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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 Thirty-One--Against the Enemies

            "I think we have achieved something here."

            Draco hoped Laughter spoke the truth, rather than just the truth as he saw it. His own head was spinning, and he didn't think he could remember half the words that Laughter and Thera had spoken, or even the ones he had added. They had drifted towards a compromise, though, one that hammered out a firm border that wound through the Forest and kept the centaurs on one side and the werewolves on the other. If a member of either species got into the other's territory, they would be imprisoned but not killed while the leaders met to determine what was going on.

            "I hope they will send you, or at least someone like you," Laughter told Thera, watching her with sleepy-lidded eyes as she rose to her feet. "You are the first sensible centaur I've ever spoken with."

            "And you're the first werewolf who wasn't a ravening beast," Thera said sweetly, once again showing her teeth in that smile that almost shamed Laughter's.

            Draco shook his head and blinked his eyes wearily, then yawned. He wondered if it counted as real sleep if he was lying in his bed dreaming all this. Perhaps not, since he was always tired after one of his negotiations with Laughter, no matter how long or short a time it took. Or perhaps it did, and the weariness was more mental than physical.

            He reached out to place a hand on Thera's smooth flank and rise to his feet, but found her gone already. He frowned. He had given her perfect perceptions of the clearing; there was no reason for her to leave before he did, unless she wanted to.

            "Yes. I asked her to."

            Draco turned back around, his hands carefully tucked to his sides, and surveyed Laughter. He had one of those expressions on his face that could be either a smile or a snarl. Draco sank back into the grass and tried not to make any sudden moves, although he knew that, really, Laughter would smell it in his scent whether he was afraid or only wary.

            "Why?" he asked. "Anything you had to say to or about the centaurs could be said to her. Better her than me, anyway."

            "You still seem to think that," said Laughter lazily, whipping his hand back and forth in a complex pattern that Draco thought he would have used a tail for if he had one. "In spite of the fact that I have repeatedly tried to convince you of your own importance and diplomatic skills. Someone must have badly cracked your confidence in the past, if you will not appreciate my reassurances when I give them."

            Draco didn't feel tired now. He sat up, feeling a brief vibration that was not fear pass through him. "I spent the last few years in the shadow of Severus Snape, either as a servant or as someone he had to continually defend and protect," he said. "That would harm anyone's confidence."

            "I have never found Severus Snape as impressive as report painted him," said Laughter, but he continued speaking, interrupting Draco's question about when he would have met Severus. "And it is not only him that you seem to have these issues with. You have also mentioned yourself unfavorably in comparison to Harry Potter, and assumed we would prefer him to you. Why?"

            Draco blinked and stared. Laughter stared back, and the air between them turned sharp and brittle, reminding Draco that wolves sometimes started fights by looking into each other's eyes. He turned away and muttered, "Because he's Harry Potter and both you and the centaurs asked for him, why else?"

            "I asked for him in the beginning," Laughter said, and snapped his teeth on air, "because I thought he would be here, and he is a powerful person who stands a chance of unbalancing any situation he enters. The unbalancing might be to my advantage or might not, and that is something to be wary of. It does not mean, now, that I would reject you or prefer him as one mindless child prefers a toy simply because its sibling clings to it. You have proven you have patience, and you have proven that you can listen to me as you would another human being."

            Draco opened his mouth to say that Laughter was another human being most of the month, and then closed it again. Another thing I've learned is discretion.

            "He might be interested in the alliance now," he said cautiously, after a moment. "Before, he said it was nothing but boredom that made him decide to speak up for the centaurs, and then he left. But now he's back, and he shows no sign of leaving again, even though he was going to spend a month away from us. Does that change things?"

            "It means that we'll have to deal with him as another partner in the alliance," Laughter said, giving a fluid shrug, and rolling over again to stretch his arms above his head. "Which is not necessarily a good or a bad thing, but a neutral thing, until we see what happens." He looked at Draco upside-down, his eyes brilliantly gold in the faint moonlight that shone through the trees. "In the meantime, we have you and always will, unless you change your mind."

            "I would let you know," Draco promised. "I'd have to, if only to protect my own health."

            Laughter showed his teeth again, but in the expression that Draco thought was closer to a smile than most of the snarls. "And you can make jokes about us without being offensive," he said. "I find a sense of humor a valuable gift in a diplomat. I do not know that Potter has it. While you have it, and for what you have achieved so far, you are always welcome, Draco Malfoy." He rolled to his feet, inclined his head to Draco, and then turned and ambled into the bushes.

            The dream began to dissolve around Draco, while he went with it, confused as he drifted on colored shreds into true sleep--confused and humbled and awed. Did that really matter? Had he accomplished something that he had only started as a dare to Severus and Harry, something to show them that he could be as good and as powerful as they were without expecting to prove anything?

            Perhaps I did.

            Then true sleep overcame him, and he passed on to dreams that were as pleasant, in their own way, as that realization.

*

            Harry threw the ball against the stones and then ducked as it rebounded back at him. It barely hit the ground before he grabbed it again and hurled it at another wall of the enclosed courtyard. It was a Quaffle, but Harry had removed the Lightening Charms that usually kept it aloft more easily during Quidditch games and slightly harder to handle for airborne players, since it might bounce out of their arms. Harry wanted to toss a ball around, not fly.

            He wanted the sound of the satisfying smack and the way he had to concentrate on where it was and what it was doing. It might drive from his mind the hatred in Leopold's eyes and the news that there was yet another enemy who wanted to kill him.

            You have to settle them. You have to make them leave you alone.

            The Quaffle hit him in the face and nearly shattered his glasses. As Harry shook his head, spluttering, he saw Shield stooping at the ball like a hawk, his tail swishing furiously back and forth.

            "No, leave it alone," Harry said wearily, and scrubbed at his face, wincing as his glasses pressed back against his nose. A Reparo took care of the damage they'd sustained, and then Harry walked over and kicked the ball. It rolled towards the wall and then back to him, indifferent to his temper. That was good. Harry needed something that was.

            Shield hovered over him, and crooned. When Harry turned his head aside and edged around him to kick the Quaffle again, Shield settled on his shoulder and dug his talons in deeply enough to make Harry hiss and turn on him. Shield immediately ducked his head, coiling his neck around Harry's, and crooned again. Harry knew an apology when he heard one, and shoved at Shield to get him off his shoulder. But the dragon just clung to him.

            "I don't understand," Harry whispered to him, because speaking out loud and possibly informing someone outside the pair of them of what he really felt was stupid. "I've had enemies all my life. I didn't know about Voldemort when I was a little kid, but the Dursleys were my enemies, in a way. And now I'm about to collapse and cry because one of the Unspeakables doesn't like me and tried to kill me. So what? Just because she hates me doesn't mean everyone in the Ministry does." He reached up and squeezed Shield's tail, to feel the living warmth and the way that the scales under his hand ruffled up into edged weapons. They looked so smooth at first. Harry wondered how many other surprises Draco had built into the dragon.

            Shield crooned again and nuzzled close to him. His nose felt warmer than usual, more like skin and less like metal, but Harry reckoned that could be his own body heat leaking into the dragon. It didn't matter. It still felt comforting, and that was what he needed, more than kicking the Quaffle.

            "I just don't understand, I think," Harry whispered, and rubbed his knuckles down Shield's spine, making Shield hiss and stretch out his neck for more. "It feels like people either ought to not care about me if they despise me, or keep attempting to use me. Not make one attempt and then decide I'm too dangerous for more."

            Shield wrapped himself around Harry's shoulders and neck like a blanket made of living chains. Harry fell silent and leaned his ear against Shield's belly, listening to the thrum of magic that imitated a heartbeat.

            No, he was probably never going to understand Carson and her kind. He could kill someone who was trying to kill him, he could do that just fine, but he couldn't decide someone was a political enemy who was better off dead and then delegate someone else to do it. His hands should be the ones stained with blood, if anybody's were going to be.

            But he had people who cared for him. People who loved him. People who would surrender their own private armies for him, or who dug into their souls and produced dragons woven of it for him.

            That was worth the price that it seemed he had to pay, for people who hated him for no personal reasons and would be just as happy if he had a heart attack in bed tomorrow.

            "You're right," Harry told Shield, although the dragon of course hadn't said anything. Harry was glad that Draco had stopped short of a voice for him, or perhaps the spell didn't allow one. Silence was more comforting than the kind of advice anyone could offer right now, even someone as wise as Hermione. "It's better to remember what I have and seek comfort of them when I want it, rather than sitting around moping and feeling sorry for myself."

            He stood up, Shield carefully flaring his wings for balance on his shoulders, and went inside, to eat and sleep and then see if Draco and Corners were awake yet.

*

            Both Draco and Harry looked better when they were gathered again. They even had similar expressions, though Draco's was a touch more stricken with wonder, Harry's a touch more pessimistic. But they believed they could handle things, and Severus did not doubt they could, when all their strengths were allied.

            Even if Harry did insist on taking his Ashborn away.

            Severus sat down on the chair between them in his rooms and reached out with his wand to coax the fire higher. Harry blinked in the increased light and then yawned. Severus restrained the impulse to ask if he had slept well enough. They had to do something about the Ministry, and the best time was now. He did not think Harry would have risked exposing them to his planning if he didn't feel well-rested enough for it, and Shield sat on his shoulder, wings slowly opening and closing. Severus would take his cues from the dragon's distress or lack thereof.

            "How is the alliance going?" Severus asked, turning towards Draco.

            Draco's face rivaled the fire in the way it glowed, and Severus wondered when that had begun to happen.

            Since he crept out of your shadow and started thinking and acting on his own, a voice snapped back at him.

            The voice was probably right, which did not make Severus any more pleased to hear it. He restrained his flinch and listened to Draco talking about Laughter, and Thera, and how the werewolf leader had praised him, personally, for his part in bringing the alliance together. Severus nodded. Draco had needed praise like that, and Severus, and even Harry, did not afford him all he needed.

            "But it sounds like I missed a lot of things," Draco wound his tale up, glancing back and forth between them and clasping his hands as though to hold the end of a chain between them. "That's interesting. What was it?"

            Harry cleared his throat and glanced at Severus. Severus inclined his head and gestured between them, telling Harry without words that he could go ahead and say what he wanted. Harry nodded, his lips still set in a frown as he faced Draco.

            "I sent Corners, and Severus sent Yaxley, into the Ministry to see if they could retrieve a body that Corners found," he began.

            Draco listened, with only a slight flush or paling in his cheeks to say how he felt, to the story of how they had captured Leopold and the memories Severus had drawn from his head. Severus watched him all the while, and saw the subtle shades of color in his cheeks and eyes, the way he tilted his head to the side as he listened and then back upright, the way he met Harry's gaze more often than Severus's. The change of color in his face wasn't the only way to say how he felt, after all. There was more there, all sorts of signals that Severus had ignored, or missed, or taught himself to miss, in the wake of the Ashborn's creation.

            I will have to learn him again, as well as Harry. There are fewer prejudices to clear away in Draco's case, but they're more likely to be ones that I want to ignore, because they will seem simple reality to me.

            At last Harry's words dried up, and Draco snapped his teeth together once before he turned to Severus. "Have you made plans yet?" he asked.

            Severus shook his head. "I would most like to defang the Ministry permanently," he murmured. "It would be--satisfying to destroy Carson and Leopold for their part in this. But someone else would step up to take their places, or to claim revenge for them, since Carson seems high in the Unspeakables' hierarchy. I wish to do something that will convince the Ministry to leave us alone, not simply something that will convince a few people to do so."

            Harry nodded. "That makes sense," he muttered. "I just hate to think of how destructive it'll have to be, if the Ashborn and Shield and my killing Old Snake-Face haven't convinced them yet."

            "Oh, don't tell me that you're growing Gryffindor scruples on us," Draco said, rolling his eyes. "They attacked your friends, too, not just you. And Shield. You can risk your life all you like, and value it less than a piece of tattered old cloth, but do you really not value their lives?"

            Harry surged to his feet. "I'm not talking about that!" he snapped. "It's just--there are innocents in the Ministry, too. People who had nothing to do with this, or who went along with it because they were afraid."

            "Calm down, Harry." Draco's voice cut. Severus decided that he could safely settle back and let Draco handle this. Besides, he was curious to see how Harry and Draco would interact when they almost forgot he was in the room. "We're not talking about killing everyone in the Ministry. We are talking about frightening them so that no one else thinks this is a good idea to try again."

            "It's just," Harry said, and wore down against the haughty stare Draco gave him. "But fear is its own kind of death," he muttered, and scrubbed a hand through his hair. Shield seized the hand in his jaws and held it there, though he let it go when Harry tugged at it. Severus nodded at the dragon. Draco had probably created a more vigilant guardian than he knew when he called the dragon up and bound it to Harry's soul.

            "I don't care," Draco said. "At what point can you stop caring about others? If someone only went along with this because they were afraid, they still had the chance to warn us with an anonymous owl, or to go to someone in the Ministry who would have put a stop to it. They didn't. Why do we always have to work on sparing them all the time but we never get to spare ourselves? When do you get to stop being Gryffindor and be Slytherin for once?"

            Harry blinked. Then he said, "Well, it's just--I learned some things about myself during the war that I don't like. I told you some of them." He flicked a faintly guilty look at Severus, who determined that he would know those things, later. "I reckon I feel like getting revenge or punishing people for being afraid might make me go too far. I might do something horrible and not realize it until later."

            "This is exactly why you need us," Draco said, and when he glanced at Severus, it was to include him. But Severus contented himself with nodding and saying nothing else. "We'll do horrible things for you."

            "And then I have to hold you back," Harry said, a flush creeping into his cheeks for the first time. "Sorry, but that just makes me be more Gryffindor. I wish that you could stop being Slytherin for once and listen to sense."

            Draco's lips quivered, and he sat down in his chair and crossed his arms tamely in his lap. "Of course, Harry," he all but chirped, and Severus felt a strange bubble in his own chest. It took him a long moment to recognize it as laughter. "What would you do, then? What's your plan for making sure the Ministry leaves us alone?"

            Harry hesitated like someone caught alone on the battlefield. Then he said, "We make it public. That's sure to get Carson sacked, at least. There's enough public feeling for me to make it career suicide to go up against me openly."

            "Good, she's sacked," Draco said. "And what keeps her from working against us outside the Ministry? Or other people from saying the right things openly and doing whatever they like secretly? Harry, they tried to kill you. They might do the same thing to me and Severus any time, because you're leaving your enemies alive behind you--"

            "I would kill them first," Harry broke in, and his eyes shone with a force that Severus had imagined when they were in the Dark Lord's cells, a force that would burn down the walls, someday, and set them free.

            "Why can you only set that kind of fire for us and not yourself?" Draco asked, cocking his head. "I want to protect you. I want to do the same things you do for us. And Severus wants too, as well, but he doesn't always have the words for it." He met Severus's words, and only smiled at the glare Severus couldn't prevent. "Can you let us do some of the same kind of thing that you do all the time and so well?"

            Harry hesitated. Then he said, "I reckon I don't trust--any of us--not to go too far?" He flushed the next moment and sat down, rocking Shield on his shoulder, playing with his hands and not glancing up at either Severus or Draco.

            "So everyone is evil," Draco said. "Possibly Shield, too, from what you told me about the way he wanted to attack Leopold. And the Ministry is full of saints of light, except for the people who wanted to kill you and used an attack on your friends to nearly do so and who would kill me and Severus, too, if they could get away with it. If we all live in a world where everyone and everything is evil, then it ought to be easy to get what we want. We'll just be gently evil."

            Harry gave a pained laugh and shook his head. "I don't understand," he muttered. "I just know that somewhere, between the utter shite that I used to swallow and what you're saying, is the truth."

            "But apparently undiscoverable," Severus broke in, because Draco had rolled his eyes at him in appeal and Severus felt it was time to take over. "So, we should make our plans to take out those we know have plotted against us and terrify the others. Will that make you comfortable, Harry?"

            "It's not about making me comfortable," Harry said, rolling his neck back as though to ease a cramp in it. "It's about making us safe."

            "Then allow us to do what we want," Severus said, leaning forwards. "And do not dare to distrust us until you are sure that we are doing things, in your name, that you do not want to do."

            Harry blinked back and forth between them, and then leaned back and laughed. Draco started to his feet, but Severus held out one hand and shook his head. The laughter did not sound half-mad to him, which was what they would most have to fear if Harry had decided to reject everything they said.

            "I was being stupid," Harry said, wiping tears from his eyes. "I wanted everything to be the same as it was when I was fighting Vol--him, because that would mean I was on the side of righteousness and good and so was everyone with me. But the Ministry isn't completely evil, and I'm not completely a hero, and at this point, they've made it clear that my survival isn't their priority. The only thing any of us can do is make sure that we'll survive, and that sometimes means destroying people who try to destroy us."

            "Sometimes?" Draco rolled his eyes. "I'd say all the time."

            Harry nodded. "Yes, I understand now," he said softly. "I was crippling myself and everyone who tried to fight with me because we had to do things in exactly the right way, but there's no way to make sure that happens. I could always be accidentally frightening someone more than they deserve, or hurting someone who might have been my friend in a different lifetime. I could make a truce with Carson and then have her try to assassinate me later. If I want to be done with Ministry politics, then I have to make sure that they can't hurt me anymore."

            "You will still be involved in politics," Severus said, because this was a delusion that he did not want to see Harry walk away from the conversation with. "There is no way to avoid them. But you do stand the chance to escape from the endless, repetitive cycles that the Ministry would otherwise force you through, and make a few things happen according to your own rules."

            Harry gave him another bright smile, and Severus could see the disagreement brewing beneath the surface--and the decision Harry had made to work with him and fight at his side anyway. "Yes, I see," he said. "There is a difference there." He paused. "So, what besides killing a bunch of them or torturing them to death, do you think would impress them enough to make them back off?"

            "This," Severus said, "is where potions come in useful." And he reveled in the way they both turned towards him, with expectant faces.

*

            "But you're sure that you're going to be all right?"

            Harry nodded, scrutinizing Hermione's face closely. "Perfectly. What about you, though? Ron told me that one of the spells caught you on the side of the head."

            Hermione flushed, as if her boyfriend and Harry talking about her when she wasn't there was something to be ashamed of, and reached up and touched what looked like a faint patch of fuzz in her hair. Harry could only make out that it was different by squinting. "I don't know why he said that," she complained. "The Healers told me it was only a minor burn, and they gave me a potion that's already grown most of the hair back again."

            Harry relaxed. "Good. Well, you don't have to worry about me. Snape and Draco gave me plenty of burn salve and insisted I relax, and even if they hadn't, Shield wouldn't let me move three feet without crooning." He rolled his eyes.

            Hermione didn't look as reassured as he had thought she would. "So it's settled, then," she said quietly. "You really aren't coming back to the Burrow for the rest of the month you were supposed to spend with us."

            Harry caught his breath, then forced himself to lean back against the legs of the chair he was sitting in front of. On his shoulder, Shield flapped out his wings and gave Harry a warning look. "No. We thought there might be a problem with the Unbreakable Vows, but we--we worded them correctly. I can stay here, as long as we still discuss what we need to do at the end of the month."

            "But you don't feel safe with us." Hermione looked away for an instant, then turned back to him. "Ron told me about Percy."

            "Whatever he told them, if he told them anything, we don't know how useful it was," Harry said, and stumbled so much over the words that he had to say them again when Hermione only stared at him. This was exactly the thing he hated, the thing he'd be most afraid of. He didn't want to break up families. He didn't want them accusing Percy before they knew he was guilty.

            "Just the suspicion is enough for Ron." Hermione sighed and leaned back against the chair behind her, tapping her fingers against a book Harry couldn't see the title of. "He sent an owl off to Percy to make sure that he was all right, and asked a few questions in it. But Percy hasn't replied yet."

            "That could just mean he was injured in the attack," Harry pointed out. He was sure that the floating body Corners had found wasn't Percy, especially since he and Yaxley had brought it back along with Leopold and there was no trace of red hair. He would have contacted Ron at once if it had been.

            Ron, and Mrs. Weasley. Harry had to wince and wince when he thought about that, about what her grief would have been. That was another reason to try and protect Percy from Snape and Draco. If they did something to hurt him, Harry knew it would drive a wedge between them and the Weasleys that they would never recover from.

            "Ron doesn't think so." Hermione spent a minute watching him. "Just be careful, Harry, all right? I know you're going to do something that we probably wouldn't approve of, and I want you to be safe. That's all."

            "I will be," Harry said. "And I'll come back to visit. It's just Sn--Severus and Draco get really upset if I leave the fortress right now, and Shield gets upset if I'm out of his sight. I'll give them a few days to calm down." And for this attack on the Ministry to either convince them or not.

            "Good," Hermione said. "I was worried about losing you to the Ashborn, and them. But I see that's silly now."

            "Of course it is," Harry said, and looked at her in a way that made her flush. "How could I forget my best friends, the people I fought the war with? You'll always be important, Hermione. That's just the way things are."

            "Oh, of course," Hermione said. "But I mean it's silly because Ron and I would find a way to make Snape and Malfoy regret it if they tried to keep you away from us against your will. If we had to storm the fortress and destroy all the Ashborn, then we'd do it."

            Harry had to grin at that, and the image of the Ashborn dissolving in another war brought on by the sheer determination of his friends. "Yeah, you would," he said, and held out his hand. He thought he felt a faint brush of fingertips from Hermione as she extended her hand back, but that was probably only his imagination, since one of them wasn't Flooing at the moment. That didn't matter, though. It was enough.

            "Good-bye for now, Harry," Hermione said. "And I won't ask. Just remember that you have our support, always."

            Harry nodded. He could think of a few things that would make him lose it--for example, if he killed as many people in the Ministry as Severus and Draco and Shield would have liked him to do--but they wouldn't happen. So he sat there smiling at Hermione until she told him good-bye again and vanished from the fire, and then he stood up and went to find Draco. They'd already decided on the basic outlines of their plan to terrify the Ministry, because there was an obvious thing that they were more afraid of than anything else; now he just had to make sure that Draco was comfortable performing his part in the plan.

            Well, really, that both he and Severus were comfortable. But Severus, Harry was fairly certain, had more practice than Draco in looking the unpleasant truth of his deeds in the eye and deciding that he needed to do them anyway.

*

            "This is the only way," Draco said, uncomfortably aware that he was saying it for the fifth time, and that the words burned oddly in his mouth. Severus only gave him a single look, and then turned away. Harry's hand brushed against his arm and braced there. They had Apparated into one of the bathrooms used as entrances to the Ministry by some employees, and Draco focused on the touch rather than what the room would look like in a few minutes.

            "It's the best way," Harry said. "The way that will involve the least number of people dead or still protesting at the end, and a reminder of what they owe me. Us, really, when you think about the way that you lot made sure there weren't Death Eaters still running around."

            Draco felt the ripple that ran between Harry and Severus as Harry said that, acknowledgment of the Ashborn who stood around them and what would happen to them after this battle. If they were successful in terrifying the Ministry after all. If they didn't need them after this.

            But Draco found it hard to think about the Ashborn and what would happen after this, even to distract himself. His heartbeat made his head sway. He was panting. He looked at the tiles beneath him and had to look away, because they swayed and danced in his vision, and he already thought he was about to throw up.

            Severus's hand came to rest on his left arm, near the Dark Mark that he had transformed into the rising bird. Harry's hand remained on the right. Draco listened to their calm breathing and reminded himself, forcibly, that he wasn't the only one here with a reason to fear what they were going to do. In some ways, Harry had the most reason to be afraid, but he was the one who had suggested this and the one who had helped them refine their way past his original crude ideas. Draco had people to support him. He could do this.

            "All right," he said, and drew his wand. "I want to be the one to cast the first one."

            Another ripple that he didn't understand nearly as well as the last passed between Harry and Severus, probably because one of them had planned to be the first, but a moment later Harry inclined his head and said, "Of course." Severus nodded behind him, as patient and implacable as a statue coming to life.

            Draco aimed his wand at the ceiling and spent what felt like the longest moment of his life composing himself. The incantation was clear in his mind, of course. It always had been ever since he had pestered his father into telling him it when he was seven. But saying it was a different thing altogether.

            At last the word came out, and it didn't tremble nearly as much as he had thought it would, or at least not enough to ruin the spell.

            "Morsmordre!"

            The Dark Mark rose above them, made of deep green, curling smoke that reminded Draco of the poison the Dark Lord had once made his mother drink in front of him. He remembered the way she had writhed and thrashed and screamed, and clutched at her belly. That hadn't been what had killed her. It had only made her want to die, feeling it, and Draco and his father, watching her.

            His hand shook, and Draco's head spun into darkness. Again Harry and Severus pushed their arms in against his, and again he took strength and comfort and reminded himself that he wasn't alone. He lifted his head, blinking, and stared at the floating Dark Mark. Harry leaned in and murmured, "Don't look at it, if you'd rather."

            Draco nodded and stared at the floor. This time, it was comforting and even welcoming. "How far do you think Corners is by now?" he muttered.

            "Probably pretty far into the water supply," Harry said, and smiled a little. Draco used the sight of that to restore himself, too, although it wasn't a pleasant smile. "Such a shame they never knew about the Water People or thought of making an alliance with one of them, or they might have been able to counter this. Or at least predict the effects."

            "It is time," Severus said abruptly.

            Draco glanced at him and saw his eyes half-closed, his head tilted as his senses followed the Ashborn he had assigned to travel with Corners. Draco thought it was Yaxley, since he had done so well last time and Corners seemed to like him, but he wasn't entirely sure.

            "All right," Harry said, and then closed his eyes and bowed his head. Draco felt the air tighten around them, and swallowed, then breathed out. Harry's arm was still resting against his, but it felt limp and dead without Harry's concentration there. Draco shifted from one foot to the other, then noticed Severus staring at him, and fell still. His skin prickled.

            Harry opened his eyes, and threw his head back. Away from him flowed a wave of wandless magic, of power so intense, that Draco this time held on to Harry's arm to keep upright. There hadn't been time to create a spell that would do what they wanted it to do, and no existing spell would. There was just Harry's will, and need, and desire.

            And all that power brewing in him, magic that Draco thought hadn't been properly exercised since the Dark Lord's death, had flowed into the Ministry, and turned it into the tangled web of desires and dreams that he needed it to be tonight.

            "It's done," Harry said at last, with a jerky abruptness that made Draco think he was trying to catch his breath. "Let's go." He took a step towards the toilets that were their entrance, and stumbled.

            Draco and Severus moved forwards to stand on either side of him this time, and together, they went down and in.

*

            Shadowdog85: Thank you! Sorry there were no kisses in this chapter, but I do think that they are acting more like a triad, now.

            AlterEquis: Yep, and now they know what they're going to do to the Ministry in return.

            Harry thinks of Corners as a he, even though technically the Water People probably have no gender, just because "his" personality seems male to Harry.
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Ashborn