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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.

Chapter List
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Chapter Thirty-Two--Near Collapse
            "I think I need some more rest in bed," Draco said, lowering his head and wrapping his arms around it and around the back of his neck, rocking a little.
            Harry shook himself free of his pleased stupor and turned in Draco's direction. "Of course," he said. The ritual was intense magic. It made sense that Draco would need rest after that. "Come on, lean on me. I'll escort you up the stairs." He took a few hasty steps to Draco's side when he swayed as if he would fall down right there.
            Draco sighed and leaned on his shoulder. "I don't know why I'm so weak," he said. "You and Severus aren't."
            "We weren't captured and tortured as recently as you," Harry murmured. He could only imagine what Snape would say if Harry said they hadn't been captured and tortured, which were the first words that had sprung into Harry's head. He didn't want to get into an argument about who had suffered the most severe pain right now, and it seemed as though he was at least going to get that much peace from Draco. Draco nodded, and his cheek drooped even further down Harry's shoulder.
            I will clean up the ritual signs and join you upstairs in a moment.
            Harry twitched violently, but didn't turn his head in Snape's direction. He concentrated on taking Draco safely out of the sitting room, and making sure that they mounted the stairs at more or less the same pace. Draco's head was bobbing, and now and then he sighed. Harry patted his back, soothing him as much as he could.
            "I think Severus thinks I'm weak," Draco whispered, when they had to pause to negotiate a difficult turn in the spiral staircase.
            "I don't think that I could say what he thinks," Harry said. It was the most neutral remark he could make right now. "Come on, watch out for this corner, you'll trip." He managed to hoist Draco over a small roll in the carpet on the edge of the step.
            Draco frowned down at the carpet. "How annoying. I shall have the house-elves take care of that right away." Then he rolled back his head, and fixed his eyes on Harry. Don't think I haven't noticed the care you've been taking of me.
            All right, Harry replied, a little baffled, and urged him around another corner. Draco could still move his legs, but Harry would have taken out his wand and floated him to bed if he couldn't feel through the bond how humiliating that would be to Draco. I won't argue with you about it. I just don't see why it matters.
            Draco sighed and straightened himself out on the top step. Because you can feel sorry for me but want to respect my pride at the same time, and respect what the bond places between us while wanting to destroy it. I don't understand why you can't do the same for Severus.
            Harry shrugged and shivered, at the same time, so violently that it was a wonder he didn't trip them back down the stairs. He shook his head and resumed dragging Draco down the corridor to his room. Snape doesn't want any consideration from me.
            I think you're wrong there, said Draco, and shook his head when Harry studied him, wondering whether he had hit his head. Not the same kind of consideration that you give me. I think he would explode if you tried. But we're still in the bond for however long it takes the potion to brew and me to recover the strength so that I can drink it. It's not such a bad idea to at least think about it, is it?
            Harry didn't say anything. He could have said that Snape hadn't done as much to deserve his concern as Draco had. He could have said that Snape would still explode if Harry tried to be kind to him in any way. He could have said that the potion would finish soon and Draco would recover soon, so it didn't matter what Harry did one way or another.
            But he ended up not saying any of it. He got Draco back to his room and settled him in his bed, with his head propped up on pillows so that he could breathe more easily. He fetched a house-elf to give him some soup, and ordered some broth with beef blood in it, the recipe that Hermione and Mrs. Weasley kept giving him when he had worked himself to magical exhaustion.
            Draco eyed him. "Anyone would think that you'd been in my position multiple times," he said aloud.
            Harry said nothing aloud, again. He just cast a spell that made the blankets softer and warmer, said, Try to rest, and then left the room. He paused a minute outside the door, but Draco was already snoring.
            Harry smiled and turned around. He didn't think rest of his own would be such a bad idea. He could use time to recover from the emotional impact of the ritual, even if he didn't think his magical and physical involvement in it were as great as Draco's.
            But the world didn't hear, or maybe didn't heed, his prayers, because there was Snape standing behind him. Harry squared his shoulders and waited. He wouldn't attack, but he wouldn't hesitate to defend himself, either.
            You still think that I would attack you, even after all we have shared.
            That wasn't a question, but Harry only knew it because of the bond. And the emotions that chased themselves up and down along Snape's part of it--the lightness of incredulity, the iron-grey thickness of anger--weren't very promising. He met Snape's eyes and spoke mentally, only so that he wouldn't wake Draco up. I don't think you'll attack me so much as I'm ready to defend. And if I wasn't that way, you would make fun of me for not having enough paranoia, so I might as well do what will cause me to lose the least.
            Snape's jaw worked, so hard that Harry thought he would probably grind his teeth down to stumps if he didn't watch out. Then he grunted and turned sharply away. Come with me. I think we need to have that discussion we put off when we subdued Nelson.
            Harry sighed and followed. Maybe rest would have been a good idea, but he wasn't going to get any of it.
            If you had truly needed it, I would not have insisted that you put it off. This is what we need instead.
            Harry bit back the retort he wanted to make. It would lead into endless paths of circular disagreement that he had no more interest in going back to than Snape did. He wanted to sit down with something to drink, though, and that meant ordering a house-elf to bring him the drink once they had finally reached whatever room Snape thought was the best for their "discussion."
            Because Harry doubted he would be allowed to leave until the bloody thing was done.
*
            Once Potter had a mug of thick, warm brown Nut-ale, Severus caught the house-elf's eye and nodded it away. The creatures were almost as used to obeying him as they were Draco, and would object to his orders only when they conflicted with a Malfoy's, so this one bowed itself to the edge of disappearing and then Apparated out.
            "Fine. What do you think still needs to be talked about, since we did that ritual together so successfully?"
            Severus turned to consider Potter. He held his mug lightly in his right hand, leaving the path clear to his wand if he needed it. He didn't seethe with the same rage that he had in the past when Severus had attempted to talk with him, but that didn't mean much. The wariness in his eyes was in some ways harder to get through.
            Talk, Snape. You were the one who wanted to.
            Severus nodded, but took a sip of his own glass of flavored water before he responded. They would deal as equals, which meant neither of them could command the other. "Very well. I wanted to know if you had thought about when we can end the bond."
            That got him a sharp look for all his efforts, and Potter said, "Whenever the potion is finished brewing, I thought."
            Severus sighed. "Yes, but the potion must be consumed in calm circumstances, when none of the participants is wounded, and when they are in accord with each other. We would have to wait in any case, for Draco to recover from the last vestiges of his torture and all of us to recover from the strain of the ritual. However, there is still the matter of latent disagreements between you and me."
            Potter blinked once, then nodded and said, "All right. I'll personally consider us even if you teach me the spell you used to break Nelson's wand."
            Severus eyed him. Potter appeared to be serious, and not to see what was wrong with his proposition.
            What is wrong with it?
            "This is not a matter of debts, even of life-debts," Severus said aloud, balancing his glass on his knee. "This is a matter of emotions that need to be talked out. We cannot declare a debt paid and expect to settle into accord as a result of that."
            Potter's eyes and nostrils and bond all flared, but he was able to respond calmly. "All right. What do you suggest we talk about first?"
            You're letting me take the lead? Severus could prevent neither the silent exclamation nor the surprise that bled over into the link between them.
            Stop jumping around and tell me what you want to fucking talk about, Snape.
            Severus held back the impulse to respond with an insult, which would work against what he had told Potter they needed to do here, not improve it, and then nodded. "Very well. I think that we need to talk about the rape and ritual that the Lestranges imposed on us."
            “I thought we’d done nothing but talk about it and its consequences for the last fortnight.” Potter’s breathing had slowed down again, and he regarded Severus under the bottom of his mug as though he assumed that he would explode in a minute.
            A fair estimate of how I would once have responded to your presence, Severus told him. But nothing more than an estimate of how I once would have responded. I ask that you give me a fairer hearing now.
            Potter’s lips parted, and he seemed as if he would say something unfortunate, but a second later, he inclined his head until his chin almost touched his chest. “Fine,” he said. “Tell me what you think we need to talk about.”
            “Do you understand now that both Draco and I suffered from the rape?”
            Potter’s head rocked back on his neck; from the shimmer of the bond, he hadn’t expected a question so direct. But he nodded. “Yeah, I do. It was still better than the death that the bond would have insisted on if I’d just left it alone, though.”
            Severus paused. This was one thing he had not anticipated. “So you think that we might blame you for the rape?”
            “Might? I know that you did,” Potter said, and his mouth twisted oddly. “Because I was the one who set up that bargain with the bond and my virgin arse, and so I was the one who set up the situation where you had to rape me.”
            Severus touched one hand to the side of his head, but dropped it without running it through his hair. That was too much a Potter-like gesture right now. “The Lestranges were the ones who set up the situation.”
            Potter’s eyes had a gleam that was almost feral. “But I was the one who made it necessary for you to rape me instead of do something else.”
            “I did not blame you in the way you are thinking,” Severus said. He didn’t know if Potter had been thinking this clearly at first, but if he had thought Draco and Severus would blame him for everything, it explained some of his reactions.
            I wasn’t thinking that clearly at first, no. But I know that you blamed me.
            Severus grimaced. Potter was not the only one who had discomfort to face in this situation. “I blamed you because I was entangled with you in yet another uncomfortable way, and because I had guilt that you seemed to keep flinging back in my face. Nothing I could do would be enough to make up for it, so why should I try? And there was the bond that was trying to kill you, and might have killed us, too.”
            “Fine,” said Potter. “That’s blaming.”
            “But I am past that now,” Severus said, and used one of Potter’s own tactics on him when he snorted, flinging open the bond down to its deepest levels. “Do you feel anything like blame from me now?”
            Potter hesitated, then reached out and stirred his fingers slowly through the bond. Mental fingers, at least. Severus endured it, and then Potter settled back and shook his head in wonder. No, I don’t. I didn’t realize that you’d got past it.
            “Perhaps I did not until we performed this latest ritual and banished the Lestranges from life,” said Severus. “But it is gone now. That means that we can—we should—discuss this affair between us free from their influence.”
            “Fine,” Potter said, and stared blindly off to the side for only a moment before he began to speak. “I thought you blamed me, yeah. And I blamed myself. I thought I should have done something else. Something that fit the Auror I wanted to be. A really good Auror could have found some way out of there without involving either rape or death.”
            Severus shook his head. “Most Aurors would not have had the presence of mind to react as you did.”
            “Or a virgin arse to offer up,” Potter said, and eyed him.
            Severus shrugged. “If you wish to say that is a qualification, then it is. But I remain curious as to why it was a qualification. Why had you remained a virgin until the Lestranges put us in that circle?”
            Potter bristled for a moment, but looked at the fire until he calmed down. “Like that’s the most personal question you could ask me, after all we’ve been through,” he muttered.
            Severus agreed, but held his peace. This was something that Potter had to come to terms with on his own, or not at all.
            “Because I didn’t find the right way to lose it,” Potter murmured at last. “Because I thought it was supposed to be—oh, everybody told me it was supposed to be this grand romantic moment, and you would know the right time for it, and it didn’t matter if neither of you had ever had sex before, you would just know the right things to do.”
            “I do not need any details of the Granger and Weasley intimacies that may have convinced you of this,” Severus said sharply, which was only true.
            Potter looked at him with something so unexpected in his eyes that Severus did not recognize it until he touched the bond. Genuine laughter.
            It flickered and was gone, but it had been there.
            Potter shrugged and said, “I never had that grand romantic moment. And I wanted it. But there was the war, and there was getting ready to actually pass my NEWTs, and there was Auror training. I cared more about being a good Auror than I did about not being a virgin, and I had to study every second, because I never learned how to study in Hogwarts.” Severus blinked at another admission that he’d never thought to hear Potter make, but said nothing. “There was no time for something like what I wanted. I could have found someone for a casual fuck and disguised myself with a glamour so no one would realize it was the Boy-Who-Lived and have the temptation to run to the papers, but that wasn’t what I wanted. And I thought I deserved to have what I wanted.”
            “Then that was another thing that—this situation took from you,” Severus said. He didn’t want to say that he and Draco were the ones who had done it, because technically that was not true.
            Potter twisted his mouth up in an expression that Severus thought was both complicated and more complicated than Potter was letting it be. “That happened,” he said. “But when we finish the potion and the bond, then there will be something that can help make up for it.”
            “Not change it,” said Severus.
            Potter looked into his ale before frowning back at Severus with eyes that were shadowed, but steady. “Well, no. But if we had changed it, then we would have died. Or I might have ended up raped and dead. I know which outcome I prefer.”
            “It did not sound as if you preferred it, with some of the things that you said to us.” Severus felt the memories sleeting past him, the memory of arriving to find Potter on the floor with the magic of the bond tugging at his ribs, and the memory of Potter dipping into his mind and feasting on any memory he wanted.
            “I didn’t know what I preferred at the time,” Potter said, but with the edge of a warning in his voice. “I was a mess. I hope that I know better than to prefer death now.”
            Severus let it rest there for a moment, and passed on. “What are you going to do when the bond is finished?”
            Potter turned his gaze to the floor, although it hadn’t been what Severus had meant, and said, “Those bloody Aurors in the Manor’s cellars. They’re still a problem that has to be taken care of.”
            “And then?” Severus asked.
            “I can’t take them back to the Ministry,” said Potter, although Severus had actually been asking for what Potter would do after he had figured out a solution to the problem of the dead and maimed and sleeping Aurors. “There are too many people who would simply let them go, and the truth of what I did to them can’t be hidden behind Memory Charms.” He shut his eyes, and for a moment, let himself slump in the chair with exhaustion. “I don’t know exactly what to do.”
            Severus paused, both to make sure that Potter was actually done speaking and to appreciate (in his own way) the trust that Potter was showing him, betraying fatigue like that in front of someone he had considered an enemy. “If your major fear is detection, then I can brew a potion that will work like a Memory Charm, but is stronger and cannot be reversed. It is one I came up with on my own, and I have not shared the recipe with any other Potions master. Without the exact recipe, they have no chance of discovering an antidote. Could you use that to lock the memories of what you did to them behind barriers?”
            Potter gaped at him. Then he said, “You’re offering a potion like that to—to me?”
            To someone who is still bonded to me and to someone who helped me get the most complete revenge I could envision? Yes, I am.
            But we won’t be bonded by the time that I have to decide what to do about the Aurors, Potter argued back. And I don’t know what I could do for you this time that would pay back that debt.
            “Perhaps it sounds strange, coming from someone as obsessed by the past as I was for so many years,” Severus said dryly, “but there is more to life than debts. Or you could think of it as payment for revenge. Or for ensuring that you would never have a huge romantic moment like the one you were planning. Any and all of those. Come, Potter,” he added, because the gape was still there in the bond, if not literally on Potter’s face anymore. “Is it that strange, when you agreed that our relationship had changed?”
            “I know,” Potter said, and waved a hand. “Sorry. I just…I’m not used to thinking about this anymore.”
            “Thinking about what?” Severus could not figure out what he meant even with a poke at the muddied bond.
            “Thinking about what people offer me without a cost,” Potter said simply. “Unless their last name is Granger or Weasley. You’re right, we’ve gone through enough together that it shouldn’t be a surprise. But at the same time, you can’t deny that it was really, deeply fucked-up.”
            “Perhaps so,” said Severus. “But now that some of the passion that made it so is gone, and the Lestranges are incapable of putting us in a similar position ever again, I think you must agree that we are able to choose how we react. This is the way that I choose to react. This is the potion I am offering you.”
            Potter considered him hard enough that Severus could feel the effort making drops of sweat break out on both their foreheads. He waited instead of snapping. If what he had said about choosing his reactions was true, then he needed to do it now.
            Perhaps more now than at any point so far.
*
            He’s right. I don’t feel as angry anymore, and that means that I don’t need to be as angry at him anymore. If I don’t want to.
            Honestly, there was still the temptation to feel angry at Snape, because what he had said was true. Harry’s virginity was gone now, and he wouldn’t ever get it back, or have the romantic moment he’d planned.
            But there were so many other things that he could have lost, and would never have had. The revenge on the Lestranges. His life. The chance to go on from here, and be…something. Not the good Auror he had planned on, either, because the Ministry was crawling with too many people eager to do something with his scar. And he might have to deal with Voldemort again, if Stockwell and the Aurors accompanying her were right.
            But he was sincere when he’d told Snape that it was better to be alive and have those choices and decisions to make instead of raped and then dead. And the Lestranges would still be alive, and they would have won.
            Harry smiled. The fiery satisfaction he had got from the Banishing Curse hadn’t diminished, unlike some of the other passions that the Lestranges had once aroused in him.
            “Harry?”
            Harry started, and reared his head back to fasten his eyes on Snape’s face. Snape shook his head. I spoke your surname, and you didn’t respond. And your mind was working too fast to even feel the touch of the bond.
            Harry took a deep breath. “Then I accept the use of your potion, and thank you. And I’m going to investigate the signs of Voldemort being back as soon as I use it. The Aurors can be dumped back at the Ministry as long as they have no memory of what happened to them. But from there, I really think that the investigation is the next thing I’m going to fling myself into.”
            “My company is an option on that journey as well, should you wish it,” Snape said, with a mostly blank face. “I bear the Dark Mark, and so does Draco. We have much to lose if the Dark Lord returns.”
            Harry paused, but only briefly. He shouldn’t be surprised by Snape’s general willingness to help him by now, even if he was surprised by each specific instance of it.
            “I’d appreciate that. Thanks.”
            It was worth the uncertainty he had gone through, to see the way that Snape’s jaw hung open when he added that last word.
*
BAFan: Thanks! I think even more weight has been lifted than Harry realized, at least from Snape.
Anon: For the Lestranges, anyway.
Ciara_D: Breaking the bond is the first step, but Harry is thinking of the future.
ChelseaPlume: Thank you! As you can see here, Harry and Severus are working their way towards some kind of accord. It’s hard for either of them to admit to weakness or needing an apology or anything else, but they’re getting there.
And while the bond will be broken, that’s not the end of the story yet.
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The Wages of Going On