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Ashborn	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 36151 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
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Chapter Six--Meeting the Allies

            The snake automaton raised its head and turned it slowly back and forth. Severus smiled tightly, lowering his wand. He knew it had been worthwhile to wait and not go running to Potter with an appeal that would have caused Severus to feel stupid for making it--

            With a weak clatter, the automaton fell back against the table, and the life left its jeweled eyes. Severus, his teeth clenched, repeated the spell that had made it live, but nothing happened. Several other variations of the same spell raised no spark. The snake was once again a mere collection of metal and jewels, without the faint self-will that Severus insisted his servants have once they left his presence.

            He wondered for a moment if he could use a kind of Legilimency on the snake. He had not created the loyalty to him in Bellatrix's mind from the ground up, but used the materials he found there. And she performed some of the same duties that he would want the snake to take up, or had until he set her guarding Potter.

            Potter. Why did everything begin to go wrong when he entered our enclave?

            Severus closed his eyes and, in his mind, walked a small spiral that was one of the basic shapes he made his Occlumency shields out of. He was letting his emotions interfere with his rational thought. That was useless, it was stupid, and it was worse than either; it would cost him time and materials that he could ill afford to lose. When he opened his eyes again, he was calm, although he had to look away from the snake automaton to become fully so.

            No, he could not use the same sort of Legilimency on the snake, as he admitted to himself readily when he thought about it. It did not have a mind for him to build up from. Taming Bellatrix's insanity had required raw materials; he did not have them now.

            You could, if Potter would help you with his Parseltongue.

            Severus shook his head. He could not be absolutely sure that Potter still possessed the Slytherin gift, although some of the reports that had trickled in during the war suggested he did. And if he did, what motive would he have to use it to help Severus?

            You could offer him privileges. A supervised visit with his friends. More time outside. Less restricted access to the library.

            Severus paused. Then he turned and took a drink from the small pot of cool water that he kept nearby for such purposes as splashing his face when he was engaged in a long bout of cutting and dicing. The water cooled his flushed cheeks, but it could not calm the furious heat in his mouth.

            Once, bribery of that kind would have been his first thought, and he knew that he could choose bait, such as seeing his friends, that Potter would find hard to refuse.

            Why had he not thought of it before this?

            Because Potter renders me irrational. Because I would rather avoid thinking about him, no matter how he could help me, no matter how he is affecting Draco. I have cared more for my hatred of him than for how he might be able to help me, or how I might need to act against him.

            Severus closed his eyes. The Ashborn had their name for a reason. They had risen from the ashes of the Death Eaters, and from the remnants of the powder that their enemies would have crushed them to. He had gone through a rebirth, as well, from servant to master and lord. He had bound his servants ruthlessly, to make sure that no one could betray him as he had betrayed the Dark Lord.

            But if he was truly made over in a new image, then he should have left his damaging hatred of James Potter behind him.

            Severus sat down on the chair behind the table that contained the snake automaton. He watched it with cool eyes, so that someone who walked in would not catch him in a moment of doubt and indecision.

            That's another thing. Who would walk in and catch you like that? Draco knows better--and he is likely to avoid you after the argument you had last night, in any case. Your Ashborn think only what you tell them to think.

            It was another sign that his old habits were left over, rotting in his brain and potentially controlling his actions if he was not careful. He did not want that to happen. He stood and went for a turn around his office, thinking.

            Perhaps there were certain things he needed to do that he had thought he did not need. Perhaps he needed to spend more time around beauty, and appreciating music, a taste of his that he had nearly let die. Perhaps he needed to learn to speak to Potter with the cool indifference he had thought he was cultivating, whether or not the boy was the son of someone he hated.

            And the son of someone you love. The two emotions should cancel each other out. Severus had believed they did when he made the original plan to have Potter swear Unbreakable Vows and take him hostage. Otherwise, how would he able to tolerate having someone like Potter constantly in the place that he had meant to make a sanctuary?

            But he had not acted that way. He had acted like a spoiled child, and it had taken no one else to tell him so. It had been his reflection in Draco's eyes and Draco's cold silence around him that told him the truth.

            I owe Draco for that. I must find a way to pay the debt.

            Severus closed his eyes again. So he had determined that he had acted in an irrational manner, that he owed a debt to his younger lover whom he liked to think of as in debt to him, and that he would probably never be able to make his snake automaton move if not for the help of a boy who had no reason to favor him, every reason to dislike him.

            Begin with the bribery of Potter first. He knew instinctively that that would take less effort for him than apologizing to Draco would. And in the meantime, you can observe him for signs of what might have attracted Draco, at least enough that he is listening to Potter.

*

            Draco leaned back from the book and nodded. He didn't feel as though he had the strength to open his eyes right now, after using them to read the crabbed handwriting in the book for so many hours. "You were right," he said, half-drowsily. "The magical creatures are part of this alliance, and part of the covenant that existed between the old pure-blood families. They could serve as neutral judges when the families really couldn't come to a conclusion, and they could grant gifts and powers that made the difference in individual duels."

            He hoped that his dry voice masked just how shaken he was. The only magical creatures he'd had contact with regularly when he was young were house-elves, and you didn't have to look hard to see how inferior they were. The centaurs, the merfolk, the unicorns, the dragons, and all the rest--wizards had tamed them, or held them at bay, or could avoid them. They were irrelevant to Draco's life except as a set of facts, to be learned the same way that he learned the finer points of Transfiguration and Astronomy. They might affect his magic. They would not affect his life.

            But now, he had evidence that they had been central to the life of his people, once, in the same way that interdependence had.

            He was glad, suddenly and selfishly, that his parents had not lived to see this new world. It would have confused them beyond bearing, and they would not have understood his desire to live in that way, so opposite to everything they had taught him.

            "That's interesting," Potter said, jolting Draco back to some remembrance of his audience. He sat up and shook his hair out of his eyes. If Potter noticed, he didn't care enough to say anything about it aloud, just nodded and tapped his fingers on the table beside the book, staring at the far wall. "I wonder what led to the attitudes changing? Everyone I knew acted like Hermione was crazy for wanting to free house-elves, even the ones like Dumbledore who respected other magical creatures and would let them teach in the school."

            Draco shrugged. "Presumably they couldn't remain in our world after people began changing and they didn't have the place they used to have in the councils of the wise and powerful."

            "But that doesn't explain what led to the change in the first place."

            Draco rolled his eyes and leaned across the table. "The important part is that I have no idea how we can share a dream so that we can both speak to the same magical creatures at the same time. Should we both try to go tonight? Or only me? The centaur you talked to seemed to want to talk to me."

            Potter gave him a brief flash of exasperation, but nodded. "Yes. Go ahead. You know more than I do about this 'covenant' that they mentioned." He yawned and laid his head on the library table as if he would go to sleep there. "I feel like I didn't get much rest last night, anyway," he muttered.

            Draco poked him until he lifted his head and gave Draco a sleepy scowl. "You're really all right with this?" Draco demanded. "I thought you were the one saying that you had to have something to live for, and I assumed contacting and speaking with the magical creatures was going to be it."

            Potter shrugged. "This is a lifelong project. Or at least, it seems like it will be. I can let you go first and not assume that that means you're taking it over."

            Draco eyed him without saying anything. This Potter was different from anyone else he'd ever met. He wasn't jealous, wasn't ambitious, but he also didn't seem to care that anyone else was, unlike the Gryffindors in Hogwarts. Draco had thought this hostage situation would never work, that Potter would burst out screaming and try to carve his way through the walls by now. But that didn't seem to be happening.

            "Why are you able to survive here?" he asked.

            Potter raised an eyebrow. "There's this thing called air, and this other thing called food that you keep giving me--"

            "Not that," Draco said, and was at least glad that the irritation he felt because of that remark was familiar. "I mean, how can you survive without the fresh air and the running around and the company of your friends that I assumed was essential to you?"

            Potter gave him a long, slow look. "None of those things are essential," he said. "Sure, I would prefer to have them. But it doesn't matter, really, that I don't have them. I can survive without them. I would never have become a hostage if I couldn't. Really, Malfoy," he added in what sounded like exasperation, probably because of the way that Draco was looking at him. "Were you expecting me to sob on your shoulder?"

            "Something like that," Draco muttered, but he didn't say more because it was so embarrassing, and so was his curiosity about Potter's inner needs. Severus wouldn't care about something like that, and while Draco no longer held Severus's ideals to be the perfection of truth, he did think that he needed to be as ruthless as he was to survive their confrontation.

            Besides, he didn't have the words. What he wanted to ask was: How can you accept this? How can you think it's all right that the protections on the incubitum flung you against the walls? How can you put up with Bellatrix, who you have to hate for killing your godfather? (Draco had listened to that particular gloating tale over and over again when Bellatrix still had her own mind, one of the reasons he was glad it was gone). How can you sit here and talk to me as if we were never enemies, and even get concerned about the Ashborn?

            But in the end, he thought he just had to be grateful that those particular emotions of Potter's existed, without trying to interpret them or understand them. They went back to planning what they should do about the magical creatures, and Potter seemed perfectly pleased to have it so.

*

            "A word with you, Potter."

            The Ashborn who stopped him wasn't someone Harry knew, a tall man with dark eyes and a thin dark moustache that looked like the aftermath of a Potions accident no one had bothered to clean up. He frowned at Harry once as though trying to decide what he was doing there and whether it was allowed, then shook his head and turned his back, walking away up the corridor. Harry shrugged and followed. Maybe this was someone Malfoy had sent to fetch him.

            But they ended up in a corridor filled with fumes and noisome smells, and Harry guessed where they were going. He was already braced, a charm cast on his nose to block out the rest of the reek, by the time that the Ashborn touched the wall beside the door of Snape's potions lab.

            "Lord Snape." He whispered the words, as though he thought the direct pressure of Snape's attention and glory might well destroy him. "This unworthy one escorts another unworthy one to face you."

            There was a pause, so long that Harry really thought they might not get through, which would be fine with him. Then the door to the lab shuddered and opened. The Ashborn led Harry through, glancing around nervously now and then.

            The lab smelled bad enough inside to get through the charm. Harry tried not to be too obvious about breathing through his mouth. That was probably an insult to Potions masters under Section 13 of the Unreasonable Wizards' Code.

            The simmering cauldrons sparked blue and brown and green. The tables ran the length of the room and were full of diced plants, cut-up animals in various stages of dissection, and whole lumps of rock that Snape hadn't got around to yet. Harry did see something else, a faceted, gleaming crystal lump, that might have been a piece of unicorn horn, and he wondered how Snape had bought it. Then he decided that that might belong in the category of things he was better off not knowing.

            "Potter."

            There was Snape, standing near the front of the room with something long and silver sprawled on the table in front of him. As Harry got closer, he realized that it resembled a snake made of metal. He blinked. Malfoy had said something about Snape's automatons, but Harry had assumed he was referring to the Ashborn.

            Apparently he was referring to creatures that Snape built and enchanted. Harry shook his head. Is there anything he doesn't get off on controlling?

            They came to a halt in front of Snape, who watched Harry with quiet, measuring eyes before he flapped a hand to dismiss the Ashborn. Harry bit his lip so that he wouldn't make the remark he wanted to about how Snape treated the Ashborn as if he were shooing chickens.

            That left him, standing alone in front of Snape, while Snape looked at him to find some way he could control him. Harry met his eyes and said nothing. The only way that Snape might have frightened him was if he could read Harry's mind, and Harry's own fucked-up memories acted as an impenetrable barrier.

            "Do you know why I brought you here?" Snape asked.

            Harry shook his head, and carefully kept all the comments that he could have made behind his teeth. Of course not, you idiot. No one told me, and God forbid that I deprive you of the pleasure of explaining something to the imbecile you think me to be.

            More than anything else, he thought, he felt tired of Snape. He was sneaking around the restrictions imposed on him by the Unbreakable Vows only because there was no other way that he could help Malfoy and the Ashborn, not because he feared Snape's wrath. Snape was simply irrelevant to his life, in the way that foul weather was. Harry had run through bushes and sneaked up on camps and killed in the rain and the mud, in the midst of ice and snow and windstorms. He would resist Snape in the same way, no matter what Snape did to him.

            Perhaps Snape saw something of that in his eyes, and didn't like it, because he turned abruptly away and pointed at the segmented silver snake on the table. Harry looked at it with mild curiosity. His first impression was that whoever had made it didn't know much about snake anatomy. The head was out of proportion, and the jaws unhinged. That meant the snake wouldn't be able to eat anything bigger than itself, something quite a few of them did.

            "I animate these creatures to help me around the lab and to guard my estates," Snape said. "I have consistently failed to animate this snake. My research reveals that most of the spells would be easier if I had someone who spoke Parseltongue on my side. With your help, it might move."

            Harry waited to see if he would say anything else, but Snape just stood there, paying more attention to the snake than him. Harry at last shrugged and responded, "Why does that matter? I assume that you have other guards and assistants enough." Now that he was looking for it, he could see distant gleams of metal that were probably Snape's other assistants, while he had taken them for the sides of cauldrons and silvery machines like the ones Dumbledore had had in his office before. "I'm not going to help you awaken this just because you want me to."

            Snape turned to face him in an abrupt movement, his robes swirling softly still around him. Harry met his eyes, again, without fear. I wonder if anyone's ever told him how much he looks like a mantis.

            "I can give you gifts," Snape said. "I can let you see your friends. I do not think you were anticipating such a gift when you came into my service."

            Service? Harry kept the sneer he wanted to give at that off his face. He wasn't Snape's servant, no more than Malfoy was--or, well, at least than Malfoy could be, given that he was slowly breaking free of the influence Snape had extended over him. But he reckoned that Snape didn't grasp the idea of someone with free will living in the same building as he was who didn't fall under the categories of servant, slave, or fucktoy.

            "Assuming that I got to see my friends," Harry asked, "how long would the visits be, and when, and where, and how many would I be allowed? I assume you'd cut them off the minute you had the snake animated."

            Snape stared at him. He obviously hadn't been expecting the negotiation. Well, why would he, when everyone else bows and scrapes at his feet or they're so scared because he rapes them?

            "I would permit three visits," Snape said at last, slowly. Harry thought he was testing the boundaries of the conversation, waiting to see how much he actually had to give up. "In the fortress of the Ashborn, under conditions that include five guards, one of whom must be Bellatrix. I would be there as well if I deemed it necessary. Each visit would be no longer than a half-hour."

            "That sounds good," Harry said. "But I need some sort of promise that my friends would be able to leave again safely, rather than being seized as hostages themselves."

            "What would I want with two more Gryffindors, neither of whom were vital to the war effort?" Snape was staring at him again.

            Harry had to muffle a chuckle. That just proved that Snape didn't know as much about the last war as he thought he did. "I don't trust your statements of self-interest," he said. "I never know when you'll think of something else that would actually serve your self-interest better. So. A promise?"

            "This is a rather hefty price for aid on an automaton that you may not be able to provide," Snape said, his eyes so narrow Harry was surprised he could see out of them.

            "You don't get it, Snape." Harry felt free to put an elbow on the table and lounge there, smiling at him. Snape tensed up, which was even better. "I'm not afraid of you. I don't have anything to gain from helping you, unless you make and keep certain promises. I have no reason to put my friends in danger because you want me to. I have no reason to do anything just because you want me to. So. Are you going to make the promise I want you to or not?"

*

            Severus did not know what to make of this.

            The boy was not afraid. A common tactic of Gryffindors, to say that and to mistake their foolish bravado for invulnerability. But the boy said it as though it was true, and didn't reveal any of the telltales that Severus was used to: the blinking eyes, the flushed cheeks, the hesitancy to talk about what they feared in case it gave their enemies ideas. Potter seemed to have identified the worst thing and gone directly for it, as well as assuming that Severus would have no reason to be charitable to him.

            And of course I do not. But he ought to realize that, within the confines of bargaining for something I want, I would be more reasonable than he thinks, now, that I would.

            "You know the Vows I made," Severus said, to test the boy's understanding. "You know the ones you made. Nowhere in them does it speak of such things as regular meals, freedom from harassment other than purely physical harassment, or being put to sleep with a potion."

            Potter met his eyes. There was something off about the boy's gaze in response to him, Severus noted. A wildness at the back of it, as though he was a feral creature considering whether to step forwards and take food from the human hand that was offering it.

            "If you try to hurt me," Potter said quietly, "then I can retaliate. That's built into the Vows. I know you might kill me. But another thing I'm not afraid of, Snape, is death." His smile widened. "A few of the Death Eaters learned the hard way that you can't really put a chain on someone like that."

            Severus did not step away, but he felt a certain part of him chill and grow quiescent. "You are saying that you are suicidal," he said. "That rather changes what I can offer you and what I can expect from you, yes."

            Potter actually rolled his eyes. Severus could not remember the last time a gesture of such defiance had been launched at him, and it made him wrongfooted, so that he couldn't respond before Potter did. "Not suicidal, you idiot. Just not afraid of what you can do to me. I surrendered myself as a hostage because it was good for my friends and because the wizarding world doesn't need another war, not because I'm afraid for my life or because I was secretly hoping that I could escape someday." He held out his hands. "This? What you see is what you get. I made the Vows honestly. You're too used to dealing with people who hold things back, or with people who have nothing to hold back because you've told them you can't." A sharp spark of disgust made his green eyes bitter. "You can't use fear as a tool to control me. Now, can we move past that and go back to the negotiation? Because I would like to see my friends again."

            Severus strangled the emotions that tried to rear their heads. He drowned them, poisoned them, fed them potions that would keep them subdued. He could not afford to let Potter control their interaction at the moment. He must face him with calmness, or he would lose.

            "The conditions that I named before are acceptable to you?" he asked briskly.

            Potter nodded. "Along with the promise that you won't harm my friends while they're here, or prevent them from leaving." He stared at Severus.

            Severus found that he had to avoid those eyes for the first time. Not because they were so intimidating, not because they were the color of Lily's, but because there was too much in them to think about. He stared over Potter's shoulder instead, with the distance on his face that had fooled more than one student into thinking that he knew every detail of their lives, and said, "The promise must be conditional. If they attempt to hurt one of my people, then I must be able to hurt them."

            Potter shrugged. "That's fine. But I want your promise now."

            "I will not give you another Unbreakable Vow," Severus said, and a mocking tone he had not planned crept into his voice. "And however could you trust me without one?"

            Potter looked at him remotely. "If you give me a promise and keep it, it'll be sufficient. If you don't make a promise, no deal. If you make me a promise and break it, then I promise that I'll hurt as many of your people as I can before the broken Vow kills me." He smiled at Severus, a tainted smile. "And I can promise that you won't like the kind of damage that I can inflict."

            "I do not respond well to threats," Severus said quietly.

            "Neither do I," Potter said. "And yet you keep trying them. Are you going to make the promise or not, and are you going to keep it or not? It should be simple. Don't hide in the shadows and threaten treachery that you have no intention of making real."

            Severus started to snap back, and then ground his teeth against each other. He had promised himself that he would not do this. He had not known it would be so hard to keep his word to himself, the person in the world who most deserved it.

            "I will make the promise," he said. "And I will keep it with the condition that I imposed from the first."

            "All right," Potter said, and stepped forwards so that he was closer to the snake. "Now, what's wrong with it? What have you tried so far?" He began to hiss steadily before Severus could respond, bending down to the snake as if it had ears and could hear him.

            Severus opened his mouth to comment that the beast would not be able to hear him until he had at least woken it up, and for that they needed the spells that only someone with a mastery of Parseltongue could speak--

            And then slammed his mouth shut again, glad that Potter had not been facing him, when the snake's head surged up and the elongated jaws parted, the forked silvery tongue flickering out. The snake cocked its jeweled, gleaming eyes at Potter, and from it emerged a sound like a steam kettle going to battle. Severus could not distinguish words in it, but then, he could not distinguish them in Potter's Parseltongue, either.

            The boy smiled, a serene smile of the kind that Severus was unused to seeing from him, and leaned his elbow on the table, continuing to speak to the snake. It began to heave its body up, swaying back and forth. Severus had marked a certain point in his mind as that where the neck ended and the body began, but the automaton didn't seem inclined to treat it that way, instead raising itself further and further and dancing above the boy like a giant cobra.

            Potter truly had forgotten how to fear. He kept looking up, and speaking in a gentle hiss, if there was such a thing. He could have been telling the snake how to move, how to attack Severus, or where the bathrooms were. Severus could still make out nothing from his lips but a steady stream of sibilants.

            The automaton opened its jaws at one point and bent down as though it would bite Potter's head off. The fangs were big enough to frame his skull. The boy raised an eyebrow, remained still, and said something with a wry tone in his voice. The snake lowered its body back to the table and hissed something back loudly enough to make a few cauldrons rattle.

            Finally, Potter seemed to have finished the conversation. Severus expected the snake to slump back to the table again when he turned away from it, but it remained upright, and turned faceted eyes on him for the first time. Severus gathered his dignity around him as Potter said, "That should do it. What did you want it to do?"

            "How did you command it without using spells?" Severus asked. Potter blinked at him, and he added, "Forgive me for not wanting fangs to close on me as I lie in bed at night, acting on your command."

            "I couldn't do that," Potter said simply. "I'm forbidden from attacking you magically, and this would count." He turned back to the snake, and watched its swaying. "You made this better than you know. There was a living spirit in the back of it, a spirit made of magic and the--the formation of the body. I don't know how to say it better than that. You made a snake, and a snake came to live in it. Just not the snake that you may have intended."

            Severus gestured shortly for the boy to continue. He had no patience for much of the mysticism behind many people's conceptions of magic. He could live with it better if he watched the results and in the end attached them to a skeleton of substantial magical theory.

            "Parseltongue means that humans and snakes can understand each other," Potter said. "It's not really the language that snakes speak among themselves, you know. That doesn't involve much sound, for one thing. But I made contact with the spirit that you'd summoned without realizing it. It probably would have done what you wanted from the beginning, but you couldn't reach across the space between it and you and make it understand your needs." He reached up and smoothed a hand along the silver segments. The snake seemed to watch him tolerantly. "Now, I can tell it what you want it to do, and it'll do that."

            "Will any future commands have to come from you?" Severus demanded. It infuriated him that the automaton he had made which seemed to work the best would have to take orders from someone else.

            Potter blinked at him. "Of course not. For one thing, I don't think you'll have to change its orders often. For another, I can make a recording of the Parseltongue words for you, and you can play it for the snake. It was just the initial communication that couldn't be established by anyone but a Parselmouth."

            Severus snarled. Being close to Potter was steadily driving him mad, making him think thoughts that had no weight and no importance, making him wonder about things that should not concern him. "Leave. Now."

            Potter still didn't back away. The disadvantages of fearlessness were many, Severus decided, though Potter might not think so. "When are you going to arrange the visits with my friends?"

            "Only you would ask something like that," Severus said, and made sure that his words were freighted with the full weight of the inconvenience that Potter was causing him. "In full consciousness of the fact that it is more complex than that, that I will have to consider my schedule and the Ashborn who are available."

            "Well, yes, of course I'm the only one who would ask something like that," Potter said, staring at him. "Since I'm the only one currently around here who you can even make promises like that to, never mind the only one who would expect you to fulfill them. I might include Malfoy, but he's too obedient to you. You've eaten him out from the inside, which seems to be your course of action with most people." Abruptly, he grinned. "Is that why you're so irritated with me? Because I won't just rip open my belly and give you a good meal?"

            "Go, Potter," Severus said.

            Potter nodded at him and walked out of the room. Severus reached out, touched Bellatrix's Mark with his mind, and made sure that she would be ready to receive him.

            He shut his eyes when the boy was gone and leaned against the table. He was so angry that he was shaking.

            No, his reactions to Potter were not rational. But neither was his conviction that he could control the boy through bribes, and tame his tongue because of an expected pleasure. Potter was not a dog, to stop barking because he was offered a biscuit. Severus did not know why he had expected him to be.

            Because nothing else works. And something must.

            He would find it. He would make Potter yield to him, and have respect for him in the end, or at least fear. But he would not find it standing here and letting anger rule his mind.

            He opened his eyes--

            And only then realized that he had never had Potter give the snake its orders in Parseltongue in the way that he had offered to, and which Severus knew he would need. Either in spoken or recorded form, the orders could only come from the boy.

            A vial shattered against the far wall.

*

            Draco closed his eyes that night wondering if he was really prepared to face centaurs after all.

            He knew more about them than Potter did, simply because he had grown up in the wizarding world, and he knew more about how they fit into the ancient pure-blood society because he had read books that Potter hadn't. But that didn't mean that he would understand all their riddles or their attempts to trick him.

            If they were attempts to trick him, Draco thought ruefully as he closed his eyes and filled his mind with visions of the Forbidden Forest, gleaming bay bodies and long swishing tails and grave human faces. That was the problem with centaurs. Helping, by their lights, might mean telling the truth wrapped in too many riddles to unravel before it was too late.

            Although, in this case, was there such a thing as "too late?" Draco had the rest of his life to build this pure-blood culture back up and to understand the role that the centaurs had played in it.

            No, you don't. Not if Severus becomes suspicious of what you're doing and tries to stop it.

            Draco took a deep breath and shook his head. He was getting distracted from his whole purpose in going to bed this early, and that was stupid. With some effort, he relaxed his mind back to contemplating magical creatures, and tried to remember all the details that Potter had told him about his dream. Leaves beneath his feet, he said, and the soft crackle that accompanied them. Dusk, and stars overhead. Well, that would make sense when the dream was taking place at night. The scents of grass and trees, and Draco was sure that he had a better sense of smell and a better imagination than Potter, since he was so much better at potions--

            "Welcome, Covenant's Child."

            Draco jumped and whirled around. The leaves, sure enough, rustled and shifted beneath his feet. He found himself staring into the face of the implacable centaur Potter had described.

            He hadn't made it clear how large the white beast was, though. Draco stiffened his legs so that he wouldn't back away and bowed his head. "Thank you, noble centaur." That would have to do until he learned names. "Why did you want to see me?"

            The centaur trotted closer. Potter had said that he carried a white raven with him, but Draco couldn't see one. Perhaps the bird was a special detail just for Potter, or only there because Potter had expected to see it. "You are beginning to build the bridge between us again. We wish to be in the covenant from the beginning, and secure alliance and protection."

            Draco held his face immobile, but his mind was rioting with confusion behind the mask. "How did you know that I was building the bridge?"

            The centaur paused and stared at him, though not as if he were stupid but simply because his answer was surprising. "Harry Potter reached out to us, and his mind was full of you," he said simply. "We know."

            Draco nodded as though he'd expected that, but made a mental note to taunt Potter lately about his mind being full of Draco. "All right. Then you must know that I'm only in the beginning stages of building the bridge."

            The centaur stamped his hoof. "Early is better than not at all. And you have a chance of constructing a bridge that endures."

            Draco decided that it was time to move beyond discussion of the metaphor to discussion of practical endeavors, at least if the centaur would allow such a thing. "I would welcome your help. Who else should I reach out to? What else should I promise? Who needs to be my allies?"

            "You can reach out to the merfolk and the unicorns and the dragons later." The centaur leaned forwards insistently. "You should promise us protection and aid, and the fostering of children."

            Draco blinked, thrown off as much by the directness as anything else. He didn't realize how much he'd been braced for riddles and nothing else until he got this instead. "I--the fostering of children? Children coming to live in the Forest with you, and centaur--" He didn't know the correct term, and floundered for a moment before saying, "Children to live with us?"

            "Yes." The centaur was stamping his front hoof, and it picked up speed as he considered Draco. "How can our people know each other if they do not live among each other from a young age?"

            How much do they really know? "Indeed." Draco took a deep breath. "But I don't have any children to foster yet, or any place for a centaur to visit me. I'm not the leader of the Ashborn, just one person."

            "Any person may become the center of an alliance, which in turn extends its tendrils to others," said the centaur dismissively. "There are two scholars among us who long for the ancient times to come again. They and their fillies are on their way to the fortress of the Ashborn."

            "I don't command there!" The words were ripped out of Draco before he could stop them. "That's not--you can't possibly think that I can make space for them when Severus Snape rules the Ashborn."

            "You will find a way," the centaur said. "You have the knowledge. Harry Potter has the will. Ask him to help you. He will find a place for the fillies to live, and for their mothers to stay with them as long as they wish. He defeated the Dark Lord that Mars said he should not defeat. One who challenges the will of the stars has little problem with the forces of the earth."

            Draco closed his eyes and put one hand over his face. It was obvious that the centaur didn't understand the logistics of human organizations, or maybe he knew all about the ancient pure-blood culture and didn't have the slightest idea of what more modern pure-bloods were like.

            Although you know that you're not dealing with a group who can make their own decisions, as Potter would point out. You're dealing with one man. And Severus won't welcome these centaurs.

            If they were already on their way, however, Draco would have to deal with them somehow, even if it was only by turning them away. And for that, he would need Potter's help. He didn't dare go to Severus with this news, not without some sort of backup and clear evidence that it wasn't his fault.

            "Very well," he said. "But don't blame me if Potter doesn't have the will, after all."

            The centaur was gazing at him in wonder when he dropped his hand from his face. "Why would you speak as if you were independent of each other?" he asked, with another stamp of his hoof that sent leaves scattering and flying up. "You are allies. If he falls, you fall, and he must see that it is in his best interest to rescue you, as well."

            Once again, all the many things he would have to explain choked Draco's tongue. He shook his head and said, "I'll try."

            The centaur bowed his head, and the Forest faded from around Draco. He opened his eyes in his own bed and stared at the ceiling.

            He didn't know how to deal with this. He had no idea how Potter would respond to it, let alone Severus.

            But he found himself smiling, even if it was a thin and constrained smile.

            How long would have I have delayed about doing something, if I didn't have a goad? This way, at least, I can't pretend that there's no urgency, and I'll get around to it whenever Severus seems to be in a better mood.

            This is the beginning of the change.

*

            unneeded: I think you can see here that Harry is making Snape angry, and that points to a greater role. Snape has more to unlearn and think about than just the way he treats Draco.

            And Harry's lack of fear is going to come in very useful later.

            lyra_ofhell: Sorry to hear that.
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Ashborn