It was ten years later, and two in the morning when the call-candle's flame sputtered and turned green. Mad shadows writhed around the bedroom, teasing Harry's eyes open. He slipped from the bed, ignored the grunt from the lump on the far side, and padded to the living room and the main hearth.

"H'llo?"

The fire flared, and a familiar but nameless face appeared, and Harry wondered why a coworker he identified only as the bloke who hummed in the lift was calling him. "Mr Potter? Gordon Eldritch, Department of Mysteries."

Harry fought back a yawn. "Yes?"

"You might want to come to the Ministry. It's about your godfather."

"Now? Listen, if this is some uptight bureaucrat trying to revoke his Order of Merlin, you can just fuck off. The man's dead. Let him alone."

"No, Mr Potter. He's... well, he's here."

He was. Wrapped in a blanket, shivering, but there. Dozens of people were between them, but Sirius was there.

"He fell out of the archway about two hours ago," Kingsley said. Harry tried to walk through or around him; neither worked and he realized this was because Kingsley was holding him in place. "Harry, listen. He's not quite... right."

"Two hours?" Harry scowled. "Why so long to call me?"

"The department heads wanted to run some tests to be sure it was him. They only informed the Minister half an hour ago. She had them fire-call you right away. Listen--"

"Why isn't he blinking? Have they cast a restraining spell?"

"A mild one. Harry! Harry, no." A solid arm caught him around the middle. "He's to go to St. Mungo's until they figure out what's wrong with him. It's best you don't interfere."

Harry hadn't been the youngest Seeker in a century for his looks; he twisted in Kingsley's grasp, and shed the man like a grasping foul. Ministry workers fell to his elbows and glares until he reached his godfather.

"Finite Incantatum." Fine trembles turned gross, and the blanket fell, undone. "Sirius? Sirius talk to me. Look at me." Harry touched a heaving shoulder to no response, then shook it, and Sirius flailed his arms, caught Harry's chin and knocked his glasses askew before half a dozen binding spells caught him again. "Oh, Sirius."

Hands fell on Harry's shoulders, and he leaned back, knowing who was there. His lover could always be identified by--frequently unpleasant--scent: sulphur and bubotuber pus this week.

"Sensory deprivation."

"What?"

"He's been without external stimuli for so long, all his senses have... atrophied. Physically, there's nothing wrong with him. He doesn't appear to have aged. He's just disconnected."

Sirius lay in a cot, relatively still under a muscle-relaxing potion. He tended to panic whenever moved, so while Harry wanted to take his hand, he settled for stroking a bare forearm. Harry had not been able to concentrate on the doctor's words, and had sent Severus in to hear the verdict. "He can't feel me?"

"Nor see you, nor hear you." Severus was not a demonstrative man, so the brief kiss he pressed to the top of Harry's head resounded between them.

"But he'll recover, right?"

Severus was silent, and Harry took that to mean the doctors didn't want to get their hopes up in case he didn't.

Harry dozed, head tilted back, feet on the other chair, thumb moving in restless circles over Sirius' arm, twirling the hair into patterns. A hand fell on his fingers. He jerked, knocked the second chair over and almost overturned his own before catching his balance.

Breath short, Harry watched Sirius, who hadn't started at the clatter. A small frown creased his forehead, and his hand moved over his own arm, and stroked the sheet beside it.

Searching, Harry realized, and seized it with his own. Sirius gasped and jerked back. Harry followed, took his hand again, and Sirius' frown deepened as he explored both Harry's hand and his own arm.

"Sirius? Are you all right?" Sirius gave no sign of hearing, but his breathing had gone ragged. "I'm going to call the nurse."

But at the first sign of Harry's hands leaving his, Sirius clutched and clawed, his tendons standing out from his over-thin arms, and his mouth opened too wide for the low moan that followed.

"Shh, I'm here. It's all right." Harry stroked his godfather's hands, and glanced at the door as if to call back Severus, whom he'd sent to shower and check that their house was still standing. "I've got you. I won't let go. Not this time."

Sirius did not react to his words, but when Harry squeezed, Sirius squeezed back.

On a whim Harry raised their joined hands to his throat, pressed Sirius' fingertips to his Adam's apple as he spoke. "I missed you."

Sirius stroked his throat, almost in wonder.

Harry had only gone home because Severus promised not to leave Sirius' side, promised to keep touching him, to connect him to the world outside his head. The house felt cold and empty; he hadn't been home in a week, and Severus had only returned for brief stops.

Sleep, Severus had said. Sleep in their bed instead of a hospital cot. Shower. Eat. Come back rested. Harry didn't know if he could manage any of it, fretting over leaving Sirius alone with Severus.

He trusted Severus, but there was no love between him and Sirius. He hoped things would change when Sirius recovered. After all, three years after leaving school, Harry had run into Severus in Diagon Alley, and all the fury he'd had to suppress as a student came to the fore, and he threw a punch without a thought and they wound up in bed together. Things could change.

Harry didn't sleep. He showered, he made a sandwich and ate a third of it, he stared at the drop of water gathering on the faucet's rim, but it never fell.

He felt like a student again, sneaking into the hospital early. Harry half expected to find his lover in a far corner, reading, while Sirius tossed on the bed.

Instead, Sirius had Severus' hand in both his own, and was slowly, gently licking his fingers.

The small frown was back, the concentration line that said Sirius was struggling to interpret the world through truncated channels. Small flashes of pink and white, tongue and teeth, winked between Severus' spread fingers, and there was nothing erotic in the act, only curiosity, but Harry's breath shortened nonetheless. He felt too large for his skin.

Severus endured the indignity without expression, and Harry weighed rescuing him against the embarrassment announcing his presence would cause. And then Severus stroked Sirius' hair, and it was all right. Harry slipped back out to get some tea.

Later, when Sirius tugged Harry's hand to his lips, Harry discovered he was wrong. The curious, innocent tongue sweeping over pads and knuckles and probing creases was unbearably erotic, and he squirmed, pinned between Sirius, who didn't mean it that way, and Severus, who watched the proceedings from across the room, a smug little smirk on his lips.

'Snayb' was the first word Sirius spoke, his nose wrinkled, his mouth drawn into a moue of disgust, and Harry laughed in delight and agreement.

Severus scowled; he had returned to work at the lab the week before, and he reeked of gillyweed and mermaid scales. "I don't suppose, Black, that you would care to express your disgust with my profession to the potion-makers who supply the hospital with the elixirs keeping your sorry hide together."

"Snayb," Sirius said again, deaf to any reply, and Harry took his palm and traced yes upon it, and Sirius turned their hands over and wrote harry on his.

"No." Harry threw every ounce of power to his name behind the word.

"It's a very common tool to assist the hearing-impaired." The therapist's perpetual smile faltered under his displeasure. "Unlike many charms, it's safe for long-term use--"

"No."

"Perhaps if Harry could test the device himself?" Severus said, an uncharacteristic mildness to his voice.

"Fine." Harry scowled and held out his hand for the black quill. "What now?"

"Don't be rude, Harry."

"Like you've any--" He froze, retort on tongue. He hadn't moved the quill at all, but he could feel words scratching themselves into his skin. I must not tell lies.

No. That had been a 'D'. Don't be rude, Harry.

And it hadn't hurt, not really. It might cause some irritation if used too much, but the nib was blunt, and coated in velvet.

"All right," he said, scowling, and took the quill back to Sirius' room, leaving Severus to arrange the schedule with the therapist.

Sirius was pacing in his slow, hesitant way, testing both the cane and the charm which let him feel objects as vibrations on his skin. The frequencies changed to let him identify individuals, and he honed in on Harry with disturbing accuracy. "Harry? I want to leave." The words were slurred, clumsy, just a bit too loud. "Can we leave now?"

Harry could not bring himself to hand over the quill yet, and took Sirius' palm. Yes, he traced. Home.

They never quite rid the house of the unoccupied feel that had settled while Harry spent most of his time at St. Mungo's and Severus divided his between the hospital and work. Severus moved the den upstairs so Sirius could have a ground floor bedroom. He also derailed Harry's plan to sleep on the couch in case Sirius needed anything in the night, and Harry agreed with him, but not until morning.

Lupin called four times the first week: twice to announce a visit and twice to cancel. Narcissa, alone in her self-imposed exile at Malfoy Manor but for Severus' occasional visits, sent flowers. Sirius threw them out. Ron and Hermione stopped by, but Sirius fled to his room after ten minutes, so when Lupin finally did arrive, ghost-white and prey-eyed, and Sirius refused to even come out, Harry explained Sirius just wasn't ready for visitors. He tried not be angry when Lupin looked relieved.

"Does Snape live here?"

Sirius had been hunched over the Braille book Hermione had left him, one hand clutching the black quill, and Harry had assumed the pensive frown was caused by his impatience to learn a new way to read. Unease coiled in Harry's stomach; he'd thought Sirius had realized sometime during his weeks in the hospital. "Yes, he lives here."

"But where does he sleep?"

"In our room." Harry went back to his proposed syllabus; he'd taken leave from the Ministry job to look after Sirius and quit when they'd insisted he return, but money was tight on just Severus' wages, and Albus would be in dire straits should September arrive without a Defence master...

"I'm not taking his room, am I?"

"Sirius, no. Our room."

Sirius didn't answer, and after a moment, set down the quill, picked up his book and cane, and left.

"I told Sirius about us today."

Severus' lips trailed across Harry's neck. "He knew."

"No. He thought..."

"He wanted you to tell him." A hand on his hip urged him to turn, and he did, settling his head on Severus' chest, his thigh against Severus' erection. Lust detonated in his belly with the force of weeks of a kiss here, a back rub there, and the day Severus had stopped the lift at the hospital and given him a two-minute blowjob to rival all his fantasies of hours in a bed.

"He was... well, he didn't yell. I reckon that's a good sign."

Severus was silent, which in Snapese meant he reckoned it wasn't but wanted sex too much to start an argument. Harry shifted his thigh, and thought about Sirius licking Severus' fingers, of the warm slick feel of Sirius' tongue between Harry's own fingers. Then he thought about Severus, and how he was patient only when it suited him to be, and he thought about why it suited Severus to be patient through this, and he thought about how the smartest thing he'd ever done had not been killing Voldemort, but trying to punch his former professor in the middle of the street and then never quite managing to get home.

Eventually home had come to them.

But then Severus rolled atop him and pinned his wrists with one hand while the other sought his nipples, and he moaned and spread his legs and forgot what he was thinking.

"I want to help."

Sirius had spurned their company for a few days, so his presence in the kitchen brought a smile to Harry's lips. "It's all right, Sirius. Dinner's almost ready."

"I'm helping," Sirius said, and propped his cane in the corner. He shuffled to the counter, still hesitant to rely solely on the resonance charm.

"You can shell the peas, Black," Severus said over the crisp sounds of knife and board and herbs.

"I'll get a bowl." Harry set aside the salad.

"I can get it my--"

"Second cupboard from the door, top shelf. They're glass." Severus tossed the cilantro in the pot. Harry fetched the basket of pea pods and set it on the table and watched the bowl retrieval with his lower lip between his teeth.

Mild fumbling to find the knob; perhaps the resonance charm needed tuning. A rattle of nested glass bowls; Sirius hadn't been expecting more than one.

"There's three."

"I've got it."

They hit the counter harder than Harry thought they should. He winced. Sirius removed the inner two, and lifted them back to the cupboard. The base clipped the shelf but they made it in safely.

Sirius sat across from Harry, and reached for the basket.

"To your left."

"I've got it, Harry."

The pot bubbled merrily as they worked. Harry vented on the tomatoes until he had a soggy, mangled mass to pour onto the salad. Sirius vented on the peas until he had shells across half the table and on the floor. Severus stirred and ignored them, and finally filled another pot with water and set it by Sirius' elbow.

Harry reached to tug the pot away from the table edge. Sirius caught his wrist and flung it away, then swept the table. The basket fell, the bowl shattered against the hearth. Glass and peas flew everywhere. Sirius stalked out of the kitchen.

There were days when Harry wanted to scream. At Sirius. At Severus. At himself. Days he wished he'd stayed on at the Ministry and hired a home-care specialist to help Sirius until his sight and hearing returned because somehow his being there was making Sirius hate him.

There were days when Harry could barely move because it struck him all over again that he had Sirius back and nothing had changed and they were still trying to be something to each other that they were not.

There were days when everything Harry thought he knew turned out to be wrong.

He found Sirius in the den once, quill tucked behind one ear so he could still 'hear', wand in hand, struggling to pronounce words he couldn't hear and perfect gestures he couldn't see. Even upside-down Harry recognized the photo album.

"Superficies transposition spell?" So he could touch the photographic faces.

"Don't help me."

"I'm sorry. I know you need your independence but it... it hurts to watch you struggle."

"I don't want pity. It's my own fault I'm like this. If I'd listened to common sense--"

Harry scowled. "Your fault you're what?"

"A freak! I can't do--" Words were lost as blood surged in Harry's veins, filling his ears with the sound of his own pulse. "--doctor says if hasn't come back by now it never will. I'm--"

"Don't you say that word. About anyone."

The black quill had its ways of conveying tone. Pressure and speed changes and nuances too subtle for Harry. Sirius paused. "I didn't mean... I've bollixed things up again."

"No. I'm just... It's a mess, isn't it?"

"Don't be an ass, Black. Harry would be over there more than here."

Harry set the groceries on the counter, and crept over to the half-open door.

"I don't want to be in the way."

"Did you not understand the part where I said 'Don't be an ass, Black', or are you deliberately aggravating me? Moving out is not going to prove your independence to him."

Severus sat in the wingback chair, a book on his lap. Sirius lay sprawled on the rug, jiggling his quill as though that would hurry its transcription. "I think Harry's avoiding me."

"If he is it's because we've finally beaten it through his skull that you're not helpless. Kindly don't destroy that progress by leaving his sight."

A delay, and then Sirius laughed, full-throated and uncoordinated. His feet, Harry saw, rested between Severus', and Harry thought of a pink tongue tasting the long yellowed fingers that knew just how to curl to bring him to ecstasy.

"Shall I continue, or do I have to spend my Sunday helping you pack?"

Sirius waved a hand in a wide circle. "Carry on."

"'It seemed to me so long, however, since I had been among such boys, or among any companions of my own age, except Mick Walker and Mealy Potatoes, that I felt as strange as ever I have done in all my life. I was so conscious of having passed through scenes of which they could have no knowledge, and of having acquired experiences foreign to my age, appearance, and condition...'

"You're thinking about him."

Harry groaned and thrust back, hyperaware of everything from the sweat running up his back to the sheets bunched beneath his knees to the pulse of blood through tissue stretched around his lover's cock. He blew his damp fringe out of his eyes. "What?"

"You're fantasizing about your godfather."

He'd thrown the first punch, that day five years ago, but Severus had hexed him silly before it even landed. "Maybe."

Another long slow thrust that had him biting the pillow. "Tell me."

"Why?"

"I want to know. Do you think about him quivering under your touch? Arching into you, moaning for you? Lying spread out and helpless?" Severus' hands held Harry's hips for slow sure strokes, but his voice held an element of cold.

"I... He was... He was licking you, at the hospital. I think about him... licking you. And--oh!" A sharp thrust nearly knocked his head on the headboard. "And fucking you."

Severus said nothing, but drove his cock into Harry again, hard, and again, and again. His hot panting breaths chased each other over Harry's nape until he pressed his face to Harry's back, lost coordination and rhythm, and came, shuddering.

Ragged silence, half anticipatory, half replete. Then Severus sat back, pulling Harry with him, one hand on Harry's belly, the other on Harry's erection, his softening cock reluctant to leave Harry's arse.

"God," Severus whispered into his ear, and Harry came in his lax grip.

Lupin was in their living room when Harry returned from his first day of teaching. Sirius had made the tea to judge from the spills on the tray, and tension stiffened both postures, but they had been speaking when Harry came in. They stopped when he did. He smiled at Lupin as he hung up his coat.

"How's the book doing?"

"Not bad, not bad," said Lupin.

"Not good either," said Sirius, and something broke in the air.

"The unfortunate truth." Lupin grinned wryly. "I shan't quit from Safeway just yet."

Harry looked from one to the other. "If you'll excuse me, one of the third-year Slytherins thought it would be funny to coat my chair with sticking charm, and the counterspell has left me in need of a shower."

He kept one ear open as he washed the sticky residue from his body. He swore he heard laughter once, just after Severus came home and retreated to their bedroom, muttering about a house full of Gryffindors as he changed out of his work robes.

"You'd think they'd want a little more privacy," Severus grumbled. He watched Harry in the mirror as he dried himself.

"They have privacy," Harry said. "Seeing how we're giving it to them." He tugged on a shirt, and Severus grunted and vanished into the den.

After Sirius saw Lupin out and Harry put away the tea things, they started dinner, and when Severus swept downstairs and banished them from the kitchen, they moved to the couch.

What was it like? Harry asked, tracing each letter on his godfather's palm, listening to Severus make unnecessary noise with the pans.

The fire crackled endlessly before Sirius answered in the same way. I don't remember.

Harry reckoned he did, but he'd learned not to press. From Severus, of all people.

There were no punches thrown, in the end. Sirius knocked on their door one night in November, looking like he didn't know why, and Harry invited him in and then kissed him while Severus turned down the sheets.

Sirius' hands found his waist, and neither made any pretense of reluctance as their tongues swept each other's mouths. Harry pressed his body close; Sirius was almost as tall as Severus and he knew just how to move to rub his prick against Sirius' thigh, to rub his belly against Sirius' stiffening cock.

Severus retrieved the lube and an extra pillow, and shed the bottoms he'd slept in since Sirius came home. Harry steered his godfather to the bed and tumbled him across Severus' lap and stared down at them.

Did he, as Severus suggested, want to hold Sirius down and bring him pleasure? Harry wet his lips and met his lover's gaze, then his godfather's unfocused eyes. "I think about you licking him, Sirius. Just everywhere."

Severus' glare screamed something at him, but when Sirius cupped his face, Severus leaned down for a kiss.

Only to have Sirius lick him, chin to nose to brow.

"Black," he growled, and shoved Sirius off his lap, and climbed atop him, and tugged off the muggle shirt Sirius wore. He bit Sirius' nipples. Harry knelt on the bed's edge, and took the quill from its place behind Sirius' ear, and used the velvet-tipped end to write across Sirius' chest.

Ours.

"Yes," Sirius gasped, and plucked the quill from Harry's fingers and dropped it over the side of the bed. "Yes." A clever roll had Severus on the bottom and Sirius nibbling his throat. Harry slipped out of his tee shirt and Y-fronts and climbed into bed. He sat against the headboard and watched pink tongue and white teeth flash over his lover's body. He watched Severus moan and pant and curse and Sirius not hear any of it but still know the devastation his mouth was causing, still corner Severus with his own desire.

Harry watched Sirius' lips working glans and shaft, dipping down to balls and perineum, tasting everything, teasing, then setting a firm steady pace of suck, suck, lick until Severus bucked his hips and arched off the bed and came down Sirius' throat.

Harry let out a shuddery breath, his hand rhythmically squeezing his erection, as he watched his lovers--he had lovers now, two of them, and he once thought that promiscuous and unworkable and now he couldn't imagine the house without one of them.

Severus' fingers looped over Sirius' palm, and whatever he said made Sirius gasp and press his cock against the bed. Severus smiled a smile that made Harry remember he'd hated the man once, and then he forgot it as Severus crawled over to him.

"I asked him if he wants to fuck you."

Harry moaned.

"I assume that's a yes. Nox."

Darkness had swallowed everything. Sirius was a hot and heavy weight atop him, Severus a firm brace behind. Harry spread his legs to accommodate Sirius' slim hips as he slithered up, and Severus caught Harry's ankles and raised his legs, exposing his entrance to Sirius' slick fingers.

And Harry arched into his touches, so much surer now, and the fingers sliding into him. "Now, please," he said, and cursed Sirius for tossing aside the quill. He settled for finding a fistful of hair and yanking.

Sirius chuckled and lowered his mouth to Harry's neck, sucked and nibbled. The fingers withdrew, and Sirius was suddenly everywhere, poured over him. A hard cock nudged his hole and they both shifted, correcting the angle, and a little push and Sirius was inside him.

Sirius was inside him.

"Severus?"

"I'm here."

"Oh, god." He still had that fistful of hair, and put it to use. "Move, damn you, Sirius."

"Ow. Greedy." A pause, then, "I'll keep that in mind."

"What did you tell him, Severus?" A wicked chuckle was his only answer until Sirius moved. Long, slow, hard strokes of the sort that could drive Harry to the edge quicker than anything and hold him there forever.

His hands scrabbled over Sirius' back. Please. Fast. More.

And spoken lowly into his ear, "I've got you."

And he did. So Harry let go, and fell, and fell, and fell.

Somewhere at the bottom of eleven years and three in the morning, Severus said, "Harry wants to watch us fuck sometime."

Sirius must have recovered his quill. "Tomorrow maybe."

David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens
Title courtesy of Milton