A/N: Oh! Regarding the House Poll - I love the number of Eagles and Snakes represented! And cheers to the Badgers, too! Not a lot of Lions chiming in, but if you're out there, be bold and daring and let your roars be heard!

Tip of the hat and a bottle of Ogden's Finest to Sundaegirl99 for catching review #300! And my continued gratitude to all who are reading, adding this fic to their lists, and leaving me such kind notes!

Katmom continues to be the woman of lavender-harvesting win. My thanks for always being patient with emails that contain random snippets.

Sorry this took longer than anticipated to get out. We started back to school this week (for reals) and my schedule's been all weird. Hope my readers in the States had a safe and sane Independence Day!

[Edit: Ridiculous autocorrect! Dragon Alley is now Diagon Alley. Ugh.]

CHAPTER TEN

CAN WE DO THIS?

In the heartbeat before he closed his eyes and melted against Hermione's lips, Harry darted a silent question toward Neville, who was wrapped around her from behind. The quick nod, the smile, the light in the moss-green eyes told Harry to Go ahead, already.

So he did.

The touch of her lips against his was sweet, chaste, and warm. Like coming home. He needed more, though, so he pressed for it. Holding her mouth with his, asking if he could enter, moving his hands slowly up the smooth sleeves of her blouse whilst never forgetting the scar she bore. The memory made him tender, careful, but also filled with awe and appreciation as she opened for him.

And then, as he enjoyed doing when he kissed, he moved to cup the back of her neck and froze. The skin, there, was ridged. Burnt. Mottled under his fingers. Opening his eyes, he met hers and then Neville's and was brought up short by the tender patience he could see in each of them.

"Touch her," Neville murmured, brushing his fingers over Harry's. "It's okay."

"It really is," Hermione assured him. She shifted to bring her arms up to his shoulders, leaving her torso open and vulnerable to his hands, if he were to be bold enough to follow through.

Watching her—the dark eyes in the shadowed greenhouse were warm with affection, he felt—he skimmed her sides with the palms of his hands, over her blouse, up and down and then he spread his fingers slowly. Carefully. He was half afraid of what he might touch, under the fabric, but that made him almost angry at himself. She had borne the scars for years and he was afraid to touch them? Don't be an arse, Potter. He dipped his fingers to the waistband of her skirt, to tug gently on her blouse, watching to see if he were offending her.

She smiled and slid her fingers into his hair, pulling his face close to hers and brushing her lips along his jaw. "Touch me, Harry."

Neville helped, lifting her top up and away and, much to Harry's shock, covering his hands. "It's all right," the other wizard murmured, guiding him.

With Neville's hands atop his, and Hermione's lips brushing against his skin, Harry felt her back. It was surreal. It was devastating. He felt his eyes burn even as he spread one hand over the middle of her back to pull her in closer and used his other hand to grip Neville's for support. His heart was racing, his body hardened, and he could feel Hermione pressing fully into him, pouring tiny sounds into his mouth as she allowed herself to be so vulnerable to him.

He also felt Neville, holding his hand and holding Hermione's hip. The three of them, all together, felt strong. Safe in a way Harry hadn't felt in a long time, if ever.

He gentled the passion in the kiss and tucked her head under his chin, staring at Neville as he did so. "Thank you," he whispered, not sure if he were thanking both of them or only one.

"You're welcome," Neville said in answer, leaning forward and lightly, as if he were being cautious, brushing his lips against Harry's own. "We good?"

"Yeah."

Then, Hermione stiffened between them before she made an uncomfortable sound and started to squirm away. "Wait. Wait. I'm so sorry—"

"No. no apologies, Hermione." Harry shook his head and immediately tightened his hold on her, his arm still pressed into the bare skin of her back. He freed his other hand from Neville's and cupped her face, heated with her blush. "What are you sorry for, anyway? Kissing me?" He smiled. "You'd said it was all right or, believe me, I never would have presumed, okay? You weren't lying, were you?"

"No! Of course not!" A spark lit in her gaze and Harry exchanged a quick look with Neville, who leaned forward to the edge of one of her ears. She sighed a little. "I was just . . . carried away."

"So was I," Harry admitted. Then, he grinned. "Nev might have been, as well."

Her blush reignited and Hermione arched her neck to see Neville. Harry managed somehow to resist tasting that lovely expanse of her throat. Just then, it seemed very important that they talk about this . . . arrangement. Situation. Whatever it was that was brewing between them. And Neville was, as of today, likely the best equipped to handle that discussion.

"Neville." Hermione blew out a breath that smelt like apple tart. "Where were you, today?"

Harry suppressed a grin. Yes, that had gone well. He smiled when the other man kissed Hermione's throat, though he didn't loosen his own hold at all.

"I went to Diagon Alley to see Fred and George Weasley," Neville said.

Surprise fairly flared from Hermione's body. "Oh? You know your grandmother doesn't entirely trust them."

Harry chuckled and moved to kiss her, lightly, eyes open, just because he could. "Well, I imagine Neville is allowed to associate with whom he likes, now that's he's a professor."

Neville surprised Harry a bit by choosing that moment to kiss him again, before gently coaxing Hermione into his own embrace. "Exactly. So. Look, here, sweetheart. I've got a transfigured arrangement here so we can talk without having any of us sit alone." He led Hermione to what Harry considered to be a modular corner sofa, but on the scale of a loveseat, really. Cozy and just right for three.

"Clever there, Nev," Hermione remarked, bending to run her hand along the brown cushion in the middle. "Leather, though?"

"Easier to clean the dirt off of leather," Neville told her. "I used an Impervious on it as well, to protect against water and whatnot."

"Brilliant!" Hermione's smile lit up the greenhouse and Neville seemed to blush a little, which Harry found quite charming. Neville had demonstrated, well, leadership, in this relationship—extended and otherwise—and it was amusing to see that the shyer boy he remembered from childhood was still in there, albeit grown into quite a handsome man by anyone's standards.

Certainly Harry's own!

"Who gets the middle?" Hermione wanted to know.

Harry indicated Neville with a quick gesture. "He'll be talking."

"But then I'd have to look back and forth a lot," Neville protested. With a playful light in his eyes, he added, "Though I've no objection whatsoever to being in the middle in the future."

Hermione gasped, eyes wide. "Neville!"

"I'll sit here and we can put Harry in the middle." Neville folded himself down to the left, Hermione, grinning, sat on the other end-piece and Harry bowed to the inevitable to claim the corner. "Now," Neville said, deliberately taking one of Harry's hands. "This is nice." They all agreed and, for a minute, the silence between them was comfortable, with Hermione hitching herself to better see them both, her eyes warm and smile content.

But she wasn't touching him anymore, and that worried Harry just a bit. "Nev?" he prompted.

"Right. So, I went to see the twins. You'll remember, Hermione, how they always did everything together."

"Cor, yes. They constantly pretended to be the other one, too, and when one had detention, they both took it, just because none of the professors could trust that the innocent party—"

"As if either of them were ever innocent," Neville interrupted with a snort.

"—Was the one serving detention and letting the guilty go free. Harry, did you ever meet them?"

"Not past first year, no. But Ron would sometimes tell me some pranks they pulled and he was quite proud when they set up an owl-post business."

"They got a shop, two years ago," Neville said. "And they got married."

"Both of them! Well of course. One couldn't do anything without the other. What's their shop like?"

"Noisy, busy, and they've got a lot of, well, interesting items."

"Now that Riddle's gone," Harry suggested, "perhaps you could visit it?"

Hermione seemed to think about that, pressing her lips together a bit. "Might not be a bad idea, seeing what the students could be bringing to school in advance."

Harry reached out and tapped her lightly on one tight-covered knee. "So you can recognize them on rounds?"

"Of course!"

"We should do that," Neville said. Then, he cleared his throat a bit and Harry shifted just enough to meet his eyes full-on. "But what I went there for was not to spy out future detentions-waiting-to-happen. See, Hermione, Harry, Fred and George caused something of a dust-up even after they finished here at Hogwarts. They, er, were both dating the same girl."

"Johnson! The Quidditch Captain for our fifth year! I remember," she went on, kicking off her shoes, drawing her legs up under herself, and looking for all the world as if she were still a student.

Harry squeezed Neville's hand, with which he was finger-twined, and reached for hers at the same time. She slid her fingers between his naturally, and he wondered if the three of them could have done this, if he had stayed at school. The three of them, cuddled on the sofa in front of the hearth in the common room, writing essays or reading together or—as might have been most likely, what with all he'd heard from Neville, Hermione, and Ron—plotting out how to fight Death Eaters.

No. Far better that he had kept that kind of fighting away from Hermione and Neville. They had had enough to contend with, what with a basilisk and that damned Triwizard Tournament.

"So, if the twins got married," Hermione was saying, unaware of the path of Harry's thoughts, "does that mean Angelina chose one of them?"

"Er, no, sweetheart. She actually chose both of them, which is why there was that dust-up I mentioned."

Harry had known, of course, that this was coming, but Hermione had clearly had no clue. He met Neville's eye again and the other man looked serious, but hopeful. Right, then.

Hermione stiffened. "Both of them?"

"Both of them."

Her lips parted and then made a silent O that, to his discomfort, only made Harry think of those dreams he'd had in his mid-teens. Neville noticed the heat in his cheeks and, as if the man was a Legilimens, he winked.

"Both of them," Hermione repeated on a sigh. "Why didn't I hear about it? Wasn't it in the papers or something?"

"Er, no, her family was happy, of course, but Molly Weasley was somewhat loud in her disapproval."

Hermione winced. "She can be that way, indeed."

Harry made a face. "Ron used to tell me about her Howlers. Apparently, they're infamous."

"Legendary," Neville concurred. "Anyway, Hermione, I went to talk to them about how they were able to, well, have a functioning triad. How that worked for them, you know?"

"A triad," Hermione whispered, eyes wide. She appeared to have trouble with her breathing as she studied Neville first, then Harry. "Oh." Harry figured they should have expected her near-instant demurral. "No, wait. Look, Nev, I didn't mean for that when I said, you know, back in September. I wasn't wanting you to feel, feel obligated to include me."

"Hermione!" Harry and Neville nearly shouted, and Harry was happy that they sounded equally exasperated. They shared a look and made a mutual, unspoken decision to shift their positions. Harry rose to his feet and tugged Hermione up to him. She complied in a boneless way. "You're in the middle," he told her.

"But I thought, I thought it'd be you," she murmured, collapsing in the corner seat. "Neville, I knew you and Harry would be good together, but I never meant—"

"We know, love, believe me. But what did I tell you, not too long ago? If I had had the least idea that you weren't also interested in Harry, here, I would have taken advantage of those protocols a year ago."

Her blush was fiery. "Right, that. But, now? I mean, you two. You two are so amazing together. I love listening to you talk at dinner and—"

"Exactly." Harry decided it was his turn to try to be persuasive. "And I'm really glad you said something to him, love, because you gave him the confidence to, well, try."

"And a bit of work that was," Neville said with feigned irritation.

Hermione held up her hands, palm out to each man, and shook her head. "Wait. So you agree that you are well-suited, but you still want . . ."

"You." Without another word, Neville kissed her. No soft brushing of lips but more of a passionate claiming, much as Harry himself had done only minutes ago.

He watched with avid focus. He leant forward, able to breathe in their air, getting the scents of her and of him combined and he hoped, for the first time in a tangible way, that this would be his new life. Hermione curled into Neville's body and Harry scooted in behind her, not thinking about it, but just following his instincts. He liked to plan, yes, but Sirius had told him years ago that his instincts were pretty damned good and he trusted them. So he skimmed his arm lightly along Neville's and lifted Hermione's braid from her back so that he could nuzzle the back of her neck. The scarred back of her neck that he had touched not long ago. He brushed the skin there with his nose, learning the textures and her scent. Though he still felt regret and pain about what had happened to her, he was trying very hard to accept it as she had seemed to. The scars were old, and she had never, not once, wavered in her friendship.

A moan sounded in Hermione's throat and he could feel it against his lips. His response was immediate and he groaned softly against her skin as he slid his free hand between her body and the leather cushion of Neville's transfigured furniture. She allowed him room to move so he did, sliding his hand up over her blouse, up to cup the smooth shape of her breast. As her own body hardened under his questing fingers, he lightly pulled on the peak hearing her moan—that time for him.

Neville came up for air and regarded him through hot, narrow slits of eyes. "Harry."

"Hm?" He was focusing on moving his other hand, stretching down Neville's side at that point, feeling the firm planes of the other man's torso.

"You want to?"

Hermione sighed and leant back into Harry's nearly desperate body. He shifted and made an awkward adjustment of his legs so that she was braced now between this thighs. Neville pulled her legs up, pushed her skirt up, his hands moving to her waist as if she wasn't wearing anything. But she was. Even so, her legs parted and Neville scooted between them.

There really wasn't room for this, though, Harry decided. Hermione seemed to agree, as she twitched and curled and finally huffed out an impatient breath. "I am reminded," she said as she gently rocked back against Harry's growing arousal, "of last summer, Neville, when we had to stop."

"Worst case of blue bollocks ever," Neville confided to Harry in an undertone. He looked uncomfortable, but also happy and oddly serene, for all the awkwardness of their current position.

"Can we do this?"

It was Hermione who asked the question and Neville who answered with a nod. "We can. But we'll cause our own bit of a dust-up, I daresay."

"How bad might it be?" Harry wondered, kneading Hermione's abdomen under her blouse. Her stomach was smooth and unscarred and he could feel her muscles clench in what might have been a ticklish reaction that he would have explored any other time.

Neville blew out a breath. "Well, it's not like it's illegal or anything. The Ministry has no laws against it; the twins checked."

Hermione laughed a little and Harry grinned over her shoulder at her. "They studied a lot of law when they were here, I remember," she said. "They wanted to stay just on the right side without going over."

"They've done it. And though I'm sure, Hermione," Neville said, gripping Harry's hand now as well as hers, "you'll want to do your research, I think we'll be all right. Legally, anyway."

"But what about your House?" she whispered, her former good humor sliding from her face. "I have been so grateful to be a Protected Member of House Longbottom, Nev. I have. But will that arrangement allow for . . . for us?"

"That, I haven't looked up," Neville confessed.

"All right. I can add that to my list," Hermione said. After blowing out a breath, she drew a long one back in again. "So . . . we can do this?"

"Do we want to?" Harry asked. When the other two stared at him with what could almost amount to accusations in brown and green eyes, he tried to smile reassuringly, but wasn't sure how it came off. "I want to try. I do. Nev, mate, you—" he faltered, but thought back to his earlier conversation with Sirius.

"Do you love the man?" his godfather had asked, stirring sugar into the cup of tea in the white china cup before him.

"I don't know," Harry answered. "It's always been Hermione, in my head, right?"

Sirius smiled a little. Sadness and regret darkening his gray eyes. "I know. You haven't had a lot of comparison, casual dates aside. You've never dated another man, have you?"

"No, you know that. But I've seen how you and Remus are and I—I like that. I could do that." He had shrugged and slouched low in the chair at Sirius's breakfast table. "I want to, Sirius. But what if he's not the only one I want?"

Pain darted briefly across Sirius's face. "Sometimes, lad, you have to make a choice. Remember, Hermione has a claim on you as well. That's . . . going to matter."

In Greenhouse Three that night, Harry gently eased away from Hermione and Neville and pushed himself to his feet. They stared at him with twin expressions of concern. "What is it?" Hermione asked, reaching out a tentative hand that she withdrew when he only smiled at her.

"Hermione, I told you. You've always been the ideal in my mind, you know? I haven't had a relationship before."

"You're a virgin too?"

Harry had to laugh when the other two blurted out that question in the same breath. Then, he blushed and rubbed at the back of his neck. "Er, not exactly, but—"

The others nodded in tandem and Harry briefly wondered if he was sure he knew what he was getting into as his heart sped a bit. "Look, I know I'm something of the odd man out, here. We—" He made a gesture to include the three of them. "We don't have the same history the pair of you do, but—"

"You've always been a part of us, Harry." Hermione rose to her feet as well and embraced him lightly about the waist. "Always."

"Told you so, mate," Neville concurred from the sofa. He leaned back, looking more relaxed. "Yes, I want to."

"So do I."

Harry swallowed his nerves and dropped a kiss to Hermione's forehead. "Right." He held out his hand to Neville and the other man joined them in a standing circle. "So, we need to know what to do about the Protected Member status thing, right?"

"Right."

"And we need to know how that will be affected by one really important thing."

"What's that?"

"Hermione Granger, I owe you a Life Debt."

A/N: Thanks again for your patience! Hard at work on the next chapter, in which they might have to make some adjustments. Can they do this? Can they be a married triad? Will Hermione's status cause any issues? What about their future prospects?

This is an Epilogue, after all, and I know you will want to know. ;-)

A sneak peek will be on hand shortly for anyone who casts the revealing spell: Aparecium! Remember it only works if you are signed in and accepting PMs!