[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Pariahs, gen, R, 3/6

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part Three

Harry’s correspondence with Albus Dumbledore is pretty eye-opening.

Dumbledore is the one who left Harry on his aunt’s doorstep, and he admits that. He does add that he honestly thought Petunia would welcome Harry more than she did, and that wizards would have experimented on or killed Harry if he’d remained in the magical world. Harry doesn’t much like the Dursleys, but he likes the idea of being experimented on or killed before he could even reach the right age to take revenge on people even less.

Harry asks Dumbledore—or Albus, as the man insists on being called in the letters—what he knows about soul-marks being bollocks, and gets a ton of information.

All of it is bollocks.

My soul-mark matched me to a man named Gellert Grindelwald, of whom I’m sure you’ll learn more the more you study history, Albus writes to him. Yet he was twisted before I ever met him by the kind of Dark Arts that would get him expelled from almost any magical school, and he saw our soulmate bond only as a path to power. I refused to stay with him, and when he began a war that overlapped with the Muggle war with Hitler, I eventually dueled him. I held off too long, hoping that it wouldn’t require me to turn against a man fate said was perfect for me, but in the end, I did as I had to.

Many people would tell you that no man ever shares a soul-mark with a man, no woman with a woman. They ignore me, and pretend simultaneously that my mark didn’t exist and that I horrified them by turning against it to duel Gellert.

Harry asks in his next letter what the explanation is for marks like Dumbledore’s when they’re public, and Dumbledore responds at once.

They claim that people who have soulmates of the same sex must have used Dark Arts to alter their marks. In truth, there is a spell that can alter soul-marks, although it is not classified as Dark Arts. Purebloods use it to make sure that their children’s marks will match the mark of some other child in a family they desire to ally with.

Harry half-sighs when he reads that. Yes, he suspected something like that existed, but it’s nice to have the confirmation.

Albus also tells him how soul-marks do exist that match other people’s. The intricate paintings that appear on someone’s arm are so intricate that there can be slight but noticeable differences between them. If someone wants another person as their soulmate, they’ll ignore the differences and proclaim that the marks match. If they find their soulmate undesirable, however, like many purebloods who could match with Muggleborns, they’ll insist that the resemblance isn’t that close and they’re looking for their exact match.

Harry shakes his head when he reads that. He wonders, for a moment, how close Professor McGonagall’s mark really was to her dead husband’s.

It sounds like Voldemort might have had a good idea, then, he writes back to Albus. Getting rid of soul-mark restrictions.

Albus doesn’t reply for nearly a week. Harry does wonder at the delay, but he’s busy working with Misty and Griphook on plans that will let him challenge more purebloods to duels and keep him safe from any retaliation Draco’s father might set up.

Albus finally writes back with a long letter. Harry smiles as he sits up in his bed off the hospital wing, reading it. He strokes Bast with one hand, and the vibrations of her purr travel up his arm and down into his chest, shaking the letter a little, too.

Voldemort had the seeds of a good idea. However, there were two things he did that made sure I could never ally with him, although I also despise people who insist on the purity of the marks above all else.

First, he killed his soulmate to access levels of power usually forbidden to witches and wizards, and to fracture his own mark. This soulmate was an innocent woman who was matched to Voldemort the way I believe he was as a child, not the monster he later became. She had done nothing to deserve the sacrifice. It is too much like the way the Gellert turned against me for me to have any objectivity about the decision, but sacrificing an innocent is hardly the way to begin destroying our society.

Second, he did not want to expose the truth about soul-marks, but to spread another lie. He wished to say that the marks needed to be destroyed, and that anyone who did find happiness in their marriages or apparent matches was a trapped victim who had to be set free by death. He had his own mark that he placed on his followers, usually directly above their soul-marks. It did destroy any influence the mark might have had over them—and it gave Voldemort access to their minds and souls, the right to wield their magic. They became his slaves, the way you talk about our house-elves being slaves.

Voldemort may have said the right words, the same ones that would appeal to you and I, but in the end, he would have become a dictator puppeting the people who were loyal to him.

Harry nods to himself when he finishes the letter. If Voldemort was as great as Harry thought he was for a little while, then Albus surely would have joined him already. And Harry’s parents might have lived.

He wonders who he would be if that happened. He would have his mark, and—what? Would he have grown up believing in it? Or would the truth about soul-marks have been exposed by then? Would his parents, who had been researching soul-marks, have wanted him to be happy, or would they be trapped by the same views they’d grown up with? They were soulmates with matching marks, after all.

Harry lies back with his hands behind his head, Bast a purring ball of warmth close to his side, and dreams of different worlds.

*

Mr. Malfoy’s retaliation comes in a form Harry didn’t think of. One afternoon while he’s reading history in the library, Misty appears next to him, silently, without the usual little pop that house-elves do to announce themselves. She’s wringing her hands, her eyes wide and wet.

“What is it, Misty?” Harry hastily raises the Privacy Charms. They’re not as good as the ones that Professor McGonagall did the day she came to fetch him from the Dursleys’ house, but they’re as strong as he can make them.

“There is a strange elf being here, Harry Potter.” Misty stares at him and blinks. “He is saying that he is here to kill Harry Potter, and needing our help to find him. Some of the others are delaying him, but we does not know what to do.”

Harry frowns. He hasn’t met any house-elves other than the ones who work at Hogwarts, but he also can’t think of why a random one would show up here and try to kill him. “Did he say who he’s from?”

Misty nods emphatically. “He is saying that his masters are being the Malfoys. His name is being Dobby.”

Harry stands up with a little smile. He’s been working on something that he didn’t think he would get a chance to test so soon, because all the elves who work here are his friends and he wouldn’t want to hurt them. But he did know that some pureblood families would have house-elves defending their homes, and that means he had to come up with a way to neutralize them.

“Lead the way, Misty.”

*

The moment Harry steps into the kitchens, he can see the strange elf. He’s sitting on the bench across from the spot where Harry usually sits, about to lift a bottle of butterbeer to his mouth. He lowers it when he sees Harry and stares at him with fixed intensity, his ears quivering. He doesn’t say a word.

He wears a ragged and dirty tea towel, nothing like the clean ones that all the Hogwarts elves wear. Harry breathes out slowly through his rage. He walks slowly towards the elf—Dobby, Misty said—his smile a little fixed.

Dobby stands up and jumps to the floor, coming around the bench to stare at Harry. He raises a hand. Sparks are wavering and dancing along the edge of his fingertips to show his magical power.

Harry draws his wand. Dobby doesn’t move, but continues to stand there with the sparks coming out. Harry wonders if he’s resisting the orders, or if the sparks are a spell the Malfoys told him to use.

They won’t have to find out. Even as Dobby begins to lean forwards to put his hand on Harry’s arm, Harry grabs Dobby’s arm and presses down as hard as he can.

And he thinks, Sever.

There’s a long wail from Dobby, and he crumples to the floor, the sparks from his fingers stopping at once. The other elves in the kitchen all pull their ears simultaneously. Harry kneels down next to Dobby and looks him over.

“How do you feel?” he asks.

Dobby stares up at him, and says nothing, quivering. Then again, that’s not that different from the way that he’s reacted so far. Harry sits back on his heels and waits for some kind of response to his question.

Instead, Dobby disappears.

Harry sighs and turns to Misty. Misty is watching him with wide eyes. “Did Harry Potter be severing Dobby’s binding?” she asks.

“I think I did,” Harry says. That’s certainly what he intended to do. The elves told him enough about soul-marks and how every wizard and witch who owns house-elves has marks—which Albus has told him are magically changed most of the time—that Harry wondered if the touch of a markless wizard could break the binding. But it’s only theory, and while he concentrated as hard as he could and told his magic what to do, he’s not the most powerful wizard who ever lived, either. He has no idea what just happened.

“But we will not be knowing unless Dobby is coming back.” Misty folds her arms and nods. “Those Malfoys, they might be trying something else. An elf will come with you this summer and guard you, Harry Potter.”

Harry blinks. “You don’t have to do that.”

“It is being a change from the kitchen work,” Misty says firmly. “And we is not having Harry Potter assassinated before he manages to do something.”

Harry smiles. He doesn’t like the thought of adding to the house-elves’ work, but when he sees it as a way of them keeping him alive so he can free them in the future, it makes sense. “All right. Thanks, Misty.”

Some of the elves used to break into sobs and cries when he thanked them, but Misty is long past that, fortunately. She studies him some more, then nods. “Harry Potter is being welcome.”

*

“Get in the house, freak.”

The minute Uncle Vernon says that, he yelps and lurches forwards. Harry hides a smile. He knows what happened, because Misty told him what she would do when his relatives started in with the namecalling and insults. Uncle Vernon just felt a sensation like a switch catching the backs of his legs.

Uncle Vernon gasps and looks around. When he sees nothing, he seems to decide that Harry did something with his magic, and glares at him. “What did you do, your little freak?!”

The switch hits again, from his reaction. Harry lets his laughter go. Misty is going to protect him, which means he can show his real emotions around his relatives for the remainder of summer.

“Vernon! What’s going on—” Aunt Petunia comes around the corner, gasps, and tries to point her finger at Harry. From the sound of it, Misty’s magic slaps her pointing finger. She staggers backwards, cradling her hand as if it’s a much worse injury than it actually is. “What are you doing?”

Harry shrugs. “I found some magic that protects me. Don’t insult me or act as if you’re going to touch me, and it’ll stop.” Misty is a lot fairer than most people Harry knows. She did promise that her job would just be watching over and protecting him, not trying to get revenge for everything the Dursleys have done to Harry over the years.

(That’s Harry’s job).

“You’re going to get in trouble with the magic coppers,” Uncle Vernon blusters. Harry doesn’t think Uncle Vernon knows anything about Aurors. He’s just trying to find some argument that will prove Harry wrong, like usual. “Can’t use magic on defenseless normal people like us.”

“There’s a whole group of people just dedicated to wiping Muggles’ memories of magic they’ve seen,” Harry says helpfully.

From the way Aunt Petunia pales, she might have heard about that, maybe from something Harry’s mum said. Uncle Vernon coughs and clears his throat. “I don’t believe you. The government would never let them get away with it.”

Harry winks at him. “How many Muggles even know about magic, Uncle Vernon? How can they stop something they don’t know about? That they don’t remember?”

Uncle Vernon is beginning to look distinctly nervous. “Now, see here, boy,” he says, and seems to gain a little confidence when Misty’s magic doesn’t strike him again. “What exactly are the limits of this? We can’t talk to you? We can’t ask you to do chores? What?”

“Don’t ask me to do chores, don’t lock me in my room, don’t keep me from eating, and don’t call me freak.” Harry shrugs. “Otherwise, I’ll still out of your way, and clear out of the house when you have friends or important people over. We can just safely ignore each other the way we did for the last month of last summer.”

Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia look at each other and seem to be having a silent conversation. Harry wonders idly if they would have had soul-marks and been soulmates if they were magical. Probably. Which just shows that people can be suited for each other in the most awful of ways.

“Fine,” Uncle Vernon grumbles finally. “But if we find out that you’ve done anything to our Duddikins—”

“I’ll stay away from Dudley. But I can’t promise what will happen if he allows his friends to corner me and beat me up all the time.”

Aunt Petunia seems to get paler, and she nods, her lips tightly pressed together. “We’ll talk with Duddikins.”

“Great. I’m so glad that we had this talk.” Harry gives them a winning smile and goes up the stairs. He can hear Misty’s chuckles behind him, almost silent but there as little piercing squeals if you know what to listen for.

She becomes visible again when they get into his bedroom, and they slap hands before going back to their plans.

*

Albus looks up with a smile as he watches the apparently ordinary owl flying back with a reply to his latest letter. When the “owl” gets close enough, the illusion fades from it, and Fawkes gives Albus a cheerful chirp to let him know that this is indeed the letter he’s been waiting for.

Albus leans back in his chair as Fawkes perches on the back of it and begins to preen his long feathers. Albus has a quiet little cottage in the middle of nowhere. He thought the best thing he could do after his devil’s bargain with Lucius Malfoy was fade from view, and it was true that no one came after him. Albus barely reads the papers, either. He can’t bear to hear about Hogwarts’s decline into “traditional” pureblood thinking, or the shameful changes the Board of Governors are making.

But with the way that Harry is talking to him, Albus feels like getting back into politics again.

He tears open the envelope in his eagerness to get to the letter. Fawkes gives a small trill that Albus has always thought of as a phoenix snicker.

Albus points a finger at him, tells him, “Just for that, no berries tonight,” and turns back to Harry’s words.

Thank you for reminding me about the centaurs, another species without marks, that wizards despise but don’t make arguments for actually enslaving. I’ll keep it in mind. I wanted to ask what your research about brownies said? You didn’t discuss that much in the last letter.

Albus sighs. The reason he didn’t include more about that research in his last letter is that there’s really nothing he can find. Free brownies seem to be nothing like house-elves, in that they would have revolted the moment the bargain was violated. And there are few bindings capable of controlling powerful fae creatures in the first place, let alone ones that would allow creatures as magical as house-elves to only use that magic as humans direct.

He needs to find out more. And he needs to be honest with Harry. He has the feeling that Harry can bear disappointment, but not lies.

Misty says that she and some of the other house-elves from Hogwarts tried to find out what happened to Dobby, but they haven’t had any luck so far. Maybe he just returned to the Malfoys and I didn’t break his binding after all.

Griphook is very eager to have us meet and have you give me that dueling training you promised. Apparently he agrees that joining the underage dueling circuit is the fastest way to let me acquire more wands legally and give them to the goblins.

Albus smiles softly. From the things Harry has written in his letters and the scandalized articles about the markless boy that sometimes appear in the Prophet, he’s sure Harry will excel once he has the right training.

I know that you’re worried about me not having more friends at Hogwarts, but honestly, the goblins and the house-elves are great friends. Maybe the goblins are more allies than friends, but I can trust them, at least. And I can’t really trust any wizard or witch that I’ve met, except for you.

Albus has to close his eyes for a moment.

He thought he would never have the privilege of mentoring young wizards and witches again when he lost the Headmaster’s position. What parent would trust their children to someone who was soul-marked for another man and then fought that soulmate?

But he has a greater chance, now, and he can’t thank Harry enough for giving him the opportunity. He reads the rest of the letter, but his mind is far away, already planning the first spells that he’s going to teach Harry.

*

“Welcome, Harry. I’m Albus, and of course you’ve already met Fawkes a few times in the guise of a post-owl.”

Harry has been looking wide-eyed around the forest clearing that Misty popped him to a few minutes ago. It’s a much smaller place than Hogwarts, but it feels infinitely more magical. Wild roses grow around the edges of the clearing and entwine their thorns into patterns that look like stars and crescent moons. Beehives with fluttering blue and purple and black bees are nearby, and a strong smell of honey comes from them. A small fountain springs up near the door of the cottage, and Harry can feel the magic of its bubbling water, singing and dancing, in a way that he never did with any water at Hogwarts, even the lake.

Why is it so much wilder here? So much freer?

There’s the edge of a thought there that feels important, but it slips away before Harry can focus on it. He turns around as Albus steps towards him with his hand out.

Harry takes a steadying breath. This is the first wizard who’s ever willingly shaken hands with him; even Professor McGonagall had to visibly catch herself to overcome the impulse to back away. He shakes Albus’s hand solemnly, studying him all the while.

Albus is tall, with a long white beard that’s tucked into his broad blue belt. He smiles at Harry in a way that looks delighted but a little forced, like he hasn’t done it in a long time. He has long white hair, too, hanging down behind his back and held up with something that might be the same belt.

His robes are blue with silver edges and whizzing stars and moons all over them. Harry smiles. “I like your robes,” he says.

“Thank you! I must admit, I do get lonely for compliments sometimes.” Albus steps back and gestures towards the cottage. “Won’t you and Misty come inside? I have some nettle wine, I think.”

“Misty can be drinking that,” Misty says, looking pleased to be remembered. Harry nods, wondering for a moment if Albus knew about the part of the binding that lets house-elves drink in front of wizards before Harry told him or not.

Well, it’s all right if he didn’t. That might just mean he didn’t keep house-elves of his own and didn’t think of them as slaves, which would be perfectly fine with Harry.

The inside of the cottage continues the wild, visible magic theme of the garden. There are moving paintings on the walls, but not the portraits that Harry has sometimes seen at Hogwarts; these show waves crashing on shores, and boats tossing on lakes in the moonlight, and a rising sun that peeks over the rims of some mountains and then sinks back again. Albus’s chair and couch in the sitting room look as if the phoenix uses them for a perch pretty often. A tea set is happily making tea in the corner. When Albus waves his wand at it, some of the teacups grow a little bigger, and steaming hot tea fills them. A small bottle of nettle wine comes bustling in and fills a cup for Misty.

Harry is grateful for the hot tea, especially when he discovers that there’s a distinct blackcurrant flavor to it. Misty makes sure Harry gets enough to eat, even when the Dursleys are avoiding them, but she makes the tea cooler than Harry likes because she’s worried about him burning his mouth. And Harry won’t order her to make it hotter because that would be stupid, ordering one of his friends around.

But he’s missed it.

“Ah,” Albus says at last, setting down his cup. “So, Harry, tell me. I know that you’ve been focusing on battle spells, and you’ve told me about a few of them. But what exactly do you know in the realms of defensive magic?”

“One ward to keep my trunk safe,” Harry admits. “And a shield that I can use when someone might seriously challenge me in a duel. Other than that, nothing special, really. Well, I tried to put a ward on my cat, but she hissed at me and ran away.”

Albus laughs, a big, booming sound that Harry likes immediately. “From what you’ve told me of the cat, I think she must be part Kneazle. Claws and intelligence enough to defend herself, and resistant to some spells. I think she’ll be able to stay safe.” He leans forwards. “Minerva chose well. I believe she must have anticipated the reaction of students at Hogwarts to you. I did, as well, but I hoped I would be wrong.”

Harry shrugs a little. He doesn’t like the reaction of the students at Hogwarts to him, but he’s almost used to it now. It seems absurd that someone might have thought it would be different.

Thinking of Professor McGonagall does remind him of one thing, though. “Can I see your mark, sir?”

“Albus, I do insist.” Albus is already rolling up his left sleeve. “I remember how happy I was when I saw the matching one on Gellert’s arm. Of course, with time and distance, all I can remember is how much our marks didn’t match.”

Harry looks carefully at the mark that’s revealed. It seems to be a green and white waterfall. Yes, that’s what it is, Harry sees after some more study. It covers the whole length of Albus’s arm between his elbow and his wrist, which is about the normal size for a soul-mark, as far as Harry can tell. And the scene is one of a peaceful-looking green forest with a waterfall, white with foam, crashing into a pool that’s also mostly green.

“What were the differences?” Harry asks, without taking his eyes off the mark.

“Gellert’s shows more of the sky.” Albus touches the upper edge of the mark, and Harry can make out a dot of blue there when he squints. “A glimpse of clouds. His waterfall has more colors. There’s a fish leaping—here, if I remember correctly.” This time, he touches the bottom left corner of the mark. “As I said in one of my letters to you, soul-marks are intricate paintings, but that just makes them easier to twist into what you want to see. Emphasize the differences, ignore the differences, pretend that they’re exactly alike when they’re not—”

“Change them when they’re not what you want,” Harry interrupts.

Albus nods, waits a moment, and lets his sleeve fall back into place when Harry doesn’t object. “Yes. I know many pureblood witches and wizards who had their marks altered. In most cases, it was to ally them as children with a particular family their parents wanted to marry them into. In others, it was done because their mark was close to a Muggleborn’s, and we could not have that, of course.”

“Or they were men and their marks matched other men’s?”

“Or a woman whose mark matched a woman’s. Yes.” Albus’s nostrils flared. “I believe that soul-marks could be a great gift to our kind, Harry. They could show us who had the potential of becoming someone wonderfully close to us. Instead, they are used as another form of chain or binding, this time one we have linked around our own necks.”

Harry is still often curious about what his own mark looked like, but at the moment, he thinks he’s grateful not to have one. Would he have been just another blind little rules-follower, sacrificing his chance to learn powerful magic and free people because he was too caught up in dreams of destined love? It seems he probably would have been.

“Do you know what my parents were researching about soul-marks?”

“Only one aspect of it. Both James and Lily thought most of it too dangerous to share. But the rumors about their work got out, of course, and Voldemort killed them.” Albus sighs.

“What was the one aspect?”

“They were seeking a way to identify marks that had been magically altered. That would, of course, have weakened the hold purebloods like Lucius Malfoy have over so many people, by showing that purebloods do not have destined perfect partners but have manipulated their marks to make it seem as if they do. Right now, you understand, Muggleborns who match with purebloods are painted as incredibly lucky or potentially about to taint their soulmates, and they are encouraged to find their soulmates in their ‘own kind’ as much as possible.”

“I’m surprised Voldemort attacked my parents, then. That sounds like the kind of research he’d want to support.”

Albus shakes his head slightly. “If there was a spell that could identify magically altered marks, it could also have identified Death Eaters he’d branded.”

Harry blinks. “But the Mark you told me about would do that, right?”

Albus half-smiles. “Remember how private most people consider soul-marks, Harry. Asking to see them is crass in the extreme. Death Eaters could pass safely in most contexts and not be thought strange for not wanting to reveal their arms.”

Harry rolls his eyes. Albus watches him curiously. “What are you thinking, Harry?”

“That this entire world is rotten to the core, and people care way too much about those stupid marks,” Harry says flatly. “And Misty is right when she says that wizards don’t deserve to be around house-elves or goblins or other markless people at all.”

“Burn them!” Misty squeaks cheerfully. “Master Albus is helping us to burn them!”

“You don’t need to call him master any more than you do me,” Harry tells her.

Misty gives him a solemn look. “He is Master Albus.”

Harry gives up. Maybe Misty remembers Albus from when he was Headmaster of Hogwarts and feels she has to respect him or something.

“I did not side with Voldemort because I could not condone his methods, or his desire to create more slaves,” Albus says. “But years have passed since then, and I feel…”

“Yeah?” Harry turns back to him.

Albus’s eyes have narrowed a little, but he smiles. “I feel that burning is the much more appropriate course than I did when I was younger.”

Harry and Misty smile back at him.