Title: A Means of Survival

Disclaimer: These characters and this storyline do not belong to me. I borrowed JK Rowling's characters, yes, but afterwards I washed them and obliviated them as much as possible without breaking them. I swear. Although, I gotta say, Snape does have this weird little giggle thing he does now, but only when he hears the chicken dance song, honest!!!

This is a semi-sequel to the story by Amanuensis called "Other Chambers, Darker Secrets" – located at amanuensis1 DOT com / other chambers DOT html (minus the spaces).

In that story, Lucius rapes Harry, Draco rapes Hermione and Snape rapes both Ron and Harry. However, my story is a semi-sequel, because my premise is that Snape only helped them and never hurt any of them, while Draco was the one to hurt Ron.

They had been the Gryffindor trio from the get go. Now however, things were different, and even Neville Longbottom could tell you that without too much undue fuss. No one except a handful of people knew why, other than the trio itself of course, but trying to ask them about it was like trying to get a hippogriff to be nice after insulting its mother – not a real great idea, all told.

Harry had been right when he had realized that the previous part of his life was over and that he'd never be able to get it back. Lucius had made him see that truth, and it seemed now that no matter what thoughts he had, he could never get that particular one out of the forefront of his mind.

They had stuck together after it had been all said and done, like they said that they would. Physically, they were healed, but mentally and emotionally – well, that was an entirely different kind of story.

***
The first change that they had been forced to implement had been their sleep routines. Being second years, they were versed in some basic silencing spells, but nothing complex. Unbeknownst to Ron, Harry had been using them on his sleeping area every night since the beginning of the school year. His dreams that year had been plagued by locked rooms, dead bodies, and his Uncle Vernon's laughter as he pleaded and begged through the door to be let out.

Before they had gone to sleep that first night after Snape had secured their release, they had discussed that silencing spell as perhaps a proper method of self-insurance for when they were alone in their beds at night. Harry and Ron were most worried about Hermione, since she was alone; they at least had each other to turn to if things got too bad.

But she had reassured them, in a most Hermione-like knowing way. She was so very strong.

…

It wasn't very long into the night before they realized that they would have to revise their plans and learn some heftier silencing spells. Harry had shrieked loudly enough to awaken the Gryffindor dorm, male and female, including Professor McGonagall herself. Indeed, the next day at breakfast, the rumor that a banshee had been let loose in the castle in the middle of the night had made it through most of the rest of the houses before Hermione's cereal had had a chance to get properly soggy. In turn, the Gryffindor house was remarkable tightlipped about the whole sordid affair, thanks to a dressing down that had occurred early that morning by a very harassed and upset looking head of house.

The trio had not slept the rest of the night, opting instead to focus on their "homework," as they had told anyone who had bothered to ask. It simply wasn't safe enough to sleep until they had learned a better method of concealment from their dorm mates. Unlike their heartfelt and teary promise to stick together, this agreement had been silent, but somehow more emphatic. This was the real deal, as it were.

They considered dreamless sleep as an option, but as Harry had already realized, it was possible to build up immunity to dreamless sleep to the point that it no longer worked properly, if at all, resulting in the need for stronger and stronger doses until what? Death? Madness? Besides, unless they wanted to learn to brew it themselves, then it was likely that their increasing consumption would be noticed by someone sooner, rather than later.

No, a stronger silencing spell was the easiest way to hide their trauma from the eyes and ears of the rest of the school. It wasn't anybody else's business. There was simply just no one that they could trust to this magnitude, and still have their revenge upon those whom had hurt them so very badly.

"Yeah mum, by the way . . .," Ron had joked sourly to his two best mates when the idea of telling someone had been brought up once more. He still hadn't told Harry about what had happened in the hallway between him and Draco, but knew that Harry likely considered the act of having to have been a passive witness in all that had gone on as horrible enough in and of itself, and therefore had not said anything to him about it.

While Hermione and Ron both hadn't wanted to deal with the fallout of telling their parents, the idea of telling the Dursleys about their situation was so laughable that Harry had accidentally exploded a nearby toilet at the mere utterance of the idea. Luckily it had been a toilet from the bathroom that Moaning Myrtle inhabited, so there was no particular problem there.

Likewise, the idea of just sleeping in the common room in shifts, with someone constantly awake to monitor the other two's sleep, was also tossed out, given the increased likelihood of drawing unwanted attention.

….

It took a total of three days of constant searching in the library for answers to their desperate question in order to find something even remotely good enough. In that time, they had only taken catnaps in the place of real sleep, while loading up extensively on Pepper Up Potions and coffee; the former being taken carefully from the infirmary in the dead of night under Harry's invisibility cloak.

Thus far, no one had said anything to them, but Harry had caught the headmaster looking at the three of them with something akin to wary concern more than a few times in those three days. Between their efforts at continuing alertness and their sagging studies, the added fear of being called into Dumbledore's office was almost enough to send him around the bend. It had only been the constant support of his two most precious friends which had kept him from diving into the lake in hopes of becoming added protein to the giant squid's sordid diet.

And then they had found something. Ironically, given their history of research, Hermione had not been the one to read across it first, but Ron had been able to give out the exclamation.

"I've got IT," he had whispered with the bloodshot desperation of extreme fear and near-complete hopelessness.

They had both looked up at him with piercing glares before realizing that he was one of them, and as such, was allowed to interrupt their endless solitude and misery.

"Read it," Harry had said tersely, his teeth clenched to keep the tremors of his overwrought body from becoming audible.

"The spell was created to initially to shield a master's household from the screams of those in labour." Ron read, breathlessly. Had Ron been anything resembling his former self, he would have been disgusted or at least embarrassed by the idea of using a spell that had been originally created for shielding the cries of a mother-to-be. Now however, an exceptionally different Ron sat there in his place. The old Ron had never experienced the heat of his most hated classmate's orgasm dripping out of his shaking arsehole. No, the old Ron had nothing on this Ron.

"What's the spell?" Harry had asked once more, a bit more tersely this time. His knuckles were white with the strain of being upright and alive in a place as open as the library. After all, anyone could get in there.

"Ah," Ron squinted at the print, "Silencio a Nevita."

Hermione had taken the book from Ron by that point and had been scanning it quickly with a renewed fervor. Finally she breathed a sigh of relief and look up at them nodding her agreement at its worth. She had not spoken since the middle of their second sleepless day, and secretly Ron and Harry had a bet going over when and how she would finally attack Draco Malfoy. Harry had given her to the end of the week and put his money on her attacking Draco physically, in an eye-gouging, knee to the groin kind of manner. Ron, on the other hand, had put his money on sometime in the next day, but had suggested that she would someone find a spell that would render Malfoy dick-less in the process.

Now it seemed that neither would occur, provided that the spell worked. And god, it had better, before they all just started screaming and hexing everything around them. And then something would come out, and not for the better. Harry could just imagine his awful title being changed to "The-Boy-Who-Lived-to-get-Fucked." And then his life would just spiral out of control, he just knew it. It was too much to bear, too much to handle, too much too much too much. He dug his nails into the inside flesh of his left arm, gouging out thin furrows of skin from his thin arms. His body ached with a subdural itch that nothing could reach. He just wanted a way to scour himself clean, but nothing worked. His body screamed at him to let it sleep and he was almost to the point of screaming back that it just needed to fuck off and leave him alone. He was almost there.

But this, this "Silencio a Nevita;" this could work, he felt certain. Why else would they have found the spell now, at the end of the third day, at the end of their unraveling sanities? It had to be right.

It just had to be.

….

Hermione went to sleep first, without even making sure that they knew how to say the spell correctly, which was very unlike her. The two boys had raised eyebrows at each other, but otherwise had not said anything when she had motioned wearily towards the girls' side of the tower.

"Maybe we should stay up for a bit then, mate," Ron had said, as he lowered himself carefully into a semi-slumped position on the couch.

"A bit," Harry had agreed, perching on the arm farthest away from Ron. Even now, in the state that he was, his eyes continuously scanned the room warily for some kind of attack. Even here, in the closest thing that he knew to a home, he still kept his eyes open and his wand ready. Although it was already ten o'clock at night, there were still several study groups left in the common area. They mostly consisted of older members of the Gryffindor house, but all seemed to be aware of the changed atmosphere around Harry, Ron and Hermione. No one approached either of the two boys for the next hour, but there were several worried glances in their direction, not unlike Dumbledore's looks had been in the Great Hall.

After an hour of what felt like fruitless waiting on the boys' parts, they finally decided that the new silencing spell was working. Normally it would take longer than an hour for any of them to reach REM sleep, but after three days of no sleep coupled with extreme trauma, they all believed that they would reach their dreams sooner rather than later.

So with some trepidation, they made their way up to their beds, before lying down stiffly, each boy ensconced behind the privacy of his bed curtains. None of the other second year boys had gone to sleep yet, and although all but Seamus were in the room with them, no one spoke to them.

Harry silently counted to three, aware that Ron was probably doing the same thing, as it had been one of the things that they had discussed quietly while still down in the common room. Then he muttered the spell and miraculously he realized that the world had gone miraculously still and quiet around him. The book had indicated that the spell should work in two ways in order to guarantee absolute privacy for the birthing process itself. Those around him would not be able to hear him, nor would he be able to hear them. It seemed a fair trade-off to him.

Having decided that he no longer gave a damn about anything other than sleeping and removing his conscious body from the world of horrors that he seemed to constantly find himself in, it was with a great weariness that he closed his eyes and submitted himself to whatever it was that would come next.