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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-Two—The Knowledge Ritual
            “I think that you’ve sufficiently proven yourself.”
            Severus kept his voice bland, but caught the flash of pride in Draco’s eyes nevertheless. In truth, Draco had outdone himself. He had chosen the largest room in the Manor, had the house-elves scrub it down so that it was free of lingering magical influences as well as the tiny specks of dust that might imperil their ritual square, and then carved the square in the stone himself, the way the leader had to, with a command of his power that Severus frankly hadn’t known he had.
            “Good,” said Draco, and gestured to the box of ingredients waiting beside him. “I thought we could go through these together. I’ve picked up the most magical stones from the grounds, but they only resonate with my power. They should ideally resonate with all of ours.”
            His gaze went past Severus as he spoke, and Severus knew that Harry had arrived. Severus nodded. “It shouldn’t take that long. This close together, the resonances between our separate kinds of power will be easy to detect.”
            Harry hesitated audibly, then moved towards them. “They will be?” he asked. “Sorry. I just never did something like this before.”
            Severus eyed Harry critically. He seemed to be more stiff-backed than he had yesterday, although Severus knew for certain that he had found all the ingredients that Severus had sent him out for.
            Well. This was a ritual that could still be dangerous, and it had to remind him of what the Aurors had wanted to do to him. Perhaps some stiffness was to be expected.
            “Reach out and pick up one of the stones from the box,” Severus instructed Harry. “Hold it in your hand and concentrate on the power that you can sense from it. When you can feel something, nod your head if it’s comfortable, shake your head if it’s uncomfortable. I’ll try to tune my own magic to the stones that you find comfortable.”
            “Doesn’t Draco need to do that, too?” Harry, of course, had to come up with a question, even as he dug down into the box and lifted up a smooth, round pebble.
            “They’re already compatible with mine, or I wouldn’t have picked them up in the first place,” said Draco, and smiled a little at Harry. “Now you and Severus have to choose from among the ones that I’ve already sorted for you.”
            Harry relaxed, for some reason. Severus was beginning to think that he might never understand him.
            Or perhaps he would never understand exactly what the interplay was between Harry and Draco. That did not mean that he would never understand anything about Harry.
            Harry shook his head about the pebble he held almost at once, and discarded it. It took several tries before he focused on a piece of quartz, and Severus stretched out his own hand above the stone and concentrated.
            He could feel the shimmering resonance of it after a moment of concentration, the vibration that played in the stone’s core, the long-ago remnants of some spell performed on the Manor’s grounds or Malfoys who had used a larger piece of rock the stone had once been part of in a ritual. It did not matter where the magic came from, as long as it would play into and not jangle against Severus’s own power.
            And this hum felt reassuring and sympathetic. Severus nodded, and Draco held out a box that Harry deposited the stone into, before he reached for another one from the original box.
            Draco had a strange look on his face, one that Severus studied idly for a few minutes before Harry found another stone that he wanted to try. It was contentment, Severus realized finally. Even doing something as simple as this together seemed reassuring and comforting for Draco, and of course he would want to experience more of it, activities that would tie them together and keep them—
            Close, Severus decided, and turned to the next piece of quartz that Harry had nodded over.
*
            Harry stood in the center of the ritual square, while Severus stood on the rim of it and Draco stood beyond him, aiming in a straight line towards the far end of the room. It was the position of anchor, leader, balancer, the way it needed to be, at least if Harry had understood Severus’s notes correctly.
            And he thought he had. In place of the demand for knowledge that the original ritual would have enacted, this one relied on the knowledge the participants had of themselves. The rocks that they had selected resonated with their magic along the corners of the square. The plants Severus had gathered and brewed into a potion they’d drunk just a few minutes ago were ones that reinforced clarity of mind and strength of thought. The bits of birds’ nests, animal fur, and nails and hair that Harry had been in charge of finding were strung on small cords around their necks and wrists, and would spread Harry’s touch over all of them at once.
            Harry understood the principles. He thought Severus had modified the original knowledge ritual in a smart and interesting way.
            But he also thought that they might not know themselves as well as they needed to, and a soft sliver of ice seemed to have been inserted into his spine.
            Draco began the ritual, as leader, holding up his wand and weaving a coil of smoke back and forth over the side of the room where he stood. When he spoke another spell, the smoke began to expand, not forming more of itself but making a large blue loop that shone like a lasso around Severus’s torso and hands. Harry waited in silence for it to cross the edge of the ritual square. He could do nothing with it until then.
            The moment arrived. Harry held out his wand towards it, making the strings of fur and other objects on him sway softly, and began to chant the spell that would command the smoke to wreathe around him like a snake. He threw in a hiss of Parseltongue at the end, which Severus had thought would be a good idea.
            The smoke climbed and lazily draped itself around his neck and hair. Harry was tempted to hold his breath against the smell for a moment, but then he exhaled, and realized that the smoke wouldn’t enter his lungs. It would stay exactly where he was supposed to put it unless something about the ritual messed up.
            Harry raised his head. As the balancer, Severus was supposed to cast the next two spells, one directed towards Harry and one towards Draco.
            But Severus stood there with his wand held up and laid flat vertically on the air, as though he was pushing against an invisible door. Small drops of sweat stood out on his forehead. Harry licked his lips, and held back the urge to cough. The smoke was not climbing into his lungs. He had to remember that.
            “There is a barrier here,” Severus said, his voice low as though he didn’t want the ritual to hear them. Since the only magic in it right now was the magic they were providing, Harry thought that was a little silly, but he could respect the impulse. “Something that should not be here. I cannot cast the spell.”
            “What kind of barrier?” Draco, too, barely moved his lips.
            “A barrier of will,” said Severus, and paused. “You told me that both of you were willing to go through this. Is that not true?”
            “I am,” said Harry, startled. Of all things, he hadn’t thought that would be a problem. He and Draco both trusted Severus. He looked at Draco, who nodded with the same wrinkled forehead and narrowed eyes. No, Harry didn’t think Draco was harboring any secret doubts, either, or they couldn’t have got this far.
            “There is still a barrier,” said Severus, and his face was dark in a way that Harry had seen only during the war. “Perhaps the Dark Lord’s presence…” He moved his wand back and forth, and then spoke another spell, not the one Harry knew they needed, perhaps just to make sure that he could.
            A second later, the halo of smoke around him turned white and drifted sideways, and then formed around Draco, clinging and washing up and down like seafoam. Draco looked both startled and angry, turning his head from side to side as though that would erase the evidence of him being the one who was resisting the ritual.
            “I need to know what question you would like to ask instead, Draco,” Severus said, in a voice like iron filings.
            “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Draco’s expression was straightforward, flustered and flushed. “I want to know if the Dark Lord is coming back! Of course I do!” He jerked at his left sleeve, so angry that it took him two tries to pull it up and reveal the Dark Mark. “Do you think that I hate this any less than you do? Do you think I secretly want him to come back or something?”
            “No,” said Severus, although from his slowly shifting wand, Harry wondered if he really believed that. “But there is another question you wish you could ask instead. I know there is. I need to know what that question is, Draco, and why you’re so set on finding the answer.”
            Draco hissed like a balked cat. Harry certainly heard no edge of Parseltongue that he could have reasoned with in those words. “I don’t know what I would want to know more!” Then his face went pale, and his posture still.
            “You didn’t know,” said Severus. “Now you do. What is it?”
            Draco stared at Harry. Harry looked back, wondering if Draco thought he was the key to Voldemort’s return, if the return would somehow concentrate on Harry’s scar and make Harry back into a Horcrux instead, and if that meant Draco was afraid of him. It would hurt if so, but Harry had put up with worse pain.
            “I want to know what exactly,” said Draco, and paused, and licked his lips, and swallowed.
            “You must ask it, or we cannot continue with the knowledge ritual,” said Severus. “We must be united in our desire to figure out whether the Dark Lord is coming back.”
            Draco licked his lips again and again. Harry narrowed his eyes at him. From the way Draco was staring, this had something to do with Harry himself, but Harry didn’t know what it was, and he was getting rather tired of trying to divine it.
            “Well?” he demanded. “Spit it out.”
            Draco did, finally. “Why were you still a virgin able to sacrifice your virginity? It makes no sense.”
            Harry clenched his hands down so hard that he nearly snapped one of the strings holding a bit of squirrel fur around his neck. He closed his eyes, reoriented himself so that the floor wasn’t spinning, and said, “What business is that of yours?”
            “I’ve wondered it,” said Draco, not in the apologetic tone that Harry had expected, but simply. “And it’s apparently more important to me than the Dark Lord’s return.” Harry heard him hesitate, the little scuffle of his shoe over the floor. All of Harry’s senses seemed to have sharpened as he stood there in darkness, listening. “No, it—it’s part of the bond. It’s the reason the bond could form in the first place. And it’s part of, part of the explanation that might tell me whether there’s any chance in the future.”
            “For a romantic relationship,” Harry muttered. He looked at Severus. Surely this was disrupting the knowledge ritual and the far more important task of learning whether Voldemort was back in the world?
            But although Severus was frowning at Draco, his face wasn’t thunderous. He didn’t even twitch or make the little twirling gesture with his wand that Harry had learned indicated impatience. Harry swallowed a sigh. He reckoned that Severus would have to intervene later, if they did take up too much time. Right now, they weren’t.
            “Yes,” said Draco. “Sorry, but I was thinking…you said it was complicated. That we weren’t your friends. I don’t know if we can name what we are, but I want to understand it more. We can’t have the name, so I want the history.”
            Harry sighed and scratched the back of his neck. “No offense, Draco, but I don’t think I can ever have sex with you the way you’re thinking.” They had to be honest, didn’t they, so they could go back to investigating Voldemort’s return? “Not when my one experience of sex was like that.”
            Draco’s flinch was deep enough to penetrate his bones, but he said, “That might not be what we—could have, anyway. I want to know why it happened at all. The bond is the most fascinating thing to me, not the Dark Lord’s return. And this is—something I might never know, even if we settle into friendship.”
            Harry groaned and rubbed his face with one hand. “You mean I’m the most fascinating thing to you,” he mutters. “You’d think you’d be over that now that you’ve seen the inside of my mind.”
            “That’s not true!” Draco had surging color in his cheeks that made Harry open his mouth again, but Draco continued quickly. “I’m fascinated with Severus, too!”
            Severus turned around and gave Draco a long, inscrutable look. Draco either didn’t see it or chose to ignore it for now; Harry would bet the latter. Draco was still staring at Harry. “I know some of what Severus thought, because I was in the same position as him when it came to the bond,” he whispered, and flinched. “Maybe I don’t really have the right to ask this, but I have to, to get the ritual back on track.”
            Harry rolled his eyes, because it was that or burst out cursing. “Would you ever have asked it?”
            “Later, if you were more comfortable with me and willing to answer.”
            Harry calmed himself, with an effort. Yes, Draco wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but it wasn’t like Harry was, either. “Fine,” he said. “I was a virgin because there were other things to concentrate on. Unless you think I should have thought about my cock when there was a war on and we were all struggling to survive.”
            He’d deliberately put it as crudely as possible, and from the flush that deepened in his cheeks, Draco knew that. But he persisted. “If you missed out during the war, fine, I can understand that. But it’s been almost six years since the end of the war. Why?”
            “It never seemed as important as other things,” said Harry. That was the simple truth, and one reason that he hadn’t tried to explain it to other people. “But the other part was that I watched Ron and Hermione, and I saw what they had, and I wanted that. They knew each other from the time they were kids, and they were meant for each other. I thought I had that, a couple times, but it always ended pretty quickly. I think I was looking for something that would take years, like it took with them.”
            Draco looked smug. Harry rolled his eyes. Arguably, he had known them for years, too, but it wasn’t remotely the same.
            “Anyway,” said Harry. “Why does it matter that much why I was still a virgin? It was a lucky thing for you. For all of us.”
            “It’s not just a matter of luck to me,” said Draco. “I don’t want you to go away.”
            “I told you that I’m not going to run out the door the minute the knowledge ritual is done,” said Harry, giving a pointed look at the smoke eddying around them. If it ever would be done, with the way that Draco went on. But so far, Draco didn’t seem to be picking up on that. Harry plowed on. “I’ll stay in touch.”
            “I want more than that,” Draco said.
            Harry sighed and rested his forehead on his hand. “Even knowing that it’s more than I’d give anyone else who wasn’t a friend?” he asked. “I can’t forget about the two of you and walk away, but I’m not sure that I’ll ever be able to give you what you want, either.”
            As he spoke, he looked at Severus, who stood still and hadn’t moved. His eyes were the only things that shifted, slowly blinking, back and forth between Harry and Draco. He looked as if he had gazed into the heart of a sun and didn’t know how to look away.
            “It doesn’t matter that much to you, does it?” Harry asked him, because he didn’t know where else to turn for his lack of answers to Draco’s questions. “Whether we just talk, or kiss, or what?” He turned to Draco when Severus didn’t answer. “And you don’t know how long it would take for me to feel comfortable kissing anyone again. I mean it. Anyone. How can you know? Do you really think that we’ll have a normal relationship?”
*
            Draco might have said something sensible, with time and thought, but from the direct flash of his eyes, he was not going to. That left it up to Severus to intervene.
            “The fact of your virginity obsesses Draco because the bond obsesses him,” he said, and saw Draco turn and glare at him. Well, it was true. There was no other way that Draco’s desire to know would have got in the way of the far more important matter of learning whether the Dark Lord was back. “That does not mean that we must all be obsessed the same way. It does not mean that something need happen between us this day, this month, this year. This decade. We are wizards. We will live perhaps a hundred years more.”
            “That’s true,” said Harry, although he was looking at Severus now as if he was the one who had pushed too far. “But do you really think this connection between us will last that long?”
            “It is not one that I had pictured ending.”
            Harry blinked several times, and reached up with one hand, moving it back and forth as though there was dust in his eyes. “That’s mental,” he whispered. “I understand that you feel this strongly, but—that’s mental.”
            “Who knows how long it will last, on your part?” Severus murmured. He supposed that, of all of them, Harry was the one most likely to find someone else and settle into a normal marriage, or relationship. On the other hand, he had not done so until this point. They were not the destined relationship he had been seeking, but they were not like anything else normal, either, so Severus felt comfortable dismissing the notion that things would simply snap back to “normal” for Harry someday. “I cannot easily see it ending for either of us.”
            Draco frowned a little, but flipped his head down in a short nod when Harry looked at him. He did not say anything, Severus thought, wisely. Harry already had an abundance of things to think about.
            “Fine,” said Harry. “I have to admit that it’s kind of comforting, in a weird way, to think that I might always have people in my life who are—connected to me.” Severus nearly snorted. There were other words Harry might have sought out, but he had chosen a neutral one. Perhaps that was also wise. “But you don’t have to date me, seriously. Or kiss me, or fuck me, or whatever else you were thinking you had to.”
            “Are you familiar with the concept of desire, Harry?” Draco muttered, shaking his head. “That has very little to do with have to.”
            Not as familiar as he could have been, Severus thought, watching Harry, how startled and young his face appeared right now, fronting their questioning. He thought Harry had probably concentrated ferociously on all sorts of things, whether or not he realized it. Surviving the war. Becoming good at his job. Surviving the ritual that had seen them tortured and then surviving what he thought were the unreasonable demands of the bond. With all those gone, there was perhaps room for a gentler kind of concentration, one that might let him explore his own desire.
            Or desire to do more than survive, anyway. Severus could admit that was one longing Harry was passionately familiar with, and had just as passionately fulfilled.
            If he could focus on something else…
            The smoke eddying around him tightened. Severus sighed. They could consider such things and the inevitable distractions they presented later, when they were out of the knowledge ritual and had the answer they had come to seek.
            “So you have your question responded to,” he told Draco. “You know yourself well enough now to continue? You have a clear enough mind?”
            Draco looked him directly in the eye instead of flinching as he once would have before such criticism. “Yes. We can go on.”
            Severus smiled without need for further comment and turned to face the square carved into the floor again. He cast the spell that would weave the smoke around all of them, and the strings that they wore, containing the bits and parts of animals that Harry had scavenged, rose up and floated towards the smoke.
            This time, there was no barrier. This time, the lines of the square thrummed with power through the stones they were carved on, and Severus could hear what sounded like the whispers of other voices chanting along with them.
            They knew what they wanted to ask. And Draco was the one who spoke first, as leader, his voice clear and precise. “Has the Dark Lord Voldemort returned to life in any fashion, in any part of himself?”
            The string of power that ran through him to Severus vibrated and began to pick up speed. Severus tilted his head back and gritted his teeth at the same time. It was like being back in the bond, both the intimacy and the disadvantages of it.
            He didn’t need to speak. Instead, he rested his wand on his own Dark Mark and spoke to the echo of the Dark Lord’s power there, then passed both the echo and the question down the cord to Harry. He would use them to reach out into the darkness of ignorance and force a response from it. Somewhere lay the knowledge. It would come to them if they reached strongly enough, if they willed strongly enough.
            Given the strength of Harry’s concentration they had both heard him confess, Severus did not think that was the difficult part. If Harry felt more distant from them, though, or less inclined to cooperate…
            He did not. He was speaking the words, his hands extended towards the nearest of the stones that they had found which resonated with their power.
            “Has the Dark Lord Voldemort returned to life in any fashion, in any part of himself?” Harry said the words in a low voice at first, building up to a grating roar. “I will know, and I will know now.”
            The power stabbed out from him, riding a wave of will that Severus liked to think came from all of them, though perhaps the largest part of it was Harry’s. It collided with some far, distant barrier that Severus didn’t recognize, and in fact reeled back from. For a moment, he felt his blood pounding with magic, and as though some vast mind had turned in their direction and was considering them, and as if the knowledge of the universe waited to rush into his thoughts and overwhelm him.
            Then the sense of magic retreated, and Harry lowered his hands, looking shaken. He touched his forehead and winced. Severus tensed as he saw the slow trickle of blood leaking from under his fringe. Perhaps that was their answer, that the Dark Lord was once more active in Harry’s scar.
            But Harry slowly pulled the hair away, and then they could see.
            The scar had changed shape. In place of the jagged lightning bolt were capital letters. NO.
            Draco caught his breath harshly from behind Severus. Severus knew he had seen it, too. He didn’t take his eyes from Harry, who was staggering from the backwash of power leaving his body, but he backed up until he could put one hand on Draco’s shoulder. Draco squeezed his wrist, and Severus read in that silent gesture all they would ever need to say to each other about their relief.
            Even as Severus watched, the bloody letters changed back into the lightning bolt, and Harry staggered to his knees. “I’d forgotten how much that hurts,” he muttered, still clutching his forehead.
            Severus moved forwards to take his shoulder and help him to his feet. “You understand that he is not coming back?” he asked quietly. Harry could not have read the message.
            Harry snorted at him. “When I heard a voice like a bell in my head telling me no, I understood, all right.”
            Then, without fuss, he fainted. Draco shook his head and called for a house-elf to help them take Harry back up to his rooms.
            Severus leaned carefully against a wall. One dread possibility, at least, was over.
            His gaze lingered on both Harry and Draco, who glanced back and forth between them as if he was their own personal balancer. Perhaps something else can now begin.
*
Naughty_megs: Thank you!
moodysavage: I think they came pretty close to telling Harry just what they want here!
SP777: Are you talking about a smushname or portmanteau name like Drarry for Harry/Draco? I’ve seen them called Drapery, or just Snape/Harry/Draco.
chelseaplume: Thank you! I think they’ve earned their maturity; they certainly had to struggle hard enough for it.
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The Wages of Going On