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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 Four—Instinct Is Not Enough
            “Auror Potter! What are you doing here?”
            Harry turned around slowly, making sure to get maximum threat potential from the way he shuffled the papers in his hands. “Where else should I be?” he asked. “I’m an Auror. As you already said.”
            His mind was already springing forwards, weighing up what he knew about the junior Auror Jerry Perkins, who stood there gaping at him. Would Perkins be among those who held the secret of the wards, and thus a candidate for the traitor among the Aurors? Harry didn’t think he was senior enough, but he knew that some of the people who were spoke well of him, and might have decided to bring him in.
            Perkins, a pale man with a face that reminded Harry of Percy Weasley’s, but a thatch of blond hair and a straggly blond beard instead of red, coughed and recovered himself. “I just meant—we heard something about what you had to go through,” he said, lowering his voice. “That torture. Horrible.”
            Harry smiled pleasantly. He didn’t think either Kingsley or the Healer assigned to the Aurors would have betrayed the fact that he’d gone through a bonding ritual, and he knew that Snape and Malfoy wouldn’t brag about it, either. So for now, he would take Perkins’s ignorance as genuine and use it as a weapon.
            “It wasn’t any worse than the torture I’ve been through under any enemies,” he said. “They could have used the Cruciatus to drive me mad, you know. It’s happened to so many people. But what I endured wasn’t enough to break my mind.”
            Perkins looked at him uneasily. “Of course not, but it must have been bad enough.”
            Concealing guilty knowledge? Or just put off by my strange manner? Harry decided to keep going. Either way, he gained something from acting like this. “It was bad enough. I survived, though. And that’s enough, too.”
            Perkins nodded, and then examined his watch. “I have to get to a meeting with Auror Dandelion,” he muttered, and trotted away.
            Harry watched him go. For all he knew, Perkins really did have a meeting with Dandelion, his mentor, right at that moment, but it also made a convenient excuse to get away if Perkins had realized the conversation wasn’t going the way he wanted it to go.
            Harry made a vague motion with one hand, and continued walking the report he’d written on the Lestranges to Kingsley. He wanted to hand-deliver it so that no office gossip would get a look at it, but he also wanted to use his body as a living, breathing message to Kingsley and that bloody concern in his eyes. He’d showed it again when Harry had walked out of the Floo this morning and nearly bumped into his boss.
            This didn’t destroy me. You don’t have to coddle me and treat me like the Glass Auror. Send me out on a case. I survived because I wanted to be a good Auror. Let me prove it.
            He was thinking that so hard as he stepped into Kingsley’s office that it might actually have shone out through his eyes. Kingsley reached out to take the report, not removing his own eyes from Harry’s face.
            “You know that you didn’t need to come back to work so soon after what happened,” he murmured. “Your wounds might not even be healed yet.”
            Harry took the chair in front of Kingsley’s desk, the only one that sat there. It was made of hard, dark wood, so no one would be encouraged to stay so long. Harry saw Kingsley blink, and smiled thinly. This prove that my arse is well enough for you? Yes, I wasn’t that wounded. The Healer took the pain away.
            Not all of it, but the mental pain was always the kind that Harry had always been responsible for healing himself, anyway. He leaned forwards and smoothly into the plea he had come to make. “What new case do you have for me?”
            “New case?” Kingsley blinked again. Harry knew that some people thought Kingsley was stupid, while he maintained that “slowness” only as a mask to fool them, but this time, he appeared utterly at a loss. “I was counting on you having at least a fortnight off to recover, Harry. Maybe even a month.”
            Harry slightly shook his head. “What kept me going in the midst of the ritual was the thought that I couldn’t die this young, I was just starting to live up to my training as an Auror,” he said. That was the truth—or the truth he could tell Kingsley. He had no right to the rest of it. “Let me show you.”
            Kingsley frowned, and went on frowning. Harry maintained his seat on the chair without effort. If Kingsley thought Harry’s supposedly ripped-up arse would start hurting if he kept him here, he was wrong.
            “Fine,” Kingsley said at last. “I have to admit, there’s no one else I can precisely trust with this.”
            Harry smiled encouragingly.
            “I don’t want anyone to know there’s a traitor in the Aurors.” Kingsley glared at him, but Harry only nodded, and Kingsley leaned back, tapping his fingers hard on the edge of his desk. “We just recovered from that latest fiasco with the Prophet claiming they had pictures of torture of criminals by our trainees, which of course they couldn’t produce when the time came in front of the Wizengamot, and then there are the idiots arguing we should have the power to use the Unforgivables again. I do not want any more of this nonsense. We need to have public peace and confidence. And we don’t know if there is a traitor, yet.”
            “You want me to find them,” Harry murmured, his heart rising along with the tide of his blood. He would have pursued that investigation on his own if Kingsley hadn’t let him, but he preferred being given it as an individual assignment. Now his needs and his methods would join.
            “Yes,” Kingsley said. “I know that you’ll be fair, that you won’t…make judgments the way you would if you were on the outside of this case.” He met Harry’s eyes. “I’m sorry, but I’ve chosen you primarily because you were tortured by the Lestranges.”
            “And I’ll keep quiet as much to preserve my own secrets as anything else,” Harry said. He shook his head a little when he saw the way Kingsley gaped at him. “It’s true. I don’t resent it. I would have done this on my own if you hadn’t appointed me.”
            Kingsley nodded slowly, eyes still focused on Harry’s face as if everything about this was unexpected. “But…you’ve changed.”
            Yes, before I wouldn’t have named your motives aloud. Harry only twitched his face a little. He didn’t know exactly what expression he was wearing at the moment, but it must be a certain kind of impressive. “Wouldn’t you expect me to, after what happened?”
            Kingsley turned pale, and bowed his head. “That’s true. I’m sorry, Harry. I wish there was a way to respond to your sacrifice.”
            Harry shrugged. “You’re letting me take this case. That’s the best thing you could do. I won’t be able to put it behind me until I know for sure who’s involved, and why.” He stood up. “Let me suggest that you pretend you disapprove of the fact that I’m back. That might encourage someone to slip up, or approach me.”
            Kingsley stared at him for a second. “You think that someone who betrayed you that way might come and confide in you?”
            “It depends on the motives for doing this in the first place,” Harry said. “If it was because of money, maybe not. But if they have a grudge against the Ministry, they might think they could trick me into believing this was the Ministry’s fault. And there are other reasons, too.” He reached up and touched the lightning bolt scar. “I’ve been approached twice by people who thought that this gave me a sort of sympathy with the Death Eaters. Being pursued by a Dark Lord ought to be enough to turn me to the Dark.”
            Kingsley still looked like he didn’t understand, but he nodded, and then straightened up and scowled at Harry. “Well, back to work, then. If you insist.”
            “Yes, sir,” Harry said, giving his voice a growl without effort, and turned around and stomped out of the office. The first act of their little play was important to set up, and he would ward off sympathy while acting like he secretly wanted it. There were plenty of people who would fall into that trap. People who wanted to see the Boy-Who-Lived as only human. People who would be indignant for him. People who would be gleeful to see his fall from grace.
            And among them, Harry might find his traitor.
*
            Draco wasn’t sure that he could hold up his head, given the weight of the mountain that was forming in the back of it.
            He had never known Potter was this stubborn. Yeah, he’d survived the Dark Lord, but a lot of that had to do with his friends and circumstances that had helped him, like stealing Draco’s wand. Besides, he’d had revenge to seek then, too, and he’d been fighting to survive. You didn’t have to be insanely determined if you wanted to live.
            On the other hand, a Dark Lord had been chasing Potter down. Maybe the insane determination had entered his mind and just never left.
            “You feel the steel in him.”
            Draco started. He’d been sitting in the small dining room that he usually used when he had only one person staying with him, and Severus had entered without his noticing. Severus piled cold meat on his plate from the sideboard and then came and sat opposite Draco. Draco nodded and picked up the plate in front of him, scraping his fork through the melted cheese and eggs left from his breakfast.
            “That noise is annoying,” Severus said, and passed on to the next subject without giving Draco a chance to either defend himself or apologize. “Yes, you feel the metal in him. I must admit that I do not understand the way this bond works. Most would give us access to the strongest thoughts and emotions that Potter had. Some would convey only emotions, some only words. A few might let memories through, or allow us to communicate directly, to respond to what we experienced through it. But this does not seem to be doing any of those. I can feel Potter’s determination, and your guilt.” He hesitated, and Draco doubted that he wanted to ask the next question, but he did. “What do you feel from me?”
            Draco concentrated. Until this point, the alien sensation of the mountain in the back of his mind had occupied him so much that he hadn’t tried to reach out for a separate feeling of Severus.
            But it was there when he sought it. Draco sampled it slowly, that alien new part of himself, but it didn’t feel the way the mountain from Potter did. It wasn’t until he applied the sense of taste to it that Draco understood.
            “Bitterness,” he said. “You taste like horrible tea.”
            Severus’s face reflected so much astonishment that Draco winced and wished he hadn’t said anything. Then he swallowed and added, “But I don’t know if that’s in general or if it’s just about the ritual, and I can’t blame you for feeling bitter about the ritual.”
            Severus slowly leaned back in his chair and picked up the first forkful of meat, bringing it to his mouth for a few deliberate bites. Draco waited, eyes fixed on Severus’s face, and finally Severus said, “I had not considered that what we were feeling might relate only to the ritual. I should have, however. Guilt is not your essential nature.”
            Draco smiled tightly back. “Do you know why you feel mine as an emotion, and I experience you as a taste, and we both feel Potter like we were carrying an object around?”
            “I do not.” Severus’s words were even slower than his bites, and he spent a moment tapping his fingers on his knee, something he would never normally do. “But it might help us narrow down what kind of bond this is. We should spend some time in the library.” He straightened up. “As soon as we send an owl to Potter telling him that we could help in his search for the Lestranges.”
            Draco winced. “Should we offer that?”
            “You agreed with me last night.” Severus took another bite of his breakfast. This time, he didn’t seem to intend to look away from Draco.
            Draco looked down into his plate, and tried to find the answer to his own sudden reluctance. Then he touched that mountain of steel in his mind again, and winced away from it. It wasn’t hot; it didn’t feel as though Potter was burning from anger. In some ways, that made it worse, because it meant that he wasn’t contemplating revenge in the way Severus had suggested. Draco felt as if he had laid his hand on a steel cube instead, or a triangle, given the rising mountain shape.
            Potter was determined, and it would happen. Draco knew he would say that if he was asked, staring at them blankly, probably.
            He doesn’t think about the cost. He doesn’t think about healing. He just wants to go ahead and do it, and that means it’s going to get done.
            Draco took a deep breath, and said, “Maybe he just wants to be left alone. I think he can get his revenge accomplished by himself, if he wants it. Can’t you feel how stubborn he is? He won’t thank us for taking his opportunity to work away from him.”
            Severus was staring at him, one knife suspended above the peach on his plate. “No, I do not see. What do you mean by opportunity to work?”
            Draco licked his lips and shook his head. He didn’t understand enough, he thought. He was used to knowing his own mind, knowing the origin of his thoughts. That meant he knew everything about his reactions, too, or at least enough to be going on with.
            And now he couldn’t tell whether his knowledge was coming through the bond, or from somewhere else. He didn’t know. And it was awfully, horribly frustrating.
            “I just think that he wants to devote himself to his job, and arrest the Lestranges, and make up for what he sees as his failure that way,” Draco said finally. “And he wouldn’t thank us for interfering.”
            “We would need to meet to discuss the bond, if nothing else,” Severus said, his voice deepening into that intense cold Draco hated. “And you do not know these things.”
            “No,” Draco said, miserable. He pushed his plate away. “I already ate a full breakfast,” he said, when Severus glanced at him. “I’m not hungry.”
            “I will expect your help writing the letter,” Severus said, and turned back to the peach.
            Draco didn’t reply. He just turned around and trudged up to his room, the bitterness in the back of his mind growing strong enough to taint the inside of his mouth. He hadn’t been up in his room ten minutes before he sent for a house-elf to bring him a glass of sweet water, the kind that was flavored with fruit and which he hadn’t had since he was a child.
            He sat down beside his window, sipping the water and staring unseeing out over the gardens. The taste gradually receded from his mouth, but not his mind.
            And the mountain of steel hadn’t changed since Draco had first noticed it last night, except to grow higher and higher, and look and feel as if it would fall on Draco’s head.
            I don’t like this. I don’t want this.
            But it was going to happen. And Draco would have to go along with and suffer the consequences just like Severus would, whether Potter accepted their help or not.
            Not even swishing the water around in his mouth and trying to absorb as much of it through his gums as possible seemed to be helping. Draco set the glass aside.
*
            “Who is that letter from, mate?”
            Harry didn’t glance up from his paperwork. He and Kingsley were playing out their “argument” right now as Kingsley grudgingly allowing him to return to work, but keeping him on desk duty. Ron had accepted it, although he seemed to waver back and forth between being glad that Harry would be safer and thinking that Kingsley ought to allow Harry to do whatever he wanted, after the way he had been tortured.
            Tortured. That was all Ron and Hermione knew about so far, the physical wounds that Harry had taken at the hands of the Lestranges. It was—they would know about the rest. They had to know about the rest, Harry thought, because he had to purge the poison from his mind somehow, and they were the only ones he could think of trusting. But he couldn’t find the words or the courage to discuss it with them yet.
            The will in him burned. He would do it, because it had to be done, and he willed it. But not right now.
            “This letter?” Harry finally glanced up to find the owl waiting in front of him. He frowned and reached out slowly. Most people who sent owls to him, instead of memos, were ones he already knew. But this owl was a magnificent black creature with almost orange eyes that he hadn’t seen before.
            It let him take the letter, despite the mad stare. Harry turned it over, and stared, quite still, for a second, at the Malfoy seal on the back. There was a slight stain on the paper below the seal, which might have come from ink or from a spilled potion.
            Harry opened the letter with a little slide of his finger, and looked down at it with a little flick of his eyes.
            Auror Potter,
            It has occurred to us that the bond is still between us, and that we should meet to discuss it and try to figure out what kind of bond it is, and if there is a way of destroying it. And if you would like revenge on the Lestranges, we might also meet and see if there is a way to achieve it. With your Auror skills and the combination of spy skills and Potions master skills that we represent, there should be a way.
            We are aware that the circumstances are difficult, and thus we will let you set the time and place for the meeting. It should be soon, however. The bond may be one of those which grows worse the longer we are apart.
            And it bore both Malfoy and Snape’s signatures. Harry tried to think of the last time he had seen them, and couldn’t. In fact, he was sure that he had never seen them on the same piece of paper, together.
            “Mate? What’s wrong? You’re shaking. Who was the letter from?”
            Harry took a deep breath and lifted his eyes. Ron was looking at him in concern, his hand resting on his wand as though he assumed that he would have to attack an enemy coming out of the envelope. Harry gave him a smile that made Ron wince, and slid the letter carefully back into the envelope.
            “Snape and Malfoy,” he said, his voice deepening and changing like he thought his smile must have changed, if Ron had reacted like that. But what about me hasn’t changed, since the ritual? “They wanted to castigate me for failing them because I didn’t keep the Lestranges from getting through the wards on the safehouse.”
            “Those bastards!” Ron looked as though he would be happy right now to keep his wand out and go Apparate to Malfoy Manor or wherever else “those bastards” were. Harry realized that he didn’t know, and he doubted that the owl could tell him. “Isn’t it enough that you were the one who suffered all the torture? Kingsley said Snape and Malfoy were in bad shape, but not nearly as bad as you were.”
            “There was something else that happened, something that you should know,” Harry said. He realized that he was shaking, or part of him was, buried deep inside. Maybe his voice was, too, and he just hadn’t heard it, because Ron paused and looked at him in concern.
            “Harry?”
            Harry took a deep breath and stood. “I’ll tell you about what I come back,” he said. “I think you and Hermione are the only ones who can help me deal with it, but—I have to tell both of you at the same time. I don’t know if I’ll get it out otherwise. Can you please firecall Hermione and tell her to come here? I need to answer this letter right now.”
            Ron stared at him, but he had always been able to sense when Harry really needed him and come back—or do what he was asked. He nodded. “Sure, mate.”
            Harry slipped down the corridor as if he was being summoned to a superior’s office, and ducked into the first empty room he found. Like some of the other empty ones, it was used as a combination of storage for files that were out of the Ministry Archives and that Aurors had been too lazy to return, and interrogation room or holding cell when all the normal ones were filled.
            Harry shut and locked the door. He had to pause a moment and recast one of the spells because his hand was shaking so badly.
            They dared.
            He turned to face the letter, feeling the tension melt into looseness. He thought of the morning he had awakened, the first one after the fall of Voldemort, and the sunlight that had come through the windows in Gryffindor Tower. For the first time, he could think that it was the sunlight of a day that didn’t have Voldemort lurking somewhere in it, and the world had been wide and bright and endless.
            He almost snarled the incantation rather than spoke it, even though the memory was happy enough to let him cast the spell in the first place. “Expecto Patronum!”
            The stag leaped out of his wand, and circled around the room for a moment in its search for Dementors. Then it turned and stared at him, and scraped a small hoof. Its gaze was bright and dark at the same time, distant, and Harry could feel the desire to help him, in the same back part of his mind where he felt Malfoy brooding and Snape spinning plots.
            Harry shook his head, refusing the stag’s desire. He would get help from his friends, and in the meantime, he had to do something with this rage, this spitting desire that was almost choking him.
            “About your revenge, and the letter you sent me, and whatever else you wanted to discuss,” he said, his voice so ugly that it hurt his throat. “Fuck off.”
            The Patronus twitched its ears at him, but when Harry swung a hand out and commanded it to go to Snape and Malfoy, it leaped through the walls and disappeared.
            Harry closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He was more upset than he should be by this. Malfoy and Snape might want to meet, but that was no reason that Harry ever had to see them again. And he wouldn’t allow himself to be summoned by them, as if he was a pet.
            He turned and opened the door, and went to tell Ron and Hermione the truth. Tell people who could help him, not people who would want to blame him for not doing impossible things in the first place.
            I am not a victim. They are not going to make me one.
*
Genuka: Why am I evil?
BAFan: The Healer had to learn from Harry if they’d done anything in the ritual that would affect the spells she had to use. That was why she was asking questions like what the circle was made of—determining the kind of ritual.
ChelseaPlume: Thank you! Severus’s direct approach may not pay off here. He hasn’t thought about whether that stubbornness he can feel through the bond might turn on him.
And yes, Harry can’t progress by ignoring everything. But he doesn’t want what Snape and Malfoy have to offer him, either.
WorldePARALLEL: Snape and Malfoy are blaming him for not protecting them, more than anything else. And yes, I do think it’s an interesting change for Harry to be the one in control. He isn’t really interested in blaming Snape and Malfoy, but neither does he want to see them ever again.
Harry is not as resistant to the bond as they are, despite the fact that he never wants to see them. Severus and Draco are still resenting him for the past; Harry has more than enough to deal with right now, and while he hasn’t magically forgiven them everything that was between them, he just has way more important things to think about.
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The Wages of Going On