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Ashborn	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 36149 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
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Chapter Seventeen—Kinds of Union

            Severus took a step back from the cat automaton and looked at it critically. It was possible that he could improve it, he thought. He could, for example, make the glittering eyes less prominent. He could add less graceful movements to the beast, so that Draco would be able to distance it if he needed to. Severus liked the realism of watching his creations move like animals, not jerkily, but if Draco adapted poorly to his companion in the first place…

            Then Severus shook his head. No, he would not think like that. He had made the gift, and if Draco rejected it, then that was what happened. He could not second-guess himself when he didn’t know how Draco would react yet. He reached out and stroked his fingers down the middle of the cat’s head, waking it to life.

            It opened its eyes and lashed its tail around its feet, sitting upright like an Egyptian temple statue. It examined him. Then it turned its head away and looked around the room.

            Severus nodded. So far, it was functioning as it had been designed to do. Draco was its master, not him. It was natural that it should look for its master.

            The cat leaped from the table and prowled around the room, tail uplifted and the kink in it clearly showing. Severus had made the cat as he would make a Siamese, down to the regal features and the graceful shape of its front paws. Again, Draco could object, and Severus would take the automaton back and make changes in it. But Draco was the one who would have to decide on those changes, or whether he wanted the beast at all, not Severus.

            The cat paused in front of the door, and its tail twined around in a circle so complete that Severus smiled. Then it looked up at him, and away again at once, as though disgusted to have to ask for a favor. Severus nodded and opened the door. Its personality was similar enough to Draco’s that they might get along, at least.

            Or completely repel each other.

            Severus smothered the doubt. Again, he refused to speculate. He had chosen the gift. Draco was the one who must do anything more than that.

            The cat prowled down the middle of the corridor, stopping to stare at a few of the Ashborn as they went by. Severus was not sure what it made of them. He had instructed his other automatons to ignore the Ashborn, but had left the cat’s image of them blank. Right now, it had a burning, Draco-shaped hole in what passed for its mind, and would seek until it found the person who filled that hole.

            Before they reached the door of Draco’s rooms, he opened it and stepped out into the corridor, yawning, his cheek flushed in a way that made Severus’s throat tighten.

            The cat lifted its head and sniffed at the air—a gesture Severus had built into it, since it responded far more to magical traces than to scents the way a real animal would. Then it redoubled its speed and wound around Draco’s ankles when it reached him, staring up into his face. The spell that caused it to purr sparked to life, and the rusty sound came out of the bright metal throat with a convincing degree of realism.

            Draco’s face changed. But Severus didn’t think he could name the emotion that shone on it now, and that he would not care to try. He watched Draco kneel down so that he could look at the cat face-to-face, and still it was hard to try.

            He had promised himself he would not ask. He had promised himself that he would read only the most obvious signals, and then he would bow and walk away. If Draco sent the automaton back to him, then he would receive the message with no attempts to implore Draco otherwise.

            But so much of what he had promised himself came from a place of certainty, undisturbed before Potter came and unstable since. So he knew the hoarse voice that spoke for his own, although nothing to be proud of. “Do you like it?”

            Draco reached out and touched one of the ears without answering. The cat rubbed its face against his fingers in ecstasy, and Draco’s face blossomed with a smile. He looked up and nodded.

            “I had thought that the forms of the others…offended you,” Severus said. It was the most delicate word he could choose without knowing exactly what the source of Draco’s objections to them was.

            Or perhaps he knew—that he paid more attention to them than Draco—and could not bring himself to admit that aloud, even now.

            Draco shrugged, and then sighed and said, “You wanted—I wanted attention from them, too. But they obeyed you, and only you. This one will be mine.” He moved to the side, away from Severus, and the cat rotated its head to continue watching him. Draco nodded and smoothed his hand down its back, fingers resting now and then against the metal as though he expected to find a patch of fur. “Yes. It’ll pay attention to me, and it’ll only obey me, won’t it? Not you?”

            Severus nodded. There was much he could have said, much he could have felt. Not long ago, he thought, he would have been disturbed at the notion that Draco was so delighted by that aspect of the cat. His suspicious mind would have encouraged him to believe Draco would use the cat as a weapon against him.

            But not now. Not when he had learned to understand Draco better—or been forced to think more about him because of Potter’s apparent influence over him, as he could admit was more likely to be the case, in the privacy of his own head. Now he knew it was Draco’s pride in possession. He had mourned losing the Manor more because it was a place he had counted as his own than because it had belonged to his bloodline. He had been smug in the knowledge that he was Severus’s only lover, that none of the Ashborn shared their lord’s regard. And he likely felt much the same way about Potter. His friendship was a possession that Draco had never had, had not even shared with others. It had simply been denied him.

            If he needs it, then he shall have it.

            Severus had not known that he himself had such great need of Draco’s regard until he discovered he might lose it. For that, he reckoned, he had to admit he had Potter to thank. The boy changed everything. He killed the Dark Lord, he made the world brighter for his friends, he ended the war that might have sprung up between the Ashborn and his followers by agreeing to become a hostage.

            That meant…

            It meant Severus had misjudged, again, and he would have to think more carefully about what he said to Potter the next time he saw him.

            He stifled his sigh and looked back at Draco in time to see him gazing up shyly, an invitation in his eyes. The cat turned to Severus, too, and studied him critically, as though evaluating whether he was doing well enough to receive an invitation to bed.

            “I’ve missed you,” Draco whispered, and held out his hand.

            Severus took it.

*

            “I think it’s the best way.”

            That was the line in Hermione’s letter Harry kept repeating over and over to himself as he trudged towards his second “session” with Snape. Hermione had said her efforts at getting an article published in a Potions journal had gone nowhere so far, but that another journal had expressed interest. She would owl it to them and hope for the best.

            Maybe it was for the best. Maybe his escape from Snape, his persuading Snape that he wanted something more than he wanted the Unbreakable Vows binding Harry to him, would of necessity be long and slow. Harry just didn’t like that, was the problem. He wanted to break through the bonds now, to run up to Snape and shake him and demand his freedom.

            But he couldn’t, so he knocked on the door of the Potions lab with a sense of doom.

            “Come.”

            Harry shuddered a little as he opened the door. That was one thing he hoped Snape never ordered him to do.

            Snape was standing over a cauldron, peering into it with a frown. Probably just realized that a mindless Ashborn couldn’t do as good a job on it as a resentful student, Harry thought, hiding a snicker. He had more than once taken out his frustration at a detention on the cauldrons Snape had given him.

            When Snape turned around, his face was grave. Harry rolled his eyes at that. “What? Did Bellatrix display a sign of independent thought?” he asked.

            Snape frowned, and then turned away and looked back at the cauldron as if it was the one who had spoken. Harry smiled. He recognized that trick. The Dursleys had used it when they wanted to show him he wasn’t important enough to deserve much of their attention.

            Then he shook his head. You’ve gone from thinking of the Dursleys only once a month or so or when someone else brings them up to thinking about them all the time. That can’t be good.

            “Please sit down,” Snape said, and nodded to the chairs in the room, as before. There was a new one this time. Harry chose it, to be contrary, and then stood up and moved back to the one he’d had before. The new one made him sink down until his neck was about level with the chair arms. If he had to move fast, or if he wanted to leap out of there and run off to leave Snape yelling after him, he wouldn’t be able to.

            Snape gave him a considering look. Reading everything I do, as usual. Harry sat in the chair with absolute normality—not slumping, not acting uncomfortable, not giving away any signals that would tell Snape anything he didn’t want to tell—though he doubted Snape would read him that way. It was the truth, but Snape seemed more interested in how strange he could make Harry feel than the truth.

            Snape took the other chair, and linked his fingers together in front of him like a kid playing with a string. “There are specific memories I saw and wished to speak about,” he said.

            “Okay,” Harry said. He wasn’t looking forward to this, but then again, he didn’t look forward to most of his daily duties with the Ashborn.

            The only thing that isn’t a duty is spending time with my friends. And Malfoy doesn’t count among them. Harry had started regretting the promise he’d made to be Malfoy’s friend. So far, he had just listened to him pour out his woes.

            “One of the memories I saw was of you, as a child, locked in a cupboard and sick,” Snape said, his voice softer than Harry thought it should be for him to hear it so clearly. “With a bucket of feces nearby. Did that happen often?”

            Harry shook his head. “I didn’t get sick often.”

            Snape’s sigh blew out his nostrils. “I meant, being locked in the cupboard.”

            “Then you should have been clearer,” Harry retorted.

            Snape rubbed his temple as if he were developing a headache. Well, good, Harry thought. The least he could do was return blow for blow, and Snape was making him feel as if he had something pressed down the middle of his spine.

            “Why the cupboard?” Snape persisted. “The house I saw had plenty of room to put you elsewhere, perhaps places where they wouldn’t have to hear or smell you.”

            Harry nodded. “I know. But no place that was as convenient for me to sleep. That was my bedroom for a long time.”

            Snape stared at him. “Someone should have known,” he said. “Someone would have known. How did the Dursleys explain your presence in the cupboard to friends of theirs that came to visit?”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “How were their friends supposed to know about it, if I was in school when they came, or if I stayed in the cupboard and was quiet? Besides, their neighbors who gossiped with Aunt Petunia all thought I was a troublemaker. They probably still think I went to a school for criminal boys instead of Hogwarts.”

            “It is true that trouble finds you,” Snape said.

            Harry gave him a grin he knew was cheerfully vicious, because he’d used it before and Hermione had told him so. Snape blinked and stared at him, taken aback. Harry shook his head at him. It was kind of fun, sparring with Snape like this. He knew nothing about Harry, and so Harry could chase him easily away from the things that might be the most painful, while still telling the truth.

            All this was truth. Something he’d told Ron and Hermione multiple times during the war, when they heard some of his babbling and his nightmares and it was hard to have secrets from anyone. He’d learned how to tell it with a hard kernel of truth wrapped inside a softer layer, his consideration for them. Snape didn’t deserve the softer layer, that was all.

            “Yeah,” Harry said. “They didn’t have any trouble believing it, either.”

            “Did you remain in the cupboard your entire childhood?” Snape demanded, eyeing him.

            Harry shrugged. “Yeah, pretty much. They put me in the second bedroom once I started going to Hogwarts.”

            Snape blinked again, then said, “You were still a child at that time. Therefore, the cupboard did not last for your entire childhood.”

            Harry showed his teeth at him. “Fine, pedant, have it your way. But it doesn’t convince me that you’re on my side when you sound like you’d rather agree with the Dursleys, y’know, or that you’re finding some way to excuse them.”

*

            Why in the world does every conversation with Potter degenerate so quickly?

            Well, perhaps the last one had not. But Severus knew even that was only in the form of him having scored some points off Potter, while in this conversation it had turned. In terms of actually helping Potter, this was not working.

            He shook his head, and made another try, from a different direction. “I also saw some of your memories of the war and how it affected you.”

            Potter nodded. “Hard not to, when they’re the ones that damaged my mind enough to raise up those barriers against Legilimency.” He didn’t sound much bothered by it.

            Severus stared hard at him again. “Do you understand what I am saying? The experiences you went through during the war were horrific. I was troubled by the memories I saw, and I am not easily rattled.”

            Potter rolled his eyes. “Harder than what you went through? Harder than what hit my friends, or what hit Draco? I don’t think so.”

            “It was in two ways,” Severus said, and found that speaking about this as if it were the potions instructions he was giving to an apprentice helped calm his nerves. He still paused before he went on, however, to choose the right words. “First, you experienced much more of the same occurrences. Draco and I went through torture, yes, and he endured the death of his parents, as I—as I did not.” There was no way he would confess to Potter about what he had felt when he killed Albus. “And your friends went behind you, but they did not experience everything you suffered, either.”

            “But it was enough.” Potter wrapped his arms around himself, then seemed to realize it could be read as a defensive gesture and dropped them, staring at Severus as if daring him to comment on it. “Anything that happened to them was too much.”

            “But you agree that you might have more trauma than they do?” Severus had recovered his balance again—until the next time Potter said or did something that threw him off it, at least—and he was curious to see how Potter would respond to the question.

            “What’s trauma?” Potter shrugged. “The nightmares, the way the memories rose up in my mind as a barrier, the way that I sometimes want to die? Ron and Hermione experienced all of those at one point.”

            Severus sighed. It was obvious that he wasn’t about to get Potter to admit to the sheer number of incidents, or that he might have suffered more than someone else. It was not in the boy’s nature to admit that, at least not right now. “The second thing that distinguishes your experiences from others’ is simply that too much depended on you. Draco was desperate to save his parents. That was his obligation during your sixth year, and I suspect you saw the way it destroyed him.” He held Potter’s eyes until he nodded. “But once they were dead, that source of stress, at least, was gone, and replaced by grief. You held yourself responsible for killing the Dark Lord, for ridding the world of him. You were not free until he was dead.”

            “Then that means it can’t be stressing me now,” Potter countered instantly. “If you’re right and Draco’s stress ended the minute his parents died—which I don’t believe for an instant—then the same thing might have happened to me.”

            “But you are left with the memories,” Severus said. “Draco, at least, had me.”

            Potter snorted. “I don’t think much of the way you must have comforted him, considering what he’s like now, if you’ll pardon me saying so, sir,” he said, with a sneer. “And my friends talked to me about my burdens.”

            “Did you ever respond?” Severus leaned forwards. “Or did they confess what had happened to them and their anxieties about it, and you held back?”

            Potter hesitated. Frowned.

            “Yes, exactly,” Severus said. He grimaced. Saying the next words would be as pleasant as biting into a lemon, but it must be done. “I—did not do the best job with Draco. I did not always comfort him in the ways I should have. But I was there for him, and it shows. You still have unhealed wounds that no one else has ever treated.”

            Potter leaned in aggressively, until his face was closer to Severus’s than it had been so far in any conversation. “Don’t you dare blame my friends. If there’s anyone to blame for that, it was me. I held them away. I kept them from coming close.”

            Severus nodded. “I do fault the right person, Potter, never fear.” He watched the boy’s eyes grow bright with indignation, and sighed. “Understand. I am now the person who must try to give you some of the healing you denied.”

            Potter snorted again. “And you think that when I wouldn’t let my friends get close enough, I would let you?”

            “I am not your friend,” Severus said. Yet. Yet he was more than Potter’s captor, as well. He put aside the effort to name what was between them until later. “If you permit me near, then at least you know that I will not be hurt by what I discover there. And I never held you up to be a hero, as Granger and Weasley did. I will not be disappointed by the idea that you suffered so much.”

            “Unless you think you should have inflicted the suffering yourself.”

            Severus shook his head. “I am past any desire to cause you deliberate pain, Potter, although it may happen anyway. I am not the professor who tormented you in idle hours at Hogwarts. If you are to live here and be what Draco wants you to be and what the hostage situation needs you to be—which I know is the only reason you agreed to do this in the first place—I cannot act the same way I did in the past.”

*

            Harry relaxed. It was inexplicably important to him that Snape not act like he was Harry’s friend or something, and it sounded like he wouldn’t. And then there was the fact that he’d admitted wanting to help Harry because of Draco.

            We’re united in shared concern for him, anyway. And if he can depend more on Snape, then he can depend less on me, and there’s more chance that I’ll get to leave.

            “Fine,” he said. “What about if I start out with a few memories, and you say what you think of them, and we can see whether we even agree?”

            Snape studied him with that impassive face Harry hated for a little while. He hated not knowing what people were thinking, especially when they expected you to guess and punished you when you got in the way or did the wrong thing. Like Uncle Vernon.

            At last, though, Snape dipped his head in a gesture that might have been a muted nod.

            That left Harry with the task of choosing which memories he wanted to start with, of course. He hesitated for a little while, then shook his head. He was making this harder than it needed to be, really. He would just go with the simplest ones, the ones that he had already partially admitted to Snape or Snape had already seen, and see what happened from there.

            “All right,” he said. “So they kept me in a cupboard. It was for a long time. I don’t think they were doing it when I was still a baby, but it wasn’t long after that.”

            “You were a year and a half old when you came to live with them?” Snape sounded like someone asking how long it would take a potion to brew—if he ever did that, Harry added in the privacy of his head. He probably knew all the brewing times of all the potions he started, because he was creepily organized like that.

            Harry nodded. “So they didn’t do it at first, but it was the first bedroom I can remember.”

            Snape nodded back. “They had a big enough house that they could have given you your own room?”

            Harry shrugged. “Sure. But the bedroom where they put me was a dumping room for Dudley’s toys instead, the ones he broke or didn’t want anymore.”

            “Dudley being your cousin.”

            “Yes.” Harry peered at Snape, but he hadn’t altered a line in his face or moved an inch. It seemed that he was taking this only as seriously as Harry was in telling it. Right. That was good. Harry swallowed back his uneasiness. “So. I did have a room, but not until after I was ready to go to Hogwarts. And they only did it then because they were afraid someone was watching them, I think.”

            “Why?” Snape tilted his head, and his hair fell across one eye. He seemed in no hurry to clear it off. “Surely they had known about the wizarding world from the day you were placed on their doorstep, if not earlier.”

            “Because the Hogwarts letters I got were addressed to my cupboard,” Harry said. “They thought someone knew.” But no one had known, and he had gradually stopped expecting them to, when no one said anything to him.

            “It is a magical quill that addresses the letters,” Snape said softly. “Not a person. You realized that?”

            Harry nodded.

            Snape paused as if waiting for him to go on, and then delicately prodded, “They ignored you when you were sick?”

            “Oh, as much as possible the rest of the time, too,” Harry said, grateful to have his next subject picked for him. “They liked to tell me to go to the cupboard and pretend I didn’t exist. But sometimes I had to be out to go to school and do the chores. They didn’t talk to me much then, either, except when I broke something.”

            “They did not touch you.”

            Harry sneered, and shook his head. This was the part he had known Snape would come to sooner or later, and the feeling of being able to disappoint him was—wonderful. More wonderful than Harry had known a sensation could be, really. “No. They didn’t beat me, they didn’t rape me, they didn’t hold me down or burn me or kick me or punch me or slap me or whatever else you’re thinking. Once or twice they threw things at me, and my cousin bullied me. But he did that to everyone, like all the kids at primary school who tried to be friends with me. That’s what was normal. Nothing new there.”

            Snape cocked his head. “Because you were not beaten or raped,” he said, “you think you were not abused.”

            Harry shrugged impatiently. “No, I know all about different kinds of abuse. Hermione made sure I did.” Hermione had coped with her own fear and pain during the war by giving them lectures on all sorts of things, and psychological lectures hadn’t been the rarest. “Emotional abuse, that’s what it was. Verbal, maybe. They called me a freak and said my parents were drunkards who deserved to die, because I think that was the worst thing they could think of without telling me about magic—”

            “You did not know your own kind, then,” Snape said. “Or have visions of a world where you could fit in.”

            Again, Harry had to shrug. “I had the fantasies all the kids do when their parents are mean, you know? That my parents were rich and powerful and important people, and that someday they would come and take me away. I think I’m the only person I know whose fantasies even came close to coming true.”

            Snape frowned a little. “What did you know about your parents before you came to Hogwarts?”

            “Their names, and that they died in a car crash,” Harry said. He took a soft, bitter pleasure in being able to surprise Snape with this. “My aunt and uncle also claimed that I got the scar from the accident. That was it.”

            “You did not know—what they looked like.” Snape sounded as if he was forcing the words through a tight throat.

            Harry snorted. “Nope. Everyone was happy enough to tell me that I had my dad’s face and my mum’s eyes when I got to school, though.”

            Snape spent what seemed like an endless amount of time studying him. Harry stared straight back. Take that and choke on it, bastard. No, I had no idea what my dad did to you, or that I looked like him, and that was the reason I didn’t understand why you started yelling at me and bullying me. That’s the end of any hope you might have had that I was deliberately misunderstanding you and acting like him, huh?

*

            No wonder he latched on so strongly to certain…aspects of the wizarding world. The Headmaster must have been the closest thing to a grandfather he had ever known. And the professors who made rules were only more adults like his aunt and uncle, who demanded things of him that seemed strange and which he had no idea how to fulfill.

            That, though, was not an excuse for some of the things Potter had done, and it was not an excuse for his earlier failure to speak about his childhood. If he had talked to Albus like this, then Severus was sure that he would have been rescued.

            But you know the reasons he had for not doing it. Did you ever spend time talking to anyone about how much Lily hurt you? Albus inferred it, he did not speak of it.

            Severus shook his head and continued his questions. “I do not remember you asking questions in school.”

            Potter gave him a bitter smile, too bitter for one so young to know. “The Dursleys taught me pretty well not to ask questions. So I gave it up. And no one really volunteered the information, either, except when they wanted to tell me how much like one of my parents I was. I didn’t know what subjects my parents were good in or what they liked to do or what their families were like unless someone told me. I still have no idea what my grandparents were like, because it seems that no one knew them.” He shrugged. “That’s why I have a limited amount of sympathy for Malfoy when he wails about how hard his life is. He lost his family, but at least he had them, and he grew up with people who loved him.”

            Severus was tempted to say that Lucius’s love was sometimes a harder burden for his son to bear than any amount of ignoring would have been, but he would not allow this conversation to drift off into one about Draco. Potter was a master at deflection, and most of the time, he didn’t even seem to realize he had done it. Severus therefore waited a beat, until Potter had slumped back into his chair and seemed to have given up his idea of making Severus talk about Draco, and then said, “You did not attempt to learn more about wizarding history and how your family fit into it when you arrived in our world?”

            Potter gave him a strange look. “Of course I did. Hagrid told me about my parents and how they died defending me from Voldemort first thing.”

            Severus shook his head. “I phrased that badly. Potter history. The history of prejudice against Muggleborns.”

            “Yeah, you try to do that when unfamiliar school subjects are poured on your head and a teacher hates you for no good reason and you’re trying to survive attacks by a deranged maniac,” Potter muttered. “It was no good. Even if I wanted to ask questions, there’s no guarantee that they would have answered me. Dumbledore kept everything as close as he could. People weren’t lining up to volunteer the information. They probably thought Aunt Petunia told me everything.”

            “I would have—”

            “Yeah, yeah, you would have done everything differently, and you would have survived and saved the day and learned everything about your family that you wanted to and recovered from abuse like that,” Potter interrupted. “You’re not me. I was just grateful to have friends who didn’t turn on me and who wanted to investigate mysteries with me. I never had that before. Never had regular meals before, or encouragement to do the kinds of bloody freakish things the Dursleys hated. I’m just glad I knew a little bit about the Houses before I got to Hogwarts, or I might not have had any of those things.”

            “Explain what you mean,” Severus said, and he did not care that his tone had gone colder than he wanted it to, his body more rigid. It sounded as though Potter was about to begin another anti-Slytherin rant, and Severus had already heard enough of those to last him a lifetime.

            “I mean,” Potter said, glaring at him, “that Hagrid and Ron had both told me about Slytherin being the place for bullies and Dark wizards. Well, I wasn’t going to join a House that was full of the kind of people who were like my cousin or who killed my parents, was I? And the Hat wanted to put me there, so—”

            “You are lying,” Severus said, and thought he controlled his voice, except he knew from the way it twitched that he had not. Potter noted the twitch, too, and leaned forwards as though, by close study, he could force Severus to yield his secrets. “The Hat makes the decisions. Had it wanted Slytherin for you, that is where you would have gone.”

            Potter snorted. “Not you, too. When I first told Ron about this, then he freaked out, too. But no, it listens to what you decide.” He stared into the distance and shook his head a little. “It told me I could go anywhere, but it pushed Slytherin. I wanted to be in Gryffindor because Ron knew he was going to be there, and he was the first friend I ever had. So the Hat warned me and argued with me a bit, and then it sent me there.”

            Severus did not know what to say. That was a rare enough occurrence that he sat there in silence for a short time, trying to recover his balance. Potter sat still, too, glancing at him with a mocking expression on his face that made Severus’s teeth grind. Potter need not think he was so special and important that it was his words alone which made Severus grope for words.

            The annoyance brought speech back to him again. “It would, of course, have been terrible to be a Slytherin,” he whispered. “The friendships you would have found there would not have been to your liking, and you would always have been yearning after Gryffindor.”

            “Oh, no,” Potter said in a bright, brittle tone. “I would have had a wonderful time, I’m sure, with a Head of House who hated me, and Malfoy who I’d annoyed on the train, and kids who’d despise me for defeating the Dark Lord or because my mother was Muggleborn. Yes, I should have known when I was eleven that not everything in the world was black and white, even though the only people I’d met in the wizarding world had just finished telling me it was. They just had different viewpoints on what was good, that’s all. Malfoy wanted me to pick him and Slytherin and get rid of Ron. Ron wasn’t any better, but he wasn’t worse, either. And I had a good life in Gryffindor. The best.” His glance, this time, was scathing and scraping. “Can’t say I regret it, either, when I haven’t managed to get along with the two Slytherins I’m living with now.”

            I am still older than he is. I am the one who knows what the House is like from the inside, the one who knows history he never learned.

            That he never learned.

            Severus closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. He had to find the right words, and he searched for them for a long time before he found them.

            “That you would make such choices, given your background, is not surprising. And I might have been more sympathetic, and more able to help you, had I known your background.”

            “It wouldn’t have mattered,” Potter countered in a heartbeat. “You would have sneered at me, and asked if I wanted help recovering from my abuse, and did I know that you suffered worse? It doesn’t matter to you. I get that. But I wish you would stop acting as if you cared.”

            “I did not care, then,” Severus admitted, opening his eyes. “You were Lily’s son, and the sacrifice we needed, and nothing more—not a human being with emotions I was not aware of. But I care now.”

            “Because of what you saw in my mind?” Potter challenged him, all bright eyes and sharp teeth. He reminded Severus of a wolf, of a fox, of himself in his schooldays. “Or because you’re afraid that I’ll take Draco and the Ashborn away from you?”

            “Because of the former.”

            Potter pulled up as though someone had tugged on a bridle around his head, staring at Severus.

            This was the part that made him feel old. “I have to change my mind,” Severus said, and it was easier to tell the fireplace than Potter—easier, but not doable. He had to keep his gaze on that small pale face, on those brilliant green eyes that so echoed Lily’s, on the way Potter froze in his seat and stared at him. “I have to acknowledge that you were abused, and that you are a stronger and better person than I knew. A person who might make a better friend to Draco than I could, since I fulfill a different role.”

            “How very fucking generous of you,” Potter whispered, but his face was paler than ever, his voice smaller.

            Severus nodded, because he could say nothing else. “I hope you will come to see it so. There is little that I can give you to make up for the way I treated you at Hogwarts, although I can try to help you here. But I will say—”

            The words made him want to spit. He had to gather even more strength before he could say them. But when he did, he had to admit there was a certain relief to it, like spitting out the seed of a burning lemon.

            “I am sorry for what I did.”

*

            Harry clenched his hands on either side of the chair so he wouldn’t bolt. He wanted—he wanted to punch Snape’s teeth in, and run, and scream at him that this was too little, too late, and laugh.

            But the expression of torment on Snape’s face was its own reward, in a way. He had not wanted to say those words, which meant they were less likely to be some kind of ploy to make Harry forgive him.

            And why would he want my forgiveness, anyway? Most of the time at Hogwarts, he thought he was in the right.

            Harry scrubbed his hand across his scar, a remnant of the time when it still hurt. It seemed strange to him that Snape wanted anything from him at all, except to shut up and leave him alone. But he had acted as if he did, and Snape had never been that good an actor in front of Harry, the way he probably was in front of Voldemort; he just despised Harry too much. His mask hadn’t broken so far, if it was a mask.

            Maybe—maybe it was true that he wanted to soothe a bit of Harry’s anxiety, if only to keep the Ashborn intact. He could have decided an apology was the best way to do that, whether or not he meant it, but simply saying the words had proved painful enough for him. He had to have some incentive.

            And apparently that was Harry.

            Harry stared at Snape again. Snape looked back at him with an expression of indigestion. It reminded Harry of the time Uncle Vernon had to acknowledge Dudley and not Harry had broken the dishes, because he’d come around the corner in time to catch Dudley tossing a plate on the floor.

            He had still blamed Harry for making Dudley do it, of course, but Snape showed no sign of something similar. The silence stretched.

            “Fine,” Harry said. “Apology accepted.” He stood up and walked to the lab door. Snape didn’t call him back, but remained on his chair, watching Harry go.

            Harry turned around on the threshold, added because it felt like a hook was buried in his guts, “I’m sorry for looking in your Pensieve during fifth year,” and then bolted out.

            Thank God that’s over, he told himself as he ran. Thank God.

            And hopefully that’ll be the end of it. Snape’s calmed me down enough for him.

            Surely he has. Surely.

*

            unneeded: Harry thinks so, too, although he’s more divided on what he needs help for.

            AlterEquis: Snape has no intention of being left out, and probably won’t be, if only because he’s making himself too annoying for Harry to ignore.
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Ashborn