Chapter Fifty-Two of 'Feather and Glass'- The Coming Madness

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Fifty-Two—The Coming Madness

Aradia!

The thought comes bursting into her head and interrupts the meditation Aradia was just settling into to get ready to cast the reality bubble spell. She opens her eyes and reaches for the journal. She informed Harry and Blaise that she would be meditating today and then coming to Hogwarts.

What could be so urgent that Harry would disturb her?

When she opens the journal, she finds he has written, in fast, shaky handwriting, I’m going to meet with Steel for the second time this evening, and I forgot to tell you that they said you should be careful casting the spell on people already affected by the spell.

Aradia blinks for a moment, and then nods and responds in writing. I did already consider that, because the calculations that created the original spell are the ones that I based my own spell on. But thank you for passing along the warning.

You’re welcome!

Aradia smiles. Harry’s thoughts in her head are always bright and cheerful, carrying a happy mental “voice” that reminds her of a bird chirping.

A young raven or eagle, perhaps. Something with the beak and talons to tear flesh. That comparison would probably please him.

Aradia does check her calculations one more time, and then closes her eyes, once more sinking towards her meditative state. She will make sure that she can cast the spell today one way or the other.

But she will also make sure it comes out perfectly.

*

“You passed along my warning to Aradia?”

“Yes. Just recently, though. Sorry, I sort of forgot.”

Steel turns their head and shakes out their hair, which seems more metallic than Harry remembers. Then again, the last time he saw Steel was almost a fortnight ago. “Have you read more of the book I gave you? Are you less upset now about the crack you put in Black’s soul?”

“Yes, and yes.” Harry fidgets in place. Steel has conjured a chair for themselves and one for Harry, but Harry feels too restless to sit in it. The wind in the Forbidden Forest stirs his hair, and he’s a little cautious about the howls and shrieks coming from the trees. But on the other hand, he wants to stay with Steel.

And he does have an actual vampire with him, so probably most creatures that tried to attack him would get shredded by Steel’s claws.

Feeling more cheerful, Harry does sit down and blurt out, “But how can I use that kind of magic if it keeps doing what I don’t want it to?”

“Have you tried to use it again?”

“Um. Sort of. I made a miniature flying horse and tried to put a crack in its soul, but all that happened was that its body fell to dust.”

Steel chuckles, making Harry feel reassured. At least Steel doesn’t think he’s a bad person the way Harry was half afraid of. Maybe some things would go too far even for vampires. “You did not place enough soul in the body of the thing to have any impact one way or another, I would assume.”

“Oh. That would make sense. But it still sort of bursts out of me in a frightening way, and I don’t want to use it without being able to control it.”

“Of course not. It is a frightening power. But I do have a way that you can learn to control it, although it will be painful.”

Harry hesitates for a long moment. After living with the Dursleys for ten years, he doesn’t enjoy choosing a painful path, and he’s sure that it’s not one Aradia and Blaise would want him to choose, either.

But on the other hand, Aradia was the one who introduced him to Steel, and the last thing in the world Harry wants is to lash out with this side of his power against someone who cares about him, just because he got angry or scared.

“Okay.”

Steel smiles. “One reason it is behaving like this is because the first time you used it, you were under significant stress and thought only to defend yourself. The magic will replicate the circumstances of its awakening until you master it.”

“It always thinks that I need to defend myself from some great threat when I invoke it?”

“Precisely.” Steel leans forwards. “The painful part will be gaining control. I can help you, but I need to weave your blood.”

Harry lets out a short breath. Even if it’s painful, that’s less bad than other things he was picturing. He trusts Steel, after all. “Okay,” he says, and holds out his hands.

Steel hesitates before they reach out and curl their hands around Harry’s. Harry looks at them, and they shake their head so that their hair clashes and glitters again. “No one in decades has so trusted me,” they whisper.

“But Aradia does?”

“Not enough to let me weave her blood. Enough to ally with me and ask favors of me and promise favors in return.”

That makes sense, Harry thinks. If Steel’s blood-weaving power is the equivalent of Harry’s soul-making one, then Aradia would probably be warier of it. And maybe he should be, too.

But the answer is still that he trusts Steel. He holds their eyes and says, “Well, let’s begin.”

Steel bows their head as if they’re going to drink from Harry’s hands. Harry sucks in his breath as he feels his blood stir unpleasantly in his veins.

“They are hurting you.”

Harry lowers his head so that his chin rests on Artemis’s head. It would be a bad idea for her to lunge at Steel right now, he thinks, but also a bad idea to try to move his hand so he could touch her. “I volunteered for this.”

“But it hurts.”

“You feel it, too?”

“Of course I feel it!”

Harry frowns. Artemis hasn’t acted as if she felt his pain any other time that he was wounded, although she was so upset at times when that happened that maybe she did and couldn’t coherently tell him.

He starts to ask her more questions, but then the blood in his veins rebels, and Harry shrieks and almost tears his hands out of Steel’s. He keeps them in place by force of will, but he knows that he’s grinding his teeth as he does so.

“Patience, youngling,” Steel says, so gently that Harry almost forgets his pain. Steel smiles at him, and Harry can see why some vampire victims apparently come back again and again, and even volunteer to be bitten. “We will be finished very shortly.”

Harry takes a deep breath and holds it as Steel’s fingers and claws slide down his wrists, and at least the pain becomes a little less. When Steel finally pulls back, Harry lets out an explosive breath and leans away, wringing his hands.

“It stopped.”

“Yes, of course it stopped,” Harry says absently, narrowing his eyes at Steel. Steel looks innocent. “You weren’t just weaving my blood, were you? You were drawing on my creative power, the one that’s entwined with Artemis’s soul.”

Steel’s eyebrows rise, although Harry can only see that because he’s watching closely. Steel’s eyebrows are a lot paler than their hair and seem to vanish altogether into their skin sometimes. “Very, very good, Harry. Yes. I was weaving your control of your soul-making magic around the magic that wants to lash out when you are threatened, so that you may control the one as you do the other. With practice, of course.”

“That’s brilliant. That sounds—more useful than my talent, actually.”

Steel immediately shakes their head. “It requires immense trust, and not only that, but for someone to willingly let me weave their blood. I have not found someone who would let me do that in decades. You are rare, and not just in power.”

Harry smiles, liking the thought of that. “All right. And now that you’ve woven my power that way, then I should be able to control the magic that could put a crack in someone’s soul, right?”

“Yes.” Steel steps back. “I will ask you to create a creature of considerable size, and then put a crack in its soul.”

Harry nods. Despite his slight reluctance to do that to something he’s made himself, he knows he has to practice. Danger to Blaise and Aradia and Artemis and all the others he cares for is too important to skimp on.

“You would never hurt me.”

Harry just strokes Artemis and then turns to follow Steel’s instructions. He is so glad that Aradia found them to be his mentor. Harry is pretty sure that no one else could have taught him how to use his magic instead of being afraid of it.

*

Sirius stares out the window. There are birds flying in circles. He watches them. They’re sort of interesting.

He can eat and walk and sleep and use the bathroom by himself. Sirius is sort of puzzled by why Remus and Albus think that he can’t do those things. They’re always hovering, as if they think that Sirius is going to drown himself in the loo.

Sirius isn’t going to drown himself in the loo. He doesn’t hate himself. Life is sort of interesting, and then he blinks and the interest slides away.

He stands up when Remus comes into the room. Remus is giving him such a despairing look that Sirius goes over and clasps his friend’s shoulder. He supposes that Remus is still his friend, although maybe that doesn’t apply if Sirius can’t feel anything for him anymore. But he can act to spare Remus upset, since he knows Remus is upset.

“We have to get you out of Hogwarts, Sirius,” Remus whispers. “I’ll be reaching the end of the term soon, and—and there’s every chance that the curse will catch me.”

“So you think it is a curse, and not just coincidence?”

“Don’t you remember our school years, Sirius? How we had a different professor every year? Of course it’s a curse!”

Sirius does remember, but he doesn’t tend to think of things that aren’t right in front of him. Why would he? He nods. “All right. It’s a curse. How are we going to move me off the grounds? Can we Transfigure me again?”

At Remus’s insistence, he’s transformed several times since Harry put the crack in his soul. Remus thought that maybe the dog’s brain and body would make Sirius feel differently. They don’t. Although Sirius does prefer dog form for the interesting scents that it gives him.

“I can’t think of any other way that would make sure you don’t get seen or caught by someone.” Remus wipes away tears.

“Okay,” Sirius says, and pats his shoulder, because he’s observed Albus doing that to Remus when he was upset. “Then I can change now, and we can Transfigure me, if you like?”

“Yes.” Remus rubs his eyes again. “Hagrid is the only one’s seen your Transfigured form. You were Padfoot, not Silver, that—that day.”

“I know,” Sirius says. “I remember.”

Remus gives him the look of despair again, and Sirius wonders what he said. He sort of hopes that he can have a different house from Remus when they get him out of Hogwarts. He seems to always be saying the wrong thing. It doesn’t distress him, but he knows it distresses Remus, and that is something he shouldn’t do.

“Okay,” Remus whispers, and draws his wand. “Can you transform?”

Sirius does, the black fur surging around him and enveloping his legs and arms. The world grows bright with scents. He starts to sniff around, but then remembers and sits back on his haunches to look up at Remus.

Remus is blinking away tears again. Sirius wishes he knew why. The tears smell a bit salty, but they aren’t interesting otherwise.

Remus Transfigures him. Sirius stands patiently throughout the process. It’s not like he has anything better to do anyway.

Finally, Remus tucks his wand away and swallows loudly. “All right. Let’s go.”

*

Aradia walks into Hogwarts with the sensation that she is floating.

In a sense, she is. She carries the incomplete bubble of the wards, the reality-altering spell, with her, and it wants to form. It wants its victims, and it lunges against her control in their direction.

But if she lets it go now, it will grab everyone near its victims, and of course she does not want that.

The other difficult thing is that Aradia left the bubble open so that it will inflict the worst consequences on its victims that they can imagine when it pops. It requires more work and a more delicate balance than designating a punishment, but Aradia also finds it more elegant. However, it is rather like balancing a huge glass orb on just the tips of her fingers while walking.

The bubble tilts to the left. Aradia halts and looks over in curiosity. There’s a blur in the air that looks like someone using a Disillusionment Charm.

Aradia smiles. It seems that at least some of her prey has come to her.

She turns and glides in their direction, the bubble vibrating with vengeance.

*

Remus has felt uneasy and melancholy all day, but he knows that has an immediate cause. He has to get Sirius out of the Hogwarts grounds, and he has to continue working on a cure for him.

Albus might say this is like the Dementor’s Kiss and there is no cure, but Remus isn’t ready to give up on his best friend.

But since he and Sirius stepped out of Hogwarts and Remus covered them both with a Disillusionment Charm as an extra precaution, his uneasiness has only increased. Remus keeps jerking his head in different directions, sniffing, trying to understand where the threat is coming from when his senses can’t find it.

Then he does catch a scent that makes him spin in its direction.

Aradia Zabini is walking towards them.

Remus immediately lifts his wand and spins around so that his back is to Sirius. “Stay right here,” he snaps.

Sirius gives an agreeable bark. He seems to obey more easily since the—incident, Remus thinks. Whatever it was. He doesn’t wander off on his own because it’s not interesting enough, and seems to only eat because he’s hungry, not because he knows he has to to keep alive.

Remus pulls his mind away from that with a jerk as Mrs. Zabini halts in front of them.

“What do you want?” he snaps, canceling the Disillusionment Charm with a flash of his wand.

Mrs. Zabini smiles at him. She’s holding one hand up as though cupping a crystal ball, but Remus can see nothing there. Unease still stirs in his stomach.

“I was coming to give you a present,” she says. “I planned to find you and ask that you share the gift with your friends, but instead, you stumbled across my path. Such a pleasant surprise.”

“We want no gift from you.”

“It isn’t one that you have a choice about refusing,” Mrs. Zabini says, with a smile so bright and words so cheerful that it takes Remus a moment to grasp the implication of them, and then she tosses something invisible in the air and blows on it.

The world around Remus dances wildly. He backs away from Mrs. Zabini and trips over Sirius. Sirius flops out of the way and comes around to stare in Remus’s face, cocking his head back and forth as though that will help him read Remus’s expression.

Mrs. Zabini laughs.

Remus pushes with his magic, trying to prevent whatever it is from settling on him. It doesn’t seem to work. He can feel a slight greasiness on his skin, like soap that hasn’t been washed off, and then—

Then he realizes that it was a gift after all.

Because Sirius is staring at him a level of concern Remus hasn’t seen since Harry hurt him, even on canine features, and then he transforms back into himself and grabs Remus and bursts out, “Are you all right, Moony?”

Remus raises a trembling hand to rest on Sirius’s forehead. He feels like he’s awakening from a dream. Of course Sirius is fine. They took him to a specialized Healer who managed to bring him back around, even though Albus didn’t think it would work. Albus still gave them the Galleons, though.

It worked. Of course it did.

“Remus!”

Right, he has to answer. Remus stands up and shakes his head. He looks around, but there’s no sign of anyone except the two of them. Then again, he and Sirius deliberately took a path near the Forbidden Forest so there would be fewer students around, just in case the Defense curse tried to grab them.

Sirius is still a fugitive from Azkaban, but even that can be fixed. Remus looked up several advocates who might take a case like this. He turns to smile at his friend, and rejoices in the sight of Sirius’s face crumpling into relief.

For a moment, laughter seems to dance past them on the wind. Then again, it’s most likely the laughter in Remus’s heart.

He grabs Sirius’s hand and crushes his friend into a hug. Sirius laughs and hugs him back.

At the moment, Remus is full of hope. They will find a way to get Sirius’s conviction overturned, probably by proving magical manipulation from You-Know-Who like Albus said, and then they’ll find a way to connect with Harry. He will have to understand the consequences of what he did to Sirius, but then again, they healed it.

Life is bright.

*

Aradia glides up the stairs, wrapped in a ward of her own devising that will keep anyone from seeing her. The reality bubble has grabbed Dumbledore, she knows that, but she wants to see exactly what form his new consciousness has taken.

She reaches the turn of one staircase and pauses for a moment. There is a small red-haired girl marching past her who might, from the sparse descriptions Harry has given, be Ginny Weasley. Aradia watches her in interest.

“…can go to a Mind-Healer if I want,” maybe-Weasley is saying to herself in a low voice.

Aradia shakes her head as the girl walks out of view. That is someone, if she is Ginny Weasley, whose path she will be just as glad to never have cross one of her sons’ again. When she is sure that there is no chance of the girl turning back and detecting her ward, Aradia resumes her glide.

She reaches the gargoyle that she knows guards the Headmaster’s quarters and pauses to look at it. She wonders if she will have to charm or blast her way through it, but the gargoyle abruptly leaps aside, no questions asked.

Interesting.

Aradia rides the moving stairs up to Dumbledore’s office.

“Aradia! Come in, my dear!”

Aradia pauses with one hand on the open door. This is something she—did not anticipate. Albus Dumbledore is beaming at her from his desk, beckoning her to a chair in front of him as if they are old friends.

Aradia uses her magical senses to study Dumbledore as she sits down. It is possible that he noticed the reality bubble, somehow escaped it, and is putting on an act. Then again, the Dumbledore she knows would scorn to use such a deception with someone “Dark.”

But there is no hint of a glamour or an illusion, and there is the sense of powerful magic, like a banked fire, that Aradia associates with the Headmaster. She might not approve of how he uses it, but he does have that strength.

“Tea? Scones? Lemon drop?”

“No, thank you, Albus,” Aradia says, and decides to get straight to the point. “I am a little surprised at your welcoming me this way, when I thought you disapproved of my taking Harry Potter in.”

Dumbledore’s face tightens for a moment, and Aradia leans forwards. But then the Headmaster shakes his head with a sigh.

“I know what you did for Sirius,” he says. “I might not like Harry’s magic or approve of the way he uses it, but I am glad that you are in control of it and have put limits and chains on it. And it is thanks to you that Sirius has been restored.” Albus looks straight at her, his eyes twinkling. “You are a much better person than I ever thought you were.”

Aradia stares. Then she clears her throat. “You—know about Harry’s magic, then.”

“I know that he has powerful accidental magic and that you’ve chained it. He isn’t the boy I thought he was, but—well, that’s in the past. You have proven that the rumors about you were always just rumors, and I assure you,” Albus says, with an earnestness that is slightly horrifying, “I will let the people who disparage your name in Britain know that.”

Aradia nods, a little dazed. She has no idea why something like this would be Albus’s preferred version of reality, and she has to dig further. “Does that include Neville Longbottom and his grandmother? You know Neville had that fight with Harry last year.”

“The squabbles of boys.” Albus waves his hand and then sighs a little. “I will let them know if they approach me. But honestly, my dear? Voldemort is dead. The Boy-Who-Lived is little more than a curiosity and a symbol for the masses.”

Aradia blinks once more then. Then she says, “You’re right, of course. Does that mean that you have that diary I found last year and thought was a trinket of the Dark Lord’s? If you’re done studying it…”

“Oh, yes. It feels foul, doesn’t it? But there’s no way that it can be a Horcrux the way I imagined, not when Voldemort is gone.” Albus turns and presses his hand against a piece of silver filigree on his desk. There’s a click, and a drawer opens. He turns to hand it to her with a beaming smile. “Here you are.”

Aradia’s hands close on the diary, and she forces herself to smile and nod. “Maybe a little tea, if you’d be so kind, Albus.”

While he busies himself pouring the tea, Aradia glances down at the diary and lets out some of the same magic she used to look for an illusion on Albus. The diary pulses with magic like a black star.

Aradia sighs and tucks it away. Perhaps she shouldn’t have let it out of her sight in the first place.

“Something wrong, my dear? I assure you, Voldemort is dead.”

That would be his preferred reality, of course. “Oh, I know. But I feel some responsibility for destroying the diary since I was the one who found it.”

“Well, in truth, Miss Weasley was the one who found it.”

Aradia raises her eyebrows a little. “I saw Miss Weasley on my way here, I believe. Red hair, a lot of freckles…?”

“Yes, I believe she is the only red-haired second-year.” Albus taps his fingers against his own cup for a moment. “I have asked her parents to take her to Mind-Healing, because the belief that the spirit possessing her was Voldemort could damage her young mind, but so far, they have refused.”

“Ah.” It must be for another reason that they’ve refused Mind-Healing, Aradia thinks. Then again, the girl seems determined enough to get it herself. “Well, thank you for the tea, Albus, but I must be going.”

“Are you sure? It does me good to see the one who saved Sirius. Especially since I know you had no reason to love him.”

Aradia stands and shakes her head with a smile. “I’m glad that I could make it better, but I really must be going. I shouldn’t spend too much time at Hogwarts, you know. Harry and Blaise mustn’t grow too dependent on me, and must learn to stand on their own.”

“Yes, they might be fine young men someday.”

Aradia half-smiles, interested to see how he reserves his opinion on Blaise, and then excuses herself.

As she walks down the stairs, she ponders how these new versions of reality will intersect. Black and Lupin don’t seem to think she had anything to do with “saving” Black. And Albus has a good opinion of her that they won’t share.

In the end, Aradia shrugs. The point of the spell isn’t for her enemies’ internal memories to make sense. It’s for punishment.

And when the bubble collapses and Albus must face the possibility that Voldemort is alive, when Black must regain his cracked soul, when Lupin loses hope and his best friend once again…

It will be delicious.

And in the meantime, Aradia can work on destroying the Dark Lord, since obviously the ones who have tried so far are incompetent at it.

*

Theo picks up the little black snake with hands that tremble. It has silver accents.

“We hope you like him,” Harry says. Blaise is hovering behind him, watching in that narrow-eyed way that Theo knows is meant to conceal anxiety. “I kept him for a few days to make sure that he would stay alive and he has the kind of free will that Ignis does. But I didn’t name him.”

Theo’s hands clench at the very thought that this little one might crumble into dust or whatever else Harry used to create him. But he is alive, and he is twining around Theo’s arm and lifting his head, tongue darting out.

“I think I know what I want to name him,” Theo whispers.

“What?” Harry is pressing forwards despite the hand that Blaise has on his arm, and despite the fact that they’re in a corner of a dungeon corridor where no one else comes and there’s no one to get in Harry’s way, “What will you name him?”

Theo smiles and meets Harry’s eyes, painful though it is to look away from the snake. “Sidus. A Latin word for star.”

“Oh? Because he has the silver spots like stars?”

“Yes,” Theo murmurs, but that’s not what he’s thinking, not entirely. He used to look up at the stars when he was at home as a child and dream about how they were far away, beyond anything his father could do to him. No matter what, they would never be affected.

And now his snake is beyond anything his father could do to him. If Ignis and Artemis are examples, Sidus will be loyal to Theo alone.

“Good. I’m glad that you found a name you like.” Sidus hisses softly and butts his snout against Theo’s cheek. Harry smiles. “He likes it too.”

Theo doesn’t need Parseltongue to tell him that. He does smile at Harry and talk for a while like a normal person, but then Harry and Blaise leave, and Theo can sink to the stone floor and be overwhelmed.

He has a companion who could destroy his father, if what Harry said about Artemis suddenly developing venom is true. Someone who is on his side and his side alone.

Power and hope and freedom.

Theo looks down at Sidus, and the snake looks back up at him, willing, obedient, alive. Ignis didn’t seem that way, but then, Theo has only seen Ignis a few times, and perhaps the little dragon reflects Blaise’s generally colder and more reserved personality.

Sidus reflects Theo.

“I love you,” Theo whispers, and if it’s the first time in his life he’s said that since his mother died, there is no one human to know.

Comments

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Steel smiles. “One reason it is behaving like this is because the first time you used it, you were under significant stress and thought only to defend yourself. The magic will replicate the circumstances of its awakening until you master it.” <<

Magic and superpowers are both prone to being reactive like that, and traumatic manifestation makes them downright twitchy.

>> Steel hesitates before they reach out and curl their hands around Harry’s. Harry looks at them, and they shake their head so that their hair clashes and glitters again. “No one in decades has so trusted me,” they whisper.<<

Trust is a powerful thing.

>>Sirius isn’t going to drown himself in the loo. He doesn’t hate himself. Life is sort of interesting, and then he blinks and the interest slides away.<<

That's a devastating defense.

In fact, some cultures describe depression as a type of soul loss -- having lost the part that can feel and care and respond, so that life becomes just a slog.

>>And when the bubble collapses and Albus must face the possibility that Voldemort is alive, when Black must regain his cracked soul, when Lupin loses hope and his best friend once again…<<

Utterly brutal.

>>He has a companion who could destroy his father, if what Harry said about Artemis suddenly developing venom is true. Someone who is on his side and his side alone.<<

That is adorable.