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

Chapter List
- 21
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Chapter Twenty-Two—Coming to Terms

            Harry stepped into his rooms and shut the door behind him. He wondered for a moment if Bellatrix had followed him, but no, he couldn’t remember her coming from the gardens or being with him when he went to Snape’s lab. Then he dismissed those stupid thoughts and turned to face the less stupid ones that he had to deal with.

            Or maybe they’re not less stupid, come to think of it.

            Snape admired him. Snape thought he was a hero. Snape had, at one point, left him alone instead of interrupting Harry’s mourning although Harry thought it was exactly the kind of dickish thing Snape would do.

            Snape had looked at him the night of Dumbledore’s death as though he wanted to fight Harry, or eat his power, or…

            Harry winced. He didn’t like the direction his thoughts were taking, but he had faced hard things during the war. He could make himself face these thoughts, too.

            As if he wanted to fuck Harry.

            Well, you know he’s attracted to men, since you know that he’s fucking Draco. And younger men, too.

            Harry let out a gusty sigh and pushed his hair back from his forehead with a shaking hand. That didn’t really make sense, though, not with all the other memories he had seen and the context of that particular one. Snape wanted Harry to stop calling him a coward and stop using the spells he’d made up. Maybe he wanted his power, too. That was different from wanting his body.

            Besides, how was Snape’s regard for Harry’s mum supposed to fit into all of this?

            Harry shook his head. It was getting too weird and stupid in here, definitely. He needed something else to think about, something that would distract him from lies that couldn’t possibly be true.

            Corners provided it, though probably accidentally. “I don’t like either of them much,” he said, and his tongue flickered. “But more than I did.”

            Harry paused and turned towards him, smiling in spite of himself. He trusted Corners’s instincts where he wouldn’t really have trusted his own. “Do you? Why? I know that Draco hasn’t tried to talk to you since that night when you sang for him.”

            “Why should I want them to talk to me? I have you.” Corners rose out of the cup, curling around himself in a way that made him look like the twisted stem of a bouquet. “But I do not like them blaming you and yelling at you, and there has been less of that. That the larger one let you into his mind is a good sign.” Then he paused, and his tongue flickered out so it touched Harry’s temple, a brief spot, there and gone, of wetness. “But you don’t seem to like it. You are not as happy as I thought you would be.”

            Harry sighed and sat down on the bed. Fine, the distraction isn’t going to last that long after all. Maybe it was a good thing, as many barriers as he and Snape and Draco already had up between them. “Well, I don’t know.” He sought for a way to explain it, and finally said, “Corners, how do you—how do the Water People—mate?”

            Corners curled his head up into what looked like a knot on the end of his neck. “Easily,” he said. “When we discover someone we find interesting, we blend our wills. Each impulse goes out into the world and produces a new one of the Water People. It is the will and the water that we are made of, nothing else.”

            “So there’s always two children?” Harry asked.

            Corners repeated the word, “Children,” in puzzlement, and Harry wondered if he had no equivalent for it in Parseltongue, since it sounded like his people didn’t lay eggs. But then he nodded and said, “Yes, you would say that. Children. I can have children whenever I want.” He paused and tilted his head. “Is that the source of your anger? Do you wish to have children with these two and they will not agree?”

            Harry choked, and wished for a moment that Snape had been in the room. Of course, he would also have to wish that Snape could have understood Parseltongue, and wouldn’t have killed him out of rage and embarrassment.

            “No,” he said, having to repeat the word when Corners’s eyes flared with harsh light. His mouth was too choked with laughter to get the accent in Parseltongue right. “Not really. But I was enemies with them for a while, and now I don’t know about how I feel about them.” He hesitated, but, well, it wasn’t like Corners was going to go around confessing to Snape about this, or that anyone would understand him if he tried. “I think the tall one wants to mate with me, though. Not to have children, but just to do it.”

            Corners uttered a thoughtful noise that sounded like a stopped-up sink. “Yes, that makes sense. Sometimes it can be a pleasure of its own to mingle with someone who has a will and thoughts like yours.” He twisted his head down again. “But I thought the tall one did not have a will and thoughts like yours.”

            Harry sighed. “He doesn’t. I’m trying to understand him, and I found that desire in his mind. Now I don’t know how to deal with it.”

            “Mate with him,” Corners said, “if it would bring you pleasure. Or don’t.”

            He sounded so baffled that Harry had to smile. “It’s a little more complicated than that for a human,” he said.

            “Because of the children?”

            Harry shook his head. “They tried to kill me, or at least I thought they did,” he said. “They fought on the opposite side of a war from me, and they took me away from my friends because they wanted to secure the future of their own—kind.” He wasn’t sure that Corners would understand the concept of the Ashborn without more explanation than Harry wanted to give it right now. For that matter, he wasn’t sure but that he should have explained the concept of war. “I find it hard to feel kind to them. But now I’ve learned that one of them wants to be my friend, and one of them wants to mate with me. It’s hard to understand.”

            “You’re kinder than they are,” Corners said. “Friendlier. It would be stranger if you wanted them back, but it’s easy to understand why they want you.”

            Harry chuckled in spite of himself, wondering what Malfoy would think if he heard that. “Then you think I should leave them?”

            “You want to leave anyway.” Corners used that long wet tongue to touch Harry’s cheek this time. “You can leave, and then come back. I think you’ll have to come back anyway, won’t you, if I understand the terms of the bargain correctly?” He had the polite tone in his voice that Harry had heard more than once when he discussed things Harry did. He thought they were odd and didn’t understand them, but he would put up with them like someone putting up with a friend’s strange hobbies.

            “Yes,” Harry said, and sat up. “You think I should tell them that I want to leave, then?”

            “It would make you decide,” Corners said. “If they want you and don’t say it, it might make them decide. That would be good, because then you would have something definite to cling to. At the moment, you’re trickling all over the place like someone young who’s just wandered into a swamp.”

            Harry smiled, and wondered again what Malfoy would make of Corners and his metaphors. It bothered him, a bit, when he realized how badly he wanted to ask.

            Well, he could do that later. He nodded. “I think you’re right. We have to press this at least a bit, because otherwise I’ll be stuck here forever, if only because of my own compassion. I’ll tell Snape in the morning.”

*

            Draco opened his eyes in the Forest clearing and sighed when he once again found Laughter waiting for him. The only time he had missed a meeting with Draco was the night of the full moon, and Draco thought himself a little stupid for trying to arrange one then, in hindsight. Laughter inclined his head now and flashed his teeth, bright and nearly as pale as the moonlight. He wasn’t a wolf, of course, Draco knew, but it was only three days past the full moon, and he still flowed and stretched restlessly instead of sitting still the way he usually did, as if he had strong memories of running through the Forest on four legs.

            “Little negotiator,” Laughter said. “We have heard news from the centaurs.”

            “Oh?” Draco asked. He thought it best to use the neutral expression instead of criticize. After all, he had no idea how the werewolves had got the news from the centaurs. Probably by listening to their conversations while hidden in the undergrowth, but he had done worse things himself.

            “They said that Harry Potter is leaving the alliance,” Laughter said, and leaned forwards to peer at him when Draco didn’t react. “The alliance that you are helping to build with us, the one that the centaurs joined you to exploit. Is that true?”

            “That they joined us to exploit it?” Draco automatically shook his head. “Oh, surely not. There must be other reasons.”

            “Little negotiator,” Laughter said, and his voice had grown very quiet. “I am giving you a chance to explain. You would be wise not to waste it.”

            Draco sighed and sat back in the grass, watching the way that Laughter’s hands—paws, he wanted to call them, but there was no hair there, there only looked as if there should be—rolled and danced through it. “Yes, he’s leaving,” he said. “He’s still going to remain bound to us nominally, but I don’t think he’ll spend as much time with us as he did. And he’s told the centaurs that he can’t keep the promise he made about guaranteeing them aid.”

            Laughter’s eyes grew brighter, and he leaned back on his haunches, swishing his foot in front of him the way he had made his hand travel. “That would explain some things,” he said, and waved his hand when Draco glanced at him. “Some rumors that have reached us. And it would mean that my reluctance to join the alliance until we could hammer out something mutually agreeable to everyone is justified after all.”

            Draco licked his lips. “Well,” he said after a moment. “I mean. I can continue negotiating with you, but if you think that Harry Potter has to be part of the alliance for it to matter, then I’m afraid I can’t oblige you.”

            Again, as had happened so many times in the past, Laughter’s tongue spilled over his teeth. “No,” he said. “It simply means that the humans in the alliance whom we know are more important now, rather than less. Much hinges on your promises, little negotiator.” He leaned forwards. “I hope you are fond of keeping them.”

            Draco lifted his head and nodded. He had a lingering stiffness in the back of his neck that came from the way he always hunched over when he was here, waiting for someone or something to spring on his back and put an end to him, but he wouldn’t make a huge deal of that. “I want someone to see me as important as Potter,” he said, telling the truth, because he knew Laughter could probably smell it on him. “This feels like my chance.”

            Laughter’s smile was slower this time, and lacked the edge of cruelty that Draco had sometimes sensed in him before. “Well. I do. Now. Tell me what you think of my proposal that you would help in setting boundaries between my pack and the centaurs.”

            Draco released his breath slowly. This was a thorny issue, and one that he thought he was unable to make firm promises on, because the centaurs were their allies, too, or should be.

            But maybe they wouldn’t be after Potter walked away. And someone wanted Draco’s decision, not Severus’s or Potter’s. He was the one who had initiated the negotiation with the werewolves.

            He leaned forwards and began to speak.

*

            Severus leaned back and blew on the ink in the parchment in front of him, out of habit. The ink he used now dried instantly, thanks to a potion of his own invention, but he had spent years using the kind that didn’t.

            He had written out the new Vows that he wanted to make to Potter, the ones that would soften and somewhat bend the iron hold of the first set. He was doing what he had always said that he would not: bowing his head to a new master now that the Dark Lord and Albus were dead, giving in to what someone else had asked of him.

            For a moment, the panic gripped him so hard that he thought it would wrench the breath from his throat.

            Then he shook his head.

            No. The freedom he thought he had experienced after the Dark Lord died was illusory. He had not waited a month before he began to locate the Death Eaters and bend their minds to his. Freedom that depended on enslaving others was a delusion, and if he could take the place of one of his masters, that was not the same as not having one. He made himself the owner of the Ashborn, and the slave of their concerns.

            Severus closed his eyes and reached out into the dark plain that he thought of his mind as, sometimes—most often when it was in contact with the Ashborn. He watched the dark threads thrumming around him, some thinner than others. It took more effort to tame someone relatively sane, like Yaxley, than to step into a hole in someone’s mind and set himself up as the new Lord, the way he had for Bellatrix, or the leader of the pack, as he had for Greyback.

            But the outcome was the same in any case. Instant, total obedience. They would do the tasks he set for them, and do them well, and understand the unspoken requests he might have made, because they always thrummed through the link. He could see through their eyes, hear through their ears, and reach out to them no matter where they traveled.

            It was not what he had wanted. What he wanted was peace, solitude, and power to defend himself. But he had convinced himself that he needed a fortress and a coterie of soldiers to do that.

            He had grown the Ashborn around himself as a turtle would grow the shell. And he ventured into the outside world less than a turtle did, come to that. At least a turtle could count on the wind blowing in its face and the contact its feet had with the ground. Severus had not done even his own ingredients-hunting in months. When he could take over the senses of anyone else hunting on his orders, it didn’t matter if they didn’t have his expertise. He could detect in an instant what the plant felt like against his palm, the rustling of silky leaves or dry ones, and the consistency of sap from a broken stem.

            But that was not life. It was not the life he had said he wanted in the cell, and which he thought Draco in that time and moment had expected to see him pursue.

            Severus wanted to see himself reflected in Draco’s eyes as worthy, and in Potter’s. And he would never have what he wanted if he held back and hid in the safety he had grown around himself, which was not very real, after all.

            “Snape.”

            Potter had stepped into the room, and if he had knocked, Severus had not heard him. A short time ago, that revelation would have had him reaching for his wand, because how could he defend himself against an enemy who could so easily sneak up on him?

            Now he simply nodded to Potter and gestured to the chair in front of him, and Potter took it, watching him as wordlessly. Severus quelled the temptation to tap his fingers and stared back at Potter, who narrowed his eyes as though he was fighting off a strong wind, or strong sun.

            “I came to see you because I want you to let me go,” Potter said at last, and then stopped, as if he hadn’t meant to make his voice come out as loud as that, almost a shout. He sighed, and continued in a slightly softer tone. “On the first of my visits to my friends, or whatever we’re going to call them officially. I want you to—bend the Vows, or replace them, or whatever you’re going to do. You’ve proven yourself sincere with one thing, letting me see inside your mind. But that’s the kind of proof that’s only going to satisfy me. You have to let me leave if you’re going to satisfy my friends.”

            Severus would have liked to sneer and say that he had no intention, or wish, or need, of satisfying Potter’s friends. But he wanted the kind of peace between them that would only come when Potter was happy with what he had done, and pleasing the man’s friends was part of that.

            “I have a new set of Vows written out,” he said, and pushed the parchment across the table to Potter.

            Potter picked it up and read, his eyes narrowing behind his glasses in disbelief. Severus watched him, and wondered what Potter would say if told that he should remove his glasses, because his eyes were beautiful.

            Probably that he couldn’t see anything without them, or something else rather literal and point-missing, Severus thought, and shook his head.

            Potter looked up just in time to catch the motion, and clenched his hand down on the parchment. “Excuse me for taking some time to absorb the information and look for traps in the wording,” he said.

            “My own thoughts made me react that way, not your actions,” Severus said.

            Potter opened his mouth as if to object to that careful phrasing, and then shut it again. He did gave Severus a cautious look as he turned back to the Vows, perhaps because the thought of someone being pleasant to him was foreign.

            Well, yes, Severus thought then, his mind burning now with the memories that he had seen in Potter’s mind. You of all people should know that a childhood like Potter’s does not contribute to much self-confidence or expectation that the world will be nice to you.

            Except that he had not had the attention Potter had received in childhood to balance his own distrust of the world…

            Severus shook his head again. He could still be hanged by his old perceptions, it seemed, when he wasn’t paying attention. No. This was the real thing, the image of Potter that he had now, and he was determined to cling to it, as best he could.

            “You would be willing to let me stay away longer than a week?” Potter had laid the parchment down and was staring at him again.

            “Summoning you back too often would promote fits of complaining,” Severus said dryly. “Not what I am trying to promote.”

            “And what is that?” Potter shoved his glasses up his nose with a shaking hand that Severus thought he might have preferred to use to strangle someone.

            “You know by now,” Severus said, not blinking.

            “I want to hear you say it.”

            Severus sighed. “Peace between us. Lasting peace between the factions we lead, even if something changes as far as the—free will of one of those factions. Trust. Admiration. Truth. I cannot say anything more than that, because if you learned anything in my mind, you should have learned that I don’t feel friendship for you, as I said that I didn’t.”

            “Yeah, you just lust after me,” Potter snapped.

            Severus felt the tremor that passed through his body, urging him to pick up his wand and strike, or cruel words and do the same thing. If someone found a weak place in his shields, the only thing to do was attack them so they would not further exploit the flaw and open it—

            No, he could not do that, or the effort he had put into this so far, letting Potter read his mind and writing the new set of Vows, would go for nothing. He would not allow that to happen. Severus therefore concentrated on his breathing for a few moments and then nodded.

            “One could put it like that,” he murmured. “I would choose different words, but it is the truth. I am curious that you sensed it,” he added. “The memory I let you see of the cell would have confirmed rather different ideas, I should think.”

            “It wasn’t that one,” Potter said, with a thickness in his voice that made Severus think he might not have confronted that possible set of ideas yet. “It was the one before, when you were shooting spells at me the night you killed Dumbledore.”

            Severus held back what he could have said about Albus, and instead studied the way that Potter’s hands clenched in his lap and his eyes avoided Severus’s. “Ah,” he said at last. “And you saw the longing I have for your power and translated that into longing for your body.”

            Potter shot him a quick look. “It’s not that, then?”

            “I did not say that,” Severus retorted, and sighed when Potter looked unconvinced. “Simply that I did not expect you to pick up on it so quickly, and not from that memory. I thought it would mean more to you that I saw you as a hero.”

            “So many people have,” Potter said, and his voice shifted keys, into one Severus had heard before. “That’s not new or surprising.”

            “I am not a mindless hero-worshiper,” Severus said, and his own voice shifted, too, because he had not been able to help it. Potter wanted truth? He would have it. “I am not someone who sat back and expected you to save them, hailing you as a hero only when things were absolutely safe and the Dark Lord was dead. I am someone who was on the front lines, someone who did give you the support you needed, and I am telling you that I admire you when you thought I despised you. I know now you are not a spoiled child, or the son of a bully who caused pain to me because you wished to. What I did in treating you as the enemy from the first day, and prejudicing you against me when we should have worked together, was wrong. I can admit that. I can say that you were a beacon that burned for me, and it is true. But do not lump me in with the others who say you are a hero and mean by that only that you warded them from a threat that they were too cowardly to face head-on.”

            Potter stared at him, mouth slightly open. Severus leaned back in his seat and gave him an even look. He had nothing else to say. It was possible that Potter would reject him after all, and the revelations that Severus could give him. In that case, there was nothing else Severus could do. There were no other emotions under this, no secrets to unravel.

            If Potter rejected him, perhaps it would even be the repayment he deserved after years of tormenting him in school.

            But Severus had not fawned in the past, and he would not beg now. He sat still and aloof, waiting for Potter to decide what he wanted to believe, and let him make the decision on his own.

*

            Harry let go of the arm of his chair and made sure that he wasn’t crumpling the piece of parchment Snape had handed him which had the new Vows written on it. He was shaking with fine tremors, but he shouldn’t be. He shouldn’t be. He took a few quiet breaths and forced himself to focus on what was in front of him, glad for once that he hadn’t brought Corners with him. Corners had coiled himself into the bottom of his cup that morning and become nothing more than a small splash of water to anyone watching. Harry suspected that was his version of sleep, and had left him to it.

            Snape had said he wanted him. And said he wanted Harry to be his hero.

            No. Not exactly. In the memory, he had told Malfoy that he expected Harry would rescue them because he had qualities no one else did. And it wasn’t a personal rescue he had expected, only the end of Voldemort. After that, as he had shown to Harry, he could manage quite well on his own.

            If he was going to get angry about something, Harry wanted it to be real. So he looked back up at Snape and said, “And do you still admire me, now that the war is over and you don’t have any more need of a hero?”

            Snape’s mouth twisted. “Yes,” he said, and Harry had the distinct impression that that wasn’t the question Snape would have preferred him to ask. Well, too bad. “You achieved the impossible. You sacrificed yourself to come to the Ashborn. You are still fighting for the peace of the world and the freedom of those who surround you.” His eyes closed in a slow blink. Harry doubted he would have noticed it was that slow if he hadn’t been watching Snape intently. “And I told you, I want someone who can teach me to live without being a master or a slave. You continue to do that.”

            Harry sat still for a moment. Then he nodded. “And would you be willing to give up the Ashborn if I agreed to teach you how to do that?” he asked.

            Snape sneered at him. “I would not make such a condition,” he said. “I do not know if you can teach me anything, or would. That is why the new Vows do not say anything about it.”

            “I know what the new Vows say,” Harry snapped back at him. “I just spent ten minutes reading them. But all it says is that I can’t use violent means to free the Ashborn, and you can’t use violent means to force me to return, and that I can visit my friends instead of having to stay in the fortress the whole time. It could have been two Vows instead of six if your bloody paranoid mind didn’t need to cover all the angles.”

            “You would have required more of the same wording if I had not included it,” Snape reminded him, and leaned forwards. “I want to learn from you. I do not know if you can teach me,” he repeated. “It may be something innate in you, not a virtue that you can give others.”

            “We have no idea if—”

            “Precisely,” Snape said. “I have made enough Vows already. I know what uncertainty does to me when I am under them. I see no reason to induce that uncertainty when we will have to wait and know more about whether you can teach this to us.”

            “Us?” Harry said, and used the word to balance himself. “Then you want me to teach Draco the same things?”

            “If you can teach them at all.” Snape knotted his fingers across his belly, looking as if he didn’t know what he wanted to say, or do. “I do not know—”

            “Yes, you’ve said that already,” Harry cut him off. He leaned in again. He half-expected to smell an unpleasant scent around Snape when he did, the medicinal scent of healing potions, but he didn’t. Perhaps he hadn’t been brewing that morning. Snape stared at him with narrowed eyes and didn’t reply. “Anyway. What I mean is, will you relax your control over Draco enough for me to teach him? Can he be included in the lessons?”

*

            Another test. Nearly everything he says to me is.

            Still, Severus felt his muscles relax. He would not know what to do with a Potter who was not constantly testing him, looking for ways to make him stumble or catch him in a lie. He nodded. “I would want Draco to learn the same thing. Lately, I have the impression that he is trying to make himself into someone who does not need a master, from the way he does not consult me, but I do not know if he could permanently escape the trap without help. He clung to me after the war, and he was proud, at first, to be taken into the service of the Dark Lord.”

            “So it’s about giving both of you back your pride,” Potter said, and stared at the text of the Vows, Severus thought, without seeing them.

            A snort escaped Severus before he could stop it. “If that is what you think, then I wonder you have the wit to put your clothes on in the morning. Both Draco and I have plenty of pride.”

            “Yeah, but it’s the wrong kind.” Potter was still looking at the Vows, as if thinking about ways to change them.

            “What?” The word came out sharper than Severus would have liked. He coughed and straightened. “Explain.”

            Potter glanced up at him, eyes slightly narrowed, and then shook his head. “Hard to, but I’ll try.” He pulled off his glasses and cleaned them on his robes. His eyes were brilliant without them, Severus thought. Unshielded—no, not quite, but closer to it than usual. “You have the kind of pride that leads to vanity and being sure you’re better than other people. But you can’t make yourselves feel good without that constant comparison. What you need is the kind of pride that doesn’t make you compare yourselves with other people, because you don’t need to.”

            “Do we,” Severus said, controlling the impulse to flick his voice out as a whip. He had, after all, asked Potter for lessons like these.

            Potter nodded. “You need the same kind of lessons, but I think Malfoy’s getting better at it. He didn’t beg me to be his friend; he just walked away, and it’s going to be up to me whether I’m his friend or not.”

            “And if he wanted to be more than your friend?” Severus murmured. He was not sure what he meant to do, set a cat among the pigeons or simply make sure that the two boys did not dance awkwardly around each other because Potter had not grasped that Draco might want him, as well.

            Potter, though, simply blinked and seemed to ignore the tsunami of a blush that rose up his face. “Then I’ll get to that when it happens,” he said calmly. “That d-doesn’t need to interfere with me teaching you.”

            “It should,” Severus said. “It should add something to it. Once again, we are asking you for gifts and not giving them properly ourselves.” He paused, but Potter simply watched him with his mouth open. “Do you trust me enough to accept something from me?” he added. “I know that my gifts before were not to your taste.”

            “It’s not rich clothes I want,” Potter said instantly. “I wouldn’t accept them even from my friends. But my journey into your mind taught me I can trust you, yes.”

            He lives as though it were natural that all one’s emotions be on the surface of the skin, as bright as sunlight, Severus thought, and wondered if Potter teaching him the proper kind of pride would entail learning that. He could hope not and suspect so at the same moment. “Then tell us what kind of gift would be acceptable to you.”

            Potter shook his head. “You already gave me what I wanted, a look inside your mind. And Draco’s not pouring out everything to me and giving nothing in return, which was also what I wanted from him.”

            “We are asking for more and future concessions,” Severus murmured. “Gifts given in the past do not serve. What do you want?”

            Potter opened his mouth, and shut it. Severus nodded approval. Careful consideration in such a matter was important. And since Potter had had trouble deciding what he wanted in the first place, he would need time, perhaps, to consider his answer to a new version of the question.

            Severus settled into the waiting posture he had used sometimes when sitting in the Dark Lord’s circle—shoulders straight, eyes aimed at his target, head back—but he had never watched then with such a sense of keen interest and importance as he did now.

*

            What do I want? To help people. For him to free the Ashborn. I already said that.

            But Snape wanted concrete, tangible things. Of course. Harry didn’t know why he was surprised. He took a tight breath, released it. Sharp butterflies brewed in his stomach, banging their wings against his ribs.

            All right. All right. He could do this. The worst that could happen was that he asked and Snape refused, right? Which he was good at. Harry shouldn’t worry that Snape would let him do something really distressing or hurtful to Snape and Draco themselves just because he wanted to keep Harry here. Snape didn’t have that kind of compassion.

            He looked up. “I want you to release one Ashborn from your control,” he said. “One you think you can trust not to go insane and try to kill everybody. Maybe you can never release someone like Bellatrix or Greyback, but I want someone free.”

            “May I defend myself if they turn on me, then?” Snape asked at once. “Or maintain enough control of their minds to subdue them if need be?”

            Harry sighed. He hated all these nuances which came along and upset the neat things he wanted to ask for—

            Which might be one reason that he was more at home in wars and grand gestures than trying to deal with the realities of day-to-day life among the people who’d followed him. They’d wanted him to make decisions after the war that he’d hesitated between because he knew they would upset someone, and wondered how long people would want to obey him when he couldn’t satisfy anybody.

            “Maintain control with different spells,” he said. “Not mental control.”

            Snape nodded, as if that was reasonable. “Very well. Then I will do my best with Hilda Incognita. She is one of the older Death Eaters and did not glory in murder and torture as Bellatrix did. She also has no particular prejudice against half-bloods despite my being one.”

            “Well, we’ll see how she feels after you free her from holding her mind captive,” Harry muttered.

            “Yes, we will,” Snape said, and turned to the Vows. “Are these acceptable, or do you need them rewritten?’

            “That’s it?” Harry demanded. “No demurring because you don’t want to free someone, no demanding that I ask for something else?”

            “It would avail me little,” Snape said, looking up. “I prefer not to waste the energy. And you should still seek Draco out, tell him what is happening, and ask him if he is happy with the terms of the bargain—or our gifts to each other, if you wish to put it that way.”

            Harry stared at him. “You’re being honest,” he said at last. “And it’s sort of infuriating.”

            “I learned from the best teacher,” Snape said, and tapped the parchment. “The Vows?”

*

            unneeded: Well, Harry might not be quite ready to know, but (thanks to Corners and Snape himself) the secret is out. Now they have to deal with it.

            AlterEquis: Yes, that’s one reason that there hsan’t been much Draco in these past chapters, the same way there were some earlier chapters without much Snape. Both of them needed to have a chance to get used to Harry and start the beginnings of a bond with him.
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Ashborn