This is one of those chapters where, if you want to avoid slash entirely, you're going to have a hard time of it; the first three scenes all at least involve the characters thinking about it. Use your discretion.

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Master of the Rising Tension

Draco shut the door quietly behind him.

Not quietly enough, it seemed. A moment ago, Draco would have said Harry was completely absorbed in the letter on his knee, but he blinked and looked up. "Draco?" he asked, shoving his glasses up with his hand and causing the letter to almost drift to the floor. His Levitation Charm snatched it up and put it back, but Harry grumbled about losing his place before he said, "Is something wrong?"

Draco frowned, then reminded himself what he'd come here for. Harry had only finished riding the karkadann half an hour ago. Draco had given him some time to shower, but, he hoped, not shed the joyful mood entirely. Harry had been open to kissing him in joyful moods before. And Draco had only had to glimpse his face, flushed and laughing from the ride, before a sharp spike of want had made him remember what he'd promised Harry in the Ministry corridor.

"Of course not," said Draco. "Why should something be wrong when I only wanted to spend time with my boyfriend?"

Harry obviously didn't assign any innuendo to that statement, because he smiled. "Nothing. But you've been talking to your mother almost since she arrived, so I thought she might have dismissed you because her ear's getting tired."

It was true that Narcissa had been in his thoughts and at his side since she arrived, Draco thought, but that had only been his wonder at the thought that she had chosen him, after all. He had thought from the time he was a child that his mother and father were, while not identical, joined; seeing one break away from the other had been an impossible concept to grasp. If he chose against one, he would be choosing against the other. And now here his mother was. Small wonder he had wanted to talk to her, to hear all the details of her duel with Lucius, to know exactly what was happening and realize again how much she loved him.

He realized Harry had turned back to his letter while he was distracted, and frowned again. He stepped closer and took the letter out of Harry's hand. Harry squawked like Granger as that resulted in a long trail of ink down the side of the parchment, and glared at him.

"Draco, that letter is to the Minister—"

Draco bent down and kissed him, pushing Harry onto his back before he knew what was happening. He didn't exactly want to bed Harry in irritation, but he could use the emotion to begin this. And the moment he had skin under his hands, and the memory of Harry's flushed face in his head, his thoughts narrowed and oriented towards one point. He wanted this, damn it.

They'd both come alive out of the Ministry jailbreak, they'd done it with no casualties other than a few wounds, and Draco had Stunned the Minister and saved Harry from having to fight him. That deserved some bedding, Draco thought.

Harry hissed, though, and the sound wasn't a noise of irritation, but of pain. Draco sat back at once. Is there something in his training that makes him react to being pinned like this?

He realized the truth when Harry sat up, massaging his right side, where the rib had broken. Draco stared. "I thought you took a healing potion for that?" he demanded.

Harry gave him a strange look. "Of course I did. But it was a broken rib. The Bone-Set could only heal the break, not ease all the pain. It's going to be fragile and tender for a few days."

"It's been a few days since then." Draco was unable to keep the pettiness out of his voice. Even though it had been his fault as much as Harry's that they'd shared the same bed for the last few nights, but only for sleeping, and spent their days doing entirely different things, he wanted this now. He shifted uncomfortably, and saw Harry's gaze dart to his groin.

"You get aroused fast," Harry said.

"We're hanging a mirror next time," said Draco. "So that you can see yourself and understand why I get aroused so quickly."

Harry's flush deepened to the color of red clay. He stood and reached out, clasping Draco's hand. "Listen, Draco," he said softly. "I'm hurt, but it won't last forever. In a few more days, at most, it should be entirely healed. It already feels better than it did yesterday. Can you wait that long?"

Draco nodded reluctantly. He supposed that he could always ask Harry to wank him in the meantime, but he wanted more than that—he wanted to see Harry entirely naked, for one thing, which hadn't happened since Harry had faced Voldemort in the Chamber of Secrets and won—and anything less would feel like settling. Draco didn't want to settle. He intended to push.

"Good." Harry squeezed his hand. "I am sorry about this, you know."

Draco looked steadily into Harry's eyes. They shone earnestly back at him. And Draco could see that, yes, he was sorry—

To not be able to give Draco what he wanted.

"Do you want this, Harry?" Draco demanded abruptly. "If your rib was healed, would you go along because you want to bed me, or because this is a gift you can offer me?"

Harry's flush deepened again. "Both," he said. "I do like—watching you, Draco." Draco considered demanding that he say the words, but that would only tie up Harry's tongue, and he needed it to say the words Draco wanted to hear. "You're beautiful when you feel that much pleasure in a way that you aren't at other times. Not that you're never beautiful at other times," he hastened to add.

"I know," said Draco, holding up a hand. "I know what you mean, Harry. But there's a more pertinent question, I think. How much does your own pleasure factor into this? Not how much you like watching me come, but how much you like getting off." He was remembering the time Harry had brought him to climax and then arranged Draco on his chest afterwards; it had been warm and pleasant and had already taken its place as one of Draco's favorite memories, but now what he was especially remembering was the way Harry had said, "I'll be fine," when he attempted to return the favor.

Harry was looking away to one side, and wouldn't meet his eyes.

"It's less important," he said.

Draco stifled a growl, then wondered why he was bloody well doing that and released it. He had promised Harry that he was going to push. "Why?"

"It's not a problem of feeling good," said Harry, not looking at him. "It's not. I liked it fine when we were at Silver-Mirror. It's just—I thought about it afterwards, and I didn't like the feeling of collapsing like that. I don't like the feeling of letting all my barriers down at once."

Draco saw the problem almost at once. The point in the last few months when Harry had seemed most relaxed was at the Sanctuary, in the pool where Draco had massaged his shoulders. On the other hand, both times he'd bedded Draco had been intense, hurried experiences, full of emotion, with Harry not really relaxed, no matter how content he'd been afterwards.

"I wish you had told me about this before," said Draco, trying and failing to keep the frustration out of his voice. "I could have helped, Harry."

Harry gave him a sad smile. "In the midst of all this?" His hand-wave took in not only Woodhouse but also the rebellion, Draco knew. "We've both been busy, and you've been coping with extremes of emotion in the last few days. I didn't think your mother would join us, either. Besides, I don't think of it as a problem—"

"I bloody well do."

Harry gave him a sideways look. "The answer to this will probably seem obvious the moment I ask it, but I don't care. Why, Draco?"

Draco shook his head. He didn't have the words to explain just why he wanted to see Harry entirely naked, taking as much pleasure from their bedding as Draco did. He just knew that he did.

So he said that. "Because I want that to happen, Harry." He shifted, deliberately drawing Harry's eyes to his groin again. "I don't consider it bedding if you just wank or suck me off for the rest of our lives. I want to fuck you, too, you know."

"It wouldn't be the rest of our lives," said Harry. "We're just a little busy right now—"

"We always will be," said Draco. "I know that you're vates, Harry; you were that before I fell in love with you. I've put up with the notion that I have to share you with your goals and your allies and all kinds of magical creatures. But you have to share them with me, too. That means that I won't suffer being put off forever. And if I did let you do that, we'd fall into some comfortable 'compromise' I'd wake up from and hate years later. No. We're going to live at the same time as we're rebelling." He raked Harry's body with a deliberately lingering look that Harry glanced aside from. "Your rib has to heal completely, of course. But until then, I want you to think about the fact that your own pleasure matters to me as much as mine does."

"Draco—" Harry's words were a plea, now.

"No arguments on that score, Harry," Draco said pleasantly, though his heart was pounding hard and he couldn't tell what emotion was uppermost in him. Anger? Determination? Bloody-minded stubbornness? "I'm not taking a sacrifice to bed. That's not appealing to me in the slightest."

He turned and stepped out of the room, shutting the door behind him again and trying to convince himself that that had been worthwhile, after all. He'd nipped something in the bud that he might have ignored in a haze of desire and then regretted afterwards—

Who am I kidding?

Draco sighed and went to find one of Woodhouse's small rooms to cast wards and Silencing Charms around. He had come to important realizations, yes, but none of that impacted the arousal that Harry had inspired in him and which wasn't going to be truly satisfied for at least the next few days.


Harry managed to finish the letter to the Minister, though his thoughts kept bouncing back to what Draco had said to him. At last he laid the parchment aside and ran his hand through his hair. He couldn't send it right now, anyway. He wanted Narcissa, Hawthorn, and Adalrico to look over it first.

How can I make Draco see that this isn't a sacrifice for me? I just—I just have problems relaxing to that extent, and there's no reason that should prevent him from experiencing pleasure.

Harry had assumed it was one more thing, like the taste of porridge or chocolate, that mattered to him and him alone, and since he didn't care that much about it, then no one else should care that much about it, either. But Draco did seem to care about it, and given his newfound pushiness, he would shove and worry at it, Harry knew, until they reached a point where Harry gave Draco what he wanted.

And what I do want, too, what it would be pleasant to have, but not as desperately as he seems to want it.

Harry shook his head. This was getting him nowhere, and the thoughts were distracting him from important things. He transformed the impulse to lie there and let the worries inside his head have free rein to the impulse to take care of those important things, and snatched the letter.

The request it contained was simple. It wanted to know why the Minister had not yet responded to the Alliance of Sun and Shadow and their demands for werewolf legal rights. Surely, outlawing murder was not that hard a decision? Even a small gesture of good faith would content them, for now. But so far, there had only come this cold silence, and that made the Alliance think the Ministry was dithering.

Harry suspected that Scrimgeour was probably grateful for the silence, and for the fact that so many factions in the Ministry had no idea how to respond. And he wouldn't thank Harry for pushing.

Harry didn't care. The silence wouldn't endure. If he gave his enemies time to rebuild their anthill, then they would inevitably come to conclusions that sounded good but which decided against his people. So he would do what rebels were supposed to do, and kick over the anthill again.

Time to set this to boiling, he thought, and sought out Narcissa.


Narcissa Malfoy was a very long way from stupid. The only arena of her life in which she would admit to, perhaps, carrying things too far was her grudge against her sister Andromeda, which had lasted through years of silence and years of sniping letters. Their communication had grown coldly courteous again in the last few months, as Narcissa coaxed Andromeda to come out openly for Harry; she nearly had in the summer before Harry's fourth year, but then retreated when she and Narcissa fell out and she discovered how close Harry was to Narcissa. And now the owls in the last few days had been warmer than ever, because Andromeda did care that her beloved daughter had decided to join Harry's rebellion. Very much.

That intelligence meant that she could take one look at Harry when he held out his latest letter to the Minister, and say, "You had an argument with my son, didn't you?"

Harry flushed. "Not so much an argument as a—clash of words," he said, and shook the letter. "Please, Mrs. Malfoy, it's important."

"What about?" Narcissa asked as she took the parchment. Harry's deepening blush gave her the clue. She paused, wondering what advice to give. Bellatrix would have laughed and made filthy jokes, Andromeda would have been delicately blunt, but she was neither of their sisters. Besides, neither of them had produced a son, or married a Malfoy.

"I'll tell you this now, Harry," she said. "Draco loves you. He may be devious, but he would not force you to do something that made you uncomfortable simply because it pleased him. He wants to please you, as well. And there is nothing wrong—nothing—with indulging your own taste for pleasure."

"Mrs. Malfoy, please." Harry had backed away a few steps by now, and had his head down. "Please, will you read the letter?"

"I told you to call me Narcissa," she chided him gently as she held the parchment open on her lap. She sat on a bench in one of the narrow corridors of Woodhouse, the better to observe what was happening everywhere and note the stirrings of arguments and dissension. So far, no one had expressed serious objections against being here—the freed werewolves, even the ones not originally Harry's allies, knew the Ministry would not offer them kisses and roses if they betrayed Harry—but Narcissa knew they would come, and she would not let Harry be taken off guard. "And what I say is true. The world will not cease to spin because you think of yourself for once in a while."

"But I am," said Harry, lifting his head with a quick, angry jerk. He breathed deeply in the next moment, and all the lines on his forehead smoothed out. Too quickly, Narcissa thought. Unnaturally. "I'm making sure I eat and sleep on time, ma'am. I do use a sleeping charm if I'm prone to lie awake and let my thoughts race around my head. I don't exhaust myself trying to fulfill impossible requests. I'm learning to refuse people things I don't think they should have. I'm becoming what you advised me to be in one of the Starborn letters, someone capable of deciding where my magic should go and what it should do, rather than assuming that I have to be a servant for everyone who asks."

"This is more than that," said Narcissa. "This is taking time and happiness for yourself, Harry." She wondered if she could have had this conversation with any other sixteen-year-old boy in the world. Usually they needed to slow down and be told to remember that other people existed, and their actions affected those people. "No one will curse you if you do that."

Harry shrugged. "I know that, ma'am."

"Narcissa."

"Narcissa," he agreed, but it was too obviously a concession to her. Narcissa eyed him for a moment, and wondered if she should press the issue.

Then she decided not to. Sometimes, as with Andromeda, one needed to let matters rest. Besides, her son would be better-suited to know when Harry was depriving himself, and much more determined than anyone else to deal with it.

She turned to the parchment, and shook her head, ignoring his soft sigh of relief. "If you want to phrase this as a demand, the first line is too conciliatory, I think."

"I want it to be more of a request," said Harry. "The letters can increase in ferocity as they grow on."

"We may not get that far," said Narcissa. This, at least, she felt competent to address. "We know that you're taking this rebellion seriously, but so far, the most impressive thing we've done is the Ministry jailbreak, and that will already be fading in its impact on the minds of the public. We need other methods of showing them we're serious. A demand would do it."

Harry opened his mouth to argue, and then he spun and stared towards the window. Narcissa followed his gaze, expecting to see an owl, but nothing hovered there. Harry's magic rose anyway.

"What is it?" Narcissa asked.

"Intruders on the borders of Woodhouse," said Harry tightly. "It's telling me about many small rushing things. It doesn't like them. They may be Aurors or Unspeakables."

A moment later, a ringing neigh and howls both came through the window, signals from their sentries. Narcissa stood, smoothing down her robes, and then shook her wand into her hand.

"They're entering," said Harry, and his magic rose and swamped the building. The next moment, he vanished, and Narcissa suspected he had Apparated directly to the attackers' side.

She turned and went to warn those who hadn't heard, and then to find Draco. Her mind drowned fear. They had Harry with them, and they had known it would come to this sooner or later, as long as they were rebels against the Ministry. She was not in the least afraid.


Harry landed on the outer fringes of the pine forest, to find that Woodhouse's warning had been even more impressive than he thought. The Aurors in question hadn't fired a spell yet, but they were hostile towards parts of the valley, slapping branches out of the way as they tried to sneak in. Then Woodhouse had picked up on their hostility towards him, and its stance had altered from tolerance of the small rushing things to active annoyance.

Woodhouse would still not attack, given that its place magic would simply defend any stones or trees the Aurors tried to move, but its annoyance could run through Harry, and he could certainly attack.

He reminded himself that intimidating people at the Ministry had stopped anyone from dying. He didn't know if he would be so lucky here, but he could certainly show off his magic.

He stepped around the tree in front of him and did so.

The air around the dark-robed wizards turned dry. Harry raised his magic as heat, rather than fire, thinking of the deserts the karkadann had run. He murmured a milder version of the dehydration curse Draco had used to save him from the time-globe on the Hogwarts Express, and the witch in front of him started gasping as moisture was sucked from her mouth. He carefully kept the magic away from the trees; since he was part of Woodhouse, the valley presumably wouldn't hesitate to lash at him if it caught him hurting another part of itself.

Harry let the air around him shimmer, too, and waited, doing nothing more than arch an eyebrow.

The witch in front of him flicked her wand, trying a nonverbal spell. Harry clenched the fingers of his hand, cast a Protego in front of his chest, and then aimed the spell, a stronger dehydration curse, over that. The witch made a soundless cry as the tendons in her hand dried to the consistency of old leather, and her fingers spasmed open and dropped her wand. Whatever hex she had chosen sputtered out against the rocks and needles under her feet.

"Now," said Harry quietly. "What are you doing here? Tell me that, and I might be persuaded to let you live." He could feel the karkadann shoving through the pine trees to get to his side, but he didn't worry. She was at a disadvantage in cover as thick as this. And he could easily use his magic to restrain her from killing anyone, should he deem it necessary.

Someone moved forward from the back of the group—a tall woman with blonde hair sweeping her shoulders, whom Harry recognized. She halted and nodded at him. Then she said, "Karen, you were supposed to inform him he was under arrest first, before you cast a spell. Remember it. I certainly will."

Karen mouthed something sullen. Harry inclined his head to Priscilla Burke. "Hello," he said. "The Ministry must consider this important if they send the Head Auror after me and mine."

The karkadann knocked into another tree behind him and let out a bellow of frustration. Harry stood firm, not letting the temptation to charge when he heard the trumpet overwhelm him. He watched the Head Auror's face instead, caught in a stream of slanting sunlight. He knew she was not here as Thomas's wife, because she would have already joined them if that was the case.

"The Ministry has declared you, and everyone who shelters with you, an outlaw," said Priscilla. "The charges are numerous. Sheltering fugitives, intrusion into and damage of Ministry property, endangering public safety. There were others, but I didn't bother memorizing them." She let out a long breath. "The point, vates, is that you should surrender and come with us now."

"Will my people be properly treated?" Harry asked mildly. "For example, will Mrs. Parkinson be treated like a human being, and not cut with silver, and shoved into a corner of her cell, and left to put on robes torn in her transformation?"

Priscilla jolted as if he had slapped her. "That did not happen," she whispered.

"Oh, but it did." Harry took a step forward. "That's the reason I'm asking for guarantees from the Ministry. I don't trust them to keep my packs from being murdered. Why in the world would I trust them with anything else?"

"Who did this?" Priscilla said.

Harry shrugged. "Hawthorn said that every single Auror who came after her contributed something to it—slapping her, spitting on her, kicking her, casting pain curses. Something." He held Priscilla's eyes, even when they watered as if she were trying to blink, and pulled more and more of his magic close to him, in a thick sheen that made the rest of the forest waver like a mirage. "There were twenty of them. That's a purging of a good part of your Corps, I think."

Priscilla closed her eyes and visibly fought for mental balance. Then, as if aware that this would make her look weak in front of her people, she chose a glare. "You don't—I don't think you understand. I would like to begin such a purge, and make sure that my own people never treat a prisoner like that again, but I need you back in the public eye to do it. I need to hear Mrs. Parkinson's testimony, or at lest see her memories in a Pensieve, to know who was responsible. If you surrender and come along, then we can quiet some of the public suspicions. So long as everyone is still shouting about werewolves running around and trying to murder us in our beds, nothing we do will make any difference. We have to have a calm environment."

"Correction," said Harry. "If we surrender, they'll think they've won. And they'll make sure that none of the really damaging testimony reaches the outside world." He looked up as the karkadann finally found the passage through the trees and came to a stop beside him, snorting and stamping. Harry reached up and stroked her shaggy foreleg, ignoring Priscilla's gape. "And that means the end of our freedom, the end of our chance to change things, and the end of our inspiration for the rest of the wizarding world. My answer to that is no, ma'am, unless we have either action from the Ministry, or binding oaths that swear they won't harm us and try to make us vanish the moment we're in their custody."

"Without your coming back now, it will come to civil war, and not just rebellion," said Priscilla, her voice tight.

"Why?" Harry asked.

"Because people are starting to support you," said Priscilla darkly. "The pages of the Daily Prophet are swarming with letters. In London, several werewolf packs have secured their lairs and prepared to fight any Aurors who arrest them, or anyone else trying to harm them, to the death. Someone else tried to invade the Ministry yesterday, and got away before we could find out who it was. And now we have letters coming in from—from people we can't afford to ignore in France and Spain, asking why the Minister hasn't done something about the Alliance's demands so far, and how they look oh so very reasonable to them." She scowled. "The Americans are doing the same thing, but the Americans always do that. France and Spain are usually quieter."

Harry allowed himself a thin smile. He didn't know much of the British Ministry's reputation abroad, but he could imagine how it had suffered under Fudge. And then it would have had a year of seeming competency under Scrimgeour, only to tremble and explode now. It was no wonder that even Scrimgeour's enemies wanted to stop the Alliance, because they would want a smooth transfer of power. Coups didn't look good on a Ministry's record.

"It doesn't look good, does it?" he asked innocently. "That one rebel can defy the whole of a Ministry armed with permission to use dangerous spells, as well as dangerous magical artifacts?"

Priscilla closed her eyes. "You have no idea what you're dealing with, vates," she said, and then she waved her wand and lifted a privacy ward between them. "I received permission from the Minister himself to seek you out and try to stop this," she said. "He was willing to wait before, but the invasion yesterday and the letters from the—the people in France and Spain are unnerving him. Amelia Bones is just about ready to declare war at this point. If you come along now, we'll avoid that. If you don't, then we won't."

Harry took a deep breath. Then he said, "You and Scrimgeour both seem to think I didn't know what would happen when I started this rebellion. That's wrong. I did. I did it to prevent even worse things from happening."

"You want corpses in the streets?" Priscilla whispered. "You want blood? You want war?"

"I don't want it," said Harry. "But that's what I'm going to get. And without it, we'd have people dying in the street anyway. Their killers would just say they were werewolves later. And we'd have the Department of Mysteries doing whatever the hell it likes, under the guidance of the Stone, and the Ministry shaking apart around Scrimgeour's ears. He's got a war of his own to fight, whether he likes it or not. He's not going to save his Ministry this way, and neither am I. I don't want to save it. It couldn't protect the innocent. It didn't try."

"War," Priscilla said. She was hung up on the word, Harry thought. "A rebellion is one thing. A war is another."

"Revolution is a more frightening word than either." Harry smiled so hard his face hurt. "And I'm committed to it. I told the Minister I was. I can't understand why people don't take me seriously. Perhaps because I'm sixteen." He heard branches twitching and snapping behind him, and hoped to Merlin that his people would stay back. The confrontation was balanced on the edge of a knife. Priscilla's Aurors would fire curses if they thought their leader was in danger. "I'm also a Lord-level wizard, and I've finally decided to use that. You'll have an awfully hard time fighting me, unless you really want to contact Falco Parkinson and ask him to try, or find Voldemort and wake him up." Priscilla flinched at the mention of the Dark Lord's name. Harry just barely kept from rolling his eyes. That might set the Aurors off. "Or invite another Lord or Lady into Britain, I suppose, but if one of them was willing to work as an assassin, others would become jumpy."

"You can't do this," Priscilla breathed. "This is why I didn't join your rebellion. You value life too little."

Harry started to answer, but just then it happened.

One of the Aurors had edged around to the side. Harry had kept an eye on him, but hadn't stopped talking to Priscilla. For one thing, that would have brought about open conflict if nothing else did. For another, the man had kept his wand in his robes, though one hand tucked down and close to it.

Now, he flung a vial of some kind of potion. Harry didn't know who the target was. Perhaps it was meant to break apart on the rocks and splash all of them with the acid or poison inside.

What it did was smash against the karkadann's leg as she pawed at the ground restlessly. Her fur promptly began to smoke, and an awful sizzling sound spread across the air. The karkadann screamed like a mountain falling, and then she brought down her head.

Harry had underestimated how fast she could maneuver with trees all around her—or perhaps he had only thought of charging, and not wielding her other weapons. The black corkscrew horn, four feet long, impaled the Auror, and Harry heard the smash and wrench and twist of bone as it pierced his spine. The karkadann reared, shaking the body so violently that Harry heard more bones snap, and bits of flesh tore loose and spotted the robes and cheeks of those who watched. Then she screamed again, and, half-turning, the corpse still caught on her horn, lashed out with one hind foot. Another two Aurors went flying. One came up limping; the other lay still, with what looked to Harry like a broken neck.

Then the Aurors began shouting and lifted their wands, and Harry knew the chaos that would explode in a moment. This was the first battle of the war, first blood shed. He had a moment to prevent heavier losses than there might otherwise be, and he took it.

His magic surged out of him and to the sides, spreading the heat shimmer further and faster. The Aurors it hit simply stopped moving, like flies trapped in amber. That included Priscilla, who was caught in an awkward position with her neck half-twisted around. Harry kept pushing, and lifted them all into a hovering position, holding them above the trees.

Beside him, the karkadann shifted as if to move forward. Harry reached out his hand and put it on her leg. She snorted, and bowed her head. Blood had soaked the white fur of her face and dribbled around her gleaming black eyes in a grotesque mask. Harry held her gaze.

"No more," he told her.

She didn't have to obey, but she chose to. Indeed, a moment later, her eyes lifted to the Auror on her horn, and she snorted in contentment. Harry remembered legends that said karkadanns would carry the bodies of young elephants on their horns until the weight killed them, and repressed a shudder.

He turned to face the Aurors.

"The terms are the same as they have always been," he said shortly. "The Ministry has to show that it can treat werewolves with the same rights as humans. It has to do the same with all magical creatures, in fact. It has to show that it cares more about the people it's meant to serve than advancing its own agenda of pettiness and fear. I'm not going to listen to any arguments that call on me to keep the peace when its own Aurors aren't even capable of doing that in an ordinary arrest."

He flicked his hand, and the amber-air shifted, moving the Aurors out of the pine forest and towards the edge of the valley. When it had dropped them on the grass, Harry took a deep breath and reached out to Woodhouse.

Woodhouse was amused. The small tree with no leaves wished to expand the trees. It wished to hold the edge of the valley as safe as the center of the valley. Because every part of Woodhouse was the same as every other part, that was an easy request to grant. A touch, a surge, and every blade of grass and every stone and every speck of dirt in that area was set to watch. Then the surge ran all around the hills, all around the place that recognized itself as Woodhouse, and they all came aware. The sky above it, which was its sky, would know when intruders tried to fly through it. There were ways that the small rushing things could try to appear inside it without going through the ground or the air, but Woodhouse watched them, too. It made the tunnels carved through nothingness solid, and the whirl of false air carried in objects impossible. All of this was very easy. Anything could have done as much. One part of it asked, and another part granted. And if the small rushing things that tried to hurt it did not come back, then so much the better. The valley could get on with its dreaming.

Harry rushed, gasping, out of the trance, and found Camellia beside him, along with Draco. Draco clasped his shoulder, and stared into his face, and never said a word. Camellia was more vocal.

"Did you raise the wards?" she demanded.

"Better than wards," said Harry. His voice sounded strange, too deep. He shook his head and tried to adjust to having just a body, not stones and roots and soil. "Woodhouse is watching for us now. It would have allowed most people to enter it before. Now it will alert me when someone tries. We can let them Apparate in, or Portkey, but we don't have to."

"Wards, Wild," said Camellia. "Just in case."

Harry agreed. If nothing else, the wards would make the Aurors, or whoever arrived next, think of them as important, and they would waste time attacking them instead of trying to counter the place magic. He set to work weaving different kinds of shields around each other. He couldn't use some kinds, because of Woodhouse's magic interfering with them, but now that he was part of the valley, he knew instinctively which kinds would be hurtful and didn't try to use them.

When the wards were set in place, and tightened and tautened from hill to hill like ropes, Harry bent over the karkadann's leg. She snorted, as though to reassure him there was nothing to worry about, and tossed her horn, playing with the Auror's body some more. Harry examined the sides of the wound carefully. The potion had created a large pit and cauterized it in the same moment. He used Integro on it, but that only made the karkadann stamp. Harry listened carefully to her sounds, and looked into her eyes, for any sign of pain, and saw none. Of course, karkadanns were born for killing. It was entirely possible that she had magic which made the pain lessen, and was already healing the wound.

Only then did he turn to look at the bodies, and use his magic to pull the broken corpse from the karkadann's horn. She lunged after it for a moment, then lost interest and bowed her head to push playfully at his shoulder instead.

He had sent the wounded Auror out with the others. That left the impaled one and the one with the broken neck, who was definitely dead when Harry walked closer to him. He grimaced and shut his staring eyes, wishing his face wasn't on the wrong side of his body.

He felt guilt as a hollow behind the determination. He didn't have time to stop and give in to it. One of the dead Aurors had tossed a potion at the karkadann and started this. The other had got in the way. Yes, he wished it could have ended with no killing, but he had known it was not likely to. He could entertain no fantasies of walking out and offering himself up, because these attackers wanted the other people with him even more than they wanted him.

You knew what was happening when you began this.

He weighted both guilt and anger, and threw them into the Occlumency pools. Then he pushed the broken bodies out beyond the forest, for Priscilla and her people to claim, and turned to face the others. There were many more waiting behind the karkadann now: Hawthorn, who looked sorry to have missed the battle; Narcissa, with her wand in her hand and a cautious expression on her face; Evergreen, snarling; Remus, who looked away when Harry caught his eye; Adalrico Bulstrode, his face set and grim; Millicent, who nodded in response to a question Harry didn't know he'd asked.

Harry took a deep breath, and made himself into the leader that was needed.

"We've got a war coming," he said. "Best we plan how to meet it."