[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Pariahs, gen, R, 5/9

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part Five

Hermione slams the book down on the library table with a little hiss of frustration. There’s nothing here about where soul-marks actually come from!

Oh, the authors try to sound authoritative, but Hermione knows exactly what it means when an author starts talking about the difficulty of research and conflicting stories and lack of sources. They don’t really know, and they’re trying their best to disguise it.

“Hermione, what are you doing?”

Hermione looks up with a little blink. Ron is standing beside her table. She realizes with a stab of guilt that she got up early this morning and came to the library without a thought to tell him where she was going. “Oh, I’m sorry, Ron. I was so interested in what I was researching that I just ran out of the Tower without thinking of inviting you along.”

“I mean…” Ron picks up the first book, which proclaims itself a history of wizards’ interactions with Fate, and which lies, and turns it over. “It looks like this is about soul-marks.” His voice is quiet.

Hermione nods. “I don’t think anything is wrong with our bond, Ron,” she adds, finally realizing what he might be thinking. “I just want to be sure of where soul-marks come from and what they really mean. I started wondering, and it’s strange that we don’t have courses on it or something, isn’t it? They define our lives, and they mean so much, but the only things I’ve ever heard about them are from word of mouth. Where are all the books that try to study the ways that soul-marks affect—”

“Hermione.” Ron leans towards her. With a start, Hermione realizes that he’s really pale, more than usual, under his freckles. “You shouldn’t be reading about this.”

“Why not?” Hermione asks. “Is it sacred?” That was a reason that a priest gave once for why she couldn’t continue to ask questions about his religion. Hermione thought she was being respectful, and she tried to ask her parents why her questions were wrong for being about something sacred, but they seemed uncomfortable and avoided explaining.

“Because soul-marks are just—they’re so precious.” Ron hesitates for a long moment, as if he’s trying to find the right words, but Hermione is used to that, and she waits. Ron leans towards her with a little hiss of breath. “They’re fragile.”

“They are?” Hermione asks with wide eyes. She’s never heard of a spell that can damage someone’s soul-mark.

Ron nods with a solemn face. “If you ask too many questions about them, fate or magic—or whatever you want to call the power that creates them—might take it away. That’s what happens to Squibs, you know. They questioned soul-marks too much, or their parents did. That’s why they have such generic marks that they can’t ever be sure of who their marks could match them to.”

“They’re punished for things their parents did? That doesn’t seem right.”

“I promise, it’s what my mum and dad told me.” Ron takes her hand and squeezes it. “You don’t have to worry that much about other people’s marks, Hermione. Isn’t it enough that we matched and we’re so lucky?”

Hermione smiles softly at Ron. She does love him, and for a moment, she’s tempted to agree. She doesn’t really have any friends outside Ron, although she studies with a few Ravenclaw girls sometimes, but why does she need them? She has Ron. Their love is wonderful.

But then she remembers Astoria, and reminds herself that it’s not about how she feels or what she has. There are other people whose marks make them tremendously unhappy, and that really shouldn’t be happening if marks match two people who are perfect for each other.

“What would you say if someone else told you they’re really unhappy with their marks?” she asks carefully, watching Ron.

Ron whistles a little. “I’d think they’re on the course to getting their marks reduced to Squibs’ marks if they keep questioning it. Fate—or magic, or whatever it was—doesn’t make mistakes like that.”

“But—but it’s not their fault, Ron! They didn’t choose it.”

“But the magic knows what it’s doing,” Ron says, in a voice so calm that it’s infuriating. “It wouldn’t have made a mistake. It means they’re probably throwing a fit over something that doesn’t matter. Like, I don’t know, if Malfoy matched with a pureblood who was less wealthy than he was, right? He would have to accept that money doesn’t matter that much. Souls do.”

Hermione catches her breath, and nods. What she knows is that the secret now sits like a rock in the back of her brain, and not because she promised Astoria she would keep it.

Because her soulmate, her one true love, is someone she can’t tell about this, because there is absolutely no way that he would understand.

Hermione glances down at her left arm even as she lets Ron take her hand and pull her out of the library, chattering about how there are going to be blueberry scones at breakfast this morning and he’s sure that he’ll be chosen to be in the dueling tournament any day now.

What if her mark is a mistake, too? Or what if it only means that she could be happy with Ron, not that she will for one hundred percent sure and certain be? Worse, what if she only fell in love with him because of the mark and how inevitable she thought it was?

Hermione feels a little sick.

*

“No human has ever been welcome here.”

Harry stands tall before the goblin Griphook brought him to meet, named Fangcleaver. Fangcleaver’s hand is tight on a bar of what looks like iron ornamented with black beads. He prowls slowly around Harry.

Harry simply waits. Fangcleaver is the leader of this ritual to try and look back through the twisted time and magic to figure out what happened with the house-elf binding. He’s the one who will decide if Harry can join it. Griphook thought Fangcleaver would say yes, but Griphook is only one goblin. Harry awaits the decision of the one who can make that decision.

Fangcleaver finally comes to a stop in front of Harry and frowns at him. His teeth are almost pure white, which is a sign of age in goblins, Harry knows. “What makes you think you are worthy of being part of this circle?”

Harry meets Fangcleaver’s gaze calmly. “I’d really like to free the house-elves, and this will help us figure out what can do that. And I think being without a mark will make my magic more compatible with that of the goblins. And I’d like to see what it’s like.”

Fangclever shows his teeth even more as he sneers. “No words about how much of an honor it would be, and how I should pick you because it would be an honor and you need it?”

Harry blinks, wondering what Fangcleaver has been hearing from humans, or maybe other goblins. “No. The reasons I stated are my real ones.”

Fangcleaver jerks his head a little to one side in what looks like a reluctant nod. “Very well. Come ahead, traveler.” He moves out of the way, so that Harry can step into the iron circle that waits beyond. The minute he steps into it, a blue mist forms, hovering above the circle’s rim and coursing faster and faster the longer Harry watches.

It’s about to make him a little dizzy, so Harry focuses on the goblins in the circle instead. There’s Griphook, smiling at him, and Stonegrinder, Griphook’s niece who matched with Malfoy’s wand, and a few other goblins Harry has come to know. They are six in total. He will be the seventh person. Seven is the most powerful magical number, Harry can practically hear Albus saying in the back of his head.

Fangcleaver is opening his mouth as if he’s about to announce the beginning when an angry yowl sounds from the stairs. Harry blinks as he watches Bast run down the steps and pounce over the edge of the iron circle, but under the spinning blue mist. She lands on his shoulder and spits her opinion of him as Harry does his best not to stagger under her weight.

“Why is she here?” Fangcleaver asks, staring at Bast.

Harry knows exactly why she’s here, and he tries to keep a smirk off his face as he strokes her fur. “She wants to be with me,” he says simply. “She’s my familiar.”

A few people catch their breaths. Harry glances around and notices that, yes, they are looking at him. One of the things Harry learned from Griphook was that it used to be common for wizards and witches to have familiars, but that became less common as humans got more and more obsessed with their soul-marks. It was considered that a familiar limited someone’s magic and weakened their bonds with their future spouses. Now humans mostly don’t have them unless they’re widowed or their soulmates died young.

“Her magic had better not interfere in the circle,” Fangcleaver mutters.

“It’s the same as my magic,” Harry says, while Bast balances herself on his shoulder and rests her paws on his collarbone. “I assure you, it will only add to my power, not change the way that my presence affects the way we conduct the ritual.”

Fangcleaver eyes him, then nods shortly. He turns around and lifts the iron bar, and the blue mist flowing around the circle begins to blur. Harry makes out white tendrils streaming from it before he closes his eyes. He would get dizzy if he didn’t, and that means he would be pretty useless for the rest of the magic they need him for.

The voices around him begin to chant. Harry knows already that he doesn’t have to worry about that. The goblins are the ones providing the active magic of the ritual. He’s the one who has to provide the passive backing, the strength that the goblins will draw on to fling their vision through space and time.

Bast begins to purr on his shoulder, and Harry weaves the sound into his concentration. He’s there, he’s there, and he’s rooted. He’s strong. When the first goblin reaches out for his strength, Harry is there, and swings it around like a weighted rope to throw and send it.

The goblins grab it, and Harry wonders if the immediate sucking drain on his magic is a normal thing. Then he again, he’s learned a lot from Albus. He can husband his strength, keep it up, pull from Bast if he needs to, and keep this going for at least a few hours.

The chant rises and rises, spiraling around the room. Harry keeps his eyes shut, since he hates to imagine what the mist is doing right now, but he can feel the change in the air. The way that power ripples over stones and the iron of the circle, stalking around all of them like a lion, purring like Bast does.

Or growling. It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s their lion, who will do what they ask of it.

Harry doesn’t expect any magic to come for free, though, especially not when they’re trying to pierce a twisting almost twelve hundred years old, so he isn’t surprised when the room gives a massive buck and the magic tries to leap away from them. Harry grabs it and sinks it into the floor. Bast’s purring increases, and then she issues a battle yowl. Her claws dig into Harry’s shoulder.

That’s okay. Harry directs the blood running down his arm to the ritual circle on the floor. He knows that willingly donated blood will make the ritual all the stronger, even though the goblins didn’t ask him for that, probably because they think he’d be squeamish.

Harry wants to smile at the thought, as he stands in the eye of a hurricane of magic. There’s so little he wouldn’t do to free the house-elves that it’s laughable.

The hurricane builds and builds, with the goblins’ chant chasing it and howling. At one point, Harry realizes that they’re picking up the rhythms of Bast’s yowl and weaving it into their own speech, and he almost laughs. But he manages to keep his mouth shut, because something so unexpected might count as a more severe disruption than the hurricane itself.

And still the conflict rises. The goblins sound hoarse now as they chant. The twisting fights in clever ways, flinging out tendrils of magic that make the stone slippery underfoot, and ones that grab hold of the goblins’ chant and try to mute it or make them miss a word.

In the end, Harry thinks they’re going to lose. He can only think of one thing for sure that would make them not do that. So far, the blood he’s shed has been a minute amount, and passively done, because he just stood there and let Bast do it.

The willingly shed magic and blood of a powerful wizard, however—

Harry rips his wand down his arm, thinking what he wants rather than making the right movements or speaking the incantation for the spell, but it seems to work fine, for all that Albus has told him to wait on wordless casting until he’s older and it won’t seem unusual. The blood splashes out of his arm and onto the floor of the room, and Bast gives her battle yowl again.

The hurricane shudders in agony. Harry knows he shouldn’t think that, that it isn’t true, that it doesn’t make sense, but that’s the only thing he can think of to name the shudder that’s making its way through him.

He falls to his knees, but that could be the blood loss as much as anything else, and he gasps and makes sure that his magic is still grounded and that he’s still pouring blood on the floor inside the ritual circle and that Bast is still balanced on his shoulder. He still gives all he can to defeating the twisting.

There’s a hoarse scream. Harry keeps his eyes closed. He has no idea if it’s one of the goblins, and what he would do if it was. It’s not like he’s the one in control of this ritual.

“We have it!”

The triumphant shout makes Harry open his eyes at last. He can see a violent, twisted shimmer in the air, like a million lightning bolts frozen in place. And Fangcleaver is plunging his hand into it and withdrawing something that screams and thrashes in his grip.

Harry gasps, and the blue mist still circling around them and the sensation of standing in a hurricane all die at once. Harry slumps over in what he’s reasonably sure is a dead faint, or something close to it, although it appears that he can still hear and see.

Griphook bends over him. Bast gives a weak growl, but the goblin doesn’t try to touch her. Instead, he grins fiercely down at Harry.

“We know, now,” he says. “Thanks to you. And of course it makes sense that no matter how much the bargain humans made with the elves was violated, they couldn’t escape the binding.”

“Why does it make sense?” Harry asks in a sleepy voice. He feels something touch his arm and bind the wound, but he’s focused on Griphook, on hearing the revelation that’s making his eyes shine like that. Harry once thought nothing could make Griphook’s eyes shine like that.

Griphook bends down further. “They tied the binding into the soul-marks,” he breathes. “That’s where the marks come from, and that’s why they endure. Being fueled by the bound power of the elves, the magic they would have had if not for the damn marks.”

Harry feels his eyes widen. “Then we need to—”

“Destroy the marks. Yes.”

No wonder Griphook is grinning, Harry thinks, dazedly. He has to know that Harry would think this is the best news he’s ever received.

“Are you keeping him awake, Griphook?” Fangcleaver stumps into view, shaking his head in disgust. “We finally learn the answer to a dilemma that we’ve always wondered about, and you want to kill the human who helps us learn about it?” He touches Harry’s forehead with the bar of iron, which moves more delicately than Harry has seen most purebloods handle their wands. “You are going to sleep, now.”

And Harry doesn’t have any choice about going to sleep. But he’s sure that there’s a triumphant smile on his lips when he does it.

*

“The chances were a hundred to one against the ritual working, from what Fangcleaver says,” Harry murmurs, leaning back in his chair with a cup of warm tea in his hands.

Albus exhales shakily. Harry told him, in detail, about the ritual, and Albus wonders if Harry knows how close he came to dying. He could have died either of blood loss or from the twisting lashing out at him to protect those ancient wizards’ secrets.

And what secrets.

Albus has often loathed the mark on his arm, but mostly because it matched him to a power-hungry madman. Now he loathes it because it is a literal symbol of the enslavement of another magical species. That wizards thought not only to win slaves for themselves, not only to win happiness for themselves by using the marks to signal potential matches with potential mates, but to tie those things together—

Albus feels sick.

“What made the ritual work?” Albus asks, finally managing to make himself move his lips and tongue. Harry is eyeing him a bit cautiously. Of course, Albus did spend part of an evening yelling at him about how foolish he had been to do this ritual and endanger his life. Harry avoided him for a day after that until Albus apologized.

Harry smiles thinly. “I’m markless, Albus. There’s no way that the wizards who prepared the twisting could have anticipated that because, even more than they believed a wizard or witch would never work with goblins, they couldn’t conceive of one without a soul-mark continuing to exist.”

Albus nods slowly. The Killing Curse is the only death spell that erases soul-marks, which is why it is the only one classified among the Unforgivables. And until Harry, no one existed past the moment when their mark was erased.

“Griphook thinks we need to destroy the marks.”

“You disagree?” Harry’s eyebrows are rising a little, but it’s clear that if Albus does, it will probably be the end of his relationship with Harry. Harry was committed to the house-elves and their cause long before Albus actually met him, and his commitment to the goblins is not much less deep. He told Albus once that he feels himself more akin to goblins and elves than other humans.

Albus might have tried harder to argue against that if he hadn’t seen the way other humans treated Harry.

“I expected to,” Albus murmurs. “I was going to argue that we should try to destroy the marks of those who own house-elves, but…not others. That Muggleborns, in particular, are innocent.”

“Everyone is bound to the bargain that the twisting was made to conceal.” Harry’s voice is uncompromising. “Everyone benefits from the services of house-elves, and the sacrifice that their magic powers. The marks have to go, Albus.” He pauses, and his voice moderates a little. “Not to mention, the spell is bound to every single elf in existence because it’s bound to every single mark in existence. As long as a single soul-mark exists, the spell can be fueled. And while I wouldn’t be that upset about killing people who are trying to stop us, I know that you would be. So I’m going to compromise and say that the soul-marks need to go.”

Albus nods, rubbing his mark again. Even when he discovered what kind of man Gellert was, he thought it beautiful.

Now, all he can think of is that it’s like a parasite burrowed in his skin. Not born of his own magic, not born with him because wizards and witches are so special that they deserve to know who their partners in life might be, or even just a range of partners in life, but born of captured house-elf magic.

“You do realize the kind of instability this will create in magical society?” Albus asks quietly. “We’re not talking only about a few people who will be upset and then move on with their lives, the way we might be if we were talking about simply freeing the elves and forcing humans to learn more household charms. Everything in our society is organized around these marks.”

“I know.” Harry’s smile slowly widens.

Albus shivers a little, imagining what Harry would have been like without his tutelage. Perhaps less powerful, less skilled in some areas of magic. But also more feral, more inclined to simply destroy everything from the ground up and rejoice in it.

Perhaps Harry is not so far from that, still, given the blazing glee in his eyes.

“And you are prepared to accept everything that will come with that?” Albus continues, still quietly. “It’s true that people hate and despise you now, but they are not actively trying to kill you. They certainly will if they discover that you are the driving force behind this, or that you are one of the reasons we know the truth behind the binding on house-elves.”

Harry looks up at him and blinks in what looks like sheer surprise. Albus holds his gaze, needing to understand, needing to see that Harry has actually thought about the dangers of his position and not just what he stands to gain from it.

“I’m not looking for only revenge, Albus,” Harry says slowly. “I’m looking for a better world for house-elves and goblins. Britain isn’t the only place they’re mistreated, even if the obsession with soul-marks is the worst here and the spell and the twisting were both created here. Goblins still can’t carry wands in countries like France, even though Veela can. House-elves are still treated like slaves and laughed at for their lack of marks.” His mouth sets in a thin line, and his nostrils flare with rage. “I heard one of the dueling champions laughing about it in the second tournament we went to this summer. He said his father had ordered an elf to slam herself into a brick wall until she died.” Harry’s hands flex for a moment. “I cursed him so that he’ll never have teeth again, but I wish I could have done worse. He deserved it.”

Albus swallows. He did wonder why Harry had used that particular curse, but he forgot to ask him about it at the time.

“I apologize, Harry. I suppose it is—it is a fault of the fact that I grew up in this world and only turned against it rather late. I still have a hard time thinking of house-elves and goblins as people.”

Harry nods curtly, and says good night a few minutes later. Albus shakes his head and stares into the fire.

It’s a flaw, and he needed to see and name it. At least Harry hasn’t shown any sign of running off and acting as though he can’t forgive Albus.

It is a long time since Albus has allowed himself to love, given how disastrously the last effort turned out. But he loves Harry Potter, and would grieve indeed to lose the boy’s company forever.

*

Alone in his room, except for Bast, Harry unfolds one of the letters he received earlier today. It’s from Magorian, one of the centaur leaders from the small colony in the Forbidden Forest. They’re interested in wands, which, now that goblins have enough of them, can be manufactured by Gringotts.

And they’re interested in a formal alliance with Harry.

Harry shakes his head a little and stares out the sky. He used to dream about what his soul-mark would be, who he would have matched with, although only idly in the last several years instead of as intensely as he did in his first year at Hogwarts.

Now, he shivers with gratitude to Voldemort for coming and destroying his mark. He even—not that he would admit this aloud to anyone except Bast, not even Albus—is grateful, deep down in his soul, in a bleak and twisted way, to Voldemort for killing his parents.

He would have grown up marked. He might have grown up not believing in all the nonsense about marks, if his parents’ research had really tended in that direction, but the pressure of the larger society would have been a powerful counter to that. And he certainly wouldn’t have participated in research like he has now.

He wouldn’t have Misty as his friend. Griphook as his ally-friend. Bast. Everyone Harry trusts the most is non-human.

He might have been like Albus, having difficulty in thinking of intelligent magical beings who are as capable and powerful as any human, and more humane than most of them, as people.

Instead, he lives in this world, where a centaur can be an ally, a house-elf a friend, a goblin trusting enough of him to practice ritual magic with him.

Bast purrs and kneads her paws on the bedsheets. Harry smiles and touches her back.

And a half-Kneazle his familiar.

Harry is glad that he is who he is.