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Inter Vivos	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 42948 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter List
- 18
- 19
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Chapter Nineteen�Occlumency

�� Are you
ready for something more extensive, then?� Draco took a step back and managed
to smile at Harry, and it wasn�t even much of a strain. Since he had discovered
he was in love with Harry, Draco�s violent emotions had calmed down. He enjoyed
spending time with Harry more than before.

�� Of course,
now he had a new source of anxiety, because he had no idea how or when to tell
Harry the truth�especially since Harry showed no sign of realizing it himself.

�� Harry took
a deep breath and nodded. �Yeah. You�ve been pretty
gentle with the Legilimency so far. I need to see what else will happen if you
probe harder.� He grinned at Draco, the sweat around his hairline showing how
nervous he was�far more than he needed to be, Draco thought�and braced his
feet.

�� Draco took
a few steps back and composed himself. By now, it was almost instinctive to use
Harry�s image to secure his mind behind shields stronger than anything Harry
could manage. His mind drained and cleared, and his breathing relaxed until he
felt as if he were ready to fall into a trance. This was the best way to teach
Occlumency, he�d discovered. Be calm, and your student would have to be calm,
too. It was no wonder that Professor Snape had failed to teach Harry, if they
were both tense and angry.

�� Harry
smiled back at him, his face open and trusting. And you did have to have a vast trust in someone, Draco had found out, for
Occlumency to work. Another reason Snape had never been able to teach Harry.

�� And it�s time to use your magic on him
before you start talking yourself out of this calmness.

�� Legilimens,� he whispered.

�� His mind
leaped forwards and began to play against Harry�s shields like waves trying to
wear down rocks. Harry frowned in concentration, but so far his shields held.
Draco smiled. That was better than he had expected Harry to be able to do at
this stage, really.

�� On the
other hand, he would have to hold against more determined attacks than this. So
Draco said, �Legilimens,� again and
sent his mind driving towards a weakness in the fortress of Harry�s mind.
Professor Snape had praised him for having the gift to discover weaknesses like
that, but Draco himself was not sure how he did it�only that he could sense the
cracks and chinks and widen them by sliding his mind into them, like a wedge
entering wood.

�� For a long
moment, Harry struggled against him. Draco felt some sweat of his own break
out, and his vision of Harry blurred. The pressure against his Legilimency grew
until he felt he would have to pull out.

�� But that
would only frustrate Harry, who had insisted before the session
started that he needed to have Draco go harder on him if he was going to
survive his next battle with the Dark Lord.

�� So Draco
bore down, and, as he knew had to happen when he was so much better at this
than Harry, the crack weakened and let him through.

�� He was
whirling along on a flood of memories and information and ideas before he
managed to master himself and pull back. His Legilimency was still less
instinctive than his Occlumency, because he hadn�t practiced as much. He was
supposed to shield himself, Snape had told him sternly, not try to read people�s
minds.

�� But right
now he had the chance to read Harry�s, and so he did his best to locate and isolate
one memory. Preferably one of Harry and him together.
It was possible that if Harry saw
them from the outside, he would realize the same thing that was always clanging
like a bell in the back of Draco�s head now.

�� Possible. But not likely.

�� Still,
Draco wanted to try it anyway, and so he reached out and snared one memory from
the flood as delicately as possible.

�� He was not
prepared for what came from it.

�� Something obscure
and writhing coiled around him like water-weed, and Draco cried out in more
than surprise when he felt the pressure on his mind. Something
sliding and smooth and subtle, something as powerful and deadly as a snake.

�� Legilimency more assured, and many times stronger, than his own.

�� Draco
stumbled backwards, wondering, in a panic, if Harry had some instinctive defenses
in his mind that would repel Draco and destroy him before he could pull himself
free. Sometimes that happened, Professor Snape had told him, but not often, any
more than some wizards and witches were allergic to certain kinds of spells.
But Draco should still have been prepared,
he always ought to be prepared for
the strange and extraordinary to happen with Harry, and still he hadn�t
considered it�

�� Then the
thing winding around him snapped tight and laughed at him, and Draco knew, for
sure and certain, that it was not and could not be Harry.

�� Harry did
not possess that cold laughter, that arrogance that crushed down on Draco then
like an avalanche and made him aware how much the possessor of the voice
despised him. His panic redoubled, and he yanked
himself free with a power that Professor Snape and Lucius both would have
been proud of.

�� Then he
opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor of their practice room, and Harry
was striding towards him, leveling his wand at a Draco with reflexes that spoke
of years of experience.

�� His eyes
were red, his pupils vertical. All around him flowed a palpable aura of power
that Draco, better than anyone after working so closely with Harry, knew Harry
did not have.

�� Draco�s
instincts saved him then. He might have frozen, and he probably would have died.
But he flung himself sideways, and the curse that flew from Harry�s wand�a sizzling,
hissing one that made the floor bubble and boil�just missed him.

�� The cold laughter
spilled from Harry�s lips. Draco shuddered. It was much worse aloud. He knew
that Harry had heard it more than once, and he wondered that Harry was sane
after it.

�� You,�
whispered the Dark Lord�s voice, Harry�s head swaying from side to side as if
it were the head of a cobra. �Lucius�s traitorous son.
The one he was so proud of, the one he was sure would kneel to me someday. Are
you, I wonder, actually Potter�s friend? Or are you pretending to be, so that
you can serve your father? But no,� the voice continued, contemplative, slow,
terrifying. �You have shown too much of yourself to Potter here. Typically, he
notices almost nothing of it, but I do. I can use his eyes; I need not use his
brain.�

�� Draco knew
he was outmatched. He couldn�t lie to the Dark Lord, not with his Legilimency and
with how much he might have seen�which was everything,
if he�d really been living in Harry�s mind for months. And he couldn�t win in a
battle against him. It seemed like the Dark Lord had all his knowledge and his
magic with him, rather than being limited by Harry�s mind and body.

�� On the
other hand, he didn�t think he would get out of the door if he tried to run.

�� He
committed himself in a moment, as Professor Snape had said he would have to
sometimes, and swished his wand in a spell that Snape had believed he wasn�t
ready to perform. �Color mortis,� he
whispered, so softly that he didn�t think the Dark Lord could hear him. At
least, he would have to hope that the
Dark Lord couldn�t hear him. Draco cast the spell during the last part of his
bragging little speech, though, so he didn�t think so.

�� The spell
spread soundlessly, invisibly, over him, but Draco could feel it passing, the tingle like a thousand cold spiders� legs
running up his skin. He shuddered, and then the Dark Lord turned his wand on
him. Draco stood tall and faced it, trying to wear a haughty expression, the
way that the Dark Lord would expect Lucius�s son to. He was breathing so fast
that he swayed on his feet, but he knew he was brave, he knew he was strong,
and this was for Harry�s sake.

�� He could
only pray that the Dark Lord wouldn�t cast the Killing Curse, because this
spell wasn�t a block to the Killing Curse; nothing was.

�� Crucio!� the Dark Lord said, and Draco had a
moment to be grateful for the rigidity of his mind and his lack of imagination before
the pain spread over his body.

��

�� It lasted
only a moment. Then Color mortis, the
Feigned Death Spell, went into motion and made him slump, his heartbeat fading
below detection levels in a moment, so it would look as if a heart attack had
killed him. Draco�s eyes rolled back, his breath stopped on the surface but
continued, suspended, in the lowest part of his lungs, and his body went slack
and unresponsive.

�� He heard
the Dark Lord make a hiss of surprise. Then he stepped towards Draco and jabbed
the wand at his cheek, rolling his head to the side. Draco went with it, because
he had no choice, and changed his prayer�this time, that the Dark Lord wouldn�t
decide to jab the wand through his eye as a way of making sure he was truly dead. The Color mortis would sustain his silence and stillness even through
that, but it wouldn�t lessen the pain.

�� I will
have to tell Lucius,� the Dark Lord said, with a little laugh, and then swept
out of the room.

�� Draco
forced himself to lie still and count to a hundred. It was the second hardest
thing he had ever done in his life. The hardest was forcing himself to his feet
and then turning in the direction of the dungeons and Snape�s private rooms.

�� He wanted
to go after Harry so badly that his body felt tugged towards Harry�s side by
invisible reins, but if he did, he would be in the same predicament he�d just
got out of. Better to fetch Professor Snape, as the only one
in the school who would believe Draco immediately and who might know what to do in the case of possession.

*

�� Harry�s
brain was screaming and scrabbling like a mouse in a glass cage, and he couldn�t
stop it.

�� He couldn�t
stop anything. He still felt the motions of his own limbs, the weight of the
wand in his hand, the brush of cloth and air against his skin as his body
climbed the stairs, but he didn�t control
any of it. His head turned and his eyes focused on stones hung with what
looked like red tapestries�the haze of red that seemed to follow Voldemort everywhere�but
it wasn�t what he wanted to look at, and the thoughts that rushed through his
head weren�t his own.

�� And Draco
was dead. Draco was dead, for
trusting Harry, and trying to help him, even after Harry decided he didn�t
trust him and wouldn�t tell him anything he wasn�t forced to.

�� It hurt so
much. He struggled and he ran and he turned and he lashed out and he kept
screaming, hoping that the fervor of everything might startle Voldemort into
letting go.

�� But he knew
he couldn�t do anything. Voldemort�s strength sat on him like a snake coiled on
top of a rat, and he had never been any good at Occlumency.

�� The
bitterness made all the nightmares he�d had so far, and his conviction that he
was going to die in the war, seem like nothing. They had been nothing. If he�d worked harder, instead of giving up
sometimes because he was so depressed�if he�d stuck with Occlumency when Snape first
wanted him to perfect it�if he�d talked to Ginny, who�d been right after all,
or told someone about the duel with Sirius where the world turned red�

�� Everything
was lost, now, and Voldemort was laughing at him. And, because he had deliberately
shared one of his thoughts with Harry, he knew where they were going.

�� Sirius was
due for a dueling lesson with Harry this evening.

*

�� This time,
Severus knew that something was wrong not due to a ward or Draco bursting into
his office, but because his Mark had begun to burn just as he was contemplating
retiring to bed. He laid down his ladle instead of dropping it this time, and
sent a moment regarding his arm. His mind had already acted to put his fear
into suspension and fill itself with clarity, the way it had during the battles
that Severus actually fought against the Order of the Phoenix, before he
changed sides.

�� The Dark Lord is in the castle.

�� And then
someone was knocking frantically at the door to his private rooms. Severus
moved towards the door, analyzing as he went. (Analysis was a way to keep himself from exploding with fear). Only Slytherins knew
where the door to his private rooms lay; that was not knowledge he had ever
seen necessary to trust to Harry, since they always met at his office or in the
training room anyway. And if the Dark Lord was in the castle, he was probably
trying to strike at Harry. And there was only one Slytherin who would be that
intimately concerned in Harry�s problems.

�� So Severus opened the door without surprise, which itself lessened
the dread, and nodded to Draco. �I need to know what has happened,� he
said, before the boy could even open his mouth, �and I need to know where he
has gone.�

�� I don�t
know the second,� Draco said. His breathing had slowed down a bit, Severus
noted with approval, retreating from hyperventilation. He was used to listening
to questions from someone else in that kind of calm, dry voice. �But the Dark
Lord�s possessed him. He must have been in Harry�s mind a long time. I stirred
him up during the Occlumency lesson, and�� He swallowed. �He must have been
there a long time, to be that strong,� he repeated, and shook his head, turning
away.

�� Severus seized
his shoulder. He did not have the time to coddle Draco, and that meant he could
not allow him to sink into despair. �Did he affect your mind in any way?�

�� I don�t
think so.� Draco shivered. �He drove me out of Harry�s mind, but I was trying
to escape anyway. And then he tried to torture me with Crucio, but I�d cast Feigned
Death and he thought I was dead. I think he�s
gone upstairs, but I don�t know where.�

�� It did not
take Severus long to make a guess. The Dark Lord would not have revealed himself,
even if Draco had probed at him, unless he was ready to make a move. And, other
than Draco and perhaps the Gryffindors�whom Potter had spent less time with
this year than usual�there was only one person whose loss would cause Harry
deep and personal pain instead of the impersonal grief that the boy seemed ready
to take on his shoulders every time someone died.

�� Up� could
mean Gryffindor Tower. But �up� was also likely to mean the Room of
Requirement, and if the Dark Lord had been around long enough to acquire some
of Potter�s memories and see through his eyes, he must also realize that
striking at Black now was an easier chance, before the news had had time to
spread. Harry�s friends would be nodding off in their beds soon. They could be
finished with ease once he had taken care of Black.

�� And if he knows that much, it is likely that
my own life is forfeit.

�� Severus felt
his heart beating strongly in his ears as he set off, for the second time, to
rescue Sirius Black. It was louder than the footsteps of Draco behind him, whom
Severus knew would not stay put no matter what he told him, and whose trust he
did not fancy losing by casting a binding spell. And it was louder than the
silent plea that he had guessed correctly and was not leaving the Gryffindor
children to suffer.

�� He knows. He knows.

�� One way or another, this is an end to my
spying.

�� An end to
suspension, an end to uncertainties�

�� Severus felt
his lips curl in a somewhat desperate smile. Strange as this circumstance was,
there were ways that he thought he could regard it with relief.

*

�� The door to
the Room of Requirement opened. Inside was the plain dueling chamber that Harry
and Sirius always used, and Harry when he was training
with the Army of Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff students. Of course it
was, Harry thought, nearly crazed with despair. Voldemort had access to all his
thoughts. He would know what the room should look like and how to summon it
into being.

�� Voldemort
did pause as the door opened, and Harry caught the edge of a thought that
sounded something like insecure and tiara. But Harry caught no more than
that, because Sirius was waiting, smiling, in the middle of the floor, and he
needed to act now, with Draco�s
weight in his mind like a stone, face pale-cold, if he didn�t want Sirius to
end up like Draco had.

�� He lunged,
throwing all his weight against Voldemort�s mind, hoping against hope that the
prophecy�which Voldemort had to know, too, if he�d been listening to Harry�s
thoughts�would take hold somehow, and ensure that he could defeat the bastard.
He could die, and that was all right, that was what he�d been preparing for all
along, just let him take Voldemort with him, all he asked, all he wanted�

�� And
Voldemort crushed him down without even moving, without shifting. He laughed at
Harry, and Harry screamed back, but his hope was gone, and nearly his mind.
Voldemort did fling one coil over him, so that he had even less freedom of
movement than he�d had up to that point, and then moved his lips in a smile at
Sirius.

�� Are you
all right, Harry?� Sirius cocked his head to the side,
his smile fading as he examined Harry with concern. �Something funny about your
eyes��

�� I woke up
with a fever this morning,� Voldemort said, and his voice was pitch-perfect,
sheepish and apologetic for worrying Sirius, but of course it would be, why wouldn�t it be, it was Harry�s voice, and why couldn�t Harry do anything? �And it turned my eyes this
color for some reason.� He laughed. �A burst blood vessel, maybe. But I won�t
let it stop the duel! I have to know how to defeat him.�

�� And he
raised his wand.

�� Sirius came
forwards, laughing, to meet it, not knowing what would happen.

�� Distorqueo!�

*

�� Draco raced
after Professor Snape to the stairs, but when they got up them, he was ahead.
He didn�t know how it happened. He didn�t plan it. What mattered was that they
had to get there, and he knew where it was, because he�d waited outside the
room more than once when Harry put an Occlumency lesson after the dueling
lesson.

�� Professor Snape
shouted for him to stop. Draco shut his ears and ran madly. He was breathing
horribly by the time he got to the last set of stairs, but Quidditch had been
good for something this year after all, although it hadn�t let him win the game
against Harry; it kept him going long past the point where he would have been
ready to drop if he wasn�t in better shape. And then he saw the door ahead, and
he saw it was slightly ajar, and he wanted to whoop and shout and laugh,
because the Dark Lord hadn�t taken the time to shut and ward it, but he didn�t
have the time, and Professor Snape was still
shouting for him to stop, and he might try to bind Draco at any moment.

�� Draco threw
out his hand and pushed the door open.

�� And he saw
Sirius Black twisting and hunching like an old tree under the Deforming Curse
that the Dark Lord had cast at him, and his heart burned hot, and he aimed his
wand and, because he couldn�t cast a spell that would hurt Harry if his life depended on it, he spoke another savage spell
that came to mind instead.

�� Dehisco!�

*

�� Harry had
never known what suffering was until he saw the torture curse Voldemort was
using cramp Sirius�s spine, turn his limbs weak and shaky, and start sucking
the bones out of his chest. Sirius was screaming.
Harry kept trying to go to him again and again. Voldemort held him down. He
laughed at him.

�� Harry
thought he could feel his mind bending, just like Sirius�s body, under the
pressure. He almost welcomed it. If he was going to die, if he was going to be
the one responsible for killing his godfather or hurting him beyond belief,
then maybe it was for the best anyway�

�� Dehisco!� came the yell from behind him, in Draco�s angry, beloved voice.

�� Beloved? Harry had time to think, the thought
whirling past him like an arrow and spinning him around.

�� And then Draco�s
curse struck and Harry�s wand split down the middle, forked into two halves
that leaped away from each other as if hit by a thunderbolt. The
phoenix feather inside puffed into a sad cascade of golden flecks and drifted
towards the ground, settling like snow on the useless holly wood.

�� Sirius fell
over, in what looked like unconsciousness, and which made Harry cry with
relief.

�� Voldemort
screamed like an angry Veela and turned around to
confront Draco�alive, alive, oh my God,
Draco�and Professor Snape, behind him. He must have seen at once that they
were both armed and he wasn�t. Harry felt him tense, and the air around him
briefly turned cold. He thought Voldemort was trying to summon his own magic
through Harry�s body, but either the distance was too great or he wasn�t as
good at wandless magic as Harry had always thought he was, after all.

�� He hissed
angrily, either way, and then he closed his eyes.

�� And Harry
felt pain travel through him beside which Umbridge�s Cruciatus was nothing, and
he realized Voldemort did in fact have a victim in reach that he could still
hurt.

*

�� Severus
stepped forwards. Part of him was in shock, but far more was soaring with
stunned pride. Draco, to think of
something like that, rather than a spell that would hurt Harry�s wand instead
of his body�

�� Oh, Draco. You are my favorite student for a
reason.

�� But then
those red, shining eyes closed, and Harry�s body began to shudder, and Severus understood
that Draco�s not casting a torture spell might have been of small avail, since
the Dark Lord could destroy Harry�s mind without moving.

�� And now it
was his turn.

�� Legilimency
against an unwilling mind was difficult, which was one reason Severus had
always kept his abilities very quiet, so that his students wouldn�t start
consciously resisting him. And Legilimency with the eyes shut was more
difficult still; Severus usually preferred to wait until someone was looking
him directly in the face even when he knew a person well. And this was the Dark
Lord, whose abilities as a Legilimens were beyond compare, and who knew, now,
that Severus had been deceiving him.

�� But still,
this was the reason he had come here. Draco had done his part.

�� Now it was
up to Severus to do his.

�� He never
hesitated. He cast �Legilimens� aloud,
which was not something he ordinarily needed to do, but he was not about to
waste any power at the moment on nonverbal spells. And it wasn�t as if the Dark
Lord didn�t realize exactly what he was going to do.

�� He leaped,
and passed inside, using his mind like a battering ram, knocking at the shields
and the traps that immediately sprang up to oppose him.

�� Only later,
much later, did he realize this was the first action he had taken in years that
was not a matter of either routine or atonement.

*

�� Draco
wanted to do something, especially when Harry began to shudder as if someone
was hitting him with lightning curses. But he had heard Professor Snape speak,
and he knew that there was nothing he could do right now. He was a fairly good Occlumens, but nothing like on Snape�s level.

�� No, as
useless as it made him feel, he had to�wait.

�� Draco
sighed and let himself drop onto his heels. And then a
groan echoed his sigh, and he looked around in surprise.

�� Sirius
Black lay hunched and twisted on the floor, his head bent to the side, his eyes
filled with terror.

�� There was
something Draco could do, after all, and so he moved towards his cousin.

*

�� Harry knew
he was shredding apart, in a process that not all the nightmares had managed,
or even seeing Draco die�as he thought�or seeing the pain inflicted on Sirius.
Voldemort had only done that to torture him. This time, he meant to kill.

�� He tore and
tore and tore, and bits of Harry�s thoughts and memories and information spun
away and were gone. And all the time, Voldemort kept up a steady chant of what
he was destroying.

�� Wingardium Leviosa. The way that your friend
Ron laughs. How your cousin tortured you. The moment when you realized
your aunt would never love you, no matter what you did for her. The Body-Binding Spell. Your friend
Hermione�s middle name. Your favorite foods. It
will all go, Potter, it will all go, and I will annihilate you. You will become
less than a name on the wind, less than a ghost bemoaning his unfair treatment.
You are gone, and you will pay for defying me!

�� The one
thing Harry knew how to do best, thanks to the training he�d received�from Snape,
from Sirius, from Draco, from the Dursleys, from Seamus, from Umbridge�was how
to endure pain. So he did what he could to cling to the core of his slowly
diminishing sanity, and last to the end. If Voldemort wanted him to go, then
the only victory Harry could steal from him was to stay as long as possible.

�� And then�

�� A slender
beam of light, creeping into Harry�s mind the way that a line of light used to
shine under the door of the cupboard. A rope ladder lowered to him.

�� You must trust me. Snape�s voice was all
around him then, beating in his ears like wind or wings, stronger than Voldemort�s
horrifying chant. I can strengthen you.
This is still your mind. You have the advantage here, and you can fight him. But
you must trust me.

�� Harry
hesitated, agonized, remembering unfair moments in Potions class, pain that Snape
as well as Voldemort had caused him�

�� And then he
ran into the first holes in his memories, and he understood that perhaps he
would never again know some of what Snape had done to him.

�� He wanted
to laugh. He wanted to weep. He wanted to dance around in a circle and point
out to Voldemort, who was now screaming at Snape and attacking him with rush
after rush of power, that his own destruction had been the thing that caused
Harry to trust Snape.

�� That, and some of the memories of the training sessions, and of the
stories that Snape had told him.

�� Yes, Harry said, and reached out to
clasp Snape�s hand.

*

�� Severus had
not expected the maelstrom, because to
expect something, one had to have a vague idea of what it was like, and Severus
had never before been in the middle of a forest fire that was also a rockfall and an avalanche, lit with vivid flashes of green
and purple lightning that would kill him if they landed.

�� But he fought
his way through, along the tattered trails of thought and the rebounding rocks
and the leaping water, and he felt Harry�s mind�familiar from their aborted
Occlumency lessons�pressing up against his, and he reached out and offered
help.

�� And Harry said,
Yes, and
Severus felt something shift around them, something that was not merely the
change in Harry�s mind that the permission signaled.

�� But for the
moment, that change was by far the most important one. Severus swept his power forwards
like a pair of wings and, at the moment when the Dark Lord intensified his
assault most and stood the most chance of hurting him, he poured his power and
his knowledge into Harry, a possession of his own in some ways.

�� But more than that. A lending. A borrowing. Harry suddenly knew as much about Occlumency
and Legilimency as Severus did, and so he had the knowledge to access the
native strength of his mind.

�� More than
that, because this was not a possession but a permission,
Severus could hide himself entirely in Harry�s mind if he required. He moved
his knowledge, but also himself, and
vanished from in front of the Dark Lord, whose assault rained and hammered on
empty ground.

�� Harry-Severus
expanded himself downwards, sideways, forwards, up. He went everywhere the Dark
Lord was not, and he grabbed things. He-they drew it in, that knowledge of his
mind that remained, the memories that were years old and layered and not so
easy as all that to be destroyed, the conviction of his death, the love of
Sirius, the hatred of the horrid Muggles who had abused him, and together
he-they drove it and built it and himself-themselves, and they shot up like a
black building, and hit Voldemort-the Dark Lord in a single burst of
indescribable power, as all Harry-Severus convulsed in a moment of rejection.

�� The Dark
Lord-Voldemort had managed to build up so much power only because he�d hidden
for so many months in the back of Harry�s mind�and his nightmares, as they both
understood at the same moment, because Harry had the memories of those dreams
and Severus recognized them as a sign of incipient possession. And now that
mind was aware of him, and angry.

�� Ancient
rage came boiling up, all the anger that Harry had at Finnigan
and Umbridge and the Dursleys and felt he had to suppress. And it joined to the
anger that Severus felt against James Potter and against Dumbledore, and with
his hatred of the Dark Lord for the loss of Lily, and hit Voldemort like a shuttlecock,
knocking him far, far away, out of Harry-Severus.

�� His
diminishing cry haunted them for long moments, and then they broke apart, fell
apart, and Severus swam to the surface of Harry�s mind, and opened his eyes to
find Harry flinging himself into his arms.

*

�� Draco
gasped as Professor Snape�s eyes opened. He�d been crouched beside Black,
trying to murmur the most soothing words he could, and watching both Snape and
Harry, who stood motionless. And then Snape�s eyes were open, and Harry jumped towards him and clutched his robes, sobbing.

�� Snape
dropped to his knees�not, Draco thought, because he wanted to accommodate Harry
but because he didn�t have the strength to stand up any longer�and caught him.
He held him for a length of time that made Draco feel uncomfortably jealous.

�� Well?�
Draco demanded after a minute, unable to believe that no one had said anything. �Is he all right?�

�� Snape
lifted his head. The look in his eyes was pure fire, and Draco had to shiver
and fight the temptation to take a step backwards.

�� He is far
from all right,� Snape said in measured tones. �But the Dark Lord is gone. And
from now on, things will be different. There
will be�arrangements made, for healing and to ease the pain that should have
been eased long since, by Dumbledore.�
His hand rose and settled on Harry�s shoulder in a gesture that Draco
recognized, having received it himself. Support. Possessiveness. Gladness.

�� And then
Draco couldn�t stand it, and had to practically drag Black over to them so he
could embrace as much of them as possible.

*

��

�� FallenAngel1129:
And Harry even realized something! Sort of.

�� Sneakyfox: Thank you. I had a lot of fun writing Draco�s
discovery.

�� MewMew2:
Thanks for reviewing.
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Inter Vivos