lomonaaeren

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Chapter Nine—Borders Breaking

“They’re really coming back from Avalon?”

“Yes, they are.”

“But why? I can’t imagine that humans are going to be less prejudiced against them. Maybe worse, since we haven’t been around them for years and we got used to them not existing!”

Theo snorted and sprawled back on the Transfigured bed beside Harry, running one hand lightly down his chest. Harry squirmed, distracted and not wanting to be. Theo seemed to be just doing it as part of his normal satyr expression and said calmly, “They didn’t exist here. That’s not the same thing as not existing.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Yes, fine, all right. Not existing here. But I’m worried about how the magical world will take this. Will we actually welcome them? I don’t think so. So why are they coming back?”

“Because, my darling, you freed them.”

Theo’s voice was lower all of a sudden. Harry had the time for one wary blink before Theo rolled on top of him. He reached up with a hesitant hand, and Theo nuzzled into his palm, tilting his head so that Harry’s fingers slid down his horns.

The guttural grunt he gave made Harry’s face flame, but Theo just kept talking in a low rumbling tone not all that different. “We thought the Blood of Avalon left us because they got bored, or they retreated to Avalon to avoid some of the spread of non-magical humans. But what I heard in my dreams last night was different.”

“Yes?”

“They left because humans imprisoned them.”

Harry swallowed. He had to admit that sounded all too likely, given the way that magical humans tended to treat goblins and Veela and werewolves. But… “I thought they were too powerful to be imprisoned.”

“Oh, Harry. We’re as vulnerable as anyone else.” Theo’s eyes opened, glowing a brilliant gold. “But it’s true that the Blood might not have come back at all even if the barriers broke, except they could feel you on the other side of them.”

“This is my fault for messing around with the Dark Marks?”

“Your fault. Your glory. Which is it? Who can say?”

Harry was quiet for a long moment. Theo draped himself more heavily across Harry’s chest, and Harry rubbed at his horns and got more rumbling from Theo’s throat. But Harry’s mind was far away, winging across ground that he wasn’t sure he had ever planned on crossing.

He—

He hadn’t heard of the Blood of Avalon before he accidentally awoke it somehow in Theo and the others. So what did it mean now? Did it mean that the non-humans would come back and be disappointed by the human world? Would it mean some kind of war because they would hate magical humans for imprisoning them?

“I don’t want it to be a war,” Harry whispered.

“What?”

“I don’t want it to be a war,” Harry repeated, a little more strongly. “We just got done with a war. What will happen if they hate wizards and witches for binding them? How can—how can I keep them from hating us?”

Theo laughed a little. “You might not be able to.”

“But that means—”

“They can be bargained with,” Theo said. “We can. When we lived among magical humans in the past, we weren’t always at war. We made treaties and we married and lived with humans and had children with the Blood in them. Or how would I be what I am?”

“But that doesn’t mean that’s going to happen now. I don’t even know enough about the past to know if that’s what they would want now.”

“Why don’t you ask them?” Theo asked, and held out his hand.

Harry hesitated, but Theo’s eyes glimmered with a challenge, and Harry would never be able to back down from that. Call it the Gryffindor in him. He reached out and took Theo’s hand, and the bed and the room melted from around them.

*

They stood near a lake that shone so brightly Harry found himself turning his head away, blinking mirrored afterimages from his eyes. And coming towards them was a tall being that seemed to shimmer and divide the light rather like the surface of the lake did.

Harry took a deep breath. Theo wasn’t moving forwards, so Harry didn’t, either, even though it seemed disrespectful. He remained still, and the being came to a stop in front of him and stood looking Harry over, head tilting back and forth as if Harry was the shining one and the being had to see him from multiple angles to make sure of him.

“Hail, Harry Potter,” the being said at last, in a buzzing, clicking voice that Harry was sure didn’t sound like that to Theo. It bent nearer. A face seemed to form out of the colored light scrambling over it, and Harry blinked to see cheekbones so high they looked as if they would tear through the parchment-pale skin. The eyes were large and triangular and glowed a brilliant gold, until they reached an inner brilliance so great he had to avert his own eyes again. “What have you come to bargain with?”

“I don’t want a war.”

Theo’s hand squeezed his. But Harry didn’t know why, and he didn’t think that it would do any good to try and play etiquette guessing games with this being. He stood there and looked up at it, and it laughed at him, a high and clicking pattern of sounds that seemed to leap back and forth.

“Why do you not? Have they not treated you poorly, the magical humans, for the Parseltongue that was inflicted upon you?”

Inflicted is a good way to put it. Harry squeezed Theo’s hand in turn. “They didn’t always treat me well, but I can’t condemn a whole world for that. The same way I can’t condemn all of you because some of the people with the Blood of Avalon in my world were Death Eaters. So what can I do to make sure there won’t be a war?”

The being turned back and forth, flashing like a mirror in Harry’s eyes. Harry blinked and blinked and held steady. He couldn’t keep his eyes from watering or closing occasionally, but he didn’t turn away, and Theo approved of that, from the heavy way he leaned against Harry.

“You could accept the spread of our blood,” the being said at last. “We would not attack those who had our blood.”

“You mean…encourage more humans to marry you?”

“That. Open the ground you control to more of our blood. Water those trees you have dreamed of, the trees of Avalon, with our blood and magic.”

“I—don’t know what that means.”

“If I might?” Theo said, and stepped forwards with a bow to the being. It nodded and seemed to melt into a hazy form of light without the solidity that it had had before. Theo turned to Harry. “You remember the trees you dreamed about?”

“Of course. But the dreams stopped when I took over the network of the Dark Marks.”

“Yes, but they didn’t go away. Those trees are still there. In a world that will not open, not like Avalon, unless you will it.” Theo’s hands tightened on his. “A world that was created when you took over the Dark Marks.”

“But I was dreaming of the trees before that.”

“Dreaming of a world that was yet to be, that was forecasting its own existence.”

Harry’s head hurt, and three years of Divination hadn’t helped. “Okay. Say that I understand this. How can I open the way to that world? How can I spread the blood and magic there, or—water the trees?”

“You have only to will it, my lord.” Theo stepped back a little, and then a little more, until he was clasping Harry’s hands from such a distance that Harry thought his arms must ache. “Dream of the way. Open it. Call the Blood of Avalon to it. Tell them that they have another world to go to if they wish, not Avalon and not the human one. Call them to a new home and share it with them.”

Harry closed his eyes, frowning. He would have liked some instruction on how to do this, but he thought Theo had already explained as much as he could reasonably be expected to do. Harry breathed out and imagined the great tree looming over him that he’d dreamed of before Theo had explained what was happening.

The image formed in his mind with surprising rapidity. But it was different than it had been. There were rivers of earth stretching away beneath it, flowing, dark and white and silver. Golden light sparked above them. The great shadows from the tree’s branches seemed to dance back and forth, as if there were more golden light, like a strange sun, piercing them from above.

Harry imagined it, anchored it into his mind the best he could, and then he took a deep breath and pushed.

There was a splintering sensation somewhere far below his ordinary awareness, and Harry let out a sharp bleat of surprise and fell to his knees. There was grass beneath him still, but softer and cooler than it had been, and Theo was leaning against him and babbling something. Harry opened his eyes with a feeling of dread. If Theo was afraid of what had happened, then what did that mean for the other people, human and not, who had to live with it?

Harry gasped as he looked at what had happened.

The green grass in front of them, which had been blank before except for the lake and the being, had changed to the rivers of earth that Harry had seen in his mind. And there was a tree looming over them, a giant white trunk with leaves casting glorious shade, and the trunk was split open, and light like sap was flowing out of it, and it fell under the shade and mingled with it—

“Harry! You did it! You did it!”

“What are you talking about?” Harry’s head was reeling, but he leaned on Theo’s outstretched arm and fought his way back to his feet. The being was turning around in front of them, light reflecting harshly from its various faceted mirrors and split features, and spreading out what might be arms to take in the shade and earth.

“You broke the barriers! You connected our world with Avalon!” Theo spun around and pulled Harry into a kiss so ferocious that for a moment Harry forgot about everything else.

When he drew back, though, Harry found himself violently shaking his head. “How could—how could I have broken the barriers just by thinking about the tree?”

Another feeling of dread was creeping through him like cool fingers now. Had he had a right to make this decision for everyone human and for everyone with the Blood of Avalon? What if someone was upset? What if the majority of people would have preferred that Harry not open this other world?

Well, too bad, Harry decided after a long moment. They had their chance to do something about the Death Eater sickness and they didn’t. They had a chance to do something about Voldemort and they didn’t. We’ll just have to do our best with what we have and the world they made me save.

“You can do it because you are connected so deeply to the network of Dark Marks,” said the being, in a voice that was softer and more melodious than Harry had heard from it yet. It sounded like a bird might when trying to turn its song into words. “That was the only root system of the Dark in your human world currently.”

“Voldemort was the only Dark Lord who used Marks like that?” Harry asked, surprised.

The being whirled towards him. “Yes,” it said, and some of the shifting planes of its face came together to show a smile as bright as sunset. “Others perhaps used a system of Marks, but they did not root deeply like this.”

Harry grimaced and nodded. Whether it had something to do with Voldemort’s Horcruxes, or the magic he had practiced, or how much he had wanted to brand and bond his followers, Harry didn’t know and he supposed it didn’t matter.

What mattered was that…

He took a deep breath, and smelled the enchanting scent of the tree’s leaves. It seemed to sink into his lungs and fill his chest and head up. He laughed aloud.

Theo smiled at him. Now he looked almost harmless, the horns on his head and golden eyes and hooves and silver claws merely a fit for the world around them. Harry found himself reaching out, and Theo stepped forwards at once and held Harry’s shoulders.

“You have brought this to exist,” said the being.

“Yes,” Harry said, turning back towards it and tilting his head. “Are you going to ask something else of me? Will this be enough to avoid a war?”

The being laughed, a sound like sparks falling on dry trees, and Harry felt a tremor of fear that he might have miscalculated, or this wasn’t enough after all. But then the being breezed towards them, not seeming to have feet that touched the ground, and reached out a clawed hand of its own towards Harry.

Theo growled a warning. Harry raised a hand to placate him. He didn’t think the being would harm him.

Perhaps couldn’t harm him, in the shade of this tree.

And yes, he only felt a sensation like warm, dry wood running across his face for a moment, before the being drew back and smiled and said, “If you were to awaken the Blood of Avalon in yourself, would you accept it?”

Harry blinked and spoke the only truth he could. “I don’t know. I wasn’t raised on the stories like Theo was. I was raised to think of myself as different from other humans, but that was because I grew up with Muggles and I didn’t know about magic.”

The being made a high, chattering sound that didn’t sound like its other laughter, but probably was, for all Harry knew. Or wasn’t. He had no idea. “If you wake the blood in yourself, then perhaps you will see.”

“But you cannot require that of him,” Theo said. “Because you made a bargain already, and he has more than fulfilled it.”

Harry was grateful that Theo was with him and had some idea what that meant. Harry might just have agreed to become Avalonian—or whatever the term was—himself, without thinking much about it. He leaned back against Theo and watched the bright being distrustfully.

“We will not harm him,” the being said. “He is safer than any other human from us, even those of our children who have not awoken the Blood. He has broken the borders.”

“What about those of your children who have woken the Blood?” Harry asked, because he wanted to make sure those words weren’t some kind of obscure threat against Theo.

“They are not human.”

Harry blinked, but he supposed he had to accept that. At least it sounded like the faeries and other beings from Avalon wouldn’t trouble Theo and his other—people.

“Will you wake your own blood?”

“What kind is it?” Harry asked. He couldn’t say that he was eager to wake it up if it would make him a troll like Flint or a vampire like Snape. And even if it was something like Veela blood, he didn’t know if that would make him melodramatic like Malfoy.

“Mine.”

Harry stared at the shining being with his mouth slightly open, uncaring of how stupid it might make him look. Theo’s elbow hit his side a second later and made him grunt, but that didn’t diminish his wonder.

“How would you—have a child with a human?” Harry blurted at last. He thought he could see Theo putting his hand over his eyes out of the corner of his vision, but if Theo thought that this revelation was one Harry could just quietly accept, he didn’t understand Harry as well as Harry had thought he did. “You don’t look as if you have any—meat on you.”

The being laughed, and this time Harry knew it for real laughter, because it caused the various mirrors and planes that made it up to flash with inner light. “We can become flesh,” it said carelessly. “We can become whatever we choose. And I see my blood in you.” It nodded, and a smile formed out of the mirrors. “You have done well.”

Harry swallowed. He’d never heard those words from his own parents, except when he was walking with their shades into the Forbidden Forest. And that wasn’t really the same.

“What are you?” he whispered. Theo’s hand squeezed his arm hard, but Harry discarded the notion that the being would destroy him for asking. If it was proud of him and wanted to protect the Blood of Avalon, then it wouldn’t.

And as little sense as Harry thought some of the beings of Avalon probably made when lowering themselves to a human level and speaking in a human tongue, he didn’t think it had lied, either.

There was a flash of brilliance that seemed to cut through the hovering light and mirrors like a thunderbolt, and then deep, hot, burning green eyes shaped like diamonds opened somewhere in the mirrors.

Your present kind call mine the Sidhe.

For a moment, Harry caught a glimpse of what lurked behind that word, immense meadows of glittering ice and seas full of tossing deserts and forests that stretched into literal endlessness, with years falling atop them as lightly as leaves—

And then he staggered back, crying out from the vision. The being was gone.

He and Theo were lying on the bed in the old classroom once again.

Theo was trembling next to him. Harry rolled towards him and took Theo gently in his arms, although his mind was only half there. The other half was lingering on the idea that there might be a reason he had green eyes and that the mark on his forehead was in the shape of a lightning bolt.

“Are you all right?”

“You—you stood there and bargained with one of the most dangerous beings in Avalon,” Theo said limply, and then latched onto Harry so hard that Harry felt Theo’s claws cut his shoulders. “You madman.”

Harry laughed. “I didn’t know it was one of the most dangerous!”

“Still.”

Harry rolled closer to Theo and shut his eyes. Theo was still babbling to himself, and Harry would let him do that for a while before they left the bed and had to face a world that might already be inundated with the first Blood to cross the border.

And he would let himself have some time to probe around the edges of the idea of waking the Sidhe blood within himself.