Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!

Chapter Thirteen: Lessons, Bloody Lessons

Harry shifted so that the book on druidic magic settled more comfortably into his lap. Another problem with not having two hands, he reflected, was that the Levitation Charm made it difficult for him to hold heavy books steady; it always seemed to hover the left side of the book just above where he gripped with his right hand. He muttered under his breath and shifted again, then went still when he heard a snort from Draco.

Draco was actually sharing the bed with him and had fallen asleep, which Harry thought was a good sign of how much the festival had wearied him. It was before midnight, so Harry had felt justified in leaving the candles burning whilst he read. But if he woke Draco up now, he wouldn't feel it was worth it.

He waited, but Draco just turned restlessly away and buried his face in the pillows again. Harry huffed out a sigh and went back to the book.

It actually had several different definitions of place magic, which made it more interesting and useful than most of the books Harry had tried to read on the subject so far.

The oldest definition of a druid's magic is the magic bound to a place where a human has lived for years, or where the particular druid's family has lived for centuries. A magical place has time to grow used to humans when they dwell there for this long. Place magic is, in general, slow-moving, and slow to take notice of those creatures who are in motion. That is why its greatest emblems are trees, hills, and stones, those slow-aging, still giants of the world. Though a river may run through a magical place, and other humans may live there, it means nothing if the river's course frequently shifts or the other humans often depart. The place magic must first notice a human living in it, and then wrap itself around the human—come to consider him or her as part of what latter researchers have called the "matrix." In older writings, this is often referred to as the "current."

Harry thought of the current of magic traveling Woodhouse. It had not seemed to notice the humans who poured into the valley for the spring equinox meeting—any of them. But it had noticed when they tried to move stones out of the sides of the valley, and had promptly put them back where they were supposed to belong. He wondered why the Antipodean Opaleye had proved the exception able to move the stones. She was also a moving creature, and hadn't been in Woodhouse long enough for the valley to have adapted to her.

He went back to reading.

Some have argued that this cannot be the only way a place's magic exists, because some druids did travel about, and were connected to many different places, not only one. Though research on this subject is uncertain—we understandably know less about druids who moved frequently than those who lived in the same home for years and left their writings behind—there is a good chance that these druids had already established themselves in one place and persuaded its magic to wrap around them. Then they chose a certain circuit of places that they traveled, usually a circular or vaguely circular path. Essentially, they created a second magical place, one bounded not by hills in the manner of a valley or the sea in the manner of an island, but by their travels. They persuaded the current that had wrapped them in the first place to extend outside its original home and wrap this new circuit. The great principle of place magic is its wholeness. The druids who became linked to their new homes were not conquerors. They had to submit to becoming part of something greater than themselves, a small blade of grass in the great lawn.

Harry gnawed his lip. He knew that some of the Opallines who studied druidic magic worked that way; Paton had told him. They lived for years in certain isolated valleys like Woodhouse, or made their homes into magical places with old techniques.

But he did not have time to either live in one place for that long, or create place magic by traveling in a circuit.

He turned another page.

Understandably, some wizards have wanted to take advantage of place magic without binding themselves to one place. They may build rooms that mimic both the limitations of place magic—namely, that its power cannot be moved outside its boundaries—and its benefits—namely, that magic concentrated in one area is enormously powerful, and may develop a sentience of its own, as all magic tends to do when put under confinement for long enough. There are several rooms in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry that take advantage of this principle. They will provide secure rooms to train or see the future, but one cannot train or see the future with impunity in any room in the school. The Founders, in their wisdom, realized that Hogwarts itself could not be filled with place magic. Too many people travel through it every year, and the majority of those are young wizards, still in the throes of growing. There is too much motion for place magic to sustain.

This may be the place to indulge ourselves in a digression. Despite many attempts to argue that place magic is neutral—as some of the druids were rumored to have practiced Dark rituals and blood magic—in the modern practice, and in those older examples, such as the rooms at Hogwarts, that survive to the present day, it tends and turns towards the Light. Place magic is deeply ordered, deeply calm, and the personalities and sentience its bound magic creates tend to be intelligent and calm as well, not raging beasts. Under the old definitions of Dark and Light magic, place magic is Light because it is tame, not wild.

Harry nodded. That would be why the Antipodean Opaleye could do as she liked, then. Dragons are the wildest creatures of the Dark. Woodhouse probably couldn't even feel her, or she was strong enough to oppose its tameness.

He read a bit more, but though the book discussed some of the ways that one might build a room like the Room of Requirement, and speculations on how places that were not obvious candidates for druids' dwellings had been made into them, there was little that sounded as if it would help him present himself to the magic of Woodhouse. He was about to close the book when a passage at the end of the chapter caught his attention.

Finally, there is a little-practiced technique that may help the possessor of a magical place in bringing himself to its notice. Researchers have argued that in some places, the magical current is so strong that a druid could not have made a stone or wooden house for shelter from the elements without first introducing himself. The magic would have put the trees and stones back into their places, and not troubled to notice him. Yet the first thing a druid often did when moving into a magically powerful place was to build such a house.

This argues for a method of introducing himself suddenly, and later dwelling in the place to confirm the bond, not create it. And, indeed, in the oral records supposedly transferred from the druids and written down centuries later, rumors of such a method exist. "Entering the dream" is its common name. What it might have consisted of is not known, but is of intense interest to those modern witches and wizards attempting to revive druidic practices.

Thoughtfully, Harry closed the book and laid it aside. So now he had another phrase to look for. Or perhaps he could ask Hermione to look it up for him. She'd already written him a list of twenty-four ways the new Ministry laws on werewolves violated precedent, and wanted something else to do. The wound she'd taken from Rosier's Severing Curse in the Battle of Hogwarts still limited her ability to move around, and she'd finished her summer homework already, of course.

Harry blew out the candle and then lay down. Draco immediately rolled over and buried his head in Harry's shoulder, with a muffled snort. He didn't wake, though.

Harry stroked his hair. Then he shut his eyes, and told himself he was going to sleep, and not worry about things. He needed to rest.

Besides, he'd already created a schedule of lessons he had to study in the next few weeks until Hogwarts began again, and things he had to do—especially spending time with Connor. Parvati's words had stung him deeply. He hadn't been the brother that he could have been, and certainly he couldn't delegate this task to anyone else the way that he could some of his research and spying. He would go and be the brother that he should have been.


"You do have to concentrate." Peter's voice was light and soft, but Harry could still tell that he was trying desperately not to laugh. "Think about what you know about yourself. You have to—"

"I've been doing that all morning," Draco snapped, opening his eyes again and glaring at Peter. "And I still don't know what my Animagus form is going to be. How should I know what the traits that are going to make me into an animal are? You're a rat, but not everything about you points to that."

"You might start by considering that you're an insufferable brat," Connor said from his corner. "It takes longer than just a morning, Malfoy, you knew that."

Harry sighed as Draco turned to yell at Connor again. He had thought that this would work because Peter could instruct all three of them—Draco had insisted on joining in—on how to become an Animagus at the same time. So far, though, Draco had whined and fussed, and Connor, who had been at this longer and actually wanted to hear what Peter had to say, had retaliated whenever Draco upset him too much, and Peter either shook his head or bit his lip to conceal his chuckles.

"Draco," Harry said. Draco was instantly focused on him, with an intensity that Harry found rather disturbing. He cleared his throat and shook his head. "Connor is right about this. You can't do well at it immediately just because you got an Outstanding in the Transfiguration theory portion of your OWLs. It takes a long time."

"Three years," Peter confirmed calmly. "That was how long it took us. But we didn't have an instructor—we certainly couldn't tell Professor McGonagall what we were doing, because she would have asked why we were doing it—and we made mistakes because we didn't know what some of the books we could find referred to. I plan not to let any of you make those same mistakes." He cocked his head and sat down on top of the desk in the front of the room. This had once been a study in Cobley-by-the-Sea, and though the bookshelves were empty now, it still looked the part. The three boys were sitting on the floor in front of him. "If you can't accept that this will take a long time, Draco, then you shouldn't try this. Envisioning your animal form is only the first step, and Connor's right, it does take weeks."

Connor looked smug. Draco sulked. Harry sighed and leaned across the distance between them, clasping Draco's hand.

"Why do you want to become an Animagus, Draco?" Harry asked him quietly. "Think about that."

"Because I want to be at your side when I can," Draco snarled back, not quite keeping his voice down. "And I'm better at Transfiguration than you are. This shouldn't be a problem for me."

"There's a reason I'm not teaching Transfiguration, you know," Peter remarked to no one in particular. "I'm good at the Animagus transformation, and I know how to train someone else in it, but that isn't the same thing as knowing all about the theory of Transfiguring objects, or other people. And someone who's good at theory shouldn't expect to be an expert Animagus the first time out, either."

Harry thought that would make Draco explode again, but, perhaps because it came from Peter instead of Connor, it just made Draco bite his lip. Then he nodded his head reluctantly. "I suppose I can see that," he muttered.

"So let's start again," said Connor, bouncing in place. "I know that I was getting a vision when Malfoy interrupted." He blithely ignored Draco's glare.

"What was it of?" Peter asked intently, leaning forward.

"Something four-legged," said Connor confidently. "And medium-sized, and it definitely had hair. So, a mammal, but there are lots of medium-sized mammals with four legs and hair." He wriggled. Harry smiled. He's passed through everything relatively unscarred. I wonder how he did it. "I want to go back and look for it again."

"And there was nothing else?" Peter asked intently. "No silhouette?"

"The silhouette was forming when Malfoy interrupted me," said Connor, and sent Draco a superior look.

Draco opened his mouth, but Harry squeezed his hand, murmuring, "Show him you're the better person," sand Draco shut it again and looked away.

"That's good progress, Connor," Peter said warmly. "But even once you have the silhouette, it can take weeks or months to fill it in. James got stuck on the silhouette for weeks."

Connor blinked. "How could he? It was a stag. That's pretty distinctive."

Peter shrugged. "He thought the antlers were horns, and he spent all his time trying to make them form horns instead of antlers. This process is fraught with peril, from your own preconceptions if nothing else. As I said, it took me a long time to accept being a rat. It took Sirius a long time to accept that he was a black dog rather than a paler one, simply because he thought the reference to his family name was too obvious. So try to see and accept what's truly there, not what you think is there, or what you want to be there."

Connor nodded and shut his eyes again. Harry nudged Draco's ribs with his elbow, and Draco sighed and shut his eyes. Harry half-lidded his own eyes, which made a better concentration tool for him than shutting them completely; when he did, he was too apt to start thinking about everything he had to do, rather than just his Animagus lessons.

He was fairly sure his form would be a lynx, but that could have been because he'd had that form in his visions with Voldemort. Peter had warned him that being certain one already knew one's form could be the biggest single block to envisioning it. Harry tried to think about why he wouldn't be a lynx, but his mind kept returning to it.

Why was I one in the first place? I retreated into that form as if it would protect me during the visions—and it did, keeping me out of the way and in the darkness. But why that form? Why not another kind of cat? Why not a bird, with wings that would fly me out of danger? There has to be a reason why it was a lynx.

His mind wandered, brushing over the traits that the lynx was graced with in legends and stories. Harry remembered ideas of lynxes being keen-eyed, graceful, beautiful, the cleverest of the cats. He smiled faintly. He would like to imagine that he was that way, but he had made his share of stupid decisions, and he had missed truths that lurked under his nose before.

Will I do that again? Does it matter whether you're a different person at one point in your life than at another? Was a lynx my destined form two years ago, and would it be something else now?

Harry was tempted to reject the notion, simply because Peter had remained a rat all his life, and James a stag long past the point when Harry would have said any nobility or pride was gone from him. But he didn't know enough about the process of becoming an Animagus to say that for certain.

Something else to ask Peter.

Eventually, Peter told them to open their eyes and discontinue the meditation. Then he told Connor to go read about four-legged mammals. Connor nodded with an enthusiasm Harry couldn't remember him exhibiting for any subject other than Quidditch.

On the other hand, do I actually know what he might like studying? I'm not in half his classes with him, and he chose to take Care of Magical Creatures. And that's another of those things we haven't talked about.

When Harry considered it, he was appalled by how little he knew about his own brother, and not just the things that Parvati had listed. He watched Connor leave the room, and felt a throb of longing travel through him. He wanted to talk to him, and not because Parvati had suggested it. He wanted to do it simply because he wanted to.

But he couldn't do it right now, because he had something to talk to Peter about as long as he was in the same room with him. He uttered a little sigh and turned back to Peter, even though Draco was hovering near the door, obviously eager to escape.

"Peter?"

Peter glanced up. "Yes?"

"This is an odd thing to ask you about, but you're the only one left who knew our parents and whose word I would trust right now," said Harry. Remus's name hung, heavy and unspoken, between them. Peter nodded and laid down the book he'd started to pick up. "I think the prophecy that caused Voldemort to mark us might be coming true more than once." Again Peter nodded; Harry had told him about that speculation when he came to Hogwarts to help prepare for the Midsummer battle. Since Peter had been a sacrifice because of the original prophecy, it seemed only fair he should know about Trelawney's third one. "But I don't know if it fits Dumbledore in all the particulars. I know that Lily and James defied Voldemort three times in the First War, and that was the reason Dumbledore thought their sons could fit the prophecy. But did my parents defy Dumbledore three times? Could he actually be the first Dark Lord in the prophecy?"

Peter narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "I'll have to think on it a bit, Harry. I don't remember all the times that might count. But my instinct is to say that yes, they did. And one time was during their seventh year."

Harry cocked his head. "What happened?" Lily hadn't mentioned this—but then, she'd wanted Harry to love and follow Dumbledore, not disobey him. If she had ever turned on him, then that might have lessened her credibility in her son's eyes.

Lily was very careful with me. Harry suffered a stab of anger as he thought about that. Too careful.

"Most of the older Gryffindor students knew we were going to be soldiers in the War," Peter began, leaning back on the desk. Harry heard Draco huff in impatience behind him. He ignored that. This was history he had never known, and which could be vitally important for defeating Voldemort and whoever the third Dark Lord in the prophecy would turn out to be. "Albus asked us, and we loved him and looked up to him, and he trained us himself. So we said yes. But James suffered a brief rebellious streak during our seventh year. I think it had something to do with his parents, your grandparents, dying in the summer before seventh year, and James becoming a Potter in his own right. They were old even for wizards when they had him; they'd almost given up hope of a child. So their deaths were natural, but they reminded James that he might have his own not-so-natural death in a few months or a year.

"He decided there were more important things than the war in the world. He made plans to go off and live on his own, outside Albus's influence." Peter shook his head. "I only heard about this afterwards, so I never knew how defined his plans actually were—whether he was going to flee to France the way so many of the older students in other Houses did, for example. But he wanted to go. And since he was an illegal Animagus, and Albus didn't know about it at the time, he even could have kept out of his way for a good long time. None of us would have betrayed him, certainly.

"The problem was, he wanted Lily to go with him, and he knew she was more devoted to Albus than he was. So he kept putting it off and putting it off, until one night when—" Peter broke off, looking embarrassed.

"They had sex, didn't they," said Harry, and shook his head when Peter flushed more deeply. "It's all right, Peter. I don't like to think about my parents having sex, but I knew it had to have happened at least once." Harry gestured at himself.

Peter nodded. "So he persuaded her. They ran away. They left on a Friday night, and were gone for most of a weekend, so not that many people noticed at first. It was actually a Quidditch practice that made people realize James was missing, not just sulking somewhere because he'd had a fight with Lily.

"So Albus was prepared to go looking for them. But then they came back before he could. They were shamefaced, but James never wavered again. I have no idea what Lily said to him, only that it was her idea to come back."

Of course it was, Harry thought. He knew that Dumbledore had begun "instructing" Lily in her third year. By the time she reached her seventh, she would have been tangled up in chains of sacrifice, and not even the influence of the boy she loved would have stopped her for long.

"But why did you know so little about it?" Draco sounded curious himself now, if reluctantly so. "If none of you would ever have betrayed him, then why didn't he tell you about it?"

Harry looked up in time to surprise an incredibly bitter smile at the corners of Peter's mouth. He tried to smooth it away, but it was there, and Harry winced as he remembered the way the other Marauders had treated Peter. His devotion was never repaid with devotion.

"Oh, Sirius and Remus knew," said Peter. He was spinning his wand in his fingers, his voice cool and reflective, with barely a glint of the emotion, akin to hatred, that Harry knew waited like black water under the surface. "But they didn't tell me. They were still dealing with my Animagus form, and all its implications. Thought I would rat them out, apparently." A blue spark leaped from his wand and earthed itself harmlessly in the carpet.

Then Peter mastered himself. Harry saw him shake his head and stop spinning his wand. When he next looked up, his face was probably as calm as he pretended it was, or at least he wore a better mask. "To be fair to them," he said, "at that point I was still changing from the horrible person I'd been in fifth and sixth years to someone better. So while I wouldn't have betrayed them, they didn't know that. They didn't know what to make of me. I was changing, and they didn't know why."

"Why did you change?" Draco demanded.

Peter just shrugged, and this time, Harry thought, his smile was like a wall. "Many reasons."

Harry recognized the end of the conversation, even though Draco seemed like he wanted to ask more questions, and dragged Draco out of the room. He went, grumbling. "Sometimes I don't know what to say to him," he told Harry, as they turned a corner in the direction of one of the libraries. "He doesn't seem like a man who spent twelve years in Azkaban, and then he'll do something that reminds me."

I wonder just how much of that man is there, and we just aren't seeing him, Harry thought.


"So, are you going to talk, or are you going to do it?" Draco lay in the middle of Harry's bed, hands folded beneath his chin and a lazy, self-satisfied grin on his face.

"I'm going to do it." Harry glared at him for a moment, then turned back to Argutus. The Omen snake held steady, coiled around his left arm, his scales faithfully reflecting Harry's left wrist, and the dark shimmer of magic above it. Harry knew now that this was a Permanence curse, meant to prevent him from being able to attach a limb of any kind of flesh to his stump, and after some time searching among the books, he'd found a counter to it.

He stretched out his hand above it, took a deep breath, and murmured, "Pausa iam."

The black shimmer in Argutus's scales grew bigger, spreading like a sunburst. Harry held still, even when a burning, itching, tingling sensation spread throughout his stump. The book he'd found the countercurse in had emphasized the importance of holding still, lest the magic should gain an even deeper hold as it was dragged off the end of his limb.

The spell gave a final spit and snarl, and then vanished in a small implosion. Harry shuddered at the pain racing down his arm, but it faded. He sat back and looked at Draco with a raised eyebrow.

"That's the second one," he said quietly. He'd removed the first curse in the Sanctuary. "Two more, one big one, and I should be able to have a second hand." He stroked Argutus's head in thanks, and the Omen snake unfolded and slid away from him, slipping out the door. Harry suspected he was going to sun himself on the cliffs. Cobley-by-the-Sea's windows were so scattered that any sunlight usually moved on too quickly for Argutus.

"That's wonderful," Draco breathed, and then looked a bit abashed. "Not to say that you're not handsome with only one hand, Harry, that's perfectly true. But for you to have two hands again, when Bellatrix and Voldemort tried so hard to insure that you wouldn't—"

"Or just wanted me to despair," Harry muttered, standing up and stretching. "I don't think Voldemort ever planned for me to survive the graveyard."

Draco snorted and rolled over. "So he's an idiot. We knew that—where are you going?" he added sharply, as Harry headed for the door.

Harry glanced back at him, startled. "To spend time with Connor. I told you I was thinking about that."

Draco scowled and dug in his robe pocket. Harry watched, not understanding, until Draco pulled out a wooden coin and threw it at him. Harry caught it automatically and looked down. It was the coin the assassins in the Ministry had thrown at him, marked with a winged horse in the middle of flight.

"I'd think finding out who cast that would be more urgent," Draco said.

Harry curbed his irritation. He doesn't like it that Connor's doing better than he is in the Animagus training, I understand that. He tossed the coin back to Draco. "I already know," he said. "It's not a secret, really. I asked Zacharias to check for me, because I know he has some contacts in the Ministry. This is a symbol for Shield of the Granian, a militant group of flying horse breeders. They've fought back before when the Ministry was going to pass laws that restricted breeding or imposed price controls."

Draco stared at him. "Stupid of them to use coins that proclaim their identity," he said at last.

Harry shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. No one's ever found out who's in Shield of the Granian. Either they're all good at glamours or they have someone who can Transfigure their faces and then put them back. And, of course, the breeders themselves disavow all their tactics. I suppose they might be afraid that I'm going to free the Granians and other flying horses they breed. But I'm not convinced this came from them." He nodded at the coin in Draco's hand. "I think now that Falco Parkinson was spying on me and told the attackers the time of my meeting with Skeeter. I've set up wards against him doing that again in his sea eagle form. But it could have been disused remnants from the Order of the Phoenix, for all I know."

"I don't like it," Draco said. "I think you should stay here with me so that we can talk about it some more."

Harry snorted. "You want to talk about other things."

Draco sighed and rolled his eyes. "And is that a crime?"

"Not at all," said Harry quietly. "But I want to spend time with my brother right now, Draco."

"So the problem is still lack of time."

"And someone else reminding me that I haven't given as much time to Connor as I could have," Harry agreed, and turned away. He felt Draco's frustration behind him as Harry slipped down the hallway, but he said nothing else.

Good. Harry shook his head. He had to admit he was feeling a bit harried with all these problems pushing in on him.

But he had chosen the vast majority of them, via his oaths and his acceptance of the positions and power other people handed him, and so he couldn't complain, but had to do the best he could. Besides, it really shouldn't have taken Connor's girlfriend to tell him he was neglecting Connor. Harry should have seen that for himself.


Connor was trying to understand what Harry wanted, he really was, but so far Harry was stumbling over his words and being tongue-tied, so it didn't work. Connor half-wished Harry would make a speech. He had liked Harry's speech about the Unspeakables, and he'd understood all of it.

"But you want to have fun," he said, trying to clarify the matter.

Harry shrugged as if embarrassed and scuffed one trainer on the floor of Connor's bedroom. "I'd like to have fun with you," he said. "I've missed you, Connor. I want to spend time with you."

"You are," said Connor, mystified. "We're having Animagus training together every day."

"Time other than in lessons," Harry clarified, sounding even more flustered.

"Then you could have said so," Connor said, and laid his book on Animagus forms aside. So far, he'd eliminated relatively few animals his form might be; as he'd told Peter, there were many, many medium-sized mammals with four legs. "I don't mind practicing Quidditch, if you want to."

Harry smiled as if he had forgotten there was such a thing as Quidditch, but was happy to be reminded. "I'd like that."

Connor went to a corner of his room to pick up his Nimbus, while Harry used a Summoning Charm on his Firebolt, which seemed to be his favorite method of attracting it. Connor studied his brother out of the corner of his eye as they jogged towards the door in Cobley-by-the-Sea that led out onto the cliffs. Lines of strain and tension were leaving Harry's face, and now and then he smiled as though he were envisioning catching the Snitch out of the air.

This is good for him, then. Connor contemplated something he hadn't before—certainly not when he thought of himself as the Boy-Who-Lived. I reckon he gets tired of being a hero.

They stepped out onto the cliffs, and Connor felt the crash and thud of the waves far below. He breathed in the salt air. It was bracing, and he thought it would be interesting to fly on their brooms where the winds crossed and divided in front of the rocky walls. He hopped onto his Nimbus, and darted over the side.

"Not fair!" Harry complained, but he was up on his own broom in a moment, and Connor knew the Firebolt could catch the Nimbus any day, so he wasn't particularly worried about it being fair. He was more curious to see if he could continue flying straight into the wind ahead of him now, or if he would be forced to swerve.

Swerve, he thought, as a current forced him towards the cliffs. Connor turned his broom, pushing straight into it, and the wind howled and plastered his robes to his body. Connor whooped. He wondered if Harry even heard the sound, though; the air was fierce enough to push it away.

He found himself shivering, wishing for gloves and other Quidditch gear they hadn't taken the time to put on, but then strangled the wish. The wind wasn't that cold, even if it did have the teeth of the ocean in it. He rose, and then rode out over the Atlantic.

The sea was gray beneath him, vast and shuddering and white-capped. Connor thought about dipping down and wetting his feet in the foam, but decided that he would be good. It would probably panic Harry to see him diving into a situation like that without protection.

His thoughts ran along that track until he turned around to see what his twin was doing, and saw him diving straight down, apparently trying a Wronski Feint on a breaker. He pulled out of it in time to avoid crashing, but as he plunged through a trough and then rose again, the next wave caught him a solid slap across the body.. Harry yelped, and spat salt water. His hair was already streaming, his glasses so thick with water that Connor wondered why he didn't just pull them off. Connor laughed, and was abruptly happier than he'd been since he learned Harry was going to the Sanctuary, and why.

"Watch where you're going!" he called.

"I suppose you could do better, then," Harry yelled back.

Connor snorted. "Who do you think you're talking to?" he shouted, steering his broom around a particularly stiff wind. "I'm not only a Seeker, I'm a Gryffindor Seeker. That means we automatically take risks that you Slytherins are too cowardly to try."

He thought, as he said the words, that he would have meant them only two years ago. And though it was hard to see from this distance and with his sea-splattered glasses, he thought he could see Harry's eyes widen as he heard both the words and the playful tone.

We're both so different from what we were, Connor thought in satisfaction. They tried to mold us, and they didn't succeed. Take that, Lily.

If he kept on thinking like that, though, he would have to think about Sirius, and Connor still missed him, so he put it out of his head to listen to Harry's reply.

"You mean that Gryffindors are idiots who think with their balls instead of their heads," Harry said carelessly. He held out his hand, gripping his Firebolt with his knees, and a ball of golden light, about the size of a Snitch, formed in his palm. Connor squinted to keep track of it as Harry bounced it up and down. "But they're even bigger bluffers."

Connor snorted. "Right."

"Let's see you catch this, then." Harry whipped the ball of light away from him. It immediately arced and headed down towards the waves, now and then weaving back and forth like a feather. "And Wronski Feint only."

Connor tossed his head back and half-reared his broom. He knew he was grinning like an idiot, but he didn't care. Merlin, this is fun. He waited for the Snitch-ball to settle on a wave, and then he dived.

The wind was strong enough to feel like someone punching him in the mouth. The cold bit him so badly that his hands shook where they gripped the broom. He was peripherally aware of not only wind but water darting around him, and while he understood the air, a few minutes of watching the ocean wasn't enough to understand that.

He didn't care. This was the most brilliant thing ever.

He cut in close to the top of the wave, and stretched out his right hand. He clasped it around the ball of golden light, which warmed his palm slightly, and opened his mouth to crow.

Water flooded it instead, and the taste of salt. Connor felt the rearing wave catch the tail end of his broom at the same time, creating just enough of a tug that he unbalanced when he tried to dart back into the air. He tipped sideways, and upside down, and another wave engulfed him.

Connor kept one hand on his broom and the other on the golden ball of light, which meant he had none free to pinch his mouth and nose shut. He swallowed a great deal of salt and began coughing. He'd heard that sea water didn't kill you on the first drink, but it tasted bloody awful. Maybe it just took a second or third gulp.

He pulled his legs in towards his chest and kicked out again, hard. That had helped when he swam in the small pond near their house in Godric's Hollow. But the Atlantic wasn't a pond. He stuck his foot straight into some other current that spun him off-course. Meanwhile, water pressed on his chest like a great hand, and more flooded in through his nostrils and mouth, and he couldn't get a breath, and his eyes stung so badly from salt that he wanted to close them, and he had lost track of his path back to the surface.

He thought he heard Harry shouting his name, but that could just be what he wanted to hear. Certainly, the ringing in his ears and the wild thumping of his heart was too loud to really let him hear anything else.

Then a hand grabbed him, and so did something invisible that Connor guessed was a powerful Levitation Charm, and together they pulled him out of the water. Connor gasped, and then wondered why he couldn't breathe yet, and then a great sluice of water came up his throat and answered the question on its own. He coughed frantically. Harry pounded his back, and he choked and more water came out.

"Connor, can you hear me?" Harry's voice was frantic. "Can you nod?"

Of course he could nod; Connor let his head fall forward and then fall back. Harry choked on a gasp of his own, and the pounding hand and Levitation Charm went back to work. Connor blinked, and blinked, and finally made sense of what he was seeing. He was lying face-down across Harry's Firebolt, staring at the sea below, while his Nimbus dangled in front of him and his right hand remained clutched tight around the golden Snitch-ball.

He was safe. He relaxed as much as he could while Harry practically beat him, because when he could finally talk again, he knew just what he wanted to say.

He spat and heaved and coughed and hiccoughed, and finally the half of the Atlantic he'd swallowed was back where it belonged. Harry helped him sit up, and all the while he was talking, his words spilling over each other in panic and relief.

"Connor, I'm so sorry—I never should have done that—I should have known better than to think—"

Connor held up his right hand and opened it, displaying the golden ball. Harry fell silent; Connor thought it was in shock.

"I told you that Gryffindors don't bluff," Connor said, his voice more of a croak than he would have liked, but still making his point.

Predictably, his brother said, "But I almost killed you, it was a bloody stupid dare—"

"It was fun," Connor said firmly. He reconsidered a moment, then added, "Except for the almost-drowning part."

Harry said nothing.

Connor twisted around, letting the Snitch-ball go so that he could clasp Harry's shoulder and peer straight into his worried eyes. "Really, it was," he said. "You're not responsible for every tiny thing that happens to me, Harry. And that was fun. I like a bit of danger, you know." He grinned. "I'm Gryffindor."

"But if I hadn't—"

"But you did, and I went after it, and it was fun," said Connor. He laughed. "And it proved that I'm the better Seeker than you are after all, because of the risks I take for my team. Watch!"

He swung his leg over Harry's broom and hopped off it. Harry shrieked like Parvati might. Connor had never let go of his Nimbus, though, and after one exciting moment of tangling limbs and freefalling, he was mounted on his own broom again. He swung around Harry, laughing.

"You need to relax, Harry," he told his brother. "It's not normal to scream this much when you're having fun."

Harry only shook his head, staring at him. Connor blinked. "What?"

"I wondered how you stayed so open even when bad things happened to you," Harry muttered. "Now I think it has a lot to do with growing a sense of humor, and not brooding on your mistakes."

Connor grinned. "You have been sadly deficient in that regard, Harry."

Harry just nodded, taking it too seriously again. Connor changed the subject. "Why could you put me on your Firebolt, anyway?" he asked. "I thought Draco had it charmed so only you could ride it."

Harry's face changed in an instant. "I'm going to kill him for that," he said. "I had to break the damn charms before I could pull you up here, and I thought I was going to lose my grip." He considered Connor for a moment. "Which do you think would be more fun: yelling at Draco for that, or just letting him notice that the charms are gone and then telling him the reason?"

Harry, Connor reflected sadly, had a lot to learn about pranking. "Neither, of course," he said. "You come in alone and pretend I've drowned because the Firebolt flung me off when you tried to use it to rescue me. Then I show up behind Draco and give him a heart attack."

Harry hesitated a long moment. "I don't think—"

"He deserves it for being such an utter tosser," said Connor firmly. "I know that he wanted to give you something of your own for your birthday, but charming the Firebolt so I couldn't ride it was just stupid."

"It was," Harry muttered.

"Yes, it was," Connor coaxed. "Come on. This is funnier."

Harry hesitated for another moment. "I'm not saying I'll do it," he began.

Connor grinned and went to work persuading him. The expression on Draco's face would be completely worth it, in his opinion, but even more worth it would be teaching Harry to have some fun again.

And some fun with me. I have missed him.