Chapter Fifty-Four of 'Leopard's Choice'- The Binding Circle

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Chapter Fifty-Four—The Binding Circle

“Do you think it will work?”

Theo stares at the documents that Ron has spread out before him. His forehead hurts. His brain feels like it’s flickering between branches, like a bird who can’t decide where to land. He blinks and shakes his head and takes a deep breath.

Blaise, who’s sitting on the other side of him in a chair near the door of the Room of Requirement, shoots him a sideways glance.

Theo tugs himself together with pride that he doesn’t remember the origin of. No. He will not fail. He will do this. He will become the person he used to be, the one that Harry and the others remember and are making all these sacrifices for.

Even if sometimes he can’t remember why he wants to.

Theo lets the useless thought go and leans over the parchment, looking carefully at the sketches Ron has made. He’s a decent artist, but after a long moment, Theo has to reach out to tap a scribble near the bottom of the scroll. “What’s this?”

“A rune.”

“Which one?”

“Um…the jagged one.”

Blaise rolls his eyes a little and holds out a hand. Ron tries to give him the parchment with the image of the circle, and Blaise takes a deep breath. “No. The book you got it from. So we can see the rune.”

Ron sighs and digs out a hefty tome that makes Theo blink a little. He can remember, vaguely, reading books like that, but he knows that most Weasleys don’t like them. Blaise glances through the pages, nodding, and then looks at the diagram of the circle that Ron drew again. “Sowilo.”

Somehow, the words spark a revelation in Theo. Technically, they shouldn’t, but then, sometimes the oddest things wake a memory from hiding. “Like the shape of the scar Harry has on his forehead.”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“The sun. Power.”

“Yes, but drawn more jaggedly than normal.” Blaise spends a good minute squinting at the book, and Theo ignores the temptation to snatch it out of his hands. That won’t do any good. “I don’t know what that means, if anything,” Blaise finishes, shaking his head. “Maybe nothing.”

“I told you it was jagged.”

Theo ignores Ron’s nonsense, and takes the book when Blaise offers it to him. He has to admit that he’s hardly sure the rune is Sowilo, even after seeing it. He turns the book sideways and reaches out to brush the page with his fingers.

Sharpness sizzles through him, and he gasps.

“Theo!”

“What’s wrong?”

Theo sags back in his chair and closes his eyes. For the moment, his mind is clear, some of what he’s lost emerging from the cracks. “It’s nothing,” he croaks. “But touching the rune made me feel as if I were protected against the curse.”

“That’s not nothing.”

“Shut up, Zabini.” Ron is the one who speaks sense for once and leads them away from a scene that Blasé would have made dramatic, leaning intently forwards with eyes as sharp as Theo feels right now. “Why would a rune in a book make you feel that way? Or do you think it’s the rune and not the book?”

“The rune.” Theo hesitates, because he doesn’t want to lose the clarity, but makes himself put the book down and trace the Sowilo rune in the air with a finger.

The cascade of energy runs through him again, although less sharp than before. Theo nods. This is of limited use, and he can’t ask Harry not to do the ritual because of it. But it’s nice to know that he can bring himself a little back to awareness.

Even if he’s already accepted that he won’t be able to take his OWLS in the state he’s currently in.

“Why does that work?”

“I don’t know—no, wait, I do.”

Theo takes his attention away from the empty air where he can almost see the rune still hanging, and looks at Blaise. “What is it?”

“The rune looks like the scar on Harry’s forehead. And of all of us, you’re the one who’s sworn the most deeply to him. The one who treats him like a lord.”

“Lord-vassal privilege? You really think that something—a rune that looks like a scar could save someone from the Soul-Breaker?”

“I really do. I just saw it do it.”

Theo wants to be skeptical, especially as he’s forgotten so much, but he can feel wonder running through his veins and old memories of what he studied as a child leaping into sharp relief in his mind. There is no way that the Soul-Breaker Curse would permit this if something else hadn’t changed.

“What’s lord-vassal privilege?”

“Something not often seen anymore, since we moved away from feudal forms of government,” Blaise answers absently, watching Theo like he’s a fascinating specimen. It’s much more to Theo’s taste than the expressions his friends have usually directed at him lately (which expressions he can now remember well enough). “We were still united with the Muggle world then, and when they started developing different governmental systems, so did we. We separated from them before most modern forms completely developed, but enough that lords didn’t take vassals on a regular basis anymore.”

“I thought…with Voldemort…”

Blaise still flinches a little when he hears the name, Theo thinks, although he’s excellent at controlling himself otherwise. “He could have made himself a Dark Lord by accepting oaths from vassals,” Blaise agrees, voice tight. “But he chose not to. That would have meant he’d be responsible to them in a way that I think is anathema to a personality like his. They could have called on him for strength, he would have known when they were in danger or feeling pain, and he would have an obligation to protect them.”

“Yeah, I see why he didn’t do that,” Ron mutters. “But neither did Harry?”

“Oh, that’s precious,” Theo says.

“What’s precious?”

“You think he doesn’t consider himself as having an obligation to protect me and you and everyone around him?” Theo traces the rune in the air again, and some of his headache retreats even further. It’s been a constant for so long now that he almost doesn’t remember being without it. “That’s precious, but also dangerous. You might not notice when he’s spending his own strength and magic to protect you, then.”

“I would notice! And anyway, I still say that Harry didn’t swear that kind of oath.”

“Not on purpose, and not as an oath,” Blaise interjects. Theo shoots him a grateful half-nod. “But because Theo believes so strongly in serving Harry the way a vassal would, and because Harry acts like a lord, and probably also because Professor Snape bound them together so Theo could watch over Harry’s nightmares, the rune is capable of soothing Theo.”

“So this would make this the right binding circle to use? Because it has the right rune and it also needs the blood of an Animagus to prevent someone who is either a spirit or a possessed person from escaping?”

“Yes, that would make it the right circle to use.”

Theo settles back in his chair as Blaise and Ron start to discuss the properties of the circle and how they’ll be able to use it to trap Voldemort. He closes his eyes and rejoices in the feel of his brain knitting back together.

It won’t last for long, probably. And the second effect of the rune wasn’t as strong as the first, meaning that he has to find other means to hold himself together and make his memories easier to access. But it’s a start, and now he can look for other means that tie him to Harry and invoke the lord-vassal magic so he can recover and hold it together long enough for Harry to conduct the ritual.

He can do something again. He can help his lord instead of being a burden.

That is worth everything.

*

Sirius’s hands tremble as he reaches out to take the letter from Hedwig. He wrote to Harry with an idea that he thought would work for the ritual to restore Nott’s mind, and he hopes—he hopes—

He opens the letter, tearing half the parchment off in his haste, and finds only one word.

No.

Sirius closes his eyes and stands there long enough that Remus comes into the dining room and asks, “Sirius?”

“Harry rejected my idea to help him.”

Sirius knows his voice is heavy and ugly, and it makes sense that Remus hesitates a long moment before approaching him. But when Remus puts a hand on his shoulder and asks, “What idea?”, Sirius remembers that he didn’t even tell his best friend.

Sirius swallows. “I thought—I thought that maybe he could take a little bit of life force from each of us who’ll be involved in the ritual to heal Theo’s mind, instead of sacrificing someone. Something from me, and Severus, and himself, and Theo, and—well, I don’t know if he could get something from Voldemort, but he could try.”

“And he rejected the idea?”

“Yeah. He’s set on sacrificing someone, Remus, and I don’t know why. I don’t know who he’s turning into, who he’s becoming.”

For long moments, Remus grimaces in a disturbed way. Then he sits down with a sigh on the chair next to the door, and pulls at Sirius until Sirius shambles into his own chair. “I have a theory, but I don’t know if you’ll like it.”

“Do I have to like it?” Sirius slumps back in his chair and closes his eyes. “I don’t know that I have to, as long as it makes sense.”

“All right. I think that Harry has broken something inside himself because he’s convinced it’s the only way he can save his friends.”

Sirius opens his eyes and stares blankly at Remus. “Sorry, what?”

Remus laughs a little, but the laughter is sad. “I think that he believes he has to descend as far into madness and horror and Dark Arts as possible so that he can save them. He’s broken his own moral limits. Forsaken his own conscience. I think it still exists, but he’s ignoring it.”

Sirius shivers. He can remember feeling that way when he was a teenager. It was the feeling that made him try to have Severus walk into Remus’s jaws.

He shakes his head and calls himself back into his body. Harry’s actions could have consequences much worse than only almost killing one person. “Do you think that he would become a Dark Lord?”

“You’re worried about that?”

The astonishment in Remus’s voice makes Sirius backpedal. “No! I mean—I just—it’s sort of the way Dark Lords get started, isn’t it? Recruiting a bevy of loyal followers and promising to do absolutely anything for them?”

“I don’t know if Dark Lords are all planning to sacrifice themselves in a ritual for their friends.”

“So you think Harry’s planning on doing it to himself.”

“I do.”

“No matter that we’ve all told him not to do that!”

Remus reaches out and puts a gentle hand on Sirius’s arm. He looks so weary that Sirius wants to apologize, but he has the feeling that he needs to listen to what Remus is saying more than Remus needs to hear how sorry he is.

“You know that Harry thinks what happened to Mr. Nott is his fault,” Remus murmurs. “It’s not something he can help. Not the way he grew up, not the way he thinks about his friends. And yes, it makes sense that that kind of thinking would override the warnings of those who don’t want him to sacrifice himself.”

Sirius sits and wrestles in silence with that insight for a few moments. At last he nods, and Remus smiles back at him and takes his hand away.

“Of course, I don’t think he should sacrifice himself,” Remus adds. “No one wants to see that less than I do. But I think that just getting angry at him for ignoring our warnings isn’t going to make him change the way he does things.”

“All right.”

Sirius is quiet and subdued after that, and Remus actually goes and gets Muggle pizza, Sirius’s favorite, probably because he feels bad for him. Sirius makes himself wake up enough to talk and laugh as they eat, and Remus goes to bed looking relieved.

Sirius, meanwhile, sits in front of the fire in the library, where he doesn’t spend a lot of time, and glares at the books on the shelves. Near two in the morning, he gets up, stalks over, and yanks a tome out.

He hates the kind of magic that his family practiced, the kind that his parents made him start trying essentially as soon as he could walk. But if there’s an answer in one of these books as to how he can save Harry, then he’ll take it. Whether that’s a means to somehow insert himself as the sacrifice in the ritual, or—

Or make Harry stop.

*

“…transit sic omnia.”

Pansy finishes the long Latin chant with a low murmur, and steps towards Harry. They’re out in the darkness at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, at midnight on the new moon, for the Diamond Dust ritual.

The blackness around them is almost complete, but Pansy did conjure a ball of white light and hang it over the ritual circle, which is made of stones drawn with runes. Harry holds out his arm towards her when she draws her iron athame. Pansy’s answering smile is luminous.

“Thank you.”

She cuts into his arm.

Harry watches the blood flow with calm indifference. He has Blood-Replenishing Potions with him, and he doesn’t think that he’ll faint before he can get back to the dungeons. Since Pansy is going in the same direction, if worse comes to worse, he’ll just wait for her to finish the last, meditation part of the ritual, and then walk with her.

He wants—he wants—

Pansy isn’t a friend, or not as close to him as Theo and Blaise and Ron and Hermione. But she can use this blood to protect herself, and that means that he doesn’t have to worry about her as much as he does some of the others. Why wouldn’t he help her do it?

Pansy collects his blood in a shallow silver bowl, and turns away to place it in the center of the circle. She fills two more bowls, and Harry’s had to swallow a Blood-Replenisher, before his part in the ritual appears to be complete.

Pansy bows her head and stands there with her hair hanging towards the ground. Harry sits on a stone right outside the binding circle to watch, and aims his wand at the Forest. So far, nothing has disturbed them, but that doesn’t mean something couldn’t.

There’s an abrupt sensation as if the world is inhaling, and then Pansy spins in place, throwing the blood in the bowls out around herself. Harry feels it whirling out, as if he’s still connected to it, and winces as it lands and splatters roughly on the ground. For a second, he thinks that Pansy can’t be doing the ritual right.

But then the blood begins to glow, and the light lifts and streams towards Pansy. If he squints, Harry thinks, he can make out that the brilliance is the color of diamond dust. Or what he thinks diamond dust should look like, anyway.

All right. Maybe it’s working the way it’s supposed to.

Pansy takes rough, deep breaths as she kneels in the center of the circle and extends her arms. The light burrows into her, and it looks pretty harsh. Harry flinches as he listens to Pansy’s short, sharp screams. Maybe he shouldn’t have agreed to this.

But then he hardens his heart. He knows what Pansy, and plenty of his other Slytherin friends, would say. Better to suffer short-term pain than long-term death.

The light finally disappears, the last jagged tails of it vanishing into Pansy’s skin and muscle. Pansy rises to her feet, wobbling back and forth like she’s drunk. But when she opens her eyes, they’re shining with an inner light that doesn’t come from the Lumos Charm overhead.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

“What kind of magic did you choose?”

“Runic Divination.”

Harry blinks. “I’ve never heard of that.”

“It’s a specialized field.” Pansy is already drawing herself back into herself, haughty and reserved the way she was for so many years before she became his friend. “Runes can be used to foretell the future, but it takes a commitment to building the arrays that most people don’t want to make. Better, they think, to go in for Divination, which almost never works except for true Seers. Or Arithmancy, which does work, but can’t tell you much but vague predictions.”

“Why did you want this particular kind?”

“So I can keep myself safe.”

Harry recognizes the end of the conversation, and stands, nodding. “Well, all right. Do you need help getting back to the school?”

“I think I should be asking you that question, Potter.”

Harry opens his mouth to say that he doesn’t need help, and then realizes how badly he’s wobbling back and forth. He tries to put down his heels carefully, but just trips over a stone he didn’t see.

Pansy catches his arm and leads him back towards the castle, shaking her head and muttering under her breath. “Self-sacrificing…are you sure that the Hat put you in the right House…don’t think anyone can be expected to…”

Harry listens with less than half an ear. His mind has gone back to where it always goes these days, to his progress on the ritual to free Theo, and the good news that the Sowilo rune can help him.

Harry will be ready to do the ritual soon. But he has to make sure everyone else is ready, that Ron has the binding circle for him, that Theo will agree to do what Harry thinks he needs to do, that he can draw everyone into the circle.

Everything has to be perfect.

*

Pansy hesitates, and then shakes her head. She went through the Diamond Dust Ritual in the first place, and took the risk of asking Harry to give her his blood, so that she could predict the future. Why would she flinch now that she has the ability?

She reaches for the carved runestones that she inherited from her mother, made of ivory from a creature that doesn’t exist anymore, and drips blood from the cut she opened a moment ago over them. The runes glow, and their lines brighten with the infusion of blood. Pansy takes the time to heal the cut, while the power around her grows and soars, making the air ring like a wineglass on the verge of shattering.

Pansy closes his eyes and concentrates on her question as hard as she can. What is the greatest danger I will face in the next three months?

She casts the runes.

She hears the ivory bounce and sing on the cold stone floor of this room in the dungeon where she came to be in private, but she doesn’t open her eyes. She keeps breathing, quietly, to herself, and then she finally forces herself to open her eyes and look.

The runes lie in a messy sprawl from her towards the door. But the more Pansy looks at them, the more she notices how the sprawl makes sense, and resembles some of the shapes she’s already learned from reading books on Runic Divination.

In fact, she thinks it only takes her as long as it does to understand because she was resisting reading the runes.

You will face death. You must not be there.

Pansy wants to rage for a moment. She went through the ritual and is still getting unclear warnings?

Then she realizes that she misinterpreted the warning. The last word isn’t there. It’s here.

Here. At Hogwarts. She must not be at Hogwarts when death arrives.

Pansy casts the runes again, this time focusing on the date death will come, and swallows.

The day before OWLS.

Pansy nods and scoops up the runes. She chose this skill so that she could get an answer, and she has one.

She will make sure that she is not there.