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The Glass of Heart's Desire	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 13568 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Two—Odd Behavior
            “Potter? Are you all right?”
            Draco came slowly into the room he had chosen to contain the mirror, glancing back and forth between Severus and Potter. Potter had seemed fine, other than the loss of blood, when Draco went to put the captured thieves in the cellars. And Draco knew that Severus would have made sure that he got the appropriate potions.
            Now, Potter had stopped bleeding, but he looked paler than he had when Draco went down. He was seated on a couch that stood not across from the mirror, although Draco assumed he would have wanted to see it, but off to the side. He buried his face in his hands for a second, then straightened up and looked at Draco.
“I’m fine,” he said, with a strained smile. “Thank you for all your help. I’d say that it’s more than enough to pay the life-debt back.”
“We, or the magic, are the ones who have to say when it’s paid off,” Draco said. “Unless we honestly feel that way, then the debt still exists.” He glanced in concern at Severus. Had they started arguing while Draco was out of the room? But no, it couldn’t be that, or Severus would look more upset than he did.
“Oh.” Potter sat there blankly for a moment, then shrugged and stood up. “Okay. Well, thank you for helping me. I think I need to get back to the Ministry now, but I appreciate it.” He nodded to Severus and Draco and moved out from next to Severus. “Do you mind holding most of the prisoners until I can bring other Aurors back? I want to take the leader with me, since she’s a rogue Auror we’ve been looking to question for a long time, but it would be more convenient to fetch the others later.”
“I want you to tell me what happened,” said Draco. Potter blinked at him. “Oh come, on Potter, I’m not blind. I know that something happened during the time I was gone to make you upset. Or whatever that look on your face really is. What was it?”
Potter closed his eyes and bowed his head. “I—Malfoy, I saw something in the mirror. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know that protecting your home from thieves would give me the ability to see something in it. But apparently the mirror thought I deserved it.”
            Draco nodded slowly. He had thought of that, but he hadn’t known that the mirror would take something like this as proof of the doer’s allegiance to the Malfoy family. “Fine. You didn’t mean to. I accept that. But why are you apologizing to me for seeing it?”
            “It was—oh, hell.” Potter turned his head and faced Severus, then glanced at Draco again, then took a step back so he could watch both of them at once. His face was set, and Draco felt some alarm stir, wondering if Potter was about to tell him something appalling.
            But all Potter said was, “This concerns both of you, and it’s stupid, but I thought I should tell you, in case it affected—whatever you were going to do with the mirror.” Draco nodded silently, although as far as he knew Potter having seen a vision in the mirror shouldn’t affect the ritual they had been preparing to let Severus see one in it. “I saw a vision of myself on a bed, in a room I didn’t know. I was just lying there, and looking perfectly happy.”
            Draco blinked some more, but caught Severus’s eye and forbore to interrupt.
            Potter turned and glanced at both of them again. “Then the two of you walked into the room, and walked up to the bed, and put your hands on me. I was naked, and the way I just melted under your touch—look, it’s obvious what the vision was saying.” He shook his head. “It’s stupid, and I don’t know why, but that was what I saw.”
            Draco stared a little. He had never heard of the visions in the mirror being influenced by the people that the seer was around at the time, but it seemed that that must be true. Because what other reason would Potter have to see both of them in the glass?
            “You are aware that the first vision you see is your heart’s desire, not the way to get there?” Severus murmured, after a pause that seemed to smother them all in folds of velvet.
            “That would make more sense, because it didn’t seem to be a step,” Potter muttered, and shook his head. “Sorry, it was just strange.” He glanced at Draco. “I hope I didn’t damage your mirror in any way. Thanks again for the help with the Dragon’s Hoarders.” He moved towards the doorway.
            “I understand why you might want to leave,” Draco said. He didn’t step into Potter’s path, even though he really wanted to. “But I would like you to stay and discuss this with—us.” A quick glance at Severus let him ascertain that that was what Severus wanted, as well. If nothing else, curiosity burned in the back of Severus’s gaze. “It’s strange, but it might be worth pursuing.”
            Potter looked at him in so weird a fashion that Draco thought his vision must be nothing to it, even if there were things happening in it to make it strange that Potter hadn’t told them. “Excuse me, what?” Potter asked, sounding faint. “You think that you might want me naked in a bed sometime?”
            “I don’t know,” Draco said. “I never thought about it before. But you never thought about it before now either, did you?”
            “Not with you.”
            Severus nodded before Draco could speak. “That suggests that the glass did not show that image to you because you have some incredible repressed desire for us.” Potter snorted faintly, but didn’t interrupt. “It showed you that for a different reason instead. We would like to speak to you about that reason.”
            Potter turned back and forth between both of them, but he didn’t glance longingly at the doorway. “This is really weird,” he finally settled for muttering.
            Draco gave him a sympathetic smile. “I understand if you want to take the Dragon’s Hoarders in, and especially that one you said the Aurors had been searching for. But I also think that you might benefit from coming back.”
            Potter bit his lip and stared into the distance with eyes that had gone hard. Draco wondered what he was seeing, but it seemed as impossible to know that as it was to know the full details of his vision in the mirror. Unless he told them.
            Finally, Potter nodded. “I do have a report to write and an interrogation to conduct, but I’ll come back. Maybe tomorrow?”
            “That would be acceptable,” Draco said, again checking with Severus. Severus arched an eyebrow. Draco nodded back. That would give them enough time to finish conducting the ritual and let Severus see his own vision.
            “Most acceptable,” said Severus.
            Potter turned back and forth between the two of them for one more moment, then said directly to Severus, “I thought you would be the one who had the most problems with it, but you sound almost enthusiastic. Why?”
            Draco waited, curious, both because of Severus’s reply and because of the way Potter had asked that question. He didn’t sound as if he was fishing for compliments. He just sounded completely baffled.
            And sometimes, Severus liked them that way.
            “Because I want to see what it was,” said Severus. “What sort of vision it is, and where the consequences will lead us.” He added, when Potter only stared at him without seeming convinced, “My life has been hidden for the past seven years, passing from sanctuary to sanctuary until I could find a place in Malfoy Manor. I long for novelty.”
            Draco’s sharp eyes didn’t miss the way that Potter relaxed when Severus said that, nodding as if it made sense. “Then I’ll come back,” he said. “Even though I don’t have any idea what it means, and even though I doubt it’ll work out the way you want it to.”
            “I am going to use the mirror myself,” Severus replied. “To see how I might gain back some sort of position and standing in society without immediately being arrested. Perhaps that vision will combine with yours and show us some way forwards.”
            Potter relaxed further, and nodded. Maybe he was all right as long as they weren’t discussing him lying naked on a bed, Draco decided. “Tomorrow, then.” He nodded to Draco, as if Draco was the one who had saved his life and mirror instead of the other way around, and strode through the doorway. Draco could hear him casting the spells that would Stun and Summon the Hoarder leader, so that he wouldn’t have to go into the cellars.
            Severus was still gazing after him. Draco cleared his throat, and Severus turned to him. “Novelty?” Draco asked. “Really?”
            “You know me after living with me for the past two years,” Severus said. “You can appreciate the mixture of my motives. Would Potter, if I attempted to explain?”
            Draco laughed. “Of course not. But you can do your best to explain to him when he comes back.” He gestured at the mirror and the silver robe that was spread out on the floor. “Now, if you would? Your ritual awaits.”
*
            “The instructions say that you need to make the surface of your mind like a mirror, as flat and reflecting…”
            Draco droned the words from the book of ritual instructions on using the Glass of Heart’s Desire that Severus had read over and over until his mind ached from the force of repetition. By this point, though, Draco’s voice had lost any of its power to disturb him. Severus could simply let the words slide down the surface of his mind and strengthen his Occlumency so that he could do exactly what the ritual required.
            And it was working. He could feel the chill in his own thoughts, the slowness with which they moved, as if they were all becoming frozen into a mirror.
            When he was sure that he had as much of the coldness as he needed, he opened his eyes and rose to his feet.
            He was wearing the long silver robe that Draco had picked out the cloth for, but which Severus had woven himself—albeit with the aid of subtle spells and Transfigurations rather than his hands. There was obeying ritual necessity, and then there was the lack of skill that would cause the whole endeavor to remain pointless.
            In a circle around him burned candles, all of them positioned carefully so that he could see their reflections in the Glass of Heart’s Desire. From here, with his mind glazed and his eyes much the same way, they seemed nothing but a ring of small and glowing stars far away. Severus stepped towards the mirror and reached his hand up.
            His fingers came to rest on the blue stone at the top of the frame. It felt as if his hand had floated to that spot of its own free will, as if it was directed. Severus did not fight it, but went on breathing, and gazing.
            The image in the mirror came slowly to life, twitching and flashing in several directions as if fighting the will of a greater power.
            Severus saw robes first, a confused and circling collection of colorful robes. He blinked. He had wondered how he could be accepted into wizarding society again, but he thought he recognized those robes, and he had had no notion that his heart’s desire might lie through the path of a Ministry ball.
            The image continued to coalesce, as if out of silver fog, and the frame trembled and shivered a little. Severus lifted his other hand and curved it beside his eyes, surrounding the image with a frame of his own.
            That seemed to help, and the picture steadied. Severus saw himself in red robes—he, who had worn no color other than black or sometimes grey for years—in the middle of the crowd, a relaxed smile on his face. Draco stood on one side of him, in green robes, and leaned near to whisper something into his ear. The mirrored Severus turned his head and regarded Draco with an indulgent smile that the real Severus was fairly sure he had never given.
            It was a smile he had thought about giving, that much was true. He had thought of it many and many a time. When he worked side-by-side with Draco on potions that Draco would sell in his own name, the Malfoy name, reestablishing it and reaping the social rewards but giving Severus the monetary ones. When Draco fell asleep leaning on his shoulder as they labored over ancient texts together. When Draco sprawled in front of the fire and somehow managed to look comfortable while angling his feet up on the hearth.
            But he had never done so, because what Draco meant to him and what he was allowed to mean to Severus were entirely separate things.
            But there he was, and there Draco was, and although Severus could not make out what Draco was saying, even by watching the movement of his lips, he knew it would be something irritating and endearing at once, the way so many things about Draco were.
            Was this the secret, then? Were he and Draco going to be partners in the fight to establish him socially, and would they be partners in a more intimate way as well?
            But although Severus thought the vision should be ending by now—certainly the one that Potter had seen had not lasted this long—it continued. Both the other self and the Draco in the mirror looked up, as though someone had taken them by surprise, and a second later, the figure appeared next to them.
            Potter, in stunning green robes a few shades deeper than Draco’s, which made his eyes seem to glow.
            Potter didn’t lean near to Severus to share a secret. He seemed fearfully conscious of the crowd around them, although Severus couldn’t take his eyes from the group of three at the center of the image to check if anyone was actually staring at them. His chin and his color were both high.
            But he reached out and laid one hand on Severus’s sleeve and one on Draco’s, and those hands did not tremble.
            The vision ended, then.
            Severus stepped back from the swirl of silver and closed his eyes, massaging his forehead. His hand trembled. His body seemed to have absorbed the strength of the Severus in the vision, and the weight of his hand on his forehead even seemed strange. He would not have been surprised to find that his brow had been branded with a scar, like Potter’s.
            “Severus?” Draco’s voice was close to his ear in reality, too, but he simply seemed concerned, his hand tight on Severus’s shoulder. “Are you all right? I read that the vision can take you like this, sometimes. No wonder Potter looked so shaken.”
            “I will be well.” Severus firmed his voice carefully. Draco did not deserve to be so disturbed, not when he had helped Severus so far and so well, and Severus was going to need more from him than even this level of support.
            Perhaps that, in the end, was why he could accept the vision so easily, and want Potter to come back tomorrow: because he had already accepted that this could come true, that he could use both of them to climb the social ranks.
            There could be other reasons, too. With Draco, there would be. There already were, if Severus was honest enough to admit them to himself.
            But with Potter, the reasons would take time to grow. That blush and that bravery when he told them of his vision would be a fine beginning, though.
            “Are you going to tell me what your vision was about?” Draco sounded as if he was barely restraining himself from knocking Severus to the floor and climbing all over him to shake the answer out of him.
            That image itself was a fine one, Severus thought, and he managed to smile even before he opened his eyes and studied Draco, who looked expectantly at him, cocking his head.
            “I saw you and myself at a Ministry ball,” Severus said. “I was wearing red robes.” Draco’s slightly parted lips said that he fully appreciated the nuance, and led Severus’s eyes to them naturally. “And then you leaned in towards me and whispered, and I smiled at you, in a way that made it clear that we had become lovers.”
            Draco’s eyes flared at him. He made no movement to step closer or glide away, and Severus could read his eager interest in his quickened breath.
            “But that can’t have been the whole thing,” Draco said at last. “You looked stunned, the way Potter did—” He stopped. “Potter was there, too?”
            Severus nodded, glad that Draco had caught it, proud that he had, indulgent again in that special way he so often was around Draco. “And he came up to us as if he wanted to be away from there, but also as if he was daring people to disapprove. And from the way he looked at the both of us, it was the both of us he wanted.”
            “So, not a matter of you taking multiple lovers to climb up the social scale, then,” Draco mumbled. “Not with that and his vision, too.”
            Severus reached out and took his hand. “It would not matter how appealing Potter was,” he said. “Perhaps, even, my vision was influenced by his. But I would not leave you behind, Draco, and I would not choose him over you.”
            Draco looked at him as though he was going to pull out a shard of the mirror and plunge it into Severus’s face. Severus dropped his hand and stepped back. He did not know what he had said to make Draco react that way, but it was at least clear that he had fundamentally misread what Draco desired from him.
            “No! I just. Sorry. I mean…” Draco followed him, quickly, and clasped his hand. “I never expected to hear you say that to me,” he continued, in a lower voice. “I was startled, that’s all.”
            Severus wanted to retort that he knew what startled looked like on Draco and it wasn’t that, but he had to admit that he hadn’t ever said something like that to Draco before. “Very well. Then you’ll think about it?”
            “I already helped you to prepare the ritual and the vision in the glass, didn’t I?” Draco squeezed Severus’s hand. “I wouldn’t step back now.”
            “If that is the only reason that you are thinking about being part of this vision, then I beg you to refrain.” Severus knew his voice had grown haughty, but he didn’t think it was something he needed to apologize for. “I will make it on my own. I did not wish to interrupt—”
            “Oh, come on, Severus.” Draco took both his hands now and looked into his eyes. “I didn’t mean that I would only become your lover to help you climb up the social ladder. Neither of us are built that way.” He hesitated, then continued. “I didn’t see any need to talk about it when I thought we both understood it, but—it’s not like our alliance in the past few years has only been for money and political support, has it? Even though it meant that we both got those things, too.”
            Severus fought back the smile that wanted to burst across his face. He thought Draco, right now, would misunderstand it as much as Severus had misunderstood his earlier expression. He inclined his head. “Then you support my idea that we should tell Potter when he returns tomorrow?”
            “Absolutely,” Draco said, and squeezed Severus’s hands with a strength that pushed his own calluses from Potions stirring rod and cauldron and explosion into Severus’s. “I’ll wager that his face will look worse than mine, anyway.”
*
            “They promised me that I would have more gold than I knew what to do with.” Honeylender was murmuring the words, her head leaned back and her eyes sometimes glazed and sometimes closed as she looked at the ceiling. “They promised me that everyone would know my name, not as just one of the Aurors but as a leader. I wanted that. I wanted that more than you can imagine.”
            Harry winced a little, but managed to conceal his distaste when Ursula Glinter looked at him. She was the Unspeakable who had invented the Dreamtalk Potion that Honeylender was under at the moment. Veritaserum didn’t suffice to get around the oaths the Dragon’s Hoarders bound their members with, but this potion made the drinker think they were talking to someone they trusted in a safe and secure environment.
            Harry understood the need for it, especially when the Dragon’s Hoarders were so successful. He just didn’t like seeing the weird, glazed look that it brought to a drinker’s features.
            Ron moved across the room. Harry looked at him. Ron raised an eyebrow and glanced at the door that led out into the corridor.
            Harry nodded gratefully and escaped with him. As long as one person was present to ask the questions and provide the memories that would be placed in a Pensieve later, it didn’t matter if it was him. Harry had already gone through his own interrogation about what had happened and how he had captured Honeylender, and he had told everything about Malfoy’s help, too—although not about Snape’s, and not about the Glass of Heart’s Desire.
            “I can see that you’re shaken,” Ron said quietly as he led Harry towards their own office. “What happened? I’m so sorry that I couldn’t come right away, but your Patronus got stopped by those wards that they have on the interview rooms now to stop any kind of message coming in.”
            Harry nodded grimly. He had forgotten. Ron had been part of a large group of Aurors working together on the last major case, that of a Dark wizard who favored murder curses and had been gathering and teaching students, and while they had captured the wizard himself, several of his students had escaped. Ron and the others had had to go in for questioning about what they had done to make the raid fail and what they could have done better. After interruptions by Patronuses and firecalls and God knew what else, the senior Aurors had finally declared the interview rooms absolutely off-limits when they were being used.
            “It’s okay,” he said. “Someone else came out to help me.” Instinctively, he raised a ward against eavesdropping around them. “Snape is with Malfoy.”
            Ron’s mouth fell softly open, and he nodded. “Well, you and Hermione were right about him still being alive, then.” He paused and studied Harry. “Is that all? I mean, I know it’s big, mate, but you’re practically shaking.”
            Harry swore. He supposed he could be glad that Ron had noticed before some member of the press did and another scandalous story whipped up, but he was still embarrassed. “Time for glamours, then.” He cast a few that he hoped would conceal the pallor of his face.
            “Well?”
            Harry sighed. “Malfoy has that bloody mirror, and you know how the articles about it said that you could see a vision in it if you’d done a service for the members of the owner’s family?” When Ron nodded, Harry made a disgusted sound. “Malfoy declared that he owed me another life-debt, and the mirror took that as a go-ahead to show me this vision.”
            Ron choked a little, and stared at him. “What did the vision show?”
            Harry hoped he didn’t flush, or that his glamours might hide it if he did. “That’s the odd thing. I’m going back tomorrow to talk about it with Snape and Malfoy.”
            Ron paused, obviously hoping that Harry would share a little more, and then sighed and shrugged when Harry remained silent. “All right. Just tell me when you’re ready.”
            I’m not sure I ever will be, Harry thought. He supposed he might have to tell Ron if it came true, but…
            How could they possibly want it to be true?
*
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The Glass of Heart's Desire