Chapter Sixty-Three: And Fire Goes Free

"Harry!"

Harry jerked his head up. He was becoming more attuned to joy than to anger now, at least if the anger wasn't confined in a ritual Draco had told him only later was called the Presence of War, and the joy in Hermione's voice was transcendent.

"What is it?" he asked, as she ducked around a shelf and avoided Madam Pince's glare as if by accident. She pushed a piece of parchment into his hand and stood beside the table, bouncing from foot to foot. Harry, glancing over her shoulder, saw that Zacharias had followed her and hovered near the door of the library, blinking now and then. He wouldn't often have seen her like this, Harry guessed.

"Just read the letter," said Hermione. "It's not from one of the people I sent 'Fourteen Simple Spells or Charms That Can Substitute For House Elf Work' to, but I think that doesn't matter. Wait until you see who it is from. More people are hearing about E.L.F., Harry!"

Harry smiled and shoved his book aside. He'd been researching the ethics of willing sacrifice for some means of getting around Horcruxes, but he could afford to take a few minutes and see what had made Hermione so excited.

The letter was written in a flowing, wavy script Harry had never seen before, and blue ink. He half-closed his eyes as words about blue ink came back to him, from the books that Aurora Whitestag and Griselda had insisted he study. The color meant a desire for peace and reconciliation, and was often used for treaties. The script, though—he couldn't remember seeing a mention of that anywhere.

Dear Harry:

I know we have met before, but it was not under the best of circumstances. When I heard about your desire to free house elves, I persuaded one of my allies, of the Fiona family, to send a copy of his letter on the subject to me. I had not received one, for obvious reasons.

I find your arguments compelling. Given that I try to live, always, in accordance with the ideals of the Light, I would not like to think I had enslaved house elves, even accidentally. But I am not convinced by the idea that the webs have endured since ancient times and have induced the desire for natural servitude in the elves, rather than preyed on it. I would like to meet with you and discuss this further. If you manage to persuade me, I would free my house elves.

That last is on my honor as a wizard and a faithful follower of the Light.

Of course, it would be wrong, according to the ancient dances, for you to visit me alone and without an introduction, and most of your allies would find my estate—painful, given the number of wards that are up to protect my family against Dark wizards. Therefore, I would ask that you bring my daughter with you. She knows the place, and can reassure you of both the position of the wards and my good intentions. I look forward to the visit.

Yours in the Light,

Cupressus Apollonis.

With an effort, Harry kept himself from balling up the parchment and throwing it across the room. He did manage to summon a smile and look up at Hermione with that smile firmly in place.

"That's brilliant, Hermione," he said.

"No, it's not." Hermione narrowed her eyes and leaned forward to stare into his face. "What's the matter, Harry? Don't you think he's sincere?"

At one point, Harry might have lied to make her feel better. Now, he shook his head. "No," he said. "He's still angry that Ignifer refused him by becoming Dark. He cursed her with infertility. And now he wants me to bring her along when we go to his estate in Ireland. I think this is just another ploy to get her back."

"He doesn't say anything about that," Hermione pointed out doubtfully, looking at the letter as if it would somehow proclaim Cupressus's bad intentions through the ink.

"Well, he wouldn't, would he?" Harry shook his head and made an attempt to calm himself. It was hardly Hermione's fault that Cupressus had been the first to respond, though it was a disappointment. "But, trust me, Hermione, this is just a ploy. The day he's sincere about freeing his house elves is the day he takes the curse off Ignifer, and I don't think that will ever happen."

Hermione's eyes and face were chill. "So he said he would take the curse off if she—"

"Came back to him and Declared for Light again." Harry swept a hand over his face. "After Declaring for Dark because the wild Dark saved her life when she called. She's only keeping her word of honor. But, of course, that word of honor is null and void when it comes to the Dark."

"So what should I do?" Hermione looked doubtfully at the letter. "This was folded up inside a letter for me that said my project sounded interesting to him and he wanted more information. I thought he was sincere then. He spoke of the Light and free will and how much he wanted to obey the ideals of the Light."

"Oh, he does," said Harry, his mind lingering on the unpleasant man he'd met almost a year ago now, at the spring equinox alliance meeting. Cupressus was another Augustus Starrise, another Lucius Malfoy, dedicated to the Light but far more dedicated to having things all his own way. "Just his interpretation of them."

Hermione nodded. "And you think that would include treating Muggleborns like house elves?"

Harry blinked. "I don't know all the specifics of that," he said. "But I think it might."

Hermione nodded again. "And Merlin knows, I could never live with anyone who did that," she said.

Zacharias flinched. Harry shook his head, and turned back to his book as Hermione left the library. "I'll write an answer to Cupressus thanking him but refusing his offer," he called after her—quietly, so as not to rouse the wrath of Madam Pince. "What you choose to do is up to you."

"Isn't it always?" Hermione said, and then snapped out of the library and was gone. Harry went back to concentrating furiously on what the book had to say about willing sacrifices. So far, it merely consisted of repeating what Acies had told them, but in more boring terms and with less clear and succinct language.

There is a way. Somewhere, there must be a way.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

"Hermione?"

She halted in walking down the hall and turned to face him, her hands on her hips and the letter from Apollonis crumpled against her robe. "What is it, Zach?"

She knows I hate to be called that. But it wasn't something Zacharias could complain about—not now, not when so much else lay between them. He took a deep breath and tried for a winning smile that didn't come out that winning when Hermione faced him with her glare. "Can we talk?"

"Will it end better than our last conversation?" There was a slice of pain in her eyes, buried deep. Zacharias was almost glad to see it. At least it made her more human, without the constant bustle and determination that had lifted her, for a while, into the realm of someone not all that human, like Harry.

"That was your fault—" Zacharias began.

Hermione took a step towards him. "Zacharias, you implied that not only were house elves beneath your consideration as a serious topic of conversation, but so were the rights of Muggleborns. I've found means of discrimination in the laws. Only Muggleborn children are monitored for the use of magic at home. That's what all that elaborate Ministry language meant." She took a deep breath that had pain dragged on the end of it. "Now, I can think of some reasonable arguments you could present to that, though I wouldn't accept them. That there are no magic-using adults in Muggle homes, for example, and so Muggleborn children need to be forbidden from using their wands during the holidays in case of accidents. Even though it does mean that they come back to school with less practice doing certain kinds of spells, which I'm sure is a coincidence," she added in a mutter. "But you said that only a fool would think that was an interesting thing to talk about."

"I—" Zacharias swallowed what he had meant to say, which was a defense of the pureblood point-of-view, and looked at her, hard. Hermione was tired, and her eyes avoided his for a moment, as though she wanted to brace herself for the coming argument. But, for the first time, those signs didn't comfort him with thoughts of an imminent victory just ahead. They made him feel—wrong. It was wrong that Hermione should look that way, but especially wrong that she should look that way when speaking with him.

He held out his arm. "Can we walk?"

The stunned glance that she lifted to him hurt; he could admit it. But he kept holding out his arm, and didn't specify a position for her to grip it in with his own hand. He left it up to her whether she would walk with him as a pureblood witch or an ordinary woman.

Hermione blinked for a moment, then shifted the letter from Apollonis to her left hand and draped her fingers over his arm. Zacharias noticed, and told himself not to rejoice in, the fact that she'd taken up the position of an older witch being escorted by a younger wizard.

They paced down the hall together, and headed out the doors, by common agreement. Zacharias cast a warming charm; the February air bit more than he would have expected, and Hogwarts's grounds were deep in snow. Hermione cast a complicated spell, one of her variants, that warmed both her hands and her robes. Zacharias felt as if he were walking next to a roaring fire.

Would you be stupid enough to reject a new spell just because someone who wasn't pureblood invented it?

Of course, from what Zacharias knew of history, his ancestors hadn't done that, and nor had other pureblood wizards. They had simply adopted the spell into their own repertoires and detached it from its owner as soon as possible, so that no one would know someone with dirty blood had been its source. It was of a piece, or so said Hermione, with denying they had any Muggle ancestry, or saying that every Lord-level wizard had been pureblood. It was a commonly accepted truism, but that did not make it the truth. Half of pureblood history was woven of lies, of stories that made good stories but poor truth.

Zacharias did not think it was half. A tenth, at most. But he was in love with a woman who believed otherwise, and he would have to either compromise with her or lose her.

He blinked at the wall of the courtyard, which was covered with traceries of frost. Discovering that he was willing to compromise should happen in a calm setting with sweet wine and a chance to think, he thought. Not outside in a cold so keen he was beginning to shiver once more.

Before, he hadn't seriously thought of listening to what Hermione said. She would get over it, and they would live together the way they had planned, putting one over on smug pureblood society by pretending to be part of it in public and laughing about it in private.

Only, the months had passed, and Hermione had not changed her stance, nor grown less interested in the Grand Unified Theory and the concept of rights for Muggleborns that would make them equal to pureblood wizards. And now she was interested in house elf rights, and Zacharias knew there was no way she could pretend to be pureblood again. Too many people would know her name now as the person who made up lists of reasons to stop using house elves and sent them in the post.

Zacharias had held back. He had tried to argue her around, and he had tried to use cold silence to make her come running back, and he had tried to reason with himself that this was the only thing he could do. His mother had taught him the importance of family and heritage—and heritage was what this was really about, not blood. Hermione would have to see that, too, or else she just wasn't a good wife for him.

But maybe I wasn't a good husband for her, either, the way I was acting.

"Hermione?" he asked at last.

"Hmmm?" She tilted back her head to look at him. She had a snowflake caught in her eyelashes. Last year, Zacharias would have taken the chance for a kiss, but they were too far apart to risk it right now.

Still, though. He had made sacrifices of his own. The badger scar on his cheek, left over from his summoning of Helga Hufflepuff when he had learned that Hermione was dying of a Severing Curse, twinged. He had done what was only supposed to be done for blood or love, and he was going to let her go?

He stepped away from her and lifted her hand to his lips. "Can we begin again?" he asked, breath warm against her skin.

Hermione did not melt as he would have liked her to; she considered him carefully instead, lights rippling and gleaming in her brown eyes. "And you'll consider what I have to say seriously?"

"Yes."

"And you won't assume I have any desire to conform to what purebloods want, that there's some inherent rightness in those rituals that I have to sense just because I'm Muggleborn?" Defiant words, bravely spoken, but Zacharias could hear the yearning underneath her tone. He was not the only one who had missed someone.

"I won't assume that," he said, and moved closer, and clasped her hands in his own, looking earnestly down at her. "The one unforgivable crime, my mother taught me once, is lying to yourself. And I've been doing it for months now. I've pretended that rituals matter more to me than you." He shrugged. "And that's not true."

Hermione's mouth fell slightly open, and then she caught herself and shut it again. "I can think of other unforgivable crimes," she muttered.

Zacharias held her eyes, and waited. He had made the first moves. She would have to make the next set. He had made mistakes. So had she. If she was unable to compromise, then they would have to separate.

Until the next time you realize how much you miss her, the taunting voice in the back of his head whispered.

Zacharias ignored it, and waited.

Hermione sighed, and stepped forward, and kissed him, delicately, on the lips. It wasn't all that proper; the partner of purer blood was supposed to guide the kiss, in most dances. But Zacharias let it pass, this once.

"I'll let you have a chance," Hermione whispered. "One more."

The words did not frighten him. Where there was one more chance, there was the ability to win a second. Or a third, or a fourth.

The courtyard of Hogwarts was as strange a place to come back together again as it was to discover he was in love, Zacharias thought. But he would take it.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

"I don't think it's a good idea."

"I can't pass it up." Ignifer paced back and forth in the center of the room, not looking at Honoria. "You know what he has. Harry didn't say anything about that in his letter, so I'm sure Father hasn't mentioned it to him. He has information, Honoria. Information about Lucius dealing with the Unspeakables, but also information about one other person." She spun, letting her robes flare behind her. It was easier to watch their swirl than to look into her lover's eyes. "We need that information. Who knows who the other person is? I've tried to think, but the clues he gives are too vague."

Honoria stepped in front of her, grasping Ignifer's chin and forcing her to look at her. "You know what price he's going to demand."

Ignifer took a deep breath and met Honoria's eyes. They were full of love and compassion, but also fear.

She really thinks that I'll walk into my old house and give away my freedom.

Ignifer reached out, gripping Honoria's wrist and holding it tighter and tighter until the smaller woman let her go with a wince. "I have to do this," she whispered. "I want to do this. It's possible that he'll ask some smaller price from me than the surrender of my free will and the Declaration back to the Light, and Harry needs that information. He's given me so much, Honoria: a place to belong and be myself again. I want to give something back to him."

"You've sworn the oaths of the Alliance," said Honoria, anger bleeding into her voice. She moved her head in a single sharp jerk that reminded Ignifer of a gull pecking at something that annoyed it. "You've saved his life. You've fought for him. What more does he have a right to ask of you?"

"It's not what he has a right to ask of me," Ignifer said softly, turning away. "It's what I want to offer."

"You know that your father would make you give me up," Honoria told her back. "He would say that you couldn't have a female lover if he accepted you back into the family. He would want you to marry someone and bear him a magical heir. For all that the Light families don't care about magical heirs, Ignifer, your father was certainly pleased that you were his, wasn't he?"

"He was," said Ignifer distantly. She remembered the days she had spent with Cupressus, asking questions no one else would be allowed to ask, touching objects in his study that would have involved curses if her younger siblings had touched them, and learning old secrets of Ireland that not even the other Light pureblood families knew. Once, she had known her world and her life and her place. She had given up more than mere comfort, more than a home, when she chose the Dark. And now it was her choice to go back and face what she had left behind.

Honoria did not understand. She was not going to embrace principles she had abandoned. She was going to embrace freedom.

But sharing the idea would diminish the prospect, somehow, Ignifer felt. She wanted to hold and entertain this idea alone.

And, if nothing else, it made a good test of how much Honoria and Harry really trusted her, what they thought she would do in pursuit of freedom.

She turned and cast a handful of Floo powder into the flames. Her mother's head appeared almost at once; Ignifer so rarely firecalled first that she thought the house elves had standing orders to fetch one of her parents when she did.

She met Artemis's eyes and spoke in Latin, the language of her childhood, her first language, the kind of peace offering her mother would mistake for more than it was. "Tell Father that I'm coming home, and that I will accompany Harry when he does so, to talk about house elves."

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

"Vates. A pleasure." Cupressus Apollonis performed a flowing bow. He straightened up and kept his eyes on Harry, not Ignifer, though she stood right behind him. From reading those books on the Light pureblood rituals, Harry knew this was how it was supposed to go, each guest welcomed individually. "I greet you with no blade, with no shut door, with no wand raised, but with an open door and in the hopes that you will consider this house your own."

A pretty blessing. Harry extended his magical senses as he inclined his head, a bit, and returned the proper words. He wanted to sniff out any compulsion spells Cupressus might be using before they found him. There must be a reason that Ignifer had persuaded him to come to her father's house and talk about freeing the house elves, and there must be a reason that she had chosen to accompany him, but Harry did not know what it was. Cupressus compelling her would make a good explanation. "And I step through the open door onto a path that I can hope will be walked in the light of sun and moon and stars and fire, themselves each a source of light."

Cupressus sighed softly. "Ah. I do not often hear the old words any more. Such a pleasure to have them vibrate in my ear." He turned to Ignifer then, and held out his hands, in a simple mark of appreciation that Harry could not have made—but would when he had his left hand back, Harry reminded himself, to silence his momentary envy. "And daughter. Welcome home."

Harry started, then caught himself and averted his eyes. The blessing was the one a parent would actually use to welcome a straying child, even though he knew that Cupressus could be doing no such thing, given how Ignifer would have to abase herself before her father would welcome her back.

He wouldn't, would he?

Harry had to admit, grudgingly, that he had less idea of what Cupressus Apollonis would and would not do than he had thought. He understood Lucius well through long exposure, and the key to Augustus had been his obsession with his dead sister, but this man was more of a mystery.

"Father," said Ignifer, and took one of his hands, and kissed both his cheeks.

Harry had to drop his eyes to the carpet so he wouldn't stare this time. He shook his head slightly and stepped forward, looking around the house so that he wouldn't try to speculate on the mechanics of a dance he didn't understand between parent and child. He had never been very good at that, anyway, given how little experience he had of true parenting.

The Apollonis home was large, with light flooding everywhere. Rather than walls, Harry saw, most of the house was all window, enormous planes of glass stretching from floor to ceiling, reinforced with spells so wind couldn't shatter them. Other spells, subtle enough that he had to work to notice them, collected the sunlight from outside and channeled it into beams that flashed and twinkled on the golden wood of the walls. The sun was not bright outside today—ordinary, pale winter light, barely encouraged by its gleam off the snow—but inside the Apollonis house, they seemed to be standing in the full flood of summer.

"Please, come further," said Cupressus, and gestured them forward, to where three chairs sat in front of the fire. One stood at a distance from the others, and he took that one. Harry had to suppress an exclamation as he sank into his own. It was wonderfully warm and comfortable, an adaptation of cushioning charms he had not known existed. When he looked up, Cupressus was lounging back, and his cheeks and mouth smiled, if not his eyes.

"The Light studies how we may make and better things," he said softly, "not how we may destroy them."

Harry held his tongue back from saying that his mother, Light-devoted, had done what she could to destroy him, and watched Ignifer to take his cue. She sat down in the chair next to him and showed no surprise. Of course, that could be because her eyes never moved from her father's face, and she did not want to demonstrate weakness in font of him.

A cup of wine appeared next to Harry—carved of wood, not glass. Harry looked from the liquid in it to Cupressus's face, and did not move.

"In deference to your sensibilities," said Cupressus, picking up his own cup and sipping, "I Summoned the wine, rather than having house elves serve us. And I assure you that this wine was prepared years ago, by the hands of Squib servants we had at the time, not house elves." He closed his eyes and sighed.

Harry, reluctantly, picked up his cup and drank. Openly doubting what Cupressus had said to him, implying that his host was deceiving him, was a serious breach of hospitality. The wine was warm, and sweet, with a sharp tang at the back of it that almost made him think lemons were involved in it somewhere.

"Now, we may adapt to the true business you have come about, I hope." Cupressus's eyes flared open, and Harry was reminded of a lazy cat lying in front of a mousehole. "You know one dimension of my offer, vates. I am interested in your arguments, and I do wish to free my house elves. There is another dimension that my daughter may not have told you of."

Harry glanced at Ignifer in surprise. Ignifer didn't move. "He has information, Harry," she said, voice like a cold blade in the midst of all this perfumed warmth. "Information about wizards dealing with the Unspeakables. One wizard is Dark and one is Light, I think. And both could hurt your cause."

I should have suspected the Unspeakables would begin to stir again. Of course, that led to the thought that Harry would like to know how Cupressus had got hold of this information. He turned back to the man. "You offer much," he said. "And I have heard no hint of a price thus far."

Cupressus smiled, a brilliant smile, well at home in this room of golden wood and off-golden sunlight. "The price is simple," he said. "And one that is in accord with history. When a Lord or Lady was challenged to a duel, for example, a sworn companion could stand in for him or her, and fight the duel instead. Or a sworn companion could give up a treasured heirloom, or a small part of his or her magic, in repayment for all that the Lord or Lady had done."

"Ignifer is not my sworn companion," Harry said.

"But she considers herself as such," said Cupressus, and turned his head to look at Ignifer. "Do you not, my lady? I raised my daughter to think of honor as the supreme good in the world. And you fulfilled that, swearing to the Dark rather than the Light, because you believed it the honorable thing to do." His eyes shone with what Harry could swear was pride. "It was hard for you; it was harder than hard, it was exile. And yet you resisted daily importuning from your mother and the urgings of your own conscience to return, because you had done what you thought was right. The long road can end, daughter. You can lay your burden down. You can come home. The only thing you must do is choose to embrace this simple trade, your old allegiance and your old obedience to me in return for the freedom of the Apollonis house elves and the information that I have to give."

"She would be less honorable if she chose to betray the Dark now," Harry said. He did not say the words above a hiss. He was too angry. He felt the drape of a scaled body around his shoulders, and the room around them deepened with the spread of jewel-like colors, blue and green and red.

Cupressus only raised an eyebrow. "Your magic is impressive, vates," he said. "And it is what makes the difference in this situation. Ask my daughter."

Harry turned helplessly to Ignifer, hoping for an explanation. She had put down the wooden cup of wine that had appeared for her, and sat with her elbows on the arms of her chair and her arms folded across her stomach.

"What he says is true, Harry," she said, never taking her eyes from her father. "In most contexts, it would be utterly dishonorable for me to betray my oath to the Dark—though there would be some who would say that I should never have abandoned my allegiance to the Light in the first place."

"True," Cupressus murmured. Harry didn't think he could help himself.

"But in this context?" Ignifer shook her head, her red-gold curls rustling around her head. Her yellow eyes, sign of a Light pureblood family, were as calm as a hawk's. "No. I do consider myself a sworn companion, though I have never given you a scar on my arm, and that is all that matters to honor—the will of the individual. I could yield myself to fulfill the bargain. Other sworn companions have done as much and more in the past, and ended more tragically, on the end of a wand or a rope. An enemy of the Lord has been satisfied with killing them and so given up the notion of killing the Lord himself. Some of those enemies have even become allies afterwards, in admiration of the sworn companion's sacrifice." For a moment, a smile ghosted across her mouth. "I recall the tale of a man who executed a Lady's lieutenant, and then went on to become the Lady's sworn companion, and died defending her from a Killing Curse. That man was an Apollonis, Father, wasn't he?"

"He was indeed." Cupressus raised his cup in tribute to his daughter.

Harry wanted to snarl. It was wrong to talk so calmly and rationally about something so strange and against all common sense.

Then again, was it really any stranger than Lucius being proud, in their second year at Hogwarts, when Draco had outdanced him, and agreeing to do what he could to see that Harry was not expelled for Petrifying other students? Pureblood dances sometimes made people do very strange things in accord with honor.

"I am not a Light Lord," he tried.

"That does not matter." Cupressus's eyes, locked on Ignifer's, never moved. "Ignifer acts in relation to you as she would her Lord, Light or Dark. She is your sworn companion, and you are her leader, the one who gave her a home after she had none for fifteen years. This is her choice and her sacrifice to make." Now he did flick a glance in Harry's direction. "Unless you would stand in her way, my Lord of Free Will?"

Harry's hand tightened into a fist. Cupressus had baited the trap perfectly. Ignifer could have everything back that she wanted without feeling she was betraying what she had chosen. And Harry could no more interfere than he had interfered with Loki's sacrifice, or with Pansy's.

He leaned back, taut as a bowstring, and waited.

Did Ignifer know he would do this? She must have. Why else agree to come? She meant to trade her freedom for the freedom of house elves and whatever information Cupressus has to give me.

"Just think," Cupressus said, his voice only a breath. "I am the leader of most of the Light pureblood families in Ireland, Harry. Once they see me giving up my house elves, they will begin to reconsider house elves' value as a status symbol. If I can endure this with no loss of power, then they will begin to think that they can. You begin a revolution that will ripple across Ireland from here, vates. And such a small price. Delivered so willingly."

Harry heard a ripple of cloth. He looked sideways to see Ignifer sliding to one knee, her robes puddling around her.

Harry wanted to look away, but his eyes felt frozen. For long moments, he held still, and Ignifer held still, and the world around them swayed like a bauble at the end of a chain.

In the silence, Ignifer's words were soft, but very clear.

"I renounce my last name. I am no longer an Apollonis. I have no allegiance to that family, and—" Her voice soared like a sunburst, dazzling, outraged, on fire. "Your curse has no power over a woman who is not your daughter!"

Harry felt magic snap through the room. This renunciation was simpler and more basic than the ritual he had used to give up his own last name, but also more primal, and in some ways more powerful. He felt the moment Ignifer and Cupressus's last connection was stripped away, a shimmer of a bond that sparked into being between them and fell into ruin at the same moment. The world shifted. They were strangers now. Blood from one could not save the other, should one of them lie bleeding on the ground.

And the infertility curse on Ignifer was gone.

Ignifer was laughing, when Harry came out of his daze. She had stood, and her hair blazed around her, and her magic coiled up and down her arms as leaping flames, and her robes lifted in the streaming hot wind she had called. Cupressus was on his feet, his wand out, and firing curses that burned up when they neared Ignifer.

Harry stumbled to her side, and stared into her face. Ignifer looked down at him and sniffed. "Did you really think that I'd yield to the old bastard?" she asked. "I came to make one final test, to show myself how much I missed what I once had, to make myself see it and ask if this was what I wanted. And it isn't. Not at all." She shot a triumphant glance at Cupressus. "And now he has no reason to firecall me and taunt me with his power over my womb, and my mother has no reason to badger me daily. It's done. I'm free."

Harry could think of no words to say. He had never been more glad to see a sacrifice avoided. His hand closed on her arm and squeezed, hard.

"You know that no house elves in Ireland will be released now," said Cupressus. Already, when Harry looked at him, he had recovered and put his wand away. He might have looked cool and composed, were it not for his shaking hands. "I will campaign against it. I will advise my allies to hold on to their house elves no matter what happens."

"It was not worth the price that you asked," said Harry. "I will not end slavery with slavery."

"And the information I have?" Cupressus eyed him. "The time is rushing close when you will need it, Harry vates. You have no idea who stands against you, dim in the shadows, once a scion of Light."

"What price—"

"You know the price." Cupressus stared at Ignifer, who magnificently ignored him.

"Fuck you," said Harry pleasantly, and turned away. "I am, as you reminded me today, a Lord-level wizard, Mr. Apollonis. I have no need to crawl."

He accompanied Ignifer outside the house, feeling as if he were escorting a victor off the field of battle. Ignifer let her flames die when they stood on the steps, and tossed her head back, to breathe in a deep gulp of air.

"It tastes so much sweeter now that I'm not smelling it through an Apollonis nose," she explained to Harry, when she caught him watching her.

Harry shook his head. He couldn't stop smiling. "And you planned to do that?"

"It was a test, as I said." Ignifer's face was calm, and shone. "I had to tempt myself, to see what I could endure. As it turns out, I love freedom more than I thought. And Honoria." Her hand found his and pressed it. "And you."

Harry kissed the back of her hand. As they began to walk from the house towards the Apparition point, he asked, "Do you know what last name you'll take?"

Ignifer's smile flashed out, more mischievous than Harry had ever seen it. "I thought Pemberley might be nice," she said. "Honoria's mother did so wish that someone else would have the same last name as she did. I know she was thinking of grandchildren, but a wife might be a nice substitute."

Harry laughed, and felt thoughts of difficulty, including what problems Cupressus could cause over house elves in the future, flame and die. For the moment, they stood in the light of a far different fire.