Thank you for the reviews on the last chapter!

This is the first three "Harry kicks ass" chapters. Because it's about time that he got to.

Chapter Thirty-Six: The Will of Water

Harry only became aware of the guards following him when Snape tried to shut his office door in their faces. That caused a loud, and immediate, protest from Draco, Isabell, and Hannah Abbott. They hushed when Harry turned around and met their gazes, too. Harry suspected that his rage was shining through his eyes.

"I won't be long," he said softly. Whatever Snape wanted him for, it couldn't be long. Breakfast would be over in half an hour, and then classes began, including Potions. "Stay there."

None of them objected, though Draco stared a bit too long. Harry didn't know why, and didn't try to figure it out. He shut the door behind himself, and turned to see Snape placing a Pensieve on a low table Transfigured from one of the chairs that usually occupied the office. Old wariness made Harry hesitate before he walked up to it, but then he shook his head and moved forward.

"What memories does this hold?" he asked.

"The battle at Ravenclaw Tower, and what I did to stop Rovenan," said Snape. "But, more than that, it holds the memory of a spell I sensed that night." He paused, as if waiting for something, then made a small noise of frustration. "It is not easy to explain outside the Pensieve. It will be easier once you have put your head into it." He lowered his own before Harry could protest that he didn't like Pensieves and had never seen anything attractive in them. Grumbling, Harry stepped around to the other side of the dish and followed.

He still wanted to do something about Argus Veritaserum and the person who had caused the Augurey chicks to be murdered. But perhaps this was important, too. The way Snape had sailed up to him argued that it was.

Time and space flipped around him, and then he stood in the Ravenclaw common room, a place he had visited a few times when he was helping Luna to make progress in her classes in her second year, after she'd been paralyzed for most of her first. He heard and felt magic blazing from above, foul heaviness rather like Voldemort's wandless power in the graveyard. He forced himself to ignore it, and concentrate on the air around them, between the many staring faces and open mouths of the Ravenclaws.

"You feel it?" Snape, the present-time one standing behind him and not the one on the landing pleading with Rovenan, asked.

Harry frowned. There was a spell there, wasn't there? Its form was odd. It was a boiling mist, foaming as if it objected to the attention of their minds. Whispers filled it. Harry cocked his ears, stripping away all the other distractions to focus on just one part of his hearing the way his mother had taught him, and heard his own name, repeated over and over and over again.

He shook his head. "Why would someone want to cast a spell that fills the room with my name repeated over and over?" he asked Snape.

Snape snarled. "That is not its purpose, Harry. I could not tell you outside the Pensieve, because I have attempted to tell several people over the past week—Minerva, you, even Lucius when he came to settle the matter of Rovenan's parents—and the spell has eaten your memories. You understand me well enough when we're conversing, but your attention wanders in a few moments, and then you've forgotten about it again. The spell is subtle, and contains its own defense mechanism."

Harry shut his eyes, to close off the distraction of sight as well, and listened again. There was something before his name in each repetition of the spell. It was the incantation that had created it, Harry realized abruptly. After several moments of listening, he thought he had all the words.

Converto intellegentiam de Harry Potter. Converto animadversionem ab intellegentia.

Several possible translations of the spell flashed through his head, but Harry rejected most of them; the spell wasn't focused on him, for one thing, which would argue against an interpretation like the incantation lowering his intelligence. He found one that fit after a few moments.

I change the perception of Harry Potter. I change the good perception to an unfavorable one.

Harry's eyes blazed open. He felt the rage in him alter direction. He was still angry about Argus Veritaserum and the Augurey chicks, but those were targets truly beyond his wrath for the moment; he still didn't know who Veritaserum was. But he knew who must have cast a spell like this, so closely allied to compulsion, so mental, so subtle rather than directly confrontational in the way that Voldemort would have gone for.

Dumbledore.

Harry snarled under his breath and turned to look up at Snape. "How far do you think this spell extends?" he asked, voice so furious that he barely recognized it himself. "Just through Hogwarts?"

Snape shook his head. "Lucius was able to tell me something of its nature yesterday, while he was in the Pensieve and the spell did not steal his memories of itself. I did research last night. The only thing that stops this spell, other than the power and perception of the witch or wizard who uses it, is salt water. I think we're looking at a spell that occupies the whole of England, Scotland, and Wales." He paused. "You have made a small net of safety in the middle of that, Harry."

"Oh?" Harry's thoughts roared back across the past months, taking in the attacks of the Ravenclaws and the weeping of Madam Shiverwood and the sudden madness of Auror Mallory, and casting them into a new light. "Why do you say that?"

"I do not seem to have been affected, other than losing my memories of the spell whenever I started to catch on," said Snape. "Neither does Draco. I can imagine ways in which this spell could have twisted several of his perceptions. He would never consent to remain on the other side of that door if he was overprotective about you to the point of hindering your progress, for example. He could easily have hurt and killed the people who hurt you. But the only one he truly struck at was Whitecheek, and that happened in the midst of battle."

Harry frowned. "But that doesn't make sense. Why would Dumbledore want to leave the people who supported me alone? He might have a hard time changing their behavior without my thinking there was something going on, but if the spell really does protect itself, except in the Pensieve—"

"That is not what I mean," said Snape. "You have made a career of unbinding compulsions wherever you find them, Harry. I think that you mind saw this net, or sensed it, and unbound it from those you love. Or perhaps you had already laid the protection in place." He stepped forward and put a hand on Harry's shoulder. "You told me once that you want everyone free to make their own decisions as much as possible, uninfluenced by Lords or fear or powerful magic."

Harry could feel himself scowling. "But that means everyone. Not just people I love, or trust, or feel protective of, or however this defense truly works."

Snape sighed. "Then I think Lucius was right, and you must be prevailed on to break the spell."

Harry wondered how, if he would lose the memories the moment he left the Pensieve, but then dismissed the question. He would just do it from within the Pensieve, then. He would do whatever he must to snap this compulsion and give everyone their minds back.

"Did your research tell you how the spell was meant to be broken?" he asked, but wasn't surprised when Snape shook his head.

"No. It suggested that, most of the time, it breaks when the wizard or witch powering it collapses. Most people cannot take the stretch in perceptions that it brings on, multiplying one's eyes and emotions endlessly, until one can see through all the minds under siege if one chooses."

"Then that means Dumbledore knows what we've been doing." Harry suffered a faint tremor of unease, and then pushed it away again. Caution had its place, and it was in the planning how to break the spell, not in worry over what would happen afterwards. Now was the time for courage. "Very well, then. We'll keep that in mind when we deal with him. Do you think he's behind the reason that the wizarding public has been so hostile to me?"

"Very likely," Snape agreed. "And the reason why the articles were received at all. I know the Prophet would normally get tired of accepting anonymous articles so frequently. The spell seems to have increased their antipathy towards you. Skeeter's articles rarely appear anymore."

Harry had noticed, but had assumed it was because Skeeter was getting tired of defending him. He gave an absent nod. "So part of this is false, too. I can't depend on anchoring my unweaving of the spell on the difference between many people's notions of true and false. They'll consider their memories of the past few months as being as accurate and true as their memories before the spell began, and we have no way of knowing when Dumbledore began the spell, anyway."

"Anchoring your unweaving of the spell—"

"Dumbledore's like a spider," Harry explained, frowning at the wide-eyed Ravenclaws in the Pensieve memory and wondering how many of them would have opposed him or thought of him at all without the spell. "He's weaving from point to point. He can't anchor the web on nothing, don't you see? He chose to alter perceptions of me, not create them. He had to have some emotion in the person's mind to work with, no matter how small it was. And now I have to have something to anchor my unweaving of the spell with. I don't think I can just follow the pattern of his spell, because I don't know those other minds like I know yours, or Draco's. I might alter something that was original to them."

"I must admit that I know very little of magic like this, Harry." Snape's voice was subdued. "I am an Occlumens and a Legilimens, but I work, at most, with one other mind, or with presences in someone else's mind. I am not sure what to advise you to do with this."

"I'll figure it out," said Harry darkly. He could feel the burning in him change its focus. Now it was urgency, and not merely anger. He wanted that web unbound. It was going. Its very existence was intolerable to him, since it had acted against other people's wills and choices. "I'll have to think it through a bit, and probably stay in the Pensieve until I do, but I'll figure it out."

"Can I help?"

Harry started, and turned. Argutus was crawling towards him through the memory, twisting his head in interest to look up at the scared Ravenclaws. "I have been here before, but not with so many people," he announced, twining around Harry's left leg, his left hip, and then his left arm. "And this feels like something out of the past. This is not a natural place, is it?" He didn't sound offended, but fascinated.

Harry narrowed his eyes. "You can tell the difference between the present and the past?"

Argutus cocked his head to look back at his own milk-smooth scales. "And the future. I am an Omen snake, after all."

Harry stared hard at him, and saw colors swarming on the scales, dancing and trying to form a vision. He doubted that Argutus was old enough yet to tell him what they meant, so he waited, gazing at them and stroking Argutus's head. Snape waited with him, probably thinking he was conversing with Argutus on matters of deepest importance and needed to be left alone.

The colors altered fitfully, fretfully, and finally slammed into a maze of scarlet and gold, as if they'd found a form that suited them. Harry squinted, but still could not tell what shape the scarlet and gold might take. The Gryffindor lion, a Gryffindor banner? Was Argutus telling him that he needed the help of the Headmistress, or perhaps his twin? Or was he just trying to say that Harry would be involved in breaking a Gryffindor's spell?

That's the problem with Divination, Harry reflected in frustration, thinking of Trelawney's prophecy in his third year. Never enough details when you need them to really help with anything.

But if he could force no interpretation upon the hues, then he was at least free to let his mind roam and pick an association with them. Harry tried to slow his breathing, thinking of things that were red and gold. Gryffindor colors, leaves when they turned, fire—

Fawkes!

Harry clenched his hand, causing Argutus to hiss in displeasure as Harry quit petting him. "Argutus?" he asked, bending towards the Omen snake to give him the task before he could sulk. As long as he thought he was doing something important, Argutus would bustle. "Can you get out of the Pensieve and then bring the phoenix here, without alerting anyone to what you're doing?"

Argutus turned his head slyly sideways. "Of course I can," he said. "No one knows as many tunnels in the stone as I do. And he is asleep in your den at this time of the morning. But I don't know why I should. After all, you haven't spent much time lately with me, and I don't like the phoenix. He has the bad habit of shrinking and growing when he should stay the same size all the time."

Harry managed a smile, in spite of everything. Argutus wanted to be coaxed. In the midst of so much strangeness, a spell that had influenced most everyone Harry knew without their even being aware of it, it was good to find at least one being who acted normally.

"I'm sorry," he said. "You're the cleverest, dearest snake that ever was, Argutus. Your name means 'clear,' but it's more than that. You're a good omen all by yourself, never mind that you're an Omen snake. Your eyes see more clearly than anyone else's in the school. You discover all the really interesting things. But you've got courage, too, to survive those pain spells without a murmur of complaint, and nobody is as loyal as you are." He felt an inspiration strike him and sink its teeth into his brain. Argutus had been fascinated by the differences between the Houses—it was the reason he spent so much time wandering in the Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Gryffindor common rooms—and had insisted on hearing as much of the history of Hogwarts as Harry thought he could understand. "In fact, you're the perfect blend of all four Houses."

Argutus gave a quick little hiss Harry hadn't known he could utter; he supposed it was the closest a snake could come to a purr. "I go," he said, and slid down from Harry's arm in the direction of the "back" of the memory. Harry supposed he had got in in the first place by sliding over the Pensieve rim. "I cannot let you down, not when I am that cunning and clever and brave and loyal."

He slithered off, and Snape demanded at once, "Do you really think the Omen snake can help you, Harry?"

Harry let out a little breath. "His scales showed a vision of fire. I think Fawkes can help me, yes."

"Why?" Snape looked as if he were reconsidering ever showing Harry this. Harry knew why. Snape's eyes had spoken it all through the conversation in which he told Harry about Rovenan, and his part in killing him. There was a new kind of protectiveness to his gaze, a new hesitancy about involving Harry in efforts to cure evil or fight spells like this one. "Are you sure you aren't grasping at straws?"

"I might be," Harry admitted. "Not even the prophecies of an Omen snake are clear, after all, at least until he learns to interpret them. But Fawkes is those colors he was showing, and he was Dumbledore's phoenix. I think he knows his mind as well as anyone else alive. You said that the spell contains a large part of Dumbledore's own perception. I hope to be able to detangle what's him and what's the thoughts of the people I'm fighting for that way."

Snape's frown was deep. "That does not sound easy."

"It probably won't be." Harry kept his voice light.

"Why must you be the one to do this?" Snape whispered. "Lucius said that you would be, and he was right, damn him. But can you not rest, and hand the reins over to someone else? I might be able to solve the problem eventually, through dedicated study of Occlumency and Legilimency."

Harry gave him an incredulous look. "What with your duties as Potions Master and Head of Slytherin and Deputy Headmaster? No, sir. And the problem would grow worse in the meantime. I know your methods. With all due respect, sir, you would spend months on this, because you wouldn't want to do something wrong. Sometimes you simply have to say fuck caution."

"Spoken like a Gryffindor," said Snape, though his words lacked malice.

"Spoken like an angry vates," said Harry. "And there's the other part of your answer, sir. I have to do this because no one else can. Dumbledore might have the power, but he sure as fuck doesn't have the motivation."

"Does your language always get fouler when you are angry?" Snape asked.

"You mean you haven't noticed that by now, sir?" Harry prowled in circles, absently avoiding the Ravenclaws, who were clutching defensively at their left arms as Snape cut their sleeves off. "Yes, it does. And I am very angry. He had no right to do this. It isn't—it isn't even limited to the people I'm protecting." Harry shook his head, wondering how he could explain it. The explanation would both reassure Snape and enable Harry to put his thoughts into some kind of order, so he wanted to make the effort. "Everyone deserves that capacity to make their own choices, without being pushed in one direction or another. I know I can't stop some of the pushing, like parents telling their children to go to bed at a certain time or else, but no one should ever have to suffer from magical coercion. And some of them will make bad choices, like following Voldemort, but that's still what they decided on. But I can't just force freedom on people, because what if they don't want it? That's why I'm almost grateful to Dumbledore for handing me this. It's not like freeing house elves, where I'll have to talk wizards into agreeing." Harry grimaced slightly at the thought of what a nightmare that would be. "It's a clear-cut situation. I'm not changing their minds, just handing them back their capacity to make their own decisions."

"Why?" Snape whispered. Harry knew he wasn't asking why that was a good thing—how could he, when he bore the Dark Mark on his arm and had fought so long and hard to get free of what it meant?—but why Harry was so deeply committed to this, in particular.

Harry stretched out his hand, and let a shimmer of flame run up his arm. "I've got all this magic. What else would I use it for?"

Snape shook his head, eyes amused, and started to reply, but just then the air around them shone with subtle fire, and Fawkes arrived on Harry's shoulder with a croon. Argutus slithered through the common room a moment later.

"He flew ahead of me," said Argutus. "Tell him to stop doing that."

Harry stroked Fawkes's wing feathers, and ignored Snape's mutters about how the phoenix had come to be here. Harry thought Fawkes could go anywhere he wanted, and probably ignored what wizards thought of as "rules" in doing so. "I need your help," he said softly. "Dumbledore's extended a spell over England, Scotland, and Wales. I want to break it. It compels people to change their minds about me. The problem is that it's hard to tell where his mind begins and their thoughts end, and we can't do it outside the Pensieve, or we'll lose our memories. Can you help me?"

Fawkes uttered a deep sound Harry hadn't heard before, like the crash of falling waters. Then he rose from Harry's shoulder, hovering just above it, so that his tail feathers and no more brushed against the side of Harry's neck. He shut his eyes, and his song burst forth.

Harry had thought he'd heard all his friend's songs—the mourning one, the coaxing one that told other magical creatures of the coming of a new vates, the joyous one with which he sometimes greeted sunrise, the wild one that he'd sung as he flew above the Forbidden Forest. But this was a new one. It was barely a melody, since it combined so many different sounds. Harry could hear a mutter of voices, only some of them singing. They babbled and rushed past him, and then he found himself swept up in them.

The Pensieve memory tore and whirled away. Harry had only a moment to worry about whether that would mean he would lose his memories of the spell and what he was doing with it, because he found himself dancing through flames.

Pattern after pattern took fire, nets and rounds and wheels of it, spreading in every direction. Harry stared, and began to see the threads that were there before they burned, ash-black strands of thought and emotion and memory. Fawkes's voice ascended, and more and more of the webs exploded into white and gold and orange and blue.

No, there was only some blue, Harry realized abruptly. That was the color that expanded and throbbed on the most tangled web, the one that raced through and under everything else. Harry's eyes narrowed, and his heart began to beat to the same harsh rhythm as those flames did.

That's Dumbledore's web. Fawkes is marking it out for me, in the best way he knows how.

He felt a sharp tug on his left arm, and looked down to see Argutus coiling there, his weight deliberate. He lifted his head and extended his tongue to taste the scent of the fire, not looking at all put out. "I don't want to be left behind," he explained.

Harry was not at all sure that the snake would be able to keep up in this strange neverland of fire and Pensieve memory and phoenix song, but he wouldn't discourage him from coming, either. There had lately been enough discouragement of ambitions and choices and freedom. He rested his hand on the Omen snake and reached out towards the blue flames that marked Dumbledore's web.

At first, he didn't know what to do. If he put out the flames, then he might kill Dumbledore's influence over anyone else, but he might also permanently damage Dumbledore's mind. There was part of him that whispered that would be no bad thing. Who cared if the Light Lord was found drooling in his Still-Beetle confinement when they came to escort him to the trial?

But Harry did. He cared. He had not received Dumbledore's permission to damage his mind. He didn't need his permission to unbraid his influence, since that was something he had done that had hurt others. But Harry had no reason to bat him back into his own mind and wreck all that he was.

The key, as always, proved to be imagination. What Harry thought of the webs as, how he conceived them, was often as important as what he actually did to be rid of them. He closed his eyes, and located himself in Fawkes's song, the song of falling waters.

Water opposes fire, said a voice so old that it seemed to be a natural truth of the world, not one that Harry had located inside himself.

He thought of water. The sea at the Northumberland beach came to him, as perhaps it always would, first of all, the endless hush of waves and the expanses of stone-gray ocean. Then he imagined the siren's pool at Woodhouse, the lush, clear liquid, made, he was sure, to mimic the siren's natural environment. Then it was the lake at Hogwarts, shifting and cloudy, the weeds blossoming to hide the truths of the water and the dangers within it.

Water standing became water falling, rain singing down, the smell of dampness in the dungeons that always increased when a storm was in the offing. Rain was probably falling right now; Harry had seen a tinge of gray in the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall this morning. Rain was a part of autumn, of spring, of Britain and of Ireland, drizzle and wetness and sudden heaviness in clothing and limbs.

Water falling became water flowing, braids of rivers threading all over the islands, ending in the sea, or beginning in it, if one looked at it another way, breathing out union, breathing out connection, ripple and spread and link and drown.

Harry wound the imaginings together inside him, and then braided them up with the remnant of his anger. The Augurey's cry signaled rain, and there were several Augurey chicks who would never cry to herald a storm, thanks to their murder by the person posing as him. Harry imagined rain falling, lonely for the black-green bird's cry, and he imagined people daring to murder the chicks and publish the articles and believe them at all because of Dumbledore's spell, and he pushed the water out of himself.

He opened his eyes and saw the cascades twining down the web's burning strands, falling with imagined gravity and not against it—it was important that the image be as natural as possible—drowning the fire as it went. Fawkes's song wound between the waters all the while, thunderous as a cascade. This was a song of justice, of stern and regretted but necessary action. Fawkes did not like getting rid of his own flames, but in this case, the flames he was getting rid of were not natural, should not have been here, should have stayed safely ensconced in Dumbledore's head. Fire had to yield to the will of water.

Harry poured it all out of himself, and saw the strands cool and stop burning, turning to ash. He wondered what the thoughts of those under Dumbledore's spell would feel like at the moment. Would they experience a certain lightness, wondering where the weight on their emotions had gone? Or would they think of him and not know why? Or would they feel nothing at all until the web was snapped completely?

Harry leaned forward and breathed on the fragile, ashy strands of the web, expecting them to blow apart.

Nothing happened.

Harry frowned, and glanced up at Fawkes, wondering what he should do. The phoenix uttered a confused note, then went back to singing the song of stern justice so that the ash-web couldn't creep away and mingle with the others. But that warble was enough to confirm to Harry that the phoenix didn't know what he should do any more than he did.

He gnawed his lip for a moment, and tried to recall what he knew of Dumbledore. He must have pushed an enormous amount of his magic into this. He would have given all he had, heart and soul and mind. That had been why Fawkes could locate his influence at all, because so much of the Headmaster himself was present.

What was the heart of Dumbledore?

And then Harry knew. His smile wasn't happy as he stepped forward, gently shifting the weight of Argutus back to his shoulder. He didn't really like understanding the former Headmaster any more than he had liked understanding Voldemort. But he wasn't foolish enough to ignore his understanding, either.

The heart of Dumbledore was sacrifice.

Harry touched the stump of his left wrist to the ash-web.

He could feel the spell scream, rather than hear it, a low vibration that traveled through his body. Argutus gave a surprised hiss. "Did a tree fall?" he asked, but then became absorbed, as Harry was, in watching the web unravel.

It began from the inside and traced outward, following the general spiral shape. Numerous small strands, binding the spell's influence to the thoughts and emotions of many different people, puffed apart and were gone, dissipating into floating clouds of black dust. Harry watched as the larger structures slumped and melted into meaninglessness, and he felt joy throbbing in his chest like a second heartbeat.

And satisfied rage, too. Strange that the ending of the web doesn't seem to have ended my anger, Harry thought. Even stranger that I don't want it to. I want to find out who killed those magical creatures and make them pay.

The web whirled around once and blew away. Harry laughed, and looked down as he felt Argutus lift his head and test the air with a tongue.

"Do you do that all the time?" he asked.

"Quite a bit of the time," said Harry.

"I'm so glad that I chose you as a friend," said Argutus happily. "That was fascinating. I can't wait until the next time we get to do that."

Fawkes gave an indignant warble as he settled on Harry's shoulder, and in Harry's mind appeared a vision of the phoenix and Harry shining with light, while Argutus lounged behind them, a dim shadow. He had helped with dismissing Dumbledore's web, the vision said; Argutus had done absolutely nothing.

Harry stroked the phoenix and the Omen snake in turn, and then opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was the Pensieve memory around them, replaying, this time somewhere near the middle of Snape's battle with Rovenan. The second thing he saw was Snape staring at him.

There was an awe in his eyes that Harry didn't think he'd ever seen before. Of course, he thought, Snape had never been this close to the breaking of a web, while Draco had shared the freeing of the centaurs and the unicorns and the Many with him. And if he'd seen a tenth part of what Harry and Fawkes had done, Harry couldn't blame him for feeling awed. He was feeling rather smug and pleased himself.

"So that's gone," he said confidently.

Snape nodded, slowly. Then he straightened, as if thinking it remiss of a guardian to listen to what his charge said, and announced, "I rather think the Headmistress will cancel classes for today, to give people time to deal with the sudden change."

"Good," said Harry, with a shrug. "I think people need the recovery time. And I need to contact the Ministry, and the Daily Prophet." If Skeeter doesn't know who Argus Veritaserum is yet, I don't think she would be adverse to doing a little digging to find out.

Snape smirked for no reason Harry could discern, and nodded, and then they pulled their heads out of the Pensieve memory.

Harry gasped and blinked, before realizing that he had Fawkes on one shoulder and Argutus on the other, and the memories of the spell in his mind. He gave one hard smile and strode towards the door.

"Do not try to do too much," Snape called after him.

Harry glanced back over his shoulder. "I'm not. I'm just going to do what I need to do, and explain to certain people how very, very angry they've made me." He opened Snape's door and nodded crisply to his three guards. They all blinked at him, Draco not excepted. It seemed that they'd been expecting him to come out of Snape's office bleeding and vomiting.

Not now. Maybe not ever again. Obviously, this is like what happened when I didn't warn the Ravenclaws enough. People think they can push me. They're going to find out that binding people under webs and hurting magical creatures is just not on.

"Come on," he said. "I've got to go talk to the Headmistress." He strode snappily up the corridor towards the Great Hall.

Fawkes was crooning a sunrise song on his shoulder, and Argutus was telling him what web he thought they should break next. Harry felt his heart lift higher and higher. His anger grew talons and breathed more fire on the way.

This is going to be really damn fun.

Albus could not move. The Still-Beetle confinement would not allow him to. But he could shudder in his head as Harry snapped the spell and cast him back into the solitude of his own thoughts.

Harry had broken the web with the help of a phoenix and his own loss at Voldemort's hands—not the help of a single, human wizard, and without a reference to either Light or Dark magic, for all that a creature of the Light had aided him.

There was a vates abroad in the world, and Albus had only one more chance to stop him.

Albus could feel the first coming of regret towering above him like a storm in the North Sea.

He knew that wave after wave, of pain and horror and loss, would follow it.