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The bed looked strangely lopsided with only one occupant, his hair a bitter flood across white cotton sheets, snaking like fresh blood on bone. Severus neither moved nor spoke, nor even watched his lover dress, though Harry knew he was awake. He looked lost in the wreckage of the bed, amidst so much evidence that last night they had not been still, so silent.
Harry kept his movements small, so not to shatter the air.
The trousers were wizard-made, old-fashioned, as was the white waist coat and outer robe. The heeled boots, a silky dove-grey leather, hugged his calves before spilling over themselves into over-sized cuffs, but the sash befuddled his fingers as he attempted to tie it. A snort from the bed at his ineptitude. First sound since the night before. He wanted to scream.
The sash finally obeyed him, and he turned to the mirror, his image a blinding mirage of someone with impeccable fashion sense, statement blank, brilliant green the only colour now that his blood scorned his cheeks. He tried not to remember the pink, pink water and the copper tang on the steam which seared his lungs, bringing a miniscule amount of her body into his. Breathe in, breath out; her blood a sediment in his lungs.
He met Severus' eyes in the mirror, their gazes bouncing, reflecting, pretending to connect. Then he shrugged into the over-robe, and fastened the single clasp, just below his high collar. It reached his knees, flirted with the tops of his boots.
His hand on the clock trembled on the verge of 'Late'. He didn't look at Severus as he left.
The Ministry welcomed him with near-frantic relief, and Harry realized most of them thought he would not show up. He didn't blame them, and indeed expected the sheer unfairness of the universe to overwhelm him at any moment, sending him fleeing back to the white-sheeted bed. Instead, he nodded at Fudge, and tried to be grateful Molly Weasley had gotten herself included in the party, despite being a mere clerk for the Department of Mysteries. He needed a friend in the room.
Again, the expected reaction did not manifest, and he tested the new numbness, deliberately thought of Sirius and Dumbledore and Remus and Hagrid and the dozen other people whom time and war had replaced with others less familiar. Hermione probably would not have been allowed there either -- she'd been in spell design, not the diplomatic division -- even had she not spilled her copper blood into his lungs. Then again, they would still be on the battlefield if she hadn't.
Molly found his elbow, and gripped it as though he would try to flee. He considered it; she wore her fractured family like ashes in her hair, and he hated the constant, wounded gaps in her shrouded aura, the tangible absence of one husband and three children.
"You can still back out, Harry," she whispered, taking his elbow and drawing him close, away from Fudge. "No one will think less of you."
Harry winced at the lie, and tried to smile, but felt a grimace lurking, so stopped. "I'll be all right, Molly."
That was the nice thing about Molly: she forgave him his lie in return.
"It's nearly time," Fudge announced, and the politicians, diplomats, aurors, soldiers, and the half-dozen surviving Phoenix Knights -- minus Severus -- assembled on the large rug. Firecalls were exchanged, and someone at the meeting place cleared them, and someone else double-checked, and then the aurors allowed the soldiers to activate the portkey beneath their feet, and the Ministry's battered temporary headquarters vanished.
The rug deposited them on a hill in the midst of a group of officials, military and political. Harry pulled away from the group, looked down the slope, grass muted grey by the cloudy sky, but alive with motion. At the base, three figures stood while clothes and hair thrashed around them, and farther off a larger group waited, uniformly black but for a lone figure in white.
Harry waited for the officials to complete their little self-important rituals, and when they were ready, a pair of aurors and three ministry workers joined him, and they walked down the hill. Fudge remained at the top; did not, in fact, step off the portkey.
Light and shadow flickered with the passage of wind-harassed clouds. Malfoy and the nun were ghostly figures, but no grey sky could dim a Weasley's hair.
"Ron."
"Harry." A pause. "Sorry."
He acknowledged the half-truth with a nod. They had to make some sacrifice, and Harry was it; Ron could not apologize for ending a war. He remembered his best friends' last moment together; one rocking the naked, copper-tainted body of the other. He'd known then that Ron would do something, but had never expect that something would be a suit for peace.
Nor had he expected Voldemort to accept.
He passed over the woman, a pale non-entity from the Order of Nimue, and moved on to the third figure.
"Mr Malfoy." Harry looked at the other wizard, regretted it instantly. Raw, dead eyes, too open, no sign of ice, and that was just so very wrong for the man who'd once looked at him like he was filth on forty-galleon Italian wizard-made boots. He thought of saying something socially expected but trite about Draco, decided not to risk an outburst. Or worse, a lack of one.
"Potter." No inflection.
Harry squirmed under his skin, not looking at either of them, until the other delegation arrived.
Voldemort's appearance unsettled him; he'd done something to reverse the worst of the physical defects, leaving a tall man in his sixties, salt-and-pepper hair, slanted eyes and vaguely reptilian features. His irises glowed a muted red, nearly brown, but not quite. He exchanged a brief nod with Harry, both of them tight-lipped.
They let their representatives go through the formal motions of restating the terms of the resolution. Reduced contact with the muggle world, bonuses for children born in the next ten years -- double for purebloods -- legalization of hermaphrodite potions and tax exemptions for wizards who chose to bear children, obliviation of all wizards with knowledge of the internecius curse.
The two official leaders said nothing; Voldemort because he had delegated, Harry because he was head of their army in name only. The witch from the Order of Nimue stepped up once the pissing contest had ended, and performed the ceremony in a whisper which the participants and witnesses strained to hear.
Voldemort's hands were cold and stiff when they took his, and Harry couldn't help but wonder if the man's preferences even lay with his own gender. Regardless, the priestess bound their hands in rune-embroidered cloth, and their handfasting began, the only outward symbol of peace both sides would accept.
They echoed words as the priestess indicated. Drank from the same cup with their free hands. Leaned forward and kissed on command, not quite on the mouth, nor the cheek, but somewhere in between, and Harry shuddered at the feel of warm skin under his lips, the graze of fine stubble.
Severus used depilatory potions; he never had stubble.
Severus in their bed, Severus not looking at him, Severus bitterly amused at his fumbling even to the last.
Voldemort caught his eye, the muddy red waxing and waning in the pendulum light, and Harry tuned out the nun's fervent whispered blessings. A union was not what either would have chosen, yet such was the nature of compromise. And with a third of the population decimated, they would be expected to set an example and produce children. Harry tightened his grip, endured the dull red gaze as the ceremony ended.
Hands freed, they stood shoulder to shoulder as they waited for the Demolishers to arrive, their black robes twisting frantically in the wind. They lined up, and of the twelve Harry recognized only Walden Macnair and the still-kicking Mad-Eye Moody amongst those who knew the twenty-seven-word-long internecius curse.
He thought of the crater where Diagon Alley once stood, thought of Severus stupefying Hermione to stop her from hyperventilating when she'd heard the news, thought of the taste of copper in the air. It had taken over five-thousand lives to convince her some knowledge should not be pursued, and months of destruction and a determined Ron Weasley to convince the rest of the world.
As the priestess moved down the line with her eleven-inch willow wand and whispered 'obliviate', he wondered how many Demolishers Voldemort and Fudge had each hidden away.
But when Voldemort offered his arm politely, Harry took it, a tightness settling in his stomach.
Wizards and their wands. [134]
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Kind people have translated some of my fics into other languages. [2]
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