Chapter Sixty-Six: Defiance

Falco had a vision in his mind. The vision had settled there the moment he felt Harry wrenched from the wizarding world and deposited between the paths, the place where Falco himself had retreated to consider his options and learn the magic of the Dark in more detail. The problem might, after all, be solved without countless battles. If he could force an attack on Harry's greatest vulnerability, he might yet win.

He had flown among the paths while Harry talked with the Stone and wrapped himself in prophecy, gathering up the magic he would need to cloak his endeavor. The cloak was more important and harder to weave than the spell that would attack Harry's vulnerable chinks. Harry had to be convinced that Falco was really coming down on him with this gray wave of power.

And then he had it ready. Foam crested his shoulders, reaching around his wings, half a sea eagle's and half a thestral's; communing with the Dark had taught him the perils and the wonders of other kinds of shapeshifting.

He turned and came down on Harry with the wave behind him, sliding across the door between the worlds that the Stone was trying to open to send Harry home. The Stone could cut through the barriers by being what it was, immune to magic unless it accepted the touch of it. But Falco was stronger here still, given his courting of the greater powers, and he easily healed every small slit that the Stone opened.

Harry tumbled back into the world of the paths, and the prophecies retreated, and Time loosened its clutch on him.

And Falco swooped, with the wave hiding the weapon that hovered at his back like a knife concealed in a palm.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Draco bit his lip, riding out the explosion, or collision, that had torn through him. His ears were ringing, and the blood dripping from the small gash on his arm had started to flow faster. He pulled away from Narcissa as soon as it was safe and climbed to his feet, looking around.

He should be able to sense the direction Harry was in. At least, he felt as if he should be able to, given their connection through the joining ritual and the Portkey-bracelet. He laid his hand on the bracelet now and asked silently what Harry's condition was. Harry had enchanted the bracelet to let Draco know that, and also to bring him to his side if there weren't strong wards in the way.

In shock and pain, the bracelet's silent, inflectionless voice told Draco.

Draco shook his head, biting his lip again, and realized that most of the people gathered around him were watching him closely. The sole exception was Snape, who had pulled his magic back into his body and looked to be fighting between collapsing where he was and searching for Harry.

"Do you know where he is, Mr. Malfoy?" Hawthorn Parkinson's voice was terribly polite.

Millicent was less so. "Where's my father?"

"That, I don't know," said Draco absently. He twisted the bracelet on his wrist, and wondered if he should go to Harry. He wanted to, damn it, but there would almost certainly be wards in the way, both the Unspeakables' and the Stone's. He gave the rock beneath his foot a vicious kick, to which it responded not at all. "But I know that Harry is still alive, if in shock." He held up his wrist to show the gleam of gold when mouths opened to ask how he knew that. "I don't know if we can get to him, though." And he wasn't madly in love with the idea of leaping to Harry's side without knowing if he could help him. The last time he had done something like this, going into the Ministry when Dumbledore had captured Harry and subjected him to the Capto Horrifer spell, he had had the Black coin to insure he was prepared when he landed.

His mother seemed to sense the flow of his thoughts, and she gave a slight shake of her head to indicate that she thought Draco's pause a good one. "We must plan," she said. She took one more look around the landscape. It had settled, Draco noted. Now they stood on a gray cliff, which might have been made of granite, above a land of cloudy green trees and silver streams. The bronze and steel birds swept around them, vigilantly watching for threats. There was no sign of gray-clad Unspeakables. "If there is a way that we can reach Harry, then we should take it. Otherwise, we should keep in mind that we do not know the laws of magic here, and Harry himself said that normal spells probably would not work."

"I might have an idea," said Draco slowly, and closed his eyes, slumping against Narcissa's ready arm as he leaped up into the minds of the hovering flock once more.

They welcomed him eagerly this time, their shallow pools of thoughts adapted to his touch, and Draco planted the idea of bearing the strange humans they needed to keep safe towards the explosion of magic they had sensed earlier. The birds did seem confused, for a moment, about where the explosion had come from—not surprising if they were in another world, Draco thought, or if Harry was. But Draco modified the idea of "towards" to be "as close as they could," and the birds turned and descended again, clasping shoulders and arms with gentle talons.

Elfrida Bulstrode spoke as they rose into the air. Draco heard her, dizzyingly, through both metallic ears and human ones for a moment before he thought to retreat into his own head. "What are we going to do, Malfoy?"

"Come as close as we can to the source of Harry's pain," said Draco. "The wards or the prison or the world where he's being held. That's where I've told the birds to bear us." He held up his hand, and the ring that Mrs. Parkinson had given him for his confirmation ritual as magical heir flashed and glimmered. She had sacrificed a part of her magic, making herself permanently weaker, for the sake of giving Draco an important and shining gift. That magic still crouched on the ring in the form of a small blue stone. "And I'll use what power I need to so that I can burst through the wards or the walls, and rescue Harry."

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Harry could feel the magic swelling around him, rising, moving oddly, shifting like the wave he saw at Falco's back. He had more power here than he had ever had, if he wished to use it. He had swallowed the magic from the Unspeakables, and the Dark and the Light were here—or, at least, curving through here—in all their might and could offer him gifts, and he did not have Voldemort pulling on his magic just now and drawing it towards him.

But Harry was determined to remember what the price of gifts from the Dark and the Light might be, and just because Voldemort was not yet a part of this battle did not mean he would stay out of it.

He moved backwards, and took a defensive stance, a shield of blades that appeared in front of him. He built the blades themselves of light, narrowed to such a thin edge that it would cut an eye out, and curled night about the ends of them in hilts of black wood. Blades were a poor defense against water, but Falco's magic was not truly water, and the blades were not truly blades. All were only imagined representatives of what could be, here, and Harry had finally, finally stepped into a place in his own mind where he had cleverness and more to spare.

The wave fell on the blades, Falco sweeping past just under it and adding another hammer blow of strength to follow behind.

The blades quivered, and cracked, and quaked. And Harry dropped the center out of them and imagined them unfolding, rising, as a spiderweb, the edges of light become tearing spokes or spider legs, snaring Falco's magic and dragging it towards him and his gullet.

Falco let out a cry Harry told himself was surprise, or fear. It was better than thinking it was mere shock and irritation that would fade in a moment.

Harry didn't want to try swallowing Falco's magic, not yet, when the absorbere gift had not quite finished digesting the last meal he'd given it. He swung the captured power around instead, casting his net away into the maze of Dark and Light paths, giving Falco's magic to whatever wanted to eat it. He heard a howl somewhere far away, and something nameless in both the realms most mortal wizards understood scurried to retrieve the prize.

Falco rose a second time, the glittering form of a spread-winged sea eagle in the midst of light. Harry juggled balls of power behind him, letting them rest in his silver hand for moments at a time, and thought of Quidditch.

He studied Falco in the meanwhile. This was the first chance he'd had to evaluate the nature of his enemy's magic. He knew Voldemort's power, vicious and fanged and bladed. He knew Snape's magic, like a tamer version of Voldemort's, and without as much of the swallowed poison. He knew Draco's, quick and adaptable and flexible, and Lucius's dusty marble tomb, and Millicent's, a stone that might dance in an earthquake at any moment.

Falco's was different. Chilly as the light he mantled himself in, deep as deep water, it revealed barely any of its owner's personality. Harry blinked. Given his lessons with Jing-Xi, he hadn't believed this possible. Even a small manifestation of his magic would show him to those who knew him, and Jing-Xi had explained that a Lord or Lady with a longer life was likely to develop a ferocious soul that imprinted itself on the smallest signs of his or her power.

He studied Falco a bit more, and then he understood. This was Falco's personality. Chilly, deep, high, brooding. He saw himself as above humanity. He understood very little of what they did. His long sleeps and retreats into the paths that surrounded them now were part of that, but more came from a refusal to understand that things had changed. Six hundred years ago, when he had been born, this kind of height above the world might have been the ideal for Lords and Ladies, and they would have interfered with mortals only to adjust the "balance" among competing forms of magic.

But even wizards changed. Even Lords and Ladies died. And Falco had locked himself into a mode that, if it did not permit dying, also did not permit living. He tricked the Dark and the Light, and in so doing, he had forgotten a good deal about tricking—and living with—others.

Harry comprehended a great deal then that he hadn't understood before.

He was ready when that chill light poured at him, trying to push him onto a golden path, trying to open his mouth and force a Declaration to the Light past his lips. He cast the balls like balls in Quidditch, the Snitch darting away from his right hand and towards Falco, a bright and fast thing all feathers and chirrups and hurrying summer morning. From his silver hand came the Quaffle, a vision of mild gentleness, of compassion, of spring.

Behind them, moving almost too fast to be seen, were the Bludgers, and they slammed into Falco, one and then another, cracking his light, letting him know how stupid he had been, causing his world to shatter into ringing shards around him.

Falco faltered and fell. Harry let the cold light wash over him, and met it with the naked strength of his will. He would not Declare. He found it wrong. And he had performed too much Dark magic to be considered Light. Would the Light really want a tainted prize like him?

Falco's attack, calculated on a misjudgment of Harry's character, trembled and fell after its master. Harry faced him triumphantly.

And Falco cast the spell he'd been hiding.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

He lifted his head, did Lord Voldemort, when he felt the clash of them far away, the Dark Lord that was to be and the young one, his heir, the child of his hatred, who would feel the bite of his hatred as the bite of an ice scorpion very, very soon.

He listened to them, and chuckled.

"My lord?"

That was his Indigena, the one who had cleaved to his side, the one who came when called, the one he felt almost tender towards. He stroked her hair with long fingers, and watched through the snake's eyes as it slithered quickly across the grass above the burrow, seeking for some signs of the new Dark Lord's magic in the air. That new Dark Lord had prepared a refuge for them. Why he should wish to do so was not yet clear, and while he almost thought he could take his word for it, did Lord Voldemort, he would be foolish to walk into a trap the enemy was preparing.

"Lord Falco and Lord Harry are fighting," he said. "And it is clear which one shall win." He cocked his head as a spell leaped to him across the distance, a spell not many people knew any more, a working of weaving and silver chain that he, swift and great, had only learned for himself in Egypt, in a city scorned by most European wizards as haunted. "Though the contest may yet be interesting," he added.

He knew his Indigena would have a baffled expression on her face. He did not mind. He liked confusing her. He petted her hair again, and sniffed the smell of roses.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Falco lay in place, as if weak and wounded, and watched his spell do its work, wrapping around Harry's mind in a dazzle of chain. Harry bowed his head, rubbing his brow with his silver hand, seeming to know that something was wrong and yet not realizing what it was. He should not have known. Falco had been careful of that. And now he was casting his second spell, as opposed to his second weaving of pure power, during the encounter, reaching out and drawing one of them closer, the nameless creatures who lurked between Dark and Light and had never received any distinguishing notice from wizards because they merited none. They could not affect the balance, normally. They were scavengers who ran the paths and ate what scraps of nourishment fell their way.

One was about to play a part in determining the fate of the British wizarding world. Falco wondered if it knew, then dismissed the thought. Nameless, these creatures were also mindless.

The thing wandered nearer, sniffing forlornly after the scraps of magic. It looked like a hyena, but without the head, leaving only the hunched shoulders to bend down and press a flat, blunt hole like a nose against the paths. The paws sparkled with diamond claws, and the wire sticking up from its back flagged like a tail. It was a living thing, a magical creature, and that was the only requirement it needed to serve the part it must play.

Harry saw it. The spell moved deep in his eyes, changing him. He lifted his silver hand. Falco hid his annoyance. It would have been more symbolic had Harry used his wand, but he had forgotten that nearly all of Harry's magic was wandless now, that he had adapted that well to this level of power. Falco debated building in an urge to use his wand when he rewound the control this would give him over Harry, and then dismissed the notion. Best not to press too far. Restoring the balance would be quite enough for him. He had no reason to attend to all the minor performances that might accompany the grand gestures.

The nameless thing squared its shoulders and turned to face Harry. Falco wondered if it knew it was about to suffer. It might. He had read, somewhere, that they did. He shook his head. One could read and forget many books in six hundred years.

The end of the silver chain sparked in his hand, winding through Harry's mind, giving him access Harry did not realize he had. Like a certain class of perception-changing spell Albus had used against Harry, it could conceal its own presence from the minds of those it affected, and erase any notion of itself that popped up.

In a moment, the spell would force Harry to use compulsion against the nameless thing.

Using compulsion, he would cease to be vates.

And then he would have no reason not to Declare, and because he knew what horrors Dark Lords were, he would choose Light. Falco would Declare Dark, and fight him, and most likely die, given the prophecy that bound Harry and Tom. And then Harry would go on to fight Tom, and probably kill both of them in the bargain. And Britain would be without any Lords again, which was probably the best condition for her.

Falco was not afraid to die. He was afraid of accidents.

But this spell, Harry could do nothing against, because he did not know about it.

Age and cunning will defeat youth and stupidity every time, he congratulated himself.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Draco had not known if he would be able to sense the best place to break through the barriers when they came to it. As it was, he didn't have to worry about that. Every sense in him stood up and screamed. It took him a long moment to realize that he was, in fact, feeling what the flock felt; they knew the moment they had fulfilled their task and taken him to the point where he was parallel to that collision of magic.

Draco did take a moment to wonder, as he studied the scene in front of him, how his possession gift had changed. He had never done that much research into its origins, not really. He suspected that it came from the mingling of his Malfoy empathy with the Black compulsion gift, but if that was so, it should not have changed further; it had no reason to do so, nothing else in him to blend with. He would have to read up on it—

Assuming that both he and Harry survived the encounter in the Department of Mysteries today.

He shook his head, and thought more about the immediate problem and what he would have to do to solve it. The flock had carried them to a place in midair, which looked like a huge, polished mirror. Draco could see more green trees and silver streams and boundless gray sky on the other side of it, and the distant reflection of the Stone. The problem was, this place in the Department of Mysteries being what it was, he couldn't say that this was a mirror. It might actually be that this room continued, only in perfect reversal this time, even down to the presence of a second Stone. Perhaps this was only as close as the birds could bear them, a midpoint and not a gate or a wall.

But he would not rescue Harry if he were fretting himself about philosophical questions.

He held up his ring and began to call on the magic that resided in it. In a way, he hated to use Hawthorn's gift for this; the practical Malfoy part of him whispered to husband the magic, to keep it for a point where he could really get a use out of it instead of using it because there was no better weapon available.

But the Black part of him asked what the magic should be for, if not for rescuing the man he loved? And the Malfoy part of him—or, at least, the child of a father who had once valued his wife and son beyond price—had no answer for that.

Draco smiled grimly. There were times he could feel the two sides of himself, Malfoy and Black, Lucius and Narcissa, fighting out the balance of his soul, but he intended to be more than two battling sides. He was in the midst of chaos now, weaving what he could, making the best decisions he knew how while still in ignorance of the outcome, and that was a talent all his own.

"Draco, wait."

His mother's hand clamped on his wrist from across the air between them. Draco concealed the impulse to snap at her, and turned a gaze that he hoped was coldly courteous on her instead. Narcissa gazed back, more than a match for him, and he lowered his eyes and nodded, indicating his willingness to listen to what she had to say.

"Could you command the birds to break through the barrier?" Narcissa gestured at the steel vulture that held her, and flapped large wings stronger and sturdier, Draco had to concede, than the glass the mirror was made of. "They may have carried us this far only because you told them to, but they would, perhaps, break open the barrier if you told them to, in turn." She gave the polished air a mistrustful glance.

"I don't know if I could," Draco retorted. "They guarded us and carried us so far because of one command that I gave them: to keep us safe. If I changed that, and told them to break through the mirror now, they could drop us, or smash us into shards as they went through wards that would not harm them." He gestured in a wide circle with his left hand. "And I don't see any ground where we could count on safely landing if they released us. And Professor Snape is exhausted and could not catch us in time."

"If I wove a net for us?"

Draco lifted an eyebrow. "Try."

Narcissa waved her wand. A spell that Draco recognized as a net which had wrapped around most of Malfoy Manor the summer he had thought he was a dragon in a human body and tried to fly off the roof spread out around them. It was glittering silver, thick and strong and more easily able to bear weight than the desperate construction of Professor Snape's magic.

It had nothing to attach to, however, and the moment it formed it began to fall. Draco watched it drift downward in silence, and then turned an eloquent look on his mother. Narcissa only inclined her head.

"Do what you must," she said. "There was a time I would not have hesitated, were Lucius on the other side of wards like that."

Draco nodded, and turned his attention back to his ring, ignoring the muttering of some of the rest of them. Millicent was worried about her father, and Professor Snape was worried about Harry, and Moody was worried about Draco's ability to lead a rescue like this. None of that signified. He laid his will like an extra hand across the small blue stone, and tapped into the freely given magic. He knew exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to break through the mirror, step through it or smash it or rend it apart like cloth—whatever must be done to stop it from separating him and Harry—and then reach Harry's side.

He visualized the desire very clearly in his mind, and started to reach for his wand to help the effect along with an incantation.

Then the world broke.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Harry felt his lip curl as he gazed at the headless creature nudging at the foot of the path. It was quite the ugliest thing he had ever seen, hairless and without a purpose except to ramble about in magic and salvage what it could. Peter's rats were beautiful and purposeful, the Many shone like the sun, even the skeletal thestrals had an odd beauty, but he could not see what this was for.

His silver hand rose without his conscious volition. The trails of magic that bound it to his flesh were warm and glowing, more pink than red now, more yellow than gold. It would be good to use it to get rid of the headless creature, wouldn't it? That way, he would show that he welcomed the hand, considered it part of his body, and bond it more firmly to his arm.

He might destroy the creature, blasting it away a hurricane of fire. He might wash it away in a sudden flash flood. He could do that. He was powerful, and around him beat the heart of all magic, available and ready for him to use.

Or he could compel it to go away. It was the easiest method, barely the flick of a thought, and then he could turn back to his battle with Falco, who was, he should not allow himself to forget, his real enemy.

Yes, perhaps compulsion would be easy—

And then the flood of rejection and defiance came forth from the depths of his mind.

For thoughts like this, the mere shadow of an idea of compelling Connor, he had feared he was becoming like Dumbledore and forced himself through a breaking and rebuilding in the Room of Requirement. He had taught himself he could hate his parents and it was well, that he could reject his last name and still retain the connection to his brother, that he could forgive his parents and yet not want them around for the rest of his life. There was no better way to make him forget about everything else and concentrate on throwing off chains and delving into himself. Why had he had these thoughts? How in the world could he have them?

Why in the world would a vates use compulsion?

He screamed, and dived into his mind, redirecting his magic, telling it to lay open his thoughts and show him everything he was thinking.

His vision spun dizzily, as Legilimency and more ordinary power, including the swallowed magic of the Unspeakables, sprang to do as he wished. Harry had a brief, burning moment to wonder why more Lords and Ladies didn't do this to themselves.

He stood above a map of blue and green and red, and swept his gaze through guilt and memories and the remnants of sated physical needs, and his gaze fixed on the alien silvery chain twining through his thoughts, and he reached in and yanked it out.

Pain leaped through him, but it was nothing compared to what he would have felt had he compelled the headless creature to go away. He flung off the silver chain, and tattered it, and shook his head impatiently.

Then he turned on Falco.

The Quaffle, Snitch, and Bludgers he had constructed were shades of an idea. If Falco was cold and saw himself as above humanity, then Harry could best battle him by introducing warmth and the idea of what it meant to be human. He could bring him back from his cold distance and force him to flee if he saw, face-to-face, what he was not.

That had been what Harry wanted to do when he had both some compassion for Falco and an idea of finesse left, however.

Fuck finesse.

He called forth his magic, winding it up into a massive wave of his own, bound to his hands, flesh and silver, and then flung it forward, hitting Falco with a flood of pure, raw wildness and strength.

You don't want to be human? You don't have a choice.

He plunged Falco into his own memories, his own emotions: the intense drama of the trial, the memories of a child cutting himself with curses and only slowly training himself out of pain, the graveyard and the wheeling, screaming moment when he lost his hand, the dizzy joy of speeding along on a broom, what it was like to have magic that manifested itself as creativity and hot jungle life. He showed him what it was like to be Harry Potter, Harry vates, and how he had already lived more in sixteen and a half short years of life—ten of those spent under a bondage he had not realized was bondage—than Falco had in six centuries. He showed him again, and again, and again, and again.

Falco fled.

Harry had not expected that. He suddenly had no target to pour his magic against. He tugged it back. It came reluctantly, shaking its head like a wild horse, and Harry caught sight of Falco crouched at a distance among the paths, his wings almost scraping a golden one, watching him with intense fear.

Harry started to snap his magic forward again, but he paused. Something hovered behind Falco, reaching out to trail its claws teasingly down his back. Harry thought it one of the nameless creatures that lived between the paths at first, but in that case, Falco would have been aware of it, and he didn't seem to be. Harry stared, trying to understand, and Falco stared back, obviously not knowing the cause of his reprieve but intent on absorbing as much information as he could about Harry while it lasted.

The thing trailed its claws, and looked at Harry, and smiled. And then, just for a moment, it changed from a vague dragon into a shape like a chimera, like the one that had come at Midwinter—or so Draco had told him, later—for his Declaration.

This is the Dark.

And it hovered over Falco, and it spread its wings, and it cradled him as if he were one of its children, but Harry did not sense the kinship from it that he felt towards himself, or the wilder, more vicious, more predatory communion it had with Voldemort. It seemed to treasure his ignorance instead, to treat him as a victim. If Falco was going to be the next Dark Lord, he did not know his new allegiance well at all.

Harry's eyes widened.

And what if that is it? What if the power the Dark Lord knows not, in this case, is the Dark? Falco is entirely ignorant of its nature. He's never Declared for it before, never fought for it, and it hides itself from him and laughs at him.

Harry felt his heart beating harder and harder. He reminded himself that the wild Dark was unpredictable, and it might change its mind and decide to welcome Falco between now and the time when he Declared.

But if he could creature a situation where the wild Dark might destroy Falco—

And if Falco Declared on Walpurgis, or fought Harry on Walpurgis, the time of the next great rising of the Dark, and Harry could not see him waiting until Midwinter with the way he had attacked now—

Then Harry might be able to consciously fulfill the prophecy for the first time.

He laughed aloud, and Falco's eyes narrowed. Harry leaped forward, his magic running around him like a whole herd of wild horses, shaking their heads and tossing their manes and tails. He rushed at Falco. He thought he knew how to destroy him, but if he could do it here and now, then he wouldn't complain, and he didn't intend to wait.

He raised his magic, and the foundations of the Ministry shook, and one path shredded like light and showed Draco hovering on the other side of it, in the talons of a metallic bird, staring at him.

Harry winked at him. His anger turned to joy, and he sent another flood of life after Falco.

Falco vanished.

Apparated, or bent time the way that Scrimgeour had told Harry he could—Harry did not know, was not sure, did not care. Hope had joined him, and it sang and sang and sang until he could barely hear the voice of the Stone underneath it.

"I will keep my promises," the gray illusion said, as it appeared hovering beside Harry. "You are the most fascinating creature I have yet met with. Studying your relationship to prophecy alone could keep me happy for half a year." Harry saw one corner tilt in that gesture like a meek head-bow again. "Step through the slit. Your ally awaits you, intact as you requested him to be."

Harry inclined his head back to the Stone. He was no less angry with it, not really, and he did not entirely expect it to keep its promises not to hurt him or his allies, or the Ministry and the wizarding world. But if it broke them, then he could rise against it and hurt it very badly through taking its Unspeakables and its experiments away.

He had the magic, the power, to do that, and while there were some things he would need to be wary of doing with that power and always would—killing others and draining their magic, for example—he could use it.

There are, he thought, thinking of the monitoring board, going to be some changes.

And then he turned and stepped through the slit in the paths into what was no longer empty air but a solid, sturdy corridor that led towards a black door opening on the circular blue room, and the birds were gone, and his allies stood about him alive and unharmed, and Adalrico lay senseless at his feet, and Draco was in his arms, breathing against him, heart beating.