Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!
Note: This is a transition chapter, and deliberately non-linear. The thread of preparing for the Midsummer battle is woven in and out between the thread of Harry taking his OWLs. Also, I've moved the OWLs from June to late May, in order to better fit the timeline.
Chapter Eighty-Four: Midsummer Breathing Down Their Necks"Then begin," the woman from the Wizarding Examinations Authority said, and leaned back as if that were the conclusion of her task. Harry could see her eyes, however, alert and confident beneath half-lowered lids. She would be watching, and anyone who thought himself able to get away with cheating in the Potions Practical because of her sleepiness would be sadly mistaken.
Harry took a deep breath and began to mix the Draught of Peace. The powdered moonstone slipped between his fingers like sand, and he reminded himself that his hand had no reason to shake. He'd already asked for and received permission to use a Levitation Charm as a second hand. The proctor had added alarms to alert her if he used any magic that would speed the cooling of the potion or interfere with another student's work, which Harry thought entirely fair.
He cleared his mind, carefully, of all thoughts of the future, all thoughts of the coming battle, all thoughts of whether he would even have a future in which the Potions OWL he earned might matter. He dropped straight into the sea of calm that let him brew his best potions. If he could maintain this state when he was mixing experimental ones, he thought as his magic skimmed the syrup of hellebore towards him so he could examine its consistency, then he might achieve more with them. But there, he was always enthusiastic, more eager to see the end result than in evaluating how best to get there, and he made frequent mistakes.
He started mixing the Draught of Peace, quietly certain that he would produce a good potion.
"They're—beautiful."
Harry grinned over his shoulder. He had never thought he would live to hear Zacharias Smith stunned.
"Aren't they?" he asked happily, and bowed to the horse in the lead. It studied him for a moment, then dipped its head back and let him step nearer so that he could stroke its neck. Laura had told him that the Gloryflowers had created these horses on the model of hippogriffs, partially to stop an enemy simply seizing a riderless one in a battle and mounting it. They would not accept anyone who hadn't bowed in polite introduction beforehand.
The horses were all made of gold, or more precisely, Harry thought, gold-colored metal, stamping and shifting and snorting like the real thing. Their hooves, crafted of silver, rang softly on the floor of the Room of Requirement. Their nostrils flared, and they turned their heads rapidly towards new sounds, their ears flagging up and down like banners. Harry hadn't decided what their pale manes and tails were made of yet. Braided diamonds, it looked like, but couldn't be.
They didn't look exactly like real horses—for one thing, no real horses had necks that swan-like or legs that long and loping, built like a cheetah's, for speed—but they were close enough to make the riders whom Zacharias had gathered stare at them in clear longing. Harry stepped back with a little nod. "You're welcome to them," he said. "You'll need to bow and wait for them to bow back before you can ride them, though."
The first person to move forward wasn't one of the Light wizards Zacharias had found, though, but a sixth-year Slytherin prefect, Catrina Flint-Digsby, the one who had laughed when Marietta Edgecombe was still in the hospital wing. She walked straight to the horse Harry had already convinced to accept him, and bowed in turn, murmuring her name. The horse eyed her back. Harry held his breath. He didn't think Laura would have done anything against her magical animals accepting Dark riders, but since the Gloryflowers were a Light family, they might have introduced precautions into the model that they'd forgotten to tell Harry about.
The horse snorted in recognition a moment later, though, and let Catrina come near enough to stroke its neck. She beamed, and then clucked her tongue and asked, "Kneel for me?"
The horse dropped to its knees. Catrina flung an easy leg over its back, sitting in the saddle-like dip there with the posture of an experienced rider, and only then paused and said, "Where are the reins, Harry?"
Harry pointed. "Under the mane. They're attached to the horse itself. Bit already in the mouth, reins leading out from it. If you can't figure out the proper signals to give it, since it is different from a real horse, Laura Gloryflower assured me they respond to verbal commands."
Catrina nodded, looking a little less confident, and picked up the reins. When she slapped them against the horse's neck, it stood, and when she pulled them and used her legs and knees in signals incomprehensible to Harry, the golden creature began first to trot and then to canter in a circle around the Room of Requirement.
Harry smiled as he watched. The horse shone as it ran, and that was only in the muted lights of the Room's makeshift riding ring. He couldn't imagine how they would shine on Midsummer Day itself, when the storm of the Light would reach down to the Light's creatures.
"They don't get tired, and they don't get hungry," he told the other riders, who were pressing forward eagerly now. "And they'll do almost anything you can think of if you use the reins or give them a verbal command, including behavior that's not natural for horses."
"This is wonderful," said Cho, smiling at Harry around the neck of her own horse, which had accepted her with hardly a pause. "I never imagined I would have the chance to participate in a battle like this."
Harry smiled back at her, and tried to conceal his worry. Cho's parents had agreed to her being here, and she owed him a life debt anyway. All the riders were older, none below fifth year, and several were legal adults. All had chosen to stay and risk their lives.
Harry still wasn't entirely happy about having adolescents other than Draco fighting in the battle, though.
He managed to calm down as he thought of the three other creatures Laura had sent. One was more properly many small creatures, a hive of digging bugs that would patrol the grounds just beneath the surface of the soil, and, hopefully, stop any of Indigena Yaxley's plants that were trying to root in it. Harry had to take them out and introduce them to the plants that belonged in Hogwarts, soon, so that they wouldn't harm the ones that had a right to be there.
The other two were the "prototypes" Laura had mentioned to him. Harry could see why she hadn't built many of them. They were disturbing. But they would get him and Draco to where they needed to go on Midsummer evening, and that was all he could ask for.
He had to turn around and snicker when Zacharias didn't wait a sufficient period of time for his horse to accept him and almost got kicked, though. He had to.
"Begin."
Harry eyed the snail in front of him and took a deep breath. He had plenty of practice with Vanishing things when he could just use his wandless magic; focus and will were the important components there. For the Transfiguration Practical, though, he had to use his wand, and he already knew he should have practiced more. The length of cypress felt unfamiliar and uncertain in his hand.
But he had practiced this in McGonagall's class—though not as much he should have—and he knew he could do it. He pointed his wand at the snail and concentrated on intoning the Vanishing Spell. This was only the first part of the Transfiguration OWL. He could and would pass it, if only because the harder parts were coming up.
The snail Vanished obediently. The proctor nodded to him and wrote something down on his chart, then pushed a teacup in front of Harry. "Make this into a dove, Harry," he said encouragingly. He was the first of those from the Wizarding Examinations Authority who didn't look as if he'd bitten into a raw lemon when asked to call Harry by something other than a last name.
Harry took another deep breath. The days when he'd done this spell with McGonagall watching him and Hermione achieving success in the background—first in the class, of course—seemed very far away. But he remembered the incantation, and spoke it confidently enough. "Pocillum transformo columbae!"
The teacup shuddered and grew wings, the part of the change Harry had always found hardest, and the one on which he'd been concentrating the most. The rounded portion of the cup turned into a rounded body, and Harry held his breath as the handle became a delicate neck and head. The dove looked up at him and cooed as though asking whether it could have food.
The proctor picked it up and gently turned it around. Then he smiled sympathetically, and showed Harry that the body was still hollow on the underside, the dove missing its feet. This didn't seem to distress the dove at all, which kept cooing and looking around the Great Hall.
Harry felt his face flush in embarrassment. The proctor merely wrote down something on his list and turned around to retrieve a needle for Harry to Transfigure into a goldfish.
"I've tightened the wards," McGonagall told Harry, as she poured tea into cups for them both. "After some searching, Helga helped me find what I'd been missing. Loki could pass through the Forbidden Forest because he had no hostile intentions towards the school. He could have had hostile intentions towards an individual person within it, like you or Professor Snape, and the wards would not have kept him out. We made the wards too focused on Hogwarts as a collective entity." McGonagall sighed and sipped at her tea. "I am sorry this happened, Harry. You cannot know how sorry."
"It wasn't your fault," Harry said quietly, and then hesitated as he sat back with the teacup warming his hand. He hadn't asked her for details before, but now curiosity burned and ate at him. "Headmistress," he said finally, and McGonagall looked up from contemplating eternity in the depths of her teacup. "What exactly did Remus say to you, the day that he left?"
McGonagall's mouth tightened. "He argued that surely he deserved some trust, since I had known him for so long," she muttered, and Harry could see the glint of anger in her eyes. "He was a Gryffindor, one of my own students, and someone I chose to hire even though I knew the laws against werewolf employment. I'd defied the Ministry for him. How could I force him away now, when that would send an unfortunate message to both the Ministry and the werewolves?"
Harry frowned. He didn't like the arguments himself, but he could see why they would have persuaded McGonagall. "Why didn't they work?" he asked aloud, then realized he hadn't meant to ask the question that way. McGonagall waved him off when he tried to apologize, however.
"I asked him, in several ways, what he intended," said McGonagall. "Each time, he told me that he could not reveal anything of Loki's plans or his own, that it was involved in aspects of werewolf life no ordinary wizard could understand, and which he would desecrate if he tried to explain. He wanted me to trust him for trust alone. Finally, I asked him, bluntly, whether he would bite a student if Loki told him to, whether the students were actually safe with him here on full moon nights—not safe in the sense that he would not take Wolfsbane, but safe in the sense that he would not go prowling, fully in control of his actions, and bite someone who didn't want to be bitten."
Harry swallowed. "And what did he say?"
"He couldn't answer me." McGonagall smiled bitterly. "He mumbled something else about pack magic and werewolf life, but he would not guarantee me that my students were absolutely safe. I sacked him at once."
Harry felt a more bitter burn of betrayal than he had when Remus actually left. Once, Remus would have understood how deep a violation of free will that was, to bite someone who didn't want to be bitten. Even if he had accepted his curse now, he had suffered under it for a long time; Fenrir Greyback had bitten Remus because Remus's father had offended him. It had been a punishment for his family, and a horrible heaping of injustice on the head of a young boy who couldn't have influenced his father's actions one way or the other. Now Remus was proposing to do the same thing, and he would not even explain why.
Harry wondered what would have happened if Loki had ordered Remus to bite someone in the school. Would he have done it and still expected to retain his position as Head of Gryffindor House, because that was just "what had to be done?"
His cup abruptly shattered, and he looked down in surprise as hot tea dripped across his fingers, mingling with shards of porcelain. "Sorry," he murmured to McGonagall, and Vanished them.
"It's all right," said McGonagall. "I had a hard time refraining from Transfiguring him into a cushion and sending him to the Hufflepuff common room."
Harry smiled, but in his mind, he carefully checked Remus off any possible list of allies. He still loved him, but he could not trust him.
Binns is useless, Harry thought, frowning at his History of Magic written exam.
The old ghost drawled on and on about goblin rebellions, and almost nothing interesting. The questions on the exam, of course, concerned much more than goblin rebellions. There were questions on wizard-giant relationships, when the Ministry of Magic had first formed, who certain famous wizards and witches were, and details of the First War with Voldemort, to name just a few. Harry idly wondered if the people who'd written the exam had ever thought themselves ridiculous as they carefully scribed out "You-Know-Who."
Luckily, his own reading in history as a child let him know some of the questions, and with others, he had heard that brilliant if madly irrelevant details could often distract the examiners; they would accept a load of bollocks if it was an intelligent-sounding load of bollocks. He'd see what adding obscure ideas about giants would do to distract them from the dates.
With a will, he set to work.
Harry eyed the letter he'd received with trepidation. He'd put off reading it until everything else he could possibly do was done. And even now, he didn't like the fact that it bore the seal of Griffinsnest. He knew who it would be from. He sighed and split the seal.
To his surprise, the letter began with a polite salutation, and contained more emotions than the scolding tone he'd expected.
May 22nd, 1996
Dear Harry:
You may be startled to receive such a letter from me, given that the issue of the linchpins has been settled between you and my family. It is true that I have no control of the Griffinsnest linchpins when working against my family combined. They agreed at the equinox meeting to allow you to attach our linchpins to magic instead of the earth, and I must abide by that decision.
But I can make your life difficult. As you probably know by now, werewolves killed both my parents. Both were killings by 'accepted' werewolves, which is the term I use to refer to lycanthropes who either willingly took the bite or have grown accustomed to the curse in the years since. Both did it as part of an obscure ritual held in some organized packs, known as the Grand Hunt. The object is to go after difficult targets—fully-trained wizards, in this case—and prove how superior their curse renders them. They did not have Wolfsbane, of course, so they made sure they were in the vicinity of my parents when the transformation and the rage took them.
I caught both monsters in wizard form. I challenged them to the same duel that Augustus Starrise used on Adalrico Bulstrode, so that they had no choice but to face me. I finished each of them by driving a silver knife into their hearts in the confines of the duel. So, while they killed my parents in accordance with their own rituals, I killed them in accordance with customs accepted by wizarding society for centuries.
That is the reason I am unable to object to your transference of the linchpins, however repugnant I find your politics. You honored the duel Starrise called, when I know that you could have interfered. You would have honored the way I slew the murderers of my parents. There is a wizard within you whom I wish to work with, one who forgoes vengeance for himself but will not twist the minds of others so that they also forego it.
But I know that werewolves run by your side, and I hear now that you are starting to fight for them more prominently. I have contacts in the Ministry who assure me that one pack of accepted werewolves is bragging they have you under control, despite the biting of Elder Gillyflower. I am sorry, but I cannot stand beside one who bows to monsters like the ones who killed my parents, who indulges them despite their vicious and violent tactics.
I am writing you because I wish to know the truth, and I trust you to answer me honestly. Do you bow to such werewolves? If you do, then I am your sworn foe from that moment forward. If you do not, then I may be able to help you.
Yours in the Light,
Gloriana Griffinsnest.
Harry sat back and frowned for a moment. He wondered if he really should tell her what he planned, then shrugged. If nothing else, she was not going to be the one to expose his tactics to Loki's pack.
And he could feel the boiling anger beginning to surge in him at the mere thought that Loki was bragging about having him under control. Didn't the idiot see that would only hurt his own cause, in at least two ways? Others would refuse to trust Harry as an independent political power, taking him no more seriously than they'd taken Cornelius Fudge, and would probably be extremely reluctant to help him fight for werewolves' rights. And other groups might think they could seize control of Harry by use of the same tactics, or even that they had to, to counter Loki's influence.
But then, Harry thought, as he pulled out parchment to draft his response to Gloriana, leaning on his Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook, I do not give Loki much credit for intelligence. Determination, yes. But it's no wonder that he spun this contest into violence as soon as he could, and threatened me to make me pay attention to him. Violence is all he truly understands.
When his letter was finished, Harry sat back and read it over before he sent it off with Hedwig.
Dear Mrs. Griffinsnest:
I thank you for writing me instead of simply assuming that the rumors you hear about me are true. There has been too much of that lately, and in fact it is the cause of the trouble in the Ministry.
I am under the control of no werewolf pack. Loki, the leader who claims that it is so, has threatened me with infection for people I love if I do not do as he wishes, and also promised to bite someone on the full moon of each month. The biting of Elder Gillyflower in April was only the first such attack. Elder Gillyflower was guilty of crimes against werewolves, and so was their target for June—who is now under the Ministry's protection and prosecution—but there is no telling whether they might not turn to biting innocents in time.
I do not care more for werewolves' rights than the rights of ordinary wizards and witches, or other magical creatures, and that is where Loki has made his mistake. I care for them equally. To be truly under his control, I would have to be convinced that he was right. I am not, and that will bite him in the end.
I have a plan that is two-pronged. The first is working on a cure for lycanthropy. Loki dares to imply that he speaks for all werewolves in threatening me. That is not true. At most, to use your terms, he speaks for accepted werewolves, and not those who hate and resist their curse. I wish to have a cure on hand so that those werewolves who wish to be free of the curse can, and to show that Loki's claims are false.
The second part of the plan does involve fighting for werewolves' rights, yes. I will understand if you can no longer give me the time of day once you read this. However, ma'am, consider this: When all laws are fair, when all rights of werewolves and wizards are equal, then werewolves will be protected far more than they are now. They will be able to have jobs and custody of their own children.
And they will be tried and sent to prison under the same laws. If Loki continues his course, then, once the laws are fair, he can be arrested and tried for use of Dark magic and war crimes. I will see him in Tullianum someday—not because he is a werewolf, not even because he threatened those I love or manipulated me, but because that is what would happen to a non-werewolf wizard using these same tactics.
I wish to end the endless cycle of vengeance. I enjoy wizard duels no more than Grand Hunts. It is your choice, however, if you wish to help me, beyond allowing the linchpin plan to proceed.
Yours sincerely,
Harry.
Harry nodded, and stood to walk to the Owlery.
"Protego!" Harry could have done this in his sleep. Without doubt, his Defense Against the Dark Arts practical was the easiest so far.
The curse coming at him from the box that the proctor had enchanted to cast random spells bounced; the proctor had to duck as it whizzed past her head. She stood again and smiled at him, writing something down on the chart that she held.
"Excellent, Mr. Pot—Harry." She peered at him inquiringly. "What would you do if you could not use a shield that bounced back the curses, for fear of hitting your comrades in battle?"
Harry grinned at her and held up his hand, dropping the Protego. The next curse out of the box was a nasty one, meant to burn the skin so badly that normal healing spells would simply slide off it and leave the person writhing in pain. Harry knew it wouldn't have come out of the box if the proctor didn't think him able to handle it; the boxes adjusted themselves depending on the skill level of the student being examined.
"Haurio!" he called, and the jade-green shield formed around his hand, spreading out from his wand. The curse hit the shield, which ate it calmly. Harry turned an inquiring gaze on the proctor. "Like that, Madam?"
"Yes, exactly!" She seemed almost flustered as she scribbled, and Harry wondered if the rest of the examinations had been boring so far. He almost hoped so. He was enjoying this, and he'd like to secure at least one O.
"Well?" Harry asked, as Draco sat back and blinked at nothing. The rune circle around the bed shone frantically, as if Draco's venture into possession this time had agitated it. "How was that?"
"Very definitely—strange," said Draco, and ducked his head as if trying to escape Harry's gaze. "You're right. Possessing an object, even one that's self-aware like that one, is very different from possessing a human brain. For one thing, she has a very strong sense of herself as female, but no name. The people I possessed always knew who they were. There's one part of your mind that sings your name over and over. She doesn't see why she needs one."
Harry nodded and laid the Midsummer knife down on the bed. The Light blade glinted in protest, but subsided the moment his hand was no longer touching it. "Do you think you could make it float or stab if you had to?"
"It won't be easy." Draco locked his hands behind his head as he thought about it. Harry told himself to stop staring at Draco's fingers and having random thoughts about them. "But easier than possessing the Dark Lord, I think. Yes, I can."
"Thank Merlin." Harry smiled at him and changed the subject from battle. They'd been practicing this for hours, and Draco's head had to be ringing with worry over what would happen when Midsummer actually arrived. "How are your OWLs coming?"
Draco gave a shaky groan and moved his hands in front of his face. "Terrible!" he wailed.
"Draco," Harry chided him.
"All right, all right," Draco muttered. "Defense Against the Dark Arts and Potions weren't bad. But I couldn't make sense of the History of Magic exam. I should know better than that, shouldn't I? I had parents who gave me a good education in it. And then I stare at a list of dates and find out I don't know anything."
Harry laughed. "I know the feeling. They really should hire someone other than Binns. Of course, I'm not sure that he wouldn't show up in the History classroom and natter on and on even if they did."
Draco sighed. "Don't remind me. It didn't help knowing that even if I'd stayed awake in that class, it wouldn't have helped." He brooded for a moment, then brightened as he added, "But I've revised so much for my Charms practical that I'm mouthing the incantations in my sleep. That's got to count for something, right?"
"Well, let's see." Harry turned so that he faced Draco fully. "Get your wand, and I'll practice with you."
"That is—bright enough, I think." The proctor had one hand shielding his eyes.
"Sorry, sir," said Harry, abashed. He looked down at the rat he'd been supposed to turn purple with the Color Change Charm. It had worked, but Harry wasn't accustomed to using his wand for this, either, and he'd turned the rat such a brilliant purple that it looked like the sun was glowing from inside it. He shielded his own eyes as the proctor murmured a few cross-sounding words and managed to reduce the rat's color.
"I'd say that you don't know your own strength," said the wizard, with a faint frown at him. He'd seemed either intimidated by or outright afraid of Harry throughout most of the practical, but this time adopted a fatherly tone. "Best to get a handle on that before you try any Charms work in the field, son."
"I know," Harry apologetically, as he readied himself for the next Charm. "Usually, I just do it wandlessly."
The proctor choked, and turned green.
"What do you say, Harry?"
Harry eyed Moody calculatingly. The old Auror had told him to stay behind when he'd dismissed the dueling club, and Harry had, once the usual complement of wounds, bumps, and bruises from Moody's intensive training were healed, and the rest of the students had staggered out the door, moaning. Harry had thought Moody wanted, once again, to express his doubts about the members of the club actually fighting in the battle. He hadn't expected this.
"You're offering me a duel?" he asked Moody.
"Yes." Moody grinned wolfishly as he pulled out his wand. "You don't get a chance to have a proper one often, do you, boy? It's charging about and wandless magic this and draining Voldemort that. But even if your purpose is going to be just to fend him off on Midsummer—" Moody sounded as if he had his doubts of that "—you should still have some dueling instruction."
"I thought that was what you were giving me with the others," Harry protested.
"Have to hold myself to their pace there, don't I?" Moody was prowling in a circle that made Harry instinctively want to fall into a defensive crouch. "Don't dare use some of the spells I could, just in case they get badly hurt and go wailing to their parents about the mad old Auror." He tilted his head to the side, and his grin widened. "You can take it, though, boy. Know you can."
"All right," said Harry. "Wand, or not?"
"Will you use one when you're fighting?"
"Probably not," Harry had to admit. He concentrated on Moody's circling, and waited.
Moody's first spell was non-verbal, of course, a curse that exploded a few inches from Harry and tried to shower him with purple light he knew he didn't want touching his bare skin. Harry rolled swiftly backwards; this was one of those curses, like the Blood Whip, that would make shields explode. He had to put some distance between himself and it.
Moody conjured a wind that blew the purple flakes after him. Harry continued his rolling, until he knew he would fetch up against the far wall of the classroom if he kept moving. He tucked his knees beneath his body and called up a contrary gust of wind. It scattered the purple flakes harmlessly to the ground and drove at Moody, actually spinning him a step backward before he conjured a shield. His wooden leg clicked on the floor with a satisfying sound.
Moody was laughing, and called, "That's why you can lose duels, boy, because you turn to offensive magic too late, and defensive magic too often!" He used a wave of his hand to make Harry think he was throwing a curse that could be stopped by a Haurio, and Harry actually had the green shield surrounding his hand before he realized Moody had fooled him. The curse coming at him was the Blood Whip.
Harry turned his back and took the pain, hissing as it carved lines into his skin, while he reached for a spell he thought Moody wouldn't suspect. "Teredo," he whispered.
That would probably take a few minutes to take effect, so in the meantime he had wounds on his back that limited his mobility, a fully-armed opponent stalking towards him, and the need to use offensive magic—though since it wasn't a real duel, he had to hold back, or he could easily kill Moody.
He concentrated on something that would show he was trying while also being something Moody could defeat easily, and conjured a whirling cyclone of diamond blades, which swept over his shoulders and towards Moody. Harry turned to see what the old Auror would do.
Moody's wand moved impossibly fast as he conjured half a dozen small shields in the air, blocking the blades. Then he grunted at Harry, said, "Another lesson you have to learn is to prepare your next spell instead of watching your enemy," and clenched his hand in no spell gesture Harry knew.
A time-delayed spell, he realized a moment later, as bursts of light in front of his eyes blinded him; Moody had spoken two incantations, one for this spell, the second to keep it waiting until he made the hand gesture. Well, it had been a good move. Harry couldn't see anything but burning afterimages when he opened his eyes.
Harry decided to stop worrying about hurting the Auror. He obviously had no worry about hurting Harry.
"Sectumsempra!" he called, and threw his hand over his shoulder towards the place where Moody had last been.
Moody cursed creatively. From the thump of his leg, Harry knew he'd dodged the curse. "What was that, boy?" he demanded.
A spell Snape invented, no wonder you've never seen it before, Harry wanted to say, but decided to hit Moody with quick spells instead, ones that would keep him moving.
"Ventus! Ardesco! Solem adversum intueri! Serpensortia!"
He heard the snake conjured at the end of that spell hiss inquiringly at him, asking him what he wanted it to do, and Harry hissed back, "Bite the old man."
There was the scrape of scales against stone, and Moody cursing from having to dodge wind and flame and blinding light and now a snake all at once, and then an abrupt crack and Moody's, "You can't actually call it off, can you?"
Harry turned around, forcing his eyes open, blinking. The bursts of purple across his vision had just started to fade, but now he could see the thin, dark line of a king cobra making for Moody, who was sprawled on the floor, his wooden leg broken. The fall had sent his wand reeling from his hand.
"Of course I can," said Harry, and told the snake, "Thank you. I don't need any more work from you."
The cobra twisted to look at him. "I'm hungry," it hissed.
Harry sighed and held out his arm. The cobra slithered rapidly across the floor and up his arm, understanding the invitation. "I'll take you to get something to eat and then set you free," Harry told it. He glanced back at Moody, who'd been inching towards his wand. Harry called it with a Summoning Charm, and grinned. "Do you know what Charm I used on your leg, sir?"
"Looks like Teredo, from the way the wood's gnawed," Moody growled. "Well. You'll do, boy. Eventually. Got to get you to abandon the defensive and go on the offensive sooner, and not pause to watch the pretty lights. Or the snakes, for that matter," he added, as the king cobra nudged its head insistently at Harry's hand, wanting warmth and food. Its body dangled down Harry's arm and shoulders, then wound around his waist, a good eighteen feet of scale and muscle. "Still. Not bad for a beginner."
Harry narrowed his eyes in thought. He'd scribbled down every fact about Saturn's rings that he could remember, and he still wasn't sure if it was enough for the written portion of the Astronomy OWL.
Draco, of course, would be smug. He'd learned more than enough star-lore when he was a child, thanks to his mother's heritage, and he was probably finished already, or putting the last touches on a perfect essay. Harry shook his head and told himself to think about Saturn instead of Draco's smile.
It didn't help that he'd never been interested in the stars, at least not the way that centaurs and Professor Sinistra were. If star-lore had been a condition of gathering allies, he would have learned it, and likewise if magic concerning the heavens had been the kind he needed to learn to defend himself. But neither was true. Star-lore was really most useful for predicting the future and learning about history, not day-to-day survival in a war. Harry had always placed the knowledge that would let him survive, once to protect his brother and then to defeat Voldemort, first in his mind, above all other kinds.
He decided to write down what he could about Saturn's position at this time of year. Merlin knew he remembered that, from all the dawns lately that he'd stood on the North Tower and stared towards the east, awaiting Midsummer and its storm.
"He had no right to do it."
Harry sighed and leaned back against his chair. He and Peter were sitting in a room on the fifth floor that most people avoided, since Peeves tended to haunt it. Peter had performed a complicated curse that Harry had never heard of, which caused an image of the Bloody Baron to float in the air. Peeves took one look and fled, shrieking. Peter had admitted, when Harry pressed him, that he'd been the one Gryffindor House usually assigned to get rid of the poltergeist when they were still in school, and make sure he didn't interfere with any of the Marauders' plans.
Peter had Transfigured several of the broken chairs into whole ones, with a skill Harry envied but supposed he should expect from a wizard who had mastered the Animagus transformation by the time he was sixteen, and connected the room's hearth to the school's Floo network in moments. From there, it'd been a simple matter for him to call down to the kitchens and ask a house elf to prepare tea. And then they had sipped it and talked as Harry told him, in detail, about Remus. Peter had come to the school to help prepare for the battle; without Regulus, he was lonely in the Black houses.
Peter had listened to the story of Remus, without interrupting, and then made his strange declaration. Harry felt a knot of tension at the base of his spine uncoil. He had expected Peter to take Remus's side, really, since they were such old friends.
"I can understand why he did it," Harry said, striving to keep his tone neutral. "He had his sense of belonging stripped away from him again and again—first when he was bitten, and then when you got sent to Azkaban. And then, even when you showed that you weren't a sacrifice anymore, Sirius died, and James was a git." Harry shrugged. "So there were his friends gone. What was he like in the Sanctuary?"
"Better," said Peter. "But not perfect. The Seers don't try to make everyone the same as a 'normal' wizard, you know. They look at our souls and suggest ways to heal the gaps." Peter sipped from his tea, though it seemed an effort for him to open his mouth, which was set in a tight, angry line, long enough to get the tea down. "They suggested that Remus heal himself by coming to terms with his past—writing Snape, for example, though I don't know if he ever did that. Writing James. Writing werewolves." Peter sighed through his nose. "And it worked so well that he found a new sense of belonging, a new set of friends, and chose them."
Harry frowned. "Then I don't see why he had no right to do what he did."
Peter twitched his nose in the manner of a rat sitting up its haunches to sniff the air for danger. "Because Remus has never learned that one sense of belonging doesn't have to cut out others," he muttered. "First he was an outcast, and he let that define him. Then he was our friend, and that was so important that he was able to ignore Sirius's steadily more deranged behavior, and stay afraid of his own rage. He was thirty-four years old in your third year, Harry, and he'd never come to terms with the fact that he was a werewolf." Peter shook his head. "And then he did, and scarpered as if that meant no one else was capable of understanding him anymore. Well, of course we weren't, if he didn't explain!
"He betrayed you, he acted as if his old friends should just give up demanding anything of him while at the same time wanting them to trust him, and he's acting like an idiot." Peter ran a hand agitatedly through his hair. "It's always one thing or another with Remus, the extremes, never the middle. If he could just remember that sometimes people are two or three things and not one, he'd be better off." He drank more of his tea, moodily.
Harry shrugged a bit. He didn't see it the same way, but then, he hadn't been friends with Remus since they were both children. "I wouldn't mind so much if he had just told me that things had changed," he muttered. "Instead, he left me to figure it out on my own."
Peter rapped his fingers on his cup. "I hope for his sake that this pack is true," he said, enough bitterness in his voice to scald a cat. "That they'll be his friends and not just use him. If not, I think Remus might break."
He took a deep breath and then straightened himself with a shake, as if the motion would put all mention of Remus behind them, turning to Harry with a bright smile. "Now. I'm staying to help with the battle, after all, so let me show you how well I can call rats."
Harry peered into the depths of the crystal ball, and wished the Divination exam allowed someone to dream prophetic dreams instead. He was good at that, at least if he was allowed to talk about the Dark Lord and his plans for Great Britain. The proctor for this exam was a humorless woman who only seemed to accept a certain list of pre-designated symbols as "real" glimpses into the future.
Trying to clear his mind the way he would for Occlumency, Harry let his gaze drift downward into the crystal. Supposedly, this was how one used one's "inner eye," too. Trelawney's insipid, simpering voice would be in his head in a minute if he thought like that, though, so Harry forced that away and concentrated on the present.
"Well?" the proctor prompted, long before Harry was ready with a complete lie. "What do you See?"
Well, when in doubt, go for the dramatic performance. Harry gave a violent start and shiver, and then shrank back from the crystal ball. He lifted his eyes to the woman's startled face. "Death," he choked out. "My own!"
The proctor sat up and reached for her quill. "What symbols?"
"A Grim," said Harry, choosing it easily, since Sirius's dog form had looked like that. "A great black dog, walking slowly through a fog-drenched forest. It turned and looked out of the crystal at me, and I knew its eyes were beckoning me on to a deeper vision." Harry put his hand to his face and shuddered dramatically. Inwardly, he was congratulating himself. Visions-within-visions were supposed to be difficult to pull off. If she believed him, he ought to get a higher mark than he would have otherwise.
"And what did you See within its eyes?" Scratch, scratch, went her quill.
"Myself, caught in a storm of light," said Harry, improvising quickly. "It was fading behind me, like the last sunset I'd ever see. I stood in front of a great snake and watched him slithering towards me. He had lightning bolts in his mouth, and around his tail he bore a bloody rose."
"And what do those symbols mean?" Yes, there really was an undertone of excitement in the woman's voice. Harry refrained from rolling his eyes, but it was a near thing.
"The snake means great danger," said Harry. "And since I am enemy to Lord Voldemort, it means that he will deal my death. But he will do it by turning my own weapons against me." He lifted his fringe so that the woman could see his lightning bolt scar. "Those are the lightning bolts. And the bloody rose around its tail—" He strained his memory for a moment. He knew the symbol was mentioned in Unfogging the Future, he could even see the page number that mentioned it, but his mind was as blank as the crystal ball for a moment while he struggled to remember.
"What?" the examiner asked.
"The bloody rose means something dangerous disguised as something sweet!" Harry was afraid that he shouted that last part, but he was vastly relieved to have remembered it. "Lord Voldemort will try to lure me into a trap that won't look like a trap."
"Remember this vision, Harry," the woman said, her voice radiating importance. "It may be all that stands between you and You-Know-Who in the end."
Harry bowed his head as if that had only now occurred to him. "Yes, ma'am."
He grinned as her quill scratched wildly. If that's not at least an E, I'll eat my hand.
"I appreciate this, Luna," said Harry, handing the final text of the article to her.
"You don't need to thank me, Harry," said Luna. She peered at the article for a moment as though she didn't know what it meant, then nodded and accepted it. "You're kind to the walls, you know. You don't stomp on the floors the way some of the other students do when they're angry." Luna frowned absently. "I wish they would stop that. They don't know what memories they're putting into the castle." She focused on him again. "You're a good person, Harry."
Harry knew he blushed. "Thanks, Luna." He nodded at the article. "Do you know when it'll run in the Quibbler?"
"Daddy ought to be able to print it in a few days or so." Luna gazed dreamily into the middle distance now. "I'm glad. I'll take a copy to everyone who wants it, including Professor Snape and the Headmistress." She shivered. "Even though I don't like being in the Headmistress's office."
Harry indulged his curiosity. The article detailing his support for werewolves' rights in his own words was finally finished, and he didn't have another exam today. "Why not?"
"I went there to tell her it was Gilbert Rovenan who'd used the Entrail-Expelling Curse on you, because the furniture said so," said Luna. "And her office was unfriendly. I do not know if it was the window, or the door, or the fireplace, or the desk, or the moving staircase. But something in it hated the whole world."
Harry frowned. Odd as Luna's intuitions were, they seemed usually trustworthy. "Perhaps it was Dumbledore's influence," he muttered. "I'll tell the Headmistress, Luna, just in case it's a curse she's overlooked."
"It's something that hates the whole world," Luna repeated earnestly. "Tell her to look for that."
"I will." Harry waved farewell as he moved in the direction of McGonagall's office. It was a long way from Ravenclaw Tower to the dungeons anyway. He might as well take this one more short diversion. "Thanks again for printing the article!"
"Of course," said Luna, with dead seriousness. "It's right that you should be for werewolves' rights. Werewolves are much less dangerous than Wrackspurts."
Argh. No. Two times sixteen is not twenty-eight. Harry carefully erased the calculation that would have made his whole Arithmancy problem come out wrong.
He cast a brief glance at the other students in the room, all bent over their own exams. Most of them looked like he felt, half-hysterical with weariness. They'd spent days frantically revising for this exam; out of the subjects studied at Hogwarts, only Ancient Runes was commonly regarded as harder than Arithmancy. Well, Harry supposed Potions was harder for most students, but only because of Snape, and only because they didn't concentrate.
Hermione, of course, was the sole exception to the frantic scribbling of her classmates. Harry didn't think she'd erased once, and her face shone as she wrote careful number after careful number. Harry shook his head. Connor had told him horror stories about Hermione and the "study parties" she'd organized foe the rest of Gryffindor Tower. They would be all glad when the OWLs were done with and Hermione couldn't badger the rest of them to study anymore.
I wonder if Connor realizes that next year she'll organize study parties around the idea of getting ahead on the NEWTs? Harry thought in amusement, and turned back to his exam, mind rested for the small bout of thinking about other things.
Harry had just sat down at the Slytherin table for breakfast—he'd come from wishing Connor good luck in the Gryffindor-Ravenclaw Quidditch game, which was today—when the post owl landed on his arm. Harry took its weight with a gasp. It was a great horned owl, and far heavier even than Hedwig. It arranged its feathers with a few quick preens, and extended its leg insistently to him, reminding Harry for a moment of the king cobra he'd released in the Forbidden Forest.
The parchment of the letter bore the seal of Griffinsnest. Harry blinked. He hadn't expected an answer from Gloriana so quickly. He wondered if it was good news as he persuaded the owl to hop to his shoulder and opened the letter.
June 1st, 1996
Dear Harry:
I understand your plan to struggle for werewolves' rights. Though I cannot but think there will be more attacks, more bloodshed, and more victims cursed with lycanthropy before all is done, I would be remiss if I did not lend you information that may help you in fighting Loki's pack. Here is what I know about what I call 'accepted' werewolves:
-All accepted werewolves have spent time in the company of other accepted werewolves. Children bitten young, cast out of their homes, and taken in by a pack are the most common candidates for this position. Sometimes it happens with an adult who goes seeking the company of her 'own kind.' Werewolves who do not regularly associate with other cursed individuals do not develop this willingness to embrace the curse.
-Accepted werewolves demonstrate a greater strength and fluidity of body than any wizard. They can walk more silently, curl up in smaller places without claustrophobia, and endure greater extremes of heat and cold. You will know already about their enhanced senses, which are part of the burden of the curse for any werewolf.
-Accepted werewolves often take mates. Despite the many silly legends human wizards have about this—you would not believe how many I had to sort through when I was researching lycanthropy—this means little more than intense monogamy in practice. I have encountered no mated couple who had children of their own, unless the woman had borne them before taking the bite. Unborn children cannot survive the violent monthly transformations of a female werewolf. For this reason, accepted werewolves sometimes bite those of their female enemies they wish to condemn to childlessness.
-Accepted werewolves form pack structures that they claim imitate packs among natural wolves. Do not be fooled by this. A wolf alpha can be replaced when his strength fails, or when a cleverer subordinate defeats him in a dominance fight. The alpha of a werewolf pack typically cannot. His position is a combination of charisma, magical strength, and what I call "fascination." The magic of other accepted werewolves focuses on him and binds with his. They will not challenge him unless his magical strength is somehow drained. However, killing him beheads the pack, and usually forces it to break apart.
-Pack magic has the following effects: very powerful layered spells, as the werewolves' magic combines, most often used to shield their presence from their prey; prevention of Apparition by ordinary wizards; increasing the strength of individuals, so that they may be able to smash through stone and steel; focusing the 'packmind,' so that the werewolves act and react as their leader does.
-I have been unable to learn as much as I would like about pack culture; they keep it secret, and usually live in places a witch like myself has no access to. I have learned that it is largely communal, dedicated to opening the wizarding world up to the Muggle one—the philosophy being that their own packs show that wizards and Muggles can live in harmony—and deeply invested in vengeance. They will punish those they see as acting against them, the murderers of their mates, and so on. The custom about which I know the most, for obvious reasons, is the Grand Hunt to prove the superiority of werewolves. This involves competing pairs, sometimes mates but usually not, choosing intentionally difficult targets on the night of the full moon. Mostly, these contests are to the death, with the werewolf who causes the most damage and gets away winning. Occasionally, if the victim survives but is infected, the contest moves to persuading the victim to become an accepted werewolf.
I trust I have given you enough to be going on with, vates. Please let me know if you need any more information.
Yours in the Light,
Gloriana Griffinsnest.
"Pleased?" Draco asked, learning over his shoulder to see the letter.
"And why shouldn't I be?" Harry responded, passing the letter to him so that he could actually eat his breakfast while Draco read it. "There were no new victims bitten last night, which probably means Loki is keeping his word about their target for this having been Melissa Rosewood, and I have a lot of new information on werewolves." He smiled, and knew it wasn't a pleasant smile.
All his research on werewolves so far indicated that the curse was a web—a violent, self-aware, Dark web that lived to torture its hosts, and had probably been invented by a cruel Dark wizard. It was one thing if a werewolf did manage to accept that and live with it, Harry supposed, though before Loki he had known only Fenrir Greyback as an example of a werewolf who had. But spreading that web to unwilling people was not on, and the moment Loki had chosen to do it, he had set himself up as Harry's enemy, just as a wizard who was trying to weave a new web to confine the centaurs or goblins would have. Harry was not vates if he stood aside and let Loki get away with something like that.
I'll save him and condemn him both at once, he reflected, as he drank his pumpkin juice. Help his people get rights, because that's the right thing to do. But then make sure he loses the ability to spread the web to anyone who doesn't want it. A stint in Tullianum ought to do nicely.
Harry carefully repotted the honking daffodil, and then stepped away from the pot and looked at the proctor. She gave him a nod, indicating that his Herbology OWL was done, and he could go.
Harry let out an explosive breath as he walked outside. He kept going until he was standing by the lake, and could sit down, lean against a convenient boulder, and close his eyes. So that's done, then. It really should have been done yesterday, but for some reason, there'd been some emergency in the headquarters of the Wizarding Examinations Authority—a mix-up with Portkeys, Harry thought he remembered hearing—and they hadn't been able to come to Hogwarts until Saturday.
"Harry! What are you doing out here?"
"Relaxing after my Herbology OWL," said Harry, opening his eyes and peering up curiously at Draco as he hurried towards him. "What does it look like?"
"You need to be getting ready to go to Diagon Alley," Draco snapped, hauling him to his feet. "Or did you forget that the festival to celebrate my confirmation as Malfoy magical heir is tomorrow? We still need to get you proper robes, Harry, and my mother refused to take us shopping until the OWLs were done with."
Harry swallowed. "All—all right, then."
Draco caught his nervousness, and smirked. "Honestly, Harry," he said, steering him rapidly towards the edge of the grounds. "It's not going to be as hard as revising, I promise."
That depends on your perspective, Harry reflected, and prepared himself to face the exposure of his own absolute lack of understanding about which dress robes looked good and which didn't.