Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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
- 31
- 32
- 33
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Thirty-Two--Baffle Them With Bollocks

            Harry landed lightly at the bottom of the dizzying plunge through the toilet and spent a moment staring. The walls were stone around him, and as far as he knew, that was normal, though he had never been in this part of the Ministry before. But strange shimmers crawled over and occupied them, as though they were hung with the webs of Aragog and his kind. Now Harry thought he could see a flash of green, here a hint of blue, under his feet a glimpse of white. He wondered for a moment what it was.

            "The magic you projected." Severus's voice was low at his ear, and his arm curling around Harry's shoulders a moment later a nice support, if still one that made Harry jump with how unexpected it was. "It changed things in the Ministry to reflect what you were feeling at the time. What you wanted them to imagine."

            "The fear," Harry said quietly. "The conviction that he was back and that they were in danger from the Death Eaters again."

            Severus nodded solemnly and turned to help Draco, who had landed in a heap on the floor. Draco scrambled up with a look at Harry that dared him to say anything. Harry chuckled and felt some of the constriction on his chest ease.

            "That," Severus said, "is the base the potion will build from. It can affect their minds, but it will need time to spread through the water and to change to the form that will ensure the release of fumes on the air. Even then, there may be some people in the Ministry who will not drink or breathe it." He glanced at Harry. "But no one who will escape your magic, not when the very stones themselves pulse with it."

            Harry found himself standing straighter. Ron or Hermione--though he had to acknowledge this was a faint possibility--might have been appalled at what he'd done, shaping reality around him so that it resembled the emotional reality at the height of the war.

            There was nothing in Severus's eyes but approval. Well, approval and the lazy appraisal as his eyes ran over Harry's body that Harry had almost become used to from him. Coming now, though, it made him clear his throat and turn his gaze ahead, down the corridor.

            "How much longer do you think we should give the magic to affect them?" he asked.

            Draco started to open his mouth to answer, but the first wave of screams came to their ears then. Severus nodded and cast the Dark Mark into the air with little more than a flip of his wrist. Perhaps watching Draco cast it first had calmed him, Harry thought, or the way he himself had helped Draco recover from casting it had.

            "It seems that we are called," Severus said, raising one eyebrow, and then swept past Harry and down the corridor without another word. Draco ran to catch up. Harry paused a moment and spent it tamping down his heartbeat and reaching up with one hand. He smiled when he realized he was feeling for Shield, who wasn't there. The dragon would ultimately obey him, as Draco had told him, not the other way around, and so Harry had sent him through the Ministry in disguise as Nagini.

            "Show time," Harry whispered, and cast the glamour that would surround him and heighten him, make him appear larger than life, more real, more promising. More like what people might expect of a hero.

            If the Ministry needed a second challenge from Voldemort to remind them of what they owed Harry, and what might happen a second time if not for the Ashborn, then they would have it.

*

            Draco could feel it everywhere, the magic Harry had unleashed, pulsing around them and reaching out with sly tendrils to rub against his mind. He had taken several potions that Severus had promised would clear his thoughts and keep them free of outside influences before they left the Ashborn fortress, but he shivered anyway.

            Does Harry have any idea of how powerful he is? Maybe he can't cast spells as strong as some the Dark Lord knew, but he could change the world if he wanted, just by imposing his will on it.

            It was fortunate for them that Harry wanted no such thing. And by the end of tonight, Draco hoped that everyone in the Ministry would know it.

            They met the first Aurors in the corridor beyond the one where they had entered, struggling with the phantasms of Death Eaters that surrounded them. Draco thought he caught a glimpse of a pale face like his father's, beneath pale hair, and turned away, feeling as though someone had punched him in the gut.

            But it was only one illusion among many, and the Aurors wouldn't have fought the illusions at all if not for Harry's magic that induced fear and Severus's potion that brought certain memories dancing to the surface of their minds. So Draco turned back and got ready to play his part, harder in some ways than casting the first Dark Mark. Harder because it was so easy.

            "Harry Potter!"

            Severus was a magnificent actor when he wanted to be, as one would expect of someone who had spent so many years fooling the Dark Lord into believing him a loyal servant. Draco turned and saw him aiming his wand at Harry at the full extent of his arm, his body braced as if to hurl a lethal curse. His robes billowed behind him, and his face was set, and Draco wanted to fuck him badly enough that the throb of his cock almost distracted him from the part he had to play.

            Then he shook his head and took his place beside Severus, making sure to let his left sleeve fall back. Their Marks remained unchanged, but it would look enough like a Dark Mark to someone under the influence of potion and magic who had only a fleeting glimpse.

            Shrieks came from behind them, even from the Aurors. Draco found himself smirking. There were many, many things about this plan that he didn't enjoy, but this one, he did. Frightening people who hadn't done shit for him when he was trapped with Voldemort, frightening people who would have treated him and his parents badly if they'd ever caught them? Yes, that he could get behind.

            Harry looked at them across the width of the gap separating them, and his eyes shone with something Draco had never seen directed at him, despite all their conflicts in Hogwarts. Draco flinched before he could stop himself. Harry noticed, and something in his face softened, the most indication he could give that he'd noticed, with an audience watching them.

            But then they had to begin the mock duel, and they did it with a curse exploding from Severus's wand. Harry leaped to the side and deflected the curse into a wall with a Shield Charm, where it cracked the stone. Then he advanced, and the shield came with him, holding the magic back.

            One of the tight ring of Aurors tried to explode outwards at them. Draco immediately Stunned him. They couldn't have anyone interfering in this fight, or it would become obvious immediately that they weren't really trying to hit each other.

            Severus countered Harry's shields with a showy hex that dissolved them in a blaze of sparks. Harry leaped over the next spell that tried to bite his ankles and cast a curse that hit Severus in the chest.

            Draco held his breath. They had rehearsed the spells for this duel and the motions necessary for them several times, but he thought Harry's memories might have taken him over and made him strike back at Severus harder than he otherwise would.

            Severus, however, only clasped a hand over the stricken spot and staggered, the way he had in all their practices. Draco released the breath he'd been holding. Severus straightened and sneered at Harry. "You would do such a thing to me? To the man who survived the Dark Lord's fall?"

            "To the man who still can't say his name, and flinches when he hears it," Harry snapped back, moving forwards, his eyes narrowed. "And to the man who was cowardly enough to make Unbreakable Vows and then try to goad me into defending myself so he could break them. Yeah, I'll curse a coward, and bring him in to Azkaban, too!"

            The Aurors cheered. Draco wondered if any of them had noticed that Harry had set up a subtle barrier between them and Draco and Severus now, one that was only visible if you squinted. It looked like silver sparks, but would burn and throw them back if they ventured any nearer. All of them would believe that it was a Death Eater who had cast it, of course.

            Or former Death Eater. If their plan worked as well as Harry thought it should, then they would achieve a delicate balance between convincing the Ministry they were still Death Eaters and that they were a new and relentless threat in the Ashborn.

            "I am far from a coward," Severus said, and Draco suspected that the anger thickening his voice was not all feigned. He had reacted much the same way when Harry called him that name as they ran from the Tower, after all. "I am someone who commands more and older magic than you will ever know of, or ever dream."

            "Really?" Harry took a long step forwards. "Let's see some, then!"

            Severus gave him a cold smile and nodded to Draco. This was part of it. They had to also show the Ministry that Severus's followers were dangerous, and Harry was necessary as a defense against them.

            Draco yelled some fancy nonsense syllables that would no doubt set the listeners puzzling about what language it was, while speaking the incantation in his mind only as loud as he could.

            A snake of misty blue light manifested around Harry, binding his limbs and hissing into his face. Harry froze, his eyes wide and his head falling back as though the snake had pulled it there.

            Draco swallowed. Harry had reassured him over and over that this spell was all right, that the person who made it up had only designed it to restrain and not to hurt, and that if something went wrong, Harry could hiss at the snake and it should obey him and uncoil. But Draco couldn't shake the fear that he had done it wrong, or rather, too right, with too much power.

            They had to do some of that, though. Be too weak, and the Ministry would thank Harry for defending them against the threat this one time, and then go back to plotting ways to get rid of him. Draco waited.

            Harry flexed his muscles and struggled for long minutes, until Draco wondered why none of the Aurors had noticed what was going on. Surely they would think it strange that Severus and Draco hadn't cast another spell to finish Harry off, or taken hostages, or at least turned and run away?

            When he glanced at them, their eyes were glazed, and they leaned subtly forwards, closer to each other than the walls. Draco relaxed as he remembered. The fear and the magic that Harry had sent hammering home, as well as the potion spread through the water supply, had multiple purposes, but this was one of them: to confuse the rational thought processes, to make what the Aurors and others would see here today harder for them to process and reason through.

            Harry finally straightened up and broke the snake's coils with an enormous, heroic flex of his shoulders. Then he aimed his wand at Severus, and his voice was deep and quiet. "So you have your minion do that instead of you yourself? Maybe you just don't have a lot of magic left, old man. Wouldn't that be something? If you've held onto your position in the Death Eaters and the Ashborn through intimidation and nothing else?"

            Severus held up one hand. Streamers of red light erupted from it, thanks to a spell Harry had cast with his wand behind his back, and that thoroughly distracted everyone from Severus's actual wand movement.

            Harry froze abruptly, staring straight ahead, and then crashed to the ground. It was a simple Body-Bind, but with the streamers that flew away from Severus's hand and started running into Harry's mouth and nose--harmless light, in reality--it looked much worse than that. The Aurors were screaming and crying now, and adding to their picture of a duel for the ages.

            Severus turned a smile on them so cruel that they all shut up immediately. Draco wondered what they would say if they knew that such a smile only made him want to fuck Severus all the more.

            They'd laugh. Draco snapped his mind back to his place in the plan, and held it there as hard as he could. They were here to do a specific thing, and if they broke too much of the pattern, there was always the chance that someone wouldn't believe them, and could convince other people.

            Harry suddenly coughed, and vomited out the streamers of light, or so it would appear to the audience. They had dissipated when Severus's spell was done, and so had the Body-Bind. Harry now stood up, and made each movement slow enough--bracing his palms on the floor, bowing his head, straightening his spine moment by moment--that Draco thought none of the Aurors were breathing when he finished his ascent.

            Harry turned his head towards Severus, and his sneer seared them both. Draco backed away a step that wasn't planned. He would be so glad when this bloody pretense was done.

            "As I said, old man," Harry said, "no magic that can conquer me."

            And he flourished his wand in a way that would gather in the eyes and dazzle them further, and he and Severus launched into their duel.

            Draco's part in this was mainly to stay out of the way. He fell back, and further back, until he felt his arse touch the barrier of sparks. He stayed there, his breath locked in his throat, his eyes locked on Harry and Severus, and there were times when he did forget to breathe and coughed until he could start again.

            They were magnificent, both of them, in the play that looked like deadly serious spellwork to everyone else in the corridor and like sport to Draco. He wanted to fuck both of them.

            He realized that wasn't the most helpful notion ever, and decided to say nothing about it. But no one could stop him from watching.

*

            Severus had expected to have to hold back and cast more than one distraction spell that would convince the watchers Harry's curses had landed.

            Instead, he found himself understanding why both the Dark Lord and several of his most experienced duelists had died fighting Harry Potter.

            Harry fought with speed, strength, skill, and concentration. Severus possessed each himself, and had seen many who had at least one or two of those gifts. By themselves, they would not have sufficed to make Harry his equal.

            But Harry also had instinct, or the quality that Severus had often heard called that and which he knew no better name for. He knew to drop to one knee when Severus had planned to aim a spell at his head or midsection, and he often countered a curse while it was still in the air, as though he had known what could come next. He halted himself before he could hit the barrier he had put up to protect them, or Draco, who stood watching with his face as pale as salt. He leaped to his feet when he had to, and closed in with a rush. Severus was caught without understanding what had happened, staggering between the net Harry cast in front of him and the expectation that he should try to give the audience a show.

            Harry pulled his own punch, slamming his net into the floor as though it had been caught by one of Severus's shields. It would take close attention indeed to notice that he had directed it there, and Severus knew none of their audience would be capable of choosing that by now.

            "Do something," Harry mouthed at Severus, and pulled back to stare at him.

            Severus did, catching him off-guard with a Blasting Curse that nearly slammed him into the opposing wall, though of course he also cast sharp blue sparks and half-tongues of fire that made the spell seem far more spectacular than a Blasting Curse. Harry came up with a smile and fired off another one in response, which Severus slipped with a graceful dodge.

            Then they closed in, and their duel became more like the deadly storms of wandwork that Severus had seen when the Dark Lord commanded two of his Death Eaters to fight for his entertainment. Back and forth, spell after spell, countercurses and shields slamming up before them and sometimes catching and sometimes not, muscles aching and eyes bright and gritty and exhausted with missed sleep.

            Harry twisted to the side and lifted his left arm, and one of Severus's spells razed a line of blood down it. One of Harry's spells made Severus hop and have to cure his suddenly burning foot. Another one singed half Harry's hair away, and he cut open Severus's cheek with a swing from an invisible blade. There were snakes, and miniature bolts of lightning, and Transfigurations that filled the air between them with chattering insects, and a rain of spiders that might have swarmed into Harry's eyes if he hadn't Vanished them as quickly as they appeared.

            And in the midst of it, Harry caught Severus's eye and grinned in exhilaration.

            This is what he is meant to be doing, Severus thought. It was no wonder that Harry had no patience with politics. He was meant for the battlefield, and the way he could settle the issues that might arise with someone else was a duel. He would have done well in the far older days of wizarding politics, when duels for honor were a regular matter and single combat had settled wars before armies could fight them.

            But these were not the ancient days, and Severus would have to help Harry find some other channel for that restless magic and shining power.

            For now, they were moving to the end of their duel, and he was ready to cast the final spell that would come across as a "mistake" and allow Harry to forcibly Apparate him out of the Ministry. In reality, he would vanish behind a Disillusionment Charm, and the Auror witnesses would be left with the impression that Harry had managed to shatter the Ministry's wards and do it all without breaking a sweat.

            Then someone said, "L-let him go! Leave him alone! Or I swear I'll kill him, and you know we're trained to do that!"

            Severus turned and stared. One of the Aurors had broken through the barrier of sparks. It had left her robes on fire, but she had shrugged out of them and ignored the pain that Severus could make out in her trembling limbs. She held her wand to Draco's throat, and although her hand shook, as well, Severus was sure that she could cut his throat before either of them could do anything.

            Draco could strike in defense of himself, but whether he could kill, as might be required, Severus did not know. He had been unable to when his parents' freedom and lives hung on the end of his wand, after all. On the other hand, the woman was a stranger, and not the Headmaster who had presided over the school he had attended for six years. That might make a difference.

            While the notions raced through Severus's mind, he saw Harry standing with his face and his wand hand still. Of course. He could not interfere without causing their plan to collapse, the plan that they had woven so carefully to convince the Aurors that they were enemies after all.

            Then a spark flowed into Harry's eyes and into his smile, and he stood straighter and taller than his mere height could account for. He caught Severus's eye for a moment, and he did not mouth Follow my lead. He did not need to.

            Harry stepped forwards and raised his voice as though he wanted everyone in the Ministry to hear him. With the potion and the magic he had sent ringing through the air, Severus considered, that might come close to happening. "So you would take my enemy away from me? You would kill him, the one I have a right to kill? He was going to kill Dumbledore at one point. He le Death Eaters into the school, and injured one of my adopted family, the Weasleys. You'd take the right to punish him away from me?"

            The Auror stared at Harry, and suddenly her hands shook a lot more. She said slowly, "No, I wouldn't do that. But--"

            "Then step back, and let me have him." Harry jerked his head at Severus. "It will hurt him to watch him die, and that's all I need right now."

            Severus couldn't keep his chin from lifting, or his fingers from tightening on his wand. He hoped that Harry knew what he was doing. It sounded like another half-brilliant plan so easy to turn in the wrong direction that Severus's soul revolted against it.

            But the Auror moved back, caught in the web of awe that radiated from Harry Potter, and Harry stuck his own wand beneath Draco's chin and used it to lift his head. Draco blinked at him. He had no water in his eyes, Severus saw, but something worse, the shadows of the prison cell where they had spent time together.

            Harry and Draco gazed into each other's eyes for long moments. Severus knew how the Aurors would read it: the last confrontation of two longtime rivals and enemies. He had no idea what the true reading was.

            And then Harry said, as if speaking from the kind of position of lofty wisdom that Albus often had, "But why should I kill him? He's not the one who hurt me all through those years. The one who did is dead. He's part of the Ashborn, and he was part of the Death Eaters, and if he acts against me, I have to stop him. But killing him is something else again, and I am the only one who decides how to punish him."

            "If he acts against the Ministry, then you should!" yelled one of the Aurors pressing forwards against the barrier, and not heeding the way that sparks leaped up to scorch his beard.

            Harry turned a slow glance on the Aurors that made them pay attention to the sparks, or at least use them as an excuse. When they had retreated to what Harry obviously felt was an acceptable distance, he started pacing up and down in front of them, staring at them all the while. Severus raised his eyebrows in respect and kept his distance.

            "You don't understand," Harry said. "I should punish them because they went against the Ministry? When the Ministry has been against me from the beginning, and tried to kill me at the party the other night?"

            A few of the Aurors started or paled, and Severus marked their faces.

            "I want this stupid war to stop," Harry said, and Severus knew those words were not part of a pretense. "And I want the Ministry to stop acting as if I haven't done enough by stopping it. Obviously, I haven't if the Dark Mark is here and if Death Eaters still want me dead." He glared at Severus. "But that's my job. The Ministry's job is to use the peace to guide the wizarding world. Not punish me for not being the hero they need, or think they need."

            The Aurors stared at him, and then the woman who had held Draco captive said, "But what are you going to do? How are you going to make them obey you, or stop attacking you, when nothing you've done so far has worked?" By the end of her words, her voice was all but twitching, and she pushed towards Harry as if she was going to thump him in the chest.

            Harry gave her another cold look that stopped her in her tracks, then shook his head. "Not even Unbreakable Vows hold them," he said. "But a bargain might, if I can find out what they want." He turned towards Severus. "What do you want?"

            Severus caught his breath and his tongue, and refrained from blurting out something that might have ruined Harry's plans immediately. He considered instead, and then said, "You know that the Dark Lord is not completely dead."

            "I'm not convinced of that," Harry said.

            On cue, a hiss and a coiling motion came from one of the smaller corridors, and Nagini came out into the light. Severus felt his own muscles coiling in response, and nearly struck before he thought. Of course, this was Shield, disguised as the Dark Lord's snake. He shook his head and pointed with his wand towards the illusion, smiling at Harry.

            "I thought you had killed his faithful companion," he said. "Are you telling me that you did not?"

            Harry turned and feigned horror well enough that one of the Aurors fainted. "Nagini" reared her head and hissed, swaying back and forth. Under the glamour, that was probably Shield begging to come to his true master, but Severus could see no trace of it. Harry had done an incredible job with the illusion spell. Or perhaps it had taken so well because Shield was bound so closely to Harry's soul.

            "It could be real," Harry breathed. "It could be true." He glanced back and forth between Severus and Draco, and his face flickered with doubt. Then he straightened and threw back his shoulders.

            "How close do you think you've come to resurrecting him, then?" he demanded.

            Severus thought he managed his grimace of a smile as well as Harry managed his own acting, then. It was one thing to wake from nightmares that the Dark Lord had managed a resurrection, and another to talk, even in play, of doing it himself.

            But Harry had asked if they would be able to play their parts, and both he and Draco had said yes. So they could. So they would. It was no harder than Draco mustering up the courage to cast the first Dark Mark, after all.

            "Fairly close," Severus said. "We would not describe the whole of the process to you, but..." He paused meaningfully, and Harry scowled at him. Severus thought part of it was genuine, driven by nerves, so he did not wait as long as he had thought he would. "But there are advantages to a world without him, I must admit. I have more freedom than I did before, if not as much power."

            "So power is what you want," Harry said, seizing on the word like any good negotiator. "All right. But how do you think that you're going to get that, in a world where the bargain we made for peace didn't work?"

            "I think," Severus said, and put many pauses between his words this time, to give the impression that he was considering it, "that treating with us as an independent power would be enough. The Ministry considered us a threat before you came to us as a hostage, but not enough to fear our wrath when they attacked you. Perhaps a bargain that we would not proceed in our resurrection of the Dark Lord, and would destroy the implements we have gathered so far, if the Ministry promised to leave us alone in the future?" He turned and raised an eyebrow at the gathered Aurors. Draco, who had stepped up to his side by now and away from the barrier, sneered in turn.

            "We can't make a bargain like that," said the Auror who had captured Draco, but she was staring at Nagini. Everyone knew about Harry's killing of the snake; it was the first tale the Daily Prophet had dragged out of him when the war ended. Even Severus had heard of it, though from the gossip of Death Eater jailers at the time rather than the front page. "We don't have the authority!"

            "But someone else has the authority to lead you to war with the Ashborn and try to kill me?" Harry gave her a lopsided smile. "I'll accept you as deciding for everyone if you accept that it was only a tiny part of the Ministry that decided renewed war would be preferable."

            "We need to leave you alone, too," the woman whispered, staring into his eyes as if she was a bird and Harry was Nagini. "So that you can--you'd fight You-Know-Who for us, if he really came back? You would?"

            "Yes," Harry said, pausing himself as though he had to think about whether he wanted to do that again for a Ministry that had proven itself ungrateful, "I would."

            And that was how it worked, the whirl of fear and spells and spectacular shows and half-logical arguments catching the Aurors up and bearing them along through what they would have questioned otherwise. That was how it came to be that six Aurors knelt on the floor and placed their hands over Harry's and swore--though not by Unbreakable Vows--to leave the Ashborn alone and leave Harry alone, as well, because they couldn't survive the anger of the first or the loss of the other. And all the while, Shield in his covering as Nagini danced back and forth, emitting hisses long and angry enough to convince anyone that he was the real thing.

            Severus was standing ready to cast the spell they had agreed upon the moment the swearing finished. Harry had argued hardest against this part, but Severus had pointed out that all their effort would be for naught if no one believed the Aurors when they told their tale. That was the disadvantage of a potion and spells to induce fear: every experience inside it would seem hallucinatory, and other people could deny what had happened in this particular corridor.

            But not if Severus cast the spell that he did then, standing behind Draco so no one would note the wand movements and doing it nonverbally so no one could hear and suspect. Imperio persuasione.

            The magic rose away from him, a sensation like smoke against the skin and in the eyes without the visibility of smoke, and streamed towards the distant walls. Like Harry's will, it leached into the stones and began to radiate outwards, making itself part of the Ministry where so many people labored.

            Severus sent, not the image of the ceremony, which would make many people suspicious if it appeared in their head, but the conviction that the Aurors in this corridor felt, born from a mixture of their horror at Nagini and their fear of the Dark Lord's name and the dazzlement of the duel. The emotions would twine together, reinforcing each other, until all those who spent a substantial amount of time in the building came to believe that the bargain was for the best, and that the Ashborn should be allowed to remain unmolested and Harry should be able to stand outside the toils of Ministry politics so he could fight the one enemy who must cross all boundaries.

            Harry had said it was like Legilimency and mind control, and Severus had acknowledged that, and not budged. It was not the same as slavery. If someone fought hard enough against the emotions, questioned enough, they could rupture that conviction. And there were always those, like Harry, who had a natural resistance to the Imperius Curse and its varieties.

            But the majority of the Ministry was as mindless and spineless as a column of ants. They would go where they were led, and this was the only way to secure permanent peace and freedom for themselves.

            The Aurors finished their swearing, and the tide of magic left Severus exhausted, though he did not sway because Draco was beside him, keeping him from falling. Together, they turned away and left with a distant dignity. Harry was talking the Aurors around, dazzling them with another wave and round of words, and of arguments that would spin apart like gossamer if too closely examined, except that they didn't intend to give anyone that chance. And he was giving them time for the spell to work.

            It was fitting that when the Aurors again looked for the Ashborn, they would find them gone, vanished as mysteriously as they'd come.

*

            Draco scowled at nothing as he helped Severus out of the Ministry, to one of the bathrooms where they could depart. Of course it was for the best that they were leaving, since remaining there would only distract the Aurors and the different kind of spell that Harry was trying to weave with his words, but it still irritated him.

            He had done nothing to help them. He'd stood there like a useless stick and let some jumped-up Gryffindor capture him. And he hadn't participated in the duel that Severus and Harry had used, simultaneously, to convince the Aurors that the Ashborn would be hard to challenge and that Harry had the necessary skills to protect them from the Dark Lord.

            That he knew he wouldn't have been able to keep up, that his level of skill wasn't up to theirs, just hurt him like lemon juice stinging an old wound.

            But he thought about it, and he thought about the last time someone had praised him for what he was good at. In the forest, with Laughter and Thera, negotiating the contract and contact between centaurs and werewolves.

            And he hadn't been able to kill Dumbledore that night on the Tower, either, and he could only torture when someone forced him to do it with dire consequences on his parents or Severus. He wasn't good at violence. He didn't have that brooding, restless, crackling power in him that Harry did.

            But.

            If the peace they had argued and fought for today held, then Harry's kind of power wouldn't do them as much good. Harry had already shown that either he needed something to do or he retreated into himself and brooded. Draco was the one whose power with words could help them in peace, the one who would help hold it together as he met with members of the pure-blood alliance and members of the Ministry, perhaps, more sensible people who would realize what happened and how they had to counter the idiots.

            Draco smiled. His greatest enemy was still himself, his lack of self-confidence and his immediate envy of any gifts he didn't share. But he could do this. He was the one who would probably be most valuable as the years went on, even if he had to bring Harry or Severus to the table with him on occasion. Harry didn't have the patience for negotiations, and neither did Severus, in a different manner; he preferred potions to people, and short-term goals to long-term ones.

            So Draco smiled as they left the Ministry, and as he fed Severus a Strengthening Potion, and as they discussed strategy against the Ministry for the months to come.

*

            qwerty: Thanks! I hope the plan does make sense, now, since it wasn't all fully explained at once.

            unneeded: Thanks! Of everybody, I think Draco probably learned the most, unless you're counting the Ministry and what they were tricked into believing.
- 31
- 32
- 33
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Ashborn