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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 Thirty-Five—Discomfort
            “Exactly what did you mean by that?”
            Severus’s spine stiffened. Once again, he had been lost in a moment of crystalline concentration, his attention on the potion in the cauldron, and his hand rested on a tiny pile of red and golden autumn leaves. He had to add the leaves to the cauldron one at a time, making them drift on the surface before they sank. It required precise placement and control of the muscles of the hand that Severus had worked a long time to develop.
            And it seemed he was not to have the pleasure of brewing as he wished to this morning, either.
            “What do you think I meant by rejecting your friend’s rude plea for a potion recipe that I invented myself?” he breathed, and cast a Holding Charm on the potion. It was less powerful than a Stasis Charm, but wand magic that had too much of his strength behind it could damage this particular brew. “I thought I made myself clear enough. If not, then I suppose I will need to do something else, so that she knows never to approach me again.”
            Footsteps shook the floor of the lab behind him. Severus started to turn, shielding the cauldron with his body. He would not put it past Harry to spill the potion in revenge.
            But Harry surged into his face instead, closer than Severus could remember them being since that disastrous day in the copper circle. He tried to retreat. The table pressed against his back, and the rim of the cauldron. He had to hold still, or he risked spilling the potion himself. And that would be a deeper and more venomous wound than anything Harry could inflict on him.
            “You knew that writing that to Hermione would hurt me,” Harry said, his teeth barely parting to let the words through. “And her, but I know you don’t give a fuck about her. That was written for me to see. That makes it all the crueler, too. You could have been less rude if you just wanted to get my attention. You thought you’d indulge your spite and get my attention at the same time.”
            Severus did have to stare, because he had never thought that Granger would show the letter to anyone, except perhaps her husband. “I did not want to catch your attention!”
            Harry curled his lip, and Severus winced as he caught a glimpse of his teeth. “Really? Then why weren’t you surprised that I’d seen it?”
            Severus winced again. But yes, perhaps that did have the ring of truth to it. Granger was nothing to him. Her requests and letters were nothing to him. He would have ignored it if—
            If there was not some deeper reason that he had for writing such a piercing letter, one that demanded a response. Weasley or Granger would not have been able to get through the wards on the Manor to hex him. Harry could slip through them at any time.
            “Perhaps the letter was meant for your eyes,” he conceded, admitting what he could barely admit.
            “Why say that to her?” Harry’s voice hadn’t wavered, even though he had forced Severus into confessing part of his vulnerability. “Why hurt her so badly? What the fuck do you want? I thought we parted like—I mean, as well as we could when everything was so fucked up. And you’d made that bargain to brew that forgetting potion and help me in the investigation with Voldemort.” He utterly ignored Severus’s flinch; this close, Severus could not delude himself into thinking that Harry had said the name only to enjoy his humiliation. “Why did you do this? You could have put what we’re doing in danger. I thought that finding out whether he’s really coming back was more important to you than hurting me.”
            Severus clenched down a hand on the chair behind him. He couldn’t retreat, and in a duel, Harry might best him, because he would use Dark spells without hesitation. He did have the chance to wield truth as a weapon, however. “Because you are still important to me, and you should not be.”
            Harry eased back, his brows rising. “Do you mean that the bond still exists for you?” he asked, shaking his head. “I don’t see how it could; that potion we drank was pretty specific about ending it, for me. I know that I can’t feel any trace of you or Draco.”
            “No,” said Severus, and closed his eyes. He knew this would be humiliating for him, and he would have given a great deal to be elsewhere. But he had brought this situation upon himself, or at least one could argue that he had. So he would endure through the consequences. “I mean that I still spend too much time thinking of you, wondering why you are not here, weighing my actions with you in mind. I should not do that.”
            Silence. Then Harry said, “You mean that you did—you did something you thought would bring me back, and something that would make me think about you as much as you were thinking of me?”
            Severus sighed. Spoken aloud, that was even more humiliating than he had thought it would sound. “Yes,” he said. “You need have no fear that I will do it again. The result is not what I hoped.” And let Harry imagine what the result was going to be, since Severus had no intention of describing it.
            Silence, and more silence. Then a hand touched his shoulder. Severus grunted and opened his eyes, determined not to move away, even if there was a fist heading for his face.
            There was only a complicated expression. Severus could not have read it even with the bond. He thought. The certainty that would have made him more comfortable had fled with the kind of certainty that would not.
            “I think this is something we need to discuss with Draco,” Harry said, and turned and led the way out of the lab.
            It had to be leading, because Severus was following. That was obnoxious in and of itself, but not as obnoxious as having Harry stand there and continue to talk into his face was. Perhaps this was the simple consequence, rather than the complicated one, of his decision.
            At least with Draco, he would have a third person to share the burden of Harry being here with.
            Is it a burden? When you missed him enough to reach out and write a letter that you knew couldn’t help but catch his attention?
            Severus immediately rejected the thought. Harry and Draco would probably interpret this as a sign that he had missed Harry, but he need not do it to himself..
*
            “Three days have really flown past,” Draco said aloud, laying his book aside, when Harry and Severus trooped into the library. It was better than some other things he could have said, and better than the introduction he thought one of them would have given to the matter otherwise.
            “They have,” said Harry, and settled down near one of the shelves that wasn’t far from the door, leaning against it but not sitting. “How have you been using your freedom?”
            “Reading, a lot,” Draco said. “Thinking about what I can do now that the Lestranges are gone, and whether there are any other Death Eaters out there who might want to target me. I suppose it’s not possible to let word of what we did to the Lestranges spread? A little bit? That would give my enemies a second idea about trying for me.”
            “I suppose it might be possible if we could somehow confine it to Death Eater circles,” Harry said. “I don’t think that would work, though. Someone in the Ministry would pick it up, and there goes my chance of not getting arrested for Dark magic.”
            “And we know that some of the Death Eaters had connections in the Ministry because of the way that Aurors helped Rabastan and Rodolphus.” Draco sighed and pushed the book away. “Well, it was a good idea while it lasted. What brings you here?”
            “Severus wrote a letter to Hermione.” Harry turned his head to look at Severus, his face so opaque that Draco wondered if he had learned a lot about concealing his emotions just from being around two Slytherins for a while. Then Draco wanted to snort. Right. It was more likely that Draco had got too used to reading Harry’s emotions through the bond and was lost without it. “A hurtful letter. Here, read it. I want all of us to be working off the same page.” He held out a piece of parchment towards Draco.
            Severus turned his head as if he would object, and then leaned back more heavily against the door. That was unusual enough in itself that it made Draco open the letter. He wanted to shake his head, he wanted to tell Severus that this was a stupid way to get Harry’s attention and get him back here, but done was done.
            Draco skimmed the letter, sighed, and laid it down. “I can see exactly why you came here,” he told Harry, and then faced Severus. “You know that was stupid to do.”
            Severus’s mouth set in a way that promised no good to Draco for saying that. But he said, “It was not—I did not do it out of hatred for Granger.”
            “Right, I know,” said Draco. He held Severus’s eyes and wished that Severus would look at him more fully. Draco had seen this before. Severus had wanted to protect Draco during his sixth year, when Draco was doing his impossible task for the Dark Lord, but he had thought the best way to do that was to annoy Draco and follow him about and drop dire hints without explaining the truth. Now, Draco knew it was because of the Unbreakable Vows and Severus’s desire to preserve both his own life and Draco’s. But at the time, all it had done was make Draco more determined to succeed. He might not have let Death Eaters into the school at all if Severus hadn’t made his temper flare.
            “That does not make it any more excusable, you would say.” Severus’s mouth was rigid and the line of his neck looked painful.
            “No,” said Draco. “It doesn’t.”
            He and Severus held glances long enough that Draco became sure Harry would interrupt, but he didn’t. When he looked over, Harry was standing there passively, his face blank and his eyes taking in both of them at once.
            “Did you come here seeking to make it up to Granger?” Severus asked the question with his mouth quirked in a way that made Draco roll his eyes. Of course Harry had come here for that reason. Ridiculous to think that it would come back for them.
            “I came here to get an apology,” Harry said, and he was speaking with more energy now, although his voice remained soft enough that it was hard to hear it. “And to tell you to stop putting me in the middle by insulting my friends. They would do the same thing if they’d insulted you. I wouldn’t like that, either.”
            “Putting you in the middle of what?” Draco asked. He hadn’t thought that Weasley and Granger were still holding onto House affiliations so strongly. “A war between Gryffindors and Slytherins?”
            “Between two sets of people who are important to me,” Harry said. Draco paused a moment to admire how diplomatically he had phrased that. “I don’t want it to happen. I would prefer that it didn’t.” He looked at Severus. “Ron was on the verge of coming here and trying to batter his way through the wards. I said I would come instead and collect an apology. So. Will you please tell me you’re sorry, and then I can take that back to them, and that’ll be the end of it?”
            “I thought we were going to investigate the Dark Lord’s return together,” said Draco, before Severus could speak. “That’s hardly the end of it.”
            Harry blinked at him. “I meant—the end of this particular problem. I didn’t mean that I was going to walk away and never come back. If nothing else, I still need the potion to use on the Aurors that Severus is going to brew for me. And to get the Aurors out of your cellars.”
            He tried a smile. It looked faltering and weak, and Draco knew trying his own would probably result in the same thing. He shook his head and sighed. “So we’re no longer bonded, but we don’t really know what kind of connection we have now. That’s normal. It doesn’t mean that we secretly want the bond back, or something.”
            “I know,” said Harry. He glanced at Severus. “And you can send me an owl instead of hurting one of my friends, to get me to come back.”
            Severus had a very peculiar expression on his face, Draco thought. Maybe this was a genuinely new situation for all of them, one that even Severus had never seen before. That would be comforting. Draco wouldn’t be alone then.
            “I will—you may tell Miss Granger that my purpose in writing that letter was not to harm her, and that I should not have…said certain things,” Severus finally said. “But I will not give her the recipe for my potion.”
            Harry snorted. “At this point, I don’t think she would take it if you offered it to her along with the credit for discovering it.”
            “That, I would never do.” Severus cleared his throat a second later. “So she need not ask for it again, either.”

            “She won’t, don’t worry about that,” said Harry, and then went on waiting.
            Severus grimaced. “What do you want, an apology in specific words? I do not think I can give you that, either. You know the real reasons I did this. I hardly think Miss Granger would appreciate being reduced to someone else’s appendage. But if you told her the truth, that is what she would feel like.”
            Harry blinked, an arrested look on his face. Then he said, “You don’t need to worry about who else I’m going to tell about your real reasons. My friends have to know, but that’s because you reached out and involved them in this stupid situation in the first place. So you don’t need to worry what Hermione feels. She’ll understand the truth. That’s more important to her than how independent she is in someone else’s eyes. I’m going to tell her the real reasons?”
            His voice rose at the end, and he stepped away and turned, so that he was looking at both of them at the same time. Draco was glad Harry had remembered he was in the room. This was in danger of becoming something too private between Harry and Severus. He wished that Severus had asked him before he did something like this, because Draco could have thought of a less explosive way to invite Harry back to the Manor, and he also wanted Harry not to forget there was a third person involved in this who might have ideas of his own about Harry’s friends.
            Not that Draco had any such ideas to add right now. He thought Granger probably did need the apology, but he didn’t want to spend too much time on her or Weasley. If Severus gave her an apology, neither one of them would owe Harry’s friends anything. And Draco was intent on keeping his debts as small as possible from now on.
            Except the ones that could no longer be avoided. That could be a source of positive pleasure.
*
            The moment had already gone on so long that Harry could feel hope dying in his heart. Severus could have said something before now if he was really going to send the apology. So Harry would have to do what he had privately resolved to do and make one up.
            He didn’t want to do that. But God, he was so sick of all this, Severus’s insecurities and feeling caught between two versions of himself and the need to keep going back and talking in new, uncomfortable ways about his new, uncomfortable ties with Severus and Draco. If he could come up with something that solve the problem in front of him and give him some peace to think, he’d take it.
            Severus finally shifted his gaze so that he was staring at a point on the bookshelves next to Harry instead of directly at Harry himself, and said, “You may tell Miss Granger that I did not mean the insults on her appearance.”
            “She won’t believe that,” Harry pointed out, his mind alive with the time at Hogwarts when Severus had insulted Hermione for the size of her teeth.
            “Very well,” said Severus, and lowered his voice still further. “You may tell her that I—apologize for doing it, and will not do it again.”
            Harry hesitated, wondering if Ron would accept that, then shrugged again. He thought it was the most he was going to get out of Severus, and that made sense. He had already pushed further past Severus’s barriers than he’d thought he would.
            “Thank you,” he said, and nodded to Draco. “Let me know when you want me to come back to discuss those potions and our next hunt for vengeance.” He moved towards the door, wondering if Ron and Hermione would still be out in the back garden of the Burrow. It would be convenient if they were. Harry wanted to tell them what had happened without anyone else in the family overhearing.
            “Wait.”
            Harry stared at the thin black line in front of him. It was Severus’s arm, extended to bar his way. He sighed and stood still, only rolling his head back on his neck to look up at Severus. “What now? I promised that I’d come back for the things you need me here for.”
            Severus lowered his arm, but said nothing. Instead, he glanced over Harry’s shoulder at Draco.
            Draco made a soft sound that might have been amusement. Harry thought he would have known, when they had the bond.
            Then he grimaced at himself. Of course I would have. That isn’t enough of a reason to wish for it back.
            “I think that what Severus means is that you’re here now,” Draco said. “And in our own way, we have missed having you around.”
            “All right,” said Harry. If he said it slowly, it might seem less strange than it did. “But I still don’t understand what this has to do with me leaving to go back to my friends. They’d probably get nervous if I was gone for much longer, anyway.” He knew that Ron had said Harry could go to the Manor and handle Severus, but he had forgotten promises before when he was in the middle of anger or worry about a friend, and this time, it would be both. “I need to tell them what happened.”
            “All right,” Draco said in return. “And if you sent them a Patronus or an owl, they might feel that you were choosing us over them.”
            Harry stared at him. It would have made sense for Draco to pick up on that with the bond, but without it…
            In the end, he shrugged and went with the opening Draco had given him. “I don’t think they’d believe that, exactly, but they might come here. I don’t want them to. I don’t think it would be a good idea for anyone.”
            “Including you,” said Severus, his voice back to neutral.
            “I’m one of the people under consideration, yes,” said Harry, and had to smile at the look on Severus’s face. What, did he think that I was placing myself at the bottom of the list or something? He really has changed from thinking that I’m selfish all the time.
            Well, but so had he changed from the days when he only thought about the effect the bond had on him.
“So I’m going back to the Burrow for today,” Harry continued. “I think that I’ll probably be able to convince them that I’m not under mind control or intimidated by you or anything best that way. But I’ll come back tomorrow, if you want me to.” Draco nodded; Severus didn’t move one way or the other, simply watching as if he thought that he couldn’t influence the outcome.
“Good.” Harry took that for enough of an invitation, when Draco was the one who owned the house. “What time?”
*
“That was strange.”
Draco offered the comment so neutrally that Severus knew it was up to him to respond, or not. For the moment, he sat there, staring at his hands folded on the table in front of him, and said nothing.
It had been strange. From the confrontation with Harry in the Potions lab, to the fact that he couldn’t simply let Harry walk out of the door once he had his apology. And Severus understood his own behavior, and understood Harry’s motivations, and did not have the fear that Harry would laugh and gossip with his friends about Severus behind his back.
It was so strange to understand all that, and particularly to be without fear when he had handed someone else so vulnerable a part of himself.
            It gave the lie to what Severus had hoped was the truth after they had drunk the potion and ended the bond: that the changes to his life because of the bond had not been permanent. If he could trust James Potter’s son that much, and even give an apology to someone he did not care about, someone he had insulted, then he had changed after all.
            Carefully, he turned the conclusion around in his mind, looking at it the way he would the first idea for an experimental potion, pointing out the flaws to himself before he committed to days of theorizing and ingredients-gathering and brewing. Was the change a negative thing? Would it affect his ability to produce good potions? To remain safe in the world, now that the Lestranges were gone? To participate in this investigation he had promised Draco and—Harry he would help them in?
            No, he decided at last. That meant the change existed, but it wasn’t negative. Severus could not call it positive, either, when he throbbed with discomfort because of it, but at least it would not cripple him.
            “Finished, now?”
            Severus glanced up, startled, and saw, from the way Draco focused on him, that he had at least understood the general outlines of what was going on in Severus’s mind. Severus nodded and stood. “I had several things to think about, but I believe I have put them in their proper places,” he said. “For the moment, I would like to go to the Potions lab.”
            Draco smiled. “Of course, Severus. And I would like to check the wards on the cellars one more time, and make sure that the Aurors are really secure now.” He nodded to Severus and left the library. Severus listened to his footsteps fading in the direction of the staircase.
            Draco might have died during his second capture by the Lestranges. He might have been badly hurt. All of them might have died during that first capture, if Harry had not been a virgin and made his bargain with the bond.
            No matter how uncomfortable this was…
            It is better.
*
BAFan: Well, Harry regrets not having the bond to give him some forewarning of what Severus was about to do. ;)
And Severus really wanted to get Harry’s attention and pull him back, but he didn’t think in terms of it hurting him. He’s a bit insensitive that way.
SP777: Well, Hermione and Harry would have been upset about her being told to fuck off as well, although not as upset.
But Harry did get an apology. He’s more important to Severus than he realized.
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The Wages of Going On