Chapter Thirty-Four: Ward-Eaters

"Harry!" A hand was shaking his shoulder, and someone was shouting his name, but it was from so very far away. Harry didn't see why it couldn't wait a touch, so that he could wade through the rest of the very interesting dream he was having.

"Harry, you have to see this!"

That woke him, at least. Harry opened his eyes, and blinked. He didn't remember taking off his glasses before he and Draco had had sex yesterday, but he must have, because everything in front of him was a blur, including the white object Draco was trying to show him. "What?" he asked. His voice trailed off into a sleepy yawn.

Draco shoved his glasses onto his face, and then held up the paper in front of him. Harry rubbed at his eyes to remove the last traces of sleep-dust, and leaned close to see what he could see in the Daily Prophet.

The headline shocked him speechless. When he didn't respond in enough time to content Draco, he began bouncing up and down on the bed behind the newspaper, saying, "Harry!"

"I saw," Harry whispered. "I'm just not sure if I can believe. This is real? This isn't some trick of Hornblower and his Vox Populi?'

Draco made a rude noise. "That's printed on coarser paper, and the newsprint isn't as even," he said, as if those were things that Harry should have noticed for himself. "He can't afford the best like the Daily Prophet can, no matter how rich he is."

Harry shrugged. He honestly hadn't noticed. As long as he could read the newspaper, he tended to care about what was on the page, not its consistency or the quality of the printing.

There was certainly nothing wrong with the screaming headline that stood up and called out a turning point in their battle before him.

ANTI-WEREWOLF LAWS REPEALED

Minister Calls Them 'Archaic,' Announces A New Way

By: Melinda Honeywhistle

The article wasn't that complimentary to Scrimgeour—most of Honeywhistle's articles weren't—but Harry got the gist of it. The Minister had summoned the Wizengamot and told them what he thought of the anti-werewolf laws, how they damaged the noble cause of peaceful relations between wizards and werewolves, and how he wanted them to think long and hard about the laws and whether there was a one of them they would really want to keep.

The Wizengamot had voted thirty-one to twenty to repeal the existing laws. They were drafting new ones to deal with the situation, and expected to remain in seclusion until they'd finished.

Honeywhistle concluded the article with a sulky suggestion that the Wizengamot was dominated and controlled by the Minister. "Their compliance is to be perhaps expected," was the last sentence, "given that Minister Scrimgeour now controls all magic used inside the Ministry."

Harry had no doubt that was part of it, but the Wizengamot Elders could leave the building and vote elsewhere—and they would have done so if it was something as simple as Scrimgeour telling them to vote the way he wanted because he was temporary dictator of the Ministry. No, Scrimgeour had done something else, but Harry was damned if he could figure out what.

"Does that mean the rebellion is done with?" Draco whispered. "Does that mean that we can go back to Hogwarts?"

Harry looked up at him. "Do you want to?"

Draco's face convulsed in irritation at once. "I want to be wherever you are, idiot," he said. He leaned down and kissed Harry so hard that Harry was gasping and dizzy when he pulled back. "So I can do that," Draco finished. "I simply wondered if the rebellion was done, now that you got what you wanted."

Harry caught his breath and licked his lips and tried to think about something other than the smooth, bare expense of Draco's shoulders, and what he would see between his legs if he moved the newspaper. "No," he said. "The Minister is drafting new laws, but no one has any idea what those laws will be yet. They might be less restrictive but still not grant werewolves the rights of full citizens. And there's no word of what might happen with the goblins and the centaurs and other magical creatures. So we'll stay here until we have those gestures of good faith—either actual laws or binding oaths—that we asked for."

Draco nodded. "Woodhouse will protect us," he said, and kissed Harry insistently once more. The paper crinkled between them, and he started to shift it out of the way. Harry might have protested, but he was remembering exactly how Draco had made him feel yesterday, and he wanted to feel like that again.

Someone pounded on the door.

Harry heard Draco's locking spell undone, and barely had enough time to spread the Daily Prophet over them both when Snape stepped into the room. He knew him by the firmness of his left step and the slightly dragging nature of his right, and the sweep and snap of his robes, before he ever saw his face.

There was a pause. There was a very long pause. Harry, lying with his head on Draco's shoulder and most of his face under the paper, felt Draco shaking with silent laughter against him. He wished he could laugh. His flush was all embarrassment and not lust now, at the thought of Snape catching them.

Finally, Snape's voice said, in the depths of freezing cold that he usually reserved for when a seventh-year-student made a mistake that he should have corrected in first year, "You must come to the kitchen. We are having a strategy meeting."

"So were we," said Draco innocently.

Snape's response was to shut the door with a massive slam. Draco rolled off Harry and laughed, and went on laughing even when Harry hit him on his shoulder, which should have hurt since he had no clothes on.

"That didn't even make sense," Harry told him. "That joke, I mean. What do you mean, a strategy meeting?"

"It didn't have to make sense," Draco said, rolling over and smiling at him. "What was important was that he saw he couldn't intimidate us. There are times I think he'd want to roll you up in bicorn fur and prevent you from moving for the rest of your life, Harry. He has to learn that you're an adult now, and that includes having sex." He started to kiss Harry again.

"A strategy meeting in the kitchen, he said," Harry reminded him, and rolled out of bed. His embarrassment had reduced his lust to ashes.

"You should shower first," Draco said. "You're all over sweat. And we could share."

Harry performed a quick cleaning charm on both himself and Draco, listening to Draco's yelp as it roughly scrubbed his skin with some satisfaction, and then summoned a new set of clothes from his trunk to him. "You'll have to get dressed, too," he added, keeping his back turned to Draco. "I don't think you'd want anyone else in the kitchen to see your strategy."


Harry stepped into the kitchen, and blinked. Among the faces he'd expected around the round table were a few unfamiliar ones.

"Neville?" he asked in astonishment.

"Harry." Neville, holding a pot in which a small, spiky plant grew, beamed in pleasure and something Harry recognized a moment later as nervousness. He wasn't sure he'd be welcome. He gave a quick little motion somewhere between a nod and a bow, and held out the pot. "This is one of the plants I was breeding to counter Yaxley's magic-binding vines."

Harry accepted the pot and stared at the plant inside. This close, he could see that it was mostly dark green, but had crimson spots here and there, and the spines were thorns, thick and furred at the ends. He shuddered and shook his head, shutting off the awful memories that wanted to rise.

"What does it do?" he asked Neville.

"It'll react to the presence of the vines," Neville said. He nodded to the thorns that curled around the plant's stem, his nervousness fading as he talked. "It grows a lot deeper; the roots extend down like the coils of entrails, you see, so they're much bigger than they appear at first, folded again and again. Those shoot straight out, and they bear thorns of their own. Those claw the vines apart."

"This is wonderful, Neville," Harry murmured, setting the pot aside. "And you're welcome to stay here, if you'd like." He was uncertain. Neville might only have come to turn over the plant. Of course, he could have sent it with an owl if that was the case.

Neville stood straighter, and inclined his head in a small, formal bow that Harry recognized after a moment. Light purebloods used it as a token of pledging loyalty, if not formal allegiance, to a Lord-level wizard. "I was hoping that you would say that, Harry," he said.

Harry nodded back, and turned around again, towards a face he'd only seen a glimpse of before Neville distracted him. "And Ginny?"

Ginny beamed at him. "Yes."

"Why?" Neville might have used his errand as an excuse, but Harry couldn't imagine what Ginny could have told her family that would have permitted her to come. Her parents had been upset with her, or so Connor had told him, even for fighting in the Midsummer battle, where they really couldn't spare anyone from the field. They had thought her too young, or not a good enough fighter, or—this was Connor's opinion—their baby girl. She could have been a sixth-year and they would have still objected to her fighting in a way that they didn't to Ron or the twins doing so.

"Because I was tired of being useless." Ginny lifted her head and glared at him as if she wanted to intimidate him. Harry wondered if he was the only one who noticed that her lower lip was trembling; like Neville, she'd been uncertain of her welcome. "No one knows what to think in Hogwarts, everyone changes their opinion daily, and there's just too little firm ground. I wanted to come here and help any way I can. I may not be able to fight like a fully-trained wizard, but my mum taught me other things."

Harry nodded. "And did your family say you could?"

Ginny flushed to match her hair.

Harry sighed. "I'm not looking forward to the Howlers," he murmured. "But you're fifteen, and you fought last year, and it's true that I do need people who want to help." Many of the werewolves didn't really want to help; they wanted to complain. Now that he was allowing himself to feel angry again, Harry was aware of a steadily rising irritation with that. What had happened to those afflicted with Loki's bite was horrible, but could he help it if they refused to make the best of a bad situation and instead would rather lie about lamenting? "So if you still want to stay, you can."

Ginny smiled and clasped her hands. "Thank you, Harry," she said. If she heard Draco's mutter about weasels, she ignored it. Harry reached back and slapped Draco's shoulder without turning from the gathering in front of him. He had noticed two other new faces now.

"I think I met you briefly at the alliance gathering in the spring," he told the young man who stood next to Millicent. "But I don't remember your name, sad to say."

The man smiled. "My name is Pierre Delacour," he said, with only a slight accent to his English. "And this is my cousin Adrienne." He nodded to the slight young woman at his shoulder, whom Harry had had trouble seeing. He squinted, and now he could see her fully, including the slight shimmer of a silver cloud that seemed to cover her magic. He felt his hackles rise.

"Why is she wearing a web?" he demanded.

Adrienne laughed and gave a curtsey; the robes she wore were more like gowns than robes, Harry noticed. "I am full Veela," she said, in an accent that sounded more Spanish than French to Harry. "I drink a potion so men will not notice me so much. It is entirely willing, I assure you." She had long silvery hair and blue eyes—features Harry remembered from Fleur at the Triwizard Tournament, and from the Veela at the Quidditch World Cup. She wore a ring on the hand she held out to Harry. Harry clasped her hand and kissed the back of it, studying the ring. It was heavy, with what looked like silver layered on top of silver, surrounding a square stone that was flat and blue and had the gloss of metal.

"What does this mean?" he asked.

"I am an official representative of the Veela Council," said Adrienne, with another smile. "I come to see if you are a good option for alliance. You are vates, and we must look at you."

Harry nodded. "And you came for the same reason?" he asked, turning to Pierre.

Pierre smiled, and Millicent flushed. "Not entirely," Pierre said softly. "There is more than one kind of alliance to be made here."

Harry let it go, though he could tell some of his allies were puzzled about what that meant. It wasn't their problem to worry about.

"We're having a strategy meeting," he said, "because of the headline this morning. I assume that most of you saw it?"

Some heads shook, so Harry cast an Accio for the nearest Prophet, and heard someone yelp as it tore out of her robe pocket. Harry shrugged an apology and spread the paper out so that everyone could see the headline.

An immediate babble of voices started. Harry let it continue, at least until he heard someone saying, "We can go home."

"Not yet," he said. The voices cut off as if an axe had fallen. Harry didn't know if that was a good thing or not. "We don't know what new laws the Wizengamot will come up with. That could include granting werewolves the same rights as wizards, but we don't know that for sure. And that does nothing for the goblins—" he inclined his head to Helcas, who stood on the other side of the table and listened "—or the centaurs." Only Bone was in the room, but he brought a hoof down in a solid stamp when Harry looked at him. "The only thing we know is that the new laws will presumably be less restrictive."

"We can go home, though," George said, leaning forward across the table. Harry restrained his groan. George was the most vocal of the new werewolves, always asking when they could go home, hinting that he wouldn't have any trouble fitting back into the wizarding world—ignoring the fact that most people would know he'd worked for the Department for the Control and Suppression of Deadly Beasts, and would know what it meant that he'd survived Loki's attack—and saying that he knew spells to keep his lycanthropy concealed.

"There is one danger you have not considered," said Snape, and his voice silenced George quite effectively. The werewolf turned around and gaped at him. Harry looked at Snape, wary.

"What is that, sir?" he asked.

Snape nodded several times, as if to say that the due of respect Harry accorded to him was acceptable if not quite what he wanted, and said, "I questioned our Unspeakable prisoner, Croaker, yesterday. I wanted to make sure he was holding nothing back, and after some time, he did tell me what I wanted." Harry masked a shiver. Snape's blank face and tone said nothing about whatever methods he'd used to get that information out of Croaker—but then, Harry had told him, basically, that he had a free hand. "The Unspeakables wanted werewolves in Tullianum for easy access to them, because they were indeed conducting experiments with your kind." Harry hoped he was the only one who noticed the sneer on the last words, but given the expression that appeared on Camellia's face, he suspected he wasn't.

"What kind of experiments?" Remus leaned over the table to challenge, and Harry wanted to bury his head in his arms and groan. Did Remus always have to take the most exasperating course?

"Why, experiments to see if they could duplicate the werewolf curse in some respects," said Snape, his eyes glinting. "However, they know lycanthropy has its drawbacks. What they wanted was the ability to change a person into other animals, on other dates than the full moon, without the vulnerability to silver—and to control the transformation for themselves, rather than having a wolf within the person's body control it. Imagine a world in which the Unspeakables strike from afar, turning an enemy into a great cat and having him attack and kill someone else, then revealing him as an unregistered Animagus all along. With their ability to Obliviate others and control a person's mind, they could have the wizard himself believing it. And such cases do occasionally happen. Who would question it?"

"And what would happen to those people who were already Animagi?" Harry asked, sick at the thought.

"Why, the Unspeakables would want to control those transformations as well, of course." Snape's face was a blank. "There is much they would give to be able to do that, and as long as they are giving the lives and magic of werewolves, they are paying no price themselves."

"What are they doing to the werewolves they took into the Department?" Harry was not sure he wanted to hear, but he was sure he couldn't afford not to.

Snape gave a piercing glance—to Harry's surprise, it was in Ginny's and Neville's directions, as if he thought they were the ones who should not hear this, rather than the werewolves themselves. Then he turned back to Harry. "Taking them apart is the delicate way of saying it, Harry."

Harry stifled a rush of sickness, and nodded. "And why did the Stone aim them at me in particular?"

Snape shook his head. "Because you are a champion of werewolves. Because your magic is very strong, and they thought your character and the fact you had not Declared for a Lord made you vulnerable." He steepled his fingers. "Croaker told me something fascinating, something I never knew. When a Lord Declares for Light or Dark, the power of Light or Dark wraps that wizard and protects him. It is not a conscious thing. As we have seen, the wild Dark may still be angry at the Dark Lord. But it makes them safer from attempts to mentally control them. This may be because Lords usually use compulsion themselves." He leaned forward, hands flat on the table now. "They considered you a prize, Harry."

Harry snorted. "Many people do." He paused. "Did you uncover any information about why they might have allied with Shield of the Granian?"

"The Granian breeders do fear that you will try to take their horses, and thus their source of profit, from them," Snape said. "So they intended to destroy you or capture Draco as a bargaining chip, if they could. The Unspeakables talked them out of killing you, and sent them after you to reach you in places they could not."

"And do they actually have webs on their horses?" Harry asked.

"Croaker was not interested in that, and did not bother to find out."

"If they do, then I'll ask them to break them sooner or later." Harry drummed his fingers on the table. "A separate offer of peace to them might not go amiss. Pointing out that the only people of theirs who have died are the ones who have attacked me would do, and telling them what I do with webs is imperative. If the horses aren't sentient, and they don't use webs, then all I can really do is ask for better treatment, not break them free." He turned to Narcissa. "Do you know anyone connected to Shield of the Granian, Narcissa? Anyone who would be willing to carry a message to them for us, and do it without distorting its content?"

Narcissa frowned slightly. "It is years since I was friends with the women connected to those families," she murmured. "But it may be that it is time to renew old acquaintances."

Harry nodded. "Do what you can. I don't consider that a particularly urgent matter unless they attack again. I think they may have learned their lesson, while the Unspeakables will keep coming because of the Stone." He looked back at Snape. "Did you find out what the Stone wants?"

"New magic," said Snape. "It is an experimenting intelligence, apparently. It wants to learn and know new things, and to make new things. It does not care what it must sacrifice in order to do so."

"Just like all my other enemies," Harry murmured, and smiled in spite of himself. "And it wants to use me as a source of fuel?"

"Yes."

"At least it's more honest than Dumbledore wanting to use me as a savior for the world," Harry muttered, and this time sought out Ignifer. He hadn't heard any reports from Honoria in the past few days—obsessed as he had been with working on the werewolf cure and trying to keep his emotions in check, he hadn't made much time for those of his people outside the valley—but she would have come to Ignifer, or told her if anything unusual had occurred. "What is happening with the Maenad Press, Ignifer?"

She frowned. "Hornblower is already swinging from supporting you whole-heartedly to questioning your decisions," she said. "Some of the articles appearing in the Populi have called you a murderer, and insisted that you be tried for your part in killing 'those fine Aurors, Unspeakables, and independent wizards who tried to stem the bloody tide,' to quote one of them."

Harry nodded, and decided that he could feel all the guilt about that he wanted, but later. "The situation is delicate, then," he said. "And no matter what Scrimgeour's intentions, we can't count on the repeal of the anti-werewolf laws bringing in much support. To some people I'm a murderer, and they'll remember that no matter what happens legally. We do need to settle the rebellion if we can, show that we can compromise if possible, but not at the cost of everything we've worked for."

"Does this mean that you won't allow yourself to be taken and dragged off to prison?" Remus asked abruptly.

Harry faced him and arched an eyebrow, wondering what was going through his head. "Of course not. I may ask for sacrifices from myself that I would not from anyone else, because I know that I can pay them, and I may pay those sacrifices the other side asks if they seem reasonable. But I won't give up as I would have last year, especially not to avoid violence. I chose violence when I started on this course."

Remus lapsed into silence. Harry studied him and wondered if he could talk with him later, work out what was bothering him, and why in the world he had asked that bloody question.

Then he snorted to himself. Oh, yes, I'll add arguing with Remus to my list of other essential things that need to be done. At this point, I'll have to wait until he comes to me and actually demands my attention. I can't waste time chasing down people who don't want to talk.

"Given that the Unspeakables want werewolves so badly, we can't end the rebellion yet, end of the anti-werewolf laws or not," he said, ignoring the sounds of dismay from George and the others who supported him. "The Unspeakables are still part of the Ministry, and even Scrimgeour controlling all the magic in the building doesn't help much when they attack outside it, as we've seen. Will he risk open conflict with the Department of Mysteries? If he will, then I think we can trust him to back us. Otherwise, we'll continue to wait."

Someone else started to ask something, and then the karkadann bugled from outside. Harry caught his breath against the tide of battle-lust that swept his blood, and told him it was probably nothing, just an unusual maneuver by a centaur that she didn't like. Woodhouse would have warned him if attackers were near.

Then she screamed again, and this time it was a cry of pain, and Harry's uncertainty whispered, If anyone could get through the place magic, it would be the Unspeakables.

He asked Woodhouse if he could Apparate outside, and received permission in seconds. He leaped, and then he was standing in the grass, near the place where the broken corpses of the winged horses still lay, clutched and held by Woodhouse's defenses, and staring at the gray-cloaked ranks who had appeared on the nearest hill.

They were holding spheres of intense white light, and the karkadann was charging them. One of the spheres flickered as Harry watched, and a burst of white flew at her. It carved a bloody trail down her back. She stopped, screaming and tossing her horn in rage, and then ran on again.

Harry knew how they must have passed Woodhouse's defenses then. The last time, what had triggered Woodhouse's response was hostile intent towards Harry himself, who was part of it, and its trees and grass, also part of it. If the Unspeakables had brought weapons that would only harm the living things not part of Woodhouse and no hostile intent towards Harry himself, then the place magic wouldn't rouse. It was the same situation the Death Eaters had been in last year when Harry and his group attacked them, since none of them had bonded to the valley.

He wondered if any of the Unspeakables realized what would happen now.

Probably not, he told himself, or they wouldn't have done this.

And his magic unfolded its wings.


Indigena snatched her hand back from the page of the book as if it'd burned her. It took her a moment to realize that it hadn't been a surge of magic from the ancient leather that had hurt her. Her thorns were vibrating from the surge of power from the west and south, as Harry's magic roared full-throated.

Indigena blinked at nothing for a moment. She wondered that she should so easily distinguish Harry's magic from Falco's, and she worried that her dedication to her Lord might be fading if she could.

But then she realized there was a simple explanation for that, and smiled. Harry's magic had a sharp, dark edge from its indebtedness to Voldemort's. Falco stank to her. Voldemort's magic smelled like fresh, deep earth, damp with the smell of rain. Harry's magic bore the scent of fresh, damp earth that someone had not made the best use of in attempting to plant too many flowers at once.

There was nothing she could do to influence the battle, since nothing she could do would let her leave her Lord's side. He would be unhappy even to hear about the battle, unless it ended with Harry wounded. She silently wished Harry good luck instead, and then turned another page and bent over the beginning of Chapter 13. Since he already has the compulsion gift, I doubt that this will be useful to him.


Harry could have done a number of things, he supposed. He could have flung fire at the Unspeakables, and they would have roasted; he didn't think they had artifacts that would protect them against all attacks. He could have chosen something uncommon, like lightning or acid. He could have called on the karkadann and sent her charging at them; she was already running straight towards them again, despite the spheres of white light in their hands and the wound on her back.

Harry didn't see a reason to do any of those things, though. He simply opened his absorbere gift and began swallowing the magic from their artifacts, and from their bodies, and from their wands, and from anything else they might carry on their persons. He felt none of the reluctance to do this that usually plagued him, only a grand disgust that their constant attacks had made this necessary at all.

One sphere and then another went dark, and Unspeakables gave the low, pained screams of wizards who had suddenly become Muggles. Harry snarled in his throat, and turned towards the ones who had wounded the karkadann—and did it again as he watched, with what looked like a sword but shot darts that made her scream and rear as they caught her in the forelegs.

Then another held up something dark and mottled gray. Harry could see it weirdly well from that distance, which he shouldn't have been able to.

His absorbere gift hit it and ended. Harry let out a loud gasp, and nearly lost control of the magic he had gathered. It felt like being punched in the teeth.

He watched, narrow-eyed, as the mottled gray thing twisted in the Unspeakable's hands and reared out a slender neck, dragon-shaped, with a blocky dragon head on the end. It roared, and the sound traveled up into the air as an almost visible cone of pure force. Harry followed it, and saw one of the wards still hanging over the valley crackle like burning paper and disappear.

I should have wondered about that, he thought. I only hung the wards to make the werewolves feel safe, but they should have warned me when someone approached, even if Woodhouse didn't.

He focused on the ward-eater the Unspeakable carried, and wondered what it was made of and what to do with it. He was sucking magic from the rest of the Unspeakables, still, but he was approaching the full amount he could carry—they simply had so many artifacts, and defensive spells, and small surprises sewn into the pockets of their robes—and when the ward-eater roared in his direction, he lost control briefly and staggered to his knees, panting harshly.

"What can we do, Wild?"

Harry glanced up. Camellia stood at his side. He wasn't surprised she had come first of all of them. Her eyes were brilliant, but she looked at the wizards with understandable frustration. Born Muggle, this wasn't the kind of battle she could participate in.

Unless.

Harry held out his hand. "Take my hand," he said. His voice was weird, distorted, as if he were underwater, from all the power he carried, but Camellia clasped his wrist with utter trust. Harry pulled, and she knelt in the grass beside him. Harry stared into her eyes, and still saw nothing but trust there.

"Can you carry some of the magic for me?" he asked.

"I—yes." Camellia blinked. "Though I don't see how I can hope to contain it, Wild."

"I'm going to try something," said Harry, and ignored another scream from the karkadann. She wasn't dead yet, he thought he would know if she was, and the ward-eater would block most of what he could do, and he was going mad under the pressure of the magic racing around him. He moved their joined hands so that his palm rested on Camellia's shoulder, and closed his eyes.

He called on his will, and the magic he had gathered, glad to be useful, surged to the surface of his skin.

Camellia gasped, but made no sound of protest or pain as the magic flooded into her. Harry set it to carving out a magical core in her. That was what wizards had that separated them from Muggles—a reservoir to carry and hold the power. Most Muggles could be affected by spells, but trying to use a wand was impossible, because the wand simply had nothing to connect with in them.

Harry used some of the magic to create a core. It was a strange process. With his eyes closed, he could see flashing purple veins and green ones, as if he were plunging into the midst of a jeweled tunnel. With his eyes open, he just saw Camellia's face, anxious but not in pain.

The magic reached the bottom of its dive and spun out. Harry could swear he saw a spider-like creature for a moment, its legs and its mandibles working incredibly fast, creating a net of spun silk across the bottom of the new core. That insured the magic wouldn't run away as fast as it gathered. Then the spider tightened its hold and began climbing back up the side of Camellia's—stomach? Harry had no idea where the physical analogue of the magical core would be, in her—weaving as it went. Tighter and tighter grew the strands of the net.

The rest of the magic poured in.

Harry felt the growing sentience in it, inevitable when it was as tightly confined in so small a place as this was. The personality was rather different from any he'd encountered before. Of course, he had extremely limited experience with this kind of thing; the magic he'd encountered in Woodhouse and the magic he'd peeled off from himself to give to Elfrida Bulstrode were the only ones that truly counted. The magic he'd drained from Black artifacts to restore those children rendered Squibs by Voldemort's attack hadn't forged this intimate a connection between him and the person he gave it to.

This magic was cool, confident, and deeply protective. It would tend to bury its uncertainty in action, and right now it was looking forward to hurting its enemies. Harry wasn't that dumb, so he realized a moment later that it was shaping itself after Camellia; it was her magic now, so it acted with and resembled her.

He sensed just when enough would be too much, when the magic would destroy Camellia instead of help her, and he pulled back, severing the connection with them by tugging his hand from her shoulder. Camellia stared at him with a dazed expression.

"You can help me," said Harry softly. "I've given you the absorbere ability."

Camellia swallowed and glanced up at the Unspeakables on the hillside. The ones with the other weapons had fallen back by now, doubtless seeing they'd only exhaust themselves against Harry, and win no victories. The one with the ward-eater was advancing, holding it out. "How do I use it?"

Harry gave her an encouraging smile. "Imagine a mouth opening in front of you. That mouth is going to pull on the magic of the Unspeakable, and only the Unspeakable. You'll be swallowing the magic."

"But what controls it?" Camellia's voice had got smaller. "I never—a few wizards have told me that magic feels like exercising an extra set of muscles. I don't know which direction to move in."

"In this case, it mostly depends on what you want to happen," said Harry. "Free will. I know you have a strong one. The magic should do as you like."

Camellia nodded tentatively, and then focused on the wizard in front of her. A moment later, the Unspeakable staggered. Harry shook his head. The absorbere ability felt like a buzzing along his skin, the irritated tickling of ants' legs.

"What are you going to do?" Camellia called, as Harry reached out.

"Pull at the ward-eater itself," said Harry, focusing on the block of gray material. He thought it was rock, but it didn't matter what it was. "From behind."

He leaped, and Apparated up the hill. He heard someone shout, but the Unspeakable was engaged with Camellia and couldn't turn in time.

Harry drank.

The magic that came flooding towards him was more alien than anything he'd felt so far. He caught a glimpse of a mind tight-wound with glittering, alien threads, with existence so long that the concept of quickness, of engaging with others rather than watching them, filled it with anger. It was angry that it had been forced to respond so quickly to this situation. It would have preferred to observe, as it always did, and make its changes so slowly that the humans could not see them.

It would have done all that, but now the moment had arrived when it needed to change or cease to exist, it thought, and so it had moved to change. It could disrupt the magic around it if it must, though it had been reluctant to show its ability forth. Its servants had always kept secret the fact that it was its immunity to magic, and not its magic itself, that was the most important facet of it.

Harry reeled a little as he was thrown back into his own head. The ward-eater was a piece of the Stone.

He didn't think that he could drain it, now that he knew. The Stone's immunity to magic included his absorbere ability.

But he could make it retreat from the battlefield, by making its servants useless to it. The Stone needed wizards, those who could understand magic in a way that Muggles simply couldn't, and who belonged in the Ministry and the wizarding world in a way that Muggles weren't considered to. He reached out again to the Unspeakables up the hill, tearing their magic apart and sending it sliding off into the air in splashes when he couldn't swallow it.

The Stone, or the ward-eater, let out a wail of loss through the dragon-head. Harry was simply inflicting losses too heavy; Harry could feel that, through the tentative bond that connected them now. Few served the Stone in comparison to the overall numbers of the wizarding population, and it had already lost too many of them pursuing this one target, tempting though he was with all the magic he possessed.

The Stone called. Harry felt it pulling on bonds joining the Unspeakables, not unlike those bonds that linked the packmind. The Unspeakables Apparated if they still could, or grabbed the arms of those comrades who could and went along. Harry felt the urge to do so himself, before he shook his head and severed the bond that bound them.

He could feel the Stone snarl in the moment before he did so. It knew that he knew it, and it was wary now. Harry could almost feel thoughts that, in something human, he would have called We might need to have peace after all.

And then they were gone, and Harry stood blinking on the hill, and the karkadann ran around in nothingness screaming in frustration, and Camellia was staggering up the slope towards him, laughing and sobbing.

"That was—thank you," she said, and then collapsed on his neck and started crying.

Harry held her as much as he could; he was missing a hand and stood a few inches shorter than she was. He stroked her back, and murmured in her ear, "I know I didn't warn you. If it hurt, I'll take it back."

Camellia withdrew at once, shaking her head, her eyes too bright, but not only with tears. "No," she whispered. "I—I understand why they screamed, now, the ones you took this from. There's no way that I could give this up."

Harry nodded, then held out his hand and whistled for the karkadann. She came trotting to him, kicking hard enough that clods of dirt and grass flew out of the ground. When she crashed to a halt beside him, she gave him a look so expressive that Harry had to chuckle. Two battles now, and she hadn't been able to kill anyone.

He patted her side, standing on his toes, and she obligingly knelt so that he could look at the wound on her back. To his relief, it was already scabbing. Karkadanns did have magic that would let them heal faster than most, he supposed; the violence they did to each other and to other animals of their homelands demanded it. He touched her shoulder once more, and she bounced back to her feet with another snort and a final kick before she started grazing on the grass where the Unspeakables had stood.

"It's going to make trouble, isn't it?" Camellia asked hesitantly. "I mean, making me a witch, but giving me that gift, too?"

"I expect it is," said Harry, turning around. "But I've won more than I've lost. I know what the Unspeakables are doing, now, and how their Stone thinks. And now that they've attacked a second time, when the Ministry's already announced a changed attitude towards werewolves, either the Ministry is going to have to admit to hypocrisy or distance itself from the Department of Mysteries."

"Which do you think is more likely?" Camellia asked, as they moved back towards the ground.

Harry grinned at her. He felt wild and light and reckless, his emotions blowing through him like wind. He felt like a karkadann. "I have no idea."