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No Gracious Influence Shed	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 5536 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 1-No Gracious Influence Shed
- 1
Title: No Gracious Influence Shed
Pairing/Threesome: Severus/Draco/Harry, prior established Severus/Draco
Rating: R
Story notes: Angst, a bit of bondage, bottom!Harry, sex rituals, rough sex
Word count: 27,000
Summary: Severus is dying. Harry Potter can help him, but as far as Severus is concerned, death would be better. Good thing Draco is there to make him see the advantages.
Disclaimer: Characters are the property of JK Rowling, et al. This was created for fun, not for profit.
Betaed by: Linda
Author's Note: Written for the 2015 Beltane fic fest for hpstrangelove. I used her prompt about Severus being sick and Harry, who is living somewhere in the Muggle world, being the only one who can heal him. The title of this story is adapted from a poem called “The Widow’s Song” by Edward Coate Pinkney.
No Gracious Influence Shed
            Severus was convulsing again.
            Draco did what he could. He cleaned the sheets, spelling them clean of sweat and blood, and cast the charms that would ease the tightening and snapping muscles, the arching that made Severus look as if someone had tied his neck to his ankles and then lit all the bonds on fire. By now, Severus had fallen so far into the illness that the only charms that would do the business were definitely Dark.
            Then Draco stepped back, and watched.
            Severus was gagging on air. Draco cast another spell that would make sure he choked on nothing, not his tongue, not air, not spit. Then he watched again as Severus thrashed back and forth, his body jerking and straightening, jerking and straightening. Draco’s magic made sure he could not damage himself permanently, but it did nothing about the pain.
            No, there was only one person who could do something about that. And Severus had so far refused to have him anywhere near.
            Draco counted twelve minutes this time before the attack subsided—already twice as long as it had been a week ago. When Severus turned his head to the side and thrashed his tongue between his lips in shapes that echoed words, Draco went and fetched the tumbler of chilled water standing ready.
            As he carefully tipped the water down Severus’s throat, Draco murmured, “You know you need Potter. You will die if you don’t have Potter.”
            Severus said nothing—could say nothing, of course, with his throat full of water, which was one reason Draco had chosen that moment to present his case. He gave Draco a look that cut across Draco’s face like a branch when he had been walking in the forest at night. Draco looked straight back, and put the tumbler down on the table beside the bed.
            “You’ll die without him,” Draco went on. “You can only exist to go on hating him if you yield and ask for his help before that.”
            Severus moved his tongue around in his mouth, deliberately cooling and soothing it and swallowing the water. He had told Draco before that his tongue felt as though someone was pressing a brand down on it. The only sensation he had felt that was comparable was being Marked.
            Draco would have summoned Potter, or at least set out to find him, since no one had seen the bespectacled git since the war, at that point. But Draco had a great helping of common sense. Severus had tried to make up for his own lack of it with a genius at Potions.
            It hadn’t worked.
            Draco stood there with his arms folded until Severus focused on him and murmured, “I would rather have my pride and dignity.”
            “Yes,” Draco said at once, “because this is such a dignified way to die.”
            Severus gave another jerk, and Draco started forwards, but then he realized that Severus was trying to get off the bed instead of having a new convulsion. Draco stepped back and waited. Severus wasn’t against Draco helping him while he was actually in the throes of the disease, because the only thing he might hate more than calling on Potter for help was surviving crippled because of the tremors running through his body.
            But he was going to cripple himself on his own time, Draco thought cynically. Severus managed to limp out of bed and make his way towards the bathroom, and Draco let him go, making sure there was no residue left behind on the sheets. Severus bled from the ears and eyes only, but still, blood could get smeared in a dozen different places when his body was writhing around on the bed like that.
            Draco waited for the bathroom door to shut and the water to start running before he summoned the old, folded letter he’d kept from years before.
            It was a letter from Granger—she had changed her name since then, but Draco was always going to think of her the same way, if only to annoy her—in response to Draco’s query about getting his hawthorn wand back from Potter. Granger had been the one to send the wand back, and tell Draco that Potter had left for parts unknown.
            He didn’t even want us to know where he was going, Granger’s neat handwriting complained. Only somewhere in the Muggle world, that was all he said. And he said that he might contact us at some point, but he didn’t tell us when. “When he was settled.” Did you ever hear anything so vague?
            Draco curled his lip. He thought, sometimes, that Granger forgot she wasn’t writing to a friend when she got on a roll. But it was at least a shallow clue, a fragile one, that he could use to seek out Potter. He had probably settled down somewhere by now—even Potter couldn’t wander for eight years uninterrupted, Draco thought—and sent an owl to let his friends know where he was. Draco would go through the Weasleys and Granger if he had to.
            He would do anything, if it meant that Severus lived past his own stubbornness.
            The water shut off. Draco tucked the letter in his pocket. He had business at the Ministry tomorrow, the renewal of the license that let him run the apothecary where he sold Severus’s potions. It would make a convenient excuse to step down the corridor to Grangers office and ask her the question.
            Severus gave a deep groan from the bathroom.
            Draco had learned the hard way not to respond. He simply clenched his hands and turned away, busying himself with the paperwork for the license renewal.
            Severus might hate him for finding Potter and saving his life, but that he would exist to hate Draco was the whole point.
*
            Severus could still remember the first day when Draco had discovered it was Potter he needed to make his existence bearable.
            Draco had come back from the Hogwarts library with a set mouth, the twin lines that dominated his face in moments of fury cutting their way down beside his nose to his lips. He had picked Severus up from the floor and put him back in his bed. That was before Severus had made it clear to him that he would rather die in his own way, sans help of any kind.
            But Draco had known before the day was out.
            Draco had sat down beside the bed and stared at him. Severus stared back, keeping his hands motionless. He wanted to reach out and slap an answer from Draco, but it was never a good idea to hurry Draco when he looked like that. Severus contented himself with a blank stare which Draco could take as inquiring if he wished to.
            Draco finally leaned back in his chair and said, flatly, “Your illness is connected to the way that you survived Nagini’s poison.”
            Severus could not prevent his face from flickering. “But I do not know how I survived.” He had simply awakened on the floor of the Shrieking Shack, with a large pool of blood around him and signs that someone had come and looked at him—footprints in the blood. But he had no idea who might have been there, and the person must have believed he was dead anyway, since they had left again. Severus had decided that his long years of testing experimental potions on himself had given him the edge he needed to beat back the venom.
            In all the years since, there had been no reason to doubt that, no hypothesis that he needed to test.
            But now Draco only shook his head and said, “I’ve found out.”
            There was another heavy silence, and Severus finally heaved and stretched himself against it the way he would have against a table that had fallen on his head during one of Longbottom’s attempts to level the dungeons at Hogwarts. “Are you going to tell me, or sit there staring portentously at me until death and the wisdom it presumably brings with it does?”
            “This answer didn’t come out of books,” Draco said. “I finally asked a few people who had been at Hogwarts during the final battle and who fought near the Shrieking Shack. They saw someone come out of it who wasn’t recorded officially as being there.”
            “Who?” Severus resolved to let the silence, if one resulted from his question, last no longer than a minute before he strangled Draco.
            “Harry Potter.”
            Severus reared back in his bed the way he would have backed away from Nagini if he could have. But Draco simply sat there, a flat rock in the smoothly-flowing stream of Severus’s reality, and recited facts in an equally flat voice.
            “He was asking around about you after the battle, asking if anyone had seen to your body. They mostly didn’t know you were dead, so his questions were useless. Then he went back to the Shack, and disappeared into it—he must have taken the tunnel under the Whomping Willow, because only one person saw him under the tree, and no one saw him actually go into the building. But several people saw him come out, and they said he looked drained.”
            “Of course he did,” Severus snarled softly. “He had just defeated the Dark Lord—”
            “More drained than that,” said Draco, shaking his head. “A lot of people sold their memories of the battle to the Daily Prophet, as you know, and so even more people saw the pictures in the papers and read the descriptions. They said that he came out of the Shrieking Shack looking white and shaking and with blood running down the side of his head.”
            “So? He probably hit his head when he fell in the Forbidden Forest, when the Dark Lord cursed him.”
            Draco looked at Severus with eyes that saw straight through him, and his mouth twisted up in a mocking smile. “How far are you going to push this if it means not admitting that Harry Potter helped you, Severus?” He didn’t wait for the answer, going on. “He couldn’t perform magic for the next three days, either.”
            “A consequence of the battle,” said Severus at once. That much was public knowledge, and he thought Draco was being ridiculous in connecting a well-known fact to his obscure case.
            “Was it?” Draco’s eyebrows rose in a polite arch. “But people said that he was performing cleaning spells and such right after his fight with the Dark Lord. It wasn’t until after he asked about you and visited your body that he came out drained.”
            “If I was dead, there is no way he could have brought me back,” Severus told him, low and savage. “If he had such a gift, he would have used it on his godfather.”
            “From what I understand, his godfather’s death was hardly an orthodox one that left a body behind.” Draco leaned in the way he did when he was playing chess and about to decimate Severus’s side. “Besides, there’s another factor at play in this situation that he didn’t have when he was fifteen.”
            “You are talking about the stories of Potter as the Master of Death?”
            Draco inclined his head.
            “I will not listen to nonsense.” Severus ripped himself out of the bed, and staggered. Draco was at his side in an instant, but Severus speared him with a glance that nailed his feet to the floor. “And I will not accept help. Potter’s or yours. I will die on my own terms.”
            So Draco learned to keep his hands to himself, and his concern. The illness grew worse, and as he leaned now on the loo and struggled to lift his head enough to vomit into it, Severus knew he would die in a few days. Perhaps a week. He had made a will that left his brewing equipment, finished potions, and scant store of money to Draco. There was nothing else to be done.
            He would die with pride. He knew that Draco thought there was little pride to be had in the way Severus was suffering, but at least he knew no Potter would ease it. There was that much to be said for it.
            His stomach surged, and he managed to reach the toilet before he vomited. But barely.
*
            The nice thing about living as a Muggle in London, Harry found, was that no one looked at him. No one stopped and stared at his scar, even the rare times that someone noticed it, and no one asked him when he was going to do something with his life, and no one thought that he was a celebrity worth chasing with cameras and quills.
            It confirmed a very old belief that had squirmed in the center of his chest when people in the wizarding world stared at him with awe, that he wasn’t worth looking at that way. That if it wasn’t for his scar and his story, no one would have noticed him there, either. Or only the people like Ron and Hermione who were interested in him on his own merits.
            It had been bleak at first. Now it was a comfort.
            Harry had a small flat that wasn’t all that far from the entrance to Diagon Alley, so he could go and visit under heavy disguises when he absolutely had to have a sense of magic around him. There were no wards on his flat. No one knew he was there, except for people he absolutely trusted. He barely even carried his wand anymore, unless for some reason he had to be outside at night and get through a dangerous part of London by himself. It was sort of nice, and his palm no longer felt empty the way it had in the first days he was dwelling here.
            He had worked a variety of small jobs: cleaning things, repairing things, selling food, tending customers who needed help making up their minds about books or newspapers or the proper order to see the sights in. Harry had never formed any permanent friendships as a result of those jobs, but he had a lot of casual acquaintances, people who wouldn’t be surprised to see him come into the pub six months later, and would be happy enough to talk to him.
            It was what he wanted.
            Harry hadn’t known what he wanted when he left the wizarding world at the end of the war. He had thought living in the Muggle world would be a temporary thing, but at least it should teach him what his desires were.
            He had learned. To have some contact with magic, the way he did when his friends visited, but not to be permanently surrounded by it. To have peace, and quiet. Harry reckoned that growing up in the Muggle world had marked him in more ways than one.
            If he didn’t have someone around to bully him or call him a freak, he was a Muggle. A good one. An insignificant one, different from his neighbors only in having money to fall back on if he lost his job.
            He woke up and looked out his window on a regular basis in the morning. His view was nothing spectacular, stone and brick and cobblestones and smoke, but he could watch the sunlight fall across it, or the rain, and be soothed.
            Harry reckoned that not many other people would have been content with this kind of life, but not many other people had had seven years so crowded with exciting incident, either. He would relax and think while he could, and maybe someday he would go back to that kind of life. Ron had informed him that the Auror Department would at least offer him a place if he ever wanted it.
            Harry had smiled back, and said he’d think about it. What he thought right now was that he was rusty and out of practice at dodging around chasing people with a wand, and he would have to find something else to keep him busy if he ever lost his taste for calmness and a life slipping past without a ripple and went back to the wizarding world.
            His life slipped past like that, each day no different from any other in the same way that a drop of water wasn’t different from any other drop of water, and he ate and worked and slept his way through them, mind silent and content.
            Then one day he opened the door to his flat, and Malfoy was there.
*
            It had been ridiculously easy to get into Potter’s place. He didn’t even have charms holding the door shut.
            Draco closed it noiselessly behind him and stared around. Potter had plain white curtains on the windows, a plain blue broken-down couch in front of a machine that Draco supposed was the telly, rugs that looked as if they’d come from a shipwreck, and a few pictures on the walls. All of them seemed to be of random corners of the city that Draco didn’t know, except for one that depicted a river sliding through green countryside. No moving photographs, no portraits, no convenient little spells that would ease the chores of everyday living. No house-elves, either, but that one was less of a surprise, given that Granger was his friend.
            Draco’s lip curled in spite of himself. Such pedestrian surroundings for the Master of Death.
            But from what Granger had told him when Draco had gone to her and spun his story of life and death and wanting to bring Potter back to his rightful heritage, that was the exact kind of surroundings that this Master of Death was likely to choose. He was simply incapable of coping with his fame, Granger had said with soft tears rolling down her face—and Draco wasn’t entirely sure if they were because of what he had told her about Severus or because of Potter—and he wanted to be ordinary.
            Draco snorted. Of course he did. And he still retained the Deathly Hallows and the power of visiting the wizarding world every once in a while, for the times when he didn’t. His tragic exile didn’t impress Draco as either tragedy or exile.
            He waited, leaning against the wall, until Potter scraped the lock open with a key and stepped in, and then froze, staring at him.
            Draco looked back with his lip curling the way it had when he first saw the flat. Merlin, Potter looked so soft it made him sick. His hair was tousled, and he wore utterly ordinary Muggle clothing—or so Draco assumed, since Potter was worried about making splashes in their world—that were blue and black and seemed to be made of creaky cloth. And he didn’t carry a wand. His hand fluttered at his side for a second when he saw Draco, but he didn’t have anything there to draw.
            The Harry Potter I knew would laugh in this one’s face.
            Draco took a deep breath to swallow his contempt. He wouldn’t get Potter to come with him if he antagonized him immediately.
            Later antagonism was a possibility, especially if he resisted, but not right away.
            “What are you doing here?” Potter croaked the words, his hand groping for something and only coming up with a switch that flooded the room with light. Draco blinked a little. At least that explained how he could function without a fireplace.
            “Because Severus is sick,” Draco said at once. “I think it has something to do with the way you brought him back from the dead. You have to fix it.”
            Potter reeled back as though Draco had punched him instead of simply shown up in his home, and then shook his head frantically. “No,” he said. “I didn’t—I brought him back without any illness or anything. It can’t be related to that. I’m sorry if he’s sick, but I can’t do anything. I’m not a doctor.”
            Draco stared at him. Then he recognized the word for a Muggle Healer, and he snorted. “It has to be related to that. It isn’t a natural sickness.”
            “How do you know?” Potter folded his arms. “I doubt you’re a doctor, either.”
            “Healer,” Draco broke out, unable not to. “The word is Healer.”
            “Not to a Muggle, it isn’t.”
            “You’re not a bloody Muggle.” It took a lot for Draco not to simply rush forwards and pin Potter to the wall, then. He managed to soothe his feelings by taking a few rapid, deep breaths, but it was difficult. “Listen. The symptoms are convulsions, pain, his body shaking as though he’s trying to shed all his skin, vomiting, sweating, and bleeding. Nothing the Healers have seen is like it. And his magic—it sways all around him in this invisible, crackling curtain.” That was a symptom that Draco didn’t even know if Severus had noticed, because he was always rather busy with other things when the attacks happened. “I performed a ritual last week that he didn’t know I was doing. His magic is—broken. Incomplete. It’s reaching out for something.”
            Potter’s eyes widened, and Draco smiled, grim certainty stabbing him in the gut. Yes, that was what he had thought. Potter knew bloody good and well what this was about, and his attempts to pretend that he didn’t were pathetic.
            “How do you know it’s not reaching for yours?” Potter snapped. “I mean, you’re sleeping with him or something, right? That’s what Hermione said once when she visited—”
            “I’m flattered that you care enough to listen to reports on my movements,” said Draco dryly. “But no, I would have been able to create a bond with him easily enough if it was mine it was seeking. The bond didn’t take. His magic is reaching for yours, Potter. Come back and fix whatever you didn’t heal.”
            Potter lifted his head, and although Draco felt the familiar hatred as the equally familiar stubborn fire flowed into Potter’s eyes, he also felt approval warming him like a hand on his belly. Yes.
            “Yes. Fine,” said Potter, clipped. “I didn’t know exactly what I was doing, I just wished, and then the Resurrection Stone showed up out of nowhere and I didn’t even know how to wield it, I just went with what felt right. So I’ll come back and give Snape my magic. That should be enough to fill in the holes in his power, right? Or whatever the problem is. That should solve it.”
            Draco stared at him. “What do you mean by give him your magic?”
            “I mean,” said Potter, with exaggerated patience, “I don’t have much use for my magic on a day-to-day basis. It ought to be possible to master it, to transfer the Deathly Hallows to him if nothing else. I know my magic is tied to the bloody things. Give him the Cloak and the wand and the Stone, and that ought to make my power go to him. I get rid of something that’s increasingly useless to me, Snape gets his illness fixed, problem solved.”
            Draco clenched his hands into fists and breathed. He had to breathe. He was going to grab Potter and shake him otherwise, and that wouldn’t be conducive to the point that he wanted to make.
            Of course, what point had he come to make except that Potter had to accompany him back to Severus and do something to help him? Draco couldn’t understand the nausea that churned around in his gut. Wasn’t this what he had wanted? Didn’t he want Potter to agree and come back to the wizarding world long enough to end this illness?
            Hadn’t he done this knowing Severus wouldn’t thank him? Why should he question Potter’s dedication to the task, or his means of doing it, or whatever really troubled him? He should accept it and they should be on their way.
            But he couldn’t, and he stalked up to Potter so that his nose was only a few breaths away from Potter’s. Potter blinked at him and raised a hand as though he would plant it in Draco’s chest and shove him back. That only infuriated Draco all the more, and he lashed out with one hand and grabbed Potter’s wrist.
            Potter shouldn’t have looked as though he was going to bloody punch Draco like a bloody Muggle. He should have used a wand.
            “A useless sacrifice,” Draco whispered harshly. “And so simple a one. You really think that you’ll hand over the Deathly Hallows and you’ll be free to go? Doesn’t the Elder Wand usually require the death of its previous master?”
            “It didn’t with you,” Potter said, his eyes narrow with dislike. “I conquered your other wand and it came along.”
            That was true, and Draco had forgotten it. It only made him feel as though he wanted to claw his own skin off to wake Potter up. Of course, Potter would probably leap back and shriek like a baby at the sight of a bloody, flayed Draco, so Draco tried to keep his tone level and even and explain what he meant.
            “We need some other way to cure Severus than you simply handing over the Deathly Hallows,” he said, and held Potter’s gaze. “Are you going to come with me if I say that? Or do you want to stay away from a man who’s dying because of your mistake and simply hand me three priceless artifacts and hope that helps? Somehow?”
            Potter’s nostrils flared, and he looked at the wall, at the paintings. Draco expected a yell or a leap for his throat, but Potter actually seemed to find something in the pictures that helped him. He turned back with a flat expression. “Fine. Let’s go find some way to do this.”
            Draco waited as Potter fetched the Elder Wand, the Cloak, and the Stone from a series of desk drawers in the next room. It looked as boring and ordinary as the one out here. Draco gritted his teeth.
            Potter came out with the Cloak draped over his arm, the Stone and Wand clutched in his hands, and started towards the door. Draco snapped, “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
            “Three of the priceless artifacts,” said Potter, and stared at him. “What?”
            “Your wand.” Granger had told him that Potter refused to use the Elder Wand, and had been using the holly and phoenix feather one on any trips that he made to the wizarding world. Draco wasn’t about to let Potter leave it behind.
            For—reasons that were hard to articulate. But he didn’t need to articulate them. He needed to get Potter back to their world and fix Severus. That was the only important thing. If Potter had to come all the way back to his flat to get his bloody wand when he needed it for some simple ritual spell, Draco would strangle him.
            “Oh,” said Potter, and shrugged, and went into the other room to get it again, instead of simply Summoning it to him.
            Draco dug his nails into his wrist, and imagined that it was Potter’s flesh instead. Potter eyed him curiously as he came back through the door, but didn’t comment.
            Draco took a firm grip on Potter’s arm as they left. For all he knew, Potter hadn’t Apparated in years, and he would Splinch them if he tried.
            Of course, a moment later it occurred to Draco that he would have had to do the Side-Along anyway, because Potter had not the slightest idea where Draco and Severus were living. But the reasoning didn’t please him as much as the first idea did, and he clung grimly to it even as they flickered and tumbled through time and space and darkness.
*
            “No. I don’t want him. Take him away.”
            To Severus’s astonishment, his sharp words didn’t make Draco back off. He simply walked into the room, gave Severus a single, calm look, and turned around to take the things Potter was carrying away from him and put them down on a table in the center of the room that Severus used for ingredient preparation when his hands weren’t shaking too badly to attempt it.
            Severus recognized the starry shimmer of the Potter Invisibility Cloak, and tensed. How many times would a Potter use the bloody thing to torment him?
            “I’m glad you don’t want him, because I’m the only one you should want.” Draco turned and stared at him. “But you’re going to endure his presence until we find a cure. I’m not watching you die of something that could easily be prevented.” He turned towards Potter. “Use the Hallows to reenact what you did to him.”
            Severus lifted a protesting arm, but he had been convulsing most of the morning and he knew he couldn’t hold Potter back. Luckily, Potter seemed to have no desire to approach the bed in a nearer fashion. He gave Severus a cautious look and mumbled, “I don’t remember. I was there with two of them, and then the Stone showed up, and I just sort of—wished him back to life.”
            Severus gave Draco a grim smile. He knew Draco had done this for him, but Draco had also ignored his express wishes in order to do so, and he deserved to lose.
            Draco took a single step forwards, and then stopped. His eyes were intent. Severus dragged himself up to a sitting position against his pillow. He knew that look. It was the same one Draco had adopted when the Ministry had tried to deny them a license to operate the apothecary in Diagon Alley.
            And they had got the apothecary. Severus had himself been impressed by how ruthless Draco was willing to be in pursuit of his goals.
            Now, he wasn’t impressed as much as apprehensive.
            “Draco,” he said quietly. Draco turned towards him. His eyes were still calm, still intent. “You need to think about what you are doing here. If he can’t do it, that is no shame on you.”
            Potter nodded fervently. Severus snorted. He doubted Potter cared that much about Draco’s self-esteem. Instead, he would be glad to be spared the work of setting up whatever he had done to Severus back in the Shrieking Shack.
            “But you still said you wished him back to life,” said Draco, his voice as soft as the murmur of underground water.
            Potter blinked. “Yeah. But I don’t know how.”
            Severus had seen where Draco was going, and intervened as quickly as he could. “Draco, you cannot use books on wish magic to try and recreate it. You do not know what Potter did. Wish magic is unreliable. The Hallows may have interfered unpredictably. You cannot—you cannot do this.”
            Draco gave him a level glance. “Thank you for listing all the possible objections so I can take care of them now. I can use the books. You’re too weak to stop me. I know that Potter wished you back to life. Wish magic is no more unreliable than other methods we’ve already tried. And the Hallows are here, so they might as well interfere in the other direction.” He turned and walked across the drawing room to the shelves, taking off one of the books that Severus knew mentioned wish magic.
            “What is wish magic?” Potter asked, looking bewildered.
            “Accidental magic in adults,” said Draco, flipping through pages and pausing to look at one before he shook his head and went on. “They don’t have anything else to call it.”
            “A name for any time a magical miracle happens and they don’t understand it,” Severus snapped. “We cannot use it because it’s a collection of unrelated incidents. A Healing that wasn’t supposed to succeed, a ritual that relied on strength of will and happened the way it was supposed to despite a coward conducting it, and the rebounding of the Killing Curse that your mother caused were all supposed to be wish magic.”
            “There are other ways to think of it,” said Draco, and gave Severus a single glance from luminous eyes before he went back to the book.
            Potter cleared his throat uneasily. Severus glanced at him. He once would have thought it was impossible that the savior of the wizarding world could look ordinary, but Potter managed with Muggle jeans and a loose, shapeless jumper. It didn’t even look like the jumpers that Molly knitted for her children. Severus glanced away.
            “I don’t understand why we can’t try the solution that you and I discussed, Malfoy,” said Potter. But Draco went on gazing absorbed into the book, so Potter winced and turned to Severus. “I thought I would give you the Hallows. Or lose a duel with you for the Elder Wand, if I had to transfer that one that way.”
            Severus couldn’t help his stare from returning to Potter, little though he deserved the attention. “What? Why?”
            “Because my magic is tied to the Hallows, and Malfoy said your magic has a hole in it.” Potter met his gaze squarely. “So if I gave you the Hallows, then my magic would follow, and probably patch the hole. Someone should benefit from the Hallows, anyway. All they ever do is sit around my flat.”
            “And your magic does the same?” Severus shut his eyes. A headache was beginning to throb behind them, sending spiking tendrils of pain over his temples and down the sides of his neck.
            “Basically,” said Potter, in a sort of calm, sad tone that made Severus at least able to listen to him, although not to look at him. “What good is a wizard who doesn’t use his wand or brew potions or visit Diagon Alley on a regular basis? I don’t really want or need my power. If I gave it to you, then at least it would be doing something.”
            Severus opened his eyes with a snarl. The headache was becoming the sort of tremble that would turn into a convulsion in seconds, which meant he had only those seconds to say the necessary words.
            “Potter, always so eager to die a martyr,” he whispered. “Did you not know that wizards who lose their magic become vegetables?”
            Potter stared at him. “What? But there are Squibs—”
            “Who were born without their magic, stupid boy,” Severus hissed. The trembling made its way into his chest, and his heart began to leap and throb. He had to drop down on the bed, but he managed it without snapping his teeth shut on his tongue, which had happened more times than he cared to count. “Not like someone who was, and—”
            He began to shake. Draco was by his side at once, book on wish magic dangling forgotten from his hand, casting the necessary spells that would keep Severus’s joints and muscles from snapping.
            Severus turned an appealing gaze on him. Draco could understand him without the need of words, after so long together. Do not condemn me to drag out my dying moments arguing with an idiot.
            “Potter, outside,” said Draco. For a moment, Potter opened his mouth as if he would protest, but then hesitated, sighed, and nodded a little. At least he turned around and left, which was more than Severus had thought he would do.
            Severus closed his eyes and tilted his head back. His entire body was vibrating with shivers. He waited for the moment when pain would begin to flow and flower through him, and he would be left with nothing except the wish for death.
            The pain didn’t increase, however. It maintained itself, steady and humming through his muscles, for longer than usual, but he never felt as though his joints were about to yank themselves out of their sockets. Severus opened his eyes and breathed at the ceiling, and waved a hand at Draco when he would have cast the spell that kept Severus from choking.
            Draco paused and watched him. He said nothing. He didn’t need to. Severus didn’t even have to meet his eyes, they had known each other for so long. He knew that Draco was thinking, because it was the same thing he was thinking: Bringing Potter here had some positive effect on the illness.
            The thought that simply having Potter in the next room might be enough to let him overcome the pain, when nothing he had done was sufficient, enraged Severus. He ground his teeth against each other for a second, and then sat up with a jerk. Draco didn’t move towards the bed, only watched him attentively.
            “Send him away,” said Severus.
            “No.”
            Severus paused, waited to make sure he would be able to make the movement he wanted because the tremors were subsiding, and turned. Draco’s eyes were still, fathomless, the way Severus had sometimes seen them when he was reading a new book on potions. He watched Severus that way now.
            But I am not a book on potions. Severus bared his teeth. “I will choose to die in my own way. You told me once that you would respect my wishes.”
            “Irrelevant, when you don’t need to die,” said Draco, not turning a hair.
            “You know that Potter sacrificing his Hallows and his magic would only make us appear criminals in the eyes of the wizarding world,” Severus snapped. “I will not live a life on the run.”
            “No,” said Draco. “I don’t want to, either.”
            Severus waited. He could have snarled, he supposed, but he didn’t have a deep enough chest for the sound he would have needed to make to express his emotions. And Draco waited, and his patience, with Potter in the next room, was greater than Severus’s.
            “If not live a life on the run and not take Potter’s magic,” Severus whispered, “what do you suggest I do?”
            “Cooperate with me,” Draco said at once. “I thought of having Potter do the same thing with the Deathly Hallows that he did to save your life in the Shrieking Shack, but he doesn’t remember what he did, wish magic is notoriously unreliable anyway, and even if it worked, it might not be permanent.” He gestured to Severus’s feet, which were still vibrating, in what he probably thought was an eloquent statement.
            Severus clenched his teeth to keep from screaming. “And you think that Potter would be content to stay in the spare room for the rest of his life?”
            “No,’ said Draco again, at once. Severus eased back against his pillow. Draco, it seemed, had an actual plan, not simply something he hoped would work. “I want to come up with a way to make sure he stays with us in spirit. And that’s easily enough done.”
            He led Severus’s gaze across the room to a different section of the bookshelves. A section that Severus often thought of as simply indulging Draco’s academic curiosity, because such esoteric subjects were impossible to use in day-to-day life.
            “No,” said Severus at once.
            “There’s been too much use of that word,” Draco said. “So I will make an affirmative answer: Yes.”
            “You cannot make the decision for me,” said Severus. “You cannot decide how I will die.”
            “I’m not,” said Draco, and Severus’s heart lifted winged for a single second, until Draco added, “I’m making the decision as to how you’ll live.”
            Severus said nothing for a long moment. Draco had fetched one of the books that covered the shelves in such profusion and was flipping through it, his lips pursed into a slight frown. Severus could hope that he would not find what he was looking for, at least. While numerous sorts of rituals existed, they were usually intended for allies, friends, lovers, or at least wizards who had come together specifically to solve a problem. There was none, Severus thought, that would fit the situation that consumed him.
            The tremors had faded. Severus let his head fall back against the pillow and rested. He knew it was Potter’s presence that had made the sickness less.
            He did not intend to let that change his decision.
*
            “Outside” turned out to be a tiny, sheltered little valley, which made the stone house standing in the middle of it seem like a boulder detached from the mountains. Harry stood for a long second with his head tilted back, watching light slowly leak away from the heights and drip down the walls of rock, before he sighed and walked around the house.
            There were gardens on every side, many of them containing spiky plants that were probably Potions ingredients. Harry shook his head. London wasn’t devoid of gardens like that, but he hadn’t seen them in a long time, and they were—strange to him.
            I really have become a Muggle.
            Harry sat down on a boulder with a small dip in it that he thought someone had probably placed there on purpose to watch the sunset. The location was too perfect. He could see the sun edging its way down between two similar dips in the mountainside. Harry traced a finger over the jagged edges of the stone as he thought.
            He hadn’t known giving up his magic would cause him to become a vegetable. If that wasn’t the case, he would have done it. Snape needed it more than he did, and magic honestly wasn’t much use to Harry anymore. If he wanted to visit Diagon Alley on occasion, he knew one of his friends would come and take him. And they would come to visit him or bring him to their houses any time he wanted. Harry thought even Squibs could still travel by Floo and Side-Along Apparition.
            He did want to live, though. What Ron and Hermione, and now Snape and Malfoy, didn’t seem to realize was that he simply wanted a different sort of life than the one he would have if he stayed in the wizarding world.
            “Potter.”
            Harry started and glanced over his shoulder. Malfoy was standing in the back doorway of the house, which Harry hadn’t even realized the house contained. The rough stone walls had looked seamless from this side.
            “Did you—convince him to accept help?” Harry hadn’t the least idea how he would help Snape if he couldn’t give him his magic, so he didn’t know how to phrase it any better than that. He sat up, swiping bits of dirt and rock off his arse.
            “I didn’t give him a choice.” Malfoy strode down a little path between two sides of the herb garden that Harry hadn’t noticed before, either, and grabbed his wrist. Harry bit his tongue. He still felt a bit guilty for not realizing that bringing Snape back to life like that could have side-effects.
            But when Malfoy gazed at him critically and added “I’m not giving you a choice, either,” something in him snapped.
            “Too bad, because there are things I’m not willing to do,” he said, and flung Malfoy’s hold on his wrist off with a little twist of his shoulder. Malfoy stared at him, maybe because he thought no one had the right to do that sort of thing to him without Auror training, and Harry sneered at him. “I was willing to give up my magic. Not march down the road to whatever Dark solution you’ve dreamed up.”
            Malfoy opened his mouth. Harry thought he would release some kind of blistering tirade about how much of an idiot Harry was, but instead, he simply laughed, soft and soundless, shaking his head and looking as though Harry was one of the most amusing things he’d ever seen.
            “You’re willing to become a vegetable,” Malfoy said. “But not to use Dark Arts. The ritual I found is perfect for you, then.”
            “I’m not willing to become a vegetable now,” Harry snapped. “Don’t you listen to anything I’m saying?”
            “When your moving mouth is productive of sense, then perhaps I will,” Malfoy replied coolly, strutting towards the door. “I’ve found a ritual, Potter. Severus can’t deny that your presence made him feel better. He didn’t have as many convulsions as he usually does. But your skinny arse can’t be here all the time. So I’ve found a ritual—”
            “You’re starting to repeat yourself,” Harry snarled at his back.
            Malfoy turned around and balanced himself against the stone wall with one leg kicked back. His face still looked oddly hilarious, eyes blazing and lips parted, but his eyes caught Harry’s and didn’t let them go. “You were the one who brought Severus back to life, Potter. I’d assumed you would be willing to undo the mistakes you made so he would have some chance at a normal life. My mistake, this time. You can fuck off and go back to the Muggle world you love so much.”
            A rush of prickling shame made Harry flush, and he glanced away. “You don’t understand, Malfoy,” he whispered harshly. “Do you think it’s that simple? I can’t just fuck off because I do understand I made a mistake. But Snape doesn’t seem like he’s willing to accept my help. I can’t do it if he doesn’t want it.”
            Malfoy gave him a cold, patient smile. “If I had listened exclusively to what Severus wanted in the past few years,” he answered, “I wouldn’t have opened an apothecary shop, because he was convinced it would be too expensive. I wouldn’t have asked him to brew potions for me, because he was convinced that his brewing skill had deserted him before the war after months of no practice as Headmaster of Hogwarts. I wouldn’t have become his lover, because he was convinced he was too old for me and had done too much to me for me to forgive.”
            Harry choked. “L-lover?” He had known, or he hadn’t not known, and it made sense, but—
            “You two are akin, I swear,” said Malfoy, and rolled his eyes as Harry gaped at him. “Both with the exact same reaction.” He turned his back. “Come with me. There’s a way you can make up for your mistake, and it doesn’t even involve you spending time with us for the rest of your life.”
            Harry followed, head still twitching from the sheer force with which he shook it. No, there had to be some mistake somewhere, something Malfoy hadn’t considered. Harry couldn’t simply show up and repair the mistake and go away again.
            Snape couldn’t want it. Probably Snape did want to live, but not at the expense of Harry’s help. Just the way that there were still some things Harry enjoyed about magic, but he didn’t want to spend time in the wizarding world being gaped at and pointed at as the price of it.
            You two are akin, I swear.
            Harry swallowed and lifted his chin as he walked behind Malfoy into the house. No. He was not going to prove Malfoy right. He would do what he needed to do, and go. If it was a ritual with predefined instructions, then it sounded simple enough. He might be able to save Snape’s life and make up for his mistake without changing anything else.
            And more than almost anything he could think of, Harry didn’t want to make another change.
*
            Draco read through the ritual once more, moving his lips gently, and not caring if Potter or Severus saw him doing so. Severus wasn’t in the right frame of mind to object right now, anyway. He lay in the middle of his bed and glared at Draco as hard as he could, and that was hardly going to make Draco change his mind.
            Potter stood by the bookshelves, glancing back and forth as if he could read their contents through the spines and tell what Draco had in mind. But Draco was pretty sure that only this book had the proper ritual.
            They would probably explode when he explained it, Draco thought cynically. He picked up his wand and held it ready as he tucked the book under his arm, and both Severus’s and Potter’s eyes came back to him.
            “Listen,” said Draco. “We need a ritual that gives us the effect of Potter’s presence, but not his actual presence, since both of you find that objectionable.”
            Potter snorted. “Don’t tell me that you don’t, Malfoy.”
            Draco shrugged a shoulder. Honestly, he didn’t know what he found objectionable at the moment. All his concern was for Severus and making sure he survived his illness. He could still feel contempt for Potter’s shitty flat if he was standing in it, but he wasn’t right now. “I don’t think physical presence is needed, though, because Severus didn’t get worse when Potter went outside and further from him.” He was looking between the two of them now, at a point in the air, speaking calmly. “We need only a sort of spiritual presence. That means a bonding ritual.”
            “No—”
            “Draco, you will not—”
            “Silencio, Silencio,” said Draco, twice in a row, and went on with great satisfaction. “The ritual I found is complex, but it only needs to be done once. And it will prevent any further illness or Potter from needing to spend all his time with us, either, if he wants. So.”
            Potter’s brow was furrowed, and he looked as if he might not have said anything even if the restriction was lifted from his mouth. Severus, of course, was practically foaming. Draco considerately ended the spell, and, out of equal consideration for himself, stepped back out of foam-spraying range.
            “I will not share something as intimate as a bond with Harry Potter,” Snape snarled. Potter’s eyes went to him, but the expression in them didn’t change. Potter seemed to be seriously thinking about it, Draco thought. At least he hoped so. That would leave him with only one ranting, screaming person to calm down. “You ought to know that, Draco.”
            “You already shared one with him, because his magic, or the Hallows, whatever you want to attribute it to, was preserving your life,” said Draco indifferently. He loved Severus, but he didn’t love this side of him, and he was going to go to battle to keep him alive, no matter what. “This time, you’ll have a different kind of bond, one that doesn’t have to falter at a moment’s notice. I think that would be enough of an incentive for you to pay attention to me.” He shrugged a little when Severus went on staring. “Maybe not.”
            Potter must have ended the spell on himself nonverbally, because he cleared his throat a second later. “This is probably the best solution,” he said.
            “Better than you as a vegetable?” Severus sneered. “At least that way, you would no longer have the capacity to torment me.”
            Potter turned away from him and towards Draco. “The reason I’ve avoided the wizarding world is because the staring and pointing and attempts at getting autographs won’t stop,” he said bluntly. “But this way, not only do you not need to come looking for me again, you won’t have any incentive to flaunt it. This is probably as good as it’s going to get.”
            “Yes, Potter, because you so hate attention,” Severus drawled.
            Potter might not have heard. He nodded to Draco. “Snape wouldn’t start falling ill again as the bond went on? It would always stay as stable as it’s going to be at the beginning?”
            “Yes,” said Draco, blinking a little. He hadn’t expected Potter to know that bonds sometimes required regular periods of renewal, at least if they came from a certain class of rituals. “If we perform it on the day that I want to perform it.”
            Potter nodded again, eyes so distant that Draco wondered what he was seeing. “Good. Then I can go back to my flat now?” He turned and looked at Draco again.
            “Running away before we can even have the discussion, Potter?” Severus asked again. His words were as soft as poison.
            “I thought I’d leave before you fretted yourself to death,” Potter told him brightly. “I didn’t think there would be any discussion if you just wanted to sit there and throw things at my head.”
            Severus drew himself up to spit something else, and Draco cut in. “You should at least hear the explanation,” he told Potter. “It’s a sex ritual.”
            Potter went pale for a second, and then shrugged and nodded. “Better than a sacrificial one,” he said.
            “You couldn’t even stand to slit a rabbit’s throat?” Severus laughed like a crow choking.
            Potter turned to face him, movements slow and deliberate. Draco caught a glimpse, then, of the man who had defeated the Dark Lord, someone he hadn’t seen in eight years. “You know as well as I do that for the kind of bond Malfoy is talking about, it would have to be more than a rabbit. I’m not sacrificing a human.”
            Draco had expected Severus to have some comeback to that, but he only stared at Potter as if he was disgusting, and said nothing else. There seemed to be no response to Potter’s declaration—not that it needed one, Draco decided abruptly a second later, since they weren’t sacrificing anyone either way.
            Before Severus could find an answer, Draco cut in as smoothly as he could. “That’s right. A sex ritual does need to take place on Beltane, however. The greatest day of fertility. That means we have a month to prepare.”
            “All right,” said Potter, and held out a steady hand. “Can I see the description of the ritual?”
            Draco pushed the book at him, tapping the page with one finger. Potter pushed his glasses up his face as if in answer, and started reading. Once, he grunted. Once, he paused and looked up at Draco. “What about the blood?”
            “Spilled once from each of our veins, into the potion we’ll brew before the ritual begins,” Draco said calmly. “Not used from anyone else or anything unwilling.”
            “Good,” said Potter. Severus snorted loud enough to wake the dead. Potter only turned another page, and paused with his head tilted absently in front of the next page. “There’s one problem we’re going to have, Malfoy,” he said. “This ritual is adaptable, a bit, but it says that a previous bond between any two of the participants has to be taken into account.”
            “Yes?” Draco asked cautiously. He didn’t understand what Potter was talking about. He knew that neither he nor Severus was bonded to anyone, and that Potter could be after years in the Muggle world defied belief.
            “You and Snape have a bond based on isolation, don’t you?” Potter looked up, and his eyes flickered once from Draco to Severus. “Your family rejected you, Malfoy. Snape, I don’t think you’re close to anyone still alive except Malfoy himself.” He drew his wand, and Draco hadn’t even begun to tense before he flicked it. “Iugum Acclaro!”
            There was a soft, complicated glow that seemed to start in Draco’s bones, and then he glanced down to see a pale red light encircling his left wrist, tying it to Severus’s right.
            “Yes, I thought so,” said Potter, nodding as if he was some learned professor and they were the hapless students. Draco did have to bite his lip severely to avoid snapping, but at least Potter went on and explained instead of leaving them in the dark, and didn’t even sound too professorial while he did it. “Your magic has reached out for each other’s and bonded you. It’s what happens when wizards or a pair of them are alone for too long without close emotional connections to anyone else magical.”
            Draco shook his head slowly. He did remember something like that being a part of his study of bonds, the one he had made when amassing these ritual books. “Okay, fine. But what does that mean for the ritual?”
            “Where have you seen this before?” Severus added before, now like a sneezing crow. “Where did you learn that spell, Potter?”
            “Ron and Hermione’s magic bonded like that when they were searching for her parents in Australia,” said Potter, without turning a hair. “They were the only two wizards within miles for months at a time, not interacting with anyone else who had magic on a regular basis, and when they found it painful to be apart after they got back to Britain, Hermione investigated why.”
            Draco opened his mouth to say that he and Severus didn’t have trouble being apart, then closed it again. Quite often, they weren’t far apart. Severus would be in the back of the shop brewing, or Draco would come home early if there were few customers. And Draco was always eager to get home at the end of the day, though he wouldn’t have attributed it to this.
            “How did your friends get themselves unbonded?” Severus demanded.
            Draco couldn’t help it; he flinched hard enough to make the glowing leash of light that tied him to Severus flicker. Severus lashed him with a glance and turned back to Potter, who was shaking his head.
            “It’s permanent,” he said. “Unless you were to have a duel to the death, or near-mortal wounding. And I don’t think you are.”
            Severus bowed his head. Draco said nothing. He turned and looked at Potter again. “You think we can’t use the ritual because of that?”
            “I know we can’t.” Potter held out the book towards him again. “You’ll need to choose another one. I don’t think a bonding ritual is a bad idea,” he added hastily, maybe seeing Draco’s anger in his furrowed brow and glittering eyes if nowhere else. “We just can’t use that particular one.”
            Draco clenched his hand into a fist for a moment, then gave a sharp snort and shook it free. “Yes, we can still use this one.”
            “I just told you—”
            “It merely means that you’ll have to bond with both of us,” said Draco relentlessly. “Both me and Severus, not Severus alone.”
            It was interesting to see the way that that made Potter sway on his feet, where just hearing about the original requirements for the ritual hadn’t. He reached out a hand as if to catch himself, but ended up weakly slapping it against the wall. He staggered and stood there when he’d recovered with his head lowered, not looking at either one of them. Draco gave him a small, nasty smile and didn’t say several cutting things that he could have.
            “There’s no other way?” Potter whispered.
            “What other way can you think of?” The leash of light that tied him to Severus was getting annoying. Draco banished it with another flick of his wand and moved toward Potter, halting about halfway between him and Severus. Maybe he should get started on making his symbolic gestures now, he thought. “A bond to both of us would mean that we could use that ritual.”
            “But you don’t need me to stabilize your magic,” said Potter grimly, and his eyes found Draco’s. There was something deep in them that Draco didn’t think was simply Potter’s stupid reluctance to use his power. “What is a bond like that going to do to you?”
            Oh, of course, Draco thought after a minute when it felt like his heart was going to stop. It’s Potter’s stupid concern for everyone interfering, as usual.
            “It’s not going to do anything more to me than it will to you,” he said. “Don’t worry about that. We’ll have the ritual, and you and I will only need as much contact as you and Severus will.”
            Potter acted like he was going to say something else for a second, but then his eyelids fluttered once, and when they came back up, there was a shutter in place across the front of his gaze. “All right. What do we need to do to prepare for the ritual?”
            “It’ll be the night of Beltane,” Draco began, brisk now. “I need you to take some of the books I have here with you and read them, so you know what’s expected of you. And we’ll need you to visit at least once every few days, to ease Severus’s pain until we get to that point. He was getting worse until you arrived…”
            He knew, as he spoke, that Severus’s eyes rested on him. He knew they would have a confrontation almost the exact moment that Draco sent Potter home.
            He didn’t mind. He was, if anything, rather looking forward to it.
*
            “A Beltane rite? A double bond?”
            Severus started his voice out low. It had more impact than he’d anticipated. It made Draco pause in shutting the door after Potter, rather than just turning around at once, and when he did turn, his head was up and his leg raised in the middle of a step like a deer startled by a sound in the forest.
            It was such moments that had first made Severus think he might have a chance with Draco. He had seen a vulnerability in him as a boy that he didn’t think anyone had, and where lay vulnerability, there lay other treasures that different people might never have seen, nor known how to value.
            “Yes,” said Draco. The vulnerability was there, Severus thought, under the surface. It was never far from the surface now, not once you knew it existed. Draco had survived a war, and the rejection by his parents once they understood he would never become a properly-married, politically-manipulating member of their society, but he had done it only because he had Severus at his side. He would have crumbled on his own.
            And knowing that, Severus abruptly decided, head clearer than it had felt in a long time, I should have known better than to think he would let me go.
            “You could have respected my wish,” Severus whispered, and he knew Draco would know they were no longer talking about the Beltane rite, which Severus had never specifically forbidden because he hadn’t thought Draco would do anything so mad.
            “I could have,” said Draco. “And watched you die. There was no other choice.” He came and stood by Severus’s bed, looking down, at the same distance he had been when the visible leash of light connected them.
            Severus made a hard gesture with one hand, and then managed to restrain himself. He simply sat up and swung his legs over the side. He was tired of lying down, and he felt more refreshed out of Potter’s presence than he ever would in it. “This would be easier if it was anyone but Potter.”
            The signs of Draco’s understanding, and his relief, were subtle; his mouth drooped slightly as though it would begin a frown, his eyes narrowed instead of widened, his hand made a gesture that wasn’t languid. “Yes. Well. There is no reason that it has to be, after we get the bond established. We don’t need to spend more time than occasional visits with him.”
            “We must spend time together,” Severus said, and reached out to catch Draco’s wrist between pinching fingers.
            Draco held his breath as if he wished to die that way until Severus added, “And perhaps we can do it without misconceptions separating us.”
            “Yes,” said Draco, that deep light shining out of him like a lantern buried at the bottom of a cave. Severus was more than content knowing no one but him had ever seen that light, or ever would. “I’d like that.”
            Severus squeezed back once more, and then began to climb out of bed.
            He had a life to live, and a light to cultivate, and a ritual to make tolerable.
*
            Harry got out of bed and walked across his bedroom until he could touch the wall. Yes, all right. He went back and lay down again. This time, he kept his eyes still and his breathing steady, doing the best he could to fall asleep that way.
            The sensation remained, anyway. The walls were pressing in on him. The room was smaller than it had been since he first rented the flat and decided that the rooms were precisely of a size to suit him, especially since he lived alone and rarely had guests over.
            Harry finally scowled and got out of bed, going to the kitchen where he kept some Firewhisky in a specially enchanted jug, a gift from Ron. He sipped it and stared at his reflection in the shiny surface of the oven.
            It wasn’t that Snape and Malfoy’s house was particularly expansive, he thought. Or that he envied their gardens with their spiky plants, or the bookshelves with lots of magical tomes, or even the rock from which you could watch the sunset. It was that—
            There was a subtle hum of something in the background when he was there. Harry would have said it was magic, except he had stopped missing magic a long time ago. Anyway, he could still go to Diagon Alley in disguise when he wanted.
            Unless it was a different kind of magic. The kind that relied on glances exchanged by two people who understood each other, hands clasped in good fellowship, bitten lips and averted eyes.
            Harry shook his head savagely. He reminded himself that he’d had the chance for companionship, a partner, if he wanted them. He was the one who had gone off to the Muggle world and told Ginny not to wait for him. And he’d deliberately kept himself distant from most Muggles, too. His dating was casual, just like his friendships. He couldn’t imagine dating someone who didn’t know about the wizarding world, and he couldn’t imagine himself revealing it, either.
            It was at least one reason he had hoped he could give up his magic. Then he could be a normal Muggle and find someone to love without worrying about it.
            But standing there with his face reflected in the stove, so that he could see at least part of the faded lightning bolt scar, his mouth full of Firewhisky and his veins singing softly with the echo of the first spells he had cast in months, he knew he wasn’t going to be normal.
            Harry closed his eyes. His greatest fear at the moment was that it might be too late for him to be anything else.
*
            They had three days of peace.
            Then Draco woke up at two in the morning as a fist thumped solidly into his back. He rolled, gathering his wand up in his hand, ready to strike out if he had to. He knew that he was breathing hard, more than he should, but he’d been startled out of a dream.
            He realized it was a nightmare when his eyes landed on Severus’s puce face, already illuminated by the faint light of his own Lumos Charm, and Draco launched into action. He’d learned a spell by necessity that would force air into someone’s body, given how dangerous some fumes were when inhaled.
            The spell seized Severus’s lungs, and Draco felt them bending, flexing, resisting more than they should have. He pumped in more air and more magic, his head turned grimly to the side so that he could breathe other air and Severus would have the fresh.
            For long moments, moments that clung to Draco’s heart like a Dementor, it didn’t work. Severus’s face was going a deeper blue color, and his arms were falling limply to the bed. His eyes were closing. He looked as if he was giving up, which was something that Draco had never seen before, not even when he knelt before the Dark Lord and had to kiss the hem of his filthy robe.
            Draco’s magic reached out, and he remembered what Potter had said, or showed them, the other day. He forced the magic along the bond that connected him and Severus.
            Severus’s magic lashed and circled around his, and the bond flared into being, so bright that it made Draco shut his eyes defensively. But he kept feeding the power, and the bond conducted it into Severus’s body. For a moment, Draco felt the continued resistance, which he reckoned was probably the remnant of the hole that needed to be patched with Potter’s magic.
            And then it bulged and rippled, and faded away to nothingness with a long hissing noise. Draco was pumping in air and power, and Severus was breathing, and Draco fell back on the pillow and lay there trembling. He wondered for a second if Potter had had to push against similar resistance when he brought Severus back to life, the resistance of death.
            Well, if he did, he didn’t bloody do it right, Draco thought savagely a second later, as he listened to Severus’s hoarse wheezing. When Draco tried to move, the bond tugged at him, and he understood. Severus would breathe only as long as Draco was right beside him, or at least within the small distance the bond implied, to keep feeding him the magic. They needed some other solution to let Draco move away.
            They needed Potter.

            Luckily, their owl was well-trained, and would come to Draco without being coaxed with treats, and he had ink and parchment and a quill in the bedside table.
*
            Harry opened his eyes to a frantic pecking on the window, and ended up grumbling as he climbed out of bed. “Yes, I’m coming—stupid bird—” he muttered as he flung open the window and let the owl in.
            It didn’t come to him right away, of course, the way that Ron and Hermione’s well-trained owls would have. Harry had to chase it around the room. It seemed it objected to a naked wizard instead of one wrapped in robes or at least pajamas, and it fluttered up into a corner of the ceiling and clung there like a bat. Harry finally used a Summoning Charm on it, and another one that conjured a soft shield on the arm and shoulder that the owl slammed into. Ignoring the attempts to injure him with beak and talon, he pried the owl loose.
            The letter was short and to to the point.
            Potter, Severus started struggling to breathe five minutes ago. Get your arse over here.
            It wasn’t signed, but then, with the reference to Snape by his first name, it didn’t need to be. Harry groaned breathlessly anyway and turned to struggle into robes. The owl was already flying out the window. It had probably been reluctant to bring the message because it was the middle of the night and it knew it wouldn’t be staying for a reply.
            That didn’t improve Harry’s temper, and he slammed out of the flat in a foul mood. Then he had to go back and get his wand, so he could Apparate. And then he found himself imagining what Malfoy would say if he admitted that, and his temper expanded until he felt as though he was carrying a spiked rock around in his chest.
            Fine. I just won’t admit it if he does ask, which he shouldn’t. Why would he care?
            And Harry vanished, refusing to admit the purr that seemed to roll through his body when he used his magic that way.
*
            Draco knew when Potter had arrived even before he heard the pounding at the door, because Severus’s breathing immediately sounded deeper and stronger, and Draco could move further away than the bond would ordinarily permit.
            Draco smoothly and quietly unlocked the door with a spell. He hoped Potter would have the sense to come in on his own, and it seemed he did. Draco heard someone picking their way through an unfamiliar dark room, a stumble, a curse, and then the soft whispered incantation that Potter used to cast a Lumos on his own wand. Draco watched with half-lidded eyes as he found his way up to the bed and bent over Severus.
            Severus’s breathing shuddered out once, in a sigh, and for a moment, Draco feared horribly that it wouldn’t be renewed. Then he heard it change in a different way, and lifted his head, shocked. No. Strange as it seemed, Severus had simply gone to sleep.
            Draco shook his head for a long moment, then focused on Potter. “You’ll have to stay here while we prepare for the ritual. I’m not going to chance losing him again.”
            Potter looked at him in the light of the Lumos, his eyes glinting like a cat’s. Draco thought it a far more fitting look than the one that had consumed him when he was stuttering in the middle of his flat earlier. “I can’t stay in the house.”
            “You have to, Potter, or he’ll die,” said Draco. Stark and simple seemed to be the way to go with this Harry Potter, who had shut himself so entirely off from the world.
            That got him bared teeth from Potter, and a simple, “I have to be nearby. But I can’t be in the house for his sake and yours as well as mine.” He went on before Draco could ask what in the world he meant. “I’ll build a little house for me outside the circle of your wards. That should be near enough for you to summon me if you need me.”
            “Inside the wards,” Draco countered. “Or he could get sick and I might have trouble reaching you in time.”
            Potter nodded, although with a tightness around the corners of his mouth that made Draco think he was resisting a grimace. “All right. I’ll take some time to build the house, probably.” He took another glance at Severus. “Is he going to be all right if I go to get the building materials?”
            Draco looked flatly at Potter and wished he could make sense out of the thoughts that seemed to be circulating behind those equally flat green eyes. “Why don’t you just Transfigure things into wood and nails, or whatever you need? Or stone?” Draco had never built a house himself and was vague on the details, but it seemed to him that Transfiguration would be cheaper than buying Muggle materials.
            “I haven’t done that sort of magic in years, and I’m rusty on it.” Potter waved his hand. “You didn’t answer my question.”
            Draco shrugged back. “I don’t know. He’s asleep now, but he could wake up choking any second, and it was only the bond between him and me that allowed me to keep him alive for as long as it took you to get here. Are you going to receive an owl that I send to you while you’re traveling?”
            Potter looked at Severus in utter silence, then nodded and pulled a chair from over near the table where Draco usually sat when he was doing the apothecary’s accounts. “All right. I’ll sit here.”
            Draco paused. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t for Potter to simply sit down with his hands folded on his lap and no expression at all on his face.
            “You can sleep on the floor, if you want,” Draco suggested. “Or I could Transfigure some pillows and blankets for you, if you like.”
            “No. I’m fine.”
            Well, what annoys me right now is his bloody martyrdom, Draco thought, and turned away from Potter, to snuggle back into the bed beside Severus and get some sleep. Some people who didn’t have Potter’s bottomless vaults had to get up and go to work in the morning.
*
            Severus opened his eyes, and frowned. His throat felt strangely rough, as if he had been screaming during the night, but he didn’t remember that. He reached up and traced his fingers slowly around the edges of his neck, wondering if he would find them swollen. Was he sick?
            Then he turned, and saw Potter sitting slumped on the chair beside the bed, staring into space. His eyes moved at once to Severus’s face, proving Potter wasn’t asleep. Severus stared with his hand closing into a fist.
            He could easily enough guess why Potter was here. He turned a venomous glare on Draco, who, unfairly, was sleeping like a Kneazle, and made another attempt to clear his throat that only resulted in more rattling. “He summoned you here? And why?”
            “You woke up unable to breathe,” said Potter. His voice was calm and so neutral that Severus would have expected it to come out of the mouth of someone he was discussing Potions with. “Malfoy was able to keep you alive because of the bond between you, but he couldn’t move very far. He sent me an owl.”
            “Yes, Octavian would have been good enough to come to him and let the message be attached instead of needing to be chased,” Severus muttered, and then jumped as he realized he was discussing this with Potter, of all people. He shook his head. “Why did you stay?”
            “Malfoy didn’t know if you would get sick again or not.” Potter only shook his head when Severus started to open his mouth again. “But I won’t be underfoot for much longer. I can build a house outside yours, in the circle of the wards. Then I’m near enough to be summoned when things start to go wrong again, but far enough away that you don’t need to think about me from day to day.”
            “This is outrageous, Potter,” Severus said, when he was sure he had chosen the right word. “I did not choose to be bound to you.”
            “If you think you have another ritual that will work, then you’re the best one to talk Malfoy into it. I don’t think he’ll listen to me. But this situation will only last a month. We can go back to our own lives when it’s done.”
            Severus hissed deeply, a noise that made his throat throb. He would have done something about that, but Potter waved his wand, and a glass came flying towards him. He used Aguamenti nonverbally to pour water into the cup, and held it out to Severus. Severus took it and cast his own spells on it to determine if the water was pure.
            Potter watched him do it, without expression.
            “Why are you doing this?” Severus whispered, when he had drunk. “I seriously doubt that you harbor any desire for me.”
            “Considering that the ritual calls for you to shove your dick up my arse, I don’t have to,” said Potter, and Severus was still reeling from his crude language—which might be why Potter had chosen those words, he realized abruptly—when Potter continued. “But I did something that should have worked, and didn’t. Something that wronged you when it shouldn’t have. So this is the way to make up for it.”
            “Martyr,” Severus whispered. “Hero.”
            “You don’t mean that,” said Potter, and there was a slight glint in his eyes that Severus was surprised he could see, with as low as the fire had sunk. “You mean, someone who likes playing them.”
            “Yes,” Severus hissed, and drew the word out as if he was the one who had Parseltongue. I would certainly have made better use of it than Potter has. “You cannot respect my right to die with dignity? In peace? For someone concerned with making up for his mistakes, you have not made up for your worst one.”
            “With the bond you have with Malfoy, you’ll probably drag him into death with you, if you die,” said Potter bluntly. “And I don’t think that he’s chosen either to lose you or lose his own life. So no, you’re not the only one with a say here.”
            Severus drew his wand and pointed it at Potter. Potter only looked back with a sort of world-weary expression, and Severus realized abruptly that Potter probably wasn’t afraid. He certainly didn’t act like it, and he might think that he had the ability to out-duel Severus despite his utter lack of any formal dueling training.
            “You didn’t know about that bond when you came here.”
            “No.” Potter shrugged. “But I do know that the ritual Malfoy wants to do will make sure that you aren’t as dependent on him anymore. You’ll be stable, without the need for my constant presence, or his. So you could go ahead and kill yourself after that, if you wanted.” He paused. “Not that it won’t still hit him hard, but you could go ahead and be the selfish bastard I always knew you were.”
            Severus found his mouth dry, which he had never thought it would be in a conversation—a confrontation—with Potter. He had imagined what he would say to him since he had figured out that Potter had saved his life with magic. He had imagined scoldings, and Potter admitting he was right, and apologies, and Potter marching away with his nose in the air because in the intervening years he had turned into James Potter Mark II.
            But he had never thought the rise in Potter’s voice would come when he was arguing on Draco’s behalf.
            “I will have no reason to die if this ritual works,” Severus snapped. “I was expressing my discomfort with your need to play the hero that overrides everything else—”
            “Good,” Potter said. “So glad that we had this little talk.” He flicked his wand, once, and Severus flinched and countered with a spell that told him what one Potter had used. It seemed to be a simple Monitoring Charm, of the kind most parents used on young children. “That will tell me if you’re in distress,” Potter went on, standing up. “And in the meantime, I’m going to go and get my building materials.”
            “Why wouldn’t you Transf—”
            “Because I wanted a normal life,” Potter said. “I’m not going to get a completely normal one for the next month or so. But there are some things I don’t want to give up.” And he walked out the door.
            Severus was still staring after him when Draco stirred and murmured, “Should I be worried that you were so engrossed in the conversation with him, you didn’t even notice I was awake?”
            Severus winced and shook his head, although he wasn’t entirely sure that it was in answer to Draco’s question. “I cannot figure Potter out.”
            “I don’t know that we need to,” Draco said calmly. “The ritual will blend our bodies briefly, and our magic permanently, to give us a sense of Potter’s magical presence. But we don’t need him here all the time after that.”
            “Just for the next month,” said Severus, and held Draco’s eyes.
            “Yes,” Draco said, without shame. “That does mean that you’ll have to be the one who deals with him more, while I’m at the apothecary earning a living.”
            Severus winced and looked away. But at the same time, a warm sensation was stirring to life in his stomach. At least he and Draco retained their closeness which meant they could almost read each other’s thoughts. Severus had thought that ability lost in the wake of his illness and their arguments about it. When Draco stirred as if he would get out of bed despite the absurdly early hour, Severus reached out and traced his finger up Draco’s arm.
            “Shall we?” he asked, and Draco answered him with an eager moan and reaching arms. Severus smiled into his mouth. Should Potter come back and walk in on them, well, he was due for an education in their bodies anyway.
*
            Harry came back to Malfoy and Snape’s house probably an hour later with a pocketful of shrunken supplies, mostly lumber and nails, but with other things, too. He didn’t mind using magic to help him construct the house. He just wasn’t going to Transfigure or conjure everything.
            He’d also brought some chairs and the couch and bed from his flat, shrunken along with everything else, and a trunk of clothes. He would be in a pretty alien place, he thought. He wanted the comforts of home with him.
            Which meant it made no sense, when he Apparated into the little bowl between the mountains where Snape and Malfoy had their house, for him to take a deep breath of the air as if it was especially clear and fresh there. It wasn’t. It was just air, that was all.
            You’ve never been that good at actually lying to yourself, have you?
            Harry sighed silently and set about starting to put the house together. Honestly, he did know what he needed. Some exposure to magic made him brave enough to say things to Snape that he’d thought he’d never say, and Apparate everywhere despite not doing it more than once every few months for years, and agree to a ritual that could change a lot of his life if he let it.
            But this was also going to be a strange, hectic month in his life, and he would still have to go back to normality at the end of it. He couldn’t let himself fall so far into the strange mirror-world that he was thinking it would last.
            Because it wouldn’t.
            Harry worked steadily through the morning, laying the planks together by hand and forcing the nails in with magic, smoothing out chinks or filling them with earth that he transformed to mud with the Aguamenti Charm. He knew some pretty good spells for smoothing out the mud and making it water-tight when he tried. He’d deliberately studied some spells that could have made him and Ron and Hermione more comfortable during their Horcrux hunt after he moved to the Muggle world.
            Not that he would ever do it again, but to prove they could have been more comfortable, more normal, even in the middle of that other strange and hectic time.
            At last he was done. He stepped back from the house and considered it, then snorted. Pretty primitive, with planks for the floor and a pointed roof that he’d reinforced with stone and tile, and windows that didn’t have any glass in them yet, and shelves projecting from the inside walls that looked more like fungal outgrowths on the wood.
            Well. The point wasn’t for it to be pretty or graceful. The point was for it to hold him.
            Harry set about unshrinking his furniture and positioning it inside. He already knew he would have to go back to his flat for some rugs, and to a few more shops for curtains. He would see about filling in the windows with wards and the like. More useful for keeping out air and insects than glass, really.
            Not that I can afford to stay here. I can’t be just a freak even among people who can do things Muggles can’t. I can’t. Not anymore.
*
            Draco stepped a little anxiously into the Potions lab. He’d firecalled several times during the day, and each time Severus had been fine, if a little annoyed at being interrupted. But that was the sort of thing one planned for when one’s lover was a Potions master, and Draco would rather hear his acerbic voice than a thousand gentle ones.
            But he hadn’t heard from Potter, and he had thought he would. Or else from Severus complaining about Potter. It was a wonder to see Severus turning away from a cauldron he had obviously just finished enchanting clean and blinking at him.
            “You’re all right, then,” said Draco, his glance sweeping around the lab. It looked as clean as it always did. It wasn’t the Hogwarts dungeon, but everything was made of stone and metal, both for ease of cleaning and because fumes and acids were less likely to dissolve them and eat their way into the floors and leave the ceiling full of holes.
            It was Severus’ lab, the same as always, the glass vials of all different shapes slotted neatly into their shelves and herbs and vegetables and flowers and crocodiles’ feet dangling on chains from the ceiling to dry. Severus gave him another odd look and moved across to the basin that stood in the back of the room, where he would wash his hands.
            “Why would I not be?”
            “Well.” Draco smirked a little, and lounged against the door. “I did wonder if Potter was going to make himself obnoxious to you, and you would fire that spell off that you told me about and test the effectiveness of a Draught of Living Death with human skin added.”
            “Didn’t I tell you?” Severus was distracted as he wiped his hands carefully, once on a white cloth, once on a blue. He’d been working on a mystic potion today, then, Draco thought, one of those where the positioning of the cauldron and the brewer’s mindset were as important as the actual ingredients of the potion. “They tried the variant with human skin last year at Durmstrang. Shreds donated by the victim of a Flaying Charm at their version of St. Mungo’s. The potion’s effectiveness decreased.”
            Draco opened his mouth to ask whether Severus was making a joke, and then closed it again. No, he wasn’t. Severus was entirely serious. His mind only ran on potions, and nothing else, when he was working.
            Draco found himself smiling. This was a side of Severus he liked to see. This was a side he wouldn’t mind seeing more of. He slinked up to him and wrapped his arms around his waist. “Dinner at Diagon Alley?” he murmured into Severus’s neck.
            Severus drew a sharp breath, and Draco knew his mind had turned most satisfyingly away from Potions. Then he said, “No. Because we would have to take Potter with us in case I had an attack while we were out.”
            The anger about Potter was like pounded iron at the back of his voice, but Draco knew a way even around that. He leaned back, the velvet robes he wore in the shop for the sake of attracting clients rustling around him, and smiled up at Severus. “Then you’re not eager to test Potter’s ridiculous little claim?”
            “Which one?” Severus’s tone said there was a whole constellation of ridiculous claims Potter had made, and he couldn’t be bothered with testing them all.
            “His claim that he can’t live a normal life in the wizarding world because everyone stares at him.” Draco snickered. “I mean, I would expect some staring, but not the sheer amount he seems to think will damage his life. You aren’t eager to parade him past some people and see them turn their eyes away, distinctly uninterested in Potter?”
            Severus pondered a moment. “He might receive some attention that would make it inconvenient for us to eat our dinner.”
            Draco shrugged. “Then we glamour him once we’ve made the point and go to a different restaurant.”
            “There is that.” Severus’s smile stretched, crocodile-like, across his face. “Well. Let us take him out, and see.”
*
            Severus eyed Potter sideways. He, of course, had brought no robes with him. When Severus had asked why, Potter had blinked at him and said, “Well, the ritual is going to be naked. And I’m not going out in wizarding public. So why should I need them?”
            He’d stood in the door of the primitive little house he’d built, holding it mostly shut so that Severus couldn’t see inside, as if he didn’t have a right to look inside buildings built on his property. Severus could hear artificial laughter, and wondered for a second if Potter had the wireless on. Then he saw a flicker of equally artificial light, and curled his lip. Potter had brought a Muggle telly along, then.
            The sight touched off a wildly burning spark in Severus that he hadn’t known was buried there. He leaned forwards until he was in danger of breaking his nose on Potter’s fingers and said, “Then I will Transfigure your Muggle clothes into something more appropriate. We are going out to eat tonight.”
            “Have fun, then,” said Potter. “But you don’t need me.” And he started to shut the door again.
            Severus kicked it open. “For someone supposedly so unselfish, you easily forget how much I need your company, even though I despise it,” he hissed, and stormed into the little house.
            He had to stop. For one thing, Potter hadn’t retreated, despite the door slamming against his legs. He stood right there.
            For another, his eyes were wild with rage, and pinned on Severus’s face. And the sight made Severus stare at him, his own rage vanishing into a void inside him.
            This was the thing he had been missing without knowing it. He had expected Potter to explode at him before this, waving his wand and casting curses and shouting about how unfair everything was and how he was too special to be bound to two Slytherins for life.
            But somehow Potter had deprived him of that satisfaction, of yelling back at him and showing how the situation was even more unfair to Severus himself. And he had done it in a way that made Severus feel as though he couldn’t fight back; this unmoving Potter would simply absorb his blows and render them useless.
            Severus opened his mouth. He was going to say something brilliant, witty. He didn’t know what, but he knew what it would have been.
            “Get out,” said Potter.
            And the fire was already out of his eyes, denied to Severus as if it had never existed, like a door slammed in a warm house that left him outdoors. Potter flicked his wand carelessly as he turned to what was indeed a Muggle telly placed in front of the couch; it must be modified to work on magic, and that proved that Potter didn’t have the Muggle life that he so hypocritically said he wanted, he was—
            A wind blew Severus backwards, and he was outside the house again, his heels having skidded smoothly across that plank floor. Potter said only, “I’ll come with you. Ready in half-an-hour,” and the door shut.
            Severus stood there for long seconds before he stirred and got ready to move.
            It was—he didn’t know exactly what he felt, only that anger was not his predominant emotion.
*
            Dinner was just as excruciating an experience as Harry had known it would be.
He found himself sitting in a restaurant that must have opened since the last time he’d visited Diagon Alley, called the Ocean View, filled with tables suspended on nearly invisible glass platforms over illusions of swirling sea. Dolphins leaped beneath them, and breezes filled with the scent of salt blew past them.
            If Harry had come across this restaurant in the Muggle world, he would have enjoyed it freely. This was incredible, really, and the food was also good. Harry had steak that was cooked as though someone had known exactly where to turn the flames to make every bit hit his taste buds.
            But the staring had begun the moment they walked into the Ocean View, even though Harry had Transfigured his Muggle clothing into a desperately ordinary set of black robes and arranged his hair so that it covered his scar. Apparently his glasses and his eyes were recognizable enough to people that they no longer needed the scar to be a signal.
            Murmurs swept the restaurant, but most people fell silent, except for some parents explaining to small children born in the past eight years who he was. Harry could feel the pressure of their eyes, though. It was there while Malfoy and Snape, never speaking to him, ordered their food and then discussed some aspect of the Potions business they owned together, and Harry sat at the table with a single goblet held in his hand. He never emptied it of the water, because that might cause some server to come up and ask if he needed more, and that would give them an excuse to gape. The server who accompanied their floating dishes on a glamoured “boat” across the “water” was indiscreet enough, staring with dropped jaw.
            Face it, it’s better than them thinking that you’re crazy or evil or the Heir of Slytherin or in league with Voldemort.
            But in some ways, it wasn’t. Yeah, Harry was grateful that he wouldn’t have people actually launching curses at him or talking about how he should be taken to Azkaban. The staring, though—it cut against all his instincts, the ones that said he should hide and sneak up on an opponent to disarm them, or avoid attracting the notice of the kids in his class in case they bullied him, or stay silent in the cupboard and hope the Dursleys had forgotten him in the good way.
            He missed home so hard that his blood thrummed with it. Yes, he had wanted to visit the wizarding world again, and there was a subtle magic about Malfoy and Snape that called to him, the way that the bond between his friends often had. That was comforting.
            No one ever stared at him in the Muggle world, though. He was ordinary there. For a little while, he had thought that maybe the Dursleys were right and his looks were just that freakish, but when Muggles walked past him without a second glance, his spirits had lifted. He was normal. He could have a quiet life or a loud life, just as he chose, and people would appraise him the way they would any stranger.
            Here, though, the fucking defeat of Voldemort followed him, and he would never have a moment free of it.
            “You look as though you’re going to suffocate, Potter,” Malfoy, who was seated across the table from him, hissed abruptly. “If you stopped hunching like a reluctant zoo exhibit, don’t you think they’d stop paying attention?”
            “No,” said Snape crisply. “Because he is the Savior.” The sneer on that was bitterer than any Harry had heard from him in the Hogwarts years. Well, he was probably still thinking about being pushed out of Harry’s house earlier, or the whole untenable bond situation in the first place. “And he enjoys the circus in his heart of hearts. No one could not.”
            “I don’t like being looked at,” Harry said, the only bit of truth he would offer them, and went back to his steak. At least he could make that last, with small bites, and he would until it became obvious that Snape and Malfoy were ready to leave.
            “That’s why you played Quidditch, of course,” Snape said, his voice soft and hissing. “Because of the lack of staring from the crowds.”
            Harry looked at him and laughed. He heard conversations hush at nearby tables as people tried to figure out what he was laughing about. But he didn’t care, almost, at this point. He would be out of here in a few minutes at the most, and then he would hole up in the house until Beltane came and they could perform the bloody rite. No more of this, ever again. Snape and Malfoy could send him a bloody owl if they needed him.
            “Yes, because the concentration on the Snitch left me so much time to notice the staring,” he said, and stood up and dropped seven Galleons on the table. “That ought to cover it.” He moved towards the door.
            “Potter, you have to—” Malfoy began.
            “I don’t care,” Harry said over his shoulder. “I told you why I don’t like being stared at, and you still pick at me. I’m getting out of here. Enjoy your date.” And he made his way directly to the Apparition point. A few people tried to stand up in his way, but Harry fixed his gaze above their heads and marched on as if he would plow them down, and they moved out of the way.
            Yes. This was strange, Harry had to admit as he stepped out into the air of Diagon Alley and breathed deep again before he Apparated. He would be bonded to Snape and Malfoy, and that would be weird.
            But then he could go back home. And this would be only another aberrant part of his life like the Horcrux hunt. He’d never have to think about it again, any more than he had to think about Voldemort now.
*
            Draco waited until nearly midnight to knock on the door of Potter’s hovel. Severus had already gone to bed, the silence between them smoldering. Draco had started the day happy because Severus was recovering, and now he’d had it all spoiled by Potter’s reluctance and idiocy.
            “Potter!” He raised his voice when he got no answer. “I know you’re in there. And awake.” The shine of the light of that stupid Muggle machine through the windows would have told him that even if he couldn’t hear Potter moving around in there. Really, Potter must think they were imbeciles.
            Potter opened the door so little a space that Draco couldn’t see him through it. Draco had expected that, too. Severus had told him about being pushed out of the house by an invisible wind earlier.
            “Listen to me,” Draco told the tiny crack, with as much dignity as he could when he felt ridiculous. “You’re going to bond to us. That means spending a lot more time with us than this, and putting up with us.”
            Potter laughed. The sound was so unexpected that Draco thought he had mistaken it for a second. “Are you mad, Malfoy? Or just hoping to trick me so you can laugh about it later? I read the ritual as well as you did. It said that we wouldn’t need to spend any time together after the initial bonding. My presence ought to sustain Snape whether I’m here or miles away. And it isn’t the sort of bond where we need to have sex once a month or something like that.”
            Draco closed his eyes. “Potter, you prick. Did you read onto the next page?”
            “No. Because you also described it as working like that.” Potter’s voice was as empty as the night around them.
            “We won’t have a telepathic or empathic bond like the ones that would become traditional with this type of ritual, no.” Draco slumped against the side of the house. Suddenly a lot of the way that Potter had been behaving made sense. Draco had thought Potter was distancing himself because of resentment at what he’d have to undergo, but no, he just thought this was the way it was going to be. “I don’t think any of us could stand that.”
            “And it’s not sexual?” Potter sounded bored, damn him.
            “No.”
            “Then what?”
            Draco sighed again. “We do have to spend some time together. Not much, not nearly as much as you’re doing now. But it’s a sort of—it has to be a bond of togetherness. We have to eat some meals together, at certain phases of the moon. You have to spend time with us, and we some time with you. In your home, I mean. And it means that we need to cast certain spells in concert. Severus would probably need to teach you to brew, because there are potions that need to be done in common, as well. And you would come and spend some time with me in my business.”
            Silence came back. Except for the crack of darkness through the door, which Draco kept his eyes on, he would have thought Potter had gone to bed.
            Then Potter whispered, “When did you plan on telling me this?”
            “I thought you’d read it.” Draco took refuge in rage, the only refuge there was now, striking out as hard as he could. “And didn’t object to it, because nothing we did seemed to have any impact on you—”
            The door flew open, and Potter yanked him into the room. Draco went with a stumble, and came up and around with his wand in his hand. He might have to restrict the damage he did to Potter so it didn’t affect Severus, but he wasn’t going to lie down and wait for Potter to crush him with a spell, either.
            He didn’t have to, he realized when he saw the raging inferno of Potter’s eyes. Potter didn’t need a spell to crush him. His magic ranged free around the room, and bits and pieces of the plank walls froze, and then melted again, and burned with a strange, soundless blue fire that left only afterimages behind. There was tar on one of the planks for a moment, and then shadows, and then sand. Draco swallowed and yanked his gaze away from them. The real danger was right in front of him.
            “You haven’t been acting like someone who’d need to spend time with me after this,” Potter whispered, and took a step towards Draco that cracked the floor beneath him. “You’ve been doing everything you can to show me how much you distrust me, and to antagonize me. This dinner idea in Diagon Alley was only the latest in a long chain of petty insults.”
            “You needed to go with us to keep Severus safe,” Draco said stiffly. “We had to come home right after you left. We barely enjoyed it.”
            “You made sure I didn’t, either.” Potter lifted his lip as if he was showing off his teeth like a dog. “What’s the matter? Don’t think that I’ll ever change from the boy you had the prejudiced view of at Hogwarts? Then this bond is pointless. You’re telling me about the things I’ll have to change and learn and become, but you didn’t intend to change at all, did you?”
            Draco swallowed and massaged his forehead for a second. Potter’s accusations made sense when he thought about them in that light, little as he liked them. He supposed that neither he nor Severus had gone out of their way to make a friend of Potter.
            “All right,” he said. “You’re—correct about that, at least. I’m sorry.” The words were so foreign in his mouth that it made Draco realize how long it was since he had said them and meant them. He said them often to Severus, but they were mocking more often than not. “But you’re strange, Potter. I think it would actually be easier if you were more like how I remembered you at Hogwarts. At least I thought I understood you then. Now I don’t, and you’re just weird.”
            Potter went still for some reason. Then he laughed. “A freak, right?”
            The word had resonances that Draco didn’t understand, but he could hardly miss them—not when the air around him had begun to whirl and congeal with wind fast enough to make his eyes sting.
            “No,” said Draco carefully. No matter how much he might have used the word in his own thoughts, which wasn’t often because it wasn’t a word that he used often, period, he wasn’t going to say it aloud now. “I just—fuck, Potter, you’re a wizard.” The word exploded out of him, into the outlet that the rest of his rage was denied. “Why would you want to give up your magic and live in the Muggle world? Why, in the name of Merlin?”
            “Because of the staring.”
            “You could go out under a glamour,” Draco replied. His breathing was easing, he realized, and he no longer thought Potter might murder him or throw him out the door for being impudent. Yes, this was what he had wanted to discuss. “Come on, Potter. Tell me the truth. Why did you flee the world that you saved?”
            Potter paused for a long moment, studying Draco as if he wanted to see how serious he was and whether he would treat Potter’s answer likewise seriously. Draco tried to maintain a calm face, and nodded when Potter’s eyes grew sharp and scrutinizing. Yes, he could at least make sure that he didn’t mock Potter for the answer, whatever he felt about it.
            Finally, Potter said, “Because I wanted to live a normal life. An ordinary one. I shouldn’t have to use a glamour to do that. Besides, how long would I have to live under it? How long until people got used to it? They still haven’t stopped gaping at the mere sight of me, as you saw tonight.”
            “I think they were gaping at you because they hadn’t seen you in so long,” said Draco. “Come back, and be normal, and go around in the wizarding world, and they would probably get used to you and stop staring soon.”
            Potter shook his head. “I told you that I didn’t like being looked at. That’s not true. I hate it. And I can lead a normal life in the Muggle world. A normal life for a human.”
            “Not for a wizard,” Draco countered, feeling the words burning on his tongue, breaking against his teeth like iron bolts. He leaned forwards. “Which you are. Come on, Potter. Come back and at least use this bond to reestablish yourself in the wizarding world and claim what their staring has denied you.”
            “And you think that once people learn I’m bonded to two men who were on the opposite side of the war, they’re really going to be enthusiastic about that?” Potter shook his head and closed his eyes. “I can’t do this, Malfoy. I already decided.”
            “You’re going to have to, because of the bond,” Draco said bluntly. “And you haven’t seen how scathing Severus and I can be in defense of our privacy. We can get them to leave you alone.”
            Potter’s hand trembled for a moment. He wasn’t looking at Draco, but he seemed to tell Draco could see it anyway, and stuffed it into a pocket.
            “There are times I miss magic,” Potter whispered. “But I was only getting along with this in the first place by convincing myself I can have my normal life back when it’s done. What happens when I start—realizing what’s going to happen?”
            “You come to us, and let us help you,” said Draco at once. “Beltane is always intense. Did you ever participate in a ritual on it before?”
            Potter’s magic sparked in a way that Draco took for a negative answer, and he moved a step closer. “Come on, Potter. It’s going to be hard for all of us. You already agreed to do this to save Severus’s life, and that means—that means we do owe you some basic consideration. I can’t promise Severus will go along with it any time soon, but I’ll try.”
            Potter gave him a tired smile. “Malfoy, you’re talking about a man who was willing to die because he didn’t want to have anything to do with me. Not willing to go along with it at all is what I’d expect.”
            Draco snorted. “Well, he’ll be part of the bond along with you and me. Despite what you might think, Severus doesn’t engage in useless displays of temper. He wouldn’t want to make the rest of his own life miserable, even if he thought it might be fun to do it to you. I promise,” he added, when Potter started to open his mouth as if he wasn’t convinced. “He’ll come around. Maybe not until after the ritual, but it’s hard to share an experience like that and remain unconnected.” He hesitated. “What made you think you’d be able to?”
            “I’m not really a wizard anymore,” Potter said simply. “I don’t have much to do with you, while you already have a bond. All that.”
            Draco pointed at the wall. Potter looked over, and started when he saw the patch of luminous, glowing red-orange light there. Draco reckoned that he found it hard to feel what his magic was doing when it was distant from him.
            “You’re not a Muggle,” Draco told him. “No Muggle could make a wall glow like that without raising a finger. Hell, not many wizards could do it, either. Come back to magic, Potter. You can think of that as what this ritual is going to give you, if you like. Just like Severus is getting his life back.”
            “And you?” Potter’s voice was soft, the way it had been the night he came in response to Draco’s summons. “What about you? Do you just get to see Snape alive and happy? Is that enough?”
            “I love him, so yes,” said Draco. It was hard to speak of his love for Severus in front of Severus, but Potter made it easy, created an atmosphere where it would have been harder to hold back. “But I think I might gain something else as well.”
            He held Potter’s gaze, making it obvious that he wasn’t thinking just of the sex, and finished in a murmur, “This is the most honestly I’ve spoken to someone else in a long time. It’s hard, with Severus.”
            Potter slowly nodded. There was a look in his eyes that might become wonder if Draco didn’t crush it. He was resolved not to crush it.
            “Good,” said Draco. “Now, I’m going to bed. I hope you sleep well, Potter.” He inclined his head to him, then turned and walked back out the door.
            It didn’t close behind him until he had almost reached the door of his own home. Draco let his lips quirk a little, a satisfied movement. Yes, he knew Potter had stood there and watched him.
            Watch me, Potter. I might teach you things you never dreamed of learning.
            Only fair to return the favor.
*
            Severus steeled himself for a harder task than brewing a Draught of Peace blindfolded, and waited until sunset, and then went out to the boulder where Potter liked to sit and watch that sunset with a civil tongue in his head.
            He could have used a Draught of Peace, in fact. The last week had not been pleasant. Draco had told him the truth roundly, which he often did, but then added that having Potter miserable was a bad thing for its own sake, as well as because it could affect the bond that was going to form between Potter and them.
            Severus had pointed out that Potter was bringing his own misery on himself by doing things like staying out of the wizarding world and then letting the stares get to him. It was a good argument. An unanswerable one, he had thought.
            Until Draco had smiled at him and produced chains of logic of the sort that Severus thought he must have learned from Lucius. Not that he was about to bring up Draco’s parents. Some things, he did know better about.
            “Does it matter whose fault it is, if it’s going to be affecting all of us? And what kind of fools would we be if we didn’t try and alleviate it? No, Severus, we have to do something about this.” He’d paused and eyed Severus, and went on doing it until Severus had nodded, because he had seen where this was going already. “Good. Then go and speak to him, and try to act like you’re at least marginally interested.”
            I am here for Draco, and not Potter, Severus told himself stiffly as he moved through the gardens and towards the taut back of the man sitting on the boulder. He will sense that. He won’t be accepting of me in the way Draco thinks he will.
            In the end, however, Potter didn’t fly at him the way that Severus had thought he would. He’d turned around and studied Severus as though checking how his robes hung, then nodded and moved aside. Astonished, Severus watched as Potter waved at the boulder and understood he was being invited to sit down.
            “You’ll welcome me this close to you?” Severus muttered as he sat.
            Potter shot him a glance. “There’s a difference between welcoming and accepting.”
            There was indeed, Severus thought. Albus had made use of the difference often enough to tame some of Severus’s reactions when he still worked at Hogwarts. It merely wasn’t the sort of thing he had thought Potter would know.
            Potter was still gazing ahead at the sunset as if nothing could trouble him, but Severus caught sight of one tight hand gripping the edge of the boulder. At least that showed this was affecting him somehow, Severus thought.
            “Draco told me that you don’t think of yourself as a wizard anymore.” Severus might be willing to do a lot of things, but not approach the subject subtly. Besides, if Potter was smart enough to make distinctions like the one had just made to Severus, then he was smart enough to see through honeyed words.
            “I don’t,” said Potter simply. He turned slightly towards Severus, and Severus could see his profile better now—in case he had been longing to do that, which he hadn’t. “But I reckon I’ll have to get used to it again now, since I’ll be spending time with you a lot once the bond takes. Why did you get together with Malfoy in the first place?”
            Mouth open to retort, Severus found himself stranded in the unexpected position of having to answer a question. “That need not concern you,” he said finally.
            “Then my acceptance of being a wizard or not doesn’t need to concern you,” Potter said. Once again, he filled his eyes with the vanishing orange rim of the sun beyond the edge of the mountains. He seemed to soak in the silence that filled the little valley, and Severus knew he wouldn’t get much more out of him.
            Left now with his own unwillingness to lose a game like this to Harry Potter, Severus thought furiously. He had asked a question. Potter had answered it, and offered a question of his own.
            Is the game to be that simple?
            It seemed it was. Severus faced Potter, and murmured, “We were isolated together in the wake of Albus’s death, in the wake of the war, and I seemed to have taken the position of more than a mentor to him, although I didn’t know that for a long time. Not to take him would have been cruel.” He hesitated, but Potter didn’t demand more information, and didn’t get up and storm away, either. “What makes you think of yourself as not a wizard?”
            “It’s easier for me than most people, because I was raised by Muggles and I don’t have the family ties here,” Potter said. Before Severus could open his mouth to retort, he added, “Why become his lover, though? Why not just his mentor?”
            Severus curbed his impatience. He could do this with tricky potions; he could do it with Potter. Potter would not be able to say he had won this contest. “Because that was what he needed. And then shortly, it was what I needed, as well. You have friends. Why not come back for them?”
            “Because they’re willing to come see me in the Muggle world, and they understand my dislike of publicity. Why did you need it?”
            Severus paused, weighing his words. He need only answer the actual pronoun, he decided swiftly, not say why Draco had needed it. “Because I needed one relationship that would provide a haven for me in a world that had gone Dark to the very core. It was dangerous, but not as dangerous as the waltz I danced between two masters, and without it, I would have gone insane.”
            Potter turned and considered him, a calm, grave look that said nothing about judging him. Severus eased down a little, and added, “Why do you dislike publicity so much?”
            “I got told enough that I was different when I was a child, and not in a positive way. And this isn’t always positive, either.” Potter’s mouth curled, but he went on without pausing. “Are you willing to enter this bond?”
            Severus blinked. “You know I have no choice if I wish to live.”
            “Not what I asked,” Potter murmured, and his eyes this time were unblinking, in a way that reminded Severus of a particularly stubborn cat he’d used to own.
            Severus struggled in silence for a time. He would have got up and stormed away at the slightest sign from Potter. But all Potter did was sit there and watch him, and Severus finally hissed a little, nodded, and said, “It will make Draco happy. And while I thought otherwise, when I also thought that I had no chance of surviving the illness in any case, I wish to make him happy.”
            Potter relaxed. “Good. Then I can go ahead without worrying that I’m doing something that makes you so unhappy you can’t stand being bonded to me.”
            He stood, but Severus threw out an arm to bar him, and asked the last question he was owed. “Why do you care about my unhappiness?”
            Potter could have fobbed him off with any one of a number of easy responses, but he stood there, eyes trained on Severus, and Severus knew he was being considered in the last low light of the sun, and answered honesty.
            “Because this is something for life. I know I can bear it, and I’m pretty sure that it’ll relieve Malfoy’s mind, but I didn’t know what you thought.”
            Severus inclined his head. Potter walked away and shut the door of his little house behind him, and a second later, his Muggle telly started to life.
            Severus settled back slowly against the rock. It was little enough, but something between them had changed.
            And sometimes an avalanche starts with a pebble.
*
            It was hard not to admire them, Harry thought, once you saw them working together.
            It was something he might not have noticed if he didn’t have the example of Ron and Hermione to compare them to. Hermione would sometimes go into a wild flight of rhetoric when she visited Harry, waving her arms and telling the story of the latest idiot who wanted the right to beat his house-elves, and Ron was the one who silently rescued her teacup from falling over. Then he would go and get more tea, and she would reach out and pick it up and have the slightest, loveliest smile on her face before she sipped.
            And there were the times that Ron was distressed about something in his family—like his mum pushing them to have kids now, when they just weren’t ready, or George brooding on Fred’s death more than usual—and Hermione would lean her shoulder against his and tell Harry something light and amusing while Ron withdrew from the conversation a little. Then Ron would tap her hand, and Hermione would segue neatly into whatever he wanted to talk about.
            It wasn’t mind-reading, unless both his best friends had taken up Legilimency without telling Harry. It was being bonded.
            And Malfoy and Snape moved around each other in that same way, that dancing way, that waltzing way. Malfoy reached for an ingredient, and Snape had it ready to provide. Snape broke the stirring rod against the side of the cauldron, and Malfoy reached out and swept the broken glass up with a spell that created an invisible net before it could hit the surface of the potion. Their hands brushed each other’s because of a longing to be where the other one was.
            Harry wondered for a moment if that was the kind of thing they would all have, after they were bonded.
            But he rejected the thought at once. He knew the bond was of a different kind. It would blend their magic, but only enough to stabilize Snape’s.
            And the bond between you and Malfoy?
            Harry shrugged to himself and went back to crushing the tulip bulbs that Snape had assigned him. He had said that Harry wouldn’t be able to mess that up, much. This potion was the one that would decorate their bodies in the actual ritual, and the bulbs needed to be completely mashed before being added.
            He wouldn’t have an experience like theirs. Well. It was beautiful to watch, anyway.
*
            Draco sat up and put his book aside. There was a nagging sensation in the corner of his mouth, as though he had a sudden toothache. He hissed under his breath as he stood up and moved to the mirror. Illness would delay the ritual, now scarcely a week away.
            But it wasn’t his tooth. The window was in the same direction as the mirror, and now he knew what was going on.
            He looked out into the back garden, where Potter and Severus were, near the boulder that had become their unofficial post by which to gather when doing ritual activities. He was in time to hear the raised voices, and he leaned his arms on the windowsill and watched, blinking. He reckoned it was his bond with Severus that had drawn him, but he didn’t know why. Severus was capable of handling their rows by himself.
            “You are a powerful wizard!” Severus sounded pissed-off in that very particular way he had when someone was denying a basic fact to him.
            “But I didn’t win the war because of that!” Potter was waving one hand, and his eyes were raging like a forest fire. “I won the war because of my mother’s love and Voldemort’s arrogance and—”
            “You will use magic to prepare the ritual circle, because it must be used that way!”
            “One of you could do it!”
            Severus’s voice came out low and ugly. “Then you are not powerful enough?”
            Potter spun around, snarling, and lifted his wand. Something that looked like a green rope, jungle-colored light, sprayed out of the end of it, and leaped into the air, and settled like a lasso around a circle of earth. Draco saw the disturbed soil leap into the air, and the raw color of the dirt, and then Potter lashed again and laid another rope on top of that one, and the circle was made of softly glowing light the way it was supposed to be.
            “There,” Potter said, and glared. “Fuck you.” And he stomped off to his house and slammed the door.
            Severus had no expression on his face, but he watched the door as if he expected Potter to come back out. Draco took a step back, amazed to discover how stunned he had become simply watching a display of magic.
            And how hard.
*
            Severus wondered if he was the only one who could see the wary way that Draco and Potter circled around each other.
            Or maybe he meant the wary way that Draco circled around Potter. Potter seemed oblivious to most things outside of himself, including how much magic he would have to use once the ritual began.
            But Draco’s eyes would lock on Potter and then flit away again, and he frowned down at the rite book when Potter found out another thing he apparently hadn’t been aware of, that he would need to spend the hour before the rite naked and meditating, and he flinched when Potter drew his wand.
            Draco had to remember a bathroom where he had suffered from the effects of Potter’s wand. Severus himself had touched the scars more than once.
            On the other hand, Draco didn’t seem inclined to back away from the ritual. He didn’t balk at preparing the extensive potions necessary to make sure that they would have enough to decorate themselves with; each potion boiled away at the end to reveal a small scrim of liquid in the bottom of the cauldron, so they had brewed that particular potion until Severus went to sleep with the measurements in his head.
            The day that Potter made an offhand reference to something he’d seen on his Muggle devices and Draco blew up, Severus realized he might have misjudged the situation.
            “You’re a bloody wizard,” Draco said in a muffled voice, slamming down the book he was reading for the five hundredth time and pivoting around to stare at Potter. “Why aren’t you referring to magical theory, or Diagon Alley, or—or those bloody songs Celestina Warbeck sings, if you need to talk about something trivial?”
            Potter stared at him. “Because I don’t like Celestina Warbeck?” he offered.
            Severus leaned back against the door of his lab. He had been researching another potion they might be able to use in the ritual that would not take as long as this one did to brew, and he had come out only to ask Draco a question about the location of a particular book whose title he could not remember. He thought things would change between the two of them if they noticed he was there.
            Draco leaned forwards with his hands braced on the table, clenched fists, as if he was going to transform them suddenly into horse-hooves and prance away. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he whispered. “You act like you despise magic, when you’re getting ready to perform one of the most powerful and dangerous magical rituals in our library, on one of the most magical days in the year. What are you doing here, Potter? Really? If you want to go be a Muggle, why you don’t just go be a Muggle?”
            “Because, amazingly,” Potter said, and leaned forwards as if he was going to transform himself as suddenly into a snake and lunge, “I’m capable of thinking about and being more than one thing at once. Wizard and Muggle. Magic-user and someone who watches the telly. Why are you running an apothecary instead of murdering and torturing people on the path to Dark Lord-dom?”
            Draco reeled. Severus lifted his eyebrows. Perhaps he was wrong about a better understanding, or at least a deeper one, growing between Potter and Draco. No one who knew Draco would have asked that question.
            “I don’t—I hate torture,” Draco whispered. “I never wanted to do that. No one asked me if I wanted to do that.”
            “Exactly. And no one asked me if I was willing to save the world, either.” Potter fell back a measured step. “I just had to do it because Voldemort would have killed me if I didn’t. Now I want to live in a world that doesn’t remind me of that, at least sometimes. I’ll have a better connection to the magical world if I do this ritual. Fine. At least, though, you could show me that it’s a connection with people who are going to respect me.”
            “I do respect you.” Draco’s voice was very low.
            “Then trust the answer I gave you.” Potter’s voice was gentle, and he reached out and clasped Draco’s arm for a minute. “Whether or not you like it. I respect the path you took after the war.”
            Respect mine. The words were ringing in the room, unheard.
            Draco gave an uncertain nod, and then turned back to reminding Potter yet again of the ritual responses he needed to give. Severus quietly shut the door.
            Perhaps he didn’t need to research different potions after all. What they had at the moment might work.
*
            The night before the ritual, the night before Beltane, Harry stood at the window of his little house and watched the stars rise. This far away from any Muggle city, the points of light were wild and majestic, scattering radiance into the air that Harry realized he had missed when he was in London.
            He had missed a lot of things about the wizarding world, honestly. Not just his friends and Diagon Alley.
            His friends. Harry hadn’t told Ron and Hermione about what he intended to do. He just—he didn’t want to. At first, he had justified it by telling himself that Ron would be horrified by Harry having that kind of connection with Snape and Malfoy, and he didn’t want to listen to the arguments when he had to make the connection anyway to save Snape’s life.
            But lately, he had realized he didn’t want to. He loved his friends. They would always be the main draw to the wizarding world for him.
            But—they had their bond, too. Harry loved watching it, but he was outside it. He simply couldn’t be close to them that way, no matter how close they were in other ways.
            This time, he had a chance to be part of something like it, but different. It was his. It was private. He wanted it.
            And that was the real reason he would go through this, despite all the doubts that he sometimes had about Snape and Malfoy and whether a bond that had first formed between two people could ever expand to include a third.
            He drew the curtains over the window.
*
            Draco stepped into the back garden. He was clad in the thin, white robe that the ritual demanded, and he could feel the drift and swirl of incredibly heavy magic around him. Magic that seemed to steam from the grass, to rise from the turning of the earth about the sun. Once, this would have been the first day of summer.
            Now, it was a day of magic that connected Draco to the man behind him—Severus, also clad in a thin robe, but this one dark green. Draco had to keep himself from turning to admire how well Severus looked in it. Silver serpents marched up and down the edge of the robe, but that wasn’t required. It was just a touch Severus had said he might as well add after he had seen how much of the rest of the ritual featured Slytherin symbols.
            And the magic also came off the bonfire that burned ahead of them, streaming with more colors than any natural fire should have, red and gold and orange, deep, luxuriant shades that Draco had never seen in flames before. Phoenix-colored, he thought, before he could stop himself, and perhaps that was appropriate considering the man who sat upright in the circle in front of the fire, facing it with his arms crossed on top of his knees.
            He was naked, and he shook sweat-soaked hair out of his eyes and looked up. His face had taken on a sheen of calm as well as sweat from his meditation, Draco thought, or else it looked more vulnerable with his eyes and scar bared. He had no glasses, not now. He didn’t need them to see. He would know every step of this ritual by heart.
            He should, after the amount of time that we spent studying.
            Draco shed the thought the way he shed the robe a moment later, though, dropping the white garment straight down to the ground. He heard Severus walk out of his own robe behind him. Green, it would touch the grass, the color of the grass. And Draco’s robe would lie there like the snow that was beginning to melt on the mountains around them.
            Draco stepped out of the space he had occupied for so long in relation to Potter, the space of being exasperated with him and disliking him and hating him and thinking he would have done something different with all those gifts than Potter had, and straight into ritual space. The air around him sharpened, grew like pleated paintings full of color and depthless light. Draco held out a hand, and realized he had crossed the distance between him and the edge of the ritual circle in what seemed like a single step.
            His hand lingered on Potter’s forehead, fingers tracing the scar. Potter looked up at him and smiled.
            Draco’s senses flew away from him for a second, everything but sight and touch. He could feel the worn skin. He could see the green eyes. He could see the light playing on Potter’s face, and feel the heat from the fire. All else was gone.
            He asked the first question he had to ask, while Severus moved over to the other side of the circle and stopped. Potter watched Draco with the calm, absolute trust he had needed. “Do you consent to be painted by my hand?”
            “I do,” said Potter, and lay back on the ground, open and stretching himself, limbs projecting out into the bounded space of the circle.
            Draco swallowed and picked up the cauldron beside him, which held the mixed remains of all the many potions that he and Severus and Potter had prepared during the past month. They slipped back and forth, and Draco drew out the tiny, smooth brush made of hummingbird feathers that had been more of a pain to make than the potions themselves. The feathers shone like rubies, like peacocks, like paradise.
            “You consent to accept the first symbol?” he asked, and positioned the brush with the green potion dripping from it above Potter’s chest. His heart.
            “I do,” Potter said, and his chest rose and fell with his breathing.
            Draco stared as his painted. The first symbol was simple enough, a circle, echoing the ritual circle, but Draco had to place it partially on top of a round, ugly scar that he didn’t understand. It looked awfully similar to a place of jewelry, as if Potter had been wearing a locket around his neck and it had burned through his clothes and into his skin.
            But the question faded as Draco worked, as he asked the questions and painted the symbols, and Potter’s response rose and fell in a quickening chant.
            “Do you accept the second symbol?”
            “I do.”
            A flying dragon on his left leg.
            “Do you accept the third symbol?”
            “I do.”
            A swirling serpent on his right leg.
            “Do you accept the fourth symbol?”
            “I do.”

            A lightning bolt on his forehead, covering the one already there.
            “Do you accept the fifth symbol?”
            “I do.”
            A pair of circles on his eyelids, conjoined by a thick line between them, the only part visible as he blinked.
            “Do you accept the sixth symbol?”
            “I do.”
            A dragon rampant on his left arm. Draco carefully etched the edges of the wings in the thickest and greenest part of the potion.
            “Do you accept the seventh symbol?”
            “I do.”
            The serpent coiled on his right arm. Draco’s arm tingled as a warning jolt of magic shot up it.
            “Do you accept the eighth symbol?”
            “I do.”
            And a lightning bolt, turned sideways, on the triangle of skin right above Potter’s groin.
            The instant Draco finished painting, the fire blew up. Suddenly there was a wall of flame surrounding them, lancing and lashing from side to side of a bigger circle than the ritual one, closing them in, binding them, not yet bonding them. Draco swallowed. They could not leave now, not until the ritual was complete or they were dead.
            And they would die if they didn’t complete it in the right way. That was simple fact.
            But at the same time, Draco’s swallow was only his body’s fear. He was not afraid. He stood up and bowed, then looked across the circle at Severus.
            “He is yours,” he said, and Severus crossed the barrier of the ritual circle that he’d been avoiding so far. The fire moved with him, leaped with him, and now it burned exactly on that side of the circle.
            Draco stood, and watched.
*
            The moment he crossed into the circle, Severus knew this would not be gentle. It could not.
            The ritual reached into the deepest parts of him and hauled all of him up—the man who had hated Harry Potter for being the son of his rival, the man who had been willing to die for Harry Potter but not be saved by him, the man who had loved Lily Potter and hated her for rescuing him.
            The man who had been a Death Eater.
            Severus shivered, unsteady, as the memories roared through him and bound him, as chains of silvery magic and blue magic and white magic and green magic leaped out of the ground and converged on him. For a moment, he was those people again, dying in the Shrieking Shack, watching Lily walk away from him, torturing a victim with his father’s face, glaring at a defiant Harry Potter in the brat’s first Potions class—
            The memories clapped together and were gone. But now Severus had Harry on the ground in front of him, and as surely as he knew that this man’s name was Harry and not Potter now, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to hold back.
            The green symbols were painted all over his own body, though shifted by one position, so that the circle was on his left leg, and the dragon on his right leg, and so on, down to the circle above his groin. He knew it. He knew the potion had leaped from the cauldron and hit him, powered and shaped and painted by the magic of the spell.
            He knew it, and it didn’t matter. What mattered was that the painted symbols didn’t count as clothing Harry, and all Severus wanted at the moment was to take.
            He lunged.
            Harry was there to welcome him, arms opening, lips parting to allow his tongue to grasp Severus’s, but it wasn’t enough. Severus was on his knees beside him, hand grasping and pulling on everything from Harry’s skin itself to the hair between his nipples, and Harry lifted his head and gave a small sound of pain.
            Severus laughed, rough, unending. He threw his leg over Harry’s hips and reached for his own cock. Harry was rolling, to the side, to lift his legs and expose the arse Severus had spent so much time standing on the other side of the circle and staring at. Severus was still laughing as he reached out with his fingers. The ritual was supposed to make this happen, make Harry ready to be taken, as much as it was supposed to incite Severus’s desire.
            But, in truth, Severus did not care if Harry wasn’t ready. He was going to have him regardless.
            He slid in. It was a long, sliding plunge, rather like diving into a pool of blood. Strange, odd, perhaps disgusting at first if Severus thought about it, but then he was at the bottom, and opening his eyes, and this was exactly where he wanted to be.
            He opened his eyes. Harry lay beneath him, panting up, the dark green circles visible on his eyelids when he shut them. That shimmer of green potion on his skin separated him from both his parents for Severus, because James would never have agreed to this and Lily wouldn’t have needed that paint.
            There was very little gentleness in Severus at the moment, but there was a sense of rightness. The hole in his magic, rather like a hole in wards, had faded. Harry’s magic poured in, and Severus tossed his head back and made a sound that was not a laugh, because laughter didn’t sound like that.
            Harry made the same sound beneath him.
            Severus placed his hands on either side of Harry’s head and began to thrust. No, it wasn’t gentle. Despite the magic that had eased his way, he knew full well that Harry would bleed from it. But it didn’t matter. Not when Harry was opening his mouth and grasping eagerly with it at anything that he could reach, including Severus’s fingers when they brushed for a moment past his mouth.
            Images glinted and slid in and out of Severus’s mind. A cupboard beneath the stairs. A lunging snake that had left a pool of blood spilled on the floor, blood from his own throat. A basilisk fang through his arm. A green-eyed girl turning her back on him.
            And more images. Hurtling after the Golden Snitch, the sudden thunder of applause as he caught it. The excitement of brewing, the softness and certainty waiting for him at the bottom of a cauldron that even a wand in his hand didn’t equal. Turning the Elder Wand on Voldemort. Waking that first morning with Draco in his arms.
            The images blended and shot through him, and Severus saw the green, painted images on Harry’s body taking fire. They were burning without harming him, constant shimmering fire, closest to Severus where their legs entwined and their groins pressed together. Severus heard the flames murmuring in soft voices to themselves. Only the sound of his balls slapping into Harry’s arse was louder.
            The flames were wild, dancing around the circle, dancing on Harry’s body, dancing on Severus’s shoulders and in his hair as his own symbols began finally and fully to burn. Severus tried harder to rock. There was something he was supposed to say, something he was supposed to remember…
            “I bind you,” he gasped to Harry, as the thunder—inside him this time, applause under his skin—stirred and echoed and slid towards his cock. “I offer you the—bonded—state of my own soul, and this is the—bonded nature of mine.”
            “And I accept,” Harry said, voice stronger than Severus’s, “with my own unbonded soul, opening to yours, clutching and holding on.”
            Why is his voice stronger than mine when he’s the one getting fucked?
            On that indignant note in his mind, Severus came, the pull of pleasure through his body stronger than he’d ever imagined anything could be. He tossed his head back and his body stiffened at the same moment as Harry cried out beneath him.
            But his one major thought, at the moment, was a determination to make Harry sound more fucked next time.
*
            Everything hurt.
            Harry ached with simmering heat, on his skin where the fire burned, in his eyes were sweat had run, in his arse. In his cock, even, where the pleasure had taken place so violently that he felt seared. He tumbled limply away from Severus as he climbed off Harry and sat down on the grass beside him, head bowed, panting harshly into his knees.
            Harry would have enjoyed lying there for a while, recovering himself and waiting for the flames to subside.
            But footsteps approached, and Harry remembered. To complete the bond, the third one, he had to let Draco fuck him.
            And he had to come. Again.
            Honestly, Harry didn’t know if he could do it.
            He reached out, groping, with one hand, and Draco caught it and drew it up to his lips, where he bit it. Harry moaned in surprise. He knew that Draco biting him wouldn’t disrupt the paint that was burning, since it was on his arm and not his hand, but he hadn’t known…
            He hadn’t known that that would be the thing to bring the desire roaring back through him, leaping from point to point in his body, arching up and filling him up like the starlight he had seen from the window last night, like the stars.
            “Yes,” said Draco, in a voice that was nearly a drone compared to the rough one Severus had used to talk while he fucked him. “I thought so.”
            He turned Harry to the side and drew his hands over his head. Harry grunted a little. He knew the fire had closed in on the other side of the circle the minute Draco had stepped into it, and he was a little displeased with having his fingers that close to the flames.
            Instead of letting his hands go, though, Draco did a spell with a murmur. Harry stared. He hadn’t thought Draco had brought his wand with him, or—
            And he hadn’t. This was wandless magic, the same power that had made Harry ready for Severus, pouring over and through and between them. And then it was between Harry’s fingers in turn, and Harry flexed his hands hard as he realized that his fingers were looped through links of chain that in turn were attached to stakes in the ground.
            “Why?” he whispered, a response that wasn’t part of the ritual and might displease Draco because of that, because it wasn’t planned.
            But Draco only looked at him, smiling, surrounded already by a glint of green fire from the symbols that had appeared on his body, as they had appeared on Severus’s, when he crossed the boundary of the circle.
            “Because I wanted to,” he said. “Just like I wanted to bite you.” He shrugged a little. “I don’t understand all my desires. But you’re going to.” And he slid into Harry’s body in a slam, instead of the long slide that Severus had used.
            Harry shouted. He knew that it was silly to expect gentleness given how intense this was, but—
            “You thought I’d be gentler than Severus,” Draco whispered above him, and rocked into his body in long, deep, punishing, fucking strokes.
            “Yeah,” Harry gasped, and gulped as much air as he could. Another thing he hadn’t expected to burn: the inside of his throat. It felt as though he had run ten miles at a stretch, and he still wasn’t done.
            “I’m not,” said Draco. “I just have different ways of showing it.” He paused, and when he blinked his eyes open, Harry saw Draco’s own eyes darken. “And I’m still annoyed at you about forsaking your own magic.”
            “I told you the reasons for that,” Harry snarled back at him. “And they’re true—”
            “I know, but I still don’t like them,” said Draco, and sped up his rocking.
            It was getting painful. Harry twisted his head to the side and panted, trying to take in as much air as possible despite the way it made his throat burn. He wanted to—he wanted to shout, he wanted to cry out—
            And then the pleasure raced through him as Draco’s cock found his prostate, and Harry shouted for a different reason. And his throat and his arse were both burning, and he honestly wasn’t sure which one hurt more, and which one pleased him more.
            “Yes,” Draco said, and then began to whisper. “I bind you. I offer you the bonded nature of my own soul, and my magic, that does not need you, but wants you, accepts you.”
            “And I accept,” Harry gasped back, “with the once-bonded nature of my own soul, and with my magic, which opens and welcomes yours.”
            “Just like your body is opening and welcoming me now,” Draco murmured back, sounding delirious, and thrust home and held, hard and still.
            Harry knew Draco had come, that he must have, because the fire closed in around them. But what mattered most of all was that he came, that he did it somehow, that his body cried out along with him and he managed it, the way he had known he would have to.
            Then the fire came in and took them away.
*
            Draco raised his head slowly. He was sprawled in the middle of luxuriant warmth, and he thought he should be able to go on enjoying it for as long as he wanted.
            But something pressed gently against his side, and when he rolled over, Draco saw what it was. Wonder stole his breath.
            Severus rested on one side of him, and his face was healthier than it had looked in months. The illness and the hole in his magic must have been taking a toll on him even before I realized it, Draco thought, and gently reached out to touch his lover’s hair. Severus stirred and rolled closer to him. His breathing was so smooth and gentle that it seemed as if he would never be sick again.
            Of course he will. But for now, I can pretend.
            When Draco looked the other way, he found Harry resting there. The green potion symbols were gone from his body, as they were gone, too, from Draco’s and Severus’s. He was stretched flat, but still with a slight glimmer from his skin.
            Draco reached towards him, but Harry opened his eyes before his hand could get there, and arched his neck a little. When he raised his hands, a flickering trail of magic followed them.
            Draco stared. Then he smiled. “The ritual healed Severus,” he murmured. “It gave me a new bond-companion. And it seems to have put you back in touch with your magic.” He lay back and waited, in interest, for what Harry’s reaction would be.
            “It seems like you got the worst deal,” Harry muttered, and fluttered his fingers. Magic once again followed their movements. He shook his head. “I don’t know what happened. But—I probably can’t go back into the Muggle world right away looking like this.”
            “That’s part of the point,” Draco said quietly, and when Harry rolled towards him, snarling, he caught his neck and held him still for a moment. “You can go back eventually. But you are normal, because you’re alive, and you get to define what that is. And I can promise that no one is going to look at you in ways that you don’t like, not now. Severus and I are going to prevent that.”
            Harry opened his mouth to speak, but Severus’s voice murmured from Draco’s other side, “And does Severus get a choice in this?”
            Draco rolled over, heart thumping, and lifted his mouth for a kiss. Severus’s lips were there, ready to descend on his, proving that he wasn’t truly angry.
            From the way Harry cuddled closer and kissed the back of Draco’s neck a second later, he wasn’t, either.
            Not that I won’t welcome their anger when it comes. It’s going to be as magnificent as everything else about them.
*
            Severus felt as though he was still in the middle of the ritual, seeing the world through shining planes of stained glass.
            He could feel Draco beside him, his heat on Severus’s skin and his heart beating calmly. And he could feel the magic through their bond, the one that had existed before the ritual, as a caress on his skin, as fire hovering above it.
            He could feel Harry, too. It was a small loss to know that he would never be able to think of him as Potter again, but then, he could think of other things. Like the way that his own magic surged and stirred in response to him, and how clear his mind was, and how he could probably brew potions now that he’d remembered giving up on in the last year. At the time, he’d used the excuse to himself that he was simply getting older, and couldn’t respond with the same clarity and vividness that he’d once used.
            Now, he knew it was the draining of his magic. Thanks to Harry, he had that back.
            And he could remember the tightness in Harry’s arse, and how much he would like to experience that again.
            “This is an interesting result,” Severus murmured, and reached out with one hand over Draco’s back to touch Harry’s hand. Harry touched back, then withdrew. So he wanted to give Severus and Draco a moment of space.
            It is needed.
            Draco stared up at him with those drowning, strong, vulnerable eyes for a moment. The eyes of the boy Severus had known, who had realized, finally, what he had got himself into by becoming a Death Eater—and had determined to endure to the end, because there was nothing else he could do. And the eyes of the man who had determined that he would have Severus as his lover, despite all his family had to say on the subject.
            And the eyes of the man who had determined that he would save Severus’s life, even when Severus himself told him to desist.
            “Can you understand why I did it?” Draco whispered.
            “Is it forgiveness that you’re asking for?” Severus snapped back.
            “No,” Draco said. “Understanding.” He lifted his chin. “Because you’re alive, and that means I’ve already won.”
            Severus nodded, once. He suspected part of the reason he had struggled so hard against Draco bringing Harry into the mix was the notion of owing a debt to Harry again, and not of dying with dignity. And he was never that rational with pain clouding his mind.
            Not that he would admit that, any more than Draco would ask for forgiveness. But they were back to the way they had worked—or better—and there were certain words Severus did not disdain to speak.
            “Good,” said Draco, and leaned up to kiss Severus. Severus leaned down to press his lips even more firmly against Draco’s.
            They kissed for long moments, until Severus did what else needed to be done and broke the hold of their mouths. Then he knelt up and looked at Harry across Draco’s back. Draco rolled down and lay sprawled between them, turning his head back and forth.
            Things will never be easy between us.
            But there were some things that needed to be clear.
*
            Harry nodded when he saw Severus looking at him. So this was a sort of confrontation, and it needed to happen with them still naked and lying inside the burned grass of the ritual circle. All right.
            “I’m not sorry about saving your life the first time,” he said. “I am sorry it went wrong.”
            “I was not looking for an apology,” said Severus, and gazed at him in silence for long seconds before stretching an arm out. “Come here.”
            Harry clambered awkwardly to the side on hands and knees, while Draco shifted to make room for him. Harry had a sudden flash of how much that would be happening in the future, and blinked. He had thought—
            Well, no, he thought, as Severus grabbed his arm and reeled him in, perhaps he had been stupid to think that this was the last time all three of them would be lovers, with only Draco and Severus maintaining that relationship from now on. Their bond didn’t have to include it.
            But from the way Severus was staring at him, it would.
            “Ah,” said Severus. “You are beginning to understand now?” His arm constricted Harry to his side, and he stared at him again. Draco pressed up from behind him.
            Harry nodded. He understood things they couldn’t put into words, and perhaps it would be stupid to try. But, if he could have…
            He trusted them to protect him from stares, because they were both capable of being frightening when they wanted.
            He trusted them to keep up the terms of the bond and not to be horrible, the kind of horror he had thought they were heading for before his longer conversations with Draco and Severus in the weeks before the ritual began.
            He trusted them to connect him more to the wizarding world, and that was, perhaps, something he wanted, now that he was remembering he was a wizard.
            He trusted them to fuck him right.
            He wasn’t sure how much he trusted them for other things. How much what he trusted them for was, well, something you shouldn’t trust people for. But he knew. And he doubted they would lie to him about any of it. Doubted they were capable anymore.
            Severus nodded. Perhaps he had skimmed some of Harry’s thoughts off the surface of his mind. He could do it, as a Legilimens. Harry knew it from his time as a student, and how much he had loathed Snape doing it, as a professor.
            Now, it would benefit him.
            Severus kissed him, hard, enough to make Harry feel the press of teeth behind his lips, and to leave him gasping to get his breath. It wasn’t something he would ever have thought to find arousing before this; none of his previous lovers had done it. But he wanted it now, and he started when Draco’s hand curled around his hip and found his cock.
            “Yeah,” Draco breathed against his neck.
            “Perhaps we shall try…newly-bonded sex,” said Severus, and eased Harry up onto his hands and knees. “If Harry’s arse is not too sore?”
            “I’m sure you can make it better,” Harry muttered into his hands, and heard Severus laugh, followed by Draco.
            “Yes, we can,” Draco said, and his voice was warm and confident.
            So was Severus’s silence.
            And as fingers probed gently into him, covered with conjured lube instead of ritual power this time, Harry shut his eyes and sighed, gently. This wasn’t something he had ever anticipated when Draco had contacted him and he’d offered to heal Severus, but it was something he could get used to, feel warm about, welcome.
            Just like magic.
            The End.
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