Nothing is mine.

Harry manages to silence something (naturally, it's not himself, but we live in hope...)

First Chill, Then Stupor, Then the Letting Go

The sound of the hammer driving the nail into the wall rang down the corridors, echoing past the frowning portraits and the still, shining suits of armour in such a way as rather reminded Harry of someone banging down the lid of a coffin in one of Dudley's nicked horror films. The rest of the class, talking away beneath the cacophony of cawing ravens, struggled on with Silencing Charms unaware.

'That hammering sounds like progress for the sake of progress being discouraged,' Harry said, leaning on the doorway out of their Charms class as Flitwick demonstrated wand motions to Neville over and over again on the far side of the room. 'I wonder what this one is? All children must now start lessons by saying good morning Professor Umbridge even if they're not in her class, by decree of the High Inquisition. Happy Christmas holidays everyone.'

'High Inquisitor, mate,' Ron said.

Hermione swatted them both on the arm with her copy of the Daily Prophet. 'Get back in here, you two.' She chivvied them back behind the front desk to their seats and the three ravens perched upon them. 'The new decree is about Hogsmeade, Harry. All students are now forbidden from leaving school during term without Umbridge's written and signed permission.'

'There go Hogsmeade trips,' Ron groused. 'The only thing left to do in the whole bloody castle, too. Good thing I'm going home for the holidays. Sucks to be you two.'

'Damn,' Harry murmured, patting his raven on the head. 'I was going to sneak from Hogsmeade into the Ministry of Magic to steal that prophecy.'

'You were what?!' Hermione's voice slipped up several octaves.

'Well, someone has to stop him and that someone is basically always me. And what's the worst that can happen?'

'Ron's dad nearly died! You could nearly die!'

Ron sniggered. 'Or worse—'

Hermione smacked him over the head with the rolled paper. 'Shut up! Harry could be arrested. The Ministry could send him to Azkaban.'

'Voldemort would break me out, it's fine.' Harry laughed to himself. 'Actually, it would probably be really boring there, he already broke everyone out.'

'He what?!' Hermione hissed.

'Yeah, ages ago. Didn't it say in the paper?'

'No!' She wrung the copy of the Prophet in her hands. 'It's not even been mentioned!'

'Well, it happened,' Harry said. 'I saw it. All his old friends are out roaming the country ready to help him save the world by killing loads of Muggles. Which, actually, brings me back to the whole we probably shouldn't let him get that prophecy idea, because it turns out that all of them believe this saviour thing is going to happen, and all Voldemort needs to do is act like it's him and then…'

'Awful culty superstitious nonsense,' Hermione muttered, stuffing the paper back into her bag. 'Really horrible.'

'Yeah… Greengrass genuinely believes in it,' he admitted, stroking the top of the raven's head with one finger; the other two hopped closer and stuck their heads out near his hand. 'I asked her and she said so.'

'She's one of those Pure-bloods, Harry. I told you she was.'

'You also told me she likes me.'

'She does,' Hermione insisted. 'She's clearly confused.'

'Not about some things, she isn't,' Harry said. 'She thinks her fairytale world is real, even though the world's way too messed up for that to be true, and she justifies it being messed up by the fact that some guy is going to come and magically fix everything. That saviour is Voldemort, by the way, so, you know, brace yourselves for the genocide of the five thousand, turning Muggles into wine, and I can't remember any other Jesus miracles other than something to do with foot washing, which I really doubt he's going to go in for.'

'Returning from the dead?'

'No he already did that one,' he replied, alternating between the three ravens as they jostled for his attention, croaking at each other and clacking their beaks. 'That's why they all think it's him. There was some other stuff too, like him being known because of his bloodline and family.'

'Oh, of course,' Hermione muttered. 'We know he's the saviour because his family have been all Pure-bloods for the last fifty generations.'

'They thumb-warred to prove it, and the most Pure-blooded person always wins because they have many extra thumbs instead of the conventional number of grandparents,' Harry said.

Ron snickered. 'Someone should count Malfoy's toes.'

'Hermione already did during their secret liasons—'

Hermione elbowed Harry in the side. 'You're supposed to be silencing a raven, Ron. Professor Flitwick's coming.'

'I can't,' Ron said. 'Harry's seduced them all.'

'They just love me for who I am, Ronald,' Harry retorted. 'They're worried you're going to try and eat them after failing to summon a chicken drumstick in transfiguration for the last three lessons.' He patted the three heads of the ravens one after the other. 'I shall name you, Jonathan, Oswald, and Craig, and you shall be my friends; only don't tell Hedwig, I think she gets jealous.'

Hermione levitated one of the ravens back down in front of Ron. 'There. Have… Craig.'

Ron groaned. 'You tyrant.' He drew his wand through the motion of the spell. 'Silencio.'

Craig cawed very loudly and flapped his wings, setting Oswald and Jonathan off as well.

'Look what you've done, Hermione,' Harry accused. 'I'd charmed them into being quiet already.'

'Why don't you try charming them using your wand?'

Harry pulled it out of his sleeve with two fingers. 'What was the wand motion?'

'It was on the board earlier, Harry.' Hermione sighed and picked her wand up. 'Let me show you.'

'No, it's fine, I'll just make up a better one.' He stared down at Oswald who cawed and went back to poking at Harry's blank piece of parchment with his beak. 'It's time for quiet, Oswald.'

Oswald croaked at him.

Harry imagined the silence settling over Oswald; it fell like snow, just a few flakes floating down at first, but then more, more and more, piling up, year after year of some endless winter smothering everything beneath its numb chill.

'Silencio.' He drew a sharp flat line with his wand.

'That's not the wand motion,' Hermione said. 'It's more of a long flick up and a short flick down to the right.'

'That's not very silence-y,' Harry replied. 'If you really want someone to be quiet you make a short sharp gesture to cut them off, like you hitting Ron over the head with the paper.'

'But that's not how it works…' Hermione trailed off as Oswald opened his beak and nothing came out.

Harry gave her his biggest, most smug grin.

'Shut up,' she growled. 'Or I'll silence you.'

They watched Oswald open and shut his beak a few times, tapping it on the desk without a sound, and then hop around in perfect silence over the parchment.

'Worked pretty well, right?' He laughed. 'It's like Potions, Hermione, just because there's a recipe on the board doesn't mean it's the best way to do it. Or the most fun way.'

Professor Flitwick clapped his hands together. 'Okay, we have—' he fished his pocket-watch out and glanced at it '—just under ten minutes and a fair few of you are struggling. We'll spend some of the next lesson on this too, but we won't have the ravens then because it will be the last day of term before Christmas break, so partner up now with someone who's managed it to practise as much as you can now, please.'

'Guess I'm with you,' Ron said, bumping Hermione with his shoulder. 'What am I doing wrong?'

'She hasn't even done it,' Harry said. 'I did it.'

'You did it a weird way, mate. I can't do it that way.'

'Well who am I meant to partner with now?' he asked.

Hermione stared back at him, her brown eyes full of mischief. 'Oh, I wonder who it will end up being.'

'You're just jealous I can maintain a relationship with someone in Slytherin after your steamy tryst with Malfoy fell apart.' Harry stroked Oswald's head with his free hand. 'I'm not going to go over there now.'

A light tug came at his sleeve and Hermione shot him a triumphant little smile.

'It doesn't count,' he said. 'I haven't moved an inch; she came over here.'

Daphne stepped around his stool and levelled a cool stare at him, folding her arms. 'We do not have a relationship.' That rogue lock of blonde hair fluttered with every word, dancing before her pretty nose and blood-pop stained lips.

A small handful of butterflies burst through Harry's stomach, swooping up to tremble on the tip of his tongue. 'You turn up at the DA just to stare at me the entire time. I feel like at any moment you could drag me into an abandoned classroom and tell me that we're the victims of a completely inexplicable marriage contract from the fourteenth century and there's no way out because of extremely implausible circumstances beyond our control.'

Her lips twitched. 'My family has not agreed to let anyone marry one of their daughters for over a thousand years, Harry.'

'I assume I'd have to kill a dragon or climb a really high tower or something.'

'What?' Daphne asked, cocking her head to one side like a curious crow. 'What do dragons have to do with anything? And why would I marry someone who murdered a dragon?'

'Ha!' Ron crowed. 'See, Muggle idioms are bad.'

'That's not an idiom, Ron,' Hermione whispered. 'And don't interrupt; it's kind of morbidly fascinating to watch them flirt so weirdly. Maybe this is why people like soap operas?'

'I am not flirting, Granger.' Daphne's tone turned cool and soft as frost. 'Potter is a Blood-Traitor.'

'Yeah, calm down, Hermione,' Harry told her. 'Go back to Coronation Street and eat a chicken sandwich full of sultanas or something.'

A snort of laughter escaped Hermione. 'If you both say so. Greengrass walked all the way over here to not flirt with you, though, so she must have come for some reason.'

'Hermione does make a point,' he said. 'Why did you come over here? You can stare from over there just as easily.'

Daphne turned away to stare out the window.

'Wow. Really?' Hermione burst into giggles. 'The silent treatment?'

'Very class appropriate,' Harry said. 'And she managed it without a—'

A sharp poke caught him in the ribs.

Daphne gave him an almost imperceptible shake of her head.

'Without a raven,' he finished.

Hermione rolled her eyes. 'And now you're keeping little secrets together. How cute.'

'Go teach Ronald to use a wand,' Harry retorted. 'I'm going to ask Greengrass questions about her weird creepy Voldemort cult thing.'

'Not here,' Daphne murmured. 'Too many people might hear.'

'We could go to Hogsmeade,' he suggested. 'Nobody is allowed to go from school as of today, so nobody could see you being something other than incredibly antisocial. Unless you're not here for the Christmas holidays, then it'll have to be when we come back in January because I will be stuck here with Umbridge and Hermione — trying to decide which is the most tyrannical, probably.'

Ron snickered.

Hermione pushed him five steps back along the desk into the corner and pointed his wand at Craig. 'Do the charm to the raven, before Harry does it to you. And he does it differently, so we might not be able to undo it.'

'Greengrass?' All the rest of the butterflies, which Harry assumed had just been biding their time for the best moment to attack, flooded through him in a tingling, tickling little storm. 'I know you're not actually silenced, so, you know, you can just say yes or no.'

Daphne tucked that stray bit of blonde hair back behind her ear with her little finger, hooking it away from the red tulips hanging from her ear.

His heart squirmed and he reached out and took her warm hand, giving her a gentle tug back around toward him. 'The silence thing is actually making me kind of nervous now, so…'

'Yes,' she whispered; a little spark of yearning shone in her blue eyes as she stared down at his hand on hers. 'But it is not a date.'

'No, you're just explaining why I'm a Blood-Traitor to me,' Harry said. 'That's not a date. If it was a date I'd have to buy you a drink while you explained why I'm a Blood-Traitor.'

The corner of Daphne's mouth curved and she eased her hand out from under his. 'Are we going to the DA now?'

Harry shrugged. 'I have no idea. Hermione, are—'

'Yes.'

'Okay. Wow. At least pretend you weren't listening to us, Hermione.'

Hermione turned a little pink. 'Sorry.'

'No you're not,' he said. 'This is typical. Every time I talk to another girl you get jealous and try to sabotage it. I thought you were going to set Lavender up in therapy with her father the last time she decided to pair undoing half her blouse buttons with leaning a bit further forward than is really at all necessary.'

She rolled her eyes. 'Nobody wants to see Lavender doing her best to show her boobs to everyone.'

'Objection,' Ron chimed in. 'Did I do that right?'

'Sustained,' Harry said. 'Yes, you did, Ronald. Good work.'

Hermione sighed. 'Boys…'

Daphne folded her arms over her chest. 'I am not undoing any buttons.'

'Probably wise,' he said. 'Hermione might try and arrange for you to have a very awkward conversation with your dad if you do.' Harry lowered his voice to his loudest whisper. 'I think she's projecting, that dress she wore to the Yule Ball had such a low neckline I nearly fainted at the scandal. Mr Darcy would not have approved of her showing off so much chin like that. Completely inappropriate. You could almost see her beard.'

Ron sniggered into his hand.

'Harry—'

Professor Flitwick clapped his hands together. 'Alright, pack away, everyone, and head off to dinner. For those who are normally in Gobstones, it is, unfortunately, still cancelled.'

'I hate you,' Hermione finished.

'What are we doing at the DA?' he asked, crumpling his unused piece of parchment into a ball and tossing it into the bin. 'Don't tell me I have to whistle at people trying to jinx each other through Shield Charms again. It was boring and they were bad at it. I had to untentacle Neville's face a dozen times.'

'You don't.'

'Today's Patronus day,' Ron said.

'Will you demonstrate yours, Harry?' Daphne murmured. 'I think you should. To show everyone.'

'Why not.' Harry imagined all the silence melting away like snow in the spring sunshine and dispelled the charm on Oswald with a flick of his wand as he drifted toward the door. 'A corporeal Patronus radiates positive emotions, so it'll only help everyone else cast theirs.'

A strange gleam flashed through Daphne's ice blue eyes. 'I am looking forward to seeing it.'

'Awwww,' Hermione whispered in Harry's ear. 'I told you she likes you.'

'You also told me she was one of those Pure-bloods,' Harry retorted, diverting away from the flood of students headed for the Great Hall and climbing the stairs toward the upper floors. 'And she is. Sorry, Greengrass, but, you know, the whole Voldemort is our lord and sav—'

Daphne clapped her warm hand over his mouth. 'Do not talk about that so loudly.' She released him.

'Why not?' he asked.

'You will get into trouble.'

'Oh no.' Harry chuckled to himself. 'Voldemort might try and kill me. What a horrifying idea.'

'Whose turn is it to bring food from the kitchens?' Ron asked.

'Hufflepuff.' Hermione led them up across the moving staircases and along the corridor, pacing back and forth in front of the Room of Requirement. 'And stop thinking about food all the time.'

'He can't,' Harry said. 'It's the sole purpose for his existence.'

The door flowed together out of the stone wall.

'Right, come on,' she said. 'Harry, when everyone's here, demonstrate your Patronus at the start, then Ron can eat all the food, you and Greengrass can go flirt in a corner, and everyone else can just talk, and I'll be the only one who passes their OWLs.'

'We're not flirting,' Harry replied, very aware of Daphne's stare burning on the back of his head as she lingered three steps behind.

'And I'm sure Harry will pass his OWLs,' Ron added. 'He always manages to do things.'

'Not the right things.'

'No, but, like, he could if he wanted to, right?'

'Definitely,' Harry said. 'I just don't want to learn Snape's rubbish recipes or use a bad wand motion; it just doesn't seem right. We're doing magic, why would I want to make it into a boring series of bullet-pointed steps when I can do it a better way?'

'Those are the instructions.'

'Well, I'm writing my own.'

Hermione sighed and opened the door. 'Do what you like, then, Harry, but if you fail…'

'Voldemort's not going to decide not to murder me because I got an extra couple of Os,' he replied, strolling in after her into the large empty hall. 'Although, he usually manages to time whatever convoluted scheme he's hatched for the end of the year, but I think that's just because they're so overly complicated they take a long time to come to fruition. Or fall apart.'

'They didn't fall apart last year.'

'No,' Harry admitted. 'He was Reborn in Death as a creepy, red-eyed, snake-man. A sure sign that he's going to fix everything that's wrong in the world.' He sighed. 'I miss Fleur Delacour, she really made the whole thing worth it.'

'Boys,' Hermione muttered. 'One kiss on the cheek from a pretty blonde girl and they don't care that Voldemort's back at all.'

Daphne slipped in after them, leaning against the wall a few paces along from the door and tugging her knee-high socks up. 'You kissed the Veela girl?'

'Er…' Harry weighed up his options to what suddenly felt like a very loaded question as the rest of the DA began to filter in. 'Not technically?'

A peal of laughter burst from Hermione. 'He broke the rules to save her little sister, so she kissed him on the cheek; if she knew how many times Harry has probably thought about her in that bathing suit, she'd take it back.'

'Or maybe she'd be flattered and kiss me again.'

'She's three years older than you.'

'I'm extremely famous, though,' Harry said. 'Finally, it works to my advantage. Fuck you, Rita Skeeter.'

'Her little sister seemed to like you,' Ron cut in, sidestepping the huddle of other Gryffindors as they joined the growing group in the centre of the hall. 'She got all pink and babbled something in French when she was saying goodbye. If she looks anything like her sister she'll be really fit when she's older.'

'Would you stop trying to make me date someone's little sister, Ronald, it's starting to get weird.'

Hermione snorted. 'Gabrielle is about nine, too. She was sweet, but Harry will have to find a blonde girl about his own age.'

'Don't you dare say it,' Harry warned.

'Or expelled,' she finished, with a victorious smile.

He chuckled. 'How the tables have turned.'

'What?' Ron frowned. 'What tables?'

'Idiom,' Hermione explained. 'It's… you know what, never mind. Harry, basically everyone's here, so demonstrate please.'

Lavender tiptoed in, waving to Ron. 'Sorry I'm late, I had to fix my hair.'

Hermione sighed. 'Really?'

'Yes.' She bounced the half-curls in her long blonde hair with a huge smile. 'Aren't they nice? It's a new charm.'

Harry laughed. 'Okay, so apparently today is Patronus day, which means trying to cast a corporeal Patronus. The most important thing is that you have to really feel it. You can't just cast it like… like a hair-curling charm. It's positivity, it's happiness, it's hope.'

'Hope?' Susan Bones blurted.

'Yes.' He waved a vague hand somewhere toward where Azkaban might be. 'Dementors feed off all the negative things; they dredge them up and feast on it. You have to be more happy than they can make you sad.'

Hermione rolled her eyes. 'That is the worst explanation—'

'No, it makes sense,' Terry Boot said. 'You have to really feel the feeling, or it doesn't stop the Dementors bringing up all the bad stuff.'

'Exactly.' Harry poked two fingers up his sleeve and pulled out his wand. 'Hermione ordered me to demonstrate and since the body of the last person to disobey her still hasn't been found, I'd better do it. My mother was Muggle-born, so she's already got it in for me as it is.'

'Oh my god,' Hermione muttered. 'Just shut up and cast the spell.'

'Fine.' He laughed to himself and raised his wand, imagining, somewhere drifting on the wind, or in the rustle of the leaves and the song of the soaring birds, or the fragrance of the flowers, his parents smiling back at him just as they had from the Mirror of Erised. 'Expecto Patronum,' he whispered.

Brilliant silver mist burst from the tip of his wand, swirling like snow caught in the wind, coalescing into a tiny, shining tornado; a phoenix sprang from it, spreading wings of trailing flame as bright as the midwinter moon, its fierce eyes as full of that cold pale radiance as the chill moon in the night sky. All the distant beauty of the stars shone within it and their flickering hope flooded through the room in a shiver of straightening shoulders and small smiles. Harry watched the light of it rise in Ron's eyes, and Hermione's eyes, and Susan Bones, and Terry Boot, and Cho, and every pair that stared up at him, watched the wonder brim in them, and a little lump swelled up in his throat.

'That's how you do it,' he murmured, letting the phoenix fade. 'Now it's your turn.'

Harry turned away, but found Daphne's eyes full of such a soaring, hopeful spring blue that all those butterflies went fluttering through his stomach and his heart leapt up into his mouth. 'Er…'

'Harry,' she murmured, stealing one small step toward him. 'It was beautiful.'

Something squirmed rather pleasantly beneath his ribs, but whatever it was, Harry was quite sure it couldn't be his heart, since it still very much felt like that was hanging off the tip of his tongue. 'Not bad for a Blood-Traitor?'

Daphne's lips twitched.

'I'm taking that as a yes,' he said, sticking his wand back up his sleeve. 'So, anyway—' he hunted for something to say that would settle the butterflies back down somewhere more convenient '—why are you still in your summer uniform? Aren't you cold in the skirt? The socks are cute, but there's a bit of a gap between your knees and the skirt that must be cold.'

'No. I like to feel the cold. It is… peaceful.'

'Fair enough.'

She cocked her head, that loose lock of hair slipping free across her face. 'Did you mind being kissed by the Veela girl?'

'Not in the slightest,' he admitted. 'But, you know, she is incredibly pretty, so I probably wouldn't have minded her doing quite a lot of things to me. Actually… now I think about it, you're pretty much the only girl I've seen that's pretty the way Fleur Delacour is.' He clamped his mouth shut before the butterflies made him say anything worse.

'I am not pretty like her.' Daphne blinked, the slightest hint of colour climbing her cheeks. 'She is not fully human.'

'Yeah, but, does that really matter?'

'Of course it matters,' she whispered. 'Her bloodline carries a gift from the Veiled World; she is both blessed and cursed by it. Loving her or letting her love you would be just the same.'

'Well, she was a bit stuck up, but actually really nice underneath it,' Harry replied. 'Although, she did promise to write to me over the summer and then didn't. But part of that might be because I never gave her my address.' A stab of regret bit deep. 'Yeah, wow, that was really stupid of me, actually. She probably thinks I was blowing her off, when I would probably trade an awful lot for another glimpse of her in that bathing suit.'

'That is not what I was talking about, Potter.' Daphne folded her arms. 'A trace of true magic flows through her veins in some form, to touch it is to let it shape your life. Would she be worth that?'

Harry laughed to himself. 'I think I'd be getting a bit ahead of myself, Fleur Delacour said she'd write to me, not date a boy three years younger than her.' He mulled it over. 'But I guess if all that stuff happened and we liked each other, I wouldn't mind. How bad could it be?'

The spark in Daphne's blue eyes burst into flame, burning with a wild, hungry fire. 'Bad,' she whispered. 'It could be bad. Like you would not believe…' Her lip quivered and she jammed her hand into her pocket, pulling out a handful of blood pops. 'I…' She spilt the crimson sweets across the floor as she fled the room.

He darted out after her, but found the corridor empty save for one blood pop spinning on the stone floor. 'Well, that was weird.' Harry bent and picked it up; the butterflies inside floundered, drowning in the black mire of some numb hollow feeling. 'I guess there was some Pure-blood cult thing I offended again by saying I wouldn't mind dating a girl like Fleur Delacour.'

He unwrapped it, drifting back down the stairs. 'Intrepid,' he told the Fat Lady.

'You look more like you're sad,' she replied, swinging aside.

'Sad?' Harry slipped the sweet into his mouth and mustered a smile as he ducked through the passage. 'Not really.' He sucked on it a few times, the sharp tang of what he assumed to be redcurrant stinging his tongue and cheeks, then he chuckled to himself and crunched it, swallowing the fizzing flash of flavour. 'Daphne's right, they are better when you bite them.'

He skirted the clamour of the Gryffindor Common Room, licking the last of the sharp redcurrant tang from his lips as he strolled upstairs and flopped over his bed with a long sigh. That wild gleam of hunger in Daphne's ice blue eyes hung among his thoughts, a deeper, sweeter pain than the tight, fluttering ball of butterflies her smile inspired, a soft, sharp little ache between his ribs.

'I hate it when Hermione's right,' Harry muttered, burying his face in his pillow. 'Why did it have to be the pretty blonde Voldemort cult girl, too. At least if it had been Fleur Delacour nothing would go horribly wrong. And I could sneak off to France to visit her, hopefully at a beach…' He closed his eyes and released a long sigh, kicking off his trainers. 'I wonder if Daphne has a bathing suit.'

His mind conjured a blurred slim silhouette, caught half between Fleur Delacour's willowy figure in that sleek, wet silver suit, and Daphne's flushed pink cheeks, fierce wild blue eyes and the crimson flowers swaying at her ear. They went with him as he slipped toward the deep embrace of sleep, scattering into a fragmented tangle of Fleur Delacour's soft warm lips against his skin, Daphne's warm hand in his and the redcurrant stains at her mouth.

And he took a long breath of chill winter air, his bare toes curling into the thin veil of snow upon the dark ice of that great lake. Cold white drifts heaped at the lake's edge, sloping up to the two ice-crusted peaks rising either side of that full, bright pale moon and all the distant stars shining beyond it.

The crack ran between his feet; Harry felt it there, thin as the edge of a knife, too thin to see, but oh so very much wider than it seemed, and spreading wider with every passing second and settling snowflake, spreading wider like her smile.

'I owe thee thanks, wychling.' Her soft whisper cut through the silence like the swing of a blade. 'Thine part in our bargain is done.'

Harry turned.

Her right eye, that ring of bright, fierce molten gold, burnt into him, full of all the dying fire of the setting sun, and, within it, her dark pupil — as dark as that starless chill waiting beyond the moon — sliced through him, and all the things Harry wished to hide inside himself felt naked, as bare as his feet to the winter chill. Her ice-blue hair, woven into a crown of braids, no longer lacked a tine where the shorn stub of a braid had once stood, it sat all bejewelled in sharp shining spines of hoarfrost that glittered in the chill, pale light of the moon like countless diamonds.

'Not you again.' He fixed his gaze upon that bone white, blind dead left eye and smiled back. 'Would you like to borrow my glasses? Or half of them, I guess, since one of your eyes seems to be working just fine.'

'Two more bargains I shalt offer thee, wychling.' She extended her hand; three snow-white skinned fingers with nails as black as ink and one severed scarred stump where her forefinger had been cut clean away — cut by what, Harry could not imagine, but for some reason he imagined she had been smiling when it happened. 'Steps on thy path to indubitable destiny.'

A question hung on his tongue, so ridiculous he couldn't bring himself to speak it aloud, but beneath the last bleeding light of the setting sun in her right eye, Harry couldn't help but wonder if she had somehow taken his father's cloak into this dream, swallowed it up, like the darkness at last closing in over the stars and snuffing them out like candles.

'What sort of weird dream bargain is this?' he asked. 'And don't say that the bargain is something like I'm not allowed to dream about Fleur Delacour in a bathing suit, because I will never manage it.'

The cold of the snow seeped into his skin, creeping deep into his feet.

And she smiled, that small smile, all shining neat little teeth, but so much wider than it ought to be, so wide it seemed to curve away off the side of her face and into the endless cold dark night sky. 'Wychling,' she whispered; and the word came not just from her pale lips, but welled up also from the depths of the lake beneath his feet, spilling from that crack in the ice like the black ink bleeding from Tom Riddle's diary. 'Dread not destiny. Dread not Death. Dread naught. Soon, thou willst come to know me as thou must. Soon, thou shalt see.'

Harry jolted awake, his feet freezing in the breeze from the window. The night gloom of the dormitory was full of the soft heavy breathing of his sleeping friends.

'Just a dream,' he whispered, tucking his feet under the covers with a small smile and a shake of his head. 'I guess Dumbledore's right about wizards and witches who are sensitive to magic having weird dreams from time to time. Now I have to put up with them for a few years until Voldemort murders me... I bet Ron doesn't get dreams like this' — he poked a toe through the hangings to stare across the room, but Ron's curtains were closed '—he's probably dreaming of chicken wings, or Lavender.' Harry chuckled to himself. 'Or Lavender feeding him chicken wings in a pink bra. Actually…' He closed his eyes, laughing. 'Ron's got the right idea.'

AN: Loads more via the linktree, including up to the next 20 chapters of this fic!

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