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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 Thirty-Six—Forgetfulness
            “Snape really apologized?” Ron asked for the fifth time.
            Harry sighed and sipped again at the Muggle beer that he had stopped in London to purchase. He wanted something he could drink without paying much attention to it for this conversation. Maybe he should have remained alert, without a drink of any kind, but he didn’t want to. He wanted a cushion between him and the world to keep him from snapping at anybody, including himself.
            “Yes, he did,” said Harry. “He didn’t want to. He tried to get around it in all sorts of ways. But when I threatened to leave and not pay attention to him anymore, then he did it.”
            Ron sat up, slowly, the way he did when someone accidentally let slip the important clue that might lead to them solving the mystery. Harry blinked at him, then around at the house and the garden. Hermione had gone inside after the second time Harry had said that Severus had apologized. Harry thought she probably believed him, didn’t want to hear about it anymore, and wanted some time alone. He could understand all of it.
            Especially when Ron was staring at him in a way that implied Harry had done something wrong.
            “He never would have taken you not paying attention to him before as some sort of threat,” Ron whispered. “He would have been glad about it, if anything.”
            “I know,” Harry said. “The bond changed a lot of things.” It had also changed the way he felt about them, changed Snape and Malfoy into Severus and Draco, but Harry didn’t think Ron would like it if he tried to discuss those things with him. “But as long as it makes him pay attention and means that he won’t say anything else like that to Hermione and you—or write it to you, whatever—then I’m happy.”
            “I’m not.”
            Harry sighed aloud this time, the way he’d wanted to sigh many times since this conversation began, and flopped back in his chair to stare at the stars. He remembered barely anything from Astronomy, now. It wasn’t a subject that had much use for most Aurors. He just knew that the stars were pretty to look at, and right now, they weren’t exasperating him the way his best friend was. “What now?” he asked. “If you think that he should apologize in person or something, that isn’t going to happen.”
            “I just mistrust his obsession with you.” Ron said the word “obsession” seriously, and went on looking serious even when Harry shot him a blank, expressive look. “He didn’t apologize because you made him see sense or because he upset Hermione.”
            “When would you expect Snape to apologize for anything like that?” Harry demanded, sitting up.
            “I wasn’t expecting him to apologize at all,” Ron said. “And that makes it all the more worrying that he apologized just because you were upset with him.”
            Harry shook his head and waved a hand. “I don’t think it was really that. We’d planned to work together. He wants to show off his potion-brewing skills to me. And he also wants to know if it’s true that Voldemort could be coming back. Of course it concerns him, when he still has the bloody Dark Mark on his arm—”
            “Stop giving me a load of bollocks, Harry.”
            Harry looked down into his beer, and did so. “I don’t know what you want to hear. It’s true that he apologized because he wanted me not to be upset with him. It’s true that he wouldn’t have done that before the bond. But the bond happened. It’s not like I can go back and make it not have happened.”
            “I didn’t expect to see you so friendly with people who raped you.”
            Harry’s fingers tightened on his drink until he thought he might throw it at Ron. And Ron was still his best friend. He released the hold instead, and made his voice be calm. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”
            “I don’t see why.” Ron laid his hands on his knees. “Maybe you feel differently about them now that they’ve helped you, but—”
            “That’s exactly it,” Harry interrupted. “That’s it exactly.” He wasn’t going to go into all the different permutations of the bond and the strange things that had sprouted out of it with Ron. He wasn’t sure that he could, that he remembered it all, anyway, and it would embarrass Severus and him. Draco would come out of it looking the best, but Harry still found himself as reluctant to share private things Draco had said with Ron as he would be to share private things about Ron and Hermione with them.
            This is so weird. But like the weird things he had gone through with the bond, he just had to live with it.
            “I wonder if the bond affected them differently than it did you,” Ron said finally, leaning back in his chair. “I mean, they seem to miss you in this strange way, but you don’t seem to miss them at all.”
            Harry shrugged. He wasn’t about to get into that, either, how oddly his mind jerked and shuddered sometimes, reaching for companions who weren’t there, people he wanted to check on or scold or share a reflection with.
            “Well, all right,” Ron said. He had waited several minutes, but he sighed now and seemed resigned to the fact that Harry wasn’t going to respond. “But tell us if they’re taking too much of your time. Hermione and I will come and get you out of there.”
            Harry nodded politely. He had no intention of telling Ron or Hermione any such thing. He hoped that Hermione would be okay with the apology, and not ask Severus about the potion again. (Well, at least that wasn’t likely to happen). “Thanks, mate,” he added, because Ron seemed to be waiting for something more, and reached across the table to shake Ron’s hand.
            Ron smiled and looked back to normal. Harry was glad one person was.
*
            Draco paused. Then he stepped back from the sleeping Auror he had been investigating and drew his wand.
            So far, the others all seemed secure under the hold of Severus’s potion, and he hadn’t found any break in the wards or sign that someone was armed or could slip in and help them wake up. But he had been searching them for wands, and encountered a slip of paper in a pocket that bent with a crackling sound. He’d tried to take it out of the robe pocket, and a defensive spell had sprung up, shimmering above the pocket.
            Now, he carefully examined it. Protective spells were harder to attach to clothing than they were to something like stone or wood, because cloth shifted around all the time and protective spells wanted stability. But this had been done by someone skilled, forming an arc like a white rainbow with beads of brighter light sliding back and forth along it.
            It all seemed a lot of effort to go to if all the Aurors had wanted was a defense against pickpockets.
            Draco set about finding a way through the protective spell. Again, it took longer than it should have, with him trying different combinations of charms and unlocking spells and ward-destroying hexes until he saw a dimming in the outline of the white rainbow. Then he pressed his wand forwards and right against the side of the rainbow, and spoke a hex that he had first learned to combat improperly set wards that would keep him from moving between rooms in the Manor.
            A final spit and sparkle, and the rainbow vanished. Draco sighed, paused a while longer to make sure that the unconscious Auror was really unconscious and wouldn’t move, and then cast another spell that would warn him of traps. That gone by without incident, he reached in and took out the piece of parchment.
            It proved to be a mess of random letters and numbers. Well, maybe less random than it looked, Draco conceded, studying the placement of them with a fascinated eye. It was probably a code.
            He didn’t know how to crack it with a few quick skims, though. He ended up putting it in his pocket and turning for the stairs. Severus was good with all sorts of mysteries and puzzles, even if he focused mostly on potions. He could help Draco with it.
*
            Severus laid the final stirring rod aside, and shook his head. Brewing the forgetfulness potion to use on the Aurors had been more difficult this time than it had when he last brewed it. He must be getting old.
            Or you have too many other distractions on the brain.
            Severus grimaced. He had to admit that was the most likely culprit. Every time he thought he had them subdued, images of Harry would show up in his brain and look at him with raised eyebrows, or images of Draco being tortured by the Lestranges. Severus almost wished that all of them could have been taken that time. Then he would know he had had some part in breaking Draco free.
            He would not care about your guilt, and neither would Harry.
            That at least was true. Severus bottled the potion with a tap of his wrist, moving all the liquid from the cauldron to the flask with a single spell. Most potions couldn’t stand that sort of rough treatment so soon after brewing, because it would cause the ingredients to separate again and become blobs drifting near the surface, but this potion was thicker than many others. Severus hoped that it wouldn’t cling to the drinkers’ teeth and tongue this time. That sort of thing made it difficult for it to work properly.
            “Severus?”
            He glanced over his shoulder. Draco stood in the doorway of the lab, expression patient. That meant he was concealing impatience, of course. And Severus owed that knowledge to the years that he had taught and scolded and indulged and befriended Draco, not to the bond, which made it peculiarly precious.
            “You found something?” He knew Draco had gone down to check the Aurors again today, but he had not expected that Draco would discover anything new when the wards had been sturdy and holding them yesterday.
            Draco grinned at him, and Severus half-shook his head. He was imagining what a similar smile would look like on Harry’s face, which was a ridiculous supposition. Harry did not have to smile like that for him.
            “Is this a bad time?”
            That attunement he and Draco had to each other after years of working together, and survival during the war, and which the bond had only briefly ruined. Severus said, “No. I was thinking of something else. What did you find?” He held out his hand, a silent command Draco should know better than to disobey.
            Draco’s return look was too wise for his years, but at least he took out the parchment and gave it to Severus without fussing.
            Severus swallowed, and did not show how close he felt to having the wind knocked out of him. “This is a code I have not seen in years,” he whispered. “I thought the Death Eaters had given up on using it when it was deciphered it during the first war.”
            “I thought it had something to do with the Death Eaters,” Draco said, with rough satisfaction. “But why use it at all, if it was deciphered?”
            “I suspect that few of the Aurors who participated in breaking the code are in the Ministry now,” Severus said absently, looking all over the parchment for the beginning of the code. There it was, the soft curve under a capital G that looked like a flowing part of the Q beneath it unless you knew what you were looking for. “Or perhaps, if they are, they were part of the group that took Potter and the coincidence of the code proved fortunate for them.”
            “Harry.”
            Severus felt the muscles creaking in his neck as he looked up. Draco looked him dead in the eye, and refused to back away even when Severus gave him what he thought was his very best sneer.
            “I beg your pardon?” Severus finally asked, when he couldn’t avoid the words any longer. He knew perfectly well what Draco wanted to say, but he didn’t think that it was important enough to waste any more time on.
            Apparently, Draco disagreed. He gave Severus a smile that was no smile. “His name is Harry. You agreed to call him that. The last time he was here, he called you Severus. I don’t want to see you reversing your given word before a Gryffindor does.”
            Severus closed his eyes. “My given word has mattered little to me. I have been forced to break too many of the promises that you want me to hold sacred.”
            “The most important promises, like the one that you told me you made to Harry’s mum, you never broke,” Draco whispered. “You kept the one to my mother. You kept the one to the Headmaster. So don’t push this away because of that.” He paused, during a time in which Severus felt no obligation to open his eyes, and then continued. “Does it help if I refer to it in a different way? Not as keeping your given word, but as being consistent with yourself.”
            Severus considered that carefully, eyes still closed. Yes, he could see it. He wanted to be at least Harry’s equal. And he wanted to concentrate on important things. Little distractions, little irritations, like calling Harry by the wrong name, or writing taunting letters to Granger, turned him aside from the important ones.
            “Fine,” he said, opening his eyes. “Harry was kidnapped by Aurors who had associations with Death Eaters. We already know that. This code is likely the same as the one I knew. And I can decipher it.”
            He turned away to begin doing that, focusing on the G that the curve indicated as the first letter of the message, and tried to ignore Draco’s proud smile.
*
            “You’re sure that this potion will work on all the Aurors?” Harry tilted the flask that Severus had given him back and forth. He didn’t miss Severus’s wince as he did that, but he ignored it. He was hardly going to drop the thing and shatter it. He had to admit, though, that the potion didn’t look like much. Just dirty tea. “Even the ones that might have protections against Occlumency or Legilimency in their minds?”
            “Where did you get the idea that Occlumency or Legilimency could protect you against potions that influence the mind?”
            Harry put the flask back on the table and shrugged at Severus. “Something I heard in Auror training.” He changed the subject before Severus could open his mouth and blast and damn such bloody superstitions as Aurors got trained in nowadays. “As long as you’re sure it’ll work, then we can use it now.”
            “One moment,” said Severus, and nodded to Draco, who came forwards and held out a piece of parchment to Harry. “Draco found this coded message in the pockets of one of the Aurors yesterday. Beneath it is my transliteration of the code.”
            “The Auror was a ginger fellow,” Draco added helpfully. “Probably a secret Weasley cousin or something.”
            Harry rolled his eyes at him and took the code. As far as he could see, the letters were a jumbled mess, but then he began to see the soft curves beneath certain ones, which Severus had written in a certain order at the bottom of the page. “What do the numbers mean?” he asked absently, studying the letters himself, trying to figure it out before he looked at the translation.
            “They tell you how many letters the next word has.”
            Harry lifted his head with a frown. “Then why doesn’t the message start with numbers, instead of letters?”
            “Because the man who invented it was not as great a genius as he thought he was,” said Severus, as dry as Harry had ever heard him be. “He expected us to begin with letters, follow the curves to the next ones, and be able to recognize the word’s ending and the point where we needed to switch to numbers.”
            “Oh,” said Harry. “So Vol—”
            “Yes.”
            Harry held up a defensive hand. “Sorry,” he said, but he thought it did make a certain amount of sense. Of course Voldemort wouldn’t want someone else creating a code that his people would use. It might make them less than totally dependent on him, and he couldn’t have that. “So. Okay.” He tried to sweep his eyes along the curves, following them from letter to letter, but it was difficult. So many of them seemed to be parts of other letters, and sometimes he thought he was looking at a nonsense word, only to realize that it was probably the beginning of another one.
            “Will you just look at the translation, Harry?” Draco murmured suddenly. “You don’t need to prove you’re smarter than Severus.”
            Harry stiffened his back against the insinuation, but Severus said nothing, which made it easier to just look at the bottom of the bloody page.
            Great opportunity. Can capture Potter dazed and reeling. Mind affected. Bond to Snape and Malfoy. Bring implements for ritual circle.
            Harry’s hand tightened on the parchment. “That reduces the number of suspects considerably,” he whispered.
            “Exactly,” said Draco. Harry looked up to see him leaning forwards with his hand on the table, his eyes ravenous. “How many people knew that you’d suffered mental affliction as a result of being captured by the Lestranges, instead of just wounds? How many people even knew about the bond to me and Severus? Not many.”
            Harry licked his lips, sick with fear for a second. He wouldn’t suspect Ron or Hermione of betraying the secret, not for a moment. They were his friends, and he would trust them forever and to the ends of the earth.
            But Kingsley? Maybe. Harry was coming to accept that a lot of the Aurors he knew, like Nelson, had other loyalties and ideas in mind than helping to support Harry as a member of the Aurors.
            Then he thought of an even more likely candidate, and the breath went out of his lungs. “How much experience would you have to have with ritual circles and torture and bonds to recognize the possibility of me being dazed by something like this? Or realizing that it might make me mentally vulnerable?”
            Draco looked at Severus, who shrugged with one shoulder and said, “Much? I thought there had been no bond like ours in the annals of the literature.” Even now, even here, he could work up a nasty tone, Harry thought. At least now he knew that nasty tone wasn’t directed at him. “That must mean that the bond would be hard to recognize, hard to predict in its effects.”
            “But not impossible, not as long as you knew that a bond existed?” Harry asked again. His heartbeat was fast enough to make him dizzy now. He ended up leaning against the table. Draco frowned at him. Harry shook his head and straightened up. “Because if that’s so, then I think I know who betrayed me. Us. And if the Aurors could learn that code from Death Eaters, then someone who’s not an Auror could learn that code from them.”
            “But it was Aurors who captured you, who betrayed you,” said Draco sharply. “You knew that much.”
            “We were looking for the person who could have told them about my bond and figured out that I’d be snooping around in the Ministry rather than just believing my story,” Harry reminded them. “And one person who could have is that Healer who examined me right after the rape.” His face burned. “She knows in intimate detail exactly what I went through. And she asked me all these details about the ritual circle.”
            “What is her name?” Severus’s voice was low. He had his head bowed, his fingers flicking among the vials, as though he was looking for something.
            “I don’t know,” Harry admitted. “I wasn’t in the frame of mind to pay attention to details like that at the time.”
            “Then we will find out.” Severus lifted his head, and Harry took a step back. As much as he and Severus had argued before the Lestranges took Draco, he thought he hadn’t ever seen the real Professor Snape, Potions master and Potions monster, before now, at least since school. Here he was. “It will not be hard to discover the name of the Healer who tended to Harry Potter after his latest capture by Death Eaters.”
            “Maybe it will,” Harry said, arguing back out of habit more than anything else. “Not many people know that many details about the capture. And I’d like it to stay that way.”
            Severus’s eyes glittered. “But the records will be available at St. Mungo’s. And I do have some contacts there.”
            “People you sold potions to?” Harry guessed, but Severus’s blandly superior face said that he wasn’t about to reveal their names to Harry. Harry shrugged. He couldn’t resent that, could he. “Fine. And maybe I’m wrong.”
            “I don’t think you are.” Draco’s eyes were distant, fixed on the wall. “It doesn’t answer the question of why that Healer would want to betray you, but at least we have a clue.”
            “Um, thanks,” said Harry. The praise made him want something to do with his hands, so he picked up the parchment again. Severus would kill Harry if he touched one of the precious vials. “And the potion is ready to feed to the Aurors now?”
            “I already said that,” said Severus.
            Harry shrugged. “All right. Am I going to go and feed the potion to the Aurors while you contact the people you know at St. Mungo’s?”
            He realized a second later that he was asking for orders, as if Severus was one of his instructors in the training program or an Auror of senior standing, and stifled a sigh. Yes, it made him feel stupid, but that was the way things were working out, and it was better to follow his instincts than struggle against them.
            “I think that you and Draco are going to go together to feed the Aurors the potion,” said Severus. “I need only write a letter, which will not take me much time, and will involve no contact with dangerous persons. But you should not be alone when confronting your enemies.”
            “All of them are senseless right now,” Harry pointed out, watching Severus out of the corner of one eye in case that made a difference. It didn’t seem to.
            “And likely to wake up in a not-so-distant future. Some of them may wake up when you pour the potion down their throats.”
            “In which case I have my wand and I can Stun them.”
            “It doesn’t make that much difference, does it?” Draco interrupted. “It’s not like I mind going along with you. Unless you mind having my company.”
            Harry scowled. “Don’t start that kind of game again. I don’t mind having your company. Just like I don’t mind Severus writing to St. Mungo’s.”
            “Then why are we still standing around here and arguing?” Draco asked, and moved towards the door.
            Harry followed him, scowling only slightly. He had the impression that Draco and Severus had somehow slipped around him, or stolen a march on him.
            Oh, well. It’s not as though I’m really uncomfortable with them doing that.
*
pittwitch: Well, they have come a pretty long way.
moodysavage: Well, Hermione didn’t find it very cute!
ChelseaPlume: Thank you! I think it helps a lot that Severus finds it harder to lie to people he was bonded to, even if he’s no longer bonded to them. And he listens to them more, as well as them listening to him.
SP777: That’s still not something that would occur to Harry.
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The Wages of Going On