[From Litha to Lammas]: The Art of the Impossible, R, 8/8, Harry/Blaise/Draco/Theo

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the epilogue. I will admit the ending is somewhat open, but if I do decide to write a sequel to it someday, then that’s a good thing.

Epilogue

“And that’s all you’re going to take with you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Harry pointed out, as peacefully as he could. He made sure the last of the books that Sirius had given him were packed away in the bundle on the bed and touched the locket around his neck. “I’m only taking with me what I brought.”

“Yes. You could have anything you wanted.”

Nott’s eyes were quiet and withdrawn, and part of Harry missed the brightness that had cut through them when they were tied in the bond. But he had his freedom now, and that was worth more than anything his former bondmates might have given him.

Former. He tasted the word in his mind with joy.

“I know that you’d give me a lot I wanted,” Harry said, glancing at his right arm. The snake marking of the bond had disappeared, and he liked looking at the bare skin, admiring it, the way he might have if someone had forced the Dark Mark on him and it had been removed. “But I don’t want it from you.”

He looked back up in time to catch Nott’s flinch. Harry sighed. He would have lessened the pain of his leaving if he could have, but the only things that would have done that were ones that would disadvantage himself, in turn.

He had had enough of doing things to oblige other people.

“Will you still allow us to write to you?”

“Yes,” Harry said, with a nod. His owl, Hedwig, had died during the war, the victim of a curse from the Carrows that had made Harry attack them and had been one of the reasons he’d been put under the Cruciatus. He took a deep breath now, shook his head a little, and spoke in what he hoped was a normal tone of voice. “But keep in mind that it’s not necessarily the prelude to a courtship.”

“Of course. You do realize that you’re going to be hunted by Longbottom and the others?”

“I always would have been. Even if I’d stayed your prisoner and survived the year of the treaty, they would have tried to kill me for still carrying the Horcrux.”

“And the people you entered the treaty to protect will be upset with you. Where will you go?”

“I don’t think I ought to tell you right now. Just in case someone captures you and tortures you for information. Or has a Legilimens who could read your mind.”

Theo straightened with a proud shifting of his shoulders. “The bond that you repaired for us gives us protection against that. What, did you know that?” he added, obviously catching the flicker in Harry’s expression he couldn’t hide.

“No,” Harry said slowly. “I didn’t consciously will it to do that.”

He wondered, for a moment, what else had happened in the bond that he hadn’t willed, but shook the thought away. He had done what he could for his former bondmates. He didn’t owe them anything else, and he wasn’t sure that he could remember all the intricacies of those moments when he’d been wrapping and unweaving the bond, anyway.

Theo continued to watch him expectantly for a few moments, then shrugged. “Anyway, we can protect your secrets, but I understand why you don’t want to expose them to us now, with what we did. And when you can be barely sure of what you’re going to do yourself.”

Harry narrowed his eyes. Theo was annoyingly perceptive. “Thanks but no thanks for the pep talk,” he said, a little sharply.

Theo nodded and stepped out of the way. “I miss your presence in the bond,” he said quietly.

“I don’t miss it.”

“I know.”

Harry glanced back once, at the man he would probably never be able to call Nott again, and then nodded, and shut the door behind him.

*

Draco was waiting on the stairs, because of course he was. Harry came to a stop and raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you relieved that you’re able to hate me again, because the bond is gone?”

Draco flushed. “I never hated you.”

“Liar,” Harry said quietly, and Draco laughed.

It was too bad that he couldn’t have heard that laugh under different circumstances, Harry thought. There were things he would regret, things that he could have appreciated if they hadn’t been tainted by the bond.

And by other things, Harry thought, as his eyes rested for a moment on Draco’s left arm and the Mark that was covered by his sleeve.

“I want to thank you for leaving the bond in place as much as you could,” Draco said, rubbing his arm. “I know that it probably wasn’t easy, and you didn’t have any reason to gratify the wishes of your enemies.”

Harry half-shrugged. “What you said made sense, about how you didn’t want to go back to being the people you were before. You got used to the distortions in you created by the bond. Just because I didn’t want them was no reason to deprive you of them.”

“What were you afraid of the bond changing you into? Someone who wasn’t disgusted by murder and torture?”

“That,” Harry agreed, and didn’t say anything else. He didn’t think he could put all his thoughts into words, and Draco wasn’t someone who was owed them.

“Thank you,” Draco said.

Harry inclined his head, and waited a moment. Draco hesitated, said, “I miss you,” and then turned and hurried down the stairs, not waiting to see what Harry would say about that.

Harry paused, then shrugged. He couldn’t blame Draco for wanting to say that and not wait for the reaction, he supposed. Harry had spoken enough truths during the time he was bonded that he hadn’t always wanted their reaction to, either.

*

“You’re the one escorting me to the Apparition point?”

“Yeah.” Blaise turned around and walked beside him out the doors as though this was totally normal and expected. It could be, Harry supposed, in some pureblood etiquette book somewhere, or it could just be Blaise being Blaise. “I wanted to thank you, as I suspect the others have, for leaving the bond intact.”

“You’re welcome.”

They walked in silence for a minute or so. There was still plenty of graveled driveway to go. Harry snorted as a white peacock pranced across the path, spreading his tail, and Blaise laughed, too.

“Draco doesn’t get upset about you making fun of the birds?” Harry asked, glancing sideways at Blaise.

“They were much more his father’s affectation than his. He keeps them out of family sentiment.”

Harry hesitated, but he did want to know the answer to his next question, and this was the last time he knew he would have a chance to ask it. “Were there ever any other Death Eaters in Holly and Yew, or was it a front? I know that Lucius Malfoy was on at least some of the battlefields, but he doesn’t seem to be living here…”

“Holly and Yew was a name we created based on the wood of our wands and the wood of yours.” Blaise turned and faced him. “I do have a holly wand, as it happens. Draco’s used to be hawthorn, but he had to get a new wand when it was broken during the war, and a yew one chose him. And Theo’s is yew.”

“That doesn’t answer my question about where the other Death Eaters are.”

“Abroad, mostly,” Blaise said, with a shrug. “They thought they could get what they wanted quickly and easily with a rebellion against the new regime. When they realized that it was going to take far more time and far more suffering on their part than they’d thought, they fled. Or we convinced them otherwise.” He smiled, and his smile was bright and cold. “Lucius Malfoy now has a lot of experience under the Imperius Curse, just as he liked to tell people he did.”

“And you?”

“We pretended that we were representing the whole of them, but it was just us.”

Harry shook his head slowly. “You started the war to get to me?”

“No, we went along with the war. We started the peace process to get to you.”

“So the whole thing was hollow, anyway,” Harry said, and felt as though another chain had slipped from his shoulders. “I’m not destroying a real peace process by leaving.”

“No.” Blaise watched him for a moment, but when Harry seemed disinclined to speak again, he continued. “We did kidnap people. We didn’t torture the prisoners, but we’ve all tortured people in the past, even if Draco mostly did it at the bidding of the Dark Lord, Theo at the bidding of the Carrows, and I to defend my bondmates. We’re not good people. We just might not be as bad as you thought.”

“Neville wasn’t as good as I thought, either. But that doesn’t make you decent people.”

“I know.” Blaise’s smile was regretful. “I suspect that if we continue to write to you, we’ll have to shift our stance on many things. But that’s not going to be as difficult as it once would have been.”

“Why not?”

“We don’t have an incomplete bond tugging at us now. And we don’t need to worry about coaxing or coercing you into it, or about what the Dark Lord or other Death Eaters will think if we don’t perform a certain way.” Blaise tilted his head. “I wanted to thank you for that, too. You set us free as surely as the prisoners.”

Harry stared at him doubtfully, and Blaise laughed a little. “You don’t have to believe me. But I wanted to say it.”

Harry nodded shortly. Then he glanced at the gates of the Manor. “I really should get going. I need to make sure that I’m safe and secure before Neville figures out something’s wrong. He’s probably got spies on the Manor, you know.”

“Oh, I’m sure he does.” Blaise smiled at Harry again and took a step back. “Be well, Harry.”

Harry just nodded, because the other things he could have said were too complicated, and stepped outside the gates. He knew Blaise was still watching him when he Apparated, but he didn’t look back.

*

Harry took a slow step back from the book spread out on the floor and read the instructions for the ritual one more time. Then he looked up and around at the grimy walls, wrinkling his nose a little.

The house at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place hadn’t had anyone living in it for a very long time, it seemed. The dust had piled up in almost endless drifts when Harry stepped in, and some kind of weird spell had tried to rush at him; Harry had cast a curse that had broken it apart in mid-movement. There was no house-elf, although Harry went all over the building to make sure. There was one portrait on the wall who started to scream at him, but Harry wrapped her in a shining bubble of silence that one of Sirius’s books had taught him how to cast, and she couldn’t bother him after that.

He’d thought about going abroad, away from Britain, where it might be harder for Neville to find him. But that was only might. Harry would be on unfamiliar ground in another country, disoriented, with no allies, and Neville had an international reputation as the Boy-Who-Lived. People would be more eager to help him find Harry than to hide and protect a stranger that Neville could tell them was a dangerous coward who had broken a signed peace treaty.

No, Harry would make his stand in a country he knew well, in a house owned by someone who had loved him, hiding as long as necessary, and making allies with people he knew and could judge might not be so much under Neville’s sway. He just needed a protected place to do so.

He’d cleared off a spot in the corridor that was, as far as he could tell, the exact center of the house. Then he’d cast a circle around him in ash after briefly lighting a fire in one of the old hearths.

Ash for endings, the book had said, and Harry would ensure one end tonight.

The ritual would create immensely powerful and flexible wards around the house. Harry had chosen Grimmauld Place because it had fallen to him after Remus Lupin had passed away during the war, and he had never heard anyone else mention it. He had taken a gamble that no one else would be living here, but that gamble had paid off.

The wards would be under Harry’s direct control. He would know in an instant if someone with hostile intent approached within a mile, and he would be able to deflect most curses without a problem. Even the combined efforts of six or seven other wizards and witches wouldn’t be enough to bring them down, as long as Harry remained alive in the house, and the wards created a no-magic zone for a hundred yards around them, so coming close enough to hammer on them would be a problem for attackers anyway.

The wards didn’t come without a price, of course. They demanded an immense sacrifice.

Harry knew exactly what he was going to sacrifice.

He closed his eyes and began to chant the simple words within the book. He could feel the magic at once, piling up around him like the chains of the bond. The power wove back and forth around the edges of the ash circle, paying attention to him, interested in him, and ready to consume him if he didn’t complete the sacrifice.

Harry kept up the chant as he reached down to the floor. Only a moment of feeling around, and he had the ritual dagger in hand. It hadn’t been hard to find what he needed in the Blacks’ immense collection of cursed artifacts, only hard to avoid being cursed himself and to cleanse the dagger.

The chant built to a climax. Harry lifted the dagger in one hand, arm shaking under the weight of the magic. But it had to be done this way.

The chant reached the end of the last round, and Harry plunged the dagger into his scar.

Pain, pain, pain, ripping and tearing at him, and if he hadn’t been prepared for that he would have succumbed…it was here, but so was he, and Harry pushed back against the pain and stood up with the force of will that had kept him from succumbing to the bond or collapsing under the revelations about his godfather…he was here, he was going to stay here, and he tossed the squirming, slimy black bit of something else inside him towards the waiting magic…

Shrieks rang through the air, and Harry opened his eyes and staggered backwards, just barely stopping himself from crossing the ash circle in time. He watched, a little sick, as the struggling, turning black mist, streaked with floating curls of blood, was ripped apart and went down an invisible maw.

At the same time, wards rang into being around the house, and slammed into Harry’s mind with such strength that his vision went black.

*

When he could see again, the house was quiet and still. The circle of ashes had changed into one burnt into the floorboards, consumed in a fire Harry hadn’t felt. He took a deep breath and moved away from it, feeling the wards all around him.

They covered every window. They swaddled every door. With a series of dizzying flashes in his head, Harry could see through all those windows and all those doors, and peer through the eyes of portraits on the wall. There was no sign the portraits noticed, but perhaps they were just utterly subdued to his will.

No one living in the house. No sign of traps left behind by the Order, either, or by the people who had lived here before them. Harry was master of the house now.

Harry leaned his head back on the wall and breathed.

*

It was easy enough to go to Diagon Alley to in disguise; Harry had never been that great at illusion, but he had gone into the Muggle world and found Muggle lenses to change the color of his eyes, and dye that changed his hair to a dirty brown color. Harry walked slowly down the middle of the alley, watching the front pages of the newspapers.

Nothing. Nothing about the treaty being broken, about Death Eater attacks resuming, or about Harry Potter escaping. Harry thought Neville must know by now, but he probably didn’t want to cause a public panic. He would be hunting for Harry on his own.

Harry wondered if he could reach out and tell Neville that the last shard of Voldemort was finally dead. He wondered if Neville would believe him.

*

That night, eating dinner in the kitchen—a dinner he had prepared with his own hands, from shopping that he’d done in the Muggle world—Harry adjusted the wards carefully to let the owl hovering outside them through. It was a grey bird that he hadn’t seen before. Then again, he hadn’t spent any time in the Manor’s owlery.

The owl landed and accepted a treat Harry had bought in Diagon. Harry unfolded the letter, a single sheet of parchment.

Dear Harry,

We wanted you to know that Longbottom knows you’re gone. He sent an owl demanding to know what we’d done with you. Apparently he thinks we put you under the Imperius Curse and made you leave to kill yourself in a deserted spot.

We didn’t reply, because there was nothing to say. But we knew it might influence how you deal with him going forwards.

Thank you again.

Sincerely,
Draco, Theo, and Blaise.

Harry snorted a little and folded the letter up. Then he collapsed back into his chair and stared at the ceiling.

Why had they thought Neville was the Boy-Who-Lived all those years ago?

It could simply have been chance, Harry thought. There were two candidates who fit the prophecy, who were both in the same room when their parents died for them, and they picked the wrong one. Or Dumbledore or someone else had known from the beginning that a Horcrux lived in Harry’s scar, and had decided that there was no way it could be him.

In a way, the prophecy came true, Harry thought, swirling his whisky in his glass. Neville did most of the work. And I destroyed the last bit of Voldemort, and now he’s truly dead.

He would probably tell Draco, Blaise, and Theo that, when he wrote back. The owl had gone to sleep on a perch in the corner, so they were waiting for a reply.

But for now, Harry took out a piece of parchment, complete with quills and ink, and began to write a different kind of document.

He had experienced some doubt before he’d Apparated away from Malfoy Manor. What was he going to do now? What kind of life was he going to lead, when he had to live under wards most of the time, or at least probably for the next six months to a year?

And then it had come to him. Just because fifty percent of everything had changed didn’t mean the important fifty percent had.

Harry began to write out his next list of steps for the house-elf freeing campaign.

Freeing people was what he did.

The End.