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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
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Chapter Sixteen—Buffers
            Draco grimaced as Potter stepped into the largest sitting room and turned around, his back wedged into a corner opposite to the door. This room was drafty from all the windows that plagued the walls, and an impossibility to heat, unless Draco wanted to burn Yule logs in the vast fireplaces every day.
            But it was a room where the only furniture was a circle of chairs near each fireplace, and the floor was therefore empty and open. And the windows could be either a threat or a means of escape. Draco couldn’t pretend, even to himself, that he didn’t know why Potter had chosen it.
            “All right,” Potter said, his voice low and smooth. Only when he listened to it did Draco realize that it was clipped as well. “You wanted to talk. So talk.”
            “It is a talk in which all of us will need to participate,” Severus said. Draco turned around and saw him lingering near the door. His right hand covered the Dark Mark, although he had also drawn down the sleeve so that it covered the scar again. “Given that all three of us have some sort of connection to the Dark Lord.”
            Potter flashed Severus a look like a slap. “And you can’t call him by his proper name, even now?”
            Severus puffed up for a second like he was going to loose all his rage in a blast of fire at Potter. Potter tensed at the same time, and his eyes shone.
            He wants to fight someone, Draco realized abruptly. He’s probably been on edge since we started questioning Stockwell. He wants to kill someone.
            It no longer surprised Draco that some Aurors had died from Potter’s pendulum spell. The miracle was that those had been largely accidents, people who could have been healed if Potter had been less focused on questioning the Aurors drawing the pentagon.
            “Quiet,” Draco said, before Severus could speak or Potter could attack. At least that had the benefit of drawing Potter’s eyes to him, and disrupting the strength and magic he had been drawing into himself. He would be less ready to attack now simply because he would be less prepared. “Listen. Severus is right that we need to prepare to combat him if he’s coming back, no matter what he’s called. Can you join with us to do that?”
            Potter curled his lip. “As long as it doesn’t involve developing the telepathy of the bond or you getting closer to me, then yes.”
            Draco sighed and massaged his forehead. He wondered if he should be talking about this with Potter so ready to snap, but he didn’t know that anything could satisfy Potter’s desire to snap, unless Draco let him rip apart the Manor or attack one of them. And he wasn’t willing to go that far—yet. “What if it did? What if the power of the bond would give us a chance to defeat him, call him what you will? Would you go that far?”
            Potter drew so much into himself that Draco felt as if they were seeing a transparent shell through which words could flow into the world. He found himself reaching out before he thought about it, but Severus caught his arm and shook his head tightly. Draco nodded back. He had been about to do something stupid, and it was good that Severus was there.
            Potter simply stood there. It looked as if he wasn’t even breathing.
            “Potter?” Draco whispered. He hesitated, then took another chance. “Harry?”
*
            If I have to do something with them to prevent Voldemort from coming back…
            Yes. Of course. He would do it. Because that was what he did. Save the world.
            Yet another sacrifice. Yet another thing he had to give up. Virginity and a normal life hadn’t been a big enough sacrifice for the month. Another had to come along, didn’t it?
            There was a long moment when Harry felt as if he was falling through space, never mind that the space had no stars and was all inside his head. He didn’t know what would happen when he hit the bottom. He didn’t know if there was a bottom.
            Then someone called his name, and Harry jerked his head up and turned it, and Malfoy was watching him with concern that—that was real. It was only connected to the concern about his own life, and Snape’s life, and probably to the fear that Harry would lash out and blow his house up, but. It was there.
            Harry took a breath. He had had to do something like this once before. He had been kidnapped during Auror training, by the Carrows when they were still at large. He had escaped before they could torture him, that time, but to do that, he had to build a bridge back to his sanity and escape his panic.
            And of course he could do that. He was Harry Fucking Potter, wasn’t he? He had destroyed the Death Eaters’ master. A couple of Death Eaters were nothing to him. And it didn’t matter whether they were the Carrows or the Lestranges or Snape and Malfoy.
            He built the first step of the bridge by looking into Malfoy’s face, pretending the concern was real enough, and nodding. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll do that.” He turned to face Snape. “What do we need to do?”
            “To build the telepathic connection, or to build the greater power of traveling through time and space?” Snape’s face was still. He had been about to snap at Harry before, so Harry didn’t think that Snape had miraculously purged his anger, but now he could pretend to be calm.
            And I can pretend to be sane. Our pretenses complement each other. Lovely. “To build the telepathic connection,” Harry said. He was proud of how calm and flat his voice sounded. “That was the first step, the book said. The one that has to come before any of the others, because we can’t connect to the roads, or whatever you call them, if we can’t connect to each other first.”
            “Correct.” Snape let go of Malfoy’s arm and shifted sideways, rather than nearer. Harry still turned his head to watch him, but at least he could continue to watch Malfoy out of the corner of his eye. “I am rather good at Legilimency. Do you trust me to use it?”
            Harry laughed. “What kind of question is that? Of course not.”
            Snape reached into his robes, slowly and obviously, as though that would make the gesture any better. Harry still found himself thinking of the Veritaserum and the Draught of Living Death that Snape had used on their prisoners, and found himself tensing up, his heart racing. Snape, though, only pulled out a vial full of what looked like liquid smoke, a grey color different from either of those two potions.
            “Then will you trust me to take a binding potion, and then use it?” Snape asked. He sounded as if he was discussing the weather. No, he would probably be more passionate about the weather, Harry decided, staring into his eyes.
            “A binding potion,” Harry whispered. He had heard of them during Auror training, but they hadn’t discussed them much. Unless made exactly right, binding potions didn’t work. Most people preferred to use magical vows if they had to extract an unbreakable promise from another wizard.
            Well, he had thought that Snape’s skill at brewing was the only thing about him that he trusted, didn’t he?
            Harry met his eyes. “What promise would you make before you swore it?”
            “To leave your memories alone,” Snape said. “To seek out only the parts of your mind where the bond resides, so that I may connect to it.”
            Harry twitched his head in Malfoy’s direction. “And what about our third partner over there?”
            “Draco trusts me,” Snape said, still with the utmost simplicity. “I can reach into his mind after the bond between the two of us is established. There is nothing in the books saying that the bond must be established between all three at the same time, only that we must be together to do it.”
            Harry licked his lips, eyes fastened on the vial in Snape’s hand. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to accept their help, to stay here. He hadn’t even wanted to fight Voldemort with them or interrogate the prisoners with them. He wanted to—
            And that was the catch, wasn’t it? He wanted to slaughter someone, or something, or many someones. He wanted to destroy this house, to bring down the blocks around Snape and Malfoy’s ears. He wanted to walk out of here and walk straight to where the Lestranges were and destroy them, and then he wanted to turn around and find all the Aurors that were part of the faction Stockwell led, and he wanted to kill them.
            But he couldn’t simply do that. He didn’t want to let go of being a good Auror the way he already had. And the other things, the things like bringing in the Lestranges that might actually benefit him, needed help from someone.
            He looked Snape in the eye. “I want to control the wording of your promise.”
            Snape nodded as if that was no surprise. He hadn’t looked away from Harry’s face or blinked, either, and Harry chose to take that as a sign that he was trying to convince Harry to trust him, rather than him trying to use Legilimency on Harry before he made his promise.
            Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he should be paranoid. But the paranoia would feed the rage right now, and Harry knew he would go deeper and deeper, and there would be no escape, and…
            He would rather not do that.
            He wanted to escape someday.
            “I want you to say that you won’t look at any of my memories that don’t relate to the bond,” Harry said. “Not even anything about my scar or the final part of the Battle of Hogwarts. We’re supposed to be thinking about the bond and how to make sense of it right now, how to make us strong enough to defeat our enemies. The bond, not Voldemort.”
            He thought Snape would argue, since Voldemort was one of their enemies, after all. But all Snape said was, “Agreed,” and then he paused, waiting.
            Harry said, “And you’ll swear that you’ll only seek out the parts of my mind where the bond resides. Nothing else.”
            “Agreed.”
            Snape held up the vial. Harry waited for him to say something else, but it became clear that Snape was waiting for Harry, so Harry brusquely gestured him ahead. Snape spoke, voice strong and calm, as if he was teaching Defense to someone he despised less than he despised Harry. “I swear that I will not look at any of Harry Potter’s memories that do not relate to the bond. Nothing about his scar, nothing about his Auror training or battles that he has been through or anything else. Nothing that relates to the Dark Lord.
            “I swear that I will seek out only the parts of Harry Potter’s mind that relate to the bond. Nothing else.”
            He immediately wrenched the cork loose from the mouth of the vial and swallowed the liquid inside. Harry nodded. He didn’t know how to brew a binding potion, but from what he remembered of his training, there was no choice but to swallow it quickly after one made the promise. Otherwise, it could take something else that the drinker said as the promise.
            Snape’s face changed color, and he swayed on his feet. Malfoy came forwards to support him, looking at Harry as if this was somehow his fault.
            Harry smiled back at him. He knew the smile was sardonic, and he didn’t care at all. Snape and Malfoy were already a unit, friends or student and mentor or whatever they were. That would probably never change no matter how much control over the bond they achieved. Malfoy was just proving more with every step he made that he thought Harry was culpable and he and Snape were perfect little saints.
            Malfoy flushed and turned to steady Snape as he stood back upright and took his wand out. There was a mechanical jerkiness about his movements, as if he was struggling against puppet strings, that Harry found reassuring. That was one possible effect that a binding potion could have on someone.
            “Ready,” Harry said, and braced his back against the wall.
            “You should perhaps sit down,” Snape murmured. “When I practiced Legilimency on you in the past, you were sometimes thrown from your feet.”
            “Your concern is touching,” Harry drawled, “but in the meantime, I think I’d like to stand up. Besides, you won’t be as rough on me this time, correct? You’re looking for information on how to strengthen the bond, not trying to tear my mind apart.”
            “He never did that,” Malfoy said, as if shocked.
            Harry snorted. “Don’t interfere in hatreds you don’t understand, Malfoy.” He faced Snape again and repeated, “Ready.”
*
            Severus entered Potter’s mind slowly, gently. He had once had to manage this far more often, when he was scooping up information from students’ minds without them ever knowing that they had been read, but he was out of practice. Brewing and answering letters had left him with a shortage of minds to look into, bar the odd apothecary who tried to cheat him.
            The memories that streamed past him had a smoky kind of mist over them, one that looked as if it would tighten if Severus tried to reach out towards it. Severus relaxed a bit. Yes, the binding potion was working. It would keep him from breaking his promise even if he wanted to break it.
            Severus turned his attention straight ahead, to the memories that stretched like a crimson galaxy across Potter’s mind, the memories of the bond and the ritual. Around them, the bond lay and sparked sullenly, and Severus could see floating pockets that might be the representations of him and Draco that the bond had taken on in Potter’s mind.
            Severus reached out and dipped into the memories, sweeping Legilimency through them like a fishnet so that he could understand how Potter related to the bond.
            He came out shaking with pain, with rage that went so deep there was no bottom, and with a darker version of the determination that formed the steel mountain in the back of his mind. That was what Potter felt about the bond and the memories of the ritual. That was what he had felt when he negotiated with the bond and established the form they now suffered under. That was what consumed him, instead of the need to take and the insistence on completion that had been Severus’s experience under the bond.
            Severus would have liked to shut his eyes and rest a moment, but he had a task to accomplish here, and for various reasons he did not want to spend any more time in Potter’s mind than he had to.
            He swiftly sought out the places in Potter’s mind that the bond touched. The memories, and the representations of Draco and himself. There was also a physical connection, a dark spike disappearing down the center towards Potter’s spine, similar to the kind of physical brain damage Severus had sometimes seen in the minds of people like Bellatrix Lestrange.
            And that was it. Potter had contained the bond, instead of allowing it to spread out the way that Severus knew a telepathic bond usually would. Ramparts of hatred walled it.
            Severus studied the mindscape for long seconds before he was certain he understood it. Breaking through the ramparts in the traditional way and spreading the bond throughout Potter’s mind would not be possible, both because his hatred of what had happened was too strong and because Severus had promised not to touch those other parts of his thoughts. So Severus had a different road to use instead.
            He grimaced as he reached into the center of himself, because this was never easy, and it would be less easy with someone who had as much reason to resist and resent him as Potter did. But because he was inside Potter’s mind and using a magic, Legilimency, that he had practiced so much and understood so well, Severus thought he could do it.
            He breached his own barriers, and placed his memories carefully into the center of Potter’s mind, the place he had permission to occupy. Then he retreated until he could feel his body all around him again, and it was only the magic that was holding the link.
            Potter was the one who would have to decide if he could accept the implied invitation and spread the bond through Severus’s mind, instead. It would still be difficult and might mean that Potter had less control of the bond on his end, but Severus thought having a third partner involved, in this case, would make it up for it.
            Besides, Potter would probably welcome a less intimate kind of telepathic communication.
            Severus rested, and waited, and only allowed himself to consider, in tiny glimpses, the horrible emotions that he had raised from his initial foray into Potter’s memories. If Potter felt like that, it was a wonder he had not lashed out and killed one of them before now. Or himself. Severus would not rule out that method of escape from the bond, either.
            They would have to see what they could do to help Potter with his horror and his rage—not for the sake of the mental bond, but the physical one.
*
            Draco raised an eyebrow, and fell back a step from Severus. There was an expression on his face that was different from the usual indifference and placidity that he showed when he was in the middle of a delicate bout of Legilimency. His pupils were dilated, and his breath came in little huffing gasps past his lips that he would probably hate to think about Draco contemplating.
            But Draco flinched more at the look on Potter’s face. He just stood there and endured, his arms folded, his head bowed as much as it could be while he maintained his gaze on Severus’s face, the locking of their eyes. Suffering had carved grim lines in Potter’s face that were already familiar, Draco thought. It might be the first time Potter had been through something this bad, but it was obvious that it wasn’t the first time he had been through something horrible.
            I wish it had worked out any other way. I wish we didn’t do that.
            But Draco couldn’t even wish that when he thought about it, not all the way through, not with sincerity, because that would mean they’d be dead, and he shuddered away from the thought. He had done so much so far to survive, and he hated the thought of surrendering and slipping away. And so would Potter. It was the reason he had survived so long, why he had negotiated with the bond in the first place instead of surrendering to it.
            But we have to do something about his emotions. We have to give him some safe way to express them. Otherwise, it is going to come down to murder and destruction in the end.
            Severus suddenly staggered and gasped. Draco reached out for him, not sure what had happened, not sure if he could help with the mental aspect of this—he was good at Occlumency, much worse at Legilimency—but at least wanting to make sure that Severus didn’t bang his head into the floor.
            “Are you all right?” he asked into Severus’s ear as Severus stood there with his head down and his body trembling.
            Severus raised his hand and laid it on Draco’s. Draco flinched a little. His hand was hot, and there was a subtle ringing in the back of his own mind that seemed to get into the pool of emotions that represented Severus for him and stir them up, make the bitterness dance and ripple, and not settle down again.
            “I can feel it,” Potter said aloud. He opened his eyes and turned his head, and there was a pride in the movement that gave Draco the incoherent beginnings of a plan. The pride of a hawk, the pride of a lion, he thought, a little more coherently. Potter functioned best on the offensive, not the defensive, when he could hunt and not wait like a patient victim.
            Another reason this bond is so hard on him.
            “I have the bond now,” Potter said, his gaze fixed on Draco as if he and not Severus was the one who had initiated the telepathic aspect. “And I know how to extend it to you, Malfoy.” He moved forwards a step, and although Draco braced himself, he didn’t run. He thought several things would be ruined now if he did.
            Potter reached out and his fingers slid up Draco’s arm to his shoulder, feather-light for a moment but then pressing hard. Draco shuddered a little and closed his eyes as the bond entered him like a living thing, a squirming snake that slid under his skin and—
            I know that you can hear me when I speak like this, Malfoy.
            Draco shuddered all over. He knew, because he could feel Severus’s presence behind Potter’s, what had happened. Severus had let Potter take control of the bond, the only way to make him participate in it.
            Potter laughed, a noise like ice splitting. Say that he convinced me. No one makes me do anything.
            We are still vulnerable, Severus said, his words more distant and precise in the telepathic world than aloud. We still might fall victim to Aurors of Stockwell’s division, should some of them find out what happened and come after us. Remember that.
            Potter was laughing and shuddering both at once. Draco knew that the mountain was still there, the steel mountain, but along with it came a sensation like water running down the metal, springing from a source near the top. I remember. And I know what we can do in the meantime. You’re right, Malfoy. I have to get rid of some of these emotions. I don’t want them to overflow and destroy anyone except our enemies.
            Draco swallowed, trying to draw back from the overwhelming experience of speaking mentally, which made him hardly able to notice his body anymore, but also aware that he was probably contributing to the experience by speaking the way he did. I thought you considered us enemies.
            Potter cocked his head at him. And this time, the whole steel mountain was paying attention to Draco, too. He winced.
            Snape swore on the binding potion and put the bond in my hands, Potter said. And you already submitted to me once. I know how to destroy you now if you try to take that back. A pause that wasn’t long enough in any sense for Draco to adjust, and Potter pushed ahead. We need to purge this poison out of my head, and then we need to move on the Ministry.
            The Ministry? Not the Lestranges? Severus asked, his voice like a coiling rope.
            Not them, Potter said. We don’t have the resources to find them or take them yet. In the meantime…
            And he swung all of them to look towards one of the Manor gardens that had been largely left unplanted and untended after the Dark Lord had killed some Muggles there, a garden not visible from the windows in the room where they stood, but which Potter knew the exact location of from Draco’s memories.
            Yes, Potter said. That will do nicely.

*
BAFan: Harry could feel the guilt from his mind now, if he cared to reach for it.
SP777: It was certainly the inspiration for his attitude.
ChelseaPlume: Thanks! I think Severus giving Harry control of the bond is the smartest thing he’s done all story; there’s no way that Harry would accept the kind of mental closeness it demands otherwise.
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The Wages of Going On