Chapter Ten of 'Valerian'- Vengeance

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Nine.

Chapter One.

Title: Valerian (10/?)
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 Ten--Vengeance

"Was he truly so desperate to keep you and your money?"

"I think the fame mattered to him even more than the money." Harry reclined on a chair in his garden, staring towards the hills that ringed his home in the distance, a cold cloth pressed to his forehead. He still got headaches that potions couldn't help. "Luckily," his experience with dealing with Voldemort when his scar was still active gave him the ability to bear the pain.

"Why do you say that?'

Harry watched Severus thoughtfully as he took his place on another chair standing opposite from Harry in the garden, one that Harry had carved himself and added cushioning enchantments to to make more comfortable. He wondered if the man was aware that, near the end, Harry had also seen briefly into his head for a bit.

"Because he had grown up with money himself," Harry said, with a shrug. "But not fame."

"Everyone knows who the Malfoys are," Severus protested. He had a glass of mead in his hand. Harry had dug the mead out from the back of a cabinet, shocked that he had almost forgotten it was there. He used to love drinking that stuff. "They were even more prominent directly after the war, when you spoke up for them."

"Do you know what happened to Lucius and Narcissa?"

Severus paused. "I know they left Britain for France. From what I understood, some of the less than favorable attention from their prominence made the decision for them."

Harry sighed a little. "They left because Draco blackmailed them. He wanted to own Malfoy Manor and have all the Gringotts vaults at his disposal. He told them that if they left, he wouldn't bring out the evidence that Lucius had served Voldemort faithfully in the first war."

A catching of his breath was the only sign Severus had reacted to Voldemort's name, something that made Harry feel oddly proud. "How do you know that? And why would Draco think anyone would be interested?"

Harry snorted. "The Daily Prophet's only loyalty is to itself, and they would have been happy to drag everyone they could through the mud--Lucius, Abraxas, the Ministry officials who accepted Lucius's story of being under the Imperius Curse after the first war. Me, for speaking up for him. It was a credible threat."

"Noted," Severus murmured. "You still have not explained how you knew."

Harry smiled. He had once liked--he still liked--he liked it buried underneath the memories that Draco had taken--

He hissed and clapped the cold cloth across his forehead as the throbbing abruptly built up to a thunderclap. Severus immediately stood and came over to him, letting his fingers press firmly against the cloth.

"It will do that for a time," he murmured. "Your mind had sealed itself around the lack of memories, only tearing open at the points where Draco deliberately reminded you of finding him and Astoria in that particular position meant to trigger the right memory. The pain is the scabbing over of the new wounds."

Harry nodded shortly, eyes shut and mind focused on the cold and the pressure. He would still rather have his thoughts free despite all the agony he had had to endure.

"You have not explained how you knew," Severus said, when Harry had managed to open his eyes. Severus was in the opposite chair with his glass of mead again. His face was wiped clean of emotion as he studied Harry.

"Yes." Harry swallowed a gulp of his own water. Severus had forbidden mead or anything else that might fog his head for now. "Draco told me. That was another set of memories I lost." So much about the last five years had seemed unreal, he now knew, because it had been.

"Why would he tell you such a thing?"

Harry sighed. "I think that, even then, he was plotting to smash his way into my mind and hide or eliminate anything he didn't want me to find. I think--it's hard to be sure, with those memories so mixed and only slowly settling back into place--that I'd started to notice some of the signs that he was sleeping with Astoria. And he wanted to impress me. He always wanted to do that, from the beginning of our acquaintance."

Severus gave a faint snort. "Yes, I remember him telling me that. Is it true that you refused to shake his hand the first time you met?"

Harry rolled his eyes as other memories surged through his mind, bright-hot and painless compared to the recent ones. "The second time."

"You saw him when you lived with the Muggles?"

"No, in Diagon Alley, when Hagrid took me there on my birthday. He was being fitted for robes in Madam Malkin's at the same time I was. But neither of us said our names because Malfoy was too busy prattling on and trying to make me feel inferior, as well as saying Muggleborns shouldn't attend Hogwarts."

Severus closed his eyes. "That does sound very like him. And then when he found out who you were..."

"He insulted Ron, who had just become my very first friend." Harry's breath caught a little in turn as he remembered how steadily his friends had stood behind him in the last few years, and how he had repaid them. He winced. Well, now that he was himself again, he could apologize to Ron and Hermione. He thought they would be more relieved to have him back to normal again than upset because of the things he had said and done under Draco's influence.

"First friend?"

"I didn't have any friends when I was living with the Dursleys. My cousin Dudley kept them all away. Told them I was a freak," Harry added, when Severus stared at him in disbelief.

"I--that is outrageous."

Harry chuckled at the look that was settling over Severus's face. "If you want to help me get vengeance on Draco, please focus on that and not tormenting my relatives. I don't know where they are, anyway. The Order took them away to protect them during the war, and I never saw them again."

"I could easily--" Severus began, but subsided when he caught sight of Harry. "Very well. But you haven't told me any of the plans that you've supposedly made for vengeance on Draco."

"Supposedly?"

"You forgive far too easily." Severus's voice was low. "You forgave me enough for my actions before the war to trust me and let me into your mind. I cannot help but think you might do the same thing for Draco."

Harry gasped and then began to laugh. He caught his breath, but started again when he saw how deep the offended look on Severus's face ran. When he finally managed to speak, he said, "That really upsets you, doesn't it?"

"Tell me that I am wrong. That you will not forgive Draco as you have a habit of doing."

Harry looked at the floor for a moment and let the memories settle in his mind of all he had lost, everything from his mental freedom to two years with his friends. Then he looked up, and Severus flinched back hard enough to spill his glass of mead.

"What do my eyes tell you?" Harry asked softly.

"That you hate Draco Malfoy behind comprehension."

Severus's voice was soft with something that wasn't fear or shock, despite his earlier reaction. Harry raised a curious eyebrow, but didn't care enough to pursue it right now. "Yes. I won't give up. I only want to make sure that I pay off the debt well enough that I won't feel the urge to go back and do it again later. I don't want to give him a single chance to defend himself or lay a trap for me in the future, and he knows me well enough that he might be able to do it."

"But you are not planning to kill him." There was a shade of disappointment in Severus's voice this time.

"No. How would that help? I would be suspected of murder, which is something I don't want to be. I'm going to do it undetectably. And how would he be alive to feel his destruction if he died?"

Severus's smile was slow and vicious. He Summoned the small keg of mead from the kitchen and dipped himself another glass. "I suppose that you do not want to subject him to the same kind of mental enslavement that you were put through."

Harry swallowed, the pain from his memories shuddering through him again. "As much as I hate him, I can't do that to another human being."

"Then what are we going to do?"

Harry considered Severus for a moment. Did he really want to be that closely involved? But from his frown, he apparently did, and Harry wasn't about to discourage someone who was still more talented in Potions than Harry would ever be outside of the small amount of brewing he had to do for his projects.

"I never said I was against a mental punishment. Just not the kind that he inflicted on me."

Severus shifted. It was subtle, but coming from him, it was practically the equivalent of sitting up in his chair and vibrating with excitement. Harry smiled, and sipped from his own glass.

"I'm going to take his money from him first," Harry said slowly. "Then his property. Everything he has that he thinks makes life worth living, including his library, his gemstones, his manor, his house-elves, and everything else that he owns." He paused. "And Astoria is going to be taken from him as well."

"Are you going to kill her?"

"No need to be that bloodthirsty," Harry said lightly. "I despise Astoria Greengrass, but I hate Draco so much that there's not much room for me to hate her. What I am going to do is make sure that she won't get any of the benefits that I think she's marrying Draco for."

"Money and property," Severus summed up.

Harry nodded. "I was invited to create a gift to celebrate this wedding. There's not going to be a wedding. As I said, stripping Draco of everything is a first step. Well, first and second, if you want to think of the Malfoy money and the Malfoy property as two separate things."

"And the third? The final?" Severus sounded as if he was edging out along a high cliff.

"Take his public life," Harry said. "I'm going to expose what he did to the world."

"You're going to announce it?" Severus settled warily back in his seat. "There are those who will think of you as weak."

"Oh, no," Harry said, his eyes widening a little. "I'm going to have Draco announce it. I did say that I wasn't opposed to some mental torture," he added, as Severus's eyes widened in turn. "I'll have him spin it in as bad a light as possible--for him, that is. He'll be trapped as a prisoner behind his eyes while he does it, able to see what's happening but unable to force himself to stop it. It's going to be glorious."

"It does sound that way." Severus's voice had gone softly breathless again. "How can I help?"

"By constructing the mental trap for Draco when the time comes. That's something I still wouldn't really be good at. If nothing else, my hatred would get in the way of my finesse."

"But I cannot help with the other steps?"

Harry paused for a long moment. He had wanted to wait to ask this as long as Severus was eager to help him, but it would have to come now. He met Severus's eyes. "Draco was your student, and someone you tried to protect during the war, and you were eager enough to help him keep an 'eye' on me when I came to the Manor to create Astoria's gift. I have to ask what changed, and why now you want to be on my side."

*

Nothing but the truth will do.

Severus had made that decision the moment he glimpsed that unquenchable fire burning in Harry's eyes. He never wanted to stand in the way of someone who could look at him with that kind of hatred.

On the other hand, neither did he want to be far away from it. And that meant he had to speak honestly about his motives.

He held Harry's gaze and said, "I was irritated when you downplayed your skills, but also fascinated. I wanted to find out more about why you would make these discoveries and not claim credit for them."

"I was never as conceited as you thought me."

Severus's pride tasted of ashes. He swallowed it anyway and nodded. "I know that, now. But I still wouldn't have thought that you would create potions and make discoveries like these and give the credit to a man who had publicly spurned you to marry a woman he had been cheating on you with."

"So you wanted to solve the mystery." Harry shrugged. "The mystery is solved. There's no reason for you to be around me now."

There is every reason, Severus thought, and his eyes trailed over Harry's face and along the curls of his wild black hair. Harry made a sharp noise, and Severus looked at him again to see him plastered along the back of his chair.

"You want me," Harry said. "What the fuck?"

Severus managed to avoid laughing at the blunt statement, which would not have been the right move to make at this point. He held Harry's eyes and simply nodded. "I do want you. I want the incredibly strong, complicated man I was glimpsing through learning about your skills. I want the man who could remain loyal to someone who had mistreated him badly--"

"You know now that that loyalty to Draco was manufactured."

"And yet you still feel enough compassion, and enough ability to look beyond your situation, to not want to repay him with what exactly was done to you," Severus said quietly. "I want the man who feels that way."

Harry blinked hard. "But seriously. I never thought you were attracted to men."

“What did we truly know about each other?” At least the taste of ashes was out of Severus’s mouth now. He drank the last of his mead and put the drained glass beside him. “I hope you know that I would hardly advertise such a thing at school.”

“Would someone have hated you for it?”

“It would have been another weakness that the Death Eaters could have preyed upon,” Severus said. “Or the Dark Lord. Or those who hated me for being a Death Eater. Or Albus,” he had to add, because Albus had been both a good man and a ruthless one. “As it was, a few times my enemies paraded young women in front of me, but they stopped when I had no reaction to them. I believe most of them thought I never saw another person as attractive.”

Harry gave him a wan smile, and then the wan look disappeared and sharp force replaced it. “You must know that I haven’t been with someone in the two years since Draco and I ended our relationship.”

“I would hardly expect you to jump into my bed right away or into dating me.”

“Would you expect me to, eventually?”

“I would not want it as a price that you are paying for my aid,” Severus said. That was not a sentence he would have spoken a week ago. But he had been in Harry’s mind since then. He had seen what Harry had endured, and he knew that Harry would never sleep with someone because it was payment for a debt. He would simply thank Severus for his help and find another way to do what he wanted. “I would hope that if you decided to date again, you would give me a chance.”

Harry was silent. His gaze roamed up and down Severus’s face. He could have been judging anything from Severus’s honesty to his looks. Severus wished he had more mead, but at least he could keep still and refrain from showing how dry his mouth was.

“This is insane,” Harry said at last. “I never once considered sleeping with you before this, you know.”

“I would have been offended if you had.”

Harry’s glacial stare broke into a chuckle. “Offended?”

“Because obviously my attempts at intimidation had failed. My sour personality and the attempts to rule my students with fear were all I had then.”

“And since the war?”

Severus considered Harry, listened for the questions behind the words, and said quietly, “I regret the necessity of what I did, but I do still think it was necessity. I had to be able to return to the Dark Lord’s side as a spy during the second war, and Albus and I both had no doubt that was coming. I could have been kinder,” he added, as he saw the storm darkening in Harry’s eyes. “I don’t dispute that. But I also don’t spend all the nights of my life tearing myself up with guilt. If that is what you want, then I cannot provide it.”

“What I want is honesty, and a vow that you’ll never use your Legilimency against me the way Draco did.”

“Then there should be no problem.”

Harry gave a choppy nod. He still seemed disturbed. “I’m not promising that I’ll date you or sleep with you.”

“I understand that.”

“Then what kind of payment are you expecting for helping me?”

“The chance to help you,” Severus said, surprised that Harry hadn’t seen that already. “The chance to see Draco humiliated, when he lied to me and did things that even the Dark Lord would have balked at. The chance to see you claim credit for your achievements.”

“I can’t believe that you really care about the last.”

“Then perhaps you will if I say that I was annoyed by your lies that Draco was the inspiration behind everything you had done and that your ideas weren’t your own.”

Harry snorted. “You really—that annoyed you so much? Why? I would have thought you would rejoice in the chance to see me taken down a peg.”

“You aren’t the only one who has changed since the war, Harry.” Severus paused, but Harry made no challenge to that, only continued watching him. “And yes, it annoys me when I know that someone is lying to me. And Draco believed he could deceive me. So did you! He was too arrogant for his own good, and you continued to deny that you were a victim of his cruelty. Now those problems are on their way to being solved.”

“If he hadn’t done this to me, then would you care?”

“If he hadn’t done this to you, then you would have told him to fuck off when he requested that you make a wedding gift for his wife, and more than likely I wouldn’t have been involved at all,” Severus retorted.

Harry nodded. “You’re right. There’s not much point in thinking about what would have happened if I hadn’t wasted the last five years of my life.” He paused. Severus waited. He desperately wanted to be involved in Harry’s vengeance, but then again, Harry was the one who had to make the decision.

And Severus could find some way to at least take revenge for Draco’s lies and attempt to use him even if it was outside this channel. He simply would prefer acting in concert with Harry.

“All right.”

“You’ll accept me as your companion in revenge?” Severus asked, and blinked again at the way Harry’s lips twitched.

“You always manage to phrase things so seriously, Severus. But yes, I will.”

Severus could not control the smile that crossed his face, or the sense of triumph that flowed through him.

*

Harry blinked. This matters to him. Why? I don’t believe that it’s all just irritation about being lied to.

The sense of a mystery that he wanted to solve—that, maybe, Harry could credit that a man like Severus Snape would be intrigued by, stubborn about. But now he had the answers. What was left was only Harry, and that couldn’t be as satisfying as finding out that Harry had been the one lying to him all along would have been.

He’d said that he’d changed, though, and it was true that the man Harry remembered would have given up long before this, disgusted by Harry’s stubbornness.

I do owe him something for having saved my mind and sanity. I suppose this is a small enough price.

Harry settled back into his chair. “I’m going to ask that you go to Malfoy Manor tomorrow.”

“And do what?”

Harry smiled a little as he heard Severus’s suspicious tones. This was more like the man he knew—the man he thought he could trust. “Tell Draco that I’m having trouble with the gift. That will both give me a cover for the visit that I want to make to Ron and Hermione, and confirm for him that I’m still magically weak and someone he can despise. Don’t lie to him directly if you can help it. He’s a good enough Legilimens to sense that.”

“I need no advice in how to twist words,” Severus said irritably. “And he is not a good Legilimens by any stretch of the imagination. He has no finesse.”

Harry laughed a little. “Yes, fine. I just wanted to know if you would be willing to do this.”

“More than willing,” Severus said. “I would also be willing to indulge in a bit of revenge of my own.”

“I don’t want Draco to suspect anything,” Harry said fiercely. “Therefore, I am going to ask you to hold off.”

Severus made a frustrated hissing noise, but the rumors that the Head of Slytherin could speak Parseltongue were without foundation as far as Harry could tell. “I could be subtle enough.”

“I know. But this is my revenge, even if I allow you to help. Hold off.”

Severus considered him for a second, and seemed to find what he needed in Harry’s eyes. Then he inclined his head. “Yes, I will. But I have your permission to say anything I want to Draco, as long as it conveys the impression that you are weak and firmly under his control, and does not make him suspect?”

“Of course.” Harry stood, smiling. “And I want to say again—thank you for persisting the way you did, instead of giving up in disgust when you realized that I was determined to deny everything.”

“Mysteries hold a certain fascination for me,” Severus replied, extending his hand. “Of course, so might answers.”

Harry shook his head and stared calmly at him, hoping that he conveyed no encouragement for Severus’s hopes to date or sleep with him. That would have to wait. So many things would have to wait.

But at least, now, thanks in part to his man, he had a future they would wait for.