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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
- 16
- 17
- 18
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Chapter Seventeen—Let’s Go Kill Something
            “I would prefer that you didn’t rip all my flowers and grass out of the grounds.”
            Harry ignored the mutter from Malfoy. He had decided that strengthening the telepathic part of the bond was important right now, and that meant speaking mentally every time they wanted to communicate something. He was busy, anyway.
            He stalked slowly back and forth, eyes on the neat square of brown in front of him. It had once held flowers, he thought, but it had been bare for years now. If he reached down into the earth with a spell, though, there were still buried seeds there, lost and forgotten, and if he cast a spell that twisted and coaxed them a bit…
            “Did you hear me, Potter?”
            Harry felt a little thrill race through him as he kept his back turned and ignored Malfoy some more. It was the same sort of thrill he had felt when he’d realized what Snape had done with the bond: touched it, triggered it, but backed off and put Harry in charge.
            This was strength, racing from mind to mind, touching thoughts and channeling them. When he wanted to, he could shut down the conduits, and neither Snape nor Malfoy would be able to open them again until he told them they could. When he wanted to speak to them, they jumped, unable to turn away from him.
            This was power.
            Don’t rip up my garden!
            That came with a feeling like someone placing a hand on his shoulder. Harry shuddered all over under it. Was Malfoy breaking their implicit agreement? Was he trying to take control of the bond from Harry?
            But the sensation retreated, and Harry realized what it had been. Malfoy had wanted to get his attention, so he had reached through the bond in a way that was like tapping someone on the shoulder. But Harry was free, and still stronger in the bond than Malfoy would ever manage to be. Harry controlled his snort and bent down to cast his spell directly on the earth.
            Don’t worry, Malfoy. I’m only going to add a few things to the garden that would never have grown here otherwise, and take my vengeance from them. Before Malfoy could voice some sort of concern about that, Harry breathed out, “Flos malus.”
            There was a bark in the back of his mind as Snape recognized the spell, but he was too far away, and Harry too near, for him to do anything about it. The seed Harry had found came exploding out of the earth as a red flower with thorns encircling it like a whipping fence. It whirled the thorns around it and cast them directly at Harry, a net that would do more than scratch him to death if he was caught within it. The flower would pierce his skin and drink his blood through the long, hollow thorns.
            But Harry was ready for it, and he danced backwards, and he felt his bondmates’ outrage and concern as sweet wine in the back of his mind as he called, “Reducto!”
            The Blasting Curse hit the flower and crumpled and crumbled it down to its root. The thorns went flying from it and struck the ground like spears a good distance away. Neither Malfoy nor Snape was standing in the path of the flying things, so it wasn’t like they could be hurt, but Harry felt them flinch anyway.
            They were sheltered, Harry thought. Even Snape was, even with all his bloody and horrible past. They didn’t know what Harry had faced in Auror training and then the year he had spent as an Auror before the bonding ritual.
            We know plenty about blood and pain—
            He couldn’t even tell which one of them that was, their voices blending into an irritating chorus in the back of his head. The only thing that mattered was the stretch of his muscles, the way the flower was ripping back towards him, and another seed he had enchanted was starting to sprout, although this one had tangling vines that spread along the ground and tried to snare his feet. He danced madly around them, over them, and Vanished the dripping remains of the first flower before swinging around to confront the second.
            The vines had crept behind him, and tried to sneak up his arms and grab his wand.
            Harry grinned. He had to appreciate the subtlety and speed of the plant, really. But it had made the same mistake that so many of his enemies had—a point he proved by muttering a vicious spell that made the plant start to wither and turn brown the moment it came into contact with his skin.
            He was better.
            Malfoy squawked and retreated as a third flower started to sprout, near him. Harry planted himself in front of his bondmate, who needed his protection and was a lot more helpless than Harry.
            That made him conscious of the indignation flowing from Malfoy, the way he would be conscious of hot food in his mouth. Harry shrugged merrily and spread his legs wide, the better to brace and balance, his eyes steady on the flowers. They were wriggling towards him, but the nearest one was too little for him to tell what it would be yet, or whether it was dangerous, so his eyes went back to the one with the vines.
            The vines had tied themselves together into a knot, and it looked as if the plant might try the tactic of the first flower, although it would throw a net made of tendrils rather than thorns over his head. Harry bent down a little to encourage it, ignoring the shrieks in the back of his mind about how he was mad from Malfoy and Snape. At least Malfoy had retreated a little, which meant Harry wouldn’t bump into him when he had to move fast.
            The plant moved with speed that Harry hadn’t known it would be able to muster, curving an almost elegant net towards the back of his neck and knees.
            But Harry leaped while it was still throwing, and came down safely to the side. He cast a curse he had learned that produced a brilliant yellow light, and where it hit, the plant burst into soft, soundless flame. It writhed and tried to sink into the soil, but the flames would harm nothing but it. They simply went under the ground with it, consuming it from the leaves down to the roots.
            Harry began to laugh, and couldn’t stop. He could feel the spasms racking him from the inside out, the way that his cries had during the bonding ritual.
            No, the way they had not. He had kept his pain inside, grunting and screaming only when pain forced him to. He’d had that little crisis about how it wasn’t fair and he didn’t want to do anything like this, and got it out of the way before Snape and Malfoy woke up.
            Harry was still frowning about the odd disconnect in his memories when the third plant erupted from beneath him.
            It wasn’t small, after all. It had just hidden its size under the loose soil, and what rose was a giant cup of a flower, opening to the extent that it could engulf him. Its petals gaped and there was a gleam of something wet in the middle of its throat that Harry would wager was more dangerous than nectar or pollen.
            He twisted and leaped, foot skidding off a slick petal as he did so. He ended up a short distance away, less far than he would have gone if he’d been prepared. The plant’s pink petals closed, realized they were munching nothing, and turned towards him.
            “Flamma.”
            There was Snape’s voice, so low that Harry couldn’t tell the emotion in it. Consulting the bond told him nothing. Snape couldn’t lift walls that would keep Harry’s mental voice from reaching him, but it seemed he could do the next best thing, and make sure that no information about himself would reach Harry.
            Harry whipped around and yelled at Snape. The plant had burst into the flames, and he had raised only three. There was no need to worry about more of them. “How dare you! I was handling it!”
            You were in danger, Snape hissed in the back of Harry’s mind. Now Harry could work out what his emotions were, all right. Snape was spitting like a struck cat, forcing his concern and his irritation into Harry’s mind until he had no choice but to pay attention to it. You have no right to toy with your life like that. Not when it would mean that the both of us would be dragged to death by it.
            Harry laughed again, but this one was short and sharp and didn’t rack him with convulsions. What did you think I meant to do when I said that I would come out here and work the negative emotions off? I’m an Auror. Facing danger is part of my job.
            Creating your own danger is not, Snape said, but Harry was more intrigued by something he had caught a flash of from Malfoy, like a mouse darting around the corner before his eyes could focus fully on it. He turned to stare at Malfoy, who was standing now with his gaze fixed on the dirt.
            I told you not to tear up my garden, Malfoy thought to him.
            You can put the soil back, Harry snapped at him. I want to know what you were thinking a minute ago. Do you agree with Snape that I shouldn’t be creating my own danger? Snape was ridiculous, but it would help to know what side Malfoy was on, if not just his own.
            Malfoy nodded. You could conjure dummies and send spells at them. That’s what I thought you would do. Not raise things that could attack back. And not use the last of the seeds that were here to do it.
            Harry shook his head in fury. No. It was more than that. You had a thought a minute ago, when I said that I was an Auror. What was it?
            Faced with him, and the words pumping into his mind like blood, Malfoy remembered what had darted through his head before he could hide it. Harry ran after it and ripped it from his head, ignoring the way Malfoy screamed. That was what it meant, for him to be in control of the bond. Besides, a second later Malfoy was fine. It was only the mental pain that troubled him, the same kind of pain that Harry used to suffer all the time when Snape used Legilimency on him.
            I did not tell you you could do that, Snape said.
            You’re not in charge here, old man, Harry said.
            What he had found was a memory. Malfoy—only he thought of himself as Draco—standing in the middle of that chamber where Harry had slaughtered the other Aurors with a pendulum spell and shaking his head at Harry’s back. He had thought that, however Harry wanted to define himself, just being an Auror didn’t come into it. Aurors didn’t know curses like that. Aurors weren’t Dark like that.
            Harry caught another undercurrent, also part of the memory because Malfoy had thought it at the same time, but linked to a previous one. An ordinary Auror couldn’t survive a bonding ritual the way Harry had.
            “Most Aurors wouldn’t be virgins,” Harry said aloud. His pulse was thundering in his ears in a way it hadn’t been when he was scrambling around the garden away from the flowers. He tasted the cold, dry sensation of shock in his mouth. He stared at Malfoy and shook his head. What would he come up with next? That Harry wasn’t human? That Harry had done some superb thing in bargaining the bond to tie them like this?
            If the alternative is leaking our brains out our ears, you did.
            Harry snapped up to look at Malfoy. Malfoy was watching him with one hand cupped over his ear, as though he wanted to prevent his brain from dripping out of it even now. Harry snorted. “It wasn’t superb. I did it because I wanted to survive so much.”
            “Why is that a bad thing?” It was Snape who spoke, the sound of gritted teeth so much in his voice that Harry wanted to laugh aloud. Again. Was Snape trying to convince Harry he was neutral, or not upset about Harry pulling Malfoy’s thoughts out of his head? He wasn’t going to do that as long as they had a telepathic bond. “And we survived as well.”
            “I only made sure that you survived because I couldn’t think of a way to separate us where the bond was concerned,” Harry snapped. Were they this stupid? Did they think that Harry had some sort of compassion for them and had suspected they would be tied together like this?
            I think you had guilt because the Lestranges forced their way past the wards. You didn’t think that you’d done your part to protect us.
            Harry whirled and faced Malfoy. “Stay out of my head, you fuck,” he whispered.
            You were the one who was saying just now that we can’t expect privacy from a telepathic bond, Snape said, his voice sliding along smooth as oil. And you were the one who wanted us to practice the telepathy before, so that we would be able to strengthen the bond. What has changed?
            Harry licked his lips. He couldn’t say it, even telepathically, but he could think it. He didn’t want them to say that he had conquered the bond out of guilt.
            But that is what you thought at the time. Snape spoke so slowly that Harry would have known he was confused without the knowledge falling into place in the back of his mind. You thought that you could spare us some pain by negotiating with the ritual and making your virginity its price. I saw that when I touched your memories of the moment.
            Harry’s thoughts raced around his head, probably corralled by the bond, probably able to be read, no matter how much Harry flinched and hunched from the idea. He didn’t want Snape to read them. He didn’t want to remember the ritual. He didn’t want to deal with the consequences. He didn’t want them to say—
            That you’re extraordinary?
            It was Malfoy and not Snape who had found his way to that thought. Harry turned his head and stared at Malfoy. He came up and stopped about a meter away from Harry, his eyes fixed on Harry’s face.
            Why is it that thought that hurts you so much? Malfoy whispered. The bond stirred and rattled like a sheet of tin in the back of Harry’s head, and more information poured into his mind. Malfoy would spare him this if he could, but Harry had already picked up the thought, and anyway, he wanted to understand.
            Because if I was that extraordinary, Harry replied, as if he was in a conversation with Hermione and nothing but honesty would do, I would have found some other way out of the situation than bonding myself to my rapists.
            Malfoy flinched, but didn’t retreat. You did the only thing you could, the only thing that would let us all survive. He paused. I’m proud of you.
            Harry laughed. Malfoy took a step closer instead of retreating, although Harry could feel his fear, jerking and dancing and whispering in the back of his head.
            You have no idea what you’re talking about. It’s impossible that you should be proud of me.
            Malfoy shook his head, holding Harry’s gaze. Harry wondered if that was so Snape could creep up behind him and stab him in the back, but it didn’t matter. He was unable to look away from Malfoy’s face even if that was what was about to happen.
            I know what I feel. It took me some time to come to terms with it, I admit. Malfoy paused. And longer to see what I should have acknowledged before now, that you use this madness to drive and keep away everyone you can.
            Harry swallowed. His throat felt torn by the laughter and the shrieking, and his head was spinning with the rage again.
            You have a reason to resent us. Malfoy stared at him. But you’re driving away your friends as well, and I don’t think you told any of the other Aurors what you were really searching for. You can’t trust a single one of them?
            Harry thought of Stockwell and the other Aurors piled under the Draught of Living Death in the middle of Malfoy’s dining room right now, flinging the images like knives at him. At them, because Snape was standing behind him and listening, too.
            But they’re Aurors that you don’t know, Malfoy said. I know from the way you think about Stockwell that you didn’t know her before this, and you were just as surprised by what she said under Veritaserum as any of the rest of us were. Isn’t there anyone you could trust? Any of the Aurors you already knew that you think might give you someone to work with, instead of against?
            The wistful ring in his voice made Harry fold his arms hard enough that his shoulders hurt. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Someone to make me weak and easier for you to live with?
            Stop this, Snape hissed, his voice more like Nagini’s than anything Harry had heard in years. It is not unnatural for you to trust and work with others. Perhaps it would be unnatural for us. There were shades and nuances behind those words that Harry didn’t understand, and which he didn’t intend to investigate. Snape was as human to him as Harry would ever need. But for you? What has changed?
            Harry stared at him, silently challenging him to ask that question again.
            “The rape.” This time, Snape spoke aloud, studying Harry. “The rape destroyed your trust of all involved in it. The ones you trusted at the time, that is. Including the Aurors who were supposed to keep your secrets and prevent something like what the Lestranges did from happening.”
            Harry was breathing fast. There were thoughts in his head, bounding from side to side and ricocheting off invisible walls, but he had no idea whose they were. The rape didn’t affect me that much. It couldn’t have.
            Yes, it did, Malfoy said. Of course it did.
            Harry clutched at his head. The thoughts were running circles, and different ones flashed back and forth and moving so fast that Harry couldn’t distinguish the gleam of them. Of course the rape had affected him; he had flung the reminder of that in Snape and Malfoy’s faces often enough. Of course it hadn’t affected him too much; he wasn’t weak that way, he was his ordinary self still. Of course he wasn’t ordinary; he was the bloody Chosen One, and he was a good Auror who could concentrate on his job to the exclusion of everything else, including something like this, his determination strengthened by the ordeal. Of course a normal Auror didn’t concentrate on his job to the exclusion of all else, and wouldn’t have expected to face something like the Lestranges’ demented bonding ritual.
            He wanted more than anything to be an ordinary Auror.
            I was affected by this. I’m shaken by it.
            I wasn’t affected by it. I’m normal.
            Those things can’t both be true.
            This time, the sensation in his head was more like an egg splitting open. His brain had been dropped from a great height, maybe, and splattered open when it met the ground. Harry found himself sagging down, his arms wrapped around his head, whimpering so pitifully that the thought darted across his mind that Malfoy and Snape would despise him for it.
            Never, said Malfoy, and there was empathy there, maybe no sympathy, because Malfoy was still distant from Harry and not part of him, but memories of his own cowardice and fear and pain during the war, and the times that he’d had to lock himself in a room deep in the Manor and sob because he would go mad if he didn’t.
            I’m already mad.
            You are not, said Snape. I would know if you were, because I am an expert in madness.
            That struck Harry as funny, and he wanted to laugh, but it came out as a choked sob instead. He sensed Malfoy approaching, and pushed him as hard as he could with his thoughts when his body was shaking with fear and pain. Don’t touch me. I can’t stand it if you touch me.
            Malfoy crouched down on the grass near him, as Harry could hear from the slight shifting of grass and dirt, but didn’t touch him. I’m just going to sit here, Malfoy whispered. I won’t even watch if you don’t want me to.
            Harry wrapped his arms around himself and huddled further over in response. He didn’t care if Malfoy watched or not. Or Snape. They would hear what was going on, and that was humiliation enough for him—
            And then the sorrow and the rage ripped him apart.
            Harry did what he could to keep his face buried, in the dirt when he couldn’t keep his arms still enough to hide himself completely. He didn’t watch them watching him. He didn’t even know if they were. The stillness in the back of his mind, the two points that weren’t torn apart, wavered back and forth at first, and then steadied. They were two rocks that didn’t move even as the earthquakes traveled through his emotions.
            Rage. How could this have happened to him? Why had this happened to him? Why did it have to happen to him when he was finally happy and leading a life that was his own for once?
            Fear. What if Voldemort came back, and everything that he had won turned to dust and ashes? What if he had to keep saving the world again and again?
            Frustration. He didn’t want this bond, he didn’t want to live with it, and he didn’t care if that made him sound like a petulant little child, it was just the truth.
            Sorrow. He wished things could have been different, that he could have found some other way to escape the bond and live with Snape and Malfoy, that he could have found some other way to protect them and himself, even that he could have lost his virginity a different way. That was a small thing compared to everything else, but it was there.
            And trying to ignore the little things had only let those little things dominate him.
            He sobbed sometimes, and ripped up the dirt with his fingers at others, and uttered muffled screams towards the end, when the tears had become furious dryness and he just wanted to release it. And when everything finally passed, he lay there and shook.
            It was the first time Harry could remember since the war that he had just let everything go. He hadn’t bottled things up, not really. But he had usually got rid of them by arresting someone or dueling constantly with Ron. This time, he had left Ron and Hermione behind, through no fault of his own.
            Snape and Malfoy were here.
            But not all that troublesome right now, Harry thought, lifting his head and wiping soil off his face. Snape sat on the ground, his legs crossed, his eyes closed, for all the world as if he was practicing meditation. Maybe he was. Malfoy watched him, his hands resting on his knees and his eyes rimmed with tiredness.
            Harry spoke aloud. “Sorry I ripped up your garden.”
            Malfoy half-smiled. We can put it back.
            Harry nodded and turned to Snape. Snape opened his eyes, and his presence in the back of Harry’s mind became a little more focused, but it was still hard to tell what he was feeling. Harry thought he was in abeyance, actually, holding himself back and seeing what would happen.
            “That revenge you mentioned once before,” Harry whispered. “I think I might be a little more interested in taking it now.”
*
ChelseaPlume: As you can see here, there are still going to be bumps along the way, but Harry needed that acknowledgment, if only to himself, that he really, really hurts from what happened, and to start tolerating the presence of a couple of people close to him.
If Harry can start seeing the choices he made as a choice rather than something to just be ignored and got over so he can go back to being an Auror, then he might start healing.
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The Wages of Going On