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An Urn For Her Ashes	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Snape Views: 8570 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter List
- 6
- 7
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Chapter Seven—Covert Allies
            “I really have no patience with the way he speaks, Severus.”
            Severus nodded calmly. He had come up to Molly before she could either leave the Order meeting or, more disastrously, speak her mind to Albus. Of course, there was the large chance that even her open speech wouldn’t convince Albus of the danger, but Severus preferred not to leave that up to luck.
            “By that, you mean…” Severus leaned over to pour some wine into her glass. They were sitting in Severus’s quarters, and Severus had let Molly stew some time in privacy before he came back with the wine and apologies for the delay. He had judged it the best way to build up her temper to exploding point.
            “The way he talked about sacrificing Harry! And everyone else! What were they thinking?” Molly slammed down her glass on the table next to her chair. Severus winced instinctively, but nothing spilled or shattered. “How could they stand there and act as if that poor boy’s life is a perfectly reasonable price to pay for peace?”
            “They have had years and years of terror.” In a cool, detached way, Severus could admire that much of Albus’s planning. He had waited to introduce Harry until the war had dragged on so long that the Order members had begun to think they would never be free, and they would grasp at any chance. “They don’t know him. A stranger’s death is small next to all the others they’ve already seen.”
            Molly stared at the floor, and Severus knew she was thinking about her twin sons. With hard-learned grace and tact, he waited until she had gathered herself before he went on.
            “But there are ways to rescue him. I will need your help with one of them, however.”
            “Anything.” Molly immediately looked up. “I’ll do anything.”
            “It’s mostly as a distraction for Albus. I need to brew a potion to help Harry, and I’ll need to begin sometime in the next day. It’s possible that Albus might want me for something else. Can you take up his attention?”
            Molly’s eyes snapped. She nodded.
            “And I’ll talk to Arthur about the poor boy,” she added, finally picking up her glass and taking a careful drink of the wine. Severus thought she handled the glass as if it belonged to a king. Well, she would not be used to such things. “If Albus has dazzled him, I’ll just have to un-dazzle him.”
            Severus smiled, although he didn’t know how staunch an ally Arthur would be. Molly’s husband was simply too eager to please, too eager to get along with everyone, and he would put things off and mumble in the hope that something else would resolve the matter for him.
            “And I might work on Hermione, too,” Molly was musing, as she stared at the wine. “There’s things she could do well to learn.”
            “Leave her until later,” Severus said, and Molly turned to face him. “Harry wants to approach her privately.”
            That wasn’t true at all, but he shuddered to think of what would happen if Molly approached the girl and she guessed, via Molly’s actions, that there were a few Order members not loyal to Albus. It would be worse than almost any other member of the Order, because while Granger nurtured some sympathy for Harry, she also respected Albus to the point that Severus didn’t think she could see past his reputation.
            She would probably go and “talk” to Albus, confident that Professor I-Discovered-Twelve-Uses-For-Dragon’s-Blood could come up with another solution. And then the game would be over.
            “Oh, I see.”
            It seemed he had missed some subtlety of his own, because Molly was beaming and nodding. Severus shook his head a little. “What do you see?”
            “Harry fancies that girl, isn’t that it?” Molly chuckled. “And he wants to get her alone and talk to her when he’ll have a better chance of explaining himself. And not so many adults around to embarrass him.”
            Severus remained still for a moment, staring at her. Then he shook his head. “No.”
            “No? Why, then?”
            Too late, Severus realized he should have allowed that deception to remain in place. Molly would have come up with the most harmless explanation, and wouldn’t have questioned it if Granger never said anything to her about Harry.
            But he had not allowed it to remain, and now he had to account for his words to the sharp eyes that watched him. Severus inclined his head and gave his own fears a different name. “Harry is concerned about Miss Granger’s loyalty to Albus.”
            Molly opened her mouth, probably to say something about the girl’s friendship with her daughter and how Miss Granger only needed the right persuasion, but then she gave a soundless sigh. “Yes. Well. It’s true we could persuade her if we had more time. But Albus seems intent on giving up Harry’s life soon.”
            “Yes, he does.” Severus was relieved that his unintentional slip had not cost them anything. He sipped from his own wine, to show willing, and Molly returned to hers. “If I ask you to go up to Albus tomorrow, would that be better than this evening?” He wasn’t sure what excuse Molly could give for remaining at Hogwarts when the rest of the Order members had departed, either to class or back home.
            “I can do it this evening.” Molly smiled, and Severus spent a moment wondering if the Hat had offered her Slytherin. “When the need is great, I can do things you wouldn’t believe.”
            That is probably true. And he might not be seeing the smile of a Slytherin, but of a woman who would have destroyed the Death Eaters hunting her sons if she had only managed to get there in time.
            Severus inclined his head. “Then whenever you want to begin.”
            “That’s now.” Molly swallowed a little more wine, snapped the glass down so hard Severus would have to check the stem, and stalked out of his quarters.
            Severus hadn’t even leaned forwards to check on the wineglass when Harry’s voice said from behind him, “You didn’t have to take that so hard, her little hint about me being in love with Hermione. She probably thinks that Albus raised me with all sorts of romantic notions, but you know that’s not true.”
            Severus slowed his breathing with an effort and turned around. “I did not know you were there,” he said, as the Invisibility Cloak slithered from Harry’s shoulders.
            “Well, yes.”
            Severus ignored that and moved forwards to study Harry. “Is Albus going to send you on more journeys for the Horcruxes, or is he going to do that himself?”
            “No.” A faint smile brushed against Harry’s lips and was gone. “Even if he goes himself, he needs me with him, to put down the blood and hair that will keep Voldemort from figuring out what we’re doing.” He locked his gaze on Severus. “There’s a locket that we need to find next. He informed me we’re leaving in an hour.”
            Severus hissed a little. “And if I had known that, then I could have told Molly to save her distraction.”
            “It won’t matter. If she doesn’t get him to put it off, she’ll worry him so that he’ll have it on his mind when he comes back.”
            “Will that make things more dangerous for you?” If Albus was distracted, he might not fight the traps or other dangers around the Horcruxes as well.
            “No.”
            Severus would have to trust that assessment, he supposed, because Harry wasn’t worried and he didn’t have the power to compel Albus to put this off. He extended a hand, and Harry ducked under it and came up with Severus’s palm resting on the nape of his neck. His eyes were shining softly.
            “You do what you need to,” he said softly. “The only thing I came by for was to offer the drop of blood from my scar so you can put it under a Preservation Charm.”
            “I am not to take it bright and fresh at the very moment I need it?”
            Harry only grinned, although Severus could think of more people who would be revolted by that statement. “No,” he said. “Because I might be hunting Horcruxes or battling Voldemort right then.” He bowed his head and touched his wand to the center of the lightning bolt scar. Severus watched him for a moment and wondered how he could be so precise about where to draw the blood without a mirror.
            Then he wanted to snort. Of course he knew. Harry had practiced this before, and who knew how many times? How many days, months, years, had he had nothing to do but contemplate magical books and try to understand them, or practice his potions theory, or dream of freedom?
            He must have been alone or with house-elves even more than I thought, since Albus was spending so much time at Hogwarts.
            There was an odd tinge to those thoughts, making them ones Severus did not want to think, and for more than the usual reasons. He shook them away, and asked, “Will you give me a moment to prepare the charm and the vials?”
            “Why plural? I only intended to give you one.”
            “I—would like more than one. In case I—make a mistake.”
            Harry lifted his head again and grinned at Severus as if he was the center of the universe right at that moment, a bright and shining sun. “How wonderful. You’re sometimes human enough to doubt yourself.”
            Severus whisked over to one shelf to fetch the vials, shaking his head when Harry would have said something else. He did not want to stand still, did not want to think and feel.
            In a moment, he had the vials ready and the incantation poised on the tip of his tongue, and Harry nodded to him and touched his wand to the center of the scar again, whispering a spell Severus had never heard. Perhaps it was one necessary to cut through not only the scarred skin but any less tangible defenses the Horcrux had.
            Whichever he needed, the fat drops of blood fell a second later, welling up around the tip of Harry’s wand and plopping neatly into the vials Severus was holding ready for them. Severus felt a soft shudder travel through him as he stared at the gleaming drops. They looked far more like rubies than blood ordinarily did.
            “That’s just the Dark magic in them.”
            Severus flushed and glanced up. Harry smiled at him, put out a hand and stroked the side of the vials, and then whipped the Invisibility Cloak over his head.
            “I need to leave. Albus expected me to be resting, and now I have to get to his office in twenty minutes.”
            Severus stretched out a hand before he thought better. He felt something soft and solid duck past him, then lift up, and he was thoroughly kissed by a pair of invisible lips that almost bore him backwards.
            He might have welcomed it if the vials had smashed and Harry needed to stay and give him some more, but instead Harry whisked past him, and Severus was alone with his blood.
*
            This was the most complicated potion he had ever brewed.
            For some other people that would have deadened their hands, forbidden them to move, Severus knew, but he was cool-minded now and absolutely sure that he could do this. His hands darted through ingredients, plucked leaves and twigs and petals and claw scrapings, and sorted them into their proper piles, or placed them in the cauldron. He added water that poured absolutely straight down from his hold on the decanter or wand. He chanted the proper incantations for increasing the heat of the fire beneath the cauldron exactly when he needed to.
            He was clarified, exalted, uplifted, by the fact that he knew he would win freedom from the Dark Lord if he succeeded.
            There was no other prize so great.
            Except one.
            And to win that prize, as well, he would have to make sure that he could actually brew the potion.
            The drops of blood shimmered under the Preservation Charm in their vials. Severus gave them a grim smile and worked harder, measuring the clean white sand he needed to add to the cauldron’s bottom to the last grain.
            Then there were the Chinese Fireball claw scrapings, and how carefully he had to add them. He was aware, as they trickled between his fingers and into the potion, that something might explode at any moment. Or someone might knock on the door and shatter his concentration. Or the Dark Lord might summon him, and his left arm could twitch sideways, as it sometimes did when pulled by the force of the Mark, and too much of one ingredient would go into the potion, or not enough of another.
            He knew all that, and it made him leap more eagerly into the brewing, bright vicious gladness beating in him like wings.
            Severus knew when the moment had come to add the heartsblood hellebore. His head seemed to clang, as though he was carrying a heavy glass tray, or at least a tray with glasses on it. He turned from side to side, for a moment, making sure he had the petals close to him, and that he was ready, that they were all there, that his fingers had them within reach.
            He paused to breathe once before he began to feather the hellebore across the surface of the unstable liquid.
            Harry had told him when he would have to add the blood. Severus knew it could be done. He trusted in Harry’s theory and experiments to have carried him this far. But he also knew that it would have to be perfect.
            What else am I, as a Potions brewer?
            His ingredients fell like snow. Severus sat there, watching them, and waiting for the moment when the hellebore would react with the claw scrapings and explode.
            He had to await it, because he was both an expert Potions brewer and someone who knew exactly how dangerous what he was doing now was.
            But nothing happened except that the potion bubbled a little. And then he had the vials open, his hands moving almost independently, and he placed the first drop of blood into the potion.
            The potion swirled as it accepted that tiny thread of Harry like a crimson hair, or a scarlet string. Severus stared at it as it dived into the potion. He knew he would have to move in a second—less than that—if the blood didn’t work as Harry had anticipated and the potion exploded after all. And his legs were poised and quivering, all his muscles taut.
            This is the way I prefer to live.
            The crimson thread of the blood disappeared, but the potion turned transparent. Severus knew the theoretical reasons for that, but at the moment, it was mostly convenient. He watched as the red dots of blood settled on top of the claw scrapings and the hellebore, and pacified them, winding around them as if someone had individually bound them all.
            And no explosion followed.
            Severus leaned back and closed his eyes. He attuned his senses to the swirl of the potion and reached out to add the final ingredients.
            The moments of dancing on the edge had passed; if he did as he should now, there was no more risk. Only a potion proceeding as it should, even if it was a potion that had never existed before this moment. Severus could feel himself detaching from those moments of intense planning and existence. He stirred one finger in the potion, even, and nothing happened.
            He would help Harry win freedom. He would help end this war and the threat of the Dark Lord, and they would flee far away together and end the threat of Albus.
            But at the moment, besides Harry himself, what Severus most valued winning was the right to continue brewing potions like this.
*
            “What was it like?”
            Severus had been woken by someone banging on his door. He hadn’t known why Harry couldn’t simply pass into the room through the walls and wards the way he had apparently done earlier, but he hadn’t questioned him. Not when he saw the ghastly pallor of Harry’s face, floating like a moon in the gleaming hood of the Invisibility Cloak.
            And not with the way that Harry had immediately collapsed into a chair and asked for something to drink. He had swallowed half a bottle of Firewhisky at once, and without coughing or choking. Severus knew what that said about the ferocity of the fire burning inside him.
            Harry turned to him in response to the question, and chuckled. “You want to know?”
            “I don’t ask questions I don’t want to know the answers to.”
            “From some of the things Albus has said about your teaching methods, I’m not sure that’s true.”
            Severus looked at him mildly, the same way he would a Slytherin student who had decided to act ridiculous. Harry sobered and nodded, setting aside the Firewhisky.
            “All right. This one was a cup that apparently once belonged to Helga Hufflepuff. And a locket that once belonged to Salazar Slytherin.”
            “He had you go after two at once?” Severus hadn’t realized until then how much trust he’d put in the declaration that Albus only intended to collect one Horcrux at a time.
            Harry opened his eyes and shot Severus a wry glance. “Yes, he did. And I promise that that’s not why I look the way I do.”
            “There were more guardians on these Horcruxes.”
            “Of course there were.” Harry let his head fall back against the chair and his eyes drift shut again.
            “He forced you to face them by yourself.”
            “That,” Harry said, with a small shake of his head, “depends on what definition of force you’re using.”
            “Mine.”
            “Then perhaps he did. But some of them wouldn’t have yielded to anyone who didn’t also carry a Horcrux or who was a Horcrux.” Harry was quiet for a moment. “And he didn’t want to bring the ring with us in case Voldemort was waiting for us and it somehow got recaptured.”
            “You will be glad to be free of him,” Severus said, and stood up to move behind Harry. Harry at once turned his head, acknowledging that he could hear Severus moving, but didn’t open his eyes.
            “Both of them.”
            Severus paused. It was such a perfect echo of his own sentiments that he could not help his response. Then he put out a hand and slowly rubbed through Harry’s rough mop, massaging his scalp until Harry gasped and reached up to catch his wrist.
            “I’d love to, but I’m exhausted and I couldn’t give you anything worth playing with. Sorry.”
            “Then sit still,” Severus murmured, a game coming to mind that was worth exploring for its novelty. “And allow me to do what I will. Free yourself for a moment from Dumbledore’s demands and even your own demands for freedom. Allow me,” he added, and scratched a little harder, when he felt the waiting resistance in Harry’s body.
            Harry balanced for a moment more on a teetering edge. Severus understood better than most people how difficult it would be. And then he let his head fall forwards and his mouth open a little as he whispered, “All right.”
            Severus kissed where he had been rubbing, and gentled his hand until Harry was softly gasping. Then he moved around in front of him and knelt down, casting a Cushioning Charm on the carpet before he reached to undo the buttons on Harry’s robes.
            In truth, he didn’t expect to be down there long enough to need the charm. But better to cast it and not need it than need it and interrupt both of them.
            He caressed Harry’s thighs and arse as he drew out his cock. Harry hadn’t even opened his eyes. He was only leaning back, offering himself up wholly to Severus. His breathing had changed to a softer, deeper sound, but hadn’t got faster.
            He trusts me that much, Severus thought triumphantly as he took Harry in his mouth. It felt like a victory in a contest, although Albus would hardly know they had been competing.
            Then Severus banished all thoughts of Albus from his mind and bent to the important task of sucking Harry. Harry was squirming in a few seconds, but it was a slow, dreamy squirming. Severus looked up. Harry’s eyes were still closed, but now his lips had turned up in a small smile.
            Severus touched his leg, and found a sensitive spot that made Harry shudder. He didn’t look down, though. Severus found he approved of that.
            He trusts me to touch him however I like, and carry him away to the heights of pleasure that only I can provide.
            He sucked lightly, continually pausing, with even lighter taps of his tongue on the head of Harry’s erection. He wanted to see if it would make Harry sit up and complain. He kept sitting back and ignoring the heat twisting like a poker in the center of his chest, only wanting to see the effect on Harry.
            It was never any different, except that Harry had slouched down in the chair and opened his legs further and offered his groin to Severus more pointedly whenever he paused.
            Severus finally smiled and threw himself into the task of making Harry come. Harry moaned, as if it was an offering he was placing on an altar, and reached down with one hand. Severus moved his head so that Harry’s hand was firmly on his hair. Harry only shivered, though, and didn’t try to grasp.
            He is different from anyone I have ever known.
            Severus sucked sharply enough that Harry started, and that finally made him come, the orgasm rushing out of him with a sigh echoing from Harry’s parted lips. He turned his head to the side, and murmured, and finally opened his eyes.
            “Thank you,” he said, before he slid onto the floor next to Severus, a single, graceful, boneless collapse, and reached out and touched Severus’s own erection.
            The touch was lighter than any touch Severus had ever needed before, but that didn’t matter. He came, too, his hands clenching in the robes Harry still wore. Harry curled towards him and rested against his side.
            They knelt like that in silence profound enough that Severus didn’t want to break it. But finally his knees did start to ache, and he eased backwards and cast another Cushioning Charm on the floor. If they were going to spend the night here, he didn’t want to wake up with cramps in his neck and back that he couldn’t explain.
            It was Harry, in the end, who got him off the floor and dragged him towards the bedroom. Severus tried to say something about that. Harry shouldn’t have to do it. He shouldn’t have to take care of Severus when he was so tired.
            But Harry smiled at him and said, “I’m still younger,” and cleaned Severus off with a spell and took his clothes away and snuggled him into bed. Then he joined him, murmuring something about heaving to leave before morning.
            Yes, he would have to. Severus knew that. But at least—he thought it somewhere between the time he eased his hand around Harry’s shoulder and the moment that he opened his eyes alone in the morning—they had taken a step towards a future where Harry could have this in more than name.
*
Severus1snape: I’m afraid I won’t listen to you and stop writing stories like this, no. ;)
Harry could become close to the Weasleys with more time. And yes, he had to learn to be a good judge of character- his mother’s memories helped a lot there.
Jester: Thank you! Harry has learned to mimic the voice that he hears in Lily’s memories through long practice.
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An Urn For Her Ashes