Chapter Five of 'Valerian' Pressing Closer

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Four.

Chapter One.

Title: Valerian (5/?)
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 Five—Pressing Closer

Harry stepped back from the hunk of black wood that he’d chosen to mold Snape’s gift from. He was panting, and his hands shook a little. He frowned and reached for the cup of cool water that he’d set beside the table when he began. The water was lukewarm, revealing one reason for his exhaustion. He must have been working far longer than he’d thought.

He studied the wood. It had been so much harder than he’d envisioned. He supposed that was because he was working from his impression of Snape’s magic only, not some object like the one Astoria had sent him that was infused with a sense of it.

But still, Harry had finished creating the physical form of the gift and most of the enchantment that would guard it. It was a stand with drawers on the bottom and storage for potions vials on the top. It would respond to Snape’s magic alone, perfectly preserving the potions or ingredients as long as they were stored there.

However, Snape would also be able to “tune” the magic surrounding it so that it would corrupt the ingredients and potions if they were removed by someone unauthorized. He could make them rot, turn to poison, or explode as he wished.

When Harry added the last bit of magic, Snape could even make it invisible. Part of the strain right now was that the enchantment was lunging against Harry’s control, longing to be completed. But Harry had to hold it in check, or he wouldn’t be able to see the stand to work on it.

Harry sighed. This would fulfill the debt and probably irritate Snape, because he wouldn’t want to reject it but would be unable to pay Harry for it.

Harry smiled slightly. Both of those were benefits, and he wasn’t sure which one was the greater.

*

“Come tell me what carvings you want on the sides of your gift.”

Severus could not have imagined a less likely sentence to begin the conversation he needed to have with Potter. But he finally nodded and followed Potter from the gates of the Manor, where he had come to catch him, to what seemed to be his workspace near a large bed of blue flowers in the back of the gardens.

Potter was limping, his face pale and marked with sweat despite the coolness of the morning. Severus lengthened his strides to walk beside him. Potter ignored him, not even glancing at him.

Severus sharpened the needle of his voice to prick in Potter’s most vulnerable place. “Draco told me that he did not, in fact, invent the method by which the potency of the Draught of Peace can be multiplied beneath a full moon.”

Potter turned his whole body towards the mention of Draco, subtly, even if he never stopped walking. Severus found his fists clenching. He ignored it, however. He had given up on understanding his own reactions where Potter was concerned.

“Oh, well, he has so many ideas that he probably doesn’t understand the greatness of what he suggested,” Potter said. “That was all I did, build on a suggestion he had. But he came up with the original idea. He could do so much better than I could if he’d ever cared to investigate.”

“Does it occur to you, Potter, that the credit and honor belong to the one who does the investigation and perfects the method?”

“Come on, Snape. The next thing you know, you’ll be telling me that grunt work like the kind you had us doing in Potions in Hogwarts is the thing that should be honored, instead of the skill you bring to it.”

Potter’s tone was amused, and Severus nearly fell for it, nearly lashed out. He barely managed to restrain himself with a harsh hiss of breath. Potter raised an eyebrow at him and limped on. Severus said, after a moment when they had rounded a terrace but still hadn’t come in sight of whatever Potter wanted to show him, “What did you mean by the carvings on the side of my gift?”

“What was difficult about the words I used?”

“You have no reason to want to make gifts for me.”

“I owe you a debt for the way I treated you at lunch yesterday,” Potter said simply, and then he reached out and waved his hand. Sharp, short veils of magic pulled back, and Severus hated the way they made him reach for his wand. But then he caught sight of what the veils had been hiding, and lost his breath.

The potions and storage stand was carved of the finest dark ebony he had ever seen. The drawers had handles of silver, and Severus could feel the buzz of the enchantment from here. His fingers twitched. The buzzing was forming in the back of his skull, in fact, which shouldn’t be happening. He turned a dark stare on Potter.

Potter shrugged a little. “I’ll release the enchantment to you when it’s finished, but it isn’t yet. When it is, then you can make the stand preserve anything in it perfectly for years, but also make those ingredients or vials self-destruct in any way you wish if someone else removes them. Oh, and you can make it invisible, but I have to make it visible to me for right now so I can keep working on it.”

Severus closed his eyes and felt his mental way along the path of the enchantment instead of answering. A second later, he found the answer he had already suspected from his observation of Potter’s work the other day. “You tied this to my magic. How?”

“To my impression of your magic,” Potter corrected. “That’s why I need your help now. I didn’t have something like the ornament Astoria sent me to root your magic properly. The carvings, which you’ll choose, will help do that.”

“I have never even heard of something like this.”

“Oh, well, like I said, it isn’t really your magic, just my impression, so—”

“No, you idiot,” Severus said, and spun around to stare at Potter. The man simply blinked at him, even when Severus stalked up to him. “A gift like this that can do even one of those things. And to tie it to me alone?” His fingers twitched. “This is a gift that others would kill to possess.”

“Well, you don’t need to.”

Potter’s dry voice made Severus fall back a step. For a moment, he could swear that the man staring at him was in fact the one he would have expected the boy at Hogwarts to grow into.

Then the flash was gone, and Potter turned and trod heavily to the side of the stand, his fingers spread. “What kinds of carvings do you want? Think carefully. It would help if they were animals or plants, and if they represented things that you thought of as protective.”

Severus remained still. He wanted that stand, of course he did. It was something he would never be able to buy or create for himself. But he wanted to understand Potter more, and force his understanding of Potter onto him. Make him see the truth, not whatever delusion he persisted in.

“Why are you limping?” he asked, as a way to begin.

“I put a lot into the magic last night.” Potter shrugged and kept his hand poised. “When I use that much power, it usually takes a toll on my muscles. The limp is pretty rare, but it happens sometimes.”

Severus gave a sharp laugh, which resulted in a sharp glance from Potter. Severus walked up so that he stood on the opposite side of the rich wood from Potter, and murmured, “You used so much magic that it literally began to feed on your muscles. And you want to complete the carvings now? When you are shaking with fatigue?”

Potter hesitated. “Part of that is the enchantment fighting me. When you tell me what carvings you want, then I can release it and start healing.”

Severus shook his head and rested a hand on the object Potter was creating for him. It promptly strained towards him. He felt the welcoming magic opening to enfold his like another hand, fingers twining with his. It made his breath come short.

In his lifetime, no one had ever made or done something for him like this. Lily included.

The thought didn’t bring the kind of grief, and sharp impatience with his own grief, with it that it usually did. Perhaps because he had a far more potent cause of impatience standing across from him. He looked into Potter’s eyes and said, “I insist you rest. You will not damage my gift because you were unable to listen to common sense.”

Potter nodded after a second. Severus knew very well that it was because of what Severus had said about the gift rather than because he didn’t want to damage himself, but Severus didn’t care. He had the beginnings of what he needed to accomplish. “Yes, all right. I’ll go back to the lab and eat—”

“Or you’ll begin working on Astoria’s gift again. How stupid do you think I am, Potter?”

“Not stupid at all, sir.”

The tone, the address, the grin Potter said it with, were all meant to irritate him. Severus let the irritation rise up inside him and then splash harmlessly against his mental shields. He could do that when he had a greater goal in mind, too. “Then you won’t be going back to the lab. You’ll be coming to my house.”

Potter already had his mouth open to refuse, probably because he’d thought Severus was going to suggest the Manor, but now he closed it and swallowed. “You would welcome me into your home, sir?”

“I don’t welcome anyone who calls me that. You will address me by my first name, as I once requested.”

Potter’s head came up, his jaw firmed, and he looked as if he wanted to bite off Severus’s nose. “No thank you, sir. If those are the conditions, then I’ll just stay here and sit on the grass or something.”

“I will call you by your first name as well.”

Potter actually took a step back from him, which was so amusing that Severus had to work to control his expression. “I—what? But sir, you don’t want to do that. And you shouldn’t have to do it to yourself just so that I’ll rest. I promise, I will. I’ll lie in the sun with my eyes closed and not do anything else!”

Severus paused. Potter’s distress was real. He would have sworn another Unbreakable Vow on his certainty of the damned fact. But it made no sense when he had spent his whole morning trying to irritate and bribe Severus.

No, wait, of course it does, when Potter thinks everyone deserves consideration but him. He doesn’t want me to do something he thinks is going to cause me pain, as opposed to irritation.

Severus gentled his voice, leaning forwards so that he caught Potter’s eye. “Listen to me, Harry. I am doing this because I want to have my gift completed by someone in top condition, and because I want to talk to you more about the process of your magic. I would enjoy learning how to do it myself.”

Potter relaxed at once. If Severus was understanding him better—and he thought he was—that had come about because of Severus’s essentially selfish stated reasons. Potter could cope with people wanting to use or learn from him. It was compassion he dreaded.

Because he thinks it was compassion that made him abuse Draco. Draco’s compassion in staying with him, in not giving up and leaving when he should have.

Once Severus worked a little harder at seeing the world from Potter’s twisted perspective, it was not hard to comprehend.

Severus was still going to break him of it. Because someone who could feel this much compassion for a man he had once known as an enemy, who had the skill to craft this kind of enchantment, and the humility to attribute all his best ideas to someone else, and the cleverness to figure out the kinds of magic he had so far…

Does Draco realize what a treasure he discarded?

*

Harry limped heavily after Snape as they rounded the far corner of the gardens. He couldn’t help but watch the Manor’s windows that pointed towards this part of the grounds, but didn’t see anyone at them, thank Merlin. It would be embarrassing if he came across as this weak in front of Draco.

Snape took his arm to Apparate when they reached the end of the long crushed stone driveway. Harry shut his eyes and tried not to reveal how much pain he was in and how grateful he was for the help in supporting his own weight. His magic had gone from causing him pain to actually wasting his muscles, and he could feel it.

He did manage to stand on his own when Snape let him go in the middle of a dusky little room with heavy drapes on the windows, but he was glad for the lack of light. He knew he was sweating and probably losing color in his eyes.

“Merlin, Potter.”

Harry still managed to shy back from the vial of potion that Snape held out to him. “You said you were going to call me by my first name.” If Snape broke one promise, who knew but that he might break others and poison Harry or let him sleep for so long that he messed up Astoria’s gift permanently?”

“Harry. Forgive me for what comes out of my mouth in a moment of stress.”

“What stress?” Harry accepted and downed the potion, glad that his hand wasn’t shaking too hard to do it yet. Damn, it had been a long time since he’d been this bad. He wished Snape could have accepted the bloody gift and let him finish it. That would have eased a lot of the strain.

“The prospect of explaining to your friends that I let you collapse in my drawing room,” Snape muttered.

“Ron and Hermione understand the way I am. They wouldn’t blame you.”

“Amazingly, that does not lessen my desire to avoid a confrontation,” Snape said, with a sneer in the back of his voice. He insisted on taking Harry’s arm like he was an invalid and guiding him through the room, weaving around what seemed to be a score of little tables. Probably a potions lab with ingredients that need to be protected from the sun, Harry thought. “In here.”

Harry stepped into what he thought would be a drawing room or maybe another storage area, and pulled up short at the sight of the immense bed in the middle of the floor. It was shaped almost like a sleigh, with high sides and a dipped middle, and covered in dark green sheets. “You put a Slytherin theme in your guest room?”

“This is my room, Harry.” Snape shifted a hand into the middle of his back and pushed.

Harry sprawled into the middle of the bed, hissing as he knocked his knees against the bed’s wooden sides. Snape shrugged at him and hauled his legs around without so much as a by-your-leave, dropping them in the middle of the mattress. “Now rest.”

“Wait—it should be in your guest bedroom, so you can—”

“I have no need to use my bedroom in the middle of the day, as unlike some careless wizards, I do not magically exhaust myself on a regular basis.” Snape waved his wand and some sort of ward Harry had never seen before sprang up from the sides of the bed, rising until it formed a dome overhead. Harry blinked at it, trying to figure out how Snape had created it. “Now rest.”

“I haven’t slept in someone else’s bed in years,” Harry told him. “I don’t know if I can go to sleep.”

“That potion will ensure you do.”

“I didn’t give you permission to force-feed me a sedative, Severus—”

Fuck, his vision was already blurring and he reached out a hand to claw at the ward, but it flickered and repelled his fingers like warm ice. Snape chuckled. “I am the only one who can open that ward, and even I would need my wand to do it from the inside.”

Harry wanted to reply that he could just use his magical strength to rip it apart, but thoughts of how fatigued he was right now and how much work Snape had probably put into the ward made him hesitate, and the potion seized him. He rolled onto his side, hating how heavy his limbs were. This was the reason he never used sedative potions even when his body was crying out for a good night’s sleep.

“Why have you not slept in someone else’s bed?” Snape whispered, the words falling around Harry like fading musical notes.

It must have been the potion that made him answer, that and his resignation to the fact that he was going to sleep anyway. “I didn’t want to be unfaithful to Draco.”

“From what I understand, Mr. Malfoy was unfaithful to you, and in any case your relationship is ended.”

“There are—some standards I still hold myself to—doesn’t matter what other people do—”

And then Harry was under. He really hoped there weren’t any other words he’d said that he couldn’t remember. He was going to regret those enough when he woke up.

*

Severus stared in silence at the sprawled Potter in the middle of his bed, a combination of words he had never thought he would speak or think. He waited for the snores to begin, but they never did.

Someone under the influence of the sleeping draught he had given Potter almost always snored. That he didn’t indicated a dangerous level of exhaustion.

A potentially mortal level of exhaustion.

Severus closed his hands into slow fists. He wanted to leave. He didn’t want to stand here gazing down at Potter. He wanted to go back to the Manor and set up some kind of protection for the gift Potter had created. He wouldn’t put it past Draco or Astoria to destroy it if they found it.

But he couldn’t move.

Potter breathed on, oblivious.

There are some standards I hold myself to. It doesn’t matter what anyone else does.

Draco had long since begun to sleep with Astoria, even during the time that he was still sleeping with Potter, if Severus had the timeline right. And Potter still considered it “cheating” if he slept with someone even now, years after Draco had ended things.

Probably because he’s in love with Draco and would never consider sleeping with someone he’s not in love with.

With a harsh sound, Severus turned and swept out of the room. He Apparated back to the Manor and strode to the portion of the gardens where Potter had left the potions stand. He could feel his mood trembling as he walked, as brittle as glass. He knew it would shatter if someone spoke to him wrongly.

And if the stand was damaged…

But the stand waited as it had been, and no signs that anyone had been near it, not even house-elves. Severus cast the spells that would make it vanish to the sight of anyone but himself, then hesitated, and worked an exception into the spells.

Potter could hardly finish the gift if he couldn’t see it or touch it to find it, after all.

Severus again stood still when that was done. He hated the feeling of staring blankly into space with no idea of what came next. He had the feelings that were churning inside him.

Potter was someone who would risk his own bloody life to try and create a gift that he thought of as repaying a debt. That the gift was something Severus could use and that would respond exclusively to his own magic was a level of thoughtfulness that no one had ever reached when it came to him.

Potter thought he should be faithful because it was the right thing to do, no matter what Draco had done. Potter gave credit for his ideas to others because he hadn’t been the one to come up with every aspect of them. Potter had powerful magic that he treated as a normal facet of his life, when every other wizard Severus could think of would have bragged about it or used it for his own personal gain.

Severus started. His hands had clenched so tightly that they were painful. He worked his fingers open and latched onto the thought that had come to him.

He could not comprehend why Draco would be willing to discard someone like that, or to bring him back to create a wedding gift and torture him that way. Again, he thought that Draco must be playing a game neither Severus nor Potter understood.

But if Draco was willing to give up a powerful, generous, devoted lover…

There was no one except Potter himself to stand in the way if Severus decided to collect him.

Severus glanced at the potions stand again. If he had never seen this, if Potter had never created it, then perhaps he would have decided otherwise. But he thought of having someone like that devoted to him instead, and covetousness or lust throbbed under his breastbone.

Yes. He would have to make more effort than he would ordinarily have committed to a goal like this, but then again, Potter had given that much effort for a casual gift.

What would he do if Severus could free him of the toils of an old bond and give him someone else to love?

Severus shivered to think of it.