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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-Eight—The Future Unwritten

            “Are you ready to go back, then?”

            Harry smiled at Hermione and stroked Shield’s head where he stood with his neck wrapped around Harry’s and his head dangling down in the middle of his chest. Shield’s claws sank deep into his shoulder, but Harry had solved that problem by Transfiguring his shirts to have a little more padding there. They were back on good terms, which meant Shield had forgiven Harry for leaving the Ashborn fortress without telling him where he was going and was no more than usually paranoid.

            “Yes,” Harry said simply. “I wanted some time away from Severus and Draco to visit with you, and Ron, and Ginny, and the rest of the family, but I’m ready to go back now.”

            Hermione grinned at him. “And I reckon it has nothing to do with Bill and Fleur coming over for a visit in a little while?”

            Harry shuddered despite himself. He had never disliked Fleur the way that Ginny and Mrs. Weasley had for a little while, but now that she was pregnant, she had enough discomforts for three armies and a pressing need to tell you what color her vomit had been that morning. “Only about ten percent of it,” he said. “The other ninety percent is that I miss them and I want to see how they’re getting on.”

            “Afraid they might change their minds without you there?”

            Harry blinked. Of all the things that Hermione might reckon were his reason, he hadn’t thought of that one. “Change their minds about what?”

            “About having you as a lover.” Hermione watched him, leaning forwards with her elbows on her knees and her hands propped beneath his chin. “I mean, they were lovers, by themselves, for an awfully long time. And they’re more like each other than they are like you.”

            Only the knowledge that Hermione was trying to do good, as she saw it—warning Harry of all the problems so that they wouldn’t surprise and disappoint him later—kept Harry from snapping at her. He sighed and nodded. “Yeah, sometimes I think about that. But all they’d have to do is tell me they were tired of me, and I can’t see Severus keeping that from me even if Draco wanted to. Then I would leave.”

            “And come back here?” Hermione half-lifted her head. “I thought the Unbreakable Vows you made prevented you from doing that.”

            Harry shook his head. “They say that I can’t attack Severus or Draco or the Ashborn, that I have to discuss the timing of my next visit to you with Severus, and that I won’t stay away visiting you for more than a month. They say nothing at all about what happens if I go somewhere and it’s not to you.”

            Hermione blinked. “Really?”

            Harry snorted. “I spent hours arguing with Severus over the wording, and any loopholes that might come up with his Vows, too. I should know what they say.”

            Hermione hesitated, then said, “Then nothing really binds you to them.”

            “Except that I want to be bound,” Harry said quietly. “You could argue that Severus isn’t bound to do anything, either, since he’s already freed Incognita and he’s shown no sign of wanting to attack you, Ron, or me anyway. But he’s still going through and doing things he doesn’t have to, like considering freeing all the Ashborn and consulting with me about the fates of the ones he frees who are too dangerous for him to just let roam around the fortress. This isn’t about Vows anymore, Hermione. I don’t think it was from the first moment that I started taking Draco and Severus seriously as—potential lovers.”

            “But they’re not always your friends,” Hermione said, her eyes bright and shrewd.

            “Is Ron always your friend, come to that?” snapped Harry, a little sick of the interrogation, even if he knew that Hermione was doing it because she was concerned for his happiness. “I don’t think that you always got along when we were on the Horcrux hunt. And I remember that time you cursed him not to speak for a week.”

            Hermione’s cheeks paled. Then she murmured, “He—never called me the names that Malfoy did.”

            “And Draco never called me those names, either.” Harry shook his head and stood up. “He called me different things, and I’ve decided to overlook them until or unless he does something else unforgivable. You don’t have to like him, Hermione. I don’t think he likes you, either. But I’m going home to them, and that’s it.”

            Hermione winced and held out her arms. “I don’t mean to, Harry,” she whispered into his hair, as he came closer and hugged her. “I’m sorry. But I do worry that there’s something not quite right about this, you becoming their lover after you were their hostage. Muggles have this disease called—”

            “Nothing in my life is bloody normal,” Harry interrupted roughly. “I know it’s not for you, either, with the war and all, but you and Ron had each other all through it, and normal childhoods, and—just lots of things I didn’t, Hermione. For right now, this is what I want. I think what’s best is that I know I don’t have to stay with Severus and Draco if I don’t want to, I’m free to change my mind. Please leave it up to me to change it instead of thinking that you need to tell me to all the time.”

            Hermione gave him a watery smile. “All right, Harry. Are you going to wait for Ron to say good-bye?”

            Harry shook his head. “We said it this morning before he left for the Ministry.” Ron had gone to see about possibly getting into the Auror training program when this year at Hogwarts and the NEWTs were over. He was a little wary, since the Ministry that had targeted Harry might target him, but on the other hand his father and Percy still worked for them, and Ron really, really wanted to be an Auror. On the whole, Harry thought it was a good idea. Ron had lots of skills he had picked up in the war that could be useful for the Aurors.

            “All right.” Hermione hugged him one more time, and then stood up and accompanied him to the front of the house. Harry had told her that he preferred to Apparate back to the fortress rather than Floo.

            And that was true, at least so he could avoid getting soot on his clothing and dropping it everywhere in his rooms. But he had another reason to want to Apparate today, and it involved doing something for himself.

            A private errand.

            A wonderful surprise, even if he was the only one who would know about it and thus the one receiving the surprise.

*

            Severus leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, running a hand over his forehead. Examining the memory he had taken from Marie Yaxley had involved enough exertion to make sweat spring out on his brow, and given him a headache that had taken several vials of Headache Draught to exorcise.

            On the one hand, he had to interpret what was going on without knowing any of the players in the drama, the way he had when he’d visited Harry’s memory. On the other, the shadow of his own Legilimency lay all over the memory, subtly warping it in various ways. He had forced Marie, as he had all of them, to pay more attention to Severus’s own desires than her own emotions, and the effects of that reached back into the past as well as extending into the future. An Ashborn guard upset by the recollection of a death or a time when someone else in the Death Eaters had tried to kill them was an Ashborn who was not serving Severus’s needs.

            And so he had woven his bonds tight, never thinking the day might come when he might want to pull them off, and needed to see the reality beneath them for that.

            With patience and effort, and going through the memory until he knew the faces of the actors better than he knew those of his parents and could repeat every word, he had finally worked the clutching, staggering memories free. And the knowledge had poured into his head, and he had known how Marie’s mind had changed under the pressure of his thoughts.

            Greatly, as it turned out. He had forced her to stop thinking of herself first and foremost—for she was self-centered in the same mild way that so many Slytherins and pure-bloods were—and pay attention to him instead. He had toughened her spirit, utterly suppressed her distaste for violence, and changed several of the interests, such as Herbology, that she had had before he invaded her mind.

            Seeing the changes he had wrought, he had caught a glimpse, for the first time, of the distaste that Harry felt for this sort of mental slavery, where before he had only understood that objection when applied to himself.

            That had left him more worn-out than the sheer work he had put in.

            He sat up now and shook his head. He could not let the weariness deter him from the work he was going to put in—changing things, altering things, and making sure that he understood the Ashborn’s minds well before he ventured into them.

            He wondered what Harry would say if Severus told him that Harry had changed Severus more than the other way around. Probably he would laugh. Or he would say that they had changed each other in the same way, with that noble pomposity and claim of equality that Gryffindors so loved.

            Severus decided not to say it. He would make the necessary study, do the necessary work, and free Marie, and present it to Harry when he came back as a fait accompli. That would do more good in the end towards showing Harry what sacrifices he was prepared to make than all the bragging or hints in the world.

            He turned once more to the bowl that brimmed with his potion and cast the spells that would stir the liquid and make it ready to receive a new memory. He had another one that he would add to the mix and test, because he wanted to be sure that he understood the true nature of Marie’s mind now and not simply that one memory.

            He could not make things perfect for either Harry or Draco when he had helped to malform their lives in the first place, but he could show that he understood now.

*

            Draco sat by the fire in his rooms, looking thoughtfully into it. Ordinarily, he would have wanted to meet with Incognita by now to know what advice she could offer him on Mermish, but she had asked permission, with a little jerk of her head and a low voice Draco hadn’t known she was capable of, to go to her room and think for a while. Draco had of course given it to her. He didn’t think she would have asked, except that she was rattled enough by Kleianthe’s predictions for her to forget that she wasn’t Ashborn anymore.

            He understood. He wanted the time alone himself.

            The future Kleianthe had read from his stars was more surprising than anything else, and Draco wondered what Harry and Severus would think of it. There would have been a time when Severus would have told him that he wasn’t destined for anything half so grand, or smiled with a superior tinge and said nothing, waiting for Draco to give up this idea as he had given up so many in his time. Draco didn’t have the concentration and dedication for one subject that Severus had.

            But he couldn’t imagine what Harry would say, even now and after knowing him so well. Perhaps an explosion.

            Draco tapped his wand against the book in his lap, and it closed with a faint trail of red light sticking out from the pages to mark where he had been reading. Draco then stood up and turned to the shelves, seeking out the tomes he had nearly memorized by now, on the old pure-blood alliance and the names of the families who had held to the ancient ways when the rest of them had decided that individual gain was more to their taste.

            Yes. Tucked in the first of them was the unfinished letter to Lady Jocelyn, the witch he had thought of asking to bear him a child. Draco traced his fingers over the words on the page, and winced a little at the arrogance that shone through them. He would write this differently now, if he had it to write over again.

            And it seemed he would. He closed his eyes and listened to the way that Kleianthe’s words beat in his ears like the sea.

            A bright path is yours, curving out before you, touching the stars and beating sparks off them like a smith at the forge. The light illumines your survival of another war, and the children you will have, and the wife you will take, and the lovers you will retain. And you will become known to many, valued by many, though by some as an enemy and some as an ally. You will become more truly the spirit of the old alliance than anyone else, while carrying forwards with the new.

            Draco opened his eyes, and shivered. He could see now—though he would never tell Kleianthe—why the wizards of the ancient alliance might have preferred the future-reading methods of the merfolk. They might not be as accurate, but he was sure they would never be half so unsettling.

            Well. The old alliance had allowed multiple marriages and love-bonds, and marriages for more than one reason, as well. If he could offer a woman trained in those old ways sufficient reasons to marry him—so that the children might be legitimate—and bear him heirs, then she had no reason to object.

            Severus and Harry might, though.

            Draco sighed and bowed his head, letting his fingers tighten around the letter before he ripped it up and cast the pieces in the flames.

            He would have to write a better one. And think, too, how he would phrase his desire to have children to Severus and Harry. He was not sure that it was a desire Harry shared, as long as he could live with people who loved him.

            And he knew it was not one shared by Severus.

            With a faint smile on his face that Draco knew would change more than once in the future, he sat down and began to write a different letter.

*

            “And you’re sure that you can pay?”

            Harry grinned in spite of himself. He probably didn’t make the most prepossessing figure, with Shield on his shoulder and hissing at the woman he’d approached, and the glamour he’d adopted to make his face look utterly ordinary, cover his scar, and cause a general air of shabbiness to hang around his clothing.

            “Yes,” he said briefly, and reached into his pocket for the bag he’d stopped by Gringotts to get. He’d been half-afraid the Ministry would have seized his vault, but either they knew the bad publicity such a move would bring or it had never occurred to them. The Galleons that spilled across his palm made the dark-haired woman blink a bit and look from his hand to his face.

            “Well,” she said, after studying him for long enough that Harry thought she might refuse to rent the house to him anyway. “Come in, then.”

            Harry stepped through the front door and made sure that he noted the slight fall down to the floor. It was plain stone, the flags well-joined but cold, like the dungeon floors in Hogwarts. The windows had thick, hinged wooden shutters on them, linking so close that Harry had to cast a Lumos Charm to see anything. The dimness didn’t stink, but Harry was tempted to wrinkle his nose anyway. The smell of dust, at least, was thick.

            The woman cast a spell that banged the shutters back, and Harry cast another one, nonverbally, that kept him from sneezing or coughing as the dust flew about. That particular spell had been useful more than once when they were hunting Horcruxes or information about them through tunnels and caverns and abandoned houses.

            Seen by the light of an actual day—even if Shield did huddle closer to Harry’s neck as if to hide Harry’s vulnerable face and throat behind his wings—the cottage was much nicer than it had appeared from the outside. Harry could see why the woman wanted to rent it, though, since it was too small for the furniture stuffed into it currently. But the walls were sturdy, and there was a corner practically made for a desk, and another one for a bed, and he didn’t think the fanciful carvings on the walls or the enchantment on the ceiling that made it reflect the weather like the Great Hall at Hogwarts would be moving with her.

            “My parents made this place,” the woman said, not moving as she watched Harry turn around in the center of the floor and stare up at the shining ceiling. “It was their fancy to make it look like Hogwarts, it was. Ye’ve ever been there?”

            “When I was in school,” Harry said. The glamour he had chosen made him look older than he was. He turned back to her. “I’ll take it,” he said firmly. “How much a month?”

            They spent a long time haggling, long enough that Miss Cherrybuck, as she introduced herself, began to smile. Harry thought she probably enjoyed the challenge of getting her money’s worth; she certainly chuckled when she pocketed her Galleons.

            “That’s fair and kind of you, Mr. Gamson,” she said. “And I can move this furniture out of here by the first of next month. Rent to be due on the first, mind.”

            Harry nodded. He had thought of buying a place first, not renting it, but none of the other houses he could find for sale had been as isolated or private as this cottage, behind its strong wards that he could sense were only temporarily lowered.

            After a moment more of looking at him, Miss Cherrybuck stepped outside, and left Harry to stand in the house and glance around, and breathe through the dust, and imagine what it would look like when he’d cleaned it and used some magic to change the colors and put in his own chairs and desk and table and bed.

            This was what he wanted. A place for himself, one that no one else knew about, one he could visit when he wanted to escape for a time from the clutching pressure of the Ashborn’s fortress and his friends and his lovers. This was what he had never really had for himself. He was always sharing things at Hogwarts, and at “home” he had only had what the Dursleys gave him. And of course, on the Horcrux hunt, they couldn’t spend too much time in private or away from each other because something might happen to separate them.

            But this…

            Harry reached out and rested a hand on the nearest wall, feeling how firm it was beneath all the dirt and grime.

            This was his claim on a piece of the future. This was his statement that he was here now, and didn’t wish to move.

            He thought he could make it a strong one.

*

            Severus plunged among shadows.

            He could feel them curling around his ankles as if they were thick, cold dark water, and he kicked out against them. He would survive them and reach his goal. Rivers could come against him, and it would not alter his determination.

            He touched something more solid, but it broke apart beneath his feet when he tried to lean on it. He grunted and began to wade again, picking the shadows apart as he went. They felt familiar to his hands, as if he had woven them himself. Which he had, though not in the form of shadows.

            He stepped up onto the one solid bank he could find and turned, swaying his wand out over the water around him. He heard it stop rushing, and Severus closed his eyes and began to push back the slavery he had established here, one slow, hard step at a time.

            The bank sloped beneath him, and tried to throw him, wickedly. The ground shook under his feet when that wasn’t enough, and the shadows came flowing back, whispering to him in familiar voices, telling him how good it would feel to have those who despised him fetching and carrying for him, and acting as his guards and protectors far more faithfully than they had ever acted for the Dark Lord.

            Severus smiled faintly. He recognized those words, too. He should, when they had whispered in his head as he changed the Dark Marks and claimed the Ashborn for his own.

            He found another bank, another rough, uneven patch in Marie Yaxley’s mind, and knelt down so that he could sink his hands deep into the sand and get his bearings. The heavy and cold water still swirled around his ankles, still tried to throw him. Severus closed his eyes and bowed his head.

            He had enough strength to do this. He had traveled far enough in Yaxley’s bound mind to understand how the slavery had changed her, and that meant he knew what the original contours beneath the shadows and darkness looked like. It was simply mustering the enormous effort that made him hesitate.

            And there was part of him, even now, that whispered he didn’t need to do this, that Harry would understand if Severus wanted to wait, that it was his own self-imposed burdens that had brought him here, and no need.

            Severus grimaced and shook his head, and stood.

            No, there was not a need. There had not been a need for very much, since the war.

            But there was a desire. And Severus’s desire was to have both Draco and Harry beside him because they wanted to be, rather than because of lust or craving for the company of someone who understood what the war had done. As long as the Ashborn remained, they were a barrier to that desire, in the same way that the existence of the Dark Lord had been a barrier to Severus’s own desire to brew quietly.

            He took a step forwards.

            The darkness hovered above him, and tried to fall on him.

            But Severus had thought carefully, and deprived the darkness of the ally it might have had in his own mind, the old yearning for absolute peace and absolute freedom from any kind of responsibility. He had chosen to enslave the Ashborn. That meant responsibility. He had chosen to have sex instead of keeping to himself. That was an alteration of peace. And he had chosen to make the Ministry afraid of him, to swear Unbreakable Vows, to negotiate for the end of a war instead of fight it.

            All of those were choices.

            And who acts is responsible.

            Severus thought it was something Albus had said to him once, but in the middle of his battle, he could not remember.

            And it did not matter. As long as he fought it.

*

            “Grass and Wind tell me that they have not yet received a summons from Potter.”

            Draco held Laughter’s eyes and shrugged. “We haven’t heard where he is yet, either. I think he had business of his own to take care of.”

            “And does he know that no business is truly private, now that he is part of the alliance?”

            Draco found himself smiling. “I’m good at spotting when you try to make me angry now,” he said. “It’s not going to work.”

            Laughter paused before he said, “I do not know why I would wish to make you angry.”

            “Private business is still private,” Draco said, watching Laughter intently. “I don’t ask about the internal affairs of the pack when we speak, because when I tried, you snapped at me.” It had been a literal snap, the kind that Draco thought Laughter would use if Draco had ever visited him in wolf form, and he had no desire to repeat the experience.

            Laughter looked at him with no expression. “But you would have the right to object if I was leading the pack in such a fashion that it had a negative impact on my allies.”

            “I’ve studied the old alliance,” Draco said, and watched the muscles around Laughter’s golden eyes contract a little. Well, let them. Draco thought someone should stand up to Laughter now that he was pushing for so much more. “It was flexible. If someone did something wrong, there were ways to negotiate the mistake, or punish one for it, or shun someone for a time until the consequences of being without their allies made them change their mind. Different possible solutions in all those cases. I think it’s much the same way with me and Harry. There are different ways of being your ally, and there’s no reason that he has to give up all his time and privacy to you any more than I do. You’re only pushing to see what you can get away with, what I’ll do if you say things like that. I don’t find it impressive, and I wish you would stop. But since I realize that you might not want to, I’ll simply answer that Harry is his own person, and trying to force him to do what you want would make him leave. You must have realized that yourself, after the way that you gave him gifts and let him answer with a gift instead of a mark. You’re less committed to traditional practices than you like to pretend.”

            Laughter carried on staring at him when Draco had finished speaking, so steadily that Draco wondered for a moment if he had gone too far. But he really didn’t think so. Laughter had invested too much time in Draco, and personal praise, and risks, to push him away simply because Draco didn’t respond in the “right” way to one of his little tests.

            Then Laughter dipped his head, and laughed quietly, the deep chuckle that Draco knew had earned him his name, and the pressure in the middle of Draco’s chest eased. Laughter sat back in the grass, folding his arms in front of him and his legs beneath him in that lupine sprawl that Draco couldn’t imitate even in his dreams.

            “Yes, you are right,” Laughter said. “Having allies like you and Potter is more important than enforcing my will. But there are those among my people who think that Potter should already have taken advantage of the gift I gave him, and are wondering and indignant that he has not. I had to say something to satisfy them, and when I return your clever answer to them, I think they will back off.”

            Draco nodded. He had sometimes wondered what it would be like to be a leader, the way that Severus had been, or his father in the Ministry, or Laughter was among the werewolves, and his main conclusion at the moment was that it was too tiring to be worthwhile. He would earn more respect in the position of a negotiator that he had chosen—or had forced upon him, he was not sure which.

            “Have you yet contacted the merfolk?” Laughter asked, brisk now and with his hands relaxing in front of him.

            Draco shook his head. “There’s been no time, what with you summoning me to dream meetings and dealing with the centaurs.”

            “Do it soon,” Laughter said, and flopped back on his side with a yawn. “It will show those who doubt you that you can do something concrete, and I have the feeling that it will also reassure you.”

            “No doubt,” Draco said dryly. “Now. Was there anything else that you wanted to discuss?”

            Laughter fixed him with a hard stare and said, “Perhaps why you feel that you can be so cheeky to me, without a good cause.”

            “It’s a good cause,” Draco said, and leaned back with a sigh. “A few months ago, I wouldn’t have dared to be like this, because a few months ago, there was nothing I wanted more than to remain in a null state for the rest of my life, doing research and serving as Severus’s slave when he wanted me. But Harry woke me up, and life woke me up. I can’t go back to what I was now.”

            “I am glad,” Laughter said softly, and Draco, staring into his eyes for a moment before he remembered the aggression that might cause and looked away, thought he really was.

*

            Harry slipped into the Ashborn’s fortress without anyone noticing. The wards were tuned to him, after all, and there was nothing to prevent him from Apparating into the small garden where Severus had once forced him to meet with his friends and walking down the corridors towards his rooms.

            Shield took off from his shoulder and flew around him, clapping his wings and crooning. Harry laughed up at him. “Yes, I know that you’re delighted I’m back in a place where you can protect me more easily,” he muttered. “Good for you.”

            “Harry.”

            Harry almost didn’t recognize the voice at first, it was so thin and thready. He turned and saw Severus leaning against the wall behind him. Of course; Harry had forgotten that this corridor led past his lab.

            There was a long moment when Harry thought both of them were afraid to move first, and then Harry stepped forwards and laid his hands gently on Severus’s arms. Severus stared at him and stuck out a finger to capture a strand of Harry’s hair, trailing it gently over his skin.

            “You’re all right?” Harry asked, and had to make it a question rather than the statement that he thought Severus would have preferred, because he looked so absolutely broken-down. Severus met his eyes and snorted. He stood taller and tossed his hair back, which made Harry realize that it looked greasier and dirtier than it had since Harry had come to the fortress.

            “Yes,” Severus said. “I understand now that the minds of the Ashborn have changed under the domination I exert over them with Legilimency, and how. I have finished freeing one of them, a Yaxley cousin.”

            Harry frowned. “Was that a good idea? I know how much Yaxley hated you.” Yaxley had been dropped off at the Ministry the other day, with the information that might have allowed the Ministry to find an entrance to the fortress carefully Obliviated. Harry hadn’t known that Severus planned to choose another member of the same family for freeing next.

            “Yes, it was a good idea,” Severus said, and his voice deepened. “This Yaxley is like Incognita. She knows that the world at large would not welcome her for having been a Death Eater, and while she hates me, she is not against having me provide her with food and a place to sleep while she makes up her mind about where to go next.”

            Harry nodded, satisfied. He wanted the Ashborn free, but having them free if the only thing they decided to do was attack Severus was good for no one, in the end. Severus would potentially be in danger, and they were all the more likely to end up in Ministry cells.

            “I gave her a room near Incognita’s,” Severus continued. “I hope their company will encourage them to come up with new plans and new desires, in time.”

            Harry nodded. “Why did you make this place so huge?” he asked, to satisfy a curiosity he hadn’t thought about much before. “It’s not as though you and Draco and the Ashborn needed that much room.”

            Severus paused as though caught more off-guard by the question than by Harry seeing him without his mask on, and then shrugged and said, “When I was young, I lived in a small house, with parents who were poor and could not get me the best of anything even when they wished to provide me with it. That included space. And my quarters at Hogwarts and at my house remained small as I aged. I decided that, if I ever reached the point where I was the master of my own existence once more, I was going to make sure I had a lot of room.”

            “Oh,” Harry said, barely exhaling. He trailed a finger through the stubble on Severus’s jaw and shook his head.

            “What is the matter?” Severus said, and his voice clanged as he drew himself upright against the wall. “That explanation is not deep enough for you? You must think that you—”

            “Please, Severus, stop,” Harry said, and met his eyes. Severus shut up, perhaps as much in surprise as anything else, and blinked at him. Harry shook his head. “No. I meant that I didn’t think you would ever tell me even that much. Thank you for doing so.”

            Severus grunted, and looked away. Harry thought it was much harder for him to smooth his hackles down than raise them.

            “What? You’re back and I don’t get so much as a kiss?”

            Harry turned around with a smile, and watched as Shield craned his neck down and waggled his wings in salute to Draco—who looked even more poised and proud and adult than Harry had seen him during the dream meeting in Laughter’s clearing. Draco stepped forwards, one hand reaching out to rest on Severus’s shoulder, one on Harry’s, and pulled them close enough to kiss.

            Harry kissed him, and then pulled back so that he could do the same thing to Severus. Severus’s mouth was rough, chapped, dry, and his breath had a faint sour taint to it that made Harry wonder why he’d needed to swallow so many Headache Draughts. Draco’s tongue darted out to welcome Harry’s at once, and his mouth was warm and sweet and swallowing. Harry shuddered and leaned closer to him, moving his hands to grip his shoulders and trembling with the force of the kiss. Draco pulled him closer, then turned him around so that Harry’s back rested against Severus’s chest. Severus’s hands fell to rest on Harry’s hips, and they held him between them as they kissed him; Severus’s lips brushed through his hair, inches away from the fingers Draco stuck there to cradle his head.

            It was all-enveloping, and fascinating, and good. Harry ached long before Draco pulled his head away and murmured into his ear, “Shall we show you how much we missed you?”

            Harry rocked backwards to test Severus’s readiness before he replied. He didn’t want to do this without Severus, he wanted both of them fine and fit and ready before they did anything—

            But Severus’s hands seized his hips again, and Severus kissed him hard enough to leave Harry dazed when he did try to reply.

            “Oh, yes,” he said, and saw Severus smile at the weakness of his voice. “Oh, yes, please.”

*

unneeded: Yes, he is. And he's even deciding he prefers it, which is a good thing to say about your natural gifts.

Mehla_Seraphim: Thanks! Laughter did try to make Harry jealous of Draco just to see what would happen.

Sablesilverrain: Thanks! That particular scene should be next chapter. I'm glad that you're enjoying it!

            Amethyst: Thank you! I’m pleased that you gave it a second chance.

            Snape might be more active once he starts believing in it more. Right now, he’s still more preoccupied with his own concerns.

            AlterEquis: Welcome back! I hope you had a nice vacation.

            Percy and a few other things will be mentioned in the next chapters, although I think your last two questions might find some answers in this one.The Future Unwritten
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Ashborn