lomonaaeren

Part Two.

Part One.

Title: Homunculus to the Life (3/3)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Ron/Hermione, mentions of canon pairings
Content Notes: Not epilogue-compliant, angst, present tense, established Ron/Hermione, threesome, drama
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 4900
Summary: In a conversation with Dumbledore’s portrait after the battle at Hogwarts, Harry finds out that he is and always has been a homunculus—a substitute body made to carry the Horcrux so that little Harry Potter, who lies asleep as a baby under powerful charms, wouldn’t have to. Harry struggles to process the news, the fallout, and the discovery that he might disintegrate at any moment.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice, and will have two parts. (I wanted it to be a oneshot, but it had other ideas). Enjoy.

Thanks again for the reviews! This is the end of the story.

Part Three

Ginny’s letter catches up with them when they’re trying to get precise Apparition coordinates for a hidden magical town in Australia.

Harry reaches up to tickle the breast feathers of the owl who brought it, and then he goes and gets some water for the bird. He’s aware that he’s putting off opening the letter, but he thinks he’s allowed to do that.

And he’s allowed to have moved on, he repeats to himself, as he glances towards the bed where Ron and Hermione are wrapped around each other in exhausted pleasure. Even if Ginny has changed her mind, that doesn’t mean Harry needs to accept her wanting to date him.

Feeling more secure, he gives the owl a treat and opens the letter.

Dear Harry,

My mum has been asking me to think lately about what human really means, and what being someone really means.

And I understand it better now. How you feel, and how Ron and Hermione probably feel. Just because someone says that you’re a homunculus doesn’t mean that you’re not human. Especially when you lived your life for seventeen years—or sixteen, I reckon—thinking you were, and going through so many things humans do.

I can’t promise that I’ll be waiting when you get back. But I might be.

Love,
Ginny.

Harry shakes his head a little. It sounds as though he and Ginny might be friends again someday, which is something he values, but honestly, he doesn’t have to accept the promise that maybe she’ll date him. He has two lovers who are here, with him, right now. That’s of far more value.

“Mate? Who’s the owl from?”

Ron is awake, blinking sleep from his eyes. Harry has to smile at him. It’s one of the cutest things he’s seen Ron do.

“Ginny,” Harry says, and sees Ron draw himself closer to Hermione, as if he’s cold and can use her to shield himself from getting colder. Harry wants to shake his head. Ron’s insecurities seem so visible now, and Harry can see how deeply the times that he got petty or angry or jealous are linked to that. Ron’s understandable, and Harry doesn’t know why he couldn’t understand before.

“Oh? What’s she want?” Ron’s voice is choppy.

“She says she might be waiting when we get back. Maybe.” Harry rolls his eyes. “You have nothing to worry about, Ron. You and Hermione,” he adds, seeing Hermione stirring now too. She yawns and rolls over on her back, and Harry gets a very nice view of her belly and hips. “I don’t dislike her or anything, but obviously what we had in sixth year wasn’t meant to last, either.”

“It’s good you don’t dislike her,” Hermione murmurs, not opening her eyes. “Disliking your future sister-in-law is a recipe for bad family dinners.”

Harry chokes. The owl gives a little fluttering leap on its perch and hoots in disapproval.

“Harry?”

Hermione’s voice is concerned now, and she’s got up from the bed to come forwards and put a hand on his shoulder. Harry blinks. “Um. Nothing. I just supposed I never thought we would—get married, you know?”

“Did you not want to?” Ron’s voice has that neutral sound it gets when he thinks he’s hiding the insecurities. He rolls onto his stomach and stares between them. “There are procedures, you know, in the Ministry. Laws that mean the three of us can marry. But if you don’t want to do it—”

“No, I want to,” Harry says, with a fierce greed burning in his belly. “I really want to. I just didn’t know we could. It’s not possible in the Muggle world.”

Hermione smiles and grabs his hands to draw him back to the bed. “This is one thing where the magical world really does have an advantage over the Muggle one. Loathe as I am to grant that.”

Harry crashes down on the bed between them, laughing, giddy, and twists around to face Ron. He kisses Ron soundly on the nose, laughing again as he watches Ron’s eyes cross trying to watch him, and then rolls onto his back and purrs, “Ron.”

“Yeah?” Every part of Ron’s body is at attention now, flatteringly, as he watches Harry.

“I think I’m ready for you to fuck me now.”

Ron closes his eyes and shudders in response, and then whispers, “Fuck, mate.”

“I said it first.”

Hermione laughs and lies down on the bed next to Harry, tracing one hand over his arm. “I read all about it,” she says. “It would be easier for you to roll over on your stomach, you know, or get up on your knees.”

Harry snorts. “Since when have I taken the easy way?”

“Right, I don’t know why I bothered recommending it,” Hermione says with a sigh, and glances at Ron. “Do you have that lubrication charm we were using the other evening memorized, Ron?”

Harry squirms in anticipation. Honestly, watching Hermione play with Ron’s arse a few evenings ago got him running nearly as hot as the thought of Ron fucking him, and he came in record time.

“Yeah.” Ron swallows and manages to pick up his wand with a trembling hand. Harry cooperates by opening his legs and lifting his hips.

“You—you should hold still, Harry.”

It’s lust and not reluctance that’s making Ron’s voice shake, Harry knows. He pouts at Ron, but lies still, and lets Ron coat his arse with the thick, clear lubricant that the charm conjures. He has to close his eyes as Ron puts his wand down and then slides his fingers slowly into Harry’s arse.

It’s cold at first, shockingly so, but Ron’s fingers are warm, and his hand on Harry’s hip is as firm and reassuring as always. Harry begins to shudder in pleasure soon enough, and opens his eyes to smile up at his best mate.

“Wait until I find the special thing,” Ron says.

“Ron, I told you not to call it the special thing. That sounds so childish.”

Hermione sounds distracted, though, and Harry glances at her to find her eyes locked on his arse. He smiles a little and stretches his legs and arches his back, making Hermione gasp and Ron’s fingers probe deeper into him.

And then Ron does find the special thing. Harry feels as if his brain is flaring and blinking like the computers Dudley got as a kid after he’d played with them for a few days.

“What is that?” he asks, and shoves himself backwards, asking without words for again. Ron grins and obliges him, and Harry’s brain lights up again with bursts of pleasure.

“That’s your prostate,” Hermione says. “It’s an organ that can make a male feel—”

“Hermione, much as I love your lectures, I don’t think Harry can concentrate enough for it to matter right now.”

Ron’s voice is smug, and he’s absolutely right. All Harry can do is squirm on the bed and wait for Ron to press his prostate again, which he does one more time before he takes his hand out of Harry’s arse, and Harry can hear him slicking up his own cock. Harry whines and then winces when he hears the sound.

“I’ve got you, mate,” Ron whispers, probably thinking that the wince is for some other reason.

“I know,” Harry says. “You always do.”

Ron’s smile shines across his face as he enters Harry, slowly, carefully. Harry breathes through the pain at one point, with Hermione’s hand stroking his arm. Then he nods, and Ron pushes forwards again.

He shifts around once he’s in Harry’s arse, and Harry feels weird and full and content. Then Ron hits his prostate again, and Harry gasps and pulls him closer, greedily kissing Ron, trying to get Ron’s tongue in his mouth and Ron’s cock further into his arse and Ron’s everything further into his everything.

“You really like that, huh,” Ron whispers into Harry’s ear as he rides him, his hips making the same shallow thrusts they did the first time Harry sucked him off. “Imagine us doing this again. Imagine me doing this faster and harder, once you’re used to it. Imagine Hermione attaching a cock to herself and doing this to you.”

Harry clenches down, and that he doesn’t come right then is no fault of Ron’s. Hermione bites her lip and cups her own breasts, and Harry manages to turn his head so he can get his mouth around a nipple.

Hermione squeals and drags his head to her chest. Harry can hardly see anything, but it doesn’t matter, not when he’s feeling it all.

He’s not sure if Hermione comes, but she’s obviously enjoying herself, so that’s one thing. He really has to get better at recognizing when a woman comes. Then again, it’s not like he has a lot of experience.

It’s utterly obvious when Ron comes, if only for his harsh breathing and the rush of warmth in Harry’s arse. Ron manages to press against Harry’s prostate one more time, and Harry presses backwards in response and then turns and leans his head in Hermione’s lap and comes himself.

It’s dazzling, thick, and wearying. When he can barely open his eyes after his orgasm, Harry is surprised. He wasn’t this affected the first time, even though he did go to sleep after he’d sucked Ron off.

But Hermione smiles and whispers into his ear as she rolls him onto his back, “I dropped straight off the first time he fucked me, too.”

“All right, mate?”

Harry manages to nod, although his head feels like it weighs about a ton. He yawns and curls up, and Ron and Hermione yawn and curl up with him.

This is the way it’s supposed to go. This is the way he’s supposed to be.

*

The night before they will probably find Hermione’s parents, Hermione sits down with Harry and takes his hand. Ron glances at her, and reads something in her face that Harry can’t, because he stands abruptly, throws on robes, and stalks out of the room.

“What is it?” Harry asks quietly. He wonders if Hermione is going to say something about her parents that she doesn’t want Ron to hear, although Harry can’t imagine what that could be.

Hermione is silent for long seconds. The little room they’re in (at the top of a kind of hostel that apparently wizards in this little Australian seaside town let out on a regular basis) is surprisingly cool, but then, the Southern Hemisphere is trotting through winter. Hermione biter her lip, and finally looks at him.

“You never asked what else Dumbledore said about the reasons that he made you into a homunculus.”

Harry breathes out slowly. “I was doing my best not to think about it, honestly,” he admits. “I know that isn’t particularly brave or heroic, but—”

“Oh, Harry,” Hermione says, and leans forwards across the little table in between them to hug him. “No one could ask more of you than you’ve already done. No one,” she says fiercely, and Harry imagines that she has the faces of some people back in Britain in mind.

Harry smiles and caresses her hair, and they sit in silence for a few seconds. Then he asks, “Do you think it’s important that I hear it?”

“Yes. But Ron left because he heard it once already, and it made him try to set Dumbledore’s portrait on fire.”

Harry pulls back, so hard that his chair nearly falls over. “What?” he asks. Asks, and not squeaks, even though Hermione tells him later that he definitely did.

“He really wasn’t happy.” Hermione shakes her head. “But we’re going to go back to Britain someday, I think, and you should hear what it is.”

Harry nods, shaken. He doesn’t particularly want to, but neither does he want to just always ignore his condition of being a homunculus, or remain ignorant of something his two best lovers know.

A small smile creeps across his face when he realizes the way he thinks of them. Well, they are. Always. Friends and lovers and best mates.

Hermione glances up at him and seems reassured when she sees the smile. She pats his arm and withdraws from his embrace a little to go across the room and retrieve something from the small bag that she unshrank earlier. She gets out a notebook and puts it down on the table between them, even though Harry thinks she probably has what she wants to say memorized.

“Dumbledore created you out of skin and flesh from—various bodies, the Horcrux from Baby Harry, and the magic of the Elder Wand.”

Harry closes his eyes. He knew that he probably came from various dead bodies, or at least one human body. It’s the way that Voldemort must have got his own homunculus body, after all, But it’s another thing to hear it confirmed.

“Why did he think that would work?” he whispers.

The Elder Wand heats up in the holster against his thigh, even as Hermione catches and keeps his hand.

“Partially because it was the Elder Wand, I think, and it could do absurdly powerful things,” she says quietly. “And partially because he assumed that the Horcrux could substitute for a soul. From what he told me, that was one reason he expected you to disintegrate sooner rather than later. The Horcrux was only a shard. He thought it would weaken because it wasn’t designed to power a whole body, or even be in a body once it was detached from the main soul. It would fade, or it would dissipate, and you would just collapse.”

“And would that really be enough to get rid of the Horcrux?” Harry swallows back his own sickness. He needs to know this. “After all, the others needed basilisk venom or Fiendfyre.”

“Remember, he didn’t really know it was a Horcrux at the time, just some kind of Dark magic. He assumed it would fade because such Dark spells do, over time, if they’re not attached to something they can feed on, like a living being’s magic.”

“But I lived,” Harry says quietly.

“You did,” Hermione says, and dashes her hand across her eyes for a second to remove the tears. “You earned that stupid title, Harry, even if I think that you might have given me white hair several times over earning it.”

Harry smiles a little. “Where did my magic come from?”

“The blood and flesh he used was from dead wizards’ bodies. And he also attributed that to the Elder Wand.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“No.” Hermione’s hands close on both him and on the notebook, crumpling some of the pages. Harry thinks it’s a measure of her mood that she doesn’t even appear to notice that she’s damaging a book. “Harry, there’s no precedent for this. No one has ever done anything like this. Dumbledore said he checked on you a few times over the years, and each time, he was stunned to see that you were still alive.”

“But he didn’t check closely enough to see that I was in a cupboard, then.”

Hermione stares at him, her face stunned, and Harry flushes. He thought she knew. He mentioned it—didn’t he? Or maybe she did know, and it’s just that he said it openly for the first time.

“I should have let Ron burn that stupid portrait,” Hermione whispers finally, her voice softly shaking, furious.

Harry squeezes her hand, and she gets up and comes around the table and buries her face in his shoulder. When she shakes with soft sobs, Harry doesn’t mention it. He holds her, and Hermione finally swallows and goes back to sit on the other side of the table.

“Bet he was surprised when I got old enough to receive my Hogwarts letter,” Harry mutters.

Hermione drowns everything with a gulp, air and tears and fury, and nods. “And that was when the charade started to catch up to him, I think. He assumed that he would be able to announce Baby Harry’s survival and release from the Time Charms when you were—gone, and then allow him to grow up in normal time, which meant that he wouldn’t have needed to use the Potter money or get a letter for years yet. Instead, here you were, thriving and acting like a hu—normal magical child instead of a homunculus.”

“You can say human, Hermione. It’s all right.”

“You are human.”

“But I didn’t start out that way. So the question is, how did it happen?”

“I don’t know.” Hermione bows her head. “Again, Dumbledore’s portrait wanted to attribute everything to the Elder Wand, or the fact that you apparently became the Master of Death. On accident,” she adds with a huge frown, so Harry can see what she thinks of that kind of thing happening without a plan. Harry grins at her. “He was scrambling, though. Just trying to cover up that he didn’t know, either.”

“But you have a theory.”

Hermione blushes bright red, which, given that they barely bother to wear clothes anymore when it’s just the three of them, means that she turns red everywhere. “Am I that obvious?”

“Not to other people, probably.” Harry captures her hand and kisses her knuckles. “But I want to know what it is, my brilliant girl.”

Hermione turns pink with pleasure this time. “All right. I think that the Horcrux was a piece of a soul, and it was living in a human body, and it didn’t have anything to attach to the way it would have if it was still in Baby Harry, or even still in Voldemort. So it grew a soul. It combined with the magic of the Elder Wand and the magic animating the homunculus, and a soul—sprouted.”

Harry swallows. He thought he was past feeling tainted about being a homunculus, but the idea that his soul is really Voldemort’s…

Well, it turns out that you’re just barely a month past having a piece of his soul inside you anyway, aren’t you? And if it had all been his, it would have gone with the Horcrux when he hit you with the Killing Curse.

“I suppose we should be lucky that none of the others did that,” Harry breathes, trying to imagine battling the diary if it had had its own soul.

“I don’t think they could. They weren’t in human bodies.”

Harry blinks at her. “And that made all the difference?”

“Yes. Plus—” Hermione flushes again and bends her head, fiddling with the crumpled pages of the notebook.

“Hermione.”

“You’re going to think it’s silly.”

“The only thing about you that I think is silly is your hatred of Quidditch.”

Hermione laughs, and relaxes. “It was what I spent so much time talking over with Apolline. One of their ancestors was a homunculus, sort of. His soul had existed in its adult body, and then he was killed, but in such a way that his murderer trapped and kept a piece of his soul, the piece that would have formed a ghost under normal circumstances. Eventually the enemy put the piece of soul in a homunculus, I suppose to torture it more. But his soul took control of the homunculus, and escaped, and made his way back to his family. And his body grew, and he lived, and his family protected and guarded him fiercely. I think they made his soul grow with love, Harry.”

She looks defiant at the end, as if she expects Harry to sneer after all. But all Harry can do is put his arms around her and pull her to him.

“Then you did it,” he whispers. “You and Ron. And others who loved me, like Mrs. Weasley and Hagrid and Sirius. But mostly you two. You saved me. You kept me alive. You keep me alive.”

Hermione leans fully into him, and Harry kisses the top of her head. And if they end up making love on the bed before Ron returns, the only objection he has when he comes back is that he missed that part.

That night, Harry finally writes the owl to Ginny that he’s been putting off too long.

Dear Ginny,

It’s fine. It really is. Please do what you can to move on. I hope we’ll always be friends.

Best,
Harry.

*

“We don’t have a daughter.”

That’s what Hermione’s parents say after she’s restored their memories.

Hermione stands very small with her head bowed and her shoulders hunched as her parents walk into their house and slam the door. Harry and Ron have waited nearby, hidden under the Invisibility Cloak. The grey sky hangs above them, and dust blows past, and Hermione finally turns and walks towards them.

They hug her, and Apparate back to the little room they rented.

That’s when Hermione begins to weep. Harry curls up on one side of her, and Ron takes the chair next to the bed and holds her hand.

Hermione sniffles, and asks for a handkerchief finally. Harry Transfigures her one out of a blank page from the notebook, and Hermione cuddles harder into his hip and sighs. Harry runs his fingers through her hair.

“I suppose I should have expected it,” Hermione whispers finally, tired. “What I did to them was pretty horrible.” She glares at Ron, then at Harry over her shoulder, as if daring them to disagree with her.

“Yeah, it was,” Ron says.

Hermione’s mouth drops open. But Harry knows exactly where Ron’s going with this, they’re perfectly in sync, and he caresses Hermione’s shoulder and leans in to whisper into her ear.

“And what I did with the Cruciatus I cast on Amycus Carrow was pretty terrible. And Ron walking away from us in the middle of the Horcrux hunt was terrible. And we used the Imperius and broke into the bank when we might have been able to find some other way to get the Horcrux cup than casting Unforgivales and robbing the goblins.”

Hermione has shifted to her “listening intently” posture. Harry kisses her ear and goes on.

“The point is, we’ve all done horrible things. And—”

“We love you anyway,” Ron finishes.

Hermione begins crying again when she hears that, but these are softer tears, and they hold her throughout the night. When she’s finally asleep between them, Ron reaches across her shoulder and touches Harry’s, pressing firmly down.

Harry knows what it means, the physical equivalent of the words Ron said to Hermione.

Together. Until the end. Always.

*

They come back to Britain on an April morning, nearly a year later.

They continued on from Australia to New Zealand, and across the Pacific, and to the States, and down into South America. They went where they wanted and ate what they wanted, and stayed long enough in Brazil to pick up a little Portuguese without using Translation Charms. Harry’s memories are full of dozens of small rooms and the first time that he ate an incredibly greasy American cheeseburger and the waterfall they spent almost half a day gazing at.

And Ron and Hermione. So much laughter and lovemaking and living.

Harry is no longer afraid that he will simply collapse and disappear one day. Hermione is no longer worried about hurting him by continuing her research into homunculi and how this might have happened.

She even told him that she thinks the Resurrection Stone probably showed him illusions of what he wanted to see rather than the real spirits of the dead on his walk through the Forest, and Harry just nodded, accepting it. The Hallows have wills of their own, as he knows from eleven months of interacting with the Elder Wand and the awakened Cloak. It doesn’t surprise him that the Resurrection Stone would have shown him what he wanted to see to try and convince Harry to keep it.

(That’s also why, when the damn stone showed up on the table next to their bed in Brazil one morning six months ago, Harry grimaced and tucked it away. He’ll keep it. He just doesn’t ever intend to use it).

They walk up to the Burrow and smile at each other as they smell biscuits baking. Harry can see the hunger in Ron’s face, but honestly, he’s feeling much the same way. Not that anything will be exactly the same as it was.

They know that the Prophet hasn’t stopped running stories about him being a homunculus, according to Molly’s letters, but it’s off the front page now, and at least most people seem to think it’s a fairly boring story. They’re much more interested in the cleanup effort going on after the war, and in Baby Harry.

From what Molly has said in her irritated letters—she also had to be stopped from burning Dumbledore’s portrait—Dumbledore apparently instructed the Unspeakables about what to do when Harry died because he knew that he himself might not survive the war. Or might even die of old age before Voldemort came back. If both Dumbledore and Harry were dead, then the Unspeakables were to release Baby Harry from the Time Room and choose a good family to have him raised by. It was to keep hope alive, or some such bollocks.

Honestly, Harry doesn’t care that much anymore. Dumbledore was wrong about his homunculus body decaying overnight, that’s all. And Harry can let him be wrong without needing to go and yell at the portrait about it.

(Satisfying as that might be).

They’ve arrived a few hours before they told Molly they would, to surprise her. But it appears someone else has been watching for them.

The door of the Burrow flies open, and a child much taller than Harry expected comes running out. His hair is fuzzy around his head, and he’s wearing tiny blue robes that make him look like a cloud.

He runs straight to Harry, yelling, “Harry!” as loudly as he can.

Harry extends his arms automatically, not sure if the child is naming himself or calling for Harry. But it doesn’t matter, as Baby Harry grabs his arms and kicks as hard as he can, and, bemused, Harry lifts him up.

Baby Harry is a lot heavier than he was, too. He wheels his feet in the air, giggling, and reaches up to lean his hand on Harry’s scar.

Ron and Hermione go still on either side of him. Harry knows instinctively that they’re planning to intervene if this is hurting him at all.

But Harry closes his eyes, and feels a soft throb in his scar that is nothing like the pain of the Horcrux. A connection to Baby Harry. Something strange, and probably not accounted for in either Dumbledore or Hermione’s theories, but there nonetheless.

“Harry,” Baby Harry says in a deeply satisfied voice.

Harry finds himself shifting the kid automatically so that he’s resting against his hip. Baby Harry wraps his arms around as much of Harry’s chest as he can and leans his head on Harry’s shoulder.

He can feel Ron and Hermione exchanging glances over his head. He looks up, and they stare back and forth between him and Baby Harry.

“Mum’s raising him,” Ron says, continuing the silent conversation.

“Look at them,” Hermione retorts.

Molly appears in the door of the Burrow then, slipping off her apron. She’s smiling, but there’s a wistful edge to it.

“He was upset all the time, randomly,” she says quietly. “I suspect, although I can’t be sure, that it was when you were. And then he started becoming happier and happier when you owled me that you were in the Atlantic and going closer to Britain. He’s been looking out the window all today.”

“I don’t want to take him away from you—”

Baby Harry lets out a wail that’s ear-piercing at this close distance and digs his hands into Harry’s throat in a death grip.

“Okay, okay, kid, don’t strangle me,” Harry mutters, shifting Baby Harry in his arms.

“Harry,” Baby Harry says. “Stay with me.” It’s a demand.

Harry closes his eyes against the swift tears that spring to them. And—

He doesn’t understand this, or the connection that seems to exist between him and his—what? Little brother? Younger father? Fellow former Horcrux container?

Little brother should do it, Harry decides, and takes a slow breath. He has responsibilities that he knows, because of the letters he exchanged with Andromeda Tonks, that she’s going to let him honor. She has more wariness about him being a godfather to Teddy at such a young age than she does about him being a homunculus.

He can be a godfather. He can be a big brother.

Ron and Hermione’s hands settle on his shoulders, and Harry nods.

With them, he can do anything.

Baby Harry kicks to be let down, as though he understands Harry’s mood and accepts it for the answer it is. Harry puts him on the ground, glad for the stranglehold on his neck easing, only to have Baby Harry replicate it on his hand.

“Inside,” Baby Harry says, and tows him towards the Burrow.

Ron and Hermione follow, and Molly laughs and kisses Harry on the forehead as he passes her.

“Welcome home,” she whispers. She doesn’t look surprised when Ron and Hermione press in closely against Harry, but then, Ron said that he told her by owl ages ago.

Where the three of us are—

Baby Harry’s hand gets even tighter.

Maybe where the four of us are, that’s home.

The End.