgive the Dark Lord the murder of his son.
Delilah and Lupin were working in tandem to dance around three other members of the enemy pack, making them spin in several directions without landing a bite. Hawthorn felt her lips lift in a snarl of contempt as she saw the clumsy, hesitant movements of the strangers. They were almost certainly new werewolves, this only either their first or second transformation. Delilah had experience gained through six full moons now, and Lupin was a creature of grace and beauty, avoiding their awkward lunges as if he were made of mist.
Claudia had already downed her own two attackers. Their bodies were half torn apart, and she was closing in on another victim, her muzzle stretched out before her body and her paws flying. She was only really happy when she was killing something, Hawthorn knew, potion or no potion.
Laura Gloryflower had just cracked the skull of the last werewolf in her jaws like an egg. She left him slumped, a bloodied ruin, and turned to face the three who had taken Fergus. They closed in cautiously, panting. They were more experienced, Hawthorn saw, more often changed, and what they lacked in rationality they made up in instinct. They knew that this great cat would be a tougher opponent than the young werewolf they'd just slaughtered.
Hawthorn allowed herself a momentary howl of grief for Fergus, packmate, downed, dead, and then she sprang to join Laura. One thought did burn in her head in the moment before she let human experience and lupine reflexes take over to guide her in the battle.
Where is Fenrir?
Harry narrowed his eyes as he saw Woodhouse for the first time. He had known what to expect from the memory Hawthorn showed him, but she had not been able to see all the nuances of the intense natural magic that surrounded it. Harry saw it as a fallen star, a singing star, with subtle, different vibrations arising depending on whether they came from wood, stone, grass, or treetops.
"Enemies."
Harry wheeled sharply. He was flying in the center of their formation, Regulus ahead of him, John and Draco to the sides, Henrietta behind. It was Henrietta who'd spoken the warning, her eyes aimed over Harry's shoulder. He looked, and saw seven brooms rising to meet them from the eastern slope of Woodhouse, behind the quadrangle of buildings. Harry clasped his hand down on the Firebolt until he felt his knuckles pop, as paranoid suspicion, focused on what could happen, became grim certainty.
We've been betrayed.
"We have to kill them or down them," he snapped. "Henrietta, I want you to—"
"Shove it, Potter," Henrietta said. Her wand was in her hand, and she was glaring at him. "Don't be an idiot. Concentrate on dropping the anti-Apparition wards. It's what you're here for. The rest of us will take care of this."
"I have to—"
"Remember your place, you idiot. Avada Kedavra!"
The green fire of the Killing Curse cut the night, and one of the flyers tumbled from his broom. The others broke, dipping and diving, and resumed their flight more cautiously. Harry thought they probably hadn't anticipated an Unforgivable cutting one of them down from so far away. One of them did cast a curse back, but it sputtered and died in the air long before reaching them.
Harry took several deep breaths, and then nodded, and turned towards Woodhouse again, this time seeking to separate the delicate lines of the wards from the rest of the singing, glowing magic.
Draco hovered next to him, Regulus on the other side. John was racing to join the fight with the enemies, and Henrietta was right beside him. All of these things Harry was aware of distantly, but for the moment, as Henrietta had reminded him, he had to do that which he was there for.
His will bore down, his sight reaching out through his eyes, his knowledge joining with them. He knew what wards felt like through his training, and now he sought and found layered defensive spells. He smiled a bit. Voldemort had had what he probably thought was a clever idea, tying the anti-Apparition wards to the magic of Woodhouse itself. Someone would have to destroy the heavily warded wooden building before they could Apparate in.
Of course, Voldemort hadn't been planning on a Lord-level opponent. Harry destroyed the wards from the other end, where they were hooked to the grass and hills of the valley, unbraiding the spells one by one with chanted Finite after Finite. That left a lashing, uncoiling vortex of threads that would have consumed most wizards, but Harry calmly turned them back with his own powerful Protego. The ends of the torn wards retracted into Woodhouse with a snap, like the heads of snails going home. Harry nodded, and touched his left wrist with his hand, using his knees alone to grip his broom as he hovered.
"Adoro bracchio de Lucius Malfoy!" he murmured, and heard Lucius's voice speaking his name a moment later. He kept his message brief. His instincts were screaming at him to get to the ground. If Voldemort was there, as now seemed likely, only Harry could face him.
"The wards are down. Pass the message to the others, and Apparate in." The ground forces were grouped together, so Lucius shouldn't need much more than a shout to pass the message.
He ended the spell and then dived, hearing the sharp cracks of Apparition already beginning. Harry kept his concentration ranging ahead of him, trying to find Voldemort. He knew they had been betrayed, but he couldn't bother to waste time on panic and hatred right now. He fed the emotions to the Occlumency pools, and they swallowed them. His focus had to be on finding the Dark Lord.
Draco and Regulus dropped back, flying near his shoulders as they came in across the quadrangle of buildings. Harry kicked his Firebolt further downward, carefully measuring his speed. He didn't want to outpace the other two, but he badly wanted to be out of the air, now that he knew the Death Eaters had forewarning of their arrival. People on brooms were too vulnerable to curses flung from the buildings around Woodhouse.
They lowered—twenty feet above the ground, fifteen. Harry saw two dark shapes fall past him, and heard a triumphant cry in Henrietta's voice. She and John had taken care of the flyers, then, Harry thought, and would soon join them.
Ten feet above the ground. They were next to the northernmost stone building now, flying over a long patch of tall grass.
Blackness surged in the grass. Harry, flown past and turning towards the sudden glimpse of movement, didn't understand what he was seeing until a strip of silver in the black oriented him. By that time, Fenrir Greyback had already leaped, clenched his jaws around the tail end of Draco's broom, and dragged him to earth, shaking and spinning him violently as they went. Draco's scream was caught off as he plowed into the ground.
Greyback tumbled a short distance away, and then rushed back in. Draco had his wand already in hand and managed to get off a spell, but it bounced from the huge black werewolf, as Harry had known it would. Greyback came in close, his jaws snapping, trying to get a firm hold on Draco's torso or limbs.
Harry felt rage turn him incandescent, transparent. His magic branded the night with fire in his immediate vicinity, and then he cried out, in a voice he hadn't known he was capable of, the voice of an angel or a demon, "Greyback. Look at me."
The werewolf shouldn't have known what he was saying, with his mind drowned in bloodlust. But perhaps he could recognize his own name, or perhaps the movement, as Harry came diving straight at him, made him lift his head and turn. Harry saw the moonlight flash on his teeth, on his eyes.
Magic and rage and will together took flight from Harry, slamming into Greyback. For a moment, he was there, Draco temporarily forgotten, his body sinking into a crouch as he prepared to spring at Harry.
Then he—wasn't there anymore.
Harry heard the snap of inrushing air as it came back together around the sudden jagged hole. Backlash made him stagger on his broom, and he wheeled the Firebolt, instinctively compensating for the lack of balance, as he would have compensated for catching a Bludger to the side. Fire ran through his head in small tendrils, making him feel the tiniest bit drunk.
But the intoxication cleared in seconds. He knew what he had done. He had looked at Greyback, and the werewolf had ceased to exist. He had killed him with almost pure magic.
And he could not regret it.
Harry leaped from the Firebolt while it was still a few feet above ground, rolling as his mother had taught him, coming up safe from the fall and collapsing into a kneel beside Draco. "Draco," he breathed, staring at him, looking for some sign of a bite or a scratch. Even such a tiny mark could be sufficient to spread the disease, the werewolf web. He couldn't see one, but perhaps that was just his hope. "Are you all right?"
Draco rolled on his back and smiled up at him. Harry smiled back, unsure if it was the relief or the release of Ignifer's fire that was making his vision burn with white spots at the corners.
Draco wanted to pant, wanted to lie still, wanted to wrap his arms around Harry and hold on, wanted to climb back on his broom and fly out of there. All his desires had narrowed to one when Greyback grounded him—the desire to live—and now that he was past that point and certain he had not died yet, they exploded in a giddy stream, spinning around and through his head.
He'd been thrown down brutally and the breath taken out of his lungs, though, so he just lay there for a moment, staring at Harry, blinking as the streamers of fire abruptly turned the night to high noon, grateful he could see.
He had to see, because the white-cheeked werewolf made no noise as she rose from the tall grass behind Harry and closed on him in a flying leap. For a moment, Draco saw her soaring, her dark fur whipping around her, her teeth bared in a skull-rictus of pain, her face seeming scorched, and entirely bared, by the white left half.
His wand was in his hand, and Draco lifted it, the lessons of a dusty classroom abruptly taking the place of his whirling wishes, and cried, "Ardesco!"
The werewolf's fur caught and smoked, just a bit. She snarled. But werewolves were mostly immune to magic, and the spell was not enough to make her alter the trajectory of her spring. She crashed onto Harry and bore him to the ground, then reared up, gaze locking on the bare back of his neck.
Draco pushed his mind frantically out from his body, and landed in hers. Unfamiliar weight nearly crushed him, the configuration of four legs instead of two drove him mad, and blood-blind savagery and grief for the loss of a mate tried to eat him alive. None of it worked. Draco had his own mate to defend, as this mind understood it, and he possessed the werewolf and pushed her off Harry before he even thought of what he was doing.
He knew his own body would have dropped and collapsed, and he whipped himself back to it, traveling in the snap which he imagined Apparition was like. He opened his own eyes, found his own wand in his own hand, and lifted it. The werewolf lay stunned on her side a few feet from Harry, beginning to lift her head. The hatred that drove her was too great to be deterred by a mere temporary loss of control.
Well, the hatred that drives me is great, too. Draco grabbed that hatred, and the memory of a voice from last year, that of the man who had called himself Moody, murmuring the list of curses that not even a werewolf was immune to.
Draco aimed. It seemed he had all the time in the world. Harry was stirring. The werewolf had stood. She hurtled towards him, paws still silent, teeth still bared in their skull-grin, eyes locked on his throat.
And through all of that, through pain and shock and onrushing death, Draco still had time to whisper, "Avada Kedavra."
His wand shook in his hand as the spell surged out of him, draining him of his hatred, a line of green fire that speared the werewolf and turned all her movement into stillness. She fell where she'd stepped, one paw still outstretched in front of her. Her malice sparked from her dead eyes like his own loathing reflected.
Draco dropped to his knees, panting. He shut his eyes. He hurt, with an emptiness deeper than the hatred had been. He could not believe he had done that, but he had to, because the evidence lay not five feet away.
"Draco."
Draco turned and buried his face in Harry's shoulder. Harry was up on his knees now, his arm wrapped around him, murmuring sweet and soothing nonsense into his ear. Draco clung to that. If he hadn't cast the Killing Curse, Harry would be dead. His first casting of an Unforgivable was more than a fair trade for that.
He'd always known that he would have to do this, he thought numbly, accepted since he was six that he would someday use the green fire. The Malfoys were Dark wizards. Dark wizards used the Unforgivables. Why was it hitting him so hard now? And how could he do nothing for the moment but kneel here and fight tears and bile and vomit?
"It's all right," Harry whispered to him, when Draco could concentrate on his words. "It's all right. She's dead, Draco, and you're alive, and you haven't changed. I promise you."
Draco had not known how badly he needed to hear that until Harry said it. He wrapped the words around him in place of the arm Harry had to take back, and nodded when Harry stood and looked inquiringly down at him.
Harry nodded back, then gripped his arm and pulled. Draco stumbled to his feet, shocked both by the force of the tug and the kiss with which Harry greeted him when he was standing, hard enough to make their teeth clack together. Harry drew back and grinned at him through a bloodied mouth. Draco couldn't tell if he'd done that, or the werewolf had, when she drove him into the ground.
"We'll fight now," said Harry simply. "Back to back."
Draco nodded, and the sickness and the emptiness began to thaw. He was here. He was now, and he was alive, and Harry was here and now and alive with him.
Harry turned, his hand still firm on Draco's, and looked across an expanse of grass towards Regulus. Draco saw that his cousin had spilt open the sack he'd brought along, and was pouring a steady stream of small objects onto the ground. Draco shuddered when he recognized them.
"Attention," said Regulus crisply, and the artificial spiders who'd tried to poison Harry in third year spun around and looked up at him. Regulus nodded back at them. "Go in front of us. Bite anyone who tries to cast curses at us."
The spiders gave a massive click of their legs, and then scuttled off, spreading out in a black carpet. Harry gave a howling laugh, and began to stalk after them, murmuring something under his breath. Draco strained to hear as he jogged along at Harry's right shoulder.
"They anticipated our attack, but Voldemort isn't here. He's still too badly wounded, I think. This will be fun."
Draco shuddered a little, but Harry smiled at him over his shoulder, and he forgot his fear at the unearthly beauty of his boyfriend's eyes lit by fire and feral intensity. He shifted his grip on his wand, and turned to meet the rest of the battle, bracing himself to kill again.
He'd done it once. He could do it again.
She'd forgotten.
Henrietta had once loved to fly on a broom. She'd gone out for a Beater less for love of the game than for love of flying. She'd expected the ride to be her favorite part of the evening, and when she'd taken down the Death Eaters who opposed them on brooms—pitiful flyers, one and all—she'd resigned herself to boredom. Even with the help of the traitor that it seemed lurked among their own ranks, the Death Eaters hadn't mustered a competent defense. Then again, why they should have grown in skill since the battle on the equinox, Henrietta didn't know.
But then she landed, and she saw Potter and Malfoy's son dispatching the werewolves, and she paused a moment to admire that, and so she saw the dark figure making his way towards Potter from the shelter of the northernmost building. Henrietta stared. Her heart picked up so much speed that her vision blurred. She could not believe—no. She had forgotten much, including her own excitement at the thought of having a real challenge, but she could not have forgotten the way this man moved.
Apollonis had filled the air with fire, revealing the Death Eater's face, since he wore no mask, but Henrietta didn't need the help. Blind, she would have known who he was.
She had simply never expected to see him again.
As he took aim at Potter, Henrietta, with joy in her heart and wetness forming between her legs, called out, "Cor cordium flammae!"
He staggered, but he was good at resisting curses that took place inside personal shields, and he ended the spell before it took hold. Then he spun, and then he saw her, and then he went quite still.
Henrietta stalked forward, laughing so hard it was difficult to speak. She managed it at last, though. "Hello, Rosier."
Evan Rosier stared at her. There was insanity in his eyes, but no joy. Henrietta didn't think there would have been. Potter was probably a toy to him—so powerful that Rosier entertained no serious hopes of being able to conquer him, only string him along and use him for amusement. Henrietta, on the other hand, had both battled him and fucked him, and walked away alive from both of those encounters. She didn't think there was anyone else who could say the same.
"No words for your old friend? I'm hurt," Henrietta whispered.
Rosier recovered then, and said, with the calm deadliness that he showed when he wasn't playing, "Dolor immoderatus."
Henrietta laughed. He had forgotten some things, including the pendant she carried against her skin, one of the Bulstrode heirlooms, that prevented the curses Rosier favored from getting under one's shields and inside the body. Not his Blood-Burning Curse, not Ardesco, not the Endless Pain Curse he'd just tried to use, would impact her as long as she wore it.
"I wish you were dead," Rosier said.
"Annoying, aren't I?" Henrietta asked cheerfully, and then they began to dance, and rapture flooded and consumed her.
Lucius came in hard and fast from the south, hearing the cries of werewolves in the woods, seeing Apollonis's fire slice the night into ribbons, feeling his every sense rouse to full alertness.
Behind him were Belville, Burke, Starrise, and Narcissa, all of them as alert as he was, Lucius hoped. He would hate to have something happen to them because they weren't alert. On the other hand, it would be no one's fault but their own. He was their guide, nor their minder.
He saw Death Eaters coming to meet them, clad in dark cloaks and white masks. Memories ran side by side with Lucius for a moment, reminding him of the time when he would have stood among them, and then they died and none took their places. Memories were not the friends of a seasoned fighter in his battle. He concentrated on what was around him. He saw what was there.
And Narcissa was there, on the left, and there were three Death Eaters coming for them, spread out with roughly equal distances between them. Lucius turned, and met his wife's eyes; she was already looking at him.
"Locusta's Kiss?" he asked.
"But of course," Narcissa murmured, and caught his arm. Lucius lifted his wand to point at the Death Eater on the far left. The others immediately scrambled faster, as if they thought he hadn't noticed them.
Lucius cast a moment before he heard Narcissa's voice, intoning the same curse. "Virus Locustae!"
The Death Eater on the right and the one on the left fell, convulsing, suffering as if from the bite of a Locusta snake. That left the one in the center with the opportunity to take revenge on one of them, but he hesitated about which one it should be.
They always did.
Lucius spun his wife around in front of him as if they were dancing, so that she presented her wand and then her back and then her wand, and their enemy oriented on her. Meanwhile, Lucius aimed his wand under Narcissa's lifted arm and cast the Locusta curse again. The Death Eater's eyes widened in an expression of surprise most amusing before he fell.
Narcissa finished her spin bound close to his body, and Lucius leaned in and kissed her harshly. Narcissa returned the kiss with equal force, laughing smugly into his mouth. They had the right to be smug, Lucius thought. The Locusta's Kiss maneuver was difficult to pull off, and had both elegance and deadliness. A glance to their left showed that Burke was looking at them with admiration.
"Would that more young witches and wizards today knew the true pureblood rituals," he murmured. "It's all that separates us from Mudbloods."
Lucius refrained from rolling his eyes, but only because Belville was striking a heroic pose beyond Burke and casting some complicated spell in a Celtic language that had no more apparent effect than a tripping jinx. That left it to the rest of them to finish the real work, while Belville cocked his head around at each of them, as if demanding they admire his learning. Ravenclaws, Lucius thought, with contemptuous resignation.
Narcissa charged beside him as they fought their way towards Woodhouse, and they had the chance to use the Locusta's Kiss again, as well as the Whirlwind Tango. Lucius could feel his heart beating hard in contentment, and he caught a glimpse of the same emotion in Narcissa's eyes.
This was the reason he had agreed to let his son go with Harry, in the hopes that Draco might have the opportunity to fight beside the young man he so obviously loved. Nothing bonded spouses like battle. If Draco had that kind of connection with their Potter after this evening, Lucius would be assured they were meant for each other just as they were.
If not…well.
There is still some time for Draco to learn lessons in the emotional control he needs.
Really, it was so easy to trick people.
Honoria reflected on that as she watched the sixth Death Eater in a row try to fight one of her illusions, and then she sneaked up behind the illusion and stuck the tip of her wand between his ribs. She murmured a Cutting Curse and he was down, just like that.
Or maybe the Dark Lord just couldn't get very good help, which was also a possibility, she supposed.
She glanced around, restless. She was with Snape's force, coming in from the east, and they were no doubt striking terror into the hearts of all and sundry. Snape was, at least. The man fought like one of the robots Honoria's mother had once described to her, all lethal precision and endless strength, striving to get to the center of the battle and hook up with the vates he loved like a son.
Honoria watched as Rhangnara used some highly complicated spell that appeared to tie his victim's guts up in knots, and then decided, quite clearly, that she no longer needed to stay with them.
She was bored. And she could do things that no one else could. And Harry might need her eyes.
She crouched, safe in the shade of an illusion, and then leaped. Her body tumbled and turned, melted and reformed, and she struck upwards, a sea-mew, seeing with clear eyes in the constantly renewed light of the fire that illuminated them all. If anyone caught sight of her, they no doubt thought they were seeing another illusion, or maybe a stray bird wandered into the battle. That was because no one knew she was an Animagus. No one knew her secret. Honoria loved having secrets.
She canted to the north, towards the place that Harry and his honor guard would have come in on their broomsticks. No one was flying right now, so they must have landed already. Houses ringing with magic passed underneath her, and Honoria cackled, the sharp gull-laughter that irritated most people who did not realize what clever and dead useful birds gulls were.
She would find Harry and…help. Or, at the least, amuse herself. And if someone thought she was dead because of her disappearance, then she could always have the fun of reappearing "alive" later.
She hoped it was Belville who thought she was dead. She always wanted to surprise those who most deserved it.
Harry strode confidently towards the buildings that surrounded Woodhouse. Voldemort wasn't there. He saw no need to risk himself on the battlefield, perhaps. Or perhaps the traitor's communication, whatever it had been, hadn't even reached him. If he was in one of those private lairs Lucius had talked about, it was likely.
As he walked, Harry drew out the scrap of parchment from his robe pocket. "I solemnly swear I want to attack Woodhouse," he whispered, and the lines of an enchanted map appeared, racing across the paper until they formed an image of the valley. Harry grinned. He'd worked on this throughout the last half of the week. It was good to know that he hadn't lost his touch since he'd created the map of Godric's Hollow two years ago.
"What's that?" Draco asked, of course, trying to peer over Harry's shoulder.
Harry showed him the map, studying the dots still gathered in the midst of the quadrangle. Sure enough, no dot marked the Dark Lord's presence. There was Karkaroff—Harry curled his lip—and several names that Harry was only remotely familiar with from stories of the First War, and several completely unfamiliar names that looked Russian, probably young Death Eaters from Durmstrang. No Bellatrix. Harry wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed on that score.
So, about twenty Death Eaters still lying in wait, then. It was probably Karkaroff who organized the defense. Harry shifted the map so that he could see it better in the light of the flames, and then frowned as he realized that a dot he'd simply assumed was a Death Eater had only one word beside it.
Siren.
Shit, Harry thought, and stared harder at the map. The siren's pool was within the quadrangle, against the southernmost building, nearly opposite from where they stood now, and past both Woodhouse itself and the waiting Death Eaters. He didn't know how to get there without a pitched battle.
Wait. Yes, I do.
Harry smiled and glanced at Regulus. "Get the spiders ready," he said. "There are Death Eaters who'll come flooding around that corner in a moment." He nodded at the corner nearest to them, which made Regulus jump and glance narrowly at him, noticing the map for the first time. He closed his eyes and shook his head.
"Sometimes, you really are Sirius's godson," he muttered.
Harry acknowledged the compliment with a small nod.
"Wait. That corner?" said John, who'd just come up behind them. Harry wondered briefly where Henrietta was, then discarded the worry. She could take care of herself if she was on their side, and if she wasn't, then his magic could take care of her. Either way, she was probably having more fun wherever she was.
"Yes, that corner," Harry replied, and then began to murmur, aloud for the benefit of those with him. "Aedifico spiritum cum odoratu et vibrare."
He smiled as Draco's eyes lit with recognition. This was the incantation that Connor had used to fool the dragons in the Triwizard Tournament. Harry watched as an illusion of himself formed next to him, so perfect that it made John start and glance at him in wonder. Harry sent the illusion forward with a wave of his hand, peeking around the corner of the building.
He heard Karkaroff's astonished shout, and then there came the sound of clattering footsteps, moving directly towards them, and of fired curses. Harry made his illusion run back around the corner, and then braced himself.
Regulus's spiders clicked their legs together.
Harry backed up a few steps, readying himself for a pull. Draco aimed his wand over his shoulder. Regulus's spiders scuttled forward, and the first Death Eaters screamed in surprise and agony as the venom entered their systems. Remembering how it felt to suffer from the spiders' poison, Harry couldn't resist a sympathetic shudder. He thought they would probably think what he did next to be more horrible, though.
He opened the serpent's jaws, and began to swallow their magic, carefully aiming above the spiders so that they could continue working. The two nearest Death Eaters, both of them small enough to be somewhere near Harry's age, fell to their knees crying out as Harry ripped their power away. Harry winced, and closed his eyes, but continued drawing. With Regulus and Draco right there, he couldn't take the chance that anything might hurt them.
When he thought he'd taken in enough magic, and Karkaroff and some of the others were hesitating to come around the corner because they feared their comrades' screams, Harry charged. Draco gave an indignant shout, which Harry ignored. Draco was perfectly capable of keeping up if he decided that he wanted to.
Around the corner, behind the building, in the shadow, and he could smell water, and see the edge of the siren's pool. Karkaroff was right there, aiming his wand with a shocked expression.
Harry spat out the magic he'd swallowed, and knocked the Death Eaters away like mice suffering from the swat of a cat's paw. He heard skulls crushed and spines snapping as they rolled. He put the knowledge of those sounds in the same place where he put the fact that he'd willed Fenrir Greyback out of existence by looking at him. He would accept, and deal with later, the fact that he had killed, painfully and numerous times.
That is what war is.
He ran through the newly clear area of earth, aiming for the pool. The bulk of Woodhouse loomed to the right, tempting him to look, so ablaze with magic that it made Harry want to wonder and sing. But he had to stop the siren first, and he was probably the only one who could.
Draco and Regulus were right behind him, John panting on their heels. Harry passed Woodhouse, and saw a shape moving between the eastern and southern buildings, near the far shore of the siren's pool. He felt his heart lift when he realized it was Snape. His force had broken through whatever guards had been waiting on the far side of the valley.
And then the siren burst out of the pool, wrapped her arms around Snape's waist, and pulled him into the water, singing as she went.
Ignifer stopped fighting when she heard the song.
It twisted around her mind, so lovely that tears were streaking her cheeks before she realized it. She put a hand over her face, shuddering. Memories sprang up in her mind like blades of grass, memories of light and goodness before she'd turned her back on the Light she was raised in, Declaring for the Dark.
She could have that home back, whispered the singing voice. She could have her parents back, not her father as he'd become, stern and proud and inflexible, and not the indifferent mother who talked to her from the fireplace every day, but her parents as they'd been when she was a little girl, furiously proud of her. She found herself taking a step forward, shivering all the while, longing.
A hand caught her arm. Ignifer struck out blindly, trying to hurt whoever held her. She needed to go to the song, the singer. She needed to follow the path that had suddenly opened in front of her heart.
Then another song rose. It did not exactly combat the first. It twined around it, and turned it, exposing it to the light like a jewel. It let Ignifer see the flaws in that music, how false it was—not a jewel, but paste. Her head cleared, and she stood, blinking, with Arabella Zabini's hand on her arm and the Songstress's voice throbbing in the air around her.
"What was that?" Ignifer demanded, then realized the question was foolish; Zabini was too busy singing, and preventing the song from snaring her again, to answer her. The others in their force were waking from what looked like similar trances, shaking their heads. Adalrico Bulstrode frowned.
"The song is coming from there," he said, nodding to the buildings. "I think we should pursue it. Whatever it is can harm our vates." He began to stride, the air around him turning steadily darker. Ignifer frowned, then shrugged. There were rumors of magical gifts in the Bulstrode line, magic they usually hid.
And then Adalrico's words caught up with her.
Something that might hurt Harry.
Ignifer hurtled forward. She had just found this alliance. She was not about to lose it.
Zabini followed her, still cocooning her in the song, battling what Ignifer now realized must be the voice of a siren—
And then that voice stopped.
Harry didn't think as he heard the splash. He didn't think as he heard the song. Visions were trying to fill his head, but nothing could compare to that too-real, too-present memory of Snape going down to his probable death, the siren's arms wrapped around him and her beautiful face upturned to watch his as it went slack.
He found himself leaving the ground, or rushing through it, a trick he hadn't performed since his third year, when he ran to Hogwarts from the Forbidden Forest to save Draco from one of the Black snakes. He just barely remembered to cast a charm that would let him breathe underwater before he plunged into the pool.
Unlike the Hogwarts lake, where he'd been last year, this was perfectly clear, and the throbbing bursts of Ignifer's fire overhead irradiated it like beams of sunlight. Harry could see the siren on the far side, drifting near an obviously magically-constructed bank of stone. She sang and sang, her voice thick as the water was. She had her gaze and her grip locked on Snape, who was not breathing.
Harry flung the breathing charm. Snape coughed, and then his chest began to heave, bubbles trailing from his mouth.
The siren snapped her head around, her gaze locking on him. Harry felt her song shift the same way. Now she wasn't launching it towards Snape, or towards whatever audience might hear her; she was focusing on him and only him.
The visions came crowding back again, trying to enchant and snare Harry with images of a perfect childhood, a good relationship with his parents, an existence entirely ignored by everyone, if only he would come to the siren and touch her. Harry found it as hard to resist, for just a moment, as he had the song of the many-legged creature in Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. This siren was free of a web, her voice unrestricted, and she belonged to a kindred of magical creatures made to compel.
Then Harry's hatred of compulsion kicked in, and he bucked his mind and threw off the strands of song. The siren's eyes, large and shining green, met his. Harry tossed his thought like a spear through their connected gazes.
I am vates. Hear me! Voldemort fooled you. He set your kind free only to enchant and hurt wizards. I have freed others. Look into my heart and see the truth. Look now. I am the breaker and unbinder of webs. The one you hold is my guardian, and if you do not release him, I will kill you, though I wish magical creatures nothing but good.
The siren heard him, or perhaps she heard and understood the impulse of freedom in his mind; Harry had never believed anything more sincerely in his life. She cried out, a musical sound that luckily did not resemble her song enough to harm anyone, and her arms loosened on Snape's waist. He drifted in the water. Harry swam up to him and draped himself underneath his arm, never looking away from the siren.
Her voice crept into his mind, a timid little girl's voice, rising and falling in waves like the ocean or the restless shifting of her fish's tail. Is it true? He tricked us? We were not going after rightful prey, but only his enemies?
That is true, Harry affirmed. He would never have allowed you to enchant or compel the wizards that follow him. He did not offer sirens true freedom, but a new web.
I must tell the others of this. We are free, and we wish to sing. We must have the freedom to drown whomever we wish.
The siren hurtled away, speeding smoothly towards a low entrance in the bank of the pool that Harry hadn't noticed before. She ducked into it and was gone, with a flirt of her tail.
Harry heaved out a breath, and then swam for the surface, dragging Snape along with him. It wasn't easy with only one hand to guide his way, but other hands grabbed him when he got to the surface, and Draco and Regulus helped him back into the open air. Harry let the water-breathing charm go, and turned anxiously to Snape as Regulus laid him out on the back of the pool, murmuring, "Finite Incantatem. Ennervate."
Snape coughed, spewing out quite a lot of water, and sat up. Harry ended the water-breathing charm on him, and met his eyes.
"Imbecile," Snape spat.
Harry found himself smiling. "That settles the question of whether you're all right, then," he said, and had to shut his eyes. "Merlin, sir, I—"
Wings sounded close above his head suddenly, and Harry spun. He saw a gull, diving, which became a woman, falling. And he saw Karkaroff on his feet, his wand aimed, anger terrible on his face.
He saw the moment when the Slicing Curse that should have cut into his unprotected back took Honoria across the stomach instead, as she tumbled between him and the line of the spell.
In a moment, everything changed. Honoria lay on the ground, bleeding, cut open from shoulder to groin, organs steaming slightly in the cold air. Harry recognized the Curse—he'd last seen it when Rabastan Lestrange had used it on Connor in the lake last year—and he felt very cold. He raised his head, eyes raking from Honoria to Karkaroff.
Karkaroff turned pale at the feeling of Harry's magic rising, or perhaps just the look in his eyes; he was a Legilimens, after all. He backed away one step, then two, then screamed, in a voice amplified by the Sonorus spell, "Retreat! Now!"
The night rang as those Death Eaters who could still Apparate fled. Harry heard the sounds of battle cease, falling into confusion and then shouts that were probably either of surprise or victory.
He could share neither. He knelt next to Honoria, and she bled, dying before his eyes. She had her eyes open, though, and she was smiling at him.
"Why should you—" she asked, with an obvious effort, then had to stop, panting. "Why should you get to have all the fun of taking a curse for someone else?" she asked, as if determined to get it all out in one sentence, and then her head fell back. Her eyes closed.
"Fawkes," Harry said, his voice distorted by emotions beyond any other expression.
Wings fluttered above his head, again. This time, they accompanied fire, and the crooning song of a phoenix who landed on Honoria's unwounded shoulder and leaned over her injury. Harry cast pressure charms to hold the blood in, his mind blasted dull and numb with shock. Fawkes's tears fell, faster than, or just as fast as, Honoria's breathing slowed; Harry could not decide their relative speeds.
The shock gave way to mourning, cutting at him like a knife slicing through one tendon at a time, and he had to wonder, the words forming in his thoughts as though out of a vortex, Is this the way other people felt when I took the curse for Connor?
He swallowed multiple times as he did what he could to assist Fawkes, which wasn't much—mostly holding the blood in and knitting a little torn skin back together. Horror and pain together echoed twice over through his soul, both for Honoria and for the thought of Draco, or Snape, or anyone, really, suffering the same emotions on his account.
I didn't know. Oh, Merlin, I didn't know. If they really consider me as important as anyone else—or at least as important as I consider Honoria—then that means they felt this. Oh, Merlin.
He heard others arriving, but their voices silenced as they neared, save for whispered conversations that Harry didn't look up long enough to notice. He did look up when someone knelt down next to him, though, and blinked when he realized it was Thomas Rhangnara, his face for once serious.
"May I help?" he asked softly. "There are healing spells I've studied that might prove useful."
Harry nodded, and Thomas began to murmur in what wasn't Latin, tracing his wand above the path the Slicing Curse had created on Honoria's abdomen. Harry watched for only a moment before turning back to his own tasks. He could not tell for certain how much effect they had. He only knew that Honoria was still breathing.
Then he realized that Draco's hand was on his shoulder, and that Fawkes had stopped crying, and Thomas was saying, "Harry? She's stable. She needs Hogwarts and your mediwitch as soon as possible, but she'll survive until we can get her there. Have one of the Malfoys Apparate her. They're good at that. I noticed when we jumped into the battle."
Harry sat back on his heels, drew in a breath that never seemed to end, and nodded. He rose, meeting Snape's eyes, and Regulus's, and Draco's. He was alive. He would survive.
Now to see who else was.
Pair after pair of eyes around the circle, and it looked as though nearly everyone was alive. Tybalt's right arm hung uselessly by his side, but he embraced John with his left, eyes tightly closed with what Harry thought was more relief than pain. Arabella Zabini limped, but her eyes were as proud as ever when Harry met them. Narcissa, though unsmiling, shifted so that Harry could see the burn on her left shoulder didn't prevent her from moving.
Then the werewolves arrived, with a lioness pacing beside them: Hawthorn, Moony, a black bitch with one ear missing who must be Claudia Griffinsnest, and one other, a golden one. One missing.
Harry closed his eyes, acknowledging the blow of a death, and counted them one more time. Henrietta was there now, too, strolling up with a faint smile on her lips, all five of their brooms floating behind her. She inclined her head when Harry met her eyes. She looked exhausted, but fully satisfied. Harry decided not to ask. She could tell him all the details, if she wanted him to know, later.
"We'll be going back to Hogwarts," he said quietly. "First, though, I want to secure Woodhouse against repossession by the Death Eaters." He glanced around distractedly for his map. Draco held it up on his second glance. Harry smiled a thanks he knew probably looked tired and took it, scanning it for more dots.
He shook his head. Save for names he recognized, and the motionless dots lying out beyond the quadrangle, there was no one in the valley. No Muggles, then. When Karkaroff got wind of the attack, he'd probably moved them, if they'd ever been here in the first place.
They had Woodhouse, though, and that was not a small prize—
Though not worth someone's life, his conscience whispered at him.
Harry told it to shut up, since this was war, and lifted his head, closing his eyes. He knew that one of the people watching him at this moment was most likely a traitor, unless Voldemort had used the scar connection to get wind of the attack. As yet, he had no idea of knowing who it was, beyond instinctive certainty that it wasn't Snape, Regulus, Draco, or any of his older allies, and a revulsion against thinking it might be Honoria. Therefore, he wasn't about to tell anyone how he intended to secure Woodhouse.
It didn't take long. The spells on the great wooden building interacted with the magic of the valley, in patterns that Harry learned to understand after a moment of gazing at them. He wove wards around Woodhouse, and then across the valley, carefully putting them just outside the patterns of magical interaction already present. The wards were to fire, and tighten into impenetrable shields, the moment anyone but him tried to enter, by walking, Apparition, Portkey, Flooing into the house, or on a broom. The last might have been a problem, but by wrapping the wards entirely around the valley, encasing it in a huge bubble, Harry avoided triggering the spells that would have disrupted the intricate communication between Woodhouse and the natural rock and trees.
This was a truly remarkable place, Harry thought, with interest that he knew would increase when he wasn't so bloody exhausted. Whoever had fashioned the original wards was a genius. He would have to study it in more detail later.
"How are we going to get out?" Henrietta asked, with a frown in her voice.
Harry opened his eyes, and saw a sheen of moonlight across the valley, binding them in. He smiled slightly. "We can Apparate out," he said. "But you shouldn't try to Apparate in after this."
Henrietta's eyebrows raised. Harry didn't give her the satisfaction of an answer. He would have to root out the traitor first, before he dared tell the wards who they could let through.
He turned to Narcissa, only to find that she was already taking Honoria into her arms. She nodded to him. Harry relaxed.
To his surprise, what came boiling up as Regulus gathered his spiders, Fawkes fluttered to his shoulder, some of his allies moved to Side-Along Apparate the werewolves, and he gripped his Firebolt, was not relief, or weariness, but rage.
Someone warned them. If not for that, whichever one of my Light allies died would still be alive, and Snape wouldn't nearly have drowned, and Honoria wouldn't have taken that curse. When I find that person, he or she will be lucky if they don't suffer Greyback's fate.