The lines quoted here come from D. H. Lawrence's "Snake."

Chapter Seventy-One: Blood of Slytherin

"Promise me you'll stay behind me when we Apparate in."

Regulus's voice was tolerant. "Harry, I'm not going to promise you that."

Harry glared at him. "Voldemort could have left traps around the shack that would reach out to the Dark Mark—"

In answer, Regulus drew his left sleeve back, showing Harry the Grim that crouched on his forearm in place of a snake and skull. "I wish him good luck trying to reclaim me from Death," he said. "You should be more worried about Severus, and yet you aren't snapping at him and trying to make him follow you like a duckling."

"That's because he knows what would happen if he tried," said Snape, striding into his office. Because he was in the mood to notice things like that, Harry noticed that almost no trace of a limp remained in his walk; the damage he had taken in the Chamber of Secrets more than a year ago was healed. Snape saw him noticing and gave him a flat stare. Harry hissed at him through bared teeth.

He could easily name the feelings that bubbled inside him as he paced back and forth between the hearth and Snape's door. Protectiveness, anger at the mere thought of someone who followed him being hurt, and determination to be the one at the front, wielding the magic that would be more likely to spare his life and shield those who followed after. The problem was that he couldn't explain them in a way that made them acceptable to the people he wanted to guard.

Regulus had quietly refused to let Harry go to the shack without him. He'd said that, as the one who'd brought the news of the Horcruxes, he had the right to see their capture of one through. And if he could sense anything about the Dark magic around the shack which Harry might not notice—an upbringing among Dark purebloods had to be good for something, he'd said—then he should test spells before Harry could.

Snape was coming. Harry had not been able to dissuade him. His Dark Mark had not tingled or burned in weeks, he said; there was no sign that Voldemort was trying to interact with it. His dreams had retreated into normal nightmares or bizarre interminglings of ordinary life and image-play. He had nothing to weaken him, and that meant he seemed to have fastened more firmly than ever onto the idea of becoming Harry's father, not just his guardian.

Draco was coming. Harry had looked into his eyes after he opened his mouth to protest, and shut it again, knowing better than to continue.

Argutus would come, because his scales might reflect hidden spells contained in the wards around the shack. In fact, he slithered in through the open door now and draped himself happily around Harry's shoulders. "Here I am," he said. "You may cease your waiting for me." His tongue flickered, once, and he jerked his head towards Harry. "You smell of anger and frustration. Why?"

Harry sighed and stroked the snake's head, ignoring Regulus's and Snape's piercing stares. At least they couldn't understand him when he said something in Parseltongue. "I don't want anyone else to be hurt. I—I remember the wards around the house as incredibly Dark, giving me a conviction that I would be cursed if I entered that I've never felt anywhere else. And Voldemort could have strengthened them or put in spells that only I am strong enough to oppose. I don't want anyone else taking the risk or becoming the sacrifice"

The Omen snake flicked his tongue against Harry's cheek, light as a kiss. "This is about them becoming sacrifices for the Horcruxes." Harry had told him about that, but only after emphasizing, repeatedly, that this was not an indication he wanted Argutus to make the decision Sylarana had. "You don't want to allow them to make their own decisions."

Harry winced. It sounded harsher in Parseltongue than it ever would in English. "I—"

Peter entered then, with Draco at his side and Henrietta not far behind. Between them, Peter and Henrietta had an unequaled knowledge of the theory behind Dark magic, they had told him. Snape might have more practical experience with it, but Henrietta had experimented and Peter had studied obscure meanings and symbols that they could need to unlock the riddles of Voldemort's curses.

Draco stepped away from Peter and locked eyes with Harry. Harry glanced away miserably, knowing he had been seen.

A pair of arms slipped around his waist, and Draco sighed into his ear. "You're making this a lot harder than it needs to be, you know," he murmured at Harry. A stir at the door indicated the arrival of Owen and Syrinx, Harry knew, but he didn't look up or back, if only because he would have rammed his head into Draco's chin. "You have your role to play, and we have ours. And if we want to be at your side when you go into danger, you don't have the right to shove us away."

"I know." Harry sounded pathetic. Responding to the tone in his voice, rather than the words—so far, he'd been frustrated in his efforts to learn English—Argutus rubbed against Harry's chin. Harry stroked his skin with his flesh hand, since the silver one didn't transmit much warmth as yet. "But this is probably the deepest instinct, Draco, the one I can't shake. It's one thing to theorize in a library about what needs to happen when we find a Horcrux. It's another thing altogether to go into battle with one and not take the point, not be the guardian, the defender—"

"The sacrifice."

Harry jerked against his hold, but Draco had as firm a grip on him as he'd ever achieved. "I wasn't thinking of it like that."

"That's all right," said Draco cheerfully. "I'll think of it like that for you. You can't just be the sacrifice and be done with it, you selfish idiot. You can't just protect people, either. We chose to be in this fight, and we'll fight beside you if we want. And your life is more important to the wizarding world than any single person's here." Harry shook his head automatically, and one of Draco's hands shifted up to cover his mouth. "Ah, ah, just listen. And we're important to you, and that means that we shouldn't carelessly risk our lives, either, because our dying would make you feel like you wanted to die. So it has to be a balance, Harry. Doesn't everything? You're working as one of a team, not in a unique position. I know how hard that is for you, but it doesn't mean we'll change our minds."

Harry bit the left corner of his lip, bit the right corner, and slowly, slowly worked his shoulders downwards. He tried to dismiss the visions that had filled his mind all night, of a curse opening dark wings on Snape and rending him apart, of Regulus's Mark coming alive as Death claimed him, of a silver blade like the kind set on some ancient wizarding tombs to trap them sweeping out and cleaving through Draco's neck--

He shoved that particular image away, shuddering. Just thinking about it made him near sick.

Draco bit the side of his neck, not on the place that Harry hated, but just close enough to distract him thoroughly, and stepped back. "You've talked to me about this often enough," he whispered, when Harry glanced at him over his shoulder. "You must not have thought I'd listen to you."

"When there was a mirror around?"

Most satisfyingly, Draco's face rippled with irritation. "I am not that vain—"

"We're all assembled," Snape broke in coolly. "I think we should proceed to the Apparition point, Harry."

Harry had to take several deep breaths before he could nod. "All right."

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Snape watched Harry closely as they moved along the Hogsmeade road towards the Apparition point. None of them remembered the house well enough to Apparate directly there, especially since they had last seen it in winter and it was now almost spring, and so they would arrive at the place from which they'd walked to the graveyard confrontation on Midwinter.

He saw many small things, things he would have been unaware of a few months ago when he was sunk in melancholy. Harry twisted his head from side to side constantly, his chin up and his eyes seeking out those who followed him. His hand now and then reached back and brushed Regulus's robe or Snape's arm or Draco's hip. When he could, he walked in front of the others, or at least to the front, talking to Owen Rosier-Henlin and edging a bit ahead of him. He even moved his torso so as to shield most of his snake behind him.

Putting himself in the way of any danger that might strike us from that direction, Snape thought. Following his instincts ingrained into him from childhood—only this time, it's not just his brother he's protecting.

But things had changed. Harry would have argued more, at one time, or simply sneaked out of the school and Apparated himself to the shack, without letting anyone else come along with him into danger. Snape's lips still tightened as he remembered the way Harry had forced him to stay behind in his third year, when he'd gone tearing into the Shrieking Shack to confront Voldemort in Sirius Black's body.

If he has altered, so have we. Snape let his fingers brush the wand that rode in the holster on his waist. We can work with his magic now, instead of having to shelter behind it or coax him to use it.

And, resolved though I might be to letting him make mistakes, he shall not suffer their consequences unshielded.

The last months had been good for at least that one thing, Snape thought. They had taught him what it felt like to have only one person in the world who cared for him—Harry—and reminded him of his Death Eater days, when there had been another, Regulus, he thought lost forever.

Anyone who tried to kill Harry as Voldemort had, apparently, killed Regulus would have Severus Snape's spells to get through.

And if Harry did not like that, he could be stunned and dragged unconscious back to Hogwarts, and then delegate such tasks as this to the trustworthy, rather than go on any more adventures.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Harry arrived with a larger bump that he would have liked; a small mound of projecting earth on the hillside had fallen away from where he remembered it. Well, that and Draco had apparently tried to Apparate by himself halfway through Harry Side-Along Apparating him.

"Draco," he said in annoyance, turning around. Argutus was twining up and down like a dancer, looking at everything new in delight, and promptly unwound himself from Harry to vanish into the piled leaves.

Draco looked at him in complete unconcern, picking twigs out of his hair. "What?" he asked. "It's time that I learned how to Apparate, too. I'm almost seventeen, and I don't need you to drag me like a child everywhere."

Harry settled for glaring at him, and turned to watch for signs of Muggle intrusion or wizard notice. The hillside's trees were still bare, concealing slushy patches of half-melted snow, but a freezing rain had begun to fall, and Harry doubted anyone would come out to see them despite the scant cover. He counted the landings behind him, and then the pairs of footsteps, and relaxed a bit. Everyone had made the transition safely.

Syrinx came up beside him, one hand in her robe pocket. Harry knew she was touching a small golden kitten that Laura had sent her, which could scout for danger in an unfamiliar place. Her head turned and her eyes locked with Harry's, calm and blank. "Ready, sir?" she asked.

Harry nodded. Syrinx took out the kitten, put it on the ground, and whispered instructions into the pricked metallic ear. The kitten scampered off immediately into the leaves and the wet, and faded from sight. Harry had thought the gold would reflect the light better than it apparently did.

"He'll warn me if someone else shows up," said Syrinx, and touched the earring that clung to her left lobe. Now that Harry thought about it, the kitten had been wearing one, too.

He chided himself for not noticing a detail like that. On a task like this, not noticing things could get someone else rapidly killed.

But he'd had no choice about their coming, unless he used conjured ropes or binding spells to make them stay behind. He collected them all with his glance, and then nodded down the hill towards the place where he remembered the house being.

"Syrinx will be watching for traps," he said quietly. "So will Argutus, and so will I. But Voldemort may have left some we can't locate immediately, or which are too subtle for the usual means of detection. Watch out, please. Don't go charging ahead. Wands out." That was useful only for Draco, though, since everyone else had already drawn his or her wand. Henrietta was looking around with a faintly wistful expression on her face, as if she wanted someone to blast now.

Harry led, Syrinx and Draco just slightly behind him. There might have been arguments about that. He didn't let there be. He also ignored the freezing rain on his skin, though he could hear a few muttered warming charms behind him. He needed to watch out for magic, and the best way to do that was not through a shield of charms.

Jing-Xi had taught him to focus, to sharpen his sight, and pick out spells from the litter of the mundane and low-level natural magic around them. It was a skill Harry had used during his first year at Hogwarts, but not truly since; he'd grown so accustomed to the spells in Hogwarts that he could ignore them as he did the general shape of the stones and the light of the torches.

Now he made himself see, and not merely look. His eyes swept trunks and slippery grass and the trailing edges of wizard robes and trainers and boots, and then came back again, circling as restlessly as a young werewolf. The rain made no difference to the spells he could see this way. It would not have unless it were a magical storm, but his training gave him an extra edge, too, insuring that the cold didn't distract him as he searched.

They neared the shack, and still Harry saw nothing outside the utter black hole of Dark that was the house itself and the flickering flames of his companions' magic. But he didn't care. There could always be something lurking he hadn't uncovered. He stared at every trailing root, every fluttering movement in the trees, every shift of the soil, and refused to let anyone go ahead of him no matter how much they—well, all right, Draco—pushed at him to do so. Voldemort was cunning, if not intelligent. He could have set traps.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

"Indigena!"

She had been reading in the garden, her skin enjoying the impact of the wetness and a Dry-Shield Charm keeping the pages unharmed, but she put down the book at once and vaulted into the burrow when her Lord called her. She slid down the steps more than she descended them, vines uncoiling from beneath the skin of her legs and clutching into the dirt. As she landed a few feet away from Voldemort on the dirt floor of the tunnel, she asked, "My Lord?"

"Someone approaches the ring, Indigena."

The ring? She had been reading about circular components of the golden bridle spell, and for a moment her mind tried to present her with a diagram. But then she remembered the only thing that would have put her Lord into this much of a panic, helped along, perhaps, by the tight clutch of his hands on the golden cup. Someone was approaching the small house not far away where he had hidden the ring of the House of Gaunt, a hereditary treasure of his family and thus of Slytherin's bloodline. And a Horcrux, of course.

An Unassailable Curse protected it, and a special surprise that no one outside of Lord Voldemort and she herself knew about, but Indigena, thinking, could see why the Dark Lord might be afraid that this particular person could pass the Unassailable Curse, if—

"Harry," said Voldemort, and spat. The spittle landed on the earth and sank into it with a sizzling sound. It took everything Indigena had to keep from flinching back. Under her shoulders, her tendrils curled close for protection, and the rose around her wrist tried to sink into her skin.

"Do you wish me to go to the house, my lord, and protect it?" Indigena asked. She had not had time, between tending her Lord and studying, to make every tree on the hillside into her devotee, but she was near it. The trees would not obey her commands perfectly if she asked them to attack Harry and whoever he might have brought with him, but they could slow him down.

"No," said Voldemort, a low snarl in the back of his throat. "The idea that Harry could have learned about Horcruxes, and I not sensed it, with what I know—inconceivable. And yet—" He closed his eyes, and his body shuddered and went limp. Indigena waited, one hand braced on the floor and the other clutching her wand. She would go if she had to, she was mad to go if it meant that Harry had somehow discovered the secret of her Lord's immorality, but she could not act without orders. She forced herself to concentrate on slowing the sick churning in her stomach, rather than doing anything else.

Voldemort was back, then, and he let out a long, low howl that shuddered through the chamber. Indigena felt his power spring up, blowing around him like a wind, and then drain away again through the hole in his magical core. She sighed. Until he could find a way to seal the hole, or convince Harry to undo the curse, her Lord could act only by using others as his hands and feet.

"Indigena," he said, when the wind had died.

"Yes, my lord?"

"He knows," said Voldemort flatly. "But if you attack, he will know that I know that he knows. I do not wish this to happen. And if I use the easiest weapon to hand, then I reveal myself too soon, and I cannot destroy all that he has loved." He paused a long moment, then said, "It must be risked. Use the golden bridle, Indigena."

She knew better than to protest. Besides, Harry might be to the house by now, and trying to break the Unassailable Curse. If he found its vulnerability—a vulnerability that the Dark Lord could never have foreseen when he cast it—then he might break it, or be able to guess how he could do so.

She sat down on the ground and began to speak the opening incantations of the golden bridle. She drew her wand in a circle around her all the while, and her plants sank into the soil to anchor her, and her left forearm flared and tingled and opened to a flow of bladed power.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Harry eyed the house. Closer to it, the feeling of evil, the stink of vicious Dark magic, grew worse. He had the urge to bare his teeth and whine. He knew now why Light wizards sometimes insisted that all Dark Arts were wrong. If they had encountered magic like this, they had a point.

The curses cast a steady feeling of doom and warning to stay away into the air. If was no wonder, Harry thought, that Muggles had never tried to knock the shack down, or explore it, even if they had been curious about it or wanted to build something here. Muggles were mad for building things.

The hillside remained untouched. Harry summoned his magic. Still he could see no spells implanted in the soil around the house, and he was running out of excuses to stand where he was. He could easily have remained there all day if it meant protecting his companions from danger, but they would not understand.

The house was still the ruin he remembered from more than a year ago, with no sign that anyone had been here since. Frozen mud caked the threshold and clung to the base of the walls. Harry stepped nearer, and nearer, and then reached out and laid his silver hand on the door.

Magic exploded all about the house in a silent lightning storm. Acid that would have devoured flesh leaped from the door. Harry already had shields up, snapping, singing, spreading, in response, and the acid splattered against the air a few inches from his and Syrinx's faces.

Some had hit his silver hand, he saw, when he looked. But it did not work on metal as it would have on meat. It simply slid down, sullenly. Harry shook his wrist to get it off, and then studied the house again. He could make out the spell that had concealed the acid ward now, so dim and close-woven with the general traceries of Dark magic that trying to detect it was like trying to see a Granian in stormclouds. He grimaced.

"Harry!"

Draco had grabbed his shoulder and shaken it hard. Harry turned around with a leap. "What?" he demanded, picturing danger coming up behind him, one of the group missing, someone—

"Are you all right, you fucking idiot?" Draco had seized his cheeks and was staring at him. Harry felt his face flush. He tried to pull his head free. Draco wouldn't let him go. Harry had to drive magic into his own limbs so that he could pull away.

"Of course," he said. "I would have told you if I wasn't." He studied their pale, silent faces—even Syrinx looked as if she had seen him fall off a cliff—and realized then that the acid had shocked them. He snorted. "I hardly expected to get to the Horcrux without triggering a few wards," he reassured them.

Draco made a strangled sound. Harry looked at him. "What?"

Draco pursed his lips together and shook his head. Harry frowned, annoyed. He can be that way, then. He faced the house again, and this time let his concentration on the rest of the world slip away, so that the house became the center of his vision. Then he sharpened the intangible "light" by which he saw magic, and some Dark spells he had missed before sprang out, pulsing.

The sheer scope and scale of the curses wrought on the house to keep intruders out made Harry dizzy. It was more than a web, it was a nightmare of thorns and briars of spells intercutting each other, intersecting in knots that made it seem as if they had edges, and then turning away again and speeding off into the air at impossible angles. There was probably a key somewhere, one strand that could be tugged to make it fall apart—Voldemort would not want to be held away from one of his Horcruxes if he had to fetch it quickly—but Harry had no idea where it would be.

Or it could just be that the Dark Lord was immune to all the spells on the house. With the scale of his study in other countries, and just how many spells Harry didn't recognize and thought were probably Egyptian or New Zealand magic, it was entirely possible.

"I should have brought Thomas," he muttered, taking a step forward. "Or Jing-Xi."

"Harry!"

He glanced up. Regulus had pressed forward, and was kneeling next to the house, carefully keeping his hands inches from even the smallest of the thorn-spells. He had one hand clamped on his left arm, over the Grim mark. The Grim's shadow splayed in front of him, sniffing curiously at the shack.

Harry walked over to him. Regulus glanced up. "There's an Unassailable Curse here," he said softly.

Harry felt his face drain of blood. "You're sure?"

Regulus nodded and passed a hand over his eyes. "Death taught me to recognize them," he said. "She thought—well, she thought I might need the knowledge." He laughed, but the laughter, to Harry, had a hollow sound, and for a moment he felt the weight of what they faced threaten to overwhelm him. "Why, I can't imagine," Regulus added, with a sarcasm Harry would have thought more fitting for Sirius.

"Is it a curse that someone would have to die to break?" Harry asked quietly.

"No," said Regulus. "I suspect he wouldn't want that, just in case one of his Death Eaters had to retrieve the Horcrux or he came alone, once. And it isn't the kind of curse one casts casually, that." He drew his wand. "I've been studying Unassailable Curses," he explained out of the corner of his mouth. "Still no way around them that I can find." He caught Harry's eyes in a brief, intense glance that Harry turned away from. "But I can identify what their major components might be."

He extended his wand towards a thin dark line that looked no different from most of the other spells to Harry, except that it coiled around most of the thorns in a pattern like a lazy figure eight. "Vomica erinyos comperta!"

The curse blazed to life. Harry grimaced and put his flesh hand in front of his eyes. The blaze was manifested as thick, oily flames.

"Blood," said Regulus.

"Vampires?" Harry asked, when he thought he could bear the sight of the curse afire. "Or we have to bleed someone to get inside?" Blood magic had been part of the protection for the locket Horcrux, Regulus had told him.

Regulus shook his head. "Not that kind of blood," he said. "I should have said—heritage." He turned his wand around, frowning, then cast a few more incantations. The curse blazed twice and was still once. Regulus stared, and then laughed. Harry laid the silver hand on his shoulder. It made him sick to hear such a sound from Regulus.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I asked if the curse was tied to the heritage of a specific family," Regulus replied. "It seemed there were few families he could have used. Most of his Death Eaters came from diverse backgrounds. Sure enough. He used his own." He glanced at Harry again. "Only the blood of Slytherin can break that curse."

"And he's the only descendant of Slytherin left," Harry muttered, remembering what the shadow of Tom Riddle had told him when he tried to control the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets. A Parselmouth descended from Slytherin had had to control that snake, no one else. "Bastard."

"Rather."

Harry rapped his flesh hand against his knee. "Are there any other Unassailable Curses on the shack itself?"

Regulus shook his head. "Only that one."

"Then we need to know a way to break that one, most of all," Harry breathed. "I can get Thomas and come back to study the others." He stared for a moment more, then turned to Snape. "Severus, I'll meet your eyes and transfer the memory of what the spells on the house look like to you. Then you plant it in the minds of the others with Legilimency." He glanced quickly at Draco, Regulus, Peter, Henrietta, and Owen. Syrinx stood off to the side, eyes slightly closed as she listened to the golden kitten's reports. "I want you to tell me if you recognize any of the spells. If not, just prepare to hold the memory so that we can study it when we get back to Hogwarts."

"But you don't want us to break the spells if we recognize one?" Henrietta asked hopefully.

Harry shook his head. "Destroying one spell we do know might trigger the spells we don't. And I think we may only get one chance to approach what's in that house, anyway. Better to study it and then retreat and come back when we're prepared." He could feel relief growing in his chest. He wouldn't have to ask any of his companions to die for him today.

He locked eyes with Snape and reached out with his Legilimency. Snape grimaced when he received the vision, and then turned and looked at Regulus. Harry met Draco's eyes.

Syrinx jerked and cried out. Harry spun around. He had been expecting Death Eaters to appear to defend their master's Horcrux at any moment, but he had hoped they would not. Must they die after all?

"What is it?" he asked.

"The kitten's gone." The war witch plucked the earring from her ear and laid it on her palm, staring. "Not enough time to see anything useful, sir. Just the tip of a wand, and then he was blasted."

"I'm sorry," said Harry gently. He knew the Gloryflowers' bond with their artificial animals ran deep enough that the loss of one hurt, and he felt a pulse of anxiety for Argutus. "But he died bravely, and he's told us there's danger." He looked around, but saw no sign of Argutus. Closing his eyes and picturing a snake, he hissed a call to return in Parseltongue—all he could do. He had no mental bond with Argutus to compare to his one with Sylarana.

He reached out his arm to Draco, preparing to Apparate him, and hoping that this time Draco wouldn't get it into his head that he needed to be an adult. Luckily, Draco took his arm with alacrity, and Harry turned to see the other Apparition pair forming, Syrinx stepping up to Snape without a qualm.

" 'And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords of life,'" a voice intoned from the other side of the house. "'And I have something to expiate; a pettiness.' Running away from me would be such a pettiness, Harry."

Evan Rosier came into view, smiling. He held a glass bead with blue lines radiating from it. Harry studied the lines where they curved off into the air, and resisted the temptation to swear. If he hadn't been concentrating so hard on the curses on the house, he might have noticed when the lines established their web. As it was, there was now an anti-Apparition shield over the immediate area, and Harry recognized the general pattern as a variant on Ariadne's Web, the spell that had sheltered the school of Durmstrang last year. He would have to destroy or steal the glass bead in Rosier's hand to gain control of the web.

"Do you like it?" Rosier tilted the bead in his hand, admiring it. "I have studied hard in the past year. It was something to do when I could not sleep." He lifted his head, and his eyes were wild and dark and laughing. " 'Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld, now due to be crowned again.' You have taught me what it is like to be an exiled king, Harry, and for that I must thank you. But I have missed you."

"I told you once," said Harry calmly, ignoring the drawn wands and hissed-in breaths from around him, "that the next time I saw you, I would kill you."

"Oh, yes, you did," said Rosier agreeably. "But I think that you should look at me and see what I've learned first, Harry. Pulmo dominatio!"

Harry braced himself to fling the spell back the moment it tried to get control of him; Rosier was an expert in spells that got under shields and affected the human body, like the Blood-Burning Curse that he had afflicted Harry with the first time they fought in proper battle. But Harry thought he could resist it, now.

He felt nothing. Then he heard a gasp and felt a head sag against his shoulder, and knew whose lungs Rosier had taken control of.

Draco.

The world went white. It took Harry a moment to realize it hadn't gone white just for him. His magic was flaring in a wide circle of shining fire all around him, beating in time with his own heart, closing in and turning around Rosier like a torture wheel. Rosier was watching it with an expression of childlike delight. He wagged the glass bead, as if to remind Harry of what was at stake.

"That was pretty," he remarked to Harry. "You must show me that again sometime." He paused reflectively. "Or you could bring me raspberries. I have developed a taste for them, in place of the blueberries that you never brought me."

"Let him go, Rosier," Harry said, trying to block from his mind the descriptions of what he'd read the Lung Domination Curse as doing. Victims could die slowly from lack of air, instead of quickly. Their lungs could fill with fluid, and they could drown on dry land. They—

"You should have acted more quickly," said Rosier. "You let me talk, and that is always a bad idea, Harry. How many enemies' lives will you spare while your friends die?" He smiled at him. "Let us make a wager. I say four. How many do you say?"

A curse soared over Harry's shoulder before he could recover his self-possession, aimed for the glass bead in Rosier's hand. It hit a shield Harry hadn't even seen, and shattered. Rosier laughed.

"I am much stronger now, Henrietta," he said. "My magic has increased wonderfully. Did I mention that?"

"Let him go, Rosier," Harry said. The world had become simple, as simple as the rage his wheel of fire expressed, as simple as the desperation that was slowly eating his brain from the inside out. "Let him go, and you may have whatever you wish of me." He lifted his wrists to show that he had a silver hand attached to the left one. "Do you want this? You can have it."

Rosier's eyes blazed. "You are so kind to offer your hand to me, Harry," he murmured. "But I think I want something else."

"What?"

"Do not trust him, Harry." Snape sounded like nothing human. Harry flicked him a glance and saw his magic crouched around him as a muscled shadow. "He will keep no bargain he makes."

"Do shut up, Severus," said Rosier. "You can't advise him in this situation." He turned his gaze to fix on Harry. "And I think I prefer your right hand to your left," he said, and showed his teeth. "I am hungry, I think, for red, wet flesh, and not so much for cold, hard silver."

Harry felt the waves of his emotions crashing over him. Fear and rage alternated so quickly he could hardly tell them apart any more. All he knew for certain was that Rosier might as well have gripped his own lungs with that curse. His breath came in time with Draco's needy, gasping ones behind him. He did feel Draco sag briefly, in the manner that meant he was trying his possession gift, but then he gave a jerky sigh, and Harry knew it had failed. Probably Rosier was too insane for Draco to possess.

"Harry," Draco whispered, and Harry bent towards him, never taking his eyes from Rosier as the air grew more and more tense. "I can't control him, but there's something—I can't see it well—a golden bridle, wrung over his thoughts—if you can break that, I think—"

And then he stopped talking, and Harry looked to see his face turning blue.

He faced Rosier again, and screamed. His ring of white fire soared, leaping like a fountain, gouts of power rising and then falling right back down into place, so they looked less like fountains and more like blades as the moments wore on. Harry wanted to kill. He was mad to do so.

"No talking, no," Rosier said. "Did I give you permission to do that? Naughty Draco." And Draco started breathing again, but only in shallow pulses that Harry knew couldn't sustain him. "Now, Harry, come forward and hold out your hand to me, so that I can bite your palm. I prefer my meat alive when I can get it."

Harry moved forward, ignoring the stifled gasps and curses from behind him, never yielding Rosier's gaze. He had a moment, and no more, to decide what he should do with the information Draco had given him.

Perhaps at another time he would have planned and plotted. But now, everything was so simple. He had to save Draco. He trusted Draco absolutely.

Thus it was that as he came to a halt and held out his hand for Rosier to eat, he leaped through his eyes, in a burst of Legilimency.

He saw at once what Draco had meant. Beyond Rosier's eyes was not the chaos he would have expected of a mad person, the chaos that Snape had once seen in Sirius's mind when he was being driven insane by Voldemort's possession, but a lashing sea with a bridge over it. The bridge resembled a golden bridle if seen from a certain angle. And underneath that bridle, the chaos fought still.

Someone had grasped Rosier's mind and constrained him to appear.

And if Harry broke the bridle, then he would be setting Rosier free to do as he willed.

Only a moment to make a decision, and Harry chose freedom. He could not do otherwise. He was vates, and the mad things, the wild things, the Dark things, they deserved their freedom, too.

And Rosier held Draco on someone else's orders.

Harry cleft the golden bridle. It withered, falling away like the phoenix web. Someone fought him for a moment, but that person was not strong enough to hold on to the spell in the face of Harry's magic. He gripped the bridle and shook it to death between his teeth.

And Rosier was free.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Indigena gagged, feeling as though someone had punched her in the belly, and flopped on the floor of the tunnel as gracelessly as Falco dropping out of the air. She coughed and coughed and coughed again, and then moaned softly at the merciless pounding in her head.

"Indigena?"

Somehow, she roused herself and crawled to her Lord's side. His fingers felt her face, and he whispered, "Harry knows that Evan was under the bridle spell?"

She nodded, and let her head fall forward, to rest on her Lord's chest. He did not smell bad, like dirt and flowers and soft cool things. It gave Indigena the strength to summon breath to reassure him.

"But he—didn't spend much time in Evan's head," she whispered. "He didn't have time to see the source of the bridle, nor where it was attached on Evan's body."

"Good," said Voldemort, his fingers clamping into her hair and on the back of her neck. "Then we will move slowly, and subtly. The others are more certain. Only our mad Evan, our broken one, needs such measures. Do not repeat the spell, and Harry cannot trace the pattern."

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Harry felt for a moment as if he were falling into an abyss, a black, churning sea, crushed with lightning, that reared up to meet him. And then he was free himself, as Rosier's natural insanity reasserted itself, and flung him out of his mind.

He was lying on the ground, a torn bite in the center of his palm, staring up at Rosier. There was blood on his teeth, and wildness in his eyes. And realization, if not sanity.

He dropped the glass bead and crushed it beneath his heel, all the time never taking his eyes from Harry's. Then he aimed his wand at Draco—Harry remembered, as if in a daze, that he had not used his wand to cast the Lung Domination Curse—and shouted, "Finite Incantatem!"

Draco took a deep breath, to show Harry he could.

A timeless moment passed, swinging like a pendulum, during which Harry looked into Rosier's eyes as he would the eyes of any wild creature he freed. He saw the same hatred he had seen there when he used the phoenix tears to heal Rosier's wounds in the graveyard last Midwinter.

And they were enemies again, and Harry tried to make the ring of white fire race in and swallow Rosier, and Rosier leaped away, the distinctive crack of Apparition shattering into silence. Argutus's lunge carried him futilely through empty air a second too late, and he chose, hissing, to twine about Harry instead.

Harry turned, forced himself to his feet, tamed his magic, snatched Draco close, and Apparated. The others followed without discussion. Harry knew they didn't need to be told where he was going.

He landed safely on the grass outside Hogwarts, breathing in the scent of Draco's hair, clutching him as if he would never let him go, and tasting the slide of rain over his skin and his lips.