Chapter Fifteen of 'Love, Free as Air'- Teaching the Way

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Fourteen.

Title: Love, Free As Air (15/21)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Warnings: Sex, angst, profanity, a bit of violence. Ignores the epilogue of DH.
Pairings: Snape/Harry/Draco.
Rating: R
Summary: Trapped in his Animagus form, Harry stumbles on Snape and Draco, who disappeared from the wizarding world years ago. His first task is to become human again. His second might be to help Snape and Draco with the same problem.
Author’s Notes: This story is being written for heeroluva, who won a charity auction at gulf_aid_now to raise money for the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. She gave me the plot, for which I thank her. I’m not sure how long this story will be, though I estimate somewhere between 15 and 20 chapters. The title comes from a quote by Alexander Pope.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Fifteen—Teaching the Way

Draco had thought that the rich colors of the flowers, the deep shade, and the soft paths of the garden might soothe him. This was the part of the physical house he had missed the most when he was living with Potter. Grimmauld Place had no garden to speak of, and Draco’s time had been consumed with things rather more important than planting.

But it didn’t matter how long he stood under a tree, barely breathing, rocking back and forth on his feet as he listened to the wind in the branches, or how long he stared into the heart of a flower and tried to see only the blue. Different thoughts pressed on his brain and pinched down like a wasp devouring a spider.

How can they ask me to choose?

The one thing Draco knew was that he could not have everything he needed or wanted. Time with Severus, someone to tell him what to do, and making love with Severus again were on one side. Spending time with Potter, trying to understand the confusing mixture of gratitude and irritation and attraction that brewed in his stomach like fireworks when he thought of Potter, and making decisions on his own without pressure from Severus were on the other side.

I reckon it doesn’t matter what I do, I’ll have pressure no matter what, Draco thought, and sat down on a stone bench to sulk.

When he didn’t have an audience, though, there was only so much sulking he could do. The impulse ran out and left him memorizing the contours of a knot on the tree trunk in front of him, despair and rage alternating with dread of humiliation.

Both of them will try to force me to make decisions. Can I go with the one that causes less pain?

Then he shook his head. That was the way he had tried to live with Severus, snatching the crumbs of attention he absolutely needed and leaving him alone the rest of the time, because most of their encounters ended in pain. But he could live like that no longer, and it didn’t matter who asked him to. He had to have some freedom, some room to breathe, and time.

Maybe, he slowly decided, the best way to do that was to go back and present that list of demands to Potter and Severus, then live with whoever could promise him the most of it. He wouldn’t get his decisions made or escape any other way.

When he stepped back into the drawing room, he could immediately tell something was wrong. Severus and Potter still occupied their seats, and they still had tea in their cups. No one had touched the cup Draco had abandoned, in fact, though usually Severus was finicky about cleaning up dishes the moment someone stopped using them. But the air was full of a tense and secret excitement, and Potter and Severus avoided each other’s eyes in a new way.

Draco stared. It almost seemed—it almost seemed—

That was the way Severus and I looked at each other after the first time we kissed. Or the way Potter avoided my eyes after the kiss I gave him.

But it was ridiculous, Draco reassured himself as he made his way back to his seat. They were both here because they were both attracted to or bound to him. There was no other tie they had in common, and therefore no way that they could be sharing what he thought they had.

His spine still prickled as he settled into his seat, though, and he clutched the teacup harder than he should, nearly enough to put a crack down the side. He shoved it away after that and took a deep breath. “Have you considered your answers to my questions?” he asked.

“I thought you were the one who had to think,” Potter said, with a piercing glance at him.

“Yes,” Draco said, sitting up. He had forgotten how much glances like those irritated him. “I need freedom, room, and time. I don’t need anyone shoving me to make decisions right away or controlling my every move. Severus, do you think you can give me that?” He turned around and tried his haughtiest stare. It was already different that Severus had left the teacup where it was and hadn’t tried to force himself into the mini-conversation between Draco and Potter. Perhaps this could work.

Severus considered him somberly, the way he would an experimental potion that had collapsed for no known reason, and then folded one hand on his knee. “Potter and I have been considering a different solution,” he said.

Potter and I. Draco had heard him use the phrase before, but never without a sneer. He sat up, shoulders all but vibrating with the tension. Something was very wrong here. Something had happened while he was gone. Had Potter and Severus already begun to plan something new behind his back, something that meant he wouldn’t have the chance to do as he liked?

“What?” he snapped, and then drew his breath in and tried to look and act as calm as he could. He wasn’t going to give Severus more room to cast accusations of being childish at him, and he wanted to show Potter that he could stand up to his lover and that a decision to come back home was not a mistake. “I mean, what have you been considering?” he asked, and he thought he was incredibly kind and tolerant in tone.

“Me staying here to help you and Snape,” Potter said. “To mediate between you and make sure that you have what you need. And Snape—”

“Severus, I think you should call me,” Severus interrupted.

Draco reeled back against the couch and stared at them both. This was so far outside his ordinary experience that his head ached, and he wasn’t sure how he should go about clearing it or helping to decrease his confusion.

“Severus,” Potter said with an agreeable tilt of his head, “kissed me.”

Draco sat still, because there was no other response to that declaration that he could make. Then he said, not even recognizing his voice because it was so low and ugly, “You seem to attract that sort of thing, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Potter said. “At least this time I was able to give a better answer, now that I’ve admitted I might want to date a man.”

Draco rose to his feet. He was dizzy with pain and panic, but determined not to show it. “I reckon I’d better leave, then,” he said. “If you don’t mind. I wish you every joy of each other, Severus. Potter.” He made a little bow. His mother had once told him to be graceful no matter what he did, because Malfoys always were.

“Sit down before you fall down,” Potter said. “You look as if you’re going to faint any moment, you know. What Severus means is that we’d all try dating each other at once. You and him, assuming you want to. He and I. Me and you.”

“One of my requirements will be that you learn better grammar, Potter,” Severus murmured, compressing his lips with a dainty expression.

Draco shook his head, but he did sink back into the chair. “You’re talking about a threesome,” he said. “You could at least use the word.”

“I didn’t really know the word,” Potter said, which made Draco rapidly reconsider how much sexual experience he really had. “But yes, I could. That’s what we’ll have if you’ll agree. But it depends on your choice. I know that you wanted to come back to Sn—Severus, and you can do that if you wish. But there’s no reason that you have to date me if you find me too controlling, or too demanding, or too—I don’t know what other reason there would be, but I’m sure there is one.”

Draco scowled. “You’re making it sound as if it was solely my choice not to date you,” he muttered. “There are other reasons, and you know what they are.”

Potter shook his head. “Not all of them. What I’m trying to say is that we don’t want to force you into a decision, but if you’ll agree to live in the house with both of us, at least that way we would be in the same place with you.”

Draco scowled at him again, and then scowled at Severus. “What were you thinking?” he demanded. He reckoned he could understand if Potter had kissed Severus first, at least if he posited some unnatural and subdued attraction, but there was no reason under the sun that Severus ought to have kissed Potter. The man Draco had known, or thought he knew, was too logical, careful, and controlled to have done so. “What did you really want from him? Did you think he’d agree to this?”

Severus’s eyes were carefully blank. “I had no idea what would happen,” he said. “But your leaving made me see that I cannot stay the same. I wanted to take a risk. If it failed, I would be no worse off than before, and if it succeeded, it would change my life. Then I must be different. It would reduce the chance that I would merely sink back into mindless routine if you chose to join me again.”

Draco sighed. Severus’s logic did have a sort of twisted sense, though his usual method was to leave his bridges in place rather than light fires under them. “Why did you choose such a Gryffindor way of doing that, though?”

“Was that a Gryffindor way?” Severus studied him with a keen gaze. “I thought of it simply as a way that would work. I prefer not to give the names of Hogwarts Houses to courses of action. A Gryffindor as well as a Slytherin can be cunning, and a Slytherin as well as a Gryffindor can be brave.”

Great, now he manages to make me sound like the unreasonable one.

Draco turned back to Potter. “You must see that this can’t work,” he said, a little desperately. He had felt so panicked and driven two hours ago that he had been sure he would walk back into the house and Potter and Severus would both shake their heads at him simultaneously. He had never imagined that he would seem like the only sane one in a world of madmen. “You can’t stay here with us.”

“If you say no, I can’t,” Potter said. “But Sn—Severus has invited me.”

Draco stared. He tried to imagine how well Potter and Severus would get along, and couldn’t. He tried to imagine this arrangement lasting more than three days without self-destructing, and couldn’t. He tried to imagine making love to both Potter and Severus at once.

That was disturbingly easy to see in his mind’s eye.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said.

“Well, that’s no different from what you felt a while ago, is it?” Potter asked encouragingly. “You need to make one decision at a time. Do you want me to live here or not? That’s the first one.”

Draco closed his eyes. He couldn’t imagine it, perhaps, but then again, he hadn’t been able to imagine that his life with Severus would end like it had, either. Perhaps the best solution would be simply to step off the cliff and live through what would come rather than trying to anticipate it.

“I want you to live here,” he said mechanically. “Or, at least, I don’t want to oppose Severus’s invitation.”

He heard Potter stand up, but he refused to open his eyes. He would be profoundly embarrassed by what he would see in Potter’s face, he thought, and Potter should feel the same way.

“Thank you,” Potter murmured, close to his ear. “I know that this was hard for you to allow, and we pressed you further than you wanted to be pressed, but you made the decision anyway, and that’s the important thing.”

His hand fluttered across Draco’s jaw, and his lips touched the skin behind Draco’s ear for a brief second. Draco could feel his jaw dropping in astonishment. He hadn’t given permission for Potter to do that! He hadn’t thought Potter, compassionate and considerate as he was, would ever dare snatch a kiss without permission.

But he had, and now he was turning to Severus and saying, “Where are those rooms that you said I could have? I’ll need to go back to my house to fetch some things, of course, but I’ll be taking them.”

Severus rustled towards the right corridor and explained something to Potter, but Draco didn’t hear it. His heartbeat had taken over instead. He licked his lips, stood still, and waited until he was virtually sure that Potter had left the room, either to find the rooms that Severus had given him—without Draco’s permission—or to find the Apparition point.

Then he turned around and opened his eyes. “Why did you do that?” he asked Severus. “The truth.”

*

Severus suffered a mild spasm of irritation. The problem with sudden honesty was that no one seemed to believe him, and he had to keep explaining his choice to change as well as the facts he was trying to convey.

But he had made this choice himself, since he could have been honest before, or simply treated Draco like a human being from the beginning and avoided all this trouble.

Or perhaps I could not have. It was not easy, even now, to admit he had done something wrong, and he could do it now only because other people were with him who could correct him in moments if he didn’t. If he had only blank parchment in front of him and another letter to write, he would have edited in his mind and probably never thought that “treating Draco like a human being” was the solution.

“I meant what I said,” he murmured now. “I wish to have Potter around because it is different. And the memories that he placed in your Pensieve convinced me. He thought kindly of me long before he had any reason to do so. I could use someone who thinks kindly of me.”

Draco’s face turned white, except for a single spot of color in each cheek. Severus stared, and then realized the implications of his words. He shook his head. “I am sure that you think more kindly of me than I deserve,” he said, “but you also have reasons to that Potter does not. His sympathy was unusual, and so it caught my attention.”

“That has nothing to do with thinking him attractive.” Draco’s voice was low and savage.

“Does it not?” Severus asked. “Did my knowledge of potions make matters any different for you? My voice? You told me once that my voice was what drew you to me when you became an adult and thus old enough to understand your own feelings.”

Draco’s cheeks went from white to red. He turned his head. “But you were never attracted to Potter in the same way.” he muttered.

“Not the same way,” Severus said. “This is new for me, and may not work. But I wished to try. I want Potter’s sympathy and understanding for myself, and his body would not be a bad trade. And I want you.”

“Why?” Draco turned his back to him. “If you have Potter, and you just admitted that you fully intend to fuck him, then why would you need me?”

Ah. He wants praise. Severus was glad that the problem was so easy to diagnose, since he was familiar with the impulse.

He rose to his feet and walked up behind Draco, bowing his head so that he could breathe gently out on his ear. Draco twitched and hunched his shoulders, but relaxed them in the next instant, as though long-ingrained instinct was taking over from his conscious repulsion. Severus smiled. Yes, he could still use his breath alone to seduce Draco. He wondered what it would take to seduce Potter, and then put the notion out of his mind for now. He should be concentrating on Draco alone.

“Because you offer me things that he cannot,” Severus said softly. “Greater knowledge. Greater familiarity with the life I have led. Greater understanding that comes from having experienced the same things yourself, rather than pure compassion. And a different kind of beauty and sexual knowledge.” He rested his fingertips on Draco’s shoulder. “Remember what and who I am. Is it strange for me to want everything I can possess?”

Draco tilted his head back, his hair brushing past his ears and falling to rest on Severus’s fingertips in the old familiar way. Severus shivered, and then restrained himself by thinking that he was not the only one who knew how to use his body as a tool in seduction.

“I didn’t think about it that way.” Draco turned his head to the side, his eyes liquid. “But—you realize that Potter has never been with a man before? He just admitted to himself that he was attracted to men. And he was attracted to me. How can you be sure that he’ll want to sleep with you when he might not even find you handsome?”

Severus was startled into a crack of laughter. “Draco. I know I am not handsome. It is not facial beauty, nor bodily beauty, that earns me lovers. Unless you lie awake at night dreaming of the way that my skin tightens around my shoulders and the way that my knees pop when I rise from the bed.”

Draco’s face flamed, and Severus paused, curious as to whether he had stumbled over a few of Draco’s secret fantasies. But Draco simply cleared his throat and said, “What if Potter doesn’t fantasize at all?”

“Then this won’t work,” Severus said. “But we do not know that yet.”

Draco shook his head, opened his mouth, and then shut it again, twin lines appearing next to his mouth that said he would never admit what he was thinking. But Severus kept his fingertips in place and raised his eyebrows, and finally Draco bit his lip and admitted, “I don’t know how you do it. You know that you could have made the wrong decision. Yet you persist. How can you do that? Why aren’t you afraid of failing and what other people will think of you for it?”

Severus shook his head. “One cannot preserve an attitude like this when testing experimental potions, Draco. If I were afraid of failure, then I would never brew. In ordinary potions, I can make mistakes when distracted,” he added, thinking of the Calming Draught that he had ruined with brooding over Draco. “Now, granted, I make most of the failures by myself, in my lab, with no one to report them. If I am mistaken in the way that Potter might come to belong with us, then at least two other people will know.” He met Draco’s gaze. “Potter’s Unbreakable Vow will prevent him from talking about it, but you could.”

Draco’s eyes flared. Then he shut them and turned his head away, but Severus could predict the route his mind was running. He hadn’t thought of that particular power, and it had given him another weapon in his arsenal, when for so long he had been helpless against Severus, or at least felt that way.

Severus was glad that Draco wasn’t looking at him, because he was not sure what his own face would have expressed. He had emerged from six years of mindless routine, just like Draco, but he was less sure about what would follow. He was making wild decisions, making changes that might not work after a few minutes’ thinking, instead of after long and cautious experimentation and research. He was throwing everything he held at the wall and hoping for a miraculous potion by sheer chance.

He did not know if it would work. But he was committed to trying.

*

Harry glanced around the rooms that Snape had directed him to, and felt his lips twitch. The walls were so dark that it looked as though someone had cast a Permanent Night Charm and then remembered to score it with lines indicating the divisions between the wooden panels. The floor was covered with scrap paper; Harry decided that Draco might have used this as a study once. The furniture consisted of a bed with sheets so musty that Harry had started sneezing when he stepped through the door, a wooden desk with a large crack down the middle of it, and a chair with one leg.

He Vanished the sheets, considered the chair and decided to give it up as a bad job, and tried a few spells on the crack in the desk. Nothing happened. Harry cocked an eyebrow and decided that might as well go, too.

What am I doing here?

Ron and Hermione would probably yell that question at him. Wait, no, only Ron would. Hermione would pick up half-a-dozen psychology books and by the end of the evening, she would be master of all the disorders that might make someone move in with people he didn’t know and try to live with them.

She doesn’t know about Snape, or I might ask her for advice.

Harry sat down on the bed, with a mental reminder to himself to check his arse for dust later, and tilted his head back to study the ceiling. Cracking and leaking. At least this crack responded to the Reparo he launched at it.

I don’t really know why I’m here. I don’t know what I feel for Snape or Draco, other than the fact that I can’t stop thinking about Draco.

And now he wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about Snape—or Severus, as Harry reckoned he really should call him, based on the other man’s permission. He touched his lips and thought he still felt the pressure of that tongue on them, though Severus had barely touched him.

I hope that Draco decides to let us live together. I want to explore this and see what happens, although it might not be anything good.

He started to brood, and then heard footsteps in the corridor outside his room. Harry stood up and put his head around the door.

Draco stood there. He shone against the dark walls in this part of the house like a beacon in the night, Harry thought, and then shook his head to clear it. He had strange thoughts sometimes. He would have to struggle with them until he corrected them.

“Is something wrong?” Draco’s voice was wary and snappish. Harry knew why. All he had seen was Harry shaking his head. He didn’t know what the gesture was for. Perhaps it was meant to send him away.

“Nothing. Are you all right?” Harry added, because he thought that would deter Draco from asking a question that he had no idea how to answer.

Draco let himself be diverted, though the way he narrowed his eyes and peered at Harry for a moment said he wouldn’t be forgetting this. “Yes, fine. And I’ve decided that I want to stay here with both you and Severus and see what happens.” Harry found his lips moving in an echo of the words, so close were they to his own thoughts. “Probably nothing good,” Draco finished, with a wise shake of his head.

“Thank you,” Harry said. “And yes, it might be nothing good, but this seems to be something we can do to address all our needs and desires and wants all at once, or at least give them a chance to emerge. Thank you,” he added a second time, because Draco didn’t seem to have absorbed the words the first time.

“You’re welcome.” Draco still seemed half-puzzled.

Harry leaned forwards and kissed him on the cheek, since he was the only one who hadn’t initiated a kiss yet. Draco turned his head and opened his mouth, and Harry’s lips ended up half-brushing his. Draco gasped, but said nothing, and stared at Harry when he smiled back and said, “I’m going home to find some furniture.”

Draco was still standing there, motionless, when Harry stepped past him and went down the stairs.