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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 Eight—More Than Cracking Ribs
            “Did you disturb my notes, Draco?”
            Severus felt the guilt in the back of his mind throb as Draco hunched his shoulders over his newspaper. Severus sighed in disgust. He was going to continue with a lecture about how he was the likeliest one to actually find out what the bond was, considering Draco’s distraction and Potter’s idiocy, and therefore Draco needed to leave his notes alone if he really wanted to be free of the bond.
            But before he could begin, Draco lifted his head from the dinner table and said, “Yes. I did.” He seemed to concentrate to make sure that the words sounded as two distinct sentences, then immediately turned back to his food, shoveling it into his mouth in a way that had always made Severus wince when he watched it from the High Table at Hogwarts.
            Irritated at himself with remembering school—they had connections and friendships more recent than that—Severus shook his head and sat down opposite Draco. It was his usual seat, but it had other advantages at the moment. “Why?”
            “I sent copies of them, plus mine, to Potter,” Draco replied, smacking his lips a little to get the food out of the way so he could answer.
            Severus sat frozen, staring at him. Draco considered him back, seemed to decide he had said enough, and returned to concentrating on the paper in front of him with implacable energy. The guilt in the back of Severus’s mind had stopped throbbing.
            “Why?” Severus heard the word come out in such a hiss that a stranger might have thought he was the one in this bond who spoke Parseltongue. And the gift would have been more worthily bestowed in that case, he thought, his hands curling furiously in front of him. “Why would you do—”
            “Because I felt a tremor in my chest,” Draco interrupted, staring up at him. “I don’t know what it was, but it felt like the bond was pulling me. And I decided that I care more about this bond being ended and discovered and—and whatever else than I care about being the one to do it.”
            Severus bit off his exasperation. Was that the only impression Draco had drawn from Severus’s anger earlier? Perhaps it was, and Severus was sorry for it. He took a deep breath and made himself take a drink of the clear water in his glass and take a bite of the excellent spaghetti in front of him before he ventured further. At least the Malfoy house-elves knew how to treat a guest, if the Malfoys did not.
            “Perhaps you do not understand, then,” he said. “Potter will actively work against us. There is no reason to send him notes that he cannot make sense of.”
            “Perhaps he’ll actively work against us if we don’t treat him right,” Draco snapped, suddenly so bristling that Severus again could only stare. “If we help him in turn, and at least pretend that we respect him, who’s to say?”
            Severus moistened his lips with his glass once more, before he shook his head. “This is fancy, Draco,” he said, not accusingly, because he did not want the boy to become too involved in his stirring thoughts of rebellion. He knew what the matter was now. Draco’s pride had been stung by being treated like a lesser partner in this—relationship, and that meant Severus had to soothe it again. “Potter can sense our emotions, or at least know certain things, through the bond. That means that he would know if we were to pretend respect.”
            Draco snorted and folded his arms. “But what about outwardly? And—and you can’t tell me that you didn’t notice the change in the steel mountain that you feel about him a while ago.”
            “You speak so eloquently,” Severus murmured, and watched in satisfaction as Draco flushed and flinched in the same moment. “Perhaps if you were to tell me what you think is the matter in more coherent terms, I would be able to tell you if I had noticed something or not.”
            “It was right after the pull,” Draco said. “I noticed the top of Potter’s steel mountain was blunted. You didn’t?”
            The disbelief in his voice made Severus hesitate. Should he be angry that Draco was insulting him, or proud that the boy thought so well of him as not to believe that he wouldn’t notice such a change right away?
            For the moment, Severus closed his eyes and sought out the image of the mountain in his mind, giving it a critical survey. He nodded slowly. He supposed the mountain did look rather different, now that he thought of it. Dimpled, or crumpled. He had not known there was anything that could dent Potter’s stubbornness like that, but whatever it was, he approved of it.
            “Perhaps we should be glad of it,” he said, opening his eyes again. “Perhaps Potter will be more prone to work with us now.”
            Draco’s mouth opened, but an owl settled at the table before he could respond. Giving Severus a dark look—as if he were responsible for the small feathers the bird scattered everywhere as it arrived—Draco untied the message from the owl’s leg and began to devour it with his eyes, a fork still poised in front of his nose.
            “Perhaps you can tell me what it says, since it is obviously from Potter, and I am involved in this bond as well,” Severus pointed out, when long moments had passed with no sign of that happening.
            Draco twisted his lip at him and swallowed the bite on his fork, then put it down with a clang that seemed to shake far more than the table, although Severus knew, rationally, that it should not have shaken even that. “I’m tempted not to,” Draco said. “Because it would serve you right for being such a bastard about Potter. But I suspect Potter would want me to, since this also involves you.” He gave Severus such a look of loathing that Severus frowned, and held out the letter.
            Severus skimmed it. It seemed to be a deal of nonsense, but did contain the information that Potter’s ribs had been cracked—ridiculous, a simple injury to heal—and that he was looking up information on magical creature bonds to try and break this one.
            Severus slammed the letter down. “It is nonsensical of him to try and break the bond when he has no idea what it is!” he snarled.
            “I quite agree.”
            Severus twisted his head around. The guilt in the back of his head had dimmed oddly, as though Draco had turned off lights that had been shining on it, and Draco was kicked back with one leg elevated, a posture Severus had not seen for years. Draco also had his plate propped on his stomach and was eating with every evidence of enjoyment, something he almost never did. He wasn’t dribbling, Severus noted, to be fair.
            But he did not want to be fair. “If you agree, why do you sound as if you are opposing me?” he asked sharply.
            “It’s ridiculous of him—if he could have any notion that his bondmates wanted to help him.” Draco tilted his chair back in towards the table and put the plate on it. He had finished all his food, Severus noted, for the first time since the ritual circle. “But he doesn’t. The only one he’s had a meeting with is you, and you behaved abominably.”
            “He is Potter,” Severus said, taken aback. Did Draco believe that he would have behaved better if he was the one who had gone to meet Potter? With the history between them? The notion made Severus want to laugh and heave, both at the same time.
            “He’s the person whom we raped.”
            Having the word turned on him made Severus flinch, but only in surprise. He charged in the next moment, to clear Draco’s mind of any notion that he might have won the advantage in this round. “Yes, he is. Which means that the ritual is a powerful one, because of the virgin sacrifice, and a dangerous one. Potter would be well-advised not to try breaking it on his own.”
            “What made him think he had to?” Draco pointed his fork at Severus. “We did.”
            “I am glad to hear you assign yourself some role in the play,” Severus sneered, too shaken to be as graceful with the words as he wanted to be. “Did you think that he would think kindly of you?”
            “Right now, he thinks more kindly of me than of you. He even invites me to correspond with him.” Draco picked up the letter and smiled at Severus. Severus wanted to snarl, but he understood too well. Draco was most alive with opposition, with someone who didn’t want to do something, or blamed him. He had shown that with Potter all those years. He had been terrified when he was working to save his parents from the Dark Lord, but active. And now Severus had become the opposing party. That had been what Draco needed to shake him out of his apathy.
            “You keep saying that I need to face up to the reality of what happened,” Draco told him, leaning close enough that Severus could feel his breath, if not smell it. “I’m doing that. Are you?”
            And he spun and strode fluidly from the room, with a grace Severus usually thought reserved for himself.
            Severus stared blindly at his food. Then he shoved the table back hard enough to make house-elves appear and squeak in dismay, and went into his lab, where there were more things to break.
*
            Draco Apparated to the coordinates that Potter had given him in his latest letter, and looked around cautiously. It seemed to be a simple grassy field, but Draco had the strong impression it might once have been more than that, for Potter to know the place. Everything in his life had to be connected with the danger of the Dark Lord somehow, didn’t it?
            But for now, the place was plain and lovely. A few birds wandered on the ground, and Draco stirred up leaves as he walked under the mostly-dead trees. He stood under the tallest one, as Potter had told him to, and waited.
            “Malfoy.”
            Draco started and spun around. Potter was walking towards him. He stopped a precise fifteen feet away from Draco and stood there, regarding him. The steel mountain in the back of Draco’s mind was as straight-topped and unbending as if it had never been broken.
            Draco shook his head a little and started towards Potter. Potter’s wand immediately snapped out and pointed at him. “Don’t,” Potter hissed, as if he hurt.
            “What, you want us to shout to each other across this field?” Draco asked in incredulity. Someone could come by and hear them, either wizard or Muggle, both of which would be disastrous for different reasons. He wondered that Potter was willing to risk it.
            “That’s close enough,” said Potter, and his eyes were fixed on Draco with such a complex of emotions that Draco gave up trying to parse them. The steel mountain didn’t really help him much in that regard. Everything there was the same shade of hard and cold and metallic.
            “Okay,” Draco said, reckoning he could understand some things without needing them explained, and stood still. Potter didn’t lower his wand, but did shift his weight from one leg to the other, which Draco reckoned meant progress.
            “So,” Potter said. “In your last letter you said it’s not a good idea to experiment with ways to break the bond. Why not?”
            “Because it’s the same thing as trying to treat a serious disease with Pepper-Up,” Draco said. He had spent a few hours thinking of that comparison, and was disappointed when Potter did nothing but raise an eyebrow. “I mean it, Potter. We have no idea what kind of bond this is. Yes, maybe it’s not that strong and you can make it disappear with a ritual that you dream up five minutes before you fall asleep. But anything that breaks your ribs is serious.”
            “Cracks them,” Potter corrected.
            “Right,” said Draco, unimpressed in spite of his resolve to try and appear nicer. It seemed to him that Potter used that same steel determination he had used to survive the ritual on everything, and Draco wasn’t actually sure if that was the best course. “Anyway, Potter, my point is that we don’t know what we’re messing around with. The best course would be to study it together, and not make any sudden moves.”
            A dry little noise filled the air, actually making Draco look around for a minute to see who else was moving through the fallen leaves. Then he turned back, and saw with some incredulity that Potter was laughing.
            “You’re talking about it like it’s an animal,” Potter said, waving a hand at Draco when he looked inquiringly at him. Inquiringly, and hard, Draco reckoned. Well, he wasn’t about to simply let Potter plunge through this without an explanation. “It’s not. It’s a goddamn bloody bond, one I don’t want, and I’m going to end it.”
            “Now who’s talking about it like it’s a living thing?” Draco folded his arms. “Whether you want it or not, Potter, Severus and I are in this with you, and that means we get a vote on how to dispose of it—”
            He took a step backwards. There was no doing anything else before the lambent fury in Potter’s eyes.
            “Oh, you get a vote, do you?” Potter asked, and he was breathing hard enough that Draco was stunned that the leaves by his feet didn’t get up and fly.
            “Potter,” Draco whispered, shaking his head a little. “What—what—”
            “You don’t get a bloody vote,” Potter said. His voice had plunged into a low snarl that Draco knew he would be hearing in the back of his sleep for a long, long time. “Snape has said that he won’t help me. Even if I wanted to listen to you, that rather tortures the whole idea of working together to death, don’t you think?”
            “I can talk Severus around,” Draco promised, while wondering if that was actually true. Severus had spent most of the past several days, during which Potter and Draco had exchanged letters, in his lab. “He’s offended at me, too, right now, but that will pass. And then we can figure out the solution together.”
            “I’ve been talking to you because you helped me and because Hermione thinks I should.” Potter’s eyes flashed, and so did the steel mountain in the back of Draco’s head, brightly enough to make him dizzy. “Not because of anything else. I don’t like you. I don’t want you around.”
            “I know,” Draco said. “But you can tolerate our presence for long enough to break the bond, surely? What were you planning to do if you didn’t have us?”
            “Use effigies of you,” Potter said coolly. “I’m told that they’re most effective with hair and toenail clippings attached, by one who ought to know.”
            Granger, Draco was instinctively sure, but he stared at Potter in appalled silence anyway, until Potter snapped, “What?” and Draco had to ignore the temptation to Apparate away.
            “That’s dangerous Dark magic,” Draco whispered. “If something goes wrong during the modified ritual and it harms the effigies, we could be harmed because of their connection to us.”
            Potter didn’t answer. He just stood there, eyes wide and dark, and Draco took a deep breath and plunged ahead.
            “Would it really be so bad, trying to work with Severus?” He heard the wheedling tone in his voice, and winced. He hated sounding that way, especially when he had been so confident and at ease with himself these last few days, but it did often seem to be his fate around Potter. “I mean—we have to be able to trust each other sometime.”
            “I trusted you once,” Potter said. “I trusted you both to get through the ritual, and not make it so bad. And since then, I’ve put up with more and more than a person ever should from their—”
            He stopped. Draco had been prepared to wince from the words that he knew must come next, but Potter just stood there and stared at him, as though Draco was the one who had refused to do what he had to do, and not the other way around. Draco shook his head, not understanding, and finally said, “Rapists?”
            Potter spat at him, a big wad that made Draco flinch back. By the time he looked up again, Potter had already Apparated.
            Well, that was useless, Draco thought, at first, as he Apparated back home himself, and glanced at the closed door of Severus’s lab as he walked past it. He would wait a while to tell him about the meeting, because Severus would gloat that neither of them had been successful, and Draco didn’t really want to listen to him talking about that right now.
            But his mind remained on the puzzle, playing with it, connecting it with the thought he had had before, about Potter’s steely determination not being the best way to face everything, and by the time he sat down in the library with books in front of him again, he thought he understood.
            Potter wanted to bull through everything—the ritual, the sacrifice, the rape, finding a way to break the bond. But that meant he was unable to stop or slow down, or he would have to do some thinking, maybe even make an effort to adjust himself and feel.
            Draco nodded. Potter hadn’t been allowing himself to think of the rape in any terms except his own disgust and hatred of Draco and Severus, because he thought that would make him weak. Or weaken.
            Draco hesitated a long time before he did what he had thought of next. But in the end, the worst that would happen was Potter sending back a Howler, and he already hated Draco. There was the faint, faint chance that this might make a difference.
            I’m sorry, Draco wrote out, and waited a long few minutes to see if more inspiration would occur to him. In the end, it didn’t, so he just added, I wish things could have been different, because we did suffer, but you suffered more, and went up to the Owlery.
            The steel mountain glittered in the back of his head as Draco watched the bird fly out of sight.
*
            I’ m sorry. I wish things could have been different, because we did suffer, but you suffered more.
            The words made Harry feel as though the air in his throat had frozen. He tore the note to tiny strips, and then cast Reparo on it so that the pieces of paper would fly together and he could watch as the note settled back on the table. He hugged himself with both arms and paced back and forth in the Black library. Ron and Hermione had gone home hours ago, taking books with them.
            They would soothe him if they were here. Or they would say—
            Harry let out a choked laugh and collapsed into the chair that he’d sat in for so many hours over the last few days while he and Hermione worked on modifying the bond-breaking ritual. It was impossible that she would understand the way that Malfoy’s words made Harry feel. She would talk hopefully about an apology and reconciliation and how that meant Harry’s rapists weren’t so terrible, after all.
            There. He’d thought the word.
            It seemed to crash into him like a hawk with talons of steel, but Harry frankly didn’t care. He would face up to the word, and master it, and put it behind him, because it was ridiculous that he could be unmanned by a mere two syllables.
            Unmanned, the way he had been when they put their hands all over him and he’d had to feel them inside him—
            Harry gagged. He managed to Summon a basin to the library before he threw up, thank Merlin, because he knew he would never make it to one of Grimmauld Place’s bathrooms before he did.
            And that was ridiculous, too. Harry wasn’t weak. He ought to be able to control his throat and tongue, to keep the vomit down, and his legs, to make them walk straight beneath him instead of wobble, if that was what he wanted. He was—he was being defeated by a mere reflex. It was daft.
            He would not be. He would not. He would not.
            He felt the determination settle deep into him, and he slammed the determination at the problem, the way he had thrown his will into the bargain with the bond. He was still here. He was still sane. He wouldn’t be the child that Snape wanted him to be, or the victim that Malfoy wanted him to be, or the raped virgin that his friends saw, someone too tiny-hearted even to have had sex before this.
            Harry flung himself to his feet. He was going to prove what he was, what he chose to be, what he had bargained with the bond to be.
            He was going to be an Auror.
            And that meant he had a job that was more important right now than modifying any bloody bonding ritual, or spending time with his bondmates, or whatever Hermione would have thought he should do if she saw him right now. He had a traitor in the Aurors to find.
            Harry turned, and ignored the wrench in the middle of his chest. It wasn’t that big, it wasn’t painful, and it was soon over. It was probably the bond reacting to his decision. That didn’t matter. He wouldn’t allow it to matter.
            There was no choice but to go on. Otherwise, he might as well curl up and let his brains leak out his ears under the pressure of his terror, the way that the Lestranges had wanted to happen.
            He took one step—
            And a silent explosion shook him, so hard that his first thought was that someone had Apparated through the wards and into his house the way that Rabastan and Rodolphus had attacked the safehouse. He looked around, wildly.
            The explosion came from inside him, as Harry discovered a moment later when a distinct shredding sensation tore down the middle of his chest. He looked down, and clothes and skin had been ripped open, as though someone had taken a knife and simply parted both of them at once.
            The pain came a moment after that.
            Harry fell to the floor and curled up around it, his wand clutched in his hand. He forced the words of spells that would replenish his blood and keep him from bleeding to death between his clenched teeth. He could not yet manage the spell that would close the wound permanently, or the one that would keep him from staining the carpet, but he kept his mind furiously on the words that he could remember, and the will to force them out.
            He had fought the bond before and won. He would win this time.
            He descended into a maelstrom of pain, and then the same ripping started in the middle of his back and he descended into blackness.
*
Jenn: This is going to be a story where there’s an outside force—Draco was right to compare it to a disease—that has to be dealt with, whether or not they’re ready. But at least Harry can choose his way to deal with it.
Genuka: That would create more problems than it would solve. Harry would probably kill them if they tried to kidnap him right now.
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The Wages of Going On