Chapter Fifty-One: Ideals of Restraint

It wasn't hard to catch Michael's eye, not when the other boy almost drooled on himself the moment he saw Draco. Now I know why my mother never wanted people fawning on her, Draco thought, waving Michael over to him as he stood just outside the Great Hall. However would one get the stains out of one's robes?

"Was there something you wanted, Draco?" Michael looked as if he wanted to draw his wand. A moment later, he did, giving in and casting a privacy ward.

"There is." Draco cocked his head and stood straighter. He'd been leaning against the wall, as much to encourage Michael to underestimate him as anything else, but for this, he needed to be standing as upright as possible. The more he thought about it, the more he saw Michael's assumptions about his bond with Harry, and especially the joining ritual, as insulting to himself. Michael was in love with someone who didn't really exist. Time for Draco to show him who did. "I know that you spoke to Harry about me a few days ago."

Michael's head jerked up. "He spoke to me," he clarified. "I wanted to leave matters just as they were, Draco. I'm content to watch from afar for the day when he hurts you."

"And you think that's going to happen?" Draco's voice sounded odd in his ears—familiar, still, but a strange thing to hear emerging from his own mouth. A moment later, he identified the reason for that. He sounded like Lucius, far more than he had for months.

"Of course it is," said Michael. "You were the one who encouraged me to admire you, Draco. You need admiration for your beauty. Oh, you need to be loved for your mind and your skills, as well, but I can do that, and love you in the other ways that you deserve to be loved. Harry can't. He told me himself that he was conditioned never to think about looks when gazing at other people."

He leaned forward, eyes shining, and Draco suppressed the impulse to move backward, even as his rage surged. He comes off as half-deranged, but I think he really means what he's saying. He thinks he can give me what Harry can, plus all those other things that Harry will always have trouble with.

He hasn't thought about what I want back, though, has he?

Draco let his lip curl and his eyes flick up and down Michael's body. "Hm. Well, I suppose I can understand where you're coming from," he said, letting his voice drag with reluctant interest. "But there's at least one bond with Harry that I've never shared with you."

"What is it?" Michael stood up straight himself, practically vibrating. "Tell me what it is. We can duplicate it."

You couldn't. You never could. The most amazing thing about this to Draco was not that someone would reach out to him while he was involved in a joining ritual—of course someone else might find him impossible to resist, and the ritual was not absolutely closed to outsiders until next Halloween—but that that other person wouldn't consider what was in this new bond for Draco. How could they match Harry's power, his laughter, the sight of him when he'd broken the phoenix web or when he'd Vanished Fenrir Greyback from existence for the crime of hurting Draco? Admiration was not enough; Draco saw that on enough faces every day. What really mattered to him was what could come back, as a gift, those things he couldn't invent or charm out of just anyone.

And Michael had nothing to offer on that scale.

"I can possess people," said Draco. "I've been in Harry's mind numerous times, practicing control of muscles and thoughts with him. Can you stand to let me possess you? I don't need as much practice any more, but that's one of the reasons I know I can trust Harry completely, because he never refuses me entrance to his mind. Will you let me do the same thing?"

"Of course," said Michael, and leaned down, holding eye contact. "I can't even imagine why anyone would refuse you."

You're about to find out.

Draco leaned back on the wall so that he would have some support, should his body sag, and leaped outwards into Michael's mind. He could have drifted among the thoughts, and let Michael sense him as simply a foreign presence. That was the Lighter side of his gift.

But the gift—born, as far as Draco could tell, from his transformed empathy mingled with something of the latent Black compulsion—was ultimately Dark now, a tool of domination and control. He had forced the Minister to do something he would never do, Stunning himself and the other Aurors so that Harry could escape during the jailbreak. And he was going to show Michael his true nature. He valued compulsion and control more than free will, unless it meant the free will of a few specific people, and he had no problems demonstrating that.

He lashed sideways, through Michael's mind, and took control of his body in the most painful way possible. He made all his muscles as taut as he could, and choked off his breath. For a moment Michael wavered, blue in the face, trying desperately to gulp in air. Draco showed off his complete indifference to the idea of Michael's death. After all, if the body he was in did die, Draco could always jump to another one. He could kill invisibly, undetectably, as he had on the battlefield at Midsummer, when he'd seized control of more than one Death Eater's mind and used his victims to guide others to the weak points in the wards—traps baited with deadly spells.

Draco had killed. And he did not regret it. He had felt sick while he did it, but afterwards, no guilt had troubled him. He let those emotions seep through to Michael, too, relentless indifference.

The gentle boy Michael thought he loved, who needed reassurance and admiration just to make it through the day, did not exist. What did was a Dark wizard on the verge of Declaring, and who would not hesitate to use his weapons to get his way, punish his enemies, and even inflict deadly lessons on those who irritated him. Draco was not Harry. He had no intention of holding back unless it was actually conducive to his goals to do so, while Harry would hold back to give others a chance to recover, or think, or choose another course.

Draco ripped himself free at last, knowing he would leave Michael with an enormous headache. He was back in his own body by the time the hold on Michael's throat eased, and he offered him a cool smile that made him flinch back.

"You should ask Harry to release you from your oath," Draco whispered. "He might want to give you a chance, but you and I both know, now, that you'll never have a chance with me."

"I could tell him that you flirted with me, that you encouraged me in the first place," Michael said. His voice was scratchy, and he coughed. Draco watched with satisfaction. He would feel the pain of choking, but there were no telltale finger-shaped bruises on his throat that might have got Draco in trouble.

"You could," Draco agreed. "And he would be angry at me, doubtless. And you could tell him that I possessed you, too, and forced you to see the truth, and he would be angry at me." He took a step closer. "But his anger will pass. Harry is in love with me. I don't think you understand that. His anger could last for months, and in the end, it would change to forgiveness. You have no standing in his eyes compared to me."

He waited until Michael's gaze, simmering with resentment—more for the breaking of his illusions than anything else, Draco thought—settled fully on him, and then added, "Besides, if you tell him, I'll be sure to know. And then what I did to you just now will seem like a Cheering Charm."

Michael flinched away from him, face sick with fear. Draco snorted. "The regard you had for me is insulting, you know," he told him. "My last name is Malfoy. And you believed me a kitten?"

He turned his back on Michael and walked in the direction of the dungeons, where he knew Joseph was working with Harry. Michael's eyes flared at his back the entire way. Draco doubted there was any love left in them now. He had wondered, at first, if Michael would refuse to learn the point and remain stubbornly, obliviously, around, waiting to pick up the pieces from a shattering between Harry and Draco that was never going to come.

Instead, it seemed that he hated Draco the more for having broken his false mirror so resoundingly.

Draco shrugged, delighting in the spare, elegant lift of his shoulders. He is free to hate me. It will not change matters. I am stronger than he is, and so is Harry. And while Harry might be inclined not to notice the snake in the grass until its fangs are sunk in his heel, I am more cautious. Together, we are impossible for someone like Michael to destroy.

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"Tell me again why you want the monitoring board to exist."

Harry stirred restlessly and stared down at his hand. "Do we have to go through this?" he asked. "I already told you everything I know, Joseph. It's not my fault that you understand none of it."

"I understand," Joseph said. "Or, rather, I understand your thinking. I don't think you understand your thinking."

Harry restrained a growl with effort. Bloody Seer. "Very well," he said, and made his voice as offensively bored as possible. Henrietta, and even Peter, would have given him detention for that tone. Harry was perturbed to see that it only made Joseph smile, as if he appreciated it. "I want the monitoring board in place to keep my bargain with the Light, and to insure that the trial of Gloriana Griffinsnest actually takes place."

"Not just that," Joseph said. "Or you would be content to dissolve it once her trial had happened."

This is the part that he doesn't understand. "I also want to encourage opposition to me," Harry said patiently. "I'm not sure that it would happen otherwise. The rebellion might seem too sweeping a victory to many, reducing them to gobbles and gasps in the corners. Voldemort's kind of opposition is mad. I don't think Falco Parkinson is far from mad—and besides, he works alone, not trying to gather allies. I want the monitoring board to have a chance to become what Scrimgeour wants the Ministry to be. It's a chance for ordinary wizards and witches to look around, realize I won't trample all over them, and start thinking instead of merely reacting."

"All of those are commendable ideals," said Joseph. "Or they would be, if you thought to point those new enemies at all proponents of irrationality, and not just at yourself. You told me that you value the monitoring board as chains on your power, boundaries on your sense of self. Why is that, Harry?"

"I am still a Lord-level wizard in power," said Harry. "Not a Declared Lord, and I never will be, but I can intimidate others, and prevent them from bringing up perfectly valid points that I've ignored. I want to show everyone that I won't ignore those points, that I value those other perspectives, that I'm willing to cramp and cripple my own magic, if necessary, so that they can have the security and space to breathe and think that they need."

He jumped, cursing, in the next moment. The bird had appeared on his shoulder without warning, and its claws had raked down the side of his face, a punishing gesture Harry had thought it incapable of now. He gingerly touched his hand to the freezing scabs and glared as the bird wheeled through the air, clacking its beak and hissing.

Its cold, vicious voice came to him as it had not for months now. Bound to you. Hate you. Love you. Hate being bound.

"I know you do," Harry muttered. "And that's one reason I won't let you go free. You would do damage if you were unrestrained."

The bird dived at him, claws spread wide. Harry ducked, and the creature passed over his head with a whiff of magic and wind and faded through the wall. Harry shook his head.

"Your magic is displeased at the thought of being cramped and crippled, I would assume." Joseph's voice held just the faintest trace of amusement.

"I can't help it that it's displeased," Harry snapped, sitting back up. "I can't just spread its influence wherever it wants to go. If nothing else, that encourages people to sway towards me because of the power of my magic. It's an unconscious compulsion, but it's a form of compulsion nonetheless. They'll make decisions just to get close to me, to feel that power for themselves."

"And when you know that resisting and cramping and caging your magic might send it back to Voldemort?" Joseph asked steadily.

Harry lowered his eyes.

"You are not to blame for the natural reaction your magic provokes in others," said Joseph. "Especially since caging it only results in its growing a personality and determining to break free once more. You have seen the disastrous consequences of that already, Harry. I believe it was called a phoenix web."

Harry exploded to his feet and paced back and forth across the room. Joseph's quarters were large, at least, and there was plenty of space for him to do that. "I don't know what to do. I've tried to give other people a chance to question me, and both Draco and Snape tell me the monitoring board was a bad idea—and then I find out that I've made people actually plot against me, like Madam Whitestag. I've tried to hold back my magic, and that only makes it angry and likely to go to my enemies. I tried to avoid interfering in the Ministry, and that didn't last long. I don't know how to keep the balance between allowing others freedom and allowing my magic enough freedom that it doesn't go mad." He ran his hand through his hair.

"That is what I have been hoping to hear from you," said Joseph, voice soaring with triumph. Harry frowned at him. Joseph smiled right back. "Your admission that forcing bounds on yourself that you would never dream of forcing on anyone else is a fool's dream. It won't work for practical reasons, and it should concern your ethics, should it not, that a vates is giving up his freedom?"

Harry leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. His magic lashed around him in coiled ribbons, shaking the maps and the banners.

"Now," said Joseph, "the only question left is why. You do not expect Falco Parkinson and Voldemort to hold themselves back."

"They're Dark Lords, or tending that way," Harry muttered, scrubbing his hand over his face. "Of course they won't restrain themselves."

"And Jing-Xi? Your Light Lady? Do you have a problem with the fact that when she arrives, you can feel her power through a door? You've said that she's interfered to settle problems in the Chinese wizarding community before, even in the Chinese Muggle government. And you don't hate her for that."

Harry hunched his shoulders.

"This comes down to holding yourself to standards that others don't have to fulfill," Joseph continued remorselessly. "And do not feed me that line about Lord-level wizards having more power and thus more need to be careful of their magic. You don't hold even other Lords and Ladies to your standard. You still see yourself as different, and I want to know why."

Harry resisted the impulse to curl up and tuck his head into his arms. That wouldn't remove Joseph's stinging words, dragging the truth out of him like the lashes of a cat o'nine-tails, and that wouldn't remove the fact that now he finally had to admit this to someone else. He had not said it before because he knew both Draco and Snape would overreact, refusing to take what he said seriously, and assuring him it didn't matter at all.

"I don't trust myself," he whispered.

"That is the truth," said Joseph, and Harry was achingly grateful that he had not said that of course Harry could trust himself. "And why don't you trust yourself, Harry? That, I wish to hear."

"You're not going to give up, are you?" Harry asked his arms.

"No."

Harry sighed. "I still remember the times when something pushed me, just a little, and I went Dark."

He heard a sharp movement, and looked up. Joseph was shaking his head. "I will not let you lie to yourself," he said. "Those provocations were anything but little. The Minister trying to steal your magic. Your mother attempting to convince you that you should retreat with her to Godric's Hollow and never show your face outside it again. Bellatrix Lestrange cutting off your hand." Joseph cocked his head. "It is inhuman to expect yourself to retain control in those situations, Harry. At the same time, part of the reason that you lost control so badly was your usual tight restraint. Surely you can see that? That some relaxation on your part will soothe the problems and solve them for everybody?"

"What if I cause trouble?" Harry whispered. "What if something happens to make me hurt someone else?"

"And now you are playing with hypothetical situations," said Joseph. "With what your mother told you, and what you still believe at some level, that you could become a Dark Lord. Hypothetical situations are the last refuge of the coward, Harry. You know the truth. You've hidden from it for a long time now. You've wanted to dissolve the monitoring board, to let your magic loose and flowing free. And you've decided that those desires are somehow inhuman and the product of a twisted mind." His voice lowered and became, to Harry's ears, horribly tempting, coaxing. "If you would allow this freedom to anyone else, Harry, why not yourself? Why must the vates fear and distrust himself, while other wizards have complete confidence in their own thoughts and motives?"

Harry looked away.

"Harry?"

"There isn't an answer," Harry said at last, his voice breaking. "I—I was hiding from the fact that there's not an answer, that there was a contradiction in my reasoning, and that I didn't want to find that out. It's more comfortable for me to be restrained and act within strict limits of what I can't and can do."

"I know that," said Joseph, and his voice had gone soft and compassionate. "But it's not healthy, Harry, not anymore." Harry could almost hear him fighting the temptation to add "if it ever was." Luckily, he successfully fought it. "You need to let yourself go more, for the sake of your magic and the sake of others, if you don't consider your own mental health a good enough cause. The world needs a vates, you've told me. But the world needs a happy and sane vates."

Harry slowly nodded. He still felt an enormous reluctance to do as Joseph said, given what could happen if he made the wrong decision and relaxed too many boundaries. But he could not stay like this. He had lost the ability to simply ignore the contradictions in his reasoning during his fourth year, he thought, when Vera saw the real reasons that he behaved as he did. He could refuse to examine them logically, but when they were brought out and paraded before his eyes, he had no choice but to change.

Joseph's arms curled around him. Harry tensed, then forced himself to loosen his muscles. I can start with this, he told himself. I can start with the fact that it makes other people feel good to hug me. Perhaps I can, in the end, accept that it might feel good to me, too.

"Now," Joseph said quietly in his ear. "I haven't asked for much commitment from you, Harry, other than to speak with me on a regular basis and think about what we discuss here. But I want you to carry this new understanding with you into the next meeting of the monitoring board, and see what happens."

Harry stirred unhappily, but didn't break out of Joseph's embrace. "Do I have to promise?"

"Yes. You do."

Harry swallowed. "Then I promise."

Joseph stepped away from him, smiling, and waved his wand to set a kettle of tea brewing. Harry sat down numbly in the chair he'd risen from earlier and stared at his hand, turning it over and over.

What if I don't have to spend the rest of my time researching Animagus training and other things useful to the war? What if I can have my second hand back if I just concentrate on it, think about it, do the research? What if other people would not be displeased to see me doing that?

Harry swallowed. He allowed himself, cautiously, to examine his own thoughts on getting a second hand.

He was surprised at how badly he wanted it.

He sighed. Of all emotions, desire was probably the hardest for him to both feel and acknowledge. But now he had a promise anchoring him, and the next meeting of the monitoring board was the first of December.

Dismally, he tried to persuade himself that it would be all right. He had managed to hold himself back during Loki's sacrifice, hadn't he? He could restrain his own desire to interfere when it was important.

And he need not fear himself. Perhaps.

"Drink your tea," Joseph said quietly, putting it in front of him.

Harry ended up using his Levitation Charm to do so. His hand shook too badly, as he caught a glimpse of what he was going to need to change, if he really could trust himself, and how radically and deeply it would need to do so.

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Aurora lifted her head like a hunting hound when Harry stepped into the room.

Something had changed. She needed no one to tell her it had. One learned to see these kinds of things for oneself, or one failed in politics—or found someone else leading one. Aurora smiled briefly, but, mostly, kept her eyes on Harry and tried to figure out the change.

He no longer walked as if he knew every path ahead, nor as if he had a hand out searching for someone to help and guide him. Instead, he moved like a child walking for the first time, terrified, but determined to do it. His eyes met hers, and Aurora saw them widen and then narrow, before Harry carefully looked away again. His face set into lines that she knew all too well, having looked at them in his guardian's face.

Aurora suffered the brief and terrible suspicion that, though neither Professor Snape nor the younger Mr. Malfoy was here, as she had asked, they were with Harry in spirit. Then she dismissed it as mere suspicion. Harry had shown his willingness to cooperate with the monitoring board. She would be acting against herself soon if she did not watch out.

"Harry," she said, with a brief, familiar nod to him. Most of the monitoring board was not yet there, only Madam Marchbanks, who turned the same kind of curious gaze on Harry that Aurora suspected she had used. Marchbanks's was much more obvious, though. "Is there something we can do for you? Any questions you wish to ask about the training in Light pureblood rituals, before the rest of the board arrives?"

"I came early because I wanted to speak to the two of you alone, actually." Harry ran his hand through his hair, and Aurora relaxed a bit. She knew that was his nervous gesture, and the shaky confidence he manifested was only a phantasm. Harry could not help but be himself, even when he tried otherwise. "I wished to ask Madam Marchbanks to take over the monitoring board."

Aurora felt the words catch in her throat, and she stared wildly at Harry.

Just for a moment, though. Then her backup plans fell into place, and she cocked her head and murmured, "That's very unfortunate, Harry. Have I done something to displease you? You must know that many of the Light wizards are comfortable with me as the head of the monitoring board, and wish to do nothing to disrupt the arrangement."

"I see no reason why they would balk at having Madam Marchbanks take over, Madam Whitestag, since she's Declared Light." Harry nodded at Marchbanks, who was watching him with narrowed eyes. "Provided that Madam Marchbanks agrees, of course."

"I do," said the old woman. Aurora restrained herself from giving her a glance of dislike, but it was a near thing. Marchbanks was necessary, she reminded herself. And at least Harry was not insisting that one of his Dark allies take the board—though he must have known that would not impress the Light wizards who ate out of Aurora's hand.

"I would still like to hear a reason why," said Aurora, and inflected her voice with hurt. "What have I done to merit such an extreme rejection, Harry?"

"Set your fellow Light wizards on me and mine like dogs." Harry's voice had no emotion. Aurora studied his face. His eyes were blank as fields of grass. "Lisa Addlington had orders to distract Draco, and provoke him to insure that I would agree to leave him out of the meetings in the future. Shadow had orders to attack Snape. You intended Marvin Gildgrace to draw out Narcissa, but she did not respond as you hoped."

How did he—But of course. Legilimency. Aurora supposed she should have guessed Snape's distraction during the prior meeting resulted from something more than just anger. If the reports of him were true, he would have grabbed his wand and cursed someone during the meeting, not just snapped ineffective insults in return for Shadow's far more effective ones.

"Is this true, Aurora?"

And now Marchbanks were speaking as if she were horrified. Aurora barely restrained herself from rolling her eyes. As if she has not made her own political compromises in her time! And she dares to scold me for making sure that the monitoring board functions as it should.

"It is true," said Aurora. "So far as it goes. You misunderstood my intentions with those provocations, vates. I truly feel that Professor Snape and Draco Malfoy are not the best influences on you. They may try to draw you down into the Dark and make you behave more like them than someone undeclared should."

"Then you could have approached me with that conclusion." Harry's voice and eyes once again gave nothing away. Aurora found it unnerving. The free play of emotion belonged in his tone and on his face. "One of the traits of the Light is honesty, is it not, Mrs. Whitestag? But you did not. Instead, you tried to separate me from them. And they are my guardian and my partner. Whatever their allegiance, you had no right to coax them from my side."

Aurora bowed her head submissively. She did seem to have fucked this up. Perhaps, though, the situation was not lost. "Will you still permit me to remain on the monitoring board, vates?" she asked softly. "I hope I have convinced you how passionately I care about the future course of your education, and your future influence on the wizarding world. I simply have not used the best methods to show it."

Silence answered her. Aurora looked up and found Harry's eyes fixed on her. Now they spoke, but with intensity, more than any single and specific emotion. Aurora forced herself to be passive, and regard Harry with an eyebrow that inched higher and higher as the moments passed.

She didn't bother looking at Madam Marchbanks. The old woman was too fully on Harry's side. She would be aghast at the thought of letting Aurora remain.

But Aurora knew political reality, and Harry knew his own reality. And he would think she had to remain, so that he would have at least one person fully committed to stopping him, should the worst happen and he lose control.

"If you remain, Mrs. Whitestag," Harry said at last, "I will require an oath from you."

This is not the way it is supposed to be. But Aurora kept her face calm and attentive, with no more sign that this troubled her than the tilting of her head and lifting of her other eyebrow. "Yes?"

"An oath beyond the Alliance oaths," Harry said. "An oath that says you will act out of concern for my education and my influence on the future of the wizarding world, and not out of concern for your own political advancement."

This is impossible. Aurora made her face as regretful as possible. "I cannot do that, vates, unless others will swear the same oath."

She watched Harry watch her, his eyes the picture of a stag before the hunters. His legs did not tremble, and he did not have antlers, but she knew he was cornered. He would hesitate to press her with another vow only she had to swear, and would not presume to restrict her free will in such a way.

"No one else on the monitoring board tried to take my loved ones from me." Harry's voice was low, but very clear. "They all either truly wish me well, or were obeying your orders. Mrs. Whitestag, I will have this commitment from you, or I will have you gone from the monitoring board."

He could not dismiss her. He could not. Aurora had too many of the right ears beside her lips. She could whisper one word, and the Light alliance with Harry would sway like a flag in the wind. He must know that. He must know that she could call his bluff, and it would all crumble.

But he did not seem to know that. His eyes remained bright, implacable. And his shaky confidence had returned. He might jump off a cliff, Aurora realized, but he was taking her with him.

For long moments, the staring contest endured, and then Aurora bowed her head. Harry could not afford to lose her from the monitoring board, if only because he would want to keep her close and watch what she did, but neither could she afford to be away from him for that long. Harry would either convert her allies, or they would do something stupid enough, without her guidance, to get themselves dismissed. And the Dark allies and Madam Marchbanks would close ranks against her, Aurora was certain. She would not be around to subtly influence people and remind them of what other alternatives than blindly following Harry vates existed.

"I shall swear that oath, Harry," she said at last, and used more regret. "If you really think it necessary."

"I do," said Harry.

He had no regrets, it seemed. Aurora, though irritated, had no choice but to draw her wand and swear by her magic and Merlin, while Harry watched her with those bright eyes. Then he leaned forward across the table, and included both her and Madam Marchbanks in his gaze.

"We should talk about how long the monitoring board's period of supervision over me lasts," he said.

Aurora concealed a groan. Who has done this to him?

I will learn, so that I can remove that influence from his life.

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Harry leaned against the telephone box outside of the Ministry and closed his eyes. He had used the Extabesco plene charm, so that anyone coming out could not see him. He was glad. He did not wish to be seen, and not for the usual reasons. He would present a picture of weakness just now, his face pale and damp with sweat, his legs shaking, his chest heaving as if he had run a mile.

And what had done it to him was something that few people would have found difficult. He had made Aurora Whitestag, who acted as an enemy to him even if she didn't mean to do so, step down as head of the monitoring board. He had made her reaffirm the commitments she said she had. He had argued the monitoring board's original determination to remain watching over him until he left Hogwarts down to the thirty-first of July next year, his seventeenth birthday and when he came of age. He had asserted legal rights that other people probably thought were common sense, and would have asked for the first day.

He had done it. And people had frowned, and whined, and tried to guilt him, but they had gone along. No one had stormed out of the room. No one had done much more than ask him some slightly sly questions. No one had told him he was infringing on her free will and he should draw back.

He had asserted himself, and nothing had gone wrong, and no one had died.

Harry tucked his head into his shoulder, shivering as the sweat on his skin began to cool and dry. This hurt. He had escaped the shell of one kind of prison, but the newer and wider world was far more frightening. In lessons with Jing-Xi and conversations with Joseph, he at least understood the rules, even if he feared he had already broken them in one case and resented what was asked of him in the other.

But this.

This.

Harry shook, on the verge of a panic attack, until at last it passed, and then he took a deep breath and stood. Nothing had gone wrong for him, either, and he was still alive.

But he would have to do this again, and again, until at last he learned not to restrain himself unreasonably or hold himself to unreasonable standards.

It must happen.

He ran his hand through his sweat-damp hair, murmured a drying charm, and turned to Apparate back to Hogwarts. He did catch a glimpse of the lizard-tailed bird, sitting on the high wall of the alley and watching him with something like approval before it took flight, wings clattering invisibly across the sky.