Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Currents of Silver	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 7453 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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            “This is far more serious than I thought at first.”
            Harry, leaning back at the table with his hands clasped around the mug of hot chocolate, rolled his eyes a little. “And it wasn’t serious when someone was running all around the country killing wizards and Muggles? Or a band of people?” There were so many overlapping signatures in the magic he’d felt in the garden that he thought it had to be at least five.
            There was also something disturbing about one of those signatures, something he would wait to tell Severus until he was sure Malfoy had gone to bed.
            “I mean that they did not target someone I knew until now.”
            Harry couldn’t help it. He snorted a little with laughter, and Severus’s face froze. Harry reached out and took his hand. “I didn’t mean it that way. I only meant that it was such a Slytherin thing to say.”
            It took Severus a moment to relax, but he squeezed Harry’s hand back at last. “You are dealing better with the other Slytherin in the house at the moment than I expected.”
            “He saved my life,” Harry said simply. “And I was watching you together, and I knew what you meant about paths not taken.”
            Severus started in a way that made Harry glad he didn’t have any drink in his hand. Then he leaned back in his chair and tried to smooth his expression out. “What are you talking about?”
            Harry wouldn’t have spoken about this ordinarily, but he had almost died today, and he was still disturbed by what he had found in the garden. “I mean that when you look at him, your eyes are warm. In a different way than they are when you look at me.”
            Severus turned his head a little to the side, and murmured, “Must we address this now?”
            “Yeah.” Harry clenched his hand down on Severus’s once, then moved it back. “I was going to say—if you want to…do something, then I wouldn’t mind.”
            Severus’s face flickered through so many expressions so fast that Harry wished he was better at Legilimency. Then he leaned nearer and hissed, “What sort of being do you take me for?”
            “Someone who’s decided to be honest,” Harry said. “And someone who does want Malfoy. I know that look, Severus,” he added, when Severus opened his mouth to defend himself in a particular way. “I don’t think wanting is a bad thing. But if you want to go ahead and sleep with him, that’s different from wanting. I’m telling you that I would understand.”
            Severus looked as though he was about to turn murderer in a second, maybe without the silver bands. He cleared his throat roughly and said, “And what part of ‘I do not regret my choice’ did you not understand?”
            “Nothing,” Harry said. “I—look, it isn’t that I think Malfoy would really want or welcome a relationship with you if I was part of the picture. But I also know you. And the heart wants what the heart wants.”
            Severus abruptly seized his shoulders and yanked Harry towards him. Harry hissed as his hot chocolate spilled and soaked his hand, scalding it. Severus appeared to be paying no attention to that as he lowered his head and whispered hotly in Harry’s ear.
            “This is because you nearly died today, isn’t it? You’re already trying to find me someone who would console me and help me move on.” Severus bit Harry’s neck savagely, and Harry forgot all about the pain in his hand. “Fool. I may want you both, but I don’t want you the same way I do Draco. And you are not dead.”
            Harry opened his mouth to respond, but it was a little hard to do that when Severus’s savage tongue was filling it, and he tilted his head back further back and further back, and succumbed to the kiss that Severus was determined to impose on him. Severus pressed as if he wanted to push the chair into Harry’s back and make a pattern of it on his skin. Harry couldn’t say he would mind that right now.
            A bump from further down the corridor reminded Severus, it seemed, of Malfoy’s presence in the house at the same time as it reminded Harry. Severus pulled back and gave Harry a panting, sideways-squinted expression. “You can count on this resuming when we get into bed.” He squeezed Harry’s fingers in a way that said he wanted to leave the impression of his own knuckles in Harry’s skin now. “And you are going to tell me what else you’re holding back, the instant that Mr. Malfoy goes to bed. Unless you would prefer me to read it out of your mind.”
            Harry squeezed his hand back and said nothing for long moments, his mind roaming through the first time he and Severus had gone to bed.
*
            “I haven’t done this before.”
            Severus’s voice was harsh, rasping. For a second, Harry’s heart bounded up, as he thought he had companionship in his secret misery.
            Then Severus added, face just visible as he walked through a bar of moonlight that entered via the window, “I do not know how it is with two men,” and Harry had to pick up the burden of his misery again.
            “I’ve had enough books shoved down my throat by Hermione that I think I can make a fairly good guess,” Harry said calmly, and started to take off his robe. He almost missed the horrified expression on Severus’s face as he turned around, but he did pause before he dragged his robe over his head. “What?”
            “You told Granger about this?”
            “No one had to tell Hermione anything,” Harry said, rolling his eyes. “She just finds out. She knew I was interested in you before I officially made a move. She gave me books about gay sex. She knew I was probably going to take up a Healing career before I did, and she got me books on that.”
            “Does she ever get you books on the wrong thing?”
            “Um. Yeah.” Harry felt his ears burn. Hermione had got him books on being a young parent when she had decided, for some reason, that Ginny was pregnant and she and Harry would need to raise the baby together. Explaining why that couldn’t be true was one of the more humiliating conversations of Harry’s life.
            Severus, though, seemed satisfied enough with that not to press for details. He nodded. “Then I shall defer to your superior expertise.” He lay back on the bed as though he thought Harry would take care of everything from here.
            Harry choked. Then he dragged his robe off, so that he could stop his hands from shaking. Then he approached Severus and began undressing him. At least he thought that was something he knew about and couldn’t mess up too badly.
            From the way that Severus’s eyes cut into him, he didn’t agree. But Harry still managed to get him half-naked before Severus spoke.
            “Tell me the cause of your nervousness, or I will read it from your mind.”
            Harry winced and said, “Look. You said that you didn’t know how it went between two men, and I told you I only knew about it from books.” Maybe if he inflected his voice just right, Severus would know what he was talking about and spare him the humiliation of saying the words.
            Severus only said, “Yes? Does that mean that I should also read some of these books before we start, so you will not hurt or shock me?”
            “I didn’t—” Harry cleared his throat. Damn, this was going to be worse than the conversation with Hermione. “That’s the only way I know about how it goes at all. I mean. I’ve never had a lover. A man or a woman.” He kept his head turned away, staring at the foot of the bed. “So you probably still know more about this than I do.”
            There was silence, silence so thick that Harry thought he would choke on it. But he would have to breathe sooner or later, so he turned around and looked at Severus.
            Severus had sat up again and was looking at him thoughtfully. Harry put his head up and strove for an air of nonchalance. He hoped this wasn’t a sign that Severus was reconsidering sex with him.
            “I should have known better than to trust in those rumors which portrayed you as the most wildly skilled lover ever to walk Diagon Alley,” Severus murmured, turning his head a little to the side.
            Harry grinned. It was hard to do; it felt like his lips were made of wax. But he did want to tell Severus that this wasn’t a problem for him. He didn’t know if it would be for Severus or not. “Yeah. No rumors were true.”
            Severus considered him endlessly. Harry thought about offering to Summon the books Hermione had given him again, but he knew Severus needed to have some time to think about this. So he stood still, and Severus finally nodded.
            “Then we will begin a different way,” he said, and stood up from the bed. Harry’s breathing was erratic as he watched Severus walk over to stand in front of him.
            Casually, Severus put his hands on Harry’s shoulders. Harry fought the urge to ask him what he was doing or push them off. Instead, he reached up and mimicked the gesture. Severus nodded as if at a promising Potions apprentice.
            Then he leaned down, watching Harry narrowly all the while, and began to kiss him.
            This part, at least, Harry had had some experience in. He thrust his tongue wildly around for a bit, until Severus’s hands tightened and he firmly twined his tongue around Harry’s, pressing it carefully down behind his teeth. Harry listened, yielded, and went with the motions that Severus showed him—motions, Severus told him later, that were less likely to choke a partner.
            Harry was glad that he didn’t know that at the time. He would have concentrated more on the burning in his cheeks than the burning in his mouth or his groin, which had become persistent enough that he shifted against Severus, wanting to do something about them.
            Severus reached down without stopping the kiss, and easily lifted Harry’s leg around his waist. Harry gasped. There. That brought them close enough together that he could feel each exhale in his ear. And it pressed them together firmly enough that—
            Harry’s eyes rolled back. Severus shook him a little, and Harry had to smile. Severus had been most insistent, when he’d decided to sleep with Harry, that this was going to be mutual and not either of them just “servicing” the other.
            “Yeah, all right,” Harry gasped, or whisper-gasped, or whatever, and leaned up and pressed himself as firmly as he could against Severus.
            There was so much heat there, it could easily be shared. Severus’s hand was behind Harry’s neck, gripping tightly enough to let Harry feel each individual finger, each individual nail. Harry leaned in harder and harder, and made Severus sway on his feet. And then they slid-collapsed to the floor beside the bed, and Harry decided that this wasn’t so difficult after all, and finished stripping Severus.
            Severus considered him with eyebrows raised. Harry could feel the heat rushing up to his face, but he would never do anything if he just kept being paralyzed by embarrassment every time, so he fixed a smile on his face and leaned in to put their chests together.
            That distracted Severus well enough, it seemed. His eyes were narrow as if to keep his own pleasure under control when he tugged at the remaining clothes Harry wore, and they got them off between them. Then Harry reached up and slung Severus to the side, rolling over himself so he was beneath Severus.
            “Tell me what you’re doing.” Even breathless, Severus was arrogant.
            “This thing,” Harry said. If it had a name, he’d forgotten it. There was a burning in his brain and in his hands and in his skin where their chests touched. He reached out and hooked one hand around Severus’s neck again; Severus had pulled back when they started doing something he didn’t recognize, although technically Harry thought everything they did was something Severus didn’t recognize. “Roll with me.”
            And he lifted his hips and pressed them furiously against Severus, and Severus pressed his down, grunting once in understanding.
            They made it to the bed later that night, and having someone inside him was an event that made Harry wish both that it had happened earlier and that it could happen again, like this, between them. But that first time was on the floor, erection against erection, and Severus’s fingernails curling dangerously near Harry’s eyesockets with furious arousal as he came.
            That was the time Harry thought he would remember best, as Severus lay on top of him and panted cooling breaths into his ear. If he ever thought about doubting what they had. That was the memory that would come back to him.
*
            Harry was listening, and he finally heard the firm way Malfoy’s door shut. A second later, the hissing tingle of privacy charms came up. Harry nodded and turned to face Severus.
            “I told you there were so many magical signatures in the garden that it was hard to recognize any of them separately,” he said.
            “You did.” Severus put his hands on the table as if he was bracing himself to flip it, or use it as a shield.
            “One of them was Malfoy’s.”
            Severus sat there in perfect, blank-eyed astonishment for a long moment. Then he shook his head and said in a voice Harry didn’t have the words to define, “And because of this, you wanted me to sleep with Mr. Malfoy?”
            “No.” Harry swallowed and shook his head. “I don’t want it. Merlin, Severus. I like what we have. It isn’t even that I almost died today. I know you, though. I know you haven’t forgotten what it’s like to want Malfoy, because of the way you looked at him today.” He glanced away and dug his fingers into the table himself. “I thought—if you slept with him once, and figured out what it was you were missing, then maybe the desire would go away, and Malfoy would go away, and things would go back to normal.”
            It sounded unworthy. But Severus had promised him complete honesty. He had replied honestly when Harry had asked him, early on in their dating, if he looked at Malfoy with desire. Now Harry owed him this.
            “I do not have to have everything I want.”
            Harry blinked and turned back to face Severus. “That’s not what you said the last time we discussed this.”
            “I would like to have everything I want,” Severus said dryly. “I would like to be thirty different men living thirty different lives so that I could explore all the possibilities of Potions and lovers and countries to live in. I would like you to never have been an orphan. I would like the war never to have happened.” He paused and drew a breath, then reached out and pulled one finger slowly down the back of Harry’s hand. Harry shuddered a little as the flesh of his hand rippled in tingling awareness.
            “That does not mean I am willing to give everything else up so that I might have one thing,” Severus whispered. “It does not mean that I am willing to give up our lives together.”
            Harry closed his eyes as a weight he hadn’t known was there tipped and wobbled off his shoulders, then crashed to pieces on the floor at their feet. “Thanks,” he whispered.
            “Now,” Severus said, when enough time had passed that Harry’s breathing had almost calmed down to normal again, “when were you going to tell Draco about finding his signature among the others’?”
            “I wasn’t going to tell him,” Harry snapped, turning back to face Severus. Is he mental? It was either that, or he was attempting to protect Malfoy again, for Merlin knew what reason. “He could be one of the people who’s trying to kill me. Why would I give him any advantage?”
            Severus settled back in his chair. “Yet you let him stay in this house, and encouraged me to sleep with him. Somehow, I don’t think you’re very concerned about the threat that Draco poses.”
            Harry felt his face heat up. That much was certainly true, and perhaps he hadn’t thought through all the implications. But he did manage to shrug and say, “I wouldn’t learn anything from telling him what I found. Of course he’d deny it, and of course we wouldn’t gain any benefit from it. He’d probably be insulted that I asked in the first place.”
            “I wonder why.”
            Harry’s face went even hotter at the sarcasm. “But if we keep him close, then I can wait for him to make a move and confront him when he does,” he finished. “It benefits me to have him stay in the house, whether or not he ever realizes that I’m on to him.”
            “There may be other, magical explanations for his signature being in the garden,” Severus said. “Or mundane ones, such as his being the initial investigating Auror who arrived on the scene. And you forget that I am a Legilimens and Draco trusts me enough to submit his mind to me. Of course we should ask.”
            Harry glanced away and dashed a hand through his hair. “Sorry. You’re right. But I’d prefer that you do it alone. That way, I don’t have to witness his humiliation under Legilimency, and he’s more likely to tell you everything you want to know.”
            “I doubt that last part would make any difference to him. He would know I would repeat the conclusions to you immediately.” Harry stayed silent, and Severus squeezed his wrist. “Harry, what is this about?”
            Harry closed his eyes and tried to heave out all the poison in his chest on a breath. It didn’t work, even after Severus’s assurance that he didn’t want to leave Harry’s bed and enter Malfoy’s.
            So he would have to tell the truth.
            “I don’t want him here because I’m bloody jealous, all right?” Harry whispered harshly. “I wish that he’d been able to go to anyone else with the case. Or I wish he’d figured out the code in the names and I was only someone who needed protection, not involved. Or I wish he’d decided to stay in the Leaky Cauldron!” His voice rose. He clipped it off. “Anywhere but here.”
            “Jealous? What of, when he did not win what you won, and achieved something that you said you did not want to achieve?”
            He has the right to ask those questions, Harry told himself, while a burning sensation filled his chest as though someone had put a piece of flaming ice there. It probably sounds mental to him, that I would be jealous of Malfoy.
            But he had promised honesty, and that was what he used. “You and him are still close in ways I can’t match. I would never be that comfortable letting you use Legilimency to read my mind, while you said he would. He’s a good Auror, and sometimes I feel like I failed at that or walked away just because I couldn’t measure up to what they wanted me to do. He stayed in the wizarding world and worked for the respect he’s gained. I live partially in the Muggle world and don’t interact much with wizards. He—has some things I would like to have.”
            “Despite being a Healer and not wanting to be an Auror?”
            Harry nodded slowly and forced his eyes open. “I know it doesn’t make much sense.”
            “It may not,” Severus agreed, but he was watching Harry with a calm look instead of the impatient one he adopted when Harry did something that he really couldn’t understand. “On the other hand, I appreciate that you are willing to say these things. And as for the closeness between me and Draco, now, you cannot match it.”
            Harry swallowed pain.
            “But do you have to match it?” Severus played with Harry’s fingers, moving them up and down in a way Harry had to admit was soothing. “Just as I want you in different ways, we relate in different ways. You need not torment yourself over that.”
            “It isn’t so much tormenting myself as…not wanting him here,” Harry muttered. He felt drained now, and the flaming cube of ice had been put out. “Like I said, I know that it doesn’t make much sense. But that’s the way it is.”
            “I am not going to run off with Draco Malfoy,” Severus said. “But I do think it would be good if I spoke to him alone about this, as you requested.”
            Harry couldn’t help the nakedly grateful look he gave Severus, and he knew it. He nodded and started to stand up from the table. While he’d had the day off today, he had some paperwork he needed to get in order before he went into the office tomorrow.
            “And after that,” Severus added, pausing Harry in mid-motion as effectively as if he was a Muggle machine, “you and Draco will have a talk. A real one. A deep one.”
            Harry grimaced at the thought of speaking to Malfoy that way. Only the knowledge that Severus was being honest, too, and wouldn’t have requested this if he didn’t think Harry and Draco needed it, let him say, “Okay. I can do that.”
            “I know you can. I will never ask anything of you beyond your strength.”
            Harry gave Severus a drained smile and slipped away from the table. He would leave unsaid, at least for now, his thought that Severus sometimes believed Harry’s strength was greater than Harry knew it really was.
*
            “What explanation do you have for your magical signature being among the ones Harry detected in the Muggle garden?”
            Draco sat frozen before his breakfast, staring. At least he had put the porridge spoon down before it could drip all over, he thought distantly. And Severus had asked the question in a way that didn’t accuse him, that gave him breathing room, even if the tone behind the words had been shrewder and sharper than Draco would have liked.
            Now, though…
            Draco shoved himself back from the table and said, “I cast spells at the scene.”
            “Your signature was entwined with all the others Harry could sense, the ones that cast the murderous spells.” Severus studied him, and waited.
            Bile crept up Draco’s throat, and he lashed out before he could think about the consequences of doing so. “And of course you’re going to believe him, and trust him, and not even think he could be mistaken, just because he’s Harry Bloody Potter? Right? And he couldn’t be here to tell me about this himself, he sent you to do his dirty work—”
            “That is enough, Draco.”
            Draco caught his breath back roughly. Severus had spoken in a way that made it impossible for him to argue. But he did know that he probably was expected to storm out of the house and take up residence somewhere else for the duration of the case.
            Bizarrely, that was what made him calm down again. He ended up sitting down and saying, as sarcastically as he could, “And Potter hasn’t yet called the Aurors?”
            “You are an Auror.” Severus hadn’t moved at all, except to slowly tap one finger on the table, so slowly that Draco couldn’t call it a gesture of impatience. “He felt safe enough with you not to reveal the news to me last night until after you’d gone to bed. And he was concerned about humiliating you when I suggested he tell you what he’d sensed.”
            Draco slowly leaned back in his chair. The more he thought about it, the more it didn’t make sense that Potter would have let him stay in the house if he had honestly suspected that Draco was a murderer.
            But he managed to say, “I didn’t leave my magical signature there. Not intertwined with the others. I have no part in this. You have to believe me, Severus.”
            “I do,” said Severus, and Draco noticed the light emphasis on the first word. “But I do want to use Legilimency on you. Not so much to clear up Harry’s suspicions as to see what clues you might have missed, clues that might have led to Harry reading your signature as part of the hostile mass.”
            Draco considered it for a second with his hand locked on the chair behind his head. If Potter honestly suspected him, Draco didn’t understand why he hadn’t gone after him the minute he could get his feet under him and his hand wrapped securely around his wand. Like Severus said, there were other currents moving beneath the surface here.
            Of course, he had always known that. But he had thought the currents were on his side alone, the legacy of his mistreatment by Potter and the world in general after the war with the Dark Lord.
            He leaned his head back and said, “All right. I’ll let you use Legilimency on me. But in return, I want to see either a memory of Potter’s or use Legilimency on him. I need to see that pattern of signatures to understand it.”
            Severus sighed, then inclined his head. “It will have, I think, to be Legilimency. A Pensieve memory will not necessarily show the things that Harry’s magical senses could perceive, especially to someone else whose purely physical senses overlapped and merged with his in that particular memory.”
            Draco nodded, satisfied enough. He could put up with a lot, he thought, as long as Potter endured equivalent humiliation. And he didn’t mind the way Severus would read his mind, because he knew Severus would be gentle.
            And also that he, himself, was innocent, whatever strange reason his magical signature had for ending up in that garden.
            As he leaned back and waited for Severus to reach into him, his thoughts flitted back to the last time he had actually entered Potter’s mind with Legilimency.
*
            “I told you already, there’s no grand secret, I just don’t want to do this anymore—Malfoy?”
            Draco steadied himself against the unpleasant surprise in Potter’s voice. “Well,” he said, shrugging a little as he stopped inside the door of the small office and made a show of adjusting his cloak and Auror robes around him. “I’m one of the few trainees who happens to be skilled in Legilimency, you know.”
            “I thought you were good at Occlumency,” said Potter, sitting up and staring at him from across the length of the bare room. At the moment, Draco didn’t think it was big or bare enough. “And why would they bother sending a trainee when they could send a full-fledged Auror?”
            Draco’s hands closed on his wand. He started to open them out of habit, to smooth away the signs of his anger, and then paused.
            Why should he have to? Honestly? He and Potter were being left alone in an unmonitored room, because the other Aurors trusted Draco to read Potter’s mind and find out whether he was quitting the Aurors because of a subtle Imperius or other spell, and they knew that the sensation of other people peering in might influence Draco’s Legilimency. Draco might still attract sidelong glances and whispers, but he had the foundations of some solid respect, at long last.
            And now he was going to suffer because Potter had decided to make a big deal of things and insult him again?
            No.
            Draco leaned across and showed Potter the fist that he was making. “I’m here to find out what’s wrong with you because of my skills,” he said. “Not because we were rivals in school, not because of my age. You should know damn good and well that your decision to leave the Aurors was going to be questioned.”
            Potter lifted his head and fixed his eyes unerringly on Draco’s. His smile was small. “Not to the point that I thought someone would be sent to read my mind. Or do the Aurors do the same thing when someone decides that they want to switch to the Department for the Control and Regulation of Magical Creatures?”
            “Not everyone who makes that sort of decision is the Boy-Who-Lived,” Draco said, and had the pleasure of seeing Potter tense. He knew Potter hated the title. That wasn’t the point. “Come on, Potter. You know the way this works.”
            A second later, Draco stiffened, enraged to find that he had fallen into a cajoling tone with Potter when he wouldn’t have done it with anyone else. Yes, Draco knew how it worked, knew that he was assigned to this when he wouldn’t have been assigned to anyone else, but he had wanted to avoid it.
            Strangely, that cajoling tone seemed to be the one Potter needed. He sighed and leaned back, sprawling with his legs and arms open. “Look into my mind, then. You’re not going to find anything except what I’ve been telling everyone.”
            That was at least a better invitation than Draco had thought he would receive. Breaking into an unwilling mind was hell. Draco eased one of the chairs closer to Potter and sat, looking at him long enough that Potter shifted. Then Draco drew his wand and murmured the spell, maintaining his gaze all the time. Someone as experienced as Professor Snape could leap into reading someone’s mind with a moment of casual eye contact, but Draco needed the prolonged sort.
            He found himself rushing down the usual chaotic grey corridors that seemed to be the outskirts of everyone’s mind, except those of some skilled Occlumens. The corridors whirled and turned and calmed soon enough, something for which Draco was also grateful. It was also hell standing at the middle of a hub of whirling corridors and feeling as though you wanted to throw up.
            Draco tilted his head back. He saw the ceiling overhead that was the rippling undersurface of the memory, like water seen from an airy cavern. Draco reached out his hand and called the memory to him. He had heard Professor Snape describe this as another rushing flight into the thought, but that wasn’t what it was like for Draco. The water fell and splashed him, soaking him, running over and through his clothes, and he caught his breath and looked around, blinking.
            He found himself sitting in the middle of Professor Snape’s house, watching and listening as the professor explained that he had uncovered a cure for lycanthropy.
            Draco watched and listened, and looked at the expressions flitting over Potter’s face. He had come here for a purpose, and he would hold to it: to find out what this memory had to do with Potter’s decision to quit the Aurors.
            But he watched, too, the way that Professor Snape’s hands cut the air like glittering stars, and the way his mouth curled, and how Potter’s eyes sparked as he traced Snape’s motions, and how Potter watched him stalk back and forth, and didn’t press the mission that Draco knew the Aurors had sent him on.
            It was clear that Potter hadn’t only found a new career in that cottage in the forest.
            Draco’s stomach burned with something not so much different from acid as he opened his eyes again in the small bare room and found Potter staring at him. Draco didn’t care to read what lurked in those wide eyes and dropped jaw. Probably shock that Draco had read his mind and found the memory without taking his memories leaving him with a headache.
            He also knew that he had a rival.
            “You quit because you wanted to become a Healer,” said Draco, without much inflection in his voice. He turned his head away and studied the far wall, and waited until he could speak without spitting. “That’s—that’s the only reason?”
            “Not the only one,” Potter said. “But close enough.”
            His words seemed to echo strangely in Draco’s ears, with an edge of familiarity that he knew came only from his use of Legilimency. For a second, he felt as if he was Potter, back in that cottage, watching Professor Snape gesture expertly with emotions squirming and swimming around him that Draco hadn’t felt in years.
            And then he jerked his head back and broke the hold of Potter’s pitying eyes on him, and he was himself again.
            “I’ll tell the others,” he said, and started to stride out of the room. But the knowledge that, once again, no one was watching, made him pause. He could hear Potter breathing lightly behind him, as though he, like Draco, knew the confrontation wasn’t over, and that was really what made Draco turn around again.
            “You’re wrong,” Draco told Potter as bluntly and crudely as he could. “He isn’t ever going to want someone like you, and you can’t make a better impact in people’s lives as a Healer than you can as an Auror.”
            Potter’s eyes cooled at once. The edge of familiarity was gone from his words when he spoke again. “You don’t know that. Either of those things. And I’m going to try. There’s no reason not to.”
            There’s every reason! But Draco couldn’t say that without betraying too much about himself. He only shut his mouth and shook his head at Potter as if disgusted, and then tapped on the door and called out to the Aurors who waited on the opposite side. In a few seconds he was out again, and describing Potter’s motivations for quitting as “harmless” and “lack of job satisfaction” to the ones who asked.
            He didn’t think about what he had seen in Potter’s mind again. Or he tried not to. That was one thing Occlumency was good for, beyond the obvious uses of fending away someone else’s intrusion into his mind.
            He tried.
            But Occlumency was always less effective when used against one’s own questioning thoughts.
*
            “Here.”
            Draco grimaced and opened his eyes. While Severus had been gentle enough that he had no pounding headache, he still gratefully reached for the glass of water held out to him. Legilimency performed by someone else on him always gave Draco a dry mouth and the feeling of his lips being coated in fuzz.
            “You didn’t return to the garden and set up a trap to try and kill Harry.”
            Draco kept sipping steadily at the water, and only ended the sipping when he had to look up and say, “No shit.”
            “Language, Draco.”
            Draco opened his mouth with his throat aching and burning, and clamped it shut again when he saw the motionless expression on Severus’s face. He had to look away.
            “I can’t believe you still scold me for my language like I’m a teenager,” Draco whispered bitterly.
            “And I can’t believe that you still think of me as if I were a Hogwarts professor.”
            Draco flinched, and opened his mouth. But Severus shook his head and leaned in. “Did you think you could conceal that?”
            “I wasn’t trying to conceal that,” Draco said haltingly. “I didn’t think it mattered.”
            Severus studied him with a jaundiced eye, and then nodded. “Well, perhaps it does not.” He swept on again before Draco could demand to know what he meant. “As to what your signature was doing there, and what the mass of signatures means, you will have to use Legilimency on Harry. I think he’ll be willing to do it in a good cause.”
            “Like keeping himself alive,” Draco muttered, and downed more water.
            “There may be more than that,” said Severus, and then sighed. “I want you to promise me, Draco, that you will speak to Harry on a number of topics soon. One of them must be the Legilimency, of course. But his mind is in chaos concerning you. As you so wisely point out, he thought you might be guilty of murder and yet made no move to expose you to me immediately, or bind you in the garden and turn you over to your fellow Aurors. He has admitted to me that his feelings about you are not…settled.”
            Draco felt his eyes widen as something he had never expected to feel flared to life inside him. “Is he jealous?”
            “Of certain things,” said Severus, “yes.”
            He seemed to feel that he couldn’t speak more on the subject without betraying Potter’s confidence, but that didn’t matter a lot to Draco. He could feel the emotion spiraling through him, singing like a dozen birds.
            He had known Potter would be jealous someday. He had known that Potter might one day look at Draco’s accomplishments and feel a little ache.
            Even if Severus was right and it wasn’t exactly Draco’s term as an Auror he was jealous of, it was something. He might be jealous over Severus’s attraction to Draco. It didn’t matter. What mattered, the only thing that did, was that the day Draco had been waiting for had come at last.
            “I need to talk to him now,” Draco said.
            “He is with a patient now,” said Severus.
            “Then I need to talk to him as soon as he returns.” Draco stood and paced around the dining room. He could feel a strength burning through his limbs that he hadn’t even been aware he had, a thickness in his mouth that reminded him of coagulated saliva, and his eyes blazed within his head. “This is important, Severus. Really,” he added, when he turned around and met Severus’s skeptical gaze. “I’m not saying this to taunt him, or make fun of him for being jealous of me. This is maybe the most important conversation Potter and I are ever going to have.”
            From the way that Severus’s mouth tightened for a moment as he inclined his head, he agreed with that, even though he might not have wanted to.
            “I will let Harry know.”
*
ChaosLady: Thanks!
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