Author's Note: Hello, and thanks for sticking with me all this time. This particular chapter is in honor of the mysterious 'cw' (I read your comments and would love to respond, but cannot, given 's set up, my dear) and ura-hd, my two persistent readers. Thanks, guys—you make this all worthwhile and very pleasing. Your comments are a tonic.

Moving on, I have a beta now and will be posting the cleaned-up versions of each chapter over the next week or so. Also, this fic is nearly at the end; there's only a little more to tell for this view/version of Harry & Draco. Sirius and Snape will wait for another fic; Sirius's importance here is mainly as a godfather to Harry, so, not to worry, no digressions off to into the atmosphere; 'just the facts, ma'am'.

You may have noticed that this vaguely follows the line of events set out in another fic of min, 'Lumos', and yes, it does. You can read that for the quickie version (yes, there is a happy ending), but then you'll miss out, won't you? My apologies for 30,000+ words to tell this one, but it just developed. And thanks again, all who've read; you are the best, putting up with my vagaries and oddities.

Ta! Tiger

HP Theorem Combustion Movement 13: Prestissimo

Time slowed; Harry should've expected that. It had slowed to a grinding standstill when Sirius had died in front of him, an arm's length out of reach, all those years ago. It slowed now, and garbled words—there were some, coming in a hasty rush from the tall dark shadow of the Wizard beside him—and hazed images—an impossible Wizard, a much-beloved godfather, a handsome man, with long dark hair and eyes of grey like Draco's—to the point of unrecognizability.

Harry considered fainting, but he was beyond that point in his life. Staying conscious and upright wasn't particularly easy, but it was desirable, given that his elbow was in the clutches of a mad and devious traitor and he was likely confronting an Inferi.

"You're dead," he croaked, and sincerely wished his wand arm wasn't the one Snape was holding so tightly.

"No," Sirius replied, seeming rather apologetic about that. "Er?"

'No!" Snape interjected loudly, "He is not—and I've gone to a great deal of trouble to keep him that way, Potter, so you'd better stuff that hex you have on the tip of your tongue right back down your impetuous throat!"

Not letting go of Harry's arm for an instant, he gestured to the Inferi, who'd assumed a puzzled expression in the interim, and snapped commandingly at him. "You! Go sit down right now whilst I get this young fool under control! Over there—out of harm's way!"

Harry growled, a menacing rumble that filled his chest, his choking throat—of all the unexpected things, more so even than Snape nearly dying to save him, was Snape, raising the dead carcass of his much beloved godfather and tormenting—torturing!—him with it!

"I'll fucking kill you!" he snarled and turned to Snape with death in his green eyes.

"Oh, no, you won't, Potter!" Snape snarled back, his eyeteeth fully bared. There was a Body Bind on Harry before he could even begin to blink the red haze from his vision.

"Be seated!" Snape ordered, and shoved Harry into the nearest comfy armchair to ensure that he was. "I'll speak and you'll listen and then—and only then, Potter—will I release you! And if you believe you can throw that Bind off, then you're a greater Wizard than even Dumbledore, Harry!"

"Severus?" Sirius Black opened his mouth. He, too, was seated in an armchair, one covered in a deep, dark Hunter green paisley, and he'd picked up a crystal goblet of wine from the tiny occasional table beside it. "Severus. Could it be that you haven't told him?"

Sirius swirled his glass between elegant fingers and appeared to be as far from an Inferi as one could get. He was pale, true, but his luxuriant raven's wing hair was glossy and his eyes were as bright as his last living relative's—Draco Malfoy, last of the Blood Blacks.

"I have not," Snape huffed, and pointed his wand straight at Harry's forehead, "and for good reason, you git."

Harry's eyes bulged and he struggled mightily against the Bind Severus had cast over him, but Snape was correct: the spell was excessively powerful and even Harry, with all his natural and death-of-Voldemort enhanced abilities, wasn't getting out of it quickly.

Besides, Sirius—oh, gods! shrieked Harry's brain, that's Sirius—that's Sirius!—he looked alive. Really alive, not just as simulacrum could, or an Inferi, or a dream or a ghost come to chat via the Resurrection Stone. There was a thread pulled on the lapel of his smoking jacket, and his hair was falling into one eye just like Harry remembered—there were a few grey hairs!—and Harry could've sworn he'd just been winked at—and there was Snape, treating this—this vision as if he was a troublemaker and a nuisance! How unreal was that?! Harry thought, and could make sense of nothing.

Nothing—nothing but the fact that his very deceased godfather was not, to all signs and appearances, actually dead.

"Right, Harry," Snape interrupted Harry's mental gyrations with a very no-nonsense question. "Are you ready to listen?"

*

Draco sneered at Elinora, who was actually a gem of a Witch, despite everything, and sipped at the butterbeer she'd offered him.

"Now, why, Elinora," he asked, with a certain degree of sardonicism, "should I believe you when you say you've found the 'perfect' residence? Have you not said that before? And has not every single one of these so-called 'perfect' homes been either unsuitable, unbearable or—to put it plainly—undesirable?"

"Draco, honeee," Elinora grinned, whilst also managing to beseech a reluctant quirk of the lips from her most difficult client. "Because this one is. Perfect, I mean, and you'll adore it—mark my words," she foretold, reminding Draco of much more elegant and bubbly Trelawney.

"Hah!" Draco snorted elegantly. "Then, show me," he challenged the most effective and successful estate agent Savills Wizarding Scotland division had ever claimed for its ranks.

*

"Though it's likely less wearing simply to show you, Harry," Snape sighed, tucking his wand away and Summoning his own glass of wine. Harry's bottle lay discarded on the carpet before the door leading back to the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts, miraculously undamaged. "But I'll be thrice-cursed before I let you into my head, given the mood you're in. So," he sipped.

Harry glared, speechless and unmoving.

"To begin. First off, I was in the Hall that evening. Second, you did not see me—no one did. I gave the alarm to Dumbledore that you'd been sucked into one of Voldemort's more facile schemes,"—Harry winced, or would've, if he'd retained the use of his facial muscles—"and Apparated there, using the sounds of battle to disguise my entry."

Harry blinked very quickly, the only physical expression he was able to manage, and attempted to convey that he had a pertinent question—reams of them, to be blunt. Snape nodded sharply at him, as if he'd picked up on that.

"You saw Mr. Black in the Veil, Harry, and that was true enough. Indeed, I believe you spoke to him a certain number of years later, just before the final confrontation?"

Harry blinked fast, the closest he could get to a nod, and continued to tell over his repertoire of wandless, wordless magic, seeking release. There was a way—he knew it—he just had to—had to—

"I took Sirius Black's body, Harry, which was not dead, although sufficient of his person had connected with that abominable Veil to release his soul. To you, and everyone else present, he was deceased and his physical form vanished. I had Disallusioned it, along with myself, and sent a hex or two after that bint of Voldemort's who was tormenting you in an effort to drive her off, but—of course—you had to go and chase after her."

Snape sipped again, and apparently got his much-tried temper fully under control.

"He took me," Sirius's voice interjected, before Severus could speak, "back to Spinner's End, from what he said, Harry, and installed me there in the Wizarding Quarters of the house—here, in fact, or actually, his guest bedroom. I don't believe you were aware of this place? No? Well—few are, indeed," Sirius chuckled.

Snape, too, smiled—a real one, which knocked Harry for a loop all over again. Snape never smiled; certainly not like that! Not with fondness and genuine good humour—and Merlin! Hadn't he and Sirius hated one another?! Really hated one another?

"Too true," Snape confirmed, glancing over at Harry's long-lost godfather. "Thankfully." A look passed between them that Harry couldn't quite interpret—was that…was that affection?!

"To continue," Snape said, and brought his dark eyes back to Harry.

*

"How about this one, Draco darling? Twelve bedrooms, not including the Master Suite; Tudor main with Regency and Classical additions—see them, the wings? Aren't they lovely? So very odd it's trendy, really. And all those bedrooms include fully updated adjoined en suites, every Muggle and Wizard mod con conceivable," Elinora was on a roll, her saleswoman's tongue caressing every syllable. "And the kitchen, Draco—oh, the kitchen!"

Draco's lips actually parted at the vision she'd summoned up. Every angle, every line was clean and clear, the ancient Tudor walls unobscured by the two vastly different architectural attachments tucked behind the man face. It was gorgeous—and then Elinora began presenting the interiors.

"There's a wine cellar and a jetted hot tub in the glasshouse; there's not one, but two separate libraries and stable space for twenty in the main barn—there it is, right by the carriage house, in the back, honee—see? And the current owner is the Seeker for Puddlemere, so of course there's a fully by Wizarding Hoyle Regulation Pitch within an easy walk of the Regency wing," she prattled on. "Oh, and these are the main bedrooms—they say both Queen Mab and the Muggle Queen Elizabeth Rex both slept in this one—separately, of course!"

"Salazar!" Draco murmured, and watched his dream house scan out before his very bemused gaze: greenhouses, pergolas, knot gardens and more. "Elinora—how!?"

*

"I brought him here and did what I could to keep his body alive, Harry. He'd sustained quite serious damage from the spell Bellatrix sent at him, so a Stasis was the best I could do for the first few weeks or so—"

Harry was blinking madly. Why!? Why didn't you tell anyone!? his thoughts howled. Dumbledore—me?! What in Merlin's Name were you thinking, you codgy old bastard?!

All the anger—the sheer burning weight of hatred—every ounce Snape had ever inspired in the bounds of Harry's madly beating chest cavity—it was right there, front and center, along with astonishment, and disbelief, and sheer befuddlement. And gratitude; yes, gratitude, for Severus Snape had accomplished the bloody impossible. No matter how he tried to wrap his mind 'round what was happening—what he was being told, so very pedantically—Harry just couldn't manage it.

"Fortunately, Hogwarts has—or had, though of course they now work under suitable contracts—

any number of house elves freely available, Potter, and even more serendipitously, I discovered one with the necessary amount of native intelligence and healing know-how to assist me. I restrained myself—with effort—from putting Black out of his misery several times—" and here Sirius snorted with muffled laughter and tossed his long glossy hair back over one velvet-lapelled shoulder—"and began to brew potions to assist in his recovery."

"Harry—I may call you 'Harry', yes?" Sirius spoke, picking up the tale, and leant forward in a confiding way, "what Severus means is that he healed my body. Only that, but that took up a great deal of his precious time and was, from what I learnt at a much later date, nearly impossible." Harry's godfather grinned, that self-same self-deprecating, utterly charming half-grin that had sent all the Hogwarts girls into fits thirty or more years before.

"Still don't know quite why he bothered, but he succeeded, despite himself," Sirius chuckled, twinkling over at Snape's superior expression. 'Didn't you, Severus?" The elegant man gestured carelessly at himself, resplendent in his silk paisley smoking jacket and wool trousers, and still breathtakingly handsome, the years sitting all too lightly on his classical Black features.

Harry gaped, or tried to. Sirius had been far from this rosy picture of robust health and happiness the last he saw him.

"I did, as you see," Snape agreed, with a self-satisfied nod. "However, it was a fairly pointless effort, as Mr. Black was not inhabiting his body for the most part, having been captured by the Veil. Even with all the effort expended, I had managed to heal and maintain his physical shell and that was all—hardly worth the trouble of mentioning it to Dumbledore—or to you, Harry."

Ahh! Harry's green eyes stretched wide as he realized exactly what Sev was implying. With that, his resurgence of blind hatred began to leach ever so slowly away, like sand particles draining out of an hourglass, and the astonishment and sense of bewilderment returned, full force.

How had Sev managed it? queried Harry's ever-active curiosity, his Slytherin instincts wanting every detail. No one, but no one, raised the dead with any success rate—not and lived long enough to tell about it. The sacrifices were far too great—and highly ignoble, and even with his body Bound and his functions impaired by what amounted to a powerful Stunner, Harry could always sense Dark Magic. There was none of that here. Not a whiff. So—how had this happened, if what his eyes—and his ears, via the alarmingly unfanciful person of his old Potions Master—were telling him was truth?

*

Rituals, even incomplete ones, are mysterious and magical things. When the realization of just exactly what he was seeing and what Snape was saying and what—oh, gods! But Sirius didn't even recognize him! sounded the refrain, over and over—it all might mean gradually infiltrated Harry's stunned brain—boom! It was as if a subterranean explosion of enormous proportions had taken place in the world of Magick, the shock waves resounding even to Hogsmeade, where Harry's fiancé was experiencing a revelation of his own.

Draco's was much the happier of the two events—it held none of the pained confusion, the helplessness, the sheer onslaught of anger-denial-bargaining-NO-acceptance that Harry's did. Here Draco was, faced with a curious old—and older, perhaps, than even Elinora realized, in parts, judging by the remains of the moat—building that looked as though it had been wrought by daft Wizards and practically oozed of 'home' and 'comfort' and 'lay your head down here, dearie.' Draco's response was one of unexpected delight—an overwhelming feeling, much as one falls into when experiencing ice cream for the first time as a child, or a long-time crush's first willing kiss, or the damp muzzle of a newborn Kneazle's tiny, triangular face into the lines of the palm.

But Harry's need was undeniably the greater of the two; without thought, without conscious effort, the bonds of the Ritual forced them together, and Draco Disapparated, mid-gasp.

This was a good thing, he decided later—much later—as it obviated the need for putting Harry through the wringer twice, explaining. And it allowed him to protect Harry from Snape and Harry's own—I know he's dead, Draco's mind screamed, scrambling for firm ground, so why the fuck?!—dearly beloved but sadly deceased godfather. Which was yet another conundrum, as Draco couldn't ever have conceived of a situation in which he would feel the need to protect Harry from his own fussy, overprotective godfather, much less the living dead man who'd been Harry's so-dear father figure.

Draco had his wand out, even as he stepped elegantly out of the Disapparate, and Harry's stiff, goggle-eyed person was placed safely behind him, where it should be. He unbound Harry with a mutter and faced up to Severus Snape, unblinking, fully willing to duel to the death, if necessary.

No one threatened Harry Potter's peace-of-mind without going through Draco Malfoy first. And no one would ever touch his Harry whilst Draco drew breath. That was how it was, and how it always would be.