lomonaaeren

Chapter One.

Title: Valerian (2/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Severus and Draco/Astoria, past Harry/Draco
Content Notes: Angst, manipulation, past infidelity
Rating: R
Summary: Harry dated Draco until Draco fell in love with Astoria, and never really got over his broken heart. Now Draco is getting married, and wants Harry to construct a unique magical gift for his bride on the grounds of Malfoy Manor. As Harry labors on his creation, telling himself not to be petty, Severus Snape watches to make sure that he doesn’t mess it up—and also, soon, for other reasons.
Author’s Notes: Several people are angsty and not at their nicest here. Don’t read if that bothers you. Also, this is a sequel to my short fic “Aconite,” which you should probably read first, and while this will be much longer than that story, it will be irregularly updated.

Thank you for all the reviews!

Chapter Two—Working Late

Harry couldn’t sleep.

He sighed and rolled out of bed when it was nearing three in the morning. He ought to have expected this, given where he’d been today, he thought, tossing his hair out of his eyes and tying it back with a leather band so that it wouldn’t get in the way. At Malfoy Manor, seeing Draco getting ready to marry someone else? Of course it would stir up his thoughts.

But he might as well use the time. He descended the steps from his bedroom to his lab and lit the lamps and the fire with an absent wave of his hand.

A plan for the maze waited on the table, where he had been drawing it before he went to bed. Harry bent over and studied the curves for a second. He had rough notes on what piece of art or other attraction would appear in which corner of the maze, but right now, he thought the pattern itself looked wrong.

Harry closed his eyes and tapped his wand against his wrist. In a second, the sense of his own magic surrounded him, deep and green and gold and slow, a wide river. He reached out and picked up the bauble that Draco had owled him that afternoon.

It was a small ball of clouded crystal glass. Harry suspected it might once have been a Christmas tree decoration. He rolled it around in his fingers now, savoring the anticipation more than the coolness of the glass before he plunged into his sense of Astoria’s magic.

It danced lightly past him, reminding him of a skirl of notes from a flight of birds. High and piercing, delicate and restless. Harry slid the sensation over the top of his own magic, ensuring they didn’t blend. It was a difficult art, but he had plenty of practice at it by now.

Then he combined the sensations, and for a second, the world was like glass around him, like he was looking up from the inside of the bauble. Harry breathed out and sent the sense of his magic combined with the sense of Astoria’s ranging in front of him.

He would have preferred to touch Draco’s magic, but that was not to be allowed. And Astoria was the one he was creating the gift for, so he had to know what her magic was like in order to create a pattern that symbolized her.

When he opened his eyes, the pattern of lines on the parchment had shifted. Harry studied them and nodded. He wasn’t convinced this was the final pattern, but it was closer to the one he wanted. Fewer dead ends, more subtle entrances. Fewer wending curves, more sharp ones. Yes.

He laid the bauble gently down. When he had first touched it, he had thought it would carry Draco’s magic.

But even after two years, he still knew what that felt like. He needed to stop accusing Draco of leading him on when Harry was the one doing all the leading.

Harry made a soft noise to himself and went back to scribbling notes on the pieces of art that would occupy the maze. Draco had taught him an important truth about himself. It wasn’t his fault that Harry had been unable to move past it, unable to let that emotion that wasn’t really love go.

*

“What are you doing here, Mr. Potter?”

Severus had come out for an early morning walk in the Manor’s gardens because he had thought it might enlighten him as to why his mind insisted on circling obsessively around Potter. He had always found the dawn and the dawn chorus soothing. But instead, he had run straight into Potter prancing around a raised bed of carnations, his eyes focused on threads of golden power hanging in the air.

“Hello, sir,” said Potter, without turning to look at him. “Are you here to make sure that I don’t mess up the gardens?” He took a step to the right, and one of the golden lines in the air altered to follow his movements.

“I am here for my own reasons that do not concern you.”

“Of course, sir.”

Severus waited a moment, but Potter never did turn to look at him. All his attention remained on those bloody golden lines in the air. After staring at Potter’s back revealed nothing, Severus turned his attention to the lines.

They formed a diagram, he realized. Something that looked a lot like a map, perhaps an outline of the damn maze that Draco wanted to gift his bride with.

“Why are you here? Do you have permission to access the grounds?”

“Yes, sir. Not the house. But enough of the grounds that I can come and design some of the minor art pieces that are going to fill the maze.”

Severus narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t realize that you were a painter, Potter. Or a sculptor.”

“I’m not, sir. The art will grow out of the magic that I’m going to use to make the maze.” Potter took a step backwards, nodded, and then faced the gates that would lead him out of the gardens. “I’ll be going back to my lab now.”

He began to walk away, his face set and abstracted. Severus stepped into his path. He received a slight jerk of Potter’s head, a widening of his eyes, and discerned from his immediate rush of satisfaction what was wrong. He had never been around Potter for so long where Potter had managed to ignore him before.

“Was there something you wanted, sir?”

“I want to know why you are doing this.”

“We did discuss this yesterday, sir.”

Potter’s voice had a slight dry tone, and the way that his eyebrow rose was irritating. Severus shook his head. “I am not satisfied with your answers. I am not satisfied with Draco hiring you. I wish to accompany you back to your lab and observe the way that you work before I will be satisfied.”

Potter’s face flickered with astonishment for the briefest moment. Then he shrugged and said, “All right, sir.” It wasn’t amiability, but it also wasn’t the emotion Severus wanted. He ended up striding beside Potter as they made their way towards the Manor’s gates, and studying everything from the way he was walking to the tattered robes he was wearing.

“Why do you wear robes like that?”

“They’re convenient, sir. It doesn’t matter much if they get burned or torn by the magic I’m working with.”

“How can that possibly happen, if you are casting your spells correctly?”

Potter shot him a quick glance with no emotion behind it, as usual. “Because I’m mostly not casting spells, sir.”

Severus frowned, and held his tongue.

*

Harry had thought it would be disruptive, having Snape in his lab, but it turned out not to be. Even Snape brooding in a corner with his arms folded was surprisingly familiar. He could scowl all he liked, and Harry would do better at this kind of magic that he had invented and designed than he ever would at Potions.

Harry compared the map of the maze he had traced in the air this morning to the one he had created on the parchment, and began to alter the drawing when he saw the differences. The one he created on the grounds was always the living model, despite the fact that he had used contact with Astoria’s magic to make the drawing. It reacted to the soil available, to the angle of the light, to the air, and other intangibles of the environment. Harry would rather change his parchment a hundred times than ignore one answer the place he’d build the project gave him.

“What did you mean by not casting spells?”

Harry finished off the drawing of a new alcove that working his magic in the Manor’s gardens had given him, and glanced up. Snape was leaning on the table next to him, a ferocious scowl on his face. Harry shrugged a little. “You must have noticed by now that the spells I did on the grounds and here are wandless, sir.”

For a second, Snape’s scowl vanished. Then he said, “Wandless magic is only another name for accidental magic. You expect me to believe that you could have achieved any level of power or control if your magic is accidental?”

“No, sir.”

Harry turned back to the parchment and smiled as he realized the alcove would be the proper site for a vase. He jotted the note down and then stepped back so that he could study the parchment from a distance and effectively see the pattern of the maze from above.

“What did you say?”

“I meant, no, sir, I wouldn’t expect you to believe that my control and power over this magic is accidental. I wouldn’t expect you to believe that I had any power or control at all.”

Snape was quiet again. But he remained leaning against the table as Harry picked up the glass bauble full of Astoria’s magic that Draco had sent him. Harry cradled it in his hands and closed his eyes. Now he was seeking more than the superficial feeling of her magic. He needed a hint of her emotions and personality—often reflected in the magic, yes, but just as likely to be hidden.

“What are you doing?”

“Communing, sir,” Harry said, and plunged his mind into the sea that was Astoria’s self.

It shifted back and forth, as deep a green as the bauble, though the color of the glass was probably influencing him. Harry ignored the feeling that it was cold. That was his own prejudice towards the woman. Instead, it was simply quiet, waiting. Harry could appreciate that. He had grown quieter himself in the years since—in the years since.

He stirred his mind slowly through the sense of Astoria’s personality, and relaxed a little when he realized that it was responding to him. Now he could catch glimpses of her artistic passions. She enjoyed music, both listening to it and playing it. She moved slowly, because she could. She was cat-like, the type to lounge in sunlight.

Not cold. Not towards those she likes and values. And there is no reason for me to be one of those people.

Harry “surfaced” with a blink and turned his head to see Snape’s eyes fixed on him, narrow and angry. Harry gave a mental shrug as he put the bauble down and rolled his neck to the side; he’d been bent over it in an awkward position for at least ten minutes. He was never going to understand Snape. But given that they weren’t friends, he didn’t need to.

“What was that?” Snape demanded. “I have never felt magic like that.”

“Draco sent me this ornament that Astoria handled often enough to infuse with a sense of her magic and personality, sir,” Harry answered, moving over to the parchment. He rested his wand on it and closed his eyes, and more magic rushed forth, changing the outline of some parts of the maze. “I sense her magic and I weave that into the maze, and now I’m doing the same thing with her personality. The maze needs to reflect her, so—”

Snape grabbed his elbow. Luckily, it was the left one, so Harry’s wand could remain on the parchment and keep up the tracing it was doing without being interrupted. Harry still threw Snape an irritated glance, though. That interruption could have been a lot more disastrous. “What, sir?”

“No one can do that,” Snape said. He paused as if he thought someone would come along and scold him for the amount of noise he was making, and then lowered his voice. But he didn’t let go of Harry’s arm, which was annoying. “No one can sense someone else’s personality or magic in glass and then let it infuse a drawing.”

“Well, it’s not always glass. People have sent me ornaments of bone, metal, leather, fur—all sorts of things. It’s mostly clothes, actually.” Harry gave a reminding shake of his arm, and Snape seemed to realize for the first time that he was actually touching Harry. He let him go with a scandalized stare. Harry very carefully hid his amusement as he turned back to the drawing of the maze.

“Still, no one can do that. There would have been advancements made long ago in Healing and Potions if—no one can do that.”

“It’s necessary for the work I do,” Harry said. He wondered why Snape thought it was so strange and interesting. Harry had come up with some very basic spell structures to do what he did. Really, the only reason he could manage it at all was the power of his magic. He wasn’t particularly special or clever or intuitive. Draco had always been the one who had those qualities in their relationship. “So I managed to figure out a way to do it. Did you think I somehow crafted the artifacts I created a different way, sir?” he added, curious.

“I never paid enough attention to your business to care how you did it.”

Chastened, Harry focused back on the parchment and altered a few more lines. Then he nodded. The next step would have to involve actual construction.

He walked outside, assuming Snape would leave. Since he didn’t think the magic Harry used could exist, he would probably conclude Harry was lying to him and stalk away in offended pride. But for some reason, Snape followed after him, stare still intense when Harry looked over his shoulder to meet the man’s eyes. Harry gave a mental shrug and turned to the patch of his garden that he used as his practice ground.

It was flat, scraped clear of grass and everything but dirt, sand, and a few rocks. Harry swallowed air and stretched out his hands. In response, the dirt stirred, and Harry fed the impression of Astoria’s personality, his knowledge of her magic, and his memory of the new design of the maze into it.

He thought he heard Snape say something, but when Harry was in this particular mood, no outside sounds could disturb him, and a good thing, too. He might unleash terrible magic if he was disturbed—

His whole being vanished into the making.

*

Severus stared in silence, his hands clenched, as he watched the sand and rocks of this patch of Potter’s garden form themselves into walls.

It wasn’t entirely physical, in that he couldn’t see individual pebbles or grains moving. Instead, swirling streaks of magic, glassy-colored and swirling around each other in a way that reminded him of galaxies, rose from the ground and streamed around the sand and rocks. Where they passed, walls loomed behind.

They were small, no higher than Severus’s knee. They shone as white as marble. And small objects were sprouting within the walls, like blossoms.

Or fungi, Severus thought, trying deliberately to shake off the awe he could feel settling on him like dust.

But it was awe. In the center of his mind, where he couldn’t lie to himself, Severus knew that. He watched as Potter gestured again, and the swirls wrapped around his arms and licked his skin with tongues that looked like dragons’ before reaching out and becoming more and more marble-like wall material.

No one should have been able to conjure that much material from thin air, or persuade ordinary rock and soil to change into something so antithetical to their natures. No one.

It wasn’t just the power, Severus thought as he watched, tongue thick in his mouth. It was the theory. Even if he was using an incantation and not wandless magic, he wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to begin conjuring material like that. He could Transfigure the sand and stone, but it would have to be separately, not all at once, and into blocks, not smooth walls. They wouldn’t look like they were growing.

Potter wasn’t Transfiguring his building material. It looked as though it was simply weaving itself into existence from raw air.

How is he doing that?

Potter finally stepped back and opened his eyes. For a second, his face blazed with leaping power, power that was more like wildfire than the tamed one on a hearth. Nevertheless, Severus found himself moving a step forwards, wanting to warm his hands near it.

He jerked his arms back, and seemed to draw Potter’s attention. Potter tilted his head for a second, curious, like a bird, obviously not having the slightest idea how Severus regarded him. “What, sir?”

“How—how did you discover how to do that?”

“Well, the most difficult steps was discovering how to read someone’s personality and magic and then keeping the impressions when I wrote or drew the artifact I constructed to represent them,” Potter said. He stepped forwards and began to walk around the tiny maze he had constructed. Staring down into it, Severus could see miniature plinths and statues and globes of glass like the bauble Potter had communed with. It was all endlessly complicated. “Once I knew how to do that, the rest was easy.”

“Easy,” Severus repeated flatly.

“Sir, are you all right?” Potter glanced up at him with his eyebrows raised. “I mean it. It was difficult at first, less difficult later. I could teach it to someone else. It can’t be that complicated.”

“Why not?” Severus demanded, wondering if the boy was being falsely modest to invite praise.

“Because I’m not that deep a thinker,” Potter said, his smile slight and pained. “Surely Draco told you that.”

“Draco was—Draco spoke in terms that sounded like a disappointed lover.”

Potter sighed. “Yes, I’m afraid I made him that way. I couldn’t give him what he needed, and I wasn’t insightful enough to let him go when he needed something else.”

Severus stared at Potter again. Potter only lifted his eyebrows a little higher and looked down at the way Severus stood where he wanted to walk. Severus moved and watched Potter stalk a little further, his brow furrowed in a way that he knew probably looked stupid. But he was unable to convince himself to look otherwise.

Potter thought that all of these magical innovations were simple and easy. He thought that he might as well not show them off to the world and that it was only a fluke or an accident that he was the first to discover them. He thought of Draco as the one who had the complex, subtle mind that Severus would have said was behind these magical workings if he didn’t know it was Potter.

Severus watched Potter inspect the maze for something that he didn’t know enough to look for and then go back inside his lab. Severus, in the meantime, left. He thought he had seen enough, and since he didn’t know the theory behind the magic Potter was using now in any case, he would think about the other puzzle opened to his senses instead.

What did Draco do to Potter to convince him that he’s Draco’s inferior in every way?