Three's Revenge

Draco’s Detour: Three’s Revenge

By Newshound

Summary: Draco tries to teach Harry a lesson about love and ends up a student of a dragon handler, a Quidditch Keeper and a Potions Master.

Disclaimer: Harry Potter and company are the exclusive property of J. K. Rowling. This fiction is entirely for entertainment purposes and no money is being made from it.

A/N: I wrote this as a response to the Draco’s Detour Challenge of Per Solum Lacuna. It is a companion piece to that fic and was written around chapter 13. Since this is an AU of PSL it will be contradicted by several events in that piece. All I can ask is that you suspend reality for a bit more. If you haven’t read PSL, I fully encourage you to do so, it is a fantastic read and understanding Three’s Revenge will be much easier.

Intro: The time is early spring. Charlie Weasley is in Bulgaria training dragons, Harry and Draco have taken lodgings at Hogsmeade while Draco completes his apprenticeship (Harry has taken a leave of absence from the Ministry and – in order to be close to Draco – has agreed to fill in for Madam Hooch and preside over the Quidditch program at Hogwarts while she tends to her ailing mother for the next several months), and Severus Snape continues to teach potions at Hogwarts.

Now, raise your glasses and toast with me: To Draco, may he always remember; it never pays to fuck with a Malfoy.

And thus our story begins.

Prologue

A Change Would Seem To Be In Order


Charlie loved dragons, had always loved them. Working with them had been a lifelong dream and he couldn’t remember a time, even as a child, when he’d thought of doing anything else with his life. These fearsome giants had always ruled his life one way or another, and the last few years spent learning about them, training them and rescuing them had been more fulfilling than Charlie could ever have imagined.

They fascinated him with all their different sizes and shapes, but what captivated Charlie most was the hold they had over him. Working with dragons required the utmost concentration and perseverance, and capturing and taming the creatures had replaced what he once considered his first real love – Quidditch.

The sense of excitement and danger Charlie felt when he’d played seeker on the house Quidditch team was not as intense as what he felt simply observing dragons, but it was the same heady rush. He’d always felt such exhilaration while flying; a release from all the restrictions and constraints he faced on the ground. Up above the pitch, alone, he felt free from all the limits imposed by the world below; up there he could be whomever he wanted. Watching for the snitch and keeping an eye on both his teammates and the other seeker had sharpened all his skills of concentration and observation. The elation he’d experienced when catching the snitch before his competitor and winning his team a victory had been replaced by the satisfaction of subduing and taming a particularly savage horntail.

Which made the disinterest he felt right now training a feisty Bulgarian blue somewhat disturbing. The constant in Charlie’s life had always been these magnificent animals and the challenge of working with them had overshadowed everything else in his life. Or so it had seemed - until recently.

For the past several weeks, Charlie had awakened from dreams that alternately excited and worried him. In these dreams he lived a different life, one without dragons. Well, one without literal dragons, that was. In them he dreamed of a life with a man, one he considered to have a nature similar to a dragon’s. A man who fascinated and tantalized him, one he wanted nothing more than to tame and dominate. What he feared was that this was the one dragon that would end up taming and conquering him instead.

He’d had dreams about the man before, but they had always been purely sexual. The dreams had changed over the past month, going from what it would be like to fuck this man to what it would be to talk to him, sleep with him, hold him and listen to him. It scared Charlie. He liked his life the way it was, sex with no strings and no permanent relationships. Everyone fell into one of two categories, friend or lover, and Charlie made it a rule never to mix the two. Mixing them led to serious problems and so far, Charlie had successfully avoided involving himself with anyone who stood a chance of ever combining the two.

The problem with love, in Charlie’s mind, was that it limited your freedom and independence – the two things Charlie cherished most in his life. He had guarded his ability to pick up and go at a moment’s notice as ferociously as a female dragon guarded her eggs and the thought of compromising this liberty wasn’t one he had ever entertained. He’d always made fun of his friends and colleagues who’d gotten married and settled down. He called it “going domestic” and it was a fate he was determined to avoid. But in the back of his mind an ominous thought was taking form; he was now actually considering facing the same fate, and not just facing it, wanting to embrace it.

The other objection Charlie had to a committed relationship was that it severely curtailed one’s sex life – the fact that you would be having sex with the same person for the rest of your life being the biggest turn-off. Charlie thoroughly enjoyed casual sex, the more casual the better to his mind. He despised what he termed, sappy “was it good for you, too?” sex. Now, here he was, aching to ask that very question!

He’d even enjoyed his fair share of completely anonymous sex. Just find someone (male or female, didn’t matter to Charlie, although women really didn’t seem to do well with this), take them somewhere private (or as close as you could get to private), fuck them, and leave. No emotional entanglements whatsoever. No names, no addresses, no “I’ll Floo you laters.”

Now all he wanted was to hear this man speak his name, and not only in bed, but just to hear it, like, “Hey, Charlie, where’s the salt?” or “Charlie, what the hell are you doing?” or “What’s wrong Charlie?”

Charlie didn’t want to know about how he moaned and sighed in bed, all he could think about was whether he stole the covers, or how many pillows he preferred or if he wore anything to bed.

Sad thing was the object of Charlie’s adoration didn’t know he was alive.
He couldn’t go on like this much longer, the dreams were beginning to intrude into his daytime activities and several times he caught himself daydreaming when he should have been paying attention. One of his friends had even noticed and commented on it. On the fact that he seemed distracted, not the source of the distraction, thank God.

He stood staring at what had once been the love of his life, a beautiful blue, who he’d been working with for the last several months. He’d received her as a baby and now she was mature, ready to release into the wild.

He’d never had a problem letting his dragons go before, but this time it was different, he felt the sense of loss acutely, like she was his child.

Because he was the last to leave each day, he was always careful to make sure his charges were settled in before he left, but today he just couldn’t face them. For the first time in a long time, Charlie missed his family, missed having people around him and missed having a close friend or a lover.

He Apparated to the small apartment he had secured near the dragon-training center at which he presently worked. He never decorated or had personal items in his rooms because he never stayed in one place very long. Besides, it wasn’t like he entertained or spent a lot of time there, just to eat and sleep mostly.

Everything about the place looked different today. It looked empty and barren, like no one really lived there and Charlie realized he didn’t like it anymore.

He wanted a home. One with lots of furniture, a blazing fire across from which sat a desk with a dark haired man hunched over it. He could smell the heavenly aroma of dinner cooking and a huge bathtub with steaming hot water awaiting him in the bathroom, with bubbles if he was lucky. The bedroom was across from the bathroom, dominated by a large bed with lots of soft silky pillows. The walls were lined with pictures of the two of them together and all the places they had visited.

He so longed for a home, a home he’d made with this man who was his companion, his lover, his best friend.
The question was how to make it happen?

He flopped down on the sofa the landlord had agreeably spared so Charlie wouldn’t have to sit on the floor. It had pink and yellow flowers and was stained and worn thin in spots, but all in all, Charlie thought it was pretty comfortable. He’d fallen asleep on it many times after a long tiresome day when he didn’t have the energy to make it to the bedroom. He’d also entertained on the sofa several times, memorable occasions all of them, but the memories were bittersweet now. The person he really wanted on the sofa was somewhere else, far away, and had already rejected him.

Suddenly, the fireplace exploded into blue flames and Ron’s face appeared.

“Charlie, where in the fucking hell have you been?” Ron yelled angrily. “Mum’s going mad, she thinks you’ve disappeared or something!”

“Slow down, Ron,” Charlie said grinning. “I had to travel back to Romania to release a little horntail we’ve trained up.”

“Well, you can explain that one to Mum,” Ron said, huffily. He was a little put out that the cumbersome task of locating his wandering brother and convincing him to return home had fallen upon his busy doorstep. “Mum and Dad are celebrating their anniversary Saturday, having a party and all, and you’re to come. Mum is having us all home and everyone will be there.”

“Saturday?” Charlie asked. “That’s fine, don’t worry Ron, I’ll be there. Maybe I’ll even stay there overnight; I haven’t seen them in months.”

“So I can tell Mum to expect you then?” Ron said, almost unbelieving. He’d never dreamed his task would prove so easy.

“Yes,” Charlie replied nodding. “I’ll see you then, Ron. I do miss you all, you know.”

“Sure Charlie, whatever you say,” Ron said grinning. With a soft pop, he was gone leaving the fireplace cold and empty again.

Speaking to Ron had reminded Charlie of someone. He briefly wondered if Harry would be there, he’d heard Harry had found himself a new lover. Someone Charlie would never, not in a million years, have imagined him with. Someone who, if Charlie remembered correctly, was intimately acquainted with the man he’d dreamed about.

He couldn’t just march right up to him and declare his intentions – ‘I realize we barely know each other, but would be at all interested in a lifetime commitment? With me?’
Did I really think that? Lifetime commitment?

He’d never actually pursued someone and his experience with relationships in general was very limited. What he needed was an advantage, someone with inside information on how to go about the whole thing. How to woo and win the heart of his former potions master, the one who had taken up permanent residency in his fantasy life, Severus Snape.
Draco Malfoy would be an incredible secret weapon in the war to win Severus’ heart. Charlie felt pretty confident he could have bedded Severus, but falling in love was something much more complicated. Plus, he didn’t want just sex; it would hurt to know he had only a part of the man from whom he wanted everything, his thoughts, his dreams, his secrets, his feelings. He wouldn’t settle for less.

Now, how was he going to get Draco to help him?

Surely Harry has some influence over him?

It was worth a try.