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Draco didn't let his hand shake when he lifted the ladle full of the bright green potion and carefully placed it into the steel vial. It wanted to, but he didn't permit it. Severus often said that no Potions master permitted anything to happen in his lab that he did not ordain. Draco was striving to be that hard, that cool, that efficient.
You are a wizard, and it is only a potion, Severus had said to him more than once. You ought to be able to keep it from splattering or flying in any direction except the one you want it to go in.
The ladle tipped. The potion poured into the vial. Draco found himself tensing his shoulders automatically, waiting for the sort of explosion that had accompanied all his past attempts to finish the potion, and relaxed them by sheer force of will. He had mastered the brewing process this time, and that meant he ought not to be nervous.
The last drop of green liquid settled into the narrow steel container, and still nothing happened—no explosion, no leaping foam, no other sudden event that he had to raise his shields against.
It had worked.
Draco allowed himself to put down his ladle and adopt a thin, supercilious smile then, the kind he often gave when he was a student in Potions and watched others struggle. I am adept at this. I can do anything I set my mind to, provided I have sufficient strength and will.
And with the magical strength of his bondmates backing him up, what might he not accomplish?
The door opened behind him. Draco turned around, head canted at the proper arrogant angle to welcome a visitor into his domain.
Severus stood there. His gaze moved from Draco to the steel vial, and then back to the cauldron that sat with the potion quietly, tamely waiting in it. He gave a small nod.
Draco nodded back, a trickle of warmth moving through his body. From a person as reserved as Severus, that nod was as good as a shout of approval, or an O mark on a Potions essay.
*
"Thanks."
Severus stifled the impulse to roll his eyes. Harry was quiet and uncertain in everything today, from the way he came down the stairs to the way he accepted the cup of tea from Severus, with exaggerated care to be sure that their fingers didn't touch. Severus didn't think he'd looked up once so far, either. His cheeks were brilliantly red. So was the bond, and the tingles of sharper emotions coming through it were getting quite distracting.
Confront him directly. It is not what he will expect, and so he will have no dodge prepared.
"Does seeing Draco and I together repulse you that much?" Severus asked in a normal tone, his eyes on the bowl of porridge that Draco had cooked that morning. Draco was gaining in skill as a Potions master almost as the days had passed, but his cooking still left something to be desired. Severus had picked out two charred lumps already.
Across the table, there was a complicated inhalation of milk and toast. Severus sighed and looked up when he thought Harry had adjusted himself so that he wouldn't be even more embarrassed by Severus's stare.
Harry's eyes were wide, and he was blinking as though someone had hit him on the head. Even as Severus drew breath to ask the question again, though, Harry glared and sat upright and hurled his words as though they were weapons he would use to fend off anything else Severus might say.
"I thought you were perfectly normal-looking! I mean, normal for two men in bed together. I haven't seen any before." He sounded as if he were floundering again, but pulled himself together with a physical jerk and forged on. "I wasn't repulsed. But I didn't have the right to spy on you like that. That's why I'm embarrassed. Because I opened the door and stared like a little sneak. You deserve more privacy than that. I tried to tell myself that I was concerned because you left the potions lab in such a mess, but—but that's just an excuse." By the end, he was mumbling again and staring at the table, but at least the bond had cleared a bit thanks to the indignation that had burned through it.
Severus stirred his spoon through his porridge and glanced at the closed door of the potions lab, where Draco was trying to duplicate his success of the early morning with the actual potion that Severus intended Shacklebolt to take. Perhaps it would have been better if he were here. Severus thought he could be more spontaneously—and believably—open when it came to speaking to Potter about joining them in bed.
On the other hand, that would have meant revealing to Draco that Potter had looked in on them, and Severus did not yet know what Draco would do with that information.
I will leave it alone for now. Once again, it must be up to Harry how fast we proceed. At least I know he recoiled from us not because he found us disgusting but because he felt guilt. And that guilt is too familiar an emotion for me to think he will entirely purge it.
"Thank you for the apology," he said evenly, and moved on. "I noticed that you had received a letter this morning. Who was it from?" He thought he could guess, since anger like an arrow had cut through the bond when the owl came, but he preferred to leave the imparting of information up to Harry as much as he could.
Harry promptly scowled and drove his knife into his toast as if he intended to slice it apart as gillyweed was sliced for the Perpetual Breath Potion. "Kingsley. He wants a 'private meeting.' He also presumes to scold me for speaking up in public without his permission. He says that I don't understand all the consequences of my actions, and I also don't understand what would happen if he was turned out of office right now."
"I do wonder if there is a serious hope of that." Severus ate the last of his porridge thoughtfully. They might be underestimating the support that Harry's speech had gained them simply because of the articles appearing in multiple papers, but on the other hand, Kingsley might be overestimating the outrage against him. Angry, frightened people did not make the best decisions.
"I don't think so, not right now." Harry shook his head. "He's popular. He was a member of the Order of the Phoenix, and he did heroic things during the war, too. And what if he was turned out of office and replaced by someone even worse?" The bond gathered dancing green sparks along the edges, a sign that Harry was wavering.
Severus leaned across the table, making no sound but waiting until the sheer force of his presence compelled Harry to glance up. "You cannot yield," he said. "He will use that fear to pressure you into reversing your gains, if you are not careful."
"I know that," Harry said, and some of the sparks in the bond vanished. "But I still have to worry about it. There's no way that we could put up a candidate from our party yet if there was an election tomorrow."
Severus would have liked to choose his words carefully, but the concept they looked at now was too simple for that. "Except you."
Harry drew his breath in as if he were going to shout. Then his hands clenched on the edges of the table, and he said in a low voice through gritted teeth, "I promised myself that I was going to start thinking more about what I want. And I don't want to be Minister."
"Acceptable." And it was. Severus did not particularly want Harry exposed more than he already was to the danger of assassination, or out of the house for the long periods of time that a Minister's work would imply. On the other hand, now that the suggestion had been made to him once, Harry was less likely to be taken by surprise when someone else made it, as Swanfair, at least, inevitably would.
Of course, she would only do so if she thought there was a firm chance of controlling Harry.
Harry watched him for a few more minutes, then grunted and returned to his toast. "I need to talk with Hermione," he said, when he had finished. "And Draco. Together, they should be able to come up with a political strategy. I've made the speech, but I'm not sure what I need to do next."
"Would you like me to sit in on the meeting as well?" Severus did not know if it was deliberation or forgetfulness that had caused Harry to leave him out.
Harry's face hardened, and the bond turned a complicated mix of silver-green and yellow that Severus hadn't seen before. "Not on this one," he said. "I need to see that Draco can control himself in front of Hermione. If you're there, of course he will, but that won't truly test him."
Severus raised his eyebrows. The tactic sounded like the task he had set Draco with the potion that resembled the ulcer-causing one. He would not have expected Harry to think of it. "As you will."
He had some reading of his own that he could do in the meantime. There were hints in a few of the books that the bond might change in still more dramatic and unexpected ways now that they had arrived at a seeming balance. Accidental magic bonds strove for optimization. Severus reckoned that many people would say this was optimization, with all three of them friendly to one another and cautiously able to patch up arguments, and two of them lovers.
Severus did not think it was, and so he believed the bond would change further. Reading might help him predict what it would do next.
"Thanks."
Severus looked up and blinked. Harry was holding his wrist and looking into his eyes with something uncomfortably close to gratitude. The bond shimmered the pink of approval.
"Thanks for understanding," Harry added, and then abruptly let go of Severus's wrist and departed the dining area.
Severus spent a few more moments with his tea, glad for once that Harry had not opened the bond both ways. He did not believe the younger man would find it comfortable to encounter Severus's purring smugness.
*
Harry kept one eye on Draco and one on Hermione as they took seats in his bedroom, which Harry had chosen mostly because it was far from both the potions lab and the library, the places he expected Severus to be. He had said that he wouldn't intervene, but why present him with temptation?
Draco sat stiffly on the edge of Harry's bed, his hands tucked under his knees as if he feared that he might accidentally touch Hermione. Harry told himself he was being uncharitable, but when Draco kept darting Hermione narrow-eyed glances and then looking away again, he was probably also being realistic.
Hermione sat on a chair that Harry had Levitated upstairs and apparently ignored both Draco and the tension between Draco and Harry. She was checking over a long list of names and nodding.
Harry sat down on the bed, too, but an equal distance from both Draco and Hermione, and smiled wryly. He was just as glad that Ron apparently still felt indignant on Ginny's behalf and so hadn't come along. He wouldn't be able to watch three people and three wands, not having three eyes.
"Yes," Hermione said, looking up. "Out of the thirty reporters you invited to that speech, twenty-five wrote positive articles about you that more or less repeated what you said verbatim. Three were largely neutral, and two hostile." She leaned forwards, her hands hooked around the edge of the sheaf of parchment. "I think that's enough support to have a public meeting that anyone who's curious or sympathetic can attend."
"Oh, yes, a marvelous idea," Draco said, with acid in his voice that didn't sound much changed from Hogwarts, "given that so many people want to kill Harry. Let's give everyone who wants to a chance."
Hermione stared at the ceiling and spoke in a deliberately slow voice. "We'd police the gathering, of course. We'd take away everyone's wands, and use wards that disrupted glamours and curses before they formed—"
"That leaves out someone being ingenious with a potion," Draco said, his voice soaring slightly, "and Dark Arts that can circumvent wards like that, and the fact that some pure-bloods will think such a gathering in the height of bad taste, so they're not likely to come even if they support Harry—"
"We're not asking everyone to support me," Harry said, deciding he should intervene before Hermione could say something about how little she cared for the taste of pure-bloods. "Did your letter to Millicent Bulstrode ever get a response, Draco?"
Draco shook his head. "Her family has already left the country," he said. "I could try writing to a few others who were apathetic about the war with the Dark Lord, but given that they were apathetic then, I'm not sure I could persuade them to care about it now."
"It's not the war we're asking them to care about," Hermione began in a lecturing tone. "We're asking them to devote a little intelligent thought to the future of the wizarding world—"
"And that future is tied up with the past!" Draco surged to his feet, which surprised Harry. He hadn't thought Draco would get upset this early in the conversation. "That's what you've never realized, you—"
Harry recognized the direction that would move in very quickly, and cast a Silencing Charm. Draco moved his mouth a few times without any sound coming out, and then glared at Harry. Harry shrugged an apology before he turned around and cast the same spell on Hermione. She went from smug to angry in an instant. Harry wondered if he should tell them how very similar they looked when they glared, and then decided it would be a bad idea.
"I don't think personal insults are the way to accomplish anything," Harry said, firmly but quietly. A fine leader I'll be if I can manage a public bunch of reporters but not two of my friends. "And I don't want to waste our time or our strength on people who absolutely won't be converted. There's no point. Draco, you can write and invite some of the pure-bloods you think might be interested in such a gathering. I'll ask Swanfair to alert her contacts, as well. Hermione, you and I can consult about the most important Muggleborn war heroes and some of the people in the Ministry. Ron can tell you whether he knows anyone who'd be interested." Ron was still in the Auror training program.
Hermione nodded slowly, though she gave Harry an ominous look that promised there would be revenge for this later. Harry released her from the spell and then turned and glanced at Draco.
He was startled by the expression on Draco's face. It looked far more upset than Harry had thought he should be. Draco's hands were clenched, and his breath rasped through his parted lips as if he were about to spring on Harry and beat him up.
He looks the way he did when I beat him in a Quidditch game, Harry thought uneasily, and lifted the Silencing Charm on Draco as well. "Draco?" he asked quietly. "Are you all right?"
Draco stood up and stormed out of the room without answering. Harry gave Hermione an apologetic glance, got a nod from her—she seemed to think it was inevitable that Draco would behave this way—and followed his bondmate out into the corridor.
Draco stood scowling at the wall. Harry came up behind him and cleared his throat. Draco didn't turn around.
"I only put you under the Silencing Charm because I thought you were both about to insult each other," Harry said. "Hermione wasn't controlling herself any better than you were. What are you so upset about?"
Draco whipped around to face him, almost hitting Harry in the chin with the back of his head. "You don't trust me."
Harry blinked and tried to decide if that was true or not. "Not to do some things," he said at last. "You were about to insult Hermione because you don't think she's a real witch, weren't you?"
Draco shifted, and his eyes went sideways, as if he didn't think that he could bear facing Harry straight on. His voice remained angry, however. "That's different. I meant that you don't trust me to really contribute ideas at meetings like this. You're paying more attention to Granger's contributions than to mine."
Harry drew in his breath to say that he was not, and then stopped and thought of something. Draco sounded the way Harry had when Ron and Hermione started dating—and snogging—intensely right after the war and Harry had accused them of leaving him out. Ron and Hermione had both been astonished by the accusation, and explained that they weren't doing that, and certainly not on purpose. They were just so involved in what they were doing that they didn't notice he was lonely.
What if this was the same kind of thing? If it was, then what mattered was not what Harry had intended to do but what Draco thought he had done.
"I'm sorry," he said. Draco turned an incredulous glance on him. Harry gave him a small smile. "What? Didn't you trust me to apologize?"
"I thought—I thought it would take more effort to get one than that." Draco peered at him with an uncomfortable intensity, but at least he was looking at Harry's face instead of the wall or the floor. Harry thought that was progress.
"Well, it didn't, not when you have a point." Harry wondered what the bond was showing to Draco right now, but it must not have been anything too bad, because Draco simply blinked and then paid more attention to his words. "Now. What do you think we should do? Don't you think a public gathering is a good idea?" He ran his hand soothingly up and down Draco's left shoulder.
Draco seemed to gain courage now that he had a specific thing to object to. "Not without us. I don't want you sitting out in the open where someone can assassinate you like that." He snapped his fingers.
"I won't be," Harry said. "Both of you can come with me, and I promise that I won't go anywhere unescorted."
Draco folded his arms and rocked backwards on his heels, pulling his shoulder away from Harry's grip. Harry found himself unexpectedly sorry about that. "Is that the same kind of promise that you made us when you said that you were going to rest after the Gut Chewing Curse and you didn't?"
"I made promises like that before and didn't keep them," Harry said calmly. He wanted to get upset, but this wasn't the time or place. Draco had a point. "I did the last time. I've learned the value of healing now."
As though his words had been much more profound than they sounded to Harry, Draco hesitated, then said, "I'll agree to it, as long as you stay with us, and as long as you let me have a big part in the planning of it. And Severus, too, of course," he added, almost like an afterthought.
"Of course," Harry said. "What would I do without you at this point?"
He made it come out joking, but Draco still took a step forwards, his face gone unexpectedly soft. Harry raised his eyebrows at him. He had started thinking that—well, maybe that the perceptions he'd had when the bond was open both ways were wrong, at least with Draco. Severus he could imagine making an effort to…be with him, but Draco only seemed interested in fighting with Harry.
Now, though, with the way Draco was looking at him like a self-satisfied cat, his hand lifted as though he were about to touch Harry's cheek, Harry wondered if he wanted the same things Severus wanted.
And the thought of making Draco look that satisfied in other circumstances was a good one, good in some way that Harry didn't know how to define. He licked his lips.
The door of his bedroom popped open, and Hermione stuck her head out. "Are we planning this or not?" she asked.
Draco drew a huge breath of exasperation, but he did turn around and go back in, and he managed to keep his simmering contempt for Hermione beneath a polite surface for the rest of their talk. Harry kept sneaking sideways glances at him, silently bursting with pride.
Draco blushed a time or two, which made Harry think the bond being open one way was good for them both. He knew he would have made a mess of himself if he tried to explain his pride in words.
*
Draco kept his hand on his wand and his eyes on Harry and Severus at all times. They were in the middle of a jostling, shoving, shouting, ogling crowd that had gathered in a wide field to the west of Hogsmeade, and Draco hated it.
He could just imagine a curse coming from any direction, at any time. Severus seemed to trust to the wards that surrounded them in a portable, glittering net. Harry was too busy shaking hands and roaring jests to his Weasley friends. Ron and the remaining one of the twins accompanied him today, which Draco reckoned showed that they had forgiven him for leaving the shrew behind.
Pity, Draco thought, but the sunlight that blazed through the bond whenever Harry looked at the Weasleys made it hard for him to resent their presence too much.
On the other hand, it was rather trying for him to think that he was the only serious defender. His political training was useless in a crowd of this size and facelessness, and though he knew it would probably break apart into separate gatherings soon, his tension increased as the long moments until then wore past.
A hand squeezed his shoulder. Draco started and turned his head to find Harry smiling at him.
"It's all right," Harry murmured. "I don't especially like appearing in front of this many people either, but it's only once. After this, we'll be able to be more select about our audience." His fingers curled around Draco's elbow and tugged him forwards to stand beside Harry. Severus followed on the other side, moving so smoothly that Draco would have thought they'd practiced this if he didn't know better.
Gradually, and with the help of Brynhildr Swanfair, who circled the crowd like a sheep dog and sliced portions of it off, they got into serious talk with the most important people. Draco spent his time evaluating them with as much coolness as he could muster and touching Harry's arm when he thought he was missing something. Harry would pause, tilt his head thoughtfully, and spend some moments considering before he returned to the conversation. Almost always, he pinpointed what Draco had wanted him to pinpoint.
Severus hovered on the other side of Harry like a great crow, and picked up those bones Harry had missed turning over. Draco was somewhat astonished at the way Severus could restrain himself and sound polite, if cold. He had never bothered to hold back that sarcasm when he was scolding his students.
But these aren't his students, Draco thought, glancing around at the people who had come to listen to them. These are people who might have the power to either help or harm them.
There were close neighbors from Hogsmeade—including several who had eagerly said they'd written to the Minister demanding that he arrest Huxley—Muggleborn "heroes," blood traitors like the Weasleys, and a few pure-blood families who probably couldn't bear to be left out of the festivities, even though they weren't certain that they wanted to support Harry yet. Draco was watching with carefully concealed eagerness for a face he hadn't yet seen.
Then it materialized out of the crowd, and Draco forced himself not to do something as gauche as to sigh in relief. There were people here who would notice, even if he didn't think so. He held out his hand. "Glad that you could make it, Blaise," he said.
Blaise lifted an eyebrow in what could have been either a mocking or a surprised gesture; Draco had never been good at reading him, and he had been spoiled lately as far as his skills were concerned because the emotions flowing from Harry often made reading his expression unnecessary. "I wouldn't be left out," he murmured. His handshake was firm but quick, and then he turned to study Draco's bondmates. Draco tensed just in time to prevent himself from stepping in front of them. Severus, at least, had a claim to some of Blaise's respect from the time when Blaise was his student, and enough wits and magic to protect himself.
Harry…
Draco wondered if Harry was really as vulnerable as Draco thought he was, or if he was still overreacting from the time he had seen Harry fall because of the Gut Chewing Curse.
"Potter," Blaise said, with a little twist to the name that could be taken as insulting if one wanted to take it that way. Blaise was an expert in saying such words, as Draco had discovered in his first year when he tried to tell Blaise how impressive his father was and Blaise had disarmed him by simply saying, "Your father?" "Quite a gathering you have here. Do you have any idea what you plan to do with them yet?"
"I don't know," Harry said. The bond pulsed with uncertainty in Draco's mind, but one wouldn't have known it from Harry's voice. He'd picked up quite a bit in the last month, Draco thought, and tried to keep his hand from Harry's shoulder. That would weaken him in front of Blaise. "It depends on whether I most need a political party or an army. A political party looks more likely right now, but who knows about the future?"
For a moment, Blaise actually appeared stunned. Then he grinned. "I do like your style, Potter," he said. "My mother might be interested in meeting you. Shall I present her?"
"I'd be charmed to meet her," said Harry. His hand hovered near his wand, too, so that Draco knew he was ready to keep himself from being literally charmed.
Blaise bowed a little, and then turned and called Mrs. Zabini through the crowd. Draco called her "Mrs. Zabini" in his head even though she frequently married and changed her name, because that was the way he had always heard Blaise refer to her when he was introducing her to someone else. He did the same thing now.
"My mother, Mariella Zabini," he said to Harry, and bowed again.
Harry and Mrs. Zabini studied each other. She was taller than he was, nearly as tall as Severus, with the same sort of thin, pointed face that Severus had, though with darker skin. Her eyes were guarded at the moment, her eyebrows permanently lifted. Her thick black hair was clustered in a tight braid at the back of her neck, and she wore a set of red robes that Draco knew must have some symbolic significance. Or maybe they were meant to make him think they did. The problem with Mrs. Zabini, his father had said more than once, was that she made gestures that would be meaningful in other people but emptied them of meaning for herself.
"Hullo," Harry told her. He seemed to have decided that he wasn't going to be impressed. Reluctantly, Draco decided that strategy was just as likely to be effective as anything else. "Have you made a decision about whether you'll join our party or not?"
"I had thought the invention of a party was just a rumor." Mrs. Zabini had a thin, fine, high voice, which sounded like it should have belonged to a smaller woman. She looked at Blaise, then spent a moment peering at Draco's and Severus's faces, as though they would tell her something. Maybe Draco's would tell her something, in spite of all his efforts to control it, but he was sure Severus's did not.
"No, madam, we intend to put one together," Harry said calmly. "Certain people are very displeased with how Minister Shacklebolt has handled many things, including the arrest of Griselda Huxley."
"And if that has no importance to me?" Mrs. Zabini's shoulders moved in a slight shrug. "Why should I care about someone threatening the hero of a war I was neutral in?"
"What's important," Harry said, without missing a beat, before Draco even had time to draw in his breath in fear, "isn't the Ministry's treatment of me alone, but what it implies, and what the Minister said when I asked him about it. Huxley was going to be allowed to get away with attacking for me living with two former Death Eaters." He reached out, laying his hands gently on Draco's left arm and Severus's right. "That suggests a hostility on the Minister's part, not to me, but to former Death Eaters."
Mrs. Zabini's eyebrows rose slightly, but she repeated, "I fail to see why I should have any interest."
"Not only Death Eaters," Harry said, his gaze sharpening, "but potentially anyone who uses the Dark Arts. Or is suspected of using them."
For a while, Draco wasn't sure that even that statement would work. Mrs. Zabini went on looking at them, turning her head slowly back and forth, her eyes lingering now on the hands that Harry used to brace himself against Draco and Severus, now on the way his robes hung around his shoulders, now on his earnest, still face, as if every aspect of Harry would tell her something equally valuable.
"That may be interesting," said Mrs. Zabini at last, in a voice as cool and still as a pond unruffled by the wind. "I will leave you my Floo address so that you can contact me when you have put this party together." She fished under her bright robe and pulled out a scrap of parchment with a few words written on it. Draco realized that he was holding his breath like a teenager and released it with a whoosh.
Blaise caught his eye and grinned at him. From the sudden relaxation of his shoulders and the deep breath he took a moment later, Draco thought he hadn't been sure what his mother was going to do, either.
"Thank you, Mrs. Zabini." Harry bowed to her, and Draco knew he was copying the bow Blaise had made to him. Certainly neither he nor Severus had shown Harry a gesture like that. It was a little clumsy, but that was to be expected, and Draco decided it might even endear Harry to the people watching them. "I'll be sure to contact you." He tucked the paper carefully away.
None of the other conversations they had that afternoon stood out in Draco's mind quite as vividly, though Harry received everything from smiles to blunt questions to threats. He passed alertly from moment to moment, ready to defend Harry from any of those threats, and when he went on to the next moment and the next alertness, he found it hard to remember what lay behind. He hoped that Harry and Severus weren't relying on his observations of the day alone to decide who they should include in this political party and who they shouldn't, because he didn't think they would do much good.
Severus continued to hover and to watch. Several times Draco saw his face relax slightly into a smile, but those moments were unpredictable. Draco enjoyed a surge of smugness that he could make Severus smile virtually whenever he wanted to. There was no one else here who had that power, not even Harry.
Not yet.
Draco told himself firmly not to be jealous—after all, if Severus tried to ignore him when Harry started coming around, then Draco would simply make such a nuisance of himself that Severus would have to pay attention—and then started observing Harry as they sat down on Transfigured benches for a meal of cheese and fresh fruit. The bond had flowed with so many emotions over the past few hours that he wanted to know for certain what Harry felt now that he had a chance to catch his breath.
He quickly realized that Harry's feelings changed from moment to moment, and it depended on who he was looking at. The bond beamed with sunshine when he regarded the Weasleys, darkened to wariness when he looked at the pure-bloods he barely knew, and softened into a slightly paler blue caution around the Muggleborn "heroes." He was tired, but it was mental exhaustion more than physical, caused by having to haul his brain through so many different conversations. The bond also quivered with a jagged red feeling that Draco didn't recognize until he saw Harry swallowing a glass of water thirstily.
There's still much to learn about him, and about each other, Draco thought, leaning his head on his hand as he watched Harry. I wonder if he's as curious about us as we are about him.
As if hearing his thought, Harry turned his head and smiled at Draco, reaching up to slide his hand across Draco's forehead and push his hair out of his eyes. "Are you holding up all right?" he asked quietly.
Draco blinked. He's worried about me? Sweetness moved through him, and probably made the smile he gave Harry all soppy and sentimental. "Of course. I'm more concerned about you, to tell the truth."
"I'll be fine," Harry said. "I'll want to collapse by the time that we get home, of course, but I'll be fine for as long we're here." Then he lifted his head suddenly, and Draco could feel the bond sharpen into a razor point of anger.
Draco followed his gaze, and drew in his breath sharply enough to make himself cough when he realized that Kingsley Shacklebolt was walking towards their bench from the edge of the crowd.
*
This was what Severus had been waiting for. He did not really believe that the Minister would let an open gathering like this pass without appearing in an attempt to change the minds of Harry's supporters, and perhaps even to make an appeal to Harry himself. His hand went to the vial hidden under his cloak, and he stood smoothly, dividing his attention between the Minister and the two red-cloaked Aurors next to him who bulled him a path through the crowd.
Only come close enough, Minister. And then I will make sure that you accept a drink from my hand—indirectly. Having Harry offer it should be enough, since you won't want to disappoint your audience.
The Minister carried silence with him. Severus watched the ripple of discontent and apprehension spread through the pure-bloods, the Muggleborns, and finally to the Weasleys and others who had been too much involved in chattering with Harry to notice his arrival. Both Weasleys went red in the face. Harry's friend started to rise to his feet, but Harry reached out, put a hand on his arm, and shook his head. The bond still flowered with anger, but it no longer resembled razors. It had settled into pounded stone instead, Severus thought—heavy and flat, ready to fall on the Minister and crush him if he so much as tried to behave insolently to Harry's bondmates.
Severus could have purred. To have someone ready to defend him, and able to do it well now that the Gut Chewing Curse had been overcome, was a new and heady sensation.
"Minister," Harry said, stealing the moment of introduction from Shacklebolt. He stood up, folding his arms in such a way that his elbows touched both Draco and Severus in the ribs. "Did you want something?"
Shacklebolt sighed wearily. He kept his head bowed, his shoulders hunched, as if he were bearing up under some intolerable burden. Keeping one sardonic eye on him, Severus found himself curling his lip. If anyone had the right to look that way, it was Harry, but it might be an effective play for sympathy on some members of the audience.
"To reconcile," Shacklebolt said quietly. "To try to understand your pain and your anger, and to explain why your demands cannot be honored if I am to continue running a fair and just society for the rest of the wizarding world."
"Explain to me," Harry said, his body radiating tension and the bond twisting and turning like a kaleidoscope of knives, "why that 'fair and just society' can't arrest an attempted murderer, and why my bondmates and I are the ones sacrificed for the well-being of the wizarding world."
Shacklebolt gave him a patient smile, and then cast his eyes around at the silent, avidly watching crowd. "You know that I can't tell you that in public, Harry," he said. "It would give away important secrets."
"Such as the fact that Huxley's blackmailing you and you don't want to arrest her?" Harry rolled his eyes. "Most of the people here already figured it had to be something like that. Why should one woman have such a hold over you? What happens if she starts forcing you to act against someone else, someone you like in this case and who isn't a suspected Death Eater? What lies will you come up with then?"
Shacklebolt had gone ashen, and Severus silently but strongly wished that Harry had held his tongue on the matter of Huxley's blackmail. It might be impossible to persuade the Minister to drink something of his own free will after this.
"Is that true, Minister?" Severus would have recognized Rita Skeeter's voice, which sounded dipped in treacle, anywhere. She was oozing towards the front of the crowd now, her quill and her camera poised.
Shacklebolt mastered himself with an effort that Severus had to give him grudging points for. He would have been tempted to lash out in a situation like this, especially when most of his reputation seemed lost already, but Shacklebolt was canny enough to remember that this small gathering was only his immediate audience, not the whole of the wizarding world. He might still have the chance to persuade others, if not them. He gave Skeeter a bland smile, murmured something about his reluctance to discuss the affairs of private citizens, and then faced Harry again and held out his hand.
"I will ignore your insults," he said. "I will ignore the implication that I don't care for your well-being. I've come to ask you back into the Auror program, Harry, and for you to drop these ridiculous insinuations and allegations against me."
"That would involve denying the newspaper articles and interviews I contributed to, I reckon." Harry's voice was slow and bored, but the bond shimmered with tension under the surface, like dammed water. Severus prevented himself from moving closer to put a comforting hand on his shoulder, as much as he would have liked to, and was pleased to see that Draco had also managed to hold back. It was their natural reaction when their bondmate was in trouble, but it would weaken Harry at the moment.
"Among other things." Shacklebolt was too clever to mistake Harry's words for immediate compliance. He settled for folding his hands in front of him and looked hopeful, instead.
"I won't do it," Harry said.
Severus had expected the declaration, of course, but it was still a shock to watch the impact on Shacklebolt's face and future. The crowd behind him stirred with excitement. Skeeter began scribbling. The Weasleys settled back and grinned, though the younger's face was still furious. The two Aurors gripped their wands more tightly.
"I feared that you would say that," Shacklebolt whispered. "I still hoped that we could conclude a truce nonetheless, Harry. If you wish to do so, then you may come to me at any time and I will welcome you. My door is always open." He lifted his head and gave another of those pathetic, resigned smiles.
"I'll remember that the next time I need someone to murder me or suggest that I'm being controlled by my bondmates or deny me my chosen career," Harry said, and gave the Minister a poisonously sweet smile in return.
Shacklebolt lifted his hand as if to make some sort of plea, then shook his head angrily, dropped his hand, and turned away.
Severus knew that he would probably never have a better opportunity. He drew the vial from beneath his robe, though he still held it in the shadow of his sleeve, and waved his wand above the mouth of the vial. He cast the spell nonverbally, a greater trial of his power. But he was confident in his abilities as a Potions master, and he could chance no one discovering that Shacklebolt's ulcer was not natural.
The potion bubbled and foamed briefly, then turned into thin wisps of green mist. By the time those wisps had ascended above the lip of the vial, they were already invisible. Severus conjured a breeze that would direct the wisps to their target and nowhere else, and watched in silent satisfaction as Shacklebolt's hair waved slightly and his robe rippled. Yes, the wisps had gone in, and he would have the ulcer now within a few days.
Draco leaned heavily on Harry's shoulder as the Minister vanished from sight behind the backs of his Aurors. "That may not be the wisest thing that you could have done," he murmured warningly.
"I don't fucking care." Harry turned towards them, speaking softly enough that no one outside their tight little circle could hear, his cheeks flushed and his eyes and the bond both shining with red and gold. "Why doesn't he understand? I don't care about the blackmail Huxley is subjecting him to or the fact that he doesn't like you." He reached out and clasped Severus's forearm as if he meant to rip back his sleeve and bare the Dark Mark. "There are things that are more important to me than his opinion."
Draco's cheeks flushed brilliantly. Severus dipped his head and murmured, "Our revenge is enacted. Let us try to enjoy the rest of the meeting and convince others that our party is well on the way to becoming a reality."
Harry took a minute to breathe harshly and stand with his head bowed, as if he were recovering from an attack. Then he nodded and looked up with a bright smile. "You're right. We can't let the bastards get to us, can we?"
He turned around and began to speak to the younger Weasley, determinedly picking up a thread of conversation about Auror training. The crowd milled and stirred uneasily for a time, then seemed to realize that Harry didn't intend to gratify their curiosity and settled back into talking and eating.
Severus watched Draco watch Harry, listening to his conversations and picking out hidden threats from glances and the too-sharp motions of certain people's hands. Contentment moved through him, and not only because he had accomplished the spell that turned the potion into a vapor.
We are in less danger now than we were, because Harry is beginning to acknowledge that there are some things no one has a right to do to him.
And because we fit so well together.