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Chapter Three—These Ruddy Dreams

Harry sighed as he opened his eyes to yet another dream that felt real, the way the dreams of the tree had. He stood up and folded his arms, walking in a slow circle around the grassy clearing where he had landed.

The trees around the clearing looked normal, at least. Their leaves fluttered in the slight breeze, silver and white. The grass under Harry's feet was intensely green. He tilted his head back and saw a perfect circle of blue sky overhead.

"Hello."

Harry turned around, his wand springing into his hand. For a second, surprise painted the face of the man standing across from him. Harry distantly recognized that perhaps this was the kind of dream where he shouldn't have been able to come armed.

But he didn't take the chance he probably should have to fire a curse. His brain had clattered to a halt.

Theo Nott had changed fully into satyr form, or so Harry assumed. It wasn't like Harry had ever seen a satyr before. His legs were furred from the hooves at the bottom of them to the tops of his thighs, and he had the curling goat's horns on his head. His chest wasn't any hairier than a human's, though, and while his eyes looked like a goat's, Harry didn't see any other goat-like traits simply looking at him.

And he was naked.

Very naked.

With a hard cock that curved up gently, and which was shining and red with blood.

Harry dragged his gaze away from it with an effort. Nott was smiling when Harry met his eyes again, and he had recovered from whatever had surprised him when Harry called his wand into his hand. He took a long, slow step forwards, his right hoof coming down on the ground with a soft thump.

The clearing wasn't very big. He wasn't very far from Harry.

"I thought we could do something here," Nott said softly. "As little or as much as you're comfortable with. It's not the same as doing it in real life. You won't be obligated to me. Neither one of us will be harmed, or physically touched at all. But if you want me to relieve me of your virginity, I would be more than happy to oblige."

Harry swallowed. He hadn't expected to be this tempted.

He hadn't—thought a lot about sex, to be honest. And before this, he'd been attracted to Cho and Ginny. They were the only ones he's kissed, the only ones he'd gone on dates with, the only ones he'd…

Wanked about.

And now a man was walking towards him, a man he hadn't even thought about before or during the war, a man who was partially a creature. Harry didn't know where the stirring in his belly came from, or the hardening in his own groin. Was it just that he was more hard up than he'd expected, and anyone would do?

Did the bond that now connected them through the Dark Mark pull on him some way, the way it pulled on Nott to grant him favors?

Harry had no idea. But he thought it wouldn't be a good idea to find out.

He raised a hand. Nott halted where he stood, although his eyes were sliding slowly up and down Harry's body in blatant appreciation. Harry shook his head, part of his mind clearing. That showed this was just a dream. No one looked at Harry like that in real life, even Ginny. He wasn't—his face was an icon because he was the Boy-Who-Lived, but no one saw beneath his clothes, to the skin, and thought his scars or his pallor or his small statue that came from living with the Dursleys was sexy.

"Let's think about this, Nott."

"I am willing to think about anything you need, my lord."

Harry rolled his eyes. If Nott thought he'd be able to get some favor by using that title, he would learn better quickly. "Why do you want to sleep with me?"

"You don't know what it means to me, to be able to assume the form of my Avalon ancestry."

Nott's voice was low and vibrant, and Harry thought he saw the grass under their feet sway towards him for a minute. Well, Harry thought, that might make sense. Satyrs were creatures of the forest and the wild. He thought he remembered hearing that, anyway. "And?"

"We haven't been able to do it for generations. My family." Nott took another step forwards, but stopped and gave what was a nice mimicry of a contrite smile when Harry stared at him. "We lost an important piece of magic when we lost that, but also simply a—connection to the living world."

"The natural world?"

"More than that. This form lets me hear and smell much better than I could normally. I even feel the breeze better on my skin." Nott spread his hands. Harry decided that there was one more change he hadn't noticed before, sharp claws that had replaced Nott's nails. Who knows how that fits with the goat thing. "I can sense magic floating around me even if I can't wield it. I can know what it's like to be in a different body. I can run faster. I am—so much more than I was before, my lord."

"I don't want you to call me that."

"Afraid of the truth?"

"Afraid that your loyalty to me will prove as fragile as it did to the Dark Lord, since he was the last one you called by that title."

Nott paused for a long moment. Harry smiled at him, and watched the way that Nott weighed the smile. They might be in the middle of yet another fucking weird dream, but Harry was determined to hold his own.

Even if he decided someday that he wanted help from Nott or Malfoy or the other Death Eaters—asking Snape for help would feel wrong when the man had done so much to help him already—he wasn't going to let them push him around or lord it over him.

"I apologize," Nott said.

"For the title?"

"For not taking you seriously. My father always thought that you had no real idea how to use your fame, because you were vilified in the papers and did nothing to stop it."

Harry lifted one shoulder and let it fall. "I didn't have any idea about my fame or what I was famous for until I was eleven. I didn't know about magic until then, either. I think I did as well as could be expected from someone who was raised by Muggles and didn't know that it was possibly illegal for the Prophet to publish what they did about me."

Nott paused again. Then he said, "And you won't have heard the legends of satyrs as they once existed in the magical world."

"No. I barely heard any of them that might exist in the Muggle world."

Nott inclined his head in something that was like a slow, careful nod. It probably was meant to be that, Harry mused. But because of his horns, it looked more like a warning that he was about to charge. "Satyrs are particularly powerful magical beings. They can blend the magic of the body, the animal magic that many wizards and witches don't have much of, and the magic of the mind and the soul that we wield through our wands. And they can seduce others in the way that Veela can."

"It isn't working on me so far."

Nott gave him a dreamy smile. "We are in a mental realm that isn't the same as the physical. I know that you're tempted anyway. It's part of my power to sense such things."

Harry said nothing. There didn't seem to be anything in particular to say.

Nott nodded as though Harry had said something anyway. "Satyrs will breed with wizards and witches who sleep with them, and gladly. But it takes something special about your bloodline to make a satyr come back for more. Most half-satyrs don't inherit anything from their non-human parents in particular. To get the magic established in a bloodline, there have to be multiple generations who can earn the favor of different satyrs."

"So your ancestors fucked goats a lot."

Nott smiled again. "Trying to get me angry won't work."

Maybe he had been trying to rattle Nott, Harry admitted to himself. He was just so infuriatingly smug. "All right. So what does this have to do with the way you're staring at me?"

"Because satyrs were spoiled for choice," Nott said softly, "and it took something powerful to attract them. Special, as I said. Beauty helped, virginity was an asset, but it was really a combination of several special things that sent out a call a satyr would find difficult to resist."

"Okay…"

"Right now," Nott said, "I can barely stop myself from taking you right here on the grass, Potter. Imagine how special you are to me."

Harry stared at him. He felt as if someone was pouring wine down into his blood. He fizzed and bubbled, and it was—it was an effort not to feel flattered by all the things Nott was saying.

Nott leaned a little closer, his eyes bright.

Harry shook his head and stepped back from the precipice he had almost jumped over. "The Dark Marks could be playing into this, couldn't they?"

Nott paused. "What do you mean?"

"The Dark Marks required me to insert myself into the network, into the place where Voldemort used to stand," Harry said, and ignored the way Nott flinched at the name. They were in the middle of what was practically a wet dream, for Merlin's sake. He could get used to it. "So it might encourage the same kind of loyalty and desire to serve that the Dark Marks did."

Nott blinked. "I hadn't thought of that."

"See?"

"Because it's stupid, Potter. The Dark Marks didn't encourage loyalty towards the Dark Lord."

"I find it hard to believe that he Marked people he thought would be disloyal to him."

"They encouraged fear," Nott said flatly. "They encouraged hopelessness to find any other solution, and tugged us back to his side if we tried to flee. Not physically, but psychically. There's a reason that so few people ever betrayed him, even the ones who were cowards, like Pettigrew. They were convinced that there was no other path they could walk. That's certainly the reason my father continued to serve him."

"And the chance to kill and torture people had nothing to do with it?"

"I—yes."

Harry nodded. He knew that not all the Death Eaters had served willingly—Malfoy was a case in point-but he wasn't going to let Nott pretend that the lot of them had been scared little victims, either. "So if there's some kind of influence here, I don't want to sleep with you."

"There isn't."

Harry shrugged at him, and pointedly dragged his gaze away from Nott's cock when it wanted to drop there. Just because he wanted Nott didn't mean he had to be stupid over him.

Nott wrinkled his nose. "I'll figure something out," he muttered, and then he vanished from Harry's dream before Harry could ask what that meant.

At least it slid back into ordinary dreams after that, and if there was a distinct lack of satyr-sex, there was also a distinct lack of debts that Harry had to feel bad about taking advantage of.

"What is he doing here?"

Harry glanced up and blinked. A man had walked through the doors of the Great Hall and was now stalking towards the Gryffindor table. He was especially notable since the staff and students who had stayed at the school to repair it during the summer all knew each other.

Harry glanced at his dark hair, his heavy scowling face, and the glints of horns through the hair, and sighed a little. "I bet that's Nott's father."

"How do you know?" Hermione asked, leaning over to whisper. The man was getting fairly close now.

"Just a feeling," Harry said glumly, in the moments before Mr. Nott (probably) crashed to a halt in front of the Gryffindor table and stared at him.

The silence that followed spread through the Great Hall in ripples. Nott was looking on in what Harry thought was approval. Malfoy was blinking and staring. Snape had risen to his feet at the Head Table. Professor McGonagall hadn't, but Harry thought from the way she was sitting that she'd probably drawn her wand.

"Mr. Potter," said Mr. Nott (probably) and bowed his head. "It is a pleasure to meet the one who has done so much for us. My name is Darius Nott. Theodore Nott's father. I understand that he has been spending time with you lately."

Harry blinked and stared. There was so much insinuation in his voice. "Sorry, does the innuendo come with the satyr heritage?"

The words made larger ripples of silence spread out over the Great Hall. For a second, Darius's face was both pinched and pained. Then he shook his head. "I never meant to imply anything one way or the other, Mr. Potter."

"Sure you didn't," said Ron. He'd propped his chin in his hand and was gazing at Darius as if he was a fascinating specimen. "So, how big are your horns? Your son walks around with them all the time. Are yours a little more restrained, or not?"

Darius glared at him. Harry rolled his eyes and stood up. Ron was his friend, and Darius was his sort-of-obligation-he'd-given-satyr-powers-back-to. That meant he needed to make sure they didn't irritate each other too much. "Can I talk to you outside, Mr. Nott?"

"That would be refreshing."

At least Darius had to stop glaring at Ron to follow Harry out of the Great Hall. Harry was sure that there were a few people sneaking after them, but he led Darius to an alcove in the entrance hall that was small enough for him to put up intense Privacy Charms around it. They'd work to keep out everything short of the twins' Extendable Ears.

The twins. Fred.

Harry caught his breath against the grief and then turned and stared at Darius. "No offense, but I'd have thought Nott would pass on the word that I don't need any help from you."

"I thought you would call my son by his first name."

"Why? We didn't really interact before the war, and now this is just—unexpected."

"He told me how intrigued he is by you."

"He what?"

"Satyrs have no secrets from their families."

Harry rubbed his knuckles across his eyes. What he was mostly learning, he thought grumpily, was that satyrs would do the most inconvenient thing at the most inconvenient time.

"He's intrigued, but I don't want to be with him because the Dark Marks are creating bonds between us that I don't understand," Harry said bluntly. He still sometimes heard the chattering crowd of voices in his head when he was trying to sleep at night, and there was the way Snape watched him all the time, like he wanted to shake Harry and then lock him in a dungeon cell for the rest of his life. And the way Malfoy avoided him. "I wouldn't want to spend any time with someone that way unless it was completely free and chosen."

"If you expect Theodore to give up his satyr powers so that you have none of their influence and he does not feel the pull towards you, you will be waiting forever."

"I wouldn't ask him to do that. But I am asking him to make sure that he's not under any kind of influence from the Marks."

"He is not."

"Exactly what someone who's under the influence and wants to see his kid sleep with someone he thinks of as a Dark Lord would say."

Darius crossed his arms. "Mr. Potter, the gifts you have given us cannot be—they have no price. They are incredibly valuable. There was no way that the Dark Lord could ever have given us such a thing or would ever have dreamed of doing so. We owe you a debt that cannot be repaid, but which we can make some efforts to atone for."

"Atone." Harry made a face. "That's not what you did wrong."

"Then you think we do have something to atone for?"

"Yeah. What about torturing and murdering Muggles and Muggleborns?"

Darius said nothing, but Harry saw a shadow drift across his face. Harry stood there and said nothing to help. Frankly, he thought someone who had become a Death Eater willingly deserved at least that much.

Darius exhaled a deep sigh. "What do you want?"

"You have political influence and money," Harry said. "Probably less of either than you had when Voldemort was in power—" ha, there's the flinch "—but you managed not to get arrested again. Start putting that money and influence to work protecting the interests of Muggles and Muggleborns. Hermione told me what a mess the Obliviators are and how they're allowed to do basically whatever they want. Sometimes they regress people back to childhood." Harry's voice shook with disgust. That was something Hermione had only recently discovered and told him about, and for the first time, he could see the appeal of going into politics. "Support laws that restrict their powers. Laws that promise reparations to Muggleborns who were hurt by the Ministry during the war or had their property stolen. Help pay for funeral expenses. Donate some money to help rebuild Hogwarts and the portion of St. Mungo's that got damaged when Greyback attacked it. That's what I want from you."

"You demand a high price," Darius said softly.

"Nott said you would hate owing me a debt and would do anything to pay it. Is the price too high? Because I'll let you go again, if that's the case."

"No!" Darius's hand flew to his left arm. He lifted it with obvious effort. "I—no, I will do as you say. And I truly meant what I said about the return of our satyr gifts being worth any price. I was merely—attempting to bargain."

"I don't bargain about things like this."

"Your will be done, my lord."

"And not the title, either," Harry said. "That ought to be easy enough, after everything else."

Darius sighed heavily. "I wish Theodore luck trying to tame you. I don't think it will be easy for him." He turned around and took down Harry's Privacy Charms with a wave of his wand, then strode away with heavy footsteps.

Harry shook his head after Darius. He wished dealing with Snape would be that easy. As far as Harry was concerned, Snape didn't have as much to make up for, and he had done a lot that Harry would prefer never to talk with him about. But Snape had tortured and killed during his own years as a Death Eater, before he'd turned. If he decided to say something about how Harry had handled Darius, Harry was going to bring that up.

A groan startled him. Harry turned his head and saw Nott standing near the doors of the Great Hall, horns visible on his head and eyes fixed on Harry.

"So sexy," Nott whispered.

"It's pretty disturbing you think about your father that way, Nott."

Nott's gaze didn't waver. "You know very well that I mean you."

Harry flushed. He didn't understand. Darius was one of the Death Eaters who had watched him be tortured in the graveyard, Harry was pretty sure, and Harry was still easier around him than he was this much younger man his own age who Harry thought had probably never killed anyone.

"Whenever you're ready," Nott said, and winked at him, and swept a slow gaze up and down Harry's body before he sauntered back into the Great Hall. His feet scraped the way they only did when he had hooves.

Harry rolled his eyes and decided he might as well get a start on the Astronomy Tower. It had been badly damaged during the battle, and because no one lived there and it wasn't actively threatening to fall over, it hadn't been a priority to fix.

But Malfoy was waiting for him near the stairs that led up to the first floor, and if his face was still Veela-pale, he did speak. "Can I—talk to you, Potter? Please?"

Harry blinked. "Sure."

"Privately?"

"Sure," Harry repeated, and led the way up the stairs towards the tower, wondering what in the world this was about.