Thank you again for all the reviews! This story will be pausing updates for a little while so I can work on my summer series of stories, but I didn't want to leave it on such a cliffhanger as the last chapter had.

Chapter Fifty-Seven—End

Lyassa's control has slipped.

Tarquinius, keeping the same stupid smile on his face as he's had since she made him Apparate them to Hogwarts, shifts his weight.

No one notices. Lyassa is leaning forwards, tail twitching, as Theodore engages with the shadow-leopard. Tarquinius does not see why it is so interesting. There is nothing to be seen but a mixture of flashing lights and echoing snarls. The battle is being carried on in some plane beyond the physical.

But Tarquinius is sure that he, with his knowledge of magical creatures and his blood connection to Theodore, can find a way in.

In the meantime, it is more important that he break free of Lyassa's leash.

He dives into his mind and spreads his strength out, flowing beneath the calm surface of her magic. He will rise in a few minutes, when he's sure that the battle is still holding her attention and will not end quickly. Oh, yes. He will rise.


The shadow beast fades into the heat and gloom of the great jungle.

Theo stands still, the dirt beneath his paws hot and blazing, his head uplifted and his whiskers twitching. He doesn't know where the shadow-leopard went, but he doesn't think it matters. They have a connection. They are both leopards, and they have already clashed once.

And the shadow-leopard is Harry's enemy, and Theo is Harry's friend and vassal. That is enough of a connection, or so Theo thinks, ever since the tracing of a rune like Harry's scar in the air rescued his sanity.

There's no noise behind him, but Theo knows something is there, and jumps straight up. The shadow-leopard's strike goes beneath him, the radiant power of it ending in a long, drawn-out yowl.

Theo lands on the thing's back.

For long moments it seems to do no good, as clumps of loose darkness dart around his paws and the singsong snarl of a great cat fills his ears. But then Theo concentrates, twists in closer, reaches out to the thread of magic that still ties him to the ritual and Harry because it's holding his memories together—

I must claim this creature's power for my own.

Theo's jaws lock around the leopard's throat.

The world is going mad around him, flickering in and out like the fire that ate Theo's memories. Theo curves his paws down the leopard's neck and rakes with his hind legs. This is a way of imagining how he will fight the leopard, since physical laws don't apply here, but it's a good one.

The leopard hits him with a focused blast of power, unraveling some of the connections between his thoughts, and the lapse in Theo's concentration is enough for the creature to break free. But it doesn't retreat into the trees the way it did before. It stands in front of him, snarling, limping, bleeding.

Theo stands up. His enemy's pain is all the motivation he needs.

I will destroy you.

Theo doesn't bother to reply. He wants to survive. He has his loyalty to Harry. He lowers his head and stalks towards the leopard.

The creature doesn't retreat before him, but neither does it attack. It crouches, long and lean, and watches him.

Theo springs for it again.

This time, the moment he touches the shifting shadows that make up its body, the leopard pulls him away, into a worse nightmare.


Harry has never been this alive.

Power is running over and through him. He is not the source of the white flame, but he is its conduit, and he can feel every nerve in his body, every piece of skin, every drop of blood. He wonders how many of the others have noticed that the outermost circle narrows to pass through him yet.

He looks at the parchments burning on the walls, and smiles.

The shadow-leopard was right that he would need to sacrifice something that mattered to him, something far more than the emerald. Not his life. Harry needs to remain alive for the sake of those who need him.

But he could sacrifice his own unwillingness to be a lord. He could write what he wishes he could have on those scraps of parchment, with as much sincerity as he could muster, and burn them, accepting the burden of what he must become.

I am not willing to be a lord.

I am not willing to lead others.

I do not want to become a Dark Lord.

I will do everything I can myself.

I will endanger myself before anyone else.

Those things are true. Were true. As he watches them burn, a priceless, precious personal sacrifice, he feels as though something has parted in his chest with a sound like strings being wrenched from a musical instrument.

He breathes out, and turns to face the conflict in the center of the leopard's circle where the creature is still battling Theo.

He catches sight of Severus's face on the way. The man is staring at him, and he mouths something that Harry can't hear in the roar of magic, but has no trouble interpreting anyway, because it's exactly what Severus would say.

Why didn't you tell us?

Harry holds his eyes. For the moment, he can't do anything to help Theo. What he's doing now, expending the magic to keep the ritual going and hold Theo's mind together, is passive. Theo will be the one who decides what happens.

You would have stopped me, he mouths back.

Severus's face tightens. Harry turns back to the battle with a shake of his head. They want him to be more independent and Lord-like, don't they? Then they can't complain when he takes his own actions.

Although after this, maybe there won't be as much need for him to keep everything secret, since there will be no shadow-leopard around to potentially spy on anything he says.

Harry goes on watching.


Tarquinius tenses. Lyassa is swaying back and forth, and she often does that before she strikes. He doesn't know that she will, she seems too caught up in the battle, but he can't dismiss the possibility that she might try to take his own magic to help Theodore or something equally ridiculous.

It is time.

He surges up.


There is a bubbling sound, a familiar one, and that alone tells Theo where he is. But he still turns and looks.

His mother is dying in front of him.

Theo lived through this once before. He knows that staring too long at it will unbraid the fragile threads of his self-control. So he turns his head away, and waits for a moment until he's sure that the bubbling will continue, that this is the memory of her dying of poison that the leopard intended to bring him to.

And then he reaches out and seizes hold of the immense power the creature represents again.

The leopard hisses and spits. Theo ignores the way that he can feel it clawing at his mind, forcing him to feel the grief that always lurks along the edges of this memory. It doesn't matter. He reaches further and further on.

He doesn't know how the shadow-leopard brought him here, but again, it doesn't matter. What it can do, Theo can imitate. And then he drags the leopard with him as he leaps, in search of a memory that he knows it might have…

And lands.


"Watch out!"

The words distract Harry from the play of light and shadow in the leopards' circle, and he spins around and lifts his hand in front of him. A shimmering shield of white flame forms in front of him, the outermost circle defending the reason for its existence.

The lightning bolt flying towards him detonates with an enormous blast of yellow and silver.

Tarquinius Nott smiles at him, savage and bloodthirsty. He's standing in his circle, which he shouldn't have been able to use magic past the boundaries of, but, Harry can see at once, he didn't count on the fact that Lyassa's control over the bastard might have been weakening. The circle was built to contain a man who was firmly under her sway. The change in his mind has been enough to weaken and confuse the circle's boundaries, the way that Voldemort's state might have been if they hadn't found one capable of containing both a spirit and a possessed human.

"I have so looked forwards to this day," Tarquinius says, his voice so deep that he sounds like a leopard himself, snarling.

Harry looks sideways without moving his eyes much. Lyassa is slumped inside her circle. Harry can't tell from this distance and the angle of his glance if she's breathing or not.

"Look at me!"

Harry turns to face Tarquinius. The power is still pouring through him, but while it will protect him from physical and magical attacks, it won't lessen the burden of its passage through him. He can't easily move to confront Tarquinius or save Lyassa.

"I hate you," Tarquinius whispers, and then begins some litany of loathing that Harry pays no attention to. Part of his mind is returning to the battle between Theo and the shadow-leopard even as he knows that Tarquinius might manage to attack the others if he hit out at Lyassa and Harry.

Theo is still the most important person here, still the one Harry is doing this for.


Theo doesn't know where they are, in that he doesn't remember it himself. But he does know that this is the memory he aimed for, and he forces the leopard down and into the midst of it, shuddering violently.

He shouldn't be able to do this, shouldn't be able to control the leopard without much greater effort. But then again, the requirements of the ritual have given him and Harry both greater strength than they should have. A flash of Harry's words, that the ritual's potential was rising like a storm before it began, tears through his mind.

And then he pushes that aside, and concentrates on making every strike of his claws and teeth an experience of fear and pain for the shadow-leopard, as he holds the creature in the memory of the moment that the Speakers destroyed the greater part of it.


Severus turns to face Tarquinius. He doesn't allow himself to think recriminations about Harry's plan. He knew there might be a problem with this, and he went along with it anyway, not pressing Harry on the details of the ritual. Severus only has himself to blame for the result of his secrecy.

What he needs now is to make a deep change in himself, so that he can break the boundaries of his circle the way Tarquinius cracked his. Right now, he could be the victim of a spell, but he couldn't launch any back, only shield the way Harry did.

He whips up his Occlumency barriers, blocking off his access to memories of love and comfort. He fills himself with the darkness that haunted him after Lily's death, up until he began to thaw a little with Harry's inclusion in Slytherin—

And it works. Such an alteration at the deepest level makes the runes on the edges of his circle writhe, dance, and swing open like the two halves of a door. Severus aims his wand.

"Frangere!"

He isn't aiming at Tarquinius's arm, although by the way Tarquinius whirls and crouches, that's what he assumes about Severus's spell. Instead, his fellow Death Eater moves exactly the way Severus anticipated he would, and it is his wand that takes the full force of the Breaking Curse.

Tarquinius stares down at the splinters he holds, and opens his mouth to scream in frustration.

Severus prepares himself for the next assault, ignoring the way that Sirius is yelping from his own circle. If Black isn't smart enough to figure out what he needs to do to release himself, Severus is too busy to do it for him.


The shadow-leopard is writhing and striking back, and were he any less than completely dedicated to its destruction, Theo knows that it would destroy him in turn.

But he is himself again, and capable of that patience that led him to successfully poison his father. He is full of the grief of his mother's death, renewed again, and determined to punish the creature who renewed it for him.

And he is loyal to his lord, his best friend, who achieved the impossible in order to give Theo back his mind and soul—and give him the chance to win his vengeance for himself.

There is one thing, too, one other thing.

The shadows of Speakers sway around them, chanting and hissing, and there are the shadows of humans that Theo assumes are Parselmouths who helped the Speaker destroy most of the creature the leopard once belonged to. All of the hissing sounds fill the air around them, and there is the memory of pain, pain unendurable, the panic of the immortal on the brink of dying—

Theo forces that fear deeper and deeper, a fine-honed claw of its own, and then stops. He can go no further. He's pressing up against some kind of barrier.

He struggles. He snarls. The leopard twists underneath him and starts to draw away, heading back towards the waking world or the dream-jungle that it used against Theo before.

No.

So Theo reaches into his own mind, to the glittering strings that tie his thoughts together, and speaks directly to Harry. My lord! I need your help!


Harry understands at once when Theo speaks to him, and he responds, even though it means blunting his awareness of the room around him and possibly becoming a victim of any wandless magic Tarquinius can muster. He pours his strength and power into the bond, along the path between their minds strengthened by the ritual, but not created by it.

That path was created months ago when Severus bound them together to try and resist Harry's visions of Voldemort.

Harry tips himself out like a pitcher, and he can feel the moment Theo understands and picks up the pitcher. He smiles a little as he sinks towards the floor, but holds on in time to see grey light stab through the maelstrom of shadows in the leopards' circle.

Harry smiles more widely.


Tarquinius knows a moment of despair so dark that it blinds him. His wand is broken. He will not be able to even Apparate out of the way, let alone resist spells from a dueler of Severus Snape's quality.

But there is one thing he can do.

He clenches his fingers into his left arm, over the Dark Mark, and cries aloud, "My lord, my very soul is yours."

It is the most ancient of vassal oaths, and one that only a few Death Eaters, like Bellatrix Black, have offered the Dark Lord that Tarquinius knows of. He never wanted to do it. He preferred to keep his soul.

But more than he values his soul, he values his life.

The oath yanks at the boundaries of the circle that contains the Dark Lord's wraith. Tarquinius hears people yelling. He can't take his eyes from the circle, though, and the way that it splinters a second later. The Dark Lord is different than he was a moment before, too, like Tarquinius and Severus. He is the Lord of a vassal.

It is enough.

The Dark Lord's spirit sweeps like a scythe over the distance between them and into Tarquinius. Tarquinius bows his head and accepts the passion, the hateful tide of strength surging through him, and the knowledge.

Knowledge of Hogwarts. Of her secret ways and passages.

And how to break an already weakened ritual circle when the person who created it is fading into unconsciousness.

Tarquinius's lips form the words of a spell he doesn't understand, and then laughter as the boundary of his circle breaks apart. The Dark Lord understands survival as well as he does, and they turn and run together.

Spells splash the stone behind him. Tarquinius ignores them all and ducks into a secret passage concealed between one shadow and another, running for Hogwarts's wards.

He will leave. He will have his vengeance.


Theo's ears are suddenly filled with words, not hissing.

"We bind the creature and cast it out of the world forever. We bind its spirit. We bind its thoughts. We bind its tongue. We bind its strength."

Theo speaks the words, which pass his leopard's muzzle easily. Cannot the shadow-leopard also speak this language, when it wants?

Harry has given Theo his Parseltongue.

The leopard is dissolving beneath Theo, writhing and whirling its tail. It is growing weaker and weaker, breaking apart into clumps of shadow that Theo can pick up and tuck into his mind like clumps of fur.

He weaves the leopard's power over and under and through the maze of strings that Harry created, and they shine and settle into the form of his thoughts. They are his thoughts, and for a moment, Theo understands the immensity of the shadow-leopard's immortality, its hatred for the Speakers, for everyone and everything but itself.

Then the knowledge fades from him, as the shadow-leopard ceases to exist. Theo opens his claws, and lets Harry's power and Parseltongue flow back to him.

Then he opens his eyes.


Harry stirs and coughs. He can feel something sinking into his throat, like a bite from an invisible snake, and knows that Theo's given him back his Parseltongue.

Theo.

Harry scrambles to his feet and runs towards the circle that contains Theo. He sees from the corner of his eye that Lyassa is slowly coiling back up, and that Sirius is racing towards him, too. The circles are broken, the white flames faded, with the end of the ritual.

Tarquinius and Voldemort are gone.

But it doesn't matter as Harry falls to his knees next to Theo's circle. "Theo," he breathes, and reaches out to touch his best friend's arm.

"My lord," Theo says, and wonder washes through Harry, both because he doesn't dislike the title anymore and because he's apparently made Theo a Parselmouth, sharing the gift between them. "My very soul is yours."

Harry feels the vassal oath catch. He smiles, because he knows that Theo made it of his own free will; it would be impossible to make otherwise. And he might have sacrificed a lot to the ritual, but he didn't sacrifice his determination to do right by his friends.

"I accept," he hisses, and then Sirius crashes into him from behind and starts yelling into his ear.

Harry frankly doesn't pay much attention. Theo is smiling at him, his old sharp smile, and everything is the way it must be.