Draco had to make an appearance at lunch in the Great Hall to avoid the awkward questions that came with him apparently missing so many meals, so Harry was left alone just before twelve. He had a nice long shower and then went back to his reading and research, in a much better mood than the one in which he had woken. Absorbing himself in the information in the books he managed to put the remaining guilt to the back of his mind, so much so that he did not even think about it until he heard a very familiar voice.

"Harry, are you busy?"

Shock and complete horror were Harry's initial reaction as he turned and found Ron's head peering around the inner entrance to his room. It was then and only then that he remembered the instructions he had given to Jeremy to let his friends in if they called unless he was busy with someone else. He had been so wrapped up in what he was doing that he had never told the portrait any different.

"Um, no," Harry managed to reply as his eyes darted desperately around the room, looking for any way out.

"Cool," Ron said, seemingly not in the least bit phased by what had happened the previous day, "because we wanted to talk to you."

Horror morphed into abject terror as Harry realised that Ron had brought re-enforcements. As his three friends trooped through the door, he seriously considered making a dash for the bathroom and locking himself in. All three appeared very determined about something and although he had stood against Voldemort and his whole inner circle, Harry suddenly felt outnumbered.

"Hello, Harry," Neville greeted pleasantly in his usual cheerful, if somewhat befuddled, manner.

Harry didn't even try and reply. His voice was hiding somewhere, cowering in fear and he knew if he tried to speak, he would just squeak at his friends.

"Harry, Mate," Ron said after a few moments of silence, "why do you look like there's a dragon behind us?"

"Ron," Hermione said patiently, "I think perhaps Harry's a little," she paused to pick the right word, "worried about what happened yesterday."

The tension had caused Harry's entire chest to tighten up and he was breathing in short little gasps, making his lungs feel like they were on fire. He tried very hard to calm down, but he was petrified. The image that kept passing through his brain was Ron's dead face from his dream.

"That's what we're here to talk about," Ron said brightly, which really did not help Harry at all.

"What Ron's trying to say," Neville decided to step in, "is that we're volunteering. Ron says that Professor Snape reckons you need four donors, and there are only three of us, but we're willing to give it a go, if it's alright with you."

Harry just stared. He sat in his chair, forgotten book in hand and stared. He wasn't quite sure he had heard that correctly. The idea would just not stick in his head. He'd mentally grasp at it and it would slip out of his reach. Neville had definitely said something about donors, but the dream image of Ron kept putting itself in the way of all his other thought processes.

"Harry," Hermione asked gently, moving forward from where she was standing in a line with the other two, "are you feeling alright."

He blinked at her. This was Hermione, calm, rational, practical Hermione, she could not possibly be part of what he thought he might have heard, could she?

"I," Harry said, in his opinion, rather pathetically.

The mental image of Ron's dead face overlaid itself on Hermione's and he had to look away.

"Look, Harry," Ron's voice broke through the waking nightmare, "you're not blaming yourself for what happened are you? It's not your fault, and it wasn't as if you hurt me or anything. It was rather good to tell you the truth."

There was the sound of a hand slapping an arm and Harry managed to look up to find Hermione had just hit Ron.

"What?" his best friend asked hotly. "It's true; he might as well know it. He'll only sit there thinking we're sacrificing ourselves for him, and tell us not to be noble, when I, for a start, think it might actually be a bonus."

Ron really had no concept of the word subtle and for once Harry was so glad of it.

"Ron, did it occur to you that you might embarrass Harry?" Hermione asked pointedly, and the simple, friendly dispute contrasted so completely with the dark thoughts moving through Harry's mind that it broke him out of his fear.

His friends really were standing in front of him arguing because Ron had just confessed that he enjoyed being bitten. It was one of those laugh or cry moments that seemed to make up Harry's life these days, and the rather disbelieving giggle escaped him before he could stop it. He had never been prone to giggling and this sounded rather ridiculous coming out of his mouth, but he had no choice. All three of his friends looked at him as if he was mad, which was a distinct possibility the way he was feeling.

"Harry?" Hermione asked with a worried little frown.

"Do any of you know how dangerous I am," he asked quietly, the giggle dying, "what I could have done to Ron yesterday?"

"But you didn't, Mate," Ron said firmly, "and that's what counts."

"Let us help you, Harry," Neville said earnestly.

"We talked about it very carefully, Harry," Hermione assured him, "we know the risks. We looked everything up, and we're sure about this."

Typical Hermione, research a subject into the ground and go with her heart anyway. Only in this case she could not know everything, because no one did, not even Harry.

"We went to Madame Pomfrey," Neville explained further, "and she checked us all out. We're all perfectly healthy and this won't hurt us."

"But," Harry said looking at their sincere faces.

"No buts, Harry," Ron said firmly. "You can't push us away and we will help you even if we just have to sit here until you lose control again. You're our friend, and you're the best mate a bloke could ever have; for once you're going to let us tell you what to do."

He opened his mouth again to protest again.

"Harry James Potter," Hermione said sternly, "give in, you aren't going to win this one."

They had moved closer over the conversation and now Neville moved up to join them. It was a Gryffindor wall, but rather than needing to climb it and escape, Harry suddenly felt strangely safe, as if they were his own personal fortress.

"Okay," he said in little more than a whisper.

The smiles on his friends' faces were so happy that they took his breath away and he suddenly found himself at the centre of a four-way hug. Strangely the dark magic inside him, which usually reacted to such contact, was almost silent, and he relaxed into the arms of his friends.

~*~

Only that lunchtime he had seen them all as they pledged their allegiance to him, offering their blood as well as their friendship, and now here he was calling them back, sure that they would hate his for what he had to tell them. Their gift to him had overwhelmed him and he had spent all day thinking. If they were willing to give him so much then he could do no less for them, and he knew he owed them the truth.

He could not stop pacing as he waited for them to arrive. He had asked Jeremy to give him a quick warning before letting them in and he was on his twentieth lap of the room when the portrait finally announced that his friends were outside.

"Thanks," he said quickly.

They trailed in one after another, all buzzing with curiosity.

"Hi Harry," Ron greeted immediately, "anything wrong, Mate?"

"Um, not exactly," Harry said slowly, "but there are some things I think you need to know, and I wanted to tell you in person rather than you finding out second hand. Let's sit down."

His three friends made their way over to the table that Harry had decided was best for this meeting and took places on three sides. Harry walked over to the fourth chair but found that he was too nervous to sit down.

"Whatever it is, Harry," Neville said warmly, "we'll understand."

Biting his lip, Harry wished fervently that he could be sure of that. It was not that he did not trust his friends; it was that he knew them very well and Ron tended to overreact, Hermione often over analysed, and Neville was far too easily shocked. He had no idea how they would take the information he had to give them.

"Well, you all know that I have certain, unusual needs," he began hesitantly as he tried to decide which explanation he had worked out to use, "it's not just the blood."

All three looked at him supportively, willing him to go on.

"You may also have noticed that I'm a little touchy when it comes to Draco Malfoy," he continued slowly, searching their faces to see if any of them would guess what he was driving.

"You've only bitten my head off twice, Harry," Ron said lightly in an attempt to break the tension.

It didn't work too well, and Harry began to pace beside the table.

"Well there's a reason for that as well," he said, plucking up his courage for what was coming next; "I'm rather possessive and he's my fourth donor."

Ron looked at if his eyes might pop out, and Harry knew there was worse to come.

"And I'm sleeping with him," he said bluntly, at a loss how else to put it.

Total silence greeted this announcement. He came to a halt, looking at them, afraid that one or all of them would storm out in disgust.

"The incubus?" Hermione asked eventually in her usual analytical manner.

"Sort of," Harry admitted quietly, feeling as if the spell might break any moment and his friends would be heading for the door, "but it's more than that. He's not what he seems, he had as little choice in this as I did."

"But, Harry," Ron said in a surprisingly calm voice, "he has the Dark Mark; the Prophet reported it, and he's under house arrest here because of it. He chose You Know Who."

It would have been so easy to tell them the lies that he, Draco and Snape had worked out for the Ministry and the press, to pretend that it was far less complicated than it was, but Harry did not want to lie to his friends.

"He didn't have much choice," he said, fighting down the emotions that threatened to wipe out his control and send him running for the bathroom. "He took the mark willingly, he told me as much, but it was that or face Voldemort's wrath. What he didn't realise at the time was that Voldemort wanted more than another Death Eater."

He paused, knowing that they had to know this to understand, but feeling strangely like a betrayer for telling anyone something so personal about Draco.

"He wanted a bedmate," Harry continued eventually, "and Draco refused him. That was why he wasn't allowed back to school, Voldemort locked him up until he agreed. I was supposed to be Voldemort's revenge; wake up as a dark creature, do unspeakable things to Draco and then kill him. He looked after me when I first woke up, before the magic changed me, and then I just took him when I woke up a second time. I told his mum to take him and leave when I went after Voldemort, but he came back for me, I still don't understand why. There's something between us that I can't explain; he should hate me, but he doesn't."

Ron was definitely having trouble with the whole idea, Harry could tell, but he also knew that his friend was trying. There was a deep crease in his best friend's forehead as Ron sorted through his thoughts.

"So, all the time he was a Death Eater he was locked up?" Neville asked for clarification.

Harry nodded.

"And he didn't really choose to join Voldemort," his friend continued to rationalise calmly, "he was pushed into it, it was expected of him."

Of all three Harry knew Neville understood family pressures the best, after all he was very much expected to be certain things by his grandmother.

"So, he's innocent," Neville concluded calmly.

Harry could have cried at his friend's simple logic. Ron looked at Neville as if he had grown another head. The frown slowly cleared, however, and then Ron looked back at Harry. His best friend was not yet ready to speak, but the disbelief was gone from Ron's gaze.

"That's why we're going to lie to the Ministry," Harry said eventually and glanced around at all three again.

"The truth of it is that I thought the same as you until I woke up after Voldemort took me, but that's not what we're telling the Ministry, or they will try and make an example of Draco because his father is dead."

All three were true Gryffindors and they understood the sentiment of what was right rather than what was to the letter of the law.

"He did have the Dark Mark," Harry said evenly, "but it's not the same anymore."

"But I thought the Dark Mark was impervious to known magic," Hermione said straight away, "it only fades with time."

"Not my magic," Harry said quietly.

That made even Hermione's eyes open slightly in shock.

"Harry, are you saying you changed Malfoy's Dark Mark?" Ron asked a little incredulously.

Wordlessly Harry nodded.

"Why? How?" Hermione was ever the inquisitive one.

"Because he's mine," Harry snapped before he could stop himself. "He never belonged to him," he finished in a softer tone.

That rather bluntly put all his cards on the table, but he couldn't do anything about it. When it came to Draco, he was very much of one mind.

"We're going to tell the Ministry it was always a fake," he explained slowly, "one that Dumbledore created. We're going to pretend that Draco and I have been together secretly since before the end of sixth year and that Dumbledore created the fake mark to prevent Draco having to join Voldemort properly. That way the Ministry will have nothing on him, they'll have to drop all charges. I just needed you to know the truth."

He looked them each in the eyes once.

"If they tried to send him to Azkaban, I don't know what I'd do," he said quietly.

Staring down at the floor he reigned in the darker thoughts this simple idea caused to stir inside him. He didn't look up until a hand covered his own where he was holding the back of the chair. He ran his eyes up Hermione's arm from where her fingers were covering his, then down her other arm to where she was holding Ron's hand and on to where Ron was holding Neville's. Harry suspected that if Neville had been able to reach, he would have found his other hand covered.

"We're with you, Harry," Hermione said firmly, "whatever we can do we will."

"You and the Ferret seems mental to me, Mate," Ron said calmly, "but you know what I'm like, give me a few weeks and it'll be like it was always this way; takes a while to get these things into my thick skull."

Harry managed a small smile at that, at least Ron recognised his strengths and weaknesses.

"As long as he doesn't hex me, I'll be fine," Neville said with a little grin.

"Thank you," Harry said his voice thick with emotion.

The tableau held for a good few seconds before Ron finally frowned again.

"Harry," he said, his voice full of curiosity rather than anything else, "how long have you preferred blokes?"

Harry just looked at him blankly.