Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!

Please note: The unfamiliar phrases here are in Manx, the Celtic language of the Isle of Man. I used a pretty good online dictionary, but it's possible they might still be wrong; I don't know Manx myself. Corrections on this are welcome.

Chapter Fifty-Seven: Resolutions

"Harry? Harry, are you all right?"

I can already see, Harry thought, as he sat up in bed and wiped at his forehead, where his scar ached from a dream for the first time in a month, that that's a question I'll get asked a lot in the life we share together.

"I'm all right, Draco," he said, blinking as Draco yanked the curtains of his bed back and the light of a Lumos charm burned into his unprepared eyes. "Come on, crawl in before we wake Blaise up."

"Blaise is already up," said a cranky voice from the other end of the room. Blaise had stayed over the Christmas holiday, since his mother thought the wards of Hogwarts would protect him better than the wards on her own home, Wyvern's Nest, which had already been broken into once. "You might as well talk loudly about whatever melodramatic plan you have going this time. I'm going to go to the library and sweet-talk Madam Pince into letting me in." He climbed out of bed and padded towards the loo.

"Madam Pince won't be in the library!" Draco yelled after him. "It's New Year's Eve!" The door of the loo shut without Blaise giving a response. Draco shrugged and looked at Harry. "Do you think she'll be in the library?" he asked, as he climbed into bed and pulled Harry's curtains shut.

"Yes, she will." Harry sat up. "Now, how did you know I was having a dream?"

"That connection we share from you letting me practice possession on you, I think," Draco said, leaning forward. His face assumed a pensive expression. "I didn't actually experience it, the way I did that time you leaped into V-Voldemort's mind." He gave Harry a stern look. Harry stuck his tongue out at him. Draco frowned and went on. "But I knew you were dreaming—and that's a strange feeling to have in the middle of my own dreams, let me tell you. And then I woke up, and I could hear you making those little sounds you make when your scar hurts."

Harry decided not to ask, just in case the answer embarrassed him further. "I did have a dream," he whispered. "But it wasn't like either the visions I have of Voldemort when I'm spying on him, or those misty dreams he sent me when he was trying to make me do something. This was more like I was sharing his head while he dreamed. And the image makes no sense. I mean, it doesn't seem like it's anything particularly powerful or threatening."

Draco nodded. "What was it, then?"

"Just a hallway," said Harry. "A hallway that ended in a dark door. I wanted to open the door, but when I touched it, nothing happened. I could feel frustration and rage, but I don't think they were mine. I think Voldemort dreams about opening that door, and knows he can't." He looped his arms around his knees. "Why would that image, of all of them, cross over the barrier between us?"

"Are you sure you didn't let the barrier down, Harry? Or have a hole tear in it somehow?"

Closing his eyes, Harry felt for the grass that barricaded the Occlumency link, and had to shake his head at last. "I can't feel any holes. Of course, if Voldemort opened a tunnel, would I know?"

"Go talk to Snape tomorrow," Draco urged him, one hand finding his elbow. "Or—well, in a few hours, really. He has to know about this."

Harry nodded. Then he yawned. "I am still tired," he said. "If I'm going to the Isle of Man to visit with the Opallines for their New Year's celebration, then I should probably rest some more."

"Of course," Draco agreed. Then his face changed. "What?"

Harry, about to lie down again, found himself yanked up to face a scowling Draco. "You never told me that," Draco insisted.

"I did, too," said Harry. "I must have. I wouldn't forget to mention it, and I've known for a month. You just weren't paying attention." He pulled away from Draco and burrowed under the sheets.

Draco spluttered above him for a moment, then said, "Yes, I was. I always pay attention to you. Nothing you say escapes me."

Harry snorted.

"It doesn't," Draco protested. "And anyway, that's not the point. The point is that you're not going to the Isle of Man, not by yourself. I'm sure that Snape is going to want to come along, and I certainly do!"

Damn. Trying to get him involved in a different argument didn't work. Harry pulled his sheets off his head and scowled at Draco. "Paton didn't invite you, though," he said, knowing he was being childish. It had taken more than a week, but he was finally feeling that shying sensation inside himself whenever Draco or Snape came near, that indication that he'd spent too much time with them now and they would start seeing too much. He knew he couldn't ask to be perfectly alone, but being among the Opallines would at least provide him with strangers for a night who didn't know him as well, and would miss any subtle signals he gave.

"I'm sure he would say it was all right," said Draco firmly. "He doesn't strike me as an impolite man, or an ally who would think it was proper for you to go anywhere without guards."

"Draaaco," said Harry, and now he knew he was being childish, and that meant he'd lost.

Draco patted his back. "Go to sleep. I think you need rest." He snickered. "Then talk to Snape in the morning, and talk to Paton with that communication spell. He'll make room for two more guests, and he'll do it a lot more graciously than you think he will. The Old Blood was famous for its courtesy, Harry, at least in days where there were more of those families."

Harry sighed and closed his eyes. Draco bent down and brushed a light kiss over his cheek, then went back to his own bed. Harry heard him shut his curtains, and his breathing resumed a soft, regular rhythm in moments. Draco could always fall asleep easily, unless he was worrying about something; Narcissa had confessed to Harry already that Draco had slept through the night when he was three months old.

Only then did Harry stretch out and frown reluctantly at the ceiling of his four-poster.

He knew that he would have to find some way to sever the mental connection he and Draco had. For one thing, if Voldemort did launch an attack that could get through the grass barrier—and since he was the best Legilimens Harry had ever met, that was possible—then Draco could get caught up in it. Harry was sick of having other people suffer for his sake. That connection had to go.

For another, Harry knew he would have to reopen the Occlumency link. Without it, he was blind to what Voldemort was doing. He was sure that he would have been able to figure out part of the plans for the graveyard ambush if he'd been listening to Voldemort's thoughts. He was given to gloating. And Harry might have seen a demonstration of Yaxley's plants, too, and come up with some idea how to counter them.

How are you going to counter them?

Well, there were a few people he could speak to about that. In the meantime, he needed that dream connection. Even figuring out why Voldemort had the dream about the corridor might help him in the end. He'd keep their connection shut until he learned some way to separate Draco from it permanently, and then he'd part the grass and go in as quietly as he could, to see what could be seen.

"Neville? Can I talk to you?"

Neville turned around, a look of plain surprise on his face. Harry wondered if he was surprised at being talked to or surprised that Harry had wanted to talk to him. But, after a moment, he nodded. "Sure, Harry," he said, and then cast around vaguely until he apparently decided that sitting in the corridor was the best they could do. He sat down, and Harry sank down the wall to sit beside him.

Harry decided to come straight to the point. "Neville," he said, "I have an enemy who fights with plants—vines that can bind wandless magic, and grass that can twine around people and hold them prisoner, and thorns that were holding a man by being embedded in his skin, and slowly eating him alive." Neville's face had rearranged itself into an expression of fascinated horror. Harry nodded to him. "I know. Do you know what those things are? Do you know how to counter them?"

Neville frowned and rubbed his wrist. "They all sound bred, Harry," he said at last. "Crossed from other plants. I don't know anything like that that occurs in the wild."

Harry sighed. "That's what I thought. Would you be able to figure out counters to them?"

"M-me?" Neville dropped his Defense Against the Dark Arts book in surprise. "You want ­m-me to help you, Harry?"

"Of course. You're the best at Herbology in the whole school, except maybe Professor Sprout herself, and I don't know her that well." Harry leaned forward. "And Ron told me about you contributing your Light magic to the stream to help me, Neville. I'm not going to be fooled again, you know."

"Fooled?" Neville blinked at him.

"I'm never going to think that you're clumsy and bumbling and a coward again," said Harry softly. Neville blinked some more. "Too many people dismiss you as just that. But I know that you have courage, or you wouldn't have gone into Gryffindor. And now you've demonstrated courage. I'm afraid I'm going to insist on seeing you as brave now. Sorry, but the spell's broken."

Neville lowered his head, a flush of pleasure on his cheeks. "That's all right, Harry," he said. "And I think I might be able to help. Can you describe exactly what the vines and the grass and the thorns look like? If I can figure out what species they were bred from, then I can see about breeding crosses of those species' predators or competitors."

Harry had to admit that wouldn't have occurred to him. He began to describe the plants in as much detail as he could remember them, deliberately crowding back the emotions that threatened to overwhelm him. They could shove off. He didn't want to brood on them, so he wouldn't. And if what he had experienced could be useful to the war effort in any way, then he had no excuse for ignoring it.

Neville asked several questions that Harry didn't know the answers to, like what kind of soil the graveyard had, but overall seemed satisfied with what he told him. He smiled at Harry and then stood and wandered down the hallway, muttering about where he was going to find trumpet-heart seeds at this time of year.

Harry grinned, watching him, and then stood and went to cast the communication spell and speak with Hawthorn. Her estate was called the Garden, and she had created the hawthorn plant that he could use to call out to her. She had some skill with plants, though he didn't think it matched Yaxley's.

Harry waited in patient silence as Snape stepped delicately around inside his head, examining the grass barrier that shut off the Occlumency link from several angles. At last, his guardian's presence slipped out of his mind, and he opened his eyes to find Snape shaking his head.

"There appears to be no hole whatsoever," he said. "Describe the dream again."

Harry did, but it had been misty and fragmented even when he first dreamed it, not holding the unnatural clarity of one of the visions, and he couldn't add any useful details. No, he hadn't noticed any unusual patterns in the stone, but that didn't mean there hadn't been; he might just not have observed them. No, there didn't seem to be curses or wards on the door, but Voldemort hadn't cared about that. No, he still couldn't open the door, but how did Snape know that was the result of a curse or ward, and not something inherent in the place itself?

At last, Snape pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled in frustration. "I can only tell you to keep the barrier up, Harry, and detach the connection with Draco if you can. That is dangerous."

Harry nodded. "That's what I thought. I'll do what I can, sir, but Draco won't like it."

Snape snorted. "Mr. Malfoy does not like many things, and the majority of them are good for him." He paused and studied Harry critically. "Sometimes he is right, however. He came down here this morning to tell me that you had received a New Year's invitation you didn't see fit to warn us about. Why?"

Harry lowered his head, flushing uncomfortably. "I—sir, please don't take this the wrong way, but I'm starting to be too conscious of what you see when you look at me," he said quietly. "I've spent days in your company, longer than I usually go, and when I'm not with you, I'm with Draco. I want some time alone, or with people who don't know me as well."

Snape was silent for a long moment. "And have you told Draco this?" he asked finally.

Harry shook his head. "I tried to convince him at first that I'd told him about the invitation, and he just hadn't paid attention. He didn't buy that, of course. And now he's set on going with me, and I don't know what to do." He felt a rush of relief that he could talk with Snape about this, even as Snape studied him and his discomfort increased. He wondered if he'd ever be able to spend endless amounts of time in the presence of other people and never long for solitude. Connor seemed to manage it just fine.

"I will talk with him."

Harry could feel his mouth drop open. "You would?"

Snape nodded. "You must not ever be afraid to ask me for something like that, Harry," he said, catching Harry's eye. "I would brave far worse than a Malfoy temper tantrum for you."

His ears heating, Harry nodded. He knew that, he did, but he couldn't seem to hold it in his head all the time. He still preferred to do things by himself. Unless it was a problem he knew he absolutely couldn't handle, like Yaxley's plants, then seeking out help was always a distant, second option.

"Thank you, sir," he murmured.

"You are welcome." Snape stood and gently ushered him towards the door. "Now, you said that you had other things to do today?"

"Other things I should do today." Harry cast several warming charms on himself, and then touched his neck. Yes, the Many snake was there, curled closely into his warm skin. "It's New Year's Eve, the last day of the year, and that's a time for making vows."

"Make sure you can keep them," said Snape, his hand straying to his left arm for a moment.

Harry smiled at him. "I'll make sure I can."

The trees of the Forbidden Forest seemed to have seriously embraced the idea that it was winter, now. Harry saw some of them encased entirely in ice, their twigs puffing into fairy flowers of white and gold. Others rose bare and high against the diamond-bright, diamond-colored air, arms lifted as if to catch and hold the clouds. The ground beneath his feet squeaked as he stepped on frozen leaves and mud, and shattered in sploshes as he broke small patches of ice.

He was aware of the centaurs tracking him the moment he entered the Forest, of course. No longer inclined to attack intruders the moment they saw them, they were still proud and wary. Hooves splashed and broke the ice in larger noises and patches than his feet could, and when Harry turned his head, he could sometimes see a black or palomino tail weaving in and out between the branches. Soon the centaurs showed themselves, trotting easily beside him: a bay Harry didn't know, and Firenze. He inclined his head to the latter, who nodded back.

"Have you come to visit us, Harry Potter?" he asked.

Harry didn't bother correcting Firenze on his last name. It wasn't something that would matter to the centaurs. "Yes," he said. "You, and the Many if they're awake at this season, and anyone else who will meet me. I want to renew my vows to them, to reassure them that I'm still vates and will be unless something kills me or I fall from the path."

"Even if you die, you are still vates," said Firenze. "We would hold the memory of you sacred." He nodded to the bay, who began to gallop ahead, his footing light on the treacherous ground and not all that cautious. Firenze went on, forcing Harry to turn and look at him instead of waiting for the other centaur to break his neck. "We have heard that you tried to convince the half-giant to travel and speak to his kin, and that you were unsuccessful."

Harry grimaced. "Yes." Hagrid had, after long thought, told Harry that he really couldn't do it. There had been tears in his eyes as he explained that he couldn't use his connection with his mother that way, to serve some political purpose. Harry had been disappointed, but had understood.

"I will offer to go," said Firenze.

Harry blinked. "I wasn't aware that centaurs and giants shared any kind of connection," he said.

"Not centaurs in general," said Firenze patiently. "My mentor went once to giant country, and preserved the maps, and showed me the way. He was more curious than the majority of us, more willing to venture into strange paths with only the stars to light him on his journey. I once meant to take the trip, but of course the web prevented me. The web told the wizards that he had left the Forest, and they caught him a few years later and killed him for being 'a danger to wizardkind.'"

Harry winced. "I'm sorry. You have little reason to love us."

"You are not most wizards," said Firenze. "And the stars have told me it is time. The Lady is rising, and the Leaf is in bloom." Harry tried to nod as if he understood what the centaur was talking about. Astronomy had always been one of his worse subjects, since he devoted so much of his time to understanding other things. "I will pursue this path. You have only to tell me what you offer the giants, and I will explain it to them. It will take a long time, but my mentor taught me some of their language."

"The same thing I offer any species," said Harry. "Freedom from their web, as soon as it can be negotiated."

Firenze bowed solemnly from the waist. "It shall be done, vates."

Harry looked away, uneasy with the courtesy—it would have been all right if it just weren't a bow, implying that he was higher than others—and then realized they were coming up on the clearing where he had met with several species before. A small gathering of centaurs stood there now, shifting their haunches and shivering to keep warm, and a writhing tangle of the Many coiled on several of their backs, to keep their scales out of the snow.

What really caught Harry's attention, though, was the creature standing on the other side of the clearing. He stopped and stared. He thought it was a dryad at first, though he hadn't been aware that any of them lived in the Forbidden Forest. It was slender, pale green of skin like new leaves, and it had many arms, most of which started out as skin, corkscrewed into bark, and ended up in delicate bunches of twigs and brilliant leaves. Harry thought it had two legs, but he couldn't be sure; perhaps those were more of its branches. It moved forward lightly enough, and then the branches swayed enough to let him see the face.

Harry stared again. The face was like the memory of his fragmented dream that morning; it had been real at some point long ago and far away. It slanted from right to left, a diagonal face, with ears so sharp they looked like knife-blades and enormous green eyes that dominated it. Harry looked hastily away from those eyes. He had seen sparks of silver begin in them, as if they were deep pools, and he knew instinctively that he could fall into them and never come out.

"Who are you?" he whispered. "The spirit of the Forest?"

A gentle voice, filled with the music of roots, answered him. "You knew me once, Harry vates."

Harry turned back, careful to keep his gaze not directly on those green eyes. He had a suspicion now, but this was so—strange.

"Dobby?" he said at last.

The figure inclined itself, like a tree bowing before the wind, and said, "Yes. I have changed, Harry, have I not?" He—Harry supposed he was still a he, and not an it—stroked his skin with two twig-like fingers.

"The last time I saw you, you were an elf," said Harry. "You looked more like one of the Sidhe than a house elf, but still…I don't know. Is this more like the form your people once had?" He nodded at the curling branches and the roots that snaked shyly across the frozen ground. He found it hard to think of it as human, or elven, or anything but strange.

"No," said Dobby. "We had no fixed form, Harry. I am remembering now. We changed from century to century, or we changed as we pleased. We would inhabit one form and learn it completely, then become another. This is the form I have chosen at the moment." His smile, when Harry glanced cautiously back at his face, was delirious with pleasure. "The other was pleasant, but not what I wanted to learn."

Harry nodded slowly, swallowing back his anger; the wizards who enslaved house elves had compounded their sin, then, not just tying up their magic and making them glad to serve, but binding them to one form. "And you have come to meet me now?"

Dobby looked up abruptly, and those green eyes nearly drowned Harry. "Yes," he said, as if recalled from his delight to his purpose. "Yes, I did. I would like your word that you still do mean to free house elves, Harry. Forgive me, but you have freed none of them since me, and you have made many allies who hold house elves. It will not be easy to persuade them to give up their possessions." A noise like wind blowing through leaves twisted those last words. "Can you do this? Or is your commitment to human political alliances greater than your commitment to us?"

Harry felt a solid weight settle into the middle of his stomach. He had been right to come out here, after all. The last day of the year was a good one for renewing vows, or taking them.

"I am vates first and foremost," he said quietly. "It is the only path I have truly chosen to walk. My parents, and Voldemort through their machinations, inflicted me with my scar and my magic, and my training made me into my brother's guardian. I would have been an ordinary wizard without that, and happier for it. But I have the magic now, and that makes the vates path possible. I will walk it."

He opened his hand, wanting some way to mark the occasion, but not wanting to use blood. He started when fire abruptly burned in the center of his palm. He recognized the brightness of it, and the sweet, mind-stirring scent that poured from it. It was phoenix fire, one of the gifts Fawkes seemed to have granted him with his sacrificial death. Harry hadn't chosen that, either, but phoenix fire was the perfect way to mark this occasion.

He looked up at Dobby, or the creature that had once been Dobby, while the flame in the center of his palm hissed and spat and cast sparks into the snow like fireworks. "I swear to you," he said, "by this fire, that I am vates first and foremost, and for however long it takes, I will free the house elves of their web, along with all those other species who wish to be free."

The fire shot up into the air, abruptly, spreading bright red wings. For a moment, Harry caught a glimpse of Fawkes hovering there, and blinked back tears. Then the fire dived down into the snow, melting it and creating a burned patch on the Forest floor. Harry felt part of his magic flowing into the scar, linking him firmly to his promise.

"That will do," said Dobby, his voice soft. "I see now why Fawkes died for you. Live well and peaceably and powerfully, vates." He uncoiled, and his branches lifted, and his eyes grew greener until he was nothing but a patch of green and silver, and then he was gone.

Harry, breathing deeply, turned to the centaurs and the Many. "My commitment to you is renewed, as well," he said, first in English and then repeating himself in Parseltongue. "It always will be. I know that you are free of your webs, now, but that all communities of your kind are not. They will be, someday."

"We are willing to wait," said Firenze, mildly. "We owe you a debt we cannot repay, Harry Potter vates, and we are more patient than humans understand. And we remind you, as well, of our side of the bargain. We will come forth to war when you need us."

Harry nodded. "A storm of Light will be coming to Hogwarts on Midsummer day, or a prophecy lies," he said quietly. "I will probably ask for your help then."

"And you shall have it."

"And you shall have our help," hissed the Many, their voices ebbing and blending in his ears as they always did. "We can help you as no others may. Our daughter is small enough to be carried about you, in your clothing, in your pockets, and no one will notice. And what she sees, we will see, and what she does, we will note. You need not wear her about your neck. Keep her secret, and safe."

Harry nodded. "And is there nothing else I can do for you?"

"Nothing yet. Another hive will not be hatched until next year. Then, we will need you to break the web that will try to reestablish itself."

Harry bowed a bit, grateful that the magical creatures were so much more straightforward than his human allies. Half of them would try to bargain with him in more complicated terms, and half wouldn't reveal what they wanted at all. It didn't occur to the Many to lie, though, much less arrange some dance where Harry didn't know the steps. "Thank you."

He spoke with the centaurs and the Many for a short time more, arranging the details of Firenze's visit to the giants and when exactly the Many's children would hatch, and then headed back towards the castle. He did pause on the edge of the Forbidden Forest to tuck the Many snake into his pocket. He felt quietly pleased with how his visit had gone. Snape had trusted him to go into the Forest without guards, probably knowing that nothing lived there that would hurt him, and he had managed just fine.

When he looked up, he saw a unicorn running across the grounds.

Harry caught his breath. The unicorn was little more than a streak of white, marked out by deep, dusky purple lights on his horn and hooves. Otherwise, he looked like a spirit of the snow given intelligence and substance, and he ran as if it were the morning of the world and he had never known imprisonment.

A moment, and he was gone, fading as he neared the lake, but Harry was left shivering with an awe deeper than the contentment had been. He supposed it wasn't his fate to be at peace for long.

Ah, well. This is more interesting.

"Ready, Harry?" Paton's face grinned at him through the fire. "Then come through!"

Harry tossed a handful of Floo powder into the flames, calling out, "The Welcoming Room!" He spun around several times, then got spat out into a shadowy place he'd only seen behind Paton's head as they spoke a few minutes earlier. He felt his arm clasped and tugged, as Paton both balanced him and shook his hand. He turned and looked at his ally, and wound up catching his breath.

Paton wore his tattoos without a glamour here, making his face into a mask of lines at once beautiful and strange. His dark blue robes revealed more tattoos, links that marked members of the Opalline family, soaring and spiraling around his body. Harry wondered who drew the tattoos. Was it a common pattern copied from an earlier artist? Did the magic just know instinctively how to make them? What happened when a new Opalline child was born?

"Welcome, Harry," said Paton, and bowed to him. His white-blond hair, still cropped from Fergus's death, was growing out again, and coiled neatly into a braid that he'd attached to a silver ring of the chain collar around his throat. "I cannot wait for you to meet the rest of my family. This is only the Welcoming Room," he added, waving one hand at the stone room they stood in. The decorations on the walls mimicked the spreading whorls of his tattoos. "We have some space to walk before we come to the rest of Gollrish Y Thie." He smiled at Harry, and opened the door on the other side of the small, box-like room.

No, Harry corrected himself, the small, box-like house. The Welcoming Room really was completely detached from the rest of the home the Opallines lived in. He took a few careful steps out the door, and froze.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" said Paton at his shoulder, with a self-satisfaction that Harry had to grant was justified. "Welcome to Snaefell."

They stood on the upper edge of a long stone staircase, carved so neatly into the rock that it would be invisible from below, Harry thought. Of course, there was probably magic helping it along. All the steps bore a dip in the middle—worn by generations of feet walking up them.

Beyond and around and below the staircase extended Snaefell, which was quite obviously a mountain, and not a hill. Harry shivered as he took in the sight through the clear air; the unparalleled view over rising and soaring snowfields made him feel colder. Snaefell canted high enough, or they stood in just the right place, to see an incredible distance across both the Isle of Man and the Irish Sea. Harry saw shades of blue and gray in the water he'd never seen before, and the distant blur of land.

"The Muggles used to say that you could see six kingdoms from the top of Snaefell on a clear day," Paton murmured to him. "England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, and the Kingdom of Heaven. We say that we have a seventh, though, properly speaking, our home was never a kingdom. We've just lived here a long, long time." Gently, he gripped Harry's shoulder and turned him around, unresisting, so that Harry could look to the left of where they stood.

That's Gollrish Y Thie, Harry thought. Another span of stone steps extended from the Welcoming Room across a shoulder of the mountain, faithfully following its lines, though they rose out of the snow enough that Harry knew they must be huge. And on top of the next ridge curled a home as splendid as a rearing dragon.

Harry would have said it was a castle, but its spare, clean lines made even Hogwarts look unwarrantedly bulky and bumpy. Various wings, patterned with what looked like scales, wavered in several directions, bending and curving where another structure would have stood square or straight. Harry could make out windows sparkling with something that might have been glass or wards. The noise of voices chattering came across the distance to him, and he saw numerous small shapes, children, darting about furiously on the icy flat rock right next to the drop.

"How do you hide this from the Muggles?" he asked Paton.

Paton laughed. "We have a pretty solid illusion that makes the whole place feel like part of the mountain—something the one Light Lady ever born to our line did for us. So far as the Muggles are concerned, all of this is just part of Snaefell. They have a railroad that runs right over our roof." He nodded towards the steps. "Shall we? It's safe, I assure you. We have wards to either side that prevent anyone from falling off the ridge, though they won't keep you from getting a faceful of snow."

Harry nodded, and they began to hop from one large stone to the other, heading towards the house.

It was harder than it looked, Harry quickly found. The rocks had warming charms that melted some of the ice, but what the Opallines considered "some ice" was obviously different from what he did. He had to hop across the gaps and windmill his arms each time to stay upright. Paton, unsurprisingly, strode along as sure-footed as a mule. He smiled at each gap in between the stones, too, as if they told him tales that Harry couldn't hear. For all Harry knew, they did.

They reached the other side with no more than one really serious slip on Harry's part, though, and then the ground was flat with flagstones all the way up to the main staircase of Gollrish Y Thie, where Harry could see a figure with long, blowing hair waiting for them. The children, who were throwing snowballs at each other and practicing spells to dump ice down the back of each other's necks, turned around and stared at him with unabashed curiosity. More than one, though, abandoned the staring to run up to Paton and clasp their arms around him with small cries of, "Jishag mooar!"

Paton scooped them up with the ease of long practice, swung each one around, and said a quick phrase in what Harry knew must be Manx. The older children, once he'd spoken to them, turned to Harry and introduced themselves with perfect politeness, hands held palm-up in front of their bodies and their heads bowing over them. Harry heard a dizzying blur of names which he didn't try to retain, though he nodded and smiled to each one. The younger tended to cluster behind the older ones, or behind Paton, chewing their braids—mostly white-blonde, but with some dark and Weasley-red mixed in for variety—and watching him shyly.

Harry tried to count all the children, but since some of them raced back to the snowball games the moment introductions were finished, it was difficult. There were more than fifty, though. Harry shook his head in wonder, and gave a sidelong glance at Paton as they finally worked their way out the other side of the crowd and towards the great steps. "You weren't kidding when you said that you're rich in blood," he said.

Paton smiled. "No. Of course, most of the time, not all of the children live at Gollrish Y Thie. We're scattered all around, as I've told you. But the New Year's celebration is a big deal, thanks to the Cooinaght. My children come from all over the world to attend it." He glanced around him with another self-satisfied look. Harry knew the expression of a man on his home ground now; Paton seemed more thoroughly at home here than even Lucius did in Malfoy Manor.

They had reached the staircase that curled up towards the main entrance of the house, and the standing figure had come down to meet them. Harry faced her, and blinked as he saw a young woman, probably Honoria's age, with smooth brown skin and dark eyes. Her white-blonde hair stood out against her coloring, and unlike most of the people around her, she didn't have it coiling in a braid, but blowing free.

"Fastyr mie," she murmured, dipping her head and holding her hands out to Harry in a version of the gesture the older children had used with him. "Good afternoon, Harry vates. My name is Calibrid."

"May I present, as she's already taken up some of the work of doing—" Paton's voice was warm and rich with affection "—my daughter and heir, Calibrid Opalline."

Harry spread his own hand in a mimicry of her gesture. Calibrid smiled, but never stopped studying him. Harry could see already why Paton had chosen her as his heir. If he wanted an observer and someone who intimately knew the strengths and weaknesses of others, he could do much, much worse.

Something was off about Calibrid, though, Harry thought as he studied her back. It was as if a song that played around most people were silent with her. He thought for a moment that she must be better at hiding her magic than many witches, but abruptly he realized what it was, and he blurted his realization out before he could stop it.

"You're a Squib!"

Calibrid's eyebrows rose, and her smile sharpened. "Ah, yes. I did wonder when you would notice. I hope you won't be unpleasant about it." Her new smile said that she could make life more unpleasant for him than he'd ever dream of making it for her.

Harry shook his head, his cheeks already burning. His training and his etiquette conscience, which had a voice like Narcissa's, were both scolding him soundly for his slip-up. "I'm sorry, my lady," he murmured. "I didn't think. I'm used to being around Dark pureblood families who value magical power when choosing an heir before all else. I didn't realize it would be different for the Old Blood, but of course I should have."

Calibrid relaxed, and dropped her hands back to her sides. "Of course it is," she echoed, and brushed her fingers along her cheeks, dissipating her glamour and calling Harry's attention to her tattoos. "I can call on the combined magical power of my family any time I should need it. Why do I need to be magical in my own right?"

Harry grinned a bit. He could think of several people in pureblood society who would be horrified to hear that, Augustus Starrise first among them. He thought they could stand to hear it.

A cutting buzz sounded from overhead, and Harry started a step back as a wasp circled around Calibrid's shoulder. Calibrid showed no alarm, but moved forward a bit as the wasp dived down behind her. A moment later, a tall young man with white-blond hair was standing where the insect had been, staring at Harry in absolute silence. Opalline tattoos curved and writhed on his fine pale skin, and his hand clutched a wand hard enough that his knuckles had lost all color.

"Doncan," said Calibrid. "He was just startled when he called me a Squib, that's all. He intended no insult to me." She reached back and laid a hand on the stranger's shoulder. Harry saw some of the tension alter in him, rather than melt, shifting to other places and positions. Doncan now leaned forward as if he were studying Harry like an insect under glass in his own right. Harry conquered the temptation to shift his own weight and stared back.

"May I present my son Doncan," said Paton, his voice dry, "a wasp Animagus and the guardian of my daughter Calibrid."

Harry turned at the use of the term "guardian." "He protects her because she has no magic?" he asked.

"That was the original justification for it, yes," said Paton. "But he also chose to do the work. And he underwent the original training that Dumbledore and your mother warped when it came to you, Harry. That training normally begins at ten years old, and the child must consent to it. Doncan consented. You did not." His eyes were dark, and his mouth tightened the slightest bit. Harry decided that he didn't want to see Paton truly angry, ever.

Harry had a few more questions now, though. "I didn't realize that Lily had the idea from anywhere," he said. He met Doncan's eyes, and realized they did look familiar, all his own emotions subdued beneath a sternness that watched for any danger to his charge. "I thought she just trained me in accordance with Dumbledore's ethics of sacrifice."

"She did," said Doncan, speaking for the first time. His voice was deep and hoarse, as if he spent a lot of his time shouting. "But she used our methods, and applied them to a flawed ideal. I am sorry for what happened to you, little brother. No one should have to suffer it. My service is joyful to me. Yours has not been."

Harry studied him some more. It was true that Doncan didn't have the lines of tension that Harry remembered as being almost constantly a part of himself when he guarded Connor. He seemed confident that most of the people around Calibrid didn't want to hurt her. Harry had never been allowed to relax to that extent; Lily had trained him to think there were Death Eaters around every corner, and in places where no Death Eaters could have been, she tested him. Harry supposed he could see how that decision, freely made, would turn out a fine warrior, and not one who resented his lot.

It made his skin prickle a bit, all the same.

"Come," Calibrid said then, extending her arm. Harry placed his hand hesitantly on it, folding his thumb back in the proper manner for a pureblood wizard being escorted by an older witch, and she nodded approval. "You have not seen the inside of Gollrish Y Thie, and you should. Everyone who comes to the Isle should." She shot a sly glance at her father. "I have even contended that we should invite Muggles here. My father says very tiresome things about the International Statute of Secrecy, but all my travels through other countries did not make me change my mind. Wizards and Muggles should know each other, I think."

"My little Calibrid is a self-styled revolutionary," said Paton, with the tone of someone pursuing an old argument.

"Because you raised me to think for myself, Father, even when that disagreed with your own thoughts," Calibrid replied sweetly, and then they were through the great arched entrance and into the main hall of Gollrish Y Thie, and Harry was too busy staring to pay attention to the course of the argument.

The inside of the hall was patterned with more scales, but this time, Harry could see that they weren't merely indentations or fancy carvings in the stone. They were actual scales. The great hall was made of a pair of widespread jaws that answered the question, once and for all, as to whether Gollrish Y Thie was molded after a living creature or had once been a living creature. They stepped into a lower jaw, and above them slanted another, extending on a constant angle back to the still-enormous throat. Harry swallowed as he looked up at the fangs hanging overhead like enormous stalactites. The fangs on the lower jaw had probably been broken away long ago for the safety of walkers. Rope ladders dangled from the ceiling, leading to faint darknesses of tunnel entrances among the teeth. Harry imagined they ran back into the skull proper, probably up to the muzzle and eyesockets.

"I deliberately didn't warn you," said Paton, standing at his side, and, Harry realized, enjoying his reaction. "I like watching the way it takes visitors. Our home was a dragon once, a dragon's skeleton—we like to say the dragon that St. George battled, though Merlin knows if she was really that. We know her kind doesn't exist in the British Isles any more, though." Paton brushed a hand fondly along a wall that Harry supposed was partly bone and partly stone. "Too big, too destructive, and their fire was too hot; it vaporized instead of just burning. Wizards hunted them to extinction long ago. In fact, there's speculation that the Killing Curse was developed to kill these dragons without close battle, since the wizards inevitably lost in a close battle." He sighed. "Can you imagine the glory she must have been when she was alive?"

Harry could. He imagined the jaws closing on all of them, the great head lifting, the mouth tilting to spill them all down the throat…

He shivered, partly with fear and partly with a pang of loss at the thought of anything so grand and beautiful dying. Then he shook his head resolutely. He couldn't be too angry at those ancient wizards, unless they were also the ones who had bound the house elves and the other species with webs. He had enough to worry about with the living magical creatures to protect and free.

"Now, Harry," said Paton, drawing his attention back. "The Cooinaght is coming."

"You mentioned that," Harry murmured. "A ritual of some kind?"

"It is a ritual." Paton's face was solemn, with no hint of teasing now. "A ritual of memory. It helps keep our family together, by showing us what we have been through and lost and won in the past year. However, I am not sure that it would be the best thing for you to experience, given all the losses that haunt your memory." He was studying Harry intently. "You are perfectly welcome to abstain from it. No one will think it an insult." Harry couldn't help glancing at Doncan, but he shook his head, eyes merciless as a hawk's. "I merely wanted to warn you, so that you don't get caught up in it, and can leave the room when it begins."

Harry thought for a moment. Did he really want to relive the graveyard twice over, and the trial, and Merlin knew what else?

But he remembered the promise he had made to himself earlier, and fulfilled in the Forbidden Forest. This was New Year's Day, a day of renewing vows and commitments. He didn't want to retreat in fear, even if it was a wise idea.

"I'll stay for it."

Paton blinked. "You are sure?" he asked, canting his head to study Harry as if he were a new tattoo unexpectedly appeared on his skin. "It is intense."

"I want to," Harry said.

Paton smiled at him. "It is wonderful to hear you say that," he said simply. "Very well, then. Calibrid will show you around Gollrish Y Thie for a time, and let me know when she must attend other duties." He glanced at his daughter, who nodded.

"I don't want to keep her away from her duties," Harry protested, a little alarmed at the thought of that much trouble being taken for him. "I mean, she's your heir—"

"And you are a member of the family as important as any other," Calibrid said firmly. "You were that from the moment my big brother shed his blood for you. Come along, Harry. You haven't enjoyed a game until you've watched children playing tag in a dragon's eye." She pulled him towards one of the rope ladders, with Doncan pacing along behind them, silent as a great cat.

Harry sighed once, then gave himself over to being treated like a guest, or the little brother that both Doncan and Calibrid called him.

By the time the Cooinaght came, Harry thought he was more than ready.

He had stood in the Great Hall of Gollrish Y Thie, the dragon's belly, and watched a display of magic meant to mimic the Northern Lights storm around him. Shining threads of purple and blue and gold and green reared up and then ran down the walls. Harry thought for a moment of dripping blood, then shook the image away and deliberately replaced it with the thought of the memory that had shone when he freed the unicorns. Then he could laugh and applaud with the rest, and admire the skill of the two girls, twins, whose magic had produced the light—two of Paton's younger daughters, just sixteen. The twins had grinned, bowed to the crowd, and slipped away hand-in-hand.

He'd met Angelica Griffinsnest, Paton's first wife, the mother of Fergus and Doncan and a few of his other children, who had wound up parting with him over "differences that made us good friends and not good spouses," as she'd described it to Harry. She seemed to enjoy the company of the Opallines, though, and associated freely with all the children. Harry watched her Levitate a squeaking grandchild around the room, and had to look away, a burning in his throat.

He'd seen Calibrid carefully retrieve a Pensieve that two enormous owls had arrived carrying. She'd noticed his look, and explained, stroking the sides of the Pensieve as if it were the most precious thing in the world, that it had come from her mother, a Pakistani witch who had loved Paton and planned to marry him. Her family had required her to marry elsewhere, though, and her mother had not wished to disobey their will. She had loved Paton for a year, given birth to Calibrid, then given her to her father when she was three months old and her mother had to leave the Isle of Man. She sent a Pensieve at the end of every month containing memories of what she'd been doing in the recent past, since her husband forbade her contact with Paton. Harry swallowed down envy, and courteously—he hoped—declined the invitation that Calibrid gave him to look into the Pensieve and get to know her mother. He was just a little too jealous of her for having a mother who loved her that deeply, even years after she'd embarked on a different life.

He felt a little out of place, in fact, though everyone made some effort to include him—and for the younger children it wasn't even an effort; they showed off new spells to him and told him tales of their exploits and insisted that he play tag as naturally as they did with everyone else. A few asked about his missing hand, but accepted the story Harry invented about an evil snake biting it off. But they were so obviously a family, and Harry couldn't help feeling his lacks in the middle of them, from his parents to his missing last name.

"Gather."

Paton spoke just the one word, and all the shouting and laughter in the hall ceased. Harry knew it was deep night from the torches that flared from cavities in the dragon's ribs, and thought it was about an hour before midnight and the turning of the year. Hundreds of solemn faces turned up now, and parents put their hands on the shoulders of children. Harry felt Calibrid draw up beside him.

She began softly translating the speech that Paton made, in rippling Manx that Harry suspected everyone in the hall but him understood.

"Now is the time of the Cooinaght, the Remembering, the ritual in which we recall the intense passages of our past year." As Calibrid finished translating that sentence, the torches sparked higher and higher. Not all of them, though, Harry realized with a glance. Only the twelve largest were leaping and acquiring a white tinge to the flames, twelve spaced at equal distances around the hall and from each other. "We recall this to challenge ourselves, for in remembering our mistakes, we learn not to make them in the future. We recall this to brace ourselves, for the next year may contain challenges greater than any we have faced so far. We recall this to cheer ourselves, for our victories in a year of life are never minor. We recall this to give ourselves life, for we are alive in the past as in the future, and the present is the moving shuttle that connects the tapestries of both."

At the end of the speech, the torches extended their flames until they touched overhead. Harry couldn't help staring, trying to judge the shape of the arch. But it remained no more specific than an arch, and when sparks began to fall from it like shooting stars or fiery snow, he could do no more than watch.

The sparks grew larger, impossibly larger, as they waltzed downwards, until Harry saw the first one to come towards him like a draping blanket. He raised his arms, uncertain of what he was about to do, and then found another place, another time, tumbling around him as the spark expanded to take him in.

He stood in the Slytherin bedroom, watching himself in a tight embrace with Draco near the foot of Draco's bed. He recognized the scene after a moment's blink: the hug they'd shared after his vision of Voldemort last January, when Draco had somehow ridden along with him and ended up killing Nagini. Harry felt a shiver of several emotions, all of them too intense to be separated, ride up and down his spine. It was strange to see himself from the outside, strange to see himself with two hands, strange to really notice the content expression as he snuggled into Draco's shoulder.

The walls of the memory fell straight down around him, and another took its place. Harry smelled blood and magic, saw himself with hands extended towards a figure lying motionless in a bed, and knew he was witnessing Marian Bulstrode's birth again, at the end of February. He'd saved Elfrida's magic, after she'd drained her own because Marian was her heir. Harry smiled. He was allowed to be proud of that, wasn't he? Yes, he thought he was. It had been the first time he'd reversed his magic-swallowing ability, and seen that he could use that swallowed strength to give life and hope back to others—the first time he'd really felt like a wizard doing what he could to help and serve other wizards, not just magical creatures.

A roar, and he was in a memory so vibrant with life that he flushed even before he saw what it was. The first kiss he and Draco had shared, which came on the spring equinox, the brightest day of his March. Harry was torn between surprised that he'd looked that terrified, and pleased that Draco looked more satisfied and deliriously happy than he'd remembered. He'd been rather too occupied with his own feelings, and expectations, and fears, to realize that it had been exactly what Draco wanted.

Darkness attacked next, erasing the bright memory like ink spilled on an overdue Potions essay. Harry looked up, and above him danced the monstrous storm that had come on Walpurgis, the wild Dark stung to fury by Voldemort's attempt to capture and manipulate it. The rage seemed almost innocent, now that Harry had seen the fury of Midwinter. He watched himself flying, hurtling through darkness with a vengeance that made him wince and suspect that Draco and Snape might have a point about how reckless he was with his life. He looked like a bit of rubble just then, a piece of trash the wild Dark might fling however it chose. April had been an intense month for him altogether, with the Maze as well as this, but this was by far the wilder memory.

Sunshine and color and light broke the darkness like dawn, and he stood in the cavern beneath Gringotts, in May, gathering and taming the magic of twelve different wizards in an effort to free the southern goblins. Power rushed into him and made him able to do so many things for those brief moments—more even than he could have done if he had swallowed their magic, since it had been willingly given over. But he had chosen to turn it back, tuck it gently into their bodies once more and refuse the temptation. Harry was less proud of that than he was of freeing the goblins, but only just.

He was prepared when sunshine became dusk, color because gray, light became darkness. It was inevitable that this would be his memory of June, burning the twenty days before it and the nine days after it to ash. He stood in the graveyard, and watched himself writhe on the stone, and heard the screams, not mindless but full of terror and pain, and watched Bellatrix sever his left hand. It did not really take as long as he had thought it did. It was less painful to watch than it was to experience. He had survived it. He told himself that, and still had to look away when the hand came free and Bellatrix laughed aloud.

July unspooled in Godric's Hollow, with him lying flat on his back next to the old isolation wards, gritting his teeth and wrinkling his forehead as he rebuilt his own mind. Harry would have preferred to watch the memory of his birthday, the day when Argutus had joined him, but he found this an unexpectedly quiet scene. He didn't stay long enough to see his own magic explode in negation, attacking the power the place had held over him, and without that, there was almost no sense of what rushed and churned in his brain.

August, and he rode the Light gryphon's back, vaulting and turning as it claimed the magic Voldemort had torn from it. Harry forced himself not to think of what would surely come with December, to try and see this memory as it had been when he experienced it. There were some advantages to the outside perspective, though: the Light gryphon flicked its tail in disdain at Voldemort as it flew away, something Harry definitely hadn't noticed at the time. He grinned, and when the next memory strewed sand beneath his feet, he was braced.

He watched himself confront Voldemort in the circle of wooden disks he'd used to destroy the sirens, and shook his head in wonder. He looked so small, so fragile. It was a wonder that his allies trusted and would follow him. Then he saw the expression on his own face when he lunged up to take the curse for Connor, and revised his estimate. He supposed it was only a mystery some of the time, and that battle on the autumn equinox had given them a chance to see both sides of him.

He was hovering in the air, a change so sudden that Harry squeaked and reached for the ground before he caught himself, shaking his head in embarrassment. He watched himself jerk at Henrietta's sharp reminder that he was their leader, and shout warnings as he pushed his broom into a dive towards Woodhouse. Henrietta went off to play with Evan Rosier, something Harry hadn't known at the time, and he and Draco saved each other's lives so quickly that Harry barely had time to breathe, watching it, between one death and the next. He felt a stir of satisfaction in his belly as he watched them running towards Woodhouse under the full moon. Obviously, their relationship couldn't be like that all the time, but it was good to know that it could be when it needed to be.

He kept his head half-bowed during the memory of November, because sound and not sight was the important thing here. He heard his voice reciting the speech for his parents, impassioned and yet strangely dry, as if he were a cracked bone pouring all his marrow and strength into the words, keeping nothing for himself. He heard the mutters and creaks of the Wizengamot quiet, and he breathed in the absolute silence, knowing that the memory of himself would be climbing back to Draco.

Darkness and wind bore him up. Once again, he hovered, and watched as Fawkes danced and sang his death, winding down his life into a tight bolt of fire that he flung directly at Harry. This time, Harry could make out the fire fluttering beneath his chest like a heartbeat—at least, when he separated again from the Light gryphon and the tears left him in peace. He frowned and touched his own chest uncertainly. What exactly did Fawkes leave me?

The memory broke, and Harry found himself on a vision of a high mountaintop. Dark, undefined country lay below, and above him shone innumerable stars, so bright and so far away that Harry shivered. Behind him lay green, well-traveled country, he knew, but he could not turn and look at it. This was a representation of the future, and at the moment, the Cooinaght insisted he look forward.

This is still yours to choose, said a voice in his ears that might have been the Light's, if the Light knew personal compassion.

The dark land smoothed and flattened, and he stood in the Opallines' Great Hall once more, his cheeks wet with tears. A hand touched his shoulder, and he was turned to face, not Calibrid, as he'd assumed, but Doncan.

Doncan stared into his eyes, so keenly that Harry had to control the impulse to turn away. He stared back instead, at this man who was, in an odd kind of way, his brother—trained in the way that Harry should have been trained, if Lily and Dumbledore had sought his consent in protecting Connor; part of the Opalline family, as Harry could be considered with Fergus's sacrifice of blood; a guardian in a way that Harry knew he never would be, but sharing some traits with him.

Doncan nodded. What he had seen in his face, Harry didn't know. He laid a hand on Harry's forehead, light and cool as the touch of a spiderweb, and spoke in his hoarse voice. "Welcome to the rest of your life, little brother."

Harry blinked, and realized the Great Hall was alive with fireworks, with more dazzling bursts of light, wilder than the controlled performance from earlier, and with torch flames that had abandoned their holders to dance in waltzes. Midnight had passed, and the new year had stalked in.

Harry didn't know the proper, ritual response, but he managed to incline his head, his heart beating with the weight of the past year and the excitement over what was yet to come, and say, "Thank you…brother."