InsaneJournal

Fantasy #9 for celandineb
Title: Between Dreams and Reality
Author: chiralove
Recipient: celandineb
Pairing: Harry/Draco/Snape
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~4500
Summary: Harry has to choose.
Disclaimer: All fun, no foul – JKR can have them back when I'm done! *g*
Highlight for Warnings: *epilogue-compliant (more or less), semi-public sex, bondage, light D/s*
AN: Huge thanks to S for the plotbunny, E for the title, and S and B for the betas! Cel, I adore you and was honored to write for you – I hope you like this!



Hands touch him and strangers kiss him, and Harry's passed around like a party favor. He struggles, but there's no escape – he's trapped.

Before he can panic, two men come to his rescue, pulling him out of the crowd and the smoke. Harry can't see who they are in the darkness, but he leans into their touches. Their cold fingers soothe his skin. It feels right. For the first time in a long time, it feels right.

One of them leans in and kisses him, and the other is behind him, pressed against him. Harry breathes easier now that he isn't in the middle of the crowd, now that he's between these two men.

It feels like a dream – it's felt like a dream since he walked into the club – but it's real and Harry arches his back, leaning into the kiss. He reaches up to touch his partner, brushes the hair away from his face and finds his fingers caught in greasy tangles. The man tastes good, smells good, but his hair is unwashed and uncombed, slick under Harry's fingers.

Somehow, in spite of that, it feels right. He tugs, and the man leans into him and presses Harry into the man behind him, pushing them both into the wall.

The tangles trap Harry's fingers and he's caught between the men. He closes his eyes, lets his head fall back, and moans. It feels good, so good to be sandwiched like this, so good to be caught between dream and reality. The club is smoky and the music pounds through him like some half-forgotten heartbeat, thudding in his chest – Harry cries out when the men leave him, hot air swirling around his body. He needs this.



Harry knew he needed something when he wandered out into London alone – he knew he needed something, but he didn't know what. Warm arms to come home to, something other than the silence of Grimmauld Place, something real. He didn't know where to find it.

It was an accident when he stumbled into the alley. He hadn't meant it, had only meant to duck away from the reporter with her acid-green quill and the crowd of witches with their flashing cameras. He veered away from Knockturn Alley at the last second and found himself somewhere quiet and cold and empty. The only thing in the alley was shadows, shadows thinner than ghosts and thicker than Dementors, reaching out to suck Harry in – he stumbled, catching himself on a doorknob. It turned.

He stumbled away from the shadows into a deserted old shop. Harry felt dizzy, unreal. He'd never felt so thin before, stretched out as if he was caught between life and dream. The world swirled around him.



The world swirls around him, the beat of the music and the clouds of smoke, bodies moving around him, dancing around him – the two men are back, they're touching Harry again. He leans into their touches, wishing that they'd never left.

The taller of the two men leans down to speak in Harry's ear. His voice is soft and scratchy, almost drowned out by the music. "Do you want this?" he asks Harry, and Harry has to strain to hear him, has to strain to convince him that the answer is yes.

The man doesn't seem to hear him over the music, but Harry wants this – wants to feel this. He needs this.

The man must have heard him, because he's bending down to kiss Harry again, and his hands are on Harry, working their way under his shirt and touching his bare skin. The other man is still behind Harry, nipping at the back of his neck, working open the buttons of Harry's jeans, touching him through his pants. He's hard already and he wants this, he thrusts into the man's touch and it's good already, so good. He's never felt anything like this before.



"You don't know what it feels like, Harry." Ginny had her trunk packed and she stopped in the doorway, looking back at him. "You've never understood."

He didn't always understand but he always tried, and hadn't he done well enough? A beautiful wife and three beautiful children – he'd done better than the Dursleys ever thought that he could.

It wasn't enough for Ginny – it never had been. The edge of her trunk clipped him as it sailed over his head, and Harry stumbled down the stairs after her. He was dizzy, too dizzy to look out the window, too dizzy to wave good-bye to his children. He tried.



Harry tries to reciprocate, tries to touch the men who are touching him, but they brush his hands away and hold him still. He arches into their touches and moans when they kiss him, but he can do nothing to touch them.

The smaller man – Harry can barely see him in the dark, just a flash of light hair and bright eyes – binds Harry's hands together. He holds them over Harry's head and pins him against the wall.

Harry's surrounded, the two men pressing against him and the cold wall behind him. He struggles against the bonds and the taller man holds him in place.

"We know what we want," he says in Harry's ear, his voice dropping to a lower octave. It's husky and warm and sends a shiver down Harry's back – he wants that voice, wants the owner of that voice to touch him and take him and… "Do you? Is this what you want?"

Harry nods, his throat clenching around the words he wants to say. One song ends and another begins, a steady beat thrumming through Harry's body, and he gives himself over to it. Lights flash in the club, brilliant shades of pink and green that remind him of curses and pain – it's been a long time since the war, such a long time, but he remembers, his body remembers and he flinches away from the lights.

Cool fingers brush the hair away from Harry's eyes and fasten a strip of cloth over them. It blocks the lights. He sees even less than he did before in the darkness and the smoke.

One of the men finishes with his trousers, undoing the last button and pulling them down to his knees. A flash of panic – Harry's left exposed, completely bare. He can't see anything. It's dark and surely, surely no one can see him, but he's tied and helpless, there for anyone to see…

Touches to his stomach, his shoulder, his throat, cool hands soothe him and stroke him when he trembles. "It's all right. Let us worry about that. We'll take care of you."

Harry relaxes, humming a little low in his throat. Good – it feels so good, and he tries to thrust into the hands that hold him.

"None of that now."

He's bound more securely to the wall and his trousers are pulled down the rest of the way, the hot air swirling through the club flows over his shins, over his bare skin. Something hard scrapes against his ankle as the trousers are removed – the marble in his pocket, Harry thinks, the thought slipping away as soon as it forms. The marble isn't what he needs.



"Well, well, what have we here?" The shopkeeper was tall and lanky, with greasy gray hair falling forward to cover his face. He leered at Harry, and Harry was almost certain that it was a glamour – it blurred for a moment, and he shivered. He was glad to be in out of the alley and the shadows and the cold, but this was no better.

The shopkeeper's assistant stepped out of a dusty corner and Harry thought for a moment that it was a goblin, hunched and horrible, a grotesque sneer twisting its face. "What do we have here?"

Harry backed away when they came close. "No-nothing," he said.

The shopkeeper's eyebrow twitched. "No nothing? It seems to me that that would be something. Wouldn't you agree, Mr. Potter?"

"How – how do you know my name?"

The shopkeeper tapped the side of his huge, hooked nose with one finger. "I know many things," he said. "Most importantly, I know what it is that you want." Without another word, he pressed something into Harry's hand. Harry looked down – it was a marble, a simple black sphere – and the world swirled around him until he was dizzy and stumbling and blind.



His shoes are removed and his pants pulled off and put aside, leaving Harry bare and helpless. He likes it, likes the feelings that run through him, the sizzle just under his skin when cool hands touch him.

"It's too dark for anyone to see you in this corner." The man speaks in Harry's ear. His hair swings down to brush against Harry's face, and Harry shivers. "No one can see you spread out for us – no one can see how beautiful you are like this – no one can see what we do to you."

He unbuttons Harry's shirt, stroking his bare skin. His fingernails brush against Harry's nipples, not hard enough to hurt, and he leans in to touch Harry and kiss him and claim his mouth. Pinned in place, taken like this, Harry can't even moan.

The second man is touching Harry too – stroking his cock, fondling his balls, and teasing him. Harry thrusts into his hands, wanting more, needing more. He's pushed back against the wall.

"None of that." The second man's voice is higher-pitched, louder. It runs over Harry's nerves like hot silver and the man puts a ring around Harry's cock and balls, tightening it until the pleasure edges into pain, and it still feels good. It feels so good. "You'll come when we tell you to come."

One man is kissing him and the other is sucking on the head of Harry's cock, slipping it further down his throat, sucking and licking and Harry thrusts into his mouth but he can't come, he can't. It still feels as though he's stretched thin between dream and life, as if this isn't happening to him – Ginny never touched him like this. No one has taken care of him like this.

That's the dream, but the rest of it is real, the solid touches and kisses and nips and promises. The men are taking care of him.

Harry wants more – he doesn't know what he wants exactly, but he's arching into the mouths that touch him, the mouth on his cock and the one sucking his nipples into taut peaks. He squirms when the second mouth is withdrawn, and hears the low, husky voice in his ear again. "Be still," it says, and Harry obeys.

Clamps are snapped onto his nipples, burning a little but bringing him more pleasure than pain, and Harry wants nothing more than to arch his back and lean into the feeling, but he obeys and holds himself still. "Good. Very good. You are beautiful like this, did you know that?"

Harry shakes his head and the man touches him, long cold fingers stroking every inch of his bare skin. "Wanton, needy, on the verge of begging … yes. You're beautiful like this, your cock down Dr-"

The man pauses and coughs. "Your cock down that man's throat, your hands bound over your head, you're straining to come but you can't. You can't come until we let you and you like that, like being restrained and taken care of. We'll take good care of you, I promise."

Harry's dizzy. He doesn't know if there are drugs in the smoke or if there's something else about this other world, this club and these strangers, but he nods. The stranger strokes his cheek and Harry knows that he's seen the nod, that he knows that Harry wants this.

"What do you want, Mr. Potter? Tell us."



"Tell me what you want." The ultimatum was in every line of Ginny's body – her hands clenched into fists, resting on her hips and the set of her jaw and the tilt of her head, facing away from Harry – and he didn't know what to say.

"You don't–"

"Please you," she said. "I know."

Harry wanted – he couldn't tell her. He wanted to be normal. He wanted to have her and his children and his cottage in Godric's Hollow and his happy life.

He couldn't help it. It wasn't his fault if he wanted more.



"More," Harry says, the words still catching in his throat. He swallows hard. "I want more."

A finger traces the curve of his cheek and he leans into the touch. "Yes, but you must tell us exactly what you want. Beg us for it, and if you beg prettily enough…"

Images flashes across the blindfold, flitting past his closed eyes, and Harry doesn't know what he wants – doesn't know how to ask for it. He'd never … he shakes his head again and swallows hard. If he doesn't ask for it, he'll never have it.

"Fuck me," he says around the lump in his throat. "I want … I want to be between you, the way we were on the dance floor. I want…"

"Tell me."

The mouth moving on his cock stops, the man pulling away. Harry strains against the blindfold – he can imagine the man there, kneeling at his feet and looking up at him, waiting for Harry's answer. He can't see any of it, doesn't know where the man is, and when those lips close over his cock again, licking and sucking, Harry can't speak, can't think, can only thrust with his hips and struggle against the bonds and try to come–

"Enough," the first man says and the second man pulls back again. "Tell us what you want."

The music thrums around them, the deep beat going through Harry's bones, and he doesn't want to say it, doesn't want to admit to his dark desires, but he's dizzy, falling, and these two men caught him, took care of him, drove him to this, and in the end, he can't help it.

"I – I want you to suck me. To touch me with your lips. There. Ah–" Harry stops. He's blindfolded and bound to the wall. He's at their mercy.

Kisses are pressed to his cheeks, to his jaw, to his lips. "You want me to rim you, to touch you and taste you, to fuck you with my tongue and make you beg for more… Is that right, Mr. Potter?"

Harry's knees go weak at the sound of that low voice and the debauchery it promises. A tongue flicks out, licking along the rim of his ear, and teeth nip gently at his earlobe.

"Is that right?"

"I – yes."

Harry wants more, needs more – they're reaching up to unbind his hands, and he falls from the wall, stumbling into the taller man's embrace. The shorter man is pressed against him again, covering Harry's back with his body, pressing a hard cock against his arse. "What do you want me to do?"

Harry swallows again and thrusts back against him. "I – I want to fuck you."



"What do you want me to do?" That wasn't the answer that Harry had given before, when Draco Malfoy faced him in front of the barrier to the platform at King's Cross.

"Just get lost, Malfoy," Harry had said, pushing past him. He'd come to see his children – Ginny took them away before he'd had the chance.

Malfoy followed him, shadowing Harry all the way to the platform. "My son's with his mother for the holidays this year."

There were a dozen things that Harry should have said – condolences for Malfoy's divorce, inquiries about his son, expressions of sympathy – but he just looked over his shoulder at Malfoy and stared at him and waited until he left.

Malfoy had done everything that Harry could have asked him to do, but it wasn't enough. Renouncing the Dark, leaving his family when Astoria tried to drag them into the next war, following Harry and fighting at his side – it was more than Harry could have asked for.

Malfoy didn't follow Harry when he stormed away, back to Grimmauld Place and the empty house there. It wasn't enough.



"You want to fuck me? How do you want me?" There's something sultry, seductive, irresistible about that voice, and Harry leans forward to kiss the man he wants to fuck.

"On your knees, spread out for me – wanting me. I … I want to see you." The last comes out as nothing more than a whisper, but somehow Harry says it loud enough for them to hear him.

"Do you?" The man kisses Harry, kisses him hard and claims him again, and his fingers are on the blindfold, tightening it, and Harry doesn't mind, doesn't care – he arches into the touches, the two men surround him, keep him pressed between them, and he frots against them, needing more, needing them…

"Enough." There's a swish of magic and then Harry is pressed against something – a table or a chair, something cold and wooden – he's pressed against it, his face against the wood, and his lover's pressed against him, moving down him, kissing each bump of his spine and working down until he comes to Harry's arse.

The other man is cradling Harry's head, massaging his scalp – soft and gentle, he rubs until Harry relaxes, and then he pulls Harry's head up, kissing his cheekbones, kissing his jaw and stroking his face. He soothes him and then waits until Harry is rigid and tense – Harry can't help it, he knows he should relax and lose himself in the sensations that swirl around him. This is real, though, and this is too much and he's never had this before, never had a man kneeling behind him, leaning over to part his cheeks, swirling a tongue against his entrance…

It's more than he can take, and the man in front of him seems to sense it. He catches Harry just before he can start to squirm, and binds his wrists together again, and holds him on the wooden surface, keeping him there. "Enough of that," he says. "Hush."

He gives Harry his prick, forcing it down Harry's throat while the other man rims him, and Harry is bound there and caught there and he can't do anything but take it, lying there spread out for them, letting them fuck him. His cock is still bound by the ring and it's pressed against the hard wood and he can't come. He can't, even though he needs it more than he's ever needed anything. He whines deep in his throat and thrusts back against the tongue that's fucking him and then he thrusts forward, taking the cock deeper into his mouth.

It's what he needs, exactly what he's wanted, and the man fucking Harry's mouth seems to know it. He strokes Harry's face, makes soft circles over Harry's cheeks, holds him still and safe.



"You don't know how to keep anyone safe, Potter." Snape sneered at him and swept away, his cloak brushing the shelves full of jars and vials. Ingredients rattled in their containers – the dry sound of crisp wasp wings, the gurgle of newts' eyes in their jars, the clink-clink of beetles against glass – and Harry followed Snape, his hands clenched into fists.

"I keep people safe every day, Professor. I do know what I'm doing."

"Don't call me that." He glared at Harry, and it was the same look that he'd given Harry a hundred times at Hogwarts, the same look, and Harry felt young and small and somehow worthless. He straightened his spine and tried to speak – but Snape cut him off with a wave of his hand, turning his back on Harry again. "You didn't do anything to help me during the war or after it, and I don't expect you to do anything now. Good day, Mr. Potter."



The tongue is withdrawn and Harry aches for more. He whines low in his throat until the man returns, fucking Harry first with his fingers, slick with lube, and then with his cock. He holds Harry down and takes him, his voice rasping his pleasure – it's gone from being too soft to hear to being so loud that it's a wonder that half the club doesn't hear him, that they aren't all standing and watching and wanking to the sight of this.

The thought makes Harry harder and he thrusts back against the man fucking him, thrusts forward to take more cock down his throat and struggles against his bonds because he has to be released, he has to come, he needs it.

The man in front of him shifts and pushes Harry off the wooden bench, works his way under Harry and then pulls Harry close, kissing him hard. "Do you want to fuck me? Do you want me?"

The pressure builds and Harry can't stand it any longer. The beat of the music rings in his ears and in his bones and in his blood, and he doesn't know if anyone is watching and he doesn't care. He wants to fuck this man, wants to take him and thrust and fuck and come. He can barely speak for wanting but he nods and that seems to be enough.

The man slips under Harry and spreads himself and Harry can't see, can barely move with the way that he's being fucked, but the other man helps him. He takes Harry's prick in his hand and guides it, putting his legs up around Harry's shoulders. He reaches up, kisses Harry and twists the clamps on his nipples.

He's moaning when Harry thrusts into him. It's nothing to do with Harry – the man behind him is setting the pace – but the man under him moans and thrusts back and clenches around Harry and it's good, it's perfect. "Please," Harry says, caught between them, "please, I have to come, I need–"

"When we tell you to come, Potter." The man fucks him harder, driving him into the other, and Harry rocks between them. He's fucking and being fucked and it's glorious.



"Fuck you, Potter."

Snape was standing by the window, his back to Harry. He didn't turn around. "You can't even keep your wife and children, what makes you think that I'd trust you–"

"That has nothing to do with it, Snape." Harry held his wand at the ready, a Shielding Charm on his lips. He didn't trust Snape – never had – and the fact that the man stood there, still alive while so many others had died, the way that he rasped his words out in a low, hoarse voice, making it clear that he'd martyred himself for the cause, that he'd almost died so that Harry could live – it wasn't anything that made Harry want to trust him.

"I don't need your protection against the latest set of vigilantes or the possibility that I'll stub my toe and fall in my own home. Get out."



Harry doesn't want to come. He doesn't want this to end, the feeling of being stretched out like this, the feeling of being filled like this, pressed between two bodies and fucked and fucking.

They let him go, the taller man reaching around Harry and unbinding his wrists, but even when they release him, they keep him. He's there between them, caught between them, completed by them. He holds on, grasping whatever he can reach – hips, legs, forearms – and it's enough. It's enough.

The three of them collapse together, Harry between the two, all of them shuddering and sweaty-hot. Harry's fingers are clenched around someone's forearm, and it's still cold to the touch. His fingers twitch, the cold skin almost burning him, and he pulls back, curling his fingers into a fist.

The blindfold is removed. They press kisses onto his eyelids while they rub his wrists until the soreness is gone. The music has ended and in the silence, the two men dress Harry again, kissing his bare skin just before it's covered. In the dark, he's still blind – he can't see them but he can touch them, and he reaches for them now.

The club spins around him and Harry clutches at them, trying to keep his balance as he falls. His fingers go numb and he can't feel his lovers, can't feel anything but himself.



It happened after the battle was over – Harry felt a cold breeze on his back, and when he turned away from Ginny, he saw Malfoy helping Snape past the frozen branches of the Whomping Willow. The wind blew through their robes, strong enough to make Snape stumble.

Malfoy caught him and helped him and Harry took a sharp breath. It was a dream, Snape was dead, it hadn't happened, it wasn't real – the two men were there, one taller than the other, both of them walking toward Harry. They stopped before they came to him, stopped and looked at him, and Harry knew that it was his fault, that he had left Snape there to die, that there was nothing he could do to fix this.

Ginny pressed her hand into the small of his back, rubbing circles there until he turned to face her again. She pulled him down for a kiss.

This was what Harry wanted, never mind that he didn't deserve it, never mind that he had killed a man and left another man to die. He couldn't have what Snape and Malfoy had. This was his Ginny and his fairytale ending.



Harry shudders when he wakes – he'd been falling, tumbling through empty space in his dreams and until he hit the ground with a sudden jolt that brought him out of his sleep. He's covered with dust and sprawled on the floor in a deserted room. It's silent, but the floorboards creak when he pulls himself to his feet.

The sound echoes through the shop. His head aches and Harry puts his hands to his temples, rubbing circles and trying to remember. He's been here before – he has, it looks familiar. He doesn't remember.

Harry stretches, working the kinks out of his back. His body is sore and he's cold, stiff from sleeping on the floor.

When he stretches, his hand brushes his thigh and he feels something in his pocket, something hard. Harry fumbles for it and pulls it out of his pocket. It's a marble. Black and silver and almost like a mirror – he sees himself reflected in its surface.

"I know what you want."

Everything comes back to him then, a rush of images. Hands on his skin, mouths touching him, kissing him, sucking him – everything he wanted. He was possessed, taken, made complete, caught between two men and loved for the first time.

He touches the marble and rolls it between his fingers – it wasn't a dream. The touch of the cold marble makes his skin tingle.