Part Thirty-Three of 'Their Phoenix'

[lomonaaeren]

Title: Their Phoenix (33/34)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Threesome, Snape/Harry/Draco. (Harry and Draco do develop their own sexual relationship within the threesome). Some Harry/Ginny and Snape/Draco near the beginning of the story.
Rating: NC-17.
Warnings: Magical bonding, slash sex, violence, profanity, massive denial. Springing-from-DH AU; it starts deviating from the moment Voldemort confronts Snape in the Shrieking Shack.
Summary: AU. Voldemort has learned who the true master of the Elder Wand is, and he plans to kill Draco along with Snape. Harry is desperate to save them, because Dumbledore would have wanted him to. But with wild magic, Horcruxes, and Dark Marks all involved, Harry may have condemned all three of them to something worse than death.
Author’s Notes: This is One of Those Bonding Fics. It’s also One of Those Threesome Fics, and also One of Those Fics With Harry-in-Denial. If that sounds like what you’re looking for, then come right in. I’m sorry to say that I have absolutely no idea how long this will be, and it will also be irregularly updated, whenever I finish a major “part.”

Part One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

An owl brought a letter in Shacklebolt’s handwriting to Severus on the morning of the gathering Swanfair was to hold.

For long moments, Severus sat holding it, looking back and forth from it to his book. He had immersed himself in the history of belladonna for most of the morning. Various Potions masters had various things to say about its effectiveness in more than a few potions, and Severus had at last become interested enough to purchase this book, which purported to resolve those conflicts. He did not want to drag himself away.

On the other hand, he was also not sure that he wanted Harry or Draco to read this letter.

True, they would know the contents soon enough; Severus was not sure that it was possible for them to keep secrets effectively from one another anymore. But there was a difference between yielding the information to them when they asked or overheard his thoughts, and letting them read the words written on the paper.

Shacklebolt would probably not have been able to figure out that of course Severus’s bondmates would see words he had meant to write only to Severus. Harry’s friends had quickly discovered that they shouldn’t complain to him about Severus and Draco by letter, but Severus no longer had any faith that the former Minister of Magic was as intelligent as two nineteen-year-old wizards.

He slit open the envelope.

Severus, was the salutation, which made Severus sigh in relief. Perhaps the letter would not be intolerable to read, as it would have been with a Dear or other sign of affection before his name. Severus objected to swallowing such thick, fake treacle first thing in the morning.

I know that you have no reason to believe anything good of me. Bu try to hear me out, please.

You were absolutely right that I was jealous of you for being taken into Albus’s confidence about his death. I spent a month after you fled asking myself what had happened, how he could have been so mistaken as to your essential nature. Then I learned that he wasn’t, that he trusted you more than anyone else, and with reason. My confusion changed to resentment. I would have given so much for that trust. I thought I had given much; Albus regularly trusted me with difficult tasks in the Muggle world, which most of the Order couldn’t have handled. Then I discovered that I was left outside the enchanted circle of his deepest confidence.

I never thought I would have to deal with the consequences of that choice. When Harry ignored the bonds, I presumed you would wither away into obscurity.

Severus curled his lip. Yes, this was a good sign of Shacklebolt’s lack of intelligence. Severus had been committed to dangerous tasks, he had been a Slytherin in school, he had been Head of Slytherin, he had attained a Potions mastery. What in any of that pointed to contentment with an obscure fate?

Then I realized that you wouldn’t, and I would have to face you over and over again. Harry claimed he would try to leave you out of public affairs, but almost immediately after that, he asked for pardons so that you could travel freely through the wizarding world. I knew what would happen then, even if he didn’t.

I didn’t want anyone to know of my jealousy. But Huxley exerted pressure on me. And Harry was there, constantly being hurt, constantly needing defense, constantly requiring me to pay attention to him. Where he went, you were.

It was inevitable.

That doesn’t mean I am proud of what I did. I am not. But I want you to know that I didn’t lose my mind randomly, and that you’re not the innocent that you probably like to think you are. Every action you perform has an effect on someone else, even if you don’t think it will.

“Yes,” Severus said aloud in his disgust, “because I should have been concerned, when Albus made me murder him, about what the effect on you would be.”

Harry and Draco’s emotions popped up in the back of his head like floating question marks. Severus ignored them for the moment and bent his head so that he could finish the letter. His rejection of Shacklebolt’s words and position was so strong that he knew he might not ever read the rest if he put it aside at the moment.

I have decided that I need to leave the Ministry, so that it can have a chance to recover from the damage I’ve inflicted on it. That lesson about the consequences of your actions and how you can’t anticipate them all but are still responsible for them also applies to me.

I hope that my successor isn’t Colben. I don’t think she has the experience or the resources necessary to survive past the election. Those resources would include good advisers. Harry is more intelligent than he gives himself credit for, but he’s still only a teenager who did one remarkable thing.

“And again you assume,” Severus whispered, watching the letter flutter in his breath, “that she would listen only to Harry and no one else, and that I would not offer my advice, to be delivered through Harry as necessary, if she refused to accept it directly.”

Draco’s curiosity jumped up and down in the back of the bond like a child who wanted a sweet held just beyond his reach. Harry’s retreated, as if he could feel something from Severus that made him less interested in the letter.

You were the one that prompted many of my actions, even if you never knew it, so I write this letter as a farewell, and a warning. Keep a leash on Harry if you can. He doesn’t know that lesson about consequences, and neither does Malfoy.

Kingsley Shacklebolt.

Severus laid the letter aside on the table, shaking his head. It was the mixture of self-defensiveness and unsolicited advice that he would have expected if anyone had told him to guess what it contained. It made him sure that Shacklebolt had resigned the Ministry as much to protect his own reputation as to try to give someone a chance in office who would do better than he had.

I don’t understand why people write letters like that, Harry said abruptly. I mean, he must have known that you wouldn’t believe him. So why bother?

You have too much faith in his intelligence and perceptiveness, Draco answered at once. Yes, he probably suspected that Severus wouldn’t believe him, but he let his hope smother that. He couldn’t resist the chance to give one last lecture.

Harry sent an impression of shaking his head so that the bond rippled and danced, but didn’t otherwise respond. Draco withdrew, so Severus curled his lip at the letter and set aside all thoughts of it the same way he had done with the physical parchment, returning to his ruminations on belladonna.

Draco came down into the library a short time later and “casually” picked up the letter so that he could read it in another room. Severus let him. There was, after all, nothing hurtful in there, nothing that touched chords of privacy in his soul, and so nothing that he would not have wished Draco to see.

*

Harry was nervous about what would happen when they confronted Swanfair—they’d tried to anticipate her so far, and she’d still managed to get through their defenses—but he had to admit that Draco’s energy was infectious.

Draco was brilliant: radiating golden joy down the bond, his facial features shining with smugness, his eyes like ice that had attained warmth without melting. He touched Harry and Severus constantly, small fluttering touches on their shoulders and backs and cheeks that startled and aroused Harry. He winked, he laughed, he told outrageous stories that he broke off halfway through to check the time, and altogether he made Harry wonder what would have happened if he’d ever offered encouragement to Draco in Hogwarts.

The same thing you said to me once, Draco responded when he caught the edge of that thought. It wouldn’t have worked, because we wouldn’t have Severus.

Harry turned to study Severus, who stood near the fireplace, a book open in his hands and a frown on his face. Even awaiting their departure, he studied. But there was one difference to mark this out as a special day: he wore a robe of black silk, with emerald-green snakes cavorting up the sides.

You will give me a fine conceit if you carry on looking at me that way, Severus said, his expression and the direction of his gaze never changing.

You deserve a fine conceit, Harry responded. Especially because you’re handsome, and because you belong to me.

Severus shifted, looking up then, and Harry shivered in delight as he realized the claim of ownership was entirely mutual.

Draco turned around and smiled tolerantly at them, as if he was indulging the pranks of children. Harry refrained from rolling his eyes, but it was difficult. Only the fact that Draco belonged to them both as firmly as they belonged to each other kept him from looking silly.

Nothing can make me look silly at the moment. Draco spread his hands to appeal to some invisible admiring audience.

“Just make sure that you don’t approach Swanfair with exultation in your face,” Severus said, shutting his book and setting it on a shelf with obvious reluctance. “Remember what aspect we are supposed to be presenting.”

Draco scowled at Severus, perhaps for urging caution, perhaps because he didn’t want him to speak aloud when they had been communicating mentally, and then smiled and spun towards the front door. “I am incapable of maintaining a bad mood right now,” he said with a sharp sigh. “Come with me.”

Harry followed, with Severus in tow. Harry could remember a time when he would have felt uneasy with Severus at his back, and expected a knife or a wand pushed into his shoulder blade, or at least a poisonous potion forced down his throat.

Now he felt nothing but wonder to be between his two lovers—wonder that he could ever have thought anything else right.

Severus growled in his mind. Stop having such thoughts, he demanded. Or you will force me to kiss you here, and perhaps forget about waiting until Swanfair has been handled.

Harry turned back to look at him, keeping a solemn expression on his face. Severus narrowed his eyes. Of course, he could feel through the bond that Harry was planning something, but he didn’t know what it was.

Breathless at his own daring, Harry ran a tongue around his lips and gave Severus a slow wink.

Severus’s eyes darkened to the point that Harry thought he would keep his promise. He was certainly moving forwards, one hand extended as if he would grip Harry’s shoulder and spin him back around, when Draco interrupted.

“You flirt like children,” he said. He was standing in the doorway, his eyes merciless, a faint cruel smile lingering around his mouth. “Have you forgotten what we’re here to do, who we’re going to confront?”

Harry winced. He couldn’t help but wonder if Draco felt left out. Harry and Severus had been flirting lately, playing coy games that they could both tolerate in the wake of a honest declaration. Draco hadn’t received as much concerted attention from either of them.

Are you kidding? Draco raised a supercilious eyebrow and turned to face Harry for a moment. His smile had become warm again, and once again his eyes resembled ice in their sparkle, rather than their coldness. I know that you both admire me for the plan that I came up with to destroy Swanfair’s confidence. I would rather have that kind of admiration than the childish kind I could arouse with flirtatious gestures.

Harry snorted, reassured, and felt Severus’s hand on his shoulder. He turned around, prepared to pay the price for his teasing.

Even when that price was a kiss that left him trembling and needing support to walk out the door, he still thought it was a good exchange.

*

Tonight is my night.

Draco had never felt like he owned a piece of time before. He had seen other people believe in it and act like it, though. Bellatrix, when she tortured someone for the Dark Lord. She knew that she could linger over the pain as long as she needed to, shaping false-tender words with lips near the prisoner’s ear, long nails stroking a pale cheek. And the Dark Lord had thought he owned the moment when Harry had destroyed him, when he had aimed his wand at a kneeling Draco and Severus.

But this time was Draco’s.

He could feel the last bits of his old self sloughing as they approached the hall where the pure-bloods awaited them. He was no longer the cowardly little boy whom the Dark Lord had controlled with threats to his parents. He was not his parents’ child. He was not the shadow of a more powerful and brilliant person, whether that person was his father or Harry.

He was himself.

And for the first time, Draco had the impression that himself might be a person that he would like and appreciate.

He felt the ground as soft as air beneath his feet when he opened the door and walked into the hall. Severus came behind him, and behind him was Harry with his Invisibility Cloak. They had chosen that as more reliable than any of the glamours they might have used, and easier to end on time than Polyjuice Potion. They couldn’t know when the moment to reveal Harry might arrive, not exactly.

Draco was, however, confident that they could seize it when it did.

It was really extraordinary how he felt, he mused as they moved on, to the private room at the back of the hall that Swanfair had agreed they could use, supposedly because Draco and Severus were too sensitive to bear the stare of too many eyes. Confidence slithered through him and sharpened his mind and clarified his perceptions. He knew that he could handle whatever happened, not because he was arrogant but simply because he knew that he could. It was a fact, like the way his eyes could perceive light.

And then he realized what the difference was. His realization ran like golden trickles of sunlight up the bonds, and his bondmates responded with gentle questions that would have sounded insipid spoken aloud.

I feel like an extraordinary person for the first time, he told them. I’m not measuring myself against anyone, because Swanfair doesn’t count. She’s so clearly going to lose. I’m complete in myself. I don’t need to cheat, or worry about my marks, or fear that someone outside me is going to cast me down into the dirt again. I’m fully and simply myself.

Harry caressed his hair through the bond. Severus rubbed the back of his neck. Draco listened to his moment singing.

*

Swanfair had no idea.

Severus could not glance into her eyes from this distance to be certain of that, but it was visible in her behavior, in the way that she stood on the stage before the crowd of pure-bloods exhorting them, in the too-wide gestures of her arms, in the loud laughter that bubbled out of her throat when she had to answer some importunate question. If she expected any kind of check or contradiction, she would have been more cautious, more chastened, aware that something could happen at any moment to change the situation and she should be calmer now lest she looked the more foolish afterwards.

But she had no trace of that awareness.

Severus smiled thinly. It suited him that the woman who had done her best to kill his bondmate should climb a mountain. The fall would hurt her the more when they pushed her off it.

Or when Draco pushes her off it, he thought, his gaze going sideways so that he could focus on Draco. Draco stood halfway between him and Harry, arms folded and head cocked as he listened to Swanfair, an absolutely relaxed expression on his face. He wasn’t smiling, but if he had been Severus’s enemy, Severus would still have been reluctant to go up against him. Someone who looked like that most often had better weapons in reserve than smiles would have been.

More and more, Severus was becoming conscious that he loved his bondmates in different ways. (He could speak those words in the most private part of his mind, the one walled around with Occlumency, where he knew that neither of them would catch the outer edge of his thoughts). Draco was the one whom Severus admired more, because he could see the qualities that made Draco what he was more easily and trace the way he used logic and cunning to solve a problem. Harry’s logic was usually opaque. Draco was the more open.

How Granger and Weasley, and Harry himself, would laugh if they heard that!

But it was the truth. Harry might betray his emotions, but until recently, Severus had not understood what caused those emotions. He understood Draco at a more fundamental level. He had only to say something in a certain way, turn his head in a certain direction, or look at Severus with a cocked eyebrow, and Severus knew what set of values or causes or passions he was being invited to share. He knew them from their beginning to their ending, because Draco’s mind was so very like his own.

He could flow with Draco in perfect confluence. It had not taken them long to master the new bond between them, not only because they both wanted to do so, but because they both worked on the problem in the same way.

Draco was a comrade, a colleague, in a way that Harry could never be. With him, Severus could have the kind of intellectual discussions that took place between Potions masters and other experts on the same subject. Severus was close to him without effort, and many times that was exactly what he wished for.

With Harry, he had to strive far more. Their experiences might be similar, but trusting to that and treading across that surface without care was like expecting to walk confidently on a frozen pond. The dark water beneath the ice bubbled and churned with the alien impulses and contrary lessons that they had taken from those experiences.

Harry called forth the part of Severus that enjoyed puzzles and intellectual games, that dealt with difficult potions, that had sometimes exulted—in a most perverse way—in the challenges that spying had set him. Severus would approach him with care, tentative, half-confident, and Harry would give him a puzzled look and explain that that wasn’t what he meant at all.

Harry controlled himself more than most people realized. There was a giant preserve of emotions in him that he had no intention of opening to the public. He kept his most precious smiles and his most valuable laughter for a charmed circle of a few intimates that he seemed to have chosen randomly.

To be admitted to that charmed circle, and now to know that Harry wanted to give up some of his control in order to sleep with him…

It made Severus hard thinking about it, and it gave him the patience to endure past the moments when it seemed that he had made his best effort and still didn’t understand Harry, and never would.

Severus was not concerned about those different kinds of love. Harry and Draco were different people. They were equal in his regard, but not identical. Why should he love them in exactly the same way?

He would be astonished if they did not love him in a different way than they loved each other, for that matter.

His life was not the way he had envisioned it during the rare moments when he let himself think about surviving his masters, but he would not have changed it.

And now Swanfair had finished speaking, and turned to gesture at the curtain to the side of the stage, no doubt thinking Draco would walk out and give her a grudging bow like a crown to be placed on her head. Draco surged forwards, his steps as light and perfect as if he were treading a tightrope to the confrontation.

Behind him came Harry.

And then Severus, who nonetheless took a moment to revel in what was happening between them before he followed.

*

Because this was his night and he was alive to every alteration in it, Draco knew the edge of the moment he was standing on.

There was the moment when the pure-bloods in the crowd, some of them resentful, some relieved, but all interested, awaited his entrance and his bow to Swanfair. Draco was sure she had prepared them for the gesture even though she had not mentioned it by name. They charged the air with their expectations, and those expectations had the power to twist reality into conformation. Draco knew that.

And this was the moment, the shining slice of time, when Draco took that pliable reality and shaped it the way he intended it to be shaped, by doing something as simple as bowing deeply to Swanfair, nearly folding himself in half. There were a few anxious titters from the audience, as they wondered why he had turned a gesture of submission into one of mockery when he was the one who had agreed to bow in the first place.

He kept his eyes on Swanfair’s face, as she looked over his dipping back and saw Harry advancing behind him, free of the Invisibility Cloak now.

And this was the moment when her plans collapsed like ice in summer, and there was shock in her face that poisoned the triumph, and the hand she had raised as if to bestow a blessing on him fell limp and useless to her side.

Draco found it hard to breathe through the sweetness.

The next moment, the audience was yelling, was clapping, was cheering, was laughing, and the moment which Swanfair might have seized and turned back into her own channels was gone forever. Even if she tried to speak now and make some gracious announcement about how she had suspected this all along and was determined to allow Draco his little joke, no one could have heard her. Everyone would remember the look on her face better than they would remember any words that she might speak, anyway.

Draco rose and stepped back so that he was standing next to Harry, slinging his arm around his bondmate’s shoulders. Harry had told Draco that he wanted to speak to Swanfair, just to hammer home the point for those pure-bloods who might be slow to follow him or who would think this was a glamour or Polyjuice. Some people probably would think that it was glamours or Polyjuice, as Draco was aware, but Harry needed this as much as Draco had needed the initial moment of revenge to soothe his rage and grief, so he allowed it.

Severus stepped up behind them and held his wand unobtrusively between their bodies. If Swanfair decided that revenge tasted better than the restricted role in pure-blood politics they intended to leave her, he would be ready.

“Too bad for you,” Harry said calmly, “that we expected something like the Impassioned Fever Potion to come from your hands. We had the antidote already waiting.” More excited speculation from the audience, but not enough to overwhelm Harry’s voice. What he said was a lie, of course, but Draco was well-aware of how powerful lies could be at this moment. “You intended me to miss the election. You should have realized that we would have anticipated a tactic so obvious.”

And then he looked at Swanfair and shook his head like a sorrowful mentor who had seen his best student fail a practical exam.

Draco wanted to laugh. He hadn’t told Harry to add that headshake, but it was perfect, the kind of thing that would also stamp itself in the minds of his audience.

Swanfair, very pale about the lips, bowed back to them. Draco approved. Under the circumstances, it was the best thing she could do, courteous and not requiring them to duel her or destroy her—and weak. Everyone who mattered and could think about things in the right way would see her bow as only an echo of Draco’s earlier, unforgettable one.

“So be it,” Swanfair said. “I acknowledge myself beaten.”

Again, it was the only thing she could reasonably do, but her allies and dependents would not so soon forget a confession of weakness.

Swanfair turned to face her audience and bowed to them, too. Draco wondered for a moment whether that would help her to regain some footing with them, but then decided that it wouldn’t. Even if she meant it sincerely, there were simply too many who would see it as an attempt to curry favor, or realize that there was no way Swanfair was that humble.

They had one more surprise, but Draco was content to let it wait for its proper time. Swanfair made a pretty little speech about being mistaken, and didn’t say anything about what she had made the mistake about. Then she turned to Draco with a jerky motion like an automaton and held her hand out. Draco took it and bowed low over it. He hoped that she could feel the mocking smile that he pressed against her skin in a kiss.

Swanfair then turned towards the far side of the stage, after the briefest of nods to Harry and Severus. Draco suspected, from the twitch at the corners of her mouth, that she was about to break down and didn’t want them to see it.

Someone cleared her throat.

Swanfair froze, staring straight ahead. Of course, that made sure she couldn’t see the person who stepped out from behind Draco, but maybe that was the idea. Maybe she’d simply had enough of humiliation for one day.

“I am disappointed by some of the revelations made today,” Colben said in a solemn tone as she stepped around Draco and into the middle of the stage. “I had thought that my allies were truer to me, and to the political cause that they professed to serve, than this. But I find now that they can act against one another without caring about how that might affect my chances for election.” She gave a delicate sigh. “At least I learned this before I came into office and had to consider rewards for faithful service.”

Swanfair turned her head back without turning her body. “You knew what I was from the first,” she said, speaking to Colben as intensely as if they were the only two people on the stage. “You accepted my help knowing what I wanted.”

“Power,” Colben agreed. “But this is not power. Your machinations have only landed you more distant from it, not near it.”

Draco knew that implied that Swanfair had had more control over things than she really did. But it was a frame of mind that the pure-bloods watching breathlessly in the audience would share. Swanfair had taken a risk, thrown her dice and gambled with stakes that she did not yet have. She had to be prepared to accept the consequences of any risk, especially since everyone would have said how brilliant she was if her plan had worked.

She was responsible—or irresponsible, as the majority of the public inclined to think that way in the first place would see it.

Swanfair made another bow, to Colben this time. Her jerkiness and the abrupt way she raised her head to stare gave her away. Her mask of perfect control was cracking. “Can you blame me for having tried?” she asked.

“When it caused potential damage to me?” Colben raised her eyebrows. “Yes.”

Swanfair stood straighter, then, and swept her hair back into a tight tail that she began to tie with a wandless spell. Draco understood what came next from the severe lines on her face. She would go away to nurse her humiliation, and in the meantime make sure that no one else could profit from that humiliation.

If Draco had entertained hopes of coaxing her back to work with Colben and Harry, he would have been disappointed. Because this was exactly what he had hoped would happen, he smiled, and let her see him smiling.

Swanfair looked blankly at him for a moment, then faced Colben. “I was incautious in the political arena,” she said. “You are right to chastise me. I am right to leave. I will go home, and mediate on my great deeds in the past, and consider whether the world has room for someone like me anymore.”

She turned and marched off the stage with great dignity.

In the end, Draco thought, stepping back towards Harry and Severus so he could feel physical as well as emotional warmth from them, this is worth no more as a gesture than Shacklebolt’s resignation. She’s doing it to oblige herself and not anyone else. Our only failure is if we believe her.

From the way Colben waved a vague hand at the departing Swanfair and then turned to face the crowd, Draco didn’t think they needed to worry about that.

You did this, Harry breathed into his mind. I’m so proud of you.

Severus’s approval was lower, without words, but there.

And because his moment was past, Draco let himself bask in the praise as he had earlier basked in the excitement. No emotion that intense could last forever, and he was glad he had experienced it once without being destroyed by it.

*

“What you did was magnificent,” Colben said, her hand firmly clasping Harry’s as she stared into his eyes. She didn’t smile, but she didn’t, often, and Harry had no doubt that she meant every word of her approval anyway. “I do not expect Swanfair to be a trouble to me as she has been in the past.”

“Thank Draco,” Harry felt he had to say, because, after all, he wasn’t the one who had come up with the plan to make Swanfair irrelevant. “He coaxed her into setting up a situation where she would be exposed and stripped of her power.”

Colben turned her head. Draco straightened from talking with Severus and gave her a brief bow. His eyes were challenging, but Harry knew, from the bond between them, that that didn’t come from hostility to Colben; he simply didn’t understand her very well, and was wary of either impressing or disappointing her.

“He understands more about politics than I had thought he could, with that last name,” murmured Colben.

“He learned in more than one school,” Harry said, drawing out the words until she looked at him again, and then tilted his head at Severus. Severus looked both pleased and embarrassed, scowling as if he had no wish to receive the tribute that Harry knew he desired. That was understandable, considering how many people had pretended to sympathize with him only to turn on him in the end. But Harry didn’t intend to let him treat the present like the past, no matter how much he would have liked to.

Besides, Harry trusted Severus to let him know if he went too far. He couldn’t believe he’d once thought those dark eyes and that rugged face unreadable.

“I see,” Colben said. Her voice had cooled and deepened, and Harry had the impression that he had left with something to think about. She bowed to him, said, “I shall have to reconsider some of the appointments that I intended to make in my new administration,” and then turned and went to deal with the pure-bloods that wanted to throng around her.

Harry couldn’t hide back his grin as he went over to his bondmates and leaned against both of them at the same time, forcing them to support him. “How would you like to be advisers to the new Minister?” he asked.

“Nonsense,” Severus said, his voice repressive in that way that meant he was actually trying to conceal his interest. “There is no reason to think that Colben will become Minister at this point, let alone that she would wish to appoint us to high positions.” His voice quivered with hope, however, and gave him away.

“If you really thought that was true, you wouldn’t support her,” Harry answered peacefully. “I know that you’ve vowed not to support a losing cause again.” Severus tensed briefly, as he often did when Harry hinted at mentioning his Death Eater days, but Harry increased the strength of his hold around Severus’s shoulders, and he relaxed again.

“She is not Minister yet,” Severus said. “It would be as well not to count on gifts that may never materialize, because they are dependent on her good will rather than the will of the people.”

Harry closed his eyes and said nothing, because he was sure he had made his point, and Severus and Draco would not thank him for continually trying to make it.

“Do we want to stay here and let the pure-bloods talk to us?” Draco asked, in a neutral voice. His bond was smooth and neutral as ice at the moment, too, as if his desires to stay and go were equally balanced.

Harry opened his eyes. He wanted the pure-bloods to have a chance to know—if they could hint it delicately enough, of course—that Draco was the one who had come up with the plan to humiliate Swanfair, so that they would give him all the proper credit.

He didn’t expect the way that Severus’s hand tightened possessively on the back of his neck and Severus murmured, “There was something else that was promised to us—to me—when Swanfair was defeated. I believe it is time now for that promise to be fulfilled.”

Harry felt dizzy with how fast he grew hard, and from the light that he could see invade Draco’s eyes. He did manage, by concentrating, to shut his eyes and murmur, “I’d like that.”

*

The world for Severus was nothing but joy.

Part Thirty-Four.