lomonaaeren | Part Thirty-One of 'Their Phoenix'

Title: Their Phoenix (31/34)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Threesome, Snape/Harry/Draco. (Harry and Draco do develop their own sexual relationship within the threesome). Some Harry/Ginny and Snape/Draco near the beginning of the story.
Rating: NC-17.
Warnings: Magical bonding, slash sex, violence, profanity, massive denial. Springing-from-DH AU; it starts deviating from the moment Voldemort confronts Snape in the Shrieking Shack.
Summary: AU. Voldemort has learned who the true master of the Elder Wand is, and he plans to kill Draco along with Snape. Harry is desperate to save them, because Dumbledore would have wanted him to. But with wild magic, Horcruxes, and Dark Marks all involved, Harry may have condemned all three of them to something worse than death.
Author’s Notes: This is One of Those Bonding Fics. It’s also One of Those Threesome Fics, and also One of Those Fics With Harry-in-Denial. If that sounds like what you’re looking for, then come right in. I’m sorry to say that I have absolutely no idea how long this will be, and it will also be irregularly updated, whenever I finish a major “part.”

Part One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

We have a very large problem.

The thought slipped through Draco’s head. He wanted to agree, since he was surveying the angry crowd of pure-bloods in the hall in front of them. There were faces he had known for years out there, and faces that resembled the ones he had gone to school with. He could feel the throb and tingle of Dark Arts from many wands; he could see ornaments that were powerful defensive weapons. In some cases, the sight of formal robes alone was enough to make him wince. Those robes had originally been woven for battle situations.

But he was the one who had to lead his bondmates in this situation, because he was the only pure-blood and the only one with a respected family name that they stood some chance of trusting. (Once, Potter might have been a name like that, but everyone knew that the latest Potter heir had been reared in the Muggle world). So Draco straightened his shoulders and replied firmly to the thought, We have a problem not too large to be handled.

How do you know that? Harry’s thought curled through his mind like oil on water. Swanfair defeated us with the simple truth. She said that we were breaking from her and let the pure-bloods assume that that meant we were all favoring Muggleborns. How are we supposed to reverse conclusions that people came to in their own preconceptions, without even the help of rumor?

It’s a good thing that you’re not running for Minister, with a defeatist attitude like that, Draco said, and then stepped out from behind the fringed curtain he’d kept in front of him so far. A combined shout and jeer rose to greet him. Draco raised an eyebrow and let them see how their opinion bored him. Let me handle this. I told you I would. You and Severus remain ready to provide protection in case I need it.

And you will, Severus said. Draco didn’t mind the grave tone in his voice; it was better than the ominous silence he’d maintained so far.

Then give it to me, Draco said, and waited, facing the crowd, until their sounds gradually quieted. Draco was grateful for the venue that Colben had chosen for their answer to the pure-blood crowds. It was a large wooden hall some miles away from Hogsmeade, used for concerts and plays when enough performers were interested. It had excellent acoustics so that the ones who stood on the stage could be heard easily, but which did not allow the audience to project their voices as loudly as they thought they should be able to. Draco would have been deafened otherwise.

Colben had been reluctant to let Draco speak for her at first, but she had grown up around enough of her father’s compatriots to realize that it was best if someone of pure blood talked first. So Draco stood there with his face calm and implacable, and reminded himself that he was distant enough that no one who stared up at him could see his pulse throbbing.

When the room was tolerably silent, Draco said, “I could excuse you for having been victims of a deception. But you have been victims of nothing save your own hastiness to jump to conclusions.” He permitted himself a single well-bred sneer. “I would have nothing to say to you if we did not wish to embrace all the communities of wizarding Britain.”

“There was no deception!” someone called from the back of the crowd. “We know that what Swanfair told us is true. You’ve backed away from her and so from all the promises that she made to us.”

Draco saw several people who stood near the speaker shift away from him, and would have smiled if this was the right time to do so. They were not so angry as to forget all decorum, then. Good. That would make it easier to handle them.

“We have backed away from her,” he said. “But why should the promises that Colben made you, the promises of prime foreign service appointments and the careful legislation she plans to enact to heal the wounds of the war, be tied to Swanfair’s presence among her supporters?”

“She was the one who approached us,” continued the same stubborn person, who apparently didn’t mind being an exile from polite circles for some weeks. Draco could see him better now as the crowd continued to create a widening space around him. He was a tall man with a thin black mustache and long black hair whose features said one of his parents had been a Vainer. “She was the one who told us that she would represent our interests with Colben. Colben couldn’t be trusted to remember those interests on her own since she had a Mudblood mother,” he added virtuously.

More shifting. Yes, Draco knew that plenty of the people he was confronting still had beliefs in blood purity, but it was now gauche to say that word aloud.

“And that was your first mistake,” Draco responded swiftly. “Letting someone else represent your interests with Colben. You were content to sit back and let her do everything?” He was proud of the way his eyebrows rose, of the perfect pitch of contempt and horror in his voice. “And then you did not anticipate there might be problems if there was ever a breach between her and Colben? The actual candidate that you had agreed to elect to the Ministerial position?”

The Vainer man made some blustering response, but Draco could see the blame creeping over many of the faces in the foreground. They were scolding themselves for succumbing to Swanfair’s easy promises, Draco knew. Of course, many of them probably had other plans, but those plans must not have been directly attached to Colben, and at least some of them should have been.

“Now,” Draco said, when he thought he had allowed them enough time to consider but not enough time to start trying to find excuses, “I agree that a representative Colben can directly deal with is a good idea. But Swanfair has made it impossible for her to assume the position. Colben finds her personally repugnant.” Colben had given him permission to say that. “Therefore, we need another pure-blood who is close to her, or close to the ones who are close to her, someone she might accept.”

“And you think of yourself in that position, of course.” This was a woman with white hair and a pinched mouth. Draco was glad to recognize her after a single glance. This was Pansy’s grandmother, Mildred Fausset.

He gave her a small bow. “Yes, I do, Madam Fausset.” From her slight start and the faint flush in her cheeks, Draco didn’t think she had expected to be recognized, and she had liked it. “Who would not want such power? But more to the point, I am in a unique position. I am bonded to the person that Estella Colben trusts most, because, like her, he’s a half-blood and open and honest.”

Blood had almost nothing to do with why Colben trusted Harry, but this crowd wouldn’t believe that, and Draco was ready to say as much as necessary to persuade them. Besides, this kind of assertion didn’t require any direct lies on Colben’s part, and she had given him permission to use those words.

“There are better candidates,” someone from behind Fausset said, her voice high-pitched and fussy. “Other people with more political experience, with wider concerns in the wider pure-blood community.”

Draco put on the air of someone determined to patiently listen to nonsense. “And with the ear of Colben?” he asked.

The woman subsided into silence.

“Yes,” Draco said, turning his head back and forth so that he could give the impression he was looking at everyone at once, his eyes meanwhile hard and distant. “That is what we have to consider. We have come too far to choose another candidate. We have come too far to admit that the temper tantrum of one of our number is more important than all our political goals tied together.” He paused a moment, then added with sharp disdain, “Or is there someone here who will claim that Swanfair should be allowed to do as she likes, no matter what the cost to the rest of us?”

A different silence answered him this time, harsh in some places, embarrassed in others. Draco inclined his head. “So. Accept me for the moment as liaison with Colben. If I disappoint you, then you can go your own ways. But we’re so close to the election now, I think it worthwhile to wait until then.”

He saw nodding heads and stiff, folded arms. Well, he could never have hoped to convince all of them. He didn’t think all of them had been planning to let Swanfair lead the charge, in truth. Swanfair had a reputation for being too clever and too deceptive. They would have been stupid to trust her without reservation.

But of course they would want to make it seem as if they had done so, to try and extract more concessions from Draco and Colben now.

Draco didn’t care. He could play the seeming game, too. As long as he carried enough of them with him to make it seem like a majority, then he could say that he spoke to Colben for the pure-bloods.

It was more power and distinction than he had ever thought he would attain so young, even if his life had gone exactly as he had envisioned it and he had been the heir to an unstained Malfoy name.

That was wonderful, Harry said.

Draco started. He had actually forgotten his bondmates for a little while, caught up in the shifting currents of power around him and the need to predict where those currents were going to flow next. He smirked now, and told them, You didn’t need to come out from behind the curtain and defend me after all.

No, Severus said, his voice soft and thoughtful. Draco gave a tiny wriggle of delight that no one could see from the floor of the hall. He knew that kind of tone meant Severus was impressed, and that wasn’t a reward Draco got to claim very often. I could anticipate what would happen next, I knew some of their desires, but I could not have commanded them in that way. Nor would they have let me. My name makes me a stranger to their world.

Now you’ll have to admit that there was some value in all the manners and the family trees that my mother taught me, Draco said smugly.

No one’s disputing that they’re worth something, Harry said in an overly-sweet tone. But until now, I would have said they were worth a few Knuts at the most.

Draco scowled and said nothing, but he was already planning an invitation to his mother to set up a party that Harry would be forced to attend. They were part of the public world now. They needed to have more parties that would show them off and make people see them as something other than “the hero and his strange Death Eater bondmates.”

He was able to smile when he reached the end of that thought. Yes, he had proven that he was far more than a Death Eater.

And his mother and Severus were proud of him, even if Harry was too jealous to admit that he was.

I’m not jealous, Harry said. I’m uncomfortable.

And, as so often with Harry’s honesty, Draco was left uncertain and stumbling, not sure how to respond.

Harry sent him a mental smile that excused him from responding. Then Colben came out to reinforce Draco’s words with carefully chosen intonations, and Draco had other things to think about.

*

“We must expect her to do something. Since she has already tried to enchant Colben and failed, she will not try that course again, but it might be almost anything else she is capable of.”

Harry nodded along to Severus’s words, but he more occupied with the current that he could feel traveling through the back of his mind. Since he woke up this morning, Draco and Severus had been exchanging private thoughts. He’d tried to ask them what was happening, and the current had stopped. But it had started again as soon as they thought that he wasn’t paying attention.

“Harry? Are you listening?”

Harry started and looked up to catch Severus’s eyes, sitting up when he realized that he was getting a glare and that small flames raged up and down the bond that connected them. That irritated him enough to snap, “I am. But since you demand that I listen to the perfectly obvious things that you’re saying instead of what’s really concerning you, then maybe you’ll excuse me for wanting to think about something else of my own.”

Severus and Draco traded a glance of the kind they used to give each other before Harry fully opened the bonds. It made Harry feel as if they could communicate dozens of emotions in a single look; it made him feel unintelligent and blundering and unsubtle. He jumped to his feet, knowing he had flushed, but not caring about that nearly as much as he did about being excluded from their minds.

“Fine,” he said. “Whenever you’re done holding your little Slytherin conference and expecting me to care about other things, then I’ll be in my room.” He emphasized the pronoun, so that they needn’t think he would sleep in the same bed with them tonight, and turned around to start up the stairs.

Draco surged up behind Harry and wrapped his arms around his waist, stopping him. “Wait,” Draco breathed into his ear. “That isn’t—we didn’t mean this to happen, Harry. We want to help you. We want to have you with us. We just weren’t sure how you would react if we tried to confront you.” His arms tightened, and he leaned his head in the middle of Harry’s back and sighed. “That’s all.”

Harry gave a dubious sniff. He could feel the bond that tied him to Draco resonating with clear bells, usually a sign that he was telling the truth, but they had already hurt him. That they hadn’t tried to do so didn’t make it much better. “Well, what did you want to say? I won’t break.”

Draco spent a moment looking at Severus; Harry could tell that because of the way his hair swept against the back of Harry’s neck. Then he nodded and said, “Do you remember the blended dream we had this morning?”

Harry blinked. “No?” He usually only remembered the dreams with intense images, especially the sexual ones. When he hadn’t opened his eyes to images like that dancing in his head, he had assumed they’d slept without their dreams connecting. It happened sometimes.

“It was of a small Muggle place,” Severus said, his voice rumbling as if he found the words difficult to speak. The bond had become a red pinprick in Harry’s mental vision. He frowned and turned to look at Severus. Draco tightened his hold around Harry’s waist as if he thought he would struggle to get away and attack Severus. “You crouched in a corner with your arms wrapped around your head. A Muggle approached you and began to beat you with his fists.”

Harry stared for a moment. Then he sighed. He knew what had happened now, and why Severus and Draco watched him with that oddly formal mingling of discomfort and protectiveness. “That never happened,” he said quietly. “It was a nightmare.”

Draco’s arms tightened again, until Harry wriggled in protest because he could hardly breathe. Draco didn’t seem to notice. He leaned his head against Harry’s cheek and breathed, “You told us what a horrible childhood you had. You hardly seemed to think about it, so we were content to let it go. But if someone abused you like that, it will have lasting consequences, even if you don’t think about them.”

Harry shook his head impatiently. “That never happened,” he said. “The other things I told you about did—being shut in a cupboard and star—not always given enough to eat.” It seemed unnecessarily dramatic to call it starvation. “But my uncle never physically abused me. I have nightmares like that because I was terrified that he would start beating me someday. The fear was so oppressive sometimes. But he never did.”

“You don’t need to be afraid to tell us,” Severus said, his voice liquid and coaxing. He stood from his chair and approached Harry and Draco, holding his hand out. Harry, watching him, thought in irritation that it was like the motion someone would make to coax an abused wild animal. “We will not think less of you for it. We would have questioned you on the matter before now, as soon as you revealed the truth about your childhood, save that we allowed ourselves to be lulled to sleep by your apparent lack of scars. I should have remembered that the unconscious mind will carry scars that the body does not show.”

Harry hissed between his teeth. “Listen to me,” he said. “Will you listen to me?”

“We don’t want to do anything else,” Draco whispered from behind him, nuzzling his face into Harry’s neck.

“He never beat me,” Harry said, in a voice that he made as loud and as clear as he could. “Never. I promise. I would have revolted against something like that, and he knew it. Besides, the Dursleys hated the thought of appearing ridiculous or abnormal in front of their neighbors. They only did things they could conceal, and they couldn’t have concealed bruises or black eyes. Hunger, though, the big clothes hid that just fine,” he added with a spasm of old bitterness. No one on Privet Drive had ever looked.

“You don’t need to lie,” Draco whispered, into his ear this time. He bit lightly at the lobe of the ear, too, as though he thought Harry needed some kind of sexual reassurance. “We’ll never despise you for it.”

“The only thing I despise is that you don’t believe me,” Harry snapped.

“You have said remarkably little about your childhood after making that remarkable confession in front of Hogsmeade and the raiding Aurors.” Severus’s eyes were intense, and he reached out one hand to caress Harry’s chin. Harry took a deep breath and told himself that he should feel calmer than he did, with his bondmates touching him. They weren’t going to betray him. They were simply being deeply annoying about everything. “That speaks to me of denial and a refusal to think about it.”

“I don’t often think about it,” Harry admitted. “But that’s because I can’t do anything to change it. So why brood on it?” He’d had so many things to think about in the past two years besides the Dursleys that he didn’t see why they were important any more, especially since he wouldn’t have to live with them again.

“Speak to us,” Severus said, his voice sliding lower still, until it sounded like the rumble of some great and protective tiger. “We will purge the poison.”

Harry thought he could hear his enamel actively wearing away as he ground his teeth. “Look,” he said in a sudden inspiration, “if I let you look into my mind with Legilimency and tell Draco what you see there, will you accept my word for it that he didn’t physically abuse me?”

Severus hesitated for some moments. Harry looked at him darkly and sent a direct thought. If you refuse because of some nonsense about not wanting to injure me further, then I’m going to scream.

“Well, we certainly would not want you to do that,” Severus said, with amusement like a thread of gold in his voice. He reached out and steadied Harry’s chin with his hand, while he lifted his wand. Harry resigned himself to discomfort. He could deal with a lot, including Severus looking at his memories; he couldn’t deal with his bondmates distrusting him or shutting him out.

*

Severus wove protections about himself as he began the descent into Harry’s mind. He would travel cloaked in soft, muffling cloths, so that he would not disturb the balance of Harry’s thoughts. He would do his best to avoid bringing up any other painful memories than the ones he was specifically looking for. Those, he could not help bringing up.

And he thought it might be a good thing in any case, for Harry to see those memories. They could not have gone undiscovered so long, given the familiarity the bond permitted them, if Harry had not enclosed them in walls of denial so great that he didn’t realize they had happened.

Severus reached the level where most of Harry’s childhood memories resided—it was a gloomy version of Hogwarts’s Great Hall—and began carefully to sort through them.

Petunia’s sour voice filled the air like obscene music as Severus looked at the cupboard Harry had described, at the vision of the thin boy cooking and cleaning for his relatives, and at the way the Muggle clothes, hand-me-downs from his cousin, overlapped his wrists and ankles. The background noise changed, to calls of “Freak!” in various voices, and the thin boy bowed his head and shivered like someone walking forwards into a driving winter wind. Severus received the sense of countless hours in the dark of the cupboard, hungry and bored but not daring to speak lest something worse should happen, compressed into an instant. Hisses condemning Harry for daring to mention magic writhed around him, while Harry lay in the locked bedroom that his relatives had eventually given him and stared out the barred window or contemplated his cousin’s broken toys with a dull gaze. The music changed to cries of joy and freedom whenever he left that house and started the journey back to Hogwarts or to another magical place such as Diagon Alley, despite the danger that he knew might await him there.

Severus waded through a morass of tar and spiritlessness that could have contaminated sixteen childhoods without noticing.

But he found no signs of physical abuse.

Oh, Harry cowered in ways that made Severus wish he had the fat Muggle in front of him. He endured threats. He got in fights with his cousin that left him with broken glasses and bruises. But nowhere was there the sort of sustained beating that his nightmare had implied.

Severus took a deep breath. He should have remembered, he of all people, that dreams could sometimes present realistic images that simply drew upon the mind’s experiences, rather than mirroring them. After all, he and Draco had dreamed about having sex with Harry long before it had happened, and Severus had used images of him committing delightful tortures to shield his mind from the Dark Lord’s probing. Thinking that Severus had already indulged in perversions rarer than those he could regularly offer, the Dark Lord had not often commanded him to join in the Death Eaters’ activities.

He should have remembered that, and listened to Harry’s words.

On the other hand, he did not think he could have been sure until he had seen for himself. So he rose to the surface of Harry’s mind again, opened his eyes, and shook his head at Draco. Draco’s eyes widened with a combination of worry and relief, and he leaned his head against Harry’s neck, sighing.

Severus bent to kiss Harry. He made the kiss gentle, as apologetic as he could when he did not regret the impulse behind what he had done.

When he drew back, he said, “Yes, your relatives did not physically abuse you. But the emotional and verbal abuse was constant, and the bullying that you endured at the hands of your cousin and the removal of food is not something a child should ever be subjected to.”

“Much less the child who’s become the man who belongs to us,” Draco mumbled, and Severus sensed worry and indignation from him as intense as sunlight. He hated suffering when it happened to people he knew and loved, though Severus also knew that Draco could look on with indifferent eyes when it happened to others. Should the Weasleys die, for example, he would care only because of the effect on Harry.

Luckily, in Severus’s estimation, Harry was too distracted by their words to think about the quality of Draco’s affection. His eyes narrowed, and he nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I know that. But I meant what I said about not being able to change the past. Besides, you knew about this.”

“We should have dealt with it at the time,” Severus told him quietly, “whatever pressing reasons there were for doing otherwise. Perhaps only your lack of trust in us at the time, as symbolized by the bonds not being open, was a good enough reason to wait. Now you trust us, and you need the succor.”

Harry opened his mouth, but Draco cut in. “Don’t you understand, Harry? If the fear that can prompt those nightmares still lingers in your mind, we want to do something about it. Wouldn’t you want to do something if you found us suffering horribly because of something that happened in our pasts?”

Harry shifted uncomfortably. “Of course,” he said in a mumble. “But it would be different because it would be you and not me.”

Draco smiled ruefully at Severus over Harry’s head. He still thinks that it’s permissible for him to suffer in a way that isn’t permissible for us.

Severus nodded back to show he understood the message, but he would not exchange a private thought with Draco. It was doing that that had first caused Harry to feel mistrustful and resentful. “You would feel more motivated to attack the problem if it was one of ours,” he said to Harry, careful to avoid all language that might imply Harry didn’t consider himself as worthy as Draco and Severus. That way only lay an argument, because Harry would insist he didn’t feel that way, and in truth, Severus was not sure how much he did.

Harry nodded, his eyes squinting as though against the glare of a strong sun.

“Because of the way the bonds connect us,” Severus said quietly, “our pain is your pain. And vice versa. We want to help you in part because we suffer while you do. Do you understand?”

“Of course, I’m not stupid,” Harry snapped, and then sighed. “But I suspect that I’ve been acting like it, since you had to tell me this straight out,” he muttered. He leaned back into Draco and reached up to put a hand on Severus’s chin. “All right. I’ll talk about it. Though I don’t know what I can say about it that I haven’t already said. You know the details.”

Severus kept to himself what he would have liked to say at that moment: that sometimes talking about something could ease the tight coils of pain in a person and make him more likely to heal. It had often been so when he spoke to Albus about his past. Without that refuge, he thought he would have gone mad long since.

But Harry would probably answer that he had explained, and he’d still had the nightmare. Severus stroked his hair. They were both—though Draco less than Harry—impatient because they were young, and wanted things to change to suit them immediately. Sustained effort in a single task was not so much beyond their powers as alien to them.

He caught an indignant look from Draco, and had to amend his thoughts. They had sustained their pursuit of a fully open set of bonds, and Harry had struggled for years against the Dark Lord. Perhaps he should have said that a long task without some small gains along the way was alien to them.

Thank you, Draco said, and then turned Harry around in his arms, apparently feeling that Severus had seen quite enough of his face. “You know that we’ll take care of you, don’t you?” he asked, running his hands up to Harry’s shoulders.

Harry gave him a weary smile. “Yeah, I do. I even enjoy it. I reckon that I don’t like having to be taken care of.”

“You’re not weak,” Draco said, and Severus added a hum of agreement from behind him. “I hope you know that.”

Harry shrugged. “I do,” he said. “But I don’t like it anyway.”

Draco glanced into Severus’s eyes again, this time conveying a message without any words at all, silent or spoken aloud. Then we must do what we can to make things more pleasant for him.

Severus answered with a silent message of his own, conveyed in lifted eyebrows. That is not a hardship.

Draco’s grin answered him.

*

Harry had had a long day; he’d spoken with several pure-bloods, including Mrs. Zabini, who seemed intent on questioning him about every detail of his relationship with Swanfair and Colben, and asking if Draco meant it when he said that Harry would let Draco consider their interests. He’d had a hasty lunch at noon, interrupted by yet another pure-blood ringing the bell, and he’d hardly seen his bondmates, since most of the people who didn’t want to talk to Harry wanted to talk to them. It was seven in the evening, and he wanted nothing more than to sit down with a large plate of cheese and pickles—because that was what sounded good at the moment—and eat them in peace.

Thus, when the owl came with what seemed to be yet another bulky letter filled with questions, he groaned and opened the envelope impatiently.

A hissing green liquid promptly coated his hands.

Harry cried out in shock, and felt the bonds shake as if they were suffering an earthquake. Severus asked without words how bad it was, and Draco didn’t bother with that. Harry could hear the stairs reverberating with his footsteps as he ran closer.

Harry fell back, shaking his hands and trying to get the green liquid off him; distantly, he thought that it had been in the envelope without eating through the paper, so it probably wouldn’t eat through the furniture or floor, either. The liquid sizzled and clung like the potion that Severus had spent most of last Tuesday scraping out of the lab. Harry felt his hands swelling up, and then a simmering heat raced up his arms towards his face.

He saw pustules breaking out on his skin, and managed to stop Draco just before he would have touched Harry. “No!” he said sharply. “I don’t want this spreading to you, whatever it is.”

He shivered as he spoke those last words, and in the next moment he felt as if someone were trying to smother him with a warm wet blanket. He smiled grimly. The sensations were familiar from a few times that he’d suffered at the Dursleys. He had a fever. The liquid was probably a potion that caused it.

“Undoubtedly the Impassioned Fever,” Severus’s voice said from above Harry’s shoulder, as cool and as welcome as a wet rag given the way he felt now. “I recognize that particular green.”

Harry tilted his head back and managed to smile weakly at him, while Severus drew his wand and banished the potion from his hands. Harry knew from his intense frown that that was only to prevent the sickness from getting worse; the damage had already been done. “Do you know the antidote?” he asked, and then sneezed enormously. He whipped around, looking for Draco, and relaxed when he realized that Draco had raised a Shield Charm in front of him that shielded him from the worst effects.

“There’s no antidote for the Impassioned Fever,” Draco said, his fear burning along the bond between them like a second fever and making Harry draw in a panicked breath that was abruptly hard to take. He raised one hand and grimaced when he felt the swollen lumps on either side of his throat.

“Yes, there is,” Severus said. “Though not one that is widely-known. I came up with one years ago, at a time when the Ministry favored the Impassioned Fever as a weapon against the Death Eaters.” Harry wished he could touch Severus’s hand in gratitude—he knew that talking about those years was not easy for him—but as it was, he settled for sending a gentle pulse of warmth along the bond. “It will take me several days to brew.”

“Several days is nothing, compared to the weeks that the potion usually takes someone out of commission for.” Draco already sounded better. Harry relaxed. He would have found his bondmates’ worry harder to bear than weeks of sickness.

“No, it is not.” Severus’s hand caressed Harry’s hair and then his forehead, keeping carefully only to skin that was not touched by the snot running from his nose and mouth. “It came in an envelope?”

Harry nodded, turning his eyes away. He felt guilty now for simply opening the letter without casting a spell that would have detected Dark Arts or hexes.

Do not, Severus said, voice swift and sure. A spell like that would have detected nothing out of the ordinary. The Impassioned Fever Potion is not Dark. It was originally developed as a means of allowing parents to inflict diseases on their children so that they would have a milder version of the sickness in a controlled environment, and only later used as a weapon.

Draco, meanwhile, had floated the envelope into the air and was examining the name on it. He made a sound of disgust. “No signature, but the handwriting is Swanfair’s,” he said.

“That explains her choice of weapon,” Severus said, his voice almost detached. Harry could feel the churning of his emotions, though, expanding into a maelstrom. “She did not wish to kill Harry, but she wished to remove him from commission for the vital weeks leading up to the election.”

Harry closed his eyes. The visions of Severus and Draco were beginning to spin, and he thought the fever was probably affecting his eyes, or else causing hallucinations.

“You may depend on us,” Severus’s voice said to him softly. “I will work on the antidote, and meanwhile Draco will take care of you.”

Harry let go of anxiety when he heard that, despite the fact that he wondered how close Draco would be able to come to him without getting the sickness himself. He sighed, and the darkness wrapped him in soft folds of trust and dragged him under.

*

Draco was furious.

He tried to keep the fury at bay as he did all the necessary things to take care of Harry: weaving barriers and magical gloves around his hands which would prevent him from taking the sickness; feeding him Fever Reducer and, when blood began to stream from his ears and nostrils, Blood-Replenishing Potion; answering his questions patiently when Harry woke in a daze and demanded to know odd things; giving him hot and cold baths as Severus judged necessary to adjust his temperature. It was easier when he decided that he didn’t care as much for Granger’s scruples now that Harry was sick and called in a house-elf from the Manor. Meanwhile, Severus worked steadily in the lab. When Draco saw him, he spoke with an iron self-control that Draco knew would produce results sooner rather than later.

That was the only thing that let him cling to sanity. Severus did have an antidote—he wouldn’t have lied and said that he did if he didn’t—and was working on it. Draco knew he would brew it properly.

But in the moments when he sat alone, watching Harry struggle to breathe against the weight of liquid that was building up in his mouth and lungs, his fury got out of its cage and ran around his head, storming and snarling.

He knew they had to make Swanfair pay for it. Harry would probably say that she was punished enough by seeing him walk out of the house, well, weeks before she would have thought he could. But Draco knew that, even if she was surprised, she would only shrug her shoulders and try again if she wasn’t afraid of any other consequences.

Next time, what she tried might kill Harry.

Draco could not let that happen. It was bad enough that Severus spent long hours working in the lab and came to bed to lie awake staring at the ceiling; it was bad enough that he could feel Harry’s struggles to breathe, his burning up and his cooling down, exactly as if the sensations were his own, thanks to the bonds. If something else happened, and Harry was to die…

This was about his bondmates, and not about his own anger.

Which meant his revenge had to be chosen carefully.

For more than one reason, Draco thought, as he supported Harry’s head over the toilet and watched as he vomited up his latest meal. If he tried to do something too violent, Harry would disapprove, and probably get in the way of Draco’s plan. If he did something too obvious, Severus would disapprove, because a political student of his ought to be smarter than that.

For all that, Draco didn’t receive the idea until the fifth day he had to tell Ledbetter there would be no training, due to Harry’s illness. The former Auror’s mouth set in a firm line.

“Did the Minister have anything to do with this?” he asked, for the fifth time.

Draco shook his head. He would have liked to say yes, because Ledbetter would go off and do something suicidal and heroic that wouldn’t affect them but might get rid of Shacklebolt. But Harry would hate that, so Draco told the truth. “No. A political rival of Harry’s, someone who wants him out of the way so that she can exercise power.”

Ledbetter snorted through his teeth. “How I’d like to see her face when she sees him alive and well again. Preferably in a place where she doesn’t expect him to appear.”

The seed fell into the fertile soil of Draco’s mind, and twined roots into his thoughts, and blossomed.

He saw Ledbetter stare at him, or more precisely at his feral smile, as he went back into the house, and didn’t care. This method of revenge didn’t use Dark Arts, or murder, or anything else that an Auror had a right to be concerned about.

It did, however, ensure that Swanfair wouldn’t try anything like this again for a long time.

*

Severus held the vial up in front of his face and examined it with a critical eye. The potion was brilliant blue, and at the moment, large bubbles were still rising from the bottom of the vial towards the cork.

Then the bubbles ceased, and Severus knew that he held the antidote.

He allowed himself to shut his eyes and take a breath so deep that it seemed as if he were breathing for two, drawing in all the free air that Harry had spent the past six days unable to use.

He had known the recipe would be perfect, of course. In his Death Eater days, he had not been able to keep notes, because of the possibility of the Ministry discovering what he did, or even of a rival in the Dark Lord’s ranks desiring his achievements and trying to duplicate them. So he come to rely on his memory, and the experiments he had performed, the combinations of different ingredients, the failures and the successes, were still engraved on his mind like markings on stone tablets.

What had weakened him and made him unsure of his success, what had caused his hands to shake and his mind to run in circles in the last few days, was the strength of his feelings for Harry, and the mere thought of the void that would open up around him and Draco if Harry died.

It had taken him more than one day to remember that he and Draco might not even survive Harry’s death. The emotional loss had mattered more to him than the physical one.

He had raged at himself. How could he let such a fear control him? How could he suffer such a tie to constrain his actions and make him less than the fully free and independent creature he had always promised himself he would become if the miracle happened and he survived the deaths of both the Dark Lord and Albus?

The answer had come like an arrow, tearing through all the fragile bodies of his delusions and spearing him in the throat.

Because I love him.

The truth was there, inconvenient, but inevitable. So Severus had brewed the antidote, and listened to Draco’s daily status reports, and brooded on his fears at night, at least before he dosed himself with Dreamless Sleep. He needed unbroken sleep to make a good antidote.

Now the antidote was done.

And now Severus had to set the vial on a table and put his head in his hands, shaking, because only now did he allow himself to think fully about what he might have lost.

*

Harry had come to think that time was meaningless. He drifted from moment to moment, and sometimes he vomited, and sometimes someone held him, and sometimes he was plunged into freezing cold or molten heat, and sometimes he shook, and sometimes he didn’t, and sometimes he slept.

Now there was sweetness at his lips, and a light in his mind, as he became conscious of the bonds for the first time in—

How long?

A while, at least.

He blinked and tried to sit up. Something sat on his chest, and he opened his eyes, intending to tell Severus off for lying on top of him when he’d clearly expressed his intention to get out of bed.

Then he realized the weight was merely blankets, and not Severus, and coughed in embarrassment, reaching down to remove them.

“Harry!”

Draco flung his arms around Harry and held him so close and so tight that Harry had no choice but to embrace him back. He closed his eyes, because wisps of blond hair were floating into them, and sighed damply into Draco’s neck.

“You’re well now,” Draco whispered. “I’m so glad.”

Harry abruptly tried to pull away, because he remembered the fever and he didn’t want to infect Draco, but Draco clasped his forearms, touching the phoenixes, and shook him a little. “I said that you were well, you idiot. Severus brewed the antidote, and that means that you can’t hurt me.”

Harry looked to the side. Severus sat in a chair next to the bed, and lifted his head so that he could meet Harry face to face when he felt his gaze.

Harry shivered in shock when he saw the depth of emotion in those black eyes.

“Harry.” Severus spoke simply. “Thank God.”

Draco was chattering about Swanfair and how surprised she would be, but Harry couldn’t take his gaze from Severus. Severus was letting him see everything on his face: the compassion, the worry, and the soul-deep relief. Harry shivered, and then put out a hand. Severus clasped it.

His fears seemed like such little things in the face of this love. How could he do anything but give himself to the man who felt this way for him?

The men, he decided, and stretched out his other hand to Draco. Draco caught and kissed it without, amazingly, interrupting his flow of words.

“—And I implied in my last letter to Swanfair that we didn’t know what was causing the sickness and you’d probably be sick for another few months at least, so she should arrange a gathering of pure-bloods and tell them that you wouldn’t be able to support Colben—”

“What?” Harry said, staring at Draco now.

Draco gave him a smile that was sweet in its pure evilness. “Didn’t I mention that? I’ve decided that Swanfair needs to pay in humiliation and the loss of her political power for hurting us. So we let her set up this gathering, announce that she’s the only way to get Colben elected now, even encourage her to choose a new candidate.” He leaned nearer, his eyes shining. “Then we walk into the middle of it.”

Harry laughed and caught his face to draw him close for another kiss. Severus leaned in quickly from the side, as if he could not bear to be left out.

Harry tasted happiness so deep from those kisses that he felt as if he were standing under a waterfall.

Part Thirty-Two.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

angelikdemons.livejournal.com

I came across this story over the weekend...and I'm sooo glad I did. I never really read the 3-some stories. It isn't that they squick me...I guess I'm just like Harry was at first; the whole "love would be diluted in a triad" mentality. I thought it would be nothing but smut. This story is slowly changing my mind about that, though. Can't wait for the next update.

From:

Part Thirty-One of 'Their Phoenix'

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