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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.

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Chapter Twenty-Six—Settling

“I just don’t want to see you settle for something that’s less than what you deserve.”

            Harry raised his eyebrows and leaned back in his chair, watching Hermione as she stood in front of the doorway to the kitchen. He’d been in the Burrow’s drawing room, reading the Prophet after a conversation with Ginny that made both of them giggle, concerning the pathetic Quidditch team that Slytherin would probably field at Hogwarts now that Draco wasn’t Seeker anymore. Harry hadn’t heard Hermione come in, and hadn’t expected to; after all, she had avoided him in a determined fashion since he came back to the Burrow.

            “That sounds good,” he said, and smiled at her. “But I’m afraid that I don’t know what you mean, and that makes me cranky and hostile.”

            Hermione took a hesitant step towards him, and then stopped. Harry waited patiently, his hands folded on his knees. Hermione made another step forwards, then stopped and jammed her fists into her hips.

            “I want you to have someone you can trust at your side and in your bed,” she said. “Snape and Malfoy aren’t it.”

            Harry nodded. He had been sure this was behind her behavior, and now he had confirmation, which made him less cranky and hostile than he had been. “All right. But what makes you think Snape and Malfoy are the wrong ones?”

            “Because of what they were,” Hermione said. “And are. No one sane rules a group of people without free will, or supports them in doing that. Harry—” She paused and brushed her hair forwards across her eyes, then flung herself into a chair and faced him. “You nearly died to prevent Voldemort from doing just that. Why are you so enamored of Snape for having his own pack of Death Eaters? Many of whom are the same people, even.”

            Harry nodded. “That’s a fair question. Let me ask you one in return. Can you imagine Voldemort granting me permission to willingly enter his mind?”

            Hermione blinked. “Not without it being a trap and set up to destroy you in some way.”

            Harry nodded again. “But Snape did that. He asked to go into my mind when a vampire had taken it over so that he could make sure no trace of her lurked there. And he didn’t find any. That meant he had seen memories that I didn’t want him to see, and I wanted some way of redressing the balance, of making sure he wouldn’t do something with those memories that was fucked up and would fuck me up.” Hermione frowned at his language, but didn’t scold him. “I asked him to let me see into his mind. He did.”

Hermione leaned forwards. “And what did you find?”

            “I can’t share all the details,” Harry said. “Snape’s too private a person for that. But I can tell you that I did see he’d admired me for a long time, and that he hadn’t hated me for months, if not years. He accepted that I was the final solution to the Voldemort problem before I did, even, and certainly before Malfoy did. He didn’t interrupt me during a private moment that he spied on when he really could have. It’s his actions, Hermione. They matter. What he showed me mattered.”

            Hermione frowned. “He’s a master Legilimens, Harry. How do you know that he didn’t show you memories he’d made up, or ones he wanted you to see so you would do what he wanted in return?”

            “Because there’s no way that I could have got that far into his mind without his help,” Harry answered. “He used his Legilimency, but he lent it to me, so that I could get through his barriers and understand what I saw. If he’s good enough to do that, and let me poke around—and I’m sure I hurt him, at least a little—and also show me only made-up memories, then he’s good enough that he could have taken over my mind without my noticing, and stifled my objections to the Ashborn. I don’t think he is.”

            “Then you still have objections?” Hermione looked him over carefully.

            Harry rolled his eyes and snorted. “Of course I do. I think what Snape did is more than a little sick. But I’m willing to give him a chance to correct it. He’s begun, by freeing the woman he swore to free.” He thought about mentioning something else that Snape had said in his letter, but didn’t see why he should have to. Either Hermione would trust his perceptions based on what he thought he could safely tell her, or she wouldn’t. Harry had to do what he could do.

            “If he does,” Hermione said, crossing her legs and leaning back in her seat, “then I think I’ll actually trust him.”

            “Thanks so much,” Harry said dryly. “And will you also forgive me for trusting in him?”

            “If it has good results.” Hermione shook her head when Harry glared at her, and held her hand out. “Harry, I’m sorry,” she said, as he clasped it. “But you went from being with us every day, trusting us exclusively, to being with them, and now it sounds like you might have started trusting them just because they were there.”

            Harry sighed. “It’s not like I had a choice about becoming the hostage to the Ashborn.”

            “But you did,” Hermione said softly. “We could have fought another war. We were poised to do that if you didn’t want to go.”

            Harry sat still for a moment. That was the kind of thing he had been trying to avoid, he wanted to shout. He didn’t want to be the kind of leader that people would sacrifice everything for, up to and including their own peace and lives. He hated the idea that he could have started a war, and they would have followed him—

            Accept the power that you have, said a voice in his head that Harry couldn’t identify as either Malfoy’s or Snape’s or Hermione’s, because it sounded like a combination of all of them. You’ll never be free of some chains on your power. You took on the duty of defeating Voldemort because you knew no one else could or would do it. Accept that, and use it, and that’s the way you will protect them. Not by pretending that what you can do doesn’t exist, or doesn’t matter.

            Harry took a deep breath, and nodded. “I know,” he said. “But because of the nature of what I am—what kind of person I am, I mean, not the bloody Chosen One or whatever—I couldn’t walk away like that, and let another war break out. Not when we were reeling from the one before that. Not when I had a chance of saving us.”

            Hermione looked at him steadily for a moment. Then she nodded. “If you can believe that, Harry, I can.”

            Harry smiled back at her, and she got up and hugged him. “Just make the right choice,” she whispered into his ear. “Please.”

            Harry didn’t bother whispering. No one had intruded on them, and he wasn’t embarrassed about anyone overhearing the conversation. “Even if the right choice means going back to Snape and Malfoy, spending some time with them?”

            Hermione grimaced and spent a moment grooming her hair back with one hand. Harry watched her, leaning back in his chair and trying not to feel impatient. These were momentous changes for more than just him.

            “I understand,” Hermione said at last. “I wish you had chosen something else, but I understand. If that’s the right decision for you, then I can’t change it.” Harry held his breath for a moment, and then Hermione looked at him, and smiled despite herself, and added, “And I wouldn’t want to try.”

            Harry stood up to kiss her cheek and hug her in thanks and recognition. Hermione patted his arm and then went upstairs. Harry flopped back in the chair and closed his eyes.

            I might take Snape up on that offer of the firecall.

*

            “You have labored for a long time by yourself,” Laughter said, his knees tucked under him as he watched Draco. “Someone else should have come with you, to help take up your duties or to seal the alliance that you think we are building with the centaurs.”

            Draco sighed and sat down where he’d started to rise to his feet. He’d thought they were done for the night and Laughter would let him go now, but when the werewolf wanted to discuss something, it got discussed. “I thought you understood,” he said. “I’ve discussed this with the centaurs who are staying with me, and they’ve agreed to represent it back to the ones in the Forest. But it’s not something we can settle like that. And there’s still no sign that Potter is going to be interested in it.”

            “Then ask one of the centaurs to come with you when you dream,” Laughter said. “They certainly know how to do it, or else they’re much more ignorant than I thought.”

            Draco hesitated. He had never tried to explain the details of the delicate situation among the Ashborn, especially given Kleianthe and Thera, because he had thought that would make them look weak. Laughter respected different kinds of strength, like the kind Draco had that could make him laugh, but strength always, and only that.

            It was clear, though, from the way Laughter stared at him with amber eyes and pressed closer, that he knew something was happening already. And if Draco had to, he knew he could dream himself away quickly, before Laughter could harm him. He would lose the alliance if he did that, but he stood a good chance of losing it through lack of honesty, it seemed to him now.

            “All right,” he said. “I don’t think the centaurs would. They’ve been rude to me and rude about me ever since Potter left.”

            “Because he was the one who made the vow that he would protect them, and he was the one who broke his word?” Laughter said.

            Draco nodded. “They still want to be part of the alliance. They’ll still speak to me. But they would rather be speaking to Potter.”

            Laughter gave him a smile. Draco tensed before he recognized it for what it was, instead of a baring of teeth. That, of course, added another touch of amusement to Laughter’s smile, and he shook his head. “Then show them what they’re missing,” he said. “Bring them word of a successful alliance, and tell them to come and meet me for themselves. I’m willing to meet with them.”

            “You’ll give your word on that?” Draco asked warily. He knew the werewolves would keep a promise if they made it. They had to have something that other people could trust, when even in their pack there were some of them who had a reputation for bloodthirst and instability. But if a werewolf gave his word, he meant it.

            Laughter paused, then nodded. “I never had an intention of doing otherwise,” he added, when Draco waited. “Yes, I give you my word that I will not harm any centaurs who come with you, except in self-defense or defense of my pack.”

            Draco promptly nodded. He already intended to ask Thera and not Kleianthe to accompany him, since he thought Thera could control her temper better. “All right. Then I’ll invite them with me in the next dream.”

            Laughter reached out towards him. Draco forced himself to sit still, not draw back, and his reward was Laughter’s hand grasping his in a strong shake.

            “You have been one of the more patient negotiators I’ve ever worked with, if not the most skilled,” Laughter said. “And when you’re trying to pull this many people together, from so many different backgrounds, not storming away and screaming just because you become frustrated with them is a skill in itself.”

            Draco managed not to duck his head and blush like a teenage Slytherin getting her first compliment at a Yule Ball. He kept his head up and blushed. “Thank you,” he murmured. He tried to find an appropriate title in his mind—it was hard to think of calling Laughter “sir” now, but he’d never heard any of the werewolves call him anything else—and settled for, “I appreciate it.”

            “Come back tomorrow night with any centaur who wants to maintain the alliance as opposed to munching on her own cud,” Laughter told him, and stood up to walk into the high grass at the edge of the clearing.

            Draco turned and let himself fade back into his body, shivering slightly as he went. Only Potter’s or Severus’s compliments would have made him feel more.

*

            Severus watched from a window high above the walled garden given to the centaurs—though not so high that he couldn’t get an excellent view as Draco chattered to the nearest of the centaurs, the female with a calm look in her eyes that sometimes reminded Severus of Potter’s grandmother. She dipped her head down near Draco now and took an apple out of his hand. Then she nodded and moved away, her tail flowing behind her as she munched the apple.

            Draco relaxed the way he did when he thought no one was watching him, throwing his head to the side and straightening his back, before he turned to make his way into the fortress.

            “It’s very quiet here.”

            Severus kept from hissing between his teeth, but he still had a faster heartbeat than normal when he turned around and confronted Incognita.

            She didn’t seem to have seen Draco or the centaurs—though she would have lacked the necessary history to make sense of their interaction even if she had, Severus thought—and instead brushed a hand back and forth on the sill of the window across the corridor, her brow furrowed. Severus said nothing, and simply watched her.

            He should know her better than he did. He had subdued her mind, Marked her, and treated her as a servant along with all the rest of them. But though Potter might not believe it, the Ashborn had tended to blend into one entity in Severus’s thoughts. There was no reason for him to distinguish them from each other, other than by the difficulty he had in keeping control of the formerly mad few, such as Greyback and Bellatrix.

            Incognita’s mind had not been very different from the others. Severus remembered her as one of the average Death Eaters, the ones in the middle of the ranks, with no ambition to climb higher and no desire to sink lower. She would viciously defend her place if forced to, but there had rarely been anyone who would force her to. The other Death Eaters lived in fear of the ones above them or in desire for Voldemort’s favor. The ones like Incognita, whom Severus thought had joined the Death Eaters because she disliked Muggles and wanted the wizarding world and their world separate but did not hate them, were rare.

            She had been a good choice for the first one to free, he thought, and for a moment did not remember it had been his own idea. There was too much about that he tended to attribute to Potter these days, whether or not he had been the first one to come up with it.

            “What am I going to do now?”

            Severus blinked. Incognita had turned back to him, and stood in a challenging pose, her hands braced behind her on the windowsill. Her head was tucked down, her chin against her chest, her eyes so bright that Severus thought for a moment she might weep. He winced. He did so hope not. That was the last thing he wanted to deal with.

            “I don’t know,” he said. “Do you have—ambitions to brew? To play politics?”

            Incognita spread her hands. “Who would I play them with, when you and Malfoy are in a position of authority over me and everyone else around me is enslaved?”

            Severus paused a moment, his fingers tapping on the stone. He had avoided the little project that Draco and Potter—Harry—had started, but there was no reason that he should not explain it to Incognita, he decided. If Draco could not use her, or found her a nuisance, he would have no hesitations about sending her away.

            “Magical creatures,” he said. “Draco has found material in the ancient books about the ways that pure-bloods once lived, in covenants and alliances with them. He is determined to resurrect those ancient ways.”

            Incognita blinked. “Why? Why doesn’t he want his parents’ money and lands back instead?”

            The question was a good one, Severus told himself, and he should not bristle. Of course Incognita did not have the knowledge that could come only from long observation of Draco and familiarity with his desires, to know why her question was offensive.

            “Because he knows that the Ministry possesses the lands now, and he does not want to fight another war,” Severus said. “Building this alliance is a means of fleeing from war, or at least holding it back. Besides, the money is long lost and scattered. But this alliance gives him a place to exist, and a project to work on.”

            Incognita pulled a strand of hair into her mouth and chewed on it. Severus looked away so that she would not see and judge the curling of his lip. Of course she would judge correctly, that he would not have allowed any of his Ashborn to fall into such a dirty habit while they served him, and he did not want to deal with the temper that might follow.

            “I used to study Mermish,” Incognita said at last. “It’s not much, but it’s the kind of contribution that I could make to the war. It shouldn’t be too hard to pick it back up again.”

            “I know that Draco has said that negotiating with the merfolk, and their several kinds, is likely to prove difficult,” Severus said.

            “It always is,” Incognita said, and her eyes were staring into another reality, another distance, far away from the blank corridor in front of them. Her fingers tapped thoughtfully next to the windowsill. “The merfolk always have so much that they want, and want to take from someone else rather than earning for themselves. I wonder if things have changed that much, since the time of the last alliance. I wonder—” And she turned and walked rapidly in the direction of the door that would take her out into the centaurs’ garden.

            Severus relaxed and turned in the opposite one. Draco was recovering from his time in Severus’s shadow, he was sure, and Incognita might do the same thing.

            He paused when he rounded the corner and found Draco waiting for him in front of the door to his lab. Draco glanced at him and then turned away. In the silence, Severus heard him swallow.

            “What is it?” he asked quietly, because he thought he ought to.

            “I need—I need someone else to tell this to,” Draco said, and when he turned around again, his face was anguished and very young. “The things I’m doing in the Forest with the werewolves. I think they’re important, and they might be, but I need someone to tell me that they’re important, too.”

            Severus opened his mouth, shut it as he considered the words he would have spoken about werewolves and becoming involved with them if he left it open, and opened it again only to murmur, “Come with me.”

            The wards on the lab unlocked when he touched the door. Draco threw himself into the chair nearest the door, one that Severus had conjured for Potter one day and then forgot to dismiss. He leaned his elbows on his knees and buried his forehead in his hands, breathing as though he had run a race.

            Severus took the other chair and waited. The air between them was new, and thick, and it seethed. He and Draco had had few truly personal conversations since Potter went away, Severus thought. They understood each other better than they ever had, but they had needed Potter as a link in the chain between them. Without him, the chain fell to the ground.

            But if Draco was willing to reach out and bridge the gap of air, then in good conscience Severus could do no less than the same thing.

            “I’ve negotiated with the werewolves on my own ever since before Potter went away,” Draco said into his hands. “And I don’t know what to do, anymore. Laughter, the werewolf leader, has promised me help for help, but now he wants me to bring one of the centaurs along. And he’s upset that Potter won’t be part of the alliance. He doesn’t say anything about that part, but I know the truth.” He flung himself back in the chair and stared at Severus. “What should I do?” he asked.

            “Why do you think that Potter won’t be part of the alliance?” Severus asked, without asking about Incognita. If Draco had come straight to the lab after his conversation with the centaurs, he wouldn’t have met her.

            “Because of what he said before he went away.” Draco sighed, a shimmering sound that seemed to gleam in the air between them, with weight and body. “That he was sick of politics, and he didn’t want to participate in an alliance that would just bring him more people to help, more magical creatures he needed to sacrifice for, without offering him anything in return.”

            “He might come back changed,” Severus said quietly. “Or you might be able to give him something from the alliance.”

            It was comical to watch the way Draco’s jaw sagged and the young look took over his face. “Me? I was the one who proposed it to him in the first place, and he agreed because he was bored, but he was also the one who told me that I was using him too much for complaining instead of friendship, and that he didn’t want to talk to me anymore.”

            “He let you be his Bonder,” Severus said, and had to bite his lip, to hold back laughter. It was the first time he had done so in years without the laughter being part of a sneer or satire, and he experienced a brief moment, a thrill, of something like clear water running through his soul. “And you were the one who told me that he needed to trust actions. Give him a gift, and he has an action to trust from you.”

            Draco touched his forehead and then his jaw with his fingers, as though thinking. Then he smiled. “Thanks, Severus,” he said. “I have an idea, even if it is based on an idea that I stole from you.” He rose and leaned over to kiss Severus, his lips glancing off his for a moment as though unsure of his welcome.

            But Severus reached up and cradled the back of his skull, bringing him close so that Draco sighed into his mouth and shivered, and then leaning back in the chair and waiting to see what Draco would do. He was hard, and he knew from the small, shifting motions of Draco’s legs that he was, too, and he wondered if Draco would be brave enough to take advantage of it.

            In the end, it seemed, no. Draco fled, and Severus leaned back and dropped a hand between his legs, reaching for his cock, imagining that Draco and Harry were kneeling in front of him, their eyes bright and their hands reaching out to touch him, in the moment before Draco leaned in and bit the side of Harry’s neck, making his eyes flutter shut, ecstatically, as Severus had sometimes imagined on the darkest and loneliest nights of his spying—

            His orgasm was immediate, intense, and more satisfying than any he’d had in months.

*

            Draco hesitated before he cast the spell. He knew what he wanted to do, and thanks to the books in the library, he knew the incantation; it was the result he was unsure of. He wasn’t good at sculpting automatons, not like Severus. If he had taken the risk and it turned out ugly, then there was no way he would give this gift to Harry.

            The cat purred behind him, a throbbing sound that seemed to thrill up and down the scale and ask him a wordless question.

            Draco smiled at the cat over his shoulder and nodded. “You’re right,” he said softly. “There’s no reason to assume that I’ll do it wrongly, is there?” The cat tapped a paw on the floor and turned its head, and Draco laughed. “Harry probably wouldn’t want a gift that looked like you, anyway,” he muttered, and then wove his wand in front of him, up and down and to the side with an abrupt motion as if he was trying to shake his fingers off his hand, while he whispered the incantation.

            The air in front of him shuddered and turned silver, and Draco worried for a moment that looking at the cat might have influenced his thoughts too much after all. But the air shivered and rolled together then, and left Draco staring at a small, gleaming shape. When he reached out and pressed a finger against it, it was like touching cold air—less than solid, but real.

            The small silver dragon opened its blank green eyes and stared at him. Draco smiled. He had wanted to echo Harry’s eye color, and he had managed to do it.

            He began to murmur the second incantation, the one that included Harry’s name and some of the words he had heard him say, to bind his soul to the dragon. The dragon was a gift, but Draco had to make sure that it became one; just conjuring it wouldn’t do anything except create something for Draco to use.

            Draco wanted to make sure that Harry had one companion at his side who would be always loyal, and wouldn’t question him, like his friends tended to do, or frustrate him, like Draco and Severus often did.

            Harry might not understand without an explanation, but Draco would send a note with the dragon, and see what his reaction was. He hoped it would be favorable. Harry deserved all the gifts that someone could shower him with.

            It’s just unfortunate that his principles restrict the choice of those gifts so much.

*

            “Um. Hullo.”

            Harry wondered for a moment if he had made a mistake. Snape was turning to face the fire, but he had an abstracted expression on his face, his eyes gleaming like coins. He had been brewing, Harry thought, and part of him still was even though he was in his rooms and not his lab. Harry tried not to look around too much. He wouldn’t want Snape to think he had called him here mainly to indulge his curiosity.

            Then Snape focused on him completely, and a faint, bemused smile crept across his face. “Harry. There was something you wanted to talk to me about?”

            “Just—letters, and things,” Harry said, and tried to ignore the cramping twist in his stomach that said he should just close the Floo connection now and go away. He had endured worse from Snape, especially when it came to detentions in Hogwarts. “Um. I mean—I wanted to talk to you about Ministry politics.” He waved the second letter that had come today, in a red envelope, as though whoever sent them was edging towards using Howlers. “Some way to get out of them, like you suggested?”

            Snape smiled, and it was a smile that chilled Harry and made him shiver with something like delight at the same time, because at least he knew that smile was on his side. “Have you not opened the letter?” Snape murmured. “I can’t help you without knowing what they want.”

            Harry nodded and opened the envelope. Hermione and Ron had thought he should look at it before this, but Harry hadn’t wanted to, as though keeping it shut meant the Ministry’s request would simply go away. But Snape hadn’t scolded him about it as he expected.

            I don’t think a lot of what I think I know is real, after all.

            The letter tumbled out, a sheet of parchment so thin that Harry could see Snape’s face through it when he held it up. “It says it’s from Yolanda Trumpery,” he murmured, and then saw Snape’s expression change and added, “She’s a sort of—Master of Ceremonies for the Minister, I reckon you could say.”

            “Yes,” Snape said, but Harry wasn’t sure if he had heard the name before or merely recognized the title of the office. “And she says that you’re welcome to attend one of the balls or functions that the Ministry is giving to celebrate the ending of the war, yes?”

            Harry scanned the letter, stared, and then scanned it again, understanding the words but not able to grasp that someone would actually write them. “No,” he said slowly. “She does invite me to a ball, but it’s a—a bit of an order to attend, and she says it’s to celebrate escaping the Ashborn.”

            Snape shifted from one side to the other of whatever it was he sat on, but only said, “I see. Are they not aware of the real circumstances of your ‘escape’, then?”

            “They must not be,” Harry said, still staring. “But that doesn’t make a fucking bloody bit of sense.” He waited for Snape to tell him to mind his language, but he didn’t, so Harry wouldn’t. “They must know the original terms of the hostage exchange. How can they think that they’re safe from you if I escaped?”

            Snape leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs one over the other. Harry blinked. It made Snape look as if he was settling in for a long meeting, and Harry couldn’t help wondering if he sat like that in the staff meetings at Hogwarts, too. “I would suppose,” he said, “that they know enough to think themselves safe, but not enough to realize the terms of the Unbreakable Vows. If one of the Weasleys said something but did not include all the details…”

            Harry opened his mouth to deny that the Weasleys would betray him like that, and then grimaced and fell silent. It wasn’t betrayal to talk about something so public. Hell, if the Ministry did have spies watching the Ashborn, they could easily see things like the exchange of Vows, which had been outside.

            Or the arrival of the centaurs.

            Harry put that particular thought away to worry about later, when he might be able to do something about it. “All right, fine,” he said. “But that doesn’t really explain why they command me to attend this particular ball.”

            “It celebrates a particular occasion,” Snape said, his voice low and full of amusement in a way that Harry had never thought about it being. Or, at least, he hadn’t thought about it being that way until very recently. “How can they do that when the guest of honor, the reason for the occasion, the only reason they thought of something like this in the first place, isn’t there?”

            Harry frowned and tapped his fingers against the heel of his palm. Yes, when Snape put it like that, Harry could see what he meant. And felt a bit stupid for not seeing it himself.

            But he wasn’t going to let emotions like that control his interactions with Snape, so he put them away, too, and said, “Well. Do you think I ought to attend this one, just to show them that I won’t come to any more? Or do something else?”

            Meditatively, Snape shook his head. His eyes had gone almost soft, and Harry wondered if this was what he looked like during Dumbledore’s planning sessions. And I need to stop thinking of the past and see Snape the way he is, now, in the present. “If you go now, they won’t listen to the implied message, or even the stated one. They’ll only see you there, and see how many admiring glances they receive for stringing you along, and become more determined to demand that you attend the next one.”

            Harry sighed. “So the only thing I can do is prove myself more powerful than they are, because brute force is the only language the Ministry understands.”

            “Oh, I think some of them might understand blackmail quite well,” Snape said softly, and his smile lit his whole face. Not in a way that anyone else might think particularly handsome, Harry decided, but it made Harry catch his breath. “If you reveal, for example, what the Ministry’s owl to you said immediately before you decided to swear the first set of Vows…”

            “How did you know about that?” Harry exclaimed.

            The glance Snape threw him had a little of its old scorn, though when he heard the answer, Harry thought Snape might be able to justify it. “I intercepted owls flying from the Ministry to you. In this case, I thought it worthwhile to let the owl go on after I copied its message, since it was what I wanted, after all: a promise that you would become my hostage and not lead another war against me.”

            “I couldn’t have done much about anyone who wasn’t Voldemort,” Harry muttered, and rubbed his head.

            “I have told you not to doubt your own abilities in this way,” Snape said sharply. “And that is even more urgent if you have begun to believe that Draco and I want you. It would make us seem to be victims of bad taste, if we had a lover who was continually putting himself down.”

            Harry blinked, and then grinned. He could take Snape being a bastard, he thought sometimes, as long as he was using that bastardy in service of their common goals. “I believe it,” he said quietly, and his eyes lingered on Snape’s face in spite of himself.

            Snape opened his mouth as though to say something specific and devastating in a new way, but then caught his breath and went on. “So. The Ministry demanded that you surrender yourself.”

            Harry shrugged. “I didn’t think too much about it. There were too many letters arriving from all over, asking me to please surrender and stop another war. Ron and Hermione and the Weasleys were the only ones who really spoke against it and asked me to consider another alternative than sacrifice.”

            “As you should have,” Snape said, but there wasn’t much snarl in his voice. In fact, he cleared his throat a moment later, as though dismissing disturbing thoughts, and focused on Harry. “But this letter included threats. It would make for an…interesting document if released to the Ministry’s critics.”



            “But I don’t have the letter anymore,” Harry began.

            “But I have my exact copy that I made from the intercepted owl.” Snape sounded as if he was purring. He folded his hands beneath his chin and met Harry’s gaze, his expression so bright that Harry wondered how his eyes could stay so dark. “Shall I send it to you?”

            Harry swallowed yet again. He was thinking about blackmailing the Ministry, and he knew he should be recoiling in horror. Hermione probably would when she heard about it. She thought the Ministry was horrible in some ways, unproductive in others, but it was still the best hope for keeping peace in their post-war world. And she was planning on reforming it from the inside, not destroying it.

            Harry—Harry knew he had dreamed of being an Auror, but he couldn’t do that, and he couldn’t go back. He nodded. “Send me the letter,” he said, his voice thick, as if he were dreaming and breathing underwater. “Then I’ll decide how to make those bastards in the Minister’s office who keep urging me to do things their way to pay.”

            Snape laughed in a way that prickled up and down Harry’s skin and made the hair on the nape of his neck stand on end. “I look forward to it,” he breathed, and the Floo swished shut.

            Harry leaned back on the couch and draped his arm over his eyes, thinking about all the trouble that this was probably going to cause, with both the Ministry and his friends.

            After a moment, he started to smile, helplessly, and didn’t stop until Ron and Hermione came home from fetching their OWL results from the Ministry archives, necessary for people who were going back to Hogwarts this autumn. Harry watched them and listened to them talk from a distance.

            My life won’t be ordinary, whatever happens. I might as well take control of it and make it the kind of extraordinary that I actually want to happen.

*

            Yami Bakura: Thank you! I’ll keep that in mind; I do have one story written in letters, “Inevitably as Tragedy,” but only one.

            Thank you for the reviews.
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Ashborn