From the centre of the night-bound continent comes death. It roars down from the ice-locked heart at speeds of up to two hundred miles per hour. Its temperatures are the coldest on Earth. Were a traveller to smile at the sheets of light rolling across the midnight sky overhead, his teeth would shatter from the cold.

Moving on over the sheets of ice it reaches the lower lands, where vast flocks of Emperor penguins huddle together against its teeth. These elegantly absurd birds, straight from Mary Poppins’ favourite cafe, shuffle together so that each takes a turn in weathering the fury on the outskirts of the flock.

Weddell seals hide where they can from the death. They seek shelter in water that cannot freeze thanks to the miracle of salt. The seals stay underwater as long as they can and only come up briefly for oxygen. By gnawing at the ice with their sharp teeth the seals keep breathing holes open. This gives them a breathing space and, when the orcas return in the spring, a bolt-hole.

As it sweeps out over the ocean, death in its fashion brings life. It is a cog in the great interconnected deux machina that is our world. By moving ice away from the shores and causing frigid salt- and nutrient-rich waters to sink and move northwards, it stirs the currents that feed the rest of the planet.

It is the Antarctic Katabatic Wind.

It is death. It is life.

Miles inland, over one of the wind-sculpted cliffs, ice-crystals fell in what would have been a rainbow had it been daylight.

When they fell they disturbed a sleeper.

The creature stirred and pricked an ear to hear what had woken it. Ice. Ice falling, ice moving; ancient ice so weighted-down that it has lost all air-bubbles and would appear blue could it be seen mutters and moans to itself as gravity pulls it to the faraway shore and its eventual death.

To the sleeper the ice sounds like Mother. The ice holds the sleeper lightly in its snowy arms. It talks to the Aunties. It complains about the daily tug of gravity. It croons lovingly to the baby in its arms.

This sleeper would be happy if the concept of happiness was known to it. It has not known unhappiness, so how could it be aware of happiness? It has, however, known was it is to be restive and in search of a place to stop. Now it knows contentment. This is the closest it can come to an awareness of joy.

Here in the coldest place on Earth there is warmth. Happiness, of a kind.

Home is close.

The creature closes its eyes and sleeps.

***

Dear Diary.

I suppose this is as good a beginning as any. Dan has advised me to write for at least twenty minutes every day about anything.

Okay, five minutes later and I’m still trying to figure out what to write. Um... Nice weather today... Blue skies, tweeting birds, autumn leaves drifting to the floor of the Dark Forest where they will form drifts for vampires and the like to hide under while they wait until night’s cloak allows them to emerge and continue their relentless and unstoppable hunt for human blood.

Maybe I should write about Dan. When I owled Rona and asked for her advice she told me to go and see Dan. Apparently he’s been counselling mental cases for years and specialises in straightening out children and teenagers like me. I don’t think he’s a Muggle. Rona says he’s one of those weird people you find sometimes who can’t be bothered with the conventional wizarding world and who like to remain part of Muggle society. Maybe he’s just a Muggle she met at University who specialised in psychotherapy, which seems kind of wizardish to me. Dan’s okay. I didn’t like him at first – well, of course I didn’t like him. I’m expected to basically open up all my thoughts for this person and have him knock off all the scabs just so’s he can tell me I’m a raving nutter who should be locked up in St Mungo’s. How can anyone look forward to meeting someone like that?

He didn’t say that, of course. But he did say that I’m suffering from nervous exhaustion. That’s why my hands have been shaking like they have and why my thoughts seem to be flying away from me. It’s been really hard to make decisions. I spent too many weeks telling myself that I was just being an idiot and even if there was a problem there was no-one I could talk to. Well, I mean, really? If I talked to someone they’d either go completely overboard about it and try to protect me and talk to other people about it and it’d get out and into the papers and... Let’s not even think about that.

Or they’d feel sorry for me. Merlin, I couldn’t stand that.

Funny how it was Snape who made me realise that something was wrong. He was really cool about it, too. Not that there’s any way in a million years I’m going to admit to him that I’m going for psychotherapy.

***

Harry Potter, hero of the wizarding world, recipient of the Order of Merlin First Class and participant in the destruction of the most powerful Dark Wizard ever known, crouched by the door and eavesdropped shamelessly to the raging argument between Headmaster of Hogwarts Albus Dumbledore, the Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge, and Hogwarts’ Potions master Severus Snape.

"What do you hear?" whispered the woman kneeling next to him.

"Shh… I think they’re coming out!"

Harry scrambled to his feet and helped his companion up. She didn’t really need the help – after four months of pregnancy Helen was only beginning to thicken around the waist a little – but Harry had developed a surprising (to his mind) degree of proprietary fussiness concerning Mrs Snape.

Boy Hero and Pregnant Woman scampered over to the couch.

They had just sat down and picked up their cooling cups of tea ("Thermos," whispered Harry, with a practised flick of his wand) when the door slammed open.

Snape, of course. He had dramatically-bursting-through-doors down to a fine art.

"… and then the Baron told me that Sir Cadogan was, in fact… Oh, hello Severus." Helen put the teacup down in the saucer. "All going well?"

Snape sneered. "You tell me. You and the Potter boy had your ears pushed so close to the door you’ve virtually left imprints of your heads. Weren’t you meant to be helping Madam Pomfrey with her stock-taking, Helen?" He looked extremely cross. Harry hoped he wouldn’t take it out on Helen.

Come to think of it, Harry Potter hoped Snape wouldn’t take it out on Harry Potter.

"It got too boring up in the hospital. And all we managed to hear was that you were angry," Helen replied, utterly unruffled by Snape’s mood. "Seeing as how you being in a temper isn’t novel, I’m still curious as to the specifics."

"I think you two can stay curious a little longer," muttered Snape, glaring at Fudge as the Minister edged uneasily into the room.

"Really, Professor Snape, young Mr Potter is old enough to –"

"To act like an idiot if given half a chance," Snape interrupted, snarling. "This is none of his business."

Fudge’s mouth pursed. "I hardly see how you can stand in the way of –"

Snape’s eyes glittered maliciously from behind the greasy black hair falling over his face. "You don’t? Let me spell it out for you. I’m the only one who can source what you are looking for so that you can send Potter off on yet another of your hair-brained attempts to have him maimed or killed." He folded his arms slowly, standing up to his full height to intimidate the Minister further. "I’ve spent fifteen years – at least – trying to keep his daft hide relatively unscarred and I’m not about to let you discard all my hard work."

Fudge turned to Dumbledore. The Headmaster was examining Snape’s bookshelves, possibly for dust of which there was none, house-elves and Snape being what they were.

"You make him see sense," Fudge demanded. "I’ve no more time for dealing with his stubbornness. Either he helps or I’ll find another way around the obstacle. Good day to you, Headmaster. Mr Potter. Mrs Snape."

"Shut the door on your way out," said Snape, but the rudeness was automatic. His eyes were too busy studying Dumbledore to watch Fudge’s exit. Even the bang of the heavy door didn’t make him twitch.

"Really, Severus," Dumbledore admonished mildly. "He’s only doing his job."

"So was Voldemort."

"Now, now. That’s unfair and you know it."

Snape looked sullen. "Life’s unfair."

For a moment Harry had the impression that the Potions master was about to scuff the carpet with the toe of his boot like a naughty schoolboy being scolded by the Headmaster.

"Yes, so you tell me every day. But it’s hardly an excuse for baiting poor Cornelius." Dumbledore forestalled any further outburst by raising one blue-veined hand. "I just ask you to think about it, that’s all. The situation would benefit greatly from your expertise, you know." He turned to Snape’s wife with a genuine smile. "Helen, I’m sorry I can’t stay and chat with you, but there’s some pressing business with plumbing that needs replacing."

"It’s so hard to get good help these days," Helen replied. Harry wondered if she’d learned the phrase from a book. Given all the books she’d been devouring since she’d become human it was entirely possible. She lifted a plate of cakes. "But take a piece of ginger crunch for the road – hall. I made it myself. This is my day for cooking."

"Why, thank you. My, but it looks delicious."

Harry admired Dumbledore’s bravery. The ginger crunch not only made your eyes water, it was like eating one of Hagrid’s rock cakes topped with sweet tar.

"Severus? Aren’t you going to try some of your wife’s cooking?"

"To my everlasting regret, Headmaster, this is the day my people fast."

That was a new one. Harry decided to remember that for future use. By Helen’s discrete snort he guessed she didn’t believe Snape’s excuse either.

Dumbledore nodded and left. The door closed behind him much more quietly than it had closed behind Fudge.

Snape collapsed onto the couch, rubbing one hand over his eyes.

"Tea, Sev?"

"No, thank you," Snape replied politely, then betrayed himself by picking up and hurling the couch cushions at the closed door. They bounced off it with a succession of dull thumps. He covered his face with his hands again and began massaging his temples with his thumbs.

"Then would you like to tell us what that was all about?" Helen asked as she poured him a cup of tea anyway. "It got you angry enough for one of your headaches, so it must have been something more than Harry getting caught sneaking into the kitchens with Ron and Hermione."

The fingers parted just enough to let through a glare. Harry had never met Snape’s foster-mother but he wondered if that glare had been perfected while Snape was still young enough to play peek-a-boo. He’d ask Snape’s foster-sister Rona next time he saw her.

"I suppose Mr Potter will find out soon enough…" Snape sat up with a sigh, propping his elbows on his knees and letting his hands dangle tiredly from the wrists. He looked at Harry. "The Ministry wants to send you on some sort of fool’s errand. Again."

"And you don’t think I should go?"

Snape gave him a sideways glare that would have curdled milk. "Did I give that impression? How odd. I thought I was all but booting you out the front gates of Hogwarts in my haste to have you run out and commit suicide."

Sometimes, Harry realised, even in his sarcasm Snape could give away his finer feelings. He knew better than to point it out, though. If Snape ever wanted psychoanalysis he could talk to Dan. Harry wasn’t stupid enough to try digging around in the Potions master’s head. Apart from seriously annoying Snape, the idea of what he might find there was a frightening one. "What do they want me to do?"

Snape snorted. "I see. I tell you so that you can race out and get eviscerated."

"I wasn’t –"

Harry was interrupted by Snape in Full Sneer Mode. "This may have escaped your notice, Potter, but every time I have prevailed upon you to act with sanity you have utterly disregarded my advice and gone careering about looking for the quickest method of suicide. You’ve done everything but paint a bull’s-eye on your chest and dance around on top of Astronomy Tower in a thunderstorm singing ‘stupid, stupid, stupid gods, you can’t get me’."

That, Harry knew, meant Snape wasn’t going to tell him

***

Dear Diary

Snape’s driving me crazy. If it wasn’t for Helen and Potions classes I wouldn’t need to see him at all, but as Potions is mandatory and Helen’s really cool to talk to, the old vampire bat’s unavoidable. I’m glad that he was quiet about the real reason for sending me to the infirmary that day when my hands were shaking so bad I couldn’t even stir a cauldron properly (not that he’d say I can stir a cauldron properly even when my hands aren’t shaking), but I’m sixteen and he’s still treating me like a kid! He won’t tell me what was going on with Fudge and Dumbledore that day even though I know it was about me. He won’t even tell Helen in case she tells me. I know that because I asked Helen.

That day I went to the infirmary was really… weird. In class he was all normal: "Mr Potter, are you too busy polishing your medals to pay proper attention to your Burnease solution? Five points off Gryffindor for your vanity and you will see me after classes to discuss your grades. Now go and see Madam Pomfrey about those boils." And he gave me a note for Madam Pomfrey.

I was so mad at him. I was so mad I was about to throw that potion me and Ron were making just to see it drip from his greasy hair and big, hooked nose and I know Ron wouldn’t have argued with me. Much. But Helen would have been cross.

And then when I went down to see him afterwards he told me to sit down and hold my hands out level. I was getting angrier and angrier with how he was treating me like I was an idiot and the way my hands – no, the way I was so weak that my hands couldn’t stop trembling.

And then he started talking to me. With me. I’ve never talked with him like that, like I was finally a person with real problems rather than someone who lived for fame while everyone else around him did all the hard work. He told me what Dan told me later – that I was exhausted. I’d been through too much. I was sixteen years old and no sixteen year old should have been put through what I’d been put through. I needed a rest. I nearly cried right there in front of him (that makes me cringe just thinking about it but Dan says that I have to write everything down, good and bad) because of how finally someone saw what I’d been looking to put words to, that I need a rest.

I’m tired.

I’m really, really tired. It’s not something that goes away after a night’s sleep, either. It’s something that’s only come up because that thing between me and Voldemort has been finished and I can stop. I’m not needed anymore. I don’t have to be strong for anyone else than myself and now I’m worrying that it’s destroying me.

He said I should talk to Madam Pomfrey and then he gave me a Potion that I forget the name of to help me get a decent night’s sleep. It worked, too. I felt a lot better the next day, as if I could think again and make proper decisions in my life. For my life.

I decided to owl Rona. I suppose I should have talked to Mrs Weasley, but she’s just too… I don’t know. I think she’d try and help me too much. Sirius... well, he’s still got enough problems sorting his own life out. I feel bad taking problems to him. Same with Remus. Rona knew that I didn’t want her to help me directly, but I needed someone else who could help me, someone I didn’t ever have to meet except to sort out my head. It’s easier to talk to strangers. I don’t want Dan to ever become a friend. It’s not because I don’t like him, in fact he seems like a really nice guy for someone so old (he must be as old as Rona and Snape, I reckon) but because I need him to stay sort of a stranger. It’s easier to tell strangers the sort of things my friends wouldn’t like to hear. There are things I might say that could scare Ron and Hermione, not to mention Sirius, who’s been fussing over me every day since he got free in an effort to make up for all the years he wasn’t here for me. Poor Sirius. I wish I knew how I could tell him that I know it wasn’t his fault. That my mum and dad wouldn’t be mad at him. I’m just glad he’s here now, him and Remus, even if they do argue non-stop about the best way to teach DADA. I’m really glad they’re my family even if they aren’t really, but I just don’t know how to say these things to him. I’m not ready to have a family. Maybe I’m not meant to. Now that I see it written down in this little book Rona gave me it looks kind of pathetic and whiny, but I don’t mean it like that. I wish I’d had my parents live, of course, but maybe I’m the kind of person who can manage without a family. Maybe friends can be enough. Maybe… maybe I’m just too far gone into my own problems to have a family. Maybe I’d be bad at being part of a family. But in reality I think that I’ve gone so long on my own that I don’t really need one anymore. Sirius manages fine without a family. Well… come to think of it, he manages kind of crap and always relies on Remus to make the important decisions for him, like should he buy a house or rent a house, and where…

Why am I writing about Sirius? This book’s meant to be for me and me alone, Dan said. It’s to sort out my problems and not those of the rest of the world. The rest of the world can get along without me now, after all… Well, that’s not what Dan said, but it’s true anyway. Snape would probably give me a lovely big label like Anachranism Boy if I asked him to. Well, maybe not Anachranism Boy. He’s cleverer with words than me.

I’m not very good at this whole writing-of-inner-thoughts thing, either. I’m not sure how to arrange my inner thoughts. I can’t put into words why talking to Dan about my problems is OK and talking to Molly Weasley, who’s the closest I have to a mother, is not OK. I’m tired. Time to go to bed. There’s some of that Potion left… That’s right, it’s called Requiem Tincture. It’s not like the Dreamless Sleep Potion – this one lets you dream and you have a really good night sleep. The dreams are kind of strange and sometimes they leave you tired in the morning like you’ve been working in your sleep but at least you don’t wake up screaming. That’s generally recognised in sane circles as a good thing, or so I’ve been told.

But… How did Snape know I needed that particular Potion?

Halfway through DADA, Professor Lupin, now the DADA master again, received a note and sent Harry outside. At first shaken and thinking the worst and that someone else had died, Harry was delighted to see Charlie Weasley waiting in the corridor outside for him with a big smile on his friendly, freckled face. Hogwarts lost some of the grey it had taken on in that brief moment of imagined horror.

"Charlie!"

The young man swept him into a quick hug and then held Harry at arm’s length. "Let’s get a look at you, Harry. I haven’t seen you for… oh, ages. Mum said I had to check that you were looking after yourself, eating healthy, et cetera, et cetera…"

"And?"

Charlie sucked air in through his teeth. "We-ell, you’re still looking peaky, but I guess I can give you a clean bill of health. Of course, if you had scales things’d be easier. I could check to see if you’re moulting in rough patches or not. I’m not so good with non-dragon health."

"How are the dragons going?"

Charlie nodded off down the corridor. "Come on. If you get me past that fat pink lady on the door and into the Gryffindor common room I’ll tell you all about it. Got some new scars," he said proudly before adding, in a worried voice, "Just don’t tell Mum or she’ll go spare."

Harry grinned. "I’ll remember not to… well, not until I need to blackmail you over something."

Charlie punched him lightly on the shoulder. "Blackmail? I heard you’d been spending time with Snape. Sounds like you’re joining the Slytherins, with your sudden ability to be sneaky!"

"Ouch!" Harry laughed. "No, don’t worry. I’m a Gryffindor still."

"So no new tricks learned over the summer? Ron was furious that you stayed with Snape of all people rather than come and stay at the Burrow with him. I got this message from him that was a few degrees away from being a Howler – he seemed to think that if I’d been a proper big brother and not dragged Mum away for a holiday you’d’ve been safe in the bosom of the Weasley household." He grinned slyly in an expression that looked odd on his honest, freckled Weasley face. "Ginny was mad at me, too. Any idea why?"

"Um. No," said Harry, blushing. He’d thought Ginny had grown out of her crush on him. She’d been dating someone from Hufflepuff last year, anyway The idea of dating Ron’s sister was too… weird. As Ron’s sister, Ginny was virtually a blood relative. What made it even more awkward was that Harry still had some vestiges of his crush on Cho Chang.

"Oh. Well, never mind. I can ask her while I’m here."

Harry struggled to find a sentence that wouldn’t end in him being red-faced. "Staying long?"

Charlie chuckled. "Hopefully not. Not that I’m unhappy being back at the old place… Hello, Sir Nicholas."

"Why, Charlie Weasley isn’t it?" exclaimed the ghost heartily. "Good to see you back, m’boy!"

"And you, Sir Nick."

The ghost drifted away through a wall.

"…But life’s even more interesting outside these walls," Charlie carried on. "That’s why I’ve come to see you, in fact."

"Oh," said Harry, who had been wondering why.

"Oh," grinned Charlie. "I can see you’re dying to ask why. Ah. Here we are."

They were at the portrait of the Pink Lady. Harry gave the password ("Wonky Faint") and the portrait swung open for them to enter the Gryffindor common-room.

"Ahh," exclaimed Charlie, planting his hands on his hips and looking around happily at the red and gold furnishings. "This brings back good memories. Funny – it seems smaller now, though."

Harry looked around and shrugged. "It always seems the same to me." Like home.

Charlie smiled indulgently. "Well, I’m surprised to hear that. You’ve really shot up this last year or so. You’re taller than me, now."

Harry grinned. "Yeah. I didn’t want to mention it in case your feelings got hurt."

Charlie clutched at his chest. "Oh – that hurt! A hit, a palpable hit right to the ego!" He collapsed into the most comfortable seat by the unlit fire. "Sit down and tell me how your summer went."

Harry skimmed over most parts of it as, judging by Charlie’s expression Snape wasn’t his favourite topic (Charlie was one of the few people who had been told about how Harry had stayed with Severus Snape in New Zealand), but Charlie asked a lot of questions about Burd Helen’s transformation from alpine parrot to woman. Harry answered those he could when they weren’t personal questions, but some of Charlie’s questions about Grandmother Taniwha touched on subjects he knew little, if anything, about.

"I don’t know how she did it," Harry had to say. "I don’t how anyone or anything can take a person who’s been killed… especially that way… and then bring them back to life." Finding his fingers picking at each other’s nails, he gripped the arms of the chair to keep them out of trouble. He’d had a bit of trouble lately by making his fingers bleed by picking at them. "I’m sure I’m not the only person who wants to know – Voldemort and his Death Eaters did a lot of damage before they left this world."

Charlie nodded. "I’m sorry, Harry. I shouldn’t really be asking you all these questions."

"No –" Harry shook his head. "– don’t be sorry. It not like I’m not used to questions and I’ve had curiosity hit me badly enough to know that sometimes you really need to find things out. I don’t mind. It’s not like you’re Rita Skeeter."

Charlie nodded again, but Harry couldn’t help noticing that when he spoke again he had changed the subject to dragons. Of course, Charlie being Charlie, dragons were usually the only subject, so maybe it wasn’t a coincidence. "Did you see an Antipodean Opaleye while you were down there?" Charlie asked.

"No. I didn’t see any dragons. I hardly saw any magical creatures apart from the pooka – oh, and the taniwha, of course. I heard Lucius Malfoy got munched by an Opaleye, though."

Charlie’s eyes lit up. "Yeah! Just think – you were near a nesting Opaleye! That’s so cool. I’ve been wanting to see one for years. Little beauties, they are, even when they get a bit grumpy."

Harry bit the inside of his cheek. Charlie’s enthusiasm was a bit… er… blinding sometimes. "Actually, I think Lucius probably wasn’t happy about seeing one."

"Eh. He probably irritated the poor old thing. Merlin knows he irritated everyone else. I hope he didn’t give her food poisoning. The dragon digestive system can be a little delicate."

The really frightening thing for Harry was that Charlie was quite serious.

Harry still didn’t know what had happened with the Malfoys. Snape had admitted only to Lucius being dead and Draco having disappeared. Narcissa had taken herself off to Paris on extended retail therapy. That last was what Helen had said, anyway, not that she had said much on the subject. Harry suspected Helen was a lot more upset over Draco’s disappearance than she let on. Helen of the overlarge heart could even hold a soft spot for someone like Draco Malfoy. She had mentioned that Malfoy Manor was sealed up until Narcissa decided what to do with it. Harry had the impression that Helen knew more than she was saying, but after only a few months as a human she was learning to keep secrets. Snape’s influence, no doubt. Not that Harry was unhappy with this new-found ability on Burd Helen’s part – it had come in useful during all the questioning she had been subjected to once Ron and Hermione had got over their caution in the face of a Mrs Snape.

Helen adored Ron and Hermione.

Snape’s attitude hadn’t changed a jot that Harry could see. He was still nasty in class – and out of class, too. If he had eased up slightly on the trio it was only because he’d mellowed slightly in general after Voldemort’s defeat. Harry, Ron and Hermione often dropped in to see Mrs Helen Snape when they knew her husband was off supervising detention (and when they weren’t the detentioned). Much as Harry enjoyed the cosy chats, he was glad that Helen glossed over many of the more pointed questions she was asked, such as, how can you stand being married to Snape?

Ron had needed to visit Madam Pomfrey for the bruised ribs Hermione had given him after he asked that. Hermione had been so embarrassed she hadn’t spoken to Ron for a week, all of which made things more interesting in the bumpy road that those two called their love-life. Of course Harry had been stuck in the middle of their spat… "Sorry?" he said, aware that Charlie had asked him a question.

"I was asking," Charlie said with a patient twinkle in his eyes, "If you wanted to take an extra-credit assignment for Care of Magical Creatures."

"Huh? What sort?"

"Well, it’d involve some travel from Hogwarts but it’s kind of secret so I can’t tell you unless you decide to do it…"

That wasn’t helpful. "Did Hagrid say it’s be okay?"

"He said I should ask you. But…" Charlie’s grin broadened "… he said he was incredibly jealous of the chance and if he wasn’t busy teaching he’d go hisself. Himself, I mean."

"Would Dumbledore okay it?"

"He said it’s your decision."

"Can I think about it?"

"Of course. But you can’t talk to anyone other than McGonagall or Hagrid. Oh, you can talk to Dumbledore, of course. But no-one else."

***

Harry thought about it.

"Mister Potter – is it too much to ask for you to pay attention in my class? I suppose you think you have better things to do with your time than learn the intricacies inherent in this study. You will write me a two-foot scroll of those things and how they pale before the art of Potions making."

***

"Okay, Charlie. When do we leave?"

***

Shivering, Harry considered that at least the chill of the dungeons had the benefit of being warmed by Snape’s temper. Nothing so human penetrated the timeless cold of this God-forsaken continent. The sun bled through in watery rays that in no way mitigated the razor edge on the wind.

"Bit nippy, isn’t it?" Charlie called out cheerfully as he tramped across the new snow to the music of ice crystals crunching under his fleece-lined boots.

Charlie Weasley was one of those people unfortunately endowed by nature to be cheerful and bright no matter what the circumstance. When the Titanic had sunk there had probably been someone like him on board saying "Gee – I hope you guys brought your swimsuits!" Harry was beginning to wonder if he’d been spending too much time around Snape after all, because Charlie was beginning to seriously get on his wick.

"You could say that." You could also say that I’m freezing my essentials off. "Could you run over the reasons why I’m standing out here waiting to be eaten by an enraged dragon?"

Charlie made to reply but was cut off by his superior, Warder Ida Burkett. "You are not going to be eaten, Mr Potter," she said patiently. "We have every spell and trap ready. You are perfectly safe. All you need to do is stand where you are. Your high personal level of magic and the beast’s hunger will do the rest."

Harry sighed and hunched down a little and stamped his feet to keep the blood moving. He was well-wrapped in a parka lined with Arctic Skrimt fur and his trousers and under-jacket were made from dragonhide. But even with all the warming spells on his clothing the cold got through. It was like the entire land didn’t want him here. A sudden vicious gust of wind was like a slap to the face. It pushed away the scarf he had protecting his face and scoured his bare skin with tiny grains of ice that felt like sandpaper. Or Crookshanks’ tongue. Harry wished furiously that he was back in Hogwarts with a nice hot cup of chocolate steaming before him and that it was just Hermione’s cat licking his face instead of this… this… this unforgiving wind.

It had sounded exciting when Charlie had helped him get ready. Go to Antarctica, where locator spells had given a rough estimate (well, within a few hundred square miles of frozen wasteland) of the whereabouts of a mythical Ice Dragon. Wait for the Ice Dragon to show itself. Catch Ice Dragon. Bring Ice Dragon back to England for further study.

Charlie had been in ecstasies. "A real, live Ice Dragon! There haven’t been any seen in – oh, not since the Goblin Rebellion, at least. Not that they were ever abundant, no. Dragons – well, I love dragons, I mean, who wouldn’t – they’re fantastic! But Ice Dragons are the dragon’s dragon. No-one’s even sure how they came about. Wolde wrote that they had been around for millions of years, and came from dragons the same way birds came from dinosaurs. If you believe in dinosaurs, of course… We’ve just got to catch it. There’s so much we can learn from it if we can just…"

Harry had listened with growing enthusiasm. Charlie was contagious that way. It had sounded really exciting – to be part of an expedition to capture possibly the last member of a species that had been thought extinct. "But why me?" he’d asked.

"Your personal magic is really high. Madam Burkett – you’ll love her, she’s just great – reckons that you’ll be the perfect lure for our trap."

"I’ll be bait?" That hadn’t sounded good.

"You’ll be a core member of our team. And you’ll get to write up a paper with us on the Ice Dragon. It’s a great opportunity and a foot in the door if you want to get into meta-zoology when you graduate from Hogwarts."

"If we catch one."

"Harry! Of course we’re going to catch one. We have to catch one. It’s every biologist’s dream to work with an Ice Dragon. When did you get so pessimistic?"

Harry couldn’t answer that one.

But now, standing watching his shadow slowly pivot about his feet as the sun progressed around the horizon (it never set at this time of year even if it only lurked around the horizon and circled like predator weighing up the odds), he was having a very bad feeling in his stomach. Of course things were going to go wrong. And even if they did go right, what were the chances of someone getting killed in the process? There would be no taniwha to bring back the dead this time. And chances were fair to excellent that someone would die. That was the way of the world, particularly when it came to Harry Potter’s part of it. He stamped his feet again and muttered a warming spell for the umpteenth time, casting a glance around for the hidden traps. They were well-disguised. No dragon, however smart or magical, would be able to spot them.

His shadow had travelled over thirty degrees by the time Burkett called a halt. "Okay, kids," she called out from her hole in the snow. She stepped out of the snow-covered hide. "Smoko time. Harry, I’ll put some hot chocolate on for you. Well done, laddie. You’re a patient sort." She grinned at him, showing a gap where (it was rumoured) she’d lost her front teeth biting a dragon to show it who the boss was. (The rumour also said that she’d been the winner on that day.)

Her emergence was some sort of a signal. Like some species of hardy perennial, wizards bloomed from the snow, brushing snow off their dragon-hide jerkins and trousers and straightening their parkas.

"Come on, Harry," Charlie called. "You’ve stood out here long enough. Back to base, eh?"

"I just want to walk around a bit," Harry called back. "My legs have got stiff."

"Fair enough. I’ll keep something hot ready for you."

"Thanks, Charlie." He watched the others trudge back to the large hemispherical tent they were calling base. It was true he needed to stretch his legs, but Harry didn’t feel like talking to anyone else yet. Ever since Voldemort’s final defeat he’d found himself less and less sociable until Hermione and Ron were the only ones he talked to on a regular basis. He didn’t want to go back into the confined space of the tent and talk to (or be ignored by – which was worse in a way as it made him feel uncomfortable about how much of an outsider he was) the Magical Creatures wizards. Charlie was the youngest and by far the friendliest. Mind you, Harry thought as he wandered over to the lip of the plateau, it would be hard to find anyone less friendly than Charlie. The others were, in their ways, as dedicated to their profession as Charlie, but in a different way Harry couldn’t quite put a finger on. They were more… ambitious, was one word that came to mind. Possibly less compassionate. Charlie loved dragons, yes, but he was the sort of man to put them up on a pedestal and worship them. The others… they saw dragons as animals. Of course, dragons were animals, but Harry had always felt some of the reverence for dragons that Charlie had in spades. Maybe after years of working with them Charlie would lose some of that reverence. Harry hoped not – it was part of what made Charlie Charlie.

He was standing on the plateau’s edge now, with the sun to his left. That wind from the teeth of Hell was blowing from behind. It never seemed to stop. Sometimes it was a thin breeze. Yesterday it had roared and no-one had been able to go outside without being tumbled head over heels. Tempers had become short.

From here he could see for miles until the horizon was blurred by a haze of light striking off snow. Harry stretched out his arms. It was glorious. It was cold, unforgiving, and inhumane, and it was glorious. The rest of the world had been losing colour in the last few months as if all the life had been sucked out of it along with Voldemort. Even Fawkes the phoenix looked dim. But here in this near-sterile land painted with shades of green and grey and white and the endless arc of multi-hued blue overhead, there suddenly seemed to be a savour the rest of the world was lacking. It was as though gravity had sucked everything down to the bottom of the world. Here was not a place for people and, for the first time since he couldn’t remember, Harry felt like he might just be allowed to be free.

Antarctica held no obligations. You lived or you died on your own merits or on the whim of the continent. It was harsh and unforgiving and, Ice Dragon or no, Harry was suddenly glad he’d come.

He stamped his feet again to warm them. Oops – a chunk of ice broke away. Harry threw himself backwards to avoid following it.

Unable to resist, he slithered forward on his belly to watch it fall. From his perspective it tumbled slowly, turning and flashing blue-green and gold. It hit the side of a wall of ice and bounced, chips of ice scattering and flickering madly in the light of the low sun. With a muffled crash it hit the powder snow on a ledge half-way down. Harry watched to see if it would fall any further but it seemed to be happy to rest where it was.

Harry sighed happily, and considered dropping another bit of ice.

The powder snow shifted.

Harry blinked, then rubbed behind his glasses at his eyes. No – he hadn’t imagined it. The snow was moving.

Something was coming out of it. Harry held his breath, his green eyes round.

A long-snouted, elegant head poked out. Something shouldered its way out of the snow and shook itself off like Snuffles coming out of the lake. It yawned, turning its head lazily so that Harry could make out a row of pearly pointed teeth.

Wings – slightly translucent and oddly petal-tender – stretched out to their full span. They swept down as the strong back legs bunched and uncoiled and the beast leaped into flight.

The sunlight caught on the rippling hide and reflected pale silvery rainbows through those wings as the Ice Dragon flew faster and gained height. In it were all the colours of Antarctica.

It flew like phoenix song.

Harry realised his mouth was open when his teeth began to hurt from the cold. He shut his mouth and watched as the Ice Dragon circled higher and then turned into the sun.

Harry blinked through tears and sunspots as the sun blinded him, and it was gone.

He rolled over onto his back. He’d heard the song of a phoenix and the roar of the crowd cheering him as he caught the Snitch. He’d ridden a hippogriff. He’d touched the Philosopher’s Stone. But never in his life had he seen anything so beautiful. It was like being able to watch music.

And they wanted to catch it?

To hell with that! Harry jumped up, determined to tell the others that he’d had enough and that this was a wild-greylag chase.

He was halfway back to base when he felt someone – something – watching. Turning, he saw it.

I never even heard it land.

The Ice Dragon was standing four-square only a score of meters away. It had its wings half-furled and it tilted its head as it watched Harry. It was even more beautiful close up.

"Hey there," Harry whispered, keeping in mind the talons sunk into the snow and the sharp teeth he’d glimpsed only a minute ago. "Well. Look at you."

The dragon tilted its head and made an inquiring noise that turned into a hiss when Harry walked closer. "Okay, okay. I’ll just stay here. I’m not going to hurt you, I promise." Harry tried to think soothing, calm, happy thoughts to keep his body language relaxed like Hagrid had taught them in Care of Magical Creatures.

Harry frowned. It was almost as if he’d been asked a question.

Smallcreatureblackhair>

With no small amount of shock, Harry realised he’d just seen a picture of himself framed as a question. A distorted picture, true, nothing he’d ever seen in a mirror, and with colours that couldn’t possibly exist to the human eye, but perhaps something like what he’d look like through a dragon’s eyes. He tried to think something back at the dragon: <beautiful. Happytoseedragon>

again, but this time the question was more confident. The wings folded slightly more. Yes, the dragon was definitely curious about this odd creature walking around on the ice. Harry just hoped it didn’t connect him with the lump of ice that had dropped on its head. "Well," he said again. "I guess you’re what we’ve come here to find. And now I’m not sure if it was really the right thing… I saw you flying before." He held the image of the dragon in flight and projected it as strongly as he could, focusing on how beautiful it had been.

The creature blinked and made a noise a little like a purr. Harry hoped it was a purr and not a growl. The dragon stepped a little closer and stretched out its neck to sniff at Harry from a distance of only a few meters. Closer up Harry could see that the creature was slightly translucent. Its hide, though it looked like suede, held an esoteric shimmer that Harry had only ever seen before in pure, undiluted magic, and that only occasionally. It seemed to be both less and more than flesh and bone. Its eyes were a polished silver-blue that scrutinised Harry with curiosity rather than animosity.

Fearsome, yes, with its teeth and claws and sinewy strength. But fearsome in the heartbreaking way that only distilled beauty can achieve. Harry was wary of the teeth and the claws but the eyes… the eyes told him that the beast wasn’t unfriendly. Yes, it was dangerous. It was dangerous in the same way a kitten is dangerous and if it hurt him it wouldn’t be out of malice, it would be out of a predator’s ignorance of another being’s physical fragility. Harry resolved not to be fragile.

He held out his gloved hand.

The dragon blinked and stretched out its neck to sniff at Harry’s hand. Harry smiled in delight.

And then everything went to Hell.

Harry’s vision disappeared in the geysers of snow erupting around him. For a moment he didn’t know which way was up: even his Seeker skills couldn’t help him as he was tumbled in a smothering cloud of icy grit.

Pale blue ropes lanced up around him. They were glimmering faintly through the clouds of ice. They arched up and clung in a sticky formation before weaving themselves into a giant, glowing web. For a moment Harry wondered if the giant spider Aragog had some cousin that preferred icy wastelands.

Then he heard people yelling in triumph. It was the trap. Somehow he’d sprung it.

"No! Stop!" he shouted.

A thick, scaled tail swept through the air and knocked Harry’s legs out from under him. Harry fell, and through the mist of blue-tinged ice saw the rearing form of the dragon looming over him, claws striking out at the glowing ropes. Its silver-blue eyes were wide but it was blind with panic. It was right above Harry. It was plunging down with its sharp talons –

"Expelliarmis!" shouted several voices and Harry skated backwards through a hole in the web. The hole closed over as soon as he was though.

A strong hand in a thick dragonhide glove grabbed his forearm, grasping him so tightly he knew there would be bruises tomorrow. If he ever had another tomorrow, that was.

"Gotcha!" shouted a husky man’s voice in triumph. "It’s okay now, kid – you’re out of the cage," the voice added.

There was a roar of rage that rose to a screech that threatened to split Harry’s eardrums. He dropped to his knees in pain and clapped his hands over his ears. The wizard-made snowstorm had settled enough to see that his rescuer – Hans Smith – was also down on his knees with his hands over his ears. Harry wasn’t sure, but from reading Warder Smith’s lips he was pretty sure that what the man was saying wasn’t polite.

Then the unearthly screech broke off. It was replaced by a bloodcurdling snarl.

Harry looked up to see that some of the glowing blue ropes had unwound themselves from the net. Now they were wrapped around the dragon’s snout. The teeth were bared but the dragon couldn’t bite.

It could still, however, lash out with tail and claws, and it was pursuing this tactic with every ounce of energy it could muster.

Harry rolled sideways and away from the fight before he could get trampled.

Wizards and witches from the team were holding onto the ropes, trying to tangle them around the neck and legs.

"Hold it down! Hold it down!" Charlie Weasley. "Steady… steady now…"

"Careful of the wings!" roared Burkett. "Don’t let it break any teeth – they’re valuable!"

Spells were going off like flashbulbs. Blinding spells, stunning spells, spells to send it to sleep or at the very least calm it down... Harry even heard one wizard shout "Imperio!", not that it did any good.

All the spells bounced off the silvery hide.

The only things keeping the dragon from flying away were the blue-limned ropes. They were specially strengthened but not soft: horrified, Harry noticed the way that welts were being left behind on the dragon’s skin whenever it pulled particularly strongly against its restraints.

This only enraged it the more.

More welts opened up. One rope must have nicked a vein on one of the wings because a drop of pale blue blood hit the snow next to Harry’s hand. It smoked. Harry couldn’t believe it. He looked around wildly for Charlie – there he was, holding on like grim death to one of the blue ropes.

"Charlie! You’re hurting it!"

Charlie, eyes fixed on the thrashing dragon, said, "Stay back, Harry. We know what we’re doing."

Harry wanted to say: no, you don’t. You don’t know anything about what this really is. It’s not a dragon, not like you think a dragon is! But he knew that if he distracted Charlie now then the creature could lash out and kill his friend. He could almost hear its bloodthirsty rage. Images of tearing and biting and lashing out with claws he didn’t have staggered Harry. He went down on his knees and clutched at his head until he was sure his thoughts were his own again. He looked up, panting slightly from the effort. Yes, the Ice Dragon wanted them all dead. But Harry had seen something else to it when it had first contacted him – something amazing. Something that had done nothing to deserve being hurt – and certainly not hurt like this.

Maybe if he waited, Charlie would see the damage they were doing and...

And then the Ice Dragon loosened the rope around its nose and snapped at a stunning spell.

The spell disappeared and the dragon’s growl became triumphant.

"Look out! Dibbles, get a noose around that nose, fast as!"

A lasso was thrown. The dragon tossed its head just in time, throwing two people of balance. Only a quick summons by Burkett, who was supervising from a little way back, saved them from evisceration.

Snap!

Snap! Snap! Snap!

The dragon was eating the spells! Harry had never heard of such a thing being possible.

Then the dragon bit at the rope tethering a foreleg to the ground.

The blue light that kept the rope magically strong went out, the light zooming along the length of rope and into the dragon’s mouth like spaghetti.

In a few seconds all the blue was gone and all that was keeping the dragon on the ground was the bare strength of the ropes.

With a few more infuriated bites the dragon cut through those as well. The wings and tail were free.

The tail whipped out and caught Hans in the chest. He was thrown over Harry’s head. Harry scurried back to check on him.

For a terrible moment he thought the man was dead. Hans wasn’t breathing. Then he took a shuddering breath. "I’m okay," he croaked. "Don’t let it fly away."

Harry patted him on the shoulder – the best reassurance he could give at the moment, because secretly he wanted the Ice Dragon to fly far and fast and never have to see another human being again as long as it lived.

Someone shouted: "It’s going! Merlin, someone throw a –"

The shadow rose vast on the plain of ice, huge with the sun low on the horizon. Harry looked up.

Still snarling, its hide cris-crossed with rope burns, the dragon rose onto its hind legs and stretched out its wings. Fragments of rope and spells littered the plain for scores of meters around. Wizards were picking themselves up and getting their wands ready.

The Ice Dragon paused and looked at Harry. Its upper lip curled back just enough to show a row of teeth like bleached bone needles. Then it looked at the wizards scattered around the plain and the lip pulled back in a full, silent snarl.

<biteriptearbloodbloodbloodblood>

<fly> thought Harry, holding the image of the Ice Dragon soaring around the glacial cliffs strong in his mind. <flyflyflyfree>

The dragon snarled and shook its head as if it could get rid of Harry’s thoughts that way. With sharp snaps and crackles it dug its claws into the ice and took another look at all the humans who were picking themselves up now and reaching for their wands. It sneered – Harry would have bet his last Galleon that it sneered – at the sight.

Harry gagged as the taste of <hotsweetmagicalblood> thickly layered his tongue.

<fly!> he thought again, desperately clamping down on the his terror of Charlie Weasley being torn apart by the furious dragon. No point in giving it ideas. <flynowflynowflynowfreefreefree!>

The dragon hissed angrily, but it spread its wings.

"It’s going to escape!" shouted the voice of Dibble. "By Merlin’s beard, it’s not getting away!"

Some of the dragon’s arrogance must have filtered through to Harry: Harry thought with contempt, And how are you going to stop something that eats magic and bites through nylon rope?

Harry wished he hadn’t asked that, even in the privacy of his own mind, because Dibble was opening a box. A box that was shaking as if a mini-boggart was inside it. Something that muttered and fussed angrily. Something that every Quidditch player knew by heart and nightmare and dreaded hearing...

The Bludger shot out of the box.

The dragon leaped up, bringing its wings down for the first wingstroke that would send it up into the sky.

Harry grabbed his wand and aimed it at the Bludger.

Too late…

There was a sickening crack and the dragon keeled sideways, crashing down onto the ice.

Harry just stood there, unable to believe what he’d just seen. The Bludger had completely shattered the dragon’s wing close to the base. The entire wing had folded as grotesquely as the sail on the broken mast of a yacht.

"No..." he whispered, as stunned as the dragon.

He tried to run forward but then the pain hit him.

***

Someone was crying. Harry could hear a high-pitched keening of pain and loss. He sat up, concerned at first by the strange light and the stranger sleeping bag. Then he remembered – oh yes – I’m in Antarctica. I’m in the base tent.

Then memory hit him like… like the Bludger that had hit the dragon, and Harry cried out.

"What is it?" asked a familiar, kindly voice.

"Charlie? Charlie! What happened?"

Charlie looked angry, but not with Harry. "You fainted when... when we caught the Ice Dragon."

Harry wrapped his arms around his knees and regarded Charlie with an accusatory glare. "That’s it crying, isn’t it."

Charlie’s angry expression became tinged with guilt. He looked away from Harry as if he were ashamed to meet his friend’s eyes. "We can’t get any spells to stick to it... it’s like they just won’t hold. They slide off its hide. We can’t take its pain away, we can’t heal the break, we can’t even let it sleep while we put a splint on it..."

Furious, Harry kicked his way free of the sleeping bag. "Let me see it."

"I hardly see how –"

The keening was making Harry shake. It even made his fingernails itch. Harry put on his glasses, ignoring the way they were so cold that they hurt the bridge of his nose. "I need to see it."

"All right..."

Outside, things were even worse. The creature had been pegged down by so many ropes it looked like it had been taken out of a picture Harry had seen in Gulliver’s Travels. Its mouth was gaping as far as the ropes would allow and it breathed in shallow pants. A thin drip of the palest blue ichor oozed from the wounded wing. Slivers of bone protruded at odd angles. There was an argument going on nearby between Hans and a witch whose name Harry couldn’t remember over how best to splint it. The witch wanted to pierce the flight membrane to fasten straps around the bone as no spells to hold a splint would work. Hans, still breathing a little roughly and with one arm in a sling, was arguing for the wing to be strapped to the dragon’s side, but as this would necessitate loosening some of the ropes no-one else wanted to do this. They were too frightened that the dragon would attack again.

Harry looked at it, wondering if it were capable of defending itself if he "accidentally" undid the ropes.

Its eyes were glazed.

It looked like it were preparing for death.

There was no way it could defend itself. Harry crouched near the head and tried to contact it again. All he got was a blank wall of shock that left his own mind befuddled.

"Charlie, it’s dying," he whispered.

"It won’t die," Charlie promised. "Sure, it looks bad at the moment, but it’ll be okay once we get it back to England and in a quiet place."

"If you can’t heal the wing it won’t be able to fly. If it knows it can’t fly again it’ll die," Harry persisted.

Charlie took a deep breath, then coughed. The air was so cold that it ripped the moisture out of lungs and deep breaths weren’t advised by medi-wizards. When he could speak again, he said quietly, "We don’t have a cage big enough for it to fly in, Harry. Normal dragons, they can be kept in by wards. But this one, well, its flying days are over, I’m afraid. It’s too dangerous to be let around loose. That’s partly why we’re here, you know; because the Ministry heard that there was an Ice Dragon and anybody who knows anything about Ice Dragons knows that they’re incredibly dangerous. They’re the only species of dragon that has ever deliberately gone out to hunt down wizards."

"I didn’t see this one doing much of that," Harry hissed. "More the other way around, it seemed to me. So you just think you can catch it and breaking its wings doesn’t matter because it’s not going to fly anymore anyway because a bunch of wizards from the Ministry decided that some creature at the end of the Earth which was minding its own business might just have been a threat based on what little evidence they have..." He trailed off, coughing from a dry throat.

Charlie put his hands on Harry’s shoulders and shook him lightly. "Harry... you’re just young. I know that this seems really brutal to you –"

"Because it is," Harry snarled at him, twisting free and stepping back to look at the man he’d thought he could trust to do the right thing.

"Harry. It’s just one of those things that have to be done. It’s not pretty, and it doesn’t seem just to you, but you have to believe me that we’ve got the wizarding community’s best interests at heart here. Sometimes life can seem ugly and harsh but it’s necessary."

Harry nodded. This was not an argument he could win. Even if he convinced the other wizards to let the Ice Dragon go, what could be done with it then? None of them knew how to heal it. They couldn’t even get spells to stick to it, let along do anything useful. Left alone the Ice Dragon would die. And Harry would be responsible for another death. But Charlie had said two things that stuck in his mind:

The first thing was that the Ministry was involved in this.

The second thing was that Harry already knew that things in life could seem ugly and harsh while, at the same time, be necessary. Harry knew all about that.

He looked at the prone figure of the Ice Dragon in its crumpled majesty and told himself not to do anything that would make Charlie suspicious. As strongly as he could, he thought at it: <I’mgettinghelp>

The Ice Dragon’s eyes flickered a little as if it had heard him.

Harry blinked. For a moment he’d thought he’d seen an image of a person from his own mind. But – after a couple of seconds’ thought he knew that the image couldn’t have been from his memory. It had been too... not the person he knew. Too friendly. The foreign memory had shown him a person who was the first choice whenever something went wrong. That was definitely not Harry’s own personal experience of that person. Which meant...

"I should get back to Hogwarts now," he said. "I’m still feeling a little dizzy."

"Hm. You look kinda pale," Charlie agreed, brow furrowed. "Okay. I’ll arrange the Portkey."

He was back in a moment. It seemed that now that the prey had been caught the bait was no longer important and could go.

Harry took the Portkey. It was ready to go in a few seconds and, as he felt it take effect, he thought: I already knew the person who knows more about being ugly and harsh and necessary than anyone else in the world.

But how did the Ice Dragon know about him?

"Hey!"

Harry didn’t know who that was – maybe Professor Sinistra? – because he was running too fast. He didn’t care, anyway. He kept running through the Hogwarts corridors, scattering a group of Ravenclaw fourth years and ignoring the comments from the paintings ("In my day students only ran that fast if they were on fire or late for Transfiguration with old Josh – remember him? Ah, those were the days…").

He was too quick for Peeves. The poltergeist, hearing the sounds of a student sprinting through the castle, thought he was ready with a water balloon. He raised it in one spectral hand… aimed… and –

Harry didn’t notice that he’d run past Peeves so fast the malicious phantasm was spun like a top. Harry didn’t even stop when Peeves – out of control – wrapped himself up in a tapestry. (The complaints of the maiden tending the unicorns in the tapestry never reached Harry’s ears, although she would later lodge a complaint with the Bloody Baron who would in turn stuff Peeves into a jug of chow-chow for the better part of a week. None of the other inhabitants would miss Peeves and it would only be when he was dished up on cold beef during lunch in the Great Hall that he would be released.)

By the time he collapsed through the entrance to Gryffindor dormitory Harry could barely breathe. He wrestled his parka off before he could begin to broil. "He- huh… Her…"

"Harry! What’s happened? Has someone hexed you?"

Ron, who had been sitting over by the empty fireplace playing Seamus at chess (Seamus was losing badly) ran over to grab his friend’s arm.

Harry was bent double trying to get his breath back. He pushed Ron’s arm away when Ron tried to wave a wand at him. "No, I’m fine. I’m not – Hey! I’m not hexed!" he added quickly.

Seamus had his wand out and was saying: "Sure, but I’m good at fixing hexes these days, Harry… Let’s see what it is, then…"

"Leave him alone!" Ron yelled, alarmed. "You’ll blow him up!"

"Only trying to help," Seamus said huffily.

"Don’t see how you exploding Harry is going to help anyone," Ron grumbled as he led Harry over one of the red-and-gold sofas. "Can I get you a drink, Harry?"

Harry shook his head. "Thanks," he said, finally thinking that he might one day be able to breathe comfortably without extra oxygen. With a bit of luck he hadn’t even ruptured a lung. "But I need to be quick. I need my Dad’s old cloak…"

"I’ll get it. You look done in."

Harry managed to look grateful. "Ta, Ron. Where’s Hermione?"

Ron’s face twisted into a sour expression that would have done Snape proud. "Doing her extra credit assignment."

"Thought she might be. Do me a favour?"

"Sure."

"Can you bring the cloak down to meet me?"

"You’re going…?"

"Yeah. Please?"

Ron sighed. "Yeah. Okay."

"Thanks. You’re a true friend."

Ron punched him lightly in the shoulder. "Go carefully. You’re interrupting study-time, and you know how Hermione gets about that…"

Harry grinned back at his red-headed friend, glad Ron was Ron. "I know. I’ll get you the new Fillibuster’s Firecrackers next time we go to Hogsmeade."

And he was off again with his rubbery knees becoming and his lungs threatening to burst into flames. Luckily it was all downhill from here.

Hermione had been wanting to do some extra work to help lift her grades from – as far as Harry could tell – being merely high to up into the stratosphere. She was working with Neville Longbottom (who needed the extra work to raise his grade to a pass) on a special project that the two kept utterly secret. Although Harry knew Hermione could keep a secret with the best of them, he was surprised by Neville. The other boy had, only this year, shown a surprising maturity. It was only Neville’s new-found ability to apply a business-like attitude to things that had previously terrified him stupid, Harry suspected, that stopped Ron from throwing a wobbly over the amount of time his girlfriend was spending with Neville. Ron had grown up, too, if he no longer needed to feel jealous over Hermione spending time with another guy other than Harry.

Harry had tried half-heartedly to get the secret out of Hermione, but she had proven unusually solemn and shaken her head, disappointed with Harry’s curiosity. "Honestly, Harry, it’s something important for Neville and the kind of research we’re doing has ethical boundaries which mean we have to keep quiet about what we’re working on."

Harry had given up at that point. Arguing with Hermione about ethics was high on Harry’s list of Things Not To Do.

He could have weaselled it out of Neville, of course, but apart from the way it would have given Harry a nasty case of guilt Harry still felt a little uneasy around Neville after what he had learned about Neville’s parents. They’d stopped Snape from getting the vital piece of information through that might have saved James and Lily Potter. Even though they hadn’t been directly involved in the murders of Harry’s own parents he still knew that, somewhere in the darkest corner of his mind, he felt that their torture and insanity were justified. Last summer he’d said that he could face Neville without any anger. And he wasn’t angry at Neville, not really. But he still felt uncomfortable knowing that he wasn’t truly sad over Neville’s parents being in St Mungo’s. And there was always that dark thought that surfaced at the most unlikely times that would whisper: At least Neville’s parents are alive.

And he would feel jealous.

That was something that really bothered him. Bothered him so much, in fact, that Harry was glad for the way the muscles of his legs were threatening to go into revolt and his glasses were fogging up from the sweat pouring off him and the way he was about to –

Crash!

"Ouch." He sat up and found his glasses in the wreckage of one of the suits of armour. Filch was going to have a fit when he was the devastation Harry was making simply by travelling through the castle.

To Hell with Filch. There were bigger, badder and nastier things out there than the caretaker and his motley moggy.

Harry wiped blood from a cut on his hand where the suit’s broadsword had narrowly avoided cutting off his fingers and aimed himself at a door set halfway along the corridor.

"Oi!" came a shout from behind him. "Potter, ya little horror! I’ve caught yer at yer mischief this time!"

Blast. It was Filch. Never mind, Harry was almost at the door. He burst through it and tripped.

And fell again.

Harry lay sprawled on his stomach and thought how nice and cool the stone floor was. It was so much easier to breathe lying down, too…

A pair of black boots entered his vision.

A silken voice said, "Well. It would seem that young Mr Potter has finally learned to appreciate my classes. While I was expecting slightly less enthusiasm, this display is in character of someone who has finally had an epiphany and wishes to throw himself into the most demanding of the arts. I hope all of you appreciate Mr Potter’s ability to share the profound discovery of his heart. You may take notes on the excellent way he has prostrated himself before the Master of the Craft."

Oh yes. If Filch ever wanted to know what was bigger, badder and nastier than him and Mrs Norris combined Harry would happily direct him towards Severus Snape.

Harry sat up, wheezing. And frowned. Snape was offering him a hand. Harry didn’t bother to stop and analyse what it might cost him later in Gryffindor credibility. He just took it and let the Potions master pull him up onto his feet.

Harry managed to peer around the room. There was Hermione working with Neville. A simmering cauldron was to their right and they had had their heads together over a textbook when Harry had come barging in. Hermione was looking at him now with her eyebrows together, anxiety written large on her face. Neville looked astonished. This could have been either the way Harry had appeared suited up in full dragonhide or by how Snape had helped a Potter up.

Snape was looking Harry up and down. Harry saw the moment Snape guessed. His black eyes flashed with fury. "What have you done, Potter?" he hissed.

Harry was used to standing in the storm of Snape’s anger, but this storm made him quake. He’d only seen Snape this angry once before when he’d accused Harry and Draco Malfoy of endangering his wife. "Well?"

Filch stumbled into the Potions laboratory. "Professor…" he began.

Snape lifted one hand to silence Filch. The other was gripping Harry’s shoulder so tight that Harry winced. "Answer me, Potter. What have you done?"

Harry said, "I think you know where I went. You probably know why, too." He cast a significant look at the other students in the room. Apart from Hermione and Neville, there were pairs of sixth-year Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs as well as Millicent Bulstrode and Blaise Zabini, two of the few Slytherins who had remained at Hogwarts instead of transferring to Durmstrang last year. This was the extra-credit Potions class for those sixth-year students who wanted to do personal research. And all of the students virtually had their ears on stalks trying to find out what was going on.

"Professor…"

Snape understood even if his harsh glare didn’t relent. "Get out. All of you. Leave your cauldrons and take your books."

There was a quiet rustling as the students evacuated before Snape could go ballistic. Even Filch seemed to have some idea of how angry the professor was – he had left, too, him and Mrs Norris.

"Well?" Snape’s voice was at its softest and most deadly. "Out with it, boy."

"The Ministry sent a team of dragon handlers to Antarctica. They took me, too – I was the bait."

Snape’s pale, thin lips went even thinner and paler at that, but he didn’t say anything.

Harry continued. "They were looking for an Ice Dragon. I don’t – didn’t know anything about it. But then it found me and –" He swallowed. "And then they caught it. They said it was dangerous."

"And how," Snape purred, "do you know it isn’t?"

Harry glared back at him. "I heard it. Like pictures in my mind. It wasn’t vicious – they said it was but it isn’t. It just wanted to meet me. It was… I saw it flying and it was beautiful. It was… it was…"

Snape heard what Harry couldn’t say. "And now? What is it now?" He had both hands on Harry’s shoulders now, clenched so hard Harry would have bruises on his bruises.

Harry bit his lip and wished people would stop grabbing his shoulders. "Now they’ve broken its wing. Their spells didn’t hold it so someone, he… he let a Bludger go…"

Snape winced.

"Professor, you have to help it!"

"And why should I help it?" Snape breathed.

But Harry had seen the speculative look in his eyes and knew that Snape was already planning out strategies. "Because it knows you," he said, and was rewarded by a look of pure astonishment.

"What?"

"I told it I was going for help," Harry said doggedly, "and it showed me a picture of you in its mind."

Snape let go of him abruptly and whirled away. With a muttered oath he extinguished the fires under the cauldrons and snapped out cooling charms. "All of these potions ruined, of course," he said sourly. He bent his head a little so that Harry couldn’t see his expression. "All right, Potter. I hope you know exactly where you left from. Antarctica is a big place."

Harry held up the Portkey. "This got me here. Hermione taught me a reverse-charm so that I can track it backwards."

"Ah. The inestimable Miss Granger. Remind me to thank her if we live through this."

"Sir?"

Snape strode over to a desk and pulled out one of the drawers so that the drawer fell onto the ground and scattered paper and quills. As Snape reached into the empty space and felt around right at the back, he said, "The Ministry is occasionally right. The Ice Dragon is dangerous. Helping it could get us killed."

"But it was friendly…"

"I hope it will be friendlier to us than it was to Lucius Malfoy."

"Sorry?"

Snape grunted in concentration as he groped for whatever it was he was looking for. "Lucius wasn’t eaten by an Antipodean Opaleye. He was eaten by your new best friend. Completely –"

Snap!

"Ouch!" Snape pulled his hand out from the desk and shook off a mousetrap. "Damn things," he grumbled. "Forgot I left that there." Undeterred, he put his hand back in. "Here we go," he muttered with satisfaction.

Harry tried to see what he held in his hand, but Snape’s long yellowed fingers weren’t giving away any secrets. He broke into a run to keep up with Snape’s long strides as Snape stalked out of the classroom.

"Give me the Portkey."

Harry handed it over and tried to look over Snape’s shoulder as they hurried along. But when Harry tripped on the billowing cloak and Snape snarled at him wordlessly he thought it wiser to drop back. That was a bonus when Ron came sprinting down the stairs and barrelled into Snape.

Snape caught his balance on a wall sconce. He said a word that certainly wasn’t on the Charms syllabus but made Ron’s eyes go wide.

"S-s-sorry, sir," he stuttered. "Um… Harry…?"

Harry held out his hand and Ron, after a moment’s hesitation while he eyed an increasingly-impatient Snape, held out the Invisibility Cloak.

Snape intercepted it with a smooth, "I’ll take that," to the mutual (but unvoiced) consternation of the two Gryffindors. Before they could protest he was taking the stairs up from the dungeons three at a time.

Ron caught Harry’s eye. Harry replied with a head-shake and gave Ron a grateful slap on the shoulder as he hurried after Snape.

As they strode down the steps outside the castle Snape snapped without looking back, "Where do you think you’re going, Potter?"

"Antarctica," Harry replied.

"I think not," Snape hissed, still not looking at Harry. Harry wondered just how angry the man was. "You’ll stay here and be a good little Gryffindor and not get into trouble. For a change."

Pretty angry, yup. "No."

Snape whirled so fast Harry nearly cannoned into him. "What did you say, Potter?"

Harry steeled himself. "I said ‘no.’ I’m going to Antarctica."

"Is that what you think?"

"That’s what’s going to happen. It’s my cloak," he said, knowing it was a bloody stupid thing as he did so, "and…" He faltered at the look of contempt he got back.

"Haven’t you learned to share your toys and play nicely with the other children yet?"

"You never did," Harry retorted, finally losing his last thread of patience. "But it’s not just that. I’m a parseltongue."

"I hardly see how that’s going to help. There are no snakes in Antarctica."

"Then how come I could speak to the dragon and no-one else could?" Harry was trying not to shout but it was a losing battle. "How the hell do you think you’re going to talk to it?"

By the way Snape drew himself up Harry knew he’d overstepped the mark. Again.

"I don’t need to speak to it. And," he added, raking Harry with a glare, "I don’t need to waste any more time talking to you. Get back to your dormitory, Mr Potter, and I’ll see you later about arranging detention for your cheek."

He turned on his heel and hurried off.

Harry stood there for a moment, steaming in the watery November sun, quite prepared to let Snape dig his own grave.

Then he broke into a run.

He caught up with Snape just as through the gates. In the shadow of the winged boars Snape hissed the syllables of the Portkey-reversal spell.

The shadows seemed to darken for a second and Snape disappeared.

Harry had managed to grab a fold of Snape’s robes as the Potions master uttered the spell. He, too, vanished.

And then all that was left were the lengthening shadows.

Harry blinked and found himself staring down Snape’s wand. On the other end of it was a very angry Snape. "You," Snape hissed, sounding a lot like an Ice Dragon giving a warning, "are not making life easy for yourself."

Well yes, Harry knew that. He’d known it from the exact moment they had arrived in Antarctica. This philosophical break-through stemmed entirely from the fact that he’d forgotten his parka and he could feel the wind slicing degrees out of his flesh. He stared back mulishly at his teacher.

Maybe said teacher was inured to the cold after so many years spent in the dungeons. Because Snape, standing with his robes fluttering around him in the icy wind, seemed oblivious to the fact that it was cold enough to snap bones.

It seemed unfair to Harry. "So what’s new?" he snapped back. "But I’m here now and I’m going to help!"

Snape’s eyes narrowed. A gust of wind as malevolent as the expression in those eyes blew lank strands of hair into them and Snape had to toss his head. That seemed to break the spell of his anger and he lowered his wand. "Very well, very well… Here," he snarled, unfolding himself from his cloak. "Put this on before you freeze your silly self solid."

Harry glared back. "I can put my Invisibility Cloak on," he protested.

"No, for the simple reason that I will be wearing it. As you’ve chosen to tag along –"

Harry took a quick breath at the unfairness of the statement and choked as the sheer cold of the air dried his throat. That was probably what saved him from a month’s worth of scrubbing out cauldrons with a toothbrush.

"– you can make yourself useful," Snape continued with the silkiness in his voice that told Harry that he was still very angry, "by making yourself visible. While your friends are busy keeping an eye on you they won’t be looking for me."

The warders aren’t my friends… But Harry nodded, reluctantly seeing sense in Snape’s plan. Great – so now he was going to be bait again.

***

It was a bit awkward having to walk at a certain speed on the slippery mix of snow and ice. Harry concentrated hard on walking and tried not to think of where Snape was.

"Harry? Hey! Harry!" It was Charlie, waving and walking towards Harry from the base tent. "What’re you doing back here? Where’s your parka?"

"The Portkey didn’t work properly. It dropped me maybe half a mile from here and a meter above the ground. And I think my parka used to be someone’s cloak. It got Transfigured somewhere between here and there…"

Charlie looked properly appalled. "You’re joking."

Harry looked appropriately annoyed. "Wish I was. It been a hell of a walk back. I nearly fell down a crevasse." He wished he hadn’t embellished quite so much, because what could be seen of Charlie between muffler and hat had gone pale.

"Oh, hell, Harry. I don’t know what could have gone wrong with it… And that cloak’s miles too big and can’t be keeping out the cold… Looks like it was designed to shroud a giraffe…"

Harry would have agreed but his teeth chose that moment to chatter.

"I’ve never known a Portkey fail before," said Charlie. You could have dropped into the ocean, or if you’d been placed a meter below instead of a meter up…?"

"Never mind," Harry said quickly. "How’s everything going here? Is the dragon still alive?"

"Yeah," Charlie said, but he sounded uncertain.

"But?"

"Don’t worry about things, Harry. I’m just glad you got back here okay. Come on – let’s get you warmed up with some hot chocolate." He started walking back to the big tent in the measured strides that he’d developed from walking over the tricky terrain. Harry fell into step beside him.

"Is everyone okay?"

"Yeah. There were a few tricky moments when we splinted the wing and the dragon managed to claw Dodds, but Burkett healed him up okay."

"She managed to heal the dragon?"

Charlie’s expression couldn’t be deciphered under all the winterwear. "No, Dodds. He’s on a camp bed in the tent keeping warm."

"But you managed to splint the wing? How? I thought you weren’t going to risk loosening any of the ropes?"

"They punched three holes in the flight membrane and strapped up the bone through those." Charlie’s expression wasn’t giving anything away, but his voice sounded strained. And Harry had noticed how he’d said "they" instead of "we."

He stored that away for future use.

"What about the bleeding? It was still bleeding when I left."

A puff of steam as Charlie exhaled. "There are pressure bandages on the ones that needed attention. The rest have been left for nature to take care of."

Harry wanted to know about the dragon’s stress levels and if it had come out of its state of shock yet. But Charlie was sounding pretty stressed himself, so he thought it wisest to leave the questions. For now, anyway.

As they reached the tents Harry was aware of every sound. He half-hoped for, half dreaded hearing the sound of the Ice Dragon in pain. If it was still making that awful keening noise then at least it was still alive, but the noise was so… Harry shuddered as he strained his ears but all he could hear were the low voices of the wizards and witches discussing shifting the beast. Charlie tried to pull Harry into the tent but Harry hesitated by the flap.

For a moment he thought it was dead. The eyes were almost closed now and the ribcage didn’t move to show that it was breathing. Then one of the eyelids twitched fractionally.

Harry thought at it as hard as he could: <hereherewithhelp> He squinted as he pictured himself standing ready to help free the dragon. He pictured Snape, too, hoping to get another of those responses from the creature that showed familiarity with the Hogwarts Potions master.

There was no reply. He had no idea if it had heard him. He bit his lip and went into the tent, his shoulders sagging under Snape’s cloak so that the black material wilted and dragged along the ground.

Ida Burkett was inside checking on Dodds. She looked up in astonishment to see Harry. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," he replied, feeling like a spy in a group of people who should have been his friends. Had Snape ever felt like this in his days spying on Voldemort? Harry didn’t want to think about that. Instead, he wondered: where is Snape, anyway? Harry was sure he hadn’t followed him into the tent. Harry had been careful with his footsteps all the way back from where he had reverse-Portkeyed because Snape had been stepping in each and every one of his footprints. Snow would have showed two sets of footprints and it was bad enough having Harry return without raising suspicions further by bringing evidence of an invisible companion.

"He had a little trouble with the Portkey," Charlie explained.

"Hm. That’s disturbing. I’d heard that the magical fluxes could get a bit tangled down in this part of the world. I hope we’re going to be able to shift our new friend without complications."

Harry rather thought that the only further complication that could affect their "new friend" would be death, but he didn’t say that aloud. Instead, he said, "How will you ship the Ice Dragon?"

Charlie pressed a steaming mug of hot chocolate into Harry’s gloved hands. The heat was delicious; it percolated through the heavy leather as the steam rose to suffuse Harry’s senses. It was almost overpowering to have something that was so much a part of Hogwarts, home, and civilisation here in this last of continents. Dangerously distracting.

"We’re going to tie charmed keys to the ropes currently holding the dragon," Charlie said as removed a pile of Wyvern Weekly from a chair and sat down. "We’ve got a cage all set up near the Welsh border. It’s iron is magicked to draw the charmed keys like a magnet. It’s sort of like a Portkey sphere that creates a transferral field that can move a large object from one side of the world to the other. Neat, huh? New from the Ministry."

"The Ministry’s been pretty helpful, by the sounds of it. Did they really ask for me specially?"

Burkett smiled, her weather-beaten face creasing at what must have seemed to her like boyish enthusiasm tempered with shy self-deprecation. Harry hoped so, anyway. Now was the time to use every part of his personal legend to help him. "Yes they did," she said. "You’ve got quite a high level of personal magic and the Arithmancers projected the best success if you were a part of the team."

Team. Harry liked that idea. It sounded a lot better than "bait." "I guess that’s why Minister Fudge came to Hogwarts last week. There was an argument between him and Severus Snape – he’s our Potions master."

Burkett’s smile was less friendly now. "Yes. He’s quite… well known."

Meaning she thought once a Death Eater, always a Death Eater. Harry had seen this frequently ever since the papers had published Snape’s role in Voldemort’s downfall. [They were still trying to get the definitive interview, too. The typical Severus Snape Interview ran along the lines of: "Professor Snape, can I interview y-?" "Piss off." "But our readers want to know i-" (loud popping sound followed by: "Ribbit. Ribbit.")] "Well," said Harry after taking a deep swallow of the hot chocolate, "he didn’t seem to like the idea of me coming down to Antarctica. Luckily Charlie came and asked me, or I never would have known exactly what was going on." Yes, and he meant that on more than the one level.

Burkett smiled at Charlie fondly. "It’s good to have someone who understands the enormity of what we are attempting here. At first the Ministry wanted Snape to be involved, thinking that he might have some hold over the dragon since its an ortho-elemental. Rumour is that Snape’s not entirely human, and might even have some blood link to the Ice Dragon. Me, I think he’s just scared. Facing Voldemort is one thing, but dragons… it takes a lot of guts to deal with dragons. Or maybe he thinks that keeping people safe isn’t all that important. I wouldn’t be surprised, given his past… I’m afraid your Professor Snape told the Minister that we should leave the creature to its own devices. Probably he would have stuck with that philosophy until it flew into Hogwarts and ate him." She smirked at the picture. "Tricky, dangerous beasties, these Ice Dragons. They can’t be left to run around in the wild."

And seeing as how you’ve just crippled its wings running around in a cage is probably all it’ll ever be able to do from now on. If it lives, of course. "I suppose not. I don’t know much about them. Can I go out and have another look at it?"

"Sure. Charlie, would you like to do the honours?"

"Sure. Harry lost his parka in the Portkey accident, so I’ll just dig out my spare for him."

***

When they exited the tent to find that the wind had picked up a few knots, Harry barely noticed the extra wind-chill factor. He felt like he was steaming with fury. He just hoped Charlie didn’t notice. He also hoped Snape had had time to…

"Hey!" shouted Dibbles’ voice. "Some bastard’s loosened the ropes!"

Indeed, some bastard had loosened the ropes. Something, which when glimpsed out of the corner of the eye rippled with a hint of silver, moved over one of them and with a faint twang! it parted as if cut by a knife. Other ropes were already lying limp on the ice or were draped over the creature. Another rope – one of the ones tethering the head – broke.

"Shit! The keys have been removed!" one of the warders snarled.

There was the soft skrik-skrik-skrik of feet running lightly over hard-packed snow and Harry felt someone grab his shoulder.

"Get ready," Snape hissed in his ear.

Harry was pulled towards the motionless hulk of the Ice Dragon.

"Hey!"

Shouts from all around.

"Expelliarmis!"

The Invisibility Cloak was whipped off Snape, who swore and tripped on the hem. Harry grabbed his arm and pulled his teacher back onto his feet.

"Dammit – we’ve got a spy! Burkett – permission to go to Code Seven?"

"Yes," roared Burkett as she charged out of the tent.

"What?" rose Charlie’s voice. "But you can’t use Unforgivables on Harry and Professor Snape…"

"We can when they’re sabotaging the safety of the wizarding world," Burkett replied. Harry caught a glimpse of her expression – it was set in grim fury, her mouth a thin line. She raised her wand.

Just in time, Snape whipped his wand around to deflect a stun and two Immobilus spells. Harry had his own wand out now and sent back a few stunning spells of his own.

Imperio hissed over his shoulder.

Then they were crouching in the lee of the Ice Dragon’s shoulder. Harry could hear it breathing faintly. He could almost feel its mind. Next to him Snape’s breaths were coming short with anger. The Slytherin didn’t need any Arctic-wear, he was almost incandescent with fury. Harry could feel the anger radiating out from him.

"Put your palms on the creature’s skin," Snape ordered softly. "And don’t take them away under any circumstances. Think hard of the clearing with Grandmother Taniwha’s Pool."

Harry nodded. There was a moment’s paranoia when he had to tuck his wand into his robes; now the only thing stopping him from a solid hexing was proximity to the Ice Dragon and once the wizards remembered that their spells couldn’t hurt the Ice Dragon they’d start throwing curses at Harry and Snape like fireworks on the fifth of November.* Harry tucked the bundle of Snape’s cloak under his arm, pressed his hands against the silvery hide and tried not to flinch from the sickly taint of dying magic. Then he closed his eyes and pictured Grandmother Taniwha’s pool as hard as he could.

The first stunning spell bounced off the dragon – Harry felt a fragment of the spell nick his ear, which turned numb.

"Crucio!"

Another thump, this time on the dragon’s snout. The spell had hit a tooth and the spell exploded into sickly fragments that made wailing noises as they scattered across the ice. A warder cried out as one hit her. Harry closed his eyes and prayed none would hit him. There was a thunk and he heard Snape gasp softly. Then Snape was muttering something in a harsh tongue and the world turned to treacle.

Harry’s hair was standing on end. Not that messy hair was anything new for him, but this time it seemed to be standing on end because it was weightless. The rest of him felt weightless, too and, at the same time, so weighted that he couldn’t move. He could have been slowly swept off in the treacle tides and not done a thing about it. The only thing that was anchoring him was the sound of Snape’s voice to his right and the skin of the Ice Dragon under his hands.

Grandmother Taniwha. Grandmother Taniwha. Grandmother Taniwha, Harry thought as hard as he could.

He thought he heard another voice echoing his words, but this one held a different resonance and the connection to the Taniwha’s Pool was deeper and in the bone. Also running deep was a river of bile and anger and guilt.

Harry realised he was hearing echoes of Snape in his mind. No-one else could be that angry and live.

What was even more profoundly disturbing was that a third mind had joined in. This one was in a state of dull panic. It wanted to be somewhere safe. It wanted snow and ice and the embrace of glaciers. It didn’t want to go to some place with hot water. It wanted –

Harry felt it the moment the journey began to fracture. He knew the moment Snape lost control of the thread they were travelling along. Even three-quarters dead, the Ice Dragon was powerful.

Harry felt fear and realised it wasn’t only his. It was the Ice Dragon’s fear, too: fear of being tortured and tied down by the filthy swarming monsters that had kidnapped him from the ice and the skies.

And it was Snape’s fear. A fear that he’d destroyed himself for good this time and taken others down with him. A fear that he couldn’t see Helen again.

In his mind Harry heard Snape calling: Grandmother. Grandmother, please help me… Help us!

Harry gave all the power he could to Snape and saw the cry go out like a white heron.

It was answered.

Child.

Grandmother, help us. Bring us home.

Harry’s very fibre trembled under the titanic weight that was the taniwha’s mind. He felt it move over the trio like a tidal wave. It picked them up and turned them over and examined them then, finding something wanting, fastened a bond between the three minds and set them back on a different path.

Grandmother… what…? That was Snape. Harry heard his bewilderment and fright louder than he heard the words. It was almost as if he was in Snape’s mind, thinking Snape’s thoughts, and the Ice Dragon was there with them... What have you done? Snape and Harry wailed.

I have made the three of you stronger.

The little cousin fears me. He wishes to stay in his home. He wishes to be in the ice and the snow. He will not be safe with me, if for no other reason than he will exhaust himself trying to escape my domain. You cannot join me here.

You will die in the ice and the snow, Severus, my beloved child. So will Harry, whose name is known to me and my mother; and Mother Death says that he is not ready for her realm yet. But there is a place where you can rest for a time. And heal. Healing must be completed for at least two of you before the second journey is begun.

I send you to a neutral ground.

Raw, elemental power was fed through Snape. For one eternal moment that stretched and broke and took no time at all there were not three separate people, but one being, strong and sure of purpose.

And when that eternal moment was broken Harry found himself kneeling in a mausoleum with his hands pressed against a dying Ice Dragon and a motionless Snape slumped against him.

It looked like a mausoleum, anyway. White sheets shrouded the furniture and curtains were open only a slit to show that the sun was still up. Snape was still leaning bonelessly against Harry.

With the strange sucking static he’d felt after touching a TV screen on one of the rare occasions Dudley Dursley turned if off, Harry took his hands away from the Ice Dragon. It twitched a little and moaned, but seemed to be otherwise unconscious. Harry took that as a good sign: given the agony the creature had been in before, unconsciousness would be a blessing. He just hoped it wasn’t actually dying… His mind veered away from that thought. Instead, he put his arms around the professor’s shoulders and eased him back to see how he was. Snape’s head lolled back in a way that couldn’t have done his neck any good and his breaths came in harsh whistles as if his lungs had been damaged. Maybe he was dying like the Ice Dragon.

"Professor? Professor?"

Was that Harry’s voice? It sounded too high and weak. And surely it had stopped cracking like that two years ago?

Harry started to tremble.

Of all the people he’d been afraid of getting killed, Snape had been last on his list. The Slytherin was just too cunning and stupid self-sacrifice was a Gryffindor trait. Of all the people in the world shouldn’t Snape have been the safest? Bastard. He should have been safe. If he wasn’t then it was Snape’s fault, surely not Harry’s. Harry wiped at his eyes. "Professor?"

"Ngh." Snape’s eyes slitted open. He went cross-eyed trying to focus on the face in front of him. "Potter? There’s a werewolf down there." His voice was as harsh as it had been after Voldemort had tortured him with Crucio last summer. "Lupin’s down there, too… gotta get him out…"

Snape was lost somewhere twenty years ago. Harry bit his lip. "Professor Snape, it’s me, Harry."

"Ngh?"

Oh, Merlin; Snape had left his mind behind somewhere along the way. Not that he could be blamed for that – Harry had felt like he had been coming perilously close to that lately. I can’t break, not now. I’ve got to stay strong until this is over and maybe then I can rest. He tried to support Snape’s head on his shoulder before Snape could drop to the floor and stun himself even more; cupping the back of Snape’s head and ignoring the greasy feel of the black hair. It didn’t help matters the way Snape was twitching like a new-born centaur foal with an inner ear infection. He shook the teacher gently. "Professor," he said softly but urgently, "it’s Harry. Harry. Can you understand me? Professor Snape? Come on, Professor. Don’t… don’t leave me alone to deal with this… wake up… be okay, come on…"

Snape closed his eyes.

Not good, not good, not good… Pleasepleaseplease don’t die… It was as if Snape was slipping away just like everyone else who had ever defended Harry. Trying not to vomit out of terror, Harry wrapped his arms around Snape like he’d wanted to wrap his arms around that big soft warm teddy bear Dudley had been given for Christmas one year, and hugged him as hard as he could. "Wake up, wake up, wake up…" Harry muttered in a soft litany of panic. He squeezed harder and shook Snape. "Wake up… come on… don’t bloody well leave me alone here…"

Snape wheezed and rolled his head to the side. His lips had gone paler and Harry realised that he was squeezing him so hard that Snape couldn’t breathe. He should let go before Snape asphyxiated but his arms were locked and he couldn’t let go because if he did Snape would die like everyone else and he really wanted Dumbledore or McGonagall or his godfather Sirius or Remus and especially his parents but all he had was Snape and Snape was dying because he couldn’t breathe and all Harry could hope to do was hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on…

"Don’t you die. Don’t you dare die. Don’t you dare die. Don’t die. Don’t you dare die."

Maybe there was some magic in Harry’s words. Or maybe Snape came out of his daze on his own. With a sudden, strong twitch of his shoulders he struggled against Harry’s grip and managed to break not only the lock but Harry’s spiralling loss of thought as he sat up, staring around the room wide-eyed with bewilderment. "Mr Potter? Where – ?"

"I don’t know," Harry replied unsteadily as he helped him sit up and lean back against a huge four-poster bed. Snape was breathing and awake; that was all that really mattered. And Snape was asking questions. Five-plus years of being a Hogwarts student kicked in and he searched his splintering mind for the answer. "But your Grandmother sent us here, I think. Do you remember? The three of us – you, me, and the Ice Dragon…" Three as one…flying through the overlapping spheres of the world… one purpose, one goal and a strength that equalled more than the sum of its parts… "Don’t you remember?"

Snape started and looked around. When he saw the Ice Dragon sprawled on the other side of Harry he exhaled sharply in relief. "I – we – I was aiming for the clearing…"

"Yes," said Harry quietly, desperately wanting to keep Snape calm. If Snape panicked, then maybe he would Apparate away from here and leave Harry alone with the dead Ice Dragon… "But the taniwha said that the Ice Dragon –" ("Little cousin," she’d called it – him) "– would fight to get away from there. So she sent us to…"

"…A neutral ground," Snape finished. He rubbed his hand over his face, which looked older than it had a few minutes ago. "Yes. I remember, now. Damn," he added with feeling, and ran the hand back through his hair.

Harry kept quiet, watching as Snape came back up to speed: for Snape that was a base of brassed-off with a back note of bitterness topped with strongly astringent sarcasm. As soon as Snape demonstrated some capacity for sarcasm Harry would know things were under control again. There would be someone to help carry the load. Someone to carry the load when the inevitable happened and Harry snapped like his Nimbus 2000 had snapped when the Whomping Willow had destroyed it.

But currently Snape seemed too exhausted to do much more than blink.

"Are you all right?" Snape asked.

"Yes," Harry replied automatically. "How about you?"

"Tired. Used up too much energy in the transfer. He was fighting me." For a moment Snape’s expression revealed a bone-deep shame.

"The dragon?" Harry couldn’t understand the shame. Snape was hiding something – not that that was unusual, but hiding something about the Ice Dragon? He thought of how the Ministry had wanted to enlist the Potions master in the Ice Dragon’s capture and added it to the taniwha’s reference of "little cousin." Maybe it was Snape’s long-lost brother or something. Just what was needed right now, Harry decided with a mental eye-roll.

"Mm" The tone didn’t encourage questions and suggested that any speculations Harry Potter might have should be kept private.

Harry didn’t care. He wasn’t in the mood for questions right now. "Can you stand up?" he asked.

Snape tried to pull himself up using one of the bed posts. He didn’t do too bad a job of it, but Harry, worrying that the man would fall and hurt himself, scrambled to his feet to support Snape.

It was a measure of how badly off Snape was that he didn’t snarl at Harry for his getting in the way and instead gripped the boy’s shoulder for balance. Harry kept one hand under Snape’s elbow to steady him. He also kept his silence except for one hurriedly muttered "Sorry," when, on touching Snape’s lower back, Snape flinched so violently that they both almost fell. Harry’s hand felt sticky and he recalled that just before they had Apparated (or whatever spell it was Snape had used) he’d thought Snape had been hit by a curse cast by one of the warders in Antarctica.

Snape’s back was warm and sticky and Harry couldn’t think about that no he had to think about keeping Snape upright because Snape was fine he was walking so he was fine so if Harry didn’t touch the blood (*not blood nonono it can’t be blood*) then everything was fine.

Okay?

Together they stood and gazed down at the Ice Dragon.

"Is he dead?" Harry whispered.

Snape shook his head slowly. "No. Not yet. Help me down."

It was awkward because Snape, skinny though he was, still weighed considerably more than Harry and his long legs kept buckling at awkward moments. Harry accidentally brushed his hand over the wet, bloody (don’t think about it!) patch on Snape’s back and Snape dug his fingers into Harry’s shoulder so hard that Harry had almost cried out. At least the pain had the advantage of keeping him anchored in reality, Harry realised. If his body hurt then it focussed him away from… all the other stuff.

Once he was kneeling on the rug next to the broken wing, Snape put his hands over the shattered bone. "Still asleep," he grunted with satisfaction. "Let’s hope to whatever god you pray to that he stays that way. Now, pay attention here, Potter. I’m going to check those dunderheads shifted the bone into the correct position and then set it. You need to hold it motionless for the time I cast the spell."

Harry frowned. "Spells don’t stick to it."

Snape gave him the ghost of his usual sneer. "Standard spells, no. Stop questioning me, Potter, and let me do my job. Just make sure you do yours."

Harry considered getting angry, but was too happy that Snape was feeling well enough to be a git again. Besides, he was also relieved that someone in the room (wherever the heck this was) was capable of taking charge. He decided to risk another question. "Is it enough just to hold the bones together with my hands? I can’t lift the entire wing and hold it steady."

"All you need to do is absorb any vibrations that run through the healing tissue. The bone matrix won’t be capable of doing that yet – the cellular lattice needs to form some semblance of crystalline coherence before it will be able to absorb stress for itself. The splint –" Snape almost managed his best sneer "– will give it the necessary gross support but as for stopping the effects of the finer diffusion of the harmonics set up by the magic I’ll be utilising… well, I don’t know a spell for that. Just keep your hands on the wing over the break and your own osteotic tissue and personal magic stores will do the rest."

Harry nodded. He wasn’t quite sure what Snape was on about – his teacher seemed a little muzzy-headed still, and Harry hoped that so long as Snape could operate on the magical level (even if he wasn’t quite up to his full communicative ability) then he, Harry, would only have to follow some basic instructions.

There were some nasty, wet grinding noises that echoed in Harry’s sinus cavities. For a moment he thought he’d vomit. He shut his eyes so as not to look at what Snape was doing, but the pictures he saw conjured up on the backs of his eyelids from the sounds had to have been worse than whatever his open eyes could have seen… Please let it be unconscious…

The sounds stopped.

Harry opened his eyes again.

"Get out of my way, Potter." But Snape was too tired to put the usual venom in. Harry moved without bothering to glare back. On his knees, Snape shuffled to the ortho’s head. From out of his robes he extracted a small shell that spiralled to a point and glowed with a faintly pinkish glow in the dully lit room.

"Hands on the wing." Snape placed the shell between the dragon’s closed eyes and spread his hands over the scaly forehead, then half-closed his own eyes and began to hum. Harry ignored the sticky feel of the almost clear blood seeping from that compound fracture of the wing and thought about keeping his hands steady.

That hum was becoming distracting, though. And when Snape modulated his voice down into the lower registers Harry felt the hairs up the back of his prickle with the sense of tapped magic. There were words in there, Harry was sure of it; but they were words that tickled at the back of his mind as if they hadn’t been invented by anything human. This magic was not like what he’d ever felt at Hogwarts, though, except for maybe once… and Harry couldn’t quite remember what that time had been. Had it been when he’d met the taniwha? Maybe. Memory was a tricky devil.

And then he nearly bit through his tongue as an expanding fuzz of energy oscillated out of Snape’s hands and into the dragon. It set his teeth to itching. Harry wanted to ask what was happening, but Snape’s fierce knitted-brow expression of concentration warned against questions.

The vibration travelled up Harry’s arm and into his teeth. It kept going, soaking into the bones of his skull.

There was one appalling moment when Harry thought every fibre of his body would blast apart.

Then it stopped. Snape opened his eyes and said, "It’s done. You can let go now."

His body still vibrating to that alien frequency, Harry was more than pleased to do so. "It’ll be okay now, wi-?"

The Ice Dragon heaved itself sideways. It lifted its head and swung the pointed nose around to see what was next to it.

Its eyes fastened on Harry and Snape and it bared its teeth.

Harry froze.

The first snap of its jaws would have been Harry’s last moment, but an arm was thrown across Harry’s chest and it pushed the boy backward.

"No," Snape growled, and from Harry’s position next to Snape he could see that Snape had managed to make eye contact with the creature. "No."

The Ice Dragon hissed but didn’t strike. It didn’t blink and neither did Snape. Harry held his breath.

Apart from the long, slow snake-like hiss from the ortho-elemental, the room was as silent as a morgue at midnight. And as cold. Snape’s breath hovered in a faint mist to show he was breathing faster than normal. But he didn’t blink.

If the Ice Dragon breathed, there was no vapour to show it. Or maybe it couldn’t exhale warmth. It hissed again.

Snape didn’t blink.

The Ice Dragon raised its head to stare down at Snape. It tilted its head, and still neither of them blinked. Then the healed wing stretched up and out over Harry’s head until it brushed against Snape’s side close to where the professor had been hit by a spell. There were scorch-marks surrounding the spot on Snape’s robes that glistened with blood, Harry noticed for the first time, then wished he hadn’t. He still felt ill.

Snape winced as the wing touched the wound.

Snape blinked.

The Ice Dragon struck out with its claws.

There was a clap of thunder that almost ruptured Harry’s eardrums, but through it he heard Snape cry out. All light winked out of the room. A solid weight tumbled back against Harry and he did his best to catch it.

When Harry could see again, Snape was lying across his legs and the Ice Dragon was backed up against the far wall, snarling, terrified, its silvery-blue eyes wide.

"Professor!"

Snape clutched at his chest. Harry could see where the creature’s claws had dug parallel furrows into Snape’s flesh. For a moment the cuts were white from the shock of the attack and then the blood began to flow in thick, scarlet rivulets.

More blood.

Harry started to shake again. Don’t have time for this. Gotta keep it together just a little longer… "PROFESSOR SNAPE!"

"I’m all right," Snape gasped, looking around with his eyes wide at Harry’s panicked shout. His teeth were bared, but it could have easily been from anger as from fear or pain. "Dra- The dragon…?"

Harry looked over at the creature. It stared back at him with its eyes even wider than Snape’s and lifted its forefoot up to its mouth. A dark grey tongue licked tentatively at the claws and its expression became – Harry would have sworn on his parents graves – its expression became anxious. It chirruped as if it were calling out for someone.

Snape struggled to sit up. Harry helped as much as he could and managed not to complain when Snape dug a bony elbow into his ribs. "Hush, now," Snape said, and to his surprise Harry realised his teacher was talking to the dragon. "Hush, little dragon. We’re all still alive here."

The Ice Dragon tilted its head and whistled through its nose. Its wings, which had been spreading out as far as injury and the walls would allow – furled again.

Harry saw:

<a man with black hair falling away into the distance. The midnight cloak of power of a taniwha. Sunlight reflecting off a field of ice. A dying woman, her eyes the colour of a starless night. The dark-haired man’s pale face wearing a rare smile>

Harry felt:

<An warmth in his chest that he’d achieved something that made this man proud. Icy fear of the taniwha’s wards. Protectiveness. The incomparable scent of a new-born baby. Determination that no power under sun or stars would harm this baby in his arms. The giddy joy of knowing someone would protect Harry himself>

Harry knew these experiences weren’t his own. Could they belong to the…? <hello?>

The Ice Dragon looked at him and blinked. <darkhairedmanbleedingwhy?>

Harry bit his lip. He couldn’t help the thought that broke through; the memory of the Ice Dragon lashing out…

<DENIAL!!!NonononotmeI’dneverdoTHAT!neverhurtbabyneverNEVERhurtbabypromisedmother!>

"OUCH!" The Ice Dragon’s anger hit Harry squarely in the forehead and he squeezed his eyes shut.

"What?" said Snape.

Harry shook his head. "It – he – I told him he was the one who hurt you and he got angry."

Snape didn’t say anything for a long minute. Then: "Help me onto that couch."

Under the window with its heavy, drawn curtains was a long, low couch. It was covered with a white sheet and looked sad and forgotten, but Harry imagined that it would be cream brocade woven through with green, and a fine place to curl up with some cushions and a good book when the afternoon sun came streaming in and… And the imagining wasn’t Harry’s. Almost, he sent out his mind to see if that had been the Ice Dragon thinking that again, but decided better. The Ice Dragon was sniffing at one of the bedposts. It licked at the smooth wood briefly, then wrinkled its nose. With a deep sigh it climbed onto the bed, accompanied by the groans of protesting springs. For a moment Harry froze, prepared to drag Snape out of the way should the bed collapse and bring the canopy down on them, but the sturdy frame held.

With the utmost care (this was not the time for another tongue-lashing) Harry helped his teacher up and over to the couch. While still steadying Snape with one hand Harry managed to pull the sheet off.

The couch was upholstered in cream brocade. Lavishly woven throughout the material were abstract designs in a forest green.

Harry shot a look over at the Ice Dragon, but it had curled up on the bed with its snout tucked under its wing.

Snape’s legs were giving out and although he did his best, Harry couldn’t help jolting him a little as he tried to ease Snape onto the couch. Snape hissed in pain, but thankfully kept any nasty comments to himself.

Harry straightened up and shivered. The room could have been used as a freezer – it was big enough to hang carcasses from, although they would have looked a little out of place under the chandelier (small though it was) and next to the books. A quick glance at the bookshelves showed that the person who had once inhabited this room liked Quidditch as well as magic. Several of the Hogwarts textbooks Harry knew were on the shelves, alongside others he was sure would never have been allowed on the syllabus… well, Snape might have allowed them… Poisons for Beginners; Hexes Hexes Hexes; The Illustrated Necromancy Reader for Children; So You Want to be an Evil Overlord? (2nd Edition); The Dark Arts for Dummies…

Nope. Nothing there that would be on the syllabus. Harry shivered again, but not so much from cold this time… Whose house was this? And what would they say when they saw their new house guests? Harry just hoped it wouldn’t be Crucio…

"There should be blankets over in that wardrobe," said Snape as he watched Harry from behind the lank curtains of his hair.

Harry looked over at the wardrobe: it was a huge, oaken monstrosity carved with grinning Basilisks and frolicking bubotoads on its double doors. This was either Voldemort’s childhood room or the bedroom of some other seriously deranged kid. Harry couldn’t imagine being able to grow up sane in the kind of house where bubotoads were considered happy nursery pictures, and he’d been raised by the Dursleys.

Harry wasn’t even sure he wanted to open it – freezing had distinct advantages over what he might find in there. But when he took another look at Snape, who was looking pale and unhealthy even by Snape standards, he saw that he was starting to shiver, and he couldn’t let Snape freeze, not after all the trouble he’d gone to to help Harry save the Ice Dragon.

When he tried the wardrobe doors neither would budge.

"Locked. I’ve got my wand, though…"

"Don’t use your wand, boy!" Snape snarled.

"Huh? Sorry, sir? Why not?"

Snape pushed himself up against the arm of the couch and sneered. "Because, idiot child, there is an ortho-elemental in the room. Did you pay any attention in your History of Magic class, or were you just as inattentive there as in my Potions classroom?"

Why was Snape choosing now of all times to go on the attack? With no little effort, Harry kept his temper. "Possibly not, sir," he replied evenly, trying not to notice that his hands were shaking worse than ever.

"Well if you had you’d have known that the reason orthos were so feared was because the are thaumovores – that means that they eat magic, in case you missed that in your DADA classes…"

"Yes, sir. I know what a thaumovore is."

"Don’t interrupt, Potter. I need to explain this to you in simple terms to aid your understanding…"

Harry’s vision was turning red. Snape normally wasn’t this bad even in Potions class… "We learned about thaumovores in DADA."

Snape continued. "Bravo – I’m pleased to hear there is at least one class you are using your ears in. I hope for the sake of whatever poor soul takes over from that werewolf next year that you will at some stage connect said ears to that under-utilised organ you like to call a brain."

Harry’s brain was telling him to push a pillow over Snape’s ugly face and make him shut up once an for all… How dare the greasy git address Remus Lupin as "that werewolf"?

"I will say this slowly to make sure you understand," said Snape, enunciating each word carefully in his silken voice. "Do not use magic. The nasty dragon will want to eat it. You use magic – it will eat you. You no use magic, it no eats you. Hopefully." Primly, he folded his hands in his lap. "It’s a rare species and digesting a Potter may damage it. So again I urge you: do not use magic."

If I lob a spell over at Snape and it sticks in his robes will it eat him? Harry hoped Snape didn’t know how close he was to finding out.

"Open the wardrobe and get out a blanket, there’s a good boy."

"It’s locked," Harry said in a small voice that wobbled like a Boggart in a closet.

"Oh. And is the Boy Who Lived unable to open doors? Really, given all the sneaking around that you and your ghastly little friends have got up to in the past, I’m surprised a silly old wardrobe should give you so much trouble. Can’t you do it without the know-how of that annoying little busy-body Granger?"

"Don’t you talk about her," Harry growled to the wardrobe. "Don’t you even mention her name." He was so angry he could hardly see. His whole body was trembling. Everything was tinged in red and there was a loud thumping in his ears that still wasn’t loud enough to drown out the soft, malicious voice of Severus Snape.

"Open that door, Potter!" Snape barked. "Or do you need me to do it for you?"

"I DON’T NEED YOU FOR ANYTHING!" Harry roared, and hurled himself at the wardrobe.

BANG!

CRASH!

Harry wondered for the tiniest part of a second if he’d broken his shoulder, but didn’t care. Again and again he threw himself against the heavy doors and then, pulling back, started kicking them. Luckily he was still wearing his heavy boots from Antarctica and they put sizeable dents in the wood without letting him hurt his toes.

The wardrobe rocked. The wood around the hinges started to splinter noisily. That wasn’t enough for Harry.

There was a study desk next to the wardrobe – empty of quills and paper – and a wooden chair. Harry picked up the chair by the back and began bashing it against the wardrobe door as hard as he could. When the legs broke off he kept hitting the wardrobe with what was left.

He kept hitting it until he was left with a only couple of sticks of wood. He threw them away, not caring that one rebounded off the wall and hit him on the shin.

By now the doors were a lot the worse for wear. One was hanging off by one hinge.

There was a brief pause for breath.

That finished, Harry ripped the door off its last hinge and lifted it over his head, bringing it down again and again on the wardrobe.

BANG! CRASH! BANG!

"YEAAARRRRRGHYABASTARD!!!"

When he finally dropped the remaining board and sank down to one knee he could see again. The red mist was gone. One lone Basilisk head grinned up at him from the dismembered panel. Harry threw it across the room where it skidded with a clatter under a dresser.

And realised that he’d forgotten he had company…

He looked around. Still curled on the bed, the Ice Dragon was awake again and staring at him with wide, astonished eyes.

Snape… Harry could barely bring himself to look at the slimy git… Snape’s expression was as imperturbable as ever.

"Well? Are there any blankets?" asked Snape, as if nothing as amazing as Harry Potter going berserk had happened.

Harry picked himself up wearily. "I’ll have a look."

***

The wardrobe had seemed like the sort that ought to have been filled with monsters terrible enough to rival the ones carved on the panels. It should have had a gateway to another world – Narnia, or somewhere in the nearby neighbourhood.

There were a few robes – too small for Harry now that he’d grown in the last year – an old Cleansweep that looked as if it had done its previous owner a great deal of service, the inevitable shoes, a couple of shirts and pairs of trousers that seemed to Harry’s unpractised eye to be of good cut and material, and…

"Here we go," Harry said as he lifted a large woollen blanket off the top shelf. "Just the one, I’m afraid sir," he added as he checked further back with his hands that were trembling so bad now that he wondered if he’d ever be able to hold a wand again without accidentally casting a spell.

Snape nodded. "Then it will have to do."

Harry carried it over and tried to tuck it around Snape, only to be pushed away irritably.

"Honestly, Potter; don’t you think you’re in more need of the warmth than me?"

Harry decided not to answer that one. Especially now that he was boiling hot under the dragonhide parka.

<bangcrashbangagain?> was accompanied by the image of a Harry-whirlwind destroying everything in the room. <notthisbed> the Ice Dragon added adamantly with a haughty sniff. <soft+comfy=MINE!>

Harry laughed weakly.

"Something amusing, Mr Potter?" Snape voice had lost its nasty edge and just sounded tired, now.

"The Ice Dragon is staking out the bed as his territory," Harry explained. He thought back to it: > and pictured the dragon curled up on the bed sleeping happily with a smile on its face.

The Ice Dragon didn’t understand why its mouth should be curling up at the corners like that.

Harry laughed again. The laugh rose too high and desperate and he stopped it by clapping his hand over his mouth. He took firm hold of himself. He couldn’t be weak. Voldemort was dead and he’d thought he could rest after that but now there were people still wanting him to go out and slay dragons that he didn’t want to slay and Harry couldn’t be weak and he couldn’t rest and he had to stay strong...

Snape, seemingly not noticing Harry’s lapse, was standing again and managed to lurch closer to the Ice Dragon. It hissed a little when he got too close, but more in a way that suggested it was nervous of him rather than aggressive.

"Can you ask it how it feels?" said Snape, swaying slightly.

Harry closed his eyes.

He received in return something like the mental equivalent of a shrug. "Seems better," he reported. He opened his mind again.

<sleep> the creature told him. <darkhairedboysleeping – sleepingquietly – darkhairedmanwatchingoverus>

Harry raised his head. That last thought hadn’t been from the Ice Dragon. He looked at Snape. The man had his eyes half-closed and the lids were slightly puffy from exhaustion. He wasn’t looking at Harry.

<Godsotiredliedown&DIE>

The next thing Harry knew was that Snape was sprawled on his back on the floor – Harry had some memory of thumping him in the chest – and he, Harry, was kneeling over him, pummelling the man with his fists and shouting: "NO! NO MORE! I WON’T LET YOU DIE TOO!"

From behind the up-flung arm that protected his face Snape’s eyes were wide, but Harry barely had time to register that, let alone enjoy finally having got under the Slytherin’s skin, when he felt

<PAIN!>

exploding down through his shoulder and lancing up through his back just over his right kidney and knew that it wasn’t Harry’s pain it was Snape’s and he, Harry, was causing this pain.

He subsided, still clutching handfuls of Snape’s robes, and bent his head to Snape’s chest. "Not you, too…" he whispered.

"Harry? What is it?" Snape pulled himself up into a sitting position.

That silken voice finally used to show caring was Harry’s undoing. Harry put his hands over his face he tried to turn away, tried to curl into himself, tried to be anywhere but here…

Hands, gentle hands, pulling him back against someone’s shoulder. Scent of blood, the shoulder wincing but Harry was too confused to register that… "Don’t die," whispered Harry into the shoulder.

"I have no intention of doing anything so silly."

"I heard you – you said you wanted to lie down and die."

A faint, startled hiss of in-drawn breath. The arm tucked around Harry tightened briefly. "That… I…" Snape sighed. "We can’t always help the things we think. Thoughts come and go – most of them are just passing fancies – impulses that fade. Nothing more. I want to poison your wretched godfather at least a dozen times a day and he’s still alive – what more proof do you need than that?"

"You wanted to die." Harry’s voice was muffled but didn’t lose its accusatory edge.

He felt the shoulder under his face lift in a shrug and then Snape winced again. "I was tired. I’m hardly about to kill myself. Not now…"

"You’re not going to die?"

The answer was a firm: "No."

"But everybody dies…"

"Mist- Pot- Harry. We are safe here. You’ve been through… you…" Snape was struggling for words. "It’s all right now. Everything will be all right."

Something broke inside Harry. The wall that he’d always needed to stay strong. But now even that couldn’t deal with the fierce storm that had raged inside him for so long.

With harsh, tearing sounds that came from deep inside of him as if he were being ripped from the heart out, Harry wept.

It took a long, timeless time. His tears soaked into Snape’s robes. And then, slowly, under the skin of Harry’s cheek was the tingle of magic.

It was this that made him realise that he was still alive and not alone in the world. He sat up, careful not to jostle his teacher as he remembered that Snape had been wounded.

The rips in the black robes from the creature’s claws still gaped. Beneath them – Harry remembered it vividly in colours that stood out from the rest of the grey world – had been raw red wounds. As he watched, those wounds drew together and sealed off, not even leaving raised scar tissue. Harry raised his fingers hesitantly. "Did you do this?"

Snape brought his own hand up to carefully prod at his shoulder. His fingers came away rusty-red with drying blood, but the reason for the bleeding had vanished. "I believe it was you," Snape replied.

"H- how?" Harry’s voice was creaky.

"Your tears," Snape said softly. "They have healing powers."

Harry’s nose was running. He sniffled.

Snape dug into his robes and found a white linen handkerchief that he handed to Harry. "It’s only the tears that heal," he said. "Here, blow your nose."

Harry smiled a little as he obeyed. "Was that a joke?"

"I’m not noted for my sense of humour."

"No? But," continued Harry, feeling a little embarrassed that he’d let himself go in front of Snape of all people and wanting to move the subject along as fast as possible. He wondered if he should give the handkerchief back? Perhaps not – it was a bit squishy. "But how can my tears heal?"

"I suspect it has something to do with your Animagus form."

Good. Another topic. Harry grabbed it like a lifeline. "But I’m not an Animagus."

"Everyone has the potential to be an Animagus. Most people never bother, but it’s there. Help me up."

Harry climbed up and took Snape’s hand, pulling the man onto his feet. Snape nodded towards a door opposite the remains of the wardrobe. "That should be an en suite. I… think it best if I washed up before the smell of blood makes the ortho hungry."

"It wouldn’t…" Harry almost said that it wouldn’t eat anyone, then remembered an image he’d got from it: the smell and taste of hot wizard blood washing over his tongue. From the Ice Dragon it had been the most delicious thing imaginable – better than pumpkin juice or butterbeer or medichocolate. Harry realised Snape was watching him with a raised eyebrow. "It would, wouldn’t it," he agreed.

Snape nodded. "Better to be safe than dinner." He limped off into the en suite and closed the door behind him. Soon there was the sound of running water.

Harry looked at the Ice Dragon.

The Ice Dragon looked at Harry.

"I don’t think you’d eat him," Harry said quietly.

The Ice Dragon blinked with solemn deliberation, an exercise given an extra eerie element by a thin membrane coming out from the inner corner of each eye to sweep across the silvery eyeball, then yawned hugely, showing rows of pearly teeth that seemed to be in stages of continuous outward growth like a shark’s. Then it closed its jaws with a sharp snap that echoed in the room, settled back down on the bed and, after a cursory scratch of its pointy nose, went to sleep.

Snape stumbled as he came out of the bathroom but Harry, tired and shaken by the day though he was, managed to stop him from falling. He received a grunt of thanks for his trouble.

Keeping in mind the injury on Snape’s back – it was hard not to forget, as when Snape had walked out of the room Harry had had a good look at the damage – Harry steered his professor over to the couch again and eased him down. It must have still hurt, because the hand on Harry’s wrist clenched until the knuckles went white and Harry bit his lip to stop from crying out from the pain.

"Sorry," Snape said as he unclenched his trembling hand.

"’S okay," Harry reassured him, and sat down too.

Snape snorted. "Gryffindor."

Harry grinned. "That’s me." Snape’s cloak – Harry felt a brief pang when he realised his father’s Invisibility Cloak was somewhere in Antarctica – and the woollen blanket were slung over the back of the couch. Harry managed to double them together to make a warmer covering and leaned up against Snape as he pulled the blanket-cloak over them.

Snape didn’t complain about the proximity. Like Harry, he was shivering still, and Harry suspected that in Snape’s case the shivering was more from physical pain than cold. The man’s black eyes were half-lidded and the lines on his face made him look even more forbidding than usual, but from the thin thread of thought Harry was picking up through the dozing Ice Dragon, Snape was too exhausted to do anything so petty as take points off Gryffindor if he thought Harry was using him as a hot water bottle. If anything, Harry guessed, trying hard to pick up what stray impressions he could via the link with the creature, Snape was content just to sit back and be still.

But…

"What did you mean when you said it was my Animagus form that let my tears heal you?" Harry asked.

"Everyone has an Animagus. After the … incident… with Voldemort at Grandmother’s Pool…"

Incident. Harry liked that.

"…when he cast the Killing Curse at me I, ah… What do you remember?"

Harry squeezed his eyes shut. Too much. He remembered Snape lying on the ground at Voldemort’s feet after having been tortured to the point where he could hardly speak. He remembered how Burd Helen had flown in front of Snape to protect him when she was still a kea. He remembered the sound of her soft, feathered corpse hitting the snow after she had been hit by the green light from Voldemort’s wand. He remembered the darkness of the taniwha engulfing the Death Eaters and washing them away into the taniwha’s pit of night. Wormtail’s silver hand had reached out to grab Harry and Harry had knocked it away. Wormtail, the betrayer of his parents, had been taken by the taniwha that night… But Harry was sure that wasn’t what Snape wanted him to remember. "I remember Helen flying to protect you."

There was a brief silence. Snape swallowed audibly before he could continue. "Before that," he said, his voice strangely gruff. "Before that. The first time Voldemort tried to kill me… do you remember?"

"I… I tried to block it…"

"You did block it."

Harry shook his head. "It hurt. I remember that. It was like my head wanted to explode. My scar… I just threw something out to stop him."

"Mm. What did it sound like?"

"Sound like…?" And Harry remembered. His eyes went wide. "Phoenix song," he breathed. "Does that mean my Animagus is a phoenix?"

"I had wondered," Snape said slowly. "And tonight your tears confirmed it. But…"

And Harry sensed the hesitation. Was Snape jealous that Harry would be able to turn into a phoenix? "What’s wrong with being a phoenix?"

"All the Animagus forms you know… list them for me."

Harry rolled his eyes – but not so Snape could see. After everything he’d been through was today turning into another Hogwarts lesson? "Um… Stag, dog, rat…" he snarled the last – Wormtail had been the rat, all right. "Cat, of course, Professor McGonagall… beetle…"

"Who is a beetle?" Snape enquired.

"Rita Skeeter."

"Really? Well, well, well. Any others?"

"Not that I can think of." Harry wondered what this was all leading up to.

"And what do all of these forms have in common when contrasted against a phoenix?"

And then Harry saw. "Oh. They’re all non-magical. Does that mean I can’t…?"

He felt rather than heard Snape sigh. "I’m afraid so, Mr Potter. A phoenix is already a magical beast. This is intrinsic within its biology beyond the powers of witches and wizards. By its nature you would have to give up your own magic if you wanted to properly take on its form."

"But… the tears healed you…"

"Yes. You can use some of its powers – I strongly suspect that is how you have achieved such a communicative bridge with the Ice Dragon – but a phoenix, magical though it is, cannot change into a human. And human magic would not be able to mesh properly with the form of a phoenix. If you ever successfully changed then you would have to give up the powers inherent in Harry James Potter. You would be utterly the phoenix."

Harry was angry again – angry at Snape. Angry at the unfairness of letting him have something so beautiful and then snatching it away. He looked over at the Ice Dragon as it twitched its ears and stirred in its sleep, and told himself to calm down. It was hard – part of Harry was still raging at the unfairness of the universe – but he remembered what Snape had said about how sometimes thoughts were just passing impulses. Then he remembered the first time he had seen the Ice Dragon and how beautiful it had been… if they couldn’t rest now and heal it then it would lose that beauty… Harry couldn’t allow that. He wouldn’t allow that. He stared up at the ceiling, which was shadowed now as the sun set outside, and contemplated his situation for a minute. It hurt that he would never be able to be an Animagus. But if there was one thing the Dursleys had taught him it was that the bitter realities of life could be smoothed out with small joys if you knew where to find them. His tears had healed Snape. He had cast a shield that had blocked the Killing Curse. And Snape thought that Harry’s ability to talk to the Ice Dragon was due to having a phoenix as an Animagus form.

Harry took a deep breath and, for the first time since Voldemort’s final defeat, knew that he would be all right.

"I would have like to have been an Animagus," he said, expecting Snape to sneer.

Snape surprised him. "I wanted to be an Animagus, too."

"What did you want to be?"

"A seagull."

"Why?"

"They can go wherever they like. They can eat any sort of rubbish so they don’t have to worry about being limited by food. They… they blend in and don’t get noticed."

Harry realised that Snape had just opened up more to him than he’d probably ever opened up to anyone other than Rona or Helen. He felt warmly privileged. "I wanted to be a bird, too. I like flying. I thought if I could be a bird then I’d be free."

"Unfortunately most Animagus forms don’t bother with practicalities. There is a technique to see what someone’s Animagus form will be… I thought it wasn’t working when I looked at you as I’d never heard of anyone being a magical creature before. If it’s any comfort, most of the people in Hogwarts would be wasting their time trying to master the intricacies of such a demanding transfiguration."

"How do you mean?"

"Take Professor Sprout. Her Animagus is a white butterfly. Hardly practical when you consider that most of her plants eat white butterflies."

"What about Ron?"

"A goldfish."

Harry grinned. "Neville?"

Snape groaned. "Rhinoceros."

This got a laugh out of Harry. "Does Helen have an Animagus form? I suppose hers would be a kea."

"Actually, hers is a white heron. I suspect Grandmother had a hand in that. But Helen’s magic is, shall we say, a little unruly. I doubt she will bother trying to change form again."

"Helen’s a witch?"

"Not precisely. Grandmother imbued her with a little elemental magic, which is tricky."

"Oh. What is your Animagus, sir?"

By the slight twitch of Snape’s mouth Harry knew that the "Sir" had been seen as exactly the tactic it was.

"Mine is… impractical," Snape replied ambiguously, and put his head back against the padded back of the couch. "Now get some rest, Mr Potter."

"Where are we?" Harry had to know.

Snape’s eyelids had drifted shut at last, but Harry knew he wasn’t asleep. "Worried someone will take you to task for destroying a valuable old wardrobe?"

"No. More worried that someone will hex us silly for trespassing."

"Then don’t be. This place is deserted. Even the house-elves are gone."

"How do you know?"

The line between Snape’s eyes deepened. Harry waited for an answer or an outburst. "Because this is Malfoy Manor," said Snape finally.

Harry tensed automatically at the name. "But…"

"Stop fretting, Potter. No-one lives here anymore. It’s empty. Lucius Malfoy is dead – that’s one death I shan’t regret, especially as he was trying to kill me at the time."

"Did you kill him?" Harry whispered, not sure how he’d feel if Snape said "yes."

But… "No," Snape replied with a faint sigh. "I didn’t."

"Was it really a dragon?"

"Enough questions. I’m tired. You are tired. I expect the Ice Dragon is tired, too. He’s asleep – why don’t you follow his example?" Snape was beginning to get testy again.

Harry rested his head on Snape’s shoulder and pulled the blanket up around his chin. Snape’s arm was around him and for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime Harry felt safe and warm. It probably wouldn't be a good idea to stir up Snape’s bad temper, but… There was one thing he needed to know. Harry decided to risk one more question. He wanted to know what had really happened to Lucius Malfoy. He wanted to make sure the man was dead and couldn’t ever come back to hurt him or his friends. If anyone could find a way to put Sirius back in Azkaban it was Lucius Malfoy…

So it surprised Harry when he found himself saying: "What happened to Draco?"

Snape went very, very still. It was as if the Potions master had been Petrified.

Through the link there was that terrible sense of loss and guilt from Snape again. And Harry guessed what had happened before Snape said quietly:

"He’s dead."

Harry thought of Draco as he’d last seen him, someone who had decided to take his life into his own hands and forge it into what he wanted rather than what he’d been taught it should be. For a short time Harry had almost found himself liking Draco. The time they tricked Crabbe and Goyle had been fun. The fun had been balanced out by the shock of finding out that Draco had been accessory to the murder of an old Muggle, but Harry seen that probably for the first time in any Malfoy’s life, Draco had run the gauntlet of his conscience and learned from it. Then there had been something going on, something strange, that had driven Draco up to the top of Astronomy Tower in the wee hours of the morning just to stand in a cool breeze. Harry had seen the hints of metamorphosis, but much more than just a physical one. After Draco had left Hogwarts he’d thought about him occasionally, and in his mind he’d wished his one-time rival luck and learning. He’d hoped that with Lucius dead Draco could finally come out of the shadows and decide on his own life the way Harry had been allowed to do when he had first left the Dursleys’ to come to Hogwarts. And now…

He’s dead.

Harry began to cry for all the potential that had been drained from the world by that monster Voldemort, but he cried softly this time and without anger or bitterness, and his tears were like rain after a drought.

Harry dreamed.

In the dream he was sitting at a flat wheel that spun. In the centre was a lump of wet clay. Harry frowned at its spinning shapelessness, then put his hands on it to mould it into something good and with purpose.

First he curved his fingers around the slick grey mass to turn it into a smooth round. At first it resisted the change but, at a stern thought from Harry, the wheel sped up and the clay spun faster and became more malleable. Soon it was a short stubby cylinder, turning in the centre of the wheel.

Good.

Harry pressed his thumbs into the centre. Obedient to his will now, the clay shifted and became hollow. His fingers drew up the sides – not too high – and when the wheel slowed Harry looked with pleasure on the fine bowl he had made.

<handsonclay ... Potter> came the thought/image.

Harry was not alone. The Ice Dragon (here Harry glimpsed sun shining at an angle onto the sheer wall of a glacier) was interested in what he was doing.

<?>

The ortho-elemental wanted to know what to do with the bowl now that it was shaped.

In the dream, Harry felt the hungry bite of disappointment. He didn’t know, either. How was he meant to get the bowl off the wheel? If he pulled at it the shape would be distorted.

The thinnest cord of silk was quickly drawn over the table and under the bowl. It severed the bowl from its resting place and Harry, delighted, picked up the bowl.

Another pair of hands – because in the way of dreams, the Ice Dragon had hands now – plucked the bowl from his. Blue-grey eyes narrowed in concentration and heat was carefully seeped into the clay, driving out the water and hardening the bowl.

Harry was holding a paintbrush now and, while the Ice Dragon balanced the bowl carefully on his fingers, Harry dipped the brush into gold paint.

But when he lifted the brush again he saw that someone had beaten him to it and the bowl was now stained Slytherin green. The Ice Dragon threw back his head and laughed soundlessly, and Harry realised that he looked like Draco Malfoy now, although no Malfoy had ever laughed with such unabashed joy, Harry was sure.

<YOUpainteditgreen?> Harry demanded as gold paint dripped onto the floor with soft plopping noises.

Draco the Ice Dragon shook his head, still grinning to show his shark teeth, and Harry became aware of the faint susurration of silk sliding just outside of his vision.

<silkthatcuts> said Draco firmly, a speech-bubble coming out of his mouth with the picture-words inside it. If Harry looked too hard at the pictures they made no sense, but he instinctively knew that if he simply accepted what he saw intuitively then he could understand what the Ice Dragon was telling him. And the Ice Dragon had just named Snape.

Well, Harry decided. So Snape has chosen the base colour, hmm?

He trailed his paintbrush over the bowl and golden lions flowed from it to rear rampant, mouths open as they silently cried their defiance. Harry grinned.

The Ice Dragon blew on the bowl softly. In one moment the glaze was dried and dull and in the next it was fired to a beautiful gloss. The lions shimmered in rich, vibrant gold over their background of mysteriously rippling green.

There was a hint of disapproval from the silk that had cut the bowl free when it saw the griffins. Harry smiled.

The Ice Dragon winked and grinned wider. He tilted the bowl to show the silver dragon painted inside.

Harry woke up laughing.

***

He stopped laughing as soon as he realised where he was. Some bedroom in the closed-up Malfoy Manor. Remembering the wardrobe with the boy’s clothes and the broomstick, Harry guessed that this would have been Draco’s room.

Weird. Harry had an uncomfortable feeling in his gut when he thought about it. Here he was, in the room of his dead enemy. And it felt so… asleep. Like he imagined a funeral parlour could look when it wasn’t in use. He looked over at the Ice Dragon. Its eyes may have been slitted just fractionally open. It was hard to tell in the dark room, where the only light seemed to be emanating from the Ice Dragon, but when Harry cast his mind over towards it all he could pick up were the easy drifting images of snow falling and the creak and groan of glaciers on their slow migration to the sea. It was comforting in a way Harry couldn’t describe. He smiled slightly at the careless way the dragon was curled up on Draco’s bed. No wonder he’d seen it as Draco in his dream; his sub-conscious must have somehow twined the two images.

Something glittered on the edge of his vision. It was on the floor. When Harry tried to look at it, it was lost from sight. But if he carefully looked just to the side of it, he could see a faint yellow glimmer. What was it?

Harry froze mid-yawn as he remembered before the dream... He had cried for Draco of all people, someone who would never have thanked him when he was alive, and then he’d scooped up the tears and wiped them on the wound on Snape’s back.

Snape had twitched and a shard of something sickly and yellow slid out from the wound and into Harry’s fingers. Instinct had seen it as a maggot, and Harry had flicked it away.

"What was that?" he had asked.

Snape frowned and said, "A fragment of Crucio, I believe." His eyelids had sagged in what must have been immediate relief from the pain.

Harry hadn’t known that spells could fragment and leave nasty little shards embedded in flesh like that. It added a whole new and sickening aspect to the Unforgivables. "Will you be all right now?"

Snape had smiled a little. "Yes. Thank you."

Harry looked around at the darkening bedroom and the battered wardrobe and asked, "How did Draco die?"

Snape took a deep breath and answered slowly: "Draco Malfoy never properly existed. He was a construct of Lucius Malfoy’s. The boy you bickered with was never anything more than a manifestation of what Lucius wanted for an heir and a source of power."

"So when Lucius died, Draco died, too?"

Abruptly: "Yes." And the coldness in Snape’s voice froze any further questions.

This had made no sense to Harry. Draco had been a spoiled brat, the son of a Dark wizard, and effectively Harry’s antithesis. But when Harry had last seen him Draco had been very much his own person. Possibly for the first time in his life. Harry had recognised this and respected Draco for the choice he had made. He still hadn’t liked him, but he’d respected him.

So how could he end just because Lucius had died?

Lying awake now, in the dark with the only sounds in the world Snape’s light snore and the occasional rustle from the Ice Dragon as it rearranged its tail in its sleep to stop the tail from falling over the edge of the bed, what Snape had said still made no sense to Harry. And it made him angry but Harry didn’t know why.

He thought about Animagi instead. It still rankled that he’d never be able to take on another shape, but at least a phoenix wasn’t as, well, as trite as a goldfish. So what was Snape’s? Impractical, the man had said. And not a seagull as he’d wanted. But then Helen hated seagulls with a passion. Snape as a seagull Animagus could have resulted in divorce. Harry closed his eyes and smiled to himself in the darkness as he considered various possibilities.

Snakes and bats were too obvious. And they were practical. A snake could have spied on Voldemort, and so could’ve a bat.

Let’s see... Snape’s from New Zealand. I think it’s famous for having sheep (there was a brief fit of giggles that fortunately didn’t wake up Snape), and kangaroos – no, that’s Australia, but it’d be cool to see Snape turn into Kanga. Um, New Zealand also used to have lots of flightless birds. There was that time I went to a museum on a school trip and the museum had this giant stuffed bird with no wings next to a pair of dodos. A… a… a moa, that’s right. I can just picture one of those things striding around Hogwarts taking points off Gryffindor.

Harry drifted off again, smiling.

***

This time he dreamed that he was in Potions and at the front of the room was a big-beaked dodo with jet-black eyes and a ferocious glare. The dodo took five points of Gryffindor because Harry was late.

In the dream the room shifted around Harry so that the dodo could teach the rest of the sixth-years who had come in before Harry. Harry looked around and saw that the door leading into one of the smaller workrooms was open. While the dodo was busy explaining the difference between a maggot and a fragment of an Unforgivable, Harry took the chance to slip into the workroom.

In the other room was Hermione and Neville. They were working over a cauldron, and Harry presumed it was their secret project, because both of his friends were wearing spy outfits. Hermione looked particularly fetching in a black cat-suit, and if it hadn’t been for her bushy hair Harry might have mistaken her for the actress from some old TV program Aunt Petunia used to watch. Neville was wearing a pinstripe suit and a bowler hat, and had the handle of an umbrella looped over his arm. Snape was hovering behind them but for once Neville didn’t seem frightened.

Harry moved around to watch from Snape’s perspective.

As he did so, Hermione and Neville changed. Both were shorter, and now they wore their school robes and larger than life Gryffindor badges. Granger’s mannerisms became bossier and even Harry got annoyed at her know-it-all way of speaking. He knew she was intelligent, he just wished she was clever enough to know that intelligence was to be hidden and kept sharp and polished like a blade for when it was really needed. Well, you couldn’t expect good, common cunning from a Gryffindor.

He kept a firm eye on that Longbottom boy. Trouble, he was – given half a chance he’d blow up himself and everyone around him. Hopefully this project would give him the confidence to finally grow into the potential Harry saw in him. If nothing else, maybe he’d get enough of a backbone to stand up for himself when Harry gave him a hard time.

Huh? I never give Neville a hard time.

And then Harry realised that he really was seeing things from Snape’s perspective. He looked down at the table. Far enough away from the cauldron so as not to be affected by the heat were neat bundles of wildflowers. Neville’s hand kept stealing towards one of them and plucking the small, yellow flowers. A lovely smell of roses drifted towards Harry.

"Don’t eat all of those," Snape told Neville. "We need the Rock Rose for the potion."

"But I still need it," Neville said, which was odd, because Neville wouldn’t have dared contradict Snape in or out of class.

Snape replied calmly, "I realise that, but the Rock Rose will be more beneficial once it’s combined with the other ingredients."

"I think we should use Agrimony instead of Clematis," said Hermione.

Neville nodded, and started munching on of the tall stalks of yellow flowers. "Yes," he said. "It tastes better than Clematis."

"But we still need something to break through the way they cling to the memory of the pain," said Snape. "After being tortured with Crucio I always find it hard to remove the anxiety left after the pain. Agrimony is excellent for the quiet times of the night when you can’t stop thinking of what happened and how it could happen again, but it needs something else as a base."

As one, the odd trio sighed and went still, frowning at the flowers.

Draco came into the room, rubbing his eyes. He’d been asleep and had missed the beginning of Potions. He opened his mouth and Harry read the speech-bubble:

<? Tallstems. Whiteflower. LookslikeStars?>

Harry saw the flower on the table – it looked just like the picture Draco had spoken.

"Star of Bethlehem. That should break the grip of the memories." Snape took it and put it into the cauldron and then he disappeared.

Draco started pushing Harry’s cheek.

Harry tried to tell him to stop, that the Snitch wasn’t in his mouth, but then Draco wasn’t there either.

Feeling a little annoyed, Harry woke up.

***

It was Snape’s shoulder that was moving under his cheek. Harry blinked but didn’t move his head. He didn’t want Snape to know that he was awake. Apart from a faint glow coming from the still-sleeping ortho the room was dark. In the dim gloom Harry could just make out how Snape took out a notebook and a pencil from his robes, and wrote something down. Then Snape tucked them away again and seemed to go back to sleep.

Had Harry just seen one of Snape’s dreams? Typical that he’d be dreaming of making a potion. But it had seemed more like a joint effort – Harry had sensed the Ice Dragon there, and the way it kept appearing as Draco would have bothered him more if he hadn’t been so tired.

Just as Harry dozed off again himself, he realised with a grin that he’d just seen a Slytherin using Muggle tools.

Heh.

***

Maybe it was the way that he’d been thinking of Muggle things, because Harry went straight into one of the awful dreams where his uncle Vernon was yelling at him. The words couldn’t be made out, but that didn’t matter. It was only the tone that really mattered. Harry (he must have been very young again) was grabbed by the arm and shoved into the closet under the stairs and the door slammed behind him.

For the first time he wasn’t alone.

<unhappy!> said the Ice Dragon. <outoutout!>

"How?" asked young Harry.

Draco lifted one foot and kicked the door down.

"Oh," Harry said. And he knew it was a dream. Real life never went like this.

Vernon was standing outside. His face was purple with a mix of fear and fury.

The Ice Dragon exhaled and Vernon Dursley froze instantly to the sound of ice crackling over his skin. Then toppled. There was a deafening crash that must have got the attention of all of the neighbours as Uncle Vernon shattered into a billion pieces of ice..

There was a wave of distaste from the Ice Dragon as the cloud of ice dust settled. <fly> it sneered, and the speech-bubble held a picture of a buzzing fly that got swatted. When Harry grinned at the picture the Ice Dragon held out a hand and Harry took it. The next thing he knew, he was standing in a small cottage and he was sixteen again. There was a faint smell of alcohol and burning beeswax candles. The cottage was familiar but Harry couldn’t quite put his finger on the reason why.

Draco, looking just like he had last summer, held his finger to his lips.

Sitting at a desk was a bent-backed man. If he had been standing he might have been very tall indeed, but now he was hunched over a large book with yellowed pages. He appeared to be studying, but Harry couldn’t make out what the book was. Next to the man was a candelabra and an empty glass. There was a tiny noise from behind them, almost like the scuttle of a mouse, but it was just a little boy coming down from the trapdoor into the attic. The boy looked very nervous but, at the same time, determined. Harry felt his heart beating faster and knew something bad was going to happen. Next to him he could feel the Ice Dragon tense. There was the thrum in Harry’s mind like what he felt when he had just sighted the Snitch in a Quidditch match, but it came from the elemental. This was the poise of a predator that had found what it was hunting.

Harry, frightened that his companion was going to do something violent, put a hand on Draco’s arm. Draco ignored it.

The small, black-haired boy crept up behind the man.

"Where my mum?" the boy asked, his voice trembling a little but his obsidian eyes steady.

The man stiffened and turned just enough for Harry to see the hooked nose and bitter twist to the mouth. His eyes were muddy and so was the colour of his hair, but the profile was Snape’s.

The boy was ready to run. He waited, only fidgeting his fingers a little.

Unheard, unseen, Harry and Draco waited with him.

The man was silent for the space of several of Harry’s heartbeats, and then spoke slowly, softly, choosing his words with care. Much as Snape had done after Harry asked him how Draco had died. However, Snape hadn’t used words like these. "She’s dead," the man said, and though there was something of kindness in his voice it was belied by words that stabbed like knives. "She died when you were born. When you slithered out of her body she took one look at you and turned away in despair. She died because she couldn’t bear to see the filth that had come from her. She died the moment she realised you lived. You were filth then just as you’re filth now and she was too ashamed of you to go on living, you see, so that’s why she died."

This man could have given Dementors lessons in destroying souls. Harry was cold and numb from the words echoing through the little room. His hands hung helpless at his sides as words sliced right to his core. This man brought back all the memories of everything the Dursleys had ever said about his parents, how useless they were, how pathetic, how hopeless; and everything they’d told Harry he was. A nasty little freak not fit for human company.

Freak.

Useless.

Stupid child, get out of my way.

Get into your cupboard Potter so’s I don’t have to see your ugly scarred face any more.

A worthless drain on our pocket.

Filth.

It took a moment for him to realise that the door was banging on its hinges and snowflakes were blowing in through the doorway.

Draco had his teeth bared in a snarl. Harry grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the house before the elemental could kill this man.

Outside there was snow on the ground. The kid had run off but Harry could see prints in the snow from his bare feet. Just as he started to follow them a sudden wind smoothed the surface and it was as if no-one had ever walked here.

The door slammed shut behind them.

There was another snarl from Draco, and Harry saw claws sprout from his fingertips. He could feel the Ice Dragon’s hunger, now, too. Harry shivered, and it wasn’t from the cold.

Then he was sitting in a tree.

This made perfect sense. What was strange was the way Draco was perched next to him on a branch and at the same time climbing the tree. No – that made sense, too. Harry knew that it was really the Ice Dragon sitting next to him, not Draco Malfoy. The Draco who was currently cursing as he tried to shake off a blob of sticky sap was the real Draco Malfoy. Although what he was doing climbing a tree was anyone’s guess… he didn’t seem to be aware of Harry, anyway.

But Malfoy had found the young boy from the cottage.

Harry watched as Malfoy gradually got the kid’s confidence and even put a pair of socks on the boy’s feet. Then the boy climbed onto Malfoy’s back and Malfoy carried him down from the tree and they disappeared.

Harry reminded himself that this was a dream. He’d have to remember this for Dan – it was fascinating. What was the symbolism of socks, anyway? House-elf liberation? A Christmas present for Dumbledore?

The Ice Dragon was watching all of this, fascinated. Then it grabbed Harry and slung him onto its back. Harry hung on around the ortho’s neck as it jumped off the branch and glided over the snowy hills. There were sparks coming from one of the gullies and <sunonice> tilted his wings to land on a rocky spur above where Snape and Malfoy – Lucius Malfoy – were throwing spells at each other.

Harry sat on the dragon’s shoulders and watched along with it as Lucius turned and saw Draco Malfoy – the human Draco.

"No!" shouted Harry, as Lucius threw a fireball. It hit Draco in the chest and exploded.

The Ice Dragon was hissing with excitement, its wings half-spread and trembling as it watched Draco Malfoy’s body erupt into a pillar of fire. There was the crackle of burning flesh and bones snapping in the flames, and a greasy smell like a burning roast drifted over to them, making Harry gag and the Ice Dragon drool. Harry was appalled.

And then he saw what unfolded from the wreckage.

And then he saw what it did to Lucius Malfoy.

The Ice Dragon growled softly as it watched its image rip the wizard to bits and then eat the pieces.

And Harry realised why the Warders had told him that Ice Dragons were dangerous. They ate wizards for their magic. And the Ice Dragons saw nothing wrong with that.

"Enough!" Harry shouted, sickened even though he knew that this was just a dream and he should wake up.

But the Ice Dragon wanted to go somewhere else. Harry had to clutch at its neck as it jumped off the spur and flew to a night-bound clearing in the forest. There was a pool in the clearing and the Ice Dragon growled nervously at it as they landed.

Even in a dream Harry could sense the power of Grandmother Taniwha.

For a moment he thought he saw the taniwha – there was a pale-faced, black-haired woman over on the other side of the glade leaning against a little white horse that was lying on the ground. Draco Malfoy the human boy was back. He was kneeling next to the woman and sharing his robes with her like a blanket. The woman was humming softly to the baby she held to her breast.

The Ice Dragon crept closer. Harry followed carefully, feeling like he was intruding on something very private, but determined to make sure that the Ice Dragon didn’t hurt anyone.

It didn’t. It seemed content to lie down in front of the woman and watch her watching the baby.

Harry woke up hearing the woman’s voice humming that song without words.

***

There was a cold draft on his face. Harry re-entered the waking world with a shudder.

He opened his eyes. At first he thought it was just the way that his glasses had slid down his nose that was making the world seem so weird.

Then he realised he was looking up the nose of the Ice Dragon. It exhaled again, washing his face with an Antarctic wind.

It was not the most comfortable way to wake up.

"Stay very still," Snape whispered.

Harry, remembering from the dream the way Lucius Malfoy had been pulled apart, didn’t even nod to show that he agreed.

The Ice Dragon sniffed very carefully at Snape’s face. Harry could hear its breath and feel it on the top of his head. From where he had his head uncomfortably pillowed on Snape’s unpadded shoulder he couldn’t see the professor’s expression, but judging by the rigid lines of tension he could feel through Snape’s robes he could guess it wouldn’t be a happy one.

"Whatever you do," Snape breathed, "don’t use magic."

"Was that why it ate Lucius?" said Harry, so quietly he didn’t think Snape could have heard.

But, "Yes," Snape replied. "It was hungry."

Harry knew that it was hungry now. He could feel its hunger through the strange bond between them. Hunger like a gnawing worm in the veins.

But there was more to the Ice Dragon than simple hunger… Harry frowned and tried to concentrate on that.

"I don’t think it wants to hurt us," Harry whispered.

"An expert now, are you?" said Snape, managing to sneer even when he was frightened.

It was safer for Harry not to answer that.

The ortho tilted its head quizzically and blinked, that third eyelid sliding across again to leave a faint gleam. Harry watched and thought of another night in another place, when he had seen Draco Malfoy blink like this. Then the creature reached out and nudged Harry aside and, in one simple movement, picked up Snape and cradled him in its forelegs like a baby.

Gradually Harry became aware that he could hear the sound of a woman singing to her baby. He looked around, but there was no-one else in the room. So who was singing? The song… the song stirred Harry’s own memory.

Harry lay on the couch with his mouth agape. The music bypassed his ears and came straight from the Ice Dragon’s memory. It was the sound of love. He knew he had heard it before – he knew his own mother had sung to him like this. It was just something that he knew.

But on the heels of that came an ugly thought – he knew from what Snape had said that it was impossible that a creature as magical as the Ice Dragon could be someone’s Animagus form.

But he knew, deep in his gut he knew, that this beast was Draco Malfoy. The dreams, the Ice Dragon’s memories, the way it had knew Snape… and the way it blinked. They all added up to one inescapable conclusion. Draco was alive. Snape had lied to him.

And Harry knew that somehow Draco had been there at Snape’s birth.

Harry shook his head. He just didn’t know how he knew, and he didn’t know how all this could be. But he didn’t want to believe in it. If the Ice Dragon was really Draco then Snape had lied to him, and Harry certainly didn’t want to believe that. Just once, he thought, I’d like there to be someone who doesn’t lie to me…

It was too confusing. Harry stood up slowly and stood at the Ice Dragon’s side. Now that it was squatting on its hindquarters using its tail for balance, its shoulder was higher than Harry’s head. One wing flicked at Harry, warning him to back off a little. Harry obeyed. The ortho didn’t seem to notice him otherwise; it was absorbed in staring down at Snape, its expression rapt if a little puzzled.

The Potions master looked, if anything, completely taken aback. He lay motionless in the creature’s hold and stared up at it with his eyes slitted. His mind, Harry knew, would be racing for a way out of this.

And then Harry saw the memories.

The Ice Dragon opened up its mind and those fractured, disarrayed memories, all jumbled up beyond its understanding, poured into Harry’s head as if the Ice Dragon was hoping Harry could explain these memories to it. The sheer weight of what Harry heard and saw staggered him – he grabbed the arm of the couch.

Harry finally understood what it was like to hold a new-born baby. There was a magic beyond all magicks to it. The scent of it, the warmth, and the way it totally trusted you without knowing what trust was. Then the moment when it opened its eyes and searched out your face with its ebony gaze. The way the world completely stopped for this miracle. And the way you knew beyond knowing that you would protect it.

Then Harry comprehended what it was like to sit with someone brave and fierce with love for her nascent child, and then watch as she died, knowing that you were responsible for bringing destruction to her.

Harry already understood grief and rage but now he relearned it from a new perspective – one not human.

And Harry felt the boundless respect for the woman’s fortitude blossom in his chest as he thought about how much she was ready to give for her baby.

And all the time there was the music of a mother singing love to her baby. First only heard in the mind, and then with the ears as the Ice Dragon set up an eerie counterpoint by whistling the melody through its nose.

It said to Harry: <??I??know??>

And Harry had to reply that he didn’t know how the Ice Dragon knew all these things.

The Ice Dragon replied with the feeling that it could wait. It would find out why that baby – that boy in the tree – this man – were all important. But for now it was content that it knew where <silkthatcuts> was. And that he was safe.

It sang along to the memory of the dying mother’s song and turned its mind from Harry to Snape, opening up the memories it still had of that dark-haired woman who had given birth by the strange and frightening black water and, borrowing a tendril of Harry’s Animagus talent, sharing them with Snape.

The Ice Dragon stared down at the man in its arms and watched his face change.

And Harry turned away to the window to watch the sun rise, knowing (for Harry knew this already deep in the core of his being) that finding out you had been cherished when all you’d known from those who raised you was hate and revulsion, and realising that your mother had loved you more than her own life, was the most private moment any child of any age could have.

Shutting his mind to the memories and ignoring the sounds of loss and finding and comfort from behind him, he snuffled a little and wiped his nose on Snape’s handkerchief, and pulled a curtain open just a crack to watch the sun spill long bars of gold across the snow and tried to empty his mind of all thought.

***

The shadows moved quickly at this time of year. Harry guessed the skeletal trees with their equally emaciated shadows just this side of the haha had measured out less than an hour when there was a muffled thudding coming from somewhere inside the mansion.

A deep growl from the creature woke Snape, who had dozed off. Snape still looked bewildered and, Harry noted with misgiving, vulnerable, tired, and unsure of himself.

The ortho-elemental carefully placed Snape back on the couch and hovered above him, hissing at the door, the tip of its tail flicking side-to-side like an angry cat’s.

"Professor Snape?" Harry whispered.

Snape sat up, batting away the Iced Dragon’s talons as it tried to stop him from moving. After whatever had just happened Snape seemed more confident around the dangerous beast. It seemed to have remembered some old interest in keeping the Potions master alive, which Harry doubted extended as far as himself.

Harry prowled around the side of the couch with his hand on his wand as the thudding sounds made their way up the stairs. Whatever it was – and it sounded like several trolls – was now making its noisy way closer to the door. Wooden floorboards beneath Harry’s feet trembled as the noises clomped along the landing.

Just as Snape said: "Stay away from the door, Potter," the Ice Dragon twitched out a wing and curved it around Harry, drawing him closer to its shoulder.

The thumps and bangs stopped outside the bedroom door.

This close, the bones in Harry’s skull and ribcage seemed to resonate to the way the Ice Dragon’s growl thrummed through its chest. The low vibration made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. But whatever the Ice Dragon wanted to attack, it didn’t seem to be Harry. Instead he felt strongly that it wanted to protect Harry; it had included him in the defensible arc of its wing, in easy reach of the weapon of the Ice Dragon’s teeth, which would tear apart anyone who tried to hurt Harry. The creature spared a brief, icy sniff of Harry’s hair as if to reassure itself that Harry was really Harry, and then turned its attention back to the door.

He could feel the Ice Dragon’s mind like an arrowhead pointed towards whatever was standing outside the door. It lowered itself and tensed.

There was a knock on the door.

Since when do trolls bother with the social niceties? Harry wondered.

Harry reached out with his mind, felt Snape do the same, and together they counselled the Ice Dragon: <wait>.

It crouched, coiled like a spring to leap, but it listened. It listened, and Harry felt a small thrill at the power he’d found without looking. It was a tiny pleasure in a tense moment, but he happily shared it with Snape. Harry could sense the Potions master’s mind through the link and knew that Snape was ready to… Harry didn’t know what, but just knowing that Snape had a plan B (and Snape being Snape, probably Plans C through at least half the remaining alphabet) went a long way towards calming Harry’s own mind.

For one crystalline moment three minds joined and prepared to fight.

The door opened.

"Hello?" said a light, cautious voice.

The astonishment, relief and love was like air to a drowning man. It had come from <silkthatcuts>. <potter> found himself grinning like a maniac and even <sunonice> eased out of his pouncing-pose and shook his head so that the spines down the nape of his neck rattled. <sunonice> made a happy, yelping sound, and <potter> laughed and slapped him on the shoulder.

And then <silkthatcuts>, conscious of showing too much of his inner self, withdrew from the link and Harry found himself with his hand on the Ice Dragon’s shoulder watching Snape get up from the couch.

Snape held out his hands in welcome.

There was a ripple in the doorway and Helen Snape ran into the room and into her husband’s arms.

When Helen finally let go of her husband, she turned to hold out a hand to Harry. "Harry-chick…" she whispered, and Harry saw the dark circles under her eyes. "You’re safe?"

He nodded, still unused to having someone care for him for no other reason than that he was Harry.

Then she tilted her head sideways the same way she’d done when she was a bird, and studied the Ice Dragon for a long moment. "Hello, sweetheart," she said in a thick voice. "I’ve missed you." She walked up to the ortho and pressed her hands either side of its fearsome jaws, then leaned forward to plant a light kiss on the tip of its nose. "It’s good to see you again."

The Ice Dragon blinked in confusion several times, then the eyelids drooped and it lowered its head to butt her shoulder in a friendly way. Helen chuckled and hugged the cold, scaly, fuzzy-with-magic head, and raised a hand to ruffle the spines behind its ears. It whistled huskily and Harry could feel its happiness like it was his own.

Helen let it go after one final peck on the nose and went back for another hug from Snape. "Are you well?" he whispered.

"Apart from being sick with worry because my husband has disappeared with one of my friends and there are all sorts of rumours about them being in league with dark forces or eaten by some monster, I’ve never been better." She stepped back and gave him a punch in the gut. "Don’t ever do that to me again."

Snape winced – the blow hadn’t been damaging, but it hadn’t been light, either. Helen wasn’t in a playful mood. "I’m sorry. I couldn’t think of how to get a message through to you. Ah… how did you know to come here, by the way?" He rubbed his stomach.

"Grandmother, who has more sense than to upset a pregnant woman, brought me."

"How? Oh – I should have known." Snape put two fingers to his mouth and whistled.

A couple of thuds sounded from outside the door and a sleek, grey head pushed the door wider. Its ears pricked up when it saw Snape, and it whickered.

"Come here," Snape sighed.

Solomon the pooka pushed the door open with a flick of his head and walked into the bedroom, tail a-swish, with that same strange ripple in the doorway that Helen had caused. The pooka walked up to Snape, ignoring everyone else in the room including the Ice Dragon, and allowed its master to scratch behind its ears. "I suppose he just showed up," Snape said, his mouth drawn down in displeasure. He hated anything from his private life being involved in Hogwarts business – Harry never had found out what Helen had threatened his professor with to let her come to the castle.

"Right in the middle of breakfast," Helen said happily. "He trotted into the Great Hall and up to the High Table. Well – he tried to. That silly little bugger Colin Someone-or-Other tried to take a picture and the flash gave poor old Solly a fright. He jumped over three trestle tables pop-pop-pop, just like that, and charged off down a corridor."

"Was anyone hurt?"

"No, although I was tempted to give that boy a thick ear for frightening a poor, dumb animal like that. We found him in the kitchens, in the end. The house-elves were in a panic wondering if they were meant to cook him."

Snape’s eyes suddenly sparked angrily, and Helen hastened to add, "But don’t worry, that funny little chap who wears all the socks said that the animal was probably a Transfigured student. So they started giving him sweets."

Snape looked even more alarmed and he ran his hands over Solomon’s belly. The pooka didn’t seem to mind, and tried to scratch its head on Snape’s shoulder until Snape pushed it away. "He’s fine," Snape said softly. "Only had a couple of apples, and he can digest those. Greedy old nag."

The "nag" shook out his mane and snorted, spraying Harry and the Ice Dragon with a light shower of snot.

"Eeyew," said Harry, and noticed the Ice Dragon looked less than delighted, too. It wiped its muzzle on one of the discarded drop-cloths.

Helen watched the Ice Dragon fondly. For Harry, she was the last piece of the puzzle. And now he was fuming over Snape lying to him.

"Draco’s grown since the last time I saw him," Helen said.

Snape drew himself up rigidly, and Helen put her hand to her mouth. "Was he… not meant to… um… not meant to know?" she said timidly.

Before Snape could reply in the firm negative, Harry said coldly, "It’s okay. I worked it out for myself. I know he’s Draco." He didn’t look at Snape. Snape had lied to him. He could understand that Snape would want to protect Draco by not telling Harry that the Slytherin was still alive, but that wasn’t the lie that stung. Of all the people in the world, Harry had thought Snape the absolute last to keep something like this from him: the fact that becoming a phoenix wasn’t impossible. Because if Draco Malfoy could turn into an Ice Dragon then Harry Potter could learn to become a phoenix; other people might lie to protect him, but Harry had thought Snape would’ve had more respect. He’d thought he had earned that respect.

Obviously not.

He was angry and hurt. Snape was still treating him like some sort of preadolescent nightmare. What the hell else was Harry meant to do to prove that he wasn’t a walking charity-case to be pitied and protected from himself?

Snape frowned, but not at Harry. The Ice Dragon – Draco – swivelled his head on his long, sinuous neck and whistled uneasily.

<???> he asked: he was picking up on Harry’s anger.

Harry forced himself to be calm again, but it was hard. He’d let himself open up to Snape and now he found just what he was worth to his teacher… Calm down, he told himself again.

Helen may have been sensitive to the mood. She cleared her throat. "I brought food. Is anyone hungry?"

***

It was an odd sort of picnic. Solomon wandered around the room sniffing at the books and the few strange ornaments and pieces of furniture left behind when the Malfoy Mansion had been shut up. The Ice Dragon munched on some old Sneakoscopes and a book of spells with the appendix missing. Madam Pince would have burned it, Helen had explained, but she’d had a strange feeling she should pack it in with the Sneakoscopes and the various sandwiches and delicacies she’d asked the house-elves to stuff a picnic basket with. She didn’t say why just why she’d had that impulse to put a basket of food and assorted magical items together and then jump on a pooka bound for who-knew-where, but Snape didn’t seem surprised about Helen’s near-psychic knowledge of what he needed, and Harry supposed Grandmother Taniwha had had something to do with that, too.

Helen sat next to Snape on the couch. Occasionally she would break off a piece of food to feed to her husband, but only when Harry was studying the Ice Dragon; at other times she would put down whatever she was eating and wipe her hands so that she could stroke his hair out of his face and tuck it behind his ears. Snape allowed this, and sometimes even ran his fingers through Helen’s brown hair when Harry pretended not to watch.

Despite Helen’s cheerful face it was clear that she had been extremely worried. Harry thought of a time when she had still been a kea and Snape had lost his temper over something Harry had done. Burd Helen had tried to perch on her wizard’s shoulder and preen his hair. And there had been another occasion, too, when Harry had seen her try to put food in Snape’s mouth with her beak. There seemed to be some characteristics she’d carried over when Grandmother Taniwha had turned her into a woman. She stroked Harry’s unruly hair, too, after she poured him a steaming hot cup of chocolate, and Harry smiled at her tiredly, glad of her caring but not sure how to tell her with Snape in the room.

Snape.

Harry wanted to yell at him and demand the answer to why Snape had lied. He wanted to shout at the greasy git about the way he continued to treat Harry like an imbecile.

But he couldn’t do that with Helen here. The last thing Harry wanted was to upset her any more than he’d already done by dragging her husband off to Antarctica where Snape had been wounded because Harry had made another mistake in judgement…

And there it was. The dread that Snape was right to treat Harry like a child, because Harry was nothing more than some stupid, snot-nosed brat who didn’t have the sense of a headless chicken.

Ouch. Harry realised, after a particularly nasty little pain in his finger, that he’d been picking at the skin around his nails again. One spot was oozing blood. He put it in his mouth, grimacing a little at the metallic tang of the blood.

Harry wanted to know if he was really that pathetic. But he couldn’t ask, because that would just invite a row and upset Helen.

Ironically, it was Helen who gave the spark. "How long have you known that Draco is an Ice Dragon?" she asked over ginger cake, batting Solomon away. The pooka was very interested in the picnic, but, as Snape said, the little horse had had enough rubbish to eat for one day.

Harry couldn’t help glaring at Snape, who was watching him with that cold, inscrutable expression Harry knew so well. "I didn’t think I was right until you came in and he decided you were his friend. Sn- Professor Snape" – Harry forced himself to be polite while Helen was here – "said that Draco was dead and that it was impossible for a wizard to transform into an Animagus form if that animal was a magical one, like a phoenix."

"Ah," said Helen, frowning as if she didn’t know what else to say.

He couldn’t look at the Ice Dragon now – not now that he knew what it really was… a repulsive Malfoy. Draco Malfoy, son of Voldemort’s right hand man Lucius Malfoy.

Merlin, I’m in the same room as… as that.

And he’d actually cried when Snape had told him that Draco was dead. Harry looked into his empty mug, feeling his face flame with embarrassment and his heart burn with jealousy. Why the hell should Malfoy get to have a magical Animagus form? Did he buy it? A crash from the bookshelf made him look up. Despite himself, he found his eyes drawn to the silvery form of the ortho-elemental… Solly and the Ice Dra- Solly and Draco were investigating the books. Draco had eaten the Sneakoscopes and the book and was still hungry. Now that he knew about different food sources the one-time human boy and now ortho-elemental was giving the room a through going-over in search of food. The pooka and the ortho appeared quite fascinated by each other; after eating the Sneakoscopes, Draco had engaged the pony in a spot of mutual grooming, when the pooka had scratched at the Ice Dragon’s neck with its teeth and the Ice Dragon had reciprocated by licking the pooka’s smooth, pale coat with his rough tongue. Now they had found an old Charms textbook. Solly watched as Draco carefully gripped the book in his talons and shredded it with his pointy teeth.

"Now there’s someone who needs to learn foraging skills from an expert," Helen announced. "And who better than an ex-kea to teach him?" She stood up, cracked her knuckles, and went over to the pair of quadrupeds. "School time, Draco. Let a professional show you how to really rip things to bits."

And that, Harry realised, was her tidy little attempt at leaving him and Snape alone to sort out their problems.

The trouble was Harry didn’t want to talk to Snape about their problems. It should be up to Snape to tell him that he’d lied.

"I didn’t lie to you, Mr Potter," Snape said in a low voice.

Oh, Merlin – was Snape reading his mind? The way those black eyes were studying him made Harry think that Snape was.

Harry’s eyes snapped up angrily. "You told me Draco was dead. You told me that because my Animagus is –"

Snape silenced him with a curt wave of his hand. "Draco Malfoy never properly existed. And I told you the truth about your Animagus powers."

"I went to school with Draco Malfoy. He tried to get me expelled more times than I can remember. You must remember him – he was the blond kid in Slytherin you always favoured despite his lack of talent or, in fact, any positive personality trait."

The flash of anger in Snape’s eyes warned Harry against continuing. You didn’t use sarcasm against a master – not if you wanted to escape with your self-respect intact, anyway.

"I told you," said Snape quietly and slowly, "that Draco Malfoy was a construct of his father’s. I also told you that he never properly existed."

Harry frowned, angry and distrusting. He shook his head. "I can’t believe that."

Snape’s mouth thinned in annoyance. "Then I’ll show you," he said. "Find that link you have with the Ice Dragon. I’ll meet you through that." And he half-lidded his eyes.

Harry looked at the blank expression for a long, astonished moment. Then he firmed his own mouth and reached out with his mind.

<sunonice> was delighted to have someone show him how to dig through things and make a mess. Here was a wonderful human who was, shockingly, encouraging him to make a mess. Memory was a tricky thing, full of surprises and nasty shocks, but <sunonice> remembered being in this room before… before the warmth of ice, and wanting to make a mess but not being allowed. Strictly tidy had been the rule. One of the rules, anyway. There had been many rules, <sunonice> thought vaguely, thoughtfully scratching his nose with a talon, and sometimes you only found out what they were after you’d broken them. He definitely remembered that wardrobe. He’d have to do something about that – <handsonclay…Potter> had done a good job of <ripping&tearing> but there were still bad memories about being caged in it for doing… something. <sunonice> couldn’t remember rules very well but he did remember punishment and flicked his tail with the memory of old anger.

Harry began to be woven into those memories, but before he could become too tangled <silkthatcuts> – Snape – was there to extricate him. Guided by Snape, Harry found himself skirting the jumble of impulses and jagged ideas that was the mind of <sunonice> – no; Draco Malfoy, Harry told himself firmly. It was a fascinating glimpse into the psyche of someone else and Harry was tempted to linger, even if it was the twisted psyche of Malfoy, but Snape dragged him on.

It was impossible to get an idea of the layers of Snape’s mind below the superficial. There was the vague sense of a strong, cold intellect, threaded through with dark strands of the taniwha’s power.

They found themselves at the Taniwha’s Pool. Snape had his head up, listening for any traces of attention from the Ice Dragon, but apparently Burd Helen was keeping <sunonice> sufficiently occupied. Snape raised one thin finger to his mouth to signal that Harry was to keep silence on this.

Harry frowned. <secret-from-sunonice?> he asked.

Snape nodded. He bent down and picked up a pebble from the bank and threw it into the centre of the gently steaming pond.

Harry watched it fall without a sound into the darkness.

He watched the ripples flow out from the middle, to the bank, then the black water climbed, rushing soundlessly through the ferns, up to lap Harry’s feet.

Harry saw.

He glimpsed two young men in black cloaks: a young, gawky Snape (it could be no other with that nose) moving as if he wasn’t used to his own height, and Lucius Malfoy – some years older than Snape but definitely not as old as Harry remembered – trekking through a bitterly cold landscape.

Lucius paused, looking uneasy but trying to hide it behind his usual smoke-screen of arrogance, while Snape disappeared through a barrier so dark that it sucked at Harry’s eyeballs like cold air hitting a tooth cavity. Then the young Snape was back again with something bundled in his cloak. Something precious, by the way Lucius’ eyes gleamed. Snape’s own eyes were wary but hinted at trust in Lucius, and Harry recoiled a little out of instinct. He wanted to tell the young Snape not to be involved with Lucius, that the man would only lead him to disaster, but it was as if Harry was paralysed; when he’d gone through other memories in Dumbledore’s pensieve or Tom Riddle’s diary he’d been able to move, but now his body was a long way away and Harry moved through this phantom world like a crippled ghost.

All the time he was aware of Snape standing next to him, watching the old memories, his arms folded in his cloak and his expression grim.

The only softening came after he and Lucius returned to a beautiful big old house – Malfoy Manor, Harry guessed from the same style of plaster decoration on the ceiling of the room in the memory and Draco’s bedroom. The young Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy were sitting at a table in the room. Lucius looked bored as stared out a window, but in a studied way that belied the covetous excitement in his eyes. Narcissa’s beautiful face was made a little less attractive by her faint expression of revulsion, and she was watching a tall, black clad figure stooping over a crib. Snape.

In the memory Snape was muttering an incantation over – Harry was floated close enough to see – a smooth, mottled egg lying in a nest of ice.

A sharp crack echoed through the room and made the Malfoys jump. The shell had split.

That was when memory-Snape put his hands out and Harry saw the black power so intense that it made his teeth itch flow out of them and into the egg.

The shell crackled and fell away to reveal a baby. For a brief moment it scrunched up its face as if some terrible indignity had occurred, then it opened up its mouth and let out a loud, angry wail.

The young Snape picked it up from the shards and ice and cradled it against his chest, wiping off a clinging membrane and some egg yolk and continuing to speak the incantation in his low, silken voice until the baby hiccuped once and fell asleep in his arms. Snape looked down at it and his face softened.

Harry was aware that the expression of the real Snape, the one standing next to him, had softened likewise.

"Your son, Lucius," the memory said.

Lucius strutted over to flick back the fold of Snape’s cloak back so that he could get a good look at the baby. It woke up long enough to give him a filthy look out of grey-blue eyes.

"I suppose it’ll do. Well done, Severus. Narcissa – would you like to hold him?"

Narcissa sighed. "I suppose I’ll have to someday," she said petulantly. She took him from Snape, lifting the small, naked body with slightly less warmth than was in the nest. The baby definitely didn’t like this, and woke up properly and started wailing furiously. Narcissa flinched and shoved him back into Snape’s arms. "Too loud. Are you sure you made him right?" she complained.

Snape looked highly offended as he re-wrapped the screaming baby in his cloak. "Of course I made him right," he snapped. "It’s up to you to make sure he stays right from now on."

Narcissa sniffed. "I’ll send for the nurse," she said, and stalked out of the room.

Lucius smiled lazily as he stretched like a Kneazle. "Don’t mind her," he said. "She doesn’t like children much."

"How about you?"

"Really, Severus. Children are well and good and perfectly necessary. Of course, so are the servants to raise them.… it’s a shame Narcissa couldn’t have any children for me… but as a Malfoy I can make arrangements for doctors to verify that she gave birth to that one, thanks to some miracle potion you gave her… think of a name for a miracle potion, won’t you, old boy? We need something to go on the medical certificate." The baby was still crying and Lucius frowned at it. "I’ll go and see where that nurse has got to. Be a good chap and mind the baby for a moment."

As Lucius walked out the door Snape asked, "What’s his name?"

Lucius gave him a slight smile. "I thought ‘Draco’ would be appropriate."

When the door closed Snape looked down at the baby Draco, who stopped crying. He watched the baby for a long time, waiting for the nurse, and Harry couldn’t tell by his expression what he was thinking. Then, "I think I’ve just made a terrible mistake," Snape whispered to the baby.

The baby yawned and blew a bubble.

Another stone hit the pond and new ripples rocked Harry, jerking him away from Malfoy Manor to somewhere quite different – cold rooms he had never been before, with a banner on the wall displaying the Dark Mark. Snape’s Death Eater days. Harry shivered.

He was alone here.

He felt the anger. He felt the guilt. He felt them as if he were Severus Snape who had just turned twenty two and was yet to grow into his own frame, with the emotions shaking his gangly limbs like a storm in the Forbidden Forest and thrashing through his blood like a tidal wave over a reef. And the anger and guilt wasn’t only for what had been done to him in his own, naïve stupidity. He was enraged for what his species had done. What he had been stupid enough to do.

And he would make it right. No-one would repeat his mistake. No-one would kidnap any more babies.

In a voice that wasn’t his Harry called out words that weren’t his, and felt all the spells of one wing of magic that had ever been made come to him from everywhere in the world.

And then he locked them away where they wouldn’t be found.

Harry came out of this memory blinking and with his heart still racing from the overwhelming sick fury. <YOU?> he asked, barely believing that anyone could get that angry and still function enough to suck the world dry of spells.

Snape nodded.

<?> Harry asked again, wanting to know what the spells were for.

He received a rapid series of images that included Ice Dragons and several other creatures like narwulfs, the K!dug, and kringle-cats that he’d seen in a History of Magic textbook about all the ortho-elementals removed after the last goblin rebellion. Hermione had been talking once about how, sometime in ’82, all the spells that controlled ortho-elementals had been destroyed. It had been mentioned in Hogwarts, a History because some of the valuable items in various cabinets had cracked as the magic had been drained out of them. It had been posited that a group of wizards – dark or otherwise – had been trying to use the spells for Voldemort. Or against Voldemort – no-one really knew. It had been a minor occurrence when set against the backdrop of horror that had been going on at the time.

But it had been Snape, all by himself, who had done it. Harry shivered, not sure he really wanted to be poking around the memories of a wizard who could do something like this, especially at the time he would have been an active Death Eater.

Snape sneered and sent Harry a picture of Snape reporting to Dumbledore. Okay, so Snape’d been spying back then, but Harry still wanted to get out of this place. He reached out, found the silver thread of the Ice Dragon’s thoughts, and slipped back into his own body.

He opened his eyes to see Snape blink and focus on him. "Do you understand?" asked Snape softly.

Harry nodded. "Draco was never human."

"No."

A loud ripping sound stopped Snape from saying whatever he was going to add and he looked over Harry’s shoulder with one eyebrow raised. Harry turned to look behind him.

"That’s it," Helen was saying. "Use those shoulder muscles. Careful of your back, though… Get a good grip, and…"

The Ice Dragon was pulling the wardrobe to pieces. Whenever it managed to tear off a piece of wood it would mouth it, tasting for magic, before spitting it out.

With a happy growl it pushed its head inside the wardrobe and pulled out the old Cleansweep. Harry was about to try telling it not to do anything to the broom, which could be good transport, when…

Crunch!

…the ortho bit through the handle. The bindings gave way with a few sparks that the Ice Dragon snapped at and, as Harry watched, the remaining spells disappeared into Draco’s mouth. He spat out the splinters. A few bristles drifted away as the Ice Dragon turned his attention back to the wardrobe. He hooked his claws into the frame and swished his tail to make sure he was balanced, then, muscles sliding like eels in oil under the scaly hide, Draco pulled.

Crash!

The pieces of the wardrobe flew across the room as it was ripped apart. The Ice Dragon turned to Helen with a hopeful expression on his face. She slapped him on the shoulder happily.

"Well done!" exclaimed Helen. "Brilliant! There – that wasn’t too hard, was it?"

Draco gave one of his happy yelps and looked around for something else to demolish.

"I think that’s enough for now," said Snape smoothly, eyeing the splinter that had embedded itself in the back of the couch by his shoulder. "Come here, Draco."

The Ice Dragon may not have understood the words, but the way Snape waved his hand was unmistakable to any Hogwarts student. There were probably wizards who hadn’t been at Hogwarts in years who would have responded automatically to Snape summoning them by crooking a finger, possibly by wetting their pants, Harry reflected sourly.

Unlike most ex-students, Draco did not go pale and shaky with remembered terror, but sighed a little and moved away from the interesting bed canopy to settle by the couch at Snape’s feet where he snuffled out the Crucio fragment and ate it. Apparently it wasn’t very nice, because Harry smelt the Ice Dragon’s disgusted thoughts of something that must have been based on rotting fish. It was like a swear-word.

Either Snape didn’t sense it or he didn’t care.

"Let me see that wing."

Harry immediately sent Draco a thought-picture, and the Ice Dragon stretched out the damaged wing obediently, if a little reluctantly, eyeing Harry as if Draco were relying on Harry’s judgement in this matter.

Harry didn’t catch Draco’s eye. He couldn’t look at this… at Draco. Not without it – him – getting some inkling of how Harry really felt.

Snape ran his fingers over the tears in the wing membrane. "Hush," he murmured absently as Draco growled. Harry wondered if Draco was somehow associating Snape with the Warders who had tried to cripple him, and tried to send out reassuring thoughts.

Draco turned his head a little, pinning Harry with a steel-blue gaze.

For the tiniest fraction of a moment Harry considered looking away, but then felt shame creep up on him at the way he’d even thought of such a thing. He thought back to when he’d first met the Ice Dragon. He held that picture in his mind, of Draco standing four-square on the ice, wings still ready to carry him away, the Ice Dragon drawn to Harry out of curiosity rather than malice or hunger. He remembered how he had felt in that moment – the sheer awe of being close to such a creature and the joy he’d found in watching it fly.

The Ice Dragon countered with another memory, and this one Harry knew was some sort of test. In the Ice Dragon’s memory Harry was standing in front of Draco, and Draco had his hand stretched out, offering friendship.

A chill ran down Harry’s spine.

That had been the pivotal moment in his entire Hogwarts career: the time when he had turned down the friendship of Draco Malfoy. Probably it had saved his life, but how else would things have been different if he’d chosen to take that hand? Would he have ended up in Slytherin? Would he have had Snape on his side instead of against him?

He almost certainly wouldn’t have had the friendship of Ron and Hermione – the two most important people in the world.

But now…

This was the Ice Dragon, who had dredged that memory up from who-knew-where (because Harry felt the slight bewilderment of <sunonice> at the memory – the Ice Dragon knew less about the motives of Draco Malfoy in that long-ago moment than Harry did). And it was <sunonice> the Ice Dragon – not Draco Malfoy – who was offering friendship.

Harry stilled, frozen under that icy stare, and time slowed to a crawl in the milky morning light.

It had been the first, best decision of his life to snub Malfoy. Just yesterday Harry had thought about Malfoy, and how he hoped Draco was doing okay wherever he was, preferably staying out of trouble. But to his dismay all those good thoughts had evaporated as soon as he realised just what and where Draco was; it was so easy to remember the hate when Malfoy was in the room and good wishes evaporated like fairy gold in the morning sun.

A friendship always cost you something. No matter what you gained, there was always something you had to give in return. Maybe it was time, maybe it was love, maybe it was a taking-on of pain to help ease a friend’s burden. That was the price of friendship, and one Harry was glad to pay for Ron and Hermione. The price of friendship with Helen was running the risk of seeing Snape outside of class time. He could even cope with that.

What would be the price of friendship with the ex-Draco Malfoy?

He had taken too long deciding.

<sunonice> pulled his head back slightly, raising those spines along the back of his neck in a chilly way that went beyond normal temperature.

Harry felt the Ice Dragon withdraw the touch of his mind, too. It was like losing a sense he’d never known he had.

In a desperate, last attempt before the Ice Dragon shut him out completely, Harry closed his eyes and pushed his hands over them to block out everything but the memory of the two of them standing on the train to Hogwarts. He held the picture of Malfoy holding out his hand firm in the forefront of his mind until he was sure that <sunonice> was seeing it too.

And then he changed the memory.

This time Harry reached out his own hand to take Draco’s.

Draco’s smile was like sunlight, and now the shark-like rows of teeth weren’t threatening at all. Harry blinked, and found himself sitting on the couch next to Snape with his hand on the ortho’s nose.

"That," said Snape slowly, "was a decision I hope none of us regret."

Healing the wing took next to no time after that.

With Harry and <sononice>’s communication reaching new levels, Harry was able to direct the Ice Dragon on the best way to hold his wing while Snape ran the pink shell over it. With a slight sucking noise, the membrane had sealed itself back together.

Now Harry and Draco were curled up on the bed together, Harry with one of Draco’s books on Transfiguration, and the Ice Dragon snoozing with his eyes only covered by that third eyelid Harry had noticed the human version of Draco possessing one night a lifetime ago on the top of Astronomy Tower. Everyone needed a rest, particularly Snape and Harry: Snape, because the wandless magic had drained him, and Harry because talking to the alien mind had given him the beginnings of a migraine. When he’d tiredly brushed his hand over his face Snape had asked what the matter had been – upon hearing that Harry had just developed split vision, Snape had pulled out one of the endless series of vials from some pocket in his robes and made Harry swallow a spoonful of the green liquid. Although the Potion had had an immediate effect, the boy wizard was left feeling exhausted.

Snape had muttered something along the lines of Harry being lucky he didn’t suffer from a coffee addiction, like some people in the room.

Considering Snape hadn’t had his daily dose of caffeine, he was behaving quite civilly, Harry admitted to himself.

Harry also supposed the ortho should have been freezing to be in proximity to, but Snape explained that the magical shield that was part of the ortho’s hide would stop the cold transmitting to Harry. Whenever Harry ran his hand over the dragon’s skin it felt like a soft combination of suede and tiny bubbles.

Snape was lying on the couch with his head in his wife’s lap as she stroked his hair away from his face. After the effort he’d put into healing the wing, Snape needed sleep. Even the pooka knew to keep quiet, and had settled on a rug by the window where he could keep an eye on Snape and Helen. Harry noticed how Solly, although seeming to sleep, would blink occasionally, and those pale eyes would move around the room to check that nothing had changed.

What with the careful way it checked for any dangers that could threaten its humans, this was definitely a pooka that belonged to a cautious taniwha. Harry remembered how Snape had said to Helen once that Grandmother Taniwha seemed to be taking a greater role in his life after Voldemort had tried to kill him. It had been tricky getting her to agree to him coming back to Hogwarts. After Harry had told this to Ron, the red-head had suggested writing to the taniwha to ask her to order Snape home to New Zealand. Hermione had quashed that idea, as she wanted Snape to be her teacher next year when she took her NEWTs.

No accounting for taste, thought Harry, and re-crossed his legs.

The movement woke the Ice Dragon, who raised his head and turned to sleepily survey the room. After seeing nothing amiss, Draco yawned hugely, curling his tongue back like a dog and making Harry smile. Draco looked over at Helen and Snape and thought a question at Harry.

Harry must have made some sort of noise, and his face must have shown something quite alarming, because Helen asked, "What?"

"Um… Um, He – Draco – he asked if you and Professor Snape were our parents."

"Merlin forbid," drawled Snape without opening his eyes.

Helen tugged one greasy lock of hair just hard enough to make her husband wince. "I think it’s a fine idea. We get two boys without having to change any nappies."

"Two teenagers, one of whom isn’t human, and I have my doubts about Draco’s parentage – Ouch!"

Helen had yanked harder. "Don’t be mean to Harry."

"Look, they’re both almost adults. I hardly think now is the time for them to be forced back into child status."

"I just want them to know they’ll always be welcome at my – at our house."

Snape sighed. "You know they are. They can come and stay as often and for as long as they need. Unfortunately."

"Don’t worry," Helen replied acerbically. "I’m sure with your award-winning personality you won’t have to put up with them all that often."

Snape opened his eyes. "What awards?"

Helen leaned down to kiss him on the nose. "All-Comers Grouch-a-thon."

Snape’s eyes closed again. "I’ve already heard that one from Rona," he grumbled.

"Well, you’ve just been awarded it for the fifth year running."

"Helen," Snape said with the smallest possible grin, "your insults are slowly but surely improving."

Helen told him solemnly, "Thank you, Sensei."

After Harry assured Draco that Snape and Helen weren’t their parents, the Ice Dragon grumbled a bit and went back to sleep for the afternoon.

***

Helen, who was meant to be on-duty with Madam Pomfrey in the Hospital Wing, made her excuses after the last sandwiches were eaten in the early evening.

It took a nudge in the ribs from Snape’s boot before the pooka got to his hooves.

Snape lifted his wife onto Solomon’s back as Harry went to open the door. "You still don’t know how he managed to get you here?" Snape asked.

"No," replied Helen. "One minute we were cantering out the front gates of Hogwarts and the next we were inside this house. Lucky the ceilings are so high." She grinned.

"Hmm. Hogwarts has an anti-Apparating barrier around it. I suspect Grandmother has achieved the same with the spell she put around this room."

Helen shrugged as she toyed with a tuft of Solly’s mane. "It felt weird coming in the door, that’s all I can say about it."

"Not so weird that it will put you off returning tomorrow morning?"

Helen’s smile turned sultry. "Tomorrow morning? Not sooner? Anyone would think you don’t care about me."

Snape blushed. "You shouldn’t be travelling in the dark. Even with Solomon looking after you."

"Oh, all right." She gave him a quick kiss. "Tomorrow morning it is, then. Draco, you be a good Ice Dragon. Harry-chick…" She winked at Harry who was still standing by the door, pretending he hadn’t seen the way Snape had blushed, and even if he had seen, it still wouldn’t be funny… "Make sure my husband doesn’t do anything stupid. Even though I’m pregnant I still need him."

Harry couldn’t trust himself to say anything that wouldn’t get him killed by Snape as soon as Helen was out of sight, so he just nodded and stepped out of the way.

There was that odd flicker around the edge of sight as Helen rode the little white horse through the doorway.

And into a trap.

"Hey!" she squawked. "Let go!"

A man wearing the golden robes of an Auror had grabbed her arm. He must have arrived outside the door soundlessly, Harry realised, and there were plenty of spells for that: no-one had heard him get there. He yanked Helen off the pooka and in the next second had his wand jammed in her throat.

"One movement out of place," he snarled, "and the bird gets it." Then he grinned at another man who entered Harry’s line of sight on the other side of the door. He too was wearing Auror’s robes. "Always wanted to say that line, Jasper," said the man holding Helen.

"Yeah, good one," said Jasper, keeping his wand trained on Solomon.

"Solly, stay!" barked Snape.

The pooka, which had been about to wheel around and let fly with its back hooves, pranced uneasily on the spot with its ears flat back.

"Very good, Professor Death Eater," sneered Jasper. "I see you know this game. But from what side, I ask myself?"

"Let her go!" shouted Harry in outrage. From behind him he could hear the rumbling growl of the angry Ice Dragon. Harry didn’t pause to wonder where Snape was – he knew from the images Draco was slipping into his mind that the man was behind Harry with his hand raised to keep the Ice Dragon from leaping forward and attacking the Aurors. Yes, Harry had to agree: it wouldn’t help matters if Draco went charging out there.

His eyes flickered nervously over Helen.

She was a little pale and had one arm hanging in a defensive way over her belly, instinctively protecting her unborn child. When Harry realised this, it was like a red mist came down over his eyes. "I said, let her go," he snarled, trying to blink away the rage. "What’s wrong with you? You’re Aurors – why do you suddenly need to go around attacking pregnant women?"

"Pregnant, is it?" Helen’s assailant sneered. "As for attacking pregnant women, do we go around doing that, Jasper?"

"No, Gordon, we most certainly do not," Jasper replied, still smirking. "But Gordon, is this or is this not the abomination that Professor Death Eater here has been claiming as his wife?"

"I do believe it is, Jasper. And in that case I most certainly am not a person who attacks pregnant women. Because this is not in actual fact a woman."

Harry was shaking. "Let her go!"

"What is it that you want?" asked the cool voice of Snape from somewhere out of the red mist.

"Ah, now," said Jasper in a way that suggested he thought he was quite the wit. Harry decided he was half-right, at best. "Well, apart from world peace, I guess I’ll be wanting that there dragon of yours locked up in a cage."

"That’s not an option."

Helen gasped as the wand dug into her throat and a few sparks hit her ear.

A floorboard creaked behind Harry and he turned to see the murderous expression on Snape’s face quickly hidden behind his customary look of cold disdain. It would have been a more effective disguise if Snape’s hands hadn’t been trembling.

"I think you’ll be finding that it’s your best option today."

Snape folded his arms and, coincidentally, hid his hands in the folds of his sleeves. "It is not in my power to cage this dragon."

"He’s telling the truth," Harry spat out.

The three men ignored him.

"We’ve heard about its little trick of eating spells," breathed Jasper.

"And we’re thinking you could just break a few of the bones in its wing again," said Gordon, ignoring the outraged gasp from his captive. "That’s all we need – that, and a hole in this spell you’ve got around the room here." He grinned. "Just think – all you need to do is a little mindless violence – c’mon, Professor Death Eater Snape, it’ll be just like old times."

Snape’s face could have been chiselled out of marble for all the warmth it gave out.

It was ridiculous – they’d defeated Voldemort and proved themselves on the side of Light and now the people whose side they were meant to be on were threatening them… "Just let her go," Harry said as calmly as he could, although he wanted to start screaming Unforgivables. "She helped defeat Voldemort. And she’s a pregnant woman."

"It’s not a woman, it’s the Transformed beast that’s whoring itself to the Death Eater that got away," snarled Gordon as he gripped Helen tighter, and Harry wondered just how sane he was. "And if I cause it to abort its spawn I’d be doing the world a favour."

He smiled in a way Harry definitely didn’t like.

"Crucio."

"Crucio."

"NO!!!" screamed Harry, hearing a combined roar of denial from Snape and Draco behind him.

Time slowed to a crawl.

The Auror holding Helen held his eyes on her face and his expression was avid and a little curious.

Jasper smiled as he looked over Harry’s shoulder at Snape. His wet lips were parted slightly.

As the spell sunk into her neck, Helen’s eyes rolled up in her head and she sagged.

Harry heard an animal sound of pain – and if it could have come from a person, he thought it came from Snape.

In the space between heartbeats, the world stopped.

Then the black light erupted out of Helen’s heart and washed over all of them in a noiseless explosion. It filled Harry’s ears and eyes and left him both blind and deaf; tumbling his senses over and over each other until he lost track of which way was up.

When it fell back like a wave exhausting itself on the shore, Harry was on his knees and the Aurors had fallen. Other than Snape, the only person still on their feet was Helen who was standing with her hands over her abdomen and her brown hair falling wildly over her face. She was shaking, but otherwise it was as if the spell had never touched her.

She looked up. Her pupils were so huge her eyes were almost as black as Snape’s. They glistened as they fastened on her husband’s eyes.

"They threatened our baby," she whispered. A tear rolled down her cheek. "They tried to kill our baby, Severus."

Harry staggered up to go to her, but was brushed aside in a flurry of black robes as Snape swept through the doorway and wrapped his arms around his wife. Snape pulled her close against him, rocking her slowly.

"She’s protected, Helen," he breathed into her hair as Helen leaned into his embrace. "Our baby is protected. Grandmother won’t let anyone harm her."

"I want to go home." Her voice was muffled against his chest.

"I know. Solly will take you home. Solly will take you anywhere you want to go." He kissed her hair.

"I want to go home with you."

Silence.

Helen sniffed and looked up. Harry saw her face. It was white except for a few freckles. All the laughter was gone. "You have to take Draco home, though, don’t you?" she said, and it wasn’t quite a question.

Snape nodded.

Using the heel of her hand to wipe her eyes dry, Helen said, "I know you do. And I understand. I just wish…"

"That you didn’t understand?" Snape whispered.

"Yes!" Helen chuckled a little, but it sounded cynical. "I hate having to be a rational creature. It sucks. I thought that now I’m pregnant I wouldn’t have to bother with all that stuff."

Snape rubbed his thumb along her jawline. "If it’s any help, most humans don’t bother at any stage in their lives."

Helen bit her lip. "I guess I’m not a real human," she said in a tiny voice.

Harry had heard enough. He hurried forward to put his arms around Helen, barely noticing that he was forced to sling one arm around Snape’s waist too. "Don’t say that," babbled Harry.. "Never say that, Helen, because it’s not true. Look – I’d take your brand of being human over those idiots any day."

"Thanks," Helen said, the smallest smile hovering in the corners of her mouth. "I appreciate it, Harry, but I’m not blind to the truth…"

"The truth is that you’re the only human outside of my adoptive family I can stand spending time with without thinking up slow and painful ways of killing them," growled Snape. "Now will you stop worrying about whether you’re human or not? Grandmother Taniwha will get someone to issue you a certificate if you have some desperate want for one. And if I care about you enough to participate in a group hug with Potter then you’re furlongs ahead of the rest of the species. Satisfied?"

"I… maybe."

"Well, be satisfied. Potter, if you don’t stop hugging my wife and I, I’m going to vomit."

Harry let go with alacrity and not a little alarm. Snape looked in the mood for damage.

But the evil glint in Snape’s eyes wasn’t focussed on him.

"Would you like me to kill them, dear?" he asked conversationally, eyeing the two Aurors who were flat on their backs and groaning as if the Cruciatis curse had hit them instead. Maybe it had.

Harry went cold. This was Snape as he’d been in his Death Eater days.

But…

"That’s not a very rational thing to do, dear," said Helen, although she paused to think as well as blow her nose on a hankie she took from one of Snape’s pockets before she said so.

"I’m not feeling very rational," said Snape silkily. "Rather the reverse, actually."

There was a worried whine from the Ice Dragon, who had crept up behind Harry. <sunonice> could sense the continuing throb of malice in the room. Harry put a hand on the Ice Dragon’s neck in an effort to soothe the creature – if the ortho became too unsettled Harry and Snape could lose control over him and at this point, with the Ministry sending out Aurors after the two wizards and the Ice Dragon, that could mean disaster.

"Well, if you killed them it would be setting a bad example for the boys…" Helen said, sounding like she was thinking aloud and trying to remember something she’d read a long time ago in a book.

"They’re old enough to get their own morals."

"The Headmaster would be angry."

"I’ll claim self-defence." Snape twirled his wand as he gave the two downed Aurors a hungry look.

"Think of the paperwork."

"Damn." He lowered his wand. But, at a slightly louder groan from Jasper, raised it again. "Petrificus totalis," he said, and repeated the spell on the second Auror.

"That was very rational."

"They will carve those words on my tombstone," said Snape morosely. "'He was a rational man’."

"Yes, dear." And Helen gave the Auror who’d been holding her a strategic kick.

Harry winced – as did Snape and the Ice Dragon, who must have had some residual memories of being a human male tucked away in there somewhere.

"There," said Helen with a great deal of satisfaction as Gordon curled around himself and made small noises in the back of his throat. "Now who’s the one who won’t be having spawn?" Before Harry could say anything she had delivered a kick to the other Auror.

"Ah, dear…?" Snape said in a higher-than-usual voice.

"Yes, darling?" Helen was surveying her footwork critically. "Rona said that was a good move. I’ll have to write and tell her how good it is."

Snape rubbed at the bridge of his nose. Harry, who was managing to stand and cross his legs at the same time, wondered if the Potions master’s eyes were watering in shared male sympathy too.

"Please don’t tell Rona about this. And… I’m sure it won’t be necessary to do this ever again."

"Hum. Well, I’ll see, I suppose." She took a good look at her husband’s face. "Honestly, Sev – you’d think I’d killed them instead of just putting the boot in." She sounded absolutely astonished. "How can killing them be worse than this?"

"It’s just…" Snape tried to say, and ended up waving the nose-rubbing hand helplessly. "Look. If you really want to incapacitate a man, try and gouge out his eyes first… but not today, please. I may have a use for their eyes later."

"This seems to work okay." She gave Gordon another kick. "See?"

Snape was having obvious difficulty finding words, so Harry tried to help. "You see, Helen… Um… it’s just that… Um," said Harry.

Sometimes words were tricky beasts to find.

There was one single, pure moment of shared male consensus between Harry and Snape as they exchanged glances. It was a look that said: We shall never mention this again. Ever.

The look dissolved into one of mutual horror as Helen bent down and started rifling through the Aurors’ pockets.

"What?" she demanded when she saw their expressions. "Oh, come on. I think I’m owed something!"

Harry tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t have Snape sneering at him for Gryffindorish sensibilities.

Snape found something first: "They might have something dangerous in their pockets," he advised.

"Oh. Well, I’ve got some money… over a hundred Galleons, I think – wow, who would’ve thought Aurors get paid so much? – a silver hip-flask, a gold hip-flask I think I’ll give to Remus seeing as how he can’t use the silver one and you only drink beer, some suspicious vials you can have, dear, and two balls of string!" She flourished her booty. "I’ll keep the string, I think. You never know when it’ll come in handy. Can I tell Rona about that?"

"Seeing as how she’s in advertising I’m sure she’ll be proud of you," Snape said weakly as he plucked the suspicious vials out of his wife’s hands.

"True. I’d better just check on Draco. Could you make sure Solly is okay?"

While Snape checked the pooka, Helen grabbed the still lightly stunned Harry by the arm and dragged him back to the Ice Dragon, who was very pleased to see her, rubbing his head against her shoulder and almost purring.

Harry relayed the information that Helen was safe, and Draco chuffed in relief.

"Harry…" Helen was scratching the ortho behind the ear.

"Yes?"

"Can you keep an eye on Severus for me?" she said quietly. "I know it sounds silly, but I don’t want him to kill those two. Killing them would just bring more trouble than it’s worth. He really wants to do something bad to them, and when he puts his mind to it he can be extremely nasty."

So Helen wasn’t blind to Snape’s bad side after all. Harry’s respect for her rose another notch.

She put her hand on Harry’s face. It was still trembling a little. "Don’t let him do anything… stupid. You’ll know stupid when you see it. And you, Harry-chick, remember that if he sees you or Draco in danger he’ll stick his daft self between you and it. So be careful, and not just for your sake… I want to see all three of you safe back at Hogwarts – or in New Zealand. You’re my nephew just as much as Chad and Eru are – remember that." She gripped his ear and tugged it lightly. "Keep yourself safe."

"I’ll do what I can," Harry said solemnly, knowing that Helen wouldn’t want some bland promise of "Of course I will." "I promise." He gave her a small smile, wishing he had some way of telling her how much it meant to him that she considered him family.

"Thank you," she breathed, and pulled his head down so that she could drop a kiss on his forehead. "I don’t want any of yoy getting into any more trouble – and certainly not on my behalf. My legal standing in the magical community is debatable, and although Sev doesn’t talk about it, it makes him angry. I have very little legal protection, you see, and he can be a teensy bit defensive on my behalf." She chewed her upper lip. "Most people would regard me as a Transfigured animal. Technically, that’s true. I’m not eligible to vote, and if someone killed me they would be charged with destruction of property rather than murder."

Harry was almost too angry to speak. "But… they can’t… anyone who ever met you… how stupid can they be?"

"People can be incredibly stupid, Mr Potter," hissed Snape, who had glided up behind them unheard. He placed his hands on Helen’s shoulders. "And I already told you I wouldn’t kill them, Helen. Solly is fine, if a little nervous. He will be happier when he is sure that you are safe."

"Yes. Sorry – I didn’t mean to worry Harry." She turned her head to kiss the backs of Snape’s fingers.

Snape sighed. "I know. Helen… Your legal status is irrelevant. If you wanted to debate the finer points, then it could be argued that I am not fully human. My ultimate ancestress is a goddess of night and death, after all." He shook her shoulders lightly. "Give me bird Helen over a fully human Helen any day – I’ve had enough of those who laughingly label themselves ‘humanity’. If you purged the world of those fully human – barring Rona and her family, or course – I honestly doubt I’d mourn."

"Harry’s standing right beside you," Helen reproved.

"I’m aware of that."

Bastard, thought Harry. I bet you were aware of that.

Snape slipped an arm around Helen’s waist to pull her backwards against him, and spread his fingers over where the baby rested. A look of concentration crossed his features, then he nodded in satisfaction. "Wasn’t even touched," he said, twin notes of satisfaction and amusement mellowing out his voice. "Grandmother weaves her protections well."

"I don’t remember her setting anything up," said Helen, staring down at Snape’s hand for a moment before covering it with her own and slipping her fingers between his.

"Hm. I think it was part of the marriage spell she cast." He smiled, and pressed a kiss to Helen’s temple. "There’s something to be said for an arranged marriage after all."

"Heck of a dowry."

Snape chuckled, an almost alien sound to Harry’s ears. And… it was an arranged marriage? Harry had to stop to think about that, even after everything that had happened today. Whenever he’d ever thought about marriage, he’d never considered that they could be arranged in this day and age – it seemed medieval! But, he realised, it made sense. For had Snape stopped to wonder if he should propose to Helen (or even been allowed to think about the wisdom of marrying someone who’d just been Transfigured from a parrot!), the marriage would have been doomed before it began – Grandmother Taniwha had been wise indeed.

Snape pulled out his Muggle-style notebook and pen and was scribbling some notes in it. "Here," he said to Helen as he ripped out a page. "Give this to the Granger girl. It’s for the project she’s working on with Longbottom."

"You’re not trying to keep your research going beyond the grave, are you?" asked Helen, shaking off his hold and turning towards him with her hands on her hips. Her eyes were narrowed.

"Of course not," Snape replied without making eye contact. He tucked the notebook back into his robes. "I merely thought she should keep herself busy while I’m away. I had an idea that needs some research done, and she should be just about competent for that."

"You should try hiding your pride in your students a bit more. You might give Hermione a swollen head if you keep praising her like that," Helen told him.

She really was coming along well with her sarcasm, and Harry was pleased she used it in defence of his friends.

"I’m sure she gets quite enough praise from everyone else. Anything extra from me would turn her into some sort of raving egomaniac. Let’s try again with Solomon, shall we?" asked Snape, before Helen could defend Hermione further. "Perhaps it will be second time the charm."

"Merlin, I hope so," Helen agreed fervently. "I don’t need anymore shocks today, thank you very much."

Solomon was standing stock still in the hallway. If it was possible, he looked embarrassed at not having taken proper care of his master’s wife.

Snape lifted Helen onto the pooka’s back again. With a smile Helen leaned down again and kissed Snape. "You said ‘she’," she whispered. "We’re going to have a daughter?" The light was back on in her eyes.

"It would seem so."

Not losing that small, secretive smile, Helen reached out and touched his face. "Come back to me."

Snape took her hand and kissed the palm. "You know I will," he breathed.

Helen closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "Okay. Solomon – get me home, please." This time, when Solomon walked down the corridor, he looked very much on the alert with his red-tipped ears flicking back and forth. Then the pooka and Helen turned a corner that seemed to be made from thin air, and they were gone.

Snape and Harry stared at the space where they’d been.

"Was that Apparating?" asked Harry, more to break the silence than out of any real curiosity. Snape had suddenly looked so sad – and Harry’s felt uncomfortable associating Snape with any deep emotion other than homicidal rage.

Snape shook his head and shrugged. "It’s a magic peculiar to some of the fairy creatures. I have no idea how it works – Solly likes his secrets. For example, how he managed to transport young Mr Malfoy back and forth in time. Because I’m fairly sure that was what happened."

"Really? I mean, I had a dream that showed Malfoy at your birth, but… I didn’t know Time-Turners worked for such distances."

"Lucius had one, but I doubt Draco ever did. However, Draco always seemed to be accompanied by Solomon when he appeared in each different time – when I was born, and when…" Snape hesitated over the memory "… and when I was lost and needed to be taken to Grandmother Taniwha… But Solomon has never shown such tendencies to me. He may belong to me, but for a long time he has been a tool or servant of Grandmother’s. I suspect he still is, especially in light of his bringing Helen and sustenance to us today."

"How old is he?"

Again, a shrug. Snape’s thin shoulders could be quite expressive. "He was old when Grandmother got him."

There was a groan from one of the Aurors and Snape’s eyes sharpened. A curl of the professor’s lip indicated that someone was in a hell of a lot of trouble and Harry found himself glad that for once it wasn’t him. For once.

After changing the paralysing spells for charms that were slightly less binding, Snape crouched next to Gordon, the man who had made the supreme mistake of threatening Helen.

At the look on Snape’s face Harry felt a twinge of sympathy, then remembered what the Auror had said about Helen: "It’s not a woman, it’s the Transformed beast that’s whoring itself to the Death Eater that got away…"

And then had come the Cruciatis curse.

Harry felt any compassion dry up inside him.

Out of one of those mysterious pockets that populated Snape’s robes emerged the small, clear bottle that Harry remembered Snape threatening him with in his fourth year: Veritaserum. Truth in a bottle.

Snape forced the Auror’s mouth open by the simple method of jabbing a finger in the hinge of his jaw. At first Gordon looked surprised and indignant. Then his eyes widened as Snape uncapped the little bottle and tilted it over his mouth.

Three drops fell.

The effect was instantaneous. Gordon’s face – not too bright to start off with – slackened and his eyes went dull.

"What is your name?" said Snape in his silky voice after he lifted the binding spell.

"Gordon Peckett."

"Very good," purred Snape. "And why are you at Malfoy Manor?"

"’m Gordon Peckett."

"Yes, you are. Very good. Why is Gordon Peckett at Malfoy Manor?"

"Sent here."

"I see. And by whom were you sent?"

"Min’stry Mag’c."

Snape looked up at Harry. "He’s been trained to withstand questioning by Veritaserum," he whispered. "Notice how he answers as vaguely as he can. All Aurors are trained to do this, but some are better at dissembling than others."

"But is that going to stop you getting answers?" Harry asked.

Snape’s face took on a sly hauteur. "Not in the least," he grinned.

Harry squatted down to watch a master at work.

And Snape was a master at getting the truth. It only took a few minutes until Gordon was convinced he was sitting chatting to an old friend by a fireside, glass of Ogden’s Old Firewhisky in his hand. After that Snape flattered him, telling Gordon how important he was to have been sent on such a risky mission.

And Gordon opened up like the proverbial Muggle book.

The trick seemed to be to make Gordon believe that the mission to Malfoy Manor was all in the past and, what was more, it had been a success. Snape carefully congratulated him on his work, and slipped something in about how Gordon had received the Order of Merlin, Second Class, for his efforts.

Gordon was quite informative after that.

It seemed that Cornelius Fudge, the Minister for Magic, had authorised several teams of Aurors to visit areas where Snape might take the Ice Dragon, and Malfoy Manor had been a lucky guess on the part of young Percy Weasley, who was rapidly rising up the bureaucratic ladder.

Harry made a mental note to tell Fred and George about that. They might be able to come up with some appropriate punishment for their prig of a brother.

Hogwarts had, of course, been searched, but only in a cursory fashion, for Headmaster Dumbledore had been quite unhelpful and had even gone so far as to protest the way the Ministry was slandering Snape. Gordon had quite a bit to say on the subject of Dumbledore’s sanity, none of it flattering, especially pertaining to the headmaster’s defence of a certain filthy Death Eater who’d escaped Azkaban by masquerading as a spy…

Harry clenched his fists but said nothing when Snape lifted his index finger in a silent warning to keep quiet.

At last Harry found out why the Ice Dragon was so valuable – because it was barely more than a baby, its various body parts could be used in a variety of spells and Potions that had been unfeasible for several hundred years. The products of adult Ice Dragons were more limited in their uses, and liable to backfire on the user. The Ministry buildings could be warded to an unimaginable degree using juvenile Ice Dragon blood and protected from assault by whichever Dark Wizard cared to make a bid for Voldemort’s crown.

When Gordon finally closed his eyes again and Snape stood up, Harry asked, "They just want Draco to protect the Ministry of Magic? Can’t they just ask him for a little blood and be done with it? They could probably scrape some up from Antarctica," he added bitterly. "He was bleeding a lot there."

Snape looked down at him, his dark eyes distant and as cold as Harry had ever seen them. "Life is never so simple, Potter. If it were a simple matter of draining a little blood they could have done that in Antarctica. But what the Ministry wants is complete control. Just like Lucius did." He rubbed the bridge of his nose as if he were getting a headache. "Lucius tried to control the magic by disguising it as a human boy. They want to control it by killing Draco and harvesting the parts." Snape’s face was reddened and a vein was throbbing in his temple. Harry wisely decided to stay quiet and wait for any more information. Or an explosion – it seemed even odds as to what Snape would give.

For once Snape felt in a communicative mood. Perhaps it was simply that he needed someone to bounce ideas off the way Hermione did sometimes, or perhaps he needed Harry to understand what they were fighting because they were fighting this together and Snape would need all the help he could get.

Maybe at last Snape would admit it, even if it was only to himself.

But Snape didn’t seem to be in the mood for anything helpful, given the way he sat down cross-legged and scowled off into space. "It would appear that someone in the Ministry – and by that I mean Cornelius Fudge – wishes to set themselves up in the traditional unassailable fortress. I find it quite revolting how often wizards conform to stereotype."

Harry wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that, but had heard that in the bad old pre-Hogwarts days the more powerful wizards barricaded themselves in towers to protect themselves from their enemies. He mentioned this to Snape. "Do you think that’s what Fudge is planning?"

"I wouldn’t put it past him. His mentality is decidedly feudal sometimes – he’s quite keen on the old bloodlines being in power, but now that so many of them have been done away with due to their association with Voldemort he probably aspires to promoting his own lineage." Snape sniffed. "Not that the Fudge family is a particularly worthy one, but everything must start from somewhere. Fudge is quite adept at politics and with his rather relaxed attitude towards nepotism he’s generated enough followers from many of the minor pureblood families to support any attempt to solidify his power base." His gaze turned upon Harry, who tried not to flinch from the cold hardness he saw there. "Now that Voldemort is removed from the political landscape there is, as the Muggles say, a power vacuum. Any student of politics worth his or her salt can see that the wizarding world is in desperate need of stability for a period of, oh, not less than two decades just to build up the economic base again, if nothing else. Even the goblins at Gringott’s have been upset enough to submit a few articles recently on the fluctuating Galleon rate. For this purpose, if not other, Fudge is seen as a good politician."

When Harry frowned and opened his mouth to protest, Snape shook his head. His greasy hair falling in strings over his face, he went on.

"I’m not saying he is good or bad. I’m merely commenting that he is perceived by most voters as the best hope for a stable government and thus a stable society. We live in a frightened world, Potter. Frightened people will follow an established leader. Professor Dumbledore might have made a successful challenge to Fudge, as Fudge is well aware and not-so-secretly frightened of, but Albus has more sense than to stick his nose into politics. It’s a dirty business, and he is, of course, too much the consummate Gryffindor to be the kind of political animal necessary in this post-Voldemort world."

"Professor Dumbledore would make a great Minister!"

"Yes, you would think that," Snape said in his driest voice. Harry flushed but wisely kept quiet. "Despite your… slightly biased opinion, Albus isn’t capable of the kind of double-dealing necessary. His sense of… honour…" Snape sneered the word "… leaves him open to attack from better politicians. Like or not, we are ruled by politicians, not philosophers or teachers."

"So you think we need someone sneaky in charge."

Snape steepled his long fingers. "What is needed is someone who can see past their own grand views to what the community needs. Fudge does provide stability, that can be admitted, but it is unlikely he will sacrifice his personal ambitions for what is best for the whole."

"Shame he’s not a Slytherin."

Harry meant it snarkily, but Snape inclined his head slightly as if at a compliment.

"Indeed," said Snape. "If he was a Slytherin, he might have had the guile to twine his ambitions into the strengthening of the wizarding community. Unfortunately Fudge is a failed Hufflepuff – failed, in the sense that his loyalty to the greater good has been sacrificed for loyalty to his immediate family and friends."

"Oh. I always thought that Hufflepuffs had better sense."

"They usually do. Self-sacrifice is something innate in them – or so the stereotype goes. Poppy Pomfrey, who is hard working and blessed with an inordinate amount of common sense, and you will not on pain of pain ever tell her that I said that, is an excellent example of a Hufflepuff. Fudge, however, is what happens when loyalty is not tempered with intelligence. Poppy can see the forest despite the trees."

"While Fudge wants to cut them down to get a better view," Harry finished.

Snape quirked a corner of his mouth up in a small smile. "Exactly."

<sunonice> had padded up to the doorway and poked his head out to sniff the downed Aurors. He growled softly and showed a few teeth, but relaxed when Harry batted his snout away.

"Leave them," Snape commanded. "You shouldn’t be hungry already."

The Ice Dragon grumbled at not being allowed to eat one of the wizards and licked his chops with a long, grey tongue. He gave Snape a lopsided glare.

Harry had an inkling the ortho was planning something, but not what. So it came as a complete surprise when Draco swiped that long, grey tongue over Snape’s head.

There was a soft popping sound.

Snape, his eyes bugging, clutched at his hair.

Draco burped.

"What the hell…?" Snape exclaimed.

Harry wasn’t quite sure what had just happened until Snape took his hands away from his head. Silky black skeins of hair rippled in shimmering waves as Snape shook his head. All the grease was gone and had left Snape’s hair almost iridescent with health.

"Um… did Draco just eat that curse?" Harry asked.

The story according to Rona was that Snape’s father had put the curse on Snape that made his hair so greasy. It had been an attempt to make the young boy feel ugly and stay away from people. As curses went, it had been pretty effective – Harry knew Snape had been given a hard time at school for it, and childish though it was, Sirius still used it as a weapon in their continuing vendetta.

"I thought it was impossible to remove."

"So did I," Snape said bemusedly, running his fingers through his hair as if he’d never felt it this clean and going cross-eyed examining strands he held in front of his face.

Actually, realised Harry, that was probably correct. Rona had said that Snape was very young when his father cursed him.

"How did you do that?" Snape asked the Ice Dragon, who was looking smug and ignored the question in favour of flopping down to rest with his head next to Harry.

Harry scratched behind one of the delicately furled ears until the ortho-elemental yawned and closed its silver-blue eyes. Waves of contentment flowed through the connection to Harry – for Harry it was the feeling of a stomach full of butterbeer and chocolate that had been stolen in a midnight raid on the kitchens.

Harry grinned and tugged the ear until he felt the Ice Dragon chuckle in his mind. "I think that curse was dessert for him."

Snape sniffed, but not angrily. "Astonishing."

"I wonder what else he can do."

"I doubt you are the only one currently pondering on that." Snape gave Jasper a kick.

The Auror glared at him. Snape smiled back sweetly until Jasper paled and looked away.

"Do you know?"

"Not really." Snape sighed. "Very little was known about them and those books that survived the Goblin Rebellions lost most of their information when the spells were destroyed."

Destroyed by you. Harry continued to look down at the happily dozing creature. "So Fudge wants some of Draco’s blood. Merlin knows I would have been happy to deliver a pint or five a couple of years ago, but… why should he want to kill him? That’s a bit like the man who killed the golden goose, isn’t it?"

"Fudge wants some blood. More than that, I expect he wants to be the only one protected by juvenile Ice Dragon blood. It gives him a unique protection that can’t be broken by anything other than one of the spells I destroyed or an adult Ice Dragon."

"Are there any adults?" asked Harry, wondering, if Draco was a baby Ice Dragon and the size of a minivan, just how big the adults got.

Snape shook his head. "All the Ice Dragons were removed from the world after the last Goblin Rebellion. It was pure luck I managed to get an egg. Luck and bloody-mindedness," he added morosely.

"What about the spells? Can’t you recreate them?"

"No."

"Then how can Fudge use Draco if he doesn’t know what spells to use."

"You don’t need spells for what Fudge wants to do. Ortho-elementals have a peculiar kind of magic that runs parallel to our own. Draco’s blood is an intrinsic protection when applied to immobile objects such as houses or the Ministry of Magic. His hide would make lightweight armour resistant to spells and blades. It is rumoured that the tears of an Ice Dragon are the purest Healing magic in the world – not even Fawkes’s tears can match them. There is nothing more valuable than a single tear from an Ice Dragon. Three thousand and sixty years ago a war was fought between five Persian tribes for one."

Harry frowned down at Draco, not that he was angry with the Ice Dragon. More angry on his behalf. "Why did you do that? Destroy the spells, I mean, unless you didn’t want to help Draco later?"

Silence.

Harry looked up. Snape’s expression was ugly and he was tapping his wand against his shin. "If only you showed this much attention in class," Snape said, his voice barely louder than a whisper. "Finding every last, little detail and milking it for every last piece of information…"

Tired, wrung out by fear and anger, Harry glared back. "Hey, I’m not the one who kidnapped a baby and then destroyed any chance of protection from its bodily products!" He regretted his outburst immediately.

"Don’t presume to judge me," spat Snape, eyes flashing.

Harry looked down. "Sorry," he said, not really feeling very sorry. "But I don’t understand why you destroyed all those spells in the first place."

There was a long silence before Snape replied.

"I was young," he said softly. "And angry at what I had done – and what I felt Lucius had manipulated me into. Young and angry in combination inevitably produce stupidity. A fact I keep trying to teach you – without much success."

Harry swallowed his anger. He was tired; Snape was tired. Not that it made any difference, probably; the man was normally more acerbic than this. But maybe if Harry tried not to lash out in retaliation he could smooth things over…? "Perhaps you shouldn’t try to teach me something you don’t understand."

Oops. Maybe he hadn’t kept that anger down like he’d intended.

Snape’s face was set in fury. "Perhaps," he whispered, with his lips thinned to the point of non-existence, "you should stop trying to be the moral majority. The day you stop trying to turn yourself into your father, who was the most stuck-up prig I’ve ever met – and I was unfortunate enough to go to school with His Arrogance Sirius Black – that day will be one of general rejoicing by all those who understand the difference between morals and ethics." He hissed the last.

Harry’s head snapped back as if Snape had physically slapped him. He could feel two points of heat flushing his cheeks. "Don’t you dare bring my father into this!"

"Why not?" Snape countered, his smile evil. "Isn’t it about time you learned to see beyond the halo of Saint James?"

"Don’t call him that! I know you two didn’t get on…" That was an understatement. Harry had talked quite a bit with Sirius and Remus. Although the two didn’t actually say as much, Harry had been quite horrified at what they’d implied about his father’s treatment of Snape. It had taken a quiet conversation with Rona to confirm his suspicions that yes, his father and the Marauders had been little more than the kind of bullies he’d despised Dudley Dursley, Draco Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle for being. It had taken a further half-dozen sessions with Dan the counsellor before Harry could reconcile himself to the fact that his father may have behaved badly at school but would have grown out of it. From stories Remus in particular had emphasised, James Potter had matured a great deal thanks to his relationship with one Lily Evans. Harry had held onto that.

What he found hard to even contemplate was how his father and his friends’ treatment of Snape had probably led the young Severus to seek validation from Voldemort.

That had hurt more than anything else.

"Do you still see my father every time you look at me?" Harry demanded, indignant as well as astonished that Snape still couldn’t accept him as Harry – just Harry. Not: Harry Potter the Boy Who Lived. Not: Our new – celebrity. Not the son of his old enemy. After this past year when they’d fought side by side instead of face to face, he’d earned it, surely. "Is that all I am? All your capable of seeing?"

He wanted to be Harry.

Snape didn’t answer with anything other than his most scathing glare. Then he unfolded his legs and stood up, ignoring the way Harry looked down at his clenched fists. It was doubtful Snape noticed Harry was blinking a little more than necessary.

"This bickering is pointless," Snape declared, eyeing the stairs at the end of the corridor moodily. "More Aurors will be here within fifteen minutes, according to our loquacious friend." He nudged Gordon with the toe of his boot. Gordon groaned – he was beginning to come out of the Veritaserum and just coming into full knowledge of all he’d told Snape. "And I don’t know how well Grandmother’s ward will hold against a squadron of them. We need to be prepared for their arrival. Are you ready to leave, Mr Potter?"

So formal. "Yes," Harry said dully. He couldn’t suppress a small shiver. Malfoy Manor seemed extra cold now that Helen was gone. He didn’t want to be here now – all it held were the echoes of angry words that should have been kept unsaid. Somehow that seemed fitting. This house did not strike Harry as having ever had anything approaching the easy-going comfort of the Weasley’s house; even ex-Draco-now-<sunonice> felt uneasy here, Harry sensed. The ortho had woken during the argument and wisely decided to stay out of it, although that third eyelid slid over his eyes more frequently.

"Stand up."

Harry stood, a little sulkily. "What are you doing?" he asked, without much hope of getting a civil answer from Snape, who was muttering an incantation over the blanket Harry still had around his shoulders.

"Spelling this for warmth," Snape replied civilly, if a little coldly. Apparently the spell for warmth didn’t reach as far as Snape’s heart, Harry decided. But he didn’t complain, especially since the blanket moulded itself around him into a very useful parka complete with hood. He plucked at the material thoughtfully – it was very thick and the woollen fabric had somehow formed a skin that should competently take the place of a windbreaker.

"Will it be cold where we’re going?"

"Extremely."

"So where are we going?" Harry asked with – he considered – great patience.

"Do you remember that wind that blows from the South Pole?"

How could Harry forget? "Yes," he replied grimly.

"We’re going to the back of it."

Snape staggered on arrival, but Harry grabbed his arm and steadied his professor before he could slip on the ice. For once Snape had the good grace not to shake off Harry’s hand with the customary sneer – in fact he put his own hand on Harry’s shoulder for support. In the quick look Harry shot him it was clear from Snape’s pinched expression that he was utterly drained by the transfer.

The Ice Dragon made a soft noise and reached out one claw to gently touch Snape’s face – or what was exposed of it between the folds of hood and cloak.

"I’m all right," said Snape, but the rasp to his voice gave him away. He looked around before Harry could comment on it and brushed irritably at a strand of newly-clean hair that blew into his eyes.

It was always day here, even if the time seemed to oscillate somewhere in the range of early to mid-morning. And that bloody wind never stopped. Harry shivered in his spelled blanket-parka and wished they’d gone further away from the coast. As he pulled the drawstring on the hood a little tighter, he silently complimented Snape on the attention to detail – because out here in the frozen wilderness details counted, and the parka Charlie Weasley had lent him was back in Malfoy Manor with most of the back torn to shreds from what Harry guessed had been a spell from one of the warders before Snape had Disapparated them out of Antarctica.

And now they were back.

Snape had Apparated them as far as he dared. He’d explained to Harry (to save stupid questions in the future, he’d said in an abrupt tone which didn’t make Harry any happier) that the magic carried in the Katabatic made it dangerous to Apparate much further inland when the starting point was so far away. Somehow the swirling waters of the Southern Ocean disrupted the edges of the magic just enough to leave a zone where a wizard could safely Apparate himself and his two passengers – even if one of those passengers was an Ice Dragon. Once they reached the continent proper and dug down for a piece of dirt, Snape would be able to aim their Apparition trajectory with greater safety.

First they had to reach solid ground, of course. The ice shelf they were on curved around one arm of the bay to a beach where shingles winked flecks of light. Over on the far side of the bay was a shifting mass of black – Harry squinted and thought he could make out individual penguins.

<sunonice> had his muzzle raised as he sniffed the breeze. He closed his eyes and ignored the startled barks of the seals thronging this ice shelf. One giant male reared up and roared at the interlopers, but when the Ice Dragon opened his eyes again in a cold glare and snapped his jaws at the seal, the giant animal heaved its bulk away as fast as it could and disappeared with a brief splash down a breathing hole in the ice.

Watching the fast-departing ripples of lard reminded Harry of the last time he’d threatened Dudley with his wand.

Snape had managed to drop them into the middle of a seal colony, and was now looking around in distaste. The seals were less than impressed with their visitors and showed their displeasure in moans, groans and loud roars although none seemed keen to come close. That was good – their teeth looked quite sharp, and some of them were quite formidably huge. The one <sunonice> had frightened off must have weighed over a ton. Harry had never given seals much thought beyond the times he’d had to clean the occasional garden ornament, but these ones weren’t in the balancing-balls-on-noses category he’d always pictured them in.

One belched loudly.

"Whoo-arrrk!" Harry tried not to retch.

The Ice Dragon looked revolted, and even Snape, who’d had the most experience with foul Potions ingredients, turned a faint shade of green.

It was the nasty smell-thought the Ice Dragon had used when he was angry.

"Seal burp?" Harry said to the Ice Dragon. "That’s your major swear-word?"

Snape grimaced. "It’s an effective one. Now let’s get off this piece of ice. I’m not sure how stable it is. Potter, make sure Draco knows to walk carefully and watch out for any cracks hidden in the snow. I may have the energy to heal another break but I don’t care to find out."

Harry closed his eyes and concentrated on sending images of staying safe to Draco. He pictured the Ice Dragon walking carefully over the ice and watching out for any dangerous places, and received back a warm abstract feeling that <sunonice> would keep an eye out for anything that might threaten the three of them.

They walked slowly with their shadows stretching out huge before them.

The seals protested loudly, but faced with a large animal equipped with claws and teeth leading the two humans the seals decided that retreat was the safest option and cleared a path. Some dived down holes while others undulated away. Mother seals kept a careful eye on the strangers as they shepherded their soulful-eyed young to safety, but the Ice Dragon chose a path that wandered from a straight line so that he avoided getting too close to pups, for which Harry was glad, and the odd trio went slowly enough so that no pup was in danger of being flattened by some startled adult.

Perhaps it was what they’d left behind them at Malfoy Manor, but Harry felt more than usually disinclined to cause harm.

The memory of Snape’s expression still put knots in his chest…

"What are you doing?"

Snape had just made sure that Harry would be warm where they were going, and had spelled his own robes for extra warmth. Now, instead of Disapparating them from Malfoy Manor like Harry had been expecting, he was crouching over the prone Aurors.

"Don’t worry, Potter," Snape replied. "I’m not about to offend your delicate beliefs by committing murder." Holding a bottle poised in one hand, he allowed six drops of the greenish-grey liquid to fall into Auror Gordon’s mouth.

"You promised Helen…"

Snape’s sideways glare could have soldered steel. "I promised Helen not to kill anyone. Don’t you dare imply I would lie to my wife!"

"Sorry." And Harry was sorry. "I didn’t think…"

"You Gryffindors never do," grumbled Snape, turning his attention back to the Auror.

Harry was reminded of a vulture perched waiting over a dying wildebeest. "It’s just he looks frightened… like he knows something special about what you gave him…"

With that impervious expression Snape could have played poker for England.

Harry tried not to show his frustration, aware as he was that <sunonice> was behind him monitoring every move for a sign that an Auror could be eaten. That wouldn’t help their cause. "So what did you give him, sir?"

Snape looked up, a smile that never showed on his lips still managing to crease lines around his dead black eyes.

"About three years in St Mungo’s."

"Huh – I mean, sorry? I don’t understand."

Gordon’s eyes were wide now and fixed on some point behind Snape’s head as he stared at something only he could see. Sweat made his face shine with a green pallor in the thin evening sunlight. The sheer terror there made Harry’s gut clench – he was sure that if Gordon hadn’t been under a binding spell the Auror would have been screaming.

"Understand this, Mr Potter… these men attacked my wife. Had they been brought to task by their superiors they might have received a slap on the wrist in the form of a small fine on a par with what might be demanded from a petty vandal."

Snape’s voice turned dreamy as he watched Gordon’s mind slip into the horror of what only the Auror could see.

"There would have been no imprisonment. Probably there would not even have been a trial," Snape continued in that dreamy voice, but then he looked up at Harry again and Harry flinched as he saw the knives in those fathomless eyes – it was like looking over the edge of sanity, and it made him shiver.

"Killing them is no revenge – it lacks subtlety. But to imprison them in their own minds… ahh," breathed Snape, "now that is punishment. Besides," he added, "this bottle was one of those Helen found in their pockets." He held it up so that the last of the evening sun diffusing through the curtains caught it and turned the bottle to a fiery green jewel swirling with brown mist. "This is Opalmind and was developed by Iago of Venice over four hundred years ago. I, personally, would put it on a Potions list on a par with the Unforgivable Curses, but of course the Ministry must know better than my humble self if they are issuing it to Aurors… and it is in a bottle with a Ministry seal on the cap. If it’s considered appropriate for know-nothing lackeys like them to be using something like this, it must certainly be on the side of Good despite my thoughts to the contrary. So I suppose if they are allowed it, then if someone like me uses it – someone like me who knows exactly what this is and what it involves – then it must be even more moral."

Harry swallowed. His throat had suddenly become very dry – it must have been because the room was so cold or something. And they way Snape used the word moral like it was some sort of mental disease was a bit scary. Earlier on he’d implied Harry’s father hadn’t known the difference between morals and ethics – what, Harry wondered, was the difference? Better not to ask about that… Snape already seemed a bit unhinged and Harry didn’t want another rant of the "Your Father was a Shit to Me at School" variety. "Why three years?" Harry queried instead.

With a small grimace that could have been a smile with a strong following wind, Snape said, "Professor Dumbledore has… enlisted my services as a teacher for another year and a half. After that I may need time to tidy up loose ends, and as these two will not be your most ardent supporters it might be best if they are… temporarily removed from that delicate period between your leaving school and your enrolment in Auror training. Minerva," Snape added, still with that little almost-grin, "has been quite vocal about your golden future – if you’ll pardon the pun – as an Auror. She wants you to have every opportunity, up to and including preferential treatment in my Potions classes."

The cold glare must have been meant to indicate that demons would be strapping on ice-skates in the netherworld before Harry would get preferential treatment in any class Snape taught.

Harry managed to ignore it. He’d seen quite a range of Snape glares and this one was mild.

"So… you’re bound to Hogwarts for another year and a half… Is that meant to be coincidental with my finishing year?"

The hint of a grin became a fully fledged smirk. "I should take points off for you thinking the world revolves around you, but… five points to Gryffindor for demonstrating thought process. Yes, I am…" Snape paused as he stood up slowly with his knees creaking and looked down at Harry "… I am bound, I suppose, by a promise I made to Dumbledore when you first came here, the promise that I would protect you through your school years."

"Against Voldemort?"

A shrug. "The Dark Lord is gone, but Albus never forgets a promise made when one thought it would never be fulfilled."

"You thought Voldemort wouldn’t rise until after I’d finished school?" hazarded Harry.

"No," said Snape, and his face darkened. "Not necessarily. I merely thought…"

He didn’t bother finishing the sentence, to Harry’s relief.

I merely thought I would be dead by then.

The link between man, boy and Ice Dragon left the thought hanging almost palpable in the air.

Harry was glad Snape didn’t say it, though, and – weirdly – things became more comfortable when Snape crouched to administer a dose from the sinister little bottle to the second Auror. Even the Ice Dragon was relieved, and shook his head with a rattle of spines.

Well, more comfortable for Harry and Draco, that was.

Jasper tried to fight against Snape’s administration and gained enough muscular control to try and bite Snape. He was rewarded with a grim smile and a sharp knuckle in just the right place to pop his mouth open.

In went the six drops of mind-poison.

And it would be a long time before Harry forgot that look of terrible satisfaction on Snape’s face.

They had left immediately after Snape was sure that the Opalmind had taken effect and the biting cold of the Antarctic Katabatic wind with its stinging needles of ice was sheer clean relief after the boxed-in malice that permeated Malfoy Manor.

Draco especially seemed pleased to be gone. There was a jaunty set to his wings as he scanned the ice in front of them for crevices which might harm one of his human companions. Right behind the twitching tip of his tail trudged Harry and Snape. Harry kept his hand under Snape’s elbow to steady his professor, and Snape was weary enough to permit help. It was needed. Snape had a tendency to stumble on the ice. If it hadn’t already been worn down by the constant to’ing and fro’ing of the seals things could have been a lot worse, but Harry still wished with every slow, crunching footstep that they’d reached the beach instead of this wretched shelf of ice that stretched out over the blank unwelcoming waters of the bay.

It must have been the noise and the constant movement of the seals that stopped anyone from noticing when the two Warders showed up. The first sign that they weren’t alone was when Snape grunted and pitched forward onto his face and his wand spun away into the shifting mass of seals.

<sunonice> spun in a shower of ice crystals to stand over the fallen wizard. Harry crouched down under the ortho’s wing next to Snape.

"Are you okay?"

Snape propped himself up on his elbows and shook his head dizzily. "Got hit by expelliarmis," he panted. "Defend yourself."

"Protego!" Harry threw up a shield just in time. A spell bounced off, to be snapped up by <sunonice>, who growled eagerly at the prospect of a magical battle.

<thistimeIwillwin!> he sneered, calling the two wizards who had attacked them <sealburps!>. <sealburps… hurtSilkthatcuts.GRRRR!KILL+EATsealburps!> and he roared a challenge.

The seals scattered, hurtling as fast as they could undulate across the ice towards the two newcomers, who threw up sparks from their wands to frighten away the stampeding seals.

Snape lunged for his wand.

He almost made it.

A hastily-aimed fireball hit him between the shoulders and sent him flying.

"STOP!" bellowed Harry, as the Ice Dragon roared again, and he threw Impedimenta hexes at the wizards. It was impossible to tell who they were, but from their fur-lined parkas they were probably warders. From this distance the little badges on their chests didn’t look like Auror badges – and who else was out here?

Some days it seemed the whole world wanted to get in Harry’s way.

He threw some more curses, not caring how nasty they were, only caring that the two warders were quick enough to dodge them. One threw a curse that looked like a fizzing purple ball of light – Harry had never seen one like it before – and it arced towards the defenceless Snape.

Harry’s intercept spell wasn’t aimed right. The Ice Dragon leaped to try and catch the spell, but he was too slow.

Snape was too far from his wand.

Helpless, Harry could only watch as the spell landed in front of Snape. Snape’s face was a mask of horror, and Harry thought he heard the Potions master say something that would have got any Hogwarts student a month’s detention with Filch plus a soap mouthwash. He saw the purple light split into blue and red lines – the blue lines dug tendrils into the ice and burrowed deep. Then the red light shot down and steam erupted from the ice.

Draco tried to pounce on them before they could reach Snape, not realising that the red and blue lights weren’t aimed directly at the wizard.

Maybe if the Ice Dragon hadn’t landed so close things would have been different.

The ice juddered.

"HOLD ON, PROFESSOR!" bellowed Harry, and Snape clung to the ice with all the strength in his gloved fingers. Over his shoulder, Harry called out, "Don’t throw any hexes unless you really want to kill someone!"

One of the warders had his wand raised, but the other pulled his arm down before he could cast any spells. There seemed to be an argument going on, but Harry couldn’t spare them any attention, nor could he hear over the noise of the seals.

<sunonice> was standing stock still with his legs splayed and his eyes wide and fixed on Snape. Snape’s face was pale as the ice beneath him shifted. A large crack had opened right in front of him and the water was as black as his eyes.

"Stay back, Potter."

Harry ignored him and shuffled forward on his belly, trying to keep his weight spread out as far as he could. Beneath him were small creaks and groans, and the occasional sharp crack that could be felt through his Parka. He’d thought the ice shelf thicker than this, especially if seals as big as that one-ton monster could lumber about on it, but the spell cast by the warder must have melted it somehow.

"Damn you, boy, don’t you ever listen? I told you to stay back! That was a direct order from one of your teachers!"

"With all due respect sir, get stuffed." Harry continued his slow crawl, altering direction after one heart-stopping moment when the ice under his forward-questing hand broke away with a flicker of purple light.

"It is not safe and I am quite capable of taking care of myself."

"Funny, it looks like you need my help to me."

Snape’s face contorted in a snarl. "Stupid child. Is this some attempt to live up to your father’s memory? Are you hoping for the headline ‘Plucky Gryffindor Saves the Day’? How about ‘Harry Potter is a Hero – Again.’"

"Nope." Harry grimly reminded himself that he was trying to save Snape, not push him into the water. "And stop trying to bring my father into this."

<stopFIGHTING!>

Harry kept his tone level. He didn’t want to upset the Ice Dragon further – if it suddenly decided to move the whole patch of ice could break up and tip the trio into the sea. Harry didn’t know any spells to save him from water so cold that it could kill him in thirty seconds.

"Oh? Why not? All this seems quite familiar to me – mortal danger in combination with a Potter."

"I’m trying to help you, you git."

"The trick to offering help, Potter, is to know when it is not wanted. Ten points from Gryffindor for insulting a professor. Now piss off. You’re destabilising the ice."

"It already seems pretty unstable to me. And you’re not going to get rid of me just by telling me I’m like my father. Just reach out – I can take your hand from here. Please."

"Take this."

Snape tossed something into the air.

It was the pink shell and it landed in front of Harry’s nose. He went cross-eyed staring at it, realising…

Harry looked up from it, wide-eyed. "You can’t… I can’t –"

Crack!

Impulse made Harry grab the shell before it went into the sea. There was a cry from the Ice Dragon, a shout from one of the warders, and the ice in front of Harry split apart.

Snape made a frantic grab as the slab of ice he was lying on tilted, scrabbling madly, and only just managed to hang on to the edge. Water gurgled and Snape gasped with the shock of the cold as he began sliding into the sea.

"NO!" Harry managed to grab Snape’s fingers. "You’ll die if you fall in there!"

"Let go, idiot child, or you’ll be dragged in with me."

"I’m not letting go! Don’t you dare die! Don’t… just don’t! And you – don’t you move!" Harry called over his shoulder to Draco, who was trembling in eagerness to rush forward.

For a moment Harry thought he had a chance. He muttered the levitation charm, and despite his chattering teeth the spell held and Snape’s dead weight lightened.

But the frigid water was taking its toll on Snape. Those inky eyes were losing focus and the normally sallow face was now ashen. "Get him home, Potter," Snape said. "Go behind the wind. You’ll find them there. The shell… the shell has the last of the spells…"

"You’re coming with us," Harry growled.

"Stupid…"

"Shut up. Sir."

Snape didn’t take any points, which frightened Harry.

Then there was another burst of purple light that shattered into blue and red, and another of those sharp crack’s, and Snape was sliding into the water. Harry’s cold hands could no more have stopped the tide.

For a moment Snape’s fading gaze refocussed on Harry.

"I don’t see your father any more, Harry," he whispered.

And then he was gone.

The ice slid back over the dark waters.

Harry lay there with Snape’s glove in his hand and tears freezing on his face while behind him the Ice Dragon screamed.

Some instinct honed by Voldemort saved Harry. The part of him that wasn’t numbed with shock cleared the way for an animalistic part of his mind that demanded his survival, and he rolled.

Just in time.

With a thump! that split the ice and frightened seagulls on the distant beach into flight, the Ice Dragon hit the ground.

Harry turned over onto his belly and prayed the ice wouldn’t open up and swallow him.

The thump echoed off the nearest cliff and drifted back like muffled thunder, mingling into the frustrated growls from <sunonice> as well as the loud grinding noises as the fractured ice reformed and sealed off the cracks made by the melting spell.

Shards of ice flew as clawed at the spot where Snape had disappeared. One chip stung briefly as it caught Harry on the cheek. He brushed it away.

"Stop." His voice came out as a whisper. "Stop," he said again, this time a little louder. The Ice Dragon ignored him.

Harry crawled to where the ice was solid and stood cautiously, ready to drop if that lashing tail swept his way. <sunonice> was so far into his own distress Harry doubted he’d notice if he cut Harry in half with the end of his tail.

There was a loud series of splashes as the Ice Dragon hit water and plunged his head into it in search of his drowned wizard.

Harry closed his eyes. >, he thought.

With a deep shuddering breath, Harry tried again. But before he put together the right word-image he felt his entire body go limp as cooked spaghetti.

He crumpled, thinking, Merlin, some bastard’s hexed me on top of – on top of everything else today! It was almost funny.

Thump. He hit the ice. Any soft snow that had landed here had been crushed into ice by the seals, and now it was hard and cold and the pain as it bruised his elbow wasn’t funny at all.

Damn! How could he have been so stupid as to forget about the warders? > he called, hoping the ortho was still capable of hearing him.

With a wallowing sound pulled his head out of the hole. The yellowish nictitating eyelids pulled back to reveal the full chill in his eyes as he turned to face the attack.

From his prone position it wasn’t possible for Harry to see what was happening, but he heard the nasty mutter of a Bludger as it flew towards them.

God, no. Don’t let it hit him again, please...

By the way he tucked his wings snug against his body, remembered it too. Harry saw the bared teeth rather than heard the snarl, then > was rearing up with his talons outstretched.

He caught the Bludger. One lick of the dark grey tongue took all magic out of it, and then > threw it back.

Harry heard a scream.

> dropped to all fours again, his weight making the unstable ice groan, and swiped Harry’s forehead with his tongue. After the faint sucking feeling from behind his scar Harry realised he could move again. He sat up, gripping his wand and snarling as his grief funnelled into pure rage.

He’d been hurting long enough.

He wanted to make someone else hurt, for once.

There was one warder standing – a quick glance showed the second lying flat on his back and not moving. Had > been that accurate throwing the Bludger? Harry wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t see any blood, and the force > had put into the shot should have splattered the target’s head across the icescape.

More Bludgers rose as if out of thin air. They’d probably been reduced, Harry knew, but right now all he cared about was the way they spun in a mad dance towards him and >.

Snape was dead, but Harry would be damned twice over before he let anyone hurt the ortho-elemental. Protecting him was the last thing Snape had asked him to do.

The warder sent sparks flying from his wand, probably in an attempt to startle the Ice Dragon into spreading his wings.

But this time > was too canny to try flying. He crouched, lowering himself protectively next to Harry, and Harry realised that > had been thinking pretty much along the same lines as Harry – he wasn’t about to let anyone hurt Harry, especially after failing >.

Harry could have wept at the stupidity of the situation – two children in a last stand against the Ministry of Magic – but he was all out of tears. Even phoenix tears couldn’t bring back Severus Snape.

Five Bludgers zoomed towards them. Hastily, Harry threw up a shielding spell to protect himself and > from any extra spells the warder might throw, then aimed his wand at the Bludgers.

Crack!

Crack!

Bang!

The last two were caught by >, who licked them clean of magic before dropping the inert balls onto the ice.

The Ice Dragon stepped over Harry, who had sagged back to his knees with exhaustion, and stalked towards the warder with the tip of his tail twitching like a big angry cat’s.

Was it just Harry’s imagination, or were the seals fretting even more? There seemed to be an increase in their movement as if they knew something dangerous was going on.

"I’m warning you," the man shouted, his voice just audible over the turbulent noise of the seals. "Keep that beast under control, Potter." He pointed his wand towards Harry.

> stilled, hissing.

Harry groaned.

Although he appreciated the sentiment he wished the Ice Dragon had been less obvious about his intelligence and, in particular, his allegiance to Harry. If they’d played their Stupid Card they might have been able to call the warder’s bluff.

But on the other hand maybe the warder wasn’t bluffing.

Harry swallowed bile and stayed down on his belly, hoping to be less of a target. He could feel hatred warring with >’s desire to protect Harry, and wondered what the ortho would choose.

He couldn’t see the warder’s expression, hidden as it was under a fur-lined hood, but the man’s shoulders squared a little, the man certain now of his hold over the Ice Dragon. Harry gritted his teeth. "You can’t hurt him," he called. "You’ve already seen how he eats magic, and he knows the trick with the Bludgers now!"

Was that a laugh?

"I don’t need to hurt him," the warder called back. "All I have to do is point my wand at you – see?" He laughed at the way > snarled louder. "Well, well. Looks like our specimen has some… attachment to you. Down, boy, or I’ll hex your pet human!"

> stopped, swaying as if he wanted to pounce, but didn’t do anything more threatening than keep growling.

The warder smiled as he continued his careful approach. "There’s a good monster."

That voice was familiar. "Warder Dibbles?"

"Hey there, Harry."

Dammit. "Warder Dibbles – you don’t know what you’re doing!"

"Mr Potter, I’m quite aware of what I’m doing. As I’m sure your elders and betters have told you, I’m containing a highly dangerous beast."

Bullshit, thought Harry. "You’re after Fudge’s reward money, you bloody great hypocrite!" he yelled angrily.

"My, my; when did you get so informed? And so bad tempered?"

"Right about the time you murdered Professor Snape!"

A one-shouldered shrug. "After all he’d done as a Death Eater who would blame me? I guess it’s safe to let people know now that plans were being made to have him put in Azkaban for life. He’d made a lot of enemies and I can’t see me getting anything more than a mild fine for – shall we say, disposing of an inconvenience? A small fine and a pat on the back," he laughed.

Merlin, and I’d thought he was normal. Behind every productive member of society lies a raving nutter. "It’s still murder!"

"There are degrees of murder." And Dibbles’ voice took on an edge. "For example – my aunt and uncle were killed by Death Eaters around the time your precious Professor Snape was an active follower of You-Know-Who. He says he didn’t have a part in it, but how can you trust the word of –"

"Stop trying to justify yourself! Snape’s confession to the Ministry Aurors was under Veritaserum – Dumbledore told me that! He didn’t kill your aunt and uncle –you’re just in it for the money, and Snape was in the way!"

"Harry, you poor kid. Dumbledore, well, he’s a good man, but he’s getting old… and to have let Snape work at Hogwarts just shows how much he’s slipping."

"Bull!" Harry wiped his mouth. He was beginning to froth – for Merlin’s sake, was he going off the deep end now? He added, a little more calmly, "Look, Dibbles. It’s you and me and your buddy there… why keep lying? I know you aren’t a gung-ho warder any more. I know you just want the money."

"Okay, Harry my old son; you win. I’ve been in and out of hospital after attacks by some insane monster or other and I’ve been thinking of retiring for a few years now. The pay for being a warder is appalling – they expect you to do it out of love." He spat. "So when Fudge approached me about this job I said, ‘Sure. I’m in.’ Can you blame me? I mean, seriously?" the warder laughed. "This thing’s worth half the Galleons in Gringott’s! I –" Dibbles cursed as a seal swung around to bellow at him: it was one of the cows, and he’d come too close to her pup.

Although even Harry knew that seals cows weren’t known for attacking humans (otherwise how could men have been walking around clubbing fur seal pups to death for so many centuries?), after working around magical beasts for so many years the warder must have been cautious enough to not want to go up against a nursing seal who weighed three times as much as he did, so he edged away towards a large hole in the ice.

For some reason all the seals were avoiding it.

Sitting up a little to see better, Harry could understand why. Beyond the slippery-looking bluish edges of the ice, the water looked pretty sinister with the oily gleam on its surface. If he were a seal he wouldn’t want to have anything to do with it, either. Anything could be floating down there in those depths… He swallowed, trying not to think of what he knew was down there. The awful image came to mind of a pale face with its dark eyes now permanently blank, and the shoulder-length black hair swirling loose like seaweed in slow currents…

He blinked it away. The cold was stinging his eyes again.

Almost as if avoiding the thought brought the ghost of Snape to his mind, Harry knew, as clearly as if Snape had written up on the blackboard in Potions class, that the warder was stalling for time.

"It’s okay for a rich kid like you," Dibbles continued good-naturedly from the edge of the breathing hole. At least, his voice sounded good-natured. Harry didn’t like the words at all. "I hear your accountant’s books run into a second edition. But for someone like me who’s spent their entire life slogging away without hardly any –"

"So… how many have you called?"

Dibbles straightened in surprise. "What?"

"How many Aurors and warders are we expecting?" Harry called out. "I mean, should I get tea and bikkies ready for a party of six or sixty?"

Was that what the seals were so upset about? Did they sense with some strange animal sixth sense that a horde of wizards were about to appear right in the middle of their breeding colony? God – they’ll take Draco to bits. I’ve got to get him out of here!

There was the shadow of a laugh from the warder. "Very good, Potter." He had to shout even louder to be heard over the seals, which were barking like a pack of hellhounds. "Just stay where you are and you won’t get hurt."

God, was Snape’s ghost haunting him? Harry could have sworn he’d heard a cynical snort from the Potions master.

He rolled onto his side, thinking hard. Impedimenta… he’s probably expecting that. But if I throw something really juvenile, like a sneezing curse or boils, maybe that’ll take him by surprise…

He sprang into a crouch to give him the necessary eye-contact to cast Oldive’s Instant Allergy and opened his mouth and –

was struck mute.

It was as though all the power was sucked down into his feet and out through his boots. When he looked down he gasped: he could see his magic disappear – blue and gold sparkles shot through with green threads were being absorbed by the ice. He didn’t hear the spell Dibbles had used, but the effect was like trying to get out of bed for the first time after a bad case of the flu.

Harry simply collapsed.

As soon as his hands touched the ice the magic began draining out though them, too. Harry fell, and as soon as he lay flat the magic poured out of him.

>’s mind was broadcasting his alarm so loudly Harry wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Dibbles had heard it too.

With far too much effort, Harry managed to get to his hands and knees, just in time to see the enraged > hurl one of the inert Bludgers at the warder.

Dibbles didn’t waste words in cursing this time; he must have used some to erect a protection ward.

The Bludger bounced off and hit a bull seal.

The gigantic beast reared up, a ton of blubber-bound muscle and attitude roaring as it looked around with little piggy eyes for its attacker. Seeing the glittering Ice Dragon in front of it, it charged.

> roared back at it and the seal must have remembered it didn’t have a death wish, because it swerved towards Warder Dibbles.

All five of the warder’s stunning spells bounced off the thick blubber, and Dibbles had to be quick to avoid getting flattened by a ton of confused seal.

For a moment he teetered on the brink of the hole in the ice. The ice there was smooth from the seals’ passage in and out of the water.

His feet skidded. He flapped his arms for balance.

If Harry could just take this opportunity to break free of the spell and hex the warder, he and > could fly free… The drain of magic was slowing to a trickle, now. Was that good or bad? He’d never felt like this in his life even after waking up in the infirmary after Quirrell had attacked him at the end of his first year. It was... it was like losing consciousness while, at the same time, staying awake.

Maybe he was dying.

A sudden gust of cold that reminded him that he wasn’t dead yet.

Harry pushed at the hex as hard as he could.

But the spell leeching all the magic out of his body was too strong, and when the magic had gone dry so too had his physical and mental strength. All he achieved were black spots dancing in and out of his vision.

Harry held his breath angrily, willing whatever justice there was in the universe to make Dibbles to fall in.

Dibbles caught his balance. "Sorry to disappoint," he called over to Harry, and took a little bow. "But this just isn’t your lucky day." He grinned.

This day still has another four months so don’t be so sure, Harry thought angrily, and the cold voice in his head sounded like Snape’s. Through the ice he could feel the vibrations of the seals as they milled around. They seemed to be getting even more upset – were the Aurors about to arrive?

Harry tried to tell > to fly away, but the Ice Dragon would have none of it. Apart from wanting to protect >, > remembered the last time Harry had urged him to fly.

> growled softly, sending back the image: . He would wait for Harry to stand up again and use the stick in his hand to get rid of >.

When Harry tried to argue, > simply thought > at him until the boy had to block his mind or vomit.

> would not leave until he had found > again. He threw that thought at Harry defiantly, and dug his talons into the ice.

The Ice Dragon didn’t understand death or, rather, he understood eating people who tried to hurt him, but he didn’t understand that Snape could disappear and not come back, and Harry didn’t have the imagery to explain it.

Had they come all this way for nothing? Had Snape died for nothing? Harry felt so helpless he wanted to throw back his head and howl.

The seals were going crazy now.

Warder Dibbles looked around with his wand at the ready. He looked puzzled and a little nervous. With a wave of his wand he sent up some sparks.

That seemed to achieve something. All the seals lumbered away until there was a clear area between Dibbles and them and then they turned around to stare at the warder. Their heads were held as high as possible and their eyes were wide and dark with fear, but their whiskers bristled like those of a pack of angry cats. They were barking like dogs – or dogs that were a little confused about pronunciation. It would have been comical if it hadn’t been set in so much bloody tragedy, Harry thought bitterly.

Then the seals went silent.

Waiting.

Fear rose off them like steam.

No, Harry realised. It wasn’t Dibbles they were looking at.

And it wasn’t Dibbles they were frightened of.

It was –

Harry never completed the thought.

The breathing hole erupted.

"N-AAAAARGH!" screamed the warder.

Sleek, black and white, streaming water from its sides, a monstrous head surged up through the ice hole and lunged at the screaming warder.

For a split second the mouth opened to show an incongruously pink tongue and two rows of conical white teeth.

It snapped shut.

There was a muffled WHUMP! as the leviathan hit the ice, and Harry’s jaw dropped.

There was another – briefer – scream from Dibbles that cut off as his chest was crushed. Blood spewed in a scarlet fountain from his mouth. His legs kicked briefly, spasmodically, and then stopped.

The seals went berserk en masse, and it was probably only > standing over Harry that prevented the young wizard from getting crushed in the stampede.

There was something fascinating about the blood. There was so much of it… He lifted his head as high as he could and stared out from his safe place between the Ice Dragon’s front legs.

It was a whale.

He’d never thought they could do this, though. Whales were... big gentle fish that hung around in the oceans singing to hippies. This whale had just jumped up through the seals’ front door and bitten a wizard almost in half. Harry had just seen more teeth than even > owned, and if whales were gentle then what the hell did this one need all of those teeth for? Smiling on a Disney film? Its skin was black and shiny and would have been smooth except for the scars that showed that this was a whale who’d swum with sharks in its time, and there were white patches behind its eyes and white skin on its belly. The black dorsal fin was about as tall as Harry, and it wobbled as the beast waggled its tail and slid back into the water, tail first, dragging the corpse of Warder Dibbles with it.

Icy brine erupted in a brief wave as the gleaming black snout vanished. The wave sloshed over the grey ice, painting it a bright arterial red.

> licked the spell off Harry just in time for the boy to turn away from the red ice and throw up.

When > – making nervous huffs and puffs – edged over to the hole to investigate, all that was left was black, rippling water and bloodied ice.

Harry heard the Ice Dragon’s delight.

<yummy! yumyumyum!> > licked the blood up like icecream. <sealburpman+GONE!=happyme&happyhandsonclay!>

Harry tried to throw up again, but his stomach was empty. All that came up was a little bit of bile, and it burned the back of his throat.

It was sickening the way > was everything but purring as he lapped up the blood slushie, but Harry clamped down on that thought. No, he couldn’t let > get into the habit of viewing wizards as food, but he could almost understand the Ice Dragon’s need to eat wizard flesh (or blood, in this case) as some sort of trophy.

Almost.

From a human standpoint it was sick, but by now Harry couldn’t deny he wasn’t dealing with a human, and with that came the need to find the fine balance between the ortho’s values and what was acceptable for dealing with humans. He had to –

Harry stopped.

He didn’t have to do anything.

He’d spent all his life with everyone else’s expectations riding on him. He’d been raised by Dursleys. Raised by wolves would have been an improvement. Since starting Hogwarts, he’d gone up against the nastiest wizard in the world on a daily basis and Voldemort annually. Voldemort, at least, had been straightforwardly evil and Harry’d get him over and done with and get on with the next thing. Until this year, Snape had been a sort of ongoing misery.

Snape.

He’d done more than anyone Harry could think of to fight Voldemort and all he’d got for it was a series of kicks in the teeth from the wizarding community. No wonder he’d been such a bastard. And then they’d just thrown him away like – like – Harry was having difficulty snapping his fingers and realised it was because he was wearing gloves – they’d thrown him away like Harry could snap his fingers under normal conditions.

They’d do that to Harry, too. Because he didn’t fit. Because he was the one who was written about in the gossip columns. Because he had a scar from Voldemort and the ability to talk to snakes.

And now Harry was worrying about stopping > damaging Fudge’s little wanna-be empire?

Screw that!

Harry rolled over onto his back and stared up into the blue, blue sky. They wanted him to do what they ordered him to do, be it defeat Voldemort or act as bait to capture a dangerous monster. He wasn’t a person, he was their sacrifice.

He remembered Snape arguing with Fudge when the Minister had wanted Harry to go on a – what had Snape called it? Oh yes – a fool’s errand.

And when Snape had somehow managed to stop Harry from even finding out about it, they’d sent in a friend. Someone who could be trusted.

Charlie Weasley.

And then Harry had been stupid enough to go on the fool’s errand and stupid enough to trust the warders not to do harm to himself or what they were hunting, because he’d thought that warders were all like Hagrid, and valued life.

And when he’d been proven wrong – because Hagrid would have never condoned torture, even if he had known that the Ice Dragon used to be that snot Draco Malfoy – when that had happened he’d gone running to Snape for help.

And Snape had gone to clean up Harry’s mess, as he always complained he’d had to do anyway, and Harry had...

Had found out enough to know that the most hated teacher in school was human and humane, and could show kindness and now, because of Harry, his body was floating somewhere under the ice and Harry would have to tell Helen who was pregnant and if the shock didn’t kill her it’d kill the baby for certain –

Harry covered his face with his hands and tried not to scream.

Dumbledore couldn’t protect him any more. Oh, the old wizard had tried and tried hard in his compassionate, if occasionally misdirected way (Harry wondered if he’d ever be able to forgive him for leaving him at the mercy of the Dursleys), but he was on the outs with the Ministry of Magic, too. And it was the Ministry who really ran things now. It had sent out the warders to catch the Ice Dragon (using Harry as bait, which said volumes about Harry’s position in the current world order); it had given tacit approval for Aurors to treat Snape like a third-class citizen simply by denying Helen Snape any human rights, and this attitude had culminated in Snape’s death and Harry’s loss of magic.

The loss ached like cold air over a hollow tooth. Harry kept reaching out to that space within him where the magic had been only to find... nothing. Whatever else the curse Dibbles had hit him with might have been (Dark, forbidden, or Ministry-approved), it was effective.

Was this what it was like to be a Muggle? A Squib? But could Muggles or Squibs ever have this terrible void? How could they live if they did?

He balled his hands into fists and shook them at the sky in silent rage.

How DARE they do this?

Harry rolled over and pounded his fists into the ice. It hurt, but he couldn’t seem to stop.

With a sigh, Harry stopped hitting the ground and blearily looked up into >’s concerned eyes.

"That man took my magic away," Harry whispered, his throat constricting around the words. "He – he stole it from me... the only thing that’s ever mattered about me..."

From the gentle probing thought it was clear that > didn’t understand what Harry was saying, but he understood pain. Harry smiled sadly at the protective way the Ice Dragon lay down and curled his body around Harry’s.

"There’s nothing you can do," Harry said softly, patting the lean cheek with a gloved hand. It felt slick under his hand, and close up it was easier to see how magic intertwined with matter in the ortho’s body, making the creature both tangible and a dream. At least he could still see and feel the magic, even if it was an alien one, Harry thought.

It wasn’t much but it was a small comfort.

A thin breeze was sliding over the seal colony and out towards the Southern Ocean and its bite brought Harry back to his surroundings with a convulsive shudder.

His cold, hostile surroundings, where the only warmth Harry could find was in the steady feed of friendship from the ex-Draco Malfoy.

I came to Antarctica to have my world turned upside-down... Is this irony or what? Harry pushed his fingers into the ice, futilely trying to summon back his lost magic. It seemed stuck in the ice, if it was anywhere. He felt the anger build in his chest again. Who the hell did they think they were, throwing around Instant Squib curses? Surely that was Dark Magic?

Snape would kno-

Snape would’ve known what the spell was, and he’d have known how to make Harry better.

> raised himself into a crouch and sniffed at where Harry was digging, wondering if <handonclay> was trying to dig a way through to > and trying to warn Harry to be careful of the <bloodyscarygreatMONSTERswimming> underneath the ice. The Ice Dragon may have approved of the way it’d crunched up that >, but the monster absolutely reeked of .

Just as Harry thought to ask if the Ice Dragon thought it could be possible for Grandmother Taniwha to have sent the whale as revenge, > exploded with a great snort of surprise. As excited as a niffler scenting gold, he bit into the ice.

There was a sound like a hundred vacuum cleaners battling it out for supremacy, and the Ice Dragon flopped down onto his tail with a dazed expression on his face. A few sparks glittered around his muzzle and he darted out his tongue to catch the last of them.

"Great," Harry said, trying and failing to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "You managed to eat my magic. Well, at least someone gets it, I suppose."

> gave him a wounded expression, but one that was heavily laced with a Malfoy-esque air of condescension Harry hadn’t seen before. Well, not in >, anyway.

Then the Ice Dragon whipped his head around and sunk his teeth into Harry.

***

For a split second the betrayal froze Harry.

He felt the sharp needles of the Ice Dragon’s teeth puncture his jacket and pierce the skin of his back and chest down into his lungs and heart and realised:

I’m going to die now.

That split second was all the Ice Dragon needed, because before Harry could struggle the magic began flowing and all Harry could do was hang limp in the creature’s jaws as his life ran back into him in rivers, filling every fibre of his being and settling into place like an old friend saying oh, there you are.

It was good.

It was great.

It was magic.

It was the antithesis of death.

When > finally deposited Harry back on the ice – with the utmost care – Harry wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. There were no marks on his Parka and, he suspected, no marks on his skin. There was no pain, either. Somehow > had used that peculiarly there-yet-not-there quality of Ice Dragon physiology to bite deep into Harry’s metaphysical body.

The sun shone again in the blue sky. Light glittered off the peaks of waves in between the mysterious troughs of bottle green, and the penguins across the bay weren’t just black and white anymore – there was yellow around their faces and pink to the grey of their feet. The black clouds mounting up beyond the hills had their bellies tinted a subtle apricot.

And the silver of the Ice Dragon’s scales held every colour imaginable as well as some Harry thought he’d never seen before.

Harry was whole.

"Thank you," he said, and threw his arms around >’s head, choosing to laugh. Laughing hurt, and it felt unfamiliar, but good at the same time. It knocked some scab off what had been Harry’s hurt. "Thank you, thank you, thank you..."

> was surprised but pleased, and growled happily, glad that he’d finally managed to do something right today.

Harry assured him that he had, and took a deep breath. With the return of his magic had come the uneasy recollection that a horde of Aurors was about to descend on this ice shelf. A seal breeding colony seemed an unlikely spot for the magical version of "Gunfight at the OK Corral," but it certainly wasn’t a place Harry wanted to battle the Aurors – because he had every intention of kicking their sorry arses should they show their stupid faces – as there was no natural cover and Harry felt a twinge of guilt about dragging the poor seals into magical battles. The ice shelf wasn’t completely flat. Pressure from tides and the summer thaw that was going on now had rumpled it. Not far away were a few small bluish "hills" that must have been icebergs trapped when the ice shelf formed. Maybe they could use those if > refused to leave. Standing up and looking around, Harry could see that there were a couple of dark spots that weren’t moving; a couple of the pups had been crushed in the colony’s stampede. So it had been a natural predator who had frightened them – that whale had been scouting for seals, otherwise what was it doing near the hole in the ice where tender baby seals would have their first swimming lessons? It was doubtful wizards made up the larger part of a whale’s diet – but Harry still felt guilty. It was the presence of the wizards and the Ice Dragon that had initially spooked the animals, and maybe...

Maybes were no use right now.

"We have to get out of here," Harry said, because he was finding it easier to mind-speak > if he spoke aloud at the same time.

He received back something non-committal. > flicked some ice off his wings, loped off and jumped over one of the ridges with his blue shadow stretching out towards one of the darker immobile lumps left behind by the seal stampede.

At first Harry thought he was going to investigate one of the dead seal pups, and considered calling the Ice Dragon back.

Then he squinted against the glare and realised what > was looking at.

Merlin, I’d forgotten about the second warder! Harry picked himself up and hurried after his friend, grabbing Snape’s wand while trying not to look at it and stuffing it inside his jacket as he went.

"Don’t eat him!" he called out.

replied >, miffed.

"Because I need to ask him some questions." Harry hoped he’d adequately translated that into images.

He must have, because > sniffed and merely prodded the downed warder with a talon. It looked painful for the wizard but not as painful as being ripped apart.

"Merlin..." Harry couldn’t help exclaiming softly as he drew close enough to see who the warder was. "Charlie...?"

The freckled face of Charlie Weasley wasn’t frozen by cold but it was frozen, although it managed to blink twice.

"Three blinks for no, two for yes," said Harry, and Charlie blinked two times again.

"Did – did the Ice Dragon hit you with the Bludger?"

Blink, blink, blink.

"Are you injured?"

Blink, blink, blink.

"Can you move?"

Blink, blink, blink; frown.

"Hex?"

BLINK-BLINK.

"One of mine?"

Frown. Blink, blink, blink.

Harry raised one eyebrow, unconsciously mimicking Snape. "Don’t tell me Dibbles hit you with a curse?"

Angry glare, but not at Harry. BLINK! BLINK!

Harry spared a second to admire Charlie’s ability to shout while mute. "Why – oh, hell. I’m going to try to release you from it. I need some answers quickly. Aurors should be arriving any minute now, so they can get you off this iceberg or whatever the hell it is, but Ron will kill me if I leave you to be flattened by a seal. Not that you don’t deserve it," he added thoughtfully, and noted how Charlie’s eyes widened. "But if you do anything stupid, like try to use magic or a knife or something, the Ice Dragon will eat you. And he’s hungry and annoyed he didn’t get to eat your buddy Dibbles. Got it?"

Charlie’s eyes rolled towards the sight of >, who was drooling at the prospect of more wizard blood.

Even the charm on Charlie couldn’t stop him shiver.

Blink, blink.

"I’d better get your wand first." Harry bent down started looking in Charlie’s pockets until > made that soft noise that meant a question.

"I’m looking for... oh." Harry sat back on his heels as the Ice Dragon picked up the wand from where it was sticking out of the ice several meters away. "Thanks."

>

"Yes. But I probably would’ve found it myself, you know. Thanks for finding the wand, but you can leave the personal commentary behind. It’s not you."

>

Harry hung his head and took a deep breath. "I’m sorry. It’s not you I’m angry at."

"Just the rest of the world," Harry said wryly.

The Ice Dragon had a special way of half-lidding his eyes that meant a smile.

Harry patted him on the nose. "Forgiven?"

Harry blinked – that had been almost like talking to another human. It was... eerie.

He tucked Charlie’s wand into his pocket and got out his own wand. "Okay, Charlie. I’m going to lift the curse now. Just remember that the next sudden movement you make will be your last."

Blink-blink, Charlie managed with difficulty, because he was trying to keep his eyes on the Ice Dragon.

"Finite incantatem."

It took more power than he’d normally use, but as Charlie straightened up (very, very carefully), Harry decided that it would be wisest not to let Charlie know that. Best to appear as the powerful boy-wizard who’d battled Voldemort and lived to tell the tale.

It also helped to have an Ice Dragon hovering over his shoulder, teeth half bared in hope that there would be wizard cutlets for dinner followed by a nice sanguine sorbet.

It didn’t help Harry’s image if he were turning green at what he was hearing from the afore-mentioned Ice Dragon. He took a deep breath, noting that the wind was strengthening. It was strong enough to blow small flecks of ice over his feet and the waves in the bay were developing white caps.

"Okay – why are you here?"

Charlie sat up slowly, not taking his eyes off >. "To catch the Ice Dragon."

"So why did you get hexed? Dibbles want the reward money all for himself?"

Something in Charlie aged before Harry’s eyes. "Probably, but he wasn’t stupid enough to try for it alone. I..." His gaze dropped to his feet. "I didn’t come here to be a murderer," he said softly. "Dibbles got the drop on me when I tried to help Snape."

"Is that supposed to prove what a great guy you are really?" Harry sneered. "Because you didn’t help Snape. He’s dead now, you know, but thanks for your concern. As far as I can see it that makes you an accomplice to murder."

Charlie blanched, but kept his mouth shut. A wise decision. If he’d opened it Harry would have filled it with… well, nothing as clean as snow, anyway.

"If you’d caught the Ice Dragon it would’ve made you a murderer for certain," Harry continued, wanting to shout sense into Charlie. "Fudge wants him for a bit of blood and then he’s going to have him killed so no-one else could use him."

"Fudge wouldn’t do that – this creature should be studied, not –"

"Not torn apart and used for his personal empire-building?" Harry finished bitterly. "You can’t be that stupid, Charlie. You must know that juvenile Ice Dragon blood is the ultimate protection for buildings? I wouldn’t be surprised if the wards of Hogwarts are based on it. And since when has Fudge had any academic motivation? He’s entirely political!" Now Harry was yelling. "And you – where the hell do you get off thinking crippling people for the sake of science is justified? Is that what you’ve built your studies on? Is this why you went into meta-zoology? No! – don’t..." he added in a deliberately calm voice to >, who wasn’t happy with the way this > was aggravating his friend. "He’s not trying to hurt me – not directly, anyway. He’s just... stupid. And I’ve had enough of stupid people."

Merlin, was this how Snape had felt ALL THE TIME? Harry began to understand just why the man had been so foul-tempered; when faced by the unending procession of inanity which comprised Homo sapiens, wizard or Muggle subspecies regardless, blind rage seemed an inevitability. It was either that or fall into an endless pit of depression.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose behind his glasses and willed himself to calm down for the umpteenth time this day. (And how many times have I seen Snape do this exact same thing...? Well, maybe without the glasses...)

There was a brief moment of panic when he feared he was possessed by the restless spirit of Severus Snape.

Then common sense took over and told him that if Snape was going to possess anyone it sure as hell wouldn’t be Harry Potter.

Black, maybe. That could be good for a laugh...

"Um... Harry... are you okay?"

"Never better, why do you ask?" Harry said coldly.

"Um... just for a minute there... you smirked. I thought you were about to take points..." His voice trailed off.

Harry glared and caught himself right before he could pinch the bridge of his nose again.

>, sensing the anger warring with fear in Harry, growled and made to take a bite out of Charlie.

"No. Not yet." Harry scratched the disappointed > behind his ear.

<1 leg?sealburphas2legsÕ eat1?>

Snort! The lashing tail dug smacked into the ice.

"You... you tell him what to do?"

"No." This time Harry couldn’t help the sneer that settled on his features. It felt so... natural. "I ask. He does what I ask him to do because he’s my friend and he trusts me. I don’t order him to do anything. Get Ron to explain the difference to you some time."

Ron’s brother took a deep breath. "Harry... ask him to stay for the Aurors. We have to make sure he can’t hurt us. Ask him... explain to him that we need to study him... "

That got a big fat > from > along with a few other choice images, and Harry laughed.

"He says no. He also said you’ve a bloody nerve worrying about him hurting you considering the greeting he got. He has a good memory, you know, and I don’t think he likes you very much."

"Well, it’s been difficult to... We have to make sure he’s not a threat…" Charlie trailed off.

Harry was staring at him as if he’d never seen Charlie before. "By killing him? Because that’s what they want to do. And… you know what, Charlie? I don’t think I like you very much either."

Charlie flinched. "It’s not a case of like or dislike, Harry," he said desperately. "It’s a case of what’s best for people... an Ice Dragon is a dangerous creature – he ate Lucius Malfoy – yes, I know about that – and I saw the way he licked up Dibbles’ blood... Merlin’s eyebrows, Harry, look at how he’s looking at me! I know you’re angry over Dibbles , but don’t let that cloud your judgement. Think about what’s best for people."

"I am thinking about what’s best for people," Harry snapped in a voice as cold and biting as the wind blowing down from the hills and across the seal colony. Far over on the other side of the bay a black dorsal fin was slicing through the waves and frightening the feathers off the penguins standing on the edge of a floating sheet of ice. A faint puff could be seen over the top of the whale as its warm breath froze into a glittering mini snowfall before being whipped away by the wind, and the fin disappeared as the whale submerged to hunt. Maybe Grandmother Taniwha had sent it, but now it seemed she’d released it to be off on its own business, doing what it wanted to do. It was back in nature as it was meant to be; the natural world involved a lot of animals killing animals and a whale was a part of that. The whale would kill and eat, and then one day it would be killed and eaten. It wasn’t moral or ethical, it simply was. Morals and ethics were not for animals, as Helen Snape had pointed out once upon a time when Snape had been alive and Harry had been someone else; morals and ethics were for people. But the people in Harry’s world went around killing other people and justifying it with the sorts of excuses Harry wouldn’t have credited hearing outside of a kindergarten. Merely belonging to the same species as Dibbles and the two Aurors at Malfoy Manor was at best embarrassing and at worst criminal by association.

Harry suddenly realised that he wanted out. Out of being the Boy Who Lived to Serve. Out of being the weird kid with the scar who was a target for every hack reporter wanting a scoop. Out of being of being stared at. Pointed at. Laughed at and picked over by vultures whenever he stumbled. Out of being expected to mop up after every idiot wizard on a power trip. Out of the wizarding world.

Harry Potter wanted out of the entire damned species.

It was like he suddenly saw everything clearly. It was all so cold. It was all so perfect. Little wheels of ice turning and turning inside each other, driving a process that had no morals or ethics. People living or dying did not matter in the end because there were no morals and there were no ethics.

There were only choices to be made.

Now Harry understood everything.

Now if only his hands would stop shaking.

He took a deep breath. "I’m thinking that this Ice Dragon is a person and he’s been treated shockingly.

"I’m also thinking that the person who did more to protect us against Voldemort than anyone else except maybe Dumbledore is DEAD, Charlie – he’s DEAD because people like you and your stupid Ministry never gave a SHIT about how he dedicated his adult life to protecting a bunch of thickos who despised him! And what all this thinking leads me to is the conclusion that I’m wasting my time worrying about a bunch of dunderheads who don’t deserve my efforts. Who have never deserved my efforts."

"Harry..." Charlie said weakly.

"Don’t bother," Harry interrupted, slicing the air with the edge of his hand in a dismissive gesture; back from fire to ice in the blink of an eye. "Because you know what? As far as those people you work for are concerned Voldemort is dead and all I’m useful now is to be bait. Fudge sees me as a threat because I’m famous, and he wants me taken out along with Dumbledore. He doesn’t want a known iconoclast like me disrupting his precious little world."

"Harry, not everyone is like that..."

Harry was still trying to work out how he knew a word like iconoclast, but he managed to hiss at Charlie, "No? Well, we live in a democracy and the people who aren’t like Fudge still voted for him." He drew himself up to his full height, forcing Charlie to squint as Harry’s shadow fell over him like a shroud. "Do you know what really scares me?" he whispered. "What really scares me is that I wonder if maybe Voldemort was good for you lot. He showed you that you’re really just a pack of stupid little cowards who know nothing about the use of power."

And, Harry thought, the idea squatting in his mind like an iceberg, now that I can see something good about Voldemort, what does it make me?

There was a silence broken only by a loud swallow from Charlie.

"Tell me, Charlie, why do wizards hate ortho-elementals so much?"

Charlie was staring into Harry’s eyes like Harry had just turned into a cobra. "We don’t hate them, Harry. They stole our magic. They attacked people who had magic. History shows that they hated us..."

"Why would they hate you?"

"Because we have so much magic..." Charlie whispered, his gaze locked into Harry’s. "Because they want to take our magic away from us."

"Why would they want to do that?"

"Because they see something more powerful than themselves. They’re jealous of us and want what we have..."

"Jealous? Hatred for how they’ve been treated, I can understand that. But..." and Harry leaned closer, not caring about how Charlie flinched, "but they aren’t jealous." Harry spat the word out. "And it belittles them to think that jealousy is all that these, as you put it, ‘dangerous creatures,’ are capable of. If a sudden army of Ice Dragons descends on the Ministry of Magic rest assured that it won’t be out of jealousy, Mr Weasley."

Harry straightened and slowly folded his arms over his chest as he glared down his nose at the idiot before him.

God, Charlie was stupid. If Harry killed him now before he had a chance to breed it could only be good for the gene pool. But Harry wouldn’t kill him. He didn’t want to waste his energy. Besides, what did the gene pool matter? Humans were so stupid they’d destroy themselves without any help from Harry. He whispered, "The day they decide to root out your species like the canker it is it’ll be because they are royally pissed off at the treatment they’ve received from the wizarding world and want to make their grievances known. Consider this: if you were part of a marginalised group which had been exploited for centuries and treated as nothing better than mobile apothecary shops would you stop at such pettiness as jealousy? Wizards don’t fear their jealousy, Mr Weasly. They rightly fear their vengeance.

"Try thinking outside of the happy little box you’ve been taught to live in, Mr Weasley, and try thinking for yourself. You may find it painful at first, but I promise you the rewards can be great."

Charlie’s eyes were huge. "P-p-p-p-pr’fessor Snape, sir?"

Harry jerked back. "What? No! No. It’s me. Harry. Just Harry. I... I’ve simply been shown how to think outside the box."

He stared down at Charlie, seeing for the first time that Charlie was terrified. Of him. Harry.

Fair enough. I was seriously weighing up whether I should kill him or not.

It made him feel sad. And old.

"I’m going outside now. I may be some time." He didn’t know where that came from either – it seemed the ice was whispering words into his ear.

"Harry... you can’t." Charlie waved a hand at the iron grey clouds banking up inland, then pulled the hand in against his chest quickly as the Ice Dragon snapped at it. "I… uh… There’s a storm coming and you’ll die..."

"That should made a few people at the Ministry happy, shouldn’t it?" Harry said bitterly. "Besides, I’ve got nothing better to do and..." he turned to look at >, who was thrumming with anger at how this <sealburp> of a wizard had annoyed >, and his gaze softened. "...And I made a promise to Snape that I would see the Ice Dragon safely home."

Charlie was silent for a moment before cautiously digging a hand into a pocket. He paused as > rattled the spines down the crest of his serpentine neck and snarled. A thin thread of drool dripped onto Charlie’s boot. Charlie swallowed a few times before he could get his voice to work, and his face had gone so ashen the freckles looked like burning coals. "It’s okay, Harry... I’m just getting something out of my pocket and it’s not going to hurt you or... your friend..."

He produced a small black pouch.

"It’s a sort of lunch box... Mum gave it to me when she thought I wasn’t eating properly." Charlie smiled wryly. "It’s a sort of hold-all – there’s bread, cheese, pumpkin juice and maybe a bottle of butterbeer still in there... loads of stuff. You’ll need food."

Harry pulled the drawstring and sniffed the insides cautiously. "Poisoned?"

The hurt on Charlie’s face managed to please Harry and stab into his heart at the same time.

"No."

"Okay. Then thanks. But Charlie..."

"Yes?"

"If there is anything in here that harms me, Sun on Ice will hunt you down. I don’t promise you that, he does."

There was a soft growl of affirmation from the Ice Dragon.

Charlie’s expression was unreadable. "He has a name?" he asked softly.

"Yes. And no – I didn’t give it to him. He already had a name before I met him. He’s named me Hands on Clay, and Snape is... Snape was..." Harry’s thoughts caught up with his words and stopped them colder than the water under the ice. He clenched his fists until his wand creaked.

"I’m really sorry about –"

"Sorry doesn’t mean anything other than ‘I was too stupid to think about my actions’," Harry snapped, and forced himself not to rub the bridge of his nose with his trembling fingers. No, my nose has never been broken and it doesn’t ache when I get a headache coming on...

Harry tied the bag to his belt. > held out a forefoot for Harry to use as a step, and the boy wizard swung his leg over the Ice Dragon’s neck and settled himself just in front of the wings where the spines gave way to coarse hair. The scaly hide was slick with magic, but > concentrated as soon as he felt > begin to slide, and Harry found himself stuck to skin that now had the texture of suede.

He looked down on the subdued brother of his best friend.

"Goodbye, Charlie. Give my best to Ron and Hermione, and... and tell the Aurors that the next wizard I see so much as giving Sun on Ice a funny look is a dead wizard. I’ll kill him myself if I have to. Another thing – they can find themselves a new idio- I mean, hero, to do their dirty work for them. Tell them, too, that they can take their morals and shove them up their collective arses."

<Let’s® go!> he said to >, trying to make it sound as urgent as possible. He just hoped > wasn’t wanting to stay and look for Snape.

But the Ice Dragon knew that wherever > was, he wasn’t here. Plus that lingering trace of was rattling his nerves. He sighed, but sent a determined thought to let Harry know that he hadn’t finished looking...

The mighty hindquarters bunched and sprang and Harry and > were flying into the wind.

Just after they crested the first of the low-lying hills of the Antarctic continent and disappeared into the haze of the approaching storm, the first Aurors Apparated around the hole in the ice. They spread out quickly with their wands ready to hex the first person or creature that said "Boo."

All they found was Charlie Weasley and a glove. It was Snape’s; the one Harry had been holding onto when the Potions master slid away.

"Where are they?" the squad leader asked Charlie Weasley, waving the glove.

"They’re gone," the redhead replied, still staring at the hills. He was sitting with his arms tucked around his knees. "Into the storm. You won’t find them now."

The Auror looked at the clouds, which were boiling over the ridgeline. Glitter fell from them. Snow.

He spat and threw down the glove in disgust. "Where’s Dibbles?"

"Dead."

"I’m sorry."

"Yeah. So is he." Charlie frowned as he remembered something that had been niggling at him. "But why did he keep saying ‘your species’?"

"Who? Dibbles?"

"No…"

The Auror gave Charlie the sort of stare reserved for those who talked to little green men from Mars, but didn’t ask him anything more.

Charlie sat there in the same position until they’d finished poking around for clues.

"Come on, lad," the first Auror said kindly, and helped him to his feet. "You okay, mate? You look pretty hammered."

"I’ve just… got a lot to think about."

"I bet."

The Aurors Disapparated with a series of pops, taking Charlie with them.

And a single Auror, who tightened the drawstring of her hood before she began walking towards the shore.

She left behind a disgruntled seal colony and one lone glove.

The storm blocked out the sun.

If <sunonice> hadn’t extended the aegis of his magic into a fuzzy cocoon around Harry, the boy would have frozen within the first half-hour of their flight. His magically protected Parka had its limits and those were passed quite quickly as the temperature plummeted and the snowstorm whirled around Ice Dragon and rider.

In one way the snowstorm was a blessing, because it meant no-one would be following them. But they were flying through a gloomy twilight where even the white snow churning around them had no light. Harry had no idea which way they were going, and only the bleak confidence channelling through the mind-link from his friend reassured him that at least someone knew where they were going. <sunonice> seemed to have a destination in view. Or, at least, if not in view then certainly in mind. It seemed as though they were taking the hardest route and flying straight into the wind. The way it kept shifting, though, made it hard to determine.

While <sunonice> seemed sure of the direction and never once suggested that they stop, Harry worried at the way the winds buffeted them around. One moment they would be flying in a bubble of low pressure that made Harry’s ears ache, surrounded by winds that howled like a flock of banshees, and the next they would be hammered so hard by downdrafts that <sunonice> groaned at the strain on his wings.

Harry’s heart leaped into his mouth as the tip of one wing grazed a cliff and <sunonice> had to struggle mightily not to crash into the sheer black rock that was rearing up in front of them.

Harry clung to the Ice Dragon’s neck and prayed they would make it over the ridge alive.

They survived.

But Harry hadn’t expected to and – when he checked <sunonice>’s opinion – the Ice Dragon didn’t seem to particularly care.

"Enough!" shouted Harry, then remembered that he didn’t have to shout to be heard over the gale – he could communicate telepathically.

<rest?>

After a moment, <sunonice> grudgingly agreed.

The landing was rough. Just as they got to the ground a particularly vicious gust of wind knocked them sideways and slammed them into the side of a hill.

"Argh!"

Harry lost his grip on the ortho’s neck and somersaulted away into the darkness. Luckily he landed in powder snow, but some of it slipped in under his hood and slid down his throat. "Brrr…"

<?>

Luckily <sunonice> pulled him out, because Harry had just found out that his body was getting so cold that it was getting hard to move his arms and legs.

"Pff – thanks," said Harry gratefully, spitting out snow and slapping the ortho-elemental on the shoulder.

<handsonclay=welcome>, said <sunonice>, his mind-voice sounding clearer and clearer to Harry.

Harry smiled and looked around. The world was a blur of white shadows – Harry would never have believed such to be possible, but here it was. It was like being trapped in Cotton Wool Land.

Oh, blast – no wonder everything was so blurry. He held out his hand.

"Accio glasses."

They shot out of the snowdrift behind him and into his glove. He put them back on.

There wasn’t much difference.

But, phew, at least his magic was still working. He shivered, wishing he knew more spells for warming. He considered using Thermos, but he was only good with that for re-heating cups of tea. He didn’t want to make his blood boil.

<!> <sunonice> had heard his thought about boiling blood, and ordered Harry not to do something so stupid.

Harry grinned a little, and thought back: <noIwon’t…I’mCOLD>

<sunonice> didn’t see why that was a problem, and sent back a mental shrug.

Harry tried to explain. <me=human…humanMUST=warm…humanNO=warm=world+nohuman>

<?>

<Nowarm=nohumanbecause=dead>

<?dead?>

<goneaway>

<® comeback> replied <sunonice> matter-of-factly. <gone=nolegs?> he sneered.

Harry wrapped his arms around him and jiggled up and down. His toes were starting to hurt from the cold but at least he could still feel them… Bloody stupid place for an argument, he thought. Middle of a storm in the middle of Antarctica… <dead=gone=NEVERCOMEBACK!> he said as firmly as he could.

<…nevercomeback?…> the Ice Dragon asked in a tiny voice.

Harry should have been warned, but he was too cold to think.

<no>, he replied firmly. <I=toocold® Inevercomeback…becauseI=dead>

Horror dawned in the Ice Dragon.

Like steel storm doors slamming shut, its mind closed to Harry. There was just one thought that could be sensed.

<silkthatcuts=DEAD!DEAD!DEAD!>

Oh. Shit.

If <sunonice> panicked now and flew away, not only would Harry die but the Ice Dragon would be alone again. With no-one to tell him how the world worked, the young Ice Dragon would be caught by some minion of Fudge’s in no time.

Harry pushed his mind out towards <sunonice>’s, willing the Ice Dragon not to break off communication, trying to will the ortho to understand all that Harry wanted him to know; that Harry didn’t want to die, that Harry wanted to stay with <sunonice>, that... that <silkthatcuts> had wanted Harry and <sunonice> to protect each other…

<sunonice> rallied, coiling his mind in tight. He snapped his wings close against his body, nearly as close as his thoughts, and stared into the storm for a moment. Then he turned his gaze back to Harry.

Harry couldn’t tell what the Ice Dragon was thinking. That light and crystal mind was still there, but, like the snowstorm, there were shadows to it Harry couldn’t interpret. But he could make a good guess as to what those shadows meant and they worried him.

He wondered if the Ice Dragon would fly away and leave him to his fate. After the shock the young creature had just had, Harry would have understood. Please, he begged any passing god, don’t let him go. Not for my sake, but for his. He’ll die without me.

Then, with a faint shudder, <sunonice> seemed to reach a decision. The Ice Dragon turned and, while half-lifting one wing to shelter Harry from the blast, began to burrow into the snowdrift that had managed to build up in the lee of a rock face.

The Ice Dragon managed to make a sizeable hole and climbed into it. Harry followed.

Once inside, the burrow seemed almost snug. With the Ice Dragon inside it was mostly filled, but there was plenty of air and although it wasn’t something Harry’d had to worry about since he’d stopped sleeping in the cupboard under the stairs, the air wouldn’t get too stale. With a faint sigh, <sunonice> turned around to line the sides with his body and block the entrance with his tail, and Harry crouched in the space under a wing and settled down using the ortho’s front legs as a couch. He hoped <sunonice> didn’t mind being used as furniture, but the Ice Dragon gave him the barest blink of acknowledgement before staring off into his own thoughts. That wing did come down a little to make Harry’s portion of the snow cave a little cosier, however.

Harry couldn’t have been unwelcome; warmth began to seep through from the Ice Dragon, although Harry suspected it was more likely that <sunonice> was siphoning what few degrees of thermal energy existed in this bleak environment and channelling them into Harry rather than warmth from the Ice Dragon’s body. It seemed unlikely, but it was true.

Harry didn’t know why he knew this as truth and he was too tired to question it. He also knew he was dangerously cold and that after all the energy he’d used up he should probably have something to eat, but it seemed too much like hard work to undo the drawstring on the hold-all Charlie had given him.

Just do it, he told himself, and the unexpected angry thought jolted his body into obedience. Merlin! Snape’s haunting me! was the brief, panicked thought. But it worked. Before Harry realised what he was doing, he was drinking the warm (warm! Hallelujah!) butterbeer and munching on cheese and bread.

He tried offering some to <sunonice>, but the Ice Dragon ignored him.

Harry sighed. He was exhausted. Not knowing what else to do, he reached out and pulled <sunonice>’s head around to cuddle the Ice Dragon like that teddy bear he’d wanted when he’d been little.

<…failed…> came the faint whisper of thought. It hadn’t been directed at Harry, but Harry heard it anyway.

He clenched his jaw and blinked rapidly. There was so much he could say that he didn’t have words for. Here he was, the only person in the world who could talk to the last of the Ice Dragons, and he had no words to tell him what was really important.

No, he thought. I’m the failure. I helped trap you and then I asked Snape for help. He kept those thoughts tucked deep in his mind where <sunonice> couldn’t read them. Guilt would kill them.

But he couldn’t stop wishing he didn’t feel it.

Normally he’d have been ashamed of anyone seeing him cry, especially Draco Malfoy, no matter what Malfoy looked like now, but Harry couldn’t stop his tears dripping down onto the Ice Dragon’s pale silvery hide where they soaked into the ortho-magic field. Anyway, he was too tired to care.

His mind spun round and round in the endless cage of fatigue. While the storm lasted he and <sunonice> were safe. When it finished things would be different. He had nowhere to go and now, with the Ministry shown up for the cancer it was, he could see that even if he did have a bolt-hole some Aurors would track him down because he was too much of a threat to the power structure and Fudge’s promise of a stable society, and Harry would fight them when they found him simply because he couldn’t think of a better option and he’d kill as many of them as he could but of course they’d keep coming and they would kill him and he remembered stories of how some of the Death Eaters had been flayed alive by curses when they’d fought Aurors…

Merlin help me. To think that he had anything in common with a pack of idiots who’d thought Voldemort was the best option…

Thinking about Death Eaters inevitably led to thoughts of Snape. Harry started shaking again as he remembered the way Snape had simply disappeared. I must have gone crazy somewhere along the line, because I want him back. I actually want Severus Snape back. Please, God, let it all have been a mistake. I’m in the middle of that nervous breakdown Snape thought I was having and I’m in St Mungo’s and all this is a terrible, terrible hallucination.

But he knew it wasn’t. And he knew that Snape was gone.

<sunonice> twitched, and Harry hugged the delicately-boned head harder, trying to think comforting thoughts to the Ice Dragon.

It was a shame he didn’t have any to give.

When <sunonice> settled back into his quiet despair, Harry tried to think of ways out, tricks he could do, people who could help, but kept coming up blank. Dan had told him never to despair, but Dan wasn’t stuck in the middle of bloody nowhere with an army after him, Harry thought angrily. He took as deep a breath as he could in this freezer, and tried to focus his mind on something positive.

But the images of what the Ministry could do to Harry and what they would do to <sunonice> when they finally caught him kept playing in a loop in his mind until…

Exhaustion finally caught up with the boy and sleep slammed into him like the Hogwarts Express. Harry sagged against <sunonice>. His eyes closed and his arms relaxed fractionally as his mind dissolved into unconsciousness.

But even in sleep he refused to let go.

Harry never saw the way liquid rainbows shimmered and fell from the Ice Dragon’s eyes.

It was not just one tear, which would have been enough to pit nations against each other, but the first of a succession.

The ransom of empires was not wet but it soaked into Harry’s arms and chest.

It was the purest of all magics.

It flowed into the scars in his heart until it filled them.

Here in the coldest place on Earth there is warmth. Happiness, of a kind.

Home is close.

The wizard and the creature of ice close their eyes and sleep.

Harry slept.

He dreamed.

Sometimes his dreams were like Bludgers striking him during Quidditch – sometimes a glancing blow, sometimes a full-on smack to the head – and he would almost wake. Almost, but never quite completely. He would twitch a little as part of his mind remembered where he was, but as soon as his mind turned itself to his companion he would drift away again, lulled by the music of the storm raging outside their burrow and knowing that while it sang he was safe.

The dreams that hit him hardest were the ones when he was screaming into the darkness. Sometimes he was shouting with anger, sometimes with fright, and colours would shatter from him in great, luminous sheets. Usually, though, he was yelling into the black void because Ron or Hermione had fallen into it and he couldn’t see them any more.

He’d be shouting their names and then realise that they couldn’t hear him. Then he’d try to dive into the great darkness only to trip on his shoelaces. Aurors and Death Eaters kept hexing his shoes so that he couldn’t go and help his friends.

Harry would start screaming then, and wake up.

Then he would half-listen to the wind and know that the one who was still with him slept, too.

So Harry knew that his screams were just in his head or he’d have woken >, and Ron and Hermione were safe at Hogwarts.

I miss them so much…he thought.

And then he would drift away again.

In between those dreams he would find himself looking down on his body. It should have been freaky, but instead he found it fascinating: there were small, threadlike worms weaving silk lattices through him. With their faint rainbow sheen the worms were coloured like oil spots on the road after it had been raining, and the silk they spun in him had no colour he’d ever seen before. He only knew it was more beautiful than any other colour there was.

The trouble was that after those interludes of quiet joy, Harry would find himself in worse and worse dreams, until the final one.

It was Voldemort. He was standing over a cradle with a baby in it.

Harry knew how this story went: he’d lived it.

His mother hadn’t.

But this time the lady who ran to protect her child wasn’t a green-eyed red-head. The new woman was just as protective of her baby as Lily Potter had been, but she had dark eyes and brown hair. She was very familiar, but Harry couldn’t quite place her in his memory.

Okay, it wasn’t his mum. Just some person. So maybe he didn’t need to get involved.

Harry drifted over to the cradle. No, the baby wasn’t him – it had fine black hair, yes, but the hair curled against her skull. When she yawned and opened her eyes, they gleamed like a night with no moon. There was no fear in them – Harry wondered if he had known fear before Voldemort AK’d his mum and dad.

Voldemort raised his wand to kill the baby.

It was Harry’s nightmare, true.. But all Harry had to do was let it happen to someone else and he would be free.

The woman (who is she?) braced herself to take the curse.

And Harry realised he couldn’t let this happen, and stepped up to the figure that had haunted his nightmares and said: "I don’t need you anymore."

Voldemort glared. "Sssilly boy," he hissed, sounding like his snake Nagini. "I am not yours to banish – you are mine to use."

Harry looked deep into those mad red eyes.

"No," he said quietly, feeling an almost unbearable rightness in every fibre of his body. "No. I never was yours to use. I just accepted it. And now that I’m not going to accept it anymore, you are no use to me. Oh, and just for the record, your glares have nothing on Snape’s."

Voldemort didn’t like that, and hissed his displeasure. As the Dark Lord pointed his wand at Harry, Harry realised he didn’t have his wand.

No matter.

"Avada ke-"

Smack!

"OWWWW!!!" Voldemort dropped his wand as he fell backwards. He sat up and cupped his face with his hands. "’Oo ’oke ai ’ose!" he whimpered.

Harry shook his hand, but punching out Voldemort hadn’t hurt as much as the last time he’d hit Goyle. Then again, Goyle’s thickness was probably matched by his bone density.

Harry sighed as Voldemort stood up again. Now his glare just made him look like Gilderoy Lockheart finding out he’d come runner-up in the Witch Weekly Best Smile Award.

"You know, this would be easier if you just disappeared in a puff of smoke or something," Harry told him.

"’on’t ee im-er-in-ent! I am the ’Ark ’Ord. Ow own e-ore ee!"

"What?"

"Um, I think it was something about how you’re impertinent and he’s the Dark Lord, and you’re meant to bow down before him," said Helen Snape, and now Harry remembered her.

Harry narrowed his eyes as he looked down at the erstwhile Dark Lord. He felt the bile rising up inside him thick like concrete, integral as bone, and as unwanted as vomit. He wanted to rip and tear and kick and bite and rend until… and none of that would bring back his parents or his childhood or Voldemort’s victims.

Something shifted in his chest. If he concentrated on it he could feel it like the melting rainbow patterns he remembered from earlier dreams. One bubble floated apart from the others and tickled his heart.

It shifted something.

That little something moved in his chest.

Harry coughed.

He grabbed his throat as he started choking, and staggered, dropping to his knees.

His vision blurred and for a moment he thought he was going to die, but the sight of Voldemort’s red eyes boring into him with such glee gave him strength he didn’t know he had...

With one final rib-cracking cough, something shot out of his throat and pattered across the floor.

It was small and round in a pale capsule that reflected back all the colours in nature. The capsule popped like a soap bubble when Harry prodded it, leaving behind a little grey pebble.

Harry glared at it.

"How would you like to deal with him, Harry-chick?"

"Huh? Sorry?" He looked up. Helen seemed unaware of his latest brush with death and was looking down at him curiously, with her head cocked to the side in the way that meant she wasn’t sure what the crazy human was up to, but hoped to find out soon because it appeared fascinating.

"Well, this is your dream, but I’ve got a flame-thrower because you never know when these things come in handy, and Wiri left his chainsaw downstairs because after Rona finished clearing out her Negative Ego there were intestines all through Maman’s house and she told Wiri to ‘hide the bloody thing or else’, and Sev’s always got a bit of poison tucked away for a rainy day, and –"

"I’d better check…" He picked up the pebble and stood up to examine Voldemort, who had a sulky look on his face now that the Boy Who Lived seemed to be going on living after all. "Here," he said, holding out the pebble that sat cold and malignant in his hand; it felt like turning up after surgery and being told to hang on to the tumour that had just been removed. "I don’t need you, and I don’t need this. If you take it and leave, it’s over. You can go peacefully. I won’t stop you, because I know that you’re not needed any more. But you aren’t staying."

Voldemort glared up at him, but didn’t move.

Harry sighed and closed his fist until the pebble was dust. "Okay, be like that, then. Helen?"

"Yes, Harry-chick?"

"I’ll have the flame-thrower, thanks. It’s handy."

Helen reached into the cot. "Sorry, darling," she cooed to the baby as she pulled out a long nozzle from under the mattress. "But Uncle Harry needs to borrow the Burny Thing. He’ll give it right back, I promise." She levelled a stern stare at Harry. "Uncle Harry will, won’t he?"

"Of course."

"There’s a dear." She handed the nozzle, which was attached by a long tube to a tank in which something smelling like petrol sloshed, to Harry, and buckled the tank around Harry’s waist. Then she picked up her daughter and left, adding over her shoulder, "Don’t worry, I fireproofed the curtains, and the walls are Gib with Pinkbatts behind them for insulation. Just be careful of the crib – it’s been in Rona’s family for generations!"

Voldemort made a noise that sounded like, "!!!" as she closed the door. "’et’s ’alk a-out it, ’Aa-ee!" he squeaked, sounding more like Wormtail, now.

"No. We’ve done all the talking we need to do."

Harry smiled a small, grim smile, hefted the flame-thrower, and barbecued Voldemort.

He didn’t stop until the Dark Lord was Well Done.

***

The next time Harry found himself on the edge of the black pit, no enemy was stopping him.

He dived in.

***

Strange: from the outside it seemed to be endless darkness. But now he was here, it felt like swimming through a bottle-green sea. It wasn’t clear, and in the distance visibility was lost in floating sediment, but it wasn’t as frightening as the few times Harry had lost his glasses and been forced to cope until he found them again (or, more usually, Dudley laughed, called him a four-eyed git, and chucked them back at him. It was nice not to need Dudley anymore, either, Harry realised).

It was like swimming, but apart from the slight drag on his limbs the water didn’t feel like water. It wasn’t hot and it wasn’t cold, and for some reason he could breathe. Or maybe not: Harry just didn’t feel like he needed to bother at the moment.

Above him was the surface, but it looked sullen as if a storm was going on. Underneath were small fish (so I am underwater!), each guarding a small patch of seafloor. Harry didn’t know fish could be territorial, but as he watched, one fish went too far into another’s territory and was chased off.

As soon as the pursued swam a certain distance, it turned around and started to chase its pursuer.

Harry started to laugh.

How did those fish know who owned what? It was all so much sand to Harry, but the two fish seemed to know down to the last fraction of an inch where the boundary of their territories were!

The fish were engaged in a Mexican stand-off now, glaring at each other in piscine righteousness.

They were so involved with each other, and Harry so involved in watching them, that none of them noticed the shadow until it was too late.

Chomp!

The water swirled and great arcs of sand churned up and Harry tumbled over and over and over.

Luckily he was used to being tossed around from Quidditch, and he quickly regained his bearings and looked back to see if the fish were okay.

One looked quite shocked, and was hiding under a bit of rock.

The other was gone.

Harry felt a bit sad about that, and he also felt sorry for the one that was hiding. But it seemed to have a memory of only ten seconds if it was lucky, and very soon it was back to patrolling its patch of sea floor like the little Napoleon it was.

Harry looked around to see what had attacked them.

When he looked up he could see silhouetted against the surface something white swimming towards the light. He squinted: it was easy to lose track of the creature as it seemed to blend in with the waves up by the surface.

For ten, twenty seconds it hung there outlined with thin strands of filtered light from the prisms of the waves breaking around it, and it seemed to Harry as if the world had turned upside down to let something so bulky hang up in the air like a zeppelin.

Then he remembered that he was having a dream about being underwater – that meant nothing needed to be strange.

The streamlined bulk curved with a lazy stroke of the tail. As it rolled away from the surface to begin its dive, Harry saw that it wasn’t white like he’d thought. Yes, its belly and under-tail was white, but otherwise it seemed to be black. It looked a lot like the whale that had eaten Warder Dibbles.

It’s a murderer.

No, Harry corrected himself, animals don’t commit murder. People do that.

Whales were meant to be gentle giant fish, anyway. Weren’t they? It was a good theory, but putting the theory to the test made Harry hesitate. Besides, Hagrid was often described as a gentle giant, and he was gentle except in the way he underestimated other people’s strength. Maybe whales were gentle like Hagrid, but could still kill someone accidentally. The first time Harry had talked to > he’d been put in mind of a big kitten. Dangerous, but not malicious. Simply a predator working to its practical view of the world. Had the whale been taste-testing Dibbles?

Harry snorted a sarcastic stream of bubbles.

Nope. The whale had been hunting. > was most definite about that, and as a predator, he should know. Thinking of > reminded Harry of what he had said about the whale stinking of a taniwha’s power.

Okay, so it was just a possessed whale.

Oddly that didn’t make him feel any happier.

Maybe it’s a different whale.

Hmm. That was a likely possibility.

Besides, Harry reminded himself, he was dreaming. And, unlike the earlier dreams, this one didn’t feel murky with suppressed tension. It felt good. Like waking up on an early Autumn morning to go out with the Gryffindor team for an early Quidditch practice when there was a light mist threading through Hogwarts carrying the smells of cinnamon from the kitchens, burning leaves from Hagrid’s bonfire, and fallen apples from the orchard behind the greenhouses, it was the feeling of his home being completely right.

It was very much like Quidditch: Harry kicked off against the bottom of the sea and darted up through the water until he was cruising just behind the whale, angling his body to change direction the same way he’d fly a broom.

Wow. The whale was a lot bigger than he’d thought.

It was one of those weird mental leaps; Harry knew whales were big, they were metaphors for hugeness. But being this close suddenly put an actual value on "big."

Going by the lazy way the tail undulated up and down, the whale wasn’t in a hurry, and hopefully it wouldn’t hurt Harry if he got too close.

Greatly daring, Harry swam up behind it.

Too late, he realised his mistake.

"H- hey – whoa!"

The current those flukes made was powerful and spun him out of control. Harry spiralled away into the green depths.

After a lot of arm and leg waving, Harry straightened himself out in the water. Another second later and he realised that the surface of the water looked a lot like the bottom of the sea. He was upside-down.

He cursed, and somersaulted around to look for the whale.

There it was – heading over to one of the big, blue chunks of ice that made inverse hills with their peaks occasionally brushing the seafloor. The whale seemed quite interested in the icebergs. As Harry watched, it raised itself so that it seemed to be standing up in the water, and poked its head out into the air.

Maybe it was looking for another wizard to eat, Harry thought, grinning. Lucky it couldn’t see him.

He had never been a strong swimmer, but when he kicked his legs he found he was swimming as easily as one of the merfolk. He grinned wider. The whale was unaware of him even after Harry’s shout, which meant Harry could swim alongside it.

He decided to swim next to the whale, just a little way back behind the front leg (fin? Flipper…? Whatever the heck it was called). Maybe there he wouldn’t get knocked around by the backwash.

It worked.

Bloody brilliant!

The spot he settle in was below and a little to the side, just right for cruising. The whale set up a submarine slipstream that carried Harry along with little effort of his own. Harry just had to stay alert for sudden changes.

But the whale seemed quite content simply to nose about the edges of the ice shelves, occasionally bumping one with its blunt nose. It surfaced often for air, although it seemed to prefer to breathe around the edges of the ice rather than just off the beach, which was made up of a steep pebbly slope that made grinding noises as the waves broke against it. The noise made Harry’s fingernails itch. Maybe the whale found the noise of the pebbles as annoying as Harry did. The first time Harry followed it as it went up for air in the centre of the bay, Harry could see why it didn’t like it there: the storm had blown the water into choppy waves, and it might have been difficult for the whale to breathe.

That was something that had been niggling at Harry for a while now – the whale breathed air.

When Dudley was nine he’d been given a goldfish. "Jaws" had lasted all of two weeks before being flushed down the loo. Harry had been blamed, of course. He hadn’t bothered to protest that Dudley was the one who wanted to see if the goldfish could swim back up the U-bend. By nine he’d learned that no-one would have believed him because "Darling Duddykins" could do no wrong.

One thing Harry had learned from Jaws’ brief stay at number four, Privet Drive, was that fish don’t have lungs. Almost as soon as it had arrived Dudley had taken the fish out of the bowl to see if it could learn to breathe air.

It hadn’t, of course, and Harry, furious at the cruelty, had popped Jaws back in its bowl and given Dudley a black eye.

Aunt Petunia’s revenge had been to lock Harry in his cupboard for as long as Dudley’s eye remained bruised.

When the darkness got too close around him and he began to wonder if he’d ever get out, Harry remembered the way the gills had opened and closed helplessly as the fish drowned in air.

When Harry had finally been let out Dudley had sent Jaws on his final swim. And then he laughed at Harry, who had been too slow to save the fish, and went downstairs to tell his parents what Potter had done to his fish.

The day after the goldfish got flushed, Dudley came down with severe bronchitis that quickly developed into pneumonia. His parents were so pale and grim with they didn’t even bother to scold Harry when he washed the dishes too loudly. Uncle Vernon had taken time off from Grunnings. Aunt Petunia spent every minute of every hour she was allowed at the hospital sitting silently at her son’s bed. The one time Harry had been taken to visit him in the hospital Dudley had been gasping like that goldfish out of water.

He’d never connected the two incidents before, and now he wondered if it was just another manifestation of his magic.

Maybe the Dursleys had been right to be frightened of him.

Harry shook off the uncomfortable thought by looking up at the whale again. He swam out to the side a little to check.

Nope, no gills.

Maybe this was a fish that didn’t breathe water. Maybe this was the descendant of a fish who’d been taken out of the oceanic equivalent of a fishbowl and learned to breathe air instead.

Maybe it wasn’t a fish.

Apart from the lack of gills it certainly looked like a fish. Fins, tail, general ability to swim… But did that mean it had to be a fi…?

Harry paused in his line of reasoning. There were noises nearby. Strange high noises he could feel as an itch in the bone rather than a twitch in the ear.

They seemed to be coming from the whale.

Harry swam closer to the whale’s head. He was careful not to get too close to that front flipper, because although it was stubby it looked like it could give him a fair smack over the head if he got in its way.

Yes.

He could almost hear it. Like the funny percolations he sometimes heard running up his spinal cord in his neck in the middle of the night when everything was still, it tickled his marrow and, while not exactly comfortable, was pleasing in its uniqueness.

After some time spent listening to the whale in this way as it swam around, Harry began to recognise different sounds. When the whale was close to something interesting it would use higher frequency, but when it turned its head to eye the darker distances the sounds would lower until Harry could almost hear it with his ears. The sounds seemed more and more important the longer he listened until he began to wonder if the whale was talking. Maybe it was trying to talk to Harry. The dark eyes were sited in front of white patches, and it was easy to miss them if you weren’t looking. Harry waved his hand in front of an eye but the whale didn’t react.

Oh well. Maybe it wasn’t trying to communicate with Harry.

They swam out from behind the shade of an iceberg and Harry admired the way the light that came spinning down in fractured arcs from the waves splayed over the dark hide. Just behind that tall fin that jutted up from its back was a lighter patch of grey skin that rippled down its side. It would look like a patch of light if it was seen from above, and maybe that was to help hide the animal.

It hadn’t hidden it that well in the past. Harry could make out long grooves in the whale’s skin that looked like old scars. Unless all whales went around getting beaten up by sharks on a regular basis, it looked like he’d found Dibbles’ killer.

Harry took a closer look.

Funny. One long set of parallel scars running from the back down the flank didn’t look like tooth-marks; it looked like at some point in its life the whale had been attacked by something with claws.

Polar bear?

Harry hadn’t seen any, but it didn’t mean there weren’t any around.

Those scars were old but they’d been deep and it was amazing the whale had survived out here in the ocean with no Madam Pomfrey to heal it.

Feeling the phoenix part of him stir in sympathy, Harry reached out and brushed his hand over the whale’s flank.

He –

***

When the world stopped spinning, Harry was back in the ice burrow, very much awake and very much astonished.

The way the whale had startled defied physics. Surely nothing that big could move so nimbly? Or so fast. The tail hadn’t actually touched him, but the force of it churning the water had flattened Harry’s chest and made his eyes pop before he tumbled away over and over and over until he woke.

When Harry tried to touch his fingertips together it was a moment before he remembered he was still wearing gloves. In the last split second of the dream he’d actually brushed his fingers against the skin of the whale. It had felt so solid. The skin had been slippery if a little rough, and then the world had exploded.

Despite the gloves Harry rubbed his fingers together and tried to hold on to the memory.

But in the way of dreams it was fading and losing details but leaving behind the memory of green water sleeping beneath a storm and the great peace he’d found there.

His nose itched. When he rubbed it on the back of his hand the glove came away bloodied.

Omigod, he thought. But it was a dream... But after visions of Voldemort hurting people when he’d woken with his scar threatening to split his head open Harry knew that it was possible to be hurt in a dream. Oh well. He was alive, that was the main thing. His nose stung and he felt tears well; one dripped, and then the pain in his nose was completely gone.

Well! thought Harry, pleased. It looks like phoenix Animagi can heal themselves! He looked to see if > was awake. Hopefully he hadn’t been roused by the smell of Harry’s blood.

The Ice Dragon was still asleep. Outside the storm winds blew and he was still stranded on the last continent in the world and he didn’t doubt that the Ministry of Magic was still hunting him.

But right now his stomach was growling for food and for some reason he was in a better humour with the world than he could remember being in… in… since when? Had he ever felt this confident and at peace?

Had he ever felt this whole?

Harry shrugged to himself, pulled out a sandwich, and tucked into it ravenously. He’d deal with tomorrow when it arrived. Right now, today felt very good indeed.

After eating and digging a hole in a corner of the cave for taking care of what Aunt Petunia and her hand-me-down Victorian sensibilities referred to as "the business we do not discuss in this house," Harry was feeling restless.

The storm was still blowing, so they weren’t going anywhere. Now that his head had cleared enough to truly appreciate the fact that they’d been flying through winds of hurricane speeds, Harry was appalled at how reckless they’d been. Had he really been that unhappy with life?

A tiny part of him replied that yes, that pebble in his heart had been growing steadily without him even knowing it had been seeded.

Harry gave grateful thanks to whatever – be it fate, God, Merlin’s ghost, Ice Dragon instinct, or good old-fashioned blind stupid luck – had guided them through that safely.

He was alive and it was good.

A thin trickle of fresh air came in through the tunnel. When Harry crouched down to see what was happening out there he found that most of the entrance had been covered by snow. He crawled a little way along and flattened some of it into grainy crystals that crunched under his gloves, just to make sure that he and <sunonice> would keep getting that fresh air. After weighing up the pros (seeing what was out there) and the cons (getting lost in what was out there, especially as the storm was still quite loud) of going outside, he decided against it and crawled back into the crook of the Ice Dragon’s leg to curled up against the shoulder. "Hey," he whispered.

<sunonice> didn’t answer.

Harry was worried. Only those third eyelids were covering <sunonice>’s eyes and the effect was like looking at a corpse.

He reached out with hands and mind, taking the Ice Dragon’s head and cuddling it to his chest the way he’d done when they’d first come here. After the last dream there was something in his heart that was new-born and fragile, a little like Fawkes after a burning day, and he wanted <sunonice> to know what it felt like. <sunonice>, he called softly. <sunonice>.

<…>

It was faint, but Harry was encouraged. At least the ortho wasn’t in a coma. <sunonice+handsonclay=safe>

The reply nearly made Harry’s hair stand on end:

<so sealburp what?>

The clarity and the despair rocked Harry. Had <sunonice> had discovered the power of human speech just in time to say he was giving up?

He hugged <sunonice>’s head tighter. <so WE goforward>

There was a snort that swept ice crystals in a brief storm around the burrow.

<sunonice> didn’t give any more words, just a feeling: <…tired…>

He wanted Harry to let go and go away, leave him to his nothingness, leave him to the ice and the cold.

<sunonice=friend>, Harry told him firmly, wanting to give <sunonice> that same sense of peace that had found him in that bottle green sea. <I=stay>

<thenhandsonclay=DIE!!!…………………I=failyou+silkthatcuts…………>

Harry squeezed his eyes shut, reached into that new calm within, and concentrated until each word hung almost solid in the gloom: <YOU … DID … NOT … FAIL>

<?>

The question was one of quiet desperation.

<sunonice¹ fail> Harry told him; gently but insistently, willingly giving the last of his new peace if that was what it would take to heal <sunonice>. He didn’t know where he’d found it or who had given it to him, but it was something wonderful he needed to share.

<?>

<sunonice> couldn’t comprehend Harry’s words. Harry saw that he had the same pebble in his heart Harry had had, and it would kill the Ice Dragon if it grew much more. But if Harry gave away his new peace of mind would the pebble begin to grow again in his heart? He hugged <sunonice>’s head, rocking it, wishing there were more options than simply to give or not to give.

But Harry had only one real choice: with a sigh, he gave.

It took no more than the decision. The shimmering rainbow magic was mixed in with some of Harry’s own power now, and together they flowed up from his chest and along his arms until it tickled the skin of <sunonice>.

There was a second where the Ice Dragon hesitatingly accepted this transmuted magic.

Then the taste of it came through. The peace Harry had found was too vast for <sunonice>. It stung with memory...

It was like meeting <handonclay> and being <curious+happy> for a small moment before being <ATTACKED> then <BROKEN&PAIN+PAIN+PAIN>

The Ice Dragon’s mind rose like the black clouds blotting out the sun.

There was lightning.

Thunder rocked their minds.

Hailstones the size of Harry’s fist smashed into him: if it had been the physical world Harry’s bones would have smashed.

It was not the physical world. Harry simply held his mind open, not fighting, simply bending with the gale and waiting with the humble patience of river rushes; surrendering all if it meant he could give <sunonice> the same healing he’d been given unawares, waiting for <sunonice> to understand the depth of the gift Harry had been given and now wished to pass on to someone who needed it. Quietly, Harry willed <sunonice> to understand and embrace it and become whole and unhurt.

<???> thundered the storm, outraged by this betrayal. <Õ sunonice=DEAD???>

<no> Harry replied, as quietly as he could. In his mind he was on his knees with his head bowed, holding out his hands and offering the rainbow tears pooled within them. <Õ sunonice=alive>

The storm held its breath to listen to the quiet voice of Harry Potter.

Harry had no words for what he wanted. He opened his mind and invited the storm to see what he was offering: it was the biggest and the best thing Harry had ever had and he wanted his friend to have it.

The storm trembled.

In the eye of the storm on a grey plane of thunder the Ice Dragon was standing before Harry and he bent his serpentine neck and drank from the bowl of Harry’s cupped hands.

Harry raised his gaze, expecting to see the calmness he’d felt in himself upon waking. The look of agony in <sunonice>’s eyes nearly ripped him apart.

The mental image of the Ice Dragon staggered on the grey storm-plain as if he had been poisoned.

As he fell he never broke gaze with Harry.

So Harry saw the moment when this new magic tore through that of the Ice Dragon, and the two powers combined and ignited.

In his mind and in his ears he heard <sunonice> scream. It drowned out his own howl.

Would it be too much?

Harry opened his eyes and came out of the world of <sunonice>’s storm to see <sunonice> lying very, very still. Lightning crackled over his hide, which was the colour of thunderclouds.

He wrapped his arms around the Ice Dragon’s head as <sunonice> shuddered and fought to find a balance between what Harry offered and what he could accept. Too late, Harry realised that the magic of the peace was too close and too integral to what the Ice Dragon was. It was a tiny fraction off true.

Some bone-deep memory rose to the surface on feathers of flame and told Harry that <sunonice> wasn’t old enough to fully accept the altered magic.

It was too much.

The Ice Dragon could not take back this magic. His form would not accept it. His body was too young, too wrong for these energies… they would poison the young Ice Dragon.

Harry splayed his fingers across the bridge of <sunonice>’s nose in desperation. With the too-late memory came the first sense of his own contribution to the healing magic: Harry could feel the taint of phoenix tears and the fire was burning through <sunonice>

His fingernails scrabbled, unconsciously mimicking Snape’s last battle to stay on broken ice, but, like Snape, Harry could get no grip.

<sunonice>’s mind cleared briefly, desperately arrowing in on a way out of his <pain&fear>.

There was only one possible direction. <goodbye> said the Ice Dragon.

"Oh no," Harry whispered. "Don’t –"

<sunonice> shattered.

***

In a crystalline blizzard, the world stopped for Harry.

***

Oh, God; what have I done? Did I kill him?

"No." Harry refused to accept it. He clenched his hands into fists and bowed his head.

<sunonice>, he called.

<sunonice>

<sunonice>, he called for the third time.

And the world began again.

***

It started with tiny motes glittering as they picked up stray flecks of light. The dim burrow filled with them and for a brief moment of time they hung.

One question from the fractured mind threaded through them.

An answer was found.

There was a decision.

Harry could see it in his mind as a microscopic crystal seed. A shape had been found. It should prove sturdy enough to contain the new magic.

Then, in swirling opalescent rainbows, the motes coalesced into the only other vessel the Ice Dragon had ever known.

And Harry found himself holding a shaking, shivering, human Draco Malfoy.

Harry wrapped his arms around the other boy, feeling Draco’s arms wrap tight around him in response, and rocked him slowly as Draco shut his eyes against all the unsolved riddles of the world and buried his face in Harry’s shoulder.

***

It was a while before Draco (no, not Draco) – it was a while before <sunonice> stopped trembling. He looked up.

No, Harry saw then; he wasn’t human. Up close it was easy to see he was something else. It wasn’t simply the third eyelid that blinked in puzzlement at Harry as the Ice Dragon tried to make sense of this new perspective, and it wasn’t the silver sheen to his grey eyes. Nor was it the expression of non-human intelligence on his face that combined with the most piercing stare Harry had ever come across without finding it rude.

It was all of these and more.

This pointed, fine-boned face was Draco’s, as was the wiry form which was wearing Hogwarts robes. There was even a Slytherin badge, but it was blurred a little as if the costume had been cobbled together from the memory of a dream. But the face and body crackled noiselessly in the aether as they strained to contain something wild; something that should never have been forced into human flesh and bone and society.

Harry had seen glimpses of this right before the human Draco Malfoy had disappeared. He had seen it full and undisguised as the Ice Dragon in flight. He hadn’t seen it seeking peace.

That was what he saw now.

"I’m sorry," he said sincerely. "I didn’t want to hurt you."

"I know," said <sunonice>, and his grey eyes, now shining silver-blue with ortho-magic, widened as he marvelled at his own voice. "And you didn’t."

The eyes closed as he leaned against Harry, and Harry realised that he could still feel the Ice Dragon in his mind.

So he knew the exact moment when <sunonice> slipped into the first deep sleep the Ice Dragon had had since Harry dropped a chunk of ice on his head.

And he heard a faint chuckle from the Ice Dragon as Harry tried to hide that guilty memory.

As Harry tucked himself more comfortably around the human form of <sunonice> and drifted off, his last thought was:

Oh, Merlin’s beard! He knew all the time that it was me who brained him with the ice!

Hope he doesn’t hold a grudge like a Malfoy.

***

When Harry looked around for the whale he saw it hanging motionless above him. He swam up to it.

It wasn’t moving. Its tail flukes drooped and undulated slightly in the eddies sent down from the waves up above.

Harry’s chest clenched, and it was lucky he wasn’t already breathing because he didn’t think he’d have been able to had he so wanted.

Was it dead?

Then the whale stirred slightly and eased into movement, gliding up like warmed oil to the surface.

Harry watched a silvery stream flow out from the top of its head and then the whale hit the surface, bobbed down a little, rose again as it exhaled another stream of bubbles, and broke the surface for the second time.

When I was a kid I drew a whale that had a fountain of water coming out from the top of its head. Maybe I was meant to draw a cloud of air. Is this how whales breathe?

The whale dived to a depth of a few meters where it stilled again.

The fins relaxed.

It’s asleep.

Harry swam closer. Now he was so close he could see the ridges in its pectoral fins and the slight roughness to its skin. He tried to think of how seaweed would feel to a whale, and reached out.

Maybe his fingers felt like seaweed to a dreaming whale, because it didn’t move. Harry smoothed over the rubbery black skin with the palm of his hand, his heart thundering, and grinned like a maniac at the presumption of being close enough to touch an animal in the wild.

He was on the whale’s right side, as in the last dream, and could see the deep ravines carved into the flesh of the whale’s flank. The skin along the scarring was gnarled to the touch and the Animagus in Harry told him that it was long past the point of healing.

He sighed a few bubbles.

The tail twitched.

Harry froze, suddenly realising that he was in a very dangerous position indeed. Last time the whale had whacked him so hard he’d ended up with a blood nose. How much healing could his phoenix Animagus supply? If the whale cracked Harry’s head like a coconut would – ?

The whale didn’t seem to notice. Harry knew it was stupid to the point of suicidal, but as the whale slowly glided forward he swam forward a little faster and hooked his hand over the fin on the whale’s back.

If the whale noticed that, it didn’t mind. It went up for another two, three breaths of air, towing Harry with it, and then it dived.

Harry held on.

He was the ultimate tourist. The whale was wandering around the bay, nudging at the bottoms of the icebergs and every few minutes going up for air.

Harry decided he preferred being underwater. Sometimes they would run into a seal, which would turn on its tail and shoot off like a torpedo. After seeing them out of the water Harry was astonished at how fast they were in it. All their clumsiness transformed into a balletic grace. It wasn’t just fish they saw: it took a few encounters with some of the smaller underwater bullets before Harry realised those were penguins. The storm was still blowing up above, and the submarine environment was calmer. Clunks and cracks came from chunks of ice jostling against each other as the waves broke up the larger sheets of ice. Once when they were investigating a particularly large blue iceberg, the whale turned and moved away at a speed that nearly made Harry lose his grip.

Not a moment too soon.

The iceberg shuddered and shed a giant spearhead of ice that crashed down into the water where Harry and the whale had just been.

Harry’s jaw dropped as he looked back over his shoulder. It was the Bludger to end all Bludgers, and it had nearly chopped off the whale’s tail. If he’d been the whale and sensed that coming, he would have moved a heck of a lot faster!

With a groan the iceberg toppled.

What it looked like from above Harry could only guess, but from underwater it was fabulous. Sheets of bubbles turned the sea into a fizzing lake of champagne and the succession of shocks from the ice planes hitting the interface between water and air thumped Harry in the chest like the hands of angry giants.

The whale rode it out.

"Wow!" exclaimed Harry, still clutching the whale. "Can we go back and have a look?" Then he realised that the whale couldn’t have understood him even if it could hear him.

To Harry’s disappointment the whale didn’t seem to think this was a safe place any more and began to swim away from the rocking mountain.

But Harry decided to go back, and let go of the whale’s fin. Maybe he could swim back and climb on top of the ice? This was certainly the best dream he’d had in ages – much better than his old ones where he’d had to watch Voldemort torture and kill. But those were in the past. They were over, and now remembering that those things had happened didn’t have the same sting.

Harry kicked his legs and headed back.

A sharp, angry buzz stopped him.

Still clicking and buzzing, the whale swam around between Harry and the iceberg.

It did not seem happy about something. In fact, it seemed very annoyed.

It turned head-on to Harry and, as he caught a glimpse of its sharp teeth, he realised: Oh, damn. It knows I’m here.

His heart sank. Wake up, wake up, wake up, he chanted, willing himself out of this dream that suddenly had the makings of a nightmare.

Then the whale blasted him with those sounds that were too high to be heard. Harry only knew the whale was shouting at him because his bones were vibrating. Even his vision was going blurry and his whole body was threatening to come apart at the cell membrane level.

Swiftly the whale moved the focus of the sound up and down Harry’s body, sending the noise-beyond-noise out from the front of its head while it moved its lower jaw – why, Harry didn’t know and didn’t care. Then it repeated itself, but at a different depth and frequency until all Harry’s teeth and bones and even his tendons were itching. Harry had the oddest feeling the whale was looking for something.

Whatever it thought it was doing, the whale stopped. Just in time, too. Any more and Harry thought his body would have exploded.

Harry stared at the whale.

The whale stared back.

Then it lunged forward.

Harry was sure it was going to try and eat him and tried to curl up in time to kick the whale.

But the whale merely bumped him with its nose. It was determined to move him away from the iceberg and kept nudging Harry until the boy turned and began swimming in the desired direction.

Harry’s body went limp with relief. As the whale swam past he grabbed the dorsal fin. It was an obliging fish, Harry thought as it carried him away from the rocking iceberg. It didn’t mind having passengers.

"I’m not a fish," the whale told him haughtily as they cruised past another ice floe. When Harry looked up he thought he could see penguins looking down at him from it.

Harry wasn’t sure he’d heard this correctly – actually, he wasn’t sure he’d heard anything at all. If the whale had lips they hadn’t moved. But: "I’m sorry?" he replied, trying to be polite at least until he worked out what new magic was going on here.

"Whales are not fish. They are mammals. Honestly, does Hagrid teach you nothing in those classes of his?"

Harry’s jaw dropped, which was a lot more than the whale’s had done. "I... he... he teaches us about magical animals. Not un-magical ones."

The whale sneered. Harry couldn’t hear it, he couldn’t see it, but he would bet his life that this bloody great fish has just sneered at him.

"That’s ‘bloody great mammal,’ you daft boy. And I see you still haven’t bothered learning any respect."

"Sorry, sir," said Harry, the shock still catching up with him that this whale knew Hagrid. Oh, and could read his mind. That was potentially pretty nasty. "But... what’s a mammal?"

The whale’s horror nearly froze the ocean. "He didn’t even teach you that? Never mind," it muttered quickly. "Suffice to say that mammals are all warm-blooded, breathe air, and feed their offspring with milk. As general rules they have external ears and hair, and don’t lay eggs."

"Oh. Yes, sir. So cats and dogs and seals and humans... and whales, of course, we’re all mammals?"

"Yes."

"I see." And Harry did see. He was swimming in a polar sea with a homicidal whale giving him a biology lesson. Harry hadn’t seen many movies, but he had seen Silence of the Lambs (and had nightmares after it), and he was beginning to have a sneaking suspicion that he was swimming with the aquatic version of Hannibal Lecter.

"It’s taken you long enough to come back," the whale grumbled.

"Well, you hit me pretty hard last time I was here," said Harry, trying not to sound too heated.

"What do you mean?" snapped the whale peevishly.

"You hit me so hard with your tail that I had a blood nose when I woke up."

The whale exclaimed with a rasp. "I hit you? When and in what possible universe did this happen?"

"Well, not exactly hit... it was more like you turned around so fast I think it was the pressure of the water that knocked me out."

The whale paused. Harry sensed shame. "I... don’t recall. You were here before, swimming with me?"

"Yes," said Harry in bewilderment. "I thought that was what you meant when you said that it took ages for me to come back to you."

"No," the whale mused. "That wasn’t what I meant. But several hours ago something did touch me and give me a hell of a – and startle me a little. Was that you?"

"Yes," said Harry, trying not to let the whale know it had slipped up and nearly admitted to Harry he’d given it a fright. It seemed the haughty whale didn’t like that. Harry couldn’t help smiling a little.

There was a break in the conversation during which the whale went up for air. When they were swimming under the arch of a hollowed iceberg the whale said, "Then I hope you were not seriously harmed."

It sounded sincere. So much for the Hannibal Lecter scenario, thank goodness. "I’m fine," said Harry. "I heal quickly."

"Are you safe where you are?"

"I... seem to have landed on my feet," Harry said with care as he was getting suspicious of where this line of questioning might be going.

The whale muttered something that sounded like, "Why am I not surprised?" and frightened a passing seal with a carefully aimed burst of sonar.

As he watched the seal disappear into the shadows, Harry asked, "What did you mean?"

"I mean I’ve been trying to contact you for the last three days," said the orca testily. "At first I tried directly but you were too emotional and I feared I was adding to that. Your mind was in a terrible mess," it added as if that was Harry’s fault. "I’ve been trying through your dreams, mainly; I would have tried the way that worked back in Malfoy Manor, but the young Ice Dragon’s mind has been absolutely frozen to me. Is he safe?"

"Yes," Harry whispered, a new and painful hope kindling inside him.

"Good. There’s still the link there, of course, which is how I managed to call you here in your sleep."

"Professor Snape?"

"Yes?"

But Harry couldn’t say what he wanted to say. And when he tried, he found out that whales aren’t designed to be hugged.

Nonetheless he tried.

And laughed when he felt the whale’s – no, Snape’s – embarrassment. He settled for patting the whale on the nose. The whale snarled a series of clicks and rasps. Yes, that was definitely Snape in there. The whale twitched and would have swum away but Harry grabbed hold of a fin.

"Sorry," said Harry (not that he was), "but we thought you were dead."

The whale radiated surprise. "I... well, I’m not."

Harry turned his face towards the surface so the whale couldn’t see his expression. "Sunonice will be glad to know you’re alright. He was absolutely devastated when we lost you. He kept trying to find you – what happened?"

"In a nutshell, I used to think my Animagus form was impractical. But when I fell into the water I had just enough energy for one spell and this was the only one that... happened." But Snape sounded a little puzzled about it. "I was so cold I couldn’t think properly but perhaps instinct or something kicked in. Whatever happened, it worked. As the Muggles say: ‘Ta-dah’," he finished dryly.

Harry chuckled. "I see. And to think I thought – never mind."

"What did you think?" the whale asked in that cool silky tone that meant trouble if a (correct) answer was not given.

"Um... I thought you might be a flightless bird like a dodo."

"I see."

"Hey, you were the one who called it impractical. I think a killer whale is pretty cool."

"Yes. Well. And if you didn’t know it was me why did you try talking to a killer whale? And I prefer the term ‘orca’ as ‘killer whale’ implies some sort of homicidal Moby Dick rather than the largest member of the dolphin family. And don’t you know you shouldn’t talk to strangers?"

"I thought you were a big talking fish and... okay, that was pretty strange as strangers go, but I thought it was just a dream."

"I’m not sure how much of a dream it is," said Snape. "Knowing you, a dream is probably life-threatening."

As if on cue, in the distance was a mighty crash as the iceberg rolled again.

Harry gripped that fin tighter as the shockwaves rolled through them. Thankfully Snape didn’t point out how dumb Harry’s idea of swimming around it had been. But he did ooze smugness, which was worse.

At least Snape wasn’t angry over the dodo remark any more. Another thing to be thankful for. "Did you – was that you who... um... kind of... got rid of Warder Dibbles?"

The face of an orca is set in a permanent Mona Lisa smile, but Harry felt the chill from this smile seep through the waters, dream or no dream.

"Oh," said Harry. Severus Snape, the last of the Death Eaters... Oh, Merlin! Don’t let him have heard THAT! He felt like smacking his forehead and tried to think of something to say that would make it alright again.

The moment stretched out between them far beyond any length of redemption and in it Harry thought he must have sweated enough with sheer shame to raise the sea level a fraction.

"Don’t worry, I shan’t make a habit out of it," said Snape in his chilliest voice after it became clear Harry wasn’t going to say something more. The clean lines of the orca form thrummed like a harp string and Harry could sense him getting ready to move away.

He couldn’t think of anything clever or wise, so he blurted out the first thing that came to mind: "Well when it comes to people trying to kill me or Sunonice or Helen I can’t complain," said Harry, willing Snape to read his mind and find out just how sincere Harry was.

Maybe he did. The orca relaxed marginally.

"Was... was that you trying to get though to me up there on the ice?" Harry asked. "I – it was like I suddenly knew things I shouldn’t have known. There were words I’ve never used and... and I suddenly knew how all the little wheels drive the Ministry..." It all made sense, now.

"When you were shouting at Charlie Weasley? Yes. You drew me in there sometimes – not entirely willingly, I might add. I’m not sure what you were saying but I got the general gist of the emotions."

"I wondered if I was feeling your emotions," said Harry quietly.

The orca turned pensive and Harry lost all sense of what it was thinking.

"I wasn’t sure if I was possessed or having a nervous breakdown," Harry confessed, bracing himself for Snape’s sneer.

"I’m afraid it was a bit of both," the whale replied quietly, and sent out a harsh series of clicks at a crab crawling out from under a rock. The crab shot back at a sideways gallop, waving its claws.

So this was how whales glared, Harry decided.

"I’m very sorry," said the orca.

"I..." Those were words Harry had never expected Snape to say – maybe they were in Hell and it had frozen over. It was entirely possible. It’s alright," he said. "I know what you were trying to do and... and..." Harry trailed off. "I’m glad you’re still here," he whispered.

The semi-smile took a hint of warmth. "I promise I will never tell either Black or your Weasley friend you said that."

Harry managed a wobbly grin. "I appreciate it."

"Now that you know I’m alive do you think it will be possible to keep in touch via Dra – Sun On Ice?" Snape asked, carefully spacing out the individual parts of <sunonice>’s name.

"If not I’ll just go back to sleep," Harry said, glad that they were back to practicalities. "Do you think you can call me back here?"

"Yes. Now that your mind has cleared." There was something ominous about that but Snape continued before Harry could query this. "It’s a wandless magic I can perform simply by concentrating long enough and hard enough, although three days straight has never been documented, and never in Animagus form. When we get back I may submit an article on it... on second thought," Snape mused, "I think not. I would prefer my Animagus form remains unknown."

"Oh. Does Dumbledore... Hang on. Did you say three days? I’ve been asleep for three days?"

"I wouldn’t know. It’s hard to judge without a proper sunset. But this storm has been blowing for what feels like three days now... ever since you left, in fact."

"I went to sleep not long after it started, I guess, but... Wow." He paused. It should have been impossible to stay alive for so long in such a hostile environment without food. "How about you, sir? Have you had enough to eat?"

"Mainly fish. But the occasional seal has wandered my way. Don’t worry, Dibbles is food for the crabs. I prefer penguin."

Harry winced at the mention of the warder. He hadn’t thought about what would happen to the corpse but Snape’s information was a bit much. "What about all the feathers?"

The whale smirked. "If you shake the penguins hard enough you can rip off their skin and that takes care of the feathers problem. Of course, sometimes the bird falls to pieces and you have to go looking for –"

"Ugh. Sorry I asked. But I’m sure you’ll be able to have some delightful reminiscences with Sunonice."

"How is he?"

Harry smiled. "He’ll be a lot better when he hears you’re not dead. I can’t wait to tell him you’re the whale that frightened the scales off him."

"Orca or dolphin, if you please," said Snape. "‘Whale’ makes me sound fat."

Harry couldn’t stop the snigger. "So… if I get to call Sirius ‘Snuffles,’ does that mean I can call you ‘Flipper’?"

Fish, whale or dolphin – it didn’t matter after it smacked Harry with its tail flukes just hard enough to wake Harry up with his eyes spinning and laughter bubbling up in his throat.

***

Telling <sunonice> the good news was one of the highlights of Harry’s life. The Ice Dragon in human form didn’t say anything, but his eyes shone. Then they closed and Harry had the oddest feeling of being alone in the burrow as <sunonice> sent his mind speeding out over the frozen wastelands to a bay where a certain cetacean was hunting penguins.

Harry sighed and pulled <sunonice> closer. He could feel the happiness radiating out from the slender form and he took a little pride in being the catalyst for it. Plus <sunonice> made a good pillow.

When he slept again, it was to see the Ice Dragon perched on an ice floe while a killer whale circled it. There seemed to be some sort of animated conversation going on.

Harry left them to it.

He had his own dreams to explore.

The next time Harry woke he found an Ice Dragon had curled itself around him. Its wings were draped over his head like a curtain keeping the worst of the cold out, and in the faint glow coming from its scales he could see the slow rise and fall of its ribs as it breathed the easy breaths of a deep sleep. If Harry listened very carefully he could hear it snoring.

He yawned and then realised something else.

He could hear <sunonice> breathing but he couldn’t hear the storm.

He dug his way out through the tunnel.

Yes. Daylight!

"Yay-aargh!"

Thump.

The snow collapsed on Harry.

It was heavy and cold and for a moment he panicked, thinking he’d never get out. Then claws wrapped around his kicking feet and dragged him backwards.

"Thanks," Harry gasped.

<sunonice> ignored him and yawned sleepily, showing off his rows of shark teeth. <moresleep?>

"No," said Harry with a grin. "I think three days are enough."

<sunonice> informed him a little grumpily that <sunonice> didn’t have the faintest idea what <handsonclay> was on about with his <babababababa>

"Sorry," said Harry, and repeated what he’d just said, this time as mind-images, filing away the information that <sunonice> was grumpy in the morning. Come to thinkof it, hadn’t Draco been even worse than usual whenever Harry’d encountered him before breakfast?

<?>

"Nothing," Harry replied hastily. <Õ outside?>

<sunonice> sneezed happily and pushed past Harry.

Harry took that as a yes, and covered his head with his hands as the Ice Dragon shouldered through the wall.

The sun came streaming through.

When Harry stepped outside it was like walking onto a wedding cake.

White icing draped the landscape, and only the rock behind Harry and some cliffs on the low-lying hills over the white plain showed that there was solid ground somewhere under the ice and snow.

From where he was standing he was looking down over a giant river that snaked long between the hilltops, virtually filling the broad flat valley. At least, it looked flat. An aside from <sunonice> informed Harry that the "river" was a glacier a mile deep. In the middle it looked flat and smooth, but towards the edges it rippled and broke into chunks. It was a river that had been slowed down a million times and covered a floodplain as big as – Harry squinted. He couldn’t tell how big it was. Size here was arbitrary and didn’t conform to human senses. The hills opposite could have been five miles away or fifty. Maybe more.

<sunonice> was asking him questions, the images flying at Harry thick and fast. He shook his head, trying to make sense of them. "Hang on," he said. "You’re talking too fast..."

There was one last <sealburp> from <sunonice> and then Harry felt a weird dislocation in his mind.

And <sunonice> marched down from the snowdrift he’d climbed onto, with Hogwarts robe rippling around his ankles and his bare feet leaving human footprints going in the opposite direction the Ice Dragon prints were pointing.

"I said, are we going home?" Sunonice snapped impatiently, his pale, pinched Malfoy face glaring down at Harry. "Come on Hands – we can’t stand around here all day."

Harry nearly replied, "Sod off, Malfoy," before the present caught up with him. "Where are we going?" he asked, and added an, "Oh, and why have you changed shape?"

"Well, firstly," said Draco, ticking the items off on his fingers as Harry had seen Snape do, "we’re going home. My home. I can feel it very close now. And secondly, this is an easier way to talk to you. I prefer to talk mind-to-mind, but Silk thinks that because it’s not natural for humans it is easier to..." he scowled as he tried to remember the word "... to vo-ca-lise our, um, comnuni... comunnini..."

"Communications?" Harry supplied.

Draco snapped his fingers. "That’s the one. When I’m in my normal shape I wouldn’t bother talking in this manner so I don’t have the... ah... the speech function part of the brain thing... I think that’s right...? Anyway. Silk said it might be easier if we talked like this so I can explain where we’re going." He looked very pleased with himself as he waded back up the slope.

Harry followed with much more effort. His boots just didn’t seem to want to stay on the surface like Draco’s feet could and kept sinking into the fine crystals. It was like walking on sugar. When he reached the top he stood there gasping from the effort and the view. It was magnificent. The sky overhead was pure blue shading to evening colours over the ridge – the wind was pushing high, thin wisps of cloud from over there. They about halfway up the side of a hill. It was the sort of hill that managed to be exactly between a plain and a cliff – a great snow-covered slab angled halfway from the perpendicular. Harry leaned against the rock wall they’d sheltered against during the storm and brushed at the snow. It seemed to be a light layer of heavy, icy mass over a lighter layer that crunched between his fingers the same way the sugary-snow crunched beneath his boots. The layers weren’t deep. <storm=littlesnow> <sunonice> informed him with a grin; "It’s usually too cold for snow here. We were lucky to have as much as we did. Most piled up under this bluff and gave us some extra insulation."

When he scraped it away he found rock below it that was dark and, to his astonishment, he could make out little bits of plant on it.

Lichen, came the thought, and it sounded like Snape might have thought it. Harry smiled, glad that Snape was still in contact with them even if it was from far away, and even more glad that he wasn’t possessed. Oh, he had no problems with the Hogwarts ghosts but they never made their hauntings personal.

He jumped as a face peered back at him from the rockface.

After the nasty moment when he thought he was still being haunted and then was sure he was about to fall backwards down the hill, he realised he was looking at ice which had formed on a flat piece of rock. It made a natural mirror, although not a very accurate one. Certainly his own face had never given him a fright like that! And when Harry took a second look at his reflection his features were smudged and so badly he couldn’t even make out his scar, although the dark rock behind the ice increased the green intensity of his eyes.

Harry looked up to see Sunonice grinning at him. <vain!> said Sunonice, and laughed.

You can talk, Harry thought to himself. At Hogwarts Draco had carried a small mirror (for magical defence, he’d claimed) and a comb (for which there was no explanation) with him at all times, even during Quidditch matches. "Okay. So explain. Where are we going?"

Sunonice’s face fell. He grabbed Harry’s hand and dragged him back down the slope and out of the wind. They reached the small flat area in front of their little snow cave amidst a flurry of crystals. "That’s the trouble. I can’t really explain. I just know that there’s a place over there –" he pointed up and over the ridge "– where we have to be. It’s where I came from. But I don’t know why I come from there." His expression turned puzzled. "The first thing I remember is fire," he muttered. "Silk was there. And the Taniwha, somehow. She stopped me from killing Silk, so I suppose she’s not that bad, and she didn’t mind me killing the other wizard. Lucius." He turned the name around in his mouth, tasting it. Harry didn’t want to know what for. "Silk says Lucius was the reason I was on fire, but I can’t remember anything before that. So I came and found the ice down here and slept for a while. That was quite nice. The you came along and... well, that wasn’t nice at all."

"I’m sorr-"

<sunonice> shook his head. "Don’t be sorry. Silk explained that you were tricked. It was lucky I didn’t kill you."

"I’m glad you didn’t." Harry was also incredibly relieved Snape had explained things without putting Harry in a worse light.

<sunonice>’s smile was sun on ice. "So am I. Life is much more interesting now, and I’m finally going in the right direction. It’s good to have someone to travel with – I can’t wait to show you my home. I’m sure it’s wonderful." He stared hungrily into the distance. "When we get there we can use the shell Silk gave you. It’s a key. It will open the door."

Harry checked his pockets. After an anxious, heart-in-mouth moment, he found the shell. It sat in his palm, not glowing, not doing anything except looking as utterly shell-like as was possible.

"You’re not looking at it right," laughed <sunonice>. "I’ll show you how –"

But they were interrupted by a sharp pop!

They spun to face the noise. There, on the hillside just down from them where five seconds ago had been nothing, was an Auror. She pointed her wand at Harry as she pushed back her hood, revealing a scarred face and greying brown hair tidied back in thin lines plaited along her scalp.

Harry couldn’t believe it. How did they keep finding him like this? "Oh, for... Don’t you people have anything better to do?" he snarled.

"Point that stick somewhere else!" snapped Sunonice.

The Auror did a brilliant double take at the sight of Draco Malfoy, but recovered too quickly for Harry to take advantage. "All right, lads; where’s dragon?"

The face that had obviously been through several battles combined with the Yorkshire accent clicked in Harry’s memory. Batty Nora, although Harry had never actually met her, was infamous in Auror circles. Nicknamed "the Yorkshire Terrier," she was a contemporary of Mad-Eye Moody. Rumour had it that she was even more of a fanatic.

Harry had always seen her as one of the good guys – well, a good guy with a bit of a shaky grip on sanity, but still one of "Us."

"Us" were being whittled down so fast in the last few days a decent plague would throw up its hands in surrender.

"I’m the only dragon around here," Draco drawled haughtily. Take him back to Hogwarts and no-one would know him from the original. "And what do you want?"

"You’d be Lucius Malfoy’s brat Draco, wouldn’t you? Heard your dad got eaten by the Ice Dragon," she said dryly. "Needs more than name ‘Draco’ to make thee a dragon, lad."

<sunonice> narrowed his eyes. "And if I am Draco Malfoy?"

Harry prayed the woman would shut up. This was not the time... "Stop it," he said quietly.

Batty Nora ignored him. "Well, then if tha’s trying to follow in Daddy’s footsteps and take over world you’ve another thing coming to thee." She eyed <sunonice> with scorn and a drop of venom. It was returned with interest. "That dragon’s got nowt to do with you, lad, not anymore if you take my meaning. Go on home."

Sunonice raised his chin. "Are you saying I should abandon Potter here to his fate?"

"Are you trying to tell me he’s now your best friend?" She snorted. "Pull other one, lad; it’s got bells on’t." The she noticed his feet and her eyes widened. "Here – get yourself home sharpish. You’ll be losing toes, tha great daftie."

Sunonice looked down at his feet. He looked over at Harry’s, which were snug in their fleece-lined boots, and appeared to consider this. He scrunched his toes in the snow. "They feel pretty good to me," he said slowly. He looked up. "And why do you think I hate Hands – I mean, Potter so much?"

She snorted and Harry groaned internally. "Ha! The stories I hear of two o’ thee hexing each other silly, why it’s amazing neither of you killed off other..." she trailed off at the look Sunonice was giving Harry. "Are you not Draco Malfoy after all?" she said, looking thoughtfully at his pink toes, and her wand moved to point at the blond boy.

To Harry, Sunonice promised, "We will talk about this later."

Then he dissolved.

For a moment he gave out the glare of an icefield under the midsummer sun and when Harry stopped blinking <sunonice> the Ice Dragon was spreading his wings. The Ice Dragon reached out and clawed at the air. What the ortho-elemental was doing was a mystery to Harry but for a moment something translucent stretched thin between the Ice Dragon and the Auror. It shimmered then snapped, and the Auror jerked back as if she’d been slapped.

She looked rattled, but the Yorkshire Terrier was a fighter from way back, and she firmed her jaw and raised her wand.

The Ice Dragon roared and Harry slapped his hands over his ears. It sounded like a cannon going off.

Dimly, because his eardrums were still twitching, Harry heard Auror Nora say, "What? Was that meant to scare me out o’ here?"

<sunonice> probably didn’t understand her, but he shoved Harry back against the cliff.

"Hostages won’t work with me, lad," she said. "What’s going on is too important to consider life o’ one boy."

<sunonice> blinked impassively. He was looking past her.

Over on the far hills the snow was sliding in sheets. Harry heard the roar ripple back along the valley, and he heard something else, too. It sounded like the Hogwarts Express coming along the tracks.

Batty Nora’s face changed. She muttered something, then her eyes widened as the spell failed.

She stepped forward, her lips moving, but the roar of the train was right overhead now and <sunonice> slammed Harry back against the rock as a wall of snow and noise rocketed down over the bluff.

In the split second before the shockwave of the avalanche crushed the breath out of Harry he saw the horror on the Auror’s face, and he realised...

<sunonice> had stolen her ability to Apparate.

Then she was snatched away.

***

Harry had no words for the avalanche. There were none. It was the ultimate version of trying to talk to an Ice Dragon.

He held images in his mind like snapshots from Colin Creevey’s camera.

Click. Nora’s face frozen in the knowledge of her death.

Click. Nora with her arms thrown up in front of her face and her mouth open in a silent scream.

Click. Air thick as a seawave crushing him.

Click. <sunonice> squashing him against the rock and sheltering him with his body.

Click. <sunonice> the single immovable object in the universe with his claws wrapped around Harry as the unstoppable force raged around them.

Click. The noise to end all noises. Harry might have screamed but he might as well have not bothered because even he couldn’t hear himself scream. The noise went on and on and on until…

Click. The stillness.

Harry was shaking with shock. When he reached out with his hands he touched freezing concrete. When he reached out with his mind he touched the equally impenetrable wall of <sunonice>’s mind. The Ice Dragon was deep in his thoughts.

And Harry suspected when he came out of them there would be the mother of all arguments. He hoped so. An argument would at least be something. What he feared was to be presented with nothing.

Damn that woman!

In a handful of seconds she’d given <sunonice> all the information he’d never needed. He now knew that he was meant to be the son of the wizard he’d killed. He was also not liked by other wizards – well, he’d probably figured that one out on his own – and, worst of all, she’d told him he was Harry’s enemy and Harry was his.

All their work wasted in a few ignorant sentences.

<sunonice> sighed and began digging at the snow. Harry tried to help but it really was like concrete. The Ice Dragon bared his teeth a little and told him to stay out of the way, so Harry subsided miserably to wait as the compacted snow was shifted by the sharp claws and wiry sinews of the ortho-elemental. <sunonice> didn’t bother with magic – brute strength was enough. It didn’t take long until he’d dug them out.

Harry followed and found himself in a new world.

Great slabs of ice lay broken on the hillside below.

There was no sign of the Auror.

<?> asked <sunonice> in disbelief as he picked up on Harry’s concern.

Harry shrugged. He couldn’t explain. But he remembered how awful it had been when the snow had fallen on him earlier, and how relieved he’d been when <sunonice> had pulled him out.

Anyway, Auror Nora had probably been crushed to death.

He looked up to see <sunonice> eyeing him with a disconcertingly blank gaze. Harry had seen it countless times on Snape.

And Snape... If Harry concentrated he could feel the sharp, obsidian edges of the Potions master’s mind. Snape hated Aurors. It was mutual. And Harry remembered the last time he’d been merciful – Pettigrew had escaped and indirectly led to Cedric’s death.

But Harry kept thinking of how he’d felt with the snow crushing him.

<find?> he asked, not expecting any answer.

Again, that blank look. It left Harry colder than his surroundings.

But then the Ice Dragon loped off down the hill, slipping and sliding as he went with his wings out for balance, sending chunks of ice flying as well as scattering snow that flew out like glittering grains of sand. He reached the base of the slope and started digging.

Harry scrambled down after him, tripped, and finished the journey covered in snow. There was a small stinging in his forehead where he’d hit a sharp piece of ice. He brushed at it, ignoring the blood, and crawled over to where <sunonice> had dug out a sizeable pit.

<alive?> Harry asked.

<heartbeat> was the terse reply, surprising Harry. He hadn’t expected any answer at all. If anything, the Ice Dragon seemed disgusted with him.

Auror Nora was unconscious by the time they dragged her out. <cold+badair> <sunonice> explained, telling Harry that Nora would have suffocated under the snow before dying from the cold. He narrowed his eyes and concentrated and Harry sensed heat flowing back into the body of the Auror. Somehow the Ice Dragon managed to feed it into her internal organs first rather than from the outside. The why of it was beyond Harry, but he respected the skill.

"If she were warmed abruptly she would go into shock and die," said Snape. His shadow lay blue and the light refracted by all the ice and snow left it jagged, but when Harry turned to look there was no-one there. Now the shadow was gone, too, and although Harry was fairly confident he wasn’t possessed he was still a little unsure about this whole nervous breakdown scenario.

He heard Snape snort.

Then the Auror coughed and opened her eyes.

When she saw the Ice Dragon looking at her she went very, very still.

Harry could understand. He was about to step forward and try to explain everything to her when her hand that was still gripping her wand twitched.

The Ice Dragon growled.

Her eyes widened fractionally, but that was the only movement she managed.

<handsonclayÕ wand> <sunonice> ordered.

Harry didn’t question the cold tone. At least <sunonice> was still prepared to talk to him.

When Harry had retreated to what <sunonice> deemed a safe distance the Auror was dropped with a soft plop into the snow.

She was the same age as Professor McGonagall and Harry would have gone to help her up but he was stopped by a slightly louder growl. The spines on the back of <sunonice>’s neck were bristling.

Harry didn’t need telepathy to know he was exceptionally angry.

"If you try to do move quickly or do anything suspicious you’ll die," he said to the Auror. "You really shouldn’t have followed us."

"Do you realise what you’re doing?" she asked softly.

"Yes," Harry replied.

"So you know you’re a traitor?"

When Harry flinched <sunonice> hissed and rattled his spines.

"If I’m a traitor to a Ministry that prefers to torture and kill rather than understand and work with then I’m not a traitor in the greater sense," Harry replied calmly after a deep breath. He nodded towards the Ice Dragon. "I could have let him leave you to die. You are here on his territory as an aggressor – he has every right to want you dead."

Out of the corner of his eye he could see the shadow of a tall man standing next to <sunonice>. He could hear the faint susurration of the man whispering to the Ice Dragon.

Harry turned his attention back to Nora. Mad-Eye had spoken well of her. He tried reaching to what Mad-Eye had valued. "I know that you want stability," he said. "You don’t want our world –" and as he said that he knew yes, it was his world, too. He was irrevocably a part of it. It was his right and it was his duty and he would never seriously want it to be otherwise "– you don’t want our world to be ripped apart by another threat like Voldemort. Fudge has told you that Ice Dragon blood is needed to ward the Ministry and that the Ministry must be the only place so guarded. He has told you to collect some Ice Dragon blood and then kill the source.

"What he didn’t tell you is that if you do this it will be murder."

Nora’s eyes were harsh with what she’d seen in her lifetime, but Harry didn’t look away. The shadow had moved behind him and was whispering in his ear. The words were indistinct but the force behind them was not.

"Behind me," Harry went on, and as he did he could feel the knowledge Snape was willing into him, "is the last child of the species. You know what happens to a society which tries to better itself on infanticide. It is not worth the crutches it makes from the bones of the babies. This story is older than civilisation and there are many names and many endings you have never heard of. But you know some. Think of Herod. Think of Arthur. Remember the Lore. And ask yourself if the path Fudge has chosen is one you should walk." Harry blinked and hoped his face wasn’t giving away his bewilderment. He knew what Herod had done, of course; Harry’d been a shepherd in a school Christmas Nativity play and Herod had been the nasty king who wanted all the babies dead so that he could be sure Jesus would die, too. Arthur? Who was he? Not King Arthur – he’d been a great hero and would never have... the silken voice whispering in the wind told him that, Yes, Arthur had ordered a slaughter of the innocents, and Camelot had fallen.

"I helped defeat Voldemort. It wasn’t me who gave him the killing blow, but I was there and I fought him just as I fought him on other occasions. Just as you fought him. Like you, I did it because there were people I cared about who he wanted to hurt. There are so many people I care about still, and so many I haven’t met yet who I will care about in the future. For them and everyone else I won’t let you or Fudge or anyone else destroy our world."

Nora’s eyes narrowed and she sniffed, twitching her long nose. "You nearly had me there, laddo. But that’s no baby and it’s nowt human."

<sunonice> stepped forward and pressed one claw into her chest. As she looked up into the silvery eyes Nora gasped.

The air grew thick with the images passing between them.

<sunonice> moved back, his tail flicking side-to-side. Nora looked as if she’d just had her world tumble down around her ears.

Perhaps she had.

"You can give me back my wand, Mr Potter," she said hoarsely, still not taking her eyes off <sunonice>’s. "I won’t be hurting your friend."

<sunonice> nodded.

As Harry handed her back her wand, he noticed the first tear trickle down her leathery cheek.

She drew the tip of her wand along the inside of her wrist. "I offer it freely," she said gruffly as the blood began to well up. "This, my blood, the blood of a loyal Auror, I give with all respect to thee."

The whispering shadow had moved back to <sunonice> and the Ice Dragon tilted his head to listen for a moment before dipping a talon into Nora’s blood. With a different claw he jabbed at his hide.

A few drops of pale blue blood dripped to the snow, making a little dish with their weight. <sunonice> took them and dabbled the Auror’s blood into them.

Nora tapped the rim of the hollow with her wand and spoke the spell. Her voice cracked over the final syllable, but the spell rang true.

It sounded like a silver bell.

Harry gasped as it rippled past him and out of the corner of his eye saw it expand like a shockwave radiating out and over the icescape.

Nora curtsied to the Ice Dragon, who bowed his head and handed her a skein of magic. The Auror took it and, with a complicated wave of her wand, wove it back into her body.

She looked at Harry and opened her mouth to speak, then shook her head and gave him a small nod instead.

To <sunonice> she said, "I’ll take tha’s message back, lad." With a small pop, she was gone again.

<?> asked Harry.

<sunonice> considered a reply, then shook his head. He raised his forefoot and Harry recognised the signal. It was time to go.

A whisper on the wind sounded like Snape’s voice. "How you consistently manage to fall on your feet, Potter, is one of the great injustices of the universe."

Harry must have imagined it because it sounded like Snape giving him a compliment.

Judging by the way the sun moved from behind them around to their right, Harry hazarded they had been flying for six hours when they stopped for a break.

<sunonice> was tired and curled up with his nose tucked under a wing while Harry walked around. It was nice to stretch his legs, although <sunonice> had given him specific directions in which not to walk. The ice looked safe from Harry's perspective, a small area of calm ice in the middle of a choppy glacier, but <sunonice> assured him all through the area were crevasses that went hundreds of meters deep. That was partly why he'd chosen to set down on this plain; Harry had been given a rough explanation of the spell Nora and <sunonice> had performed, and it should have provided an anti-Apparition shield specific to Aurors covering most of the Antarctic continent.

Harry was impressed.

<sunonice> wasn't. He didn't trust the Auror not to have snuck in a loop-hole somewhere. Thus the crevasses.

<sunonice> thought the idea of a <sealburpAuror> falling down a crevasse was pretty funny. The idea of <handsonclay> falling down a crevasse was not funny; Harry was under orders not to do anything stupid while <sunonice> rested.

Harry sighed and decided not to say anything that could end up as an argument. <sunonice> had been quiet but with a depth to his silence that implied a hell of a lot of thought going on. As they'd glided down from the highst peak of the mountain range (and Harry had thought they'd rested on a hill top! Snape's echo had told him the ice was so deep even the mountain were almost buried) he'd asked Harry a few questions centring around Helen. Harry, after he stopped concentrating on keeping his breakfast down after the spectacularly swift decent, suspected the Ice Dragon had understood a great deal more of what had gone on at Malfoy Manor than anyone had suspected. He was, for instance, very interested in Helen's recent transformation into a human. Although <sunonice> had kept his own thoughts private, Harry picked up a few glimpses of Hogwarts corridors milling with students, the Forbidden Forest as seen at midnight from the top of the Astronomy Tower, Snape in his office snarling as he marked test papers, Lucius in his office (complete with some brand of tension seeping out of that memory Harry didn't want to know about), and a colourful one of Helen at dinner arguing with Trelawney before decking the professor with dessert -- things that <sunonice> the Ice Dragon couldn't have known. Draco Malfoy, however, would have known them.

Were the barriers between Malfoy and Ice Dragon crumbling? Harry felt something cold down his spine that had nothing to do with Antarctica.

They still hadn't had That Talk.

***

<?>

"Huh?" said Harry, his best reply to the unspecific question. He rubbed his eyes. They were becoming sensitive to the glare of the icefield and the beginnings of a headache was creeping through the back of his skull. Maybe it was the vast space giving him the illusion of being compressed into something utterly insignificant, but he felt suffocated. His eyes watered a little when he took his glasses off and scrubbed at them with the heel of his hand, but it seemed that phoenix tears had their limits. It was probably the sheer exhaustion. After seeing Hermione stress out so many times during exams (oh, and in the three-month build-up to them) Harry knew the signs of a person who was simply worn-out and he knew that he was close to being prostrate with tiredness. Oh well. It was probably just all the stress he'd been through. Dan the counsellor had talked to him about stress headaches. The sooner <sunonice> was home, the sooner Harry could have a rest.

There was a guilty pleasure in thinking forward to a future where he could relax for a change, he reflected as he pulled the last bottle of butterbeer out of Charlie's hold-all. What would it be like not having people out for his blood? Hopefully he wouldn't be back to some equivalent of that dull torturous existence he'd had at the Dursley's... He grimaced as he finished the bottle, wishing it had been plain water. Butterbeer just didn't hit the spot and his tongue felt fuzzy with thirst. He ignored it in favour of more immediate concerns. "Ready to go?" he asked, carefully stringing together a simple mind-picture to match the words.

<sunonice> nodded, silent in voice and mind, and lifted a front foot for Harry to step up on.

It was lucky <sunonice> wasn't in a talkative mood, decided Harry. It was pleasant to lean forward and close his eyes against the harsh light. The illusion of rest was also good. But the excitement building in <sunonice> couldn't stay hidden, and Harry felt his own heart start beating stronger, too, as they neared an unbroken field of white. Harry put his hand over his glasses and squinted through slitted fingers. It helped a little. "Are we there yet?"

<sunonice> didn't answer, but he did change the angle of his wings and they slipped sideways and down into a spiral.

Harry looked again -- the white wedding cake wasn't as perfectly iced as it had first appeared. It looked like someone had dropped a cup on the top and punched a perfect circle into the marzipan.

Ick. Harry hated marzipan and wished he hadn't thought of it -- he was starting to feel ill, now, and couldn't get enough breath.

What if he'd got food poisoning? Those sandwiches of Charlie's might have been too old.

That thought was lost when <sunonice> folded his wings and they plummeted fifty meters down into the hollow. The Ice Dragon spread his wings at the last second. And, with a hollow boom as the translucent wings caught the thin air, the Ice Dragon landed soft as a sparrow on a twig.

Harry slid off and managed to get a few stumbling steps away from the Ice Dragon before he dropped to his knees and threw up.

<?>

"'m okay," he muttered, picking up a handful of snow and wiping his mouth. He popped a second handful in and moved it around with his tongue until his teeth ached, then spat it out and coughed. "Bad sandwich."

<sunonice> nosed the back of his neck, but Harry was still trying to get his breath back. When he didn't get up the impatient Ice Dragon trotted off to investigate their new surroundings.

Sheer cliffs of ice rose from the flat-bottomed bowl. They were high enough to completely shadow the floor, but because of all the light bouncing down from the glassy surfaces it was almost as bright as the plateau above. There was no wind and thus no wind chill, but it was freezing. The air, still as a tomb and heavy with cold, skulked at the bottom of the shallow well. It made Harry think of the times he'd had to defrost Aunt Petunia's deep freeze; even after he'd taken all the ice out the cold didn't want to leave the bottom of the freezer.

Strange, though; the air felt heavy to his few square inches of exposed skin but when he inhaled it, it was thin and lacked sustenance.

Harry sat back and breathed as deeply as he could of the frigid air, shaded his eyes, and watched the Ice Dragon. He couldn't help smiling.

<sunonice> gambolled around the arena like an otter. Harry grinned as the Ice Dragon gallumphed past at full gallop, wings clumsily half-spread for balance, kicking up snow.

"Hey," Harry laughed. "At least someone's having a good time today." The laughter caught and he coughed until his lungs gurgled. Merlin, was this place giving him pneumonia now? Did food poisoning ever affect the lungs? Okay, he thought. Let's finish what we started. Then I can get out of here and see Madam Pomfrey.

He was digging in his pocket for the shell when agony nearly split his head open.

***

Harry dropped, clutching his skull and screaming.

First it was so bad he thought he was dying.

Then it was so bad he wished he was dying.

A dark vortex dragged him down.

Then he had the taste of nectar on his tongue and he was looking past a blurred shadow and up into a blue bowl of sky and wondering if his spirit was flying up into it because it all felt so good and so free.

Was he dead? If so, death was greatly underrated.

A cold draft moving over his face made him realise that his eyeballs were dry and he blinked hard, squeezing tears to wet them again. The world was jiggling around him. That was odd. Avalanche? Harry hoped not. One avalanche a day was his limit. What was even odder was how the wind was whispering so urgently.

And then a pair of talons were trying to put his glasses back over his eyes again. Rather clumsily, unfortunately. Harry reached up instinctively to take his glasses and put them on himself before he had an eye poked out. When the world regained focus he saw that the blurry shadow was the snout of <sunonice>, and the expression in the eyes above it was concerned. The breeze was <sunonice> sniffing at his face and the reason the world was moving was because <sunonice> was holding Harry and lightly shaking him. So, not an avalanche. But he could still taste the nectar.

Harry tried to take a deep breath and grimaced as pain zigzagged up through his chest. "Ouch." His voice was weak and talking started him coughing. "I guess I'm not dead, then."

<?> asked <sunonice>, but to Harry's relief the shaking stopped.

A breeze where there had been none muttered angrily, swirling a small eddy of powder snow around the bowl. <sunonice> twitched an ear to listen to it. The Ice Dragon picked up a pawful of snow and held it over Harry's face.

"Hey!" Harry protested, then realised that the drops falling from the claws were warm and he was really, really thirsty. He drank. When the warm water ran out <sunonice> picked up more snow and melted it for Harry.

"Thanks," said Harry when he'd had enough. Then, "Oh no, what's wrong?" he breathed.

Because the Ice Dragon was crying. A tear rose and then dropped like a diamond, glittering cold fire as it trickled down the Ice Dragon's face. One of the talons that had dribbled water into Harry's mouth now plucked up the tear and dabbed it on Harry's lower lip.

"Are y..." And then he tasted the nectar again and Harry felt it run through his body. It was --

The warmth of a spring sun melting snow from crocuses. The first bluebells. A mountain meadow alive with colour rising through the last of the snow. Water for the thirsty. Food for the starving. Air for one who had been too long underwater. Love for the unwanted.

Healing for any and all.

Harry took his first deep breath, held it, and sighed it out in relief. He had been one of those drowning and he hadn't realised it. Oxygen flooded his system and along with it went the magic of the tear, draining Harry's lungs and bringing life back to suffocated cells.

"What the hell just happened?" Harry asked, too dizzy to properly picture the question for <sunonice>.

<highmountain→sickness> replied <sunonice>.

"Oh... not a hex, then?"

<no. humansickness>

Another tear dripped onto Harry's forehead. It tickled. "I'm sorry," said Harry. "I... I didn't mean to hurt you..."

<?>

Harry closed his eyes and tried to picture what he meant in a way <sunonice> could understand.

<!> said the Ice Dragon, and blinked his version of a smile. His thoughts glowed with warmth, pictures and emotions mingling in a kaleidoscope Harry was understanding better and better: <I = happy. handsonclay + sunonice = HERE. HOME. NOWhandsonclayNOTsick → handsonclay = HEALTHY. tearsNOTsad... tears = HAPPY>

Oh, thought Harry, humbled. He was being given tears of joy. And <sunonice> didn't hate him after all. The Ice Dragon had been <!frightened!> when Harry collapsed, and sometimes fear was enlightening. After the fright over losing Snape, <sunonice> didn't want to lose a friend for real. It was much better to share <happiness> with <handsonclay>.

"Thank you," Harry whispered, smiling although the cold air hurt his teeth.

<!> harumphed the ortho-elemental. <handsonclay = idiot>

Harry took exception to that. Wincing a little at the memory, he pictured Batty Nora telling <sunonice> in his human form about how he and Harry had been enemies, and tried to show how worried he'd been that <sunonice> might think they were enemies now.

Another snort from <sunonice>. There was a flood of images that hit Harry in waves:

Meeting Harry and reaching out with his mind to find that Harry was pleased to meet him. Harry urging <sunonice> to fly away from the <sealburpwizards> who tried to cripple him. (And Harry nearly broke into a sweat of relief to find out that <sunonice> had guessed then that Harry wasn't one of those who wanted to hurt him.)

Harry bringing <silkthatcuts> to save him.

(Harry bringing <silkthatcuts>! For that alone <sunonice> would be eternally in Harry's debt!)

<handsonclay + silkthatcuts> healing <sunonice>'s broken wing.

... and then <handsonclay> had forgiven <sunonice> for trying to attack him when the Ice Dragon woke up after the healing. The Ice Dragon regretted that action and although he had already received forgiveness from <silkthatcuts>, he hoped Harry understood how bewildered and frightened he had been.

<handsonclay> making sense of some murky image from a before-time memory that confused <sunonice>; with one handshake turning the whispered, miasmic memory of being a discontented boy on a train into the satisfying one of a friendship forged.

Harry accompanying <sunonice> to the Ice. Harry fighting on <sunonice>'s side against the warders.

Harry choosing to abandon his people for the Ice Dragon. That came through like a shout.

And then Harry relearning to value his species and choosing not to turn his back on them, even after all they had done to him and not done for him. Harry showing compassion to the Auror who tried to drive them apart and would have died.... <sunonice> would have gladly left her to die because he was so angry from the poison she left in his mind, but Harry had asked and <sunonice> decided to give <handsonclay> one last benefit of the doubt.

Harry had expected nothing from the Auror, not even gratitude. She had given <sunonice> many things to think about and now he was pleased he'd rescued her, but the images rushed past that before Harry could find out why <sunonice> was pleased, and the only thing he took from the torrent was that <sunonice> was impressed with Harry's wisdom.

(Me, wise? thought Harry)

On the long flight he had thought about the paradox of fear and loyalty he'd had for the wizard he killed and ate in the dawn of memory. He thought about all <handsonclay> had done. He thought about the difference between friend and enemy, and wondered if <handsonclay> had it in him to deceive.

<maybe=yes/maybe=no...maybe I = gamble...maybe handsonclay = betray... BUT handsonclay = findsilkthatcuts> The message was a little jumbled, but Harry grasped the heart of it: <sunonice> was ready to make the leap of faith and keep his trust in Harry.

<no> replied Harry, shaking his head. <NEVER = betray sunonice> He tried to show <sunonice> his memory of when he'd thought Snape had died in the cold water under the ice, and the promise Snape had asked of him as well as Harry's determination to carry it out -- not just because Snape had asked him, but because Harry cared what happened to <sunonice>. Harry could only hope that the young Ice Dragon had the emotional complexity to understand how Harry had felt at the time, and he opened up his mind to lay bare all the determination to look after <sunonice> he'd felt.

He was rewarded with the lightest touch in his mind.

<I = know>, said <sunonice>. <but handsonclay = human. I = NOT human. Handsonclay → humans at finish>. He sounded sad but resigned to this. Maybe Harry was his friend now, but that could not last. Harry was too different. Oh, well. he would make the most of this odd friendship while it lasted.

Harry resented this. He breathed deep of the still air and shut his eyes, trying to focus everything into the one, clear thought: <I = human. human = person ...sunonice = icedragon. icedragon = person.>

<WE = PEOPLE>

He threw this to <sunonice> as hard as he could and waited for a response.

After a score of seconds deep thought, the Ice Dragon simply dipped his head and nudged Harry's shoulder.

Harry exhaled in relief. Things were alright again. Well, for now, anyway; life was, so he'd heard, a roller-coaster, and this was one of the peaks.

<sunonice> nipped his shoulder lightly. <now = ?>

Ah, the pragmatic side of an Ice Dragon, Harry thought wryly. Time to get on with the job. He picked himself up and dusted the snow off his backside. "Okay, okay," he grumbled as <sunonice> nudged him again, this time forcefully enough to send him staggering sideways. "Here it is... let's hope it still works after everything it's been through."

The Ice Dragon's ears pricked forward and the wedge-shaped head turned from side to side until <sunonice> gave up trying to focus on something so small.

"It's the key," Harry explained. He gripped it lightly. "Now if I can just find the lock..."

<sunonice> trotted over to a section of the ice wall that looked... exactly the same as every other bit. But the ortho seemed to think it was special, and if Harry closed his eyes and stretched his ears he imagined he could hear Snape whispering from somewhere over ... there. When he opened his eyes the only two people were himself and <sunonice>, and the Ice Dragon was watching Harry impatiently.

<!>

"Alright, alright." Harry trudged over and put his hands on the wall.

Nothing. Smooth ice that showed him his own face wearing a scowl and -- Harry pushed back the hood of his parka to check -- a complete absence of scarring.

Harry peered closer. He'd thought the earlier ice mirror was a fluke, but while this one didn't have the resolution to show him individual eyelashes, it should have shown that lightning-bolt on his forehead. His as-of-now nonexistent scar.

Wow. What had --?

<vain!>

"Sorry," said Harry. He whipped off his gloves and tucked them in his pocket before putting his hands on the wall, noticing in passing that after a few days of not being picked at his fingers had healed up around the nails. His hands seemed steady, too. Now there was a small victory. He pressed into the wall and tried to sense what was behind it. Nothing. It felt like leaning against a condensation-covered window. He scraped the shell against the ice but it didn't even leave a scratch. He tapped his wand against it. If there was a substance on Earth that was utterly devoid of magic, this seemed to be it. So how had Snape got into it?

"Now what?" he wondered aloud.

<???>

<sunonice>'s wings were drooping and his look of dismay was nearly human.

"Look, we'll figure something out, don't give up yet."

Harry closed his eyes and tried to reach out through the bridge of the Ice Dragon's mind to Snape.

When he found him, he found that Snape was just as baffled as Harry. But significantly more angry. He suspected Lucius of coming back and tampering with the ice to make it impermeable to further adventurers.

<sunonice> bared his teeth as he caught Snape's reference to Lucius. <hotwizardblood!> More images followed, but none Harry could understand. There was a rattle of spines as the frustrated ortho shook his head, a brief flare of cold light, and the Ice Dragon became human. Or human-shaped, anyway. The expression on his face was that of a boy who'd just seen his birthday cake fall on the floor.

"Hey," said Harry, and reached out to pat Sunonice's shoulder. "Maybe this just needs a bit of time for us to figure out the way in. Snape couldn't have just walked in, could he?"

Sunonice glared at him. "But he did. And I'm an Ice Dragon -- I came from there. Even if Silk doesn't want to talk about it I know this is where he found me. I should be able to get back." He kicked the wall. "Ow."

"Well, you're not wearing shoes," Harry told him practically. "How come your feet aren't cold?"

"How come you want to keep your feet so warm?" Sunonice sniffed. "Just because I look human doesn't mean I am one. Or want to be one, for that matter. I'm <icedragon>." He threw the image at Harry with a casual ease the best wizard mind-talker couldn't have managed, complete with sneer. But before Harry could get significantly annoyed at this Malfoy-esque behaviour his expression dissolved from haughty to something much younger. "I want to go home."

Harry couldn't think of anything to say to that. Luckily the little breeze (it had slunk off to investigate the arena when Sunonice said he knew what Snape had done) whirled back at that point and whispered something Harry couldn't quite catch.

Sunonice heaved a sigh then began to translate: "Silk remembers it having a darkness so dark you couldn't look at it. He used the magic he has from being part <taniwha>" -- Sunonice wrinkled his nose at that -- "to make a doorway. Then he channelled more energy into the shell to turn it into the key. And then he walked in and found... me. But now it's different for some reason. You should be able to use the shell to get in even though you're not part <taniwha>. Silk wants to... NO!" cried Sunonice. "Don't you dare!"

"What? What?"

Sunonice's pale cheeks now had twin spots of pink. "It's Silk -- he wants to come here. I don't think that's a good idea."

"Would that anti-Apparating ward you and the Auror put up stop him?"

"No, that's not it." Sunonice rubbed at his nose as he thought. It was a gesture he seemed to favour in either form. "He was weak with cold, you said. Then he changed into a different shape. I think he had help with that, because I could smell <taniwha> in the air afterwards. I think he'll have trouble changing back. Even if he does turn back into a human, he'll still be cold and I don't know if I can warm him properly. That Auror nearly died, you know. If I let Silk die..." He trailed off, spreading out one hand in distress. "I don't want that," he added simply. He listened for a minute, head cocked to one side, silvery eyes narrowed. "No," he said at last, and folded his arms. "I won't let you."

The wind prowled off to grumble over on the far side of the arena.

But the talk of cold gave Harry an idea. He readied his wand to cast a small heating spell on a patch of the wall. "Thermos."

The spell hit the wall and shattered.

One piece hit him in the eye. "ARRRGH!"

Spell shrapnel ricocheted off the wall, screamed past his ear, bounced off the walls around them and zinged away up into the remains of the ozone layer.

The wall was unmarked.

"Don't do that, Hands," growled Sunonice from where he was lying flat on his stomach.

"Damn," said Harry, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eye.

"What's wrong?"

A splinter of the spell had burned it, and now his eye was watering ferociously as it self-healed. "Nothing." Harry wiped away the tears and leaned up against the wall for a better look, sighing. "I don't think it's ice. Or... not completely ice, anyway."

"Yes. I know." Sunonice was back on his bare feet and brushing at his pseudo-Hogwarts robes.

"You know?!? Why didn't you say?"

Sunonice glared back. "I didn't know your eyes were so feeble."

Harry gritted his teeth. I won't talk about being a better Seeker than him, I won't talk about being a better Seeker than him, I won't talk about... "Well, let's say they are feeble. Could you tell me what you see?"

"Why are you angry?"

"Because I'm doing my best and you keep pointing out that I'm useless!" Harry shouted.

"You're not useless, Hands," Sunonice said kindly. "You... ah... you can... There's lots of things you're good at, I'm sure. I'll get back to you on that one, okay?"

"Thanks, mate."

Sunonice gave him an odd look, then chuckled. "This friendship lark's a bit tricky, isn't it?"

Harry laughed, surprised back into good humour. "I guess so. But maybe if it was easy it wouldn't be as valuable."

The Ice Dragon grinned. "Right. What do you want to know?"

Harry had Sunonice describe how he saw the ice wall -- and how it wasn't really ice. There was enough frozen water to hide an entire lost tribe of mammoths, but something about it wasn't ice, which perplexed Harry. Unfortunately Sunonice's words and images reached their limit here. After some frustration the Ice Dragon summed it up as something to do with the frozen water being completely drained of magic. Ice should have given some sustenance to an Ice Dragon but this stuff was slightly less nourishing than the plastic frames of Harry's glasses. Sunonice found it all a bit frightening, and the feeling Harry glimpsed was akin to the itch down the spine at the idea of walking through a graveyard at midnight and finding some of the residents had decided to go for a stroll, too.

Most uncomfortable.

Woven through the frozen water were cables of inert anti-spells (here, Sunonice pulled out an old memory of Remus Lupin talking to Harry about anti-spells... "Hey!" exclaimed Harry, who hadn't thought Sunonice could go so deep into his memories without permission), which acted like mirrors and kept any environmental magic from coming in and left the whole place dead, magically speaking. Sunonice was sure he could feel something behind the barrier but he wasn't sure what. When he attempted to show Harry, Harry sensed it as a coiled spring. An angry coiled spring. He squinted at the wall, trying to see what had been described.

That was strange -- there seemed to be a small mark now. Thinking back, Harry remembered it was where his hand had been. Harry rubbed at it until the cold made his fingers ache and then he realised:

Phoenix tears.

It was the tears from his hurting eye that had melted the ice. "Yes!"

<?> "Sorry, I mean, 'huh?'"

"It's my..." Harry stopped, realising as he looked up at the gigantic sheet of ice that no-one could be that upset. Even if he punched himself in the nose really hard his eyes wouldn't water enough to shift those tonnes.

But maybe he didn't have to.

"Let me try something..."

He closed his eyes and tried to visualise Fawkes. The image that came to mind wasn't of the pearly tears the phoenix had cried to save Harry's life after the basilisk had poisoned him; it was of the first time he'd seen the phoenix. Fawkes had been sitting like a mouldy old duster on a perch in Dumbledore's office and then, right in front of Harry's horrified eyes, he'd burst into flame.

And so a phoenix was reborn.

Harry ignored the whispers in his ears that sounded like Snape telling him not to do something stupid, grabbed the memory of Fawkes' Burning Day and put it firmly in his mind, letting it blaze and burn and renew.

Without knowing why he was doing it, Harry placed his hands flat on the ice. It didn't hurt any more, because now he understood that it wasn't ice. It was a prison. Its bars were the substance of cold without the essence. And the essence of all the elements, as Harry had had drummed into him in every class at Hogwarts, was magic. This ice was aching for something to bring it back into line with the rest of the world -- and although Water Magic was denied by the ancient anti-spells, the ice-that-wasn't-ice didn't care what Element was used. Even a taniwha's magic had worked, once.

Harry leaned into it and thought of Fire.

There was the sound of phoenix song, and Harry blazed.

The wall turned to flame. The ancient anti-spells to bind ortho-elementals spun within their disguise of ice and screamed as the phoenix fire seared through their cords. One by one they began to snap. They writhed as Fire ripped through them and lashed out at Harry, tangling around his neck. They wrapped tight and would have choked him, but there was a flash of white light as <sunonice> moved back into his native form and then the Ice Dragon bit through the cables. Whatever substance made them up, it wasn't strong enough to withstand the sharp teeth.

Dimly, Harry could hear the Ice Dragon's rumbling growl, but now that he could breathe again he kept his attention focussed on pouring Fire into the frozen water.

This time it turned Harry's strength against him. It fought back with steam.

A jet of it knocked Harry's glasses off and he screamed as the skin just next to his eye was scorched.

Then Ice from <sunonice> cooled the burn before it could blister and Harry's own tears of pain smoothed the hurt away. <sunonice> threw all the cold from the freezing polar air into the steam and sunk his talons deep into the melting wall. For the first time Harry found himself completely attuned to the alien mind, and through it he saw the mesh of anti-spells. He paused in his battle, awed. It was huge. Vast. Masters of the craft had set this prison up and it was designed to last for Eternity... Nothing short of the ice caps melting would break the walls down. Wizard and Ice Dragon faltered as they saw the massive complexity they were fighting. The moving complexity baffled them and left them wondering how they could ever destroy this monstrosity.

Then a third mind joined them.

There.

Yes, thought Harry, peering closer so he, too, saw what Snape was showing them. The spells weren't a simple tangled mass as he and <sunonice> had thought; there was a pattern which deflected their magics and protected the integrity of the anti-spells. But what Snape/ could see was the tiny flaw in that pattern. It was an almost microscopic chip where a cluster of anti-spells joined in a Gordian knot: one anti-spell was of an opposite polarity. Harry would never have seen it; Sunonice would never have understood it, but Snape knew what he was looking for and found it in the faintest uncertain flicker where there should have been slick lines of anti-spell cables.

<YES!> exulted <sunonice>. <we = see!>

The pair, boy wizard and Ice Dragon, shifted their focus. They couldn't help picking up on Snape's suppositions as the breeze whirled around them. Lucius -- his style was easy to see here if you knew what to look for -- had tried to close the door to Snape but the elder Malfoy hadn't done a perfect job. No-one could have. The wall had been created perfect and any alteration other than by an elemental creature like a taniwha could only result in an imperfection.

And that imperfection would be their way in. Thank you, Lucius, Harry thought with what little humour he could spare. Harry held the shell ready and, in the moment when the combined Fire and Ice blasted a small hole through to the weakness, he slipped the shell into place.

The anti-spells screamed and tried to shrink back from it but were blocked by their fellows.

When the first anti-spell touched the shell Fire and Ice rippled out in concentric waves.

<sunonice> growled again, this time in delight as he showed <handsonclay & silkthatcuts> how the cables shuddered around the shell like eels in a fire. He flicked a question at <silkthatcuts>

Yes, came the whispered answer.

The young Ice Dragon clawed out the tangle of anti-spells and, with a wince and a muttered <sealburp> at the taste, bit through them.

Harry's eye's widened. Even without his glasses (and without enhanced Ice Dragon sight) he could see the cables as they shot in blue and green streaks around the glassy walls like snapped elastic. The walls unravelled before his eyes. He nearly gave himself whiplash trying to follow the collapsing anti-spells, but they all came back to the point right in front of him.

The shell sucked them up and crumbled into dust.

And magic that had been waiting for hundreds of years for this moment slid out of the surrounding ice of Antarctica and into the vacuum of unnaturally frozen water, turning it back into ice.

Harry let out his breath in a long sigh. "Now is -?"

He didn't have time to finish the sentence. Cracks raced up the walls on long spidery legs. The ice groaned and popped. <sunonice>, who had been gagging and using snow to wipe the taste of the anti-spells off his tongue, grabbed Harry and pulled him back into the lee of his body.

With a roar, the wall trembled and shattered. Harry threw up his arms to protect his head. <sunonice>'s head was tucked in next to him and the Ice Dragon held his wings bunched over them. Harry felt him wince every time a chunk of ice dropped on them, but he couldn't hear what was happening over the noise.

The noise stopped. But it left behind the certainty that something had come back into the world. Carefully, inch by inch, <sunonice> lowered his wings and took a look at the reshaped world.

<!!!>

By the young ortho's excitement, something was very different. Harry would have liked to have seen it, too, but his knees were shaking so badly he collapsed in the debris at <sunonice>'s feet. After a few seconds while he tried to stop his head from swimming, Harry looked up to see what <sunonice> was so fascinated by. At first he thought it was a sea of rainbows. Then <sunonice> shoved his glasses at him and Harry put them on and took a second look.

He gasped.

All around him Ice Dragons were stretching and spreading their wings.

He'd stood up too fast to see the Ice Dragons. Harry heard a high thin whine as his vision went again, and sat back down. It was more a controlled collapse.

Spots were flashing in his vision as the blood rushed back to his head. A claw turned him onto his back. <sunonice>, he guessed, and the Ice Dragon wasn't being awfully gentle in the way he was digging the point of that claw into Harry's ribs.

Harry blinked and looked up to see that <sunonice> had grown. A lot.

He blinked again and reached to readjust his glasses. No, that wasn't <sunonice>. The eyes were a smoky green rather than silver-blue, and while <sunonice> who was the size of a minibus was pretty big, this was massive.

Harry sat up. "We did it?" he asked, hoping there would be someone there who understood human speech.

A nervous <sunonice> picked him up and set him on his feet. <yes>

"Oh. Good." Harry didn't feel good. He felt like he'd been run over by a stampeding herd of hippogriffs. His eyes were grainy and his mouth tasted like something disgusting had crawled in there and died. He wondered why they hadn't been crushed by the falling ice, but when he looked around he saw that there was surprisingly little on the arena floor. What was in large amounts were the huge Ice Dragons, stretching their wings and eyeing him in a way he didn't like. No, not at all. The air vibrated with muted anger -- maybe he couldn't hear them growling but he knew in his bones that they were. And <sunonice> was keeping so close Harry could feel the ortho's unique magic through the back of his parka.

<sunonice> thought back something non-committal which, Harry was learning, meant he was wondering about telling Harry something important.

"It... is good, isn't it?" Harry asked as the enormity of what he'd done began to sink in.

Let's see... he'd come to the South Pole or something approximate, metaphorically given the fingers to a bunch of Aurors and the Ministry of Magic, and unleashed a large number of horrendously powerful creatures who had been trapped for centuries by wizards. Harry looked around at the Ice Dragons. They were all staring at him, but none of them had that friendly glint of curiosity he'd seen in <sunonice>'s eyes at their first meeting.

These were a people with a grudge and they weren't looking upon him as their saviour. They were looking at him like he was the aperitif to a banquet.

The main course would probably involve Hogwarts.

"Oh shit," Harry said quietly. And Snape had destroyed all the spells... the wizarding world was about to be demolished unless he could say something to explain to the Ice Dragons how their anger was no longer necessary.

"Um..."

The two biggest Ice Dragons (he guessed they were about fifteen feet tall from ground to shoulder) growled in unison.

There was a worried chirp from <sunonice>, who drew Harry back against him.

The growl subsided but Harry wasn't reassured by the looks of contempt on the face of one, and horror on the other. The contemptuous one was slightly bigger and Harry mentally labelled this one King. The other, silver with violet eyes, had what Harry could only describe as a feminine edge to the ortho-magic emanating from its aura and Harry decided she was Queen.

The King sniffed at <sunonice>, who shrank back. The King snorted as if he'd smelt something nasty and glared down at Harry.

<<FIRE & CORRUPTION! WHAT VILE WIZARD TRICK HAVE YOU DONE TO THIS ONE?>> he bellowed into Harry's mind.

"I'm sorry, I don't understan-"

<<PHOENIX REEK! PURITY OF ICE CONTAMINATED BY YOUR FOUL MAGICS!>>

<sunonice> tried to say something but even Harry nearly blacked out from the King's roared order to be silent. Anger filled the arena and when the King turned back to Harry he felt that anger like a hammer.

"We came here to free you," Harry said, trying to sound respectful. "Look, I can show you --"

<<BAH! WIZARD TRICK>> The King flicked Harry's feet out from under him with a claw. When Harry tried to sit up, that claw jabbed at his chest and pinned him to the ground.

Harry lay there and tried not to think of pins and butterflies.

The King leaned down and slowly drew back his lips to show row upon glistening row of teeth.

<<I HAVE HAD LONG YEARS TO THINK UP TRICKS OF MY OWN, WIZARD>>

Harry forced himself not to squirm. His eyes widened as he realised the King was about to --

With a growl, <sunonice> pushed the King back before the King could snap Harry's head off. He stood between Harry and the King, his teeth bared, a growl vibrating the air. It was like seeing Crookshanks go up against three-headed Fluffy.

For a moment the King froze, shocked, the spines around his neck bristling in astonishment. In that moment <sunonice>, his own spines rattling, threw flurries of images like pamphlets around the arena in Harry's defence. Harry caught a few of them and saw a heroic version of himself defending the frightened and helpless baby Ice Dragon.

Well, it wasn't quite like that, Harry thought, and <sunonice> looked back over his shoulder and winked.

While it didn't lower the level of anger, Harry could sense a slight wavering in its direction. There was no longer the same degree of accord the Ice Dragons had had when he'd first unleashed -- uh, freed them. There might just be room for diplomacy.

After a brief discussion between the Ice Dragons that went completely over Harry's head and baffled <sunonice>, the King said grudgingly, <<YOUR MOTIVES MAY BE... NOT UNFRIENDLY AFTER ALL. AND ... WE ARE FREE BY YOUR HAND, PHOENIX WIZARD>>

It sounded like something Harry shouldn't presume to take advantage of. Maybe Harry hadn't done this for gratitude but a little wouldn't have gone amiss. "I am Sunonice's friend," Harry said quietly. "I'm here because he needs his family and because you should never have been trapped as you were. I should be pleased to be your friend, too."

A snort. The King sounded a little like Snape. <<MANY WIZARDS HAVE DESIRED FRIENDSHIP WITH ICE DRAGONS. THERE IS MUCH TO BE GAINED... FOR THE WIZARD. WHAT IS YOUR MOTIVE?>>

Harry looked at <sunonice>, who looked back at him. They both shrugged. "I don't know -- we just are friends. There's no why to it, it just is."

<yes>. <sunonice> nodded vigorously. His spines were still half-raised, giving the impression that he had a mane.

There was some shuffling of wings amongst the surrounding Ice Dragons. More debate Harry could only touch the edges of.

"Have there never been friendships between humans and Ice Dragons?"

<<WIZARDS AND ICE DRAGONS, NO>>

"Oh. Well, it's been a long time. Maybe it's time for it."

The King raised his head and growled.

<<I REMEMBER ANOTHER WHO CAME HERE... THE WALLS OF THE TRAP WERE DIVIDED FOR A MOMENT BY THE PECULIARITY OF HIS MAGIC. IN ALL THE TIME OF OUR IMPRISONMENT, HIS WAS THE ONLY MOVEMENT. WITH HIS GIFTS HE MIGHT HAVE FREED US THEN, BUT HE DID NOT AND WHILE OUR BODIES WERE FROZEN THIS THIEF SLIPPED AMONG US LIKE A SHADOW ON THE MIND AND USED HIS LIBERTY TO STEAL A CHILD. I SCENT HIM NEARBY>> And the King growled louder, shaking a small rain of crystals from the cliffs.

Oh, crap, thought Harry as the tiny specks of ice frosted the fur surrounding his hood and melted on the lenses of his glasses. That didn't sound good. It sounded like the King remembered Snape taking the egg. What must it have been like for the Ice Dragons, caught like living insects in amber, knowing what was happening and unable to fight it? No wonder they were so angry. "Wait, he's n-"

<<COME HERE>>

Crr-rr-rack!

And the centre of the arena heaved up a whale.

Harry and <sunonice> had to jump back as the orca snapped into existence before them. The tail lashed as the whale writhed from instinctive fear of being beached, sending chunks of ice as big as Harry's head around the arena. Several Ice Dragons flinched, but none moved to help, and Harry ducked and stumbled back further, shouting, "Professor Snape! Professor! Please, don't panic... change back!"

Pop!

A black-robed figure was lying on the churned-up snow. Water streamed off him and crackled in his clothing and his hair as it froze.

The King used one wing to tuck <sunonice> firmly back behind him.

"Oh, hell..." Harry sprinted forward, tripped on an ice boulder and only just managed to stop himself from falling on Snape. "Here," he muttered, "take your wand..." He tried to shove Snape's wand into the hand that had lost its glove, but the fingers were white with cold. Harry gripped the hand and tried to curl the fingers around the wand. "Come on..." It was no use. The wand dropped onto the ground. Snape was shaking so hard Harry thought he was having a fit. His face was grey and lips were blue. The only contrast to the awful pallor were his black hair and his eyes, and then his eyes unfocussed and rolled back. He stopped shaking.

It was even worse than the last time Harry had seen him. Changing into his Animagus form had merely delayed the inevitable. Harry clutched the brine-sodden cloak over Snape's shoulders and looked up.

"You have to help him!"

The King watched him as an entomologist might look at an interesting new beetle. But when <sunonice> tried to get to Harry and Snape, the King shot out one wing with a sound like a whip cracking, barring <sunonice> from his friends.

Harry caught the edges of the King's order.

He heard <sunonice> protest.

The King's answering roar was only echoed in his mind, but Harry saw <sunonice> tremble at it. Then when the young Ice Dragon tried to slip past the King, the King clawed at him viciously. <<YOU WILL OBEY!>> And, ignoring <sunonice>'s yelp of pain, threw him back behind him again. <sunonice> struggled but this time two Ice Dragons pinned him down. They ignored his screams of fury and dampened the frantic images the little ortho tried to send them.

And in the meantime Harry was praying the cold hadn't stopped Snape's heart. The man didn't seem to be breathing. "No..." Harry whispered.

No-one was coming to help them -- the King had commanded this.

Around them the shadows began to gather, seeping out of blue-veined cracks and pooling in the broken ice around Harry and Snape. There was the faintest smell of roses. Harry thought of death and shuddered. After one last howl of fury and despair, <sunonice> went silent.

In the fading light Harry lifted his own wand and looked at it. Well, if Snape was going to die anyway, he might as well go fast as go slow, and if he was as dead as he looked then it wouldn't matter if Harry stuffed up the spell... And unlike the time in Malfoy Manor when Harry thought Snape was dying, this time Harry was not held back by his own demons. His hands were steady and so was his mind. There was a slim chance he could save him.

He took a deep breath. "Ther-"

A hand came down on his and pushed his wand away.

Harry looked over his shoulder and up into the shifting, shadowy face of the daughter of Night and Death.

Harry. You cannot heal this. He is in my domain now.

<<YOU HAVE NO PLACE HERE, TANIWHA, AND YOU SHALL NOT TAKE WHAT IS RIGHTFULLY OURS.>>

After placing her hand on Snape’s head and whispering a single word that started him breathing again, Grandmother Taniwha had pulled out of the air a cloth of darkness speckled with stars and wrapped it around her descendant. Now Snape’s eyes were still closed but his colour was better, if still pale. Harry would have sworn Snape had been dead, but apparently Grandmother Taniwha was prepared to bend the rules for her family. That was encouraging. Smoothing the wrinkles in the blanket to make sure no chilly draught would tip Snape back into the taniwha’s realm, Harry crouched beneath the moving shadows that composed the taniwha as she turned to face the King.

She folded her arms in her cloak and Harry was struck by the controlled violence in that simple movement. He had seen Snape do it hundreds of times and never noticed how deliberate an act of self-control it was. When the taniwha lifted her face up to the King her stillness became that of the eye of the hurricane.

Why claim you my child? And from what dishonour do you say I have no place here?

When the taniwha spoke her voice brushed soft through Harry’s ears like the gentle gurgle of the stream that fed into her pool. In the same way she was made from the shadows of living things, her words were shadows of sound.

Feel the stone beneath the ice. Feel the memory of ferns. Feel the cold bones of your ancestors embedded in the rock. Feel the birthplace of spirits and know that this is where I was born.

My mother is Night and Death, but she cherishes light and life. And she saw that in the dying of one land would come the birth of a nation. But she also saw it would not come easily and she left me, her Guardian, to be yours for a time.

When the ancient land of Gondwana was broken and the island continent of India drifted north spewing poison and ash, I was here. I sheltered you from the burning rain.

When the fire that fell from the sky turned the day to night, I was here. In the winter I whispered to you of your legends and gave you dreams and hope. In the summer months when the dark still clung to the world and food could not be seen, I was your eyes.

And when the last of your flesh-bound ancestors took their final breath my Karakia formed the path to their next place and it was I who gave Waiata for their passing.

When they left you behind without the nectar of their first steps into magic, I was there and I gave you nectar from the Land of Birds.

When your first steps into the aether were being taken, I was there and I showed you the paths of winds and spirit.

And at last when the ice came and I shepherded my birds and my ferns to the last of the living places you said you were of age and would stay, and I left this land to you to have and to hold. I left it to you as a step-mother proud of her step-children would give them her blessing.

AND YOU DARE TELL ME I HAVE NO PLACE HERE?

The voice that was no voice rang in the spaces between sound. Its echoes shattered the last of the frozen mirrors.

The Queen stepped forward through the drifting rainbows of particulate ice and dipped her head respectfully. The pictures she spoke were too complicated for Harry to understand, but he saw the taniwha nod.

You are no longer children. And I am no longer a part of your world. Your choice will stand and I will not interfere.

And she stepped back, tall and haughty as light and shadow fought for dominance of her form.

The brief, agitated flutter of thought-words amongst the Ice Dragons was rapidly followed by a flash of white light. Harry thought Sunonice had managed to change shape again, but the human figure that stepped forward was that of a woman. Her skin was a warm dark brown and her hair hung over one shoulder in a single plait of jet. Her sari of gold picked out with little purple flowers blazed like a midnight sun. And as she picked her way across the arena small silver bells around her ankle tinkled.

She clasped her hands and bowed deeply to the taniwha. "You were never forgotten, Step-mother," she said, and her voice was as silvery as the music of the bells. "The words were spoken in anger. But please understand there are crimes which must have justice visited upon them." She gestured to where <sunonice> was being held. "Although I am grateful to have my nephew returned to me, I cannot forget how his parents are dead because of the workings of witches and wizards of your child’s world. My nephew was stolen by this wizard, and although the wizard is your child we cannot give him forgiveness merely on consideration of his ancestry."

"May I say something?" asked Harry after waiting a dozen heartbeats for the taniwha to say something. He looked down Snape who, although he might have known the right words, was still unconscious. Someone had to speak on his behalf. The taniwha, who should have done this duty, seemed reticent to interfere in the affairs of mortals. Harry couldn’t blame her on that but he wished she would give clearer signals of her protectiveness for Snape. Surely she was powerful enough to spirit them out of Antarctica?

The sari-lady’s ghostly silver eyes rested on him for a moment, then she nodded. "Friend to my nephew, speak."

"I... want you to know how much this man was ready to give to set you free. He made a mistake when he was young and he’s spent the rest of his life paying for it. He can be unjust and harsh and he doesn’t really care for people, but he does the right thing. I don’t always agree with his methods and I don’t always agree with his definition of right, but I respect that he chooses to fight what he’s done and never repeat those mistakes. And if you give him a chance I know you’ll see how much he wants your nephew to be protected. If you harm him you’ll lose someone who could be an important ally to you. Yes, there are wizards and witches out there who will try to hurt you – that’s how people are, I’m afraid. But if you just let yourself see, you’ll find more who would rather be friends." Ugh. He cringed. That had come out so twee. But then he wasn’t a silver-tongued politician and the whole speech was confused and lacked the core of what Harry knew to be truth; he just hoped his words would be enough to sway the Ice Dragons. "You were at war with the wizarding world for centuries. But the world has changed... not always for the better, but it has changed. If you just give us a chance..."

The mood had changed. Harry could sense it. Now the anger against him, which had been personal and almost palpable, had lost its heat. He almost started to relax when –

<sunonice>’s aunt looked at him sadly. "You love your people. And that is a good thing in its place. But you are young and love can blind. You speak of ‘allies’ and ‘friends’? We know your people and we know what atrocities friends and allies are capable of. I have seen war and famine and all the varieties of hate. I was there when the sorcerer Alexander the Great made pacts with rulers in the sunset and toppled their empires when the sun rose again. Blood ran in rivers and rivers of blood is all that your people understand and respect." She lifted her face and sniffed the air. "And now all the spells that held us back are gone," she mused, licking her lips. "We have returned. There will be blood. And there will be so much of it that none will dare raise a wand against us."

Harry opened his mouth in horror, but the taniwha held up the evening shadows of fingers and stopped his words before they were born.

If blood is the price for your return then blood is what I give.

She curled her fingers like claws, beckoning…

Severus, child. It is time.

Snape’s eyes snapped open. He stared around the arena wildly, a small gasp escaping him as he saw the Ice Dragons. His gaze sought out and found <sunonice>, who nearly went berserk trying to break away from his captors when he saw that Snape was alive. Snape smiled gently and <sunonice> settled, chuffing and growling at those who held him, then whistling encouragement to Snape and Harry. Then Snape looked up at Harry. He nodded. "Well done, Potter," he managed, his voice as dry and cracked as his lips.

Harry bit his lip and ducked his head, knowing that while he’d succeeded for <sunonice> he’d just doomed his world. He was simply too much of a coward to tell Snape that. But at least the taniwha would protect Snape and his family... Harry might be able to buffer Hogwarts somehow... there had been spells once… there must be something that could be done... Dumbledore would know some trick…

With a muffled grunt Snape stood, using Harry’s shoulder as a prop, and stepped forward. When Harry tried to follow Snape shook his head. He was shivering again but Harry didn’t think it was from the cold. The Potions master walked before the King Ice Dragon and went down on his knees. Harry had that queasy feeling back in his stomach: Snape didn’t usually move so clumsily.

From behind his captors, <sunonice> made a small querying sound high in his throat. Harry thought back: <???handsonclay = don’tknow>

<<YOU WOULD GIVE THE LAST OF YOUR BLOOD?>>

The taniwha folded her hands in the darkness of her cloak of hair.

His wife is with child.

Harry gasped. "You wouldn’t..." She couldn’t possibly mean to… The King snarled and the taniwha cut a glance at him that sealed Harry’s voice and locked his feet into the ice.

When he realised he wasn’t going to get free, Harry waved his arms, trying to get Snape’s attention. Get out of here! You can still Disapparate! Go!

Snape his eyes half-closed and if he could see Harry, he showed no sign. His face was pale as it tilted back to catch the filtered light, but the first beads of sweat glittered along his hairline.

<?> asked <sunonice>, his mental voice sounding more worried. Harry tried to tell him in hopes that the young Ice Dragon would think of something to stop this from happening, but the King snarled and flicked out a thought that sent Harry’s mind reeling.

Harry stumbled and, when he knew who he was again, found himself grovelling with broken ice biting into his hands and knees as the roar of the King’s voice thundered across his mind.

<<YOUR BLOOD HAS POWER. YOU GIVE IT FREELY?>> the King asked the taniwha.

She bent her head towards Snape. Shadows were her eyes. It is not mine to give. Child?

Snape nodded tightly and Harry tried to scream.

This isn’t happening! We come to set you free and all you can think about is revenge!!! This isn’t justice – it’s murder! You… you’re just like everyone else! You say you’re superior to wizards but all you want is revenge!

The words turned to cotton and lodged in his throat before he could form them.

Then the King stepped forward and raised one razor-sharp talon to Snape’s throat.

Out of a flare of light Sunonice ran forward with his Hogwarts robes flapping behind him and his bare feet skidding on the ice while his two erstwhile captors clawed at thin air. Sunonice dodged between the Queen’s legs, making her scramble back like an Oliphaunt sighting a mouse, and then he threw himself across Snape, shoving the Potions master backwards.

"Oof!" gasped Snape, as the air was knocked out of him.

"Don’t you touch him!" snarled Sunonice, shaking his fist at the King. "If you hurt him I’ll kill you!"

The King reared back, appalled.

Bells tinkled as Sunonice’s aunt hurried forward, her sari flickering like sunflower petals. "Stay out of this," she said. "It does not concern you."

Sunonice’s jaw dropped as he hit the heights of outrage. He lunged up and grabbed his aunt’s throat. "No? Well, learn that it does," he hissed, and threw a blizzard of images at her. "If you hurt him," he said slowly, his words filtered through images and memories he hurled around the Ice Dragons like Bludgers, "you hurt the only one who ever looked out for my interests. Do you see what I’m showing you? Good. Then know this: by harming him you harm me. Maybe I don’t remember much about being a human but I remember this: I swore to his dying mother I’d protect him, and he’s spent most of my life protecting me. My father by blood is dead – I heard you say that just now. My human father, the one who stole me, is dead. I killed him. This man is the closest I have to a father and he lives and he will remain alive. By harming him you make me your enemy. And if you kill him then, as God is my witness, make damned sure you’ve killed me too, because I won’t rest until all of you – All of you! – are back in this prison."

His aunt reached up and gently pushed his shaking hand away from her throat. "Oh, child," she said sadly, "are you so removed from us?"

Sunonice was still shaking, but it stemmed from his own outrage and her words left him unmoved. His eyes were colder than Harry had ever seen them in either Sunonice or Draco. "Are you so removed from me? I am Ice Dragon and I will always be so, but I will not be party to murder. There are other ways to feed than by killing people. Self-defence is one thing, but to actively seek out and destroy a person to satisfy an old grudge is not justice. We are not animals. Wizards are not animals. And if you are a person then killing for revenge is murder, and murder is never justice. If you kill my friends I won’t kill you. But I will lock you away where you can’t hurt anyone ever again."

There was a moment of silence punctuated by Sunonice’s harsh breathing.

"And if wizards come to hunt us down?" said his aunt in a soft voice.

Sunonice shrugged and rubbed at his nose. "Then I say, ‘dinner is served’." A glimmer of humour returned. "Wizards are very tasty, you know."

His aunt chuckled. "I do know," she whispered, and winked at him. She stepped back. "As you will, then. This will be discussed. A consensus is needed."

With a flash of light she erupted into her native form. Still shaking, Sunonice, after checking Snape and Harry were still alive and unharmed, followed her example with such brightness the two wizards were left blinking. He suddenly noticed Grandmother Taniwha, snorted in alarm, and sidled away behind his aunt, all his bravado lost in the whiff of a taniwha.

There was silence as the Ice Dragons argued among themselves. Harry only dimly sensed the storm but he sensed when the decision was reached.

The King padded over to Snape, taloned feet splintering the ice. When he raised a forefoot over Snape’s throat Harry tensed. Snape, who had closed his eyes, opened them for one last glare. "I accept their decision, Potter, as will you," he whispered, but his voice was cracking. He squeezed his eyes shut as the King’s claws swept down.

The tip of the claw pressed into Snape’s neck until a few ruby drops were raised. They were picked up on the claw and lifted away.

<<WE SPARE YOU YOUR LIFE>> said the King to Snape. <<BUT… THERE IS SOMETHING I NEED TO KNOW.>>

He sniffed at Snape’s blood. After a moment, he blinked. Harry had only seen <sunonice> blink like that when he smiled. The King was amused.

<<YOU TRICKSY, CUNNING OLD BITCH>> he said, and bowed to the taniwha.

She smiled, or the shadows shifted to give that effect. My children, you have outgrown me and I will not tell you where all the traps of adult life lie. So go forth in peace. For I have not laid traps for those who cherish life.

Warned by the thunder of wings snapping out for flight, Harry dived to protect Snape. The Potions master was still down on his knees and looked absolutely stunned by his close escape; Harry worried he would get hit by a wing or a tail. Then there was the roar of giants taking to the sky.

When the roar of the departing avalanche died, Harry looked up.

A fine haze drifted sparkling in the filtered light. The only people he could see left in the shattered arena were himself and Snape. He helped Snape into a sitting position, but wasn’t sure the man would be steady enough to stand. Snape barely seemed capable of recognising Harry, so drained was he. He was looking through the clearing haze over Harry’s shoulder. Harry turned and looked, too.

At the taniwha.

Harry, one hand resting protectively on Snape’s shoulder, stood up to confront her.

***

"How could you let them –"

"She knows what she is doing, Mr Potter. Remember your manners when you speak to her."

Harry huffed in fury. He’d never suspected Snape of being a closet martyr. "She was ready to let you die!"

Snape’s eyes slid to give Harry a sideways, almost drunken glare. "When I took the ortho-elemental spells I never destroyed them. I hid them."

"What? You... you hid the spells in your blood?" It was astonishing and improbable, but by the way the King’s eyes had narrowed in revulsion at the smell of Snape’s blood, Harry thought he could make a rough guess. "That was the trap the King accused the taniwha of setting?"

Snape’s smile was pure malice. "Oh yes. Only it was the trap I set. And had they ripped my throat out all the spells would have been released," he added with the ghost of a smirk. "If they had chosen to start with blood, then blood they would have had. Much of it their own. The wizarding world isn’t as toothless as they think, even without the ortho-elemental binding spells. With the spells, well. There would have been a series of nasty shocks for the Ice Dragons."

"Your last revenge, I suppose," said Harry, mind reeling at anyone being so cold as to utilise their death like this.

"No. Not revenge," said Snape, sounding exhausted. "Justice. We seem to be harking back to that a great deal today, no?"

"I really don’t know any more." Harry rubbed at his nose, then, reminded of Sunonice, wished the Ice Dragon was still here. But no, he had flown away in the mass exodus of his kind. "But it all seems a little... coincidental to me. Everything that’s happened is too neat."

He nearly missed the quick glance Snape shot at the taniwha.

"Oh," breathed Harry. "The story of how the taniwha left her pool and went to investigate what it was to be human... That’s a very tidy ... myth, isn’t it?" he said to the taniwha, who had remained silent through the argument so far. "You weren’t interested in humans and you told the Ice Dragons you couldn’t get involved in their affairs, but you did. Or rather, after they were locked up you went out and had a child. And that child had a child and so on down the years until one of those children used the elemental magic he’d inherited from you to free an Ice Dragon. That ... that’s very ... I don’t know. It’s very patient, certainly. But you were still ready to sacrifice one of your children for your purposes! You –!"

As she unfolded her arms her eyes silenced Harry. You could rage at death, you could delay death, and you could embrace it, but you could never stop it. In the Guardian’s eyes was the inevitable price of being mortal and Harry saw his concerns reflected in them as petty trifles that merely rippled the smooth surface of the taniwha’s pond before fading.

I set the pieces in motion. Free will directed their actions.

Grandmother Taniwha lifted one hand to cup Harry’s face with long fingers that felt smooth and polished. They brought back the memory of picking up his wand for the first time at Olivander’s. He tried to look up at her face to gauge her thoughts, but the shifting mosaic of light and shadow bewildered his vision. Only her eyes remained constant and there was something so vast about what Harry saw in them that his knees trembled and he had to look away. He was angry and determined to stay angry at how she’d manipulated what seemed like the entire world. How Snape could be so indifferent defied belief! But when the taniwha bent close and whispered words for him alone Harry quivered under the molten power of the elemental and his anger, forgotten, dissolved and flowed away in streams.

Am I cold? Does my love not meet your specifications? I am immortal and bound to laws you cannot and should not comprehend, and my actions are never frivolous.

She paused to let him breathe.

Never think I lack love for my children, and every variety of living thing with mind that passes through my Gate is cherished as such. I may – she glanced at Snape – I may occasionally have favourites among them, but all are valued and I can but grieve to see them in pain and know I must do nothing. There was no myth when I chose my husband. He was a good man and for a time I was mortal and loved as mortals do. You think I was wrong to birth a child who could free a trapped race? My daughter would not have thought so, had I ever told her. Her son was never told of the Ice Dragons, but had he been he would of his own free will have worked on their behalf. Perhaps. I shall never know. It took Severus to discover his cousins and then choose to set them free.

He did this of his own free will.

Harry blinked as her words rang in his ears. A sense of shame crept up his face like a slow sunrise, warming his skin. He had no call to judge the taniwha – maybe she had been prepared to sacrifice her great-great-and-then-some-grandchild’s life, but it had been to release the spells which would protect the wizarding world. The world he had been so ready to abandon.

She tucked her finger under his chin and tipped his face back up.

Harry. Thank you. Thank you for your courage and your fortitude. These tasks should be done without repayment, but humans have corrupted me. Her voice sounded amused. You shall have payment. Firstly, for your work for your friends and your world, you will have fulfilment. You readied yourself for that on your journey. You are ready to embrace that now as you were not before Sun On Ice wept for you and left you able in turn to weep for others.

Secondly, for what you have done for me and mine I will break the rules this once and give you this knowledge:

Your parents have watched you grow from child to man. They love you more and are prouder of you than you can ever imagine. They asked me to pass on one thing.

And she leaned closer to press her lips against his temple.

Memories spilled from her lips and poured into Harry’s mind. Every kiss his mother and father had given him as a baby. And there had been many. And there were more: Every kiss they had wanted to give him as he was growing up through the grey drudgery of childhood. Every kiss they had yearned to give him during the turmoil of adolescence.

As the taniwha’s lips broke from his skin, Harry felt one last kiss from his parents. The kiss that told him he was no longer a child and they gave him their blessings now that he was on the brink of adulthood.

He stepped back light-footed and light-headed in a daze as she turned away. Although it was as if spring had erupted fresh and green in his heart and mind, Harry dimly heard her words as she lifted her great-grandchild to his feet:

Let their memory go, Severus. Let them rest. James repented a long time before he died. Do you think if he had died with such arrogance nestled in his soul I would not have arranged his rebirth a long time before now? A life as a donkey in North Africa would have taught him humility. Let it go. And be generous to Sirius. If he dies without acknowledging the truth of how he tried to murder you then his fate will be worse than James’ would have been. North and then west of my home is a land where dogs are considered to contain the souls of murderers and treated accordingly. Should he of this moment die, that is Sirius Black’s fate. But do not mock him with this; for if he repents out of fear then his penitence will be false and will help no-one, not even you. Forgive him if you can, but do not bother with revenge. Justice is inevitable. I will see personally to that.

And see Harry as Harry. Just Harry. You no longer have to guard him from the world and, more importantly, you no longer need to guard the world from him. Harry will be a good man.

At the sound of his name Harry blinked his vision clear and looked around just in time to see the taniwha press her hands to the sides of Snape’s face.

Here is your path home.

And she dissolved into shadow.

Snape swayed on his feet and Harry rushed forward to catch him. They collapsed together.

***

To the sound of bells and summer lightning the Ice Dragons rode the katabatic down out and of the heart of the last continent. Some carried eggs glued to their bellies, and these travelled only as far as the nearest good nesting sites where they could raise the next generation. Others had plans for the wider world. When they reached the edges of the ice they shimmered and flew away on the paths of the aether, moving faster than thought.

They were back.

And now they wanted to find those who remembered them.

"When I was sixteen all I wanted was to take the world and shatter it. The why of it doesn’t concern you." He glared, as if daring Harry to ask. "But I didn’t have the power for destruction of that scale, so I turned to someone I thought did."

They were sitting on two chunks of ice Harry had transfigured into wooden chairs. As chairs went they weren’t very comfortable and Harry’s squeaked every time he moved, but it was better than sitting on ice and neither of the wizards were up to much in the way of standing. Although they should have been working on a way to get home, Harry had asked about the taniwha’s last words. You no longer need to guard the world from him, she had said. Harry wanted to know why Snape thought Harry was a threat.

(Although given the fact that Harry had just released a number of angry ortho-elementals, maybe Snape had been right. In the privacy of his own heart Harry could admit that he was knee-numbingly petrified over facing up to the rest of the world.)

"But… what about Rona and Wiri… weren’t they your family?" Harry whispered. He thought he could guess the why Snape didn’t want to tell him about; sixteen-year-old Severus Snape had probably just survived the Shrieking Shack incident. Had Sirius ever been punished for that? Did Sirius have any idea what he’d tried to do? But the idea of Snape being so upset at nearly being killed by Remus that he didn’t think about his own family… Harry couldn’t imagine being that angry, but then he didn’t have a family – or not one that counted, anyway, Dursleys being Dursleys – so maybe it was possible.

Snape hesitated over the answer and Harry suddenly took in the situation: one unarmed person telling an armed person why he thought the armed person might be the teensiest bit unstable. "Wait..." He dug into the pocket of his parka and pulled out a wand. Snape’s wand, which he had rescued from the ice sheet on the bay. It all seemed like a long time ago, now. "Here. And... take mine, too. If I’m really as dangerous as Grandmother Taniwha implied, maybe you should hold onto it for me until I know... what I need to know."

Harry held out the two wands.

Snape stared at him, inky eyes unreadable. When, after a long, uncomfortable silence, he reached out, he took his own wand and left Harry’s in Harry’s hand.

"I think you are capable of making your own mistakes." Snape’s eyes were as dark and dead as Harry had ever seen them. Even without a breeze his hair moved back to shadow his face. "As for Maman, Rona and Wirimu, I forgot them. It’s easy to do."

"But…" Harry trailed off as Snape’s stare pierced him and ripped out the truth.

Snape spoke rapidly and with his eyes almost closed. It was as if the words pained him. They ripped at Harry like barbed wire. "The first time I saw you walk into the Great Hall I knew you had power. It poured off you. And when you came up for the Sorting I looked closer and saw that you had something in your heart. A stone … a seed." He shifted uncomfortably on his chair. "I’m the only person I know who can see them. I see them in virtually every person I see; friend, enemy, stranger. The only person I know who doesn’t have one is Helen. Everyone else – and I mean everyone – has at the very least a small seed in their heart. It doesn’t need sun – it needs fear and hate and pain. Envy is good, too. And when it grows it swallows up all compassion until there is no longer a connection between you and other people. You see yourself as separate. With that seed and your power you could be the threat Voldemort only dreamed of being." Snape sat back, his boots crunching in the snow, and looked down his nose at Harry. "How would it feel, Mr Potter, to have the world remade to your desire? A fair world. A just world. You would make it so. And you would do it out of shame."

Harry made himself sit there and not flinch at the terrible images Snape conjured without magic.

Snape spoke in a whisper. "You told Charlie that you didn’t care about his species any more. His species. For you there was no ‘we.’ ‘Maybe Voldemort was good for you lot,’ you said. And you were ashamed to be part of the same species as Charlie, the Ministry officials, and everyone in the wizarding world who you had worked for so selflessly. Do you remember, Mr Potter?"

Snape spread his hand in front of Harry’s eyes and Harry did remember:

Merely belonging to the same species as Dibbles and the two Aurors at Malfoy Manor was at best embarrassing and at worst criminal by association.

It was like he suddenly saw everything clearly. It was all so cold. It was all so perfect. Little wheels of ice turning and turning inside each other, driving a process that had no morals or ethics. People living or dying did not matter in the end because there were no morals and there were no ethics.

Harry remembered and was horrified. It was like looking into a pensieve and feeling each emotion anew. And the emotions there were harsh.

When he remembered the dream where he’d charcoaled Voldemort he could see how easy it had been to disregard Helen and her baby. He’d thought it wasn’t his problem. He’d thought it was nothing to do with him. And he hadn’t seen a need to intervene even though he was the only one who could save them.

Merlin, it had been so cold.

"And you have been selfless for them, Harry," Snape said earnestly. "Or you thought you had been. But at rock bottom you’re human and giving without receiving isn’t something we are designed for. So, like any normal child would do, you lashed out at those who took from you without returning even the courtesy of gratitude. But," he continued as his eyes narrowed their focus on Harry’s face, "you are sixteen and you are on the brink of adulthood and as soon as you finish school you will no longer be my student."

"And you won’t let me be the person you were?" Harry asked brutally, because what Snape was saying stung him badly, then wondering after he’d said it if Snape would hex him through to the North Pole for his cheek. He didn’t care – not if it meant finding out the truth.

Snape flinched and took a sharp breath. "No," he said softly after a moment’s recovery. "I won’t. More than that, I won’t let you be the person I wanted to be at your age."

He looked so sad. "And if you think I’m going to be that person?" said Harry more quietly, wishing he could take back what he’d just said. Being able to hurt Snape was the sort of power he had dreamed about once but now all it brought him was regret.

"You will not be him."

"Because Sunonice healed me. I think I understand. But if I slip back...?"

Snape said nothing.

Harry took a deep breath. "If," he started slowly, "if you thought I was going to be the next Voldemort, what would you do?"

Snape kept his face utterly impassive. "If I was certain you were, I would destroy you," he said gently.

"You think you can do it?"

"I know I can."

There was utter silence before Harry licked his dry lips and asked:

"Why? Why you?"

"Because I know what you are capable of. Because you’re not just Harry Potter the Boy Who Lived Despite Himself. Because I know what goes on in the heart of a monster and I will not let you become one."

Harry, his heart hammering, asked, "And you – you think it’s up to you to do the dirty work to make sure I don’t?"

"I promise, Harry, that I’ll make your death as quick and painless as I possibly can."

Which was probably the last kindness he could give, Harry realised, and nodded. "Thank you."

Snape’s eye’s widened. His mouth twisted in a non-smile. "Never thank me. Not for that."

"For that, and for everything," Harry said determinedly.

Snape bent his head and let his hair cover his expression. "Don’t thank me, Mr Potter. Just... choose to be who you are meant to be."

"Yes, sir." There was a moment while Harry sorted through his whirling thoughts. Oddly enough relief was uppermost. "But will I ever have it back – the seed, I mean? And what about you? Do you have that in your heart, too?"

"Being human means making those choices." Snape reached out and tapped over Harry’s heart with a knuckle. "You don’t have it now but you will. Again. You were fortunate to have the intervention of an Ice Dragon’s tears. They gave you the ability to stand back and see what you wanted and allowed you to discard the dross. How many people are so fortunate? Do try and capitalise on your blessings, Mr Potter."

"I will. And I know you’ll tell me as soon as I forget," he added wryly. "And you – do you…?"

Snape’s expression was blank again, but this time not cold or unkind, merely thoughtful. As if he were remembering. "I have a stone in my heart, yes," he breathed, "and if I were offered Ice Dragon tears I wouldn’t accept them. I want the reminder of who I was – who I am – and..." He trailed off.

But Harry understood, although he wished he didn’t. Snape chose to fight the destructiveness in his own nature on a daily basis. To Harry it was crazy – especially after being healed himself; surely a sensible person would take the easy route of a quick healing? Well, Severus Snape was not necessarily Mister Sensible Person and he often did things Harry considered weird in the extreme such as hold an unnervingly strong interest in Potions and the Dark Arts, but he wasn’t lazy and Harry knew better than to tell him how to live his life. Some people choose to climb Mt Everest, some to tame dragons. If Snape wanted to conquer his inner demons by himself Harry wouldn’t tell him he was crazy, even though Ice Dragon tears would probably be on offer should Snape want it and he wanted to give the Potions master a smack over the back of the head for being so pig-headed.

But he would remember that Snape had promised him a quick and painless death if Harry ever turned back to the road Voldemort had walked. And he would especially remember that Snape had chosen to let Harry keep his wand before telling him this. That suggested Snape had some sort of faith in Harry. Maybe it was a measure of how crazy Harry himself was, but there was something reassuring about this latest death threat. It meant Harry could get on with things.

"I think... I think I’m beginning to understand."

But it was hard to get on with things when he knew that the world back home was probably in chaos. Or baying for his blood. He rubbed his hands together for a warmth that was more than physical. They should talk about going back now, but… "What did the taniwha mean when she said she made a… a ‘carry kea’? And a ‘why-something’?"

"Karakia means ‘chant,’ waiata means ‘song’," Snape explained, his voice clipped and running to impatient. "Words are power; particularly for wizards, for taniwhas, for journalists like your friend Skeeter... and politicians like Fudge. You must have noticed that by now."

Harry drew in his shoulders reflexively at Snape’s (probably deliberate) mention of Rita Skeeter and Fudge. Another reminder of what would be waiting for him. If the Ice Dragons hadn’t killed everyone, of course. "I guess that was something else I didn’t notice," he said numbly, not knowing what else to say.

"So you admit to a vast lack of knowledge?" said Snape after a long moment in which anything could have been said, and to Harry it sounded like he was trying to remember his usual barbed modus operandi. "Or are you merely procrastinating about your return?" he sneered.

Ouch. It was a little close to the bone; Snape was recovering his form fast. Harry opened his mouth to retort then, realising Snape was trying to goad him out of his fear by making him angry, had to cover his smile by standing and brushing a few glittering specks off the sleeve of his parka. "Both. Although certain people seem to have a hobby in pointing out the first one out to me." He held out his hand.

Snape took it. When he stood the colour drained from his face and Harry grabbed his arm to steady him until his eyes could focus again. The brief weakness had Harry’s heart thumping louder. He couldn’t stand it if Snape died, not now ... but if something happened Harry knew that now he would manage. Somehow. It was a good thing to know.

"Are you alright, Professor?"

"Just... a little tired. It’s been a long day."

"Another four months or so, I believe." And then it hit Harry – the most incredible thing of all about this incredibly strange day was:

We’re still alive.

The realisation shook him to his bones. And an adventure this dangerous could only be capped by something even more dangerous. Harry gave in to impulse and, laughing, wrapped his arms around Snape in a bear hug.

Just as Snape’s shock began to wear off, Harry stopped laughing. "We’re still alive," he muttered into the cloak Grandmother Taniwha had given Snape. "We’re alive, we’re alive, we’re alive..." He couldn’t stop saying it, just as he couldn’t stop holding on. Like him or not, Snape was human and it suddenly hit home how close Harry had come to throwing away what he loved most in the world. People. "You won’t let me turn into him, will you?" Harry got out between chattering teeth. "I don’t want to shatter the world ... I don’t want to turn into the next Voldemort..."

Snape went rigid again at the name, then relaxed. A little. "I promise. But you won’t. Grandmother Taniwha said so herself. The Dark Lo- Voldemort... Voldemort isn’t in your nature. Probably he never was." He rubbed circles on Harry’s back but his hand was awkward. It was entirely possible he’d read about comforting distressed children in some Hogwarts teachers’ manual and this was the first time he’d tried putting theory into practise. It wasn’t warm and as far as compassion went it was studied, but the effort was very human and Harry appreciated that more than anything.

"What if the Ministry wants to send me to Azkaban?"

"Albus won’t let them. Exile, possibly, but not Azkaban."

"What if I’ve already destroyed the world?"

Silence. Then: "I suppose we shall work on a way to fix it again. Besides, the world is quite durable."

"Really?"

"Yes. Unfortunately."

Harry laughed a little, and then hiccuped.

Snape gave him one final pat on the back. "Shall we go? We have so much to look forward to. There’s the wondrous likelihood of finding out the latest inanity – or series of inanities – Fudge has managed to inflict on the world today. Or shall we return to the simple pleasures of Hogwarts, where cauldrons explode as soon as Neville Longbottom walks into a room and giant three-headed dogs are considered pets? I hear Rita Skeeter has picked up her quill again…?"

"Okay. And thanks for making the world seem ... well, less of a place I’d want to save."

"Just doing my job."

Harry stepped back and appreciated that Snape didn’t look at his expression. "But what if they exile me?"

A snort from Snape. "If the dragons haven’t eaten Fudge I’d say he’s going to cause a lot of trouble for you. Us. Well, me, most likely…" He scowled. "But if you do get exiled there are so many places in the world you can go where your friends can visit it’s not going to be a major problem. With a bit of luck Fudge will blame me for corrupting you and force me to resign from Hogwarts." He brightened again at the thought. "Then I can go home and get some real work done."

Exile wasn’t something Harry would have ever considered a happy solution even though Snape seemed to view it with a slightly frightening enthusiasm. But… if it had to be so, then it had to be so. "If they’re going to lynch me I suppose I have to get it over and done with sooner or later," he muttered, not realising he’d spoken aloud until he noticed Snape’s eyes boring into him. "So how do we get home?" he asked, squaring his shoulders.

Snape frowned and pulled his new cloak tighter around his shoulders. The effort was enough to force him into grabbing the back of his chair for support. "I suppose I could Apparate us to the coast. I might be able to get a message to Professor Dumbledore from there."

He didn’t look like he could Apparate anyone anywhere. He was ghostly pale and his fingers shook as they gripped the back of the chair hard enough to splinter the wood ... and Harry couldn’t help thinking how close the word splinter was to the word splinch.

"What did Grandmother Taniwha say about the path home?"

"Ah," said Snape, in a tone that added, and how much more of that conversation did you hear? "She showed me the best wind currents to the coastline. The katabatic wind that starts up here doesn’t have an even flow." He frowned. "Not much use without – ow."

"What?" Something bounced off Harry’s head. "Ow!" Just a piece of ice. As if he hadn’t seen enough of them lately.

Looking up and squinting at the rim of the bowl far above them, Harry could see a wedge-shaped head silhouetted against the bright blue sky.

<sorry ... taniwha = gone?>

"I think we’ve just found our ride home," said Harry, and grinned up at <sunonice>.

***

Wild bells rang out in a wild sky.

Norbu’s tribe was cousin to the Sherpa tribe – that is to say, they niggled at each other and said bad things at relatives’ weddings, but if an outsider were to come in and stir up trouble the two tribes would present the sort of united front that left the imprudent outsider out in the cold.

And it gets very cold in the Himalayas.

Norbu’s tribe wasn’t big and it wasn’t famous and even most of the Sherpas had forgotten its name, but it had held onto its traditions and its stories for generations.

And Norbu knew on the day he was out tending to the Wind Horses that something was coming. Rather, he knew something was coming back. He felt it as he bent to brush snow off the stone carving of his clan’s totem. The sinewy form seemed to move in the shadows cast by the fluttering Wind Horses, and ice clung to the grooves.

The prayer flags tied to twine were snapping in the wind as if they wanted to break their bridles and gallop up to Heaven to deliver their messages. Never, in all Norbu’s years, had he felt such urgency in the Wind Horses. He had seen them flutter in the drowsy heat of summer. He had seen them snap and battle the winter snow demons that started avalanches.

On the death of his wife and brother they had rippled with his sorrow.

Today they flew in the wind with joy. He wanted to laugh with the gleeful anticipation fluttering in their cloth.

In that moment he knew he was on the roof of the world and beneath his feet the world turned. It was a brief, giddy moment, and the sky flared with untamed light and the bells of Heaven rang from the mountain tops.

When the shadow fell over him he looked up and into lambent yellow eyes. The pupils dilated and contracted into slits as they studied him. They seemed surprised that he was looking back at them. Was he not meant to?

Was it a ghost? Was it a demon?

It was a –

Norbu looked at the stone carving and remembered the teachings of his grandfather, who had been the wisest of all the priests in his clan.

One day in your lifetime you will be there to greet the ancient ones on their return. The old man had waved a knobbly finger at the young Norbu. You will show respect.

Norbu clasped his hands and bowed as far as the arthritis in his back would allow. He straightened slowly, and slowly he extended his arms.

"Welcome!" he called. "Welcome home, old friend! You are once, twice, three times welcome!"

And the creature smiled down on him. <<My friend, it is good to be Home>>

***

Far to the south of Norbu and up in the highlands of India was a village. Slightly apart from the village lived an old man. He was a Muslim, something that had given the Hindu villagers some grievance when he had moved in. Only the local doctor, now another old man, had bothered to visit him. The late afternoon under the whispering, spreading branches of an ancient fig tree was a time for battle.

"Let me see you find a way out of that," said Rabendra.

Deepak brushed his greying beard as he thought. "Ah-hah! Got you! Check! I win again."

"Ah! Your pride will be your downfall. Learn humility."

"Chelo Pakistan. Krishna does not require me to learn humility. My soul is purified by graces your prophets can never comprehend."

"Spit the beetlenut out of your mouth and speak with politeness. Krishna has not taught you manners. Chelo Pakistan yourself."

They happily insulted each other’s religion and personal habits for a while before setting up the chess board again. Rabendra drew white. He moved a pawn forward one space. "My sister wrote to me today," he said conversationally.

Deepak appeared to study the board. While religion was the source of much good-natured argument, the subject of Rabendra’s family, especially his nephew, was taboo. "Is she well?" He, too, moved a pawn one space.

"She is old. She wishes to meet with me."

"Ah."

"It was her son who died."

It had been in the news at the time. A bus, filled with Hindus, had been blown up. It wasn’t uncommon in some parts of the country where Muslims and Hindus clashed on a daily basis, but in this region it was almost unheard of. A young man had been arrested. When his uncle went to get him out of jail the young man, a Muslim, had proudly confessed to planting the bomb. The uncle hadn’t spoken another word, just turned on his heel and walked out of the jail.

The young man had died in jail.

There had been riots, of course, and the uncle had disappeared. He’d simply walked away.

Deepak had read the papers and when a man had walked into this village in the southern highlands and up to the old falling-down bungalow on the outskirts, Deepak had held his tongue even while the other villagers had loosened theirs.

"My sister has forgiven me. After all this time." Rabendra sighed and shifted a bishop. "My nephew, who killed all those people... ah, he was a sad young man."

Deepak held his tongue.

"I know you know the story although you have never said so to me. It was all the village was talking about when I came here. But you are a good man, even if you worship false gods, and you let me have my silence. I think you think I am crazy for giving him sympathy after he killed all those poor people, yes? Or worse. But you are a doctor, so I ask you: if a patient hears voices in his head telling him to do these terrible things, what do you do? Do you leave him in a cell where the guards will ignore his suicide attempt until the attempt has become suicide? Do you walk away, saying, My boy, you defile the teachings of the Prophet when you kill these poor, innocent people? Do you curse his name for the shame he has brought to your family? Do you, a doctor, ignore the fact that he is ill?

"I was a doctor, and I did all these things. He was sick and I let him die. I let him kill those other people. Who, I ask you, is the one who should have been locked in that cell? And now my sister writes to say she wishes to forgive me."

"Will you let her?"

"Do I deserve forgiveness?"

"Is that not for her to decide? Or your God?" Deepak moved another pawn. "All this time you have spent trying to convince me of the strength and compassion of this Allah of yours and now you doubt his wisdom?"

"I... do not think I have a place in His wisdom. Or His compassion."

"You have lost your faith."

"No. But I no longer think it needs me. And my family doesn’t need me either."

Deepak was a doctor and a good one. But this sort of healing wasn’t one he’d trained for. He kept his silence and they continued the game until Rabendra looked up and squinted into the trees growing on the slopes above the house.

"Do you hear something?"

Deepak listened. "No," he said. "But my ears are not so young as they once were. What do you hear?"

"Bells. And for a moment I thought the sky had shifted."

Most alarming. Deepak had heard of stresses masked for decades suddenly breaking free when an end was in sight. Was this guilt driving his friend mad? Then he heard the bells, too.

A woman, not young but not old, was walking down from the forest. Her buttercup-yellow sari was bright with modern dyes, but she wore it in the Hindu fashion of a few hundred years ago. The peculiarly rich Dravidian hue of her skin and the inky blackness of her hair combined with the elegant bone structure Deepak had learned to appreciate while still in medical school stamped her as a local. But she lacked the Pottu, the spot over the spiritual eye. Although she might have been a widow or a rather old maiden, what was truly alien about her was the way her two physical eyes were not dark as premium coffee. They were ghostly pale. Deepak heard the music of the bells as she walked. Above one slender, arched foot she wore an anklet. Most people favoured gold for decoration, but she had chosen silver. Tiny silver bells hanging from it sang with each step.

Deepak was a religious man but he wasn’t superstitious. And just by existing, this woman shattered all his university-acquired rules about the implausibility of spirits.

"Are you a ghost?" he heard himself asking. He was standing now, with Rabendra standing next to him, two honour guards welcoming their rani back to her palace.

She smiled. "No. Merely a weary traveller who has decided to return home and make a new beginning."

Her voice was like the bells. Rabendra was nodding. "Then welcome home," Rabendra said, his voice rough and his expression unreadable. "Thank you for returning … Forgive me, I don’t know who you are. I only know that you have been missed."

"Yes," agreed Deepak, racking his brain for where he’d seen her before. He knew he had seen her once upon a time, a long time ago. "Will you sit down with us?"

"Thank you. What is this you have on your table?"

"It is a game," Rabendra told her, holding the chair for her as she sat down. "It is called ‘chess.’ Can I get you food or drink?"

"Do you have ice?"

"Yes."

"Iced water, please. Is this a difficult game to play?"

"For some, yes; for some, no. It is a game of strategy. We can teach you, if you would like…"

"I should like." She accepted the class from Rabendra in both her hands, as if she couldn’t quite remember how to hold a glass. "It has been a long time," she said quietly. "And now I am home again. I have missed my home ever so much."

"How long, Madam, have you been away?" asked Deepak when it became obvious Rabendra wouldn’t or couldn’t say anything.

"Too long. Too long. And it was a nasty time of exile. But now is a new time, one for homecomings and new beginnings." Her smile was radiant, and sparkled like the ice floating in the glass.

"Yes," said Rabendra, his grey head nodding slowly. "This is a good time for new beginnings."

***

On the other side of the world dawn was breaking.

Orville and Denise had left their hotel room in the dark to be at this place when the sun rose. Sedona was meant to have energy vortexes, whatever those were, and Denise had heard they might be able to see them if the angle of the sun was just right. Orville didn’t like getting up early and he especially didn’t like mosquitoes, but he liked Denise. A lot.

So they sat together on the side of a hill and watched the sky as it first turned dusty grey then shaded into purple and gold. By the time the first deep blues were painting the sky Orville and Denise were holding hands; Denise was watching the sun rise with the colours reflected in her purple eyes, and Orville had forgotten all about the hassles of getting up early because he was lost somewhere between the twin wonders of the melting sky and Denise’s eyes.

This was the best morning of his life. He hoped it would be the best of hers, too. But as he felt the weight of the little box in his pocket like plutonium, his courage withered in the face of her beauty.

No-one that… that… that glorious would want…

That was the moment the sun rose over the hills and spilled its light into the valley and the sky rioted.

Wild bells rang over the desert and Orville saw a miracle.

Rising from the valley floor were what looked like columns of warm air. And soaring through them using them as updrafts for their flight were dreams.

Five of them.

One of them broke away and glided over to where the couple sat.

Orville wondered if he’d completely lost it – he’d tried a few things in his first year at university, but nothing that should have given him delayed hallucinations… and were hallucinations this fabulous? But when he checked Denise he saw that she had her mouth open and she was watching this… this… dragon as it landed just down-slope from them.

Now that it was close Orville could see that the wings were translucent and the body not quite real. He could see rocks and some of the scraggy bushes through it. Its eyes were the most real thing about it, and they changed colour as the sky did.

The elegant head tilted as it looked down on them.

<<Orville>>, a silvery voice said into their minds. <<And Denise>>

When Orville looked at Denise again, she was crying. He hugged her. "What’s wrong?"

"I don’t know," she wept, and the tears were streaming down her face. "I don’t know. But they’re back and they’ve been away so long and, oh, God. I’m so happy they’re back!" She stood up and pulled him to his feet.

To his horror she dragged him down the slope. Luckily they stopped just out of biting range.

"Welcome back," she sniffed, and scrubbed at her nose. "Damn. This should be more… I dunno – more ceremonial or something. But I… I don’t know who you are and I don’t know what you are and I don’t know what’s happening… I just know that you’ve come back to us!"

The translucent dragon reached out with a claw and tenderly wiped her tear away.

Orville had thought Denise was glorious from the first moment he’d seen her at a friend’s party, but now she eclipsed that first impression. She was past glorious into a whole new realm. She glowed like the dragons.

Orville was shabby next to her and was glad he’d decided not to say anything until the sun had risen. He never would, now.

The dragon with the eyes of molten sky looked at him and into him.

And he saw what Denise saw.

He saw himself: Orville; tall, a bit shy and not the most handsome guy on the block, the student in the group who’d gotten into university through a football scholarship and thought he wasn’t smart but really was if he’d just relax and get over himself. Orville, the one who had something every other man lacked. Orville, who made Denise’s heart flutter in her chest like a bird when he smiled at her. The one who was destined for Denise but she was too scared to tell him in case he laughed at her for being a weirdo hippie like her mom.

"Is that what you really think?" he whispered.

Denise bit her lip and nodded.

<<Give me the box>> the dragon commanded.

Orville obeyed, and noticed Denise’s eyes go wide. She was blushing a little. Orville couldn’t help blushing too.

The dragon’s claws circled the box and it shimmered. Orville winced, wondering how a paltry little diamond set in 12 carat gold would stack up against the golden treasure bed this dragon probably slept on. Scholarship money and the pittance he got from the part-time job stacking shelves only stretched so far. Once he graduated he’d get her a –

<<Give it to her>>

Orville blushed but he held out the little box and opened it. "Um," he said, and it immediately went down in history as the worst proposal speech ever.

But as Denise took the ring out of the black velvet box all of that didn’t matter.

What had been cheap gold was platinum. Where the chip of diamond should have glinted, a stone half a centimetre across dazzled. It was tinted yellow and as Orville blinked in the light it cast he wondered what sort of trick this was.

"Oh. My. God." Denise took it out reverentially. "Orville – how could you afford…?"

<<It was what you and he wanted>> said the dragon. <<Orville does not have the money but his value is reflected in this stone>>

Denise, being Denise, whipped out the geological eye-piece she carried around and took a closer look. Her mom’s penchant for crystals combined with her dad’s fascination for the natural world would make her a brilliant geologist, Orville considered.

"This can’t be real," she said quietly. Her brow was furrowed in concentration. "I’ve never seen one of these before."

<<I am real. It is real>>

"It’s a chameleon diamond," she whispered. "They aren’t the prettiest, but –"

<<But they hold their secrets>> the dragon finished, smiling.

"Yes," she breathed, looking up at the dragon. "And I always wanted one…"

<<And you have one standing next to you. Well? Aren’t you going to answer Orville?>> The dragon sounded impatient now, but its eyes sparkled like the diamond.

Denise’s mouth dropped. The she whirled and threw her arms around Orville. "Oh yes," she breathed. "Yes, forever yes."

The sun rose.

When they remembered the rest of the world and looked around the dragon was gone. But the ring was real, and the diamond would keep its secrets for more than twenty years.

Whenever Denise and Orville wondered if it had been a dream they could touch the diamond and hear the distant music of bells. And twenty-six years later their daughter would graduate top of her class from the California University of Magical Arts (Law Division) and study for a post-graduate diploma in trans-species law under Professor Sunonice at Otago Alternative. There she would meet and fall in love with the brilliant rising star of ortho-elemental magics, Oscar Snape. The two would go on to rewrite many of the old segregation laws and set up a law firm specialising in interspecies arbitration. And, of course, live happily ever after.

Just like her parents.

***

Where midday had just passed a pair of Ice Dragons flew into winter. As they reached the coast of Ireland one kept going north to Scotland while the other, larger one, turned east.

They had made no human friends. But many humans had made them their enemies. London and Hogwarts would freeze before they burned.

***

The King reached his target first. He landed on the roof of an undistinguished building somewhere in Central London. He had never cared for humans of any sort, so the Muggles scurrying back to the warmth of their offices after their lunchtime breaks never saw him.

He dug his claws into the roof and considered ripping it off like the top of a termite mound just to watch the panic.

It felt good. Magic flowed here, thick and juicy. His mouth watered at the smell of it. So many witches and wizards, all waiting to be drained of magic. Maybe he would eat some of them, because blood was more satisfying than magic without body. Hum. That bloody taniwha would have something to say about that, he didn’t wonder. But she couldn’t complain about the Ministry of Magic being levelled – he’d learned from the little one <sunonice> that the body politic of the human magical world had hunted him and that [<<GAH!>>] that wizard the taniwha claimed as her descendent. Taniwhas were not above a little payback, providing it was done within the rules. When the wizards came out and attacked him he’d have every right to … defend himself.

He had been fighting when they trapped him. Down all the long years his body had been fixed his muscles had stayed ready, remembering they were meant to be fighting, and he had slept little in that time as he planned how he would fight again.

He smiled to himself and flexed his claws.

When the first three magical humans came onto the roof they did not leap to the attack as he’d hoped.

The youngest one had its wand in its hand. It didn’t look like a traditional wizard – this one wore animal skins instead of woven plant material, and its red hair was obscenely bright. One of the older ones – she, he guessed, although it was sometimes tricky to work out the appropriate pronoun for the ape-things – she did not lift her wand. A trick. The King could smell the wand in her pocket. The third was male; it had hair on its face but none on the top of its head. That one had no wand at all but the King could smell potent magics woven into his clothing.

The King thundered a challenge at them.

The witch’s grizzled grey hair in its plaits shook and her yellow [<<AUROR! ENEMY!!>>] robes rippled, and although the trio flinched at his power they didn’t run. Or fight.

"Your anger is justified," the witch said, her voice scratchy. She knelt and – to his horror – carefully took her wand from her pocket and placed it at the King’s forefeet. The red-headed wizard did the same.

"Will you give us the courtesy of hearing our story?" asked the bald wizard.

The King growled softly, but inclined his head once, all the time keeping his senses alert for a sneak attack.

"Thank you. My name is Dermus Dryskull, and I am in charge of a Ministry group known as the Unspeakables. We are chiefly responsible for protecting knowledge most people are not capable of using wisely. My companions are Nora Blavatski, of the Aurors, and Charlie Weasley, who up until this week was a Warder but has resigned in protest over methods used by other members of that group. The leader of our world, the one who wanted one of your children dead, was removed from power a few hours ago. He has been accused of several charges ranging from misuse of authority to treason. A charge of inciting a murder may also be pressed. With what the Ice Dragon child taught my companions, new laws are being drafted. We have begun the changes, but our society needs some time to fully implement them. We three are quite prepared to open our minds to you to show that we mean what we say."

The King, knowing in his bones that somehow that old bitch of a taniwha had managed to trick him out of his revenge again, sighed. And when the witch and wizards opened their minds for his scrutiny he was careful to be gentle.

***

When the Queen landed on one of the turrets of the castle, she wrapped her tail around the pillar and bared her teeth. Ahh, it all smelled so good. Down below were screams as tender magic-humans, made little by distance, scurried back into the castle. Not that it would protect them, of course.

She would tear the castle down stone by stone, drinking each one dry and throwing it away. There were other schools in other parts of the world, of course, but this one had the highest level of magic. Oh, and the fact that most of her enemies had trained here did, of course, help her with her decision.

She could smell one of those enemies… but surely he was dead by now? Humans did not live so long.

She sniffed again. Hmm. No. Not the one who had killed her son. But it was that wizard’s son or grandson, surely. Ah, irony. She would feast on this wizard and then reduce this castle to rubble.

And now the wizard was coming up to this tower, accompanied by one other. He probably wanted to make a deal. The Queen snorted. The taniwha was a long way from here and the Queen had waited too long to care, anyway.

She drooled.

When the wizard stepped out onto the top of the tower, she was very pleased. He was even more powerful than his father. But with no binding spells to protect him, he was helpless. It would take more than the threat of that long white beard sticking in her throat to stop her biting his head off.

She was just about to do that when the wizard’s companion stepped in front of him.

"Don’t you dare," said the witch. Or perhaps she wasn’t a witch. The queen couldn’t quite read her magical aura. "You can’t go around killing people. It’ll reflect badly on Draco."

Draco? Oh, yes. That had been the human name of the kidnapped baby. How dare she try to manipulate the Queen out of her revenge by bringing a child into this?

Whatever else she might be, this woman was a pest. The Queen slapped at her with a paw, meaning to slice her into ribbons.

The claws never connected. There was a thunderclap and a light so intense it was black and left its shadows dancing in her eyes.

The air reeked of elemental magic.

As warnings from a taniwha go, this one was pretty subtle, the Queen decided angrily as she shook the spiking pains out of her forefoot. She took a closer look at the woman, who was still standing next to the wizard and looking very cross.

Oh. Her scent confirmed it. The woman would be the mother of the next child in the taniwha’s line. The Queen cursed.

The wizard stepped forward a little and bowed. "I realise my family has done you a great wrong," he said, solemn but not afraid or guilty. The Queen bared her teeth and raised her spines. The wizard continued despite this threat. "And although there can be no recompense for what my father did to you, it is time to move on. We have the power here to banish you from Hogwarts, but that would do nothing in the long run. When you were captured and bound away from the rest of the world, the world suffered for it. You are necessary. You are needed. We of the wizarding world have only just managed to achieve peace within our species, but if you had been here war would have been less likely. We need your balance. Peace," he sighed wearily, "between our two species is long overdue."

The Queen replied with the image of ripping magic from wizards who had glutted themselves on it. There had been great stores of magic levelled by ortho-elementals of different species, and powerful wizards toppled from their authority. Why would this wizard, who wore magic like a cloak, want to be stripped of it? Was this a trick or was he just a fool?

She threw her scorn into the winds, happy for all to hear it.

"I have been called a fool many times," the wizard replied, daring to smile. "And I don’t find I care all that much for authority. The world is a much nicer place when authority figures leave me alone and let me get on with running this school."

The Queen sneered, and replied that she was quite happy to take all reason for authority from him. What was the wizard word? Oh yes: Squib.

The woman seemed to be listening to someone else. "But Grandmother Taniwha asks you not to take the magic out of this man," she said. "He is not ambitious. The world doesn’t need to be protected from him. Like you he is necessary. What he does is valuable. And Grandmother says that Draco will have the kind of protection here he can’t get anywhere else." This said, the woman seemed to snap out of her trance. She clapped her hands together. "Oh, goodie! Grandmother thinks Draco-chick should come back here!"

The Queen grunted unwilling acknowledgement. There was thinking to be done, and none that she wanted to do here. She flicked an image at the elderly wizard. Then she uncoiled her tail from the tower and flew away to the north, far from meddling taniwhas and wizards and strange, possessed humans.

***

"Well? What did she say?" asked Helen Snape.

Dumbledore offered her a lemon drop. "She showed me where your husband and two of my straying students are. I suppose I shall have to go and get them." He popped a lemon drop into his mouth. "I haven’t been to Antarctica in the longest time now… probably because the place is so cold. I wish Severus would stop getting himself into predicaments in such inhospitable places. I remember the time in that fjord in Norway, when that poor, Muggle fisherman…"

"Can you get him now, please? I have a few things to say to him myself."

Harry put the quill down and closed his diary. True, he hadn’t had much inclination to write in it these days, but sometimes it was nice to see his thoughts put down on paper. He’d tried using a pensieve for a little while but eventually given it up as being too disturbing.

He picked up his glass of chilled pumpkin juice and strolled out onto the deck. The pumpkin juice had a slightly acrid taste and Harry swallowed quickly. Snape never had bothered to make any of his Potions more palatable, even those like this Headache Potion that was used on a regular basis. But the serenity that surrounded his house helped the Potion work faster. Harry was glad he’d chosen Waiheke Island to do most of his work. Only a few people here knew who he was, and none of those gave a Tartarian fig that he was The Boy Who Lived. To them he was just another person. And the rest of the people – Muggles and those on the fringes – he’d met here just knew him as a likeable young man who lived over in Palm Beach. Not like the outside world, where he was lauded as Harry Potter, Boy Wizard and Saviour of the World, etc, etc, etc. There, like it or not, he’d been glued to a pedestal and was forever feeling the need to keep his robes long to stop people getting a glimpse of his clay feet. What with Voldemort and the whole Ice Dragon thing (fiasco, Harry called it privately), people thought he was wisdom and power incarnate. Merlin help him if he ever showed that he was capable of being human and making mistakes...

Here he had the freedom to fall flat on his face and no-one cared a jot. Well, Snape would say something nasty about Harry being unbalanced, of course, and Helen would cluck and check for bruises, but it never made the local paper.

Over on the other side of the bay the sun was picking out the headland in greens and golds. One house, painted a surprisingly unconventional yellow, flared like a buttercup on a grey day. Harry lifted his glass in a salute to that which wasn’t afraid to be noticed. Which brought him neatly to the hidden, he mused as he picked up the pair of sunglasses left on the deck table.

Sunonice had just left. A visiting Muggle would have seen him as a human except for those eyes, of course. There is no disguising the eyes of an elemental. Or the descendant of an elemental, Harry knew, thinking of Snape. Thus the sunglasses: instant disguise. And, according to Sunonice, they made him look cool.

After spending the afternoon in his Humagus form with Harry hammering out the latest treaty between Ice Dragons and wizards and snacking on magically-infused ice-cubes, Sunonice had been exhausted. Harry was feeling kind of tired, too. After – Harry did a quick mental check and was surprised at how fast time had gone – six years, it could still be a major headache communicating with Sunonice. Even when the Ice Dragon was in his Humagus form (which showed that Draco Malfoy wouldn’t have grown up to look as much like Lucius as everyone had expected), spoken language still tended to give way to the telepathic picto- and emotographs of Sunonice’s native language, especially when debates grew heated. And debates turned into arguments on an irregular yet frequent schedule. Sunonice was at least as – if not more – stubborn as Draco Malfoy, especially when he felt that the rights of those he represented were being chiselled away by those who had wronged them in the first place.

That could lead to some terrible arguments. Seal burps were a posy of violets compared to some of the images Sunonice could come up with when enraged.

But Harry appreciated the effort the Ice Dragon was making, even if he did finish so many of their meetings with a pounding headache. The Ice Dragons were old and wily and weren’t about to be caught out by wizards again. They hoarded their anger like the more standard breed of dragon hoarded gold. And they had significant influence outside ortho-elementals, up to and including house-elves and Veela, so if they ever seriously decided to express their displeasure at being locked away for centuries it would take more than the revival of every witch or wizard who had featured on a chocolate frog trading card to stop them. Harry suspected, though, that Sunonice would have been less than enthusiastic if Snape hadn’t personally asked the ortho to put the work in. It was lucky that some of Draco’s personality had survived the Ice Dragon’s re-hatching. And a significant part of that was Draco’s respect for the Potions master.

The air was getting chilly outside now that the sun was going down. Harry shut the French doors to the balcony but left the curtains open. Watching the light shift over the waters of the Hauraki Gulf was something he never failed to feel grateful for. When he had been a child Harry had wanted to see the sea. Now he owned a cottage overlooking Palm Beach, which was, in Harry’s opinion, the most beautiful beach of a superlatively beautiful island. He had just watched someone he had once viewed as an enemy and now viewed somewhere in that odd space between being a business partner, ambassador, best friend, and spectacular force of nature – he had just watched <sunonice> jump from the balcony, spread his wings and – unseen to most Muggles – glide across the bay before turning and spiralling up on the breeze that blew up the valley and disappearing into a sunbeam.

Headaches or no, there was no way Harry would give up the privilege of being the person he was in this time and place. Dursleys, Malfoys, the Snape of his schooldays, Rita Skeeter, even Voldemort... Harry wouldn’t give them up if it meant giving up his life of now, too. All had tried in their different ways to break him. All had failed. They had shown him how strong he was. He had managed to grow up despite (but not to spite – that was important) them.

He felt like his life was beginning to make sense.

It was tough. It could be unforgiving. It could be filled with the responsibilities that would have crushed someone with less... what had Snape and Grandmother Taniwha called it? Fortitude. That was it. The one compliment Harry Potter ever received from Severus Snape and he’d had to go and look it up in a dictionary.

But it was his life. And he seized it as fiercely as only someone who has faced to worst knows how to do.

Life comes complete with paperwork – Harry filed away the notes he’d taken from today’s talk with Sunonice. It had been such a glorious day they’d taken a break halfway through to go down to the beach and have a swim. He remembered Sunonice standing on the beach and the way the Humagus dug his toes into the wet sand as he thought.

Harry had wondered what Sunonice had been thinking as he stared out to sea with his stormy silver eyes. The Ice Dragon’s mind had been opaque to him then – Draco – Sunonice – had been making a conscious effort to use human speech. Harry had presumed the ortho had been thinking of flying, the way he seemed to turn his head to each of the tiniest changes in the breeze blowing off the sea.

So he had been surprised when Sunonice had said: "Are you happy, Hands?"

After a moment’s thought while he’d tried to work out the motive behind the question and failed, Harry said, "I think so."

Draco – sometimes it could be hard thinking of him as Sunonice when he looked so human – had nodded. "Good," he said. "You won’t live very long. You should be happy while you’re alive."

Oh. Harry finally managed to place what was nagging at him: it was the way Draco stood. The unconsciously arrogant tilt to his head. The sun angling over his grey eyes. The wind stirring his fine hair gave him that final finishing touch of Lucius Malfoy. And his words…

Merlin…

Harry had felt an instant sick knot of dread in his stomach, old and familiar as the smell that took him back to nightmare lessons on the odd occasion when he had to visit Snape down in the Hogwarts Potions Summer School teaching laboratory. It was like that smell, only much, much worse. Sunonice’s words took him back to the old feelings of that time just before he had forced himself to owl Rona and ask for help for the things that were too big for a sixteen year old boy who had had too much asked of him. What did Draco mean? Did he know something about an upcoming bloodbath where orthos would wipe out all humans capable of magic? Had he somehow heard of a Death Eater reprisal that would involve the slow death-by-torture of all Harry’s friends before Harry himself was put out of his misery?

Harry closed his eyes for a minute and reminded himself that he was twenty-two now, and even if he wasn’t fearless he was capable of managing that fear. And Lucius Malfoy, last of the active Death Eaters, was dead and wasn’t standing in front of him. He swallowed against the rising bile and breathed deep of the salty air. "What do you mean?" he asked in a steady voice.

Draco turned and looked at him with the eyes of an Ice Dragon. In them was nothing of Lucius Malfoy. Lucius’ eyes might have held pity for the snivelling weak, but never compassion. Harry had never sensed pity in the Ice Dragon. While Sunonice wasn’t overly given to tolerance, quixotically his inherently frosty nature did include warmth for other beings. Compassion occasionally bloomed therein. Sunonice looked a little puzzled and somewhat sad. "Well, you’re a human. Even wizards only live for a few hundred years if they’re lucky. That’s... that’s barely enough time to breathe and look around and get your feet under you. I’ll still be young when you get old and die."

Oh. "How long do your people live?"

Draco – Sunonice – shrugged. "I don’t know. Maybe a few thousand years."

"Are you happy?"

Again, a nod, the cool, pointed face impassive. "Yes. But sometimes I think about when I was human. I wasn’t happy then. I was always clawing for it without knowing what it was. Maybe what I really needed was contentment. But it wasn’t something that me was capable of. I don’t want you to be like that."

Harry had found himself blinking a little more rapidly.

Now, in the evening in his own home, he thought about the conversation. Was he happy? Harry thought so, but sometimes there was that little niggling doubt. Something bad could happen. A new Voldemort – well, no, the Ice Dragons wouldn’t permit that. Remus could forget to take his wolfsba- Again, no. Against all odds, Snape had allowed Remus to work with him and together they had developed a second-generation version of the potion that could, if the werewolf chose to take it only once in his or her lifetime, make the werewolf’s transformation at the full moon permanently painless and utterly remove all traces of the bloodlust which made a werewolf so dangerous.

Remus Lupin had so chosen. The lines of fatigue and stress had all but disappeared, only reappearing around exam time at Hogwarts. There was nothing short of dye that could hide the premature grey in his hair, but the DADA professor wore it like a badge of honour.

Harry gave up. He’d heard a Muggle song with a line in it that had resonated in his mind – something about not worrying about everything because the things that were really worth worrying about were the sort that would blindside you on a Tuesday. He translated that to mean: You couldn’t prepare for them, so why worry?

Swallowing the last of his pumpkin juice, Harry grabbed his leather jacket and Apparated to the other side of the island.

"Harry! Harry!"

A little girl – well, Harry had to admit, not so little; she’d started school this year – grabbed his hand as soon as he appeared in the living room. "What? What?" he shouted back, enjoying this game.

She let go and stood back, planting her hands on her hips and pouting. Her enthusiasm (and, luckily, her nose and her smile) had been inherited off her mother. The ebony eyes and scowl, however, were pure Severus Snape. "Are you making fun of me?"

"I would never make fun of you, Sylvie," Harry replied, sweeping her up and kissing her cheek. "I was just surprised to have someone so pleased to see me, that’s all."

"Oh, that’s all right then," Sylvia Snape replied at her most haughty. The princess routine was ruined by a huge and mischievous grin as she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around his neck, all the better to whisper conspiratorially into Harry’s ear: "Do you know what Oscar did?"

"No," Harry replied, solemnly. "What did he do today."

"He... he... he drawed on the walls. In crayon," she added, mock-horror widening her eyes. "Dad’s going to go nuts."

"Hmm. Maybe we should clean the walls before your dad gets home."

Sylvie considered this, brows knitted over her ebony eyes as she weighed up what was in it for her if Oscar didn’t get into trouble.

Harry thought she was taking too long and gave her conscience a nudge. "You’re his big sister. You’re meant to take care of him and show him how to behave."

Sylvie heaved a dramatic sigh. "Oh, all right. But only because he’s my little brother, you know."

"I know." He gave her another kiss and set her down. She took his hand and led him into the kitchen.

"Oh, thank Merlin," said a harassed Helen. She was kneeling on the kitchen floor with a giggling toddler tucked under one arm while she scrubbed at a wall fetchingly coloured in various shades of crayon. "Take the little horror. He’s your godson."

"He’s Chad’s godson, too. He’s the bad influence, not me. Besides, you were the one who wanted us to be godfathers. Blame yourself for the bad choice. Snape probably would have preferred Remus or Neville Longbottom over me."

Helen rolled her eyes and snorted as Harry took the wriggling bundle. Oscar said happily: "Awwy Awwy Awwy!" and tried to colour in Harry’s glasses.

"Oh dear," said Helen as Harry extricated the crayon from the sticky paw. "Sorry about that. I thought I’d got all of them."

"Probably his magical heritage beginning to show through," Harry replied. "I didn’t know there were any artists in the family, though. That’s an interesting new artistic development. Or should I say creative interior decorating? What do you call it? Post modernist scribble?"

"I call it ‘get your bloody wand out Harry Potter and stop being a smart alec and clean this wall before Sev gets home and makes some smart-arse comment about my nesting habits’."

"That’s a heck of a title. It’ll probably be a hit in the London galleries, then."

"Mum said a bad word!" Sylvie exclaimed gleefully. "Mum, you said ar-"

Helen raised a threatening finger. "Not another word from you, miss," she said. "You already know what soap tastes like."

"Hey," said Harry, "Sylvie, here, I’ll show you a spell. Watch the wall carefully now..."

He managed to charm the mess into slowly gyrating spirals, then Hippogriffs that jumped through hoops and bowed to Sylvie. She jumped up and down and clapped her hands. Then, with a final wave that would have done Professor Flitwick proud, Harry magicked the markings so that they swirled together into a whirlpool that swallowed itself up.

"Oh, well done," said Helen. "One of these days I’ll get around to learning to use a wand, I swear. But..." She shrugged. "Come on. The chook’s still roasting. It won’t be ready for another half-hour at least and Benny needs a walk. Let’s go down to the beach."

"Yayyyyy!" shouted Sylvie, running to get her shoes. "Here, Benny! Here, Benny!"

Helen took Harry into the lounge where she found Oscar’s carry-pack.

Harry took it. "Here, let me."

As Helen did up the domes that would keep the extremely wriggly toddler from wriggling out again, she raised an eyebrow a la Snape and said, "Getting in some practise, are we?"

Harry blushed. "No..." He realised the straps were too tight, and loosened them.

"Uh-huh. So how is Luna Lovegood at the Ministry? Still single?"

"Helen!"

"If you don’t stop mooning around and ask her out I’ll tell Sev you’re a chicken."

"Helen!"

She shrugged. "Can’t blame a parrot for trying." She opened the French doors. "Sylvie! Where’s that ghastly girl got to...?"

Eyes gleamed in the darkness.

"Sylvie?"

A huge, shaggy creature prowled out from the bushes and stalked towards the light. It was as tall as a pony and, with its heavily muscled shoulders, much heavier. Teeth glittered in the panting mouth and where ears should have been sprouted two spiralling horns. The quills along its back rattled as it walked and long, gnarled claws clicked on the concrete path.

Harry raised his wand automatically.

"Benny!" screamed Sylvie, and ran forward to wrap her arms around the fearsome head. "There you are. Bad doggie. You didn’t come when I called."

The awful beast opened its mouth to show more fangs than Harry cared to count. A long tongue swished out and licked the little girl’s face.

"Eeyew." Sylvie wiped her face. "Mu-um, Benny slobbered on me."

Harry realised he’d been holding his wand defensively and put it back in his jacket. He’d seen Benny the narwulf countless times, but the ortho-elemental always managed to unnerve him. Helen stepped forward and put a collar around the narwulf’s neck, and as soon as it was buckled up the narwulf disappeared. There in its place stood a golden retriever. The ultimate family dog, as Snape had said in what could have been his idea of a joke when he made the collar. Benny had originally been named Fenris. He was one of the first of the narwulfs released from magical stasis beneath a French dolmen, and gifted by the Ice Dragons to guard the Snapes when they were out of Grandmother Taniwha’s sphere of protection.

Eighteen-month-old Sylvie hadn’t been able to pronounce "Fenris," so "Benny" he had been renamed.

They walked down the road as the sky darkened. Sylvie, precocious in her bossiness, was trying unsuccessfully to get Benny to heel. Benny, who knew as every good guard-dog knows that his place is at the head of the procession scouting out the path for his family, wasn’t having a bar of it.

Helen tucked her arm through Harry’s. "Had a good day?" she asked.

"So-so," he replied. "Sun said something odd today."

"Only today? As opposed to every other day of his life?"

Harry grinned. "He asked me if I was happy."

Helen pursed her lips. "And what did you say?"

"I told him that yes, I think I am."

"You only think you are?" Helen gave him a sideways look. "Don’t you know?"

Harry steadied her as her ankle twisted on a loose bit on tar seal. "I guess I still have a little bit of, I don’t know... something. Maybe its a superstition. I don’t want to say that everything’s great in case something terrible happens."

Helen nodded. They walked in a comfortable silence for a while, listening to Sylvie lecture Benny about how real dogs were supposed to behave.

"I scared my husband this morning," Helen said.

"Oh?" said Harry, not quite sure what else to say. Sometimes with Helen it was best to keep a slight distance from the conversation and try and jump on as it turned a corner.

"Yes. I woke up this morning and the sun was shining in through a crack in the curtains and I knew it was going to be a beautiful day. And then I started crying."

Harry had no idea what to say to this.

Helen didn’t need his feedback. She continued. "Sev woke up. He put his arms around me and kept saying ‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong?’ Then when I could talk I said to him, ‘I’m in a house that I love with my husband who I love beyond love and I have friends and people who love me and skills I’m good at and the two most beautiful children that ever existed. There’s nothing wrong, Sev, I’m just so happy. I’m not crying because I’m upset, I’m crying because my life is so wonderful and I can’t express my joy any other way than by crying.’"

Harry didn’t ask what Snape’s reply had been.

Helen squeezed his arm. "He didn’t tell me I was crazy, if that’s what you’re wondering. He just held me and said that he was glad I was happy." She looked up at Harry, who was a lot taller than her these days. For once her face was oddly serious. "These moments of… of… sublime happiness… they happen so rarely that I know I have to treasure them. And that’s the way it should be. Have you ever been so happy you wanted to share it with someone else?"

Harry looked away. "I was today," he said at last.

"Then one day you’ll find someone else to share it with. But you’ll live a long time. Don’t be in a hurry. You are quite simply the most... sincerely good person I have ever met. Not just in a moral way. I can’t explain what I mean, but... You have so much love in you and there’s so much about you to love. You’re not perfect, and that’s your saving grace. Goodness knows but you drive Severus wild from time to time. I swear he was frothing at the mouth when you and Draco-chick let those narwulfs out before the Ministry had finished going over the paperwork. But it makes you human, this imperfection. It lets other people come close to you, just by knowing that you’re not some sort of unattainable god or a statue on a pedestal. You’re a living, breathing human being, which is so much better than a statue. And gods are overrated."

"Blasphemer," he joked, hoping to Merlin he wasn’t blushing as brightly as it felt like he was.

"Ah – I should bow down to the shrine that is set up for the Great and Powerful Harry Potter."

"Now you sound like Severus."

Helen laughed, a clear sound in the dusk. "Why, thank you. When he’s not tying himself in knots of bitterness and penitence he can be quite sensible."

Harry grinned and chose not to reply.

Rocky Bay was... rocky. There was a little cove Muggles tended not to notice just around from it and this was even more so, and so different to the golden sands of the northern beaches that you would have thought it was a different island. Pebbles shifted and rattled under their feet as they walked down to the water’s edge. Little wavelets hissed through the rough mix of sand and stone.

A louder hiss announced the breathing presence of something in the water close to shore.

A gleaming fin sliced through the flat water. A black lump, reflecting the last of the light, rose and aimed itself for the beach just along from where the small group of humans and narwulf were standing. Water surged into the pebbles with a muted roar.

To the delighted squeal of "Daddy!" from Sylvie, the orca beached itself.

One last wriggle, then the killer whale disappeared and Severus Snape, wearing swimming shorts and shaking water out of his hair, stood up and walked along the beach towards them. He paused to pick up Sylvie and rest her on his hip.

"Thank you," he said to Harry as the younger wizard, unasked but used to the transformations, performed a drying spell.

"What happened to you?" Helen demanded anxiously, seeing a cut on her husband’s lip.

Snape looked shifty.

Helen planted her hands on her hips. "Have you been snacking on stingrays again?" Snape’s non-answer proclaimed his guilt. "You know I’m cooking tonight," scolded Helen.

Snape caught Harry’s eye.

Helen saw the exchange. "Oh – if this is another one of those ‘this is the day my people fast’ days then you’ll be sleeping on the couch! My cooking is excellent these days."

Snape sighed and looked apologetic. "I know," he said. "Force of habit. And..." he grinned evilly "...stingrays are fun to chase. Crunchy, too. Cartilage instead of bone. And the wings are really juicy with the way they..."

"Yes, I’m sure they are." No-one had yet succeeded in putting Helen off her food. "But we’re having roast chicken tonight. With yams and kumara as well as potatoes. Don’t you dare tell me you’ve got no appetite by the time we get home."

"Yes, dear." He smiled and kissed her temple. She handed him a sweatshirt. "Thank you," he said, and put it on. "How did it go today?" he asked Harry.

"Good," replied Harry. "It’s funny, but I really like working with Sunonice. Not something Trelawney would have predicted."

"It’s taken you this long to realise?"

"Yes." Harry shrugged. "It’s easier to see the bad stuff than the good, I guess."

"Human nature," said Snape, who would need major surgery to be turned into an optimist.

They walked along the beach, Sylvia taking Harry by one hand and her father by the other. Helen took Benny’s leash and broke into a run with him to chase a few of the seagulls who were out late. Helen hated seagulls with a passion. Harry never had learned what Snape thought of that, given his early dreams of being a seagull Animagus.

Snape’s eyes smiled as he watched his wife run. "It’s a lot of responsibility. To be honest I didn’t think you’d want the job for more than a year. There must be so many other things you want to do..."

Harry, also watching Helen and Benny and listening to the rhythm of breathing from the toddler on his back that told him that Oscar was asleep, said, "None that are this fulfilling. It’s still left me scope for other things, like living here where I can be anonymous and have a proper social life. Maybe one day I’ll meet someone and we’ll fall in love and get married and have a family." He mentally crossed his fingers that Snape didn’t know about Luna. Harry wanted a bit of time to sort out just how serious his feelings towards her were. "I’d like to do that. But there’s no hurry. As someone pointed out today, I’m a wizard and could live for up to two centuries. That’s a lot of living for me to do and I’m looking forward to it. But best of all I don’t have to be around people who are reading the latest Rita Skeeter articles about me. Or – worse – reading them out to other people around me."

"Ah. I can see how that could appeal."

"I bet you can." Only occasionally did Harry dare brush the boundaries of being impertinent to the man he had once hated. Helen had taught him that it was more fun to save it up. He cleared his throat. "So yes, I want to keep going with the work. Sometimes it gets tough – oh, and I’m grateful for all the Headache Potion you give me, by the way – but sometimes there are moments of epiphany where everything becomes clear and I know I’m in the right place at the right time doing the right thing."

Snape was silent. Then, "Yes. Getting the three in balance is tricky. If you ever find yourself at a point in your life when you can honestly say to yourself that yes, you’re achieving this balance, then count yourself fortunate. Happiness is a bonus." He stopped and let go of his daughter’s hand. Sylvie dropped Harry’s hand, too, and raced off along the beach after her mother. Snape turned a little and Harry saw, as he had seen that first day in Potions class, Snape’s eyes looking like tunnels to another dimension. But now, instead of being dead and frightening, there were stars beyond those tunnels.

"Are you happy, Harry?" Severus asked.

"Yes," said Harry. "Yes. I know I am."