Thanks for the reviews yesterday!

This chapter turned out...rather differently than I originally envisioned. But that's all right, because this version actually works better with the next chapters in line than the original did.

Chapter Sixty-Two: Everybody Yells At Harry

Harry followed obediently enough behind McGonagall and Snape until he realized that they were going to the Headmistress's office. Then he slowed until they looked at him, and nodded at Hermione, still wrapped in the circle of his arms.

"I don't think she should have to hear what you say to me," he said softly. "Can you find someone to escort her back to Gryffindor Tower?"

"I hardly think—" Snape began.

"But I did not, either, and I have to admit, Miss Granger needs attention," said McGonagall, in a much softer voice than she'd used on Harry. "Miss Granger, if you would like me to call Mr. Weasley and Mr. Potter? They are both awake, as the fire started burning on the outside of Gryffindor Tower."

Hermione said a word that might have been "please." McGonagall took it that way, at least, and turned away, red wards manifesting around her as she moved. She touched one of them, and a small creature that looked like a lion made of fire leaped away from her, vanishing but trailing a small comet-tail behind it. McGonagall caught Harry's gaze, and explained, "Since I set the wards in Gryffindor Tower when I was still Head of House, I can summon my students who live in that House."

Harry nodded. "Have you figured out the structural weakness in the wards yet, Madam?" he asked.

Whether because of the subject or for Hermione's sake, McGonagall was at least willing to discuss this without yelling at him. Snape looked as if he became more angry with each moment the scolding was delayed, but McGonagall ignored his tight noise of disapproval. "Not yet, Mr.—Harry." She sighed. "The Founders know that the weakness is somewhere in the tunnels of Hogwarts, but the Founders have access to all those tunnels. They know everything that is in them. It is much easier to survey them from an anchor-stone than it is walking through them on foot. And they have searched them all, and reported no holes to me. It is rather as if the wards are water we pour into soil, and they soak into the soil and vanish." McGonagall gestured to the red wards glowing around her. "These are strong because I renewed them when I was up in the Tower, but they will start fading again in a few hours' time. We don't know what happened, and if Albus was still here, I think I would strangle him before I could get answers out of him."

Harry smiled in spite of himself. A moment later, footsteps pounded down the corridor, and Connor and Ron appeared in front of them. Their hair was wild—Connor's almost as wild as Harry's own—and their faces were covered with soot in which tear tracks of sweat had appeared.

"Hermione!"

"Harry!"

They spoke so nearly in unison that Harry found it difficult to tell who had said what. McGonagall nodded as if both words made sense. "Miss Granger was captured by the wizard who set the fire," she said. "Please take her back to Gryffindor Tower and make her as comfortable as possible."

Ron reached out, and Hermione shook herself free of Harry and went to him, burying her face in his neck with a little sob. Harry could understand why. She'd been in Rosier's company for however long it took the Insomnia Charm to wake Harry up and Rosier to decide to set the fire instead. She needed the soothing of close friends now, and he wasn't one of them, no matter how he wished to be.

Connor, though he looked at Hermione with an anxious expression, turned back to watching Harry in a moment. "Are you all right?" he whispered.

Harry shrugged. "It's a snakebite," he said, which he knew confused Connor, but expressed his feelings on the matter as eloquently as possible. "I'll recover."

In a moment, he regretted the metaphor as he found Snape's fingers gripping his arm and turning it. "Where were you bitten?" Snape asked, in a voice that anyone else might have found emotionless. Harry could hear the pounded-down emotions within it, flat flakes of worry and concern and rage.

"I didn't mean it literally," said Harry softly, drawing his arm free. "Just that Rosier's poisoned the whole night with his presence."

"Rosier?" Connor exclaimed. Hermione gave a muffled moan at the sound of his name, and Ron began moving back towards the Tower.

Harry managed a fleeting smile at his brother. "Don't worry. The next time I see him, I'm going to kill him. I told him that."

"You should have done it this time!" Snape all but barked. When Harry looked at him, he could see his face darkening with the onrush of rage.

"Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley, please escort Miss Granger to the Tower now," said McGonagall quickly. Connor looked disappointed, but he put his arm around Hermione's free shoulder and started moving with her towards the stairs. McGonagall turned fiercely on Snape in the next moment. "We are not doing this in the hallway, Severus. I agree that we need to talk to Harry, but we'll do it in the privacy of my office. Mr. Malfoy is already waiting there, in any case," she added, with a sidelong glance at Harry.

Harry bowed his head. He could imagine how frantic Draco would be, particularly if he woke from a random dream and found Harry gone.

But underneath the penitence was a growing seed of frustration. What else could he have done? Rosier would have killed Hermione with a thought before Harry could strike him, likely, especially given that Harry didn't have any magic ready or a spell on his lips when he met them. And Hermione's death would have distracted Harry further, perhaps even giving Rosier time to get away.

It was a situation that could only have ended badly for everyone. In another world, Harry supposed, he might have cared little enough about Hermione to risk her death, but in this one he hadn't. He had made a poisoned decision, but all decisions this night were poisoned. He had thought that the yelling he knew McGonagall and Snape and Draco would do would prove cathartic, at least for them. Now he wondered if anything could purge the venom gathering under his skin.

Snape kept silent, with an obviously supreme effort, until they were riding the moving staircase up to McGonagall's office. Then he said, "I trusted you to tell me before you considered leaving the school, Harry. It seems I was wrong to trust you, at least on that score."

Harry let his eyes unfocus as he tried to count stones in the wall. He had thought it would be easy to submit to this scolding; he'd had so many of them before. But now he found sarcasm burning on his tongue, sharp as the Many's poison. The little snake stirred in his pocket as he thought of her, and Harry knew she would spit in Snape's eyes and blind him if he merely asked. He shook his head. The vision wasn't tempting. He wanted to spit his own words instead.

Snape saw the headshake, and his voice sharpened. "Is this your way of telling me that I should not trust you at all, Harry? Perhaps my first instincts, the ones I had last year, were right, then, and I do need to cast monitoring spells on you. Or perhaps I should use the potions that let parents know the emotional state of their infants at once, as you seem prone to following yours rather than coming and getting an adult, or someone who stands outside the situation and can see rationally."

Harry swallowed, and swallowed again. They didn't know everything yet. They knew about the fire, and that he had gone, and that Hermione had been hurt. Perhaps when they heard every detail, they would understand that rational thought was less than useless in this particular venture.

"Will you tell us what happened, Harry?"

McGonagall was the one who said that, and Harry turned to her gratefully. "Yes," he said softly. "When we get into your office, Headmistress. I think Draco should hear this, too."

She nodded, and then they arrived at the top of the staircase and she opened the door. Harry saw several conjured chairs in the moment before Draco flung himself out of one and threw his arms around Harry.

"I didn't even know," he breathed. "I didn't know where you were. The bracelet said that you were alive and healthy, so Professor Snape convinced me not to use it to go after you."

"He was right," said Harry softly, stepping out of the embrace, glad that Draco was apparently more reasonable than Harry had thought he would be. "I went to Durmstrang."

Draco's face turned the color of ashes. "You what?" he said, and now Harry could see the anger building in him. "But you promised, Harry. You said that you would leave the research on Durmstrang to wizards and witches who could handle it because they were the parents of children there. You took the first chance to free the school that came along, didn't you?"

"I wouldn't call Evan Rosier much of a chance," Harry said. "Certainly not the one I would have chosen."

"Rosier was here?" Draco stared at him as if he were mad.

Harry nodded, and then, seeing a way to deflect anger from him for a while, glanced at McGonagall. "Is the school safe to stay open, Headmistress?" he asked. "If the wards are going to drain every night, I mean."

McGonagall sat down behind her desk, looking very tired. "Yes," she said quietly. "I've described the problem to several ward-builders at the Ministry, and they said it sounds familiar. They're coming tomorrow to strengthen the wards and prevent them from draining. If they couldn't have done anything, then I would have sincerely considered closing Hogwarts, or asking you to construct a lightning ward that included both the school and Hogsmeade."

Harry nodded. "That's how Rosier got in," he said. "Apparating, because the wards are so weak. He set the fire and seized Hermione when he found her in the halls. He put a collar on her like the one Mulciber wore last year, the one that I exploded when I killed him. He said that hers would trigger at a thought, to kill her."

"And you believed him?"

Harry turned to stare at Snape as his guardian took one of the chairs. "What do you mean?"

"I investigated those collars last year after Mulciber's death," said Snape in a glacial voice. "They are clever, but an inherently inflexible design, one that can only be altered in a number of select ways. They can control thoughts, and block them from outside influences. They will also hurt the victim if removed by force. But only someone with as much magic as you could make one burst, Harry. At most, Rosier might have used that collar to compel Miss Granger to do what he wanted her to do, or encouraged you to free and thus hurt her. And that is all."

Harry bit his lip. "I didn't think he was bluffing," he said. "This was Evan Rosier. He plays riddles and tricks and games, but he doesn't bluff." And running a bluff like that would add to the thrill of the game for him, added the darker part of his mind, the one that came closer to understanding Rosier than he would have liked.

"You don't know that!" Snape roared, and leaned forward. "You didn't even consider the possibility, though you know he is a liar! You believed him without question! That is what must stop, Harry! This senseless risking of your life on the word of your enemies, as if you trust your enemies more than your friends—"

"Enough, Severus," McGonagall interrupted. Harry turned to see that she was sitting behind her desk. "I, for one, would like to hear the whole story without interruption. And I suspect that there will be time for scolding later." She smiled at Harry, but with steel behind the sympathy. "Please sit down, Harry."

Harry sat down, took a deep breath, and resumed the story. "Rosier said that he'd used an Insomnia Charm to get me out of the common room, but that didn't work fast enough for his tastes, so he set the fire. Sure enough, I came rushing out, and he had Hermione with her collar. He claimed that he wanted to pay a life debt he'd incurred when I set him free of Yaxley's thorns in the graveyard and healed him. If I refused, he'd make the collar explode and Hermione die." Harry shuddered convulsively as he remembered the look in Hermione's eyes when Rosier pulled her forward. "I don't know what he'd already done to her. You'll want to talk to her, Headmistress." McGonagall nodded, lips thin.

"He had a Portkey that he'd 'obtained' from loyal Death Eaters; he still has contacts among them. He said it would take us to Durmstrang, behind the lightning ward. And if we took too long, Hermione would also die, because the collar would explode an hour from the moment he offered me the Portkey."

"Even though it could not have," said Snape, contempt in every note of his voice. "Even though you were taking a foolish and suicidal risk in grasping the Portkey of a known madman."

"I agree," said Draco.

"Please, gentlemen," said McGonagall. "Let Harry finish his story."

Harry breathed deeply for a long moment, so that what came out would be the words of that story and not his rage. Then he said, "I thought I had no choice. I agreed, and we did indeed go to Durmstrang."

"Coincidence," Snape muttered. "Not a sign that you could trust him."

Harry found that his fingers hurt, and looked down. He was vaguely surprised to see them gripping the side of his chair so hard the knuckles had turned white. He swallowed and continued. "Bellatrix had an object that Ariadne's Web linked to. It turned out to be her right hand. I was going to cut it off, but Rosier revealed himself and taunted Bellatrix into injuring a girl before I could. So I had to reveal myself and cut it off then. Bellatrix thought I wouldn't destroy it because it had been my hand." He saw Draco pale from the corner of his eye. "I did burn it, though, and the web was gone. Then Rosier used a Severing Curse on Bellatrix, and I killed her; she was mad and in pain. I couldn't stay long to reassure the children at Durmstrang. I was afraid Hermione's collar would explode any moment and kill her. We came back here, and Rosier kept his word to remove the collar and leave." Harry stirred uneasily, remembering his last words. "He also made a threat against Henrietta Bulstrode."

"Mrs. Bulstrode should prove tougher prey than he thinks," McGonagall murmured. Harry nodded, remembering the way McGonagall had watched Henrietta at their meetings in the Room of Requirement.

"But I still want to warn her," he added.

"That can come later." Snape had got control of his voice now, and it was only furiously quiet instead of furiously loud. It sounded more like a whip that way, though, and Harry flinched as he listened. "First, Harry, I want you to explain what you thought you were doing."

"Saving Hermione's life," said Harry, as distinctly as he could amid the conflicting impulses to lower his eyes and just listen, and the one to defend himself.

"Even though the collar was fake," Snape said.

"Yes."

"And would you have given your life for any student like that?" Snape sneered. "I had thought that your circle of senseless sacrifices had grown smaller, so that we only had to worry about the safety of a certain number of people as connected to you. Or am I wrong? Would you sacrifice your life to save an Augurey chick hatched yesterday?"

Harry took a deep breath. "No one deserves to suffer at Evan Rosier's hands," he said. "And what he asked for wasn't a hostage exchange, or to kill me instead of her. He wanted something within my power. So, yes, I did it."

"You did not answer my question." Snape's face was now white to the lips. "Any student? The Augurey chick?"

"The Augurey chick, I don't know," said Harry softly. "Any student?" He considered his response. Snape wasn't going to like it. On the other hand, Snape was also staring into his eyes and would know if he lied. "Yes."

Snape leaned forward like a viper. Harry found himself shrinking back in his chair. He hadn't known Snape could move so fast. "That is what we must heal," Snape snarled. "That is what you must give up. You know what importance your life holds to those around you, Harry. And if you will not think of that—if you cannot think of that when your enemies are threatening other students with nonexistent magic—then think of your importance to the war effort and the prophecy. You told me that you believe the way you and Draco defeated Dumbledore was only the first iteration of the prophecy, that two more are to come. And who do you think will stand before those Dark Lords if you are dead?"

"He didn't want to kill me, I said," Harry forced out between his teeth, clamping down on the urge to say something unforgivable. "I had an excellent chance of surviving the evening."

"You didn't know that." Snape's voice only got lower and more intense. "He could have taken you to Voldemort with that Portkey, or dropped you down a bottomless pit. You had no way of knowing, and still you gripped that Portkey. You do seem to trust your enemies better than your friends."

Harry closed his eyes, mostly to keep Snape from seeing his anger. "It has nothing to do with that, sir, and everything to do with making the best decision I could under impossible circumstances," he said quietly.

"And why did you not simply kill Rosier?" Snape asked. "You could have done that, Harry, the moment you saw him. Then you would have spared Miss Granger's life and secured your own safety."

"And forfeited the chance to save the children at Durmstrang."

"You can't use that as an argument, Harry," Draco said from his other side. "You admitted that you didn't know what Rosier was going to do with that Portkey, and you had no way to be sure that he was telling the truth. So you can't say that the way it turned out was for the best. You didn't know how it would turn out then."

Harry had to admit that. "All right," he said. "But you know very well why I didn't kill him. I don't just—I don't just kill people."

"And that is an attitude you will need to lose around Rosier," said Snape.

"I did say that I would kill him the next time I met him," Harry protested.

"But you didn't kill him before he Apparated away," Draco said. "He's alive to make trouble for you in the future."

Harry ran his hand through his hair, and suppressed the impulse to spring up and pace, mostly because he was sure McGonagall wouldn't like it. He looked at the Headmistress, whose face was hard in that way that made it impossible to guess what kind of homework or detentions she would assign next. "What do you think of this, Madam?" he asked her.

McGonagall nodded a little, as if she'd been waiting for someone to ask her her opinion. "I think that you did the best you could under very hard circumstances, Harry," she said. "But you need to think of the future. And you need to take precautions that will satisfy your guardian and your—" She shook her head as if all the words she could use to describe Draco's relationship with him were too undignified for her to utter. "I'm not sure what those will be. But I encourage you to take them." She stood. "And if I'm not mistaken, more visitors are arriving now, perhaps to see that you are back, or perhaps because they know that Durmstrang is free."

She stepped forward and opened the door to her office before anyone could knock. Narcissa Malfoy looked startled for half a second, before she gave a stiff nod to McGonagall. McGonagall nodded back even more stiffly, as if the fate of the world depended on the way she bent her neck. Harry knew the two women didn't like each other, but he'd rarely seen it so clearly expressed.

Narcissa swept into the room, and focused on Harry. Harry was gratified to see an expression of relief cross her face for a moment, as if she hadn't been sure she would find Harry alive and well until she saw him. But then her features cooled, and she swept forward and held her left arm out to Harry.

"Do you know what this is, Harry?"

He looked down in dread, expecting to see some cousin to the Dark Mark, but found only three parallel lines. Two of them looked as if they were already healing. The third was still open and bleeding. Harry leaned back, staring at her face, and shook his head.

"They are the marks of my oath of vengeance," said Narcissa in a casual voice, "the one I took to make Bellatrix suffer three times over. I had inflicted two of those penalties on her, with the taking of her left hand and the cutting off of her breasts. Now I find that it is impossible for me to fulfill my oath, because someone else has killed her." She leaned forward until she was staring at Harry from an inch away. "I swore that knowing there was a chance that I would not fulfill it," she said quietly, "that someone else would slay Bella in battle before I had the chance to make her suffer again. But I never thought, Harry, that it would be you, someone who knew about my oath and has had first-hand experience with how vicious vows can be."

Harry winced. "What happens now?" he asked, because everyone, from Narcissa herself to Lucius, standing motionless in the door, seemed to expect it.

"I don't know," said Narcissa, drawing away. "It's been centuries since someone dared to swear and then violate that oath. But it will almost certainly wait in my future, fanged, trying to trap me into the greatest misfortune it can. It was Dark magic I invoked. And Dark magic is more unforgiving than the Light magic you favor, Harry, or the reckless magic of heroism." She shook her head and stepped away from him. "When Charles contacted us to tell us about Durmstrang, and that you'd killed Bellatrix, I felt as if I were falling."

Harry looked away, but in doing that, he caught Lucius's eyes, which said he should have done anything rather than kill Bellatrix and damn Narcissa. He looked at his hand, shame winning out over his anger again.

"So your reckless act has had consequences for people beyond yourself and Miss Granger, Harry," said Snape, his voice deep with some emotion Harry didn't want to examine too closely. "What have you to say now? Will you think twice about risking your life in the future, or will the desire to be a hero overcome you and make you dash off again?"

He paused, telling Harry it wasn't a rhetorical question. He swallowed. "It wasn't like that," he whispered. "I didn't do it out of desire to be a hero."

"But you were thinking less about your own life and more about the lives of others," Draco said. "Is that a fair summary, Harry?"

"Yes, but—"

"You are only making excuses, now," said Snape. "You know that what you did was reckless, and there is no reason but the greatest good luck for it to have turned out as well as it did. You are acting like a child, Harry, after some time of making progress. And if you will not agree to some restrictions of your own free will, you will drive us to measures you hate, simply to ease our fears."

"I didn't mean to do that," said Harry, thinking of Hermione's lack of expression, thinking of the way that the pain in Owen's face had eased when his brother healed him. It hadn't just been the pain of his broken leg. "I didn't—there were other concerns at stake—"

"Not as important as your life," said Draco, and settled a possessive arm around his waist. "Nothing is as important as your life."

"I just—there are times when—"

"You should have thought," said Snape, and his voice had a smugness that sank claws into Harry's temper. "You should have remembered that your enemy was a known liar and a Death Eater who would stop at nothing to hurt you. You were foolish to trust whatever honor he pretended to observe with the life debt. Foolishness, childishness, and perhaps lack of thought? Do those complete the list of your mistakes? No, they do not—"

"Stop it!"

Harry hadn't known he would shout before he lifted his voice to do it. It appeared to startle most of the other people in the room, too. Narcissa took a step away from him, and Snape shut up, and Draco's arm fell limply from his waist. The look in Lucius's eyes grew colder. McGonagall blinked.

"I did the best I could with what I thought I knew at the time and the circumstances I had," said Harry. He realized he'd stood up, too. He didn't remember doing that. He stared at Snape's face, trying to make him see reason. "I didn't know that about the silver collars, sir, because you never told me. And I did believe he would kill Hermione. And once I was at Durmstrang, I did what I thought I had to do. If I hadn't killed her, Mrs. Malfoy, then Rosier would have. I'm sorry about the oath, but it was going to be broken no matter what happened tonight." As he spoke, he grew calmer, but he could feel the leashed beast of his temper straining under the surface. If they just accepted this, as he hoped they would, then he wouldn't have to shout any more.

Snape, of course, didn't accept it.

"The main problem, Harry, is that you did not think," he said. "You claim to have changed, but you still follow your instincts in such situations, and not your thoughts. If I were in your place, I would have—"

"Shut up," said Harry, with such ugly force in his voice that Snape did. "If you were in my place, you would have done wonderfully. Of course you say that. But you weren't in it, were you? And it's very easy to judge from the outside, isn't it, the way you judge the failure of your students in Potions? And you judge, you snipe, you snap, instead of for just once trying something else—" He struggled, and managed to restrain the words that wanted to burst forth. They were too personal to say in front of other people. He was not a pathetic child wanting something more than that judgment from Snape. He wasn't.

"If someone outside your situation could see what needed to be done so clearly—" Snape began.

"You weren't there!" Harry screamed at him. "None of you ever are! That's why I have to make decisions on my own, because I'm the only one who's bloody there, and my enemies aren't the kind to wait around politely while I debate morality in my head! And yes, sometimes, I think a missed night of sleep is more than enough recompense for my endangering my life, which happens all the time anyway! At least this time I got something out of it!"

"But that's what you say every time," Draco protested.

Harry turned on him. "No, most of the time I just accept your scolding as deserved, Draco," he snarled. "I might argue a little, but then I give in and promise that I won't do it again. And we both know those promises are false, because Voldemort—stop flinching, Merlin damn you!—won't stop using those techniques. Because they work. It's useless for me to promise that I won't go away without consulting you, because then I'll end up betraying something deeper."

"Like what?" Draco had risen to his feet in turn, and though his face was pale, he spoke challengingly.

"Everything I am, for a start," Harry said. "And the same thing will happen when I start killing in cold blood without asking questions, or when I start dithering and sacrificing lives in a situation that calls for direct action. Sometimes, all I can do is survive. Tell me something, show me a way, that lets me do something else, and I'll do that. But I'm not going to become the kind of hardened soldier you think I should be. I escaped from that. That's the way Lily trained me to be, a silent soldier who accepts sacrifices as sad but necessary. I won't go back to that. I've fought too hard. So, sorry, Draco, but I won't place myself above other people just because I'm important to you, or because I'm important to the war effort."

"You have to," Draco said, and his face had turned paler. "Sometimes, Harry, you have to. If Voldemort is going to kill a dozen children in front of you, and says that he'll spare their lives if you just come down to him, would you really give up your life?"

"I'd do what I could," said Harry. "And then, yes, Draco, I would suffer for it, and question whether I couldn't have made a better decision. I'll fight this war my own way. It'll always be my own way. I'm not Dumbledore, and I'm not Voldemort, and I'm not a Malfoy. And I'm not just in love with you, though it's an important part of who I am." He glanced sideways at Snape. "And I'm not just your ward, either, and you don't seem to understand that. I'm not going to submit to the kind of restrictions you want, because they're stupid restrictions, and they would interfere with my life more than Rosier wants to. I want more than other people want for me. Sometimes," he added, choking on the bitterness that bubbled up his throat, "I don't know whether you've really accepted that I've started healing, even though you encouraged me to do it. I'm healing into a person who wants more than just what the two of you think I should want. And sometimes I think that you don't know that any more than Lily did."

The silence in the wake of that was boulder-heavy. Snape's face had assumed an expression Harry had no name for. Draco had put out a hand towards Harry, but he retracted it towards his side now, snapping it into a fist. His face had turned the color of whey.

"I'm tired," Harry finished. "And I survived, and I did the best I thought I could under the circumstances." He nodded to Narcissa, who watched him as if he were someone she had never seen before. "And, Mrs. Malfoy, I'm sorry about your oath, but I won't be responsible for the breaking of it. You knew the risk when you made it. You're an adult. If I allow that to you, will you allow my mistakes to me?"

Narcissa shook her head, but Harry wasn't sure what part of his declaration she was answering. Harry moved towards the door.

Lucius stood in his way.

Harry met his eyes and waited. Lucius inclined his head an infinitesimal amount and stood aside.

Harry went down the moving staircase more rapidly than it wanted to go, springing from step to step, and made his way as quickly as he could to a window. He didn't want to go outside, not when the wards were this weak, though he wished he could spring on a broom and fly. He leaned out the window, though, and panted in the cool air, which made his throat burn with something other than the anger that had flayed it so far. Harry leaned his head on his hand and stared up at the sky, which showed only stars.

Light pierced the darkness near him. He blinked at the sky, and then the hall, and then his hand. Phoenix fire was surging in it again, responding, Harry supposed, to his emotions. He could sing, too, if he wanted.

Harry closed his eyes and swallowed the song, and willed the fire to lie down. He was something more than what Fawkes had given him, something more than Draco's boyfriend, something more than Snape's ward, something more than the war leader of the alliance and Voldemort's enemy. If he wasn't going to let the label "abused child" define him, then why should he let others close on him like chains? He wouldn't, and perhaps he'd been wrong and that wasn't what other people wanted to do to him, but it was what he felt they'd done to him, and he shivered with pain and anger and fear of being caged, and that was all right. No need to go crawling back to Snape and Draco and ask their forgiveness at once, not if what they'd taught him was true. No need to go talk to Vera, because these emotions weren't unnatural or the product of his training. He was feeling, thinking, as himself, and it was all right.

He opened his eyes slowly, and looked at the stars again. His breathing had slowed, and the emotions felt less bitter and poisonous than they had before, as if he didn't need to tear himself apart just because he'd felt them.

Perhaps this was a purging, after all.

And then, since he was tired, he stood and turned back towards the dungeons, so that he could get some sleep.