lomonaaeren

Chapter Nineteen.

Title: Love, Free As Air (20/21)
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 Twenty—Easing In

“I am willing to remove the Unbreakable Vow.”

Harry was sitting outside in the garden when the words came to his ears. He had to sit still with his eyes closed for a moment longer, because he was sure that he couldn’t really be hearing them. He might have overheard them, in a conversation that Severus and Draco were having, but Severus wouldn’t be saying this directly to him.

Then he turned his head, and found that it was true.

Severus stood next to the stone bench that Harry had selected for his half-dozing, half-daydreaming session, eyes so dark that Harry could only imagine the courage it must have taken him to work up to this moment. But he had done it, and his gaze on Harry’s face was quietly insistent. He held out a hand, as if to say that Harry wasn’t going to be permitted to hide from this when Severus had finally found the courage to face it, and he would pull him into the new reality by main force if he had to.

Harry accepted the hand, and rose to his feet. He felt the shudder of power traveling through Severus’s muscles as he performed that simple gesture, and it made him shudder in return. He could imagine the way Severus might use his weight and strength in other circumstances. He coughed and shifted, hoping that Severus would mistake the shuffling as awkwardness rather than embarrassment.

Severus didn’t. His eyes flicked downwards, and a pure smirk overtook his mouth. Harry braced himself for any remarks Severus wanted to make, but he turned away with a slight jerk of his head, as though to say that Harry could perfectly well follow him, swollen groin or not.

“I don’t know how one goes about releasing an Unbreakable Vow,” Harry said as the coolness of the house closed around them once more. “Do we need Draco? Or is it a simple spell or ritual that we can perform on our own?”

“We need Draco,” Severus said. His voice went slow and heavy suddenly, and he glanced at Harry as though he might have changed his mind. “Would being alone for this release please you more?”

Harry flushed, tried valiantly not to think of the innuendo in several of those words, and shook his head. “I just meant—I don’t know, that’s all.” He would stick close to simple words and concepts for now, he thought. He was less likely to humiliate himself that way.

“I’m here, Potter.” There was a pause, as though Draco had considered the context and weight of his words, and then he sighed and said, “Harry.”

Harry swallowed and glanced up. He had assumed that he and Severus were alone, although he didn’t know why. He knew how dim the room always seemed when one came in from the gardens, and if he had missed Draco sitting on the couch against the far wall once, that meant he could miss him other times.

Now Draco rose to his feet and came towards him with eyes so wide that Harry wondered if he was frightened. His hair clung around his cheeks and made Harry’s fingers itch to smooth it back. He reached out and clasped Harry’s hand, and the cold clamminess to his skin made Harry even more certain that he didn’t want to be here. Harry tried to clamp down in a way that Draco could take for reassurance rather than desperation.

“Are you going to be all right if we do this now?” he asked quietly. “You look as though you should wait.”

Draco bit his lip savagely. Harry would have been worried, but he knew the tactic was one that he used himself when he was trying to distract his own attention from an obsessive emotion or thought. Harry waited instead, making sure never to take his gaze away from Draco or remove his hand from Severus’s arm, where he had reached out to place it. He wanted to show that he valued both of them, although he thought Draco might need the attention more right now.

“I want to be here,” Draco said at last. “It’s only my reluctance to do something where I don’t know what the consequences will be that’s stopping me.” He went on before Harry could ask if there were usually bad consequences to releasing an Unbreakable Vow, his head thrown back and his nostrils flared. “Can we count this as payment of one of the debts that I owe you?”

Harry nodded. He didn’t know that they needed to, but making up for the life-debts was something Draco wanted to do anyway. “If you’d like.” He glanced at Severus, only to find him listening with a grave imperturbability that suggested he would give his younger lovers whatever they needed.

Lovers. Harry swallowed again. He didn’t know if he had earned the right to call them by that name yet.

“Come here,” Severus said then, and Harry found that he was kneeling on the floor, tugging Harry irresistibly down with him. Harry knelt and wondered why they had to. Perhaps just because the Vow was going to knock them down when they let it go.

He looked up to see Draco standing above them, with his wand held at the ready. He looked back and forth between Severus and Harry, drew a spiral with his wand that might have imitated the way the tongues of fire had curled about Harry and Severus’s wrists all those weeks ago, and then nodded.

“Very well,” Severus said. “I, Severus Snape, release you. Harry Potter, from the Unbreakable Vow that I required you to swear. You may not speak freely of our location, our existence, and all other matters covered by the original terms of the Vow. You may go free with my blessing.”

Harry had thought more flame would appear, or that he would feel the tightness of the Vow around his throat and mouth lessening. Perhaps Draco would have to touch him with the wand and murmur a spell. Or there would be a sound like a bell ringing that signaled the magic had listened and was now free of the Vow.

There was a sound, one like glass snapping. But the power that slapped down into Harry’s body from the released Vow was the important thing. He found himself flying backwards, hitting the couch and crumpling to the floor as his bones rang. Harry gasped, then cursed as the headache that had started up seemed to spread to every part of his body at once.

He tried to sit up, but was so dizzy that he simply fell back again. Draco’s voice from above said, “Don’t try to move right now, Harry. You won’t be able to do it without pain for a while. That’s the backlash. Releasing a Vow is never a small matter.”

Harry gritted his teeth. He had felt backlash before, from some of the wards that he’d disrupted in his investigations, and it didn’t feel like this. Pain sure, but this pain was rapidly changing into a restless, twitching energy that made his arms yearn to embrace something, his legs long to clasp something, and his mouth hot and dry with the wanting. He turned his head from side to side.

“Look, idiot.” Draco’s voice was coming closer. He had apparently knelt down above Harry. “You have to lie still. That’s what my clear instructions not to move right now meant, and if you’d only listen—”

Harry forced his eyes open. Draco was kneeling above him, all right, face fuzzy and frowny with concern. Harry was glad. That meant he had an outlet for the energy. He lunged up to meet Draco, knowing that the pain would diminish if he could only get hold of him.

“Harry—” Draco said in an alarmed tone, but Harry was on top of him by now, bearing him backwards to the floor, and just as he had known would happen, the pain began to fade when he had skin beneath his hands.

Harry jammed a hand beneath Draco’s head to keep his skull from hitting anything and kissed him. The kiss was a motion that began far down in his body and spiraled up through it. The pain was gone by now, but the energy wasn’t.

And whether it was the memory of who else was in the room or just the intuition that one person wouldn’t be enough to satisfy the energy, Harry reached out an impatient arm to Severus and beckoned him closer.

*

Severus had never seen such a reaction to the release of an Unbreakable Vow. He had known that the power would snap and probably give Harry a faint headache, but that it would throw someone straight across the room—

And then he remembered the tendency of the Vow’s release to vary with the amount of personal emotion between the participants and the power of their magic, and cursed himself for a fool.

That unspoken emotion was taking its personal revenge, and emerging now.

It might have been ropes curling around Severus’s legs and arse to drag him closer. Harry had beckoned for him, yes, but that alone could not explain the way his muscles trembled and the extreme hunger that boiled up his throat and fired his groin. He stumbled, he knelt, and then he was at Harry’s side, bending down to take his mouth.

Harry, kissing both him and Draco at once, gasped aloud and flicked out his tongue so that Severus could taste it. Then he turned his head and bit at Draco’s chin, while his fingers scratched the bottom of Severus’s cheek. Severus caught one of his hands and pressed it close, kissing the back of it, then holding it prisoner while he began to pry Harry’s clothes open.

“What—what’s happening?” Draco gasped. He didn’t look quite as caught up in this as the rest of them, with his eyes wide but not dazed and his mouth bright and pink and swollen. He kept looking back and forth between Harry and Severus as if he thought this was a dream from which he would wake up in a moment. He gulped, and the sound of the click was loud in the quiet room.

Severus leaned close to him and kissed him. Draco sighed and parted his lips to let Severus’s tongue in. Severus lapped at his teeth and pulled back. “The Vow released magical energy,” he said. It was hard to talk when he really wanted to be kissing and biting. “We could resist it, but it is easier to go along with it.” He had an inspiration when Draco blinked doubtfully at him and nodded to Harry, on the floor. “Can you resist this, Draco?”

Draco looked down. Severus knew the moment when he saw the sight that Severus had wanted him to see, because he suddenly went still, and the only sound between them was his panting breath.

Harry had managed to pull off his shirt. He was gasping up at them, hair disordered by their hands and his shirt going over his head, his chest flushed such a rich color that it made Severus’s compulsion to bite all the stronger. His eyes were heavy and heavy-lidded, and he reached out for them with urgent sounds that barely ascended into the audible range.

“No,” Draco whispered, and lay down on top of Harry, fastening his teeth in Harry’s throat. Severus had to climb over to the other side to find a place where he could touch both Harry and Draco at once, but he didn’t think either of the others would complain about the final result.

Harry was moaning aloud now, and he held both of them as though he was greedy for more of their flesh, more and more and more. His hand hooked in the collar of Severus’s robes and tugged demandingly. Severus had to shrug them off, and that left his shirt vulnerable to Draco’s grasp as well as Harry’s. Harry rolled to the side, half-unseating Draco, and took Severus’s right nipple in his mouth.

It was good. It was more than good. Severus lost himself to the pleasure for a few seconds before Draco pressed against his back, and he became aware that he was still fully clothed. Severus turned his head and heard their teeth clack together as he and Draco kissed.

Harry pushed Severus to the floor in turn, and then straddled him and began to rock back and forth. His eyes were distant, his muscles jerking and spasming from the magical energy that hummed through them. His arse was close enough to Severus’s groin to be tempting, but not close enough to produce the friction that he wanted.

“Wait, Harry, wait,” Severus murmured, and Harry glanced down at him with those eyes, which made Severus suddenly aware of his erection, aching and lonely and unloved. But it would only satisfy one of them if Harry came in his pants early, so Severus caught his wrists and levered himself backwards. “Draco, would you help?”

Draco, who had shed his shirt and trousers when Severus wasn’t watching, leaned in and kissed Harry hard enough to hurt. Harry sighed and locked his fingers around Draco’s head, holding him in place so that he could feast on his neck when he got tired of snogging him. Draco gasped and began to whimper in the high, steady, needy way that told Severus he was close to coming.

Funny, Severus thought as he began efficiently to get rid of the last of his clothes, before he reached out to take Harry’s trousers off in turn. It’s been years since I thought about the sounds that Draco makes during sex, but I haven’t forgotten them.

Perhaps he thought he hadn’t needed them, when he and Draco weren’t having sex regularly and living as strangers in the same house. But his mind had known he would need them again someday, and had stored them.

Severus shook off such unhappy thoughts. The important thing at the moment was the sight of Draco’s cock, bobbing in the air and jerking with pale drops at the tip as Severus was used to seeing it, and the fact that he couldn’t see Harry’s cock yet while he still wore those confining clothes.

Harry sighed when Severus lowered his pants, neck arching back as if this was a sensual gesture in itself. Well it might be, Severus thought as he ran his hand up Harry’s hip and then urged him wordlessly to turn away from Draco so that both of them might have a good look. Harry’s erection would be concealed against Draco’s belly otherwise.

Harry was hard and long and thick, and warm when Severus dared to touch. He was also very red, purple in some places with the restrained blood. Severus caught an almost reverent expression on Draco’s face, and wondered if it came from attraction to Harry or because this was the first strange cock he’d seen in six years.

Then he shook his head. That was an unworthy thing to think, and he had something better in mind. He leaned forwards and covered Harry’s cock with his mouth.

The extremely satisfying buck and cry from above told him how much of a better idea it was. Severus smiled and kept his mouth working while Draco shuffled behind Harry.

*

Fast. It was moving so fast. Draco hadn’t known that would happen. He had thought he and Harry would dance around each other for days yet, weeks, months, working out the terms of the bargain they had struck where Harry would let him do certain things to help pay back the life-debts and the debts that he’d accumulated.

But maybe it was better this way, Draco thought, as he reached out with trembling hands and pried apart the cheeks of Harry’s arse. The dance would only be that, a dance, and they would still know what the destined end was. Now he had something better in mind.

Not just in mind, Draco thought. Right in front of me. A hysterical giggle slipped out, and he bit his lip to stop it.

Bowing his head, he scraped his tongue across the middle of Harry’s back and felt around frantically for his wand with his free hand. There it was, the smoothness of the wood an odd contrast to the warmth of Harry’s skin, and then Draco had it aimed and was pointing, and the spell burst out of it.

Burst was the appropriate word, Draco knew a moment later. He’d never cast a lubricant spell with quite that much enthusiasm or lack of direction. The spray of wetness and slickness coated Harry’s arsehole, and his back, and the clenching cheeks of his arse, and Draco’s hand, and Draco’s chest.

Well. At least this meant he would have plenty of it when he took Harry, Draco thought. He paused, waiting for someone to wake him up from the dream and tell him this was wrong. Or maybe he should warn Harry, because Harry was probably so far gone from Severus sucking him that he didn’t know what was happening.

In fact, Draco thought apprehensively, his doubts increasing, how did he know that Harry wanted this at all? They were just acting because of the strong energy from the release of the Unbreakable Vow. It was no different from being drunk. Harry would probably regret it later. It would—

“Draco, exactly what are you doing?” That was Harry’s voice, not Severus’s, and he sounded awake and aware and angry. “Are you going to fuck me or not?”

Draco swallowed. The word in Harry’s voice made him faint. He reached down to Harry’s entrance with his coated fingers, but did whisper into Harry’s ear, “Are you sure you want this?”

Harry snorted and turned his head. His pupils were blown, but there was still much more coherency in his eyes than Draco would have expected from someone who was feeling that backlash of magic and getting a blowjob.

“I’m sure,” Harry said fiercely. “I wouldn’t have had the courage without the magic, but do you really think that any magic could overpower my delicate sensibilities and my anxieties if I wasn’t sure? I want you. Now get it in me.” He turned around and drove his arse further towards Draco, as though Draco might have lost track of it during their conversation.

Draco let the sweetness of the gulp of air he’d just swallowed burn all the way down his throat. Then he set about easing his fingers into Harry, while feeling the tremors that ran through him when Severus sucked and listening to the clenching of his muscles and his ecstatic cries.

Draco couldn’t remember when he’d more looked forward to sex.

One finger, two fingers, and Harry didn’t appear to notice anything out of the ordinary; he was entirely occupied with Severus’s mouth on him and the way that he—as far as Draco could see—was desperately trying to keep his hands out of his hair. But he snapped his head around when Draco pulled the two fingers out and asked in a patient, if breathless, voice, “Were you planning to fuck me any time at all? Or were you just going to sit back there and admire the view?”

“It is admirable,” Draco said, and then stopped talking, because his voice was embarrassing. He lined himself up, encouraging Harry to rock forwards and pausing to conjure pillows around Harry’s knees that would help brace him. His hand was shaking so much that he very nearly turned Harry’s knees into pillows. Luckily, Harry was too occupied to notice.

Then Draco was in the right place, and then he was in position, and then he was inside.

Brilliance.

The brilliance was the warmth surrounding him, and the choked gasp that warbled out of Draco’s throat, and the starflakes bursting behind his eyes. He let his head sag forwards, resting against Harry’s back as he gulped air and shifted his hips to make sure he was all the way in. He would need more strength to move than he currently possessed.

*

Harry knew it would hurt. And it did. Draco wasn’t small, and had stretched him but probably not enough, and the lubrication was helpful but couldn’t solve all their problems. Even the way that Severus’s tongue traveled soothingly up and down his cock, pausing to give a series of complicated lashes at the head, wasn’t enough.

But the sensations. The sensations!

Harry was assaulted by newness on every side, and it was so good that he kept whimpering in contentment. The wetness around his cock really wasn’t much different from a woman’s mouth, he supposed, but it felt different. And now he knew what it was like to be full, and he reckoned that he would want it again as soon as possible.

He couldn’t believe the position that he was in, crouched on his heels—which were starting to shake—and the angle that Severus had to bend his head at. But if Severus and Draco weren’t protesting, then Harry thought it would be all right.

He pressed backwards, and Draco took that for the invitation it was and slowly started to fuck him. At the same time, Severus suddenly clamped down with cheeks and tongue and a hint of teeth and sucked.

Harry shrieked and came, blasting Severus’s mouth with a burst of seed that he felt rather sheepish about later. But there was lightning in his brain at the moment, and more lightning striking up through his arse as Draco hit something, and everything was good and dancing in time and wonderful. Harry cried out again when he was done coming, just a faint sound, but one that he trusted showed how marvelous he felt.

Draco seemed to understand. He pushed Harry forwards some more, so that he was on hands and knees, and started to fuck him in earnest. Harry braced his arms to take it, panting and wondering if it would always be like this between them.

A strong hand touched his cheek. Harry blinked and looked up, half of his own free will and half following the tug on his chin.

“Now,” Severus said, his deep voice glorious and his eyes so direct it was impossible to escape them, “you are going to return the favor.” He stepped to the side and braced himself as if he thought he needed to show off.

No need for that, Harry thought. For the first time in his life, another man’s cock was making his mouth water. He leaned in, making eye contact with Severus so that he would know this was all right, and put his mouth to work.

Severus shuddered and locked his muscles in place as though the floor itself was fighting him, his head and hair spilling back. Harry paid almost more attention to the way Severus’s chest and neck looked than to the way his tongue moved, at least until Severus winced.

Harry soothed him with a few more licks and carefully moved his jaw to the side so that he could try a new angle. Severus made the most dangerous and disturbing sound, a purr, a growl, and a groan, and Harry was heartened and tried a few swallows.

Then Draco jabbed deep enough to hit the thing in his arse again, whatever it was, and Harry yelped around Severus.

That seemed to be all that Severus needed to come.

Harry gagged and choked and gulped and gasped, and somehow got through it, though most of Severus’s spunk seemed to drip down his chin. Draco shuddered as if Harry’s failure to swallow what he should have was a turn-on, and pushed himself forwards far enough that his balls were pressed against Harry’s arse when he orgasmed.

Harry swallowed again and then looked up at Severus, wondering if he would be angry that Harry was so messy. This was his first time with another man—other men—but he didn’t know if Severus realized that.

Severus looked so smug that Harry at once dismissed the notion of his being angry, but he was still a bit uncertain until Severus bent down and kissed him, softly, but with growing passion. Harry moaned and kissed back.

Then Draco pulled himself out of Harry with a squelch and crawled around to join them, so it was a mixture of three tongues and three mouths and innumerable teeth. If Draco objected to the taste of Severus on Harry’s breath, he didn’t say so.

This was begun by the Unbreakable Vow, maybe, Harry thought hazily, but this is us. This is what it can be like.