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

Chapter List
- 6
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Chapter Seven--Falling Stars

            "I'll help you in any way I can."

            That had apparently not been what Malfoy was expecting to hear, since he stared at Harry with his mouth open. Harry firmly bit his lip so that he wouldn't gape back in the same way--Malfoy would think he was being made fun of--and did his best to explain with quiet, firm words.

            "That centaur told you that I had the will to make Snape agree to hosting the other centaurs. It's about time I put that will to use." Since it's not been very good for fuck all so far.

            "But--" Malfoy brushed his hand across the corner of his mouth, glared down at his hand as though it had betrayed him, and then folded it firmly in his lap. "It isn't that," he whispered. "I expected you to help me."

            Liar. Harry kept his expression bland, but inwardly, he was speaking the word in a loud, mocking voice. He wondered if Malfoy had any idea how alone he appeared, how much he needed help to walk the dangerous path he'd set himself on. Of course, fool that he was, he probably still thought he could depend on Snape, or the Ashborn that Snape had set to guard him, or some such.

            "But I didn't expect this to happen so soon." Malfoy waved one hand around at the walls and collapsed into his chair again. They were meeting in Harry's room this time, and Malfoy had stared at the colors on the walls for five minutes, gaping, before he would start talking. Harry thought he would prefer that witless behavior to the way he was acting right now. "I don't know how I can face Severus. I don't know where we'll put them. And when Severus realizes that I don't plan to simply court a woman and have a child I can teach the ancient pure-blood ways, that it'll change the way he lives..."

            "Oh, is that all?" Harry asked casually, feeling the scalding delight rise in him. "I'll be happy to talk to him about that, if you want."

            Malfoy turned around and stared at him again. Well, good. Harry had his attention. He leaned forwards and began to speak, softly, all the words he'd wanted to say since the rape. If he waited for Malfoy to come up with counters to them, then he might never get the chance to say them at all.

            "You're far more afraid of him than he deserves. Yes, he's magically strong and he commands the Ashborn, but he's a lesser person than you are, in every way. He's not aware of the outside world. He wants to live shut away from it, in walls that nothing can pierce. That's a sign of weakness. You give him power over you that he doesn't think he needs, but he requires it, to prop up his own wilting self-confidence. Withdraw it, and your relationship will change. You don't have to be afraid of him, because he'll be too afraid of you leaving him. Just stand up to him, once, and see what happens."

            "You don't understand," Malfoy mumbled. "He has a power of withdrawing, himself. All he has to do is turn his head to the side and leave me behind with that cold indifference he practices so well, and--that's it. There's no way I can fight that, not when I've spent most of the past three years dashing myself to pieces on it. He'll be startled and angry when I fight back, but he'll ignore me until I give in."

            Harry grinned at him. "You're smarter than I realized," he said, and watched the flush fill Malfoy's cheeks, the spark fill his eyes. Good. He looks so much better that way than broken-down, cold and waiting for death. "You recognize that much of the dynamic, at least. No, I agree that it can't change until you bring someone else in. That's why I volunteered in the first place."

            Malfoy scoffed at him. "He'll do the same thing to you, and you don't have the patience to wear him down or the importance to him to force him to change."

            Harry blinked, then realized that he hadn't told Malfoy about the way Snape had called Harry to him yesterday, or the results of that meeting. He laughed. Malfoy sat up further and glared at him. Harry took a moment to wonder why the expressions on Malfoy's face, and where he got those expressions and what he did with them, mattered so much to him.

            "Sorry," Harry said, and choked on his own giggles. "But I irritate him to the point that he can't contain himself. I didn't tell you. Yesterday he offered to let me have some visits with my friends if I could bring his snake automaton to life. I did--it wasn't hard, really--and he made the promise, but in between, there was such anger as you've never seen. He can't think rationally about me. He wanted to throw things at me the entire time I was in there. He's far from the cool and pragmatic thinker that he's convinced you he is, or that he's convinced he is. Use me as a shield, if you need to, since his anger'll spill onto me, but I think that standing up to him, following my example, will also catch him off-guard."

            Malfoy closed his eyes. "You know how much I long to be important to him," he whispered. "I never meant for you to see this weakness."

            Oh, for the love of small furry animals. Harry placed his hand on Malfoy's shoulder and shook it until his eyes popped open and he shot Harry another glare.

            "Enough of that," Harry told him crisply. "I feel sorry for you, sure, because I still think you were raped and can't admit it, and I'm sorry that you've lived in fear for so long. But that isn't the same thing as despising you. Snape despises you. He wants a compliant toy that still has enough free will to give him some titillating excitement when you're in bed."

            "Fuck you, Potter!" Malfoy rose to his feet, his magic beating out around him for a moment like a heat shimmer. Harry still met his eyes fearlessly, though. He knew he was stronger than Malfoy was, and could land a harder blow if Malfoy attacked first and freed him from his Vow.

            "Can't, I'm afraid," Harry said coolly. "You're so full of Snape fucking you up and over that there's no room for me."

            Malfoy snarled, and his anger surged up from wherever he'd been hiding it. "You want pathetic?" he asked. "I'll tell you what's pathetic. The way you agreed to be our hostage, exactly as if you were the broken-down, spineless wreck that I thought you were in that first year for not being in Slytherin. You don't care about yourself, you don't care about living, you'll just crawl into the deepest hole you can find and martyr yourself while whimpering about how it's all for your friends--"

            Harry laughed again. Malfoy stopped and stared at him. "Listen," Harry said to him, when he could talk around the laughter. "I agreed to this because I'm used to it, and because I was the one Snape asked for."

            "You're used to it?" Malfoy's eyes blurred with confusion. "You were never a hostage during the war."

            "Yes, I was," Harry said. "For a short time." But still too long. He bit the thought off ruthlessly and shrugged when Malfoy stared at him. "But what I really meant is that I'm used to being a tool. And Snape wouldn't have asked for anyone else, except as a chain to hold me in check. Better for me to become his hostage, so that he doesn't get that bright idea." He leaned forwards until his nose was an inch or two from Malfoy's. He was sitting on the bed, so there was a slight height difference between them, but Malfoy was the one who glanced away. "You're much more of a hostage than I am, held prisoner by your own fear. I'm not afraid of anything anymore. There's a limit to how much Snape can hurt me."

            Malfoy stared at him, panting. Harry kept an eye on his hands, ready to dodge if Malfoy should lash out at him. He thought it entirely possible. Malfoy's fear and anger wasn't going where it should, to Snape. He had always had a terrible time blaming the right person, at least if the way he'd blamed Harry for his father going to Azkaban was any indication.

            God, that was only four years ago, wasn't it? Harry blinked. The waste of time between then and now seemed large enough for a desert.

            Maybe it was the blink, but Malfoy didn't hit him. He eased backwards instead and shook his head, his cheeks colored with a dull flush. "That doesn't matter," he said. "What matters is that I'm not going to say to Severus what you want me to say."

            Of course not, because that would be too simple. Harry bit the inside of his cheek so that he wouldn't say that aloud. "I'm offering to help you," he repeated. "I'll stand between him and you. For now."

            "Is that a threat?"

            Harry stood up and left. There were all sorts of excuses to be made for Malfoy's behavior, but at some point they ran out.

            He would visit the centaurs tonight, in his own dreams, and try to get a better sense of when the fillies and their mothers were arriving. That would let him know how much time he might have to prepare.

            The same tall, thin Ashborn man Snape had used to summon him yesterday crossed his path before Harry could get back to the library. "Lord Snape requires you," he said, staring over Harry's head to meet Bellatrix's eyes. Harry didn't know what command he'd given her, but she stayed behind as they went to Snape's lab.

            Harry rolled his eyes as he thought of the snake automaton and the reasons Snape might have summoned him. If he wants to challenge me, then he's more than welcome to do so.

*

            Draco sat in the library with his hands over his eyes, wondering for a moment if he should. If someone came in, and saw him sitting like that after a conversation with Potter, and reported it to Severus--

            But no one will do that, will they?

            No. They wouldn't. The Ashborn wouldn't notice him unless Severus commanded them to, Severus never came out of his lab this early in the morning, and Potter had walked away from him.

            Draco bit the inside of his cheek savagely and shoved back his chair to hear the squeak. Then he walked rapidly through the corridors until he reached the garden he'd used to meditate in the other day, flung himself down on the bench where he'd also sat before, and stared around at the flowers growing in wild profusion.

            My mother would have loved this.

            Yes, she would have. Draco forced himself to inhale the clear air slowly, to notice the shining blue and the brilliant red and the shy pink of the flowers nearest him. He couldn't identify them all, he realized with a small start. He had paid attention to the parts of Herbology that involved magical plants he might have to use as Potions ingredients, but ordinary flowers had been beneath him.

            They aren't now.

            Draco reached out, hesitated, and then turned one of the blue flowers to face him. It grew with others on a large bush not far from the bench, and the head was heavy and covered with minute clusters of petals like confetti that had landed close together. Draco turned it back and forth, seeking some clue that would tell him exactly what it was, but finding nothing.

            He lived in a world that he didn't know about, walked on earth he didn't recognize, was surrounded by flowers he couldn't name.

            The idea hit him like a blow in the chest. Draco stood up and turned towards the library again. This time, he intended to find a book on Herbology and work with it until he could identify some of the ordinary flowers in the garden. It was a silly idea, but Severus wasn't around to say it was, and Potter had already promised to handle the arriving centaurs for Draco, if Draco would only let him.

            It was worth it, at least for the moment.

*

            "What did you need me for this time?"

            Potter's tone was drawling, bored. He did not do it as well as Draco. Severus was glad to have found a weakness, although he did not speak of it aloud because Potter would pretend not to know what he was talking about, and Severus was tired of that.

            "To give the automaton its commands," Severus said, and moved around to the other side of the table, so that he could watch from a better angle exactly what Potter did this time. Accompanied by Miguel, Potter walked up to stand near the snake's head. Severus touched Miguel's Mark with his mind and dismissed him. Potter appeared not to notice.

            One would not think he had been in battle, Severus decided, and allowed his lip to curl.

            "Interesting," Potter said softly, and looked up at Severus. "Did you command it to go back to sleep?"

            It's none of your business what I commanded it to do--

            Severus controlled himself between one breath and another, one blink and another. No. That question contained information that Potter could conceivably need, and the automatic response to it that Severus had produced was overblown. He had to gain better control of himself, and learn why Potter's blithe responses made him want to burn something.

            "It went to sleep," he said. "Without my command." Enough words to answer the question and do nothing more. That ought to fulfill his mental condition of handling Potter with metallic neutrality. There were times that he could wish for the gleaming silver of his servants to replace his sparking thoughts and dashing emotions. It would be a more peaceful existence.

            "Hmmm." Potter reached out and traced his fingers down the snake's blunt nose, hissing beneath his breath. The snake reared up at once, focusing on his voice. Potter stepped back to give it enough room to rise, his eyes locked on the glittering ones. He pitched the hisses upwards, or so Severus thought, locked in the mode where he tried to listen to as much as possible of a new language so that he might learn it more easily. The snake responded with a short, cut-off demi-syllable. Or so it sounded to Severus. He was not sure that Parseltongue had syllables in the way most human languages understood the term, and Potter would be useless in helping him learn more.

            Because it sounds like English to him when he speaks it. Not because you hate him. You must restrain that hatred as best you can, Severus.

            Potter shook his head and turned to Severus. "You made it for a specific purpose," he said, not quite hiding the sparks in the back of his voice or the way his eyes darkened. "It went to sleep again because you didn't give it orders that related to that purpose. It wants to be used." He glared at Severus under the fringe now, and with that scar hidden, the only difference between him and Lily was the hair color.

            And the shape of his face, and the glasses, Severus told himself harshly. "You left yesterday before we could establish the orders."

            "That doesn't matter," Potter said, while the sparks in the back of his voice caught fire. "It's still made for--use. It needs something more."

            "Then give it the orders," Severus snapped.

            Potter didn't move. "I want a definite time for the meeting with my friends."

            "I have not yet chosen it."

            Potter, infuriatingly, gave him a slight smile. "I know that. But I want to make sure that you choose it before I leave the lab."

            Severus did not close his hands into fists. He would not allow himself that much indulgence. "I suppose that I will set a time of two days from now, in the morning, and you and your friends will meet in the large garden to the north of the fortress." The garden was completely enclosed, with several windows looking out on it, and would give Severus the ability to employ guards who could still be busy with other tasks, such as cleaning the corridors, while they watched. "Can you inform your friends of the meeting within that time-frame?"

            "If you'll permit me the use of an owl, or a fireplace."

            Severus narrowed his eyes, and said nothing. The strange request indicated that the boy had some other form of communication with them, one that Severus had not yet discovered. But arguing about it would waste more time, and if he was to understand his own reactions to Potter, then Severus thought he needed hours away from him.

            Potter faced the snake again, his eyes narrowed in concentration. "You want it to guard your fortress," he said, his left hand raised as if he would stroke the snake, but not connecting to the swaying body. "How do you want it to discriminate between threats and visitors?"

            "It is to attack anyone who comes into the fortress from the outside," Severus answered. That ought to be simple enough for Potter to convey in Parseltongue; perhaps only "fortress" would take a bit of explanation.

            Potter turned and looked at him, movements heavier and more deliberate than those of many of Severus's automatons. "Including my friends? Including anyone coming in from the gardens?"

            Severus closed his eyes, but a small spark of understanding had flared into life inside him, and had not burned him. He was used to a simple life now, with the only complicated things in his universe his spells and his potions, and not all of those. He had to keep seeking out more complexity, looking up more obscure incantations, entering the art of automaton-creation when he had not had any such desires at first, brewing potions that were almost beyond his abilities and inventing experimental ones that served less and less useful purposes.

            He required challenges to keep from being bored. But he had given up finding them in people. The Ashborn were forcibly made simple; he could render Draco the same with a few carefully-chosen words.

            Potter was new. Potter was complicated, challenging, unexpected, different.

            Once, he would have rejoiced in that. But he rejected it. He feared it. He backed away in front of Potter and made sure that he had no access to the essential Severus, the core of wonder and intelligence that he carried in the depths of his mind.

            He opened his eyes and looked back at Potter, who was still waiting for the orders he wanted to give the snake. Potter's eyes changed as he looked back, and Severus was glad to see it. Previously, those green eyes had been too much like deep pools under the shelter of some tall tree. Now there was a disturbance coming up in them from underwater.

            Severus did not intend to show his own change yet. He said in a voice that was not different from the first one he had used, "You will tell it to attack anyone coming in from the outside unless they are Ashborn or unless they carry my magical signature."

            Potter frowned. "How do you intend to establish your magical signature? It would have to be something the snake could sense."

            Severus nodded and moved a step closer. Potter didn't flinch, though he did shift his stance slightly. This one would allow him to come up off the floor faster and strike from a variety of angles. Severus wondered if he knew he had done it.

            "This way," Severus said, and spoke a long, slow spell that he had last used to give some of the automatons a way of distinguishing between him and a thief who might steal Potions ingredients. Long, swirling streams of violet and saffron formed between him and Potter, trailing about like wind currents. They snapped and shortened, and then wrapped around Potter. Potter's lip lifted from his teeth, but he didn't try to move until the spell had passed and the banners disappeared.

            "That mingles your magical signature with mine?" Potter asked. He was trying to avoid picking at his arms, Severus thought, as though the spell had created scabs of dirt that covered him.

            "It does," Severus said. "In scent form."

            Potter wrinkled his nose further, but nodded and faced the snake, beginning a short, sharp series of hisses. The snake bent further towards him, head bobbing in what could have been parodies of human nods or simply something that could be read the same way. Severus leaned back against the wall of the lab and watched Potter engage with it, sometimes clenching a hand so that he could work some of the tension out of his fingers.

            There was...

            There was a newness in him as well. And a quiet, appalled realization of how much he had changed from the man he had been.

            That man had had his alertness about him at all times, fooled only by habits of equally long standing, such as that of obedience to Albus or loathing of Potter. He had only rarely had to admit surprises, such as when a Hufflepuff girl turned out to be more competent in Potions than Severus had dismissed her as or when Potter managed to kill the Dark Lord as Albus had always predicted he would.

            He had been happy to leave that man behind. After all, he had been a spy, a servant, a Potions master condemned to teaching children he mostly despised and kept from his true work. He had taken to the shaping of the Ashborn under the happy realization that now he could do his work, provided he created a set of people that would insulate him from the world. His whole life would be pleasure, with the potions and with Draco, and with short breaks into duty, such as when he had to take Potter hostage or give an Ashborn an order to resolve two conflicting imperatives.

            But instead, his life had dissolved into pressure since Potter arrived. Arguments with Draco, inability to raise his newest automatons, internal debates of the kind that he had hoped to leave behind with the Dark Lord and the Light Lord.

            This was not the way to the life he had wanted. He might have admitted that earlier, except that it was so hard for him to admit at all when he was wrong.

            And that was not a rational action. If he was to be a supremely rational man, then he would have to change his mind and scan over the mistakes that had brought him thus far, locating the point where he could change them. He would have to interact more with the world, because that would, in the end, bring him greater comfort and pleasure than maintaining his isolation would have.

            Albus had told Severus again and again that he could not have a happy existence by himself in the dungeons, that he was bound to crave for light and human company sooner or later, but the longer he put off the desire, the more savage it would be when it did recoil on him. Severus still curled his lip when he thought about the old man's wording, but...

            In some ways he had been right.

            As always, old man.

            "And done."

            Potter was finished, then. Severus stood up and moved forwards to inspect the snake. Instead of coiling back into somnolence as it had done too soon after Potter's last visit, it nudged at the edge of his hands, flickered its tongue at Potter, and then silently slithered off the table and towards the door. Severus listened, and could hear nothing but the faint click and rasp, now and then, of a scale against the stone. The noise it made when moving had been his primary concern about its weaknesses as a defensive guardian.

            "So, are you going to let me have an owl?"

            Severus turned back to Potter. Potter watched him, waiting. No trace of fear.

            As always.

            "I will," he said. "There is a small owlery on the far side of the fortress, reaching towards the hills. I will tell Bellatrix to take your letter there."

            Potter paused and blinked at him, uncertainly, as though he had expected Severus to refuse even this request even at this time. "All right," he said, and edged past Severus with another curl of his lip.

            Severus watched him go. Potter the impulsive, Potter the brattish, Potter the impossibly incapable of respect, had nevertheless agreed to become a hostage, and he had done well enough to have survived more than a week among the Ashborn without prompting either of them to break their Vows.

            Severus could take a lesson from that.

*

            Harry leaned back from the letter and considered it for a moment. Then he nodded and rolled it up into a tight little scroll, which he sealed with a spell that he and Ron and Hermione had used several times to mark their letters when they were separated from each other during the war: a small curl of fire that left behind the shape of a rising flame in the sealing wax.

            He thought he'd done a good job with the letter. It outlined the conditions that Snape was letting them meet under, and emphasized that he didn't think there would be danger.

            If there was...

            Harry let his fingers stroke his wand for a moment. Yes, ultimately the spell he'd used to take down Voldemort had worked on people, but he and Hermione had found another variation that worked on property, which he'd simply had no occasion to use. He could pull the fortress of the Ashborn down around their ears if he wanted to.

            Then he shook his head. The far more likely outcome was that there would be nothing wrong or dangerous in the meeting, because Snape wouldn't be interested in retraining Ron and Hermione as hostages.

            Smiling slightly at the thought of Hermione's reaction if Snape tried, Harry stood up with the letter in his hand and walked towards the door of his rooms. Snape had said that Bellatrix would take the letter to the owlery when he was done with it, but Harry intended to walk with her. Bellatrix wouldn't forget the letter along the way on purpose. On the other hand, she wouldn't have much choice if Snape told her to drop it or tear it up.

            They had mounted several steps the color and size of flagstones--the first staircase Harry had seen in the fortress, since the Ashborn seemed to prefer to live all on one level--and there were the hoots and shrieks of owls above them, when Bellatrix abruptly stiffened and laid her hand on her wand.

            Harry frowned at her. "What is it?" he asked. He didn't see what would make her look like that unless it was a summons from Snape, but he didn't know her that well.

            "Magical creatures attacking the Ashborn," she said, and drew her wand free with a rasp, and whirled to rush back down the stairs. Harry hesitated for the briefest moment before he followed.

            Magical creatures. The centaurs.

            Oh, shit.

            Well, he ought to be able to use magic to get ahead of Bellatrix, since he didn't intend to escape and the spell he had in mind wouldn't do any damage to the Ashborn. He ran his hand along the shaft of the wand and murmured the words that he had memorized when he and Hermione still thought that he'd have to battle all the Death Eaters at once before taking on Voldemort. "Obiter."

            The world around him wavered. Then his feet left the ground, and his perspective seemed to turn sideways. He was flying, he was wavering like a mist, over the walls and down the stairs and in between them, passing through the inevitable cracks in the plain grey stones, seeking light.

            The passing between stones was always surreal, no matter how many times Harry had done it. He found himself free and imprisoned at odd intervals, and now and then he could feel the sharp pinch of the rock around him, or veins in the stone, or flecks of crystal and quartz and mica. It was always hard to be sure what they were.

            He burst out into the light with a gasp, and circled above the green grass. Magical signatures were visible to him in this form if he concentrated, as dim and misty auras of power. There were two off to the side that looked nonhuman--thicker and greasier--accompanied by two smaller, barely formed auras. Harry turned his wind-self in that direction, noting the magical signatures of Ashborn drawn up in front of them.

            His landing would have to be more precise than the ones he'd practiced in the past. Well, he would do his best. He dived down until he was sure that he would land somewhere between the Ashborn and the centaurs, and then whispered a Finite that seemed to ripple throughout his body. He popped back into himself with a suddenness that made him shake his head.

            At once sound and light and color pressed down on him. The Ashborn saw him appear and paused. No doubt Snape had ordered them not to harm him. Harry kept his back to them for a moment, instead regarding the centaurs.

            Both of them were female, one a sorrel, one a bay. They were as calm and solemn as the white centaur Harry had met in his dream, although they did make sure that their bodies remained between the smaller centaurs and the Ashborn's wands. The fillies, Harry saw with a swift glance, were both chestnut, and they looked like five-year-old girls. Each of them ducked her head when they saw him looking, veiling their faces with bright auburn hair.

            Like Ginny's.

            Harry swallowed back the memory and faced the sorrel centaur, who he decided to address as the leader unless they corrected him. "May I know your names?" he asked. The fewer questions he asked that gave them room to answer confusingly or with riddles, the better off he thought they would be.

            "Kleianthe," said the sorrel, touching her chest between her breasts. She gestured at the bay. "Thera." Then she put her hands on the shoulders of the fillies, pulling them both a little towards Harry until they gave in and bowed. "These are my daughter Starborn and Thera's daughter Cadmaea."

            Harry nodded. "You came here because you wanted to?" he asked. "No one made you come?" His mind was working quickly, and he was sure that no matter what Malfoy's books said, magical creatures wouldn't function very well in a pure-blood alliance that their leaders had pressed them into.

            Kleianthe smiled at him. She had brown eyes, bright and generous and warm. Harry decided to look at them. It would keep his eyes away from places they shouldn't be. "Yes, we came," she said. Her voice had a crisp sound, like hooves crunching through leaves in the Forest, Harry reckoned. "We want the old alliance as much as you do."

            "Uh," Harry said, deciding that this wouldn't be the best time to tell them that he hadn't read the books Malfoy had and was filling in for him instead.

            Then the nearest door of the fortress banged open and Snape stepped out, robes billowing around him, face flushed. Harry felt a smile struggling to work its way across his face even as he realized that Snape was probably on the edge of snapping and just ordering the Ashborn to exterminate everyone. He looked more human than Harry had ever seen him, less controlled.

            Which might mean that Harry could control him, in the end.

            "What is the meaning of this?" Snape was trying to make his words roll like thunder. It worked on the Ashborn, who swayed on their feet. Harry noticed that Kleianthe and Thera looked absolutely unimpressed, although their daughters hid behind them again.

            "We have come to reestablish the old alliance," Kleianthe said. "The old protectorate," she added, perhaps to clarify, since Snape wore a stony expression and no other sign of response. "This time, we wish to be the ones that you speak to first, instead of the merfolk. They dominated the alliance last time."

            He could get along with Kleianthe, Harry thought. She seemed the only centaur he had ever met, other than Firenze, who talked in a way he could understand. "Then let me make you welcome, formally, to the Ashborn," he said. "I will defend your lives with my life."

            He didn't know if those were the right words; he had only chosen them because they sounded as if they should be. But the air between him and Kleianthe whirled abruptly into light. Harry blinked, wondering if someone else here knew the passage-spell he had used to get outside and was employing it right at the moment.

            What came out of the star-shape forming between them was a pair of chains, however, small and delicate ones of the kind that someone might wear as a necklace. They fell at Harry's feet with a clank. He picked them up and stared at them. Both of them seemed to be made of iron, but iron so lightly made that they didn't feel heavy in his hands.

            "You have spoken the words," Kleianthe said, and there was a song in her voice. She slid to kneel on one foreleg, bowing her head, and Thera did the same. Harry only noticed for the first time, as he stared at their lowered faces, that they were wearing bows slung over their shoulders. "And the ancient agreement has produced new signs." She reached out one wrist, splaying her fingers towards Harry.

            After a moment, Harry realized what she wanted, and his face flushed as he looped the chain carefully around her wrist. The iron circlet closed, and the two links that ended it joined together, with no sign that they had ever been apart. Harry started to hold the other one towards Thera, but she shook her head and pointed her chin at him.

            Harry put the chain around his own wrist, and it joined and fused in the same way.

            Er. I reckon I did something more than just welcoming them.

            "Do you realize what you have done."

            It wasn't a question, Harry thought as Snape stepped forwards. Snape already knew the answer, so there was no reason to ask a question. Harry watched him and saw the way his hand had fallen to his wand, which he pulled free of his robes without haste. His eyes were on Kleianthe and Thera, and the fillies. He probably thought they would be less trouble to kill than the adult centaurs.

            "Welcomed them into a new alliance," Harry said, and held up his head as Snape's gaze snapped around to stare at them. What, had he not expected Harry to know that much? Harry had thought it was clear in his words. "Malfoy told me that pure-blood wizards used to be allied with magical creatures." Never mind that he didn't know exactly how. He was sure that it was more than Snape had known, or at least paid attention to. "And now that we have these symbols--" he brandished the iron chain on his wrist "--they need to be made welcome here."

            Snape's nostrils flared. He said nothing for long moments. Then he said, "I will let them go, if you step back into the fortress now and prepare to make another set of Vows to me."

            Harry understood what he'd done, then, and a smile of vicious delight broke out on his face before he could stop it. Snape narrowed his eyes as he stared at him, and Harry beamed right back, madly. Yes, he was more than willing to fuck up Snape's day if he could.

            "I promised my life to defend them," he said. "And you can't actually kill me, can you, unless I attack first? I'm too valuable a hostage."

            "There is pain I can cause you that does not depend on dying." Snape held up a hand and motioned, and Harry didn't know why until he heard the crunch and sway of the Ashborn behind him, moving forwards as one.

            Utterly as one, with no chance of being different than their neighbors, Harry thought in disgust. He shook his head at Snape. "If you torture me, then I can strike back, and the Vows won't stop me. And I've said it before, you just don't seem to absorb the message in the right way. I'm not afraid of you."

            "Legilimens."

            Harry didn't think Snape meant for anyone else to hear that, it was whispered so softly, and of course the Ashborn wouldn't care if they did. The centaurs were the nearest audience, and Thera took a step back, her eyes flickering warily between him and Snape. Kleianthe gave a snort that seemed to originate deep in her chest and edged closer, pawing the ground with one hoof as if on the edge of a charge.

            Harry didn't move. The spell had the effect he knew it would, briefly slicing into his tangled mass of memories and then recoiling from them. Snape's face turned pale. Harry wondered if anyone else here understood how revealing that was.

            Of course, Malfoy would probably understand even better than I would. But he wasn't here at the moment, or at least wasn't watching their little duel openly, so Harry wouldn't invoke him and remind Snape of his existence.

            "I told you," Harry murmured, barely moving his lips. "You can't do that to me, either."

            Snape's hand tightened on the wand. Harry thought he would lash out, for a moment at least, and he readied himself for that. Defensive spells bubbled and churned in his mind. He would protect the centaurs first, as the ones he had invited to this little meeting, and then raise a shield that would bounce most of the curses that Snape could fire at him--

            Then Snape said in a hollow voice, "Do what you will. You cannot respect the laws of hospitality. It should not surprise me that you cannot respect the normal rules of social interaction." He gave a mocking little bow to the centaurs and whirled aside, throwing swirls of dust into the air. He motioned to the Ashborn on his way past, and they turned around and followed him back inside--all except Bellatrix, who stood to keep a watch over Harry like always.

            Harry blinked, licked some of the dust off his lips, and turned back to the centaurs. He thought he knew why Snape had given up so easily. He didn't want to humiliate himself in front of any more people who could see him being humiliated, and with the arrival of the centaurs, that number had gone from two to six.

            Or from one to five, at least. I don't know if Malfoy really counts when he'll still do his best to ignore everything that might lower Snape in his eyes.

            "If you'd come with me, ladies?" he murmured. "I'll find a place where you can shelter, and if you'll tell me what you need to eat, then we can see about providing that, too." The Ashborn's fortress was seated on a flat plain, surrounded by spells to keep Muggles from noticing when they flew over, and the plain was covered with grass, but Harry had no idea if that was the kind centaurs ate or not. Or did they even eat grass? Maybe their stomach was a horse's, but their mouths were human.

            "No need to call us ladies," Kleianthe said, trotting up beside him. "We are allies now." She eyed him sideways. "And that was impressive, what you did."

            "Defied him to his face?" Harry smiled a little as he started to lead them along the side of the fortress, Bellatrix following with huge eyes. "Yeah, I don't think he's used to that."

            "Promised your life to defend us," Kleianthe said. "That is something that the old alliances required, but which we did not expect."

            "Oh," Harry said. He hoped that he didn't look as stumbling as he suspected he did, but then again, Kleianthe was wearing an iron chain around her wrist that he had somehow conjured out of thin air with the right words, and she didn't seem unimpressed. "Er. Yes. I couldn't let him hurt you."

            "He would have."

            Harry breathed out and slowly nodded. "Yeah, I think so."

            He started looking for sections of the fortress wall that had vines and trees rising above them. Those would be the gardens, and the places where the centaurs would probably want to stay even if they couldn't graze; they were outdoors and open to the wind and the stars. As for the rest, he would most likely have to find Malfoy and get his help, somehow.

            If he wants to help me after what I did to Snape.

            Then again, I suspect that Snape won't exactly tell him the full story.

*

            Severus kept walking until he found a small, cool room that none of the Ashborn would enter without his express permission; he used it to store Potions ingredients that could not be kept in the warmer environment of the lab. He pressed his back against the wall and watched the lightning dance against his eyelids.

            Potter had challenged him to his face.

            And got away with it.

            Severus's hand worked up and down his wand with a slow, crushing motion. He knew he would not break the wood or damage the core inside; it was a substitute for what he would have liked to do to Potter's throat.

            I must find some way to conquer him.

            He did not know how or when that would happen. He only knew that it must.

*

            Draco bit the heel of his hand and slumped against the wall. He hadn't been able to look away from the window through which he'd seen the confrontation between Severus and Potter until it was finished.

            And now his mind was in a riot of conflicting emotions.

            He hurt Severus.

            I didn't know someone could do that.

            I hate him.

            He did something I would never have dared to do.

            He did something I should have done when he welcomed the centaurs and volunteered to stand up to Severus.

            Out of all the raging truths, out of all the different and sharp-toothed options, only one stood out to him as something he had to acknowledge beyond all denial.

            I don't know what comes next.

*

            unneeded: Severus is starting to realize how warped his perceptions are. The problem is, this confrontation with Harry over the centaurs is probably going to set him back because he can't stand the thought that Harry is getting one over on him.

            And I don't mind that much about people not reviewing. This story only updates once a week and it has a pairing that's not everyone's cup of tea, plus Snape is being a real bastard at the moment.

            Yami Bakura: Thank you! I'm curious what you think about the centaurs and Draco after this chapter.

            Cody_Thomas: Hee! I guess if it entertains you enough to keep reading, that's good, at least? I do think Snape is frustrating--he's frustrating to write--but here you can see the first steps out of the mist he's wrapped himself in. A large part of the problem is that he combined "Now I will live the way I want!" after the war with "And that means that I don't have to listen to anyone else!" That was partially because he lost Dumbledore, the only one who could really advise him, and he deliberately hasn't lived with any equals until now, or anyone he took seriously.

            I've heard Drarry, but mainly it's called H/D. And it does seem to move in that direction a lot, but here, you can see the confluence of the three. At least Snape is involved and passionate about something again, even if the thing is kind of stupid.
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Ashborn