Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!

This chapter concludes the current arc of action.

Chapter Fifty-Nine: First Time, First Choice

Draco landed on stone, which told him this was probably Durmstrang, and rolled over, springing back to his feet, where a single glance told him that, no, this was not Durmstrang.

He stood in the middle of a corridor filled with wizards and witches clad in robes with plebian designs on them, their eyes fixed on nothing and their voices moaning or crying for help. And in front of him lay Harry, his voice uttering screams that made Draco twitch, and his eyes shut hard enough that almost no tears leaked out from beneath the lids, and in front of him stood Dumbledore, lifting his head to regard Draco with slow surprise.

Draco felt a surge of terror try to take him. In another life, he might have knelt shivering on the floor, unable to do anything.

But rage ate the terror. As long as he was acting Gryffindorish, Draco supposed, then he might as well be hideously angry at the powerful wizard hurting the boy he loved.

"What spell did you use on him?" he demanded.

Dumbledore smiled. It was the kind of smile Draco had seen the Headmaster give in the morning across the staff table, when he was benevolently observing his contained little world of Hogwarts and seeing nothing wrong with it. "You're about to find out," he said, and nodded over Draco's shoulder.

Draco turned to look. Darkness came at him, whirling like the central funnel cloud of a great storm.

But, when it touched him, it shredded into black ribbons and fell to the floor. Draco blinked and turned back to Dumbledore.

I did say that I wanted to arrive prepared to help Harry, he thought. The coin probably protected me from the effects of this spell, whatever it is—no, wait, I know what it is. Reading the books on Dark Arts that his father had suggested he study over the past few summers had come in handy after all. This would be Capto Horrifer.

And that would explain why Harry was on his back, too. The spell caused the victims to relive their most fearsome memories, but twisted them into a new abundance of horrors, so that the victims couldn't simply count on surviving the way they had the first time. Harry must be dreaming of that moment in the graveyard when Bellatrix had taken his hand.

Draco's rage blasted away his surprise and his rationality again. He could sense Dumbledore getting past his own surprise, probably preparing another spell to attack Draco and hold him there, or perhaps torture him, or perhaps kill him.

He didn't hesitate to think whether this was a good idea. It was the only one which might work, so he did it. He fixed his eyes on Dumbledore's and jumped, out of his mind and into the former Headmaster's, wondering dimly as he flew why it felt as if the air had turned heavy and surging, filled with thunder as well as the greasy film of this particular spell.

Albus had been surprised by the arrival of the Malfoy boy, but there were Dark artifacts that could have permitted the boy to pass his wards. At least there seemed to be no rescuers coming after him, and once the Capto Horrifer spell failed, he knew something stronger would be needed. He started to prepare a binding curse that would make Draco see what Harry was seeing and suffer, helpless as a ghost in his memory-world, even if Albus could not bind him into his own thoughts.

Then his head rocked on his neck, and someone struck his mind a powerful blow. Albus slid down a long, dark tunnel, scrabbling frantically for control. It didn't come to him. He was falling faster and faster, into some quiet corner of his thoughts where he would be able to watch but do nothing to control his body.

No. Somehow, the boy had acquired the power to possess other wizards, which Albus wished he had known before now, but he had faced this before. Tom had tried to possess him more than once. Albus was a master Legilimens, and he knew his own mind too well to permit someone to intrude for long.

And there was no way that Draco Malfoy could be more powerful and experienced than Tom Riddle.

Albus imagined a tunnel opening in his mind, taking him to the side instead of down as the boy envisioned, while at the same time using a whisper of Legilimency to make it look as if he had been sufficiently startled to fall all the way. Draco was satisfied, and turned his body, making it step forward and kneel beside Harry. One hand reached out and stroked Harry's forehead. Draco said soothing words in Albus's voice which Albus didn't let himself listen to. They would only distract him at this juncture.

He had thrown Tom off with an attack from behind and below, clad in Legilimency that continued to make it look as if he cowered in the background and didn't know what to do. He employed the same technique with this boy, swimming undetectably as he gathered his magic, focusing on the incantation that he wanted to use. It would be best if he killed Draco Malfoy the moment he threw him out of his mind, so that he would not continue to be a nuisance.

He thought he could do it. Draco Malfoy was not Harry Potter, any more than he was Tom Riddle. Albus had been cautious about pushing Harry too much; threaten to kill him, and his magic might rally and defend him, to the point of slaying Albus before he could be sure that his mentor had seen his signal. Trapping him in his mind was the best way to both weaken him and make sure the Capto Horrifer burned until Falco arrived. The spell would end when Albus died—and he fully expected his mentor to kill him, but by then, the magic would have served its purpose.

Draco Malfoy, though, was not a Lord-level wizard, nor a Legilimens. Albus sharpened all his thoughts, bearing down on a certain spell, a Dark Arts one he had studied but never cast. That was not going to matter, though, not with his will and not with the strength of his magic.

Diduco mentem. It would divide and scatter Malfoy's thoughts to the point where he could never draw them back together; fragments and sparks of himself would wander into corners of the Ministry and the wizarding world. It had to be cast when the victim's mind was out of his body, tumbling helplessly through the air, and thus it wasn't often used. Albus thought it would be perfect for the moment before Malfoy managed to recover from the shock of the attack.

He waited a moment more, to be sure that Malfoy was engaged in fumbling for his magic, trying to figure out how to use it to perform a wandless Finite Incantatem on Harry.

Then he struck.

Draco felt a shock wave travel up to him and try to bear him out of Dumbledore's body. It had edges, and it had strength, and he knew it could cut him up or crush him if he stayed. The overwhelming impulse was to flee the foreign mind and go back to his own body.

But if he did that, then Dumbledore might kill him, or Harry.

Draco didn't want that to happen.

He instead turned and leaped as the shock wave of magic came at him, possessing it as, a moment ago, he had possessed the whole of Dumbledore's mind. He felt wrenched out of all proportions. Of course, he had no body now, and it had always been the body that he and Harry practiced with, and which he'd learned to wield like a weapon. Draco felt strange sensations crowding in on him, the reports of strange senses, and knew that trying to interpret them all would drive him mad.

And then he'd either die, or fade away, or return to his body and be helpless.

He forced himself to ignore all the oddities that being a piece of magic was giving him. He concentrated on only two things: the image of Harry screaming in pain at Dumbledore's hand, and one of the training exercises that his father had taught him long ago, when he was learning to control his accidental magic and move to a practice wand.

Can you envision the wand core? It will be dragon heartstring, or phoenix feather, or unicorn hair, because those are the cores from which Ollivander makes all his wands, and a Malfoy buys only from an Ollivander. Now, ignore the dissimilarities between the cores. What matters is that they are all long and thin. Your magic runs up them, constrained, narrow, and then spreads out of the end of the wand like a blade of sunshine. That is the image you must learn to master, Draco. Your accidental magic is too wide at the moment. It must be focused.

Draco had learned to focus; he'd managed his first spells with a practice wand while he was still very young. He fell easily into the old visualizations now. The piece of Dumbledore's magic he'd snatched wasn't a wand core, but the same principle applied. Draco compressed it firmly, and let his own magic pass through it like a narrow beam of sunshine, which widened when it had the room to spread.

He didn't know exactly what he'd done, but he knew, as if he had ears attuned only for this, that Dumbledore was in pain. He turned and sent the narrow beam of his own magic through the magic he'd possessed again, and this time felt whatever spell or trap Dumbledore had prepared tremble and shatter like ice.

Now he had to move quickly, because Dumbledore might try something back in the world of bodies. The quickest, the cleverest, the most imaginative wizard was the one who most often won on a battlefield, both his parents and Professor Snape had taught him, rather than the most powerful, because power didn't mean anything if you didn't know where to send it or what to do with it. Lashing out with accidental magic and hoping to hit something was so much less elegant than aiming a wand, chanting a spell, and having it do exactly what you wanted it to do.

Draco aimed himself. He forced and focused all his will onto one target: Harry free from the spell Dumbledore had cast and back in possession of his sanity. He remembered what he knew about inventing spells. Will was important, and need, but if he could give it an incantation to focus it, that was wonderful; raw, new magic responded best to incantations, following the example of countless other spells as they came into existence.

"Exsuscita!" he cried—if not aloud, then somewhere in his mind. He certainly seemed to hear the word, blowing past his ears on wings of fire. "Exsuscita iterum! Exsuscita iterum atque iterum!"

Awaken! he thought, flinging the words through the narrow core of his will, towards the vision at the end of his wand. Awaken a second time! Awaken again and again!

The words coiled through him like a tearing fire, or like a filament spun from his very being, pulling so much material from him that Draco wondered irrelevantly if this was what it felt like when a woman gave birth: the pulling and parting of her own flesh, the sudden separation of what had been a smaller piece of her. Then he lost all considerations of such things as his thoughts fell away from him, and he blended into pure white fire. There was a moment when he knew nothing but what he was doing. Awaken, act, rise, be awake--

The next moment, Dumbledore threw him out of his head.

Draco came back to himself in mid-tumble. He slammed into his body at the next moment, and if Dumbledore had flung a spell at him to try and kill him, it missed altogether. He bent over, his breath rasping in his throat, burning as if he had been breathing air thick with ice. He noticed the odd, thundering feeling around him again, but he still didn't know what it was, and he barely cared. Creating that spell on the fly had taken nearly everything out of him. He started to sag forward.

A hand caught him. Draco looked up. His heart bounded, and he found a new strength and cared again, as he realized that he had landed near Harry's head, and Harry was sitting up, his hand on Draco's arm to prevent him from falling. His eyes were fixed on Draco's face, solemn and wide-awake again.

Then dark snakes lashed into being around him, and the walls of the corridor turned to ice.

Harry turned to face Dumbledore. Draco stepped up, grinning, ready to help any way he could, and to enjoy the fun.

Harry heard the voice as a distant cry on the horizon at first. Bellatrix had removed his right hand and right foot, and was moving to start on his left foot. Her hoarse laughter never varied. Neither did the burning scarlet gaze fixed on him, and of course Harry had no way into unconsciousness to escape the pain.

Nevertheless, the voice was there, repeating, in Latin, "Awaken a second time!"

Harry blinked as the poison-colored sky of his hell began to burn. White flame was consuming it, bit by bit. Neither Voldemort nor Bellatrix appeared to notice, but Harry didn't care if they noticed or not. He wanted to escape, and he was beginning to think, for the first time since the horror had taken him, that perhaps this was not real, after all.

The voice soared again, triumphant as a diving falcon. "Exsuscita iterum atque iterum!"

The sky tore apart as if it were sliced by the dive of a falcon itself. Light poured in from every corner, and Harry remembered that this had happened once, and no matter what the pain, he had lived through it the once and had no reason to live through it again. He was not guilty of a crime that horrible. He was not ashamed of what he was, to think he had to return to the last days before his parents and Dumbledore were arrested and make things right again. And he was not that weak-minded, to think that he somehow deserved this.

The mental chains holding the horror in place slipped. Harry sprang upward as if he had wings, and then he was back in his body, and he knew the voice that had called him for Draco's.

He turned just in time to keep Draco from falling to the floor, and hoped that his eyes said all the things he didn't have the breath or the time to speak right now. Draco smiled as if he had heard them, and then moved to stand behind him as Harry felt his anger ride the air. Cold and snakes, he thought, the ways he always got angry.

And he was angry, but there was something more to it, this time. He recognized the thunderous feeling in the air, the shifting and stirring of power, though he didn't know what it meant. It said a prophecy was in motion, and from the spell Dumbledore had used and the way that Draco was standing at his right shoulder, Harry suspected he knew which one it was.

But that's impossible, his mind tried to chatter at him, distracting him. That would mean that the prophecy talked about Dumbledore and not Voldemort, and that's simply fucking impossible—

Harry shut the voice away. He had a Dark Lord to deal with, and the spell he could see the people in the corridor under, the same one that had enslaved him, had stripped away his every impulse to mercy. He meant to kill Dumbledore, now.

He moved a single step forward, noticing that Dumbledore had come back to his feet and was watching him calmly. At least, most people would have thought he was calm. His eyes had none of their usual twinkle, and they moved in more than one direction, instead of staying focused solely on Harry's face. He was frightened, Harry knew. Good. He should be.

He eased another step forward, Draco right behind him, a hand resting on his right shoulder now, and Dumbledore broke the silence.

"There is no need to settle this with violence, Harry," said Dumbledore, in a soft, pleasant voice that Harry just barely remembered from his childhood, when he'd used it to reinforce the lessons that Lily taught him. "We are both powerful wizards. We are both doing what we do for the good of the world. Why should we not form an alliance? I will speak for the rights of witches and wizards, and you can speak for the rights of magical creatures."

"I don't trust you," said Harry. He had never felt like this before. The whole world was crystalline, and forgiveness had no place in it. He saw a road leading him straight to Dumbledore, and at the end of that road was death. "Never again." He reached down into his magic, gathering it the way he had when he thought Voldemort had come to Hogwarts. The snakes and the ice vanished; Harry didn't have the strength to waste in frivolous displays of his anger. His magic began churning around him, not wild, but cold and calm and deep, a spreading maelstrom. Harry fixed his gaze on Dumbledore and waited to see how he would respond to that. Did he recognize the feeling of prophecy in the air?

"I can feel the thoughts of your parents, Harry," said Dumbledore. "Did you know that you are the central figure in your mother's nightmares?"

"I'm not surprised." Harry was pulling up strength that he didn't know he had, until the heavy feeling of his magic was barely distinguishable from the feeling of prophecy in the air.

"But don't you care about it?" Dumbledore twinkled at him now, but it was as false as the shine off leprechaun gold. "You could still change her mind, Harry. Go to her and show her how great and noble you truly are. We could heal her mind, together."

"I don't care about my parents anymore," Harry told him, and heard his voice come out as calm and flat as a glacier. He'd taken his magic away from the semi-permanent Levitation Charm around him; he wasn't likely to need it right now. Spread and spread and spread, and his magic had overwhelmed the feeling of prophecy. Harry nodded. He was nearly there. He'd nearly gathered enough strength to do what he wanted to do.

Dumbledore sighed. "I hoped I would not have to do this, Harry. I hoped even now you would see that the good of the wizarding world is little served by making me into your enemy. There is still Tom to fight."

"Both of you are my enemies," said Harry, and envisioned a smooth, icy, bottomless pit.

Dumbledore attacked.

Harry had expected it. The attack overwhelmed him, throwing him back into Draco, and he'd also expected that. Dumbledore was stronger than he was, after all. Where Harry's power could feel like boulders falling from a ceiling, Dumbledore's could feel like the whole Ministry coming down on their heads.

That didn't matter, not when Harry's magic seized it and funneled it straight past Harry, swallowing it harmlessly. This was not the snake Harry had used to constrain his gift at other points in the past. Instead, he was opening the pit he'd envisioned wider than the snake's mouth could ever go, and he wanted to drain all of Dumbledore's magic, not just the small amount he'd spend in attacking an enemy.

It was working. His power absorbed his enemy's power into itself, and it didn't touch him or Draco. Harry held Dumbledore's eyes, totally without pity, and waited for him to catch on.

Dumbledore's eyes widened, and then he launched such an avalanche of magic that Harry staggered, falling to one knee. But still he went on draining, his goal clear in his mind: Dumbledore a Muggle or a Squib, the way that Harry had never willingly made anyone but Lily.

The avalanche tumbled past him and into the icy pit, too.

Dumbledore's eyes narrowed. Harry felt him gather himself, reaching for old and familiar weapons, calling them, readying them, pointing them straight at his enemy. Harry raised his head and waited. He'd had a dim idea of what would happen from the moment he felt the prophecy in motion, and if he was right, then he could resist the attack.

If he was right.

But then, if he wasn't, no one else had a chance of facing Dumbledore, either, so he would succumb knowing he'd done the best he could.

The compulsion sank home into his mind like a knife, and it was simpler than Harry had thought it would be.

"Be what we trained you to be," Dumbledore whispered to him. "Be what you were for the ten years before you came to Hogwarts."

Harry felt his own mind surrounding the compulsion, aiding it in its persuasion. After all, wasn't that what he wanted? To be the obedient trained little puppet that Lily would have made him, safe to lurk in the background and lead no wars? In the shadows, he was responsible for no one but his brother. He didn't have to make hard decisions. It was not part of a war effort against him when Voldemort and Bellatrix took Durmstrang, but of the effort against his brother and the side of the Light. He hadn't needed to question; other people told him what to do and he did it. And other people didn't bother with trying to know or love him. It had been a shadowy paradise, the one he'd instinctively sought when Voldemort's curse had trapped him in his own mind on the day of the autumn equinox, the one his Complete Vanishing spell had mimicked when he'd known he might destroy Margaret in his anger.

Harry swayed. The compulsion could overbear him, not because Dumbledore was still that strong magically, but because it had assistance from his training and his own desires. Why not surrender? The compulsion made it sound so tempting, and once he was under it, Harry wouldn't know the difference between being forced to choose it and choosing it, anyway. He could have everything he wanted with just a bit of effort.

Everything would be so simple.

And Harry lowered his head and pushed back. Because nothing was simple, nothing was easy, and he knew that.

The knowledge had been bred in his bones and blood from the time he'd learned about the phoenix web—no, maybe from the time he'd begun to accept himself as part of Slytherin House—no, maybe from the time he realized that, no matter what he did, Draco was his friend. The moment the training had come in contact with the real world outside the isolation wards of Godric's Hollow, it had shattered. He was not that fragile, and he had grown around it and survived and lived and thrived, and he had made hard decisions, and no matter what he tried to think, these obligations would never release him, because those who wanted the power to change the world had to be prepared to bear the costs of changing the world.

He pushed and he pushed and he pushed, and he willed the compulsion to break, and it did, shattering into small flying shards.

Harry shook his head and stood. Yes, the prophecy had been right. He did have a kind of power the Dark Lord knew not. Dumbledore had never understood free will. He understood webs, and compulsion, and manipulation, but he did not understand the free choice to do something. He still thought, even now, that he could press a single button, tug a single string, and Harry would go back under control.

Harry felt his first coloring of pity for the man since this had begun, staining the clear dome of his anger, but he kept right on pulling Dumbledore's magic down into his pit. He did it with his eyes fastened on Dumbledore's, though that meant he had to see what happened to his face as he made him into a Squib, because Dumbledore deserved a witness to his agony, and Harry had chosen to be that witness. He felt the hand on his right shoulder clasp tight, and suspected that Draco was watching, as well, though perhaps more with vindictive glee than pity or anger or love.

Yes, love. I see now that I can't just love everyone without distinction and expect it to work out. Snape told me, but I didn't listen to him. Loving people so much that I hesitate to punish them can mean they escape to wreak harm on others that I love. How many people in the Ministry are suffering under Dumbledore's spell right now? How many wouldn't have had to suffer if I'd agreed to punishment for him long ago, when whatever happened to change his mind about Dark Arts hadn't happened?

It was a regret, but Harry didn't think he felt guilt. He saw, now. He saw what needed to happen, and he was prepared to do it.

At the same time, he saw what he was doing, what kind of step he was choosing, sacrificing one life for the good of others. His mouth tightened. It was no wonder that Vera, and Snape, and others, had said that he needed to see himself clearly. It wasn't just so that he could be vates. It was so that he didn't end up like Dumbledore. He had reacted violently against his own impulse to compel Connor at the trial, but that had been a conscious and aberrant thought. What would happen if he slipped into making other people do things unconsciously? He might never notice. And the people who loved and followed him might never notice, either. And if an enemy rose against him, would he treat him like Dumbledore had treated both Voldemort and Harry?

Not that Voldemort is right. But it's not as simple as right and wrong. It never was. I told Lily once that neither Dumbledore nor Voldemort had learned that lesson, and Dumbledore really hasn't. He must have thought that inflicting mental torture on the people around him was right, because he was the one doing it. He would never have done it just to rejoice in their pain.

So more compassion crept into his mind, but that didn't mean that it crept into his method of dealing with Dumbledore. Harry kept draining him. He knew what it meant, where it was going, and he accepted it.

Draco's hand tightened on his shoulder, and Harry leaned his head back towards him without glancing away from Dumbledore. "What is it, Draco?"

"I—aren't you finished yet?" Draco whispered. "Surely you must have taken all his magic by now. He just looks like an old man."

Harry nodded. He did. Dumbledore's robes didn't shine the way they had when he was Headmaster of Hogwarts, but hung limply on him. He no longer looked intimidating. His eyes wandered, and his breath came slow, and his hands were palsied. If Harry could have believed that Dumbledore would give up now that he had no more active magic, he would have stopped there.

But Dumbledore managed to look up and focus his eyes. Harry saw that steely spark of determination, that conviction of his own righteousness, and shook his head.

"Which is it?" Draco asked, sounding confused. "Yes or no?"

"He still has passive magic," Harry murmured, "the kind of thing that lets wizards live longer than most Muggles. He'll find a way to use that, Draco, if I leave it to him. I can't."

"But if you take it—" said Draco, and fell silent.

"Yes," agreed Harry.

Draco looped his arms around his waist then, and Harry reached out.

Albus could feel himself shaking. It both came and did not come from the fact that most of his magic was gone now. It came mostly from the doom that clanged in his mind like a knell.

He had felt the prophecy in the air, but dismissed it. Sybill could have made another prophecy while he was in prison, and of course he wouldn't have heard of it. That was probably the prophecy that was coming true now. None of the other prophecies fit this particular situation.

And then he'd realized that Malfoy was standing at Harry's right shoulder, and that Malfoy was older than Harry.

No.

That was the first tone of the bell in his mind, the first toll that indicated he might have been wrong. Albus wanted to step away, but his eyes were on Harry's as the boy drained his magic, and he found that he couldn't move unless Harry did. Wide and green and utterly merciless, those eyes looked at him, and they pinned him more effectively than any compulsion.

The prophecy surged and sang like foam on a shore as his magic drained away. The great force that guided the future was happy, as if Albus's loss of his magic, his defeat, could actually help a Seer's vision come true.

It does.

The second tone of doom, and Albus shuddered. He could hardly bear to think what this meant. He was not a Dark Lord. He could not be a Dark Lord. He had always served the Light, even when it took his magic. He'd never Declared for the Dark. How could he be what Tom was, enough that he'd taken his place in the prophecy?

But even more, how could the prophecy be wrong? Albus had based and built his actions for the last fifteen years around that version of the future. He'd known that they'd have to sacrifice Lily's boys from the time they were born at the end of July. He'd accepted that it meant the sacrifice of Peter, and the suppression of Harry's magic, and the absolute firm grip they'd gained—thought they'd gained—over the boy's mind. Someone born as the seventh month died, the younger of two, having the power the Dark Lord knew not—

Then Albus felt his heart swell. No, this couldn't be the prophecy coming true, could it? It couldn't! He hadn't given Connor his heart-shaped scar, and he hadn't inflicted a curse scar on Harry like Tom had. Besides, he was stronger than Harry, not equal to him in power. There was no way the prophecy could be talking about him.

Yes, it could.

The third sound of the bell rang through him, and Albus shuddered, as he remembered that Tom was also stronger than Harry, and perhaps "marking him as his equal" didn't mean what they'd all thought, and neither did "marking his heart." There was the phoenix web Albus had cast. That had marked Harry's mind, and he had certainly done it out of fear of Harry's magic, out of fear of what Harry would do and become when he grew up, just the way that Tom had ended up marking Harry's forehead out of fear of what the boy might do to oppose him when he grew up—

See how right this is? the bell of doom asked him.

Albus screamed. There seemed to be no air left in his lungs to make the sound, but he made it inside his head, and that was more than enough. The sound of his mistake was everywhere around him, ringing through his bones, making them crumble, making them tear and part and shred, his skin crumple and fall in on him, his heart labor and stop, as he realized that he'd been wrong, wrong—wrong! sang the bell—and created a waste and a mess in trying to fulfill a prophecy that had always been meant to claim him, that had descended on the one who had tried to save it like some great beast, that had recoiled on the hand that meant to wield it like an ungrateful whip, that was shredding the world into smaller and smaller pieces as he saw how unnecessary all the sacrifices had been.

It was almost a mercy when his heart stopped beating. It stopped the endless flight of the arrows of pain through him, the endless clanging of the bell in his mind.

Harry closed his eyes. It was done, and he didn't need to witness any more. He had swallowed every bit of passive magic that Dumbledore had, including the magic that had kept his heart beating for a hundred and fifty years, when it would have stopped much earlier if he was a Muggle.

He had anticipated what would happen when he did—or, he thought he had. It had still been horrible to watch magically delayed time snap back and take its vengeance, finding a Muggle body that should have aged and been dead and buried long since. Dumbledore's skin had fallen off, his organs had withered to dust, his eyesockets had turned empty, and his robes had become an elaborate shroud around a set of bones. Harry swallowed. Dumbledore was dead now, and it was done.

Well, almost done. Harry didn't really know what to do with the trapped magic, part of him and yet not part of him, churning at the bottom of the icy pit. Dumbledore's magic didn't taste quite as vicious and tainted as the magic the Death Eaters and Voldemort used, but it was slimy and greasy, like the film of the spell that had covered Harry's skin even in Hogwarts. He didn't want to swallow the magic. He didn't want it mixing with his own power, because it was mightier, and could overwhelm his like a greater quantity of poison overwhelming pure water.

Images flashed behind his eyes as he thought of a way to deal with it: the sea or the earth, which could swallow it, and the graveyard where Voldemort had told him about that particular power of earth, and the white light that had funneled from Augustus's staff as he broke through Voldemort's wards—

That's it.

He opened his eyes and turned to Draco. "Can I borrow your tie?" he asked. "I didn't put mine on before I went to the library."

Draco blinked, as if he had forgotten that there was such a thing as Slytherin school ties, and then undid his and handed it to him. Harry took it up and turned it around. A simple thing, green and silver, and made of cloth that was ridiculously fragile. He murmured a few preservation spells and sent the magic funneling through his gripping fingers, to make it strong enough.

Then he took up Dumbledore's captured magic and poured it into the tie.

The magic didn't want to go. It fought and twisted and rebounded back on itself, warping and coming up with cunning ways to slip away from him. Harry had the advantage, though, since he had trapped the power already, and the visualization of ice he'd used to contain it didn't have any holes or handholds to let it get out. In the end, it went where he told it to and poured into the tie.

When he opened his eyes, Draco's tie was glowing like the sun. After a moment, though, the magic settled into its new home and lost the sentience that it had grown under pressure. Harry let out a soft breath and stuffed the tie into a pocket of his robe.

"What are you going to do with that?" Draco asked in a high voice.

"I'd like to wrap it around a rock and throw it into the Atlantic, but somehow I don't think that would be safe enough," Harry muttered, and then blinked as he realized it wasn't Draco who'd spoken. He turned around, and found that the corridor was crowded with those people who'd been under Dumbledore's spell, silently staring at them. Harry flushed. Merlin knows how long they've been awake, or how much they saw, or what they think about it all.

He lifted his chin and tried to get back some semblance of dignity. "I'll have to talk to Minister Scrimgeour, of course," he said as coolly as he could. "Is there someone who can direct me to his office from here?"

Several people volunteered at once to be guides, from a woman clad in the robes of an Auror trainee to a man with multiple quills behind his ear who appeared to work in the Department of Magical Games and Sports. Harry caught mostly sidelong glances from them all, their eyes round and wide to the point of looking as if they hurt. They might have been awed, or frightened, or dreaming of getting free drinks from this story for a month.

Harry shook his head. I'll be charged with murder, for all I know. I don't think there are precedents for things like this.

He was more occupied, though, with trying to figure out why the prophecy had happened now as their merry little band trudged towards the lifts. Did that mean it didn't apply to the defeat of Voldemort after all? Then why in the world had so many other things relating to Voldemort fit—the curse scar that he bore, for instance, and the fact that he and Connor had been born twins, appearing to fit the prophecy neatly?

Except that that wasn't the only prophecy I've heard lately. Was it.

Harry had to half-close his eyes, but Acies's whispering recital came back to him.

"Three on three the old one coils,
Three in its times, three in its choices,
It bears his rivals to silence and stillness,
And the wild Darkness laughs, and the Light rejoices."

Harry hadn't wondered what "the old one" was, so caught up had he been in the implications of the second quatrain and its storms. Now, he wondered if this prophecy was referring to an older prophecy—such as the one Trelawney had made sixteen, maybe even seventeen, years ago.

Can prophecies come true more than once? I don't know. It's something to ask Acies.

A more urgent concern tackled him as their little group at last reached the level of Scrimgeour's office.

If I'm right, that means it'll come true twice more. Who, besides Voldemort, do we have to face?