Nothing is mine.

Harry conjures some ice, a flower, and a bird; also some other stuff happens that involves the Brythonic conlang we've been having so much fun with - including what may be the best play on words in the fic. I say we, because some of you have been trying to use various methods to translate it. Good luck! xD

I Am the Swift Up-Flinging Rush

A frenetic scramble of wand swishing and waving filled the Transfiguration classroom, accompanied, beneath the cacophony of incantation-calling, by a low murmur of frustration and cursing. Presiding over it, thin-lipped and serious save for a small soft gleam of humour in her brown eyes, Professor McGonagall conjured a shining glass orb and vanished it once more.

'Be precise,' she instructed. 'Be clear. Fix in your mind the exact shape and size and appearance of the object.' In her palm, at the tip of her wand, she conjured another orb of glass, smaller than the first, and bright blue. 'It is a spell like any other.'

Ron groaned and jabbed his wand at the desk.

'Ron…' Hermione sighed and shook her head. 'You have to actually try, you know.'

'But I don't want to,' he replied. 'I just want to go to lunch.'

'Conjure lunch,' Harry suggested.

'Harry, Gamp's First Law of—'

'Makes literally no sense.' He pulled his wand from his sleeve with two fingers. 'I can conjure a chicken, but I can't conjure a roast chicken? That's just silly. And what even are the other four? I can't conjure a drink? Starters? Mains? Dessert?'

'Have you even tried to conjure what we're meant to be conjuring?' she demanded.

Harry closed his eyes for a moment, picturing that glass orb, but it frosted before the eye of his mind, a sphere of gleaming, dark ice plucked from the chill black depths beneath that slim whispering crack and smoking with its cold.

He flicked his wand.

And it appeared on the desk before him, rolling across the scratched, stained wooden surface toward Hermione's notes.

She clutched for it and gasped as she grasped it in her hands. 'Cold,' she breathed. 'This isn't glass, it's… ice.'

Harry chuckled. 'I was thinking about glass, but then I thought about ice, so I conjured that instead.' He imagined it vanishing, the smooth, shining orb of ice swallowed like some distant star, and tapped it with his wand.

It disappeared.

'There we go,' he said. 'Now, I wonder if I can conjure ice cream?'

Hermione rolled her eyes. 'You can't make food out of nothing, Harry. What part of that isn't sinking in?'

'The why not part.'

'You just can't. I know it doesn't make sense, because there's no actual difference between summoning a bunch of atoms in one structure and another in a different one, but you can't.'

'There's got to be some reason,' Harry replied. 'Otherwise we'd be able to do it.'

'The reason, Mr Potter,' Professor McGonagall called. 'Is because magic follows its own rules. Many Muggle-born students struggle to see the difference between conjuring a chair or conjuring a sandwich, but to magic, they are very different things. One is a tool, an object, the other is… something else.'

Harry caught that strange mix of contempt and pity in Daphne's cool blue eyes staring at him from the back of the room and somewhere something fell into place, like a snowflake settling on the palm of his hand. 'Life.' He grinned to himself. 'It's because it's life, isn't it? We can make all sorts of things to use and look at, but we can't overcome the—' he searched for the words Daphne had said '—the natural cycle of life.'

Hermione huffed. 'That's nonsense.' She waved her hand in the air. 'Professor, why can't we conjure food but we can conjure inanimate things?'

Professor McGonagall's lips thinned. 'No sufficiently well-evidenced theory has ever been provided as to why there is a difference between conjuring various things, Miss Granger, but you need only remember the five laws that adequately describe what it is possible for us to do with magic.' She swept her gaze across the class. 'Mr Malfoy, Miss Parkinson, Mr Goyle and Mr Crabbe, you need to be practising not whispering to each other.'

'What now?' Harry mused, watching Hermione summon a small marble-sized ball of glass in her palm with a broad grin. 'Let's do something more fun.'

'Wait.' Hermione elbowed Ron. 'If you're not going to try and do this, at least stop Harry doing something stupid.'

Ron yawned. 'He's not trying to do anything stupid.'

'He's about to,' she hissed. 'He's wearing that stupid smile he gets right before he decides he's bored of lessons and wants to do something probably dangerous. If he conjures something, do not let him eat it.'

Harry laughed. 'I'm going to conjure something more interesting than a ball of glass, that's all. I promise not to eat it if it's not food.' He pictured the red tulips that'd swung from Daphne's ear, bright as blood, woven together by a braid of slim emerald stems, and for half a moment as he flicked his wand, he saw them springing up through the ferns somewhere else, somewhere of such vivid verdance that his heart ached to breathe in the sweet scent of young flowers and feel the warm sunlight of woodland glades upon his face.

A thin stem snaked from his fingers, young green leaves unfurled from it, and at its tip, the intense crimson petals of its flower blossomed from a bright emerald bud.

He grinned. 'Look, not dangerous at all.'

Hermione stared. 'That's real… that's alive.'

'Well, yeah.' Harry chuckled to himself. 'Why would I summon a dead flower, Hermione? That'd just be pointless.'

She blinked.

Ron chortled under his breath. 'He's got you there.'

'If I eat it, would it be food?' Harry wondered. 'Does it just disappear or what?'

'Harry,' Hermione hissed. 'Don't be stupid. It's not even edible.'

'Fine…' He imagined it sinking out of sight into some slim dark stream and vanished it. 'I'll do something else then, something less boring.'

Harry closed his eyes; that faint yearning tugged at his heart still and snatches of those green glades full of flowers and the floating flickering fireflies flashed through his thoughts. The wren perched above that slim misting dark stream lingered before his mind's eye as the rest faded, smaller than a snitch, all soft modest brown feathers and a short little beak, not too big, he felt, and not too complicated, just a normal sensible bird surrounded by something special, so he swished his wand.

The wren burst from the tip of it, fluttering across the class to perch atop the blackboard and survey them all with its small dark eyes.

Professor McGonagall frowned and vanished it with a jab of her wand. 'Mr Potter, if you would stop experimenting with NEWT-level conjurations, please. If you're finding this easy, assist your friends. I would like to finish this topic before Christmas and we only have a few lessons left.'

Harry glanced at Daphne in the back corner of the class. 'Of course, professor.'

'I'm good,' Ron said. 'Unless you can conjure food.'

Hermione shook her head. 'He's going to go and help Greengrass anyway.'

'I might not be,' he retorted.

'Okay—' she gave him a wave '—off you go then.'

Harry laughed. 'Guilty as charged.'

He squeezed past Ron and strolled back past Malfoy and the scatter of small misshapen glass beads on his desk. Daphne sat cross-legged on her chair, the sun shining on the line of green and silver stripes running up her skirt; all her blonde hair hung in the neat ponytail she'd tied up with a thin crimson ribbon, all save that one rebellious lock which fell free over her slim pretty nose and cool blue eyes.

'Good morning, Greengrass.' Harry admired the trio of red primroses hanging from her right ear. 'Those are nice. Did you conjure them? Is that how you make them?'

'Morning, Potter,' Daphne murmured. 'Did you mean to conjure that particular bird?'

'The wren?' He shrugged. 'Kind of.'

'Kind of?' A strange sharp gleam shone in her cool blue eyes, like broken glass glinting in the snow. 'You really do not know anything, do you?'

Harry stole the seat beside her. 'It doesn't matter,' he said. 'I wanted to ask you about something.'

Little lines creased her pretty face into a frown. 'What did you want to ask?'

'About… prophecies.'

Daphne shot a swift glance around them and lowered her voice. 'What about them?'

Harry groped around for the right words. 'Well, what are they to you?' he asked. 'I know there's some weird one for your Old Ways. Hermione read out some of the things but I forget what they were. Does And Those Who Dream in Death will recognise him sound familiar? Honestly, I only listen to every other sentence sometimes or my brain begins to melt.'

'And Those Who Dream in Death shall recognise his coming,' she whispered. 'Yes. I know it. Everyone in this room not raised by Muggles or as a Blood-Traitor knows it.'

'No they don't,' Harry said. 'You do. And Malfoy. And all your lot, but—'

'They know it.' Daphne folded her arms. 'They might not believe it, but they know.'

He considered that. 'Well, that could be true, but I don't really care. Will you tell me about prophecies or am I too much of a Blood-Traitor to know?'

'You already said what they are,' she murmured. 'Prophecy, Prof y Sidhe, gifts from those of the Veiled World. They are high magic, Harry. True, real pure magic from the other side.' A glimmer of yearning rose in her blue eyes. 'A gift of truth about what is to come. Real prophecies are rare, and most of the ones you hear or see are just forgeries.'

'Makes sense. Professor Trelawney just talked about death around me all the time. Usually me dying in all sorts of strange ways. And I'm still not dead, despite the best efforts of Voldemort and also probably myself.'

Daphne's lips twitched and she lowered her voice to such a faint whisper Harry had to strain his ears to hear. 'The ICW and the Ministry do not like prophecies; they cannot control them. And sometimes, sometimes they predict things that they dread, so the Ministry records them and buries them deep inside the Ministry where nobody is allowed to view them without special permission, and hopes they never come true.'

'What permission do you need to see them?'

'If you are not in the prophecy, since the Ministry has never quite been able to pass a law to stop people looking at their own future, or an Unspeakable, you will not ever get to see them.' A touch of contempt flitted across Daphne's face. 'The only thing that they get right is that they are words from the Veiled World, words that have great power, and so should not be spoken aloud carelessly. Prophecies should be shared in the right way.'

'Well, Voldemort is after one. One that's apparently about me, as well, or that's what I think he meant. Something to do with saving the magical world.' Harry laughed to himself. 'Of course, what he means by that is murdering a lot of people he doesn't like, and that includes most of my friends. Also me. He seems pretty set on murdering me, even if he said he wasn't going to last time we had a chat.'

Daphne stared back at him; all the winter chill had melted from her blue eyes. Behind that fluttering wild lock of blonde hair, they shone with hope, brimmed with the light of it, as bright as spring skies. 'He sees the signs. As many of us do. Dwyr Sy'n Tystio, a saviour come to bring this endless Autumn to an end, come to take us into Winter, come to at last let the world be reborn into Spring.'

A snort of laughter escaped Harry. 'You think Voldemort is some kind of saviour? That's… that's actually insane.'

'There are signs,' she whispered. 'He died and then he was reborn. Ken y tyachtfech — as it was foreseen.'

'As a weird corpse-baby that got dropped in a cauldron and then came out as an even weirder snake-man,' he said. 'And what kind of saviour just wants to murder people? Aren't saviours meant to, you know, save people?'

'Dwyr Sy'n Tystio will save everything. All the wonders of the magical world that have been lost will return with the Spring.'

'Yeah… I think I'm with Hermione on this,' Harry decided. 'On one hand, I quite like the reverence of magic you talked about because it's just nice, but on the other hand, it's a bit too good to be true, and the insane Voldemort cult murdering people kind of tippy-tips the balance for me.'

'You will see—' the crook of Daphne's mouth curved up '—when you hear what that prophecy says, you will see.'

Harry stared at her. 'You… really believe it?'

Unwavering, patient faith shone in her blue eyes. 'I do. I know it is true. It has been foreseen again and again from a time when this world and the Veiled World were one, from when our ancestors roamed all across Europe and beyond through a world full of magical wonders. We have not forgotten that our gods promised us Spring, Harry. None of us have. Whether we call him Dwyr Sy'n Tystio, Drouiz Piw Gwelout, or just… saviour, we know that he will come. So we wait for the day he comes to allow us free.'

'One wizard is going to just fix everything.' He blinked. 'That's what you meant before, isn't it? You believe in your fairytale stuff and even though it's too good to be true, you think someone's going to jump out of the fairytale to change all that by themselves. That's just… just…' The words floundered before her pretty face. 'Silly.'

'Dwyr Sy'n Tystio will lead us all; he will not be alone. High magic is capable of more than you can even imagine, Harry.'

'Well, Voldemort's not going to fix anything,' Harry muttered; a little flare of anger turned the words hot. 'He's just going to murder a bunch of people. How could anyone think he would save them?'

'Autumn is a time of sacrifice,' Daphne murmured, a wild gleam in her blue eyes. 'Of falling leaves. Of blood. The signs point to him, and so many hope and believe. If it truly is him, I cannot say, but there is a reason we do not say his name. Names given by our gods in the Veiled World have power, and those we do not speak…'

'You think he was given it from the Veiled World?' Harry laughed and stole Pansy Parkinson's quill off the bench in front of theirs. 'He made it himself. It's an anagram of his real name. Tom Marvolo Riddle. I am Lord Voldemort—' he wrote them both down beside each other and crossed the letters off in pairs '—see? He has a Muggle father, by the way, which makes him a Half-blood just like me, so...'

'Your mother was a witch,' she replied. 'You are a Pure-blood. If Voldemort is a Half-blood, then he is a Half-blood. As long as he reveres magic as he should, it does not matter whether he is Pure-blood, Half-blood, or Muggle-born. He could even be a Muggle.'

'Tell that to Malfoy.'

'I told you why they hate Muggles and Muggle-borns, it has nothing to do with their blood.' That little wild spark in her eyes burst into flame. 'It is just those who are Pure-blood, who grew up revering magic, who know what it is and what it means; they do not help destroy what is left of the wonder in our world.'

'I don't care,' Harry said. 'Voldemort's not a saviour. He's a monster. Just because he managed to come back from dying doesn't make him anything else. If you think he's saving anything, you know nothing about him.'

Daphne cocked her head, sending the three little red primrose flowers hanging from her ear swinging back and forth above her shoulder, and leaving the rogue lock of blonde hair dangling across her cheek. 'There are many signs, Harry. He is Slytherin's Heir. Salazar Slytherin, whose ancestors migrated down the Atlantic coast to Spain, and who returned here to their roots in pursuit of the same prophecy only to disappear seeking to cross over to the Veiled World and find a way to save our world. Voldemort is the last branch of Slytherin's withered family tree through the Gaunts, all of whom are now dead except for him.'

'Probably because he killed them all, knowing him.' Harry shook his head. 'What does that matter, anyway? Who cares who his ancestors are?'

'Because it was foreseen that by the blood of his kin we would know him,' she replied. 'That he would be born from the last branch of a withered tree. And by Slytherin's blood, born from the Gaunt family line, he speaks Parseltongue, and we know him.'

'Stupid nonsense,' he muttered. 'I can't believe you're stupid enough to actually think Voldemort's going to save anyone or anything.'

'Dwyr Sy'n Tystio will,' Daphne whispered. 'He will save me. He will save my family. He will save the world from fading into a squalid pit of mud and metal. He will save us all. Ken y tyachtfech.'

AN: More via the link. Up to 20 chapters more as well as a million words or so of my own original stuff.

linktr . ee / mjbradley