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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.

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Chapter Sixteen—Unexpected Offers

            “But you haven’t yet told me why we should accept your changes to the alliance.”

            Draco tried not to let his hand shake as he reached out and picked up the shallow dish of water that the other werewolf had brought him. He didn’t know if drinking dream-water could refresh him, but he would try it. And it did feel as if it was at least soothing his dry throat when it poured past his lips. He swallowed several times before he lowered the dish to the ground, and the other werewolf at once snatched it up and took it away.

            Who would think that someone who turns furry once a month has such a good political brain on him?

            Well, perhaps that was unfair, Draco had to admit. Someone who turned furry once a month didn’t necessarily stop being human in the times between. But no one had warned him about Laughter, and he felt a bit beaten-up, as though he’d been running for a long time in place instead of trading thoughts with a clever negotiator.

            Laughter, meanwhile, looked no different than he had when he began speaking to Draco. He sprawled, still, in the grass, full-length, and gazed at Draco with an expression of calm pleasure and interest. He had taken Draco through the history of the present alliance, the past alliance, Potter’s presence, the founding of the Ashborn, and the way that Severus intended to secure the Ashborn against attack, all without faltering or revealing the source of his information. Draco swallowed, and wondered if the liquid trickling down the back of his throat was actually blood.

            “But what you say is extraordinary,” Laughter began again, as though Draco had been saying something instead of reeling in the last few minutes. “You tell me that you don’t understand what the old pure-blood alliance offered us, and then you say that you want us to be part of the new one.”

            “I still don’t understand what the old pure-blood alliance offered you,” Draco pointed out dryly. “Since you seem to keep changing the subject when that comes up.”

            Laughter’s tongue spilled over his teeth again. “My apologies. I was trying to creep up on it, so as not to shock you. But I see you are a brave and experienced young man, who has undoubtedly dealt with harder things before, so I will be plain.”

            “Thank you,” Draco said, and then frowned at the croak in his voice. Was Laughter mocking him? Draco had never felt less experienced.

            “They gave us flesh,” Laughter said.

            Draco held himself rigidly in place, and was glad, for the first time, that the Dark Lord had had a habit of revealing disgusting surprises suddenly, as when he had told Draco that he had to break every bone in the hand of a captured Muggle. Draco never knew when a flinch meant that a harsh blow would fall on someone else, usually his parents or Severus, so he had trained himself to avoid them.

            “I see,” he said levelly. “Well, yes, if these were firstborn children, then someone might object to that.”

            Laughter lived up to his name and gave a series of soft yips. They seemed to echo in the space between his ears more than ordinary human laughter would, and made Draco’s head hurt. Or maybe they just made the space between his ears feel wider.

            “Nothing so grand,” Laughter said, and grinned. “They gave us the flesh of condemned criminals, those who otherwise would have died. They let us hunt them.”

            “Kill them,” Draco said.

            “Sometimes,” Laughter said. “We are unpredictable when running under the influence of the moon, even with Wolfsbane in our veins. And, of course, quite often we have no Wolfsbane.” His face was quiet, unreadable. “Sometimes we chose to bite and turn them. It was up to our instincts, and the atmosphere in the woods, and whether the prey gave us a good chase or tried to end it immediately.”

            Draco shook his head. He knew what Severus would say without thinking about it. Severus’s feelings about werewolves struck Draco as irrational most of the time, but not in this way. “The leader of the Ashborn would never allow that.”

            “Your lord. Your lover. Your protector.” Laughter stretched out in the leaves again, this time completely on his belly in a way that made Draco wince, and studied him. “Can you make decisions without him?”

            “I can’t make decisions without other members of the alliance,” Draco said, glad he had that much of an excuse to fall back on. “Of course.”

            “But from what you told me, and more than told—what you hinted—your Snape is not a member of this alliance,” Laughter said. “You referred to him as a source of your strength, but not the other way around. He might back you, he might avenge you if you’re killed, but that’s not the same as supporting you wholeheartedly and giving his support to others that you might bring into the alliance. Is it.”

            Draco swallowed hard, and ignored the way the skin on the back of his neck prickled. His scent had probably already told Laughter what he felt. For the sake of his own dignity, though, Draco would strive not to show it. “He’ll come around with time,” he said. “And permit me to say that your intelligence is terrifying.” Laughter might be the sort easily distracted by compliments. Draco didn’t know, because he hadn’t tried yet.

            Laughter didn’t smile or stir from his place, except to lean forwards a little, as if he thought he had to catch Draco’s eye even though he already had his full attention. “Listen,” he said. “I want to make sure that all our partners in the alliance, if we do decide to join it, have the good sense to realize what they’re getting into.”

            “Of course you would want that,” Draco snapped, more than a little irritated Laughter would think he needed to make plain something so obvious. “That doesn’t mean you need to doubt my word about Severus.”

            “I don’t need to,” Laughter said, “not when your scent and your reactions cast that doubt for you. What you must realize, little one, is that we have no need of this alliance, not the way we once did. We can keep ourselves alive here, even through the conflicts with the centaurs that I’m sure they’ve told you about.”

            “I see,” Draco said stiffly, his every sense feeling as though it stung from the idea of “little one,” and began to rise to his feet. “Then you don’t mind if I leave, because it’s obvious we have nothing to offer you.”

            “I mentioned the price of the old alliance,” Laughter said, coming to all fours like a large dog getting ready to spring, “because that was historical fact. That does not mean we will only accept that price for the new alliance, should we decide to join it.” His eyes shone like dull moons. “There is something we want more.”

            “What?” Draco asked warily. It sounded like the old price had given the werewolves a means to recruit new members as well as pleasure and a chance to indulge their instincts. Draco couldn’t think of anything else that would be acceptable.

            “Help,” Laughter said. “And we will give help in return.”

            “Help,” Draco said, and suspected he looked like an idiot repeating the word like that. Laughter’s eyes flashing in amusement certainly said so. Draco lifted his head and looked as calm as he could, but he couldn’t help the way that his fingers twisted in his robes. “What do you want help to do?”

            “That,” Laughter said, as if thinking about what he should say before he said it, “is rather private, don’t you think?”

            “No,” Draco said. “Not if what you want is illegal or in some way against the principles of our alliance.”

            For a moment, he thought that he might have succeeded in upsetting Laughter; the werewolf’s muscles tensed, and his claws scraped through the leaves at his feet as though he would spring to them. Draco swallowed and got ready to move. Even if Laughter didn’t move, he simply wasn’t eager to test what a werewolf bite would look like when he came out of the dream.

            Laughter opened his jaws and snarled into Draco’s face, and then seemed to remind himself that Draco might not know the hidden nature of werewolf politics and what he’d stumbled into here. He settled down with a sniff and a stretch of his muscles, but his sharp stare at Draco said he would remember this. Draco swallowed and didn’t move. Laughter’s fingers flexed out again, his nails scraping through the leaves, before he shook his head and sat up.

            “We want help to live our lives,” Laughter said. “To get Wolfsbane. To set out our desired territory in such terms that the centaurs won’t ever intrude into it and then claim it was an accident. To remind new werewolves that they have options other than to turn into ravening monsters or become repressed and sad hermits in their own lives. That they can turn to us.”

            Draco nodded slowly. “The centaurs seem to think that you spend more time intruding into their territory.”

            “They would say that, wouldn’t they?” A long ripple ran through Laughter, and Draco shivered. He wouldn’t want to be near when the ripple became the fluid motion that it looked like. “Because they’re part of the alliance, and at the moment, you have no reason to disbelieve them. But when we are an equal part of the alliance and our voices are heard, you will not find it so easy to accept a centaur perspective.”

            Draco contented himself with a temperate smile for now and cocked his head. “And what would you offer in return?”

            “Help training those who are new to their lycanthropy but don’t want to live with the packs,” Laughter replied at once. “Rare Potions ingredients from the depths of the Forest, where few humans want to venture.” Draco hoped the immediate widening of his eyes he could feel didn’t give him away too much. He knew Severus would be interested in that. “A few other things we can gain because we live in the Forbidden Forest, and with it, in ways that most other humans don’t dare to.” He paused and gave Draco a calculated glance. “Do you think that is enough to begin the bargaining?”

            Draco had to walk a line here; he couldn’t appear either too eager or too depressive about what the werewolves could likely offer. He gave a slight shrug and nod. “To begin it.”

            Laughter showed his teeth, but Draco thought it was a smile rather than a snarl. He thought. “Then go back to your lord and master and see what he says,” Laughter said, and bounded to his feet. He paused to glance over his shoulder at Draco. “If you want my advice, you will make him part of the bargaining as soon as possible.”

            Then he was gone, springing into the forest like a deer. For a few moments, the other werewolf lingered, staring at Draco; he had the strangest feeling that she was about to ask him if he needed help finding his way out of the Forest. Then she snapped her head down, made a chuffing sound, and burst into motion. In moments, she had blurred into the forest and was gone.

            Draco closed his eyes and began to let the sensations of dirt and leaves fade, aiming for the surface of sleep. His mind seethed with notions that he wanted to discuss with Potter, who, while he didn’t always have good political instincts, would give Draco his attention when he realized where he had been.

            And those notions he wanted to discuss with Severus.

            He would have to bring Severus into the alliance, Draco decided, opening his eyes and staring up at the ceiling. He didn’t like the way his pulse beat and fluttered in the back of his throat, and he didn’t like the notion that the mere thought of confronting Severus was enough to make him shake, but that was the way it was.

            Laughter had pinpointed one of their weaknesses. Draco and Potter and the centaurs all lived under the roof that the Ashborn owned and controlled—and Severus owned and controlled the Ashborn. Without his support, they could lose the shelter as well as the chance for Kleianthe and Thera to raise their children among humans.

            And haven’t we been doing a wonderful job with that, Draco thought, grimacing a little, as he thought about how the centaur fillies still seemed afraid of them. He and Potter had been busy with their own concerns, of course, but not every day. And still they spent little time with them.

            This alliance had started as his hobby. It had become a real thing—and whether or not it would ever have become real without Potter was beside the point, Draco thought. He had to do more important and bigger things now, things that mattered and were difficult, such as bringing Severus in. He had to take an active role, not lean back in the corner and let others help him. Sometimes that worked, as when Potter welcomed the centaurs, but more often it seemed that he didn’t quite get what he wanted.

            And if he could do it while maintaining the pretense of weakness that had brought Severus and Potter together so far…

            Draco felt a vicious little smile curl his lips as he began to dress. Of course it wouldn’t be easy. But then, he thought nothing worth doing ever was.

*

            “Potter.”

            Harry turned his head and blinked. He had assumed that neither Malfoy nor Snape would find him in the little garden he’d chosen, since it was full of thorns and weeds, but he reckoned Bellatrix at the door was a giveaway. He swallowed a little and sat up, wondering why Malfoy’s cheeks glowed with self-importance.

            Maybe Snape just fucked him.

            Harry frowned and flicked a whip-like thought at the stupid part of his brain, making it whimper and retreat. Shaking his head, Harry said, “You wanted to talk to me about something, Malfoy?”

            Malfoy nodded and sat down beside him on the bench. It was a narrow thing, carved out of dark stone with skill but without, Harry thought, the foresight that someday someone would try to use it as a seat for two people, and Harry wanted to shift his weight away. That might make him look afraid, though, and he refused to be weak in front of someone who needed his help the way Malfoy did. He just nodded.

            “I think you should call me Draco,” Malfoy said.

            Harry thought about it, then shrugged. He reckoned he could do that without sacrificing too much of his pride. “If that’s what you wanted to talk about, then sure,” he said. “I do some of the time, anyway.”

            Malfoy turned an unexpectedly intense gaze on him. “But I want it all the time,” he said, in a tone that Harry would have thought more appropriate to begging a favor from Snape.

            “Er,” Harry said, and wondered why the air between them felt like stretched candy. He turned his head away and stared intently at a small thorn tree leaning against the wall to get rid of the feeling. But it went on, coating his muscles with stickiness, covering him when he tried to lean away. He settled for sighting and said, “Fine. But that doesn’t seem important enough to seek me out like this.”

            “It’s not the only thing I have to tell you, no,” Malfoy said, and caught his hand. “But it’s a start. I’ve decided that I have to go more aggressively after the things I want, and this is one of them.”

            Harry stared down at the hand on his wrist. Malfoy bit his nails, he realized with a shock that seemed to hit him in the middle of the stomach. He didn’t know why, again. He had known for a long time, back in Hogwarts even, that Malfoy wasn’t the refined, aristocratic type that he liked to present himself as. “Fine,” he said. “Draco.”

            Malfoy’s hand didn’t fall away, though when Harry glanced at him, he was smiling and nodding as if satisfied. “Good,” he said. “One of the other things I want from you is more of a commitment to the alliance.”

            “The centaurs were talking about that, too,” Harry said. “And I have no reason to make that commitment if I leave with my friends, if they find some way that I can leave without breaking the Unbreakable Vows.”

            “You don’t know that will happen,” Malfoy said, and his voice had lost any trace of teasing humor it might have had. Had it been there in the first place? Harry doubted it. He had been looking frantically for it despite himself, because it would make things easier. But things that would make his life easier rarely existed. “You could have to stay, and the alliance will be stronger with you.”

            Harry twisted to his feet and broke the hold Malfoy had on him. Draco. You should start thinking of him as Draco, because otherwise you’ll probably call him “Malfoy” when you don’t mean to and upset him.

            Harry snarled and hunched his shoulders. In the mood he was in, the very last thing he felt like hearing about was another obligation. True, this wasn’t a large one, but at the moment, it seemed to symbolize everything he was expected to do.

            “Potter?” Draco’s voice had taken on a gentle tone behind him, but also a politely baffled one. Harry stared at the nearest thorn and wondered that it didn’t boil from the heat of his stare. How dare I not want to do what he wants me to? How dare I not want this great burden that he’s holding out to me like a treasure?

            “I’m expected to do too much for the alliance,” he said. “Go after the vampires, welcome the centaurs, play nice with Snape, treat you as if you’re my friend. And the centaurs can say all they want about how someone will arrive someday who’ll have the time to spare for me, but that’s ridiculous. Every new partner the alliance gets will impose a new obligation.”

            “I know I haven’t done much so far,” Draco said, his voice calm and accepting in a way that infuriated Harry. “I’m willing to make up for that. I know I have to do more in the future.”

            “Make up for me, then,” Harry said, turning around and facing him. “Be the efforts of two people. Because I won’t be here.”

            “You don’t know that that will happen,” Draco said again, and it would have been so much easier to think of him as Malfoy, because his hair was blowing back from his forehead in a little wind dashing through the garden, and Harry didn’t think he was ugly. The last name would be a barrier between them it would take more than politeness to breach. “You could have to—”

            “I don’t have to do anything like that,” Harry said, and he felt the giddy urge welling up in him that he hadn’t felt since the moment he destroyed Voldemort. He had wanted to lash out, burn the world, end everything. Just in that moment, because afterwards had come the peace and the realization he had won, but in that moment, yes. He took a step towards Draco, who sat up straight and stared at him. “I have to obey the Vows. I have to stay a hostage to secure the peace between the Ashborn and the people who followed me, at least until Hermione can come up with an alternative Snape likes better. I don’t have to sacrifice anything for the alliance or you. That was something I only agreed to help with because I was bored, remember? Not a lifelong commitment.”

            Draco frowned at him. “But it is. If you enter an alliance like this with someone, you give your word, and you stay bound unless someone else betrays you, because that’s the way it works.”

            “Of course you would see it that way,” Harry said. “You’re pure-blood, and that automatically makes you better and more honorable than me. More fit to go speak with werewolves, or vampires, or whatever else is alive and waiting for you out there.” His heart pounded, and he had to pause to take a few deep breaths, but he no longer thought he might kill Draco. He was tired, that was all, tired of being scolded by members of the alliance and told that he should take it more seriously when he had made his motives clear from the beginning. “Zembaz took you sending her a half-blood as an insult. I think you should take a cue from that and let me go.”

*

            Draco hesitated. He had assumed, without thinking about it much, that of course Potter would honor the alliance. He had given his word, and he was a Gryffindor, and what better things did he have to do while he was a hostage?

            He had forgotten, as he had before, that Potter was more than just a Gryffindor. And he didn’t stop being whatever else he was when he became a hostage, any more than Draco gave up what he was when he was temporarily under Severus’s control.

            Draco rose to his feet. Potter immediately sharpened on him and studied him as though he was expecting Draco to draw his wand and hurt him. Draco shrugged. He would have liked to have more of Potter’s trust than this, but he didn’t, which meant he had to speak.

            “I think Zembaz would have found some excuse to invade the mind of anyone we sent her,” he said. “Even Severus.”

            Potter snorted. “Well, he’s a half-blood like me, isn’t he? So of course she would have been as insulted by sending him.”

            “Stop it!” Draco took a long stride towards him, stopping himself in the middle of a patch of thorns that snagged at his boots. “Stop it,” he repeated more quietly, while Potter stared at him with wide eyes. “I won’t have you insulting him.”

            “I should have known it would be that,” Potter said, rolling his eyes. “You still have all the pure-blood prejudices. You just make an exception for him, because if you didn’t, then you probably would never forgive yourself for sleeping with him.”

            “You don’t know me at all,” Draco said, and despite himself, his voice cracked with what sounded like lightning in the middle.

            “Say I don’t.” Potter took a step towards him, and Draco wanted to howl. Some part of him rejoiced at that even now, that he was provoking Potter, getting a reaction from him besides frozen niceness or a smile. “Say I learn more about you, and stay with you and do everything you want me to, just because you want me to. What’s in it for me? Nothing. More duty, more responsibility, something to keep me from going mad while I’m a hostage—but Hermione’s offered me a way out of that. That would be the best path for me to take. There’s nothing here for me that can compete with the company of my friends.”

            “Your honor,” Draco began.

            “I don’t owe anything to people who only saved my life and sanity because they want to use me,” Potter snarled back. “And I think Ron’s right when he says I take those debts more seriously than anyone else. If I’d saved your life and nothing more, you wouldn’t care twice about dropping me. It’s just because I can do something for you, establishing this alliance, that you want me to stay.”

            Draco shook his head. He wanted to recover himself, but at the same time, he thought that would probably be deadly. Potter wouldn’t deal well with calm, emotionless words. Draco needed to fall headlong, at least if he was going to make Potter fall with him.

            “Come on, then, Potter,” he said, and gave him a condescending smile. “What if I admitted to you that I wanted you here? That seeing you be smug and cool and distant drives me mad? That you’re the only chance I have here for a friend, instead of an ally or a lover?”

            “If you think you and Snape can’t be friends because you’re lovers, then that’s really sad,” Potter said, stabbing his legs into the ground as though he’d resist the tide Draco wanted to pull him to. “And indicates things that aren’t my problem to fix.”

            “I’m not putting it that way,” Draco said. “I’m saying I can give you more than your friends can.”

            Potter stared at him, then burst out laughing. The laughter really seemed to shake him to the ground, since he knelt there and started whooping with it. Draco started forwards, intending to kick his arse, but Potter rolled over and held up one defenseless hand, without his wand, and Draco had to stop, staring at him.

            “You’re not my friend, Malfoy,” Potter said, mopping at his eyes and shaking his head. “You don’t have the slightest notion of what I want, of what I’d like, what my friendship with Ron and Hermione gives me. And you can’t make me happy about being here, no matter what you do.” He grinned up at Draco through eyes that still gleamed with a few stray tears. “Nothing you can give me makes up for what I’ve left behind.”

            “Really?” Draco whispered, kneeling beside him. “So a chance to have a new role in the world doesn’t suffice for you?”

            “I wouldn’t have a role,” Potter said. “I wouldn’t be anything more than a part of the alliance, since it doesn’t have leaders. And I was a leader back in the outside world. That’s what I…” He trailed off, frowning.

            “That’s not what you want again,” Draco said. “You want friendship. Freedom. You want something to do with your life now that you’ve killed the Dark Lord. But I don’t think that thing is really being the same kind of leader you were before. You don’t like the way Severus leads the Ashborn—”

            “Which has nothing in common with the way I intend to lead,” Potter cut him off mercilessly.

            “You want to change things,” Draco said, and kept his voice low and breathless. He didn’t know if he would have been able to raise it anyway, not with the wind of his own audacity sweeping him away. “This is the way to change them. Alter the Ashborn. Show Severus there are other ways to lead people. Spend time with your friends. I think Severus would be eager to arrange that, whether or not you stay a hostage.”

            “This is only the same thing you’re already asking me to do,” Potter said, with a dawning frown. “Spend all my time and energy taking care of people who aren’t my friends.”

            Draco laughed in turn, and waited until Potter was glaring at him, his eyes spitting fire. Draco shook his head. “I doubt very much whether you can be content taking care of people who are only your friends,” he said. “Don’t your friends have their own lives? Their own ability to defend themselves? You have to live beyond them. With them, maybe,” he added, seeing that Potter’s stubborn mouth was opening, “but beyond them. What are your own fantasies and dreams and hopes? The things you want to do, not because you’re bored or someone forced you into them?”

*

            Change things.

            That was the immediate response Harry wanted to give to Malfoy’s stupid statement, but he clenched his jaw to hold it back, because he knew that Malfoy would just reply that he was already changing things, or could, if he tried to take the Ashborn away from Snape.

            Harry clenched his hands into fists and told himself again that he didn’t have to listen. Malfoy was trying to get Harry to stay because he was lonely and nothing more. He couldn’t want anything else from this, and he couldn’t want anything Harry actually wanted to give.

            But Malfoy’s words were already in his head, and worming deeper.

            What do you want?

            Harry couldn’t answer that question, beyond knowing that Ron and Hermione were safe and happy, and spending some time with them.

            So he said that to Malfoy, who just nodded as if he was the wise one, and then shook his head in the next instant. Harry snorted. “What’s wrong with it?”

            “What I just told you a minute ago,” Malfoy said. “You can’t spend your whole life doing that, and taking care of their children, and cleaning up their shit. What do you want besides that?”

            “To leave you behind,” Harry snapped. “To leave Snape behind. To have people stop telling me everything I do is wrong, and I still have to sacrifice more and more.”

            “I’ll sacrifice things as well, building this alliance. So will Severus.”

            “Then tell me what!” Harry scowled at him. “You haven’t given up time that you didn’t want to give up, studying the old alliances. That was a hobby until I came here and you suddenly had the power to really build the new one. You didn’t confront Snape; I did that for you. You didn’t greet the centaurs. I did—”

            “And since then, I’ve fed them with you, and spent time with them, and learned more about them,” Malfoy interrupted, his lip jutting out. “And I’ve been to the werewolves now, and found out that what they really want is help, even though they had something else when the old alliance was new.”

            “What something else?” Harry demanded.

            “Human flesh.”

            Harry shook his head immediately. “I don’t think werewolves are mindless monsters, but I won’t help any of them who want to hunt us.”

            “Will you listen?” Malfoy reached out and seized his hand, squeezing down hard enough to make some of the bones in Harry’s wrist hurt. “I just said they don’t want that anymore. Their leader, Laughter, explained it to me. They want help obtaining Wolfsbane and teaching new werewolves and—and that kind of thing. And they’ll help us in return. I don’t know how, yet, but I know they will.”

            “And I reckon I’ll have to help them, too,” Harry muttered, and rested his free hand over his face. “That’s part of the reason you want me to stay, isn’t it? Because you know you have more people besides just the centaurs to please now.”

            “There are other reasons.”

            “To help you with Snape, right.” Harry waved his hand. He felt as though someone was pressing an iron blanket down on him. “And Thera and Kleianthe. And the vampires, eventually, even if I can’t be the one who negotiates with them. I don’t know. Maybe it’s better than being bored, but endless duties and the sense that I can’t ever leave even if Snape frees the Ashborn because they keep increasing…” He shuddered. Only now did he realize one way in which he’d been lucky in hunting Voldemort: he knew it would end, someday. There was a limited amount of Horcruxes, and then there was a Dark Lord to kill. He’d grown bored and restless serving as a leader of his people in large part because he knew that that would never end.

            “I can help you, too.”

            “How?” Harry glanced at Malfoy. “There’s nothing you have that I’m not either going to share, like the duties of this alliance, or that I want, like your luxuries.”

            Malfoy winced and glared at him. Then he seemed to take a deep breath, and looked around the garden as though he expected someone to hide there, spying on them. “I want to be your friend,” he said.

            “Yeah, I remember you saying that,” Harry said. “Another duty.”

            “I want you to be my friend,” Malfoy says. “That’s the duty. But I—I want to be your friend, too.” From the way he spoke, he might have found cutting his veins open easier than saying the words; in fact, Harry was sure he would have. “I want to—make your stay here easier. Get a reaction from you. Leave you free to be honest with me, if I’m honest with you. All of that.”

            He was panting by the time he’d finished. Harry stared at him, trying so hard to decide what to say that his mind kept whirling and turning in place like a top, never coming to a rest. Finally, he shook his head and answered as gamely as he could. “One friend isn’t going to be enough to make up for the loss of the rest of the world. And we’ve fought like bloody cats and dogs all our lives, Malfoy.”

            “Draco.”

            The tone stung like pellets of ice. Harry winced, but went on trying to explain. “Nothing’s changed since I got here. If anything, it’s got worse. How are you going to make friends with me with all that lying between us?”

            Malfoy’s hand turned wary on his wrist, and then let him go. Harry shook his hand out immediately, although he never took his gaze from Malfoy’s face.

            Malfoy went through his own long and silent struggle, or so it felt like. Then he picked his head up and said, “Listen. Will you listen to me without interrupting, long enough for me to explain? I think that’s the only way I’ll get through this.”

            “That doesn’t sound promising,” Harry muttered, but Malfoy went on staring at him, so he sighed. “Fine. I promise. Go ahead.”

            Malfoy might as well not have heard him, from the way he went on staring and muttering to him for a minute. Only when Harry snapped his fingers in front of his face did he jerk back to himself and grunt, nodding.

            “Fine,” he said. “I know you might still leave. But in the meantime, I want to try and—be honest with you. I’ve wanted a reaction from you since you came here.” Harry opened his mouth to say that he’d had plenty of those, but Malfoy glared at him and Harry remembered his promise. He shut his mouth again. “Not pity, not just anger, not contempt. Something that goes deeper. Something like what I saw when Severus read your memories. Something that’s just for me alone.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. He still didn’t say anything, but he was thinking, Of course. It’s all for him, as usual. Nothing for me. I don’t know why I let him talk me into listening.

            “And I want to give you a reaction,” Malfoy said. “Show you that you can trust me. Show you that I won’t betray anything I learn about you, so it’s all right to tell me things. Show you—show you that you’ve meant a lot to me, all these years. More than a mere Quidditch rival would have.”

            Harry glared at him. “Yeah, and I know why,” he said, unable to hold his tongue any longer. “Because I refused to be your friend in the first place. If I’d agreed, I’d just be another faceless member of your court and you would ignore me the rest of the time.”

            “You think—you think I could ever ignore you?” Malfoy’s astonishment felt like cold sweat on Harry’s skin.

            He shrugged. “Well, all right, reckon that would be difficult with the scar. But you still only want me as your friend because you’ve never had me.”

            “That’s part of the reason,” Malfoy said, and he was struggling now as if he was drowning. The words burst forth from him in long spurts, and then little drips and dabs of water. “But—but more is because I’ve never had someone like you. Let me have a chance. Severus isn’t like you, neither were my friends in Slytherin, and I—I want to know you. To know why you want to leave so badly, and why you only laugh when your friends are here, and what Severus saw in your head that made him react like that.”

            Harry snorted. “You could just ask him.”

            “But he had to take the knowledge,” Malfoy said. “I want it because you give it to me. That’s the reason.”

            Harry blinked. He didn’t know if Malfoy was being completely honest, but then, he reckoned Malfoy didn’t know himself. He was sitting there, panting as if he’d run a long race out in desert heat, and he didn’t know.

            Harry considered it. This wasn’t an obligation, like staying until the Ashborn were free or working for the alliance. If anything had demanded it, it was some impulse in the back of Malfoy’s head that Harry still didn’t understand.

            And…well.

            He knew Ron and Hermione and the Weasleys loved him. They didn’t have to say it all the time. And he’d heard plenty of words that sounded disobliging from the Dursleys and Snape and the Death Eaters and all the other people who held him in contempt for one reason or another.

            It was weird, hearing Malfoy talk this way. Harry had no reason to think it would be different from the selfish desires Malfoy had expressed so far, either.

            But if he chose this, it was something chosen. A duty that wasn’t a duty, that he didn’t have to worry about walking away from, because if it didn’t work, it was as likely to be Malfoy’s fault as his own.

            And this speech was new. He didn’t need words like that from the people who really liked him. War and adventure had forged their bonds so tight there was no splitting them.

            But sometimes, he thought he might want the words.

            “Fine,” he said. “We’ll try. But the instant I think you’re only using me to get what you want, and everything I give you is only another means of tying me into the alliance, then I’ll walk away. Okay?” I don’t think it’ll take very long.

            Malfoy reached out and took his wrist again, but with a fire in his eyes this time that made Harry smile in spite of himself. “Harry,” he said. “I can call you that?”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “Trust you to push the boundaries the instant you can,” he said.

            Malfoy waited.

            “Yeah, all right,” Harry said. “Draco.”

            It won’t last very long. It can’t. We’re both too selfish, and I distrust him too much. I already have everyone I need.

            But sometimes, he thought he might want someone to smile at him in that new, wondering way that Malfoy was doing right now, as if Harry was someone special, someone important, just for being who he was.

*

            AlterEquis: Thanks! Not very much alliance plot got advanced in this chapter, but the personal one did.

            oOMissGOo: Thanks! Yes, Harry is being drawn more and more into thinking about Snape and Draco as people, rather than those he stands above.

            unneeded: Harry doesn’t want it to become more than a hobby if he has a chance of reuniting with his friends. A lot of what he does right now is marking time.
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Ashborn