Title: At Childhood's End
Author: 
mahoganyhandle
Team: Fanon
Prompt: The Magician
Wordcount: ~38k
Rating: PG
Warnings:
Summary: When Harry comes across a fallen branch of an elder tree and accidentally bonds with it, his life changes beyond his wildest imaginings.
Author's Note Magician: Immanent, spiritual, and Mercurial transmutation from potential to kinetic, focusing on maturation, (limitless) power, self-confidence, initiative, determination, communication, new beginnings; coming of age. Link.
Betas: A, L
A fool journeys out into the world alone, having blind faith in himself. He looks with wonder upon all sights, having seen none previously. When fresh waters cross his path, he drinks. When fruited trees lay alongside his roads, he eats. All other times, he walks, seeing all and nothing at once. Were a cliff's edge before him, he would continue onward. He is a fool. He has faith, but no power.
~
Harry was allowing the slight rocking of the boat to lull him through sleep-fog when a horn blared and startled him alert. He jolted to the left and flailed helplessly as he fell head first out of bed, smacking his forehead on the bedside table. Pain erupted in his scar, and for a few moments, he couldn't even bring himself to move. Unfortunately, the horn kept blaring, making the pain worse.
It took a bit of careful, worm-like manoeuvres to get out of the tangle of sheets about his legs, and when he finally did, he pushed himself up and raced to the bedroom window.
A stubby wizard in brown plaid robes with a green oak leaf emblem on the chest pocket stood at the gate, honking exuberantly. Harry groaned and worked his fingers through his sleep-mussed hair. He had expected the shipment of wood to come in this afternoon, but Barley always arrived at the wrong time. Usually he was late, but not today. This just went to show that nobody could have a decent lie-in when they wanted.
Heaving a sigh, Harry slid the window open and called out that he would be there in a moment. Barley glanced his way and frowned. When he shifted a clipboard under his arm, the short sleeves of his robes cut into his bulging biceps Harry's heart gave a fluttering leap, and he swallowed hard, turning away from the sight so as not to flush.
He grabbed a pair of sleep pants from the clothes piled on the cushy armchair across the room and hopped into them on his way down the hall. The gate creaked open and Barley's footsteps thundered up the riser as Harry jogged up the steps to meet him on the deck.
It was a lovely day. Orange sunlight burnt across the dark wood of the deck and made the windows on the narrow boat glint. A cool breeze ruffled through Harry's hair as he stepped out and smiled.
"Bit early for you, is it?" he said, taking the proffered clipboard. He scratched his name out sloppily and then handed it back.
"Three cancelled shipments," Barley groused. "Thought I'd get around here before you backed out on me, too."
"Not a chance. I couldn't drag myself out of the lab last week. I'm flat out." Harry grinned and Barley's frown slowly worked itself into a sly smile. "What have you got for me today? Anything neat?"
"We've got a few rare specimens in," Barley said. "I set several logs aside for you. The lumberyard's usually quite busy this time of year. If you've not slapped an address label on it, chances are it'll be gone in a crack."
Laughing, they stepped onto the dock where Barley's cart sat, loaded down with crates. Harry's order was beneath the three cancelled ones, and, instead of levitating the hefty crates like any other wizard, Barley pulled them down manually. His muscles flexed and strained and a flush crept up the back of his neck. Harry shifted uncomfortably when his penis took interest in the proceedings. Still, he couldn't bear to tear his gaze away from Barley's strong back and the way his muscles moved under his thin, cotton uniform. It was such a glorious sight, after all.
Once his order was down, Harry pried open the top crate and rifled through. There were plenty of the usual variety of woods for everyday usage—oak, holly, hawthorn, yew, and more—but there were some others that were more powerful and less stable, too. Harry delighted to see them, caressed the barks and the smooth, golden xylems of the logs.
Picking up a piece of ebony that positively vibrated with energy, Harry hummed to himself and turned it over and over again, just admiring it. It would make beautiful wands—three of them, he thought; the black sisters. He chuckled to himself and then startled when Barley slapped a hand on his shoulder and playfully shook him a little.
"You look like a boy who's had his first peek up a froufy skirt."
Ducking his head in embarrassment, Harry said, "Er, yeah," and set the piece of wood back down on the top. "There are some fantastic pieces in there... Thanks!"
"Not a problem," Barley said, moving behind his cart. He flipped a page of parchment over the clipboard to double check the next address on his route, and then slid it underneath his arm. "See you in three weeks?"
When Harry nodded, Barley Disapparated with a stentorian crack. A few paces over, at Dean and Luna's hand-painted narrow boat, Dean poked his head out of window framed with a shocking pink and sunflower yellow gerbera. Dean glanced at Harry curiously and waved hello.
"So you're off to play then?" he called.
"Looks like," Harry answered. "And you?"
"I'll be in the gallery all day. Dinner's still at seven? That'll be a right blast—if Ron and Corner get into again, I'm skipping out."
"Yeah, me too," Harry laughed. Dean's head retreated back into his house, and Harry turned to levitate his delivery inside to the controlled environment storage facility in his office. The wood needed to be sorted before it began to rot.
~
Every Friday night Harry and his friends got together for dinner. Unfortunately, tonight was his night to play host. Adulthood was a busy undertaking on the best of days and a whiny and demanding cunt on the worst. He saw Dean and Luna most often, but were it not for the weekly dinners, Harry thought, he might not see the others for long stretches at a time.
Since the prospect of sleep was out, Harry put on a pot of coffee and gathered eggs, cheese and onion from the refrigerator. He made himself an omelette and sat down to eat and flip through the Daily Prophet—not that it was trustworthy, but it was an all right source of curiosities.
According to the paper, a Fiendfyre in Hogsmeade had displaced three families, Aurors were investigating a string of unexplained deaths, and Gringotts Bank had announced the implementation of magical signature screening, a new security measure to root out trickery and theft; they already had two break-ins on record and their reputation was suffering for it. Harry always felt a bit sheepish whenever he went to make a transaction, but with all the goblins giving him foreboding looks and several security guards trailing after him, it was hard not to feel that way.
Following breakfast, Harry returned to his office to shelve cases of wood in the storeroom. Logs came packaged in latched metal cases with their type stamped on the top, so it was easy enough to keep like with like; it was always a good idea to keep woods of different magical make-up separated so their integrity was not compromised. Ollivander always had been a little lax on that rule, because he believed in the power of the magical continuum, but Harry was a stickler.
Harry took a quick shower after stocking the shipment, and then went out to put his sign up so potential customers would know he was open. He'd only latched one silver chain to the hook before a dizzy-looking witch with green hair charged out of the café across the street and made a beeline for him. Even from afar, she looked like a furious woman on a mission, and Harry considered taking his sign down and fleeing back inside. For the most part, dealing with customers was tolerable, if not outright pleasurable, but then there was...
"You sold me a dud!"
"I highly doubt that," Harry replied, making an effort to keep his voice even.
Upon closer inspection, the woman's hair looked like leaves of spinach moulded to her head. That, in addition to the plush silvery grey robes she was wearing made her look like a beech. Harry tried not to laugh, but he wasn't successful altogether in suppressing his amusement, if the flare of her nostrils and flash of her eyes was anything to go by.
"Er, how about we go inside to talk?"
The woman followed him to his office, a cosy den just off the kitchen. Order forms, invoices and inventory spreadsheets cluttered his desk, and he had to fumble around for a standard defect sheet. He seldom had complaints, except from the oddball customer who hadn't heeded his advice during the design process and ended up with a wand that was unsuitable for his magic type or daily usage. Harry doubted his confused fumblings for the form instilled any confidence in his angry customer, even though it meant he rarely needed to use them.
Finally he found what he was looking for and sat with the customer by the cold hearth, pen and notepad in his lap. He asked to see the wand, and she jutted it under his nose so fast she nearly poked his eye out. Jerking back, he grabbed the wand before she made another anxious jab at him.
Tickling wisps of magic swept out of the wand and twined about his wrist when he first touched it, and he smiled fondly. Now he knew what Ollivander had meant all those years ago when he said a wandmaker never forgot the wands he made; their magic called out to him, were a part of him, like children.
Now, he remembered this customer, a bubbly witch who wanted "a wand with a sense of humour." It was no wonder she looked like a tree now. Harry had told her that she didn't know what she was getting into with a request like that, but she hadn't believed him. Well the joke was on her, wasn't it?
He gave the wand an experimental flick, and a sprig of the white Nilly flowers on the sill animated and danced a little ditty as it floated across the room and slipped itself into his shirt pocket. Harry examined the spells on the sprig for a few moments, and then turned the wand over several times, mapping out the energies it emitted at rest and again at peak.
"Seems fine to me," he said.
"Oh, it seems fine to you, does it?" she snapped. "Are you blind as well as daft? Look at me!"
"Yes," Harry replied. "I think it likes you."
Veins on the woman's neck and forehead bulged as her whole face turned red, and Harry hoped she wouldn't give herself an aneurysm.
"It's a menace, is what it is! I want you to get rid of it so I can have a proper wand."
"You're barking up the wrong tree, Maxie." Oh Merlin, thought Harry as soon as the words came out. Why'd he have to go and say that? She looked like he'd just slapped her in the face. "I mean the issue here isn't that it's a dud."
"Why don't you tell me what the issue is, then, since you think you know better than me?"
"Look, you wanted a wand that liked having a laugh. Did you think it would make an exception when it came to laughing at you? It's just being friendly. Maybe if you had a sense of humour this wouldn't be a problem."
"Wouldn't be a problem? Maybe it was cute for the first ten minutes or so, but I've looked like this for three days!"
Harry rubbed his forehead. Maxie was standing up, frothing with rage, spittle showering the coffee table while she ranted. As she yelled, the wand in his hand trembled fitfully, and the spells over her gradually melted off. Her leafy head withered into dark brown curls and her plush grey robes cracked on the seams and flaked off, revealing Muggle Bermuda shorts and a blue polo shirt. Maxie was so busy raving that she hadn't even realized that she'd terrified her wand into submission.
She finished off screeching, "I want you to destroy it!" and the wand vibrated with fear.
"I'm not going to destroy it," Harry said once she'd had a few deep breaths. Maxie sneered at him, but the wand didn't seem so frightened anymore, and that was more important to him. "Listen, the spell is broken, so why don't you just sit down and relax. I can draw up a list of spells for you to try out to bond with your wand and get to know each other's boundaries. It's just a matter of taste level, here. But you wanted a funny wand so much you didn't want to hear when I told you it wasn't the best idea, so now you've got to live with it."
Maxie checked herself over before she would believe she'd turned back to normal, but when she saw how she looked, she did take his advice. He spent over two hours teaching her how to communicate with the thing, and by the time he managed to get her out of his office, he felt exhausted. Luckily enough, he didn't have many other customers that day, and of those, none were complainers.
~
After work, he took down his sign and went to the neighbourhood grocer to shop for dinner. It was a small organic foods market and, for some reason that Harry did not want to contemplate, it always smelled like brine and butter. The friendly couple that ran the place were in their seventies but still quite active in the artsy community in which they lived.
He picked up some ground beef, cheeses, and tomatoes for his lasagne, took the ingredients home to keep them fresh, and then headed to Diagon Alley to pick up a bottle of wine to complement the meal.
As he passed the threshold behind the Leaky Cauldron, an explosion of sound assaulted his ears. He cringed back a few steps in surprise and bumped into a full-bellied witch in buttercup yellow maternity robes.
"Sorry!" he said, steadying her as she wobbled side-to-side from his momentum.
"Quite all right, lad," she replied, patting her stomach. "It's just awful, isn't it? Wouldn't be here myself if I didn't have an appointment at the holistic healer's!" Harry stepped out onto the street, feeling dumbfounded and a bit claustrophobic. Aurors were swarmed the alley and vibrant ropes of magic cordoned off large sections of the thoroughfare, creating several bottlenecks. To make matters worse, hoards of gossiping busybodies and clamouring paparazzi loitered behind the magical ropes, trying to hear snatches of conversation as the Aurors passed by.
Harry squeezed through the thick of the crowd and stopped at a kiosk to buy a copy of Flick and Swish magazine and a tin of mints. A young Auror stumbled out of Dame Dora's Divinatory and vomited all over the cobbles and Rita Skeeter's lime green shoes. Another Auror swiftly joined him and rubbed his back to lend support, and they whispered about the eerie way Dame Dora had been murdered.
Harry frowned and tossed handed the kiosk owner a few Sickles. He was eager to get away from the Divinatory and the Aurors' whispers of murder. When the Death Eaters were still at large, the wizarding world had had a ridiculously high murder rate, but this was out of the ordinary. Coupled with the Fiendfyre in Hogsmeade, Harry began to wonder if these events might be connected to them again. He sorely hoped not. He'd had enough of Death Eaters by the time he'd duelled Voldemort, but going through Auror training and chasing down the ones who'd got away had been positively tortuous. He hadn't even lasted six months at that, and could barely stomach listening to Ron's Dark Wizard stories.
Quickly, he manoeuvred away from the bottleneck and slipped into his former master's store to say hello. They talked of wands and the plans Harry had for some of his custom creations, and Ollivander walked through some of his ideas with him.
Somehow the conversation returned to the state of the alley, and Ollivander's concerns that the shopping centre was unsafe. At first the Aurors had presumed that the cases were merely mysterious deaths, but new evidence indicated otherwise. Somebody had drained the victims of life—stripping the years right out of them, making them age and die within a matter of moments.
As yet, no one knew what connected the victims, and the public was hysterical. It seemed like anyone could be next on the list, and reporters already were proclaiming Diagon Alley the most dangerous place to be.
Harry offered his second bedroom and office to Ollivander, and Ollivander agreed to stay over, starting tomorrow afternoon. Harry understood why Ollivander was eager to get away, given what had happened when Yaxley had dragged him off to Malfoy Manor. Fear and worry shone through his usually tranquil and piercing eyes, and Harry was glad to offer his former master a place where he could feel secure.
Once Harry and Ollivander said their goodbyes, Harry Apparated from the back room straight to the sitting room of his house. A painting of a Professor Snape startled and railed at him for disturbing the peace. Harry simply smiled and waved on his way to the kitchen to start cooking.
Dinner went off well. Harry made salad and lasagne, and a treacle tart for dessert. They'd also had a flaky, crusty Italian bread from a nearby bakery and the signature coffee blend he bought from the café across the street. After dinner, they retired to the sitting room to talk over cordials.
Neville had brought another plant with him which Harry planned to put in the office with the rest of the unique plants Neville had devised. Sometimes the plants turned out to be so magically strong that Harry used them in his wands, which delighted Neville to no end. Last year, Harry had made a wand with fibres from Neville's white Nilly flower woven through it.
Neville talked a lot about his greenhouses, and then about Hannah Abbott with as much fervour and awe. They had been dating for a few months, but it looked like the relationship was finally getting serious despite Neville's demanding new job as substitute professor at Hogwarts, replacing Professor Sprout. Ginny listened to Neville's besotted mooning and cast furtive glances at Michael Corner, her obnoxious boyfriend, who was only tolerated in their circle because Ginny cast a mean Bat Bogey hex.
As the hour grew late, the group began to break up to return to their own homes. Harry closed the grate of the Floo after them and then stumbled into his bedroom. He stripped down to his boxer shorts, brushed his teeth, and then fell into bed.
The next day, he woke at ten and hurried through his morning ablutions. After a brief breakfast of eggs on toast, he holed himself up in his workroom, which he'd converted from a guest bedroom when he bought his narrow boat. He was eager to get out some of the more powerful wood specimens and see what he could do with them.
Yesterday, it had surprised him to see a case of elder in the shipment, so he selected that first. Elder wood made for terribly powerful wands, like the Deathstick, but usually no one dared to cut it. Legends told of spirits who lived in elder trees, and who would curse or kill anyone that dared to bring harm to the tree. Ollivander often had told him such tales; one of the worst was about a sickly witch who had cut an elder for firewood in mid-winter and was immediately turned to stone as punishment.
Harry didn't believe such old wives' tales, of course, but, as far as legends went, Merlin himself was said to have been imprisoned in a tree, so the rumour wasn't so far afield. As such, the only way to make an elder wand was to collect samples that had fallen on their own.
Magic tingled in Harry's fingertips as he opened the case. There was only one log inside, a slender, crooked branch with a gnarled tip. He could make just one wand out of it, albeit a long one, if he didn't make a mistake in construction; he'd have to carefully plan this one out before starting on it.
Harry picked the branch up. Magic shot through his arm and down his spine, making his whole body hum with power.
Yelping in surprise, he tried to drop the wood. To his dismay, however, whenever he started to uncurl his fingers, they would clamp back down even tighter as if by some magical compulsion.
Harry flailed furiously, trying to fling the branch away, but to no avail. More and more power gathered in the stick and pulsed through his entire body in nerve-wracking jolts that left him breathless and stupefied. With each increasing increment of magic from the elder branch, the steady outflow from his beloved holly-and-phoenix feather wand sheathed at his hip gradually faded away. The holly wand twitched twice, and then fell still, its magic emptied out completely.
Harry dropped the elder branch on his workbench and swore.
As a wandmaker, he knew the signs of severance and bonding. And he knew this elder... stick had chosen him to wield it.
It was infuriating. He'd managed to repair his old wand when everyone else had proclaimed it a lost cause, dead forever. Now this branch had forced their bond to break. A branch! Not even a proper wand.
Slapping a hand against the wall, Harry swore again. Then he kicked his chair over for good measure. A steamy rage swelled within him, and he yanked on thick clumps of his hair, trying to keep his cool. It hurt plenty, but it didn't work to stem his ire. He raved, loudly and colourfully. This situation was unacceptable. Everything he'd been through, every moment he'd felt worthless without his holly wand at hand, and all the power it had taken to repair it once broken would not be for naught. It would not. It was his wand, and he refused to trade it in for a mere branch.
~
Harry spent the rest of the morning vainly trying out spells with his wands and sulking at the results. The old holly was dead and the elder stick obstinately chose him to master it again and again. To make matters worse, when Ollivander arrived later that day, all he said was, "Hmm... Well, my boy, it looks like you've a new wand."
Harry was so angry he could have spat. As it was, he barely managed to maintain his dignity, gritting out, "It's not a wand," before locking himself in his room for the rest of the day.
It was late night when he finally emerged again, at the rumbling urges of his stomach, and headed to the kitchen to make sandwiches. The moon shone through the kitchen window like a great ghastly eye, and his knife flashed in its light as he spread mayonnaise.
He'd left his wardrobe door open when he changed into his pyjamas, and when he returned to his bedroom, his eyes immediately fell on his reflection. Only... it wasn't his reflection. It was Draco Malfoy's. Pale, smarmy and calculating as ever.
"Oh great," Harry muttered, massaging his forehead with his free hand. "I'm being haunted! Could this day get any weirder?"
"Is that an 'N' for nimrod on your forehead, Potter? I am not a ghost!" Malfoy's ghostly image said, flushing with indignation. It was a queer sight, rosy cheeks on a shimmering silver complexion, and Harry wasn't certain if the faint glow of light from the pale expanse of skin simply was reflected off the mirror after all. He couldn't help but gawk.
"What are you, then?" Harry demanded. "And why are you hiding in my closet?"
"Your mirror to be precise—any reflective surface, really... If you want to get technical—"
"I don't."
Malfoy huffed. "Anyway, I am a doppelgänger. Obviously. I always knew your head was full of fluff, Potter; you don't have to make a point of proving it to me."
Harry decided it would be best to simply ignore the insult. He refused to get into a screaming row with his reflection. Refused. This day was odd enough already.
"Aren't doppelgängers usually of dead people, though?"
"Usually—of people who have died or will die shortly," Malfoy conceded, "but I am made of awesome, so I am the exception to the rule."
"Go haunt a dead planet, Malfoy. They're reflective, aren't they?"
"So you'd like to see my face whenever you look up at the moon? How romantic!"
"Get lost!"
"By the way," Malfoy continued with a saccharine smile, "you can't use my surname. I have no familial association in this form. Largely, I am a wisp of magic, with other odds and ends accumulated here and there. It's quite interesting, actually—"
"No, it's not, Malfoy."
"Potter, using that name is a curse; you lose one year off your life each time you say it. I told you it's under a very strong Taboo, designed to suck the life out of you one year at a time."
"Mal—Draco," Harry said, growling the name. Draco cast him a winning grin. "What are you doing here?"
"Existing, I should imagine," was the flippant reply. "Oh, and I'm meant to say, if you spirit that new wand of yours about, you'll likely end up in jail."
"Wha—how—what?"
"Night!"
Draco's expression was far too glib when he winked out of the mirror for him to have been telling a lie. Groaning, Harry sat heavily on his bed and turned his gaze upon the two crossed wands sitting on his bedside table. This was just perfect. As if he needed another dangerous mystery to make his life complete.
~
Bright and early the next morning, an owl tapped on his window, delivering a letter from the Ministry of Magic, Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. It read:
Dear Mr. Harry J. Potter,
Our records indicate that you have been chosen as the mate of a magical being. Congratulations on your most esteemed magical bond! Please, at your earliest convenience today, come down to our offices to register your union and fill out the form to claim spousal rights.
Sincerely,
Terrance L. Boot
Registrar
Harry frowned, crumpled the paper in his fist, and tossed it in the bin. Then he penned a brief response to Boot, informing him that he'd made some sort of mistake. Once that annoying little task was completed, Harry focused his attention elsewhere—breaking the inconvenient wand-bond with the elder branch.
No matter how he tried, though, the branch would not relinquish its claim. He tried snapping it over his leg, but he only ended up with a black and blue bar over his thigh. He tried severance spells, usually reserved for people who were forbidden to carry a wand, but the branch merely vibrated with powerful magic as if to mock him. He even tried raving, hoping to betray his wand with his all-consuming wrath as Maxie had frightened hers into submission days ago, but his branch was not to be trifled with. He had to leap out of the way of a severing hex as it backfired at him and only ended up ducking into the stinging hex it spat out next.
Seething boils erupted all over his face. As he howled in pain and surprise, the branch floated up from the floor where he'd dropped it and smugly sheathed itself in the holster he wore on his left thigh.
Ollivander wandered into the room, trailed by a chary-looking witch and her toddling son, hugging her chartreuse robes. The boy peeked out on Harry's lumpy face, and his blue eyes widened and turned glassy. Whimpering, he ducked back behind his mother, who absentmindedly patted his head.
Ollivander's only response to Harry's spluttering outrage was to suggest that the branch might subject itself to being "spruced up a bit." However, Harry wasn't yet desperate enough to whittle the stick into something attractive to carry around with him. He still held out hope of actually breaking the wand-bond and fixing his beloved holly.
Wincing around the words—he had an awful boil on his lower lip—Harry asked Ollivander to patch him up. However, Ollivander tried the spell a few times before proclaiming that a vain exercise, and suggested that Harry make up with his wand. Instead of taking him up on his advice, Harry Flooed in to St. Mungo's for emergency treatment.
The hospital screamed with activity when he came in, and he had to stand in a dizzyingly long line before he could even check in. Then the welcome witch gave him a confusing scroll to fill out. It stretched across six feet when unrolled, and asked the most ridiculous of questions. He skipped over three-quarters of the questions, signed his name with a flourish and shoved the form back underneath the welcome witch's nose. She smiled up at his pocked, pus-drenched face and directed him to Artefact Accidents department on the Ground Floor.
Harry turned to go. He bumped right into a passing Auror ushering a patient in through the store-front window, and cringed as one of his boils burst open and rained pus down the front of his robes. Sparks of pain-induced stars danced before his eyes, blinding him to all else. When his vision cleared, he saw the apologetically smiling face of Susan Bones as she used one hand to steady him on.
"Sorry, 'bout that, Harry."
"S'okay," Harry muttered. Then she moved on.
As she jostled her companion past him toward reception, Harry gawked. The man in her arms was jittery and grey, and as each second passed, he seemed to wither away a little bit more. His vibrant red hair thinned and turned white, his hands contorted into useless rheumatic appendages, and his skin paled, sagged and wrinkled right before Harry's eyes.
The welcome witch exclaimed upon seeing him, and then called out for help. Several Healers in uniform lime green robes rushed out with a stretcher, and Susan helped to lay the man on it. One of them asked what had happened to him, and Susan said, rushing alongside the stretcher, "Same as the others... This one staggered out onto the Alley, else we mightn't have found him 'til..." A door down the hallway slammed behind them and Harry could hear no more.
He startled and jerked himself forward, toward the lifts. For a few seconds, his own agony had faded into the white noise as he had stared at the withered man on the stretcher; he'd seemed to grow older and older with every rattling breath. It was surreal, but also terrifying and repulsive. What could make a man age and die like that? What could suck years right out of him in a matter of moments?
He pondered this on the brief walk down the corridor, past the lifts and an alcove of vending machines, to the triage for Artefact Accidents. The welcome witch here was considerably grumpier, but Harry couldn't blame her. Fang-toothed triplets with batwings flapped through the waiting room, giggling with glee, and their mother made no effort to control them; she tearfully shrank away from her vampire brats and sobbed into a handkerchief.
Harry's head began to pound along with his face. By the grace of Merlin, the Healers were efficient and surprisingly quick, and he was ushered back into a private examination room sooner than he'd anticipated.
While prodding at his face, the Healer asked a number of questions, trying to figure out how the accident had happened. Sheepish, Harry explained with short, swift sentences, and the Healer clucked when he admitted to trying to break a wand-bond and having the tables turned on him.
According to the Healer, that was a "foolish and dangerous ambition" which he should "cease immediately," but Harry would not be deterred. The Healer managed to patch his face up where Ollivander had failed, although it was a struggle, and in the end Harry had to apologize to the wand first. Even though he bit the words out disingenuously, Harry came away without the slightest pockmark as a reminder of his accident.
After that venture, however, he sorely needed a pick-me-up, and headed to his favourite supplier on Knockturn Alley, where he usually found intriguing bits and bobs to put in his experimental wands.
Summer was getting on now, and the Alley was quite crowded; the humidity and the body heat made staying outdoors in public for long periods of time simply unbearable. Harry sweltered in his summer robes, and frowned every time he moved his arm and became aware of the growing patch of moisture underneath. He was tempted to try a drying charm, but when his hand moved to his wand and found the stick instead, he remembered the doppelgänger's warning not to show it in public.
He wondered what that was all about. Perhaps he might have to peek in windows and mirrors to try to catch Doppel-Draco's reflection, and see if he could wrangle some sort of explanation out of it. The pasty git's admonishment that he shouldn't use his wand when others were around to notice had put Harry a bit on edge.
Kentigern Breckenridge was busy with a whiny customer when Harry came in, so Harry turned his attention to the row of poisonous utensils at the back, feigning fascination with a fork. The witch at the counter droned on and on about the cursed cane Kent had sold to her, which hadn't made her stingy old husband trip on the stairs and break his neck as Breckenridge had promised, and Harry grew impatient for him to just hex her already and send her off.
Another fifteen minutes of pointless drivel passed with Harry contemplating assault. He hated when other customers were around when he showed up; he'd already signed a non-disclosure agreement, and didn't want to know the nasty things they were planning to get up to upon leaving the store—like Mrs. Zabini over there. It was said that she was intelligent and powerful in her own right, but that her most treacherous gift was her looks.
Finally, the door closed behind Mrs. Zabini and the sign on the door flipped into the closed position. Harry turned and asked to see Kent's merchandise. Kent led Harry over to the centre of the room, idly mentioning how he'd wondered when Harry would return, as he had acquired some interesting pieces. Harry craned his neck when Kent raised his wand to the chandelier, which slowly extended downward from the ceiling.
The entrance to the back room changed once a week. Last time, Kent had pulled him through to the Unplottable restricted zone through a bejewelled scarab beetle in the glass display case. Today, all the candles on the chandelier winked out and Kent grabbed the black, twisted wick on the third candle on one of the arms, not waiting for the smoke to die away. Harry felt a hook behind his navel and a yank. The items in the room washed into one colourful swirl as the view spun away and settled into something else.
They emerged in a stylish drawing room painted sunshine yellow, and Kent beckoned for Harry to sit on a bone silk settee. A silver platter of tea and biscuits appeared on a low coffee table before them, and Harry accepted the drink gratefully. The tea would help to settle his stomach after his dizzying trip.
Kent left to gather his private collection, and Harry sat back, fingering the seam where the silk tucked into the fancifully carved wood. Then Kent returned, carrying a small mahogany case, and a three-tiered covered cart rolled in behind him.
First, he set the wooden case aside and flung back the cover on the cart. The first tier was filled with pristine feathers in clear plastic sheaves to protect them, the second, with bits of sinew in dishes of preservatives, and the third, odds and ends like scales, hairs, bones, and dust in crystal vials and test tubes.
"Anything you like?" Kent murmured, taking a seat on the matching settee on the opposite side of the coffee table. He leaned forward, bracing his elbow on his knee, and his eyes twinkled.
"What's in the other?" Harry said, glancing at the mahogany box.
Kent grinned and said, "I thought you might... These are some rarer pieces still than those on the cart. Very dear to me." Harry snorted, waving him on. "What would you pay for immortality, I wonder? I can give you that."
"I'm not interested in living forever."
Kent's grin widened into something smug and secretive. An inadvertent shudder traversed Harry's spine and, despite himself, he leaned closer. Kent drawled, "Who said anything about extending your life?"
~
Harry had never been this distracted in his life—not when he'd been out-voted on a trip to Godric's Hallow, not even when he'd had to choose Horcruxes over the Deathly Hallows. This was another sort of obsession altogether, reminiscent of his sixth year at Hogwarts, haunting Draco Malfoy's every step.
Kent Breckenridge had sold him a very intriguing artefact indeed, one that Harry hadn't been able to pass up. It was a single strand of hair, so pale as to be colourless, and silky soft. It bore more than a passing resemblance to Veela hair, but Harry was a wandmaker and quite familiar with that type of hair and the magic it generated. This was not a Veela hair. In fact, Harry had never felt a magic so strong, so base and unchecked as the magic emitted from that thin, silvery hair.
The hair was bound in the centre of a golden pentacle, so as to keep it from expelling a vast amount of magic all at once and causing a disturbance the likes of which the Auror Corps would frown upon. Harry kept it on a thick cord of leather around his neck, tucked into his shirt. He liked the feel of the magic pulsing into his chest, although he knew it probably wasn't the best idea to expose himself to it so fully before he had carried out his research.
Unfortunately, useful information about this hair was few and far between. He'd gone to the wizarding section of The British Library, but that had been an exercise in futility. Even the Hogwarts library restricted section turned up nothing. Rather, he'd found more information on Horcruxes than he did about this hair. Or, to be more precise, the creature that had shed it.
A Green Man...
This was something that Harry knew nothing about. He'd never even heard of the creature, although Hagrid's ideas about what constituted a good magical creatures lesson were very much lacking, anyway. But for the constant and immense flow of power from the hair in the pentacle, Harry might have presumed himself duped. However, he knew better—this Green Man was very, very real; it just happened to be something that someone didn't want anyone else to know about.
Sighing, Harry picked up the pentacle lying on the bedspread and turned it in the pale streak of moonlight slanting in through the blinds. He was tempted to ask Hermione, but that didn't seem like a good idea. She would get hung up on where he'd got the hair and have a fit. Probably, she wouldn't even look into it, but would notify the proper authorities. Whoever they were—Harry wasn't certain. His first thought had been the officials in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Then he'd thought better of it. Would they have the knowledge or means to control a creature so rare and powerful? It was doubtful.
"Damn him; I have to go back," Harry swore, dropping the pentacle on the bed. It bounced a moment, and then settled.
"Perhaps you're looking in the wrong places?"
Harry startled, his heart jumping into his throat, and grabbed his elder stick from where it rested against the bed. His gaze fell upon Doppel-Draco's wry smirk, and a flush crept up the back of his neck as he put his stick back down.
"What do you know?" he said, sitting up onto his elbows. "You're just a reflection."
"Rather, not a reflection at all—what am I reflecting? You? Don't make me sick, Potter."
"Oh, ha, that's a good one, Draco. Beg pardon while I forget to laugh." Doppel-Draco pursed his lips and turned his head, his eyes flashing an eerie blue-grey in the darkness. There was no light shining down on the mirror, so Harry supposed that bright flash had come from within. It made him feel anxious, and he sat upright and let his hand fall down to finger his stick. "What are you, then?"
"We went over this before, yes?" came the impatient reply. "I am a messenger. I offer you guidance."
"So your shape—is that all a figment of my imagination?"
"If you expect messages to come out of your imagination, you should be locked away in St. Mungo's, Potter."
"You know what I meant!"
"Well..."
"So, if you've got a message for me, let's hear it."
Doppel-Draco shrugged and said, awkwardly, "I can't just...It's not... like that."
"What is it like then, if not like that?"
"Don't mock me!"
The insistent screech of Doppel-Draco's voice took Harry aback. He opened his mouth to respond, but the image winked away and suddenly was much, much closer and much, much more frightening. Doppel-Draco hovered before him, his eyes flashing that terrible blue-grey again, with electric bolts of magic crackling all around his ephemeral form. The intense heat radiating off him made sweat break out on Harry's brow. Harry grabbed his elder stick and scrambled back.
"Don't you dare mock me, Potter! I'll—I'll kill you!" Doppel-Draco shouted, raising both hands as clotted knots of white-hot power writhed around them. His silvery complexion took on a flush of colour, making him seem more real and more dangerous. "Do you understand me? I'll kill you!"
Harry nodded, but despite that, he advanced again. Then, the bedroom door slammed open and a purple-robed Auror flew into the room, hexes flying. Great clanking chains and manacles flew out of the tip of the Auror's wand, shooting towards Doppel-Draco, who winked out of existence just as easily as he winked in it. The chains dropped uselessly to the floor. The air sizzled with power in Doppel-Draco's wake.
Scrambling, Harry tossed his elder stick behind his bed and kicked the pentacle under the bunched up covers at the end of the bed. Only then did he turn his attention to the Auror in his bedroom door—Susan Bones—and Ollivander, who hovered behind her, looking frazzled with fear.
Susan came into the room and glanced about herself in confusion. Susan shook her head and inched forward into the steamy, static hot-zone Doppel-Draco had left behind. Her long, straight red hair stood on end. She touched it, her apprehension showing ever more on her face and in her jerky movements. "I was sure I... But there's nobody here!"
Harry glanced at his wardrobe mirror, where Doppel-Draco sat crossed-legged, gripping his ankles in white-knuckled fists, his eyes averted. Susan followed Harry's gaze and started.
At first, Harry wondered if she could see Draco, too, but then she started patting the crow's feet at her eyes. She rushed over to the wardrobe for a better look, her expression first frantic, then fearful, then resigned. She turned back, her mouth set in a resolute frown and gestured to Harry and Ollivander, telling them both to leave the premises immediately. Then she whipped out her wand and shot off a dove Patronus, which fled through the bedroom window.
Harry quietly asked if he could change into a robe before vacating the room, and she urged him on. He grabbed the pentacle under the pretence of searching for the socks he'd kicked off, and then grabbed jeans, a shirt, and trainers from the closet. Doppel-Draco had the good grace to look abashed when Harry shot him a baleful glower.
Several other Aurors arrived and commandeered Harry's narrow boat. Harry and Ollivander went next door to Dean and Luna's, and they all sat over coffee and avoided the topic of the Auror invasion of Harry's bedroom. Then an Auror with a notepad arrived and asked for a moment alone with Harry to take his statement. Harry was certain that his complete inability to answer a single question or describe what happened or what it had felt like didn't impress the Auror in the slightest; probably, it only made him suspicious.
Finally, after several hours, the Aurors retreated and Harry and Ollivander were allowed back in the house. Harry rubbed at the tension in his trapezius and shuffled into his bedroom without a word to Ollivander. Once inside, he locked the door and threw himself on his bed. Doppel-Draco still sat in the same position as before, his eyes bright as they looked out over the room.
"Sorry, Potter," he mumbled, fidgeting with his bell sleeves. "I shouldn't have threatened you. I just... I don't like to be mocked."
"I wasn't mocking you," Harry replied. "You're very immature, you know? Your little temper tantrum could've got me into a lot of trouble."
"I made certain they didn't find your wand," Doppel-Draco insisted. "That redhead—Bones, I think—she was about to find it, but I bewitched her so she'd turn away. Only a very powerful Familiar could do that for you. You're very lucky to have me."
"You're my Familiar, are you?" Harry grumbled, burying his face in a pillow. "Merlin, help me! I think I'd rather quit while I'm ahead."
Doppel-Draco huffed until Harry would look at him again, and even then he pouted so much that Harry had to stroke his ego until he preened. He was a very needy little bugger, apparently.
"I'm something like a Familiar, but not exactly. What I am... well, it's hard to say. How do you talk about something when the words have been erased? Like that..."
Harry frowned, the furrows of his brow deepening as he peered over to Doppel-Draco. He was kneeling now, the fabric of his shimmering white robes billowing out behind him like a wind-blown cloak, his soft, pale hair whipped about his head. Harry could feel power pulsating from him again, but this was a subdued power, as if someone had taken it and bound it with adamantine chains. Doppel-Draco's magic called out to Harry, and mingled with Harry's own, until he felt light-headed and confused. It felt like there was somewhere else he ought to be, something urgent he needed to do. "I... have things to tell you," Doppel-Draco whispered. "So many things, but I can't... can't say. I can feel the words in my mouth, but they won't come out. I try to force them until my head hurts so much I can barely remember what I'm fighting it for. Then the words dry up and crumple like spent leaves, so I just... swallow them instead."
"Draco, that's not natural."
"No, it's not," he sighed.
"I mean, it almost sounds like you're—but you aren't, are you? Cursed?"
Doppel-Draco made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat and shook his head. His eyes flashed again, but then they widened in fear and he stood up stiffly. His robes tore into long, fringy strips and twined around him and hardened, like a grooved tree trunk. He held his hands straight overhead as his fingers elongated and twisted out, and his hair stood on end. He whispered, "I have to go," before winking out of existence.
Harry stared for a long moment after he was gone, feeling the strange, familiar magic recede. It left him feeling empty, drained.
Yet, more than that, he was worried. Doppel-Draco had looked absolutely terrified, but of what, Harry could not fathom. He remembered that moment when Doppel-Draco had flown out of his mirror, ripping magic from the very air itself. This form of Draco seemed so powerful, so dangerous that it was hard to imagine there was something even scarier than that. Whatever it was, though, Harry hoped he could help Doppel-Draco escape it. Nobody should live their life in fear.
~
Ron came by the next morning, determined to hear about what had happened the night before and check that Harry was all right. He kept insisting that Harry go to St. Mungo's for a check-up, but Harry refused, claiming that he'd never felt better. The queer part was that, despite his fear for Doppel-Draco and confusion over what had happened in his bedroom, he did feel quite all right.
Lingering shocks of Doppel-Draco's magic—the good, subdued kind, that is—pulsed through him still, rejuvenating him. His muscles didn't ache, his head seemed clear of cluttered thoughts, and his elder stick worked better than ever before. Whatever it was about Doppel-Draco's magic that appealed to his own, it was like a concentrated Invigoration Draught without the overwhelming crash a few hours later. Certainly, that was not something that called for a trip to see the Healers, was it?
Ron was adamant, however. He wouldn't hear reason, and, finally, Harry pressed him for an explanation. What came rushing out of his mouth, however, was not at all what Harry had expected to hear, and it took the winds out of Harry's sails.
Susan Bones was the lead Auror investigating the string of mysterious deaths that were rocking the wizarding world. She'd answered a call about a disturbance at Alastor Gumboil's house. He had been head of the Hit Wizardry division of Magical Law Enforcement, and quite adept with his wand to boot. Yet Susan had found him withered into nothing on his couch, sitting in a tranquil position that indicated his death had been swift and unexpected.
In the succeeding days, more calls of magical disturbances came in, and all turned up queer, unexplainable deaths. At first, there was no indication of foul play, so they presumed it was the result of a freak magical phenomena. Then an unusual magical signature was picked up at one of the crime scenes. After they back-tracked and found it at every other place of death, all the cases were ruled as homicides. As Susan told Harry, whatever had left behind the magical signature at the other crime scenes had left small traces of it on Harry's bed.
Shocked and horrified, Harry's hand fluttered up to his chest to grab the pentacle he wore beneath his shirt. Of a sudden, Harry couldn't breathe. He bent double and held his head between his legs, gasping for air. His chest burned with a slow-moving fire that crept through his torso, over his spine, out to his limbs and head. His cheeks seared him, and his jaw ached from clenching his teeth so he wouldn't scream.
Misreading his reaction, Ron ushered Harry to a chair and tried to reassure him that everything was all right, that nobody believed he was the murderer. In fact, Harry's magical signature was all over his narrow boat, and it didn't match the small sample they'd collected from his bedclothes in the slightest.
Eventually, Harry pulled himself together again, thanked Ron for his concern, and insisted that he had an appointment to make. Ron watched him warily as he left, and Harry could feel Ron's gaze trained on his back. He ignored it.
Once out on the dock by his gate, Harry gripped his elder stick, sheathed on his lower leg, where it fit in his jeans, and Apparated to Knockturn Alley.
Kent didn't have any customers this time, and he took Harry to the back room through a Portkey disguised as a tassel on the drapes framing a portrait of a busty, tow-headed witch. Harry pressed him for information about Green Men and the hair he'd bought, and Kent smiled smugly and told him what little he knew.
It was only once Harry was out in the heat of the summer sun again that he remembered the non-disclosure agreement, and how he'd need to find information from a secondary source to be able to discuss it.
Still, he supposed, it was a start. Otherwise he'd never have turned his attention to Hogwarts' History.
~
Harry sagged in relief when Doppel-Draco returned, looking none the worse for the wear. Harry didn't even care that he was stuck in the library again. All the researchers sitting nearby his table met his quiet exclamation of joy with disdain, and he scowled at them until they turned back to their own books. Doppel-Draco, distorted in the gleam of the waxy tabletop, smirked at him in amusement and then gestured imperiously to the table.
Obliging the unspoken request, Harry transfigured the table to a high-finish polished metal and Doppel-Draco's image cleared. Directly across the room at a chestnut desk, the librarian glowered at him, but he waved her off. It wasn't like he didn't plan to remove the charm before leaving.
Moving his stacks of books to block the view to his table, Harry bent his head and whispered, "Are you okay? What was it that drove you off like that? I kept looking for you...I was worried."
Doppel-Draco batted his lashes, and said, "How sweet."
His tone lacked mirth, however, and Harry could see that he was still frightened. He had a habit of fidgeting with his clothes when he was anxious, and the brooding look hadn't yet left his eyes.
Heaving a sigh, Doppel-Draco settled himself into a more comfortable position and pushed back the sleeves on his overlarge robes. The robes shifted around, and dipped over his collarbone. A dark mark, puffy and runny, marred his sternum, and Harry clenched his hands into fists and bit his lip so as not to scream.
"Someone branded you?" he hissed.
Doppel-Draco jolted in surprise and shifted his robes back to cover the mark. His eyes shone with dismay and fear, and he shook his head fiercely.
"It didn't hurt," he rushed out. "I didn't even feel it, really. It just looks bad, but... it's not so bad. Well—it could've been a lot worse, anyway. They could've felled—" He cut himself off and his face scrunched up and turned dark red, and he seemed to struggle with some unseen force. Finally, he deflated and his shoulders sagged a bit. "I shouldn't..." he whispered, ducking his head forward so that his long fringe hid his eyes.
Harry asked Doppel-Draco where he was and who had branded him, but again the doppelgänger couldn't speak. His eyes flashed and he shook his head, twisting his fingers in his pale robes.
"It's okay... This is much better than the alternative, anyway. Please don't be angry," he said, unable to look Harry in the eyes.
"There is no way in the world it's acceptable for someone to brand you!"
"I didn't say it was acceptable," Doppel-Draco said. "I only said it could've been worse—a lot worse. And that's still true. I... What I did..." He trailed off and sank back, looking defeated.
An unexpected emotion kindled awake inside of Harry at the pitiful sight of him. The Draco he knew never was so meek, never accepted defeated. And the few times Harry actually had seen him look vulnerable... well, Harry didn't really want to think about that, but suffice to say that he'd been in a terrible position, then. If his circumstances now were anything like the ones that had humbled him before, Harry knew he'd have to help Doppel-Draco out of that awful situation. Somehow. It was a little difficult when Doppel-Draco was too frightened to talk about it, or had been rendered incapable of divulging secrets. What had he said about words being erased?
Harry was reminded of the Green Man hair again. And wasn't that a whole other trunk full of troubles? He couldn't handle it all at once. He just would have to prioritize.
Doppel-Draco first, he decided. He seemed to be in more imminent danger than thousands of nameless faces. Besides, the Aurors already were investigating those strange deaths. Hermione might have something about letting the authorities do their jobs. They were trained; he was not, and Draco needed him much more.
"Listen," Harry said, peering down at the tabletop. "I'm going to ask you a very important question, and I need you to answer to the best of your ability, understand?" Shifting to his knees to draw closer, Doppel-Draco nodded. "Good. First things first—are you the real Draco, and not just a doppelgänger or Familiar?"
No response was forthcoming for a long time, although Doppel-Draco's face contorted as if he were in tremendous pain. His eyes welled up with tears and he trembled violently. When he reached out, Harry didn't need to think before pressing his hand against Doppel-Draco's reflection and opening himself up to the force of the subdued power from before.
This time, it roared through him, seeming almost unchecked despite the heavier binds encasing it. Harry gasped at the feel of it, feeling his cheeks heat. Every nerve-ending in his body felt alight. It was an overwhelming, jittery feeling, but he did not pull back.
Rather, he held on for all he was worth. Their connection seemed to bring Doppel-Draco to life as well as Harry's nerves. Whereas before he had seemed a faint, ghostly image, now he was infused with colour and vitality. His silver eyes glowed bright green.
Then he forced out, "Yes," in a raspy, disused voice. "I am Draco."
"Are you trapped somewhere?"
"Trapped—have to go—"
"Not yet!" Harry yelled. Draco started, glanced beyond Harry as if there were something looming right behind him, and then gave a fitful nod. Harry wasted no more time, and said, all in one breath. "Is someone holding you against your will? Do you know where you are? Do you have—"
"They lock me up—make me sleep—it's always dark—please, have to go!"
"No!" Despite Harry's insistence, Draco tried pulling out of the magical link between them. Frantic at the thought of losing him too soon, Harry clamped down and refused to let him go. "Where are you? Do you know?"
"Lonely place—dark and wet—old place—please, go?"
Draco was begging, and Harry's heart hammered in his chest. Lonely place? What did that mean? He wanted to help but he needed more information.
"I'm going to find you, but you have to tell me something. Where are you? Who's keeping you there? How? Anything!"
Draco twitched about, seeming to battle with some magical Goliath. His magic curled fully around Harry's own in an excruciating embrace that had Harry gnawing through his lower lip. Droplets of blood pooled on Draco's reflection. But the touch of his magic seemed to lend Draco strength. He drew on another wellspring of power, making the bonds holding it in burst open entirely.
"It's the elder coven—the Whyggis!" he said; and then he was shrieking in pain and curling in on himself in a protective huddle. Whips of fire cracked down all around him, writhed over every inch of him as he screeched for mercy from his attackers. The last fragile tendril of Draco's magic clinging to Harry's own slipped away; and then Draco was gone.
Leaping up, Harry stumbled a few feet away from the table and heaved. Yellow streams of bile burned his throat, leaving an awful taste in his mouth on their way to splatter across the floor. When he was through convulsing, he stood hunched over, trying to breathe. He rubbed idly at the hollow ache stemming deep in his gut. He remembered Draco, so small and vulnerable and hurting, and had to squeeze his eyes shut so he didn't cry.
~
When he returned home, an owl was sitting on the rail, a letter on the deck beneath it. Harry picked up the letter and trudged inside. He glanced at his wardrobe mirror as he set his library books aside, but Draco was not there.
Sighing, he curled up on his bed and went to sleep, hoping Draco would be back in the morning. He wasn't. Anxiety worked through Harry. And the guilt was immense. He had pushed Draco to that point by trying to pump him for information. And a fat lot of good it did, too! He still didn't know where to go, how to help...
With few other alternatives, Harry bunkered down to read. That's the path Hermione had always taken and she'd turned out lucky more often than not.
He spent the morning in his room, casting occasional glances at his mirror. By the time his stomach started to growl, he tossed his useless books aside, however, and went to get some lunch. He stepped on an envelope on his way out of the room and remembered the owl from the night before. The envelope bore the Ministry seal. He tore into it, frowning irritably. It read.
Dear Mr. Potter,
At your urging, I have reviewed your magical bond and have concluded that no mistake was made. Once again, I offer my congratulations. Please note that your presence is now required at the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures tomorrow at your earliest convenience. I look forward to seeing you here. Non-compliance with the summons may result in fines.
Sincerely,
Terrance L. Boot
Registrar
Grumbling about idiotic bureaucrats, Harry tossed the letter and proceeded to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich and soup. He could hear Ollivander murmuring with a client in the nearby office, so tried to keep his movements quiet.
After awhile, the office door opened and Ollivander stepped out, showing a portly, greying wizard to the door. Soon, Ollivander returned and sat with him.
"Have you had any luck breaking your wand?"
"Hmm?"
Ollivander's eyes glimmered with mirth and he tilted his head to have a better look at Harry—or, perhaps, Harry's magic. Ollivander's fingers twitched in that telltale way that Harry was familiar with; he was playing the waves of magic like the taut strings of a harp.
Shrugging, Harry said, "Given that up. My priorities have changed."
"Yes, I can see that."
"Outside of a consult, it's terribly rude to engage someone's magic uninvited," Harry drawled as he withdrew his magic into himself. He still could feel the last touches of Draco's magic and he didn't want anything erasing them. If he were going to save Draco, he'd need all of his wits about him, and a wandmaker's skill for playing, manipulating, and engaging people's innate magic without their noticing was a powerful weapon to have—one he couldn't afford to lose.
"Beg pardon," Ollivander said, his insincerity blatant. "I sometimes forget how snippy you can be when it comes to affairs of the heart. But have you considered that this old hat might yet know a few helpful tricks?" Ollivander then smiled, showing uneven yellow and missing teeth. "I know what you're hiding."
"Then you know how much it means to me."
"I might, at that," Ollivander mused. "Tell me, boy, when have I ever been a stickler for the rules?"
"Not since I've known you, I'd say," Harry answered.
"Old families," Ollivander laughed as he rose, "tell intriguing tales. The older the family, the more intriguing the tales. And my family is one of the oldest. Right next to the Malfoys and the Sangsters, almost."
"Sangsters," Harry repeated. "Never heard of 'em."
"No, you wouldn't have... Some take care their names are never erased from history; some take care their names are." Then Ollivander went to the counter where the foodstuffs still were laid out, and began making a gargantuan sandwich. "I think tomorrow I'll tour my family estate and conduct my yearly inventory. I could use a good pair of legs and a strong back, lad."
"All right, then," Harry said absentmindedly. "I have a few errands until then."
"Go on, I won't hold you."
Harry headed into the office. He penned another letter to Boot. This was longer than the last, explaining in embarrassing detail that his only new bond was with an unwanted elder stick that fancied itself a wand, not a magical creature, and that whatever equipment used to monitor new bonds was defective. He sealed it and then sent it off with his owl.
When he returned to his room to continue studying, he received a pleasant shock. Doppel-Draco sat in the mirror, hugging his legs to his chest.
He looked peaked and pale and his eyes were the awful blue-grey as they were when he was angry. His skin shimmered as if someone had rubbed him down with fairy dust, but no scars were visible; even the brand-mark from before was gone. And he was naked. Silver cuffs locked around his wrists and ankles and he wore a heavy torque around his neck. He long hair billowed back, seeming caught on a non-existent breeze.
At the sight of him, Harry exclaimed in joy and rushed over. Kneeling in front of the mirror, Harry raised a hand to the cool surface. Doppel-Draco struggled as if caught in a vise, but then mimicked the gesture. Their magic caressed, but Draco's was a low hum, barely a fraction of what it once had been, even subdued. Harry frowned.
"What happened?"
"They stripped me—tore me down," Draco said, his face flushing with shame. His voice was thick. "I'm so tired, Harry. I think of all the things I've yet to do, and I wonder... Would it be better to sleep? If they put me to sleep, what would it hurt?"
"Don't talk like that! It's okay—everything will be fine. I'm going to find you and take good care of you, okay? And make those bastards pay for what they did to you!"
"Find me?" said Doppel-Draco. His eyes went wide and he shook his head. "You can't—they'll hurt you. You can't get into trouble with these people, Harry. They're dangerous! They've been at this for generations already. Do you think it means anything to kidnap people and lock us away like animals? Do you think it bothers them to kill whoever gets in their way? They cast Fiendfyre about like Lumos, Harry; and when it's all done they patch me up and tell me to be a good boy next time. That's the kind of people you'd be going up against. I can't let you do that."
"I'm not worried about that. I'm worried about you. What they're doing to you is wrong. And it's not your choice whether I help you. It's mine. And I've chosen."
Doppel-Draco glanced away raised his shoulder in an awkward, pained shrug. "I did this to myself, you know. I was... I was foolish. I thought I could do anything I wanted, and it came back to bite me... You shouldn't risk your life for me. It's not worth it."
"You don't really believe that. Whatever happened to I am made of awesome?"
"Well, I am made of awesome, obviously," said Doppel-Draco, flushing scarlet. Harry's gaze caught the colour as it the colour spread down his neck and pale, toned chest. Doppel-Draco was more fit than Harry had expected—he was quite skinny and angular, still, but there were hard, flat planes to him as well.
His cheeks hot, Harry jerked his head up to look Doppel-Draco in the eye. But Doppel-Draco's head was back and his eyes were closed. He was brooding. Harry had never seen such a sharp, calculating expression on his face, even in sixth year. It made Harry wonder what he was thinking.
"I'll help you as best as I can," Draco said. "They fear me. That's why they're so eager to keep me contained. I've got more burn scars than anybody else here." His brow furrowed and he opened his eyes again, staring at the pendant around Harry's neck. "As long as you have your wand and... and that... You'll be well protected, I guess. Then you can play the hero all you like."
Clutching the pendant through the fabric of his shirt, Harry said, "You mean that they're afraid of Green Men?" Draco smirked. "Really?"
"Deathly afraid, in fact—as they should be!" Harry's heart fluttered. "Do you know what a Green Man is, Harry?" When Harry shook his head, Draco continued, "It's a spirit that dwells in the forest."
"Something about immortality?" Harry asked, trying to weasel around the magic of the non-disclosure agreement that kept him from revealing too much.
Doppel-Draco's eyes narrowed. He shifted closer and, again struggling with some unseen vise, gritted out, "It is primordial magic. It is dark and heavy and inescapable. It has no light of its own, but can suck in and steal the light of others. It is the lemniscate and the ouroboros, and the coil of the continuum. It is... limitless—purpose and power." His eyes darted, and then his hand pushed through the mirror and placed a filmy, misty hand over Harry's, still gripping the pendant. A sudden rush of power pulled through Harry's hand, shot straight through it as if it weren't there to connect with Draco, who smiled fondly, although it was strained around the eyes. "They didn't expect me to have friends," Doppel-Draco said. "They moved me next to one of their oldest prisoners and tied our magic together. They're always pitting us against each other like that, hoping we'll drag each other down. I'm going to make certain they rue the day they ever set that Green Man after me. They thought they had beaten me, finally. But I am a Malfoy. No one beats a Malfoy. "
"I thought you had no familial association," said Harry, furrowing his brow in confusion.
"Oh." Draco withdrew into his mirror and hugged his legs. "They stole it from me, erased the name from use," he murmured. "They put the Taboo on it. Only a proper healer can restore it to me. I miss it so much. I was always so proud of being a Malfoy."
"I know. But won't you lose a year on your life?"
"Ha! That shouldn't bother me, yeah?" Doppel-Draco fell into a laughing fit. Harry watched him, confused by his change in demeanour. It was unfathomable that someone could laugh about something like that. "I mean... you have worked out, right, the things I can't say?"
Harry tilted his face away, toward the ghastly owlish moon gleaming in through the window, reflected over Doppel-Draco's head. He took a moment to think about what Doppel-Draco had said and work out what his response should be. Unfortunately, in that moment, Doppel-Draco startled, cocked his head as if he could hear something that Harry could not, and stood up.
Flushing at Doppel-Draco's nudity, no longer mostly hidden behind the fold of his long legs, Harry kept his face averted.
"I have to go again," Doppel-Draco whispered.
"I know," Harry replied. "I gathered."
"I'll see you again—soon, probably. Unless they figure out what I'm up to. Then I may have to... hide for awhile... so they don't put me to sleep." He laughed again, but it was bitter. "I've grown so good at hiding, I can hardly figure when to stop. But hiding is better than... sleeping."
The word sounded like a malevolent hiss. Jerking back toward the mirror, Harry took a stumbling step forward and stilled with his hand against the cool surface, right over Doppel-Draco's chest. Doppel-Draco looked him in the eye, and Harry stared back, mesmerized.
"You mean they'll kill you?"
Doppel-Draco smirked, his eyes twinkling with mirth. "Oh, no. They've no idea how, really. I like to mock them and trip them over roots, watch them shuffle like foals newly born... Have you ever seen a Centaur foal, Potter?" Harry shook his head, feeling bemused. "It's like running through surf on jelly-legs...I'm sure you're familiar with that jinx?"
"Too familiar," he admitted.
"Well, it's been an interesting night. I almost thought..." Doppel-Draco ducked his head so his long fringe fell in his eyes and shrugged. "Watch that trunk's edge, why don't you, before you poke your eye out the back of your skull? There's only so much the Healers can patch you up before you start looking and acting like Old Mad-Eye. So, then!"
He winked away, leaving Harry mystified as to what he meant by that last. Trunk's edge? he wondered. Doppel-Draco had stared into Harry's eyes as if he could see through them, beyond them, to all the sights yet unseen, words yet unsaid, deeds yet undone...
Sighing, Harry turned away and flopped on the person-shaped spot on his bed of books. He swiftly steadied a few piles that threatened to topple over and returned to his reading to see if he could puzzle something out about the Green Man or the lonely place that Doppel-Draco had mentioned before.
~
Yawning himself awake, Harry rolled over and planted his face firmly in an open book. It was stifling and the text was a bit dusty, so he jerked back, nose twitching, and sneezed himself fully alert. Sniffling from the excess, he blinked down at the book, groaned, and shoved it over the side of the bed, idly palming his face and wondering if he had ink smudges.
It had been a long night and looked to be an even longer day rifling through Ollivander's heirlooms. He'd thumbed through book after book about Hogwarts' history and magical creatures last night, and for the most part he'd had no luck.
However, there had been one text that seemed promising. It was Runic, and Harry had spent hours translating a small passage properly. Magical runes were curious things—each new word changed the meaning of the last. People usually read them backwards to get a vague idea of the text before going forwards again—or so Hermione claimed. She was the one with the real runes experience, after all; it came from working as a Reviser for the Invisibility Squad at the Ministry. He only bothered with runes because he needed them to decipher some of the older wandlore. Finally, he had succeeded—although he was iffy about a word here and there—and clonked out.
Fishing for his glasses, Harry gathered his wits and then glanced at his wardrobe mirror to see if Doppel-Draco was there. Upon finding himself alone, he got up and went to use the loo. Only once his bladder was lighter and his breath fresher did he pick up the parchment of translations to peruse. It was always a good idea to sleep on something and then return to it for closer consideration.
The paper in his hand was crumpled and smudged, and his handwriting grew sloppier by the line, tapering down on a significant curve—evidence of his grogginess. Still, it was legible enough. It read:
The siege is upon us and our walls weaken. The Lady, ever wise and tempered, was the one to suggest at last what we all had long avoided, myself especially. I am not eager to see the mystes roll out of the forest, even for the survival of this academy and all who dwell in within the fortress. I wonder, what shall come once our deed is done? And I tremble in despair. I have heard tales—and they are terrible.
In the Darkness, a garden flourished, thick and lovely and sweet. The men who dwelt in trees therein knew neither sorrow nor shame, neither hunger nor hurt, neither weariness nor want, neither despair nor death. Milk and honey sustained them. Gods whispered truths in the winds that rocked them. Magic loved them and obeyed their whims. And they were at ease. This was the first world of man.
The dawn of Light destroyed their world, yet they flourished on, dwelling among others unlike them—men as we, who have lost the capacity of the elders and so now know vice, suffering and death—and learnt their names and truths, which gave them power. But the men envied and hated these strange, immortal beings, and sought to exploit them to their own ends, but this only led to ruin and death. So the elder ones retreated to their forests to dwell in trees and sleep, and there they remained and were forgotten.
I cannot help but think that is where they belong. They were not made for our world. I shudder to think of them unleashed on us again. Should we make tools of them to defeat our enemies, what will they do to us in turn when our enemies are gone? Their powers are fearsome—they are creatures of darkness; they have no light of their own, so steal the light of others. They do not know death intimately, but may deal it out with a single touch. They do not suffer, yet at a glance understand and exploit the suffering of others. They labour for nothing, but leech gain of another's pains. There is no place for such creatures in our world. They would drive us all to despair and destruction.
There was potential in that excerpt. This was the first text he'd come across that spoke of the Green Men openly. All others seemed unaware of their very existence, let alone of the characteristics that defined them. However, if what was contained in this excerpt was true, Harry could fully understand why Draco's captors feared Green Men—he feared them, too. They sounded like awful, parasitic things.
A knock came at his bedroom door, drawing Harry out of his musings. He called out to Ollivander that he would be ready to go in another twenty minutes, and rushed into the bathroom to have a quick shower. Once done, he hurriedly towelled off and donned an old pair of jeans and a t-shirt he didn't care about ruining. He wasn't certain what state Ollivander's old relics would be in, but he doubted finding answers would be easy if the ramshackle disorder of Ollivander's store was anything to go by. Harry had spent hours organizing wands and sweeping out dust and cobwebs once a fortnight during his apprenticeship, but Ollivander never bothered to put anything where it was meant to go, so the mess encroached again and again. That was one of the things Harry had hated about studying under such an absentminded wand-making genius. Harry wasn't even a neat freak himself, so it was rather telling that Ollivander's simply was too messy for him. He didn't even want to think about peeking in his guestroom while the old man was inhabiting it.
When he went out into the common quarters, he saw that Ollivander had made a quick breakfast of sausage and peppers with toast. They ate in silence, and Harry kept returning to his translation about Green Men and what little Doppel-Draco could reveal about the matter. As they ate and Harry thought, Ollivander kept staring at him with those shrewd moonlike eyes. It made Harry a bit uncomfortable, to be honest. He swallowed his last bite of sausage like a lump in his throat and stood, pulling a tight smile. Ollivander stood with him, fingers twitching.
Then Ollivander took his arm and pulled him into the office, to the large, person-sized fireplace, which he'd had built in specifically to give Floo access. Ollivander turned his wand on the logs lying in the grate and cast a fierce Incendio. Lively flames licked at the top and back of the hearth. A light sweat broke out on Harry's brow as he leaned in to fetch the clay jar of Floo Powder from the mantle.
Tossing in a pinch of grainy powder, Harry stepped back to let Ollivander sweep through. He called out the address, The Crossed Wands, and was gone in a flash of green light.
Harry followed suit, watching the different grates swirl around him. Then, the fire spat Harry out like a spark cracking in the air, and he stumbled into a cobwebby room with a wooden chandelier that dangled precariously from a frayed cord. A fat ghost in long, austere robes floated in circles around the chandelier. Harry grew dizzy just watching him.
Chuckling in amusement, Ollivander stepped out from the shadow of the hearth and greeted his ghostly ancestor. The ghost didn't even pause in his rotation around the chandelier as he lifted a hand and huffed out, "Password?"
"Here is childhood's end."
As if a brick wall rose up before him, the ghost stopped suddenly. Then he made a slow turn and peered at Ollivander, his eyes shining with fear. He asked to hear the password again, and when Ollivander repeated it, the ghost actually shook. Whatever those words meant to him had to be simply awful if they could frighten a ghost.
Ollivander's deceased ancestor turned back to the chandelier and darted up through the ceiling. After a few seconds, the chandelier began to swing on its frayed rope. Harry glanced sideways to see Ollivander. Ollivander's face was upturned to the chandelier, but he didn't seem concerned about the way it rocked. In fact, he wore a secretive smile. When Harry started to ask what was going on, Ollivander merely held up a hand to silence him. Uncertain, Harry kept quiet and turned back to the chandelier.
It was going faster now. The frayed rope split fibres and creaked. The ceiling dipped under its weight.
Harry wasn't in the least surprised when it snapped altogether and chandelier crashed to the floor. Faint curls of smoke from the extinguished candles rose up to the gaping hole in the ceiling. Harry had expected to peer up into the framework of the ceiling, or even beyond into the room above. Instead, however, a white light shone down through the hole. It grew more brilliant every second.
Clapping a hand on Harry's shoulder, Ollivander urged him forward, into the ray of light. Surprisingly, the touch of the light on his skin felt cool rather than warm, and he pressed his fingers against the curve of his biceps, marvelling at the chill. He could feel magic in the light—it was a strange, abrasive magic that made him feel as if his skin were being chafed away.
"Close your eyes," Ollivander said.
"What?"
"Close your eyes against the light or it'll blind you as it passes into the darkness."
Harry did so. It kept growing brighter anyway, and had begun to make his eyes ache, even through his eyelids. He had to throw a hand over his eyes to keep them from throbbing with pain.
The magic of the light grew more abrasive. He felt spread thin, shredded. It became almost painful. He squirmed, and started to move away, but Ollivander yanked him back. Harry cringed and bit his tongue.
Then, before he even realized what was happening, the magic receded. Harry dropped his hand from his face to see if the light still burned through his eyelids. It didn't, so he opened his eyes and checked out his surroundings, idly rubbing at the raw feeling of his arms.
It was dark now, damp and chill. Running water sounded nearby, and, when Harry stepped toward the sound, a thick brush crunched underfoot. He rocked back on his heels and turned to Ollivander curiously. Though Ollivander stood close by, Harry could barely make him out in the pressing darkness. He frowned.
"I told you once before that my family always has kept a tree farm," he said.
"Yes," Harry replied slowly. He took a few blind steps to his left, arms outstretched, and came into contact with the rough bark of a tree. "But you never collected your own wood. You're the one who put me onto the lumber yard. So I thought..."
"Hmm." Ollivander drew closer and put a hand on Harry's shoulder. "I never told you that the trees were meant to be cut. We provide for them—and they reward our tender care."
"How do they... reward you?"
Harry turned and started. Ollivander's eyes illumined the darkness. It was unsettling. Harry was reminded of Doppel-Draco's blue-grey eyes, flashing like strobes, and he withdrew from the kindly old man who'd taught him everything he knew about wands. Harry had always known that Ollivander was fascinated with magic best left alone—dark magic, blood magic, ancient magic—the secrets and lies and gilded frames that came with raw power. But the war had been hard on him, and Ollivander was weak of body, if not frail of heart or mind, and Harry had thought he settled down into a respectable life.
Perhaps not. Ollivander and Dumbledore were much alike. Harry never had known what the older man was thinking—scheming, more like; he was full of schemes and plots—and that should have bothered him. It turned out, Harry hadn't quite learnt his lesson after all.
"They lend me power."
Wind whipped through the wood and the trees rocked and groaned. Rustles whispered through the canopy. Ollivander's gaze followed something in the dark.
Harry spun about to have a better look and saw a flicker of light in the distance, down a long aisle over which hung the scraping, skeletal branches of sad-looking trees. Ollivander put a firm hand on Harry's back and gave him an insistent push forward.
"Let's go. I will show you how to draw them out. They may have answers for you, about your queer little friend."
Ollivander's eyes darted this way and that, and Harry realized that he was watching a ghastly pale mist roll over the horizon, winding along between the thick trunks.
Leaning close, Ollivander whispered, "They speak amongst themselves and share the dreams of those who sleep. They dwell within the continuum. They are collective."
"Who are they?" Harry asked, just as quietly.
Ollivander squeezed Harry's side, his fingers twitching. "Tree spirits... They are the elders."
"You are lying to me," Harry murmured, allowing Ollivander to push him down the path.
"Well," Ollivander laughed, "only in part."
~
Elder trees towered overhead, their white blossoms dotting the darkness of the canopy. Harry craned his head back to study the trees. Several of them were gathered in a clump here, at the end of the narrow aisle; the grooves and knots, lines and curves of the bark gave the impression of seven frowning faces glowering down at him. Harry fidgeted.
The chill of the light burned colder now, with the misty air creeping over his lower arms like ants creeping over his hands. Harry regretted his choice of clothing. The morning mist was thick and gelatinous, rolling over him like slime; whispering winds cut right through him as he huddled beneath a stooped elder tree. Like a mouse, Ollivander scurried through the brush, drawing flaming runes on the trunks of the trees, and Harry shook himself, bouncing on his heels to keep warm. Twiggy debris crunched underfoot, and he realized that he'd heard no animal sounds since he stepped into the forest. It was a disturbing thought. The air thrummed like a taut string, and in the distance, the brooks gurgled, but no birds chirruped, no canines prowled. This misty wood had smothered the life right out of itself.
A resonant hum swelled in the silence. It grew so loud it blared. And, far off, Harry thought he heard laughter—no, pealing bells.
His mouth dropped open and the musk of the air burned his tongue. Turning in a tight, slow circle, he took a moment to better examine his surroundings. It almost reminded him of the Forbidden Forest. Yet, however Forbidden and Dark that place was, it seemed positively lively and welcoming compared to this.
The mists rolled and their current shifted. A blurry blackness burned through them. Even from afar, Harry could taste the thick, medicinal smoke as it wafted through the trees toward him. He cast a quick glance in Ollivander's direction to see that he was still drawing runes and muttering to himself, and then hedged closer to the source of the smoke.
Furry vines snapped out from the canopy to bar his way. They made a web of vibrating energy that pulsed and thrummed with black magic, making it quite clear that he was not welcomed there. He stumbled back.
"Harry," Ollivander said, his voice tense.
"Sorry, I—"
As he turned, the words clumped in his throat and lodged there. The stooped elder tree that Ollivander had been working on now looked as if globules moved beneath the bark. It looked a bit like a man who'd taken Polyjuice Potion and was in the midst of transforming.
The grooves in the tree cracked and split open. Roots burrowed up through the ground and snapped together, twining about one another to make massive lower limbs. The overhead branches creaked as they bent this way and that. Leaves rained down from the canopy into Harry's hair.
Harry stared up in awe. The knots and bumps that had given the impression of a face now twitched into one, and the tree rocked forward, lurching a few steps before coming to a stop before Harry.
Gasping, Harry took a hesitant step back, but he knew there was nowhere to go. The pulsating vines still blocked his way, and he didn't doubt that should he try to flee another barrier would appear.
But he was not the type to flee from things anyway. He opened his mouth to address the stunned, sleepy looking tree, but then clapped it shut again. He didn't know what to say. He glanced to Ollivander for help, but Ollivander only held up a hand, indicating he should wait. He did.
The tree shook itself, branches tangling and canopy hissing. Then, as the tree stretched and opened its mouth—its mouth, Harry thought, bewildered—and yawned, a thin silvery vapour drifted out.
It settled before Harry, shaped like a broad-shouldered man. Steadily, it grew firmer, more colourful, until it looked just like any other person he might see walking through London. Except this person was naked and still had flaming runes glowing on his chest.
"Hello," Harry said, waving lamely. The man cocked his head. His eyes were golden and piercing, and as his long grey hair blew back on a breeze, they seemed to peer right through him. Harry's stomach flopped. He shouldn't have said anything.
"Harry has befriended an elder tree," Ollivander said, moving to stand by Harry's side. Harry was grateful for his presence there. It made him feel a little less transparent to the spirit before him.
"The sapling is rather resilient, after all," the man said. He turned to gaze through the mists and said, absentmindedly, "It is green, too, like a little garden snake, and just as cunning."
"You know of him, then?" said Ollivander.
"I've seen through your minds."
That was less than comforting for Harry. He shifted back on his heels again, as if to put more room between them, though it wouldn't have helped anyway. This place was disquieting. He wished he were home. But for Doppel-Draco, he thought, he could endure this queer encounter. The tree spirit didn't seem the type to mince words, after all.
"Um," Harry said. "I wondered if you could... help me somehow? Tell me something about what's happening to him?"
"You wish me to contact him?"
"If you can," Harry said. "He's trapped somewhere, and the people who are holding him there... They—they torture him."
"I see."
Admittedly, the man was a tree, but Harry had expected a different reaction than the bland and dismissive one he'd received. He wondered if the spirit even cared what had happened to Draco, and why Ollivander would bring him here if not. He clenched his jaw, his hands at his sides. As he moved, he felt the elder stick, sheathed on his thigh; it leant him strength.
"Could you tell me... anything?" he insisted.
"It is called the Forlorn Garden, this place where your sapling is trapped and tortured. He is imprisoned in a tree."
"Like you?" Harry asked, glancing over the man's shoulder to the stooped elder from which he'd come. It lumbered there, seeming...plant-like. That was even more queer than when it had grown limbs and distinguished a face.
"I am not imprisoned. I chose to dwell within the tree. He would rather dwell among your kind... The ones who have taken him are cruel. They believe it is best to lock him away like this." Harry frowned. He remembered Dumbledore's talk of the greater good, and felt his stomach roil with nausea. "Long ago, we who dwelt in trees went out into the world. Long ago, we dwelt among your kind. But there we were misunderstood and maltreated, so we chose to leave." Smiling sadly, the spirit shook his head and looked Harry full in the eye again. "Well, most of us chose to leave... Some of us chose to hide."
"Hide?"
"Among your kind, boy. They pretended to be like you. Then one day they were... Your sapling's family was borne of one of our kind who chose to pass as a man. You will have to ask your sapling how he came to awaken his magic one day. He is hiding this much from me."
"I didn't think you could hide within a collective," Harry murmured.
"It is difficult but doable. There are so many of us, you need only shield yourself behind the others... But, even were that not so, your sapling is not a part of the collective yet. They have stolen his family from him and put him in thrall of the Taboo. That is how they managed to trap him at all. As I said, he is resilient and cunning. He will do what it takes to free himself from that lonely place." The spirit bowed his head. "To enter the land of the forsaken, one must die; likewise, to leave the land of the forsaken, one must be reborn anew. Only the waters of life can accomplish such a powerful transformation and elevate the soul beyond that hellish threshold. Because you have come here to aid one of our own, we will allow you to pass and take a chalice. But beware the curse of greed."
"I am not greedy," Harry said. "I don't want to live forever. I only want to bring him back safely."
"We will hold you to that. The sapling knows your name, and so I do. That gives me power over you. I will suffer neither lie nor betrayal."
"I've already sworn myself to the one person that matters," Harry said, grinding his teeth.
The tree spirit looked at him for a moment, and then nodded. He raised his hand. "The waters are there."
Harry turned to look behind himself, where the tree spirit had pointed. An orange fire burned through the furry vines that had sprung out to block his path earlier. Even the mists receded through the wood. Harry could see a light beyond there, flickering and golden. When he turned back to thank the spirit, the man was gone, and the stooped elder settled back into its place, knotted, bumpy face still and silence once again.
~
Harry stumbled into his bathroom, stripping off layers of dust and clothes. His muscles ached and his head was pounding. After collecting water from the brook in a goblet, Ollivander had ushered him into the house again where they dug through some of the family's archives, searching out artefacts or books that might be helpful on Harry's unanticipated quest.
The bathroom filled up with steam and Harry stepped under the hot spray. He lingered in the shower awhile, allowing the hot water to soothe the soreness from his body. When he finally emerged, an hour later, in a white mist, Doppel-Draco glanced up from the wardrobe mirror and cocked his head. His stare was curious and calculating, slowly creeping over every inch of Harry's wet body. Harry was distinctly aware that he was clad only in a loosely fixed towel. He felt glad of the flush from the shower, else Doppel-Draco might have noticed the heat of embarrassment as it spread over his upper body.
Fidgeting with the towel to keep it from falling, Harry hurried over to his wardrobe and swiftly donned pyjamas, uncaring how it stuck to his damp skin and patches of moisture spread over the soft cotton. Once clothed, he felt more comfortable. He threw a few pillows and blankets on the floor in front of the wardrobe mirror to lounge on.
Doppel-Draco was better dressed this time. He wore a thin shroud, and, despite being mostly sheer white cloth, it allowed for the illusion of modesty. He laid on his stomach and propped himself up on an elbow.
"I nearly broke my neck, you know," Harry said conversationally, "tripping over a trunk in Ollivander's attic. How'd you know?"
"I know you," Doppel-Draco hummed, his lips curving into a secretive smile. He looked better than the last time Harry had seen him, healthy and well-rested and vibrant. Even the Mona Lisa smile was a welcome sight. "More than you realize—I know you...Klutz."
"Hmm." Doppel-Draco's gaze slithered over toward the bedside table where the goblet of water sat, then drew back to Harry. "Were they unkind to you?"
"They think I've given up," He said, shrugging. "My friend helps me to keep unnoticed. He's very good to me. Without him..."
"I see...That's good news, you know, someone is looking out for you until I find you."
"Do you worry for me?"
"You know that."
Doppel-Draco lowered his gaze and drew his fingers across the surface of the mirror idly. He said, "Do you wonder about me?"
Rolling onto his side, Harry pushed himself up and scooted closer to the mirror, drawing a flannel blanket around his shoulders. He pressed his fingertips to the lush curve of Doppel-Draco's mouth, seeking to engage his magic.
It started as a trickle, a dribble of magic coursing down his own. Then there came a stronger rush of magic, streaming steadily into him. It was a cosy, familiar feeling, like two bodies cuddling together, guiding each other through a breathtaking haze of contentment.
Harry could feel Doppel-Draco's soft lips beneath his fingertips, full and pouted and moist. They curved in a slight, lopsided smile, and Harry closed his eyes against the sight which shook him. It was overwhelming even to feel the alternating moist heat and chill of Doppel-Draco's every breath against his fingers. But if he kept looking at that most unexpected smile, he thought he might crumble.
"I think about you all the time now," Harry said, his voice low and uneven.
"Do you want to save me?"
"Of course!"
"I see."
Doppel-Draco lowered his gaze and his smile fell. Harry pressed more insistently against him, but despite the plumpness of Doppel-Draco's mouth against his fingertips, the mirror remained cold and unyielding. Harry made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat, and Doppel-Draco glanced up, surprised. His eyes flew wide and flashed that queer blue-grey which Harry was gradually growing accustomed to; it seemed far less unnerving each time he saw it, and became something he fondly associated with his doppelgänger.
"You say you always think about me, that you want to save me. Sometimes you say you want to take care of me. But I am not a child, Potter, whatever my situation."
"I know you're not a child. Not everything is as cut-and-dry as you would like it to be. There are ways and ways to want to protect someone. I know they hurt you."
"So you think I will never come back from this?"
"Nobody deserves what they do to you, Draco. Nobody!"
"I've protected myself for so long."
Harry couldn't help but roll his eyes and laugh. "You've never done very well looking after yourself, and you know it!"
"No," Doppel-Draco admitted. Harry's eyes slanted over to the mirror, and he watched a flush creep up Doppel-Draco's cheeks. "Well, I suppose I can hardly fault you for wanting to protect me. It's never easy to... watch someone suffer, or to... cause suffering. I learnt that lesson well enough during the war."
"Draco—"
"The problem, Harry, is that I want to protect you far more than I want to protect myself. The last time I felt that way..."
"Hey," Harry said, sitting up again and staring Draco full in the eye. "Don't worry so much. We'll look out for each other. Now's my turn."
Harry's heart gave a little thrill when the smile returned, brightening Draco's face. His fingers began to itch with the desire to touch as it curved wider and Draco's eyes gleamed.
"Do you want me, Harry?"
"Yes!" The word gushed out of him, and he took in another deep breath before he could go on. "Yes, I do want... you."
Doppel-Draco's answering smile was absolutely brilliant, and Harry found himself momentarily breathless again as he stared. Then the magic between them cut itself off abruptly as Doppel-Draco withdrew to kneel upright, and Harry reluctantly let his hand fall away.
"I'm going to come through."
"You can do that without alerting the Aurors or your guards?"
"Of course! It's difficult, and I can't do it often, or they'll definitely notice, but... I never said I was a reflection of anything, you know. I'm not bound to the mirror. It just anchors me, helps me to deflect the power I have to use to visit you so they don't realize what I'm up to."
"Oh," Harry said. "Maybe you shouldn't," he started to say after a few seconds more. He didn't want Doppel-Draco to get into any more trouble with these people than he was already in. He didn't want Doppel-Draco to end up hurt again, like he had the last time.
Yet, when Doppel-Draco made an imperious gesture for him to move out of the way, Harry's protest died in his throat and he scooted back. The surface of the mirror rippled as Doppel-Draco stepped through it, and thick strands of molten metal and glass stuck to him and stretched after him. He plucked them off one by one, and they pinged back into the mirror and hardened as before. Harry watched them settle curiously.
Then Doppel-Draco cleared his throat, and Harry tore his gaze away from the mirror and looked up at the doppelgänger. He stood, pale and silvery as a ghost, except he didn't float midair as they did. Instead, his feet were planted firmly on the ground.
Only his eyes had any colour. They were the blue-grey as before, and they glowed like embers in ash. Harry's chest and throat constricted as Harry stared up at him, and he scrambled to his feet.
"It's better if I dim my appearance," Doppel-Draco said as he went to sit on the edge of Harry's bed. "Unless it disturbs you to see me like this? It's a very ghastly look, I'll admit."
"No," Harry croaked.
He joined Doppel-Draco on the edge of the bed and tentatively reached out to him. Harry had feared that Doppel-Draco might feel strange somehow, but his skin was soft, his flesh firm and warm, his muscles tight. His hand curled around Doppel-Draco's upper arm and gripped tight. Doppel-Draco smirked at him, a knowing look in his eyes.
"Do you want to kiss me, Harry?"
"Oh, shut up!" Harry groused, flopping back on the bed. He reached for a pillow to yank over his burning face, but when he realized they were all on the floor, he grumbled and reluctantly pulled out his elder stick to Accio them back. They sailed through the air and neatly piled themselves over his head. He felt Doppel-Draco's gaze trained on him, and the heat of his face redoubled so he very nearly sweltered beneath his fluffed-up mask.
"You can kiss me once I'm free," Doppel-Draco continued easily. "I should like it to be done properly, you know."
Biting down on the pillow directly over his face, Harry grunted his response.
"What?" Doppel-Draco demanded, batting the pillows away. He crawled up the bed and leaned over Harry, and Harry stared up into his eyes. They were like the oceans at the first sliver of dawn, when a tempest rose and kicked up the sludgy seafloor—they were murky slate, both frightening and beautiful in the most eerie of ways.
"I said when I kiss you good and proper, you had better swoon," Harry lied.
"I shall see about swooning," Draco laughed as he flopped onto his side and stretched out over the bed. "Although the thought of anyone swooning over the Golden Boy regularly makes me nauseous—well, that might do just as well, actually, to make me keel over in your arms when you pucker up."
"What was that? You've been daydreaming about kissing me? How long has this been going on?"
"You wish, Potter." Doppel-Draco said and thwacked him in the shoulder. Harry curled onto his side because he laughed so hard his stomach hurt. It was not long until he laughed himself breathless, and a comfortable silence spread between them, broken only when Doppel-Draco yawned. "It's been so long since I've slept in a bed, it seems. I'd forgotten how nice it is..."
"Yeah," Harry replied. Suddenly he felt queasy.
The reminder of Doppel-Draco's current situation made his stomach twist into anxious knots. How could he rest easily knowing that someone was making Draco suffer? How could he carry on a humdrum farce when Draco lived in fear?
"Would you like to stay here?" he asked. "Could you?"
"Hmm... I'll have to return to the mirror, soon. It's exhausting, trying to deflect the light on my own."
"Oh. Right. I don't know what I was thinking."
"I wasn't aware you made thinking a habit," drawled Doppel-Draco. Harry grunted. "Besides, if you leave it to me, Potter, you might find—"
"Are you a Green Man?" As he asked the question, Harry rolled onto his side and propped himself on his elbow to have a better look at Doppel-Draco. His eyes dipped away for a moment, and he pursed his lips, but he didn't seem to be struggling with any magical compulsion as he once had before. Harry wondered at the ease with which he nodded.
"Are you still going to help me now that you know?" Doppel-Draco wouldn't meet Harry's eyes, and Harry's heart seized. He hadn't intended to frighten Doppel-Draco, but he needed to know what he was really up against. Yet, Doppel-Draco's voice had sounded so small and wounded, and his question had completely thrown Harry off. "I'll understand if you don't want to... I—I can't really hurt you like this, you know. But if you—"
"You don't really believe I'd leave you there to suffer?" Doppel-Draco glanced up briefly, and a blush suffused his cheeks. It was queer to see the flush of colour upon his silvery complexion, and Harry couldn't help but draw his fingers down the heated curves of Doppel-Draco's cheek and neck. "At the very least, you should expect your proper kiss..."
"I couldn't tell you... But I also was afraid to tell you however much the spell would allow. I thought..."
"I know what you thought," Harry sighed. "I promise to draw you ought of the darkness."
"Even so, you could never draw the darkness out of me. I have become... a strange and powerful creature. I am not like the boy you knew. I can never be like that again."
"That doesn't concern me. I am not the boy you knew, either. I can never be like that again. That is the way of the world, Draco, to turn and grow and change." For a long time, Draco did not answer, but Harry watched him patient silence. "Why do they fear you so much? Are you allowed to say?"
"I wasn't born this way," Doppel-Draco replied. "I was made this way, through a ritual that activates latent magic. It makes me stronger than most. There were parts of the elders that were dormant, but these qualities are fully awakened in me... You have to understand that the elders are what wizards could have been, had they the power, just as wizards are what Muggles could have been if they had magic. Every part of my magic is active, but for the elders only about thirty percent of their magic is active, and for wizards, it's even less—fifteen percent, at a stretch, but most scholars agree that it's more like ten percent... That's why they're so afraid of me—they don't understand what I am."
"Who really understands what they are?"
Doppel-Draco looked up at him. "Well, I don't, anyway," he said, and laughed.
~
When Harry awoke the next morning, Doppel-Draco was back in his mirror. Harry yawned and sat up, peering blearily across the room. He was befuddled to see Doppel-Draco still here, and said, "Did you stay all night?"
"I left before they made rounds at dawn," he replied, shrugging. Then he pointed to the desk. "You've a message."
Harry glanced over to see an owl with a familiar-looking sealed envelope and tried not to groan. He flopped back and worked his hands through his hair. "I thought you were my messenger."
"Your messenger, your Familiar, your worst nightmare, yes... Are you in need of some guidance, Potter? I could call on the powers that be, but I doubt they'd cut the red tape for you."
As if in agreement, the owl squawked and fluttered over to sit on the bedpost. Harry tried to flag it off, but it remained resolute, and, finally, he grumbled and accepted the letter.
Dear Mr. Potter,
I have investigated the nature of your magical bond once more and again have concluded that no mistake was made. Please report to the Ministry of Magic, Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, at your earliest convenience today between 10:00am and 6:00pm. I will be expecting you, and we can discuss your magical bond in more depth. Non-compliance with the summons will result in fines. It would be conducive to clearing the confusion if you showed up this time.
Sincerely,
Terrance L. Boot
Registrar
Growling with annoyance, Harry crumpled the letter and tossed it aside. He spat invectives for idiotic bureaucrats and their ridiculous protocols. This was an unnecessary diversion from the urgent task at hand, and Harry felt like he could clock Boot in the face as soon as look at him.
"Bad news, I take it?" said Doppel-Draco.
Harry cast him a baleful glower before stomping into the bathroom and slamming the door. He yanked his pyjama top overhead and startled when he saw Doppel-Draco smiling cheekily at him from his medicine cabinet mirror.
"Locked doors can't keep me out, you realize," he drawled.
Harry scowled. "I'd like to shower in peace. So sod off."
His words were terse, bitten through clenched teeth. Doppel-Draco started at the harsh sound of his voice, and Harry realized that he was taking his frustrations and feelings of helplessness out on the wrong person—on the person who needed him to be understanding, strong and smart, at that.
Heaving a sigh, Harry added, "Look, the DRCC is breathing down my neck, claiming I've mated to some creature or other when I've only got a new wand. I shouldn't have snapped at you, though."
"The DRCC," Doppel-Draco murmured. His eyes flashed and he glanced away, staring off thoughtfully. Intrigued by his reaction, Harry leaned against the sink and asked what he was thinking. Doppel-Draco's mouth curved into a wry grin. "Nothing. I think I'll go with you, if you don't mind. I might be able to help you—if I can learn something new about Green Men."
"Oh!" Harry said, flushing.
He hadn't even looked at the situation like that. If anyone had access to classified information about Green Men, it would be someone in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.
This could actually be a useful excursion. Most of the information about Green Men seemed to have been erased from history, which left Harry out in the cold as far as his research went. He was still despairingly ignorant about what Green Men were, what the Forlorn Garden was, and what this elder coven that Doppel-Draco mentioned was and why they hated Green Men so much to track, kidnap and imprison innocent people.
Now that he had an excuse to go to the Ministry, however, Doppel-Draco could slink from room to room and hunt down something useful. Whatever the elder coven was, they were powerful enough to keep the majority of the public in the dark, but the Ministry usually was very good at keeping ancient records.
"So, I'll leave you then," Doppel-Draco said. He stood and, with a flurry of his gossamer robes, winked out of the mirror.
Turning away, Harry reached over the claw-foot tub and started the shower. Once the water was steamy, he stepped in and began to soap up. Despite his initial irritability over the meeting, now Harry was rather eager to get to the Ministry of Magic. He couldn't wait to get Doppel-Draco back home, either, and pump him for information.
After a quick shower and change of clothes, and Harry stood before his wardrobe mirror and fixed the pentacle with the Green Man hair in it around his neck. He cast several glamour, notice-me-not, and dampening spells on it, to prevent anyone from taking an interest in it. He knew that it would be best to carry it on his person; he didn't want Ollivander to come across it. That man was sneaky on his best days and had always been fascinated with power in whatever form it took—white or black magic.
"You'll follow me?" he asked, pressing a hand to the mirror. Doppel-Draco flagged him off, so Harry Apparated.
The atrium of the Ministry of Magic was light and airy, and a fairly large crowd bustled through. The marble gleamed in the sunlight slanting through the high, arched windows and a cloud of paper airplane inter-office memos fluttered overhead.
There was a long line at reception, and Harry got stuck behind a burly witch with hazel green eyes. She was quite chatty and annoying, and kept stepping back on his toes and jabbing her elbow into his chest, making Harry twist away so she didn't come into contact with his Green Man pentacle.
On her fourth jab, as she scurried back to let a school of wizards pass on their way toward the row of fireplaces against the far wall, she pressed bodily against him and stiffened. Harry cursed under his breath as he shoved her off in the pretence of steadying her, but not before the skin of her face drew tight and leathery, shining in the morning light, and crow's feet crinkled at the corners of her eyes.
"Ma'am?" Harry said, trying to keep his voice even.
She shook her head bemusedly and her double chin jiggled. Harry swallowed the knot that had worked its way into his throat and croaked out, "Are you all right?"
"Yes, just fine," she managed, sounding dazed.
The impatient line that stretched behind jostled them forward, and the witch bumped into the reception desk and gave her name. Harry stood a few steps behind, taking deep, even breaths. He glanced to the metal light fixture behind the welcome-witch's head and saw Doppel-Draco frowning down at the woman. Harry managed a weak smile.
He felt somewhat dizzy and jittery himself. Despite the charms he'd cast earlier, the pentacle at his chest pulsated with power. He engaged it with his own magic, so as not to let it escape into the hall at large, for fear of what it might do or the unwanted attention it might attract. The age that had crept into the hazel-eyed witch's face frightened him. He didn't know what kept the power of the Green Man's hair at bay when it concerned him, or why it so indiscriminately killed at a single touch. He couldn't even ask Doppel-Draco for the information, either; he doubted Doppel-Draco would know any more than he.
"Sir?"
Harry startled and glanced to the welcome witch, who was glowering at him impatiently. Belatedly, he realized he'd been holding up the line and smiled a sheepish smile.
"Sorry. I'm here to see Terrance Boot, Reg—"
"Yes, fourth floor."
"Er, thanks," Harry said, taken aback by the brusque disdain in the woman's voice. She pointed across the atrium to the lifts and hurriedly measured his wand—the old holly-and-phoenix feather, of course; he couldn't hand over his silly elder branch and expect not to get any strange looks, could he?
Harry shuffled away, trying to refrain from keeping a hand over his chest, where the pentacle rested heavily, steady streams of magic gushing through him.
Luckily, he didn't have any other encounters on the lift, though it was a little cramped, with seven wizards and their briefcases squeezed inside. He was glad when the golden doors slid open and he slipped out, alongside a pretty Asian woman with scales down the nape of her neck.
Another granite reception desk sat in the lobby of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, and a skinny, pallid man sat behind. His lank, black hair was greasy and his pale grey eyes were bloodshot and weary, quite unlike Doppel-Draco's lively, shining grey. The man cast Harry a bleary smile as he approached, and Harry bit back his surprised gasp as white fangs were revealed.
Desperately, he tried to rein in the urge to blurt out something ridiculously obvious, and gave his name to the vampire instead. The vampire nodded him back down the hall to the corner office on the left, and Harry purposefully gazed at his dirty shoelaces rather than the motley magical creatures sitting in waiting area behind the granite desk.
A brass plaque proclaiming Boot's name and title was screwed onto the mahogany door. Doppel-Draco's face was distorted in the curve of the capital R in Registrar, as he said, "I'm going to snoop. Play nice with the pencil-pusher, why don't you?" Harry glowered at him, and Doppel-Draco laughed joyfully and stuck out his tongue before winking away.
Harry knocked tentatively, and the door swung back.
"Ah, Harry Potter! I thought I'd never see you here," said Boot with a cheery smile as he slapped a hand on Harry's shoulder and gave him a light push into the room.
Boot had a nice office. It had a wall of windows, which, though they didn't look out onto the streets as most windows in the Ministry of Magic, were enchanted. This one displayed a beautiful forestry scene, complete with ancient, towering trees, budding canopies, and clopping Centaurs. Harry watched a foal skitter through the brush as he sat, and remembered laughing with Doppel-Draco about just that.
The thought of Doppel-Draco, however, was like a shot of cold water in the face, jolting him back to the matter at hand. The longer he kept Boot talking, the more time Doppel-Draco would have to sneak around and the more chances he would have to pick up useful information about Green Men. Otherwise...
Harry didn't want to think about the alternative. He trained his gaze on Terry Boot as he poured two cups of coffee from a conjured service and made small talk about the Creatures' Rights rally in London and the tragic Fiendfyre in Hogsmeade a few days ago, which had displaced far more magical creatures than those three families that had been written up in the Prophet. Harry murmured the appropriate platitudes and sipped at the coffee when Boot placed it before him and tried not to think about the whips of Fiendfyre that had cracked down around Doppel-Draco days ago as well.
"So, shall we get started?" Boot asked, pulling open a drawer on his desk. He pulled out a neat stack of manila folders and a golden phoenix feather quill. "I understand you feel there has been some sort of misunderstanding regarding the nature of your bond?"
"Yes," Harry said. The saucer clattered when Harry set his cup down a little harsher than necessary. "I must admit I'm not certain how this happened at all. Is your machine so sensitive that it recognizes wand-bonding, too? I've never heard of anything like that in all my studies."
Boot countered with a far too bright smile. "Yes, you are a wandmaker, aren't you? I've a nephew who recently went to Hogwarts with one of yours. He's overjoyed with his results."
"I only sell first wands to near Squibs," Harry said, bemused. Boot nodded once, his smile never wavering, and Harry's face flamed. "Sorry, I didn't think...How is the wand holding up for him? I said he should contact me if he needed some adjustments...There are ways to manipulate the wand-bond even after it's formed."
"You would know more about that than I."
"I would be happy to look at it."
"I'll pass that message along; my sister will be delighted... Actually, you mentioned a wand-bond might be the cause of this... mistake?"
Harry noted how he said the word mistake, as if he were placating Harry's temper with its use. Clearly, this was going to be a harder fight than Boot's letter had led him to believe. Harry gritted his teeth.
Apparently Boot had turned into quite the bureaucrat—one who believed so fully in the vapid red-taped system that he couldn't fathom a system error ever occurring.
"It was the only thing I could think of that might've triggered the register," Harry replied evenly. "You never said if your machine was sensitive enough to pick something like this up?"
Boot leaned forward in his seat and pierced Harry with an intent and calculating stare. He said, tentatively, "Here's the problem, Mr. Potter: we don't use a machine to register new magical bonds at all. You might be thinking about the book and quill that registers magical births at Hogwarts?"
"I thought it would be something similar."
"Magical bonds are far more subtle than magical births," Boot explained. "You've heard of the magical continuum?"
"What's that got to do with anything?" Harry said.
"We are, each of us, tapped into magic as a whole, but only very slightly, although some are more deeply entrenched than others. It's enough to allow us to utilize magic as we see fit—that's why Squibs are born, as well as Muggleborns, and why we see such a variance in the power levels of different people; we don't all relate to magic in the same way. A powerful wizard such as yourself would be more entwined in the continuum than most others. Do you follow still?"
Harry nodded for him to continue.
"Naturally, there are some who have stronger connections to the continuum than even you. These people are the ones with the ability to detect magical bonds as they form, by scouting out the distortion of the continuum as the magic of one person connects to the magic of another and flagging the magical signatures of each person for closer evaluation. So you see, we will need to have a closer look at your wand and determine why your bond is so strong, or if this is truly what our sensors detected."
~
"Surely you can tell me something else?" Harry clenched his elder stick in his fist. The bark flaked under his nails with such agonizing depth that blood rimmed each of his cuticles. Through the blur of tears welling in his eyes, the red stain looked like Hermione's chipped varnish when she came back from strengthening the invisibility wards around some of the wizarding world's oldest landmarks. "Maybe you looked in all the wrong places?"
"Maybe," Doppel-Draco drawled. "It's entirely feasible that I looked in all the wrong places. Then again, maybe I looked in the right ones, too. It's hard to see inside of closed filing cabinets."
Harry stared. Were his eyes glimmering, or was that just the sunlight streaming in through the office window and shining against the burnished pitcher of water that hosted his reflection?
"This isn't funny."
"I screamed my throat raw the last time they came at me with their wands blazing. Quite literally—" Doppel-Draco's eyes flashed and he hedged around the pitcher so that his face was distorted on the spout and Harry couldn't make out either of his eyes anymore. Harry gripped the branch tighter. He thought he had splinters, too. "—So much for all my training. The Tangle was nothing compared to that."
"What training are you talking about?" Harry asked, hissing as he uncurled his fingers from around the elder branch. Thin fibres stretched out from the branch, as ripe as any beet. "What's the Tangle?"
"Bit of trivia, Potter: how do you put out the Gumbraithian Fire?"
"Aguamenti," said Harry as he rummaged through his drawers for a pair of tweezers, sucking his teeth at each new jab and stub against notepads, measuring tapes and tubs of rabbit skin glue. He was fairly certain he had several in here, for the odd splinter while paring. "Tip you over and pour you out?"
Harry glanced up in time to see Doppel-Draco flip him the bird. Then he brushed against a little plastic case and Harry nearly whooped for joy as he curled his throbbing fingers around it and yanked back.
"Rather, you don't. You feed it away from you—little known fact... That's one of the tests."
"Haven't taken any tests since Hogwarts," Harry mumbled out of the left side of his mouth. He had to bite down hard on his lower lip on the right side to distract himself from the pain of tweezing beetle-sized javelins from his flesh. "Funny you should be."
"Yes, well, luxuriating in one's own perfection is only satisfactory for so long."
"Of course."
"And then one seeks a little more excitement. I... just found too much, is all."
"Trouble, thy name is Draco."
"But it used to be Harry, you know."
Harry glanced up. Doppel-Draco's image danced in the shards of glass in the refracted dream catcher Luna had given him last Christmas. Dean and Luna were fond of giving handmade gifts that Harry didn't know what to do with, but he could hardly complain—they always asked him to whittle something from the scraps of his logs.
"All I wanted..."
He made no effort to finish the statement. Harry's interest was piqued. Even the hot pain in his fingers dulled in the sudden absence of sound.
"What did you want?" Harry said.
"Nothing." Draco whispered.
"But you can trust me."
"I know..." Still, Doppel-Draco was shifty-eyed and restless, bouncing from window to mantle to pitcher and back to the dream catcher again. "Anyway, the DRCC knows what they're doing, although you might never believe it. I mean, they are quick-quillers, after all. But, if they had sense enough to get a Seer on their side... I'll reserve judgment."
Snorting, and ducking his head back over his bleeding fingers, Harry said, "Since when did you put so much stock in prophecy?"
"It's not the prophecy part of Divinations I care about. Some Seers have the ability to see magic—not just the continuum, you know, but individual magic. It was a Seer who explained what happened to my magic... what happened to me."
"And this Seer?" said Harry as he pulled the last splinter free and heaved a sigh of relief. The tweezers clattered across the desk and fell over the edge. "Dame Dora, by any chance?"
"Hardly a coincidence, I'd say... That's why I told you—it's not worth it, helping me. Everyone who's helped me so far ended up dead. Dame Dora, Althea Xylander—Merlin, even Gumboil!"
The name Gumboil sounded familiar to Harry, and it took him a few moments to remember where he'd heard it before— from Ron, when he'd showed up, demanding that Harry get himself checked out at the hospital after hearing about what happened Susan's call on Harry's narrow boat.
"So you knew Gumboil and Dame Dora?"
"They tried to get me to a safe place," Doppel-Draco murmured, glancing away from Harry. "They didn't deserve what happened to them, Harry. It was... gruesome."
"And Althea Xylander? Who was she? What happened to her?"
"They got to them all," Doppel-Draco sighed. "They killed them, everybody who dared to help me. She was a true healer, one of the few left in the world, and she promised to bind herself to me and restore my name from the Taboo they put on it... They—they wouldn't dare to cross me if I had a true healer on my side. But they got to her before we could finish the ritual."
~
Upon Doppel-Draco's urgings to keep up appearances, Harry opened for business the next day. Thursdays were usually slow days, especially in late June, which would allow him to catch up on his backlog of work. Another shipment of woods was due in next week and he'd barely touched this last supply—aside from the elder stick that had taken him on for a master, he hadn't cracked a single log.
Ollivander was surprised to see him in the office. Harry belatedly realized that he hadn't been to work since Ollivander showed up on the twelfth. He hadn't even bothered to treat his wood, and wouldn't be surprised to find that some, or even most, of it had started to rot out already. Hundreds of galleons wasted away, just like that.
Sighing, Harry hitched up his sign and then retreated to his workroom to sort through the woods, trying to see which were viable and which were salvageable. The ones that were useless to him were set aside for the neighbourhood compost behind the organic grocer's. The rest he stacked in piles according to which woods were in most urgent need of treatment. To his delight, he found that the ebony still could be used. He'd wanted to make three sister wands out of it—triplet wooden shells, individual cores.
Doppel-Draco watched from a small mirror Harry fixed for him over the desk, filling the room with aimless chatter. He was a bit more verbal than Harry had expected, but Harry supposed being locked away in a tree might put a damper on one's social interactions anyway. Talk about cabin fever!
Before he knew it, the morning was over and his stomach rumbled for him to fill it. He headed to the kitchen to make a few gargantuan sandwiches and thought about heading over to the corner café for a bite of brownie cheesecake as a reward for all his hard work today.
He'd just dropped his used dishes in the sink to be cleaned later and gone out onto the deck when he spotted two women unlatching his gate. Biting back a disappointed curse, he plastered a smile on his face and welcomed them to his shop.
Fluffing her curly brown hair, one of the women said, "I hope you don't mind that I stopped by. It looked like you were coming out to close down for the day?"
"No, no, just finished breaking for lunch, actually," Harry said. "It's good to see you again, Maxie. You look much better than the last time I saw you."
"I really acted the beech, didn't I?" she said, drawling the word beech out to sound like a curse. Harry shrugged, laughing with her. "I was just in the neighbourhood visiting some relatives and thought I should stop by and thank you for helping me take control of my wand. It works like a dream, now—and hasn't lost its charm, either!"
"That's good news."
"This is my cousin, Misty. She's thinking about getting a wand here."
"Something sweet-tempered and sunny," Misty supplied with a grin. "I've about had enough of blasting and stinging hexes!"
"Um, right this way, then," Harry said. "I'll need to take some measurements and examine your old wand and your magic a bit. You've about an hour or two to spare?"
They both nodded and followed him down to his office. Ollivander was already in there, jotting notes in the sunlight slanting through the windows. His eyes caught a flare of light when he stood to excuse himself, and he cut an eerie glare across Harry as he passed into the adjacent kitchen. Harry watched him leave, bemused, but startled again when the couch creaked as Maxie and Misty sat down.
"What brings you here for a wand?" Harry asked as he pulled out his charmed tape measure. "Er, please stand, arms out to the side, would you?"
Misty obeyed, watching keen-eyed as the tape measure curled under her arms, wrapped around her shoulders, then wound between her fingers. When she answered, however, her smile grew tight.
"Looking for a change of pace from the same-old, really."
"I see."
Harry remembered going through the same process with Maxie, and how tight-lipped she'd been about the probative questions he'd asked. It seemed like the cousin was going to be just as secretive about the spells she cast most regularly. Perhaps they both worked as Unspeakables?
"There's a form of questions," Harry said, rifling through his drawers in search of it. He slammed the bottom drawer shut and frowned. "Looks like I'm all out. I'll just go get another stack from storage. It'll only be a moment. Please sit. I'll bring back tea."
He slipped out through the kitchen, where Ollivander sat peering moodily at the door, and then squeezed around his former Master's chair to get through to the back rooms. Doppel-Draco was lounging in his frame when Harry came in, and he rolled his eyes.
"Took you long enough! What were you eating, a life-sized gingerbread house?"
"Some customers came while I was out. There were plenty of pans in the kitchen for you to play in. I know how nosy you are."
"Rather skittish about flames," Draco snapped. "Why don't you try being brought down by giant ropes of them again and again and see how eager you are to sit in a pot of boiling water. I think it's quite enough I kept silent while you disfigured helpless tree after helpless tree for your own gain. It's perfectly possible to make magical wands out of other source materials—like ceramics!"
"We're in the office, if you're interested," Harry said, rolling his eyes.
Doppel-Draco huffed in indignation, but then muttered, "I'll meet you in there."
"Of course."
Harry opened the filing cabinet by the storage closet and pulled out a box of forms. It shut with a tinny clatter, and he headed back to the office. He paused briefly to charm the kettle and china along the way, and then bypassed Ollivander, whose gaze skipped along the copper pots hanging from the overhead pot rack.
Maxie and Misty whispered heatedly between themselves as Harry returned, and he hung back by the door and cleared his throat. His eyes caught on the fragmented dream catcher over the window, where Doppel-Draco appeared, his eyes glistening with trepidation. Then, in a wink, he was gone.
Harry staggered forward, dropping the box of forms, drawing Maxie and Misty's attention. Papers flew up into the air and swayed on the air currents. "Harry, are you all right?" Maxie said softly.
"Forgot something, sorry," he mumbled, spinning about and racing from the room.
He checked the kitchen, the workroom, and finally his bedroom, to no avail. Harry worried that something was wrong—that something had happened in the Forlorn Garden, like the times before. Flopping on his bed, he held his head in his hands and took a few deep breaths. It did little to soothe him.
"So he's fled, then?"
Harry glanced to the door, where Ollivander leaned against the jamb, arms crossed over his chest. His knowing eyes rested on the wardrobe mirror.
"Your little friend?" Harry nodded, glancing at the mirror with dread. He wondered how long it would be before Doppel-Draco returned again. The last prolonged absence had nearly driven him mad.
"How did you know?"
"I've been studying his magic for some time now. It has a very strong pull. He creates a sizeable depression in the continuum whenever he's around. It's all very fascinating. I would expect great things."
"Oh." Harry swallowed a lump trying to harden in his throat. "Yeah, he's rather powerful. I don't think he realizes just how much this changed him."
"Whatever the circumstance may be, it would stand to reason he can take care of himself. He's managed this much, at least."
"He does better when people are there to look after him. He's never been a whiz on his own." Harry clenched his hands into fists, the bite of his nails on his palm helping to keep his head clear of panic. "If they hurt him," he seethed.
"He'll be fine for now," Ollivander said. "See to your customers. Get them out of here, and fast. The rest will come later, I think."
"Yeah," Harry said, standing up. His palms itched when he unfurled his fingers so he wiped his hands on his trousers. Ollivander watched, keen and calculating. "I've got to..." Harry jerked his hand in the direction of the office, and Ollivander allowed him to pass.
~
"Why did you run out like that?"
The night wind howled through rattling windows and kicked back the wardrobe door. Doppel-Draco's mirror rocked precariously on the hook, scrapping a pale arc into the bureau.
"Are you going to answer me?"
"What do you want me to say?"
A miserable, meek quality suffused Doppel-Draco's voice. Harry didn't like it at all. Draco was colourful and cocky—not this knee-hugging waif two blinks away from bawling.
"The truth, maybe? Are you familiar with the concept?"
He'd thought the off-colour snark might spark a bit of attitude, but Doppel-Draco just glanced aside and cringed. Harry hated the way he stared off as if to allow some gnawing pain to pass, but kept quiet. He'd never felt better when his friends hovered over him during his weak and vulnerable moments and doubted Draco was the sort to enjoy mothering attentions in such situations either.
Sighing, Harry sat back on his heels to give Doppel-Draco space, resolving to let him speak first. The wind beating against the narrow boat filled the silence until long after Harry's knees started to ache and he had to switch to lying on his stomach. He began to think Doppel-Draco wouldn't answer him after all.
It was hours before he said, "I was afraid."
"Of what?"
"That they'd found me out..."
"Something happened in the Garden?"
Doppel-Draco shook his head. "I watched them fell trees far older and stronger than mine... It's not how wizards do it—they don't just chop us down. What they do to us is so much worse, Harry!
"I have nightmares when they make me sleep. Just the same one over and over again."
"What—do you want to talk about it, maybe?"
Shining eyes met his own, and Harry scooted closer, pressed his hand against the glass for comfort. Doppel-Draco shuddered.
"It's so bright out that my head throbs and the light burns through my eyelids. The heat of it dries me out. Leaves turn brown and flake off. Branches start to rot... Then, when I'm a deformed hull, and I start to think it can't get any worse, they come out with their knives flashing in the sunlight and flay me like all the others. They strip away everything that I am... until there's nothing left."
"I won't let that happen to you."
"I hope not. When they stripped the bark before, that was awful enough." A smile wavered across his lips and faded. "But mostly I worry about you."
"Me?" Harry's voice sounded loud and splintered. "Why would you have to worry about me? I'm fine. You're the one who's..."
"I thought they'd come to kill you," he whispered.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Earlier today, when I ran. I made a disturbance in the Garden so nobody would think... I knew you'd be safe from them as long as you had the wand and pentacle, so it just seemed like the best thing to do to leave. If they'd got you, Harry..."
Harry frowned and curled his fingers against the mirror, wishing he could push through and touch Doppel-Draco, caress and comfort him.
"Who did you think would get me out here?"
"Maxie and Misty. They're the ones who kidnapped me and brought me to the Forlorn Garden."
~
Mid-afternoon on the twenty-fifth, a horn blared, making Harry jump and rake the gouge across the back of his hand. Hissing in a deep breath, Harry sucked his bloody knuckles into his mouth and leaned over the desk to peer out the window. Barley leaned back against the post from which his sign hung, flipping through the pages on his clipboard. Harry rolled his eyes and kicked his chair back to head outside.
Barley glanced up, squinting against the glare of the sunlight reflecting off the sparkling river, and waved as Harry jumped down to the dock. He hedged back toward his cart, stacked with several wooden crates and a few raw logs strapped against the back.
"These for me?" Harry asked, rubbing his uncut hand down the grooved bark of a hawthorn.
He peeked up through his fringe when Barley grunted and came around to unhook them. Harry stood back to let him unload them safely onto the dock and levitate them up to the tool bench on the upper deck of the narrow boat, where Harry cut overlarge logs in preparation for storage.
Weaving along the windows of the narrow boat, Doppel-Draco followed Barley around, a curious expression of dismay on his face as the logs were stacked by the rack of circular table saws. Living in a tree was getting to him more than he let on, it seemed; Harry had thought he'd been joking when grumbling about Harry's profession, but perhaps not... Would he even be able to use his old hawthorn wand upon his reintroduction to society?
"So, that's all for today, then," Barley said as he thundered back down the ramp. "Three weeks again? Any special requests, or just the usual?"
"Usual should do," Harry murmured. He took the clipboard when Barley waved it under his nose and signed his name to the invoice slip with a quick scribble. He tore off the carbon copy and shoved it in his back pocket. "If you can get more ebony, I wouldn't turn it down, mind," he added, laughing.
"Of course; you know I'm always on the look-out for you. Have to earn my Christmas bonus."
"Ah, you know I love you."
Barley stepped behind the cart and grabbed the handle. His wand gleamed in the morning light as he raised it to Apparate.
"Quick question, then," said Harry. Barley's arm fell and he cocked his head toward the narrow boat. Harry realized his own gaze had kept flicking back toward the window where Doppel-Draco sat pouting. He turned his face to the delivery man, straining not to glance away again and feed Barley's bemusement. "How'd you come across the elder?"
"I was on the detail hunt," he said. "Probably won't be able to get you some more of that, you know. There aren't enough galleons in Gringotts to impel me to cut an elder tree!"
"No, I was just curious. It was on the ground? It was very fresh."
"Funny thing, I tripped over it... but the sweep was over and I was fairly certain it hadn't been there before. We don't even have elder on the plantation. Nasty, powerful stuff. And inefficient for the yard."
"Right," Harry said. "That is funny."
"So, Friday?"
Harry nodded and waved him off. The crack of his Apparition prompted Dean to poke his head out the window, and he called Harry over.
Jogging to his dock, Harry said, "What can I do for you?"
"I've got a few heavy pieces coming in on Monday. You free to help me set them up? Last time Tarry unloaded them right on the street. Nearly drained my magic dry, getting them all inside."
"Sure, no problem."
"Thanks, man."
Dean's gaze shifted over Harry's head and he scowled, looking angry enough to spit. Harry peered over his shoulder. A Pegasus-drawn wagon circled about and landed in the quarter, scattering a few people lounging there sunning themselves or throwing Frisbees to their dogs. The grasses churned to mud underneath their clopping hoofed feet as they beat a path to the street.
"Money-grubbing fuckers," said Dean, watching the covered wagon turn the corner onto the main road, leading up to the commercialized north side of the quad. "Do you believe the Parkinsons opened an organic grocers on Squid Street?"
"Hadn't heard about it, to be honest." Dean cast him an annoyed look. "I've got a lot on my mind lately. What's with that? We don't need two grocers right around the corner from each other."
"You're telling me? They've got this four-storey building with a green garden right out back. Fifteen people working in there!" Dean sniffed with disdain. "They're just trying to run Mum and Da Sanger out of business, the sleazy goblin-hearted runespoors!"
"Wow. That's disgusting," Harry said.
He wondered what would happen if anyone tried to modernize the wand-making industry. Wand-making was a difficult skill and required a steady hand and a keen eye for magical interaction, but so had broom-design, once upon a time. The Comet Trading Company had turned that around, and the wizarding world had embraced the factory, despite its usual reluctance to accept change.
"How are the Sangers taking it?"
"Ha! They're not—Luna was over there last night, helping them plan out their protest, and they've got a lot of support in the community, so... You'll be there, right, to give the Parkinsons what-for?"
"Yeah. When is it?"
"Saturday next."
"Fine. For Monday, just give me a Floo when you're ready. I'll be in the lab. See you tonight. I've got to unload this wood; already let most of the last rot out on me."
Dean made a pained face. "Good luck," he said, and ducked back into his house.
Harry jogged back to his own house and pounded up the ramp to the deck. He knew the crate could wait, so he focused on getting the raw logs cracked down to size for storage so they wouldn't have to sit out in the elements. Doppel-Draco sat cross-legged in the window, the sunlight crowning his head turning his hair to blinding white. He leaned closer with interest as Harry pulled open a drawer on the tool bar and fetched a pair of goggles. A log levitated up onto the sawbuck beside him. He raised his head in time to see Doppel-Draco tremble.
"Maybe you shouldn't watch," he said, fingering the hand saw.
"I'm fine," Doppel-Draco gritted between clenched teeth.
"You're sure?" Harry replied. He raised the saw to the log on the buck and the metallic teeth bit into the wood. Bracing himself with his feet splayed apart, Harry pushed his weight forward, his arms straining and muscles tensing against the hem of his sleeves. Doppel-Draco's eyes widened and he disappeared in a wink.
~
Several copies of the Evening Prophet were spread over the low-lying coffee table in the living room when Harry came in. A few scrapbooks were stacked nearby in tall columns that toppled over onto the couches and chairs and wrinkled some of the newspaper and magazine clippings. Laughing, Harry helped Dean clear off the couches and chairs so everybody could find places to sit.
"What's she chasing now?" Harry asked around the pile of scrapbooks he carried to the second bedroom. It was intended as Luna and Dean's workspace, but their projects usually spilled over into the rest of the house.
"Some sort of tree spirit," Dean grunted as he shoved a huge box of old albums and paintings down the hall. Harry's heart seized, and he tripped over the metal casing at the bottom of the door to the second bedroom. A hand gripped his arm and hauled him back upright, but the scrapbooks splayed all over the ground. "Sorry," Dean murmured as he bent to help Harry pick up the books. "Sent you in blind, didn't I?"
"Yeah," Harry laughed. He paged through one of the books curiously, wondering if Luna had any additional information on Green Men he might find useful. "A tree spirit, you said?"
"They live in elder trees, supposedly." Dean huffed as he stacked the boxes in a free corner, squeezed between an old kiln and a clay encrusted potting wheel. "Hiding away because they're empathic and some other shtick about saving Hogwarts from a Mormaer nutter with an army of Dark Wizards and Red Caps at his disposal."
"What?" said Harry, frowning.
"Gryffindor and Slytherin were feuding with the Clann Kinnaird, remember? It's all in Hogwarts: a History."
"Right, yeah," Harry said, rubbing at his brow. He wished he'd read that book at some point in his life. Hermione had always harped on and on about it, and now Dean, too. Even Kent's suggestion to research Hogwarts' history hadn't prompted him to pick up that phonebook-sized text.
He was about to ask another question when a voice shouted out from the living room, asking where everybody was and whether they were still on for dinner. Dean kicked the boxes back into the little corner and ran out on Harry, calling out to Ron and Hermione that they were just cleaning up a bit after Luna. Harry listened to the quiet sounds of their chat and laughter, but hesitated to join them at first. He thumbed through Luna's scrapbooks, ruminating what Dean had said about the Founders' blood feud and comparing it to the passage he'd translated previously.
Luna had several highlighted clippings in the scrapbook. Some talked about the Fiendfyre in Hogsmeade and the winding ropes of fire that snapped down out of the sky, catching houses, gardens and forestry in its scorching net of destruction. Other clippings focused on the mysterious string of murders on Diagon Alley, seemingly disconnected, and how the yet unlived years were sucked out of the victims. One article from the Quibbler quoted a naturalist named Rolf Scamander, son of Newt Scamander, who said:
Some creatures are so old and dangerous even our legends do not record their names, but that does not mean these things do not exist. On the contrary, they lived long before us, dwell among us, and will endure well after we are gone. They are the old spirits of the forest, born in the ages of darkness. They move through darkness and shadow, deflecting light, skulking around us. However, if they avoid us, it is not from fear of us; it is because they prefer the quiet of the darkness. After all, these creatures are more powerful than we.
Because they are tuned in to the magical continuum, they are empathic and can delve the depths of emotion at a glance. Because they are collective, they can assume thoughts, feelings, and even the very lives of others for their own, sucking identity and years into themselves and rendering themselves ageless and immortal.
Feeling a bit overwhelmed, Harry set the book down on top of the pile. He'd already known Green Men were fearsome creatures, but he'd never seen their powers described so frankly and the last place he would have thought to look for information was in the newspapers, let alone the Quibbler. Although, given the nature of the Quibbler's conjectures, it probably should have occurred to him to take a peek there.
Sighing, Harry went out. Everybody but Luna had arrived already, and they were sipping wine, nibbling cheese and chatting. Harry flopped on the couch between Neville and Corner and took a glass of wine, gulping it. Ron was going on and on about being pulled onto Susan Bones's murder case on Diagon Alley, and Harry was starting to feel sick. He hated Auror talk more than anything. He'd rather listen to Corner bombast about the perks of working directly alongside the head of the Registration Commission in the DRCC than listen to Ron's Dark Wizard stories.
He was glad when the door swung open and Luna came inside, carrying a platter of something that smelled heavenly.
"Sorry I'm late," she said as Dean hurried over to take the platter from her. "Mum Sanger showed me how to make wild boar with elderberry wine glaze and I got caught up in her stories again. She sent over some of her sticky elder tarts, too. They're famous in her family, she says—but careful, or you'll be poisoned!"
Luna's off-colour humour fell flat, as it usually did. Not that Luna minded. She looked somewhat dazed as she swept into the kitchen, humming.
Soon after, they sat to dinner. The wild boar was delectable and the berry glaze and tarts were mouth-watering, sweet and bitter and altogether perfect. Harry stuffed himself, savouring each bite.
Over such a scrumptious meal, Ron had a hard time keeping up his gloomy topic about Susan's search and seizures and magical signature scopes. His mouth mostly was full anyway. So the conversation turned to something pleasanter—Neville babbled about the greenhouses and changes for the upcoming school year, and blushed red to rival the eclipsed moon when he mentioned he'd bring Hannah Abbot to dinner the next time.
It was such a light and fun evening, Ron even managed not to clobber Corner when he said something which annoyed Ginny. As if Ginny couldn't handle that lightweight, Harry thought. Corner barely got a good grip on his wand before Ginny let loose with a Bat Bogey hex that had green bogeys screeching in the night and flapping across the full, yellow moon.
As they were leaving, Neville passed him another Nilly plant, which lifted Harry's spirits ever higher. He thought about using the fibres in one of his black wands. Maybe the youngest sister?
He held up the white Nilly flower and watched the petals shimmer golden in the moonlight. Beautiful.
From his portrait, Snape muttered disparaging remarks about Harry's coordination when he tripped over a box of Ollivander's tools on his way through to the bedroom. Harry responded in kind, yawning out that it had never stopped him from squashing Slytherin at Quidditch. If Snape cursed him, Harry didn't hear it over the thud of his bedroom door. He set the Nilly flower over by the cup containing the waters of life and then began to divest himself.
Upon hearing a quiet murmuring, he spun around and his eyes alighted on Doppel-Draco, sitting cross-legged in the wardrobe mirror. Doppel-Draco's bright gaze rested upon the Nilly flower.
"You had a good night," he said.
"And you?" said Harry, frowning.
Doppel-Draco shrugged. "All right, I guess. They put me to sleep for a bit. I dreamt I was a water sprite and came up out of a well to pull thirsty travellers into my realm."
"Well, that's interesting."
Doppel-Draco seemed disheartened, his shoulders slumped, eyes averted, lower lip glistening and quivering. "I mean I drowned them, Harry."
"You're not a killer."
"I might as well be! So many people are dead because of me."
"Draco—"
"Fuck! I didn't meant to be so gloomy. I only wanted you to cheer me up. That's why I came here."
"Then... why did you?" His gaze slithered to the Nilly flower, now flashing with hatred instead of shame. "What?"
"Those flowers grow on the trees here. They grow on my tree. They keep us drugged-up and docile."
Horrified, Harry turned to the glimmering, pale plant. Was Neville's plant really—yes, it had to be. Doppel-Draco wouldn't lie about something like that. At the thought, Harry felt sick, and his good mood withered. He wanted to toss the damn thing overboard, watch it sink and drown.
"But these are a little different somehow," Doppel-Draco mused. "Their magic has been purified, I think. They're... rather friendly, really. It's just the look of them."
"Neville bred them."
"Did he?" drawled Doppel-Draco, amused.
"They're hybrids. That's why their magic is different."
"Well, then?"
"Well what?" said Harry, confused by the impatience in Doppel-Draco's voice.
"Well... where did he get the seeds to breed flowers that only grow on the enchanted elder trees?"
Harry frowned. "I'll have to ask him."
Doppel-Draco chuckled. Harry cocked his head and studied him a bit closer. Dark circles pouched under his red-rimmed eyes. He looked so weak.
"You do realize the difference between being a killer and being a person people have laid down their lives for?" Harry asked as he crawled into bed.
"Yes," Doppel-Draco whispered as Harry charmed off the lights.
"Good." Harry sighed as he settled down. "Come keep me company awhile."
"I can't deflect tonight. Too tired."
"I know." Harry said. The drapes drew closed over the fat yellow moon, submerging the room in total darkness. "No lights in here... But you can use my magic as a shield in case. All right?"
After a moment, the bed dipped under Draco's weight and a warm body settled next to his. Harry turned into Draco, slid an arm around him, and listened to the sound of his breath even out. Harry kept still and quiet, awake and alert, so he'd be sure to wake Doppel-Draco before the guards made rounds at dawn.
~
Returning to Hogwarts had always felt like a homecoming, but this was surreal. The school was alive with activity, students and teachers swarming in an anxious flurry before the last exams and the train rolled out to London. Students raced through the halls, their laughter overwhelming and palpable. He could have been eleven again, staring wide-eyed at the creaking suits of armour and gossipy portraits. It was excruciating. Hogwarts was his first home, but having a home you couldn't really return to was one of the worst feelings in the world.
He watched the students rough house by the Great Hall as he fished out a worn piece of parchment from his back pocket, rubbing his thumb along the main crease and the rough weave as he unfolded it.
He was reluctant to take out his ridiculous-looking elder branch in public, so he had to squeeze himself back into a dark alcove where none of the students could see as he drew it from its holster. It was a long, slender branch, just a bit longer than the average wand, but sometimes the branch twisted about in the sheath and chafed his side. Even now, welts stretched along his ribcage from the elder stick's continuous attempts to get his attention; it was a spoilt little thing, he gathered, and wouldn't abide being ignored—just like Doppel-Draco.
The Marauders' Map came to life with a tap of the branch against the top of the page and the whispered password. Names and footprints bled onto the parchment as the map of the castle's grounds unfurled in sharp lines and sweeping arcs. Not long after, Harry spotted Neville Longbottom's name near the greenhouses, trudging up the path to the back entrance.
Harry put the branch and map away and started in that direction to head Neville off. They met up in the outer courtyard beyond the classrooms. Neville was surprised to see him coming around the white tomb, gleaming in the sunlight.
"Everything okay, Harry?" he asked as he dumped a few bags of fertilizer on the grass and sat on a bench. He fetched a lacy handkerchief from his shirt pocket and wiped his brow. Harry's eyebrows shot up on his forehead and he bit back a smirk, making Neville blush.
"It's Hannah's. Picked it up by accident when I was there last."
"And have been carrying it around ever since? My, but you are a fool in love!"
"So it would seem," Neville mumbled. "What brings you all the way out here?"
"Actually, I was a bit curious and wanted to ask you about something... Didn't mean to interrupt anything, but—"
"So it's urgent?"
"You might say."
"Up to the same old tricks, eh?" Neville laughed. "Whatever it is... you can trust me, Harry. Always could."
Harry slapped a hand on Neville's shoulder and shook him a little, smiling. "Yeah, I know. And it is urgent—a bit weird... It's about the murders on Diagon Alley."
Neville twisted the yellow hanky into knots and his gaze went dark as he glanced aside. Already the mention of the Green Man murders had him on edge. It took Harry a few moments to figure out why, but when he did, the answer couldn't have been more obvious.
Hannah Abbott ran the Leaky Cauldron. She'd bought it six months ago, when Tom had gone into retirement. Since no one knew what was behind the string of murders, seemingly everyone was at risk of a miserable end.
Squeezing Neville's shoulder, Harry said, "She'll be all right, mate."
"Refuses to close down for a while, 'til it all blows over. Hannah's always been stubborn like that. I've admired her tenacity for so long—never back down, Neville; that's what she told me. It got me through the war, mate, but if it fails her now—"
"It won't."
"How can you say that when—oh. This is what you didn't want to say, right? You're all wrapped up in this mess!"
Rubbing the nape of his neck, Harry squinted at the phoenix on the white tomb, rising from a fiery halo of destruction toward the eastern light of morning. He said, "Um, yeah. If you knew—I mean, it's unbelievable!"
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"Right now, that might be a bad idea. It's tempting—so tempting, but your life could be at stake if you knew. I don't want to be responsible for putting you in that kind of danger."
"Harry, mate, did you forget who you're talking to? You can talk to me about anything."
"It's... I'm being haunted by a doppelgänger, but he's... nice. I like him. Really like him—"
"So you want to date him?"
"Funny thing to ask about a doppelgänger."
"We're wizards. Or, don't you know the history of the Centaur?"
"I'd rather not," Harry said, cringing with distaste. "The answer is yes, but he's in trouble and I've got to rescue him from this place called the Forlorn Garden and the people who've imprisoned him there."
Neville winced and his gaze travelled down to the bags of fertilizer stacked by the stone bench. His brow furrowed as he said, "And this has something to do with what you've got to ask me?"
"He recognized your Nilly flowers as originating from this place. I wondered if you knew anything about them."
"Maybe we should take this up to my office?"
Harry agreed and helped Neville collect the bags of fertilizer to drop off in the Herbology storage room beside the office, where Neville kept his private stores, including the seedlings he used to make the hybrid Nilly flowers. He pointed out the packs of seeds; they were simple clear plastic bags labelled with marker. An aura of magic surrounded the packets, shimmering in the golden torchlight.
Fingering the seeds, Harry engaged their magic with thin tendrils of his own, trying to map out their character and identity. Having heard Doppel-Draco talk of their purpose in the Forlorn Garden, he had expected to feel an air of malevolence when in contact with the seeds, but he felt only a very subtle poison. They were ordinary almost—like any other elder plant. The intensity of their magic, however, made Harry suspect that the Sangsters abused their power, twisting it to their own ends. But what Neville had done to them—cleaned them up, extracted the poison and rooted out the evil—had made them beautiful again.
Harry returned the seeds to the packet and set them back on the shelf. He followed Neville across the hall to his office, cluttered with potted plants in rows beneath the windows and stacks of books and essays on the shelves and desk.
An old, low couch sat against the wall. They settled on it and called for tea. A wobbly house-elf popped in with tea and cakes for them, and Harry fiddled with his cup, trying to soothe the anxiety slowly building up deep in his gut.
"I get the seeds from a woman with a small private garden. She sells the elder seeds and black elderberries to me. I also hear the business deals in flower heads, berries, foliage and extracts. And they're famous for their ritual magic in certain circles."
"Do you have a card or Floo address I could use to get into contact with them?"
"I'm afraid not, Harry. Maxie comes by whenever she's in the area."
"Maxie?" Harry couldn't say why he felt so surprised. Of course, Doppel-Draco had already told him about Maxie and Misty helping to track him down, but he hadn't expected this. It was disgusting to think the family funded their evil ventures by selling the same products they used to imprison innocent people.
"Maxie Sanger. Do you know of her?" She sells by word of mouth only. If you leave a message with Hannah, she'll get to you when she comes around again. They've a long-standing arrangement with the proprietor of the Leaky."
"I'll do that, thanks." His spoon clattered as he stirred more sugar into his tea, ruminating about Maxie and Misty. How disturbing to think that such pleasant, cheerful people—who he'd welcomed into his home—could be so heartless. "Do you know anything about this woman?"
"Just what I've picked up here and there, chatting. Bit secretive."
Harry laughed, unable to contain his bitterness. "Yeah. Tell me about it. Can't believe I sold her a wand. Utter witch!"
Neville seemed curious but didn't say anything. Harry was grateful. No matter what reassurances Neville gave, Harry didn't want to draw his friends into this if he didn't have to. They had already give and risked so much for him during the war... Now they had their own lives and responsibilities. He couldn't stomach asking them to risk everything all over again. Doppel-Draco came to him. That made him Harry's responsibility.
"I think she's from Aberdineshire, or thereabouts. There's a fairly thick concentration of wizards there. My family has a house out that way, from my Great Aunt Enid's side. Maxie talked about the Whyggis a lot."
"What's a Whyggis?"
"It's an abandoned wizarding prison in Rowena Ravenclaw's native village. People say it's haunted. There are always magical disturbances around there, so no one goes near it anymore. Ravenclaw's house was right by it. She gave her house to Gryffindor and Slytherin for their experiments. She came from the Sangster line, so it was filled with ancient artefacts, and they were intrigued by it all. But they accidentally started a fire—Gumbraithian, unfortunately, so they had to feed it away from Ravenclaw's cellars. The flames crossed onto a neighbouring property and they got into a blood feud with Clann Kinnaird. It was pretty gruesome—Hogwarts was at stake, so they formed a dark army to subdue the Kinnairds. Then they locked the family in the Whig Vault." Neville laughed then. "It's in Hogwarts: a History. Guess you haven't read it yet?"
Harry shook his head, feeling sheepish. Neville twisted at the waist and grabbed a thick book from the wall shelf over their heads. It flopped heavily in Harry's lap and he grimaced down at the black leather cover and shining gilt.
"We're asked to read it before we start teaching—appreciate the atmosphere and heritage and the gravity of our place, blah, blah, blah." He waved a hand through the air. "Hope it helps you, Harry."
"Thanks," Harry said, clutching the book to his chest as he stood. "I'm going to stop by Hannah's on my way in."
"Of course. You know you can come to me with anything else, Harry. Don't worry about me."
~
The Leaky Cauldron was dark and nearly empty when he arrived. A few people clustered in the corners, clutching their steins in leathery hands with cracked yellow nails. A fang-toothed witch was working the bar while Hannah stood on a ladder in the outer corridor before the stairs, scrubbing the high windows peeking out onto the alley.
When Harry called her over, Hannah came down and they went up to a private lounge to talk. Her long red hair was swept up into a ponytail, tied with a monogrammed scarf with Neville's initials on it, and she couldn't seem to stop fidgeting with it whenever she longed for a use for her hands.
He asked her a bit about the Sangsters and the Leaky Cauldron's agreement with the family, which had been passed from proprietor to proprietor through the generations. Unfortunately, Hannah could tell him very little. The Sangsters were a secretive lot.
However, when the conversation rolled around to the state of Diagon Alley, and the hysteria and fear that had driven away most of her customers, she mentioned something interesting. A few weeks prior, directly before the serial murders had overwhelmed the wizarding world, a strange group of people rented several rooms from her. There was a queer old man with them, a Seer, who sometimes stared at her and gave her a sick feeling in her gut.
"He just seemed so broke and miserable," she said. "They all hounded him—he was never alone, never spoke for himself—like a prisoner. It was so sad... I let him play with my owl; he was fascinated with it. I was glad when he got away from them."
"He ran off?" said Harry, trying to keep a schooled ton and expression. It would be best not to alarm her over a mere suspicion, but... He was fairly certain she'd encountered a Green Man, one the Sangsters used to track Draco down.
"I believe he did. There was a great upheaval at the holistic Healer's," she said. "There was a fire and a brawl, and he ran off amid the mayhem."
"All these fires," said Harry, scratching the nape of his neck.
"I know! It's like the witch hunts all over again."
They chatted a little longer and Hannah took his message for Maxie, should she return soon, though he doubted it. Then he left the Alley still stank of smoke and black soot marred the fronts of the buildings in great scorched eyebrows over their windows. Many of the shops were closed and some, like Ollivander's, were temporarily relocated. It was like wartime all over again.
On his way home, Harry decided to stop in again at Kent's shop on Knockturn Alley. It probably would be open and he might learn a bit more about Green Men.
When he came in, Kent was kneeling at a small curio in the back of the shop, surrounded by a mounting pile of bewitched Remembralls. He smirked when Harry came in—he usually was happy to see Harry, as it often involved an exchange of fairly large sums.
"Looks to me like you figured out how to use your pentacle after all. Not interested in extending your life," he snorted.
"What?" said Harry, grabbing the Green Man hair through the fabric of his shirt.
"It's dangerous to bond with those things, I meant to say." He grunted as he heaved himself up and pushed his Remembralls and one rolled under the hexed wardrobe across the way. "Unless there's something you've been hiding from me. Want to go up?"
"Might as well."
"The cloak rack," said Kent, shooing Harry over. Harry moved closer to the front door and grabbed one of the rungs. Once Kent joined him, the Portkey activated and pulled him through to the sitting room. Harry was glad of the extra measure of privacy despite knowing about the non-disclosure agreement; if someone overheard what he was talking about, there was no stopping them from acting on it, after all.
Kent brought in several new specimens for Harry to root through. None were as intriguing as the Green Man hair had been—no surprise there. That was the find of a lifetime and, in retrospect, quite an onerous peculiarity at that. Harry set aside a few Acromantula hairs and vials of their powdered pincers and Occamy plumes for his wands. As he perused the new stock he and Kent chatted about Green Men, exchanging intriguing bits of information.
"You know, I've wondered why you sold it at all," said Harry, tapping the pendant. "It's quite the find, yeah?"
Kent shrugged. "I already said it's dangerous to hold on to. I was surprised to see you'd bound with it, but it figures you're a true healer. Probably why you were drawn to wands."
"Funny you should say—I don't even know what a true healer is."
"An old world magician, a shaman—they manipulate magic, twist the aura; they work with magical signatures, the innate magic of man—like wandmakers do for wands."
"I see."
Fumbling through the tray of articles on the table between their seats, Kent said, "It's no coincidence the true healer and the elder were made for each other. An unstoppable pair, if ever there was such a one... I trust by now you've figured out just what has the wizarding community in such an uproar."
"No doubt." Kent held up a shrivelled green finger with a two-inch long, pointed black fingernail.
Harry cringed at the sight of the knobby stub. "What's that?"
"It's a Red Cap's finger," explained Kent, smirking. "Red Caps are little gobliny buggers that beat people to death—they live mostly in castles and towers. Mormaer Kinnaird had thousands of them under his command. When he moved against the school, seeking vengeance for the death of his eldest son and the destruction of his ancestral home in the Gumbraithian fire that Slytherin and Gryffindor accidentally started, Ravenclaw suggested a drastic move. At that time, the spells to repel Red Caps hadn't yet been written, so they were far more dangerous back then. The only thing more vicious than an army of Red Caps moving against the school was an army of elders intent on protecting it. So they unleashed the Green Men and bargained with them—if the elders eradicated the Kinnaird threat against the school, the Founders would render the lands surrounding the castle a haven for their resting places. That was the day the forest became forbidden...
"Nowadays, they still haunt the depths of the forest, beyond even Centaur territory. Anybody who knows what Green Men are also knows that the only chance a man's got against them is to use Fiendfyre. It's no coincidence that somebody somewhere is trying to raze the forest to the ground."
Scratching his stubble with the Red Cap's finger, Kent leaned forward in his seat and, in a conspiratorial whisper, continued, "My first thought was that one of the elders woke up from their slumber, but then I did a little more research on the topic. Now I'm not so certain. See, the Forbidden Forest and all the creatures that dwell within it are untouchable. It's a magically binding contract, under sanctuary rights. There are a few other safe havens like it scattered throughout the wizarding world, but none on such a grand scale. Rather, the—you know about the Sangster family?"
"No," Harry lied, hoping Kent would divulge something useful in an attempt to explain his theory. However, if Kent thought Harry already knew all about the Green Man and Sangster conflict, he might skimp on the details, and Harry needed all the help he could get if he hoped to rescue Doppel-Draco soon. It had been far too long already in his opinion.
"As long as there have been Green Men, there have been people who feared and despised them. Long ago, a coven was formed to curtail their power and growth. There's only one family line left, but they're still up to their old, dirty tricks nonetheless. Most people have never even heard of the Sangster family, although they've been around as long as the Malfoys. But the important thing to know is that they didn't go away, didn't lost their purpose... Now why is that, do you think?"
"I thought all the elders were sleeping... But that can't be the case, if the Sangsters are still active. So... these elders must continually reproduce. If there are always more. Then there are always more to capture."
"Hmm," Kent murmured in agreement. "And I think they're dealing with a particularly troublesome Green Man, one who's clever enough to claim sanctuary in the Forbidden Forest. That's why there are all these outbreaks of Fiendfyre. They're desperate."
Kent tossed the Red Cap's finger back onto the tray and sneered, his eyes glittering with disdain. His entire face twisted in his disgust, revealed crooked brown teeth as he spat. "I might've kept it, but for those nutters hell-bent on extinguishing the entire elder race from society. They're not just bad guys, you know, elders; they're only misunderstood. Never heard of one that actually meant anybody harm or who used his powers for evil or personal gain... But that's the way of the world, isn't it, to malign what's different?"
The words lingered in Harry's ears as he collected his packages and returned home, Apparating from the Leaky Cauldron. He appeared in his living room, strewn with wood chips, shavings, and boxes of wands. Harry groaned, working his hand over his face. He wondered when the case of the Green Man would be solved—that is, when his former master finally would go home.
Then, a voice from the wall startled him from his musings and his heart plummeted into his stomach at Snape's words. Harry's breath gushed out of him. Tossing Neville's books and the casings from Kent's stores onto the couch, he rushed into his bedroom.
The disorder he saw there stopped him short, but he caught his breath again when his eyes fell on Doppel-Draco, reclining in the wardrobe mirror, the goblet filled with the waters of life sitting in front of him.
"Oh, thank Merlin!" he exclaimed in relief, stepping over spilt drawers, overturned tables and strewn linens. The glass of the mirror felt cool and smooth beneath his fingertips. Glancing up through his fringe, Doppel-Draco smiled. It was slight and tentative, a picture of apologetic solemnity.
"I was afraid you wouldn't have time to get to it." Harry said.
"What kind of Familiar would I be if I couldn't protect you from the big bad Auror Corps?"
Despite himself, Harry smiled, heaving himself forward against the mirror. The firmness against his chest melted and softened somewhat. The arms that enfolded him in an embrace were warm and surprisingly strong; the lips fluttering kisses against his racing pulse, reassuring and soft.
"Harry..."
"Hmm?"
"Just relax," Draco whispered. "I won't let anything bad happen to you. Never again."
"Nor you," Harry murmured, curling into the curve of his body. "Promise."
~
Harry spent most of the weekend cleaning up. The Auror had made quite a mess of his house on their single-minded search, and it irked that they weren't accountable for quality care or damages, nor would they provide an inventory of his property claimed as evidence. Once everything was in order once again, he could determine what, if anything, was missing.
Fortunately, it looked like Doppel-Draco had collected the one thing of value to them that he'd left lying around. Most other items were replaceable—some linens, wands and old records.
Although, Harry was furious that the Aurors had taken his newly made black sister wands. He wouldn't let them get away with that this lifetime. Already he had written several letters and called in a few favours to ensure he got those back untouched, or else.
If working under Ollivander had taught him anything, it was that most people feared wandmakers. Part of the fear went back to a superstition about a wand belonging whole-heartedly to the maker before it belonged to anyone else. The other side of that fear came about because wandmakers were notoriously powerful wizards and had a tendency to dabble in Dark Magic—although, Harry had to wonder how much of that impression was borne of generations of Ollivanders sharing in one long-standing family secret. Whatever the reasoning behind the apprehension, however, Harry wasn't afraid to use it to his advantage. Rather, he'd lost such qualms long ago. If he'd ever had them to begin with... He'd never been shy of controversial means to an end, no matter his reputation as a all-around kind-hearted chap.
It had been a long weekend. On Monday, Harry had hoped to sleep in late, but those hopes were dashed when a Ministry owl swooped in through his open bedroom window and nearly pecked his eye out in its eagerness to deliver the missive tied to its foot. With a beleaguered groan, Harry pulled himself out of bed and relieved the insistent fowl of its duty.
Mr. Harry J. Potter, it started in a hand that was by now quite painful in its familiarity. Terry Boot was one busy and efficient little bureaucrat, that was for certain. He needed a vacation, if only so Harry could spend a week free of his correspondence.
Mr. Harry J. Potter,
Upon further review of your magical bond, it has been determined that you are indeed mated to a magical being. Rather, that is, your wand is in part a magical being.
The wizarding world has a long history of dealing with such magical beings who dwell in trees. They are, unfortunately, now endangered species due to unrestrained sport and poaching. Although the Ministry now holds these majestic beings in high regard, that was not always the case, and longstanding superstition and unsubstantiated fear has nearly driven these magical beings to extinction.
Therefore, I have taken the liberty of submitting your bond for further review by the Committee for the Protection and Betterment of Misunderstood Magical Creatures and Other Beings. The CPBC will contact you for behavioural and bonding analysis.
However, due to an additional anomaly with your case—that is, the being to which you are bound has been declared a missing person—I have also submitted your case file to the Auror Corps and Hit Wizard Elite Squad for screening. Expect a letter from the Auror or Hit Wizard in charge of your mate's case.
My purview ends with this letter. If you have any further questions or comments, please direct them to Mr. Michael Corner, Protected Beings Liaison and Undersecretary to the Minister of Magical Creatures, Floo A1962.
Once again, congratulations on your most esteemed magical bond!
Sincerely,
Terrance L. Boot
Registrar
"What's that, then?"
"How long have you been here?" Harry asked around a yawn as he glanced up at Doppel-Draco, sitting cross-legged in the wardrobe mirror.
"What makes you think I left?"
"Not even when they made rounds?"
The Mona Lisa smile was back, but this time Harry frowned at him. Harry never knew when Doppel-Draco was keeping secrets or when he simply couldn't speak because of the curse he was under. However, he'd also never had the distinct impression that Doppel-Draco was withholding information—like he did now. Frankly, it was too late in the game to keep silent.
"I'm getting stronger," he replied, a bit flippantly.
"I see."
"Still pretty green next to some of the other trees here, though. I can't even see the sky, really. I'm still just a sapling, but not as willowy, and—"
"You do realize you aren't a tree, don't you?" When Doppel-Draco grew pensive an aloof at the comment, Harry couldn't help but feel apprehensive that this rescue might be taking too long. His stomach flip-flopped. "Draco."
"I... am not a tree, no." His hesitance was alarming. It only made Harry feel ill at ease to hear him speak of himself in such terms. "Does it bother you that I like my tree?"
"Of course not." Harry huffed and bit back his nausea. "But I wonder how you managed to break the branch off."
"What do you want me to say, Harry? It felt like gnawing through my own arm? You've been captive before. You do what you can to buy your freedom and worry about the trauma later. Isn't that how it goes?"
"You never said... anything. You never said anything about it."
"The shame of... I was desperate enough to maim myself. Maybe I should have said, 'This is a part of me. This is a part of you, too. This is how I can see you, touch you, guide you back to me. I can lend you my power, and I can breathe life into you. I can show you what it's like to be someone else entirely—or entirely yourself.' But I couldn't bring myself to say any of that. I wanted... I wanted to pretend for awhile long. So I guess, I'm sorry..."
"Oh, Draco," Harry sighed, working his fingers through his hair. He couldn't help but tremble. The thought of Draco's desolation, his despair which drove him so far as to destroy a part of himself, was crippling. "I'm the one whose sorry. I shouldn't have said anything."
"I don't expect pity. It's my own fault, anyway."
"You keep saying that, Draco, but none of this is your fault. These people hate you for the sake of hating something, and you didn't do anything to deserve this treatment. Do you understand?"
Doppel-Draco shrugged and stood up, looking eager to wink away. He fidgeted with the folds of his white robes, twisting his long fingers around and around. He wouldn't even meet Harry's gaze.
"But you're wrong. I was determined to be a Hit Wizard Elite."
"A what?"
Doppel-Draco flushed crimson as he met Harry's blank expression. Then he turned away just as quickly.
"Traditionally, Hit Wizards capture dangerous criminals, remember? But there's an additional class of Hit Wizards who hunt down ancient covens. They've been thorns in the Ministry's side since Slytherin's Revenge at Whyggis, and as hard as they are to find, they're even harder to out-duel, let alone outsmart. Still, I'm good at it. So... So bloody good at it! The only problem was... I'm a Malfoy and Malfoys aren't good for anything nowadays."
"Draco, whatever you think you did to deserve this, you're wrong about it. I don't know what to say to make you realize—"
"Hey, don't you have work today? As much as I dislike the thought of you chopping wood, imagine how much more furious I'd be if you kept letting it rot out!"
Harry knew better than to keep pushing the issue, so he flagged Doppel-Draco off and headed to the bathroom. After a quick shower, Harry found himself bogged down in his office, giving treatment after treatment to the fresh logs. He'd always found this part of the job most tedious. It constituted casting the same series of primer and stasis spells on each log. Only then could he get to the part he most enjoyed: the cutting. A quiet joy came of working with one's hands and moulding a huge hunk of wood into something sleek and beautiful and powerful and lively.
That Doppel-Draco hovered over him, staring with an observant and knowing eye only made the tedium that much worse. It had never occurred to him that Doppel-Draco could simply glance at him and know things about him, some which he might not want others to know. Reading about the power of the Green Man to delve the collective or continuum, and seeing it at play against him were two very different realities. Draco was empathic. He'd hid it so far, but Harry hadn't realized how comfortable the distance between them had made him feel until suddenly it was gone. Now he had to face those piercing eyes.
Then, as if he knew exactly was Harry was thinking and feeling, Doppel-Draco said, "Maybe you should cut my branch down."
Harry's eyebrows shot up under his fringe and his jaw dropped. Doppel-Draco tilted his head, a distant look in his eyes.
"You'd be comfortable with me taking a knife to your limb?"
"About as comfortable as I was when I broke it off and sent it flying through the gate, I think. But what can I do about it?"
"It's yours."
"So are you. Keep safe for me. Please."
Averting his gaze to the forest of logs lined up on the deck, Harry nodded. Leaning forward, he grabbed the elder branch and drew it closer. The bark was mostly smooth and flaky, except for at the snarled tip.
"This bond between us... What does it mean?"
"Whatever you want it to mean, Harry. No one can impose depth on you."
"What a funny thing to say!" Harry rocked back, hoping to get a better view of Doppel-Draco in the sunlit window, despite the burn in his thighs and ache in his knees. "Don't you like me? Why did you choose me if... Was it just because of... Voldemort? Or, maybe, the true healer-wandmaker thing?"
Draco flinched, his eyes flashing a radiant blue. "Circumstances brought us together, I would say... But I'm not so certain if that's really true. I might have guided the branch to you subconsciously, because I know your character and trust in your goodness. In any case, I'm glad I got to see you like this. I grew up a lot since the war, but I never realized how incredibly childish I still was. I had so much power, so much potential, and absolutely no idea what to do with it. That's why I screwed up so royally. But you seem to have it all together. I want to be like you, Harry. One day soon, I will be."
"I'm not as wonderful as you seem to think I am."
"Maybe not, but I've still got to think for myself and be a man. I know what needs to be done now, and if I can get away from this place..."
"You will," Harry swore, clenching his hands into fists. "Draco, I'm going to get you out of there, and then you can do all the things you never realized—"
"Hey, Harry!"
Harry spun about. Dean stood in the doorway, glancing wide-eyed about the deck. His old jeans and t-shirt were covered in paint and dust, and he even had a few wood chips sticking up in his hair.
"Who're you talking to?"
Harry's cheeks heated, and he did his best to distract Dean from the interruption. In the window, Doppel-Draco stood in preparation to go, idly flagging Harry off as well.
"Later, then," Doppel-Draco said. Harry nodded as inconspicuously as possible.
Dean said, "Come one," and slapped a hand on Harry's shoulder, ushering him back inside to catch the Floo. "The shipment just came in. Tarry's still unloading, but not for long. Thanks for helping."
"Not a problem."
They took the Floo to Dean and Luna's gallery on Apple Road. It was a small space, but very popular. Dean had a reputation for being one of the wizarding world's artists to look out for, and as far as Harry couldn't tell, was considered a "painter's painter." In addition, many of the po-mo pieces he worked on with Luna sold for hundreds of Galleons each.
Tarry was a gangly wizard with teary eyes. He stood out in front of the gallery, yelling at his delivery men as they unloaded heavy hunks of sheet metal and piping. Dean went out to oversee the delivery, but Harry hung back. He wandered the room, checking out the newer paintings on the walls.
He came to a stop in front of a forestry scene that looked familiar. It was dark beneath the canopy and seemed like a gloomy place devoid of life. The brush was thick and brittle. Clusters of hoary elder trees huddled together, knobbed faces in the bark seeming to frown through sleep.
A sticker next to the painting read: Featured Artist: Abby Sanger, The Forlorn.
"Hey, Harry," Dean called. Harry glanced up. Outside, Tarry's truck, a giant yellow monstrosity, pulled off. It rattled down the road before disappearing to the next location with a pop.
"Um, where'd you get this?" Harry asked. Dean glanced his wand and shrugged.
"Luna brought it in. Mum Sanger has a bunch of old paintings just like that in the attic. You like it?"
"Yeah," Harry lied. To be honest, it reminded him too much of Doppel-Draco's suffering. A lonely place, he'd called it. It was devoid of life, of light, of hope.
"Take it with you, then. Luna won't mind. She practically cleared Mum Sanger out last week!"
"Thanks," said Harry as he followed Dean back onto the street. "I'll do that.
~
The scent of brine and butter overwhelmed him as he entered the grocer on Squid Street. It was strange to think he'd been a patron since moving to Quadmoor Quarter but had never known about the Sangers' connection to this ancient coven and crime. He wondered what other mysteries might lie behind people's friendly smiles.
"Ah, Harry! What can I do for you this week?" said Mum Sanger as she swept out of the back room."
Harry held up the portrait. He was still sweaty and dusty from helping Dean out, but he felt exhilarated, too. His nerves came to life, leaving him rejuvenated to the point of jitters as he watched the recognition in Mum Sanger's eyes. It was more than familiarity with her own artwork, Harry was sure of it. He'd never been so close to solving this mystery and bringing Doppel-Draco home.
"Maybe you should come to the back," she said quietly, indicating the beaded curtain that hid the view into the next room. "You can't be here for any other reason than the Secret, I suppose."
When she said that, Harry thought he could cry. It was all he could do to contain himself as he nodded and followed her into a colourful living room and sat on a patchwork-upholstered couch.
"Well," said Mum Sanger. "The bond between the two of you is so strong. Your magic must be written all over him. I haven't been in contact with my family for years, but they're all of a sudden knocking down my door, demanding to stay. I believe they've taken an interest in you, although I can't be certain. Anyway, it would make sense. That's how they are—the vultures!"
"He said they hadn't noticed him lately!" Harry exclaimed, feeling scandalized with worry. If Doppel-Draco had lied to keep that much hidden from him, did that mean they were hurting him regularly, still? "Ugh! I'm sorry, just... Anything you can tell me would be tremendously helpful. What they do to him makes me sick."
"I know how you feel. I've always disagreed with what they were doing," said Mum Sanger, a sad smile tightening her mouth as she stared down at the portrait Harry had brought with them. "Growing up, I used to run through the forest and whisper to the trees. I made friends with them, so I never could bring myself to harm them. My family... despised me for being weak. What would you do, if you believed you were making your world a better place?"
"I've ki—" Harry cut himself off abruptly, unable to bring himself to answer truthfully. Everyone knew what he'd done to make the world a better place. He'd become a killer. And however much he wished he wished that was his secret, his notoriety preempted his shame. "Well," he said after a moment, "just because you believe you're doing the right thing, it doesn't mean you are."
"That's very true," said Mum Sanger, reaching across the table and patting his knee. "And I wish that I could help you."
"You won't then?" Disappointment roiled through him, so acid and hot that he felt like retching. He averted his eyes from that friendly wrinkled face, and closed his eyes on the painted tribal masks hanging on the adjacent wall. "I had hoped..."
"The Secret of the Forlorn Garden is lost in me, Harry. They took it. More important than any one individual is the collective. We were raised on that principle for generations. Once I elected to flee the coven, a powerful charm was placed on me, to prevent me from revealing it to anyone, especially the Ministry of Magic."
"The... Ministry?"
It was curious to hear her say such a thing. Harry had never given the Ministry for much credit for anything besides bumbling along.
"In 1623, the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures changed their stance on Green Men, listing them as Protected Beings, and initiating a Cultural Sensitivity Training program at Hogwarts."
"You mean Care of Magical Creatures?"
"Yes, that's it." Harry snorted to think of modern-day Care of Magical Creatures as originating as a Ministry-decreed sensitivity program. "Back in my day, it was very useful, though Merlin knows what they're teaching you kids now."
"Yeah."
"The coven has violated so many of the Ministry's edicts protecting the elders that the Ministry has been after them for generations now. So you understand why they must protect their coven and strip me of my Secret. If there was some other way to tell you how to enter the Garden, I would, but...
"The Fidelius Charm is a powerful spell. Carrying a Secret like that weighs on your soul, and imprints itself. It becomes a part of the carriers, engrained in them, and can never be truly destroyed. Only masked—the Taboo can hide it.
"Knowing this, I have tried to break the spell for fifty years now. I was very young and idealistic when I left the Whyggis, and so I was drawn to the Quad. Back then, the community was concerned mainly with magical expressionism rather than artistic, and I believed... But it was hopeless. Only a true healer could restore the Secret from its hiding place."
"I see," Harry said. He stood up, smoothing his T-shirt with shaky hands. "I'll think of something."
"I wish you the best of luck, Harry."
"Yes. Thank you."
"I wish there was something more I could... Well, there is one other thing." Harry glanced at her in surprise as she pulled a thick hemp necklace from her robes and over her head. A small silver key swung from the knotted fibres—a Gringotts key. "It will help you to free your friend. Even should you find a way to free the Secret, you will not get very far without this. The place you are going to is exceedingly dark."
"What is it?"
"A knife—Goblin-made—which can pierce the dark wards surrounding the Forlorn Garden. Vault 9234."
Clutching the key in his fist, Harry thanked her again and left. His nerves were all alight, flaring with jitters all up and down his spine. He couldn't determine whether to head to Gringotts first or to the Ministry to see Hermione. Already, he had an idea about drawing the Secret out of Mum Sanger. If only Hermione would help... She knew more about Invisibility Shields and Taboos than anyone.
However, if the Sangsters truly were watching him, it might be best to have all the tools he would need gathered together before making a move. If they knew what he was after, they'd jump at the chance to steal it away from him. He couldn't let this opportunity pass him by. Gringotts it was.
He Apparated to Diagon Alley. The scarcity of life made the few diehard proprietors and patrons seem even more conspicuous. A pasty-faced witch sipping Firewhiskey in the corner winked at him, and Harry wondered if he should cast a Glamour or something. Ducking his head, he picked up his pace.
Going to Gringotts Wizarding Bank since the war's end has always been an uncomfortable venture. Goblins always made a point of following him with their minatory glares and Harry was aware that people still whispered about him and "the great dragon break". Unfortunately, now that Gringotts was just as empty as The Leaky Cauldron and the rest of Diagon Alley, the goblin tellers and guards had every opportunity to track his movements through the building. He travelled down to safe 9234 amid a furious cloud of anxious goblins, rattling on ahead, behind and beside him. It was a distinctly uncomfortable experience.
The cart screeched to a stop deep in the recesses of the bank where dragons usually were chained down as an extra security measure. The pressing darkness here was suffocating, and the moist air stank of mould and earth. Harry felt his eyes straining just to see the goblin next to him as he climbed out of the cart onto the platform, let alone the crusty old dragon sniffing about at the end of the row.
Several goblins came forward, jangling chains and the beast shuddered and retreated in fear, snorting. Globs of snot rained down on the vault doors as it scuttled back, and Harry grimaced as he watched the poor creature huddle away from them.
"Your key, sir," growled one of the goblins, pointing at a slimy vault door. Harry handed the goblin the key and watched as he went forward to unlock the door. The lock clattered to the uneven ground as the goblin dropped it and pushed open the door. "All right, Mr. Potter. You may now enter the Sanger Vault."
"Thanks," Harry said.
He hadn't expected it to go so well, especially since the goblins had added an extra security measure to ensure that they kept their reputation for being the most secure place in the world, next to Hogwarts. Then, as he stepped inside the vault, the door slammed shut behind him and the locks clanged.
"Hey!" he shouted, banging on the door. His fists ached from the pounding and the skin of his knuckles tore and bled, leaving red streaks down the dark grey metal.
"Please relax, Mr. Potter. This is just a long-standing policy. You will be released," said an old, tired-sounding voice. "Continue your business."
Huffing, Harry leaned against the wall and rubbed at his brow. Continue his business here? Right. Couldn't those grotty little wankers have warned him about it first?
After a moment, he pulled himself together again and pushed off the stone wall. He pulled the reshaped elder wand from its holster and cast Lumos.
Light flared out of the tip of the wand and spread to all the four corners and the high vaulted ceiling so no shadows remained. It made his eyes throb, but he'd learned during the war that one was better safe than sorry.
As he glanced about himself, he realized that the vault was mostly bare. Only a silver-framed mirror hung on the far wall, but there was no sign of any knife. Harry gritted his teeth, wondering if Mum Sanger was playing some sort of game with him. Was this a trap? Was she secretly working with the Sangsters to kill him here? Or worse—were they hoping to catch Doppel-Draco in the act? He thought, he'd rather steer clear of the mirror just in case.
"So you're going to give in?"
Jolting, Harry cast an anxious look at Doppel-Draco.
"Do you trust me, Harry, or not?"
"You aren't the issue. This could be a trap! The last time I was caught in a vault—"
"Let me protect you like I've been doing. You don't need to worry about the elder coven." He scrunched his face, biting out the words as if it pained him to say them. "Don't you think I would have noticed disingenuousness?"
"You weren't even there!"
Doppel-Draco sighed and pierced Harry with his knowing stare. "I am always with you. You think because you can't see me I'm not there?"
Harry bit down on his tongue to keep from answering him. He knew there was something odd about this scenario. It made sense to him that Doppel-Draco could pass freely from his tree to Harry's wand, but Harry had wondered for a while now how he'd been able to protect the waters of life.
"You never leave me?"
"No," Doppel-Draco said. "My magic is yours. I merely spread myself thin, like a taffy stretching too far."
"But you enter my house when you wish?"
"I'll stop if you prefer, but I do watch it for you, like—Merlin, I can't believe I'm about to say this!—like a guard dog. There are powerful people after us, Harry. I have to watch for them."
Heaving a sigh, Harry held out his hand. "It's in the mirror, isn't it? The knife?"
As answer, the light in the room fluttered and died away, and a heavy weight dropped in Harry's waiting palm. He curled his fingers around the hard leather of the scabbard.
"It's goblin-made, bathed in the light. Don't let them see."
"I know how they are. It was the same way with the Gryffindor sword during the war. Their idea of property is... queer. Talk about taking what you didn't earn!"
Doppel-Draco laughed, a light sound so rare that Harry couldn't contain his anger any longer.
"I'm going now."
"I'll hide again,"
Harry nodded to him and moved back to the door. Even though Doppel-Draco could only show himself to Harry, Harry wasn't certain how goblins experienced magic. If it was at all different from the human experience, there was a chance, they might notice Doppel-Draco's presence anyway.
"Er," said Doppel-Draco hesitantly. "Am I forgiven?"
"Stop protecting me," Harry teased. "I'm the one protecting you. Clear?"
"Of course," he drawled, and winked away. Harry banged on the door and yelled through that he was finished in the vault. No answer came, and Harry wondered if he were trapped after all. Then, the door swung back, revealing resentful grey faces peering up at him.
As Harry exited, the goblins stepped aside and allowed him to climb into the cart. A goblin locked the vault and handed back the key. Then they were off again, rattling through the dark labyrinth at speeds so fast Harry could hardly blink his eyes for wind resistance.
Finally, it was all over. His legs wobbled beneath him as he walked out onto the road, and he clutched the knife in his pocket with trembling fingers. He felt victorious. Now there was only one obstacle standing between him and the Forlorn Garden—and he knew just who to call on to batter that blockage to the ground.
~
Hermione's smile faltered when she saw the grave look on Harry's face, and she sat heavily on her chair.
"Nothing good comes of an expression like that," she said.
"I wouldn't say so," Harry replied, sitting across the desk from her. He couldn't help but stare. He'd never seen her at work, only out of it. At those times, she was her usual busy and bright-eyed self. "I think something very good will come to me."
"Oh?" Hermione patted her dusty hair absentmindedly, working her fingers through the tangles in it. It seemed like a daily habit of hers, judging by the easy efficiency with which she unknotted the mess. Then she caught him staring and raised a scorched eyebrow. "What is this good thing?"
"Someone I care deeply for... I need your help to break a Taboo on a Secret."
"What? You mean a—a Fidelius Secret?"
Hearing the alarm in her voice made him anxious. Sucking in a deep breath, Harry thought of Doppel-Draco, who was counting on him to make this work out, and gave a firm nod.
"Oh, Harry!" she exclaimed, slumping in her seat. "You're involved in this Green Man mess, aren't you?"
"How do you know?"
"Because I've been working with Susan Bones since the beginning."
A gust of air whooshed from Harry, and he folded in on himself, glancing about the room for anything reflective. His gaze landed on the letter opener on Hermione's desk, and he was relieved to see that Doppel-Draco was not there. Good, then, he though. Doppel-Draco had taken yesterday's warning seriously.
"Harry, leave it alone."
"If you're on the case, you already know I can't do that."
"What are you talking about? Why can't you?"
"I'm the one from the DRCC with the Green Man, mate. I'm not going to sit by while he suffers unnecessarily."
Hermione looked as though she'd been slapped. Seeing her like that, Harry felt a little guilty for telling her that way, but he would not turn back now. There was no way he'd stand to see Doppel-Draco forsaken.
"I really need your help," Harry pleaded. "Teach me to break Taboos."
"A spell like that could kill the one who casts it! Why do you think the Invisibility Squad work in groups, Harry? It's a Synergistic spell!"
Harry gritted his teeth. He hissed, "You can teach me the spell or I can find it on my own. Either way, I'm going to do this. Don't try to convince me otherwise."
"If I teach you the spell, I'll lose my job. Is that what you want? Ron and I have a mortgage and—"
"Don't try to manipulate me!" Harry spat. "All I did was ask for your help!"
Heaving a sigh, Hermione grimaced and shook herself. A cloud of dust puffed up from her robes and made them both cough.
"What if it led to the capture of the Sangsters?" Harry asked her. "I thought the Ministry was out to get them."
"They are, but I'm working in conjunction with Susan Bones. It's her job to capture the Green Man responsible for all those deaths, and nothing more. The Hit Wizard Elite Squad chases covens."
"Bleeding bureaucrats!"
"It's a totally different skill set!" Hermione huffed. "Dark Wizards concern themselves mostly with Dark Magic. Covens practice ancient and ritualistic magic. The lines cross sometimes, but very rarely."
"Spare me the lecture, please," Harry groaned, dropping his head in his heads. "Merlin, give me strength. Who's looking out for Draco, then? Is it just me?"
"Malfoy?" Harry's head shot up, and although he tried to backtrack, he knew it would be useless. Hermione had heard what she'd heard, and there was no way she'd let it slide. "You're in contact with Draco Malfoy?"
Grimacing, Harry nodded.
"Hmm..."
"That's it? That's all you're going to say?"
"Draco Malfoy is a special case."
"What? Why is his case special?"
"Go home, Harry. And don't do anything stupid, please! I'm going to look into this for you, and will be in contact shortly."
"Not until you tell me why Draco's a special case! You can't just push me out like a child!"
Rolling her eyes, Hermione said, "Malfoy is on the Hit Wizard Elite Squad. He got the job just before he disappeared."
"You do realise that I know he was kidnapped, don't you?"
Hermione glowered and started tugging him up from his chair. Then she stood, arms akimbo, tapping her foot. Harry had a hard time of pushing the image of Mrs. Weasley from his mind.
"Keep that quiet, please. HWes doesn't want anyone to know."
"Why not?"
"Oh, just do as you're told for once, Harry Potter! Go home and wait for me to contact you. If you sit tight for once in your life, you might find that the Ministry isn't as incompetent as it used to be. Learn to trust people sometimes! I thought you would've matured a little since you blew off Aurors!"
"Don't start in about Aurors again. It's my life, and I had every right to quit it."
Hermione heaved. "Like I said, go home and wait."
Harry tried to do as she said, but it was tough going. He spent the time at home rereading all the information he had about Green Men and talking to Doppel-Draco. He kept himself busy and moving, because whenever he sat idle, his head began to fill with so many thoughts he feared it might explode. He slept and ate little, and paced so much he made the portrait of Snape dizzy.
Thankfully, only two days passed before Hermione showed up below deck, looking dustier and sleepier than he'd ever seen her. She swayed precariously on her feet. Harry couldn't figure out if that was from exhaustion, or from the weight of all the crackly leather-covered books in her arms.
"Let's go," she said, eyes gleaming.
"Go?"
"Somebody must have the Taboo on them if you want to break it."
"Oh! Of course. She's just across the street. Come on!"
Grabbing a few books from Hermione, Harry pushed has her and Harry let her over to the Sanger house, a crooked little building in a dingy row of plain-faced stores. Heedless of the late hour, Harry banged on the door.
An upstairs light turned on and a night-capped head poked out the window and called down to them. Harry answered that he needed to see Mum Sanger urgently. The window snapped shut and, moments later, the front door opened to let them in. Mum Sanger glanced between Harry and Hermione. A smile bloomed on her face, brightening up the dim night.
"You're quite quick," she said as she showed them to the back room.
"Just lucky enough to have friends in high places," Harry replied. Despite herself, Hermione flushed, and she swiftly busied herself with her books so as not to seem flattered.
"Let me explain, Mrs. Sanger" Hermione said, flipping open an old papyrus scroll. "I'm a reviser for the Invisibility Squad. I research old spells and rewrite them for modern day usage. But in case of the Taboo, I only had enough time to revise the latter portion of the ritual. It's a very difficult spell to perform, and with the way it's set up, the Taboo can't be shed until it's already been activated. That means the Sangsters will know what we're doing as we're doing it."
"But Draco—they'll kill him if they have half a chance!" Harry shouted.
"They won't kill him," Mum Sanger insisted. "It's rather difficult to kill a Green Man. If it wasn't, they'd have been slaughtering the elders for generations now. But they will be able to pull him down if he can't resist the Fiendfyre."
"Fortunately," Hermione said before Harry had a chance to respond, "I got Michael Corner to do me a favour. He bumped the elder coven up to public enemy number one, given the current situation on Diagon Alley, and petitioned HWes to launch an attack. They're preparing as we speak and Susan Bones has brought the Auror Corps in for back-up. As soon as we break the Taboo, they can respond at the site. However, that does mean that Draco will have to head the Sangsters off and bear the brunt of their firepower at first. If he's willing to do that... if he'll create a diversion, HWes can tear down their wards before they even know what's hit them. We can take the coven out in one fell swoop!"
"But that still leaves Draco all alone at their mercy, and that's the one thing I promised I wouldn't let happen to him! I promised to protect him!"
Hermione deflated, reaching a hand out to him, but Harry shrugged away from her. He huddled on himself instead, trying to steady his breathing and think. There had to be another way, hadn't there? He couldn't let Draco suffer like that again, couldn't take the risk that they might break his spirit this time. Harry had promised to bring him home safely. How could he go back on his word and ask Draco to go along with Hermione's suggestion?
"He's a Hit Wizard, Harry," Hermione said after a few moments. "He knew what they were like long before he was caught. And there's always a price to pay for freedom."
"Don't you dare spew out tripe like that at a time like this!"
"Sorry!" Hermione said, shaking her head. "Sorry, I—I just hoped you would see all the good that could come of a move like this. But it's your call. If you want to pull back and look for another way..."
Harry raised his head and croaked out, "It isn't my call. Can't you see that?"
For a moment, Hermione and Mum Sanger simply stared at him, unable to work themselves free of the tension of his exclamation. Then Mum Sanger shook herself and went into an adjoining room. When she returned, she carried an old-fashioned bronze mirror. Harry averted his eyes from her.
How could he call Draco out and tell him about this ritual? It was supposed to save him, and yet it would bring him more suffering than ever before. How could he tell Draco that breaking a Taboo meant using it, after all that Draco had confessed to him, and after all Harry had sworn to Draco?
"Harry," Hermione said.
"What?" he said miserably. "What could I possibly say?"
"What makes you think you have to say anything?" Surprised, Harry glanced at the mirror, at Doppel-Draco's grave reflection. He knelt there, his head bowed forward so that his hair fell into his face. "I've always know you could only get me so far, Harry. If I want to leave this place, it was have to be on my own power."
"I said I would save you! I... I thought I would be the one to save you."
"I know that. And you have, by carrying me to this point. It would have been much harder for me to get this far on my own. I am very grateful for what you've done for me, Harry, but this is childhood's end. I will see you on the other side."
A lump rose up in Harry's throat, working itself upward relentlessly though he swallowed it down harder. He nodded and turned to Hermione, whose eyes glittered with both compassion and curiosity.
He said, "We'll go through with the ritual, then. I... can't do anything else, so... I'll do this."
"All right," said Hermione. "All right, then, Harry—you'll act as the mystic supplicant on Malfoy's behalf and prepare four offerings. Then you'll have to undergo a ritualistic death and rebirthing. I'm going to walk you through it first, okay?"
"Yeah," Harry muttered. "Okay."
~
Harry knelt within the triangle of evocation in a clearing in the Forbidden Forest. He'd never been so deep into the woods before, and, despite knowing that the Founders had turned this into a safe haven for Green Men, he was surprised to see the plethora of elder trees in a Scottish forest. He could barely tear his eyes away from the lumpy, knotted facial impressions frowning down at him.
As he glanced away, his eyes alighted on the full-length mirror at the triangle point in front of him, where Doppel-Draco was sitting. Hermione and Mum Sanger stood at the other two points of the triangle, each holding out their wands and a copy of a text on wire-bound notebooks.
"Are you all ready?" Harry said, pulling the pentacle from beneath his t-shirt and allowing it to settle against his chest. It gleamed in the moonlight.
"Go on," Doppel-Draco said.
Harry took a deep breath to steel himself, and then continued. First to pulled the elder wand from the sheath on his thigh and turned to face Hermione. He held it up above his head and recited the invocation she'd taught him back at Mum Sanger's house, "Spirits of the forest, I beseech you, that I may foreknow all future things and command whole nature. Spirits of the forest, I beseech you, in the interest of truth."
"I accept the wand of fire," Hermione said, and Harry set the elder wand at her feet.
Harry then turned to Mum Sanger at the next point of the triangle and held up the cup with the water of life. He repeated the invocation to Mum Sanger, and she replied in kind, saying that she accepted the chalice of water.
Finally he turned back to the mirror and looked Doppel-Draco in the eye. He picked up the knife that Mum Sanger had given him and pulled it from its sheath. It was the first time he'd done so, and he gasped when he saw the light shining out of the blade. He recalled what Mum Sanger had said about it being made of goblin silver and how it would help Doppel-Draco escape the darkness of the Forlorn Garden.
The final part of the ritual was breaking the Taboo. To do that, Harry held the knife out before Doppel-Draco, and repeated the invocation. Doppel Draco said, "I accept the knife of air," and then Harry slit open his palm.
He hissed as his flesh split and the blood pooled in his hand. As he put the knife at the final point of the triangle of evocation and smeared his blood across the surface of the mirror.
Once the triangle was completed, the pentacle around his neck began to thrum with power. Wind whipped through the clearing, and Harry swayed as the breeze swept around him, strong enough to knock him over. He felt dizzy and nauseous.
Dimly, he could make out the sound of Hermione, Mum Sanger and Doppel-Draco speaking the words of a spell in unison. Their magic vibrated all around the triangle of evocation, but within, Harry felt empty and isolated. The winds stung his eyes, so he closed them. And he felt his body slump...
~
In the Darkness, a garden flourished, thick and lovely and sweet. The men who dwelt in trees therein knew neither sorrow nor shame, neither hunger nor hurt, neither weariness nor want, neither despair nor death. Milk and honey sustained them. Gods whispered truths in the winds that rocked them. Magic loved them and obeyed their whims. And they were at ease. This was the first world of man.
The dawn of Light destroyed their world, yet they flourished on, dwelling among others unlike them—men as we, who have lost the capacity of the elders and so now know vice, suffering and death—and learnt their names and truths, which gave them power. But the men envied and hated these strange, immortal beings, and sought to exploit them to their own ends, but this only led to ruin and death. So the elder ones retreated to their forests to dwell in trees and sleep, and there they remained and were forgotten.
~
Light shown in through the open window, and a soft breeze fluttered through his hair. Harry could smell the water and feel the rock of his boat, lulling him through morning grogginess, so he knew that he was back home, but he had absolutely no recollection of how he'd gotten there. Rather, the last thing he recalled was slumping over in the triangle of evocation, and—
"Harry."
He jolted up from the bed, gasping in surprise. His gaze turned to the wardrobe mirror first, an old habit, now, but Doppel-Draco was nowhere to be seen. The disappointment he felt rocketed through him, leaving him a bundle of nerves and sickness.
"Harry."
"What?" His voice sounded terribly disused even to his own voice, and he clutched at his throat in surprise. He cleared it a few times, and then tried again, "Hermione?"
A long, slender wand jutted underneath his nose. Reaching up, he took it from her, curling his fingers around it. A familiar pulse of magic pushed through his hand and up his arm, making it tingle. He traced the leaves, berries and flowers he'd carved onto the pale shell. His hands shook.
"You've been out for a while. I think the ritual drained you," Hermione said, patting his hand. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," Harry said, shoving the covers back and clambering out of bed. His muscled ached, a dull soreness that made his movements tense and jerky. "I dreamt of Draco. That I was him."
"I see," said Hermione. She grew shifty-eyed and tried to leave the room, but Harry grabbed her wrist and held her back.
"Tell me he's okay. Tell me they didn't... didn't..."
"You really don't trust me, do you?"
Harry's heart leapt up into his throat as he spun about. Draco stood in the bedroom door, carrying a basket filled with clinking vials of potions.
Harry was at his side so quickly that he might as well have Apparated. Draco looked so healthy and alive, and Harry yanked him closer and held onto him for dear life. Draco squirmed a bit, but didn't protest. "I thought..."
"I know what you thought, Potter," Draco drawled.
His voice sounded so smooth and easy, as if what he had endured meant nothing. Harry jerked back in surprise and stared at him. Surely, Draco wasn't going to retreat back into his shell? He wasn't going to start hiding again, was he?
Harry didn't think he could take that. They'd come so far together, hadn't they? And—
Draco's hand came up and clamped on Harry's jaw, and Harry hissed in a breath. A disfiguring scar that looked like a burn twined around Draco's left hand, going up beneath the sleeve of his robe—how far it went, Harry couldn't say.
Swallowing a knot of fury lumping in his throat, Harry pulled Draco's hand back and pushed his sleeve back. The burns extended all the way up, a waxy, white spiral that looked as though it might have seared straight to the bone. Draco remained compliant as Harry examined his arm.
"Does it still hurt?"
"It was much worse before, but I had immediate medical attention," Draco murmured. He deposited the basket on the bedside table and curled his hand over Harry's. "The burns don't matter anymore. I want to move beyond that time. It's useless to dwell on it now. Besides, I was rather looking forward to my proper kiss."