The poetry lines quoted here are from "Leda and the Swan," by William Butler Yeats.

Chapter Eighty-One: Our Own Voices

"You should have known better."

Harry opened his eyes to those words, and realized almost at once that he would not have an easy time persuading Snape that he was fine. He rolled his head over on the pillows, much as he had rolled it to look at the gray dog who had come to represent Death, and grimaced. His head was still light and faintly fuzzy from loss of blood. It wasn't the ideal position to be arguing from.

But he could see by the light coming through the windows of the hospital wing that it was morning, and he bore no wounds that he could feel save the long, jagged one in his right arm and the many light scrapes and bruises that he would have from falling on the stones in the Forest. He had survived and come back mostly whole. And he had had numerous hours to sleep and recover. Madam Pomfrey must have given him a Blood-Replenishing Potion. That meant he should be ready to face Snape.

He heaved himself up on his left elbow, as he knew his right arm would simply go watery and drop him in a moment. He held Snape's eyes calmly. "I knew that you wouldn't have let me do what I needed to do," he said. "You'd told me as much. When I mentioned spilling blood on the chain, even in the most casual way, you forbade me to do so. So I had to go alone in order to make sure the thestrals were freed by the only thing that would dissolve that cold chain. That's all."

Snape's face looked like dark stone in its rage. He leaned nearer. "It will not be happening again," he said.

"Yes, it will," said Harry. He could feel his insides squirming in discomfort. He had felt bad slipping alone into the Forest without even leaving a note, though someone could have found the note before he reached the grounds and come after him. But it would have been a hundred times worse had he not been doing this as part of his vates duties. Yes, as a child he had run away and done things on his own for stupid reasons, or to satisfy his training to protect Connor. But he had made sure in his reading. Blood was the only way to free the thestrals. The blood had to be drawn by thorns, not a knife and not a spell. Something about thornbushes growing in the native territory thestrals were from. Harry had not made up the requirements of the procedure. He had merely decided to answer them.

"It will not."

Harry blinked and leaned a little away from Snape, using his right hand to wipe carefully at the fleck of spittle that had landed on his face. He hadn't seen his guardian this passionate in a long, long time. He had lowered his voice instead of raising it, and Harry did have the impulse to cast down his eyes. But how could he? He had done what he needed to do. If he promised not to do it again, then he would be betraying the most important path he walked.

"I have to use thorns," he said. "I have to use blood. If you wish, you can come with me next time, but I really didn't trust you not to Stun me and take me back to Hogwarts the moment I opened my arm, sir."

"And you were right to doubt that I would have let you do this mad thing." Snape's voice just got colder and colder, harder and harder. "There must be some other way to free them, Harry. Find it."

"There isn't," Harry pointed out patiently. "I have been trying to find some other method that would work for most of a week. And it's blood, and it's thorns. I'm sorry. But just like a Calming Draught won't change its base for all that I worked on it, this won't change for all that you protest, sir."

Snape closed his eyes and murmured something violent, his wandless magic leaping and crackling like lightning around him. Harry watched him in concern. He wasn't going to change his mind about this, no matter how much guilt he felt or what arguments Snape used. He wished he did know a way to ease Snape's fear, though.

"Let me, sir. I think I can handle him."

Harry's head jerked up. Draco stood in the doorway to the hospital wing, leaning against it. Now he stalked inside, and came straight up to Harry's bed. Harry swallowed back a surge of nervousness. He hadn't seen Draco this truly angry in months. Petulant sulks over not getting his way were one thing. This Draco had a manner that reminded him partly of Narcissa and partly of Snape.

Draco touched Harry's right arm just above his wound, eyes never leaving his face. "You would say that this was an acceptable price, correct, Harry? You would say that, if your vates path leads you in that direction, it's simply the one you have to go?"

Harry nodded, mesmerized by the way that Draco's eyes speared him.

"And what happens if you meet a magical species whom you have to free by sacrificing the person dearest to you?" Draco asked quietly. "Or by giving up your ability to love? Would you accept that bargain?"

"There doesn't exist such a species," said Harry, feeling his back half-arch.

"There could." Draco watched him thoughtfully, mercilessly, his face showing no signs of yielding. "You don't know everything about the magical species of the world yet, Harry, and especially not the webs that bind them. There could be something wonderful or terrible out there that would demand its freedom from you at that cost." He leaned close, until Harry could feel his breath on his cheek. "Or there could be one you would die to free. You nearly died to free one thestral last night. One, Harry. And you will have to nearly die again and again to free the rest."

"I didn't think my life was in danger," Harry said, trying to pull away. Draco's hand clamped on the back of his neck, and that, combined with the weakness in his muscles from the blood loss, wouldn't let him move. "I knew my magic would work to save my life."

"Then what's this?" Draco seized his left hand and turned it over.

"A gray dog came and licked it back into flesh," Harry said stolidly, but winced when Draco's nails clanged off the small patch of silver that remained in the middle of the palm. Yes, it was shaped like a dog's head.

"You didn't know that would happen," Draco said. "You didn't know anything about the cost of freeing the thestrals, Harry, not really. You only knew how it had to be done. Tell me, why couldn't you have used the blood from an animal to do this? Is there something in the books that forbids it?"

"The animal wouldn't have given the blood of its free will," Harry reminded him tightly. "I did."

"And the books say that the chain has to be broken with the blood of a willing sacrifice?"

Harry knew he'd hesitated a moment too long.

Draco reached out and took his chin in an almost crushing grip. "I knew it," he breathed. "That was all you, that decision to use your own blood. If you do it again, Harry, I am going to break off the joining ritual."

Fear froze his insides more than the guilt ever could have. Harry stared into Draco's face and finally whispered, "You wouldn't—don't do that. Don't even threaten that."

"And why not?" Draco's eyes were bright, scornful. "You say that you wouldn't give up someone dear to you or the ability to love, Harry. And yet you would give up what permits you to be dear to other people and to love them, your life. You've never valued it enough. You've treated it like some counter on a game board. I did think you were mostly healed of that tendency, but this proves you aren't. It will end. Remember what I said, Harry." His hand caressed Harry's cheek, and he leaned in and kissed him hard enough to hurt, to steal breath. "With this one action," he murmured, breath puffing against Harry's lips, "you've said that you don't value the rituals we've gone through so far, the possibility of what we could be when the joining's done in about two years, or my presence in your life."

"I didn't say that!" Harry yelled, feeling his hold on his temper slip. "I didn't think I would die!"

"But you put your life in enormous danger, and you did it without telling anyone where you were going, and you ignored an easily available choice that wouldn't have put you in danger at all," Draco said smoothly, and stepped away from the bed. "And you knew we would worry, Professor Snape and I and your brother and all the others who love you, and you did it anyway. You put one magical species ahead of all the others you need to fight for and free. What would have happened to the house elves if you died in the Forbidden Forest, Harry?"

"Dobby spoke better for them than I ever could have—"

"Which doesn't mean they don't need you," said Draco tightly. "Idiot. Look me in the eye and tell me that you value your life, Harry."

"I do," said Harry, glaring at him. There was guilt ripping through him now, shredding him with bloody claws when he tried to think about this from Draco's or Snape's point of view.

"And tell me that you value the people in your life."

"You know I do. I shouldn't have to prove that."

"But you do," said Draco, "because you seem to have given up all notion of keeping them and loving them last night. Prove to me that you do, Harry. Voluntarily protect your life for at least the next month, until the Walpurgis ritual. And never do something like this again."

He turned and left before Harry had a chance to reply.

Snape said, "He executes the punishment of a partner. I am going to execute the punishment of a parent, Harry. Detention every night for a month. Yes," he added, when Harry opened his mouth. "That includes weekends."

"But sir—"

Snape looked at him.

"Severus," Harry corrected himself with a groan. "I—how can it be moral to use an animal's blood like that, put it through extreme pain in order to do something I want to do?"

"As well ask how it can be moral to make those who love you worry so much," Snape said, and turned away. "I will await you in my office tonight, Harry. Do not worry, it will be light labor, in deference to your healing arm."

He left. Harry lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling, feeling his cheeks burn with humiliation and rage.

The rage was small, though, buried beneath the guilt for the most part.

I just—I just thought they would be angry at me, but because I lied to them. I never thought they would believe I didn't value my life. I do. It's just—

And at the wording of his next thought, Harry nearly swallowed his tongue.

It's just less important than other things.

Harry curled up in confusion, tucking his pillow beneath his cheek. He hadn't realized the implications that thought would have to Draco and Snape, what they would think and feel if they could hear him say it.

Perhaps it was time he did.

SSSSSSSSSSSSS

It took labor for Draco to eat silently beside Harry instead of simply giving in, wrapping his arms around him, and taking him back to their bedroom for a round of sex that would knock most of the arguments between them away.

But it was labor he had committed himself to, and now he had to do it.

He shot a narrow-eyed look at Harry, who was picking miserably at his breakfast. Two days of rest, other than attending detentions with Snape, had improved Harry's health considerably. But his mood hadn't followed that. He had been quiet and downcast the first time Draco saw him after their argument, and he'd remained quiet and downcast since.

He slopped orange juice instead of milk into his cornflakes as Draco watched. Draco shivered a little. Now the desire to reach over and comfort Harry was so strong that it felt like a wave of the sea, running through him and slapping his body from side to side.

And still he refrained. He and Harry had a philosophical difference between them in this area at least as deep as the one that had lain between his parents about his disownment. Narcissa could not have yielded to Lucius without loss of face and proving that she didn't really care what he did to their family. Draco knew the same thing applied to him now. Yield, and Harry would not take him seriously. He would risk his life again, knowing he would have, at most, a few days of discomfort afterwards—a small price to pay for a freed thestral.

Draco wanted the lesson to go home once and for all. And it would. He could endure days in misery. It made his food taste bad and left his hands itching for a touch of Harry's skin, but that was better than endless nights for the rest of his life lying awake and wondering where Harry was this time and whether he would come home alive.

Draco had thought once that he refused to be a suffering little wife, left behind while Harry went on adventures. Well, he refused to be the hapless partner either, left lying asleep while Harry risked his life, especially when there were less risky choices to accomplish the same goal. Harry would learn to value his life if only because Draco valued it.

Otherwise…

Draco took a deep breath, and scraped at his plate with unnecessary violence, since his food was already gone and there was nothing left to move around.

Otherwise he would break the joining ritual. He had said he would, and he meant it. He refused to be left behind, to be considered less than an equal, while in the midst of a binding that was supposed to make them exactly that. He deserved better than that.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Snape watched from the corner of his eye as Harry came in and headed straight for the thick pile of books he'd been reading for the last three nights. His shoulders still tightened when he opened them, but he no longer looked as if he would like to murder someone, Snape had noticed. He supposed that was progress.

The books were wizarding fey tales, Muggle fairy tales, and more ordinary children's stories all mixed together. Harry was supposed to read them and take notes. The one thing they had in common was their theme. All revolved around the theme of a parent or child in danger, and the other coming to rescue them.

Harry had snapped his head up and stared at him in betrayal when he first figured out what they were, that night when he came down after being wounded. Snape had looked at him calmly until he turned away and took the notes he was supposed to on them. The notes would say "what he learned."

The notes grew more and more coherent each night; the first time, they had been little more than erratic jottings, so badly-written that Snape couldn't read them. Now, though, they contained comparisons between the different kinds of stories, wonderings about the themes of the more obscure ones, and, more and more often, the admission that the parents loved their children and vice versa.

Snape went back to marking his own essays while the soft scratch of Harry's quill sounded behind him.

Draco had one lesson to teach Harry, one about valuing him and considering him an equal. With Snape, Harry's lapse was different; Snape did not want Harry to have to consider himself in the relationship of a friend or guardian or colleague to his own father. He wanted Harry to realize that he could be a son, and that it was not always wrong when someone wanted to stop him from doing something harmful to his own safety.

Add to that the fact that, while he was in Snape's office writing about the stories, he couldn't be outside, running about in the Forbidden Forest and ripping his arms open with thorns, and Snape thought the trade was more than fair. Harry would learn something. He would have Harry under his eye. A month of detentions ought to press the lesson home through even a skull as thick as his son's.

Snape marked the essay in front of him 'T' with a flourish.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Connor waited patiently around the corner. He could hear soft voices from ahead of him, one a voice he'd known since childhood and the other one he'd grown resigned to hearing for the rest of his life. They were conducing a whispered, private conversation that he didn't try to listen to. It was no one's business but their own what they said.

But between him and them, standing unnoticed in this short side-corridor, was another person.

One who had been following Harry around lately, though his brother had been so sunk in abstracted misery he hadn't noticed.

One who had decided to intrude where he wasn't wanted, and whom Connor had finally decided to put a stop to.

He heard a faint smacking sound, and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. You better appreciate what I'm doing for your sake, Harry, he complained inwardly. It's bad enough that I know you and Draco kiss, I don't need confirmation of it.

A moment later, he heard a soft and whirring click, and his hand shot around the corner, grabbed the collar of the person waiting just ahead, and dragged him back around the corner. He squeaked as Connor turned him sideways and slammed him into the wall. Thanks to the bubble of the Silencing Charm Connor stood in, and which now included his captive as well, neither Harry nor Draco heard. Connor glanced warily around the corner and saw them standing close together, so absorbed in each other it was a bit sickening.

Luckily, he had a diversion.

"Colin," he said, and produced his best predatory smile, the one that Parvati, impressed, had said made him look like a mad murderer escaped from Tullianum. "Hullo." Then he waited.

Colin Creevey looked in several directions for a moment, eyes darting as if he thought Connor must be referring to some other Colin. Then he sagged, and said, staring at the floor, "Um, hullo, Connor."

"That's a nice camera," said Connor, indicating the one that Colin still held in his hand. "I'd reckon it helps you take pictures of things—oh, all sorts of things that no one else is ever going to notice."

The boy perked up, the way he usually did when someone was talking about photography with him. "It does," he said. "I took a picture of a flower the other day that grows on the edge of the Forbidden Forest and isn't in any of the Herbology books. Even Neville said he hadn't seen anything like it. Do you want to see it?" He started fumbling and patting at the pockets of his robes.

"Not now, Colin," said Connor pleasantly. "I'm much more interested in the picture that you just took."

Colin fixed him with wide, innocent eyes, and laughed a little. "Just took? Oh, there aren't any like that, Connor."

"Now," Connor said, and snapped his teeth hard enough that Colin jumped and tried to get away from him. Thanks to the hand on his collar, he naturally couldn't. "The one of my brother and Draco Malfoy kissing, Colin. Merlin knows I don't want to see it, but I've made worse sacrifices for him."

"It's not what you think," said Colin sulkily, as he unhooked the camera from its strap and handed it over to Connor. "I mean—I didn't take the picture because I'm going to sell it to the Daily Prophet or anything like that. I took it because I noticed something strange about Harry's right arm."

"What about it?" Connor stared at the camera for a moment, but he was satisfied that he'd tackled Colin too quickly for Colin to tamper with it. He put it in his own robe pocket and smiled at Colin. "You'll get it back after the evidence has been destroyed."

"I thought he might have the Dark Mark," Colin said earnestly. "That bandage on his arm, when he wasn't in a fight?"

Connor rolled his eyes, not bothering to hide it. The world disappointed him with its stupidity, sometimes. But he could still have a bit of fun, and that would make up for the fact that he'd have to see, and destroy, a picture of his brother kissing his boyfriend.

"Death Eaters wear the Dark Mark on their left forearms," he said.

"Oh." Colin deflated.

Connor paused as though thinking, then leaned closer. "Listen," he said. "I'll promise to tell you what he did if you'll promise to stop following him. And not tell anyone else, either."

"You would?" Colin's whole face shone with a disturbing mixture of greed and hero-worship. "Oh, thank you, Connor! I promise, no one else will hear about this, I promise, I promise, I promise—"

"Once was enough," Connor muttered, and then started speaking softly, Silencing Charm or not. "He went into the Forbidden Forest to free thestrals. To do that, he had to use thorns on his arm."

"Really?" Colin breathed, eyes wide.

"Yes." Connor lowered his voice further, as though he were afraid of Harry walking around the corner and discovering them. Colin, who probably hadn't realized they stood in a Silencing Charm, leaned nearer in fascination. "He had to bleed from the hole cut by the thorns, and spread it along the chain. And of courser, he had to keep opening the wound again when it was about to clot."

Colin swayed a little closer as Connor lowered his voice to a whisper. "And then the chain was gone, and the thestral free, and do you know what it did?"

"What?" Colin asked.

"It—"

Connor raised his voice abruptly, yelling right into Colin's face. "Hurt him!"

Colin scrambled away from him with a shriek, and took off down the corridor in the direction of Gryffindor Tower.

Connor laughed as long and loudly as he wanted, and then went on his way, now and then patting the camera in his pocket, whistling. It seemed as though his brother and his brother-in-law had made up, and so things were swinging back towards equilibrium in their small corner of the world.

SSSSSSSSSSSSS

"It was actually the Horcruxes that made me think the most about what you said, you know."

Draco lifted his head from Harry's shoulder and blinked at him. He'd been half-dozing his way through the afternoon; since Harry had come up to him, apologized, and said that he'd thought about what Draco had said and believed it to be mostly true, he'd been so overwhelmed with emotions that sleep felt like the best thing. Granted, he was half-thinking this peace would splinter at any moment and Harry would shout at him—they'd never had an argument conclude so quietly, without emotional collapses and yelling and breakdowns—but perhaps this was a sign of how they had both grown up.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

Harry stroked his hair. His hands hadn't quite stopped touching Draco ever since they came back to their bedroom. Draco could not say that he minded. "I'm researching Horcruxes to find a way to get around the requirement of sacrifice," he said. "Why shouldn't I research the thestrals to find some way to get around the requirement of shedding my own blood on the chains?"

Draco tensed a bit. This was the part where their "mostly" agreement mostly ran out. "You can use the blood of an animal," he told Harry. "That's not immoral. You don't owe anything to ordinary animals as you do to the magical creatures."

Harry ignored him. "Both involve sacrifice," he said. "But the one was unthinkable to me. Why not the other?" His hand curled around a lock of Draco's hair and tugged. "Because it was me, and not other people, who was in danger of losing my life in the Forbidden Forest? What a stupid reason that would have been to refuse to research this further." He snorted and tucked his head into Draco's shoulder, his words muffled. "So I thought about it, and thought about it, and yes, you were mostly right. I don't like the threat you made, and I don't think that you were right about killing animals to shatter the chains, but you were right about the rest. It's simply stupid to propose exceptions between me and other people when I know that we both inhabit the same plane of importance now."

Draco wondered which part of that to respond to, and in the end chose the most innocuous. He doubted that Harry would want to hear arguments for bleeding animals but not killing them right now, or to hear that his life was more important than the lives of the vast majority of wizards in Britain. "It wasn't just a threat. I would have broken the joining ritual, Harry. I don't deserve to be in a relationship where I'm treated as less than your equal."

Harry rolled over and squinted thoughtfully up at him. "I didn't know if you would be able to go through with it," he said. "That was why I called it a threat, instead of a promise."

Draco stared at him, and then looked away. He'd come to regret saying that more and more often as April and their argument both wore on, and if matters had gone down to that point, he didn't know if he could have turned away from Harry, either. It wasn't something he liked to spend a lot of time contemplating. It had just felt like something that needed to be said, to show how serious he was.

"Just don't put me in a situation like that, and we won't ever have to find out how much I meant it," he said, striving to keep his voice light.

Harry's hand cupped his ear, and he tipped it to the side so that he could kiss the skin behind it. "I don't want to," he whispered. "Hopefully, I'll know better than to do something that brings it up."

Draco closed his eyes and gave in to the light touches, the pleasure sweeping through him as Harry gently bit and blew on his ears. Yes, he didn't want to think about it. This argument was done with, and hopefully it would never arise again, if Harry really had thought about what it meant that he'd put his life in such danger. He would much rather think about other things.

Including the fact that in just a few more weeks, it would be the end of April, and the time for their second Walpurgis ritual, the fifth out of thirteen, taking place on the anniversary of the first.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Harry had been thinking a lot. The week when he'd barely spoken to Draco and spent his detentions reading stories that barely took up his attention had left him with time to do that.

And he was beginning to think that, if his life was equal in importance to others'—

And if he distressed people this much when he put it in danger, the same way that he would have been distressed if Snape was the one in danger, or Connor, and let's not even talk about the heart-freezing fear he'd felt when Rosier had cast the Lung Domination Curse on Draco—

And if he would become indignant on the behalf of someone who was put off constantly by the Ministry in the way that he had been—

Then perhaps that meant that, when the third letter arrived saying that Elder Juniper could not meet with him to accept his apology yet, and would Harry try again next weekend, he had no obligation to write a reply accepting the new proposed meeting date.

Instead, he wrote one with his Transfiguration book braced on his knee to support the parchment, now and then using a Levitation Charm to hold on to the parchment, and sometimes remembering to use his new left hand. Really, it had been a wonderful thing that Death did for him, when she turned the silver hand to flesh.

Though it would not have been worth the price of your life.

He shook the thought away and bent over the letter again. He highly doubted that Elder Juniper needed to know about his exploits in the Forbidden Forest. What he seemed most interested in so far was the performance Harry had given at the festival after freeing the sirens, and refusing to accept an apology and put the matter behind them once and for all.

Harry answered in the cool tone that he would have advised someone else to show with an offended acquaintance who was being this difficult about settling something important.

April 8th, 1997

Dear Elder Juniper:

I am writing again to offer you an apology for my behavior at the festival that the Minister tried to hold in my honor directly after the vernal equinox. I have done so twice before, wishing to apologize in person, and each time the meetings have fallen through. Now I have received another letter asking me to wait, but specifying no reason that I should have to do so.

I wish to make amends with you, sir, but if we cannot do it face-to-face, the medium of parchment is surely ancient and honorable enough to do so. I hereby say I am sorry yet again, and if you wish to meet with me on the third weekend of the month, then I am available to you.

Sincerely,

Harry vates, Heir of Black.

He felt a bit odd adding that last, but reminding Juniper that he had some claim to an ancient pureblood line—albeit a Dark one, and not a Light one, which Juniper would have respected more—could not hurt.

Draco read it over his shoulder, and pressed his hand down once in approval. Harry sealed it with the Black crest and went to send it by owl. Perhaps this would content Juniper. If nothing else, Harry could not continually make plans for meetings that had to be abandoned, because that meant he didn't have mornings and afternoons free for doing the necessary study to find another way to defeat the Horcruxes or free the thestrals.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

"He may know something."

Aurora frowned at Juniper's head in the fireplace and went on twisting the braid of hair she'd assembled into an Egyptian pattern she'd learned. "And why do you think that?"

Juniper silently held up a letter. Aurora stooped closer to the hearth so she could read it. She frowned more as she did, and sighed at the end. Suspicion isn't impossible, and I suppose that we couldn't put Harry off forever.

"And what are you going to do, Elder?" she asked, carefully moving away as the braid threatened to slip out of her hands and trail into the flames.

"Give him his meeting," said Juniper. "It should not harm anything. We are debarred from immediate action, anyway. If I allow him to see my face when he apologizes and see, in turn, the Order of Merlin pinned to his shirt, then I daresay nothing evil will happen."

Aurora bit her lip thoughtfully. "You don't think the Order of Merlin will give him political influence sufficient to counteract what we're planning?"

"Unlikely," said Juniper. "Most of the witnesses to the festival remember his vanishing more than they do the reward. If it's a private meeting and Harry does not announce it again to the newspapers—and why would he, since he is so reserved about claiming such honors for himself?—then the fuss should die naturally. Until we choose to stir it up again, of course."

Aurora caught her breath. Juniper was being more open in his contempt of Harry than he had been when she had seen him last. "Does that mean that you think we must move against him, sir?" Even as she negotiated with Juniper, she had never been sure that he wouldn't announce one day that acting against Harry was impossible and they might as well make the best of a bad situation.

"I think we must," Juniper murmured. "I have studied his political activities over the last several years, Madam Whitestag, and not merely the information that you gave me." Aurora felt a stab of pride, that she had an ally who could take the initiative that way. It was not something that would have occurred to Lisa Addlington or Marvin Gildgrace. "And I see consistent patterns. A fuss emerges, either from one of Harry's mistakes or one of his heroics. He acts embarrassed in the wake of it, and speaks to the newspapers like one who does not know how to make the best of either his notoriety or his fame. Some aspects of his psychology—the desire to hide, for example—became clearer when I studied the records of his parents' trial. His relationship with Albus Dumbledore was hardly something to boast of, either." For a moment, Juniper's face darkened with anger. Aurora knew he was thinking about the disgrace Albus Dumbledore had been to the Light. She kept silent. She was undeclared, so it wasn't her place to comment on Juniper's allegiance. "But it is, in context, good news for us. He was reluctant to strike until the very last moment, even given what the man had done to him. The reports of how he killed Dumbledore are consistent as well. Self-defense."

"And what are the implications that you see for our long-term strategy?" Aurora asked. She knew what ones she would draw, but she had been wrong before. She wished to see what Juniper would say.

"He will be reluctant to fight us," said Juniper. "He will be equally reluctant to oppose legal measures directed specifically at him. It was the laws against werewolves, including that ill-advised hunting season, that stirred him into anger enough to rebel. He thinks he can weather attacks on himself, and he has little regard for his honor or his pride." He brandished the letter again. "Even with this, which is the first touch of pride I've seen from him, I think it was the multiple refusals that nettled him, not the fact that I refused to meet."

Aurora nodded. Juniper seemed to understand Harry well, and the extra time provided by the missed meetings hadn't revealed any secret legal weapon they could use against Harry—only that they would need the support of either more of the Wizengamot or more of the Light wizards than they currently possessed. "Then I suppose that the apology and the Order of Merlin could do no harm, and might even reassure him that you bear him no ill-will, sir."

Juniper laughed softly. "As indeed I do not. This insult is merely a convenient excuse." He pulled his head back from the fire. "Until our meeting a few days hence, Madam Whitestag."

Aurora bowed to him, and waited until the fire died before she knelt down. The braid she Levitated across the room. It had taken a long time, and included the hair of many people she couldn't get a strand from again, including her own dead children. It would never do to have it burned.

She cast a handful of Floo powder into the flames, and waited patiently until the flames sparked green and cleared, revealing a room paneled in white wood that was really just opulent enough. If Aurora had been a Light witch, she thought she would have wanted her home to look like that.

A house elf at once hurried into the room, and stopped, squeaking and bowing, when it saw her.

Aurora smiled at it. "Would you fetch Madam Apollonis for me, please? Tell her Aurora Whitestag would like to speak with her."

SSSSSSSSSSSS

The letter that arrived back from Elder Juniper, confirming their meeting for the third weekend in April, pleased Harry, but not as much as the letter that arrived a few days later. It was at lunch when the Augurey flew through the window of the Great Hall, squawking awkwardly, and landed on the Slytherin table by planting its head in the mashed potatoes. There was more than one burst of laughter. Harry had to admit that the Irish phoenix was hardly the most graceful bird. This one, hopping back to its feet only to half-tilt and almost step on its own feathered tail, rather reminded him of Tonks.

It at last managed to arrange itself and hold out its leg, and Harry took the envelope and opened it. He was already relearning how to use a living left hand again. So much easier than some of the magic that he'd used to open envelopes and perform other simple tasks before, he thought. He'd even noticed that he felt slightly more alert, as though the permanent Levitation Charm had been a grand drain on his magic and he'd never noticed it.

The letter was in a hand he didn't recognize, and saluted him by every title the writer could think of. Harry didn't mind that nearly as much as he thought he would, not when he read the rest of the contents.

My name is Periwinkle Lyrebird. You probably haven't heard of my family before; we are purebloods, but we fell on hard times several generations ago, and our name was never honored as much as same of the older and more native families'. We have had little but our name and our honor for those several generations—and our house elves. There are several other Irish wizarding families in the same situation.

We had one other thing in common, until recently. That was faith in the patronage and leadership of Cupressus Apollonis. Even if we had found some other powerful wizard willing to lead us, he would have found it difficult to make headway in Ireland against Apollonis. They are simply too powerful, that house. Even when we heard of you, you didn't seem very interested in Light purebloods as allies unless they could offer you fighters, so we followed Cupressus in silence.

That changed with the alliance meeting that you held last spring, and the news of the Alliance of Sun and Shadow. And now we have heard that Cupressus lost control of his daughter. You faced him that day, and yet you walked out alive, and so did the Lady Ignifer. That once would not have happened, when Apollonis was at the height of his strength. He is afraid of you, and you can defy him successfully.

The other poor Light Irish families have appointed me their spokeswitch. What I am prepared to offer you, vates, is our allegiance and the freedom of our house elves in exchange for protection from Cupressus and certain financial considerations for our house elves. We can survive without them. We have been reluctant to give them up because of what they said about our status, but this is a new world, and the concept of status is changing. If you can provide what we ask for, we are yours.

Sincerely,

Periwinkle Lyrebird.

Harry could not stop grinning. Millicent read over his shoulder, and then let out a low, impressed whistle. Harry glanced at her. Sometimes—in fact, since the day her father had been captured and taken into the Department of Mysteries—she had acted as if she would prefer to avoid his company, but now she peered at him with bright, challenging eyes.

"And you'll be accepting their offer, I suppose, Harry?" she drawled.

"Of course." Harry gave Draco the letter. "I have money that can repay them for their house elves. And that's a sacrifice I would much rather make, Galleons to avoid infringing on anyone's free will, rather than—others." His left hand flickered towards the slowly closing wound on his right arm, rather than outright referring to it.

Millicent raised her eyebrows and nodded. "Did you think you would achieve this many victories in so short a time?" she asked softly.

Harry shook his head, still feeling dazed and happy. If nothing else, this proved that Cupressus's attempts to intimidate his allies in Ireland and slow Harry's vates work there would only backlash on him. "No. I hoped that a few house elves might be free on their present owners' conviction by next year. And even if these are still the house elves of my allies, as opposed to people who hear about what the webs have cost and make the decision from their own conscience, it's more than I expected." He felt, for a moment, as if a green path were opening in front of him, leading into sunlight, and into a country of no trouble.

It was only a dream, of course, and a moment later he rescued the Augurey from the marmalade and started composing his reply. But things were moving. In spite of setbacks and mistakes, some of which he'd put in his own path, things were moving. They would stumble forward, and they would make it, in the end.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Henrietta often went outside the school grounds to practice the Darkest magic she knew. For one thing, it relieved Minerva of the troubled mind she would have if she had to confront the fact that her Transfiguration professor had—well, certain proclivities for boiled and flayed skin.

For another, the dampening effect of the wards often made her feel like her skin was crawling. The Founders, other than Slytherin, had not wanted Dark Arts practiced in Hogwarts, and Slytherin's influence had long since been purged from most official rooms. Henrietta knew it wasn't true, but she could feel disapproving eyes on her back every time she performed a few mild pain curses. And from what she knew of the Founders' shades Minerva worked with, those disapproving eyes might be literal after all.

There was a third reason as well, but that had been only a hope until today, when Henrietta went into the Forbidden Forest, and thus further from Hogwarts's main grounds than she had been since she arrived. She drew her wand through the air, practicing slashing curses, pain curses, boiling curses, flaying curses, curses that attacked the mind and made it tear out of the skull. She had captured a number of small animals to use as test subjects. When they ran out, she cast a spell that let her feel the pain of plants and continued.

She caught a glimpse of a robe whisking behind a tree as she cast a spell that she'd heard Death Eaters used on raids, one which made the victim sure he was being raped. Of course, it didn't work nearly as well on a tree, but it translated itself into the equivalent pain of violation—boring by grubs, Henrietta thought—and the mere sound of the incantation was revealing. She smiled faintly. She was glad that Harry trusted her enough now to have granted her license, under the Unbreakable Vow she wore, to cast most Dark magic. The Unforgivables were still forbidden her unless she was using them in self-defense, but that wasn't so bad.

She cast another spell. She caught another glimpse of the robe, and then one of dark eyes she knew well.

"You might as well come out, Evan," she called, as the oak's leaves withered and shrank, and faint, keen wails of pain broke across the surface of her mind like lightning bolts across a livid sky.

A long pause, and he came out. He leaned against the tree he'd been hiding behind, his gaze fixed on her face. Henrietta turned to face him, spinning her wand around in one hand.

Evan Rosier. He wasn't as handsome as the Death Eater she'd raped when he came with two others to convert her to Voldemort's service, and to kill her if they could not convert her. He was thinner, for one thing; more than a decade in Azkaban had done him no good there. His skin was gray, and sagged on his face, though that wasn't as noticeable next to the brightness of his eyes and teeth. He looked half-haunted by shadows, the legacy of Dark magic that slowly closed in and made the user's features run and blur. His dark hair was unkempt and shaggy and straggled down his back like a werewolf's ruff.

"Why did you come to me?" he asked her at last, voice softer than she'd heard it.

At least he's smart enough to know that I was seeking him out, and allowed him to stay, instead of simply running into him by accident. Henrietta spun her wand again and smiled. "I believe in fate, Evan," she said. "Don't you? Certain things happen, and they can't be denied. We've faced each other multiple times, and it's never come to a conclusion. It will have to, you know, in the end. One of us will have to kill the other. We're Dark wizards—well, a Dark wizard and a Dark witch. It's what we do."

"Or we might kill each other," said Evan. He came a step forward. Henrietta could see the madness smoldering in the backs of his eyes, but for now it was banked, like a well-tended fire. He was interested enough in what she was saying to focus on her, not on the scraps of poetry chattering in his mind.

Henrietta laughed. "That's true. That might happen." She studied him for a moment, eyes narrowed. "Have you been eating, Evan?" she asked critically. "I wouldn't want to think you'd lose to me because of poor nutrition. There's no grace in defeating an opponent who can't fight."

"I don't remember."

"The madness is advancing in you, isn't it?" Henrietta asked. She had never been sure whether Evan's insanity came from a specific incident in his life or from using too much Dark magic or from genetic predisposition, but it did seem to have got worse in the last few years. Azkaban would not have helped that, either, though Severus said Evan had wanted to go to the prison and experience the touch of the Dementors.

"It is." Evan leaned on the tree again, and studied her. "I dream about the night you raped me. When I'm not dreaming of my Lord and what he did to me, or of Harry and what he did to me."

"What did Harry do to you?" Henrietta could feel her eyebrows crawling up her forehead.

"Set me free," said Evan. "Cage me, kill me, succumb to me, but do not set me free. I am wild, and wild creatures bite."

Henrietta could hear the madness growing in his voice again. She suspected she would get neither her final duel nor useful information from him today. His brief lucid interval was over. "You dream about the night I raped you?" she asked, in the final hopes of getting something useful.

"Yes. In the words of the poet, 'Being so caught up, so mastered by the brute blood of the air, did she put on his knowledge with his power, before the indifferent beak could let her drop?'" Evan shook his head. "I received only one piece of knowledge from you, Henrietta, and it was how to hate."

"I thought you hated before that."

Evan threw his head back and howled his laughter, and Henrietta winced. His voice was cracking. He really had been living in the wild like a werewolf, eating nuts and leaves, probably, and little else. "I hated," he said. "Everything. But the world was a game. After that, I hated you, and I had opponents." He twisted his head to the side and watched her like an owl for a moment. "I can accept your view of fate. We shall meet and kill each other someday. But not today."

"Not today," Henrietta agreed softly, and then felt in her robe pocket. Evan was back around the tree in a moment, but Henrietta finished lifting out the thing she held anyway: a raspberry pie she'd had the house elves at Hogwarts make for her. It was no longer hot, but still warm. She set it carefully on the forest floor. "This is for you, Evan, and it has no poison in it."

He put his head around the tree and watched her. Henrietta held his eyes for a moment. So much madness in them—burned to a low ember right now, but it would rear back up and blaze like a wildfire in the end. She would have what she wanted.

She Apparated back to Hogwarts, but she saw him come forward, slowly, step by step, boots slipping in the mud, to accept the pie.

SSSSSSSSSSS

"Thank you for coming, Narcissa."

His wife raised her eyebrows as she sat down in the chair opposite his. Lucius knew just how she would cross her legs, how she would fold her hands on top of them, how her blonde hair would coil around her neck when she turned her head. Mannerisms like that did not change in a few months apart. "I wish I knew why I had agreed to come, Lucius. What is this momentous news you have for me?" Her voice was cool and hard, like frost on stone, and Lucius knew that it was right to say this to her, if only for the pleasure of melting that frost for a moment.

"I am revoking the disownment," he said casually. "Draco is once more a Malfoy, and the legal and blood heir to the family's assets."

Narcissa's face drained of color, and she actually let out a sharp, "What?" before she regained control of herself. Then she said, "I will believe this when I see it, Lucius. You would never yield up your pride like this, unless Draco had given you a similar concession or a greater one, and I know that he has not."

"Why not?" Lucius asked, to see if she would say what he thought she would say.

Sure enough, she did. "He would have consulted with me before he took such a drastic step."

Lucius nodded. "Yes, he would have. But circumstances have changed, Narcissa. I made the decision to disown Draco because I believed that Harry's rebellion was doomed, and that Draco was not strong enough to be the Malfoy heir I wanted him to be. Now I believe that Harry has succeeded in most of his goals—the most important ones—and Draco has proven himself strong enough."

Narcissa snorted at him. "And it only took you until four months after Draco's Declaration to realize this?" It was the sixteenth of April, and thus slightly less than four months since the Declaration at Midwinter, but Lucius decided that he would be kind and refrain from pointing out her error.

"I wished to be sure it would last, and not be a simple slip into error again," said Lucius. "Instead, I find that Draco grows stronger and more worthy of being my heir every day since." And that was so, if what he heard from his contacts in the Ministry and in Hogwarts was true. Lucius could admit he felt pride, if pride like a mountaintop, pride like Narcissa's voice.

"I wish to see the papers confirming this," Narcissa said, her eyes glimmering frozen lakes.

Lucius had just received the documents from his solicitor that morning, in fact. He fetched them from the study, amused but not surprised to see that Narcissa was keeping her wand, hidden in her sleeve, trained on him the entire time, and gave them into her hands. She also cast spells to check them for contact poison before she actually grasped and looked them over, he noted.

Narcissa shuffled through them, and then sat back and stared at him, as if trying to grasp his purpose.

"What is the matter?" Lucius asked, deciding it was at least worth asking the question. He could not predict every nuance of Narcissa's behavior. He had given up on doing that. He did think that this move was transparent enough that she should accept it for what it was: his attempt to make sure he had an heir who could take over the Malfoy properties and monies. That she did not know why he would want one now was not a problem. No one would know.

"Why, Lucius?" she asked quietly. "Why the disownment in the first place, if you are doing this now? Why reverse it, when you did it in the first place?"

"That is information I might share with you if you were to agree to return to your proper place," said Lucius, grasping and holding her gaze. "At my table, in the chair beside mine, in my bed."

Narcissa's lip curled. Very slightly, of course, but it was answer enough.

Lucius nodded. "Then I shall not tell you, Narcissa. I will, if you wish, swear under Veritaserum that the Malfoy legacy is not a poisoned apple. I leave Draco no deadly bargains, no crippling debts. He shall have the fortune and the majority of the houses as whole as I can transfer them."

"Why?" Narcissa asked, but she whispered it this time.

He looked her in the eye, and ached with the desire to reveal the truth to her. But that would be foolishness. She was not of him, not now. She was a proud and independent and beautiful creature, light and pale as a white leopard in the winter sunlight. She was loyal to Draco, and not to him, and it was his own fault that had made her so.

At long last, Lucius thought, he was at peace with himself and his mistakes. He had scorned the emotion before, but it was possible that Light wizards and other proponents of conscience were clever when they spoke of it.

"Farewell, Narcissa," he said, and pressed the documents into her hands. "You may take these with you, if you like. Show them to Draco. Discuss them with your own solicitor, to make sure they are genuine."

She rose from her chair, still staring at him, and retreated out of the room in a slow, baffled way. Lucius waited until he heard the whoosh of the Floo that told him she had gone.

Then he turned back to his study, to resume his reading.

The simple fact of the matter was that he knew he would fall, now, soon. The truth of his crimes would come out. When it did, Lucius could see only three possible outcomes.

Harry would drain his magic for Lucius's crimes against his parents and for violating the oaths of the Alliance of Sun and Shadow.

Hawthorn Parkinson would kill him for his part in betraying her to the Unspeakables as a werewolf.

He would flee, and survive.

The last path was the one he was working to make come true. Yes, it was humiliating, but he would rather be alive and humiliated, as he had been immediately after the Dark Lord's fall, than dead or infected. He had built up what he would need to escape. A small part of the Malfoy fortune was invested in a separate account at Gringotts, enough to sustain him. And the only Malfoy property not going to Draco was a small warded house that only a member of the oldest living generation of Malfoys could enter. Lucius had no siblings. Draco would be able to enter it only if and when he died.

Harry could, of course, potentially track him to that house and try to drain the wards, but Lucius did not think such an action would be beneficial for his son-in-law. The Malfoys and the Blacks had intermarried before he and Narcissa had, several generations back. Finvarra Black, whose mother was a Malfoy, had gone into one of the pictures hanging in Silver-Mirror and come out with something small and fierce and intelligent and irascible from another world. She had buried it beneath the house Lucius had chosen, where it had slept since. Waking it would be—uncomfortable for Harry.

He remembered what his father had taught him, however. Family was always more important than the individual. He had to have someone to take care of the properties and fortune he would leave behind.

And he had only one blood child.

Draco it was.

Lucius nodded once, then sat down and picked up the book that he thought might be his salvation, should Hawthorn come hunting him. Surviving The Teeth of Destruction: What To Do When You've Killed a Werewolf's Mate or Child.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Indigena snorted as she watched Falco fly away. She didn't know the whole of what he'd come to talk to her Lord about this time, since they had, as usual, sent her away during the meat of the conversation, but she knew the majority of his plan. He would attack on Walpurgis, with the wild Dark behind him, and he imagined this would be enough to win the battle with Harry. Or perhaps he imagined it would be enough to make Harry Declare for Light. Indigena didn't think that Falco knew what he truly wanted any more. He had simply come far enough along the road, and felt responsible enough for the British wizarding world, that he couldn't fathom abandoning his supposed plan. Indigena wondered idly who would actually get hurt on Walpurgis. Perhaps both Falco and Harry would survive it, though she hoped not.

"Indigena."

She descended the stairs into her Lord's lair, and paused when she realized that he was sitting up, the flesh-snake wound around his waist, its eyes fixed on her. "My lord?" she asked tentatively. He looked more lively than usual, but that could be deceiving. Sometimes he looked the wildest right before he collapsed and had to retreat into his own mind due to the hole in his magical core.

"We will be moving tonight, Indigena," said her Lord, and his tongue flickered across his lipless mouth, "to the sanctuary that Parkinson prepared for us."

Indigena knew she couldn't hide her surprise, so she didn't try. "May I ask why?" she said. "My Lord?" she added hastily.

"It soon will not matter that he knows where we are," said Voldemort, and chuckled, a sound like scales rasping on stone. "He will not survive Walpurgis Night. My heir will destroy him. And this burrow is a potential danger to us now, after the attack on the ring's house. Harry may return and think to look for us near my father's house." There was a depth of hatred in father that nearly matched his hatred for Harry, Indigena thought; it would not surprise her if he had used Tom Riddle's death to split part of his soul into the Slytherin ring Horcrux. "As well, the accumulated magical energies in this burrow are making my meditation difficult. My hand will soon be ready to move, my Thorn Bitch, and I wish to be in a place more special and symbolic to me than this when that happens. I was conceived here, but my mortal birth was in London, and my truest birth in the place we go. I wish to sojourn there."

"Yes, my Lord," said Indigena, thinking, for a moment, of the difficulties of transporting Voldemort to his new home more than anything else. Then his words crashed home into her ears, and she looked up sharply. "My Lord? Does this mean that we are almost ready?"

"We are, my Indigena." His snake hissed to echo the Dark Lord's laughter. "My spy has given me much interesting information on the state of Hogwarts in the last few days, as much as he ever gave me about Woodhouse. No one thinks of poor Lord Voldemort any more, no one thinks him a threat. And Harry's politics are becoming much too settled as things are. And my control of my hands and feet grows stronger every day. When I strike, when I take the first of those he has loved, it will be little more than a month and a half hence."

Early June, Indigena translated, and trembled a bit. "And I shall have the part in the strike that you promised me, my Lord?" she whispered.

"Of course, my dear one. It was your plan." He smiled at her.

Indigena closed her eyes, and tried not to feel overwhelmed. Her only weapon for so long—she thought of the books she had read over and over—had been parchment. Now she would finally take up her wand in her Lord's cause.

She was a bit sorry she would cast the wizarding world into screaming chaos when she did, but it came not from any personal animosity, but an honor debt. There were few wizards alive who would not understand that, if they truly thought about it.

"Go, Indigena," Voldemort said, obviously knowing from her face what she needed. "Walk in your garden. Say farewell to the flowers there."

Out she went, from the dense, dark burrow into the open air and the declining sunlight. It was nearly sunset on the third weekend in April, and she stood there, just breathing, watching as the day, slightly longer than yesterday, depended and then dropped. The scent of the tame soil, the living soil, the strong soil, came in at her nose, and birds chirped somewhere far away.

She had seen in the Daily Prophet that morning, when she went in disguise to a small wizarding village, that Harry had met with Elder Juniper of the Wizengamot and received the Order of Merlin. She had smiled then, because she was fond of Harry. She had thought it would be the best news she received all day.

Now it was not, and the endless waiting was nearly done at last.

She breathed, and thrilled to the sense of being alive.