Switched

“Harry!” Hermione exclaimed, her (slightly shrill, more than slightly accusing) voice cutting effortlessly across the dull roar of the Great Hall at breakfast. She waved a copy of the Daily Prophet at him. Blaise’s, probably. He was the only person in their little group who had a subscription. “Harry! Where have you been?! Look! Sirius is finally out!”

It was, Harry thought, incredibly surreal, going from dealing with matters of life and death out in the Forest to being here, in the Great Hall, with his friends and their completely unimportant concerns. Not that Sirius being exonerated and finally settling the compensation agreement was unimportant, exactly. Sort of the opposite, really. Harry was sure it would affect a lot of people in a lot of really good, life-changing ways. 

But compared to being woken up by a wave of spiders crashing down on the wolves’ camp, just before dawn — at least two or three times as many as any of the wolves had ever seen in an attack before, and they’d never actually attacked the camp before — compared to fighting for his life and the lives of his friends, compared to seeing two of them die because they were just a little bit too slow to avoid the spiders’ fangs, and the way the rest of the pack had howled when they drove off the spiders, but then realised that One-Ear and Blackpaw weren’t going to make it...

Coming back here, into the light and the noise of so many people having no idea what had just happened felt weird. 

Maybe he should have just skived off today. He’d considered it, especially since he was supposed to be going back out to talk to the centaurs about something at lunch anyway, but it was also weird being around people in mourning. He hadn’t known One-Ear and Blackpaw nearly as well as the rest of the pack had, obviously — he’d only been hanging around and sleeping out in the Forest for a few months — but he’d have called them friends. They’d played together and hunted together, shared kills and slept in a big puppy pile together. And they’d fought alongside each other today to protect their friends and family. Harry should be sad about their deaths, at least a little. He could tell that the others thought so, that they could sense it through their pain and loss that all Harry really cared about was when they were going to lead a counter-attack against the thrice-cursed spiders. (Even Hagrid couldn’t say that this was Harry’s fault. He’d been asleep and nowhere near spider territory! But he was pretty sure that the giant would be angry at him for defending himself again anyway, in which case he really might as well help the wolves get their revenge, too. In for a penny, in for a pound, right?)

Knowing that they wouldn’t be around to play with anymore was...disappointing, he didn’t like it, but it didn’t hurt him like it clearly did the others. Being around sad people who knew he wasn’t when he should be was...awkward. He didn’t know what to do or say to make them feel better, and he clearly wasn’t suffering with them. He wasn’t a complete idiot, he could tell when he didn’t belong somewhere, when he not only wasn’t really a part of the group (which, with most people, was always), but when he was intruding by being there. He hadn’t wanted to make them feel worse, uncomfortable and awkward as well as sad, so he’d come back up here to clean up and give them some time to mourn without him hovering impatiently over their shoulders, waiting for them to get to the revenge part.

“Did they get the clinic?” he asked. That was really the only part of the negotiations he thought had still been up in the air.

“Well, I don’t know, I haven’t read it, yet!”

“Well, read it, then,” Danny said, laughing at her as he took another rasher of bacon. 

“Oh, all right. The headline is, Sirius Black is a Free Man, and there’s a picture of him strutting out into the Ministry Atrium, I think?” She held up the front page for them.

Blaise nodded. 

“Alright, let’s see... While speaking to this reporter, Black asked to be quoted as saying, ‘Don’t bury the lead, love — they all know I’m innocent. What everyone wants to know is how hard the Light just got—’ I’m not going to say that, I can’t believe they printed it on the front page,” she cut herself off with a prim little frown. 

Danny peeked over her arm to see. “Buggered. ‘How hard the Light just got buggered.’”

Hermione went slightly pink, but clearly decided that telling him off for his language wouldn’t do any good. It was printed in the paper, after all. “Er. Yes. Um. ‘Put the list of concessions at the top,’ end quote. Then, let’s see...they got the charter for the school. He wants to open it next September.”

“Next September as in, six months from now?” That seemed reasonable to Harry, but Blaise apparently thought it would take longer than that to get all the courses and professors and shite sorted.

“No, he said, ‘This September is probably too soon to get everything ready. That’s only, what, six months? I’d like to say next year — that’s what we’re aiming for — but just to be on the safe side and not get anyone’s hopes up, let’s say September of Ninety-Four.’ And then...

“There’s a list of all the specific parts of different laws they agreed to change, but it basically looks like most non-humans have the right to free travel again — dark creatures, beings of near-human intelligence, blah, blah, blah...may again travel freely between designated magical and muggle spaces with appropriate measures to protect Secrecy; may let living space from muggle landlords, provided there are no muggle residents sharing the property; and may take what jobs they might find in the muggle world which they can perform without revealing their non-human status. So, that’s good. 

“Also, goblins, house elves, centaurs, and veela can carry wands again. And— Do they really call this the Protection of Minors, Wards, and Incompetents Act?” Obviously that was a rhetorical question, since she just shook her head and kept going. “Magical Britain, honestly... a section has been added to the 1946 Protection of Minors, Wards, and Incompetents (P.M.W.I.) Act—”

“Pomwee,” Blaise inserted. 

“What?”

“It’s called the Pomwee Act. Not P.M.W.I.”

Hermione rolled her eyes at that. “Fine, a section has been added to the Pomwee Act, authorising agents of the Office of Elvish Affairs to investigate reports of possible house elf abuse and, in extreme cases, remove elves from their home. There’s another one mandating that the custos of any werewolf must have lunar containment protocols in place which meet or exceed the standards set by the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, or they will be fully liable for any damages caused if the werewolf escapes. The werewolf, by contrast, will not be held liable, as the individual who guaranteed that they would not present a danger to others while suffering the worst effects of the Werewolf Curse would be held to have failed in their responsibility.”

“That one’s a big deal,” Danny informed them. “Until now, if a werewolf got loose and bit someone despite taking reasonable precautions, the werewolf would be held responsible, even though they’re not in their right minds on the full moon, and even if someone else swore to keep them contained and failed. Like, if Sirius’s werewolf friend had escaped from the containment area Dumbledore set up for him and bit someone when they were students—” The circumstances of Sirius becoming an animagus had also come up in the trial. “—the werewolf would be held responsible and probably executed, even though Dumbledore had to’ve sworn that he wouldn't allow the werewolf to pose a danger to others when he let him enrol.”

That was a big deal, because the idea that a werewolf would be responsible for biting someone when they were out of their mind wasn’t fair at all! Especially if someone else was supposed to be arranging their safehouse or wards or whatever, it wouldn’t be their fault if they escaped as a wolf!

Hermione just nodded. “A third new section of the Revised Pomwee Act provides new regulations and restrictions of custodial use of income earned by dependents, including house elves and sponsored werewolves and vampires, as well as minors and beings deemed mentally incompetent by mind-healing professionals. Is that really a problem? Guardians stealing money from their wards, I mean?”

“A bigger one than you might think,” Blaise said, nodding. 

“Also, it’s basically slavery,” Danny added. “Taking whatever the ward makes and only letting them keep like a little allowance or whatever, because they can’t legally own anything.”

“God, this country is so backward... Perhaps most shocking of all, the Chief Warlock has agreed to open discussions with the muggle rulers of the United Kingdom and Ireland regarding potential solutions to the Dementor Problem other than Azkaban. ...Lord Black, when asked for a quote on the matter of balancing public safety and muggle protection against humane treatment of criminals— Such an unbiased question,” Hermione scoffed. “Anyway, Lord Black said, ‘If it’s good enough for Europe, it’s good enough for us. Here’s a thought: Do a few things to support the common people and make their lives better, and the dementors will bugger off to find people who are more miserable to prey on.’”

Danny’s jaw dropped. “Seriously?! Let me see that!” he demanded, peering over her arm again.

“See, right there.”

“Well, that’s bloody brilliant. I can’t believe Dumbledore actually agreed to do it, but Mum says the I.C.W. has been pushing for us to get rid of Azkaban for ages, so...”

“Problem is,” Blaise said drily, “if they’re planning on just discorporating the dementors, they’re going to have to teach a lot more people serious light battlemagic. Mira says there aren’t a lot of people in Britain who can actually do the sort of magic to get rid of them. A lot of it’s actually illegal, even though it’s light, just because it’s too powerful to just let anyone do. So, don’t hold your breath.”

Hermione ignored them. “Okay, here we go: Healer only applies to individuals who offer medical services to beings— Wow, the Healers’ Guild spokeswitch is racist!”

“Eh?” Harry asked — his first contribution to the discussion in a while, but he had other things on his mind, like how very blue acromantula blood looked in the morning sunlight and whether the cut he’d gotten on his left leg was bad enough that he should go up to the Hospital Wing and get a real bandage. He hadn’t been bitten, just clawed, so he wasn’t going to die and it didn’t hurt that badly, but if it was too deep it would break open again when his conjured bandage vanished (probably in the middle of a lesson, with his luck), so he probably should... 

“‘We wouldn’t call a veterinarian a healer just because he uses healing charms on your pet kneazle, nor would we require veterinarians to join our guild in order to practise. The idea is ludicrous. Guild Healers provide healing and medical services to humans and other beings, not creatures.’ I mean, really.”

On the other hand, though, Madam Pomfrey probably wouldn’t just give him a bandage. She’d fuss, like she had after the Troll Incident and the Defective School Broom Incident, and that was always just...ugh. He didn’t think he could sit through that sort of shite and not get short with the Healer. Not today.

Blaise and Danny just shrugged. “I mean,” Danny said, “if it works in our favour... That does mean they can have the clinic, right? If they’re not technically doing healing, they don’t need licences, right?”

“Well, yes, that is what it says here, but it also says they’re not going to get the clinic.”

“What?” Harry objected. “Why not? Sirius was so sure they were going to think of something!”

“Would you hang on? I’m getting there! ‘The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures demanded access to any records such a clinic might generate, which I simply could not allow. ...I would not let my clinic become little more than bait to lure desperate non-humans into a position to be even more thoroughly and directly oppressed, and they wouldn’t budge, either, so my advocate and I decided that it would be more productive in the end to shift our focus to securing more legal rights for non-human populations.’”

“I don’t believe it,” Harry said firmly. Sirius just didn’t strike him as the type to give up on something he thought was important. Granted, they still hadn’t met in person, but he had stayed in Ministry Holding for weeks longer than he really had to, arguing for this clinic.

“Well, that’s what it— Oh, wait—” She giggled, cutting herself off. “This— That’s hilarious, really. Here: ‘I’ve decided to found a private research institute instead, examining the efficacy of different treatments for common ailments and conditions in different non-human groups...’

When asked how, exactly, that would differ from a free clinic, he added: ‘Well, we won’t be employing healers, for one thing. We’ll be employing researchers. They won’t be practising healing, either. They’ll be performing longitudinal studies... And most importantly, as a private research institution, our records will be considered proprietary information, owned by the Institute, and not subject to examination by any Ministry officials whatsoever.’ That is just brilliant!” she added, grinning almost too hard to speak clearly. 

“Ha! I knew it!” Harry crowed. “He said they’d think of something, I knew he wouldn’t just let it go!”

She nodded. “The article goes on to talk about what he’s planning on doing now that he’s a free man and how he feels about the outcome of the trial and the negotiations, and whether he thinks there will be reprisals from the other Noble Houses for forcing them into this, but I think that’s all the most important—”

At that point, she was cut off by a shout from the Gryffindor table, Ron Weasley getting into a shoving match with one of the second-years, while the Weasley Twins tried to pull them apart. “Your bloody cat killed Scabbers! I know it did!”

“She did not, you bloody psycho!”

“It’s been hunting him for weeks, McLaggan! Weeks!” he yelled, shaking a blood-stained pillow-cover at the older boy.

“Well, so what if she did kill your stupid rat?” McLaggan asked, clearly disgusted by Weasley’s attitude. “It’s a rat. You brought it to Hogwarts. There are eleventy billion cats around, one of them was bound to eat it eventually!”

Weasley managed to break free of his brother’s grip and threw himself at McLaggan, screaming about him being a heartless, evil bastard, even managed to pop him one in the nose before McGonagall swooped down from the high table to break it up. 

Is that...normal? Harry had to ask, slipping the thought to Blaise. 

Well, Weasley’s a little over-dramatic, but it’s more normal than Oh, two of my friends died this morning, damn, that means we’ll be at an even greater disadvantage when everyone else gets over it enough to take the fight to the spiders. In the meanwhile, I guess I’ll just go to lessons and not mention it to anyone, because the whole idea of mourning these two people you knew and liked, who just died an hour ago, is weird.

Oh, piss off, I know I’m not normal. Who would I mention it to, anyway? Other than you.

“Go and tell the old man in his tower that we require an audience,” Bane said firmly. “This is too much. It was already too much that they were pressing outward, but to strike in the heart of the wolves’ territory? If they would dare such a thing, no place in the Forest is safe from them any longer. This is a clear violation of our treaty with the humans, for it was they who introduced those monsters into our Forest, and we demand to speak with the Lord of Hogwarts directly to discuss how he intends to right the situation.”

Harry nodded. “Here?” 

He knew that the centaurs didn’t like humans coming to their villages. He wasn’t entirely sure any other humans (or even Hagrid) knew where they were. This was the first time he’d been invited here, and only because of the attack. Selene, one of the younger mares — Bane’s daughter, Harry was pretty sure (maybe a granddaughter?) — had explained as she escorted him in from the old ritual circle that the wolves had moved to bed down on the outskirts of the village, counting on the strength of greater numbers to protect them, both from the spiders and from whatever was hunting unicorns. (Apparently the centaurs had found two now, bloody and broken, corrupting the Forest where they had been slain.) 

Normally, the centaurs just found Harry out with the wolves if they needed to talk to him, or left a message with the wilderfolk telling Harry to meet them at the old ritual circle the next day, like they had yesterday. Harry suspected that they’d meant to ask him to tell Hagrid to tell Dumbledore about the unicorns before he and the wolves were attacked — Bane had told the wolves to tell Harry to meet him today well before any of that happened — but he guessed if the centaur wanted to talk to Dumbledore in person about the spiders, he could tell him about the unicorns himself, too.

“No, at the circle. Tonight, at sunset. This cannot wait.”

Harry nodded again. “I’ll tell him.”

“Why is he here?” Alpha asked, glaring at Hagrid, following Dumbledore into the circle to join them. Alpha’s English was surprisingly good, Harry thought. Better than he’d expected, because Alpha was wilderfolk, not an animagus who had gone native — there were two in the pack who were born human, and decided to fully embrace their animal. He didn’t actually have a name. He was just Oldest-Leader-Father to the other wolves: a figure of enormous respect, even if he was growing slow and white around the muzzle these days. 

“Calm yourself, old friend,” Dumbledore said, in a tone which was meant to be soothing, Harry was almost positive. It didn’t work. If Alpha had been in wolf form, Harry suspected that his hackles would be raised. “Hagrid has news to share. Disturbing, important news, I’m afraid. Bane of the Dark,” he added, with a formal nod toward the centaur shaman. “Harry.”

“Headmaster. Hagrid.”

“Hey, Harry. Bane. Old Grey.”

Bane didn’t bother with pleasantries any more than Alpha had. “More important, Albus, than the giant’s wretched spiders striking at the heart of the wolves’ territory, just yesterday, killing two of their warriors?”

“You’ve killed way more than two of them,” Hagrid protested. “Both of you!”

“Not ambushing them in their home while they sleep!” Alpha growled back. 

“We kill them when they try to kill us,” Bane added, his tone more restrained, if just as angry. “When they hunt our lands. When each year, more webs appear, spreading like a sickness, taking more and more of the Forest for themselves!”

“Well, if you’d just learn to share—”

“No.” Alpha stalked forward, stiff-legged and bristling (metaphorically). He couldn’t really get in Hagrid’s face — Hagrid was almost a metre and a half taller than the human-shaped wolf — but Harry could tell he wanted to. “We share with our own. We share with the centaurs and the nymphs. We share with this one.” His head tipped toward Harry. “There is no sharing with spiders! They take and take and eat and kill until there is nothing else alive!”

Bane nodded. “We should have killed them as soon as we realised that there was a second, but in our ignorance, we agreed that they could have a corner of the Forest for themselves — as long as they stayed on your lands, where was the harm? — we agreed to share! And where has it gotten us? Into a war with an ever-growing enemy, with an insatiable appetite! It is not we who would take every inch of the Forest for ourselves, who will not stop, will not abide by the terms we agreed to! It is not we who press outward every year, who encourage our thousands of offspring to venture forth and colonise, to consume any animal they snare and strangle the trees with their webs! They are a menace! A menace, Hagrid!”

“They’re just acting according to their nature!” Hagrid said, as though that was any kind of defence. 

“Yeah, maybe, but they’re not native, are they?” Harry pointed out. “Maybe in the Amazon or wherever—” Harry wasn’t entirely sure where these particular acromantulae came from, but he knew they were tropical spiders. “—they can act according to their nature and not break everything, but here, they don’t have any predators and they are breaking everything!” Not to mention, they were conscious beings, they didn’t have to act according to their nature any more than Harry did.

“Well said, Boy!” Bane snorted, pawing at the ground with a fore-hoof for emphasis. “This must cease, Albus! If something is not done, they will overrun the entire Forest within my lifetime!”

“Surely that is an exaggeration, Bane,” the Headmaster said, his tone infuriatingly condescending.

“It is not,” Alpha bit out. “Show him!”

Bane pulled a map from one of the bags he wore slung across his withers. This was the first Harry had seen of it — a well-worn piece of parchment about a metre square, showing the entire northern end of the Hogsmeade Valley, major landmarks like the Castle and its ward-lines, the lakes, Hogsmeade town, the circle where they stood now, and the boundaries of the centaurs’ territory inked in black. Trails and the location of the wolves’ recently-abandoned camp, as well as several other features Harry didn’t recognise just based on their location were sketched in with charcoal, and the extent of the spiders’ colony from year to year with some kind of reddish-purple ink, probably from some kind of berry. The oldest lines were faded and brown, entirely outside of the centaurs’ lands. The newest were clear and bright, and encompassed not only the vast majority of the lands technically belonging to the school, but also a significant stretch of land on the centaurs’ side of the border, the stain spreading slowly but surely to the south, in spite of the efforts Harry knew they made to keep them back.

“In the thirty years since the female was brought here, the lands they occupy have expanded twenty times over, Albus! They take ever more land each season, as they must to feed their horde! We are being overrun!”

Dumbledore frowned at the map. “And what would you have me do, Bane? Kill them all? That would make us no better than acromantulae ourselves!”

“They have grown bold enough to attack the wolves in their own den, Albus!”

“That wasn’t their fault!” Hagrid objected. 

“They are not animals, Hagrid!” Bane snapped. “That it is their nature does not excuse their actions! They do not act on instinct alone! They think and reason, and—”

“No! This ain’t about that! They were spelled, by a wizard!”

Bane and Alpha seemed to be just as shocked by that as Harry, all three of them staring at the giant gamekeeper in shocked silence, allowing the Headmaster to say, “This is what Hagrid came to tell you both.”

Hagrid nodded. “Aragog says somethin’ took over his children and forced them to go attack you, Grey. One o’ the survivors said it was a human with a stick. Her mind was no longer her own. She wanted nothin’ more than to kill the young human who’s been running with the wolves, no matter how dangerous it was. Somethin’ or someone is tryin’ to kill Harry!”

“And anyone who gets in his way, I’m afraid,” Dumbledore added. 

“Are you certain?” Bane asked, a troubled frown creasing his brow. 

Alpha just put a hand on Harry’s shoulder and pulled him closer to himself, stepping forward so Harry was a little behind him — a very clear this one is mine and I will protect him -gesture. If anyone else had done something like that, putting their hands on him and physically moving him around, Harry would have objected, but that was just how the wolves communicated, with touch and body language more than words. As it was, he just edged back out into the open a second later, because he didn’t need to be protected, and Alpha was a stocky, broad-shouldered bloke as a human, the cloak he’d borrowed from one of the centaurs (because wilderfolk didn’t wear clothes, obviously, but it was barely April and still kind of chilly under the trees) blocking Harry’s view of the others.

“‘Course I’m certain! That’s what Aragog said, an’ I believe him! He’d never lie to anyone!”

Alpha scoffed. “He lies about staying in his own territory every time we speak. He says he will not hunt in our lands, and then he sends his children to kill ours!”

“They need more space, Grey! There’s not enough food in their lands for his children!”

“There is not enough food in our lands for them either,” Alpha snapped. “The more they take, the more children he makes, so that he can always claim he needs more!”

“Yes, friend, you are right, the spiders must be dealt with,” Bane interrupted, clearly keying up for a but. “But there are other dangers in this Forest. You know this as well as I. And when we interrupted the unicorn-killer, it fled on a broom, into the spiders’ lands.”

“Unicorn-killer?!” Dumbledore repeated, apparently horrified. “Why is this the first I’m hearing of this, Bane?”

The centaur glowered at him for acting like this was his fault. “A single slain unicorn is a tragedy, but the perversion of men knows no bounds, and the face of Lady Astraea has been marred by the appearance of a new comet these past months. That a selfish man might once again be so emboldened as to violate the most innocent of creatures for his own gain should come as no surprise. There are always those who doubt the truth of the Curse.”

From the way Hagrid rolled his eyes and shook his head there, Harry suspected that he didn’t believe in the Curse, whatever it was.

“A second slain unicorn is a dangerous pattern, desperation or corruption, rather than avarice, and the wretch was drinking of the blood when we found him. It is a pity our arrows did not. But this was only two nights past. We had not yet spoken with the boy when the wolves were attacked,” Bane explained, his head tipping toward Harry.

“What does Harry have to do with this?”

Harry sort of wanted to know that, too, as in, why whatever was killing unicorns would want him dead, too, but Bane chose to answer the question of why he’d been waiting to speak to Harry rather than just going and finding Hagrid: “We do not trust Hagrid to relay our concerns. Not when the matter is of such grave importance as this.”

Dumbledore frowned, a little crease forming between his brows. “I would not have appointed Hagrid as my emissary if I did not trust him, Bane.”

“No one asked if you trust him,” Alpha snapped. 

“It is not your life which is threatened by his refusal to see his beloved Aragog for what he is, Albus, and his refusal to carry our words to you as is his duty!”

“I do my job!” Hagrid objected, seeming awfully offended, despite the fact that Harry was just as sure as Bane that he hadn’t told Dumbledore how far the spiders had spread. “I keep the peace and tell the Headmaster what he needs to know about what’s goin’ on out here, and—”

“What you think he needs to know!” Alpha interrupted. “You always defend the spiders! Always! Even now, when two of my people are dead because of them!”

“It wasn’t their fault!” the giant bellowed.

“Hagrid, please,” Dumbledore said soothingly, reaching up to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder. “But he is right,” he added, turning to Bane and Alpha. “I will admit that I had my doubts at first, but that the unicorns are under attack as well only supports Aragog’s claim that his children were bewitched to attack you.”

That, Harry thought, was his opening. “So, you think whatever’s killing unicorns also wants me dead? Why?”

Dumbledore hesitated. 

Bane didn’t. “Do you know what unicorn blood is used for, Boy?”

“I know it’s used in all the really good healing potions,” Harry admitted. One of the books Professor Snape had recommended had called it the Essence of Life. “But doesn’t it have to be given freely? Like, you can’t take it, you have to ask, and if the unicorn doesn’t think you want it for a good reason, like you just want to sell it or whatever, it’ll stab you with its horn, and if you do take it, like attack the unicorn and steal it, it becomes poison, or something?”

Dumbledore nodded slowly. “Or something, indeed. Unicorns are creatures of purity — natural order — innocence, and life. Unicorn blood which is taken — before the unicorn dies, that is — still has the same life-sustaining properties as that which is given, but stealing it is a violation. Not only does it lose its truth and purification properties, but the person who took it — and anyone who obtains it and knowingly uses it afterward — is cursed. Very subtly so, the effects are directly related to the selfishness and intent with which they took the blood. It will sustain the life of one even on the very verge of death, but the one who drinks it will lose all the pleasures of living forever after. Moreover, to kill a unicorn is to corrupt its very nature. A unicorn that dies violently, that is slain... Its flesh and blood become poison, cursing anything that consumes them and even the land itself, absolute purity in life becoming absolute corruption in death.”

...Harry was sure he was missing something, and Alpha looked just as confused. “What? I mean, what’s even the point, then? I mean, if you’re not going to enjoy your life, why bother trying to stay alive?”

“As I said,” Bane reminded him, “there are always those who doubt the Curse.”

“And some folks are just afraid of death, I reckon,” Hagrid added, seeming noticeably more troubled, now that Dumbledore had confirmed that the Curse was real, and not just Bane being superstitious. “Just don’t want to die, more than they want to live.”

Dumbledore nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. And if what Bane says is true, it seems likely that he is drinking the blood to sustain his own life, for however long he may do so...”

“O...kay...? But what does that have to do with me?” Harry asked, even more confused now. 

Bane gave him an are you really this stupid look. “Can you think of no one, clinging to life these past ten years, who might want Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, dead?”

Oh, right. The centaurs and wilderfolk so rarely called him ‘Harry’ it was easy to forget that they even knew his name and who he (supposedly) was to anyone outside of the Forest. “What, you think Riddle’s lurking out here somewhere, half dead and trying to use spiders to murder me?” Harry wanted to say that sounded like the stupidest thing he’d ever heard, but it actually sounded sort of plausible. Still, “I don’t get it. What would his end-game be? I mean, even if he killed me, he’d still be half-dead and have to kill unicorns to stay alive, right?”

“That,” the centaur said, giving the Headmaster a shrewd, side-eyed glance, “depends, I suspect, on how true certain rumours are, regarding a certain artefact which is said to be hidden away in the school at the moment.”

Dumbledore’s eyes narrowed immediately, his head snapping around to fix the centaur with a challenging glare. “And where, precisely, did you hear these rumours?”

“The quarterly trading fair,” Bane said shortly. “Do you think the goblins have not been speculating about a certain package you had removed from a vault only hours before an attempt was made to rob said vault, Albus? Is it here, truly?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny it,” the Headmaster said, so stiffly Harry was sure the answer was ‘yes’.

“Er. What is it, exactly?”

Dumbledore tried to brush him off with, “That, my dear boy, is not your concern,” but Bane said, “The Philosopher’s Stone,” at the same time, so it didn’t quite work. (Bane was one of Harry’s favourite adults, just because he never bothered trying to keep shite from him because he was a kid.)

Though it did leave Harry more confused, because, “Dru told Blaise there’s no such thing.” 

Dumbledore’s beard twitched as his face briefly took on what Harry might actually have called a sneer. (Not as contemptuous as Snape’s sneer, but definitely in the same family of expressions.) “In that case, my dear boy, she was mistaken. I worked with Nicolas Flamel for several years, and I can assure you, the Stone does exist.”

“Did he tell you why he’s never shared it with anyone, then?” Harry asked, because if it was real, that was still a really shite thing to do.

“He has his reasons,” Dumbledore said gravely. “They are private and not up for discussion.”

Sounded to Harry like he didn’t have a reason, then, but whatever. “Okay, fine. Say there really is a Philosopher’s Stone, and it’s here at the school, you really think Mouldy Voldie—” The Headmaster cracked a smile at the name, though graveness quickly overtook him again as Harry continued, “—is hiding out here in the Forest, killing unicorns to keep himself alive until he can steal it and trying to kill me in the meanwhile?”

“I’m afraid so,” the old man nodded.

“Er. Why’re you saying that like that’s a bad thing?” Harry asked, an entirely involuntary grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I mean, sure, it’s bad he’s killing unicorns, I guess, but I can’t kill him if I don’t know where he is, so this is actually kinda convenient, isn’t it?”

Dumbledore very clearly disagreed. “If what Druella told me about the measures he took to avoid death is true, then he cannot be killed, Harry. Not yet, at any rate. And I still have my doubts—”

“Yeah, yeah, you think Danny’s got to strike the killing blow, whatever. I still think knowing where he is is progress!” He was betting Dru would, too. He’d have to write to her when he got back up to the school. He could ask about the Philosopher’s Stone, too, while he was at it...

“If the unicorn-killer is hunting for you, you cannot stay here in the Forest,” Alpha said, before Dumbledore could object to Harry’s complete dismissal of the prophecy (which had probably already been fulfilled anyway). What? Every line of his body was tense, leaning toward Harry with obvious concern, but... “It is not safe.”

“What? But, Alpha— I can take care of myself! I did just fine in that raid, you saw! I’ve been—”

“It is not safe for Grey’s people, Boy,” Bane interrupted firmly, reaching out to lay a hand on Harry’s head. “Or for mine. Even if you can protect yourself, if Hagrid and the spider are to be believed — and in this case, I believe they might be — your presence here endangers us all.”

“Including Aragog and his children,” Hagrid just had to put in.

Oh.

Damn.

Much as Harry wanted to say, no, it’s fine, I swear, we’ll find a way to protect you, it didn’t take a genius to see that the best thing they could do immediately was remove any extra incentive the half-dead has-been might have to attack the locals, by proxy or otherwise.

It was just...he liked living out here with the wilderfolk!

But he didn’t want them getting hurt on his account.

He felt his face fall, his shoulders slump in defeat.

“You may continue to visit,” Bane offered consolingly, “but we cannot allow you to stay with us where we are vulnerable.”

Well, that was something, he guessed. 

“You shouldn’t’a been letting him stay out here before, anyway,” Hagrid said, all disapproving. “I told you so, didn’t I?”

Yes, but not because it was dangerous for the wolves. Hagrid just didn’t like Harry running around the Forest like he belonged out here. Harry wasn’t really sure why. He sort of felt like he did belong out here. The giant gamekeeper just said it wasn’t his place, Harry was human, he should stay up at the Castle with the humans. (Harry hadn’t told Hagrid that he probably wasn’t human, actually, because that would mean explaining that he was Bella’s son, and Hagrid couldn’t keep a secret if his life depended on it.)

“Do you mean to say that Harry has been sleeping out here in the Forest?” Dumbledore frowned up at the giant. “When you repeated Aragog’s message, I understood you to mean that Harry has been playing with the wilderfolk, not living with them. In fact,” he added, turning the frown on Harry, “I specifically recall seeing a memorandum from Filius to the effect that you would be sleeping in the Slytherin dormitories due to an improbably strong adverse reaction to exposure to distilled darkness.”

Oh, apparently it was official, then. He hadn’t been sure if Snape had actually gotten his dorm reassigned, or just did something to the wards himself to let Harry in Blaise’s room because he could get in now, but the elves hadn’t put a second bed in there or anything. Not that it mattered. Blaise had assured him that he really didn’t mind sharing, and Harry had gotten used to sleeping in puppy piles over the past couple of months, so on the rare occasion that it was too wet to sleep out with the wolves, they’d just been doubling up.

He nodded. “I got a tattoo. It’s wicked cool. Want to see?” he asked, already pushing up his sleeve. 

Dumbledore seemed inexplicably unimpressed. “I find it irresponsible in the extreme that Druella allowed an eleven-year-old to be tattooed in the first place, but I suppose what’s done is done.”

“Er. She didn’t let me so much as I didn’t tell her until afterward,” Harry clarified. He’d told her in the same letter he’d asked what the hell a shadowkin was. 

Apparently it meant that he’d kind of turned himself into a type of non-human being which didn’t entirely belong in the tangible world. This wasn’t quite the same (apparently) as his soul existing slightly outside the mundane realm because he was a seer, or belonging outside because he was part whatever kind of fae or demon Dru was. Shadow-planes were technically mundane, developing out of and dependent on the local physical reality, they were just intangible. 

He wasn’t really sure he understood the difference, honestly, but he thought that he might eventually be able to make himself intangible at will, which was really bloody cool. He’d also be able to travel through shadows (though he might find it more unpleasant or difficult to travel by other elemental means, like the floo) and do a whole discipline of shadow-magic humans usually couldn’t, or usually couldn’t very well, and would have a higher channelling capacity because...something about the darkness in his body serving as an auxiliary magical conduit, or something, in addition to his nerves? But not until his metamorphosis was complete, which he’d know when his body began producing darkness and he became capable of manipulating the shadows around him in the tangible world, both of which were signs he also didn’t entirely understand, but they sounded cool. 

On the down side, though, he would be much more sensitive to light and light magic and his body wouldn’t be entirely human anymore, so he might have trouble having children with humans without using blood alchemy (though he might be able to have kids with upyri — vampires — or something called nichtlyn, and other human shadowkin and metamorphs “obviously”) and his blood would be slightly poisonous to humans and/or turn them into shadowkin, too (if they drank enough of it, which didn’t entirely seem likely, since humans, as a rule, didn’t go around drinking any blood at all).

Obviously having trouble having kids (on top of the magical incompatibilities Dru would expect to be problematic anyway just because he was a Black) would be a problem if he was planning on repopulating the House, and while he’d kind of thought that his blood turning normal people into shadowkin would be wicked (why wouldn’t everyone do it, that shadow-magic sounded cool and he could just turn anyone who wanted to have a baby with him into shadowkin, too, that’d fix that), he’d only thought that for about half a sentence before she’d added: assuming they survive the metamorphosis. Most humans unfamiliar with freeform subsumption would be unable to accommodate and assimilate the Darkness, which, in quantities sufficient to trigger the metamorphosis in one who is capable of the transformation, would simply poison them.

She’d gone on to speculate that Harry hadn’t had any apparent trouble with the process because Bella had introduced him to free subsumption literally minutes after he was born, inclining his magic in that direction, or because the symbiote he shared with Bella and Dru was helping him rewrite his fundamental identity more smoothly than most humans could, or because Angel had done something to help him, rather than allow her new dedicant to be poisoned by her own blood. Not in so many words, obviously, just in case the letter was intercepted.

All she’d had to say on the matter of the tattoo was that it was indeed a less logistically suspicious reason to give for his transformation than an alchemy accident, if somewhat less plausible from a theoretical perspective, and at least the design (which he had sketched for her, in separate stages, he didn’t know how to get them to merge like Missy had done in the actual tattoo) could have been worse. At least it wasn’t a giant bloody nundu on his back, or something equally obnoxious.

Harry had no idea if someone had actually told her about his original plan (Blaise claimed he hadn’t, and he didn’t think Missy knew her, so probably not), or if she knew it because she was a seer, or if she just knew him and figured he’d think something like that was wicked cool. 

Dumbledore just sniffed, like Dru should have somehow stopped Harry from getting a tattoo at all, even if she hadn’t known about it. “In any case, arrangements have been made for you to sleep in the Slytherin dormitory, and I must insist that you return to doing so.”

Harry almost said make me, purely as an instinctive response to the tone of the condescending order, but given that they were only talking about this in the first place because the attack on the wolves was apparently because of Harry, and he couldn’t keep sleeping out here, because if he did, the next time it happened it would actually be his fault, he kept his mouth shut and just nodded.

“You may return to living with the Pack when this threat has passed,” Alpha assured him. 

Bane nodded. “Though this does bring us to the question of how Hogwarts intends to deal with the threat in question.”

“And the spiders.” 

“And the spiders,” Bane repeated.

“I’ll talk to Aragog again,” Hagrid sighed, as though this was a great imposition. 

Both the wolf and the centaur ignored him, continuing to glare at the Headmaster. “I will think on how best to approach the resource problem the acromantulae represent,” he said, which was clearly not what either of them wanted to hear. 

Or Hagrid: “But Sir! It isn’t their fault! They just want to live!”

“By killing us!” Alpha snapped. “And we were here first!”

“As I have already said, killing all of them—” As though the wolves and centaurs had the resources to do so. Harry was certain if they could they would have, decades ago. “—would make you no better than them.” Dumbledore said, in a patronising tone that made it absolutely clear he had no intention of helping them, and he thought he was right not to.

“It’s different,” Alpha growled. He could get in Dumbledore’s face, but Bane pulled him back.

“We did not call for their extermination until it became clear that they have no intention of stopping until we are all dead,” he shot back, sneering. Obviously he wasn’t going to take any of Dumbledore’s older-and-wiser-than-thou shite any more than Dru had. “Defending one’s people against an existential threat is not so immoral as to press to expand one’s holdings at the expense of other sentient beings no matter how many invaders must die to halt their greed, and you know it.”

“Theft and murder are hardly equivalent, however,” the old man countered. “Do you truly think it right to kill another being for hunting and living on your land, simply because it is ‘yours’? Does your right of ownership outweigh their right to live?”

“Yes.” That clearly was not the answer Dumbledore had expected, as evidenced by the annoyed, bewildered expression he turned on Alpha. “And theft and murder are the same when the spiders steal everything and starve our people, or capture and eat us!”

Also, “I don’t think it counts as murder if it’s a war.” All three adults and Hagrid ignored Harry’s very pertinent contribution to the conversation.

“It is not we who have escalated to the point of demanding their total annihilation,” Bane insisted. “If they will not stop until the last of us or them are dead, then all of them must die, and so be it! To have killed all of them would trouble me less than allowing them to continue to kill this Forest and my people!”

“They’re not killing the Forest!” Hagrid protested. “And they don’t want all of you dead! They just need a little more space to hunt!”

“And a little more next year, and more the year after that,” Alpha said scathingly. “As long as they keep making more spiders, they will need more space! We know this! And they are killing the Forest! The nymphs tell you every year! If you would look, you would see it for yourself! Nothing lives in their lands! But you will not!”

“I said,” Dumbledore interrupted rather than let the argument continue in circles, “that I will consider the problem! We will not reach a solution here and now, that much is clear, and—”

Bane interrupted him in turn: “Yes, you will consider, and then you will do nothing, I am certain. And what of the unicorn-killer?”

The Headmaster, who had seemed annoyed to be interrupted, gave a heavy sigh as the conversation turned back to the undead dark lord. “If it were so easy to deal with him, do you not think I would have done so years ago, Bane? All that we can do is attempt to delay his return as long as possible, and put our faith in what has been foretold. There is one who has the power to defeat him, but it is not I.”

“You could take this stone he wants elsewhere,” Alpha suggested, clearly not impressed by the mention of the prophecy in the same way Bane was. The shaman seemed positively taken aback, giving the Headmaster a troubled frown.

“Why would he do that?” Hagrid asked. “There ain’t nowhere safer than Hogwarts. If the Professor moves the Stone, it’ll be that much easier for the blighter to get to, won’t it!”

“The Castle is full of young humans. If this killer would risk the lives of our pups to kill the boy, do you not think he would harm any number of human children who come between him and this stone?”

“By that logic, perhaps the boy should go elsewhere as well. To stay with his guardian, or the Fallen Star, perhaps.”

“What? No! Didn’t I just say it’s convenient he’s here because I’m going to kill him?”

No one listened to Harry, but that didn’t really matter, because Dumbledore said no, too, shaking his head slowly. “No, Hagrid is right.” Wolf and centaur exchanged a look which said they very much doubted that. “The trap I designed for the Shadow when it was rumoured that he was trying to steal the Stone should capture Voldemort—” Hagrid flinched at the name. “—just as handily, if he should somehow come to find it. And in any case, there has been no indication that he has gained access to the Castle itself.”

Bane gave him a classic did someone drop you on your head as an infant? look. “By the time you have such evidence in hand, the harm may already be done,” he said, as though speaking to a small child. “And in the meanwhile, he is here, poisoning our Forest to sustain himself!”

“If he is sustaining himself with unicorn blood, it is likely that he will remain here regardless of whether the Stone is here or not,” Dumbledore countered. “No man resorts to unicorn blood if he is not desperate. Regardless of whether he believes in the curse or not, unicorns are hardly easy prey for one so dark as to consider deliberately harming one, so I believe we may safely assume that it is all that is keeping him alive at this point. Until he obtains an alternative elixir to sustain himself or manages to collect a rather substantial supply to tide him over while he continues to search for such a thing elsewhere, I doubt he will abandon the Forest. After all, there is only one constant unicorn range on Great Britain. In fact, I believe we may safely assume that that is why he has dared to come here in the first place. Unless you believe that he too has been gossipping with the goblins, there is no reason to suspect that he even knows the Stone is here.”

“But that still leaves him half-dead with no real end-game,” Harry reminded them.

Dumbledore’s face fell into its gravest frown yet, his eyes flicking to Bane’s before he said, “There is one even more disturbing possibility.”

Harry waited a second for him to explain this second, more disturbing possibility, but he didn’t, because he was clearly trying to kill Harry himself, through sheer suspense. “Well?”

The old man continued to hesitate, possibly, if Harry was inclined to be charitable, considering whether it was a good idea to tell him (as opposed to deliberately torturing him by drawing it out), so Bane explained, “It is possible that the Dark Lord, in his madness and perversion, has become such a creature of destruction and corruption that the cursed blood serves to strengthen him, but...” He shot a questioning look at Dumbledore.

“I know, it does seem too terrible to contemplate, but I would put nothing past him. I was recently informed that he made multiple horcruxes.” 

Bane gasped. Alpha and Hagrid clearly knew that this was bad, but Harry rather thought they were more confused than anything. Presumably they hadn’t heard of a horcrux. “They’re this really creepy sympathetic magic soul anchor thing, like a lich, but it’s not your soul in the reliquary, it’s someone else’s soul that you have to sort of make into a palimpsest copy of your soul, and you’re only supposed to make one because if you make more than one, your soul will be torn into pieces when you die, one piece for each anchor, but he altered the ritual somehow so that wouldn't happen, which is apparently really hard to do for technical reasons I didn’t really understand, except maybe it’s easier if you’re a legilimens, but anyway, that’s why he can’t die,” he volunteered. “Yet. We’re working on it.”

Dumbledore’s horrified expression shifted to Harry. “I presume Druella told you this?”

“Well, yeah, who else knows about all this shite? Sorry, stuff,” he corrected himself as the glare momentarily sharpened. “I mean, Bellatrix probably, but I don’t think owls will go to Azkaban.”

The old man shook his head in apparent disappointment, muttering something very much like, “This is why I thought this arrangement a bad idea...” under his breath.

“It’s not like she told me exactly how to do it,” Harry added, slightly defensively. “Just why it was so evil and why it was a big deal he made more than one.” He had also asked if she knew how to make one (yes) and if she would teach him (no), so that was two things on the list of shite Harry probably cannot be trusted to use responsibly. He didn’t really want to be immortal, but he might try it out if it meant he could put a copy of himself in a book to just sort of write to people after he died, like the diary they’d taken from Lucius Malfoy. (What he knew about it sounded really neat, he couldn’t wait to meet it at Easter.) But the point was, Dru was responsible enough to know that and not tell him, so really she was a good guardian, obviously.

Dumbledore just kept shaking his head, now more incredulously. Whatever. Bane kept his focus on the important things: “Who is the one who may destroy this monster, Albus? By what signs will we know them?”

“It is for the best that I do not tell you, Bane.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “He thinks it’s Danny Tonks.” 

The Headmaster glared at him. Harry shrugged. What was he going to do about it? He couldn’t un-say it. Plus, they’d already established Dumbledore couldn’t make Harry do anything, and Harry was pretty damn sure Dru was right about all this prophecy business, anyway, so even if he could un-say it, he wouldn’t.

“Dru thinks it was Lily Potter, and the prophecy’s already done with, because it was just about defeating the bastard, and he’s been pretty damn defeated for the last decade or so, and now anyone could finish him off, so I’m going to do it, because I know you haven’t met Danny, but he’s about the least likely person I know to kill anyone. Like, Daphne would probably kill someone before Danny would.” Daphne would probably kill someone by poisoning them or paying someone else to do it, because she didn’t like getting her hands dirty, but still. “But we do have to track down his horcruxes and kill those first, like a video game or something, so Dru’s working on that, because I’m ‘only slightly less useless than most eleven-year-olds.’” He was pretty sure that was at least half a joke, because he was much less useless than most eleven-year-olds. “The tracking part, I mean. She said I can help with the destroying part.”

Bane inexplicably did not seem to find this reassuring. “Please relay to your guardian that I wish to speak with her regarding the matter.”

“She’s a seer, she knows what she’s talking about.”

“Nevertheless. And in the meanwhile, Albus, what do you intend to do about the unicorns?”

“Bane, I fail to imagine what you think I might possibly do to protect them. You know as well as I that they cannot be caged, even for their own safety, and sadly, I do not share Miss Rosier’s optimism regarding Voldemort’s—” Hagrid flinched again, shooting a reproachful look at the top of Dumbledore’s head. “—destruction.”

“Magistra Rosier,” Harry corrected him, though of course he ignored him. He still slipped up and called Harry ‘my dear boy’ at least once or twice a meeting, and he liked Harry a lot more than he liked Dru, so Harry wasn’t really surprised.

“The only thing you can do is continue to purify the Forest wherever a fallen unicorn is found, and we must hope that Voldemort—” Flinch. “—does hear tell of the Stone’s presence here at Hogwarts, and that he will fall into my trap before anyone else is seriously harmed. Harry must return to the Castle, and I trust you will both warn your people to be on their guard...?”

Obviously they would, and they didn’t need Dumbledore to tell them to, either. Bane nodded, his usual serenity somewhat strained. Alpha didn’t bother dignifying the suggestion with a response, sneering contemptuously at both Dumbledore and Hagrid for their uselessness and popping back into his wolf form to lope off into the trees.

“Well, then. It seems we are done here,” Dumbledore said, firmly and pleasantly, as though he hadn’t just been completely blown off. He gave Bane a little bow. “Bane of the Dark, I wish you good fortune, until we meet again.” Bane nodded back. “Harry, I expect you to bid your friends farewell and make your way up to the Castle before full dark.” Then, more disapprovingly, he added, “Hagrid, a word,” turning and striding off back toward the school, leaving Harry with the impression that Hagrid was in trouble, probably for not telling Dumbledore about how bad the spider problem had become.

Generally speaking, Harry would have blown the Headmaster off, too — Bane and Alpha hadn’t said he couldn’t be out here at all, just that he couldn’t come to the Village, and what did it matter if it was dark, but he did have to go explain to the wolves that he couldn’t sleep out here anymore, and Bane added as soon as Dumbledore was out of earshot, “Boy, do not forget to write to your guardian and tell her that I wish to speak with her,” so he probably would end up at the Castle before full dark, too, because if he didn’t do that right away, he probably would forget. 

He’d already forgotten what the other things were he wanted to write to her about. One of them was the Philosopher’s Stone and whether it really existed, but he had a nagging suspicion that there was another thing, too, damn it...

“I had hoped that the brightness of Mars these past weeks was only a trick of these old eyes,” Bane muttered, “but if what Albus says is true... Cetus has become more prominent too, since the autumnal equinox, and if the monster again approaches and Just Innocence has been corrupted by so ominous a sign, would it be a wonder that War follows in their wake?”

Oh. Right. Focus, Potter. The fact that Voldie was lurking around here, period. That was the other thing.

Voldie’s killing unicorns, is there really a Philosopher’s Stone or not, and Bane wants to talk to you. He could remember that. 

(But just in case, he’d better try to make his farewells quickly, and get that letter off ASAP...)