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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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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Six—A Tense Meeting
            “Damn him.”
            Harry thought the words flat enough that they needed no further discussion, but Ron looked up immediately. He had accompanied Harry home that night. Harry had said that he didn’t need the company, and Ron had looked him in the face and said, “Yes, you do,” so softly and patiently that Harry had given in.
            “What does he want now?” Ron stood up and came over, extending his hand for the letter.
            Harry hesitated, but let him have it. He was infuriated enough staring at Snape’s words. “He wants to meet with me,” he said. “We have to discuss the bond. We have to make sure that we all understand.” Ron flinched a little, and Harry clenched his fists in front of him. He didn’t want to hurt his best friend, and just because his words were hot enough to intimidate Ron didn’t mean they would intimidate Snape.
            “Are you going to do it?”
            Harry jerked his head up. “Why should I? He—he can pursue his own revenge, and he has nothing to do with the search I’m conducting.” He didn’t know if Snape and Malfoy had even realized there had to be a traitor in the Aurors. He didn’t know how much they had known about the safehouse wards. When they were there, he had known where they were at all times, so he could protect them, but he had spent most of his time circling the perimeter of the house, checking for threats, and preparing traps that—
            That hadn’t slowed the Lestranges down at all.
            Harry snarled, softly. That was another weapon Snape had used against him. He hadn’t actually used the word “guilt” in his letter, but he had hinted around it, about what Harry must be feeling because he hadn’t kept Snape and Malfoy safe from the Lestranges the way he had promised to.
            “Harry?”
            Ron was there. How could he have forgotten Ron was there? Or that he was holding his wand hard enough to break it? Harry released his grip slowly, a little surprised that he didn’t feel splinters prickling at his skin. He nodded once and leaned back. He couldn’t frighten Snape away, and he couldn’t pretend his own guilt didn’t exist. So he would do something else instead.
            “I’ll go and meet him,” he said. “But I’ll choose the place. And it’ll be somewhere that I can easily escape.”
            Ron looked helplessly at him. Harry wondered why until he said, “I wish—do you want me to go with you, Harry? In case Snape—tries something?”
            Even then, Harry didn’t understand completely, and spent a moment staring blankly at Ron until reality dawned. Ron flinched and nearly put his hands over his ears as Harry laughed rackingly. Harry stopped when he sounded like a victimon the actual rack.
            “I think he might try to guilt me into cooperating with him, or talk about the bond, or threaten to blackmail me,” Harry said. “I’m two hundred percent positive that he won’t try to touch me, or rape me again. There’s no way that he ever would have without the bond.”
            “But you can’t just forget what he did.” Ron turned around and paced to the end of the room, his hands shaking in turn. “How can you stand to be in the same room with him?”
            “Because I have to,” Harry responded. Oddly, he was calm now that he thought about it. It was like facing the bond, he thought, or preparing to find the traitor in the Aurors. He would drive through and endure the challenges that lay before him, in order to reach the good life he had wanted to survive for, the life he had promised himself.
            He had hoped to reach it sooner than this, but, well, he had been wrong, that was all. If he had to, like he had to kill Voldemort and bargain with the bond to survive and admit to his friends that he was—had been—a virgin, then he would do it.
            “Can I do anything?” Ron trailed off and looked around Harry’s house as though he didn’t know what he was doing there.
            Harry smiled at him and shook his head. “Thank you for coming with me. But this is the kind of thing I have to decide on my own.”
            “Do you know where you’re going to meet him yet?” Ron leaned forwards until he seemed in danger of tripping over his own boots.
            Harry stared off into space for a moment, buildings that he barely remembered and images that he had barely formed storming and flitting around his head. Then he smiled and glanced at Ron. “Yes. There’s a plan that I formed a while back to arrest one of the former Death Eaters. It didn’t work out.” He rose to his feet. “But it should work out fine to meet one of them.”
*
            “I’m leaving to meet Potter.”
            “Have fun.” Draco kept his voice to a monotone and his eyes on the Dark Arts text in front of him, although Severus stood in the doorway of his study and it would have been a simple thing to glance up at him.
            Silence, but that didn’t mean Severus couldn’t steam like a dragon. Draco resisted the urge to plug his ears with his fingers, and kept reading about the Decapitating Curse instead.
            “You might wish me good luck.” Yes, Severus’s words had that undertone of smoke that was so familiar to Draco from so many situations during the war.
            Draco did look up at him this time, because of the words—but probably not in the way Severus wanted. That sense of bitterness in his head had increased. It felt like it was leaking down his nasal cavities and would drip out and cover his book with thick, greasy brown drops any second. “Good luck with what?”
            Severus shifted his cloak, which he hadn’t put on yet. It hung over one shoulder and one arm, and he seemed to think that he would present a more casual picture that way. “Good luck with getting Potter to see sense.”
            “I want the same thing he wants,” Draco said.
            Severus blinked at him. “The ability to write letters that will convince me to leave you alone?”
            “To be left alone,” Draco countered, feeling a furious blush working its way up over his cheeks. He turned his head back to the book, his hands curling up in front of him until he thought his nails would pierce his skin. “I don’t expect you to understand that—”
            “No,” Severus interrupted. “In this case, your sense of guilt is interfering with your common sense. We must address the bond.”
            Draco closed his eyes. “We spent all yesterday trying to do that.” They’d searched and searched through the Malfoy library for material on the bond, but even though Severus had said identifying a trifold bond with different emotional sensations for each member should be easy, they had found nothing.
            “What would you have us do?” Severus’s voice settled on him like small raindrops.
            Draco turned to face him, and fought the impulse to extend a hand. Severus would only slap it away, and rightly so. “Leave it alone for right now. Give Potter some time to recover. Give us all time to recover, so that it doesn’t feel like my tea is full of guilt.”
            Severus’s nostrils flared. “We will never get over what is done to us if we sit back and wait for it to go away.” He turned before Draco could say that wasn’t what he meant at all, and added over his shoulder, “If you will not wish me good luck aloud, you might think of me in an hour’s time, when I will meet Potter.”
            And he was gone.
            Left alone, Draco let his head drop into his hands. He couldn’t go on reading; the words swam before his eyes.
            This…hurt.
            And he knew no way to stop the pain.
*
            Severus let his eyes sweep the restaurant that Potter had invited him to. It was one of the recent “daring” places that had opened up in Moderate Alley, supposed to be the poor man’s version of Knockturn. The apothecaries flirted with ingredients this side of illegal, the bookshop sold purported Dark Arts texts, and there were cafes like this one, with staged duels and counterfeit Aurors coming in to arrest the participants.
            Severus wondered for a moment why Potter had chosen this particular place, called the Lenten, probably because the owner was Muggleborn.
            When he saw the setup, he understood.
            The Lenten was more interested in cultivating an atmosphere than in attracting a large clientele. The tables were small, round, and scattered in interesting combinations, sometimes one and sometimes two. The space between them was breathtaking and led the eye naturally to the enchanted windows, the largest that Severus had seen outside the Ministry, and made of a material that was glass-like in consistency if not real glass. They showed open forest clearings and wide plains stretching away to the sun and the ocean. The café itself was round.
            There were no corners here that anyone could pin Potter in, and no tables that would catch him if he tried to race away. There were no tables where you could even sit, really, without seeing most of the people around you.
            And Potter had chosen one in the center. He raised his head when Severus looked at him.
            The way he moved struck Severus like a blow. He knew what he had done, of course. Woke with the memories hammering in his blood and his ears, and had the steel and the guilt in the back of his mind to bring the knowledge home.
            It was another thing, seeing the way that Potter’s eyes looked as they had not after the Battle of Hogwarts. He looked at Severus as he had not at the Dark Lord.
            Severus nodded once and walked towards the table. Potter did not retreat. He did turn to the side so that Severus could see his hand rested on his wand.
            Where he intended to keep it, Severus assumed.
            There was a faint, sour taste in his mouth. He ignored it. He could not sense the bitterness that Draco told him came through from his side of the bond, and it would stay that way. He took one of the rough wooden chairs, painted blue at this table, across from Potter and hung his cloak on the back of it, making sure to exaggerate his movements so that Potter would see he had no intention of reaching for him.
            Potter watched him.
            He reminded Severus now of an eagle waiting to swoop down on prey, as long as Severus did not look him in the eye. The eagle would be wary of any human who approached it, but it had its own beak and sharp claws, and it could attack.
            Severus considered the mountain of steel in the back of his mind, for the first time in terms other than the length of the shadow it cast over his thoughts. Did it waver? Did it crack?
            No. If anything, it was taller and colder than it had been. It, and Potter’s assurance that he could strike if Severus tried something, were the only reasons he was still here, Severus thought. Perhaps the only reasons he had come at all.
            “Hermione hasn’t found anything about the bond yet,” Potter said. “Have you?”
            “You assume I have been looking,” Severus said, the words springing to his tongue.
            Potter’s eyes flashed once, and he made a sharp gesture with one hand. Severus nearly drew his wand before the mountain in his mind glittered, too, and he knew it for what it was. Not an attack, but a motion of contempt.
            “Of course you would have been looking,” Potter said, lowering his voice. “Have you found anything?”
            Severus had forgotten how hard it would be to settle himself and attend to what was in front of him instead of his own need to prove himself to Potter. But if the war had ended, and he owed Potter nothing, then he didn’t need to do the proving. He did have some choice things to say to Potter, but they would wait until the essentials had been discussed.
            “No,” he said. “Draco feels me in his mind as bitterness. I feel him as guilt. We both feel you as a mountain of steel.” He drew back as two cups of tea floated over to the table, borne on currents of magic from a young woman in a back room. Potter must have ordered it before Severus came. Severus sipped the hot liquid, and grimaced. It was too sweet. “What do you feel us as? That might give us a clue to the nature of the bond.”
            “I know things,” Potter said. “I don’t feel anything. What you would likely think and your motivations at the moment appear in my head, without intervention.” He couldn’t have sounded much more disgusted if he had said that he felt Draco and Severus as rotting flobberworms. “That doesn’t provide any kind of clue that Hermione can find.”
            Noting that Potter was not drinking his tea, either, justified Severus in lowering his cup back to his saucer. “That is impossible.”
            “For me not to feel you as something?” Potter gave him a narrow smile that had so much challenge in it, Severus was forced to remind himself that they should not duel. “That is what happens. I don’t think this bond has much precedent in any case.”
            “If Granger thought that, she wouldn’t have started researching it,” Severus snapped back.
            “She can think one thing, and I can think another.” Potter seemed to sit more solidly in his chair, a stone that carved new holes in the air, although Severus didn’t know how that had happened. “I’m not tied to her.”
            “You always needed someone to lead you to the obvious conclusions.” Severus leaned forwards and lowered his voice. Yes, the war was past, but there were still some things one did not mention in a loud voice in public. “Most people would have decided they were one of his Horcruxes early on, the moment they learned about them.”
            Potter gave him a smile that could only be called pleasant compared to some of the scowls that he had received from Potter in the past. “Even if I had decided that, and asked Dumbledore, would he have told me the truth?”
            Severus choked a little. He had once suggested to Albus that Potter be brought into the plan. If he went off adventuring and got himself killed, there was no guarantee that anyone else would know to destroy all of the Dark Lord’s other Horcruxes. For that matter, if he didn’t fall dead at the Dark Lord’s hands, the Horcrux in him might not be destroyed properly, either. Albus had only shaken his head and refused. Potter was too dear to him for Albus to let the boy know the truth a moment before he had to.
            No matter how close that might have come to dooming the world, Severus thought. Sometimes he marveled at how willing Albus had been to sacrifice people he claimed to care for to the greater good, and other times he thought it was much the other way about.
            “Yes, I didn’t think so,” Potter said. His voice had gone as soft as starlight. “Hermione didn’t lead me to this one. She thinks that she’ll still find mention of the bond somewhere among all the Dark Arts books she has access to.”
            “Dark Arts books?” Severus blinked. He had never considered Granger as saintly as some of the other professors at Hogwarts, so it didn’t surprise him that she would touch books like those, but the access was a different matter. “How did she get those?”
            “The Blacks have a good library,” said Potter, leaning back in his chair. Everything about him was edged, even the bones of his wrists and elbows that Severus would have simply called thin in other people. Maybe it was the bond that made Severus think about him like that, though, and the sharp peak of the steel mountain in the back of his head. “So does the Ministry. In the meantime, I think the bond is something different.” He watched Severus with narrowed eyes, apparently waiting for him to argue or agree.
            Severus was inclined to do neither, but to switch the subject. This was not at all the way he had envisioned the meeting with Potter going. He had thought he had brought Potter to concede something, since he had come to the meeting at all, instead of holding back and only attending when the bond forced them to. But Potter had an armor that shed all concessions, that made them slide off like water. Severus did not like it.
            “We need to make provisions for what we will do if the bond changes,” he said.
            “Meet.” Potter picked up his awful tea and sipped it again, as if he knew that was the thing he could do that would most irritate Severus. “I told you that already. I am willing to meet if the bond demands it, or the sacrifice starts falling on someone else. But that will depend in part on understanding it. Is there anything else you’ve found?”
            Severus had found the direction he wished this conversation to take, in Potter’s mention of a sacrifice. “You are being an arrogant child,” he hissed.
            Potter’s face lost a certain subtle animation that Severus hadn’t been aware it had—something that separated it from wood. “Arrogant, of course,” he said. “There are many ways that you could call me that. Even Hermione said it once, because I was trying to take the whole burden of the bond on myself.”
            Severus nodded, and started to draw breath again, then stopped it as Potter leaned forwards. Severus did not like the sight of that unmoving face coming towards him. He had to fight to stay still as it finally stopped, looming and hovering over the middle of the table.
            “But a child?” Potter shook his head. “I had perhaps one claim to that, one thing that made me immature. And it’s gone. You and Malfoy took it. Call me arrogant all you want, Snape, but get your terms right.”
            And he leaned back and began sipping tea again, staring at Severus.
            Severus could feel a boiling in the center of his chest. He wondered if Draco’s emotions were now leaking out and affecting him. He wondered if someone had slipped a Heart Attack Poison into the tea. But he could not believe that Potter would have a greater chance of immunity to such a draught than would a Potions master.
            No. He knew what it was, what it meant. He did not want to admit it, but he knew. He leaned back, clutching his teacup, and refused to look away from Potter.
            “Now,” Potter said. “You say the bond is impossible. I think it’s unprecedented. Those might come close to meaning the same thing, in this case. What we need to do is monitor it day-to-day. Keep track of the changes and what you feel from them, as you would in a journal on an experimental potion.”
            “How do you know that?” Severus demanded, before he could let the boiling feeling in his chest stop him. That feeling would have told him that he had already asked too much of Potter. Severus would not let it in.
            “That you keep a journal?” Potter looked him in the eye, cool as a lizard. “I don’t. If you keep track of the changes you make in an experimental potion some other way, use that way instead to track the bond. You’re more used to it, and more likely to notice the changes then.”
            “That Potions masters keep journals.”
            The mountain curved as if it would fall on him, although Potter did nothing but sit there. Severus felt as though the sheer scorn in his eyes was digging a hole in the middle of his chest, but he would do nothing save sit there, either, at least until Potter moved further.
            “Because I’m not as useless as you think I am,” Potter said finally. “I don’t despise Potions and everyone who practices it because of you. If you think you’re that important to me, you’re mistaken.”
            Severus said nothing. If someone had phrased it that way to him, of course he would have laughed and said they were ridiculous. He had never wanted to be an annoyance and an enemy to the boy. Things would have been easier if Albus had either raised Potter in the wizarding world and trained him the way he should have someone who was going to take such an important part in the war, or kept him apart from everyone, training him from the moment he could walk. Either way, Severus would not have needed to hint and work around the enormous walls the boy was carrying.
            “I can tell a little of what you’re thinking.” Potter’s face was austere in a way Severus had never thought it could be. That kind of look belonged on Draco’s face, or maybe his mother’s, the face of someone pure-blooded and high and far away. “Yes, Dumbledore should have done things differently. He didn’t, and this is where we are.” He took another sip of his tea and stood up. “This was useless, I see. You want to bring up the ancient past. I would have expected the recent kind if you were truly the master of vindictive insults the way I always thought you were.”
            He gave a little bow to Severus. “Don’t call on me to meet you again unless you have news to impart.”
            He left, striding through the café and out the door as if he had the ability to walk through any obstacle in the way. Severus stared after him.
            There was no way to be sure, of course, but he thought the mountain of steel had grown steeper.
*
            Harry Apparated back into his bedroom and sat down on the bed, staring at the wall.
            He could still feel Snape’s confusion, and the way that Malfoy was huddling into himself at whatever lair they’d chosen to go to.
            Harry would still have tried to kill them if they touched him, but it was strange. He hadn’t been pretending in those last few moments with Snape. He really did despise them. Snape was less impressive than Harry had learned to account him. He was a really bloody impressive spy, Harry had decided after the war, to have pretended loyalty to Voldemort for so long, enough for Voldemort to put him in charge of Hogwarts, and to fool Harry and everyone else who needed to be fooled during the years Harry had been a student. And Harry had thought Malfoy had a core of inner strength to survive being Voldemort’s torturer without going insane.
            Now, though, both impressions had crumbled like clay in rain. Snape was stuck in that past he had helped to weave. He would never see Harry as anything but a boy, the child of the man he had despised, a rule-breaker, a Gryffindor. He couldn’t move on, which made him useless when it came to dealing with this bond.
            And Malfoy was going to snivel and huddle. Maybe that was how he had survived during the war, too. Death Eaters liked sniveling more than Harry did.
            Harry shook his head and lay down on the bed, hands folded behind his head. I did try, Hermione. I can’t help it if my bondmates are useless pieces of shit.
*
BAFan: I don’t think this chapter will improve your opinion of Harry’s rage!
I do think the rage is in proportion given what happened to him. But if he can’t deal with it, it’s not healthy for him, regardless of what it does to Snape and Draco.
Genuka: Harry doesn’t feel that he’s ignoring it, but he’s content to leave it alone until it does react. He feels that he can’t predict the way it’ll act, anyway.
ChelseaPlume: You might be able to count this meeting as Severus’s something stupid. I don’t know about Harry’s. There might yet be a deeper explosion.
Thank you! This story already has a bunch of tangles I didn’t anticipate; let’s see how it grows.
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The Wages of Going On