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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-Nine—Getting To the Bottom

            “You’re all right.”

            It was the only thing Ron had been able to say since Harry firecalled him. Harry smiled and nodded, and shifted a little so that Ron couldn’t see Shield crouching beside him like a talisman, head snapping in every direction. Ron might think that meant there was something frightening in the room with Harry, rather than it just being Shield’s usual paranoia. “Fine. I was burned, yes, but Snape and Malfoy gave me salve for the burns. And Shield had protected me from the worst of it.”

            Ron leaned forwards until it looked like he was going to fall headlong into the fire and sprawl on the library’s hearth. “You mean he would have protected you, if you had let him do it.”

            Harry sighed and used one hand to scratch Shield’s spine. He arched up with a sound like an iron purr, but kept looking in all directions. Harry tried to imagine the dragon sleeping on his lap, contented as Draco’s cat, and couldn’t. Essential alertness seemed built in. “Yes. I’ve learned my lesson now. If I get into a situation like that again—”

            “And you will, because you’re Harry Potter,” Ron interjected, making Harry smile at him.

            “Then I’ll let Shield take the brunt of the spells.” Harry waved a hand to dismiss the attack at the Ministry. He and Ron had already discussed how it looked from Harry’s perspective, what happened after he came back to the Ashborn’s fortress, and all the things Harry had done wrong. Since that was the kind of thing Harry had talked about with Snape and Draco, too, he was more interested in fresh news. “What about you? Did you make it out of there all right?”

            “One of their spells burned off all the hair on the left side of Hermione’s head. Bastards.”

            Harry drew in a deep breath. He would have liked the person who cast that particular curse to see Ron right now, especially if he thought it impossible for Harry’s friends to be dangerous because they were going back to Hogwarts in the autumn. Ron clenched a fist in front of him and continued.

            “We were more worried about you than anyone else, but otherwise it was like—the war. Just fighting. You know I can’t remember much about the individual battles.” Ron smiled at him and then looked down at his fist as if trying to remember what in the world it was doing there. He dropped it to his side and blew out a harsh breath. “But I want to know who did this, and I want to be part of the group that takes them down.”

            “You think a group will?” Harry had thought Ron would counsel waiting, especially if he was worried about Hermione. Hermione certainly would. She had always wanted a map of the entire area and a plan, even a list of goals, before they attacked one of Voldemort’s traps.

            “I know what I saw when Malfoy bonded you,” Ron said. “And the look in Snape’s eyes when he held your hands. It’s—weird, but I’ve had time to think about it, and it’s there. I don’t think they’re going to let the Ministry get away with this.”

            Shield rattled his wings one against the other, so they sounded like war drums. Harry nodded in response to the sound as well as Ron’s statement. “I sent Corners into the Ministry to spy, and Snape might do the same with some of the Ashborn.” Snape had made the statement at breakfast that morning, neutral-voiced, and said nothing else. “But, Ron…there’s the chance that Percy might have told them something about how I fight. That’s what Corners hinted at last night, when he came back from his spying.”

            Ron closed his eyes. “Of course he would,” he muttered. “And of course he would see nothing wrong with it, because why would he? It’s just information he can give the Ministry to make himself more important. It’s just news that they could find out some other way. That was the justification he always gave for telling Mum when I did something dangerous.”

            “Uh, Ron, you don’t have to do anything about it,” Harry said, because he thought Ron wouldn’t need a Pepper-Up Potion to make steam come out of his ears right now. “Forget I said anything, if you want. I’m sure Shield and Draco and Snape will help me punish him.”

            “Forget about it?” Ron’s eyes snapped open again. “When he’s my bloody brother?”

            “But I don’t think he meant to betray me,” Harry started again. Goddamn it, this was exactly what he had wanted to avoid, getting Ron involved and feeling like he had to turn against his family for Harry. Harry had broken enough things and people and relationships in his life so far. He wanted to build, now, and ignore those things that would tear him down in return. Stupid bloody Ministry, getting me involved in this again.

            “That doesn’t matter,” Ron said, shaking his head. “He still should have contacted Hermione and me after last night to ask us if we were all right. He didn’t. That’s a sign he’s feeling guilty, and guilt always unsettles Percy. He feels it so seldom.” There was a faint, hard smile on his face that Harry had last seen right before he killed one of Voldemort’s guard trolls.

            “Well, if you’re sure,” Harry said, because better to agree gracefully than to have to change things at the point of a wand.

            “Yes, I am,” Ron said. “Give me time to work on him. Don’t make a move concerning him yet.”

            Harry bit his lip as he thought about that. “I can try to keep Snape and Malfoy from doing that, but I don’t know how long I can,” he said. “Percy is the one solid lead we have, and I think that Snape is going to be desperate to show the Ministry what he can do, or what they shouldn’t have done to me.”

            “I’ll be as quick as I can,” Ron said. “No one expects me to launch a firecall like that, instead of Hermione.” He gave Harry a smile bright as mayhem and then disappeared into the flames.

            Harry leaned back on his elbows and stroked Shield again. The dragon rattled his wings one more time and closed his eyes, although his neck still twisted from side to side, and he lifted his head the instant Corners slithered under the wall.

            “You went out again already?” Harry asked in surprise, holding out his hand in case Corners wanted to join him. Shield sprang onto his shoulder and locked his wings in position for gliding, hissing at Corners. Corners flickered his tongue at the dragon in response and curled up in the cup on Harry’s bedside table.

            “I wished to,” Corners said. “The home-nest you have is fascinating.” Harry rolled his eyes. He had managed to make Corners understand that the Ministry was important and central to a lot of wizards, but he hadn’t managed to get him to see that it wasn’t because all the wizards in Britain were hatched in that place. “Many pipes, many songs of strange waters. I heard the strangest one of all this morning.”

            “What did you hear?” Harry asked, wondering if the Ministry might have offered alliance to the Water People. But then, Corners would probably find that familiar, not strange, and Harry couldn’t imagine the Ministry wanting to listen to the magical creatures as allies anyway.

            “The song of the dead.”

            Harry stared. Then he sat up and nodded. “And did you find a dead—person?” It was still hard to tell how Corners would hear him when he said that. As far as Harry knew, “person” in Parseltongue meant “snake,” but Corners might hear it as referring to another of the Water People.

            “I found a body.” Corners flicked his tongue out again, and this time Shield didn’t move, staring at him. Once again, Corners turned his head away regally, as though he didn’t have time to be bothered by the dragon’s staring. “A wizard body. Floating in the water as though someone had dumped it there. It was bloated, and small creatures had eaten the face.”

            Harry leaned back on his elbows again. “Then someone must have dumped it a long time ago.” His first thought was to connect the body with the fight last night, but of course, other conspiracies would happen in the Ministry all the time, and this body might have come from any one of them.

            “There was also the taste of fresh magic,” Corners said, in the strangely prim tone that he sometimes used to discuss wizarding spells, as though he assumed they didn’t fit the proper definition of magic that he used. “Spells to age. Spells to call the small creatures. The magic was thick around the body.”

            Harry hissed, a meaningless hiss, he thought, but Shield brought his head around and Corners jerked hard enough for Harry to feel a thin film of wetness on his fingers. “Sorry,” he mumbled, wondering what that meant in Parseltongue. “So—they wanted a plausible lie. If someone found the body, they would assume it couldn’t come from last night, not if it had spent a long time in the water.”

            “I smelled the cooked places,” Corners said. “As though someone had caught the body in fire.”

            Harry sighed and closed his eyes, massaging the bridge of his nose. Yes, of course someone would do that. The same kind of person who might decide it was a good idea to dump the body in the water in the first place. Or perhaps the fire had been accidental. The body could have come from the fight or been involved in the fight or died that way, who knew?

            “Could you find the body again?” he asked, studying Corners.

            Corners corkscrewed his neck into a tight bow. “Can you tell which way the wind is blowing?” he asked.

            Harry nodded. “All right. And—this is the part that I know you might not want to—could you speak to other wizards about where and how you found it?”

            “They could not speak to me.”

            “Yes, but I would translate for you.” Harry didn’t know how “translate” came out in Parseltongue, either, but he assumed Corners understood the concept, because he let his long eyelashes rest on his face in what looked like consideration instead of asking a question. Harry discovered he was holding his breath and made himself breathe out. Shield promptly bent down his head and studied the middle of Harry’s chest, probably to make out whether Harry was having a problem with his heart or lungs. Harry poked him to make him back off and then concentrated on breathing normally for a time.

            “I would do it,” Corners said, opening his eyes. “But you would not translate the words you wanted me to speak. Not the words that would make them comfortable. You would translate the words I spoke, and you would translate all their words to me.”

            “Even the insulting ones?” Harry asked, trying to imagine the Wizengamot’s reaction—or the reaction of what was left of the Wizengamot—to a Water Person hovering in a glass in front of them.

            “I want to know the truth,” Corners said. “All of it. When someone asks me for a tale about wizards, I want to tell the true ones, and if someone asks whether they should come up the river, I want to tell them if they should bother.”

            Harry smiled wanly. That was honest, at least. And he thought Corners had the right to make the decision for himself, and spread the warning. At least no one could ever harm the Water People in the depths of the ocean, where they could scatter themselves so widely that no one would know which particles of water belonged to them and which did not.

            “So I will find the body,” Corners said. “And then what will you do? What will you do if someone else finds it and takes it away?”

            Harry hesitated. Then he said, “Could you take someone else with you? If they could change into water themselves, or swim well with a charm on that would let      them breathe underwater?”

            “They would not believe you,” Corners said quickly. Harry grinned more strongly this time. Corners probably imagined how awkward it would be to have to herd a human through the pipes, and Harry couldn’t disagree with him. “It would be better if I went on my own, and made sure the body was not moved.”

            Harry looked up at Shield. “Could you take him with you? I know he’s a creature of fire, but he should be able to swim, and he doesn’t need to breathe in the way that a normal dragon would.”

            Corners flicked out his tongue again, and this time, Harry was sure that he could see contempt in the way it curled, although he didn’t know how he could accurately distinguish a serpent’s emotions like that. “I would rather take you swimming with a charm,” Corners said at last. “He is a creature of fire, yes. While he does not breathe, he was not made for this.”

            Harry decided from the tone of the refusal that it was probably better if he gave up asking Corners about Shield going with him. “All right,” he said. “Then I need to speak with the others, and we can decide what to do together.”

            “You do that.” Corners pulled his head back and dissolved into shapeless water in his glass, leaving Shield to make a soft chirring noise. Harry didn’t know what it meant, but Shield clung to him with his wings fluttering slowly for a long time before Harry could convince him to let go. And he might as well not have convinced him, since Shield followed him down the corridor towards Snape’s rooms when Harry opened his door. Harry rolled his eyes.

            I’m surrounded by a multitude of protective snakes. Honestly.

            But that thought at least made a good distraction from the thoughts that came over him as he stood outside Snape’s door. There was a sharp breath caught in the middle of his chest, and he couldn’t help remembering this was the first time he’d seen Snape in the flesh since they made the second set of Vows—

            Unless you count him trying to save your life when you showed up burned from the Ministry attack, or at breakfast this morning.

            But Harry didn’t count that, since the one was such a brief moment and Snape hadn’t spoken much at breakfast, and he couldn’t keep his hand from knocking twice at the door, instead of the single firm, confident time that he had planned on. Snape spoke his name, and Harry nodded and waited outside the door, not wanting to open it in case he startled defensive wards.

            I can do this. Of course I can. It’s not such a big deal.

*

            “Harry. Come in.”

            Severus stepped back, and told himself that to feel like a nervous host was to play the idiot. Of course Harry would come to seek him so that they could speak about the best way of action with regards to the Ministry. Of course Harry would resent that Severus might use the Ashborn against their will—if they could be said to have a will—and would want to complain.

            There was no reason for him to feel that he was carrying a large glass globe in his hands, one that might shatter with a single fall.

            Severus retreated to the far side of the room, and watched as Harry looked around. Severus had spent more than a year in these quarters already, and wondered how they would look to a stranger, which definition did not encompass him, Draco, or any of the Ashborn. The walls were plain dark stone, as the rest of the fortress was, but one could hardly see them for the bookshelves that stood against them, and the tapestry that depicted the slaughter of a unicorn by Muggle hunters. Severus had always rather valued that scene. Beauty and innocence brought to bay by the more powerful, and taught as a lesson in a series of compressed pictures.

            Harry’s eyes lingered on the tapestries, especially the one that showed the unicorn kicking out against a hunter while goring a hound, but he turned back to Severus without saying a word about it. “I need to talk to you about what Corners found when he went spying in the Ministry,” he said. “Do you want to get Draco, or should we talk about this alone?”

            “Alone,” Severus said, and regretted the snap in his voice when Harry stared at him. But he could not deny the way his insides clenched when he thought of the long conversation Draco and Harry had had, by themselves, yesterday, while he sat brooding over the list of names. Draco had mentioned it at dinner, casually. Severus had looked the other way and eaten more beans while he thought about it.

            “All right,” Harry said, and glanced around as though wondering which of the tall, black wood chairs he should take. Severus gestured at the nearest, and cast a Cushioning Charm on it. Harry paused to grin at him. “You don’t have to do that. They didn’t burn my arse.”

            “Give me—permission to do it,” Severus said, his voice strangled, though he couldn’t have said that whether that came from Harry’s playful tone, or the invocation of his arse, or something else. “I would like to—aid you.”

            Oh, yes, Severus, wonderful words, stiff as they are, when Draco would have said something more charming. That is the kind of gift that comes from being Lucius Malfoy’s son, while you are the son of an abusive Muggle.

            On the other hand, Harry might understand that, given his own childhood and the glimpses he had picked up of Tobias during their Occlumency sessions in fifth year. Harry at least looked at him thoughtfully instead of laughing, and then nodded. “Thank you,” he said.

            Severus nodded back, and took the chair opposite him, and stirred the fire so that it threw light throughout the room. The colors in the tapestries caught it and gleamed richly. He suppressed the impulse to try to impress Harry with the age of his books and the finely-made cauldron in the corner; Harry didn’t know enough about such subjects to be impressed.

            They stared at each other in silence.

            Severus felt a sharp prickling steal over his body as Harry looked at him. Who could know what Harry saw? He might value Draco’s open, polished beauty, gleaming like steel, far more than he would something like Severus’s deft fingers and Potions skill. Severus had not much idea what the real Harry Potter, as opposed to his cracked image of the boy, liked or valued.

            Loyalty. Compassion. The desire to help others. Freedom.

            Well. Severus let out a slow breath. Perhaps he would not be good at exercising those virtues that Harry valued, but the fact that he could name them to himself when he wanted was at least a good sign that he knew something about Harry.

            “Corners found a body floating in the water, somewhere in the Ministry,” Harry said abruptly. “He thinks that it has something to do with the confrontation last night, because there were spells on it to make it look as if it had been in the water longer than it really had. And he says that Percy Weasley might have told someone something about me. My fighting skills, maybe.” He watched Severus with a lowered head that seemed to wait for an explosion.

            Severus narrowed his eyes. “I am not pleased that that happened, but I will not harm him if you do not wish me to,” he said.

            Harry blinked, then smiled faintly. “Thank you, sir.”

            “Can you use my first name yet?” Severus asked. “I have seen you do it for Draco, but you seem to avoid mine.”

            Harry squared his shoulders. “And you would rather talk about that than about what Corners found?” he asked, as if testing.

            “Yes,” Severus said. “I think we must. We will speak in full conference with Draco about the body and Percy Weasley later, but this—why do you smile?” he added, because Harry was grinning, and not doing much to hide it.

            “Because you speak so formally, even when no one’s around to hear you,” Harry said, and then paused. “It reminds me of the old days at Hogwarts,” he said. “I don’t want to think about them, but I always do when I’m around you and Draco.”

            “Can you be in a sexual relationship with us?” Severus asked. He could feel the universal gasp in his head, the voices of all the Slytherins who had ever trained with him or helped him or advised him. To speak in such a way, so bluntly and directly, about a private matter, was worse than Gryffindor; it was vulgar. But Severus saw no other way to approach the matter, since Harry seemed to have developed the art of dancing aside from the subject no matter how Severus spoke of it.

            Sure enough, Harry choked on air, and then sat staring at Severus in incredulity that was less than flattering. But before Severus could regret speaking as he had, Harry sighed and stared at his hands.

            “That’s honest,” he whispered. “The least I can do is be honest in return.” He looked up. “Yes.”

            “You can—?” Severus prodded, because he did not believe what he had asked for himself.

            “Yes, I can see myself in a sexual relationship with you and Draco,” Harry said, and smiled at him.

            Severus closed his eyes. He would do something, say something, if he had them open that he did not wish to do or say. He did not know what that was, but the knowledge he did have was enough. He remained still for long moments, his breath coming in and out of his lungs as if he were about to collapse, until the sensation went past.

            “Good,” he said, opening his eyes. “Then we may as well speak on the Ashborn. I could send an Ashborn with Corners to find this body, or at least spy out its position. I can extend my senses through their eyes and ears, as you have reason to know.” Harry winced a little, but nodded. “Is this an acceptable compromise?”

            “I wish you would free them,” Harry said, sitting motionless, eyes on him. He paused, then added, “Severus.”

            Had it been Draco sitting in front of him, Severus would have accused him of using his first name this time simply to manipulate him. He doubted Harry would do such a thing on purpose, but he might on accident. Severus again allowed a moment to go by, and then said, “I could send Incognita. But I could not see through her eyes as I could with someone still under my control—”

            “You mean someone enslaved?” Harry leaned forwards until he was hanging off the seat of the chair. “You might as well say the words you mean, you know.”

            Severus bared his teeth. “I did not consider it slavery,” he said. “In many ways, I still do not. It was the only way that Draco and I survived the death of the Dark Lord. If I had not taken control of the Death Eaters, they would have slaughtered us as traitors.”

            “You could have used the control of their minds to make them stand back and let you by,” Harry said, and from his smile, Severus could feel the pointed shape of the words that were coming. “And then let them go once you were free. Or taken control of the ones like Bellatrix that you thought would never stop hunting you. But to take all of them? That’s what I don’t understand.”

            “I wished to be absolutely safe,” Severus said. “I will not defend the desire.” He took care to sit with his arms at his sides, not in the defensive closed position he wanted to adopt. “But I could not be safe when someone remained free who had a grudge against me as they had reason to have a grudge.”

            “That time is past,” Harry said quietly, insistently, and this time he looked as if he might explode out of his chair and at Severus. Severus told himself with what he hoped was equal insistence that it would not happen, but his heart sped up and he felt the dump of adrenaline into his veins. “The—he’s dead. The Ashborn are a feared power in the world, and no one’s going to attack you out of nowhere. You should let them go.”

            “You have enemies in the Ministry,” Severus said harshly. “And when the world becomes aware that I stand at your side, I will have enemies, too. You expect me to let the Ashborn go, at the precise moment it would do me good to have a guard around me?”

            “It’s let them go,” Harry said. “Eventually. With time, and the assurance that you can work on the binding spells on their minds to mean they have some free will and mind left.” He paused and took a deep breath. “But yeah. Eventually, it’s let them go or let me go.”

            Severus told himself it was no more than what he had expected. He told himself that Harry was not demanding as much as he could have, as much as he might have had he not felt an equal interest in Severus and Draco to what they felt in him. He told himself that he would do very well with Bellatrix and Greyback still under the binding and some, like Incognita, who would stay with him because they had nowhere else to go.

            He told himself that, and he still felt as if someone had knocked all the walls of his fortress down.

            “I said eventually,” Harry said, and Severus snapped his head around to say that he knew that—and then shut his mouth. Harry’s eyes were far too bright, and he saw too deep and too far. Severus had to look away again. Harry paused, and when he spoke again, at least he didn’t use his words as he could have, to open Severus up and flay him. “I know this is hard for you. But it will be harder for the people who lived without their free will for months, maybe years, and now have it back again. That’s what tempers my compassion and keeps me from feeling as sorry for you as I could have.”

            Severus snorted weakly. “Are you sorry for me?” he murmured. “You do not show it.”

            “I feel sorry for anyone who has to enslave other people to make themselves feel better,” said Harry. “I even felt some pity for Voldemort before the end. Not enough not to kill him, and I think that my pity had faded completely by the time we came into our final conflict. But it was there.”

            Severus had to look then, and he despised the look in Harry’s eyes as he never had before. “I did not bind them to make myself feel better,” he said, coating the words with the contempt that he felt they deserved. “I told you why I did it.” He was tempted to repeat the true explanations, but if he had done it once and Harry hadn’t been convinced by them, there was no reason to say them again.

            Harry shrugged and leaned back. “All right. Sooner or later, motivation stops mattering, and what matters is the result.”

            “How Slytherin of you,” Severus sneered, and caught his tongue between his teeth. Those words might make Harry draw back, and then he and Draco would have all the work to do over again, if they wanted to keep him. It was a problem Severus had had all his life: letting the immediate impulse destroy the long-term gain.

            Harry only smiled. “Yes, all right, you can say that. But in this case, you’re the one who has to act like a Gryffindor. Face the fact that you’ve done something wrong, and apologize. In this case, by freeing them.”

            “That is Gryffindor?” Severus arched an eyebrow. “I certainly recall a number of them who would not apologize for what they had done even if someone rubbed their noses in their crimes.”

            Harry nodded. “I was like that, too. I’m sorry.” Severus opened his mouth to ask how Harry knew Severus had not been speaking of him, but Harry continued, his calm almost majestic. “And I know I’m asking a lot. That’s why I want to give you time. And there are some Ashborn that can never be released, like Bellatrix probably.”

            “And Greyback,” Severus said, at his most dry. “Unless you know some miraculous method to control a werewolf who preys on children.”

            Harry shook his head. “All right. You can make a list of the ones that you don’t think you can control or that would go insane without the Mark, and then we can discuss it.”

            “You talk of giving nothing up, I notice,” Severus said.

            “A few things, yes,” Harry said calmly. “Like privacy from my friends’ constant questions for a few months. Even if Ron and Hermione have accepted you, the rest of the Weasleys won’t make it so easy. But I’ll be the one they yell at, since they know yelling at you and Draco wouldn’t do any good.”

            “A miracle I managed to teach them that much,” Severus muttered, thinking of the endless procession of red-heads through his classroom.

            “But mostly, I don’t think of this as a sacrifice,” Harry said. “I think of this as something I want to do.” He reached out, and his fingers slid over Severus’s palm uncertainly for a moment before clasping and holding tight. “You can think of it the same way, if you want. Or as a price. A price paid to gain something greater.”

            That, Severus was familiar with. And he had once thought that he was done paying such prices once he set up the Ashborn, that he had the people surrounding him he would live with and who would shelter and guard him and give him the experience of being a Lord to the end of his days.

            He ought to have known it would not be that simple from the first moment he demanded Harry Potter as a hostage.

            He sighed and spent a moment thinking. Harry waited, hand still extended, body still. Severus turned his hand over and closed his fingers so that he could feel Harry’s fingers and palm, wondering as he did so if this was what he wanted.

            And he felt it, and he made his decision.

            “You and I will need to go over the list carefully,” he said. “I will not take the risk of missing someone who must remain under control and risking a stampede through my lab, or one that would put Draco’s life, and yours, at risk. And I can only do them one at a time. Releasing the bindings on Incognita took a great deal of my strength and gave me a headache.” He paused, then added, “And I want to wait until I can send one of them through the water beside your snake. An accurate report through their eyes and ears is the only way I can be certain of the evidence.”

            “But then?” Harry breathed, as delicately as if his breath would make a spiderweb tremble.

            “Then,” Severus said, “it will happen. As you ask for.”

            Harry’s smile was like the morning.

*

            “Can I come with you when you and Thera visit Laughter?”

            Draco started and turned around. He had just left the centaurs’ garden, after making the final preparations with Thera for how she would accompany him tonight. He hadn’t expected Harry to be lurking against a wall.

            Draco waited a moment, both to make sure he would speak the right words and to soothe the jealousy he had felt that afternoon as he watched Harry go into Severus’s quarters. What had they talked about, all their long, private meeting alone?

            Perhaps something of the same level of intimacy that you and Harry talked about?

            The thought made him lay down his hackles, and he nodded to Harry, though not a nod of agreement. “Why would you want to?” he asked. “You told me often enough that you cared nothing for the alliance, and you broke your promise to the centaurs.”

            “I—I’m interested in it now,” Harry said, taking a step forwards.

            “Why?” Draco repeated, and folded his arms. “I’ll bring you if you really want to come, but it’ll take a while to remember how to dream to include a third person, instead of just two. Two was hard enough. I’m not going to do it for some whim of yours.”

            Harry spent a moment scratching his forehead under the fringe. Draco’s eyes followed his fingers irresistibly, but he couldn’t make out the old scar.

            “Because it concerns you,” Harry said at last, and the way he flushed and turned his face away told Draco that he hadn’t been searching for an answer, the way Draco had assumed. Instead, he’d been searching for an acceptable way to phrase it. “If—if you want me to come, I’d like to. If it isn’t too much trouble.”

            Draco took a moment to appreciate the mad wildness of his life. Three years ago, he never could have imagined Harry Potter asking permission to accompany him and a centaur on a dream-journey to the leader of the werewolves.

            Then again, three years ago he would have thought he wasn’t smart or competent enough to attempt something like this, and centaurs and werewolves would have been “just” magical creatures to him.

            And Harry Potter just a Gryffindor.

            “I want you to think about it more,” he said, before he could spoil the moment with too much consideration. Harry blinked at him, and then narrowed his eyes.

            “Are you saying that because you think my interest isn’t sincere?” he asked, his voice so low that Draco had to tilt his head to hear him. “I promise you, Draco, it is. There’s no way that—that I can make up for what I did by leaving the centaurs, maybe, but I do care about the alliance because you care about it.”

            “Yes, but right now, you would unbalance this fragile respect I have from Laughter,” Draco said, and he knew the words were true as he spoke them, but he still couldn’t believe that he was saying them. He should have jumped at the chance to have Harry by his side. All his political instincts said so, and it seemed true the longer he thought about it. Why wouldn’t it be true?

            But at the same time, he had a new set of instincts, the ones derived from the moments he’d actually spent in Laughter’s company, and convincing Thera. And of course, there was another reason.

            “I don’t know if Thera would want to come with me if she knew that you were going, either,” he added.

            Harry blinked, then smiled faintly. “I reckon I have to make a few more sacrifices than I thought I would, after all,” he muttered.

            “This isn’t a sacrifice I’m demanding of you,” Draco said. “I’m asking you.”

            “The way I asked you if I could go.” Harry didn’t make it a question, though Draco thought it might have started out as one. He nodded, and then said, “That makes sense, Draco. I’ll see you later.” He turned and left.

            Draco leaned against the wall, and tried to work out the clashing, changing, challenging emotions in himself.

            In the end, he had to give it up as a bad job. He would understand better later; right now, he had a political meeting to prepare for.

*

            unneeded: Yes, whoever orchestrated this plan thought Snape and Draco would be willing to abandon Harry, and that isn’t true.

            AlterEquis: Thanks! He should be a regular player from now on.
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Ashborn