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And Under Star

“It grieves me to inform you, students, that there was an attack on Hogwarts last night.”

The Slytherin and Hufflepuff students in the Great Hall mostly gasp. The Ravenclaws mostly don’t, since a lot of them got woken up by Harry leaving the Tower or Professor Flitwick summoning the older years to defend the younger students. Some of the Gryffindors look pretty droopy, too. Professor McGonagall must have woken them up for the reasons Professor Flitwick did, Harry thinks.

“The attackers were defeated,” Dumbledore says soothingly. He stands at the Head Table with his hands spread. Harry thinks he’s pretty good at this, and he probably should have made a career out of soothing people with a soft voice and waving hands. “But it was thanks to the valor of our professors and students that they were. Harry Potter led the counterattack.”

The Headmaster is also better at giving credit where credit is due than he was last term, Harry thinks. He lifts his mug of butterbeer in a toast. Professor Flitwick asked the house-elves to switch out Harry’s regular drinks for butterbeer for the rest of the month in thanks. Luna smiles next to him.

“Who sent the attackers?” asks someone in seventh year at the Gryffindor table. Harry makes him out after a bit of squinting. Seamus Finnigan.

“Lord Voldemort,” Dumbledore says, making a lot of people gasp this time. Harry wonders why a name has that much power to cow them, and makes a mental note not to rely on many of the students if Voldemort attacks the school himself. They won’t be able to do anything about the man if the name makes them react that way. “He sent werewolves.”

“How many?” asks Finnigan, while the Great Hall erupts.

Dumbledore is good at pitching his voice so that people hear him even when they’re shouting. “I am unsure. Mr. Potter, how many do you think?”

“I think about twenty-five. Maybe twenty. Some of them ran away once the first ones started dying, and I don’t know how many were there originally. But we killed nineteen.”

The murmurs die down into utter silence. People are staring at him. Harry frowns. “What? I didn’t kill all of them. My count was only seven.”

“Only seven,” says Terry Boot faintly.

“Yes, seven. Which isn’t that impressive when you think about it. It’s only seven-nineteenths of the werewolves who were killed. Or stopped,” Harry adds conscientiously, and looks up at Professor McGonagall. “I don’t know whether you consider turning werewolves into wooden statues to be killing them, Professor.”

Professor McGonagall smiles. Harry notes a few people at the Head Table edging away from her. “I do not, Mr. Potter. I transformed three of them, and all of them have been turned over to the Ministry. So those count as arrests and not kills.”

Harry shrugs. “All right. So it was sixteen who died.”

“You killed seven,” says someone at the Hufflepuff table in a thin screechy gasp. Who—oh, Ernie Macmillan. “That’s almost half.”

“Yes? I did get instruction in basic human maths, you know.”

People are once again looking at him funny. Harry sighs. “The only reason I got it wrong the first time is that I was counting Professor McGonagall’s Transfigurations as kills,” he explains, as carefully as he can. “Now I know that she doesn’t, so now it’s seven-sixteenths. It’s not my fault that I didn’t know she didn’t count them.”

“That’s not what—” Terry begins.

Anthony puts a hand on Terry’s arm. “I’d leave it alone if I were you.”

Terry subsides. Harry smiles at Anthony in thanks. At least he seems to understand that a mistake can happen to anyone, and it doesn’t make Harry bad at maths. Maybe it’s because Anthony takes Arithmancy and Terry doesn’t.

He does get to overhear Ginny talking about how she killed three werewolves, and watch people edging away from her at the Gryffindor table. Ginny is goblin enough to enjoy it. Harry hides his smile.

*

“Thank you for coming.”

Draco’s voice is strangled. Harry watches him in some concern. Draco stands with his arms clasped in front of him and his head bowed. They’re not far from the edge of the Forbidden Forest, but at least it isn’t the full moon tonight.

“Of course. What’s the matter?”

“I need to know if you’re upset with me.”

“No,” Harry says slowly. “Did you think you did something that I need to be upset about?”

The starlight is faint, but Harry can see Draco biting his lip in the moments before he plunges forwards. “I just—I thought you might be upset that I didn’t help you in the werewolf attack. Since I’m supposed to be an ally of your clan.”

Harry waves his hand. “Luna’s my friend and she didn’t help, either, because she’s not a trained warrior. And Professor Flitwick did, but he’s half-goblin. And Professor McGonagall helped, but she hasn’t sworn to me or anything. And Ginny, but she can’t swear to anything before she’s seventeen.”

“I—so it’s not a problem?”

“Right. It would be a problem if the werewolves attacked and you fought beside them. But I don’t think there’s any reason for you to do that when I removed the Dark Mark.” Harry squints at Draco. “Unless you were dating one of them or something. Were you dating one of them?”

“No,” Draco says, looking more than bewildered.

Harry sighs. Every time he thinks he understands a human cultural norm, it turns out he doesn’t. It seems that Michael’s weird determination to date Luna and also never talk to her about it doesn’t translate to other humans. “All right. Well, you didn’t fight on our enemies’ side, and you didn’t hurt anyone, so I don’t mind.”

Draco ducks his head. “I don’t even know for sure if I could fight,” he whispers.

“I hope you would, to defend your own life and innocent lives,” Harry says. “But there are other ways you could contribute.”

“Really?” Draco looks hopeful. “Like how?”

*

“I want to know what you mean, Mr. Crouch, by stating that this is the only year the Goblin Dueling NEWT will be offered.”

Harry grins. Having Draco come with him to the meeting Crouch demanded was a brilliant idea. Draco can’t do fighting all that well, but he can do haughty and look at Crouch down his nose like Crouch is a shoe who keeps untying itself.

“Mr. Malfoy, you of all people should know—”

“Why me of all people?”

“Because these filthy beasts killed your father!”

“Excuse me, I did bathe this morning,” Harry points out. He sees no reason to object to the “beasts” comment. According to the Ministry, some of the most intelligent people he knows are beasts, including unicorns.

Crouch turns away from Harry with a sour expression and stares at Draco. “They did kill your father,” he repeats.

“Harry did. And I don’t regret it.”

Crouch’s mouth flaps open. He regains control of it, and then seems to decide that he’s going to ignore Draco, turning to face Harry instead. “Mr. Potter, you must understand that it’s not in the Ministry’s power to have a Goblin Dueling NEWT extend beyond this year. I was only able to negotiate it for this one year as a special favor to you.”

“Why can’t it last beyond this year?”

“Because you won’t be in the school anymore,” Crouch says, and his pinched expression gets a little brighter. “There won’t be a qualified professor.”

“I could fail my NEWTS and stay, if that’s all it is,” Harry offers, and ignores Draco’s terrified face. NEWTS are less important than Voldemort, Nagini, Fiendfyre practice, fighting off attackers in the school, protecting his people, continuing Ginny’s training, teaching his Goblin Dueling class, and doing ordinary classwork. He would like to bet that most humans don’t often attend to the thing that’s ninth on their list of priorities.

“You should, of course, pass them and go on to take your place in civilized society,” Crouch says quickly. “There would be no qualified teachers after you.”

“Yes, there would be,” Harry points out. “Even if it’s just goblins from my clan rotating in and out. And I’m sure that I could take my place in the civilized society of the Realm of Song without some exams that my people don’t acknowledge anyway.”

Crouch narrows his eyes. “I risked my political standing to get this class approved, boy. It was always understood that it would only endure until you finished your seventh year.”

“Not by me.”

“You should have known! If you had a modicum of political awareness at all!”

Harry smiles. “And if you had a modicum of awareness at all, you would be aware that I would hardly consider one year’s worth of a NEWT in Goblin Dueling to be worth retracting my claim of blood feud. Would you like me to reinstate that? I could, and just duel you to maiming instead of death. That would acknowledge what you did while also acknowledging that it wasn’t enough.”

“Why can’t you go away?” Crouch springs to his feet. “Why do you have to—to proclaim blood feuds, to not understand the inner workings of the Ministry, to be—such a bloody goblin!”

“That’s what I am,” Harry says evenly. “I could ask you to stop being a human, but you wouldn’t understand what I meant. Now. What is it? You continue to fight for the Goblin Dueling NEWT to remain, or I reinstate the blood feud?”

Crouch fumes for long moments. Then he says, “I’ll pay the weregild.”

“You refused that option long ago. And I don’t believe that you would pay it if I let you out of this room. You’d probably just go on the run and send me taunting letters again.”

“Wait, what are you talking about?” Draco asks, sounding a little alarmed.

“He hid for months while I was trying to bring about the end of the blood feud,” Harry says, not taking his eyes from Crouch. “I did offer him the choices of a weregild or a duel. He refused both. He sent me letters gloating about it. Then, when he did finally say he would fight for the Goblin Dueling class and I agreed to withdraw my claim of vengeance, he never said anything about it only being for one year.”

Draco is giving Crouch a look of disgust that, to Harry’s pleasure, seems to wound him far more deeply than did Harry’s. “I think even my father would have said that was against the definition of honor, sir,” Draco says, shaking his head. “Why would you do such a thing?”

“He’s a coward,” Harry points out.

“The prices you demanded were unreasonable!” Crouch blurts at the same time.

“And why was illegally incarcerating Sirius for twelve years reasonable?”

“I do not expect you to understand politics.” Crouch is breathing through his nostrils like a bull. “Nonetheless, this is the truth. The Goblin Dueling class will not continue after this year, and no more goblins will be admitted to the school as teachers.”

“Says who?”

“The Minister.”

Harry nods slowly. Dumbledore might have changed his mind, but that means little if the Ministry is still hung up on goblins teaching human youngsters. It seems the time has come to remove Fudge from office.

“We don’t accept that,” Harry says.

“You and Malfoy?”

“My clan and I.”

“It doesn’t matter what you accept. The Ministry has made its decision, and will enforce its will. Or do you think the Ministry cannot interfere at Hogwarts? Do you remember a professor named Dolores Umbridge?”

“I remember she was only here for a day or so before Harry made her quit,” Draco muses.

Crouch tosses him an ugly look. “You should make sure that you stand on the right side, Mr. Malfoy,” he mutters threateningly. “Your father did—”

“And he died. Besides the fact that I’ve sworn an alliance with Harry’s clan, I’d like to live, thank you.” Draco looks a little revolted as he stares at Crouch. “You were right, Harry. We become ugliest when we oppose your people.”

Harry shrugs. “Some of it is just ordinary human qualities that everyone could live with, but when human people decide that goblins aren’t people, then this is what happens.”

Crouch makes a noise of sheer frustration and stomps away. Harry can remember thinking that people had Veela or Mermish heritage when they did that, but no longer. That’s just pure human frustration, nothing non-human about it.

“That was fun,” Draco muses.

Harry nods. “And it’s confirmed one of my courses of action for me.” He sighs. It seems that “opposing the Ministry” is going to have to move up the list of his priorities. But after thinking about it for a moment, he smiles.

This also means that no one can fault him for pushing the NEWTS even further down.

Enchanted Ways

“Harry.”

Dumbledore sounds exhausted. Harry gives him a concerned look. Dumbledore’s face is pale, and if it weren’t for the fact that Harry knows Nagini is the last Horcrux, he might be concerned that there’s another one influencing the Headmaster. He’s just worn-down, and sometimes his eye twitches in weird, random patterns.

“Yes?” Harry asks. They’re in his office again, with Fawkes preening on his perch nearby, critically peering at his feathers as if he thinks that the ones not about to come loose in his molt are ones that he wants to get rid of. Dumbledore’s desk is still complaining. Harry really needs to liberate the poor thing.

“I received word that Minister Fudge is no longer getting paid.”

“No, he’s not.”

Dumbledore waits some more. Harry waits some more. Dumbledore’s eye twitches, and finally he gives in. “Do you know something about this? Cornelius was disposed to blame you, but I reminded him that just because you had cursed him and irritated him and thwarted him many times did not mean you were automatically to blame.”

Harry smiles. Dumbledore has learned not to blame goblins automatically, which is more than Harry thought he ever would. “In this case, yes, I had something to do with it. But it’s really more my clan.”

“What are you doing?”

“Every time he should get paid, or every time someone tries to bribe him, the Galleons roll away from him or away from his vault,” Harry explains cheerfully. “I suppose someone could try to bribe him with a whole bunch of Sickles and Knuts, but we really only had to speak to the Galleons because they’re the most common kind of coin for bribes and also the coin that all the Ministry officials get paid in.”

Dumbledore is staring at him in what looks like horror. But it could be awe. Harry thinks he’s learned to judge human facial expressions to a shade, and this has elements of both. “How did you speak to the Galleons that he would get paid or bribed? I do not believe you would have access to them before they were paid.”

Harry shakes his head. “No, but we can pass the message to the golden lakes and rivers in the Realm of Song, and they can pass it on to the Galleons that were forged of them. All gold is kin at bottom, sir. Even if a Galleon was forged from a vein quite far away, it might be gold that flowed free in another goblin clan’s lake once, or a vein that ran beside one of ours early on in the shifting of the earth. And the Galleons don’t tend to like the Minister, anyway. His hands are sweaty.”

Dumbledore mouths the last words to himself, looking bewildered, but then says, “So you are trying to remove the Minister from office?”

“Yes.”

“And you think that his not getting paid will do it?”

“Well, Fudge doesn’t care so much about morality or truth or the right thing to do,” Harry says, and shrugs. “He cares about money. I think that if he gets frustrated enough, yeah, he’ll step down.”

“If he suspects that the curse will persist no matter what he does, he may cling to the Minister’s office simply for the position of power,” Dumbledore says grimly.

“That’s possible,” Harry has to acknowledge. “But I did send him a letter telling him what he has to do to get the Galleons to stop rolling away from him. I can’t do anything about it if he doesn’t believe me, but I tried.”

Dumbledore leans back and stares up at the ceiling for a long moment. Harry looks with him, but sees nothing more interesting than the stones that are most places inside the castle. They’re singing to themselves, so self-absorbed that they’re not even talking about the cracks running through them. They’re reminiscing about Headmasters of old.

“I suppose that if you must handle the Minister as an enemy, this is one way to do it that is peaceful,” Dumbledore murmurs at last.

Harry shrugs. “I really don’t want to be his enemy. The problem is that he insists on being mine. And my people’s.”

Dumbledore looks at him with an odd twinkle in his eyes, not quite like the ones he used to have. Still, Harry likes it better than the blank, flat look he’s been wearing lately. “Do you know, Harry, I think you are quite right.”

Harry beams. Even Dumbledore can learn, even if it’s about Fudge and not himself. “Thanks, sir,” Harry says, using a title he hasn’t used in months now. “That’s good to hear.”

Fawkes abruptly flaps off his perch and soars over to land on Harry’s knee, crooning softly. Harry listens to him, but Fawkes’s voice is shrill and high-patterned and fast, and Harry only makes out the gist, not the exact words.

“Thank you for the gift,” Harry says gravely as Fawkes lays a glittering feather to rest in Harry’s hand. “I’ll treasure it.”

Fawkes gives him the satisfied look of a phoenix whose job is done, and flies back to his perch. Harry twirls the feather around once, watching the light shine and sparkle off it, before he sticks it in his pocket.

“What will you do with that?” Dumbledore asks curiously.

“I think I’ll know when the time comes,” Harry tells him.

*

“This is Dumbledore’s petition to visit the Realm of Song.”

Toothsplitter looks down at the scroll Harry carries. “And he asked you to deliver it for him?”

In her voice is the cool disapproval that Harry knows she would feel about any goblin smith being a servant for any human. Harry pats her arm. “It’s not like that. He said something about wanting to visit the denizens of the Inner Halls, and I told him that the only way to do it would be to petition the clan to visit the Realm. And then he said that he would send it by owl, and I told him that wouldn’t be the best way, and I volunteered to deliver it. Partially so I could look it over and burn it if it wasn’t respectful enough.”

Toothsplitter flashes her teeth in a smile, and looks at the scroll again. “Well, you didn’t, so it must have been all right.”

Harry shrugs. All right are the words for it, he feels. Dumbledore doesn’t insult anyone in the petition, but he also rambles on about his human accomplishments and how impressive they are and how the goblins should totally trust him because he has a half-goblin professor on staff. Harry doesn’t think Dumbledore knows how close Professor Flitwick has come to leaving a few times down the years.

“We shall consider it,” Toothsplitter murmurs, in a voice that says Dumbledore shouldn’t get his hopes up, and Harry nods, content.

*

“Why was it denied?”

“The clan felt that you wouldn’t be able to withstand the journey to the Inner Halls,” Harry says, with complete truth. He was there for the debate, and that was the reason that was raised second most often. “And they also don’t trust you to be a friend to the goblins and come into the Realm of Song without wanting to change things.”

Dumbledore frowns. “Change things?”

“You’d want to use wizard magic on what you saw there. Or you would want to ask goblins to be your servants.”

“I would not—”

“Last term, you wanted us out of this school. Along with the classes that we taught. And you were extremely insensitive to Luna, a friend of mine. I think just because she’s a friend of goblins. Otherwise, why wouldn’t you care more about the way she was attacked?”

Dumbledore lowers his eyes and sits in silence for a long while. Harry waits. He took Dumbledore’s petition to the clan over the Easter holiday and spent what seemed like almost every day listening to the debate. He’ll share the details if Dumbledore wants, but he’ll be glad when this whole thing is behind him.

Dumbledore sighs. “Did you tell them why I wanted to access the Inner Halls?”

“They read the petition. They knew.”

“Oh. I thought—I thought you would read between the lines and see the real reason.”

Harry eyes him. “I don’t know the real reason, sir.” He does respect Dumbledore more than he did. If nothing else, he submitted the petition and he didn’t explode into anger at being denied. But Harry doesn’t understand why he thought Harry should know something Dumbledore never said.

“I wanted to go and ask the denizens of the Inner Halls the same questions that you did,” Dumbledore whispers. “To make absolutely sure that the snake is the last Horcrux and she can only be destroyed with Fiendfyre.”

“Because you don’t trust me.”

Dumbledore says, “Did you know I had a plan for what you would be like, how you would show up here? I was sure that you would be a little downtrodden because of your years in the Muggle world, but still strong like your father, compassionate like your mother. Very human. And then you arrived as a goblin, and it blew up in my face.”

“Plans don’t often work very well, when you predicate them exactly on how a being will behave.”

Harry ought to know that. None of his battle plans for confronting Voldemort have worked out exactly as he envisioned them. The one comfort to that is that none of Voldemort’s have, either.

“Yes, so I have learned,” Dumbledore whispers. “I thought you would oppose Voldemort because he killed your parents. Because he would not stop pursuing you. And when that plan changed, I did not know what to do. I was so afraid we would lose the war because you were acting differently. Because you had already removed the piece of soul from your scar.”

“Did you know about it, before I came to Hogwarts?”

Dumbledore shakes his head, which is fortunate. Fawkes would probably be sad if Harry had to kill Dumbledore for lying about that, and even the desk might be. “I knew there was something special about your scar, but not what. I certainly didn’t know it was a Horcrux. I had no idea at the time that he had made such things.”

Dumbledore sighs and shivers, and looks straight up at Harry. “I owe you an apology, my dear boy.”

That sounds good enough that Harry eases his hands away from his daggers, where they have a tendency to inch when he’s talking to someone who wanted to play with his life. Fudge is another example, and Crouch a third. “Oh?”

“I was afraid,” Dumbledore whispers. “So afraid. And I took that fear out on you. Instead of trying to work with you and learn about your strengths as a goblin, I was upset because you weren’t human. And I thought I might be able to force you into a human mold.”

“That was stupid of you,” Harry says as gently as he can.

But Dumbledore only nods as if he already knew that, or maybe as if he’s listening to someone else say it. “I know that now. I know it to my sorrow, almost too late, and it is only luck that kept us on the right path and allowed me to work with you in destroying the Horcruxes instead of losing your trust completely.”

“Luck and my battle prowess,” Harry says, because he does feel that he deserves some of the credit.

Dumbledore’s eye twitches for a second, but it goes away too quickly for it to really concern Harry. He nods. “Yes, and your battle prowess. Do you think you can accept my apology and work with me on plans to destroy Voldemort and his last Horcrux? And I will do my best to rebuild my trust with you. Starting by trusting you when you say that Fiendfyre is the only way to destroy Nagini.”

Harry smiles. It does feel better to have one fewer enemy at his back, and to know that Dumbledore can be on his side as they work to take things away from Voldemort. “Yes, sir. I think we can do that.”

Fawkes sounds smug as he sings from his perch, but Harry can’t even fault him for that. At least some things are working out, and Dumbledore’s fear is no longer cowardice.