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The Marriage of True Minds	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 55082 -:- 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 Eleven—Wider Than the Heart Can Compass

            “You can’t really believe that they wanted to help you.”

            Harry sighed and looked down at the parchment spread on the desk in front of him, all the files that had miraculously managed to pile up over the single day that he was gone. Sometimes he wondered that the Ministry didn’t collapse from the sheer amount of parchment that filled it. That weight ought to be enough to knock down a few walls.

            “They were good about it,” he said quietly. He’d come in looking a bit cheerful this morning, and Ron had pounced on him at once, wanting to know how he could smile after a day of forced rest with the Malfoys. Harry had lost the good mood as he explained.

            Anyway, it didn’t do any good. No matter how often he explained, Ron didn’t seem to believe it.

            “This marriage is a sham, mate,” Ron hissed when his mouth was close enough to Harry’s ear that no one in the corridor could possibly overhear him. He shot a glance over his shoulder anyway, evidently thinking that something might have changed between one second and the next. “Don’t you remember? You never wanted to be married to the git. You want to be free and married to Ginny.”

            “Yes,” Harry said firmly, “I do.” He tugged at the ring on his left hand and moved it further away from Ron, so he didn’t accidentally brush against it. He thought of Ginny, her sad smile and the way she’d listened to (and read, when he had to write them down) his stories of what had happened in the darkness. She was the woman for him, the only one for him.

            But he didn’t see any reason why he couldn’t remember that and still value the Malfoys for what they were. Not competition for Ginny, just people that it turned out he had been unexpectedly able to trust and tolerate sharing a house with for a little while.

            He glanced at Ron and smiled. “I’ll marry her,” he said. “And to make it easier, I have a kind of truce with Malfoy now. He’s not going to be as much of an interfering git as he had the potential to be when he thought I was embarrassing the family.”

            “His family,” Ron corrected, but he lifted his head and leaned back against the table, balancing on his hands. “Huh. Really?”

            Harry nodded. He didn’t intend to spend a lot of time and words protecting Malfoy and his parents, but on the other hand, he didn’t want Ron to have misconceptions about them. They were what they were: pure-bloods, annoying, but also capable of compassion to those they thought deserved it, and living in the shadow of torture, like him. Harry would go through his day without speaking about them, and he would make sure that he gave his friends every excuse to do the same.

            “Well, then.” Ron seemed happy enough to leave the subject of the Malfoys behind, instead picking up the file on the top of his stack and holding it out to Harry. “What do you think of this case? It’s got the blood and the symbolic patterns drawn in blood, but the patterns aren’t for a summoning. This one may be insane.”

            “What, like most of them?” Harry countered, but took the file with a grimace. He hated the blood-oriented cases. It reminded him too much of Voldemort in the graveyard. From a distance of twelve years, he could recognize that as a twisted ritual, one that would have granted Voldemort more power than simple resurrection if he’d succeeded in killing Harry.

            “What they’re doing makes sense to them, at least,” Ron said, renewing an old argument. “Even though Dark Arts has warped their minds so much you practically have to twist your brain in knots to see what they’re driving at. But this one genuinely doesn’t seem to have any meaning.”

            Harry grunted back, which made Ron argue some more, which made Harry focus some more on the file, and the subject of the Malfoys slipped away entirely. Harry rubbed a finger over the ring now and then in gratitude.

*

            “Your father is more committed to having his own way than I imagined, Draco.”

            Astoria had her head bowed over the photographs of past Malfoy wedding dresses as she made her criticism. When she lifted it and gave him a flashing glance from green eyes like the heart of summer, Draco was able to smile back. He understood the frustration that she must carry locked beneath her cool mask. She wasn’t impugning his family, not if he understood the true message behind her gentle words and the graceful turn of her neck.

            “Yes,” Draco admitted, “he is.” He’d barely seen his father in the last week. Lucius no longer took meals with the family, and he seemed to spend most of his time in his study or his potions lab. Draco wondered idly if he was working on a potion to make Draco and Harry more palatable to each other. Draco could have told him he was wasting his time. Every “love” potion in existence produced only temporary lust. “But I can outwait him. So can you.”

            He met and held Astoria’s eyes, to see if his trust in her strength of will and desire to marry him was misplaced. She only smiled at him and returned to the photographs.

            Draco leaned back in his chair, well-pleased. He had chosen the best possible bride, he knew, despite the doubts his mother sometimes mentioned in a soft voice. She had the beauty and the blood, there was no question about that, and the fortune, though of course diminished from what it had once been; the Greengrass family had been rivals to the Malfoys in their time, but no more. Each day that passed confirmed her discretion and the balanced nature of her soul.

            Like a marble door poised on hydraulic pistons, Draco thought, watching Astoria as she lifted a hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. Even that gesture was done gracefully, though Draco hadn’t thought it could be, before. She turns in the direction she should at the slightest push.

            “We have not discussed,” Astoria murmured, her attention on her delicately painted nails and the pages she was turning, “how many children we would have.”

            Draco nodded. “I would prefer one only, since the Malfoys have a tradition of only children. But your parents might want more than one grandchild. Don’t they?” he added. He had met Mr. and Mrs. Greengrass several times, but he had never engaged them in intimate conversation. One didn’t, when one was of a different generation and there were as many protocols and rules covering the situation as there were in this case.

            Draco rubbed the ring.

            All the protocols and rules.

            “Hmm. I suspect they’re likely to get as many as they want and need from Daphne, actually,” Astoria said, her voice dry for some reason. She turned her head and fixed her gaze on him, so suddenly that Draco blinked, unprepared for the mask he wanted to fasten in place. “What about you, Draco? Is one enough?”

            “Of course,” Draco said. He didn’t know what he might have said or done to give her a different impression, but it was serious, considering the way her fingers clamped down and wrinkled the page of photographs. “I would, in some ways, like more than one, in case it turns out that we have a Squib. But I respect the traditions more, and certainly it would be easier to open one’s heart to a single child.”

            Astoria bowed her head and said nothing for some time. Then she said, “I’ve been speaking to your mother.”

            Draco stared at her, not understanding. “About the marriage? What did I say or do to make you think—” There were certain things that a bride and her new mother-in-law might speak to one another about, but Draco didn’t think they had advanced to that stage yet.

            “I wanted to know what she thought about the number of children,” Astoria said. “Whether they made the decision in concert, she and your father, or independently after your birth.” She stroked down the line of her arm. “She said that she would have liked to birth more children, but your birth cost her too much.”

            Draco raised his eyebrows. “She never told me that.”

            “Well, she wouldn’t, would she?” Astoria asked, giving him a mild look. Draco still flinched back as if he’d been stung. He was glad that he had chosen a wife who could hurt someone with her eyes, he told himself, a little stunned. Of course he was. He just hadn’t known that particular skill was one she had. “One doesn’t discuss such things with the single heir of the family line. My mother wouldn’t have spoken about it with me, and encouraged me to ask yours, if I was Daphne.”

            Draco frowned at his hands. He had sometimes wished for siblings, but always accepted that it was right that he didn’t have any. His father might have wanted to disown him then when Draco disobeyed. And he would have had to share his toys. As an adult, there were other reasons to be glad. The Ministry had made him the face of the Malfoy family, a more difficult task if there had been two children.

            “We can have more than one child if you wish one, Astoria,” he said. “I didn’t—I never thought about it, because I assumed my parents had agreed, but if you want more than one, you should have it. You’re the one who will bear them, and the one who will make the decision.”

            Astoria’s eyes widened, and she stood up and came around the table towards him. Draco rose to his feet to meet her. He was still a bit confused about what was happening, but he knew that one didn’t sit down in front of one’s future bride and look appealingly up at her. Until the wedding night came, decorum must be maintained.

            “I didn’t mean that, Draco,” she said, and put her hand on his arm. Draco stroked the marble-strong, silk-soft fingers, and watched her face. “I thought you might not desire any. That was why I tried to hint that having at least one would make your mother happy as well as fulfill your obligations to the family. You care about her, I know. It’s in your eyes and your voice every time you mention her. Her happiness might compel you if the goad of duty wasn’t enough.”

            Draco stood still. For some reason, that she had manipulated him and confessed to the manipulation made his breath catch. And not in admiration.

            He shook his head a moment later and said, “Astoria, I always knew that I would have to have children. Even if I hadn’t wanted to follow in my parents’ footsteps, even if I hadn’t been the heir, I would have respected their traditions. Instead of asking you what I did or said to give you the impression that I wanted more children than one, I now have to ask where you received the impression that I wouldn’t do my duty.”

            His voice had cooled in spite of himself as he spoke, but Astoria drew away with a slight smile and a bow of her head. “Your new husband,” she said. “He gives you a measure of independence from your father. There is no way that Lucius can force you to have grandchildren, even with fertility potions slipped into your wine, even if he bedazzles your mind and tries to make you forget the elementary precautions. I wondered which was stronger, your desire for predominance over your father or your devotion to your family.”

            “The marriage bond was an accident.” Draco reached out and put his hand on her arm in turn, resisting the urge to squeeze. He did not like the suspicions she harbored of him, but then, he had not done his best to clarify them or make her forget them. He had thought a single conversation would suffice to make her fathom the situation and accept it. He should have known better. Astoria was two years younger than he was, and despite all her perfections, perhaps still prey to romantic delusions. “I concentrate on living with Potter because it is the best way to make my father see his intent to annoy me is not working and make him dissolve the bond. I don’t want Potter. I don’t want to stay married to him. But one puts up with what one has to, instead of raging against the heavens.”

            Astoria studied him with calm eyes for a moment. “Yes,” she murmured at last. “I would have doubts of your dignity if you did that.”

            “Instead, you have doubts about my devotion to family, to what’s right and proper,” Draco said. “How can I settle them?”

            Astoria smiled at him. Draco knew, then, that she had achieved what she meant to achieve all along. He locked away the emotions that immediately tried to besiege him. He would have to deal with them later, when he was away from her. Thinking about them in front of her would involve her trying to counter them with something else.

            “I’d like a declaration of intent.”

            Draco blinked at her. “But we were keeping the marriage and the courting secret for a reason,” he said.

            “I know.” Astoria’s eyes darkened, and Draco felt a distant pleasure that, after all, emotions of some kind were capable of touching her. “I want to renegotiate. It’s all very well to say that this marriage bond was forced by your father and has nothing to do with me, but its existence says that your father can pull some weight in choosing the people you marry. It makes you look less independent from him, Draco. I want your declaration of intent, as the head of the Malfoy family, that you are going to marry me. The bond to Potter will look odd with that, yes, but all it will make the right people assume is that you have some plan to ensure that you get what you want out of this deal.” She smiled at him. “And you do.”

            Draco nodded, but she would be foolish to assume that the gesture meant agreement, and from her expectant look, she knew that. “And what about the wrong people?”

            Astoria turned her hand over, as if she could already feel the weight of the real Malfoy ring, not the one used for forced marriages, there. “Who cares what they think?”

            Draco thought, Harry would. And then cursed himself for referring to the man by his first name again, as though it was necessary for them to do so.

            You know that you passed a barrier in that bed, Draco, and that you can’t step back over for wishing it.

            Draco curled his lip, vowed never to let Astoria hear that particular thought—which she would entirely misunderstand—and focused on his future wife again. “Very well,” he said. “It’ll take some time to draw up the proper declaration of intent. And you understand that it might take more time still for the marriage bond to dissolve. My father might decide that I’m defying him and deliberately extend it longer.”

            Astoria had dimples when she smiled. Draco hadn’t noticed them before. He wondered idly if she kept them hidden most of the time because she knew how they marred the perfection of her face and made her expressions seem less serious. “Draco,” she said gently, “I think your father already knows that you’re defying him. He would have to be a fool not to know.”

            “Well, he can be that,” Draco grumbled, and then sighed when she looked at him expectantly. “Yes, I know. It’s the best solution. And I do want to marry you, and I do want to have a single child to carry on the Malfoy line. Any more after that, we would have to discuss in concert.”

            “I am glad to hear you say that, rather than that it is solely my decision,” Astoria said softly, leaning forwards to kiss his cheek. “I would not want to marry someone who would leave such important decisions up to someone else. I want someone who cares about the future of his family, more than the fleeting impulses of the moment.”

            Draco nodded. And I want someone who won’t manipulate me into violating the agreement that we both came up with.

            But he said none of that, and he smiled and made small talk with Astoria gladly for the rest of their meeting. At the end of the appointed time, Astoria rose and swished back across the room where they always met, pausing at the door and glancing over her shoulder to offer a faint smile. She had become the perfect maiden again, without a sign that she had kissed and touched him earlier.

            Draco could live with finding out that his betrothed was more passionate than he had suspected. She had proven in the same afternoon that she had an icily cool part of her mind and was not above using it.

            No, he had not chosen wrongly.

            But there was another conversation that he needed to have, and soon. He was already mentally preparing himself to have it when he stepped out of the fire that led him back to the Manor.

            What had his mother been about, lending information about the family’s intimate life to Astoria? It was her right to speak of it, of course, but not until later in the courting process. And Draco knew his mother was too intelligent not to wonder what Astoria would do with the information once she had it.

            He knew his mother did not doubt his devotion to his family, and if she had, she would have found some other means of expressing her disapproval. That left a purpose he did not see, and he was determined to drag it into the light.

            Enough people already sought to control his life. He was not minded to tolerate another one.

*

            Harry arrived back ho—

            No. He arrived back at the Manor. That was the kind of thing that would happen if what Hermione had told him was true and the bond was trying to twist him to its purpose, he thought firmly as he took off his cloak and started to hang it up.

            Juli appeared next to his feet in a flash and took the cloak away. Harry rolled his eyes and let her. He knew he would find it back in its proper place at the foot of the bed the next morning, washed and pressed.

            Hermione would probably give him that hard, intense stare of hers if she knew how much he was relying on house-elves, Harry thought, trudging up the stairs towards his bedroom. And Malfoy house-elves at that. She’d be horrified. She would tell him to concentrate on something else, think about something other than the marriage bond, if only for the house-elves’ sake.

            Harry smiled and reached out to open the door into his bedroom. He was making a good start on thinking of something else. The Ministry’s hunt for the wizards who could cast decay magic, and one of the cases he and Ron had been assigned, would absorb most of his time for the foreseeable future. And although it had turned out the mandolin wasn’t possible, George had had a guitar he didn’t want to play anymore. One new hobby, coming up.

            “Mr. Potter.”

            Harry felt his muscles surge with adrenaline. He was lucky that he was facing the door, he thought, or he would have lashed out, and all of Draco’s praise for not destroying Malfoy property would be gone. He would at least have broken the balcony railing with the Blasting Curse he’d launch.

            “Mr. Malfoy,” he said, turning around and making sure that his hand was on his wand and Lucius could see it. “Why are you calling me by that name? You were the one who took away my right to go by it.”

            Lucius Malfoy looked at Harry down his nose, with a slight twist to his lips that made Harry’s fist itch. He held it down, kept it under control. He’d kept worse things under control since he became an Auror, including deliberate insults and the emotions that came when someone stared at or tried to touch his scars. And he didn’t want to ruin the new understanding that he’d gained with Draco this soon.

            “Well?” he asked. “I assume that you have some reason for coming and talking to me when you’ve avoided it so far to skulk in your room like a child, but just standing here and staring at me doesn’t make it obvious.”

            Lucius’s eyes half-shut, but Harry could see the hard glitter under the lids. “You should remember that I am in ultimate control of your fate,” he whispered. “I can take away the marriage bond, or I can let it remain, tangling you in misery for years.”

            “Your son has a better flair for poetic metaphor than you do,” Harry told him, bored. “And your wife, even better. Your bragging hasn’t frightened me for a long time. Tell me what you came for, or go away.”

            Lucius sneered and folded his arms. Harry could see the shake in his shoulders, and knew it came from suppressed rage. He held back the smirk and fastened his gaze on Lucius’s throat, as if considering the best way to tear it open.

            Lucius paused. His breath came a little faster when he spoke. “You have a degree of influence over my son thanks to the marriage bond. Convince him to speak to me, to yield. I don’t need much. One vault is all I ask. A bit of control over one Malfoy business. He is right, we cannot publicly disobey the Wizengamot’s decree giving him the power of the head of the family. But a little, he might do.”

            Harry laughed in his face. “Why should I, when you’re the one who’s responsible for the misery that ties us both together?”

            “Because otherwise,” Lucius said, “I will never release the marriage bond. This I swear.”

            Harry stared at him. The anger and the fear had vanished as if they’d never been, and Lucius looked tall and confident and strong again, like someone who could legitimately be called the head of the Malfoy family. He looked down at Harry’s ring and shook his head.

            “Does it make a chain?” he whispered. “Does it bind you? That is nothing compared to what it will do to you if you can never marry, never have the woman of your choice and father children.”

            “I’ve borne worse things,” Harry said in a low voice he hadn’t known could come out of him. “I can resist you. I can forfeit almost everything.”

“Then think about Draco,” Lucius said. “He will soon issue instructions to his solicitor about a declaration of intent, saying that he intends to marry Astoria Greengrass in the future. The papers will take an interest. Some of his friends will laugh and turn their backs on him. At least some of those who have left you alone until now will wonder what it means, that the marriage bond is not real, and look into things. You can endure it. Can he?”

            Harry’s breath escaped his teeth in a long hiss. He hated the thought of it, he hated that Draco’s happiness meant anything to him, but…

            But he owed Draco for not being a bastard about the memories and his knowledge of the darkness.

            “Bastard,” he whispered, to the Malfoy he could accuse.

            “Think about it,” Lucius whispered back, and ghosted down the corridor, leaving Harry with his hand on his wand and visions of Lucius flying apart dancing behind his eyes.

                                                                                                                                                *

            Myniephoenix: Thank you! I hope you continue to enjoy my stories.

unneeded: The Harry-hunting plot goes underground for a while, but only a short while. The next cluster of chapters focus on Draco.

And, well, denial about what? I actually think it was brave of him to admit as much to the Malfoys as he did. He isn't in denial about wanting to be married to Draco, since he really doesn't, yet.

SP777: Thank you! I think they will become more comfortable with each other from here on out.

Lumcer: Thank you! Please to continue to read as long as it intrigues you.
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The Marriage of True Minds