Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Ashborn	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 36151 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 33
- 34
- 35
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Thirty-Four—Making Apologies

            “It is not surprising that Yaxley resented me for taking over his mind,” Severus said, and lifted a cup of tea to his lips. Harry didn’t think he was as interested in sipping it as he pretended. More interested in escaping the conversation they were about to have, Harry thought. “After all, I did not conceal the traces of my presence in pulling the bindings out, and he was inherently of a less resilient and forgiving temperament than Incognita.”

            Harry stared at his buttered scones and pushed them around on his plate. He really wasn’t hungry, but Draco seemed to pick up on that thought even better than Severus, with his Legilimency, and turned to glare at him. Harry obediently picked up a scone and took a bite, although he didn’t really think it would taste good.

            The fluff of the bread melting on his tongue and the sweetness of the butter against the roof of his mouth convinced him otherwise, and he swallowed a few bites before he said, “I don’t see how we can know which Ashborn would be good ones to release, though. If you can’t know exactly how they’ll react, and if their minds have changed while they were bound in any way, they might explode after you free them. Or not.”

            “That’s why I don’t see anything wrong with leaving some of them servants.” Draco examined his plate as though displeased to find only crumbs there, and then leaned back in his chair and reached for one of the scones on Harry’s plate. Harry slapped his wrist without thought. Draco gave him a smile that was all bright baring of his teeth. “They can serve a purpose that way, and we don’t have to make difficult decisions about what to do with them.”

            “Not acceptable,” Harry said quietly.

            “I am willing to pay the price of giving the Ashborn up,” Severus said a moment later, and put down his teacup. “I have already agreed to that. But I am interested in hearing what Harry thinks we should do with Yaxley.”

            “Yes, so am I.” Draco linked his hands together and stretched his arms over his head, so far that Harry could hear the crackling of bones and muscles. Then he brought them down again, folded in front of him, and cocked his head at Harry. “And what we should do about the centaurs. They’re beginning to talk of returning to the Forest. They don’t feel they’re truly part of the alliance, and I think they worry about what the werewolves may do without them there.”

            “They can’t do anything about the werewolves by themselves,” Harry said, blinking. “And you said that Thera did come with you to one conversation with Laughter.”

            Draco sighed and rolled his eyes. “Why do you think Thera and Kleianthe chose to come? They’re the ones who want to be involved, Harry, to be on earth instead of gazing at the stars all the time. It’s natural for them to resent being left out, whether it would make sense for them to be in the negotiations with Laughter or not.”

            Harry sighed and passed a hand over his eyes. He had spent most of last night worrying over what to do about Yaxley, and how he would apologize to the centaurs, and it was tempting to say, “Fuck it,” and go back to bed. He couldn’t think of anything immediately.

            That doesn’t mean you need to say, “Fuck it.” It only means that you need to think in more depth about what you have to do, and maybe blunder through it and make up the rules as you go along. You’ve done that all your life, why stop now?

            Harry gave a faint smile and dropped his hand to his lap. “I’m willing to take charge of Yaxley, if you want,” he told Severus. “He seems to think that Vol—he is still alive in me. He might be willing to listen to me.”

            Severus’s face did not change. “But I am not willing to let you be alone with him,” he said. “He is still dangerous, and sooner or later he would find out that his delusion that part of the Dark Lord survives is indeed delusion. Think of something else.”

            Harry hesitated. Then he said, “I can’t think of something else. Killing him would be cruel. Trying to force him to obey us or putting him back under slavery now that he’s had some time out of it is cruel. Keeping him captive is dangerous and useless. Stripping him of his magic or Obliviating him is cruel.”

            “Is that all you can think of?” Severus raised his eyebrows, and his cup, again. “I thought of turning him over to the Ministry. Let their justice take its course. He is a Death Eater, and but for my taking over their remnants, the Ministry would have caught and punished him in any case. Give him to them. It could be a good peace offering, and a reassurance to them that we will obey the letter of the law.”

            “That’s,” Harry began, and then stopped. It did seem like a good solution, but that was his whirling head talking, surely.

            “I don’t think we should sacrifice someone’s life simply because we can’t figure out what to do with him,” he said at last.

            Severus shook his head, and he had a smile on his face to match Draco’s. “Do we know they will kill him? They may simply put him in Azkaban, or try him for lesser crimes and fine him; I do not know how much detail they have about Yaxley’s specific actions during the war. And my responsibility towards him ended when I released him from his bindings. If I am not his Lord and he is not my servant, I have no responsibilities towards him.”

            “It just seems a miserable life,” Harry said. “Being a Death Eater, being enslaved, being a prisoner.”

            Draco leaned forwards and stared hard into his face. “Harder than what I endured?” he asked. “As a young Death Eater, and a torturer, and a prisoner, and then someone who might have wasted my life if you hadn’t come along? Harder than Severus’s years as a spy and a Death Eater and a shut-away Lord of the Ashborn? Harder than what you did?”

            Harry leaned back and shut his eyes again. Draco and Severus let him. In a moment, Harry heard the sound of Draco eating again from some newly-summoned dish, and the murmur of low conversation as he and Severus spoke to each other.

            If they think I’m being stupid…

            It might be worth listening to them.

            Harry had to admit that he really didn’t know what to do with Yaxley if not hand the man over to the Ministry. Yaxley couldn’t be trusted, and the time spent to redeem him or make him listen or establish a truce that would hold with him was time that Harry could better spend on soothing other Ashborn, like Incognita, who would listen to him and not cause Severus so much time and trouble to release.

            He remembered what Draco had said when they’d spoken about it, that neither he nor Severus cared about the Ashborn in the way that Harry wanted them to. They didn’t see them as people who should have their own independent minds and lives, because when they had those minds and lives, they had used them to make Draco and Severus miserable. Or they had, at the very least, gone along with Voldemort’s plans to do so and hadn’t dared to speak up.

            If these Death Eaters came out of their slavery and couldn’t see the advantage of staying quiet and trying to find a way to live, like Incognita, then why should Draco and Severus waste extra time on them?

            Harry explored the edges of a new, curious idea, his tongue tapping around it like a loose tooth. Maybe…maybe I don’t have to care about them either, if I don’t want to. Perhaps neither Draco nor Severus would care if they went into the Ministry’s custody, and I could stop worrying about them that way.

            Maybe I can be selfish sometimes. Who would thank me for caring about the Ashborn? Not them, not when I’m only the man who killed their Lord to the ones like Yaxley. Not Ron and Hermione and the other Weasleys, not when they have the world to worry about putting back together after the war. Not Draco and Severus.

            Harry opened his eyes and looked at Draco, who looked back at him with one eyebrow raised and his mouth full, and Severus, who patted at his lips with a napkin and leaned back in his chair.

            “Trying to be selfish feels strange,” he said.

            “That’s because you’ve learned to think of it as selfishness,” Draco said, and took another sip of tea. “Try thinking of it as the normal bloody way that everyone behaves, and it’ll come more naturally to you.”

            “It’s true that I can’t think of anything else to do for them,” Harry admitted. “And that I would rather help people who can be helped than spend my time and effort on someone who wouldn’t appreciate them anyway.” Perhaps he could think of Yaxley rather like some people in the Ministry, who wouldn’t be content with Harry as a hero unless he perfectly obeyed them. Neither was worth a thought.

            “I knew you would learn it someday,” Draco said, and put his cup down to applaud politely. Severus didn’t follow his lead, but did look vastly amused. “It’s common sense, and most other people in the world are born with it. But you, you had to learn the high-level morality first, and approach everything backwards.”

            Harry threw his napkin at him. Draco caught it with a little cluck of his tongue and smiled at Harry. “You look a lot better without all that darkness in your eyes,” he murmured.

            “And I should care how you think I look?” Harry shook his head and grinned. He hadn’t realized how much his inability to think of a solution for the Yaxley problem had weighed him down. It felt as if he might run up mountains like a goat right now and still have enough energy for a dance or a duel afterwards.

            “That is rather the idea when you are considering taking someone as a lover, yes,” Severus said, his voice even lower and smoother than Draco’s.

            Harry blinked, and the silence filled the air between them like smoke. He thought it was the first time that one of them had said, out loud, what had hovered between them and whispered in their touches and kisses.

            And it was still odd, to think about kissing them. Harry thought he had plenty of Gryffindor morality left, it just concentrated in queer places.

            He stood up and glanced at Draco. “Would you mind taking me to the centaurs’ garden?” he asked, picking up an orange from a plate in the center of the table that the Ashborn must have brought while his eyes were closed. “I think I have a peace offering to try and make.”

            Draco raised an eyebrow at him. “You know it won’t be that simple? They’ve had plenty of fruit by now, and they’re still going to remember your broken promise, not forget it because you’re offering them something sweet.”

            “This is a symbol, not a bribe,” Harry said patiently, and reflected that he wasn’t the only one who could misunderstand basic gestures sometimes. “And, Severus, is there something you could do to figure out which Ashborn are safe to free and which aren’t? I’d rather not put you through that pain again for nothing.”

            “Perhaps a potion, yes,” Severus said, and his fingers twitched as if he would pick up a quill. “There are certain herbs that are useful in constructing images of the mind even for a non-Legilimens…yes…”

            Harry turned away, smiling, and found Draco watching him thoughtfully from beside his chair. Harry nodded to him. “Ready?”

*

            Draco shut the gate of the garden behind them and watched as Harry approached Thera and Kleianthe, holding the oranges he’d stolen from the table high.

            Well, not stolen. But Harry moved as if he had stolen them, and Draco could see the centaurs watching him and deciphering how he felt from the way his arm was crooked and his slightly desperate smile.

            Draco strolled after him, meeting Thera’s eyes and smiling blandly when she glanced at him. It wasn’t his fault if the centaurs found Harry confusing to deal with. Draco was sure he would, too, in their place. But they would have to choose on their own to reject or accept his apology. Draco wouldn’t interfere.

            Kleianthe was the first one who moved in response to Harry’s overtures, stopping in front of him and drumming one hoof on the ground. Harry’s shoulders stiffened, which made Draco wonder what he associated that sound with, but he bowed and held out the oranges. Kleianthe picked up the nearest one and held it to her mouth, squeezing the juice onto her tongue. Her gaze never moved from Harry’s face.

            Thera was the one who held out a hand but kept it poised in the air, meaning that Harry had to move closer to her if he wanted to give her anything. She kept her voice mild, but for all that, it was an effective whip and Draco saw Harry flinch underneath it. “You broke your promise to us.”

            “Yeah, I did,” Harry said. He seemed to have chosen simple words, along with simple gifts. “Sorry.”

            “Why should we trust you to come back now?” Kleianthe danced in place, hooves thudding into the dirt. Harry turned his head back to her, face remote, and Draco was sure that he was controlling a magical reaction that otherwise might have been much worse than this. Kleianthe wouldn’t necessarily know that, though, and the way she reared and came down in front of him said she wasn’t impressed. “You made a solemn promise that you then broke. You can’t tell me that you’re sorry for it now.”

            “Because you won’t accept the apology?” Harry watched her, but kept his hand with the other orange aimed towards Thera. After a few moments, she took it and began to peel it. Her gaze stayed on Harry, more meditative than anything.

            “Because you aren’t sorry,” Kleianthe said. “If you cared enough to be sorry, then you would never have broken your word in the first place.”

            “That’s rather circular logic, isn’t it?” Harry said, with a smile that Draco couldn’t help but appreciate, even if he agreed with Kleianthe that Harry should have thought more about his original promise before he made it. “That would deny that anyone ever changes or makes apologies.”

            “I distrust your reasoning, as well.” Kleianthe dropped the part of the orange she held to the ground and pulped it with slow, strong motions of her hooves. Draco didn’t think her eyes, focused on Harry’s, had blinked yet.

            “Someone so unyielding would make a bad diplomat,” Harry said. “Therefore, I don’t think your leader sent you with that in mind, or else you don’t really believe what you’re saying. There must be something I can do to make it up to you.”

            “Presuming that you can makes your arrogance obvious,” Thera said, and Harry flinched as though someone had slapped him.

            He turned to face her, and then took a deep breath and bowed his head. “And now I’m sorry for that,” he murmured. “This does seem to be a morning for making apologies. All right. Is there anything I can do that would make you accept me back?”

            Thera smiled and bounced the orange in her hand, then took another bite. “If you made a promise you could not break,” she said.

            “I didn’t know centaurs could make Unbreakable Vows,” Harry said. Draco touched his elbow to get his attention, and shook his head. There were harmonics ringing in the back of Harry’s voice that worried him. All they needed now was for Harry to break out and do something to the centaurs.

            “We cannot,” said Thera. “Or rather, we have no desire to involve ourselves in such promises. We would rather that you swear on your magic, so that if you break the oath, you will not die, but your magic will be diminished.”

            Harry blinked and looked at Draco. “You can do that? I never heard of something like that.”

            “Why are you looking at me as if I’m the only one you can trust to tell you the truth, simply because I’m a wizard?” Draco murmured, and took the back of Harry’s neck in one hand, aiming Harry’s head at Thera. “She’s the one you should listen to, because she’s the one who’s telling you the truth right now. Are you going to listen to her or not?”

            Harry flushed and mumbled, and then stood up. “Okay. I never heard of something like that before. How can you make such a promise hold?”

            “It all depends on the way you make it.” It was Kleianthe who took up the conversation now. She had a leaf in her hands and was deliberately ripping it, but at least she had blinked. Draco thought he was seeing now why both Thera and Kleianthe had come, and how they might work in concert when confronting different types of humans. “Will you speak the correct words, knowing that you will be punished for your disloyalty and your word falsely given, and that there is no second chance if you fail this time?”

            “More like a third chance,” Harry murmured, but he nodded. “Yes. If the promise only harms myself and no one else.”

            “We have no interest in such things,” Thera repeated, her voice lofty. She reached out and picked up an apple from a plate in front of her, then broke it in two halves with a twist of her hands that Draco would have given a lot to be able to imitate. He avoided eating fruit often simply because it ended up so messy. “Mr. Malfoy, will you take one half of this apple and be a Bearer for this rite?”

            A Bearer must be like a Bonder. Draco reached out and picked up the apple half, holding it in front of him. He could see a star-shaped pattern of seeds on the white flesh, and wondered what Thera was going to do with it. This must be centaur magic, which he had heard of but thought confined to reading the stars.

            Thera turned to face Kleianthe, and held out the other half of the apple. Kleianthe took it and backed up so that she stood across from Thera. With her eyes and a nod of her head, Thera directed Draco to move so that he was standing across from Harry, leaving Harry and Thera in the middle. Harry had his hands clenched in front of him, but didn’t object.

            “Now,” Thera said, and her voice had gained a strange, strong resonance that actually made Draco glad that he wasn’t expected to do anything but hold the apple, “do you, Harry Potter, swear to support us as your allies, fight for us, and not run away again?”

            Harry waited as if to hear more, and then nodded cautiously. Draco began to relax. Perhaps this promise would go well after all. Those were practically things that Harry did all the time anyway.

            Thera gave him a faint smile and stepped back so that she was closer to Kleianthe, motioning Harry to move closer to Draco at the same time. “Do you swear on your magic to keep these promises? You must speak aloud.”

            Harry blew out his breath, and then said, “Yes. I swear on my magic to support you as my allies, fight for you, and not run away again.”

            Draco felt a fierce hum start in his hand, affecting the apple but seeming to travel down into the bones and the skin of his wrist. He gritted his teeth and held on. He didn’t know exactly what the centaur magic entailed, but he doubted Thera would do something that would hurt him or Harry. She had to know that that was counterproductive as far as making the alliance strong went.

            Thera nodded twice, once as though in response to Harry and once as though listening to silent instructions. “Very well,” she said. “You know what you have sworn, and you will be punished if you forsake it.”

            “I will be,” Harry said, and then blinked, as if he hadn’t exactly meant to say that.

            Kleianthe curled her fingers around her half of the apple. Draco could see it vibrating, dancing, trying to get away from her. He didn’t think his own was doing that, but he curled his fingers around it, too, in case it started to happen.

            “You should take the magic into you, make it part of your body,” Thera said, and her voice was low and lulling. Draco reached up with his free hand to smooth the hair down on the back of his neck, and tried to remind himself that Thera wouldn’t want to harm Harry, either. Harry reached out for the half of the apple that Draco held, not taking his gaze from Thera, and Thera reached for Kleianthe’s half in the same way.

            Draco tried to make sure that he released the apple he held at the same moment Kleianthe released hers. Kleianthe met his eyes and smiled a little, stamping down with one hoof.

            That must be right, then. Draco felt himself relax a fraction. He still didn’t understand much about the strange diplomatic waters that he was swimming in, but he kept getting things right.

            Harry bit into the apple, and grimaced, as though the magic had made it taste strange. But he ate it all, and so did Thera. They even licked their fingers free of juice in almost an identical manner. That was the only part Draco had to look away from, because he was sure the sight wasn’t meant to make his groin hum and twitch the way the apple had done, either.

            “Good,” Thera said, when they were done. She stamped her hoof again, and nodded. “Now, you can go. We will need time to consider the offer you have made us, and that we may be able to forgive you.”

            Harry blinked, as though he had thought instant forgiveness was possible—after everything, after all—but inclined his head, and then turned and walked out of the garden. Draco lingered to watch Thera. She had started to lower her head as though to crop grass, the way Kleianthe had already done, but cocked it to watch him.

            “Is something wrong?” she asked politely.

            “I’m glad that you made the decision to take him back into the alliance,” Draco said. “I can’t promise that he’ll be perfect, but he does want to help.”

            Thera snorted, the sound more human-like than horse-like, although the light shudder of her skin she gave a moment later had no human equivalent that Draco could think of. “That was the nature of the old alliance, as well. It had to be flexible, because it had to embody new mistakes, and old ones, and room for people to make them and be forgiven. We will accept him as long as he does not break his promise, and that is less likely now.”

            Draco bit back the words that he wanted to speak, about how Harry was so powerful that losing some of his magic probably wouldn’t mean as much to him as the loss of all their magic might mean to most people. He was here to help Harry and include him as part of the alliance, and that meant trying to refrain from automatically tearing him down.

            That is hard to remember, sometimes.

            “I hope that you’re right,” he said, and left the garden to go after Harry.

*

            Severus stared into the crystal bowl in front of him, and then leaned back and shut his eyes. Thoughts whirled and dashed through his head, fragments of books and his own notions about experimental brews and the time that it would probably take to construct a potion like this, one that would let him see the thoughts of his Ashborn and the underlying structures of their minds before he freed them.

            If I use hawthorn…comfrey would work better…potions involving memories are always tricky…one cannot use Legilimency if there is no mind to read…there would be a mind if I were to retain the potion as an inert base and only brew it to work when those memories are added…

            He opened his eyes and bent once more over the dish, his fingers twitching. He blew across the mixture he had already put in there, and then waited. The impulse to blow had been a strange one, but sometimes his best results came out of the strangest impulses.

            The crystal dish twanged like a beaten tuning fork, and then the liquid inside surged up towards his face. It resembled the silver liquid of memories in a Pensieve, but was both thicker and more sluggish. Severus rapped his wand sharply against the side of the dish, and the liquid settled back with what sounded like a hiss. Severus let his lip twitch, once.

            Good. It would do if it was working right, at this point in the process, and what better way to test it than with one of his own memories?

            He touched his wand to his temple and thought of his last kiss with Harry. The memory flowed out and draped itself as a slender silver thread over the wand, so that Severus rather had to work to get it into the dish.

            But once it settled into the mixture of molten silver, hawthorn leaves, and several other ingredients that Severus had written down on the parchment beside him, everything changed. A spiderweb of cracks spread out over the surface, and Severus found himself gazing at something that looked like broken ice. He smiled and tapped the dish with his wand again.

            The potion rose and twisted itself into an ice sculpture of a branch, with shadows moving inside it. Severus gazed at the shadows, and discovered the first of the problems that he would have with this particular experiment.

            The shadows needed interpretation. They did not form straightforward pictures, but simple images, ones that sketched and sawed back and forth as though they were cast by a fire. Severus knew what memory he had put into the dish, and that would help in this initial interpretation, but it would take much more practice for the others.

            Severus grimaced for a moment. Harry, with his insistence that the Ashborn be freed as soon as possible, would not like that.

            Then Severus settled back in his chair and shook his head. Harry had shown that he was more willing to accommodate Draco and Severus than he had initially seemed to be. So Severus would explain the problem and show that he had tried to solve it, but that more time was necessary.

            And in the meantime, Harry should grow more reconciled to the idea that not everything would happen the moment he wanted it to, and that some of the Ashborn perhaps could not be freed at all.

            Severus smiled and reached for his wand again.

*

            “I’m sorry,” Harry said, shifting so that Shield’s weight was somewhat better balanced on his shoulder and the sharp tail wasn’t poking him in the nostrils from its tight clutch around his neck. “But you can’t be with me all the time. I didn’t want you there at breakfast hissing at Draco and Severus for disagreeing with me, and I didn’t want you in the garden where you might threaten the centaurs.”

            The dragon hissed into his ear and hooked his claws ever deeper, so that Harry thought there was a good chance he would probably get his chest scratched if someone knocked on the door and startled either of them. He reached up and caught Shield’s foot, intending to remove the claws from his shirt altogether.

            Shield craned his neck around and cried into his face.

            Harry stopped, staring at him. Shield bobbed his head up and down in response, and then tucked his neck around Harry’s, along with his tail. He must have lengthened it, because his eyes wound up next to Harry’s cheek, and stared at him, claws tightening until Harry thought he’d have better luck removing his own hands than Shield.

            “I’m sorry,” Harry said quietly. “I didn’t realize that it meant that much to you.”

            He sat down on the bed, cradling Shield against him. The dragon waited a moment, as though absorbing Harry’s intentions and deciding that he didn’t really want to run away from him, and then unwound. He ended up on Harry’s lap, running his claws delicately over his shirt this time and crooning up at him.

            Harry shook his head and rubbed Shield’s back. “You’re still anxious about the Ministry attack?” he asked. “But you have to get used to that. I don’t think I’ll ever be completely safe. Even if I’m safe for most of my life, someone else will probably try to kill me. That’s just the way things are.”

            Shield bared his teeth and snapped them. Harry touched his back again, smoothing down the spine.

            “Because I used to be the Chosen One, and because the Ministry dislikes me, or some people in it do, and because there are people who might still think Voldemort should have won out there,” Harry said. “That’s why.”

            Shield drummed his tail against Harry’s chest, and, of course, said nothing. But the look in his eyes deepened, and Harry sighed and stroked his head again.

            “I’m not going to run actively into danger,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I’ll be able to stay out of it completely and for the rest of my life, especially when I’m not going to squat in the fortress for the rest of my life, either. You can come with me, and guard me. Just not all the time. And you’ll have to get used to the danger.”

            Shield bared his diamond-edged teeth. Harry stroked his neck and tried to think about it, about the ways that he could keep himself safe enough for his paranoid dragon companion while still having enough of a life to be worthwhile.

            Well. Maybe just thinking about it in the beginning would be enough. Not rushing into danger when I don’t have to. Not doing things like accepting the Ministry’s invitation when I don’t know what it’ll entail.

            Shield crooned and loosened his hold on Harry’s shirt, probably because he could pick up on the direction of his thoughts. Harry was starting to stroke down his leg when someone knocked on his door.

            “Come in,” he called. There was one good thing about being in the Ashborn fortress, at least, he thought, as he transferred Shield to his shoulder: he never had to worry about someone who didn’t belong there knocking on his door. If it wasn’t Draco or Severus, it would be Bellatrix or another of the Ashborn with Severus’s mind behind their eyes.

            You oughtn’t to feel that way. You ought to feel that the Ashborn would be better off free.

            Harry was so busy arguing with himself about that that at first he didn’t notice Draco standing in the doorway. Then he raised his head, and hoped he didn’t look too stupid with the focus he’d had on his own thoughts, and said, “Yes?”

            Draco smiled at him, a smile so slow that Harry braced himself for insults to come behind it, and shut the door. Then he took a step forwards and said, casually, “I find that I’d like to kiss you. And that I’d like to spend some time with Severus while we do it.” He looked at Shield for a moment, no more than a flicker of his eyelids, but it was enough to let Harry know what he would say next. “Without the dragon. What do you say?”

            His gaze came back to Harry’s, and the very intensity told Harry that Draco wasn’t sure what he would say next, apparent confidence or not.

            Harry swallowed. His hands shook, and he closed them into fists and hoped they would shake in a more productive manner. Shield glanced back and forth from him to Draco, but made no vocal objection, the way Harry had thought he would.

            “I—I’d like that,” he said, and his voice cracked and then broke, something that shouldn’t have been possible in only three words. Draco nodded, his smile gone and his eyes left with that burning light.

            “Good. I think Severus will have finished his work for the day in, perhaps, an hour or two. Come to the rooms that we share.” And Draco stepped out of the bedroom and closed the door behind him, leaving Harry blinking and Shield sitting upright on his haunches, twining his neck around Harry’s again.

            “I didn’t know Slytherins made appointments for sex,” Harry told Shield, smoothing his hand up and down the dragon’s back again.

            Shield looked at him with clear eyes and gave a small, uncertain chirp.

            “Yeah,” Harry said, and flopped back on the pillow, the whirling thoughts about danger and dragons and selfishness and safety replaced by smaller but no less confusing ones about Draco and Severus. “You and me both.”



*

            Anon: This is probably the best solution. If Severus cared more about him, they would do something else, but then, it’s sort of a defining trait of Severus’s that he’s not unselfish



            Thank you!

            Penn: Thanks! They have a good handle on the Ministry now, and enough wariness and sense to keep away from it, so hopefully they can control the terms of the game.

            unneeded: Severus chose Yaxley to release based on obedience, which is something he should have remembered all Ashborn have as long as he’s controlling them, but probably not beyond that. Hopefully his potion will help him there.

            DarklessVision: Thank you! I don’t think it will take that much now to conclude the story. Probably a few more weeks.
- 33
- 34
- 35
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