Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter.

Part Three

"Now that we are outside the Debating Chamber, I can handle you as you deserve."

Harry smiled a little as he turned around to face Abraxas Malfoy. Charlus hesitated next to him, but Harry waved him on without looking away from Malfoy's squint. Abraxas was probably trying to appear powerful and malevolent. Harry thought it just looked as though he'd lost his glasses.

"Yes? In what way will that be?" Harry didn't even bother reaching for his wand, and Abraxas flushed. He was at least quick at understanding implied insults.

"A formal challenge to a duel." Abraxas stalked a step closer and lowered his voice, although not enough to make it inaudible to anyone who wanted to walk up this mostly blank Ministry corridor. "When I win, you will retract your insinuations about me and my son."

"When. Confident. When I win, what do I get?"

"You won't win, because you're wrong and a half-blood." Abraxas took another threatening step closer to him. Harry only stood his ground, which meant Abraxas ended up retreating with a swirl of his robes. He really can't stand being that close to someone who isn't a pure-blood, Harry thought, eyes locked on Abraxas. A useful weakness. "There's no use in talking about your reward."

"Oh, leave something up to luck and chance. That would give me a better opinion of your intelligence, Malfoy."

Abraxas reached for his sleeve. Harry did the same thing at the same time, ignoring the way that Charlus briefly leaned against his back. He wanted to obey the formal rules, yes, or he wouldn't have bothered accepting the challenge, but he was also going to defend himself if Abraxas attacked.

The man restrained himself, barely. He huffed out a breath and glared. "Name your price."

"You'll step down as leader of the Diamond Debating Chamber," Harry said instantly.

Charlus abruptly stepped away behind him. He was probably trying to control his laughter, Harry thought, as he kept his eyes locked on Abraxas's face. Abraxas was staring in silence, his eyes a bright, stormy grey.

"You can't require that."

"Then you can't require me to stop telling the truth."

"Insinuations! Not the truth!"

"We could stand here and debate definitions all day, but I was given to understand that formal challenges to duels require that the one making the challenge sees their opponent as worthy of honor. How do you see me, if you're willing to deny everything from the legitimacy of my price if I win to simple wording?"

Abraxas had a slight flush coming into play on his cheeks now. Harry supposed he had to take it as the equivalent of the kind of sweaty red face that, say, Ron would have had.

Harry breathed softly through the pain, and waited. Abraxas finally pointed his hand at Harry, absent the wand that would have let Harry start dueling now, and snapped, "I accept your price! We will duel to yielding. Name the location."

"The grounds of Potter Place."

Abraxas glared once more and turned away. Harry rolled his eyes. He thought he was probably supposed to find the swirl of the cloak behind the man dramatic, but the drama was there in all the wrong ways.

"Asking for the duel in a public place where more people could see his humiliation would have been better," Charlus muttered.

Harry faced him and saw Charlus recoil at the glare he still wore, which Charlus had probably thought was just for Abraxas. "I didn't do that for you. I'm going to do this because my political tasks in the future would be a lot easier if he wasn't in charge of gathering and distributing the petitions anymore."

"Well, I know that, of course. But you accepted your place as my heir, so—"

"Because arguing and whinging about it would have wasted everyone's time, including my own," Harry pointed out, narrowing his eyes. "And I spent the last few days in the library looking at those books about the ritual you used to make sure that you weren't lying and attempting to keep me here under false pretenses."

"I wouldn't lie about something like this! I have more honor than that!"

"So much honor that you kidnapped an heir from another world!" Harry could feel the anger building up in him, burning just beneath the surface of his skin like magma. But he could also feel eyes watching, even if they were probably people who were around the corner at the minute. He didn't want to have this argument in public. "Come on," he snapped over his shoulder at Charlus, and started for the lifts.

"I don't appreciate being ordered around," Charlus said in a low tone, but at least he said it when he was beside Harry. He probably didn't want to have a fight in public, either.

Harry snorted. "Get used to it."

That caused Charlus to walk beside him in offended silence all the way to the lifts, and then during the trip to the Atrium, and then through the Floo connection. Harry ignored that. It seemed there were things they needed to say, things Harry had assumed Charlus had understood and Charlus had probably assumed didn't exist.

Harry was happy to change his relative's mind.

Charlus winced as he settled across the dining table from Harry and saw the sharp gleam in his eyes. He hadn't witnessed that anger since the first night he'd brought Harry here through the ritual, and he'd assumed it had departed. It seemed it hadn't.

"You want me to be an heir to you?" Harry sipped from the cold lemonade that Elsie had brought him, and leaned forwards. Charlus would have liked more table between them at the moment. "Then you've got to start treating me like an adult, not a child. Don't expect me to trust you without any evidence. Don't think that I'll do what you want and that's it. You lost all the rest of your family. Well, I lost my bloody world. The future I'd thought I would have. Don't treat me as though I'm someone you can push around and scold."

Charlus hesitated for a long moment. "I wouldn't do that. I know that you're stronger than that."

Harry snorted, with a roll of his eyes that made Charlus bristle. Harry saw that right away, of course, and gave him a nasty smile. "But you would still consider it an option if I was weak by your standards."

"I know what I did was bloody selfish. I still did it. I've apologized. What more do you want me to do?"

"Mean the apology. You've been so busy being delighted in what you 'secured' for your family that you haven't seen me as a bloody person!"

Charlus recoiled. But he kept himself from snapping, and tried to see the way the meetings in the Diamond Debating Chamber, and with Abraxas, and with Charlus's friends and allies, might have unfolded over the last few days from Harry's perspective.

Yes, Charlus had practically told Harry that he wasn't allowed to fight with Orion Black despite how offensive he might be. And he'd reacted this morning as if Harry had been the one to challenge Abraxas to a duel, and had done so with the intention of getting rid of him.

Harry couldn't have known how much Charlus wanted Abraxas out of the Diamond Dueling Chamber, because they hadn't discussed it. It had been more than short-sighted of Charlus to assume that Harry was doing something devious that would serve the Potter family's interests, at least on purpose.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly.

"For all of it?"

"I wish I could have left you in your world, yes. Or at least opened up a path to travel from one place to another, so that you could still see them."

Harry gave a harsh laugh. "There. That's better. Although you have to know that I would walk down such a path and just not come back."

Charlus nodded in response and said nothing. He knew that Harry had accepted this as much as he had only because he had no choice, and it was ridiculous to expect him to embrace Charlus's purposes and the Potter family whole-heartedly.

Harry finished the lemonade with a rough snap of his throat, and then faced Charlus. "Now. Tell me why you haven't dueled Abraxas before this, if you really wanted him out of the way and you knew that he would probably accept the duel."

"He wouldn't have, though," Charlus pointed out. "There are ways to back out from a challenge and make it look as though you're still honorable, and he knows that we all hate him. Besides, he trained Orion how to fight, Augusta isn't a great duelist, and I'm considerably older than he is and have additional heart problems now from the ritual. It's entirely possible that we could have challenged him and he would have won. Whatever he would have demanded would have cost too much to risk it."

"Heart problems."

Charlus shrugged. "I'm in my seventies, Harry. I can still live several decades yet, but I was born with heart problems that meant I had to be careful of how much running or dodging I did. And then I poured ten years of my life force into the ritual to bring you here, and the ritual itself made my heart problems worse. It claimed its price."

Harry stared at him, face wiped of all expression. Then he shook his head and murmured, so softly that Charlus almost didn't catch it, "You're mental."

"Yes."

"Why would you risk that much to bring someone who might have rejected you? Even killed you?"

"I spoke the parameters of the ritual so that that part was unlikely—"

"Answer my question."

"Because I wanted to keep the Potter family alive and thriving. Because I wanted someone who could help us pick up the pieces after a devastating war. Because I didn't want to marry again after Dorea died and try to have another child, the way some of my contemporaries are doing. Because I wanted to make sure those plagues stay confined and the sacred responsibility the Potter family has here doesn't fail. Because I'm stubborn and knew I could try to set up the ritual so that it would bring someone who would accept being here."

Harry shook his head. "I don't think that I really understand you at all."

Charlus said nothing. Yes, that was probably true, just as he was probably misunderstanding and underestimating Harry.

Harry stared out the window and said, "I don't want to talk to you for a while." Then he turned and walked out of the room.

Charlus sighed and went to the library, where he would spend some time revising dueling spells. It wasn't impossible that Abraxas would break the rules of the challenge about the time he realized that he couldn't defeat Harry just because Harry was a half-blood, and strike at Charlus in turn. Charlus had to make sure, in particular, that Abraxas didn't do something that would strain his heart.

"I'm going to defeat you, little boy."

Harry said nothing. He was looking around the Potter garden, making sure that the limitations of the dueling ring were clearly visible. Charlus had warned him that Abraxas might try to run if he started to lose.

When he starts to lose, Harry thought, and faced Abraxas. The man held his wand lightly between his fingers. His expression had changed again. Now he looked more the way Lucius probably would, disgusted and detached.

Harry bounced his wand lightly in his hand. The fury in him had finally come to life, past the numb shock of finding himself in this world. He could look at Abraxas Malfoy and see the seeds of the destruction that had been wrought here, and would come to full flower if he was allowed to go on promoting it.

The bloody destruction that had been the reason Harry got pulled here in the first place.

"To yielding," said Abraxas, maybe because he'd caught some glimpse of the fury that was animating Harry now.

"Yes." Harry smiled. He was going to enjoy this. He didn't bother to glance at Charlus, who stood on the other side of the dueling ring, which was marked out with a glowing white line in the dirt. He might look worried. He might look triumphant, since he and his allies had been seeking a way to defeat Abraxas for years and now Harry was the one handing it to them. Harry honestly didn't give a fuck. He was going to beat this man and have fun doing it.

Abraxas tilted downwards in a weird way that it took Harry a minute to recognize. He was bowing. Harry bowed back without taking his eyes from the git's face.

Abraxas, of course, cast from the middle of his bow. Charlus roared something about dueling etiquette, but Harry honestly couldn't have cared. It just meant he was freer to break the rules when it came to things like the kinds of spells he'd cast.

The Bone-Breaking Curse flew off to the side as Harry's shield batted it away, and then Harry flung his first hex. He'd chosen it carefully. Abraxas blinked for a moment when it landed, perhaps because it didn't have an immediate effect.

Then a loud sound came from the direction of his arse.

Abraxas made an outraged noise, but he did keep up his shield, which spoke to more skill than Harry had thought he'd have. Harry smiled and watched as the man's bowels squirmed and twitched and released more loud sounds.

"What are you doing, Harry?" Charlus shouted from outside the circle.

Harry ignored him and circled off to the side, rejoicing in the difficulty with which Abraxas turned to face him. He knew that the man would probably yield right away like the coward he was if Harry showed him lots of superior skill. And Harry didn't want that. He wanted to burn off some of this fury that he carried around.

So make it humiliating, and Abraxas would be all the more reluctant to yield because his pride was on the line.

A second later, the Cholera Hex took full effect, and Abraxas uttered a loud cry. Then he cast a purple zigzag of light Harry had never seen before at him.

Harry rolled out of the way. The zigzag, however, bounced off a tree near the edge of the dueling circle and came right back at him.

Nice, Harry applauded mentally, and met it with a Shield Charm that he threw up with careless ease. There was a flare of light, both purple and gold, and the Shield Charm dissolved—but it took the curse with it.

In the meantime, Abraxas was rolling on the ground as he emptied himself at both ends. Harry laughed. He only had a moment to enjoy it, though, because Abraxas finally managed to end the hex and climb back to his feet.

Harry met him with a round of grooming charms. Abraxas ruined whatever spell he'd been trying to aim at Harry when he shrieked as his eyebrows were suddenly plucked, his ear hairs came flying out, and his chin was freshly-shaven.

"Come on, then," Harry said. "Really. This is taking long enough as it is."

Abraxas was nearly hissing with rage as he cast some spells that presumably cleaned himself up and soothed the pain, but Harry didn't care. He had nothing on Voldemort. And his rage wasn't dead yet.

"Caeco!"

Shit. The Blindness Hex took effect from the caster's wand, without giving the victim a chance to shield. Harry could remove it in a minute, but he was sure that Abraxas wouldn't give him that minute.

Harry promptly blew up the earth at his own feet.

As the grass and dirt hurtled through the air, Harry rolled to the ground behind it. He could hear Abraxas casting frantically, but it was obvious the man couldn't see him. Harry touched his wand gently to his temple and murmured the countercurse, and his sight flashed back into being.

To confront Abraxas, who had dashed around the edge of the earth fountain and looked elated to find himself standing while Harry was on the ground at his feet.

Not that that mattered so much, not if what Harry wanted was a clear shot at Abraxas's feet and legs. Which he did. Harry whipped his wand in a fast circle and thought the next incantation with a feeling of vicious satisfaction.

The curse tangled around Abraxas's legs like a bolo, and he went sprawling to the earth. At the same moment, his toes started to writhe and grow, Transfigured into tree roots as they sought water.

"Look at you," Harry crooned as he stood up again. "All covered with mud."

That drove his opponent mad, as Harry had thought it would. Abraxas leaped back to his feet and then cast with a fury that might actually have done something if Harry wasn't in a fury himself, and more skilled. The curses came in a blizzard that Harry had to work on countering, rather than following up with the next humiliating spell.

But when Abraxas tried to move a step closer to Harry, he fell. His feet were by now firmly sunk into the earth, and the change was spiraling up his legs, bark replacing his skin. Abraxas clawed at his skin for a moment before he managed to reverse the Transfiguration.

That might be even more effective than mere bodily humiliation, Harry thought, and began to smile. He can't stand the thought of being something other than an arrogant pure-blood sod of a wizard, hmm? Well, let's give him a chance to see how the—

Harry's wand stabbed out, and he shouted, "Equus!"

-other half lives.

The human Transfiguration wasn't one that Harry had practiced a lot, which was why he'd had to cast it aloud. Abraxas was still too slow to get out of the way, especially given that his toes were the last things to change back to human. Harry laughed aloud as he watched the man's arse swell and push outwards, and then a long, silky blond tail fall from it. At the same moment, his legs bent and crooked and acquired hooves, and a whole new pair of legs sprouted from underneath his chest.

Abraxas looked down at the centaur he had become, and screamed.

Harry laughed again. "I'm not an expert in human Transfiguration, you know," he told Abraxas with great seriousness. "It's possible that you might never recover your human form. No matter how hard you struggle. Transfiguration is tricky like that."

Abraxas was clutching at his own withers, staring in horror at his tail as it swished. When his hooves stamped, he likewise whirled around as if they had a life of their own and he wasn't moving them. The intense fear on his face made Harry wonder for a second if he'd go mad.

Instead, Abraxas threw his wand across the ground, until it bounced off the glowing side of the dueling circle, and screamed, "I yield!"

"You'll step down as the leader of the Diamond Debating Chamber?"

"Yes! Yes! I yield! Change me back, Potter!"

Harry concentrated on willing the change, since he didn't remember the specific countercurse for this particular transformation. He thought it wouldn't work for a bit. Certainly Abraxas remained a centaur long past the point where Harry had thought he would begin to become human again.

But then his arse began to shrink—apparently, this Transfiguration was going to start from where it had begun, instead of creeping down in reverse like the tree one had—and then his tail vanished. Abraxas collapsed to the ground as his front legs vanished, and he buried his head in his arms, weeping.

Harry watched him without remorse. True, Abraxas might be a worse enemy after this point, but he had already been someone who was ready to hate Harry just because of his blood, and who had at least been complicit in the slaughter of a train full of children. Harry would be more than ready to pull out this memory if he did try to be a nuisance in the future.

Abraxas didn't seem inclined to stand up or stop crying, so Harry rolled his eyes and banished the dueling circle, then stepped out of it and nodded distantly at Charlus. "Are you going to order the house-elves to take him back home, or should I?"

Charlus couldn't take his eyes from Harry. He hadn't cast a single Dark curse—human Transfiguration wasn't considered to be that if it could be reversed—but had made Abraxas break in a way that Charlus knew he would never have managed himself.

And he was asking a question.

Charlus blinked and focused. "Elsie!" The house-elf appeared and gave him a questioning look. "Please take Mr. Malfoy to the gates of Potter Place and stay with him until he's capable of Apparating."

Elsie nodded and snapped her fingers, floating Abraxas behind her as she trotted towards the gates. Charlus faced Harry again slowly. He froze when he found those burning green eyes fixed on him.

"I could do that to you, if I wanted," Harry said. "I probably wouldn't, because it takes a lot of time for the anger to build up like that. But it also wouldn't take as much time to build up as normal, considering that you kidnapped me."

"I'm sorry," Charlus whispered. He didn't know what to say. He had never seen anyone fight like that. And it also humbled him, considering that he, or Orion, or even Augusta, might have defeated Abraxas if they'd been willing to think creatively about the kind of magic they used against him.

Hell, Charlus had known himself the kind of horror that Abraxas felt about being less than clean and less than human. He was said to have stopped talking to one of his own cousins who had married a half-Veela. Charlus could have used that as a weapon. It had never occurred to him.

"I'm going to help you for a while," Harry continued. "I'll focus on making sure those plagues are contained or destroyed, and in finding someone who has a trace of Potter blood who can be your heir. And then I'm going to do my damnedest to find a way back to my own world. That ritual might not have any known exceptions now, but you didn't think Abraxas Malfoy could be defeated until tonight, did you?"

Charlus shook his head, still mesmerized. Harry gave a short laugh and ran his hand through his hair.

"I gave up because I thought it was hopeless," he muttered. "But I was just in shock. Now I can feel things again." He started to walk towards Potter Place, and then glanced back at Charlus with a frown. "Are you coming or not? It's not too late to start research in the library tonight, and you know how the books are organized."

Charlus glanced towards the gates, where he could still see a smudge of white from Abraxas's robes, and then followed his terrifying heir. He had to admit the solution Harry proposed would be fine with him, as long as the plagues the Potters were responsible for containing wouldn't burst out on an unprepared world.

If Harry could go home, it would be for the best in the end.

And until then, if he was slightly dazzled and following Harry rather than guiding him into assuming the duties of an heir as he had envisioned…

Well, it was a way to atone.

And damn if he wasn't proud.

The End.