Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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
- 22
- 23
- 24
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Three—In The Brewing of Subtle Poisons
            Severus held a green leaf above the cauldron, and waited in patience for the surface of his potion to stop trembling. Then he flicked his finger against the leaf, and watched it fall, twirling and spinning around the stem, into the liquid.
            There was a moment when the leaf simply and safely floated, and Severus thought his hard-bought peace had not affected the potion after all. Then, suddenly, the surface of the potion surged up and around it and swallowed, with a gulping motion that reminded Severus irresistibly of a throat. The leaf was gone. Even when Severus tilted the cauldron and made the potion slide to the side, even when he cast a Transparency Charm, he could see no trace of it.
            Severus nodded. He had made the Devourer’s Poison the right way, then. Poured down someone’s throat, or even simply stirred into their drink, it would create a blockage in their throat that ensured all food vanished into the maw of the potion itself, and none passed into the stomach of the victim. Perfectly healthy people starved to death without knowing what was wrong; Healers could detect no trace. Only another Potions master could even suspect the truth, much less brew an antidote.
            Severus laid his hand gently on the rim of the cauldron, and watched it dispassionately. It quivered a little, itself, before firming.
            He had thought earlier that being in this bond was like being poisoned by the Devourer, and that had inspired him to brew the potion without instructions, to see if he still remembered how.
            He did. He was the most skilled Potions master he had ever met, the only one who had absorbed the art into his body and mind, who could brew without a book, who knew enough to change potions with a flick of his wrist and enough in the immediate aftermath to realize whether he should duck, add more ingredients, or bear witness to a job well-done.
            All that, and still he had not escaped from the ritual, had not managed to resist the call of the bond, and would perhaps die in this silly pursuit of revenge on the Lestranges.
            He turned away from the cauldron and set about brewing the antidote. (One could not dump the Devourer; it would set about eating the hole it was dumped down). His hands moved without thought, but never without skill. His mind flitted easily between one matter and another, bringing questions to his attention that he needed to consider before the next fortnight was out, and others where the next day, the next week, the next month, was imperative.
            One of those questions concerned Draco, who had not come out of his rooms since the night before.
            Severus knew that he should not be surprised. Draco was at the point where he felt pushed by the bond, and it was natural that a Slytherin should retreat in such a crisis and try to fortify himself in other ways. Draco’s ways included a book and a fine meal. And no harm could have come to him, because he was a Malfoy in the middle of Malfoy Manor.
            On the other hand, that only reminded him that he and Draco had gone to the Auror safehouse in the first place because Draco did not think the Manor’s wards proof against the Lestranges’ tactics.
            Severus shut his eyes and massaged his forehead for a moment. Draco was becoming impossible to deal with.
            I am, am I? Draco had ignored the existence of the bond for hours, to the point where Severus had felt able to forget it was there himself, but now his voice came roaring back with a vengeance, and made Severus stagger. It was like standing on the bank of a river that had suddenly burst into flood. What do you think you were for days and days at a time?
            Severus felt cautiously around the edges of the bond. Yes, it was open. He supposed that Potter wasn't concentrating on them at the moment and didn't care about keeping it closed. Well, he would have to make the best of it. I fail to understand what you are talking about. I agreed to work with Potter, didn't I?
            Draco sneered, and the sneer was as strong and as vocal as if Severus had been standing in his room beside him. Only after complaining and dragging it out as much as you could. And then it was the kind of agreement that was going to evaporate the moment things got a little hot between us. The way they did yesterday.
            Forgive me for not applauding the fact that my life is tied to the life of a young man who is more reckless than anyone else I've ever met, Severus snapped.
            He was only reckless when he was ignoring the bond. Since then, he's cooperated--most of the time. Yeah, he was being stupid yesterday. But I would prefer to think that he was just tired and overwhelmed.
            Severus shook his head. He didn't want to discuss this any further over the bond. It would only strengthen it, and perhaps make it harder to dissolve the bloody thing when they actually tried next time. Will you meet me in the library? I will be there.
            He worked hard on not feeling emotions or hearing words from Draco as he made his way to the library, to the point that he didn't know whether Draco was coming or not. Or so he thought, because when he heard Draco's footsteps outside the door, they made him aware that he had been listening for an echo outside his head of the footsteps inside it all along. Severus gritted his teeth and sipped, hard, from the glass of wine he'd had a house-elf bring him.
            Draco stepped in, raised an eyebrow at him, and shut the door again. "You don't treat good wine that way," he said.
            So perhaps Severus was rather gulping it. He set the glass down with some force on the table beside him and folded his arms. "You are smarter than me, or so your attitude proclaims you are," he said. "You tell me what we should do."
            Draco snorted. "So much of that depends on Potter that it doesn't make sense to have the discussion when he's not here to support his part of it."
            "I am not asking what he would do," Severus snapped. "I asked what we should do for a reason."
            Draco eyed him once, then nodded and sat down in a chair near the door. "As it turns out, some of the reading I've done is on bonds and combining magic," he said, and waved his wand. Severus watched as the books slewed towards him, and refused to jump when they landed with loud bangs on the table. "I found some interesting information."
            Severus waited, but Draco opened the largest book and turned it around, pushing it to the edge of the table. It seemed that Severus was not to be read to. He sneered in Draco's direction and walked over to take a look at the tome, aware that Draco was smiling unpleasantly out of the corner of his eye.
            Combination of magic can strengthen the magical cores of all the participants in the ritual. It means that they have a reservoir of power available to them that is conjoined, and any may draw on the magic at any time, without separation between them.
            Severus drew back, revolted. That was what he had been afraid it meant, and he didn't see that Draco had a reason to sit there grinning.
            "You have the oddest characterizations of me," Draco said, aloud, but so obviously responding to the thought that Severus shot him a strong look of dislike. Draco ignored it and went on. "Yes, that's what can happen. But you didn't read the paragraph below it, which is the really important one."
            They held another staring contest that Severus lost. Finally, Severus grimaced and leaned down to look again.
            But the reservoir can be maintained only by the willing gift of all participants. When one wishes to pull back, the unity is shattered. It is easier to disrupt the combination of powers than a telepathic or soul joining.
            Severus tapped his fingers on the book. "Does it say anything about a bond forged by the unity of walking a road together?"
            Draco shook his head.
            Severus stared down at the book. "So if we enter into this with less than full and willing participation, or Potter does, then we may never achieve this part of the bond." He shuddered a little. "Or we may achieve it and then lose the power that we have built up in the moment of confronting the Lestranges."
            "And that is the reason I thought you should see this book." Draco nodded, his mouth now a jagged slash across his face. "Because this is the thing that you want most, this power to use against the Lestranges. You won't have it if you don't work with Potter. Or if you manage to achieve a kind of bond with him and then we break it right in the middle of battle. I thought you would care more about our revenge than picking at him."
            "I am not the one who caused the problems yesterday." Severus was proud of the voice he used to speak that, flat and calm and so level that someone could have skated on it.
            Draco stared at him, and Severus found himself lowering his eyes before he thought about it. "I was not," he whispered.
            "You did." Draco stood up and moved around the table to shut the book. Severus wondered why at first, considering that Draco didn't need to come that close, and then understood. Draco was coming that close so that Severus couldn't ignore him, the heat coming from his body or the way that Draco's arm brushed against his or the direct stare. "Some of it comes from Potter, yes. But I have a different way to appeal to his desire for revenge. You, I'm going to tell right out. Stop it."
            "Potter will not like it if you are trying to manipulate him," said Severus, his head spinning a little. He could sense Draco's emotions now, a weariness that shimmered and danced like a sulfur spring. Draco felt the way that Severus often had when confronting a classroom full of students for the first time.
            "That's true," said Draco. "But it's the same about apologies. He doesn't like apologies, but there's no way that I can stop trying to make things up to him because of that. He doesn't like being manipulated, he doesn't like being left alone, he doesn't like being talked to, he doesn't like being ignored. And I'm going to put him in possession of all the same facts that I told you, only spin them differently. You care about the revenge the most. I can't be sure that's the case with him."
            "What Gryffindor wouldn't care about revenge?"
            Draco started to answer, but paused. His head tilted, and his eyebrows went up. Severus concentrated, sure that it must have something to do with the bond, but could feel only a faint ripple that seemed as if it was passing through a mild pond.
            "Well," Draco murmured. "It seems that I'm going to have the chance to explain myself to Potter earlier than I anticipated." He stood up and moved towards the door of the library.
            "He's contacting you?" Severus reached out to the bond and met only smoothness, as if he was touching a blank wall.
            "Yes." Draco paused and looked back at him with a glance that might have been pitying. Severus couldn't tell. "Stay out of this, Severus. You've had your chance to show him your memories and connect with him, and for the most part, you failed miserably. This is mine. I mean to do better."
            Before Severus could open his mouth in outrage, Draco vanished through the door, and the closing of that door seemed to coincide with the closing of the bond. Severus watched as even the dancing of Draco's emotions in his head faded. He could still feel a few things, but not much. It seemed that Potter wanted this conversation between him and Draco to be private as much as Draco did.
            I do not always fuck up the things I touch. Severus tried to tell Draco that down the bond, to show him the successful poison he had brewed earlier.
            Nothing happened. If Draco could hear Severus at all, he was very good at pretending that he couldn't.
            Severus cursed under his breath and made his way slowly back to his lab. He did not know what to say. Draco, so convinced in general of Severus's intelligence and competence, seemed to think that the task of going along with the bond and subduing their differences enough to gain revenge on those who had established the bond in the first place was beyond him.
            Is he not right? He has had no evidence to the contrary so far.
            Severus paused with one hand on the door of the lab, frowning. Was this another manipulation? Draco had told him that probably knowing what effect his disapproval would have on Severus.
            Then Severus grunted and stepped back inside the lab. It is no less effective for all that. He wondered if that would be the same way that Draco would speak to Potter.
*
            Harry waited only until he was sure that Malfoy was alone, because all sense and taint of Snape had faded from the bond. Then he struck.
            He could sense Malfoy flailing, trying to stand up, as the power of Harry's disdain crashed into him like a flood and bore him off his feet. Harry ignored that sensation. Yes, perhaps he should be treating Malfoy more gently. But he saw no reason to. Malfoy had been moving around early this morning, disturbing Harry, giving him no chance to rest and think about other things. And his words had lingered in Harry's mind like slow poison since yesterday. He had had all the rest he deserved.
            Malfoly struggled and bore up under the flood, though, and the answer that came was quicker than Harry wanted and sharper than he wanted, digging into his mind enough that he wanted to retreat. That would show weakness, though. He couldn't do that. So he braced himself, and accepted the emotions that Malfoy shoved at him in return.
            Which was everything. Instead of lowering his Occlumency shields so that Harry could read his mind, the way Snape had, Malfoy flung himself wide open, lowering all sorts of walls, just so that Harry could see what he was feeling.
            He felt what Malfoy had about the rape: compelled, enraged, upset, unwillingly aroused. All of it was there, in a knot that Harry couldn't separate and had to reject, because fuck if he was going to feel aroused at his own rape.
            But Malfoy just stood there and felt at him, and there was no building the barrier up again easily, because Harry had been the one to hit Malfoy with his own anger and fear and pain, and Malfoy was responding. They floated back and forth together in some sort of borderland between reality and the bond, jostling until Harry wanted to scream.
            Enough, Malfoy! he finally shouted, when he had suffered through the frustration that Malfoy had felt yesterday, as keen as knives, and all sorts of thoughts about Snape's idiocy, and Malfoy's moping over the aftereffects of the bond, and what Malfoy had been feeling when he apologized, and...
            The flood of emotions stopped. Harry opened his eyes and leaned over with his hands on his knees, glad that he had made sure he was alone in Ron's room before he tried to contact Malfoy this way. God knew what his friends would have made of him writhing in place and gasping with open eyes like that.
            You didn't have to do that, he said, when he felt he could touch the bond without turning into a mass of raw nerves.
            But it's what you did, Malfoy snapped back, not sounding sorry at all. Harry didn't want his empty apologies, but he was starting to think they were better than having a cat bristle in the back of his head all the time. You hit me with that pain and you didn't think it was for a good reason. You just wanted to punish me.
            Harry swallowed stickily. He didn't want that to be true, but he thought it probably was.
            Of course it was. I can make you feel what I felt then, if you want.
            No! Harry said quickly. He didn't want to get lost in a reflecting maze of the bond's emotions, continually bouncing off them. I don't want--you have no right--
            He fell silent, because Malfoy was laughing cruelly in the back of his head. Yes, you're the one who can get away with that punishment because you felt you should, but also the one who can't deal with being hit back.
            I'm not the one who raped someone.
            Malfoy's laughter went dark. Then why not hit Severus with the same sort of demand for him to pay attention to you? You only did that because you were annoyed with me for what I said yesterday. It has nothing to do with the rape.
            Harry flung a wordless shout of rage, and Malfoy answered again with that ball of emotions that Harry couldn't separate and flinched back from.
            I didn't rape you because I wanted to, Malfoy said, his words written in letters of fire across Harry's brain. I raped you because the bond and the ritual compelled me to, because that was the way the sacrifice was set up. It's not as simple as saying that it was all my fault and there is something I could have done to prevent it. I suppose I could have given up and died, with my brain running like water out my ears. But then you would have died too, wouldn't you? Because the bond wanted three people in it, three minds, and without one of the minds, you would have died. You chose rape as the price of your survival. It's a horrible price. It shouldn't have been done. But it's there, it happened, and we were compelled to do it. There is no getting away from that. I'm trying to deal with that. You're just crouching under the bed and hoping everything goes away.
            Harry tried to reply, but he was so wordless by this point that it felt as if his body was shaking with fire, or as if it was on fire, and he blew away into the nothingness of the bond again. He was the one who controlled the telepathy, but random thoughts and images sleeted past him, and he didn't know that he could recover himself. He darted from place to place, coming up with ways to answer Malfoy's accusations and unable to use them, trembling, reforming, and then blithering apart again.
            Malfoy did nothing but watch him. Harry, when he had the control of himself again to do anything but scream in fury, decided that it was like Malfoy had stayed in one place, and Harry had traveled to many. Harry was panting, ashamed and hurting and furious, and Malfoy just radiated coolness at him.
            If you're smug about what you did... Harry breathed at him.
            Never that, Malfoy said at once, but with a lack of the bitterness in his voice that had been there the last time he spoke. It's caused me too much guilt and grief to be that way. But I do want you to work with me. I found information in a book today that said that our participation in the joining of magic has to be willing or we stand the chance of the bond breaking at any time. So we'll snap if we're in the middle of facing the Lestranges, say, and you decide that that's the perfect moment to explode at Severus or me.
            Harry bowed his head and massaged his temples with his fingers, pressing as hard as he could in the spots that hurt most. Nothing seemed to help. There was just more pain waiting behind that which he soothed away to pop up and laugh at him.
            I can't bond with you, he told Malfoy. Not in the way you mean me to. I don't care how much it hurts or how much it would make my life better to face the Lestranges and take them down. He knew from the throb at the back of Malfoy's mind that Malfoy thought that. There's no way that I can surrender that much.
            Silence from Malfoy, hard-edged silence that smoothed down to porcelain as Harry concentrated on it. Then he said, Very well. Then we will go up against the Lestranges with the ability to walk roads and the telepathic part of the bond.
            Harry frowned. Wouldn't that make the bond unstable? Or not complete? If there are three parts of it and someone is supposed to be in charge of all of them--
            Of course it would make it bloody unstable, Malfoy snarled, and Harry recoiled. The sensation of someone breathing directly on his face was strong. But the great and strong Harry Potter has decided that he knows better, and that he can't put up with someone else being in charge, as you put it. So we'll do it your way. Because just like you don't have the power to control the roads or combine our magic all by yourself, we don't have the power to compel you to do something else.
            He retreated in the next instant, and said, All right? So tell us when you're ready to seek out the Lestranges.
            Then the sense of his presence retreated further. Harry reached out, incredulously. He was supposed to be the only one who could close the bond like this, and if it turned out that Snape and Malfoy had lied to him, and they really could close off their emotions and speech and thoughts from them, than he would...
            But he discovered the distance disappearing again when he tried to touch Malfoy's mind. He could still close it. It just appeared that Malfoy and Snape had the ability to step further back than he'd thought they did.
            Yes, you're in control, Malfoy said. And going up against the Lestranges is going to be more dangerous than it needs to be with the bond so unstable, but we're making the bargain to save you from harm. He sounded weary, without much of an opinion on the subject. So there you go. You don't need to surrender any more control than you already have.
            Harry tried to understand what he could say. Finally, he came out with, You make it sound as if you were the real victims here.
            Malfoy exhaled, hard and long and cold. No. Not as much as you are. Only victims, too. And frankly, I'm uninterested in trying to come up with who was more at fault. I'm interested in surviving. Aren't you, too? He paused, then added, Or you're only interested in the kind of survival that comes without you having to do something like trust us.
            I can't trust you!
            And we can't trust you, either, Malfoy snapped back. Not even when we offer you memories and apologies and everything we can think of. If nothing can make up for this, then you might as well sever the bond right now and leave Severus and me to hunt the Lestranges on our own. We would have a better chance of surviving without you, anyway.
            He turned and stalked back into his own mind, leaving Harry staring at the blank wall. He shook his head abruptly, and stood up to go down to the Burrow's kitchen and be with Ron and Hermione. That was what he needed right now.
            He wasn't going to let Malfoy and Snape trick him into trusting them. Never again.
            But at the same time, he did want revenge on the Lestranges.
            I'll go to the Manor after breakfast and look at that fucking book. It must not say what Malfoy says it says. It can't.
*
            moodysavage: It's complicated because Draco does understand why Harry is reacting this way, but he's come to the conclusion that he can't really do anything about it, the way things are.
            ChelseaPlume: I wouldn't put it in quite those terms, but at the very least, what Harry is doing isn't helping him survive or heal or move on. So it's probably time to do something else. If revenge will accomplish the healing, then taking it is going to be the best thing he could do. If not, then severing the bond is probably best to do.
- 22
- 23
- 24
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The Wages of Going On