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Love, Free as Air	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 32703 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am not making any money from this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Two�From
Between the Bars

�� After a few
days of living in a cage, placed against the far wall of the large dark room
that served Snape and Malfoy as a cross between study and drawing room, Harry
knew more about the two men than he had ever wanted to know.

�� For
example, he knew that Malfoy stumbled out of bed in the morning with his hair
mussed all to one side and bits of food still stuck between his teeth. He would
give Harry the bowl of seeds, nuts, and slices of fruit that he seemed to have
decided was a perfect diet for a parrot, yawning all the time, which gave Harry
the perfect opportunity to look at his tonsils, assuming he wanted to. Then he stumbled back into
the bathroom and did some arcane series of wandless Transfigurations that
resulted in him emerging looking like the sleek man Harry had spotted in the
garden that first day.

�� Malfoy
would spend a portion of the morning talking to Harry, or rather, sitting in
the same room and using Harry as a convenient audience for his tales of woe or
his latest reading. Then he would go out in the garden and sit staring at the
sky. He came back inside to eat his lunch, then would sit with a book, or
sleep, or go walking in the garden once more, and so on until dinner.

�� He never
seemed to spend much time with Snape.

�� Harry
wasn�t stupid; he had figured out within a few hours of coming here that Snape
and Malfoy were lovers. But it showed more in the way Malfoy hunched his
shoulders and snapped, and Snape ignored him with a magnificence Harry couldn�t
remember Snape using even on him in
school, than in any tender touches or loving words.

�� Harry had
to seriously pause when he thought of that and ask himself whether he had
thought that Snape and Malfoy would use tender touches or loving words anyway. He would shake his head and
preen his feathers afterwards, in the hopes that smoothing them back into place
would also put his thoughts in some semblance of order.

�� Snape was
different. He would come out a full hour before Malfoy and stand looking
through the window into the garden. Then he would turn around, give Harry a
single cold look, and go to fetch his own breakfast. (If Malfoy ate breakfast,
Harry never saw him do it). After that, it was brewing, brewing, brewing, and sometimes
reading Potions books in the drawing room-cum-study in the evening, pausing now
and then for a single bite of toast or a cup of soup.

�� Harry
thought he would have feared Snape less in school if he had known how
phenomenally boring the man was.

�� Snape
almost never spoke. He seemed to find enough to content him in his cauldrons
and books. Malfoy would look at him constantly, open his mouth, and then snap
it shut again, turning his head away. Harry could practically hear him thinking
that interrupting Snape�s solitude would never be worth it.

�� A pretty sad statement when you think about
it, that you can�t imagine interrupting your lover to offer him your presence, Harry
thought, and then had to spend a little time biting his toenails before he
could feel normal again.

�� Snape and
Malfoy�s relationship�if Harry had to
think about it in those terms, and it seemed he did�was falling apart slowly,
like a building subjected to the Detonation-in-Eternity Curse. Snape never
noticed. Malfoy was too wrapped up in it to notice anything else.

�� That ought
to have made this the perfect set of conditions for Harry to escape. Malfoy
barely paid attention to him except when Harry did something he hadn�t seen
before, like hang upside-down from the top of the cage, or when he wanted an
audience to the sad little story of his sad little life. Harry should have
picked the lock that fastened the door of the cage and made his way out the
window on the second day, or at least convinced Malfoy that he was who he said he was and got some help
in changing back.

�� Except that
neither of those worked.

�� Malfoy had
been clever when he conjured the lock, clever enough that Harry thought he
ought to be punished by being locked up with it after death (if he shouldn�t be
punished by being made to sit in a room with Snape and continually trying to
get some of his attention). The lock had a steel cover over the wards that made
it move, and the cover was impossible to lift from any angle that Harry could
attain inside the cage. Even when he clung to the bars of the door beneath it,
stretched his beak through the bars, and lifted, the cover wouldn�t cling to
anything; it fell back down with a rattling noise just when Harry was starting
to insert the curved tip of his beak between the flutings of the lock.

�� It was maddening.

�� The other
course, Harry tried in desperation the fourth day he was there, because he
thought that perhaps his suspicions about Malfoy being paranoid and willing to
kill him if Harry mentioned his name were exaggerated. He waited until Snape
was deeply involved in something in his lab and Malfoy was sitting on the
couch, supposedly reading but really staring at the wall with a faraway look in
his eyes. He was about to begin complaining, and Harry would just as soon head that
off if he could.

�� Listen,�
he said.

�� Malfoy
glanced at him with a faint smile. �Your voice is so clear, Compensation,� he said. (Harry also hated the name
Malfoy had chosen for him. It made Malfoy sound so soppy and Harry sound like
some faithful lapdog come to relieve his loneliness). �I reckon that you�ll
start talking like us eventually, won�t you? Or like me,� he added, plunged
straight back into gloom. �I don�t think Severus ever talks to you.�

�� Harry had
an unfortunately clear, if brief, vision of Malfoy twisting in Snape�s arms in
bed, calling out, �Severus!� He
shuddered as best as he could without big shoulders and tried again.

�� I really
did know you at Hogwarts, Malfoy,� he said. �You scared me on the Quidditch
pitch by dressing up like a Dementor. I found you in the bathroom crying during
our sixth year. It�s me, Harry Potter.�

�� Malfoy went
quite still. His hand slid to his wand. Harry held his breath, ready to spread
his wings and flap furiously from side to side if he needed to. Luckily, Malfoy
had made the cage big enough for that.

�� Then Malfoy
shook his head and cast a spell. He was distant enough on the couch that Harry
couldn�t make out the words his lips were forming, but the movements of his
wand looked familiar. It was a charm that would let him sense any magic
clinging to an animal, or at least Harry thought it was. He arched his neck
helpfully on his perch and hoped for the best.

�� Malfoy sat
still when the spell was finished and turned pink. Then he rose and stalked
across the room to Harry.

�� He bent
down so that his face was level with Harry. Harry looked at him hopefully. He
didn�t like the look in Malfoy�s eyes, though, and his words were even less
likeable.

�� Severus?�
Malfoy whispered. �Can you hear me? This isn�t funny, you bastard. It wasn�t
funny when you enchanted the morning glory and it�s not funny this time either.�

�� Harry
stared. What?

�� You can�t
fool me into thinking it�s the bloody bird,�
Malfoy said, voice scathing. �I just checked and there�s no magic of any kind
on him�no charms that would give him memories belonging to someone else, no
magic that would conceal the fact that he�s an Animagus, nothing. That means it�s you and your bloody undetectable potions
again. Give me one reason, just one,
why I shouldn�t storm into your lab and interrupt your brewing.�

�� It�s really me,� Harry said, and tried to
think of something Malfoy had done to him that Snape wouldn�t know about, the
way he would about the bathroom incident and probably the confrontation on the
Quidditch pitch. It was hard, though, when his mind was reeling with the other
knowledge Malfoy had discovered.

�� Not only
had the criminals he�d been spying on put a spell on him that would trap him in
his Animagus form, they�d used another charm�or that charm itself had a
component�that made anyone else unable to find the magic.

�� Bastards. Harry hoped they�d all burned
in the fire that a quarrel over money between them had started.

�� You wanted
to fight a duel with me first year,� Harry said, and pressed closer to the side
of the cage, cocking his head so that he could see Malfoy better with one eye. Damn beak. �You didn�t show up. That was
a trap. You didn�t tell Snape about that, did you? You couldn�t have.�

�� Yes, very
funny, Severus,� Malfoy said, but his voice had changed. It sounded more like
frozen glass breaking and less like anger. �To use words against me that I
spoke in privacy. I find your joke unamusing, and since you won�t admit to it��

�� He stalked
away down the corridor.

�� Harry
leaned his forehead against the bars and kept it there for a minute, not caring
how odd the gesture would make him look to anyone who thought he was a bird. By
this point, someone thinking he was odd could only work out well for him.

�� Fuck. I forgot that they�ve probably been
lovers, or at least friends, for years, and that Malfoy has probably told Snape
everything about his Hogwarts career in a desperate attempt to seem important
enough for him.

�� And if Snape has played jokes like this
before�

�� If he had
to pick a side in the endless arguments that haunted this house, Harry thought,
this would have been enough to make him choose Malfoy�s.

*

�� Draco could
feel the anger and the bile collecting together in his throat, creating a hot
mixture that he would have to spit out rather than swallow. Luckily, he had
someone he could unload that mixture onto.

�� Severus had
cast spells like this before, though only the first one had ever fooled Draco.
He had made his voice seem to emerge from the morning glory vines shortly after
they�d begun to grow, and because of his use of a potion, Draco had found no
magic when he used the charm that should have detected it. Draco had
half-believed, for a few minutes, that the vine was really as strange and
sentient as it seemed to be, a transformed wizard or unknown magical variety,
and had confessed several different things to it before he remembered the
Televox Potion that Severus was working on. He had destroyed the vine in a fit
of rage and suffered from Severus�s calm assessment that night that he was
childish and required help in controlling his anger.

�� Severus had
tried it since, with furniture and other flowers and insects, but not for
years. Draco had thought he had given it up at last.

�� Now he
understood. Severus had only waited until he had a target that Draco might
actually have believed, a bird with a human voice.

�� Draco
struck out with one arm when he reached the wards around Severus�s lab. Though
Severus had undoubtedly forgotten it, he had built weaknesses and flaws into
the wards years ago, when they were on better terms, that would respond to
Draco�s touch and fall apart if Draco ever desperately needed to reach him.
They allowed Draco, now, to walk straight into the lab and not fear the fire
that might have come to life in his guts if he was an intruder.

�� He slammed
the door behind him.

�� Severus
jumped, dropping a bit of metal he held into the cauldron he was currently
poised above. Draco smiled. He thought it was probably a mean and spiteful
smile, and he wasn�t displeased with the notion that Severus would turn around
and see that on the face of the person who had dared to interrupt him.

�� Not that
Severus turned at once. He stared into the ruined potion as if he wanted to
memorize the exact terms under which it had failed, and then turned so that his
robes snapped and clapped behind him. But Draco, if not immune to hurt from his
lover, had at least grown immune to this tactic years ago, and only waited,
arms folded, until Severus faced him.

�� I don�t
know why you assumed I would believe your voice emerging from a bird�s beak any
more than I believed it coming from the table two years ago,� he said.

�� Severus
narrowed his eyes. �Do tell me whatever impossible story you have dreamed up
now, Draco,� he drawled, �and strip it of unnecessary details, so that I may
return to what gives meaning to my life.�

�� Draco
sucked in his breath. He would have liked to close his eyes and take a moment
to assimilate the hurt Severus�s words caused him. He had never said before, so
openly, that his brewing mattered more to him than Draco did.

�� But closing
his eyes was a sign of weakness that Severus would pounce on in a moment, so
instead he told the truth that Severus must already know.

�� You used
the Televox Potion to make my bird speak about secrets only you could have
known,� he said. �It wasn�t your voice, but it doesn�t need to be when that
parrot has one of its own. I�ve checked and double-checked, and there�s no
magic on the bird at all, let alone any charm that could have concealed
Animagus ability. It was you. It must
have been. Why? Are you annoyed that I�ve passed all your little exams for the
last year or so?� That was Severus�s justification for the pranks he tried to
pull, that they were exams meant to test Draco�s emotional resilience and
mental stability. He had to be stable, both mentally and emotionally, if he was
to last out years in a confined and controlled environment like this house
where they had only each other, Severus had explained.

�� That was
another explanation that Draco would have received with wide eyes and beating
heart years ago, longing to be found worthy.

�� Now he knew
that Severus would never find him worthy no matter what he did.

�� Severus
regarded him with his mouth and nostrils pinched tight. Then he shook his head.
�I did not use the potion,� he said. �I have better things to do than grant you
a chance to pass exams you have already failed.�

�� When did I fail it?� Draco demanded,
drawn despite himself into a row that he hadn�t wanted to have. �Tell me that.
I was fooled for three minutes that
first time, and since then, I�ve never believed you.�

�� Those
three minutes were the failure.�

�� Severus�s
mouth was twisted, his eyes bright with contempt and disgust. Draco clenched
his hands into fists. He could not believe that he had once loved this man, or
convinced himself he did. Wasn�t it more likely that he had brewed his
hero-worship and his frantic wish to remain free into a concoction as poisonous
as any of Severus�s draughts and then called it love?

�� Well. He
would have liked to think that, but he wasn�t sure he could, when his head and
chest still pounded with pain whenever Severus did something like this.

�� You�re
lying,� Draco whispered. �The bird isn�t an Animagus. You�ve done things like
this before. What other explanation could there be?�

�� If you
must think that to live with yourself, then so be it,� Severus said, and turned
away. �I will need an hour�s extra work to put this right. Consider that hour
stolen from time I might have spent with you this evening.�

�� The
audacity made Draco want to scream. Severus never spent time with him in the
evenings anymore. It had been months since they�d slept in the same bed, even.
But to say that, to imply that he might have,
and that it was Draco�s fault that he had changed his plans�

�� It was the
kind of emotional blackmail that Severus had been pulling for years, Draco
thought dully. It had either been less blatant before, or Draco had refused to
see it for what it was. Perhaps a combination of both. In some ways, though not
in all, Severus Snape was not a subtle man.

�� Fine,� he
said, and walked out of the room.

At least he managed to keep his
head from dangling uselessly until he got out of the corridor that led to the
lab. And then he gathered up lunch�if only a cheese sandwich�and ate it before
he went out into the garden. And he chose a section of the garden that he knew
Severus couldn�t see from either the lab or the kitchen, the rooms he was
likely to spend time in for the rest of the afternoon.

�� He had
little left except his pride. Best to nourish that, if only with the scraps of
dignity and restraint he could snatch from Severus.

*

�� When and
why had he taken such a childish lover?

�� The thought
intruded itself between Severus and his refinement of the Blood-Replenisher,
which had never happened before. Draco�s entrance had disturbed him more than
he had thought. He stepped back from the cauldron and began to pace out the
neatly calculated set of steps around his lab that would give him the maximum
of exercise while keeping him a comfortable distance from the cauldrons and
more delicate ingredients.

�� An odd lie
for Draco to speak, that accusation that Severus had used the Televox Potion on
the ragged parrot he had rescued the other day�a bird whose feathers were not
even good material for the potions he had tried them in. He must be lying, of
course, because Severus had done no such thing and he had cast charms himself
that showed the parrot was ordinary.

�� However, perhaps
there were other explanations. It was more charity than Draco deserved, but he
might have heard the words that he thought he had. Severus picked up his wand,
listened a moment to ensure that Draco was not in the house, and then went into
the drawing room, where the parrot�s cage sat.

�� The
enlarged rat cage was now nearly as tall as Severus and as wide as the smaller
couch. The bird inside twisted its head around and eyed Severus sideways as he
approached. Draco had trimmed and smoothed a branch that he had stuck through
the middle of the bars to serve as a perch. The bird seemed to spend its time
on that, staring at them and occasionally screaming when Severus was trying to
read.

�� No doubt he can sense delicate mental
operations taking place and does not wish them to, as they might challenge his
intelligence for supremacy, Severus thought. Then he discarded the thought.
Its rhetoric and formulation suggested that he was falling into the same trap
as Draco by attributing unusual force of willpower and brainpower to the bird.

�� He lifted
his wand when he was near the bars. The bird went frantic, immediately
screaming, puffing his feathers out, and flinging himself off the perch to
flutter around the back of the cage.

�� Draco might
indulge such hysterics, but Severus had no time for them. He cast a spell that
chained the bird�s legs to the bars and then reached in with a confident hand
to hold the neck still.

�� The bird
bit his finger, beak closing down as if it meant to unscrew the top of his skin
like a seedcase.

�� Severus
swore, jerked his hand backwards, and cast Numbing and Blood-Clotting Charms in
quick succession. His fault, of course; he should have muzzled the bird before
he did anything else. He waited until he thought he would not incinerate the
bird�s feathers in a sheer display of bad temper�they could still be valuable,
and he didn�t wish to listen to Draco�s sulks�and then raised his wand once
more.

�� I know
you,� the bird said. �Severus Snape. Snivellus. Sirius used to call you that.
Do you remember him?�

�� Severus
went very still. There were people in the world who still knew that he had
borne that insulting name�though not the most damaging, with Black, the
werewolf, and Potter all dead�but not many. And the list of the survivors was
small enough that he thought he might determine who was speaking through the
parrot with relative ease.

�� His mind,
though, picked rapidly among the various players and justifications and could
find no reason for this exact combination of circumstances. Why would any of those
players send a bird to him to speak those words? If they could find their way
through Severus�s wards, they would simply have arrested him and dragged him
back to suffer the Dementor�s Kiss. Potter might have played a prank like this,
yes, but Severus knew how rigid and brittle his justifications were. He would
not have left the bird here so long before casting the spell that would let him
speak through it, and he would not have left it so long before he came crashing
through the wards on his self-righteous mission to capture Severus.

�� Really,
Snape. I didn�t think you were this stupid. You sent Malfoy outside in tears.
What, is he upset because you won�t fuck him?�

�� Severus
added a spell that would allow someone to see through the parrot�s eyes to the
list of magic that must be active here. It was extraordinary that any of the
fools in the Ministry�s employ could manipulate an animal�s perceptions this
way, given that they would have to push aside its instincts and desires in
addition to coping with its limited presence in Severus and Draco�s home. It
could not have seen as much as the spy would have wished it to from its cage.

�� Of course,
there was one answer that would fit all the evidence so far. Severus cleared
his throat. �I am astonished at your facility with magic, Miss Granger,
although I should not be. May I know the reason for the insults?�

�� I�m not
Hermione,� the bird said. �I�m Harry Potter. I got trapped in this form by a
spell that the people I was watching must have invented. And it has a component that makes it impossible to detect by other
magic.�

�� Severus
shook his head. �There is no such spell. It is theoretically impossible to
develop one. I have read esoteric magical theory for years, and the many who
have tried have all stumbled against the same obstacles. If a researcher had
discovered the means to make such a charm, he would have been internationally
famous at once.�

�� Yeah,� the
bird said. �Because international fame really matters to criminals.�

�� Severus
cocked his head. Certain features of what the bird said would fit in with the
evidence better than the explanation he had proposed. But he could not afford
to let his guard down yet. He had lived too long for that.

�� Say I
accept your claim,� he said. �Why did you not say something before now? If your
form has a voice, you could have alerted us at once, and then Draco would have
kicked you out through the wards and we should have troubled each other no
longer.�

�� I couldn�t
fly because of another spell they cast on me as I was escaping,� the bird said,
shaking its feathers and climbing cautiously back down towards the perch before
the chain stopped it from moving, �so I knew that I would have to stay here if
I was going to recover. And if you did believe me, you might have hurt me. Or
you might have been paranoid and tried to murder me. I can believe that you�re
paranoid, with all the wards around this place,� he added under his breath. He
raised his voice again with another glance at Severus. �Today, I decided that
it was better to take the risk than stay a prisoner any longer. Are you going
to help me or not?�

�� The voice
sounded like Potter�s, Severus thought, but that did not eliminate the
hypothesis that he was manipulating the bird from a distance (after having got
someone else to actually cast the spell, of course). He could at least try a
few potions to see if the spell the bird described really existed and could be
reversed. Already he could feel the excitement of a new theoretical direction
stirring in him like a snake in water.

�� I will
attempt to help you,� he said. �For a price.�

�� Potter�truly,
Severus might have to think of him that way now, hard as it was to accept that
the boy had such an intelligent Animagus form�ruffled his wings out and stared
at him gloomily.

�� When you
are human again,� Severus said, �you will take an Unbreakable Vow not to reveal
my location or Draco�s, to willingly bring harm to us, or to lead anyone else
here.�

�� Potter
bobbed his head. �Just stop me from being a fucking
bird any longer.�

�� We will
have to see,� Severus said, and strode back down the corridor to his lab,
taking exquisite pleasure in being able to leave Potter caged behind him.

�� It was only
halfway through his first potion that he realized Draco had not been lying
after all, though he had been mistaken about the source of the parrot�s words.

�� Severus
paused, then lifted his shoulder in a shrug. The realization changed matters
only within his own mind, not in the outside world.

*

�� Mia: Thank
you! I hope you have fun with this one, too.

�� Qtness.Quill:
I�m glad you�re enjoying it. I have an African gray, and I agree that they are
amazing birds (though also infuriating at times, such as when they have figured
out exactly how to ring their bells in the most annoying patterns).

�� Harry�s
anonymity didn�t last very long, but he already does have a better picture of
Snape and Malfoy than either realizes.

�� littlechivalry:
Well, thank you! I hope to keep up regular updates on this story.

�� mrequecky:
Thank you!

�� Enamoril:
Hee! Well, I do still make mistakes with grammar, and I think I have habits
that show up across many stories if you read them close together, but I�m
flattered that you don�t receive that impression. And I do try to make the
stories as complex as I can without turning them into soap operas.

�� angelmuziq:
Not long for him to talk; the biggest problem is that the problems here won�t
be that easy to solve.
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Love, Free as Air