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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
- 39
- 40
Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of Ashborn, although I wouldn’t be against writing a few short sequels someday. Thank you for reading along!

Chapter Forty—All The Changes

            “That hammer looks too heavy for me,” Harry said, turning his head away and mopping at the sweat on his forehead. He had stood close to the forge for nearly an hour now, watching the way Grass worked, and his eyes burned from the sparks and ached from the contrast between the light of the fire and the dimness that surrounded the rest of the shed. And of course there was the light of the dazzling day through the open door, too, making him blink and sting, blink and snort, and blink and sting some more.

            “That’s what Lightening Charms are for,” Grass said, straightening up and shaking her head. She had sweat running down her face, too, but she didn’t look at all discomfited by it when Harry looked at her. “Here, go ahead.” She held out the hammer to Harry.

            Harry took it gingerly. It was made of polished steel on the head, some dark polished wood he didn’t recognize on the handle, and sure enough, it dragged his arm down. Grass snorted and cast a few quick spells, and the hammer almost bobbed in Harry’s grasp.

            “I heard that you were strong and quick enough to kill a Dark Lord,” Grass murmured, leaning back against the wall of the shed and stretching her arms upwards, backwards, down. “Was that an exaggeration? Perhaps you crept up on him when he was sleeping and destroyed him that way.”

            Harry glared at her, letting his anger soar higher and hotter than he knew he should. But this was a forge, and part of the reason he had come to the werewolves’ clearing in the flesh was the argument he’d had with Draco and Severus about his friends the night before, an argument that had left him with a lot of irritation to work out. He was here for that reason. He might as well add to his emotions instead of subduing them right away.

            “Something more than that,” he said coolly, and spun the hammer in his hands. “Let’s see you put some metal on the anvil.”

            “Big words from the wizard who couldn’t master a simple Lightening Charm a short time ago,” Grass muttered, her smile large and lazy, but she reached into the fire and pulled out a blank of metal that she tossed at him. Harry ducked just in time and watched it settle into place. Of course, her magic had guided it, so it never came close to hitting him. “Let’s see you shape that into a sword. You won’t, of course, not on your first try, but let’s see it anyway.”

            Harry turned and swung the hammer down furiously at the metal. The red glow challenged him, bit at his temper like the heat and Grass’s infuriating competence. It shattered briefly into sparks when he hit it, but remained barely dented, and Harry unleashed as many blows as he could before it cooled, snarling wordless threats at it. This was better than bouncing a Quaffle off the walls of an enclosed courtyard any day.

            “I think the only person who could use that sword would be a one-legged dwarf.”

            Harry looked up, blinking, and found that Grass was standing beside him, examining the sword blank with critical eyes. When he glanced down, he realized that the metal was all crumpled and twisted to one side, much shorter than it should have been compared to the shining blades on the walls of the forge, and cool. He cleared his throat in embarrassment.

            “Oh, not to worry.” Grass grinned at him. “For your first try, you did much better than I would have expected. And there’s an advantage to it, isn’t there? For letting out brute physical anger, there’s nothing like it.”

            Harry had to nod. He could barely remember some of the stupid things that Draco had said, or at least he could consider them dispassionately. And remember some of the things he had said about Slytherins, too.

            "Well." Grass rolled and settled her shoulders. "Good. Do you want to do any more today, or are you returning home?"

            "Returning home, I think," Harry said, though he blinked when he realized that he thought of the fortress where the Ashborn had lived for so long as home, rather than the Burrow. Or Hogwarts. But if the time had come for him to return to school, he sure didn't feel it. "Yes. I have things I need to talk to Severus and Draco about."

            He braced himself for some reference to other gifts he needed to give the werewolves, or at least Grass and Wind, but she only nodded and turned back to casting spells that would dampen the fire and begin to gather up the metal still waiting to be shaped. Harry wandered out into the light and stood there blinking for a few short moments, then Apparated to the walled garden that he liked to land in.

            It was time they talked in more detail, instead of just snorting and storming away.

*

            Draco settled back on his bed with a sigh and stretched his arms out, closing his eyes. He had spent most of his day hunched over a table in the library, which was the better one for writing, composing a letter back to the Lady Jocelyn. She had written to him with many questions, most particularly about whether he would be keeping up all the tenets of the old alliance, and Draco had blatantly stolen much of his best wording from some of the tomes around him. Which also necessitated hunching and squinting at ancient pages.

            He had just started to close his eyes when someone knocked on his door, the fist rat-tatting in time with Draco's headache. Draco sighed and looked at the door, wishing the someone would go away.

            Someone. Right. He knew very well it was Harry, and he wouldn't get anywhere by avoiding the conversation that he had tried to have with Harry this morning.

            "Come in," he called, looking around the room and summoning a Headache Draught from a shelf of potions when the glance revealed none immediately in reach.

            Harry stepped in, shut the door behind him, and stared at Draco with a good deal of apprehension. Draco blinked at him as he uncorked the squat bottle the potion had come in. Harry was flushed and sweaty, apparently having exhausted his anger through physical labor instead of some other way.

            "Well," Draco said, when some minutes had passed and Harry hadn't said anything, "did you come to yell or apologize?"

            That caused Harry to flush, predictably, and glare at Draco. "I was waiting for you to take the bloody potion," he said, jerking his head at the bottle.

            "Fair enough," Draco said, and tilted back the bottle so that the potion in question slid down his throat. It was thick enough that he couldn't swallow right away; he waited until it seemed about to congeal in the back of his throat and then snapped his lips shut and gulped. The headache began to ease off, and he sighed and put the bottle back on the table beside his bed. "But then the question stands."

            "Do you know why I got angry?" Harry leaned back more casually against the door now and put his hands in his robe pockets.

            "Because I told you that I was going to marry someone else," Draco said, and then thought about the letter he'd received and the second one he'd written and added, "Well, if she even agrees to have me."

            Harry blew his fringe sharply out of his eyes and said, "That irritated me, yeah, but it was really what you said about Ron and Hermione."

            Draco tilted his head. "What? I said that Weasley would probably understand the notion of an arranged marriage better than you do, because it's something pure-bloods used to do all the time. I don't see what's offensive about that."

            "No, not that," Harry said, his voice practically picking that particular phrase up with tongs and casting it aside. "When you said that Ron and Hermione's marriage had a lot of the practical and convenient to it, too, instead of the romantic."

            Draco blinked. That had been such a fundamental statement of fact that he'd had no idea how Harry could object to it. "Well," he said, "it does."

            Harry closed his eyes and audibly counted to thirty. Draco was a little disappointed he hadn't tried it in some other language, so Draco could correct his pronunciation.

            "It's romantic," Harry said firmly, when he looked at Draco again. "They didn't just get together because--because they spent a lot of time together and because they were friends with me first or anything like that. They got together because they love each other."

            Draco wanted to open his mouth and say that those things weren't mutually exclusive. Weasley and Granger probably did love each other (though how anyone could love someone like Weasley was a mystery that Draco was still trying to understand with regards to Harry, never mind non-friendship), but they had had the chance to know each other because they shared adventures and trials and dangers together, and certainly their mutual concern about Harry would have given them something else besides their romance to talk about.

            But--

            But maybe I don't need to say absolutely everything I think, Draco decided slowly. Harry isn't throwing our past in my face all the time. He isn't telling Severus over and over how horrible he thinks he is for binding the Ashborn, even though I'm sure he does think it's horrible. And Weasley and Granger, model romantics as he thinks them, probably don't have every fight they could have because sometimes one of them bites their tongue.

            No matter what he might believe about Harry's friends, there was one thing he could say with absolute truth.

            "You know them better than I do," he murmured, coming forwards and opening his arms to Harry. "And I'm sorry I upset you. I'll try not to do that in the future."

            Harry stared at him, wild and wary, his fringe tangled halfway across his eyes and his hair still slick with sweat. Draco blinked back at him, and wondered at first what the emotion moving through him was. It wasn't desire, something he was now very familiar with when it came to Harry, but it was wilder and gentler and more affectionate.

            I...adore him? Or this is just what romantic love feels like? We can have it without going to bed all the time?

            Draco had no idea why he was asking himself, since it wasn't like he would receive an answer if he didn't know or understand the question, but then Harry gave in and wrapped him in a rough hug, and Draco let the moment pass. He put his chin on Harry's shoulder and relaxed.

            "It's so strange," Harry murmured, voicing Draco's thoughts, although Draco had no idea whether he had arrived at the conclusion the same way. "I was thinking that we have to share everything we think at all times, but there are subjects I can agree to disagree about with Ron and Hermione. I'll never think that schoolwork is as important as Hermione thinks it is, and Ron thinks the Ministry can be reformed and I don't. It doesn't make us any less friends. I think--I think I could do the same with you and Severus."

            Draco smiled against Harry's neck. "Good."

            Harry pulled back then, and looked Draco rather sternly in the eye. "Just one thing," he said.

            Draco nodded, letting his eyes increase in size as he watched Harry. Harry looked stern and threatening, but also as if he wouldn't mind a bit of playacting. "Yes?"

            "You have to be honest with me about things that hurt you," Harry said firmly. "So that we can decide whether they're just something to disagree about, or really, really important things that we need to talk about in detail." He hesitated, and then his hands squeezed Draco's arms and he smiled. "All right?"

            "That's easy enough," Draco said, and then laughed when he caught Harry's eye. "No, I know you're probably thinking that nothing is easy for me when it comes to honesty, but I can always talk about the pain I'm suffering."

            "Well." Harry hesitated again, then gave a temperate smile. "Good." He eyed the letter that Draco still had on the table by his bed. "You're writing to your...bride?"

            "Yes," Draco said, not seeing any effort that he should have to make to conceal it. He lifted his eyebrows and waited.

            Harry massaged the back of his neck, and frowned. "It just seems weird to me, marrying someone you don't love," he said.

            Draco shrugged. "She and I may come to like each other. And she can teach me a lot about the politics of the old alliance, how it was managed and how it functioned somewhere between making exceptions for a lot of personal circumstances and having general rules that reeled everyone in. And she's fascinated by the war. Her family and the few others that still follow the old ways have stayed so thoroughly out of everything that neither the Dark Lord nor your lot ever thought to approach them. The idea of fighting openly is foreign to her."

            Harry rolled his eyes. "That's something I would find so foreign in turn that--I don't know if I can live by the rules of this alliance, Draco."

            "Then don't," Draco said gently. "Keep the gifts that Laughter's given you, and the promise you made to the centaurs, and leave the other pieces of the alliance, like the merfolk, alone."

            "I thought that wasn't possible," Harry said, tipping his head to the side.

            "I didn't think it was," Draco admitted. "But that was before I studied those books in intensive detail so I could actually write to Jocelyn. There were plenty of people who had less connection than others to the alliance. Some people might have multiple marriages, lovers, friends on what would have been opposite sides at any other time, allies by special arrangement, enemies they sniped at but wouldn't kill. Others might stick to their blood family or friends they made outside the alliance--Muggles, for example--and maybe be part of one arrangement that they had to be in because it was with the family or the place they lived instead of them as individuals. And that was all."

            "I don't see how they survived," Harry whispered. "If everyone had to be part of it--"

            "They were, in some way," Draco said. "But they didn't have to be all equally a part of it."

            Harry still eyed him the way he had a few minutes ago. "I don't know that I'm comfortable with you sleeping with Jocelyn, whoever she turns out to be, whatever she's like," he said. "Even if she would be totally and completely non-jealous of us, that doesn't mean I wouldn't be jealous of her."

            "I know," Draco said. "That's why, although at first I talked about conceiving children in the traditional way, I'm writing to her now proposing conception spells. There are ways of making sure that a child has the right father, and stays in the right mother's womb, without either of us touching the other. Close your mouth, dear, you're staring," he added, when Harry's lips parted and didn't close.

            "I didn't think anything like that existed, either," Harry said, and scratched his forehead through his fringe, where the lightning bolt scar lay hidden. "The Muggles do, but I'm used to thinking of the wizarding world as backwards compared to the Muggle world."

            Draco grimaced. "We lost an awful lot, of both magic and knowledge, when we withdrew into our little private families," he admitted. "There's a certain kind of knowledge that's only secure if lots of people know it and can teach it and it doesn't stay locked inside separate skulls. The Founders of Hogwarts knew that. I've been reading lots of things about them, too, in some of these books. It's fascinating."

            He noticed the way Harry started to say something and then hesitated, because he would notice it if Severus did that, too. He was tuned to them in all sorts of ways that he was only now beginning to notice or understand. "What?" Draco added, leaning forwards to stare at Harry.

            "I sometimes thought about that," Harry mumbled. "Lying awake in those wretched tents we spent so much time in--or ditches, or cells. How Hermione knew more than I did, and sometimes more than Ron did, but that was because she studied all the time, and she was interested in it for its own sake. And wizarding children are taught at home sometimes before they go to Hogwarts, but their parents might not have the time or the skill to teach them very well. I wonder--I was good at teaching Defense, when we had that bitch Umbridge as a professor and we had to get around her somehow. I'd like to see about teaching other people the kind of knowledge I have..."

            "About how to win a war?" Draco asked, and couldn't help grinning when Harry glared at him. "Well. It could be useful knowledge for the next time a Dark Lord tries to take us over, that's certain."

            "And more than that," Harry said. "History and small spells and household cleaning charms and spells to preserve food and ways to make things larger or smaller and how you can sharpen your memory and--"

            "I think that's a good idea," Draco said firmly. "It would give you something to do that's not just waiting around on us all day."

            Harry raised an eyebrow. "Where did you get the idea that I would be waiting around on you?"

            "If you're going to hang about here doing nothing but scowling and mumbling, we would put you to use somehow," Draco said.

            The row that followed about that was a good deal friendlier than the one this morning had been, and Harry left the room smiling. Draco let himself sprawl on the bed, reaching his arms out so they touched either side and grinning.

            He and Harry were getting to know each other. He wanted to think about that, and was disinclined to continue the letter to Jocelyn for the moment.

*

            "Severus?"

            Severus blinked and looked up. He had been resting with a cup of tea, preparing for the next assault on an Ashborn mind--which meant on his own Legilimency, his own traps to keep something like that from happening. He had not realized someday that he might want to break them, or he would have laid his traps neither deep nor wide.

            Harry stood in the door of his lab, framed by the space around him as if he would hurry back down the corridor at a cross word. Severus did not see what he had to fear, frankly. Harry's argument had been more with Draco than with him, this morning. He set down his cup of tea and motioned Harry into the room, clearing away a drift of chopped leaves from the other chair with a flick of his wand.

            Harry sat down and spent a few moments tapping his foot on the floor. Then he looked up and said, "Could you teach me Legilimency?"

            "Perhaps," Severus said, when enough moments had passed in a shower of invisible sparks to let him conceal his surprise at the question. "It would be different than teaching you Occlumency, at least. Why do you want to learn?"

            Harry rubbed the side of his face. "I want to teach people how to survive a war," he said. "Maybe even start a school. But--I have to know what the war did to me, to do that. And I don't think I can face that without knowing more about what's in my mind." He stopped.

            "You cannot Legilimize yourself," Severus told him gently. "Not even with a mirror."

            Harry grimaced and spent a moment tugging at his hair. Then he said, "Then I'm going to have to ask you a great favor, even bigger than teaching me Legilimency would be, all by itself." He turned to face Severus, visibly bracing for a rejection. Severus narrowed his eyes and said nothing, his hands motionless in his lap. He did not know what Harry would request, and any guesses in anticipation might only push him away and prompt him to do something dangerous and stupid with Legilimency on his own.

            "Would you be willing to pick up the threads we dropped, and use Legilimency on me again?" Harry asked quietly. "Teach me how to confront my memories, or bring them to the surface of my mind and--comment on them?"

            Severus stared. The thought that Harry might consider his particular acid brand of commentary an asset instead of an insult had never entered his head.

            "I said it was a huge favor," Harry said hastily, and folded his arms, and looked some combination between disturbed and miserable that, in turn, disturbed Severus. "I understand if you don't want to do it--"

            "I did not say I did not want to do it," Severus intervened quietly. "Indeed, the chance to know you better, in this way as much as any, is welcome." He paused.

            And Harry read it as a pause rather than simple argument, which showed that he was growing far more attuned to Severus than he had been. He leaned forwards, almost vibrating. "Yes?" he asked intently.

            Severus sighed. "I do not think that your memories of the war, and what they did to you, are connected to the war alone. The memories of your childhood, and even your time at Hogwarts, had their part to play, as well. Someone else without your resilience might spend most of his time gibbering in a corner. On the other hand, someone without the relatives that taught you to distrust other people might have survived even better."

            Harry's eyes deepened to the color of jade, which Severus had expected. He took any remark like that as a challenge, and it only increased his determination to survive. "That doesn't sound like a refusal."

            "It is not," Severus said. "As long as you agree that your memories of the war are not the only ones we need to investigate. As long as I have your permission to touch on others as well, and try to heal the scars that run beneath the surface. All of them."

            Harry's lips quivered, and then firmed. "I don't--I might not want to face all of them."

            Severus shook his head. "I need not comment on all of them in the same way. For that matter, I need not use the same kind of Legilimency to recover them. But I do insist that you learn to face all your demons, not only the ones that you think are necessary. They are so interlinked that if you believe facing some is necessary to open your school, then I think facing all is."

            Harry hesitated. Then he said, "If I told you that I just never want to think about the Dursleys again, and that I don't feel any particular malice or hatred towards them, would you accept that as sufficient proof that I'm all right there?"

            "On the contrary." Severus leaned back in his chair and eyed Harry. Harry gave him a baffled look, and Severus reminded himself that Harry, unlike Draco, was not familiar with the way he might glance at an experimental potion. "I would find it more reassuring, rather than less, if you were bursting with the desire to destroy them."

            Harry ground his teeth. Severus kept his face smooth, but inside, the satisfaction grew thick as a rope. Yes, Harry was angry at someone. Severus would take that, if he could take nothing else.

            "You don't understand," Harry said, as if speaking to a small child, or Neville Longbottom in a Potions classroom. "I don't want to think about them. That's not the same as forgiving them. It's just forgetting about them."

            "I will accept neither forgiveness nor forgetfulness in this case," Severus said.

            Harry bounced out of the chair and strode forwards to look him in the eyes, reminding Severus unavoidably, with his closeness, that they had shared a bed. "Then you think, you think, that I should go and hunt them down to, what, be worthy of your aid?" he spat. His magic coiled in the air in visible rings around him, and Severus heard a scrape at the lab door. He lifted his wand, letting it open so that Shield could fly in. The dragon landed on Harry's shoulder and crooned into his ear, but from the way Harry pushed roughly at his head, Shield had failed to soothe him.

            "No," Severus said. "I think that is not possible nor desirable. But forgetting buries them, forgiveness is impossible, and what you need to do is face those memories for yourself. So that you can move on with your life and realize your ambitions, some of which you have confessed to me. Not doing that lets your family continue to have power over you."

            Harry stopped and stared at him. Then he said, as if willing to discuss the magical theory of someone whose sanity was nevertheless in doubt, "What happens if they stay that way?"

            "You do not know yourself," Severus said, leaning forwards and tapping Harry softly in the belly to emphasize his point. He ignored Shield's slight hiss. "You do not get to open this school you've talked of. You do not manage to teach others to survive the war, not when you have not managed to survive your own childhood."

            Harry closed his eyes and visibly caught back an angry retort. Severus left his hand in place on Harry's belly, and watched, and waited.

*

            Harry wanted to protest that of course he had survived his childhood, how else did Severus think he was standing here and talking to him right now, and--

            That's not what he means, and you know it.

            The more he thought about it, the more Harry had to, reluctantly, acknowledge that Severus was right. His life was a mess, all tangled up together, and he hated the memories of the war but he was more willing to think about them than about the memories of the Dursleys. If everything was fine and he'd actually been in more danger during the war, as he insisted, then that didn't really make any sense.

            He wanted to survive, to go on, to live with Draco and Severus, to learn from Grass and Wind, to start a school, to see what keeping his promise to the centaurs entailed, to be with his friends. And who knew? If he didn't face the memories, he might not succeed at any of them. The school part, at least, and continuing to be with Draco and Severus. He wouldn't want to be with lovers who thought he was a danger because of some unexploded bomb in the back of his head.

            He met Severus's eyes. "Do you think that Draco needs to sit in on this Legilimency?"

            Severus's eyebrows rose, and then he smiled slightly. "Do you insist on sitting in on the brewing sessions that Draco and I conduct?"

            Harry wrinkled his nose. "No, because I think they're boring. And because I think that you two need to share things just like all three of us do."

            Severus nodded. "Now, I suspect that Draco may have more interest in the results of my reading your memories than you do in potions." He tapped Harry again on the belly, and that made Harry wonder how much weight he had gained. He seemed to be bouncing there, rather. "But if you wish privacy, then do not ask him. He has his alliance and his new bride to occupy him at the moment."

            Harry considered Severus. He had been mostly silent during the argument this morning, only speaking up to say that Hermione and Ron were not welcome in the fortress without prior notice of their coming. That had made Harry angry at him at the time, but since then, his rage at Draco had precluded most of that. "Doesn't it bother you?" he asked. "That he's going to marry someone else?"

            A weird ripple seemed to travel up Severus's face. Then he shook his head. "It does not, in fact," he said. "Or, at least, not in the same terms it troubles you. I can tell that much from reading your expression, not your mind," he added, although Harry hadn't thought at all of accusing him of using Legilimency.

            Harry sighed heavily and flopped back on the chair he'd risen from, pausing so Shield could adjust his weight. "It bothered me when I thought he'd have sex with her," he said. "Now he says that he doesn't need to, in order to conceive children." He cocked his head at Severus. "Did he already tell you that?"

            Severus nodded.

            "But you still don't seem as bothered as I am." Harry leaned forwards again and touched Severus's arm, looking down at the pale skin and the small black hairs flecked over it. "Why not?"

            "I did not expect to survive the war," Severus said, in a low, precise voice that Harry couldn't help thinking he might have used to report to Dumbledore. "Let alone to have lovers. Let alone to have someone marry me."

            Harry knew where the courage came from, but not the words, as he met Severus's eyes and said, "I would marry you, if you wanted me to."

            Severus blinked for a moment, looking lost. Then he said, "I have thought so little of marriage that I do not even know which kind I would prefer, or if I wish to go through it." His hand uncertainly squeezed Harry's, and then dropped back to his side. "I do not know...I would have to think about it."

            "Of course," Harry said, and bowed his head. He knew that he was grinning when he lifted it, and Severus stared at him in wary wonder, but then, he couldn't understand the source of Harry's private joy. Harry grinned at him specifically, and gave it to him. "It just seems strange to me that once I vowed to kill you for Dumbledore's murder, and now I'm sitting here and talking to you."

            Severus's face grew stiff, and so did his arm under Harry's touch, which was worse than pulling away. "I understand."

            Harry sighed, and then reminded himself that things like this were simply going to happen with Severus, until he grew more confident and used to being wanted. He rubbed his hand slowly up and down Severus's arm, shaking his head. "No, you don't. I meant that we've all changed. Not just you, and not just me, and not just the situation. Hell, I don't think Draco could have borne seeing me touch you just a little while ago."

            "And now he cares so little that he is not here."

            Harry shook his head. "He's busy, the way you said, but that just gives us more time together." And he leaned forwards and kissed Severus, slowly, his hands working deeper into his hair, giving Severus the time to pull away if he wanted to.

            It seemed as if he would, from the way his body straightened and his breath hissed out through his nostrils. And his tongue lay still under Harry's, needing several taps and a lot of coaxing to come to life. At last, though, Severus shuddered and relaxed in Harry's grip, his hands rising to close on his shoulders almost desperately.

            Harry pulled back and looked into his eyes. "I want to be here," he said. "I want to be with you, with Draco. And find a way to teach people how to survive a war, and get assistance from the members of the alliance if I can. As long as I don't have to pay too high a price for it." He smiled. "And even learn to confront my memories, if you think I should."

            "You would trust me that much?" Severus ran Harry's sleeve through his fingers and watched him with narrowed eyes.

            Harry nodded. "Because it means trusting you, sure, but also trusting Draco's choices and mine. And I do."

            Perhaps he had found the right tone at last, perhaps the right words, but Severus relaxed and kissed him of his own initiative this time. Then he pulled back and picked up his wand, aiming it off to the side. "Did you wish to begin our first Legilimency session immediately?"

            Harry sat down hard in his chair again, and hesitated a moment. He was feeling good at the moment, trust and triumph trotting through his body. He didn't really want to spoil it with memories of the Dursleys abusing him, or whatever else Severus would find when he went digging around his mind.

            On the other hand, he had promised. And he reckoned it was a good sign that he could call what the Dursleys had done to him "abuse."

            He swallowed loudly and met Severus's eyes. "If you want to," he whispered. "Only if you want to."

            "You and Draco relate to each other more with gestures, more with words," Severus answered, his voice only a breath. "This is the best way I know to be close to someone. Although it has so often been used for pain in my life, for a twisting of the right way and the best way, I would still like to try it with someone who welcomes me."

            And those were the right words for him, Harry determined by the wave of relaxation that swept his muscles. He leaned back in the chair and nodded. "All right, then."

            This time, the pressure of the spell against the barriers in his mind, the tossing memories that would still keep someone out if he wanted them to, was more like a knock on the door, an invitation. Harry opened it, and let him come in.

*

            "Sir. Can I talk to you?"

            Severus paused in his walk towards the dining hall and turned, staring. It was rare for Incognita to approach or speak to him at all, let alone with that agitation in her voice. He wondered if she had had an argument with Marie Yaxley, whom he had also freed and assumed without much thinking about it would be a companion to Incognita.

            But she brushed up to him and took his sleeve without a sign of fear or anger. There was a complex expression on her face, but Severus thought the choleric part of it closer to irritation than anything else.

            "It's the merfolk," she said. "I can't reach their minds no matter how much of their language I learn, and there are some concepts that I can only communicate that way. Their language doesn't even have a word for alliance with someone who doesn't live in water. I hoped that you could show me some Legilimency that might help."

            Severus blinked once, twice, and then decided to treat the request the way it sounded and not as a cover for an attempt to stab him in the back. It would, at the least, be more interesting that way.

            "Legilimency on inhuman creatures is dangerous," he said. "It can take some time--perhaps years--to learn the shape of their minds and how it differs from ours."

            Incognita swore. That was another sign, Severus supposed when his mind had recovered from the shock, of how much had changed in the way she regarded him. She would never have said such a thing in front of him normally.

            "We don't have years to establish this part of the alliance," she snapped, leaning back against the wall and combing her fingers through her thick hair. "I've already wanted to attain more than I have now, to show that I'm valuable."

            The words touched a chord so deep in Severus that he could not help responding. It was only the form of the response that had changed. Once, it would have been a sneer and a recommendation that Incognita either find a way to touch the minds of the merfolk or some other way to make herself valuable.

            Now, he said, "I could possibly still help you."

            Incognita rolled one eye over to regard him. "How, if you can't teach me Legilimency that will reach them?"

            "Someone who already has the training has a better chance of success," Severus said quietly, meeting her eyes. "And someone who is both an Occlumens and a Legilimens stands the best chance of all, for he can shelter his mind from the alien influences that might otherwise poison it."

            Incognita hesitated for so long that Severus thought she might not have taken his completely transparent meaning. Then she stood up and swallowed. "You're volunteering to be the one who contacts the merfolk," she said.

            Severus inclined his head, and said nothing.

            "Why?" Incognita had her hands braced on her knees now, as though she was going to bolt away, but wanted to give Severus a chance to speak first.

            "Because it is something I have not done before," Severus said. "Because it is a task that is worthy of someone who is both Legilimens and Occlumens, and thought he would never get a chance to exercise those talents both at once again." He had the trust Harry had reposed in him, of course, and thinking of the memories he had seen that day made him want to smile, but that was not the sort of thing he would share with Incognita. "Because it would give me a part in the alliance, which at the moment I have mostly stood aside from."

            "It might also give you obligations that you wouldn't want to have."

            Incognita's eyes seemed to glow with a strange meaning as she stared at him, and Severus finally grasped what she was saying. She knew his mind as only someone who had lived under his binding could have. She didn't see any reason why the man who had enslaved her would want to oblige himself to someone else.

            "I do not intend to accept any obligations that I do not want," Severus said coolly. "I have learned the pleasure of making my own decisions, and will not yield that to someone else."

            Incognita took a step nearer, and her eyes had a flame burning at the bottom of them that looked as if it might explode outwards and shower him with sharp sparks. "And yet, you are someone who conspired to take others' freedom of choice away from them," she whispered.

            "I did that in the past," Severus said, his eyes not moving from Incognita's face. His hand was ready on his wand should he need it, but he did not think he would. "I have changed now. And no one could have forced me to change if I did not want to. Certainly the ones I took the freedom from could not have, as their will was gone."

            Incognita was still for a moment, biting her lip. Then she said, "I am not sure that freedom earned in that way is a guarantee that you will never do it again."

            Severus shook his head. "You are questioning how your freedom was earned? Rather than using it?"

            "I am not the same woman I was, either," Incognita said, but from the sound of it, she had calmed down. She moved a few steps back, cocking her head as if to study him. "I might question. But it is true that I care more about what I can do with that freedom, and that I have it in the first place, than the motives of the one who gave it to me. I wish only to be clear that there is no debt between us."

            "No debt," Severus said. "I would owe you one, perhaps, but since we wish to have nothing more to do with each other..."

            "No," Incognita said. "Not nothing. You will help me with the alliance, I hope? You will contact the minds of the merfolk, as the only one with the gifts that will permit you to do it?"

            "Ah, then," Severus said, permitting himself to smile. "Then we will begin a new circle of debts, alliances, and obligations. But we will ignore the past, and not allow it to intrude on the future. Is that the way you wish to phrase it?"

            Incognita thought about it, her lips so firmly pursed that Severus thought for a moment she would refuse after all. Then she nodded and put her hand out. "Shake on it?" she asked, not having missed Severus's backwards flinch at the mere thought of touching another person.

            Severus hesitated one more moment, giving himself, more than her, the ability to back out if he wanted to. But he found that he did not want to, that he was curious as to what would happen if he did this thing.

            His hand touched hers, and the next moment Incognita had pulled away and was leading him briskly down the corridor, speaking over her shoulder. "Part of the trouble is that they think of themselves as the only political beings in the world. The colony in the Hogwarts lake has been isolated for so long that they don't even believe in other merfolk. And their minds are hard for me to understand in the first place, and I've learned Mermish by magic, and dreaming myself into their lake with all the charms that will allow me to survive in place is tedious in the extreme..."

            Severus followed her, wondering, as he went, what it would be like to speak with creatures who had no cultural prohibition against Legilimency, or at least, as they would have to, different ones than ordinary humans.

            He could feel his interest stirring to life in the back of his mind.

*

            "And what finally happened with Malfoy and this woman that he was going to marry?"

            Harry waved a lazy hand, leaning back on the grass outside the Burrow and closing his eyes. The sunlight was warm on his face, and the clouds were coming to steal it away soon. He didn't think he wanted to talk about Draco and the politics of the alliance right now.

            But Hermione was insistent, poking him in the back and sides until Harry sighed and sat up again. "She said that she was going to need more reassurances, and that she wanted to see him face-to-face so she could make sure she wasn't going to have ugly children," he said.

            Hermione tried to stifle a smile while Ron shrieked in laughter. "Bet the little git hated that," he chuckled.

            Harry shot Ron a look over the name, but he couldn't really disagree about the sentiment. Draco had stared at the letter for an awfully long time, shaking his head as though he couldn't believe Lady Jocelyn's extraordinary conduct. "Yes," he admitted. "He wrote her back indignantly, and I don't know if their marriage is going to come off after all. Or she might propose a simple child-contract instead of a marriage."

            "You don't sound that upset about it," Hermione said, studying him.

            Harry smiled at her. "Do you mean that I'm not upset about Draco getting married, or not upset about him not getting married? Because both are true."

            "I never pictured you that way, that's all," Hermione said quietly. "You told me once that the first thing you were going to do after the war was propose to Ginny, and then you'd settle down and have a perfectly normal life."

            Harry flopped back on the grass again and watched the light edging around one huge cloud. "Do you remember when I told you that?" he asked.

            Hermione hesitated a moment, but then she said, "Of course. The first month after we started hunting the locket Horcrux, when we thought we would manage to finish everything up in a year at the most."

            Harry nodded. "I did think that was what I wanted then. I was just separated from Ginny, and I missed her like mad. And I still like her," he added hastily, because of the way Ron was looking at him. "A lot. Just not enough to marry her."

            "Your desires changed," Hermione said.

            Harry turned his head and blinked at her, wondering if it would be that easy after all, to make her understand his meaning, without screaming and yelling at her. Maybe so. In the end, she was his friend, not his enemy, even if they disagreed so much sometimes that it seemed that way.

            "Yes," he said. "I didn't know what I wanted. Now I want to study, and I want privacy, and I want love, and I might want to get married. Someday, they'll all settle down and make sense. At the moment, things are tangled and chaotic, and that's the way it is."

            Ron grunted a little. Then he said, "You should know, mate, that Dad finally talked to Percy. He claims that he didn't deliberately tell anyone enough to let them figure out your weaknesses."

            He seemed to have finished. Harry waited a few minutes, and then said, "Well. That's good. Of course, they could have picked it up from him in some other way, but if it's not deliberate treachery, then I can still talk to him without wanting to kill him. Tell him that, will you?"

            Ron hunched his shoulders. Then he whispered, "I don't know if I can, Harry. Even if he didn't betray you on purpose, the fact that he didn't see anything wrong with going on to work for them after the attack--"

            "I don't think we're ever going to understand everything about that attack," Harry interrupted quietly. "The body we found floating in the water had been altered by magic, no doubt of that, and so it must have come from the attack. But the Ministry refused to claim it, and they're probably not going to say anything about it to us, not when they finally have a treaty with us. And you know that your father still works for the Ministry, too, and you're going to, if you become an Auror. You don't need to talk like that."

            Ron gave him a sharp look. "Then you don't really care that it was probably Percy's information that let them attack you?"

            Harry shook his head. "I care, but I can't prove it. I would rather--let bygones be bygones, where I can. The future is going to be crowded enough as it is." He shivered, thinking about the memories that Severus had called up for him to face that morning. Harry had wanted to rage through Severus's lab afterwards the way he had through Dumbledore's office after he found out about the prophecy. Luckily, Severus had acted quickly to restrain him. "And frightening."

            "What are they making you do now?" Hermione leaned forwards as if intensely interested in the answer.

            Harry rolled his eyes at her. "Only the things I told you about. And no one made me do it. This is what I want."

            "I don't know if your desire is always a good guide in cases like this," Hermione said, her voice deep and sad.

            Harry didn't snap back at her, because that would only lead to another tedious argument where she pretended not to understand why he was upset and he tried to reassure her about things that only time could convince her of. She would become less and less afraid of Draco and Severus breaking his heart the longer it didn't happen, Harry reckoned. He only looked up at the clouds and the sunlight and thought for a few minutes before he answered.

            "Maybe not. But I haven't seen any really bad consequences from it yet. I'll let it happen for now, and if necessary, I can change my mind. And at least experimenting like this will teach me what I really want."

            Hermione was silent, which either meant she was answered or she had let it go. Harry shut his eyes and drifted away into the space of time woven by the sunlight and the smell of the grass and the rumble of distant thunder.

*

            "I still can't believe that she refused me!"

            A quiver at the corner of Harry's lips told Draco that Harry didn't agree. He leaned forwards with his eyes narrowed. "I suppose that you think she could do a lot better with someone else?"

            "I don't know anything about the other people who might have proposed marriage to her," Harry said temperately, holding one hand up. Shield, seated on his shoulder, followed the motion with his eyes, and then seemed to decide there was nothing to fear. "But, Draco, think about it. Someone she doesn't know writes to her and tells her that he wants to marry her, or at least set up a child-contract, and tells her that he read about her family and the way they live out of books. Would you trust a Muggle who tried to contact you that way?"

            "No Muggle knows how to handle an owl," Draco muttered, and rolled away so that his hand trailed in the stream. They were outside, the way that Harry seemed to prefer to be when the weather was nice, and even Severus had been coaxed to come with them. He had a book in front of him, his lips moving, but now and then he shut his eyes and moved his lips that way instead. Draco knew he was looking up information on the ways of reading merfolk minds and might not be listening to the conversation.

            It was nice to have him here, even so.

            "But think about it, if they did," Harry said relentlessly. "If they were a Muggle with a Muggleborn family member, perhaps. Would you consider yourself bound to seriously think about their offer just because they appeared out of nowhere and they'd like you to?"

            Draco grunted, and then sighed. Harry's way of thinking about it was actually better than deciding that he just hadn't been acceptable to Jocelyn, in and of himself. "No."

            "Well, then." Harry turned his head sharply as a ripple in the water started mounding up--those instincts from the war that he would probably never entirely lose--but still continued speaking to Draco. "It's probable that she didn't feel that way, either."

            Draco shut his eyes and tried to see it from the perspective that Harry insisted was Jocelyn's. Well, maybe. Maybe he could think of it like that, yes, as long as he didn't let it destroy his self-confidence.

            Harry hissed something in Parseltongue.

            Draco let his eyes pop open and his hand fall on his wand. Harry was standing to greet that bloody snake with the long, horse-like head and shining blue eyes. Corners, that was what he called himself. He reared up in the water and dipped his head down towards Harry, his eyes with their absurd lashes opening and closing. Shield had taken off and flew around the serpent's head, hiss-crooning.

            Harry asked something in Parseltongue, or Draco thought it was a question from his inflection of the words. Corners hissed something back, and Harry laughed. "I should have known," he said in English, turning towards Draco and Severus.

            "Known what?" Severus had put the book down and was paying close attention to this portion of the conversation, at least. But his hands were mounded smoothly in his lap over the book, and he didn't appear as if he would curse Corners. Draco dropped the only worry he'd had and tried to smile at the beast. Of course, no answering smile appeared on the equine face.

            "Corners left for a while," Harry explained, careful to keep his face turned to the side so that he wouldn't start speaking in the snake-language again. "He kept thinking about the Ministry raid, and the part he'd played in it. He didn't like that glimpse of war. His kind don't have conflicts like that. Just struggles between individual Water People."

            "He decided to forgive us, then?" Severus wore the same look that Draco suspected he himself did, eyes slightly narrowed and voice gone emotionless.

            Harry just rolled his eyes at them and reached up to lay his hand along the side of that slender, flowing neck. Corners looped his head around without effort to enclose Harry's hand in himself. Harry hissed a long, complicated series of fluting sibilants, and Corners responded with what sounded like the noise from a teakettle, ignoring Shield as he landed on Harry's shoulder again and tried to add something. Draco wondered idly if one could learn Parseltongue by listening to sounds like that.

            "To him, there's not much to forgive," Harry said. "Only what he likes and doesn't like. He didn't know if he liked humans. He did decide to give us another chance. But the stories he told the Water People didn't tempt any of them to come back with him. This time," he added.

            Severus nodded, and returned to his book. Corners flowed out of the river and coiled himself into the cup that Harry hastily conjured. Harry sat down and started talking to him, ignoring the way Draco stared and sometimes even asked for translations into English.

            "Translations in a minute," he finally snapped. "I have an awful lot to ask him."

            Draco took a deep breath and made himself relax the muscles in his arms and shoulders one by one. He finally leaned back on the grass and shut his eyes.

            And heard the murmuring of Harry to the snake, and the whispers of Severus to himself, and the gurgling of the river.

            And then the cautious stamping of hooves.

            Opening his eyes, Draco watched as the centaurs left their garden and came down to the river to drink. Kleianthe led the way, her arms folded sternly, while her daughter hid behind her flank and Thera's kept close to her mother, in turn. Thera smiled at them all and then folded her knees to get her mouth near the water.

            Draco wondered for a moment what his parents would say if they could see him like that, on the grass beside two lovers, smarting from the sting of a woman he had proposed a child-contract to, listening to Parseltongue, watching the motions of a herd of magical creatures whom they would not have considered worthy to be his allies.

            And he would never know, because they were dead.

            But he could still live. He could imagine what they would have said, and value it, or discard it, and no one could stop him, because he was still alive.

            Draco reached out a hand and touched Harry on one side and Severus on the other. Severus took it, entwining his long, pale fingers with Draco's. Corners hissed something, and Harry laughed and seized Draco's other hand, swinging it, glancing at him with green eyes that shone.

            Draco lay back again, and let happiness rise up in him in answer to that which rained down on him from above and all around.

            The End.

*

            AlterEquis: Thanks! Although I don't like tickling much, either...

            But now the story is done.

            Sablersilverrain: Thank you! I'm glad that you liked the chapter, and I hope you like the ending, too.
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