Disclaimer: I do not own the original canon nor am I making any profit from writing this piece. All works are accredited to their original authors, performers, and producers while this piece is mine. No copyright infringement is intended. I acknowledge that all views and opinions expressed herein are merely my interpretations of the characters and situations found within the original canon and may not reflect the views and opinions of the original author(s), producer(s), and/or other people.

Warnings: This story may contain material that is not suitable for all audiences and may offend some readers.

Author's Note(s): This piece was written for a challenge in the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (Challenges & Assignments) on the FFN forum.
The Challenge Information:
House: Gryffindor
Claimed Pairing: Lunar Heroes (Neville Longbottom/Luna Lovegood/Harry Potter)
Day 19: Creature Mates
Extra Prompt[s]: n/a
Word Count: 2627

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Not Long Enough

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"We love the things that destroy us, because in that destruction we truly feel alive."

― Robert Pobi, Bloodman

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Neville came awake grudgingly. The darkness that had trapped him before clung like stubborn bits of ivy to his thoughts. He shook his head, and instead of dark vines, he had to deal with colorful explosions of pain. With the hard-learned skill learned in the warzone that had been occupied Hogwarts, Neville bit back a groan as he began to carefully sort through what he could remember of how he came to be wherever here was. All he could really tell with his eyes closed was that he was laying on something soft, with his head pillowed on what was probably someone's leg.

He had been out with Ron and Hannah, shopping for Luna's birthday which was in a few days. They had been lingering over ice cream, just three friend chatting about their significant others and their other friends. Ron had made a comment about Harry acting off at work, pissy in general and weirdly defensive about even stranger things. Hannah rolled her eyes at Ron's suggestion that Harry was turning into a woman on her period while Neville had tried to offer that he hadn't noticed anything odd at home. It wasn't quite the truth, but Harry probably wouldn't have appreciated him sharing any of the changes he had noted, given they all had to do with what the three of them did in the privacy of their own home. If Harry was finally getting comfortable enough to push for more affection from himself and Luna, then Neville wasn't going to do anything to threaten that security.

The attack had been sudden—precise, and directed. The attackers had hit the ice cream shop within seconds, and not just the shop—because life was never that simple when one loved Harry Potter. They had targeted the table the three friends had been sharing. It was all too fast, even for three veterans of the War. Neville's last thought before waking here had been about how pissed Luna was going to be if she had to call upon any of her allies in their local sidhe to save him.

"Are you willing to admit to being awake yet, pet?"

This time he did groan. Luna was going to be livid that Sabine had managed to get her hands on him. Luna hated the other fairy with a passion that Neville would have said she couldn't feel about anyone if you had asked him back at Hogwarts. His mate didn't get even get half as enraged about generic Death Eaters (who killed people as part of their initiation) as she did any time Sabine was anywhere in the vicinity. This was a nightmare; it had to be. Sabine had to know better than to attempt to steal another fairy's bonded mate, so she couldn't be this stupid…unless—

"It's okay, pet," Sabine said, and Neville almost threw up from the sensation of her fingers in his hair and the realization that she was exactly that stupid. Sabine had never believed Luna's claim of having two mates. The argument had a lot of political ramifications that Neville didn't understand and honestly, didn't try to understand. Human politics was hard enough to contemplate, and since taking over both his own seats and Harry's, Neville found that he didn't want think about a different arena with players operating under completely different rules.

He understood enough to know that Luna's claim over both him and Harry made this obsession of Sabine's distasteful, and actually taking one of them? That was pretty much a declaration of war. It was not a war that Sabine could hope to win. Finding magi with the magical capability and, er, physical stamina to keep up with the bloodsong of even the lesser fey was difficult. Higher fey had even greater difficulty as they bonded spiritually as well as magically and physically. To find two humans with such compatibility was thought to be impossible—but clearly they had never experienced the phenomenon that was Harry Potter, who seemed to create the impossible just by existing.

Oh, shit—Harry.

"You're so fucked," Neville stated as his mind finally cleared enough to realize the full scope of the situation. The fingers in his hair stilled. "Forget your feud with Luna for a moment. How do you think the wizarding world will react when they find out that you took the bondmate of their Savior? How do you think the Aurors—no, the whole damn DMLE—will react when their favorite team leader is hunting for his husband? He wouldn't order them to follow him, not my Harry—he wouldn't even ask, because he never does. That won't stop them from doing it, every single last one of them. It's only a matter of time before Harry Potter is leading an army to your door."

"Listen here, you pathetic worm," Sabine snarled, yanking his head up by his hair so that he met her eyes. The gold of them glittered dangerously. "No mere mortal will ever be able to breech the wards without my permission. I have plenty of time to break whatever bewitchment that little upstart has over you. Even if it cannot be the soulbond she claims, you are clearly capable enough to be useful until you finally wither away as all mortals do."

His neck ached from the angle she held, but he knew better than to fight it. He was a very capable wizard and very strong physically, but he was also very aware that he was human, nowhere near the same level as a full-blooded fae like Sabine. One in the middle of a full rage would be able to break him like a twig. But if Sabine started attacking the bond—that would be even worse than anything she could do to his body. That pain would echo to Luna and Harry. That was not acceptable.

…and there was a reason that Neville lost the fight with the Hat to put him anywhere except Gryffindor.

He spat in her beautiful face, vindictively pleased by the sight of the spittle trickling down a finely sculpted cheekbone.

"It is a soulbond, you fucking idiot," Neville snapped, diplomacy be damned.

Sabine used her grip to throw Neville across the room. Hitting the wall knocked the breath out of him. For longer than he liked, he couldn't move, as his body prioritized figuring out how breathe again. Sabine used the time to stalk over to him, every inch a dangerous predator hunting. On Luna, that look was sexy with a dangerous edge, but Neville didn't think Sabine was interested in the kind of playtime that Luna would have been and even if she was, well, Neville definitely wasn't, not with her. He was a one fairy kind of man, after all.

"Mortals aren't capable of bonding to each other," Sabine screamed. The walls around them quaked to punctuate the statement. It took the assessing look Sabine gave the space for Neville to realize that the magical burst hadn't been from her. Neville didn't even try to not laugh, even if it hurt. Harry's gallows humor was definitely starting to affect him if he could laugh in this situation. Trapped with a pissed off fairy while another one and an equally pissed off wizard leading an army of combat-trained magi stormed the castle? Perfect time to laugh at the sheer impossibility that was his life. Sabine looked properly worried now, as another wave of magic made the room tremble ominously.

"That's Harry," Neville commented gleefully. The magic was curling around him, heady and protective as it always when Harry let it unfurl—something the other man rarely did, for reasons he refused to talk about but didn't paint a nice picture of the muggles who raised him. Neville could tell the magic was different somehow, definitely darker than usual, but it was so completely Harry that Neville couldn't work up the need to worry about it. Harry would sooner kill himself that risk his and Luna's safety.

Another shove of energy had half of the wards failing explosively. As their holder, the backlash threw Sabine into the air. The fairy groaned from her new position crumpled against the far wall. Neville didn't bother moving more than it took to curl against his own wall. Breathing was still something that hurt, and apparently laughter didn't help that. Who knew? Besides, the other half of the wards had just been yanked from Sabine's control by magic that was definitely Luna's deft hand, and very brutally, too, if the convulsions of the fairy were anything to go by. He was much better off staying right here, safe as can be and out of whatever battle was happening outside.

He must have dozed (sleeping in snatches, another fun habit from the war that refused to go away) because the next Neville knew there was pounding on the door as if someone was attempting to break it down. It's Harry—Neville would know that magic whipping around the room anywhere and even oblivious Ron would probably be able recognize it—but the difference in it is sharper now, more obvious. He could feel the weight of it settling about him, familiar and heady and—yeah, there's the familiar arousal flooding into his blood. As the door began to splinter under the assault, Neville gave a passing hope that Harry only had Luna with him, even knowing that it was probably futile because he knew they would have brought backup.

Harry was the first through the door—but Neville immediately knew that something was wrong, something was off, because he was moving wrong. Neville was able to catch a glimpse of solid black eyes before Harry was pressed against him, checking him over with far more thoroughness than he usually used when there was chance of being seen. Around them, magic swirled and swelled to fill the space. The air was so thick with it that Neville could taste it and he couldn't stop the moan that escaped him at the penetrating feeling of it in combination of Harry pressing his nose against his neck.

"Take that into custody," Luna ordered in the tone she only used in her official capacity as ambassador between Avalon and the Ministry of Magic...the one that never failed to make him want to beg to do all sorts of things that would have the fine, upstanding human magi of Britannia fainting in shock. "Then secure this floor. Let no one pass, not for any reason. Am I understood?"

"Yes, Lady Luna," said an unfamiliar voice, recognizable only as another high fae. Harry growled into Neville's neck at the new speaker, moving to hunch over him protectively but otherwise seeming to trust that Luna's position between them and the guard who was removing Sabine from the room was enough. Harry's hands slipped beneath Neville's shirt, nails scratching lightly over his skin. The sensation made Neville arch into Harry with a loud moan and absolutely no care about where they were at the moment.

Neville could feel the floaty sensation that came from being saturated in the magic of either of his bondmates, but especially Harry's. It was easy to forget sometimes just how powerful Harry was. He was a master of hiding in plain sight, of deflecting attention away from any of the impossible things he could, of making himself seem small and harmless. Harry could somehow seem like the least important person in a room where everyone was looking for him specifically. Part of that was the tight control he kept over his magic—which made every slip extremely noticeable, even if it hadn't meant things like cleaning orange juice out of the carpet three floors away because Harry had been surprised by a house elf delivering the morning mail.

(Yes, wizards approaching their twenty-fourth birthday shouldn't still be having bouts of accidental magic, but it wasn't completely unheard of for it to happen, when a wizard was extremely strong or had experienced long-term or extensive damage to his magical core, all of which was his Harry.)

Of course, Neville preferred noticeable slips which ended the way this was headed, when Harry's magic filled him in a way that was so close to sex but also so much more intimate because it didn't just penetrate Neville's magic—it mixed them together, all three of them, and then spread it between all of them. That feeling of perfect connection, of belonging completely, it was like a drug and just like Luna breaking out her command voice, Harry losing control (or surrendering it) of his magic was something which made Neville willing to do all sorts of things that would have had him stammering and blushing back during their Hogwarts years.

"Neville, this is very important," Luna said, as she pressed against the side not covered in fondling brunet. Her fingers were carding through his hair, which helped him focus on her as much as they hindered. He hummed an acknowledgement to her words. "You noticed that Harry's a bit different, right?"

"Mm, mine," Neville managed to reply before Harry's snuffles at his neck turned to nibbling. "Just, ah, more than before. Still—" He cut himself off with a high-pitched keen. Harry had bit down where his neck met his shoulder, and the force sent a pulse through Neville's body that couldn't be denied, no matter where they were. Luna had made sure they were alone and weren't going to be disturbed. Maybe debauching Sabine's secret hideaway would be an excellent form of revenge. "Please?"

"It's a creature inheritance, Neville—I don't know what it is, exactly. Your kidnapping broke the final barrier, but this had to have building for weeks."

"Ron mentioned—"

"Yes, the territorial displays," Luna agreed, and her nails scratched lightly at the back of his neck. Neville pushed back into the touch, not caring that Harry took advantage of the vulnerable arch of his neck. Right now, that only seemed like a good thing, an excellent thing, the best thing in the world—gods, please, more. He panted, fighting back the urge to writhe impatiently. "He's been a bit of a handful, but I think we managed to work things out between us…for now."

Wasn't that a pleasantly warm image? His two powerful mates fighting for dominance? They'd never actually hurt each other, but the display of skill and power they would put on would be— He moaned again, not capable of articulating how much he liked that idea. A hand toyed with his waistband and Neville pushed upwards against it, a silent demand for more. His tongue felt thick and uncooperative.

"Please," he begged.

"Neville, we don't know what he is—"

"Harry," Neville choked out and it was getting rather difficult to speak. "He's Harry, my Harry, our Harry—Harry, Harry, Harry."

"Are you sure, love?"

"Soul—my soul—" Neville swallowed sharply as Luna's hand tightened in his hair. Her lips brushed his ear and her breath tickled his skin.

"And you're ours, my love—our mate, our treasure, our bonded mate," she whispered, with that commanding tone she used to keep her Unseelie allies and underlings obedient and loyalty. The whisker softness of it implied both threat and promise. "Do you know how long we'll keep you? Hmm?"

"For always," Harry growled the answer into Neville's shoulder. The magic crashed around them like waves tossed in a storm, and all Neville could see was stars as his body gave into the crescendo of it with an enraptured scream. The climax felt almost like pain but Neville didn't care. There were worse ways to spend eternity and Neville was looking forward to every moment of the pleasurable ache.

Always may not be long enough.