Chapter Three of 'Valerian'- Blended With Aconite

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Two.

Chapter One.

Title: Valerian (3/?)
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 again for all the reviews!

Chapter Three—Blended With Aconite

Harry stepped back and studied the patch of grass in front of him with frank disgust. He had noticed that it wasn’t responding as well to his magic as the rest of the earth where he would build the maze. And now he knew why. The blue mist from his spell floated above it, rippling into the names of the Dark curses cast here.

Harry sighed. Well, given that Death Eaters had occupied the Manor during the war, that wasn’t unexpected. He would just have to—

He froze, and then felt a fine tremor make its way through his limbs. He promptly locked his teeth and continued to study the mist as if he hadn’t noticed. He knew who stood behind him, because the strong reaction of his body couldn’t be mistaken. Harry had retained lust for him long after he had learned that he wasn’t capable of love.

“Potter.”

Harry turned slowly to face Draco.

God, he was just as beautiful as ever, his white robes shimmering as though someone had stroked them with a brush made of mother-of-pearl. His face shone the same way, but Harry knew that came simply from his intelligence, his personality, coming through. It wasn’t just physical beauty that had led Harry to love Draco.

Or try to love him. That was the point. Harry had never managed to love Draco the way he deserved to be loved. If he had, then Draco wouldn’t have been compelled to seek out Astoria.

Draco sighed. The sound was long and exhausted. “You’re still thinking that you wish you could be with me, aren’t you?”

Harry nodded. There was no point in lying. Besides the fact that Draco had years of Harry’s behavior with which to predict him, he was a Legilimens and could detect lies.

“Let me see.” Draco moved forwards and stretched out a hand that Harry desperately wanted to grasp and hold. Instead, he stood with his hands down at his side and let Draco grab his chin and reposition it. “It’s always possible that you’ve learned love in the months since I looked last.”

Harry met Draco’s eyes, wincing as Draco crashed into his mind. There was no other way to do this. Harry’s mind was so broken and fractured and such a mess, made up of jumbled shards of memory, pain, war trauma, tattered efforts at humanity, and the taint left from being a Horcrux for so many years. Draco had to essentially swim through broken glass to get to what he wanted to see.

Harry concentrated on how much he missed Draco, how much he wished he could have been what Draco wanted and needed, how much he wished he could have been worthy—

And Draco, as always, found and tossed up the brutal memory of Harry walking through the door that day that he had come home and found Draco kneeling in front of Astoria, his mouth between her legs.

Harry flinched again, and Draco stepped back and shook his head.

“As long as you think of that as brutal,” Draco said quietly, “instead of something that had been a long time in coming, then you don’t love me.”

Harry looked at the ground.

“You never even noticed how much my behavior had changed towards you,” Draco said, and his voice was tuned to emotions that Harry knew he would never feel, harmonics he would never hear. Harry hoped that Astoria shared them with him, though. Draco deserved that, deserved to be loved and have everything he wanted. “How can that be love, Harry? You thought you were making me happy by having shallow conversations and bringing little trinkets home and cooking dinner now and then. You never—”

Draco hesitated, as if wanting words, and then continued. “You never saw me. Astoria did. That’s why she’s worthy of the title of becoming my wife.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry whispered. He wondered if there was anything else he could say, but there never had been.

Draco sighed. “I’m giving you a chance to participate in the love that Astoria and I share by creating the gift for her. Don’t mess it up. Don’t make me regret having you here.”

He turned and walked back to the manor with his head bowed. Harry watched him go for as long as he could bear it, and then turned back to the blue mist smoldering above the patch of earth that had sustained so many Dark Arts curses.

He would have to do what he could with statistics and lists in the next little while, because the creative part of his brain felt snuffed.

*

“I wondered if I might speak to you for a moment, Severus?”

Severus wasn’t fond of Astoria Greengrass, who had never been one of his closest students when he was Head of Slytherin, calling him by his first name, but on the other hand, he could hardly refuse her without getting martyred looks from Draco. He inclined his head and continued sipping from the hot tea that the Malfoy house-elves had served him a short time ago.

Astoria sat down across from him, rearranging her skirts neatly, fussily. Severus watched her and wondered what Draco saw in her. Beauty, but Malfoys had never chosen their spouses primarily for that; it was more a quality that they saw as necessary rather than as a keystone. The Greengrass family wasn’t especially powerful or wealthy or well-connected, although it had a higher standing in some circles since the war than the Malfoy name did. She had never seemed terribly clever or magically strong to him as a student.

Then again, that was years ago now. Severus maintained a pleasant, neutral expression.

Astoria sighed. “I know my darling thinks this will work out…”

“This?” Severus inquired delicately. He did not particularly want to be a confidant in either wedding planning or pre-marriage woes.

“Having Potter design a gift for me,” Astoria said, tilting her head forwards so that two golden curls fell around her face.

“Ah.” Severus had recourse to his cup of tea.

“I know that Potter does detailed work and art that no one else can create,” Astoria went on in a soft, brooding voice, turning her head so that she could look out the window of the library Severus had taken refuge in. “But do we really need him? Draco was the one who came up with all his ideas in the first place. Surely Draco could design this maze.”

Severus kept his eyes on the page in front of him. “Draco came up with the ideas? I did not know that.”

Astoria nodded, her voice still rippling along like water. “Yes. He told me once. Potter is the only one who had the powerful magic that could make the art happen, but Draco created the idea of the company and the formulas that he uses to manipulate his magic.”

“Formulas?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t pay that much attention. I only know that I don’t want him here, and Draco doesn’t seem inclined to listen to me.” Astoria turned around and stared at Severus with those wounded eyes that he had seen so much of in the last few weeks. “Could you speak to Draco and get him to send Potter away?’

“I find it best not to involve myself in such debates between lovers,” Severus said. His voice didn’t curdle on that last word, which he would regard as the miracle he was entitled to today. “But I need to speak with Potter on a different matter. It might be that I can hint at your discomfort and persuade him to leave that way.”

“Thank you,” Astoria breathed. Almost everything about her was breathy, Severus thought as she stood and glided out of the library. The way she moved was like an insect drifting on the breeze, and her neck resembled the drooping stem of a cut flower, and her hair floated in curls too soft to be natural. Severus was surprised that Draco wanted someone like her.

But then Severus shrugged. Even less than lovers’ quarrels did he wish to become involved in policing a former student’s preferences. He went in search of Potter.

*

“Is it true that Draco came up with the idea for your art?”

Harry blinked and glanced up from the list he’d made of various places in the Malfoy gardens that were too scorched by Dark Arts to be part of the maze. “Oh, hello, sir. Yes, he did. He was the one who pointed out that there had to be ways to make wandless magic obey with formulas instead of just assuming it was free of theory, the way so many people do.”

Harry looked down and made another check mark on his list. Yes, he could see the ways that he would have to change the map of the maze so that it could bend and avoid those patches of scorched ground. Or perhaps he could incorporate them?

But no. He could only do that if Astoria’s personality contained analogues of those areas, and Harry might envy her, might nearly hate her, but he wasn’t that foolish. She had nothing that dark in her, nothing that twisted. It was one reason Draco loved her.

Harry moved to write down a way to make the maze twist around the first patch he had identified that morning, only to have Snape interrupt. “And you think that is the same as coming up with what you do?”

It was obviously doing him no good to concentrate on the list right now, so Harry put it down and turned to look up at Snape. The man stood with his arms folded and the sneer on his face manifested full-force. Harry wondered idly if Snape thought he had been lying for not telling him this right away, and if it lowered his opinion of what Harry could do.

Well. Then again, Harry had told him that what he did wasn’t especially creative, and that someone else could learn it easily. He didn’t think it had been a lie. Snape just hadn’t indicated he’d like all the details before this.

With a small shrug, Harry said quietly, “Of course it is, sir. Draco sees things in one creative swoop. His mind just—flies there. That’s the true mark of genius. I’m the one who has to plod along the trail and put all the markers together one by one. Do you know how many tests it took me before I could build a living model of artwork like the maze I’m creating here? Hundreds. Draco would have had it in one try.”

“And yet, he is not creating the kind of art that you are.”

“Well, no, sir. He doesn’t have to. And he wouldn’t have wanted to stay with me to do it.”

Snape scowled more furiously than ever. Harry wondered if he had come from Astoria or Draco to test him about the project in a different way. Did they want to make sure that Harry wasn’t claiming title to Draco’s cleverness or ideas?

Well, he couldn’t. He didn’t know the first thing about how to make his mind fly as swiftly as Draco’s.

“I truly wish that I knew how Draco convinced you that you are inferior to him in every way.”

Harry winced a little as the memory bubbled to the surface of his mind again. But he wasn’t going to share the details with Snape. Draco could tell him if he wanted to. Harry ignored the guilt that overwhelmed like him midnight at the thought and answered, “It took a lot of convincing, sir. I wasn’t a good student of his for three years.”

“Three years?”

“That was how long he loved Astoria before I found out, sir. I never noticed he was unhappy for that long.”

Snape’s shoulders seemed to tighten. Harry found himself wondering for a moment whether wings would unfold from them, and then shook his head sharply. Those speculations about Snape being part-bat had been unkind, and Harry wasn’t going to indulge in them, not now, when he was really trying to be a better person.

“So he cheated on you with a woman, and yet remained with you. And you—what? Blame yourself for not seeing the truth?”

“For hurting him, sir,” Harry corrected him. It was so hard to explain to anyone outside the situation. The same thing happened when he tried to talk with Ron and Hermione, great friends though they were. They just wanted to blame Draco. They didn’t understand all the complexities, or the moral crimes Harry had committed. “That’s why he’s right to blame me. Because I hurt him, and if I’d really been alive to what was hurting him, then I would have noticed.”

Snape’s fingers writhed for a second as though he wanted his wand. Harry hoped Snape wouldn’t duel him. He was afraid of lashing out with his magic when he got in a battle situation and destroying someone. It was one reason he hadn’t become an Auror.

“What was his excuse for remaining with you for three years?”

“He was trying to teach me what it was like to love, sir. Make me understand.” Harry shook his head. “He tried to heal me. It didn’t work. He fully acknowledges that he was wrong to do that, because I just don’t know what love is, sir.”

“You don’t respect me at all, do you?”

It was such an unexpected change of subject that Harry felt like he blinked at Snape for a full minute before he could speak. A breeze lifted his hair and a peacock clucked somewhere across the gardens, but neither the words nor Snape’s hard, suspicious stare changed.

“I—I respect you, sir? I know a lot more about what you did in the war for our side now. And I know that—”

“You bark the word ‘sir’ as if it’s a mindless sound,” Snape said, and his sneer was impressive, in a way. “As if it’s nothing but a blurt of air that you expel from your lips and fling away from you as soon as possible.”

“I—well, I can’t call you Professor Snape, since you’re not a professor anymore.” Harry’s brain was scrambling in circles trying to figure this out. Somehow he had gone from designing the maze to describing Draco’s mind to reminiscing on the past to a discussion about what he called Snape. “Do you want me to just not call you anything?” It would be hard to break the “sir” habit, but Harry was sure he could.

“I have a name.”

Harry nodded slowly. “All right, Snape. If you want—”

“Not that one. I thought you were—” Snape stopped, and then continued. Harry found himself vaguely curious about what the end of the sentence would have been, but not as interested as he was in the words Snape was speaking now. “Speak the other one.”

“All right, Severus.” Harry spoke it while keeping one eye on Snape’s sneer. Any moment it would change, he was sure, and Snape would laugh at him for having fallen for the joke. Or this was also part of the test. Draco and Astoria wanted to make sure that Harry wouldn’t try to get too close to anyone while he was designing the maze, perhaps.

Snape seemed to smooth his feathers down at all once, like a raven who had been ruffled, and he nodded. “See that you keep using it, Potter.” Then he turned and marched away.

Baffled, Harry shook his head and picked up his scroll again. Well, perhaps whatever the test was, he had passed it. Or maybe Snape just really did think that Harry was being mindless when he spoke the “sir,” and wanted something more meaningful.

Harry still didn’t think he could bring himself to use it often. It was too much as though Snape was inviting him into the sort of inner circle that Draco and Astoria must occupy with him, and Harry knew well enough that that kind of place wasn’t for him.

*

Severus closed his eyes. He was in a cool area of the Malfoy gardens, shaded by a long tree branch above, with the sweet scent of oranges and lemons dancing around him, a cup of shining water in his hands, the peacocks chased away by spells. The padded seat of the chair was comfortable. Near his left hand lay a fascinating book from the Malfoy libraries on the influence of lunar cycles on brewing.

And still, he could think of nothing but the shining adoration in Potter’s eyes when he spoke of how much of a genius he thought Draco was.

This wasn’t a prank. This wasn’t some false modesty where he tried to lure Severus to give him compliments under the guise of pretending not to believe he deserved them.

This was the truth.

A certain coil of Severus’s mind had to admire Draco for what he had achieved. He had utterly burned up Potter’s sense of self-worth and reduced him to cringing apology for being fucked around on. That was a plateau that Severus had never managed to achieve with his students.

But the rest of him was appalled. And another question had been added to the one about what had happened to reduce Potter to that state.

Why did Draco want Potter here, designing this wedding gift? Astoria was right that it seemed counterintuitive, no matter how easily Draco could pay for Potter’s work or how much he wanted to show off his new bride to his old lover.

Severus picked up his water and drank. Then he opened the book and stared at the first page, depicting the phases of the moon, for seven minutes without seeing anything. His internal clock timed it.

A moving figure caught his eye. Potter was walking towards the gate of the grounds, several scrolls of parchment tucked under his arm and a thoughtful look on his face.

Severus stood. While part of him knew that following Potter back to his laboratory would yield no new insights—he had already been there—he took a step forwards and called Potter’s name. Potter turned around and headed towards him.

“Yes, si—Severus?”

Severus stared in silence at the placid green eyes, the face that concealed what it was thinking now that Potter knew someone was watching him, the slightly tilted head as Potter waited for whatever Severus would say. And Severus decided that only something unexpected would pull an honest reaction from Potter, the way he had stirred one up by asking Potter to call him by his first name.

“Have lunch with me.”

Potter’s attention flickered towards the Manor. “Draco asked me not to come inside or have the house-elves serve me anything.”

Severus narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t mean that we would stay here. Come with me to Diagon Alley.”

That did get him a wide-eyed stare, but in seconds, the placid expression was back, as though Potter thought making one mistake in his life meant he had no right to express opinions or worry about anything again. “All right. Please choose the restaurant, so I can be sure that you’ll have something you like to eat.”

Severus did lead the way, while he felt as though he would bite through his tongue in frustration.

This lunch had better yield some damn revelations.