Nothing is mine.

A longer one. Basically, I assume by this point everyone who hates my slowburn pacing has dipped, so now everything is fast-paced and full of action! xD

... Death Binds the Blood-Flecked Laurel

Daphne and Astoria stood at the far end of the hall upon the steps of the raised dais in white and gold, lazy swirls of grey fog circling their waists. Soft snores rose from Chasca as she sat upon the long bench, her forehead resting on the table, and Bella and Enni played a slow game of chess a few places along from.

Bella plays chess? Harry watched her poke the pieces forward into a huge battle, ignoring the squares and giggling as they massacred each other beneath Enni's amused red eyes. Not really, I guess.

'It's the mysterious Mithras,' Astoria chimed in. 'Come to lend us a hand with that troublesome Tsarina for no discernible reason whatsoever.'

'I'm just very selfless,' Harry replied. 'The sort of guy who likes to make sure everyone gets their just desserts.'

I owe the two of you a betrayal. Harry waited for the touch of ice upon his heart, but it never came. What does it matter now? There's little left of the one they betrayed.

'See, Daph, Mithras knows we were ice creams.' Astoria snickered. 'That or he just thinks you look sweet.' She prodded her sister in the hip. 'Are you sweet, Daph? Sugar and spice and all things nice, is that what Daphne Greengrass is really made of?'

A long sigh escaped Daphne. 'Only the Unspeakables and Susan Bones knew of our identity and there are none of them left,' Daphne murmured. 'But they might have told Les Inconnus after we revealed ourselves.'

'What's your favourite colour, Mithras?' Astoria asked. 'Is it… purple?'

'Blue,' Harry said. 'Or silver.'

'I don't remember an azure or an—' Astoria wrinkled her forehead '—I don't know—'

'Argent,' Daphne said. 'They're both from the latin.'

'Thanks, Daph!' Astoria shook her head. 'Well, there can't have been an argent, the rings were already silver and it would look silly, so you must have been azure.'

'He might not have been his favourite colour,' Daphne murmured.

'No but when I asked what his favourite colour was, I was really asking what his secret name for Les Inconnus was, so he wouldn't have actually replied with his favourite colour.' Laughter gleamed in Astoria's pale blue eyes and a soft pang tore through Harry's heart. 'He didn't make a funny joke about purple, though, so—'

Grindelwald appeared with a soft snap. 'Daphne, Astoria, I've come to a decision.'

They straightened up.

Astoria swept her blonde braids back over her shoulders and waved a hand at Bella. 'Wake Chasca up, Bella. You know Enni's not allowed.'

Bella stretched across the table and tugged Chasca's long dark hair. 'Wakey, wakey!'

Chasca jerked awake. 'Not my hair!'

Astoria sniggered. 'Well, now we know what Chasca's nightmares are about. It's not someone eating the sun, it's people messing with her hair.'

Chasca scowled at Harry. 'Why is he here?'

'Because he's very selfless,' Astoria replied.

Daphne sighed.

'Fine. Fine.' Astoria clapped a hand over her mouth. 'Happy, Daph?' she mumbled into her fingers.

Grindelwald's sombre blue eyes swept over them to linger on Harry. 'This is the perfect moment to react. For the last two weeks, I have sought a solution to certain problems we face, but I believe I am close now.' He tucked a hand through the silver buttons of his waistcoat. 'However, this delay has emboldened some of our enemies and we must now retake the initiative. Meine Walküren, you will probe the wards on both French borders one after the other, put them back on the defensive there, then let Suleiman see you near Constantinople to see if the second set of wards are raised, but do not engage.'

'And the Tsarina and Fürst-Elect Dubrovsky?' Astoria's eyes flicked to Harry and back to Grindelwald. 'They're the ones on the attack, we left them alone in the forest too long and now they've regrouped and are all over poor Karsten. What happens if he loses his only remaining ear? He won't be able to hear my jokes.'

'Mithras will see to them,' Grindelwald said.

'And us!' Bella waved her hand in the air. 'We want to go there and play, not hop around poking boring wards!'

Harry shrugged. 'Come and play with me then, Bella.'

She beamed and bounced to her feet. 'Time to feel alive!'

'Spare the Tsarina and Nadia Dubrovsky if at all possible,' Grindelwald said. 'Those others, who fight for their idea of a better world, they can die for it. But the Tsarina is key to making sure the Russkayan Tsardom stays organised and effective in ensuring the magical wildernesses remain concealed beneath the Statute of Secrecy for now. Her submission will guarantee us peace in the region without having to watch over it constantly.'

Harry nodded. 'I understand.' He slipped his wand from his sleeve and spun it in his fingers. 'Where am I going?'

'Odd Spot Mock Her!' Bella twirled her dark dress swirling around her knees. 'We know how to get there! We can take you!'

'That's not it's real name…'

She giggled, grabbing his wrist. 'It's a better name. It's a game name!'

Enni laughed. 'I will miss your silly games, little mad one. Have fun with Mithras.'

'Bye Enni!' Bella waved. 'Happy hunting!'

The bare, grey hall lurched with a loud double-crack, and with a glimpse of a crumbling ruined house amidst overgrown lawns, Harry appeared on muddy slope overlooking the bend of a broad river and the swathe forest stretching off toward the crags on the horizon.

A ring of tall steel columns and shimmering wards encircled the broken towers and steep ditches around the shattered bridge, rising from the scorched mud like telephone poles over the hedges of Privet Drive.

'Is it just us?' Harry asked. 'I feel like there's meant to be someone else down there, but I can't see anyone.'

Bella frowned. 'I'll go find them!' She vanished with a loud crack and bounced back off the shimmering wards at the edge of the banks. 'Ow!' Her cry drifted up the slope on the faint breeze. 'Stupid wards!'

A ripple of magic burst from her, tearing across the ground and hurling dirt up the slope to patter down a few metres from Harry.

Bella skipped through the wards and up over the bank.

I should probably go down there as well. He apparated to the edge, ducking through the shimmer and striding up the bank to the summit.

Bella's white and gold robes gleamed at the broken end of the bridge beside a tall, stocky figure in a long brown leather jacket and a third red-haired figure in white and gold.

Charlie Weasley. Guilt gnawed at Harry. Poor Molly Weasley's last son.

He picked his way down through the ditch, squelching through the mud and strolling out to the centre of the bridge. The river swept through beneath, rushing down from the treeline past the thrashing dark form of a caged dragon.

'See!' Bella flapped her arm. 'Here he is! Mithras! The best player!'

'Karsten Metternich.' The tall bald wizard with the double-headed black eagle on his chest rubbed at the stump of his ear. 'Are you it?'

'It?' Bella asked.

'We were expecting all the Walküren,' Charlie said. 'We need them all.'

'What for?' Harry asked. 'Grindelwald said they'd regrouped and attacked you here, but that was it.'

Karsten spat off the edge into the river. 'The Oaksworn attacked in the night; they used their lightning magics to drive the whole acromantula colony out of the forest and into us. We pulled everyone back to stop the swarm and they killed all our allies outside the walls.'

'And then the wards and those big metal poles went up,' Charlie said. 'There are twenty-one of us left, including my dragon handlers, then about twenty centaurs, six giants, and about thirty trolls.'

'And them?'

'At least thirty aurors,' Karsten muttered. 'But the Tsarina was left alone in that damn forest for too long and those Russkayans know how to tame and make use of the wild creatures of the lands here. We've seen trolls at the forest's edge during the days and heard the strigoi screaming at night, and neither trolls nor strigoi hunt or live alone. We killed a lot of acromantula, but there could well be more; their colonies are vast, and who knows what else lurks in the depths of that cursed forest.'

'What's a strigoi?' Bella asked. 'Can we play with it?'

'Flesh-eating, night-loving horrors. They were driven deep into the heart of the forest a long time ago by the aurors of Polans,' Karsten said. 'The Tsarina has dragged them out to use against us, probably promised to let them eat us.'

Bella huffed. 'But we don't want to be eaten.'

'Eat them first,' Harry said.

She scrunched her face up. 'Urgh.'

A faint smile flashed across his face.

'Oh fuck,' Charlie muttered. 'Look at all of them.'

Harry twisted around.

Through the tall steel pillars shambled a long line of forest trolls, dragging thick branches and logs. Dozens of slim, pale creatures prowled around the trolls' waists, lingering in their shadows, and their high fierce shrieks stabbed at Harry's ears.

There must be more than a hundred of them.

'They must have seen you come,' Karsten said. 'And they're attacking now before anyone else comes to even the odds up.'

A huge, hulking shadow lumbered from the tree line into the light, its bloated pale-scaled swollen belly wobbling and swaying as it squeezed through the gap in the poles and spread a huge gaping cavern of a mouth.

'Hala.' Karsten muttered a string of curses in German. 'How the fuck did they get that out here without it trying to eat everything nearby?'

Leather-jacketed aurors bearing a double-headed black eagle sprinted across the bridge from the far side and four fire-scarred dragon handlers hurried from the tower at their end of the bridge to Charlie's side. A tall brown-haired witch with two fingers missing from her left hand and deep purple scar across her forehead whispered something in his ear.

'Olga says we're fucked.' Charlie drew his wand. 'We can't hold the fort, not against all of them. Forest trolls and strigoi are both highly resistant to magic and there are far too many. That hala will be able to tangle with our giants. We should pull back.'

'Retreat through those metal poles?' Karsten shook his head. 'That's a trap. We'd get fried by the Oaksworn's lightning the moment we got close. We either break those wards or we're stuck fighting here, and if we don't fight here, they can get all across Europe and cause all kinds of trouble for us.'

'We'd better win then,' Harry murmured, slipping his wand from his sleeve.

'Win?' Charlie scoffed. 'How?'

'You do have a dragon…'

Charlie's blue eyes drifted to the caged dragon. 'If we let Marzanna out, we're not getting her back in again, but if she sees that hala, she'll more than likely attack it. It's the biggest threat and she only knows one way to deal with threats.'

'Gather everyone,' Harry said. 'We let the dragon out, hope it does a lot of damage, which, being a dragon, it probably will, and then we'll pick a fight with whatever's left. When they're scattered, we attack ourselves. If we hit them hard enough, we can just wipe them out.'

Karsten nodded and snapped his fingers, stepping over to his aurors and yelling in harsh, German. They cried out, gesturing up the slope.

Despair. Harry saw its swallowing dark rising in their wide eyes. Better to fight for hope, right?

'Karsten!' He thrust his hand out, tugging at the bald wizard with his magic. 'Tell them the dragon will deal with all the creatures they can see and that there's no reason to give up.'

Karsten growled and nodded, gesturing to the cage. Three of his aurors ran down into the ditches and the rest drew themselves up into a thin line across the bridge.

'She'll deal with someone,' Charlie muttered as a huddle of scarred trolls scrambled out of the broken towers and crouched down behind the bank. 'She's covered in so many wards it'd take a hundred wizards to put her down.'

'Good.' Harry pointed his wand at the cage. 'Let her out now.'

Charlie clambered down to the river bank as six giants lumbered by, following a German witch past the trolls, dragging thick wooden beams studded with metal poles after them. He picked his way across the flat, scorched mud beside the river bend to the shaking, rattling cage. Fire billowed through its bars, leaving the dragon a dark silhouette behind the swirling smoke.

'Look how many players there are,' Bella breathed, her purple eyes glowing bright as flame. 'We're going to have such a wonderful game, Bell. And we don't have to play alone anymore!'

Charlie sprinted back across the mud, patting out little flickers of flame from his scorched white robes and tossing away the ruined left sleeve. 'She's not happy,' he yelled, climbing back up onto the bridge. 'We better hope that lot manages to kill her!'

The black dragon burst from its cage, spreading its wings with a fierce cry and leaping aloft, powering its way up into the sky.

Karsten and his aurors watched it circle over their heads and swoop back, snatching the cage up in her claws and dashing it through tower after tower until its bars broke and it fell apart through her talons to bounce across the banks.

'Clever girl,' Charlie muttered. 'She knows she can't go back in the cage now.'

The shadow of the dragon swept over them, passing along the line of trolls and over the hulking great hala as lightning crackled along the steel pillars. She turned about, swooping back toward the bridge and unleashing a wave of orange flame across the mud.

'Oh fuck…' Charlie took a step back. 'She's really not happy with me about that cage.'

Why are there always bloody dragons causing trouble?

'I hate dragons,' Harry murmured. 'I always get the difficult evil-looking black ones and everyone else gets the nice tame green ones that just want to take a nap if you're really pretty and sing to them.' A hot lump swelled in his throat. 'Tu me manques, mon Rêve,' he whispered through the twist of pain.

But you deserve it. You ruined it all.

Karsten's aurors wavered, edging back from the searing rush of flame as it broke over the outermost bank, immolating the scattering centaurs in a cacophony of screams, and the sharp reek of burnt hair and scorched flesh stung Harry's nose.

He took a step forward and raised his wand, thrusting his magic into the air and wrapping it about the dragon. 'Down you come.'

Harry ripped the dragon from the sky with a flick of his wand, bringing it smashing through the tower into the ditch at the far end of the bridge.

A tattered, crooked pair of black wings rose over the dirt bank and the dragon's head snaked up over the top of the rubble of the tower. Spells flashed past from the aurors, bursting on the dark scales like drops of water.

'Fulminis.'

The searing beam of lightning splashed off the dragon's neck and arced down into the dirt, crackling out.

'She's warded,' Charlie yelled. 'We enchanted her scales, you can't get through them with anything short of Fiendfyre!'

'Time to improvise, then.' Harry conjured a long slim spear of steel as the dragon dragged itself over the bank, shedding dirt and thick steaming drops of dark red blood into the mud. 'It's just like a big snake really and improvising usually works out for me.'

The last really big snake I messed around with had a soft spot when it opened its mouth.

'Are you mad?' Charlie hissed, stumbling back; behind him, Karsten's aurors scrambled toward the edge of the bridge and the river. 'She'll burn us all alive!'

'She's definitely going to try.' Harry wrapped the air tight around his spear and held his breath. 'And when she does, I'm going to kill her.'

There's nothing left to fear.

The dragon snarled and reared her head back like a cobra, heat haze shimmering between her long curved fangs.

Harry swept the spear forward, sending it flashing down the bridge; it pierced through the roof of her mouth and she slumped over the bank with a quiet rumble. Steaming blood dribbled down the gleaming spear sticking through her jaws over her lolling tongue and pooled on the ground.

'Fuck me,' Charlie whispered. 'You're either insanely lucky or just insane.'

The steam faded, a deep chill settling through the air. Patterns of frost spiralled across the stones, spreading over the bridge. The emptiness sunk its teeth into Harry's heart, a thousand icy needles piercing deep.

A ragged swarm of small figures swept from the trees, pouring across the scorched mud as the flames guttered out around them.

Dementors. He knew the cold seeping deep into his bones, knew its numb embrace and its soft tug on his heart as it drew it into the dark. Despair.

'Dementors. They herded them out of the forest through the lightning barrier.' Charlie raised his wand. 'Expecto patronum.'

A wisp of silver mist shot from his wand and guttered out. Karsten fired glimmering red curses at them, but his aurors shrank back from his shoulders, defeat and despair looming in their eyes.

Harry levelled his wand at the dementors as they swooped over the bank and across the dragon's corpse, clawing for Katie's beaming grin as she waved her small fists and babbled, for Fleur's warm smile and the softness in her summer sky-blue eyes. But the willow tree burnt amidst his thoughts, the smooth amber warm against his face, and the silver cogs of Fleur's silly clock spun to a slow stop alone on the ash-covered kitchen floor.

'Expecto patronum,' he murmured.

A single thread of silver faded at the tip of the slim ebony wand.

Of course I can't.

He thrust his magic into the air and swept it forward, catching the dementors fast at the end of the bridge. They struggled, squirming and kicking their legs, clawing with long thin mottled grey fingers, their ragged red tunics and capes whispering in the breeze along the river. Hollowed empty eye sockets stared at Harry from withered skin shrunken against a small skull and its little mouth gaped open as it glared at him.

Children. The book was right. They were obscurials. Harry's despair crumbled into the swell of the storm, snatched away into its searing swirling winds. They were like Roxie. Like I nearly was.

A bright spark of gold welled from the tip of his wand. Beyond it, faded silver letters gleamed on the tattered red tunic as it wrenched its hood back up with a sharp rattling of breath.

Legio something. Latin. The scream of the storm stole the words from the tip of his tongue, swallowed it up in a burning murmur of fierce yearning. There's no place for things without dreams in the world to come. Or for legacies of Rome.

The burning amber spark sprouted wings, bursting into a brilliant butterfly and fluttering around him. It split into two, into four, and countless more; they whirled around him trailing motes of gold, a swirl of amber as bright and hot as flame.

The dementors stilled as the butterflies flashed forward, reaching out toward them with their small arms, but came apart in the storm of gold, shredded in its searing winds and swept away like little wisps of cobweb brushed back into the dark corners of his cupboard beneath the stairs.

Harry smothered the memory of Roxie's tearful, joyous smile and swallowed the lump in his throat. The butterflies fell from the air, spiralling like snowflakes and crumbling to nothing.

I'm sorry. He stared through the empty space at the end of the bridge. But when there are no dreams left, there's no point.

Harry turned away.

Awe shone in the eyes of the German aurors, soft and bright as the morning light sneaking through the keyhole of the cupboard.

That's right. The corners of Harry's mouth twitched into a faint smile. Better hope than despair.

Karsten stomped forward. 'Now what? We needed the damn dragon, but it's dead and they're all still up there!'

'We need the dragon?' he asked.

You need to see something more to believe?

'Fine. See for yourself.' Harry strode across the bridge and touched the tip of his wand to the dragon's snout. 'There is nothing left to fear but dying fruitlessly. Spending our dearest dreams on nothing but dust.' Worms of his magic wriggled into the dragon, squirming through the scales, burrowing deep into the flesh like maggots; he twisted them together, threading them through the corpse like veins, pouring pulse after pulse of his power in, ignoring the growing ache and throb of exhaustion. 'And those of us who fight and die here will not do it for nothing. We will not just disappear.'

'You can't—'

Harry's magic thrummed within the dragon, an eerie yellow glow settling upon its scales, and its head rose, the bones of its wings snapping back into place.

'Charlie,' he called.

Charlie gulped and stepped forward from the aurors. 'Ye - yes?'

'What was her name?' Harry bent and tugged the spear from the dragon's mouth with tired trembling arms, tossing it into the river.

'Marzanna,' Charlie whispered.

'Hello, Marzanna.'

Marzanna rose onto her legs and wings, baring long, curved fangs, the jagged spines rattling on her neck as she shook her head.

'Together, we're going to do something great.' Harry patted Marzanna on the black scales of her cheek with his bare hand. 'We all are.'

He glanced up the slope. Go on. Wipe them all away.

Marzanna leapt into the air, scattering stones across the ditches and powering her way aloft into the clouds with heavy beats of her wings.

'Insane,' Charlie muttered. 'You can't make a dragon inferius, the power it takes makes it impossible.'

'The only limits magic has are those we place on it,' Harry said. 'I will not be stopped.'

We both sacrificed everything, didn't we, Tom? We can't let it be for nothing.

Marzanna swooped from the low clouds and hammered into the hala's back, hurling it down the slope and gliding after it, burying her fangs in the hala's swollen belly as it hauled itself up and ripping free a glistening mass of purple and blue entrails.

The hala surged forward, slipping and sliding in its own guts; it blundered into Marzanna, biting at her black scales with tombstone-sized teeth and wrenching at her wings with its huge three-fingered hands. Marzanna's left wingbone snapped with a sharp crack and the hala shoved her into the mud, beating at her head with both its fists until her skull caved in with a dull crunch.

Throwing its arms aloft, the hala howled at the heavens.

The wingbone jerked back into place and Marzanna lunged like a viper, seizing the hala by the throat and ripping its head free. Blood spouted from the gaping neck of the hala; it tottered, swaying as the great gouts of red dwindled to small spurts, and crumpled to the slope. Marzanna shoved it over with one wingclaw and the huge bloated body rolled down the slope, smearing itself in its own guts and mud, and thudded into the ditch.

The strigoi shrieked and screamed, flooding down the slope, and with a roar, the trolls charged.

Marzanna pounced on the first, snapping it in half with one bite, and whirling around to smash her spined tail through the wave of strigoi, hurling them back into the lightning wreathed steel pillars to burn and blacken and burst into flames.

Spells hissed from the trees, bouncing off her black scales and streaking away into the sky.

'I think I might have changed my mind about surprise dragons.' Harry took a long deep breath of cool air, stilling the creeping ache in his limbs. 'When Marzanna has drawn them all to her, I'll take Bella and Charlie to get rid of the ring of pillars. Karsten, you attack up the hill with everything you've got.'

Charlie drew himself up and raised his wand. 'Yes, Mithras.'

Karsten turned around and waved his gaping aurors forward into a line, yelling at the trolls and giants in a harsh, thick tongue.

Searing white flashes tore from the tree line, arcing off Marzanna's side as she ripped through the throng of trolls and strigoi, and into the steel pillars.

Karsten yelled and thrust his wand forward. The trolls and giants charged over the bank and up the shallow muddy slope past the dead hala, slamming into the back of the knot of trolls and strigoi. He strode up the bank, firing red curses over Marzanna's wings at the forest, his aurors edging after him in a long, loose line.

'Now?!' Bella bounced on her feet, watching the battle with wide bright violet eyes. 'Time to play now?'

A faint smile curved Harry's lips. 'Time to play, Bella.'

He leapt down into the mud and strode along the riverbank, the thick brown ooze sucking and tugging at his boots. Bella bounced and splattered through it beside him, clutching her wand tight in her hand. Ahead of them, bright fierce arcs of crackling white magic flashed between the tall thick gleaming metal poles, tearing small smoking craters in the mud around them.

'How are we getting rid of these?' Charlie asked. 'I can't vanish that many giant steel pillars and we can't get close through all that lightning.'

'Simple.' Harry watched Marzanna burst free from the clamouring throng of trolls and strigoi, trailing tattered broken wings as she smashed into the metal pillars.

Lightning arced off her, crackling across her wings as they crunched back into place and turning the thick troll blood drenching her scales to steam, but Marzanna ripped the poles free one by one with her jaws and spat them away, sweeping three more from the ground with her tail.

'Let's go around the side, shall we?' Harry stepped through the gap, ducking Marzanna's trailing tail spines as she plunged back into the fray.

Spells flashed back and forth through the shrinking ball of struggling trolls and strigoi, splashing on their tough hide, sailing into the sky or streaking through the branches of the forest. Karsten's aurors pressed on into the hail of spells, their line dwindling away death by death, and the last giant crumpled in the middle of the mob, dragged down by a dozen strigoi with a deep groan as Marzanna ripped through a trio of trolls with a slash of wing claws.

A line of aurors advanced from the trees, burying the dragon in a hail of red spells; the strigoi melted away beneath the onslaught, but their flood of curses burst against Marzanna's dark scales like a wave off rocks as she reared her head back like the basilisk, baring her gleaming fangs.

Bella giggled. 'They don't know she's dead!'

'Time to put an end to this,' Harry said. 'Ward us all in, Charlie.'

Charlie jabbed his wand at the sky and a thick shimmer of magic fell over them all.

Marzanna ploughed through the middle of the line, biting two aurors in half with one snap of her jaws. The rest froze, then scattered back into the trees or fled toward the river. Karsten's aurors fired spells into the forest as Marzanna lunged after them, smashing through trees and splintering branches, conjuring blocks of stoke, wood, and iron as they edged forward

'Is it our turn now?' Bella asked.

'Go on,' Harry said. 'Remember, Bella, not the Tsarina or Fürst-Elect Dubrovsky, but everyone else is part of the game.'

She skipped forward, hurling bright pink and purple spells at the pair fleeing toward them, deflecting their spells, ducking some and dodging others as she twirled and danced through the hail. 'Missed us,' she sang. 'You have to be faster. You're too slooooow. Don't you know how to play?'

Charlie grimaced and the shimmer of wards shattered overhead. 'Bollocks,' he muttered.

Bella's pair of opponents vanished with a loud crack.

'They got out,' Harry said.

Bella let out a frustrated little growl and a ripple of magic smashed two more metal poles over into the dirt, buffeting past Harry.

'Yeah—' Charlie's eyes fell to his feet '—sorry.'

'We won,' Harry said. 'That's the most important thing.'

And everyone that died here died for a purpose. Harry's gaze lingered on the blood-soaked mud and the sprawling heaps of corpses. Their wishes weren't wasted.

'At what cost?' Charlie whispered. 'If you hadn't been here we'd all be dead, but there's barely any of us left.'

'But I was here.'

Bella skipped across, glowering. 'They all ran away!'

'I'm sure you'll have a chance to play with them again,' Harry said.

Marzanna stalked back through the trees toward them, shedding bits of branch and bark and loose leaves as she shook herself off. Blood trickled down her dark scales, dripping into the mud, and eerie poisonous yellow magic glimmered all about her, bright as flame in her glassy eyes.

Charlie swallowed. 'What are you going to do with her?'

'Keep her.' Harry reached up and patted Marzanna's red-smeared nose. 'She's quite handy.'

A German auror stumbled across the battlefield through the smoking craters and bodies, saluting Harry with his wand. 'Herr Mithras. Fürst-Elect Metternich bad wound. Tsarina Bugrov North—' he pointed into the forest with his wand '—Fürst-Elect Dubrovsky East.'

Charlie asked him a sharp question in German and the man mumbled a reply. 'There are nine of them still able to fight. Karsten's had the skin flayed off the left side of his body and all my friends are dead.'

'But not for nothing,' Harry murmured as the auror staggered off. 'There's a price required to change the world and it can't be paid by one man alone. Everything they sacrificed will help to end this fight forever.'

'Will it?' Charlie sagged with a long sigh. 'I left my mum and my sister and my brother for this. Percy's dead now. Disappeared, but that just means dead. And we're all still fucking fighting as the muggle world smothers us. I dream of home every night, but I don't think I'll ever see it again, and if I do, I won't be welcome. Or there won't even be anyone else there.'

'Dreams are dust.' The words slipped off Harry's tongue. 'Dandelion seeds drifting away on a cold wind. Shadows and smiles hovering behind cold glass. We dwell on them until the pain of having them torn away forces us awake.' He tucked his wand back into his sleeve. 'When there are no dreams left, then we see the truth. When there are no dreams left, we have the chance to do something important. Something greater than chasing our own wishes. And if we let despair swallow us and don't take that chance, then it was all for nothing in the end anyway.'

'Something great?' Deep tired shadows hung in Charlie's eyes. 'A greater good? I don't know how great a good has to be for this to be worth it. And we're not even close to done. Grindelwald sits in Nurmengard planning and planning and everywhere everyone is dying just like before.'

'Everything has its price, but we did not pay so dearly just to slaughter people who are just like us. All of this, the endless struggle over the Statute, will end. There'll be no need for it. No more secrets.' Harry swallowed a soft pang and a tug of yearning. 'It can't all be for nothing, so we have to make something perfect enough that it was worth it. It can be done. Better to fight for hope than just despair, Charlie.'

The shadows in his eyes faded. 'You destroyed the dementors with that gold magic. You took the despair away.'

'That's the plan.' Harry mustered a faint smile. 'To get rid of the crucible that leaves us its helpless victims, to let everyone have the chance to dream. Just one small wish can be enough. Even if it's only finally getting to go home.'

Charlie shifted, his boots squelching in the mud. 'Where are you going next?'

'Wherever I need to.'

Bella giggled. 'He wants to come with you, Mithras. He knows you're the best player!'

Why not?

'You can if you want to fight to change our world,' Harry said. 'Or if you'd just like to know that one day when people just wish they could go home, they can.'

Charlie drew himself up. 'I'll follow you. I'm not really part of the Walküren, not now my dragons are gone.' He held out his left arm. 'What do I swear?'

'Nothing.' Harry slipped his wand from his sleeve and pressed the tip to Charlie's bare wrist. 'But when you feel that despair rising, look at this and remind yourself that there are some things so special they're worth paying any price for.'

Black ink twisted beneath Charlie's skin, coiling into the stem and thorns of a small rose; its petals bloomed in bright glowing gold just before his elbow, as brilliant as the rising sun spilling across the horizon.

'You might not ever get to go back home, Charlie,' Harry whispered. 'But with the strength born from the sacrifice of all our dearest dreams, we will create a world where many many others will.'

AN: Follow that linktree for all the links you can eat (also early access, lots of early access, and all the happy original stories those who support me get to read)

linktr . ee / mjbradley