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Harry tried to open his eyes, and found them stuck shut with some gummy substance. Then he tried to move his limbs, and found they were weighted to the bed. He chuffed softly in frustration and tried to sit up anyway. He ought to be able to do that without waving his arms around, or even opening his eyes.

"No, Harry, lie still." That was Ginny's voice, soft and fretful. "The Healers want you to stay as still as you can until they're sure they put all your intestines back in the right place."

That was such a strange statement that it managed to distract Harry from his determination to sit up for a moment. Put all my intestines back in the right place? What was I doing that—

Oh. Of course.

He relaxed, and turned his head in the direction of Ginny's voice. Her hand brushed over his forehead and her lips brushed his cheek as a quick reward.

"Did they cast some spell to make sure I couldn't open my eyes, either?" Harry asked, trying to keep his tone as wry as possible. He'd already learned a few things about Healers from his interactions with them during the Auror training classes: sound as if you were upset, and they were likely to cast sleeping spells on you.

"Oh, no, that's just crusted sleep," Ginny said, and Harry heard her mutter something under her breath. The next moment, the weight on his eyelids was gone. He sighed in relief and opened them.

The hospital room seemed oddly bright, until he worked out that he must have lain in the bed overnight. The sun poured through the open windows, and Harry could make out the bouquets of flowers already piling up on the tables by the bed, in explosions of red and white and purple. He snorted. "Don't tell me. Rita Skeeter already found out that something sent me to hospital, and those are from well-wishers."

Ginny grinned at him and leaned an elbow on the bed. "Got it in one."

She looked ridiculously happy. Well, Harry thought, he might have felt the same way if he knew that someone he liked a lot had survived a deadly spell or a gut wound.

And then he stiffened, because he couldn't believe that he had forgotten this long, no matter what had happened to him.

"Where are Draco and Severus?" he demanded.

Ginny stood upright at once, and her eyes slid away from his face while her cheeks flushed. She coughed. "I didn't—Harry, it wasn't my idea, you realize," she murmured. "But there are certain people on the St. Mungo's staff who've lost family members in the war, and when they realized who Malfoy and Snape were—"

"If they've hurt Draco and Severus, I'm going to kill them," Harry snarled, and pushed his sleeves up. To his relief, the phoenix marks on his arms were quiet, without the burning sensation they would give him if his bondmates were hurt.

On the other hand, maybe Healers knew some magic that would block the bonds. They knew all sorts of odd things. He turned on Ginny. "Where are they?"

Ginny swallowed and looked as if she was debating what to answer for a moment, but, fortunately for her, she decided that the truth was best. "The Healers put them out of hospital, because they thought they would threaten other patients," she said lowly. "I think—I think they may have gone home. Or maybe they're still outside the hospital. I don't know."

"Go find them."

Ginny blinked, as if wanting to ask why he was so angry about this, but in the end she nodded and turned away. Harry leaned back on the pillows and swore softly under his breath, cursing the Healers. Of course Draco and Severus would have protested being put out of his room, but if they protested too much, then they were likely to end up in Akzaban again, or at least arrested.

Having Kingsley pardon them isn't enough—not enough to make them innocent in the eyes of most of the wizarding world. I have to do something else.

The thought of what that "something else" would be occupied him and the whirling thoughts in his head while he waited for Ginny to come back.

*

Severus turned towards the door at once when someone knocked. The wards strung across the front gardens would have reacted negatively if it was someone who wanted to harm them, but he still picked up his wand. He hadn't had time to set up the subtler wards he wanted, which would discriminate between nuances of intention.

And he was a bit on edge, given the hours that had passed without news of Harry. Yes, there had been no more pain from the phoenix marks, either, which indicated that at least he had not grown worse, but negative news from a distance was not the same as seeing the process happen with his own eyes.

Draco burst past him before Severus could come up with the best strategy for answering the door, and opened it. The Weasley girl stood there, her hand still raised to knock, her mouth slightly open. Draco snapped at her, flustering her further. "Well? Is Harry alive? Have the Healers changed their minds?"

"He wants you there," said Weasley, apparently choosing the simplest answer to several of Draco's questions.

Severus felt a tight knot he had not been aware that he carried within him relax. When Harry woke and found them gone from his hospital room, he might have decided it was their fault, or their choice, and simply not thought anything more about them for several days. That he wanted their presence was—promising.

"Get out of the way," Draco said, and charged past Weasley. She looked after him with an expression of indignation before she turned to Severus and raised an eyebrow.

"I don't know how you're going to get past the Healers who put you out before," she said. "He didn't tell me that part."

"I imagine that he does not know himself," Severus said coolly, and then stepped around her. He could already envision several different ways of doing so. The Healers might at least hesitate when they realized that the Boy-Who-Lived himself had called for Draco and Severus. They might send someone to his room to find out if this was the truth, and Harry should be able to convince them.

As it turned out, that was not necessary.

*

Draco was glad that he didn't have very sensitive ears. Certainly they would have been damaged by the shouting that erupted from the upper corridors as they stood arguing with the welcome witch whether she should let them further into St. Mungo's.

"They're heroes, is what they are! Haven't you paid attention to a thing the Prophet's said since the war? I'm living in a house in Hogsmeade with them, for fuck's sake! No, I will not calm down—don't bring that Calming Draught near me unless you want to be walking across glass in a minute—"

There came a loud shattering sound. Draco glanced sideways and surprised a small smile on Severus's face. Ordinarily, he would have been angry at the waste of a potion, Draco knew, but it was a small price to pay to dissolve the barrier that kept them from Harry's side.

"I believe," Severus drawled, fixing his attention on the welcome witch, "that you can hear Mr. Potter's wishes for yourself."

"Not to mention," Draco added, as the witch drew her breath in to argue again, "that we were pardoned by the Minister himself. Or do you think you know more about 'the darkness in our souls' than he does?"

The witch hesitated, gave an agonized glance up the stairs, and then visibly gave up and left it to her superiors to deal with. She waved Draco and Severus past her.

Draco led the way up the stairs. He was younger and moved faster than Severus, or at least he could tell himself that was the reason. In reality, he knew he had been more irritated when the Healers put them out than Severus had, simply because he had less control of his emotions. And he hadn't seen Harry healed of that gut wound, either, the way Severus had because he was the one who performed the spell.

The phoenix mark could be silent all it liked. What really reassured Draco was the anger that filled the bond like dozens of spitting cats and the voice that soared out of the room on the Spell Damage Ward ahead of them.

"Did you ever stop to consider that not all Death Eaters are the same? I know the fact might be too large for your small brain, but try. And I'm told that Healers are better at sensing invisible things about their patients than this. Had it occurred to you to look for a reason that they might be so concerned about me?"

Draco sped up. He didn't think that Severus wanted Harry revealing the existence of the bond to anyone just yet.

He skidded into the room, and blinked, his eyes taking a moment to sort out the images in front of him. The flowers were everywhere, and made it look as if Harry had labored to transform his hospital room into a tropical jungle. They almost obscured the form of a young Healer cowering in front of Harry's bed, holding up his hands as if they could shield him from the Chosen One's wrath. On the floor were the liquid and glass remnants of a vial of Calming Draught.

Harry had risen to his knees, and seemed oblivious of the large red scar that still shone across his belly. His hands were clenched into fists, his face flushed. His phoenix marks didn't shine, but Draco thought they should have; his fury was practically a light.

"Harry, it's all right, we're here," he called, and began picking his way gingerly across the glass towards the bed.

"Draco!" Harry whirled towards him and relaxed with a slight shake of his head. The next moment, he was tense again, cocking his neck towards the Healer, his eyes ablaze with indignation. "Do you know what he's been saying about you? Hullo, Severus," he added, as Severus stepped into the room behind Draco. "It's ridiculous. I'm beginning to think that those pardons from Kingsley didn't do a bit of good."

"A war happened," Draco murmured. As little as he felt like defending the Healers, he didn't want Harry getting upset enough to tear his wound open. He arrived at his side and helped him to lie down in the bed again. A glance showed him the Healer had taken the opportunity to scuttle out the door. Draco exhaled in relief—he didn't really want a confrontation right now—and turned back to Harry. "You have to remember that."

"Not when they treat you like pariahs." Harry snorted like an angry horse and turned to stare into Draco's eyes. Draco swallowed a little when he realized how close their faces were. "Are you all right?"

"Am I—" Draco blinked until he remembered the way he and Severus had cried out in pain when the Gut Chewing Curse hit Harry. He nodded and stepped back so that Severus could hold his wand towards Harry and examine the scar on his belly. "Of course. What about you?"

"If they put my intestines back in the wrong place, I haven't heard about it yet. But then, I probably won't know until I eat something." Harry switched his focus to Severus with dizzying rapidity. "Hello again. Thanks for healing me."

The words weren't especially soft or intimate, but they made Severus pause in his examination of the scar. For a moment, he and Harry locked eyes. Draco looked back and forth between them, infuriated that he, as close as he was to both of them, couldn't tell what exactly was happening between them. Harry felt soft, and striving for neutral, but that was about all, and of course Draco had no special, bond-guided insight into Severus's emotions.

"Of course I had to heal you." Severus spoke a moment later than he should have, if he was really unaffected by Harry's gaze. "We would have died otherwise."

Harry glanced away, his eyes shuttering themselves effectively, and Draco wished he could privately inform Severus that had been the wrong thing to say. But Harry was already going on. "That didn't happen before, when Ledbetter or one of the other instructors wounded me with a curse. We have to figure out why it did now, and what we'll do to keep that from happening again."

"I believe the bond is altering." Severus had stepped back from the bed, and seemed intent on examining a bunch of roses with an eye to their usefulness as Potions ingredients. "In what direction, I cannot tell."

"Not useful, then," Harry said. It was Severus's turn to lower his eyes and half-flinch, though from the twitch in Harry's body, Draco thought he might have seen the reaction to his words. "But we should try to learn everything we can about the bond, so that we know what it's changing from." He tilted his head at Draco, the bond pulsing with relief at leaving Severus behind for the moment. "Did you sense any chance in the magic we shared, or anything like that, when you were wounded?"

*

Harry knew he had hurt Sna—Severus. He knew that. But Severus had hurt him first, and there was a limit to how many things Harry could think about and do when he was leaning against pillows in a hospital bed.

Draco frowned, his eyes going back and forth from Harry to Severus as if he understood their interaction perfectly, which he probably did, and hated it. Harry shut his eyes a moment. He hated it, too, but the fact remained that there was just never going to be an easy connection between the two of them. He should get used to it now.

"I don't think so, no," Draco said lowly. He hesitated. "Do you think it would help to brew the Hidden History Potion again?" he asked Severus. "We were able to learn more about the bond by watching how it formed. Maybe Harry would see something that we've missed. You and I had different insights."

Severus relaxed. Harry could sense that without having the bonds open to feel their emotions; it came simply from his knowledge of the man, who would like having something definite to do, and especially something that concerned a potion. "Of course," he said. "I should have thought of that myself. I will begin it at once, now that I know the Healers have tended Harry well."

He stepped past the bed and brushed a hand gently across Draco's shoulder. Draco beamed up at him in response.

And a spike of jealousy so sharp that it felt as if someone had driven a needle under his fingernails hit Harry. He stared down at the bed and concentrated hard on his hands. They could feel what he felt, of course, but hopefully they wouldn't understand the source of it.

Fuck, he couldn't understand the source of it.

No matter how much like friends he and Severus became, they simply couldn't forget the hatred that had lain between them when Harry was a child. So they had to accept that and work past it. He thought he had accepted it. He had reminded himself of it not a moment before, when Severus turned away from him.

He shouldn't be envying the gentleness and deep ease of the relationship Draco and Severus shared. Not only were they more alike, not only had they shared more together, they were lovers and couldn't help it. It wasn't done to hurt him.

I don't understand myself, Harry thought crossly, and kept his eyes directed at the bed until Severus left. Then he looked back up at Draco, who regarded him with far too knowing an eye. Harry spoke hastily so that he could get past some of that.

"How are we going to deal with the Healers wanting to put you out of hospital again?"

Draco at once narrowed his eyes and shook his head. "I don't know," he admitted quietly. "The pardon didn't help. The Healers who put us out aren't going to give up their irrational fear that we'll murder everyone in hospital just because you say so. I reckon you'll have to contact the Ministry and ask that we be permitted to stay."

He looked perfectly disgusted, and Harry could understand why. This shouldn't be so difficult. If he really had the kind of power that people always thought he did, he should be able to say who was and wasn't allowed near him. If he didn't have it, then he was much more like a private citizen and people shouldn't worry so much over who he associated with.

But being a celebrity isn't fun, and you know that. He nodded and said, "Could you bring me some parchment and ink? The sooner I write, the better. I don't even want to know what sorts of stories they're spreading now about me." He rolled his eyes. "And then I'll need you to bring me a post-owl."

Draco didn't move for a few moments, and Harry wondered if he had been lost in his own thoughts when Harry had made his requests. He was about to repeat them when Draco said quietly, "There's no reason to be jealous. We'll share what we have with you, willingly."

Harry winced. "It was stupid of me to feel that way," he said flatly. "I don't know why I did. Drop it, please?"

"No." Draco stepped forwards and reached out to cup his chin. Harry tried to avoid him, but the healed wound in his gut pulled warningly, and he stopped. Draco tried a smile as he cradled Harry's chin and brushed his hair out of his face, but it faded quickly, overpowered by the intensity that Harry could feel crackling between them like lightning. "We want to share it," Draco whispered.

He leaned forwards. Harry found himself as frozen as a rabbit in the shadow of a hawk. He had an idea what was about to happen, but no idea whether he wanted it to happen or not.

"Harry—oh."

Ginny was standing in the doorway of the room, staring. Harry knew that before he looked. He jerked away from Draco, his face burning, and winced again as he thought of the explanations he would have to come up with. Ginny would put the worst possible interpretation on what she'd just seen, and Harry wasn't sure she would be wrong.

"Get me the parchment and the ink and the owl, please," he whispered. His voice was so choked up. It shouldn't be, but it was, and like the inconvenient fact that people expected more out of him because of his fame, he would just have to live with it.

Draco stood there and stared evenly at him for a moment, as if he couldn't feel the tension in the air. Then he ducked his head in something like a nod and turned away, striding rapidly from the room and past Ginny.

"They do want you," Ginny said, slamming the door behind her. Her color was high. "Or at least he does. I knew it."

Harry sat there for a moment, more stunned by the sudden ending of the potential kiss than by it almost happening in the first place. Then he cleared his throat, and moved away from the dream world of his fantasies into the one where he had to deal with inconvenient facts.

"Yeah, it looks like he does," he muttered.

"Then I want to know," Ginny said, moving a few steps closer, her hands balled into fists, "how I'm supposed to be comfortable leaving you alone with them. I realize that you have to be close to them because of the bond. I can't deny that or change that. But what am I supposed to do?" Her voice was becoming dangerously close to tears.

Because he didn't know what else to do, Harry stretched out his hands. Ginny came closer and took them in her own, staring at him through a curtain of hair. Harry rubbed her fingers with his thumbs and wished he had a neat, quick, certain answer.

"I reckon I can only ask you to trust me," he said. "Maybe they, or Draco, will try to kiss me again, but I won't let it happen. I'll tell them that I'm dating you."

Ginny sighed. "That won't make them back off," she muttered, but she did seem less upset. "I think Malfoy could be as persistent as Romilda Vane, if he really wanted to."

Harry laughed despite himself when he thought of Draco slipping him chocolates laced with love potion. "I really hope that doesn't happen!" He was starting to feel tired and dizzy from something other than anyone's nearness, but he really didn't want any mistrust to linger between him and Ginny. "And besides, I can't imagine Severus wanting me. He and Draco are lovers. He'll be jealous when he hears about Draco trying to kiss me. I can't believe he'd condone it, or let it happen again."

"He was handling you pretty tenderly after you got wounded," Ginny said doubtfully. Her tears were dying now. She wiped them away and gave him a shaky smile. "But then, you're pretty want-able."

Harry rolled his eyes. "He saw me almost die," he said. "And I think that they die if I do, though we're trying to figure that out."

He pushed away the uncomfortable thought that suggested itself then: if that was true, how could he be an Auror, in a career where people would be trying to kill him almost constantly? The witch's attack on him in Hogsmeade showed that he might not be much safer in ordinary life.

"Of course. I didn't think of that." Ginny sounded contrite. She touched the back of his head, the same place Severus had when he was soothing him to sleep. Harry smiled at her, and tried not to compare the two touches in his head. "Forgive me?"

"Of course," Harry repeated back to her. He stifled a yawn. "What happened to the woman who attacked me?"

"I think she's still here. They needed to reverse the spell you used that turned her to stone." Ginny peered at him then, and the shadow he'd seen when he tried to talk to her on Christmas Eve was back in her eyes. Harry wished he knew what caused that so he could banish it forever. "What spell was that?"

"Just an ordinary Petrificus Totalus," Harry said. He was wrestling with sleep now, trying to avoid the temptation to simply lay his head back and shut his eyes. I've already spent a lot of time asleep, that should count for something! "But I share magic with Draco and Severus now. That made the spell extra powerful."

"Oh." Ginny released the word on a little sigh, and stroked his shoulder. "You can go to sleep, Harry. I'll get a Healer, and I'll tell them that Malfoy and Snape should be allowed into your room."

"Thanks, Ginny." Harry sighed those words, too. He could feel pain from the wound across his belly again, and he rubbed the scar. The bond took one scar away, I reckon I was due for another one. Then he shifted to his side, trying to find a comfortable position, and shut his eyes.

Ginny kissed his forehead. "You're too noble for your own good, sometimes," she whispered. "I'll tell Ron and Hermione that you woke up. They were here earlier, while you were asleep."

She added something else, about "Professor Snape" and "telling," but Harry was too tired to pay much attention. He slipped into a confused dream where he ran from stone statues tied in glistening ropes the color of intestines, and Draco and Severus battled for his life with wands made of fire.

*

Severus stepped back from the Hidden History Potion and cast a charm that would keep it in its current state until he had time to place Harry in front of it and add the final ingredients. The guardian would emerge immediately when the final ingredients hit the potion, or Severus would have added them now and then cast the Stasis Charm.

Anything to keep him working for a few more moments. Anything to keep him from thinking about what had happened in hospital.

Simple words from Harry should not have the power to affect him. Nor should simple emotions, like the jealousy the boy had shown when Severus and Draco shared a reassuring moment together.

The jealousy told Severus there might be hope for a deeper kind of physical relationship. The words told him there was none.

Severus shut his eyes and tried to resign himself to having no immediate answer to the problem. He needed both Draco and Harry for that answer, and Harry, at least, would not be fit to leave hospital for quite some time. Severus had heard the front door slam when Draco came home earlier, but he had not stopped in the lab to speak to Severus, and it was not a conversation Severus wanted to pursue at the moment, either.

His world had become sharper-edged and stranger than any he had inhabited in the last few weeks. He had thought the most trying time was when Harry refused to acknowledge the bond, but at least the fundamental certainties of his universe were still in place then. Severus knew that he hated Harry and that they would only put up with the bond because they had to.

And now…

Sharp edges bristled wherever he looked. Strangeness flooded him and bathed him in a liquid that hurt like scarlet scorpion venom splashed on the skin.

"Professor Snape?"

And it appeared that he was not to have even those moments alone that he required, to think through the strangeness and smooth the sharp edges back into the convenient, hard pictures he was familiar with. He turned to face the lab door and saw Molly Weasley's daughter standing there, mouth puckered as if she had swallowed a lemon.

It was no effort to gaze at her without expression. She had been, until recently, a person who roused little emotion in Severus, which was not the case with Draco and Harry. Severus had been reluctantly impressed when she tried to resist his reign as Headmaster last year, and then when she had stuck close to Harry's side despite the storm of publicity and proposals he received.

But now he had to consider her an obstacle, and the resentment from that was another emotion he did not know how to cope with, which he had to feel poking him for the moment and do nothing about. It was much easier to look at her blankly and incline his head, encouraging her to continue.

"You should know," Weasley said, taking a step towards him and looking at him with bright, blazing eyes that reminded Severus of the way she had looked at him last year, "that Malfoy almost kissed Harry in the hospital room today."

Severus blinked. What could have prompted Draco to that display of recklessness? And in a place where Weasley could catch him, no less, and where there are people who have less than tender feelings about us?

"I don't think he'll stop," Weasley said, in the tone of someone confiding an important secret. "I trust Harry, but—he just sat there today. I think he's overwhelmed with the injury and everything." She caught her breath, and Severus suddenly saw her as a young woman trying her very best to cope with her own overwhelming experience. She was the strong one for the moment, because someone had to be, but it could not have been easy to see her lover fall down in front of her.

I do not enjoy these moments of empathy.

But at least it made it easier for him to understand what Weasley was upset about, and to manufacture the anger she would expect from him. He drew himself up. "I will speak with Draco," he said coolly. "As to why Potter did what he did, you must talk to him about that."

Weasley nodded to him, her eyes grim. "That's just what I plan to do," she said. "But I think I can trust him more than you can trust Malfoy." She hesitated, which gave Severus a chance to fight down his anger at that. This chit has no idea of the true state of affairs between Draco and me. "Do you know—is Malfoy really interested in Harry? And if he is, then why? Why would he be lovers with you and interested in someone else?"

Severus waited a few moments more, so that he could hold back the automatic sarcastic answer, about whether the Weasley girl was so Gryffindor as to believe that inherent nobility could counteract human sexual instincts.

She was staring up at him, brown eyes fearful but determined, and touched by a fugitive sheen of tears…

It was so very easy for Severus to use Legilimency to slip into the mind beneath those eyes, especially since she had no natural defenses.

He found the answer as to why she was worried about her closeness to Harry almost at once. Her experiences in the school during the last year were never far from the surface of her mind, whipping shadowy tendrils through the rest of her life. She longed to talk to someone about those experiences, and the nightmares that she still suffered as a result of them. But she thought she had to remain silent because what Harry had suffered, including the latest attack, was so much worse.

Wrapped beneath the silence was resentment that she needed to stifle herself like that, combined with the reluctant acknowledgment that Harry had never asked her for the stifling in the first place.

Draco and Severus need not make any special effort to break apart Weasley's bond with Harry. It seemed as if it would fracture on its own. They had chosen different ways of coping with the trauma of the war—too different to allow them to remain together.

Severus slipped back out of Weasley's mind and gave her vague assurances about Draco's interest in Harry, and how no one could ever perfectly know another person's mind, and how he would make sure that a kiss did not happen again. Weasley departed unsatisfied—nothing could have satisfied her completely—but in a state of calm that Severus only wished he could duplicate.

He turned and stared at the Hidden History Potion. He felt as if he might be in the middle of a vision caused by the potion himself, but it was a vision unconnected to any specific event.

New possibilities unfolding. New emotions hurtling down on him, which was painful after the isolation he had endured for so long. New personalities crowding into his mind and insisting on being dealt with.

But he could not always have someone to come to him, reassure him, and set him on the right path. Draco had not come to talk to him about the kiss with Harry. He was either sulking about it or believed Severus would scold him. Either way, it would be wiser to approach him gently rather than with a scowl.

And that was what he would do at the moment, Severus concluded, checking the Stasis Charm on the potion once more and then dimming the torches on the walls with a wave of his wand. He could do no more here.

He took a quick glance at Harry's Christmas present, still waiting patiently in a corner of the lab, and then shut the door behind him.

*

When Harry woke up, Hermione was there. And Ron. And a green-robed Healer who hovered to the side of the bed with a potion vial in his hand and a nervous expression on his face. Harry was pleased to see that it wasn't the one who had tried to give him the Calming Draught earlier.

On the other hand, he could be one of those Healers who had tried to prevent Draco and Severus from entering the hospital. Harry narrowed his eyes. "How do you feel about Death Eaters?" he demanded.

The Healer jumped, then blinked and straightened his shoulders. He was openly fighting not to blush or lick his lips, Harry thought critically. He had sandy hair like Neville, a face without any of the thoughtfulness Neville had gained in the past few months, and bright hazel eyes. "I—I think they should be treated like anyone else," he said. "My job is to heal the body, not the soul."

Harry relaxed. Maybe not the best view, but I can live with it. "And what does that potion do?" he asked, nodding to the vial in the Healer's hand.

Hermione intervened then. "It's a potion that will prevent scarring from the gut wound," she said. "I've read about it, Harry. I recognize that shade of purple."

Harry swallowed the potion without complaint, although it tasted like chocolate gone putrid. The Healer beat a grateful retreat, and he turned to his best friends. "Did Ginny tell you what's been happening? Or did you know?"

"She told us, yes." Hermione reached out and squeezed Harry's hand. Her face was soft. "I didn't know that they'd sent Malfoy and Snape out of hospital." She shook her head and lowered her voice. "I think you should tell everyone about the bond."

"Kingsley doesn't want me to," Harry grumbled. "He thinks that it would make me even more of a target, because it would give my enemies two relatively unprotected people to attack."

"Then the Ministry should pay for wards on your new house," Hermione said. She had a frown on her face that Harry usually feared—it often meant she was going to start talking about house-elves—but this time he found it comforting that she would probably turn it on the Ministry. "After all, the people who attacked you haven't been Dark wizards and Death Eaters. They've been people I think the Ministry would call 'ordinary citizens.'"

"Including the witch who tried to kill me?" Harry shivered a little as he spoke. He'd had so many other things to think about that he hadn't considered she could easily have killed him. "Who was she?"

"Her name's Griselda Huxley." Ron spoke for the first time. Harry glanced at him, and saw anger in his best friend's eyes. At least it seemed to be tamed anger, since Ron wasn't stomping around the hospital room and swearing vengeance on a dozen different people. "And there's a problem with arresting her."

"What is it this time?" Harry snapped. "Surely they can't claim that no one saw the damage, the way they did with Pepperfield. I could probably call seven or eight Healers as witnesses, not to mention you—"

"She was a hero during the war." Ron did hop on his feet and pace back and forth then. He looked the way he had when Bill almost managed to beat him at chess on Christmas Eve. "Led some Muggleborn fugitives away from Death Eaters, and defended them when a bunch of Snatchers almost caught them. According to Kingsley, it would be a public relations disaster to arrest her. The trial would be a circus, and there are people on the Wizengamot whose relatives she saved. They might actually refuse to try her."

Harry closed his eyes and clenched his hands into the blankets. He felt Hermione put a hand on his shoulder and heard her murmur something soothing, but at the moment, he didn't care. He had to do something about this.

Something that would protect Severus and Draco. Something that would stop letting people think they had the right to walk up to him and do whatever they wanted because they were disappointed in Harry for choosing Severus and Draco's company.

And the only thing he could think of was to let people know about the bond. There were people who would attack them more for that, yes, but there were people who would attack them anyway, and the Ministry seemed uninterested in punishing them. And given what Hermione had pushed him to read about bonds lately, Harry knew there were others in the wizarding community who would accept them more eagerly. Pure-blood traditionalists would care less about the fact that the bond was between three people, three men, or a "hero" and two "villains" than the fact that there was a bond. That would prove that Harry was a proper wizard and properly settled down.

I can't believe I'm thinking about getting support from some of the same people who supported Voldemort. But then, Kingsley was always talking about reconciling people to the new Ministry and the new world. Maybe this was a way to do it.

If the bond was public, he could stop hiding the fact that he was protecting Severus and Draco, and stop coming up with excuses as to why he was living with them—a question he still hadn't managed to find any good answers to.

He would have a reason to study bonds, which was something he had worried about hiding when Severus said the bond was changing.

"Yes," he said aloud. "That's what I'm going to do."

"What are you going to do?" Hermione demanded at once.

Harry smiled at her fondly, and at Ron, who had stopped pacing and come across to the side of his bed again, his expression anxious. They wouldn't necessarily approve of his plan, but they wanted to know what it was, so that they could decide whether they would support it. Harry knew he was incredibly lucky to have two people so interested in him, so willing to argue with his conclusions.

Maybe I'll have two more someday?

But Harry quickly rejected the idea. He had told Ginny that she could trust him, and that meant turning away from certain visions, certain twists in the path that his life might take.

"I want to make the bond public," he said. Ron's brow wrinkled; Hermione opened her mouth. Harry raised his hand. "I think it'll solve more problems than it causes. Then I can do what I need to and want to to protect Draco and Severus—"

Ron twitched, and Harry realized he hadn't used their first names in front of Ron before. He shrugged impatiently and pressed on. He was going to give Ron something else to get concerned over.

"I can live with them openly. I can let anyone who tries to hurt them, or me, know that the others will be angry about it. The Ministry makes some exceptions for self-defense, I know. Right now, Draco and Severus can barely defend themselves, let alone me, because everyone would think they were using Dark Arts to hurt innocents. But when people know there's a three-way bond between us, they'll have a lot better case for drawing their wands if I'm in danger."

"But other people will target you now, because they know that they can hurt Snape and Malfoy through you." Hermione's frown looked so deep Harry wondered idly if it would leave permanent traces in her face. "I don't like your taking on extra danger, Harry."

"Those people who want to hurt them, and who are willing to hurt me to do it, aren't my friends or supporters, anyway." Harry gave her a thin smile and gestured to the scar on his stomach. "And we've already seen that plenty of the 'heroes' and 'good people' are willing to hurt me."

"You're not just any war hero, mate." Ron laid his elbow on the bed and stared earnestly at Harry. "You're the war hero. Kingsley might think that you're forcing the Ministry into supporting two people they don't really want to support."

Harry hesitated for a long moment. He was trying to be more adult about this. Didn't that meant he had an obligation to calmly consider the claims of the Ministry, too, and try to deal with them like an adult instead of a petulant child?

"Do you think they'll manage to try Huxley despite all the reluctance?" he asked Hermione.

She hesitated, with the kind of silence that told Harry her brain was racing and she was trying to come up with any answer to the question, not just one that would give her what she wished was true. Then she sighed. "Maybe they will," she said. "But right now, it doesn't look like it. She isn't even in Auror custody. She was allowed to go home. And it would take a lot of determined effort to get her in a courtroom."

Harry clenched his jaw. "Then I don't see why I should accept what Kingsley tells me and behave like a good little puppet, when he can't even be bothered to arrest people who would pose a danger to my life, never mind Draco and Severus's."

"That's right," Ron said suddenly. His eyes were wide and bright with the shine that said a revelation had come to him. "Why is he so worried about Huxley's reputation when you're the bigger hero? They shouldn't have trouble finding people to try her when you have so much more support than she does."

Hermione folded her arms and frowned at both of them. "That doesn't mean Kingsley doesn't care about Harry, or that there's some kind of conspiracy, Ron."

"I know that." Ron waved an airy hand. "But it does mean that he's a lot more worried about Harry's standing with the general population than he says he is. And if Harry is just one more hero among the lot of us, then it shouldn't matter so much what he does or who he associates with. I think Kingsley is worried about negative publicity in any direction. But he can't have it both ways. Either Harry is important enough to get Huxley tried, or he's not important enough to make the Ministry worry about his every movement. There's no reason Harry should have all the burdens of a heroic reputation and none of the advantages."

Hermione looked faintly impressed. Harry smiled at Ron. "So you'll support me in this, then?"

"Ginny won't like it." Ron's eyes were somber.

Harry swallowed. "I know. But we've discussed it, and she's said that she trusts me." If Ginny hadn't told them about Draco almost kissing him, then Harry wasn't going to mention it, either.

"How are you going to get word out about the bond?" Hermione asked, moving on to more practical matters as usual. "It's not as if you could grant an interview to Rita Skeeter and ask her—" And then she stopped, mouth open.

Harry pushed himself up the pillows, ignoring the tug from his stomach. The wound hurt less than it'd done earlier, anyway. "Why not?" he demanded excitedly. "Why couldn't I do just that? We'd make her swear a vow to tell the truth and not use the Quick-Quotes Quill, first. I think she'd give up on the temptation to twist my words around if it meant that she got an exclusive interview." He snorted. "We might as well make this stupid 'heroic' reputation work for me for once."

"But she might twist them anyway," Hermione said, folding her arms. "And I don't think you should do this without discussing it with Snape and Malfoy."

Harry laughed sheepishly. "I was getting so carried away that I didn't even think of that. Thank you, Hermione. And you, Ron," he added, looking at his best friend over Hermione's head. "Where would I be if I didn't have you?"

Hermione and Ron flushed identical shades of pleased pink. Harry leaned back against the pillow and plotted smugly to himself.

The news about the bond will get out, and Kingsley can't do anything to stop it.

And if it causes problems with Ginny, then I'll just explain as best I can and do what I can to make it up to her. Who ever said that I had the right to a relationship free of problems?

For the moment, he ignored the other nagging questions that tried to force themselves into his mind. There was only so much that he could do at once, and protecting Draco and Severus was the first priority.

It always will be, he thought, and didn't realize some of the implications of that thought until later.