"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
~ Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carol
In a surprising three more days, Dyre had recovered completely. The adults hovered, unable to believe that the boy had healed so quickly. He had literally gone from a step at Death's door to the same proud unbending stance he had given when he first walked through the doors of the Great Hall. Those foreign eyes were so cold, colder perhaps than before. His back was always straight, and he held himself as if there was a place for every part of him. Hands on thighs, legs straight, feet together, and face taken by something far away. He responded mostly in monosyllables save for when courtesy dictated otherwise. He didn't even move in sleep. He ate when told to eat, rested when told to rest, and took all his potions obediently. Even Severus was creeped out.
On the third day, after both Narcissa and Poppy informed him he was completely healed, the group had gathered once more, eager to know what he would choose to do. James and Lily, through regretful of the reason, were happy to keep the boy within their sight. Their contentment in their meager fussing had shifted to anxiety and fear once more. But as much as they wanted to clutch him to their chests, they knew they could not.
Dyre was staring once more out the open window. The heady musk of fall was giving way to the somber briskness of winter, but they supposed to Dyre, it still felt warm. The crisp air, leaden with a dying sun, invaded the infirmary, chilling their hair. The silence stretched on, the witches and wizards somehow unable to interrupt his indifferent staring. With so many thoughts running circles through their heads, it was not hard to become lost in their own contemplative stares.
Unsurprisingly, it was Dumbledore who broke the air.
"Dyre," he called quietly.
The boy turned, and the motion moved only his neck and head, like his body was disconnected. Nothing of his face changed. Only the narrowing of his eyes indicated he was in this world at all.
"What do you intend to do now?" Dumbledore asked, for once not mincing his words.
"Do?" the boy inquired, his brow lowering only slightly. "Do you not wish to ask questions of me?"
"Are you willing to answer them?" Dumbledore countered.
Dyre looked shocked, his face going slack as his eyes widened marginally. He gathered himself quickly, glancing down at the sheets covering his lap. The standard nightgown of the infirmary ward had been foregone by a neat, charming set of pale blue pajamas. Silver snowflakes were hemmed on the cuff, and soft flannel brushed the boy's knuckles. They were Sirius' and even after hemming charms, still managed to somehow look too big on him.
"To my ability, I will answer anything that you wish to know," he said at length, still gazing at the embroidered hem of his sleeve.
Dumbledore smiled, his mouth disappearing in his beard. "Well then…" His hand swirled, and in a soft mix of evanescent light, a chair slowly formed. He set it beside the bed, scooting it closer to Dyre's side. "I should very much like to know your favorite color."
Dyre could not hide his alarm this time. The plastic sheath of non-emotion dropped way to astonishment, and he could gaze at the old man only with stunned confusion, his jaw slightly open.
"I beg your pardon?" Dyre asked, his voice lighter than its usual solemn malaise.
Dumbledore frowned thoughtfully. "Was that too personal?"
"I, uh," Dyre floundered, backing away from the wizard as if he had suddenly become diseased. He blinked several times, completely taken aback. "I don't know, sir," he ended up saying, trying to distance himself from Dumbledore happy grin.
"Quite alright, my boy. I can never choose one myself either."
"What about your favorite food?" Lily asked suddenly, leaning forward excitedly from beside her husband.
Dyre turned to her much like a startled bird, looking extremely out of his element. Those eyes that had been so distanced were fleshy, fixed on the here and now in a way that had long been missed. Dyre, in these simple questions, could not for the life of him gain his feet.
"I don't – Don't you want to know about how I could speak to the dragon or have an animagus? Or how I healed so quickly?"
"I would much prefer to know what your favorite season is," Dumbledore said, smiling fondly.
"Are you – Why on earth would that matter?" He looked beseechingly to Victor, who was lounging against the wall nonchalantly, watching him squirm amusedly.
The brutish Bulgarian shrugged. "How should I know the mannerisms of Englishmen?"
Dyre hung his shoulders, acting the part of a bewildered, caged animal.
"Oh for heaven's sake," Severus grumbled. "Would you prefer we hoist you before a firing squad and interrogate you?"
"What's a firing squad?" Draco asked.
Severus ignored him.
Dyre ran a hand through his hair, ruffling the unruly locks above his scar. "Uh, blue, I suppose," he said reluctantly.
Dumbledore clapped his hands, startling him. "Excellent choice! I sometimes fancy myself in a blue sort of mood and those are the most wonderful of days!"
Dyre grimaced. "I suppose I enjoy vegetable soups. It is forbidden to eat meats inside the Tower."
"Really?" Draco said in disbelief.
He nodded.
"That seems rather strange for your culture," Remus said curiously.
"Death perverts the weaving," Dyre said simply.
"What is the Tower like?" Draco asked suddenly.
Several of them tensed, wondering if Dyre would shift back into silence. However, they were shocked to see a warm smile. The scar twisted over his cheek, pulling his skin awkwardly. His milky eye was as silent as a grave, but his green eye sang. A soft glow lit up his young face, lending a rare warmth and gentleness to his rough features. His right eye was hooded and tender.
"It is very beautiful," he said, recalling the central cathedral and cool courtyard.
"What did you like most about it?" Lily entreated, an eager smile below eager eyes.
Dyre graced her with a smile, a timid, gentle thing much more sincere that his wily grins. "There… there is a small tree in the courtyard. The all-mothers despair of it," he said with a flicker of mischief, "but none of them have the heart to cut it down. Magic keeps her in bloom and the courtyard is always coated in petals. Even in the coldest of days, she coats the sky."
"Sounds lovely," Lily smiled encouragingly.
Dyre nodded and sighed. "It is said that the tree is connected with the Maiden, that as long as She lives, it will continue to bloom."
Lily's eyes were kind as she spoke, "You care very much for her, don't you?"
Dyre blinked, and his face lost some of its soft glory. "Of course. As would any adept of the Tower."
"Dyre," Lucius said suddenly in the silence. Dyre turned to him stolidly. "I did find something curious about your animagus form."
Dyre tilted his head a bit, appraising the lord. Lucius neither flinched nor shifted, remaining stoically impassive to his scrutiny.
"You wish," he said slowly, "to know why my form is older than I am."
Lucius nodded, grey eyes focused tightly on the youth beneath the hospital sheets.
"I suppose you know that harts are not native to Iceland as well," Dyre said more like a question, watching the man much like an eagle watches the erratic diving of an osprey.
"I noticed," Lucius replied dismissively. "But you are English."
Dyre shook his head. "That is irrelevant. I grew up in the Nordic lands and that is where I learned my craft. Magic is shaped by the land, my lord, not the caster. I am sure there are many of my countrymen who will make the correlation between me and the Potters now because of what I have done."
Lucius' eyes narrowed. "That does not explain why your animagus is fully grown while you are but a child."
"Lucius," Lily said warningly, eyes darting to her son.
Dyre raised his hand, cutting off her protests. "I do not mind this question," he said, his assessing gaze turning into something more solid and earnest. "I am one of the few whose animal is a magical creature." He paused, turning his gaze to Padfoot. "Much like your Grim, master werewolf."
Remus was properly startled, as was most the rest of the room. Padfoot stood awkwardly, braced on his hind legs, before, seeing no reason to remain anonymous, he morphed back into Sirius Black. Blue eyes shone sheepishly behind roguish black hair.
"How did you know?"
Dyre shrugged. "I can see such things," he said simply.
"With your eye," Sirius hedged, pointing towards his left unmarred one to indicate Dyre's own.
"Nor do Grims cuddle," Dyre stated in lieu of an answer.
Sirius made a noncommittal sound, scratching his unshaven cheek.
"We know Black's animagus," Severus said impatiently. "What of your creature?"
Dyre sighed. "His name is Dáinn. He is one of four Red Deer that sits beneath the World Tree Yggdrasill."
"But your animagus is black," Draco pointed out.
Dyre was silent for a second before answering rather reluctantly. "Do you know the rough translation of Dáinn?"
Victor was silent against the stone as Draco floundered. His arms were crossed, a dark expression below his heavy brow.
"The Dead One," Severus said, his expression just as cloudy.
It grew quiet. Dyre surveyed him with hidden eyes. "Rightly so, Master Snape. I have never asked why his pelt changes so upon his descent to earth, and he has never spoken of it."
"Your animagus has a separate consciousness?" James asked, his voice filled with something broaching both awe and concern.
"My actions are my own," Dyre said with a small glower. "But yes. Dáinn belongs to himself as much as I do."
"Isn't that dangerous?" Lily asked.
He struggled for a moment with his answer. "It has… potential to be dangerous, but Dáinn can harm me no more than he can forsake his nature."
"You do realize you're talking about a deer inside your head, don't you?" Draco pointed out abstractly.
Dyre stared at him for a moment. "I talk to many beasts."
"Talking to beasts isn't so weird," he said, giving him a wry look. "It's the 'in your head' part that's rather disturbing."
A smile threatened its way over Dyre's lips. "I suppose I've gotten used to it."
"We know you can talk to dragons," Remus said. "Can you talk to other animals?" he asked curiously.
"I speak to serpents," Dyre said offhandedly. "Lizard-speak is just a variation of parseltongue. It was not so hard to teach myself," he shrugged. "Other beasts communicate on their own. If they don't understand man-speech, then they can at least grasp emotion."
"And these creatures just find you and…" Severus trailed off ambiguously. "Start up a conversation just for the sake of it."
Dyre looked suddenly uneasy. He clenched his hands in the blanket covering his thighs, eyes downcast. It was silent a long time before Dyre decided to speak.
"They… they come sometimes to tell me… to tell me things. Riddles, secrets, most often I can make no sense of it," he waved off. "It's only recently that they…" he trailed, his jaw tightening. He turned away from them, a silent debate converging in his eyes.
"What do they do, Dyre?" Dumbledore asked gently, placing his hand on the blanket close to his knee.
Victor leaned up from the wall, watching the boy cautiously.
"The world is filled with awe, Banebreaker," Dyre said in a quiet voice. Something like a tight ball glistened in his blind eye, capturing an empty corner of the room. He sighed almost wistfully, a heaviness weighing down his shoulders. "Such awe as could form mountains from dust," he breathed.
Dumbledore looked to the corner. Even with his wise eyes, coated in magic and the subtle nuances of deception, he could see nothing but an empty corner playing with the dust motes in the air.
"Dyre, what are you-"
"The worlds are unbalanced," Dyre broke in suddenly, overriding him. The others shifted warily.
His hands gripped the covers again, kneading the fabric tightly. Victor moved to his side, taking his shoulders, but Dyre was immovable, gaze enraptured by the invisible magic in the corner. Sirius moved across the room, walking boldly into the empty space. He waved his hand through the air, feeling for… anything, but nothing met him. Dyre's eyes did not change.
"The things I see," he whispered in a strange hiss. A pulse beat the room, a tender throbbing in the blind eye.
"Dyre!" Victor shouted, strong hands incapable of uprooting him.
"The things I hear," Dyre continued, either ignoring him or unable to hear.
Fear reared. Dyre's green eye suddenly blurred, paling in a mix of swirls to a fine, cold mint. The pupil of his left eye dilated, angry beating jumping in the orb like a heavy heartbeat.
"They speak to me of a being that is malformed," he said in a strange voice, quick and raspy. "It walks the edges of existence. It haunts the ley lines. It comes for me."
"What comes, Dyre?" Dumbledore asked. Eyes as sharp as cobalt stones peered into him.
"They do not know."
"Dyre!" Victor shouted again, shaking him.
"Who doesn't?" Dumbledore asked, leaning in with sharp eyes and a thin mouth.
"The owls," Dyre whispered, his voice again somewhat human.
His body moved beneath the sheets. He leaned towards whatever he saw, pulling from Victor's grip. His legs slid beneath him, a strange mutinous calling in his face. There was magic in this, old and deep. Something formidable and inhuman entreating upon the lithesome son.
"The snakes, the ravens. The dead, the dying, the sidhé. The centaurs, the moons, the bones, the stars," Dyre listed, not for a moment breaking his gaze from the boundaries of that nonexistent world. "None of them know this thing. They come to warn me. I cannot cross the ley lines. Something lies in wait. It will come for me, they say. Through fire and earth and water, it comes. It brings a wrongness. It calls. It wantssss me."
Victor suddenly turned him roughly. His fist came up, slamming maliciously into his jaw. Dyre's head hit the iron bed frame. His feet tumbled from the sheets. Blood dripped onto his collar.
"Odin damns you, Dyre!" Victor shouted, towering over him impressively.
James and Remus grabbed him, pulling him from the bed. Victor's limp leg slid over the floor, the metal plate along the heel of his shoe chipping the floor, but he managed himself, relying on the strength of his left leg to stand against the werewolf and father. Lily leaned over her son, patting at his split lip. Dyre stared listless at the bedding, his left eye still overlarge and throbbing.
Victor snarled, tugging again the arms holding him. "Think of the Maiden, gods blast you!"
The oath seemed to do the trick. Slowly, the light from his left eye receded, the orb's trembling rescinding as it fogged back to dimness. Mist swirled in his right, pale lichen green bleeding backwards. The black of his pupil bobbed to the surface. The original green, dark and secretive, curved around the black, bringing to surface the wet sheen of something alive and breathing. He sat up, pushing Lily away. His hand held his left eye. Small drops of red dripped to the sheets.
The first words out of his mouth were incomprehensible. When Victor responded in kind, they realized he was speaking Icelandic. James and Remus released him.
"You know better than to dabble in the mystics," Victor said coldly in English.
Dyre weaved his hand over the sheets, calling the blood from it. The red moved with the crest of his fingers and palm, pulled from the threads in a fine thin mist. His hand flicked, and it dissipated in a small burst.
"I am sorry," he said.
The words hung. They sounded raw, like a torn wound. Heavy silence spread between the two boys, one glaring and the other with eyes downcast, a defeated, shamed slump to his shoulders. Victor left, heavy boots clanging on the tiles. The door banged loudly with his exit.
"If you know what is best," Dyre said after the door shut, "you will cast me out of this place."
"Where will you go?" Dumbledore asked reasonably before Lily and James moved to protest. His extended arm bade silence.
He tasted the blood around his lip. "Bane tells me of a gate that will lead me to the world beneath," Dyre said, purposefully avoiding their gazes and placing his thumb over his still bleeding lip. "The Hel saints will know what this world does not."
"You would go to the land of the dead?" Severus asked. Despite himself, his voice rose with incredibility, disbelief warring with terror in his face.
Dyre nodded shallowly. "I know the paths. If I cannot use the ley lines then the gates will serve me."
"And what if these saints don't know?" James said brusquely, gaze hot and feverish as his hands held back his wife's shoulders. "What will you do then?"
"I will cross the ley lines," he said dismissively. "Better a warrior's death than a coward's retreat."
"This is foolishness," Severus said at the same time that Lily and Sirius shouted their protest.
"What of Karkaroff?" Lucius asked, cool eyes calculating as he surveyed the child. "Are you not bound to him?"
"He has cast me from his sight. I must leave anyway before he decides to call upon me again. He did not know of my animagus or that I could converse with the wyrms." He sighed, his head hanging. The muscle in his jaw twitched. "I fear he will use me for more treacherous things than errands and books."
"Is there any way at all for us to separate him from you?" Sirius asked desperately.
"No way that I would wish of you," he said shortly. His gaze pulled up sharply to glare at them, daring their dissent.
Dumbledore rested a hand on his shoulder. Dyre's gaze turned to him, something of his vehement recalcitrance resurfacing from his shame.
"I am the master of this hall," the old wizard said kindly, "and as long as you stay in this land, you have asylum here."
"How can you say such a thing?" Dyre said in a breath of shock, the words moving from a hollow place in his throat. "You know evil calls for me. How can you endanger your lives and the lives of your students for someone like me?"
"Because we love you, Dyre," Lily said unabashedly, eyes shining resolutely. "And we do not wish for you to disappear again. Please," she pleaded shamelessly. "Do not leave."
Dyre frowned, his eyes turning from her. "If that is what you wish of me," he said with slow belligerence. "Then I will stay as long as I can, but it cannot last forever, my lady." Eyes suddenly bored into her, demanding attention as surely as a death threat. "One way or another, my nature will bid me leave you."
"It will just have to be enough then," James said before his wife, trapped in that violent stare, could respond.
He wrapped his arm comfortingly around Lily's waist. His brown eyes were stricken with sorrow but a stubborn strength resonated in him, lending his remorse little room to breath. The eyes that met him were just as strong as his father's gaze, resolute in their decision to harbor such calamity. He could find no ground in their potency, the warm russet of the Were, the eager opalescent cyan of the Grim. The calm, egg-blue of Banebreaker Dumbledore, the forbidding obsidian of Severus Snape, Lily's forest-green. Even Lucius, with a coolness forged of beads of mercury, was unyielding, hand gripping the top of his silver-head cane.
Dyre's gaze met cerulean grey. Though the light in the room was limited, restricted to the faint glow of the evening lanterns, something white shone in them, moving in a bright roll through the twin stares. Draco's eyes called something. They sang with a youth that Dyre could not remember. Though his mouth was tense and his brows drawn into a frown, there was still something horribly, wonderfully brilliant in his stare. It begged something of Dyre that he could not begin to fathom.
He turned away.
It was strange, Dyre thought. He had been trying so hard to escape from this, the expectation in their gazes that he could never satisfy. He had been running so hard, so fast, ignoring anything that tried to stop him, anything that tried to still him, hold in place with something as simple as a smile. So unbelievably hard he had run. And still, here he was. Fates blast him, it seemed that even with all the running in the world Dyre could never seem to move, never seem to escape the hounds of his past, the demons bearing him down into the ground.
For all his running, he could not protect the things that mattered most.