[one-shots]: The Inner Lands, 1/3, R, H/D

[lomonaaeren]

Title: The Inner Lands
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Summary: Harry wants to know why Draco Malfoy is a Sidhe. And why he's heading the Sidhe delegation that's threatening the wizarding world. But most of all, he wants to know why him.
Rating: R
Pairing(s): Draco/Harry
Warnings: Angst, violence, some rather weird magic.
Word Count: 31,300
Author's Notes: Written for tigersilver in the 2012 Draco Tops Harry fest; she suggested Draco as a faerie creature, among which Sidhe was an option, and asked for small Muggle traditions to turn the Fair Folk aside. Thanks to my beta, L., for going above and beyond the call of duty, as always. The title comes from Lord Dunsany's story "Poltarnees, Beholder of Ocean," quoted below.



The Inner Lands

Toldees, Mondath, Arizim, these are the Inner Lands, the lands whose sentinels upon their borders do not behold the sea. . .

Harry climbed slowly and stiffly out of the old fireplace and looked around the house. Spiders dangling from the rafters, dust snowdrift-thick on the floor, the smell of must and age thick enough to choke him--

He almost smiled. It was rather like being back in the cupboard at the Dursleys', wasn't it?

He spent a few moments composing himself, flicking his wand to banish the dust and soot from his clothing. He still wanted to wrinkle his nose at the rich clothes that Hermione had insisted he wear: tunic and trousers, of all things, of crushed velvet or something like that. He looked like one of the prancing Muggles he sometimes saw on the streets of London, the ones who believed they had been born in the wrong century.

And everything was green. Hermione had said that was important, it was symbolic. As far as Harry could tell, everything to do with the bloody Sidhe was symbolic. He just objected to it applying to his clothing.

Besides, as far as he was concerned, green was a symbol of the Killing Curse and Oh, Harry, You Have Your Mum's Eyes. But no one had asked him.

But the Sidhe had asked for him. Still shaking his head when he thought about that, Harry stepped out of the house's doorway and into the abandoned field beyond. This was the nearest Floo point to the place where the delegate had requested to meet him, once a wizarding home that the family who dwelt here had left after one too many deaths in the place.

He couldn't see a damn thing in the darkness beyond, only the faint far lights of stars. Well, it was appropriate to the mood of the house, anyway--

Then two bright lights lit up in front of him, and Harry lifted his wand and spun into a battle-crouch, his cloak flaring behind him and his stupid tight clothes jamming his elbows. He rarely had occasion to do regular battle any more, but work as a dueling instructor had kept his moves sharp.

The lights moved closer, and Harry made them out as the shiny, reflected eyeballs of a horse. He didn't relax. For one thing, the horse was so black it looked like a piece of darkness come to life; for another, he had never seen a horse walk in that weird way, with its neck bent down so that its head hovered barely above the ground and snaked along.

And for a third, he was on his way to meet a bunch of bloody power-hungry despots who had once ruled the entire wizarding world. He trusted nothing to be what it was supposed to be.

The black horse came to a stop and stood staring at him. Harry stared back, and made out silver swathes over its back and head, in a shape like a saddle and bridle. They were part of the skin, though, not harness.

He held the creature's eyes, and murmured, "And who bound you, that you have to wear the marks of your slavery even in this form?"

The creature's head tossed up, and it turned its back on him with a stamp of forehooves and hind hooves one right after the other. Harry smiled. He knew now it was a Pooka, and that meant it was probably the guide the Sidhe had promised.

"Well?" he asked. "I'm waiting, for an answer. Don't you lot never lie?"

The Pooka's eye rolled back at him, and then it turned and pounded into the darkness. Harry whispered a tracking spell, although he thought the sound of the hoofbeats would probably guide him, and then followed.

It was hard to do; the fog that rolled silently out of the night muffled the sounds, and the locator charm kept flickering and slipping in his mind, as though nothing except the marks already on the Pooka could bind it. Harry kept patiently repeating the syllables of the spell, and it towed him ahead at last, Harry trotting like the Pooka did, then running. He wondered if he would arrive with stains of sweat under the arms of this stupid, expensive tunic, and knew that he didn't much mind if he did.

He came out abruptly, through a wall of fog, into a round space of white sand, glowing so brilliantly that Harry blinked and cast a spell to reduce the glare. There was no sign of the Pooka for a moment, and then it melted into being ahead of him, kneeling down by one of the immense silver thrones that ringed the sand. A chain slid into being out of air and shadow, leading from the bridle imprinted on the Pooka's face and up to the hand of the creature in the chair.

Harry walked slowly forwards.

Because there were beings in those chairs, oh yes, and he could tell simply from looking at them that they must be the Sidhe.

They were vaguely human in the same way that apes were vaguely human. Their ears were pointed, and their features slim, delicate, still. Their skin was so white that Harry didn't think he could have seen them if they were just standing on the sand instead of sitting in the thrones. Their fingers were so long that they looked like insect legs, and their eyes were stretched oddly, almost like diamonds lying on their sides, under high arched brows.

Harry had heard they were full of inhuman beauty, but he didn't actually see that as he moved among them. They were so strange and different that he shuddered as he looked at them. He wondered if ancient wizards had had really bad taste or something.

Then one of the Sidhe made a gesture with one hand, raising it and spreading the fingers so that Harry could see they had more distance between them than a human's would--

And their faces shone out, heartbreakingly lovely now, and he could see colors like broken glass and green water and blue heather in their eyes, and his heart beat and rebounded and his knees trembled with the longing to let him sink to the ground.

But somewhere under the dazzling tide, Harry remembered the gesture the first Sidhe had made, and rebelled against it. This is glamour. This is illusion. That's why the ancient wizards all found them beautiful, and why I didn't at first.

He raised his chin and spent a moment feeling about in his mind for the link that he knew had to exist between him and the spell. It wasn't anything so visible as the Imperius Curse, where he could hear the little voice ordering him to do things. But he found it after a moment, a thin chain around his thoughts and reaching up to his eyes, the same as the bond that that one of the Sidhe had linked to the Pooka's bridle.

No, thanks! he thought, and reached up with hand and heart and magic to rip it off.

The glamour shattered like a star breaking, and suddenly he stood once more in the silent circle of thrones, with the nearest Sidhe on its feet and the one beyond that, the one who had cast the spell, holding his hand out in front of him and staring it. Harry looked at that one, but the expression on its face wasn't recognizable as pain. Perhaps it was just more startled that its spell had failed.

"What did I tell you?" The voice, at least, sounded like it could be beautiful, bell-like, though it was shrill enough to set Harry's teeth on edge. "He was nearly one of us--would have been, had he been allowed to grow without stunting. Such simple tricks cannot fool him."

Harry turned around. The Sidhe holding the chained bridle on the Pooka had risen to its feet and was watching him.

His feet, Harry decided a moment later. The longer he looked at the Sidhe, the more it looked like a man, and the shapeless grey clothes on it came to resemble a tunic and trousers like Harry's own, though with stony colors. But not just grey, colors of moss and lichen and babbling stream all mixed in--

Harry pulled his eyes away from the clothes, wary of being caught by another trap, and glared into the Sidhe lord's eyes.

And it was him. Draco Malfoy.

Harry didn't yell, but only because Hermione had hinted that he might meet someone he knew here, and Malfoy had vanished shortly after his twenty-second birthday. Harry bit down on his tongue, and nodded to him, his mind working furiously. This also explained why the Sidhe had chosen Harry, specifically, as a delegate. Malfoy wanted to miss with his head or wanted the mission to fail. Anyone who had been around Harry in the past few years knew he had no diplomatic skills.

"Potter," Malfoy said, as if reading the moment when Harry had recognized him out of Harry's head, and gave him a creepy smile. If it was a smile. Harry wasn't sure. His lips more trembled than actually moved, and he turned his silvery eyes away a moment later to study the other Sidhe gathered in the circle.

"Malfoy," Harry said, and then curiosity and stubbornness and several other things made him add, "Or isn't that your name anymore?"

"It is the name I bear in a region where humans need to name me," Malfoy said. "My name in the Sidhe tongue, as near as I can render it for someone lacking three senses, is--"

A confused bursts of sounds and smells and colors came at Harry. He could hear the shrill notes that bells made when you shook them hard enough, and there was dark green like moss in the Forbidden Forest and a smell like rotting roses.

And there was a feeling, too. Harry didn't know what else to call it. It had a sour melancholy to it, though, envy and hatred and sorrow and something else.

Yeah, that's what Malfoy experienced during the war, Harry thought, dead certain even if no one had told him that, and managed to shake his head and rid himself of some of the lingering smell. "All right," he said, looking up at Malfoy. "So did you bring me here to harass me, or what?"

Malfoy moved a step down, off his throne, looping the Pooka's chain casually around the arm of his throne as he moved. "You're still as arrogant as ever you were, Potter," he murmured. "I find it almost endearing."

Harry noted the almost, and reminded himself again of what Hermione had told him: that the Sidhe had once ruled the wizarding world, and that the cooperation of wizards and magical creatures had driven them back. Or else they had left on their own. No one really remembered the untarnished truth, because the records that talked about it were in the keeping of centaurs and fairies and other magical creatures that the Ministry didn't communicate with much now.

Harry shrugged. "Sorry," he said. "I'll work on that. But why ask for me? If you want to make sure that someone listens to the message, talk to the Minister. Or Hermione, for that matter."

A faint smile, sheer as a cliff's edge, touched Malfoy's lips. "You do not have the influence of the Boy-Who-Lived anymore?" His eyes lingered on the curse scar on Harry's forehead, although Harry had deliberately grown his hair long over it. "I find that hard to believe."

"Things can change," Harry muttered, and smiled in spite of himself as he thought of some of the ways that he had diminished his own influence. Being as open as possible about his lovers instead of trying to conceal his secrets, not settling down, not being involved in any political scandals, and giving blunt opinions in language that was hard to misinterpret had made the papers unsure of what to write about him. He wasn't dissipated, he wasn't a brilliant Auror, and he wasn't the fairy tale hero they had been so sure they would have when he was dating Ginny. Stay unknown, and your enemies would find it hard to cage or confront you.

And someone could say the same thing about the Sidhe, Harry realized, and tried to square his shoulders and keep his eyes on Malfoy and the others in the thrones around him. He thought there were eleven thrones, counting the one Malfoy had risen from. That was significant, probably.

"Come with me," Malfoy said, and paced away from the rest, into the thick, bright fog that encircled them. Harry gritted his teeth and followed. He could wait there, but he felt no safer with the rest of the Sidhe than with Malfoy.

They walked with no sound, the fog eating any noise they made. Harry looked ahead and behind them, and saw only the banks of glittering white. And silver, he thought. The fog was shifting colors. Nothing deeper than grey yet, but it might show up if he gave it time.

Sometimes he could feel no earth beneath his feet at all. Perhaps the Sidhe's magic made it cease to exist at certain points.

"Do you know what I am?"

Malfoy's voice startled Harry, but he kept his eyes focused on the glimmer of white sand ahead and didn't jump. "A Sidhe lord," he said calmly. "That much was obvious from where you were sitting and what you look like."

Malfoy's hand landed on his shoulder. Harry winced and turned. The grip was hard as steel, but it was also colder than that metal, and that was what made it so hard to bear. He had one hand in his pocket already, near his wand; he moved it instead to the small lump of cold iron that Hermione had insisted he carry with him. He stroked the lump with one finger and held Malfoy's eyes.

Malfoy watched him with his eyes shining like a ghost's--except, Harry thought, a ghost would probably have looked more human. Then he smiled suddenly, and it made his face even more angular and fox-like than before.

"I was born human," Malfoy said softly. "But with a gift, the gift we have ignored, the gift we drove away. I survived and did not become little more than a crushed flower, and so--I changed. Do you know how many seeds never come to growth? How many are scattered or trampled that should have been blossoms?"

Harry wanted to roll his eyes, but he also wanted to smile in relief. This was more like the incomprehensible Sidhe talk that Hermione had warned him he would have to listen to. "Yes, Malfoy, whatever you say," he murmured. "Does that have anything to do with why you wanted to talk to me, specifically?"

Malfoy nodded, examining Harry intently, his gaze once again rising to the scar. "You had the chance to become like me," he murmured. "But someone twisted you, warped you, and ensured that you will never come to your full growth."

Harry stared at Malfoy. He had the feeling that something important was going on here, but he really didn't know what. In the end, he shook his head and chose to talk about the first of the points Hermione had presented him with instead. "All right. I know that you've returned from your exile and you want something from the wizarding world. What?"

Malfoy turned his head away and stared into the distance. A slight breeze--that he had probably conjured, Harry thought cynically--brushed past his forehead and lifted his hair. It made him look melodramatic and prince-like. It made him look like a ponce.

As if he could hear the thought, Malfoy turned a sudden glance on him, and Harry winced. Those eyes could score like fire when Malfoy wanted them to, then. Harry wished he could have discovered that in some more comfortable way.

"You know nothing of the inner lands, do you?" Malfoy whispered. "Only the outer ones."

"Are you talking about Faerie and that kind of thing?" Hermione had called the place where the Sidhe went that, but then she had thrown up her hands and said it was no good giving it that name. Sometimes Hermione could be as confusing as a Sidhe lady herself, Harry thought. "The place you went?"

Malfoy nodded slowly, his eyes holding Harry's. Harry searched them for some sign of the mockery that Malfoy had always shown him in school, but couldn't find much. It seemed that Malfoy had changed his priorities along with his form.

"Yes," Malfoy breathed. "Those are the inner lands, the ones that wrap closest to the magic, and the ones that are closer to the Center of things."

The way he said the words, Harry couldn't miss the capital letter. He thought about asking what the Center was, but knowing Malfoy, it would only result in another weird answer that he couldn't understand anyway.

"The inner lands are wilder than these," Malfoy said, and for a moment he seemed to glance around the area of white sand and fog they stood in with contempt, although as far as Harry could see, there was nothing here that the Sidhe hadn't made themselves. "They are vaster. They are more beautiful. . ."

"Then why come back here?" Harry asked. "It seems that Faerie and the rest of them are the places that you would want to be."

Malfoy stared at him, and the faint passion vanished from his face. "I forget how stunted you are," he said.

Harry sneered at him, and said nothing. No, he wasn't good at diplomatic language, but answering back right now would only get him another nonsensical answer that would infuriate him more than it would help him. So he stood there and watched Malfoy, and Malfoy at last laughed, as though Harry had said something that pleased him after all.

"I forget how stunted you are," Malfoy repeated, "but I remember when I look at you. Therefore, I must be gracious and repeat the information that you have forgotten you heard me say. The inner lands are wilder than these. That means they destroy more of us than are born there, and though sometimes we are war and wish to fight our enemies there, we are not always in such a mood. So we have come back here."

Another interlude, during which Malfoy's conjured breeze brushed past Harry's face more than once. Harry finally gave in and shook his head. "You want a safer place to live in the wizarding world?"

"That is something you would assume," Malfoy said, and curled his lip. "No. We wish to have more of our children change here."

"So you do want a safer place," Harry hazarded. He was already picturing wizarding families caring for Sidhe children, and he didn't think that they'd like it much. One story that constantly repeated itself on the front page of the Daily Prophet was how few children were born to pure-blood parents and how many Muggleborns went back to the Muggle world when they'd finished their education. Yes, people wanted more children, but of their own blood, and their own wizarding magic.

"We wish," Malfoy said, and moved a step forwards that made the white sand crunch like snow, "to see that our children change."

"I don't know what that means," Harry said, and held Malfoy's eyes, and didn't flinch away. Yes, he was a bastard, and a right one. That didn't mean Harry had to back down in front of him. He couldn't be an effective diplomat if he had no idea what he was negotiating and so gave away all the wizarding world's bargaining counters immediately.

Once again, he wished passionately that they'd sent someone else. He was here because Malfoy had thought it would be amusing to request him and make jokes about him, evidently, and not because he could help the wizarding world.

Malfoy studied him, and then closed his eyes and ran his fingers along his own temples, touching above his eyes and around his cheeks and ears. "Your pardon," he murmured, in a deeper and more human voice than Harry had heard him use before. "But it is hard for me to think and speak as a human, after so long."

It's only been five years since you disappeared, Harry thought, but he nodded anyway. It wasn't as though Malfoy was paying much attention to him right now.

"There are certain numbers of wizards who have the potential to--change," Malfoy murmured, his eyes closed and his head bowed as though he was reasoning his way through the steps of the explanation in his head. "To alter. When they reach the age of twenty-two. If they are not stunted before then." He opened one eye and looked at Harry with a gaze that was, if anything, more penetrating than when he used both his eyes.

Harry blinked and looked him over. "You think that we can somehow change ourselves into Sidhe?"

"Not yourselves," Malfoy said, and made a flicking gesture with one hand that seemed to scoop up the fog and gather it closer to him. "But you do change, yes. Some of you. And they become Sidhe."

Harry waited, and Malfoy went on gazing into the fog, Apparently it was infinitely more fascinating than what they had actually come here to discuss. Harry sighed and began speaking again. "I don't see what you want us to do. If we can't actually change ourselves, then there's no way that we can influence who becomes Sidhe and who doesn't."

Malfoy turned his head and locked his eyes on Harry. "Why do you think I became that way?" he asked.

"Because you're pure-blood," Harry said. He didn't, actually, believe that at all, but there were enough pure-bloods in the wizarding world whining about their closeness to magical creatures and how important it was that he was willing to pretend he did. Anything for a quiet life, really.

Malfoy shook his head, once, the white hair whispering around him and then settling back near his cheeks. It looked like it was made of clouds. Harry bit the inside of his own cheek and turned his head away so that he wasn't tempted to touch it. "Because certain circumstances took me over," Malfoy said. "Because I grew up in the wizarding world, and because I did not immediately begin to use my magic when I reached the supposed ‘age of adulthood' like everyone else, because I lived under the rule of a Dark Lord who made me confine it." Malfoy sneered the words "age of adulthood" with the venom that Harry was used to hearing him reserve for Gryffindors. "And because there was the flower hidden inside me, the seed getting ready to blossom."

"Which we can do nothing about encouraging, to hear you tell it," Harry said. He carried on staring into the fog, and wondered when the hell Malfoy would get to the point. Maybe the wizards of long ago had driven the Sidhe away because they were annoying to talk to.

"To encourage? No," Malfoy said. "And again, yes."

Harry swung around again and glared at him. "Will you get to the bloody point, Malfoy?"

For a moment, the silver eyes gazing at him chilled and flowed and turned to stone in a way that reminded Harry that this was an incredibly powerful and non-human being he was talking to. Harry bit his lip and prevented himself from backing up only by a powerful exertion of his own will.

Malfoy was a Sidhe lord, but Harry was the man who had killed the most dangerous Dark Lord since Grindelwald and then fought his way free of becoming the wizarding world's icon and playtoy after that, when everyone had assumed he would have to succumb to the Ministry and the newspapers. He leaned forwards until his nose was an inch away from Malfoy's.

"Tell me," he said. "Enough riddles."

Malfoy smiled at him suddenly, and reached out as if he would touch Harry's hair. Harry gritted his teeth and permitted the touch, but kept his eyes warily on Malfoy all the while. Malfoy didn't seem to notice.

Or, more likely, Harry had to admit, he didn't care. Hermione had warned him again and again about how strong the Sidhe were, how little reason they had to pay attention to the wizarding morals and strictures.

"You might as well say," Malfoy murmured, "enough Faerie, or enough magic. It would be as easy for me to dispose of either."

"All right, I get that," Harry said. "But we're here because there are things that you want out of the wizarding world, and I'm the one you picked to deal with it. You might as well tell me. The longer you delay, the longer until you get what you want."

Malfoy gave him a smile that was unexpectedly charming, and made Harry wonder if they might have been better friends if he'd stayed human than they'd managed when they were boys. Then he stepped back and folded his hands in front of him, turning his head in a slow, almost mechanical sweep of a half-circle. Harry moved a step back in front of him, his hand falling to his wand.

"Hush," Malfoy whispered. "Hush. I will show you." His hands rose, and Harry noticed that the conjured breeze blowing past them had stilled and the flowing fog around the clearing no longer stirred.

The air seemed to twist, and then color and scent, music and jewels, flooded the world around Harry. He staggered back a step, disoriented, and felt Malfoy catch him, drawing Harry close, back against his chest. He kissed the skin behind Harry's ear and stroked his tunic, undoing one button.

Harry froze for a different reason now, but Malfoy went no further. He nodded at the explosion of sensations happening in front of Harry and breathed, "Look."

So Harry did, although reluctantly. The colors had resolved into the vision of an arched stone gateway, with the scents and the sounds flowing from beyond it. Harry moved a step forwards, or Malfoy guided him forwards, and he saw it.

The earth beyond the gateway fell away in a steep slope of green so rich that it shaded into blue and purple on the sides. The sky overhead was a similarly jewel-like shade, this one resembling the heart of a sapphire. Steep cliffs rose here and there, marked with white, streaked with red. On top of them stood pillars and circles of stones and lone thorn trees that taunted Harry with the feeling that they must have been used for something, and that he had learned that use once and would remember it in a moment.

The ground opened up into a valley beyond, and a blue creature stood there, resembling, in some ways, a huge lion with long, ropy legs and a collar of thorns and reaching tendrils around its neck instead of a mane. It bowed its head, and the thorns pierced the flesh of a white creature standing beside it, which Harry's brain could only make sense of by comparing to a huge sheep. The creature trembled as the thorns sank in, but didn't try to run. A moment later, the tendrils turned red as blood and flesh began to flow up them to the blue creature. It closed its eyes and lowered its head in what looked like bliss. The great jaws were parted, Harry thought, but the sharp teeth that dotted them might as well have been decorative; the thorns were how it fed.

"They can make their food stand still like that," Malfoy whispered in his ear. "Walk up to them and give their lives. They are more dangerous than a Nundu." His hands were caressing Harry's hair and shoulders and also the air around them, making Harry ripple and shake, as if the boundaries of his body were dissolving. "They are wonderful, and even we can barely fight them. We will unleash them here unless you give us what we want."

Harry shuddered and tried to ignore the tempting scents coming from beyond the gate, honeysuckle and fresh-baked biscuits and apple blossoms. They were probably part of the tools that the lion-creature used to lure its prey closer. "All right, threat delivered. And what is it you want?"

The vision dissolved, and Harry found himself floating in another one, a black void surrounded by stars. It had to be a vision, because there was no way in hell that Malfoy could really have transported them into the depths of space, and be keeping them alive with not much exertion of magic. Harry refused to believe that.

"So many worlds," Malfoy crooned and sighed into Harry's hair. His hands were still near his body, and at the moment, Harry was rather relieved at that. He didn't think he would want to float alone in a void like this, and he didn't trust his ability to fight through the glamour--it must be, but this time, his mere disbelief in it didn't shatter it the way it had when he disbelieved in the Sidhe's beauty--and get back home. "The little ones that you know about, the kind that you live in, with magic only a background hum. And around them, closer to the Center, the wrapped and shining worlds, the ones like tapestries curled around and around the fragile outer worlds."

Harry took a deep breath and made a stab for what he thought he understood. Hermione had said Sidhe were unpredictable around fear, sometimes glad they had caused it and sometimes taking it as a signal that they should attack, as if they were dogs. "You're saying that this is bigger on the inside than the outside?"

Malfoy laughed in delight, or at least a shrill emotion Harry could tell himself was that, and shifted closer to Harry, hands outlining his hips now. Harry had the dangerous fantasy that he only held his own shape because Malfoy was here with him in the void, and bit his lips over it, refusing to surrender to it. "Yes. And the inside, the Center, where everything comes from, is the largest of all."

"What is the Center?" Harry asked, thinking Hermione would probably want to know.

"Everything," Malfoy sighed, into his ear this time.

Well, so much for that. Harry made another try. "And what do you want us to do, Malfoy? How can we escape having the lion-creatures unleashed on us?"

The black void around him vanished. He found himself standing on a field of thick green grass, dotted with flowers in a literal rainbow of colors, from pale red at one corner of the field to thick purple, almost black, near his feet. Malfoy bent down and picked an indigo blossom, reeling with light, an open cup, dark with thorns near the tip.

"You must change the age of adulthood," Malfoy said, eyes on him as he held out the flower to Harry. Harry took it, trying carefully to avoid the thorns. "Seventeen forces wizards to exercise their magic too young, forces them to assume adult responsibilities that make them human and not Sidhe. For more Sidhe, there must be more, as there were with me, who are not encouraged to use their magic too often and too young."

Harry shook his head. "I don't see how we can predict that. Other people went through the same war as you did and didn't--change." He might as well use the Sidhe word for it, seeing as he didn't know another one.

"Some have the potential inborn, and some do not," Malfoy agreed, his voice as breathy as the wind in the flowers. Or maybe the wind was speaking through him; Harry didn't know anymore. "That is the part that you cannot encourage. The encouragement, the growth of the seed, comes with changing the age."

He paused, and leaned forwards until his head butted against Harry's. Harry shivered. Malfoy's brow felt both colder and harder than the equivalent bone would on a human.

"You would have been one of us," Malfoy whispered. "You had the potential inborn. But you were stunted long before the war." For a moment, his hand rested on the scar that still occupied the center of Harry's forehead.

Harry jerked his head away, his lip curling. He didn't much like being called stunted, particularly not by someone who had changed into something so different, so non-human, that it was hard to comprehend. Harry wondered whether even his memories were the same; maybe not, with the way that he was treating Harry.

"That would have been strange," he snapped. "Anyway, all right. You gave me the message. I'll carry it to the Ministry and see what they want to do." He personally thought it was unlikely that the Ministry would change the age of adulthood in the wizarding world overnight. It was an established law, and they didn't like change. And they knew they had beaten the Sidhe once before, so they might think they could again.

Hermione would probably say that it's my duty to convey how powerful their magic is, so that the Ministry doesn't try to resist them if they can't.

Harry rubbed his scar where Malfoy's hand had rested, and grimaced. The one bad part of winning a life for himself outside the Ministry was that he had less influence inside it, and they might discount what he was saying simply because it was him.

"That's why you picked me for a contact, wasn't it?" he asked, when he looked up and found that Malfoy still stood there, motionless and watching him. "Because you think that I would have been part-Sidhe."

"Not part, a whole, if you had gone unmarked by the Dark Lord and then survived to the age of twenty-two without using so much magic," Malfoy corrected him, his voice as soft as the wind blowing through the flowers. "There is no such thing as someone who is half-Sidhe. We do not reproduce in the normal ways you know. We come from others, we always have. When someone in another world knows--"

"Yes, yes," Harry said, waving his hand, much less interested in the mating habits of Sidhe than Malfoy assumed he was. Maybe that was one way in which the git had stayed the same, then, inhuman heritage or not: he still assumed that everything should revolve around him. "Fine. Then I'll go back and tell them, but I'll warn you, you could have chosen someone different, and you probably should have if you wanted them to actually listen. There are too many people who will assume that I'm lying, or exaggerating, or something."

"We want the age to change because of the young who will come from that," Malfoy said, and then stared dreamily over Harry's shoulder towards something that might be another part of the meadow or might be the void; Harry wasn't turning around to find out.

"And now you're talking like you're an animal," Harry muttered. "The young, right."

"We do not want the age to change because we wish to avoid a war," Malfoy said, and turned his head so that his eyes looked straight into Harry's and his body seemed to sway a little with the wind that might not exist, either. "We do not care about wars. We will fight them, and we will unleash the izindra and destroy the wizarding world if our demands are not answered."

Harry felt his mouth dry out, and he rubbed his face. "Then--why negotiate at all? Why pick someone instead of just appearing to everyone in the wizarding world and announcing your threat to them at once? And I know you could do that, don't lie," he added, before Malfoy could say anything.

"We do not need to lie," Malfoy said simply. The words were cold and indifferent, and they made Harry shiver far more than a threat would have. "We chose this way because we want the age to change, your world to endure, to grow us the young." He cocked his head, and leaned in close to Harry, who stared back but refused to move away. Apparently becoming Sidhe destroyed one's sense of personal boundaries, too.

"And we wished to see you," Malfoy whispered. "I did, that is. I wished to see how you might have changed, and the ways that you had not."

Harry blinked. Then he said, "Did you miss me, you git?"

"That is a word I have not heard in a long time," Malfoy said, cocking his head further. "I remember it as an insult, but you say it to me with such affection. . ."

Harry stared at him, then waved his hand up and down in front of his face. Malfoy followed Harry's hand with his eyes, but didn't back away.

"That's not affection," Harry said. "That's bloody irritation. I don't know what in the world to say to you, Malfoy, if that doesn't convince you that I still hold you in contempt."

Malfoy laughed at him, his mouth open and his breath puffing across Harry's face with little huffing sounds. Harry cuffed at the air and shook his head. Malfoy reached out, his hand on Harry's hair and his face a few inches from his still, and looked into his eyes so long that Harry had to give up and blink.

"Sometimes," Malfoy said, "I think of you, and think that your Sidhe nature must have sensed my Sidhe nature. We were both displaced in some ways, discontented with our lives despite having so much that others would value and envy."

Harry bit his lips, and said nothing. If Malfoy still knew nothing of Harry's childhood and the reasons that he might not have wanted attention for something he couldn't remember, then it wasn't Harry's place to tell him.

"And other times," Malfoy continued, his voice dropping to a hum that Harry could feel in his bones, "I know it was not that. Not even any Sidhe knows another Sidhe before he changes; the connection may exist, but can never be defined or sensed in time, making it rather useless to speculate upon, or rely upon for information. No, I think that we obsessed about each other because our personalities clashed." He tugged on a strand of Harry's hair, hard enough to bring tears from Harry's eyes. "And I wanted to see you again, to see what you were like now, if you were as I remembered. That is all."

He turned and walked away from Harry, the grass changing to white sand as he moved. And Harry was there for a moment again, in the circle of thrones, the chained and bridled Pooka flinching from Malfoy as he sat down in the throne next to it.

The next moment, before he could draw a breath, he was outside the circle again, next to the abandoned house he had Flooed to. And all around him was silence, not even a breath of wind to stir the grass. Harry reached out with his senses, and knew that the lingering Sidhe magic had gone.

He stood there feeling useless and stupid for some time, and then quietly went home.

*

"How sure are you of your conclusions, Mr. Potter?"

Harry ground his teeth, but didn't show that on his face, which maintained the calm, polite expression that he'd come in here with. He knew it would irritate the Wizengamot much more if he showed that he wasn't getting upset, and when they asked him questions like these in those high, piercing voices, there was nothing he wanted more than to irritate the Wizengamot.

They were in the so-called Magnificent Office, which as far as Harry was concerned should have been called the Trying-To-Intimidate-You-With-Grandeur Office. Gold covered the walls (Harry knew it was actually gold leaf because he'd checked with certain spells that sounded its depth), and portraits of past Wizengamot members stared down from the dome that the ceiling rose to. That particular tactic would have worked better if the portraits didn't have a tendency to go to sleep and snore, or gossip with one another, instead of watching the events happening below them. There were marble pillars--in reality, just stone with Glamour Charms--decorated with curly gold tops in that Grecian fashion that Hermione probably knew the name of, and a long, echoing aisle that led up to the mahogany table in the center, curved like a pair of outspread wings, where the Wizengamot members sat. Harry's chair was in front of the narrow part of the table.

He sat in it with his hands folded in his lap, and smiled at them as often as he could. So far, he was responsible for three scowls and one snapped quill, and it was only three minutes into the meeting. He thought he was doing well.

"Fairly sure, Madam Hornpipe," he said now, staring at the woman all in purple who had asked the question. Purple clashed with her hair. "I don't see a reason for the Sidhe to lie when they want something, as they said. I don't understand how changing the age of adulthood from seventeen to twenty-two would help with making more wizards into Sidhe, but they want it to happen."

"But you could be confused," said Hornpipe, nodding her head up and down so that the hat floating somewhere in the sea of her hair bobbed like a ship on the waves. "You said yourself that they spoke in riddles and didn't seem much interested in making their speech clearer. That suggests that you don't know what they really want. You're only guessing."

Harry didn't move his hands from his lap, no matter how satisfying it would have been to tear a few strips of wood from the arms of the chair. "Of course I am," he said, and his voice wasn't snappish, either. But it wasn't submissive, and the Wizengamot members would have done well to listen to that. "That hardly means that I don't have any idea. The Sidhe speak in riddles, but the one I spoke to used to be human, and he knew me. He knew he would have to descend to our level to speak to me and make his demands clear."

"It sounds as though you admire these Sidhe," said another of the Wizengamot, a tall man with eyes so narrow that Harry wasn't sure what color they were. "As though you would side with them against your own kind."

Harry held back his exasperation by tilting his head back and studying the ceiling--tiles under another Glamour Charm to make them look like deep blue geodes--until the Wizengamot members shifted in their chairs. They thought he was angry with them, but without words to latch onto and twist, it was much harder for them to declare that he was ungrateful because of the anger.

"I know very little about them," Harry said at last, looking down. "And the one who used to be human was someone I hated in school. Draco Malfoy was his name."

"Then how can we trust anything he says?" Hornpipe instantly demanded. "How do we know that he's even made the transition to Sidhe, the way you say he has? He could be telling us lies simply because he hates you."

"I thought of that," Harry admitted. "But at this point, it doesn't matter whether he's really a Sidhe or only the servant of someone more powerful. The magic he showed me was incredible. Voyages to other worlds, leaving and coming back from a place without Apparition, taming a Pooka with bridle and saddle."

"And all of that could have been glamours and illusions. Such as legend tells us that the Sidhe are famous for using." Hornpipe leaned back in her chair and beamed around at everyone, pleased with herself for having solved the riddle.

"They did try that on me once," Harry said, and made his voice gentle, the best way to terrify the lot of them. "And I broke it with an effort of my mind. I can resist the Imperius Curse, Madam Hornpipe. I'm one of the most powerful wizards in the world." He hated claiming that, and wasn't even sure it was true, but sometimes it was the only thing that would make stubborn people listen to him. "If they can do that to me, if they can bewilder my mind, then the difference between reality and glamour in their magic becomes less important."

Hornpipe frowned at that. The other members of the Wizengamot nodded or made nonsense noises that were meant to show they were seriously considering his information.

Harry knew they wouldn't. They never considered anything seriously except what they were already predisposed to think about because it applied to them. He shifted back in his chair and sighed. "Can I go now?"

"Yes, of course," Hornpipe said, taking on the duties of the Master of Ceremonies before anyone else could, and waved him majestically away. Harry rolled his eyes as he stood and moved back in the direction of the door.

So he had delivered his report, and the Wizengamot would probably debate things and then come to a resolution that they would write up in a long report and stick somewhere no one would ever find it. Well, they could do that. Harry had done his part, and he had already saved the world once. He had no desire to be any more involved in this second attempt than he had to.

*

"Harry? Are you there?"

That was George's voice, of all people's. It brought Harry stumbling out of the shower faster than Ron or Hermione's would have, because he knew the tones in their voices better, and whether something really was urgent. "What is it, George?" he asked, yawning and tugging the towel tighter around his waist.

"I have someone here who wants to talk to you." George's face was paler than Harry had seen it since Fred's death, and that made Harry turn his head slightly, locating his wand on the mantle above the fireplace.

"Of course, George," Harry said, keeping his voice calm so whoever had bullied George into firecalling him wouldn't realize that anything was wrong. "If you want me to, then I will."

He waited for some signal or clue that would indicate how he was supposed to respond to this; George was certainly more than clever enough to give him one. But George stepped aside without doing so, and a face far paler than his appeared in the flames.

Harry blinked. It was Malfoy, and seeing him outside the circle of thrones and white fog only emphasized the strangeness of his white skin, his sharp cheekbones, his silver-white hair that lay along his cheeks like dandelion fluff.

"You are the first person in your world who looks solid to me," Malfoy said, staring as if the sight of Harry soothed him.

"It used to be your world, too," Harry said, rolling his eyes and sitting down on a stool not far from the fireplace. He thought he could be a little more casual around one of the Sidhe in a setting like this, and it wasn't as though Malfoy would respond in the normal human way to seeing the Chosen One mostly naked. "Git."

"Used to be, is not anymore," Malfoy said, but he smiled. "You retain your charming verbal habits. I find it refreshing, like a breeze from the Mountains of Mahnlahrin."

"Wherever those are," Harry muttered, and Malfoy gave a soft, breathless sound that could have been a laugh, or might have been the Sidhe version of gagging. "Anyway. Why did you come to George? I reported your message to the Wizengamot yesterday, and they said they would consider it."

"I came to him because he is one of the children of chaos, and closer to us because of it." Malfoy's eyes had that shine to them that said he wouldn't explain anything else--or, at least, Harry thought it said that. He had to stop and remind himself, again, that he really didn't know anything about the Sidhe, and if they were all as inhuman as they were said to be, then he couldn't trust his own perceptions. "And I know that you gave them the message."

There was silence for a few moments, save the crackling of the flames, until Harry gave in. Malfoy might not even realize that their staring contest was a mind-game to Harry, and one that he was disinclined to participate in. Maybe staring wordlessly at someone was a compliment in Sidhe society.

"Then why are you here?" Harry reached up and found that his wet hair was already partially dry. He sighed and cast a spell that would renew some of the moisture. It was the only way he could make it do anything he wanted to, if he started combing it when it was fresh from the shower.

"I wanted to see you again," Malfoy said. His eyes were on the scar on Harry's forehead.

"I don't think you can unstunt me," Harry said.

Malfoy smiled like a dog, a wrinkling and change of light in his eyes and the lines of his face more than anything else. "I have never heard that word," he said. "Never thought of it. It is something new, in an immortal life that will stretch through all the worlds, to hear a word like that."

"Come off it, Malfoy, you're only a little older than me."

"Changing does things to one's sense of time," Malfoy said simply. "Being one of the Sidhe would be hard if I thought of the years as a human does."

"Careful," Harry warned him. "That was dangerously near making sense, you know."

Another smile, and Malfoy went on examining him carefully. Then he said, "You have no iron near you."

"No," Harry agreed. "But if you try to enchant me and make me walk headfirst into the fire without Floo powder or something, you should know that Hermione told me some of the other remedies to your glamours."

Malfoy said nothing, and the silence deepened and seemed to spread out of the fire and around the room, until Harry had the sense of standing in a deep snowfield with stars above him. He reached down and gripped the wood of the stool firmly.

The glamour broke like a bubble, with as soft a sound. Malfoy stared at him again, and Harry said simply, "Rowan wood."

Malfoy looked at him, and said nothing for so long a moment that Harry thought he would break away or back out of the conversation. Then again, that probably made too much sense for someone as self-centered as Malfoy.

"You know most of the remedies, then," Malfoy said, though how he knew that when Harry had only expressed his knowledge of iron and rowan wood, Harry had no idea. On the other hand, he had no reason to deprive Malfoy of his delusion, either, so he smiled and held his silence. "But there is one against which you have no remedy."

More relaxation flowed through Harry's muscles. Malfoy hadn't come to ask about the message from the Ministry in some disguised form, then, or issue more threats against the wizarding world. Malfoy was just fucking with him, and that was something intimately familiar to Harry after their years at Hogwarts. "What's that?" he asked. "Do you think that you can bridle me with silver the way you did your Pooka, and force me to bear you on my back?"

"Riding a Pooka is undignified."

Harry rolled his eyes. "And there's another dip back into confusion," he muttered.

"When I ride you," Malfoy continued, his voice even and cool and his face almost quiet, reflective, "then you'll be a special mount."

Harry stared at him, and then shook his head. "That almost sounded like you were promising to have sex with me or something," he said. "But I know the remedies to your glamours, remember?"

"One against which you have no remedy," Malfoy whispered, and the fire clouded over and froze for a glittering moment into diamond flames sparking far down near the base. Then the fire broke, and the shards cascaded onto the floor and lay there sparkling wickedly.

Harry spent a few moments catching his breath against the cold that had invaded the room, and a few more making sure that his Floo still worked after Malfoy's impressive little magic. George's face appeared right away when Harry contacted him, but he looked so shocked and drained that Harry just told him everything was all right and shut the Floo down again.

Harry rose to his feet with a cold anger that wound through him like the veins of a glacier and made him wish that he had been able to bear it against the Wizengamot, instead of the weary contempt that inspired him when he thought of them. He might get something done with rage like that.

But he had changed since the war, and now, he only felt fury like this when someone had dared to harm one of his friends. And Malfoy had come to George for no reason, hurt his mind, dazzled him with magic, done something that made him look like that. George was more vulnerable to magic and manipulation of all kinds since Fred's death, as if his twin had been his means to laugh things off. Harry wouldn't see him hurt just because Malfoy wanted to renew their old rivalry.

Threaten my friends, Malfoy. Just try it.

*

"Good, Julius," Harry said, keeping his head lowered and his eyes on his hand as he traced out the sketch of the next spell he wanted his newest student to learn on a piece of parchment. "You'll have mastered that particular charm in no time. Now, the next one we're studying is a little more complicated, and that means. . ."

What he had been expecting to happen for the past fortnight finally happened, as Harry had thought it would with a little bit of pretended inattention. Julius Farthingale, who had admired Harry when he first began training with him and then rapidly lost the awe when he learned that Harry didn't stalk around on an arrogance high, charged him with a ringing scream.

Harry turned neatly to the side, getting his parchment out of the way so that Julius wouldn't spoil it, and flicked his wand once. Levicorpus, and the boy flew up and dangled by his heel near the ceiling. Expelliarmus, and Harry was in possession of his wand. Silencio, and Julius's indignant cries dropped into quiet.

Harry finished his sketch of the next spell in peace, and then turned around and looked up with a faint smile. Julius's robes dangled down in front of his eyes, but another quick charm held them up near his eyes and let him see Harry. He stared at him and seethed with open fury, somewhat diminished in dignity by his red cheeks and the helpless way his mouth moved.

"Now," Harry said quietly, "you ought to have known that you can't take me by surprise like that. Don't I move too quickly and too quietly, and you never know where I am when you have your back to me? You expected me to treat you badly, to hand down the secrets of my wisdom from on high like a disdainful Dark Lord. Well, just because I'm not like that doesn't mean I'm a weakling, or that I'm willing to let you harm me. You have two choices left to you. Either I let you down, we go back to training, and you only try attacking me when you have some reason to be confident in your skills, or I drop you on the floor and you walk away to find a dueling instructor who suits your sense of yourself."

Julius's face turned even redder, but Harry thought it wasn't with anger. And a moment later, Julius nodded and mouthed, The first one.

"Good," Harry said heartily, letting Julius slide down an invisible ramp of air to the floor and tossing his wand back to him. "See how the world spins along nicely when we decide to recognize our limitations?"

Julius gave him a single, sullen glance, but nodded. Then he aimed his wand at his mouth and raised his eyebrows.

Harry smiled. "Every wizard should know how to remove a Silencing Charm that someone else cast on him, just in case he gets the chance to retrieve his wand and escape," he said. "I'd like to see you try."

Julius flushed again, but only held Harry's eyes for a second before looking away and nodding again. Harry nodded back to him and then faced his parchment again, correcting his sketch of the proper wand movement with a slight flick of his hand.

He always had some students like Julius, he thought idly, as well as those who were happy to learn from him and those who could learn nothing because of their timidity of him and who eventually left for another instructor. They thought they could take him. They started to reason that Harry didn't do anything very powerful in front of them and had killed Voldemort when he was only seventeen, so who was to say that they couldn't beat Harry? They probably had more raw power anyway.

Harry shook his head solemnly. Sometimes he wanted to go into Hogwarts and correct all the delusions that the Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers over the years gave their students about "raw power." Wizards past the age of eleven should stop believing that sheer strength mattered more than what you did with it.

But then again, it did form so useful a shield for him against people who would otherwise have tried to make him do what they wanted. And Harry had discovered that he'd give a lot for a quiet life.

Julius abruptly cried out. Harry raised his head and his eyebrows at the same time, meaning to congratulate Julius for removing the Silencing Charm much more quickly than Harry had assumed he would.

But Julius was staring at something in the middle of the room, and while he had removed the Silencing Charm by himself and that would be important to acknowledge, something had to be done about this whirlwind of form and color first. Harry moved forwards to confront it, his hand on his wand and his thoughts calm and ordered. So this thing had managed to break through the wards around his dueling studio; that meant it was powerful. He saw no need, however, to encourage the person or people responsible for it by flailing.

The whirlwind had assumed a definite pattern by the time that Harry halted in front of it: an alternating blossom of light and dark, looking like the patterns that Harry could see if he shut his eyes and pressed down hard on his eyelids. He snorted to himself and laid his free hand on the lump of iron in his pocket. He had a good idea who would be sending him flowers, even flowers as bizarre as this one.

The flower flowed and formed into a shape like a unicorn, only it had too many small, spiky horns on top of its head and its hooves tapered, front and back, into glittering barbed spurs. It tossed up its head and stared at him, and Harry moved forwards, hand outstretched to scratch it between the horns.

As if sulky that he wasn't afraid, the beast danced backwards instead, and then focused on Harry and spoke in Malfoy's voice. "The Sidhe lord formerly known as Draco Malfoy wishes to summon Harry Potter to a meeting with him, at the former location. Floo." The unicorn bowed its head and held the longest horn, in the center and twisted into a savage spiral, towards Harry's heart. "Come alone."

"Of course I will," Harry said, "since he asks so politely."

The unicorn turned and blew up in a shower of diamond sparks that earthed themselves on Harry's floor and walls and tried to start fires. Harry shook his head as he flicked his wand and poured cool water over them. First ice, then flame. What would Malfoy think of trying next?

"What was that?" Julius whispered, his voice shaking as though he assumed that someone would shout at him if he spoke more loudly. Harry considered shouting at him for speaking in a whisper and sounding so hushed and reverent, but decided in the end that it would do more harm than good. "And why was it so beautiful?"

Harry blinked--he would describe the unicorn in several ways, but "beautiful" was not among them--and then snorted lightly as he remembered that he had had his hand on cold iron and Julius hadn't. "Someday, I'll tell you about the Sidhe," he said. "Or they'll take over the world and then you'll know all about them anyway."

Julius turned a pale, limp look on him. "Huh?" he asked.

That look reminded Harry enough of the way that George had looked to piss him off, and stop him from laughing. He sighed and snagged Julius with one hand, pulling him close to his side. "It's all right," he said quietly. "Everything is going to be all right, and for now, you are going to practice the charms that I assigned to you. Including the one that you were doing right before you attacked me. All right?"

"I attacked you?" Julius blinked, his face still pale and his eyes moving with an odd slowness. "But that can't be right! Why would I do that? I admire you so much!"

Yes, they've changed his memory. Harry felt his smile twist, and Julius stepped back from him, unsteadily, staring with wide eyes. Gently, Harry patted his hand and stepped back himself. "That's all right," he said. "Don't worry about it. But I want you to show me that you can do that charm respectably before you go."

"Yes, sir!" Julius said, and applied himself to the magic--making a reflection in a mirror step out so that it appeared as a human being on its own--enthusiastically.

Harry stood and looked at where the unicorn had been, his insides chilled and his mind saying quietly, So that's what you do. Change people into more compliant automatons. Stifle their desires that might make them break free of you. Dazzle them with this supposed beauty of yours and alter their memories so that they don't even remember what they're struggling against.

I hate it.

Part Two.