This would qualify as the hurt/comfort chapter, I think. I so hope it is not soppy.

Chapter Forty-Seven: A Port in the Storm

Harry settled down with Vera in a small room on the sixth floor, furnished with thickly cushioned chairs—white, Harry wasn't surprised to see, not after his glimpse of the Sanctuary in Peter's mind last year—and with a fire blazing in a hearth larger than even the one in the hospital wing. Harry eyed the chairs cautiously. The wood appeared to have whorls of red in it. He didn't think that kind of wood was ever used for chairs at Hogwarts.

He glanced at Vera, who simply smiled. "We bring a bit of the Sanctuary with us when we come to stay somewhere, Harry," she said quietly. "And yes, I did clear this with your Headmistress. I could do nothing else, not when I hope to be by your side for a few months."

A few months? Harry blinked. He hadn't planned on that. He had planned on one of the Seers writing him, actually, with comfortably long gaps between the letters. He swallowed, and said, "I thought that Seers grew inundated with the sight of other souls, and had to retreat to the Sanctuary every once in a while?"

"And that is why I shall be here until my gift gets the better of me," Vera said. "But it will be some time before that happens, and I have long wanted to help you, Harry." Her face grew brilliant with an expression that wasn't really a smile. "You do not know how pleased I was when you wrote to me, and with no sign that someone else was forcing you to set quill to parchment."

Harry swallowed a few times. He could do this. Just because it was going to be harder than he'd expected was no reason to abandon it. And he had made the decision on his own. That was important. It was not like the decision to bring his parents to trial or face Voldemort, which, important as they had turned out to be, had their ultimate origin in other people's choices. This was born of his confrontation with himself in the Room of Requirement. He had to take an active part in his own healing, or it was foredoomed to fail.

And how many horrible things had he faced and fought his way through before?

"Did someone force you to write to me, Harry?" Vera's voice was still soft, but tight now with anger. "If someone did—"

Harry lifted his head and shook it. "No. I did that on my own. And I'm ready to face what you have to tell me."

Vera nodded, the brilliant look appearing again. She leaned forward. Harry tensed instinctively, but she was too far away from him to cup his face, though it looked as if she would have liked to.

"You will not be surprised," she murmured, "to learn that you don't really regard yourself as human, not yet. That is one of the things you must learn."

Harry huffed and crossed his arms. "I thought I had made more progress than that. I don't think of myself as less important than other people any more."

"Your first thoughts are still of them, Harry."

"And is that a bad thing?" Harry frowned as he thought of the short-sighted selfishness that had prompted the Ravenclaws' actions against him, that had prompted Connor's behavior in first year, that had made James into the kind of man he was, along with cowardice. "So many people think of themselves first. I might be a bit less selfish than most, but—"

"You know that it can hurt you," said Vera softly. "More, it can hurt others. What happens if you take a curse for someone else and die in battle, Harry? What will happen to those who follow you, honor you, love you?"

Harry could feel his frown growing more pronounced. They shouldn't fight on one side of the war just because of a person. That's like the Light families only fighting because Dumbledore led them, not because they think Voldemort's an evil person or his ideals are wrong. I'll have to show them that the ideals I represent are worth struggling for all on their own.

"What happens to your bond with your Malfoy if you do things only to please him?" Vera asked.

Harry's face burned. Somehow, in the noble, high-minded moment when he had decided to contact Vera, he had forgotten that this would inevitably lead to discussion of Draco, and the physical pleasure that Draco was so eager to share with him. "He wouldn't like it," he admitted, once he saw that Vera was waiting for an answer and his embarrassment wouldn't save him. "He's said more than once that he wants me to reach out to him because I want to."

Vera nodded. "So that is another thing you must learn to do. I think that learning to regard yourself as human and fallible comes first. But a good bit of selfishness would not go amiss. Listen to your own thoughts, the ones you ordinarily try to dismiss, the whims and momentary ideas."

"You sound like Madam Shiverwood," Harry complained.

"The woman who first tried to make you think about your abuse?" Vera cocked her head thoughtfully. "Well, I do not think it is necessary to make you regard the trial in any particular way. You have taken care of that very thoroughly on your own. You have spoken for your parents—I can see the cut that made on your soul—and that is all you owe them. But you must still deal with the legacy they have inflicted on you."

Harry squirmed, keeping his eyes on his hand, which was clenched in a fist on his knee. "I meant that she wanted me to indulge my whims and do something pleasurable for myself once a day."

"I do not think that is terrible advice, though too limited," said Vera calmly. "You disagree?"

"I just—" Harry wondered if he should phrase the idea differently, then decided that the phrasing was probably exactly the kind of thing Vera needed to hear. "I just don't see the point," he said. "They're small things. Fleeting things. Whims, the way you and she both spoke of them. What good will it do if I decide to go flying for an hour one day? I might want to go flying, but I couldn't abandon the Charms essay I'm working on, or the political letter I have to write, for the sake of indulging myself. They're small. They don't matter."

"And if someone else wanted to go flying?" Vera asked. "Someone who had been through a trial—not a literal one, mind you, but a period of difficulty?" Harry's mind skipped to Edith Bulstrode. "Would you think it was unimportant, if you believed it would aid their healing?"

"Of course not!" Harry exclaimed.

"And what if this would aid your own healing, Harry?"

"This is one of those places where you think I don't regard myself as human, isn't it," said Harry flatly.

"Isn't it?" Vera turned the question back on him.

"I just—" Harry leaned his head back on the chair and scowled at the ceiling. Instead of turning aside into the answers his training provided him, he tried to make himself ask the question head-on. Why should it be so different for him? If Edith could go flying because she wanted to, and it would help ease the lash-marks on her soul, why shouldn't he be able to do the same?

He did have an answer in a moment, one he didn't think Vera could refute. "Because I have responsibilities," he said softly. "I don't believe that I can do everything that needs to be done in a day and then push aside the rest until some unspecified time while I enjoy myself. Free time is just a myth."

"For you," said Vera.

But not for other people. Harry wished she would stop doing that. Now his mind was coming up with the answers on its own.

"I'm a leader," said Harry. "People told me that I needed to accept that for so long, and I finally have. I'm vates, and I need to be a war leader, and I suppose I'm a political leader, too." He made a face as he thought about it. He understood the pureblood dances, but so many of those were based on manners, or reciprocal gifts, or strength of magic—all things that his training had prepared him to deal with and accept as good standards for judgment. Politics seemed to be based mostly on people indulging their greed for more money and power, an impulse Harry couldn't comprehend, and feeding their ridiculous prejudices, something he was determined to stop. "So doesn't that mean that I should spend as much time as I can fulfilling my responsibilities?"

"As much time as you can? Perhaps. But do you really think that someone like Rufus Scrimgeour spends all his time working in politics alone, Harry, with never a moment for indulgence or himself?"

Harry was feeling decidedly cranky by this point. He was probably going to have some sort of revelation any moment, and he didn't like them. They hurt. "He sleeps, of course," he said shortly. "And I think he has a tea moment in the mornings that's not to be interrupted. And he's not married, but he probably doesn't scrabble among paperwork all the time."

"Then why can't you do the same?" Vera again cocked her head, like a bird eyeing a crumb it was about to peck up. "Do what you must, do what you can, do what opportunity presses you to do in the arena of politics, but then turn back and take some time for yourself. Fly, spend time with your Malfoy…" A moment later, she trailed off with a sigh. "That is another thing you will need to do, Harry. Find pleasures that do not involve protecting and saving people."

"Learn to be selfish," said Harry.

Vera nodded. "And now, I asked you a question. Why can't you do the same?"

Harry hunched his shoulders. He hated the answer he was going to give. He knew it wasn't an adequate answer. But he didn't think that he had another one right now. "It's just different for me, that's all."

"And why is that?"

"You're not going to give up, are you?" Harry asked her, with a sharp glance.

"No," Vera agreed peaceably.

Harry sighed. "Because my mother trained me to think of myself as different," he said. "As someone who didn't need as much as other people—as much pleasure, as much human contact, as much sleep, as much freedom from pain. And I know that's the answer, but I can't help thinking she was right in this much, most of the time. I mean, I can do this. Why shouldn't I?"

"And you know the answer to that, too, where you would not have a year ago," Vera murmured.

Harry clenched his hand. "Yes," he said. "Because I deserve as much indulgence as anyone else."

"I would call it a normal life, rather than indulgence," said Vera softly. "Not being struck with pain curses seems normal to me, Harry. Tending to your own wants and needs seems normal. Balancing your intense devotion to the freedom of others with devotion to your own freedom is, perhaps, not normal, because most people carry a devotion only to their own freedom, but still something a vates should do. Unless you truly believe that a vates need not see himself as clearly as he sees others?"

"No," Harry whispered. "I do."

Vera made an abrupt, though still soft, noise of understanding. "Ah. That is what may be hindering you. I have not seen your soul in a year, Harry, and there are many changes to absorb. Until this moment, I was not sure how one new realization fitted in with the rest." She raised a hand and moved it through the air, as if she were trying to maneuver a piece of an invisible puzzle into place. "Your training in resistance to pleasure."

"I know that I have that," Harry said defensively. "I'm working with Draco to overcome it."

"Not just the pleasure of touch and human contact," said Vera calmly. "Your mother conditioned you against all sorts of things." She was still staring intently at the invisible puzzle. "The appreciation of the sweet taste of food. I suspect that may be one reason that you do not care that much about your meals, and can see eating only as fuel for your body, so that you may do more things for others. Does everything truly taste bland to you?"

"Not bland," said Harry. "But I like porridge as well as anything else. It's nourishing. It's always on the table. I might as well eat it."

Vera nodded. "And you do not think of sleep as a pleasure and a comfort, either, nor warmth. Thus you can ignore the need to rest in favor of doing something more—" She paused, and Harry was reminded of Snape reading his thoughts with Legilimency, though there was no sensation of someone else moving about in his mind. "Productive, I think, is the word you use. And you can stand in the cold rain, as you were on the Tower, without a thought of getting sick."

"I could always use a warming charm," Harry suggested. "I am a wizard."

"But you did not."

"I didn't think of it."

"You must learn to think of it," said Vera softly. "This is connected to learning to think of yourself as human, Harry, not different from it. It may be even more urgent. You are well used to conducting intellectual debates on the rights of others, and you can learn to apply that kind of thinking to yourself. But you accept pleasure as something inherent to other people. The right of someone else to eat chocolate and appreciate it is not something that even enters your head as a subject of debate. On the same note, you accept it as something separate from yourself. It would not enter your head to work to overcome that, either." She looked directly into Harry's eyes. "You have said that you are working on overcoming your fear of touch with your Malfoy. Did you start doing that for his sake, or yours?"

Harry squeezed his eyes shut. Merlin, Draco would kill me if he knew. But Draco wasn't here right now, and Harry was almost certain Vera already knew the answer to this."His," he whispered.

"That will not do, Harry," Vera said. "If he ever found out, it would devastate him. Granted, I have not seen his soul in a year, either, but I glimpsed him last Halloween. He was obsessed with equality then. He does not want to leave you behind, and he does not want to be left behind, either. He wants your bond to be as pleasurable for you as it is for him, a source of comfort and strength—and not because you are doing what he wants with something that you don't care that much about, your body. Try to learn to want this for its own sake, for your own sake."

"I am trying!" Harry opened his eyes and glared at her. "I am."

"And what happens then?"

"I panic and pull away from him as quickly as I can." Harry felt his cheeks burn again, but it was as much anger as embarrassment—anger mostly at himself, truth be told. "It feels too good. And what kind of a stupid idea is that to have?"

Vera shook her head. "That is another thing you cannot do, because you have done too much of it," she said. "Condemning yourself for trained reactions. Learn to see yourself clearly, Harry. Never stop pushing. You have grabbed hold of that lesson, or you would not have contacted me. But also know when to rest from pushing. Do not try to do too much at once. Remind yourself that this is a long road to walk, and the end may not be in sight for a time."

"I can live with not being like everyone else for a long time," said Harry, shifting restlessly. "I did it for years, after all. But I don't think Draco should have to live with it."

"Have you asked him how he feels about that?" said Vera. "I know he is more impatient than you are, but have you asked him?"

"Um. No."

"Well, then," said Vera. "I think that should be your first task, Harry, before we speak again. Talk to him honestly. Learn what he wants, instead of waiting for him to show you or simply assuming it from his reactions."

"I can do it," Harry said, now looking down at his feet. "But it sounds so stupid to say it out loud."

Vera didn't reply, and when Harry chanced a glance up at her, he found that she was smiling, eyes shining with something that might have been recollection.

"I think you will find, Harry," she said, "that even fifteen-year-old boys are more than willing to speak on the subject matter of what they want, when you ask them."

Harry felt himself blush again. Vera stood from her chair and held out her hand to him.

"Have patience," she murmured. "With me, with him, with yourself. That last most of all. I will be here when you wish to speak with me again."

"It won't be boring for you to just stay in Hogwarts?" Harry scrutinized her face.

"Your Headmistress has a very interesting soul," said Vera happily. "So does the woman who is part dragon. Talking with them alone can take up a good deal of my time. And you should worry about yourself first." She stooped and gave him a kiss on the forehead. "Speak with him when you are ready. Take these two days to rest, to sleep, to dream, to do what you must. You deserve a rest before the next push."

Harry nodded, and then left the room, stretching and flexing his shoulders as if he had wings. He felt a bit lighter, though he couldn't account for that. Perhaps it was his clothes finally drying from the rain.

"Here I am, Harry."

At least Harry wasn't writing letters when Regulus surprised him this time, because he had promised himself he wouldn't write any today. He was sitting on the bank of the lake, eyes closed and head leaning on a tree. Snape had obviously told Regulus where to find him, since Harry had set up a small charm to make people casually glance elsewhere. He didn't want any reporters interviewing him about being the Boy-Who-Lived this weekend.

"Regulus." He opened his eyes and smiled, standing with a stretch. He held out his hand, but was clasped and pulled into an embrace. Oh, well. I suspected that would happen.

"Are you all right?" Regulus murmured into his ear, his hands roughly massing his spine. Harry wriggled back into the sensation instead of hunching his shoulders as was his instinctive response, and reflected wistfully that sometimes, yes, it really might be nice to have two hands. Then one could do things like Regulus was doing.

"Yes," said Harry. He received a snort and a sharp look of disbelief, and gave in. "Oh, all right, not completely. That's one reason I wanted to talk to you. I know I said I didn't want to talk about inheritances and bloodlines and things like that, and I still don't want to talk about being Black heir," he added warningly, as Regulus's face brightened like a firework. "But I did remember Narcissa telling me once that Silver-Mirror was the most peaceful of the Black houses. Is that true? Because I think I'd like to see it. I'd like to go somewhere soothing." Hogwarts was not that at the moment, with stares continually following him.

Regulus's face moved into a smug smile. "Of course, Harry. And I'm very glad that you're seeing the place where you might go for holidays in the future." He held up one hand and laughed when Harry glared at him. "Just kidding. Let's get beyond the wards, and I'll Side-Along Apparate you."

Harry nodded, and started to follow him, only to pause when he realized Regulus showed no sign of letting him go, but wanted to walk with an arm around his shoulders. Uneasily, Harry came up beside him and walked there.

Why are you uneasy? he thought, almost a ritual now after his talk with Vera last night. He had asked himself the same question when he woke this morning and immediately thought he should stop wasting time and get out of bed, and when he found himself avoiding foods he knew were sweet and savory for bland ones.

In this case, the answer was relatively simple. I don't think he likes touching me. Why should he? I'm just me, not a child related to him by blood.

Harry sighed and reminded himself that he knew the answer to the answer. He loves me. There's no rational reason for it that I know yet, but I know it's true. And he seems to love me just the way I am, without demanding that I become Black heir to satisfy him.

It was very strange. Harry knew that he still did best with conditional love, not unconditional. But he made some effort to relax, and by the time he and Regulus got beyond the wards, he no longer felt as though the arm around his shoulders were a burden too heavy to carry.

Regulus drew him towards him once they were near Hogsmeade, and they Apparated. This time, the jump felt even longer than it had to Cobley-by-the-Sea. Harry wondered where they were going.

He found out when they appeared inside a shining place. Harry tilted his head back, staring. It looked as though they were at the center of a giant mirror, which he supposed was only appropriate, given the name of the place. But this was golden, not silver.

They stood on an immense round floor, beneath an immense round ceiling, in the center of which a single pool of golden light shone, like sunbeams continually gathered and given out again. Harry could see other colors moving in the pool—it wasn't as bright as the sun, though he had afterimages dancing in front of his eyes when he looked away—but they always melted back into gold, into rich shades of life and light. No drops appeared to fall from the pool, except along slender chains that led to lamps on the walls. They would inch down, fill in the lamps and glimmer through the casings of what looked to Harry like dragonbone, and then inch back to the pool. Thus, under the dominant effect of the shifting pool, other radiances came slowly to life and as slowly died, and strange shadows sprang up and then descended again.

He traced his glance down the walls at last, but couldn't tell what they were made of; the light danced on them in a way that might have fit metal, or wood, or stone. They were crowded with numerous paintings, though. Harry took a step forward, staring at a landscape of trees he had never seen before. Their leaves were silver-blue, and they rippled in a wind that seemed to blow on Harry's face as he stood in front of the picture. Startled, he blinked.

"Welcome to Silver-Mirror, Harry," Regulus said softly. "Though it could just as well be called Golden-Mirror, really." He nodded at the paintings around the walls. "This is the place where the Blacks keep our most intensely magical possessions. They're not weapons, but they are works of art."

"What do they do?" Harry whispered. He had no doubt the pictures were wizarding portraits, but he had never seen as many without people before, and usually they depicted places more realistic and ordinary than these seemed to. He could see, besides the forest one that kept drawing his attention, one that showed a road seemingly made of starlight running under a dark sky, and one that came out on a high mountain ledge with a blue crystalline door to the side, and one that showed a sea made of fire, like a more violent version of the golden pool above their heads.

Regulus said nothing, but he was grinning when Harry looked over his shoulder. "Touch one and find out," he invited.

Harry eyed his grin—it looked like the kind the Weasley twins used when they got up to an especially good prank—but he faced the forest one and stretched out his hand.

The sensation of wind grew stronger as he reached for it, and then he felt enveloped, as though he had stumbled over a cliff into a long drop. But there was cool earth beneath his feet, and a murmur of leaves over his head, and sweet air singing in his ears.

Harry lifted his head and stared in disbelief. He was beneath the silver-blue trees, which were revealed as giants, standing many times higher than his own head, their bark silver with swirling white patterns. The air around him was fresher than any he had ever smelled, even on the Northumberland beach at Midsummer. The grass was actually moss, which gave beneath his feet with a sighing musical sound and a scent like strawberries.

I don't believe this, Harry thought, in a daze.

He turned his head, to see a picture on the trunk of the tree directly behind him. It gave a confused golden glimpse of Silver-Mirror, which Harry thought he wouldn't have known how to make out if he hadn't been there before. Regulus's head was in the middle of it, grinning madly.

"Wonderful, isn't it?" he asked.

Harry looked up at the trees around him again. This time, he could see things moving in the branches, as graceful and quick as monkeys, but with what looked like five legs. "What is this?" he whispered.

Regulus heard him, luckily, and answered. "Doors to other worlds," he said. "We think. One of my ancestors, Neptune Black, painted them. We don't know for certain if he made them up, or if he just had dreams of real other places and painted them. I think they're real, though, because another of my ancestors found the artifact that Silver-Mirror is named for in one of them and brought it out. Old Neptune can't have dreamed everything."

"I have to admit," said Harry, tilting his head back as he heard a song falling in the distance like chiming crystal, "I don't know why the Blacks haven't become filthy rich bringing out artifacts from these other worlds."

"It doesn't work like that," said Regulus softly. "Either Neptune didn't want it to work like that, or it was something inherent in his gift. You can only go into one of these portraits for an artistic or healing or protective motive. You could go to find a weapon that would let you help others, for example, but not a jeweled sword that you could sell for hundreds of Galleons. If you try to come here with a selfish motive, it's just a pretty picture."

Harry nodded slowly; he could see some of the drawbacks. "And of course you might not find what you were looking for in one picture, and you'd have to spend a lot of time searching all of them."

Regulus made a little sound of agreement. "There are a few closely guarded secrets about some of the portraits, about what they lead to—maps of their worlds. I can't reveal those even to you until you agree to become Black heir, thanks to the magic in them." He happily ignored Harry's mutter about "if I become Black heir." "But they're a wonderful heritage for someone like you, Harry. I know you would appreciate them."

Harry felt a twinge in his chest, something shifting in his head. He thought he was having an idea, but he couldn't make out the dimensions of it as yet. He asked slowly, "Can you send someone else into a picture?"

Regulus had his brows arched when Harry looked at him again. "Yes, you can. But you'd have to be pretty cunning to convince them to just go. Most wizards can sense the danger in a picture like this instinctively. And once someone outside the picture turns it to face the wall, that person can't come back again."

Harry snorted lightly. "So there goes my great plan for capturing Voldemort," he said, but he tucked the idea into a corner of his brain. It might yet be useful.

Regulus grinned ruefully. "Yes. I told him all about these pictures when I was still a Death Eater. It's one reason he wanted to take Silver-Mirror, why he was happy to have the Black heir as part of his entourage. He thought he could at least arrange to sell the pictures to raise money for his Death Eaters." He extended a hand through the frame. "Ready to come back now?"

Harry took his hand, and once again stepped into what felt like a fall. But then he was standing on the floor of the circular room again.

"How many pictures are there?" he asked.

"An even thirteen," said Regulus happily. "One each for the thirteen blazing dreams Neptune Black had throughout his life. I can't wait until you do accept your inheritance, Harry. Then I can tell you all about the one that I think might be most—" Abruptly, his face paled, and he put one hand over his heart. Harry took a step towards him, his own heartbeat quickening in fear, but Regulus stood back up and shook his head wryly. "I'm fine," he reassured Harry. "Just came too close to a secret the magic doesn't want me to share until you're actually confirmed."

Harry frowned. "That's strange, you know. I don't think James's inheritance ever did that to him with Lux Aeterna." He was proud of himself, to find that he could say James's name without trembling. But why should he tremble? The man was nothing to him now, certainly not his father. "It did just what he wanted, in fact. The wards kept out anyone he didn't like."

Regulus snorted. "That's because the damn thing's a linchpin. Light wizards and their linchpins!"

Harry narrowed his eyes. He had known that most Dark families didn't use linchpins, but he had assumed the operation of their inheritance magic wasn't that different. Obviously, he'd been wrong. He knew more about magical than blood heirs, and more about sheer formal customs of inheritance, such as the acknowledgement festivals held for magical heirs, then either. Information about just how exactly Dark purebloods transferred property and money down the family line wasn't easy to come by for someone born outside their circles, even Lily Potter or Dumbledore, while many dances were a matter of public record. "So the Black houses aren't linked to the earth?"

Regulus shook his head. "Each inheritance is linked to a person. It's a subtle difference to most people, I grant you, but real. That's why it was so important that Sirius—" His voice faltered on his brother's name, then became brisk once more. "That Sirius have a spell designating him the Black heir," he finished. "If he'd left it alone, the properties would still have belonged to me, since technically I was still alive. And if I had been dead, and Sirius hadn't cast certain specific magic, then the inheritance would have gone to Bellatrix—not in common to Bellatrix and her sisters. That was part of the purpose of the pureblood dances, you know, to sound out who was best suited to be heir. It was the eldest child most of the time, since they'd have longer to train and prove themselves worthy before their parents died, but not always. Most Dark pureblood inheritances are bound to a person, and they'll have conditions that can be changed—like the openness of the wards—and ones that can't—like the charms locking my lips shut about those damn maps to anyone other than my heir."

Harry stared at him, fascinated. "But then shouldn't Narcissa have been unable to remove the weapons from the Black houses that she did?"

Regulus shrugged. "No. My ancestors considered old Neptune's pictures the most valuable things the Blacks owned. There are protective charms on them, and on the vaults and the houses, but not on a lot of the other minor treasures we have. The current owner would have to specify, with rituals, that certain things could pass only to his heir if he really wanted to guard them. Sirius never thought he would have to, of course. As it was, since Narcissa could get in through the wards, and she was of Black blood, she could take almost anything she wanted."

"Could a Light family's inheritance be linked to a single person that way?" Harry asked.

Regulus snorted. "Of course. But good luck getting any of them to agree to it."

I bet Connor would, Harry thought feverishly. Maybe even Augustus Starrise, now that he's my ally. And that would remove at least one linchpin, perhaps two.

He had some idea how to free the northern goblins now. He found himself smiling, and Regulus smiled back.

"I really didn't bring you here to discuss inheritance," Regulus said. "I promised. So come on, then, and we'll see the artifact that gave Silver-Mirror its name." He clapped Harry on the back and led him towards a door on the far wall which, with the charms of this room, Harry hadn't even noticed. "You might have realized that a few of the other houses have elemental affiliations," Regulus commented over his shoulder. "Number Twelve Grimmauld Place doesn't, not really, but Cobley-by-the-Sea is water, and Wayhouse is earth, since it was built of wood. This is fire." He nodded to the golden pool overhead.

Harry simply raised his eyebrows as he followed him through the door, but he felt his expression change with the movement of the air around him.

"And this part of Silver-Mirror," Regulus whispered in his ear, "is wind."

Harry couldn't respond. For one thing, he wasn't entirely sure that Regulus would hear him at anything other than a shout, but for another, he didn't think the words could get around the lump in his throat.

They stood on a narrow balcony, beyond which probably lay a staircase. Harry couldn't say for sure, because his eyes hadn't adjusted that far yet. The immediate portion of the room was as dark as a cave, and led his gaze downwards, to Silver-Mirror itself.

A turning, shining pool lay there, like a complement to the golden one in the entrance room. Harry didn't think it was water, though, not after Regulus's words. It was wind made visible, crashing waves of air. It was beautiful, and even more alive than the shifting fire had been.

And sound. Sound was everywhere, stroking his ears, murmuring with music. Harry heard nothing ugly there, or, if there was something ugly, it was taken up and woven into the immense pattern so that it sounded as natural and beautiful as the rest. The songs of sirens were there without the awful enchantment, and Fawkes's voice, and the wild symphony of the frenzied Dark, and thunder, and the dash of falling rain, and voices singing lullabies.

Harry found himself putting out his hand. His sight was adjusting, now, to that intense, faraway silver light, and he could make out winged shapes skimming through the air.

Birds.

They came and went, magical and mundane, wheeling in great flocks, though so enormous was the room that Harry didn't feel overwhelmed by their numbers. He felt the same kind of exaltation he did when he was on his broom as he watched them: soaring, swooping, diving, folding their wings and plunging into Silver-Mirror as if it were water, circling, fluttering, nearly colliding with one another. Their voices trickled in and out of the din, which gave them back sounds as it chose, so that sometimes a swan's voice seemed to come out of an eagle's beak, or a phoenix's sweet tunes from a Diricawl as it continually appeared and disappeared in midair. Harry tried to make out an order to their movements, but couldn't. Or perhaps one existed, but it was beyond him.

He felt his mind clear as he watched them. By the time he came back to himself again, he'd had muscles relax that felt as if they had been tense since the trial, and Regulus had one arm firmly wrapped around his shoulders, and he didn't mind at all.

"This is brilliant," he whispered.

Regulus just squeezed his shoulder, and didn't make any comment about inheritance at all, letting him simply be absorbed in his watching.

Harry ran his fingers through his hair, then told himself to stop that, because he was messing it up.

No, wait, his hair was always messy. He should stop this because he had no reason to be nervous. Draco was hardly going to object to what he wanted to say.

He entered his bedroom quietly, and jumped when he realized Blaise and Ginny were involved in a sloppy kiss against the far wall. He looked only long enough to make sure that Draco wasn't on his bed, then slipped out and shut the door behind him.

"Awful, isn't it?"

Harry jumped a second time; Draco was right beside him on the stairs. He shook his head at Harry. "They're not done yet? I thought it was odd that Blaise asked for an hour of 'study time' this afternoon, but, well, he's cleared out of the room for us before. I can at least repay the favor."

"Let's go somewhere else private, then, because I want to talk to you," Harry told him.

Draco's eyebrows rose, and he stared hard at Harry. Harry stared hard right back.

Draco smiled a bit, then, his lips quirking. He nodded. "Will I need the Pensieve?"

"Yes, if you want it," said Harry, startled. He'd intended to keep his promise to Draco about putting his mindset in the Pensieve for Draco to experience, but he hadn't thought he'd keep it so soon. Then he shrugged. Oh, well. If he does have questions about why I'm talking to him like this, then he can understand them better once he experiences things from my side.

Draco opened the door and sneaked into the bedroom to retrieve the Pensieve. That gave Harry a chance to lean back against the wall and ask himself why the hell he was so nervous.

Because I don't like all of this intensity focused on me. It can be focused on someone else, just not on me.

Harry snorted a moment later. He could understand Vera now when she said that wasn't good enough. He was becoming tired of his own insecurity on that score. He might not comprehend exactly why yet Draco was willing to focus so much on him, but he accepted that Draco wanted to. And he had admitted to himself that he was in love with Draco.

You can do worse than indulge that, I think.

Draco came back out a moment later, flourishing the Pensieve in triumph. They went upstairs to find an abandoned classroom, and, on the way, Harry decided to look at Draco and think about him without scolding himself for such silly and inappropriate thoughts.

It was remarkably easy, once he gave it free rein. He'd thought things like this before, he realized now, but had pushed them into the Occlumency pools rather than deal with them. Once he'd got past the first acknowledgement of his own desire, he could start thinking that it wasn't silly or inappropriate after all.

Draco's way of movement attracted him, he had to admit. It was partially training, born of pureblood dances that warned against revealing too much emotion with a careless gesture, but Harry knew exactly how someone trained exclusively in that way moved; Lucius Malfoy was like that. It made him into nothing so much as a breathing statue, lovely in stillness, too graceful in motion.

Draco blended that grace with a more human jerkiness, a remnant of the boy Harry remembered who had dragged him around half Hogwarts by one arm in first and second year. He paused to look around a corner and make sure they weren't being observed, and then pulled his head back with a sharp oath as someone else came out of a door down the hall. He made constant arm-movements that showed his impatience. He tossed the Pensieve from hand to hand because he could. He did freeze up around his father, but away from Lucius, Harry could see Narcissa's influence, the naturalness she'd passed on to her son.

Yes, so that attracted him, he told himself, pushing himself forward to consider these things, regardless of how silly it felt. And what else?

How expressive Draco's face was—again, not something that a good pureblood wizard should necessarily show, but something Draco did. His eyes always showed an intense awareness and aliveness, an awakening to the world. Every part of his face was involved in his every emotion, not just a short curl of his lips for his disdain. His eyebrows would cant down and his cheeks would tighten and his eyes would get into the act, too.

And I never realized I paid enough attention to him to notice all that.

Harry swallowed nervously. He had accused himself, several times, of taking Draco for granted. Finding out he hadn't been, at least on some levels, was unnerving.

It does mean I can change, then. I'm human somewhere under all this training, and I don't know myself that well.

And that was terrifying.

"Harry?"

Harry started and glanced up. Draco had one hand reached out towards him, the other clutching the Pensieve white-knuckled. Harry let himself drink in the brightness of those eyes with concern, the way Draco had his head tilted to one side, the sharp angle of his eyebrows.

"Are you all right?" Draco whispered.

Harry nodded. "Just realizing that you're beautiful to me in several ways," he said. Oh, Merlin, let that not be soppy. Please.

But even if it was soppy, the look that came over Draco's face immediately afterwards was worth it. Draco moved several steps nearer, and then cupped his chin and raised it. His eyes were intense, as piercing as thorns, but Harry felt the courage to offer himself up to them anyway. He won't hurt me. I know he won't hurt me. He would never hurt me.

Draco moved his face slowly nearer, but Harry was the one who leaned the rest of the way to initiate the kiss. That surprised a noise out of Draco that was certainly startled and might have been indignant, but Harry knew exactly how to silence that. He opened his mouth and let Draco slip his tongue inside.

Draco tried to say his name, but this, Harry decided immediately, was difficult when his tongue was where it was. Then his other hand slipped around Harry's neck to hold him in place, dropping the Pensieve, and he was kissing Harry frantically, as if he thought the training would kick in at any moment.

The training was trying to kick in. Harry could feel shivers running up his spine that were not all pleasure, could feel the screaming thoughts that said he shouldn't feel this good, he didn't have the right—

Fuck off, he told his own thoughts, and put his Occlumency to good use, swallowing the protests of his training. There was sudden, wonderful silence in his head, silence that filled almost at once with the cloudy feeling he'd experienced the night Marietta used the Blood Whip Curse on him and Draco had tried to coax Harry to tell him his attacker's name.

Harry tilted his head back, slipped his own arms around Draco's neck and waist, and put his own tongue to good use, surprising another one of those strangled sounds out of Draco. The cloudy feeling grew thicker and more intense, a sharp warmth invaded his belly, and Harry wondered if this was what eating chocolate was like for other people.

Draco drew slowly backwards at last, and stared down at Harry with his eyes alive in an expression that Harry definitely wanted to see again. Harry reached out and ran his hand down Draco's chest, pulling back only reluctantly as he realized the cloudy feeling and the warmth lingered in his own body, and his training was protesting more strongly than it had before.

"Sorry," he said.

"You have absolutely nothing to be sorry about." Draco's voice had deepened, and Harry found those intense eyes still focused on him when he looked up. They weren't as far above him as they would have been a month ago, only an inch or two, and Harry grinned as he realized what that meant. I'm getting another growth spurt, then. I might even be taller than he is one day.

"I suppose not," he agreed. "Do you want to do the Pensieve, still?"

"I'd rather hear what brought that kiss on." Draco couldn't stop looking at his lips as he said that. It amused Harry entirely too much, and even though the cloudy feeling and the warmth had knocked him somewhat off balance, he grinned as he nodded up the hall.

"Don't you think we should get into the classrooms we were making for, and not have this conversation out in the hall where anyone could hear us?"

Horror flashed across Draco's face at the thought, and then another intense look, though different by several degrees from the one he'd been giving Harry before. "Of course," he said. "I'm not sharing you with anyone."

Harry rolled his eyes as Draco picked up the Pensieve, then dragged him up the hallway by one arm. Honestly. Like other people would want me with the same degree of possessiveness he does.

All the same, Harry thought it was a good thing to get into a room where they could lock the door with spells, both because he wasn't comfortable with anyone else seeing the way he acted around Draco yet and because he could easily imagine someone else wanting Draco the way he did. So, all in all, it was better just to get out of sight.

When they'd locked the door behind them, and Draco had cast several layers of wards, he turned around and demanded, "Well?"

"Vera's here," said Harry simply. "She came last night. She suggested I talk to you about what you want. I know what I do." He eyed Draco's face. "I'm surprised you had the strength to stop when you did, given how much you want," he murmured.

Draco sat down in a chair as if his legs had given out. Unfortunately, the chair turned out to be broken, and dumped him on the floor amid an immense puff of dust. Harry started to snicker, but stopped when Draco raised his head.

The intense look was back in his eyes. Harry swallowed.

"I want everything you can give me," said Draco. "All of what you are, Harry. I want to know things you don't even think are important about yourself yet, like what kind of tea is your favorite. I want to know that no one else means as much to you as I do. I want to be the only person you want in your bed. I want to know that you understand the things I believe in even if you don't agree with them. I want you to yell at me without holding anything back, even your magic. I want you to know my moods well enough that you know without my speaking when I need to be held, or fetched a sweet, or left alone. I want to have that kind of closeness to you that depends on choice more than it does need, and makes everyone jealous who sees it. I want sunlight love. I told you that, once, last year."

Harry nodded, swallowing. It was a demanding list, and he could think of several things on it that he could not imagine, say, Parvati asking of Connor. But Draco was demanding. He had shown that well enough when their bond was just friendship.

And he wants those things of me.

Like the fact that Draco loved him, it was just something that had to be accepted. And it sent a shiver of sweetness down Harry's spine, and a tremor of a smugness that he didn't understand at all.

He wants those things of me.

Harry blinked at nothing. And? So? If he wanted them of someone else, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

The smugness stayed there anyway. Harry shivered again. He would have to learn plenty of things about himself, it seemed.

He stepped nearer to Draco and held out his hand. "And I want to give them to you," he said, holding Draco's eyes. "Some of them will take longer than others."

"I. Don't. Care."

Harry tried to speak, but he thought he was probably going to sound stupid if he did. He settled for pulling Draco to his feet and wrapping him fiercely in his arms, settled for feeling warm, and safe, and loved.

Except that that's not settling, not at all.