WARNING: Cliffhanger.
Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Day of the Phoenix
Harry watched patiently as the sun arose. He had not slept, and it felt as if grainy weariness were clawing at his eyes. But he could wait to rest until he performed certain important tasks. And he wanted one of those tasks to be symbolic.
So he waited as the sun arose. And beside him and behind him were Snape, Draco, Laura, Delilah, and Narcissa. Hawthorn had stalked away from him when she heard of Harry's proposed bargain, and most others were still asleep. Delilah had only changed back to human a few moments ago, when the moon sank beneath the surface of the earth and the balance of power shifted from night to day, but she was here nonetheless. Harry was glad. He hoped that her support would help others angry over his terms for settling the rebellion, in particular the other werewolves.
Snape's hands were tight on his shoulders. Harry knew he hadn't given up his concerns about the monitoring board, though he might have held whatever fit he intended to hold in private. There were shoals ahead for them, too, tricky places to be negotiated.
Harry knew all of it. It didn't bother him. Now, watching the first rays of gold crawl up the sky, he was truly calm. His pacing rage had curled up and gone to sleep, like a werewolf with Wolfsbane locked into a room for the night. He was doing the only thing he could, and seeking the only path forward.
But, of course, it would help if he could make it look like the right thing as well.
So he waited as the sun arose, and when he could finally see the edge of it over the curve of Woodhouse's hills and pine forest, he began to sing.
This song was different from all the others. Harry didn't want to cause just one emotion with it, either sorrow or joy. He lifted his voice as a tribute to the fallen in the past, and he did it so that he might link those fallen to the future and salute them by giving a clearer image of what their deaths had won. He sang what was gone, and he sang what would come. He could imagine, if he closed his eyes and thought about it, Fawkes rising in a circle above him, every turn to the left marking an acknowledgment of death and mistakes made and griefs unchanged, and every turn to the right marking an acknowledgment of life and mistakes that could be prevented and things that could yet alter.
Harry had given up the chance to punish other killers of werewolves when he agreed to this bargain; he knew that. If he was going to emphasize that Gloriana's crime was a crime because it had occurred after the new laws were passed, then he would have to say that the other crimes were not crimes because they had happened when the hunting season was legal. He had taken what he thought he might be able to have—justice for the one murder that had happened close enough to the rebellion's end to merit a trial in the eyes of the public. That was what had made Hawthorn stalk away from him. She did not like to be told that she could not seek vengeance against the Aurors who had hurt her because to do so would unleash a string of attacks, illegal duels, and blood feuds.
Harry hoped she would forgive him. He hoped they would all forgive him. He poured all that into his song, and waited until it filled Woodhouse like an overflowing bowl of music. Then he let his magic go, too, and poured that into his voice.
Phoenixes had been associated with the sun for as long as they existed. Some legends said they had borne their ashes to the sun itself when they came back from the dead. That was not true, and Harry knew it, but some of the other legends about phoenixes had proven to be true of him, who only had the voice and the fire and not the body. So he imagined his voice growing louder and louder, and mingling with the sun's rays as they spread all over Britain.
He sang, and he wanted everyone magical to hear him doing so.
His vision flattened as he sang, and then it rose and spread. He might have been on dragonback, looking down on the British Isles from a grand height. They appeared as painted images below him, with gaping holes full of light and movement that let glimpses of moving figures through. He saw Augureys in Ireland pause and lift their heads, beaks gaping, at the sound of the song. He saw a unicorn begin a pass through a Muggle town, breaking the boundaries between magic and mundane and spilling the melody into their lives. Harry had never known the look of almost painful wonder that the Muggle men and women wore for the moment he saw them. He decided that must be what it was like to live in a world without magic and then suddenly glimpse it.
He saw people flooding in to work at the Ministry stop moving, and close their eyes. He saw McGonagall open the front doors of Hogwarts, and come out into the aftermath of a thunderstorm, tilting her head to the sky. Connor was trying to make gestures to tell everyone else that this was his brother, since he didn't want to actually speak and interrupt the song, and Luna was smiling.
Pharos Starrise clasped his hands behind his back, leaned against the wall of his ancestral home, and fought the longing to relax and weep. Harry had been instrumental in the death of his uncle, and still sheltered his mother's murderer, and he would not forget that.
A man grooming a Granian in the west of Scotland paused and squinted at the sun. He had heard that the boy vates had a phoenix's voice, too, but that didn't matter to his cause. He had no idea why the chords and warbles he was hearing now should matter, but he knew that they did, somehow.
Lucius Malfoy was very pale, and his face only grew paler as he listened.
Harry's voice hovered and lingered over the Isle of Man, and Calibrid Opalline braced her hands on the table in front of her and bowed her head, relaxing from the burden of caring for her family for one moment. Paton stroked the head of his youngest grandchild and listened with distant eyes. A few of the burned children Harry had woken from their fear-induced trances after Acies had come laughed and stretched out their hands in recognition of the voice that had freed them.
The Hebridean Black dragons in the sanctuary on their islands came awake all at once, bellowing and shouting, even the ones in the thick of the sleep that followed when they'd eaten well. Their handlers, of the MacFusty clan, ran about trying to calm them. Dark head after dark head turned in the direction of the phoenix song, and fire flared and danced across the stone and across the sea.
Harry reached after a pitch of determination and stubbornness that carried him, and all those listening to him, to a pinnacle of change, where they could shine in the sun. He held them there, lingering, on a single, stretched note.
And then he let his voice dissipate, fading into the sunlight and the air and the slowly thinning colors of dawn, and freed them.
Opening his eyes, he nodded to the people gathered around him. "Let's make the plans that we need to make," he said quietly. "The first thing I need to do is contact Scrimgeour about the time we'll be arriving."
Hawthorn had changed back while she was in the middle of clawing her bedding apart. She collapsed on the floor, her hand clenched on the sheet, and breathed, hearing the thud of her heart and the rasp of her lungs as if they belonged to someone else.
Her packmate was dead. The hole she had felt when Fergus died was there again, but deeper and more pervasive this time, as if one of her limbs had vanished when Claudia did. Hawthorn had known her longer. She had taken comfort with Claudia when Pansy died. Several mornings she had awakened to Claudia wrapped around her, her breathing soft and steady in her ears. And if she rarely spoke words of sympathy, she had her eyes to talk for her. Hawthorn sometimes found herself wishing she had known Claudia before the attack, but it would have been unlikely they would ever meet; Claudia was the daughter of a Light family, and engaged in doing private research on the nature of Light and Dark, and inventing or modifying new spells. However she came to know her, Hawthorn was grateful.
And now she was gone, and the only thing Harry could think of or talk of was a trial to make sure that Gloriana, her murderer, went behind bars in Tullianum.
It was not enough. She could suffer the same treatment that Hawthorn had when she was captive in Tullianum, and it would never be enough. How could it be enough when that woman had made part of Hawthorn's self vanish?
Even Delilah did not quite understand, perhaps because her powerful family had protected her and she had not gone to Tullianum with Hawthorn. Apparently, Aurors had approached the Gloryflower property, but Laura had changed in front of them and roared at them, and they had rapidly found excuses to be elsewhere. She did not understand that Hawthorn had looked on their little pack as one of the few worthwhile things to come out of the last few years, and now that Claudia was gone, the loss diminished everything that had come before. She felt the same loss, but she looked at it through a different lens.
Hawthorn knew she could mourn Claudia's death by more useless gestures—ripping the bedsheets apart as she had done while still a wolf grieving for the death of her packmate, or trying to get vengeance on Gloriana Griffinsnest, when that would only see her exiled from the Alliance and perhaps dead. Or she could curl up and lower her head like a good little dog and tell Harry that she understood, that why should she ask for vengeance when she could have justice?
Or she could do what it was actually in her to do.
Take this rage. Hide it deep. Grow the hatred the way she would grow a flower that she wanted no one else stealing the seeds of: place it in a corner of her garden and tend it alone, hidden from all eyes.
The hatred, and the determination that came with it, would give her a cure for her lycanthropy in the end, Hawthorn thought, and perhaps even one that did not stand such a high chance of killing her. And they would give her the patience to wait and watch, and take her revenge in so hidden a way that not even Harry could argue against it, nor would have any idea that she had done it.
Hawthorn had killed only one fellow Death Eater for something she had done, which was try to get the Dark Lord interested in using Hawthorn's husband. She had done it by waiting, and watching, and then, in the end, arranging matters so that it was Lucius who actually killed the woman, thinking it all his own idea. She could do the same thing now. The sword would cut down her enemy, but no one would be aware whose hand had held the hilt.
She rose and pushed her hair back into shape, then grasped her wand and changed her tattered clothes for new. She conjured water that she poured into a basin on the end of her table and slowly bathed her face, while peering into a similarly conjured mirror to make sure that she looked normal.
She was a pureblood witch, not a mindless beast. She was always going to remember that, no matter how many times the world exasperated her and tried to make her forget it.
When the knock came on the door, she could open it and smile at Harry's anxious face. He tried to explain, to apologize—as if anything could apologize for Gloriana Griffinsnest not dying in pain—but Hawthorn got there first, pitching her voice calm and sweet and low.
"It was something I should have realized on my own, Harry, given the oaths of the Alliance of Sun and Shadow." She smiled at him, and he studied her face carefully back, looking for guile. Hawthorn would give him none. He had been a good leader. He had even understood why she used blood curses on Indigena Yaxley in the midst of battle. It was not his fault that he did not understand this, that their stances on vengeance must part forever. And, in fact, in the best scenario, he would never have to know. Hawthorn would simply complete her vengeance with no one the wiser and leave Harry happy and content with her. "I am calm now. And I agree that this compromise is the best one we can look forward to."
"Do you want to go with us when we leave Woodhouse?" Harry asked. "The Minister has asked us to meet him in front of the Ministry at noon. The time of brightest Light, you know." He gave a faint smile as if he were embarrassed about the symbolism of that, at least. He should be, Hawthorn thought. "Only a small delegation is going, of course. New laws or no new laws, most of the pack leaders are still bitter or fearful, and many of them had their homes destroyed in the attacks, so they have nowhere to go but Woodhouse right now."
I know, Hawthorn wanted to say. I was at one of those attacks. And your efforts to ease their pain, while commendable, are simply too late and not enough, Harry.
What she said was, "Yes, I should like to go. Is the Minister going to show Gloriana Griffinsnest in front of the wizarding world, and explain her arrest?"
Harry nodded.
"I should like to go," Hawthorn repeated softly, scratching her left shoulder.
Indigena leaned against the wall of the burrow, pressing her ear to the earth and listening in rapturous silence until the last of Harry's song died away. Then she sighed, and the tendrils of the swift-roses and other plants gathered around her writhed in agreement. The song had been like sunlight, and they were sorry to see it go.
She checked on her Lord, but he still lay in the coma he had worn since that strange attack of convulsions, his hands clasped tightly around the golden cup, his breath rasping in and out of his lungs. No more strange cuts had appeared on his body. Indigena was grateful for that. She'd examined the cuts, and the only things she thought they resembled were the talon marks of a raptor, a hawk or an eagle. She did not know how to prevent them from appearing, nor what spell might have been used to cause them.
She did add finding out to her other load of research. She had enough to read about, Merlin knew, but she could not simply ignore a spell or piece of magic that was likely to prove dangerous to her Lord.
Indigena dragged Odi et Amo towards her again, and blew dust and dirt off the cover. Her grandmother would be furious to see Indigena treating a valuable book this way. She had been the one to teach Indigena about gardening and the love of green and growing things, but she had always insisted on both of them washing their hands before they came into the library. "Weeding isn't reading," she'd said, and Indigena still believed that.
As it was, she had little choice.
Currently, she was rereading Chapter Eleven, in hopes that it would provide some clues as to why her Lord's latest plan wasn't going well. Indigena was trying, but she wasn't as strong as he was, and with only the one candidate to practice on—well, two if one stretched it, but it was the difference between a healthy plant in a pot and a few seeds that had gone through fire and flood and might or might not sprout—she dared not step too clumsily and lose control altogether.
Harry glanced over the group of people going with him. Draco, of course. Snape would not be left behind. Narcissa was coming with them, and Harry was glad of that. He had the feeling she was genuinely calm, not merely pretending to be calm the way that Hawthorn was. She would add to their group by her presence, her composure, and her quiet refusal to let anything undignified happen while she was around.
Harry was less sure about taking Delilah and Hawthorn, but both deserved to be present when Claudia's murderer was delivered to justice. Besides, he thought that Delilah would be all right with Laura to restrain her. And the Gloryflowers were necessary to counter the perception that every single one of Harry's allies, even the ones he brought along in such an important moment as this, was Dark.
Adalrico was coming, and Millicent; Elfrida would stay with Marian in Woodhouse. Harry, after careful consideration, had chosen Camellia and Trumpetflower as representatives from his own pack. Remus had almost sat up and begged when Harry announced the need for candidates, and had sunk back into his chair with a stricken expression on his face when Harry refused him. But he had also given Harry a sharp glance that said he might be arriving at the beginnings of comprehension. Harry was glad for him, if that was so. He missed Remus sometimes.
Peregrine would come to witness and speak for the packs driven out of their homes in London by the hunting, though Harry had persuaded her two guardian wolves to stay behind. There was simply too great a chance that they would bite if someone even looked to be threatening Peregrine, and on a day of the full moon, that was inexcusable. Helcas would come for the goblins, and Bone for the centaurs. Harry did wish there was a way to take the karkadann, but he couldn't imagine Apparating her.
He himself took Helcas's arm, while Draco took his mother's, and looked around as the others matched up into people who could Apparate and those who couldn't, holding tight to their partners. "Everyone knows the general area in front of the Ministry that we want to aim for?" he asked. "The alley that holds the telephone box?"
Nods came back at him from around the circle, and Harry smiled. "Good. Let's do this."
He closed his eyes and shut all the confused, crowding thoughts out of his mind with Occlumency. He breathed, deeply and easily, and made himself think of the gains he was going to win by going ahead with this plan. Some of them were things he should have done long since, like including more Light wizards in the Alliance of Sun and Shadow. Aurora had made the point in her letter to him that there should be more Sun among the Shadows. Though Harry disagreed politely with her about that interpretation of the Alliance's name, it was a useful impression for this meeting, along with the Minister's suggestion to meet at noon.
He put away the considerations of whether what he had done was right. He was surrounded by his own doubts and doubters. Other people would talk to him and take him to task if he became too complacent. He did not think that he ever need feel uneasy about resting on his laurels, because he wouldn't get a chance to rest, and to some people, these wouldn't be laurels.
They Apparated, and landed with stone beneath their feet. Harry heard Helcas give a deep sniff beside him, and opened his eyes to see a look of bliss on the goblin's face.
"What is it?" he asked in curiosity.
"This city smells of stone and metal." Helcas looked approvingly towards the visible parts of Muggle London, smothered half in sunlight and half in fog. "I have long wondered how many of my southern kin lived here, where they could not hear the sound of the sea nor feel the wetness soaking their shoulders. Now I see that London may have its compensations."
Harry nodded, and glanced about to see that everyone had arrived safely, though Bone was checking his hooves and tail-tip to make sure nothing had been Splinched. Then he turned and looked down at the alley, at the welcoming committee the Minister had set up for them.
It was more elaborate than Harry would have guessed, or perhaps people were simply more eager to see the end of the rebellion than he had assumed. Around the telephone box blazed a ring of light, a leaping fountain of it that rose and then cascaded back down, never quite touching the stones. Harry recognized it as a variation of the spell that could create a private dueling circle for two combatants. At the head of the ring, under a banner floating in the air that said WELCOME BACK VATES, stood the Minister, with several members of the Wizengamot behind him. Harry was happy to see Griselda Marchbanks and some southern goblins among them. Outside the ring of light gathered others, trying to press forward. The light rejected them, though, bending inward a small distance and then firming again to push them back.
The moment Harry met Scrimgeour's eyes, the ring of light expanded to include him and his companions. Harry paused a moment to let everyone arrange themselves as they'd agreed on—Draco at his right shoulder, Snape at his left, and the others spreading out in a tail like a comet's behind that. Harry frowned as he heard hooves clopping, and hoped the others remembered his directive that Bone and Helcas should not be left to the last row.
Then they advanced.
Scrimgeour stood with his head up, watching them come. Harry hadn't seen him in a month, and was struck by how much he had changed. His eyes had shadows behind them, as if he had crossed battlefields. His stance no longer carried the unconscious pride it had before, of a man who knew his place in the world and what to do with it. Now he looked like someone who'd tap-danced on a peat bog and learned to keep his steps even in spite of that. He stood with his whole body balanced around the scroll he held—the scroll with the final, promised terms of the rebellion settlement, Harry guessed. His hair had paled further. If it had any color now but white, Harry couldn't see it.
He had to honor Scrimgeour. The man had made some dangerous, difficult, and ethically prickly decisions of his own, of which the Ritual of Cincinnatus was only the most prominent one. And there were more difficulties with meeting with Harry like this, giving him the amount of respect that he might to a visiting Minister of Magic. Some people would sneer at Scrimgeour, and see him as bowing down to the intimidation of a sixteen-year-old boy. Aurora was confident they could save Scrimgeour's position in office along with the Alliance, the rights of werewolves, and the political power of the Light. Harry was not so sure.
He halted about twenty feet away from the Minister, far enough that he could see curses coming in time to deflect them, and bowed. The crowd outside the circle of light yelled, but their voices were dimmed to murmurs by the ring. Harry wondered if they were shouting mostly scorn or encouragement, and which it would be better to hope for.
"Minister," he said. "Thank you for inviting us here. You have the agreement that we came to sign?"
"I do," said Scrimgeour, and tossed the scroll into the air. Harry's surprise lasted only until he saw the strands of light reaching out from the sides of the ring, catching the parchment and unrolling it from its golden ribbon. It opened quickly, and then a melodious, uninflected voice spoke from it, reciting the terms aloud. Despite its beauty, and the necessity of having all of this read aloud so that the audience would know what it said, Harry shivered. The voice without a trace of emotion or tone reminded him just a little too much of the Unspeakables' voices the first time he had heard them.
"Minister Rufus Scrimgeour, temporarily dictator of the British Ministry of Magic due to the Ritual of Cincinnatus, and Harry vates, leader of the Alliance of Sun and Shadow, have come to an agreement. The Ministry promises to offer werewolves the same rights as witches and wizards. This set of terms was offered to Harry vates on October 24th, 1996, and accepted by him later the next day. Thus, the murder of Claudia Griffinsnest by Gloriana Griffinsnest that night was unjust and illegal, and will be recorded as such by the Wizengamot."
A large puff of colored smoke rose off to one side; Harry suspected it was more to draw attention than anything else, since there was no reason the Aurors holding Gloriana couldn't simply have Apparated into the ring of light. He turned to see them, and tried to restrain a snarl of vicious satisfaction. Gloriana was shackled, and held in such a position that it was impossible for her to walk with her head held haughtily high and pretend to no discomposure. In fact, she lost her calm the moment her eyes fell on Harry.
"You did this!" she almost screamed at him, straining at the chains to reach him. Harry saw the fetters were silver, and had to duck his head to hide a smile. "You were the one who made sure I was arrested!"
"By my acceptance of the Minister's terms of an alliance, yes, I did," said Harry quietly. He was aware that the voice had stopped reading the scroll, but he didn't much care. If the audience wanted to hear the exchange between him and Gloriana, they would hear it. "You committed a murder. Of your blood relative." He could let contempt and disgust drip from his voice now, and if everyone not in his alliance thought that came mostly from the fact that Gloriana and Claudia had been related, and not because he hated the idea of the murder in the first place, they were free to think that. "I merely requested the Ministry to follow through on its promise."
Gloriana strained against her chains again. "And what about the other hunters and attackers during the hunting season?" she shrieked. "Are you going to accuse them, too?"
Looking into her distended features, Harry could see how intently she must have thought she was going to get away with this. It was the only explanation for such deluded behavior now. That added to his sense of satisfaction about sending her to trial. "No," he said, though that drove a dagger into a different part of himself. "What they did was legal by the laws of the time. We cannot arrest them for that, though I stand by my conviction that what they did was unethical if not illegal. But the laws did apply when you murdered Claudia, ma'am. I hope that you enjoy your trial."
His fury was awake and pacing in his chest again. He was strong enough to rip Gloriana apart, if he wanted.
He held himself back. He watched in silence as the Aurors escorted Gloriana to the telephone box, and led her down. Then he turned to Scrimgeour. The Minister was watching him intently, but he relaxed when Harry looked at him, and waved at the scroll. The toneless voice began to speak again.
"The terms are the same as those sent to the Daily Prophet. Werewolves will no longer be hunted. They will be tried fairly. They may hold paying jobs, wands, and custody of their children and property legally theirs. They need not wear collars, nor carry identification papers, and any imprisonment in Tullianum on charges of being a werewolf alone is strictly forbidden, as is experimentation by the Unspeakables in the Department of Mysteries. The Ministry regrets that such atrocities were necessary to make it see its duty towards its werewolf citizens."
Harry could hear Peregrine and Camellia muttering together behind his back, but he didn't turn to face them. They were probably saying that the atrocities were regretted even more by those werewolf citizens who had had to live through them. And, well, that was true, but Harry could not reach back and change the past. He had to keep his eyes on the future.
"In addition, those funds that once went towards the Department for the Control and Suppression of Deadly Beasts will be directed towards brewing Wolfsbane for all registered werewolves and making sure that a cure for lycanthropy is researched," the voice continued implacably. "The Ministry also agrees to set up a Goblin Board to address communication with the northern goblins, and to have southern goblins among its representatives. Other Ministry employees will venture into the Forbidden Forest to treat with the centaurs, and discuss registration for Being status and interaction with humans."
Scrimgeour paused the voice from the scroll and turned to Harry. Harry inclined his head. "I accept that," he said.
The Minister nodded, and the voice began once more.
"In return, Harry vates agrees to lay down his rebellion. He will return to the wizarding world and acknowledge the legal authority of the Ministry of Magic once more. He also agrees to accept more Light wizards into his Alliance of Sun and Shadow, as long as they will swear the oaths involved, and he accepts a monitoring board to watch over him and guide his behavior. Two prominent members of this monitoring board, Aurora Whitestag and Griselda Marchbanks, will help him to choose the other members."
Movement stirred behind Scrimgeour's shoulders, and the two women broke apart from the rest and came out to stand on either side of the Minister. Aurora Whitestag looked as if someone had set the world on fire for her. Madam Marchbanks's expression was more guarded. Harry could not blame her. He nodded to both of them as to two equal comrades and turned back to the scroll.
"The Ministry recognizes that the monitoring board does not claim to have official guardianship of Harry vates, but they can and will advise in him matters to do with his vates task and his destruction of the Dark Lord You-Know-Who, with the details to be hammered out in private conference. Members may include Light and Dark wizards, and wizards of any blood status, as well as magical creatures. The only requirement is that they meet the approval of all three people selecting the members, and that they swear the oaths of the Alliance of Sun and Shadow.
"Finally, all charges against Harry vates, including trespass on and damage to Ministry property, and harboring fugitives, are dropped.
"Witnessed this day, October 26th, 1996, by supporters of both Minister Rufus Scrimgeour and Harry vates, and the wider wizarding community. Signed—"
The scroll's voice broke off abruptly. Scrimgeour held out his hand, and the parchment came skimming over to him. He produced a quill and ceremoniously signed his name at the foot of the page, then held it out to Harry.
Harry could feel the tension of the people behind him as he took the scroll, but he couldn't see any magical bindings or compulsion spells on the parchment, other than the expected one: after he signed it, he would be expected to abide by the terms. And he could do that. He let it float in the air as he accepted the quill from Scrimgeour and signed his name. After Harry, he hesitated only an instant before using vates, wrinkling his nose as he did so. Doing this felt too much like claiming it as a title, but he had no last name—and probably never would, if he had anything to say about it—and it was how the scroll had referred to him.
"Signed by Minister Rufus Scrimgeour and Harry vates," the voice said, though now Harry thought it had a hint of triumph in it, and then the parchment rolled itself back up and the golden ribbon tied it. Rufus drew out his wand and tapped the scroll, and a second copy came into being. He held it out solemnly to Harry.
Harry was just opening his mouth to say something significantly splendid when he heard the warble of phoenix song from above his left wrist. He blushed as Scrimgeour smiled, and then took the scroll and murmured quickly, "I'm sorry, but I don't think that I can speak—"
"Harry." It was Paton Opalline, his voice tight and urgent in a way that Harry had never heard it before. "The dragon is gone."
Harry blinked. "What?"
"Acies," said Paton. "The British Red-Gold. Calibrid just went to look in on her, and she's gone. We didn't feel her fly away or break any of the spells keeping her asleep. We don't know when she left, or where she is."
Harry closed his eyes for a moment. He had a very good guess as to what might have awakened Acies, come to think of it. He remembered the Hebridean Black dragons holding up their heads and bellowing when his phoenix song spread across the Isles. Dragons were called the Singers, and Acies had changed in the wake of siren song and the frenzied music of Light and Dark on Midsummer Day. And it might follow, it might, that she would follow the lure of the phoenix song to him.
Harry had to go to a battlefield where he could fight her.
"Thank you, Mr. Opalline," he said now. "I will—"
And then he heard the sound of tearing sailcloth, and knew it for the sound of immense wings. He swung around amid screams, and lifted his eyes to the sky.
Coils of red-gold filled the western horizon as the dragon came storming straight towards him. Her jaws were already open, as if to breathe fire, and Harry imagined the destruction such flames could wreak in Muggle London—what it would mean for unshielded Muggles, or unshielded wizards, to face a dragon—and he remembered the Death Eaters melting. Acies was already swinging her head from side to side, as if she couldn't see him and was thinking about another target.
Harry stepped forward, and began to sing.
