Chapter Seventy-Two: See What Beauty Falls

Draco took a deep breath, because he could, and then another one, because he could see Harry watching him.

Harry had lingered to tell the Headmistress what had happened and to answer questions from the others as they arrived, with bare courtesy. Regulus had stepped back and prudently let him go when his magic sprouted from his face in bizarre bronze tendrils. Draco was of the opinion that this was the right thing to do.

And not only because Harry would be calmer if not forced to answer question after question, of course. Also so that Harry could take care of him.

It was a wonderful feeling, to know that at that moment, he was the center of Harry's world and Harry would have done anything to protect him. He'd taken Draco back to their bedroom and conjured food for him from a robe that he never wore anymore. Draco had protested at first, expecting it to taste like dust, but in fact it tasted like grapes. He'd had to eye Harry sideways and wonder how much of what he did in class failed not because he didn't have the talent but because he was trying to channel raw power through the conduits of spells too small for it.

Harry had fed him the grapes, eyes so intent that Draco had felt unable to talk. Meanwhile, his magic roamed the room, snakes twitching their tails and hissing whenever Harry looked at them. Sometimes Harry hissed back, and sometimes he talked to Argutus, but for the most part he kept up a low murmuring of constant reassurances that Draco could only make out some of the time.

"Love you…would have torn him apart if he hurt you more than that…should have torn him apart the moment I saw him…Merlin, Draco, no end to the things I would do for you…has to be a better way to protect you…felt as if my mind was ripping out of my skull when I knew that he'd hit you with that spell…so clever, even in the middle of that pain, to feel the golden bridle in his mind and be able to tell it to me…"

Draco leaned back on the bed and let Harry touch him with his hands when the words weren't enough any more. For the most part, Harry used the right one, but Draco reached up and clasped his left wrist, letting him know without words that the silver was welcome. And it was; the combination of Harry's magic working to bind it to his body and a warming charm made it only a little stiffer and smoother than Harry's right hand.

Draco reveled in the fact that no one else would ever know what the touch of those hands felt like, and in the gaze Harry gave him all the while, as if he were the most precious thing ever to exist, treasure and lover and friend all rolled up into one. He could have asked Harry to do anything at that moment, and he would have done it.

He didn't intend to use that power, of course, except to save Harry's life if necessary. But he didn't care. The point was that he had it, and he could have used it. Draco closed his eyes, and twitched a bit as Harry spelled his clothes away and went to work, kneading his skin and breathing over every sensitive place on his body and caressing his groin as if he thought that it would vanish in the next moment.

The other times they'd bedded each other stood out clear and sharp in Draco's mind, mosaics of leaps and angles. This one didn't. This one was curved, blurred, blending, sliding from a moment of pleasure to another moment of pleasure, colors exploding behind his eyes, pleasure soaking his belly from the inside and his hands and his chest and his legs and then his belly from the outside.

Harry gathered him close when he was done. He used his hands, but other than that, he might have shifted Draco's weight by main force or magic; Draco couldn't open his eyes to see. He lifted his head for a kiss, and it was there. He leaned his head on Harry's shoulder, and it was there.

He couldn't open his eyes, he was so sated, but he could imagine the picture Harry must make, crouched over him, eyes blazing as he stared at the far wall and, Draco hoped, plotted vengeance on Rosier.

He did wish he hadn't had to go through such an experience as the Lung Domination Curse to get this kind of treatment, Draco reflected drowsily. But he had had his place in Harry's life reconfirmed in a very pleasant way, and now he drifted on the edge of bliss. He favored giving up all thought about his dangerous experience today in order to flirt with sleep.

Sleep won, and seduced him—though not as thoroughly as Harry had—into a slumber that Draco felt as a leaping wave of blackness creeping up from his legs. He might have tensed when it passed over his chest and above his still-laboring lungs, but he did not. He was comfortable, and he was relaxed, and then he was gone.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Harry waited until he was sure Draco was asleep to lower the barriers over his magic.

The air all around him went hot, bright, blazing, like a desert at noonday. Harry saw golden trees take form on the wall, but they looked blasted and blistered, as if they had stood too long in that fierce sun. Snakes looped through them, but their heads and tails were both narrower, and they showed fangs as they moved. Lynxes were nowhere in sight.

The black cats were everywhere. One of them jumped up on the bed and nudged at Draco, causing Harry to draw him more tightly into his arms, then lifted its head and locked Harry's gaze, green eye to green eye.

Harry saw the rage there, and he met it, because he had to, in a struggle only slightly less fierce than the one with Rosier had been. He swung between the desire, the need, to find and kill Evan Rosier so he could never do something like that to Draco again. And not far behind the anger was the desperate, maddened despair. Draco would be in danger every time they went into battle, unless Harry did something about it. And it was up to Harry to do something about it, because he was the reason Draco was in danger. If he had not cared about Draco so much, then his enemies would not have concentrated on Draco and tried to kill him.

He knew he could not solve either of those problems in the simplest ways, the ways that would have been available to someone like Lucius Malfoy. He could not order Draco to stay behind and out of danger, because that was a violation of his free will. Nor could he simply seek out and kill those who threatened Draco.

He regretted not killing Rosier on sight.

He did not think that he had it within himself to kill people on sight.

When he tried to think about it, even given the rage in the cat's eyes and the rage that had turned the room around him golden instead of deep purple and green, all his vates instincts revolted, screaming. His love of freedom was the only emotion as deep within him as his love of Draco, and it was able to combat it. He could not simply kill someone he thought was a threat, only to find out later that that person had been an innocent, or someone coming to offer terms of surrender. He could live with the consequences that might follow leaving someone alive to talk, but not the other. If he slew someone by mistake, then the shadows of suicide would come back, and he would look into the abyss he had when he let Loki kill Kieran.

But neither could he live if Draco were destroyed.

That was what he had understood in the moments after they arrived back at Hogwarts, not the moments when he tried to think of something to do to get Draco free of the Lung Domination Curse or the moments when he sprawled at Rosier's feet. As undeniable as the will to allow people their will was the one that said his mind, his heart, his soul, were wrapped up in Draco. If Draco died, he would follow. And if he allowed something to happen to Draco, again, suicide out of guilt would be the road he had to choose, the one his sense of right would make him choose.

And yet he couldn't do that either, since the wizarding world needed him alive to fight Voldemort and achieve as much as he could of the tasks of a vates.

For a moment, just a moment, Harry closed his eyes and mourned in silence that he had not been born Connor instead—the twin who turned out to be destined for perhaps one task and that far in the future, after he had learned a few lessons in love and compassion. He didn't want his magic, he didn't want whatever thing in him made other people follow him into danger, he didn't want his past, not if it made him have to face choices like this.

But the moment passed, and Harry opened his eyes again and scowled at the far wall.

So he could not take the simple methods. So wishing that things were different did not mean they would suddenly change into those different configurations. So his definition of what was most important in life and what he should do with his magic would not agree—probably never agree—with anyone else's.

That didn't matter. The choices and the consequences of his choices were still there, and needed to be lived with.

And that was what made him different, Harry thought, as he eased backward and pulled Draco with him so that his head rested on his chest. The cat had lain down beside him and was licking its claws. Now and then Harry felt a swipe of its tail or its flank, feeling solid and smelling musky. Real. His magic was strong enough to bring a creature like this fully formed into life.

He must live with them. Very well. Then he would. He was life-focused, not death-focused, despite the thoughts of suicide that seemed to be wheeling more and more often around his head this year. If he lost people to the Horcruxes, then he would have to live on. He could not think of death as an end, because he had given his life to larger things, responsibilities that would still need him no matter how much he wanted to die.

And I don't think that I would have been happy any other way, not with my training. Harry had to acknowledge that. He did not know how to relax, how to drug his mind and send it into submission. The closest he came to it was during flight, and that was more often an occasion to think about things he couldn't manage on the ground. And even in sex with Draco, he was chasing Draco's pleasure and his own as fiercely as he could, and then, almost the moment their bedding ended, his mind pounded and raced down a new track again.

He would be destroyed if Draco was, and he could not afford to be.

That was one truth.

He would not abandon his principles against vengeance and binding the wills of others, and that was another. Besides, Draco had proven himself in battle several times now.

So the best answer that Harry could come up with was a bodyguard. He would ask Draco his opinion of the choice, but he would not accept any attempt Draco made to persuade him out of doing it, any more than Draco had let him escape without bodyguards after the Ravenclaws cursed him last year.

Besides—

Harry smiled, and the black cat looked up from licking its claws and nudged its head forward, sliding it along his side, making him tangle his fingers of the silver hand in its fur and stroke it.

He knew how to spin the idea of a bodyguard so that Draco would see it as a privilege of uniqueness, rather than the intrusion that it had tended to represent to Harry. Harry knew all about the vain side of his lover. Most of the time, he could ignore it, or he only used it to tease Draco. This time, it would be useful.

He stroked Draco's hair and looked down at him with a faint shake of his head.

"I'll charm you," he whispered. "Persuade you. Manipulate you. You're a Slytherin, and you'll understand, if you figure it out, that it was merely a case of my following the traits of our House."

The cat licked his flesh palm with a rough tongue, rasping over the wound Rosier had made. Harry glanced at it in surprise, then shrugged. He supposed he should bind it, but it had stopped bleeding and it didn't hurt. He would take himself to Madam Pomfrey if it became infected.

He lay back and closed his eyes. He should sleep while he could. The moment he was awake, he had questions to ask Snape and others of his allies—specifically, those who bore the Dark Mark on their arms.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSS

"No."

"Severus." Harry was calm. Snape knew that from the way he hadn't retreated into formality the moment Snape refused. "I do want to do this. I know that you're a talented Legilimens and can sense most intrusions into your thoughts, but if I'm right, then Voldemort's using a spell that compels thought, and he's a very strong compeller. I just want to look for traces of the golden bridle that I saw in Rosier's thoughts. That's all."

Snape bared his teeth. "Nothing has happened to me," he said, looking Harry in the eye. "Since I ended the Sanctuary dreams with the one that told of Regulus's death—"

Harry stepped forward, but Snape's withering glare stopped him.

"I spoke of it with Joseph," said Snape. "And that is over now. I have thought about it, and soothed the stirred memories back to sleep, or else made an effort to integrate them into my life and coexist with them." That he had not told Joseph everything about his last dream, including what would have made him look most weak, was not the point. "There have been no vivid or compelling dreams since then. Rosier's line about lost sleep likely means nothing."

"But Indigena taunted him about bad dreams when he kidnapped Connor," said Harry, "and he went mad. I think he knew he was being controlled, then, or figured it out. I don't think they were working together at all. Indigena, or Voldemort working through Indigena, made him send those letters to Connor, and those carved wooden figures, and compelled him to wait until they were ready to summon Connor to Hawthorn's garden. Otherwise, do you think Rosier would have remained focused on one goal for that long? I had the feeling that it was impossible for him. He is simply too chaotic, and he would have wanted to do something more to get to me than to merely summon my brother to an ally's house and cast a few curses at him."

Snape had to admit that the scenario sounded unlikely to him, too. But he could still not believe that the Dark Lord was trying to control him by means of bad dreams or a golden bridle spell. He would have sensed such a thing. He was a Legilimens second only to Voldemort in Britain now that Dumbledore was dead, and an Occlumens second to none. If there was influence in his mind through dreams, then Voldemort could not have hidden it from him.

And he did not want to allow Harry to read his mind.

"Severus. Please."

Snape tossed his head and turned away. "I do not wish to," he told his fire flatly. "There are things in my memories that you do not need to see, Harry." He had been dreaming about the Marauders lately, and remembering the way that Dumbledore had allowed them to stay in the school when he should have expelled them after the attack on Snape. And he had allowed a werewolf to attend in the first place, madman that he was. Snape clenched his hands. Now and then he woke so full of hatred that he had to lie still and breathe deeply for a long moment before he could stand and make ready to teach Potions. Joseph said it was a healthy sign, a healing sign, that he could remember that much hatred without either burying it in an Occlumency pool or taking it out on his students, but Snape knew it made him shake with remembered darkness.

Harry did not deserve to see that wave of loathing directed at his father—the man who had sired him, say rather—at the moment when Snape was trying to be the best father to him that he could be.

"Please, Severus," Harry tried this time, as if the combination of the word and the name in that order would work a miracle where so far they had not.

Feeling as though his first name were tugging on him like the bridle Harry wanted to look for, Snape turned around again. "Why don't you ask the others first?" he asked harshly. "Why don't you ask Peter?"

"I already did," said Harry. "Asked, and looked into his mind. No trace of a golden bridle. And he said his dreams were no worse than usual. They're finally calming down now, after keeping him awake for a relatively long time. Hawthorn and Adalrico and—" He paused a moment, as though reluctant to say the name, then finished. "Lucius said they haven't dreamed of violent memories or anything else recently. And Regulus's mind isn't his own since he came back from Death, but she fills it with visions that have nothing to do with Voldemort."

"Then why would you think that I could have dreams that do?" Snape whispered, closing his eyes. "Am I alone, and none of the others, to be compared with Rosier?"

Harry touched his arm. Snape opened his eyes to see Harry taking a deep breath as though to prepare himself for climbing a mountain.

"I think he would target you before any of the others," Harry whispered, "because he was working that golden bridle on a man strong and difficult to control. Rosier is only harder to control than you are because he's mad." He paused, throat working. "And he would target you because he knows that you mean the most to me out of anyone who wears a Dark Mark."

Slowly, Snape knelt, holding Harry's eyes all the while. Harry looked nervous and miserable, the way he usually did when saying that one person was more important to him than another, but he didn't glance away.

Snape dropped his barriers. Harry was through into his mind, in a little rush of Legilimency that he greeted with a gasp. Then he caught himself, and began to swim with more grace than Snape had expected, heading towards the center of his mind, sifting memories with gentle fingers and looking for Merlin knew what sign of the Dark Lord's tampering.

It was—uncomfortable to have someone else in his mind. It always had been, Snape thought, which was one reason he was glad that he had learned most of what he knew of Occlumency and Legilimency out of books, rather than in combination with a teacher. His mind had been his secret refuge during his school days when others taunted him, and even sometimes from his mother's words. He could abandon Eileen's lessons and retreat into a corner where he was the Half-Blood Prince, son of pureblood royalty even if unacknowledged, and someday everyone would admire him for his brilliance with spells and potions.

Sometimes he caught a little jerk or flinch from Harry, but luckily, he did not have to confront any particular memory when that happened. Harry's touch was light, flitting from one part of his mind to the next. Snape suspected that came from his respect for someone else's free will. Harry would never be the best Legilimens in the world, simply because he had none of the liking for domination that had made Voldemort so proficient in the art.

Then he was out, and Harry stood gazing up at him solemnly. Snape waited, not knowing what he had seen.

"No trace of a golden bridle," said Harry. "And I saw no dreams that he'd sent in your memories." He reached out and put a hesitant hand on Snape's arm again. "Thank you. I know that must have been hard for you. And you're one of the bravest men I've ever met, Severus."

Snape stared. It hadn't occurred to him that part of the solemn shine in those green eyes came from admiration. But it did, and he could only stand there as Harry gave him a quick hug and then slipped quietly to the door. He did pause there, looking back with a faint smile that warned Snape he was about to say something to lighten the mood.

"Are you sure the Sorting Hat never considered you for Gryffindor, Severus, with all that bravery?"

Snape looked for something to throw, but Harry was already out the door.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

"I don't understand why we're here," complained Melinda Honeywhistle, tapping her quill against her scroll.

Harry ignored her serenely, along with the other reporters who shuffled their feet and muttered agreement. They stood in the center of the Hogsmeade road, in a roped-off section that still left foot travelers room to get by. Beyond the reporters, whom he'd invited, Harry had attracted a good deal of curious attention from the villagers. That suited his purposes. He currently hovered off the muddy ground in the center of the ropes, not on a platform, but borne along on currents of pure magic. That suited his purpose, too, which was to impress people to death.

"You will in a moment," said Harry, and turned his eyes upwards, since he'd seen a moving shadow. Alas, it was only one of the thestrals, rising idly from the Forbidden Forest and turning on a thermal. Harry watched him, and stifled the impulse to rise and join him. He could, yes, but only a small portion of the crowd would be able to see the creature he flew in company with, and those who could would be terrified. "If he comes, of course."

"You invited us here for someone who might not even appear?" Honeywhistle's face was ugly when Harry glanced at her again. "You should have a good excuse for this, Potter."

"That's not my name anymore," said Harry, with enough force that she started and took a wary step back from him. Harry raised an eyebrow, and pretended to let his anger drain away. He hadn't been angry at all, had suffered only a tiny spark of irritation, but they didn't need to know that. Sometimes using Slytherin manipulation was the best thing to do after all. With the control he could have over his emotions if he wanted to exercise it, Harry had managed to persuade Draco to accept Syrinx as a bodyguard, to persuade Peter that his form really was a lynx and he was ready to move on to more complicated Animagus training, and to interest these reporters to attend this showing, all in the last week. "At least I have that much in common with the one I asked to appear here this morning. He did have a name, once, but I only call him by it out of his courtesy. I would suggest that none of you try using it."

He saw an older wizard's lips shape the question, but he wasn't about to give the name away.

Besides, in that moment Dobby arrived.

He coalesced out of the air, his shape coming together from a myriad white sparks that until that moment seemed to have lain dormant in the mud. They rose and spun around each other, then joined into a shape that Harry had to swallow a chuckle at. Dobby had chosen the body of a black unicorn, though the horn itself was white, and the tail was a mix of red and white and green, and his eyes were green and blazing, and—

Harry narrowed his own eyes a bit. The unicorn had a white scar shaped like a lightning bolt extending from the base of his horn to the top of his eyes.

I'm sure he only means to make a point.

Dobby blinked at the reporters who surrounded him. Those eyes weren't just green, Harry saw when he glanced into them. They had the same golden sparks, the same immense wisdom, that he had seen when Dobby took him to the bedside of Jiv and her son.

And the magic. It poured into the world a few moments behind Dobby, soaking the people who watched, turning the air damp and moist with a half-felt rain. Dobby reared and brought down a single hoof that flashed from black to white as it moved, striking the ground.

The mud and the cobbles of Hogsmeade tore, and a spring of water fountained up, singing quietly to itself as it flowed along the street. Some people stepped away from it with a cry, but others came forward, looking half-dazed from the amount of magic in the air, and bent to drink. Harry smiled. His own senses were alive and awake, and he didn't have to ask to know that the water was cold and clear in their mouths, quite the best thing they had ever tasted.

"This is what can happen," Dobby said, his voice so sweet that it was like that water being poured over his ears. Harry shuddered, gooseflesh lifting on his arms, trails of pure delight pricking around the center of his back. "I was once a house elf, and then Harry freed me. Now I have gone back to what my kind was meant to be. Shapeshifters of the moment, changing as we move, changing to reflect what we learn of the world, which is everything." He turned his head, and let the horn glint, cleaving the air until the edge of it seemed like a needle. "Long ago, we entered the house elf form, giving up some of our greater power in order to learn about the limits, and it was thus that wizards found and tied us with the webs. And we forgot what we were. Now, because we have begun to be free, we have begun to remember."

He turned and laid his horn on Harry's shoulder. Harry forgot how to breathe. Despite the scar and his odd-colored tail, Dobby had faultlessly imitated the other aspects of a unicorn, including the graceful curve of its neck, like nothing else in the world, and the warm, soft animal smell of its fur.

"Thank you, vates," Dobby said, so softly that Harry had no doubt it was meant to remain private.

Harry couldn't speak. He nodded. Dobby flung himself back abruptly, rearing in midair, his hooves dancing above the cobbles and mud as though he were afraid of rousing a spring everywhere he went, and arched against the sky.

"When you free us," he said, his voice soaring to follow his motion, "you free one of the primal magical forces of the world. When you free us, then see what beauty falls!"

His legs bent, his hooves following the path of them like shooting stars, and when he reached the end of his kneeling motion, he exploded.

The sparks that flew everywhere from him were like black snowflakes. One brushed against Harry, burrowed blindly along his sleeve for a moment, and then reached bare skin and latched on.

Harry saw.

For a moment, he caught a glimpse of the path the shapeshifters walked on. It was nothing like the paths of Dark and Light, not a defined road so much as what Dobby's people—and almost he felt their name, teasing at his teeth and tongue, there and then flown—had chosen to do with their existence at the beginning. Long-lived, immortal if they wished to be so, existing in the midst of immense magic, able to change shape, they altered, and altered, and altered again, flowing through all the other powers in the wizarding world and the Muggle one.

Why had they been created? They did not know, and that did not matter. They did not think they had been bred for a defined purpose like the flying horses had been, but even if they were, they no longer remembered it. What mattered was that they were there, they existed, and they had a coherence and an identity of their own that did not depend on anything anyone else said.

And then they were bound.

That trapped them in one shape. More, it trapped them in one relationship to wizards. They were no longer free to approach individual wizards if they wished and initiate bonds of friendship or love or enmity with them. They, who had been the freest of the magical creatures, were trapped in servitude, and convinced it had been their idea and was their nature, and that was all they knew.

And now a vates had come, and his breaking of the webs could restore to them choice, the freedom of stars and skies and an endless, uncircumscribed life and body. They were again what they had been, partnering wizards in the great dance if they wished, but not compelled to do so. There were no words for what that meant, and no words for how keenly interested Dobby was, among all his other interests, in making sure that the rest of his kind achieved it again.

Wizards could make up for what they had done only by letting the race they called house elves free. And that was all.

The moment ended. Harry gasped, and saw Dobby, in unicorn form again, spring forward, hooves drumming like bells on empty air. Straight up he ascended, a flying shape, ridiculously-colored tail streaming behind him, and in the sky he burst again and was lost.

Harry slowly surveyed the crowd. Many there were crying openly, and one or two of the reporters had fainted in shock. Melinda Honeywhistle was still on her feet, but she swayed back and forth, her lips blue. Harry nodded, and awkwardly cleared his throat. He had intended for them to meet Dobby and see what could be gained when the house elves were free of their webs, but Dobby had made a far more convincing argument than he could ever have done.

And that was right, Harry thought, the satisfaction slotting into something deep within him. Ultimately, what he wanted was not to make the magical creatures dependent on him, or dependent on the good will of wizards, but able to speak in their own voices, make their own arguments, and live their own lives.

When one could do that, the beauty that fell out of it was greater, by far, than the beauty wizards might achieve when they still had house elf slaves and bound the other creatures as servants.

"Thank you for coming," he said into the silence and tears. "You can always ask me if you have questions."

He turned and floated back towards Hogsmeade, mind shaking and stamping its hooves like a unicorn. He had promised himself, in the wake of Rosier's attack, to live life as best he could, and take precautions to insure that the people around him could survive, without becoming paranoid about it in a way that would steal all the joy out of surviving.

Based on what he had seen from Dobby—the creature who had been, at one point, called Dobby—he still had a lot to learn.