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lomonaaerenTitle: The Bonding Athame
Pairing: Harry/Theo/Draco/Blaise
Content Notes: Humor, “eighth” year, forced marriage, present tense, angst
Rating: PG-13
“You need more training on how to recognize Dark artifacts,” says Professor Angela Greengrass, roaming back and forth in front of the class with her eyes flashing. “I won’t have it said that all of you failed the Defense Against the Dark Arts NEWT because you didn’t know it.”
Harry barely manages to hold in a yawn. He thought he would enjoy a normal year for once at Hogwarts, with a Defense professor who’ll be there next year and nothing but his NEWTS to prepare for. Unexpectedly, though, it’s kind of boring.
“Mr. Potter! Since you appear so bored, let me give you some excitement.” Professor Greengrass whips a knife out of her robe pocket. Harry squints at it. It appears to be made of obsidian, or some other dark material, with a hilt that’s made of something white—bone?—and wrapped in silver wire. “This is an extremely Dark athame. It does not, however, kill or poison on contact. Handle it, and tell me what you can observe from it.”
Harry sighs and reaches out to accept the knife. Professor Greengrass is holding it by the hilt, though, which means Harry can’t avoid touching the blade. Which means that she’s to blame for what happens next, as far as Harry’s concerned.
“Ow!”
“I told you to be careful with it, Mr. Potter.”
The blade does indeed seem to be obsidian, or maybe black glass. Harry scowls at her and juggles the knife around until he can hold the hilt. The blood welling on his finger from the deep, sharp slice doesn’t actually hurt that much. But Harry wants people to know when he’s been hurt by the Dark knife his professor was waving around, damn it.
“It’s—absorbing my blood,” Harry says, after studying it for a moment. Not a drop has fallen to the floor, that’s for sure. “And on the hilt, too,” he adds, as he notices his bloody fingerprints disappearing.
“Good.” Professor Greengrass nods. “Those are important clues to the nature of the athame. Does anyone else want to hazard a different guess?”
Harry glances around the room, not that surprised to see Blaise Zabini’s hand rise carelessly into the air. Since the war, Zabini seems to have relaxed a lot, and become a lot more vocal, too.
“Mr. Potter, pass the athame to Mr. Zabini.”
Harry then finds out why Professor Greengrass probably held it by the hilt (other than that she’s the sort of teacher who thinks of everything as a lesson). It’s fucking difficult to juggle the knife so that you can hand the hilt to the other person but don’t get cut by the blade, either. The athame makes another small cut as he hands it to Zabini.
Zabini eyes Harry, not the knife, as he twirls it around. Harry frowns and mouths Show off in his direction.
Zabini looks down at the athame with a little grin. “It’s the kind of blade used in powerful rituals,” he says, and traces the patterns of silver wire on the hilt. “The way it’s wrapped, here and here? That’s meant to make it easier to grip when the blade gets coated with blood, and the silver also honors the moon, which would be important in many rituals like these.”
“Gross,” Ron says.
Professor Greengrass claps her hands. “That is indeed true, Mr. Zabini, but you haven’t said what the true purpose of the knife is.”
“Oh, I think I know,” Zabini says, his eyes glinting for some reason. He tosses the knife abruptly across the class to Malfoy, which makes even Harry flinch. Sure, Malfoy’s a right prat, but he’s acted like a lost puppy since they came back to Hogwarts. Singling him out like this isn’t something Harry would do.
But Malfoy catches the athame by the hilt—Seeker reflexes, Harry’s sure—and turns it around to look at it, seeming more alive than he has since the beginning of the year. He touches two indentations on the hilt, Professor Greengrass casting a Magnifying Charm when Malfoy asks, that Harry didn’t even notice.
“These indentations are in the same place on opposite sides of the hilt and look exactly the same,” Malfoy says. “The distances between them are also exactly the same. This indicates that the athame is used in rituals of binding or joining.”
“Very good, Mr. Malfoy,” Professor Greengrass says with a small nod. “But can you not be more specific?”
“Not right now,” Malfoy says cryptically, which makes Harry wonder if there’s a spell on the knife that keeps people from discerning the true origin. That would fit Professor Greengrass’s teaching style. He tosses the knife onto Nott’s desk.
Nott, like Malfoy, has been quiet since the war, but he was always pretty quiet. He scoops the knife up now and turns it around in his hand, as if admiring it, before looking up with the first smile Harry can remember ever seeing from him.
“It’s a bonding athame,” he says calmly. “It creates a bonding—a binding marriage—between the person it cuts and the next people who touch it.”
“What?” Harry says.
“What?” Hermione says, dropping her quill.
“Gross,” Ron says.
Professor Greengrass claps her hands again if this is exciting news. “Precisely! Five points to Slytherin, Mr. Nott.”
“Wait a minute,” Harry says loudly, making everyone in the class look at him. “Does that mean that Nott and Malfoy and Zabini and I are all married?”
“More precisely, they are all married to you,” Professor Greengrass says, while the chattering of the other students mounts louder and louder. “But I suppose it would not be amiss to say there is a fourway bond. You would have needed specific words of binding or a specific rite to make it a marriage in which the three of them were bound to you, but not to each other.” She Levitates the bonding athame carefully into the air and casts a spell that surrounds it with white, flickering flames. “There.”
“The bonding is gone?” Harry asks hopefully.
“No,” Professor Greengrass says. “I cleansed the blood from it so that other people can touch and examine it without initiating the bonding with you. I think four spouses is enough in one marriage.” She takes the athame across the room to hand to Susan Bones, while Harry stares at her back.
“Did she just—” Hermione’s hand shoots into the air, because she evidently wants Professor Greengrass to answer the question. “Professor! Why did you not warn Harry before he ended up married to three people?”
“It will be an unforgettable lesson to take caution when handling Dark artifacts,” says Professor Greengrass happily. Then she nods as Susan Levitates the knife and gingerly turns it around in the air to look at. “Very good, Miss Bones, two points to Hufflepuff. One bonding per class is also enough, I think.”
*
“Wait up a minute, Potter.”
Harry turns around with his arms folded and an expression on his face he knows is mulish. But he doesn’t care. God, how is this kind of thing always happening to him?
And to think he thought a normal year would be boring.
Malfoy is in the lead as the other three boys come out of the classroom. Harry eyes them. All three are smirking. He rolls his eyes.
“Yes, yes, I know it’s funny,” he says. “But you knew what it was and how to figure it out. So you must be able to figure out some kind of Dark artifact that would sever the bonding and leave us unmarried, right?”
“Why would we want to do that?”
It’s Zabini who speaks, his eyes wide and his voice very soft. Harry looks at him. Yes, there’s a trace of laughter on his face, but he leans forwards without actually laughing, and touches Harry’s elbow.
“We chose this. We knew what was happening and we chose this, Harry.”
Harry backs away from both the touch and the use of his name. Zabini is weird, he remembers. He also said that Ginny was attractive for a blood traitor, and Harry tightens his will against the temptation he could see this becoming if he listened more to the part of himself that just wants to be wanted.
“I don’t know why.” Harry is careful to keep a flat tone in his voice. “Before the war, you could have married me for fame, or because you thought I might protect you from Voldemort.” Good, he gets flinches. This feels more like a normal Gryffindor-Slytherin interaction, now. “Now? My fame’s already fading, and some people are saying it’s mere luck I defeated him. So why would you want to marry me now?”
Malfoy and Zabini and Nott all talk with their eyes for a moment. Then Nott turns to him. Harry is a little surprised that he’s been chosen spokesperson, but maybe it’s because he’s the one who’s interacted the least with Harry before this.
“You probably know that my father is a Death Eater.”
Harry only suspected, he didn’t know, but he nods curtly. Hell if he’s going to show any weakness in front of Slytherins.
“Even with his lord defeated, my father is trying to groom me into a perfect little follower who can see about taking his place as a mindless loyal tyrant in the future.” Nott’s breath comes out in a sharp hiss. “I need to be free of him, but even though I’m of age, I don’t have any kind of independence. No separate money of my own, no allies who could shelter me, nothing but my wand and the clothes on my back, really. I think you could be a way of keeping me free and safe.”
Harry swallows. His eyes flick to Zabini.
“You’ve heard the rumors about my mother.”
“Yes.” Harry keeps his voice as neutral as he can, but obviously not enough, as Zabini stands a little straighter and sneers at him.
“Imagine what she’s like as a mother. Then imagine a little darker, because you can’t know the truth. She loves me, I think, in her own twisted way, but she’ll also never let me have any sense of independence because she thinks I’d kill her. I don’t know. I might. But even if I told her that I wouldn’t, she would never believe me.” Zabini’s hands close into fists, and his dark skin seems to get marginally darker with a blush. “I want freedom, too. Wealth. Power.”
“I’m not going to—I don’t know, overthrow the Ministry or anything like that.”
“Power can be found in different places,” Zabini says cryptically. Harry shakes his head a little and lets his eyes rest on Malfoy.
Malfoy’s cheeks flush a dark pink, but he takes a deep breath. “You know that we paid back all the life-debts we owed each other from the war.”
“Yeah.” Harry testified so that the Malfoys wouldn’t go to prison for their crimes, and Malfoy himself swore an oath that he would never target any Muggleborns or Muggles, either with his wand or his words. It was enough for Harry.
“Father is already at it again.” Malfoy closes his eyes. “He’s convinced some people he was under the Imperius Curse this time, too. He’s spreading rumors that you put it there. He might be under house arrest, but he has the money to influence the Ministry, and that’s what he’s trying.” Malfoy shakes his head and opens his eyes, and the disgust he sees there convinces Harry. “Potter, I’m so tired of this. I don’t want to be his little puppet, and I don’t want to be what Malfoys have always been. I want to be something different.”
“You could have got what you wanted without using this stupid Dark artifact, you know.” Harry scowls at them. “You could have come to me for help, and I would have given you money or—”
“We won’t come to you as petitioners.” Nott’s head is proudly uplifted.
“What does that even fucking mean, Nott?”
“We need to be equals, Harry.” Malfoy’s voice is very careful as he pronounce Harry’s first name for what might be the first time. It’s at least the first sincere time, Harry thinks, staring at him. “We can be very powerful, I know, but we can be stronger together. Not as people you’re protecting and helping, though. As partners.”
“Again, you could have asked for that!”
“Would you ever willingly go into politics?” Zabini’s voice is soft.
“No! But people are going to play politics with my name anyway, aren’t they? And I’ll support Hermione’s house-elf rights legislation when she manages to bring it before the Wizengamot, and all the rest of it, and—”
He breaks off as he realizes the hungry way they’re staring at him. Harry flushes and folds his arms tighter. “Anyway,” he says sulkily, “I would have helped you, too.”
“This does solve another problem, you know,” Malfoy says. “It’s no secret that you haven’t dated since the war, in part because you fend off up to a dozen love potions a week, and maybe more than a dozen insincere offers of dates from people who you just want to use you for your wealth and fame. We’ll make sure that never happens. The bonding itself will make you immune to love potions, and offers to date you are now insults we can duel people for.” He looks happy about that.
“You want to use me.”
“The bonding makes us equals,” Zabini insists. “And it’ll work hard to make sure that we stay that way, Harry. It’ll take time for you to trust us, I know that. But we can’t act against you, or betray you, or stab you in the back. You won’t have to worry about that again.”
Harry closes his eyes, trying not to show his reaction to that. The love potions have been making him paranoid, and the way the professors just smile indulgently at that and the girls and boys flitting around him, more so. That he’ll never have to worry about that again, ever—
“So you’ll be okay with a bonding in name only?” he asks, opening his eyes. “It won’t punish you for being unfaithful, right? Otherwise, you wouldn’t have chosen it.”
“You think yourself so undesirable?”
That’s Nott, and he’s staring at Harry, and his eyes are full of things. Harry flushes. “I just thought—”
“Three partners is enough for me,” Malfoy says.
“I never have to worry about any of my spouse turning on me,” Zabini says. “I can’t tell you what a relief that is. And that they’re very handsome? All the better.” He leers at Harry.
“I’m really looking forward to the point where you’re comfortable enough to come into bed with us.”
Nott’s head is canted, his dark hair falling into his eyes, and Harry licks his lips a little at the steady gaze he’s receiving from him. And the way that Nott’s eyes follow his tongue makes it worse. Better?
“You don’t want to break the bonding?” Harry asks. Not if it’s possible this time.
“We don’t.” Zabini touches him again, one hand running up Harry’s arm to his shoulder. “And we’ll spend as much time as we need to making sure that you never regret this.”
Harry stands there for a long moment, wondering what in the world his life is going to look like in a few years. It’s certainly nothing he imagined. Nothing he chose.
But it’s still different from being love potioned or hounded by people for dates. If they’re willing to wait—if this is marriage, which Harry has always imagined as lifelong when he does imagine it—
If the bonding makes them equals—
Harry can try it out.
Then he remembers something, and grimaces. Nott leans forwards intently, but Malfoy is the one who asks, “What’s wrong?”
“Just imagining the articles Rita Skeeter is going to write about this.” Harry rolls his eyes.
“Let me tell you,” Malfoy says, touching Harry’s shoulder tentatively and slinging his arm around it when Harry doesn’t move away, “what we can do about Rita Skeeter.”
Zabini chuckles softly as they begin to move towards the Great Hall, pacing on Harry’s right while Malfoy walks on his left. Nott is sometimes behind them, sometimes ahead, and Harry feels like he’s surrounded by big, bold, dangerous predators.
He’s never felt safer.
And there are all sorts of things that will still need to be settled, and this isn’t the end, not by a long shot, and Harry has to admit he’s nervous about things like just how having three partners will work.
But he feels mad excitement and hope stirring in his belly, all the same.
Pairing: Harry/Theo/Draco/Blaise
Content Notes: Humor, “eighth” year, forced marriage, present tense, angst
Rating: PG-13
“You need more training on how to recognize Dark artifacts,” says Professor Angela Greengrass, roaming back and forth in front of the class with her eyes flashing. “I won’t have it said that all of you failed the Defense Against the Dark Arts NEWT because you didn’t know it.”
Harry barely manages to hold in a yawn. He thought he would enjoy a normal year for once at Hogwarts, with a Defense professor who’ll be there next year and nothing but his NEWTS to prepare for. Unexpectedly, though, it’s kind of boring.
“Mr. Potter! Since you appear so bored, let me give you some excitement.” Professor Greengrass whips a knife out of her robe pocket. Harry squints at it. It appears to be made of obsidian, or some other dark material, with a hilt that’s made of something white—bone?—and wrapped in silver wire. “This is an extremely Dark athame. It does not, however, kill or poison on contact. Handle it, and tell me what you can observe from it.”
Harry sighs and reaches out to accept the knife. Professor Greengrass is holding it by the hilt, though, which means Harry can’t avoid touching the blade. Which means that she’s to blame for what happens next, as far as Harry’s concerned.
“Ow!”
“I told you to be careful with it, Mr. Potter.”
The blade does indeed seem to be obsidian, or maybe black glass. Harry scowls at her and juggles the knife around until he can hold the hilt. The blood welling on his finger from the deep, sharp slice doesn’t actually hurt that much. But Harry wants people to know when he’s been hurt by the Dark knife his professor was waving around, damn it.
“It’s—absorbing my blood,” Harry says, after studying it for a moment. Not a drop has fallen to the floor, that’s for sure. “And on the hilt, too,” he adds, as he notices his bloody fingerprints disappearing.
“Good.” Professor Greengrass nods. “Those are important clues to the nature of the athame. Does anyone else want to hazard a different guess?”
Harry glances around the room, not that surprised to see Blaise Zabini’s hand rise carelessly into the air. Since the war, Zabini seems to have relaxed a lot, and become a lot more vocal, too.
“Mr. Potter, pass the athame to Mr. Zabini.”
Harry then finds out why Professor Greengrass probably held it by the hilt (other than that she’s the sort of teacher who thinks of everything as a lesson). It’s fucking difficult to juggle the knife so that you can hand the hilt to the other person but don’t get cut by the blade, either. The athame makes another small cut as he hands it to Zabini.
Zabini eyes Harry, not the knife, as he twirls it around. Harry frowns and mouths Show off in his direction.
Zabini looks down at the athame with a little grin. “It’s the kind of blade used in powerful rituals,” he says, and traces the patterns of silver wire on the hilt. “The way it’s wrapped, here and here? That’s meant to make it easier to grip when the blade gets coated with blood, and the silver also honors the moon, which would be important in many rituals like these.”
“Gross,” Ron says.
Professor Greengrass claps her hands. “That is indeed true, Mr. Zabini, but you haven’t said what the true purpose of the knife is.”
“Oh, I think I know,” Zabini says, his eyes glinting for some reason. He tosses the knife abruptly across the class to Malfoy, which makes even Harry flinch. Sure, Malfoy’s a right prat, but he’s acted like a lost puppy since they came back to Hogwarts. Singling him out like this isn’t something Harry would do.
But Malfoy catches the athame by the hilt—Seeker reflexes, Harry’s sure—and turns it around to look at it, seeming more alive than he has since the beginning of the year. He touches two indentations on the hilt, Professor Greengrass casting a Magnifying Charm when Malfoy asks, that Harry didn’t even notice.
“These indentations are in the same place on opposite sides of the hilt and look exactly the same,” Malfoy says. “The distances between them are also exactly the same. This indicates that the athame is used in rituals of binding or joining.”
“Very good, Mr. Malfoy,” Professor Greengrass says with a small nod. “But can you not be more specific?”
“Not right now,” Malfoy says cryptically, which makes Harry wonder if there’s a spell on the knife that keeps people from discerning the true origin. That would fit Professor Greengrass’s teaching style. He tosses the knife onto Nott’s desk.
Nott, like Malfoy, has been quiet since the war, but he was always pretty quiet. He scoops the knife up now and turns it around in his hand, as if admiring it, before looking up with the first smile Harry can remember ever seeing from him.
“It’s a bonding athame,” he says calmly. “It creates a bonding—a binding marriage—between the person it cuts and the next people who touch it.”
“What?” Harry says.
“What?” Hermione says, dropping her quill.
“Gross,” Ron says.
Professor Greengrass claps her hands again if this is exciting news. “Precisely! Five points to Slytherin, Mr. Nott.”
“Wait a minute,” Harry says loudly, making everyone in the class look at him. “Does that mean that Nott and Malfoy and Zabini and I are all married?”
“More precisely, they are all married to you,” Professor Greengrass says, while the chattering of the other students mounts louder and louder. “But I suppose it would not be amiss to say there is a fourway bond. You would have needed specific words of binding or a specific rite to make it a marriage in which the three of them were bound to you, but not to each other.” She Levitates the bonding athame carefully into the air and casts a spell that surrounds it with white, flickering flames. “There.”
“The bonding is gone?” Harry asks hopefully.
“No,” Professor Greengrass says. “I cleansed the blood from it so that other people can touch and examine it without initiating the bonding with you. I think four spouses is enough in one marriage.” She takes the athame across the room to hand to Susan Bones, while Harry stares at her back.
“Did she just—” Hermione’s hand shoots into the air, because she evidently wants Professor Greengrass to answer the question. “Professor! Why did you not warn Harry before he ended up married to three people?”
“It will be an unforgettable lesson to take caution when handling Dark artifacts,” says Professor Greengrass happily. Then she nods as Susan Levitates the knife and gingerly turns it around in the air to look at. “Very good, Miss Bones, two points to Hufflepuff. One bonding per class is also enough, I think.”
*
“Wait up a minute, Potter.”
Harry turns around with his arms folded and an expression on his face he knows is mulish. But he doesn’t care. God, how is this kind of thing always happening to him?
And to think he thought a normal year would be boring.
Malfoy is in the lead as the other three boys come out of the classroom. Harry eyes them. All three are smirking. He rolls his eyes.
“Yes, yes, I know it’s funny,” he says. “But you knew what it was and how to figure it out. So you must be able to figure out some kind of Dark artifact that would sever the bonding and leave us unmarried, right?”
“Why would we want to do that?”
It’s Zabini who speaks, his eyes wide and his voice very soft. Harry looks at him. Yes, there’s a trace of laughter on his face, but he leans forwards without actually laughing, and touches Harry’s elbow.
“We chose this. We knew what was happening and we chose this, Harry.”
Harry backs away from both the touch and the use of his name. Zabini is weird, he remembers. He also said that Ginny was attractive for a blood traitor, and Harry tightens his will against the temptation he could see this becoming if he listened more to the part of himself that just wants to be wanted.
“I don’t know why.” Harry is careful to keep a flat tone in his voice. “Before the war, you could have married me for fame, or because you thought I might protect you from Voldemort.” Good, he gets flinches. This feels more like a normal Gryffindor-Slytherin interaction, now. “Now? My fame’s already fading, and some people are saying it’s mere luck I defeated him. So why would you want to marry me now?”
Malfoy and Zabini and Nott all talk with their eyes for a moment. Then Nott turns to him. Harry is a little surprised that he’s been chosen spokesperson, but maybe it’s because he’s the one who’s interacted the least with Harry before this.
“You probably know that my father is a Death Eater.”
Harry only suspected, he didn’t know, but he nods curtly. Hell if he’s going to show any weakness in front of Slytherins.
“Even with his lord defeated, my father is trying to groom me into a perfect little follower who can see about taking his place as a mindless loyal tyrant in the future.” Nott’s breath comes out in a sharp hiss. “I need to be free of him, but even though I’m of age, I don’t have any kind of independence. No separate money of my own, no allies who could shelter me, nothing but my wand and the clothes on my back, really. I think you could be a way of keeping me free and safe.”
Harry swallows. His eyes flick to Zabini.
“You’ve heard the rumors about my mother.”
“Yes.” Harry keeps his voice as neutral as he can, but obviously not enough, as Zabini stands a little straighter and sneers at him.
“Imagine what she’s like as a mother. Then imagine a little darker, because you can’t know the truth. She loves me, I think, in her own twisted way, but she’ll also never let me have any sense of independence because she thinks I’d kill her. I don’t know. I might. But even if I told her that I wouldn’t, she would never believe me.” Zabini’s hands close into fists, and his dark skin seems to get marginally darker with a blush. “I want freedom, too. Wealth. Power.”
“I’m not going to—I don’t know, overthrow the Ministry or anything like that.”
“Power can be found in different places,” Zabini says cryptically. Harry shakes his head a little and lets his eyes rest on Malfoy.
Malfoy’s cheeks flush a dark pink, but he takes a deep breath. “You know that we paid back all the life-debts we owed each other from the war.”
“Yeah.” Harry testified so that the Malfoys wouldn’t go to prison for their crimes, and Malfoy himself swore an oath that he would never target any Muggleborns or Muggles, either with his wand or his words. It was enough for Harry.
“Father is already at it again.” Malfoy closes his eyes. “He’s convinced some people he was under the Imperius Curse this time, too. He’s spreading rumors that you put it there. He might be under house arrest, but he has the money to influence the Ministry, and that’s what he’s trying.” Malfoy shakes his head and opens his eyes, and the disgust he sees there convinces Harry. “Potter, I’m so tired of this. I don’t want to be his little puppet, and I don’t want to be what Malfoys have always been. I want to be something different.”
“You could have got what you wanted without using this stupid Dark artifact, you know.” Harry scowls at them. “You could have come to me for help, and I would have given you money or—”
“We won’t come to you as petitioners.” Nott’s head is proudly uplifted.
“What does that even fucking mean, Nott?”
“We need to be equals, Harry.” Malfoy’s voice is very careful as he pronounce Harry’s first name for what might be the first time. It’s at least the first sincere time, Harry thinks, staring at him. “We can be very powerful, I know, but we can be stronger together. Not as people you’re protecting and helping, though. As partners.”
“Again, you could have asked for that!”
“Would you ever willingly go into politics?” Zabini’s voice is soft.
“No! But people are going to play politics with my name anyway, aren’t they? And I’ll support Hermione’s house-elf rights legislation when she manages to bring it before the Wizengamot, and all the rest of it, and—”
He breaks off as he realizes the hungry way they’re staring at him. Harry flushes and folds his arms tighter. “Anyway,” he says sulkily, “I would have helped you, too.”
“This does solve another problem, you know,” Malfoy says. “It’s no secret that you haven’t dated since the war, in part because you fend off up to a dozen love potions a week, and maybe more than a dozen insincere offers of dates from people who you just want to use you for your wealth and fame. We’ll make sure that never happens. The bonding itself will make you immune to love potions, and offers to date you are now insults we can duel people for.” He looks happy about that.
“You want to use me.”
“The bonding makes us equals,” Zabini insists. “And it’ll work hard to make sure that we stay that way, Harry. It’ll take time for you to trust us, I know that. But we can’t act against you, or betray you, or stab you in the back. You won’t have to worry about that again.”
Harry closes his eyes, trying not to show his reaction to that. The love potions have been making him paranoid, and the way the professors just smile indulgently at that and the girls and boys flitting around him, more so. That he’ll never have to worry about that again, ever—
“So you’ll be okay with a bonding in name only?” he asks, opening his eyes. “It won’t punish you for being unfaithful, right? Otherwise, you wouldn’t have chosen it.”
“You think yourself so undesirable?”
That’s Nott, and he’s staring at Harry, and his eyes are full of things. Harry flushes. “I just thought—”
“Three partners is enough for me,” Malfoy says.
“I never have to worry about any of my spouse turning on me,” Zabini says. “I can’t tell you what a relief that is. And that they’re very handsome? All the better.” He leers at Harry.
“I’m really looking forward to the point where you’re comfortable enough to come into bed with us.”
Nott’s head is canted, his dark hair falling into his eyes, and Harry licks his lips a little at the steady gaze he’s receiving from him. And the way that Nott’s eyes follow his tongue makes it worse. Better?
“You don’t want to break the bonding?” Harry asks. Not if it’s possible this time.
“We don’t.” Zabini touches him again, one hand running up Harry’s arm to his shoulder. “And we’ll spend as much time as we need to making sure that you never regret this.”
Harry stands there for a long moment, wondering what in the world his life is going to look like in a few years. It’s certainly nothing he imagined. Nothing he chose.
But it’s still different from being love potioned or hounded by people for dates. If they’re willing to wait—if this is marriage, which Harry has always imagined as lifelong when he does imagine it—
If the bonding makes them equals—
Harry can try it out.
Then he remembers something, and grimaces. Nott leans forwards intently, but Malfoy is the one who asks, “What’s wrong?”
“Just imagining the articles Rita Skeeter is going to write about this.” Harry rolls his eyes.
“Let me tell you,” Malfoy says, touching Harry’s shoulder tentatively and slinging his arm around it when Harry doesn’t move away, “what we can do about Rita Skeeter.”
Zabini chuckles softly as they begin to move towards the Great Hall, pacing on Harry’s right while Malfoy walks on his left. Nott is sometimes behind them, sometimes ahead, and Harry feels like he’s surrounded by big, bold, dangerous predators.
He’s never felt safer.
And there are all sorts of things that will still need to be settled, and this isn’t the end, not by a long shot, and Harry has to admit he’s nervous about things like just how having three partners will work.
But he feels mad excitement and hope stirring in his belly, all the same.
