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Chapter Two—Blood of Avalon

Harry thought he remembered waking up once in the hospital wing with no visitors, but Madam Pomfrey had immediately clucked at him and forced a few more potions down his throat, and he'd drifted off again. He would remember waking this time, because Snape was sitting beside his bed.

And staring at him.

"Um, hello, sir," Harry said, and rubbed his face. The sensation of people talking in the back of his head had faded when he woke, but seeing Snape reminded him of what Nott had said about the networks and the Dark Marks, and he grimaced a little. "You're here to yell at me for altering the Dark Marks, right?"

Snape leaned forwards until Harry had trouble seeing anything but his eyes, mostly because he had trouble moving his head from the position it was resting in right now on the pillow. "Do you know what you have done?" Snape hissed.

"No, sir. Sorry, sir."

Harry controlled the temptation to say something like, "But I'm sure you're going to tell me." After the war, he and Snape were doing their best to settle into some kind of truce. Part of that was Harry not voicing every sarcastic comment that went through his head.

He could think it all he liked, though.

From the way Snape's eyes narrowed, he might have picked up a stray thought. But instead, he shook his head and said, "You have made yourself a Dark Lord."

Harry blinked, once, twice. Then he said, "I thought that what Nott said—it just meant I was helping to stabilize the Marks and we could work on disentangling them from the networks later. I was volunteering to be a storage container, basically."

"A storage container," Snape said flatly.

"I suppose that's not what it is?"

Snape shook his head and looked away. Then he said, "Potter, what about the Marks made you think the Dark Lord would be a storage container?"

"Nothing? But I'm not taking over his role. I don't want to tangle the Marks with anything else. I want to work on disentangling them. So that was the step I needed to take at first, but now we can work on anything we need to, because we have the time."

Snape just stared at him in silence, his eyes flat. Harry looked back. Snape could probably use Legilimency to read his mind, and maybe that would be justified, but honestly, this was the perfect and whole truth as Harry understood it. He hadn't set out to be a Dark Lord, if that was what Snape was accusing him of.

It might not even be that, Harry thought. Maybe Snape was just still angry about Harry saving his life. Harry had disclaimed any life-debt, but that had made Snape angrier.

Harry had to accept that he would probably never understand this complex man, or the kinds of things that had driven Snape to both vow to protect Harry and despise his existence. But they both still existed, so he'd have to try, at least a bit.

"You are not a storage container," Snape said, and Harry bit his lip so he wouldn't laugh out loud at the viciousness Snape used to say those words. Snape absolutely would take that the wrong way. "You are a Dark Lord."

"In practical terms, what does that mean?"

"In practical terms? Nothing about this is practical, Potter—"

"I mean, how do we handle this so that we can get rid of my being in that role as fast as possible? I know that Nott said some people in the network were getting sick and dying. I stopped that. Now we need to figure out how I can make sure that all those people are free, and no one is being affected by me being in the center of the network."

Snape settled back in the chair and scowled at him. "So you did not intend to become a Dark Lord."

"No."

"Why did you reach out to attack Nott's Mark?"

Harry blinked once. Was that the way Snape experienced it? Maybe his Mark hadn't been decaying the way Nott's had been. "Because he asked me to. He told me that Malfoy was sick and his father was, too. I couldn't let them die."

"Why not, Potter? They were Death Eaters!"

Harry stared at Snape evenly. "The same reason I couldn't let you die, sir. I just didn't want to."

Snape got up and swept out of the infirmary. Harry shrugged a little. Presumably he thought that Harry was joking with him or being sarcastic, but it was nothing less than the truth.

"Time for one more dose of potions, Mr. Potter, and then you can go back to the Tower."

Harry turned his head with a smile. At least Madam Pomfrey's motivations were pretty simple to understand. "Thanks, Madam Pomfrey."

"Oh, hi, Ron! You came back?"

"Obviously," Ron said, glaring at Harry from the chair nearest the fireplace in the Gryffindor common room. "When I hear that my best mate tried to kill himself, I'm going to come back and make sure he doesn't succeed."

"I didn't try to kill myself." Harry sat down gingerly on the couch across from Ron. He was still a little unsteady on his feet and had a tremor in his limbs from the magical exhaustion.

Ron stared at him in a way that said he didn't believe a word of it. "Right."

Harry shrugged, and hoped that Ron would accept Harry's word and give up the idea of him trying to commit suicide sometime soon. "Hermione explained to you about the Dark Marks?"

"Yes," Hermione said, stalking around the couch and sitting down across from Harry on the next chair. She glared at him and raised a Privacy Charm. While they were the Gryffindors spending the most time in the Tower this summer, they weren't the only ones, and Harry appreciated that she didn't want Neville or Ginny to stumble into this conversation. "Why did you do it, Harry?"

"Nott asked me to."

"You know what I mean!"

Harry did know, but he had to dig down to find the words, while Hermione waited with a tapping foot and Ron with crossed arms. "I couldn't let them die," Harry said at last. "Not when I put so much effort into Snape surviving, and even sort of Malfoy and Nott surviving."

"Oh, come on, Harry, you've never even talked to Nott!"

"I know, Ron, but he was one of the reasons I fought Voldemort. Or people like him. To make sure that they didn't have to make stupid choices and serve a bigoted wanker."

Ron buried his head in his hands, muffled laughter shaking his shoulders. Harry grinned at him. It was probably just because he'd called Voldemort a "bigoted wanker," but that was a good reason.

"Do you know what it's going to mean?" Hermione asked, practical as always, herding them back towards the topic of the conversation.

"Snape visited me in the hospital wing this morning. He wasn't happy about it. He said I'd essentially made myself a Dark Lord."

"Oh, good! Take over the Ministry and pass some laws that make sense for once."

"Ron!"

Ron raised his hands in Hermione's direction, grinning. "I'm just saying, if he's going to be a Dark Lord, he might as well do it right. Grindelwald just killed a bunch of people, and Voldemort didn't even do anything very important. Other people did it for him. Our Harry here's a go-getter, he'd be in the forefront of—"

Hermione cast a Silencing Charm on Ron and turned to Harry with an air of strained patience. "You aren't going to do anything stupid, right, Harry?"

Harry shrugged. "Right now, I don't even know what the first stupid thing I did means, Hermione. I'll go talk to Nott. He explained a little of it before, if not very clearly. I'll tell him that I need to know."

"Was Nott the one walking around with goat's horns this morning?" Ron asked. He'd already removed the Silencing Charm, and just grinned at Hermione when she gave him a brief startled look.

"Was he? I don't know. Hospital wing, remember?"

"Promise me that you're going to be as careful as possible, Harry. Don't do more random things just because Nott tells you that you have to."

"I don't think he'll tell me any more people I could save are sick and dying. So it should be easy, Hermione."

On his way down the stairs to the Great Hall, Harry unexpectedly ran into Malfoy. He hadn't seen much of the prat this summer, even though Malfoy had also spent some time helping to rebuild the castle. He seemed to concentrate exclusively on working in the dungeons, which Harry supposed he could understand.

Harry opened his mouth to say something as cordial as he could make it, but Malfoy looked up at him, turned paler than bread, and whirled around and ran down the stairs, disappearing in the direction of the dungeons again.

Harry stared after him. Then he said, "…Huh."

Soft laughter came from a corner near the bottom of the stairs, between them and the wall. Harry turned around, and saw Nott standing there. The horns still grew from his head, or maybe grew from his head right now, and he still looked tanned and healthy. Harry was relieved that at least the Dark Marks weren't making him sick anymore.

"What is it?" Harry asked. "Why is he so scared of me?"

"Consider how the last Dark Lord treated him," Nott replied, coming towards Harry. There was a slight, odd rasping sound when he did, but Harry decided he didn't have to worry about that until Nott did something hostile. "He's worried about the new one. I tried to tell him, but he isn't accustomed to listening to me."

Harry sighed. "Snape said something about me being a Dark Lord, too. What does that mean? How can I be one when I just healed you lot and did something that would stop the Dark Marks from decaying?"

Nott studied him with calm, clever eyes. Harry remembered them as dark before, but now they looked as if they had a ring of gold around them. Huh.

And why was Harry staring so intently at another bloke's eyes, anyway?

He averted his gaze, flushing a little, and then said, "Are you going to explain this to me or not?"

"Of course. If you want me to." Nott's voice had a dark amusement to it, but he gestured towards the entrance hall with one arm in a way that seemed to at least imply Harry would get answers to his questions if he went along with this. "After you."

Harry sighed, and went.

They ended up settling along the edge of the Forbidden Forest not far from the place where Harry had done—whatever he had done to Nott's Dark Mark. Nott seated himself with casual grace, but his robes flipped up, and Harry found himself staring at Nott's feet in turn.

"What is it?" Nott asked, with that laughter packed back into his voice. He knew exactly what had caught Harry's attention, of course.

"You have—hooves." Harry stared some more. The hooves were small and cloven, and now, of course, it was perfectly clear what had been scraping over the stone floor of the entrance hall when Nott walked.

"Yes, that's a legacy of the creature heritage in my family, along with the horns. I can cover them up if they bother you."

"They don't bother me! It's just a surprise." Harry dragged his eyes back to Nott's face. He was sure, now, that he hadn't been imagining the ring of gold around Nott's eyes. Or maybe the slit pupils he thought he saw in them now, too. "What kind of creature blood do you have? I think the only ones that I've ever met were people with Veela and goblin blood. And only a few people even then."

Nott smiled. "People here would probably call us satyrs."

"Here?"

"Our blood comes from another world, ultimately, Potter. A world that people here call Avalon, but that isn't easily translatable into a human language."

Harry decided that he wasn't as interested in pursuing that as he was in learning what Nott had implied he knew about Dark Lords. "So why did I become a Dark Lord in the middle of this network, then?"

"It was a Dark Lord who put the Marks on us. Why wouldn't you become that?"

"Because I didn't place the Marks? Because I never intended to enslave anyone?"

"Believe it or not, the Marks were intended as a sign of favor and power. It used to be that Dark Lords were wizards or witches of such immense power that they would spare that magic to their followers, in exchange for loyalty."

Harry frowned. "Okay, but you're still dancing around the truth, Nott. That doesn't tell me anything about what happened when I stabilized the Marks."

Nott threw back his head and laughed loud and long. The sound trailed off into what sounded almost like a bray. Harry blinked and tried to remember what he'd ever heard about satyrs. They played flutes and they danced and—they had goat legs?

He subtly tried to look at Nott's legs. They didn't seem to have more hair than average where they showed under his robes.

Nott caught Harry's eye and smiled a little. The smile had depths that Harry didn't want to think about it, and he looked away, blushing.

"You're sharing your power with us now," Nott said. "The Dark Lord didn't want to share his, which is one reason that he tangled the Marks with other networks in the first place, so that we could supposedly draw magic from them and grow stronger that way. It didn't work. All we did was start growing sicker as we shared their decay. But you have power and to spare, so it's overflowing into us and making us healthier.

"That's probably another reason Draco is scared of you. He's sure that there's a price to be paid for such power, and that someday, you'll demand it."

"That's ridiculous, Nott."

"I agree, but that's how Draco is. He allows past experience to rule where he should try to use present knowledge."

"I didn't mean that!" Harry leaned forwards and slapped his hands onto his legs. Nott only watched him with mild interest, and Harry leaned back and took a deep breath. "I meant—damn it." He ran his hand through his hair. "You know that I defeated Voldemort by luck and chance, not power."

"I don't know that at all."

"You were there, watching, right?"

"I saw you come back to life from being dead, Potter. I saw you defeat the most powerful Dark Lord in Britain for generations. Of course I think that your strength in magic had something to do with it.' Nott's lips curved. "And I feel your power running through me now, giving me access to parts of myself that I've never known."

"Argh," Harry said aloud, and fell back to lean against a tree and stare at the sky. "Well, anyway, you know it wasn't on purpose."

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't set out to be a Dark Lord. I didn't know what I was doing. So you don't have to serve me or whatever."

"I think I can say with confidence that Draco and Professor Snape and my father have no desire to serve you whatsoever."

Harry started to answer, and then squinted at Nott. "That list didn't include you."

"Well." Nott ducked his head, eyes watching Harry from underneath lashes that also looked thicker and darker than they had before. Not that Harry could be certain, of course, never having stared into Nott's eyes before this. "I wouldn't say that I want to be your Death Eater."

"Good—"

"But there are certain services I would be more than happy to provide for you."

Harry didn't get it for a long moment. Then Nott licked his lips, and Harry understood, and flushed red.

Because he remembered what else he'd heard about satyrs. That they wanted to have sex all the time, and were persistent in chasing after nymphs and—other things that lived in the forests. Or wherever satyrs lived.

Harry flushed harder still, but said firmly, "That's not a service that I'm going to require from you."

"Aren't you?" Nott's voice was so deep, and it seemed to send a thrum through the ground and up Harry's legs and directly into his lap.

"Yes. It would be wrong."

"Wrong?" Nott leaned closer, but this time the thrum of his voice sounded threatening. "Because I'm only partially human?"

"What? No! I didn't even think of that!"

His denial must have been convincing, because Nott leaned back a little and said, "All right, why?"

"Because I'm the—the Dark Lord, or whatever, until we can find some way of fixing this, and you're bound to me." Harry waved his hand. He was kind of glad that he couldn't feel whatever bonds or strength-feeding were apparently happening with the Dark Marks. "It would be taking advantage. Exploiting you."

"Not if I consented."

Harry shook his head firmly. "No."

Nott studied him, then said, "Very well. What else do you want to know?"

"Dark Lord just means feeding you this magic and keeping Dark Marks or Dark magic stabilized? Nothing else?"

"It will probably change into something else in the future," Nott said calmly. "Because you might have to stabilize those other networks in the future. And my father and other, older Death Eaters won't like owing you a debt."

"So they'll want to be freed?"

"No. They'll want to make sure that they're doing things for you as well. The Dark Lord's bargain was false and one-sided, but one where you give us everything and we give you nothing in return is unbalanced as well."

"But I don't need anything they could do for me," Harry said, a little helplessly. He wondered what he could say to convince Nott, who kept peering at him with those bright golden-dark eyes. "I just want to rebuild Hogwarts and go here for a real seventh year and take my NEWTS in peace."

Nott smiled. "Has it not occurred to you that it could be something as simple and mundane as helping you study?"

"But that would be cheating."

"It would not."

"Yes, it would. It would be getting help that other students weren't getting, and someone might try to give me the answers outright." Harry shook his head. "Come on, Nott. You should know that I'm a Gryffindor," he added, trying to tease a little to get rid of the scowl on Nott's face. "I'm going to be as stubborn as a mule over things that a Slytherin would probably assume were perfectly simple."

"Your Avalon ancestors were probably mules," Nott muttered.

"Could have been," Harry agreed easily. "But I did think of something you could do yourself."

"What?" Nott leaned forwards and tensed like a predator about to spring.

Harry did his best to force the comparison out of his mind. "Help me understand this. Avalon and wizards and witches with creature blood and the kind of Dark magic that I'm helping to stabilize. That's the only thing I can think of that I really need right now, and that I think you could provide me that wouldn't be exploiting you."

"I assure you, I wouldn't consider it exploitation at all to have you gracing my bed."

"And I would, so let's stop talking about it."

Nott tilted his head. "In a way, I don't understand my own reaction to you," he murmured. "I expected to have a strong one, because you saved my life and made it possible for me to express my blood, but not as strong as this. Unless…"

"Unless what?"

"You're a virgin?"

Harry felt his face practically catch on fire. "What does that have to do with it?"

"Satyrs find virgins very tempting."

Nott's voice was reverberating in his bones. Harry coughed theatrically and climbed to his feet. "And that's enough of that!" he announced cheerfully. "I think we should go back to the school now, and maybe make a vow to never talk about this ever again."

Nott only smiled, as if he knew something Harry didn't, and followed him back to the school. Harry tried to ignore the feeling that Nott was watching his arse with some kind of professional satyr-gaze.

It was, well, it was more flattering than it should have been. If it hadn't been for the bond and the debt and the Dark Marks thing, Harry would have been tempted to say yes.

But all of that was there and probably would be for a while, so he couldn't. That was just the way it was.