Ashborn

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter
Four--Stirrings of Interest

            "Your
room looks different."

            Bellatrix didn't sound as though she thought that was
allowed. Harry grinned over his shoulder at her as he pulled on a light shirt;
the last few days had been increasingly warm, and he'd rather not have to
Transfigure in the middle of his exercise. "Did Snape tell you I couldn't
do that?"

            After a
hopeless moment of staring, since this was beyond the bounds of her orders, Bellatrix led him outside as though nothing had happened.
Harry went with her, content. He didn't think Snape would care much even if Bellatrix reported the changed colors to him. What did
Harry Potter's room matter in the grand scheme of brewing potions and
mind-controlling people?

            He probably does more than that.

            Harry
shrugged to himself as he jogged in light circles around the grassy courtyard.
And what did that matter to him? It
seemed as though Snape's last attempt to approach him
would be about the incubitum. Harry couldn't imagine that Snape
would be interested in any other communication after how badly that had failed to work out.

            When he
came back into the room and Bellatrix served him
breakfast--exclusively fresh fruit this time, as though someone in the kitchen
had something against meat--Harry leaned back on his pillows while he ate and
stared around. The room's bright colors probably clashed, because Harry had
never had an eye for that kind of thing, but no one else had to live here. He
had therefore pleased himself in a way he never could, not in the Dursleys' cupboard and second bedroom, not in the common
bedroom shared by the boys in Gryffindor Tower, not in the frequently changed
shelters they ran from and to during the war.

            Along the righthand wall as he lay against the headboard was a
cheerful outdoor scene, a blue sky filled with white clouds above a bright
green meadow spangled with crocuses and dandelions. Harry had chosen the
flowers on purpose; they were hardy and kept coming back no matter what winter or
people did to keep them away. He thought that was a good thing to remind
himself of.

            The lefthand wall, where the door to the bathroom was, had an
evening scene instead, with the sun sinking down in blazing red and purple
across an ocean. Harry was particularly proud of the way he'd done the waves
there, rippling forwards with their own shadows and own lights, and grateful to
Hermione for teaching him the spell that would imprint precise and specific
images from one's imagination on a flat surface. He could have spent ages
trying to move colors into position with his wand, or use paint, and never have
got it right.

            The wall
where the door stood was painted like a cave, working with the natural grey of
the stone. Exciting, twisting and turning corridors lay just out of sight, and
Harry had painted a sleeping green dragon curled up on one rocky ledge, with
the gleam of gold from beneath it. He had thought about giving the dragon Snape's eyes, but just in case Snape ever did care, Harry had showed the dragon
with eyes shut instead. This was becoming his home now, his private sanctuary,
and he didn't want it destroyed by Snape in a temper tantrum.

            The wall
behind the headboard, he'd done the least with, because he kept his back to it
most of the time, but it showed a dim room with hints of red and gold that
could have been the Gryffindor common room if you squinted. Harry was fairly
confident that he was the only one who would get the reference, because none of
the Ashborn had been Gryffindors.
The fire flickered on someone asleep on the couch. It could have been Ginny; it
could have been Hermione. Harry had deliberately left it up to interpretation.

            He'd also
Transfigured one of the unnecessary blankets on the bed into a thick white rug
that he'd cast over the stone floor of the room. If he needed it when it was
winter, then he could Transfigure it back, but for now cold feet were more of a
problem for him than cold limbs.

            "This
is much changed," Bellatrix said. Harry had the
impression that she'd spent all her time staring at one wall after another,
turning slowly in place like a robot, while he ate.

            "Yes,
it is," Harry said, and smiled at her. It was so strange, to think that he
was sitting here in a stronghold of the enemy eating food they'd provided him
that wasn't drugged or poisoned--at least, he didn't think it was--and
discussing the way he'd painted his room with the woman who'd murdered his
godfather. But then, nothing about his life had ever worked out the way he predicted it. If it had, Harry thought that might have been the catalyst to
make him scream and run, not everything else. "I wanted more of the
outdoors than I'm allowed, so I brought it in to me."

            Bellatrix raised an arm, which shook as though she was
unused to the gesture. Harry ducked out of the way from habit, but she only
pointed at the scene of the common room behind him. "That is not
outdoors."

            Harry
shrugged. "No. But it's still a place that I can't be right now." That I'll never see again.

            He rolled
his eyes at himself and started finishing his breakfast, which he'd rather
delayed by chasing grapes into his sleeves and putting them under Preservation
Charms. Old habits died hard, and if Snape ever took a pointer from the Dursleys and decided that Harry couldn't eat, then at least
he would have enough to sustain a few days of life.

            "Why
do you want to go back to it?'

            Harry
blinked up at Bellatrix. "That was very nearly
an intelligent question," he said, in confidence that she wouldn't get
angry at him. "Are you supposed to be talking to me this way?"

            She
blinked, and a glaze seemed to slide over her eyes, as though it had been
waiting there for the moment she needed it. "No," she said, and stood
there after that like a pillar, although she still stared at the scene of the
common room behind his headboard.

            Poor thing, Harry thought, and tried not
to feel the grapes and berries and peaches turning to mush in his stomach. I never thought I'd feel pity for someone
like her, but there it is. Dying when Voldemort did would have been better for
her than this.

            And he was
restricted from doing much about it, since he'd sworn not to foment rebellion
among the Ashborn.

            Harry
frowned, and ate, and fed a few grapes to the small snake when he woke--he
complained that fruit needed blood to be palatable--and thought. There was no
way that he could break his Vow without dying, no way that he could break
through the mental control that Snape had exerted over his followers when he
was such a poor Legilimens himself...

            But he had
to do something. This was pathetic.
Not even the Ashborn deserved to breathe and eat and
die and think only because Snape
commanded them to.

            The only
two tactics that came to him, after long hours of thinking, were both a bit
hopeless. First, wait for the message he had sent out to the magical creatures
behind the white raven to have some effect. It hadn't so far.

            Second,
talk to Malfoy, the only one other than himself here who had free will.

*

            Draco went
for a walk in the eastern gardens that morning. He wished to avoid Severus
while these uncomfortable revelations banged and bumped about in his skull like
rolling eggs.

            Not that
Severus would care, or see him right now. The mornings and afternoons were
Severus's time for brewing and working on his automatons and the defense
problems of the Ashborn. Most of the time, Draco
would see him only at the evening meal, and then sometimes afterwards when they
fucked each other.

            He had been
content with that, until the revelations about the ancient pure-blood society
and the mental expanse they showed him. Now he felt hopelessly silly and naive,
with no sense of history and an enormous sense of how much he didn't know. Now he wondered how he
could have been content to hide in the Ashborn's
fortress and think about adding a few more details to the life of his child.
Now he wondered whether Severus was the be-all and end-all of his life, and
felt disloyal for thinking such things, and wondered why those thoughts had
never come to him before.

            At least that proves that I'm not
mind-controlled, the way Potter suspected I was. He wouldn't have left me these
doubts.

            Draco
finally settled on a bench in a corner of the largest garden and looked up
through the fine net of defensive wards to the sun above. It was a mostly
cloudy day, but every now and then, a beam of light would break through as
though the sun was trying to caress the flowers around Draco. Flowers, vines,
bushes, straggling masses of leaves that counted as all of them...Severus had
directed them to be planted as ingredients, not for their beauty. But they were
beautiful anyway, and Draco breathed in the scents of the roses and thought
about his mother.

            She'd had a
theory of "grace notes," things that weren't strictly necessary or
expedient but which you did to show that you didn't need to count only what was necessary or expedient. You made your
chairs comfortable. You made your walls beautiful. You had glass or ivory or
gold in your home, not because such materials were the best for vases or tables
or clocks, but because they showed that you wanted to give your guests
something else to look at than plain stone. She had loved emeralds, which were
probably the gemstone with the fewest magical uses to someone like his father.

            She had
never apologized for liking them. She had an emerald necklace and an emerald
ring, and the evenings that Draco had seen her wearing them, her face had shone
with a beauty that didn't just come from her joy at being admired. She had a
joy in wearing them, simply and purely because she liked the color.

            There was
nothing in Draco's life that was like that. He had thought translating the book
of runes was, but he had realized when he ran into the real description of the
real, ancient pure-blood culture that he felt nothing but dismay, instead of
the wonder and fascination he had thought he would. It was so different. He wanted something that he
could use to apply towards the future, towards making his family different and
better than any of the others.

            The spirit
of that culture was against anything of the sort. And he had felt dismay
because now he could not use it, at
least not in the way he'd dreamed of. Simply knowing wasn't enough.

            Draco
leaned his head back on the wall and half-closed his eyes. He could pretend to
himself that it was because the sun was shining directly into his face, but he
knew the real reason, and it made him shift restlessly on the bench.

            Severus
would never admit that he wanted or liked such things, that the pleasure he
sought with Draco had any unnecessary or luxurious components to it. And the Ashborn were much the same, tools of Severus's necessities
and those tasks he didn't want to take the time to accomplish himself.

            There was
only one person in the fortress who might understand the way he was thinking
and encourage him to act on it.

            Potter.

            Draco
climbed heavily to his feet and crossed the grassy walkway that would  carry him back to the fortress. He wondered
if Bellatrix would obey his command to leave them
alone if he gave it. He couldn't be sure, because he had never tested such a
thing. The times he gave a command that conflicted with Severus's and Severus
had disliked it, Draco had apologized and reassured him that it only came from
thoughtlessness, not any desire to contradict his leader.

            That was no
longer true.

            Heart going
faster than it should, throat dryer than it should be, Draco went to find
Potter.

*

            Malfoy
wasn't in the library, or the corridors that Harry searched, or in the few
rooms that Bellatrix would let him into--dining hall,
what looked like a study, a large experimental potions lab--before she got
agitated and stepped into his path. Harry sighed and turned around to retrace
his steps. This was harder than he had reckoned. He had been so pleased when
Snape and Malfoy left him alone, but that would mean that they'd avoid him even
if he found them.

            "Potter."

            There was Malfoy, closing a massive
wrought-iron gate behind him. Harry caught a glimpse of faint sunshine and
smelled fresh air, and told himself to remember the gate, which led outside. He
had been brought by Apparition to the inside of the Ashborn's
fortress, so he still didn't have much of an idea what the whole thing looked
like, but this added to his mental plans.

            "I
need to speak with you."

            Harry blinked,
hearing what sounded like an echo of his voice, and then realized that Malfoy
had said it at the same time. He found himself smiling grimly back at Malfoy,
who looked half-embarrassed, folding his arms as though that would provide a
protective barrier against his emotions.

            "Fine,"
Harry said. "Do you know a private place we can go?"

            "Not
private," said Bellatrix, and there was an echo
in her voice that sounded more like the iron gate closing than any repeated
words said by another.

            "Ignore
her," Malfoy said, with a light flush in his cheeks that Harry thought
belied his words. "Severus has--changed her--so that she has to say things
like that, but I'm high in his confidence."

            Keep telling yourself that, Harry
thought, but it might not be the right time to bring up Malfoy's own controlled
mind, especially if Bellatrix could tell Snape what
she heard. "All right. Then what?"

            "Come
to my rooms," Malfoy said, and led the way.

            Harry
blinked as he stepped into a room of sober magnificence, all grey and black and
white and silver. Well, he reckoned Malfoy must actually like these colors,
rather than being stuck with them because of the natural colors of the stone;
he'd certainly had a chance to change them if he wanted. Harry looked around
and took what seemed to be the smallest of the chairs. If Snape burst in, that
would probably be the kind of thing that he'd read a great deal into.

            Malfoy took
the chair that faced him. Bellatrix stood by the door
like an obedient dog. Malfoy glanced at her and licked his lips once before
asking her to guard the door from intruders, and seemed surprised that she
went. Harry was sure that the expression on his face wasn't hunger or any other
kind of desire.

            Interesting. If he's uneasy that she might
report something back to Snape, then perhaps he's thinking of rebellion on his
own.

            "Listen,"
Malfoy said, facing him. "How much do you know about pure-blood
culture?"

            Well. That wasn't what I expected. "That
almost everyone who's interested in it tries to kill me," Harry said
dryly. "If that's not what you're referring to, then I'll need you to tell
me."

            "It's
not," Malfoy said. He bowed his head so that he was looking down at his
hands, leaving Harry to study only his profile. It surprised him. From this
angle, Malfoy could actually look like a serious, studious young man. It was
probably an illusion, but it was still an image Harry had never thought he
would see in Malfoy. "I--I've been translating a book of runes that hides
the story of a culture my ancestors left behind. My Malfoy ancestors, and even
my Black ones, it was a Black ancestor who wrote the book, wanted to have
honors for only their own families. They turned against their allies. In the
ancient times, they were allies with almost everyone, including families they
think of as enemies today."

            Harry held
up his hand. "I'll need you to slow down a little. So there were some
political alliances and they broke them. How is that different from the way
that people act nowadays, allying with the Ministry or with Voldemort and then
changing their minds?"

            Malfoy's
head snapped up, and the unfamiliar look to his face that had haunted Harry
faded, replaced by the ordinary stubbornness he knew better. "Could you
not call him that? I'll listen to any
other name that you want to make up, even the ridiculous ones, but I don't like
flinching when I'm trying to have a normal conversation with you."

            Harry
blinked. "Do you believe that he's still alive?" he asked. "That
he could come back?"

            Malfoy
shook his head. "Of course not. Severus and I felt a change in our Dark
Marks the night he died. If he was still alive, we would have been the first to
know. I believe you destroyed him forever."

            "Then--"

            "The
name is--too sharp a reminder of the war." Malfoy pushed his fringe out of
his eyes. "We want to move forwards, to change things, or at least I
do." Harry stared. That was more interesting than anything he'd expected
to hear from Malfoy, that he might be interested in change in a different way
from Snape. Malfoy turned his head to the side as if he'd realized that but
went on speaking. "We don't want to forget the war, but we don't want to
have a waking nightmare in the middle of the day, either."

            Harry
thought about that. It still sounded similar to what he suspected most people's
attitudes would be now that he was a hostage: mourning at first, then
forgetting as they pushed the war behind them in any way they could.

            But most of
those people had only been victims in the war, not fighters. Harry didn't see
how the fighters could forget. And
Malfoy had been not only Death Eater, but Voldemort's
victim, in some intense, close, intertwining relationship that Harry didn't
understand and didn't really want to understand.

            "All
right," he said. "I'll try to remember, but I can't promise that I'll
do it all the time at first. And it doesn't mean that you won't snort at the
ridiculous name I come up with to replace his title, either. I'm not going to
call him the bloody Dark Lord."

            Malfoy gave
him a weak smile. "Thank you."

            Harry
nodded. "So, anyway. You were explaining to me how these old political
alliances were different from the modern ones."

            "Because
they weren't just political," Malfoy said. He hesitated, then said,
"Take marriage as one example. My parents raised me with the idea that
marriage meant devotion, and children, and an exchange of money. They weren't
opposed to the idea of me falling in love with my bride, but it was definitely
a secondary consideration, because we could be legally tied together without
that."

            "Right,"
Harry said, hiding his distaste at the thought as well as he could.

            He must not
have hidden it well enough. Malfoy just raised an eyebrow at him, though, and
went on. "The old pure-blood culture favored multiple alliances, and the main idea was the connection, the
devotion, not just the reproduction of children or Galleons. You might marry
someone you loved, and someone else your family thought would be a good match
for you, and someone else who was more or less a business arrangement like the
one my parents wanted me to make, and someone else you had to marry because otherwise you wouldn't have children, and
someone you liked a lot but didn't love as much as the first partner."

            Harry
shivered a bit. He couldn't imagine that. Well, he reckoned it would be all
right for people actually raised in that world, but he had always wanted
devotion and one person to call his own.

            He'd
thought Ginny would be that person, but now...

            Harry
impatiently pushed the thought away. Well, he'd had his chance, and chosen this
course instead. No need to squeal that he was put-upon and treated unfairly.
"So what was the point of that?"

            "To
bind everyone together," Malfoy said. "You didn't change your
alliances unless the other person betrayed you first, and if your interests
came into conflict, people were supposed to negotiate and listen to one another
and explain why they wanted what they wanted and suggest substitutes. It
was--complex. But they had a lot fewer wars than we did, and no Dark Lords. No
Dark Lord could arise without outraging his families and alienating them all,
or without his families noticing something was wrong and stopping him in
time."

            Harry
half-shook his head. "But if someone was selfish enough to become a Dark
Lord in the first place, why would he care about that?"

            Malfoy
shrugged. "He might not--although I think the encouragement of his
tendencies which something like my father's power-seeking could foster wouldn't
happen there. But the main thing was that someone could see him and spot him in
time."

            Harry
traced a finger along the edge of the cushion he sat on, and then stopped when
he saw Malfoy staring at him. He was probably getting his dirty half-blood
germs all over the chair, he thought wryly. "I hadn't thought about
that," he said. "But if they were all bound together and didn't fight
each other, then could they actually kill someone who betrayed the rest or
tried to commit murder?"

            Malfoy
smiled coldly. "If someone committed betrayal of his own free will and not
because he was pressured into it or taking a justified revenge, then they would
find out. And they would kill him, yes."

            "Justice
couldn't always have worked out neatly," Harry said bitterly, thinking of
Sirius. To this day, he didn't understand why they hadn't used Veritaserum to exonerate his godfather. It was possible
Sirius had refused to take it, and the Ministry couldn't force him to drink it,
but surely Dumbledore could have done something...

            Then Harry
sighed soundlessly through his nose. If the Pensieve of memories he had
received from Dumbledore had proven anything, it was that the man wasn't
faultless, and Harry and the others who had relied on him to that great an
extent had been blind.

            "Oh, I
don't think it was," Malfoy said. "But it must have been a lot more
common for them to find out the right answer, because they were interested in investigating it. They
didn't dismiss it as a nuisance, the way we sometimes do the notion of fair
trials in our society."

            Harry
shrugged. "I can imagine that it would be a better world, but I still
don't really see what it has to do with me. You're remembering that I'm not
pure-blood, right? That was one of the reasons that Old Eating-Grave-Dirt
wanted to kill me in the first place. Not that he was pure himself, but, well,
hypocrisy in Dark Lords, what are you going to do."

            Malfoy
stared at him in open shock. "He wasn't--"

            Harry shook
his head in amusement. "No. His mother was magical, but she fell in love
with a Muggle. He grew up in an orphanage in the Muggle world, and didn't know who he was at first."
Harry hid a shiver. That could have been his fate, in so many ways, if the Dursleys had been a little less willing to put up with him.

            He wasn't
grateful to his relatives, not exactly, but they had taught him how to survive
and hadn't been as harsh to him as they could have been. For that, he would
have to thank them, if he ever saw them again.

            Not bloody likely, here.

            Malfoy
looked far more disturbed than Harry had thought possible. In fact, he ran a
shaking hand through his hair and stared unseeingly at the far wall of his
room. Harry stifled the temptation to invite Malfoy to his own rooms, to see
the images and that people could live in other ways than just with
"pure" colors. He didn't think Malfoy was in the mood to take that
kind of invitation well.

            "I
never knew," Malfoy whispered. "That wasn't the sort of thing that
anyone talked about. Or hinted about."

            "Well,
they wouldn't have wanted to, with Vol--No-Nose
poised to destroy them if he heard," Harry said logically. Then he leaned
forwards. He still hadn't had a chance to talk to Malfoy about what he was
really most concerned about, the Ashborn and the
level of free will they had, but on the other hand, maybe he could turn the
conversation in that direction if he worked at it. "You haven't answered
my question. Why should it matter to me what ancient pure-blood culture was
like? If you're maintaining the old distinctions, then it's the same to me
whether people who hate me are allied or squabbling. Squabbling might be even
better, in fact."

*

            Someone had
stolen Potter during the night and replaced him with one of Severus's
automatons, Draco thought faintly. That was the only possible reason he could
be making as much sense as he was.

            But a
sensible Potter was one who awaited an answer, and Draco knew that he couldn't
put off the real purpose of the conversation any longer, as he had tried to by
talking about his discoveries. Well, that and he had wanted someone who would
share his excitement. But he should have known Potter wouldn't.

            "I...I
think that you can help me with Severus," he said. Those weren't the right
ones, either, but they might do for a beginning.

            Potter's
eyebrows shot up. "Malfoy, no offense, but what you do in the bedroom is
none of my business."

            "Not that," Draco said, a little
disgusted that Potter would even think of it. Severus would never consent to fuck him. "I meant that Severus
isn't as strong and capable as he could be."

            Potter
gazed blankly back at him. "And this is my problem how?"

            Draco stood
up to pace. It was an indulgence that he tried not to exercise in front of
Severus, who was so quiet himself that he thought one should be able to sit in
a chair and think through all the thoughts in one's head. But Potter either
wouldn't share the same standards or wouldn't really care, since he didn't have
a high opinion of Draco in the first place. "I'd think you would
care," he said. "Since you're living in the same fortress now, and
his mood can directly affect your quality of life."

            "If he
uses Crucio on me, I'll do it right back,"
Potter said, with what Draco thought amazing coolness considering the way
Severus had dueled him to a standstill three years ago. "Besides that, I
don't see how he could affect me."

            Draco shook
his head in slow wonder. He stood on one side of an abyss, and Potter stood on
the other. Draco would have considered it vitally
important to understand Potter's moods and what caused them if the
situation was reversed and he was a prisoner among Potter's people. Anything
that made Potter upset might be laid at Draco's feet; anything that made him
happy, as long as Draco could do it in return, might mean that he could gain
more power and move up the hierarchy to a place at Potter's side. But Potter
still saw himself as a kind of isolated island, not bound to the people around
him just because he had joined them by force.

            The way
that Draco's father had seen himself. Potter's haughty, lion-like walk among
his enemies reminded Draco of that, the way his mother had said Lucius reacted
when he was briefly imprisoned after the first war.

            The way
that Draco knew now to be wrong and weaker than that old way where they all
depended on each other.

            Then I have to be the one to build the bridge
across the abyss and show Potter why this matters. What does he care aboutt?

            Once he
asked himself the question, the answer wasn't far away, and Draco was a bit
humiliated he had missed it before. He lowered his voice and asked, "Even
if the way he acts--the way he acts because
of you--influences how someone else is treated?"

            Potter sat
up, and now that haughty, stalking lion had turned its attention on Draco and
expected him to have something good enough to pay it back. Draco was elated and
terrified at the same time. He couldn't remember feeling this way before,
except the first few times Severus had taken him to bed, before it became
routine.

            And I didn't know it was routine until now.

            Potter
seemed to be in the habit of teaching him uncomfortable things about himself.
Draco struck out stoutly for higher ground, deciding that he could ignore some
of those weaker insights for now. "If he mistreats one of the Ashborn because he's angry, for example. Or me. He won't
strike at you because of the Vow you swore. That doesn't mean that someone else
won't suffer. Severus grew excellent at deflecting his anger when he served the
Dark Lord. Everyone did. You didn't get angry at him, you just assured that someone else lower in the hierarchy
suffered your displeasure." Draco shivered as he remembered the way his
aunt used to do that, though in her case she was mainly taking out
disappointment that the Dark Lord hadn't noticed her that day, or had favored
someone else. One of the happiest moments of his life had been the one when he
realized Bellatrix was tamed and wouldn't hurt him
again.

            Potter sat
still, then shook his head. "If your advice to me is to placate him, then
I don't think it'll work. We've always argued, long before I understood why he
hated me. The most I'll do is try to keep his anger focused on me in ways that
will flow over in barbs to me and not to someone else."

            Draco
sighed and sat down on the bed. He was a bit closer to Potter, who tensed and
watched him. Draco wondered about that. How often had Potter fought in the war?
Sometimes he seemed like his old, annoying self with a few quirks that made it
hard to discuss things rationally with him, and then he would watch you move or
seem to mark the exits from a room and his eyes would flare with something
primal, something powerful.

            It was the
kind of thing that had drawn Draco to Severus, but he didn't think Potter would
be safe to touch. Potter had never had any of the reasons that Severus did to
tolerate or be fond of him.

            "You
could do more than that," Draco said. "You said you wanted to study,
that you wanted to do something.
There's enough material in these books that I'm translating to give you a
project for a lifetime. And if Severus saw that you were integrating yourself
into our group, then he might calm down. That would mean less trauma for the Ashborn, for all of us." And it would give me time to figure out in what ways I'm independent of
Severus, and in what ways I'm obeying him just like everyone else.

            Potter
watched him with quiet, troubled eyes. Then he said, "It's more than that.
Did you--figure out that he's been controlling you, now?"

            The
audacity took Draco's breath away, and he responded before he thought about it,
his voice poised to cut like a knife. "I'm not being controlled. If I was, then I couldn't have doubts, could
I?"

            "So
you do have doubts."

            Draco would
have tried to kill him if he had said that in a satisfied voice. But he said it
with a breathlessness instead, a shining satisfaction in his tone that made
Draco pause and think. Potter leaned forwards on his chair and spoke softly,
intensely, the hair on the back of Draco's neck crawling with his words.

            "I
hate the way they look, going about their lives with dead eyes. I want to do something for them, and for you, but
I don't know what I can do, without violating my oath. It's not right that
they're treated like that, but I can't act directly against Snape, and trying
to talk to them will just make them report what I'm doing. You're my one chance
to save everyone, my one wedge into them."

            "So we
want to use each other," Draco said, and didn't even care about the wry
tone in his voice or what he had just revealed. He was still too stunned by the
revelation that he and Potter could have common ground, after all. "That's
fine."

            "How
do you want to use me?"

            Potter
didn't sound hostile, as though he was interested
in what Draco was going to do. Draco met his eyes directly. "You made
me aware of some things about Severus I would rather not have thought," he
said. "I want to explore that further, to figure out why you make me think
those things and what I should do about them if they're true."

            Potter gave
him a long, slow, curious look. It was as though he thought Draco might turn
out to be extremely intelligent or extremely stupid, but he didn't know which
at that particular moment. "You already said that you know you're free.
What else can I help you learn?"

            "I'm
free, but I've followed Severus like the rest of them," Draco said. He had
to look aside into the fire as he spoke. Meeting Potter's eyes as he confessed
his weaknesses was still too damning, still too daunting. "Blindly.
Adoringly. He didn't need to control
me, he had everything he could want from me without that." His voice
rasped with bitterness. He controlled it with a long, careful snort. "I
want to know how much of that is necessary and how much isn't."

            "None
of it's necessary."

            Draco shook
his head. "You're here against your will, but I chose this. And you could
go back to your friends if Severus died tomorrow, but I have nowhere else to
go. My parents are dead. My friends don't acknowledge me." Actually, that
was the closest he could get to the utter blankness, the utter abyss, he felt
between himself and his former friends. He hadn't seen them in three years,
hadn't heard from them, barely knew how the war had gone for them aside from
seeing a few of their parents die or be arrested. But he was older than they
were, full of ashes they hadn't eaten. "I bear Severus's Mark. I have to
survive where I am, but I want to do it as my own person. That's how we're
different." He was relieved there was still something.

            "His
Mark."

            Potter's
voice had gone flat. Wonderful. Draco
shot Potter another look, but he didn't know what was in it, what fury and
anger and unhealed wounds. "He changed the Dark Mark to one that signified
loyalty to him. What, would you have expected him to leave things exactly the
same? It wasn't possible. The old Mark was a tie to the Dark Lord, and would
have tugged at the Ashborn even though he's dead. He
changed their Marks for the same reason he changed their name."

            "Let
me see it."

            Draco shook
his head. "Why? You'll only sneer at it, and you've inflicted enough
upheaval in my life in the last few days."

            Potter
looked at him with flat, steady eyes. "Because I need to," he said
simply. "Because some of the things you've told me don't make any sense
without that, and I need to see it for myself."

            Draco
snorted. "Of course. You'll change your mind the instant you see it. You
probably already have, and decided that all of the Ashborn
are unworthy of the freedom you talked about giving them, because we still
carry a Mark on our skin. It wasn't going
away, Potter. It was transform it or nothing."

            "I
know that," Potter said, and his hand rose and covered the scar on his
forehead, which Draco hadn't looked at it in days. It was different here than
when Potter was prancing around the school, drawing attention to himself.
"But--I know what my scar looks like, now, how it's faded. Let me see this
one, and I think that I can take it as a literal sign of the change that you're
talking about."

            Draco
hesitated one last time. Only a few days ago, he had decided that Potter would
never be worthy to see his Mark.

            But now...

            Now, things
had changed, and having Potter's help would make gaining control over his slide
into chaos a lot easier. Draco pulled back his left sleeve and turned his arm,
keeping his gaze on the fire.

*

            Harry knew
what the Dark Mark looked like. He had spent almost an entire day lying in the
snow, trapped beneath the body of a Death Eater, staring at it, before Ron and
Hermione found him.

            But this
was different, in the ways that Malfoy had promised. It covered a larger area,
for one thing, as though simply replacing Voldemort's
snake and skull hadn't been enough for Snape. He had to tear up innocent skin.

            Harry's
vision hazed red. He knew that was a danger sign. He took a few breaths and
went on watching the Mark in a kind of detached way, cataloging details in his
mind that he would think about later.

            The symbol
was a black bird, stretching its wings towards the cardinal points of east and
west. Its beak was open, and from the cruel, jagged shape of it, as well as the
talons that stretched away under its body, Harry knew it was probably supposed
to be an eagle. Faint lines danced away from the beak. Harry leaned towards
them, and made out tongues of fire there.

            "What,
Snape couldn't decide between a bird and a dragon?" he muttered.

            "We
rose from the ashes," Malfoy said, his voice stiff with knotted pride.
"It's only appropriate that we have fire as part of the symbol."

            Harry
nodded, and kept on looking. The bird's feathers were mostly an
undifferentiated mass of sleek black against the body, but stood out on the
spread wings and in what was nearly a crest on the lifted head. The talons
hooked; loving detail had been spent on the claws. Beneath the claws lay
something Harry had thought was a tree branch at first but which resolved into
an outflung arm when he looked at it. That was
another thing he was familiar with from his sojourn in the snow, pinned beneath
a corpse that smelled worse hour after hour.

            But he
wasn't there now. He was in a warm room with someone who had taken a risk in
showing him the Mark; that much was obvious from the fine tremor that swarmed
through Malfoy's arm as he held it out. Harry leaned back and gestured.
"All right, enough," he said, when Malfoy glared at him. "I
don't have to see anymore. You're right, it is different from the Dark
Mark."

            Malfoy drew
his sleeve back down, but kept his hand hovering protectively, as though to
cover the bird. Harry looked at him, trying to understand, trying to see inside
his head.

            This
mattered to Malfoy, even when he sounded on the verge of questioning Snape and abandoning
his old ways. Why?

            Because it made him part of something.
Because it took away the symbol of shame and slavery he was carrying up until
that point, and made him part of something special. Harry knew the answer
as clearly as though Malfoy had shouted it into his ear.

            And really,
didn't it make sense? Snape hadn't
rescued Malfoy in the traditional way, but he had hammered the remnants of the
Death Eaters into an elite fighting force and given Malfoy a high place among
them. It had been what Malfoy probably thought would happen to him at first
with Voldemort, but more stable and longer-lasting.

            Snape was
fulfilling a lot of Malfoy's fantasies, really.

            Harry
glanced at Malfoy, decided it would be smarter if he didn't say that directly to Malfoy's face, and
instead asked, "So what does that mean, for you? That there's a way for
the Ashborn to be fundamentally different from the
Death Eaters? Are you going to make them that way, with the book that you told
me you're translating and your notions of what pure-blood culture used to be
like?"

            He hadn't
meant the words to come out in an accusatory tone, but Malfoy flushed and
glared at him. "You needn't sound as though you have some grand ambitions that are going unfulfilled," he
said. "Or you would never have agreed to come with us and be a hostage in
the first place."

            Harry tried
to smile, but he knew it came out bitter. He shook his head. "I put my
life on hold because I thought it was worth it," he said. "But I was under the impression that Snape had
some ambition for the Ashborn. They're powerful, and
they're organized, and he showed himself willing to go to war for it. And he's
a Slytherin. But what can he possibly have them
do?"

            Malfoy
hesitated. Harry waited, trying to keep his eyes from flitting back to Malfoy's
left sleeve and the Mark that it covered. He wanted to take another look at it,
to see if he could discern anything about Snape's
intentions from it. As he had learned from an intense study of clues and asking
questions of those who'd known Tom Riddle, even a careful Dark Lord couldn't
always keep from betraying himself.

            That skill would have been useful to me if I
was an Auror.

            Harry
shrugged the self-pity off. That was another life, the one he wouldn't have.
But it seemed he would have to wait for Malfoy to tell him what his life would be like.

*

            Draco would
have liked to spend a few minutes with his eyes closed in meditation. Severus
had taught him that even a short time when one wouldn't permit oneself to think
about anything else could do wonders for the concentration. And this conundrum
needed either concentration or a wiser head than sat on his shoulders.

            A head like the one on Severus's? The head
that you used to think was so knowledgeable, and which you trusted to think for
you?

            Draco
swallowed. Yes, he could have used some time alone, but he wasn't getting it.
He doubted that this Potter, the one with the glance like broken glass and the
intelligence that he had been hiding somewhere, would agree to retreat or
politely look elsewhere while Draco thought about matters that involved the two
of them.

            "Fine,"
he said at last, and tore something open in himself as he did so. "I think
that Severus really wants a private world where he can brew and experiment, and
nothing else. He doesn't want anything to disrupt that, though, so he has to
have a strong set of guards who will keep him safe from any interference."

            There was a
pause that felt breathless to Draco. Potter had frozen, one hand closed on the
edge of his chair. He stared into the fire the way that Draco had on the
evenings--most of them--when Severus refused to join him, and then he bared his
teeth.

            "What?"
he breathed. "Their minds, their lives, their sanity, their freedom,
sacrificed to that?"

            "Well,
Bellatrix didn't have much sanity to begin
with," Draco felt compelled to point out.

            Potter
sprang to his feet. Draco grabbed his wand by instinct, but it was Potter's
idea to pace back and forth, spitting epithets. Draco hadn't heard most of
them, or else they were in a different language. He watched and listened, in
silence, until Potter ran down and turned to him.

            "That's
not right," Potter said simply. "He told me not to foment rebellion
among the Ashborn."

            Draco nodded
cautiously. "Which means most of the things that you probably want to do
are right out."

            "I
know that." Potter roasted Draco with a glance. "But you don't have
any such restrictions on you. And as long as we leave a set of guards who can
protect him--preferably the ones, like Bellatrix, who
would be no good even if we did break them free--then you and I can do
something else."

            "Neither
of us is good enough at Legilimency to free them from
their bindings," Draco said.

            Potter
looked briefly disappointed, which meant he had hoped Draco was good enough,
which meant--Draco didn't know. He was unused to having people trust him to be
good at things, now.

            "I
know," Potter said then, which was truth in the purest sense of the word;
he did know, now. "But there are
other things we can do. If Snape saw that we were doing something that would
rebound to his benefit, he would give us some slack to do it in, right?"

            "Perhaps,"
Draco said. "I think that he wants a completely undisturbed, unchanging
life." Which, judging by Potter's look of withering contempt, sounded far
worse aloud than it had in his head when he whispered to himself what Severus
wanted and what he must therefore try to do.

            "Fine,"
Potter said, though in a tone that clearly promised a return to the subject
later. "For now, we'll see what we can do with your notion of pure-blood
culture, and that means reaching out."

            "To
the Ashborn? That's useless."

            "No."
Potter smiled, and Draco felt a rush of something pass through him that was
like the thrill he had felt when he saw a dragon flying once in the distance.
"To other allies."

*

            Severus
lifted his head from contemplating the snake automaton, still motionless
despite all the effort he had spent on it.

            He had
felt...

            He had felt
a wind pass through his head, as though one of the Ashborn
was breaking free of the web of control he had spun about them. But when he
reached out and tested their positions through light touches to their Marks,
knotted inside his head, he felt nothing missing. Everyone was in place.

            And the
wards would have alerted him if Potter had tried to escape. Not to mention that
the brat would be dying now of breaking his Unbreakable Vow.

            Severus
frowned, shook his head, and returned to consideration of his problem, one of
the challenges that made life worth living.

*

            unneeded:
Oh, I think the change has already begun with Draco. With Snape, it's going to
be a little harder, although he'll probably take notice of it when Draco
abandons him.

            And a
closed society stagnates, but I don't know that Snape would care as long as the
Ashborn are still doing what he wants them to do.