Auror's Williamson and Proudfoot stood in the office of Account Manager Griphook.
Auror Williamson handed over a magically sealed parchment festooned with ribbons and shrouded in a charm that did nothing more than draw every eye that was not skilled in occulmency to stare at its magnificence in awe.
Sadly, it did not work on goblins. Griphook sliced it open with a claw and snorted as Auror Williamson reacted like the trained parrot he was, not the skilled warrior an Auror was supposed to be and chirped out a repeat of the parchment's contents.
"You are ordered to turn over the fugitive Sirius Black to Auror custody so that the mandatory kiss on site order can be completed by the Dementors you unjustly refused access." Auror Williamson said, his chest puffing up as if even speaking the words of Cornelius Fudge made him somehow important.
Griphook had met Fudge. He had know actual fudges that had more fiber and resembled excrement less than the wizards Minister of Magic. Griphook was a goblin, and all goblins are pendants when it comes to contract law.
"It is Lord Sirius Black of the House of Black, we oversaw his heir ritual and blood ascension shortly after his arrival. His House Magic confirmed him as lord, and his ring was brought from his vault. He was never given a trial, and thus is not legally a convict and thus does not fall under any fugative pursuit clauses of the Goblin Treaty. This has also been confirmed by Magic, as if he had been convicted under wizarding law he would not have been able to take up his ring."
Griphook smiled, and tore the parchment in half and tossed it in the Auror's face.
"None of that matters. Sirius Black was collared by Friend of the Goblin Nation, the Lady Selwyn, Milicent Bulstrode on a recent hunt in the Hebrides. It seems he attempted to poach a dragon she had hunted and as punishment she collared him. As she is a friend to my son Harry, and knew Sirius Black was kin to him, she brought him here and offered him as a gift to my son Harry.
That makes him property of my son. That makes him Goblin property. As Lord of House Black, he is property that represents millions of galleons and a huge block of votes in the Wizagamot. That is a gift of great worth, and you think to take it from my house so you can simply destroy it with your unclean pets? I think not.
Tell Minister Fudge not to ask for what he cannot take."
Griphook smiled and laid his sword across his desk and stroked the hilt lovingly.
Auror Proudfoot had enough disrespect at that point. "Do you claim a wizard can be property of a mere goblin!" Proudfoot shouted.
Griphook made a banishing gesture and spit over the side of his desk.
"Of course not. Rare indeed is the wizard worth his feed. No profit in lazy, stupid, inbred, degenerates as most of your kind are. The odds of finding one worth even basic cost to feed and house are astronomical. Miss Bulstrode is widely respected by goblin kind as having a rare eye for value. A slave she took will of course be seen as valuable, to the point that we are even investing healing in this asset, that it can be even more valuable in future."
Auror Williamson snarled at Griphook "I should kill you right now."
Griphook smiled a wide toothy grin in return. "You should, you really should. That would trigger an automatic Goblin rebellion, and my son Harry Potter and his sword kin, Lord Neville Longbottom, Hermione Granger, Milicent Bulstrode of Selwyn and now Lord Sirius Black will be fighting at our side."
"Potter and Longbottom put half the Light Faction at our side due to existing treaty House obligations when Harry and Neville take up their rings at Midsummer, with Black and Selwyn already having their rings, bringing a good portion of the Dark Faction to our side due to their existing House Alliances."
Griphook caressed his sword lovingly and released the catch, placing his hand upon the hilt. "Since 1542, the Goblin Nation has never had anything close to parity with the wizarding world, but if you choose to draw your wand against me right now, I can't help but like our chances!" He said in a tone filled with an odd kind of lust.
Auror Williamson took his hand away from his wand and turned to leave.
"Your King Ragnot will hear from the Minister." He threatened.
Griphook simply smiled. If Director Ragnot got a Post Owl from the Minister about this meeting, he would pay an easy thousand galleons for the memory of it. Perhaps even more. The old goblin loved to see the wizards squirm, and this had been worth every second of his valuable and limited time.
He sighed. The whole thing had been moot anyway. This was June 21st, the Midsummer. The children were all at Longbottom manor to exchange their presents formally for their witch majority. They turned 13 this year, and by magical law were no longer children. Not yet legal adults without further accomplishments, they were now entering the stage where magic was no longer limited. Their core would grow based on their demands and challenges, their channels would burn wide as power handled properly bore them wider, or scar closed as their mistakes marred them forever. From now, what became of their potential was in their hands.
Griphook knew they planned something powerful for Midsummer. This was old magic, magic from before wands. Magic from before they were nations, when they were scattered tribes calling upon their connection with the wild magic to make them strong enough to defend their tribes from a world where every hand and claw was against them.
Wizarding Britain had turned its back on ritual magic. It did not fit the laws and rules that kept power safe, controlled, and contained within the limits and of course, the hands of the trusted elite who used simply to perpetuate their wealth and status. The days of magic's greatness and daring had faded since the Statute of Secrecy to simply the great game of politics and influence peddling, where power was measured in who you knew, and who you could buy, never what you could do.
Wizarding Britain valued stability, conformity, and honestly, mediocrity. He feared his son valued none of that, and Britain was in for a rather rude shock in the next few years.
-Noon, Longbottom Manor, the forest.
Harry and Neville had given their gifts, and as lords their gifts were about what you expected. Pretty extravagant. Draco had given his gifts, but since he was a Slytherin heir with little to no experience with Hufflepuffs and even less experiences with Slytherins who are more likely to do extreme violence than ever bother to threaten it, his gifts stuck to areas of extreme Pure Blood fashion, which his mother assured them they would all be either unable to provide for themselves, or appreciative of the taste shown in his efforts. It was unusual for Draco to care enough to stress over gifts for others.
Hermione had prepared Walther PPK with what she considered her basic rune and potion package. Muggle Notice Me Not charms, wards against magnetic detection and explosive detection, silencing charms, acceleration and penetration charms, a red dot holographic light enhancing and sight rune array instead of those muggle sights that stick up and get in the way. Her bullets had been a bit of potions experiment gone too far which required both the bullet and the barrel to be potion temper enhanced, as well as recoil compensation charms added. Of course expansion charms on the magazine were a given. Wizards don't run out of expendibles. Why even be magical if you don't cheat? It now hit a bit harder than a muggle .50caliber anti-material sniper rifle.
She had made those for Neville, Harry and Milicent because she trusted them not to use them against muggles in anything but necessary self defense. Well in Milicent's case self defense was given a certain latitude that included pre-emptive threat elimination, but she was morally certain no innocents would be shot. She was unable to gift anything to Draco or Sirius though, as each of her weapons required several weeks worth of work.
Hermione looked troubled, but the little blond Ravenclaw who had joined the coven circle for the dance came up to Hermione and hugged her. "Don't worry Hermione!" The little odd Ravenclaw said. "You will give Draco and Sirius the best present ever!"
Hermione looked down into the surprisingly wide and wise eyes of the little Ravenclaw girl and remembered her name. Luna Lovegood. She looked into those eyes and something in Hermione flinched from what looked back at her. The first year Ravenclaw girl was called "Loony Luna" and mocked for always walking around in a daze. Hermione watched Luna swaying and felt the pulse of the magic in the ritual circle for the rite they were beginning now. She noticed Luna was moving perfectly with it. She began to wonder if Luna had been wandering around in a daze, or in a vision. She shuddered. Luna bore watching.
The ritual of Midsummer began, and Milicent had said that her gifts would be part of the ritual and not conducted before. Her gifts were part of their collective coming of age. Hermione had thought it odd, this was Midsummer, the height of the power of the sun and fire, the weakest point for Milicent's ice and water. Somehow though, it felt right.
Narcissa Black joined Poppy Pomfrey, Pomona Sprout, Augusta Longbottom, Susan and Amelia Bones, Luna Lovegood, Hannah Abbot, Grizelda Marchbanks, Bathsheda Babbling, all three Gryffindor Chaser girls, the Weasley Twins and even Mad Eye Moody.
The calling of the quarters was almost refreshingly normal, for although all the elemental powers wrapped the calling quartet, no physical manifestations yet accompanied the ritual. Hermione as the fire touched was wreathed in flame, but it was her choice if fire burned her or not, so she wore it simply like a crown.
This was Midsummer, Sunna, the goddess of the sun ruled the sky, and the power of the light and life were at its strongest. She heard the drumming of Alastor Moody and felt the earth answer with every tramp of the dancers feet. She felt Harry throw his power up at the sky, and lightning lance down from blue sky at his call, eager to touch the earth and grace it with its potency. Neville's feet touched the ground so lightly for a boy growing as large as he was, for the earth fair rose to receive him, the life within that earth eager to answer his merest call. Lastly the water witch, the child of ice and silence held but a fragment of her power at this, the farthest from her own power of Yule, yet as she moved, her every step drove Hermione's fire hotter and brighter.
Hermione felt herself seperate. Part of her called the blessings of Midsummer and gave the call for healing and plenty that was part of the scripted ritual, but part of her was bound in the tramp of feet, the beating of the drum, the power stirring within the earth, and the power that wanted her to call down something in answer. Something she did not yet possess. Hermione looked over at Luna who had thrown her head back and given herself to the dance. Hermione was all about control, planning, concious choice. She envied Luna her ability to surrender to magic. For Hermione, a muggle born, this was the hardest lesson of magic. Surrender.
Milcent Bulstrode broke the circle and came before Hermione to bow, winter to summer in the time of her primacy. Hermione nodded in turn to grant Milicent leave to speak.
"Neville Longbottom, receive this Midsummer the gift of your manhood. Receive this gift from my hand. Your parents were taken from you by the actions of these three. Receive this gift of vengeance, and I pray it bring you healing!"
Milicent Bulstrode thought for a second about the wisdom of offering three severed human heads before Alastor Moody, greatest living Auror, and Amelia Bones, head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, but this was for Neville. Consequences were for later.
From her bag she tossed the heads of the LeStranges. Bellatrix looked defiant, Rabastan looked terrified, Rodolfus looked confused. She heard more than saw the scream of Augusta Longbottom, but her eyes were only upon Neville. Sweet gentle Neville who had been forced to kill his own parents because Dumbledore decreed they should be trapped forever in their pain, rather than admit they were more casualties from his failed war.
Neville's face was a study. Oddly the baby fat had long gone, but his face was almost always in a soft and gentle smile that shifted the lines of his face enough to distract you from its basis. Neville was not smiling now, and his face was noble, almost regal, and his blue eyes blazed with all the rage and pain in the world. He held up the head of Bellatrix LeStrange and cried out his rage to the earth.
The earth answered. Cruel vines split the earth and three heads became impaled on the growing mass of leaf, and thorn that stripped the flesh from the skulls and left them bare and woven within a framework like a wicker cage.
Neville's eyes wept, but his face was the bare rock of the mountain, ancient and pitiless. Milicent led Sirius and Draco to the growing treelike mass of thorns and leaves, and soon Sirius and Draco were bound within.
"MOTHER!" Draco called out in fear, as the vines wrapped him helpless. Helpless that reminded him of the helplessness of being trapped inside his body, then cast out of it entirely while Tom Riddle took it for his own.
The ragged bits of Draco's hard won self control shattered, and he bled scarlet as the thorns bit into him as he thrashed in pain and terror. All his life he had wanted to be just like his father, only to have his father sacrifice him to a monster as little more than a glove of flesh for the cold dead hand of a monster. He had fought for his soul, at the last, and found he neither recognized nor dared to face what and who it was he had won. Now it seems, he would die unknowing.
Sirius Orion Black felt the vines wrap him, felt the thorns impale him, felt the hunger of the earth for his blood and life and the wounded warrior who had fought the cold and soul devouring touch of the Dementors for a decade felt the fight go out of him. This was it, the clean earth to recieve him, the womb of the earth to accept him home. No more struggle, no more denial of what he was, who he was. At long last, the fight was done. He closed his eyes and let the vines wrap him. Harry was safe, Harry was loved. He had lived to see it. It was enough.
Harry felt the roiling coils of darkness in himself. Tom Riddle's diary had been the first Horcrux, the deepest cut. More of Voldemort's soul had been lost in the first cut than at any other. All of that was inside Harry now, the magic of his mother sang as she cut Voldemort's soul apart, unravelling his existence a thread at a time. The darkness in him denied healing, denied love, friendship and loyalty. It valued only power, accepted only fear. Harry felt the curse scar pulse. Felt the rune his mother's magic had woven into it, the wand movement of the killing curse, and the power rune, the sun rune Soweilo.
He felt the sun burn upon the goblin silver, and the heat burned his flesh. Stepping forward, Harry gave himself to the thorns of Neville's weaving, and they bound him between Sirius and Draco. Harry smiled as the thorns bound him with his face to the sky, his soweilo rune burning like a torch even in the sunlight.
Neville nodded, his own grief and fury twisting within him, poisoning him. Neville wanted to be a healer, wanted to nurture and grow things, but the pain of his parent's suffering had been the axis on which his life had turned for so long, even the deaths of the LeStrange were not enough to free him. His hatred and rage still howled within him.
Stepping forward, Neville closed his eyes and fell into the thorns. They welcomed him and embraced him. Lord of the giving earth, the reaper, he who rules the cycle of life, surrendered himself to the binding.
Milicent was terrified this last gift was a mistake. The amulets she had taken from the Azkaban guards who got in her way had only one thing in them. Ash. Ash that burned her skin the way that only the primal fires of creation could burn her who was Isa, the primordial ice of the void. The ash of a phoenix.
Milicent stepped forward, opened her present to Hermione, a single amulet that held the ash of the three guards she had knocked out on her journe up the tower of Azkaban. Milicent took the ash, and marked Hermione's face with Kenaz, the torch. The rune of fire.
Hermione felt it. The death. The death of the phoenix caught up in the ashes the ministry had taken and bound. In violation of all natural laws, they had bound the ashes of the phoenix so it could not be reborn, that the power of its primal fire of creation, its ultimate spark of life should be barrier and protection against the soul sucking parasites of shadow and hunger called Dementors.
This was WRONG. There was a price to be paid for all things. No magic is free, it is all paid for by life, effort and pain. Knowledge is not given, it is earned. Magic seeks balance, and this chaining of the ever renewing phoenix into death so that the Ministry could control its psychic vampires was a violation of the natural order she could not permit.
Hermione did not notice striding forward to give herself to the thorns until she had been bound in them and raised highest above the four bound men. Crowned in flames she blazed like the Queen of Summer, marked in the ashes of a death that should not be, fire wreathed her flesh but did not burn.
In that instant, she understood. She understood why she could not claim her form. She understood how to right the wrong of the Azkaban amulets. She was crowned in fire, wreathed in flames, yet by her will it did not burn her.
This was Midsummer. This was the time of the sun, the burning time, the fire time. It was not time for her to rule over fire, it was time to give herself to it. Fire took her flesh. Her hair ignited, her flesh burned.
Hermione screamed as her body writhed in pain beyond the Cruciatus she had alredy suffered, as her entire skin burst into flame, and was consumed.
The four men in the fire felt the thorns surrounding them transfom into flame, and the too screamed as the fire sunk its claws into them, and burned.
From Sirius the cold of Azkaban burned from his flesh and from his soul, but he screamed as it was taken from him, for no magic is without cost, and his cost was memory. He remembered his brother Regulus. Regulus who loved him, but who tried to please his parents as Sirius never could. He remembered lashing out at him because Regulus loved him enough to take it, where his parents never would. He remembered starting to prank the bullies in first year, because he was strong and brave enough to fight back, and he was proud. Then he got stronger, and remembered pranking those he didn't like because he could, then those who dared accuse him of being a bully, because he didn't like how they made him feel. Then those he chose to suffer just because unlike Mother and Father he was the strong one here, and he could be the one giving not receiving pain!
Sirius threw his head back and screamed. Had he only been that boy, perhaps he would have surrendered to that flame and chose his end, but he had been more. He had fought a long dark war against an enemy that was always stronger, always better led, better supplied, with knowledge of ever plan and secret stronghold. Sirius had kept the faith, never caring if the ones he defended also spit on his name behind his back for his Black blood and the many Death Eaters who bore it. That Sirius bore the scars of his mistakes, and looked back at those he could not save and swore oaths upon his name and power to do better, to be better. To give him his due, he had tried.
He screamed into the fire, and wept tears of cold black despair like poison from his eyes, he burned, and he healed.
Draco Malfoy writhed in the fire, a boy who lived a life in shadow thinking it was darkness. Neither sunlight's warmth, nor the darkness cold had ever touched him, so he sported in shadow and dreamed he knew the night. When the night had claimed him, when he hung screaming upon the gallows of his choices, while the Darkest Lord of the last century wrote the legacy of his crimes into Draco's memory and soul, he had not been strong enough to die, but not weak enough to surrender.
The Mudblood Lilly Potter had chosen not to let him die, had dragged him back and forced him to fight for his own life. The Mudblood Hermione Granger had chosen not to leave him broken, and now forced him to heal.
A thousand broken places in his soul where the memories of Voldemort were too foul, too bitter, too potent for Draco to face, his soul had recoiled and withdrawn. He had left cysts of darkness in his mind because Draco Malfoy had not been strong enough to face them. Hermione did not care. Her fire lit the dark places inside him, and Draco had no choice but to see. Fire flayed and scourged him, beneath the beating wings and punishing claws of that terrible bird of fire, Draco ran from the flame behind him, and tore into and through the pockets of darkness, accepting the pain and horror of their touch, to offer the corrupting dark rather than his fragile soul to the punishing flame within. The darkness of Voldemort was burned away, but Draco was both scarred and healed by the fire that cleansed him. Whole now, Draco had all his shadows stripped away, and stared upon the naked truth of his own soul, and wept for it.
Harry felt the primal fire of creation wash over him, tear into him, sear and scourge him. Harry was not forged of darkness or light. Harry was the storm and sky, madness and ecstasy, inspiration and wisdom. He embraced the pain, and turned his gaze upward to see Hermione's flesh sluff away as her body died.
For this was the truth, the phoenix was born from death, and its coming cleansed the world.
Neville felt his vines tear into her flesh, felt her blood run over them, offering her blood to the hungry earth even as the fire in her caught every leaf and branch. Neville felt that fire burn into him. The fires of creation and destruction. The fires of purity and healing. Neville felt the years of fear, and the hatred and rage he called up to defend himself. He saw the three skulls now hanging before his face seem to writhe in the flames and be consumed. Consumed like the fear he need no longer feel. Consumed like the hatred and rage he had built brick by brick to hold back the fear of these monsters, and the greater fear he would never be strong enough to defend those he loved from similar monsters.
Neville sank his roots deep into the earth, he let the fire burn him. Drawing up strength from the ever renewing earth, he let the fire burn away what was no longer needed. He was Jera, the harvest, the reaper, the lord of the cycle of death and rebirth. His was the gift of endings, and it was time for the fear, the rage, and the hate to end. He offered them to the fire, he offered up his pain, and though he had the power to end the flames, he chose to embrace them, and pay the price for his healing.
Hermione felt he flesh sluff away, and feathers form. Her feet became talons, her cry became a call to magic more potent than any spell. She felt the magic of the circle, as all of those who gave their magic to this circle of healing at Midsummer had offered their magic, their will, their struggle and their pain to the working. A gift for a gift was the way.
Hermione spread her wings and soared. As she flew, she ringed the circle three times sunward, and with each passage her power washed over those inside, and the magic of renewal, of healing, and of joy was given.
Beneath her, the vines and thorns had been consumed, the skulls were no more. Draco, Sirius, Neville and Harry lay awake and panting, physically whole and spiritually cleansed. The changes that had been wrought within them must be worked through, for no gift of magic is without cost.
Hermione landed on the ground before Milicent, and the Queen of Summer bowed, thankful for the gift she had been given. The ash of the dead phoenix had been what Hermione had lacked. In all her master of fire, she had never understood that to be the phoenix is to surrender to the burning. That is a lesson that can only be learned from ash and loss, for hope is found only in the darkness.
Sirius and Draco both stood taller, and their flesh no longer hung on them like skeletons in flesh robes, but the flat muscles of duelists. Neville was no longer hunched, but stood open and relaxed. Harry was, well, Harry. Hermine sighed. Harry grinned. There was perhaps too much goblin in the boy to ever really be aware of the risk or danger of what they did; or perhaps too much trust that his friends would never hurt him, even by accident.
Luna came and hugged her again. Hermione flinched as she assumed her flames would burn Luna, but it seems Luna was correct. The flames just seemed to make her smile.
"I knew you would fly today. A beacon needed to be it. The light needed to remember it was meant to heal and teach, not simply to burn away the darkness, and blind those that stare too long at it." Luna cheered, which Hermione felt somehow was not a ringing endorsement of the Light Faction itself.
In the dinner following the ritual, over the boar that had been roasting over a spit for most of the day, Amelia Bones argued with her chief subordinate.
"She as much as admitted she murdered those three." Argued Amelia Bones.
"Didn't admit it. Implied it. Very Slytherin. Plus their Death Eaters, so screw them." Said Mad Eye Moody.
"We have evidence she participated in a jailbreak at Azkaban!" Amelia argued.
"Nope. Burned up. Phoenix are damned hard on evidence that way." Cheered Mad Eye, moving to grab some potato salad to go with the boar.
"We have a convicted murderer right here at the buffet!" Argued Amelia, grabbing some of the Greek salad to add to her plate.
"No trial, ergo not convicted. Plus, I saw the guy he supposedly killed ten years ago when he was less than ten minutes dead just a couple weeks back. Can't be a murderer if the bugger lived. Covered that in Auror training at some point I think." Mood said, then made a valiant attempt to wiggle a slice of pie onto his overloaded plate. It failed but Amelia's wandless levitation held it in place until they got to the table.
"She turned into a bloody Phoenix Alastor. That can't be normal. We should report this to somebody!" Amelia said, waving her arms in the air, and losing a black olive off her fork to land on Sirius Black's shoulder as he tried to see how much ham he could consume in a sitting.
Mad Eye looked at his boss and grinned. "Report to who? Fudge will lose his mind that a Muggleborn can turn into a phoenix and has a claim to being the new Lord of the Light rather than Albus Bloody Dumbledore.
Report to Albus Dumbledore that we were at one of those coven magic rituals he had the wizagamot make illegal, but inside Longbottom manor so there is bugger all he can legally do about it, and one of his Muggleborn students just manifested the ability to turn into a phoenix? I mean, he calls himself Champion of Light because one hangs out in his office, the Granger girl can turn bloody into one. Albus will lose his mind.
Report to the Wizagamot that a mudblood just manifested a power Merlin never claimed, in fact that hasn't been claimed since the ancient times when words like Goddess and witch sometimes got a bit blurry around the edges? I'm sure all the Sacred Twenty Eight families will just sit back quietly and let the magical superiority their rule is based on get negated and just leave her to complete her education totally unharmed." Mad Eye grinned.
Amelia glared at him, took her fork, and stole a piece of his pie off his plate.
"Remind me why I haven't fired you yet?" Amelia snarled.
Mad Eye smirked. "Seniority. I would cost more from my pension than my pay, what with all the awards I picked up during the war. I think if you combine all the extra years service that goes along with each of my medals, I would cost about five times more retired than on the job."
Amelia growled, and chewed his pie. It was easier to swallow than his words. Actually, it was amazing pie. Longbottoms knew how to set a table. She sighed.
"They didn't even bother trying to swear anyone to secrecy. It is like it has never occurred to them that it isn't' just Death Eaters they need to watch for!" Amelia finally snarled. "Sirius is a wanted man, legality of his status or not!"
Moody laughed. "Hufflepuffs like me! I was a dewey eyed young innocent once. Trusted in the fairness of the system, the wisdom of my superiors, and the justice of our Lords and Masters of the Wizagamot!"
Amelia felt her brain shut down at the idea of Alastor "Mad Eye" Moody, whose war cry of "Constant Vigilance" was the nightmare of every Auror recruit in the last twenty years was once a dewy eyed innocent like these four trusting idiots.
She looked over at Milicent who she found watching her and Alastor coldly in return. Well, three innocents and their seeing eye Slytherin.
"Morgana's tits Alastor, I think the murdering little Slytherin is our best hope of reason for the four idiots." Amelia sighed.
Alastor laughed and pounded her on the back, like he just heard the funniest joke ever. Somewhere out there Voldemort was stirring. Forces all over Europe were stirring. His allies were gathering again, and the best hope of wizarding Britain were currently watching Sirus Black try to toss bits of ham to a magical rock viper across a twenty foot dining table as if it was the natural way to celebrate Midsummer.
Merlin help her. This was going to be a strange war.