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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 Twelve—The Waste of a Breath

            “I only want to know what you told Astoria, Mother.”

            Narcissa sat with her hands folded in front of her and gave Draco the sweetest smile he had ever seen. It made his teeth grind. Normally he admired his mother’s ability to keep her composure no matter what happened, but this was different, this was important, and she didn’t seem to see the difference.

            “What I told Astoria was for her ears,” Narcissa said mildly. “Information that I thought she would like to know when she marries into the family. The scions of the Black line had no trouble bearing multiple children. It must be the magic of the Malfoy line that limits the conception of each child to one.”

            Draco glared at her. The magic, she said, but he knew she was thinking of either ancestral curses or a genetic defect. She would not say so, which meant he couldn’t challenge her, and left the issue to hang between them.

            Yes, she was subtle and manipulative in the gentlest ways and unlikely to hurt him directly. That did not, as Draco wished he had realized before now, make her easy to handle.

            “Besides,” Narcissa added, crossing one leg over the other and examining Draco with calm, interested eyes, “it sounds as though she told you what I told her. Which was certainly her right, to share the facts that are part of your heritage and, now, hers. Why do you wish to hear those facts over again from my lips?”

            Draco hesitated. He was left with two choices now, both of them unpalatable. He could lie to his mother, which would limit her ability to help him, and probably wouldn’t work. He had never been able to lie to her even when he was much adorable and inventive than he was now.

            Or tell her the truth, and reveal how Astoria had twisted his intentions and forced his hand.

            “Draco.”

            The tone in her voice made Draco look back at his mother. Her eyes were slightly narrowed, as though she had to peer into a strong light. “Did Astoria threaten you? That would explain the way you hold yourself, as though you have found yourself on a string of razors above a great height.”

            Draco relaxed a bit. He had found a difference between Astoria and his mother, and at the moment, that felt like a good thing. “You always did have a turn for metaphor, Mother,” he complimented her.

            Narcissa flipped her fingers in a dismissive motion, still watching him. “If she said that she would reveal her secrets to someone outside the family, then I will speak with her.” And settle her, she didn’t need to say. It shone from every line of her face, which suddenly looked like carved steel.

            Draco stared at her. He had never seen his mother look that way before. His memories of her were marble—from her stillness, her pallor, the way she had restrained herself from stupidity during the war—or silk—her hair, the way she held him, her face when the war was over.

            “No,” he said at last. “She didn’t threaten that. She—didn’t threaten me at all. She was very polite, very reasonable.”

            “Well, then,” his mother said, and the steel flowed out of her. Possibly it had been his delusion after all. “Then what discontents you?”

            Draco sighed. It was hard to describe to another person—and humiliating, moreover, that he had wound up in Astoria’s trap before he thought about what was happening. “She—said that she thought I might have tolerated the marriage bond because it gave me a measure of independence from Father. That I might have decided to value that more than the duty I was born to, the family I was bred from.”

            Narcissa sat very still. “The questions about numbers of children,” she said, as if addressing herself, “could have had other motives. But not the questions about you, about how much time you spent in communion with your ancestors, about how much you love your world and your place in it. I see.” She nodded and turned to him.

            The steel was back. Draco found himself sitting up straight, and a brief bolt of pity for Astoria traveled through him.

            He had come home intending to question his mother about what she had meant, speaking to his future wife like that, about sensitive matters. He had found himself gently handled into a position where he confessed to the truth instead, and felt glad that she didn’t focus her attention at the moment on him.

            Whereas speaking with Astoria in much the same manner, a contest of wills, had hurt him and angered him and driven him out of countenance.

            Yes, Astoria and his mother were more different than he had pictured them.

            “Excuse me, Draco.” Narcissa stood and moved towards the door of the receiving room where he had found her. “I must compose the invitation to tea.”

            Never had any words sounded so daunting, Draco thought, and stood up to bow briefly to her. She didn’t notice, but he was sure she would have if he had failed to show that gesture of respect.

            He sat back down, head spinning, filled with light and air and disbelief. Well. So his mother was on his side, and his bride was on the other. He had never wanted to fight either of them, of course, but if battle lines must be drawn up, this was the way he would prefer that they fall out.

            Draco paused then, and flattened his hand out on his knee. He hated finding unexpected things in himself.

            Wasn’t he looking for a partner whom he could stand beside as his mother could his father—at least, when his father wasn’t acting like a bully and idiot—and shouldn’t he have felt glad that Astoria was showing glimpses of her strength?

            He should have, yes. She was a woman whom he had no reason to regret choosing. The only time he had ever seen a flaw in her composure was one he had put there, with his apparent allegiance to the marriage bond. Caught up in preserving his privacy from the eyes of the outside world, he had neglected to mention to Astoria how much he despised being Potter’s husband.

            He should have. One could say that this entire situation came down to him refusing to include his bride in the circle of the family, to embrace her with information as he should have.

            Draco leaned back in his chair and half-closed his eyes.

            One could say that. But one would be wrong.

            Draco considered himself as having been hammered into being by the war as anvil and his parents’ desires as the smith. He was not perfect, but he was what he needed to be to fulfill his family’s goals and his deepest desires. He would accuse himself if necessary, drive himself in circles, live with the presence of a Potter in his family home, and put up with strife against his father that made it impossible for him to respect Lucius as he should.

            But he would not lie to himself, at least once he found out the lie.

            He had done all he could, all that tradition and Astoria asked of him, to include her in the marriage. If she wished to object to that, she could have done it with little more than a cool glance and a silence when he asked for her agreement. She had no reason to pen him up against his own reluctance and try to herd him like a recalcitrant bull.

            That is what I resent most of all, Draco thought then, with a small smile. The inelegance of the manipulation, the way that she showed her hand and drove the blades into my flesh instead of holding them as promises against my throat.

            So. This situation was a mark against her. He would watch more objectively now, with less happy pride in his own choice. His pride had to bow before the needs of the family.

            If Astoria turned out not to be the wife he needed, then he would cast her aside and choose someone else. She had forced the declaration of intent from him, but Draco knew more about lawyers and legalese than he had ever expected to after spending the past few years fencing with the Muggle world. A document could be suborned by itself.

            Someone knocked on the door of the receiving room.

            Draco stared, and then shook his head. Neither of his parents would have bothered, the house-elves would have Apparated in, and any of his friends would have been announced by the elves. That left only one person it could be. “Come in, Potter.”

            Potter stepped through the door and shut it quietly behind him. His face was set in a frown, his eyes dark as he worried his lower lip between his teeth. Then he shrugged as if walking into battle and came forwards to take the chair across from Draco.

            That made a great enough difference from the last time he and Potter had been in close quarters to cause Draco to raise his eyebrows. “You find me more troublesome than the monsters you fight on a daily basis?” he asked. He would have added Or the ones whose mark you wear on your skin?, but this really didn’t seem to be the right time for that.

            “Not you, the news I came to tell you,” Potter said. “Your father confronted me. He said that I had to make you give him some power, a vault or an obligation for the family, or he would never release the marriage bond.”

            Draco blinked. Speaking of unsubtle manipulation.

            A great, quiet anger swelled in him like a glacier growing. Potter laid his hand on his wand and shrugged when Draco peered at him. “Now you look like the monsters,” he said simply.

            Draco half-closed his eyes. He could share his anger with his mother, he could know that he was angry—and must to guide his actions correctly—but Potter did not deserve to know—

            Draco opened his eyes, then, and glanced down at the platinum band in his ring, which shimmered with opalescent fire.

            What we’ve shared, and Potter doesn’t deserve to know something like this anger? You showed it clearly enough when you figured out what Father did with the marriage bond.

            “I don’t mean to,” he said, and glanced up at Potter. “Do you—you believe he’s serious.”

            Potter shrugged and nodded. “I think he expected us to kill each other long before now, or for you to go crawling to his feet and complain you couldn’t stand it anymore,” he said simply. “So he’s desperate. But he does feel he holds the power in the situation. I mean, would he have threatened us if he didn’t?”

            “You say ‘us’ as if it didn’t trouble you,” Draco murmured.

            He was unprepared for the clear, dignified look Potter fixed him with. It was something to see those green eyes unglazed with pain, irritation, or exhaustion. Draco thought he preferred them this way.

            “Of course the marriage bond troubles me,” Potter said. “But I take it as acknowledged, and move on. And we are in this together as far as resisting your father and finding some way to make him break his word—or change his mind—goes. Stop picking at my language and let’s decide what we’re going to do.”

            Draco inclined his head, quietly impressed despite himself, and determined not to let Potter see that, at least. “Very well. Then we need to make his life inconvenient for him, in a way that convinces him we have the upper hand.” He wondered if he was savoring the word too much, but Potter’s thoughtful frown and slowly tapping wand distracted him.

            “If he can live with what we’ve done so far,” Potter said, “I don’t see how we can. And I know you don’t want to make a public fuss.”

            Draco gave him a slow smile. “There are other things he values—that are important to the family—beyond a public reputation.”

            “Yeah, I know,” Potter said. “Money. Blood. Your whole family values those.” Draco opened his mouth to chide Potter for his sudden distance, but Potter had continued. “But we can’t waste money and we can’t magically make me completely pure-blood or completely Muggleborn. What would annoy him about those?”

            “Not waste,” Draco said, and waited for Potter to figure it out.

            Potter glared at him. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know how to spend money on something that would matter to your family, either.”

            Draco stood up and took a step across the distance between them. Potter was on his feet in instants, his wand aimed at Draco’s flank. Draco stopped and thought of the way Potter had lain on his bed, and the wounds, to hold back the snapping words that wanted to rise. “We spend it on something that he considers part of the family but only provisionally,” Draco said. “We spend it on you.”

            Potter squinted as though staring into the sun. “I don’t want to touch my vaults. They’re for my children, not me.”

            Is that the reason you’re content to wear the standard robes you do and suffer from a pitiful lack of possessions? Draco thought, but he knew better than to say it aloud. Driving a wedge between them was what his father would want. “I know,” he said. “We’ll spend Malfoy money—” This time what he held back was the urge to speak a disquisition about how it was all Malfoy money, with the Potter and Black vaults blended with theirs, and again he refrained. His father would have been proud of his self-control, had he known it existed. “And give you things that you want but which my father will see as unnecessary. I haven’t tested my power over the inheritance in many battles against my father,” he added thoughtfully. “It would be unbecoming. But what he has done to us is more so.”

            Potter waited before he nodded. Draco peered at him, but could detect no real reluctance in the curls of his mouth and the way he scratched the back of his neck a moment later—fingernails dangerously near the highest of the scars, Draco thought. “All right. As long as you make it gifts that I can leave here for someone else to use when I go.”

            Draco frowned at him. “It would hurt you so much to take reminders of your marriage back to your home with you?”

            “It would be your money, so they should stay with you.”

            Draco gave up. “Very well.” He paused, then, tugged by temptation. “Do you want to tell my father our refusal? Or should I?”

            “It wouldn’t be very becoming of you to do so, would it?” Potter murmured, and the emotion in his voice tugged Draco’s lips up into a faint smile.

            “No,” he admitted. “But I am the occasional recipient of a thought that would disgrace the Malfoy line. As long as I don’t act on it, my ancestors would not feel ashamed.”

            “Then don’t act on it, I will,” Potter retorted, and walked to the door. “Besides, that way he can dump any anger he feels on me.”

            Draco blinked. “You’re volunteering for that?”

            Potter blinked back at him. “I’m used to standing between people and danger,” he said simply, and closed the door after him.

            Draco was left, for some reason, amid all the other thoughts he could have had, wondering what Potter would think of the situation with Astoria.

*

            Lucius chose to stage the confrontation at dinner that night.

            Harry had known something was wrong as soon as he stepped into the dining room and saw both Malfoy parents sitting at the table instead of Narcissa alone. He had thought of turning around and leaving. He had a standing dinner invitation from Ron and Hermione for as long as this situation lasted, and one at the Burrow, too. He could practice his guitar there, and visit Ginny, and have a discussion about something other than ways to loosen the marriage bond, which, of course, were necessary, but which made him wish he didn't have it as part of his life even more than usual.

            Then Draco came in behind him, and cast him an oblique look on the way to the table. Harry sighed. He was committed, after all. He followed Draco and sat down in a chair beside him, instead of across from him, as he usually did. (Well, "usually." He had only eaten two other dinners with the family, and one of them was the one where Draco had insulted Hermione. Harry didn't think two nights and a lot of rudeness enough to establish a pattern).

            Lucius watched him closely as Harry arranged the napkin in his lap and checked the arrangement of his cutlery. The house-elves appeared with the first course, a huge salad scattered with thick slices of apple and egg, and Harry turned his head to study it.

            "Don't thank them," Draco said out of the corner of his mouth.

            Harry raised his eyebrows. "Don't you want your father to enjoy the benefits of snot-covered cuisine?" he muttered.

            "If you could ensure the dishes went to him first, I wouldn't mind it," Draco said. "But they serve me first as head of the family."

            That answered Harry's question, which he'd been opening his mouth to ask—why Draco didn't simply order the elves to serve his father before anyone else. He closed his lips and nodded. Draco was actually more reasonable with the answers than Harry had thought he was, until they were forced into openness.

            But I hope that doesn't happen again, he thought, picking at the salad when the elves placed it on his plate. Either I'd have to explain—more, or I'd have to learn a secret of his that runs as deep, and I think either one would be uncomfortable.

            "Mr. Potter."

            Harry looked up. Lucius was leaning forwards with one arm braced on the table and a tentative smile on his face. Harry wondered if he thought the expression would fool stupid Gryffindors.

            Of course not, he decided a minute later. He's playing for the benefit of his wife and son. He thinks that I'm stupid enough to threaten Draco for him, he must think that I'm stupid enough not to see anything but what's right in front of me.

            "We had a discussion earlier,” Lucius said. “I need your answer.”

            “I already told Draco all about it,” Harry said. He glanced sideways at Draco from the corner of his eye, wondering if he would prefer to handle this. Harry had said he would. Then again, Harry didn’t think either of them had anticipated that Lucius would move so openly, and in front of Narcissa, too.

            I was right. He is desperate.

            “And?” Lucius pushed, his other hand touching the table now. Harry wondered if he would actually launch himself into the air and forwards across it. He doubted it, but with the man acting strange and unpredictable, it was hard to be certain.

            Draco gestured with his fork as if pointing a house-elf in the direction of his empty wineglass, but Harry sat to the side and could see it better. He sighed. “Mr. Malfoy, I’m not going to blackmail my husband. The answer is no.”

            Lucius sat abruptly backwards. His eyes were narrowed, his hands twitching and then closing as if he were trying to take hold of an extra pair of knives in front of him. Harry kept his face clear and guileless, but beneath the table, put a hand on his wand.

            “Lucius?” Narcissa reached out to touch her husband’s wrist.

            Draco watched everything with the faintest smile, his elbow curved around his plate as if the food were the only important thing in the world. Watching him, Harry thought, you might get the impression that it was. He was a better actor than Harry would have suspected from watching emotions twitch through him in Hogwarts.

            But we’ve all grown up since then.

            Lucius stood, pushing his chair back. He nodded at his wife and started to walk out of the room. Draco parted his lips, a small chuckle escaping.

            Harry quivered, strung on wires, and so he was the one most ready to move when Lucius swung back around.

            He didn’t have his wand in his hand that Harry could see, but it didn’t matter. The glitter of his eyes as they fixed on Draco and the way his hands parted from each other said that he had prepared some curse. He might be capable of wandless magic. It was always better never to underestimate the enemy.

            Harry whirled out of the chair and between Lucius and Draco, moving like a throwing star.

            The curse that sped towards him was like a reaching hand, with webs between the fingers and claws on the ends of the nails. Harry didn’t waste time analyzing it, or wondering what in the world it was meant to do to Draco, the son that Lucius supposedly loved so much. He simply brought his wand down and hissed, “Finite Incantatem” with all the breath and will he could put behind the words.

            The air in between him and Lucius flickered and turned the color of frost. Lucius fell back a step with a snarl. Harry watched the reaching hand falter and then turn into wisps of smoke.

            Even a wisp of smoke could be dangerous. Harry kept a sharp eye on them until he was sure they’d dissipated entirely, and then turned to watch Draco. “Are you all right?” he asked.

            Draco’s color was high—probably, Harry thought, because of the disrespect that his father had showed him more than because of fear—and he nodded. Harry turned back to Lucius. When the man moved, he moved, too, making sure that he was still acting as a living shield in front of Draco.

            “You don’t need to do that.” Draco’s voice was low and an inch away from his ear. “I am not helpless.”

            “No, but I’m the one with training to protect people’s lives,” Harry said. He could see by the balked snarl in Lucius’s face that he would strike again if he thought himself unwatched. “Be still a moment. He might do something else.”

            Lucius settled for saying, in a low and vicious voice as if it was an insult that Harry would care about, “You disgrace the family.” Then he walked to the door, but Harry thought the walk real this time, much like the retreat of an injured crab.

            “Father. You’re wrong.”

            Lucius paused, twisting his head to listen to Draco’s words. Harry quivered on the edge of tension again, ready to move.

            “Harry is more part of the family than you are.” Draco leaned forwards past Harry’s shoulder, and there was a sharpness to his smile that Harry didn’t like. “Remember that.”

            Lucius turned away before Harry could see his reaction and left. That was probably as much of an admission of fear as a frightened expression, Harry had to admit, if one knew how to read it.

            He sighed and lowered his wand, swallowing the aftermath of his adrenaline. Then he turned to Draco, intending to ask if he knew the spell Lucius had tried to use on him.

            Draco seized Harry’s left hand and held it up. Harry stared, but swallowed his curses, too, when he saw Narcissa looking at him.

            Among the joined metals on both rings was a single bright thread of new steel.

            “I think, Mother,” Draco said, “that it’s time for a council of war we should have had long since.” He turned his head, and his fingers, though not his ring, locked with Harry’s. “Come, Harry.”

*

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The Marriage of True Minds