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Part Three

Blaise has often wondered if he should have come back to Hogwarts for his eighth year. On the one hand, he’s invested this much time in Hogwarts, and it truly was impossible to study for his NEWTS last year. And if he went abroad to another school, he might have to spend two years catching up on what he missed, because they teach it differently.

But if he had gone to another school, he wouldn’t be listening to Draco whinge all over the bathroom at the moment.

“But my hair was perfect! How could he deny me the Galleons?”

“Maybe he didn’t care about your hair,” Theodore, who’s using wandless magic to cast Cleaning Charms on his teeth, says lazily.

Draco stops and stares at Theodore with his mouth hanging open, as though he’s said something incomprehensible. Blaise settles his own laughter into a coughing fit and reaches for his toothbrush.

“What do you think, Blaise?” Theodore adds. “Would Potter have given Draco some money if he’d noticed Draco’s hair?”

“Of course not. The state of Potter’s hair ought to show anyone who pays attention exactly how much he cares about that. Which isn’t at all.”

Draco gives them both an injured look and flounces out of the bathroom. Theodore watches him go with a malicious smile that instantly makes Blaise’s curiosity bleed. If Theodore were just amused by Draco in general, the smile would be different.

“What did you do to him?”

“Do to him?”

“I’m not fooled by those wide eyes, Theodore. You did something specific to Draco, something that he’d hate.”

Theodore lets go of the silly innocent look and chuckles. Blaise sighs. This is more like it. If Theodore did something that involves Potter, it’s both going to be incredibly annoying to Draco and entertaining for Blaise.

“I simply made sure that Potter could access the magical creatures that my father keeps imprisoned on his property. Rather. Kept imprisoned.”

Blaise blinks. Then he blinks again. George Nott’s collection of exotic animals has such a reputation that Mother has discussed, more than once, trying to lure him into a collaboration, if not a marriage. But if all of them have vanished into Potter’s sanctuary…

“And that would sting Draco how?”

“Oh, it doesn’t directly. But watch what happens when we go into breakfast. Specifically, the look on Draco’s face when I do what I’m going to do.”

Blaise has to be content with that until they actually get into the Great Hall, but luckily, Theodore doesn’t keep him waiting. He glances over at the Gryffindor table and lifts one hand in a wave at Potter.

Potter looks back at Theodore with his eyebrows raised, but then he nods and returns to some sort of intense, low-voiced discussion he’s having with the youngest Weasley.

Blaise peeks over his shoulder. Draco is standing still, his gaze locked on Theodore, looking the very definition of flummoxed.

Blaise chuckles and sits down at the Slytherin table, in a much better mood than he woke up with.

*

“I don’t understand why both of them can’t happen at the same time.”

Ginny is proud of herself. She keeps her voice low and level and calm, and sits with her hands folded in her lap as she does it.

“It wouldn’t work out, Ginny.”

“Running a magical creature sanctuary and dating me at the same time? Why not?”

“I wouldn’t be a good boyfriend for anyone right now.”

Ginny pauses. That’s not what she thought he would say, especially since they did kiss right after the battle and they dated the first month or more of summer. And then Harry went strange and cold and distant, so much so that she actually cast Finite Incantatem on him the first time he spoke to her after that, thinking it was a curse.

“When could you be a good boyfriend?” she asks, instead of arguing the way she planned on.

Harry looks at her. His face is so grim and dark, and his eyes resemble the eyes of a wild creature more and more. Ginny supposes that’s only fair, when he’s spending so much time with them constantly. He reaches out a hand and squeezes hers, and Ginny suppresses a cry at the tightness of it.

“I don’t know. I hope, after I’ve spent some time surrounded by magical creatures who could never betray me and soaking in the unicorns’ innocence and purity, that I can come back to you. Or someone else, if you’re dating someone by then.”

Ginny bites her lip and nods. She wants to say that she’ll wait for Harry, but he’s giving her fair warning. It might be years before he decides that he’s had enough of the sanctuary. She might get impatient. She knows herself.

Or he might never decide he’s had enough of the sanctuary, and continue running it along with dating someone. Ginny doesn’t know if she wants to be in that shadow, at least not if things keep going the way they are right now.

She pulls back from Harry. “Thank you for telling me,” she says.

Harry half-smiles at her and goes back to eating. Ginny watches him for a moment, yearning for what could have been.

Then she turns around, with a determined smile to talk to Dean. His face lights up, and Ginny thinks that’s what she wants.

She deserves someone who wants her, not someone she had a long-lasting crush on her but who chose magical creatures over her.

*

“How are they doing?”

Potter glances up from the long enclosure that he’s standing above. From what Theodore can see of the ward, it extends horizontally back into the Forest out of sight, but only a short distance vertically. He raises his eyebrows.

“Fine. Did you come to see them?”

“I came because I was curious,” Theodore says, which is perfectly true, and makes Potter relax a little. Interesting. Maybe he can tell when people are lying to him, or at least make a good guess. Well, Theodore doesn’t have any reason for dishonesty. “It’s a lot of creatures to settle into the Forest all at once.”

“Hmm.” Potter watches him, and then beckons Theodore closer to the enclosure that overlays the grass. “Well, this is a pen to give the ouroboros some room but not let it out to attack anyone else.”

Theodore leans over the side of the ward. The snake before him is black and grey, and mostly just coils. He’s always had a hard time seeing the head and tail of his father’s ouroboros, and that meant it frightened him in a way that none of the others did. “And you can speak to them, of course.”

“Yes. I know a lot more about what they need to eat than I did.”

“You never spent much time around snakes, did you?” Theodore asks as he follows Potter further into the Forest, their way lit only by floating lanterns radiating silvery light.

Potter glances at him with those wild eyes. “No. Not growing up, and then I didn’t exactly want to remind people about my Parseltongue.”

Theodore nods as if he understands. In a way, he does. Growing up surrounded by Gryffindors, it’s not a surprise Potter adopted their prejudices.

“What did you do about the dragon-hounds?” Theodore allows himself to ask, because he is curious, and he doesn’t think that many people other than Father could contain them. It cost a lot of Galleons to build their particular kennels.

Then again, that’s one thing Potter has plenty of.

“Oh, they’re the cutest things, aren’t they?” Potter asks, and his manner is fond as he leads Theodore to the right instead of on the straight path they’ve been taking. The Forest is dimmer here, with the bobbing lanterns casting a dusky blue light instead of a silver one. “Right here.”

Theodore halts a respectful distance from the pens that seem to be made of glowing golden lines. They don’t look like the kennels Father used, but Potter probably thinks of those as inhumane.

Potter whistles, the way he did a few weeks ago to call the thestrals.

The golden lines light up as something jumps against them. Theodore lets his mouth fall open as he stares at the dragon-hound, three hundred pounds of killing strength, leaping up and down like a puppy. It’s even whimpering. Theodore can make out the wicked jaws with the serrated teeth, and the little bits of flame breaking past them, and the heavy canine body covered with scales, but—

Suddenly the dragon-hounds don’t seem as scary as they always did.

Potter steps fearlessly up to the golden lines and extends his hand. The dragon-hound leaps up again and licks his hand with a tongue that probably strips away some of the skin. But Potter must be wearing a glove enchantment, because he only smiles.

“They were some of the most dangerous beasts my father kept,” Theodore says faintly.

Potter shrugs without looking away from the dragon-hound. “They want to be loved, and I don’t think he loved them.”

Theodore shakes his head fervently. Of course Father didn’t. He only used them as a source of Potions ingredients, and guards, because they go mad every time someone walks past without giving them food.

“The food must be getting a bit expensive, right?” Dragon-hounds need either raw, fresh meat or precious metal on a regular basis.

Potter smiles at him, so open and friendly that Theodore starts. “Not really.”

“What do you mean?”

Potter reaches into his robe pocket and pulls out a Galleon. Then he tosses it into the air with another, sharper whistle.

The dragon-hound leaps for it, a spark of gold proving that its wards extend above the level of the visible lines. The hound spreads its stubby wings and flutters, then adjusts course and grabs the Galleon, swallowing it in one neat motion of its throat.

Theodore doesn’t rub his eyes, because he knows what he saw, but he does turn to Potter just so that he can clarify what’s going on. “You’re feeding them the Galleons from the Black fortune?”

Potter laughs. “Think I should tell Malfoy? The expression on his face might be hysterical when he figures out where it’s going.”

“You’ll deplete the vaults in a few years at that rate.”

Potter stops laughing with the same ease with which he began, and leans forwards a little to stare at Theodore. “Not really,” he says softly. “You have no idea how much Sirius left me. And it’s multiplying as the goblins invest it, and as people donate to the sanctuary.”

“They donate?”

“They want to get on my good side,” Potter says, with a shrug. “I pretend that they can do it. And maybe some of them really love magical creatures, or think that they can clear up the Dark Marks on their left arms by doing it. I don’t care that much about their motivations. As long as they support the sanctuary.”

Theodore blinks and shakes his head. He’s one of those who thought the sanctuary was something temporary Potter would play with until he got bored of it, and then probably shutter once he starts getting poorer.

Now, it seems he won’t.

“I think you should tell Malfoy. It would drive him mental.”

Potter grins at him again. “You’re all right, Nott. Come on, I’ll show you where we put those cannibalistic Abraxans your father had.”

*

Hagrid sleeps soundly, but a wild pounding on his door wakes him up as readily as it does anyone else. Fang scrambles to his feet, yelping, and then Hagrid hears Harry yelling his name.

“Comin’, comin’!” he calls back, and shrugs himself into his coat as he stands. It sounds like Harry needs a bit of help, and that probably means Hagrid won’t be going back to his warm bed anytime soon.

He opens the door, and finds Harry cradling a bleeding unicorn foal in his arms. Hagrid snarls and takes the little thing from him with hands that he makes sure are absolutely steady, but shoots Harry a dark look.

“What got into the sanctuary?”

“Poachers,” Harry answers, and Hagrid feels as though he could growl and bite people better than Fang. Harry nods to whatever he sees in Hagrid’s face. “I’m going to go and make sure that they didn’t injure any of the other creatures. You take care of this little one.”

“You don’t want my help?”

Harry shakes his head. “Sorry, Hagrid, but I won’t be able to do anything for worrying about them if I don’t have a safe place to send the ones that need healing. And the people who betrayed me are going to regret it.”

A few times in the past month when Hagrid’s been up at the castle, Professor McGonagall and some of the others have talked about how Harry has changed. They think he’s wild, or mad, or something. Hagrid listened to them, but he didn’t know what to say. Working among the creatures with Harry, he seemed just like he’s always been.

Now Hagrid can see the difference. But he doesn’t think it’s a bad thing. Harry has always protected humans who needed his help. Now he just has a different target, that’s all.

“Do whatever you can to make them leave the little ones alone.”

Harry flashes him a bright smile and vanishes back into the Forest. A second later, Hagrid can smell fire.

He worries, a bit, but he knows that he can’t help Harry much when he can’t use magic, and he’s convinced Harry won’t let the Forest burn down. For now, he lays the unicorn foal on a nest of blankets in front of the hearth, shoos Fang off, and sets to work making sure that the little filly’s as safe as can be.

*

Aurora Sinistra doesn’t consider herself a violent woman. She chose a career where she would be able to look at the stars and not have to cast the kind of offensive spells that Aurors do, even though serving in the Aurors is a tradition in her family. She did her part in the Battle of Hogwarts, but she was glad to leave such things behind.

However, it seems that she has a stronger stomach than she knew. She’s the only professor who can look at the floating wizard in the middle of the Great Hall at the moment without, apparently, wanting to vomit.

Aurora takes a step forwards, and then another. The students are screaming. Pomona has stumbled back with a hand over her mouth, and even Filius, whom Aurora thinks would be the most used to violence of all of them, looks as if his stomach troubles him.

Aurora, meanwhile, looks at the places where the wizard’s skin has been flayed off, in long strips, and then shakes her head and turns to face the students.

“Who is responsible for this, please?”

At the sound of her voice, they stop bleating and stare at her. Aurora scans them. “Who is responsible?” she repeats. “I highly doubt that the person who did this would not be in the Great Hall at the moment, to see the reaction to what they did.”

The students glance uncertainly at each other. Her fellow professors at least stop looking so sick, and Pomona steps forwards to help Aurora search the crowd.

“Here, Professors.”

It’s Mr. Potter stepping forwards, of course. Aurora holds back her sigh. She no longer sees the boy on a regular basis, since he chose not to pursue a NEWT in Astronomy, but she feels as if she hears tales of his exploits all the time.

“Ah, yes, Mr. Potter. And can you explain why you left this wizard hanging like this?” Aurora motions with her head to the victim, while at the same time turning to see if she recognizes him. There’s only a faint familiarity to his facial features. Perhaps he’s a student she had sometime in the past.

“He’s a poacher who came into my sanctuary. He intended to take unicorn tail hairs, and also the skin of some of the other creatures living there.” Potter gives her a bright smile. “So I took some of his skin instead.”

People cry out and protest and say things that Aurora notices make Potter’s jaw tighten. She sighs. It’s not that she approves, exactly, but bloodier things happen in some Defense and Charms classes on a regular basis, not to mention Quidditch. And Potter died for them all. He’s earned some forbearance.

“Is there a reason that you chose to put him here and not in the Ministry Atrium, Mr. Potter?”

That gets her a quick glance, as if Potter is reconsidering some of his actions, or what he was about to say. Aurora looks calmly back. She isn’t afraid of him. That nonsense about him becoming the next Dark Lord is only nonsense.

“I thought it was likely that the poacher had contacts here,” Potter says at last. “Or a child. Someone he could make a plausible excuse to visit, since today is a Hogsmeade Saturday. I wanted everyone to see that I don’t tolerate betrayal.”

He turns and stares out over the students as he announces that, and they cower back from him. Aurora wants to roll her eyes about that, too. Yes, Potter is capable of great and violent things, but so is anyone who carries a wand.

“I see. Thank you, Mr. Potter. At any rate, I think everyone sufficiently warned—”

“Not everyone is here, Professor Sinistra—”

“Mr. Potter, by the end of today, do you think that there will be anyone in Hogwarts who does not know about this?”

Potter starts and peers closely at her. Aurora looks back. Then Potter shakes his head and his face relaxes, enough for her to see how very young he is, again. Too young to have taken the protection of an entire magical world and an entire magical world’s worth of creatures onto himself, but it’s happened. “No, Professor Sinistra.”

“Then kindly remove him. You could send him to the Ministry.”

“I don’t know if they’ll punish him at all, laws against poachers being what they are,” Potter mutters, but he at least waves his wand and makes the poacher float out of the hanging position he’s in. When he reaches the floor, Potter casually Stuns him and then tosses a Binding Charm at him for good measure.

“You’re sick, Potter!” shouts someone from the direction of the Hufflepuff table, although Aurora can’t see who it is.

Potter looks up, the pleasant cast of his features completely gone. “And you should have bloody died for yourselves, if you don’t like the way that I do it,” he snaps. “You should have protected the unicorns and the others better. Then I wouldn’t have to do it this way.”

And he marches out through the doors of the Great Hall with the wizard floating behind him.

Aurora studies the faces around her. They look shocked, relieved, upset, fearful, accusing. She wonders, for a moment, if Potter should have brought the poacher here at all, warning against betrayal or not. It might only have upset people more, and increased the chance that people would accuse Potter of being a Dark Lord.

As clearly as if he stands beside her, Aurora can imagine what Potter might have said:

They accuse me of being a Dark Lord all the time without any proof, so I might as well lean into it.

Aurora sighs and fires off a loud clap with her wand to imitate a firework, and the babble dies. “I believe that Madam Pomfrey should have Calming Draughts on hand in the infirmary,” she says, and catches her colleague’s eye. Poppy starts and nods, hurrying out in Potter’s wake. “If the rest of you want to sit and eat breakfast, you can. Or you can discuss this among yourselves or with your Head of House.”

“Potter’s mad,” Aurora hears someone say, before she turns and continues towards the head table. This hasn’t put her off her breakfast, at least.

“How can you be so calm?” Bathsheda whispers as Aurora sits down beside her. “I thought I was going to vomit.”

Aurora looks at her for a moment, and wonders herself. Her earlier thoughts about not being used to violence come back to her. Bathsheda isn’t, either, occupied with Runes as she is, but Aurora is reacting better than she is.

Then Aurora figures it out, and smiles. Bathsheda shies back from her.

“My family came to Britain in the first place, fleeing Rome, because one of my ancestors suffered a terrible betrayal,” Aurora tells her, reaching for the nearest teapot. “We didn’t have the land in Rome to go back to anymore, but we kept the legend alive. I understand Mr. Potter. I understand the way he reacts.”

Minerva overhears and turns towards her with a quick motion. “Then might you be willing to speak with him when he comes back from the Ministry, Aurora? I have the feeling that we are losing Mr. Potter, for all that we’re trying to keep him close to us, and we could use someone who could talk to him.”

Aurora agrees. It’s not her fault that Minerva didn’t specify the topic of conversation. Aurora did a NEWT in Care of Magical Creatures, and she thinks it will be interesting to hear Mr. Potter talk.

Perhaps she can ever get an invitation to his creature sanctuary, and permission to look at the reflections of constellations in a few creatures’ hides.