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The Wages of Going On	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 43959 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 7
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 9
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- 11
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Chapter Ten—Straight Ahead
            “You can go home,” Harry said, when he looked up and saw Malfoy striding down the stairs. Snape had already gone somewhere else. Harry didn’t care where. He would have the wards of Grimmauld Place find him and kick him out as soon as he had finished eating. Luckily, Kreacher had sensed his mood and served him almost raw steak that Harry could tear at with his teeth.
            “You’re sure you’re all right?” Malfoy stood in the doorway of the kitchen eying him. It reminded Harry a bit of the way that some members of the Order of the Phoenix used to watch him, and he smiled sourly, swallowing. Some things passed down the years, like thinking Harry Potter was mental.
            “I’m as all right as I’m going to get,” he said. “Leave some of the Blood-Replenishing Potions and I’ll be fine in three hours.”
            Malfoy seemed to close his mouth hard on a question, but Harry didn’t care what it was, and kept eating. Malfoy finally nodded and turned around as though Snape would be looming up behind him because he willed it so. “Where did Severus go?”
            Harry concentrated a second on the back of his mind that glowed and hissed and churned like the world’s weirdest teakettle with Snape’s emotions. “He’s trying to do some research on the bond, I think,” he said. “So that would mean back into the library upstairs, or the one down that corridor.” He flung his hand out and pointed, a little disgusted that his certainty came from the bond rather than his knowledge of the plan of Number Twelve.
            Malfoy nodded without comment and turned to walk away. Harry frowned at his back, then sighed and added, “Thank you for cooperating with me to save my life.”
            “It was all our lives,” Malfoy said over his shoulder. “Helping you wasn’t a selfless act. I would think Severus would see that by now.”
            Harry raised his eyebrows, but didn’t respond, not sure that Malfoy would want him to. He watched him leave instead, and took another bite of steak. Perhaps Malfoy was getting exasperated with Snape as much as Harry. Well, Harry would leave him to talk Snape around. He would be better at it, anyway.
            In the meantime, Harry had more clues to the nature of the bond. It wasn’t every bond that could take someone into their own mind like that and provide mental communication between different minds. He would owl Hermione with the clues and give her free rein to investigate them.
            In the meantime, he had an investigation of his own to conduct. Malfoy had succeeded in reminding him of one of the major reasons why he had wanted to survive: to be a good Auror. And right now, that meant finding the traitor. That would be his means of revenge, all legal and right, if undercover.
            Harry’s hand tightened on his fork, and he had a long moment of wrestling with himself before he could calm back down.
            He didn’t care about all the shit that Snape and Malfoy might inflict on him in the future. He wanted the bond gone, but he saw now that he had been wrong to make that his overriding goal. It was still letting the bond control his life if he struggled against nothing but it, and thought of nothing but how much he hated it.
            In the meantime, he could punish the people who had inflicted this bond on him, even if not directly, by finding the Auror who had betrayed the safehouse to the Lestranges. And that might lead him to the Lestranges.
            Harry laughed a little in his throat as he tore into the rest of his steak. Wouldn’t it be amusing if his tactics, the ones he had learned from training and not the natural cunning that Slytherins valued so much, were to lead him to the vengeance Snape and Malfoy wanted?
*
            Severus heard Draco enter the library behind him, but he did not look up from the book that he held in front of him. It was a fascinating Dark Arts book, one Severus had heard of. However, he had assumed that every copy had been destroyed long ago. Trust the Blacks to have preserved one for themselves, he thought.
            “Severus.”
            He hunched over further and didn’t turn around. That was the tactic that had kept Draco out for days and days, while Severus remained in his potions lab and Draco drifted between library and dining room and bedroom. It ought to have the same success here, without Severus needing to do much.
            But Draco sat down and reached across the table and took his book away. It was so neatly done that Severus simply looked at him speechlessly, and by that time, the book was back on the shelf.
            “We have to talk,” said Draco evenly, and folded his hands. Severus knew that was to keep them from shaking, but that didn’t make him feel better. He leaned forwards and pressed down on the scowl. Draco winced. “Are you going to listen to what I think is the theory behind the bond, or are you going to sulk like a child?”
            “Someone who survived what I did could never be called a child,” Severus growled back, and Draco sneered at him, a move so unexpected that Severus could only blink.
            “Of course not,” Draco said. “Except when he acts like a child. You said that you thought Harry had to submit to us again. Well, you were right. The bond likes active and passive partners. But it likes to alternate. Harry was the one who had to be the active partner this time. Why were you so opposed to lending him your strength when it proved your theory right?”
            Severus struggled with the words, but only because he did not believe Draco did not know them already, and did not intend to spare him the ordeal of speaking. Draco watched him without motion and without sound, though, and so Severus had to do the work.
            As always.
            But the memory of Draco arching as Potter stole his strength played across his mind again, and Severus knew that had been a moment when he had left the labor up to someone else. It did not sweeten his temper.
            “I cannot submit to anyone. I did when it was required as a matter of survival, and as a result of my own stupid choices.” He did not touch the Dark Mark on his arm. That, at least, was something Draco could be expected to understand, since he bore his own. “But since the end of the war, I do not do it. And this was not something I chose. It was something that was forced on me by the Lestranges.”
            Draco met his gaze with harsh eyes. “Do you think Harry chose it any more than you did?”
            Severus closed his eyes. He did not like discussing what the brat had done. It created too many notions of a debt he could never repay. “I cannot submit. It is against my nature.”
            “I think it’s against Harry’s, too,” Draco said. The shock of really noticing that he was calling Potter by his first name made Severus open his eyes. Draco leaned forwards and spoke, practically into his face. “Or so that mountain of steel in the back of our minds says, unless you think that’s a sign of a yielding nature, somehow.”
            Severus snarled at him, but shook his head reluctantly. He knew it was not. “But he still chose it,” he said.
            “He chose to make submission into a weapon,” said Draco, and there was an odd emotion in the back of his voice that Severus promised himself he would analyze later, when he had the chance. “It shows what he can do what he has a mind to it, and it shows where we would have been if he hadn’t had the presence of mind to do it.” His eyes sparked at Severus again. “Why can’t you do the same thing?”
            “Have presence of mind?”
            “Turn submission into a weapon.”
            Severus shook his head. “I find my weapons in other things.” He did not sound as impressive as he wanted to, not from the glare Draco leveled at him. “For example, I find it in my intellect, and the research that I can conduct on my own to find the nature of the bond.”
            “How can you do that if you don’t know anything about the place that Harry found himself in, within his mind?” Draco asked.
            “You discussed it after I left,” Severus said. He did not know why this revelation made his lips feel numb. He eased back in his chair, rubbing them, and not looking away from Draco. It was the best way he knew of to bring Draco back under his thrall again, and make him see what nonsense he had been spouting.
            “Yes,” Draco said. He still looked fearless, or at least fearless compared to the way he had looked in the last few weeks. He didn’t back away from Severus, who was sure that his eyes could crack the table. “And I won’t tell you unless you agree that we need to work together to make this bond—end, or transform, or weaken, or do whatever we can do.”
            “I hardly think Potter would agree to work with me.” That was not an admission that Severus wanted to make, either, but if he could use it as a weapon against Draco, he would. Nothing was too small to be used to pry Draco’s reaching hands loose and drive him away.
            “No, he wouldn’t,” Draco agreed, wrongfooting him again, for long enough that Severus didn’t speak before Draco got his next word in. “I meant that you and I ought to work together, and spare Harry what work we can.”
            “Is it your guilt that drives you to this?” Severus demanded. “You ought to know that Potter will hardly give you what you require, the absolving of your guilt. He has made it clear what he thinks of us.”
            Draco snorted. “Yes, he’s made it clear. But I can hope that I’ll ease some of his burden, and I don’t think he wants to spend much more time on the bond, at least not with us. I recognized the look on his face. He has a new goal, one he can drive straight at, and the bond doesn’t represent that.”
            “How can you possibly think that you can read a mountain?” Severus asked. “It is blank, cold steel, and nothing more.”
            “I said I could read his face.” Draco gave him an endless look, deepening until Severus looked away. He hated that admission of weakness, but once again Draco continued speaking, giving him no ability to reply to it. “I know him well enough to realize what he’s thinking, some of the time. Not all the time, not the subtle nuances, but there’s no subtlety to the way that he prepares to go after enemies.”
            “When did you ever spend enough time around him to know that?” Severus hissed to the books on the shelves.
            “We all have,” said Draco, tired now, from the sound. The guilt in the back of Severus’s mind had almost dimmed out of existence, but so far nothing seemed to be replacing it. “It was a matter of survival to learn to read his face, for the same—but opposite—reason that we learned to read the Dark Lord’s.”
            “I do not have this gift that you cite,” said Severus, still staring at the books.
            “I don’t claim it as a gift,” said Draco. “An ability that anyone who went through the war, even someone who did as a child, should have. You could do it too, if you weren’t so determined to see a useless projection of your suffering in a mirror made of stale vomit instead.”
            Severus whirled around, outraged. The look in Draco’s eyes made him wordless.
            “Grow up, Severus,” Draco said, walking out of the library. “And come with. We’re leaving.”
*
            “Please tell us if you need anything.”
            Harry held back the retort he wanted to make, and inclined his head instead. Malfoy was mistaken if he thought Harry would go to him whimpering because the bond hurt him a little, but Harry had to acknowledge that he couldn’t have come out of that coma earlier without Malfoy’s help. “I will. Tell you.”
            Malfoy seemed to accept the change in the pronoun without comment; at least, no knowledge that he disagreed appeared in the back of Harry’s head. Malfoy stepped out the front door of Grimmauld Place, a few books that Harry had told him he could borrow under his arms. If he took over the task of researching the bond while Harry sought the traitor among the Aurors, then he would need the books more than Harry did, anyway.
            “Potter.”
            Harry let his head turn to consider Snape, but only because the man stood right beside him and showed no signs of following Malfoy out the door until Harry did. Harry bared his teeth, mildly. Snape still looked wary. Good. He should. Harry’s baring of teeth was only mild compared to what he would have liked to do.
            “You’ve made it clear that we have nothing to talk about, Snape,” Harry replied. “Get out.”
            “I would like,” Snape began, and then let his voice trail off, probably because he saw no sign of belief in Harry’s face. There wasn’t. Like fuck Harry was going to believe that Snape was willing to do anything to work with him. For a moment, they stood there in silence, and then Harry stepped out of the way with exaggerated care and bowed Snape through the door.
            Snape snarled a little, the fingers of his left hand folding in towards his palm. “It doesn’t trouble you that we need to find a solution to this bond and you won’t talk to me?” he asked.
            “It troubles me that I asked you to submit to me to bring me out of a coma, and you wouldn’t,” Harry replied. He struggled with the urge to say more, to say it in a sharper tone, and then shook his head. The only time his so-called bondmates needed to matter to him was when he needed their help. Right now, he didn’t need it, and that made it a matter of importance not to create artificial emotional tangles between him and Snape. “That shows me that you don’t give two shits about what I want, about any of it. If you won’t help me when I’m in danger of death and you likewise, why would you help me at any other time?”
            Snape watched him with alien eyes. Harry thought there might have been a little softening in them, but if so, Snape still wouldn’t speak the words, and Harry didn’t intend to yield one inch of ground.
            “I am somewhat an expert in seeking revenge,” Snape said at last. “If you find yourself in need of that expertise, talk to me.” And he brushed past Harry and out the door, although like Harry, he was careful that they didn’t touch.
            Harry held back a snort with difficulty as he watched Snape leave. Right, of course. Snape wanted to take revenge on the Lestranges, and that meant he would help Harry with something—that mattered more to Snape than Harry.
            But who cared? Malfoy was the one who had reminded him of what was really important, what he had chosen to live for.
            And it would be satisfying to prove that he could catch the people who had betrayed them with good Auror work, the kind he had been trained for, not the Dark methods that Snape probably used. Potions based on blood. Calling out Dark magical creatures and compelling them to track the Lestranges down. Curses that would warp the mind and make the Lestranges return to the safehouse or the place they had tortured Harry to gloat.
            Harry shook his head. He knew about all those methods because they had been taught about them in Auror training, to recognize them and know what to avoid. They were more alien to him, now, than the thought of wanting to apologize.
            He sat down and reached for the ink and parchment Kreacher had left on the table earlier. He would make a list of everyone in the Auror Department who could possibly have known about the wards, and work on eliminating some people from there.
            He would do it alone, to get back to the moment when he could work with Ron again, and be a normal Auror. He would put this behind him, only dealing with the bond when it flared up, like a disease. That was the best way to handle it.
*
            Draco locked himself in the library when they got home. He knew that Severus would probably try to talk to him, and he didn’t want that. Partially because Severus was being childish, of course, and if he didn’t want to talk to Potter and meet him at an equal level, then he could fuck off. Draco would talk to him in the morning if he was any more rational then.
            Given that it’s Potter, he might not be.
            Draco took a harsh breath and closed his eyes. He accepted that, but he still needed time and distance from Severus to deal with it.
            And to deal with what else had happened.
            Severus hadn’t said a word about the moment when Potter had pulled on Draco’s strength, and Potter hadn’t, either. Potter probably didn’t know what it was like for Draco from the inside, only what it was like from inside his, Potter’s, own body. That made Draco forgive him for what he had done so far.
            It didn’t make the feeling that had seared him when Potter drew on the bond to replenish his strength from Draco’s easier to live with, though.
            That had been purest pleasure.
            If sunlight could fry a human, then Draco might have believed that was what he felt. As it was, he had no idea if sunlight could fry a human or not, so he didn’t know if he should compare it to that.
            But that had been what it was like. Standing in the middle of intense light, of trembling warmth that he knew could burn hotter any moment and consume him, and wondering what it would take from him next, wondering if it would consume him while he stood there gape-mouthed in the wonder of what he felt.
            Draco believed in what he had told Severus. They would have to work on the bond with Potter to have the slightest ability to conquer it. That was why he had taken the Dark Arts books from the Black library.
            But he also wanted to sit there and hold, to himself, the pleasure, and the desire that he had to experience it again.
            And the knowledge that Potter’s submission to them in the moment of the rape, however necessary and even used by Potter against the bond itself, had not been at all a pleasant experience. It was Draco who had benefited the most from the bond. Severus was pretending his sanity was not a great enough prize to be going on with, and Potter…
            Draco closed his eyes.
            Potter would probably tell him that he was letting it affect him too much, Draco decided. Potter didn’t seem to care about anything except the best way to survive this and tracking down the traitor in the Aurors. The pain mattered to him, but he didn’t think about it. He could put it aside. And it was his pain. That meant Draco should be able to do much the same thing. Wasn’t it kind of presumptuous to pity Potter based on his pain, when he had survived and seemed to discard every sign of the agony?
            Draco swallowed. He felt that way anyway. Potter need never know it, would probably be irritated if Draco tried to talk to him about it, but Draco couldn’t help the way he felt.
            He looked at the books he had taken from the Black library and folded his arms. Potter had spoken of modifying a bond-breaking ritual by putting effigies, or people, in place of the traditional Veela and unwanted mate. As far as Draco understood it from the limited hints Potter had dropped, it would work because it would stretch the bond out of place and confuse it. The bond didn’t like people shuffling roles or taking each other’s places, Potter had said.
            But that was exactly what they’d had to do to pull Potter out of his coma. Which meant they could switch places.
            Draco didn’t mean to offer himself up as a body for Potter to rape, but he wanted to see if he could take Potter’s place as the sacrifice sometimes, for some days, or at least the next time the bond wanted someone to punish. If they spread it out among them, then they were more likely to survive. Potter simply couldn’t bear the punishment every time.
            He sighed and reached for a book. This would be easier with Severus, but Draco wasn’t going to have his help any time soon, so he’d better get started.
*

            Severus stared down at the notes on the page in front of him, then shut his eyes and rested his forehead in his hands.
            Based on what Potter had said about the way the bond had pulled him into his mind, and the way that it had also let them communicate with each other when Potter, at least, was unconscious and couldn’t hear them with his ears, Severus had thought he might be able to hunt the bond down. And he had.
            And now there was less hope than ever.
            He slammed the book hard enough to make the vials on his shelves rattle.
*
BAFan: It’ll be getting more dramatic if Snape doesn’t shape up.
ChelseaPlume: Thank you! Yes, Snape doesn’t really understand his own emotions, and what he understands he doesn’t like. He really is the main obstacle at this point; Harry is willing to do what he has to do to live with the bond, if no more.
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The Wages of Going On