Chapter Three of 'Chosen Chains'- Where Sun and Shadow End (1/2)

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Two.

Title: Chosen Chains (3/5 to 7)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione
Rating: R
Warnings: Heavy angst, bondage, D/s elements, violence, sex, profanity. EWE.
Summary: Harry has spent the last two years in semi-exile from the wizarding world after bitter arguments with the Ministry and his best friends. Now the Ministry summons him back, since they can’t run the school without the cooperation of Dumbledore’s portrait-and Dumbledore will only talk to Harry. Draco, summoned to talk to Snape’s portrait at the same time, meets a Harry he hasn’t expected, one who’s going to request something strange from him, and perhaps require more than that.
Author’s Notes: This will be an irregularly updated story of, probably, five to seven parts, with fairly long chapters. The Dominance/submission elements are limited, but an important part of the story, and I haven’t often written them before, so please don’t read it if that bothers you.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Three-Where Sun and Shadow End

Harry finally slowed and stopped. He had run so fast that his legs felt like jellyfish, and his head was spinning and his stomach aching. He leaned against the nearest tree, once he was sure that he no longer crackled with flame that would burn it, and looked around.

The clearing he stood in wasn’t natural; Harry thought something had probably fallen here and burned some of the trees away recently. A lightning strike? The ground was blackened and melted in a few places, and there was a faint, persistent stink of smoke when he got interested enough to smell for it.

Not that he needed to care. He wasn’t going to burn down the Forest, now that the intense run had worn away his anger, and no one would care about his observations or his reasons for being here if he didn’t harm anything.

It had been a great satisfaction, after the war, when Harry realized that he didn’t have to care so much or so intensely. He had tried to reduce his anger with that, thinking about the Ministry’s corruption with indifference. He could never address it, so why try? He could never say why he needed the stress relief that he did or where his anger came from, because neither had any logical cause, so why try?

But it hadn’t worked. He still cared about things like Hogwarts interfering in the Ministry, and he still nourished bitterness against his friends for trying to make him ask questions he wasn’t interested in the answers to.

Harry grimaced and leaned his head back against the trunk again. It would do no good if he ran all that distance and then got upset. He couldn’t stop caring about Ron and Hermione, but he could stop thinking about them for the minute, and go and arrange lodgings in Hogsmeade like he’d said he would.

He turned around, and found a white centaur considering him from so close that Harry didn’t understand how he hadn’t heard his hooves. Harry raised his wand and waited warily. Centaurs could be kind, yes, but not always, and he hadn’t heard anything lately about how they conducted their relations with humans since the war.

“Harry Potter,” the centaur said, in a high voice. “The stars did not predict your coming. Or they did not do so in a way that we could readily understand.”

“No reason they should,” Harry said, with a casual little shrug that he hoped would content the centaur. “I don’t plan to stay here very long.”

He stepped around to the side, but the centaur faced him squarely again and said, “You carry something as dark as an eclipse within you, something that should never find expression.”

Harry gritted his teeth. Now random magical creatures were showing up to tell him how wrong his choices were. He didn’t try to hide the fire that flickered up his side, because the centaur might understand the threat, surrounded by wood, in a way that wizards surrounded by stone and wards didn’t. “I’ll try not to let it. Can I leave now?”

The centaur considered him again, scraping one front hoof back and forth in a slow dance over the leafy ground. Harry stared back some more, and thought about Apparating, but a brief test showed that this part of the Forest still had the same wards on it that surrounded Hogwarts.

“You will find the means to tame it here,” the centaur said at last. “Orion has promised that much. Yes, Orion,” he went on, and Harry thought he was talking mostly to himself, “Orion the fierce hunter, who runs his prey down and does not miss.”

“Good,” Harry said. “That would be good. But I’m leaving now, and I promise that I won’t come here again.” He thought it would be best if he got out of here as soon as possible, not because he feared the centaur’s words of wisdom, but simply because he didn’t want to start a conflagration.

“Leave,” the centaur said. “You cannot escape from beneath their influence, who look down through dusk and shadow to find us.”

Harry bowed politely and started to go, then hesitated, caught by the similarity of the centaur’s wording to what Dumbledore had said. He turned around. “Can you tell me of the place where both sun and shadow end? We’re trying to find it.”

“There is no such place,” the centaur said. “For does not everything in the world happen beneath the gaze of the sun or the stars? And are not the stars suns in their own right, for worlds we cannot imagine?”

Well, that was bloody useless, Harry thought crossly, and took his leave. The trail out of the Forest was easy to find, thanks to the blackened footprints he’d left behind, as if he carried his own portable lightning storm with him.

Harry shivered in distaste. He didn’t like being this angry. The methods he resorted to to control the rage were stopgaps. Nothing would have made him happier than getting rid of it forever.

But how could do that? Contrary to what Hermione thought, he’d talked to his share of Healers, Mind-Healers, Potions masters who brewed concoctions that were supposed to control his emotions and damp his magic, and ordinary people who were supposedly good at soothing the anger of others. He’d tried the rigid discipline of the Auror program, meditation rooms that some of the radical young Healers at St. Mungo’s and Muggle books recommended, and different diets.

Nothing helped, except the brief, violent release that he discovered when bound and under orders.

He didn’t even do it that often. Hermione thought she was disgusted by it, but she couldn’t feel that more strongly than Harry himself did.

There was no other answer, though, and so, as he often did for lack of a better option, Harry put the problem out of his mind. He would go to Hogsmeade, get a room at the Three Broomsticks, write a letter to Annie, and then settle down and think seriously about this riddle that Dumbledore had handed him.

Well, them. Having to include Malfoy in the equation was troublesome and alienating, but Harry reluctantly supposed he’d get used to it.

*

Draco walked in a slow circle around the sentient potion’s cauldron. For now, the potion lay quiescent inside it; in fact, it hadn’t moved or made a sound since Draco had brought it to Hogwarts. That could be useful, in that a regular dose of novelty would help him improve his control, or it might be simple fear. Draco already knew that fear would quell the potion for a few hours, but then it would test his control.

When he had added the new ingredient to activate it, a pinfeather from a hummingbird, Severus had leaned forwards in his portrait. “What are you doing?”

“Making a sentient potion.” Draco never took his gaze from the cauldron, because at that point he didn’t know what would happen. The potion might have suddenly decided to make his life interesting. “One that should control the limbs and bodies of people it’s introduced to when I’m finished with it. And animals, of course. Flies and spiders would make excellent spies, if I could adapt the potion to their systems.”

Severus was silent for some time. Then he said, “Did you come up with this project on your own, or did I introduce you to the knowledge?”

“Both,” Draco said, judging that it was safe for the moment to look up at the portrait. “I took hints and clues from your teachings, particularly about the effects of discipline, but most of what I know now I learned from other brewers.”

Severus was silent for so long that Draco thought he’d left the frame. He’d provided himself with a wooden shield by the point that Severus spoke again, as well as a lash of steel wire that he’d Transfigured from a bookmark in one of the obscenely cheerful books along the walls. “My former self did not transfer all his memories to me.”

“I know that,” Draco said, keeping his head turned towards the cauldron and his shield and coil of wire in slight but constant motion. He had felt the urge to freeze the moment Severus spoke those words, but he saw no reason that he should. After all, treating a declaration of vulnerability as a declaration of vulnerability would only cause Severus to shut his mouth. “You told us that already when you told us about the riddles.”

“Us,” Severus sneered. “You are truly determined to consider Potter a part of this mission.”

Draco judged it safe to face Severus and nod. “Yes. He is the only ally I have in a tense and confusing situation where the rewards are uncertain. I would like to trust him.”

“Be careful how far you go.” Severus flicked his fingers in a gesture that Draco had seen him use when he was sending dandelion dust into a volatile potion. It was dismissive only on the surface. “I shudder now to think of how my former self trusted him to know what he had to do to defeat the Dark Lord.”

“I couldn’t help being careful, after what I overheard and seeing him burn,” Draco retorted. And curious. But Severus would disdain the curiosity, so let it remain unspoken for the moment.

The potion lashed out with one green arm, apparently planning on catching him unawares.

Draco spun, blocked it with the wooden shield, touched it with the steel wire, and watched it crumple. He smiled grimly. He had been right in thinking that steel would prove to be a new means of controlling it.

“I am surprised that you favor working with such dangerous subjects,” Severus murmured. “After what you faced during the last year of the war, do not peace and safety have the strongest attraction for you?”

“I don’t mind peace and safety, in their places,” Draco said, and then began to pull the new “arm” back to the cauldron with the use of the steel. He didn’t want to touch it yet, but he would have to scoop up the small drops that fell to the floor of the dungeon. Leaving a part of it unattached could possibly mean that it would develop new vulnerabilities and new capacities of its own, and grow another body not confined by the cauldron. “But I also don’t mind danger and disruption, in an environment that I ultimately control.”

Severus said nothing. Draco looked at him and found him standing there with his arms folded, head shaking as if he were watching the mistakes of a promising but rather slow apprentice. “No one can control everything he faces. I should think you would have learned that lesson by now.”

“Did Dumbledore teach you that one?” Draco asked.

As he had known would happen, Severus stalked out of the frame. Draco went back to his potion. He liked brewing unpredictable potions, yes, but the real influences that he felt compelled to exclude from his environment were people who insulted him.

He wondered for a moment what it would be like to work with Potter in the room, if he would fling the same insults as Severus or simply try to disrupt the brewing. Most likely he wouldn’t even understand the danger. Severus, portrait and thus lesser reflection of the true man or not, maintained the memories of his training.

I think Potter would be fascinated, but he would assume that he also understood everything he needed to of brewing, and interfere in undesirable ways.

Then Draco laughed. Why was he considering such a thing? The idea that he and Potter would ever occupy the same room while he was brewing was childish. Perhaps he still dreamed of the things that his child-self had once wanted, of Harry Potter’s notice and attention. Dreams might be put down for a time, but they were rarely forsaken, or Draco would not do such a brisk business in lust drafts and potions meant to restore youthful beauty for a few hours or give someone the ability to fly like a pro Quidditch player.

On the other hand, he might have to brew potions during their quest to solve the riddles and unlock the wards. Perhaps his unconscious, fantasizing mind was wiser than he knew.

He levered the green potion into the cauldron with more thoughtfulness than usual.

*

Dear Annie, Harry wrote, and then paused, wondering if he had earned the right to call her by her first name. She might not like it, either, since she seemed so much more grown-up than some children he had met.

And he was sure that she didn’t have the same problem he did as a child, when someone calling him by his first name was a pleasant change from the taunts he usually received.

Dear Miss Crompton, he wrote instead, and then leaned back in his seat, trying to imagine what he could tell her about her chances of coming to a magical school and getting a good education that wouldn’t be a lie.

The room he’d been granted at the Three Broomsticks was pleasant enough. A single window, without any enchantments, showed Harry a view of people passing in the streets of Hogsmeade, and the heavy wooden bed was wide enough for two to sleep in. Harry smiled grimly. That last comfort was rather wasted on him.

And there was a table and chair that he could use to write letters. Harry didn’t need anything else, really, since he had brought his own parchment, ink, and quills with him.

I’m at Hogwarts now, he wrote when he returned to the letter. The school is a huge castle, with a lake in front of it. When the first-years come to the school, they ride across the lake on a boat, and they’re met by a gamekeeper named Hagrid. Hagrid’s rather large and he can be frightening, but I think you’ll like him.

Harry paused, frowning suddenly. He hadn’t seen Hagrid since he’d come here. Was he still working as gamekeeper, or had the Ministry dismissed him? One of the arguments he’d had with the Ministry was with the people who wanted to dismiss Hagrid because half-giants were “dangerous.”

Well, he would have to find out later. Just another thing to do, and struggle with, and probably fail at, because the Ministry was determined not to let him have any successes.

Harry gritted his teeth, and wrote on, Hogwarts teaches you all the subjects you’ll need to control your magic. You’ll learn about the history of the wizarding world, and how to brew potions that heal people and make them fall asleep, and Transfigurations-which is magic that changes things into other things, like changing people into animals-and flying on broomsticks. I didn’t like all of those subjects at Hogwarts, but who knows what you’ll find fascinating?

He finished the letter with a few more descriptions and recommendations. He would have liked to say something more personal, but he still didn’t know Annie very well yet.

When he sealed the letter, Harry paused before he cast the final spells, fighting his own sudden idea with the side of himself that was more mature. Then he shook his head-his maturity never lasted very long anyway-and cast the charm that would sting anyone other than Annie who tried to open it.

Maybe Annie wasn’t exactly the same as him, but he bet she would still enjoy secrets and the ability to make her own decision about the letter.

When he turned around, intending to trek back to the Owlery and summon his owl, he was startled to see Catherine crouching on the sill. Harry cleared his throat and crossed over to the window to give the letter to her. Catherine accepted it in her beak, but stared at him instead of flying off right away.

“What?” Harry snapped, irritated. Hedwig had never looked at him that way, and she was the only owl he had to compare Catherine to.

Catherine reached out and captured his chin in her talon again, the way she had in the shop. From even closer, she gave him an even more critical stare, and then sharply nipped his ear. Harry jerked back, hand to his ear, swearing, as she soared out the window. That was also a much harder bite than Hedwig had ever given him.

Face it, Harry told himself gloomily as he went over to clean up his writing supplies. Not even your owl likes you.

He reckoned he should probably go back to Hogwarts tonight to meet with Malfoy and perhaps the new Ministry representative, but in the meantime, he didn’t have anything better to do than sleep and fantasize about what he could never have.

*

“I’m sure you understand our horror at the way you were treated, Potions master Malfoy. Wimpledink let his understandable impatience with Mr. Potter spill over onto you, and for that, I am deeply sorry.”

Draco took a drink of the wine that the new Ministry representative had served to him the minute he entered her rooms, and smiled at her. The wine was cool and faintly sweet. He wondered who had told her that he liked it that way. If he could have spies in the Ministry, they could certainly have spies on him. “Oh, no, Miss Covington. I wasn’t offended. I always assumed that the Ministry representative would be difficult to work with, no matter who it was.”

Margaret Covington touched her hand to her chest in an expression of dismay so perfectly executed Draco wanted to stand up and applaud. She was an altogether different breed of flunkey from Wimpledink. She was tall and dark-haired, with the signs of pure-blood breeding in her face-although Draco didn’t recognize her name-and she had bright, deep blue eyes and could blush on command. And she never said anything less than soothing and serene and apologetic, though Draco knew she couldn’t mean everything.

Potter will be sorry that he missed this, Draco thought, and had another sip of the wine.

“I can only grieve that those who dealt with you in the past gave you such expectations.” Covington leaned towards him and lowered her voice. “I hope that I do not?”

“No,” Draco said with complete honesty. She symbolized a different type of challenge that he would have to overcome: the part of the Ministry that would give him soft words and sweet lies and deliver nothing solid.

Covington smiled, took a sip of her own drink-so pale that Draco honestly didn’t know if it was wine or water-and then leaned in further. “I was in Slytherin House myself,” she murmured. “I hope that you don’t think I’m conspiring against the House that sheltered me.”

But of course you would, Draco thought as he inclined his head, if it was to your own advantage. “I must admit that the Ministry’s refusal to deliver a pronouncement on the future of Slytherin has worried me.”

“Such refusals will always be politic as long as we do not have a competent Seer.” Covington spread her hands in what Draco was sure was mock sorrow, but so perfectly rehearsed that it didn’t look that way. “The Ministry can’t yet know whether allowing Slytherin House would turn out to present more disadvantages than advantages.”

“It was allowed for hundreds of years.” Draco knew his smile was sharp, but he had already revealed that he cared about this topic. Speaking further on it was not the same thing as weakness. “Including during wars when the former Dark Lord had been a Slytherin, or the nearest equivalent in his country of origin. Why should it be disallowed now?”

Covington paused in filling her glass and shot him a curious glance. “Surely you don’t think the previous school administrations did all they should have in the interests of safety?”

Well-played, Draco thought admiringly, and shook his head. “I can’t think that, as the son of a former school governor who often disagreed with a former Headmaster,” he said. “But I’m not convinced that the exclusion of Slytherin House represents a safety issue.”

“What would it represent, then?” Covington settled back in her chair, seeming entirely prepared to discuss this for as long as he needed to be persuaded.

“An issue of politics,” Draco said. “As you admitted yourself.”

Covington laughed. “I could accuse you of a pun, but I will treat your concern seriously instead.” Draco nodded. He had expected a tactic like that, one aimed at reducing his self-confidence, and it might have worked if he was less settled within himself and less in tune with Severus’s lessons. “The Ministry is much more worried about Dark wizards than we used to be. We have expanded the Auror program and searched more extensively for new trainees, as well as giving extra lessons on the matter to the rest of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.”

“Despite the exclusion of one prominent Auror from your Department,” Draco said, “I believe you.”

“Did you ever hear why Potter had been sacked?” Covington was utterly unruffled. “For opposing the Ministry’s plans for Hogwarts. The issue of our children’s education is more important to us than the placement of an arrogant grandstander, war hero though he may be.”

Draco nodded again. He didn’t think that was Covington’s own opinion, necessarily, but it was useful to know the Ministry party line.

“It seems useful, necessary, and convenient to eliminate a House that often produced Dark wizards,” Covington continued. “No, not everyone who comes out of the House is Dark, but you can’t deny that there were more of them than there should have been. Some of my yearmates had no taste.” She shuddered delicately.

“What would happen, under this new plan, if a Dark wizard turned up in Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Gryffindor?” Draco asked softly. “Would you abolish them as well?”

“The reason that Slytherin produced Dark wizards is not due particularly to the children being selected,” Covington said, “or its location in the dungeons, or even the Dark wizards who sometimes Headed it.”

“Such as?” Draco was prepared to defend Severus if she included him.

“Oh, I’m sure you can think of many,” Covington said, once again smoothly dodging and apparently paying a compliment to his intelligence. “But as I was saying. The main reason for the House producing Dark wizards is the philosophy of its founder. Can you imagine preferring pure-bloods over Muggleborns in this day and age?”

Snake, Draco thought. An appropriate symbol for her. I can’t tell whether she ever held beliefs based on blood, and that’s the point. She’ll slither into any available hole and adapt her coloring to the people around her. She has no core beliefs except in her own advancement.

“Then simply encourage Muggleborn students as well as pure-bloods to join the ranks,” Draco said, with a careless shrug. “Change the reputation of the House in the school that ensured students of our kind often became self-segregating. When they find it less fearsome, I don’t think Muggleborn students will be so resistant to being Sorted there.”

“And when they find out that their House’s founder specifically raised and trained a basilisk to attack people like them?” Covington gave him a direct glance. “What would your response to their fearful questions be?”

“That Slytherin didn’t embody all the virtues or faults of the House, and his students don’t have to, either,” Draco said. “Simple enough. Not all Gryffindors, excluding perhaps Potter, are true heirs of Godric Gryffindor, either.”

“Simple,” Covington echoed. “When the symbol, the name, the ideal that the children are exhorted to live up to, the philosophy of many students within it-including the older students of six different years that the Sorted Muggleborns will have to live with-tell them otherwise. Yes, simple indeed.”

When Draco got up to leave, he still hadn’t managed to wrangle a straight answer out of Covington, or win the argument, though her replies did indicate that the Ministry strongly intended to close Slytherin. Draco shook his head as he paced through the corridors towards the dungeons. The Ministry had made a mistake, perhaps simply out of oversight, with Wimpledink, but now they were going to be harder opponents than he’d thought.

“Psst! Malfoy.”

Draco turned his head slowly, hoping to express his extreme indignation that someone would couple his last name with such a childish and silly outburst as “Psst!” Then he saw the source of the voice and realized that it wouldn’t matter.

“Weasley,” he said. “What do you want?”

Weasley waved frantically at him to be quiet. Draco raised his eyebrows and strolled nearer. Weasley was standing in a side corridor, checking up and down for other people in a way that showed he hadn’t conspired very often. Draco wondered where his wife was. She would have done infinitely better.

“Listen,” Weasley said in a hurried whisper, “I think we could stop the Ministry from taking over the school, or at least having it all their own way, if we could cooperate.”

Draco raised an eyebrow and said nothing at all. He wasn’t about to share the riddle that Severus and Dumbledore had entrusted to him and Potter, and he didn’t think that Potter would, either.

“You need to speak to Harry,” Weasley said. He was sweating, and spent a moment staring at a currently blank portrait frame as if he assumed that the painting was hiding behind it to listen to their conversation. “He won’t listen to us. All it’ll take is a few compromises, and we can have back the Hogwarts that we know and love.”

“What kind of compromises?” Draco asked calmly. It cost him nothing to ask.

“Well-more wards, of course.” Weasley grimaced as though he was swallowing a Gobstone. “The Ministry insists. They want a ban on Quidditch right now, too, but that won’t hold against the students’ clamor for it. And Slytherin House would have to be shut down, but the students who would otherwise be Sorted there can ask for another House. Don’t look at me like that,” he added defensively, though Draco didn’t think he was “looking like” anything in particular. “I know it’s possible. Harry did it.”

Draco blinked, and oddly enough, his first thought was, There goes my point against Covington about Potter’s perfect Gryffindor nature. If only she knew. “What House?” he asked.

Weasley, stopped in mid-flight, blinked foolishly again as if he didn’t know how to begin. “What?”

“Which House was Potter almost Sorted into?” Draco asked, more quietly than before.

“Look, it doesn’t matter.” Weasley waved a hand. “I shouldn’t have said that. The point is that it only means a few changes. The Ministry can appoint a Headmaster, sure, but the school won’t work with them if they’re unsuitable-the portraits and the wards and the stones themselves, I mean. So it’ll be only a few years before we get a new Headmaster. These are all workable. But Harry refuses to compromise. He always did,” Weasley added, half to himself. “Will you persuade him? I know you want to see Hogwarts open again.”

“Tell me one thing,” Draco said. “And I’ll speak to him.”

“What House he was Sorted into?” Weasley asked. “Easy enough. It was-”

“No. What you rowed about badly enough that he won’t speak to you now.”

Weasley stiffened as though someone had filled his arms with needles. He stared at Draco for long moments, while Draco waited and the silence grew thicker. Draco did listen, to make sure that no one else was nearing them or lurking behind Weasley, since he seemed so upset about that, but he heard nothing.

I wonder if Granger knows he’s here? Then Draco dismissed what could have been an interesting possibility. Of course she does. One of them would never act without the other.

“I don’t owe you that,” Weasley finally said, measuring the words as though he assumed that would make them easier to speak. “I owe you nothing. But I offered the information about what House Harry was going to be Sorted into. Isn’t that enough?”

“You’re trying to make bargains by trading on your friends’-excuse me, former friends’-secrets,” Draco said. “I don’t think you get to take the moral high ground.”

He paused courteously, but Weasley had nothing to say. Draco nodded and continued his journey, sighing in relief when he could close the door of Severus’s rooms behind him.

“Did you learn anything of interest?” Severus was bending over the cauldron in his portrait, frowning. Draco watched the cloud of white smoke that surrounded him and decided that he had no reason to intervene in the brewing process, yet. The smoke had a color and consistency that would have worried Draco, but he didn’t know exactly what Severus was trying to make.

“The Ministry representative is a Slytherin who feels no loyalty to the traditions of the House,” Draco said, and sat down in a chair close to the fire. He felt pleasantly amused, but also restless. Perhaps Covington’s wine had affected him more than he’d thought. “And Weasley stopped me on the way back and wanted me to talk Potter into reconciling with him and Granger.”

Severus stared. “He thought you would do that?”

Draco laughed. “People do persist in thinking that I have some inner sense of decency. Why, I can’t imagine.”

Severus leaned nearer, hands braced on the rim of the cauldron. “I remember what you did during the war, Draco. I know what you refrained from doing.”

“That’s the point, though,” Draco said softly, holding his eyes without effort. He had begun to lose his awe of Severus-the-man by spending a few hours around Severus-as-portrait, and his guilt for not coming sooner. He couldn’t make up for his mistakes by cowering before a portrait. Severus himself was gone, and the part of him left behind an inferior reflection. “I refrained from doing some things. That isn’t the same thing as actively helping the cause that you fought for.”

After a few seconds, Severus nodded and once again retreated to the side of the cauldron. “Did Weasley offer you any enticement to do as he asked?” he murmured in a neutral tone, sounding more preoccupied with his potion than anything else.

“What House Potter was supposed to be Sorted into, before he chose Gryffindor,” Draco said. “He mentioned it in the context of a rant to show that children who might be Sorted into Slytherin after the school reopened could always choose another House, and then he regretted the mention and tried to reverse himself, and then he tried to use it as a bargaining chip. I can understand why Potter turned his back on that mass of inconsistent impulses and incoherent ideas.”

“That is an easy answer,” Severus said. He picked up something green and soft and plunged it into the potion, releasing an enormous cloud of steam. Draco, watching him, wondered idly where he got his ingredients. Perhaps there were portraits that showed the Forbidden Forest and other points of possible collection. “Albus told me once, when he was trying to convince me to ‘bond’ with Potter.” He rolled his eyes. “Supposedly, the Hat wanted him for Slytherin.”

Draco blinked. “I can’t see-” he began, and then stopped, thinking of the brutal words that Potter had spoken to his friends today and the anger that powered his magic. “I can see it,” he decided. “Slytherins don’t always have to be subtle.”

“I doubt the information matters,” Severus said, and with a fluid shrug, he deposited one more green and soft object in the potion. The white steam vanished. Draco smiled. He should have remembered that the portrait-painting process would probably not have taken away Severus’s skill as a brewer. “Potter chose Gryffindor. He is the product of that choice, not a non-existent one where he acceded to the Hat’s suggestion.”

“Yes, perhaps,” Draco said, and then leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, mind turning, for lack of other material, to the riddle that Severus and Dumbledore had given them.

Where sun and shadow end.

It could refer to a cave, perhaps, but Draco didn’t know any caves on the grounds of Hogwarts-and he was going to assume that this place was close to Hogwarts until he had some solid evidence otherwise. It could also refer to the dungeons, but since those were enclosed within the body of the school, Draco didn’t see the point of singling them out specifically. And besides, there were places in the dungeons, such as these altered rooms, that brought in sunlight through the enchanted windows.

Or were Dumbledore and Severus thinking only of the school as it had looked in their time, and discounting any other changes?

Draco grimaced and rubbed his head. He wished that there was some way to be sure of what places they could safely eliminate, but there wasn’t. He would have to go ahead and hope that Potter was coming up with better ideas.

His immediate temptation was to snort to himself and mock the idea, but then he reconsidered the information Severus had given him, and Weasley, and what he had heard, and temperately decided that he wouldn’t make any judgments on Potter’s intelligence until he had to.

Among other things, that gave him more hope that they might actually manage to solve the riddles.

*

Harry had woke late enough to miss any plausible meeting, so he ate alone in his rooms, turning the riddle over in his mind. It seemed odd to him that Dumbledore and Snape would have talked about a place where sun and shadow ended, instead of where they never came. That suggested sunlight could get into the place, but not go all the way.

What would prevent it? Another barrier of darkness? A human-created barrier? And why did they specify shadow? And why sunlight? Why not say other kinds of light, like lamps?

Harry licked a smear of potato from his lip and decided that he couldn’t yet decide for certain what the riddle meant. What he could do was make a list of the places around Hogwarts that the riddle might mean. He pushed his empty plate aside and picked up the ink and parchment again.

There was the cave that Sirius had hidden in during his fourth year; that might count, if you thought about a place where the sunlight stopped coming in because it faded away into the darkness. And maybe the Astronomy Tower, because of the way the stairway curved and suddenly left you inside the stone, but Harry couldn’t believe that anyone going up and down the stairs wouldn’t have noticed it before this. After all, Dumbledore had said they would be in a fight to the death when they found the secret.

In fact, Harry thought as he scratched out the Tower on his list, that would apply to any place within Hogwarts. I can’t imagine the Ministry hasn’t entered most of the places in it, looking for the key that will let them unlock the Sorting Hat and the rest of those things.

There might be possibilities in those places that no one had entered, though. Harry wrote down the Room of Requirement and circled it.

There was also the Forbidden Forest. Harry grimaced at the thought of wandering through the whole of it until they located the place. He didn’t think Dumbledore and Snape would require them to do that, but considering how paranoid they had been with the rest of the precautions, it might be possible.

Where else? Harry leaned back, tapping his quill against his teeth, and had to admit that he couldn’t think of many more likely places. Yes, you could shut sunlight off by closing a door, but the shadows would still be there if there was any light source anywhere in the space. And the sunlight could come back the minute you opened the door again. That was stopping it, not ending it.

Unless maybe the difference between the words “stop” and “end” wasn’t important.

Harry blew out his breath and shook his head. He was getting angry again, because he was frustrated, and that was the last thing he needed right now. He shoved the parchment away from him, cast defensive charms around the table, the chair, and the bed, and then set about doing what he could to relieve his own frustration.

His magic writhed and danced as he cast the spells, creating chains as thick as his thumb and made of shining blue-black steel. Harry grimaced and wound them around his wrists. They wouldn’t do the job, of course. His magic could break anything formed of his magic. He couldn’t be held back as he really needed to be.

But this was still the best solution. He could hardly go for another run through the Forbidden Forest right now. He attached the chains to the outside of the defensive charms on the bed and then threw his wand from him.

Immediately, he felt anxiety stirring in his muscles, the memory of how Voldemort had bound him in the graveyard rushing to the forefront of his mind. Harry panted, sweat on his forehead and his collarbone and under his arms. He would have liked something to rest his forehead against, and Bradley usually provided it, but he wouldn’t get it here. This was a compromise, one that wouldn’t last long.

But while it lasted, it might help him and remove some of the coiling, crackling tension that was the real problem.

He lunged forwards against the chains. They creaked, but held. Harry lunged again, then forced himself backwards and thrashed from side to side, concentrating on trying to find the weak points among the thick links or in the cuffs that covered his arms.

There was none-at least yet. And Harry felt that sensation he didn’t know how to define except as a burst of freedom pass through him, white behind his eyes, cool and still when it reached his heart, and for a few seconds he was calm.

He had to fight the bonds, but he also needed them. In fact, he needed them to be strong enough that he couldn’t break free. Once bound, once past the first moments when instinct and fear made him struggle, then it was as if the bonds of his anger shattered to compensate.

Bradley hadn’t liked doing this, although he was willing to accommodate Harry in some other things and Harry had done “worse” for him in the past. The bonds should always be weak enough to snap with a single pull, was his view. In fact, he preferred string to anything else. It was the symbolic importance of the binding that he liked.

But Harry needed chains.

The moment of relaxation was passing. Harry could remember the ropes that Voldemort had used to tie him down, the rough hemp rubbing against his skin, how he hadn’t been able to move but had struggled desperately to get away. Past bled into present, and he threw his weight against the chains again.

This time, they parted. Either the magic he’d used in the creation of them or the magic that they’d been attached to simply wasn’t strong enough. Harry sprawled on the floor in the midst of the rapidly dissipating links and took a few quick breaths, preparing a lie in case anyone from the Three Broomsticks should come up to see what the noise was about.

Sometimes he thought these brief moments of respite were actually worse than simply suppressing and controlling his anger until he could find someone else to do it for him. They made him remember and crave what he couldn’t have, and desire would join the anger, resulting in a still more unstable combination.

At other times, he had tried buying his own chains, but his magic would simply undo those just when he was falling into true peace, because it interpreted his giving up as a sign that he was surrendering and had to have help.

Harry rocked back on his heels and shook his head. He didn’t think he would ever find somebody who understood why he wanted to be tied up and ordered about, but also why he had to fight it in the beginning. He knew there were people who could lie down on the floor and become submissive as easily as they could go to sleep. But he wasn’t one of them.

Well. He had got this far without a person who permanently understood him. In fact, permanent understanding was probably an illusion anyway. Look at how his “unbreakable” friendship with Ron and Hermione had turned out.

Sour again, but deciding that was better than angry, Harry went back to studying the list of likely places the riddle could be referring to.

Part Two.

This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/290887.html. Comment wherever you like.