Thank you for the reviews yesterday!
I don't have much to say about this chapter. It will have to speak for itself.
The title this time comes from Swinburne's "Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor."
Chapter Forty-Five: Spake As His Soul Bore WitnessHarry knew there were eyes on him. He would always be sensitive to that feeling, he thought, and the more because of his new change. Since he couldn't ease the staring with hiding and shrinking away, it would be harder to bear for a time.
He sat down at breakfast and ate his porridge. He knew people were murmuring rumors of the trial yesterday, and poking each other to go up and ask him questions about it. Harry ignored them. He knew the Daily Prophet had arrived, and from the way that people went quiet, the story on the front page must be about him. Harry ignored that. He kept his gaze on the porridge. The other Slytherins didn't bother him, though they gave him many puzzled glances, clearly unable to comprehend why he would be up this early when he didn't have to attend classes.
"Harry, you prat," Draco said from behind him, in a nasty tone. "You could have awakened me and told me that you were coming down to the Great Hall for breakfast." He dropped into the chair beside Harry's and glared at him, before helping himself moodily to a plate of sausages, as if to say that Harry could eat bland things, but he didn't have to.
Harry shrugged. "I couldn't sleep. I figured you would want to." He ate another spoonful of porridge.
Draco lowered his voice. "But you could have avoided all—this." He waved one hand to encompass the staring and the rustling and the whispering and the other signs of a bunch of people too interested in his business. "Didn't you want to do that?"
"I've got to get used to it sooner or later," said Harry quietly, and met Draco's eyes. "Since, after all, I don't plan to hide who I am any more."
The smile that spread across Draco's face at that was really quite frightening. Harry found himself eyeing it as cautiously as some of the Ravenclaws watched him. Draco leaned nearer and stared hard into his eyes, then turned away and went back to his sausages, now helped along by a generous goblet of pumpkin juice.
Harry stared at the back of his head, then shrugged and started eating again. He supposed he would get used to that in time, too, at least if Draco planned to do it on a regular basis.
"Potter."
Harry paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth. He knew that voice, but it wasn't one he'd expected to hear. He carefully set the spoon back in the bowl, and the bowl a good distance from his elbow, before turning around. Then he had to lean sideways, to stop Draco from going for his wand at once. Really, I'm not the only one who needs to make some changes. I know why he's overprotective of me right now, but he knows what I cursed her with.
"What do you want, Parsons?" he asked the Ravenclaw, who stood behind him, shielding herself with the Prophet as if paper would somehow protect her from powerful magic.
"I—I want to know if it's true," she said, and fluttered the paper at him, too rapidly for Harry to make out the headline or the photograph on the front page. Luckily, Margaret elaborated a moment later. "I want to know if you really are the Boy-Who-Lived, the one who bounced back the Killing Curse."
Harry rolled his eyes. Connor had come up to him yesterday evening and said he was sorry again, but wasn't that just like a Gryffindor, to blurt out something like that because he got angry? "Yes, I am," he said, and tried to return to his porridge.
"But that changes everything," Margaret told his back.
"Why?" Harry glanced over his shoulder, not trying to hide the dislike in his eyes. If she didn't know how he felt about her by now, she was truly mad. "Because you think the Boy-Who-Lived must be inherently of the Light?"
Margaret frowned. "Aren't you?"
"For Merlin's sake," said Harry. "You were the one who thought I was Dark, evil enough to curse, for getting your Headmaster in trouble. And now you're ready to reverse everything that you believed about me, for the sake of one article? Come off it." He took a bite of porridge, and then said out of the corner of his mouth, when he'd swallowed, "Draco, put your wand down."
"Just one hex," said Draco.
Harry shook his head. "She can't use magic against you anyway, and it's not fair, considering that other curse I put on her."
"But I want to," said Draco. He didn't have a dreamy expression on his face, only a determined one. Harry knew he might choose a pain curse, though Margaret hadn't done anything that awful to Harry himself; she'd hurt Argutus more. "And you want to," Draco added, causing Harry to reflect that this conscious effort to drop his mask and show more of his emotions wasn't always an unmitigated good.
"Put it down," said Harry. He spoke to Margaret without turning his head again. "I didn't defeat Voldemort because of any inherent Light I have. The decisions I've made between that night and now are what put me in Slytherin and made me into the person you said you despised. So, yes, it's true, but you don't have to let it change your mind. Think differently about me, think the same, I don't care. Just let me eat my breakfast in peace, Parsons."
Eat my breakfast in peace, and not think about having to be in the courtroom in an hour. They'll do the sentencing today, I think. There wasn't as much witness testimony to get through as I thought there would be, since no one testified for the defense.
Harry could feel his stomach dropping away from him as he thought about it. The Wizengamot had a good chance of sentencing at least his mother to death; whispers he'd heard yesterday and disregarded were rushing back to him now. The testimony's many interruptions and irregularities had all been of the kind that flowed against her.
Harry wondered for a moment what he could have done to save her, then shook his head. He knew one answer to that; the magic slumbering around him in shimmering waves could have changed their minds, yes. And he had already said that he wouldn't walk that path, that it would make him too much like Dumbledore.
I didn't know that I would still want to save her so much, he reflected dismally, as he bit into a scone. I hated her so much last night that I forgot I also love her.
"Harry?" Draco whispered into his ear. "Are you well? You're shaking."
Harry shook his head. "Not going to vomit," he murmured. "Just thinking about what they'll do to my parents." He wondered distantly if he should have been more concerned over James, but he was fairly certain James would survive. The crimes he was accused of were less pernicious, and when he'd asked Connor yesterday what James's testimony had been like, his brother's report eased his worries further. The Wizengamot would laugh at James and give him imprisonment in Tullianum. Harry had already learned yesterday, in the Room, that he could live with that.
"Are you sure you should go today?" Draco brought him back from his racing thoughts, with a gentle touch on his arm and a fierce look in his eyes.
"Yes," Harry whispered. "I do owe them a witnessing, Draco."
"Why?"
"Because I would owe anyone a witnessing," said Harry. "Imagine having your magic stripped from you alone, Draco, knowing that everyone in the audience hated you."
"But you hate them, too," said Draco.
"And love them."
Draco clamped his lips together, his nostrils flaring, and Harry remembered his reaction to that declaration last night. He wondered if they were going to have a row during breakfast. But Draco just nodded, in the end, and ate several pieces of sausage to relieve his feelings.
"Potter?"
Harry tensed his muscles to keep himself from startling. He'd had no idea that Margaret was still there, since she hadn't said anything. "Yes?" he asked mildly, refusing to face her.
"I hope your parents live." This time, Harry heard her walk away.
"Bloody bitch," Draco said, the insult the more vicious for being so soft, not less. "She probably means that she hopes they live to hurt you more. Bloody bitch. I hate her so much, Harry."
"Aren't you full of light and cheerfulness at the world this morning?" Harry asked, while his mind traced the outline of Margaret's words again. "And I don't think she meant that, or she would have said she hoped they went free. She may actually want them to live because she knows I would be upset if they died, Draco."
Upset…does not quite cover it. The thought of their deaths set Harry's world spinning dizzily on its axis. Harry covered it with short, thick bites of his scone, and a few swallows of pumpkin juice. The dizziness wasn't the kind that would cause him to be sick. Harry hoped.
"She doesn't," Draco insisted. "She can't mean you good."
"I stand by what I said about light and cheerfulness." Harry could feel himself creating a box again, to conceal his terror of what would happen. Carefully, he shut his eyes and stopped it. He made boxes clumsily now anyway, as he had seen yesterday. He didn't want this one bursting open in the middle of the trial.
But I can use a mask to conceal what I'm feeling just enough to let myself appear calm. And if I see a chance to do my parents good, then I'll take it. No magic, no compulsion at all, nothing that will hurt another person or me. But I don't know what the Wizengamot's decided, or how far along they might be towards sentencing. There may still be hope.
Harry wondered if he would feel this same painful sensation of standing on a precipice and not knowing whether a long drop or a gentle step lay below him before every major decision, before every battle.
If so, then that's what I'll have to feel. Harry shivered, and picked up his spoon again, while a cold wind seemed to speed along his skin. Maybe, if Vera or another Seer arrives soon, they can help me work through this. Realistically, though, Harry knew that his letter would take at least two weeks to reach the Sanctuary. He would have to cope on his own for some time.
I can do that. I meant what I decided. I'm not going back on any part of it. Harry hesitated as something else brushed against his mind. If I meant what I decided, then I should be able to take comfort from Draco. I don't think he would mind. Cautiously, he leaned towards Draco.
Draco was more than happy to wind an arm around his waist and attend to eating his breakfast with one hand. Harry sighed. The warmth of Draco's touch seemed to alleviate the dizziness, and let him eat more.
And I really do deserve this as much as anyone else? That was still a shy, fugitive thought, darting across his mind from one hiding place to another. I suppose I might. How strange.
Draco kept a close eye on Harry as they entered the Wizengamot's courtroom. Strong as Harry was, wonderful and marvelous as the changes he had made yesterday were, this was still the day that might see the death of his parents, or at least their imprisonment and the loss of magic from the one who still had it. Draco would have been more worried if Harry looked like an ice statue.
He didn't. Harry had bitten his lip raw already. His hand frequently closed into a fist, though Draco got him to open it by pretending that he needed to have his hair stroked. He lifted his head as if to peer over the heads of the people in front of them, though not even the full Wizengamot was there yet, and certainly not the prisoners.
"Draco. Harry."
Draco turned his head and met Snape's gaze. The professor had apparently stayed so late at the Ministry last night that he'd wound up sleeping there. His eyes were sharply alert, though, and he held himself like a coiling serpent. Draco could imagine that this day was as much a relief to him as it was a source of stress to Harry. At least the trial would end, and one of the two spells he'd launched into motion would have found its target. There remained Dumbledore's trial in March to deal with, but that was distant enough to allow Harry at least some peace.
And Snape some time to reconcile with him, which Draco knew was on his mind. No one outside Slytherin House would believe the way those dark eyes looked as they rested on Harry.
They narrowed, though, and Draco knew why. Snape would be examining Harry's eyes, his emotions, for traces of Occlumency pools, and not finding any. Harry had gone unshielded today.
Snape's eyes moved from Harry's face to his, and they bore a clear command. Draco nodded. "I'll be right back, Harry," he whispered, and then stood and followed his Head of House down the row of chairs and towards the doors of the courtrooms.
Snape leaned on the wall in the corridor outside and cast a Silencing Charm around them. "What has happened?" he demanded.
Draco smiled. He wondered if the professor had had any good news since the trial began. He doubted it. It felt better than he knew it should to be the bearer of that good news. "Harry faced himself in the Room of Requirement yesterday," he said simply. "He was able to say that he hated his parents, and he cried, and he made a commitment to facing the future with me." He paused to savor Snape's stunned expression, before finishing with the two pieces of news he knew would mean the most. "And he rejected his last and middle names, and he willingly called upon a Seer."
"What."
Snape didn't say the word as if he were disbelieving, but more as if he dared not hope this was true. Draco nodded. "No one suggested it to him," he said. "I certainly didn't. But he bears only his first name now. He despises his father too much to receive that legacy. And he doesn't want to go to the Sanctuary, but he did write to Vera, the Seer he met last year when you were—away—and asked her to write to him or come to Hogwarts."
"What happened to him?" Snape whispered.
"He really, really doesn't want to be like Dumbledore," said Draco, with a shrug. He at least understood Harry's goal of not ever using his magic to compel or hurt another person, though he thought it unrealistic and wished that Harry would spend his magic on himself a bit more. "The temptation to become that way scared him so much he was able to drag himself through some of his fears."
"I wish I had been there."
Snape's voice was pure longing for that one moment, a yearning that Draco had only heard in other voices before when someone discussed originating a spell or being close to the source of mighty magic. He understood it perfectly, though. If Snape had been the one to go with Harry yesterday, he would be feeling that same envy himself.
"He'll reconcile with you," he said softly. "He'll forgive you for this."
Snape grimaced. "I am not so sure," he murmured. "Not after yesterday."
"Professor Snape," said Draco, wondering at the strangeness of his taking a comforter's role to this man even as he did so, "he can forgive—that woman. I think he can forgive you. And if it takes some time to come, it'll just show that it's genuine, not the trained emotion that he feels for her."
Snape closed his eyes and said nothing for a long moment. Draco shook his head. You may not feel that you belong anywhere but with the family who bore you, Harry, but, Merlin, open your eyes. Snape would give everything he has to be your father. In a sense, he's already given up his invulnerability, his comfort, even his capacity for objective thought.
It was strange that he knew that without empathy, and it was strange that this was happening, and the strangeness thrummed in his blood. But Draco wasn't tempted to walk away from it. After the Room of Requirement, strangeness alone wasn't going to make him flinch.
Then Snape straightened with a snap, and all his masks came down again. "Thank you, Draco," he said coolly. "Did he say anything about what measures he is willing to let us take, if he becomes upset again?"
"A Calming Potion," said Draco. "Forced down his throat, if need be. But he gave that permission only to me." He couldn't quite help snapping the words. As Harry improved, other people might think they could approach him more freely, require things of him that he hadn't given so far. Draco was determined that some of those gifts would be his. His jealousy would be unfathomable to Harry, at least for a while. Draco didn't care. This was the way he was. "No sleeping potions, nor binding spells, nor removal from the room."
Snape gave a faint half-smile, and Draco wondered for a moment if he were seen as much as he saw. "Very well, then." The professor put a hand in his robe pocket, and Draco tensed out of instinct grown paranoid over Ravenclaws, but Snape merely handed over several blue vials. "This is all I carry at the moment."
Draco accepted them. "Thank you, sir," he said.
A movement, and a wave of people began to flow past them. Snape lifted his head, and his eyes grew more distant. "They finished the testimony yesterday," he said quietly. "There will be a summary of the case, after they bring in the prisoners, and then the Wizengamot votes on their fate."
"What do you think it will be, sir?" Draco asked. He knew what he thought, but Snape had seen far more of the testimony than he had.
Snape's mouth pulled into a thin line, and his eyes glittered with some emotion that, for Draco, had no name. "For James Potter? Stripping of his magic, and imprisonment for life in Tullianum." He shook his head. "For that woman? Execution."
Harry watched the Wizengamot members settle into place. Amelia Bones still led them, he saw. She had taken her place behind the questioner's desk, and watched the doors impatiently, as if longing for the moment when they could close them.
Harry glanced swiftly around. A great many people watched him, but none hovered on the edges of their chairs, the way he thought witnesses who had yet to bear their witness would. That meant—he thought it had to mean—that the testimony was done with. From the books he had read, he knew Madam Bones would speak for a few moments, reminding everyone of the major points from the case, before the vote started.
And it meant he had a chance.
Harry could feel his palm begin to sweat. That was all right. He controlled his face, and he doubted anyone had cast a spell that would let them smell his sweat, specifically, across this distance. And if they had? Could anyone really doubt that he was nervous, this morning?
He caught Connor's eye as he arrived. His brother smiled at him, a nervous look, but his eyes glinted with determination. Harry knew Connor wouldn't speak against whatever punishment the Wizengamot decided on—unless they released his parents, in which case he would probably be the first around the balcony railing to strike at Madam Bones. Harry had seen the expression on his face yesterday. It was Connor's "I am just barely restraining myself from violence" look.
And he only wears that when he's really, genuinely angry. I'll have to apologize for asking him to lie.
Draco touched his shoulder and his hair, then slid into place beside him. "Professor Snape says that the Aurors will bring your parents in just a few moments," he murmured. "Are you ready?"
"I bloody well hope so." And Harry did. His plan was a light, fragile thing, made of leaves, really, and anything could destroy it. If he didn't get to put it into play, which was entirely possible, then its failure might destroy him. He had to be ready for either occurrence.
He could feel Draco's odd look boring into the side of his face. He ignored that, in favor of watching the lower courtroom doors as they opened and the Aurors marched Lily and James Potter in.
James walked with his head bowed and his gaze fixed on the floor. Harry thought that he didn't fully understand what he'd got himself into, even now, and what a decision against him by the Wizengamot could mean. He felt a stirring of pity inside him for the man. He paused, then allowed it. He had expressed his contempt yesterday afternoon. This was a new day, what could be the last day of at least one of his parents' lives. He would treat it with the seriousness it deserved. If pity was the closest he could get to compassion for James, he would take it.
Lily walked with her head up, and turning from side to side. Several times, her eyes went to the area of the galleries where he'd sat yesterday. Harry was a good distance back from that now, though, with Draco planted slightly in front of him, and straining as if he'd like to be completely in front. If Lily felt disappointed at not finding him, she didn't show it. She merely looked ahead, and wore a bored expression as the Aurors bound her to the second prisoner's chair beside James.
"The spectators will stop talking," said Madam Bones, with a Sonorus charm enhancing her voice. Harry was amazed at how quickly the chattering stopped. Then he realized that most of the room was probably eager to see his parents sentenced, and clenched his hand into a fist.
Madam Bones remained silent for a moment herself, surveying the room regally, like an eagle from a mountaintop. Harry knew this was the best chance he would ever have. He stood.
"Madam Bones," he said clearly, ignoring Draco's hissed, "What are you doing?"
The questioner turned and looked at him, blinking a bit, as if he'd woken her from a dream of justice. "Mr. Potter—" she began.
"Not Potter, anymore." Harry shook his head. "I renounced my surname yesterday afternoon, Madam. Harry will do."
He heard chains rattle in the middle of the floor as James apparently jerked against his bonds. Harry didn't care. His attention was for Madam Bones, and what she might or might not allow him to do. She was frowning slightly, as if he had handed her a Firewhiskey when she wanted butterbeer.
"Harry, then," she said. "Surely you know that this is irregular. The time for witnesses to speak is past. I will summarize the case for the Wizengamot, and then will come the vote and the sentencing."
"I know that, Madam," said Harry, "but this whole trial has been irregular. I ask for your indulgence one more time." Draco tugged at his sleeve. Harry ignored him, and remained on his feet. His hand did slip when he tried to put it on his robes, so slick with sweat was it. Harry didn't let that show on his face.
As he'd hoped, the odd, formal way he spoke intrigued Madam Bones. She nodded to him.
"I would like to ask permission to speak one final defense of my parents," Harry said, making sure to project his voice to all parts of the courtroom, raising it louder and adding a touch of magic to it when the buzz from the shocked and the appalled and the amused nearly overrode his words. "I give you my word that I shall use no magic to influence the vote or the sentencing. I wish only to speak. I was not able to finish my own testimony yesterday, and then I was part of two witnesses' performances that I should not have been. I would like the opportunity to give my own speech, in full. If you and the Wizengamot will allow it, of course, Madam," Harry went on, turning back to Madam Bones.
Madam Bones seemed entirely at a loss for words. She opened her mouth, then shut it swiftly again, as if she didn't want to leave her jaw hanging open. And then she looked at the Wizengamot for guidance.
Harry's hopes climbed rapidly. His chances increased with every moment she didn't just refuse.
Draco tugged violently enough at him that Harry had to pay attention. "What are you doing?" he repeated. "Don't do this."
"I want to," said Harry gently. He wondered, afterwards, if it was the gentleness or the wording that made Draco stop, and sit up, and stare him full in the face, instead of just obliviously insisting that he was wrong and Draco right.
"Merlin and his demons, Harry," said Draco, which wasn't an oath that Harry had heard him use before. He breathed out in short huffs, and with each huff, one of his fingers let loose of the sleeve of Harry's robes. "All right."
Harry nodded, and looked back up at the front of the room. Madam Bones was speaking in heated whispers with someone who had leaned forward from his seat. Harry blinked when the man sat back again, and he realized it was Scrimgeour. Usually, he could sense the Minister's presence at once. He radiated power that had nothing to do with magic. This time, he had kept himself to the background.
In fact, why did he let Madam Bones take over at all? Yes, his moderating the trial might have been a conflict of interest, but everything else about this trial has been unfair and anything but disinterested.
Harry shook his head. Perhaps it was Scrimgeour's trust in him to do the right thing, a trust that seemed to have been restored now that he knew Harry wasn't the one who had used the compulsion spell.
"We will allow it," said Madam Bones, and Harry had more proof of that trust.
"Thank you, Madam." Harry inclined his head towards her, and towards the Wizengamot, and then made for the staircase that would take him down into the main courtroom. Draco probably did make a grab for his robes then; Harry didn't think he'd realized where he intended to stand. But Harry slipped past it, and made his way briskly forward.
He could feel his heartbeat, thin and chill, in his mouth. He felt the importance of the moment threaten to freeze him and make him unable to say anything.
But, no. I won't allow that. That would be the only disaster. This is a slim, fragile hope at best, and I might stammer and I might phrase things wrongly, and that would be all right. But not speaking at all, now that I have the chance, is indefensible.
He reached the bottom of the stairs, and found himself suddenly closer to both the man who had sired him and the woman who had borne him than he'd been for five months. Harry lifted his gaze and moved resolutely forward. He met their eyes, which was harder than deciding to speak for them in the first place.
James's eyes were haunted with warring emotions, dashing and colliding like stormclouds. Sometimes he looked worried, sometimes hopeful, sometimes upset, sometimes defeated. Harry wished the courageous emotions would win, but he doubted they could, at this point in James's life.
Lily's eyes held quiet satisfaction, and she nodded to him as he came to a stop next to James's chair. "That's it, Harry," she whispered. "I knew you would do this."
You didn't know a fucking thing, Harry thought, and held her eyes, and forced himself to remember yesterday, when she had encouraged him to break her chains. She wanted him to forget that she had tried to incite him against the court. She wanted to take credit for his decision to use only words today. Harry wouldn't let her.
His hatred howled at him. He pushed it gently away. He would no longer deny it, but it didn't have control of his life. Yesterday had been its day.
Today, he spoke out of love.
He turned and met Madam Bones's eyes. She shrugged. "You may as well go ahead, Mr.—Harry," she said, voice twisting oddly.
Harry nodded, and felt wind come rushing towards him and mantle him in cold wings. He was riding above the darkness on a thestral again, not knowing where he was going to land, not knowing how to stop, not knowing how to turn aside—
So you're alive, then? Good.
Harry pulled himself through the irony of the voice in his mind, which sounded a lot like Vera's, and reached for the words he needed.
"I was abused," he said quietly. "You know that now. You've heard the explanation of my mother's motives for doing so. I doubt you found them adequate." An explosion of snorts from the Wizengamot indicated that he'd been correct. "You've heard how my father didn't know of the abuse, and then ignored it and its consequences when he was made aware of it."
Harry heard tears gathering thickly in the back of his voice. He considered, then let them sound, but not pour down his face. He wouldn't try the equivalent of Connor's little trick in his testimony yesterday. He would, instead, show them what he was feeling, stripping off his mask and stepping into the world.
"I can feel hatred. I can allow that to myself. I can feel pain, and dread the road ahead, since it's going to take me so long to recover."
"Harry," Lily hissed out of the corner of her mouth. "Harry, what are you doing?"
"But I can also feel love," Harry continued. "There are moments in my parents' lives when none of this happened. Their abuse of me does not define them, though I think it's been allowed to do so, in this courtroom." A few of the Wizengamot members actually shuffled their feet at that. Interesting. So they know they're not objective, then, and they just didn't care. "You've heard part of the explanation for my mother's behavior, but not the whole of it. She made the decisions she did out of fear and a desire to belong. Albus Dumbledore told her when she was quite young, thirteen or fourteen, that she had a destiny, to carry the wizarding world into the future. My mother was a Muggleborn, and most of the students in school didn't accept her or were afraid of what it would mean to relate to her, during the first years of Voldemort's rise. She, and several other Muggleborn students, loved the idea of serving as sacrifices to rescue the wizarding world from itself, to keep it alive when Dumbledore convinced them no one else would. Think of it. Thirteen years old, and she could do what neither adults nor her pureblood classmates could. She was excited, of course."
"Harry, stop this," Lily whispered. "I knew what I was choosing. Do not try to blame Albus. He taught me ethics, not wound the rope around my brain that you are claiming. He did not abuse me."
"None of that excuses her," Harry said. "But it explains her.
"And my father… he was afraid. He told me the story himself of how he went slightly mad when hearing of how the Lestranges attacked and tortured Frank and Alice Longbottom. This was in the aftermath of the attack on us. He went after Bellatrix and Rodolphus and used Dark spells on them." No need to mention that it was an Unforgivable. He's not on trial for that. "He feared himself. He removed himself from Auror work the next day, and spent the next decade with us in Godric's Hollow behind isolation wards, growing steadily more and more fearful of the outside world. He didn't have the purpose that Lily and I did, to keep him going, and he didn't have my brother's innocent conviction that he, too, was destined to save the world. He thought he'd played some part in the saving, and failed badly.
"None of that excuses him. But it explains him.
"The saddest thing about all of this is the wreck of our lives." Harry tilted his head towards his parents. So I think of them, one last time and no more. "So many people we could have been, so many things we could have done, so many other roads we might have walked, broken and stripped away." He had to close his eyes for a moment to hold back the tears, remembering what Vera had said to him when she saw his soul, about how Harry valued the endless unfolding of possibilities for other people, so long as they did not infringe on the freedom of others. They could have grown out of themselves, become so much more, in such profusion of beauty, than they did. Yes, I mourn that, and always will. For them, and for Sirius, and for Peter, and for Dumbledore, and for me, for all the people we might have been.
"I'm in a position to recover, somewhat. I was a victim of abuse, and, as my brother said yesterday, managed to step out of it and break the webs that held me. I have people who will continue to help me heal. But all Lily and James Potter have is a mentor who sacrificed them as he did so much else, friends who have turned their backs on them in justified disgust, a son who hates them for not letting him make his own choices, and me."
Harry turned to face Lily and James. He had to. The motion of his speech, the spiral it was taking, required it. James just stared at him as if he had never seen him before. Lily's eyes were filled with tears, and she was shaking her head back and forth.
"Harry," she said. "You cannot—you cannot be free. You can't have broken all the webs. You will be a Dark Lord if you do."
Harry looked directly into her eyes, and answered her, and answered the staring, silent Wizengamot up above.
"I plead for them because I cannot help but plead for them, because they are living souls in the world who have no one else, and I love them. They have done harm, and they must be punished, and their healing is beyond my power. But I can ask that they be left alone, that the wreck of their lives not be ground into smaller pieces."
Harry glanced up again at the Wizengamot, over his shoulder. "And I can plead for myself. It was for my sake the charges were filed, that the case was brought like this against both my parents and Albus Dumbledore." Do you hear me, Snape? I understand, now, why you did it. Understanding is not forgiveness, but it may be a beginning of it. "A healing and a cleansing has begun in me with this trial. I can ask that it not be paired with sorrow as love and hatred are paired in my emotions with my parents. I ask for the Wizengamot to consider life in Tullianum for both of them. Abroad in the world, my parents can grind down other lives. Locked in one place, they can at least dwell with their own hearts, in their own silence, and rend and be rent no longer."
The silence that had fallen was more still than death, and so Harry thought the entire court heard Lily's reply to him. "Do you even know what you're asking for, Harry? Why are you doing this, if you're not going to ask for our freedom?"
Harry faced her again. The green eyes were the eyes of the woman who loved him, the woman who hated him, the woman who'd shared a secret and wonderful fate with him, the woman who had trained him in things that Harry now found so disgusting.
The woman who, more than any other, had made him what he was, but not what he might become.
"Because my own soul requires it," Harry answered.
He turned back to the Wizengamot. "I have nothing else to say. Thank you."
He climbed the staircase. His heartbeat sang in his ears, thin and high as the cry of a diving seabird. He fell limply into Draco's arms when he reached the top of the steps, but then clung like a starfish when he realized just who was holding him.
"Harry," Draco said into his ear, and no more.
Harry let himself be escorted back to his chair. He sat down, and leaned on Draco's shoulder, and didn't listen as Madam Bones summarized the case in a strained voice for the Wizengamot. He didn't listen, either, as the vote went through condemning Lily and James as guilty, and thus worthy of sentencing, not freedom. That, they had had no chance to avoid, with the evidence of their crimes everywhere and no one denying they had actually happened. Besides, not a single person voted for innocence, vaguely surprising Harry. He supposed Dumbledore's spell might have influenced the trial less than he originally thought.
And then came the sentencing.
"Speak your choice," said Madam Bones. "For James Potter, imprisonment in Tullianum without magic, or death. Madam Marchbanks."
"Tullianum," said Madam Marchbanks, and Madam Bones nodded, and her gaze moved on.
Harry closed his eyes, but relaxed when he realized that there were twenty-eight votes for Tullianum. The Wizengamot had fifty-one members. Even if the rest of them voted for death, there was no way that James would not be spared.
And then came the moment when Madam Bones said, "Lily Potter. The choices are imprisonment in Tullianum—she has already been stripped of her magic, thanks to events that we all saw yesterday—or death. Madam Marchbanks."
Harry looked into the face of the old witch, who was friends with the southern goblins, and had helped him free them and secure the London tunnels when he thought Voldemort's attack might fall there. She looked fierce.
"Death," she said.
Harry closed his eyes.
The next witch voted for life in Tullianum, and then the world altered and became unreal in Harry's consciousness. He couldn't feel his own breathing, but he could feel Draco's. He could hear the voices calling out their votes, but he shouldn't have been able to hear them at all, since his own heartbeat was so loud.
He counted. He had two lists, a ledger in his mind, and for each vote, a quill inked down a word on either side.
Ten for death, eight for Tullianum…
And then another for death, and two more for Tullianum, and what did that make?
"Tullianum," said another voice, and Harry panicked. He'd lost the count.
He could feel his breath speeding up, to the point of a panic attack. He felt Draco exclaim something softly, and then a vial was jostling at his lips, the sweet smell of a Calming Draught filling his nostrils. Harry gulped it, and then struggled against the serenity that spread over his thoughts. He had to think, damn it!
The doom went on spreading, voice by voice down the circle, and Harry did not know what was to happen, and he hung suspended over a knife's edge. Everything hurt—his eyes, as if he'd spent a month weeping; his throat, as though it were closing in on itself; his skin, as though it could hardly bear to have Draco's arms wrapped so tightly around him. The Calming Draught forced his muscles to relax against their will, and his mind not to speed so fast, but nothing could stop the Wizengamot members from speaking.
And then Madam Bones said, "Minister Scrimgeour."
Scrimgeour. Who hated his parents. Who hated abusers. Who had promised James that he would look over the charges again, and try to see if he couldn't get him charged with something more violent than neglect.
Harry found his eyes open without a notion of how he'd opened them. He was looking straight at Scrimgeour, who was looking straight back at him. Somehow, that did not surprise Harry.
Scrimgeour looked into his eyes for a moment that could not have been longer than a moment, because Madam Bones didn't get impatient and ask for his vote again. His eyes were yellow, one indication of Light pureblood heritage, and merciless and fathomless as an eagle's. Then he leaned nearer to Madam Bones, and he spoke. Harry saw his lips form the word as if in a dream.
"Tullianum," he said.
Madam Bones nodded, looking slightly dazed. "Lily Potter goes to Tullianum for life."
Harry felt himself sag back; the words had stolen all his own power to keep himself upright. He felt Draco's arms come around him, and pull him in tight, and he knew he was crying again. He had the urge to raise his hand and wipe at the tears. Merlin, he was so sick of crying.
But he couldn't, he truly couldn't this time. The moment was past, and he might have helped to save her life, and he was free, the last tie severed.
James tried not to fight when the Aurors stepped back into the courtroom. It would be all right, he told himself. There was still time for Harry—just Harry now, but the renunciation of a name didn't mean the renunciation of a family—to come leaping over the balcony railing and save him.
And then an Auror was undoing the shackles, and another pulling him to his feet, and James realized, realized, that he would not be saved this time, that there was no magical cure, no sudden reversal of fortune, to spare him the loss of his magic.
"No!" he screamed, and his magic rose, wandless, and lashed at the Aurors. They'd expected that, though, and one of them cast up a shield to defend his partner. That partner stepped up a moment later, James's brief fury done with, to clasp a collar around his neck with a murmured incantation. James knew the collars and the spell, both, from his time in the Aurors. It would bind his magic to his body permanently. It was only used as a prelude to a criminal's being led off to lose his magic entirely.
Truth struck him and exploded his mind.
"No!" he screamed again, and he might have fallen to the floor, and he might have struck someone, or kicked someone, but he didn't know, he didn't think, he couldn't think, his mind swimming in uttermost despair, inevitability—
Until the moment the Aurors brought him into the room with the artifact that would strip him of his magic, and there was no escape.
Lucius narrowed his eyes and gave a small shrug. It was not the outcome he had expected—nor, indeed, the outcome he had desired, since it now meant his spell on Lily Potter, the one that would insure she felt the few seconds of her death as a year of torture and pain, would not be allowed to come into play. But then, perhaps he should not have expected anything else, when they had a vates in the courtroom.
A vates who had just renounced his last name, apparently.
Would he like another one? Lucius thought, amused, but he knew better than to ask the question now. He rose and held out his arm to his wife, who accepted it with grace. Her red gown rustled around her.
"Pleasant not to have to declare blood-feud on anyone for a wrong verdict, isn't it, my dear?" he murmured, as he guided her towards the doors.
Narcissa tilted back so that her head rested on his shoulder, her eyes bright with half a dozen emotions Lucius did not often see there. But her answer was purely herself. "Of course it is. You know that the Wizengamot only made the decision that it did because of me, I hope, and their fear of being on the wrong end of my wand."
Lucius laughed aloud, a sound that caused most of the people in the nearby galleries to turn around and stare at him. He did not care. Those people were not married to his wife.
Indigena Yaxley rose slowly to her feet, her eyes narrowed and thoughtful.
Well. The Dark Lord wanted me to see this and report anything interesting to him. I shall have more than merely interesting things to report.
She worked her way down the stairs, pausing patiently when others forced themselves past her. She wasn't in a hurry to go anywhere. And the constant pauses allowed her to gaze her fill on—Harry? Lord Harry? She was not sure what to call him, even in her head.
He had spoken as his own soul required him to. Indigena did not doubt it for a moment. She had caught a glimpse of that soul through his words, and she knew what she would be facing.
She would never change her allegiance. Her nephew had done that, hiding from what the Dark Mark on his arm meant, and had required her to answer his debt of honor by adopting the allegiance herself. A true Yaxley did not waver, did not turn, never forsook honor and never forsook pride.
But she did regret that it could not have been different, that she could not walk up to—Harry now, and offer him a simple oath. He was a leader that she would be proud to have served, someone for whom she would willingly have left her greenhouses and her gardens.
I regret it, my lord. Indeed, I do. And I look forward to meeting you on the battlefield. That we may share the bond of honorable enemies is something to hope for.
It was a regret. She was still allowed those.
Lily was sure there was some mistake, when she was escorted from the holding cell they had given her down into one of a row of little rooms, all the same, all carved out of the rock. She had a bed, and a small loo, and a table where food would appear three times a day. There was nothing else, but there did not need to be. Harry could not have meant what he said, or the world would already be shaking in fear of a second Voldemort. It was a feint, to fool the Wizengamot. He would be along any moment, to free her and run away into the darkness with her, to go back to Godric's Hollow and renew his training.
Lily did not see a reason to fear, when the enchanted lights in her room went off and Harry had not come. Of course he would come at night. The darkness should be literal, the better to hide them.
Lily did not lose hope, when she woke and Harry was not there yet. All the cells in Tullianum looked alike. He would need to search for her, past steel doors and carved gray walls, all the same.
Lily felt a faint tremor of disquiet, when she had sat on her bed in silence for hours—there was nothing to do in the cell—and still Harry did not appear. But, of course, he would need to wait until no one suspected he might move. The ones who claimed to love him, but had not molded him like she had, would be watching him too closely right now. He would come when he could.
Lily had to bite her lip to keep from crying, when the lights went out again and she was reminded that Harry's magic was powerful enough to have let him do anything he wanted about the people, the doors, the bars, the walls, holding him back from her.
Lily woke in the darkness that second night, and began to understand.