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Ashborn	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 36151 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Fifteen—In Motion

            “And how does this affect us?” Thera took a delicate bite from the treacle tart that Harry had brought out that morning. Even though the older centaurs usually ate horse rather than human food, it seemed there were some human dishes they were unwilling to leave completely up to their fillies.

            Harry sighed and shook his head, looking around the garden. It was still early, only a few minutes away from dawn, and he hadn’t realized how different it would look. He could smell more flowers than he could see. “I don’t really know?” he said hopelessly. “Except that it might mean Malfoy and I work better together now, so it could mean good things for the alliance, as well.”

            Thera paused and cast him a skeptical glance. “You realize that sooner or later, someone must go to the vampires?”

            Harry made a face. “God, I know. Next time, we’ll send them a proper pure-blood like they asked for.” He had to smile as he imagined Snape meeting Lady Zembaz. Perhaps she would like the taste of his mind better. Or, no, wait, Snape wasn’t pure-blood, was he? His father was a Muggle. It would have to be Malfoy. Too bad. “But I’m not going near them again, in case this attempt to take over my mind happens again.”

            “The werewolves and the vampires,” Kleianthe said sourly from nearby, where she was grazing. She had refused the treacle tart, and Harry didn’t know whether that came from a genuine lack of interest, because she wanted to leave more for her daughter, or because she didn’t want to eat anything Thera showed such interest in. “Two key pieces of the ancient alliance, and we are still missing them both.”

            Harry snorted. “The alliance is, what, a month old? At most, and that’s if you start counting from the time I cast that spell to find the white raven.” He had to pause and shake his head at that. He had been with the Ashborn a month—long enough to almost forget what it felt like to eat with other people, or not be doing crazy and stupid things because Malfoy or a centaur needed him to.

            Agreeing to Snape’s little proposal was another crazy and stupid thing.

            Harry ran his hand through his hair and shook his head again. Fine, it was crazy and stupid. So was Hermione’s plan to get him out of here by playing on Snape’s greed for a restored reputation, but Harry also thought it was the only thing that might work. So he would shut the hell up and let Hermione try, and he would shut the hell up and let Snape try, although how in the world he thought talking about his memories, like Snape was his therapist, would work…

            Shit. I reckon I can’t shut up and let Snape try, if I have to be the one to talk at him.

            But so far, there was nothing to indicate that Snape would start trying. It had been two whole days since he tried to read Harry’s memories, and Harry had selfishly taken his time since then, resting and eating and hiding in his room, letting Draco explain—or not explain, since it seemed Harry had to do that—to the centaurs. Snape was always absent, usually in his lab, the few times Harry had decided to do something else stupid and ask Bellatrix.

            So. Probably he had lost interest, or discovered some new experimental potion that had to be brewed right away. Harry was feeling cautious relief.

            Thera frowned at him.

            “What?” Harry asked. “If you tell me the old pure-blood alliance was established in a few months, then I’ll laugh at you. They probably had to bicker about the food for at least that long before they could sit down and work on the negotiations.”

            “It’s not that.”

            Harry started, and turned to face Kleianthe. Sometimes, she remained so quiet it was hard to remember she was there. But she’d turned towards him now, neck arched, and Thera was fading into the background in turn. Maybe only one centaur could speak at a time or something, Harry thought, half-hysterical, and this was also part of their politics.

            “Then what is it?” Harry said, and met the centaur stare for stare. After a moment, her tail began to twitch. Harry smiled a little. Yes, Kleianthe wasn’t the fortress of wisdom and calmness she’d seemed before he saw her lose in that argument to Thera. He could intimidate her if he needed to. He leaned back on the garden wall and waited for her to make her discussion of things clear to him.

            “Only this,” Kleianthe said. “That you seem uncommitted to this alliance. We have done you an honor by coming here. You don’t seem to return that honor. Your eyes are always fastened on escape. It’s there in the way you speak of the vampires and the werewolves. You see them as pieces to be moved about, as toys, not as serious allies.”

            “One of the vampires almost killed me,” Harry said dryly. “Or at least took over my body and used me as a chess piece of her own. I think I take them seriously.”

            “But this is a hobby for you,” Kleianthe said.

            Harry nodded. “And since I made that clear from the beginning, I don’t think you have much to worry about. Of course I’ll take the chance to leave if I can. I’m here unwillingly, unlike you. But Draco would still be here, and I think Snape is starting to take this more seriously, if only because it matters to Draco. So, don’t worry. You’ll still have what you want, what you need. I just won’t be part of it.”

            “We need you,” Kleianthe said.

            Harry eyed her in a jaundiced fashion. “You mean to tell me that even centaurs are impressed with the Great Harry Potter’s fame?”

            Kleianthe snorted; Harry thought it was the most horse-like sound he had ever heard her make. “Of course not. The point is that we need you because you are part of the alliance, and add to our strength. Break from us, and others may begin to think we are not serious about reestablishing the old bonds.”

            Harry closed his eyes in a slow, weary blink. Then he ended up shaking his head. “That doesn’t work with me anymore,” he told her, quietly. “Not now. You keep saying that the alliance gives strength to the people who are part of it, but so far, it hasn’t done anything for me. It’s given Malfoy some new perspective and confidence, and maybe it’s taught you something about living with humans. But I don’t have any children for the centaurs to foster. I already had plenty of confidence. All you have for me when I fail at bringing some new partners into the alliance is criticism, which I’ve already endured enough of in my life, thank you. So I might as well leave, because the alliance does nothing but weaken me.”

            Kleianthe, he saw, turned towards Thera. Thera nodded and made a gesture with her hand that seemed to encourage Kleianthe to stand down. She bent her leg in response and moved away to stand next to a young tree she seemed to be eating steadily for breakfast.

            Harry glared at Thera. He had seen McGonagall do similar things when she caught him misbehaving in front of some other professor, and if he thought hard about it, he could remember Vernon doing the same to Petunia. “I don’t need to be handled,” he said. “If you have something to say to me, say it. But don’t try and soothe me the way that you would soothe a naughty child.”

            Thera paused, and Harry didn’t know if his point had actually struck her or if she was simply trying to pick her words carefully. He waited, arms folded. He thought literal steam would probably be rising off him if his magic was more powerful.

            “The alliance has not benefited you so far, I agree,” Thera murmured gently. “That does not mean it won’t benefit you in the future.”

            Harry snorted, and saw Kleianthe’s head twitch a little. Well, he hadn’t chosen that sound in mockery of the centaurs or whatever other paranoid suspicion they had, he’d just done it because he felt like making that sound at the time. “All I have to base future experience on is past experience,” he said. “And if everything continues exactly as it has so far—which I wouldn’t be surprised to find—then it won’t.”

            Thera nodded. “I understand, and I apprehend your discomfort.”

            “But you’ll try and persuade me to stay in the bloody alliance,” Harry finished sourly.

            Thera flicked her tail once. “I think you are dwelling too much on the notion of personal benefits,” she said. “As the alliance grows, more people will be added to it, people who can help you and counsel you.”

            Harry started at the word “counsel,” and turned away to kick moodily at the grass so Thera wouldn’t see it. “And more people that I have to help,” he said. “I think that’s the more likely scenario here.”

            Thera remained silent, swishing her tail. Harry wondered what she wanted him to say. Then he suppressed the thought ruthlessly. The problem was what he could say, what it would make sense for him to say, not what Thera wanted him to say. He turned and raised hostile eyes to her face.

            She only looked at him, and then smiled. Harry tensed, ready to lash out if her smile was tolerant or weary, but she looked genuinely friendly.

            “All right,” she said. “I see that we can’t convince you that the alliance will work for you yet. We may not be able to until we persuade the vampires and werewolves to join us. And as yet, we have done little except make recommendations and explain a bit of our politics to you. Perhaps we should be the ones to recruit the vampires.” She turned her back and trotted over to another corner of the garden, reaching up to pluck the fruit that hung there down from the branches.

            Harry shook his head and left the garden. If the centaurs started doing more for the alliance, Draco would probably like it, but Harry was becoming less and less convinced that he would.

            Ron was right. He didn’t owe anyone here anything, except not to break the Unbreakable Vows in a way that would make Snape attack. He wanted to leave and go home, and he should be able to, without worrying about the future of the Ashborn and the centaurs and Draco’s bloody alliance.

            But he knew he would stay here at least until he was convinced that his bargain with Snape wouldn’t play out the way he had wanted. A huge sigh welled out of him, and he ended up bowing his head, rubbing his hand down the back of his neck.

            All in all, he was in a grand mood for his first “session” with Snape.

*

            “Come in, Potter.”

            Severus kept his voice light, as if distracted by the potion brewing in front of him, though in reality this was one he had made more than a dozen times and knew the steps of by heart. It would ease Potter to think he had come in unobserved, and could spend some time observing Severus before he turned around. At the moment, Severus desired nothing so much as that Potter was at ease.

            A marked change of ambitions for you.

            Severus gave a small shrug which remained entirely mental. The only ones who did not change were the dead. He had resembled them this past year, once he had settled into his perfect, calm, stagnant life. Potter had offered him a way out, and Severus would pursue it until he found his way back into the life he always could have had.



            “So. Are we going to talk about my memories, or not?”

            And yes, that sounded like Potter, sharp words and judgmental attitude and all. Severus kept the realization out of his eyes as he turned around and nodded. “We are. When you settle yourself comfortably in front of me, we will begin.”

            Potter looked around the lab as though there was a lack of comfortable chairs. In fact, Severus had cleared several seats in anticipation of this day. Potter had a choice between sitting on a chair, a bench, a second chair noticeably smaller than the first, and a table Severus had found incapable of supporting cauldrons in the huge sizes that he preferred.

            After a few seconds of hesitation, Potter chose the smaller chair. Severus noticed his defiant glare as he sat down, and suspected that Potter would loudly object at any attempt to analyze him from his choices.

            Such as that he was someone who was used to getting the worst of everything. Such as that his choices reflected deep-seated insecurity about his own value. Severus dried his hands on the towel in front of him and kept those thoughts out of his face, too, as he took the larger chair across from Potter. It was important to keep him on edge, because if he was relaxed, Severus doubted he would confess anything about his childhood. A disturbance in his memories had brought Severus into them last time; he needed Potter’s cooperation, but not his cheerfulness.

            Though I hope to win that, too, in the end.

            He arranged his face in a patient expression and waited. After a few moments of muttering and kicking at the legs of his seat, Potter reared back and stared at him with hatred enough to make Severus give him an inquiring look.

            “I don’t like this,” Potter said, his voice charged with lightning. “I know it’s necessary because you think that—you think that I’m going to go mad tomorrow or something, and Draco thinks the same thing. And we made a bargain.”

            Severus nodded. “We did.”

            “Fine.” Potter combed his fingers through his fringe and stared at the floor. “So.”

            He let silence stretch between them for so long, Severus almost imagined he would not begin speaking again. But Severus had outwaited dragons and hunting cats and unicorns in his time, in pursuit of the Potions ingredients he needed. He waited, and after a few moments, Potter shook his head and spoke in an explosive mutter, as if his words were charges of powder.

            “Fine. This is what I remember. My aunt and uncle weren’t happy that I was there. They never were, and I knew that they forbid me to talk about magic or even say the word, but I didn’t know why. I just thought it was because they wanted to be normal and it wasn’t normal to be taking care of your orphaned nephew because his parents had died in a car accident.”

            Severus stared at him, and picked apart this incredible speech in his mind before deciding what he should attack first. He chose the last part. “When did you learn what you were? What your parents had been?”

            Potter frowned at him as though he had said something stupid. “When I went to Hogwarts. Dumbledore sent Hagrid for me. He was the one who told me the truth.” He was sitting up now, no longer ducking his head like a sullen boy. “What, do you think I should have known it earlier? How? When wizards hide themselves from the Muggle world, they do a bloody good job, and it’s not like my relatives would have told me!”

            Severus smiled a bit, which of course Potter took as more contempt and shook with the hatred of. Good. Along with the edge that would make him speak, Severus thought it good for Potter to experience emotions other than the damnable calm he had showed so far. Perhaps that would gratify Draco, as well, if he was so anxious to see that Potter was still human.

            “I do not say that you should have known,” Severus said, and let his voice trail off in what could have been a thoughtful pause while Potter stared at him and fumed. “I do say,” he went on after the pause, “that asking more questions would have served you well more times in your life than this one.”

            “If you knew,” Potter said, leaning forwards and lowering his voice, “what it was like, in that house. If you knew what my aunt looked like when she said that I mustn’t ask questions. I thought something horrible would happen. And then I went to Hogwarts and did ask questions, and no one ever answered me, or only did it when it was too late. Why Voldemort hated me. Why you hated my father. Why Voldemort survived what my mother did to him. What I had to do to defeat him.”

            “You know why Dumbledore could not reveal the knowledge of the Horcruxes to you,” Severus said, and felt the cushion of the chair shred under his grip. “He did not know of them himself until he began to investigate the Dark Lord’s past.”

            “God, you can’t say it even now, can you?” Potter asked, and curled his lip. “His name was Voldemort. He’s dead. He can’t hurt you.”

            “One does not rouse the ghosts of one’s past without reason.” Severus forced himself back towards the calm he had desired, the true control of his emotions rather than the false control that speaking to Potter like this was supposed to give him. “I would not—”

            “But I’m rousing the ghosts of my past without a good reason.” Potter sneered at him. “Just because you think that you might actually be able to cure me, never mind that we’ve never got along—”

            “If you believe that getting along has anything to do with this,” Severus said, and openly rolled his eyes now as he felt his emotions tilt back towards the center once more, “then you do not understand what I am trying to do here. I am trying to dig out the memories that cause your nightmares and your suicidal thoughts because you buried them. If you could dig them up on your own, or with the help of a sympathetic friend, we would not be here. Instead, none of your friends are sympathetic or stern enough to help you. They would rather leave you alone to deal with the pain—”

            “Shut up about my friends, Snape—”

            “No, I will not,” Severus said, and watched the fury shimmer in Potter’s eyes in response to his sneer. “They’re part of the reason for this, aren’t they? Because until you met them, you didn’t have any.”

            The blast of wandless magic slammed him against the back of the chair and made the chair tilt on its legs. Severus righted himself with a simple shifting of muscles, not drawing his wand. He knew, as he watched those eyes turn the color of coal, that Potter would react badly to the sight of a weapon.

            Even though it would have comforted Severus himself.

            But he never would have begun these sessions with Potter if what he wanted was comfort, and he despised himself for even thinking the word. He held himself rigidly under control, and watched as Potter’s hands clenched open and shut. Then Potter looked away and closed his eyes.

            “Yes, that’s right.” His voice had gone back to the calm, passionless thing he had used when speaking to Severus and Draco in the recent past. Severus was determined it would not stay there, but at the moment, he had little reason to assume it would, and every reason to give Potter some extra play on the line. He listened, with the kind of silence that Potter tried, uselessly, to fill. “My cousin made sure that I didn’t have friends at the primary schools I went to, and then my uncle and aunt enforced it at home.” He turned around, and his eyes were like green glass. “I suppose now you’ll tell me that I was shit at keeping friends, and at defending myself when I let Muggles do that to me, and you’ll want me to admit I knew that all along and I’ve just been making excuses.”

            “Why should I say such a thing?” Severus replied, just as calmly. “It would only confirm your intolerable victim complex.”

            There was a long silence. Potter’s eyes narrowed.

            “Then what do you want me to say?” he demanded. His anger was rising back to the surface again, and Severus felt his breath come short at the sight. That could have been fear alone, now that he had some idea of how powerful Potter was, but he didn’t think so. But this was not the time to think about it, so he put it aside for later. “What do you—listen, Snape, we can’t make progress on this because there’s nothing I can say that will satisfy you. That’s the simple and plain truth, isn’t it? So I can just—”

            “I am going to do something much worse than talk about how weak and stupid you were, Potter,” Severus broke in. “That would only mimic the techniques of your relatives, and dig deeper the wounds I aim to heal.”

            Silence again. This time, Potter was the one leaning forwards, trying to compel him to fill it, but Severus did not choose to be compelled until he wished to speak.

            “I am going to tell you how strong you are,” Severus said. “How splendid. All the things that you only ever dared think in the silence of your head, with the conceit of the young, and then push away again, because God forbid that you comfort yourself. At bottom, you still feel the self-loathing that your relatives taught you to. This time, I am going to point out your achievements, and make you proud of them.”

            “You can’t—that would be agonizing for you.” Potter’s face was working through so many emotions Severus shuddered a little as he watched it. Yes, he had undoubtedly done much the same thing when Potter provoked him, but he hoped that he had not done it with such—such absolute loss of dignity. “You don’t need to do that. There’s nothing you could hope to gain by it.”

            “I would gain by seeing you writhe in agony,” Severus pointed out cordially. “And I am seeing that now, from the beginning. Your instant defensiveness when I speak about your virtues is pleasant. And enlightening.”

            Potter lowered his head into his hands and lifted them, clasping them around his face. Severus watched him. He could see Potter’s breathing falling into a steady pattern. Interesting, that. It made Severus wonder who had taught Potter a pattern more appropriate for meditation than anything else.

            And why he had wanted to learn such a thing. Surely uncontrolled emotion, boundless passion, was useful during the war, driving him onto his goal when other goads Severus could think of would have fallen still. He had also once believed that it was impossible for Potter to master himself.

            Not true. But disastrous when he tried. It rendered him suicidal and snappish in other ways, although it might have spared the lives of a few people, like Draco, who had confronted him in ignorance of his power.

            Control and repression are not the same. The lesson that Potter had yet to learn, and that it seemed Severus Snape was appointed to teach him. Severus sighed, and tried not to resent the notion. He had entered on this task of his own free will, after all.

            When Potter looked up and spoke again, his voice was noticeably deeper and cooler than before. “You don’t understand, Snape. Of course I acknowledge that I have some good points. If I hated myself as much as you’re making it sound like I do, then I would have killed myself long ago. But I don’t hate myself. I—judge myself. I needed to know exactly what I was capable of when I fought Voldemort, or I would have lost.”

            Severus nodded, saying nothing for long moments. Potter considered him as if wondering what Severus would do next.

            “You value your capabilities,” Severus said. “But your virtues? Your value as a person? That, I wonder about.”

            “I know people are valuable,” Potter said, and his hands had already opened and shut once before he went on speaking. “That’s never been a problem. Would I have risked so much to save other people if I didn’t believe that?”

            “People in general,” Severus noted with satisfaction. “Yes, it is easy for you to believe that, isn’t it? Harder to believe you, yourself, personally, have some value beyond the weapon that killed Voldemort.”

            Potter hissed at him like a dragon. Since he could not actually breathe fire, and neither did he slide into the thrilling syllables of Parseltongue, Severus chose to be unimpressed. “Shut up, Snape! I know what you’re saying! You think I’m some poor, abused, weak child who grew up with evil relatives and never admitted what they did to him. That’s ridiculous. Of course I know. How could I live with them, and afterwards, when I came into the wizarding world and saw how much I was valued, and not know?”

            “Weak,” Severus said. “A word that I would not think to apply to you, and yet it springs to your lips so easily.”

            Potter rolled his eyes. “You’re only not thinking to apply it to me because I did that first. Does it anger you, Snape, to know that I’ve anticipated you and so you can’t use it without sounding repetitive?” He had the audacity to smirk.

            Severus shook his head. Yes, it was easier to keep his calm than he had thought it would be, given their earlier row. Then, he had still allowed his passions to control him. Now he had true self-mastery, not without feeling under the surface, but using that surface to win what he wanted from the boy. Potter’s major mistake was that he affected indifference and then cracked the indifference and pretended he had not. If he intended to make Draco and Severus leave him alone, annoying them was not the way to do that.

            “You are not weak,” Severus said. “Abused, yes. Poor…not in the sense of riches, but in the sense of the way you think about yourself, yes, I think that epithet would be appropriate.”

            Potter said nothing. But his hands had clenched shut again.

            “You are possessed of great courage,” Severus said, beginning with the virtue that it would cause him the last pain to name. He had never greatly cared about courage, after all. “That much is so. That much is true. But do you think that you have nothing more than that? I wager that you do.”

            “What do you have to wager with?” Potter spat. “What do you have that I would care for? This fortress? The place is gloomy and cramped. And the Ashborn? They obey you because they’re machines, not people. If you let Draco go, then there’s nothing that I would stay here for.”

            Since Severus knew that was not the truth, he ignored it. Perhaps Potter would be comforted to know that he does not possess the virtue of honesty. “You have great intelligence, also. Not in Potions,” he added, as Potter’s head rose and his eyes flashed, with what looked like joy at having caught Severus out in a lie. “That is why I did not notice it in school. But in helping others, and noticing when they need help. At figuring out puzzling situations, as I saw you do several times in your memories. In recognizing tactical situations that you can use to your advantage, as you did with the memories that kept out Legilimency.”

            Potter squirmed and shrugged. “That’s what Hermione says, too,” he said at last. “It’s no big deal.”

            “You killed the Dark Lord,” Severus said. “In what way is that not, perhaps, the ‘biggest deal’ of the last century?”

            “You sound like you’re picking up a dead fly with salad tongs or something when you say it like that, did you know?”

            Severus made sure that his smile stayed thin and that he gave Potter no hint that he wished to discuss his juvenile insult. “You underrate your own fame,” he said. “Your coming to me and agreeing to be my hostage was enough to avert a war. That is power that others have sought centuries to achieve without winning it. So. You are powerful.”

            Potter shoved himself to the back of his chair, as if Severus’s words were launched spears that he wanted to be ready to dodge. ‘Of course a Slytherin would think that was a virtue, instead of an accident that I had nothing to do with,” he snapped.

            Severus sighed. This conversation was less organized than he could have wished—he had planned to discuss specific memories with Potter, including a few that came from the war rather than his childhood—but perhaps that was necessary, to establish a base that they could build from in the future. “Your mother sacrificed her life to save you the first time,” he said. “But hunting and fighting the Dark Lord, which no one else was brave enough to do—”

            “Dumbledore was.”

            Albus. Severus winced at the memory of pleading eyes fixed on him and the Unbreakable Vow tightening around his neck like a collar, and his voice came out more harshly than he had intended. “Not even Dumbledore did as much as you did. The Dark Lord destroyed, not held at bay or weakened. Yes, I call it a virtue. Why do you not do so? I had had the impression you were clearer-eyed about that than your friends.”

            Potter snorted, but he sounded a bit calmer. Is praising his friends all that it takes to make him so? I will have to remember to do so in the future. “Because power that you struggle for and do something with is different than what I have,” he said. “I only have power because of people believing in me.”

            Severus paused. He knew the answer to that question, and he waited to see if it would emerge from the boy’s—no, the young man’s—mouth. But it did not. Potter simply glared back, his mouth shut.

            “And because you supported that belief,” Severus said. “Slaying a basilisk in your second year. Abandoning the safe haven of Hogwarts, or what many might have believed was a safe haven, to pursue the Dark Lord. Enduring torture and worse to make your way to the end of the quest. Yes, Potter, I quite agree that the power would come from their belief and nothing more if you had been a Neville Longbottom, cringing without the courage to support your reputation.”

            Potter leaned in again. “Don’t talk about Neville that way. You have no idea how brave he was—”

            “But you did something,” Severus continued, lowering his voice. “This is what you deny with that false modesty of yours, which is false because you must know, under the bluster, that no one else has ever done something quite as extraordinary as you have. That is what I do not wish to see you deny, for it is foolish. Will you acknowledge you have been a hero the way you defined someone as needing to be to deserve the name, or must I drag the admission out of you?”

*

            Harry closed his eyes and leaned his head against the back of the chair. His throat hurt, as if he had struggled against tears, though he knew in reality it was more like struggling against certain words that he had wanted to speak.

            This was—

            This was ridiculous, that was what it was. Snape had no reason to want Harry to feel better about himself, no matter what he insisted.

            And Harry was edging closer and closer to something he had started suspecting about himself months ago, when he had told Hermione casually a large wound in his side no longer hurt and she burst into tears.

            He said those things, he pretended that he didn’t hurt and it didn’t feel good when people worried about him and he could endure anything, because he was worried about what would happen if he didn’t. What if he became the pampered, spoiled little prince Snape had always thought he was? What if he stopped appreciating all the sacrifices people had made for him, and acted like the dim-witted idiot that Hermione sometimes accused him of being?

            He just—didn’t want to not appreciate things, that was all. He didn’t want to be like Dudley, to be like Malfoy the way he remembered him from school, to be like his father the way he’d seen him in Snape’s Pensieve. And it was entirely possible that that might happen if he wasn’t careful. He knew it, because Snape and everyone else had seen those traits in him even when he was trying his hardest not to let them come through. If he relaxed his guard, then they could probably creep through despite everything.

            Maybe, though, it was all right when he was actually living with people like Snape and Malfoy. They would let him know in a second if he acted arrogantly, or if he was stupid. Hell, Snape had practically been telling him nothing else since they started talking this time, although he dressed it up as compliments.

            In return, Harry could face up to the truth that, yeah, he had done things other people hadn’t and he wasn’t always like them, although he would oppose to the death any suggestion Snape might offer that that made him better.

            So he opened his eyes, and nodded a little, and said, “Yeah. I reckon I can.”

            It left them both there in ringing silence, staring at each other. Even though he had done what Snape wanted, Harry thought, Snape looked stunned.

            A moment later, he cleared his throat. Harry leaped down from the chair and sped towards the door of the lab, eager to get away from there before he felt the urge to say something awkward. Snape really wouldn’t let him get away with that, no matter how much it might seem like he would.

            “Return tomorrow for another session,” Snape said to his back.

            Harry didn’t trust himself to keep his temper if he responded. He nodded and stepped out into the corridor, closing the door behind him. The air outside the lab seemed far fresher than it had when he passed through it an hour or so before.

            Then he cast the Tempus Charm and realized that it hadn’t been even an hour.

            He shuddered as he made his way to his room, Bellatrix following him like a slightly louder shadow. He didn’t know if he wanted to rearrange the contents of his head every day or not.

            But it was necessary to someday give the Ashborn back the freedom they had lost, and Malfoy the freedom to stand on his own. For that, Harry had to acknowledge, he would do almost anything.

            Yeah, I suppose I’m a hero through and through.

*

            Once again, Draco had dreamed himself into the Forbidden Forest, and this time the werewolf appeared to have been waiting for him. She stared at him, teeth bared, but didn’t leap back in surprise. A moment later, in fact, she gave a gracious little bob of her head and moved to the side, gesturing with one hand.

            Draco turned around and found another werewolf sitting in the dirt, sprawled so casually that he turned the messy leaves into a throne.

            He was much heavier than the one Draco had first contacted, and had amber eyes and lengthened teeth when he smiled. Draco thought he’d have to speak carefully, so as not to cut his tongue on them, but it seemed to produce nothing worse in his voice than a slight accent.

            “My name is Laughter,” he said. “Sunflower told me that you’d come from a pure-blood alliance, to bring us into bonds of strength like the ones we used to have. Why don’t you tell me more about this fascinating proposal?” He rolled forwards onto his elbows, as careless as though he’d been born with four legs, and Draco watched the muscles sliding in his arms and down his back, since the only garment he wore was trousers. “And I’ll judge if it’s worth our time or not.”

            Draco swallowed a little. He remembered the powerful vampire who had taken over Potter’s mind, and wondered if he would come back with traces of the same thing.

            Then he reminded himself werewolves couldn’t read or control minds unless they had acquired Legilimens abilities as a wizard, independent of their condition.

Werewolf bites might be magical enough to pierce through a dream like this and into the real world, though.

But you want to be of some account on your own eventually, not just as an appendage to Severus and Potter.

His mouth dry, Draco began to speak.

*

            unneeded: Yeah, Harry can actually admit Snape is right now! Although he tries to turn that into another point against him at the end.

            Shadowdog85: Thanks! I’m glad you’re enjoying it.
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