and the walls came tumbling down...
Finally finished my exceedingly, unforgivably late entry to viggorlijah's Marry Harry Challenge. This will be going up on my actual web site when I am home again ETA: have updated website; the chosen is here(am currently in NYC), but for now, I give you
The Chosen
Numbers never lied.
Vincent learned that at an early age, learned that numbers were the only things that didn't lie. Mothers lied, and fathers home from Azkaban, they lied a lot, and friends certainly lied. Numbers, though. Numbers never called him names, or sold him out to tall, cold men. Numbers were exactly what they claimed to be, and rather than manipulate him, Vincent could manipulate them. Numbers were cold, hard fact.
Numbers were telling him to marry Harry Potter.
Well, to be accurate (Vincent placed great store in accuracy), Hermione Granger was telling him to marry Potter. But she was using Arithmancy to do it, and having gotten his only N.E.W.T. O in Arithmancy, Vincent was inclined to believe her. Unfortunately.
"You're crazy," Potter said. At Potter's side, Weasley was turning red. "I'm not marrying Crabbe."
"You have to." Granger reached for Potter. He jerked away from her, and she bit her lip. "Harry, please, I know. I know it's not what you want, but it's for your own safety."
"Do you know how sick I am of people making me do things I hate for my safety?"
Vincent thought dimly that he should probably be insulted, but on the other hand he wasn't exactly dying to marry Potter, himself... he ran a finger along the calculations, double-checking Granger's math.
"You have to have family for Gentiane to work, Harry, and Crabbe's got no family at all, and--"
"And I'm supposed to grab him up just cause his dad ditched him?"
Next to Vincent, Professor Snape bristled. "You're supposed to thank your lucky stars there's someone in this world willing to put up with your--"
"Shut up," Potter said. The Weasley girl whispered something to Potter, and he slumped. "Fine. Whatever."
Vincent watched him storm out. He was always storming somewhere or other. That, or talking furiously with the younger Weasleys and Granger. Occasionally he went out on missions and came back grey-faced and silent, and Professor Lupin would follow him upstairs. Those times, everyone tip-toed around the house until Professor Lupin returned. Everyone except Professor Snape, who sneered at their horrified faces, and Vincent, who didn't really give a shit.
Most of his life, Vincent had revolved around Draco Malfoy. Draco could be an arse, and was perfectly willing to sell Vincent out to save his hide, and teased Vincent and Goyle mercilessly. On the other hand, Draco protected him from the other Slytherins, from the professors who treated Slytherins like dirt, from people like Potter and Weasley and Granger and Vincent's dad. Since he had been revealed as a traitor and disowned, since the night Snape threw more spells than Vincent had ever seen, furiously working through a crowd of Death Eaters to reach him and Portkey them to safety, he hadn't known quite what to do without a pale, pointed face to follow. He had no money, no name, no missions, only Arithmetical problems to work over, day after day, and Potter to ignore. With the exception of the times Potter forced him to notice, the times Potter stomped all over and swiped at his eyes and shouted angrily at people who cared about him, it had worked pretty well. The rest of the time, however, he had wanted to strangle Potter more than ever.
Professor Snape rested a hand on his shoulder, disrupting his multiplication--not that the numbers were doing anything different this time around. He had always found that comforting before. "You are not required to do anything you find distasteful."
"Like it's a hardship for him" Weasley muttered. Vincent ignored him.
"You owe Potter's father a life-debt."
Professor Snape nodded slowly.
"I owe you one."
"I would not have you--"
"A life for a life," Vincent said. For all his difficulty with words, these had been ingrained on him from an early age. All purebloods knew the Life Oath, and what it meant. "As you have gifted mine, I repay yours. Flesh for flesh, blood for blood, heart for heart."
"Vincent." When Vincent was young, when his mother still lived, she put him to sleep at night with stories of Roman sorcerers. Every night, she would speak of great deeds, great generals, and tell him "Vincent means to conquer. You are my victory, Vincent. You are my greatest deed." Then his dad returned from Azkaban, his dad who was nothing like what his mother had promised, his dad who called him only "boy". His dad who kicked his mother out, and Vincent heard no more stories. Since then he had been called Mr. Crabbe by teachers, Crabbe by those who knew him well. Even Goyle had called him Crabbe. Even Draco. "Vincent."
He held his wand out. Professor Snape tightened his fingers on Vincent's shoulder, then he too drew his wand, and pressed the tip to Vincent's.
"In the name of the House of Snape," he said, "your oath is hereby claimed. A life for a life. As I have gifted yours, you repay mine. Flesh for flesh, blood for blood, heart for heart. I absolve you from debt."
* * *
Potter found him sitting in the library. He had never really liked the library at Hogwarts, found it overwhelming, all those books, all those words, but the one at Grimmauld's Place was stripped of most texts, was quiet, was a perfect place to examine once again the numbers Granger had handed him to see if they stacked up.
"Remus says Ron says you took on Snape's life-debt."
Vincent grunted.
"Why?"
He closed his eyes, not knowing how to explain his reasons to Potter, who had always made his best mates miserable. To Gryffindors, at all, for that matter. Slytherins would have understood. Draco would have. Goyle.
"You're not. You don't even like me," Potter said.
Vincent put the scroll Granger gave him aside, and picked up some calculations he'd been working on that might indicate where of a few locations the Dark Lord would strike next. They had spies, but the spies brought conflicting information (none of the spies was as good as Professor Snape had been, Professor Snape who sacrificed how many lives to rescue Vincent's? How many muggles and muggleborns would die because Vincent lived, because Professor Snape had saved him?) and of course the Dark Lord would have spies of his own. Vincent was one of an unknown number of Arithmancers who checked over the information and reported only to Dumbledore.
Potter, on the other side of the table, scowled. "At least pay attention when I'm talking to you!"
Vincent grunted again, but he put down his quill and looked up.
"You don't like me," Potter repeated.
"No."
"Then why would you want to take Snape's life-debt? Why would you marry me?"
Vincent didn't know what to tell him--there were so many answers, and few of them had anything to do with Potter. He took the life-debt because he owed Professor Snape so many lives, because Professor Snape was the closest thing he had left to--to anyone, really. Because Professor Snape was his Head of House. Because wizarding custom demanded it of him, and even if he was as bad as a muggleborn now, no family or line or anything, he still could retain what little honor was left him. He had that, at least. He was not ignorant, whatever the Gryffindors said. He would marry Potter because Gentiane was necessary, because they needed Potter to defeat the Dark Lord. Because he woke up at night drenched in sweat, still hearing a high, thin voice say, "crucio." Because he had sacrificed everything, and nothing was left except the knowledge that he had been right.
He told Potter, "I have to."
Potter huffed and slammed out of the room. Vincent returned to his numbers, which were constant, and silent, and did what he wanted them to.
* * *
There wasn't a wedding ceremony, not a proper one, as Vincent had no dowry and Potter had no breeding.
Once, Vincent would have worn formal white robes with his family history embroidered in gold, his father's side on the left, his mother's on the right, and so on, divided down his arms and sides and bleeding into the hemline round his toes. He would have come to a groom (or bride, if the need for an Heir outweighed his preferences) with galleons and furniture and the portraits of his ancestors, with land and perhaps even the family estate, with the wands of the dead for his children to try, and the Crabbe Book of Names for his children to learn. As it was, he wore the black robes from his last Death Eater meeting, carefully mended. They were only semi-formal, at best, but they were the most expensive thing he owned, and the only clothes that were truly his, rather than a gift from Professor Snape or Dumbledore.
Potter, who had as much money as Vincent had lost, wore plain black as well, though whether through anger or ignorance, Vincent didn't know.
They stood in a circle of twelve, the minimum required for the wedding spells to take. It should have been in a sacred grove, or among the Standing Stones. The Forbidden Forest would have done in a pinch. It should have had majesty and grandeur and all the words Vincent couldn't think of, except that he was going to be married in the parlor of 12 Grimmauld Place, where the only paintings in the room belonged to a family neither party knew by blood.
Dumbledore rested a hand on Potter's shoulder. "Harry James Potter, son of James and of the muggleborn Lily, grandson on the wizard side of Nigel and Cassiopeia, child in the same line of magic unto the ages past, you are here today to take unto your family, your house and your name the wizard Vincent Carolingus, born of Vincent and Nimue, but present today as the son of no house. Do you enter this union in full knowledge of this, with the understanding that your children will likewise bear the stigma of one house, and your grandchildren and all your descendants into the ages ahead will trace one line to nothingness?"
"Yeah."
"Vincent Carolingus, born of Vincent and Nimue, but present today as the son of no house, you are here today to take on the family, the house, and the name of Harry James Potter, son of James and of the muggleborn Lily, grandson on the wizard side of Nigel and Cassiopeia, child in the same line of magic unto the ages past. Do you enter this union in full knowledge of this, with the understanding that your children will likewise be blessed with his house, and your grandchildren and all your descendants into the ages ahead will trace one line to the ages passed?"
Vincent said, "I do."
"Kneel then, and bare your wand arm."
Vincent rolled his sleeve up. The carpet had been rolled back so as not to be stained. Instead, one of Weasley's brothers had brought in dirt; after the rites were finished it would be used for performing Gentiane. Dumbledore carefully slit Vincent's wrist, then Potter's, and pressed their arms together.
"I bind you in blood and marriage, in house and family and name. Who were two, now are one. Who were separate, now are joined." He tied their hands together with a golden ribbon, then touched each of their heads with his wand. "Harry James Potter, son of James and the muggleborn Lily. Vincent Carolingus Potter, son of Vincent and Nimue. What you have undertaken today, so it shall be."
The ribbon glowed briefly, split in two, and twirled round their fingers. The other members of the circle echoed, "so shall it be," and the ribbons became rings. It was over. Potter tugged his hand free, and they both rose.
"Right." The oldest Weasley boy opened a glass jar, calling the bloodstained dirt. " I'll get started on the opening charms immediately. Severus, how long will it take to brew the base potion?"
"Two hours." Professor Snape eyed the circle. Granger and Weasley and the Weasley girl had surrounded P--Harry. He was Harry now. Vincent was--"Mr. Potter, you will assist in preparing ingredients."
Harry wheeled around, red-rimmed eyes flashing. "Shove off, Snape."
"Ah ah ah." Professor Snape shook the phial three times before pocketing it. "As much as it might behoove you to assist in the rites we have prepared solely for your own protection, Potter, I have long since given up hope of your displaying any such maturity or gratitude. I assure you, it was not to you that I spoke."
The room went silent as everyone looked at Vincent. He slouched a little--trying to minimize his bulk was ridiculous, of course, but he had never enjoyed being the center of attention. Not that he had much practice at it.
"Yes, Professor," he said.
"Thank you, Mr. Potter." Snape stalked from the room, robes swirling behind him. Like he had done since he was 11 years old, Vincent followed.
* * *
Chopping and slicing materials was soothing, a balm to his nerves. He found a rhythm in the careful peeling of pods, the swift knife movements, the clack of metal and wood.
Professor Snape, at his side, peered into the cauldron and lowered the fire by two wand waves. "Vincent."
Vincent looked up. "Sir?"
"Watch what you're doing, boy! If you bleed on the asphodel, it will ruin it."
"Sorry, sir."
Professor Snape eyed him for a minute, then returned to the cauldron, stirring three times. "Have you ever." He paused, which threw Vincent for a loop--as far as he could remember, Professor Snape had never been at a loss for words. "Tonight is your wedding night."
Vincent grunted. A night with Harry Potter.
"Has anyone explained to you the. mechanics. of two men?"
The knife slipped.
In the ensuing chaos of wrapping his hand and moving ingredients and disposing of the asphodel before it could stain the other ingredients and Professor Snape calling him "idiot boy" twenty-seven times, Vincent nearly convinced himself he'd managed to duck the conversation. He had known he was bent since he was 12, since the Christmas break where he woke up one evening in the closet, with Goyle, both of them half naked. If Goyle had noticed he was hard, he didn't say anything--probably from a lack of understanding, and horror at his own state and their situation, but Vincent preferred to attribute it to kindness. In the years which followed, as his eye turned more and more towards the curve of Blaise's ass, to Adrian's arms, to the pale hollow of Draco's throat, Vincent had handled the situation pretty much the way he handled everything--by keeping his mouth shut. They talked a lot about sex in the locker rooms after he joined the Quidditch team, but it was always sex with girls, always about how Chang's robes rode up when she dove for the Snitch, or the way Johnson's breasts moved when she and Bell passed the Quaffle, or even just some girl in the stands who looked particularly shaggable. Vincent had decided after awhile that he was simply the only queer he knew, and even when his baby fat melted and his muscles stood out and his growth spurt hit, leaving him 6'4" and decently strong, he was nothing to write home about in the looks department. He'd known that since he was a child and overheard his mother's sister comment, "my, he does takes after the Crabbes, Nimue, doesn't he?" So if he wanted to learn about sex that actually interested him, he knew he'd have to bite the bullet and find a book (which hadn't been so bad if he ignored the text and looked at the diagrams...)
Never, though, in his wildest imaginings, when he was despairing of ever finding a bloke to exchange even handjobs with, when he was 16, had no idea what he was doing, and snuck out of the house on broomstick to fly to Knockturn Alley and pay someone to pop his cherry, never had he thought of asking Professor Snape for advice.
He scrubbed the wooden cutting board carefully, working soap into all the cracks, while Professor Snape prepared a new batch of asphodel.
"You never answered my question."
Vincent reddened.
"You are unfamiliar, then--"
"No, sir."
"I see." Professor Snape wiped his knife clean and laid it on the table. Vincent studiously eyed the cutting block.
"I will only tell you this, then. You have had a great many things stripped from your grasp this year, and have been thrust, whether at your own doing or from necessity, into situations that cannot be appealing to any sane man. You are a Potter now, Vincent, for good or ill. Your husband was raised by ignorant Muggles, but I am certain that by tonight one of his friends will have explained to him certain facts that purebloods take for granted. Whatever he may say, however he may treat you, remember always that you are a Slytherin. When all other houses are taken from you, you will always be one of Salazar's chosen."
Vincent thought of the night he was found out, the night that he was called before the Dark Lord, before Mr. Malfoy and Mr. Goyle and his own father, before Draco and Goyle and Professor Snape and the Lestranges, all three of them, before Wormtail and a whole host of others he did not know by name. He stepped forward, into the circle of faceless white, and the strength of the Dark Lord's crucio sent him to his knees faster even than Professor Moody's, six years earlier.
"You are a grave disappointment, Crabbe," the Dark Lord said. Vincent looked up into those red eyes that always seem to skate the surface of his mind. "I expected more from you. Your father has hardly been my most useful servant, of course--"
Somewhere behind him, his father whimpered, "please, My Lord, he's not my son, I disown him, I have always been loyal to you, always, Great Merciful One--"
"Silence! As for you, boy, you have far outstripped your father's foolishness. He, at least, knew the price of deceiving me--me, the greatest wizard in the world."
Vincent thought, you're not, but he knew better than to say it. Perhaps the Dark Lord could see it in his face, though, for he whispered once more, crucio, and laughed as Vincent screamed.
And then, then the pain had stopped and everyone was shouting and a flurry of different colors was moving towards him, and the colors parted and it was Professor Snape, holding in his free hand a handkerchief, and even as Vincent reached for it he heard them casting furiously, avada kedavra, stupefy, petrificus totalus, crucio, and then his stomach hooked him into blankness.
He woke in the morning, weak and nameless, and since then had been entombed in this house, this house that hissed at him and called him traitor and in his dreams the portraits sneering at him whispered crucio, always, crucio. He had been only Vincent, and nothing more.
Now he was Vincent Potter. And also, perhaps, something of his own.
"Yes, sir," he said.
Professor Snape smiled briefly. "Good."
* * *
Before he left the brewery, Professor Snape gave him a phial of oil. Vincent had reddened yet again, but accepted it without comment. He took it from his pocket at night, placed it beside the bed, so as not to accidentally break it while he stripped.
"Look," Potter said. He sat on the right side of the bed, carefully folding and unfolding the earpieces on his glasses.
"I bottom," Vincent said. Harry dropped his glasses. "You mind?"
"What? I mean. No," Harry said. He reached for the phial. "I, um."
"Nox."
It was easier, in the dark. Vincent could look at the pillow, the carved wooden headboard, and pretend it was someone else's fingers on his skin, someone else's pants in his ear, someone else's hard, delicate hand and touch and it was necessary, to seal the marriage spell, and at least Harry brought him off, even if it was after he came himself, even if he wasn't quite Draco.
He was Vincent's husband.
They were married.
He was Vincent Carolingus Potter, and his husband muttered cleaning spells and rolled over and Vincent slid beneath the covers and they didn't touch.
In the morning he sat on his side, the left side because Slytherins were always left, or maybe that was giving Harry's too much credit (too little?), and buttoned his shirt.
"So that's it?" Harry asked.
Vincent looked over--the first time he'd looked at Harry since the whispered nox, or really, since they were eleven and Harry laughed at him. "Give me your hands."
"What?"
"You're right-handed," Vincent said. He took Harry's hands (Harry's hands on skin, hot despite the oil, hot and small and calloused and tightfastmoremoremore) in his, and moved the wedding ring from the right hand to the left.
"Oh." Harry flushed. "Right," he said, mimicking the actions on Vincent. "Right. Are all wedding rings ribbons?"
"No." Vincent's mother's parents had been married using braided Unicorn hair. Students from Durmstrang were rumored to use human bones, though Vincent didn't quite believe it, the rumor having been passed on by Pansy's sister Peony's best friend's cousin. Draco's parents, like most purebloods, had used real gold ribbons, from galleons melted and pulled and reformed. He and Harry, of course, had had to use transfigured ribbons, as there hadn't been time for shopping. It didn't matter, really--the spell of ring formation was the same, whatever was used.
Harry was staring at him. "Well?" he asked expectantly.
"What?"
"I--Nothing."
Vincent muttered a cleaning charm. It wasn't very good, in that the dirt lifted but the wrinkles remained. It would have to do, until he could find a house elf or Mrs. Weasley, who took pity on him every week or so and cleaned his things when she thought he wasn't around. Many things had to do now. In any event, they were clean enough for breakfast. He glanced at Harry, who was still half-nude. "Hungry?"
"Not really." Harry waited till he had reached the door, then blurted, "we had sex last night."
"Yeah," Vincent said.
"How can you just--"
"'M hungry."
"They'll look at us," Harry said bitterly. "They'll stare, and they'll. They'll think things, and say, and you don't even like me, and it's just, this whole thing, I don't--"
"I'm hungry," Vincent said again.
"Right," Harry said. "Crabbe and food, of course."
"Potter."
"What?"
Vincent started to tell him he wasn't a Crabbe anymore, that he hadn't been a Crabbe in weeks, that he was a Potter, that he was Vincent.
He went to breakfast instead.
* * *
It was another week until Gentiane was ready, another week of fucking in the dark and baleful looks during the day. The sex wasn't strictly necessary, of course, the marriage spell having already been consummated, but Harry wasn't a bad lay, if a somewhat impersonal one. Vincent wasn't about to turn him down, glares and silent treatment and all.
Another week of fucking, and another week of not understanding Harry and no one talking to him but Professors and Aurors and people who were not his friends and he missed Goyle and Draco like crazy.
Professor Snape was around on occasion, but classes had picked up again after Winter Hols and he hardly had time for a handshake or nod before Apparating back to Hogsmeade.
He made sure to be there on Sunday, though, when Harry and Vincent cut their hands again and blood flowed into blood and Professor Dumbledore drizzled the potion over their bleeding palms. "Gentianus Ignito," and their skin glowed briefly red before the potion faded.
Harry pulled away immediately--Harry never touched Vincent longer than necessary. The potion tingled in Vincent's hand, in his arm. He felt it in his chest, in his legs, his feet, his head. For a moment he thought he couldn't breathe, then Professor Snape slid a hand under his arm and pulled him to his feet, and the world tilted rightways again.
"Thank you, sir."
Professor Snape's eyes flickered to Harry, who was getting his hand bound by Granger and the Weasley girl, and was, as always, ignoring everyone. "Vincent," he said.
Vincent shrugged. It was over, now, no use going about making a fuss.
"You may have dizzy spells," Professor Snape said. "or tire easily. Lupin should be able to help you in the short term. I've given Molly Weasley a list of several nutrition-rich supplements to pour into your food, as well. You'll need at least eight hours of complete rest a night--"
"Professor."
Professor Snape sighed. "I should never have let you do this." He looked tired, Vincent realized, and. Well, a forty-year-old wizard could hardly look old, but there were grey streaks in his hair, and bags under his eyes, and something else--worry? fear?
"I'm twenty, sir."
"Ah, yes, of course. Ancient indeed."
"I just meant--" he didn't know what to say. That wasn't quite true; he knew what to say, he just didn't know how to say it. He could never find the right words for anything. He settled for, "I knew about the side effects before I agreed."
"And that changes the facts how, Mr. Potter?"
Mr. Potter. He was angry, then.
"It just. Sir. It couldn't be Granger, you know it couldn't."
"Miss Granger's qualifications or lack thereof have no bearing on the fact that it should not have been you."
"I owed--"
"Nothing. You owed Potter nothing, and you certainly can't believe I would have forced you to throw your future away!" Professor Snape had lowered his voice to the angry whisper that he reserved for his House when they had most disgraced themselves or him. He had acted honorably, he knew it. Professor Snape had no right to, to yell at him and scold him like a schoolboy and. Vincent swallowed.
"I had to," he said.
"You stupid, idiot boy. 'You had to.' Do you even realize what is you've done?"
"Leave him alone!"
They both looked up, startled. Everyone in the room was staring at them. Vincent had forgotten other people were even there, that anyone was there except him and Professor Snape and, as Draco had put it after the fake-Dementor incident in third year, whatever had crawled up Professor Snape's ass and died there.
Harry advanced, his hands clenched into fists at his side. "Leave him alone," he repeated.
"I don't remember asking your opinion, Potter."
"You asked when you said whatever poisonous rot made my husband look like--like he'd rather be dead." Harry sounded furious. He stopped at Vincent's side. Beneath the bandage (Vincent's own cut had stopped bleeding, but remained a pale pink line next to the week-old scar from the wedding) his hand had a reddish cast. The pull of Gentiane.
"I'm fine," he said. Professor Snape and Harry ignored him.
"You've hardly spoken a word to your 'husband', you impertinent--"
"--I'm not your potions student, Snape, don't you dare--"
"--I'll do whatever I like, without your--"
"--Fuck you--"
"I'm fine," Vincent said.
"--reckless fool--"
"--slimy git--"
"--just like your godfa--"
"--you watch your tongue, Snivellus--"
"Harry!" Granger, Professor Lupin, and Professor Dumbledore sounded shocked, horrified. Whatever was going on went way over Vincent's head, but he felt the brief flicker of Gentiane nonetheless. He touched Harry's arm.
"Professor Snape didn't do anything wrong."
"Oh," Harry said. He cheeks were a dull red. "Of course not. Take his side. Greasy bastard." He threw a final glare over his shoulder at Professor Snape as he stalked away. Part of it caught Vincent.
"I have a class."
"It's Sunday."
"Remedial," Professor Snape said. He brushed past Vincent before he had a chance to say goodbye. Professor Dumbledore followed.
"Right," Vincent said, though he didn't know what was right at all. He rubbed his hand absent-mindedly. "I guess I'll do some problems, then."
"Are you sure you're strong enough, dear?"
He didn't look Granger in the face as he told Mrs. Weasley, "Yes ma'am."
"If you need anything," Professor Lupin said.
Professor Lupin had spent half the school-year tutoring Vincent in Defense, once. When they faced the boggart, and Vincent's dad appeared, and Vincent's riddikulus removed his hands, Professor Lupin held him after class, and gave him tea, and let him cry without saying anything. Of course, Professor Lupin was also a werewolf, and had run loose on the grounds without taking Wolfsbane, and everyone knew what werewolves did, when they were wild. Vincent tried to think of the tea, though, and Draco saying, "Lupin's alright, really, if you ignore his robes." With the exception of the Dark Lord and Mr. Malfoy, Draco was a pretty good judge.
"I'm fine," he said instead, and the third time must have been the charm, because he left for the library, and they let him go.
* * *
People started talking to him, after that. Not Harry, of course, because Harry was a prissy little prick who seemed to think Vincent owed him allegiance when he hadn't done anything but tease and hound Vincent for seven years, but the others. Granger, who asked him to call her Hermione. Mrs. Weasley. Professor Lupin.
One afternoon when he'd just finished some particularly complex calculations and was preparing a letter for Professor Dumbledore, Weasley found him.
"Crab--er. Look, I don't know what to call you."
Vincent grunted. He didn't really care what Weasley called him, as long as he got everything down in his note before he forgot it all. He'd already burnt the parchment with the calculations on it, a standard precaution lately.
"Well, Vincent, then. I just wanted to say. Look, Hermione talked to me, right? And I, er. Thanks. For Harry." The last bit was a rushed mumble, which was nice because then Vincent could pretend to ignore it, ignore Weasley.
The fact was, of course, he wasn't doing any of it for Harry, except in the sense that Harry needed to live so the Dark Lord could die. But it wasn't for him, specifically. It was never about him.
Weasley shifted his weight from foot to foot.
"Alright?" he said.
Vincent nodded, and carefully wrote out"...leads to the conclusion the attack will occur between 23:00 Friday and 08:00 Saturday. In all likelihood 8 Death Eaters will be involved, though only 1 from Inner Circle (45% chance a second Inner Circle member will join; after that probability drops to 17%)..."
"Right," Weasley said.
"...V.C.P." He tapped the parchment twice with his wand and the letters flew about the page, rearranging themselves into meaningless combinations. Each member of the Order had his own Code Spell, a method Professor Dumbledore had worked out during the Grindlewald War. He alone (and the member of the Order, obviously) knew the counter-key. Though in theory if an Arithmancer intercepted a message he could work his way through all combinations of likely code spells and their most common counter-keys (taking into account, if possible, the personalities of both the encoder and the intended target,) the reality was that the information would cease to be useful in far less time than it would take to cycle through all possibilities. Which was why it was far more useful to intercept a person, and simply break him.
If Professor Snape had not saved Vincent, he would have killed himself, a vow all of the Order's spies took before being sent on field missions. His 8-year molar had been replaced with a false tooth containing poison; he was fortunate not to have bitten down too hard during the agony of crucio
"I need to send a message myself," Weasley said. "Want me to mail that?"
Vincent looked up from imprinting his Phoenix seal on the wax. Weasley looked eager, bright-eyed. Probably he just wanted to do something (he and Harry both chafed under confinement). He was Harry's friend, after all, his closest mate. He'd just thanked Vincent for taking the life-debt, for Harry. There was no doubt that Harry himself would trust him, implicitly, as once Draco would have--but that was it exactly. Vincent was a walking example of traitorous friends. Vincent, whose left arm still ached from the Mark on occasion, whose right palm tingled from Gentiane.
He tucked the scroll carefully into his sleeve; Professor Snape could take it after the meeting that night. "No."
Weasley scowled. "Just trying to help."
"I don't need your help."
"Slytherin."
Vincent shrugged on his way out the door. "Yeah," he said. "I am."
* * *
It was dark, so dark he could see only the white masks surrounding him and the red eyes of his Lord, the eyes that skimmed his mind, that whispered harsh, dark things he shuddered away from.
His father whimpered in the background, "Please my Lord, I disown him, he's no son of mine."
Mr. Malfoy raised his wand, and Vincent screamed, knowing what was coming, and the Lestranges lifted their arms, and Draco, and Goyle, and Mr. Goyle, and with the Dark Lord they murmured, "crucio."
Professor Snape shouted something, pushed at the circle but could not break through, and his spells came slower and MacNair pulled out an axe and the ground turned red beneath Vincent's feet and he could not hear Professor Snape any longer, could hear nothing except his own voice loud in his ears and crucio, crucio, crucio.
He woke panting, one hand still trembling with the aftershocks of his dream. Harry handed him a glass of water, and when he spilt half, steadied it and helped him drink.
"Thanks," he said when he could talk again.
"Was it Vol--him?"
Vincent nodded.
Harry rubbed his arm, where a Dark Mark would be if he had one. "I felt it," he said, "a little."
"Gentiane." Harry would always feel shadows when Vincent hurt, so he'd know if the spell--if Vincent--failed.
"Chocolate?" Harry asked.
"What," Vincent said. "You Professor Lupin now?"
"Tea, then?"
"I'm fine."
"You woke screaming not five minutes ago," Harry said. "And your arm still aches."
"I'm fine," Vincent said.
"Fine. Whatever. Nox."
Vincent rolled onto his side, facing away from Harry, but quickly discovered the weight hurt his arm too much. He flipped onto his back, instead, and tried not to think about Draco and Goyle, and crucio, and Professor Snape's blood at his feet.
Next to him, Harry shifted uncomfortably.
"You asleep?"
"Yes."
Vincent snorted. "I'm not that thick," he said.
"I was only trying to help." Harry's voice was filled with injury.
"You don't talk about your dreams."
"I don't get them. Not anymore."
Vincent sat up. "What?"
"I learned Occlumency," Harry said.
"Yes, but--"
"He was. The scar was a bond. He sent me. Things." Harry's voice was suddenly harsher. Vincent wanted to see his face, but couldn't quite bring himself to whisper lumos, not when Harry sounded like that. "So I learned to stop it. Haven't dreamt since then."
"People without dreams go crazy, Harry. That's why Dreamless Sleep is so controlled, everyone knows that."
"Fine," Harry said. "So you keep screaming from crucio each night, and I'll wake up with phantom aches in my non-existent Dark Mark, and that'll keep us both sane, how's that? Or, oh, I know, I'll just let my guard down, shall I, and Voldemort can waltz in and plant visions of Hermione dying, or Ron, and I'll rush off and get us all killed. Or perhaps he'll just settle for causing me EXCRUCIATING PAIN IN MY BLOODY SCAR!"
"Do be quiet," said a voice above Vincent's head. "Some of us are trying to sleep, boy."
"LUMOS!" Vincent blinked at the empty portrait frame, which now sported a wizard in a sleeping cap glaring down at the both of them. "Who the hell--"
"Phineas Nigellus," Harry said.
"The headmaster?"
"Why d'you think I turn the lights off 'fore sex every night?"
Actually, he'd thought it was because Harry didn't want to look at him, not because there was a voyeur in the room who had to be kept from looking at either of them. Though it did explain why the picture frame stayed over their bed even though Vincent had never--until now--seen someone occupy it.
"I am here," Phineas said haughtily, "only at the request of Albus Dumbledore. I assure you I have much better things to do with my time than watch an ungrateful boy have sex with his idiotic lump of a husband."
"Fine." Harry waved his hand. "Good-bye. Unless there was something Dumbledore wanted you to tell us?"
"No," Phineas said. He stalked from the frame, sleeping cap fluttering behind him.
"Peeping Tom," Vincent muttered.
Harry glanced at him. "I wonder. How many spies you think Voldemort has?"
"Least one," Vincent said, "or Professor Dumbledore wouldn't be so worried." He though of the report he'd given Snape, of Ron Weasley's angry expression, of Wormtail and glowing red eyes that always seemed to know too much. "Maybe more," he said.
Harry nodded.
* * *
The Crabbe women had always been strong.
Not the ones like his mother, the Crabbes by marriage and gifted blood, but those whose births were recorded in the Book of Names were fierce; crafty; determined; pureblood women who knew what that meant; wealthy women who learned of duty at their mothers' breasts. Witches, they were called by muggles of old, not for their magic, but their power.
When Vincent was young and his mother died, his grandmother found him in the closet, silent and stone-faced among her silks and satins. For a moment he'd thought she would embrace him, Grandmother Crabbe who had helped Mother raise him, who had taught him to read, to ride, to fly, who had taken him every Friday to the Hall of Portraits and shown him the Crabbes of the past. Grandmother Crabbe, who called him, like the house-elves, "Little Master," for he was the Head of the Family with Father in jail. But Father had returned, harsh and wild, and Mother had left, and Grandmother simply held out her hand and said, "Come along, Boy. Crabbes don't hide."
Vincent had followed.
That was before Gentiane, of course, and besides he wasn't a Crabbe, but when red light flashed behind his eyelids and he slumped over a series of complex equations detailing how to increase the number of people in Headquarters without compromising the security of Fidelius, he realized that no one had told Harry that Potters had to hide.
After that, everything went blank.
* * *
"That's right, Vincent. Open your eyes."
Vincent blinked, letting his sight adjust to the brightness of the room. "What happened?"
Professor Snape, whose hand had been at Vincent's forehead, sat back in his chair. "Your idiotic fool of a husband decided to waltz into Diagon Alley this afternoon."
"I didn't know--"
Vincent started; Harry was standing in the back of the room, next to Professor Lupin. He looked desperate, or angry, or some other emotion that Vincent might have been able to read had his husband not been Harry Potter. Had he been Draco Malfoy, or Goyle, or.
"Is that supposed to excuse you, Potter? It isn't murder if you didn't know he'd die?"
Harry lunged, and it was only the tightening of Professor Lupin's fingers on his shoulder that kept him from hitting Professor Snape. "You're a rank bastard, Snape, you know that?"
"I am many things, Potter, most of them unpleasant."
"I would like to speak with my husband alone."
"Ah. And once again the world must fall on its knees to follow the whims of Harry Po--"
"It's alright, sir."
Professor Snape's hand clenched briefly into a fist, then he nodded at Vincent and swept from the room, Professor Lupin behind him. Harry closed the door with a gentle click. Vincent watched him trace the woodwork, watched him look anywhere but at Vincent.
"What have you done?"
"A life for a life."
"I don't want your life."
"It isn't your choice to make."
"Isn't--I'm the one you're dying--" Harry's voice cracked, and at last he raised his eyes to Vincent's. "I didn't think Gentiane was lethal, the Ministry would never--Hermione said pureblood families cast it all the time!"
Vincent grunted. He didn't want to explain this; he didn't want to explain anything. He wanted cold, hard numbers that didn't stare at him with green eyes and expectations and floundering, helpless rage. His grandmother had always told him, however, "if wishes were thestrals, we'd all be dead."
He said, "Pureblood families cast it to protect the heir in dangerous times. Everyone in the family gives some of their strength, their blood, and in turn all curses or injuries the heir receives are siphoned through the blood bond to the other family members.
"It isn't fatal because there are so many of them. Because the strength and protection flows from everyone."
Harry told him, "I don't want you to die."
Vincent shrugged. "A life for a life," he said.
Harry, who Vincent was beginning to realize would never truly be a wizard, not the way he and Professor Snape and even Professor Dumbledore were, stormed from the room. From over Vincent's head, Phineas Nigellus muttered, "Gryffindors." It was half the insult Vincent remembered it being, and half something else entirely.
He rolled over, ignoring the amount of effort it took him just to do that, and tried to sleep.
* * *
"Crucio."
"Crucio."
"Crucio."
Everything hurt. Everywhere he looked, white faces, featureless faces, and blank eyes. Somewhere behind him, Professor Snape was screaming. Harry. Harry was hurting, he could feel it, his palm itched beneath the pain of crucio; the scar on his hand was burning red, red, flashing red everywhere and crucio and "he's not my son."
The faces around him melted, the masks disappearing in a slide of white, white dripping down the black robes, covering them, formal white, pooling at the feet of the Death Eaters and leaving everywhere redheads and strangers and Professor Dumbledore.
"Do you enter this union?"
"I don't want you--"
He said, "A life for a life."
"Gentianus Ignito."
"I don't want you," Harry said.
Vincent's scar flared red, red, and everything came up darkness, and someone behind him whispered, "crucio."
* * *
Vincent knew he was still dreaming when he woke up to find Draco at his bedside. Although, to be fair, he had never dreamt of Draco looking tired and bruised, with eyes shadowed, with a tear in his robe near his heart. Draco never had looked like that, not even when they were nine and played with Goyle outside Malfoy Manor, after the rain. Vincent and Goyle had gotten terrifically dirty, but somehow Draco had always stayed clean. The dirtiest Vincent had even seen home, outside of Quidditch, was during third year, when a poultergeist or ghoul hurled mud at them near the Shrieking Shack. Certainly he had never torn his clothing--although Draco took money for granted in a way that Vincent had ceased to do after being disowned, he abhorred looking ragged.
"Hey," Vincent said anyway.
"He awakens," Draco said, and Vincent knew it was him.
"How did you--"
Draco sniffed. "Please," he said. "You know very well you've never had an original thought in your life."
"You're a spy."
"Was," Draco said. He brushed a piece of lint off his sleeve.
"Goyle?"
Draco looked away then, and he didn't have to tell Vincent. Vincent had always been able to read Draco well. Vincent had always known Goyle was the weak link.
"I tried," Draco said at last. "I did try, Cra--Potter. And," he said, changing the subject with asperity, "what on earth gave you that idea?"
"Professor Snape," Vincent said. Most of his ideas came from Professor Snape or Draco.
"Well, of all the. Gentiane," Draco said scornfully. "Only a complete fool would--"
"Didn't have you around."
Draco sniffed. "Clearly."
"Professor Snape owed Harry a life-debt," Vincent added. Draco, as he had known Draco would, understood.
"That's alright then," he said. "Except."
Vincent fingered the ring on his right hand, the one Mr. Malfoy had given to Draco, Goyle and him the summer after second year, when they had all spent the summer in Wiltshire. The summer after first year, Vincent had forgotten quite what his father was like, forgotten enough to show up the next year with bruises beneath his robes and a Tantalus curse. He hadn't felt full the entire school year, and though Goyle had happily eaten alongside him, matching him treat for treat, Draco had been so disgusted he'd eventually had to explain. A week before school ended, his father had sent him an owl saying he'd been invited to Malfoy Manor and he was to behave himself or else. Draco had always looked out for him like that.
"Do you have Goyle's?" he asked. Draco pulled the ring from his pocket. "I have a box, under the bed, a shoebox. Can you?"
"You're such a girl. Honestly," Draco said, pulling out the box, "I don't know why I put up with you."
Vincent grunted. Draco was always peevish when he couldn't make things better. He lifted the lid off the box, sorting through it. There was a picture of his mum. There was a school tie. His O.W.L. results, and N.E.W.T. A snapshot of him and Goyle hoisting Draco on their shoulders in sixth year, when they won the Quidditch Cup. There was a badge from fourth year, still flashing Potter stinks.
Draco grinned. "Remember how long we took making those?" He pressed a finger to the badge, and "Support Cedric Diggory -- The REAL Hogwarts Champion" appeared.
"Stayed up all night," Vincent said. "Professor McGonagall was so mad about our Transfigurations essays."
"Everyone wore them, though, even the Ravenclaws." Draco pressed the badge again. "Do you mind?" he asked, his fingers tinged by flashing green light.
Vincent shook his head.
Draco pinned the badge to his robe, carefully covering the rip. He dropped Goyle's ring in the memento box and closed the lid again. "Thanks," he said. "Can't wait to see his face at dinner."
"He'll come storming in here after, yelling and mumbling. Maybe throw some things, or kick the wall."
"You're sure it's alright?"
"I'm sure," Vincent said. "He's a better lay when he's angry."
Draco smiled. "Slytherin," he said, and for the first time since Vincent got married, it didn't sound like an insult.
* * *
Harry didn't come back that evening, didn't return to their bedroom until late, and the only reason Vincent knew he returned at all was that he didn't dream that night. Instead, Mrs. Weasley knocked on the door at six, bringing him chicken broth, spinach, and chocolate cake for pudding--"but only if you finish your supper, dear. Have to keep your strength up."
Vincent grunted. He didn't need people telling him that, people who weren't Professor Snape, anyway. When Professor Snape said it, or Draco, they meant what they said. Mrs. Weasley might mean it, but she also might mean, "can't have you dying before Harry needs you." Ron Weasley would, he knew. He thought.
Ron hadn't really looked him in the eye, not since Vincent refused to let him carry letters. Granger hadn't been around much, either.
He didn't know what Harry might mean, if he said it, but that didn't matter because Harry didn't speak, except to ask if he needed more fingers, or moan in his ear. It was odd, that he knew the sound of Harry's voice when words were beyond him, but he didn't know what Harry would sound like if he ever said, "All right, Crabbe?" like Draco had the beginning of sixth year, when they'd met at 9 and 3/4 and none of them had fathers. The way he'd sounded when he was utterly lost and alone and bewildered, and Vincent's friendship was a rock he counted on.
The way he'd sounded when Vincent was secretly betraying him, and their Lord, and both their fathers, and Draco was secretly betraying right back, and neither of them knew.
Sometimes Vincent wished Mr. Malfoy had been different, for Draco's sake, but then Draco might've been different too, and he couldn't imagine Draco being anyone but himself.
He couldn't imagine Harry being different either, though in another world he would've grown up with parents, would've maybe even known what pureblood meant, the tradition and culture and gravitas, what they owed the world, owed their magic. What a life-debt meant.
In another world Harry would've thanked him for Gentiane.
In this world, Harry was gone by the time Vincent woke, and when Professor Lupin brought him breakfast they talked in quiet tones of everything but Harry.
Every time he cleaned his plate, or felt an ache, a stubbed toe or wave of pain in his forehead that should've been his husband's, every time Professor Lupin thanked him, or Mrs. Weasley. Every time Draco sighed, or Professor Snape called him an idiot child and squeezed his hand and Vincent knew he was proud. Every time Harry turned away, avoided his gaze.
Vincent didn't care. It wasn't for Harry, anyway.
* * *
Vincent, who no longer sat up for more than half an hour at a time, told Draco, "you look tired."
"They found another spy."
"The Order?"
"The Death Eaters."
Vincent swallowed. That meant someone high up in the Order, then. Someone who could catch their members, reveal them, torture them. Someone the Dark Lord trusted to wheedle his way close to Dumbledore. The Dark Lord didn't trust many.
"Who was it?" he asked, because he of all people had a right to know now who had died.
"Marcus Flint."
Vincent remember Flint, though they hadn't played Quidditch together. He'd been sport-mad, to the exclusion of everything else. He'd failed seventh year, and only stayed an extra year because his great-grandfather insisted no heir of his would leave school without any N.E.W.T.s. Everyone in Slytherin'd expected him to play for England, after Hogwarts, but he'd gone to the Ministry instead, working under Walden MacNair, and when Julius Flint finally died, it turned out the whole estate had been entailed anyway, fortune and manor and land, and Flint disappeared for well over a year before returning to his job.
When Vincent made the Quidditch team, Flint had owled him, protect the Seeker. It was Draco, so he hadn't had to be told, but still.
"Where's his family?"
"Somewhere safe. Dumbledore isn't saying."
Vincent nodded. Dumbledore knew everything, so no one else had to. He couldn't think of anything to say, so he didn't. Draco always knew what he meant by silence, even when nobody else did.
"Keep Weasley away from your husband."
Vincent grunted. It wasn't Draco's place to say--and anyway, there wasn't much he could do, stuck in bed, when Harry only showed up after dark and disappeared again before the sun rose. Not that Harry would listen. Harry would shout and glare and possibly fuck him, though they hadn't touched since he first learned what Gentiane truly meant. Sometimes Vincent thought Harry must have touched him at night, he could feel it under his skin, a soothing of an itch he hadn't realized was there, but if it happened it was never when he was awake.
If it happened.
"It could be anyone," he said.
"No," Draco said. "It couldn't."
* * *
Something must've happened at the meeting that night, because Vincent's chest felt tight, angry, and Harry stormed into their bedroom and finally spoke to him. Yelled, really.
"--he doesn't know the first thing about Ron, or friendship or anything--"
Vincent waited for him to run out of breath. He was fairly certain there was a time that Harry hadn't slammed around, hadn't shouted everything, but he'd spent most of his school years ignoring Harry, so he wasn't sure. He could remember quite clearly when Harry rejected him, him and Draco and Goyle, and even better when his father had been imprisoned, the harsh, twisted words Harry spat his way. He remembered glares from sixth and seventh year, guttural curses in dark hallways, laughter and snide remarks and no one but Professor Snape taking points away, not that anyone ever did. He remembered the disgust on Harry's face when he arrived in the hallway, grasping a handkerchief, Professor Snape's arm around his shoulder. "He's your spy?".
He didn't remember when that disgust got turned elsewhere, and Vincent was safe, protected, but it didn't really matter because Draco was--Draco--and Vincent had always kept Harry away.
"It has to be someone important."
"Well it isn't Ron."
"Harry--"
"It isn't" Harry said, and Vincent knew reminding him his father had felt that way about Wormtail wouldn't do any good. Weasley wasn't Wormtail, and Draco wasn't Professor Snape, and it was only because Vincent was good and finding patterns that he saw parallels in his dying so Harry could live. Because Harry had taken Divination instead of Arithmancy, and everything for him was trustwork, guessing, instead of solid facts. Vincent could run probabilities 99 times, and Harry would still believe the hundredth would turn out different. Would insist that one chance out of a thousand was still a chance.
He couldn't say any of that, of course, not to Harry, so he offered, "who do you think it is?"
Harry shrugged. "Not Ron," he said again, like that was all that mattered. He added, as an afterthought, "and not Hermione."
"It isn't Draco, either," Vincent said.
"Oh--" Harry's mouth was bitter, twisted. "I suppose," he said, "that's all that matters, is it, that your precious Malfoy--"
Vincent sighed. He'd once heard Terry Boot mutter, "Rowena preserve me from the idiocy of Slytherins and the arrogance of Gryffindors." He rather fancied it was the other way around, though not to hear Professor Snape tell it.
"Come to bed," he said.
"What?"
He was silent--Harry had heard him perfectly well.
"You're not--"
"I am."
"You can't even stand anymore, what--"
"Harry," Vincent said, "shut up."
"I don't--"
"You do." He pressed his lips to Harry's, murmured, "you know you do."
"You're sick," Harry said, pushing Vincent back down against the pillows. Vincent slid a hand around his back, held him close. Reluctant to hurt him, Harry stayed, and Vincent used the opportunity to slip his hand under Harry's shirt. The small of his back was soft, and Harry shuddered once as he repeated, "Vincent, you're sick."
"Hush," Vincent said.
Harry did.
* * *
He was tired, so tired, and someone was talking anyway. Voices at the door, he could hear them, though he didn't want to open his eyes, voices tugging at his chest, at his Harry. He rubbed his palm fretfully against the bedspread, but it didn't help.
"Harry?"
His voice was barely a whisper--when had he grown so hoarse?--but Harry came over at once, rested fingers on his cheek, and the itch in his hand faded, just a little.
"It's starting."
Vincent nodded. "I know."
"I'll be careful," Harry said. He touched Vincent's scar with his own, entwined their fingers. "I'll be careful, and then it'll be over and we can lift the Gentiane. I promise."
"Don't."
Harry's eyes clouded. "Vincent," he said. "Vincent."
Vincent knew he wouldn't understand, he never had, never did, but he told him anyway, "it's all right."
"It's not--"
"Harry."
Harry kissed him then, a hot flash of tongue against his, a brief clench of fingers in his nightshirt, a brush of stubble and the coolness of Harry's glasses on his cheek, harsh breathing, desperate breathing.
"I promise," he whispered.
Vincent let him go.
* * *
His chest hurt. Hurt, and somewhere in the back of his head he heard crucio, he knew it, and laughter and Professor Lupin, who was still recovering from the full moon last night, murmured something soothing that Vincent didn't catch.
It was Gentiane, he knew it, it had to be. Because he'd spent his life looking after Draco Malfoy, looking up to Professor Snape, and Harry had been nothing, meaningless, six months back, before their vows, before their blood dripped onto imported dirt and Vincent became a wizard again. He'd never fought for Harry, never cared, and even now he was dying for something else, for honor and dignity and things he couldn't name, for Professor Snape, it wasn't for Gryffindor half-bloods, it wasn't (he sounded like Harry in his head now, bitter and petulant, Harry), it had to be the spell. He didn't care what happened after, he didn't pull the curses on himself so Harry would be safe, it wasn't anything like that.
He didn't remember sleepless nights, or panting and the touch of Harry's fingers, twisting, the hot sweet rush of pleasurepain he didn't think of it he didn't feel joy when his hand started bleeding, knowing Harry was saved this pain, he didn't think on magic brutalized or red eyes boring into him or anything but being free, at last, he wanted freedom, he wanted--"Harry!"
Someone pushed him back down on the bed, but he couldn't see who any longer, everything was dimming.
Someone was singing softly, nearly drowned out by the voices in his head.
Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop, when the wind blows, the cradle will rock, when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby--
diffindo
Rock-a-bye baby, your cradle is green--
crucio
Someone was screaming.
and Mother's a queen. Sister's a lady, and wears a gold ring--
flagrate
Rock-a-bye baby, way up on high, nevermind baby, Mother is nigh. Up to the ceiling, down to the ground, rock-a-bye baby--
crucio
"We're losing him. Poppy! Vincent, Vincent, concentrate on my voice. You remember, your third year, we practiced on the boggart, you needn't listen to them, you're safe here, Vincent--"
Some dim corner of his mind recognized Professor Lupin, knew that he sounded scared. Vincent wanted to tell him--he didn't know what, he never knew, not with words--but he couldn't speak, he couldn't breathe, he could only concentrate on Harry, Harry, and the world around him narrowed away towards nothingness and suddenly everything stopped.
"Vincent?"
"It's green," he said, "Professor, Professor it's gre--HARRY, it's GREEN!"
The ring on Vincent's right hand turned to ribbon, and slithered to the floor.
* * *
There was a knock on his door, someone the wards didn't recognize. Not a student.
"I know you're there, Professor, Dumbledore said--"
Oh for bloody--he yanked the door open. "What," he said, "could you possibly want with me now?"
Potter handed him a box. "He'd want you to have this. They all would."
Severus watched him leave, a boy grown at last to manhood, finally understanding responsibility, understanding loss. He waited until Potter had turned the corner before letting his door click shut, and lifting the lid.
"Reckless children," he said, when he was finally able to speak again. His fingers were gentle as he placed the picture frame on his mantel, as he traced the letters carefully engraved in silver, Salazar's Chosen. In the picture, Crabbe and Goyle hoisted a smiling Malfoy onto their shoulders. Draco waved the Quidditch cup. Vincent waved at Severus.
"You stupid, idiot boy." Severus pressed his fingers to the glass, then wiped it with a handkerchief. "Stupid," he whispered.
Vincent smiled, and lifted Draco higher.
The Chosen
Numbers never lied.
Vincent learned that at an early age, learned that numbers were the only things that didn't lie. Mothers lied, and fathers home from Azkaban, they lied a lot, and friends certainly lied. Numbers, though. Numbers never called him names, or sold him out to tall, cold men. Numbers were exactly what they claimed to be, and rather than manipulate him, Vincent could manipulate them. Numbers were cold, hard fact.
Numbers were telling him to marry Harry Potter.
Well, to be accurate (Vincent placed great store in accuracy), Hermione Granger was telling him to marry Potter. But she was using Arithmancy to do it, and having gotten his only N.E.W.T. O in Arithmancy, Vincent was inclined to believe her. Unfortunately.
"You're crazy," Potter said. At Potter's side, Weasley was turning red. "I'm not marrying Crabbe."
"You have to." Granger reached for Potter. He jerked away from her, and she bit her lip. "Harry, please, I know. I know it's not what you want, but it's for your own safety."
"Do you know how sick I am of people making me do things I hate for my safety?"
Vincent thought dimly that he should probably be insulted, but on the other hand he wasn't exactly dying to marry Potter, himself... he ran a finger along the calculations, double-checking Granger's math.
"You have to have family for Gentiane to work, Harry, and Crabbe's got no family at all, and--"
"And I'm supposed to grab him up just cause his dad ditched him?"
Next to Vincent, Professor Snape bristled. "You're supposed to thank your lucky stars there's someone in this world willing to put up with your--"
"Shut up," Potter said. The Weasley girl whispered something to Potter, and he slumped. "Fine. Whatever."
Vincent watched him storm out. He was always storming somewhere or other. That, or talking furiously with the younger Weasleys and Granger. Occasionally he went out on missions and came back grey-faced and silent, and Professor Lupin would follow him upstairs. Those times, everyone tip-toed around the house until Professor Lupin returned. Everyone except Professor Snape, who sneered at their horrified faces, and Vincent, who didn't really give a shit.
Most of his life, Vincent had revolved around Draco Malfoy. Draco could be an arse, and was perfectly willing to sell Vincent out to save his hide, and teased Vincent and Goyle mercilessly. On the other hand, Draco protected him from the other Slytherins, from the professors who treated Slytherins like dirt, from people like Potter and Weasley and Granger and Vincent's dad. Since he had been revealed as a traitor and disowned, since the night Snape threw more spells than Vincent had ever seen, furiously working through a crowd of Death Eaters to reach him and Portkey them to safety, he hadn't known quite what to do without a pale, pointed face to follow. He had no money, no name, no missions, only Arithmetical problems to work over, day after day, and Potter to ignore. With the exception of the times Potter forced him to notice, the times Potter stomped all over and swiped at his eyes and shouted angrily at people who cared about him, it had worked pretty well. The rest of the time, however, he had wanted to strangle Potter more than ever.
Professor Snape rested a hand on his shoulder, disrupting his multiplication--not that the numbers were doing anything different this time around. He had always found that comforting before. "You are not required to do anything you find distasteful."
"Like it's a hardship for him" Weasley muttered. Vincent ignored him.
"You owe Potter's father a life-debt."
Professor Snape nodded slowly.
"I owe you one."
"I would not have you--"
"A life for a life," Vincent said. For all his difficulty with words, these had been ingrained on him from an early age. All purebloods knew the Life Oath, and what it meant. "As you have gifted mine, I repay yours. Flesh for flesh, blood for blood, heart for heart."
"Vincent." When Vincent was young, when his mother still lived, she put him to sleep at night with stories of Roman sorcerers. Every night, she would speak of great deeds, great generals, and tell him "Vincent means to conquer. You are my victory, Vincent. You are my greatest deed." Then his dad returned from Azkaban, his dad who was nothing like what his mother had promised, his dad who called him only "boy". His dad who kicked his mother out, and Vincent heard no more stories. Since then he had been called Mr. Crabbe by teachers, Crabbe by those who knew him well. Even Goyle had called him Crabbe. Even Draco. "Vincent."
He held his wand out. Professor Snape tightened his fingers on Vincent's shoulder, then he too drew his wand, and pressed the tip to Vincent's.
"In the name of the House of Snape," he said, "your oath is hereby claimed. A life for a life. As I have gifted yours, you repay mine. Flesh for flesh, blood for blood, heart for heart. I absolve you from debt."
* * *
Potter found him sitting in the library. He had never really liked the library at Hogwarts, found it overwhelming, all those books, all those words, but the one at Grimmauld's Place was stripped of most texts, was quiet, was a perfect place to examine once again the numbers Granger had handed him to see if they stacked up.
"Remus says Ron says you took on Snape's life-debt."
Vincent grunted.
"Why?"
He closed his eyes, not knowing how to explain his reasons to Potter, who had always made his best mates miserable. To Gryffindors, at all, for that matter. Slytherins would have understood. Draco would have. Goyle.
"You're not. You don't even like me," Potter said.
Vincent put the scroll Granger gave him aside, and picked up some calculations he'd been working on that might indicate where of a few locations the Dark Lord would strike next. They had spies, but the spies brought conflicting information (none of the spies was as good as Professor Snape had been, Professor Snape who sacrificed how many lives to rescue Vincent's? How many muggles and muggleborns would die because Vincent lived, because Professor Snape had saved him?) and of course the Dark Lord would have spies of his own. Vincent was one of an unknown number of Arithmancers who checked over the information and reported only to Dumbledore.
Potter, on the other side of the table, scowled. "At least pay attention when I'm talking to you!"
Vincent grunted again, but he put down his quill and looked up.
"You don't like me," Potter repeated.
"No."
"Then why would you want to take Snape's life-debt? Why would you marry me?"
Vincent didn't know what to tell him--there were so many answers, and few of them had anything to do with Potter. He took the life-debt because he owed Professor Snape so many lives, because Professor Snape was the closest thing he had left to--to anyone, really. Because Professor Snape was his Head of House. Because wizarding custom demanded it of him, and even if he was as bad as a muggleborn now, no family or line or anything, he still could retain what little honor was left him. He had that, at least. He was not ignorant, whatever the Gryffindors said. He would marry Potter because Gentiane was necessary, because they needed Potter to defeat the Dark Lord. Because he woke up at night drenched in sweat, still hearing a high, thin voice say, "crucio." Because he had sacrificed everything, and nothing was left except the knowledge that he had been right.
He told Potter, "I have to."
Potter huffed and slammed out of the room. Vincent returned to his numbers, which were constant, and silent, and did what he wanted them to.
* * *
There wasn't a wedding ceremony, not a proper one, as Vincent had no dowry and Potter had no breeding.
Once, Vincent would have worn formal white robes with his family history embroidered in gold, his father's side on the left, his mother's on the right, and so on, divided down his arms and sides and bleeding into the hemline round his toes. He would have come to a groom (or bride, if the need for an Heir outweighed his preferences) with galleons and furniture and the portraits of his ancestors, with land and perhaps even the family estate, with the wands of the dead for his children to try, and the Crabbe Book of Names for his children to learn. As it was, he wore the black robes from his last Death Eater meeting, carefully mended. They were only semi-formal, at best, but they were the most expensive thing he owned, and the only clothes that were truly his, rather than a gift from Professor Snape or Dumbledore.
Potter, who had as much money as Vincent had lost, wore plain black as well, though whether through anger or ignorance, Vincent didn't know.
They stood in a circle of twelve, the minimum required for the wedding spells to take. It should have been in a sacred grove, or among the Standing Stones. The Forbidden Forest would have done in a pinch. It should have had majesty and grandeur and all the words Vincent couldn't think of, except that he was going to be married in the parlor of 12 Grimmauld Place, where the only paintings in the room belonged to a family neither party knew by blood.
Dumbledore rested a hand on Potter's shoulder. "Harry James Potter, son of James and of the muggleborn Lily, grandson on the wizard side of Nigel and Cassiopeia, child in the same line of magic unto the ages past, you are here today to take unto your family, your house and your name the wizard Vincent Carolingus, born of Vincent and Nimue, but present today as the son of no house. Do you enter this union in full knowledge of this, with the understanding that your children will likewise bear the stigma of one house, and your grandchildren and all your descendants into the ages ahead will trace one line to nothingness?"
"Yeah."
"Vincent Carolingus, born of Vincent and Nimue, but present today as the son of no house, you are here today to take on the family, the house, and the name of Harry James Potter, son of James and of the muggleborn Lily, grandson on the wizard side of Nigel and Cassiopeia, child in the same line of magic unto the ages past. Do you enter this union in full knowledge of this, with the understanding that your children will likewise be blessed with his house, and your grandchildren and all your descendants into the ages ahead will trace one line to the ages passed?"
Vincent said, "I do."
"Kneel then, and bare your wand arm."
Vincent rolled his sleeve up. The carpet had been rolled back so as not to be stained. Instead, one of Weasley's brothers had brought in dirt; after the rites were finished it would be used for performing Gentiane. Dumbledore carefully slit Vincent's wrist, then Potter's, and pressed their arms together.
"I bind you in blood and marriage, in house and family and name. Who were two, now are one. Who were separate, now are joined." He tied their hands together with a golden ribbon, then touched each of their heads with his wand. "Harry James Potter, son of James and the muggleborn Lily. Vincent Carolingus Potter, son of Vincent and Nimue. What you have undertaken today, so it shall be."
The ribbon glowed briefly, split in two, and twirled round their fingers. The other members of the circle echoed, "so shall it be," and the ribbons became rings. It was over. Potter tugged his hand free, and they both rose.
"Right." The oldest Weasley boy opened a glass jar, calling the bloodstained dirt. " I'll get started on the opening charms immediately. Severus, how long will it take to brew the base potion?"
"Two hours." Professor Snape eyed the circle. Granger and Weasley and the Weasley girl had surrounded P--Harry. He was Harry now. Vincent was--"Mr. Potter, you will assist in preparing ingredients."
Harry wheeled around, red-rimmed eyes flashing. "Shove off, Snape."
"Ah ah ah." Professor Snape shook the phial three times before pocketing it. "As much as it might behoove you to assist in the rites we have prepared solely for your own protection, Potter, I have long since given up hope of your displaying any such maturity or gratitude. I assure you, it was not to you that I spoke."
The room went silent as everyone looked at Vincent. He slouched a little--trying to minimize his bulk was ridiculous, of course, but he had never enjoyed being the center of attention. Not that he had much practice at it.
"Yes, Professor," he said.
"Thank you, Mr. Potter." Snape stalked from the room, robes swirling behind him. Like he had done since he was 11 years old, Vincent followed.
* * *
Chopping and slicing materials was soothing, a balm to his nerves. He found a rhythm in the careful peeling of pods, the swift knife movements, the clack of metal and wood.
Professor Snape, at his side, peered into the cauldron and lowered the fire by two wand waves. "Vincent."
Vincent looked up. "Sir?"
"Watch what you're doing, boy! If you bleed on the asphodel, it will ruin it."
"Sorry, sir."
Professor Snape eyed him for a minute, then returned to the cauldron, stirring three times. "Have you ever." He paused, which threw Vincent for a loop--as far as he could remember, Professor Snape had never been at a loss for words. "Tonight is your wedding night."
Vincent grunted. A night with Harry Potter.
"Has anyone explained to you the. mechanics. of two men?"
The knife slipped.
In the ensuing chaos of wrapping his hand and moving ingredients and disposing of the asphodel before it could stain the other ingredients and Professor Snape calling him "idiot boy" twenty-seven times, Vincent nearly convinced himself he'd managed to duck the conversation. He had known he was bent since he was 12, since the Christmas break where he woke up one evening in the closet, with Goyle, both of them half naked. If Goyle had noticed he was hard, he didn't say anything--probably from a lack of understanding, and horror at his own state and their situation, but Vincent preferred to attribute it to kindness. In the years which followed, as his eye turned more and more towards the curve of Blaise's ass, to Adrian's arms, to the pale hollow of Draco's throat, Vincent had handled the situation pretty much the way he handled everything--by keeping his mouth shut. They talked a lot about sex in the locker rooms after he joined the Quidditch team, but it was always sex with girls, always about how Chang's robes rode up when she dove for the Snitch, or the way Johnson's breasts moved when she and Bell passed the Quaffle, or even just some girl in the stands who looked particularly shaggable. Vincent had decided after awhile that he was simply the only queer he knew, and even when his baby fat melted and his muscles stood out and his growth spurt hit, leaving him 6'4" and decently strong, he was nothing to write home about in the looks department. He'd known that since he was a child and overheard his mother's sister comment, "my, he does takes after the Crabbes, Nimue, doesn't he?" So if he wanted to learn about sex that actually interested him, he knew he'd have to bite the bullet and find a book (which hadn't been so bad if he ignored the text and looked at the diagrams...)
Never, though, in his wildest imaginings, when he was despairing of ever finding a bloke to exchange even handjobs with, when he was 16, had no idea what he was doing, and snuck out of the house on broomstick to fly to Knockturn Alley and pay someone to pop his cherry, never had he thought of asking Professor Snape for advice.
He scrubbed the wooden cutting board carefully, working soap into all the cracks, while Professor Snape prepared a new batch of asphodel.
"You never answered my question."
Vincent reddened.
"You are unfamiliar, then--"
"No, sir."
"I see." Professor Snape wiped his knife clean and laid it on the table. Vincent studiously eyed the cutting block.
"I will only tell you this, then. You have had a great many things stripped from your grasp this year, and have been thrust, whether at your own doing or from necessity, into situations that cannot be appealing to any sane man. You are a Potter now, Vincent, for good or ill. Your husband was raised by ignorant Muggles, but I am certain that by tonight one of his friends will have explained to him certain facts that purebloods take for granted. Whatever he may say, however he may treat you, remember always that you are a Slytherin. When all other houses are taken from you, you will always be one of Salazar's chosen."
Vincent thought of the night he was found out, the night that he was called before the Dark Lord, before Mr. Malfoy and Mr. Goyle and his own father, before Draco and Goyle and Professor Snape and the Lestranges, all three of them, before Wormtail and a whole host of others he did not know by name. He stepped forward, into the circle of faceless white, and the strength of the Dark Lord's crucio sent him to his knees faster even than Professor Moody's, six years earlier.
"You are a grave disappointment, Crabbe," the Dark Lord said. Vincent looked up into those red eyes that always seem to skate the surface of his mind. "I expected more from you. Your father has hardly been my most useful servant, of course--"
Somewhere behind him, his father whimpered, "please, My Lord, he's not my son, I disown him, I have always been loyal to you, always, Great Merciful One--"
"Silence! As for you, boy, you have far outstripped your father's foolishness. He, at least, knew the price of deceiving me--me, the greatest wizard in the world."
Vincent thought, you're not, but he knew better than to say it. Perhaps the Dark Lord could see it in his face, though, for he whispered once more, crucio, and laughed as Vincent screamed.
And then, then the pain had stopped and everyone was shouting and a flurry of different colors was moving towards him, and the colors parted and it was Professor Snape, holding in his free hand a handkerchief, and even as Vincent reached for it he heard them casting furiously, avada kedavra, stupefy, petrificus totalus, crucio, and then his stomach hooked him into blankness.
He woke in the morning, weak and nameless, and since then had been entombed in this house, this house that hissed at him and called him traitor and in his dreams the portraits sneering at him whispered crucio, always, crucio. He had been only Vincent, and nothing more.
Now he was Vincent Potter. And also, perhaps, something of his own.
"Yes, sir," he said.
Professor Snape smiled briefly. "Good."
* * *
Before he left the brewery, Professor Snape gave him a phial of oil. Vincent had reddened yet again, but accepted it without comment. He took it from his pocket at night, placed it beside the bed, so as not to accidentally break it while he stripped.
"Look," Potter said. He sat on the right side of the bed, carefully folding and unfolding the earpieces on his glasses.
"I bottom," Vincent said. Harry dropped his glasses. "You mind?"
"What? I mean. No," Harry said. He reached for the phial. "I, um."
"Nox."
It was easier, in the dark. Vincent could look at the pillow, the carved wooden headboard, and pretend it was someone else's fingers on his skin, someone else's pants in his ear, someone else's hard, delicate hand and touch and it was necessary, to seal the marriage spell, and at least Harry brought him off, even if it was after he came himself, even if he wasn't quite Draco.
He was Vincent's husband.
They were married.
He was Vincent Carolingus Potter, and his husband muttered cleaning spells and rolled over and Vincent slid beneath the covers and they didn't touch.
In the morning he sat on his side, the left side because Slytherins were always left, or maybe that was giving Harry's too much credit (too little?), and buttoned his shirt.
"So that's it?" Harry asked.
Vincent looked over--the first time he'd looked at Harry since the whispered nox, or really, since they were eleven and Harry laughed at him. "Give me your hands."
"What?"
"You're right-handed," Vincent said. He took Harry's hands (Harry's hands on skin, hot despite the oil, hot and small and calloused and tightfastmoremoremore) in his, and moved the wedding ring from the right hand to the left.
"Oh." Harry flushed. "Right," he said, mimicking the actions on Vincent. "Right. Are all wedding rings ribbons?"
"No." Vincent's mother's parents had been married using braided Unicorn hair. Students from Durmstrang were rumored to use human bones, though Vincent didn't quite believe it, the rumor having been passed on by Pansy's sister Peony's best friend's cousin. Draco's parents, like most purebloods, had used real gold ribbons, from galleons melted and pulled and reformed. He and Harry, of course, had had to use transfigured ribbons, as there hadn't been time for shopping. It didn't matter, really--the spell of ring formation was the same, whatever was used.
Harry was staring at him. "Well?" he asked expectantly.
"What?"
"I--Nothing."
Vincent muttered a cleaning charm. It wasn't very good, in that the dirt lifted but the wrinkles remained. It would have to do, until he could find a house elf or Mrs. Weasley, who took pity on him every week or so and cleaned his things when she thought he wasn't around. Many things had to do now. In any event, they were clean enough for breakfast. He glanced at Harry, who was still half-nude. "Hungry?"
"Not really." Harry waited till he had reached the door, then blurted, "we had sex last night."
"Yeah," Vincent said.
"How can you just--"
"'M hungry."
"They'll look at us," Harry said bitterly. "They'll stare, and they'll. They'll think things, and say, and you don't even like me, and it's just, this whole thing, I don't--"
"I'm hungry," Vincent said again.
"Right," Harry said. "Crabbe and food, of course."
"Potter."
"What?"
Vincent started to tell him he wasn't a Crabbe anymore, that he hadn't been a Crabbe in weeks, that he was a Potter, that he was Vincent.
He went to breakfast instead.
* * *
It was another week until Gentiane was ready, another week of fucking in the dark and baleful looks during the day. The sex wasn't strictly necessary, of course, the marriage spell having already been consummated, but Harry wasn't a bad lay, if a somewhat impersonal one. Vincent wasn't about to turn him down, glares and silent treatment and all.
Another week of fucking, and another week of not understanding Harry and no one talking to him but Professors and Aurors and people who were not his friends and he missed Goyle and Draco like crazy.
Professor Snape was around on occasion, but classes had picked up again after Winter Hols and he hardly had time for a handshake or nod before Apparating back to Hogsmeade.
He made sure to be there on Sunday, though, when Harry and Vincent cut their hands again and blood flowed into blood and Professor Dumbledore drizzled the potion over their bleeding palms. "Gentianus Ignito," and their skin glowed briefly red before the potion faded.
Harry pulled away immediately--Harry never touched Vincent longer than necessary. The potion tingled in Vincent's hand, in his arm. He felt it in his chest, in his legs, his feet, his head. For a moment he thought he couldn't breathe, then Professor Snape slid a hand under his arm and pulled him to his feet, and the world tilted rightways again.
"Thank you, sir."
Professor Snape's eyes flickered to Harry, who was getting his hand bound by Granger and the Weasley girl, and was, as always, ignoring everyone. "Vincent," he said.
Vincent shrugged. It was over, now, no use going about making a fuss.
"You may have dizzy spells," Professor Snape said. "or tire easily. Lupin should be able to help you in the short term. I've given Molly Weasley a list of several nutrition-rich supplements to pour into your food, as well. You'll need at least eight hours of complete rest a night--"
"Professor."
Professor Snape sighed. "I should never have let you do this." He looked tired, Vincent realized, and. Well, a forty-year-old wizard could hardly look old, but there were grey streaks in his hair, and bags under his eyes, and something else--worry? fear?
"I'm twenty, sir."
"Ah, yes, of course. Ancient indeed."
"I just meant--" he didn't know what to say. That wasn't quite true; he knew what to say, he just didn't know how to say it. He could never find the right words for anything. He settled for, "I knew about the side effects before I agreed."
"And that changes the facts how, Mr. Potter?"
Mr. Potter. He was angry, then.
"It just. Sir. It couldn't be Granger, you know it couldn't."
"Miss Granger's qualifications or lack thereof have no bearing on the fact that it should not have been you."
"I owed--"
"Nothing. You owed Potter nothing, and you certainly can't believe I would have forced you to throw your future away!" Professor Snape had lowered his voice to the angry whisper that he reserved for his House when they had most disgraced themselves or him. He had acted honorably, he knew it. Professor Snape had no right to, to yell at him and scold him like a schoolboy and. Vincent swallowed.
"I had to," he said.
"You stupid, idiot boy. 'You had to.' Do you even realize what is you've done?"
"Leave him alone!"
They both looked up, startled. Everyone in the room was staring at them. Vincent had forgotten other people were even there, that anyone was there except him and Professor Snape and, as Draco had put it after the fake-Dementor incident in third year, whatever had crawled up Professor Snape's ass and died there.
Harry advanced, his hands clenched into fists at his side. "Leave him alone," he repeated.
"I don't remember asking your opinion, Potter."
"You asked when you said whatever poisonous rot made my husband look like--like he'd rather be dead." Harry sounded furious. He stopped at Vincent's side. Beneath the bandage (Vincent's own cut had stopped bleeding, but remained a pale pink line next to the week-old scar from the wedding) his hand had a reddish cast. The pull of Gentiane.
"I'm fine," he said. Professor Snape and Harry ignored him.
"You've hardly spoken a word to your 'husband', you impertinent--"
"--I'm not your potions student, Snape, don't you dare--"
"--I'll do whatever I like, without your--"
"--Fuck you--"
"I'm fine," Vincent said.
"--reckless fool--"
"--slimy git--"
"--just like your godfa--"
"--you watch your tongue, Snivellus--"
"Harry!" Granger, Professor Lupin, and Professor Dumbledore sounded shocked, horrified. Whatever was going on went way over Vincent's head, but he felt the brief flicker of Gentiane nonetheless. He touched Harry's arm.
"Professor Snape didn't do anything wrong."
"Oh," Harry said. He cheeks were a dull red. "Of course not. Take his side. Greasy bastard." He threw a final glare over his shoulder at Professor Snape as he stalked away. Part of it caught Vincent.
"I have a class."
"It's Sunday."
"Remedial," Professor Snape said. He brushed past Vincent before he had a chance to say goodbye. Professor Dumbledore followed.
"Right," Vincent said, though he didn't know what was right at all. He rubbed his hand absent-mindedly. "I guess I'll do some problems, then."
"Are you sure you're strong enough, dear?"
He didn't look Granger in the face as he told Mrs. Weasley, "Yes ma'am."
"If you need anything," Professor Lupin said.
Professor Lupin had spent half the school-year tutoring Vincent in Defense, once. When they faced the boggart, and Vincent's dad appeared, and Vincent's riddikulus removed his hands, Professor Lupin held him after class, and gave him tea, and let him cry without saying anything. Of course, Professor Lupin was also a werewolf, and had run loose on the grounds without taking Wolfsbane, and everyone knew what werewolves did, when they were wild. Vincent tried to think of the tea, though, and Draco saying, "Lupin's alright, really, if you ignore his robes." With the exception of the Dark Lord and Mr. Malfoy, Draco was a pretty good judge.
"I'm fine," he said instead, and the third time must have been the charm, because he left for the library, and they let him go.
* * *
People started talking to him, after that. Not Harry, of course, because Harry was a prissy little prick who seemed to think Vincent owed him allegiance when he hadn't done anything but tease and hound Vincent for seven years, but the others. Granger, who asked him to call her Hermione. Mrs. Weasley. Professor Lupin.
One afternoon when he'd just finished some particularly complex calculations and was preparing a letter for Professor Dumbledore, Weasley found him.
"Crab--er. Look, I don't know what to call you."
Vincent grunted. He didn't really care what Weasley called him, as long as he got everything down in his note before he forgot it all. He'd already burnt the parchment with the calculations on it, a standard precaution lately.
"Well, Vincent, then. I just wanted to say. Look, Hermione talked to me, right? And I, er. Thanks. For Harry." The last bit was a rushed mumble, which was nice because then Vincent could pretend to ignore it, ignore Weasley.
The fact was, of course, he wasn't doing any of it for Harry, except in the sense that Harry needed to live so the Dark Lord could die. But it wasn't for him, specifically. It was never about him.
Weasley shifted his weight from foot to foot.
"Alright?" he said.
Vincent nodded, and carefully wrote out"...leads to the conclusion the attack will occur between 23:00 Friday and 08:00 Saturday. In all likelihood 8 Death Eaters will be involved, though only 1 from Inner Circle (45% chance a second Inner Circle member will join; after that probability drops to 17%)..."
"Right," Weasley said.
"...V.C.P." He tapped the parchment twice with his wand and the letters flew about the page, rearranging themselves into meaningless combinations. Each member of the Order had his own Code Spell, a method Professor Dumbledore had worked out during the Grindlewald War. He alone (and the member of the Order, obviously) knew the counter-key. Though in theory if an Arithmancer intercepted a message he could work his way through all combinations of likely code spells and their most common counter-keys (taking into account, if possible, the personalities of both the encoder and the intended target,) the reality was that the information would cease to be useful in far less time than it would take to cycle through all possibilities. Which was why it was far more useful to intercept a person, and simply break him.
If Professor Snape had not saved Vincent, he would have killed himself, a vow all of the Order's spies took before being sent on field missions. His 8-year molar had been replaced with a false tooth containing poison; he was fortunate not to have bitten down too hard during the agony of crucio
"I need to send a message myself," Weasley said. "Want me to mail that?"
Vincent looked up from imprinting his Phoenix seal on the wax. Weasley looked eager, bright-eyed. Probably he just wanted to do something (he and Harry both chafed under confinement). He was Harry's friend, after all, his closest mate. He'd just thanked Vincent for taking the life-debt, for Harry. There was no doubt that Harry himself would trust him, implicitly, as once Draco would have--but that was it exactly. Vincent was a walking example of traitorous friends. Vincent, whose left arm still ached from the Mark on occasion, whose right palm tingled from Gentiane.
He tucked the scroll carefully into his sleeve; Professor Snape could take it after the meeting that night. "No."
Weasley scowled. "Just trying to help."
"I don't need your help."
"Slytherin."
Vincent shrugged on his way out the door. "Yeah," he said. "I am."
* * *
It was dark, so dark he could see only the white masks surrounding him and the red eyes of his Lord, the eyes that skimmed his mind, that whispered harsh, dark things he shuddered away from.
His father whimpered in the background, "Please my Lord, I disown him, he's no son of mine."
Mr. Malfoy raised his wand, and Vincent screamed, knowing what was coming, and the Lestranges lifted their arms, and Draco, and Goyle, and Mr. Goyle, and with the Dark Lord they murmured, "crucio."
Professor Snape shouted something, pushed at the circle but could not break through, and his spells came slower and MacNair pulled out an axe and the ground turned red beneath Vincent's feet and he could not hear Professor Snape any longer, could hear nothing except his own voice loud in his ears and crucio, crucio, crucio.
He woke panting, one hand still trembling with the aftershocks of his dream. Harry handed him a glass of water, and when he spilt half, steadied it and helped him drink.
"Thanks," he said when he could talk again.
"Was it Vol--him?"
Vincent nodded.
Harry rubbed his arm, where a Dark Mark would be if he had one. "I felt it," he said, "a little."
"Gentiane." Harry would always feel shadows when Vincent hurt, so he'd know if the spell--if Vincent--failed.
"Chocolate?" Harry asked.
"What," Vincent said. "You Professor Lupin now?"
"Tea, then?"
"I'm fine."
"You woke screaming not five minutes ago," Harry said. "And your arm still aches."
"I'm fine," Vincent said.
"Fine. Whatever. Nox."
Vincent rolled onto his side, facing away from Harry, but quickly discovered the weight hurt his arm too much. He flipped onto his back, instead, and tried not to think about Draco and Goyle, and crucio, and Professor Snape's blood at his feet.
Next to him, Harry shifted uncomfortably.
"You asleep?"
"Yes."
Vincent snorted. "I'm not that thick," he said.
"I was only trying to help." Harry's voice was filled with injury.
"You don't talk about your dreams."
"I don't get them. Not anymore."
Vincent sat up. "What?"
"I learned Occlumency," Harry said.
"Yes, but--"
"He was. The scar was a bond. He sent me. Things." Harry's voice was suddenly harsher. Vincent wanted to see his face, but couldn't quite bring himself to whisper lumos, not when Harry sounded like that. "So I learned to stop it. Haven't dreamt since then."
"People without dreams go crazy, Harry. That's why Dreamless Sleep is so controlled, everyone knows that."
"Fine," Harry said. "So you keep screaming from crucio each night, and I'll wake up with phantom aches in my non-existent Dark Mark, and that'll keep us both sane, how's that? Or, oh, I know, I'll just let my guard down, shall I, and Voldemort can waltz in and plant visions of Hermione dying, or Ron, and I'll rush off and get us all killed. Or perhaps he'll just settle for causing me EXCRUCIATING PAIN IN MY BLOODY SCAR!"
"Do be quiet," said a voice above Vincent's head. "Some of us are trying to sleep, boy."
"LUMOS!" Vincent blinked at the empty portrait frame, which now sported a wizard in a sleeping cap glaring down at the both of them. "Who the hell--"
"Phineas Nigellus," Harry said.
"The headmaster?"
"Why d'you think I turn the lights off 'fore sex every night?"
Actually, he'd thought it was because Harry didn't want to look at him, not because there was a voyeur in the room who had to be kept from looking at either of them. Though it did explain why the picture frame stayed over their bed even though Vincent had never--until now--seen someone occupy it.
"I am here," Phineas said haughtily, "only at the request of Albus Dumbledore. I assure you I have much better things to do with my time than watch an ungrateful boy have sex with his idiotic lump of a husband."
"Fine." Harry waved his hand. "Good-bye. Unless there was something Dumbledore wanted you to tell us?"
"No," Phineas said. He stalked from the frame, sleeping cap fluttering behind him.
"Peeping Tom," Vincent muttered.
Harry glanced at him. "I wonder. How many spies you think Voldemort has?"
"Least one," Vincent said, "or Professor Dumbledore wouldn't be so worried." He though of the report he'd given Snape, of Ron Weasley's angry expression, of Wormtail and glowing red eyes that always seemed to know too much. "Maybe more," he said.
Harry nodded.
* * *
The Crabbe women had always been strong.
Not the ones like his mother, the Crabbes by marriage and gifted blood, but those whose births were recorded in the Book of Names were fierce; crafty; determined; pureblood women who knew what that meant; wealthy women who learned of duty at their mothers' breasts. Witches, they were called by muggles of old, not for their magic, but their power.
When Vincent was young and his mother died, his grandmother found him in the closet, silent and stone-faced among her silks and satins. For a moment he'd thought she would embrace him, Grandmother Crabbe who had helped Mother raise him, who had taught him to read, to ride, to fly, who had taken him every Friday to the Hall of Portraits and shown him the Crabbes of the past. Grandmother Crabbe, who called him, like the house-elves, "Little Master," for he was the Head of the Family with Father in jail. But Father had returned, harsh and wild, and Mother had left, and Grandmother simply held out her hand and said, "Come along, Boy. Crabbes don't hide."
Vincent had followed.
That was before Gentiane, of course, and besides he wasn't a Crabbe, but when red light flashed behind his eyelids and he slumped over a series of complex equations detailing how to increase the number of people in Headquarters without compromising the security of Fidelius, he realized that no one had told Harry that Potters had to hide.
After that, everything went blank.
* * *
"That's right, Vincent. Open your eyes."
Vincent blinked, letting his sight adjust to the brightness of the room. "What happened?"
Professor Snape, whose hand had been at Vincent's forehead, sat back in his chair. "Your idiotic fool of a husband decided to waltz into Diagon Alley this afternoon."
"I didn't know--"
Vincent started; Harry was standing in the back of the room, next to Professor Lupin. He looked desperate, or angry, or some other emotion that Vincent might have been able to read had his husband not been Harry Potter. Had he been Draco Malfoy, or Goyle, or.
"Is that supposed to excuse you, Potter? It isn't murder if you didn't know he'd die?"
Harry lunged, and it was only the tightening of Professor Lupin's fingers on his shoulder that kept him from hitting Professor Snape. "You're a rank bastard, Snape, you know that?"
"I am many things, Potter, most of them unpleasant."
"I would like to speak with my husband alone."
"Ah. And once again the world must fall on its knees to follow the whims of Harry Po--"
"It's alright, sir."
Professor Snape's hand clenched briefly into a fist, then he nodded at Vincent and swept from the room, Professor Lupin behind him. Harry closed the door with a gentle click. Vincent watched him trace the woodwork, watched him look anywhere but at Vincent.
"What have you done?"
"A life for a life."
"I don't want your life."
"It isn't your choice to make."
"Isn't--I'm the one you're dying--" Harry's voice cracked, and at last he raised his eyes to Vincent's. "I didn't think Gentiane was lethal, the Ministry would never--Hermione said pureblood families cast it all the time!"
Vincent grunted. He didn't want to explain this; he didn't want to explain anything. He wanted cold, hard numbers that didn't stare at him with green eyes and expectations and floundering, helpless rage. His grandmother had always told him, however, "if wishes were thestrals, we'd all be dead."
He said, "Pureblood families cast it to protect the heir in dangerous times. Everyone in the family gives some of their strength, their blood, and in turn all curses or injuries the heir receives are siphoned through the blood bond to the other family members.
"It isn't fatal because there are so many of them. Because the strength and protection flows from everyone."
Harry told him, "I don't want you to die."
Vincent shrugged. "A life for a life," he said.
Harry, who Vincent was beginning to realize would never truly be a wizard, not the way he and Professor Snape and even Professor Dumbledore were, stormed from the room. From over Vincent's head, Phineas Nigellus muttered, "Gryffindors." It was half the insult Vincent remembered it being, and half something else entirely.
He rolled over, ignoring the amount of effort it took him just to do that, and tried to sleep.
* * *
"Crucio."
"Crucio."
"Crucio."
Everything hurt. Everywhere he looked, white faces, featureless faces, and blank eyes. Somewhere behind him, Professor Snape was screaming. Harry. Harry was hurting, he could feel it, his palm itched beneath the pain of crucio; the scar on his hand was burning red, red, flashing red everywhere and crucio and "he's not my son."
The faces around him melted, the masks disappearing in a slide of white, white dripping down the black robes, covering them, formal white, pooling at the feet of the Death Eaters and leaving everywhere redheads and strangers and Professor Dumbledore.
"Do you enter this union?"
"I don't want you--"
He said, "A life for a life."
"Gentianus Ignito."
"I don't want you," Harry said.
Vincent's scar flared red, red, and everything came up darkness, and someone behind him whispered, "crucio."
* * *
Vincent knew he was still dreaming when he woke up to find Draco at his bedside. Although, to be fair, he had never dreamt of Draco looking tired and bruised, with eyes shadowed, with a tear in his robe near his heart. Draco never had looked like that, not even when they were nine and played with Goyle outside Malfoy Manor, after the rain. Vincent and Goyle had gotten terrifically dirty, but somehow Draco had always stayed clean. The dirtiest Vincent had even seen home, outside of Quidditch, was during third year, when a poultergeist or ghoul hurled mud at them near the Shrieking Shack. Certainly he had never torn his clothing--although Draco took money for granted in a way that Vincent had ceased to do after being disowned, he abhorred looking ragged.
"Hey," Vincent said anyway.
"He awakens," Draco said, and Vincent knew it was him.
"How did you--"
Draco sniffed. "Please," he said. "You know very well you've never had an original thought in your life."
"You're a spy."
"Was," Draco said. He brushed a piece of lint off his sleeve.
"Goyle?"
Draco looked away then, and he didn't have to tell Vincent. Vincent had always been able to read Draco well. Vincent had always known Goyle was the weak link.
"I tried," Draco said at last. "I did try, Cra--Potter. And," he said, changing the subject with asperity, "what on earth gave you that idea?"
"Professor Snape," Vincent said. Most of his ideas came from Professor Snape or Draco.
"Well, of all the. Gentiane," Draco said scornfully. "Only a complete fool would--"
"Didn't have you around."
Draco sniffed. "Clearly."
"Professor Snape owed Harry a life-debt," Vincent added. Draco, as he had known Draco would, understood.
"That's alright then," he said. "Except."
Vincent fingered the ring on his right hand, the one Mr. Malfoy had given to Draco, Goyle and him the summer after second year, when they had all spent the summer in Wiltshire. The summer after first year, Vincent had forgotten quite what his father was like, forgotten enough to show up the next year with bruises beneath his robes and a Tantalus curse. He hadn't felt full the entire school year, and though Goyle had happily eaten alongside him, matching him treat for treat, Draco had been so disgusted he'd eventually had to explain. A week before school ended, his father had sent him an owl saying he'd been invited to Malfoy Manor and he was to behave himself or else. Draco had always looked out for him like that.
"Do you have Goyle's?" he asked. Draco pulled the ring from his pocket. "I have a box, under the bed, a shoebox. Can you?"
"You're such a girl. Honestly," Draco said, pulling out the box, "I don't know why I put up with you."
Vincent grunted. Draco was always peevish when he couldn't make things better. He lifted the lid off the box, sorting through it. There was a picture of his mum. There was a school tie. His O.W.L. results, and N.E.W.T. A snapshot of him and Goyle hoisting Draco on their shoulders in sixth year, when they won the Quidditch Cup. There was a badge from fourth year, still flashing Potter stinks.
Draco grinned. "Remember how long we took making those?" He pressed a finger to the badge, and "Support Cedric Diggory -- The REAL Hogwarts Champion" appeared.
"Stayed up all night," Vincent said. "Professor McGonagall was so mad about our Transfigurations essays."
"Everyone wore them, though, even the Ravenclaws." Draco pressed the badge again. "Do you mind?" he asked, his fingers tinged by flashing green light.
Vincent shook his head.
Draco pinned the badge to his robe, carefully covering the rip. He dropped Goyle's ring in the memento box and closed the lid again. "Thanks," he said. "Can't wait to see his face at dinner."
"He'll come storming in here after, yelling and mumbling. Maybe throw some things, or kick the wall."
"You're sure it's alright?"
"I'm sure," Vincent said. "He's a better lay when he's angry."
Draco smiled. "Slytherin," he said, and for the first time since Vincent got married, it didn't sound like an insult.
* * *
Harry didn't come back that evening, didn't return to their bedroom until late, and the only reason Vincent knew he returned at all was that he didn't dream that night. Instead, Mrs. Weasley knocked on the door at six, bringing him chicken broth, spinach, and chocolate cake for pudding--"but only if you finish your supper, dear. Have to keep your strength up."
Vincent grunted. He didn't need people telling him that, people who weren't Professor Snape, anyway. When Professor Snape said it, or Draco, they meant what they said. Mrs. Weasley might mean it, but she also might mean, "can't have you dying before Harry needs you." Ron Weasley would, he knew. He thought.
Ron hadn't really looked him in the eye, not since Vincent refused to let him carry letters. Granger hadn't been around much, either.
He didn't know what Harry might mean, if he said it, but that didn't matter because Harry didn't speak, except to ask if he needed more fingers, or moan in his ear. It was odd, that he knew the sound of Harry's voice when words were beyond him, but he didn't know what Harry would sound like if he ever said, "All right, Crabbe?" like Draco had the beginning of sixth year, when they'd met at 9 and 3/4 and none of them had fathers. The way he'd sounded when he was utterly lost and alone and bewildered, and Vincent's friendship was a rock he counted on.
The way he'd sounded when Vincent was secretly betraying him, and their Lord, and both their fathers, and Draco was secretly betraying right back, and neither of them knew.
Sometimes Vincent wished Mr. Malfoy had been different, for Draco's sake, but then Draco might've been different too, and he couldn't imagine Draco being anyone but himself.
He couldn't imagine Harry being different either, though in another world he would've grown up with parents, would've maybe even known what pureblood meant, the tradition and culture and gravitas, what they owed the world, owed their magic. What a life-debt meant.
In another world Harry would've thanked him for Gentiane.
In this world, Harry was gone by the time Vincent woke, and when Professor Lupin brought him breakfast they talked in quiet tones of everything but Harry.
Every time he cleaned his plate, or felt an ache, a stubbed toe or wave of pain in his forehead that should've been his husband's, every time Professor Lupin thanked him, or Mrs. Weasley. Every time Draco sighed, or Professor Snape called him an idiot child and squeezed his hand and Vincent knew he was proud. Every time Harry turned away, avoided his gaze.
Vincent didn't care. It wasn't for Harry, anyway.
* * *
Vincent, who no longer sat up for more than half an hour at a time, told Draco, "you look tired."
"They found another spy."
"The Order?"
"The Death Eaters."
Vincent swallowed. That meant someone high up in the Order, then. Someone who could catch their members, reveal them, torture them. Someone the Dark Lord trusted to wheedle his way close to Dumbledore. The Dark Lord didn't trust many.
"Who was it?" he asked, because he of all people had a right to know now who had died.
"Marcus Flint."
Vincent remember Flint, though they hadn't played Quidditch together. He'd been sport-mad, to the exclusion of everything else. He'd failed seventh year, and only stayed an extra year because his great-grandfather insisted no heir of his would leave school without any N.E.W.T.s. Everyone in Slytherin'd expected him to play for England, after Hogwarts, but he'd gone to the Ministry instead, working under Walden MacNair, and when Julius Flint finally died, it turned out the whole estate had been entailed anyway, fortune and manor and land, and Flint disappeared for well over a year before returning to his job.
When Vincent made the Quidditch team, Flint had owled him, protect the Seeker. It was Draco, so he hadn't had to be told, but still.
"Where's his family?"
"Somewhere safe. Dumbledore isn't saying."
Vincent nodded. Dumbledore knew everything, so no one else had to. He couldn't think of anything to say, so he didn't. Draco always knew what he meant by silence, even when nobody else did.
"Keep Weasley away from your husband."
Vincent grunted. It wasn't Draco's place to say--and anyway, there wasn't much he could do, stuck in bed, when Harry only showed up after dark and disappeared again before the sun rose. Not that Harry would listen. Harry would shout and glare and possibly fuck him, though they hadn't touched since he first learned what Gentiane truly meant. Sometimes Vincent thought Harry must have touched him at night, he could feel it under his skin, a soothing of an itch he hadn't realized was there, but if it happened it was never when he was awake.
If it happened.
"It could be anyone," he said.
"No," Draco said. "It couldn't."
* * *
Something must've happened at the meeting that night, because Vincent's chest felt tight, angry, and Harry stormed into their bedroom and finally spoke to him. Yelled, really.
"--he doesn't know the first thing about Ron, or friendship or anything--"
Vincent waited for him to run out of breath. He was fairly certain there was a time that Harry hadn't slammed around, hadn't shouted everything, but he'd spent most of his school years ignoring Harry, so he wasn't sure. He could remember quite clearly when Harry rejected him, him and Draco and Goyle, and even better when his father had been imprisoned, the harsh, twisted words Harry spat his way. He remembered glares from sixth and seventh year, guttural curses in dark hallways, laughter and snide remarks and no one but Professor Snape taking points away, not that anyone ever did. He remembered the disgust on Harry's face when he arrived in the hallway, grasping a handkerchief, Professor Snape's arm around his shoulder. "He's your spy?".
He didn't remember when that disgust got turned elsewhere, and Vincent was safe, protected, but it didn't really matter because Draco was--Draco--and Vincent had always kept Harry away.
"It has to be someone important."
"Well it isn't Ron."
"Harry--"
"It isn't" Harry said, and Vincent knew reminding him his father had felt that way about Wormtail wouldn't do any good. Weasley wasn't Wormtail, and Draco wasn't Professor Snape, and it was only because Vincent was good and finding patterns that he saw parallels in his dying so Harry could live. Because Harry had taken Divination instead of Arithmancy, and everything for him was trustwork, guessing, instead of solid facts. Vincent could run probabilities 99 times, and Harry would still believe the hundredth would turn out different. Would insist that one chance out of a thousand was still a chance.
He couldn't say any of that, of course, not to Harry, so he offered, "who do you think it is?"
Harry shrugged. "Not Ron," he said again, like that was all that mattered. He added, as an afterthought, "and not Hermione."
"It isn't Draco, either," Vincent said.
"Oh--" Harry's mouth was bitter, twisted. "I suppose," he said, "that's all that matters, is it, that your precious Malfoy--"
Vincent sighed. He'd once heard Terry Boot mutter, "Rowena preserve me from the idiocy of Slytherins and the arrogance of Gryffindors." He rather fancied it was the other way around, though not to hear Professor Snape tell it.
"Come to bed," he said.
"What?"
He was silent--Harry had heard him perfectly well.
"You're not--"
"I am."
"You can't even stand anymore, what--"
"Harry," Vincent said, "shut up."
"I don't--"
"You do." He pressed his lips to Harry's, murmured, "you know you do."
"You're sick," Harry said, pushing Vincent back down against the pillows. Vincent slid a hand around his back, held him close. Reluctant to hurt him, Harry stayed, and Vincent used the opportunity to slip his hand under Harry's shirt. The small of his back was soft, and Harry shuddered once as he repeated, "Vincent, you're sick."
"Hush," Vincent said.
Harry did.
* * *
He was tired, so tired, and someone was talking anyway. Voices at the door, he could hear them, though he didn't want to open his eyes, voices tugging at his chest, at his Harry. He rubbed his palm fretfully against the bedspread, but it didn't help.
"Harry?"
His voice was barely a whisper--when had he grown so hoarse?--but Harry came over at once, rested fingers on his cheek, and the itch in his hand faded, just a little.
"It's starting."
Vincent nodded. "I know."
"I'll be careful," Harry said. He touched Vincent's scar with his own, entwined their fingers. "I'll be careful, and then it'll be over and we can lift the Gentiane. I promise."
"Don't."
Harry's eyes clouded. "Vincent," he said. "Vincent."
Vincent knew he wouldn't understand, he never had, never did, but he told him anyway, "it's all right."
"It's not--"
"Harry."
Harry kissed him then, a hot flash of tongue against his, a brief clench of fingers in his nightshirt, a brush of stubble and the coolness of Harry's glasses on his cheek, harsh breathing, desperate breathing.
"I promise," he whispered.
Vincent let him go.
* * *
His chest hurt. Hurt, and somewhere in the back of his head he heard crucio, he knew it, and laughter and Professor Lupin, who was still recovering from the full moon last night, murmured something soothing that Vincent didn't catch.
It was Gentiane, he knew it, it had to be. Because he'd spent his life looking after Draco Malfoy, looking up to Professor Snape, and Harry had been nothing, meaningless, six months back, before their vows, before their blood dripped onto imported dirt and Vincent became a wizard again. He'd never fought for Harry, never cared, and even now he was dying for something else, for honor and dignity and things he couldn't name, for Professor Snape, it wasn't for Gryffindor half-bloods, it wasn't (he sounded like Harry in his head now, bitter and petulant, Harry), it had to be the spell. He didn't care what happened after, he didn't pull the curses on himself so Harry would be safe, it wasn't anything like that.
He didn't remember sleepless nights, or panting and the touch of Harry's fingers, twisting, the hot sweet rush of pleasurepain he didn't think of it he didn't feel joy when his hand started bleeding, knowing Harry was saved this pain, he didn't think on magic brutalized or red eyes boring into him or anything but being free, at last, he wanted freedom, he wanted--"Harry!"
Someone pushed him back down on the bed, but he couldn't see who any longer, everything was dimming.
Someone was singing softly, nearly drowned out by the voices in his head.
Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop, when the wind blows, the cradle will rock, when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby--
diffindo
Rock-a-bye baby, your cradle is green--
crucio
Someone was screaming.
and Mother's a queen. Sister's a lady, and wears a gold ring--
flagrate
Rock-a-bye baby, way up on high, nevermind baby, Mother is nigh. Up to the ceiling, down to the ground, rock-a-bye baby--
crucio
"We're losing him. Poppy! Vincent, Vincent, concentrate on my voice. You remember, your third year, we practiced on the boggart, you needn't listen to them, you're safe here, Vincent--"
Some dim corner of his mind recognized Professor Lupin, knew that he sounded scared. Vincent wanted to tell him--he didn't know what, he never knew, not with words--but he couldn't speak, he couldn't breathe, he could only concentrate on Harry, Harry, and the world around him narrowed away towards nothingness and suddenly everything stopped.
"Vincent?"
"It's green," he said, "Professor, Professor it's gre--HARRY, it's GREEN!"
The ring on Vincent's right hand turned to ribbon, and slithered to the floor.
* * *
There was a knock on his door, someone the wards didn't recognize. Not a student.
"I know you're there, Professor, Dumbledore said--"
Oh for bloody--he yanked the door open. "What," he said, "could you possibly want with me now?"
Potter handed him a box. "He'd want you to have this. They all would."
Severus watched him leave, a boy grown at last to manhood, finally understanding responsibility, understanding loss. He waited until Potter had turned the corner before letting his door click shut, and lifting the lid.
"Reckless children," he said, when he was finally able to speak again. His fingers were gentle as he placed the picture frame on his mantel, as he traced the letters carefully engraved in silver, Salazar's Chosen. In the picture, Crabbe and Goyle hoisted a smiling Malfoy onto their shoulders. Draco waved the Quidditch cup. Vincent waved at Severus.
"You stupid, idiot boy." Severus pressed his fingers to the glass, then wiped it with a handkerchief. "Stupid," he whispered.
Vincent smiled, and lifted Draco higher.