Shadows of the Endless Day

jetso

Rating: PG13
Genres: Romance, Action & Adventure
Relationships: Harry & Hermione
Book: Harry & Hermione, Books 1 - 5
Published: 30/01/2004
Last Updated: 06/10/2004
Status: in_progress

Sequel to A Minute with the Rising Sun. Severus Snape wasn't exactly antisocial; he just didn't like people very much. Or parties. Or weddings. Or being the bearer of strange prophecies... Meanwhile Harry begins his desperate search for Hermione, a journey that will pull him through that proverbial veil.

Chapters

1. The Prophetic Beaker

2. Turning Time

3. Fraud

4. Incarnation of the Stars

1. The Prophetic Beaker

Shadows of the Endless Day

The Prophetic Beaker

Severus Snape scowled into his glass; he knew better than to openly show his irritation. Straining his facial muscles back into a presentable expression, he lowered his glass. The entirety of his future happiness could hinge on his behaviour now. Definitions of "presentable" differed, but most seem to agree that it didn't include painfully removing parts of the guests’ anatomy with a large, blunt spoon.

Funny, that.

Severus wasn't exactly antisocial. He just didn't like people very much: their vile little minds hopping from one presumption to another, all snugly wrapped up in their own self-righteousness; effusive in their congratulations, with contemptuous words and sneers behind loosely-fanned, shielding fingers.

He didn't like attention much, either. All those beady eyes staring at him, weighing him on their weighted scales. Eyes flickered nervously at him, eyes that dared to challenge his glare, eyes that lingered on his greasy hair before turning away and the undercurrent of twittering resumed. Eyes that winked knowingly and elbows that nudged each other subtly as their owners attempted to look inconspicuous.

And weddings.

The yards and yards of fabric festooned overhead, all enchanted to shimmer in a myriad of sickly, pastel colours; the cacophonous mixture of wildly jarring scents: all the Savage Strawberries mixing with the Bewitching Blue Blossoms and the Luscious Lime; the music edulcorated the air with saccharine love songs that unashamedly crooned "baby" repeatedly; the cake, a towering confection of white icing, silver ribbons, white sugar pillars and "crystal" sugar balls, was topped by a pair of tiny figures dressed in black robes and a pointy black hat.

Severus definitely didn't like weddings. Especially his own.

He had no excuse not to eat the wedding cake; the treacly taste still clung to the walls of his mouth. He couldn't hide in the toilets and hope the guests would just forget about him since his initials were intertwined with hers everywhere, from the borders napkins to becoming the centrepiece of the draperies. People stared at him expectantly, as though waiting for him to do something.

When he had first climbed up those rickety stairs and ascended into her cramped incense-wreathed attic, he had thought they had an understanding. Dumbledore had subtly hinted for him to "keep an eye on” Professor Trelawney in case she stumbled on another real prophecy. In real terms, that meant spending every moment of his spare time with the old fraud.

After peering at him through her arthropodal glasses, she had told him she had foreseen his coming with her Inner Eye in that airy voice of hers. She gestured vaguely, making her many bangles jingle-jangle up and down her arms. She had bid him sit down and proceeded to make him a cup of tea with that ridiculously mismatched tea set of hers.

"Green? Herbal? Black? Red? In a bag?"

"Black," he had replied curtly.

"Are you partial to any blend?"

"No."

"Caffeine-free? or just normal?"

"Normal."

"How dark do you like your tea?"

"Dark."

"Ice?"

"No."

"Milk?"

"No."

"Cream?"

"No."

"Brown sugar? Demerara?"

"Neither."

"White sugar? Beet, cane or corn?"

"No."

"Sure? There's granulated sugar, icing sugar, castor sugar..."

"No."

"Maple sugar? Caramel?"

He shook his head.

"Honey?"

He shook his head again.

"Aspartame? Saccharin?"

He shook his head yet again.

And the entire time during their farcically long conversation about tea, her eyes sparkled behind her glasses, flaunting some secret knowledge to which he was not privy. It had made him grind his teeth in frustration.

It was quite a while later that he found out that the secret shining in her eyes was that the kitchen was serving pumpkin pie instead of cauldron cakes for tea that day. It had cost him a whole afternoon of futile bush-beating, tea-sipping, and eye-rolling.

The next few days they spent together dabbling with the tarot. It was strangely addictive. Perhaps it was the way in which Sibyll predicted nasty things would befall everyone in Hogwarts. Her predictions only occasionally came true but it was enough to satisfy the part-time sadist inside him. Undeniably, the mental image of Harry Potter stuck at the bottom of a deep, dry well while being attacked by rabid frogs was very satisfying. Of course, he didn't really want anything horrible to happen to the boy, but he appreciated Sibyll's creativity.

Sibyll floated up to him with that irritating smile on her lips and that look in her eyes again. Her robes looked no different than her normal ones. After all that trouble she had dragged him through to organise the occasion, she had somehow not seen it fit to wear something special. The only difference in her attire was that her earrings were platinum instead of silver and she had four more bangles on than usual, two of which he had given her for Christmas. (He had bought them from the London farm market along with a pirated cauldron. It was another one of those buy-a-cauldron-get-bangles-free offers.)

"Now that we're married, dearest," he said, generously swabbing venom onto the endearment. "It would be nice if you shared some of those secrets of yours."

"The guest list was slightly longer than you thought," she said, sipping chrysanthemum tea. Various guests made snide remarks about how unseemly it was for one to drink chrysanthemum tea from lead crystal champagne flute; Severus personally saw nothing wrong with it. It was a rather endearing eccentricity - not that it was endearing to him, naturally. A few daggered glares soon silenced the mussitating.

"You mean you invited Hagrid? I noticed that," he said. "One would have to be blind not to notice that-"

"Actually the blind would notice Hagrid. One would have to be blind and deaf to be wholly unaware." She always took whatever he said at face value. Perhaps she truly was oblivious to sarcasm, but she used it a little too often on him for him to be completely unsuspicious.

"So... What's the big secret?"

"Harry's here."

"Potter? What's he doing here?"

"I invited him."

"Why?" Severus dropped his voice to a silkily dangerously half-hiss.

"Be nice, dear. Just say 'hi', he'll be trampled by a crowd of centaurs shortly." Sibyll smiled and inclined her head towards where Potter presumably was.

"Really?" He tried not to sound too hopeful; "hopeful" and "dangerous" don't mix.

"Only metaphorically, dear." Sibyll smiled. "And do warn him about the White Phantom, I see it hovering somewhere in his past."

Taking deep breath to calm his frustration, Severus marched over to where Sibyll had indicated. After a bit discreet elbowing, the sea of guests parted for him.

Potter was indeed there. He was no longer the scrawny teenager Severus had terrorized in his schooldays, but still recognisable by his mop of unruly black hair. He looked very much like his father: black hair, round glasses and all. Severus' lips curled into a snarl at the memory. It was generally considered ungracious to think badly of the dead, but he had abandoned chivalry too long ago to care about such petty little details of etiquette. Still, the resemblance between the two Potters was slightly unnerving.

He stood amongst his friends. Another of the flame-haired freckle-dappled Weasleys (Severus wasn't sure which one) and that ex-Ravenclaw, Lovegood. He had no particular recollection of her save for her involvement with Potter's pathetic attempt at an insurrection and later the Order, but there was no one else in the Wizarding world who would dangle Muggle milk caps from her earrings. He didn't seem to remember inviting them, then again, he didn't seem to remember inviting most of the people who are jostling each other in this vast room right now.

In fact, he remembered starting out with a very long guest list of acquaintances and relations which he laboriously whittled down to about three names. Sibyll must have been slipping in names again without his knowledge. Really, after all that trouble he went to in finding reasons not to invite all those people and constructing such reasonable arguments to convince her, she could at least have pared down the numbers a little. Admittedly, "I don't like people who wear sandals," is a bit feeble, but she could at least put that down as part of the dress code.

"Where is she?" came Potter's voice, harsh with anger. The undercurrent of loosely-fettered emotional magic in his words was enough to char the hair off one's skin. "She said-"

"Did you hear? Ron and I got married." Lovegood sounded much too cheerful, as though oblivious to Harry's latent anger. She gave her stomach a conspiratorial pat.

"Yes-"

"Do you still read the Quibbler? I write for it now."

"Where is she-"

Before Severus could tactfully interrupt their conversation, he was accosted by Pomona Sprout and Alastor Moody.

"Congratulations, Severus," cried Pomona jovially, waving her goblet at him. The Head of Hufflepuff house looked characteristically happy; Severus didn't like happy people. It was another of the reasons why he didn't like weddings. Perhaps he could blame the cake; it had so caramelised his mind that all higher brain functions were put on hold and he was systematically listing all the things he disliked. Or perhaps it was just that there was so much to dislike about this gathering.

Pomona wore a pair of fluffy, pink earmuffs around her neck. Perhaps she had simply forgotten to take them off after working in the greenhouse, though considering the relatively clean state of her Prussian blue robes, it seemed unlikely that she had been trawling through dirt for the hours immediately prior to the party. Alastor too wore earmuffs around his neck, though his were powder blue and equally fluffy. The rest of his attire was a lot less like Pomona's: his hair seemed to have been burnt off with a candle and his grey robes had the look of something which had been propped up and used as a tent in a thunderstorm for week. He seemed to have lost a good chunk of his left ear since Severus had last seen him six months ago, but body parts was a rather touchy subject to bring up with Alastor and the story he would force mangled from the ex-Auror's lips would hardly be worth his time. It was probably another accident with the rabbits.

Severus nodded briskly. He didn't like pleasantries much, even at the best of times, for which this particular moment definitely didn't qualify.

"Are you finally going to talk with us?" snapped a distinctly irate voice, anything but quiet, rising above the general chatter. "Or are you just going to keep talking at us?"

"Never guessed," exclaimed Pomona, "Would never have guessed it would be you and Sibyll. I was all confused when I received the invitation. It was a good thing Alastor was nearby, else I'd have never made it back from the Amazon in time for th-"

Alastor grunted proudly.

"You're not the only one who cares-" that voice cut through Potter's protests.

"I reckon someone's trying to kill you, Severus," said Alastor. His eerie blue eye stared fixedly at him.

Severus could label that voice - Weasley. There was only anger, albeit a lot of it, in the voice. No magic tightly coiled and ready to strike. He breathed a mental sigh of relief; it takes two to duel. He could still taste Potter's anger in the air, cold, bitter and metallic at the back of his throat, just beyond the reach of his tongue.

Alastor gesticulated with his cake-speared fork and growled, "Think about it: your cake was the only slice without raisins. Given how much I don't like raisins, I make an effort to-"

"I suppose," said Severus, distractedly. He vaguely noted the raisin-studded cake that was impaled on Alastor's fork.

"Play nice, Ron. Harr-" broke in Lovegood's voice, sounding surprisingly sane in comparison to Potter's irrational anger.

"I hope you remember watering the Arcanum Arundinaria gigantean I gave you last Christmas-"

"Of course, Pomona," murmured Severus. He remembered that present well. It was possibly the only time he was glad the Herbology professor had bestowed a living plant upon him. He was, after all, a Potions Master, which meant he liked his plants desiccated, stripped, sliced, powdered and preferably uprooted, thank you very much.

That Christmas Sibyll had foreseen exotic greenery; he needed some desperately. Re-potting the Arcanum Arundinaria gigantean was time consuming (the pot that Pomona chose was a tasteless dull brown) but there was distinct satisfaction in seeing Sibyll happy, or rather, not trying to send the furies after him in the form of rampaging Thestrals. She was quite pleased with her present, even if it was only cane reed.

"I just want to know where she-" hissed Potter.

"Dumbledore wanted to ask if Sibyll has Seen anything. He's getting concerned."

"She said that the price of tea was probably going to go up quite a bit next year, so stock up. Especially those odd pyramid-shaped teabags. There will be a disaster at the workshop that makes them."

Alastor's cough sounded a little too much like the word conspiracy. Pomona nodded sagely.

People seem to take Sibyll's prophecies so much more seriously after that incident with the kelpie up north.

"And she mentioned something about the fluidity of time, but I wasn't really paying attention."

"What could possibly be so important that you could forget to take down a prophecy?"

Severus said nothing, gave a deep nod and turned away from the two. This was not the time to even think about what had happened that night - at least, not in front of people.

A space was clearing around Potter and his two friends. Not everyone would be sensitive to the galvanic magic surrounding Potter - it is surprisingly difficult to sense the actual current of magic as opposed to manipulating it with one's wand - but most were probably sufficiently aware to feel uncomfortable. That and the fact that the rather irritated someone probably has enough power in him to reduce most of the county to a funny-shaped crater for future tourists (and still be alive at the end of it) should have scared off the rest of the on-lookers.

He really should ask Potter to be angry more often at his weddings (not that he really intended to have any more), that boy seemed to have a rather positive effect on the guests, namely, to disperse them.

"...you know where she is. Tell-"

"I have no reason to, stranger-"

A translucent ghost floated up to him, carrying a rather large brown-paper-and-string package under one arm.

"I thought you were dead, Professor."

"I resent that term," said Binns lackadaisically. The dead in general have a habit of taking their time with things. Must come from the fact that they don't have mortality chasing at their heels anymore. "Just because I am mortally disadvantaged doesn't mean I can't attend wedding celebrations. I just thought I'd come to congratulate you and your illustrious wife-"

"...then disappear!"

It was Weasley again. Severus could seem the flame-haired man gesticulating vigorously through the limpid Professor Binns. The melodrama of the situation was almost amusing. "Were we ever friends, Harry? Or was I just-"

"Did I ever tell you how much this events reminds me very much of the time during the Goblin Revolts of-"

"Really?" muttered Severus.

"For you and your wife."

Severus looked dubiously at the mangled package Binns had just given him. It was heavy, blocky and reeked of old paper. He knew exactly what it was. "I already have a copy of your book."

"New edition. Extended Appendix," said the ghost enthusiastically. "And an excerpt at the back from my next book discussing the myth of King Arthur and the history behind it. The some possible locations for excavation. The records we have are frightfully confused, but I believe I may have discovered the key-"

"So says the writer of romance novels."

Binns shrugged nonchalantly. "That was back when I was alive, before I even taught at Hogwarts."

Most people didn't know the dead professor used to write romance novels, penny-paperbacks that were sold like so many doses of escapism over the drugstore counter in the Muggle world. Among the many historical tomes that sat on Binn's shelves, there were pink-spined paperbacks with watercolour covers and titles like Boots in her Bedroom and Husband for a Week.

"Professor Snape!" Lovegood waved wildly. Mad or not, she had an excellent sense of timing.

"If you'll excuse me, Binns, I'll see you back at Hogwarts," said Severus hurriedly, walking over to where Lovegood, Potter and Weasley stood. His eyes flickered down to Lovegood's feet. From underneath her dirty scarlet robes, peeked leather sandals.

"Lovegood."

"It's Weasley now, Professor."

"My congratulations. Which one?"

"Ronald," she confirmed, taking his question purely on face value. "Though, I write under my maiden name. And do tell your new wife I did enjoy the article she wrote last week about the irregularities in the brightness of Mars."

"Mr. Harry Potter."

The enraged man spun round to face Severus. Green flame flickered behind his glasses and the air suddenly smelt of burning.

"Snape." The word was spat out as a curse.

"Potter. Hi."

There. Done. Severus ticked the imaginary box next to his mental checklist of errands Sibyll had asked him to run. Irritating as it was, he was determined to keep his little Seer happy today. After all, it would be more than slightly embarrassing to not be doing anything on the night of their wedding.

"Sibyll told me to tell you to beware the White Phantom." Severus turned to leave. He hazily heard Potter shout questions at him and splutter some sort of wordless confusion, but his mind was too far away to notice.

Finished. Sibyll would be happy. Or to be precise, ecstatic.

Author's Notes:

Many thanks to my beta, the resplendent and radiant Rawles (SheWhoHathAPen), who's been reading and correcting these first chapters.

So, what prompted the apparently sane author to write an entire chapter based on Snape and Trelawney?

It's the prologue. And I wanted a bit of humour before plunging back into the world of Harry's angst. It also hints a bit more on what has everyone been up to in the past few years. All this will come into play in the next chapter.

Offhand, the she Harry was asking about - that's Hermione.

Professor Binns did write romance novels. Real trashy ones too.

Ron and Luna did get married. They did so in the A Minute with the Rising Sun. Offstage. Harry received the invitation from Hermione and freaked out, to say the least.

Yes, this is a H/Hr fic... I'm just getting slightly sidetracked. Only slightly.

Next Chapter: Harry's hunt. Luna's Lunacy. Ron's Rage.

2. Turning Time

Shadows of the Endless Day

Turning Time

It was like a realisation. Not the gradually dawning sort that he had often shared with her in overlapping sentences, the slow piecing together of the situation's shreds in the plush-lined common room that swallowed up their voices with all its soft furniture. It was like those scarce moments of pure epiphany that shine harsh light into night-time eyes, moments that don't meticulously whip and beat and fold his world like batter the way that Voldemort had systematically dismantled it with all the casual interest of making the Saturday pancakes, but, instead, shatter the entire mixing bowl on the floor, splattering gooey batter and porcelain shards everywhere.

Harry staggered forward.

There was a rush of falling. His stomach disquieted; his magic glowered.

Something with all the fluidity of water, but none of the dampness, washed over him: deluged him, folded around him, overwhelmed him. Cold, but bladeless, like and unlike the blusterous wind that rushes through flesh, swoops overhead, and deals blunt, almost physical blows.

He felt a hooked tendril of foreign magic on his tongue. It tapped on his teeth, the knocking of a patient guest at the door. It tasted metallic, but without the suggestion of blood that steel had always brought him. His tongue made it out to be like an elaborate knot of barbed wire.

Baited with vague promises, it seemed palatable; he swallowed-

His hands flew to his thro at.

It slid down, down; his fingers, tightly curled into talons, bit flesh trying to dig it out again. His hands searched downwards, following its progress. His fingers tangled with the silver chain around his neck and the miniature sandglass that hung from it. The knot of magic, sunk deep within him, sprawled and blossomed hooks.

Light flickered, as though a child with restless hands had made the sun its plaything.

The current around him grew stronger. It grew breathless, laboured. He heard the low, rustling murmur, like that of leaves, but it felt oddly out of place, as though it had sounded on a windless day. Vaguely he knew that the distant mussitation came neither from dry, too-ripe leaves nor branches heavy-hung with foliage, the same way he knew that the heaving breaths the sky--if there was still a sky above him--gasped onto him were not just air moving from areas of high pressure to low.

Hands clutched fabric, searchingly. Numb fingers and biting nails knotted.

Like a grappling hook, the foreign magic anchored itself in him--in the very fabric of him. His own magic panicked; it reared and clawed the air with steel-bound hoofs like ambitions wave a towering cliff. It bared its teeth, allowed saliva to drool from blood-pink gums, and rolled low, resonant sounds from its throat, like the deep rumbling of the earth before an earthquake. It writhed just beneath his skin, waiting for the courage to surface and escape, but feared too much the wind-that-wasn't that grated its blunted knives on his skin.

Grip tightened. Clutched desperately. Skin too thick, too real.

The foreign magic buried long teeth into his mind, his memories, the defining moments that shaped his being. It wormed itself, vermiform, into him, unearthing morsels and moments as it went.

His mind squirmed.

It was the wrapping of one's mind around a new concept. It was that digesting of ideas and information, both new and old, into a mishmash of radical new thought, that fermentation of the dregs of one's mind into radical thought, that painfully slow process where everything ekes together, like the long wait for distant thunder after the lightning of revelation. Somewhat akin to when Hagrid had burst in and told him, with little flourish other than that his size and painfully pink umbrella gave him, that he was a wizard. Somewhat akin to when Snape swirled into the underground classroom and told them with infinite smugness that all that he had taught them for their OWLs, all that they had spent the past terms slaving on, was a lie. (Or rather, a gross simplification, as she had explained later. You'd hardly understand imaginary ingredients, sixth dimensional brewing, second-layer synthesis and solubility manipulation a year ago. As always, she had a point. He barely understood now why one would need to brew a potion according to the schedule of another dimension. It's like moonlight brewing only slightly more complicated. As you know, precision in the time of...)

He found it fitting that his quest for her should lead him here where his mind was stretched so. He remembered hours spent pouring over books with her beside the Arthurian tapestries of the Gryffindor Common Room, in the book-crowded library, where the many promises whispered seductively, each wrapped in their worn leather coats...

He was in a familiar door-lined corridor, but longer, darker, more winding than the one that had haunted his dreams. Vaguely he knew himself to be still firmly rooted in the backroom of the British Museum, he saw it all in a curious overlay of images, like a garish special effect from a bad Muggle film.

Behind each door would be--was, he knew it with an undeniable certainty--roomfuls of battered cardboard boxes with worn corners, each full of knickknacks and bric-a-bracs; whatnots, whatchamacallits and whatsises; the sort you would find in an old ladies' attic, after a lifetime of accumulation with the motto "you never know just when it may come it handy."

He wandered down the corridor, or perhaps the corridor moved whilst he stood still; he wasn't sure. The heavy silver weight around his neck was his only solid anchor, everything else was a blur. The foreign magic wormed deeper; his own never felt further away.

A door yawned open and indeed the boxes stood on guard in their haphazard rows, like a rabble army standing on attention, a baby's citadel toy bricks. There was a grudging organization to it all, as though someone had been forced to inflict some order onto the place and hurried through the process.

Contents spilled themselves into his hands and he found himself holding two armoured figurines on horseback with streaming banners and tilted lance, though somewhat greyed with darkness (odd; the room was merely hazy, not dim--yet the knights were shadow stained). He found a handkerchief smeared with pink, sticky, sickly-sweet-smelling icing, though he knew without opening his mouth it was without taste; a toothpick; a pair of woollen socks, which were all heels.

It took a moment for him to recognise them. There were the tin knights he had set charge against each other in the dark space of Dudley's spare room; he had never seen them in light bright enough for the colours to register. This was the pink smear of Dudley's twelfth Birthday cake, the one Dobby had heaped on Mrs. Mason's head; he had never tasted it, since he washed it off his hands straight away, but the saccharine smell lingered for days. The shapeless socks were Christmas presents from the Dursleys, which had been permanently been occupied by all manner of objects, save his feet.

Memorable, but not treasured.

The things stacked themselves back into the box, onto the shelf and another box emptied itself. The doll-sized orange jumper he knew immediately, the one Aunt Petunia had tried to force him wear. There fistfuls of hair from numerous haircuts; a collection of toothpicks (presents from the Dursleys); pages and pages of History of Magic notes, filled with increasingly messy scribbles that dissolve into funny-looking dots (where he had fallen asleep from Professor Binns' droning); a smoosh of damp grey clothing that resembled more an elephant-skin than a uniform.

Memorable, but not unforgettable.

The next box contained a birthday cake, which was somehow both flat, drawn on a dirt floor, with fingermarks lighting the candles and real with green icing and chocolate layers (his mind and somehow melded the two cakes into one; so intermingled they were); a chocolate frog card with Dumbledore smiling enigmatically; Ron's spello-taped wand, still covered in slug-slime.

Unforgettable, treasured, but not pivotal.

He sorted through hundreds of boxes as that foreign magic probed deeper and deeper into his mind, into the pivotal moments, the ones that defined him.

Another room further down the corridor, another boxful of memories spilled out: the splintered remains of his Nimbus Two Thousand; a small mirror, forever empty, divorced of its twin; a photograph album of memories that were not his own, moving snapshots of his parents, each a pocket of hope, of what could have been; the Triwizard tournament trophy, shiny, but in the reflection he could vaguely make out the faces of the dead, of those who should have died.

Cold, distant pain. He heard a hiss of sadistic satisfaction from the foreign magic.

Another room. Another box. This time it spat out an eagle-feather quill; handfuls of hippogriff fur; his old glasses, much abused and often mended; a page torn out of the library's book of beasts, describing Basilisks, with the word pipes written in the margin; a small cauldron of potential Polyjuice Potion (his most lingering memory of that month was sitting in the out-of-order toilet, watching her at work).

He tasted pain again. A different sort. Not the resigned bitterness of losses to death, not the distant pain already numbed by time and acceptance, half-healed by revenge, almost reconciled with the Elysian knowledge. This was the pain of a more tangible hope, something he had held but let slip through his fingers like the wild wind that he had once tried to bridle. This was the pain of his own folly, the knife-twisting agony that he had later washed away with relief in the Department of Mysteries, when she had collapsed--seeming dead--amid fireworks of dangerous magic.

He felt his hands shake as the memories came back, but it wasn't until the box yielded sheaves of notes and homework that he wanted to stop. Pages upon pages filled with his messy scrawl, seven years worth of work. These, however, were different from the ones he had first found. Written neatly in the margins and in the little gaps between the lines, was Hermione's handwriting. The thin, precise lines of her lettering breathed so near, almost grazed the thicker, blacker marks of his words. It was wire, spined with poison, spangled with the diamond tears of early morning, surrounding some unapproachable secret amid a barren field that belonged to no man. The neatly arranged tangles that invited that fatal touch. Occasionally, they would cross, bite into each other in a small blot of darker ink, too small, too brief.

He almost dropped the quill made of a peahen's feather, with a rainbow still trapped in its barbs.

The foreign magic gave a soft shudder of triumph. It stabbed itself into the core of him, and unearthed the more abstract memories: the two Hs that she had sketched with leaking magic; the soft whisper of her skin on his; the deceiving almost of gilded firelight; the half-melted snowflakes that beaded her hair; the weight her petrified hand in his...

The silver chain bit into his flesh; the sandglass that hung from it was leaden weight.

And then there were her memories, the ones that she had given him: the faded flowers that she had awoken to (he had consistently changed them though the stagnant magic around the petrified killed them all immediately); the time-turner that she had worn around her neck all of her third year; the ingredients from Snape's cupboard; the long conversations with House Elves; piling toast onto a napkin in preparation of breakfast outdoors...

Yet, they were more than her memories; they fitted next to his to form a complete whole: her initial disappointment over the faded flowers complimented her discovery through the sharing magic and memory that he had tried to keep them fresh; the familiar weight of the time-turner matched their sharing of it in the freeing of Sirius and Buckbeak; the swift collection of breakfast followed by the shared lake-side morning...

The magic snatched.

The non-wind that had never ceased, but merely slowed to a trickle when he examined his memories, stopped altogether with frightening stillness.

He held his breath.

It sliced through air when it began again, in the opposite direction. It was sharper this time, faster, all sense of rhythm and control lost in the folds of its breath.

The world spun. Stars wheeled overhead.

His magic recoiled with a disembodied panic--a panic that he knew he felt rather than actually feel it course through his skin, rippling gooseflesh and calling each hair to attention. He observed it as a remembered emotion, something too distant to examine properly. He only knew to cling onto the imprint of what had been snatched away. His fingers closed around that shadow, already fading.

A phrase of phoenix song--or what a phoenix would have sung if given not only notes, but words.

Fog descended.

He still fell. The ground simply wouldn't come.

His mind wouldn't focus. It was as though it had tried to encompass an idea too vast, like the theory behind Summoning Charms, but more complex, more profound. It had tried to down something too big, something that did not fit into these three and a half dimensions and it had given him mental indigestion.

He was searching for....

"Did she leave something? Anything."

"I'm not sure-"

They had exchanged some pleasantries and apologies, looked at some moving photographs with people whose smiles seemed almost forced, and eaten stew made of a creature he wasn't sure existed.

"Sorry, Harry, don't mind the mess. I like working on the kitchen table... Let me get you some more tea."

"I thought it was the windows."

A window covered in words of black wax, mostly symbols too archaic to decipher.

"That too."

"Isn't it-"

"No. Saves me cleaning the windows." A shrug.

More pleasantries and a question aching to come out, waiting, just waiting by his tongue. He asked about something else, someone else...

"They don't know yet. Not really. Mum keeps trying to marry her off to a nice Hufflepuff-"

"Hufflepuffs are very nice, Ronald. They were related to dinner."

A grin. "Badgers. That was a hog-nose sand badger in the stew. Foreign delicacy."

"It was very... interesting."

Idle leafing through piles of parchment. Restlessness.

"This is her handwriting." He still couldn't say her name. He wished he had now; he might remember it now.

"That fragment is about a thousand years old, Harry."

"It is her handwriting. No one does their Hs like her and the little curl at the end of the-"

"I don't think-"

"Look!" The paper passed hands, but his hands hovered close to the imprint the acid-ink had burned into the parchment. He wanted it back.

"Artorius!" An exclamation. The closest thing that strange girl with bottle-top earrings ever came to swearing. "It is her."

"Where-?" "It's hers, I suppose. She's always studying musty old things. Something about that king with a sword in a stone and-" Another shrug. "Ronald! This is important."

"It's just the fault of that barmy old wizard who couldn't keep his mouth shut. And to think you've got about thirty five of his chocola-"

"Thirty two, Ronald. Thirty two since last Saturday. I traded you-"

An embarrassed laugh. "Don't... I don't collect chocolate frog cards anymore. It's childish..."

"Ronald." A warning.

"It's for the children. They'll be very valuable one day..."

The tangent shot off. Fingers danced across the parchment, tracing the archaic words he could barely read.

"Don't drop the subject. This is important. That was her handwriting." "Luna, why is it so implausible that someone back then wrote a little like Hermione?"

"That someone wrote like her is plausible, Ronald. That she wrote this is implausible."

"I'm glad we agree."

"But I believe the latter."

"But... but..."

He stopped listening. The conversation was steered away from the scrap of paper, but he pocketed it as the thought wouldn't let go. Sometimes implausible things...

His mind was still spinning, still hurting. The shards of a glass broken bit, like shrapnel. The only immovable thing was that weight around his neck.

The non-wind continued, but shifted, took him for its eye and wrapped its violent folds, each bristling with blades, around him. It whipped against his skin, brought its cold, cold lips to his ear and howled long notes of indecipherable wordlessness.

"Ah, yes, I remember..." An old voice. A new voice. No; voice new to his mind, but had come from an old throat. A man who had glimpsed memory that was not his own, unearthed it from the residue of the past.

"Thank you."

The many shelves, boxes again of ancient things, lost fragments abandoned by their long dead owners...

"Lovely girl... interested in the old tales: Morgana, the Lady of the Lake, Gwenhwyvar the Fair, the knight of the dragon, the Bear King..."

"Bear King? Wasn't it..."

"Dragon King is a much later title. He is said to be the embodiment of the Bear Stars. Ursus. Uthyr..." The man rambled; he was only vaguely aware. That question again. The one he could not bring himself to voice.

"About this parchment..."

"Yes... I think I have something in the back room. I'll be right back. Don't touch anything." The man--the curator--wandered off behind the curtain.

A glimmer snared his eye, like a well-laid trap.

It was a small sandglass of tarnished silver hung almost negligently among a number of other trinkets. The silver winked at him, catching the light just on its bottom rim. The shape of the bright crescent was soon eclipsed, but he who had once scorned the prophesies that moulded his life, foretold his doom, and meted out justice.

His hands closed around it. A small yellowed tag stated its origins and purpose in faded ink: c.320 P.P.; 542 S.XX.H; 1290 K.T.C.D.; Very early prototype of time-manipulation device, employs sacrificial magic, untested...

The non-wind quieted to a gentle breeze and the air rippled like the pebble-broken surface of water. The ground finally came with numbing solidity.

He smelt burnt flesh around his neck, his hands, but the pain was still distant. The many scattered pieces of him were again reassembling into his skin. His magic was kindling again inside him, giving a comforting growl of reassurance.

He staggered to his feet, light blinding, grasped for something to stable himself against something. There was an urgency to move, to search for something--someone--her...

His fingers met leather. Warm, worn, almost welcoming.

Author's Notes:

Many thanks to my beta, the refulgent and remarkable Rawles (SheWhoHathAPen), who's helping me perpetuate the illusion that I'm vaguely decent at grammar.

If you haven't figured it out already, Harry has been looking for Hermione and has travelled back in time following a very dodgy clue with the use of some even dodgier magic.

Very sorry about the delay. There are, as always, many excuses, but none of them truly valid. RL is hectic, with those pivotal exams around the corner and the research and plotting required of this story got out of hand. Disembodied angst is a rather strange thing to write and I hope it worked.

I've also made use of some Movie!HHr!moments, mostly due to the upcoming new film. Hopefully the next chapter will come sooner and easier than this one.

And of course, please review.

3. Fraud

Shadows of the Endless Day

Fraud's Truth

Despite all of the Wizarding World's supposed superstitions, none of the Hogwarts staff feared it enough to leave Severus alone on his honeymoon. He was barely two days into wedded bliss when Pomona tugged so vigorously on the bellpull that the banshee living in it managed to scream away her voice in a most unpleasant manner.

Unbolting the door was met with more rasping of the bellpull-banshee and finally, when Severus faced a very impatient Professor Pomona Sprout, he knew even without Sibyll's warnings from the day before that this meeting would be at best severely irritating. For one, Pomona informed him before even sitting down that the five points he had taken from Hufflepuff last term for the overdue book was considered unjustified, which meant they now tied with Slytherin. Secondly, the enormous spray of sweetbriar speared through her hat was wilting, shedding leaves all over his clean floor. She also carried with her a very large, leather-bound book that Severus recognised from Dumbledore's shelves. Glassy eyes stared from the book's spine.

"Albus will be here shortly. You might want to get Sibyll." She tried to set the book down on a table, but there was no space not covered by half-empty cups of tea and past issues of the Mugwump.

"She's still sleeping; she didn't get much of it last night."

"I suppose it much be quite a change from the topmost tower of Hogwarts," said Pomona.

Severus nodded, not bothering to correct her assumption.

Pomona opened the book and balanced it precariously page down on a patch of table particularly with teacups. The bleary, unfocussed eyes on the spine blinked slowly and swivelled around in its leather socket. It made the hairs behind of his knees quiver with unease; a very odd feeling.

The banshee rasped out Dumbledore' presence.

"Severus." He dipped his head in a stately greeting. The formality of the gesture made Severus more keenly aware of the severity of the situation discussed. Minerva followed, bowing her head with equal solemnity, despite the dishevelled status of her hapless bun which seemed to be doing a rather successful impression of a pin-cushion.

"Sibyll isn't awake yet, sir," said Pomona, agitated. The drooping flora in her hat sagged lower than before.

"I'm still not sure about this, Albus. Divination is, after all, the most imprecise branch of magic," started Minerva. "You don't honestly believe someone's going to die-"

"Tea?" offered Severus.

"You don't appear to have any cups free, Severus," said Dumbledore mildly.

"I could wash one..."

"But they're all still half-full, Severus."

Half-full. They had poured endless cups of tea on their wedding night, be neither to bring themselves to finish any for fear of what the tealeaves would say. Severus had never deemed himself superstitious, but seeing a foul omen glaring at him from the bottom of his teacup on that auspicious day of days could potentially mean loosing her. By nature of the night, he knew whatever prophecy she pronounced would be intensely personal. She feared what she would see in the future; he feared only her fears.

Vaguely surreal, his recollection of the night spent with endless cups of tea was distant. He could barely remember it, yet the half-empty - no, half-full - teacups stood as testimony of the inane night. He didn't know if he should be relieved to know himself still capable of fear or if he should be disgraced by the sheer insanity of it all. They had fretted a night over possibilities, over what could go wrong. Neither he nor Sibyll were inherently optimistic people, which made the idea of building some semblance of a future together all the more daunting.

"Severus, are you sure Sibyll's asleep?"

"Why?" he snapped.

"The eyes, Severus."

It took him a moment to realise which eyes Dumbledore was referring to. The eyes on the spine of the book had narrowed and stared on the some distant point underneath the floorboards.

"Sibyll?"

The stairs spiralled down and from where he stood he could hear the echoes rasp in a disembodied voice.

"...echoes of the future now played out in the past. The Riddle of Death remains unsolved yet could be for would be in the next turning of the glass..."

Severus darted down the stairs to fetch his wife and found her stumbling, disorientated towards him. He draped a gauzy green shawl around her and led her up to meet their colleagues upstairs. He growled at the clinking of the shawl's beaded tassels; the levity and cheer of the sound seemed to be mocking him. She seemed so frail this morning (he wasn't quite sure whether or not it's morning, really since the dungeons yielded no windows), as though that something of great enormity which she carried within her was gone, leaving her empty.

He was met with what must have been a long and weighty silence.

Sibyll shook herself and staggered to her feet. She gathered her shawl around herself, looking more like a glittering dragonfly than ever; who said dragonflies can't be sexy? She squinted at the crowd gathered in Severus' study and looked mildly surprised.

"Very sorry. I must have-"

"Too late. Too late..." said Dumbledore with a sigh. "Sit down, Sibyll, Severus. I'll explain."

"Surely that wouldn't be necessary, Albus, since Sibyll knows everything-"

"Minerva-" said Severus.

"As I was saying," said Dumbledore, as though neither Minerva nor Severus had interrupted him. "Alistair was speaking with Professor Binns and some of the other ghosts yesterday and most noted a change the taste of death. After a lot of searching they found the ghost of Pete-"

"The Lindow Man, Albus? Are you sure he's-"

"Quite reliable? Yes, Minerva, quite. Most of us have misgivings about men bearing the name of Pete Moss, but he has been dead a lot longer than any of us here at Hogwarts."

A chill at the back of his neck told Severus that Professor Binns had just floated in through one of the walls and was nodding quite enthusiastically.

"Someone has travelled back in time. But not just anyone and not just any-when or anywhere. Someone's travelled very, very far back using a very old form of sacrificial magic."

"Virgin's blood or the classic white bull, Albus?" Impatience coloured his voice; Severus had little patience for the Headmaster's dramatic flairs.

"You know better than I do that the sacrifice of another cannot feed your own magic. Any trade that seems to succeed is the darkest of our Arts and in the end, it is you who will pay the price of power. Just as Voldemort had to."

Severus looked away quickly, trying to choke down his most shameful memories. Sibyll's hand gave his a squeeze and let go, resting it just beside his; she knew he wasn't fond of physical contact. Her eyes promised him that something horrible would to happen to Albus Dumbledore on his way out.

"Apparently this man (though it could well be a woman) traded his memory for time," said Binns. "He would have sorted through his past and dredged out his most precious, most defining moments and given those up to pay for the travel back in time."

Dumbledore nodded. "I don't know what he would have to forget, but considering how far back he must have travelled, he probably wouldn't remember enough to come back. He might even have forgotten the reason for his journey."

"The Department of Mysteries allegedly sends witches and wizards back all the time, Albus. Surely this is of equal danger, or rather safety."

"That Department is so cloaked in the substance of that their namesake that we cannot estimate how dangerous or safe what they tamper with is. As far as I know, they only send witches and wizards back in very controlled environments, without the use of sacrificial magic or this much magic, for that matter. The bureaucracy keeps everything well documented in triplicate on time-proof paper as to prevent any changes in history, so we oughtn't further burden ourselves with their little projects. Their dealings aren't tangible to the dead, which should be good testament of their subtlety and caution."

"How far? How far did this wizard go? History could be changed irrevocably."

"A tie-seller once told me that there were two ways of looking at time: that it is elastic and no matter what you do to the past, the present always bounces back to the way it is now. Or that it is fluid and the premature death of a prehistoric butterfly could cause the next apocalypse."

"What does a man who sell ties know about time?"

"Yes, what would he know? He just sells ties. But, Minerva, that is the least of our unanswered questions right now."

"Albus and I have deduced that this man would have been using a contraption not unlike the one on page seven eleven of that book-" (Binns gestured a translucent hand to the eye-spined book.) "-and considering how far back he went, it is highly likely that this is an accidental use. At that moment, he probably wanted to go somewhere or do something or find someone more than anything else. The sandglass would have interpreted that a temporal destination. Say it was their life's dream to go to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower. The sandglass would have taken them back to 1889 to meet Alexandre Gustave Eiffel and see it being erected."

"But why would anyone want to see the Eiffel tower that much."

Binns shrugged. "It was just an example. A dead spouse or a lost dream of some sort. A missed opportunity long ago or a lifelong obsession. It could be anything."

Dumbledore nodded. "We'll need to find out who this person it to track him down.

"And secondly, that amount of magic used always has... serious repercussions. We all know about that crater in the middle of Egypt. Luckily, that was amid a desert and the sand dunes, albeit still seeming a little odd in shape and slightly charred underneath, has covered everything up quite nicely."

"You mean Britain will be reduced to a triangular crater."

"Slightly smaller than that, hopefully, and probably less regular, more akin what should have been a Christmas-tree-shaped biscuit after too much baking powder, but yes. The magic released will echo and when we hear the words..." Dumbledore's voice trailed off ominously.

"Sibyll's prophecy should have given us clues as to who it was, where he was and when he travelled to. The Department of Mysteries only allows those who are directly affected by the prophecy to review it, and I doubt that includes any one of us. All that's clear from what I heard was merely a play on the volatile nature of time.

"Professor Binns, start looking though the history books for any change in the past. Minerva, will you alert the Order, though there may be precious little they can do at the moment. Ask Arthur to try his contacts within the ministry. His son is a lot more flexible than you all imagine so long as you approach him the right way. There should be a register of all the sandglasses of this nature somewhere in the Ministry records and if he could pry anything at all from the Department of Mysteries... And Pomona, will you research with Poppy about time damages. Send word to Hagrid; he's on better terms with the centaurs than I am. Alistair and I will be looking at patterns of magic and the possible repercussions of that magic. Severus, keep both eyes and both ears on your wife. Any whisper of prophecy will be of great use. That book will be useful, I hope. Firenze wrote it before he died."

And then, Dumbledore hit his head on the low ceiling on his way out.

Author's Notes:

Hope that clears things up a bit for the confused...

4. Incarnation of the Stars

Shadows of the Endless Day

Incarnation of the Stars

His eyes were tearing, whether for sadness or simply for the blinding light, he did not know. He tightened his grip around that leather stick - no, sword - between rapid blinks and light-beclouded shapes, he made out the red-gold pommel, the dark leather-bound grip, the crossguard and the iron blade stretching down into the parched earth underfoot. His face rested on the sun-warmed metal of the pommel; it was a foreign, humming warmth that called to his magic, which, still shaken from their displacement, responded only weakly.

The air was still and heavy on his skin. Perhaps after being engulfed by the perpetual motion of restless time, life's normal pace would seem slow and plodding and comparison.

Foreign voices, almost guttural in accent, murmured. Harry had neither the strength to decipher the words nor lift his head to meet their faces. Bright shadows dancing on the patch of earth he saw told him they were shifting, moving, circling.

He waited until strength had slowly seeped back into his limbs before looking up. The silver chain, which had burnt its pattern around his neck was cooling; still the pain was distant. He didn't know whether to dread it's inevitable arrival or be thankful it was still at bay.

Finally, he looked up and slowly, the brightly haloed shapes solidified into a circle of twelve armoured men. The backlight cast dark shadows; he could not read their faces, but their chain-mail was stained brown with a proven threat of blood.

Slowly, painfully slowly, Harry balanced himself on his feet, leaning heavily on the sword as he did so. His feet proved trustworthy, but his hand still rested heavily on the sword's pommel.

One of the men stepped forward, drew his sword and uttered an angry sound of challenge. Though the word itself held no meaning, the voice and its aggression were too familiar to be mistaken.

Harry's hand slid over the pommel and wrapped his fingers firmly around the grip of the sword the earth had half-swallowed.

Another shout of anger, or perhaps a challenge. The man's companions remained silent, almost immobile as his unsheathed blade drew a broad, cruel arc in the air. And though the face was still shadowed, Harry could feel the man's eyes on him.

Carefully, threateningly, Harry readjusted his grip, opening his hand and slowly curling each finger in turn around the warm leather. He was aping one of Godric's agitations at the dawn of battle. With the Founder's enormous, scar-whitened hands and legendary sword, it was a promise of death, but Harry had neither and had not the Godric's mastery of the weapon to uphold his claim.

The man stepped closer; the measured step of a wary swordsmen. He spoke more unfamiliar words, his voice softer, more mocking, almost serpentine, but with equal anger.

This was a game Harry was familiar with; Voldemort liked to toy with his prey too.

The earth yielded easily the sword.

His skin tasted liquid light as the blade slid out. His magic, felinely lethargic before, now sang colours into his ears in a song of awakening and recognition. It meant nothing to Harry, but the knot power that wound itself around him like thread around a spool and tinged midnight the mist around him, he knew only too well.

The sneer on the man's face didn't even flicker. If he felt the sheer physical weight of the magic that the sword was drawing to itself or saw at all the splurge of firework and lightning that it called, he did not show it.

There was something familiar in the way the twist of his mouth, in anger of his eyes...

The man's sword came slicing towards him. Harry sidestepped. The blade's edge whistled past, worryingly close, ready to sink its iron teeth into his flesh. The cold wind that it breathed along his skin sent shivers down his spine as he remembered other blades that were just that little bit closer.

Nimbly, Harry ducked, turned and jumped in avoidance. Memory of his previous swordfight, resurrected by the sword in his hand, stilled his hand. But even those horrors were not enough to stop him from searching for that old rhythm inside himself - the rhythm of the sword.

Left sidestep. Jump. Sidestep. It came back, filling his mind with its cadent commands, with an blade whistling an accompaniment. Harry followed his mental instructions the voice dictated. It was the old way again, though it felt different. There was an eyeblink of hesitation. As he skirted beyond the man's sword, only he knew how it was striking closer, increasingly so.

The sword swung negligently in Harry's hand. He tried to keep it between the man in bloodstained armour and himself, but it wasn't important. It was never more than a prop for him in most fights - a glamorised wand. It was something to distract the enemy with, to fend him off with until he was ready to hurl a spell. Godric had despaired over such tactics, but even he had to admit they worked.

The light-haired man handled his blade with great fluidity; there was nothing angular about his strokes that melted into each other as he drew arcs after deadly arc in the air. He raised a mocking eyebrow at Harry's sword and spat a string of words through a sneer-distorted mouth.

Staring down a long, elevated platform and finding at the end of it, his sneering opponent standing on a waning moon, wand raised and ready.

The young man's movements quickened, sharpened. He shuffled forwards. With no corner to be forced into, Harry gave the space willingly.

In a stone vault, in the womb of the earth, stood alone a young man crumpled on the floor, his face downcast and all one could see was head of straw-silver hair. Words. Then he raised his head and sneering, he unsheathed his sword.

The young man was no longer aiming at Harry, but at the sword in his hands, as though he was trying to make Harry employ it. It was as though Harry's victory lay in his inaction. He voiced frustration in that unfamiliar tongue; the sneer remained only as a force of habit as he blade struck shadow after shadow.

Without a wand, the spell was much harder to weave. A little like trying to make fire out of sunlight without a hand glass. Magic there was in plenty with the strange sword he had pulled out of the ground singing away in sounds only skin can hear, but a spell unlike rampant outpourings of destructive power took a certain delicacy of touch and concentration.

Across the clutter of books, cauldrons and apparatus, a pallid face sneered him. The dim light of the room with its boarded windows made ghostly the features. A paper bird fluttered to him and mocked him with its animated scrawls.

The man paused, allowed Harry to step back. Though slightly breathless, the young man held still his shoulders and there was no waver in his blade, poised between them. The pause gave Harry the break he needed and a stunning spell quivered on Harry's lips.

The light-haired man sidestepped; the light finally fell fully on his face and for the first time Harry saw clearly the sneer that twisted his lips.

It was the sneer.

Harry swallowed the spell along with the gasp that gathered at his throat; he could not betray such a weakness. Another two steps backwards bought him time to recover. He understood now: this could only be resolved in one way. He crouched lower, tightened his grip on the sword and tried to mirror the sneer on his opponent's face.

When the blade whistled close again it was met with like.

Harry's arm shook with shock. His opponent's blade slid off the flat of his own. The metallic ring jarred against he ears, though he had heard it so many times before.

Harry had brought his sword into play. He remembered all too clearly the long ribbons of flesh, chalk-white bone splintered and leaking marrow, the endless smears of sticky blood and the dark cavities in the human soul, but that fear of his own capacity for bloodthirst fed too his craving for redemption. If he could face again that sneer and prove the more human of the two, perhaps...

The young man's sword flowed back with keener aim; Harry dodged and swept his blade in attack.

He understood now Godric's fondness of mundane weapons; the soaring magic was becoming a distraction. The bejewelled sword he had pulled out of the Sorting Hat was as magical as his toothbrush. Magic had its limitations. Until the metal bit flesh, the magic could but intimidate, as brilliant and as harmless as the northern lights that festoon the sky with shimmering colour.

The fair-haired man made a sound at the back of his throat and shouted at the onlookers. From the tone Harry knew the words were not seeking interference, so he spared not a glance to the other men - those silhouettes he has seen against the light.

His opponent's sword flew in reply, but this time Harry did not allow the old rhythm to settle. He interrupted it with attacks of his own, staccatos to the beat. He did not meet each blow with a parry, neither did he answer each attack with one of his own; a rhythm would be too comfortable. This was no tired drill nor practice. It was not supremacy of skill he sought, but resolution.

The fight became a messy percussion of failed attacks as the air around him seemed to bristle with metal, his opponent's blade weaving close. The young man circled Harry, danced in and out of his reach and drew what seemed like symbols in the air. His flourish seemed to belie his fluid efficiency; he fought as an art.

Suddenly, Harry pulled back. He tamed the surging magic in his veins and forced a grin.

It was a moment before the pain was felt, before the blood flowed, before the man realised and touched a hand to the cut. Blood trickled down the young man's arm from a long wound down his shoulder. Harry caught the first drop of it on his clean blade and with a theatrical slowness he showed it to each of the eleven spectators.

They murmured among themselves. Harry caught but two words: "Uthyr... Artorius..."

One of them bowed stiffly and gave him with equally exaggerated slowness a leather scabbard and belt.

The sword slid smoothly into the scabbard and rested comfortably at his hip. Its worn appearance spoke of long histories among heroes, but he didn't know the stories. Vaguely he knew there was someone of his acquaintance who would know, but that thought itself was fleeting, lost in deciphering the flood of magic that the sword and scabbard oozed. It was unmistakable. Yet whilst the magic of the sword was destructive, that of the scabbard was of growth and creation. He moved to touch it to the fair-haired man's wound, but the man stepped back firmly in stubborn refusal.

All eleven of the gathered men wore pointed leather caps and armour of some description. What he had first mistook for chainmail was leather with metal and horn disks sewn onto it, creating a suit of scales. The blood, however, he did not mistake.

"Artorius..." said one of the men. "It is as She had foretold..."

"And to think, brother, that we doubted her..." muttered another. His features mirroring his brother's.

Understanding flowed from the scabbard's magic.

"The stars... is he still among they who gather around the lyre-player?" asked one hesitantly.

"How could he? He is among us now. He stands as flesh..."

"We know not blood... he has shed only the Dragon's," said one, giving his companions a toothy, canine grin. He turned to Harry. "Artorius, be you flesh or flame, our pledge to follow remains as stone. You shall have always my sword at your side."

The young man who Harry had fought glared. "Sosruquo, would you betray my father-"

"Would you betray the heavens, the stars, the moon, the sun?" interrupted Sosruquo. "Come, Artorius. We shall seek she who had parted the mists for us and unveiled your coming. She is our Setenaya."

"And you too, Dragon," said a tall man, whose red hair peeked from beneath his cap. " Temper your mettle, lest a brittle blade you become."

They pressed the reins of a horse into his hands and feeling a curious gravity to his actions, Harry mounted the horse and he followed as the thirteenth horseman.

Author's Notes:

Many apologies about the delay...

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