… already told you Ginny and Harry had a shouting match last night and blew up part of the top floor, but this afternoon she had a go at Bill, too. Seems she's on a right rampage, although, somehow seems like it might have done something; Harry came and sat with me and Hermione for a bit this morning, and duelled with Sirius. He put his memories of that night in a pensieve for Sirius and Dumbledore, too. Sirius watched the memories and then banned anyone else from seeing. I reckon he'd have let Remus or Dora if they'd really wanted to, but they didn't.
I can't blame them; it was awful, Malfoy.
I asked, obviously. Not Sirius, that wouldn't have got me anywhere, but Harry. It's his head, after all. Hermione didn't approve, and Harry wasn't thrilled, but when I said I wanted to understand, he seemed to get it. Not all of it, obviously—not this—but enough to give his permission.
I couldn't not know what we're up against, what Voldemort's like. We've heard stories, but that's not the same as seeing it, and when Harry's just had to deal with him, and you might have to any day now, I just— The writing cut off and then resumed a little shakily.
It was the worst thing I've ever seen. The version Sirius told us—the version Harry must've told him—had some pretty big holes in it, as it turned out. Voldemort—he asked Harry to join him. And then Harry tried to kill him—really, actually, properly tried, if you get my meaning—and then Voldemort—
He's terrifying. As bad as the stories, maybe even worse. That's not what you want to hear, I know, I'm sorry, but don't— just be ready for anything. And, if it goes bad, or even looks like it might be going bad, get out.
"Draco."
"Mother?" Draco asked, snapping his book shut. She looked pale and frightened standing at the base of Draco's tree, and Draco, who prided himself on being observant, had been so engrossed in Weasley's message that he hadn't even noticed her approach. "Are you all right?"
"We have a visitor," she said, and he knew from her voice it wasn't Severus, or one of Hydrus' friends.
"The Dark Lord has requested you, in your father's office." A chill ran over Draco's arms and neck, though it was a sunny day, but he didn't hesitate:
"Of course, Mother." He tucked his book into the branches of his tree, and carefully climbed down. Mother reached up to run a hand through his hair, smoothing it, and brushed bark off the back of his robes. Draco took the time to school his face and brace himself, ready his Occlumency. Then Mother released him and led him around the side of the Manor and back inside.
"You're certain you're ready?" she asked, voice impossibly soft, so it wouldn't carry.
Just be ready for anything, Weasley had written.
"I am," he said.
Mother led him to father's office doors, which were shut, and knocked once, quiet enough to be heard, but not loud enough to be disruptive.
"Enter," said a voice that was not Father's, and Mother pushed the door open, curtseying.
"Thank you, Narcissa," Father said, and Mother stepped back out of Draco's way, head still bowed. Father was not at his desk, but rather, standing before it; in his chair sat the Dark Lord. He was pale, and had no hair on his head, or face—no eyebrows, no eyelashes, and his cheeks and chin were smooth. The middle of his face was almost flat—noseless—though he had two slitted nostrils. His eyes, red and almost reptilian, flicked over Draco, considering, and Draco felt—something in his mind. It wasn't a touch, or prod, it was almost the mental equivalent of feeling watched. "My Lord, this is my youngest son, Draco."
"Come forward, Draco," the Dark Lord said in a voice that gave Draco chills.
Doing his best not to show it, Draco approached the desk, stopping when he drew level with Father. The Dark Lord studied him and Draco studied him back, mind boggling a little over his appearance. It wasn't how he looked that Draco was struggling to wrap his head around—he'd grown up around magic, around house-elves, had seen plenty of charms and transfigurations gone wrong at school—but more the fact that no one had said anything. Father had described the Dark Lord's ambition, his power, but never the way he looked. There were no photographs in the history books, and it wasn't something Potter had ever mentioned either.
"You are a bold one, aren't you?" Draco couldn't tell if he was amused or disapproving, or perhaps a little of both, but Father had stiffened.
"Am I?" Draco asked, a little cautiously.
"Wizards with far more reason to be favoured by me than you show me far more deference," the Dark Lord said, and glanced at Father, who bent his head slightly. The words hung in the office, awaiting a response.
"Apologies, my Lord," Draco said, inclining his own head. His heart was pounding. "But what you call boldness could well be stupidity. I'm a Gryffindor, so those tend to go hand in hand."
"You're not stupid," the Dark Lord said. "Lucius and Severus would know better than to bring you to me if you were." He drew his wand and twisted it between long, pale fingers. Draco wondered if it was a threat. The Dark Lord was hard to read—his voice had an unnatural hissing coldness to it, and his face moved just a little differently to most people's. "Foolish, perhaps. Though not foolish enough to let your housemates dictate your allegiance, at least, else you'd be standing before Dumbledore instead."
"Draco knows better, my Lord—"
"Does he?" the Dark Lord asked, watching Draco with those cool, red eyes. "He hasn't always."
"My Lord—"
"Quiet, Lucius," the Dark Lord said, and Draco saw a bit of irritation in the narrowing of his eyes, heard it in the sharpness of his voice. It was not a severe reprimand, but Father fell silent at once, head bowed. "Well, Draco?" It was a test, it had to be, but what was he looking for? Devotion? Loyalty? Belief in the cause? Or perhaps he just wanted to see how Draco would respond when he was accused of wrongdoing. Draco was still and silent, trying to stay calm while he decided how to respond. With so little to go on, it was hard to know what to say or how to say it. But then the Dark Lord continued, "You were there with Harry Potter, attempting to keep me from the Philosopher's Stone, and my diary-self had to set the basilisk on you to keep you from interfering with the Chamber of Secrets…"
That he could work with:
"Yes," Draco said. Father twitched. A slight widening of the Dark Lord's eyes was followed by them narrowing, but it was a different narrowing than the irritated one. Draco wasn't sure it boded any better for him, though. "Am I supposed to deny it?"
"Gryffindor indeed," the Dark Lord said to Father, who gave a jerky nod. "You do not seem very sorry."
"You don't seem very upset," Draco said, without thinking. "I— just— if you held the actions of my twelve year old self against me, I very much doubt I'd be standing here." His mind was racing, trying to figure out how to salvage the situation. "I think you understand that allegiances can shift." That was good; the Dark Lord had tried to recruit Potter so he had to believe that.
"On what grounds do you presume to tell me how I think?" the Dark Lord asked frostily, and Draco froze, but then the Dark Lord leaned back in his—Father's—chair, twirling his wand again, and studying Draco over the top of it.
Not a bad reaction, not yet.
But Draco didn't think it would be wise to mention the Dark Lord's failure to recruit Potter, to remind him of Potter's escape...
"You recruited Pettigrew," Draco said, "even though he was friends with Black, and Potter, and Lupin. And more recently, you thought you might have lost Severus to Dumbledore."
The Dark Lord considered him.
"And what prompted your change of heart, Draco?"
"I want to be on the winning side," he said.
"And that has always driven you?" the Dark Lord asked.
"Nobody likes to lose."
"Does that mean that, until recently, you expected I would...?" His voice was soft, but his eyes were narrowed again; still not irritated, but dangerous. Draco knew a leading question when he heard one, knew how to spot a trap.
He weighed his options, then sprung it:
"Yes." Sparks flew from the end of the Dark Lord's wand and Father's skin had gone chalky:
"Draco," he hissed out of the side of his mouth.
"It's rather easy to get swept up in Potter's wake," Draco continued, ignoring him. He tried to sound as bold as the Dark Lord thought he was, but his voice shook a little. "Especially when you're twelve years old and spurned by your family for your Sorting. Potter takes care of his friends, and regardless of whether it's luck or skill or help from people like Dumbledore, or a bit of all of those, he's done a good job at staying alive." Draco kept his voice as level as he could; factual, impersonal. "I recognise now that you hadn't lost the war, but at the time…" Draco trailed off, allowing the silence to speak for him. "And regardless, you'd certainly lost battles."
"And now?" the Dark Lord hissed. Draco was actually surprised to see he didn't have a forked tongue.
"Father told me a year ago that you'd made contact with him and others, and that you'd have a body soon," Draco said. "It made everything seem more real than when you were acting out of the shadows and not involving them. And then he and Mother gave me a choice; offer my services to you, or go to Durmstrang. They made it clear I'd been endangering them, and that—that had never been my intention. More than that, it was a chance to bury the wand and be a family again." He glanced at Father, who was not looking at him at all.
"That sounds less like you're driven to be on the winning side, and more like you're driven by… affection." The Dark Lord's voice was mocking, but not, Draco didn't think, unhappy. He didn't know what he'd done right, but it seemed he'd done something.
"Perhaps," Draco said grudgingly. "Or it started that way, at least. Now it really is about winning. I've been watching Potter for a while now, but this year I've seen what you're capable of. There's no competition, not really." Still not a lie, though he expected the Dark Lord to interpret it differently than Draco meant it.
The Dark Lord was silent for what felt like a long time, then glanced at Father.
"Severus has been teaching him?"
"Yes, my Lord."
"And how do you think you have progressed?" the Dark Lord asked Draco.
"Severus thinks I'm ready—"
Does he? The Dark Lord's voice was in Draco's mind and Draco hadn't felt him enter. How long had he been there, Draco wondered. And do you think you're ready? At that, Draco was able to pinpoint the Dark Lord's location; he'd been lurking at the very surface of Draco's mind, light and subtle as a cobweb in a cornice. The Dark Lord noticed his attention and became markedly less subtle; Severus' presence in Draco's mind felt like light pressure, like a headache that didn't hurt yet. The Dark Lord's mental presence seemed to have a weight to it, was almost smothering. The Dark Lord materialised as himself, looking around as Draco's thoughts and memories drifted by in silvery strands.
Every now and then, he would reach out to catch one and examine it:
Draco traipsing after Dobby, Draco sorting Severus' ingredients cupboard, Hydrus breaking Draco's nose, Draco sitting by Potter hearing Father had something to do with the Chamber, Draco spinning back through time beside Granger, Draco standing beside Weasley, who was telling him he didn't want to be useless anymore…
You are fond of Potter, the Dark Lord said. And of the others. He plucked a memory of the World Cup out of Draco's mind, of him squeezed between Potter and Weasley on a log beside the campfire, surrounded by their families and a handful of others from school.
They've been good friends, Draco said. And they're talented. Their time training with Potter in the Room flashed briefly before them. I'm hoping… when the time's right, I'm hoping to talk them around...
And if you cannot?
Then I'll be vindicated to have them realise I was right, once we've won, Draco said grimly. Assuming they survive, that is.
The Dark Lord pulled free of Draco's mind with a sensation akin to a weed being dragged from soil. It pulled at things, made his smooth, pensieve-mind roil like the ocean, hurt—
Draco sagged to his knees on the floor of Father's study, gagging. Father's expression was smooth, but his eyes were concerned as Draco picked himself up off the floor.
The Dark Lord was back to twirling his wand, until suddenly he wasn't; quick as anything, he jabbed it at Draco—
No, not at Draco; at the door, which creaked open.
"You will be useful," the Dark Lord said. Draco didn't know if it was an observation, a threat, a challenge, or something else, but it was a dismissal.
"Yes," Draco said, nodding. Father shot him a look, and Draco bowed, then retreated from the office, not straightening or daring to turn his back until the door was closed again.
He took a deep breath and then walked, very calmly, back outside to his tree. It took him several tries to get up into the relative safety of its branches because he was trembling so badly—when had that started, he wondered, and hoped it had been after leaving Father's office.
His book was still there, but at some point while Draco'd been in with Father and the Dark Lord, Hydrus had come outside; he was flying over the grass, occasionally swooping at a peacock and then zipping away before they could retaliate.
It was a beautiful day, bright and sunny, and yet Draco shivered as if cold as he opened his book to page three-hundred-and-ninety-four, murmuring the passphrase. Weasley's familiar handwriting was still there, the same few paragraphs as before, but there was a new one, too.
Perhaps Weasley had felt guilty for ending it on such a dire note (And, if it goes bad, or even looks like it might be going bad, get out) or perhaps he'd been thinking more about what he'd seen and didn't have anyone else to voice his thoughts to. Regardless, as was Weasley's way, he'd known exactly the right thing to say—or in this instance, write:
You want to know the best, worst thing about what I saw in the pensieve? he'd written. Voldemort's terrifying, like I said. Draco knew that now, personally. But Harry… it's easy to forget, sometimes because he's just Harry, you know? But I think Harry is too, a bit. Terrifying, I mean.
Draco summoned a quill through the library window and wrote back:
Good thing you're not sharing a room with him this summer, then. His handwriting was shaky, but before he could siphon the words off to try again, Weasley had written back.
Terrifying in a good way, not a scary way.
Like Granger? Draco wrote, blotting ink when his hand trembled.
Exactly! Draco could almost hear Weasley's pleased voice and it warmed him a little. Different types of terrifying, but the same principle applies. Draco tried desperately to think of something to write that might keep Weasley there and talking for a bit longer, something that wasn't 'I just met the Dark Lord and survived'.
Weasley beat him to it:
You all right, mate?
I don't know, Draco wrote. I'll tell you about it once I think I can get it out coherently.
All right. Just as Draco was about to throw his pride away and ask Weasley not to leave him alone, Weasley drew two horizontal lines, each about an inch apart, and then two vertical ones over the top. A moment later, a cross appeared in the centre of the grid.
Grateful, Draco placed a wobbly circle in the lower right corner and then scribbled a note alongside:
I don't know why you thought it was appropriate for you to get crosses and to go first.
Weasley drew a smiling face below Draco's comment and then another cross appeared above his circle.
"Bill will be joining us shortly, I'm sure… ah!"
Bill walked into the library, followed by Ginny, who halted and looked a lot less certain once she noticed Dumbledore sitting with Harry and Padfoot, or perhaps it was the look on Harry's face that stopped her.
Bill settled himself on the couch beside Harry with a distinctly appraising look that made Harry feel like he was some sort of obscure Egyptian relic.
"All right?" Padfoot asked, from Harry's other side, though he looked a little angry himself.
"No," Harry said, not sure if he was more angry or upset. He settled for scowling because that conveyed both at once, and must have accidentally released a bit of static because Padfoot and Bill twitched in unison. "Not if they're suggesting I could have had this thing off weeks ago—"
From the doorway, Ginny's eyes narrowed, which Harry took for solidarity.
"We could have begun to try weeks ago," Dumbledore corrected, unbothered by Harry's mood. His eyes flicked momentarily to Ginny, then to Harry, as if to give Harry the opportunity to request privacy, but Harry said nothing, and Dumbledore continued: "As I was saying, Severus—"
"Snape's been in on this?" Sirius demanded.
"Severus has been kind enough to let Bill and I study his Mark—a complete Mark—to see how it is anchored—"
"Anchored is an understatement," Bill muttered.
"Quite," Dumbledore sighed. "Additionally, Severus shared with us his memories of receiving it - the incantation and wand movements, which do indeed match what you recounted to me and to Sirius the night of the fourth task."
"Great," Harry said.
"Indeed," Dumbledore said. "Because it means the process of receiving a Mark has not changed in that time, which means what we have learned from Severus' Mark can likely also be applied to yours."
"And when did this learning happen?" Harry asked. Bill shifted beside him and Padfoot frowned between Dumbledore and Bill, but Dumbledore remained calm.
"Shortly after the holidays commenced," Dumbledore said.
"And you didn't think to say anything?" Harry demanded.
"I haven't had the opportunity," Dumbledore said. His tone was polite but the words were pointed. An admonishment, rather than an excuse, though Harry didn't actually think Dumbledore was upset with him. Enough of the self-awareness his argument with Ginny had provoked lingered that Harry could admit—even only to himself—that he'd not exactly made it easy for Dumbledore to speak with him outside of Order meetings.
Even so...
"You could have made an opportunity," Harry muttered, covering his sleeved forearm with his right hand. "I didn't— I thought it must not even be an option—"
"It might not be," Bill said. "We're going to try, Harry, but it might not work. Even if it does, it'll take some time, and..." He trailed off, looking pained.
"It will likely be… uncomfortable," Dumbledore said, after a moment, which Harry took to mean that it would probably hurt. Padfoot stiffened beside Harry, scent unhappy and worried, and Harry knew he'd reached the same conclusion.
Dumbledore cannot protect you.
"What's new?" Harry asked, without humour. Dumbledore looked sad, Bill worried, and Padfoot upset. Ginny was frowning slightly. What did Harry care about a bit of hurt if it meant getting rid of the Mark?
How could any of them have thought he would? What pain could compare to the Cruciatus? What pain could compare to what he'd felt when he'd seen he had the Mark in the first place, and realised he'd lost his hand? Did they think he wouldn't be able to cope?
To me, you have always been an equal, always taken seriously. Can you say Dumbledore treats you the same?
Harry'd thought they couldn't do anything about his Mark, not that they were choosing not to. That Padfoot obviously hadn't known was a small comfort, and that Bill had but hadn't said anything was frustrating, but Dumbledore—
Excluded from the adult conversations until it suits them to bring you in…
"A moment?" Dumbledore asked, without looking away from Harry. Padfoot's scent bristled but Bill was already standing and shepherding Ginny out ahead of him. Padfoot opened his mouth to protest, then shut it at the look on Harry's face and followed the other two out, pulling the door shut behind him. The library's walls and shelves shimmered purple.
Harry eyed him, not sure if he was about to be chastened.
"Now," Dumbledore said, with grim humour, "you may say what you will to or about me without having to worry about the others trying to defend my good name and intentions." Harry blinked, thrown enough by that for some of his anger to subside. "There is little you can say to me that I feel would be undeserved, and in fact, most of it has already been said some weeks ago, though not by either of us." Dumbledore attempted to smile but didn't quite manage it.
He was talking about Voldemort, Harry realised, and what he'd said to Harry between the graveyard and the Riddle house; Dumbledore knew all of it now, having spent the early evening in the pensieve.
But Harry didn't want to throw insults or accusations around, he just wanted answers:
"Why didn't you say anything? I've been wearing Voldemort's Mark for weeks and the whole time we could have been trying to do something about it! Did you think—" I couldn't handle it? But Harry couldn't get those words out, was a little afraid of the answer. "—I wouldn't want that?" he asked instead.
"Not at all," Dumbledore said, looking genuinely surprised. "In fact, I knew that you would, which was why I approached Bill and Severus before you'd even left Hogwarts. I did not expect a simple or immediate solution but I confess I hoped for one. I would have liked to be able to offer that to you."
A fix for what they hadn't been able to spare him from. Dumbledore didn't say so aloud, but Harry heard it anyway, could smell it in the guilt and shame and sadness rolling off him.
"Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that that would not be possible, and that there was also only so much we could learn from Severus—"
"Which you knew a while ago," Harry said, unable to keep the accusation from his voice.
"Recovery is not a simple thing," Dumbledore said at last. Harry was getting very sick of people telling him that. "I did not wish to dictate what yours should look like. If I could have fixed the Mark in the hospital wing with a flick of my wand, or with help from Fawkes, I would have without hesitation. But it is beyond me." Dumbledore's wand slid out of his sleeve and into his hands. They both stared at it. "If a solution is possible, it will take time and testing and a not inconsiderable amount of effort. Most of it from myself and Bill, I suspect, but you will need to be present, involved. It will likely be painful. We will likely make mistakes along the way. It was not fair to expect that you would—"
"Then don't expect it," Harry snapped. "Ask and let me decide—give me a choice."
Dumbledore flinched a little and Harry knew he was hearing it too:
Has Dumbledore ever given you a choice, Harry?
"Even without knowing the significance of that until very recently," Dumbledore said, "that is actually, and apparently very unsuccessfully, what I was trying to do."
"How?" Harry scoffed.
"I expected you to ask," Dumbledore said, looking sad. "If not me directly, then Sirius, who would likely approach me for help on your behalf." His eyes were very blue behind his half-moon spectacles. "I expected more of you than you could give."
That stung, and Dumbledore could obviously tell; he went from gentle and upset to appalled in an instant:
"No, Harry, no, no! Do not misunderstand; my failed expectations are not the result of any shortcoming of yours, or any failing." Dumbledore sighed. "I knew it would take some time for you to recover from your ordeal in the graveyard, but I expected, based on your recount of the task, that your recovery would be largely physical." His eyes darted to Harry's wrist, mostly hidden in his sleeve, and Harry had to resist the urge to tuck it more completely out of sight. "And that the mental components would be predominantly related to your hand. Naturally, other components would relate to Voldemort, and I expected this encounter with him would weigh on you more than the ones that have come before because of his return and because of your parents' appearance. Even suspecting you had withheld some of what had happened, I did not consider… You have always been so incredibly resilient that..."
Dumbledore trailed off, then cleared his throat and said, very gently, "It has been clear for some time now that I grossly underestimated the effect the fourth task would have on you. Once the extent of your struggle became clearer—even if the reason for it was not entirely known—I thought it best to give you the time or space or whatever else you felt you needed. And now, knowing both the extent of your struggle and its cause in its entirety, I understand that I have not only failed to give you what it was you have needed, but also unknowingly proven Voldemort right."
Dumbledore closed his eyes.
"Why now?" Harry asked at last. "If you were waiting for me to say something—"
"Miss Weasley mentioned your Mark to Bill in the hope that he might have a solution," Dumbledore said. "As I understand it, she was quite displeased to learn we had been working on one behind the scenes." Harry, who'd been a victim of Ginny's displeasure himself recently, grimaced. "Bill, in turn, mentioned it to me, and so here we are." Dumbledore offered Harry a shadow of a smile, then sighed. "I am sorry, Harry. So, so deeply sorry."
He was; Harry could smell it and didn't know how to feel about it. It was validation, it was uncomfortable, it was genuine, and it was more than Harry had expected but at the same time not quite enough.
Harry nodded and swallowed. They sat quietly for a few moments, neither speaking, but it was comfortable again now; Dumbledore's scent was sad enough that Harry knew he understood Harry's nod had been acknowledgement rather than absolution, but he was calm too, unsurprised.
"Is there anything else you wish to discuss without an audience?" Dumbledore asked after about a minute, raising his wand slightly, but making no move to use it.
Harry shook his head and the purple trickled off the walls and the door eased open. Padfoot's eyes flicked over Harry and he seemed to relax a little, then he and Bill headed back in; at some point while Harry was talking with Dumbledore, Ginny must have decided to leave them to it.
"All right?" Padfoot murmured. Harry nodded.
"Still want to do this?" Bill asked, hand hovering over where he kept his wand tucked in his sleeve. His eyes flicked between Dumbledore and Harry. Harry nodded again and Dumbledore waved a hand. Bill lowered himself onto the couch beside Harry and Padfoot took the other side. "I'll need your arm," Bill said.
Somehow, Harry hadn't quite factored that into all of this. Padfoot seemed to understand where his mind had gone, and shifted slightly beside him, a silent, warm support.
Harry breathed in and out and then extended his left arm to Bill, who took it gently but firmly, and rolled back the sleeve of Harry's jumper. It was the first time his stump had been so openly on display since Harry'd left the Hospital Wing, and even then Madam Pomfrey had really been the only one to see it. Worse, as Bill eased Harry's sleeve up toward his elbow, the Mark became visible too. Harry's skin crawled, and his remaining hand twitched with the urge to pull his sleeve back down, to pull his arm away from Bill and go back upstairs—
There was a crackle and Bill actually twitched. He released Harry, shook his fingers out, then gave a little smile.
"Happens all the time in my line of work. Not exactly this, but traps and things..." He said it with a lightness that was all Ron, and made something in Harry ease. "But we don't have to—"
"No," Harry said, setting his jaw. He sensed rather than saw the look Dumbledore and Padfoot exchanged, but he did see the skin around Bill's eyes tighten and catch the small flare of concern in his scent. "I want to try."
To Bill's credit, all he said was, "All right." Carefully, he tucked Harry's sleeve up and then drew his wand. "This part shouldn't hurt…" He traced a rectangular shape in the air with his wand and a shimmering, transparent screen appeared over Harry's arm. Bill, staring down at it, immediately looked thoughtful. "It lets you see magic," he murmured, even as Dumbledore shifted to look through it. Harry craned his neck and shuddered; though it was light on his skin, the Mark through Bill's conjured lens was dark; black, with flecks of green and silver. Voldemort's magic, Harry realised, a little different to what the magic looked like in his scar, but recognisable all the same.
Beside Harry, Padfoot shifted, scent uneasy.
"It's different," Bill said, and Dumbledore nodded. "Less complete for sure."
"Compared to Snape's?" Padfoot asked. "Less complete is good, right?"
Bill hmmed and traced a rune into the shimmering surface of the screen, which flashed a dark blue. The magic changed again, thinned. If what they'd been looking at before was the body of the Mark's magic, what they could see now seemed like the skeleton.
"See these?" The tip of Bill's wand nudged where the magic was most concentrated; the eyes of the skull, eyes of the snake, and then three scattered over the coils of the snake. "These are what anchors the Mark." His eyes flicked up to Dumbledore. "Same as Snape's. But not as solid, so maybe…" He murmured something and touched the magic again. Padfoot made a soft sound of surprise beside Harry as the magic swirled out of its current shape and into five runes.
Harry could suddenly smell disappointment, resignation, and worry, from both Dumbledore and Bill, though nothing showed on either's face.
"What is it?" he asked at the exact same time as Padfoot did. Padfoot's mouth quirked up just a bit, though he didn't look at Harry.
"The runes," Bill said, tracing them into the air with his wand. "They're the same as Snape's." They shimmered there in navy and silver with an oddly sandy texture, and then Bill conjured a scrap of parchment and quill and copied them down again.
"And that's bad?" Padfoot asked, putting a hand on Harry's shoulder.
"It complicates things," Dumbledore said, as Bill leaned back into the cushions on the couch. "These are unfamiliar to us—either of us."
"This one—" Bill waved a hand at one of the floating, gleaming runes, which looked a bit like three spirals forming a triangle. "—is like a triskele, but it's not. Runes differ a bit stylistically between countries or cultures, but this is… something else. Maybe even a completely different runic alphabet."
"One he's made up himself?" Harry asked, frowning at the runes. The only runes he knew were eihwaz, because it had been in the second task, and sowelo because it looked like his scar, and yet, though he was sure he'd never seen them before, there was something about these that was nigglingly familiar.
"That would be my guess," Dumbledore said. Bill nodded, mouth turning down. "Our preliminary searches have not yet revealed anything useful, but we shall continue to look. And in the meantime, Bill will—if you are still sure you wish to pursue this course of action, Harry—be able to experiment."
"Not knowing the exact translation of the runes will be a complication," Bill said, "but if we can get a clear enough idea of their purpose—individually and combined—then that might be enough for us to figure out how to counter or disable them."
"And so remove the Mark," Padfoot murmured.
"And so remove the Mark," Bill echoed grimly.