Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any other canon characters or plots. JK Rowling does. Any characters that she doesn't own are mine, though.
Chapter 5: Negotiation
"How dare you?" the god demanded, staring at Harry. Harry blanched and tried to shrink into the bed. When that failed, he gathered his courage and began to explain.
"Please, my Lord, I've been trying to get out. They put some sort of restraint on me, and I can't get rid of it. I've been trying, honest!" Fate glared at Harry.
"Silence! While I may accept that you were unable to free yourself from this," he gestured at the bed and the suddenly-visible restraint spells before continuing, "you should have prevented it from ever happening! How did they discover your existence?"
"It wasn't his fault!" Sirius jumped in, glaring at the god. "Harry told you the truth. Why do you think we restrained him? He already escaped from us once before, and I wasn't about to let my godson get away again!" Sirius really wished he could pull his wand on Fate and force him to release Harry. He shook his head to stop fantasizing about the curses he'd use on him and returned to the problem at hand. Specifically, the god of Fate yelling at his godson.
"Then you should have killed them! I specifically ordered you to ensure – by any means necessary – that none knew of your continued existence. And you disobeyed me!" Harry, a rebellious gleam in his eye, opened his mouth to argue, but snapped it shut when Fate made a quick gesture – as if he was pulling something back. Harry stared in horror at the god's hands but quickly turned his terrified eyes to his own hands. Sirius saw that Harry's wrists were glowing with strange runes. He didn't have time to worry over them, though, because Harry had started to scream and twist his body about, trying to escape the pain.
Sirius looked at Remus and Dumbledore, horrified. That wasn't part of their plan! They all started shouting at Fate, telling him to stop, it wasn't Harry's fault, but the god ignored them. Dumbledore raised his wand to try and stop it himself, but a barrier arose and blocked the charm. Desperate, Remus grabbed Madam Pomfrey's strongest pain-relieving potion from a shelf and banished some of the liquid to Harry's open mouth. Madam Pomfrey swore that a swallow of that potion would stop the pain from the Cruciatus. Remus had used it occasionally, after very bad transformations. He hoped it would work for Harry.
It did. As soon as the potion reached Harry's tongue, he stopped screaming and writhing around. He dropped his hands and fell back, limp on the bed, unconscious. Fate turned to Remus, furious.
"You dare to interfere? He is my Hunter, and I shall deal with him as I see fit!" He hissed. Remus crossed his arms nonchalantly, watching Sirius take care of Harry. It looked like Harry had been trying to wrench his whole body away from his own hands or something. Whatever he had done, though, he had rubbed most of his body raw, fighting the restraints. The werewolf knew pain very well, especially the pain of fighting magical restraints. He did it every full moon. He was impressed that Harry hadn't been knocked unconscious from that pain by itself, let alone the pain from whatever the god had done to him. Hopefully Harry would be alright. They would let Madam Pomfrey take care of him soon, but first Sirius had to get Fate's attention.
"So what? He's my godson, and I'm going to make sure he's safe. Especially from you!" Remus inwardly winced and smirked at the same time. That definitely got the god's attention. And his bad mood.
"You dare oppose me? I am a god! How I treat my servants is none of your concern!" Perfect. Now Sirius had the perfect opening.
"Yeah well, keep on treating him like this and you ruin your chance to return to power!" Fate narrowed his eyes at Sirius.
"What are you talking about, mortal? I am in power. I am Fate!"
"Then you should know that it is the fate of mortals – which Harry still is, by the way – to die. Then where are you?" Sirius smirked, seemingly unconcerned by the force of divine irritation directed completely at him. "I did some research. The only way you can get a real servant, not some crummy seer like Trelawney, is by forming some sort of link between you and a mortal. And from what the books say, making that link stick is pretty hard for you, especially if the mortal's unwilling. But it's far easier if your new servants are the children of your old servants, right?"
"That is true," the god grudgingly admitted. "Yet that has no relevance to the topic at hand, which is whether or not I should kill you for interfering between me and my servant!"
"The topic at hand," Sirius retorted, "is how you should treat Harry, your only really useful servant. My point is that if Harry has kids, you'll have more potential servants. And the only way Harry would ever try to father a child is if he knew he could raise the child in the proper environment – in a family! So, if you want to be able to have more servants, which would give you more power and influence, then you have to let Harry start a family! That means he has to interact with people, especially the people he already considers friends and family!"
"I see," Fate smiled. "You think that I will allow my servant to waste time socializing with you so he will produce offspring to serve me. But what is to stop me from simply ordering him to wed and impregnate any woman I choose?"
"The fact that Harry wouldn't. That's not the kind of person he is. Even if he had to, he would still teach his kids to refuse to work for you in revenge. And if both he and his children are unwilling, you wouldn't be able to take advantage of their blood link to form your links to them. So the only way you'll get Harry to give you more potential servants is to let him marry and start a family with somebody he picks. So you have to give him back to us. Otherwise the Potter line of Fate's Servants ends with Harry." Sirius folded his arms and smirked again, certain of victory.
"Were I to do that, he would spend years frolicking about and even more years courting girls before settling down! He would waste precious time doing that, time he could better spend doing my will!" Fate snapped.
"What's more important to you – a few decades of a single servant's service, or an entire family line of servants that could last centuries?" Sirius returned. "I thought gods cared more about the long-term, not the quick and easy solution."
"Even if I agreed to this, I would have no certainty of such a line! He might pick a barren woman to be his wife, or his children could still refuse to serve me, even with his agreement. And then the years I let him spend courting and playing would be in vain!"
"But you're a god," Sirius pointed out. "You could make sure that whichever girl Harry marries is fertile – you could probably make her have kids in twos and threes! And if Harry's allowed to come out of hiding and have some time off with us, then he would probably make sure at least one or two of his children would want to serve you. It's not like you'd need all of them – just a couple, right?"
"That is true," the god conceded. "Very well. I will allow the boy to interact with whomever he chooses and live as an ordinary mortal, provided that he performs services for me whenever I need him, and provided that he marry and produce offspring to serve me within the next ten years."
"That would probably work," Sirius agreed. "But you can't call him to do stuff for you every day. He's only fifteen. He still has to finish up Hogwarts, and he'd need to get a job afterwards. You could only call him every once in a while."
"Would once a year be acceptable to you, mortal?" Fate asked testily.
"I'd be thrilled with that, but I imagine Harry can scrounge up more free time than that. I think once every two months would be good, at least while Harry's still in school." The god considered this and nodded. "Though Harry would have to agree with this as well," Sirius added, not wanting to give Harry no choice again.
Fate disagreed. "Two parties only are necessary in a negotiation, mortal, and that's what this is. You have argued on behalf of my servant; therefore you represent his desires. If you agree to this conclusion, then it is done. The only say he gets in this is what you have already said." Sirius opened his mouth to argue but closed it, thinking. He was lucky that the god had been willing to negotiate Harry's contract at all. Sirius had always been a risk-taker, but it being Harry's future at stake, he had best be more cautious. Besides, the terms Fate was suggesting weren't that unreasonable; they were far better than what the god had originally offered Harry. Surely Harry wouldn't mind this.
Sirius nodded. "Alright then. You leave Harry alone except for once every two months until he's graduated Hogwarts, and then you and he can figure out a different schedule. He gets married, has at least one kid within the next ten years, and makes sure that at least one of his children –"
"Two" Fate interrupted.
"– At least two, then, of his children also enter your service at a reasonable age. Other than that, though, Harry gets to live his life as he would have if none of this ever happened." Sirius ticked each point off on his finger as he listed it and concluded with a small glare fixed on the god that had messed with his godson's life.
Fate nodded. "I agree to all of this. As a sign of this change, furthermore – " he flicked his fingers at Harry, and the runes on his wrists glowed and faded into nothingness. He picked up Harry's sword next and traced a design onto it. It responded by shrinking to the size of a small dagger, which he lay down on the dresser next to the scroll of parchment. Fate, seeing the interrogation recorded on it, frowned until the parchment quietly incinerated itself. Then he looked around and hissed until Harry's fork-tongued familiar slithered up, only a foot long. The two hissed back and forth for a few minutes, Misno shrinking and growing as the conversation went on, until finally the god hissed out a sharp, commanding sort of sentence. The snake settled on close to three feet long and draped himself over his master. Finally, Fate reached a hand out to his servant, made a dismissing gesture, nodded as the restraining spells ended, and disappeared.
Sirius, blinking in surprise at the sudden change, turned around to see Dumbledore and Remus staring right back at him, the same mix of shock and relief on their faces as well. The three men sank into chairs and beds and looked, as one, at the young man lying on the bed.
The young man that groaned and stirred himself awake, only to sit up, look around and frown in confusion.
"Wha? I thought – where did – what happened?" As he stared at the room now empty of his master, Sirius smiled and shifted until he could place a hand on Harry's shoulder.
"I've got some good news for you, Harry."
Author's Note: Sorry this has taken so long. Quite frankly, I haven't written in so long simply because I didn't want to. I have had the whole thing planned almost the entire time, but I have a hard time convincing myself to just sit down and type. Thus the year and a half of nothing.
Hopefully I'll update again soon. I only want to write one or two more chapters, and then this will be complete. I do want to finish this, but I'm not sure how long it'll take.