Thank you again for all the reviews! This story went in a direction I never expected, but that's one of the perils and pleasures of writing without an outline. Living things do what they want.

The epilogue to this story will be posted tomorrow.

Part Seven

"Where are we?"

Harry turned around. He had known this dream was a dream right away. Not only did it not show a scene from his past with the Dursleys, but the country around them was a gleaming grey mountain, illuminated by colored lights dancing above. Like the Northern Lights, Harry thought, even though he had never seen them.

There are many things you have never seen.

The voice wasn't the nasty one that had sometimes spoken in his head, and Harry didn't think it was any of his bondmates', either. He turned and looked down.

Theo and Blaise and Draco were standing on a ledge of the mountain, looking bewildered. The ledges below them swept up the side of the mountain like a rising wave, and beneath that was a country of deep purples and blues and blacks.

Harry watched a shining lake that seemed to sparkle and dance more than it should in the reflection of the rainbow-like lights overhead, and then the surface bent back on itself and started showing a different scene. Harry could see it perfectly, even though he was standing at an angle where he shouldn't have been able to see that, either.

Harry swallowed. The scene was one of the Gryffindor common room, with people laughing and playing chess and doing homework and holding an Exploding Snap tournament. Harry sat in a corner of the room, away from it all.

I could have gone up to them. I could have asked to play. I could have made friends.

But the younger version of Harry had never been able to make himself do it. He had known that they would allow him to join in because he was a Gryffindor, not because they especially wanted him there or because he was especially missed if he wasn't.

No one wondered what I was thinking.

Another lake caught Harry's eye. This one was a tossing surface of silver, much like a Pensieve memory, and that was what he saw when he looked into it. Neville had shown Harry some Pensieve memories of Dumbledore right after the end of the war, because, he'd said, he thought Harry was owed the knowledge that the Headmaster had planned his death in advance. Harry had held out, along with others, through the horrible seventh year at Hogwarts, without Dumbledore there to protect them.

"You deserve to know why he wasn't there," Neville had said.

Would a false friend do that? This time, the voice in the back of Harry's head was softer, more amused. He's a true friend. He didn't have to show you the memories, but he did anyway.

The brilliant lights in the sky drew Harry's gaze back to them. He saw the black dog and the pale horse from the title page of the book Sirius had given him galloping together, although it seemed as if the horse had odd horns rising from its head that made it look like a stag.

You have two fates to choose from, said the voice.

"What are they?" Harry asked aloud, and his bondmates started and asked questions that Harry didn't listen to.

You know very well what they are.

Harry lowered his eyes. He could go along with the bond and let it shape and change him, become what Draco and Theo and Blaise expected him to become. He could stay true to his ideals and die or act in some way that benefitted Neville's side, forgiving him and the others for what they hadn't told him. He could grasp power like a thorn and rip the bond out by the root, but not go back to Neville's side, either.

"That's three."

The voice didn't reply.

Harry turned and scrambled down the side of the mountain towards his bondmates. Draco was still speaking, but he fell silent at Blaise's touch on his shoulder. All three of them stared at Harry with still-bewildered faces that made it hard to work on holding back his laughter.

"Where are we?" Blaise asked. "This isn't like the other dreams."

"I know." Harry turned and gestured, and at his will, sunlight flooded over the landscape, making the pools sparkle with memories and illuminating the dark ground and trees as made of braided faces and whirling words, letters sparking on them and then fading. "I think this is a representation of my own mind and life. And the bond."

"Why are we here?" Theo asked quietly. He was watching Harry.

"I think your theory about the bond's magic changing under my control is right," Harry said, and noticed with some amusement that Blaise and Draco gave Theo betrayed glances. So he hadn't told them about the theory. They could keep secrets from each other. "It's brought me here to give me a choice."

"What about the rest of us?"

"You'll have as much choice as you gave me."

Draco flinched.

Harry turned and looked around the countryside again. The lights overhead had gone out, probably because he had conjured the sunlight, but the sensation of something waiting for him to make a decision was still heavy, still present. He clenched his hand into a fist for a moment, and then made himself open it. He didn't know all the ramifications of what he was doing.

"Can you please make the choice in such a way that you don't turn us back into the people we were before the bond?" Theo whispered. "I told you why I have reason to fear that."

"I have reason to fear it as well," said Blaise unexpectedly. Harry had got the notion that he was the most confident of them, and had always been like that. "I was a smug blood purist dick before the bond. I don't want to be that again."

"Why wouldn't you want to be a blood purist?" Harry murmured, and smiled at Blaise. Blaise looked back at him. "After all, the people you were bound to, the people you were in love with, were both purebloods."

"The bond changed me from being so self-involved. And until we identified you, we had no idea who our fourth person was. It could have been a half-blood, or a Muggleborn." Blaise sighed out. "Please don't make me go back to that."

"I'll consider it." Harry faced Draco. "And what about you? What are you afraid of turning into if the bond alters?"

Draco swallowed several times before he could speak. Theo and Blaise stood looking at him instead of moving to comfort him, which Harry thought was interesting. "That's it."

"What's it?"

"I was afraid," Draco whispered. "Of everything. I was a coward. I tried to conceal it beneath my bragging and tried to frighten other people with my father. It…didn't work very well. The bond gave me strength and courage. I didn't like being bound to other people at first, but I came to see that they would protect me. I don't want to go back to being alone, unprotected." Draco's eyes returned from whatever inner distance he was focusing on and focused on Harry instead, beseechingly. "Please don't destroy the bond."

"It's given me nothing but misery," Harry said.

"And magic," Theo said.

"And truth," said Blaise.

"And the knowledge that your godfather loved you," said Draco.

"You aren't making a compelling case." Harry turned towards the top of the mountain again, knowing without knowing how that he would find the answer there. "I could have had those things outside the bond, if anyone had bothered to tell me the truth."

A jagged shape struck across the sky, a huge shape that looked familiar somehow. When it repeated and froze this time like the reflection of a spell in the showroom's mirrors, Harry recognized it. It was the lightning bolt scar on his forehead.

He reached up and ran his fingertips across his own scar. There was an answering hum from the sky, and a buzz from the scar beneath his fingertips. Harry cocked his head. He couldn't remember the scar every doing anything, except now and then bleeding a bit, inexplicably.

He stared from the shining form in the sky to the three men who called themselves his bondmates. The bond hovered around him, fragile, capable of being ripped if Harry wanted. He wondered idly if he could detach it from himself but leave it wrapped around the three of them.

"What did the treaty say about my scar?" he asked quietly.

Theo bowed his head. Blaise exhaled something that sounded like a sigh of relief. Draco smiled.

"What about it?" Harry asked, not moving back down the mountain towards them but not looking away from them, either.

"The damn thing said that we couldn't talk about it unless you asked about it first," Blaise said. "Which is one reason that we wanted you to read the damn thing. But Longbottom and the others never encouraged you to, of course. Convenient."

"Now I'm asking," Harry said, and he felt his magic rise up behind him, an endless cresting wave. At least it shut Blaise up. "Tell me what it says. Tell me what the scar is."

"There was a prophecy," Theo said, voice sounding as if echoed up a long tunnel. "I wouldn't have known that, but I eavesdropped on my father a lot, since it was the only way I could survive, and he was one of the Dark Lord's oldest and most trusted lieutenants. The prophecy said that a child would be born at the end of July who could defeat the Dark Lord."

"Yes, that was Neville, I know," Harry said, a little impatiently. Neville had never explicitly mentioned a prophecy, but there had been talk of "destiny" and "fate" in the conversations Harry had sometimes overheard him having with Ron and Hermione.

"Whose birthday is also at the end of July, Harry?"

Harry blinked hard. Then he said, "You're having me on."

"No, we aren't," Theo said calmly. "The Dark Lord managed to hear the full prophecy at the end of our fifth year. Before that, he'd only heard a part of it. It said that the child destined to vanquish him would be marked as his equal. I think you can agree with me that Longbottom hasn't been marked in any way." He lifted his finger to point at the lightning bolt dividing the sky above them. "Not like you have."

"This is ridiculous," Harry whispered, feeling his heart beat as if about to rip out of him. "This is insane."

"Is it?"

"Yes, it is," Harry snapped, surging to his feet. "Because you have no—Neville still defeated Voldemort!" He waited, but they didn't grasp their arms, so he supposed their Dark Marks didn't hurt in this world. "That makes him the Boy-Who-Lived, the destined champion, the Chosen One, whatever. Not a prophecy and a mark that did nothing."

"You're the one who has Parseltongue, which was also the gift of the Dark Lord," said Theo. "You're the one who cast a Dark Arts spell right the first time. You're the one who was handed over gladly to former Death Eaters by those you call friends, for no reason that I could have named. They certainly wouldn't have wanted to oblige our plans or give you the love and pleasure and comfort you always should have had. Why did they do that, Harry? What did they count on you finding here?"

Harry closed his eyes. "Can I see the treaty?"

There was no response in the form of words, but a noise like a great bird's wings unfolding. Harry opened his eyes and found a roll of parchment lying on the sunlit stone in front of him.

Harry picked it up and unfolded it.

He skimmed over the provisions for how long the hostage situation would last, how they would offer proof that Harry was alive, and what would happen when he was handed over. He knew all those already, or they weren't important.

He slowed down when he got to the central part of the treaty, the provisions for how he would be treated.

Holly and Yew agree that they will be personally responsible for the safety of Harry Potter. They will give him regular meals, a room of his own, the ability to practice combat magic under the stipulation that he does not hurt the members of Holly and Yew with it…

Blah, blah, blah. Harry began to skim again, and then stumbled to a halt as he saw the word "scar."

Holly and Yew agree that they will not discuss Harry Potter's scar with him unasked. They will not draw his attention to it or explain any magical theories they may have about it. They will not allow him to cast Dark Arts spells.

Harry swallowed and looked up. "This says…"

Blaise was the one who spoke this time. "Yes, it does. We had a loophole with the word 'unasked.' Longbottom's side was thinking that we would simply never mention it. We were the ones who demanded that it be worded this way, though, so that if you did ask, we could say that we were still working within the letter of the law."

Harry shook his head, a little alarmed. "And the part about allowing me to cast Dark Arts spells?"

"We didn't allow you to do that," Draco said, practically bouncing in place, his eyes glowing. "We encouraged you to do it."

Harry sighed. "All right. What about the scar is so important now that there would be provisions in the treaty about it? Whether or not you think Neville was the one marked by Voldemort, he's the one who actually defeated him. And I don't think he's the kind of person who would want to keep me in the dark about it because he's jealous of sharing the credit."

"How much do you know about how Longbottom defeated the Dark Lord, Harry?"

"Not a lot," Harry said. "I know that he went into the Forbidden Forest because Voldemort demanded that he surrender himself. There was—I don't know how to describe it, that kind of reverse explosion, like all the air rushed into the place where they confronted each other. And Neville came out and said it was done, and when we went and searched, we found Voldemort's body in ashes and several unconscious Death Eaters."

"The Dark Lord's body in ashes," Draco echoed. "The way that it happened on that Halloween night when Longbottom supposedly defeated him for the first time. But he defeated him then. He didn't kill him."

Harry swallowed. "You're saying that Voldemort is still alive."

"Not in any sense that you would recognize," Theo said softly. "He is far less than the wraith he used to be, which was able to possess the bodies of people and snakes, and cling to a constructed body made during his resurrection at the end of our fourth year. He's a shadow, a bad dream, the rumor of a monster in the Forbidden Forest. But yes, he is not completely gone."

"And my scar is…what?"

"A Horcrux."

"I don't know what that is."

"A soul container." For a moment, Draco's hand clenched on his left arm. "It holds a shard of the Dark Lord's soul. We were able to verify that when we got close enough to cast a spell on you one of the months after the war."

"I don't remember that!"

"We brushed by you, cloaked, in Diagon Alley. It was simple enough."

Harry took a searing breath, and another. He resisted the urge to reach up and scrub at the scar on his forehead. It wasn't like it had changed in the last minute. "The snake that Neville had me kill…"

"Another one. And it was Horcruxes that Longbottom and Weasley and Granger went hunting during what should have been our seventh year." Blaise's eyes were as large as some of the ponds that lay around them, reflecting the sunlight and Harry's soul. "They thought they had got them all, and that Longbottom could safely fight the Dark Lord and vanquish him. But when he only managed to banish the Dark Lord from his body, they knew there must be one more."

"Why—why didn't they tell me and ask me to sacrifice myself? Or kill me? I don't think Her—Hermione would have hesitated to kill me, if it was necessary." Harry's breath hitched. He had seen Hermione's ruthless streak, and he had accepted in part of himself that she would turn it on him if necessary. She would do all kinds of things for Ron and Neville.

"Can you ask that?"

"Yes." Harry straightened up, his eyes narrowing at them. "I'm asking that."

"Think of the way that Longbottom asked you to kill the snake, instead of Weasley or Granger." Blaise smiled a little, but there was rage behind that smile, cold and deep and abiding. "The other Horcruxes were all objects. They could destroy them. But when it came to killing a living thing, they didn't want to get their hands dirty."

"They could still have asked me to die, to kill myself—"

"You think they would be willing to live with that guilt?"

Harry paused. He had always had the impression that Ron and Neville, and especially Hermione, would do whatever they had to do. Hell, he'd just been thinking that about Hermione, who had cursed Marietta Edgecombe with acne for betraying Dumbledore's Army.

"I thought they could," he said slowly.

"They used curses and Unforgivables," Draco said quietly. "They hurt and tortured people. Incidentally, Harry, I don't know why you think Longbottom is so much better than us, when he wielded the Cruciatus—"

"Be that as it may," Blaise cut in sharply, "they didn't kill. That was one line they never crossed. I think they wanted to be able to preserve their morality. If they could tell themselves there was one thing they'd never done, no matter the temptation, they could continue to think of themselves as good people. In the end, Longbottom didn't even kill the Dark Lord, only caused a spell backlash that accidentally expelled him from his body."

"Getting me to kill myself wouldn't be the same as murder."

"They would still have to ask and explain and look into your eyes when they did it. I don't think they could do it. Cowards that they are."

Harry frowned and said nothing. He supposed that could be the case. He just didn't think it was, not when Hermione was so ruthless in defense of her friends.

"Take a look at the end of the treaty," Blaise suggested quietly.

Harry flipped over the parchment. At the end of the scroll was a long list of items that he thought at first must be the consequences for breaking the treaty. But then he saw his own name, and leaned in closer. The magical sunlight he had created obligingly grew brighter.

Holly and Yew is allowed to kill Harry Potter if…

Harry read through the list in growing disbelief. If he used Dark Arts. If he attacked one of them, or did something that could be interpreted as an attack. If he tried to escape. If he did something that made it hard for Holly and Yew to provide proof that he was still alive. If he destroyed enough property in the house where they'd be holding him.

Harry lowered the treaty and blinked and blinked again. Tears didn't come to his eyes, but they felt as if they wanted to.

The hovering emotions in the bond moved closer. Harry shook his head, and they backed off. He bowed his head and told himself over and over again that some of these weren't a surprise, like if he'd tried to escape or attacked a member of the Death Eaters. They made sense. They were the kinds of things that he'd thought would be in the treaty before he read it.

But that Neville and the others had agreed to this…

Harry's fingers traced over the signatures at the bottom of the contract. While Blaise and Draco and Theo had all signed it for Holly and Yew, Neville was the only one who had signed it for his side. His name was the one that stood there, condemning Harry.

They didn't warn me. They didn't care that much if I lived or died.

The conclusion that he'd been trying to avoid, and which he was now sure Blaise had been hinting at, rose up and hit him in the face.

They were hoping that Holly and Yew would take care of their problem for them.

Harry waved his hand, and the contract vanished. He looked up at Blaise and Theo and Draco, watching him so intently, and asked quietly, "What happens now?"

"What do you mean?" Theo asked. Blaise and Draco just continued to watch, in silence.

"You've shown me that the people I thought were my friends weren't." Harry's voice shook a little, and a cold wind picked up around them, seeming to blow down from the lightning bolt in red light still etched across the sky. "And you've shown me that you want me, but it comes with being forcibly bonded to you."

"You still have a choice," Theo said. "You told us that. You're powerful enough to break the bond. You could break free of us and go off somewhere, if that's what you want." His pain battered at Harry through the bond, slthough his voice was even. "If you do that…all we ask is that you wind the bond around us and try to preserve the changes it made in us."

Harry stared with blind eyes at the red light in the sky. He had no idea what to do next.

He didn't want to just go back to Neville and the others, because they had betrayed him in some ways, even if he told himself over and over again that those ways were understandable. He didn't want to stay with Blaise and Theo and Draco the way it had been, because they had forced him, too, and they still weren't good people even if Neville and Ron and Hermione weren't the shining beacons Harry had always thought they were.

He wanted some of the things the bond had shown him he could have. People who truly cared about him. Truth. Powerful magic. Pleasure.

But he couldn't have them the way the bond currently stood.

Harry lowered his head and held out his hands. Blaise was the first to get it, and began to climb up the mountain towards him. Draco followed, picking his way through the stones and scree as if this was a real mountain instead of a dream one and he could fall and get injured.

Theo was slow to follow. Harry locked eyes with him and said clearly, "If this is what I want, are you going to deny me?"

"I waited so long for you," Theo began.

"No, for the fourth person to complete your bond." Harry said it gently. He found he could be gentle here, where he held the power. "I'm going to adjust the bond so that it works with three people. Three is a very magical number, after all."

Theo lowered his eyes and nodded. "What will we lose?" he asked, as he climbed up so that he stood on the ledge below Harry.

"The power of your magic as it stands. I don't think it's a good idea to leave kidnappers and torturers with magic powerful enough to conquer the world."

Theo winced. Harry would remember that. He was capable of feeling some level of remorse about his crimes when Harry scolded him.

It just wasn't enough as the bond currently stood.

"Will we still be able to cast in tandem?" Draco asked quietly. He looked younger than the rest of them as he stood there, although maybe that just had to do with the shadows that the magical sunlight cast over his face. "Learn new spells together? That's the part that matters the most to me with the magic."

Harry wanted to shake his head. Then again, he reckoned they had been together long enough that they wouldn't value casting independently like he did. "Yes, the bond will be the same as it would have been if it could be complete with three people."

Draco nodded and fell silent. Blaise was still looking at Harry, though. "It's never felt complete."

"It wasn't," Harry said, a little impatient. He was gathering his magic around him, and that was a delicate endeavor, even here in this dreamscape where he seemed to have the clearest access to it. "You're right, it was meant to have a fourth person. But now it will be as if didn't have to have that fourth person."

Blaise frowned, but Theo reached out and caught his hand. They exchanged a look that made Harry ache for a moment. That was the kind of true intimacy that he didn't know if he would ever have.

But he definitely wouldn't have it with the bond the way it was, so he pushed it out of his mind.

"May we continue to correspond with you?" Theo asked.

"What would be the point?"

"You are giving us a gift," Theo said. "You didn't have to. You could have ripped the bond away from us and left us to fall back into our separate selves as revenge for forcing the bond on you."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Unlike some people here, I'm not a vengeful git."

"And that's one reason."

They all said that at once, in one voice, which Harry found creepy. But from the glances they exchanged with each other, he didn't think that had been planned. Harry shook his head a little. "What do you mean?"

"We thought we would find someone who would be changed by the bond," Blaise said. His voice was quiet now, and he gestured at Theo and Draco as if to keep them from saying anything. "We thought you would join us in exacting vengeance on whoever we wanted and make us more powerful in doing so."

"That seems like it should be a reason not to stay in contact with me—"

"We felt you through the bond," Blaise continued, insistently. "We discovered that you were more interesting than that." He hesitated, as if reluctant to say the next part. "Better than that."

Harry snorted. "Death Eaters? Suffering morality at this late hour?"

"I don't like being complacent," Blaise said. "That's what I was like before the bond. I didn't realize that I'd—become the same way within it. Taking my bondmates for granted. I like someone who can challenge me."

"We all enjoy that, Blaise, don't make it sound like you're unique," Draco grumbled.

"Yes, we all saw how much you enjoyed being challenged on the Quidditch pitch."

Harry blinked as he watched them bicker. He'd had the impression that they never did, united as they were, and with practically the same emotions. Maybe they weren't three mindless bodies containing one being after all.

"If there's ever a chance that we can rebuild a better version of the bond with you," Theo interrupted, when it seemed that Blaise and Draco wouldn't shut up, "provide you with a version of the love and appreciation that you would accept, then we would like to do so."

"I don't know."

"May we write to you?"

Harry hesitated. But while he did want to make his own life, it was going to be awfully lonely, given that he'd have to avoid the people he had thought were his friends and just about everyone else from Neville's side. "I suppose."

Theo held up his hand. "I can swear on anything you like that we won't force you."

"Let's save the swearing for after I alter the bond. It's impossible to tell right now whether you'll feel the same once I change it."

Theo hesitated, then nodded, a rueful smile playing on his lips. "I suppose no one knows anything of how they're going to respond right now."

Harry smiled back, and reached out to the magic.

In the end, it wasn't like anything he had experienced before. Harry supposed there was no reason it would be.

He whistled down through a golden tunnel, seeing another landscape like the one that had surrounded them, a different dreamscape reminiscent of his soul. This one glittered with the same lakes, trees, and stones, and the northern lights danced overhead in a starry sky, but everything was covered with chains. Even the sky was crisscrossed with glittering links when Harry squinted up at it.

Harry narrowed his eyes.

I have the power to destroy you now, he said in his head, trying to reach out to the bond the way its voices had reached out to him, and it seemed to him that the chains trembled.

Harry didn't have to think much about the way that he intended to destroy the bond. He simply called up his magic and directed it at the chains, a shimmering flow of power that began to glow like molten gold as he released it.

The power streamed at the chains, following their links and making them shine as if they were on fire. Then, with a roaring snap that made Harry flinch despite himself, the chains began to part.

The awareness of Blaise's emotions vanished from the back of Harry's head, followed by Draco's, and then Theo's. A moment more, and he knew that he wouldn't be able to tell if they were lying to him. He thought absently that might be the only part of the bond he would mourn.

The shock of the magic burned through him and made him fall to his knees, and then he felt the loose end of the bond snap past him like a trailing rope.

Oh no you don't!

Harry reached out and caught the heavy, dragging thing, ignoring the way that it tried to refasten itself to him. He pulled it back, link by link, and wound it around the three of them, Blaise and Theo and Draco, binding them together.

Will I ever be able to bond with someone like that? Will I ever have someone I can trust that much?

Harry shook his head. He didn't want that kind of bond, or binding. He had to be free to make his own decisions.

The light and the roaring sound cut off as suddenly as if Harry had stepped into yet another dreamscape. He gasped and opened his eyes.

He was awake, in his room at Malfoy Manor. The sense of the bond wrapped around him was gone.

Harry closed his eyes and sank into true sleep, before he could think better of it.