Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn

A City That Is At Unity In Itself

Wilt thou, by God's grace alone
Obtain the Stone of the Philosophers?
If so, seek it not in vegetables or animals,
In sulphur, quicksilver, and minerals;
Vitriol, alum, and salt are of no value;
Lead, tin, iron and copper profit nothing;
Silver and gold have no efficacy.
Hyle or Chaos will accomplish it all.
It is enclosed in our salt spring,
In the tree of the Moon and of the Sun.
I call it the Flower of Honey,
The Flower known to the Wise.
***
The New Jerusalem is built
With transparent clear gold,
Also with pure precious stone.
Here is placed the famed Stone of the Wise,
The unique bird, the good Phoenix,
Who by the glow of the fire
Is slain and born again,
And becomes a real Salamander,
Who now lives in the fire.
This is filius solis, child of the sun,
Who with his singular power
Works miracles and great wonders,
And can expel all sicknesses
In human and metallic bodies.
With glorified body, flesh and blood,
He purifies all that is corporal.
The immortal Adam, highly endowed,
Tinges common gold and silver,
So that they thereby may become fruitful,
To bear their blessed likeness on the Earth.

- 'Certain Verses of an Unknown Writer Concerning the Great Work of the Tincture', from the alchemical compendium by Benedictus Figulus, Pandora magnalium naturalium..., Strassburg, 1608, translated by A.E. Waite in his edition of The Golden and Blessed Casket of Nature's Marvels..., London, 1893.

FIGULUS, PUBLIUS NIGIDIUS (c. 98 - 45 BC), Roman savant, next to Varro the most learned Roman of the age. He was a friend of Cicero, to whom he gave his support at the time of the Catilinarian conspiracy (Plutarch, Cicero, 20; Cicero, Pro Sulla, X1V. 42). In 58 he was prætor, sided with Pompey in the Civil War, and after his defeat was banished by Cæsar, and died in exile. According to Cicero (Timæus, 1), Figulus endeavoured with some success to revive the doctrines of Pythagoreanism. With this was included mathematics, astronomy and astrology, and even the magic arts.

***

See Cicero, Ad Fam. iv. 13; scholiast on Lucan I. 639; several references in Aulus Gellius; Teuffel, Hist. of Roman Literature, 170; M. Hertz, De N. F. studiis atque operibus (1845); Quæstiones Nigidianae (1890), and edition of the fragments (1889) by A. Swoboda.

- The 11^th Edition of the

Encyclopædia Britannica (1911)

PUBLIUS VERGILIUS MARO, a native of Mantua, had parents of humble origin, especially his father, who according to some was a potter, although the general opinion is that he was at first the hired man of a certain Magus....

- Suetonius, Loeb ed.

i. Draco's Bow of Burning Gold

Were it not for the presence of that absolute poon, Potter, the dreams were not so bad, really. At least he was doing quite well in them, and seemed to be safe, secure, and solvent. Shagged rotten, as well, which, if only it weren't Potter....

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ii. Harrys' Arrow of Desire

All things being taken into account, a future this golden, one of victory, peace, and someone, finally, to love him, was almost worth its being Malfoy who loved him.... Almost.

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iii. Dumbledore Resolves That, If the Chariot is On Fire, He'd Much Rather Walk

No, really. The exercise would do him good.

A golden future and love burning brightly between these two? Victory and peace? And all so delicately suspended that trying to effect it would almost certainly instead prevent it. These were the torments of Tantalus. He could hardly bear to watch. The sweeter the prospect, the more painful were it to fail and be, in the end, but a dream of what might have been.

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iv. We Have Built Jerusalem

Once again, the dreams. Once again, as ever, framed by the scene of the two of them, wounded but alive, meditating the uses of victory amidst the groans of the wounded and the dying.

'Now we both have what we wanted. And we can do as we damned well please. That is what victory is, Harry. And that is what was worth fighting for.'

And Harry remembered the words of a seer from years before: neither may live while the other survives.... Perhaps, now, it would be possible to get on with life: to live, at last. But first, it would be necessary to bury the dead, and come to some terms with the past....

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v. England's Green and Pleasant Land

In a past envisioned in dreams....

From Kenfig Hill to Mynydd Margam - Morgan's Mountain - and Moel Ton-mawr of the Cistercians, who settled where the Legions had once garrisoned and where Roman legates long ago had made a park for deer; from Eglwys Nunydd, the Church of the Nuns, to Mynydd Baedan, that some claim was Mount Badon where the dux bellorum Arthur fought, to Llangynwyd of the Celtic anchorites, was the Evans's country of Glamorgan and Neath. But long before, it had been someone else's country as well, 'she of the vales', a holy woman on good terms with the anchorites and a fit precursor to the later nuns. She was of mixed parentage, her mother's kinship being from Morgannwg, the Vale and Strand of Morgan, Glamorgan, from the cantref that bore the Evans line, but her father's people being of the Danes who went a-viking and at various times held lands in Wales as elsewhere, even to founding a kingdom in Dublin and seizing much of the East of England. She was descended in right line from the Danish wizard-warrior, Harald 'Hvalpuf', 'Whale-spout', which name the English tongue abraded into 'Hufflepuff'. He had settled with others of his kindred on the strand and thence inland, from what is now Port Talbot well into the vales of Morgannwg. Witch that she was, rather than shield-maiden, her father had named her Helga: the holy maid.

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Pendle was notorious for its witches and wizards, and there was by all accounts Device blood in the Longbottoms and the Leatherbarrows both.

But in the Year of Our Lord 1652, forty years after the Pendle Witches were hanged, a more momentous event occurred on Pendle Hill. A learned grazier and shepherd who had - although a layman - already begun preaching of the doctrine of the Inner Light, felt a 'leading' at its foot.

As we travelled, we came near a very great hill, called Pendle Hill, and I was moved of the Lord to go up to the top of it; which I did with difficulty, it was so very steep and high. When I was come to the top, I saw the sea bordering upon Lancashire. From the top of this hill the Lord let me see in what places he had a great people to be gathered.

The man to whom that vision was vouchsafed was named George Fox, and his legacy, that vision realised, was the Society of Friends: the Quakers.

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Some sixty miles to the Northwest of Pendle Hill, two centuries after George Fox's vision, the new men had begun to arise; men of a new and very different vision. Men who had left the countryside for the towns and the cities. Men of craft with their hands, with minds attuned to wheels and cogs. Some were good men enough, intellectually excited by the challenge of turning Nature to their purposes. Some were grasping and hard, who saw Nature as inimical and to be subdued, or simply as so many resources to be plundered.

The Bryces were small and fiercely independent farmers, with their own lands and their own flocks as well. Dour, perhaps, a bit near-going when it was a question of brass, but no side to them, though in their possessions and holdings they were superior farmers. Thrawn folk, but decent, a part of the solid, ordered world of the Hangles time out of mind. They lived in a world that was in balance, until one of the new men came. He was of the grasping sort, sharp and cunning, a 'warm man' in no complimentary sense. His name was Jasper Thomas Riddle.

He started small, did this townee incomer. But his mill grew, and with it his brass, and with these, his pride and his greed. The mill grew, and its labour force, and the mean houses of them, and the country 'round saw the men leave to take work at the mill; and Jasper Riddle's mill and factories grew, and demanded more meat for their capacious maws. And so the empty land feel into Riddle's grasping hands, in great slabs, until the new man was lord in all but name of Hangle-in-Cleveland, Hangle-le-Beans, Hangle-le-Street, Hangleton-le-Moors, Hangle-le-Hole, Hanglethorp, and Hangleby. The farmers, now dispossessed, left the lands they had lost, and, with the villagers, trooped to Riddle's dark, Satanic mills. The empty country fell to the incomer. Deserted and silent, mourned only by the birds of the cold air, curlew, merlin, and plover, the empty lands, Hangleton Moor, Hangle Dale, Hangle Beck, Hangle Rigg, Hangle Fell, Hangle Scar, all were held tight in his grip. And he took a wife during his ascent, did Jasper Riddle, a faded and sour woman of far better family and no brass at all, and he builded them a great, ugly house looking down on the village, a heavy and frowning house lowering over Little Hangleton, its park taking in everything from there to Great Hangleton itself.

All the Hangle country was his now, almost to Bedale and to Snape, where great gentlemen and lords from t'South had their shooting, even - though he knew it not - the Malfoys of Wiltshire.

And then did Jasper Riddle turn his eyes to the southwards. He was a Radical, which did not mean he believed in opportunity and equality for such as the Bryces and the others he had dispossessed, but, rather, meant that he wanted to tear down the privileges of the titled and seize them for himself and the other new men, men who could buy and sell an earl twice over. With the Great Reform Act 1832 and the new Second Reform Act 1867 now in place, there was every reason to believe that he, and after him his son Japheth Riddle, could found a dynasty at Westminster as they had, in industry, in the Hangles of the North Riding.

But Jasper Riddle had failed to recognise the twitch of his tether. Even as he set his foot upon the first rung of the parliamentary ladder, the Long Depression of 1873 broke upon him and his, and was to hang on until 1896, long after he had died and his grandson Jabez had been born, he who was to father the elder Thomas Riddle, whose son in turn would seal the family's destruction.

Jasper Riddle had overextended himself, plunging heavily into markets he ill understood, and the new economy of the age favoured financiers over manufacturers, who had not the resources to maintain the great combinations of the day and their monopoly powers. Well before he died, much of what he had built and bought, had seized and swindled for, had sloughed away, in great chunks, and the legacy of Jasper Riddle, MP, JP, when he died, soured, raging, and richly hated, was a family of hereditary bitterness, the retention of the first mill and factory, a large, draughty, and ill-favoured house, and an uneasy supremacy over dependents who loathed them, and had cause to do.

The Bryces, father and son over four generations, displaced by the Riddle avarice and ambition, had become the gardeners at the Riddle house. It were work, and work more congenial than work down t'mill; more nearly independent, and closer to the earth and the old ways. Frank Bryce, the last of his line, was not an important man, as the world regards such things: a gardener, from a long line of country folk. Yet when Frank Bryce was two years in age, his father had gone off to war, in Flanders fields, and when he himself was seven-and-twenty, he had followed his father in service to King and Country, had felt the sting of battle and carried a wound ever after, honourably gained in a war against great evil.

When, in August of 1994, Frank Bryce, an honest old man invalided out of the service for wounds suffered in the retreat to Dunkirk, was casually murdered by the last of the Riddles, the pattern of callous evil begun by Jasper Riddle was complete.

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In dreams of peace, after Hogwarts and Domdaniel, and recalling a dreamt past.

It is a curious fact - and one that causes Draco Malfoy to grin mysteriously and say nothing, to this day - that all but one manor in the entire county of Wilts seems to be missing from all surviving copies of Domesday Book. Certainly the Malfoy properties have never been accounted for to Muggles.

The situation in Devon, Dorset, and Somerset is a trifle different, and far more baffling. In each county, as recorded in the Exon Domesday, there are entries showing extensive holdings held directly of the king, as tenant in chief, on no specified service, attributed to one 'magus' - which cannot, of course, mean what it seems to mean: a scribe's or a later scholiast's error, no doubt - Harold, 'called Figulus', and also called 'Artifex'. These include in many instances, property by property, mills and mines, fisheries and forests, churches and castles, tolls and mints. Their value, 'TRE' - in the time of King Edward the Confessor - and after the Conquest alike, is at once undiminished and incredible, being valued more highly than all the holdings of the bishops, of the count of Mortain, and of the count's half-brother the king himself. Equally implausibly, these holdings in no case record any slaves. Nor do these values translate into any taxation at all.

More strangely still, this Harold, a royal thegn of the prior dynasty, has not been stripped of his lands, even though it is clear that he has had no dealings with, much less has he assisted, the Normans. Some authorities have suggested that this leaving of Harold in peace suggests a connexion with an earlier thane, of the days of King Ethelred, one Godric. Ethelred was married to Emma of Normandy, the Conqueror's great-aunt, and Saxon Godric seems to have had contacts with the Norman court, as attested by his surname, Gryffindor (gryphon d'or); but this speculative connexion, even were it true, between Godric, who disappears from the records early in Ethelred's reign, even before the marriage to Emma, and the Harold called 'Figulus', does not at all explain the latter's retention of his lands after the Conquest.

Strangest of all is it that a thane of great wealth should ever have been by-named 'Artifex' and 'Figulus'. Yet in some fashion, this Harold, whose lands and manors immediately thereafter vanish from the record and are never subject to census after, seems to have had the wary respect of the new king and his officers: indeed, it would almost appear that they feared him, and left him strictly alone; and not him only, but tenants who held of him, such as those in Ottery St Catchpole, amongst them the 'barons', that is, the free thegns as tenants, of Weasel Lea: who, a peculiar marginal entry records, are 'protectors and knights (milites), who guard against (?)fell beasts and monsters (be[?l]uæ infe[?s]t-...)'.

Now, 'figulus,' as all ought know, means 'potter' in the common tongue.

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In a dreamt peace, at Domdaniel.

After the War, it had occurred to Harry - not so subtly encouraged by Dumbledore's Socratic waffling - that he had, perforce, spent almost all of his life withindoors. The back garden of number four, Privet Drive, had not precisely counted as countryside, after all; and, as Dumbledore had noted - purely in passing, of course, amongst a great welter of irrelevance (Harry snorted to himself, thinking of that unlikely claim) - as Dumbledore had noted, twinkling infuriatingly, most of Harry's happiest memories seemed to have as their settings the Forest, Hagrid's paddock, or the air itself, whether above the pitch or simply flying for fun.

Besides, Dumbledore had said, rather more gravely, there were matters to be dealt with regarding Sirius's estate. Grimmauld Place was well in hand, now, but that had been only the Black town seat. Whenever Harry wished to go see what he had inherited, Dumbledore offered, he was certain that Arrangements Could Be Made. After all, the old man had winked-and-nudged, his college, and the Fellows, and the Chancellor, and the University Corporation, for that matter, owed him a certain amount of consideration, he having saved them all....

Thus it was that the two surviving male heirs of the Black line, Harry and Draco, found themselves just outside the Hogwarts-and-Domdaniel anti-Apparition boundary, with Remus and Dumbledore, with tutorials behind them and the weekend before them. As only Dumbledore knew where they were going, his presence was indispensable, even had they wished to dispense with it.

When they opened their eyes a moment later, they rather wondered if the old man were not, perhaps, losing his touch. They were standing in the midst of a sombre, still, and untouched heathland, bracken and heather underfoot, birch and pine and oak to every side, somewhere in the West Midlands. Dumbledore obviously was well aware of their fugitive suspicions of his sanity, as his twinkle increased tenfold, and he passed the other three each a small twist of parchment.

The Black Family's seat, Atrum Old Hall, may be found near Furvus Bridge, Staffs.

'Which is why we're standing in the middle of the Cannock Chase AONB, Albus?'

Dumbledore chuckled. 'Now, Remus, you of all people know what to do now - and that things are not always as they seem.'

They performed the faintly ridiculous ritual of memorising the directions and concentrating on them, and, with the inevitability of sunrise, a great, ramshackle house and surrounding parkland, run riot from neglect, sprung up before them. Atrum Old Hall was the work of centuries, gone to seed in a generation: a jumble of Elizabethan brick and Stuart stone, connecting with a half-timbered core amidst the wrack and ruin of a Norman motte and bailey; all added-on to, brutally, without the least consideration, by sneering, condescending, Whiggish Georgian ashlar and oppressive Victorian vulgarity in brick.

'Staffordshire,' Harry mused. 'I don't imagine I'd've guessed that for Sirius's family.'

'Harry,' Draco coaxed. 'Hullo? They do call this the Black Country.'

'Well, yeah, that's because of the coal and all the early industry -'

Draco sighed, and closed his eyes, in what was very nearly a wince. 'Raised by Muggles,' he reminded himself, half-audibly, with an evident effort at patience.

'The Muggles adopted the term for their own reasons, Harry.' Lupin was typically brisk, kindly, and lucid, the model schoolmaster. 'But it was the country dominated by the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black -' Lupin's tone became discernibly dry - 'long before the First Industrial Revolution. In fact, that's rather when the Blacks came a cropper. They had plans for out-mining and under-cutting the Muggles, and profiting massively. Unfortunately, they way they meant to go about it would have violated the Statute of Secrecy, and what's more, the plan involved trying to cozen Goblins into doing the mining for a song. Nearly sparked a whole new Goblin Rebellion.'

'Thank God it didn't,' Draco said. 'More grist to Binns's mill? No, thank you.'

'Yes, well,' Dumbledore smiled, 'there is that. But it is from the period Remus refers to that the Blacks's jealous hatred of Muggles burst all bounds of reason and became positively obsessive and unbalanced. Odd, really; they and their Muggle neighbours had surprisingly similar views, in the end. This was very much Enoch Powell territory during the racialist agitations of the 1960s and '70s. Shall we go in, now, and see what they've left you?'

Harry hesitated. 'It can't possibly be as bad as Grimmauld Place, surely?'

But it was.

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In dreams of peace, after Hogwarts and Domdaniel, in the flush of adulthood.

There were numerous, solid reasons why the post-War generation had adopted - had acquiesced in Harry's adopting - the policy of regular rotation in office. Two years was more than enough to ask of a Minister for Magic in peacetime. They had other calls on their lives. Rotation prevented entrenched ways of thinking, graft, the politics of personality.... Rotation promoted fresh ideas and new approaches.... There was no loss of continuity of policy, after all, with all of the war heroes of one mind, all of them members of the Wizengamot, all of them sworn to the Magical Privy Council.... And these arguments applied, mutatis mutandis, to the headmastership of Hogwarts and various positions and offices, up to and including the chancellor's and vice-chancellors' seats, at Domdaniel.

But the actual reason was hinted at in the offhand remark, 'they had other calls on their lives'. Mostly, Harry and Draco had other calls, and in order not to exclude them from their just rewards of office - Hermione never actually admitted that Harry and Draco would have liked nothing better than to be left out of the rotation - whilst yet accommodating their other wants, the rotation system had been quietly agreed on by their friends. (By and large, Draco quietly and delicately 'managed' Harry. But Ron, Neville, Luna, Ginny, Dean, Blaise, Justin, Seamus, Ernie, Colin, and the rest, with Hermione well in the van, generally 'managed' Draco and Harry both.)

Harry and Draco, for their parts, did not mind at all taking their turns as masters and dons, headmasters and deans and principals and chancellors and wardens and fellows, at Hogwarts and at Domdaniel and its colleges. Political office was, however, a duty, and a cross to be borne - not least because it took so much time.

Mind you, neither complained of the demands of civic duty nearly as loudly or as lengthily as did that most reluctant Wizengamot member of all, one Ronald Bilius Weasley.

The fact of the matter was, Harry and Draco did have other things to do, things that their fellow veterans and heroes did not have to do. Certainly, everyone in Wizarding Britain was, in some fashion, recovering and rebuilding from the War. But Draco's situation was unique in his need to rebuild, and indeed to reform and recreate, his family's honour, and to purge its traditions: a need that Harry as Sirius's heir could assist in, on the Black side, but which Harry himself did not, could never, fully share. At the same time, Harry's situation was unique, even granting that Draco as a Black could assist in part of its management, in that Harry had two or more generations's worth of recovery and rebuilding to do, and generations's worth of Wizarding ancestors to come to grips with, as he recovered and re-established the patrimony of the Potters, the Evanses, and the Blacks.

Draco had a name and a lineage to purify. Harry had estates to rebuild and a lineage to recover and learn.

Sometimes, Draco marvelled at the deep, subtle connexions that wove their lives together. He had been raised to embody the alleged traditions of the Malfoys, only to find that those traditions had been a twisted and frightfully nouveau riche pastiche of even the worst traditions of his line; he had hardly been allowed to know he was a Black as well, much less that the Black traditions encompassed Sirius and Aunt Andromeda and Phineas Nigellus and Great-Grand-Uncle Alphard, quite as much as they did the 'dark' Blacks whose ultimate avatar was Bellatrix Black Lestrange.

And now, here he was, with Harry, standing in the deep grasses of a Somerset meadow. The nearest town was Pylle, the nearest pub, the Portman Arms; the nearest town of consequence was Shepton Mallet, and off to the Northwest he could almost imagine he saw the tower that crowns Glastonbury Tor.

Deep and subtle connexions. East of them was his own ancestral Wilts, and the manor house of his youth that was now Harry's own - and thus more truly his, as well, than ever it had been; yet when in Wilts they dwelt more often in the Wylye Valley than at the Manor with all its memories, living peaceably in an ancient, small hall set between the river and the Great Ridge, South-southwest of Bapton and Fisherton de le Mere, in the area bounded by the Deverills (Longbridge Deverill, Hill Deverill, Brixton Deverill, Monkton Deverill, and Kingston Deverill), the Fonthills (Fonthill Gifford and Fonthill Bishop), the Wishfords (Great and Little), the Langfords (Hanging, Little, and Steeple), the Codfords (Codford St Mary and Codford St Peter), Tytherington Hill, the Great Ridge, and Grovely Wood. It was a property that had passed into the possession of the Malfoys from their collaterals, the Ludlows and the Pyles: the selfsame, wizardly Pyles who had come to Wilts from just here, in Somerset, in the Summer Country.

And across the Severn's mouth from this same Somerset, across Bridgwater Bay and the Bristol Channel, was the ancient Vale of Glamorgan, and the lands around Pyle and Kenfig whence the Evanses of Harry's mother's family had come.

To the South and West, also quite near, really, in Devon, not so far from the Potters's old retreat at Wyvern House, was Ottery St Catchpole and the Burrow and their mutual - mutual: he was still getting used to that - cousins, the Weasleys; Ottery St Catchpole, and the Fawcetts, the Lovegoods, and - his breath caught, in shame and grief, as always when he thought of Cedric's murder - the Diggorys.

Deep and subtle connexions. West of them - halfway between Wyvern House and where they stood, in fact - was Godric's Hollow, on the margins of Exmoor, where - aptly, as Bowman Wright is buried there, and Bowman Wright's Sons, Ltd, still ply their trade, manufacturing Snitches - a professional Quidditch pitch, now named in memory of James Potter, stood, hidden in impenetrable magical fog. Godric's Hollow, Gryffindor's ancient home, where James and Lily had been slain and whence their boy - Who Lived - was hurried away by Hagrid on Sirius's flying motorbike, to hide away in Wales during the darkest hours before being taken clear across the kingdom, to Little Whinging.

All this was Potter country, as it had been Arthur's country, and Godric Gryffindor's; Potter country, where the earliest and eldest of wizards arose, potters with their craft, masters of earth and water and fire and air. What had old Bellowes said?

'The Smith preceded the prince and the warrior, for it was the Smith who learnt the alchemy of forgin' metals, it was the Smith who created the swords and the shields that allowed those who acknowledged him to carve out kingdoms and principalities and dominions. It was the Mason who made the walls the troops garrisoned, who raised the palaces and built the fortifications. And first of them all, in the dawn of civilised time, it was the Potter whose art and mystery, whose magic and craft, took earth and water and air and fire, and broke men free of the seasons, storin' the food for use, cookin' the meats, holdin' the first potions in vessels, allowin' men to settle and plan and store. It was the Potter who made it possible to do more than live from hand to mouth. It was the Potter whose art and mystery first freed men to watch the heavens and dig in the earth for ores, who made it worthwhile to sow and plant and harvest and irrigate, and so inspired others who learnt magic of him to take counsel of the stars for those endeavours.

'And from the Potter's kiln came the Smith's forge, and from out the Smith's forge came the Mason's tools. And the Potter and the Mason and the Smith gave rise to the second tier of ancient families of magic, the Bowyer and the Fletcher with the arrows tipped in metal and the Cooper with the Smith's bronze and iron, the Baker and the Brewer with the Potter's vessels, and the Granger once granaries were made possible by the Potter's and the Mason's art.

'It was then, young Malfoy m'lad, that the younger sons of these families of power, fitted out by the craft and mystery of their fathers, went forth to raise cities and castles and to wage war and establish power. Ares and Zeus and Apollo the archer and Athene with her shield and spear are unarmed without Hæphaistos, and Weyland Smith is ultimately the one without whom the Northern gods are lost: there's a metaphoric truth in the old myths.'

So it had been. Magic lingered especially in the West. The Punic traders had been here, dark men who smiled mysteriously in their beards and spoke of magic and the stars, and reported to the Greek world that there were islands here, and tin. Behind the stannaries stood magic, deep and ancient, the magic of the Smith, the Wright, who learnt his trade and took his tools and his kiln from the eldest magician of all, from the Potter who was the first to have a craft and a mystery, the father of alchemy and elemental magics.

Deep and subtle, subtle and exceeding deep, was the magic, and subtle and fine its innumerable connecting threads, its cunning filaments that netted together Potters and Malfoys, Weasleys and Diggorys and Lovegoods. Deep and subtle its warp and woof, weaving the patterns of lives. Magic lingered and the connexions it wove were all about them.

And here, now, Draco stood beside his Harry. It was one of those perfect English days that makes poets of the least of men. The grasses were lush and knee-high. Fritillaries sparked in the gentle and lambent air, and a few blue butterflies: fewer of the blue butterflies than on the chalk of home, to the eastwards, in Wilts. Harry had spoken briefly, earlier, with a passing grass snake. Bluebells rioted in the understorey of the hazel coppice, where the dormice dwelt, and swallows haunted the eaves of Pottersfield House. The Potter's Field: one of Harry's forebears, Draco mused, had a wicked sense of humour. But there was no touch of gallows humour in this air; rather it bore the sweetness of wildflower and birdsong, and the drowsy susurration of bees.

Draco had become, in the years since the War and after university, more and more attuned to the elder and deeper magics, to the natural magics, purer, more Light, than any he had been taught. Somewhat to his surprise, it had increased his talents as a potions maker twenty-fold or more. But that had not been his purpose. It all came down, as most things did, to Harry, and Harry's matchless innocence; to Harry, and, Draco admitted, fondly, to Neville, as well. As the horrors of war had impended, it had been Neville, more than Draco, more even than Ron and Hermione, nay, more even than Dumbledore or Lupin, who had saved Harry from becoming what he was fighting against. Only Neville could have done so, because, when it came down to it, there was a bond between Harry and Neville, the two objects of that notorious prophecy, that was greater in its way than the bonds Harry had with Ron or Hermione or Remus or Albus or even, oddly, Draco himself. Only Neville could have reached him in those months before the destined hour, as only Neville had been able to break through to Harry in the dire, numb hours after the last battle, when even Draco could not fully do so. On some deep level of the soul, Harry and Neville had found in one another, the two victims of the prophecy and of Riddle's worst malice, the brother each had never had, and not even Ron had thought once to be jealous of their twinship of souls, not even Draco had resented Harry's bond with another. It was Neville, equable, earnest, endlessly loyal, who understood a part of Harry that not even the other two-thirds of the Trio, or his bondmate Draco, could. Draco recalled a bitter evening, when the world seemed about to implode and all hope of victory lost, when Neville, shy, reserved Neville, had put aside the English horror of such gestures and walked over to Harry, who had already shrugged off the proffered comfort even of Molly, Draco, and Hermione, and simply hugged him. It had been the most courageous thing, really, that Draco had ever seen, and was the moment in which Draco finally and fully understood just why the Sorting Hat had placed Neville Longbottom in Gryffindor. And Harry had not fought Neville, as he had bristled at the others, and after a lengthy pause had hugged him back, and then all of them had found themselves hugging Harry and Neville both, in a most un-English display that gave Snape the vapours, raised McGonagall's eyebrows and blood pressure simultaneously, caused Dumbledore to break down into refined, barely-suppressed sniggering, and wholly baffled Blaise Zabini, who - to the end of his life, and despite the Zabinis having lived in London for over eight centuries - would never comprehend the mad Anglo-Saxons and their less than Latinate ways.

Come to think of it, it was Neville's fault that Harry had turned into an inveterate hugger on a positively American scale. Although, to be fair, Draco mused, Harry was making up for eleven years in a cupboard, as far as that went.

But Neville was responsible for more than that. Harry had been left by his years at Privet Drive with a horror of suburbia, and - by his experiences with the Ministry, the press, and the general public - with a distrust of cities and crowds. He had taken to the countryside, to his ancestral acres long hidden from all but his trustees (as Albus had said, 'if Vernon and Petunia Dursley had thought for a moment you owned anything, they would have deprived you of it sooner than you could say, "wand"'), with alacrity, with childlike wonder, and with joy. And it had, naturally, been Neville - and who better, after all? - to whom Harry had turned for guidance in learning his way about the natural world and its magic. It went without saying that Draco had been with them each step of the way, and had learnt everything Neville - and Hagrid, also, when he had been roped in - had had to teach them.

There were those, Draco reflected, and amongst them many who had every reason to know better, who had thought that Albus Dumbledore had become even more childish than commonly, towards the end, before his death of sheer old age, some years after the War. Draco knew better. He had become rather frail, it was true, and the Highland weather had overborne him; even after Draco and Harry had brought him to live with them, and cared for him until his peaceful and blameless end, in their various retreats in Wiltshire and Somerset, with visits to Devon and the Weasleys, Fawcetts, and Diggorys, the old wizard had tired easily, and he had delighted to the last in speaking in riddles and conundrums (in a brief moment of inconsequence, Draco dimly recalled an old jest about conundra and sums, but it danced past like the damselfly that hovered between him and Harry). But Albus had never lost his wits, to the very end. It had been just there, in the shade of an ancient oak, that Albus had given Harry, the day before he died, some last good advice, ostensibly about farm and estate management, but with a typically double-edged applicability: the standard Dumbledorian admixture of whimsy, shrewdness, parable, and koan. Even as advice on rural life, it was especially worthwhile; for, after all, what Dumbledore hadn't known about bees and pollination hadn't been worth knowing.

Albus Dumbledore, Rubeus Hagrid, and Neville Longbottom. There had been - was yet, in Hagrid and in Neville - a quiet strength in them that was the strength of the earth itself, of the natural order. They had taught a magic that Harry had never had a chance to know and that Draco had had kept from him, and for Draco, at least, learning the solid, simple, clean magic of Nature had been the final step in his transformation from a model out of Lucius's warped and twisted mould, to his own, honest self, Harry's Draco.

He closed his eyes and reached out with his magic into the natural order about them. His consciousness expanded, comprehending the great chain of being, comprehending and accepting and enfolding the presences all around. Peafowl and guinea-fowl, slowworm and grass snake, hare and rabbit, badger, otter, and fox, deer and dormouse, vole and meadow mouse, dragonfly and damselfly and butterfly, bee and wasp, Crup and Kneazle, cockchafer and worm. He reached out still further, searchingly, taking in harvest mouse and warbler, red squirrel and stoat, ladybird and lacewing; the sweet-breathed cattle, the well-fleeced sheep and the gambolling lambs. Frogs, newts, and toads, trout and carp. Corncrake and dove, swallow and wren and owl, and the pipistrelle bat. He felt the apple trees in the vast and ancient orchard behind them, and the primroses now gone to seed and the blackthorn and the hawthorn and the staghead oak and the mistletoe and the full, mature oak and the gentle willow. He opened his mind and magic to the crab-apple and the wild cherry, to the sloe and the orchard cherry and the pear. He opened his eyes and saw beyond mere sight, gazing at the trees that hid a rookery and at the meadow that in the dawn would be filled with nets of trapped stars, the bedewed webs of spiders. The bunting and the magpie were nearby, he knew, the grey heron had long since built her a nest and the chiffchaff had come to herald the imminence of summer. The soft air was redolent with the fragrance of wild flowering grasses, and with the dizzying scent of apple blossom, wave upon wave of it.

Draco remembered the astonishment that he and Harry had both felt on first seeing the vasty orchards here, here in the most ancient of the Potter demesnes, the head of their old lordship, and Albus's chuckle as an ancient, but spry and sprightly, house-elf had appeared, apple-checked and West-Country-accented, to welcome the son of the house to the lands that were his. Draco had been unable not to blurt out, 'You own a cider orchard and the Wizarding world's premier cider-makers and bottlers, and you've a house-elf named Scrumpy?' Dumbledore had laughed so hard he'd had to be gently helped to sit down and recover.

Harry turned to him, his own face joyous and open. 'I think the blossoms have set - do you feel it?'

'Yes, love. I feel it, also. Today's the day.'

Harry beamed. 'Oh, super. I love this part. Wands out, then.' And they carefully levitated hive after hive, frame after frame, of golden bees into the white-cloud-blossom-clad orchard, setting them gently down amidst the deep green of ancient, sheep-grazed lawn between the slim, haphazard, ancient trees: ancient trees, their grey-black-buff vestments of bole and bough dusted with the pollen and lichen green of the Sundays after Trinity, their blossoms white as albs. Rank upon unserried rank the immemorial and unregimented orchard stretched, variety after variety, each in its own kind: Harry's Jaisey, Gryffindor Red, Doxy's Pippin, Grimmauld Black, Niffler's Snout, Crupwhelp, Ottery Coppin, Potter's Sweet, Porlock's Nose: each with its role to play, its note to sound, when the harvest should come, and the ancient elm press kiss the pomace in its oat-straw bed into a new and transmuted life of glory. For now, it was blossom time, and in the dappled light beneath the blossoming canopy, in air drunk upon the perfume of apple blossom, they had set the tireless bees. As the last of the beehives were set down, gently as a lover's sigh, the bees, heeding the ancient magic, stirred, as Harry and Draco watched the timeless marvel that never staled and always amazed. The air was full of the lull and hum of bees, as the singing masons arose from their roofs of gold and ascended into a heaven of breeze-kissed blossoms, tumbling foam blossoms of white blushed with rose-pink. This was peace upon the emerald turf. This was the life sprung of Tom Riddle's defeat and death. This was what they had fought for. Wordlessly, Harry and Draco clasped hands, and watched in grateful wonder, weaving their magics into the magic of the ageless scene.

_________________________

In dreams of peace, after Hogwarts and Domdaniel, in the flush of adulthood, on a Maundy Thursday morning.

'DRACO!'

Draco startled, and turned, and tried desperately to look innocent, hiding the object of his depredations behind his back, and willing Harry not, somehow, to notice that he had - o irony of ironies! - a silver spoon in his mouth.

'Mphm?'

'DRACO MALFOY! You ... you ... I cannot believe you would do this!'

'Srry?'

Harry rolled his eyes and snatched the spoon out of his lover's mouth. 'Eating three-fruits marmalade straight out of the jar! Good Christ, Draco, we've guests coming!'

'But I like it so.'

'It's not like you to be that childishly greedy.' Harry forcibly pried the marmalade from Draco's grip and set it down, out of reach from where he now had Draco pinioned against a wall.

'Nothing childish about it,' Draco said, breathlessly. 'I want to slather it on the length of you and ... lick ... it ... off....'

Harry flushed crimson and his eyes dilated visibly. Seizing the moment, Draco pushed back against him, and they found themselves against the opposite wall, this time with Harry caged. Draco swooped in, kissing Harry passionately, the wild honeyed taste of the marmalade now on the tongues of both. Gasping, Harry broke away. 'Draco, you mad bugger, our guests will be here any -'

They heard, from outside, the successive pops of several Apparitions, and one faint crash of someone's blundering off the gravel surround and into a shrubbery.

'- second.'

'Well, bugger,' said Draco, forcefully.

_________________________

One look at Draco's and Harry's snogged-out appearance, and Blaise, Justin, and Tonks began laughing helplessly. Tinker and Aunt Andy were more subtle. 'You've an outer and an inner gatehouse,' Aunt Andromeda declared, rather grandly. 'You want to move your Apparition points slightly, I should think. Keeps people from popping in to your porch or crashing into the creeper that seems to be holding the place together.'

'Perhaps - d'you have a moat?' Tinker asked helpfully.

All he accomplished was to cause Molly and Arthur to break down sniggering along with Justin, Blaise, and Tonks.

Harry and Draco were saved by the second round of Apparitions: Ron and Hermione, Neville and Luna, Ginny and Colin, Seamus and Dean, and Remus Lupin.

Dean stared, in what Draco at first mistook for a rather embarrassing awe, at the house. It was Harry's and his smallish mediæval manor house, between the Wylye and the Great Ridge, in West Wilts, and Draco felt a certain unease that Dean, who had after all grown up in Muggle council housing in Tower Hamlets, might find it ostentatious, though it was really quite rustic and unpretentious. But that was not the source of Dean's bafflement. He was counting windows and doors and storeys.

'Draco? Harry? Bit small, innit, for all this lot?'

The penny dropped. Right, Draco reminded himself. Not that he was raised in a Muggle council flat, it's that he was raised in a Muggle council flat. 'It's much larger inside than out,' Draco smiled.

'Right,' Dean said, batting self-deprecatingly at his forehead. 'Wizarding space. All these years, and I keep forgetting. So. Is this the Malfoy Manor, then?'

'Lord, no,' Harry laughed. 'We wouldn't subject you to that.' Draco poked him in the ribs. 'Bloody Whig edifice with double cubes by Wyatt -'

'Blame Inigo Jones for those, love -'

'- Well, whoever. So damned determined to make an esoteric statement about God, the C of E, and the British Constitution that you end up putting the servants in dungeons for the sake of a façade....'

'Sounds like the Malfoy creed, mate.'

Draco levelled Ron, who was grinning unrepentantly, with a look. 'Cousin or no cousin, that was bloody cheeky. Let's get inside, shall we? Um. Dean? Dean?'

Seamus laughed. 'No use it is at all, at all, Malfoy, acushla. He'll have painted the whole of it from three diff'rent perspectives by Sunday, so he will. Let him be, just. He'll wander in when ye've wet the tay.'

As they passed, jostling, under the corbel, their laughter ringing in the ancient porch and doorway, Dean remained transfixed. Not unreasonably. The east front faced him, its stony face softened by creeper and vine, its centre recessed beside its porch of two storeys. Between its gabled ends, buttresses alternated with windows in casual admixture, mullioned, transomed, circular traceried, and oriel. Only the brief forecourt garden separated the manor from the inner gatehouse; the sense of privacy and seclusion, of being hidden away from the world and the passage of time, was palpable. The barn behind was far larger, and almost as mellow in old elegance; the chapel of ease that flanked one gabled end had the air of a guardian cherub, and to balance it at the other end of the house stood, in earthy practicality, the ancient ash house, where the ash of the hearth was stored for fertiliser, completing the cycle of taking the fruits of the earth and its bounty and returning the same to its source, enriching it in turn.

Although a manor in origin, no home farm pressed close: proof, if any were needed, that this was indeed, and had ever been, a Wizarding manor. In its stead, ten acres of park and garden stretched away behind the house, carved out of and merging into ancient woodland; and the air was murmurous with the drowsy call of doves. Even in the Kentish farmstead, serene amidst the hops, to which Dean had removed his family from the squalor of Tower Hamlets and their council flat, there was not such an air of peace; and, incredibly, it seemed that in defiance of anything they could have imagined at school, the peace of this place both informed and was informed by that unlikeliest of couples, Harry and Draco. He smiled, thinking suddenly of his own Seamus, in whom he found his peace, and went into the house.

_________________________

'Fascinating,' Arthur was saying, with the innocent enthusiasm and unslakeable thirst for knowledge that he brought to all things, Muggle and magical alike. 'Hammerbeams. Almost like an angel roof in a church. How interesting.'

'Uncle Arthur,' Draco began, a little uncomfortably.

Aunt Andromeda cut him off. 'I quite agree, Arthur.' Draco's fears that his favourite cousin, and uncle by courtesy (it seemed unnatural to call Cousin Ron's parents by their Christian names without some acknowledgement of their seniority), was committing the solecism of commenting on another chap's possessions, subsided. 'It's quite a rare blend of Muggle and Wizarding work, isn't it, and quite a fit and proper province for antiquarian interest.'

Molly puffed out a fondly exasperated breath. 'Arthur doesn't care a whit for propriety, Andy, as you well know, he's simply the complete Elephant's Child.'

'I'm afraid,' Arthur smiled, 'I do suffer from 'satiable curtiosity. Just as well there are no crocodiles in your winterbourne and your ponds, Harry.'

'Wouldn't matter,' Draco smiled. 'I'm sure Harry could negotiate with a Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake on your behalf if needed.'

'I don't know about that, Arthur,' Harry said, 'but I can certainly help satisfy your curiosity. Dobby!'

Pop!

'Sir! Dobby is gladly assisting you, Harry Potter, sir!'

'Thanks, Dobs. Would you mind levitating Arthur to see the hammerbeams better? I'd as soon not Leviosa him myself when your house-elf magic can do it so much better and more safely.'

Draco hid a grin. Sometimes, finding enough things for Dobby to do about the place drove them to distraction; but they had learnt that a bored Dobby meant a Dobby who went in search of things to polish, launder, dust, iron, or rearrange, and they'd been interrupted rather more times, in rather more compromising positions, than they really cared to count.

'I'd like to see those m'self,' Andromeda said.

'Oh, very well,' Harry grinned. 'Dobby, I'm entrusting you with the last-Minister-but-three. Aunt Andy, I'll levitate you - I've levitated aunts before, after all.'

Draco chortled.

'Right, then. Dobby: on the count of three. One. Two. Ups-a-daisy! Amita leviosa!'

'My word,' Arthur called down, excitedly. 'The Green Man himself on all these bosses!'

'Yes,' Draco called back, as, at a nod, Harry and Dobby floated Arthur and Aunt Andromeda back down. 'The place is reputed to have a ... procreative effect.'

'That's the pheromones from the Chizpurfles in your linen-fold panelling,' Luna murmured, looking unnervingly just to one side of Harry's right ear.

Hermione, meantime, looked at Ron. 'We're here to get away from the brats, Ronald, not make more of the little fiends.'

'I'm more concerned about the wolfish looks Remus is giving my cousin,' Draco drawled.

Harry snorted. 'Which cousin? It didn't sink in when - when Sirius first told me the pureblood families are all interrelated, but by God I've learnt since that basic rural incest simply isn't in it, in comparison!'

'Where are the little beggars, anyway, Hermione?' Justin had floundered into the conversation to cut off what he thought might be an uncomfortable moment.

'Not as if we've not room,' Draco added. 'But they're spending Easter with their Granger grandparents.'

'In the Muggle world?' Tinker was curious, and there was a prospectively anecdotal gleam in his eye.

'Lord, no,' Ron snorted. 'Not bloody likely we'd turn 'em loose on innocent Muggles. Harry and His Nibs, there, kindly put them up at Atrum Old Hall, the old Black place.'

'I certainly hope you've managed to clean it out fully,' Remus said, raising an eyebrow.

Harry rolled his eyes. 'It's as innocuous as Pottersfield by this point. We'll all Apparate back and forth, or as many who wish may, to see them during your stay.' Molly beamed a grandmotherly beam. 'Really, Remus, we'd hardly have turned them loose on anything dangerous.'

'Boot's probably on the other foot,' Ron muttered. 'Let's hope they leave you with a whole house. Ruddy little terrors.'

'They do have adult supervision,' Ginny snapped. She quite liked the Grangers.

'Yeah, but not Wizarding adult supervision.'

Colin looked puzzled. 'I thought Fred and George and their families were there with them?'

'You call the twins "adult supervision"?'

'You have a point,' Colin conceded. 'Where is the old Black pile, anyway?'

'Staffordshire. Middle of Cannock Chase, actually, though the Muggles have no idea. Amazing how we've managed to get them to declare nature reserves and AONBs wherever there's an Unplottable to be hidden. The Diricawl Option, I call it.'

'Really! Golly, Harry, that's close to where I grew up! Lots of daffs just now, I'd imagine.'

Ginny smiled. 'You're transparent, darling. Just come right out and ask to photograph the bloody place.'

'Language, Ginevra!'

'Yes, Mum.'

Harry cut across the digressions and discursions. 'The point is, the Grangers, the twins-and-family, and the terrors are all in Tetty's competent hands. They -'

'Tetty?'

'The senior house-elf at Atrum - housekeeper, really, not to say Deputy Headmistress: McGonagall-as-house-elf -'

'Lor',' said Blaise. 'That's frightening. As was Minerva when we were students, much as we love her as adults. If your Tetty's at all like Deputy Headmistress Moggie Thatcher....'

Harry laughed. It was oddly reminiscent of Sirius's great bark of laughter. As he aged, and let his hair grow, Molly reflected, looking at him with a keen and motherly awareness, Harry was beginning to favour his distant cousin Sirius quite as much as he did James, spit and image of James though he still could be in certain lights and postures.

'Yes, well,' Harry said. 'She runs Atrum with a rod of iron, and I have every confidence in her. Which is a good thing, as I pensioned off her mother, and quite handsomely, too, to make sure Tetty was in charge.'

'You only did that because Tetty's mother and predecessor embarrassed you,' Draco said, with a teasing grin.

'Yes, well,' Harry said, crisply, 'I'm damned if, when I want a house-elf, I'll stand about yelling, "Totty!". Suits neither my style, my species, nor my orientation.'

Justin was laughing so hard he had to be helped up the stairs as the house-elves showed all the guests to their rooms.

_________________________

'So,' Justin said, as Harry and Draco walked them about on what Draco rather snidely called the 'Grand Country House Tour, five pee each, just like the bloody peerage with their turnstiles. Bloody death duties'. 'Your own chapel, eh?'

'Not that we use it,' Harry said. 'We've a perfectly good vicar.'

'Harry likes to go to church when we're in the country,' Draco said. 'Couldn't drag him to one in town, of course, but it seems, well, part of the Thing To Do here.'

'Ah,' said Justin. 'Hadn't heard that you'd got religion, old boy - though of course that's an excellent thing,' he said, hastily, 'and wars do tend to do that to a chap....' Justin was very much a believer in the conventions.

Draco smiled, and cut Harry off before he could answer. 'Oh, Harry's not got religion,' he said, his voice fond, 'not really; he's got music.'

'I'm glad enough to totter over for Matins regardless of whether we're in the parish choir or not,' Harry protested. Not that he wanted to seem pious, but Draco seemed to be imputing rather mercenary motives to him.

Draco could hardly resist that opening. His well-trained tenor took up the inevitable anthem, by Parry: 'I was glad -'

And Harry, unable to resist, joined in, his bass-baritone coming in on cue: '-Glad when they said unto me -'

And Hermione, who had been brought up to believe that culture was important enough that one was justified even in going to church to be exposed to it, took the high part, as they sang, 'We will go, We will go, We will go, Into the House of the Lord....' Even Justin, who, had he followed his birth-charted path to Eton, would have followed it on as well to King's College and its choir, as a choral scholar, had entered by the last.

'Ah,' said Tinker, who quite liked Justin ('finally, someone out of the same stable, eh, Andy?'). 'Parry and Elgar, what? Don't write music like that anymore, more's the pity. Lot of rubbishing guitars and pop singers, these days. When I was a lad, we had music.'

'When you were a lad, Tinker, we still had an Empire.'

'Damned shame we gave it up, too,' Tinker said, stoutly. 'Not that I'm that damned ancient, Andy. Bein' born before the Queen's accession don't make a man positively elderly, y' know.'

'No, Tinker, but acting as if you'd been born before Queen Victoria's accession does. Your bloody father was more forrard-lookin'.'

'I say, sir,' Justin blurted out, as the penny dropped. 'Are you at all related to Colonel "Stonks" Tonks?'

'My uncle, the Gunner; m'father was in the Guards. Why?'

'My father and grandfather knew him.'

'Really?' Tinker could be seen visibly to contemplate. 'D'y'know, I do seem to recall there havin' been Finch-Fletchleys about you lot's Mess....'

'We'll leave you two to it, Flinch,' Blaise grinned. 'Never let it be said that the Royal Regiment of Artillery was disvalued by me. We civilians and City gents know our place.'

'"Flinch"?' Draco was puzzled.

Justin blushed. 'Full marks to Blaise for loyalty. I'd've thought he'd've spread that one discreetly about, at least in Slytherin. The summer before I was to have gone to Eton - the summer I got my Hogwarts letter, and old McGonagall blew in and frightened my pater into gibbering incoherence: he's still twitchy around magic - my older brother had a chap from school spend a week. Ailsham Minor ... well, turns out he was the school tart, really, and very camp. Not that my brother cared: Ailsham's people owned a few horses that were with a trainer at Newmarket, and we're hard by the Heath: Ailsham owed his guest ticket to that, frankly, and was expected to have a few tips by way of singing for his supper. Well, you can imagine that I was a bit taken aback by so obvious a chap; all sorts of inchoate thingummies that had been preying on my mind, rather, suddenly made rather more sense to me than I'd've altogether preferred. I was rather skittish around Ailsham, as you may well imagine, and he came up with the nickname, "Flinch-Fetchingly", for me. "Flinch", for short.

'Frankly, I was damned glad when the Hogwarts business came off, I certainly wasn't looking forward to going on to school and having that tag put on me.'

The others made sympathetic noises, rather marred by Tinker's penetrating, though not unkindly-meant, whisper to Arthur: 'I say, Weasley, is your boy the only chap here who's not a robe-lifter?'

_________________________

'I must say,' Neville said, rooting about happily in the gardens, 'that's one thing I do rather envy you C of E lot. Church music. I quite like music, I do, but we don't get any of it at t'meeting-house.' Luna was wandering mazily in the plantation, like a large, vague moth, looking for God knew what mythical and fantastic beast.

'Good Lord,' Draco said. 'I'd forgotten about that. You being a Quaker, I mean.'

Neville waved his hand, aimlessly. 'Well, Pendle, after all....'

Harry, smiling affectionately at them both, at his love and at the man who was almost his brother, thanks to that damned prophecy, thought back to Nev's and Luna's simple, moving wedding.

In the fear of the Lord and in the presence of this assembly, Friends, I take this my friend Luna to be my wife, promising, with God's help, to be unto her a loving and faithful husband, until it shall please the Lord by death to separate us.

In the fear of the Lord and in the presence of this assembly, Friends, I take this my friend Neville to be my husband, promising, with God's help, to be unto him a loving and faithful wife, until it shall please the Lord by death to separate us.

And Luna, with her intense inner life, had been born to become a Friend, and Neville's prop and support. Harry only hoped that he and Draco would grow together so.

'No, no, I quite understand,' Draco said. 'Though there's something I don't understand.'

'Happen that might be the Peace Testimony, and my having fought in t'War?'

'Well, yes, not to put too fine a point on it.'

'Ah, well, now. One thing about t'Society of Friends, Draco: excommunication's not in our vocabulary. Least of all over a matter of conscience. Nowt's as respected at meeting as minority view: after all, happen it may be truth, or but idea before its time. It's as Gran said at Sawley meeting. Happen it's wrong to fight evil wi' weapons, when fighting against mortal men who are but evil's tools. But that's Muggles. Old Riddle, now, he were different to that, nobbut an incarnation of malice, more beast than man by then, and Wizards are in situation, in fighting evil direct, that Muggles aren't in. Well, Sawley's a Wizarding meeting, so even if not everyone agreed wi' Gran, they saw point.'

'Great God,' Draco said, suddenly struck by a possible failing as a host. 'Here we are having you stay over Easter, and I have no idea where the local Qua- - that is to say, the local Society of Friends are.'

'Ah, now, nowt to fret over. There are Friends here in West Country, have been since beginning. Luna's family were not ones for observance, but her great-gran at least was a Friend. Happen we feel led to go t'meeting on First Day -' Nev, like most Wizards, was a bit old-fashioned, still, in utterance - 'we'll find one, never you fret. Come to that, we can Apparate home, easily enough.'

'Nev?' Harry broke in, his curiosity getting the better of him. 'Did you say your Gran went to, um, "meeting" in Sawrey?'

'Nay, lad, Sawley. Happen she'll go t'Marsden meeting once in a time. Sawrey's clear oop in Grizedale, on Windermere, in what they call Cumbria nowadays. Lake District and all. Why?'

'Oh, it's just. Apparently I had a great-aunt or cousin something, a Mrs Heelis after her marriage, who retired up there. Wrote books about rabbits, apparently.' Harry shrugged.

Draco's mouth fell open. Even Neville boggled. As for Justin, he felt absolutely horrid. He'd heard that Harry had had a terrible childhood, and he was rather surprised that the purebloods had heard of Harry's relation, Potter though she was, but the thought that Harry himself had no idea.... Justin's very first real porridge bowl and cup and plates, once he was old enough not to break anything more fragile than silver or pewter, had been Beatrix Potter patterned, from Doulton. It was somehow more tragic than all the other terrors and losses he had so notoriously endured, that Harry had lived through a childhood so hateful that his appalling relations had never so much as read him the tales of Peter Rabbit, Mrs Tiggywinkle, Jeremy Fisher, and Jemima Puddleduck. For a wild moment, he thought of explaining to Harry just who this unknown relation had been, and all that she had meant to countless children; but then he realised how hurtful it could be, to contrast Harry's ghastly childhood with those of the millions of children whose teatimes and bedtimes had been sweetened by entering into that lambent, tidy world indwelt by Squirrel Nutkin, Appley Dapply, and Pigling Bland. He caught Draco's suspiciously moist eye, and Neville's pained and empathetic gaze, and stepped into the breach, with a diversion, reliably Doing the Right Thing according to his class and caste.

Firmly gripping Harry's arm, he gently led his host away, saying, 'Hmm. Never spent much time there in Nev's beloved North Countree, myself. Now, this country of yours, here. Different to East Anglia, I must say: I notice you've nowhere near the cowslips we have in the Fens. But very fine country, I must say: you certainly have us beat on violets, bluebells, and primroses. Much huntin'?'

_________________________

Blaise watched as Justin and Harry wandered away, hearing his beloved's voice trailing off into the distance, a-babbling o' green fields. 'Flat, mostly, though there's the Heath, but it's not all mud and reeds, you know ... Swaffham ... Devil's Dyke ... well, that's the nice thing about magic, old boy, you've no conflict in preservin' and huntin' both - birds any good last year?'

Since about the time of the Battle of Crécy, the Zabinis and the Goldsteins had carried on, in the face of Muggle persecution of Jews, Catholics, and all foreigners generally, as merchant bankers in Purse Lane, in Wizarding London, and as the contact and conduit between the goblins of Gringotts and the Muggle City and its money. Although the Zabinis traditionally recruited wives, every few generations, from the ancient lands of their line - Wizards not having endured the complications of distance that bedevilled Muggle communications before the invention of modern methods of transport - they had certainly been a part of the English fabric for centuries, and Harry and Draco rather insistently thought of him as being as English as themselves, for all that his mother was from Venice. (Francis Lawrence Peter Michael Zabini had married Violetta Maria, daughter of Lorenzo Eugenio Manfredo Zen-d'Este-Conti, of Venice, and Lorenzo's wife Maddelena Luigia Serafina, née Contarini-Magris.)

Yet there burnt within Blaise ancient and un-English fires.

When he was younger, even having from the first rejected the Dark, he had thought the English, as incarnated in Dumbledore and Potter, insular, small-minded, ingenuous, and rather primitive. He had never longed to be at Durmstrang, of course, Unplottable in its snowy fortress, variously thought to be located in the Carpathians, the Tatras, or the Jotunheim mountains. But even after his first, tentative relationship with Justin - scandalously, a Muggle-born and a Hufflepuff - had begun, he had dismissed the English and their island. They thought so highly of their small hillocks and minor mountains, their trim parklands and what they thought was wilderness. For a young man who regularly spent summer hols with family scattered from Venice to Trieste, from Monfalcone to Sankt Pö lten and Vienna, who had cousinage scattered in Gemona del Friuli, Tolmezzo, Cavazzo Carnico, Udine, Pozzuolo del Friuli, Villa Opicina, Villach, Maribor, Sopron, and Stockerau - as a family, the Zabinis and their collaterals had never quite recovered from the Habsburgs's fall - the English, and the tight and tidy, homely, little island they were so proud of, were faintly ludicrous. What were even the Cairngorms and the Pennines and Wild Wales to him, who knew the Alps and the Alto Adige, the Tyrol and the Dolomites? What was Malfoy Manor against their Venetian palazzi? The English were at one with their prized and petted land: middling and mild, incapable alike of dizzying heights and still more dizzying depths.

Well, he knew better now. He had seen depths more dizzying than any that mere geography could show, and the worst of evils wearing the cloaks and masks of a Venetian ball, evil that clad itself in the sophistication he had thought was his birthright and beyond the plodding English. And he had learnt in a hard school to value the simple, solid, stolid strengths of the English character - the British character, he corrected himself, recalling the stern Scots virtues and the Irish willingness to charge all Hell with a bucket of water, the Welsh indomitableness and the special, something-to-prove, Test-match resolve in the descendants of Indian and West Indian alike, in the Patil twins and in Dean - he had learnt to cherish the strength and virtue that inhered in homely insularity and the fierce, the Roman, commitment to the household lars, the hearth and the home.

Having looked into the maw of Hell, he had a new appreciation for the simple virtue of the quiet, understated British. In wedding himself to Justin, he had wedded himself to the solid best of England, in all its stodgy glory. He looked up: Harry and Justin were coming back into view and hearing, Harry droning away about Easter and church music. '... though Tinker's mistaken, there are still decent anthems being written, and even if it was from a film, Doyle's Non nobis deserves to be used at coronations. Now, Good Friday won't be much at St Mary's - I think every other church in the county is named St Mary's, you'd think St Aldhelm would have a look-in, wouldn't you? But we don't plan on going to the Cathedral this year -'

Draco broke in, then, dryly, as they approached. 'You meet the most appalling sorts on Salisbury Plain. Bloody foreigners.'

'- and Easter Sunday will be quite nice if you care to take in the service. Stanford in A, and Taverner, and Wesley, and Tallis. Handel, of course. And I think you'll enjoy the spread here after, we thought we'd have some local specialities with it, Bath chap, pease & faggots, Bradenham ham, lardy cake, Wiltshire fairings. Dorset knobs with lemon curd. We grow our own cress, you know. Lamb, of course, and Dobby makes an excellent chutney, and pickle, and indeed Cumberland sauce.....'

Blaise caught Justin's eye, and melted. This, this quiet, rather thick strength, this inability to conceive of fear and treachery and disloyalty, this simple if unthinking goodness: to have found that and allied himself with it was, he now knew, the true end and crown of all his old ambitions. He had joined himself to England, incarnate in one sweet, gentle, and rather unobservant man. It was enough. He was content, at last, and free from ambition's lash and spur.

_________________________

It was night, on Easter Sunday. They had, most of them, trooped dutifully to church, with Hermione and Ron, who had been there most often, steering them to Harry and Draco's pew, their hosts being in the choir where they belonged. And Nev and Justin and Draco and Blaise had sneaked off the day before, in full agreement, ostensibly to the pub (the Wizarding house, the old Bell, Book, and Candle, not to be confused with the Muggle free house in Wylye, The Bell), whilst the others had Apparated to Staffs and back to see what havoc had been wreaked by children gifted with Ron's temper, Hermione's formidable wits, and their uncles's talent for mischief. They had slipped away and brought a little something back for Harry: a complete set of first editions of all the works of Beatrix Potter; and Harry had hardly known how to express his thanks.

It was night, and in each bedroom, the Green Man, Jack in the Green, the Old Man of the Woods, Green George, looked down from leafy tracery.

'Arthur,' Molly said, with a faint giggle. 'At our age!'

'I am a fond and foolish old man,' he said, and even in the dark, she could hear his smile.

'Fond, yes,' she said. 'But not so foolish. If this is folly, let's make the best of it.'

It was night, and in each bedroom, the Green Man, Jack in the Green, the Old Man of the Woods, Green George, looked down from leafy tracery.

'Hermione!' Ron was happily scandalised.

'You know I can't get enough of you, Ronald Bilius Weasly,' she chuckled. 'Even if it means more ruddy terrors. Honestly, Ron!'

It was night, and in each bedroom, the Green Man, Jack in the Green, the Old Man of the Woods, Green George, looked down from leafy tracery.

'And is it a landscape with figures that has you so excited, Dean Thomas?'

'You're the work of art that has me worked up, Seamus - c'mere, you.'

It was night, and in each bedroom, the Green Man, Jack in the Green, the Old Man of the Woods, Green George, looked down from leafy tracery.

'Golly, Ginny!'

'Colin?'

'Mmm?'

'Stop chattering and start -'

'GINNY!'

It was night, and in each bedroom, the Green Man, Jack in the Green, the Old Man of the Woods, Green George, looked down from leafy tracery.

'Ancient, am I, Andy? Allow me to demonstrate the contrary.'

'Tinker, if you think I plan to just close my eyes and think of England ... shift over, you old fool, and - yes, there is good....'

It was night, and in each bedroom, the Green Man, Jack in the Green, the Old Man of the Woods, Green George, looked down from leafy tracery.

'Caro! You have hidden depths, my Hufflepuff!'

'At the moment, old boy, it's your depths that want explorin' -'

'THERE! YES!'

'Little screamer....' Justin's laugh was low and rich.

It was night, and even in the Great Hall, the Green Man, Jack in the Green, the Old Man of the Woods, Green George, looked down from leafy tracery.

'Grandmother, what great eyes you have.'

'Any more wolf cracks, Little Red, and the wooing ends and I start calling you "Nymphadora" in public.'

'You wouldn't.'

Remus smiled, wolfishly.

It was night, and in each bedroom, the Green Man, Jack in the Green, the Old Man of the Woods, Green George, looked down from leafy tracery.

'Good God, Harry.'

'Thank God for silencing charms - though I think I faintly heard Blaise?'

'One always does. I had to stay in the same dorm as the bugger for seven years. The boy has lungs.'

'Is he where you learnt to top from the bottom?'

'We're Slytherins, you big, bad Gryffindor. The only ones who aren't bossy, demanding little bitches are the females of the species.'

Harry snorted. 'Up for another round of being my bitch, then, Malfoy?'

'Oh, I'll have you for that one, Potter.'

'Scared, Malfoy?'

'You wish.'

It was night, and in each bedroom, the Green Man, Jack in the Green, the Old Man of the Woods, Green George, looked down from leafy tracery. The old god had long since made peace with the true, being after all but an aspect of the divine love.

'Good night, Friend,' Neville said, tenderly, as he drew the rumpled linens back over them.

'Good night, my Friend and love,' Luna said, snuggling close, glowing with sated magic even in the dark.

_________________________