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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.

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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Nineteen—A Private War
            Severus stepped back from the cauldron and found himself holding his breath. He exhaled, annoyed with himself. He would not do this. He had wanted the bond to solidify so he would be able to brew again, not because he thought there was a greater danger of being unable to brew even after it did.
            But no matter how long he studied it, the Clarifying Draught remained motionless inside the cauldron. It had the transparent color, the perfect glass-like sheen without a tremble of green or blue on its surface, that it was supposed to have, too. Severus relaxed, and picked up a vial and ladle to begin to move it out of the cauldron.
            A wordless shout of rage through the bond made him drop the vial. Severus watched it break apart into glittering shards on the floor and pondered, for a moment, the consequences of the bond, and whether being able to brew was really worth the trouble.
            Then he shook his head and stooped to cast a Reparo on the vial. At least bits of glass could be fixed far more easily than a ruined potion.
            When the potion was where it should be, inside the repaired and corked vial, Severus turned and walked out of the lab and towards the library. He did not hurry. He had sensed no corresponding shout from Draco, no ringing of worry along the bond. The Manor had not been invaded by rogue Aurors. Potter had not tried to kill Draco. Any lesser crisis meant he didn’t have to worry.
            Severus did pause, with one hand on the knob of the library door, and contemplate what it meant, that he could already tell Draco and Potter apart by the way they shouted inside his mind, although he hadn’t had much exposure to their mental voices so far.
            Then he brushed it off impatiently and opened the door. He had more than enough to worry about without contemplating such idiocy as that.
            And it seemed that he was needed to clear up some confusion, as well.
*
            “I don’t understand why this upsets you so much.”
            Even with a bloody fucking telepathic bond, you don’t? Harry asked, and pivoted towards Malfoy, letting his sneer come out fully. He’d been holding it back while he furiously paced around the library, for fear of looking too much like a Slytherin, but apparently he would only look like a smart Slytherin. You can’t even pick up on that much about what I am, about what I need?
            He was aware that Snape had entered and was leaning against the far wall of the library, watching him critically. Harry ignored that. Snape could do what he liked, as long as he didn’t try to interfere in the bond or drive Harry into a position of compromise. Harry was the only one who would be deciding what he did.
            Oh, Malfoy said.
            Harry rolled his eyes. We find out something awful, and that’s all he can say.
            “I would rather like to know what was worth shouting about in a manner that I heard from across the house,” Snape said, in that terribly, horribly polite manner he had, like someone who just happened to be clearing his throat at the scene of an accident he’d had nothing to do with. “If someone could tell me.”
            Harry whirled around and picked up the book that he and Malfoy had been studying, letting it dangle from his hand as he held it out to Snape. He knew it was still open at the page that he had spotted the horrible sentence on. He’d hit the book hard enough when he was jumping up from the table to make certain of that. “Here. Tell me what you propose we do about this. Because I don’t know.”
            Snape picked up the book and bent his head conscientiously over the print, as though he couldn’t use the bond to pick up on the facts from Harry’s mind. Harry ground his teeth and went back to pacing.
            I was trying not to use the bond to intrude where I wasn’t wanted, Snape said, his words as gentle as acid. The way that you told me you shouldn’t. I thought that intruding where I wasn’t wanted would make you shut down the bond, and I didn’t want that.
            Harry hissed like a teakettle and turned away again. He knew he was being ridiculous, but his head hurt, and his skin pounded like a drum with the blood beneath it, and he ached so much, and he wanted to lie down and have a nap.
            That might be a wise idea, Malfoy suggested. That way, you could be recovered when you woke up, and you’d have had a chance to think about things…
            Harry looked at him. Malfoy turned his palms up and sat down at the table.
            “I do not see this infamous paragraph,” Snape remarked, and held up the book as he turned to Harry. “What is it?”
            “Not a paragraph,” Harry said, and stalked across to pound his finger into the middle of the page. He was aware that that brought him unacceptably close to Snape, but he tried to ignore the way his skin prickled and his heart thudded worse than ever. “A sentence. That last one. There.”
            “So different people most control different parts of the bond,” Snape said. “So someone else will have to initiate our ability to walk different mental paths to different physical places, the way that you initiated the telepathic aspect…” Then his voice broke off. “Ah.”
            “Expressive,” said Harry, hoping that his voice would show one-tenth of his anger, and began stalking back and forth again. At least neither Snape nor Malfoy tried to say something stupid to comfort him. They just watched him instead, at least until Malfoy turned back to the book and began to rifle through the pages.
            “Don’t bother,” Harry said. “I already cast that Seeking Charm, remember? It sought out all the uses of ‘initiate’ in the book. There’s nothing else in there that says the person who already has control of the bond can initiate different parts of it.” He whirled around and punched the wall.
            “There are other words that Draco can look up, like ‘control,’” said Snape, but he wasn’t looking at the book. He was looking at Harry instead, and Harry tensed up at the interest in his eyes, the way he cocked his head as though Harry was some sort of intriguing potion.
            No. You are in the bond with me. I can understand most potions right away, and whether I want to brew them or not. You’re much more a challenge to figure out.
            “So sorry to do that to you,” Harry tried to snap, but it came out more as a defeated little whimper than anything else. He clenched his hands and stared at the floor until he had his heart settled in one place and his thoughts would stop racing.
            “All it would mean,” said Malfoy, although he was still leafing through the book and didn’t look at Harry as he spoke, “is that we would be in charge of different aspects of the bond. You would have control of the telepathy. I would have control of the roads. And maybe Severus would be in charge of the different aspects of combining our powers.”
            “Unacceptable,” Harry said at once. “The only reason that I surrendered to this bond in the first place is that you promised me I would be in control of it.”
            Rather, Snape said, in the back of his mind, I knew that the only way you would accept the telepathy was to leave you in control of it. It does not mean that I thought you were the best person. In fact, I think your instability threatens all of us.
            “I know I have less rage than before,” Harry said.
            Snape looked at the imprint in the wall from his fist, and said nothing.
            Harry shook his head wearily. The anger was draining away as fast as it had come, and he would have blamed his “bondmates” for that, but he didn’t think it was their fault. He thought it was simply that he was exhausted, and didn’t have any more capacity for emotion. Instead, he felt bitter, bleak, cold, like the surface of a field in winter. “I’m not going to do something to destroy this. My life, or yours. What guarantee do I have about you, though? You could easily do something that would destroy one of us, probably me, if you were in charge of some aspect of the bond.” He turned away and considered walking out the library door. Maybe there would be fewer problems if he simply went home and started seeking the Lestranges on his own.
            In the morning. When he’d had some time to recover from the length of a day that was, in some respects, worse than what had happened to him during the day of the bonding ritual.
            “I do not hate you,” Snape said.
            Harry nodded. “Right. And you love Gryffindors, and you can stand the sight of me, and Malfoy there is going to start a society to integrate Muggleborns into the wizarding world any time now.”
            “Here me out.” It was really the calm of Snape’s voice, which was echoed by the voice speaking in Harry’s head, saying the same words, that made him turn around and give Snape the chance. Snape had chosen to move up beside Malfoy now, but not exactly beside him, instead about halfway between Malfoy and Harry. “It helps that the other parts of the bond are not like telepathy. We must hear each other’s thoughts and emotions, unless you choose to set up the barriers. But while I might be the one who has to initiate the combination of our magic, and Draco the one in charge of the paths, you can resist that more effectively than we can resist the telepathy. The mental part of the bond happens instantly, with little defense. You could refuse to give us your magic or walk down those roads.”
            Harry stared at him. That sounded like the sort of thing he needed to make the bond tolerable for him, but Snape hadn’t even read much of that book. “How do you know that?”
            “Because stepping onto the roads would be a physical action,” Malfoy said, turning around in his chair. His hand rested on the book, and he was watching Harry evenly, although without a trace of the frustration Harry had thought he would, for sure, be feeling. “And magic is part of your core. You can share your mind with someone else without your permission, the way that happens in Legilimency. But your magic is part of your core, and no force exists that can drain it without your permission.”
            Harry snorted. “Funny definition of permission you have, if you use it with Legilimency.”
            He felt the harsh tremble in the back of his mind, and he glanced at Snape, prepared to find him sprinting forwards with a wand in his hand. But once again, Snape’s body and his mind didn’t complement each other. He stayed in the same place, and his voice was still calm when he spoke, at least on the surface, although his hands had clenched.
            “You care too much about the names of things. I do not hate you, but I hate the bond. I’m not happy about being bound to you. You were right about that much.”
            Harry inclined his head in something that Snape could choose to call a nod if he wanted, not taking his eyes from Snape’s face.
            “But it is here, and we have to live with it.” Snape spread his hands. “You can trust us, or not. We are explaining the truth about how we think the other parts of the bond would work. You would know if we were lying. We’ve made ourselves more vulnerable to you with your mental control, and lack of control, than you will to us if we control other parts of the bond. You would also know if we didn’t really believe that.”
            “I hate anyone else having control over me,” Harry said. Then he clamped his teeth down, because further words would come out that he didn’t really want out, if he went on speaking like that.
            Snape peered at him, speaking quietly. “Is that an old idea, or did that start with the ritual?”
            “It started with the anger of someone who got pushed around a lot by Dumbledore.”
            Snape nodded as if seriously considering that, which was more than Harry had expected from him. “Very well. But can you trust us, if we explain how we think certain parts of the bond would work, and you listen inside your mind and realize that we are not lying?”
            Harry laughed. “It would help if you didn’t constantly refer to yourself and Malfoy as a pair, the way I asked you not to do.”
            Snape checked for a moment, dipping his head, and then said, “Fair enough. We still have to live with the bond. Can you live with the trust issues that will crackle back and forth between us—all three of us, all of us that are in the bond and living with this particular issue? Or is that something that cannot be so easily resolved?”
            “I don’t think anything’s going to be easy, however you choose to define it.” Harry refused to wrap his arms around himself and shiver, even though he wanted to. He stared at Snape, and Snape stared back.
            Then Harry switched his gaze to Malfoy, who he thought was being unusually quiet about all of this. Malfoy gave him a faint smile and turned his palms upwards, extending his fingers as if catching and cupping an invisible bird in the center of his hand.
            “I think that I can get along with this,” Malfoy said, and Harry didn’t miss the slight emphasis on the pronoun. “The biggest problem is going to be whether you can, Potter, honestly. Severus isn’t the most diplomatic person on the planet, but I think he’s stated the problem we face well enough. Yes, the bond is hard to live with, and yes, it’s harder on you than the rest of us.” Harry nodded; that was a kind of dividing up that he could live with. “But it’s there, and it has to be struggled with. You’ve already learned yourself the kind of futility that resistance is.”
            Harry grimaced. The last thing he wanted was some kind of scene where he broke down sobbing the way he had in the gardens of the Manor.
            And now that he considered it, the bond was actually easier to deal with if he considered it as a stupid but inevitable necessity, the way that the Ministry had some rules as part of Auror training that were no longer very current—for example, the way that Aurors still trained to fight spells that hadn’t been used in a generation, just in case they ever came back—and Harry had had to put up with them and pass those requirements to become an Auror.
            Being an Auror still mattered to him. But he didn’t know if he could go back now that he had cast that pendulum spell and killed some of his colleagues.
            That was a decision he had made all on his own, he thought. Not like the decision to appease the bond and sacrifice his virginity, which had been made under constraints that still caused him to shudder away from the thought of them, but similar in some ways.
            He was still the one who had made the choice. The choice to survive, the choice to accept telepathic control of the bond, the choice to live instead of dying.
            Harry turned back to Malfoy. “Fine,” he said. “But I want you to be the one in control of how we combine our magic, and Snape to be the one who’s in control of the roads in the mind.”
            Malfoy stared at him, and his wonder slipped into place in the back of Harry’s mind like a strand of soapy water sliding down a mirror. “Me? Why?”
            “Because,” Harry said, relentless, and ignoring the way that Snape had stiffened up, “I trust you more, and I still think that combining magic is going to be the more difficult and intrusive thing.”
            Then he turned to Snape, and took his courage in both hands. “What’s the first step that we need to take to get access to those roads?”
*
            Severus silently examined the bond. He appreciated how difficult this was for Potter—since he had dipped into that pool of rage in Potter’s mind, since he had seen the unbridled display of it in the gardens, he understood much better—but he was not sure that this turn to him was sincere.
            It was, he decided, from the shimmering, transparent surface of the bond in his mind, or at least as honest as Potter was capable of being right now.
            You could have asked me that. Weren’t you the one who was harping on about trust and the way that we need to trust what we see in each other’s minds?
            Severus blinked to acknowledge the hit, and in the meantime went on looking at the bond. He thought he could see the place where one would begin to start the roads. They were physical, they must lead somewhere, and that meant the place where the bond vanished in a dark rush down into Potter’s brain was the logical beginning point.
            He fell back and opened his eyes to study Potter, who was watching him with barely-concealed hostility. Severus nodded casually to him and turned to Draco. “Do you want to join us?”
            Draco gave him a withering look. Severus thought that he would have shoved Severus and Potter towards the door of the library, except that wasn’t dignified enough for a Malfoy. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “I should start researching my part, anyway. It looks like you have a good point to launch your studies from. I don’t have one.”
            Potter looked startled. Then he nodded. “That’s a good idea, Malfoy. Come on, Snape.” He turned and marched resolutely away.
            I know you won’t kill him, Draco said, and sat down at the library table again.
            Severus gave Draco a long look that did more for him than any subtle vibration or prod sent down the bond could do, before he followed Potter. Draco was going to pay for this, although it made sense and had been done in such a way that Severus couldn’t see what the appropriate revenge would be yet.
*
            Harry became aware, as they walked, how quiet Snape was. He barely seemed to breathe as they walked across the grass of the grounds in front of the Manor towards the iron gates. Snape seemed to think that they needed to be beyond the wards to get good access to the mental roads, and Harry couldn’t think of a good reason to disagree with him.
            Which does not mean that you will not try.
            Harry glanced back at Snape and offered him a bloody-minded smile. “Well, yeah.” Maybe in some ways, now that the first impulse that would have led him to kill Snape was past, they could understand each other without Malfoy between them, acting as a barrier. “You know that I have to disagree with you on principle.”
            “Why?”
            So sure that was a rhetorical question, Harry didn’t even try to answer it until he felt a quick little jab at his mind. Then he turned around and stared at Snape in shock. “What do you mean why? You always hated me when were at school. I always hated you. You raped me. Why wouldn’t we disagree?”
            “I told you my view on the bond,” Snape said as they crossed through the gates. He turned and faced Harry with his arms folded, the wind barely seeming to stir his cloak. “That it is something that must be lived with, and the sooner we learn to live with it, the closer we will come to the moment when we can end it.”
            Harry half-nodded. “But that doesn’t mean that we can’t struggle with it and hate the consequences it enforces on us in the meantime.”
            Snape blinked and seemed to examine him more attentively, though Harry had assumed that nothing could be more penetrating than his gaze already was. “If we struggle against it, we cannot make it do as we wish.”
            “I didn’t mean it in the sense of damning it and wishing it out of existence the way I did before.” Harry shook his head when Snape just went on looking at him. “I meant that we shouldn’t just be happy about it. We should always remember that we didn’t choose for it to come into existence, and resent it.”
            Snape stood there. Harry rolled his eyes. “You know, the way that you regarded me when I was in school? When you weren’t just hating me, I mean. You had to protect me because I was the best way to win the war, but you resented my existence.”
            Snape didn’t move for a moment. Then he said, “It was more complicated than either resentment or hatred.”
            “I suppose we’ll never know, will we?” Harry turned around and began to look for a good place to stand. He assumed that a physical thing like the road would probably open up in front of them, and he didn’t want to be near a tree or a cloud of dust that could envelop him. “Since you’ll never tell me, and I don’t care enough to ask.”
            “You could look at my memories.”
            Harry stared without looking around. That produced no results, so he turned around and stared in Snape’s actual direction. “Excuse me?”
            “I have realized that I made many mistakes in the way that I spoke to you after the ritual,” said Snape, his eyes aimed over Harry’s head, far away, into the distance. Harry started to scoff, but Snape continued speaking, and he kind of had to shut up and listen. “My guilt made me act in irrational ways because I did not want to acknowledge it. That may not matter to you, but it does to me, a great deal.” His eyes came back to Harry. “That means that I want to purge the guilt. Enough has been done so that I can brew in peace again, but I cannot think in peace. If I show you my memories, the way you showed me yours of the bond, then it will balance the scales.”
            Harry couldn’t even shake his head, because the offer was so strange. Instead, he just asked, “And you think showing me your memories of the bond is likely to endear me to you?”
            “I am doing this for myself, and not you,” Snape said. “Choose a time that you would like to know about. I was thinking that the memories of Hogwarts when you thought I hated you would be a natural place to look, but it does not matter. I open my mind to you.”
            Harry came a step nearer. Then he said, “I’m still not a good Legilimens.”
            “For this, you need not be.” Snape seemed to have descended into a kind of stony peace, where he did nothing but stare at Harry and wait for him to react in some way. “For this, I will drop my barriers, and you need only cast the spell and push.”
            It still sounded too good to be true, at least to Harry, but he had to admit, he was curious. And if he could punish Snape in some way, it might make him feel better. Why shouldn’t he do it with Snape’s willing cooperation?
            He lifted his wand and held it out towards Snape’s eyes, whispering, “Legilimens.”
            Snape didn’t look away, and Harry vanished easily into the rush of memories.
*
moodysavage: Yes. And despite his offer at the end, Snape’s insistence that he’s doing this all for himself isn’t really endearing him to Harry either…
ChelseaPlume: I think there are ways that’s true. Of course, Harry is hardly willing to look at it that way, Draco is busy thinking about tons of other things, and Severus would hate to admit to a weakness like that.
And thanks! I think Harry is still acting wildly, but I think it’s the thrashing of an animal in a trap; he simply doesn’t see any other way to react, to show his rage and despair. But he’s calmer about it now than he was.
SP777: Thanks! Although I think of Harry more as fire.
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The Wages of Going On