Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!

Chapter Thirty-One: The Ritual of Cincinnatus

Rufus met Aurelius Flint on the fourth floor, at the entrance to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Flint had two other people with him, muffled in cloaks. Rufus eyed them sharply before he relaxed. The cloaks were dark green, not gray, and really, while he still thought Flint might betray him, he wouldn't do it via the Unspeakables. Flint seemed to have as much reason to be tense around and frightened of them as Rufus did.

"Only two?" Rufus asked, in the low voice, less piercing than a whisper, they'd taught him to use on Auror raids. He looked Flint in the eye, and saw him make a shallow movement, more bob of his head than nod.

"Fewer willing than I thought," he said.

Rufus could understand that. There were some people who, driven against the wall, would gather their courage and be willing to stand up and fight the Unspeakables, but there were many who were too afraid, or simply determined to retain a neutral position where the Unspeakables would have no reason to bother them. Rufus had been one of the latter himself at one point. When he'd become Head Auror and then Minister, he had to deal with the Unspeakables, but he still thought it better to remain outside their webs when possible.

So we are seven. Rufus let no one see his grimace. He could only hope that Griselda Marchbanks had managed to sweet-talk nine people into coming with her. Of course, he needed to hope for a lot of things, including the luck to reach Courtroom Ten safely.

"This way," he said, and made for the walls. He carried the stone plaque that would grant them access to the Ministry's inner staircases in his pocket; he had also hoped he wouldn't have to reveal its existence to any strangers. If Flint had gathered others, then perhaps—

Rufus cut off the thoughts with a shake of his head. Blaming his comrades was a bad move. He wouldn't get any more.

He touched the plaque to the wall, and the wall yawned. Rufus looked down into the darkness, and wondered if it was a metaphor for what they were walking into. The Unspeakables had plenty of magic he didn't understand. Would they step down into the staircase and never emerge? Or would only their bodies come back, talking and smiling, their minds locked into new thoughts or altered by Unspeakable artifacts? They would have to pass far too close to the Department of Mysteries for Rufus's liking.

You are thinking too much.

Rufus put his foot on the staircase leading down.


"And you think you are ready?"

"I think I am."

Joseph said nothing, but Snape had learned to read his silences. The Seer was not convinced. It had only been a few days ago, he might as well have said, that Snape was struggling to rebuild his mental walls after one of the dreams. Did he want to go to Harry as a guardian, or the burden he had turned out to be when he couldn't control his own temper in a house with werewolves? And in Woodhouse there would be many more werewolves, including the one who had threatened to infect him and reached out and placed her hand on his arm…

Snape shrugged the memory away, and slid the last vial into the traveling case. Those were thickly padded with bicorn fur to insure that the glass stayed intact through the vagaries of Apparition. They would have to be. Joseph had never seen Woodhouse, so Snape would have to Apparate them both, along with all the Potions supplies he intended to bring with him.

"What will you do if you aren't ready?" Joseph asked the question of the walls, the door, the hearth, everything but Snape.

"Make myself ready."

"You cannot know—"

Snape turned around and fixed him with a sharp eye. "Yes, I can," he said, with an intensity, if not a volume, that seemed to convince Joseph to shut up. "I was—weak before." He grimaced, but this was a man he had already told far more damning and humiliating weaknesses to, so he pushed himself to speak. "I preferred to remain within my own head and content myself with my bitterness, how no one would ever understand me, and that others were lauded as heroes while I, who had done far more, received stares and sneers and sobs." He held up his left arm, and shook the sleeve back to force Joseph to confront the Dark Mark. He had noticed the Seer still found it hard to look at. Sure enough, he glanced away, and Snape calmed as he regained a measure of control over the situation.

That had been the problem all along, he thought. Control. He had allowed others to define him. He had snapped at the werewolf's taunting as if he were once more a schoolboy. He had flung objects at Harry's head as if he were younger than that—a child of four or five unable to control the simplest and most laughable impulses. He had endured the dreams with the ultimate weakness. A stronger choice would have been to accept the Seers' help with them from the beginning, or else to take Dreamless Sleep and avoid them.

The moment he had grasped the fact that he had no choice and began pulling himself out of the pit with both hands, his life had improved. He still required Joseph's help, but even his need for that was lessening day by day. And with a small number of simple techniques rooted in the more disgusting memories, he had more and more control of their interaction.

He had always known that about himself. It was why he had such an affinity for Potions, why he had hated Walpurgis Night, why he had wished there was some way to control what happened to Harry long after it became clear there wasn't. He needed to feel as though there was something he controlled. The focus had needed to change from his wallowing in self-pity to his life, and that had actually worked when he made the change.

"And now that is done," Snape continued. "Now I have remembered once again that many of my enemies and those who hurt me are dead or in confinement—" reminding himself of James Potter rotting in Tullianum had helped hurry his recovery enormously "—and that those who remain will never grant me the respect I wish as long as I hide in the past. I know that while I remain distant from Harry, others could influence him in ways I would not approve of. No one will grant me the gifts I wish to receive. I must take them."

"I fail to see," Joseph said, in the water-voice, "how that life is different than the one you were living before you came to the Sanctuary."

Snape met his eyes and felt able to really sneer at him for the first time. The Seer could glimpse souls, find words that irritated and pinched and forced Snape to think of things he would rather not, and persist through flares of temper that would have made even Dumbledore back off. But he did not know everything, and with this remark, he proved how little.

"Because I intend to keep having the dreams," said Snape. "I intend to keep talking to you. Is that not why you came from the Sanctuary? To keep me talking?"

Joseph frowned. "Yes, but I will not allow you to simply put everything back together the way it was. You can't. The walls are shattered, and there would only be death, if not for you, then someone else—"

"I understand this," Snape interrupted. "But I need no longer make healing my sole passion. I have advanced far enough in it that I can do other things at the same time. That is what Harry once said he would do, and what I have finally gathered enough courage to join him in. It is foolish to think the healing could be completed all at once, when you yourself said it would take years."

"Years that you need," said Joseph.

"Years that I do not have," Snape snarled, "when my son is at war—" he had also gathered the courage to call Harry by that name in Joseph's hearing, now "—and I could aid him in ways that no other can or will. I will continue the healing. I will speak with you. I will have the dreams. But I will not become a whimpering patient and then a new man. I will have more of the past in me than you approve of." He took a step forward, and Joseph backed away, the first time he had done so. Snape exulted inside, but kept it off his face. "Harry did the same thing, though it took me some time to realize that. He did not become the Slytherin hero I wanted when I first started training him. He changed. His present is always marked by his past. Like father, like son, I would say."

And like past, like present. The dream two nights ago had reminded him that he had been a good actor, that when he first came to Dumbledore he had carried the weight of two Lords' gazes on his shoulders and made them both think he was their man. That his convictions had shifted later was of no matter.

He should have remembered that he could fool most everyone he chose, when he wanted to make the effort.

He would act as if he were more healed than he really was. This time, he would allow no taunting werewolf to pierce his shields, any more than he had allowed Lucius Malfoy's taunting to do the same when they were both Death Eaters. And in time, the act would become reality, the lie truth.

Joseph, he saw, had nothing to say in response to his declaration. Snape raised an eyebrow and turned to make sure the final set of vials was securely packed.


That journey downstairs in the darkness was one of the most surreal Rufus ever experienced.

He expected, at every step, to be stopped. Or perhaps the walls, barely seen in the light of the Lumos carried on Flint's wand, would blur and time would stretch around him, and he would wake in his office with new, Unspeakable-planted, thoughts in his head, and think this had all been a bad dream. He accomplished each step, and still he knew the next one would be the end of this. Even wondering why the Unspeakables had let them get this far if they knew what he intended did not ease Rufus's worries. They would be waiting at the end. They would be waiting on the next turn of the staircase. They would be waiting in Courtroom Ten when he opened the door, if by some miracle they got that far.

And then they reached the bottom, and opened the door onto the tenth level of the Ministry, into the corridor where Draco Malfoy had stunned him. Rufus blinked for a long moment. There were no Unspeakables in sight.

There would be, at any moment.

He led his people past the hidden door of Tullianum, and through another door into a different corridor, the one that most visitors were likely to see, if they were summoned to stand before the Wizengamot. He frowned as they walked up it, because something was different. Some pressure and presence of magic he usually felt was gone, or something new had been added. He could think of only two candidates. Neither was good news. Either the Stone had noticed them and was extending its influence into the tunnel, or the Unspeakables had removed the wards that usually guarded the place and were no more irritating to a trained Auror than music in the background. Yet there was no sign of the Unspeakables.

Flint gave a loud sniff beside him. Rufus glanced at him, unable to decide if that had been a snort of contempt or not, and then realized it was an actual sniff. Flint's nose was wrinkled, his eyes studying the corridor ahead as if he would force the stones to give up their secrets.

"What is it?" Rufus asked.

Flint shook his head, but his eyes didn't stop scanning. "Familiar smell," he said shortly. "Smelled something like it before, on some of the artifacts we handled. Don't know what it is, though."

Rufus had to accept that. They reached the door of Courtroom Ten, the one that led to the gallery, and stepped through it.

The room was empty, and so quiet that the echoes of their footsteps sounded as if there were half a hundred of them. Rufus shut the door behind him, still tense. Flint's information had indicated that Courtroom Ten was specifically warded against the magic of the Stone—something one of the Ministers had done years ago, so that the Wizengamot's decisions would be truly objective, without influence from the Department of Mysteries. Rufus could have laughed at the idea that the Wizengamot would manage objectivity at all, outside influence cut off or not, but he had been too grateful at the news that a place might exist where they could talk unheard by the Unspeakables.

And too pessimistic, at the same time, that they would ever manage to use it. He looked one more time for the Department of Mysteries people he was sure must be here. Nothing and no one greeted his eyes. The room remained empty, and since they had stopped walking, the loudest sounds were Flint's sniffs.

Rufus looked out into the vast sunken courtroom with the single chained chair where Minister Fudge and Severus Snape and Harry and Harry's parents had all sat in their time, and shook his head. He wondered if he would ever stand trial there. If Amelia Bones or someone else took the Minister's office, he probably would.

But things had gone too far. He had to take this risk, even if it killed him or threw him out of office—and he suspected it would.

He turned to his people. "Griselda Marchbanks is coming, with enough other people to make a difference, I hope," he said, and drew his wand, his gaze going to Percy and the two Aurors who had followed him down. "Flint, I'll ask for an oath from you later, and your companions, if you are sure they can be trusted to give one."

"They can," said Flint. One of the green-cloaked wizards moved his head in a nod. And Rufus had to accept that, because they needed the numbers.

He turned to Percy, whose mouth was open. "I need you to swear an Unbreakable Vow, Percy," he told him quietly, catching his attention less with the words than the use of his first name. "What we're going to do here cannot leave this room, and I'll need you to tell a number of extremely dangerous lies to safeguard it. Can you do that?"

Percy's eyes were wide, though less wide, Rufus noticed, than the ones of the second Auror who had followed him downstairs. He shook his head, but not in denial. "I don't understand, Minister. What is this?"

"Invocation of a tradition that most wouldn't expect me to invoke," said Rufus, with a small smile he knew was nasty, "because I don't have enough people. But what I need is bodies. There are going to be seventeen of us here, if all goes well—a third of the number of the Wizengamot, and one of them the Minister. That's what we need. Of course, we also need all our stories to agree."

Percy swallowed, the click in his throat bouncing off the walls. "Unbreakable Vows kill you if you don't fulfill them," he whispered.

"They do." Rufus refused to look away from his face.

Percy stared into his eyes as if he'd never seen him before. Rufus looked back. He was fairly sure Percy's loyalty was to him, not his family and not the Ministry and not the Auror program, but if he was wrong, this would be the time he found out.

"What happens if I refuse?" Percy breathed.

"Then you'll be Obliviated," said Rufus. He made sure Percy heard the regret in his voice, and also the adamant. "We can't take the chance that you'll be questioned under Veritaserum and give away our secrets."

Sweat broke out on Percy's forehead. Rufus didn't move, didn't flinch, didn't blink. He could have cast a modified version of Imperio on Percy and made him follow through, but he wouldn't. There were certain standards one did not break, no matter how far one was willing to descend.

The thought came to him that perhaps an Unbreakable Vow wasn't that different from the Imperius Curse, when all was said and done. Rufus put it aside. It was almost certainly true, but truer was the fact that he couldn't afford to deal with it right now.

Percy passed the test. He exhaled through his nose and nodded, his face pale as salt next to all that bright red Weasley hair. "All right, sir." He knelt.

Rufus knelt with him, and reached out to clasp his hand. He looked up at Flint. "Will you be our Bonder?"

"Certainly, and welcome." Flint stepped forward and aimed his own wand at their joined hands. Rufus took Percy's eyes in a gaze that was not going to allow either one of them to blink.

"Do you swear to hold secret the truth of all you see here?" Rufus asked.

Percy swallowed again, but said, "I do." Flint nodded, and a narrow stream of fire shot out of his wand and encircled their hands. Rufus felt it slide and tickle along his skin, and for a moment he was forcefully carried back to a night sixteen years ago when he'd made an Unbreakable Vow of his own, one he would probably refuse now if he could.

He shook his head. The First War is behind us. "Do you swear to tell the lies we shall ask you to tell, up to and including to members of your own family or others you trust with your life?"

"I do." Percy's voice was a little stronger this time. The fire moved again, and now their wrists looked as if they were bound in a knot. Rufus moved his gaze to those bonds as he asked the third and final question.

"Do you swear to remain loyal to all those you meet here, no matter who they are or what they ask of you?"

Percy jolted. Of course, he didn't know most of those people or who they were. He held Rufus's eyes for a long moment, asking without words if he could actually trust strangers, and then he bowed his head. He had come this far, his slumped shoulders said. He might as well go farther.

"I do," he answered softly.

The bands of fire coiled tight and sank into their skin. Rufus hissed out a breath and then stood. He held Percy's hand for a moment longer than necessary, squeezing, he hoped, hard enough to brand the impression into skin and bone. It was the only thing he could do, since he couldn't apologize and he couldn't say that the Vow would be broken someday, if Percy was patient and kept his silence. That wasn't true. It would always need to hold, or Rufus would have chosen some lesser form of commitment.

They weren't spinning history here, he thought, as he turned to face the two Aurors who had accompanied him down. They were spinning lies, but it was the lies that would become the history, not the truth. The truth would go behind guarded tongues to the grave.

The first of the two Aurors, the woman called Hope, stared at him for a long moment. Then she knelt and held out her hand for his. Rufus repeated the oath with her, seeing her eyes watching him with less trust than Percy's but something deeper behind them. She understood what was happening here, he thought, probably better than Percy did.

Then came the second Auror, a young man barely out of training, called Frederick. He stammered and looked away and mumbled and flushed, but he knelt in the end. Rufus felt a sense of peace settle on him as the last words of that Vow were said. Now he could take his own, and Flint and the ones with him could take theirs.

"The Vows are a good idea," said Griselda Marchbanks's voice abruptly from behind them. "But my allies will back it up with their own magic, since the Unspeakables might have a way around the Vows for all we know."

Rufus turned. Griselda was there, and she had brought the required number of people with her, so they could truthfully say there were seventeen of them at this little meeting.

Rufus had thought they would be humans, though, not goblins.


Hawthorn leaned on the door, gently, until it opened. Then she peered in through it. None of the others had been willing to disturb Harry, but none of his other close allies, the ones he might accept an interruption from, could move as silently as she could.

She saw him dropping the final pinches of a shredded plant into the potion that simmered in the vial in front of him. Then he closed his eyes and bowed his head. Hawthorn felt the same ripple she'd encountered before, when Harry yielded his magic to help Peregrine's wolves, move into the liquid. It gave a shiver, and then it turned the color of silver. Hawthorn flinched in spite of herself.

Harry turned and looked up at her; perhaps her flinch had made her arm brush against the door. "Hawthorn," he said. "You can come in." He gave the silver liquid a final, thoughtful glance, then sat down on the chair waiting beyond the table where he'd brewed the potion. Those were the only pieces of furniture in the room. "Was there something wrong?"

Hawthorn shook her head, and, taking out her wand, Transfigured a piece of dust on the floor into a chair she would have to remember to Vanish later. Woodhouse's rooms were so narrow that extra furniture simply crowded them. "No, Harry. We just—" And then she paused again. One reason she had been the one to volunteer was that she might be able to find words where the others couldn't. And now that she was here, she found Tonks was right. What she was about to say sounded stupid.

"Are you all right, Mrs. Parkinson?"

She didn't want to provoke that from him, though, that retreat into formality. And perhaps the best thing she could do was engage him with informality. Treat Harry like a Lord, and he responded like a servant. Treat him like a person, and he often didn't know how to hide.

"I'm not, Harry," she said. "I was worried this afternoon. We all were."

Harry frowned. "I know that George is a bit of a loud-mouth, ma'am, but I don't think all the new werewolves share his views. Most of them know that they can't just go home as long as the Ministry is hunting them. A few of them were berating him the moment he finished yelling. He hates being a werewolf, yes, but some of them have learned to accept it, or think they can. And they know that they don't really have a choice but to fit into the valley right now. I don't think we have to worry about the werewolves from the Department turning on us in battle. If the Ministry were offering shelter and safety to everyone turned by Loki's bite, then yes."

"That wasn't the reason we were worried," said Hawthorn. "He accused you of not killing Loki when he had the chance."

Harry's frown grew more pronounced. "I know he did, ma'am. I was there."

"And you started to grow angry, as anyone would at an unjustified accusation," Hawthorn said. "Then you closed your eyes, and your magic stopped rising and your anger vanished as if it had never existed."

"Of course it did," said Harry. "I put it away."

That was the answer she had been afraid of. Severus Snape had owled her when Harry's parents were first arrested, with copies of the memories of Harry's training he had retrieved from Dumbledore. Hawthorn knew about the box or the cage that had contained a great deal of Harry's emotions at one point, and she knew that he could not be allowed to build another. At best, it would be a temptation for him to go on putting emotions into it even when there was no reason to do so. At worst, it would become a permanent weakness for him, and at some point in the future would open and do more mental damage.

She reached out and clasped his hand. "Where did you put it?" she asked.

Harry tried to pull back from her, but only managed to retreat to the end of his arm. Hawthorn saw his eyes change again, but then the emotion was gone and Harry was settling back into the chair, as if he couldn't imagine why he'd wanted to move away from her in the first place. That frightened Hawthorn more than all the rest, and made her sure was doing the right thing.

"In the Occlumency pools," he said. "The way Professor Snape taught me to."

Hawthorn breathed in and out, holding his eyes. Harry just looked at her with polite puzzlement.

"Harry," said Hawthorn, "we're concerned that you're shedding your anger too quickly. If you keep too much of it suppressed, it could break open—in the midst of battle, perhaps, but there's no telling when it would happen. And then it could hurt those who are dear to you as well as your enemies."

"That won't happen," said Harry, with the same confidence he had exuded after he'd thrown his magic in the Ministry's face.

"Why not?" Hawthorn asked.

"Because that's why I'm controlling it," said Harry. "So that I won't yell the wrong words at the wrong moment, or upset someone else's healing with rage when they need calm."

Hawthorn hesitated, wondering if she should tell him the rest, but decided it had to happen. Otherwise, he would be caught by surprise. He had other people watching, but they did not have a werewolf's nose, and his pack was focused on Harry to the extent of ignoring other packs.

"I think Peregrine and her wolves need anger," she said. "So do some other packs, like the one I helped escape, who were attacked out of the blue and are frightened and enraged. They need to know that you take this threat seriously. They arrive here, and you're so calm, Harry, so coldly determined. They would like to see a bit more fire, to reassure them that you won't make a compromise at the expense of their lives."

Again a shadow moved across Harry's face, and again it vanished between one blink and the next. "I'm doing what I can," he said, and nodded to the silver potion on the table. "That's the first stage of a cure for lycanthropy, I think."

Hawthorn stared. "What." She felt so much sheer astonishment that she could not ask it as a question.

"I think so," Harry went on earnestly, staring over his shoulder at the potion. "The problem is, the potion has to be made by the person whom the curse clings to. That means that you'd have to brew the potion to remove your own wolf, for example. A potion I brewed would do you no good."

"I could do that," Hawthorn whispered. "If—if this is true, Harry, why hasn't it been discovered before?"

Harry looked at her with a sad smile. "Because it's also a poison that has a sixty percent chance of killing lycanthropes," he said. "One of the major ingredients is silver, and the potion turns silver, too. That's fatal to werewolves, even though it isn't to most other kinds of curses." He shivered. "And it requires the willing sacrifice of magic. No matter what happens, that magic is gone from you forever."

"I could do that." Hawthorn found she couldn't take her eyes from the potion. "I made part of my magic into a ring for your partner. I can remove it, willingly sacrifice it."

"That won't work," Harry said quietly. "That kind of sacrifice slides the magic into a solid object, or makes it into a solid object, like the stone on Draco's ring. The potion is a liquid." He hesitated, then continued, "Also, the reason that most willing sacrifices work is that the witch or wizard yields his magic to gain something he or she wants more. You knew that Draco would be indebted to you, for example."

Hawthorn nodded.

"Only part of this sacrificed magic is supposed to go into the potion," Harry confessed. "A tiny part. The rest is simply wasted, spent on the air. Not many witches or wizards can muster the will to sacrifice their magic and leave themselves permanently weaker with so small a potential reward. And without will, of course, a willing sacrifice doesn't exist."

Hawthorn shifted uneasily, trying to keep from looking at the potion. It didn't work. The silver gleam only seemed to make it more tempting, not less, even though it had caused her to flinch when she first saw it. "I think I could stand the loss," she said.

Harry shrugged. "There may even have been some wizards who fit all that criteria and managed it," he said. "But the potion recipe is rare, the ability to muster the will and pass the magic into the potion is rarer—and, of course, it doesn't work at all for those werewolves born Muggle—and then the fact that the poison could kill most of its victims makes people reluctant to try it." His mouth quirked with a smile that Hawthorn might have called bitter, but she couldn't read the shadows underneath it in her fascination with the potion. "At least, they tend to live under the werewolf curse."

"Why did you make this, if you knew it wouldn't work and you aren't a werewolf?" Hawthorn asked softly.

"To see if it would work." Harry rubbed his forehead. "I can regain the magic I put into the potion, since I'm an absorbere. And that same thing allows me to pass the power into a liquid; it's just a matter of opening my gift and pouring the magic elsewhere, not using a spell. I was hoping to learn a sure way for someone else to put his magic into the potion, if he wanted to do it. But I didn't learn anything useful. I'll experiment with the recipe, next time. Some substitutions won't make it explode, and might produce differences in the final result."

Hawthorn nodded in distraction. The potion was useless, she reminded herself. And even if she managed this on her own, there was no guarantee that it would work instead of kill her.

But she could not stop thinking about what would happen if she did manage to brew the potion and drink it. And if it was not poison, then when she woke as a pureblood witch again, what would her life be like?

She could hardly imagine it, and she didn't know if that was because she really had forgotten what it was to be human, or because so many evil things had happened to her that she could not imagine good fortune.

Harry's touch on her arm brought her back. "I promise, Mrs. Parkinson," he said gently, "if something happens with this, if I can brew a cure, then I'll let you know immediately. But I should start the second batch now. Some of my ingredients won't keep fresh for very long."

Hawthorn nodded, and let herself be herded out the door. She wanted Harry to have absolute calm for his experiments. Who knew what he might discover?

She did pause on the way up the corridor, certain she had forgotten something she'd meant to say to Harry, but then the wondrous possibilities of that potion preoccupied her mind again, and she shook her head and forgot it.


"Griselda." Rufus couldn't take his eyes from the goblins, particularly one large female who stood next to the Wizengamot Elder and appeared to have chains actually braided into her flesh. "I—I didn't know that you were bringing these friends. Are they here as witnesses?"

"They're here to make up the seventeen we need to complete the ritual," said Griselda bluntly. "This isn't just a human cause any more, Rufus. I knew that you might be nervous if I brought werewolves, and I don't think I could find any right now anyway, with how thoroughly they've gone to ground." She was a tiny old woman, but when she tilted her head up and her eyes stared at him through a mass of wrinkles, Rufus was the one who felt small. "But goblins are magical creatures. Free magical creatures, who are willing to help me for the same reasons I've helped them in the past, and to have a voice in the wizarding world's future course."

"Free," said Rufus, since that was the word that had leaped out at him most, if only because of Griselda's emphasis.

"Yes," said the female goblin. "We are slaves no longer, Minister. We have no reason to keep serving you, except that we desired to keep our freedom locked in stone until the best moment for releasing it." She smiled, showing a mouth full of unfortunately pointed teeth, no less bright than the chains woven around and into her skin. "Our web has been gone for more than a year. Now is the time for our moving."

Rufus breathed in and out, and tried to think. Granted, he knew very little about webs, and less about the ancient wizards and witches who had woven them. Guilt and lies and forgotten history had covered up so much that, when he'd tried to learn what he could about them, he mostly found historians engaged in blaming other factions for the necessity of webs in the first place. "Does this mean," he asked at last, "that you would no longer serve in Gringotts?"

"We have not served since our web was broken," the female goblin said. "I am the hanarz, and I lead my people again. Our magic has returned, since it is no longer bound. And we have stayed in the bank. But if you do not grant us a part in this, now, we will withdraw."

Rufus tried to imagine their economy collapsing, and could not .The devastation that it would do to not only the British wizarding world, but those other communities who had financial ties to Britain, was intense. And the goblins were the only ones who knew how to open most of the vaults, the only ones who knew the ways past the traps, the only ones who knew to the Knut how much money each vault contained.

They could have held us hostage at any time, he thought. They waited this long to show us they were serious, and to put themselves in a position where we wouldn't have the chance to refuse, I suppose.

He had no choice, literally, and not only because they needed seventeen people for this. Traditionally, the choice to place the Ministry's control entirely in the hands of the Minister had to be made by seventeen people, a third of the Wizengamot, in the room where the Wizengamot most often met. That pulled an old ritual into play and set wheels turning that would, Rufus hoped, keep him safe from the Unspeakables long enough for deeper changes to take place.

He had avoided doing this so far because he had seen no way to persuade sixteen members of the Wizengamot to agree to it, and he had still hoped to avoid what was essentially short-term dictatorship. Then he had studied the wording of the old documents again and discovered that they said seventeen people, a third of the number of the Wizengamot, not actually "a third of the Wizengamot." He needed seventeen bodies, and he needed a way to insure that those other people would not tell the truth about what had happened, and he needed to locate sixteen Wizengamot members—well, fifteen now, since Griselda had joined him after all—to Obliviate and convince them they had voted this way. Actually kidnapping the Wizengamot members and bringing them to Courtroom Ten would have been too risky, too likely to attract the Unspeakables' attention, and would have taken too long to arrange—and there was no reason for them to agree, once they were here.

The goblins would agree, if he agreed to certain other things. Rufus needed them as much as they needed him, he suspected. They must not want open war, or they would have declared it already.

He watched the hanarz, and Griselda Marchbanks standing implacable beside her, and knew they must have reasoned this all out already. They were only waiting for him to catch up.

He caught up. "Your people will swear the Unbreakable Vow?" he asked the hanarz, barely restraining himself from asking Marchbanks if the goblins would. He had to treat them as equals, and speaking to a human about them in front of their faces was not the way to do so.

"We will," said the hanarz.

Rufus nodded, and then turned to the wizards with Flint. "I'm going to ask you to remove your hoods now," he said. "I want to know who I'm swearing to before we decide this."

They did so, and Rufus received his second shock of the night. It didn't come from the witch standing on Flint's right, a hard-faced woman whom Rufus didn't know, but suspected worked in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.

It came from the wizard on Flint's left. Tall, pale, cool and blank-faced as he met the Minister's gaze—Lucius Malfoy.


Harry frowned and studied the bubbling potion once more. He should have made it do more than bubble when he'd added the pinch of comfrey. He wondered if he had read the recipe wrong, and turned his back to fetch the book.

Luckily, therefore, his eyes were not aimed at the potion when it exploded. Harry felt the flood as a rush of sticky coolness across his back, which soaked his shirt and his robe and felt almost soothing for a moment before it began to burn.

Harry shoved the pain into an Occlumency pool and dropped to the ground to roll as he stripped the clothes off with smooth movements. A good portion of the potion came off, but some still remained. Harry heard himself make a noise of annoyance, but it all felt distant, as if it were happening to someone else. He just rolled over and over, and shook his head when he felt his scalp beginning to burn, before he concluded that he would need water.

He conjured water above himself, and let it flood down with an enormous splash. That quieted the burning on his scalp and across most of his back and shoulders. Some places, though, still continued to hurt as if the potion were acid eating into his skin. Harry stood and looked over his shoulder, to see that globs had dripped down and were clinging to his lower back, edging towards the base of his spine.

The door opened then—well, opened was a mild word; it was more like it flung itself open—and Snape strode in.

Harry stared at him, caught so far out of his zone of expectation that he had no idea what to say or do.

Snape took one look at the potion, sniffed, grimaced, and snatched up a handful of comfrey leaves waiting on the table Harry had set up on the far side of the room. "The source of the pain cures the pain," he lectured as he stepped forward and pressed the leaves against the drops of silvery liquid on Harry's back. Harry let out a loud sigh and closed his eyes; the acid-like burning dropped away as if potion and leaves had ceased to exist together. "When you're working with demiguise hair and powdered bicorn horn, at least. And you were, weren't you?"

Harry sighed again and peered up at Snape, trying to feel something other than sheer surprise. "What are you doing here, sir?"

"Rescuing you," said Snape tartly, and dropped what remained of the smoking pinch of comfrey leaves on the floor. "Guarding you." He caught Harry's chin and tilted his face up, staring directly into his eyes. Harry, confused, allowed that, and Snape's face bore a truly alarming scowl in the next instant. "What have you been doing to yourself with Occlumency?" he asked, giving Harry's shoulder a sharp shake with his other hand. "It is a good thing that I came when I did. I doubt anyone else here would have recognized it."

"I've been suppressing my anger, and letting compassion and sympathy and determination through, so that I can keep working and give people what they need from me." Harry rubbed at his eyes with his hand. Legilimency that keen always made them water. "Shouldn't you be back at school and recovering, sir?"

"Joseph agreed that I was well enough to come to Woodhouse." Snape picked up Harry's stained robe and shirt and flicked his wand at them. Most of the potion vanished. On consideration, though, Snape handed only the shirt to Harry. "The robe is ruined beyond repair," he explained shortly. "And you should know that suppression of emotions is dangerous, Harry."

Harry felt the anger rise, but he grabbed it automatically and smoothed it back under the surface of the Occlumency pool as he pulled the shirt on, reminding himself that while Snape might have been well enough to come, he would still be recovering. "Thank you, sir," he said stiffly.

"No one else has spoken to you about this?" Snape demanded.

"They tried," Harry muttered, wondering why he felt like a sulky child. This was Snape. He knew how to deal with Snape now. He extended understanding and compassion as much as he could, while keeping in mind that Snape might always want distance from him. It was not all that different from his relationships with most everyone else, except that he loved Snape more and Snape was more damaged. Snape had no right to put him in a child's role again, as if he really were still Harry's guardian, rather than one to be protected.

"And you distracted them, I would assume." Once again, Snape caught Harry's chin and looked into his eyes. "No more. I am here now, and I am not so easily distracted."

Harry felt discomfort squirm like a worm in his belly. He had trusted Snape to handle things like this, once upon a time, but that had changed, and why should it change back? Snape was not fully recovered. And if Harry let the Occlumency barriers fall apart, then he might start yelling at people who didn't deserve it.

Some of them would prefer that.

But some of them wouldn't, Harry pointed out, with the more reasonable side of himself, and pulled away again.

Snape didn't seem to be angry. Harry eyed him cautiously. Either the new Snape or the old one would have snapped at him—the new one for Harry upsetting him in the midst of his own pain, the old one for putting himself in danger by suppressing emotions and dropping comfrey in a volatile potion. This Snape only nodded and said, "It shall take some time, of course."

"You should be back at Hogwarts, sir," Harry tried again. I don't think he can play the role of guardian, even if I need one. And I can't let myself depend on him and be let down again, not when so many people are depending on me. I can't. "You should be taking up a challenge that's easier than this one, if you do think you're partly healed. Teaching a Potions class all the way through and actually talking to the students, for example."

He supposed from the flicker of Snape's eyelids that that stung. But it only won him another nod and said, "I did not expect to walk back into your life and be welcomed with open arms, Harry. I meant that. It shall take time."

"Listen," said Harry desperately. "Sir. Please. I can't—I don't trust you the way I used to. I trust you to heal at your own pace, and to know what's best for you most of the time. I trust Joseph to protect you. But I don't know what you'll do in a valley full of werewolves, and I don't know if I can trust you to—to take care of me the way you seem to want to." The words sounded embarrassing as they fell from his lips, and he could feel his cheeks heating up. Harry grabbed the embarrassment and smoothed it under the surface of the Occlumency pool, too, so he could face Snape with adult calmness. Stammering and flushing like a teenager would only convince Snape he was in need of care. "Please. If you stay here, you'll find a place, I know that, sir, but it won't be as my guardian."

"Yes, it will," said Snape.

Harry stared at him. Merlin, I want to trust him, but how can I?

"In the meanwhile," Snape added, without a change of expression, "you should wash. A swift soaking spell will not clean the rest of the potion off as a shower will."

Harry nodded. That, at least, made sense. He turned to leave the room and go to the loo, feeling Snape's eyes on his back the entire time.

He felt two emotions fighting in him, both too strong to be shoved into an Occlumency pool right away. One was a frantic concern. Snape shouldn't be among people who would upset him yet. His barriers were too fragile. Joseph might think he was healed, but he'd tended Snape in isolation. Who knew how he might act in company? Who knew what harm he might be inflicting on himself, standing here?

The other was a desperate yearning to trust Snape as Snape insisted he could, to have someone who didn't need constant consideration of his more delicate feelings and wouldn't care if he yelled, to be able to lean on someone else.

The clash hurt, but Harry had accepted that most of his emotions would. He would wait until these grew less passionate, so he could tuck them away. Then it wouldn't really matter how much he trusted Snape; he would still be able to react, and think, rationally.


"You," Rufus said.

Malfoy only smiled at him. The smile had no content, Rufus thought, cold and blank as a winter sky. "Me," he agreed. "And I will swear the Unbreakable Vow with you, Minister, and I will participate in this ritual. I said that I would. I made my choice."

"Why?" Rufus demanded. He realized he was aiming his wand at Malfoy, and that both the woman who had come with Flint and the goblins were shifting uneasily. He didn't care. This was Malfoy. The memory of battling him in the midst of a flesh-eating rain had never quite left Rufus, and he had long since suspected that Malfoy interfered more in the Ministry than he let on, that some of the people who should have been loyal to ideals of justice and law were instead loyal to Malfoy's coin. He could not believe the bastard would dirty his fingers with something this risky, rather than watching as the Ministry thrashed itself to death and then picking over the corpse.

Malfoy shrugged. The motion barely disturbed the pale white-blond hair that lay on his shoulders, and it barely disturbed his composure, either, it seemed. "Because things have not turned out as I hoped," he said. "Because certain promises were made and not kept. Because those I counted my allies have turned on me in ways I did not anticipate."

"I heard that you disowned your son," said Rufus. "Did you really believe that that would make Harry happy?"

A slight widening of those pale gray eyes was all that remark earned him, that and the words, "Do not speak of what you do not understand, Scrimgeour. I am ready." He knelt and held out his hand, poised as if he would crush the one laid in it. "Or do you really intend to swear Vows only with those who already pant at your heels like dogs?"

Rufus restrained himself from a snarl with difficulty. He knelt and clasped Malfoy's hand. It made no attempt to put pressure on his. It was barely a weight. Holding Malfoy's gaze, he said, "Griselda. Will you be our Bonder?"

She stepped forward, and Rufus demanded the same three terms of Malfoy that he had demanded of Percy and his Aurors. Malfoy swore them without complaint, without flinching. Rufus didn't think he blinked, either, but perhaps he simply timed his blinks to Rufus's own, and thus hid them.

When that was done, Rufus had to take his own Vow; honor would allow him to do no less. Malfoy asked for the vows without a hint of mockery, which made it worse. Rufus pulled away as soon as the ritual was done and turned to take Griselda's hand, feeling as if he had held a corpse's fingers.

They all swore to the oath alike, human and goblin, and so put themselves on an irrevocable path. It was far more dangerous than a vow to simply be loyal, Rufus thought, as he swept them over again with his gaze. There were things in existence that could make them tell the truth, Veritaserum foremost among them. If the Unspeakables captured one of their little group and forced Veritaserum down his throat, that was the end, because the potion would force them to tell the truth, and the Vow would kill them before they could.

Committed. Changed. Altered. The faces that stared back at him were uniformly anxious—except for Malfoy, who probably wouldn't show much more emotion than a vampire even now, and the goblins, whom Rufus had no practice in reading.

Rufus took a deep breath, and held his wand high. The Minister had to begin this ritual. "I arrive at this moment," he intoned in Latin. "I come to the turning of the world and foresee darkness ahead for wizard and witch, and death for those laws we have kept sacred. I am the Minister of Magic for Britain, and I ask that you hand control of the Ministry over to me, for I am the one who knows the path through the darkness."

He saw a silver mist emerge from the tip of his wand, and form into a shape. He waited, mildly curious, even through his desperation, to know what the shape would be. The ritual documents had said only that it would be an animal symbolic of the situation at hand.

He suffered a moment of shock as it became a wolf, and then shook his head as the wolf loped over to sit down at his side. Of course. I should have known. What else could it be, given what's caused this unrest?

Griselda spoke the next part of the ritual; they had decided that was safest, since she was the only actual member of the Wizengamot in the room. "We hear and heed you," she said, also in Latin. "The Minister knows the path through the darkness. The Minister can bring peace to us, but only if we give him the power to do so." She faced the people, both human and goblin, who had drifted into a loose circle around her. "We are seventeen. We stand in the room where the Wizengamot has met most often for the two years. Do we grant power to the Minister?"

"Yes," said the hanarz, in English.

The other goblins replied one after another, their voices harsher and more croaking than anything human. Rufus could feel the magic in the room growing stronger, and now he could smell what he thought Aurelius Flint had smelled, the unusual, stony tang of goblin magic. Flint must have encountered it on goblin weapons and other objects that his Department dealt with. Rufus found it hard to breathe as it surrounded him, imprisoning him in a block of invisible marble. The silver wolf sat motionless at his side.

"Yes," Griselda echoed, when that finished, and turned to the wizards.

"Yes," said Flint.

"Yes," said the woman who had come with him.

Malfoy held Rufus's eyes, long enough to make Rufus wonder if he would choke to death before the bastard made his choice, and then inclined his head and murmured, "Yes."

Percy, Hope, and Frederick gave their answers almost at the same moment, as if they were desperate for this to be done with. Rufus understood. Now he felt as if his body had turned to stone, and he could barely lift his wand and speak the next part of the ritual, the part that sealed the end of it and subjected his mind to examination by the magic—and was the reason, apart from the distrust and independence of the Wizengamot members, that so few Ministers had ever invoked this particular form of control. Rufus had to be sincere in his desires. If he were doing this for his own personal power, and nothing else, the magic would kill everyone in the chamber.

"I promise," he said, again in Latin, "to lead us through the darkness, to bring us to peace in the end, and to lay down the crown I carry when I am finished with all the reasons I call this power. In the spirit of Cincinnatus, who yielded control when his task was done, I speak, and in the spirit of no Emperor."

The pressure grew inside his head. Rufus felt as if hands held his brain. He felt the magic looking at him for a moment: a presence cool as Malfoy, with little interest in why he was doing this or who he was. It examined him to make sure he was the Minister of Magic, as he'd claimed to be, and it examined his intent and his motives. Rufus closed his eyes as the pressure increased steadily into agony, and tried to think thoughts that were as truthful as he could.

And then the silver wolf tilted its head back and howled, and leaped into the air. Rufus opened teary eyes to see it multiply, many small wolves rising up the walls and running into the ceiling of the courtroom. He blinked, and wondered if he should feel any different. Of course, perhaps the pressure flooding out his ears was release enough.

Then he felt it. His fingertips tingled, and his muscles jerked as if he'd received a lightning shock. He felt tiny threads grow from his eyelashes and the strands of his hair, and the awareness of wards grew in the back of his mind like so many small birds chirping at their mother.

The others were watching him, he realized, and waiting for an answer.

"It's done," he whispered. "I control all magic used in the Ministry."