Chapter Eighteen of 'Love, Free as Air'- The Spinning World

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Eighteen.

Title: Love, Free As Air (18/21)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Warnings: Sex, angst, profanity, a bit of violence. Ignores the epilogue of DH.
Pairings: Snape/Harry/Draco.
Rating: R
Summary: Trapped in his Animagus form, Harry stumbles on Snape and Draco, who disappeared from the wizarding world years ago. His first task is to become human again. His second might be to help Snape and Draco with the same problem.
Author’s Notes: This story is being written for heeroluva, who won a charity auction at gulf_aid_now to raise money for the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. She gave me the plot, for which I thank her. I’m not sure how long this story will be, though I estimate somewhere between 15 and 20 chapters. The title comes from a quote by Alexander Pope.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Eighteen—This Spinning World

“Harry, can you come at once? I think I may have evidence of tampering in the original trial that would mean we could free Mrs. Malfoy immediately.”

Hermione’s Patronus, an otter standing upright in the middle of the kitchen table, flicked its tail and vanished the moment it spoke those words. That left Harry, Draco, and Snape all staring at where it had been with expressions that Harry suspected were shocked. Or at least Snape looked shocked. He concealed it by looking down at his plate in the next moment and flicking his fingers as if in answer to the motion of the otter’s tail.

Draco looked more than shocked; he looked dazed. He closed his eyes, opened them again, and then whispered, “I had no idea Granger was that close.”

“Neither did I,” Harry had to say, because with the way Draco’s mind worked lately, he would find some way to turn this into an accusation against Harry in the next minute for not telling him everything. Harry pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll try to be back by this afternoon.” He could send an owl if he wasn’t, but he knew that Snape—Severus—was paranoid about owls possibly carrying too much information back to Harry’s friends.

“I’m coming with you.”

Harry blinked at Draco, who had also stood up and had an expression of determination on his face so strong that Harry could just imagine what would happen if he tried to dissuade him. Harry frowned, considered objecting, and then decided that he had no right to. Draco wanted to see his mother freed, and it was possible that he could add information to Hermione’s store that she didn’t have already.

“All right,” he said, and went to fetch his cloak.

There was silence behind him for so long that Harry wondered if Draco had changed his mind. But Draco came running after him in the next instant, eyes narrowed. Perhaps he thought that would distract Harry from noticing the confusion that filled them. “Did you hear what I said, Potter? I’m coming with you.”

“I know,” Harry said. “Maybe you can help us reassure your mother, if we get in to see her today, and maybe Hermione can use your help with details that she doesn’t know. You have a right to come along, anyway, because it’s your mother.” He spoke without looking at Draco’s face, because he would feel the temptation to snap if he did, and that wouldn’t make for a pleasant journey.

“You have an answer for everything,” Draco said, in a bristling hiss, and then stomped away down the corridor that led from the drawing room towards his bedroom. Harry turned to watch him go. Every line of Draco’s back radiated angry indignation.

Harry shut his eyes and took a deep breath. Exactly what else was he supposed to be doing? He tried to be kind and patient, and Draco reacted as if Harry had slapped him. He tried to hold his ground while not hurting Draco, and it turned out that he’d hurt Draco anyway. There didn’t seem to be any answer to this problem, and Harry had no idea why.

“You must not be so gentle with him.”

Harry started. He hadn’t heard Snape come up behind him. He turned and frowned, especially when he realized that Snape was staring at him with dark eyes that suggested the fault was his own. “What, and hurt him even worse with insults?” Harry asked. “Nothing I do is right, so I might as well do what’s most comfortable for me.”

Snape looked amused, damn him. “But it isn’t what’s most comfortable for you,” he said. “You want to snap and let him bear the full brunt of your temper. And why not? It is a most frustrating thing to think you know people, know their faults and tempers, and then find they have transformed themselves into saints when you aren’t looking.”

Harry stared at him. “Draco’s been angry because I’ve been patient?” he asked. “But he deserves patience. He’s been through awful things.”

Snape narrowed his eyes a bit and twitched his head as if he resented the allusion to those awful things—which included him, Harry only remembered now—but he went on before Harry could apologize. “This is not the man that he thinks you should be, the man who destroyed my lab and fought with him in Hogwarts,” he said. “Yes, he is uneasy around you because he can see you suppressing the anger. And when he can’t, he thinks you are.”

“I’m not the boy I was in Hogwarts,” Harry said gruffly, checking up the corridor to see if Draco was coming back. Not yet.

“You are not the saint you have been portraying, either,” Snape said, his voice as sharp now as some of the dicing knives he’d shown Harry in the potions lab. “Why would you wish to be?”

Harry shook his head. “I just—I was a little shit when I was younger, all right? I made all sorts of mistakes, all sorts of snap judgments, while I went around thinking that I was right and righteous just because I was fighting Voldemort. And then I didn’t get to do as much as I wanted to when you were in prison and awaiting trial because of that stupid sickness. I decided that I had to grow up, and I told myself that I would never be as oblivious as that again.”

“Ah,” Snape said, his voice oddly satisfied. “So this is another concession to your martyr complex and need to feel guilt. I might have guessed.”

Harry glared, but Draco came panting up just then, slinging his cloak round his shoulders as if he was afraid of Harry leaving him behind, and it had to wait. Harry just nodded curtly and swept out the door with Draco right behind him.

When he glanced back, Harry saw Snape staring after them, and it struck him like a blow how it must seem to him, to watch two young men who were free to venture back into the world from this warded cottage, while he had to stay inside it because the outside world had to be kept ignorant of his existence. Harry winced. He wouldn’t be able to put up with such confinement himself, and even if Snape was content most of the time, that didn’t mean that he didn’t ever long for a change.

Hesitantly, Harry raised his hand and waved to Snape—no, Severus, he should be thinking of him that way since it was what he had told Harry he would prefer to be called. Severus’s eyes flared in surprise before he shut the door and his expression at the same time. Harry sighed and turned forwards.

“What has Granger been researching?” Draco demanded.

Harry gritted his teeth. “You know as well as I do,” he said. “The trial itself, and the laws surrounding the imprisonment of people who were only incidentally involved in the risings of Dark Lords, most of them going back to the threat from Grindelwald. I don’t know what this thing is that she’s discovered.”

“You might have,” Draco said. “It’s not as though you’d been completely forthcoming since we came here.”

Harry lost his temper before he could think about. He swung about and grabbed Draco’s wrist, squeezing hard enough that Draco couldn’t stifle a yelp. Harry thrust his face into the other man’s and snapped, “I don’t know more than what I told you. I’m not lying, you suspicious little shit. I just don’t have anything more to say.”

Draco stared at him. And then he relaxed and even managed a half-gracious smile and a nod. “I only wanted to be sure,” he said.

Baffled, Harry released him and started walking towards the edge of the garden again, keeping one eye on Draco. He seemed perfectly content to follow, humming under his breath and admiring the branches arching above him as though he had never been in a bad mood.

It’s as though he thinks my anger is such a huge part of me that I’m lying by being kind to him.

But Draco hadn’t reacted like that all the time. He had been eager enough to listen to Harry when Harry wanted him to escape from Severus, and he had invited himself along to live with Harry before Harry considered suggesting it. He hadn’t seemed to think Harry should yell at him then. So what was the difference?

Maybe living with me long enough, past the initial moment when I helped him, makes him think that I should have showed more of myself.

Harry grimaced. His friends had sometimes told him that hiding when he was angry and trying to be as compassionate as he could was hiding who he really was. Harry didn’t think so. After all, he did like to help people, and he would have been lying if he said that he didn’t. He could never please everyone anyway, so he might as well do what made him comfortable and would ease the lives of others.

I’m not easing Draco’s life right now, though.

Harry decided that was probably the biggest argument in favor of altering his behavior to Draco: he didn’t want to hurt him, and Draco, for whatever reason, was hurt that Harry didn’t snap at him or show when he was exasperated. A strange wish, but if that was what he wanted, then Harry would give it to him.

And, he had to admit, it would be nice not to have to act as if he thought Draco’s objections were reasonable all the time.

*

“So, you see,” Granger said, letting the scroll in her hand snap shut with a sound that would have made Draco jump if he hadn’t been expecting it, “one of the witnesses in the original trial was bribed to suppress some circumstances and exaggerate others.” She had a smile like a dog that had just chased a cat from the room without being scolded for it, Draco decided. “Unfortunately for them, they were stupid enough to leave evidence behind of what they’d done.”

Potter seemed to have followed the torrent of information Granger had poured over their heads better than Draco had. He nodded and pushed his glasses up his nose. “But you saw how reluctant the Wizengamot was to give Draco a second trial. Are we going to be able to persuade them to consider a second one for Mrs. Malfoy?”

Narcissa, Draco wanted to say. My mother’s name is Narcissa. But he knew that he had no reason to expect Potter and Granger to call her that, so he kept silent and watched while Granger nodded.

“They don’t like the publicity that this second trial for Malfoy unleashed on them,” Granger said coolly. “Now people are thinking back to the decisions that they made in the wake of the war and wondering if all of them were as flawed as that one. There are some people I think that they won’t retry no matter the provocation, including Lucius Malfoy.” She nodded her apology to Draco. Draco nodded back, although his throat felt tight. He had always known that his father had chosen his course, and left far too much evidence of his crimes behind, to make release realistic. “But now they’re going to be cautious, jumpy. They’ll want to be seen as doing the right thing. If we can obtain evidence that Mrs. Malfoy needed to be retried, which I have right here—” she tapped the scroll “—then they’ll do it because they want to seem friendly and compliant and eager.”

“I see.” Potter’s eyes were half-lidded. Draco wondered what was going on behind them. He so rarely knew what Potter was thinking, and that was part of the reason that he held back and distrusted the man when he tried to be nice. Draco knew he wasn’t nice all the time. What was the point of pretending he was? “Is there any way that this could go wrong?”

“I’ll see when I bring the issue before the Wizengamot,” Granger said. “I don’t know all the possible ramifications of throwing a stone at the hornets’ nest yet.”

Potter nodded. “Good.” He was cocking his head as if in distraction, though, and rubbed his fingers along the top of the table for long moments before he continued. Granger watched him with a patience that Draco thought was real on her part. They were seated in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place, and Kreacher had already been in and out several times, eyes streaming with ecstasy as he carried plates and glasses and cutlery.

“How great a hardship would it be for you to do one more trial, after this?” Potter asked abruptly.

“No hardship at all,” Granger said, and grinned. “Do you know what this is doing for my reputation as a lawyer? I have a lot more clients now than I did.”

See? Draco asked the air. Granger has Gryffindor compassion and all that, but she also acknowledges that she has ambitions and desires of her own. That’s what I want to see Potter express. Just that.

“But I told you before,” Granger continued in a cautioning tone, “I don’t think I could free Lucius.”

“I know,” Potter said. “This is—someone else.” The way he cleared his throat and touched the place where his pulse beat a moment later let Draco know who he meant, though the Unbreakable Vow prevented him from saying much more than he had. “But I can’t talk about it yet, because I promised I wouldn’t. If I ever get permission, I just want to know if you’d consider taking the case up.”

He broke off, coughing, and Granger frowned at him. Draco could see the dark flash in her eyes that probably meant she’d figured out it was an Unbreakable Vow. But she looked down at the tabletop and said neutrally, “Of course. If you get permission.”

“Thank you,” Potter gasped, and stood up to get some water. Of course, Kreacher appeared to him on his way to the sink and offered a glass of water with a stern expression. Potter drank it, looking sheepish.

Granger turned at once to Draco. “Is that what it looks like?” she demanded in a lowered voice.

Draco nodded. He didn’t think he could have done otherwise, faced with Granger’s terrifying eyes, and Severus would just have to understand.

“How could you let him do that?” Granger’s hand shot out and closed on Draco’s arm with bruising force, the way Potter had done this morning. This time, though, there was no distinctive tingle of pleasure the way Draco had felt when Potter touched him. “Do you know how easily Vows kill?”

“Yes, I do,” Draco snapped, thinking of the Vow Severus had sworn to murder Dumbledore in his place. “I do, actually.”

Granger remembered his history in the next moment, as he could see by the paling of her cheeks. But she didn’t offer the frantic apologies he would have received, and found so annoying, from Potter. She simply sat back, removed her hand from his arm, and scanned him. Draco looked back, arms folded, until Potter returned to the table.

“Anyway,” Potter continued, as if he had had nothing but an ordinary coughing fit, “when will we have to come back for the trial?”

“A few days, no more than that.” Granger looked down at the scroll in front of her with a faint smile. “The evidence I have is too clear.”

Potter nodded. “Thanks.” He stood up, hugged Granger, and then motioned to Draco to follow him. Draco rolled his eyes, but shook Granger’s hand and did so.

He knew that Granger was studying them all the way out, but he had no idea what he was supposed to do about it, so he simply didn’t look back.

*

“Would you be willing to speak to Ron and Hermione and take off this Unbreakable Vow so that they can try to get you freed?”

Severus had nothing in his hands at that moment, and could be grateful for it, when he saw the way his fingers shook. Perhaps that shaking would not have been enough to make any vials he held plummet to the ground, but he wouldn’t have wanted to risk it. So he watched them shake, and then stepped back and turned around to confront Harry.

Harry, who was standing beside the pair of scales where Severus had instructed him to weigh dandelion leaves, frankly stared. His face looked flushed, but his eyes darted from side to side for long moments before they returned to Severus’s face.

“Well?” he asked.

“You do not know what you are asking of me,” Severus said, and his voice was so soft that Harry frowned and cocked his head. Severus cleared his throat. The shock should be wearing off soon, he thought, and then he might speak more effectively. “You do not know what would happen to me if I went back to the wizarding world.”

“They would seize you and want to try you again,” Harry said, with a nod. “I know. But we would prevent them from doing that, I promise. Hermione thinks that she can get Mrs. Malfoy retried, because she found out that they’d suborned a witness during the original trial. Your imprisonment never happened, but with Hermione to argue that the example of Draco’s trial and Mrs. Malfoy’s provides—”

“You do not understand.” Severus knew his voice was hollow and that he was exposing more of his fragility than he truly wanted, but he could not help himself. He gestured to the lab around him. “Imagine what would happen if I were to leave a place where I had been content for six years, and suddenly have contact with many more people than you two. Draco has told me what his difficulties were, and he had been discontent and dreaming of a difference for some time. I cannot imagine mine.”

“We would do our best to make sure that no one taunted you,” Harry said.

The words told Severus he had still not grasped the enormity of the problem. He shook his head. “But others would see my weakness.”

Harry’s forehead wrinkled, over the old scar. “So?”

Severus felt the quick leap of his anger, and welcomed the flame of it as a means of dispelling the cold mist that the shock seemed to have wrapped around him. He stepped forwards and stared at Harry’s stubborn, obtuse face. “You stupid boy. Do you not see? You might be able to live with the exposure of those vulnerabilities. Draco could because he has heard me mocking him for six years. But I could not. My pride is too great.”

Harry rested a hand carefully on top of the table next to him. His face gave little away, except for the compassion in his eyes, but Severus was satisfied by the careful motion of his hand that he understood now.

Until he said, “What a load of bollocks.”

“Excuse me?” Severus knew his voice had gone deadly soft. He was not inclined to try and change that at the moment. He narrowed his eyes at Harry and waited for him to apologize, to change his mind.

It seemed, however, that Harry had taken Severus’s advice about letting his temper loose and applied it far too well. His eyes were bright with anger now, not sympathy, and he took a step away from the table and towards Severus as if he would seize his shoulders and shake him. “You heard me,” Harry said, voice soft in turn. “I think it’s a load of bollocks. You’re stronger than that. You’re simply afraid of what would happen if you let the world back into your consciousness, after shutting it out for so long.”

“I will remind you that you are a guest in my house,” Severus said through cold lips, “and I am not used to my guests insulting me.”

Harry rolled his eyes. Severus knew that voice could intimidate Draco. He was unsure why it did not work as well with Harry, who was the same age—younger, in fact—and whom Severus had begun to kiss and treat as a potential lover, and who had admitted that he was not the same brash youngster he had been in his Hogwarts days. “This house belongs to both of you, and Draco admitted that I could stay as well,” he said. “I think I owe it to both of you to tell you when you’re acting ridiculous. You are.”

“You go too far,” Severus whispered.

“It’s all too plain that no one has gone far enough with you,” Harry said in irritation. “Yes, yes, I know, you’ve been injured by the world and forced to hide away for six years. I swear there’s something in this cottage that poisons minds. Draco had the courage to walk away from it, only to lapse into stupidity when he came back. And you’re acting as though you couldn’t survive beyond its four walls. And I’ve been biting my tongue since I came here. I think I shouldn’t have.”

“You are younger,” Severus said. “Outside our relationship. You cannot understand.”

Harry looked at him unflinchingly. “And you were the one who invited me into it. If we’re ever going to make this work as a threesome, then I have to be honest.” He didn’t even have the grace to blush when he said the word threesome, Severus thought, unusual as he knew such a word—such a concept—was for Harry. “You and Draco are both hiding. Maybe that’s fine, for a while. I’ll let you have the time to hide. But if you never emerge, then you’re effectively saying that all those people in the wizarding world are right about you.”

Every time Severus thought he had reached the bottom level of the well of shock that Harry could drop him into, he reached some new one. He gurgled on his emotion, and Harry snickered.

“They said that you were a coward,” Harry said. “That that was why you murdered Dumbledore, instead of finding some better way. That you were a coward to run, instead of stay and face the Wizengamot. That your Potions skill couldn’t have been what you claimed it was, since so many of your students were poor.”

He took another step forwards and reminded Severus unpleasantly of a lion bringing a gazelle to bay. Severus could only hope that he would not be devoured, though he blamed his lack of retort on the shock alone.

“You’re a coward if you allow fear to control your life,” Harry said, his voice and face burning with conviction. “For a while, sure. If you need a rest and relaxation period, the way Draco does. But not forever. And I know that you’re capable of revolts against your fear, because you kissed me and claimed me.”

Severus’s body, disobedient to his wishes as it had never been, burned at the thought of “claiming” Harry.

Harry seemed oblivious. “And you’re not as good at Potions as you think you are if you hide here forever and let others make the discoveries. Oh, I know,” he added impatiently when Severus opened his mouth to speak. “You publish some of your discoveries under a false name. But the name is false. And if you can’t travel to other countries and meet with other Potions masters, watch their techniques and exchange information first-hand, then your skills will always be stunted. I know enough about Potions to know that.”

Severus clenched his fists. “How can I do such a thing until my name is cleared?”

Harry smiled, eyes flashing, and Severus realized he had walked right into the bastard’s trap. “And I’m offering you a chance to clear your name,” Harry said. “One that I want you to think more about, rather than dismissing me with that ridiculous load about how you’ll collapse if you leave the cottage.”

He leaned forwards, kissed Severus hard enough to cut his lips on his teeth, and then turned around and stormed out of the lab.

Severus closed his eyes, overwhelmed less by shock now than the notion that Harry might care enough for him to want freedom, and reputation, and honor, for both him and Draco.