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The Wages of Going On	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 43959 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 7
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Three—Force of Conviction
“What was the ritual circle made of?”
            “Copper,” Harry said, and watched the Healer assigned to talk to him write it down. She was a Healer who often worked for Aurors, and made decisions about what questions to ask and what potions to administer based on her knowledge of Dark magic and what it did to the body. She had decided that he was competent to answer questions right now.
            Harry tried to remember her name, but it slid out of his mind.
            “And you said it had blue light dancing on the circle?” The Healer looked up at him. She was a square-faced woman with brown eyes. Harry focused on them to keep himself from thinking of anything else. “And blue light on the torches?”
            “Blue light from the torches because they were made of driftwood,” Harry said. “The dungeons were near the sea. I don’t know why the light from the ritual was blue.”
            The Healer nodded and scribbled something else down. Then she said, “I can cast the diagnostic charms now, and then the charms that will take away the pain in your—in your bottom. I’m sorry for making you wait, but I wanted a complete description of the ritual and a chance to look at what happened to you before I healed you.”
            Harry nodded and closed his eyes. Luckily, he didn’t have to take off his clothes so the Healer could cast the diagnostic charms. Luckily, because they were still near the safehouse, or outside it actually, and Aurors stood around them, talking to Snape and Malfoy, and examining the broken wards so that they could be sure of how Rodolphus and Rabastan had got into the house.
            That made Harry roll his head wearily from side to side. He and Snape and Malfoy had been at least two days in the tender loving care of the Lestrangers. Surely that was enough time to figure out what had gone wrong by now? And if it wasn’t, then he had to wonder whether it was that the Lestrange brothers were all that skilled, or whether it was just that the particular Aurors working this case were incompetent.
            “Some blood and tearing, but not that much,” the Healer said. “Maybe the bond eased some of it.”
            “Yeah, maybe,” Harry said. It was the last thing in the world he wanted to talk about.
            The Healer’s wand swished, and the pain diminished perceptibly. Harry winced. The Healer clucked and swished her wand again, and the pain faded altogether.
            “Thanks,” Harry said. Now he at least thought he could sit down and go to bed tonight, though it was anyone’s idea about whether he would manage to sleep without dreams.
            “You’re welcome.” But the Healer didn’t move away, and Harry opened his eyes to find she had come to stand in front of him, her eyes so concerned that he grunted and waited.
            “If you want to talk to someone,” the Healer said, “I’m here.”
            Harry didn’t sneer, but that was because he had more practice at controlling his expressions than he’d used to have when he first got into Auror training. He nodded. “All right. Thanks,” he added, because the Healer probably wouldn’t go away until he said it. If he talked about this with anyone, it would be with his friends, not a woman whose name he couldn’t even remember.
            If he talked about this. Harry felt like he was made of ashes, right now. The will he’d directed towards the bond, the way he’d lit himself on fire for it, was all gone. He’d survived, and that was what he wanted.
            He thought he needed a few days of sleep before he could safely determine what else he wanted, what he needed.
            The Healer moved away, with glances over her shoulder. Harry turned around, ready to Apparate out. Surely he had answered all the questions that anyone could ever need to know about the ritual and the breaking of the wards.
            But Kingsley was standing in front of him, his face so dreadfully embarrassed that Harry waved a hand at him. “I don’t care,” he said. “Right now, I want to go home and collapse, not listen to excuses about why they were able to get through the wards.”
            “That’s not what I was going to ask about,” Kingsley said, and coughed delicately.
            “Then you’re going to ask about the bond,” Harry said. Of course he is. “Fine. It was the same kind of bond that they were trying to use to tie Aurors together, in that experiment that went so wrong. But the Lestrnages rolled me across the ritual circle, and that disrupted the bond and made it try to accommodate three people instead of two. It didn’t care about what kind of closeness it was, though. It just wanted closeness. So I used my virginity as a sacrifice to content it. Physical closeness was enough that it didn’t demand the telepathy.”
            Kingsley just looked at him, warm and silent. Harry glared back. He appreciated that Kingsley was trying to offer compassion, sure he did, but the most caring thing he could do at the moment was to move out of the way.
            “The bond may not be entirely gone,” Kingsley said.
            “So you need to keep me in St. Mungo’s so you can watch me for signs of returning telepathy?” Harry snorted. “Sorry, but I don’t trust Auror guards right now.”
            Kingsley started. “You can’t think—”
            “The wards broke,” Harry said. “Rabastan and Rodolphus didn’t hammer them with force until that happened. They didn’t happen to know the countercurse. They knew how to tear through the weak points instead. Weak points whose knowledge was restricted to Aurors. Yeah, Kingsley, I know what I think.”
            Kingsley bowed his head for a second. Then he sighed and said, “Well. If the bond hasn’t returned yet, then I don’t think an immediate return is likely. Not yet,” he added, just in case Harry might have thought he’d escaped. “Why don’t you go home and go to bed?”
            Harry gave him a smile that made him take a step back. “A brilliant suggestion,” he said, and Apparated.
            He staggered as he appeared inside his bedroom. Few people knew it, but his bedroom was a little clear space in the midst of his wards. He could Apparate there, and Floo there, and do anything else to make sure that his arrival was swift and safe.
            Now, he began to strip off his clothes, his fingers moving with a precision that surprised him, until they sped up and ripped awkwardly at the cloth. He left a trail behind him as he moved into the bathroom. That didn’t matter, though.
            Nothing mattered except the shower, and the flow of hot water over him, and the way that it didn’t sting when it touched his arse.
            Harry turned to face it, and then turned his back to it. He leaned against the wall with his braced arms for a second, his head bowed and his eyes shut. Then he jerked his head up and shook it.
            He hadn’t burned all his will to ashes after all, in the middle of that ritual circle. He only thought he had. He had needed this much time to recover and remember what he was.
            Alive.
            As long as he was alive, no one was going to destroy him. Not the bond, not the traitor there must be in the Aurors, not the Lestranges, and not Snape and Malfoy. No one was going to master him. No one was going to subdue him.
            He smiled a little, aware that his face felt as if it would crack, when he considered what Snape and Malfoy had probably thought as they were fucking him. Had they thought he was broken? That they were taking something away from him that he would never recover?

            Harry shrugged as he reached for his shampoo. Really, they had taken something from him that had become a social handicap, a reason for stammering and sweating when he thought about what someone would say if they learned of it. The sacrifice to get them out of a ritual circle was probably the most useful thing his virginity could have done. He walked unburdened now.
            And he would keep doing that, even if the bond came back or Snape and Malfoy were ridiculous about the consequences.
            He was alive. That meant he could do anything else.
*
            Draco stared around his bedroom for a second. It was large and cold and spectacular. Most of the time, he didn’t have a problem climbing under one of the heavy blankets and falling asleep.
            But this time, he didn’t want to. Not alone.
            He turned and sharply left the bedroom, walking down the corridor to the room that the house-elves had given Severus. He knocked. He’d learned the hard way, years ago, about what happened to those who intruded on Severus without proper warning.
            This time, he knew Severus had heard him, but there was still a long, weighing silence before Severus grunted and called out, “Come in.”
            Draco stepped into the room—slightly smaller than his own, hung with dark red drapes that contrasted with the bright lights of the torches on the walls and the candles on the tables—and leaned against door as he locked it behind him.
            Severus gave him a measuring glance. He stood, without his robes, in the middle of the room, near one of the bookshelves that held old Potions tomes. His simple shirt and trousers made him look smaller than Draco had thought he was. Of course, he couldn’t remember the last time he had seen Severus this undressed.
            As opposed to undress completely.
            “What?” Severus asked, when the time had passed by in muffled heartbeats and Draco had said nothing.
            Draco took a deep breath. “I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
            “I am not your fuck,” Severus said.
            Draco flinched, more from the shock of the word on Severus’s lips than anything else. “I know that,” he said. “I want—I don’t want you to touch me. If you don’t want to,” he added quickly. When the last naked skin he had touched was Potter’s, Severus’s would be a welcome antidote. “I just want you to talk with me, and make me feel a little less alone.”
            Severus took a step back and sat down on the bed. “You feel it,” he said. “That the bond is not done with, and has not let us go.”
            “I know,” Draco said. “But I thought it was supposed to be telepathic closeness that it wanted, not any other kind.”
            He flinched when Severus looked at him, but Severus turned his head away again a minute later, exhaling. “That is not exactly what Potter told us,” Severus muttered. “He bargained with it. It can be appeased with physical union. And he thought of his virginity as a sacrifice that would make the bond depart. I do not think it was. I think it transformed the bond, made it assume a less dangerous form. Virgin sacrifice was traditionally important in ceremonies of change. From mortality to immortality. From weakness to power. But that does not mean the bond has departed.”
            “You don’t think he was lying, then, about being a virgin,” Draco muttered.
            Severus gave him one of those piercing looks of scorn that had the power to sting even now, long after they had departed Hogwarts. “As he himself said, we would not have left the circle if he had lied.”
            “He could have done something else,” Draco snapped, because there was a twitch at the corner of Severus’s eye that he didn’t like. “Parseltongue. He talked about that. Instead, he was the one who gave himself to us.”
            “And if he had done it because he wanted to make that sacrifice,” Severus said harshly, “what would you have done, Draco? Raped him?”
            Draco stared at Severus. “You think that was what we did.”
            “I asked the question,” Severus said. “Why would I ask it as a hypothetical if I believed that it had already happened?”
            “But you do,” Draco whispered, his stomach twisting. He hadn’t wanted to think about his actions except in the context of triumph over Potter, but if Severus had begun to change his mind about that, then Draco would have no choice. “You think—you think we raped him. That’s impossible, Severus. I know that you were never that kind of man, even when you were a practicing Death Eater, and neither am I.”
            “But we have neither of us been under the influence of that kind of magic before,” Severus murmured, his voice so deep that Draco wanted to strike back, wanted to do anything that he could to drive that tone away. Severus might convince him, and then—and then—
            And then Draco wasn’t sure that he could live with himself.
            “I don’t want to think that,” Draco said, voice loud enough to make Severus’s little room echo. “We didn’t do that. He came and gave himself up to us willingly. And it’s not like he didn’t get off on that, Severus. You saw it. You felt it.”
            Severus’s face darkened, but Draco couldn’t be sure if it was because of his words or because of the memories that Draco’s words brought back. “Coming does not mean that he derived much pleasure from it,” Severus said. “You saw the state of his arse.”
            Draco reeled again. Severus was not the kind of person who said the word “arse.” Draco had been his friend for five years now, his student for longer than that, and Severus did not say those words because he had no need to refer to any of the few activities that a grown human being used his arse for.
            But Severus turned and looked at him, and Draco looked down. He knew when Severus had begun to think about the kinds of activities that a grown human being used his arse for, he thought. When he was made to perform them.
            “You’re changing your mind,” Draco whispered. “What do you think? That we’re guilty of a crime?” He looked up, shaking his head. “But—it was self-defense. The bond would have destroyed us otherwise. You heard Potter, Severus! He was the one who said that.”
            Severus stayed frozen, looking at him.
            “I’m not a rapist,” Draco said, his stomach rebelling as it hadn’t when he was in the ritual circle itself. “I know myself, and I’m not. No matter what anyone says, I’m not—I’m not—”
            And then he sank down in the middle of the floor, shuddering, his hands wrapped around his head, as emotions he didn’t understand danced and buzzed down the middle of his mind.
*
            Severus drew breath. It felt like the first time in several minutes he had done so. He shook his head and moved, dropping to one knee beside Draco.
            It was good to know that he was not the only one who felt like this. The sick disgust had overwhelmed him perhaps five minutes after the interview with the Aurors, and had only got worse after that.
            Every situation since the war, every situation in the war, he had rescued himself from. He had survived Nagini’s bite because he had had the foresight to see that the Dark Lord liked to turn his snake on his most intimate companions, and had swallowed an essence of powdered bezoar every day for nearly a year. He had survived the storm of criticism after the war because he had secured a Pensieve of Albus’s memories before the old man died. He had made his living as a Potions master despite the reluctance of most people to buy from a known criminal by taking assumed names, the undisputed excellence of his skills, and trading on the twisted romance of his name with those customers who did find it exciting to acquiring Potions ingredients from someone tainted by the Dark Mark.
            He had never owed his life to anyone—except Potter for killing off the Dark Lord, and Severus found that debt easy to live with. It was the same one that all of wizarding Britain owed, and few people seemed to feel the need to pay it. Besides, Potter would never have reached the point where he could save the world if Severus had not protected him and guided him along the path to reach it.
            Now, he owed Potter something. He knew that the situation in the ritual circle would have disintegrated, would have fallen in on them like rain, if Potter had not been the one to take control of it. And Potter had been enough in control to bargain all the way through the fucking they’d given him.
            Are you upset that you raped someone, upset that you owe Potter your life, or upset that you’re such a poor lover Potter could keep focused through all that?
            Severus swallowed. Perhaps all three.
            “Thinking like this will solve nothing,” he told Draco, sharply enough that some of his words must have reached Draco through the tight (ridiculous) hold that he had on his ears. Draco lowered his hands and stared at Severus incredulously. Severus ignored that. “We are rapists. But your anxiety over a word solves nothing, either. What we must do is figure out the effects of the bond, and the effects of living with Potter.”
            “This bond is going to demand sharing a house?” Now Draco looked more revolted with the circumstances than himself.
            Severus counted it a victory. He knew what happened to Draco when panic struck him. He had had more than enough chance to see that during the war, too. Draco became fixated, and useless. “I did not say that,” Severus replied. “I said that we will have to see him again. We will have to speak to him about what happened when the Lestranges broke through the wards. We will have to testify at a trial, perhaps, if Rabastan and Rodolphus are captured. And we will have to have Potter’s help if we intend to hunt down the Lestranges and take our revenge for what they did to us.”
            Draco’s mouth twisted in a petulant way. “We don’t need him.”
            “Neither of us has the tracking skills of an Auror,” Severus pointed out. “I am a good spy, but I am not the dueler that Potter is, and this pursuit is unlikely to require getting close to others and using disguises to charm the truth from them.” He paused, his eyes locked on Draco, who kept grimacing as if he had bitten into a pickle unexpectedly. “And while your skills with potions and Dark Arts are impressive, would you have any notion of where to begin the hunt?”
            It took a long moment, but Draco did see sense. He lowered his gaze and swallowed. “I just—I don’t like being beholden to him, Severus.”
            “I know that very well,” Severus replied quietly. “But this is a way of paying back that debt, getting rid of that beholding. If we help him to track the Lestranges down, if they are captured and rotting in Azkaban—or dead—then there will be no debt between us, will there? We will have done something for him that gives him peace of mind, and we will have taken revenge on those who set up the ritual in which we raped him.”
            Draco flinched, but managed to concentrate. “You think he would accept that as payment of a life-debt?”
            “Considering he has never collected on the ones that you owe him form the war,” Severus said dryly, “yes.”
            Draco flushed and spent a moment toying with the hem of his robe. “But how can we help, then?” he demanded. “A moment ago, you were speaking as though there was no way we could do anything at all. Potter’s the one who would have to hunt them.”
            “When we capture the Lestranges,” Severus murmured. “Punishing them. I believe that a part of Potter may long for revenge, but he will be too moral to take it. Yet it would mean he never had to worry about them again if we made sure that they—went away before the Aurors could take them into custody.”
            Draco stared at him. “How did you know that?”
            Severus grimaced. “I think that a side-effect of the bond, knowing things about him that we should not know. I also—know—that he did this because he wished to survive. Nothing more and nothing less.”
            He was less sure of what to make of the enormous mountain of steel that had risen in the back of his mind. Did that represent Potter’s determination to survive? It was plausible, but why he should sense that and not something else, Severus did not know. This particular bond called for more research.
            Draco slowly nodded, at last. “If there’s any way that we can stop—I can stop thinking of myself that way—”
            “Perhaps not,” Severus said. He would not conceal from Draco that this was as likely to fail as work. Potter might not accept their help at all, which Severus could not blame him for. “But it is a way to begin.”
*
            Harry settled into bed at last, a bed with dry, clean, soft sheets, and no one else around within a hundred miles to throw him into a panic.
            He drew the blankets over him and rested his head on the pillow and closed his eyes.
            He knew that Malfoy was tearing himself apart at the moment with confusion. He knew that Snape was making plans that had to do with the Lestranges, but he couldn’t pick up anything more specific than that.
            How he knew, he refused to question.
            He had survived. That was the beginning of everything else.
            He drifted off, left again with the thought.
            I can do anything as long as I am alive.
            Including ignoring them.
*
kit: Thanks! The bond is still there, as everyone thinks in this chapter, but it’s in a state of flux.
BAFan: Yes, I think that’s the most intense scene I’ve written, bar maybe one in Nova Cupiditas—but that one didn’t go all the way.
Harry did know to get medical attention. He’s an Auror, that’s procedure. And he wants to be a good Auror; he wanted to survive partially to try to be even better at his job. So he’s not going to act as wild and outside the rules in this story as he sometimes does in others.
ChelseaPlume: Draco might get some help from Snape, as here, in coming to terms with it, but Harry isn’t going to want his help. We’ll see how it works out.
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The Wages of Going On