lomonaaeren

Thank you again for all the reviews!

I am cutting up the Inter Vivos chapters into smaller parts now, as the longer ones were overwhelming me with dread when I tried to write them.

Chapter Twenty-Eight—Stone (Part One)

“Are you feeling well enough to talk now?”

Harry winced, but kept staring straight ahead, out the window in his bedroom. His arms were folded on the windowsill. His shoulders were hunched. His broken arm was still bound to his side with a sling, though as far as he was concerned he didn’t need it anymore; the bone-healing spells and bone-strengthening potions had done their work. Still, he must look sullen and miserable when seen from behind. That ought to deter Snape from talking to him.

It had worked for three days. Harry had slept and awakened in Draco’s arms, reassured Sirius he was fine, written letters to Ron and Hermione asking them to get the basilisk venom if they could, and engaged in a few guarded conversations with Mrs. Malfoy. That had been all he wanted.

He couldn’t face up to the anger in Snape’s face or voice when he had seen Harry wounded. All he could think was that he was once again being blamed for something that wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t planned to get wounded. He hadn’t thought it would be jolly good fun. He’d done pretty well, in fact, when the cabinet that had only broken his arm might have fallen on him and crushed him flat beneath its weight.

But still Snape watched him with disappointed eyes and spoke to him in a brittle, bitter tone. Harry was just as pleased to avoid a conversation that he feared would make him distrust Snape again.

And he was so tired of distrusting Snape.

“I think you are.” Snape’s voice had cooled. It had sounded considerate at first, but Harry knew that was only a mask.

And then his weariness became anger. Why should he have to hide in his and Draco’s room and apologize for his injury? If Snape wanted to make him apologize, he was the one at fault. Harry had spent years trying not to challenge the Dursleys, trying not to give them a reason to hurt him, and it had happened anyway. It was time to stop running away from Snape, too.

“Yes, I am,” he said, turning around and awkwardly folding his arms in front of him. Maybe his anger would give Snape pause. He hoped so. Snape was staring at him with the same cold mask he’d been wearing for the past three days. The least he could give the bastard back was his own rejection. “Not that you care about the wounds themselves so much as having someone to blame for them.”

Snape paused, his hand on the door of the bedroom. His eyes had gone careful, and Harry didn’t understand why. He should have attacked with such open provocation. “I do not understand you,” he said. “I do not blame Draco for your injury. He was…rather occupied at the time your arm broke. I understand.”

“No,” Harry said, and the bitterness spilled over before he could contain it, “you just blame me.”

Snape stared at him, and the shock on his face looked like false innocence. Harry rolled his eyes at him.

“I saw how furious you were when you saw my arm,” he said. “And then you packed me full of pain potions before I could so much as ask for them. You blame me for getting hurt. And I understand that, all right? It’s pretty bloody familiar from the Dursleys.” He felt a sharp stinging at the corners of his eyes, and had to turn away. God, what was wrong with him? Ever since they’d retrieved the tiara, he’s felt tense, instead of happy the way he should. He only relaxed around Draco. “You scolded me the entire time. Like I chose that, like I really wanted—”

And then he had to stop, because Snape’s arms were wrapped around him, in a careful position that wouldn’t jostle his sling, and even Harry couldn’t mistake the emotion in that hug for disappointment.

“Foolish child,” Snape breathed. “That’s not it. I was worried for you, and my worry has little practice at manifesting as anything except anger. That’s—it. That is all.”

Harry swallowed. He trusted Snape’s actions more than he did his words at the moment, but when he reached out and felt carefully around his ribs, Snape’s arms were still encircling him. There was little stiffness in his shoulders. He wasn’t embarrassed about this, or not much. He wasn’t forcing himself to do this.

“You mean that,” Harry said weakly. He knew there had been anger in Snape’s eyes. He wouldn’t allow Snape to forget that. But the possibility that it hadn’t been directed at him had never entered his head.

“Yes.” Snape nudged him gently in the direction of the chairs at the end of the bed. Draco had declared that he was tired of having nowhere to sit when he wanted to read in the bedroom and fetched them from the library. Harry sat down in a daze. “I am—sorry if you misinterpreted my behavior. I thought you were avoiding me because you felt sulky about my giving you the pain potions without your permission and did not want to discuss healing the wounds in your mind.”

Harry put a hand to his scar and shook his head a little. The relief from the thought of arguing with Snape was overwhelming, but the tension still crackled and boiled as a headache behind his temples.

“What is wrong?” Somehow, Snape achieved the perfect tone, concerned but not commanding, as he let Harry go and sat down in the other chair.

“I don’t—know.” Harry forced the words out against a lump of agony in his throat and against the temptation to keep his feelings to himself as he had done for so long. “I should be happy that we succeeded and that Draco is master of the Elder Wand, but I’m not, and I don’t know—what to do.”

He looked up at Snape and let his Occlumency shields drop, hoping against hope that Snape would understand the invitation without the need for words.

*

Severus caught his breath. He had not expected, when he came up the stairs, that Harry would let him see into his mind today. He had thought he was going to be dealing with a reluctant adolescent who was intent on avoiding pain.

But this…

Severus stepped into Harry’s mind even more delicately than he had when he was looking for the location of the Horcrux. It wouldn’t do to cause any pain now. Harry’s trust was more fragile than he perhaps understood. He still expected interference in his life from adults, utter disregard of his feelings, and abuse. It was time for Severus to show him that the first did not necessarily mean the other two would follow.

He built walls to shield some of the boy’s mind, as before, and then turned to face the suppurating wounds the Dark Lord’s possession had caused. He hissed when he noticed that they were darker than before, and the one he had had to tear open the other night in order to reach the memory of the Room of Requirement was boiling with slick magic, the mind’s equivalent of blood.

This is more than the damage I had to do.

Severus glided carefully around the pain, touching nothing, but observing intently. The wounds expanded as he watched, and sick fear clenched around his stomach and extended cold fingers into his throat.

It is no wonder that the Dark Lord did not bother preying on the boy last year. I thought that his sending Bellatrix after Harry meant he was washing his hands of the kill. But even if she didn’t succeed, this would have.

The Dark Lord had done more than simply possess Harry and force him to injure Black, as horrendous as that was. He had carried a magical venom, based on Legilimency, along with him and injected it into Harry’s mind like his snake Nagini biting someone. It was spreading as depression at the moment, and it would increase as senseless mental pain and listlessness of spirit, until at last Harry took his own life.

And there was no way that getting rid of it would not hurt.

Severus placed himself firmly in his own body before he opened his eyes. Harry was watching him with his arms wrapped around his chest, as though to shelter himself against the cold, and his brow was furrowed.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” he asked. “I could feel your reaction.” He looked away from Severus and pursed his lips with a faint smacking sound. “How bad?” His voice dragged on the last words, as though he didn’t really want to know.

Severus knew the boy had had enough of adults hiding information from him, however, and so he replied honestly. “The Dark Lord has poisoned the wounds in your mind,” he said. “He did it from the beginning, but because they were not…examined closely…I did not realize it had happened. We must purge the venom.”

Harry exhaled hard through his nose. “And it’ll hurt?”

“It will.” Severus had no intention of hiding that, either, particularly because he knew Dumbledore would have tried.

Harry put his hand over his eyes and sat in silence for a moment. Then he looked up, and though his eyes were tearless, they were bright in the way Severus had often seen Lily’s be before she wept.

“I’m tired of distrusting you,” Harry said. “I want to be able to rely on you again. If I’d had more emotional distance from what you told me at the end of my fifth year, then I would have been able to start doing that sooner.” He looked pale and frightened and very young—unless Severus looked into his eyes. “And I want you to heal me as soon as you possibly can.”

Severus hesitated, overcome by the confidence implied in that statement and not sure his voice would stay steady if he spoke now. That wouldn’t be the disaster he would have thought it was two years ago, since Harry was not his Gryffindor friends, but he wanted to be strong for Harry at the moment. He had seen what it did to the boy now that he had to act like an adult for Black, instead of the other way around.

“Speed may increase the pain,” he said. “I will want to study the wounds for at least a month before I begin.”

Harry smiled. “Well, you can do that, since Draco and I aren’t going back to school in September,” he said, and stood up, stretching as though he were trying to stretch his cramped spine from the pressure of a long burden. “And in the meantime, we’ll think about ways to destroy the tiara and the stone permanently.”

He hesitated, then put a hand on Severus’s shoulder and pressed down hard for a moment. Severus recognized the reassuring gesture he often used on Black.

Severus reached up and covered Harry’s hand with his own before he could leave the bedroom. He would not allow Harry to feel responsible for him, too. He was no longer young enough to absolutely require parents, but he still needed someone he could lean on. And more than that, Severus had seen the toll that acting as a leader took on Harry when he still didn’t really believe in his own qualifications for the role. Severus was determined that, at the very least, Harry would know he didn’t have to shelter Severus from the wrongs of the world.

Harry looked down at him, surprised. Severus stared back. He had no idea how good Harry had become at Legilimency under Draco’s tutelage; he had no idea how to make his emotions appear on his face, when he was so long out of practice. But he imagined showing his pride in Harry and his humility under his new charge, and that would have to be enough.

Harry’s expression softened, and he nodded a little before he turned away and walked out the door.

Left alone, Severus closed his eyes and told himself this time would be different, because Harry had made the first move, before he stood and went down to his lab to find his books on mental wounds.

*

Draco sat back and folded his arms behind his head, scowling thoughtfully at the Elder Wand, which lay in the middle of the kitchen table. Now and then, it vibrated and slightly trembled. Its tip swung further and further away from him, the grip inviting his hand. Draco would have thought it was moving because he tapped his foot on the floor and caused shocks that ran up into the table.

Except that he wasn’t tapping his foot on the floor, and he knew better.

He didn’t trust the surge of power that had risen up in him when Professor Snape told him what the wand really was, or the way that the wand had jumped in his belt, even though his hand hadn’t been anywhere near it at the time. It was worrying that he could feel that much hunger for a mere artifact. He didn’t want to end up like Dumbledore, so obsessed with one of the Deathly Hallows that he let its mere existence control and constrain his planning.

Draco yearned for power, of course. He wanted to be strong—at least strong enough to outface his enemies and resist their attacks, ideally strong enough that others would come to him for advice and he could take a position of influence in the wizarding world. That was more than his being his father’s son. Even if his mother had raised him alone, she would have passed that belief, a legacy of his heritage from both the Black and the Malfoy families, on to him. It was an exceptional pure-blood, like Harry’s Black, who didn’t want power.

But Draco had also seen how the search for it had enslaved his father and destroyed his parents’ marriage. He wasn’t prepared to sacrifice anything for it.

One had to have life and health to use power. One had to have freedom, or the use of power would be checked by obligations to others. One had to know something about one’s long-term goals, or the power would be spent frivolously, and flow uselessly into minor projects. And someone would probably come and take it away before long.

Draco did not intend for any of those things to happen. He would carefully study the wand’s magic before he committed to it. He would be the master of the Elder Wand, if he decided to keep it, not its servant.

And he would not make himself a target for the Dark Lord to come after, as Draco suspected he might once he learned who had conquered Dumbledore’s wand, when the most important thing was surviving the war.

What I need, he thought, watching the way that the wand inched its way across the table towards him, is some way to use it that won’t involve me wielding it in battle. I would desire power more there, when I might need my full strength to defend Harry or save my own life.

I wonder what makes the Elder Wand so powerful? Its history? Its wood? Its core?

Draco narrowed his eyes and wondered how easy it would to be to write to Ollivander the wandmaker. He might not know much, but anything more than the bare legend of the Deathly Hallows would be more than Draco knew now.

*

“Mr. Potter. Come here, please.”

The words were polite if cold, but Harry knew a command when he heard one. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had made sure he learned that lesson before he learned to read. He hesitated, then moved slowly into the library, where Mrs. Malfoy sat on a couch before the fire with her hands primly clasped.

“Yes, Mrs. Malfoy?” Harry kept his voice just as cold. If she was about to scold him for “corrupting” Draco or putting him in danger, then Harry wasn’t in the mood to listen. He kept his back to the wall by the door so that he could dart out quickly if the scene got too unpleasant, and looked at the fire rather than at her. Maybe that would reduce the confrontational nature of the conversation.

Her first words put paid to any hope of that. “You must realize that I resent your relationship with my son.”

Harry took a deep breath and looked her in the eye. He cared more about showing that he loved Draco and she couldn’t drive them apart than he did about hurting her feelings. “Why?” he demanded. “You must know by now that we both want it, and that Draco’s as eager as I am to pursue it. It’s not like I walked up to him, cast the Imperius Curse, and started snogging him.”

Mrs. Malfoy’s eyes grew into chips of ice and pearl, as if she thought the reference to snogging too impolite to pollute the air she had to breathe. How did she survive seeing us kiss at Christmas? Harry wondered in irritation. “You could have done more to discourage him than you did,” she said, and there was no inflection in her voice, but there didn’t have to be to show her feelings.

Harry lifted his chin. “I did try to discourage him at the beginning. I assumed his feelings didn’t run deep, and I didn’t want to associate with Slytherins—”

Mrs. Malfoy gave him a brittle smile. “Anyone who would let House pride stand in the way of a loving bond—”

“I’m talking about the way I am now,” Harry said loudly, “not the way I was when I was thirteen. He taught me better. And he wouldn’t go away. So we started out as friends, and then we realized we were in love with each other, and we became lovers.” He watched her flinch with vicious satisfaction. He was through with putting up what other people said and thinking politeness in the face of rudeness was the best response. “So you’d have to talk him out of loving me even if you could talk me out of it.”

“I see the necessity for danger to his life.” Mrs. Malfoy examined her hands. “He would be in danger if he had never associated with you, because I have fled from Lucius and Draco has refused the Dark Mark. But you could have preserved greater secrecy and not asked him to go with you when we left the school.”

“We,” Harry snapped back. “Do you think he’d really stand being left behind?”

“That is not the point. You didn’t even try.” Mrs. Malfoy’s eyes were colder than ever.

“I don’t try to make those kinds of decisions for him,” Harry said firmly. “Not anymore. You’ll have to forgive me, Mrs. Malfoy, if I think what Draco wants more important than what you say about it.”

“Conflict between us could make life uncomfortable for Draco. You would not want to force him to choose between us, surely?”

“He’s old enough now to see that that’s a false dichotomy.” Harry yawned in her face. “You would be the one insisting on the choice. And since he’s of age, you can’t make him obey you. I think that he would decide you were trying to force him back into a childish mold, whilst I trust him enough to treat him like an adult.”

Mrs. Malfoy was silent for long moments, studying him. Then she said, “You love him, Mr. Potter?”

“More than I love anyone else,” Harry said fiercely. “I’d do anything to keep him safe from Voldemort—except make him sit out of the war,” he added, anticipating the question he was sure she opened her mouth to ask. “That’s not fair to him. I want to be fair to him, and show that I trust him, even more than I want to protect him.”

“An unusual ambition.” Mrs. Malfoy shifted so that her hands could open on her lap, as if she found the position she had been sitting in until now cramped. “One might say that your way would kill him, whilst my way would at least leave him alive.”

“You can’t know that.” Harry took a step forwards before he thought about it. He didn’t want to threaten Mrs. Malfoy, but, on the other hand, she sounded like she was making threats to him. “After all, you thought you were safe in the Manor with your husband, and look what happened.”

For long moments, there was silence. Then Mrs. Malfoy smiled and stood up. Harry stepped quickly to the side and laid his hand on his wand.

“I have indeed failed,” Mrs. Malfoy said, “at least in gaining your trust, if you believe that I would harm you. I will not. I owe you, in fact, for giving me a most valuable and important lesson.” Her voice was mild, with a light chime to it, as if to show that she held no hard feelings, but Harry was not going to trust that, of course. “Never confront a teenage boy who feels as strongly about his lover as you do.”

Harry snarled. “If you think that my feelings for Draco will cool when we get older—”

Mrs. Malfoy held up a hand. “That is not what I meant. I was thinking of speaking to Draco on the same subject, but I can hardly imagine that he would be less—vehement—than you.” Her lips twitched into a brief smile, and she held Harry’s eye until he started wondering if she could use Legilimency, too.

Then she nodded and said, “A good showing, Mr. Potter. Though you are not the first lover I would have chosen for my son, I do believe you have passed the test.”

And she stepped past him and out of the library, her gown rustling softly along her legs.

Harry stared after her with his mouth open for a long moment before he realized what she meant.

She was testing me. Seeing if I would defend Draco or back away from him when a member of his family challenged me. And—I performed well enough to satisfy her.

Harry had to breathe hard against the anger that hit him then. He glared after Mrs. Malfoy’s back and thought about casting some jinx that would humiliate but not hurt her.

No, he decided after a moment. That would only sour things between us, and I don’t want that. Even if I do think that she’s a cold bitch sometimes.

Instead, he went in search of Draco. He found him casting spells at the Elder Wand with his own hawthorn wand, and sucking his teeth noisily over the results, though the spells produced no effect that Harry could see.

“Sucking your teeth is a filthy habit,” Harry said, and draped his arms over Draco’s shoulders, and kissed him.

Draco leaned back to return the kiss with interest. “I can think of much more filthy things to do with my mouth,” he whispered in a breathy voice. “Interested?”

“God, yes.” Harry just wanted to forget about relatives’ tests and wounds in his mind and Horcruxes for a while. He pulled Draco impatiently away from the Elder Wand and towards their bedroom.

Draco laughed breathlessly. “What would you do if I wasn’t here?”

“Wank. A lot.” Harry pulled him into another kiss and then reached down to grip his cock, which had the pleasant consequences of shutting Draco up and making him rut against Harry’s hand.

They’d reached the bedroom, and Harry began taking off Draco’s clothes, since Draco seemed too languid at the moment to do it for himself. He did pause once, to take in the way that Draco sprawled on the bed, his eyes fluttering open and shut and revealing glimpses of clouded grey as they did so, his hair spread around him like a sunburst, his lips slightly parted.

I love him, and I don’t care what his mother says.

Harry leaned down for a third kiss, and tore the buttons open.

Chapter 28.2.