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Ashborn	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 36149 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
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Chapter Three--Perils of Communication

            Harry's second full day among the Ashborn was much like the one before. He rose when Bellatrix called to him, she took him out for exercise and he looked for the white raven--this time without seeing it--and he went back in and had breakfast. Once again, nothing in the breakfast was really unfamiliar and nothing was exciting.

            Harry swallowed his bread with a small grin. He had to admit that "excitement" as far as food was concerned was something he didn't miss. Huddled under a dripping bush with Hermione and Ron right beside him, sharing dried meat and fruit and trying not to think about the Death Eaters stumbling around behind them...

            Harry cut the memory off with a shudder. If he thought too much about it, then it would turn into a memory of Seamus's death, and he preferred not to relive that.

            "Speak."

            Harry glanced up in surprise. Bellatrix stood by the door, beckoning him, although he hadn't finished his meal. Harry hastily swallowed the food he was chewing, palmed a few scraps for later the way he'd done it for the snake the day before yesterday, and stood up to follow her.

            They passed some Ashborn on the way. All of them looked once at Harry and then seemed to dismiss him, perhaps because the woman guiding him had to be the most fanatically loyal of all. Harry watched their focused eyes and the way they walked, never varying from their paths. All of them seemed to have agreed as to what those paths would be in advance, so that they never bumped into one another. He could envy them that unity of purpose.

            Then he shuddered. No, I won't, not when they probably only have it because Snape's controlling them all.

            They turned away from the large, blank doors of the library, to Harry's disappointment. He had thought he might stand a decent chance of sneaking a book out if Malfoy or Snape wanted to speak him there. He'd had plenty of practice at sleight-of-hand during the war, when his life had depended on concealing a weapon more than once, and might have succeeded at it yesterday if Malfoy hadn't surprised him.

            And if the book hadn't been so big. As Ron would say, "Know what you can do and what you can't in your own head, even if you brag out loud."

            Harry clamped his lips shut. He hated to admit, even to himself, how much he missed Ron and Hermione, because he knew it would get worse before it got better. He might have letters; he doubted that Snape would permit him any visits.

            I chose this. This is the way life is going to be, and you should have killed yourself if you couldn't bear it.

            There was, in fact, no provision in the Vows against suicide. Harry stroked the thought briefly, then put it away as Bellatrix halted in front of a large wood-paneled door and knocked twice. He would have to think about it later, when he wasn't around two people who were watching in paranoid anxiety for him to try something.

            "Enter," said Snape's dry voice, and Harry stepped through, faintly surprised. He had assumed that Malfoy would have the task of baby-sitting him for the day. He was sure it must be boring for Snape.

            The room beyond was the most interesting space he'd seen yet in Ashborn territory. There were three fireplaces, spaced apart from each other in a triangle; in fact, Harry thought, the room itself only had three walls. All of the fireplaces were going in a blaze, which made Harry cast a Cooling Charm on himself. The light played over a large, round table in the center, with three chairs arranged about it. Snape and Malfoy were sitting in two of them. Bellatrix marched forwards and halted against the wall, large, quivering eyes fixed on Snape, so Harry reckoned that the third chair was for him. He took it, studying the thing in the center of the table.

            After a few minutes of staring, "thing" was still the best name that he could come up with for it. It resembled a cylinder covered with rings of different metals. Harry thought he could identify iron, silver, and gold, but the others were a mystery to him. He tried to count them, but the effort made his eyes water. For one thing, some of the rings were entwined with and buried beneath others.

            For another, it was perfectly obvious that the thing was the focus of powerful magic. Harry leaned back in his seat and looked from Snape to Malfoy, awaiting some explanation.

            Snape stayed still, his hands clasped in front of him, his legs crossed at the ankles. He looked as though he could hold the pose for hours, entirely comfortable. Malfoy, on the other hand, was perched at the very edge of the chair, fidgeting back and forth. His eyes were locked on Harry, and his forehead had a beading of sweat.

            Use a Cooling Charm, idiot, Harry thought. He wondered if Snape had willed him not to, and felt another stab of pity for Malfoy. He was nowhere near as free or powerful as he thought he was.

            Harry had played the waiting game with Death Eaters, with Order members reluctant to acknowledge that a teenager had to take a leading role in this war, and with Voldemort himself. It took more than two stares to unnerve him. He studied the object instead, and had just made out that it stood on three evenly spaced fins that looked like rocket fins and echoed the spacing of the chairs and the fireplaces when Malfoy lost it and spoke.

            "You're going to help us use your magic," he said harshly.

            "If you're planning to drain me," Harry said, hiding the way his adrenaline spiked and his mouth dried out, "then I believe that counts as something I can defend myself against."

            Snape spoke up, eyes passionless as a fly's. "You misunderstand. Our device has the makings of an incubitum from many powerful wizards. But there is little that either Draco or I can do to affect it now, it possesses so much magic from us. We wish you to focus your power on it."

            Which sounded simple enough, but... "Its name implies that it's a concentration of something," Harry said. "What? And what are you going to do with the power?"

            Snape paused. Harry didn't think he would have noticed it if Snape hadn't been lifting his hand to, apparently, touch the device, and his fingers froze for a moment in midair. Harry's fucked-up brain noticed it happen, of course. Such moments could be the ones right before an enemy pulled a wand or flung something as a distraction, and his instincts wouldn't let him forget that.

            "You have read of this," Snape said.

            "Not really," Harry said. "Or I would already know the answer." He squinted at the device, which shimmered as though it was passing through a mirage now. "I just know what the word incubitum means. And I won't lend you my magic if it's going to be used in a way that hurts people."

            "You know the word," Malfoy said, sounding as if that particular revelation destroyed the world as he knew it.

            Harry glanced at him and raised an eyebrow. "Yes. I studied Latin during the war, when I realized that it could be useful for more than just making my enemies laugh when I tried to pronounce it. I needed it to grasp and invent some spells." He peered at the device again. The latest shimmer had faded, but that left him no closer to understanding it.

            "I have sworn a Vow not to use magic against your former associates," Snape said. He spoke as though someone had stuck a fork down his throat. Harry wondered if the git was really that irritated about him knowing Latin. Irritated at the way it messes up his preconceptions of me, probably. "Do you think that I would attempt to break it, if I was going to, in front of you, with a device this simple?"

            "There are other people you could use it against," Harry said.

            "Such as who?" Oh, Snape was definitely speaking through gritted teeth now.

            "The Ashborn," Harry said. "And that would make a neat way for you to have me break my Vows at the same time, since I swore not to hurt them except in self-defense." He closed his eye and reached out with--well, he thought of them as "tendrils" since he envisioned them that way, but Hermione got all stroppy when he said the word, so Harry reckoned it was something more like another sense. Snape and Malfoy weren't about to let him cast a spell that would tell him anything about the incubitum, so he would see what he could discover about it this way.

            The sensation that came back to him was one of intense cold. Harry frowned, opening his eyes. Healing magic registered as warm to him, death magic as slimy, and defensive magic as a beaming light. He didn't think that he'd ever felt cold before without some other sensation to mix into it and lessen it.

            "We do not intend to make you break your Vows," Snape said. His voice had deepened. Someone was not only sticking the fork down his throat, but twisting it around so that it gripped his intestines and wound them in all sorts of directions, likely.

            "But that would be the easiest way to get rid of me," Harry said, and smiled at him. "And I don't think that you really want me around all the time, hostage deal or not."

*

            No one talks to Severus that way.

            Draco watched the interactions happening in front of him in somewhat of a daze. He was used to cringing appeasement from the emissaries the Ministry sent them, complemented by deference from the Ashborn and Severus's patient answers to his own eager questions. Someone didn't defy Severus this way, casually, without even anger or hatred behind the words to give them a reason to exist.

            Oh, logically Draco knew that Potter must hate Severus. The risks he'd taken and some of the things he said only made sense if seen that way. But he didn't show it, and seemed more interested in the incubitum than either of them.

            Draco glanced at Severus from the corner of one eye, and found that he was sitting too still, his eyes fixed on Potter. When he looked like that, he would strike. Draco had never seen a situation where he didn't.

            And if he did, that would free Potter to strike back. Draco knew Severus would win the contest in the end, because he was stronger and smarter and faster than anyone else in the world. But Potter had fought in a war, and had casually revealed abilities just now that he shouldn't have had. It was possible that he might hurt Severus.

            Draco didn't want that to happen, so he started talking. "I can't believe that you care so much about the Ashborn," he told Potter flatly. "Not when so many of them were your enemies until Severus took them in hand, and not when you killed so many of the Death Eaters in the war."

            "That was Death Eaters," Potter said, turning on him in a way that said he was glad to have a weaker opponent than Severus. Draco hid a vicious smile. Potter was a weakling and, under the shell of Gryffindor bravery, a coward. That was worth knowing. "Not Ashborn."

            "They're the same groups," Draco said, and deliberately didn't touch his left arm. He had borne the Dark Mark there until Severus changed it to the black eagle. But Draco's Mark was different from any other, and he didn't want to show it to Potter. Potter didn't deserve to see it.

            "No," Potter said. "The name change isn't the only thing that separates them. Their goals, and who they obey, and what they fight for, are different, too. I think that my people can coexist with the Ashborn, or I would never have made this bargain. They couldn't have coexisted with Voldemort."

            "You think that we can." Severus's voice was soft. Draco took a quick glance at him and saw that the need to strike had vanished from his face. He was sitting back from the table, his hands once again resting loosely in his lap. Draco swallowed, basking in such relief that he nearly didn't hear Potter's reply.

            "Coexist with Voldemort?" Potter grinned, apparently enjoying the way Severus's face shut down when he heard the name. That only confirmed Draco's suspicion that Potter was an arsehole. "No. But coexist with my people, yes." His eyes and his face went cool. "If I had thought that you would find a way around the Vows and destroy my people, or that you couldn't or wouldn't make the Vows, then yeah, I would have fought to the bitter end."

            "Thus dooming all those who depended on you." Draco flinched. Severus's contempt stung him like hot sand flung into his nostrils. He wondered how Potter could stand it.

            "I would have died fighting you," Potter said. He didn't sound upset about it. He sounded like it was normal. Draco frowned. He had thought that Potter was someone who would rather go on existing, do anything to go on existing, than die. Had he been wrong? Perhaps not, if Potter was imagining all death to be noble. "But then someone else would have come along and compromised. I would be gone, though. I would be dead. Yeah, I would be incapable of existing in the same world as someone who was basically Voldemort come again."

            Again the flinch. Draco leaned forwards, wanting to take some of the burden of the conversation from Severus, as well as lead it in a direction that would hopefully aim away from the name that hurt them both. "None of that has anything to do with the situation in front of us, Potter."

            "The incubitum?" Potter asked, turning back to it. "No, it doesn't. If you'll explain to me what it does, then I might consider giving it some of my magic."

            Severus laid one hand flat on the table. Draco had seen him do the same thing when pinning down a piece of parchment, and he relaxed a little. He didn't think Severus was upset, not if he was doing that.

            "You need understand only this," Severus said. "That it is a ward, of an unusual kind. It lets us prevent threats rather than react only at their approach. We can fight offensively instead of defensively."

            Potter looked once more at the rings of metal that encircled the incubitum, then turned to Severus. "You mean it lets you see the future where your enemies attack, rather than just sit there until they come?" he asked.

            Draco gaped. Severus made a sharp gesture, and Draco shut his mouth. Potter's eyes had already noted his expression, and he smiled a little. Draco ducked his head in shame. He hadn't meant to give that much away.

            "How did you make it work?" Potter asked, almost as if talking to himself. "Divination is neither art nor science, as Hermione would say...oh, that's it, isn't it? You need a lot of power. That's why you need so much magic from everyone who'll live under the protection of the ward."

            Severus's face was a study. Draco ducked his head again almost the minute he looked up, and bit his lip, struggling to understand his own conflicting impulses. Of course he was baffled and upset that Potter had guessed the purpose of the incubitum that easily, but...

            But...

            But he also had to look away from Severus so that he could fight the desperate urge to laugh.

*

            Severus had not known.

            No one could have figured it out who did not know, let alone a Potter who was desperately behind on magical theory, a class not offered at Hogwarts. He had never attended to the small scraps of theory that Severus offered during his classes, either, and Severus knew that the boy did not have the kind of brain that would seek out such material because he took a delight in it.

            There must have been cheating of some kind.

            But immediately Severus's mind hit the barriers of his own logic and rebelled, because who would have told Potter about the incubitum and what it could do? The Ashborn obeyed Severus. Draco had no reason to disobey him. Severus himself was not in the habit of sleepwalking and blurting out secrets he wished to keep silent to immature boys who thought the world revolved around them and presumed to make moral pronouncements that most of the Ashborn would have laughed at.

            No, he did not know how Potter would have learned what the ward did. Perhaps he should simply put it down to a lucky guess and move on. Already he had spent too much time considering this, and Potter was beginning to turn bright eyes away from the incubitum and watch Severus. He might learn too much from his silence.

            "Will you contribute magic or not?" Severus asked. "The ward might function better if you do. On the other hand, you have no reason to feel loyalty to us."

            "If you're actually thinking about protecting me, I might have reason to feel more," the brat said, and of course there was insolence in his voice. All pride and insolence; why had Severus ever thought he would be otherwise? "But I also only have your word for it that that's what this thing does." He reached out to flick a fingernail against the lowest ring of metal, the gold.

            Severus snatched for his hand, but too late. The incubitum blurred, and Potter ended up flung across the room, hitting his head on the far wall and slumping down with a little groan. His body shook as though someone was standing just out of sight and wringing him like a wet cloth. Severus could understand the temptation.

            Potter stopped shaking a moment later, and lay there for a minute breathing. Draco reached out one hand, then drew it back against his side, shooting an abashed look at Severus out of the corner of his eye. Severus looked back with calm sternness. He would not forget the gesture, although perhaps it had only meant that Draco wanted to make sure Potter was not dead, rather than that he wanted to help him.

            Potter sat up in the corner and put a hand to the back of his head. He nodded to himself, then staggered to his feet and made his way back to the table.

            "Will it do something like that to anyone who does try to bypass the wards, if they get that far?" he asked.

            Severus blinked. "It was meant only to defend itself if someone discovered what it was and tried to destroy it."

            "A simple touch is destruction?" Potter looked at the incubitum exactly as if it had not injured him--or, more likely, Severus thought, as though it was something he could respect because it had. "No, I think it has other defensive properties. If you could make a backup system based on it if its predictions fail and someone does manage to attack the Ashborn on their own ground..."

            "I would be the one to make any decision," Severus replied as repressively as he could, when Potter seemed to have changed masks and forms with someone else yet again. His eyes glinted, and he was leaning forwards as if peering at the rings of metal would let him see under the surface to the incubitum's secret.

            "Yeah, yeah," Potter said, in such a faint voice that Severus didn't think he meant offense. It would have been more offensive--and more interesting--to have Potter focused on dismissing him instead of ignoring him. "But there are possibilities here. I'd like to contribute magic to something that would keep me safe, like I said. But it could keep all of us safer if we focused on the offense as well as on the defense. Which would be defense at the same time, see?" He looked up with a face that shone.

            "I do not."

            Something in Severus's voice, perhaps his tone, got through to the stubborn boy at last. His face shut, and he nodded. "Then I'd prefer not to contribute any magic," he said, and stood up and walked back to the door where Bellatrix waited for him. "Thanks all the same."

            Bellatrix hesitated, looking back and forth between Potter and Severus with liquid dark eyes. Severus gestured violently, and she started and hurried after Potter. She reached out as if she would put one hand on his shoulder to guide him, but Potter dodged her without looking back and kept walking.

            Severus shut his eyes and leaned back in his chair. That had not turned out as he wished, but that was no reason to deny himself basic amenities such as rational thought. The blazing hatred that had sprung up in him as pale blue fire would simply have to wait. He needed this morning free and calm for working on the incubitum and then perfecting a potion that would let him know if his mental control over the Ashborn was slipping.

            "Severus?"

            Draco's quiet voice was the last straw. Severus opened his eyes and shook his head, unable to speak. Luckily, the gesture he made towards the door needed no words to translate it. Draco reared to his feet, his face bright and frightened, and ran for it.

            Alone, Severus lowered his head and placed his hands over his face.

            He did not know why, of all the people he had encountered, killed, fought, taught, and been tortured by, only Potter had the ability to irritate him like this.

*

            The bump on the back of Harry's head hurt.

            But it also seemed to have paid for itself twice over. Snape and Malfoy didn't summon him again.

            Now and then he saw them, of course, because he would pass Malfoy in the corridors, clutching a sheaf of parchment or a book and looking abstracted, or Snape on his way to the lab. On one memorable occasion, he saw Snape--although he didn't think Snape saw him, because he didn't try to Obliviate Harry--walking half-naked, holding a drenched and dripping robe in front of him. It looked as though someone had soaked it with emerald-colored paint.

            Harry bit his lip hard to keep from laughing. It cheered him up a little, to know that even the Great Snape could have potions blow up in his face on occasion.

            The little snake came back to him the fourth evening he was there, with many complaints about how long the journey was and how many people had tried to kill him before they realized he was carrying a letter. Harry sympathized, and murmured, and fed him scraps of food until the snake was satisfied and went to sleep next to his pillow. Then he tore open the letter Ron and Hermione had sent him.

            No, wait, there were two letters. One was Ron's, scratched and ink-stained as though his best friend had spent a lot of time trying to decide what to say. Harry could understand that. Ron had agreed to Harry's plan, but it took a lot of persuasion, and he had volunteered to go himself as a hostage instead.

            Snape might have agreed to that. If he'd thought I wouldn't dare do anything to him as long as he held Ron, which I wouldn't have...

            Harry shook his head impatiently. No, that was being selfish. He wouldn't wish this cheerless hell on anyone, but especially not Ron, who had his family and his life with Hermione to look forward to.

            Dear Harry,

            How did the world get so quiet with you gone? (The word quiet was underlined three times, and then Ron had gone back and put a line above it, too). I don't understand it.

            Everyone here misses you. I've caught Mum crying twice, although she tries to put a brave face on it. George and Fred keep swearing they'll come up with some way to get you out of there, because the Vows didn't say anything about jokes or pranks. Dad keeps saying how much better things would be if you were here. And Ginny just sits at meals sometimes and stares off into the distance.

            Harry sighed and leaned back on the pillow, shaking his head. He and Ginny were--difficult. They'd dated for a bit in sixth year, and then Dumbledore and Snape and Malfoy had happened, and Harry had decided that he couldn't take her on the Horcrux hunt. She had helped in other ways, though, especially with setting up the trap that had ultimately lured Voldemort into a place where they could take him.

            And sometimes they were passionate and Harry knew she had forgiven him. And then they'd have another argument about how much Harry was willing to risk his life but not hers, and there would be cold weeks or months of silence again.

            He would have to hope that Ginny found someone else, and that she was only reacting so badly because his absence was new. He knew that he couldn't be the kind of husband and lover she needed.

            Hermione's going to send you her own letter, so I won't say anything about her, but Merlin's saggy testicles, mate, I miss you. There's no one here to play Quidditch with who does it right. There's no one to share the memories with. There's no one to plan with. Everyone else except us seems to have decided that the peace is the important thing, and they don't want to talk about what we had to give up to get it.

            Harry shrugged. He hadn't expected anything less. Actually, he wouldn't mind if the outside world, except for his friends, forgot about him. It would prevent them trying to sneak in something or someone that would tempt him to break his Vows.

            And I'd better stop here, because I sound all bitter and upset, and you're probably enduring more than I ever can. Let's hope that we can see each other again someday, mate.

            Ron.

            Harry waited a long, silent moment, and then put Ron's letter to one side. He would have to think a while before he could write the reply that a letter like that deserved. Hermione's was probably going to be easier in some ways.

            It was, although not for all the reasons that Harry had expected. Hermione spent less time talking about her own anger and grief because Harry had been taken hostage by the Ashborn and more talking about speculations surrounding the magical nature of Unbreakable Vows.

            If there's a Vow made that only uses the original wands, then you can break free of them if you break your wand and pick up a new one. Or if you take over someone else's wand. At least, that's what some of the books say. They don't give examples of anyone who's actually succeeded in doing that and defying the Vows, except in legends. Still, I'm going to write to Ollivander and see if he can teach me something about wandlore. It's got to be worth a chance.

            Harry frowned. He would write back to Hermione as soon as possible, then, because he really didn't want her to spend too much time on this. He was--not entirely content with where he was, but willing to endure, especially now that Snape and Malfoy were leaving him alone. He didn't want to take the chance of breaking the Vows.

            Especially because that would probably shatter the endurance that was allowing him to live and fill him with hope again. There was no way he could stay here for the rest of his life if he knew there was a way out of the Vows, even a remote chance of one.

            But it's really better that I be here. War would be worse than anything the Ashborn can do to me.

            Harry glanced at the sleeping snake and smiled. Even if he wrote his letters to Ron and Hermione right now, it would probably be a few days before the snake would agree to be Apparated again and go through the tedious journey to deliver them. He could do something else before then.

            He rose to his feet, took up his wand, and looked around speculatively.

            In the meantime...

            In the meantime, he was going to see what he could do about getting some colors on these goddamn walls.

*

            Draco leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms over his head, listening to the popping of bones in his back. Then he picked up another cold forkful of duck with orange sauce and ate it, staring into the fire. He would have liked to share both the meal and the magical massage he'd need after sitting in the same chair for so long with Severus, but this was one of the evenings that Severus had locked himself in the lab and seemed inclined to stay there.

            Besides, his body felt, at the moment, like only a simple container for the whirling insights that he had finally begun to pluck from the tangled branches of Argellus Black's book.

            Ancient pure-blood society had never been the separate set of fortresses and heavily-armed, carefully-negotiating families that Draco had dreamed it was. It was, indeed, based on the ideal of cooperation that a few families like Lady Jocelyn's still followed, and the notion of links and bonds and intertwining and split loyalties and multiple marriages and different kinds of alliances.

            It was...

            It was far more complicated than Draco had envisioned. Less individualist. Less committed to the notion that families must advance and have their own children. Most of the families that Draco had read about, or the casual references to families dropped among the runes of the book he was translating, were of that mixed and blended kind. The children were someone else's children as well as your own. Instead of one partner marrying into a family and giving up their heritage so that their children would only be heirs of one particular bloodline, they always knew they came from two or more origins, and their children would have all those origins as well as the origins carried in the blood of the other partner.

            Draco's mother had always told him that genealogy was a pastime of the Black side of the family. Draco had wondered how that could be. Surely you learned your own family tapestry and the tapestries of the other major pure-blood families, and you were done.

            Now he saw why it could keep someone's attention occupied. People changed throughout their lives. They could be exiled from one of their birth families, fostered in a new one, adopted, changed in such profound ways by powerful magic that they became different people. They could marry many times, all at once or sequentially; the mother of one child might have that child alone as her direct heir, because all her others were borne as parts of business arrangements for other families and would only become a permanent part of her household if they willed it. But in the meantime, they were summer visitors, and they had their own feuds and alliances and business arrangements. To be a master of genealogy meant that you knew who someone was likely to be at any given moment, not just the moment of their birth, and often where they were going to be and who they liked spending time with, as well.

            Draco bowed his head and rested his forehead on his elbows, thinking. He hadn't sent the letter to Lady Jocelyn with his suggestions for their child-producing alliance yet, and he was glad that he hadn't. While a woman from that family would appreciate his acknowledgment that the child was a part of two families, not just the Malfoys, and the money he offered, she would also expect to evaluate Draco as a person before she bore the child. And depending on who he approached, she might or might not agree to use the magic that would ensure the child was born male. Draco had chosen Jocelyn's name because she was the only woman in that family circle who was exactly his age. But she might not be the right one.

            He would need to study more before he really understood what it meant, to be part of a cultural tradition like that. And before he decided whether that was the sort of culture he wanted to build among the Ashborn, surrounding his child, or not.

            Draco lifted his head and shook it in bemusement, glancing at the book of runes again. He had wondered, when the outlines of this strange society first began to come clear, why they would want to do something like that. The way his own family and most of the others he knew of--the Parkinsons, the Notts, the Blacks, the Greengrasses, the Longbottoms--had operated made more sense to him. You had a few heirs in the direct male line, and the families circled and dueled each other to get ahead in the Ministry and wizarding society in general. Why would anyone want to be so tied and bound that it was impossible to take a business or political step without involving a bunch of other people?

            Now he felt as though his translating self of a few weeks ago was impossibly naive. To prevent war, of course. The Dark Lords who had plagued their society had started arising the moment some of the pure-bloods had abandoned their old culture in the rush to get ahead. When people considered themselves opposed instead of bound, they would be far more likely to go to war.

            Those old pure-bloods had understood a truth that it had taken Draco long, painful years to recognize: that they were a small culture. The Muggles far outnumbered them, and would overwhelm wizards if they spent all their energy in fighting each other. If they were bound, they could continue growing and thriving, and something that diminished one family would be seen as diminishing everybody, because it would. Your sister or your sister-wife or your cousin or your mother-in-law or your blood-brother would be the one affected.

            Draco exhaled again and rubbed the back of his neck. In some ways, he didn't think he would have a hard time persuading Severus or the Ashborn to agree with him that this lifestyle was better. After all, Severus wasn't interested in war, or he would never have agreed to a truce with Potter's people. It was far more likely that he wouldn't agree to the notion of being bound to someone. Severus wanted people bound to him, unable to exist without him. Not the other way around.

            Draco paused, and his heartbeat went so fast that for long moments he seemed to be hearing it instead of his own thoughts. Although his thoughts were the things dancing and curving in his head, racing around each other like clashing waves.

            He had never thought something like that before. Never. He had honored and admired Severus as the only one with the strength to take over the Death Eaters and make them into the Ashborn. He had watched him pound Bellatrix's mind to powder and craft a new whole artifact out of it, which Draco knew even someone experienced in Legilimency would have found hard. He knew that Severus hadn't been able to save his parents, but then, Draco couldn't, either, and he had more motive to try, so why should he blame someone else for not being able to do it?

            Draco leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. His main anxiety, up until this time, had been persuading Severus that he should be allowed to spend his time on translating the book of runes and integrating them into a new pure-blood culture. But who was Severus to give or deny him permission?

            Why had Draco felt as though he was in subjection to Severus, when he had insisted to Potter that he wasn't?

            Draco cast some massage charms and closed his eyes. Then he called on his Ashborn guards for wine to ease the bitter taste of revelation.

            If he was going to think about things as unpleasant as this, he might as well do it in comfort.

*

            Severus stepped back and narrowed his eyes at his new automaton. The snake lay across the table, segmented in body like a caterpillar, the segments chased with silver and decorated with small, semiprecious gems of the kind that were common among the Ashborn, since Severus had directed all of them to surrender the family heirlooms they wouldn't need anymore. The snake's head was appropriately fang-festooned, and Severus knew that once he loaded the hollow teeth with poisons of his own devising, they could stop anyone who broke through the wards.

            But so far, the simple animation spells and other charms to make it obey his commands that he had tried had failed.

            Severus measured his own breath out in careful pants, so that he would not sound irritated to someone who burst into the lab that moment. He knew the reason for the failure. These spells were too limited; the snake had to be able to react to sudden threats instead of simply fetching him ingredients or cutting them on command. And Severus had trouble directing even Bellatrix, someone with native intelligence of her own, to that extent.

            There was a possible solution, one he had read in a book months ago and dismissed because at that time he had had no chance of effecting it. But now he did. Now he had a Parselmouth living in his home.

            Severus leaned back on the table that had supported several unsuccessful experiments so far and studied the snake. It did not shift for all the power of his glaring at it, although he would have preferred that it do so.

            He sought to understand his own instinctive revulsion to the thought of asking Potter for help. Of course, it was Potter, and of course he did not want to encourage the boy to think of him as weak or needy.

            But he had been ruthlessly practical, or thought himself so, in the last few years. He had been willing to make sacrifices that he would have preferred not to make, he had compromised where that was necessary, because his end goal--a sheltered and protected mini-world where he could do just as he liked--was more important to him than fleeting inconveniences along the way.

            Surely asking Potter for help would be another such minor inconvenience. Surely it should not be something that made him grit his teeth against the thought and feel, with a spasm of distaste, that he would die rather than do so.

            He would not die rather than do so. If he was dangling above an abyss and Potter's was the only hand that could drag him to safety, he would certainly grasp it. He was being childish and hyperbolic.

            Severus gazed at the snake and marshaled his thoughts again. Did he fear the boy's taunting? He had more than enough taunts of his own, and he had had no opportunity during the past three years to say them, which would give them all the sting of freshness. Did he think that the Ashborn would decide he was weak? Not so. They thought nothing except what he told them. Draco and Potter were the only free ones.

            He did not want to, he decided at last. He could get along without the snake automaton. He did not need Potter's help to make it come to life because he did not need the snake to serve him. There were others he could rely on, and the incubitum, once fully-powered, would be all the defense they could ever need.

            He turned away from the table and made his way to the cauldron. The green liquid inside shimmered and shifted, and Severus put his head down to study the color from a shorter distance. He needed to know how soon he should add the bay leaves that even now awaited his pleasure on the palms of his hound automaton.

            The cauldron exploded in his face.

            Severus jerked back quickly enough to save his eyesight. He should have seen the telltale small green bubbles rising to the surface, he thought as he stared at his stained robes. They would have to be thrown away. They would not wash.

            This was his fault. His and his alone.

            In a fit of rage, he drew his wand and destroyed the cauldron with a spell that wound fire around it and consumed it fast enough to drown even the stink of the burning potion.

            It was not rational, and he prided himself on being rational. This was not good.

            But...

            It was done, and he set out to find new robes and a way of disposing of the old ones with new dignity.



            He refused to consider that he had been irrational all day, and so should question some other decisions he had made.

*

            unneeded: Snape would have a lot easier time admitting this if it wasn't Harry he was dealing with.

            Amber: Thank you! Harry has grown a lot more perceptive in this AU war.

            red713: Thank you! I think working on them at different paces helps, like only adopting some once a week.

            warriorbookwyrm: Thank you!

            Emma: Thank you! Draco is learning now that Severus isn't always right, and that comes as quite a shock.

            Echo: He's on the verge of admitting it, but doesn't want to, because letting himself get played is almost worse than not admitting it.
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Ashborn