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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 Forty-One—Knowing
            “How are we going to do this?” Harry asked.
            Draco tensed up and kept his eyes on his wineglass. He knew that Severus had read the book that Healer Tarriash had stolen, and read it again, and read it again. And Draco believed that he wouldn’t want to sacrifice Harry mindlessly any more than Draco would. So Draco did trust Severus to set up a ritual that would tell them what they wanted to know about the Dark Lord’s return, “reading” Harry’s scar, without hurting any of them.
            But it still frightened him to think about, and so he had restricted his role today to providing the wine and the meeting place, and asking Harry if he was doing all right. Even that question Harry had greeted with a curious sideways glance, as if he couldn’t understand why Draco would be so worried about his well-being.
            Draco kept his mouth smartly shut, and only looked up when he heard Severus say, “With the participation of all of us, of course.”
            Draco blinked in surprise, met Severus’s eyes, and realized how stupid he had been to sit there feeling fear at all. Or perhaps he hadn’t been feeling the right kind of fear. Perhaps he should have foreseen the emergence of Severus’s long-buried Gryffindor side, and been anguished about that.
            “How can we help?” Draco asked. “I thought Harry’s scar was the most direct connection to the Dark Lord. It’s certainly the only one the Aurors thought about using.”
            “The Aurors who kidnapped Harry are not the most intelligent of their kind,” said Severus, in a tone that made Draco wince a little. He could imagine it opening blood in a long line down his arm. “And they did not have among them anyone else with a direct connection. We have three.” He tilted his left arm.
            Draco swallowed. He disliked the Dark Mark, and spent most of his time with his arm covered, ignoring its existence. But he was no coward. The uncertainty of the situation, the outcome of the knowledge ritual and if it would work at all and exactly what he was feeling towards Harry, was what kept getting to him.
            If Severus had a plan, perhaps he could give up those first two fears. He bent nearer. “How will this work?”
            “You’re assuming that I’m going to let you have a part at all,” Harry interrupted pleasantly before Severus could speak. “Why should I let you risk yourselves, when I’m the one who is most affected by this, and the one who can get you the answers you need? No.”
            “You don’t understand,” said Severus, mildly, for all that Draco could see old arguments sparking back to life in his eyes. “As we do not get to make the decisions about you taking risks that you deplored so loudly, you do not get to make the decisions for us. If we wish to help you lessen the danger of this ritual and gain the knowledge that makes it imperative to perform, then we will.”
            Harry snorted and glanced sideways at Draco. “Did Draco really choose it? He had no idea what you were going to propose, did he? You can’t tell me that’s a willing choice.”
            “Well, now that it’s out in the open, I can decide whether or not I want to do it,” Draco snapped back, immediately irritated. No wonder Severus had told him vaguely that it would be all right in the past few days, when Draco had asked for details. He must have been working out how to adapt the knowledge ritual so that it could have three subjects instead of one. That had taken all his concentration. “And I want to. I don’t want you to bear all the brunt of what’s going to happen in the ritual.”
            “I’d rather do that than be afraid of what’s going to happen to you two!”
            Harry’s arms were folded, his eyes darting at them like lightning from the scar on his forehead. Severus held up one hand and turned to Draco with faint, very faint, mockery in his face. Draco nodded back. Yes, fine. He knew now that Harry was invested in their safety as strongly as they were in his, and he admitted that it had been silly to suggest Harry would simply abandon them. Severus could shut up now.
            “I will explain the design of the ritual,” said Severus, his words even and precisely spaced-apart. “I will do that very carefully. You can cease to worry when you actually hear the details, I hope? You will ask questions about any of the magical theory that you can’t understand? You can trust us?”
            His tone contained a little of the old challenge that would have been between Professor Snape and the Boy-Who-Lived, Draco thought. Harry immediately bristled and nodded. “Of course I can! I didn’t mean—”
            “I understand you better than I did,” Severus interrupted. “It feels no better to be subjected to patronizing concern than it was to feel it.” He turned back to Draco. “Would you object to being the leader of this ritual?”
            Draco blinked. A leader of a ritual was someone who empowered it, began it, was sometimes the only reason it worked. “Why me? I thought you would want that role, since you’re the one who came up with the idea to make the ritual safe to use.”
            Severus shook his head, eyes still snapping. “I will be playing the role of balancer instead, the link between the two volatile poles of you and Harry. I think it better that someone more mature and calmer play this role.”
            “That’s stupid,” Harry promptly began.
            “Don’t worry,” Severus told him. “Your role, the anchor, was sometimes played by the person who was sacrificed in the ritual. I presume you would find that a natural extension of your eagerness to give up your life?”
            Harry pulled back his head, such a sharp expression on his face that Draco thought he might stomp away after all. But then he sighed and looked away. “You’re a bastard sometimes.”
            “Only sometimes, I think,” said Severus, and with a complicated expression on his face that Draco suspected would be hard to translate for anyone on earth except Severus himself. There were times that Draco missed the bond. “And you’re going to let us do this, aren’t you? With Draco playing the role of leader and me playing the role of balancer. And you’ll be anchor.”
            Harry frowned at Draco. Draco turned his palms outwards. He hadn’t agreed to this, except insofar as he’d sat silent just now instead of objecting. He hadn’t had any idea of what Severus was planning.
            “Just tell me that the proportion of risk we’ll have to bear is equal,” said Harry, and glanced back at Severus.
            The way that Severus’s lips parted and his eyebrows rose for a second gave Draco an unexpected glimpse into his core. So ha, Draco thought, content in a weird way. If having Harry hold me against a wall does it for me, being considered an equal to the Great Harry Potter evidently does it for Severus.
            I’m not going to let him forget this.
            Severus cleared his throat and looked sharply at Draco, as if he could hear his mental sniggering. Draco held up his hands and widened his eyes. He wouldn’t say anything about it aloud if Severus didn’t want him to.
            Severus shook his head and turned back to Harry. “Yes, they are. If we are going to perform this ritual, we need to trust each other, and I know that you would not trust me if our positions were not…equal.”
            There was a tiny hesitation before that last word, if you were in the pattern of observing Severus and you knew what to look for. Draco bit back another snicker and nodded. “I think that he’s right, Harry. The knowledge ritual the Aurors wanted to use is obviously unacceptable. A three-pronged one would work better.”
            “From the perspective of you allowing me to participate at all,” finished Harry with a sigh.
            “When you get over this irritating habit of dismissing our care for your well-being as a desire to put restrictions on you, then let me know,” Draco snapped. “We aren’t the Lestranges, you know. Not all of us are enamored of chains and bindings.” He tapped his fingers on his knee as Harry studied him.
            “Fine,” Harry said at last. “How long is the ritual going to take to perform? Do we need anything special for it? Does it have to take place at a certain time of the day or night?”
            “Almost exactly an hour,” said Severus. “And yes, we must draw a ritual square and gather the implements. As for the time, that is not a component of the original ritual that the Aurors planned to use, but the book suggests that noon would be the best hour.”
            “The time of brightest light,” Harry murmured, sounding like he was in a trance. Maybe he needed to be, to convince himself. “The time when the mind might reveal and clarify itself.”
            Draco started. Sometimes he forgot that Harry did have some training in magical theory. Of course he did, or he wouldn’t have been able to help them as effectively in the Banishing Curse, but Draco kept forgetting anyway.
            “Yes,” said Severus, after a pause that Draco liked to imagine concealed his own surprise. “So. We would best perform it tomorrow, then, since it is already late morning now. Will you wish to go back to your friends for tonight?”
            Draco knew a challenge when he heard one. It seemed Harry did, too. He half-smiled. “I’m going to stay here,” he said. “I already spoke with my friends, yesterday. They know what happened in broad, general outline. I didn’t tell them about what we did to the Lestranges, or about Healer Tarriash, only that we were still working to identify someone connected with the case.”
            Draco swallowed another snicker. That was an accurate description of the Dark Lord, he supposed, if one made the description so general as to be useless.
            “Do you have a room I could use?” Harry stood up and glanced at Draco.
            “In a house this big? Of course.” Draco turned to Severus. “What implements will we need?”
            “I am going to gather the plants,” Severus said, in that haughty way that always reminded Draco he was a Potions master and Draco was not. “I want you to be responsible for the stones and earth from the grounds of the Manor. The bond that your ancestors had with the land should guide you instinctively to the right ones.”
            “And what will I do?”
            “You insist on being right in the middle, of course,” Severus said to Harry in a resigned fashion. Draco didn’t need the bond this time, though, to see the way that Severus leaned back in his chair and tilted his head as if receiving sunlight from some distant source. This was the sign of a relaxed Severus. “I would like you to gather this short list.” He produced a parchment from a pocket in his robes. “Some of the materials may be available in the Weasleys’ garden; I noticed a number of nesting birds there. Others, you may have to buy.”
            Harry didn’t even care, Draco saw, from the way his hand grasped the list and his eyes shone. He just wanted to be doing something that would help.
            I wonder if that’s why he became an Auror in the first place. Why he took on the sacrifice that the bond asked him to make. Not because he wants to be a martyr all the time, but because he wants to feel like he’s helping.
            It touched Draco with fire under the breastbone, to think about that, that Harry Potter would want to aid them.
            “Right,” said Harry, scanning the list with the expertise of someone who had to read boring reports and files all the time at work. “I’ll be back for dinner, right after I dump some of my stuff in that room someone promised me.” He looked at Draco with mild impatience.
            Draco shook his head, and repressed the temptation to reply that Harry was welcome to any room in the house, and he should have known that. He understood Harry feeling more comfortable with a designated place. “Right. Come on.”
            He led Harry up the steps to the room he had mentally chosen, all the while reeling mentally from the mere fact of having Harry Potter in his house, having him here willingly, and about to help them.
            No. He’s not here willingly because he missed you. He’s here to perform the knowledge ritual. And what is he going to do when that’s done?
            Draco bit the inside of his cheek. There were times when he wished that Severus had never revealed the real reason behind his behavior to him. Draco had to admit that he wished for a closer connection with Harry, now, and would be watching anxiously to see what he would do when the ritual was done.
            Or you could just ask him.
            But that was last resort. Draco wanted Harry’s company, but he hadn’t overcome his lingering fear of looking pathetic while he wanted it.
*
            Harry nodded and glanced critically around the room. “This is good.” It was, of course, a lot nicer than his room in Grimmauld Place, with heavy blue and purple tapestries of sea scenes hanging on polished marble walls and floors that looked as if they wouldn’t dare to get dirty, but Harry wasn’t about to let Draco know that.
            From his smug smile, Draco might know it anyway. He inclined his head graciously. “Then please stay as long as you like. You don’t need to hurry away the moment the knowledge ritual is done, you know.”
            Harry started and looked at Draco. Draco looked back with the kind of wide eyes that Harry once would have been able to interpret instantly, but now he had to rely on his own brain and knowledge of Draco to do it for him—and both of them seemed sadly lacking.
            Stupid bond. Stupid knowledge ritual. Harry paused, and then added in two more, because he might as well. Stupid brain. Stupid Slytherins.
            “Thanks, but I don’t want to intrude on your hospitality,” he said, thinking that he had phrased it just the right way.
            Draco snorted, a sound ridiculously juicy for such a pale and haughty face. Harry stared at him in amazement. Draco was too busy scowling at him to notice. “When have I begrudged you my hospitality since this whole thing started?” he demanded, depriving Harry of a few snotty answers that would have begun, “Well, during the war…” “I want you here. Severus wants you here. I’m not sure what more we could do to make that clear. Deck out this whole room in Gryffindor colors?” He waved his hand around the bedroom, and then paused and pointed out a door Harry hadn’t paid much attention to. “And the bathroom, too, that’s through there. You can have a bloody scarlet loo if you want.”
            Harry folded his arms. His heart was pounding the way it did when an enemy pinned him into a small corner, which was absolutely ridiculous, and he knew it. That didn’t make his heart slow down any.
            “I don’t know why you want me here,” he said. “Once the knowledge ritual finishes, you could be justified in turning away from me and never thinking of me again.”
            “Because the whole bond thing is so easy to forget,” said Draco. His eyes had darkened, and he took a step towards Harry that read as more threatening than lots of things Harry had seen when he was an Auror. Harry would have put his hand on his wand, but that seemed stupid, too. This was Draco.
            Someone who probably doesn’t want you to go away.
            Harry shuddered a little, not at the thought of staying but because what Draco might ask of him might also be more than he wanted to give, and looked off to the side. “It’s not easy to forget, but I thought you might want to put it behind you.”
            “Hardly.” Draco breathed the words from right in front of him, from the distance he’d crossed without Harry knowing it. “Or did you mistake what I was asking you entirely in the Healer’s office?”
            “You were asking me to let you go so you could murder Tarriash.” Harry knew that was true. He had never doubted it was true until Draco asked him to speak the words, and then suddenly his tongue was too big for his mouth. He shook his head impatiently and bore on. “I don’t see what that has to do with the bond.”
            “I wanted to touch you,” Draco said. “I liked it when you held me against the wall. Did you mistake that completely?” He paused, his hands stretched around either side of Harry’s head so he was touching the wall behind him. “Or maybe you’ve simply held too many suspects in that position. It’s no wonder you don’t see anything romantic in it.”
            Harry swallowed. Now that Draco mentioned it, he was close enough to watch the pulse fluttering in Draco’s throat, and to see the way that his eyes widened and his fingers curled. He supposed you might think of that as romantic if you were into it.
            And then his brain caught up with the words, and he shoved lightly at Draco’s shoulders. “Romantic?” he asked. “Are you insane? Did you forget how the bond started? How could you stand—how could either of us stand to touch each other, after that?”
            “But we’re standing here and touching each other,” Draco said equably. “And maybe romantic was the wrong word. All I know that is that I want to be close to you and have some guarantee of continuing—closeness after the knowledge ritual is done with.” Harry had the impression that he’d got rid of some other word like friendship, which Harry had to agree didn’t square with what they had. “I just want that. Can you guarantee that?” He glanced at Harry like he was a drowning man and Harry had a rope.
            Harry swallowed again. He dropped his hands from Draco’s shoulders and rubbed his face.
            He had been willing to tell Ron and Hermione that the rape had made permanent and long-term changes in him, and that the existence of the bond meant that Draco and Severus were close to him. He had planned to stay close to them. He agreed that friendship wasn’t the right word for what they were to each other.
            He just hadn’t thought that either Draco or Severus planned to ask for this form of closeness to replace the friendship.
            “Let me think about it, all right?” he asked, not turning to Draco. “I never intended to forget about you once we completed the knowledge ritual. But we have to finish that first. We don’t even know if Voldemort is back yet. If he is, we have to make fighting him our priority.”
            “If he’s back,” said Draco, who hadn’t flinched at the name, it seemed, because he was too busy watching Harry, “then we’ll contain him and make sure he can’t harm us.” He paused. Harry let the silence continue, despite the intense pressure he could feel on his ears and mouth.
            “But if he’s not back,” Draco whispered, “will you find some other excuse to run away?”
            Harry turned his back violently. “I won’t abandon you,” he told the mirror on the wall behind him. “I don’t want to. But I don’t think I can contemplate a—a romance, okay? I never did before. Enough to stay a virgin. Just leave me alone and let me think about it.”
            Draco hesitated, then nodded and left, all in the mirror. Harry went on watching him there until the door shut.
            Then he huffed and leaned his forehead on the cool glass of the mirror.
            He had lots of things to think about. But he also had a list of ritual ingredients to gather, and he was going to do that first.
*
            Severus sighed and examined his list again. He had been sure the Manor gardens contained all the plants he needed, but of all things, he could not find dandelions here. The house-elves probably kept the grounds too clear of them.
            He took a step towards the front doors, intent on Apparating to a few undisturbed wild places he knew where most of the plants might grow, and then paused as he saw Harry coming down the stairs. Harry nodded at him and walked more briskly.
            Severus raised his eyebrows. Was that the way it was, then? If Harry wanted to be away from him for some reason, Severus would let him go ahead.
            But then Harry stopped, and sighed, and turned to face him. “Draco said that he wants to be—around me even after we’ve finished the knowledge ritual,” he said. “Is that true for you? Because it would be weird to be friends or whatever we are with him if we don’t also include you.”
            Severus held back an impulse that was too smug for its own good, and cocked his head. “It depends on what you mean by ‘around.’”
            Harry grimaced as if he’d swallowed a snail. “He mentioned something about romantic, and liking it when I touched him in hospital. Honestly, all I did was hold him against a wall,” he muttered to himself.
            Severus held back his own snide assessment of what that had looked like, and might have felt like to Draco, and simply nodded. “I would not say that my thoughts are exactly the same as Draco’s. I no longer know his thoughts. But I would not wish to simply wave farewell and never see you again.”
            “Even though you and I have—” Harry searched for the words. “A more volatile history than Draco and I do?”
            Severus held back his laughter at the terms that Harry had chosen to phrase that in, and simply nodded. “Yes, that would be part of it,” he said, and translated when Harry looked at him blankly. He could sometimes take pity on someone who badly needed him to. “The volatility of our history itself makes me want continued engagement.”
            “Because you’re a masochist?”
            Severus laughed in spite of himself, and took the widening of Harry’s eyes at the sound of his mirth as payment enough for losing his dignity. “No,” he said. “Because I find that I do not know how to name what lies between us, and I would like the time it will take to name it.”
            Harry cocked his head, eyeing Severus as though he was truly inexplicable. Severus remained calm. Harry had not retreated or tried to name it yet. This might be progress.
            “Okay,” said Harry. “As long as we’re not springing into some kind of crazy romantic relationship?”
            “We are not,” Severus said. “We might not ever give that name to what we are.”
            “That’s true,” said Harry, and shook himself like Hagrid’s boarhound shaking off water. “Well, I don’t mind staying around and trying to find the name.”
            He left. Severus gave himself a few instants of quiet to recover from the blow to his dignity before he followed.
*
BAFan: Thanks! At least the bond has made Draco realize that Harry doesn’t read subtle signals well, so he’s got to move forwards with as much aggression and clarity as possible.
SP777: It did, but at least they’re relatively on the same page when it came to working things out.
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The Wages of Going On