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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-Eight—Comparing Scars

            Severus laid down the list of names and positions that Incognita had prepared for him, swearing softly.

            No, it was worse than he had imagined. He had thought he would find familiar names in the list among the Minister’s undersecretaries and most important flunkies, that he could easily locate, that way, whoever had wanted Harry dead more than they had cared about the potential embarrassment to the Ministry.

            There was not one familiar name. There were dozens. Severus shuddered as he stared at the list again. People related to Cornelius Fudge, people related to Umbridge, people related to Rita Skeeter and the Blacks—and Severus had been in the right circles, just before Albus’s death, to hear people muttering about how the last legitimate Black heir had left everything to Potter—and others whose names went back centuries, mostly tangled in complicated feuds with the Potters.

            Not to mention those who hated Muggleborns enough to perhaps strike at someone famous with a Muggleborn mother, but not enough to join the Dark Lord.

            Severus reached out and stroked the Mark on Bellatrix’s arm with his thoughts. She was there in seconds, holding a steaming cup of tea. Severus picked it up and sipped it, his eyes closed.

            “Master.”

            It was rare for Bellatrix to volunteer a thought on her own. Severus opened his eyes and looked at her wearily, but signaled her to go on when she hesitated. Bellatrix sane enough to control and serve as a guard did sometimes mean a Bellatrix sane enough to feel wary that she was annoying her Lord.

            “An owl crossed the wards this morning,” she said.

            Severus nodded, understanding. Many owls came, from people wanting to send him Howlers to those wanting to propose an alliance with the Ashborn, and most of them were dealt with before they came to him. Greyback would place a small store of important letters on his desk every morning. “Yes? Who was it from?”

            “No sender was named. The handwriting is not familiar.” Bellatrix’s words became more crisp and regular again as she settled back into the role he had woven to contain her. “But this is the letter, and it contains a threat and a promise.” She held out a sheet of creamy parchment, the sort that many pure-bloods could afford.

            And so can others, Severus reminded himself, and opened the letter, which had been folded in half. He murmured a spell as he did so to lock in magical signatures. If not many people had handled this before the sender owled it, and only he and Bellatrix after its arrival, he stood a chance of getting a decent signature out of it. Otherwise, he would receive only a meaningless buzz of noise and scent, like listening to many voices speaking at once.

            The letter was two sentences, in a delicate, dipping handwriting that made Severus visualize old handwriting teachers and jade inkwells, but which he did not recognize any more than Bellatrix had.

            We can do worse to him, and you know it. Give him over, and we will give you much else in return.

            Severus waited through the ringing silence that filled his head. Then he smiled and folded the paper into a series of quarters. He did not check for magical signatures as yet. The anger would make him clumsy and careless.

            Rather like the writer.

            “Sir?” Bellatrix hovered near him. “Do you want me to put the letter somewhere safe, or destroy it, or—”

            “Yes, keep it safe, by all means,” Severus murmured, handing it over. “In a cupboard where it stands no chance of coming into contact with magical materials. I do not want the signature contaminated.” He would have kept it in his lab, but there, there was too much chance of Potions fumes or the subtler effusions from some of his ingredients ruining the spell.

            Bellatrix bowed to him and moved with alacrity, ducking out of the lab. Severus laid his hands together behind his head and watched the dancing flames of the fire under the nearest cauldron. It was a small, focused point of light compared to the great hearth he could have been staring into, but at the moment, that suited his mood.

            Who would have dared to send a threat? Who would have dared to attack Harry in the first place? Severus could hope that the questions would both have the same answer, but he didn’t yet know what that answer was, or where to begin looking for it. The list of names by itself was not helpful, and neither was thinking of those who might be jealous of Harry’s fame, or who might fear the Ashborn. They were too many, there were too many whom he might not be thinking of, and…

            Severus paused. Then he sat up and shook his head.

            Of course. There were things he could do to eliminate some of the suspects. He had not thought of them because he was too used to using the Ashborn merely as servants or guards for himself, and not as spies. But there were some whose abilities under his control were greater than he had given them space to show. He could send them to the Ministry as “rebels,” and the Ministry, while suspicious at first, could not be suspicious enough to avoid showing some sign. There were always those who would welcome Dark wizards supposedly fleeing from a Dark Lord’s control and needing political allies. Look at how easy it had been for Lucius and others to pretend that they had been under Imperius during the first war. The people who mattered knew it was a lie, but it was a useful one, and had taken him back and used him as a tool and been used themselves. If they thought they could establish the same sort of reciprocal alliance with the Ashborn, they would do so.

            And Severus could give the Ashborn the words to say that would make it seem as if they weren’t his willing servants, as if they never had been even when he supposedly had absolute control over them.

            Not your willing servants. Your will-less servants.

            Severus winced when he thought of that, and leaned back, looking away from the fire at last. He had not considered it, but it was true that Harry would probably object to Severus using the Ashborn in such a way. He did not like the fact that they were servants at all, and would not want to place them in danger.

            But they had come to an understanding about Incognita, and about Harry staying in the fortress overnight to calm Shield and make sure his burns and smoke inhalation were completely cured. Before that, they had arranged for mutual reading of each other’s minds. Severus was much more confident than he had been before the first set of Vows that they could come to some sort of accommodation.

*

            “Hold still so I can put the burn salve on.”

            Harry rolled his eyes, but stayed still. He had to admit that was more because of Draco’s wide-eyed stare of concentration than any other reason. It was cute, and he could see it better staying still like this, and so being allowed close, than he could from further away.

            Draco looked as if putting the burn salve in the wrong place would kill Harry, or cause him wounds more severe than the burns. And, well, Harry had to admit that the salve cooled the burns off, and he had been grateful to Draco more than once in the night when he woke up, felt the pain but also found it was bearable, and drifted off again. That didn’t mean he thought it was worth as much fervency as Draco threw into the task.

            When Draco stepped back and studied his placement of the salve with a critical nod, Harry blew out his breath and smiled at him. Then Draco moved forwards, one hand reaching out so that he could take Harry’s chin and turn his head to the side. Harry allowed it, but blinked. The salve was all over the burns on the side of his face and neck, as far as he knew.

            “There are more under your collar,” Draco said. “Take off your shirt, Harry.”

            He said the words in a flat, normal tone, which made Harry flush more than he would have if Draco had spoken to him in a deeper voice, or with more inflection. As it was, he felt Shield, curled up on the headboard near his pillows, lift his head with a warning rumble. Harry reached out a hand to calm him down, without taking his eyes from Draco. “You—you want me to do that?” he asked. “Without Snape here?”

            Draco leaned back against air. The small pot of burn salve was in one hand; his other one was empty, and caught the air and twisted it, a contrast to his calm body and absolutely straight spine. Harry found himself watching it. Draco saw him doing it, and gave a small shrug, his hand falling straight down. “We need to do it,” he said. “And yeah. I want you to.”

            Harry felt more heat licking his body, and couldn’t tell what came from the blush and what came from the burns and what came from—something else, if he was honest with himself. He swallowed and pulled his shirt back and over his head, and ignored the motion Shield made to wrap himself around Harry’s shoulders. He wasn’t cold.

            At least, not with anything more than anticipation.

            Draco moved forwards, his eyes flickering as though he wanted to be serious and wanted to smile at the same time. Harry glanced down, and blinked himself when he saw the burns on his chest. He had been sure they didn’t get through his clothes and the Shield Charm, because they hadn’t hurt last night. Or had Snape and Draco already cast spells that eased the pain by then? He shook his head. He didn’t have that much memory of last night, or at least not much memory that wasn’t sensation.

            “You—don’t want me near?”

            Harry glanced up, and realized that Draco had stopped moving, perhaps because he’d seen Harry shake his hand. “I want you,” Harry replied, and then flushed again as he realized how Draco would probably take that sentence. Sometimes it felt so huge and horrible and awkward, this thing between them, all the history they had to ignore, including the history of how he had come here. But he held out his hand, and he didn’t pull away.

            Draco came towards him again, and there was a faint smile on his face. Maybe he was mocking his own worry, Harry thought, leaning his head back on the pillow and turning to one side. He felt Draco’s hands smooth salve over the burns on the side of his chest, and then pause. A finger traced what felt like a particularly large one.

            “You have a scar here,” Draco said.

            Oh. Harry looked back, and looked at Draco’s finger instead of his eyes. “I’m amazed you can see it under the burn,” he said.

            There was a faint rustle as Draco knelt beside him, his hand still in place, hovering over the burn, and the scar beneath, and asked the question with nothing more than a tilt of his head and a glow in his eyes.

            Harry swallowed. “All right,” he said. “So, okay.”

            Draco’s smile broadened. “This sounds like an embarrassing story,” he said. “Is it? Did I find the scar where the Great Harry Potter impaled himself in on a tree branch as he was running away through the forest?”

            Harry tried to smile, but his face felt crowded and anxious, and he dropped it in a second. “No,” he said. “It’s just that—I haven’t told anyone about my scars. Ron and Hermione were present for a lot of them and saw them happen, so I didn’t have to tell the stories. And no one who asked about them after the war ever actually saw them, so I could put them off with any made-up stories I wanted. But you’re here, and you’re asking. I have to put it into words for you.”

            He had thought the weight of his words might oppress Draco, but Draco leaned nearer, his eyes so bright and intense that Harry thought he might burst into flame.

            “Tell me,” Draco breathed. “I want to be the first one to hear the story of your scars. Tell me.” His hand spread out flat, covering both burn and scar.

            Harry closed his eyes and tried to marshal his breath, or perhaps just his courage, before he continued. He reached out and covered Draco’s hand, and that acted like an anchor, made everything more real. He listened, and thought he could hear the slow pounding of Draco’s heart, unnaturally slow given how excited he seemed.

            And that thought would distract him, if he let it, with more visions of Draco “excited.” Harry sighed in irritation and began the story, wondering if he should be grateful for the break from the intensity of before.

            “You-Know-Who guarded some of his—treasures with snakes.” He had a hard time talking about Horcruxes with anyone except Ron and Hermione. It was probably fine now, but, well, he wasn’t going to try and change that particular habit in the middle of his first intimate conversation with Draco. “I could talk to them in Parseltongue, of course, and he got tired of having them stolen because I would convince the snakes to slither aside. He came up with a new kind of snake. Or else he bred it, from Nagini. I think it was one of her hatchlings. It looked like her.”

            “I don’t need to think about the Dark Lord’s snake having sex, thank you very much,” Draco muttered. Harry held back a snort at the thickness in his voice, and the way his hand flexed shut for a second, as though throttling a serpent.

            Then his hand spread out again, flat on Harry’s skin, and Harry didn’t have the urge to snort at all. He continued in a voice that he hoped wasn’t breathless, but probably sounded that way.

            “He put the snake at the back entrance of a cave. We thought we were so clever, getting in to steal some of Vol—Old Snake-Face’s hoard and coming out through a tunnel we didn’t think he knew about. But the snake was waiting.”

            Harry fell silent. Because he could see, even now, the way the snake had uncoiled from the ground, so slowly that he thought it was a drifting ribbon of mist at first. He could see the way its fangs had aimed towards Hermione, and hear the hiss he had used to attract its attention to him. Nothing more than Parseltongue for Attack me, you idiot! Usually, it would have made the snake cower in confusion. They weren’t used to hearing a human who gave them orders and wasn’t Voldemort.

            But this one had turned towards him, and its eyes—

            Its eyes were almost the color of his. Not exactly, not the shade of green that Draco had managed to achieve with Shield, but close enough that Harry had felt something inside him stir and flow, pulled towards the snake.

            “Then what happened?” Draco’s voice interrupted his memories.

            Harry sighed and opened his eyes. Thinking about what had happened next wasn’t his favorite activity. Perhaps talking about it would actually make the incident seem simpler, flatter, something he could handle from a distance and not have so many nightmares about. “The snake tried to bite Hermione. I yelled, and it came for me instead. Vold—sorry, Stubborn Tom had given it eyes like mine somehow. And it started tugging my soul out of me. I don’t know how. It didn’t feel like the times I’ve come too close to a Dementor. But I could feel it holding on. I think there was something like me in it, close enough that it attracted that part of my soul that would stay with me most of the time.”

            “Well, of course,” Draco said, as if that was a simple conclusion, or something he had heard before. Harry blinked at him, wondering where he would have encountered snakes with soul-stealing eyes, and Draco shrugged back at him, his head tilted to one side. “The magic that I used to make Shield was like that.”

            Shield’s wings rustled out from the headboard, as if he wanted to hide Harry from sight simply on hearing his name. Harry reached up to caress his neck, still staring at Draco. “You used your soul to make him?”

            “Magic that contacts the soul,” Draco said, and gazed at him, obviously waiting for the rest of the story.

            I didn’t know. I knew he had to invoke me and know himself well to make a dragon like this, but I didn’t realize how deep he went, how much of a risk he took.

            Harry turned his hand over and gripped Draco’s, because he wanted to. Draco blinked, but Harry immersed himself in the story again, making himself remember the moment when the snake had stared into him.

            “I saw—the people I could have been,” he said. “The snake was showing me parts of my soul, ones that could have influenced me more than they did.”

            “You knew that at the time?” Draco’s voice was soft, but devoid of emotion; he might have been impressed, frightened, skeptical, or none of those.

            “No,” Harry admitted. “I figured it out later, with Hermione’s help.” He hesitated, wondering if he really wanted to tell Draco about some of the things that he had seen in the snake’s eyes.

            “I’m waiting, Potter.”

            Harry half-smiled. He would never mistake the slight impatience in Draco’s voice for true anger again, not when he knew what Draco had done for him. He leaned his head back and let Shield’s wing caress his forehead before he answered.

            “I saw myself a Dark wizard worse than him,” he said. That had been the greatest number of images, the most prominent path he could have taken. All of them, whirling around and showing him standing at the edge of a cliff, plunging into the sea and poisoning the waters of the world, slaying hundreds with a storm he had called, making the earth move and swallow up a village because someone in it had annoyed him, creating potions that were responsible for the spread of subtle and incurable diseases. “I would have been a lot worse than he was, because he didn’t have much imagination, or much empathy.”

            “That made him good at torturing people, Potter,” Draco interrupted. His thumb had sunk into Harry’s wrist, hard enough to make him wince as it pressed down on the tendon. But he said nothing. Draco’s voice was—blank, somehow. Enough to make Harry think that he needed time to absorb what Harry was talking about, time that Harry intended to give him.

            “Yes, but not good at understanding them,” Harry pointed out quietly. “He couldn’t come up with ways to hurt them beyond the most obvious, like torturing them. I could have. And I would have been terrible on a global level because I wasn’t obsessed with killing Muggles or killing a boy, like he was. I would have torn apart my friends’ lives first, and then hurt anyone else who hurt me. For fun.”

            “And you think that’s inside you?”

            Draco was shrinking away from him as much as he could while still holding Harry’s wrist. Harry knew why. He had seen that memory of Draco and Snape sitting in the dungeons, after all. Draco had suffered at the hands of a madman who had commanded him to do the impossible, and he knew what it was like, to be that victim, that hurting boy. Harry doubted he would ever forget.

            “I know it is,” Harry replied, and didn’t look away from Draco’s eyes, because he would never find the courage to look back again. “Because that snake reflected my soul. It’s there, along with the beauty that you saw, or imagined, when you made Shield for me. That’s part of me, Draco, not the whole. But in a different world, I could have gone a different way.”

            Draco flinched once. Then he lifted his head, and his jaw was set, and Harry reached out and smoothed the hair back from his forehead. He had done that with Ron and Hermione once, too, when they fully realized that they had set themselves up for as bitter and vicious a war as they had.

            But they hadn’t run, and Draco had decided not to run, just now. Harry couldn’t keep from smiling, he was so very proud of him.

            Draco bristled, for some reason, and avoided his gaze as he said, “Tell me what else you saw in the snake’s eyes.”

            “All the futures I could have had,” Harry said, and he kept his voice gentle, but not mocking, not anywhere close, because he didn’t want Draco to think that he didn’t understand his emotions. “I could have been a spoiled child, or died as a child, or lived with my parents and had the happiest life I could ever imagine.” He was glad that that vision had been so small and quickly over. It had hurt worse than the revelation that he could kill people and be glad of it; by that point in the war, he had started to suspect that. “Or my relatives could have killed me. Or he could have. All the many and varied ways that I could die. That was a big part of it. I reckon death’s always hunted me.”

            Draco nodded, staring at the bed with burning eyes. “And that was the reason you have the scar? Because the magic burned you?”

            Harry snorted. “No. Because I was so caught up in what I was seeing that I forgot the snake was striking at me, as well as trying to draw my soul out of my body. It hit my side, and that left the scar you see.” He looked down at their joined hands and swung his a little, so that Draco’s had to swing along with it. “So there you have it. Not that much in reality, and when the snake struck me, I snapped out of the vision and killed it. Hermione gave me the antidote we’d developed by that point for Nagini’s venom, and I was fine.”

            “No,” Draco said, his voice heavy as a sheet of lead. “You lived. But you weren’t fine.”

            Harry sighed. This had been what he was a little afraid of, when he started sharing his memories, first with Snape and now with Draco. He didn’t want them to become caught up in those memories to the point that they started seeing them as all he was. Yes, Harry had been hurt, and he hadn’t healed as completely as he should have. But he wanted to live now, and Draco and Snape were the ones helping him do that. They couldn’t if they turned back and focused all their energy on the child abuse victim, or “the poor Boy-Who-Lived, so young for his great destiny,” which was a phrase one of the Prophet articles after the war had used for him.

            “I will be,” he said, and squeezed Draco’s hand until Draco looked up. “You didn’t heal from the war, either, did you? I saw Snape’s memory of you in the dungeons, the day that he told you he hoped I would win the war. You looked horrible.”

            “It was—it wasn’t what you endured,” Draco said.

            “Yeah,” Harry said. “But I didn’t have to go through losing my family when I was old enough to know them, either.” Draco choked and started to pull away, but Harry tugged him closer to the bed. “Come on, why should I be the only one who has to talk about horrible secrets here? Or don’t talk about it if you’d rather,” he added, because Draco had twisted his head away until his chin was buried in the shoulder opposite the one Harry was holding. “Just—be with me. Think about it. Think about yourself, for once. I want you to.”

*

            Since when? Draco wanted to ask. Sometimes Harry acted as if the last thing he was interested in was another display of childishness.

            But that had been before he left the fortress, and since then, Draco had been his Bonder in the second set of Unbreakable Vows and made him a dragon. Draco suspected that made more than a minor difference. He picked up his sodden mind from its cowering puddle of emotions and made himself breathe out.

            “The war was hard for me because I kept hoping,” he said. “Sometimes I thought about giving in to despair, and I think that would have been better.”

            “No, it wouldn’t.”

            Harry’s voice got a tone when he was certain of something, as though no one else in the entire world would be right while he was busy being that way. Draco looked up at him, blinked, and shook his head.

            “You say that as if you think something specific would have happened if I despaired,” he said. “It wouldn’t. Severus was right there with me, and he had sworn to save me. He would have guarded me and protected me even if I faltered.”

            “It doesn’t matter.” Harry’s mouth was still set in a small, stubborn line, making him look rather like a painted doll as he leaned towards Draco. A doll with green glass eyes and red and black paint splashed on the side of his face, Draco reminded himself. Somehow, this had stopped being about healing Harry’s burns and become about Draco instead, and Draco would have guided the conversation back round in the right direction if he could have remembered how they got here. “I still think you would have fought less hard for your life, and then one of two things would have happened. You would have died during the war because you didn’t care anymore, or you would have gone down into Snape’s shadow when he made the Ashborn and not come out. You were broken-down when I got here as it was.”

            Draco bristled. “I would have found some way out of it.”

            “Yeah? You walked around with him like you were Ashborn, did you know that? When we saw you at the hostage exchange.” Harry settled back in the bed and frowned at him in a way that made Shield rattle his wings. Harry reached back as if to quiet him, and then exhaled loudly and said, “That’s part of the reason that I can’t call him Severus yet, you know.”

            “Keep in mind, Potter, that not all of us have a mind that leaps to conclusions as readily as your own,” Draco said, and used the haughty snap that his father had sometimes used when fighting with his mother. Then he winced at reminding himself of his parents, and wondered if he would look even more pathetic to Harry because of it.

            Harry shook his head. “I meant that I can’t call him Severus because of what he did to you. And some of the others. I can accept, just barely, that you might need to put bonds on someone like Bellatrix or Fenrir Greyback if you weren’t going to execute them. But Incognita? Some of the other Death Eaters I know got conned into following him? The way he treated you? There’s no excuse for that.”

            “And here you’ve been talking as if you could have forgiven him,” Draco snapped, and pulled his hands away. He still had to put more burn salve on Harry, but for later. Right now he had to leap to his feet and pace around the room. “Have you mentioned this, in the middle of all the firecalls and letters and letting him touch you?”

            Harry flushed, but didn’t look away, and leaned forwards as if he thought he could convince Draco that way. Draco folded his arms and didn’t touch him in return, although he knew Harry would have liked him to. Harry took a breath and released it in a mutter that sounded suspiciously as if he was praying for patience.

            “I think I can forgive him,” Harry said. “Eventually. But part of that is hearing what it was like for you when you were—living in his shadow.” Draco smiled, because Harry had obviously considered other words and wouldn’t have liked what would have happened if he had said anything about “slavery.” Harry perhaps saw the smile from the corner of his eye and rushed on. “Why did that happen?”

            “Because the war was done,” Draco said quietly. “I didn’t need to fight anymore. The worst had already happened.”

            Harry cocked his head. “And so you thought—what, that there was no future? That nothing would ever change? You would go on living under Snape’s domination and studying, and he would command the Ashborn and brew, that was all?”

            Draco drew his shoulders back. “I don’t know that you ever considered the future, either. You were a weapon to fight the Dark Lord, and then you were the sacrifice that would save the wizarding world yet again. Have you been listening to yourself? What did you think you would do, but wear out your days among the Ashborn, moping and feeling sorry for yourself?”

            Harry blinked, and then gave what sounded like a bark of laughter and shook his head. “You’re right. Sorry. It sounds like we all have something to learn about living after the war, instead of withdrawing into ourselves and waiting for someone else to come along and heal our wounds.”

            Draco eyed Harry. He had relaxed, and Shield had retreated to the top of the headboard, his tail draped around and over his forepaws. He watched Draco with eyes like iced green glass, but looked less as if he might bite.

            “It was like that,” Draco said at last. “It was restful. I knew I couldn’t bring my family back, but I dreamed about finding a pure-blood girl who lived in the old ways I was learning about from the books in the library and rearing a child in those old ways. Starting a Malfoy family who would remember their grandparents and honor them for their sacrifice.”

            Harry’s lips tightened, but he didn’t say something about “what sacrifice?”, which Draco would have had to hit him for. He seemed to stare at the wall as if a fire flickered there, and then he just nodded. “Do you still think about that?” he asked. “About starting a family with the right pure-blood woman?”

            “Yes,” Draco said. “I explained the old alliance to you. There’s provision in there for temporary marriages, and child contracts. And there’s still a small number of pure-bloods in Great Britain who live by the oldest ways, although most of them marry and associate with people from the Continent. Or even further away. I want that life, Harry. I’m still working on the project that I was working on when you left, and I think I’ll bring the werewolves into the alliance soon, if Thera agrees to visit Laughter with me.”

            “Laughter?” Harry frowned at him.

            Draco smiled at him, rejoicing, more than he probably should have, in having this little bit of knowledge that Harry didn’t. “The leader of the werewolves in the Forbidden Forest, the one who has the power to open negotiations with the centaurs if he wants. And negotiations with me.” He paused a moment, then added casually, “Hilda Incognita can speak Mermish. That will make it easier to bring the merfolk in.”

            “You’re going to try that?” Harry frowned more widely. “Even though the centaurs don’t like them?”

            Draco snorted. “There are times that I think Kleianthe and Thera hardly consider themselves my allies. I won’t allow them to dictate who should belong to the alliance as a whole.”

            Harry was silent for a second, picking at the blanket. Then he said, “That’s—good. I know I don’t think about the alliance in the same way you do, but that’s good. You need a project that you can throw your whole heart and soul into.” He lifted his eyes and caught Draco’s. “And you need a way to learn proper pride.”

            “Right,” Draco said, letting himself ease down a little from his crouch and smiling at Harry. “Someone was supposed to teach that to me and Severus, hmmm? It seems that we’ve been learning without him.”

            He’d reckoned that Harry would be upset when he heard that, but he gave a superior smile and leaned back on the pillow. “Teaching without even being there,” he remarked to the ceiling. “I am good.”

            Draco allowed a few moments to pass while he silently reveled in the way Harry smiled at him and the fact that they could have an argument and Harry would realize he had done something worthwhile. But there were still the burns on Harry’s face and chest, and he nodded to them as he said, “We have to find out who did this to you.”

            Harry bit his lip, and nodded. “There is someone who could find out for me.”

            “The Ashborn? Well, of course, but Severus would have to agree to sending them, and probably free them first—”

            “No.” Harry turned his head to the side as an abrupt trickle of water flowed from under the wall to the right. “Someone I already sent.”

            The horse-like head and bright eyes of Harry’s water serpent friend lifted from the floor, and he hissed something in Parseltongue that made Harry laugh. Draco licked his lips. He wondered if Harry knew it made his hair stand on end when he heard the language—at least, the language as spoken by human lips, not the burbling voice the serpent used.

            Harry hissed back and forth a few times, and then Corners flowed towards him and into the empty vial that Draco had used to hold the salve. Draco winced; he hadn’t cleaned it out, not thinking it might be occupied in the next little while. Other than Corners flickering out an annoyed tongue, he didn’t seem to care. His head vanished into the vial, and a moment later, no one would have known it was anything more than a tube of slightly murky water.

            Shield was on his feet, Draco saw a moment later, his wings fanned out and his jaws parted as if he didn’t know whether or not to breathe fire at the intruder. Draco felt much the same way. He sniffed and settled back, wondering what Severus would say when he found out Harry had anticipated their need to investigate. It was good to know, of course, but it would have been equally good to share the mystery and the search with Harry.

            At least this way we will know, and we have a way to find out the truth sooner, and that means Harry will be protected.

            When he turned back to the bed, Harry had stopped laughing. Draco reached out without much thought and held his hand. Harry turned his hand over in response, and clutched back tightly.

            “Did he find out that one of your friends is behind the attack?” Draco asked softly. That would be a reason for the ugly expression on Harry’s face just now.

            “Not—really,” Harry said. “But Corners said that the Minister is talking about it. And his secretaries. And Percy Weasley, who still works in the Ministry.” The corners of his eyes drew down as if in pain. “I don’t think Percy betrayed me. Not really.” He says that as if he could convince himself, Draco thought, and stroked the back of Harry’s hand. “But he may have given them information about me and the way I fought, the way I would try to shield someone else first, that influenced them. Corners didn’t find out exactly who planned the attack, but he was tired from traveling through the pipes. I’ll send him again when he’s rested.”

            Draco grimaced. It didn’t feel as good as he had thought it would, after all, to know a Weasley might have betrayed Harry. “I’m sorry,” he said.

            “So am I,” Harry said, and stared hollow-eyed at the wall.

*

            unneeded: They thought Harry was someone who would go along like a good little sacrificial lamb, basically, and that that must mean that he didn’t have any power of his own. Or at least some people were thinking that.

            AlterEquis: Very well put. Especially when they do have unresolved issues from the past to deal with.

            Shadowdog85: Thanks! I hope your computer is fixed, now.
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Ashborn