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WARNING: Cliffhanger.

Chapter Fifty-Four: Even In The Deepest Dark, The Light Doth Shine

Harry swung his head so hard that he felt one of the vines actually tear in its grip on him. Indigena Yaxley shouted something. Voldemort erupted into a wordless snarl, and the basilisk, if not the worm, ripped into insults in Parseltongue. Rosier started laughing.

Harry could make no sound. His whole attention was imprisoned in the vision that had landed before him.

A mass of glaring white light filled the eastern end of the graveyard, spreading from the gates, and it dissipated Voldemort's wards and Dark magic as Harry had never seen anything do—unless it was the sun rising and dissipating morning mists. The darkness flowed back before it, and Harry thought he felt a twinge of discomfort from the wild Dark magic itself, though it grew confident again in the next moment. Sharp, piercing, stabbing like swords, the Light magic stalked a little further into the graveyard.

As Harry's eyes grew used to it, he could make out its shape. It radiated as sunbeams from a central core, and the core was focused around Augustus and the white wood staff he held. It was his voice that had called out the spell, then, Harry thought. Hardly surprising, since Augustus had said he would be the focal point for the cooperative ritual between the Light wizards.

Harry just hadn't expected them to get here this soon.

"Hello, Harry," said Augustus. Harry took a moment to realize what was different about his voice. It lacked the sneering, condescending undertone it had contained every other time Harry saw him. He now sounded purely happy. "I assume that you're in a spot of trouble and could use our help?" He raised his head and studied Harry, as if the presence of the vines and the worm hadn't already told him that.

Harry just nodded wordlessly, and then Voldemort broke the silence that had fallen between them. It was in that dirt-filled Parseltongue, and he commanded the worm to attack, kill, eat.

The white coils began shifting forward, turning towards the mass of churned earth and grass in front of the gates. Harry saw the rubbery flesh writhing, and cried out a warning in the moment before Yaxley's leaves wrapped around his mouth and made speech impossible.

Augustus laughed and called out a spell in a voice so high and ringing that Harry couldn't make out the invocation. The bands of gold on his staff shone as he turned it in the direction of the worm, and the white light focused and beamed sharply down.

The white flesh began to smoke where the light touched it, like a mass of ants with the sun focused on them through a glass. Harry heard a thin voice screaming, high enough to make blood run from his ears, and the creature shifted back from Augustus and the wizards that Harry could make out standing behind him, dim dark shapes in the fierce glow.

"No!" screamed Voldemort. "Attack them, hold them, swallow them! You must not allow yourself to be defeated!"

The great head dived, and then the graveyard seemed to spin as a mound of the worm's body traveled directly under Harry, aiming for his allies. He instinctively reached out, thinking he might be able to cripple the vines if the worm had disturbed their roots, but his wandless magic reached the limit of his skin and slammed back again. Harry hissed and tugged on his bonds, to no avail.

He did try another warning, though he wasn't sure how much good it did, given the gag on his mouth and all the other sounds flying around the graveyard.

The ground in front of Augustus trembled and collapsed inward, and then the worm's mouth was rising, a black hole filled with dirt, its fangs moving like deadly hairs. Augustus only laughed again and pointed his staff downward into the maw.

"Aurora ades dum!" he repeated. Harry realized what was going to happen, and hid his eyes just in time.

A second sunrise blossomed inside the worm's mouth. Its scream of pain made Harry scream in return. He had never heard any agony so primal, so bestial. The vines trembled again as the worm danced beneath them, and Harry tensed. But, when the creature had flowed past, they were still rooted. He braced his feet as best as he could with nothing to brace them on and resolved to wait for the moment when he could break free.

Voldemort shouted at the worm again, but it was busy hurting. Harry felt the moment when he changed his mind and decided to use his own magic on the interfering Light wizards instead. The intense dawn shining on his closed eyelids dimmed, and night answered it out of the Dark Lord.

Harry opened his eyes in time to see darkness extend like a flow of ink from Voldemort, eating the sunbeams it found. The worm stopped screaming as comforting blackness covered it. Harry supposed the blackness must resemble that of the underground tunnels Voldemort had bred the worm in.

Augustus stood unafraid in front of that looming wave. Harry, again twisting around as far as he could, made out Laura Gloryflower at his side, and Tybalt, and John, and Paton Opalline, and others that Harry suspected were Opalline relatives. None of them looked afraid, though he was distant enough from them to be mistaking some of their expressions.

Harry shivered. He wondered why they were so calm. They had created this ritual to defeat the wild Dark, not to defeat Voldemort. The Dark Lord could, presumably, still hurt them.

Then Augustus stabbed his staff down, and planted it in the earth. His voice had gone back to its usual scornful self, but this time, the contempt and condescension weren't buried. They rang in his voice, like the scream of an eagle that scorns the ground. "We have come in answer to impulses that you will never understand, Dark Lord." He turned his gaze to Harry, and aimed his staff at him. "Admiscerimus dicionem nostrem et accumulamus donis Harry Potter!"

Harry didn't know what that spell meant, and he didn't like the sound of it, especially when he felt the earth shaking with the power of it as it spilled out around Augustus. He couldn't exactly do anything about it, though, not when he was trapped by vines and Voldemort was bearing down on his allies. He gave another yank, hoping the vines might have loosened their hold while Yaxley was distracted by the antics of her Lord. The bonds tightened instead.

Then he discovered exactly what that spell did.

Augustus smiled as he felt the spell's power growing in him, whipping his blood to frenzy, filling his mind with light. The oil he'd smeared on his forehead earlier burst into flame, a star-like coruscation that called on the real stars and bade them answer. They still shone, beyond the clouds, and just because the Dark storm had covered them did not mean it could extinguish them.

The magic raced down his limbs, inexorable and majestic as the tide, spreading them out to the left and the right. Augustus lifted his hands, so that his staff could stay exactly where it was, hovering and beaming a straight cone of light into the center of the graveyard. He realized, distantly, that the worm might come back, and that the Dark Lord's power was heading for them, but those seemed petty concerns in the wake of this radiance growing inside and out. He closed his eyes.

He felt a warm hand rest on his arm, and a voice he hadn't heard in fourteen years murmured into his ear, "Shall we show them what Light is made of, Augustus?"

He did not open his eyes, knowing that he would not see Alba; he could only hear her. But he nodded and murmured back, "We shall."

Other stars burst into flame on other heads around him, as the Light wizards who had come with him—even his proud, impatient nephew—yielded to the flow of the spell and the ritual they had prepared, blending their magic into one pool. Augustus grew light-headed with the feeling that they stood on a shore of power. The waves leaped and surged to their heartbeats, bent and blended and broke apart again, and still magic continued to pour in, drawn through the tattoos on Paton's skin that bound him to his relatives.

Then Augustus turned, and lifted his arm, still feeling Alba's clutching hands, and sent the whip of the ritual hunting across England, seeking out those Light wizards who might feel a loyalty to Potter and asking them two very important questions.

Rufus signed the request from Amelia Bones to use Veritaserum on Hestia Jones, and sighed, sitting back in his chair. He'd only managed to concentrate on paperwork for a few minutes at a time tonight, a shameful record for him. He kept turning his mind to the east and thinking about Little Hangleton, the graveyard, and the young Lord-level wizard who would be facing the wild Dark there in—a few hours? An hour? Now? It was impossible to tell. Since Rufus himself was devoted to the Light, he could feel the wild Dark only as a deep, shifting presence, a negation. He couldn't tell what it was doing. The first thing he would know of Harry's loss would be when the storm descended on London.

The Ministry did have evacuation plans in effect, and it had opened its doors to those homeless wizards in London who had nowhere else to shelter. Rufus had allowed those of his people who wanted to to go home. Few had. They knew the wards on the Ministry were sturdier than those on their own houses. Some of them had not only stayed, but brought their families with them. Rufus could hear the laughter of children too young to understand what this night meant, running up and down the halls outside his office and playing tag.

He glanced over at Percy Weasley, who was flipping through a book of laws, trying to familiarize himself with all the edicts the Ministry had passed in the last ten years. Rufus permitted a small smile to cross his face. Weasley was still a trainee, but he was flying through the training. He'd be an Auror sooner than the normal three years it took, if that was possible.

Rufus turned back to the next piece of paperwork to be dealt with, and started. Staring at him out of the piece of parchment was a gryphon's face. In fact, the surface of his desk had turned into a deep well of light, and the gryphon gazed up out of that, its beak parted and its feathers blending into the sides of the well.

"What are you?" Rufus whispered, but he hadn't finished his question before he heard a cry from Percy Weasley, and then a voice speaking in his head, too deep, too resonant, to be denied.

Are you loyal to the Light?

Rufus nodded. There was no question about that, and no reason to give any other answer than the truth. He'd been Declared for the Light since he was twelve years old, and in the more than fifty years since, he hadn't once regretted his decision.

Are you loyal to Harry Potter?

Rufus nodded again, and then extended one arm, knowing without speech what he had to do; an almost magnetic force seemed to grab his arm and pull it there. The gryphon reared out of his paperwork, a shining form that didn't belong in the rather dingy surroundings of the Ministry, and clenched its claws around his wrist. Then his magic ran out of him like blood, and Rufus slumped over his desk, dizzy.

"Minister?" Percy Weasley's voice was thin and trembling.

Rufus looked up to see that the young man's face was as white as parchment. Of course, he had one arm extended, too, and magic pounded out of him in a golden-white flood. It swirled into their desks and away. Rufus, if he concentrated, could feel it streaming east—

Towards Little Hangleton.

Harry had said that his Light allies were preparing a ritual they hoped would defend him. Rufus just hadn't expected it to be so spectacular.

"It's all right, Weasley," he said, and then grabbed the edge of his desk with his left hand and held on. He was loyal to the Light. He was, come to that, loyal to Harry, so long as it didn't mean abandoning the ideals of his Ministry. And this was a contribution to a conflict much greater than that between a Ministry and a Lord-level wizard.

He closed his eyes and opened the gates of his soul wider, giving all that he had to give.

Fiona Mallory sat shivering on the couch in her flat. She wasn't cold, not really—she still had her wand to cast warming charms, after all—but she still shook in shock, given what had happened to her a few hours before. Amelia Bones had returned her wand and told her, quietly, that she was sacked from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. She shouldn't bother applying for another position in the Ministry, either; they would all know where she'd come from.

Fiona wished she could say it was worth it. She remembered little about her days under Dumbledore's compulsion spell, but she had had the sense of absolute righteousness. The decisions she made were not open to question. She did what she was required to do, always, and it had worked out. She had willingly sacrificed herself so that Lucius Malfoy could get away with his torture of the Potters, and certainly she had cursed them herself with the greatest pleasure.

Now, with the spell gone, she had to wonder if that righteousness had been an illusion, and if the ghost of it could support her against a lonely Christmas and the necessity of finding a new job.

When the wall tore apart and a gryphon's head projected towards her, Fiona accepted it as just one more illusion, one more dream. It was no stranger than the rest of her life lately.

But then the mighty voice spoke in her head, and shook her to her bones, and she answered that yes of course she was loyal to the Light, and of course she wished to help Harry Potter—he was like her, he had been abused and the last thing she had done to help him hadn't resulted in that much good—and she held up an arm, and magic rushed forth from her, and she felt her joy rising along with it, uncontrollable, exulting, so that she almost hoped she would die before she returned.

Minerva actually dropped her teacup when she felt the flood of magic traveling towards her. Godric, who stood on the other side of the room, floated through the floor in his surprise, then recovered himself and looked hastily at her, as though trying to reassure her that that didn't happen every day.

Minerva barely noticed. She stood up, her mind tingling inside her skull. It reminded her of the way Hogwarts's wards responded to her, but this was much greater than any of the wards. Hogwarts was a tame lake, and the wards surged in it like ripples, tiny waves, always dying when they reached the shore. This was a flood galloping down an ancient watercourse. Minerva knew what the watercourse must be, though she had never thought to see it invoked in her lifetime. The Light only interfered when called. Most Light wizards were content to know it was there and they had sworn their lives to it, and didn't bother calling it.

"Godric," she said. "Would you be willing to contribute some of your magic to help Harry? I suspect that the Light is about to ask you in a moment."

"The Light?" The Founder sounded bewildered. "I—"

The stones around them became transparent. Minerva heard cries of awe and terror, but she didn't know if it was her students, or if she heard the sounds she expected to hear, somewhere in her head. She stretched out her hands, her heart singing. This was the force she had once thought embodied in Albus, the one whose loss she had mourned, along with the loss of an old and true friend, when she found out how corrupt he was. At least feeling the Light around her gave her a glimpse of the certainty that she'd felt in the First War, the belief that there was something greater than any one mortal wizard, a set of ideals worth fighting for and which truly separated their side from the side of the Dark Lord. The more she discovered about what Albus had done, the further she traveled from that feeling, but now it was with her again.

She laughed, and when the questions echoed in her head, she held out her arm gladly. Still the laughter spilled from her lips, giddy and joyous, the laughter she remembered giving when she'd finally achieved the Animagus transformation.

When she saw Godric also standing with his arm extended to feed the flood, she smiled at him, and she could have sworn he blushed.

The Light thundered on. They stood on only one stretch of its banks, Minerva knew, and it had far to go.

Zacharias Smith was not surprised when the gryphon appeared before him, though the rest of his Housemates fled in terror, or at least drew back and shrieked; the Hufflepuff common room wasn't really suited for fleeing in terror. How could he be? He was the heir of his family, the latest in a long line of descendants from Helga Hufflepuff, and newly come into adulthood this year. He rose to his feet, and tugged Hermione with him when she might have sat on the couch staring at the enormous eagle's head and lashing lion's body that blended into a torrent of golden-white radiance. This was something that one should face on one's feet, unless one was a commoner—and while Hermione was Muggleborn, she wasn't common, and Zacharias didn't intend to permit her to act like it.

The gryphon dipped its head. Zacharias bowed back. The beak shone like diamond as it almost cut the floor. Zacharias allowed himself to be gravely impressed. The gryphon was as beautiful as some of the treasures in the Smith vaults. He saw no harm in admitting that, as long as he did not think it was more beautiful, which would be a betrayal of his family.

"Loyal to the Light?" he said in response to the first question. "I daresay I am."

"His name isn't actually Potter any more," he added, when the gryphon voiced the second question. "It's Harry. He renounced his last name. I just thought you should know that."

The eagle's eyes stared at him, and Zacharias coughed and conceded that such things were less important than others right now. He stretched out his arm, and let the Light take what it had come for. He glanced to the left and saw Hermione doing the same, and gave her a nod and a smile. She was a good student.

"I didn't do it for you," said Hermione.

Zacharias blinked. "Who did you do it for?" he asked, having to clutch at her as he swayed. The Light was drawing forth his magic ferociously now. Of course it would. He was pureblood, and his family had been devoted to the Light for more than a thousand years. It would want to feast on that pure power, rooted in the strength of the earth and displayed forth in a beautiful body, if he did say so himself.

Hermione snarled at him—she was always doing that, and it was an endearing habit—and turned her fascinated gaze back to the white fountain that sprang from her arm and joined the rest of the Light as a rushing river.

Luna looked up when the Light asked her its questions. She thought about it, and then nodded. Of course she was loyal to Harry, at least if one phrased "loyalty" in a vague and convenient way. She was more loyal to the sylphs who danced during the solar eclipses, of course, but then, they'd made her promise and swear twice by her blood. And that was wild magic, anyway, neither Dark nor Light. This was the Light asking, and within those strict definitions, Luna had a greater devotion to Harry than anyone else.

A few of the other Ravenclaws in the Tower were contributing magic, too, she saw when she glanced around. Cho was practically glowing, as if she would make a fuss about it any moment. Luna didn't see why. She propped her arm out of the way and returned to her book. It explained about hippogriff teeth that had an association with the dark of the moon rather than the full, and she had to learn about them while the moon was still dark, so she could go gathering them tomorrow night.

George sensed it first, but even as he lifted his head, he knew that his brother wasn't far behind. They didn't quite share a mind—that was just a trick they played at to fool the people who wanted to be fooled—but they had a closer bond than mere siblings, and the rush of the Light wasn't exactly being subtle, was it?

When the Light asked them its questions, that was a little more complicated. George looked at Fred and asked, "Well, what do you think, Fred? Are we—"

"Loyal?" Fred chewed his lip. "I suppose so, but—"

"The least we could ask for is brand loyalty from Harry when we set up our shop," George finished, nodding. "No more—"

"Buying from Zonko's for him, exactly." Fred grinned at him and held out his arm. George extended his, and identical streams of radiance burst from them, gushing into the Light that raced past. George had a brief vision of the two of them standing on the bank of a river filled with leaping flames. He grinned as he watched fiery foam leap into the air.

I bet we could make some fireworks that looked like that.

Ron swore and lowered his book. It was no good trying to read for bloody Defense Against the Dark Arts when they might not even be alive this time tomorrow night, was it? He was amazed that the professors had assigned homework, anyway. You'd think the Headmistress would have warned them off for once. If you don't get a free night for facing imminent death from the wild Dark, what do you get it for?

He glanced around the Gryffindor common room. Other people had given up on trying to read at all, especially since Hermione wasn't there to scold them into it. They whispered to each other, or glanced at the fireplace as if that would tell them the secrets of the future, or played Exploding Snap with shaking hands. Ron had to stifle the impulse to go interfere in a game of wizard's chess that was going incredibly badly. He would have done better than that, even as nervous as he was. Ron had never understood why other people found chess so complicated. It was easy, and the patterns that predicted what would happen if a certain piece moved weren't any harder than Quidditch strategies, which plenty of people understood.

"What do you think's going to happen?"

Ron gratefully gave up pretending to study, and turned to Neville, who had taken the chair beside him and was anxiously rubbing his wrist. "I don't know," Ron told him. "I suppose Harry might be able to stop it, but—"

And then he gasped as he felt a warm feeling growing in his chest, a clasp of talons on his shoulders, a head bending and stroking hot feathers on his cheek. It felt like what he had always imagined Fawkes would feel like, if he actually decided to land on Ron's shoulder, but closer and larger.

Are you loyal to the Light? a voice asked, and Ron had the impression that the answer to that question would be the most important he ever gave. He nodded, dazedly, and the talons locked down on him as he got asked another important question. Are you loyal to Harry Potter?

For this, I can be, Ron thought, as he remembered how Harry had helped him break through the block on his magic last year, and held out his arm as the magic instructed him to. Then he caught a glimpse of a fiery river, and a gryphon flying in lazy circles above it, now and then stirring the flames with a kick of its legs or a flip of its wings. The vision was overwhelming, choking, and he jerked his head back.

He turned to Neville, wondering if he had seen that, too, and found Neville with his right arm extended and a beatific smile on his face, white magic pouring from his hand to join the stream.

"The Light asked me to help!" Neville whispered. "It actually asked me! It doesn't think I'm a coward!"

Ron managed to smile, and then he, too, lost himself in the wonder of actually doing something to battle the Dark.

Ginny jerked awake with a gasp as the Light came for her. She'd lain down on her bed to try and get a nap, never imagining she would succeed. How could she, when she was so worried about what might happen tonight, and if Hogwarts would still be standing, come morning?

But she'd fallen asleep, and for a moment she imagined the vision of white radiance was part of a dream. Then she realized it wasn't. No light she had ever dreamed was this harsh, this punishing, this—high. Ginny had the impression of incredible compassion, but not for any one person. It was directed towards so many that individual sorrows made very little impact on it.

But now it was trying to save a great many people, and it was asking for her help, so her agreement mattered to it.

Ginny nodded in response to the questions. Connor had told her about how Harry had snatched Tom Riddle's diary out of her cauldron in Flourish and Blotts the summer before her first year at Hogwarts—the diary Lucius Malfoy had tried to put there, the diary that might have possessed her and forced her to open the Chamber of Secrets. Ginny couldn't know just what Harry had gone through with that diary possessing him instead, but she had some idea what he'd spared her from. She'd heard Connor talking to Ron about having Riddle in his head.

She owed him a debt, even if it was only for what might have happened. She stretched out her arm, and her magic joined the tide.

Connor saw the Light not as a gryphon, not as a river the way he later heard people discussing it, but as a star. Perhaps that was because he was on the Astronomy Tower, gazing to the south, when it came for him.

It was the only connection he could have with his brother, looking up at the sky where the storm would descend from. Harry had absolutely refused to take him along, and while Connor had resented that, he could understand the logic. Full-grown adult wizards couldn't help Harry tonight, not unless their allegiance was to the Light and they agreed to take part in a certain cooperative ritual. How could another fifteen-year-old help?

Except that I'm Declared for Light now, Connor thought, well-aware that he was being mulish, and not caring. That should make a difference.

So he stood, and stared to the south, and tried to imagine himself in Little Hangleton and the graveyard, getting ready to fight the Dark Lord. Voldemort would make some stupid crack about using Connor for revenge on Harry the way he had at the end of third year, and Connor would respond that he could actually fight now, and Voldemort would lift a hand and send a beam of dark fire at him, and Connor would dodge it, and then he would say…

A star on the horizon caught his attention. Connor blinked and leaned forward. He had thought there was no star there a moment before. No storm had come in as yet, but clouds blotted out all the light, even as they had during the day.

Nevertheless, a star stone there, bright as the spark in his twin's eyes when Harry went forth to confront some enemy to freedom. It spun and swirled and shone, and Connor heard the questions in his head.

"Yes," he breathed. "And yes." He lifted his arm, both so that the Light could touch him and in salute to his brother.

The magic roared around him, forth from him, a lightning bolt striking from the star and then leaping back again. Connor stood watching it as the gleam grew brighter and brighter, and then the Light shot away from it and towards the south.

A saying rose to his lips. He knew he'd heard it before, but he couldn't remember if it came from Sirius or his parents or Remus or the Headmistress, or maybe even Dumbledore.

"Even in the deepest Dark, the Light doth shine," he whispered, and then leaned forward, pouring all his heart and soul into the beam, hoping that Harry would feel that as well as the magic he was lending.

Draco had almost given up on beating on the wards by the time the Light wizards appeared. Panic—for Harry—and hatred—for Voldemort—raked him with iron claws, but the wards held firm, no matter what he did. Snape, beside him, uttered curses in a low, steady voice, but they sparked and died against the snow that separated them from Harry.

Then that pompous Starrise showed up and ate through the wards with his Light, and Draco could get into the graveyard—but not very far in. Mounds of broken earth blocked his path, and the coils of some creature that stank and which Draco did not want to see face to face, and the Light wizards themselves. He heard the spell Starrise chanted, and saw a beam race away cross-country, but his gaze was fastened on Harry. He'd finally located him past the brilliance of the sunrise, a small dark figure borne far too far above the ground, wrapped in vines.

He tried to run forward. Snape's arms wrapped around him like vines themselves, and his father's hand gripped his shoulder and squeezed. It was his father who spoke, voice thick and harsh. "No one can do anything for him yet, Draco. Just wait. The Light wizards are helping him."

"I have to," said Draco intently, struggling. He understood how Harry felt now, those times when he should have given up and lain back and let someone take care of him, but he just couldn't. He had to move, had to get up there, had to use Diffindo to cut the vines and Wingardium Leviosa to catch Harry as he fell. It wasn't a want, it was a need. His father and Snape meant well, but they couldn't understand. "It won't take long. Just a moment."

"You can't, Draco," his mother whispered, and her arms joined Snape's in wrapping him round. "We'll have to wait, and hope that the ritual the Light wizards performed actually worked."

The doubt in her voice inspired Draco to new heights of kicking and squirming. He didn't understand why he couldn't get free. When he was a child, he'd delighted in wrestling free of the house elves who tried to grab him and bring him back under control That had been before his father began his pureblood training, of course, but surely he hadn't lost all his skills in the intervening years?

After a few more moments, he understood that it wasn't his skills that had decayed; it was his parents'—and his Head of House's—that had improved. They were keeping him here because they were terrified for him, terrified that he would die if he ran forward and tried to help Harry now.

It's very simple, Draco thought. I have to do this. It's not a choice. I love him, and I have to be at his side.

He finally thought to reach for his wand, but a hand clamped down on his arm and stopped him. He looked up to see his father staring at him with a white face. Lucius shook his head, once.

"You don't understand," Draco said, suddenly sure that they would if he could just explain it rationally. He would show how good his pureblood training was, how calm and composed he remained even under intense pressure. "I have to. That's just the way it is. That's just the kind of commitment that Harry and I have made to each other. He'd come get me. I have to go get him. Excuse me."

He twisted to the side, then dropped to his knees, forcing Snape and his father to loosen their holds. Then he rolled, and Narcissa, already bent at an awkward angle to clutch his arms, lost him. Draco bounced back to his feet, ignored the mud clinging to his trousers, and ran straight for the vines and for Harry.

His mind churned in his skull as he ran, and he knew that he had to reach a patch of ground free of ditches and gaps so that he could safely use his possession gift. His body collapsed like a limp rag when he was gone from it. He and Harry hadn't been able to figure out a way to stop that from happening, so he had to make sure that he couldn't tumble down and crack his head when he leaped.

He reached a patch of grass that seemed as good as any, and knelt. Then he looked up and into the face of the witch who stood under the vines holding Harry. Now and then she shook her head, and appeared quietly amazed.

Draco flung his mind like a spear straight at her. He felt the familiar whirling tumble of being inside another mind, the sudden weight of strange skin, the pull of muscles unlike his own—Harry was a fifteen-year-old boy and fairly close to his own height and weight, but this was a woman in her forties—the shift and lift of limbs that all wanted to fly in different directions. To make it worse, this witch recovered from her surprise fairly quickly and started to fight back.

Draco ignored her, though. He and Harry had concentrated on general principles of possession, rather than on commands too specific to any one body, and he knew how to move a right hand. He rotated it sharply, and the vines turned and bore Harry towards the ground.

The witch in his head pushed at him. Draco could ignore that, too, for now. He waited until the vines landed and their leaves opened from Harry's arms. Harry scrambled to his feet at once, his gaze fastened on the witch.

Draco rejoiced on looking into his boyfriend's eyes, until he realized that Harry was gathering his strength, and part of that wandless magic would certainly blast straight at him. He leaped out, just as the witch made another bid to retain control of herself, and traveled back to his own body. He rolled over, blinking and rubbing his brow; he had a ferocious headache, though part of that might have come from the way his mother was yelling into his face, loud enough to break an eardrum.

He looked back in time to see the tidal wave of Light gallop through the graveyard and slam straight into Harry.

Harry knew when Indigena Yaxley's vines suddenly released him that Draco must have possessed her. He couldn't see her turning from Voldemort on her own. He surged to his feet, grateful to have control of his own magic back, and then looked to the east. He knew what was coming.

A tracery of light would extend across the British Isles, and maybe across half Europe, too, if one counted Opalline relatives into the equation. Argutus's vision had been correct, Harry thought.

He saw the gleam of the wave's foam, and then the wave itself, tearing through the middle of the Light wizards. It hit the tip of Argutus's staff, and then focused. Harry braced himself as best he could. Had he had any idea what this ritual entailed, he would have suggested a different one, but it was too late now.

Voldemort's darkness covered him, swayed, and then struck downwards.

The Light hit Harry.

He felt the magic of more than a hundred witches and wizards flood him, freely given up, freely donated. Harry's body became no more than a suggestion of outline. His eyes tingled, and he could see everything: the bones of the earth, the veins inside the vines, the thoughts swarming beneath the surface of Indigena Yaxley's mind and Voldemort's and Rosier's.

He lifted a hand, and feathers of power sprouted from his fingers, stroking apart Voldemort's attack as though it didn't matter. Dizzy, floating, Harry made a leap in the air and felt himself come down slowly, the way that Muggles were supposed to on the moon. He turned to face Voldemort.

He could do anything at the moment, but he was also filled with the Light's compassion and tenderness of temper, and he found that he rather pitied the man who stood before him, all his genius turned to pathetic ends, all his estimation of himself gone false. He imagined that he could harness the wild Dark, and that was not true. No mortal could do that.

"Tom," he said. In his voice, bells rang. Beneath him, the earth rang where he trod. Power rippled beneath his skin, but Harry remembered, always, that it was not his, and that he had it for a purpose. Defeating the Dark was that purpose, but the Dark storm was only building now, and he had a Dark Lord to deal with first. "Will you give up and go quietly?"

Tom, Voldemort, Dark Lord, laughed at him, and in the laugh were the hundred hisses of a snake. "Why should I?" he cried. "You are nothing but a child, and I will see you destroyed. Abi!"

Harry felt the corkscrew of magic that struck at him then. It was meant not only to rend him apart, but make it as if he had never existed. This was not a traditional spell, but a deep desire of Tom's, given form by his will and insulation by the Latin invocation.

Harry raised his hand, carefully. The corkscrew broke apart in the face of his own desire, and Tom stared at him. Harry felt a more intense pity well up in him. Really, Tom's form spoke to the damage Dark magic had done to him. It had blurred his features, melted them and sent them sliding down his face. And it had done the same thing to his mind, only with more violence. Harry had to feel for him. He had caused pain, but he had suffered it, as well.

And he could not stand against what Harry was about to do to him.

"Tom," Harry said softly. "You are gone from here. You cannot snare the wild Dark. Your worm is dead, collapsed back into the pieces of dead flesh it was created from. Your servants are with you, and unable to cause any more harm to Muggles tonight. You cannot do anything for tonight but brood." It was not the harsh punishment Tom deserved, the Light knew, but too far, and Harry would find himself using compulsion. He did not want to do that. He would not give up all that he was for the sake of stopping Voldemort. One night's peace, enforced as much to protect Voldemort from the wild Dark as to protect them all from him, was the limit of what he could do.

As he spoke each thing, it became true. The Light spread around him and fused the night into glass and diamond. Tom vanished. Indigena Yaxley vanished, sent to the same place he was. The worm broke apart, stitches showing clearly where the segments had been threaded together, greasy gray fire consuming it as it sprawled in death. Harry raised his hand higher, and the white force, song and fire and goodness and loyalty, flared around him. Harry had never seen a sight so beautiful as this dawn in the middle of the longest night.

For one moment, all was peaceful. Voldemort's trap was dissipated, and the ritual had worked to grant him the power needed to defeat the Dark Lord. Harry breathed clear air.

Then the night shook.

Harry lifted his head.

And he knew it had done no good, no good at all, as streams of thunder raced from all four corners of the sky and coiled above him, splitting and dancing and weaving back together again into reaching tendrils of power. The Dark had come, and it was mightier by far than the Light magic of mortal wizards. And this was the Dark's night, the time when the sun was furthest away from the northern hemisphere, a time of the dark of the moon, a night of clouds blocking out the light of the stars and preventing it from reaching the earth. There was nothing the Light could do to stop it.

The Dark was amused that he had tried; Harry could feel its amusement like a hand pressing against his body. And it would stay and play with him for a bit before it broke past his feeble defense and attacked the rest of Britain. He had made a good showing. It was too bad that good showing could not be permitted to stop the storm.

Harry stood there, the gathering wind sending his hair behind him, and felt the cold of acceptance curdle in his belly. This was a contest he was doomed to lose. The Dark was simply too strong for him to fight, and this time, unlike in Henrietta's story, it would not lose interest and wander away. It would cause thousands of deaths before the dawn came to stop it. The Dark rejoiced and crooned in the thoughts of those deaths, and more so because Harry himself wanted so very badly for them not to happen.

Harry knew they would happen. But he had to try to stop them. He drew in his own magic, and his borrowed Light power, determined to send a strike into the sky and catch the Dark's attention. Perhaps he could wound it.

Then wings beat above him, two sets of them. Harry heard a song like thunder and a song like strength, and he lifted his head again, focusing his eyes this time on something other than the Dark's display of power.

One of the shapes was very much larger and blacker than the other. It stooped at him, and Harry made out wide leathery wings, dark scales, eyes golden as madness. The Hungarian Horntail landed beside him with a sweep of her spiked tail, her claws delicately straddling the broken earth, and extended a wing towards him. Harry knew he was supposed to mount.

The other shape circled his head like a comet, singing all the while. Harry saw Fawkes, and Fawkes's dark eyes gazing at him, and Fawkes's crimson feathers bobbing; he had turned deep red all over, like spilled blood or the heart of summer.

Harry took a deep breath, and a step forward, and a moment to pause and hope. Then he was running up the leathery wing. It was stiff as a ramp, and bounced only slightly where he stepped. He settled into a dip on the dragon's back, and fastened his hand on the spikes in front of him. It hurt to grip them, but he was used to riding his Firebolt using only his knees now. He thought he could manage with the Horntail.

Fawkes sang again, and the dragon opened her mouth and sang, and then they rose, hurtling upwards into the heart of the storm.