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The Serenity of His Rage	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16981 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
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Chapter Ten—Noble Intentions

            “You’ve spent a lot of time telling me about the things they did. And just as much time reassuring me about the things they didn’t do.”
            Harry sighed as he rubbed his eyes. He’d had to stop talking to Draco because Madam Pomfrey had come back into the hospital wing and fed him a bunch of potions. Harry had the impression she’d agreed to leave them alone after that because she thought he would sleep.
            But he didn’t have the normal reaction to sleeping potions, either. At least this was one “gift” he didn’t mind possessing.
            “That’s because I know what people think when they hear someone’s abused,” said Harry. “Beaten up and threatened and shoved and hit and kicked and pushed down stairs. Broken bones. They never did that.”
            Draco was quiet enough that Harry looked at him. The bond was more open, but Draco still didn’t project emotions as much as Harry knew he did.
            “What about your cousin?” Draco finally asked. “Didn’t he ever break any bones with the way he was beating you up?”
            Harry shook his head a little, and pulled together some shards of the discomfort he’d felt when he started talking. He didn’t just sit there and tell people about the Dursleys. He knew Ron and Hermione knew some of it, but they’d put it together from other clues. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
            Draco stared at him. And now the bond was recoiling and lashing back and forth like a whip. “What kind of answer is that?”
            “An honest one.” Harry rolled his eyes when he saw the way Draco was sitting up. “My relatives never took me to hospital. I don’t know if any of my bones got broken or not. Sometimes it was hard to breathe. Dudley liked to hit me in the ribs, so it’s possible that I had broken ribs. But I never knew.”
            “Where else did he like to hit you?”
            “My hands. My face. But I know what a broken nose looks like, and I can use my hands well enough, so I don’t think I ever had anything broken there either.”
            Draco closed his eyes and sat there. He looked like he was meditating, the way that Harry had done when he was first trying to learn Occlumency. But from the waves that pulsed and beat in the bond, he wasn’t having a lot of success trying to relax himself.
            “I’m going to say something,” said Draco slowly. “I don’t want you to snap at me. I want you to listen to me all the way to the end and try to understand what I’m saying. Can you do that?”
            “You sound like it’s going to be some kind of revelation that won’t make me like you very much,” Harry muttered. He glanced at Lucius Malfoy, still asleep and breathing slowly, in a way Harry didn’t think was just pretending.
            “Not me, but my words. I want you to promise that you’re going to hold still and listen and let me speak. Okay?”
            “It sounds horrible,” Harry said, but he caught Draco’s eye and sighed. “Yes, I understand what you want. Talk about it.”
            Draco watched him as if he thought that wasn’t a true promise, then gave a put-upon sigh. The bond echoed once more like racing wavecaps, then settled down. Draco murmured, “You say that you don’t want someone to think you were abused in the way you described, but you do acknowledge you were abused.”
            Harry almost said, “Yes,” but in the end he nodded instead, remembering his promise not to talk. Draco paused, then went on, his voice gaining more confidence.
            “But when you talk so much about how you weren’t beaten and you weren’t hurt and you might have had broken bones but you weren’t sure, as if it didn’t matter—that makes it seem, to me, as if you don’t think you were abused. Because things happened to other people that didn’t happen to you.”
            Harry let his breath out carefully. Draco was watching him with such shrewd eyes that Harry did feel attacked, but the bond was steady, not echoing with impatience or hurt or any of the other emotions that might have made it intolerable. Harry forced himself to say, “What happened to me was horrible. And Voldemort, too. He makes my life awful.”
            “But you would still say that you didn’t have it as bad as other people.”
            “My mum didn’t die in front of me!”
            Draco raised his eyebrows slowly. Harry could feel himself flushing. Draco said, delicately, a second later, “Mine didn’t. It was awful enough to hear about, later. I would never—” He closed his eyes, and Harry waited while the bond sang soaring in his head like a bird of pain. Then Draco went on, “I would never wish for anything worse than that.
            “But your mother did die in front of you, Harry. Even if you were too young to remember it. And the fact that you forgot that just now in your haste to reassure me…” Draco shrugged. “It doesn’t speak well to your acknowledging your abuse enough.”
            Harry stared at the bottom of Draco’s bed. He wished at the moment that he was back in the Gryffindor common room, if only to have a fire to look at. It gave him something more natural to do with his eyes.
            “Harry?”
            This wouldn’t disprove Draco’s point, but Harry still thought it was important to say. He opened his eyes again, and looked into Draco’s face, and said, “I do remember my mum dying in front of me. Part of it. It’s what I see when the Dementors come. The green light of the Killing Curse—well, that second. I hear her pleading with Voldemort to spare my life and him telling her to stand aside and then laughing.”
*
            If I had known that, I would never have made fun of him for fainting around Dementors.
            But Draco had to shake his head when he thought that. They had all been different people then, in third year. He sometimes thought he had changed into a different person completely when his mother died and he made the soul-bond with Potter. That person still valued his family, but he could learn to value other people, too.
            “Thank you for telling me that,” Draco said.
            The different emotions coming from Harry began to calm down. He once again adopted the posture of lying back with his arms behind his head, which was probably meant to convince Draco he’d relaxed completely.
            I used to think he was relaxed when I saw him lounging around the library and agreeing with Weasley that he didn’t need to study.
            “How many lies do you tell people on a daily basis?” Draco added, because he really wanted to know.
Harry blinked, and his emotions surged and shone again like a wave breaking on a cliff, then ran back down into the calmer waters of the bond. “A few dozen, maybe. Mostly about how brave I am and how I feel and the secret plans I supposedly have for facing Voldemort.”
“You wanted to tell the truth last year. When Umbridge punished you for it.”
Harry smiled wryly and held up his right hand with the back facing Draco, but their beds were too far apart. Draco shook his head. “What am I looking at?”
Harry waved his wand lazily, and suddenly the air between them became small and clear, like a prism, showing Draco the back of Harry’s hand. Draco blinked. He hadn’t seen that spell before, and his first thought was to question where Harry had learned it.
But only until he saw the words etched into the back of Harry’s hand, made shining and red now by the prism.
            I must not tell lies.
            “The results of a Blood Quill,” said Draco. He could feel the bond lying still, but that was deceptive, rather like the way that a lake might lie still before erupting in storm.
            “Yes,” said Harry, and tucked his hand back against his side. “I do tell the truth about things like Voldemort coming back. Just not about things like how I feel.”
            “Why not?”
            “Because half the time, no one believes me anyway.” Harry rolled his eyes. “Some people could be benefited by knowing Voldemort was back, but no one would benefit from knowing that I’m scared to face him. And no one believed me when I told them I wasn’t the Heir of Slytherin. And when I said I wasn’t lying last year. After a while, it’s easier to know when you have to let the truth go.”
            “I never believed you were the Heir of Slytherin. The Heir would have more class than that.”
            Harry grinned. “You’d think the Heir would also have more class than to write in letters of blood on the walls, but you would be wrong.”
            Draco longed to ask him if the rumors were true and the Heir had been Ginny Weasley possessed by a malevolent spirit, but he wanted their bond to flourish. Asking Harry questions about the Weasleys would probably drive them back to guarded neutrality, at the best.
            “I want you to know it matters to me,” Draco said. Harry raised his eyebrows this time, and Draco added, “How you feel about things. What happened to you in Umbridge’s detentions. What you really think.”
            “You only feel that way because we have a soul-bond now.”
            “Well, so do you. That’s the only reason you ever agreed to come with me to rescue my father.”
            “You’re right.” Harry looked in the other direction. “I probably would have fought for you to have the chance otherwise, but I wouldn’t have gone against Dumbledore.”
            Draco paused. He might have the chance to move the conversation around to another place he wanted it to go, as long as he didn’t look or sound too eager. “What do you think of him? Do you think he’s doing everything he should as leader of the Order of the Phoenix and leader of half this war?”
*
            Harry felt his lips twitch. If that was some attempt to recruit me to the Death Eaters, it’s not a very good one.
            But then again, Draco would have no reason to want Harry to fight for Voldemort now. Harry tried to treat the question as he thought Draco meant it.
            “I think he does use people. But that’s what you have to do to win a war. That’s why I’m no good at it. I just charge ahead and kill a basilisk or battle Voldemort or something, but it’s not like I planned those things. Dumbledore maybe isn’t a great person, but he’s a good general.”
            “Is he, if his way litters the ground with sacrifices?” Draco shook his head, but his eyes were bright and insistent. “You might be one of those sacrifices. At least, I think you are. Why does he make you live with people who despise you?”
            “He told me once that he knew I wouldn’t have a good childhood there, but I needed to stay alive. And he wanted to give me a chance to be a child. That’s why he didn’t tell me about—about everything I needed to do to defeat Voldemort before I turned fifteen.”
            The bond whipped up into whitecaps again. Harry sighed a little. He didn’t like a lot of what Dumbledore had done any better than Draco did, but he didn’t see the point in sitting around blaming him for it, either. They just had to go on and do the best job they could.
            “Does he want you to go back to your relatives in the summer?”
            Harry blinked. “Of course. Although I think it’ll only be for a month this time, until I turn seventeen.”
            “Then you’ll come to the safehouse with my father and me,” Draco said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
            Harry stared at him. “I can’t do that. I have—my friends, I have things to do—”
            “I didn’t mean right away.” Draco made the bond vibrate, along with having an insufferably smug expression on his face. “I don’t think my Hogwarts education will be worth much to me now. Maybe I can take my NEWTS later, after I’ve had some private tutoring. But you should stay and get what you can out of the rest of your sixth year. I meant during the summer, after you’ve spent what time you have to with them.”
            Harry was wordless now. But not emotionless, and Draco turned his head to the side and appeared to listen hard.
            “You don’t agree with me.”
            “No. You’ll be with your father, and I think it’s best if you stay safe there. But I’m probably going to be hunting Horcruxes.”
            Draco’s face changed again, and the bond only a moment later. Now it was roaring and surging, and Harry winced back from it as he would from a crash of spray against his face. “What? What are you talking about?”
            “I’m talking about going on a hunt to destroy the other Horcruxes besides the one in me, and two that have already been destroyed,” said Harry. “Dumbledore’s teaching me about them. There’s no one else who can do the job.”
            “Why?”
            Harry rolled his eyes and pulled his hair back to show his scar.
            “Don’t give me that.” Draco’s voice was low and controlled, and the bond had dropped back to an almost ominous stillness. “You and I both know what that scar really signifies. Why can’t Dumbledore do it? Why can’t the Order of the Phoenix do it? These wizards who weren’t ready to guard my father, surely they can do something that would matter as much to the future of the world as destroying the objects that the Dark Lord uses to hold on to immortality?”
            Harry frowned off to the side for a second. Well, he supposed he had no choice now, and Draco didn’t want Harry to lie to him.
            “There’s a prophecy,” he said. “About Voldemort marking a child born at the end of July as his equal, and neither one of us being able to live while the other one survives. Dumbledore only told me last year after Sirius died.” Harry winced and realized that the bond had grown sharp now, as though someone had laid needles against his temple. “Dumbledore and my friends can help me, but that does argue that I’m the one who actually has to defeat the bastard.”
            Draco leaned slowly back into his bed. He looked as though he was the one who had really suffered in the raid on Malfoy Manor. Harry held still and watched him, wondering what was going through his head.
            The bond had emotions only, not words. Harry had been relieved when Dumbledore first explained that to him. Anything else had seemed too intrusive.
            But at the moment, Harry thought, they could have used words in their heads. It would have been easier to just think at each other rather than struggle to find the right way to say it.
*
            There’s no chance of persuading him to walk away with me and Father and give up the struggle against the Dark Lord.
            Draco shook his head a second later. He hadn’t thought seriously in terms of that until today. He wanted vengeance on the Dark Lord for what had happened to Mother, and he was determined to do whatever he had to to get that.
            But going up against the Dark Lord had already proven harder than he’d thought. If he could have escaped with Father and Harry, and hidden away with them and known that the only family he had left and the person he owed the most to were safe, then Draco would have been tempted by the idea of turning his back on the war. And the temptation had temporarily seduced him.
            It’ll have to be temporary, Draco realized as he saw the fires in Harry’s eyes and felt the heat running up the bond.
            “I didn’t know that you enjoyed playing the hero,” said Draco aloud as he wrenched his mind back from visions to his present course.
            “Don’t enjoy it. Have to.”
            Oh, dear, and now he’s almost monosyllabic. Draco decided he must have sounded like Professor Snape, who sneered about Harry’s heroic tendencies all the time. He reached out with one hand and made a little gesture of peace. “I understand. A prophecy is a hard thing to refute.”
            “Not to mention all the people who would be let down if I ran away.”
            Draco frowned. It seemed to him that people shouldn’t be that let down. There were lots of Aurors with more combat experience than Harry—and many more Death Eaters—and there was Dumbledore, and Professor Snape, and Professor McGonagall, and other adults who seemed more competent to fight a war to Draco. Not to mention the much-vaunted Order of the Phoenix.
            “How are you supposed to defeat the Dark Lord?”
            “I don’t know. The prophecy speaks of a power that the Dark Lord knows not, and I suppose I’ll have to use that.”
            “But you don’t know what it is, either.”
            Harry settled back and shook his head. The bond was no longer vibrating, just swaying back and forth gently like a line in the wind. “No, although I do think that it probably has something to do with the Horcruxes. Maybe I can face Voldemort better because I have a whole soul and he doesn’t.”
            “You have a soul of your own plus mine.”
            Harry’s eyes met his, and Draco felt an intense charge strike down through his body, like a lightning bolt that had decided to root him to the bed. He shivered, and Harry’s eyes grew sharper and more piercing, but also brighter.
            “Yes. And I’m still grateful that you agreed to share yours. It makes a lot of difference to have a soul-bond I can choose.”
            Draco cleared his throat a little. His cheeks were horribly stained with what he suspected was a flush, even though he had no reason to blush in front of someone like Harry, someone who already knew a lot of his thoughts and apparently didn’t mind them.
            “All right. Well. I’ll let you know when Father and I are ready to leave. It can’t be before Madam Pomfrey decides that we’re ready to get out of bed, anyway.”
            “Does anyone ever listen to her all the way through?” Harry shook his head and tilted to the side, sticking his legs out of bed. Draco caught his breath, but apparently Harry could stand up just fine. He nodded triumphantly to Draco. “Don’t let her bully you, I say.” He shrugged and made for the door out of the hospital wing, wobbling a little.
            “You almost died.”
            “And now I’m alive. I only stayed here so long because I wanted to talk to you.”
            Draco felt his throat dry out, and he was still staring when Harry tossed him a wink and slipped out of the hospital wing.
            “Draco.”
            And now Harry has to feel my start of embarrassment and wonder what the hell it means, Draco thought, turning numbly towards Father. Father, who had his eyes open and very clear and direct, which meant that he’d heard most or all of the conversation. At least he wasn’t smiling.
            “You should be careful, Draco,” Father said. “I understand enough of the circumstances to grasp why you turned to Potter for help. But you have no need to continue the association once we go into the safehouse. You should turn your attention to other allies and strengthening our position as Malfoys.”
            “The soul-bond will still be there, though. I can’t exactly get rid of it.”
            “Attitude, Draco.”
            You get your father, your only remaining family, back, and you intend to argue with him over Harry Potter? Draco closed his eyes and breathed deeply enough that a second later he coughed. Father was right. The soul-bond would be there, but Harry had laid out some of the reasons it would have to stop mattering to them as much. They would spend the majority of their time apart from now on; they might never see each other again if Harry got killed in the war.
            I don’t want that to happen. Draco shocked himself with the force of how much he didn’t want it to happen, actually.
            “I don’t want to simply say that nothing about him will matter to me now that we’re leaving,” Draco finally said. He thought his voice was acceptably calm, although in the end only his father could be the judge of that.
            “Of course not. And I owe him a life-debt that I must think of how to repay.” Father smiled gently at Draco, and reached out a hand. Draco slid to the edge of his bed and clasped it. “You will leave suddenly, of course?”
            “Of course.” Draco wasn’t going to give Dumbledore the chance to cage them here, in case he wanted to do that to influence Harry. “And you think you’ll be well enough to travel shortly?”
            “Hmm.” Father looked down at his arms. “They didn’t use me as hard as they could have. Of course, I think that means they were saving me for something worse.”
            What could be worse? Draco wanted to ask, but it occurred to him in time how stupid a question that was, and he didn’t ask it. He only nodded, and then whispered, “You think we’ll be safe from the Dark Lord?”
            “I know that, as soon as I can get hold of a wand, I’m going to cast some spells on our Dark Marks that should make us safer still.” Father closed his eyes for a second, and then continued, “Your mother would never forgive me if I failed to protect you. She would probably never forgive me for ending up in a prison cell and making you come to fetch me.”
            “She would forgive us a lot for still being alive. And the best way to honor her is to go on being that way.”
            For an instant, Draco didn’t think Father had heard him. He was drifting in some world of his own, one that troubled his breathing and made his eyelids quiver. But then he nodded and looked up, with hard eyes. “Of course you’re right, Draco. Of course I should be thinking about how to survive her, not how to mourn her.”
            Draco smiled. Now and then he felt a quiver down the bond from Harry’s emotions, but they didn’t seem as present and real without Harry here to read the expressions on his face.
            Of course they had to separate. Of course he saw that now. Harry had enough Occlumency to separate their emotions and enough insane determination that Draco couldn’t persuade him to turn his back on the war.
            All the same…
            Draco was still thinking of what could be.
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The Serenity of His Rage