Chapter Two of 'Chosen Chains'- Welcome Home (1/2)

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter One.

b>Title: Chosen Chains (1/5 to 7)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione
Rating: R
Warnings: Heavy angst, bondage, D/s elements, violence, sex, profanity. EWE.
Summary: Harry has spent the last two years in semi-exile from the wizarding world after bitter arguments with the Ministry and his best friends. Now the Ministry summons him back, since they can’t run the school without the cooperation of Dumbledore’s portrait—and Dumbledore will only talk to Harry. Draco, summoned to talk to Snape’s portrait at the same time, meets a Harry he hasn’t expected, one who’s going to request something strange from him, and perhaps require more than that.
Author’s Notes: This will be an irregularly updated story of, probably, five to seven parts, with fairly long chapters. The Dominance/submission elements are limited, but an important part of the story, and I haven’t often written them before, so please don’t read it if that bothers you.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Two—Welcome Home

Harry hesitated for a long time before he stepped out into Diagon Alley and walked towards Eeylops Owl Emporium. A few people still turned to stare at him, but two years away from the majority of the wizarding world had done their work. Harry was no longer a subject of continuous gossip or constantly on the front page of the papers.

I’m only doing this for Annie’s sake, he told himself defensively as he opened the door and heard the weird bell above it whistle and cheep and hoot. Not because I want to replace Hedwig.

Hermione would have said that he wasn’t replacing Hedwig if he got another owl, but then again, Hermione was wrong about a lot of things.

The man behind the counter was just turning around with a tawny owl on his fist. He had flyaway hair coated with feathers and a long scar next to his eye that Harry thought a beak had probably caused. “Hullo,” he said. “What kind of owl do you want?”

Harry hesitated once more, then shook his head. He might as well do this right if he was going to do it at all. “A swift one,” he said. “I’m going to be distant from my major correspondents for the next few days.” Or weeks, but he hadn’t wanted to think about that yet.

“Well, speed isn’t the major consideration for a distance owl, you know.” The man set the tawny bird gently on a nearby perch and came around the counter, focusing on Harry. If he noticed the lightning bolt scar, he gave no sign. “You need reliability before anything else, and sometimes the slow, stolid types are better for that.”

“But not all of them?” Harry leaned back reluctantly and looked up at the cages hanging overhead. He caught a glimpse of a snowy owl, and quickly turned back to the man. “I want one that’s both reliable and swift, then.”

The man chuckled and moved over to open two wire cages hanging next to each other. The owls within hopped out tamely, and Harry thought he could use that, a bird who was friendly. The man turned around and balanced the birds on his outstretched arms. “These are our best combinations of those two traits. Look your fill.”

Harry focused on the owl on the left. He was small and black, with brown edgings to the feathers. Harry swallowed. Yes, he was dark, but his golden eyes were just too much like Hedwig’s.

“This one,” he said randomly, and turned to the other owl. She was considerably larger, staring at him with orange eyes that at least wouldn’t remind him of the dead. Her feathers were a mixture of different browns, slashed with dark lines and paler patches. “What’s her name? How much is she?”

“You can name her what you wish, of course.” The shopkeeper looked disturbed for the first time, stroking the owl’s foot with one hand while he watched Harry. “And she’s an eagle-owl. Not a good choice for a first-time owner.”

“I had a snowy owl,” Harry managed to say before his throat closed up. He stared blindly into a corner of the shop. He shouldn’t be this sad over it, still, he told himself scathingly.

Of course, he also still shouldn’t be so angry all the time, or so upset when he remembered the trauma of the war. He didn’t know why time hadn’t healed him the way it was supposed to have healed everyone else, and frankly he didn’t care. The methods he knew of dealing with it worked, when he could use them.

“Ah.” The shopkeeper’s voice was sympathetic now, and soft. “And you lost her?”

Harry blinked and looked up. No matter how much he mourned Hedwig, a public shop wasn’t the place to break down about it. “In the war.”

The man nodded. He seemed to completely understand devotion to owls, which Harry thought was a good sign. “Then it only remains to see if she’s satisfied with you.” He tilted his arm, and the eagle-owl spread her wings and soared towards Harry.

Harry braced himself too late. He hadn’t had a lot of experience with owls in the last few years, after all. Her claws settled on his shoulder, and he winced, reminding himself to buy gloves and pads so that he could handle her safely.

The owl stared at him from so close that her regard was almost painful. She shifted restlessly from one foot to another, and Harry wondered how an owl like her would get along in the Hogwarts Owlery. He started to open his mouth to ask about her track record of living with other birds, but was interrupted as she carefully gripped his chin in one talon and turned him more openly to face her.

“Hold still,” said the shopkeeper. “She’s evaluating you.”

Harry didn’t much care for the “evaluation.” He stared back, wondering if that was a sign of aggression to owls the way it sometimes was for dogs. The owl dropped his chin and fanned her wings out, beating them up and down in a way that probably indicated something, though Harry wasn’t sure what.

“She likes you,” said the shopkeeper, sounding relieved. “Now, you’ll need food, of course, and a traveling cage, though I should tell you she much prefers to fly, and there are complimentary treats that—”

“What do you call her?” Harry interrupted. The owl was still on his shoulder, looking at him as if he had passed one test but was about to fail the next, and he thought she would be easier to control if he had a name.

“Well, Catherine,” said the man, blinking as though the question were strange. “Just a fancy of mine. She reminds me of someone I used to know. But you can, of course, give her a unique name. Most owners of owls prefer to.”

Harry shook his head, grimly amused. He’d been in a Muggle household last week, interviewing a small boy and his parents who had agreed to send him to a magical primary school, and had seen an image of a woman facing a sword, her eyes full of pain but her mouth set and defiant. The boy’s mother had said that was Saint Catherine, who had been beheaded because the torture wheel they’d intended to kill her on broke when she touched it. The look in her eyes wasn’t so different from the owl’s. “Catherine will do.”

*

Draco landed in Hogsmeade with a faint bump but no sound—he had perfected silent Apparition in the last few years, when he had needed to reach gardens and private preserves that certain people would rather he not harvest ingredients in—and looked around with interest. It was some time since he had visited the town proper.

A few people turned to stare at him, but most of the ones in sight carried on darting in and out of shops, arguing in the streets, or heading towards the pubs with looks of weariness on their faces. An ordinary life, an ordinary place. Draco wondered if they missed the students who hadn’t come for the past several years because Hogwarts was shut.

He did roll his eyes over that as he started down the path that led to the school. The Ministry ties up the opening for years because they’re arguing over protocol, and they still imagine that their being in charge of the running is a good thing?

The ground rolled under him, the track broadened, and there were the gates, open but with a small group gathered in front of them. Draco raised his eyebrows and quickened his pace.

“Potions master Malfoy, I’m so grateful you could come.” The man who stepped forwards to pump his hand was a tall, thin stick Draco had seen in the papers more than once, a kind of undersecretary to the Minister. He had a broad smile and small, cold, black eyes that should contradict the smile for anyone who wasn’t a complete fool. His name was Derek Wimpledink. “On behalf of the Ministry of Magic, welcome.”

Draco nodded in response and turned to look over the rest of the group. There was the usual collection of Ministry flunkies, Professor Flitwick, a plump woman in flowing purple robes whose purpose here Draco didn’t know, and—

“Well, well,” Draco said. “Greetings, Weasley, Granger.”

The man and woman he was looking at moved closer together. They both wore plain brown robes, not the bright Auror scarlet, at least for Weasley, that Draco would have expected. And they didn’t respond, either, which Draco thought was rude of them.

“Professor Granger and Professor Weasley will be teaching at the school when it’s open again,” said Wimpledink, following Draco’s gaze. “History of Magic and Defense Against the Dark Arts will benefit from their presence.”

Draco nodded without looking away from the pair. Their presence was a surprise for more than one reason, now that he could think clearly. They had opposed the Ministry taking over Hogwarts in the first place. He wondered what had made them decide to cooperate, and then smiled to himself. In Weasley’s case, it could have been a large enough wage.

“We’re waiting for only one more,” Wimpledink was saying, “and then we can try to confront the roots of this problem.”

A noisy Apparition answered him, and then Draco heard a horribly familiar voice say, “Oh, fuck, Malfoy, not you.”

He took his time turning around, because that would let him get his face under control. Then he inclined his head and murmured, “Oh, dear, Potter. No one told me you were coming, or I would have been ready to greet you properly.”

Potter stood in the middle of the path behind him, one hand in his pocket as he studied Draco. He had a satchel slung over his shoulder, for all the world as if he were still a schoolboy, and eyes that were darker than Draco remembered them being. Of course, that wouldn’t be hard, Draco thought. He didn’t remember Potter’s eyes all that well.

Except for the way they looked when he stared over his shoulder at the Fiendfyre.

Draco shrugged a bit. The nightmares weren’t something he could stop, which made it stupid to try. Severus would have taught him that, except that Draco had already known it when he tried.

“No one told me you were coming, either,” Potter said, and his eyes flashed at Draco before he turned his head to study Wimpledink and the rest of his merry little band. Draco followed his glance, because it was going to be amusing to see Potter start at the sight of his friends.

What he did, though, was more amusing than jumping. Instead, he firmed his hold on the satchel and gritted his teeth, so much that Draco could hear it from where he stood. And although Granger and Weasley were trying to look stoic and aloof, they wore expressions of acute discomfort.

That’s interesting, Draco decided, and decided also that he would hoard the information for further use. He had plenty of purposes in coming to Hogwarts already, plenty of things to keep him busy, but this would add an extra spice.

Potter marched up the path with a dignity that surprised Draco until he remembered that the man had been in the Aurors before he got sacked for—something. Seeing the way he leaned forwards on his toes, the air around him turning hot and shimmering, Draco wondered if it was for lack of control over his magic.

“I’m here,” Potter said. “Where’s the old man?”

“The portrait, you mean?” Wimpledink had the slightly wrinkled nose of someone who valued clearer language than Potter was currently using. “Upstairs, of course, in the Headmaster’s office. At least, the one you’re speaking to.” He turned to Draco with a determined politeness that Draco thought would have cut anyone more sensitive than Potter. Of course, it was impossible to be less sensitive. “The one you are speaking to, former Professor and Headmaster Snape, is in the dungeons.”

Draco nodded. He had known that, despite his lack of courage in coming to visit.

“Why do you need to talk to Snape?” Potter asked. He seemed to be addressing Draco directly, rather than Wimpledink. “They told me Dumbledore held the information they needed to break into a hidden place, but was hiding it for some reason.”

“That’s what they told me, too,” Draco said. “Only it was Snape who supposedly had the information.”

Potter spun around and raised his wand. It pointed straight at Wimpledink’s forehead, and Draco heard the man swallow a whimper. Well, he might do the same thing if he was on the end of the Savior’s wand, though of course he would conceal it rather better.

“What were you planning?” Potter asked, in a voice like boulders grinding against one another. “That we’d never run into each other? That we’d arrive at different times? Answer me, dumbarse.”

*

Harry knew what Hermione’s expression would be without looking at her: a mingling of resignation, sadness, and disapproval. He knew that Ron would be leaning forwards, half-wanting to support Harry but also conscious that he was going too far.

It pained him to realize how well he still knew them, even after two years’ exile.

The Ministry functionary rolled his eyes down to the wand and then looked back into Harry’s face. Harry reluctantly supposed that made him tougher than some of the others. But he still wasn’t moving until Harry got an answer. No one had told him that he was going to be working with Malfoy, of all people.

For that matter, no one had told him he was going to be here for as long as it sounded like the task would take, if it was complex enough that Snape and Dumbledore shared the knowledge between them.

The Ministry man cleared his throat and said, “Mr. Potter, if you’ll let us explain, I’m sure you’ll understand.”

“Then explain,” Harry said, not moving his wand. It wasn’t as if it was heavy.

Hermione stepped forwards. Harry knew it because he could hear the rustling noise of her robe coming from the direction she’d been standing, but he also knew it because he recognized her step. It seemed that bonds he’d thought he’d torn up when he left still had their anchors in his flesh.

“Be reasonable, Harry,” she said. “I saw the Ministry message before it was sent. It told the truth. They need the Sorting Hat and the Sword of Gryffindor and a few other artifacts to reopen Hogwarts, and they can’t do that without information from the portraits, and they can’t talk to the portraits without you.”

“How strange, Hermione,” Harry said, and kept the flunky in his line of sight. “To find you working with the Ministry and approving their messages and all the rest of it. But then, I reckon I should have expected that.”

The air between them seemed to throb, though Harry knew no one else there but Hermione and Ron would feel it the same way. The name he had called her in their last conversation, the one that had destroyed everything between them and ensured no owls for the last two years, still lingered.

Traitor.

“She’s right, mate,” Ron said. “It’s true that they can’t open the school without you and Malfoy.”

Harry twitched a little. The reminder that Malfoy stood beside him was like a needle through his ear. Then again, Malfoy was actually the least of his problems right now, which might make him the most tolerable person to work with.

“And what are you going to do if you do reopen Hogwarts?” he asked, still watching the Ministry man. “I think last time there was talk of appointing the Headmaster and the governors, so that the school would be run under your auspices.”

“There was also talk of abolishing Slytherin House, the last I heard,” Malfoy volunteered unexpectedly, “and using the Sorting Hat to find and send away the students who would be Sorted into that House.”

Harry turned his head. Malfoy was standing there with arms folded, looking mildly amused. The wind didn’t touch a hair of his head, Harry noted. He probably had some charm in place to ensure that it wouldn’t, either.

“Why?” Harry asked.

“They still blame us for the war,” Malfoy answered. “They somehow think that banishing children from the school and not training them would be the same thing as not training any Dark wizards.” He paused. “May I say how impressed I am that you know a big word like auspices, Potter?”

Harry grunted and turned back to the Ministry flunky. “I wonder why Snape’s portrait refuses to help you?”

The man sighed and finally seemed inclined to speak for himself. “Mr. Malfoy has unfortunately misrepresented a complex situation,” he said. “The Minister is still considering several actions that could be undertaken in order to better the education of our future’s more precious resources.”

“You’re his speechwriter,” Harry said. “I know the type. You make words mean what they don’t want to mean.”

Malfoy stepped up to stand at Harry’s shoulder, staring at him in interest—or perhaps at the Ministry flunky in interest, Harry thought. It wasn’t as though he had any idea of how Malfoy’s twisted, perverted mind worked. He did, however, think how strange it was that he was standing shoulder to shoulder with Malfoy against the side his best friends were on.

Or former best friends. Harry still didn’t know how to think about them after the horrible conversation that had taken place the last time they’d seen each other.

“Are we going to stand here discussing irrelevant matters all day, or are we going to go inside and let you begin your speech with the portraits?” The flunky had finally begun to look like a real person instead of a patient martyr. “After all, that is what you came here for.”

“Why should I speak with Dumbledore and help you if you’re going to treat the school badly?” Harry asked.

“I’m not the right one to reassure you about this,” the man said, smoothly and instantly. “There are other Ministry officials who would have the level of power that might content you. I will contact them when we are inside the school.”

Harry snorted in disgust. There was an old and long-abused Ministry tactic: passing the responsibility up the line so that someone else could be afflicted with it. On the other hand, he didn’t see how he could do much more here. It was only too obvious that the others in the group lacked the courage to interfere, or they would have already.

“Then let’s go,” he said. “But you might as well note that I’m not going to talk to any portraits until you hand me a good reason to be content with the Ministry’s goals.”

The Ministry man looked as if he wanted to do a little dance of rage, but instead he cleared his throat and nodded. “I understand,” he said. “Though I grieve that you do not take a lesson in calm and poise from Potions master Malfoy.”

Of course the git is a Potions master, Harry thought, and opened his mouth to say that as far as he was concerned, Malfoy could go fuck himself. Malfoy spoke before he could, voice so smooth and inviting it took Harry a moment to get past the tone of his words to their content.

“I am afraid you still misunderstand. I will not be speaking to Professor Snape, either, until the Ministry answers Potter’s challenges.”

Harry turned to gape at Malfoy. He only got a raised eyebrow and a supremely irritating smile of the kind that the prat probably saved up for non-Slytherins in return.

*

Draco knew he was taking a risk, allying himself with Potter. Apart from the danger to his own goals and to the cooperation with the Ministry he suspected would be a necessity in the end, he didn’t yet understand everything about the complexities of the situation. Why were Potter and Weasley-and-Granger on opposite sides? Why had Wimpledink assumed he would be able to handle Potter with no trouble? Why did Potter move with his magic boiling around him, constantly on edge, even well before anyone had antagonized him?

On the other hand, the Ministry seemed more confrontational and patronizing than Draco had expected. It would do no great harm to use Potter as an icebreaker and let the heavy blows fall on him.

Wimpledink led the way up to Hogwarts, with the rest of the people who had been waiting with him straggling behind in a rough line. Weasley-and-Granger dropped back to try and talk to Potter, but he gave them a freezing glare the likes of which Draco hadn’t seen since Severus was alive, and they hurried up again.

“What brings you back here, Potter, beyond the obvious?” Draco asked. “And why are your best friends avoiding you?”

That got him the freezing glare in return, but Draco returned it with a bland look, and waited. Anyone could see that Potter was exploding with the wish to talk about himself, as usual. Enough silence would produce an effect.

Draco made a mental note to try silence on his sentient potion when he worked with it here. It was a stimulus that he hadn’t thought useful so far, because the potion would simply hide in the cauldron, but he had reached a more advanced stage now and should start thinking of subtler challenges.

Potter, though, only stamped along the path with his eyebrows bent down and his face shut like a door. Draco shrugged one shoulder and looked away from him, up at Hogwarts.

The Ministry had done a fine job of rebuilding the towers, Draco thought critically, and the gates, and restoring the strip of land between the front doors and the lake that had been thoroughly blasted and burned in the battle. Every stone was in place, or at least enough that Draco’s memories couldn’t tell him they looked any different. The grass grew in neat patterns. The lake shimmered in the reluctant sunlight. The castle might pass as magical and strange to a first-year who had never seen it.

But.

Draco could notice other differences, ones that might not matter to a Muggleborn. The Forbidden Forest had been cut back, leaving only stumps where the outer edge of trees had once began. A railing now surrounded the edge of each tower. The gates were lower than they had been, the doors made of lighter wood, as if to reassure timid children that they wouldn’t find anything truly frightening inside.

Draco suspected the Ministry had done as much in the name of safety as it had in the name of attractiveness. That didn’t keep him from criticism, especially as one of their “safety” procedures was apparently to banish Slytherins.

They stepped into the entrance hall, smaller and darker and cooler than Draco remembered it. Wimpledink raised a grand wrist. “Welcome, witches and wizards, to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”

“What you’ve left of it,” Potter said, not even in a whisper.

Wimpledink gave Potter a look of open hatred. Draco raised an eyebrow. He wondered if the Ministry had deliberately sent their least diplomatic man, on the idea that Potter wouldn’t be diplomatic anyway and there was no point in using soft words, or if Wimpledink had angled for the position for his own reasons.

Or if the Ministry simply had no idea how to handle Potter. They hadn’t made the most of their genuine hero when they had him.

“The Headmaster’s portrait is in his office,” said Wimpledink, speaking through gritted teeth and trying to pretend that he wasn’t. “Shall we proceed?”

“Why should we, when you have admitted that you can’t answer Potter’s questions and you have to wait until someone comes who can?” Draco cocked his head. “Show us to the quarters prepared for us instead.”

Potter looked positively ill. “I’m staying in Hogsmeade,” he said quickly. “I’ll wait here until the Ministry representative comes.”

“We’d thought you would stay in Hogsmeade, too, Potions master,” Wimpledink told Draco. “I’m afraid that no quarters have been prepared for you.”

Draco remained still and let his silence speak for itself. He was giving up valuable time to come here, he had a large number of trunks floating behind him, and they proposed to make him pay for his own space and meals?

Wimpledink’s face turned red, and he looked at the ground and mumbled something that might have been an apology. Draco added a further hypothesis to his collection of them concerning Wimpledink’s presence. Perhaps he was simply young and inexperienced, and had taken over something that was his due to the functions of his office, but ought not to properly belong to him.

“You can stay in the dungeons, Mr. Malfoy,” said McGonagall then. Her voice was a shadow of its old firmness, Draco thought. Perhaps fighting with the Ministry for six years over Hogwarts had worn her down. “There are rooms the house-elves can prepare without trouble, and I’m sure that you would want to be close to your old House.”

“The House that’s in danger of vanishing,” Draco said. “Mr. Wimpledink, can you verify that rumor?”

More flushing, more mumbling. Draco had expected no more, but he had thought he’d ask. He cast a Tempus Charm and asked, “How soon can we expect your replacement?”

A worse flush than before, but Wimpledink managed to look up and into Draco’s eyes as he said, “I am going to owl now, Potions master. Someone should be here within two or three hours.”

“Excellent,” Draco said, and turned to follow McGonagall down to the dungeons. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Potter making again for the doors to Hogwarts, with Granger and Weasley both chasing after him while trying to look as if they weren’t running.

The spirit of mischief that not all of Severus’s teaching had been able to tame made Draco add, “Coming, Potter?”

Potter turned and stared at him. Draco couldn’t as easily see the shimmer of uncontrolled magic inside a building, but he thought it was still there. The last few moments would have done nothing for Potter’s tension, after all. He bared his teeth now, as if he wanted to tear something apart and Draco would serve as well anything else.

“What would I want with your company, Malfoy?”

“There are things that I could tell you,” Draco said. “Since we’ve been summoned for such similar purposes, they might be to your advantage. But I forgot that Harry Potter can stand on his own.” He bowed and started to turn away again.

“Wait.”

Draco turned to see Potter striding towards him and Granger and Weasley reversing their course like mice who’d spied a cat. Potter gave no sign that he’d noticed them. He halted next to Draco and looked him up and down, maintaining the same expression of arrogant disdain that had polluted his face ever since he arrived here. That expression, while better than the wide smile that Draco had so often seen him wear as a schoolboy, had its drawbacks; it would not let Draco see how fine his features were.

Fine? How Severus would laugh at that.

But Draco did not have Severus’s problems with Potter or his father, problems he had begun to guess the source of when Severus’s will gave Draco certain photographs and a few letters. He could extend an invitation if he wanted to, and it would be only Potter’s fault if he refused. He waited now.

“If you’re fucking with me,” Potter whispered, “you should know that I can destroy you.”

“You shouldn’t make the most dramatic threat first,” Draco murmured. “If your opponent stands up to you, it renders the rest of what you can do useless.”

Potter stepped back and stared at Draco the way he might a statue he was considering buying. The greatest of Draco’s rewards at that moment was the utterly flummoxed expression on Weasley’s face, which he saw from a corner of his eye.

“You talk good sense sometimes,” Potter said. “Interesting. Yes, Malfoy, we’ll have a discussion.”

“Harry,” Granger said, in what was a tone of genuine anguish if Draco was any judge. Of course, the only people he normally got to judge on such things with were addicts craving the latest dose of their potions, so he wouldn’t venture to say for sure it was authentic.

“Shut up, Hermione.” The words were flat and not particularly blistering, but the glare Potter gave her was. She shrank back against Weasley, who looked as though he was struggling to choose among seven different insults.

All this time, Draco noticed, McGonagall and Flitwick stood there silently, as if Potter and his friends were participants in a drama for their own personal amusement. Another thing he would have to investigate.

“This way, then,” Draco told Potter, and set off down to the dungeons with Potter at his side and the former Head of Gryffindor leading the way. He hoped that Severus would appreciate the irony in that when Draco told him.

*

Harry had known he was going to hate the Ministry’s iron attempts to force him to obey its will, but he hadn’t realized how much he would hate it.

The flunkey—Wimpledink—had put up a delay, and meanwhile everyone else went along with it. It made Harry’s heart roast to see how meekly McGonagall accepted the Ministry’s interference. And Flitwick hadn’t done anything about it, either.

Hogwarts had been closed for six years. Maybe they were tired of fighting and thought the Ministry was the best chance to get the school running again. Maybe they planned to introduce changes later, into a living body of students where they would be more difficult for the Ministry to detect.

But Harry thought they’d given up, and he was disgusted.

And Ron and Hermione…

Harry shifted his shoulders to settle them. He shouldn’t think about these things when he was walking beside Malfoy. His new old nemesis had quicker eyes and a sharper intelligence than Harry would have liked. He might notice something wrong and begin to link events together in a chain that would bind Harry to the past.

But the thoughts were there no matter whether Harry wanted them or not. He’d met Ron and Hermione in these dungeons on that last day, after all, coming back from trying to speak with Snape’s portrait about the changes the Ministry would make. Snape had done nothing but turn his back. Dead or alive, he wouldn’t forgive.

“We’re worried about you,” Hermione had said. Her face was bright wet with tears. Harry knew what she and Ron had to have been talking about. It was obvious, and they had discussed it before, and when would she leave him the fuck alone? “We just—Harry, you have to consider that maybe this pathology is a result of what happened to you during the war. And before it. Being manipulated by Dumbledore and other forceful adult males all your life. Don’t you think that wanting someone to bind you and order you around is the result of twisted psychology? It’s not normal. It’s not you.”

Harry knew she thought those words. She had hinted at it before when Harry first told her and Ron how he sometimes sought stress relief. And she had been furious when Harry revealed the full extent of Dumbledore’s manipulations, instead of supporting his plans, like Harry thought she would, because they worked.

But she’d never said anything like this before, these statements that went off like detonations in his chest. Harry folded his arms across his chest and nodded slowly. “My sexuality is pathological, is it?”

“Harry, I never said—”

“Yes, you did,” Harry said, and seized the knife of knowledge he’d never planned to use and twisted it. “So everything that you two enjoy—the way you like Ron to hold you down on the bed and fuck you hard—goes back to your psychology, too. Mustn’t it? The way you like a bit of pain, that comes from the way Bellatrix tortured you. And his hold on your wrists reminds you of the way that the Snatchers dragged us around. And—”

“Stop it, mate!” Ron had surged forwards, his fists flying, and Harry had raised a Shield Charm. Hermione stood there, too shocked to cry, one hand over her heart as if his speech had really cut her there.

“No,” Harry said, and he kept his voice cool, and he meant every vicious word. “Why should I? She’s convinced this one thing, this one thing that I only do every few months when I need it, goes back to the war and that that’s bad. Well, then her sexuality goes back to the war and it’s bad, too. Why not? She was tortured. I never was. She went through some of the same things I did. It only makes sense.”

Ron had stopped, his arms falling to his sides. “Bastard,” he whispered. Hermione was crying, now, with little hiccoughing sounds. “Do you know how long it took her to get comfortable with what she wanted? Do you know how much this has hurt her?”

“Do you know how long it took me to figure out what worked, and what would keep me from destroying everything in sight?” Harry looked back at Hermione. “I told you that, trusting you, and she’s the one who decided it was a disease. She’s a traitor. Tell me, Hermione, how many Healers have you talked with about me?”

Hermione wrapped her arms around herself and whispered, “Just one.”

“Traitor,” Harry had repeated, and then walked past them, and up towards the light, where he knew he would find the Ministry’s news of his being sacked from the Aurors waiting.

They didn’t try to stop him.

“Mr. Potter, I would appreciate it if you didn’t burn down the dungeons before we reach Mr. Malfoy’s rooms. Among other things, it would involve burning Severus’s portrait.”

Harry blinked and looked up. He had honestly almost forgotten where he was, caught back in that moment of twisted time when he had lost his best friends and his root of security in the wizarding world both at once. And his body shimmered with transparent green flame, moving back and forth in response to silent winds.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he murmured, and pulled back the fire into himself with an effort. McGonagall nodded and strode ahead. Harry knew the abrupt movements were, among other things, attempts to hide her discomfort with his magic. He had seen that tactic so many times by now it no longer held any surprises.

He glanced sideways to see what Malfoy’s coping technique would be, and found him staring directly, calmly, at Harry, one fist beneath his chin as though he were considering a Potions problem.

“Aren’t you worried that I’ll burn down the dungeons?” Harry asked him.

“Why should I be?” Malfoy took his hand away from his chin to gesture at the dungeon walls. “One improvement that I think we can commend the Ministry for is the addition of very powerful anti-fire wards. When I see that your magic can devour such wards, I’ll worry. Not until then.” He continued walking, though he kept one eye on Harry as if to see what he would do when confronted with this bit of wisdom.

“You’ve changed,” Harry said after a moment. He saw no reason to conceal his shock if Malfoy refused to conceal his fearlessness.

“More than you know.” Malfoy gave him a faint smile. “Now. Do you intend to discuss a possible alliance with me, or continue to be as rude and difficult as possible?”

McGonagall drew in a snort of air that sounded like a stifled chuckle. Harry glared ahead at her, but she continued stolidly walking, presenting a back that he couldn’t see through as easily as a face.

“I’ll cooperate,” he said at last. He didn’t think he would have needed help if the situation had been less complex in even one dimension—somewhere else than Hogwarts, without the portraits of two men he owed debts of both honor and disgust to, with his best friends who seemed to feel they were wronged hovering in the background and the Ministry trying to stymie him and months having gone past since his last stress relief session. But all those things were present, so he would accept it.

Malfoy nodded briskly. “Excellent.”

“These are your rooms,” McGonagall said suddenly, stopping and throwing back a door that Harry hadn’t even seen.

It took Harry a long moment to recognize the chambers beyond the door, and when he did, he wanted to let the fire flare up again. It took him a supreme effort to keep it inside his body and preserve some semblance of a neutral expression on his face.

They had changed Snape’s rooms. Now they were wide and spacious, with enchanted windows pumping in light from three walls and torches blazing on the other, as though the Ministry assumed that all the darkness found here was merely physical. The chairs that stood together in companionable twos and threes were red and gold. The shelves held modern treatises on Potions making, without a sign of Snape’s dusty old books that had still been there when Harry last came two years ago to speak with the portrait. And there were no vials, cauldrons, or other apparatus to make Potions anywhere in sight.

“Once again, Potter’s mouth is so wide open that I can see straight into his skull and divine that he has learned nothing in the last few years.”

Harry raised his eyes. The portrait of Snape was still there, placed above one of the bookshelves next to a window. He still looked the same as he had been—well, why wouldn’t he? Harry thought in the next instant—dressed in black robes with a scroll of dark green along the side. He had a desk, a table, a shelf with what looked like his books and a cauldron burning and bubbling in the picture with him. The frame was dusty gold.

Harry caught his eye once and then looked away. He didn’t think he could continue to study Snape and not be overwhelmed by the memories, which would probably make him look like a gaping idiot.

In turning his head, he got to see the complicated expression that came over Malfoy’s face, and decided that he wasn’t the only one struggling not to drown here.

Part Two.