A Year's Temptation, Chapter Eleven--November (Part One)
Title: A Year's Temptation.
Summary: Draco isn't best pleased to discover he's a Veela at twenty-four...especially since both he and his mate, Harry Potter, are married. Harry suggets a compromise that might work, if everyone agrees. But the compromise is fragile, and stands the chance of only making everything monumentally worse than before.
Rating: NC-17/M+.
Warnings: Half-Blood Prince spoilers, het, slash, sex (both het and slash), language, violence, creature!fic (Veela), infidelity, WiP.
Pairings: Draco/Harry, Draco/Pansy, Harry/Ginny.
Chapter Eleven-November
Somehow Harry wasn't surprised that, when Snape finally contacted him, he did it in such a way that the letter slipped past the Aurors entirely.
Kingsley had indeed partnered him with a trainee new to the Hermes Corps, a young woman named Melinda Jones, one of Hestia's cousins. She watched him with a bit too much hero-worship in her eyes at times, but she was a genuinely talented witch who would probably do much better once she stopped thinking Harry could do anything.
One morning in early November, she came back from fetching herself tea with a frown on her face. "I found this in my teacup between one moment and the next," she said, holding out a letter towards him. "I only looked away for a second, I would swear it. It's addressed to you."
"Did you check it for curses and hexes?" Harry asked, making no motion to take the envelope himself.
Melinda blushed and hastily pulled out her wand, running it over the envelope as she muttered several common detection charms. The letter flashed on none of them, but, as Harry told her, that didn't necessarily mean anything. He taught her the incantation and wand-movement for another of the charms, one practiced by higher-level Aurors, and her naturally pink cheeks turned almost red with gratitude.
None of the charms revealed a spell, however, and Harry took the letter away at last and slit it open with his thumb.
"Should you tell Kingsley that you received a letter, sir?" Melinda ventured then. She considered the regulations binding Harry to paperwork for the next few months silly, Harry knew, but she also heard daily lectures from other Aurors on the importance of sticking to Ministry rules so those they arrested had no ground to challenge them. Harry had a plausible lie ready, luckily.
"I shouldn't be telling you this," he whispered, "but this is from my wife, Ginny. She said that she might write to me. And if I tell someone else, well--" He grimaced and shook his head as if it didn't bear thinking about. "It'll be all over the Daily Prophet at once, and the best thing they'd accuse me of is having an affair with two people so I can be doubly unfaithful."
Melinda's nostrils flared. She had views, apparently, on the Prophet and their never-ending permutations of the story that surrounded Harry and Draco. "You don't need to worry, then," she said earnestly. "As long as it's not dangerous. I'd never intrude on your privacy, Harry." She still flushed sometimes when she said his name.
Harry gave her a noncommittal smile and turned away so that she couldn't accidentally read the letter over his shoulder as she went back to her desk.
November 4th, 2005
Potter:
You have been a nuisance to me since the day you were born. I suppose I should have realized that your irritation value would not diminish simply because we have assumed rather different positions in life.
I require a meeting with you. You have made several mistaken assumptions with regards to me, and it appears that I have done the same, once, with you. If you are important to the man I swore a vow to Narcissa Malfoy to protect, then I do not wish to clash with you.
Do me the courtesy of meeting me on the corner of your street at seven this evening, without any of your bodyguards about. I am sure that someone so skilled in mischief as you are can manage this plausibly. I will be dressed as a Muggle. I give you a Wizard's Oath to show you no violence.
Severus Snape.
Harry stared at the letter for several long moments. His first impulse was to disregard it altogether, even though the sharp, spiky handwriting across the paper was the same sort he had seen on his Potions homework, and in nightmares, for years. His second was to send the Aurors after Snape, but he had no idea where the man was right now, and if he waited until this evening and tried it, he was certain Snape would see them coming.
His third impulse was simply to go alone--and then he was brought up short by the promise he'd made to Draco not to take insane risks anymore.
Hissing through his teeth, Harry leaned back. "Melinda?" he asked.
She jumped and looked at him over her shoulder; she must have been deeply interested in the report she was writing. Harry himself had missed out on the 'painfully earnest about paperwork' stage of a trainee Auror's usual development. "Yes, sir?" she asked, and then blushed. "I mean, Harry."
"Ginny wants to meet with me tonight," Harry said quietly. "Trouble is, I'll have two of the nosier Aurors with me, and I can't trust that they won't talk about it to someone, which will result in it getting back to the Prophet. I don't know how to shrug off the bodyguards and go, though."
"I don't think you should shrug off the bodyguards," Melinda said hesitantly.
"It would only be for a short time," Harry said. He was sure of that, at least. He and Snape had always been so volatile in each other's presence that their conversation, assuming they managed to have one, couldn't last much longer than the battles. "Could you help me? I know a glamour that could make you look like me for a short period, just two hours or so. And if you remained with my guards until then and then Apparated out, I would be the one who got into trouble. They'd think I was acting out, trying to get away from them. No one would suspect you."
"I--I don't know…"
"Please?" Harry looked at her with a begging expression on his face, and could see her intense flattery that the Savior of the Wizarding World would ask her for a favor. "It would be easy enough to slip away from them. I could go to the loo, and you could meet me there and come out with the glamour on."
"I couldn't talk like you, though," Melinda faltered. "And I wouldn't know anything they expected me to know."
"An auditory glamour for the voice," Harry said glibly. "And, well, you wouldn't have to say much. The Aurors on duty tonight know I don't like them, and they'll expect you to brood and not talk. I could key you into my wards so that you could pass easily into my house."
"But what if something happens?" Melinda insisted. "What if someone attacks you while you're in the street? I don't want you dead."
"I won't be alone," Harry assured her, and grimaced wryly. "Much as I don't like it, Draco Malfoy has insisted on being with me every time I meet my wife from now on. So he'll be there. I give you my word of honor on that. I'm sure you've heard how he killed Mulciber. I feel sorry for anyone who attacks me, frankly."
"I--" Melinda drummed her fingers against her desk for a moment. Harry thought that was more from the fact that she didn't know how to feel about the situation with both Draco and Ginny than because she was really deciding against helping him. "What if someone suspects me before the two hours are up?"
"Then you send me a Patronus with the message," Harry said. "You know how to do that, don't you?" Melinda nodded; the communication technique the Order of the Phoenix had once used had come out during the war, and was now a standard part of Auror training. "What's your Patronus?"
"A seal."
Harry nodded. "Then just send it to me, and I'll know that you had to leave, and I have to return as soon as I can."
Melinda smiled wryly, a more knowing expression than Harry had seen so far entering her eyes. "You're very persistent when you want something, aren't you?"
"I am," Harry said, unable to sound apologetic about it. "And you can even watch me write my letter to Draco, if you'd like."
"All right," Melinda gave in.
"Thank you," Harry said, leaning across the distance between their desks to squeeze her hand impulsively.
"Just see I don't regret it," she said, but the smile had a tinge of excitement to it now, and it occurred to Harry that having her as a partner wouldn't be so bad. At least she didn't show a tendency to blame him as Ralph had. Ralph would have gone along with this only if he knew it had Ginny's approval.
Well, Harry didn't intend to do this without Draco's approval. He turned hastily to pick up parchment and quill. It was not nearly long enough before he had to meet Snape, and he doubted Draco would appreciate being summoned by the pull of the claiming mark when Harry entered danger.
*
Draco thought about raging when he received Harry’s letter, but quite apart from the fact that there were photographers for the Daily Prophet just waiting to snap a picture of him leaving in a fury and he’d frighten the house-elves, he knew it would do no good. The only choice he had now was whether he would go with Harry and perhaps manage to settle accounts with Severus, or whether he’d forbid Harry to go and end up settling them much more unpleasantly at some other time.
He wrote a curt letter back, telling Harry he’d be on Grimmauld Place an hour beforehand, under a Disillusionment Charm, and that if Harry even thought of going to the meeting place without him, he’d Apparate straight to Kingsley Shacklebolt and tell him all about Harry’s little escapade. It was the best he could do. That, and try not to go mad for the rest of the day while he paced in rooms far apart from the front windows and scowled into mirrors.
He dressed carefully enough, in pale blue dress robes, as if he were going to one of the parties he’d refused all invitations to since throwing Pansy out of the house. He made sure to keep a cold and utterly disdainful expression on his face as he strode down the walk outside the Manor. He hoped the photographers took some pictures of him looking like this. Perhaps they would make it to the front of the paper, and those who might think of bothering him about being a Veela, or troubling Harry, would think again.
He just barely remembered to cast the Disillusionment Charm before he Disapparated, and drew his wand as he landed. His head jerked slightly to the side, and he realized he could feel Harry’s presence. Also under a Disillusionment Charm, he thought, a few paces to his right.
Draco edged in that direction, watching out for danger. There was nothing as yet. Grimmauld Place looked like what it was, a dirty and poor street in the heart of Muggle London. Draco curled his lip. He would insist that Harry come to live in the Manor when they were finally bonded. It was out of the question that he be separated from his mate by more than a few hundred feet in the first few months, and he was certainly not coming to live here.
He reached out and felt cloth under his hand, just a moment before he also felt the tip of a wand pressing against his throat. Draco grimaced and whispered, “Harry. It’s me.” The final stages of the Transformation should have made his mate subconsciously familiar with his scent, but a fine thing that would be if Harry struck out defensively.
“Oh,” Harry whispered, and then reached out, drawing Draco close to him. This near, Draco could make out the blur that concealed Harry’s movements, though nothing of his facial features. His scent was stronger, soothing Draco’s instincts and making him draw in a few deep whiffs of it, so as to reconcile himself to the danger his mate probably stood in. “Why did you insist on coming an hour early?” Harry added.
“Why do you think?” Draco muttered at him. He cast a nonverbal spell that should alert him of the presence of anything human on the street, and how much magic those humans had. It only made three dull sparks glow in his mind, though, which would mean there were three Muggles nearby. “In case Severus set a trap for you, of course, or in case you decided to sneak off and meet him early.”
“I said I wouldn’t do that anymore.” Harry’s voice was full of indignation. Draco wished he could see his eyes. That would help him determine whether Harry simply looked angry, or vaguely guilty, the way he did when he was planning something he’d been caught at. “My death is your death. I know that, Draco. I wouldn’t go into danger without you.”
“But apparently staying out of it is too simple for you,” Draco muttered, and leaned against Harry’s shoulder.
Harry made an exasperated sound at him, and then turned his head so that his breath was falling on Draco’s ear. “Snape’s letter said that he’d explain himself, and he swore a Wizard’s Oath to use no violence.”
“Wizard’s Oaths only matter when they’re in words, and face-to-face,” Draco muttered. “They’re not binding when they’re written on paper.”
A long pause, and then Harry said, “Oh.”
“Yes, oh.” Draco leaned back against the house behind him and clucked into Harry’s ear. Let him shiver as Draco’s breath assaulted his ears-and from the way he squeaked in startlement, it was working. “We have really got to get you some wizarding education. I don’t know how you’ve lived in this world for twenty-five years and not learned the simplest thing about it.”
“Being raised as a Muggle for ten of those years had something to do with that,” Harry said in an acid tone.
“But you knew you could use magic,” Draco pointed out in a long-suffering tone. He liked playing martyr, if only because Harry always reacted so beautifully. “You said the Muggles were relatives of yours. They must have told you about being a wizard, what it meant-the family history. Not the Potters’, of course, but your mother’s history.”
Harry snorted, and when he spoke next, after a pause, his voice held the bitterness of truths denied a long, long time. “They never said a word about it, Draco. They hated magic. Loathed it. Wanted to pretend it didn’t exist. I spent my first year with my parents, of course, but I couldn’t remember it. Then,” he added, with a catch in his voice. “I only learned about it when my Hogwarts letters started coming, and then I was too busy trying to keep up in school and save the world from Voldemort to do much research about obscure laws or whether Wizard’s Oaths are worth the paper they’re printed on.”
Draco blinked into nothingness. It was his turn to say, “Oh,” now, probably, but he didn’t want to sound as inarticulate as Harry had. Instead, he found and gripped his mate’s hand in silence.
He thought for a moment about what he could say. An apology would be out of place, but a heartfelt conversation now might drive Harry away from the sharing that Draco wanted to encourage in him. They hadn’t managed yet to talk about anything personal without exploding into an argument. Perhaps this had to be the same way, at least on the surface.
He made his voice as snotty as he could while still keeping it soft enough that they couldn’t be overheard from a few feet away. “Well, I’ll have you know that I understood what it was to be a wizard from the time I was two.”
He could picture the astonishment on Harry’s face; the shoulder leaning against his stiffened, and the hand in his cramped as though Harry were about to pull it free. And then Draco heard him snort under his breath, and felt the crisp rustle of hair against his temple as Harry shook his head.
“Yes, you understood what it was to be a wizard,” Harry mocked lightly. “That would be why nothing ever took you by surprise in Hogwarts, and you managed to show me up without trying each and every time.”
Draco hissed, but had to smile. They had barely talked over their pasts, either, even Dumbledore’s death or Draco’s time in the Inquisitorial Squad. If they were ever going to understand each other, they had to discuss it and move beyond it somehow, and this was as good a way as any.
“I understood the important things,” he said. “How to address someone at a state dinner, for example.”
“Because there were ever so many of those at Hogwarts.”
“At least I knew other wizarding schools existed before Durmstrang and Beauxbatons appeared in fourth year. I even speak a little French myself, you know.”
“What do you know how to say?” Harry shoved his shoulder. “’Please help me, my hair is mussed and I’ve broken a nail?’”
Draco made a mock outraged sound. “I’ll have you know that I can ask for seven different kinds of complete meals and thank the servers politely each time.”
“That’s why I prefer plain food, and no house-elves. No one to thank.”
“You’ll need to get used to having house-elves again.” Draco leaned over to kiss the side of his neck. “It shouldn’t be hard, since you were oblivious to their existence for most of your career at Hogwarts. That was the real reason Granger’s SPEW never took off, wasn’t it? The house-elves ceased to exist for you as soon as they left your presence?”
For a long moment, Harry’s shoulder tensed again, and Draco wondered if making a joke about Granger had taken him beyond the pale.
And then Harry laughed, a long, gusting, tension-releasing laugh, as if he had been waiting for the day when he could look back at his memories of his best friends and joke about them with someone. He would never have dared that with the little Weasley, Draco thought with an odd sense of pride. Yet another sign of how much better he was for Harry.
“Meanwhile,” Harry said, with an odd sort of relish, “your mother’s side of the family is the one that hung up house-elf heads on the walls of their home. I suppose they didn’t want to chance forgetting about them.”
Draco shoved him in turn. “Take that back,” he said. “The Blacks did nothing so horrid.” He thought that was true, at least. He couldn’t be entirely sure, since he did remember the empty places where hunting trophies might have hung in Harry’s house, and he had only ever visited it once before that, when he was too young to remember anything concrete.
“I will not,” Harry said. “Had to haul the lot of them away. The nastiest damn job I ever did, not counting hunting the Ravenclaw Hor-“ He paused for a long moment, then finished, “Well, this object of Voldemort’s.”
“I did not need to know there was a Ravenclaw whorehouse, Potter,” Draco said, with a fastidious shudder, wise enough to know that now was not the time to pursue whatever Harry had nearly revealed.
Harry laughed again, and returned to the conversation. Draco followed patiently, soaking in what tidbits Harry revealed and letting bits of his own past slip through his fingers, drifting into Harry’s ears and mind, where he knew they would be well taken care of.
Perhaps someday they would both feel comfortable enough to talk openly about their pasts. For now, this would have to do. And given how much Harry seemed to enjoy it, Draco would have said it more than did.
*
Harry knew it the moment Snape showed up. He could feel a sudden increase of magic on the street, and the wards around Grimmauld Place, still keyed to him even though he’d also tied Melinda into them, suddenly spluttered and flared. He narrowed his eyes and stood straight, his hand curling inside Draco’s to alert him. Draco stopped dead in the midst of another reminiscence and looked around, then moved his free hand in a pattern that Harry knew meant he was drawing his wand.
“Where?” Draco breathed into his ear. Harry took a moment to enjoy the pure sensual pleasure of Draco’s breath sliding across his skin, as out of place as it might have been to do that.
“Corner, just like he promised,” Harry whispered back, and began to move down the street. He could see the figure standing on the corner now, the tall man he would probably have taken for just another Muggle if he hadn’t felt the powerful magic. Snape glanced quickly in several directions, then consulted his wrist and sighed, apparently just irritated that someone he had come to meet hadn’t met him.
Harry cast a quick charm to divert the eyes of Muggles elsewhere, and then removed his Disillusionment Charm. Then he murmured to Draco, “Maybe you should stay hidden.”
“Fuck that,” Draco snarled softly back at him. “We don’t want to make him nervous by thinking you didn’t keep your word not to bring the Aurors. Besides, he might have guessed that I’d come anyway.” And he made himself visible before Harry could argue further.
Snape’s eyes focused on them and narrowed. Harry lifted his head and met that dark gaze coolly. Once, it would have intimidated him; Snape seemed to have seen so much of life, and when Harry met his gaze, he was reminded that he was only a very little boy, after all.
Now, though, he’d been in the Aurors for four years, and he could see the way Snape adjusted his posture and used his height and the narrow thinness of his face to stare someone else down. He was still formidable, not least for the magic crackling through his body and his wand, but he was not invincible. Harry told himself to remember that, and to keep a firm grip on his wand as he halted five feet away from Snape.
“Potions master Snape,” he said, since the man had never gone back to teaching and therefore didn’t deserve the title of “Professor” any longer.
“Draco,” Snape said, and nodded to Draco first, simply to insult Harry, he knew. He held his peace. Such a tactic would have done damage to Ralph or any other of several Aurors, but Harry knew his target. Only then did he turn, and gave Harry that same coolly dismissive look that he’d used whenever they met during the war, touched with disappointment, as if he had expected better of Harry even when he should not have. “Mr. Potter.”
Harry said, “You believe I’ve made several mistaken assumptions about you. Correct them now.”
Snape gave a short sound that was not a laugh. “Demanding, are you not, Mr. Potter? It would be worth your while to be polite.”
“Shove your politeness, Severus,” Draco said, in a voice that made Harry glance at him in surprise. He found that Draco seemed several inches taller than usual and more present, the way he had when Harry had first seen him after the Transformation, but this was meant to impress rather than allure. “You tried to kill him the last time you met. Tell us what you came to tell us, and let us leave.” He put an arm around Harry’s shoulder and moved closer to him, radiating protectiveness. His free hand never let his wand go, and that wand was pointed straight at Snape, Harry saw.
He felt a brief wash of surprise, which pleasure immediately followed. He had someone who would watch his back-not just in the way of an Auror partner, the way Ralph had chosen, but because he was Harry. Because of friendship, and love.
When Harry faced Snape again, he found that his fear had vanished entirely. He raised an eyebrow and chilled his tone. “You heard him. Severus.”
*
Draco studied Severus in silence. He had lines on his face that hadn’t been there when Draco had seen him last, but since it had been seven years, that wasn’t surprising. On the other hand, Severus lacked the tension that had infected him during every Death Eater meeting, and even while he brewed when Draco was still under his guardianship. He simply watched in every direction and pointed his wand at every suspicious sound, which was practically normal in someone who had been Head of Slytherin House.
You let me think you were dead. You tried to make me think my mother was alive the last time we met. You tried to kill my mate.
So many things that he wanted to say to the bastard, but probably none of them would win them answers. So Draco waited as best he could, and let Severus ponder what he wanted to say.
When he finally answered, his voice dragged, as if he had to choose his words more carefully around Draco than he would have done around Harry alone. “After the battle at Azkaban, I considered it worth my while to disappear for a time. I left enough evidence to make it seem as if I were dead so that I would not be pursued.”
He lifted his head, and that gesture was familiar enough to Draco; he had seen it time and time again when Severus felt himself ill-used, even if the suspicion that fell on him had been entirely self-incurred. Draco clenched his teeth against the memories. No matter what Severus had done for him in the past, his allegiances had changed enough that Draco no longer felt comfortable trusting him.
“I had served masters for more than twenty years,” Severus said patiently. “I wished to have the freedom that so many children around me took for granted and used to so little effect, and the only way that I could have it was by convincing both the Dark Lord and the Order of the Phoenix that I was dead. So I did. I established myself not long after the war was won as a supplier of rare potions to those who requested them from me.”
“Including illegal potions, I suppose.” Harry was trying to sound bored, but Draco could feel a fine tremor traveling up his arm from the point where he held his mate. Harry, of course, as an Auror, would feel he had the right to be outraged about this. Draco was not so sure he did.
“Many of the potions the Ministry has made illegal have no side-effects that harm more than the wizard who takes them,” said Severus, and curled his lip haughtily enough that Draco felt tempted to tell him it would freeze that way. “So, yes, I made them.
“And then I made contact with Death Eaters who had done the same thing I had, and faked death to escape being hunted by the Ministry.” He gave a sharp laugh. “You have no idea how many of us came away alive from that field where you were convinced the best of us were destroyed, Potter.”
“But not my mother,” Draco said, undercutting Severus’s mockery as effectively as he could.
Severus cocked his head and regarded him for a long moment. His voice was gentler when he replied; of course, Draco had always suspected that Severus had something of a soft spot for his mother.
“No,” he agreed. “She would not stop trying to reach Lucius, no matter what I told her. And by the time I might have reached her side and stopped her, the Aurors were on the field, and I had to leave to save my own life.” His voice had a trace amount of regret, but it vanished in the next moment. “I was explaining to you what kind of life that was.
“I awed those Death Eaters who found me alive, such as Mulciber, and used them to control the ones who had survived the war but had no idea that I lived, such as the Carrows. I used them for as long as their innate-tendencies-did not outweigh their usefulness, and then directed the Ministry towards them by means of subtle hints that looked more like carelessness on the parts of the brewers.” He nodded at Harry. “Mulciber was a different class of servant from them, however, which is why I did not at first interfere, and even lent him my own magic, when he tried to rid the world of you. Alas, it cost him his own life instead.” And this time he looked at Draco.
Draco lifted his chin and refused to look away. Severus wasn’t the only one who had changed, or the only one who had found a life that he wished to live.
Severus was the one who turned away after a moment, clearing his throat and focusing on Harry.
“Indirectly,” he said, “I am the one who has led to many of your best arrests over the years, by being in such a position that I could give you those I no longer had a use for.”
“And how many innocent people did you hurt?” Harry asked, in a voice that rose like a growl from the middle of his chest. “How many suffered from your potions and the depredations of the Death Eaters before you decided to rein them in? Fenrir Greyback has infected at least three dozen people in the past four years. You don’t care for what they suffer, do you?”
“And who has cared for what I suffered?” Severus asked, barely moving his lips. “I was telling you only why it might not be in your best interests to remove me from my position, Potter, since I am the one who can funnel new arrests towards you, and since I control what would otherwise be a dangerously disorganized form of business. I shall leave you alone from now on, now that I know you are important to Draco. You need not worry for your safety at the end of my wand, nor fear that any of my servants will hunt you other than in the ordinary course of battle.”
The offer sounded fair to Draco, actually, especially since it had the potential to make Harry look better as he made more and more arrests. He tightened his arm around Harry’s shoulders, silently urging him to take it, and hoping he would understand.
“I can’t let you do that,” Harry said softly.
That was the only warning Draco had before his mate twisted away from him and began to fire curses.
*
Snape was prepared, of course, and managed to conjure a Shield Charm in the right place to deflect Harry’s first curse. But Harry had planned out the battle in his head as he listened to Snape’s rambling excuses, and he used the spells in the exact sequence he’d chosen, an unpredictable one that didn’t resemble any he’d regularly used in battle for the past few years. If Snape had been watching him and knew his usual tactics, Harry planned to deprive him of that advantage.
Therefore, Snape was taken by surprise when Harry flung several burning curses at the same weak point of the Shield Charm, fracturing it, and making one of them dive through to him at last, on the wand hand. His wand went flying, and Harry swiftly scooped it up with a Summoning Charm. He saw Snape’s eyes narrow slightly, and knew he was probably reaching for a potion next, or attempting some wandless magic. Harry didn’t plan to give him the time.
He flung a Body-Bind with the same will behind it that he used to resist the Imperius Curse. The Body-Bind settled on top of Snape, tying up both his body and his magic. He collapsed to the ground, his arms wrapped around himself, his eyes rolling back in his head. Harry cast a Stunner at him just to make sure. He could be feigning unconsciousness.
He stood in silence for a moment, or at least as much silence as his own rapid heartbeat and breathing could offer. Then he heard Draco shifting his weight, and he came a bit nearer. Harry turned to face him, expecting a lecture for having dared to fight his own battle.
“Harry,” Draco said, his voice as soft as a falling feather. “Let him go.”
“No,” Harry retorted, without even having to think about it.
Draco reached out and ran the back of his hand over Harry’s cheek. Harry ducked the lulling gesture, insulted. Did Draco think he really turned into pudding every time he was touched?
“Harry,” Draco whispered. “For the sake of what he once meant to me. For the sake of what he’s done for the Ministry in the past. For-“
“You heard him,” Harry snarled. “He didn’t care what harm his minions did as long as he could discard them when he wanted to. It’s the exact same philosophy Voldemort had.”
Draco stepped back as if Harry had struck him, and spent a short moment looking as if he were counting under his breath to keep from getting angry. Harry stooped over Snape again and looked at him carefully, his wand still at the ready in his hand. The man’s eyes were rolled back in his head, but with as many tricks as Snape had pulled in the past to convince Voldemort he was still on his side, that meant nothing, either.
“I suppose this is the self-righteousness that Weasley scolded you for?” Draco said at last.
“I suppose it is,” said Harry, and Levitated Snape into the air. He knew there would be no hiding it when he took him into the Ministry; Kingsley might well sack him. But he would rather be sacked than let someone like Snape, someone who was probably responsible for half the Potions distribution the Ministry dealt with if what he said was true, remain free.
“You don’t care at all, do you?” Draco asked.
“About his excuses? No.” Harry paused and looked at him. “About what you said? Yes. But only because you said it.”
Draco now looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to be pleased or irritated. “Things will be easier when we bond,” he breathed, in what sounded like the first part of a mantra.
“Not less argumentative,” said Harry. “Never that.” He cocked his head at Draco. “Assuming that Kingsley lets me out of the Auror equivalent of detention within the next few days, I’d like to see you again. I enjoyed the conversation-well, the argument that we had before Snape appeared.”
Draco opened his mouth, then shook his head and gave Harry a resigned smile. “All right, yes. Come to dinner at the Manor, if you don’t mind entering a place where you can’t Apparate out easily.” He lifted his head, as though he were prepared for Harry to refuse.
“Now that your wife isn’t there to give me dirty looks, I accept,” said Harry, with a mocking little bow of his head, and then Apparated away with Snape in tow. He was pleased that Draco, Slytherin ethics though he might have, at least understood what Harry valued-and why he valued it.
Summary: Draco isn't best pleased to discover he's a Veela at twenty-four...especially since both he and his mate, Harry Potter, are married. Harry suggets a compromise that might work, if everyone agrees. But the compromise is fragile, and stands the chance of only making everything monumentally worse than before.
Rating: NC-17/M+.
Warnings: Half-Blood Prince spoilers, het, slash, sex (both het and slash), language, violence, creature!fic (Veela), infidelity, WiP.
Pairings: Draco/Harry, Draco/Pansy, Harry/Ginny.
Chapter Eleven-November
Somehow Harry wasn't surprised that, when Snape finally contacted him, he did it in such a way that the letter slipped past the Aurors entirely.
Kingsley had indeed partnered him with a trainee new to the Hermes Corps, a young woman named Melinda Jones, one of Hestia's cousins. She watched him with a bit too much hero-worship in her eyes at times, but she was a genuinely talented witch who would probably do much better once she stopped thinking Harry could do anything.
One morning in early November, she came back from fetching herself tea with a frown on her face. "I found this in my teacup between one moment and the next," she said, holding out a letter towards him. "I only looked away for a second, I would swear it. It's addressed to you."
"Did you check it for curses and hexes?" Harry asked, making no motion to take the envelope himself.
Melinda blushed and hastily pulled out her wand, running it over the envelope as she muttered several common detection charms. The letter flashed on none of them, but, as Harry told her, that didn't necessarily mean anything. He taught her the incantation and wand-movement for another of the charms, one practiced by higher-level Aurors, and her naturally pink cheeks turned almost red with gratitude.
None of the charms revealed a spell, however, and Harry took the letter away at last and slit it open with his thumb.
"Should you tell Kingsley that you received a letter, sir?" Melinda ventured then. She considered the regulations binding Harry to paperwork for the next few months silly, Harry knew, but she also heard daily lectures from other Aurors on the importance of sticking to Ministry rules so those they arrested had no ground to challenge them. Harry had a plausible lie ready, luckily.
"I shouldn't be telling you this," he whispered, "but this is from my wife, Ginny. She said that she might write to me. And if I tell someone else, well--" He grimaced and shook his head as if it didn't bear thinking about. "It'll be all over the Daily Prophet at once, and the best thing they'd accuse me of is having an affair with two people so I can be doubly unfaithful."
Melinda's nostrils flared. She had views, apparently, on the Prophet and their never-ending permutations of the story that surrounded Harry and Draco. "You don't need to worry, then," she said earnestly. "As long as it's not dangerous. I'd never intrude on your privacy, Harry." She still flushed sometimes when she said his name.
Harry gave her a noncommittal smile and turned away so that she couldn't accidentally read the letter over his shoulder as she went back to her desk.
November 4th, 2005
Potter:
You have been a nuisance to me since the day you were born. I suppose I should have realized that your irritation value would not diminish simply because we have assumed rather different positions in life.
I require a meeting with you. You have made several mistaken assumptions with regards to me, and it appears that I have done the same, once, with you. If you are important to the man I swore a vow to Narcissa Malfoy to protect, then I do not wish to clash with you.
Do me the courtesy of meeting me on the corner of your street at seven this evening, without any of your bodyguards about. I am sure that someone so skilled in mischief as you are can manage this plausibly. I will be dressed as a Muggle. I give you a Wizard's Oath to show you no violence.
Severus Snape.
Harry stared at the letter for several long moments. His first impulse was to disregard it altogether, even though the sharp, spiky handwriting across the paper was the same sort he had seen on his Potions homework, and in nightmares, for years. His second was to send the Aurors after Snape, but he had no idea where the man was right now, and if he waited until this evening and tried it, he was certain Snape would see them coming.
His third impulse was simply to go alone--and then he was brought up short by the promise he'd made to Draco not to take insane risks anymore.
Hissing through his teeth, Harry leaned back. "Melinda?" he asked.
She jumped and looked at him over her shoulder; she must have been deeply interested in the report she was writing. Harry himself had missed out on the 'painfully earnest about paperwork' stage of a trainee Auror's usual development. "Yes, sir?" she asked, and then blushed. "I mean, Harry."
"Ginny wants to meet with me tonight," Harry said quietly. "Trouble is, I'll have two of the nosier Aurors with me, and I can't trust that they won't talk about it to someone, which will result in it getting back to the Prophet. I don't know how to shrug off the bodyguards and go, though."
"I don't think you should shrug off the bodyguards," Melinda said hesitantly.
"It would only be for a short time," Harry said. He was sure of that, at least. He and Snape had always been so volatile in each other's presence that their conversation, assuming they managed to have one, couldn't last much longer than the battles. "Could you help me? I know a glamour that could make you look like me for a short period, just two hours or so. And if you remained with my guards until then and then Apparated out, I would be the one who got into trouble. They'd think I was acting out, trying to get away from them. No one would suspect you."
"I--I don't know…"
"Please?" Harry looked at her with a begging expression on his face, and could see her intense flattery that the Savior of the Wizarding World would ask her for a favor. "It would be easy enough to slip away from them. I could go to the loo, and you could meet me there and come out with the glamour on."
"I couldn't talk like you, though," Melinda faltered. "And I wouldn't know anything they expected me to know."
"An auditory glamour for the voice," Harry said glibly. "And, well, you wouldn't have to say much. The Aurors on duty tonight know I don't like them, and they'll expect you to brood and not talk. I could key you into my wards so that you could pass easily into my house."
"But what if something happens?" Melinda insisted. "What if someone attacks you while you're in the street? I don't want you dead."
"I won't be alone," Harry assured her, and grimaced wryly. "Much as I don't like it, Draco Malfoy has insisted on being with me every time I meet my wife from now on. So he'll be there. I give you my word of honor on that. I'm sure you've heard how he killed Mulciber. I feel sorry for anyone who attacks me, frankly."
"I--" Melinda drummed her fingers against her desk for a moment. Harry thought that was more from the fact that she didn't know how to feel about the situation with both Draco and Ginny than because she was really deciding against helping him. "What if someone suspects me before the two hours are up?"
"Then you send me a Patronus with the message," Harry said. "You know how to do that, don't you?" Melinda nodded; the communication technique the Order of the Phoenix had once used had come out during the war, and was now a standard part of Auror training. "What's your Patronus?"
"A seal."
Harry nodded. "Then just send it to me, and I'll know that you had to leave, and I have to return as soon as I can."
Melinda smiled wryly, a more knowing expression than Harry had seen so far entering her eyes. "You're very persistent when you want something, aren't you?"
"I am," Harry said, unable to sound apologetic about it. "And you can even watch me write my letter to Draco, if you'd like."
"All right," Melinda gave in.
"Thank you," Harry said, leaning across the distance between their desks to squeeze her hand impulsively.
"Just see I don't regret it," she said, but the smile had a tinge of excitement to it now, and it occurred to Harry that having her as a partner wouldn't be so bad. At least she didn't show a tendency to blame him as Ralph had. Ralph would have gone along with this only if he knew it had Ginny's approval.
Well, Harry didn't intend to do this without Draco's approval. He turned hastily to pick up parchment and quill. It was not nearly long enough before he had to meet Snape, and he doubted Draco would appreciate being summoned by the pull of the claiming mark when Harry entered danger.
*
Draco thought about raging when he received Harry’s letter, but quite apart from the fact that there were photographers for the Daily Prophet just waiting to snap a picture of him leaving in a fury and he’d frighten the house-elves, he knew it would do no good. The only choice he had now was whether he would go with Harry and perhaps manage to settle accounts with Severus, or whether he’d forbid Harry to go and end up settling them much more unpleasantly at some other time.
He wrote a curt letter back, telling Harry he’d be on Grimmauld Place an hour beforehand, under a Disillusionment Charm, and that if Harry even thought of going to the meeting place without him, he’d Apparate straight to Kingsley Shacklebolt and tell him all about Harry’s little escapade. It was the best he could do. That, and try not to go mad for the rest of the day while he paced in rooms far apart from the front windows and scowled into mirrors.
He dressed carefully enough, in pale blue dress robes, as if he were going to one of the parties he’d refused all invitations to since throwing Pansy out of the house. He made sure to keep a cold and utterly disdainful expression on his face as he strode down the walk outside the Manor. He hoped the photographers took some pictures of him looking like this. Perhaps they would make it to the front of the paper, and those who might think of bothering him about being a Veela, or troubling Harry, would think again.
He just barely remembered to cast the Disillusionment Charm before he Disapparated, and drew his wand as he landed. His head jerked slightly to the side, and he realized he could feel Harry’s presence. Also under a Disillusionment Charm, he thought, a few paces to his right.
Draco edged in that direction, watching out for danger. There was nothing as yet. Grimmauld Place looked like what it was, a dirty and poor street in the heart of Muggle London. Draco curled his lip. He would insist that Harry come to live in the Manor when they were finally bonded. It was out of the question that he be separated from his mate by more than a few hundred feet in the first few months, and he was certainly not coming to live here.
He reached out and felt cloth under his hand, just a moment before he also felt the tip of a wand pressing against his throat. Draco grimaced and whispered, “Harry. It’s me.” The final stages of the Transformation should have made his mate subconsciously familiar with his scent, but a fine thing that would be if Harry struck out defensively.
“Oh,” Harry whispered, and then reached out, drawing Draco close to him. This near, Draco could make out the blur that concealed Harry’s movements, though nothing of his facial features. His scent was stronger, soothing Draco’s instincts and making him draw in a few deep whiffs of it, so as to reconcile himself to the danger his mate probably stood in. “Why did you insist on coming an hour early?” Harry added.
“Why do you think?” Draco muttered at him. He cast a nonverbal spell that should alert him of the presence of anything human on the street, and how much magic those humans had. It only made three dull sparks glow in his mind, though, which would mean there were three Muggles nearby. “In case Severus set a trap for you, of course, or in case you decided to sneak off and meet him early.”
“I said I wouldn’t do that anymore.” Harry’s voice was full of indignation. Draco wished he could see his eyes. That would help him determine whether Harry simply looked angry, or vaguely guilty, the way he did when he was planning something he’d been caught at. “My death is your death. I know that, Draco. I wouldn’t go into danger without you.”
“But apparently staying out of it is too simple for you,” Draco muttered, and leaned against Harry’s shoulder.
Harry made an exasperated sound at him, and then turned his head so that his breath was falling on Draco’s ear. “Snape’s letter said that he’d explain himself, and he swore a Wizard’s Oath to use no violence.”
“Wizard’s Oaths only matter when they’re in words, and face-to-face,” Draco muttered. “They’re not binding when they’re written on paper.”
A long pause, and then Harry said, “Oh.”
“Yes, oh.” Draco leaned back against the house behind him and clucked into Harry’s ear. Let him shiver as Draco’s breath assaulted his ears-and from the way he squeaked in startlement, it was working. “We have really got to get you some wizarding education. I don’t know how you’ve lived in this world for twenty-five years and not learned the simplest thing about it.”
“Being raised as a Muggle for ten of those years had something to do with that,” Harry said in an acid tone.
“But you knew you could use magic,” Draco pointed out in a long-suffering tone. He liked playing martyr, if only because Harry always reacted so beautifully. “You said the Muggles were relatives of yours. They must have told you about being a wizard, what it meant-the family history. Not the Potters’, of course, but your mother’s history.”
Harry snorted, and when he spoke next, after a pause, his voice held the bitterness of truths denied a long, long time. “They never said a word about it, Draco. They hated magic. Loathed it. Wanted to pretend it didn’t exist. I spent my first year with my parents, of course, but I couldn’t remember it. Then,” he added, with a catch in his voice. “I only learned about it when my Hogwarts letters started coming, and then I was too busy trying to keep up in school and save the world from Voldemort to do much research about obscure laws or whether Wizard’s Oaths are worth the paper they’re printed on.”
Draco blinked into nothingness. It was his turn to say, “Oh,” now, probably, but he didn’t want to sound as inarticulate as Harry had. Instead, he found and gripped his mate’s hand in silence.
He thought for a moment about what he could say. An apology would be out of place, but a heartfelt conversation now might drive Harry away from the sharing that Draco wanted to encourage in him. They hadn’t managed yet to talk about anything personal without exploding into an argument. Perhaps this had to be the same way, at least on the surface.
He made his voice as snotty as he could while still keeping it soft enough that they couldn’t be overheard from a few feet away. “Well, I’ll have you know that I understood what it was to be a wizard from the time I was two.”
He could picture the astonishment on Harry’s face; the shoulder leaning against his stiffened, and the hand in his cramped as though Harry were about to pull it free. And then Draco heard him snort under his breath, and felt the crisp rustle of hair against his temple as Harry shook his head.
“Yes, you understood what it was to be a wizard,” Harry mocked lightly. “That would be why nothing ever took you by surprise in Hogwarts, and you managed to show me up without trying each and every time.”
Draco hissed, but had to smile. They had barely talked over their pasts, either, even Dumbledore’s death or Draco’s time in the Inquisitorial Squad. If they were ever going to understand each other, they had to discuss it and move beyond it somehow, and this was as good a way as any.
“I understood the important things,” he said. “How to address someone at a state dinner, for example.”
“Because there were ever so many of those at Hogwarts.”
“At least I knew other wizarding schools existed before Durmstrang and Beauxbatons appeared in fourth year. I even speak a little French myself, you know.”
“What do you know how to say?” Harry shoved his shoulder. “’Please help me, my hair is mussed and I’ve broken a nail?’”
Draco made a mock outraged sound. “I’ll have you know that I can ask for seven different kinds of complete meals and thank the servers politely each time.”
“That’s why I prefer plain food, and no house-elves. No one to thank.”
“You’ll need to get used to having house-elves again.” Draco leaned over to kiss the side of his neck. “It shouldn’t be hard, since you were oblivious to their existence for most of your career at Hogwarts. That was the real reason Granger’s SPEW never took off, wasn’t it? The house-elves ceased to exist for you as soon as they left your presence?”
For a long moment, Harry’s shoulder tensed again, and Draco wondered if making a joke about Granger had taken him beyond the pale.
And then Harry laughed, a long, gusting, tension-releasing laugh, as if he had been waiting for the day when he could look back at his memories of his best friends and joke about them with someone. He would never have dared that with the little Weasley, Draco thought with an odd sense of pride. Yet another sign of how much better he was for Harry.
“Meanwhile,” Harry said, with an odd sort of relish, “your mother’s side of the family is the one that hung up house-elf heads on the walls of their home. I suppose they didn’t want to chance forgetting about them.”
Draco shoved him in turn. “Take that back,” he said. “The Blacks did nothing so horrid.” He thought that was true, at least. He couldn’t be entirely sure, since he did remember the empty places where hunting trophies might have hung in Harry’s house, and he had only ever visited it once before that, when he was too young to remember anything concrete.
“I will not,” Harry said. “Had to haul the lot of them away. The nastiest damn job I ever did, not counting hunting the Ravenclaw Hor-“ He paused for a long moment, then finished, “Well, this object of Voldemort’s.”
“I did not need to know there was a Ravenclaw whorehouse, Potter,” Draco said, with a fastidious shudder, wise enough to know that now was not the time to pursue whatever Harry had nearly revealed.
Harry laughed again, and returned to the conversation. Draco followed patiently, soaking in what tidbits Harry revealed and letting bits of his own past slip through his fingers, drifting into Harry’s ears and mind, where he knew they would be well taken care of.
Perhaps someday they would both feel comfortable enough to talk openly about their pasts. For now, this would have to do. And given how much Harry seemed to enjoy it, Draco would have said it more than did.
*
Harry knew it the moment Snape showed up. He could feel a sudden increase of magic on the street, and the wards around Grimmauld Place, still keyed to him even though he’d also tied Melinda into them, suddenly spluttered and flared. He narrowed his eyes and stood straight, his hand curling inside Draco’s to alert him. Draco stopped dead in the midst of another reminiscence and looked around, then moved his free hand in a pattern that Harry knew meant he was drawing his wand.
“Where?” Draco breathed into his ear. Harry took a moment to enjoy the pure sensual pleasure of Draco’s breath sliding across his skin, as out of place as it might have been to do that.
“Corner, just like he promised,” Harry whispered back, and began to move down the street. He could see the figure standing on the corner now, the tall man he would probably have taken for just another Muggle if he hadn’t felt the powerful magic. Snape glanced quickly in several directions, then consulted his wrist and sighed, apparently just irritated that someone he had come to meet hadn’t met him.
Harry cast a quick charm to divert the eyes of Muggles elsewhere, and then removed his Disillusionment Charm. Then he murmured to Draco, “Maybe you should stay hidden.”
“Fuck that,” Draco snarled softly back at him. “We don’t want to make him nervous by thinking you didn’t keep your word not to bring the Aurors. Besides, he might have guessed that I’d come anyway.” And he made himself visible before Harry could argue further.
Snape’s eyes focused on them and narrowed. Harry lifted his head and met that dark gaze coolly. Once, it would have intimidated him; Snape seemed to have seen so much of life, and when Harry met his gaze, he was reminded that he was only a very little boy, after all.
Now, though, he’d been in the Aurors for four years, and he could see the way Snape adjusted his posture and used his height and the narrow thinness of his face to stare someone else down. He was still formidable, not least for the magic crackling through his body and his wand, but he was not invincible. Harry told himself to remember that, and to keep a firm grip on his wand as he halted five feet away from Snape.
“Potions master Snape,” he said, since the man had never gone back to teaching and therefore didn’t deserve the title of “Professor” any longer.
“Draco,” Snape said, and nodded to Draco first, simply to insult Harry, he knew. He held his peace. Such a tactic would have done damage to Ralph or any other of several Aurors, but Harry knew his target. Only then did he turn, and gave Harry that same coolly dismissive look that he’d used whenever they met during the war, touched with disappointment, as if he had expected better of Harry even when he should not have. “Mr. Potter.”
Harry said, “You believe I’ve made several mistaken assumptions about you. Correct them now.”
Snape gave a short sound that was not a laugh. “Demanding, are you not, Mr. Potter? It would be worth your while to be polite.”
“Shove your politeness, Severus,” Draco said, in a voice that made Harry glance at him in surprise. He found that Draco seemed several inches taller than usual and more present, the way he had when Harry had first seen him after the Transformation, but this was meant to impress rather than allure. “You tried to kill him the last time you met. Tell us what you came to tell us, and let us leave.” He put an arm around Harry’s shoulder and moved closer to him, radiating protectiveness. His free hand never let his wand go, and that wand was pointed straight at Snape, Harry saw.
He felt a brief wash of surprise, which pleasure immediately followed. He had someone who would watch his back-not just in the way of an Auror partner, the way Ralph had chosen, but because he was Harry. Because of friendship, and love.
When Harry faced Snape again, he found that his fear had vanished entirely. He raised an eyebrow and chilled his tone. “You heard him. Severus.”
*
Draco studied Severus in silence. He had lines on his face that hadn’t been there when Draco had seen him last, but since it had been seven years, that wasn’t surprising. On the other hand, Severus lacked the tension that had infected him during every Death Eater meeting, and even while he brewed when Draco was still under his guardianship. He simply watched in every direction and pointed his wand at every suspicious sound, which was practically normal in someone who had been Head of Slytherin House.
You let me think you were dead. You tried to make me think my mother was alive the last time we met. You tried to kill my mate.
So many things that he wanted to say to the bastard, but probably none of them would win them answers. So Draco waited as best he could, and let Severus ponder what he wanted to say.
When he finally answered, his voice dragged, as if he had to choose his words more carefully around Draco than he would have done around Harry alone. “After the battle at Azkaban, I considered it worth my while to disappear for a time. I left enough evidence to make it seem as if I were dead so that I would not be pursued.”
He lifted his head, and that gesture was familiar enough to Draco; he had seen it time and time again when Severus felt himself ill-used, even if the suspicion that fell on him had been entirely self-incurred. Draco clenched his teeth against the memories. No matter what Severus had done for him in the past, his allegiances had changed enough that Draco no longer felt comfortable trusting him.
“I had served masters for more than twenty years,” Severus said patiently. “I wished to have the freedom that so many children around me took for granted and used to so little effect, and the only way that I could have it was by convincing both the Dark Lord and the Order of the Phoenix that I was dead. So I did. I established myself not long after the war was won as a supplier of rare potions to those who requested them from me.”
“Including illegal potions, I suppose.” Harry was trying to sound bored, but Draco could feel a fine tremor traveling up his arm from the point where he held his mate. Harry, of course, as an Auror, would feel he had the right to be outraged about this. Draco was not so sure he did.
“Many of the potions the Ministry has made illegal have no side-effects that harm more than the wizard who takes them,” said Severus, and curled his lip haughtily enough that Draco felt tempted to tell him it would freeze that way. “So, yes, I made them.
“And then I made contact with Death Eaters who had done the same thing I had, and faked death to escape being hunted by the Ministry.” He gave a sharp laugh. “You have no idea how many of us came away alive from that field where you were convinced the best of us were destroyed, Potter.”
“But not my mother,” Draco said, undercutting Severus’s mockery as effectively as he could.
Severus cocked his head and regarded him for a long moment. His voice was gentler when he replied; of course, Draco had always suspected that Severus had something of a soft spot for his mother.
“No,” he agreed. “She would not stop trying to reach Lucius, no matter what I told her. And by the time I might have reached her side and stopped her, the Aurors were on the field, and I had to leave to save my own life.” His voice had a trace amount of regret, but it vanished in the next moment. “I was explaining to you what kind of life that was.
“I awed those Death Eaters who found me alive, such as Mulciber, and used them to control the ones who had survived the war but had no idea that I lived, such as the Carrows. I used them for as long as their innate-tendencies-did not outweigh their usefulness, and then directed the Ministry towards them by means of subtle hints that looked more like carelessness on the parts of the brewers.” He nodded at Harry. “Mulciber was a different class of servant from them, however, which is why I did not at first interfere, and even lent him my own magic, when he tried to rid the world of you. Alas, it cost him his own life instead.” And this time he looked at Draco.
Draco lifted his chin and refused to look away. Severus wasn’t the only one who had changed, or the only one who had found a life that he wished to live.
Severus was the one who turned away after a moment, clearing his throat and focusing on Harry.
“Indirectly,” he said, “I am the one who has led to many of your best arrests over the years, by being in such a position that I could give you those I no longer had a use for.”
“And how many innocent people did you hurt?” Harry asked, in a voice that rose like a growl from the middle of his chest. “How many suffered from your potions and the depredations of the Death Eaters before you decided to rein them in? Fenrir Greyback has infected at least three dozen people in the past four years. You don’t care for what they suffer, do you?”
“And who has cared for what I suffered?” Severus asked, barely moving his lips. “I was telling you only why it might not be in your best interests to remove me from my position, Potter, since I am the one who can funnel new arrests towards you, and since I control what would otherwise be a dangerously disorganized form of business. I shall leave you alone from now on, now that I know you are important to Draco. You need not worry for your safety at the end of my wand, nor fear that any of my servants will hunt you other than in the ordinary course of battle.”
The offer sounded fair to Draco, actually, especially since it had the potential to make Harry look better as he made more and more arrests. He tightened his arm around Harry’s shoulders, silently urging him to take it, and hoping he would understand.
“I can’t let you do that,” Harry said softly.
That was the only warning Draco had before his mate twisted away from him and began to fire curses.
*
Snape was prepared, of course, and managed to conjure a Shield Charm in the right place to deflect Harry’s first curse. But Harry had planned out the battle in his head as he listened to Snape’s rambling excuses, and he used the spells in the exact sequence he’d chosen, an unpredictable one that didn’t resemble any he’d regularly used in battle for the past few years. If Snape had been watching him and knew his usual tactics, Harry planned to deprive him of that advantage.
Therefore, Snape was taken by surprise when Harry flung several burning curses at the same weak point of the Shield Charm, fracturing it, and making one of them dive through to him at last, on the wand hand. His wand went flying, and Harry swiftly scooped it up with a Summoning Charm. He saw Snape’s eyes narrow slightly, and knew he was probably reaching for a potion next, or attempting some wandless magic. Harry didn’t plan to give him the time.
He flung a Body-Bind with the same will behind it that he used to resist the Imperius Curse. The Body-Bind settled on top of Snape, tying up both his body and his magic. He collapsed to the ground, his arms wrapped around himself, his eyes rolling back in his head. Harry cast a Stunner at him just to make sure. He could be feigning unconsciousness.
He stood in silence for a moment, or at least as much silence as his own rapid heartbeat and breathing could offer. Then he heard Draco shifting his weight, and he came a bit nearer. Harry turned to face him, expecting a lecture for having dared to fight his own battle.
“Harry,” Draco said, his voice as soft as a falling feather. “Let him go.”
“No,” Harry retorted, without even having to think about it.
Draco reached out and ran the back of his hand over Harry’s cheek. Harry ducked the lulling gesture, insulted. Did Draco think he really turned into pudding every time he was touched?
“Harry,” Draco whispered. “For the sake of what he once meant to me. For the sake of what he’s done for the Ministry in the past. For-“
“You heard him,” Harry snarled. “He didn’t care what harm his minions did as long as he could discard them when he wanted to. It’s the exact same philosophy Voldemort had.”
Draco stepped back as if Harry had struck him, and spent a short moment looking as if he were counting under his breath to keep from getting angry. Harry stooped over Snape again and looked at him carefully, his wand still at the ready in his hand. The man’s eyes were rolled back in his head, but with as many tricks as Snape had pulled in the past to convince Voldemort he was still on his side, that meant nothing, either.
“I suppose this is the self-righteousness that Weasley scolded you for?” Draco said at last.
“I suppose it is,” said Harry, and Levitated Snape into the air. He knew there would be no hiding it when he took him into the Ministry; Kingsley might well sack him. But he would rather be sacked than let someone like Snape, someone who was probably responsible for half the Potions distribution the Ministry dealt with if what he said was true, remain free.
“You don’t care at all, do you?” Draco asked.
“About his excuses? No.” Harry paused and looked at him. “About what you said? Yes. But only because you said it.”
Draco now looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to be pleased or irritated. “Things will be easier when we bond,” he breathed, in what sounded like the first part of a mantra.
“Not less argumentative,” said Harry. “Never that.” He cocked his head at Draco. “Assuming that Kingsley lets me out of the Auror equivalent of detention within the next few days, I’d like to see you again. I enjoyed the conversation-well, the argument that we had before Snape appeared.”
Draco opened his mouth, then shook his head and gave Harry a resigned smile. “All right, yes. Come to dinner at the Manor, if you don’t mind entering a place where you can’t Apparate out easily.” He lifted his head, as though he were prepared for Harry to refuse.
“Now that your wife isn’t there to give me dirty looks, I accept,” said Harry, with a mocking little bow of his head, and then Apparated away with Snape in tow. He was pleased that Draco, Slytherin ethics though he might have, at least understood what Harry valued-and why he valued it.