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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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Chapter Twenty-Five—No Objections
            “I have no objections about him coming here, if you feel he must.”
            Draco grimaced and turned away from Severus, pacing slowly towards the far side of the lab. The room was spotless as it had rarely been since the formation of the bond. That was because they had both joined in scrubbing it down, casting Cleaning Charms, and removing the specks of what Severus insisted were unsuccessful experiments and which to Draco looked like soot from the cauldrons. Severus said that he didn’t want anything going wrong because they had neglected to investigate whether they were brewing in a clean cauldron or not. Severus’s cauldrons were always clean.
            “I don’t feel one way or the other,” Draco told the wall that had a fresh new glow to it. He could feel Potter coming closer and closer, up the stairs that separated them. He suspected Severus felt much the same, from the tension of his shoulders. “I think we have to let him try. If he refuses to listen and actually participate in the potion instead of just shout at us, then we’ll kick him out. But let him try first.”
            “That sounds like feeling to me.”
            Draco rolled his eyes as the lab door opened. The last thing they needed, with Potter on their threshold, was an argument about terminology.
            Draco turned around. Potter stood there with his hand clasping the edge of the door, his shoulders bristling. Draco could almost feel the invisible hackles he had rising around him, and held back his own awareness of that.
            I can feel what you’re thinking anyway, Malfoy.
            Draco inclined his head. At least there was nothing overtly hostile in what Potter was saying, and that was a good start. “Fine. Then you know that we’re going to brew a potion to try and dissolve the bond.”
            “It will help if you will begin to cut up ingredients.” Severus kept his back turned as his hands blurred among the ingredients already cut or not needing cutting: marigold petals, bits of gold, grains of salt. He might have been addressing either of them or only Draco. Draco thought he was definitely taking advantage of the ambiguity in the word “you.” “The marigold petals must be diced, the smallest piece no smaller than the thumbnail on your least finger, the largest piece no larger than your thumbnail. It would also help if you checked the gold for purity, Draco. The last time that I made a potion like this, the gold was not completely pure, but I have found myself unable to purchase more.”
            Because he wanted to finish the potion right away, Draco knew, but Potter was bristling behind him, indignant, of course, and leaning forwards to challenge Severus. “Why are we using less than pure gold, if you think there’s a chance that it might negatively affect the potion? Why not use something else?”
            Severus turned around. All the lines in his face had locked down, a frightening look to Draco. He knew it meant that Severus was struggling furiously to control himself. “Because this is what we have available,” Severus said. “Because I could not afford anything else. Because this is what we have.” He paused, and then added, “Unless you want to wait on developing the potion while I go to the shops for gold.”
            For a second, Potter and Severus held each other’s gazes, and the air between sparked and shorted. Draco winced again. If this effort was going to collapse at the beginning, well, he supposed that would save them from putting in some effort, but he would rather that it didn’t happen at all, thanks.
            “You have no idea what I would do,” Potter whispered, “to be free of this bond.”
            Severus said nothing for a long moment. Draco tried to reach out to him through the bond, and found the normally open portal screwed shut. Severus was probably struggling to control his temper.
            Finally, he said, “I know, because I would do much the same thing. We must, for the moment, ignore the temptation to lash out at each other. Will you go to the shops and purchase more gold, then?”
            Potter hesitated for the first time since he had entered the room. Draco turned away and hastily bowed his head over the pile of marigold petals he had already begun to dice, lest he give something away with his expression.
            The bond gives you away, idiot, Severus murmured in the back of his head. But I understand your attempt to avoid drawing Potter’s wrath.
            Finally, Potter said, “I wouldn’t know what to look for. I’ve never had to evaluate how pure gold is.”
            Severus only nodded once, and said, “There is a spell that I can teach you to do it here, in the privacy of the lab. But shopkeepers, understandably, often consider it an insult when it is cast in front of them. You will have to do it here, then.” And he turned back to his own task, dismissing Potter, even as he Summoned a book and had it fall open at a page that probably contained the spell.
            Potter took the book and stood so still for a second that Draco held his breath, thinking they had another problem on their hands. Then Potter moved his head in a complex gesture and turned away.
            Draco released his breath in a rush, then had to scramble for his wand. That forceful exhale had made some of his marigold petals fly off the table and drift dizzily around the room.
            And thus are you punished, without my intervention, Severus said, not looking at him.
            Draco felt justified in ignoring him. They were all in the same room, and no one had exploded yet, either with an object or with emotions. That was worth celebrating.
*
            Harry stared at the gold in front of him, and tried to ignore the feeling of someone breathing down his neck.
            So there was Snape on one side of him, and Malfoy on the other, and these particles of gold dust in front of him that he was supposed to sort and make something from. So what?
            He raised his wand and murmured the incantation from the book. “Expiscor aurum.”
            For a second, he thought it hadn’t worked, because there wasn’t any change in the gold in front of him. Then grains of it began to roll along the table, separating from others. Harry blinked and watched. It was the first spell he had cast in a long time that didn’t have some sort of harmful effect. It was fascinating.
            Then Harry shut his eyes and shook his head. No, that wasn’t true. He used charms for warming and cleaning and Summoning all the time, and none of them had harmful effects. He was getting paranoid.
            He wasn’t completely a killer. Perhaps he wasn’t as good as he used to consider himself, and he should think about some spells more carefully before he cast them, but that didn’t make him a murderer.
            When he had convinced himself of that, and he was breathing again, he turned and cast the charm on the next pile of gold dust. He left the separated piles alone. For all he knew, touching them would contaminate them again. Or Snape would decide to behave as if it had, and Harry really couldn’t take that right now.
            He kept his eye on Snape as he worked, but Snape never looked around at him. He continued preparing a pewter cauldron, which seemed to be the one they needed for the potion. Harry didn’t know why, and wasn’t about to ask. Frankly, it was a trial to his nerves and principles just to be in the same room for right now.
            He plucked the bond at one point, to see what kind of reaction he could get. Snape still never looked up. Malfoy did, but it was a quick, searching glance that went back to his marigold petals so quickly that Harry would have missed it if he hadn’t already been more than half turned in that direction.
            Harry had never thought he could feel peace in Malfoy or Snape’s presence, but it turned out that being in the same room with them and not shouting or cursing each other was a good enough substitute. At least he knew that they both wanted the same thing he did: separation from the bond. After that, they could discuss other things like revenge on the Lestranges, or ways to find out where they were hiding, since they couldn’t use the roads anymore.
            It was a sort of beginning. It was a beginning that made the air in Harry’s lungs ache less, and his hands stop the tight grip on his wand over time. The continued murmuring of the charm that separated and cleaned the gold dust, or whatever it was supposed to do, helped, too. Doing the same simple thing over and over was what he needed right now.
            Not that he intended to allow either Snape or Malfoy to know that. They would claim some kind of credit for it, and laugh at him, or sneer at him, or tell him that he should be grateful, and Harry couldn’t take that.
            He became aware that he had stopped casting the charm and was standing in place with his teeth grinding into each other and his wand trembling above the pile of gold dust. Snape was still working, apparently stepping back to admire the shining outer surface of the cauldron, but Malfoy had gone tense beside him, and stopped cutting.
            Harry concentrated on his memories, and slowly pulled back from his dangerous rage. Snape and Malfoy hadn’t actually told him that he should be grateful for their “help” with this yet. They had done enough real harm to him that he didn’t need to get upset about something imaginary. He concentrated on other things, too, like the feeling of his wand in his hand and the beat of his heart, and gradually managed to work himself back to the point where he could say the charm again.
            The instant he did, Malfoy went back to cutting his marigold petals, and a tension Harry hadn’t felt was there—coming down the bond with Snape, he thought, rather than being seen in his body—dissipated. They were dependent on him for their moods, then, and the way they took the bond.
            That relaxed Harry more than he had expected. If he was in control of this much, then that lessened his fury. He even found himself with a faint smile on his lips, mostly because he knew that neither Snape nor Malfoy would ever understand what he was smiling about.
            So the afternoon passed.
*
            Severus was at last satisfied that all trace of foreign matter was gone from the cauldron, including not only stains or specks from the former potions he had brewed in it, but the magical influence of those potions. Sometimes, and it was hard to say when it would happen, a particularly powerful potion would leave behind non-material traces of itself. A Draught of Living Death was known to be responsible for sometimes poisoning non-related potions with a bit of asphodel or wormwood, as strange as such a thing was.
            And, finally, Severus could turn his mind to the exact composition of the bond-severing potion.
            He had known that he would need marigolds because they were a common ingredient in potions of this type, and gold because it was the chemical representation of the sun, of the fire, of a purifying and transfiguring force. But he didn’t yet know what else he would need. He turned and began to prowl along the shelves, now and then reaching out to touch a glass jar with his fingers, or stroking a vial, or pondering the contents. He would know what he should use when he saw what he had to work with.
            “Snape?”
            That was Potter, from behind him, and his voice threatened to grind the fragile peace that Severus had won, and the clear state of mind he needed to pick his way through the shelves, to dust. Severus gritted his teeth and pitted himself against his own irritation. He won the battle, if barely.
            “Yes, Potter?” he asked, in the neutral tone that he had once used when asked by Albus to get along with Potter.
            “What are you looking for? I thought you had all the ingredients that you needed right now.”
            Potter’s question was one that Severus had been asked before, mostly by people like Lucius who should have known better and didn’t understand what he was doing. But Potter did not know better. He would know nothing about Potions. That made it easier for Severus to answer the way he would have in front of Lucius, but with less irritation. “This is an experimental potion. I do not know all the ingredients yet. I know some, and those are the ones that I have been having you assemble. In the meantime, I must roam the shelves and allow my mind and imagination to pick over the ingredients. The ones that seem right will be the ones that are right. My training as a Potions master does not always operate consciously.”
            “You mean that we might end up drinking anything because you feel that it’s right to put it in the potion?” Potter demanded, and his voice sounded so young that Severus fought another surge of irritation. On the other hand, young people did not know anything about Potions, either. “That isn’t right!”
            “I would not feed you poison,” Severus said, looking at the shelves until his eyes blurred from the force of his straining. “It would mean my own death, or prosecution for murder even if I survived. I wish to be free, to remain free. Free of the bond, and then free of the shadow that the Lestranges have cast over my life.”
            “The shadow they cast over your life?”
            Severus studied the shelves in front of him. Here was the powdered silver, and here the diluted quicksilver. He had ordered them close together because he wanted to, because that aspect of the arrangement pleased him. He responded to Potter’s demand to explain with quietude, almost drifting in the sea of peace that he forced himself into by contemplating his own arrangements, and how he managed to have them in his lab, and how he would someday win the power to arrange his life again. “They have cast me into a maelstrom of guilt and doubt. They have left me with the threat that they might be out there again, and might manage to break through the wards on the Manor as they did the ones on the safehouse. They have made me into a rapist, which is something I avoided becoming even during the war. They have forced me to cross lines that I did not wish to cross. I wish to be free of them.”
            “That isn’t as great as the shadow that they cast over my life.” Potter’s voice was edged with resentment, the blades that could cut into the fragile peace Severus had won for himself if he let them.
            He did not let them. Had he not danced with sharper blades every day, his own grief and guilt for Lily’s death, his spy act during the war and his own conflict over murdering Albus, and lately the guilt from his actions during the ritual?
            One boy was not going to be enough to defeat him.
            “I know that,” Severus said. “Yours is the greater.” He leaned nearer, and found that his hand was reaching for the vial of powdered silver. Well, silver and gold would make a stronger potion together than either alone. “It is, nevertheless, a shadow.”
            He could feel Potter through the bond now, the way he had not been able to since Potter walked into the room. The barriers that held them apart were probably thinning with Potter’s rage. Severus could feel it as a struggle, a breathing, prisoned thing like a butterfly thrashing against its cocoon.
            Potter was in control of the bond. Severus could not prevent it if Potter was to slam him with molten rage in a few minutes, the way he had slammed Draco so short a time ago.
            But Severus found that he could watch with indifference. He could not prevent it, no, the way that he could not travel back in time and prevent the rape. But he had been living with the illusion that he could change the past for too long. It was the major reason he had gone to Albus and given himself up as a spy after Lily’s murder, for example. Some urge to make up for the past, to atone in a way that would change it.
            But no matter how long he waited, Lily would not be alive. Potter would not be unscathed again. It was unchangeable.
            Because it was unchangeable, and because the guilt would always be there, Severus had to learn to live with it. He had fought hard enough against the inevitable himself, so he was not without some insight into Potter’s struggle. But that would not change the outcome.
            I hate you, Potter breathed at last, as intimate as if he had whispered it into Severus’s ear.
            Enough not to work with me? Severus asked back, aware that Draco stood there watching them, and wincing a little, probably from the force of their emotions, but also aware that Draco had no part in this little confrontation.
            For a moment, Severus thought the answer might be yes. Potter was fighting again, this time against the bonds of what felt like his own emotions, as far as Severus could determine. He could almost taste, on the back of his tongue, Potter’s iron yearning to fling the gold dust away and tell them to go to hell, and walk out of the lab.
            But he also felt the moment when the realization crashed into Potter—the realization that doing so would not sever the bond—and caged him, the bars slamming down across the road of his life as they had already slammed across Severus’s and Draco’s.
            Enough to work with you as long as I have to, and then leave as soon as I can, Potter snapped back. The moment I don’t need you anymore.
            That is acceptable, Severus said, because it was what he wanted to say, and turned to pick up the nearest vial. The silver came to hand, and after that, the petals of a silver flower that he had plucked at midnight on the night of a full moon, a flower that most of his books said no longer grew in Britain. Severus had set out to prove that they still did, since he had known no magical or environmental reason why they should have stopped growing in Britain, and had proven himself right.
            You’re impossible, Potter hissed, and withdrew. Severus let him go. There was no reason to continue the confrontation. That they had survived thus far without an outburst was some kind of miracle to him.
            He would continue with his collecting, and Draco continued with his chopping, from the sound. He did not know if Potter continued with the incantation that would separate one kind of gold dust from the other. He did not let himself look, or feel.
*
            I thought someone was going to get scarred.
            Draco had to put his knife down and work his hands for a moment, although only a moment. He didn’t want to lose his rhythm and draw down Potter’s wrath. He could feel the angry energy dancing in the air, so harsh that he felt as though someone had cast Tergeo directly on his bare skin. He wanted to preserve the pace, not disrupt it.
            But Merlin, he hadn’t known that someone could be so angry and not snap under the pressure to contain it.
            And that was Potter, not Severus.
            Draco swallowed, because he could do that quietly, and picked up the knife again. By that time, Severus had turned away from the shelves and walked back to the cauldron with his collection of vials. He would scatter the contents into the cauldrons, Draco knew, and it would be flawless. Severus did that, found ways around what should have been obvious problems and blended together ingredients that Draco would never have considered combining because of their volatility or poisonous effects, and had everything turn out flawlessly.
            He understood, a little better, what the ritual had done to Potter now. Perhaps he would never understand everything because he hadn’t experienced that anger from the inside, but still. He had experienced it.
            And Potter was stronger mentally than Draco would ever have assumed, to survive it.
*
            Snape is making sense.
            Harry had come up with that single sentence, one that he fastened to the back of his neck and kept crouched there like a guard in case he turned back into an idiot. He kept repeating it, finding elements of it in his breath, and his heartbeat, and the flick of his wand.
            He didn’t want Snape to make sense, but Snape was making sense.
            He wanted to punish Snape for having the gall to do it, but Snape was making sense.
            He wanted to be free and stalk out of the room and run as far as he could, but Snape was making sense. Harry would only take the bond with him if he went, and Snape and Malfoy would probably go through the dangerous pass, at this point, of swallowing the potion on their own, so they could end at least one-third of the bond, without caring about what effects it had on him.
            Do you care about the effects it has on them?
            No, Harry had to admit. Well, returning indifference with indifference might be a step up from mutual hatred.
            He went on separating the gold dust, and didn’t watch Snape. It would only irritate him, and he was finally learning, he thought, to ignore things about this bond that would irritate him.
            And maybe…
            Maybe this could work.
            He would never trust them as people, but he could trust Snape’s competence with potions, and commitment to getting out of the bond. And it seemed he could trust the same thing with Malfoy, even though he hadn’t made much noise about it.
            I’ll have to trust them.
            At least I can hate that in peace.

*
writeaddict: Thanks! Ultimately, I think Harry and Snape can work together; it just takes a lot of pre-work.
SP777: Well, Harry is doing better, I think? He does understand now that they want to be free of the bond like he does, and they’ll do it faster with his help. Which is a definite improvement.
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The Wages of Going On