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Ashborn	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 36149 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
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Chapter Eight--Sharing the Days

            "And this does not inconvenience you?"

            Harry shrugged and held out the tray of cornflakes and toast to Starborn and Cadmaea. Both of them murmured thanks and retreated with it to the far corner of the gardens. They were less shy around him than they had been, but Harry didn't think they had ever seen humans before they came here, so it wasn't a surprise they would want to spend most of their time away from him. "Inconvenience in what way, Kleianthe? I have to carry the food here for you, that's true. I can't rely on the Ashborn to do it." Or to do anything else, lately, except bring him the one tray of food.

            Kleianthe considered him with a carefully flicking tail. Thera was several feet away, chewing tender bark off one of the trees in the garden. The adult centaurs could live on horse fare with human food thrown in for variety, they'd explained to Harry, but their children needed meals that were easier to digest. "They give you no more than this?"

            Oh. Harry held her gaze and shrugged. "I have enough to survive." And he did. Although Snape had ordered Bellatrix to feed him only as much food as she had before, which meant Harry had to give the centaurs his portion, he'd concealed enough scraps of food in his room that he could survive on them for a few days. And it was no worse than the rations he'd had at the Dursleys.

            He was going to have to figure out another strategy soon, but that was something he'd always been good at doing. He wasn't worried so much about his own survival as doing something that would mess up the new alliance with the centaurs.

            "Everyone here seems most severely unwelcoming," Kleianthe murmured, and placed several blades of grass that she'd plucked earlier into her mouth. "Even the one that Sidereal told us knew about the alliance and would extend his hospitality to us."

            Sidereal, Harry had decided from the other mentions she'd made of him, was the white centaur. He snorted. "Yeah, I thought he would. But he seems to have decided to hide in his bedroom and pout." He hadn't seen Malfoy anywhere in the corridors of the fortress since the moment he overcame Snape.

            "He does not wish us here, then?" Kleianthe's eyes were bright, piercing, and she leaned forwards as if she would peer into Harry's face and draw the truth out of him with that long stare.

            "I don't know," Harry said. It seemed impossible to him, to predict what Malfoy would do next. Sometimes he thought Malfoy must have been humiliated by his own fear of Snape and Harry taking the part in the alliance that should be his; sometimes he thought Malfoy preferred the centaurs to exist in the world of books and meeting them outside that was beyond him. Or Malfoy could have thrown the whole thing up and decided to squirm back under Snape's protection. Harry declined to speculate until he had some solid evidence.

            Kleianthe studied him, the tops of her human ears flicking back and forth, now and then lying flat, the way they would have if they were horse ears. At last she nodded, seeming satisfied. "You do not yet know how he means to move," she said, and dipped her head to snatch more grass, speaking through her chewing this time in a way that somehow didn't blur the words at all. "That is well. I would be more worried if you were not being honest with us."

            Harry eyed the great hooves, more than twice the size of his outstretched palm, that moved through the grass near him. "So would I."

            "I would not kick you to death," Kleianthe said, following his gaze to her hoof. She was quick at reading his thoughts, something that had so far troubled Harry more than a bit. "I would do something else more subtle but that would make you regret lying to me, and then Thera and I and our daughters would return to the Forest."

            Harry licked his lips. "I'll keep that in mind."

            "That is not a threat, either," Kleianthe said, hide shuddering as though she was fighting off a fly. Harry hadn't seen any flies around since he entered the fortress, though, so it was probably directed at him. "Not even a warning. It was--"

            "A prophecy?" Harry finished, giving her a sweet smile. If she could say things that unnerved him, he would return the favor.

            After a moment during which she looked at him through eyes that Harry couldn't read the emotions in, she snorted and nodded. "Yes, if you like."

            Harry went back into the fortress far more relaxed than he'd come out of it. So Snape wasn't giving him enough food to feed their guests as well as himself. He would find a way around that problem. At least the alliance between him and the centaurs seemed to be holding firm for now--though he wasn't sure why he should want it to, when Malfoy was really the one who cared about the future of the pure-blood connections with magical creatures--and he didn't mind if Snape and Malfoy kept out of his way.

            And the meeting with his friends was this afternoon. The owl had come back with the messages from Ron and Hermione far quicker than the snake had. It was going to be a good day.

            Harry was whistling as he reached the door of his bedroom and laid his hand on it. By now, he could almost ignore Bellatrix trailing after him. A quick meal of scraps of meat and dried fruit, and then he would consider some of the things he had to tell Ron and Hermione and the questions he most wanted to ask--

            "Potter."

            That's the end of my holiday, Harry thought in resignation, turning around. "What do you want, Malfoy?" Finally emerged from your hiding hole? he added in the privacy of his head, but he decided there was no real reason to say it. If Malfoy wanted to be an ungrateful prick, then let him.

*

            Draco came to a stop when he saw the way Potter was glaring at him. For some reason, he had dared to imagine that the bastard would actually be pleased to see him, but--

            He isn't. He won't be.

            Draco felt anger swell his veins like blood, giving him the courage he needed to face Potter, the courage that had been sadly lacking ever since he watched Potter take Severus apart from the window two days ago. He said quietly, without moving from where he stood, "Did you think that I would allow you to take my place with the centaurs in the alliance?"

            Potter didn't splutter, didn't turn red or blink or any of the other signs that Draco was looking to indicate that he understood what he had done. He nodded instead and asked, "Does that mean that you're going to take over sheltering them and talking with them and feeding them? Because the Ashborn might give you more food for the fillies than they've given me."

            "React, damn you!" Draco snapped before he thought about it. "Or do you care about nothing but what's in front of you at the moment?" He surged forwards, not pinning Potter to the wall only because he kept a thin hair of space between their bodies. "Are you as suicidal as you protested to me that you weren't, and you can go from topic to topic and emotion to emotion without blinking, because nothing matters to you?"

            "Look down, Malfoy." Potter's whisper coincided with the jab of something sharp against Draco's ribs.

            Draco did. Potter's wand rested beneath his ribs, and it jabbed again as Draco watched, sinking into the yielding skin, jolting on bone.

            "I care about getting you free of Snape's bloody tyranny," Potter said, his breath washing over Draco's face in heated puffs. "I care about making sure that the centaurs don't get hurt because they were stupid enough to trust you and actually come here. I care about my friends, and seeing the Ashborn free, and finding a way to exist here and accomplish what I want and care about without breaking my Vows. So sorry that the thrashing, fighting Gryffindor on a hook you wanted only exists in your head." He gave Draco a mean smile.

            Draco pressed closer against him, feeling Potter's ribs now, his chest, the bones that projected up from his hips and pelvis and shoulders. He was nothing, skin and bone, nothing to hurt Severus like that and make Draco feel as if he were falling downstream with a river in flood. Nothing to make Draco feel out of control for the first time in years.

            If Potter hadn't come here, he wouldn't have questioned his relationship with Severus. He wouldn't be the way he was now, his mind flailing away from all the books he tried to concentrate on and the small goals he tried to set--even the ones that couldn't matter to anyone but him, like picking up a book of Herbology to learn the flowers in the garden--and focusing again and again on Potter and the centaurs.

            Potter had humiliated Severus. And whatever Severus had done to Draco himself, never mind that the Ashborn wouldn't notice a thing Severus didn't tell them to notice, that still hurt. Someone had to avenge it.

            "You can still be hurt," Draco whispered. "If what you're saying is true and you care about all those things. When your friends come here, I can hurt them."

            Potter's wand sank deeper into his side. "I know a spell," he said, voice no longer a whisper but a simple, normal conversational tone, so that someone coming down the corridor could have understood them easily. "It's called the Vampire Curse."

            Draco laughed. "Do you think I'm afraid of being turned into a vampire? Severus has potions that could change me back--"

            "No, it's named for what it does," Potter said. "Drains all the blood from your body and leaves you a corpse in seconds. And that's what I'll do to you if you harm Ron and Hermione. You won't have more than a second to realize what's happening, either. It's that quick." He paused. "I'm that quick."

            "A swift, painless death?" Draco sneered at Potter, and thought he could feel his canines growing as he had denied to Potter would happen. "That's not something I thought you would give someone who had gone so far as to hurt your precious friends."

            "The war changed me," Potter said simply. "I've learned that it doesn't matter how I kill people. Just that I do."

            Draco took a step away from him, unnerved despite himself. Severus's honor, he remembered, and came up with another tactic. "And what if I go back to Severus, and tell him that he can do anything he likes with me? That would hurt you, wouldn't it. If I stopped caring about my own freedom."

            "You could try," Potter said. "But I could mercy-kill you, too, if I saw you suffering from continual rapes and you were so deluded as to think that was something you chose."

            Draco spat at him. Potter reached up and wiped it off his face with no sign of disgust, then cast a spell that Vanished it from his skin.

            "I want to live, and I want to be with Severus," Draco said, trying desperately to think of a way to hurt Potter. That was the most infuriating thing about him, even more infuriating than the way he had impugned Severus. He couldn't be hurt. He didn't fear death and he had an answer to everything Draco tried to bring up.

            "Then go and do so," Potter said. "And stop bothering me as though there's a real reason for you to want to change." He opened his bedroom door and stepped inside, leaving it open only long enough for Bellatrix to follow. She'd stood by during his entire argument with Potter, Draco realized dimly, as though it was nothing to her if Potter died in front of her.

            Or if Draco did.

            No. She would have intervened if he hurt you. She would have to.

            But only because Severus would have compelled her to. Or the orders he had woven into her brain would have compelled her to.

            There was no one, Draco realized in that moment, simply and brutally, who saw him for him, who cared for him because of who and what he was. He had thought Severus came close, but that indifference he knew how to wield so well cut deeply here. And the Ashborn would only pay as much attention to Draco as Severus required them to. He had built in slavish, cringing adoration for himself. Nothing for Draco.

            Potter had spoken to him, but even he was convinced that Draco was so incapable of making his own decisions that he wouldn't know what rape was when he saw it.

            The pain blew away in the face of an anger like a stormwind. Draco turned from Potter's door--because God forbid that anyone see him standing here like an idiot--and made his way back to his own rooms, already invested in new ways of making everyone else see him, instead of the simpleton they had turned him into in their own thoughts.

            No one would change things for him. Potter's efforts were driven by pity. Severus wouldn't care if Draco fell to his death tomorrow, except that he would have to find someone else to fuck. The Ashborn...he had already stated the problem with the Ashborn.

            But there were other creatures in the fortress that he could make himself matter to now.

            And if he had to appeal to centaurs to achieve some level of power and importance, then he would do that.

*

            Severus settled back in his seat and closed his eyes.

            So withholding food would not break Potter, or his alliance with the centaurs. He fed the food he received to the young ones, and he did not complain of hunger. Of course, perhaps he would not, thin as he was and with a face that spoke of prolonged starvation during the war.

            There was something else needed to conquer him, something else Severus did not yet see.

            His frustration tried to rise like bile, boiling hot, and overwhelm him. He shook his head and dismissed it. That had been the way he'd reacted to Potter so far, childishly, with limited emotional capacity to do anything but rage. Potter had bested him so far not because he was inherently more intelligent but because he simply held his emotions in check better.

            Severus would go further. He would analyze Potter's weaknesses and break him in the end. Potter would lose the advantage because he did not seek to do the same thing. He was always, simply and endlessly, thinking about Severus only when confronted with him. His great fault had always been not paying enough attention to his enemies when they were not in front of him. He had lived like a normal teenager during the war, not like someone who should be training for battle. Severus had been amazed by the way he acted when he broke rules, not because it was so impossible that a Gryffindor and the sainted son of James Potter should break rules, but because Potter of all students should be thinking of bigger and better things.

            He settled back in his chair and held out his hand. The hound automaton was there immediately, bearing a glass of cooled water on its flattened hands. Severus sipped from it and focused his thoughts.

            So. Potter's intermittent concentration on his enemies had been enough to slay the Dark Lord. What did he think about Severus? How could Severus take advantage of the boy's obliviousness to his existence?

            A small smile lifted the corners of his lips a moment later, and he nodded.

            The answer was simple, when he thought about it. Not thinking about Severus meant the boy would also not be considering the unique forms of danger Severus could present because of his skills. If the boy had paid any attention to experimental Potions over the last several years, then Severus would be surprised. And even if he had, he would not know which potions Severus had invented, since he sent them into the world under an assumed name, and which ones he merely had access to.

            Severus could make the boy suffer from small doses of potions administered to his food, his water, the walls of his room. He could make him sweat all night, render him unable to sleep, make him vomit until his stomach twisted out of his body. All of those treatments would leave Potter alive to continue to serve as a valuable hostage, and none of them were so subtle that the boy would be unable to pinpoint them on his enemy eventually. Thus Severus would assert his authority, his ability to affect the air Potter breathed and all the time he spent in the Ashborn fortress.

            Severus rose to his feet with a tight smile.

            He would end the starvation Potter had experienced tomorrow. And he would choose his first potion with care.

*

            Harry leaned against the wall and took a few deep breaths. Bellatrix stared at him, probably because she thought them a precursor to an attack, and Harry shook his head and smiled at her.

            "Just trying to remind myself they're here, now," he said, even though he knew she wouldn't understand, and then opened the door and stepped inside.

            The door led to a small garden, the one that Snape had told him they'd be meeting in. The air was filled with the scents of roses and honeysuckle, but Harry had no eye for flowers right now. His gaze locked on Ron and Hermione, as welcome as food in the summer, and he ran forwards and grabbed them both into a hug at the same time, dancing them in a circle.

            Harry closed his eyes while Hermione said his name in his ear, over and over again, and Ron mumbled and swore and tried to show his emotion in socially acceptable masculine ways. He could feel his spine straightening as he held them, new plans and ideas flooding into his brain.

            He had always thought better when he had his friends with him.

            At last, they finished hugging and sat down at the chairs near the small round table that the Ashborn, or Snape, had set out for them. Harry was aware of Bellatrix staring at them and eyes from the windows nearby, but he didn't care. In fact, he shook his head when Hermione hissed something to him about speaking in front of Bellatrix. "She won't care about anything we say in and of itself, unless it threatens Snape. We just have to assume he's going to know anything we say here, and proceed accordingly."

            Hermione looked sickened, but Ron nodded and plunged ahead. He didn't always get hung up on ethics as much as Hermione did. "So, mate. Why did he agree to this meeting?"

            "Because I helped him animate a metal snake that he wanted to bring to life." Harry shrugged when they stared at him. "I know, but I don't pretend to understand him." He told them about the centaurs, since that was the thing he wanted to share most at the moment.

            Hermione's eyes were shining by the time he finished. "A real alliance with magical creatures," she whispered. "I wish we'd been able to do that with house-elves." Then she hesitated. "Why did they never come to us when we tried to approach them, but they came at the call of a wanker like Malfoy?"

            Harry shrugged. "They used to be allied to pure-blood wizards, and I think they see this as the continuation of that kind of alliance. Anyway, I don't think we're going to be doing anything grand any time soon. After all, the Ashborn don't have any children to foster the way that the centaurs are fostering the fillies here." He shuddered to think of the ways that Snape might breed the Ashborn if he decided that he wanted a new generation of servants.

            A cold, quiet voice in the back of his head asserted itself. There are things you can do to prevent that. You might not ever be able to reverse the mind control that he has on the adult Ashborn here; it's sunk in too deep and you don't know enough about Legilimency. But you can make sure that the children are free.

            Harry nodded. He would do that, rather than stand back to see them grow up in slavery.

            "Tell me about you," he said, changing the subject. It seemed to him that his world was small and sterile, with only the centaurs to blow through it like a fresh wind. And hearing the news from his friends on paper wasn't the same as hearing it from their mouths. "What have you done in the past week?"

            "Tried to comfort Ginny," Ron said. "Played an awful lot of Quidditch. Told Mum you won't be coming back." Harry winced and nodded. None of them had broken the news to Molly before he left, because none of them had wanted the task. "Thought about ways to get you free."

            "Mostly that," Hermione added.

            Harry shook his head firmly. "I made Unbreakable Vows, and cramped and confined as this kind of existence is, I do still want to live. Please, if you can, visit me, but don't play around with wandlore or any of the things that you think might be able to free me."

            "We can't," Hermione said, and abruptly her eyes were swimming with tears as she reached across the table and clamped her hand down on his. "Harry, you're meant to be free, with us, living a normal life. We can't stop thinking about that and working for it and fighting for it. Don't ask us to."

            Harry sighed. He knew that look, and he knew that speaking to her about it would be futile.

            "Fine," he said. "But you'll need to find some way that doesn't depend on me breaking the Unbreakable Vows. I know that I would die if I approached that, and I want to live, I told you."

            Hermione's nostrils flared, but a moment later she nodded. Ron clasped Harry's hand and nodded, too.

            "I hope we can work fast, and you can be with us before a year is up," he said.

            Harry permitted himself one moment to live in hope, one moment to think about seeing his friends every day and learning to live with Ginny and eating whatever he wanted whenever he wanted to--

            And then he laid the vision aside. He couldn't go on existing here, in the real world inside Ashborn walls, if he held onto it. He would dream himself to death. He had to believe that what he had done was valuable and important in its own right, or he would go mad with resentment that someone hadn't come up with a way to make his sacrifice unnecessary.

            "That would be great," he said. He heard movement behind him, and saw Bellatrix shifting around. Their visit would be over soon. Harry reached out and held Ron and Hermione's hands even tighter, making himself memorize the feel of their calluses and scars and the ridges of their palms.

            "I hope that I can see you again soon," he said. "But I don't know that I can. Keep on working on a way to free me, if you have to, but live your lives, too. I don't want to deprive you of that."

            Ron leaned in to hug him again. Hermione waited her turn, and she said in his ear, "Are they going to hurt you once we're gone? You already look thinner and paler than you did."

            Harry blinked, but whispered back, "I've been out of the sun, and Snape thinks that he can control me by depriving me of food."

            Hermione's arms tightened around him, but she pulled back and gave him only a single grave look. "If you need help, then call on us," she whispered, and walked past and away with Ron, to the edge of the garden. Harry watched them go. He knew they would Apparate somewhere beyond the walls and he wouldn't be able to make sure they were gone and absolutely safe until he got a letter from them, but there was still no way he was looking at anything else as long as they were in sight.

            Bellatrix started making the little shooing motions at him that she used when she thought he'd lingered in one area long enough. Harry nodded at her and started walking, trying to ignore the sensation of her eyes on his back. Where she looked, he could assume that Snape's brain was in control.

            I'm still here. I'm still alive.

            And tomorrow I'll have to do something about the food, since I'm running out of what I've stored. But I have a solution to that, too.

*

            "I have neglected to welcome you among the Ashborn so far," Draco said, with a bow that he knew was correct because he'd spent the entire afternoon studying books about the alliance with the centaurs that told him how to do it. There were plenty of books like that once he knew where to look for them. They simply weren't the kinds that had been in use at Hogwarts or valued in his parents' library, which meant that he had never learned from them before. "Please allow me to correct that mistake."

            The centaur he spoke to, a sorrel mare with large breasts, studied him without speaking. She was also the one who wore the stupid iron chain around her wrist that Potter had conjured. Draco bit the inside of his cheek and, with effort, said nothing about that even though he wanted to. He rather thought that the effort would pay off later, when the centaurs began to change their allegiance from Potter to him.

            The sorrel said, "I am Kleianthe." She didn't offer the others' names, which Draco knew from the books was a bad sign. She took a single, prancing step towards him, and swung her wrist around in front of her so that the sun gleamed off the links of the chain. "Why did you not approach us earlier?"

            More direct than most of the centaurs are supposed to be, as well. Draco took a slow, deep breath. "Because I thought to assign the duties to Potter," he said. "He was the one who your lord first contacted."

            Kleianthe smiled as if he had said something funny, though Draco didn't think his words could possibly have less grace than Potter's. Potter had said the right thing that conjured chains into existence out of pure luck. "And in the days since?" she asked. "It is two days since we arrived, and you have never come near us once."

            Draco felt the part of him that was still his father's son rear up in furious pride. I do not need to justify myself to a beast--

            But he could not think that way if the centaurs were to become his allies and his first chance of building a power base among the Ashborn that was independent of both Severus and Potter. He bowed his head and said, "That was my mistake. I would like to be known to you, however, and to your companions." He looked pointedly at the other centaurs, awaiting the introduction.

            Kleianthe only trailed one hoof through the grass as if considering. Then she said, in a voice stern enough to mimic iron bells clashing, "Why was it your mistake? Why did you not come immediately?"

            "I had other things to deal with," Draco said. "Matters relating to your comfort to study." There, that was true, given the books he had read, and the kind of dignified excuse that should impress them.

            "So far, Potter has seen to our food and shelter and water, and promised to defend us with his life." Kleianthe studied him with her tail flicking. "What can you have to offer us beyond that?"

            "Courtesy," Draco said, which he knew centaurs valued. "Trust. The beginnings of a true alliance. Time spent with you. Does he come at any time when he does not have food to deliver?"

            Kleianthe smiled for the first time. "That is true enough. So. Tell us about the terms of the alliance that you will lay down. What other magical creatures do you intend to reach out to? How will you defer to them, or will you invite them here? What sort of gifts will you exchange? Will they be placed before us in the alliance?"

            Draco didn't have to read the twitching of her ears to know the right response to that last question. Centaurs were touchy, and the histories he had read had taught him that they had always resented their secondary place in an alliance dominated by the merfolk. "No," he said. "I can promise you that much, no matter who we reach out to."

            "But you have no plans as yet." Kleianthe nodded. "I would like you to visit the garden tomorrow morning with Potter when he brings our children breakfast, and then we can discuss the matter like friends."

            Draco narrowed his eyes. "I had thought it was understood that I would be responsible for providing the meals for you from now on."

            "For our daughters," Kleianthe corrected him. Her lip curled an infinitesimal amount, but Draco saw it. "They are the only ones among us who still eat exclusively human food. Besides, this is an alliance. You cannot act independently of each other, not when you issued a joint invitation. If you dislike each other or have conflicting goals, all the more reason for us to speak together."

            Fuck. Draco wanted to respond with a curt refusal, but of course that would also damage his chances to grow a power base. He bowed instead, while his mind returned to the problems the books had talked about, and which he had hardly given thought to until now.

            Of course the old alliances had functioned in a different way. He had known that from the beginning. And of course he had been shaken when he realized how different they were, but his shaking of old conceptions had not gone deep enough.

            Kleianthe would see them both as bound to each other now, Potter and him, because Potter had got there first and offered his life and words of protection to the centaurs. Draco and Potter were supposed to negotiate, talk to each other, back down when a problem got out of hand and walk away--only to come back later. There was no sawing through these webs he wanted to spin simply because you were angry. The anger provided its own kind of sealing wax, said a book he had read today. You would become angry over the loss of someone you valued, not because a stranger who meant nothing to you had offered you insult. What did strangers matter? The world was your friends, your rivals, your allies, your trade partners, your family.

            Draco swallowed the bitterness--healing potions were never meant to be sweet--and nodded. If he wanted that world, then he would have to work to create it, not a pale substitute.

            "I will come tomorrow morning," he said.

*

            I can have meat without hunting?

            Yes, you can. Harry smiled at the small snake coiled around his wrist, who watched him with bright, doubtful eyes, flicking its tongue now and then. He'd sent Bellatrix away by the simple expedient of pretending to go to sleep. It seemed she didn't have orders to watch him when he couldn't possibly be plotting against the Ashborn. That was useful to know. I'll feed you out of whatever you bring me from the kitchens. You know where the kitchens are? In Parseltongue, that came out a bit like "cave of dead meat."

            The snake's tongue flickered once as if uncertainly, and then it turned almost around and flicked it out strongly. Yes. There. The smell of food is strong in that direction.

            Go and fetch whatever you want, then. Harry turned his hand over, and the snake descended his arm to the floor. Bring what smells good. That might be a worryingly broad category, given the range of what snakes would eat, but, well, Harry knew some Cooking Charms and other useful spells after years of fighting. I will prepare it for you and break it up in the way that you like. He had discovered the snake enjoyed having him hand-feed it scraps rather than simply gulping down whatever might be in sight. It claimed that it had more chance to savor the taste that way.

            That doesn't sound like not having to hunt to me, the snake complained, but slid away with a flick, of its tail this time. Harry watched it squirm between the stones and vanish. Then he lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. Bellatrix opened the door to check on him, but withdrew a moment later.

            Harry had finally run out of scraps to feed on, but he had found a way around the problem as he knew he would. The snake could swallow far bigger things than it could carry, and hold them safe in its throat. It might have to take a longer route back to his rooms--some of the tiny tunnels through the stone that it used would be impossible with that swelling of the food to make the snake bigger--but it would get there eventually. Harry would snatch mouthfuls of food, more frequently than he'd been used to at the Dursleys', bigger than the mouthfuls he'd had often during the war.

            That was the difference between what he'd suffered as a child and what he was doing now, he thought, somewhat smugly. He'd endured then, because he could do nothing else, at least until he had friends to send him food. Now he survived, and struggled, and fought, and won.

            Someone knocked on the door.

            Harry popped open his eye and studied the door. He knew it was probably Malfoy, come to continue their argument from earlier, but Harry could have done without seeing him right now. He didn't want to use up too much energy until he could get food to restore it, and sleeping seemed like the best idea.

            "What?" he called.

            "I need to speak with you about the centaurs," came Malfoy's clipped, snooty voice.

            Harry sighed and stood up. If Bellatrix wasn't objecting, then he couldn't put off the whole conversation under the pretense of orders from Snape. "Right. Come in."

            Malfoy slid in, and didn't gape at the painted walls this time. He sat down in the chair exactly as if Harry had invited him and crossed his legs. "I want to make sure you know that, from tomorrow morning, I'll be visiting the garden and feeding the fillies with you," he said.

            Harry ran a hand over his face and thought about that. He could see it, in one way. It would be sort of nice if he fucking managed to hand over the care of the centaurs to the one they'd deigned to deliver their message to. "Does that mean that you'll be giving them food out of your share?" he asked.

            Malfoy blinked. "What?"

            "Oh," Harry said. Of course not. Why would Snape restrict what his lover eats? "Will you share in giving them food, is what I meant? I only have the one tray, and I've been giving it away to the fillies. If you gave them some food as well, I could keep some of it."

*

            Draco stared at Potter. Severus hasn't increased his meals since the centaurs arrived?

            Well, no, Draco realized slowly. Severus would see it as the perfect way to control someone he had no particular love for. He had likely expected Potter to yield and plead for mercy long before now.

            Draco...didn't know how he felt about that. For some reason, even though it was the perfect tactic for Severus to use, and Potter the perfect stubborn one to fight it, it wouldn't have occurred to him.

            "I can give them part of my meal, yes," Draco said. "I should, if I want them to respect me as well as you, and give me a part in the alliance," he added, and didn't care if it was the haughty edge to his voice that made Potter curl his lip. Potter bloody well deserved that haughty edge. "The alliance that I told you about."

            Potter rolled his eyes. "Fine. We've settled that. We'll meet in their garden in the morning when my meal gets served and I can take it to them. Now, was there anything else?" He looked back at his pillow as though it was calling him.

            I'm not important enough to pay attention to, not unless I'm doing exactly as he wishes me to and calling any sex with Severus rape. The boiling anger that he wanted to pour on Potter's head wouldn't earn him special consideration, though. Draco snorted in several deep breaths and then said, "I want to know why you didn't protest about Severus depriving you of meals."

            Potter's return glance sleeted over him, incredulous. "Because he wanted me to complain," he said. "And because I'm not soft enough to whine over a little thing like that."

            Draco shifted in place on the chair. "That's bravado," he said, but ruined his own claim by hearing his voice climb at the end of the words, as though asking a question.

            Potter shrugged and moved away from him, climbing back onto the bed. "It's not," he said. "But if you want to think it is, then I certainly can't stop you." He shut his eyes. "Now, unless you think that watching me sleep is going to be interesting, you really should leave." He shut his eyes firmly and curled up on his side, his breath whistling our softly as though he was already halfway to dreams.

            Draco shook his head and stood up. "A word of advice, Potter," he said. "Severus has played more power games than you've ever dreamed of. He won't let you get away with defying him."

            Potter didn't bother saying anything, just lay there. Draco clenched his teeth down. Very well. Potter wouldn't listen to him when he tried to offer honest advice, either. This way, at least he couldn't say that Draco hadn't warned him.

            He slipped out of the room and returned to the dining hall, already making plans about what he should select in the morning to tempt the centaur fillies. Potter had offered whatever came his way, no doubt, depending on the whims of Severus and the house-elves. Draco was sure that they would like sugar and fresh fruit better than cornflakes, though.

            He might have a chance to create a meal tempting enough that they would start trusting him before they did Potter. Draco knew he had a small, hard smile on his face as he began to make a list, and he didn't care. This was the only route to power that offered itself right now, and he would walk it, no matter how long it took or where it led in the end.

*

            The snake slipped in at last, after Harry had almost given up hope of him, but Harry had to distract Bellatrix by flailing and kicking in the bed and pretending that he'd had a bad dream. The snake slid through the open door while her back was turned and darted under the bed.

            Harry finally "came awake," panting and flipping sweat-soaked hair out of his eyes, and shook his head at her when she tried to cast a diagnostic charm on him. "I'll be fine. Thanks, though."

            Bellatrix tapped her wand against her leg and eyed him. Harry tried to look the pattern and picture of innocence, and she finally turned away. Harry didn't know what thoughts were churning in that Snape-controlled morass she called her brain. He didn't think that he could call them "thoughts," even, not when she didn't have any choice about them being there.

            The snake eased back out and opened its jaws, dumping most of a chicken on the bed. Harry chuckled and began casting the spells that would clean it off--thoroughly--and cook it. His mouth already felt wet, and he knew that he would need discipline to share the scraps with the snake.

            In the end, the snake coiled around his wrist and stared at him, so it wasn't that hard after all. Harry made sure he ate slowly, ignoring the demands of his screaming stomach. He had been hungrier than this before, and he'd also been sick and thrown up the food. That was no way to handle his first full meal in two days.

            The snake ate more than enough chicken to satisfy it, and then lay down on the pillow and watched Harry devour the rest. Harry stored the bones in a Stasis Charm under one corner of the deep, downy blanket. He knew spells that could crack them open so he could find the marrow. He'd done that more than once on the run, too.

            You are careful, the snake said.

            Had to be, Harry said drowsily, and let his eyes slip shut so that real sleep could overcome him this time. But tomorrow, there might be more food.

            That hope made for very pleasant dreams.

*

            unneeded: In a sense, that's what Harry does to both Snape and Draco. In the case of Draco, it's giving him some anger that might help if he can stop turning it against Harry.

            Shadowdog85: Thank you! Pleased you're enjoying it.
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