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The Marriage of True Minds	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 55083 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Ten—On the Same Pillow

            Harry opened his eyes the next morning to realize that he’d fucked himself over but good.

            He listened to Malfoy’s breathing beside him and counted the beats of his own heart. They were different. That was good, he reassured himself. It meant that he still had a bit of independence, that he hadn’t given in completely to Malfoy’s demands for…

            For what?

            That was the hell of it. He knew he had given up something important, something that he hadn’t let even his friends or Ginny have that much of, but he couldn’t define it.

            As he lay there, though, silk beneath his skin, goose feathers or some other ridiculously soft and expensive thing behind his head, he found a name for it.

            Weakness.

            He hadn’t told his friends all about his sojourn in the darkness because he needed them to see him as strong. They couldn’t know how close he had come to breaking. They would worry more about him than they already did, and Harry didn’t want that for them. They’d suffered, too, during those months he was missing, if not as badly as he had. For their sakes, he wanted them to move on with their lives instead of continually asking him whether his wounds hurt, whether his nightmares had stopped, whether his cracks ran too deep to be repaired.

            Harry was starting to think that they did, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that he had reasons to keep his secrets, and he felt weak when he talked about them. Or worse than weak. The clogging-glass feeling in his throat, as if he tore himself apart by telling the truth, got worse every time he had to confess to something else, something new, a change that Hermione had noted in him, or Ron remarking that he wouldn’t sit with his back to doors anymore, or how Ginny had looked at him in shock and surprise when he snapped at her for touching his back.

            He hadn’t told them about what he’d done to escape, either, but that was for a different reason. It disgusted him, it would surely disgust them, and he had enough trouble living with it, without reliving it.

            He turned his head and looked at Malfoy. Malfoy was still relaxed, his mouth opening slightly with his sleep, although of course nothing as undignified as drool or an air bubble escaped. One of his hands curled beneath his head as though he wanted to defend it from invisible mice that would come out to gnaw his fingers during the night.

            His other pointed towards Harry.

            Harry nodded slowly. Malfoy hadn’t been worried about him during those missing months, because the marriage bond hadn’t existed then and he hadn’t known Harry was missing, thanks to the spread of the Ministry’s soothing lies. He wouldn’t worry himself to death about Harry now.

            In a weird way, Harry could be more honest with him than with his friends, because it wouldn’t hurt either of them as much.

            And Harry knew that things had changed enough now that he couldn’t go back to ignoring Malfoy and pretending nothing had happened. Malfoy knew. The knowledge would hide and glint in his eyes whenever he looked at Harry now, and as much as Harry disliked the notion, he at least owed it to Malfoy to nod back at that light.

            Which was why he had fucked himself over, because he didn’t know what would happen to his shields against the memories once he let someone inside them. If Malfoy was nearby when Harry went through a memory-cycle again, he might get hurt.

            “You worry too much, Harry.”

            Malfoy’s voice had softened and deepened in sleep. Harry glanced at him again and found Malfoy’s eyes fastened on him. He reached out and laid a caressing hand on Harry’s elbow, his fingers tightening when Harry didn’t try to move it away.

            “You call me by my first name too much,” Harry said.

            Malfoy’s smile was slow in coming, but real. “This is one of the first times I’ve done it.”

            “One too many.”

            Harry didn’t really know why he continued to insult Malfoy that way. He knew that he had come too far to go back; he had admitted all that to himself while Malfoy was still oblivious. So why push up the barriers now and pretend they were anything other than porous?

            Maybe because Malfoy didn’t know that they had come that far. He still had the option to retreat if he wanted to. Harry looked at him speculatively, wondering if he would take the insults to heart.

            Malfoy reached across the bed with a bare twitch of his arm and locked their rings again. Harry gritted his teeth against the shock of paralysis, but this time it didn’t come. Malfoy turned their hands back and forth, as if to admire the new platinum strand in the rings.

            “You’re striking out like a child who hurts his father because he can’t hurt the Healer,” he said, without looking up at Harry. “I’m not the one you want to hurt.”

            Harry shrugged. All right, so Malfoy would come past the barriers, but he wasn’t doing it in a way that set Harry’s hackles bristling. Harry could live with that. “I told you last night, the one who did this to me is dead.”

“I know.” Malfoy looked up at him. “Do you fear that I’ll misuse the knowledge?”

“No,” Harry said slowly, feeling his way through this treacherous new territory between them. “But I fear that you’ll use it in some other way. I haven’t permitted even my friends to know much about this.”

“Because you’re an idiot.”

“Because it’s traumatic.” Harry tried to pull his hand back—he knew that Malfoy could release the lock of the rings if he wanted to—and once again Malfoy kept his hand there, letting Harry tug against the weight of his arm. “Because they worried enough already, and seeing them suffer through it with me might be more than I could take.”

Malfoy said nothing, his eyes, lighter and more intelligent than Harry remembered him, studying his face. Harry waited, glancing away when that gaze became hard to take. He looked at their hands, imprisoned between them, because at least that made sense. They never would have been in this situation in the first place if not for the marriage bond, and they both still wanted it to end. That part was comprehensible.

*

            Draco spread several scenarios before his mental eyes and held them there, delicate as snowflakes and spinning like them through the darkness.

            He could agree with Harry, withdraw his hand, and let them both ignore this. That plan had multiple advantages. Draco could forget his glimpse of the darker part of Harry’s life. Harry could forget that he owed Draco his healing and that Draco owed him his life. Draco could continue with his plans to marry Astoria.

            He could tell Harry that he was being an idiot and urge him to talk to his friends. Advantages there as well. Harry’s friends would want to know the details, Draco was sure, and they would take the burden of nursing Harry’s fears away from him. Draco didn’t want to stare at wounds, physical or mental. It wasn’t what he was meant for. He had a head for business, and for irritating his father, and for choosing a perfect pure-blood woman to continue his family line. He wasn’t entirely sure what Harry needed, whether Healer or confidant or someone more skilled than either, but he knew that he didn’t possess those particular talents.

            He could take Harry to his mother. That would contain family business within the family, without involving him.

            Or…

            Or he could do as he had done last night, act on the platinum and admit what he should have admitted before. If Harry was not truly part of the family, then Draco had no right to make the demands on him that he had. But if he was, then Draco owed him more than frozen politeness and a room in the Manor.

            Draco hated admitting he was wrong, but he hated being wrong a second time even more. That meant the last option, distasteful as it was, was really the only choice.

            “I think you are underestimating both your friends’ ability to care for you and your own ability to endure their suffering secondhand,” he said, but shook his head when Harry started to speak. “I won’t make you tell them, though. I won’t insist that you speak to a Healer. I do insist that you speak to me, since you’ve made such a good start on it already.”

            Harry fell silent, staring at him. Draco studied him back, the clench and the curve of his jaw, the careful way he held his head, and wondered how he could have mistaken that holding of pain at bay for arrogance.

            Well, he had known Harry when he was young, when he was Potter. It was natural that past impressions should carry into the present.

            “All right,” Harry said. “But I’ve told you everything I can. All the—essential details.”

            “I agree,” Draco said. He had, at the moment, no desire to force Harry back through the memories that had made him have to cast a Shield Charm on himself yesterday. Harry was already shifting as though he wanted to pull his hand away. Draco considered releasing the lock on the rings, but he would rather that the conditions of their association were set first. “You haven’t made the consequences clear, however.”

            “Sometimes the memories come back, and I lash out the way I lashed out with magic at the—wizard,” Harry said, confirming one of Draco’s guesses. He let the pause before “wizard” escape unnoticed for now. “I need to be alone then. The protective spells and wards I’ve put on my door ought to be enough.”

            “All right,” Draco said mildly.

            “Really alone,” Harry emphasized, leaning forwards and glaring at him. “No one intruding in the middle of the night to rescue me, no matter what you may hear. No sending house-elves into the middle of a battle zone. They’re innocents, and there’s a chance that I could hurt them when I’m like that.”

            “What about yourself?” Draco asked. “At the moment, it sounds as though you have more concerns for the lives of house-elves than you have for your own.”

            Harry shrugged with one shoulder, but Draco saw the way his head tilted, and decided that he was probably carrying another burden that he didn’t want to share. Then he had to reconsider that, because Harry’s next words were offered with an honesty that was simply too devastating. “The beast hurt me more than I could ever hurt myself.”

            “Even if you die?” Draco asked quietly. “I don’t know how violent these rages of yours are,” he added, when Harry stared at him. “Your spells prevented me from gaining the necessary knowledge, rather effectively. I don’t know if you might kill yourself some morning from the untreated wounds. The Healer couldn’t offer us much useful advice, you know that. It would help if you would tell me how worried I need to be.”

            He thought of that as the most neutral thing he’d said all morning. There was no reason for it to make Harry tense up and look away, his head ducking as though to escape from a blow.

*

            How worried I need to be.

            That was the exact point, though. That was the problem.

            Harry had decided to live with his confession to Malfoy because it wasn’t as though he could back away from it, it wasn’t as though Malfoy would allow him to forget, and it wasn’t as though it would concern Malfoy greatly. Once Harry satisfied his curiosity, that ought to have been the end. What else would he want?

            But no, he was pressing forwards, on, his voice growing weightier the more the moments passed, and the more questions Harry answered.

            Harry had a sudden, quicksilver flash of insight. This is what Ginny was afraid of, what she saw happening when I started relaxing into breakfasts with Narcissa and skipping dinners with her. They’ll ask questions, and I’ll think it means nothing when I answer them, because they’re distant from me. But the more they ask, the more I answer, the closer we become, until we reach the point where I know them better than I know her.

            I’ve already given Malfoy details that I kept from Ginny.

            Telling himself that he’d had little choice, given the spell’s effects on his wounds, didn’t do much to ease the part of himself that had suddenly frozen up. No wonder Ginny wouldn’t let him touch her, kiss her, or look too closely. She wanted to force him away if he was going, inevitably, to hurt her.

            And yet, Harry didn’t see what else he could do, when going back wasn’t an option—what else he could do but go on, and hope that this was the one intimacy he would ever have to extend to Malfoy.

            “What happens to me—it’s psychological, not physical,” he said, as he watched Malfoy’s face and wondered when it would close, when Malfoy would give the indefinable impression of having heard enough. Harry had learned to identify that set of mind rather well when he lived with the Dursleys, and he would take it as a signal of salvation here. “I live through the memories again. I had to use a lot of magic to—kill the creature and escape the house.”

            Kill. As if you were doing anything that clean.

            Harry breathed and swallowed, and continued. “My mind goes back into that time and makes me feel as though the creature’s still alive. So my magic flails around trying to find and destroy an enemy. I’m not sure what would happen if I was in the same room as someone else. I’ve always been behind wards, or at the very least a Shield Charm, when I feel it starting to break loose. But this time I think I only had the wounds in the first place because that wizard had hit me with the decaying magic.”

            “That was an odd curse,” Malfoy said, his eyes solemn.

            “It is that,” Harry agreed, relieved beyond words that Malfoy wasn’t going to press the point. “The Ministry did think that the people who captured me had given up, because there hasn’t been a sign of them for the past three months. Now that we know there are others out there, I can inform the Head Auror and we can hunt them.”

            “And you think he was aiming at you.” Malfoy pulled his hand back finally, twisting it to unlock the rings. Harry felt his muscles all uncoil at once, and had to work hard to prevent himself from simply slumping back on the pillow. I have to learn how to manipulate the rings free when Malfoy does that to me. It can’t be that hard, since he doesn’t take a long time. “Not me.”

            “I can’t be absolutely certain,” Harry admitted. The tingling sensation in the roof of his mouth, in the base of his bones, would mean nothing to Malfoy, who wasn’t an Auror and probably thought they hunted more by science than by instinct, as most people did. Harry knew Malfoy was only in danger as his—husband, but he couldn’t translate that feeling for him. “I’d stay close to the Manor for the next few days, which is all the time it should take us to find these people. When you have to be out, be ready to cast a Shield Charm at all times. Or—do you have an artifact that extends wards around you? If you do, carry it.”

            Malfoy frowned and folded his arms, as detached as a judge despite his half-flattened hair and the sharp eyes he used to peer at Harry. “I have one. I was going to offer it to you.”

            “I’m better-trained to protect myself,” Harry said simply. “As you saw.”

            “I know that this magic has a worse effect on you than on me,” Malfoy countered. “Carry it, and I won’t be tempted to lock you away behind the wards.”

            “As if you could succeed if you tried,” muttered Harry. The Malfoy wards were good, but he had noted weaknesses in them, the same weaknesses that most standard wards had. Malfoy would be in for a very large surprise if he actually tried to close them around Harry and Harry was forced to respond.

            Malfoy’s eyes darkened. “You’re family. I hate threats to family. The war showed me how deep they strike into my soul, and for my sake as well as others’, I don’t allow that to happen now.”

            Harry eyed him and waited for him to see the self-evident ridiculousness of his pronouncement. He didn’t look as though he would. In the end, Harry nodded. “If it would make you feel better, and as long as it doesn’t get in the way of doing a normal day’s work, I’ll carry it.”

            “Good.” Malfoy turned away. “I’ll send a house-elf to fetch it from storage, and another elf to bring you breakfast.”



            “No need for that last one,” Harry said, and started to stand. He got halfway up before his back seemed to lock into place all at once, as though the separate muscles had become a solid sheet of ice. He fell back, gasping. The gasps wanted to be screams, but he had got out of the habit of expressing his pain aloud in the darkness. He rolled his head over to stare at Malfoy. “What was that? Did the Healer give me something?”

            Malfoy sneered at him. It made him look younger and more familiar, which meant it was immediately a thing to treasure as far as Harry was concerned. “Idiot. That was your wounds objecting to the way you treat them. You were bleeding badly yesterday, Potter. You’re still weak. Relax. You’ve already missed half the workday, there’s no sense in going in now.”

            Harry glanced up at the ornate clock on one wall—it had tiny silver swans swimming in a circle of pure blue water and clustering near the numbers of the hour and minute—and nodded reluctantly. It was noon already. He could go to the Ministry to show willing, but he’d spend a few hours sweating in pain in a chair, the way he felt now, and get no work done. “Fine. Let me contact Ron and Ginny, though, so they’ll know I haven’t disappeared.”

            Malfoy had a ghost of a smile on his face as he clapped his hands and called the house-elves. Harry didn’t know why until after he had directed them to bring food, quills, parchment, ink, and the warding artifact. Then Malfoy murmured, “So you can be sensible, after all.”

            “When I have to be,” Harry said. He shifted so that he was resting more comfortably against the pillows. Even that motion almost stole his breath. He hoped that he would have the strength to support a breakfast tray on his lap and lift the food to his lips, because letting an elf feed him would be a humiliation he’d always see glinting in Malfoy’s eyes from then on. “But being an Auror doesn’t give me many chances.”

            “Do you regret you took that job?”

            Harry stared. Malfoy lingered near and watched him, however, showing no sign that he intended the question as a joke.

            “No,” Harry said at last. “Of course not. It’s the job where I can do the most good. And the only one where people would put up with me constantly putting myself in danger and poking my nose into mysteries, which I learned to like at Hogwarts.”

            Malfoy’s eyes narrowed as if he were considering a complicated puzzle. “And yet, I do not know if you are the same person you were at Hogwarts.”

            “Of course not, everyone grows and changes—” Harry began, wondering how in the world he had fallen into a civilized conversation with Malfoy.

            “I meant,” Malfoy said, with a hauteur that withered Harry’s slowly-growing reply, “that you seem to have become a new person since—the creature had you. Much of what baffles me about you in the last few days might have come from there.”

            Harry smiled at him. “Perhaps so,” he said. “But I refuse to let it define me. And now that you know all the relevant details, I would prefer not to discuss it again.”

            Malfoy lifted his eyebrows, shrugged once, and turned to take the trays of food from the house-elf who had appeared next to the bed. Juli, Harry’s house-elf, was with her, carrying such a heavy stack of parchment that Harry was amazed it hadn’t toppled her over. She staggered over, placed it on the table next to him, and looked up at Harry with melting eyes. “Master Harry Malfoy is needing others things?”

            “You’ve done fine, thank you, Juli,” Harry told her. That made her sniffle and seem on the edge of crying, but Malfoy plopped the tray in his lap before Harry could worry he’d upset her.

            He blinked at the buttered toast, buttered scones, small pats of more butter and some kind of fruit spread, slices of oranges, cornflakes with attendant glass of milk, and cup of tea in front of him. Then he glanced sideways at Malfoy, who was settling back with what looked like an equally abundant breakfast, although some of the components were different.

            “You’re kidding, right?” Harry asked.

            “Kidding about what?” Malfoy bit into a piece of toast. He managed to make that look graceful.

            “I never eat this much in the mornings,” Harry said.

            “Yes, I can tell,” Malfoy said, with a raking glance that seemed to count all of Harry’s ribs under the robe.

            “Not that it’s any of your business,” Harry said, deciding that it couldn’t do much harm to pick up a piece of toast, “but I have a small breakfast because I get groggy and sleepy if I eat too much in the mornings. I make up for any lost food at lunch and dinner.”

            “It’s almost afternoon right now,” Malfoy said. “Plenty to be made up for.”

            Harry frowned at him around the corner of the piece of toast and shook his head. That sprayed crumbs everywhere, but Juli and the other elf who’d brought the trays Apparated into being and plucked them from the sheets before Harry could worry that he’d stained something expensive. “You can be really weird when you want to be,” he said, swallowing.

            “In what ways?” Malfoy began eating from what looked like a piece of chicken. Harry could only fervently hope that he was having that because it was near lunch and that he didn’t actually consider it breakfast.

            “I mean—because you act as though I’m family sometimes, and a guest sometimes, and your enemy the rest,” Harry said. He waved his free hand between them; the other was rather occupied hesitating between the tea and the orange slices. The tea won. “This is weird. I don’t know how to classify this.”

            “As the peace offering of someone who was terrified last night and is reassured now,” Malfoy murmured.

            Harry scowled at him. “I told you, I’ve always managed to get behind wards or a Shield Charm in time.”

            “There are other ways of being terrified,” Malfoy said, and caught and held his gaze.

            Harry had to turn away in the end. There were some things that were just too intimate to talk with anyone about, especially someone whom he’d considered his enemy until a short while ago. He ate his food, listening to Malfoy order the house-elves about and then watching him from the corner of his eye as Malfoy read a Muggle newspaper. Whatever he saw there made his brow pucker.

            He stayed right beside Harry as Harry wrote his letters to Ron and Ginny, and ordered them taken to the Malfoy owlery by the house-elves. He never looked bored, never winced when he surveyed his sheets, and never suggested that Harry go back to his own room. Harry knew that he would, of course, when night fell.

            But for now, he was—

            Not enjoying this. Not exactly. He still felt as though he’d swallowed glass talking about the darkness, as usual.

            But this was a tiny little interlude cut out of the rest of the world. If they could endure like this until the marriage bond was broken, Harry thought, it might not be half bad. It was less complicated than any of the rest of his life, or, at least, the complexities could be held at bay.

*

            Unneeded: Well, both Draco and Harry think they can essentially stop the revelations right here and that will be it. But Draco will indeed by surprised when (or if) he finds out about Harry’s childhood.

            Kogas Hentai Luver: I promise Narcissa will appear again! And Harry trusts Draco a little bit, but only not to say anything about this for right now.

            Addiena Saffir: Thank you! I can at least promise a lot more updates, since it will be a long story.

            Eve: Thank you! I promise answers are coming, but the story does switch focus for a little while so that it can concentrate on Draco, Astoria, and Narcissa.

            MadisonSnape: Well, for him, that he doesn’t want to marry Draco or be part of the Malfoy family is reality.

            Thank you!
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The Marriage of True Minds