At the 12 Grimmauld Place checkpoint, Harry made sure they had everything they needed before leaving. Well, the only thing he cared about was the Cloak, but Draco insisted on checking that the silver dagger was still in his pocket.
In addition, Hermione suggested bringing the rune-carved chest. "Merry mentioned that we needed to bring something linked to Samsara," she explained. She assumed that the Hârrik meant something other than Draco.
Inevitably, they had to track down the former contents of the chest, having misplaced two of them while decoding its runes. They found the lock of hair on the rug, the vial of vampire venom under the couch, covered in lint fluff, and the ivory talons wedged between two couch cushions (how those got there was anyone's guess).
After restocking the chest, they opened an iridescent portal with the Spiral Key. Stepping through, their heels echoed on the hard marble floor of the mansion.
Merry stood in the center of the mosaic swirl, waiting patiently for their arrival. "I was beginning to think you wouldn't show," she said solemnly. "Come. We have much to do."
"Sorry for the wait," Hermione apologized. "We had to find the item you requested."
Merry's interest was piqued. "And what might that be?"
"Well, we figured it would be better to have back-ups, just in case it didn't fit the bill," Hermione expounded, going on a bit of a tangent about preparedness as they re-entered the study. "Would any of these work?" Hermione held the chest wide open, revealing the items inside.
Merry didn't even look inside the box, scoffing lightly, "That's not something I can answer." She located the Pentacle Key hanging from the wall and turned it in midair.
Closing the chest in disappointment, Hermione followed after her through the forest portal, "Why not?"
The trees were covered in silky dew from last night's torrential downpour. Every so often a leaf would shift in the zephyr and drop a pocket of rainwater on their heads.
"I can tell you what won't suffice," Merry elaborated regally, "but the only person capable of knowing what will is the querent."
Hermione knitted her brows, her disgust for anything divination-related rearing its head, "Querent? Like in tarot readings?"
Merry took no offense. She picked a sturdy stick off the ground and held it in her hands like a scepter, stabbing the wet ground as she walked. "Yes, but in this case, it's the person which the ritual is being performed on."
"So Draco, then?" Harry asked, looking over to the wizard. His blond hair glowed yellow around the edges in the evening sunlight.
Merry nodded, not turning around, "Precisely."
Draco wrinkled his nose. Wizards didn't do rituals like this, despite what Muggle literature claimed, so this wasn't exactly an area he specialized in. "Why would I know?"
Merry sighed like a very tired babysitter who had just seen a child eat paint. "I'm getting to that," she stressed, leading them across the clearing which bore no grass. The dirt was malleable, causing the heels of their shoes to sink every time they took a step. Strangely, Merry didn't sink at all, and she left no footprints.
She used her arm as a barricade when they reached the crystal-cored pillars, "No one move past this point."
Hermione, Harry, and Draco remained still, watching as the Hârrik dragged her stick through the clay-like earth, scoring the ground methodically, encircling the pillars in a ring. She then moved within the circle, connecting adjacent posts with straight lines, forming a full pentacle once she finished.
"Ohhh," Harry uttered, comprehending, at last, the odd and seemingly out-of-place choice for the key and brooch's design.
Merry paid him no mind. With her scepter stick, she pointed to the crystal within each pillar, "Querent goes to moonstone, poison of querent goes to anyolite, poison to querent goes to black tourmaline, and onyx can be your choice of either confinement or something which grounds the querent. Any questions?"
Harry squinted in confusion as if trying to make out a nonexistent shape in the distance, "Yeah. What the fuck does any of that even mean?"
Hermione rolled her eyes, "We have to put things that suit the requirements in their corresponding places. That's why she told us to bring something linked to Samsara. It's the 'poison' of the querent."
Harry turned to the Hârrik and pointed to the chest in Hermione's care, "Is the vial inside filled with Samsara's venom?" He had to ask. For all they knew, it could've just belonged to some random vampire.
"It is, but that won't work," Merry said. She disdainfully jerked her head in Draco's direction, "The boy hasn't been harmed by it before, and he never will be."
"Are the claws Samsara's?" Hermione asked, having ruled out the lock of hair as not being harmful in the slightest.
Merry shook her head, "Those are griffin talons. Poison to the querent, in Sam's case."
"How so?" Harry asked, thoroughly lost.
But Hermione nodded as if everything made sense now, "Griffins are the only known creatures capable of inflicting unhealable wounds on vampires–"
Harry cut her off before she started recalling the legend of Apollo and his griffin, "Then that's perfect. Hypothetical, but it works."
"Not so fast," Merry stopped them. Her eyes drifted over to Draco, "The boy has to decide."
Draco looked at the items in the chest, but no matter which object he hovered a hand over, none of them felt right. He had never even seen a griffin, let alone come into combat with one. "What about the chest itself?" he asked.
For the first time, Merry smiled with understated pride at something Draco had said, "Why?"
He frowned, "Because without it, I wouldn't be in this fucking mess."
"Very well," Merry allowed. She stepped aside, gesturing for Draco to place the rune-decorated chest in front of the black tourmaline pillar.
"Draco," Merry began softly. "How would you say you hurt others?"
Draco seemed caught off guard by both her question and the fact that she called him by his actual name, "I don't know." He hesitantly held out his wand, "I've never been able to cast the kind of spells that actually harm people . . . so I assume my wand wouldn't fulfill the requirement."
Merry did not say anything. She simply waited for him to think things through on his own, confident that he could.
One other option entered Draco's mind, but it wasn't suitable. He could've spilled blood over the soil, a symbol of pureblood prejudice, but he had abandoned such things a long time ago, as they did nothing to serve him.
On the other hand, his blood was proof of his lineage, his link to the infamously ill-faithed Malfoy family that looked down on half-bloods and Muggleborns. But since distancing himself from those beliefs, he's felt less like a Malfoy and more like an individual—one with the freedom to choose whether or not to be hateful. And he chose not to. He didn't want to resemble the same person from his past, despite being one in the same. All the pain he had caused was intangible now, and there was nothing physical to portray that. Draco felt defeated for a moment, but then his eyes flickered with decisiveness.
"I need a vial," he declared.
Immediately, Harry retrieved the ampoule of Samsara's venom and uncorked it. It occurred to him that this action might've been impulsive. "Wait, do we need the venom for anything else?"
"No," Merry assured him. "It's actually in your best interest to be rid of it."
With that, Harry went to pour the venom over a tussock of grass. Black smoke hissed from the burning patch as the greenery singed and died in less than five seconds. Harry stared at the charred spot on the ground, grateful that none of it spilled onto his skin.
"Be careful," he told Draco. "There may still be some venom on the cork."
Heeding what Merry had divulged to them, Draco took the cork and vial without fear of it singeing his skin.
And it didn't; he was completely immune to the venom's corrosive effects, thanks to Samsara taking up residence in his body. Of course, the downsides of that greatly outweighed the benefits, hence why they were relying on help from his former assistant.
Draco was lost in his inner world as he raised his hawthorn wand, wandering the rolling hills in his mind, as if he could simply find a destination along the journey—somewhere he could hide from the entity that lurked in the nearby forest. He pulled the wand away from his temple, extracting a silvery white strand full of memories from the parts of his mind he had tried and failed to bury.
It was an amalgamation of everything he remembered from his days back at Hogwarts—the cruel way he treated Hermione, the heinous words he said to Ron, and all the ways he made Harry's life a living hell. He scraped them into the vial and stoppered it shut, throwing it into the space in front of the anyolite pillar.
Merry almost looked like she wanted to say something about it, wanting to question him about the decision, but she didn't. "And now you need something to ground you," she voiced instead.
Draco looked at Harry without a second thought. The answer was so obvious—Harry always had a way of bringing him back down to Earth, even when anxiety and fear made that feel impossible. He was a physical reminder to Draco that everything he'd sworn off hadn't been in vain, a reminder that Draco had become a better person. If his efforts hadn't made a difference, Harry wouldn't have given him a chance.
Draco's expression softened as he extended his hand, "I suppose it's a little sappy to say, but it would work best, with you."
Harry smiled, suppressing the urge to tackle Draco and kiss him to death, then and there.
Hermione cooed with a sort of bird-like squeal, unable to hold back her joy. She didn't care that Draco looked at her as if she had sprouted a third arm. Despite being the war-hardened diplomatic badass she was, Hermione could still very easily admit when things were irrevocably cute.
Merry's expression was more despondent, as if reminded of something substantially out of reach.
The sun disappeared behind the horizon of trees, and the orange sky turned to the dark purple of dusk as Harry took his place within the circle, in front of the onyx-cored pillar.
Hermione assumed her position beside Merry. "You didn't mention that one," Hermione said, pointing to the dark teal stone behind the Hârrik.
"That's apatite," she replied. "And that's for the host, which is yours truly." She planted the soles of her feet in a defensive stance, still not disturbing the dirt beneath her. She addressed everyone as a whole, "Ready?"
Harry looked over at Draco, who stood beside him, his vampiric features emerging under moonlight. "Ready," they both confirmed.
Merry waved her arms as if summoning a hurricane, mumbling an incantation. Her voice echoed like a siren's song, "Duae animae in uno corpore. divide eos et separare." From the etched pentacle in the dirt, blue flames illuminated the space with a circular wall of fire.
Hermione held her wand at the ready, as she usually did, in case things went wrong, as they usually did.
"Duae animae in uno corpore. divide eos et separare," Merry repeated. The items within the circle started to glow the same shade of blue. Harry wondered, then, what Muggles would make of the blue beacon tearing mercilessly through the night sky.
Once more, Merry whispered the incantation, and the gentle breeze from before picked up into something much more powerful.
Draco started to feel faint, but then he realized he was no longer anchored to his body—no longer anchored to mortal feelings. He floated into the sky like a feather pulled into an updraft.
He saw Harry do the same, but he looked very different. The Gryffindor's physical body was still standing below them, in place, swaying in the wind. The man before him was merely a spirit, and Draco's form was equally as ghostly.
"Is it just you?" Harry asked.
"It is," Draco replied, relieved. He didn't think he would ever feel like this again—unaccompanied by another in his mind.
Harry smiled nervously, "I don't quite know where to begin. . ."
He looked down at Draco's physical form, still held down by gravity. Instead of swaying absentmindedly, vacant of any soul, its eyes were narrowed as if trying to decipher what the two were saying.
Samsara was still within Draco's body, but he couldn't hear a word that left their mouths, thanks to Merry's talents. Slowly, a non corporeal flame emerged from the Slytherin's chest, encased in a glowing sphere. Merry pinpointed her focus into keeping Samsara's signature inside the orb, her hands seeming to lock in midair.
"Start with what Merry told you," Draco suggested. "About how to kill Samsara."
Harry tried not to move his lips in a way that could be read, despite the fact that Samsara no longer had any eyes to see. "We can't kill him without killing you," he breathed.
Draco's intense face fell, but he didn't seem overwhelmed by the information. "I have to die?"
"But you'll survive in the same way I did," Harry promised him, implying there was nothing to fear.
"With the Deathly Hallows," Draco concluded.
Harry furrowed his brow, stunned by his placated reaction, "You knew?"
Draco pressed his lips into a thin line, "I had an inkling. As soon as Granger mentioned passing on the Cloak to someone other than a family member."
"Do you think Samsara knows?"
Draco shook his head, "He was sealed away before the Deathly Hallows were even invented. He wouldn't have known what to look for, even when he had access to my memories."
"Good," Harry sighed with relief. The last thing they needed was for Samsara to learn about his impending demise.
As they spoke with one another, the circle of fire had become unstable, zigging and zagging like columns of chevrons. A torrent of blue fire darted upwards and hit Hermione square in the chest, knocking her off balance.
"Hermione!" Draco and Harry cried in unison, hovering over to her as if they could do anything to help.
The dangerous reality of the ritual had finally set in, and any certainty Draco had about going through with it had waned considerably.
"I'm fine," she grunted, standing with considerable difficulty. "Just keep going!" Despite the pain in her voice, Hermione maintained the strength of a warrior. It was something Draco had come to admire.
"Make it quick," Merry strained, appearing much weaker than she looked moments ago, "I don't know how much longer I'll be able to hold him!" Her voice was labored and struggling to get the words out.
Harry turned back to Draco with a sense of urgency, "We need a codeword for dying—something we wouldn't say otherwise."
Draco thought for a moment, but it was challenging to deliberate under pressure. He sputtered, "W-we can just say 'ascending.' It means a similar thing, but Samsara might think it means becoming stronger."
"That's brilliant!" Harry exclaimed.
On tenterhooks, Hermione shouted to the sky, hoping it would reach them, "Hurry!" Merry was reaching a threshold.
With a sternness, Harry turned back to Draco once more, speaking quickly, "After this, I'm going to give you my Cloak. You must accept it as if it belongs to you. It's yours now."
Draco was confused by this. "I thought you could only pass it on to your offspring."
"That's the tradition, but in the event that the owner dies, it can be passed on to their partner as well," Harry expounded, assuming he had encountered death more than enough times for the transfer of ownership to succeed.
"HARRY!" Hermione wailed, urging them both to return to their bodies before Merry's strength gave out. They did.
Instead of Samsara's soul taking residency in the rune-covered chest, it careened back into Draco's body, hitting him like a bullet through the heart. Draco stumbled backward, bracing himself against the moonstone-cored pillar. The wind died down, and the blaze along the etched pentacle extinguished. In the lack of chaos, they watched Merry collapse in a heap.
Hermione rushed to her side, shaking her by the shoulders, "Merry? Merry! MERRY!" she screamed frantically. The Hârrik remained lifeless and limp, completely unresponsive to her promptings. Harry and Draco ran across the ritual site, their faces pale.
Hermione checked Merry's pulse, dismayed, "Her heart isn't beating!" Hermione furrowed her brows in skepticism, "Do Hârriks even have hearts?" A thought crossed her mind that even if they did, there was a possibility that it resided somewhere odd. Hermione was severely out of her comfort zone, trying to remedy a situation she knew nothing about. Did will-o-wisps have circulatory systems? Blood? The idea sounded ludicrous. "What do we do?" she asked desperately.
Harry shrugged, at a loss. He was sort of hoping that Hermione had the answer—she usually did.
Draco spoke up instead, "Isn't Rolf a Magizooligist? He might be able to help her."
"Anything is worth a shot," Hermione said. They owed so much to Merry, and leaving her to die or wither away felt like betrayal. At the very least, they felt an obligation to keep her alive. Luna and her husband were their best bet.
Harry shoved his hands beneath Merry's form, bracing for how heavy she would be, but she weighed no more than a star.
Hermione and Draco corrected him with the knowledge that stars were actually very heavy. He amended his comment to say she was as light as a firefly, just to get them to stop talking. They were fairly similar to stars.
-x-
After taking a portal detour to 12 Grimmauld Place, Draco Apparated them to the patio of Luna's cottage. Despite how light Merry was, Harry placed her on the lounge chair. It was more for her comfort than his. She was still out cold.
The brazen Gryffindor started shouting down the hall, causing Hermione to be overwhelmed by second-hand embarrassment. Even though Luna and Rolf were awake, being the night owls they were, it was still hard to witness.
Twenty seconds later, Draco and Hermione could hear Rolf's voice from down the hall, sounding astonished, "A Hârrik? Are you absolutely sure?"
Luna divaricated the beaded curtains and stepped onto the patio in daisy-patterned pajamas. Rolf filed in behind her. Both of them stood in awe, Luna remaining as Rolf dashed to the lounge chair, his Bottomless Briefcase in hand. He got to work quickly, unsure of how long the Hârrik had been unconscious.
He retrieved a syringe from the briefcase and extracted a glowing blue substance from an ampoule. Everyone aside from Rolf and Luna looked away as he turned Merry's palm towards the night sky. They knew where that needle was going, and they didn't want to see it.
"You all can look now," Rolf sighed, putting the syringe in a wide, pellucid case that seemed to come from nowhere—probably to dispose of the biohazard later.
"What did you give her?" Hermione asked, wincing a little.
"Mana," Luna replied. "We do the same thing for mermaids and fairies."
Rolf nodded, gazing at his wife with all the adoration in the world, "Exactly. When we see magical beings in this state, they're usually dangerously low on mana. Wizards have an unlimited supply of magic, but magical beings do not."
"And they can die if they use up too much," Luna added.
"Will she be okay?" Harry asked anxiously. He felt partly responsible for pushing her to work past her limits.
"She'll be fine," Rolf assured him. But there was something else on his mind, only emerging once his patient had become stable, "How did you manage to find her? Last I heard, Hârriks have been extinct for ages."
Harry explained that she had been living alone in a secluded mansion since the early eleventh century. He left out the part about Samsara, though, since that was on a need-to-know basis. While he trusted Luna and Rolf with his life, Harry just didn't want to drag them into the thick of such a mess.
"Then she's the last of her kind," Luna said wistfully. Her protuberant eyes were sad yet curious. "Helena told me about the Hârriks—such gentle creatures. I never expected to see one." She was equal parts excited and compassionate. It must have been lonely, Luna thought.
And it certainly was, in ways she couldn't know. Merry had been on her own since she sealed Samsara away, and on top of that, she had cut off contact with the mortal she loved to prevent future heartbreak.
Merry began to stir, cyan eyes fluttering open to see only a blurred version of the world—blurry humans that she couldn't easily identify. Immediately, she became frantic, reminded of how humans tended to treat beings like her. She was unable to voice her worries, so they swirled like twisters in her mind. Have I been captured? Hunted? Am I going to be killed? She wasn't strong enough to transform into a wisp, just yet, so she was incredibly vulnerable.
Harry spoke to her in a calm voice, "It's alright. You're safe here."
Her eyes widened, but her vision stayed the same, "Harry?" She scanned the room, squinting at the wizards around her. "I can't see any of your signatures. . ."
"You only just recently became conscious," Rolf explained. "Your abilities will return to you once you've recovered."
"How long will that take?" Hermione inquired.
Rolf shrugged, speaking honestly, "I can't say. I've never rehabilitated a Hârrik before."
"She can't stay in her human form for too long," Draco mentioned, figuring it was valuable information for a Magizoologist to have. "It causes a sort of shadow monster to manifest, and you won't be able to fight it off with magic."
"Agrisi, right?" Luna recalled.
Trying to remedy her atrocious vision by blinking forcefully, Merry replied, "Correct. You needn't worry about them, though. I should be strong enough to transform in the next few hours." She elaborated that the only way to neutralize an Agris was with a Hârrik's wisp magic, which didn't take much mana to utilize. Traveling long distances and hosting rituals were the main activities that depleted her magical energy.
Harry knew there was no chance of Draco receiving the Resurrection Stone until she recovered.
"Don't worry," Luna hummed brightly, "She's in good hands. We'll keep you updated by owl."
"It would be best to keep her existence a secret, though, even among wizards," Hermione added dutifully, switching to her Minister of Magic brain, "It's crucial to her safety."
Rolf was already on the same page. If given the chance to save an extinct species, he would take it without any question or second thought.
"It's not like anyone would believe us," Luna admitted with a whimsical demeanor. "Most wizards think we're crazy." That was true; any time Harry brought up Nargles or Wrackspurts, people tended to look at him funny. Luna probably dealt with that her entire life. She smiled impishly, "I think they're just close-minded."