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Ashborn	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 36149 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Twenty-Four—At Home and Otherwise

            “We’re so glad you’re back, Harry.”

            Harry sat down at the breakfast table and took a large gulp of tea so that he wouldn’t answer back the way he wanted to. Because it was true, and they were glad to have him back, and he knew it. It was just…everyone didn’t have to keep saying that. They could say something else once in a while, and Harry was sure that it would be just as important and just as true.

            Mrs. Weasley beamed mistily at him over a mug of the same tea. Ron sat next to her, eating his eggs and looking half-awake, still. Hermione made up for it with the large pile of books in front of her and the way she was plowing through them already, though Harry didn’t know what she was looking for, yet. He had tried to ask her last night about why the second set of Vows, the ones Snape had made, had upset her so much, but she had avoided him and said she was going to bed early.

            And then she did. It was unfair, particularly when Harry had to listen through the too-thin walls to the way she and Ron laughed together and then gasped together on his bed, and wonder who he would be sharing his bed with, in a month’s time.

            “Good morning, mum.”

            Harry shivered a little, and then lowered his mug and smiled at Ginny as she came around the table towards him. Ron’s eyes opened wide, Hermione glanced up, and Mrs. Weasley was turning her head back and forth between Harry and Ginny as though she assumed they would fall automatically and romantically into each other’s arms now that they were within range of each other. Harry bit his lip and said nothing, although he stood up to hug Ginny and receive her kiss on his cheek.

            Mrs. Weasley sighed audibly when that happened. Even Ron muttered something that might have been, “What’s wrong with the lips?” until Hermione kicked him under the table.

            Ginny sat down beside Harry and reached for her own full and waiting plate. Then she glanced at Harry and asked softly, “How are you, really?”

            And Harry wished he could answer that question with honesty, but he couldn’t, not when they had six speculative and hopeful eyes watching them. (Well, maybe four, if you counted the way Hermione had turned back to her book, but Harry knew that she would start paying attention again the instant he said anything interesting). He settled for shaking his head and saying, “It’ll take me some time to come to terms with everything, you know? I never knew—I didn’t know how much the war had affected me until I went there.”

            Ginny’s forkful of eggs paused halfway to her mouth, and she stared at him so long Harry thought she was going to vomit something at him. Then she said, “You—you admitted that? Your friends and the remnants of the Ministry and people looking up to you and those nightmares you had and we heard couldn’t get you to admit that something was wrong with you after the war, but Malfoy and bloody Snape got you to admit it?”

            “Ginny,” Mrs. Weasley said, but Harry had no idea if that was for the sentiments she’d expressed or the language she’d used to express them. He couldn’t move, couldn’t look away from those brown eyes he’d imagined so often during the war and then seen so often afterwards with chaotic and weirdly mixed emotions.

            “Well?” Ginny pushed back her plate, and then her chair, fixated on Harry to the point that he was starting to worry. Ron and Hermione would get involved in a few minutes, and then it would all be over but the shouting. “They managed to get you to admit something? They’re trying to—they made you able to admit something?”

            “Er,” Harry said, because he wasn’t sure what answer would provoke her temper. “Yes, I think so? But I knew I wasn’t entirely healthy before I went there,” he added, and couldn’t help the sharp tone that crept into his voice. “I just didn’t see much point in talking about it when I had all these decisions to make, and the aftermath of the war to deal with, and then the Ashborn to worry about.”

            Ginny nodded. Harry didn’t see any tears in her eyes, but he also didn’t know what to make of the set of her jaw and the way her hair bounced around her. “I see,” she said, and then turned and strode out of the house in a way that made it clear she wasn’t just taking a trip to the Quidditch pitch.

            Harry stared around helplessly. Ron and Hermione stared back. Mrs. Weasley was the one who reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder, saying, “I’d go after her if I were you, dear.” Then, because she was Mrs. Weasley, she added, “I’ll keep your food warm.”

            “Er, thank you,” Harry said, and scrambled after Ginny.

            She did go to the part of the garden where they often played Quidditch, after all, and walked back and forth, her arms wrapped around herself, her red hair bright enough, Harry thought, to combat the chill morning. He waited for her to speak, but the loudest word that came out of her mouth confined itself to a mutter. Harry finally sighed and broke in. “Are you angry at me for healing, or finding healing with them?”

            “I could never help you!” Ginny shouted, spinning around. Her eyes were bright with a queer light that Harry thought was worse than tears, in a way, although he had always thought he would face anything rather than a girl in tears the way Cho had been. “I knew something was wrong, but you never bloody admitted it! You just nodded and smiled and talked about how you had decisions to make. You never take time for yourself, Harry James Potter, you push everything away until it festers and bursts out at once, and now there’s no more V-Voldemort for you to take on and pummel until he explodes. Ron is right, you think about others too much, you sacrifice yourself for them too much—”

            “Ginny,” Harry broke in. He could feel something settle in him as he stood there, or something open. “I know you didn’t really come to say that. So what did you come to say?”

            Ginny bowed her head, and there was a bright flush on her cheeks, so bright that Harry winced again. “I wanted to be able to heal you,” she whispered. “I wanted you to reach out to me. But you didn’t, and you didn’t, and then you went away, and Malfoy and Snape are the ones who started to heal you and make you admit things. You’re going to give them the deepest parts of yourself.”

            “But not the best,” Harry said, moving a step nearer and reaching out with one hand. “You think—you think I want people to know about my fucked-up childhood that way? Or goad me into admitting that sometimes I go too far in caring about people? I don’t. They did it because they knew I didn’t want that to happen, and they’re Slytherins. They’re enemies. They take delight in tormenting me.”

            Not anymore, said the part of himself that remembered the kiss he and Draco had shared.

            Harry shivered, and then focused on Ginny. She had the most peculiar look on her face, but he honestly wasn’t sure what he had said that caused it.

            “Are you all right?” he tried, because sometimes that got a good response.

            Ginny shook her head, but he didn’t know if that was an answer to the question. “You don’t want someone to make you think about that, but thinking about that is exactly what you need,” she said. “I had the feeling that you were ignoring things that someday would crop up and bite you in the arse. If they’re making you think about them, then they’re doing you a service. And all your friends a service,” she added, though there was a strangled note in the back of her voice that made it clear she hated to think about that. She backed a step away from him, then another. “And I don’t want to date you anymore.”

            He had known about this, Harry reminded himself. This wasn’t the great and shining romance that Ron and Hermione had. If he and Ginny were going to have that, he would have seen some sign of it between the end of the war and now. But it still hit him like a punch to the gut. He nodded. “Because I shared something like that with someone else?”

            “Because you don’t want to face it.” Ginny had a slash of light in her eyes that Harry had never seen before, an odd glitter to her smile. “You didn’t talk about it before, but I told myself you needed time to recover. To know that you never intended to discuss it with me…that’s something different.”

            Harry swallowed and nodded again. He reckoned he could see why she would feel that way, though it still hung a new rock around his neck. “All right. Thanks—thanks for being honest, Ginny.” And he would try to get used to the idea of a future where he would definitely not date her, where he wouldn’t marry her, where he wouldn’t go through a period of misunderstanding and then get back together with her again. When he was with Snape and Malfoy, he had already been thinking about that. He had acknowledged it and moved on.

            But it’s harder to move on with her standing in front of you, and you knowing all the things that you’ve lost now that you don’t have her anymore.

            Ginny reached out and patted his shoulder, then withdrew her hand. “We’ll both move on,” she said. “I think we both did already. This is an acknowledgment of what was true?” Her voice rose into a question, and she winced, but she didn’t move her hand from his shoulder. Harry gave her a tired smile and reached up to pat her wrist, realizing for the first time that she probably had had as much to endure as he had. He’d never written directly to her when he was with the Ashborn, even, he realized. Better to part from someone he couldn’t bother to remember in his letters.

            “I hope you find someone who deserves you, Ginny,” he said quietly.

            “I hope I find someone I deserve,” Ginny said, and smiled at him, and went back in to breakfast. Harry remained outside to watch the sun coming up and let his mind roam freely. He would have to talk to Ron and Hermione about how he wouldn’t be marrying Ginny soon enough, and he wanted a bit of free time before then.

            For some reason, he caught himself wondering what Malfoy was doing right now.

*

            “I’m not going to do this.”

            Severus laid his spoon beside the plate and leaned back in his chair, watching Draco with the kind of cool look that he would use on a student who had messed up a simple potion. Draco felt his shoulders hunch and his head start to bow. He would react like that to that look, of course he would, and the conversation would cease, and Severus would go to his brewing, and he would—

            I will not.

            Harry had taught him this much: that he had a right to stand up for himself, that when Severus began to speak, as he had this morning, of spending too much time alone and apart, Draco had the right to ask for his attention back. He uncoiled the tension in his shoulders and met Severus’s eyes with a cool look of his own, which made him blink.

            “I won’t let you hide from me,” Draco said. “If you want to row with me, we can, but there’s a difference between agreeing to that and letting you shut me out. That’s not going to happen. Until Harry comes back, we will speak to each other like lovers.”

            “And when he comes back, then that will cease?” Severus’s voice had the sound of dark waters running in a cave.

            Draco let his lips curve in a vicious smile. “Why,” he said, “I hear a certain tone in your voice. Let me analyze it. Could you possibly be jealous?”

            Severus reached out with one stiff hand and picked up the small glass of juice that sat by his plate. He was always drinking it in the morning with his coffee, and Draco didn’t actually know what was in it. Fruit, he thought, and milk, and possibly real juice, and he wouldn’t be surprised if there was some sugar, to keep Severus going through the severe middle of the day when he had to be in the lab watching several potions at once. But what else it might be, he didn’t know. Nor was he tempted, from the smell, to ask.

            “I will not have you speak to me that way,” Severus said, all offended dignity and chiming neurosis.

            Draco smiled at him again. “What way? Treating you like an ordinary human being, the way that you’ve so often treated me?”

            Severus lowered his head and looked like someone unexpectedly confronted with a stone wall where he had anticipated nothing harder to break through than mud. “You are inexplicable, Draco,” he said. “I treat you well, and you throw it back in my face. I try to reconcile with you, and you hint that what you most look forward to is Potter returning.”

            Draco felt a tremor shake his legs, and then they relaxed and uncurled under the table. He wondered if this was something he had to thank Potter for, as well. If he argued with Severus, he had the chance to avoid a panic attack by remembering that Severus could not cut him off with that devastating, snowy silence. Draco could object, and he could make moves for reconciliation, and Severus could answer him, but he could not turn his back and walk away.

            We are in this together.

            “I want him back because he makes us more lively,” he answered, when he realized that Severus’s stare at him had turned sharp. “And because of what his presence means for us. But that’s not the same as wanting him back because he’s not you.” He reached out and laid a light hand on Severus’s wrist, the kind of gesture Severus would never have permitted him to make a month ago. “Can you understand that?”

            Severus spent a few moments breathing in and out. Then he inclined his head. “I can,” he said, and his voice dug into Draco still, but not as much as it had before. “That does not mean that I cannot see him as—competition.”

            “I want him,” Draco said. “You want him, too. Let’s dream about him and talk about him together, and practice our sexual techniques for the next time he’s here.”

            Severus choked on his tea. He put the cup down carefully next to the cup of his morning drink, and shook his head. “The first thing I must do, according to the Vows, is free Hilda Incognita,” he said. “And that is not likely to be pleasant or fun.”

            “Sure it is,” Draco said, meeting his gaze and not turning aside. If Severus wanted a lover he could intimidate into silence all the time, he should have looked elsewhere. “Think of the way that Harry will stare at you when he hears you actually did it.”

            “That will not be pleasant, either,” Severus said, giving him a look that was two notches deeper down the oddness pole than “strange.” “And he knows that I intend to free her. I made it as a Vow. I promised it as a gift to him. I have no choice.”

            “I don’t think Harry takes promises like that into consideration, even Vows,” Draco said thoughtfully, picking up the last slice of banana on his plate to finish it. “He doesn’t trust people that way. Words are words, and actions are actions. There was no other reason for him to be so surprised that you intended to go through with your own replacement Vows. When he heard you say them, then he believed. Not before.”

            Severus paused for a moment, and then frowned and leaned back in his chair, staring at the air halfway between Draco’s head and the ceiling. Draco relaxed. He knew that frown. It was the “this is an interesting new experiment” expression, not the “this is a moment of imminent danger” one.

            “I had not conceived of it that way before,” Severus said. “But you are right. Promises—even when I tried to give him those clothes and had them spread out in front of him, he made no move to take them. He did not trust me to keep the promise. But he accepted the Vows, because they were an action I took and he knew the magic bound me.” He lowered his gaze to Draco’s. “Did you make him promises he did not believe?”

            Draco grimaced, but nodded. He was the one who had started this line of conversation, so he owed it to Severus to reveal the truth of it on his side. “I promised him that I would be his friend, and that I only wanted friendship in return. But then I acted pretty much the same way, and asked him to listen to me, and showed no interest in listening to him. He had no reason to believe me—not until I said I would leave him alone and then did it. He didn’t expect that.”

            “What has made him this way?” Severus asked, as if talking to himself. “He trusted Albus’s promises in school.”

            “All the time?” Draco cocked his head, and tried to remember the way Harry had acted when they were children in an unbiased way, one that didn’t involve detentions and House rivalries. “Dumbledore promised he would be safe and could have a normal childhood. He made that promise to all of us, at the Feasts, and if he singled out Harry for another conversation later, I don’t know it. But Harry wasn’t safe, and he could never be normal. Perhaps he learned that his first year.”

            Severus said nothing. Draco looked back at him and saw that he had his forehead resting in one palm, his elbow braced on the table.

            “I’m sorry,” Draco murmured, suddenly remorseful. He knew better than anyone else alive how little Severus liked talking about the Headmaster and mentor and great man and horrible man he had murdered.

            “No, it must be done,” Severus said, and raised his head as though to answer a question Draco hadn’t asked. “No, I believe you are right. Harry will trust actions.” He shoved himself back from the table with a motion that made Draco jump; he had never used anything half so violent before. “And I have an action to do that I have been putting off long enough.”

            Draco knew what he was going to do, and he knew it had to be done, and he knew the Vows compelled it. None of that stopped him from swallowing nervously as he followed Severus down the corridor in the direction of the room that he knew Severus had already set aside for freeing Incognita.

            I hope the action is enough, that’s all. And I hope that it doesn’t destroy either Severus or Harry.

*

            It wasn’t the same.

            Harry had been so sure it would be. Oh, granted, he hadn’t had much time with Ron and Hermione after the war, before Snape’s demand for hostages came down, but he had had time with them when they were children, before the—before the war. He had assumed that coming back from the Ashborn would be like returning from the Dursleys’. He had endured a month of imprisonment, he would have a month of freedom, and it was the things he did during the month of freedom (at Hogwarts, at the Burrow) that mattered.

            But now he had to acknowledge that that wasn’t it. The war could have changed them, or his willing submission to the Vows in the first place, or the breakup with Ginny. But he no longer knew his friends in the same way he had.

            He wanted to ask Hermione about her reaction to Snape’s Vows, but she avoided him for the first day they were back at the Burrow. So he asked Ron instead, as they lay on their backs in the long grass behind the Burrow, a Warming Charm wrapped securely around them.

            Ron bit into an apple instead of replying. Harry watched him and compared his ripe munching with that of a centaur, and then shook his head. Bargain with the Ashborn or not, the centaurs had nothing to do with him anymore. Nothing. The alliance would have to belong to Draco and Snape, not to him.

            A movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he turned to see Corners sliding out of the cup, all but one tendril that he kept connected to the bottom, and exploring the garden. His body looped and slid and shone among the grass blades, which trembled towards it as if expecting irrigation. Harry smiled. At least someone was enjoying the visit here without worry.

            “She thought you’d leap at the chance to be free,” Ron said suddenly.

            Harry blinked and turned around. “Of course,” he said. “I do. I will. But I couldn’t really be completely free anyway, not with those Vows I had to make to Snape. Why did she get angry about the ones Snape wanted to make and not the ones I made? That’s the real problem, if she’s thinking I should have freedom.”

            Ron turned his head and spat a piece of apple that was evidently sour into the grass. His fingers flexed for a moment, as though he was clutching an invisible weapon, and then he relaxed and shook his head. “She’s talking about the freedom from Snape and Malfoy,” he said, voice so quiet that Harry could hear the slight rushing of the water in Corners’s body better than he could hear it. “The freedom to be free. Not the freedom to be with us. But you went looking back at them, and Snape bound himself with chains to you, and that means you need to do something for him. Not for the sake of the peace between the Ashborn and our people.”

            Harry turned his head uneasily to the side. He hadn’t told them about the kiss with Malfoy, of course, but based on the way Hermione stared at him with flat eyes sometimes before she turned away, he thought she might guess.

            “I didn’t ask to be a hostage,” he chose to say. “And I appreciate what she did, trying so hard to publish articles with Snape’s research so he would let me go in the first place. That was brave of her, and clever. No one else would have thought of that.”

            He’d thought surely that was the right thing to say, that Ron wouldn’t disagree with him and would like to hear Hermione praised, but Ron stared at him. “She wasn’t the one who did it,” he said.

            “Yes, she was,” Harry said, and blinked. “Is that it? Does she think I don’t give her enough credit? Snape never would have thought of bending the Vows if she didn’t convince him that he could have some of his glory back—”

            “But he did,” Ron said quietly. “She didn’t have any articles actually published, only one accepted for publication. She thought the process would take months and months. And you came along and did something that convinced Snape to let you go like that. Or else Snape changed his mind, but he doesn’t hate you. We both saw that. Neither did Malfoy. They want you. They want to keep a hold on you.”

            Harry winced, and then sat up and stared at his hands. That was true enough, and he didn’t think he could have lied to his best friends about it for long even if they didn’t notice something odd at the Vows-swearing.

            “Fine,” he said, and forced the bitterness that wanted to grow there from his voice. “Then I’m what I was a few months ago. Not a hostage, but someone who serves as a symbol. I’ll probably be better at that role than I was at actually judging and deciding things, anyway. I was a symbol of hope during the war.”

            Ron didn’t say anything, which Harry thought might have meant that he’d convinced him. But in the end, he glanced up and found Ron’s eyes fixed on him, his own arms wrapped around his chest as though Harry was a cold wind he had to shelter from.

            “They don’t want that,” he said. “They don’t want you a symbol of hope. They want you as a person, don’t they? That was what I saw in their eyes, and that was what Hermione got upset about. If Snape just accepted your Vows and didn’t make any of his own, then it might mean he would let you go. But if he accepted them and wanted to give you something in return, something to bind you closer to him—it might mean you would want to go back to them.”

            Harry felt the words welling up in him that he knew would cut their friendship if he spoke them aloud. He closed his eyes and shook his head, forcing himself to breathe shallowly instead of striking out the way he wanted to. No. He would wait. He concentrated on his breathing and nothing else until he thought he could speak.

            That had one good effect, at least, he saw when he looked up. Ron watched him with his eyes slowly blinking, instead of backing away or turning aside.

            “Listen,” Harry said. “I’m not saying that I want them yet. I know I want to help people, like I told you the last time you visited the Ashborn. And I know that Malfoy kissed me, and it was amazing.”

            Ron’s eyes closed as if in pain.

            “And I know that Snape agreed to free one of the Ashborn from his control, and I want that,” Harry went on. “Strongly enough that I was willing to swear the Vows to go back to them again—not that that was something I thought I could get out of. But I had more choices than I expected with them. More than I ever thought I would have.”

            “They’re tricking you,” Ron whispered. “You think they want you whole and happy and free? They want you under their control, surrendering to them.”

            “Everything argues against that,” Harry said quietly, his wild heartbeat slowing. Perhaps the trick of concentrating on his breathing had worked after all. “Snape weakens the Ashborn by freeing one. He weakens himself by doing what I want. He can’t keep control of all the people he had when I first went there as a hostage. Even if I only ever pressure him into freeing Incognita, still, that’s a crack in his power. One he was willing to make for me.”

            Ron watched him from the corner of his eye, then said, “But that’s my point. They’re playing a long-range con. Give you something you want, and they can have a much larger slice of the pie later.”

            Harry laughed in spite of himself. “Am I a prime candidate for submission, Ron? For someone who’s neat and comfortable to control, the way you’re trying to picture me?”

            Ron frowned, as if he didn’t understand. “No. Not yet. But by giving you gifts, that’s what Malfoy and Snape are trying to make you.”

            Harry shook his head. “And since when do I accept gifts, or bribes, easily?”

            Ron had to smile. He was probably thinking of the times that he and Hermione had to force Harry to sleep, eat, take a shower, stop studying, or do something else other than work to defeat Voldemort during the war.

            Harry wondered for a moment if he was going too far the other way now. During the war, I did so much. Too much. Am I relaxing now because I can, and someone who appeals to my need to be lazy and selfish is going to appear to be right?

            But no, that couldn’t be, because Ron was, again, the one who had told him that he could stop helping the Ashborn and Snape and Draco, that it didn’t matter, and he could come home and forget about the problems of the world. Harry did think Snape and Draco were probably trying to get something for themselves, but then, so was he. He hadn’t asked to see into Snape’s mind out of some idea of benefiting Snape.

            “You’ve gone all red.”

            Harry started and came back to himself, issuing a silent reminder to his brain not to get caught up in his memories of Snape and Malfoy. No one else would understand what it meant when he flushed like that. “Sorry,” he said. “But, Ron, I really think I can trust them. A bit,” he added, when Ron frowned at him. “Not all the time. But…I can trust them to look out for their own best interests. I can trust them to keep the Vows, because they have no choice. I can trust them to want me to come back and to keep the peace, because not doing that would mean they lose me forever.”

            “But you can’t trust them to let you go so you can marry Ginny,” Ron said in a tone that had all the bitterness of salt on tomatoes.

            Harry sighed. “I don’t want to do that, Ron. And she doesn’t want to marry me, either, when I’ve told Snape and Malfoy more about my problems during the war than I ever did her.”

            Ron stared. Then he said, “It’s like that, is it?” For the first time since the beginning of the conversation, his face seemed normal. “All right. Half the reason I was fighting this battle was for her.”

            “You don’t have to worry about it,” Harry said firmly. “I may not end up with Snape and Malfoy—” Ron gagged “—but it’s not because I’m pining for her or she’s pining for me.”

            “Half the reason,” Ron repeated. “The other half was for you. I want to see you free and happy, settled with the person you’re in love with.”

            “Or the people?” Harry asked, mostly for the fun of watching him flush again.

            And he eventually gave a satisfactory answer even to that, so Harry let him go and turned away with a faint smile to contemplating the sky above him again. He wondered when the owl would come telling him that Snape had successfully freed Incognita.

            Or perhaps not successfully, but that he had at least done it.

*

            Severus leaned back and sipped the hot tea he had dumped one of his experimental healing potions in. The warm liquid sped through his limbs and made the throbbing in his head diminish noticeably.

            He had done it. He had broken the link to one of the Ashborn and proven that someone with a mind enslaved by him could retrieve her thoughts, could assert her mental independence, and could continue to function apart from him despite the Mark she still bore on her arm.

            And he had proven that he could give himself a ferocious headache doing so.

            Severus rubbed his brow, grimacing, and wondered if the pain he felt was similar to what Potter had once felt when his scar connected him to the Dark Lord. He could not ease the headache by leaning back or forwards, so he leaned his chin in his palm, sipped, and listened to Draco explaining things to Incognita in the anteroom off the lab.

            Now and then her voice surged up with an angry recrimination. Draco would reply with some new bit of history or information, and hers would sink again.

            Severus sighed. One thing he had not counted on when he created these links to the Ashborn’s minds was that it would suspend their time sense, perhaps because he had not cared enough to record the conditions of each and every individual’s life in the links, or perhaps because his own awareness of the passing time had pleasantly dulled when he could spend every day brewing in his lab. Incognita still thought it was the days right after the end of the war, when the Dark Lord had been defeated and the Death Eaters spread out in constantly changing packs, slinking from safehouse to bolthole to cavern and debating what they should do.

            Draco had volunteered to explain what had happened, why Severus had done it, and what Potter had been and was to them now. Severus had let him. He did not know what Incognita would choose to do. On the one hand, she could feel no love for him for taking the place of their late Master.

            On the other hand, she was an intelligent woman, and had to know that her past and the Mark on her arm branded her unwelcome in a large part of the wizarding world. Should she choose to leave, she would have to go to the Continent at the very least, and perhaps further than that. Severus thought they might be able to arrange an accommodation.

            He took another drink of tea, and then put the cup down. The voices in the anteroom were moving towards him now. He sat up and turned around, fixing the anxious lines of his face in a smooth mask.

            Incognita stepped into the doorway and stared at him, vibrating with the tension. Severus folded his hands in front of him, on his lap, and maintained his innocent expression without trouble. She was the one who had no wand—he would give it to her eventually, but not in the beginning, as he was not mad—and the one who had the Mark on her arm. He would apologize to her, were it necessary, but he would not fear her.

            “So that’s the way it stands, is it?” she asked, and her voice was split down the middle, with ragged edges. “Our Lord is gone, and you’re the only one who tried to preserve what he fought for?”

            “An accurate assessment,” Severus murmured, barely moving his lips. Draco hovered in the doorway behind Incognita, he saw, looking as if he wanted to interrupt. Severus flicked an eyelid at him, and Draco stepped back. Their silent communication had improved since Potter’s departure, he thought for a moment—or perhaps it was only that Potter had taught them the value of paying attention to each other in the first place.

            “And this is what we have,” Incognita whispered, apparently to herself. She pushed her hair out of her face and paused, then closed her eyes. “This is all we have.”

            “Yes,” Severus said. “Stay with me, and I will not control your mind again. You will have a harder life than you did as an oblivious servant, a less contented one. But you will not go to Azkaban, and the Aurors will not harass you. You may be able to raise a family. We have spoken of such things.” Well, Draco had spoken of finding a pure-blood girl to have children with. It was the last thing Severus wanted. The learning about pride he would do from Potter was the only teacher-student relationship he ever hoped to find himself in, ever again.

            Incognita stared at him. “You enslaved me.”

            “And you attacked me and would have killed me soon after the Dark Lord died,” Severus responded. “I took you first, in self-defense.”

            Incognita could not hide the way she stood straighter. She was one of those Death Eaters who would be cheered to be regarded as dangerous, Severus knew—another reason that she might not want to go back to the outside world, where the Ministry would lock her away and then cease to fear her.

            “I will have to think about this,” she said. “Are you going to be freeing all the Ashborn?”

            “Not Bellatrix Lestrange, and not Fenrir Greyback,” Severus said. He had made his decision on this, and if Potter wanted to question him on it, he would have to take it up with Severus in person. “They are mad, and I went through too much effort to bring them back to sanity. Rather than have them crack the bonds and begin my work all over again, I will simply hold them.”

            Incognita nodded as if approving of that decision, and then asked Draco to escort her to her rooms. Draco raised his eyebrows at Severus, and Severus nodded back. He had won that particular wager. Draco had thought she would hide away in a corner of the fortress, resenting them. Severus was the one who had insisted that she would understand what had happened, give up on taking revenge for the past when Severus could enslave her again if he wanted to, and want to resume all normal life as soon as she could.

            When they were gone, Severus drew down a stack of parchment, an inkwell, and a quill from a shelf. He paused, wondering for a moment how to begin, and then shook his head and went with what came naturally.

            Dear Harry…

*

            unneeded: Yes, I don’t think he’ll be able to run forever, either. And hopefully I’ve explained what was with Hermione’s disapproval of the Vows.

            AlterEquis: Yes, and it goes on here, as you see.
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Ashborn