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Ashborn	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 36149 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 9
- 10
- 11
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Chapter Ten—Teaching Moments

            “Good luck.”

            Draco blinked in mild shock. When he had told Potter that he would be dreaming of the werewolves that night, in the hopes that they would agree to become part of the same alliance as the centaurs, he hadn’t thought that Potter would give him that much approval. If anything, given his tension in the last few days, he’d been certain Potter would insist on joining the dreams, the way that he’d been the first to contact Sidereal.

            But Potter didn’t seem to realize that this was anything remarkable. He opened the door of his painted rooms and stepped inside as though something pursued him.

            “Wait!” Draco blurted. He grimaced as he moved past Bellatrix. Sound too eager, and Potter would have reasons to scorn him.

            Once again, Potter didn’t seem to realize what sort of reaction he should have. He did nothing but turn around and stare. “What?” he asked. “I thought we’d discussed all the questions you would have.”

            Draco leaned forwards. “Since when did you trust me enough to make contact with a new magical creature species all by myself?”

            “Since we spent hours talking about it, and you have the centaurs to disappoint, as well as me, if you do anything stupid,” Potter said. He looked as if he had a mild concussion with the way he was blinking. “You want this dream to come true for different reasons than I do, but it would still be stupid for you to sabotage yourself.”

            Draco reached out. He could feel the muscles in Potter’s arm moving beneath his hand, and the way that Potter went still at the touch. His eyes had probably already found out two escape routes and three ways to kill him, Draco knew. If Potter had any legacy from the war, it was a combination of better reflexes and paranoia.

            “You have to know,” Draco said. He knew that he wanted to convey this, but he didn’t know the right words—the way he hadn’t when he wanted to threaten Potter, the way he hadn’t when he wanted to ask for Potter’s respect, the way he hadn’t when he wanted to explain the reality of his relationship with Severus. Potter had that effect on him. “You have to—you have to distrust me somewhat, because of the way that we acted in Hogwarts.”

            Potter’s face cleared. “Of course I do. But that just means that I don’t trust you to do things for disinterested reasons, the way I would with my friends. I trust that you’ll act in your own self-interest. And I don’t think doing something stupid just because you want to spite me fits that.”

            Draco shook his head. His tongue was clumsy, his head was filled with fog, but he knew this was important. “You also think I can be better than that. You’ve told me so, when you talked to me in the past.”

            Potter gazed at him expressionlessly for a moment. Draco knew what he hoped the git was thinking—that Draco had unexpected depths—but he had no way of knowing. Another thing the war had done was make Potter harder to read most of the time, though by no means always.

            “You could be better, yes,” Potter said. “But you’ll need to be the one to make that decision. I was wrong to think I could stand between you and what you feared. At best, I can only protect you for a little while, and you’ll have to go on after that and see what you can do.”

            He shut the door between them. Bellatrix took up a guard position outside it. Draco glared at her and at the uncommunicative wood for a while before he snorted and turned away.

            Of course, he would do what they had agreed on with the centaurs as part of the alliance and dream of the werewolves that night. But he wished for something more—

            And did not know what it was, as usual.

            I will learn, he promised himself, turning away so that he could walk down the corridor to his own rooms, and his own bed. And when I do, I’ll astonish Potter, and I’ll demand his respect. He’ll have no choice but to give it to me.

*

            How did you prepare for teaching a class in a magical language that sounded like English to you?

            Harry had thought of several ways to do it, and had to discard all of them, because they relied on him knowing what proper pronunciation in Parseltongue sounded like. In the end, he gathered up a few books with plenty of pictures when Bellatrix motioned to him and followed her to the library. He would just have to use a method that relied on Snape.

            Snape was waiting for him at the great central table in the library, the one where Harry preferred reading books in the last several days because no one could sneak up on him there, the way Snape had. He had his hands folded in front of him and a severe frown on his face of the kind that used to frighten Harry out of his wits.

            Harry shrugged now and dropped the books in front of Snape. When you’d survived a dragon charging you and shrieking steam into your face while you tried frantically to back out of its burrow, a frown was less intimidating.

            But never harmless. Harry planned to keep his eyes on Snape’s hands and his ears on the tone in his voice all through the lesson.

            “I can’t hear Parseltongue,” he told Snape. “It sounds like English to me. So what I’ll do is look at pictures of common objects, the ones you want to learn, and speak the Parseltongue word for them. You’ll have to listen and then repeat the word.”

            Snape’s lip curled in disdain. “And how will you know that I’m speaking Parseltongue or English, then?”

            Harry nodded. “I thought of that. I hope that when you speak the word back to me, it’ll sound like distorted English to my ears. The wrong pronunciation, or something. You can usually tell when someone has an accent, even if they know the words well. I hope that happens with you.”

            Snape sat there watching him for a moment, as though he expected something more. Harry looked steadily back. He didn’t know what else Snape wanted, and he would have felt silly trying to guess.

            “You do not know if this will work at all,” breathed Snape, like someone having a revelation. “You do not know—”

            “No, I bloody well don’t,” Harry snapped. “But what matters is that you’ll learn the language, if this works. I don’t want to hear anything from you on the subject unless you actually have a better idea, and from the way you’re staring at me, you don’t.”

            Snape’s hands clenched on the table, but he didn’t draw his wand or make threatening noises about potions, the way that Harry had been more than half-expecting. After an examination of Harry that seemed to count the hairs in Harry’s nose, he gave his head a rough nod.

            “Good,” Harry told him sweetly, and opened the first book.

            Since Snape hadn’t expressed any preference, Harry thought they might as well start with pictures of food, which snakes thought about a lot. There was a mouse on the first page, a bright-eyed photograph that sniffed at the camera and moved around its burrow. Harry looked at it, thought of the little snake—whose presence he wouldn’t reveal to Snape unless he had to—and then spoke the word for mouse.

            Snape stilled across from him. Harry smiled and didn’t look up, because that would encourage the idiot to think that his motions were important to Harry. He spoke it again, thinking about the way that a snake would unhinge its jaws to eat the mouse, thinking about the size of the tunnels that they would need to slide down, thinking about the muffled squeaks that the mouse would give. All of those would have to make his word more real, because Harry still heard the word “mouse” no matter how he said it.

            Snape stirred again. Harry looked up and blinked away the image of the snake and the mouse in front of his eyes. Thinking too much more of them would only result in him speaking Parseltongue to Snape, and he doubted Snape would accept that. “How was that?” he asked. “Could you hear it?”

            “Yes, I could,” Snape said, after a moment of strained silence in which Harry wondered if he’d somehow stopped being a Parselmouth. “But you hurried through it. The words rattled and rustled too much for me to keep track.”

            “Not words,” Harry said. “Word. That was only one word, the word for ‘mouse.’”

            “Then repeat it again.”

            Harry looked back at the picture and did. He saw Snape leaning forwards with his lips silently moving, and held back laughter. That would ruin the calm picture he was trying to project and the truce for sure. So he chanted the word for mouse, over and over, and saw Snape’s eyes darken with frustration.

            Well, he said it could be learned, not that he could learn it in a day. It probably frustrates him to think that anyone around here knows something he doesn’t, though.

            Harry paused as a new thought occurred to him. Perhaps that was one reason Snape had bound the Ashborn so thoroughly with Legilimency, instead of just using the Mark and reserving the mental control for people like Bellatrix who couldn’t be trusted otherwise. He wanted to be sure that their eyes and ears brought them no information he did not know, that he could trust them to report on everything they saw and did.

            That still doesn’t excuse breaking their free will with his bloody mind control, though.

            “Mus,” Snape said, or something that sounded like it. The word was deformed, and a blur seemed to pass across Harry’s ears as he said it, like the way a heat shimmer would pass across his eyes. Harry blinked, and wished he could twitch his ears.

            “Not quite,” Harry said, and Snape hissed in pure frustration. Harry grinned. He must have spoken in Parseltongue without realizing it. “Not quite,” he said, tearing his concentration away from both the book and Snape, who reminded him too much of a serpent. “It sounded like you were missing half the vowels.”

            “From what I can hear, this tongue does not have vowels,” Snape said darkly, but repeated the word again. This time, Harry thought it was missing the first sound, and told him so. Snape said it a third time, all but biting the end off.

            Harry smiled. “A little more, and I think you’ll have it,” he said. “Listen.” He turned back to the mouse, said its name, and listened for Snape’s response.

            “…us…”

            “That was worse than before,” Harry pointed out.

            “You are not speaking as clearly.” Snape filled every word with patience as if it was poison. “How do you expect me to learn this from you if mumble like a first-year student caught pissing in a cauldron?”

            Harry paused. “That didn’t happen, did it?”

            “A few times, yes, when I kept spoiled brats too long in detention for their bladders.”

            Harry shook his head, chewing on his tongue for a second so he could keep the words about what he thought of Snape’s detentions firmly in his mouth—and found the solution. He grimaced. “We’re both frustrated,” he said. “You because you don’t get it right the first time, and me because I’m teaching you. Let’s take ten minutes to think about something else, or you can practice if you want, and then we’ll start again.”

            Snape stared at him with fathomless eyes. Harry thought he wouldn’t agree, just before he stood up and turned to walk around the nearest stack of books. Harry sighed and slumped into his chair, stretching. He felt more tired than he expected, and when he cast a Tempus Charm, he was surprised to see how much time had passed.

            Well. At least it’ll get these weary hours of my life to go past a bit faster.

*

            That the boy would think to send me away, as if he were the professor and I the misbehaving student…

            Severus closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose hard enough that his eyes would have watered had he kept them open. It was somewhat of a revelation, how hard it was to slow his own breathing and admit that what Potter had done was…

            Was right. He had done the same thing himself when some of his students grew frustrated by their own mistakes in his NEWTS Potions class and he knew they would only waste time and valuable ingredients if they tried again.

            I did not expect such wisdom from him.

            But then, he had not expected much of anything from Potter, and he was continually discovering things that changed the stakes. He was tired of them. He should use this brief holiday from the intricacies of Parseltongue—and its use of more sibilants than any language should wield—to examine what he had learned about Potter in the past day and decide how much of it was likely to be useful.

            He had learned that the boy was most likely a formidable fighter in some circumstances. But that was complemented by a skittish set of reflexes and a suicidal urge that meant he was perhaps only a third more likely to do the right thing in a complex situation. Severus was not at all sure that he would trust the boy should he find himself trapped in battle or in a corner with him.

            He had the capacity to change his mind about people like Draco and Severus, or he would never have agreed to help them or live with them.

            On the other hand, how much of that is truly changing his mind and how much is agreeing because we do not matter to him except as potential threats to his friends?

            That connected back with the suicidal urges Potter seemed to have. He could be effective, even perhaps magnificent, in battle, but sooner or later his lack of defenses and his lack of concern for his own life would catch up with him and he would have to surrender or collapse or die.

            Then Severus paused. He still thought as though he would fight a war in the next year, because that was the situation he had come to adult growth in—a war against the Marauders, against all who thought he was worth less because of his Muggle blood and because he practiced the Dark Arts and because of his House—and continued on with in maturity, during the wars with his conscience and the Dark Lord and his own hatreds.

            But now he had the Ashborn. Now he had the freedom that he had fought for.

            When had it ceased to be enough?

*

            “Mouse.”

            Harry grinned. He hadn’t realized how good it would feel to finally hear Snape say the word in good Parseltongue, which Harry reckoned was good English to his ears. “Good! That’s it. Do you want to do another word today, or not?”

            “No.” Snape stood, staring down at him. Harry remained seated on purpose, looking up calmly. Snape might think he was intimidating, but he had nothing on Voldemort chanting over Harry’s strapped-down and helpless body, thinking that he’d finally found the right way to avert the prophecy and have Harry die without killing himself.

            You promised that you wouldn’t think about that anymore.

            Harry twitched a shoulder in response to his conscience. It was his responsibility what he thought about here, in a place where no one would hear his nightmares or care if they did.

            “You have not yet asked me about a time when your friends might visit again,” Snape said.

            Harry shrugged. “I reckoned that would have to wait until you saw that learning Parseltongue was actually going to work. Kind of a useless bargain if you can’t learn what I’m supposed to be trading to you for good treatment and seeing my friends.”

            Snape closed his eyes. He’d had that habit when confronted by Neville’s cauldrons, Harry thought.

            Neville. He hadn’t seen Neville in months. Harry tried to conceal a swallow as well as the harshness in his throat, and kept watching Snape, curious as to what he would do, or try, next.

            “You can invite them to visit on the morrow,” Snape said. “The same conditions as before, and the time they can visit is two days from now.”

            Harry stared at him. Snape’s eyes gave no clue what he was thinking, and he wasn’t clutching at his wand anymore—hadn’t been since Harry had told him his pronunciation of the Parseltongue word was halfway right, in fact—so Harry couldn’t tell from that, either. If this was a trap, it was a subtle one.

            Then he thought he saw it. “As long as you make the same promise as before,” he said. “Not to harm them, or take them hostage, or allow any of the other Ashborn to take them hostage or harm them, either.”

            “They shall come and be here and leave safely,” Snape said. “I swear it.”

            Harry hesitated, caught. Well, shit. Now what? “Thanks,” he said at last, because he did want to see Ron and Hermione again, and if Snape was inspired by some sort of mystical Spirit of Giving or memory of Dumbledore or something else, then Harry didn’t want to waste the chance.

            Snape inclined his head back to him and swept out of the room. Harry watched him go, baffled. Snape’s bargains with him in the past few days didn’t make much sense—

            Not unless he wanted a way to neutralize Harry from working on the Ashborn, or wanted some way to get Malfoy back under his control. Working with Harry must be preferable to having him thinking about either of those goals.

            With a grim smile, Harry gathered up the books. He’ll just have to find out the hard way that I was serious about returning free will to everyone.

*

            Draco closed his eyes and spent a moment in silent meditation. He was certain that this was something he did better than Potter, at least. He could organize his thoughts and marshal them in one or two directions when he wanted to, not dart off after every new idea the way that Potter would.

            Draco wondered for a moment, idly, what Potter’s Animagus form would be. Something canine, he was sure. A terrier, perhaps, with a tendency to bark frantically at things that weren’t there and chase every rabbit that crossed its path. Draco could feel Potter’s fur beneath his hands, softer than that ridiculous hair—

            You accuse him of babbling and lack of focus, and then you do the same thing?

            Draco bit his lip and bent down to his task, building on that image of Potter-as-dog to begin imagining the werewolves. He knew that they would dwell in the furthest parts of the Forbidden Forest, as far as possible from human contact. The darkest parts, too; he had read once that most werewolves shunned light that would reveal their differences from normal humans, like their amber eyes and the way their teeth and nails might grow longer. Or it could remind them of the moon and the curse they suffered when it was full.

            He had to think like a werewolf. He had to see the spot where they dwelt, in his mind if not elsewhere. He had to make contact with them.

            Around him, scents suddenly sprang to life. Sun-warmed grass. Moldering leaves. Some strong and spicy smell that Draco thought probably came from a particular species of tree. Soft earth. A rotting carcass. The last wasn’t pleasant, but Draco worked to cough and clear it out of his throat, and, when he thought he was ready for what he might see, opened his eyes.

            In front of him was a deep dip in the earth, with steps scraped into the sides and what looked like a chair made of stone at the end Draco was facing. Overhead was a dark sky full of stars, although he knew that the sun was still up outside. Draco started, then forced himself to relax. This was a dream, after all, and the features of both landscape and time inside it would be the ones that the person he communicated with dreamed into being.

            Person.

            Werewolf?

            Draco shrugged irritably. He thought Potter would probably say that it was an excellent sign he was already thinking of the werewolves as people. Then again, Potter was mad. Draco turned in a slow circle, hearing the ever-present crackle of leaves under his boots the same way he had when he visited the white centaur, and scanned for the sign of any inhabitants. His mind had pointed him here, but there didn’t seem to be any werewolves about.

            “Hullo?” he called out at last, feeling extremely stupid. But he would feel stupider still if he stood here and waited and wondered when someone was within earshot.

            The darkness stirred at the edge of the clearing, beneath the stone chair. Draco caught a pair of bright eyes, somewhere in color between gold and orange, gleaming there. He swallowed back what he wanted to say next and watched carefully.

            The woman who came forth was taller than Draco had thought she would be, given how low the eyes had been. She stooped as she walked, though, and maybe she could walk on four legs as easily as two; Draco had so little knowledge of werewolves. Her hair hung around her face, long and tangled and grey, but not like the streaks that Draco had seen on Severus. It was a cat-color, frosted with white. She faced him, and opened her mouth in silence. Draco winced. Her teeth were so crooked and sharp that the only word he could really apply to them was “fangs.”

            “Um,” he said. “Hullo.”

            The woman answered him, and if her voice was deep, at least she spoke a language he could understand. “Why have you come here? Most humans would not venture anywhere near this part of the dream-realm.”

            “I’ve come to invite you into an alliance,” Draco said, and when her eyes widened, he worried for a moment if she would think that the invitation was personal or realize that it extended to other werewolves. Think about that problem when you come to it. “The old pure-blood alliances included your people, I know.”

            “You speak about us as though we were some backwards tribe,” the woman said. “We are humans, like you.” There was a depth in her voice that wasn’t a snarl, Draco thought, but might be one when it grew up.

            “You know that there’s a difference,” Draco said, and he was surprised to hear the calmness in his own voice. I don’t think Severus could stand here like this and speak this way after being threatened by a werewolf. Even Potter might have trouble with it. “Or you wouldn’t live out in the Forbidden Forest and avoid the society of other people.”

            The woman sprang lightly into the air and landed in front of him, staring down. Draco swallowed. She reminded him of some of what he had seen of Fenrir Greyback, but he had been a simple and savage killing machine, dedicated to using his bulk to smash people to the earth and cow them. She had a wild grace in her, and Draco could picture her better as someone who turned into a lean wolf on the full moon.

            “We are here because the Ministry wishes to harm us,” she said. “No other reason.” The snarl was present now.

            Draco stood tall, and nodded. “And we’re here to change that. Long ago, the pure-bloods were bound to others in a relationship of interdependence and alliance. I want to bring that back.”

            The woman cocked her head. “Your name?”

            “Draco Malfoy.” Draco hesitated, then gave the other names reluctantly. We’re part of an alliance now. Their strength is my strength. “I’m working with Severus Snape, leader of the Ashborn, and Harry Potter.”

            The werewolf paused and stared at him. Then she shook her head. “I know your name. And Harry Potter would never work with you.”

            Fuck, not this again. Draco tried to stand straight and stare her down, but that caused her growl to rise, and Draco seemed to remember something long ago, some advice Severus had given him, about not staring wolves or dogs in the eyes, because it would cause them to become more aggressive. “He didn’t used to,” he said. “But he agreed to become a hostage to the Ashborn, so that he could save the rest of the wizarding world from another war. And that means that he’s with us, and that means that he’s helping us create this alliance.” The us might be a slight lie, since Severus hadn’t shown any interest in the alliance so far, but it would sound more impressive that way, and Draco was fairly sure Severus would back him rather than let himself be shown up by a werewolf. “He’s probably doing it because otherwise he would be bored, but he’s doing it.”

            The werewolf sniffed at him as if he actually stood there instead of in the midst of a dream. Well, for all Draco knew, werewolf noses were sensitive enough to sniff out emotions like that. She ended up taking a step back and scraping slowly in the dirt with her foot, as though she wanted to disturb the leaves as little as possible while she thought. “You believe you’re telling the truth.”

            Draco wondered what she thought he was lying about, and decided that he might as well play another card. “The centaurs are with us already, and bargaining for positions in the alliance.”

            The werewolf’s eyes widened, and her body jerked to stillness. Then she said, “The centaurs. This is news. I must speak to Laughter about it.” And she pulled around and ran out of the clearing as though something was chasing her. Draco took a step after her and opened his mouth, but then stopped. He had no name to call, and he would look ridiculous chasing her through the woods when there was no way for him to keep up.

            He might not have much right now, with his life changing constantly from hour to hour, but he thought he could keep his dignity.

            He opened his eyes and found himself floating to the surface of his sleep slowly. The Forest was still around him, he thought dreamily, the leaves waving and the bright and dark patches between the trees still drifting across his sight—

            And someone was knocking on the door.

            Draco swung out of bed and stared. He would have felt less surprised, but Severus didn’t usually summon him at this time of the day and Potter had no reason to seek him out. Unless something had happened, of course. Something that might have an impact on the alliance. He flung on his boots and hastened to the door. He hadn’t bothered to take his clothes off when he went into the dream.

            He opened the door, breath already on his lips to command Potter to tell him what was wrong or tell the waiting Ashborn to take him to Severus—

            And found Severus waiting there instead.

            Draco took a step back and found his arm working as if he would actually shut the door in Severus’s face, he was so startled. Then he managed to get control of himself, but he still simply ended up staring. He wondered if he could ask permission to leave for a few minutes, so that he would do something other than swallow and stare, something that would actually give words to Severus’s miraculous visit.

            He flinched the moment he had that thought, because he could practically hear Potter yelling at him. Are you stupid? That’s the kind of thing he wants you to feel, that you’re the unworthy one and the one who should feel as if he’s in trouble, when you were doing nothing but sleeping! He’s the one who came to your room. Let him be the one to explain himself.

            It took more courage than Draco had known he had, but he managed to stand up and give a cordial nod to Severus. “What can I do for you?” he asked, which he knew made him sound like a shopkeeper, but was still better than the cringing response he’d wanted to give at first.

            Severus stared at him with those fathomless eyes that Draco had found himself mesmerized by when they were imprisoned together. He’s the only one who ever looked at me then like I was worth something.

            And now, Potter is the only one who does. Draco couldn’t let the past intrude on the present, couldn’t let himself be convinced that Severus deserved another chance when Draco hadn’t decided to give him one. He settled for leaning on the door and raising one eyebrow, waiting for some sort of response.

            “You are well within your rights to leave me standing in the corridor,” Severus said at last, his voice deep and quiet. “But I had hoped that you would invite me inside.”

            Heat rushed up Draco’s skin from his throat to his cheeks, and not the kind of heat that Severus usually inspired in him. He wanted to step back, to stammer that Severus didn’t have to ask permission to go anywhere inside the Ashborn’s fortress, not when he was the one who had ordered the Ashborn to build the bloody thing—

            And then Draco paused. That in and of itself was significant, wasn’t it? Severus left Draco to his own devices much of the time and commanded him the rest. Draco wasn’t allowed to intrude on him in the evenings when Severus had expressed the fact that he would much rather be left alone.

            This was new. This was different.

            Draco licked his lips, and nodded. He moved out of the way, and Severus stepped inside, turning his head around as though he had never seen the room before and wanted to know where everything was.

            Draco looked around, too, and wondered what Severus’s critical eyes would make of it. He had tried to arrange his possessions in a way that made sense, in everything from the books on the shelves to the pillows on the bed. But anxiety seared him that Severus would find something out of place, something ungracious or juvenile.

            Again, he had to straighten his shoulders and remind himself of what Potter would have said. He chose to come here, and he’s the one who decided to become my lover even though I’m much younger than he is. He could have chosen one of the other Ashborn if he wanted someone closer to him in age.

            It was strange, to feel a thin, bright feeling moving through him and realize that it might be pride. After everything. After it all. He blinked and stood straighter still, so he felt ready when Severus turned back to him from his inspection of the rooms.

            “Have you been unhappy with the introduction of Potter into the Ashborn?”

            Draco took a deep breath. He could have said yes or no with equal truth. Potter had smashed everything to pieces. He had made Draco question his personal hero, the one person he knew who had been through the horrors of the Dark Lord’s dungeons exactly as he had and survived and made everything better. Severus had banished the Dark Mark, ensured that Draco was surrounded by people who would obey him without question, fed and sheltered him and given him books. He had taken Potter under his control. Potter meant that Draco would never look at that the same way again, with the same untarnished, glittering trust.

            But if Potter hadn’t come, then nothing would ever have changed, and the alliance wouldn’t be on the same footing it was. Draco would never have dared invite the centaurs, for fear of annoying Severus.

            “I can find some other means of controlling his friends, if you wish him to go,” Severus continued, in a hurried tone. Draco looked at him in wonder. It sounded almost as if Draco’s silence had unnerved him, and he wanted to get the question out of the way so that he could focus the conversation on practical realities.

            “No,” Draco said. “I like having him here.”

            Severus turned to examine the vials of completed potions Draco had sitting on his shelves, with an abstracted frown. It was something he had always done the other times that he came to Draco’s rooms, and Draco wouldn’t have thought it was strange now.

            Except.

            Except that this time, Severus’s eyes had flashed before he moved away, and Draco knew what that gleam was and recognized it. He had seen it in the mirror often enough, when Severus paid too much attention to his potions or his automatons or other Ashborn who needed their mental bindings renewed.

            Jealousy.

            Draco licked his lips. His chest tightened and then loosened, and this time the pride was bright and strong enough to make him feel as though a different kind of flame was shining beneath his skin.

            He had a power of his own after all, the kind of power that didn’t depend on the centaurs or Potter, or what he might have started or done by contacting the werewolf tonight. The power was personal and between him and Severus.

            “I’m happy to have Potter here,” he said calmly, when he thought that he could speak in a way that wouldn’t make his words tremble with joy and reveal the truth to Severus. “He’s made me think about things in a new way. He’s inspired me to seek out new projects.” He paused, and then, because he couldn’t resist the chance to slip a knife into the man who had done it so often to him, he added, “I think you were the one who told me that inspiration is the most valuable thing one person can give another.”

            Severus’s shoulders hunched. For a moment, Draco thought he would strike out, and Draco found himself startlingly prepared for that. He would strike back. He had words and words waiting, ones that would hopefully make Severus reconsider whatever kind of attack he had planned.

            “I must consider what you have said,” Severus said hoarsely, and turned towards the door.

            What? It’s over, just like that? Draco blinked and followed him. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Potter has to be here as a hostage because of the Unbreakable Vows.”

            “Yes, but I had thought of a different means to accomplish the same end, to rid ourselves of him.” Severus laid a hand on the door, felt about for a moment as though he didn’t remember that it had a handle on this side, and then found it and wrenched it open. “But if you wish him to be here, I will abandon that plan.”

            Draco had to close his eyes as a pulse of sweetness overwhelmed him. Yes. I made him rethink what he was going to do. That’s the first time I’ve done that since he set up the Ashborn.

            The same way that it’s the first time he’s visited me without prior warning. The first time that I’ve seen him jealous over me, afraid that someone else would take me away. Because, who could, when only the Ashborn were with us and none of them would desire me except at his command?

            Being in power again, discovering that he had the ability to affect Severus instead of only being affected himself, was a marvelous feeling.

*

            Severus made sure that he was back in his rooms before he let himself consider the words Draco had spoken. Doing it in front of someone else would probably make him break down, or at least show weakness that—

            He was thinking as though he was still among the Death Eaters, where spying eyes would carry any tales they could back to the Dark Lord to break a favorite. Here, the Ashborn were the only ones likely to notice, unless Potter was wandering, and Severus knew that he would have felt Bellatrix’s Mark drawing nearer if the latter was the case.

            Potter was making him regress.

            Potter, and Draco.

            Severus shut his eyes, and saw Draco again as he had been just now, his face pale but set, his voice steadier and less caressing than Severus had ever heard it. He had never felt his own desire for Draco as a hindrance. He was a beautiful boy, a beautiful man, an obedient student and servant. Severus could take or leave him as he chose. He was the one who was in control of their relationship, and not Draco.

            But now…

            Now, Draco had changed when Severus’s back was turned, changed rapidly, like a snake shedding an old skin and growing into a new one. He had altered, and Severus found himself as enchanted as though this new Draco was a hypnotic cobra, or one of the artifacts that the Dark Lord had enchanted to enslave the mind of anyone who picked it up.

            As though Draco knew Legilimency extensive enough to enslave him.

            Severus entertained that idea for a time, and then reluctantly put it aside. No. He would not think that Draco had somehow developed that skill. It was far more likely that increased confidence, which Potter had given him, was enough to make Severus notice.

            He had not known that he desired a confident lover. Yes, sometimes he wearied of Draco’s worship of him, but that was uncommon. Most of the time, he basked in the uncomplicated adoration that Draco offered, and when he tired of it, there were no shortage of places he could send Draco away to. His life had at last become what he dreamed it might when he was still a student laboring away in Slytherin.

            Well. There were differences. Lily was not with him now, for one thing.

            But Lily’s son was. And he was challenging things, changing things, introducing new elements into Severus’s life that would alter the course of it if he allowed them to continue exactly as they were.

            For the moment, Severus decided, feeling cautiously at the thoughts as they grew in his head like new teeth, he would do nothing to change the way that Potter related to Draco. It was making Draco more confident in an odd way, and that made Draco more attractive to Severus in an odd way. He would wait there, and see what happened. And he did not believe that Potter could affect the Ashborn, at least for now, no matter how passionately he wanted to.

            He would watch, and wait, and see in what ways he could affect the alliance that Draco was building with the centaurs and perhaps other magical creatures. If he could be more accommodating and gracious than Potter, Draco would turn to him in time, and the accusation from Potter that Severus had no respect for Draco’s hobbies would fall to dust.

            But with Potter himself…

            Severus felt his lips thinning, and nodded.

            Yes, with Potter himself, other measures would be needed.

*

            unneeded: Snape’s head is coming out of his butt with reference to Draco; I don’t know about Harry. And Harry is good for Draco in several ways, I think, not least of which is treating him like a person.

            AlterEquis: Here comes the next chapter! Hope you enjoy it.
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Ashborn