Chapter 18: Keeping Harry

The impromptu meeting with the three Ravenclaw girls helped Harry a little, he felt like he could understand the reasoning behind why courting started anonymously now, but he also knew deep down that he didn't deserve to be wanted by another person this deeply.

He was still too much for anyone to understand, including himself. And if they ever found out about his past, he knew they would run for the hills cursing his name as they went.

The blue rose only hinted at his suitor being a male who had loved him for a while. It wasn't much to go off of, but as he got more mysterious gifts he knew he didn't want to disappoint whomever it was that wanted to essentially marry him.

Many of the gifts were flowers with beautiful meanings, clothing Harry liked, or books that showed Harry a bit of what his suitor liked to read and study.

It was all simple ways for Harry to get to know the mystery person, but one day Harry just couldn't take it anymore.

The school year had ended, and as Harry got off of the Hogwarts Express, He sent a note off with Hedwig to give to his mysterious suitor. He didn't look to see where she went, only helping Silas onto his shoulders, then leaving the platform and waiting for his parents.

Which by the way, still make him giddy to think about. He had his own parents now, and a family. He had two dragons he could turn to, and a suitor who he was just about to turn down.

He didn't want to lead the stranger on, but he also didn't want to get his own hopes up. He was still working on his past trauma and abuse, the loss of his godfather, and his first crush before that. His body was constantly changing, and now that he was half female, he didn't want to get attached to someone he barely knows, only for them to turn around and shun him. Or worse yet, sell all of his secrets to a gossip reporter like Rita Skeeter.

No, he would just have to deal with being alone for now.

The first week of the summer passed with Hedwig flying back and forth between Harry and his friends.

He told them of all the things he had decided, and Hermione, Cho, Neville, and Luna asked if they could come over to help him through it.

Harry asked his adoptive parents if he could have some friends over, and after he got permission, he send his friends a letter to let them know they could come by for the weekend.

During the first night of their stay, the four friends were fully introduced to Harry's family, and they were all led up to his room, where they each got comfortable and spoke.

Harry finally told them who his unknown mentor was, and laughed happily as the group looked at him shocked. Luna only smiled, but he had reason to believe she just knew things others never could.

She asked if his mentors wings were soft, which shocked everyone even further. Harry could only shrug, as he didn't know how they felt... yet.

They spoke about school and life, before finally landing on the topic of Harry being courted.

"No I don't want to be courted by some stranger!" He said, a deep blush taking over his face.

"But what if you know him?" Neville asked softly.

"Oh, is it you Nev?" Harry teased, batting his eyelashes at the taller boy, who only blushed and pushed him away.

"Try asking my girlfriend that Har-Bear." He teased back, taking Luna's hand in his.

"No, but if I do know him I hope he'll understand that I want to know who he is without all the anonymity." Harry sighed with a smile, sitting back with his hands behind him and leaning his head against the side of his mattress, "And stop calling me Har-Bear!"

Ryan and Aubrey came into his room only an hour later, bringing in snacks, drinks, and even more gossip with them.

They spoke well into the night until Rowan came in to tell the group goodnight. She warned them that the next morning they were expected to eat real food so they better get to sleep soon.

Everyone settled in, glad that the boy they were here for seemed happy and healthy for once.

HPSSHPSSHPSS

The next day passed with a lot of games and catching up, they kept the boy talk to a minimum around the parents and Harry showed his friends his favorite things to do to pass the time.

They played a short game of Quidditch, though Neville and Hermione both sat out. They made their own food, or really Harry made the food and everyone else assured him he'd be a perfect husband. Hermione asked him to marry her, and the group shared a laugh when Harry agreed.

The second night they decided to camp out in the back yard, and it was then when Harry recieved a letter. The group of young adults were all settled around a campfire a little ways away from the manor, and as the sun began to set, Hedwig swooped in, dropping the letter beside her human.

Harry thanked her, before handing her a piece of bacon, then read it while surrounded by his friends, and the group listened as he read from the typed letter.

It was a bit personal, letting Harry know that he knew the one looking to court him. They were in the same potions class, and while they had never sat together, the other boy could never quite stop thinking of Harry.

It wasn't enough that he was told he actually knew his suitor, but as the letter went on, he realized just who it might be.

The letter explained the look in Harry's eyes when he taught him how to dance, the way his flames seemed to be more of an invitation than a threat when he had mastered it. How his eyes lit up when he partially shifted, and how soft he knew Harry's wings to be. He described Harry's scent and how his arousal seemed to add to the crisp sweetness of it all, challenging his control.

Oh Harry knew now who it was. He could tell that the person who wrote this had full knowledge of what he looked like in those moments. The writing wasn't the same, since the letter was typed, but the formal writing style gave the man away.

He slammed the letter down into his lap and chirped almost uncharacteristically loud.

He knew that this was a sign of his second inheritance popping up, but even still, the way his sisters and friends pounced on him to read the letter made him feel better about the slip up.

"What does it say??" Aubrey said softly, moving closer to her brother. Hermione was looking intently at him, and even Luna looked interested.

Neville just smiled at the situation, and Cho and Ryan tried to get the piece of parchment out of his lap.

"Okay! Okay!" He laughed batting them away. "I'll finish reading it, Merlin."

He continued where he left off, a deep blush staining his cheeks and neck.

The man only really spoke about how he had come to appreciate Harry's presence, and that he knew the boy was his mate, but was unsure about how to court him. But because Harry had deemed himself so unworthy, he would have to simply change his tactics.

At the very bottom, just before the signature was written in the mans elegant handwriting; "Prepare to be kept."

The letter wasn't fully signed, but it didn't need to be. Even the simple S.S. at the bottom was more than enough for Harry to know who it was.

He almost squealed at the last note, and hopped up to do a short energetic dance.

His mentor wanted to court him! The man he had been crushing on for years had acknowledged him as his mate.

Mate... the word brought him back down to earth, and as he sat heavily on the grassy ground he couldn't help but smile.

"I know who it is now." He almost sang, the sound of his voice causing the others to smile as well.

He wanted to tell them, but decided to make them guess.

Aubrey and Luna kept quiet, and Harry could tell that they already knew. Aubrey had known about his crush since the Yule ball in fourth year, and Luna seemed to already know who was courting him.

It really didn't take long before Hermione found out, and one by one everyone sat in shock as it was slowly revealed.

"Snape?!" Ryan asked, keeping her voice low enough to not draw untoward attention to them.

"Yup." Harry said popping the p with a smile, before folding the letter and asking Hedwig to put it in his room.

"So... are you ok with this?" Cho asked, placing a hand on his shoulder.

Harry nodded, and said that if he hadn't been ok with it, he would have thrown it into the fire as soon as he finished the letter. But as it was, Harry knew enough about mate bonds to know that the feelings he had when around his mentor were real.

He let them know what he felt, and what the book he had, described. He even explained what he knew about the bonds and how dragons form them, then went on to reveal that he and Snape had met before his first year, and how he was the reason why Harry went into Gryffindor instead of Slytherin.

And in the spur of the moment he told the group about his inheritance. He wanted them to know about it, but he tried to keep it simple, so that none of the teens wouldthink he was extremely weird.

He didn't need to worry so much, as a few of them had already read about dragon kin when they first learned about him. Hermione was especially fascinated to know more about how he dealt with the changes, and if he had gotten his first period yet.

The emerald eyed boy just face palmed. He should have known, really. There just wasn't anything that Hermione didn't want to study.

Neville then asked if that made Harry straight rather than gay, or maybe Bisexual by technicality. It was a good question, and on that the other boy hadn't thought of himself.

Everyone went to sleep that night feeling dumbstruck and contemplating the world Harry now lived in. Harry was being courted by a teacher. And not just any teacher, but their perpetually angry Potions Professor. He was gay, and also not entirely a boy anymore...

Even if Harry was ok with it all, they all knew just how hectic the next year would be.

HPSSHPSSHPSS

After his friends left that following monday, Harry and his two closest siblings brought the issue up during dinner.

Or, well the twins did, Harry just tucked into his food to hide his silly smile and ever present blush.

However when Rowan and Adler informed the children that they knew, Harry almost choked on his spaghetti. The dragon had already asked them for permission to court Harry, since the boy was his mate. And just as he left he said he would speak to someone named Khagra as well concerning the matter.

Harry reminded them that Khagra was the dragon that gave him her flame and essentially adopted him into her nest. So his mentor was really trying to go about this properly...

Later that night, Harry wondered once again what being 'kept' would entail.

And it really wasn't that much longer before he began to find out.

Instead of flowers greeting him in the mornings, it was all kinds of gems and jewels, coins, foliage, necklaces and just things that glowed or shined. The monetary value meant nothing to the boy, but the way the items glittered in the sunlight as he began to form a collection was what made him happy.

He was gifted things that appealed to every side of him, from soft plushies and art supplies, to jewelry, harmlessly glowing mushrooms, freshly caught meat, poetry, clothing, and traditional Greek instruments that played themselves.

Harry, more often than not, could be heard singing, flying, or chirping as he allowed his mate to woo him. He was a ball of energy, and as his 16th birthday came along the whole house heard an increase in his singing.

The sound was beautifully haunting, like the boy could make you feel his emotions as he felt them. It left everyone feeling happier and more energetic as well. It was something he would need to figure out how to keep to himself, but as it were he felt happy being able to express himself.

Of course there were moments when his song was somber, and the mood was low as he remembered those he had lost, either through death, or broken friendships, but those days were few and by the beginning of his sixth year, Harry was able to keep his emotions from always being sung.

That didn't mean that he didn't have low points, or days where he didn't have the energy to be happy... It just meant that he had the time to work through those moments without it being projected to the outside world. He didn't want people to be so caught up in his emotions, or for them to follow him around because he couldn't control the Siren's song.

And he was getting better at controlling it, along with the last parts of his draconic inheritance. He felt almost normal now, and school had always represented a place full of people who were just as unique as he was, so he now felt better about his new look than ever. Especially when his mate would send him sweet notes or gifts in the mornings.

He would find small trinkets on his bed, and during meals, on his plate would always be something no one else had, like smoked salmon or lightly charred steak with asparagus and smoky roasted potato salad.

It made keeping his happy songs quiet even harder, but when the odd chirp or hum did escape him, he simply ignored the looks.

He was on a cloud, floating through the beginning of the school year with ease. He was doing well in his classes, his friends were closer than ever, and even though he and a quarter of the other boys from his year didn't talk anymore, he was still happy.

Truly the boy was enjoying the thrill of being courted, but when he was able to just visit the man and speak with him like they had in the years before this, he felt even happier.

The mans office had changed, as he was now the DADA Professor, but the atmosphere that surrounded them never changed at all. It was bliss for Harry. A sanctuary when the students got too loud or too close. A place to just be himself with someone who understood him, while the world outside still tried to antagonize him.

HPSSHPSSHPSS

On a particularly muggy Saturday, Harry woke to find a wrapped book beside his pillow. It was old, and had seen better days, but the scent on it was undeniably from his mate, and he pulled the book closer.

Instead of reading it he simply played with the pages, and fell asleep holding the potions text book.

It would turn out to be a boon for him, as it opened his eyes to his mates past and absolute genius when it came to potions.

Harry wasn't a slouch when it came to potions, but he wasn't at the top of the class either. The book, which he called the Half Blood Prince's book in order to keep others from catching on, was filled to the brim with useful changes in the potions he would be learning that year.

His grades rose even higher than he was expecting, as the instructions made the potions easier to understand, and he shared what he'd learned with his friends.

All in all the school year was going well. Up until the Headmaster called him into his office.

He wanted to show Harry some memories, and throughout the visit, Harry was subjected to seeing the past of Voldemort. He already knew the snakes real name, but he had learned that as a child the snake had been in an orphanage, left there by his mother before she died.

He learned that the young Tom Riddle jr. was actually a product of a love potion being fed to a muggle to make his father love his mother. And when Tom Sr. Was let off of the potions, he turned and ran.

It was understandable, since the man was forced into a life he never wanted, but he still kind of felt for Tom jr.

His life in the orphanage was unhappy, and his time at school wasn't any better, but Harry knew that evil didn't just switch on and off. It was there from the beginning. Dumbledore tried to compare Harry to that monster, in some weird way of making him see that the only difference between them was that Harry chose a different path. Because of love.

Which Harry found himself unhappy with. The only difference wasn't that they chose different paths, it was that they were lead down opposing paths. Harry had a support system, Tom did not. Harry had loyal friends and now family, Tom did not. Harry had people to show him happiness and that anger or shutting down was never the answer.

And fundamentally, though they were both orphaned as infants, Harry was literally stripped of his identity for so long that he had to recreate himself. Tom made his way through life by projecting a bigger persona than he had, and it stuck with him.

Tom thrived on having the power he hadn't had as a child. He lived off of the pain he could inflict on muggles like they had onto him.

Harry thrived on the exact opposite. He loved the love that he was shown, and he thrived off of the positive attention he had earned. He lived for the knowledge that a select few people loved him for who and what he was.

They were fundamentally different, and no one could tell him otherwise. The part about love was true, but even that wouldn't have changed who they became.

As the visits continued, Harry learned even more about the Dark Lord's past, about his family history, and about the ways he spiralled out of control. From the chamber of secrets when he first learned of it, and blaming the events on Hagrid, to his adult years and how he became infatuated with Hogwarts and the founders. How he had killed his father and muggle family...

Tom had even tried to gain a position as the DADA Professor, and how when Dumbledore turned him down the position was consequently cursed.

Harry hadn't known that the rumor had any truth to it until that point, but the thing that truly got to him was when the Headmaster finally revealed what the prophecy said. Neither shall live, while the other survives... born as the seventh month dies, to those who had thrice defied him... he shall mark them as his equal...

Even more shocking was when the Headmaster showed him a memory of the new Potions Professor speaking to a much younger version of Tom, when the dark wizard was in his seventh year. Riddle had asked the man about a way to preserve or section off a soul, but at some point after that the memory went fuzzy around the edges, and the sequence of the conversation didn't fully match up.

It was all wrong, and Harry could tell even without the Headmaster speaking that the memory was all true.

The Headmaster wanted Harry to somehow get close enough to the Professor to find out how the real memory ended. He seemed to have a blind faith in Harry's dumb luck, because he sent Harry away without even an idea of how to get the once retired Professor to confess his lies.

But even that could not dampen the new feelings Harry was feeling.

There was no other way to describe it other than his dragon side forming an attachment to Snape. He was already attracted to the man before they went from mentor and student, to courter and courtee, but this was different.

He was noticing things about the man that awoke him in ways he was not ready for. Still unused to the new parts he had, which by the way was annoying and painful at certain times, the man made him ache for something he didn't even know how to ask for.

Severus had a refined strength to him, and a classical look that seemed to pull Harry's attention at the most inopportune moments. He had taken to searching the man's face during odd moments, tracing his features and trying to commit them to memory to draw later. He was fascinated by the man's hands as well, and his friends tried to keep him in line, but everytime he looked at his mate, Harry just wanted to sing.

It was definitely a hard thing to manage, but Harry still somehow kept up with their show of animosity.

On top of all of this, was how the students treated him. It didn't matter that Harry wasn't the only openly gay student in the school, what mattered was that everyone still looked at him like he was. Even last year, when he was teaching the students Defense, some of them were looking at him as if he would start flirting with anything that looked like a guy.

Ron and the Gryffindor boys in his year and a few seventh years as well had started taunting him again. And it went even further than the pranks of last year, they had started to corner him between classes, or push him around at meals and in their free time.

He wasn't even safe in his dorm, as the boys would douse his bed in freezing water or venomous insects and throw hexes at him when he was in the shower.

Professor McGonagall was aware of the problems, but she had only given the boys a warning and later a detention, which they took out on him afterwards.

He had lost sleep, which was eating into his performance in class, and his grades had started to lag. His mate couldn't really help, though he did keep Harry away from the bullies as much as he possibly could by either giving them detentions or giving Harry one.

It seemed to backfire as the boys were now taunting Harry about his 'detentions', and how he was likely on his knees to clean something other than the Professors classroom.

They would push him around every chance they got, though as Gryffindor lost more and more points, they just got more stealthy about it.

But as much as Harry tried to perservere and get through the year, nothing could stop what came next.

Like most other days, Harry had been trying to keep a low profile as he went from his first class to the next. But unlike most other days, he was hit with a full body binding spell, falling from the light of the hall, to the darker alcoves and into someone's arms.

They were rough in how they moved him, but he couldn't tell who it was. They didn't have any real distinction in their robes or with how they breathed, but he knew without a doubt that his abductor was a male.

Panic raced through his veins, he could feel something. Something really wrong was resting against him from where his body rested against his abductors.