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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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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Forty—Lingering Effects
            “Mate. Where have you been?”
            It was more a statement than a question, Harry knew, as he let himself into Grimmauld Place alongside Ron and Hermione. They hadn’t entered the house while he was gone, even though he knew the wards would have let them in. They seemed to be content to sit on the front step for some reason.
            “With Severus and Draco,” said Harry, and dropped his cloak on the floor. He knew Hermione would roll her eyes, but he was too tired to do anything else at the moment. He and Severus and Draco had confronted Healer Tarriash in the early afternoon, and spent the rest of it Apparating dazed Aurors around Britain. He went straight to the kitchen and began to build a sandwich half a dozen ingredients high. “Sorry if you sent me a Patronus and I didn’t respond or something. I’ve been pretty busy.”
            “We were worried about you.” That was Hermione. Harry heard a swish, and turned to see her floating his cloak off the floor. He held in a sigh. That was her choice, and he had known he was irritating her by dropping it there, almost tempting her to interfere. “We hadn’t heard from you all day, and you said that you would only be gone a short time when you went to Snape’s house.”
            “Malfoy’s,” Harry corrected her absently, and decided that he wanted pickles on his sandwich as well. They would drip on the bread and make it soft, but he could always cast a few Preservation Charms to hold it together. “They’re staying in Malfoy Manor.”
            He knew from the sudden, tense silence behind him that he’d said something wrong. But he ignored the situation, and added tomatoes to his sandwich, and cheese, and pieces of beef. Then he cast those Preservation Charms and bit into it, sighing. Apparating always exhausted him like nothing else.
            “I knew that,” Hermione finally said. “I did know that. You must have mentioned it once.”
            Harry turned around and leaned his back against the kitchen counter, studying them. He didn’t know what they wanted. They watched him with shadowed eyes, but they had done that since he was raped. He wondered if they thought he was still suffering from the consequences of that.
            Well, in a way they were right, and Harry would be suffering from the consequences all his life long. But he couldn’t curl up and do nothing because of it. He was changed, he would accept the changes. He had been a virgin, he wasn’t one. He had been hurt, he had taken revenge. That was the way it worked.
            “Yes,” said Harry. “And we were following up some leads about who might have betrayed us. It wasn’t anyone else in the Ministry, thank Merlin. I think we found all the Aurors who might have betrayed the safehouse wards.” He took another bite of his sandwich. His stomach had stayed silent when he was with Severus and Draco, for a mercy, but now it was awake and grumbling.
            “You did find them?” Ron leaned forwards. “What did you do with them? Did you report them to Kingsley?”
            Harry shook his head. “Until this morning, Kingsley was one of the ones I suspected.”
            Ron jolted as though Harry had sent lightning down his spine. “Kingsley? Mate, what—that’s ridiculous, you know that, right?”
            “I know that now,” Harry pointed out, and ate some more of his sandwich, filling his mouth with the satisfying crunch of pickle and tomato. While it was full, it prevented him from having to answer more questions.
            “Because you found out who really did it?” Hermione drew her wand and used it to drag the table closer. Harry dropped into one of the chairs, but Summoned his own plate before she could do it.
            “Yes.”
            Ron waited, and started tapping his fingers on the table when Harry just went on eating his sandwich. “Well, mate?” he finally burst out, when he didn’t sound as if he could stand it anymore.
            “I’m not telling you more than that,” Harry said, finishing one corner of his sandwich and looking him dead in the eye. “It would put too many people in danger.” Like Severus and Draco. And Ron and Hermione, too, if there are still people in the Ministry who would kill to protect the secret that they were part of a group hoping to use a knowledge ritual on me.
            “But you would tell Snape and Malfoy,” Ron said, and looked down. Harry opened his mouth, and found that he didn’t have words to say.
            Ron was jealous. He knew that slight green tinge to his face all too well.
            In all the thoughts that had occupied Harry of his friends finding out that he had used Dark Arts and worked alongside Draco and Severus, he had never anticipated this reaction.
            Harry shook his head and put his sandwich down, this was that important. “Listen, Ron,” he said. “The reason I can tell Severus and Draco is that they were there with me. If they’d been somewhere else, I wouldn’t have told them, either.”
            “But we used to be the people you could tell everything to.” From the uneasy look Hermione flashed Ron, she thought he should really be the one to say this, but he couldn’t at the moment, his jaw locked as if he would spill his churning stomach otherwise. “Listen, Harry. What changed that that isn’t the case?”
            Harry pressed his fingers into the table. He was debating what to say when Ron added, in a faint voice, “Unless that’s another of those things you can’t tell us.”
            Might as well be blunt, then. “I was raped.”
            Ron opened his mouth. Hermione moved her hand from the table to his shoulder. “I think that’s what we don’t understand most of all,” she murmured, in a voice that was trying desperately, Harry thought, to sound calm. “Why you can talk to the people who r-raped you about this, but you can’t talk to us.”
            “Because the rape changed me, just like Ron said,” Harry muttered. He was still hungry, but he couldn’t have eaten right now even if someone had put treacle tart in front of him. “There are some things about me that are mean and angry now. I don’t know if that will ever go back to normal. And the revenge I want to take—you wouldn’t want me to take it.”
            Hermione and Ron frowned at each other as if uncomprehending. “But I never blamed you for wanting revenge on Voldemort or Bellatrix,” Hermione said. “I was worried about how dangerous it would be, but I never said that you shouldn’t do it.”
            Ron nodded vigorously, peering at Harry as if trying to find some trace of the boy he had been best friends with for years.
            “I just wanted to kill them, though,” Harry said. “Or to have them gone from my life.” Really, by the time he was ready to kill Voldemort, he didn’t care how much the bloody arsehole suffered, he just wanted him gone. Now, he didn’t think he would have been so amenable to Dumbledore’s plan to kill Voldemort essentially without pain. “Not the kind of bloody revenge that—I’ve taken.”
            Hermione’s eyes trembled for a second, but she closed them instead of breaking out in tears. Ron whispered in an awed tone, “What did you do?”
            “Took care of the Lestranges,” Harry said, and found himself smiling. He couldn’t help it. He would always smile at the thought of the Banishing Curse that had taken the Lestranges, and nothing was going to make him regret that. “And some other people who betrayed the location of the safehouse or the wards or the fact that I was going to be there to the Lestranges.”
            “You can’t just go around slaughtering people, though,” Hermione said in a small voice. “You’ve got to take them in and have them tried justly.”
            “I thought about that,” Harry said. “But apart from the fact that I’m not the only one who deserves vengeance, and Draco and Severus would probably never agree to that, there are too many Aurors who were involved in this bloody mess. We couldn’t trust they would hold the Lestranges properly, or the others, or that the trial would be fair. There might even be some members of the Wizengamot who would want to free the Lestranges just because they resent Draco for his father’s influence, or me for mine. The Aurors and the justice system both failed me on this one. I won’t let them touch the Lestranges.”
            Not that they can, now. But that was another of those things that Harry thought might alienate Ron and Hermione from him if he revealed it.
            “You can’t be the one to make the decisions, though.” Hermione sounded on firmer ground here.
            “Why should the Wizengamot and the Aurors be the ones to make the decisions, when I can’t trust them for reasons I just told you?”
            “Bring in someone impartial from the outside who can,” Ron answered while looking slowly back and forth between Hermione and Harry, as though he assumed this was a fight between just the two of them and he was intruding. “Like Kingsley.”
            “I told you. Until a few hours ago, I distrusted Kingsley as much as the rest of them.”
            “You can’t be your own law and executioner!” Hermione was almost in tears.
            “When everyone else failed me, then yeah, I can,” said Harry, and shook his head when she looked at him pleadingly. “I can’t go back in time and change what happened, but I can make sure that the Lestranges don’t get to stay around and torture me again. I can make sure that the people who betrayed me—us—understand exactly what happens when you threaten someone who has nothing to lose.”
            “I don’t understand what that means!” Hermione was clasping her hands in front of her. “You’re talking the way someone who mistreats house-elves talks!”
            Harry blinked, then snorted a little. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that she would make that comparison. “I thought you were going to say, like a Death Eater. But I mean that I have nothing to lose except my friends anymore. I can’t go back to being an Auror, because some of them plotted against me and I would never trust them again. I can’t go back to being non-raped.” It was the only word he could think of under the circumstances, although Ron blinked and Hermione flushed. “I can’t be what I wanted to be. So I’ll take revenge.”
            “You could use that to justify anything. To strike at anybody.”
            Harry felt the temptation bubbling up inside him to tell them about the possibility of Voldemort being back, and the way that Stockwell and the rest had justified hurting him. But he held it back. Keeping his secrecy, and the cloak that had protected Draco and Severus, intact was still more important than blurting things out in a passion.
            “I only used it to strike at the people who hurt me, and them,” he said. “The ones no one else would punish.”
            “You could have waited. You could have asked questions! Someone would have had to notice something was wrong and answer you!”
            “And in the meantime, the word could get back to our enemies and they could strike at Draco and Severus, if not me,” Harry murmured. His interest in the conversation was fading rapidly. Ron and Hermione would remain his friends, but there were some things he wouldn’t be sharing with them. Well and good. That was the way it was. “No. My fame might protect me, but not much would protect them.”
            Hermione looked as if she hadn’t expected any of Harry’s arguments to work. Harry felt irritation bubbling up, and told himself to be calm. There was no reason for Hermione to simply bow to his arguments when she didn’t know anything about the circumstances.
            But he wasn’t going to tell her anything about the circumstances, either. There was simply too much going on, too much that might endanger Severus and Draco.
            And your friendship with Ron and Hermione?
            Harry didn’t really think much could do that, though. If they walked away from him after this row, then he would have to change his mind, but he hadn’t seen anything so far that would have been able to make them do that.
            They sat there in silence for a little longer, and finally Ron, after glancing at Hermione and clearing his throat several times, ventured, “Do you have to exact any more vengeance? I mean, is there anyone else you have to punish?”
            “There’s one more thing we have to do,” Harry said, with careful emphasis. “There’s something about the case that might or might not be true. Somebody told me it was true.” There was no way he would mention Stockwell’s name, either, or let Ron use it to track her down. “If we can find out it’s false, though, then no. Everyone we want to take vengeance on will be punished, and not all of them are dead, either,” he added, seeing Hermione’s eyes widen. “I don’t see any reason to kill the ones who are still alive.”
            It occurred to him that Severus and Draco might disagree with him on that, particularly when it came to Tarriash. But that was another thing he would keep to himself. He wasn’t breaking a promise to his friends. He was telling them what was true as far as it went, as far as he knew right now.
            “And if it’s true?” Hermione, it seemed, would pursue this to the bitter end.
            Harry looked at her coldly, unable to help himself. “It concerns someone who’s threatened me before. I promise, you’d have no problem with me punishing them.” He really did long to tell them it was rumors of Voldemort’s return, because then they would stop arguing with him and probably even help him, but he couldn’t take the chance. He would never take the chance, when someone might make the connection with the Aurors who had disappeared and then showed up randomly sick and confused and bereft of their memories.
            “Another rogue Death Eater?” Hermione leaped to a conclusion and sat up, staring at him, eyes wide and fearful. “Oh, Harry. Promise you won’t confront him without someone at your back! You could be captured again.”
            “If it’s true that they’re linked to the case, I won’t be going alone,” Harry said, and reached out and squeezed her hand. He recognized her words for what they were, an unspoken peace offering. She hadn’t even insisted that she and Ron should be the ones to help him. “Severus and Draco suffered because of this person, too. If it turns out that it’s true and he’s connected to the case.”
            “How are you going to find out if it’s true or not, though?” Ron had to ask. “If your informant thought it was and that’s the only source you have?”
            “Please don’t ask me that.” Harry spoke the words quietly, and found himself holding his breath. If Ron persisted, if he asked too many questions, then it would be like Draco and Severus and their refusal to let him go down and feed potions to the drugged Aurors alone. There was such a thing as too much overprotectiveness, and too much curiosity. Severus and Draco had pulled back from the first one. Harry wasn’t sure that Ron and Hermione could pull back from the last one.
            Ron gave him one more piercing look, the kind he had used when Harry was struggling during the Auror training program and trying to hide it from everyone else. But then he nodded and reached out and put a hand on his arm.
            “If we need not to ask, we won’t ask,” he said, and then looked up and held Hermione’s eye until she nodded, slowly and reluctantly. “Maybe we should just—be grateful that—”
            He sounded like he was struggling with the words. Harry held his shoulder until he managed to meet Harry’s eye and say them.
            “Maybe we should just be grateful that you’re not changed more than you have been,” he whispered, “considering what happened to you.”
            And Harry knew it was going to be all right, really all right, and he smiled at them both, and changed the subject.
*
            Draco woke early, from a sleep that had probably endured only three hours. Then he went downstairs and found out that the house-elves hadn’t made bacon, even though he had specifically ordered that. He snapped at them and made them bow and scrape and squeak and apologize, and then he sat down in something dark and sticky in the middle of his chair. Of course, it had last been Severus’s chair, and the inconsiderate bastard had probably come out of his lab with a potion dripping from the hem and not paid any attention to where it dripped.
            Draco had stood up and was scrubbing at the middle of the chair when Severus emerged from the direction of his lab. Draco saw some yellow discoloration on Severus’s sleeve, and the only thing he could think of was that Severus was probably going to drip all over the table, and get the potion in Draco’s food when the house-elves finally prepared his breakfast the way he wanted.
            The words that emerged from his mouth weren’t planned, but he couldn’t regret them. “Stay away from me if you’re only going to make messes for me to clean up.”
            Severus, who was carrying the book that Healer Tarriash had stolen, lifted one eyebrow at him. Then he saw the stain Draco was working on, and shook his head. “The presence of unicorn opal makes that potion impossible to clean with a charm,” he said, and took a potent Dissolving Solution from a pocket in his robes. The unspoken words about Draco needing to recognize unicorn opal and when it was an ingredient in something floated around their heads as Severus came around the table to spread the solution.
            “You aren’t considerate,” Draco whispered, stepping away from him. “You never look where you’re going and what you’re doing and I hate it.”
            “No, I am not considerate,” Severus said, looking at him in the blank way that someone would when waking up from a dream. “But it never seemed to bother you before. What has changed?”
            Draco could not tell him about sleeping poorly and not having his breakfast ready when he woke up. Severus would dismiss such trivial reasons for a reaction.
            As he should. You know you’re being childish.
            “Forget it,” Draco snapped, and walked around the table to another chair, luckily as his breakfast finally appeared. He sat down in front of the plate and attacked it with what he hoped Severus would dismiss as hearty appetite, and not an attempt to bury his emotions in small physical gestures.
            Severus’s eyes were still on him when he took his seat in the chair Draco had abandoned, though. Draco cursed, knowing the sensation, and made sure that all food was out of his mouth before he spoke again. “Aren’t you worried about the aftereffects of the Dissolving Solution on your poncey arse?”
            “The potion bonds to the first object it touches, nothing else, and dissipates immediately, without even fumes,” Severus said quietly. Draco shuddered, and clamped his hands and attention down harder on the edge of the plate. “What is troubling you?”
            “Just stupid little things,” said Draco. At the moment, he would take Severus being bitter and scathing over Severus being perceptive. Severus being perceptive led to things like him discovering Draco’s task for the Dark Lord in his sixth year. “It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing. Forget it,” he added, when he looked up in hope and found that Severus was still pensively regarding him.
            “It is not nothing,” said Severus. “And since I think that I may know the source, it behooves me to speak to you about it, for the sake of peace in the household.”
            “Of course, for the sake of peace in the household,” said Draco, and saw Severus narrow his eyes further. Well, good. Maybe a scolding would follow. “Not because you actually care about me at all, you cold bastard.”
            “And the source is what I suspected it is,” said Severus, half-nodding. “I noticed that you enjoyed the way Harry held you against the wall yesterday.”
            Draco’s hands curled in loathing. “If you dare suggest that I feel sorry enough for what happened to allow him to rape me—”
            There was a strange sound, one that Draco didn’t know anything about despite his mental catalogue of Severus noises, and he looked up. Severus was laughing in a little wheezing, gasping choke, his head turned away. Draco stared at him. He thought it might be the first time he had ever seen Severus display genuine amusement, rather than exploding at someone who had earned his ire through being stupid, which would explain why Draco didn’t recognize it.
            “Forgive me,” said Severus, when Draco pushed his chair back and got to his feet. “But such a speculation would never have occurred to me. What did occur was that you may want to be close to Harry for some time in the future, and you fear that ending this knowledge ritual will mean the end of contact with him.”
            Draco stilled. That thought hadn’t come to him before, but it made him hurt and burn too intensely inside for Severus to be wrong.
            Severus nodded, apparently having read the truth through the combination of Draco’s expression and body language. “I can understand that fear.” He hesitated, and Draco recognized the way that he would sometimes steel himself to approach an uncomfortable confession a moment before Severus said, “I have experienced it myself.”
            Draco reached out for the nearest wall, because something else had come up in his mind, and he didn’t know how Severus would react when he proposed it. “But doesn’t that mean that the potion didn’t work after all? That the bond didn’t end? Because there’s no other reason for you to feel something like that.”
            Severus was quiet. Then he asked, in curiously precise words, “Why were you not surprised to find yourself feeling it?”
            “I didn’t know exactly what was upsetting me before now.” Draco turned around to study Severus. “And you used to scold me answering a question with a question.”
            “I was the professor, you were the student,” Severus murmured, but he was looking unseeing into his teacup, without the proper bitterness that such a response required. “No, I think the bond is gone. I think we would know if it were not. We would have experienced some premonition of Harry’s emotions when he was at a distance, for example.”
            “Then what is it?” Draco struck the wall in frustration.
            “As there is not a name for what we are to him,” said Severus, retreating into his favorite distant tone again, “friends being inaccurate and any other word not being comprehensive, I do not believe there is a suitable name for why we miss him.”
            Draco peered suspiciously at Severus. “As long as you don’t think the bond is active again.”
            “I do not tolerate such insults to my brewing skills,” Severus warned him, eyes growing dark enough to reassure Draco that he spoke the truth, at least as far as he knew.
            That left Draco to wonder if Severus was right, if it was just that there was no name and he would have to learn to live with this as he had to learn to live with sharing Harry with his friends…
            Or whether he did know the right name, and did not dare to use it.
*
Chris: Severus and Draco may indeed want to do that. Or Draco, anyway.
ChelseaPlume: Thanks! That’s largely what I’m aiming for, but it absolutely has to be voluntary or Severus and Harry (and probably Draco, too) would never consent to it.
Severus is justifiably proud of that little spell.
SP777: No, and now it’s pretty much out in the open, although Draco didn’t want to admit it.
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The Wages of Going On