Chapter Fifty-Seven: Sacrifice, Power, and Joy
I will not give up.
After days of study, days of searching, Harry could say that only one book in the Hogwarts library contained the word "Horcruxes," and that alluded to them only as "Dark magic of which we are forbidden to speak." There were powerful destructive curses in some of those books—Snape had given him permission to use the Restricted Section—but none that would reverse an Unassailable Curse, and none that could stand in for a willing sacrifice.
Of course, Harry had known that. He tried to tell himself that he had known that. A willing sacrifice was the most powerful of magic, always. Nothing else could have changed the centaurs' nature from rapists to gentler creatures and allowed him to free them from their web. Nothing else could have enabled Charles Rosier-Henlin to so thoroughly destroy Karkaroff, as he had with the Pyra spell; it was sure to kill precisely because it required the suicide-sacrifice of a wizard. Nothing else could have destroyed a Horcrux.
No.
He would keep searching.
A hand slammed down on the book in front of him. Harry blinked at it for a long, stupid moment before he realized it was blocking the words he had tried to read, and that probably meant the interrupter wanted something of him. He sat back, blinking again, and looked up. Draco's eyes met his, shining with such intensity that Harry blinked a third time.
"What is it, Draco?" he asked. His voice was thready, but that came from hours of not using it. It had been a week since they returned to school, and Harry had not shouted himself hoarse with fury and frustration since the first day.
"I want you to tell me what you're doing," said Draco, his voice low and pleasant enough, but Harry could hear an edge within it. He frowned.
"You know what I'm doing," he said, even as he cast a privacy ward around them. They were hardly about to release word of the Horcruxes to the whole school. "Researching a way to get around the willing sacrifices. Or break an Unassailable Curse without using a sacrifice."
Draco just watched him. Harry found it hard to meet his eyes, and didn't know why. He knew he was doing the right thing. As Regulus had said, even if four people decided to sacrifice themselves for the sake of destroying the Horcruxes and had no loving connection to Harry, Harry would still need to be there and drain the magic that the soul shard clung to. If he could find one thing to make the task easier, one thing that would ease the agony of those deaths or make them not have to happen at all, then it was his duty to do so. He was twined in this, by the scar on his forehead, and the prophecy that overlapped him and Draco and his brother and Merlin knew who else, and the fact that Voldemort hadn't simply succeeded in killing him the first time.
"And I don't suppose you know anything about the monitoring board," Draco said, still in that reasonable voice.
"Of course I do," said Harry. He pitched his voice into the earnest tone of a second-year Hufflepuff answering questions in Transfiguration. "It's headed by Griselda Marchbanks, and it has equal numbers of Light and Dark wizards on it, and—"
"You don't know that they sent an owl wanting you to meet with them this weekend?" Draco cut in.
Harry shut his mouth and looked away.
"I thought so," said Draco. "You haven't been paying attention to anything outside the library in the past week, Harry. There's the owl from the monitoring board. There's a note from Ignifer Apollonis that I can't open, because it burns me every time I try. She charmed it so that only you could read it. That came Thursday, and I assume it's information she doesn't want to convey by the phoenix song spell. It might be urgent. And there's the fact that half of Slytherin wants to ask you to play Seeker for them in the Ravenclaw game, despite the fact that Sam's actually on the team." He paused for a moment, then added, "And there's the fact that you're slipping so badly in your classes that all the teachers have noticed, not just Belluspersona and Snape and Pettigrew."
"You could use her name," Harry muttered. "We're behind a privacy ward."
"I prefer not to slip." Draco's voice sharpened. "While you're locking yourself away from the world, Harry, life is going on without you. And it needs you. Idiot. Or do you really think that finding a way around those sacrifices will mean that you're no longer vates or a student at Hogwarts or a Slytherin or my partner anymore?"
"This is more important!" Harry hissed. "It has to be. You heard what Regulus said. I've got to be involved in—"
The look on Draco's face stopped him. Last year, it might have been hurt. Now, it was just black fury.
"More important," he said. "So I'm less important than the Horcruxes, am I?"
"Draco, you know what I meant—"
"No, actually, I don't know what you mean." Draco drew his wand, not taking his eyes from Harry. "We're supposed to be past this, Harry. Before, I could threaten to use binding spells and sleeping spells on you, and you'd sigh and let yourself be coaxed back into a semblance of a normal life. And then you reached the point where you didn't need that, where you were actually thinking of and looking out for yourself, and I relaxed. And then I passed through my Declaration. That means that I won't just threaten you now. I will use those binding curses and sleeping spells on you."
"Draco—"
Draco whispered Consopio, and Harry had to place a Protego before it to fend it off. "Stop this, Draco," he said, anger and fear and worry sharpening his voice to a diamond edge. "Stop."
He shook his head, white-blond hair tossing in several different directions. He didn't look exhausted, or upset, Harry thought. He looked bloody furious. "Do you want me to stop? Fight me, Harry."
"You're delusional—"
"You are, you wanker, for denying me what I want from you, for not fulfilling your promises, for acting like a bloody child when you know better!" Harry was glad that he'd thought to add a silencing spell to the privacy ward; Draco's yells would have brought Madam Pince running, otherwise. "If you were still suffering from your training and the idea that you had to do everything, I could excuse this. But you're not. And it's time that you learned better, Harry, and stopped falling back on that for everything. You've changed. You've grown up. So act like an adult, not a child! And if I need to treat you like a child who needs a nap, then I will." He aimed another sleeping curse, this time nonverbal, but Moody had taught Harry to recognize the wand movement for that one, and Harry deflected it, too.
He could feel irritation bubbling up in him, lava beneath broken pieces of ice. He was angry that Draco had interrupted his research, and he was worried that someone might come around the corner and see, if not hear them, squabbling like madmen, and he was—
He was conscious that Draco was right.
"Shit," he whispered.
He wasn't sure if it was the word or the softness of the word that made Draco lower his wand and eye him critically. Harry waved a hand vaguely to signal the duel was done, and sat down on the chair. Draco tensed, but Harry stared past him, and didn't return to the book. Draco seemed to consider that a reason to lower his guard and take another chair, though his wand remained steady.
"I can't bear it if someone else dies for me," Harry told the air. "Sylarana didn't know she would die, just that she was willing to. Sirius did it for both me and Connor, and to keep the world safe from Voldemort. That was how I lived with their sacrifices. But this—if Regulus is right, I'll either have to live with the knowledge that someone is dying because he loves me or ask perfect strangers to give up their lives based on the intention to destroy the Horcruxes."
"And save the world from Voldemort," Draco said, in his own most snide and irritating tone. "You always forget that bit, Harry."
"Shut it, will you?" Harry asked, but without heat, which he thought was the only reason Draco actually did it.
Harry sighed. "If this was three years ago, then I'd be able to get through these sacrifices by promising myself suicide at the end, to atone for them." He ignored Draco's leaning forward so fast that his elbow connected with the table, and the subsequent curses. "But that was before I swore to the vates path, and entered the joining ritual with you, and built the Alliance of Sun and Shadow, and decided that I'll actually have a future." He reached across the table, and Draco's hand was there, waiting for his. Harry squeezed it. "All those things have to continue. They matter to more people than just me."
"That's always your test, isn't it?"
"Always." Harry ignored the bitterness in Draco's voice. That was part of him, and it was not going to change. Harry rather liked that part of himself. "And it would be more selfish to neglect those concerns while I'm researching the sacrifices, or because of the sacrifices, when they're waiting."
"Or right beside you and willing to tell you when you're being an idiot."
"That, too." Harry stood up, with a sigh, and glanced at the books. Once, he had had a thick bubble that he could use to ignore reality, built by his training and his love of Connor and his conviction that if someone did try to tell him to live differently, it was merely because they did not understand the necessity of Harry's role. Now, the shells he could build were thin, and liable to rupture the moment reality introduced itself to him. Creeping in like a whipped dog was the knowledge that he had been ignoring: that he couldn't stop living because of this.
"Someday, you'll know this from the beginning, without having to reason yourself into it," Draco muttered, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and steering him from the library. "And without making me miss dinner."
"You can go to the kitchens, and I'm sure the owl sent from Hogsmeade will be waiting for me," Harry said, with a shrug.
Draco gave him a long, measuring glance. Harry frowned. It's a long time since he did that, like he doesn't understand me. Usually, he understands me too well. "What?"
"It doesn't bother you that I eat food the house elves provide, even though you don't," Draco said slowly.
Harry shook his head. "I wouldn't expect you to change that, Draco. You don't see anything morally wrong with it, so you're not being a hypocrite, and you grew up with it, so it's not as though it's a sudden habit you adopted at Hogwarts because it's convenient. What I can do is provide reasoned arguments if you ever want to listen, and hope to show you that life can be lived perfectly well without house elf labor. We have magic. We can do basic cleaning and cooking charms without much loss of our time. I don't think there's such a large difference between life with house elves as slaves and life with house elves free—except for the house elves, it means a great deal more than it ever will to us."
"It's a status symbol," said Draco. "A privilege. The Weasleys don't have any house elves. The Malfoys do. It makes a difference."
"Yes, but I think the difference is stupid," Harry pointed out.
"And yet you won't force me to change."
Draco's voice was wary, now, and Harry wondered how in the world he had gone from scolding Harry about sacrifice to sounding as if he feared to lose an argument about house elves. Harry could not understand why he would be afraid of losing an argument. All he had to do was not listen to Harry, if he really wanted to keep the same opinion, and if he changed his mind because the arguments were good enough to convince him, then surely that only proved his desire not to change his mind had been wrought out of stubbornness in the first place, and not reason?
"Of course not," said Harry, and kissed the side of his cheek. "Vates, remember? I'm not forcing you to change, Draco."
"You would like it if I did."
"Yes."
"And you could."
"Could what? Could force you to change?" Harry stopped walking and turned around, gripping Draco's shoulder. It was Draco's turn to avoid his gaze. Harry shook him slightly. "Draco, I won't use compulsion. And you know that. And what else in the world could force you to change?"
"Threats," said Draco, sounding sulky. "Promises. Growing more distant and colder to me until I do."
Harry shook his head. "That's not what I do, Draco."
"But you know that I will?" Draco cocked his head, and his eyes had returned to that earlier intensity. "They're tools in a Dark wizard's arsenal, Harry, and I will use them sometimes. If not with you, with others. And with you, too, if they're the only way I can get you to stop being an idiot, or come to your senses, or not do something stupid."
"I know that," Harry said, beginning to feel faintly exasperated. "Suffice it to say, Draco, that you weren't the first Dark wizard I ever met."
"And you're fine with it," Draco clarified. "And you won't force me to change the way I act."
"No."
"Why did you ignore me when I half-choked Michael, then?"
Harry shoved his shoulder. "Now you're being deliberately obtuse. You know there's a difference between consequences for an action and forcing you to change your behavior. That's what's going to happen if you play around with someone else's emotions deliberately, or for the same reason you did with Michael's, except that next time it would be a week, and after that a month. That doesn't mean I'll enter your mind and try to alter your beliefs, Draco, or chase you down and prattle at you about house elves until you convert. When you jump off a step, you know gravity's going to pull you down, don't you? It's not the stair's fault if you fall and cut your knee. You chose to do it. But the stair won't force you to jump down, and neither will I."
"You're human, Harry," Draco said, so quietly Harry could hardly hear him. "You can't expect your decisions and your punishments to have the force of natural law."
"I'm going to try to come as close as I can to that." Harry stared into his eyes. "I love you, Draco. I'm in love with you—and that's the only person I can say that about, even as I love others. I don't like punishing you. But neither am I going to say that your actions have no consequences just because you're my partner and my lover." He managed to say that without blushing. Harry was proud of himself.
Draco studied him with troubled eyes, then tugged on Harry's arm. "Come on," he said with forced lightness. "Let's find your owl."
Harry let Draco pull him along, much as he let him change the subject. He knew Draco still didn't really understand. He wondered if he ever would, until or unless he changed his mind on house elves and like subjects.
Perhaps it was like Draco not understanding about the sacrifices. He would claim that if someone wanted to kill himself to destroy a Horcrux, why should Harry worry? It was the individual's free choice.
He didn't believe, as Harry did, that death ended all opportunities for change. He didn't see, as Harry did, the world full of glorious souls packed with glorious possibility, and that the moment a person died, that stripped away the possibilities for them. Harry didn't want people sacrificing their lives for him because he believed he was not worth it, but, also, he did not want to be the reason that lives full of grander chances ended. Who knew what better things those sacrifices might have done, had they been allowed to live?
Thus why he had wanted his parents to live. Thus why he hadn't killed Dumbledore until driven to do it in the last extreme. Thus why he hadn't wanted to turn his back on his brother, Draco, and Parvati even during those few weeks in September when they were driving him mad. He could see himself as a champion of free will and a champion of life. He did not want to be a champion of death.
Which, really, should be selfish and Slytherin enough on Harry's part to content Draco. Harry wondered if he would ever manage to express it to him in words that would.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Draco should be looking at his book, he knew. They had a Transfiguration exam tomorrow, Professor Bulstrode making sure they hadn't forgotten their lessons over the holidays, and, as Peter had warned him, Transfiguring other humans was distant enough from becoming an Animagus that Draco's growing expertise in one wouldn't help him in the other. He had to pay attention.
Instead, he found his gaze continually straying to Harry, who lay curled with his head on the pillow and one arm around his face, in a defensive posture he usually adopted when he didn't want someone to see his emotions or his tears. It worried Draco that Harry was sleeping that way.
But he had been sane. He had done what he had to do. He'd eaten a late dinner, and answered the monitoring board's request for a meeting with a letter that simply said he would come but bring both Snape and Draco with him, and opened Ignifer's note—it said something about information from her father, Draco gathered, and Harry had immediately contacted her and told her that it wasn't worth bargaining with Cupressus yet, given what he would demand in return—and he'd talked to the rest of Slytherin House about playing Seeker. Draco had been present for the conversation, and he would have said in the beginning that the other Slytherins would win. Yet Harry had spoken reasonable words about practices and fairness to other players and the harmony of the team, and in the end he'd walked out of the common room with Sam still secured as Seeker.
Draco could not understand it—not how Harry had won without hexing people, not why he had wanted to refuse the position of Seeker in the first place when the rest of the Quidditch team was falling over themselves to offer it to him, not why Harry wouldn't simply use some of his power to get what he wanted.
So, yes, compulsion was right out, but there were threats, intimidation, and the resource Draco thought Harry most underestimated: the sheer, shimmering power of his magic, which, unbound as Harry carried it lately, made other people practically twitch to be near it. That was entirely natural, the wizardly longing for magic. Harry might not have a Declaration, and he might be making no efforts to recruit more sworn companions as Voldemort had recruited his Death Eaters, but he still had the power of a Lord or a Lady, and at base that was what drew other wizards or witches to him. To stand in the presence of such a pure example of what they coveted was enough for some people. It would make others listen. And still others would at least assign themselves as neutral parties in relation to Harry, because Lords were too rare to destroy. One had to put down a mad dog like Voldemort. Otherwise, they were to be spared if at all possible.
And Draco had seen Harry use all of those in the past.
Only when he absolutely thought he had to. Only when he believed something more precious would be lost if he hesitated than if he acted.
Power under restraint was such an alien thing to Draco. He supposed that was the Lucius in him. Narcissa moved more gracefully and elegantly, that was true, but she moved, and used the clever words and political connections that were her particular weapons as she saw fit.
Harry could do so much more than any of them, and yet he preferred to do so much less.
Draco put his Transfiguration text down, not even pretending to pay attention now, and folded his hands behind his head to consider Harry. Harry was content to let him have his path, the path of the Dark that was already changing Draco in ways he could notice and, doubtless, in ways that he didn't notice. Certain spells were easier now, others more difficult. He could feel a vague hostility towards any Light wizard, though that died as the days progressed and the wheel of the year since the ritual turned. He found himself more confident, more prone to expressing his opinions. That might have been magic, but it might as easily have been his renewed sense of a place in the wizarding world. He had a solid foundation on which to stand. He was part of a tradition that stretched back generations, and didn't only include Malfoys. He was an adult, in ways that even turning seventeen wouldn't make him.
Harry neither tried to sway him from that road, nor felt inclined to follow it. It was as if he were merely moving in company with Draco, down a parallel but unconnected path.
Yet most people Draco knew argued for their beliefs. Couples ended their love affairs over them. Potter still hadn't approached the Patil bitch again, or at least not on any permanent basis. The state of things between Granger and Smith had settled into something like all-out war. Even Terry Boot's girlfriend, a seventh-year Ravenclaw Draco didn't know, was capable of extended bouts of nasty silence, after which Boot usually apologized.
He and Harry should clash so strongly—Dark-raised and Dark-Declared versus Light-raised and undeclared, pureblood versus halfblood, traditionalist versus revolutionary, ordinary wizard versus Lord-level—that they would be continually driven apart, unless one of them changed his views to support the other. And yet they didn't.
Draco would have felt easier if he could have understood why.
Perhaps it's a result of some things that don't change, he decided slowly, as he picked up his Transfiguration text again. Professor Bulstrode would not understand a preoccupation with his lover, no matter who said lover was. We change, we change all the time, but there are basics that don't. It's the Dark for me, and Harry's love for self-sacrifice, for him.
Perhaps he should trust to its working, Draco thought, and think less about how it did.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
"He is worse than we thought, then."
Harry simply nodded, not really trusting himself to speak. After some hesitation, he'd decided to tell Jing-Xi about the Horcruxes. If he failed, and Voldemort moved to take over more of the world than Britain, the other Lords and Ladies would need to know the secret of his immortality.
Jing-Xi leaned back in the chair she usually used when they met. Her power crept throughout the room, Harry had found, and wrought subtle transformations, or Transfigurations. The chair grew larger, and with sunbursts along the arms and on the back, or with dark patterns that mimicked the patterns of her waving hair. The stone above the hearth turned rose-colored. A subtle scent of flowers, not ones Harry was familiar with, wafted through the air. Harry assumed they were natural attendants on Jing-Xi, or perhaps on any Light Lady. It wasn't as though he'd ever met one before, to know. Or perhaps she'd made a special study of Transfiguration, or magic of the senses. That might fit with her interests as a research witch.
Before Harry had finished studying the new shape the hearth was sculpting itself into, Jing-Xi leaned forward and captured his attention again. "I will tell the others about Voldemort when I speak to them," she said. "I will meet Pamela Seaborn, the Light Lady of America, in a week's time. For now, Harry, there is another part of your etiquette training that you have not yet mastered, and should before you make contact with anyone Lord-level other than me."
"Which part?" Harry sat up nervously. So far, his etiquette training with Jing-Xi had consisted mostly of history, which she'd told him enough of to make his head spin. There was the Pact, which made Lord-level wizards and witches not interfere with each other's magical communities. There were procedures for dealing with wizards and witches like Jing-Xi, whose power grew for decades, and procedures for dealing with wizards and witches whose power had mostly come on them by the end of their second decade, who were more common; Jing-Xi said Tom Riddle had been one of those. There were permissions to be asked before one visited another country that had a Lord or Lady in it, and the reasons those permissions had come about. There was the dizzying dance done to keep those of the Light and those of the Dark away from each other's throats. And there were more names of historical, dead Lords and Ladies than Harry knew if he could remember. But Jing-Xi had spoken relatively little about what Harry should do when he met someone else of his power level in person yet, because, as she had said, she was the only one he would have occasion to meet and not battle for now.
Jing-Xi gestured at the hearth, and then at her chair, which this time was sea-green with the waving patterns done like seaweed, as Harry had thought of the first time he saw her hair. "The signs," she said. "These are the small, involuntary manifestations of one's magic. They tell a visitor what to expect, and they reassure him or her of honesty. Of course, most wizards and witches of lesser power are surprised or afraid when they see what I do without trying—" she tapped the chair "—so for the most part we keep our magic behind light barriers. In the presence of another Lord or Lady, those barriers constitute a lie. We let them fall. The signs that emerge tell those we meet something about us, our moods and states of mind and health." She leaned forward and fixed her eyes on Harry. "Each time, I have warded this room so that our magic does not spill outside it. Since I am stronger than you are, you could not destroy Hogwarts by letting go of your power while I am here. Yet that does not happen. You have kept the barriers up. I have no idea what your signs are."
"I told you about the bird," said Harry, feeling a touch defensive. "No one else can see it, not just you, and I don't know how to make it become visible."
Jing-Xi shook her head calmly. "That bird happened only because of the twists that the connection between you and Voldemort has taken since his resurrection. Thomas told me the whole fascinating theory of it. Your signs, Harry, are yours. They occur in relation to no other wizard. I want to see them."
"So would I," Harry muttered.
Silence. Then Jing-Xi said, with exactly the tone of voice Thomas used when he encountered something completely new, "You don't know what they are?"
Harry shook his head.
He could not have borne pity, but Jing-Xi did not exhibit any. She regarded him with steady dark eyes, then nodded. "I suppose that should not be surprising, since your situation is unusual," she said. "Drop your barriers, Harry, and we will see them for the first time together. It is an honor. Usually, Lords and Ladies come into their signs so young that they know them thoroughly by the time they meet another of our power."
Harry swallowed. "I've never dropped my barriers completely before, except during—" Well, he wasn't about to tell her the details. That was something shared and private, between him and Draco.
"You cannot hurt the school," Jing-Xi whispered. "Nor me. If there is anyone in your life you can relax with, Harry, it should be a Lady or a Lord. Now."
Harry worked to still his rapid, panicked breathing, and closed his eyes. He tried, as hard and sincerely as he could, to imagine all his barriers falling, and the magic coming out.
He heard a deep purr as the magic expanded around him. Then Jing-Xi said, "Open your eyes, Harry."
Harry did, and was startled to find that the room had become bright and deep, the walls splashed with jeweled colors: green, blue, purple, like a jungle dreaming at night. Now and then he thought he saw a tree, but the colors were too abstract to make a true painting. The shadows of animals stalked through the jungle. When Harry focused on them, he saw a snake, golden of scale and green of eye like Sylarana, and a lynx, and a huge black cat with eyes as green as his own, which turned and hissed at him.
"Ah," Jing-Xi breathed. "That is what your magic does when left to its own devices, Harry."
"Make a jungle?" Harry tore his gaze away from the circling shadows to face her again.
"Create," Jing-Xi said, severe and serene. She was watching the colors and the animals with an expression of honest wonder, honest pleasure, which made Harry fight to keep from hiding all the magic again at once. A sliding sensation, like raindrops, trickled along his skin. He wasn't sure if it came from his connection to the magic thrumming all around them, or from her magic interacting with his, or from the fact that someone else was looking and seeing. "The colors will reflect your dominant moods, I believe. The snake is important to you in capacities you have already explained. The lynx?" One of her tendrils of dark hair waved to point at Harry.
"I think it'll be my Animagus form."
Jing-Xi nodded, and held out her hand. One of the dark cats paused in spitting at Harry and trotted to her, delicately extending its nose to sniff her fingers. A bright white spark of lightning leaped between them when it did so. The cat hissed and leaped away with claws that flickered silver, then melted into the colors with the other shadows. Harry realized he was raising his barriers in shock.
"No," Jing-Xi whispered. "Do not send them away, not yet."
Reluctantly, Harry forced them down again, and the signs reappeared. Two dark cats followed a golden snake along the far wall, while a lynx played beneath them. A third dark cat coiled in a half-tree and watched Jing-Xi with wariness Harry had sometimes felt on his own features when someone was trying to get him to do something he didn't like.
"I don't know what those cats are," he felt compelled to say.
Jing-Xi smiled and glanced at him. "And I did not know why I changed furniture as I do until I was forty-three," she said. "Do not worry, Harry. You will figure it out in time." She sat back and looked at the walls in contentment.
"Should we—"
"Hush," Jing-Xi whispered. "Your magic is free for the first time in your life, Harry. Enjoy it."
Harry sat back in his chair and tried. He found it easier to phrase it in his head as words, though; the odd joy and the thrumming traveling his nerves was too new. This is what I can really do. And it doesn't hurt anyone. All it wants is to exist by and for itself, to be used and enjoyed. It doesn't need to answer to anyone else's call to be worth something.
His breathing eased, and gold flooded the blue and green and purple like the sun rising in a distant sky.
"Beautiful, Harry," Jing-Xi said.
And, for the first time, Harry could feel that it really was.
