Chapter 17
Harry had a two week break from his regular lessons with Minerva and Fillius, and he spent his time well. He perused a lot of restricted section spell books. His basic research on the unforgivables shed a lot of light on the origins of the curses and, much to Harry's amusement, revealed that a ridiculous percentage of the darker spells actually had their basis in cooking and medicine. Spells for exsanguination, beheading, and the killing curse all were originally made for butchers and chefs. Blood switching saw use in medicine, switching small amounts for potions could help with some of the most dire injuries. It was intriguing. He also got down to learning some of the most basic runes and their applications. He cursed himself again for being lazy third year. If he hadn't followed Ron into divination, he might have actually learned something.
His favorite Scot and Half-goblin hadn't been wasting their time either. They were each aware that Harry didn't use a wand, his having been lax after tiring days of training eventually revealing it to them. They had been talking, and now that Harry had dual masteries they knew there was really only one place left for him.
Harry appeared for his next lesson, Minerva's was first, and got himself a bit of a surprise. Sitting in the middle of the room they experimented and trained in were three high back leather chairs a tea service busily steaming away. Harry entered and sat.
"Harry, if we're honest with you, and us," Flitwick shot McGonagall a glance and continued, "we don't have anything really left to teach you. We barely have to tell you an incantation, and you're able to do a spell. Your work with your little friend there," A long pointed finger indicated the furry snoring lump being idly stroked in Harry's lap, "and on the Lady have been incredible. And not just because she has cleaned up greenhouse seven for the first time in living memory, and managed to actually get Hagrid to wash his beard and hair."
The lady had taken to doing a large number of extremely odd jobs. Harry was truly astounded by how many people couldn't keep her secret. Another reason for him to skip town and country. The castle gave him a sad but warm note at the thought.
McGonagall picked up the narrative, "From how you now wield magic, we want to talk to you and try to make you into a Sorcerer."
Harry could feel the capital S on the word, but was confused by it.
"Am I not one already? I mean I thought that's what you all were teaching me?"
Flitwick received a look from Minerva. He started, then said, "There are some subtle things in the language here that you wouldn't understand because you were not raised a magical. We are all wizards and witches. We control our power through rigorous study of cause and effect relationships. Our knowledge of magic and our power it technical. It means something much different to be a sorcerer. Sorcery requires significantly more power and focus. Sorcerers channel and control magic through their personality and force of will. Their magic is different than the magic of a wizard, and is often near impossible for a wizard to counter, deconstruct, or unravel. It is a powerful application of accidental or wild magic."
Harry felt doubled teamed as Minerva started in, "We've been watching you in our extra training. In the heat of the moment, you don't even use an incantation. When you're excited about a transfiguration with me, or sometimes in your mock duels with Fillius, magic does your will instead of you directing it with a word or a wand. That is being a sorcerer. We think we know how to get you the rest of the way. You probably won't like it though."
If she said he wouldn't like it, Harry knew he really wouldn't like it. From beneath his chair, Harry's favorite half-goblin removed a box, and opened it to reveal a set of what looked like golden manacles. To Harry's eye, the pair of wrist bindings looked evil, their magic felt dull, and like a black hole might.
"As far as we can tell, the one thing separating you from this power, from true sorcery is your focus," Minerva grinned and Flitwick gave a terrifying goblin half smile, Harry had the decency to look slightly ashamed, "Your attention wanders a lot. The reason that you have been so successful so far is your excess power. Without all of the extra power you put into your spell work, they would fizzle out to nothing. These," Minerva pointed to the manacles in Flitwick's hand, "will dampen you magic. Fillius has purchased them from a cousin in the rock-home. They are adjustable, so you can turn them off for normal work around Hogwarts, and you can also turn them up when you bring your focus to a level where you can cast spells around the dampening."
The tiny professor carried on, "These small knobs here regulate how much magic they will absorb, you simply move them around the outside of the bracelet to the desired strength. All this will be doing is teaching you how to do more with less, and it is only step one. We've seen you as you've been learning and training outside our lessons, and when you were given lab space to begin with the Headmaster placed a small number of monitoring charms in your lab space."
Harry gulped at that. If the bearded one knew what he knew, he could be in trouble. Harry telling Sirius to not trust the old man alone would probably see him in hot water. After his conversation with Padfoot, Harry had been even more certain that the old man did not have his best interests in heart. As if a decade of unrelieved abuse without being checked on wasn't enough proof.
Fillius picked up on Harry's sudden nervousness, and wrongly attributing its source to a more personal or intimate one, attempted to mollify the boy, "Nothing that watched you or listened in to you, Minnie... er... Minerva and I made sure of that."
"Fillius! Well we know him well enough now I suppose. My friends call me Minnie, Harry, you may if you would like," She favored Harry with a smile, "But don't think this will go on unremarked you half-goblin nuisance!"
Flitwick looked abashed, but continued their original conversation, "The charms monitored spell use and power output, as well as your health. Basically, we know you compulsively practice everything you read about. Step two to your transition is to never again use an incantation. If you are around others, fudge the incantation, or make one up. What you need to eliminate your need for any form of incantation, and learn greater focus. What do you say?"
Harry took the cuffs from Fillius' hands with no small amount of hesitation. He gave his head a small shake, as if making up his mind or clearing it, and snapped the pair over each of his wrists. He moved the small knobs to their roughly halfway mark, and closed his eyes.
Harry didn't say anything, and the two professors seemed to get that this was his answer. The boy-who-lived raised a hand slightly, and with a scrunching of his face, a patchy but corporeal prongs stepped in front of him.
He looked at the bright stag in front of him. He narrowed his eyes, and the energy that made up the animal solidified. The animal gave Harry what seemed to be a look of thanks, and gave a short prance about the room before disappearing. Harry made eye contact with his two professors (er... advisors... friends? Harry thought, the line wasn't as clear anymore ) and gave a short nod.
"I... I think I can do this."
The rest of March and April proceeded apace. Harry got his tanning potion finished on the correct lunar schedule, and embedded his materials in the now magically impregnated leather. The bracer worked as a wand holder, though more often than not it held a blank holly wand shell in it. Harry had made a few for himself so he could always have one in an extra pocket. He was at the point where he didn't really keep track of his first wand anymore.
To him it represented himself without power, and without focus. It represented the time in his life when his greatest ambition was to make it to the next semester at Hogwarts, and hopefully to survive. Aside from all of that, on a mental level he had set the wand aside when he took up wild magic, sorcerer's magic. It was entirely due to a mental block he knew, but he couldn't channel a spark through it anymore.
Harry's final making of the bracer, which he had spent so much time on up to this point, could not have come a worse time for him personally. Its entire purpose was to ease the passage of his magic outside his boy. The blood binding in the tanning potions ensured that. His training was bent around the opposite purpose now.
Harry wore the manacles Flitwick had bought for him constantly. His near religious practice during class hours and when he wasn't with Luna, Nev, and occasionally the Twins had even got him to the point where he had burned out the pair.
Luckily Harry had studied the enchantments on the cuffs (despite how they simply felt wretched in his hands) and was able to duplicate and strengthen them. By mid-april Harry had run through two pairs of his home made dampers and was on a set he had constructed of conjured gold roughly double the size of the ones his half-goblin friend had made for him. The size he had be gifted simply couldn't hold the amount of rune encrusted work necessary to keep his power down.
The end result of all of the work was not only an increase in Harry's skill at practical enchantment, by that same mid-April time frame his hundreds of hours of practice (often waaaay later into the night than he should have been, he looked like his girlfriend in the morning more often than not by now) had developed a laser-like focus in him. He could twist, turn, and manipulate the trickle of power that his cuffs let through into any spell he needed, and the lack of power forced him to be very creative with uses.
All in all it was excellent training, but its application to Harry's next spot of trouble wasn't what he thought it would be.
Dumbledore smiled a wide and many toothed smile at the people in his office before him.
This! he thought with relish, Is Finally Something Going My Way!
The aged wizard may have been old and incredibly stubborn, but if there was one thing he knew it was what happened in his school. The 'chosen' one's entrance into the school this semester had been remarkable.
First his scans of the boy, and those of his favored St. Mungo healer slid right off of young Harry after that little dust-up during the World Cup. Dumbledore approved of the boy playing the hero, but he needed his sacrifice in good health, and too much accidental magic like that could run him into the dust before Dumbledore's plans could reach their conclusions. His inability to scan Harry was troublesome though. More than troublesome.
He had contingencies, but it simply wouldn't do to have his main plans run off of their rails.
Finally the boy reaches school, only to appear the same as he was before. Harry's marks had not changed much, a slight improvement maybe, but it was what the portraits in the library and what Severus was saying that were more telling.
The denizens of the shelves (ostensibly there to guide young minds to the correct knowledge) were reporting Harry there more than ever before, and on top of that he was more often than not in the company of Neville and the Lovegood heiress. These were troubling developments. Dumbledore needed Harry with the Weasley boy, Ron had kept Harry lazy for years, compounding the treatment Harry was to have received at his home.
Severus had said that the Boy now was possessed of an inhuman patience. Severus' own best efforts and the efforts of the, Albus shuddered, Malfoy scion had all gone to naught. Harry was maintaining his temper somehow, weathering these assaults like a proverbial rock.
Dumbledore needed the boy slightly harried, and angry at the pureblood bigots. He truly hated allowing the Malfoy boy free reign, under Dumbledore's tutelage the school had not been this bad in decades, but he needed his sacrifice to hate the enemy.
Of course as the year wore on Fillius gave the boy access to an old enchanting lab, and Minerva takes him on for extra tuition. They both privately insisted the boy had some reservoir of untapped potential, Albus thought not given all he had done to him, but all the same he had given his blessing. To not have done so would have raised suspicion among the two minds most closely guarded outside his own and Severus'.
It pained him to do these things, Dumbledore thought, it pained him so to have to arrange for the putting down of a brilliant young mind. But what was one life against Britain? What was one life against the world?
Then Harry gets entered into the competition. Dumbledore expected it. If his clearly imperiused friend hadn't put Harry's name into the goblet, Albus was likely to have done so himself. What could focus and trouble the boy more than another life and death adventure? Of course the boy had to have that old lion Minerva on his side. If she wasn't so protective of her cubs all the time, Albus might have suspected something about that.
The disaster of the first task meant he had to do a lot of damage control, the public didn't like the image of their savior roasted. The foolishness of the second meant the public saw even more incredible magic by his sacrifice. That was the true disaster.
Dumbledore had suspected some small increased ability, one-on-one attention from the two finest minds (save his own) in all of the UK meant there could be nothing less. What Harry had shown during his two public trials was nothing short of amazing. He could never admit it out loud, but internally Albus wondered if even he could match what Harry had done.
The sacrifice for the greater good couldn't be talented! How could Harry die to his foe (and in doing so kill his foe) if he could defend himself? It was far too early for Dumbledore's personal interference, that was two years off at the least. The boy was too strong though, and without Albus sneaking his way into the boy's room and attempt yet another binding on him, what was he to do?
He shook his head and ran a few fingers through his great beard. His solution was the platinum-blonde in front of him. This would tie the boy down. Bring him to heel a bit more, bring him back into Albus' fold. This was the reason for the grin that lit the elderly man's face.
The girl, Delacour was the name, was a part veela (quarter veela, his mind reported absently) and she was saying she had a life-debt to his boy. He had never looked into the intricacies of the cross-over between life-debts and veela bonding magic. She and her father were contending that the bond already existed, and nothing less than the consummation of the bond would allow her to continue living and keep her magic.
Albus wasn't sure if she was technically right, Harry's golems were the only thing in danger, but regardless of the truth of the matter he needed a sacrifice tied down and under control. This was a matter that necessitated his involvement, so it could break through his normal embargo on contact with Harry. A few full bore twinkles, an assignment of married student's quarters, and the abject disasters of the last few months could be back on course. Albus had never been one for the affections of the finer sex, but if the veela before him lived up to her people's carnal reputation the boy would actually enjoy this part of the path to his eventual death.
Harry had been summoned to the headmaster's office. He checked his conscience, and finding it no more loud than usual (his assistance to Fred and George notwithstanding) he asked the guardian to Dumble's office to move, and made his way upstairs.
Before his knuckle could impact on the door at the apex of the spiraling stairs, the unmistakable voice of the elderly headmaster sounded out from inside the office.
"Enter, Mr. Potter."
Harry's face flashed into an annoyed cast, then was quickly schooled back to normal. It was... childish, he decided, for the headmaster to do that to anyone entering his office. Harry had only been subjected to it a few times, mostly as his yearly death games concluded, but with the amount of personal growth he had undergone over the previous months, he understood now the extent to which it was a move designed to simply show off.
Harry opened the thick wooden door and entered to find the French tart (God damn it, it was so tempting, but no, that was rude. Fleur, her name was Fleur) sitting next to a man that could only be her father. Across the desk was the man Harry least wanted to see. Harry had no idea what was going on, but he knew it was going to be bad. The sixth sense he had for life threatening situations was pinging like it was going out of style. Harry knew it was going to be a very, very long day.
"You called for me, sir?"
Dumbledore released the first of what would end up being far fewer twinkles than he had hoped for, "Harry, you know your fellow champion, Ms. Delacour, beside her is her father, Alain Delacour, the head of the French department of Magical Law Enforcement."
Pleasantries were exchanged, with significant tension between Harry and the department head. Fleur couldn't meet his eyes, and Harry's danger sense was beginning to stop pinging and was simply a constant whine at the back of his head.
"Harry, how familiar are you with life debts?"
Harry's mind raced, thankfully his reading into magical binding following the goblet of fire incident had been thorough, "I'm very familiar sir, but I don't quite see why this is important."
"In a moment, dear boy," the afternoon's second and final twinkle was unleashed at full force, "how familiar are you with Veela, and their interaction with the aforementioned life debts?"
Harry's mind raced again. He despised being controlled. He had looked up the veela after he had access to the Hogwarts library, Harry knew that he needed whatever info he could get on veela after the World Cup. If they could undermine his barriers he needed to know, and he performed all the research himself as Hermione had walked off in a huff when she found the topic of his research. The wizarding sources of info on them had been surprisingly... pornographic in their portrayal of veela heritage.
Harry buzzed through all he knew and halfway through his mind reached a conclusion and stopped dead. Veela life bonds, veela mating bonds, just veela bonds. Harry knew this was going to be bad. He went to Luna in his mind, cursing that something like this could happen both to him and her. The Lady of the castle sent him a bracing feeling.
"Veela who owe life debts often bond, either unintentionally or just against their will, with the person they owe the debt to. Not fulfilling this bond results in their veela heritage removing their magic, often resulting in turn in the," Harry gulped, "... death of the woman involved."
Fleur and her father wore expressions of supreme surprise, Harry didn't notice. Harry did see surprise etched in every line and crease in the face of his headmaster. This gave Harry another bad feeling, it seemed as if he wasn't supposed to know these things.
"A... erm... thorough treatment of the subject, if lacking in details, dear boy. It seems as if your actions during the second task have brought a life debt between yourself and Ms. Delacour here. You can see what the implications of this are."
Harry put his head in his hands. It had to be something, things had been going too well this year. Of course he had to go and get married, for all intents and purposes, to some French girl he couldn't stand.
Alain spoke up, "Monsieur Potter, there can be no mistake you must complete the bond with my daughter. I know of you, and I know of your honor. I despise the suddenness of this, but you must consummate the bond with Fleur. Appoline, that is Fleur's mother, and I have waited these many days to confirm that the bond is true. My Appoline assures me that the veela in my daughter demands this."
Harry could not separate his head from his hands. He had a girlfriend. He had a chance to be happy. He had a plan. Damn this.
Albus continued, "The life debt, as I understand it, combines with the veela heritage of the charming lass here to create a magical bond between you. This cannot be denied."
His voice pierced the barrier of his hands, and as he spoke he slowly raised his eyes to the only other teenager in the room, "Fleur. Fleur. What do you have to say about this?"
Harry could see the poorly suppressed excitement in her. She wanted this, and wanted it badly, but her words were what tipped Harry off that something was seriously amiss.
"I do not want zis, obviously," hesitation, "But my magic and the veela are what zey are. Zis must 'appen. Eet is so unexpected!"
It was not beyond him to remember the look of hunger in her eyes at the end of the second task, nor was it beyond him to recognize now the significance to furtive whispers and tittering of the Beauxbatons contingent. The rest of this interaction he could buy, it was in character for Dumbles and Alain seemed genuine in his concerned father approach, but she wasn't on the level.
Harry's fresh angst moved just a smidge down the spectrum towards anger. Suspicion continued running through him. If there was a connection, if there was a sort of magical obligation, then there had to be a tie between them, right?
What else could cause such a reaction if not a magical compulsion, a magical binding or obligation to do this, to 'consummate' as Fleur's dad put it. Harry shuddered a bit. He was fourteen. If he had to be honest to himself, girls had only recently become not just another guy. Luna was the reason that changed for him, and they had been close on the train before that became a useful distinction for him. He was fourteen, he wasn't ready to consummate anything.
No one said another word after Fleur's statement, they all seemed to be waiting on Harry. He had his next move ready though. He crossed his hands, and with a curious twisting gesture, released the masking wrist cuffs. As they lost contact with his skin there was an immense magical pressure on the room for a moment. Fleur's eyes almost bugged out with what Harry could only qualify as desire. He deftly caught the as they fell from his forearms, and stored them into a pocket he had expanded on the inside of his robes (by Odin he loved the expansion charms channeled by pentacles). Alain saw the cuffs, and a visible flicker of recognition and confusion crossed his face.
"Fleur, give me your hand."
Again, Harry thought, she hid her triumph poorly. She thought she was going to win here, Harry didn't really need much more proof that this was a scam on her part, but he did wonder how this Appoline character was dragged into this, he didn't want to generalize about veela but he didn't exactly have a good sample now did he. She placed her hand in his, false nervousness written plain all over her face.
Harry had reached the point where he didn't need to close his eyes anymore, he just shot a small petrification through to her arm so she couldn't let go if she began to sense what he was doing, and he extended a tendril of magic through their connected hands and down into her core.
It was less than a tenth, less than a fiftieth or even a hundredth the size of his, but he had no problem identifying it. It was silver and blue, it had the same air, the same taste, as her aura did when it surrounded his barriers. It was like a breeze, light, fresh, airy, but it held a very strong note of fire that pulsed in time with her heart beat. It was as if it could burn up in a moment, becoming an all-consuming blaze.
This actually gave him a bit of insight into her. Unsurprisingly, he guessed, given how clear and deep a look into her very soul he now had. These actions weren't necessarily her. She was the air, the Veela in her was the fire. She was honest, she felt lonely. The veela in her was the part that screamed for a connection to him.
Harry didn't approve of her, he'd be damned if he liked her, but with this look he no longer even felt the childish desire to destroy or hurt her. After what felt like hours of feeling her from the inside out, learning about her from her very core, Harry retreated to the connection of their hands between them. He felt around, his training giving him more than a bit of the laser focus Minnie and Fillius had spoken of before.
There was no connection between them. Not a thread, not a fibre, not a hint or a shadow of a life debt or an obligation. Harry knew that was how it would be. As he had extended the tendril of his magic into her, a light shined where their hands met. It was the golden light flecked with green that he had come to associate with his magical presence, but as it appeared as a complete surprise to the three others in the room. Their expressions of surprise were all near mirror images of one another, though Fleur's soon change as she closed her eyes and felt the presence of Harry within her.
When Harry had seen all he needed to see, he released the veela witch from the minor petrifaction, giving her hand a small squeeze of support before turning in his chair to face Alain.
"Mr. Delacour, sir, what do you know about life debts?"
Dumbles gave a grumble of discontent at being tacitly cut out of the conversation, but the head of the French DMLE gave Harry a queer look before responding, "I worked up through the Aurors, monsieur Potter. I am familiar with the concept, but in our line of work it was our job to save lives so it was impossible for any of my fellows and I to incur them."
"Alain, I have done some extensive research on bindings, debts, and magical obligations following my unconsenting entrance into this blasted tournament. A life debt can only form if I put myself in great personal danger or expended significant personal resource to the same effect. This is the only way. I remember seeing you at the second task, if you will recall, not only did I never enter the water, even the constructs I sent in to the water to were made of the densest stone. Not even they were in danger."
The eldest Delacour present seemed to chew these words over. Fleur clutched her hand that Harry had squeezed like a lifeline, or more accurately Harry supposed, her veela did so. Albus, as Harry figured should have been proper if this meeting weren't some strange form of manipulation, was relegated to the back of any and all conversation or thought.
"Alain, please, take my hand along with your daughter, I will show you."
Fleur was beyond quick to snatch Harry's hand, Alain much slower.
"If you have any defenses around your mind, please trust me and relax them for a moment. I'll show you what I mean."
Harry laughed internally for a moment. Alain really hadn't stopped giving him a strange look since the moment they had met. Truth be told, Harry couldn't blame him. Harry wouldn't let a guy like him date any daughter of his, much less do any of that whole 'consummation' jazz.
Harry sent his magic through his hand to the older man, and encountered a barrier. To Harry's gaze it was purple to his own blood red, but it seemed to work for the man. Harry extended a very narrow tendril and gave a very light rap on the man's shield. He took a step back in surprise.
"Please sir. I'm not going to seek any information about you, I won't enter your mind or look into you. I need you to let down your barrier for a moment so I can lead you to the connection between your daughter and I. I would like you to feel it first hand, sir."
The tall and broad shouldered Frenchman seemed to nod his head as if affirming to himself that Harry Potter wasn't likely to harm him, and the barrier slowly dropped as he closed his eye to see inside himself. Harry felt a piece of the man's magic clasp firmly onto his own, and he drew Alain's awareness down through himself and into the area where his magic met that of Fleur.
Dumbledore was making increasingly grumpy sounds from where he sat, as harry spoke again to the French contingent in the room.
"Sir, do you sense anything here? This, right here is where our magic meets," Alain nodded, "Your daughter's magic feels of air, and the veela in her tempers that air with the feeling of fire, of passion. My own magic is raw, and it focuses mostly on transformation. It is magic of change. Can you feel it sir?"
The man's response was a tight nod. He hadn't gotten to be head of the French DMLE by the graces of his charms and nepotism, though as things often were these days, they had certainly helped. He thought he got where the young man before him was going with this.
"I'll draw my own magic away from hers, and tell me what you see between us."
Harry did so, and a solid five minutes of incredibly awkward silence permeated the room. Albus shifted in an uncomfortable manner throughout the time, he wasn't used to not being a part of the center of the attention for any given meeting. The current developments didn't sit well with him, and for more reasons than his lack of inclusion in the proceedings.
Alain's voice broke the quiet, but only barely. He whispered out from beneath closed eyelids, "Nothing. There is nothing there. You cannot be bound. To think of what we almost did."
Harry guided Alain's awareness back to his own body, and relinquished both hands. Fleurs eyes filled up with tears at the no longer awkward silence following her Father's words.
Harry stood.
"My purpose here is done. There is no bond, there cannot be one. That is not all though. Alain, please speak to your wife. Fleur's veela controls her, she must learn balance if she is to live a full life. I don't know veela, but I know magic. There must be balance, Mr. Delacour."
Harry grasped Fleur's hands from where they covered her face as she sobbed silently. Her plan was no more. Harry, a being of such power that her veela calls out to him as the wolf calls out to the moon, was lost to her. She was without hope.
In a move that surprised everyone in the room again, Harry drew the young witch to her feet, and wrapped her in a hug.
"You can find balance, you abuse your veela as it does you. Take care. Not everyone is as kind as I am about being entrapped," Harry whispered into her ear.