Part Twenty-One of 'Their Phoenix'
Title: Their Phoenix (21/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Threesome, Snape/Harry/Draco. (Harry and Draco do develop their own sexual relationship within the threesome). Some Harry/Ginny and Snape/Draco near the beginning of the story.
Rating: NC-17.
Warnings: Magical bonding, slash sex, violence, profanity, massive denial. Springing-from-DH AU; it starts deviating from the moment Voldemort confronts Snape in the Shrieking Shack.
Summary: AU. Voldemort has learned who the true master of the Elder Wand is, and he plans to kill Draco along with Snape. Harry is desperate to save them, because Dumbledore would have wanted him to. But with wild magic, Horcruxes, and Dark Marks all involved, Harry may have condemned all three of them to something worse than death.
Author’s Notes: This is One of Those Bonding Fics. It’s also One of Those Threesome Fics, and also One of Those Fics With Harry-in-Denial. If that sounds like what you’re looking for, then come right in. I’m sorry to say that I have absolutely no idea how long this will be, and it will also be irregularly updated, whenever I finish a major “part.”
Part One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Harry stood where Draco had left him for long moments, his hand lifted as if he wanted to wipe away the kiss from his lips. Then he lowered his hand and stared at the fingers.
“How odd that you give your hand that look,” Severus remarked as he stepped out of the potions lab and shut the door behind him. “Draco did not kiss you there.”
Harry started and whirled towards him. His face had gone pale, and the bond leaped and flurried with more emotions than ever. Severus simply waited. He was not sure which thing most confused Harry at the moment, and he did not want to chance answering a question that Harry considered unimportant.
This was the reason that Severus had been so intent on waiting until Harry came to them to ask questions about desires and longings and how a relationship between three people would work. This was a delicate moment. Harry might turn his back on the wild, uncertain future that Draco offered and run away, clinging to the normality of his childish boyfriend with all the force of a stubborn hero’s heart.
But what was done was done. And Severus had to admit his own relief at the fact that Draco had displayed the daring and impatience that he had not.
“I-I didn’t mean to cheat on you with him,” Harry croaked. Immediately he blinked. “That is, I didn’t mean to cheat on Cadell with him,” he corrected with great care. “And I’m sure that he didn’t mean to cheat on you.”
“Do you believe this would have happened without my permission?” Severus unfolded his arms and trod a few steps closer, making sure to move in absolute silence. Harry’s slightly widened eyes and increased pulse said that he found that attractive, and who was Severus to deny him? “I want you in the same way that Draco does-though perhaps, I admit, with not so much of the fervor of youth. When he says a relationship with three people, he means all three of us together, all the possible combinations happening at once. He does not mean that he would be my lover and you would also be his without being mine. Though I am sure that he would enjoy such concentrated attention, were it possible,” Severus added dryly, thinking of the way Draco sometimes bathed in arrogance.
Harry swallowed. “But-there’s so many problems with that.”
“Moral? Physical? Intellectual?” Severus continued prowling closer. Though the boy was frowning in thought and didn’t seem to notice his movements on the surface, Severus could see his throat jumping and knew that he registered them on a physical level.
“All of those,” Harry said. He tilted his head back to look at Severus with a desperate frown. “Not to mention psychological. You’ve said something a few times about being friends with my mother. Are you looking for her in me? Or would you find my father, and despise him instead?”
Severus stopped moving in respect. He had not expected such intelligent questions from Harry-no, he had, but not immediately. He raised his eyebrows and said, “I have lived as your bonded partner for almost a year now, and with you for six months. I have learned to overcome what lingering traces of that remained.”
“You don’t know that,” Harry insisted, folding his arms and looking more and more distressed. “Or maybe you think you did, and then you’d look at me when we were-in bed-and find out that you despised me after all.” His hands closed into fists, and his face flamed like a raging fire. “Damn Draco, anyway,” he added irrelevantly. “If he hadn’t told me about this, we wouldn’t have this problem.”
“We would still have it,” Severus disagreed. “But Draco would grow more and more miserable, because I believed that we needed to wait to talk to you, and the tensions between us would become deeper and more cutting.” He reached out, because he was close enough now, and tilted Harry’s chin up so that he had no choice but to look into Severus’s eyes. “As for my emotions about your parents…”
It was true that his emotions about James and Lily still seethed under the surface, and that he did not consider those memories often, painful as they were. It was also true that Severus had accepted the bond as marking a different turning in his life, much the same way his return to Dumbledore when he could not bear being a Death Eater any longer had. His repentance had been as sincere as his service to the Dark Lord. And his much more tender feelings for Harry were as sincere as the loathing and the helpless love he had experienced for Harry’s parents.
But he did not know how much sense that would make to Harry, who was accustomed to living with all his emotions at once and who had had much the same allegiances, loves, and hatreds most of his short life. He did not lock his feelings in separate compartments and fetch them out as needed, and Severus did not know that he would ever do so. Draco might when he had more control.
He would have tried to explain how matters stood to Draco with a Potions metaphor. Harry would not understand that, and would probably resent it if Severus tried, thinking that Severus was demanding impossible feats of intellectualism from him.
So, instead, Severus said, “I will lower my barriers and invite you into my mind. You can use Legilimency if someone does not oppose you.” Harry opened his mouth to argue, the bond freezing into marble. Severus went ahead smoothly, as if he had not noticed the attempted interruption. “Look at what I feel about you. Nothing else. That will appease your conscience, I think.” He tilted his head and waited for Harry’s answer.
Harry shut his mouth and bowed his head. “You-that’s a gesture of trust,” he said. “You could let Draco do that. You don’t have to let me.”
Ah. That is part of what is wrong. Severus ran his fingers slowly from Harry’s chin up to his ear. “I trust you,” he whispered into that ear, letting his breath rake over Harry’s earlobe at the same time, “with the same strength, though not in the same way. I would not leave you in charge of a boiling potion. I would not let Draco look into my mind without much stricter controls and barriers because he would not be able to help his curiosity and would go looking for answers to questions that are none of his business. I invite you, Harry, as I invite you into my bed and my embrace.”
Harry was shivering now as if he were too cold. Severus stepped back and waited, though he kept one hand cupped around Harry’s face, rubbing his fingers up and down as if he didn’t notice what he was doing. He did not want to give Harry too much of a chance to consider. That would probably lead to him running off in more panic than before.
Or storming off to go back to Caesarion.
Only long practice at not letting his body express his emotions kept Severus from clamping his fingers down on Harry’s face and hurting him. He was beginning to think of Caesarion much as Draco did, now that there was the chance Harry might understand he was welcome in their bed.
Harry swallowed at last and took out his wand. He was valiantly pretending that his hand did not shake, which led Severus to also ignore it. “All right,” he said.
Severus lowered his face so that it was level with Harry’s, and gave him as open a look as he could manage. He knew that his eyes were his best feature-Draco had said so several times-and if they could be forbidding, there was no reason that they should not also shine and promise depths that Harry had never seen before. Harry did blink as if befuddled before he took a deep breath and said, “Legilimens.”
His entrance was clumsy, but Severus had anticipated that and put up barriers and muffles that would contain the possible headache. Otherwise, he left his mind like a limpid pond so that Harry might see to the bottom if he desired.
Harry, biting his lip, his face stern with anxiety, only sought out the memories of himself, as Severus had asked him to. He looked at memories of Severus looking at him, and he sought out that particular evening he had peered in through the open door and seen Draco lying asleep in Severus’s arms.
Severus heard him reel and gasp as the dark, soft warmth of the emotion Severus had felt then enfolded him. It took him a stern effort not to smile with triumph.
Harry pulled back after that and stood staring at him with a very red face. Then he said, “You could have asked me to open the bond the other way.”
Severus shrugged and raised his barriers. “But I know that you would have refused, because you do not want to be overwhelmed with emotions. That is your choice. It was my choice to offer free access to my mind.”
Harry took in air that seemed to breathe a rosy tint into his cheeks. Severus checked another too-triumphant smile. Letting Harry make some of the decisions in this relationship was a good gesture, and one that Severus suspected Draco had yet to learn how to make.
“It’s too much,” Harry said abruptly. He was fidgeting, now, and he bowed his head as the bond exploded in different directions with questions like leaping leopards. “I need you to leave me alone so that I can think about it.”
Severus bowed and stepped out of the way. Harry hurried up the stairs, though he paused halfway up with his hand on the banister. Severus waited. He had been enjoying the sight of Harry’s slender legs and arse moving too much to hurry away himself.
“Do you feel the same way about Cadell that Draco does?” Harry asked. His hand curled until Severus was mildly concerned that his fingernails would leave scratches on the wood.
“Not the same way,” Severus said. “I do not have as much of the disdain that he does. I have read Caesarion’s mind, remember. I know that he is not malicious and cackling in the way that Draco would like to imagine.”
Harry glanced over his shoulder, eyes narrowed. “But you still don’t like him.”
“He is sleeping with someone I want, someone bonded to me, someone I would like to consider mine,” Severus said, and infused his gaze with the lust that he didn’t think Harry had been able to pick up from his mind.
Harry squeaked and fled up the stairs. Severus listened, and heard his door slam above before he turned back to the potions lab.
It would take Harry some time to come to terms with this. Severus did not doubt that. But it would not be the months or the years that it would have been if Draco had not made his move.
Severus sent a pulse of approval to Draco, who paused in his wild dance in the garden to acknowledge it. Severus smiled, this time in amusement. He would have to arrange something special for Draco tonight.
*
Harry felt as though someone had opened a door to a new wizarding world and shoved him through it without telling him anything about the rules of behavior in that world.
Severus and Draco, of course, acted as though nothing was wrong. Severus continued to ask Harry if he wanted milk in his tea in the morning and discuss Ledbetter’s lessons with him and advise him to read more books. Draco grinned at him more often and littered his conversation with sexual innuendos, but also trained beside Harry and spent hours in the Potions lab and lay with his head in Severus’s lap ranting about various principles of Potions-making that he intended to adapt to Defense Against the Dark Arts and hadn’t figured out how to use yet. They seemed to be casual, long-term inhabitants of this new world.
Harry didn’t know if he could be.
He’d told Cadell about the kiss with Draco, of course. It wasn’t the sort of thing that he could keep concealed from his lover. Cadell’s eyes had grown chill, and he’d spent ten minutes walking down one of the main aisles of Honeydukes, swishing a long stem of grass in front of him. He had plucked the stem from the garden to chew on, as he often did. Harry watched him and wished there was something more he could say.
Cadell turned around at last.
“It’s no good asking you to move out of the house or not touch him again,” he said abruptly, “because he’s your bondmate and you have to live with him and touch him sometimes.”
Harry nodded. He had thought about telling Cadell that Draco hated him and wanted to sleep with Harry, but then he’d grown confused between loyalty to his boyfriend and loyalty to his bondmate, not wanting to tell too many of Draco’s secrets. Besides, Cadell could probably figure out the last part from the fact that Draco had stolen the kiss in the first place.
“But-but I want some assurance this won’t happen again,” Cadell said in a rush. “I’m not that possessive, Harry, but I do need to know what you want. I know he took you by surprise this time. Will you let that happen again?”
Harry stepped towards Cadell and laid his hand gently beneath his chin. Those blue eyes he liked were wide with fear and something like anguish. Harry was touched. He hadn’t known Cadell cared that much for him.
“I won’t let that happen again as long as I’m dating you,” Harry said. “I haven’t decided how I feel about Draco and Severus myself. I thought I had, but the way they’re acting keeps changing things-”
“Severus?” Cadell said sharply, his eyes narrowed. “I thought it was only Draco.”
“Draco was the only one who kissed me,” Harry corrected him, uncomfortable. He felt as if he were walking in treacle. Why is this so complicated? I thought things were easy when I was dealing with Ginny, even though she was jealous of Draco and Severus, and I knew the other people throwing themselves at me were idiots. “Severus made it clear that he wants me some time ago. I thought he’d given it up, but-some things he said showed he didn’t.”
And his thoughts, Harry. Don’t forget those.
Harry wasn’t likely to. The fact that Severus had invited him into his mind to look at something that private, instead of forcing him to open the bond, was a gift that Harry only unwrapped to look at in bed, in the dark, because he didn’t think he could consider it rationally.
“Yeah, I don’t understand this.” Cadell swished the long strip of grass moodily again, not looking at Harry. “I know it’s not your fault, but I still don’t like or understand this.” He turned around again, and Harry blinked as he found himself looking straight into Cadell’s eyes. “Did you know that they wanted you when you started dating me?”
“Yes,” Harry said, and experienced a moment of intense loneliness. It seemed that he couldn’t explain himself to anyone who was important to him, no matter how hard he tried. “But like I said, I thought that they’d given it up. Just because you desire someone doesn’t mean you sleep with them.”
“It’s the usual course of events.” Cadell had turned away again and was staring towards the door of the back room that contained the machinery. His shoulders were slumped, and he looked as though he had given up a fight before he ever started. Harry controlled his irritation as best he could and put a hand gently on Cadell’s back.
“Not always,” he said. “I understand that it makes you uncomfortable. I’m sorry. But it’s not going to happen again. I promise.”
“Would you sleep with them if I wasn’t here?” Cadell demanded. “Do you want them?”
“Yes,” Harry said, after a long minute in which he debated with himself and decided that he owed Cadell honesty on that, too.
Cadell sighed.
“Will you listen to me?” Harry shoved at his shoulder. He didn’t like the sulky person that jealousy apparently made Cadell into. “I swear, no one listens. Just because I want them doesn’t mean I’m going to sleep with them. Just because they want me doesn’t mean they’ll sleep with me. There are all sorts of unexpressed histories and problems between us. And I don’t think we have a chance of getting past them.”
Maybe if we tried…
But Harry shoved away the thought. The problem was, no matter how interested Severus and Draco were, Harry thought they still formed a smooth, cold unit that shut him out. They were so similar. They were lovers experienced with each other’s moods and needs. They liked each other better than they liked him. Harry would be starting under a disadvantage if he tried to break into their relationship now. And he didn’t want to start at a disadvantage. He wanted an equal relationship or none at all.
He didn’t see any way a triad could be equal.
Cadell turned back around and looked at him carefully, thoughtfully. “If you’re really not going to sleep with them while you’re dating me…”
“I promise, I won’t,” Harry said earnestly.
Cadell finally smiled. “I trust you, Harry. It was just a shock finding out this way that you desired other people and had them desiring you.” He clasped Harry’s hand. “But if you really wanted them, then I reckon you’d break up with me and go and get them into bed.”
Harry stifled a sigh as he used Cadell’s hand to draw him closer and into a kiss. It’s more complicated than that, he wanted to say. It’s more than loyalty to you that keeps me here right now. I don’t know how to approach them. I don’t know how to deal with Draco’s selfishness, which I know would come up in bed, too, or Severus’s perfectionism. Sleeping with someone may be simple to you.
And that worried him, because it suggested that Harry couldn’t really match Cadell in the same seamless simplicity that he had been sure they shared.
Then Cadell was kissing back, and Harry was happy to wrap his arms around him and think about something else.
*
Draco shifted and leaned around Severus to glare at Harry. Harry glared right back, and turned to the side so that he could speak with Granger. Draco rocked back into place with a disgruntled sigh.
He had been sure that Harry would go tell Caesarion that they couldn’t be together anymore, especially after Severus told him that he had talked to Harry, too. Then Harry would come and climb into bed with them.
But instead Harry, though he looked at Draco more thoughtfully and avoided arguing with him quite as much, went on as he had done before. He visited Caesarion and shut the bond when he did. He ignored it when Draco and Severus went up to their bedroom to have sex. He didn’t open the bonds all the way on both sides, which Draco had been sure he would do, if only to have some confirmation of the feelings that Draco and Severus were telling him existed.
Draco had been sure that everything would change the moment the truth was out in the open and Harry couldn’t deny that they wanted him. Instead, Harry had made what adjustments he absolutely needed to make and ignored the rest.
Draco ducked his head so that his scowl wouldn’t show to the people gathered in front of them, a silent, expectant crowd that was over half pure-blood. He was supposed to look serene and strong and confident, the way that Severus did right now. He was supposed to look like someone who could stand on a stage and absorb the impact of stares without losing his composure. A light touch on his back from Severus told him he wasn’t achieving that.
Draco cast his eyes over the crowd until he spotted his mother’s white-blonde head. He focused on her and relaxed, remembering all the times that Narcissa had said she was proud of him in the past week for taking the political steps that his father wasn’t free to take. Finally he could absorb the scene the way it was meant to be absorbed.
This time, they’d chosen a more dramatic setting than the field near Hogsmeade where they’d hosted their public meeting. Behind their small stage made of conjured ivory-colored wood, sheer cliffs fell away to the sea. Perfect, manipulated sunny weather sent warmth and light cascading down on them. Seabirds soared overhead, gabbling, but an invisible Impervious Charm would hold off any unsightly missiles that the birds tried to deliver. In front of the stage was a sprawling, rippling mass of green that dipped up and down in mild hills, providing several different heights of vantage point for people to observe them from. It was bright and in motion with the robes-black, red, grey, yellow, blue-of people in finery edging into their places. Everyone expected a grand announcement today, and no one wanted others to be able to say that they’d looked less than their best.
They stood in a row of five on the stage: Weasley and Granger on one side, Harry and Draco and Severus on the other side of the gap. Draco had to admit that Harry looked better than he’d ever seen him look, with his hair in a mass of tangled rather than exploded curls and a green robe trimmed with gold that Weasley, of all people, had enchanted for him. Draco carefully hadn’t looked at Weasley, because he didn’t want to see what that ginger hair would do next to formal robes, but maybe it wasn’t all that bad if he’d chosen Potter’s clothes.
In the gap between them, Colben would stand, when they made the official announcement of supporting her as their candidate for Minister.
Before then, Draco decided, he wanted some things settled. Honesty, he reminded himself. That’s what Harry needs. He kept one eye on the crowd as he leaned forwards, watching for the ripple of motion and anxiety that would tell him Colben was making her way to the stage. “Harry,” he whispered.
Harry’s shoulders stiffened, and the bond gave a single savage beat like a constricted heart. But he finished his conversation with Granger and turned around with a nod. “Yeah?” he asked.
Draco said, as softly and swiftly as he could, “Are you angry with me?”
Harry hesitated, and then he admitted, “A bit. You seem to have expected me to fall into bed with you. Why?”
Severus gave a warning hiss. Draco glanced to the side, but he couldn’t actually see Colben yet, so he felt safe to continue the conversation. “I thought that once you realized triads are possible-”
“Possible,” Harry said, with a sharpness that made Draco wonder if they should have handed him a few wizarding novels or history books that featured triads, “but not stable. You and Severus know and understand each other so well. I would be a disappointment for both of you, not subtle and not experienced enough. And I don’t want to break up with Cadell just because I know that you’re waiting for me-which is something that both of you are too dignified to do, anyway.” A painful smile constricted the corners of his mouth for a moment. “I know that you want me, yeah. I want you back, yeah. Whether it will work? No, I don’t think so, with my requirements and your selfishness. I don’t see any way that it can.”
Give honesty, and you’ll get honesty back, I reckon. Draco blinked in astonishment, trying to decide what to do with this revelation.
“Continue the conversation later,” Severus said, his voice sharp enough to cut even through Weasley’s gagging noises. “Colben is coming.”
Draco had to bite down on his lip to stifle the protest, but his mind was already working through permutations on Harry’s words and what he might be able to do to counteract them. If I was able to offer him some kind of proof that my selfishness wouldn’t take over in bed-
And what does that mean, anyway? What selfishness? Severus keeps saying that I’m a very generous lover.
Severus’s elbow hit him hard in the side, probably because Draco’s emotions through the bond were distracting him. Draco stood up tall and pasted his brightest and best fake smile on his face.
He could feel his mother’s automatic amusement at the sight, even though he was no longer looking at her.
*
Somehow, Harry hadn’t expected Estella Colben to be so short. The photographs had shown her standing next to children, but he hadn’t caught the comparison, and his gaze actually went over her head at first. Then he finally lowered it and looked at her as she came to the bottom of the steps up to the stage.
She looked at them like a hawk, was Harry’s first impression-with all of a hawk’s coolness and keen intelligence and uncaring beauty. She wore heavy dark blue robes that she gathered up around her to mount the stage. They rustled with soft crushed sounds that made Harry think of velvet, though he didn’t know if people could wear velvet robes. He would have to ask Ron, who was unexpectedly a fount of information, since that was what they were currently studying in Auror training.
Colben rose up the stairs without trouble, which Harry was grateful for; all they needed now was a candidate who tripped over her own robes in her first important public appearance. She reached the stage and nodded to them all, taking a moment to look them each intently in the eye. Harry shifted uneasily when he met her gaze. He didn’t think she was a Legilimens, but it was hard to be sure from a single glance. At least he was comfortable in the knowledge that there was no way she could read Draco’s or Severus’s thoughts without permission.
She is not a Legilimens, Severus said reassuringly in his head. Simply a good observer, and skilled in reading expressions and gestures.
Harry nodded back to him, torn between thanks for the reassurance and irritation with himself for thinking loudly enough for Severus to hear in the first place. Thanks, he said at last, and then paid attention to Colben. She was walking towards him with her hand out, so he more or less had to.
“Harry Potter,” she said. Her voice was as intense as her eyes, with the same sort of muffled rustling in the back of it that her dress robes produced. Harry, as he shook her hand, wondering for one mad moment if that was why she chose her clothes as she did, and then told himself not to be stupider than he could help. “I am glad to meet you. I have wanted to, but I did not believe we would ever be able to arrange felicitous circumstances.”
“I’m glad to meet you, too,” Harry said. Swanfair had told him to stay with simplicity as much as possible so that he wouldn’t embarrass himself, and for once, Draco and Severus had echoed her advice. Harry felt some steel enter his spine as he reminded himself that simplicity could be as compelling as elaboration. He stood up straighter and met Colben’s eye. She had smooth brown skin on her face that made it look as though she had never lived through hardship, but her eyes and the heavily callused hand he was holding said otherwise. “It seems that we might share some of the same philosophies.”
Colben gave him a faint smile. “Some,” she said, and moved on to shake Draco and Severus’s hands. Draco tried to engage her in a staring contest. Colben refused the invitation with a tiny movement of her head, and then said something to Severus in a low voice that made him look both startled and pleased. Harry smiled. It was probably a compliment on something he’d discovered in his research and published in an obscure Potions journal. That was the only thing that could make Severus wear that particular combination of expressions.
I heard that, Severus said calmly.
Harry rolled his eyes, told himself to shield his thoughts better, and then watched Colben as she turned to face the crowd. All right, so she’d managed to get onto the stage without tripping over her robes, but that was hardly a test compared to this. Now they had to see if she really possessed the speech-making skills that Swanfair had assured them she did.
Harry was starting to doubt that, just from the critical, solemn way that Colben surveyed her audience. That wasn’t the way to get them involved. He knew that from his own experience with the reporters at Hogwarts. They wanted drama, excitement, color-
Then Colben took a step forwards, and tilted her head to the side, and slightly altered the position of her arms, and smiled. And Harry found himself gaping. It was as if she’d ripped away an Invisibility Cloak and revealed her charisma hiding underneath it. It was one of the best Transfigurations he’d ever seen.
“Thank you for inviting me here,” Colben said, her voice low and thrilling, starting to rise as she began to walk back and forth. “You are trying to estimate my fitness to be a candidate to potentially replace Minister Shacklebolt in a general election. Some of you will have heard rumors of my background. Others of you will have doubts about my neutrality in the war, or my activities since.”
She whirled around abruptly, the robes rising and falling in a dramatic fan pattern. “I will tell you this: I am not afraid of change.”
That was the best thing she could have said. Harry felt the current of relaxation ripple through the crowd, and knew he was somewhat caught up in it himself. Kingsley was so afraid of change that this would be a breath of fresh air.
Colben smiled and lifted her arms above her head. “I will reach out to the future with you,” she said. “I cannot promise that it will be an easy future, or a bright one. I can only promise that I will do my best to make it both.” She snapped her head from side to side, and this time that hawk-like gaze served her well, pinning random people in the crowd who froze and had to look at her attentively. So did everyone else, really, Harry thought, because there was no telling who she might choose to look at next. “And to bring you with me,” Colben concluded. “It is impossible for me to know the thoughts and needs of everyone, but I can listen when you choose to tell me of them.”
Without promising that she would actually implement any changes based on them, Harry mentally completed the sentence in his mind. Very clever.
The rest of her speech was like that too, offering the people facing her all the words they needed to hear without pinning her down to a definite promise that might cause trouble for her in the future. By the end of it, Harry was no longer worried about her political acumen or her ability to capture a crowd. Colben didn’t mind emphasizing her Muggleborn heritage or her pure-blood heritage or her Death Eater cousin or the fact that she had spent most of the war in quiet retirement. She could be all things to all people; she had similarities somewhere in her background to most of them.
She makes a much more successful leader than I would, Harry thought, absently touching his forehead before he remembered that his scar wasn’t there anymore. I’m too unique, too different from most people.
He glanced sideways at Severus and Draco, both of whom seemed to be enthralled with the conclusion of Colben’s speech and the applause from the crowd. Draco’s face was wistful, as if he wanted the applause to be directed at him.
Of course he does.
Harry shifted restlessly. There were times he wanted his bondmates, and they had worked so well together when the Aurors raided their house; he wished he could work like that with them again. But there were so many barriers holding them apart. And if they couldn’t demand that he change, how could he demand the same thing of them?
I’m not even sure if Draco would be able to change what I dislike about him, the selfish little git. It runs deep into his soul.
Harry shook his head and forced himself to focus on the questions that a few people in the crowd were asking him. They were all simple, luckily-people asking him if he supported Colben, people wanting to know if he was going to run for Minister himself, people wanting to know if he had any hostility towards people associated with Death Eaters.
“It depends on who they are,” Harry said, making sure to glance at Draco and Severus before he turned around to smile at the questioner. “And whether or not they’re truly repentant for their crimes.”
Colben was watching him, he saw, her eyes quiet and cool once again, and her face without animation. He looked back as honestly as he could, willing his expression to reflect only the truth. Colben smiled as if she were trying to keep from laughing and turned away.
Harry shook his head, glad to step down from the stage. He thought they had probably chosen a good candidate, but “someone comfortable to be around” was another matter.
Once I thought my life would become simple as long as I didn’t have Voldemort chasing after me.
Hah.
*
“Mother,” Draco said.
Narcissa looked up at him. She was sitting in a chair across the room, staring thoughtfully into a white book with a sewn silver binding that Draco had often seen her handle before. She didn’t seem to read it, but rather examine the pages, now and then turning one back. He thought it might contain photographs, but the one time he had tried to pick it up, it had burnt the skin off three of his fingers. Narcissa had told him that he might see what it was for himself when she died.
“Yes, Draco?” she prompted, and Draco realized that he had been staring absently at the book and hadn’t asked his question.
Shaking his head, he said, “Do you think I’m selfish?”
Narcissa paused, then laid the book carefully aside. When she shut the cover, a ward sprang up about it that Draco knew would warn her if anyone touched it, or so much as tried to stroke a finger down the binding. He sighed. Narcissa’s brow crimped in a way that made her look fierce, but Draco knew she was trying to suppress a laugh.
“It depends in what way you wish to define that word, Draco,” she said, folding her hands on her lap. “You are not a beaming beacon of charity and goodwill in the way that the Muggleborns would like you to be, but I think that you have your own honor. Your father and I taught you to have that, at least,” she added, in a tone that said she remembered the times that he had broken the rules they gave him.
“Selfish in a way that would displease a lover,” Draco said, his cheeks flushing. He would have resisted asking the question of his mother, but she was well-aware of his relations with Severus, and if she didn’t know about the way he wanted Harry as well, Draco would be surprised. Besides, he thought defiantly, sitting up and pushing his hair out of his face, they were both adults. He didn’t need to feel embarrassed to talk to his mother about anything.
Again Narcissa spent some time considering with a grave expression on her face. Draco scowled at his hands. He would have preferred that she deny it at once and tell him that he could have anyone he wanted, but then he would probably have scorned her opinion for being a mother’s instinctive defense.
I need to give other people more credit for intelligence and more chances to judge me without assuming they’re wrong, I suppose, he thought.
“I believe you could be,” she said. She settled back in her chair and stretched her hand out. A house-elf appeared next to her, bowed, and ensured that her fingers closed around the glass of ice water in exactly the right place. Draco sighed longingly. Harry refused to let them have house-elves. Draco had tried to explain that they were for things like this, minor chores that freed up the minds of their betters to think about other things. That had caused Harry to give him a cold look and bring Granger in to talk to him. Draco was not eager to have that happen again. “If your lover asked for something, I can see you ignoring it if you were sure that you knew better or that there was something else they would enjoy more.”
“That doesn’t help in this case.” Draco put his chin in his hands and stared at the floor. “We’ve never actually been lovers, so I know that he can’t object to anything I’ve done in bed. But Harry says that I would be selfish anyway, he can tell that I’d be selfish, and that’s one reason he refuses to be with me.”
“Hmm,” said Narcissa, in the tone that meant she was judging him but didn’t want to say so.
“What?” Draco lifted his head and glared at her from beneath his fringe.
“I can see why he would think that.” Narcissa gestured with her free hand in a languid motion that reminded Draco of the way she would push pieces across a chess board. “The laws and rules Potter lives by are alien to ours, but they are not incomprehensible. I am sure that he values safety and honor and freedom and peace. He does not value them in the way we do, and that is what causes the troubles between you.”
Draco spent a moment wondering how his mother could speak with such absolute assurance, when she hadn’t sat down and had a conversation with Harry about this, and then shook his head. His mother was a keen observer of people, as well as skilled at going about so quietly that she seemed like part of the background and others acted naturally in front of her. And she had had a chance to observe Harry at the political rally a week ago and on afternoon visits to the house when Harry was present. For Narcissa, that would be enough.
“When he gives himself to someone,” Narcissa said simply, “he gives completely. I have seen that in the way he talks with his friends. He would do anything for them, he loves them so. But the reason he can do that and not fear being hurt or mocked is that they would do the same for him, and he knows it. He would give the same gift to a lover-but if that lover held back, refusing to admit Potter to terms of equal intimacy, he would see no reason to become involved with that person.” She finished the speech with a lift of her eyebrow and a delicate sip at her glass of water.
“But-” Draco tangled his fingers together. “He has a lover now. A boyfriend, I mean.” Admitting that Caesarion was Harry’s lover still left a bad taste in his mouth. “If he’s already given himself completely to this idiot, then that doesn’t leave much for us.”
“If that is the way it is,” Narcissa said, “that is the way it is.” Draco scowled at his mother and wished that she wasn’t so intent on facing reality, and making him face it, too, sometimes. Narcissa, gazing broodingly into her water glass, didn’t seem to notice. “But my guess is that he has not. You described their meeting to me. It was sudden. He has not known the boy for years. He has not experienced things with him that would forge them into the unbreakable unit that he forms with his friends.” She glanced up, and her eyes were coolly amused. “You and Severus have more in common with him than this boy does, or at least more in common with Potter’s friends. You have shared traumatic experiences together. That seems to be the glue that Potter finds irresistible.”
Draco felt himself brighten. It was silly, but he knew that he would look sillier still if he tried to stop the expression, and then his mother would know what he was feeling anyway. She was exasperating like that. “So Severus and I could still have a chance with him?”
“More of a one than this boy does,” Narcissa said, pulling her robes in close around her as if she was cold. “But not if you do not give yourselves to him completely, in the way that he would demand of a lover-and of himself.”
And then she refused to talk about Harry for the rest of the visit, instead telling Draco the dealings of the pure-blood families in her circle, and how she had begun to hear regular rumors against Shacklebolt even from them. Draco sighed and gave himself up to mindless gossip.
When he began to consider how he could be less selfish in order to win Harry’s love, or even if he wanted to, he knew he would have to do some hard thinking. Perhaps it was best to let his mind repose for right now.
*
Severus watched as the last steel dummy he had created blew apart under the force of his spell. He was in the tiled room that Ledbetter had reinforced for Harry and Draco’s dueling lessons, where he did not have to worry about the magic escaping and destroying the rest of the house.
He had picked up an image of himself from Harry’s mind that he did not like at all earlier that day: cold, hard, impossible to please, always critical of the honest efforts that Harry made. It was no wonder that Harry wanted to avoid taking him as a lover.
Severus Transfigured a piece of tile chipped from the wall into a squawking bird this time, and turned it to stone as it tried to fly away, watching as it shattered against the floor.
The image made sense of the way Harry had avoided him even after Severus opened his mind to Harry, yes, but it also infuriated him.
He had done what he could to make himself accessible to Harry, to show that he did not hate him, to demonstrate appropriate gratitude for the sacrifices Harry had made for the sake of the bond. He had told the truth about his emotions. And still Harry continued to prefer his own imaginings of Severus to the real man.
How many other sacrifices must he make? What else could he do?
This time, the tile was Transfigured into a rat who didn’t run more than four steps before Severus’s spell blasted it apart into a scattering of white fur and scarlet drops.
Severus pinched his nose violently between his fingers and stood still for a moment. He was verging close to the Dark Arts, and Ledbetter and others who might come into the house, such as the Weasleys, would probably be able to sense them. He must stop.
It was not a kind of control that Draco would have had, or Harry. Both of them were young enough to careen through the world doing whatever seemed good to them at the time and then learning from their mistakes afterwards. But Severus had long since mastered most of his base impulses and had done what he could to atone for his crimes.
And still it was not enough. Still Harry saw him as the hated Potions professor who would let no opportunity pass to criticize him.
There should be some time at which one does not have to become more mature, Severus thought in wrath, and paced towards the door.
And then he sighed, because the same control that made him so different from Harry and Draco told him the answer to that question, and convicted him of whinging if he continued to ask it.
There is no end to growing up. There is no end to change. You must always alter yourself if something does not work, no matter how much you like your old self. And if you want something badly enough, it justifies the change.
Did he want Harry badly enough?
He thought so, yes.
Severus stood still for a moment, his hand resting on the door, and then lifted his head and purposely flooded himself with pride.
His longer experience of life meant that he saw more angles of attack, more possibilities, than either Harry or Draco did. If he felt baffled, he would simply circle the situation until he found a way in and through, a new plan.
I am too intelligent to remain baffled forever or give up in disgust. There must be a way to reassure Harry that I would not demand so much of him and yet retain my pride and my individuality.
As he cleaned up the scattered feathers and fur and blood, Severus had to admit that he should probably be grateful for the challenge. If he had survived the Dark Lord and been left alone with nothing to do but brew and battle people who didn’t believe in his innocence, he would have been dreadfully bored.
Part Twenty-Two.