Part Thirty of 'Their Phoenix'
Title: Their Phoenix (30/34)
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 smiled thinly as he reached up to take the message from the owl. The owl was elegant, a cream-colored one with bright golden eyes, but so small and delicate that he didn’t feel more than a quick throb of pain for Hedwig. Then he was reading the letter, and nodding and smiling as he did so. It was all so exactly as he expected.
Dear Harry:
I know that you might not believe me, but a most urgent consideration has arisen in connection with Estella Colben. I need to speak with you as soon as possible. Make sure that you do not see Colben alone in this time. You may set the date and the place, but let it not be further off than a week in advance of today.
Brynhildr Swanfair
Harry sucked the back of his teeth for a moment and wondered if it could be true.
Then he shrugged. Even if it was, he couldn’t trust Swanfair to tell the truth regarding the weather yesterday. And he wasn’t about to back out of supporting Colben when she seemed to be the only honest politician he was ever likely to meet.
Severus? he asked, reaching out and sweeping his mind delicately over Severus’s. Draco wasn’t likely to wake up until later, but Severus often used the early morning to brood over new potions and spells and consider the possibilities for making them real.
What are you doing out of bed so early? Severus thought back at him, petulance etching the words in the bond like acid. You left us cold.
I wanted to get some early morning exercise. Ledbetter said this was the best time of day for it, and he was right. Harry glanced around the garden in affection. He could hear the murmuring, sleepy chirps of birds, and even though a storm was coming, from the clouds that piled around the horizon, it wasn’t here yet. Harry had cleared a space among the Potions ingredients so that he could cast spells without damaging the plants. You ought to come out here.
I prefer not to leave the warmth and comfort of my young lovers before I have to.
Harry laughed. He knew that Severus was giving him a great gift, though it might not seem like it, in exposing a side of himself so childish and vulnerable. It meant that he trusted Harry not to judge him harshly. Well, one’s left you. And Swanfair’s sent me a letter hinting darkly that she needs to see me about Colben. Very non-specific, of course. It includes a warning not to tell Colben. Harry crumpled the letter up into a ball and tossed it into the air, then caught it again on the way back down. He contemplated setting fire to it, but Severus would probably want to see it.
Yes, retain it. Severus sounded a bit more alert, if unwillingly so. I will read it later. For the moment, I will rest. Harry felt him retreat from the bond, so that Harry was hearing only a murmured echo of his emotions, like the roll of waves on a distant shore.
Harry smiled and began to practice with some of the countercurses that Ledbetter had been showing them lately, complicated versions of the Shield Charm that were intended to protect against specific classes of magic rather than all sorts of spells. Draco had protested that a defense like that seemed useless compared with the Shield Charm. Ledbetter had given him the sort of patient glance that braced Harry; it meant the question was about to get an answer that Ledbetter thought they should have seen for themselves long since.
“And when you meet a spell that goes through the Shield Charm like a hot knife through paper,” Ledbetter asked, “will you still insist on the effectiveness of that one spell, I wonder?”
Draco had blinked and taken a step back as though he thought Ledbetter intended to use such a curse on him right then. Harry had snickered. Draco glared at him and tossed a wordless scolding his way before he nodded to Ledbetter. “Show us, then.”
Harry practiced now, mouthing the incantations as he twisted his wand through the motions that Ledbetter had demonstrated. Matching the speed of his hand and his mouth was the hardest thing. Ledbetter had warned them that finishing one aspect of the spell before another could cause things to go horribly wrong.
He smiled. He would be able to show Ron something new the next time they met. Ron had said that they were starting to practice spells like this in their Auror trainee lessons, but they hadn’t got there yet.
Suddenly, Harry paused and blinked, as a new thought overcame him.
I’m getting a better sort of instruction than an Auror trainee would have, and more specific to what I like best, Defense Against the Dark Arts. But I don’t think I want to be an Auror even if Colben lets me come back to the training. So what am I going to do with all this magic I’m learning?
Harry nibbled his lip. His immediate impulse was to say that he would go out and hunt down the Death Eaters, but he didn’t think there were all that many of them left to hunt, and Severus and Draco would have a fit if he ventured into danger like that. In fact, being an Auror probably wouldn’t have worked out, either, since he would constantly risk his life and stand the chance of killing them right along with him.
What kind of career would use Defense but be safe? Harry had to admit that he couldn’t think of any. The wizards in the Ministry who stayed behind their desks didn’t need to know all the complicated things he was learning, and a desk job would bore Harry to death anyway.
Then he smiled a bit, as other memories of his schooldays-memories that had nothing to do with fighting Voldemort-came back to him.
I could be a teacher, maybe. Not at Hogwarts. I don’t think I could stand to go back there so soon after everything, and it would feel like retiring before I lived my life. But I could teach people who wanted to learn Defense Against the Dark Arts.
If Draco ever manages to combine Potions and Defense, then I could help.
A vague picture grew up in his mind-vague, but it was one that pleased him more than the thought of himself as an Auror. He and Draco and Severus would have a business of sorts, some small business that would allow them to spend lots of time together and work out of the house. Harry was no fool; he knew they would have to live behind powerful wards for years, even if Colben won the election. He would provide the basics of Defense, and Severus would provide the basics of Potions, and Draco would combine them. All of them would be necessary. All of them would be busy, and contented.
And Draco will be the center of attention, just as he should be.
Harry blinked. That didn’t sound like his own thought.
Golden laughter showered through his head. It’s not, Draco said, obviously fully awake now. Not that you do badly when left to your own thoughts. I can like and admire the visions you come up with. But do remember that you should always pay attention to me. I’m worth it.
Harry snorted back at him and started to reply, but his hand and mouth had gone on practicing without his permission, and he finished the gesture before the incantation. At once black ropes shot out of the air, coiled around and around each other in search of a proper shield to form, and then knotted themselves together in the middle-where Harry happened to be standing.
Most instructive, Draco murmured as Harry swore and struggled in the middle of his ropes. I’ll remember that Ledbetter usually has a point when he talks about performing the spells exactly as he teaches them to us.
*
Draco kept his head lifted and a contemptuous sneer tilting up the sides of his mouth as they walked into the back room of the small restaurant where they had agreed to greet Swanfair. Harry had assigned him to play the part of unimpressed pure-blood, so that Swanfair would soon stop checking his face for reactions and appeal to Harry and Severus instead. That would give Draco more time to observe her without being observed.
It wasn’t hard to look scornful when he saw the state of the restaurant’s much-vaunted “private” room. The walls were thin screens of silk and other materials that Draco knew from experience were poor imitations of the decorations some members of his mother’s generation used in their homes. The painting on the wall depicted a woman changing into a blue heron, and would have been handsome except for the way her distorted features made her eyes seem to stare directly at you. The tables of red wood gleamed from a distance, but had scars and scratches on them close up. This was a place of petty corruption, and Draco didn’t have to be pleased by it.
Swanfair waited for them at the largest table in the room, set back against the one wall that looked solid. She had a grey cloak on with a hood flung back that was probably meant to make her hair shine more like silver and her face look more impressive. She started when she saw Severus and Draco, then controlled the flinch and rose to her feet with an inclination of her head. Her smile, like the tables, would have convinced someone watching the interaction from a distance as she murmured to Harry, “I invited you alone.”
“You must know that bondmates cannot be so easily separated,” Harry said, with an easy smile that paid compliments to Swanfair’s sense of what was proper. “And you said nothing in your letter about wanting to see me alone.”
“The salutation-” Then Swanfair visibly decided that she wasn’t here to correct Harry’s manners, and bit back the other words that would have risen. She shook her head in irritation and faced Draco with a faint, forced bow. “Welcome, Mr. Malfoy. Welcome, Mr. Snape.”
Draco thought idly as he nodded back and slid into his seat how odd it was to hear someone call Severus by that title. When he had been at Hogwarts, he was always a Professor, and now, Draco didn’t imagine that he could ever call Severus by anything other than his first name.
If I wish you to call me something else, then you will, Severus’s voice said in his mind, heavy with promise, dark as squid ink. He took his own seat and nodded to Swanfair, folding his hands in front of himself on the table. He had agreed, like Draco, to leave the main burden of the confrontation up to Harry, but his role was different. He would do his best to probe gently into Swanfair’s mind when she looked at him and find out why she really wanted to meet. “We are happy to greet you in return, Mrs. Swanfair, and hope that you will forgive our presence.”
That produced a slight thaw in Swanfair’s smile, and she inclined her head at Severus. Then she turned and studied Harry as if she wanted to find a weakness or a flaw in him that wasn’t readily apparent.
Look as hard as you like, Draco thought in some pride, following her gaze to Harry. You won’t often find one.
And the ones she could find, you’re protecting me against, Harry finished, doing that trick he did so often and following up a random thought with a compliment. At the same time, he smiled confidently at Swanfair, and he might have been a statue of a hero for all the human frailty his face showed. His lips were bright red and inflexible; his dark hair was wild and too tangled to make someone think they could pat his head. His eyes were calm and polite and attentive, but they promised nothing.
Stop looking at me that way, or I’m going to get hard.
Draco had to fight to keep from grinning. He thought of replying that that was a reason for him to stare all the more, but Severus was just starting to turn his head to look at Draco in disapproval. That wasn’t the plan. Severus was supposed to keep his attention on Swanfair, and Draco was supposed to look perfectly calm and composed under this wretched mask. With a little sigh, he refocused his gaze on Swanfair and let his sneer take over again.
“This is a very important meeting,” Swanfair said, spreading her fingers across the table and giving Harry an earnest look. Draco had to admit that she was good. Two months ago, he would have been anxious about leaving Harry alone with her. There was a chance that she could persuade him. Now, it was useless. Harry was most persuaded by a round of good sex, and he already had his favored partners.
Will you stop having thoughts like that? Harry snapped at him, and then began speaking to Swanfair before Draco could retort with proper indignation that Harry shouldn’t be listening to his thoughts. “Why is it an important meeting? I’m afraid that I still don’t understand what Colben is supposed to have done to make you stop supporting her, or what I’m supposed to have done that makes me dangerous to her.”
You should be thinking about us being dangerous to her, Draco remind him.
But she has a tendency to forget that we’re three, not one. Only the slight tick of a muscle in Harry’s cheek showed that Draco’s interruption had irritated him. I want to encourage that tendency. Now leave me alone and let me do this.
“Today, we decide the course of Britain’s immediate political future.” Swanfair lifted her head when she had said that and poised like a heroine in a tragic play. Draco eyed her with interest. She was acting her part so well that it was hard to tell it was a part. “Colben is more unsteady than I had thought her, less suited to take up the Minister’s office. We may have to change candidates.”
“What has she done?” Harry was making a good impression of surprise, with his wide eyes and lowered, grave voice. “Changing candidates at this point in the race is rarely a good idea. It would have to be something momentous.”
“You know, of course,” said Swanfair, her fingers playing about each other, “that a politician must have a certain mastery of deception to be good at this game. I have seen you play with more subtlety than I would have credited you with, and so that knowledge must be among your accomplishments.” She directed an oblique look at Harry.
“Yes, of course,” Harry said, and his smile was guileless. That almost prepared Draco for what Harry said next. “We have to hope that the next Minister won’t go as far as Shacklebolt did and lie about what he’s supposed to be doing, but it might happen.”
Draco clamped his lips together to hold back a snort. Severus gave a thin smile and picked up the nearest of the glasses of water that the server had already brought to the table, sipping it carefully.
Swanfair looked at them both with the same sort of tolerant patience that Draco’s mother would have given to people who insisted on being drunk at a formal party, and then turned around again and paid attention to Harry alone. “Shacklebolt’s mind is diseased,” she said, with a grave shake of her head. “He can no longer tell the difference between truth and lies, when one would be useful or when the other would.” She paused impressively. “I am beginning to think that Colben’s mind is diseased in the opposite direction.”
“She knows too much about the difference between truth and lies?” Harry picked up a piece of cheese from the plate of slices in front of him. Draco sent him a pointed mental warning, but Harry sighed back to let Draco know that he understood and simply played with the cheese, giving Swanfair a confused frown all the while. “I don’t see how that could be a bad thing. Unless we have to worry about the clear sight itself driving her mad.”
“Use some of that subtlety that I know you have,” Swanfair said with a sudden and shocking change of tone, leaning forwards and glaring at Harry as if he had tried to irritate her on purpose. “She is mad now, as far as politics are concerned. She reveals too much. She speaks her true intentions and makes promises that she intends to fulfill. She does not have that reserve that is natural and necessary for a Ministerial candidate. Of course we have to replace her with someone else, someone who will understand her responsibilities better.”
Harry leaned back in his seat. His face had gone still and blank, and Draco might have been fooled into thinking he felt neutrally about this if he didn’t have access to the bond. The bond was brilliant orange and filled with small, madly hopping shapes.
Does she really think she can persuade me of this? Harry appealed to both Draco and Severus at once, his voice thick with anger. Or is she playing at something else, hiding a second game under this one?
Draco looked hard at Swanfair before he answered. He wouldn’t want to give answers his life might depend on, but Swanfair’s eyes had the same hard glitter as the jewels she wore. It also hadn’t escaped his notice that the room was well-warded. No word they spoke here would emerge to touch the ears of anyone outside.
I think she’s as sincere as she can be, he said at last. She probably hates petitioning you like this, because she has to suspect that you like Colben’s honesty. But you’re her most powerful supporter. There are a lot of people who will vote for Colben just because you approve of her. If Swanfair takes out everyone else and not you, it doesn’t make much difference in the end.
I agree, Severus added. She has been driven into a corner, or she would have chosen some other way. She does not know what will compel you to turn around and agree with her about Colben, so she chooses this tactic.
Harry nodded and turned back to face Swanfair. It occurred to Draco that he hadn’t once questioned their opinions or refused to listen to them simply because they were “Slytherin” opinions, depending on something else other than optimism. Draco grinned. He wondered how he could make sure that Weasley realized Harry’s deep trust in him.
Severus pinched his arm under the table.
“I can see some of the problem that you have with this,” Harry told Swanfair. “But I would still rather an honest politician than one, like Kingsley, who gets tangled and ensnared in secrets and lies to the point that he can’t even act.”
“You fool.” Swanfair’s fingers would have made impressions on the nice wood table if her nails were a very little sharper, Draco decided. She leaned forwards as if she thought that looming over Harry would make him change his mind. Draco snorted inwardly. Of course that wouldn’t work. Harry had grown somewhat, but he was still so short that he had to get used to people taller than he was.
Harry pinched him this time, but down the bond, so Draco didn’t have to work as hard on controlling the flinch.
“I don’t see why.” Harry sipped at his own water, his eyes wide and bright and alert. “Colben has her faults. I have no illusions that she’ll be the perfect Minister or easy to control. But I don’t want to control her. I want someone I can work with, instead, someone who has her own strength for those moments when mine might falter.”
Swanfair closed her eyes and shook her head, pressing her fingertips against her temple this time, as if she thought that her head would hurt less if she could break through the skin.
“I did not mean Colben to be a simple figurehead,” she said. “But we must have control of her, and we cannot if you insist on supporting her in her transparency.”
“Explain to me why.” Harry’s voice had cooled and settled into the sort of shape that would have warned Swanfair of danger if she had been more familiar with him. Draco gave her a sneering half-smile. She was not the best political player after all-or rather, she was like his mother, and her initial impressions controlled what she saw and experienced after that, sometimes to a horrifying extent.
“Surely you must see why we cannot maintain control of her if you support her in this fashion.” Swanfair brushed her hair out of her face and gave Harry a hard look. Draco widened his sneer, only to see Swanfair ignore him. She had decided to focus on Harry so much that she had blinded herself to changes in the people she depended on for support. Draco had to restrain himself from pounding his head on the table at such blindness.
“I was asking a different question,” Harry said. “Why must we maintain control of her? You were careful to present her to me as a partner, and I’ve accepted her in that spirit. Why can’t we live with what she’s really like, instead of what you wanted her to be?”
Swanfair turned pale. For long moments, she remained so still that Draco hoped this was the moment that Severus could slip past her barriers and manage to use Legilimency on her despite her defenses.
Not yet, Severus told him regretfully. I must do it undetected, or it will be worse than useless.
Before Draco could answer, Swanfair rose to her feet. Her voice was smooth, and cold, and might have had the power to make Draco tremble a year and a half ago, before he had acquired his bondmates and some sense of his own power.
“So be it. It seems that our political goals part ways here.” She paused, and Draco thought she had intended to walk away from the table in dignified silence. But the words burst out of her despite herself. “You promised me power. Where did you think it would come from, since you wouldn’t allow me to control you?”
“I thought it would come from having a position in the Ministry.” Harry was giving her a level look that Draco decided he must have practiced in the mirror when neither Draco nor Severus was looking. It was so good that even Narcissa might have applauded. “From being a close adviser to Colben. From taking one of the foreign positions she seems so interested in rewarding her pure-blood supporters with. From many different things.”
“Power over the powerful is the only safe choice in any time and place,” Swanfair said, her eyes bright. Draco could have reached out and cut himself on her words. “You are out of the question, for reasons I understand. Colben is not, but she is not what I thought her, either. Stronger in her honesty, and in her personality. And she does not understand gratitude in the way that almost any pure-blood child would.”
Harry laughed, ignoring the way that Swanfair’s hands clenched when he did. “I can’t imagine that most pure-blood children would rejoice if you were given power over them, either.”
“Achieving the power of a Minister should be enough for anyone,” Swanfair answered back, swift as a viper striking. “No one should ask for more than that. That she has the arrogance to think she should be Minister in her own way, when she would not have risen this far without us…”
Harry’s response to that blew up like a firework in Draco’s mind, but remarkably, when he spoke, his voice was calm. “Well, it hasn’t been enough for her. And I would rather trust someone who can act on her own than a figurehead.”
Swanfair gave a calm, chilling smile, her first gesture that had impressed Draco in the entirety of the conversation. “Oh, but you will be trusting a figurehead,” she breathed. “Because she will be my figurehead, if not yours.”
She turned and left the restaurant.
Harry waited for a few minutes until he was sure that Swanfair wasn’t coming back, then called the server over and ordered salads and bread and fresh fruit. Meanwhile, the bond between him and Draco filled with stinging coolness like seafoam. Well? What do you think we have to worry about next when it comes to Swanfair?
The most likely choice is that she will try to compel Colben to do her bidding, Severus answered. He was frowning at the table. Draco knew he was disappointed that he’d never had the chance to try Legilimency on Swanfair, and sent him a wave of reassurance. Severus smiled back, but the trouble still burned in the back of his eyes like a stubborn ember. Mere persuasion is unlikely to work. But we have no notion whether Colben is resistant to the Imperius Curse or to the tricks with gems that we know Swanfair can perform.
Then we must warn her. Harry gave the server who brought them their food a charming smile. “Could you bring me ink and parchment and a quill?” he asked. “And do you have an owl I could use?”
The server stammered, her dark eyes going wide, fastened to Harry’s forehead as if a scar was still there. In the end, she nodded and scampered away. Harry rolled his eyes and bit hard into his salad as Draco and Severus chuckled at him.
“I hope the warning is in time,” he muttered aloud.
“If it is not,” Severus said, plucking a twist of bread from the loaf in the center of the table, “then we will free Colben. That is all.”
Draco closed his eyes. For long moments, he couldn’t name a source for the flood of sweetness breaking over him.
Then he realized what it was. Once, Severus would have spoken those words grimly, absorbed in the weight of the task before him, only one more unwanted thing to do in a lifetime of them. Now he spoke lightly, and was thinking about something else in the next moment, though Draco could not grasp the substance of his thoughts.
Harry put it into words for him. “You feel that you can enjoy your life more now,” he said, and Draco opened his eyes to see that he was regarding Severus with a bright smile and softened features.
Severus paused and glanced sharply at them both; he seemed to feel that they might be mocking him. Then he relaxed and put one hand on Draco’s neck, while brushing his opposite shoulder against Harry. “Yes,” he said. “Now that I have people about me who will make the experience worth living.” He popped the bread into his mouth and chewed it defiantly, half-closing his eyes as if that increased the intensity of the taste.
Harry met Draco’s eyes, and Draco caught the edge of his thought, turned sideways and made dim to keep it from Severus. He deserves everything that he has and more.
I wouldn’t disagree with you, Draco responded, also carefully, wondering what Harry was getting at.
So. Harry fell silent for a moment, while the bond opened out and then contracted and turned yellow the way it did when Harry was feeling a tangle of complex emotions. I think we should give him something else to help make his life worth living. Focus on him in bed the way that you focused on me and we focused on you.
Draco gave him a slow smile, and made his thoughts even more of a whisper in his head. He would enjoy that, not only for the pleasure that he knew it would give them all, but for the fact that Severus would struggle to hide his delight and surprise. When do you want to do it? Soon, or not?
Harry closed his eyes, and Draco felt a flash of fear that told him what Harry was contemplating for his gift to Severus. Then he answered, Let’s settle this situation with Colben first, and decide whether we’ll need to fight Swanfair. That ought to be soon enough.
Draco nodded. He could wait, especially because he didn’t think their days in between then and now would be exactly devoid of pleasure. Besides, this would add a keen anticipation to what would happen when they foiled Swanfair.
“You are also enjoying your lives, I hope.”
Draco blinked and glanced up. Severus was watching them with flared nostrils and slightly lowered eyelids, while the bond between them was murky with uncertainty. He knew they had been talking privately, but not what they’d said, Draco thought. His prickliness was still there, if hidden beneath the surface most of the time now. Perhaps he’d decided they’d been exchanging complaints.
“Very much so,” Harry said, taking the lead in the way that baffled Draco to do just then. He stretched up and kissed Severus with single-minded intensity. Severus returned the kiss, his hands rising to hold Harry in place. Draco leaned against Severus’s back and kissed the nape of his neck.
A muffled squeak interrupted them. Draco glanced up. The server had come back with a coil of parchment and an inkwell in one hand, and an owl riding her wrist. The bird looked as ruffled as she did.
Harry laughed and reached out a hand to take the things she’d brought, not seeming to notice his own flushed face or the way that Severus’s arm curled possessively around his neck. “Thank you,” he said.
The server bowed and nodded and started to run away, remembered the owl, turned back, put the owl on the back of Severus’s seat, and hurried off.
“It’s not that funny,” Harry said as Draco snorted and Severus bowed his head with the smile twitching wildly at the corners of his lips, but he was biting his lip on chuckles.
*
Severus knew Harry and Draco were planning something, something in which he was not included.
However, as he also suspected that he knew what it was, he did not concern himself about it so much as what they should do about Swanfair and Colben.
Their letter to Colben had produced no response. Perhaps she was already under Swanfair’s control, and had ripped up the letter on her command, Severus thought. Or perhaps Swanfair had simply intercepted it.
Still, it had been only two days. He would try to avoid troubling himself with fruitless speculations until he had some proof as to one of them.
He had made sure that Harry warned Granger and the Weasleys about the break with Swanfair. There was no telling who else she might lash out at if she was as disappointed as Severus thought she was.
He stepped back from the cauldron in front of him and surveyed the smoke rising from it critically. Then he nodded. The green smoke had a bluish tinge to it, the way it should, since this was an experimental potion. He reached for the next ingredient, the vial of hen’s toenails, never taking his eyes from the smoke. If it bent towards him and managed to fill his lungs, then he was in serious trouble.
Do you need one of us there? Draco demanded abruptly in his head. He had picked up Severus’s thoughts from a greater distance than he ever had before, since he and Harry were currently at the Burrow exploring how the Weasleys reacted to one of Harry’s bondmates. It sounds like it.
Do you require my participation when you are conducting your own experiments? Severus narrowed his eyes in satisfaction when Draco made an annoyed grumbling sound.
Just be careful.
Draco retreated from the sudden close communion. Severus took a moment to check on the bond, and as far as he could feel their emotions from this distance, both Harry and Draco seemed well. He scattered the hen’s toenails into the potion and watched as the green smoke changed again, this time to a vivid red.
Good. If Severus was right, this would be a potion that combined the properties of Veritaserum, a Calming Draught, and a Dreamless Sleep Potion. The victim would go to sleep after ingesting the potion and babbling true answers to whatever questions were asked, and wake remembering nothing more than a sudden tiredness.
Severus could think of certain political opponents of theirs who required this potion.
Someone appeared at the edge of their wards and disrupted his concentration. Severus clenched his fingers on the table against the immediate temptation to turn his head away. That would be stupid with the potion in such a volatile state.
Instead, he moved without haste through the next three steps, which required the addition of rose petals, flakes of gold, and three widdershins stirs. Then he cast a Stasis Charm on the entire lab-one could not be too careful with experiments-and walked out of the lab, sealing the door behind him with another charm. Many of those same enemies the potion was intended for would also find it useful. Severus did not wish to put it in their hands because of misplaced overconfidence.
Severus? This time it was Harry who had picked up on his distress from miles away. Do you need us to come home?
I do not even know who the visitor is yet, Severus snapped, sure that his anxiety would be sensed and forgiven. He cast the spell that would allow him to see over the garden, and then blinked. It is Colben.
We should be there, Draco insisted, the bond from his side alive with sunbursts.
No. It is also important that you maintain good relations with the Weasleys, Severus answered. I handled Colben by myself once before. I will do so again. He refused to listen to his bondmates’ buzzing as he reached out and opened the wards to Colben. He truly did not fear her. If she were under Swanfair’s control, then he should be able to sense that at once and defeat her the more easily, because he would use spells that he would hesitate to use if she were in her right mind.
Colben walked into the garden the moment the wards fell. Severus watched her carefully, but could see no shuffling in her gait or vagueness in her gaze, such as often afflicted people who were under the Imperius Curse or some variant of that spell cast through jewels.
Then again, he reminded himself, as he lifted the final defenses and spun a net of wards around her at the same time so she could get through the door, I have not always recognized such indications. To my cost. He winced as a faint throb of pain went through an old scar on his right hip.
You never told us about that, Harry said at once. What’s the story? Do you need help? Are you sure you don’t need help? he amended the last question as Severus growled in irritation.
Yes, I am. Pay attention to your conversation with the Weasleys. Would you like them to think that you do not like their company and are always thinking of the bondmate you left behind? Severus stretched his lips into a smile to welcome Colben. No, there was no glaze in her eyes; in fact, her gaze was almost offensively direct and sharp.
You were welcome to come with us.
And then no one would have been at home to greet Colben when she came calling. Yes, Harry, that is a magnificent solution.
Harry lapsed into sulky silence, and at last, Severus was able to give his full attention to Colben. “Yes?” he asked.
“Swanfair has broken with you,” Colben said. “Her first action was to come to me and tell me that you had turned against me.”
Severus made sure that his fingers were lightly clenched around the end of his wand, ready to draw it and use it if necessary. “That is not the case,” he said. “But if you believe it, of course you must act on the belief.”
Colben stared at him with darkened eyes for a long moment before replying. Severus wondered idly if she had expected a confession of guilt. Yes, Colben was honest, but she must know that her deficiency did not take up every mind around her.
“I do not believe it,” Colben said.
Severus inclined his head. “Will it please you to come in and talk about it? Harry and Draco are not here at the moment, but that need not trouble you. They are with me in spirit, and I may speak for all of us.”
“A chair would be pleasant,” Colben said, following him. “I was on my feet most of the night, debating about who to believe and what I should do. I cannot afford to lose Harry’s support, and he has been more honest with me. But I also cannot afford to lose Swanfair, who is my line to the pure-bloods.”
What’s the use of coming to us without Swanfair, then? Draco muttered in a dissatisfied way in the back of Severus’s mind.
But Draco was not here in the flesh, and could not see Colben’s face. When she spoke the last words, she had looked up and into Severus’s eyes. He knew what she wanted. She would prefer to leave Swanfair behind and go ahead with their support, as long as there was a way that she could keep the pure-bloods with her.
“You do know,” Severus said neutrally, “that the Malfoy name is powerful.”
“Once powerful,” Colben said, taking the chair he motioned her to. She arranged her robes around her as if they were skirts, a nervous gesture that Severus had not seen her make before. “Are they the same now, with the head of their line in prison and his wife receiving very few visitors?”
“And their son bonded to Harry Potter,” Severus said.
Colben paused, her eyebrows rising slowly until they touched the edge of her fringe. Then she gave a small smile. “You interest me,” she said. “Go on.”
“The pure-bloods have not approached us before they thought that Harry’s distaste for those of their numbers who were Death Eaters would overcome any influence Draco could have over him,” Severus said. He knew that was the truth, even though he had never given it much thought before. There was no reason for the people who had long known Draco’s family not to try and court them otherwise. “And, of course, they had Swanfair. But if we make the news of the breach between you and Swanfair public…”
“If there is a breach between me and Swanfair.”
Severus laughed softly. “You are not stupid. You know that Harry is more congenial to you, more like you, than Swanfair could ever be.”
“That is not always enough to guarantee political compatibility.” Colben gave a slight shrug. “Swanfair was honest enough with me at the beginning, too, about what she wanted from me and what she was capable of giving in return. There is no saying that Mr. Potter will not turn out the same way, just as we cannot say if the pure-bloods would rally to a Malfoy as their name stands at this stage of the world’s affairs.”
“Without Swanfair,” Severus said, “the pure-bloods would have no choice but to turn to us, because otherwise you might cast them off as you cast her off. And they would be well-pleased enough to deal with a pure-blood and with someone who was a notorious Death Eater and therefore, they will think, must have believed in blood purity. They will be even more pleased to have a direct line to Harry Potter. There is nothing that we cannot give them that Swanfair could. We only have to make it known that we have so many things on offer.”
Colben smiled, a smile that seemed to come from a long way off, like a gleam of light underwater. “Yes,” she said. “That might make it work. Of course, if Swanfair attempts something in return, the way she did with a ruby this morning, then she could lure the pure-bloods back to her side.”
“We must make the offer so tempting that that will not happen.”
Severus felt a rush of pleasure as he spoke. It was twofold. Conversing with someone intelligent like this, making deals that everyone understood, was one of its sources, but the rest came from the soft beams of light that he could feel falling on him from his bondmates.
“Very well,” Colben said. “We will include political access to the Chosen One and…perhaps some potions that you could brew? That will do for an initial offer, combined with what I intend to offer them if they stay loyal to me instead of Swanfair.” She rose to her feet.
Severus stood, astonished that she had gone along with this so quickly. Of course, Harry’s politics would be more to her taste, but taste seemed to rule over her instead of practicality. He hoped that meant they could still trust her.
“I will agree to brew the potions,” he said. “But can you handle making the offer and hearing the words of those who might prefer to remain with Swanfair?”
For a moment, Colben’s eyes turned hard and cold. Then she was smiling gently again.
“Ah,” she said. “I understand. You are like the others who think that I am fragile because I am open and honest.” She shook her head slightly. “I am as hard as steel could wish to be, Mr. Snape. Watch me after this and see if you do not agree.”
And she whirled out the door, which left Severus to blink after her.
She’s right, you know, Harry said in his head, in intense amusement. You do have a bad habit of assuming that someone is fragile because of being open.
You handled it well, Draco said at the same time.
Severus snorted at both of them and turned back to his lab. At least his potions wouldn’t pull any baffling surprises on him.
At least, he thought so until he opened the lab door and discovered the deep deposit of emerald-green tar covering everything because the Stasis Charm had reacted with the sealing charm on the door.
Part Thirty-One.