Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Bonded Consort	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 33015 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 13
- 14
- 15
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Fourteen—Worse Than the Dark
Harry kept himself from reeling when they landed in front of his family’s house—the Potters’ house. Probably best if he kept thinking of them that way, because they wouldn’t think of him as having any right to their last name or their house.
“Harry?” Draco stroked his bonding bracelet for a moment, his eyes as watchful as a raven’s.
“Just—the shock of seeing the place again after all these years,” Harry said, and smiled at Draco while a rush of memories assaulted him like winter wind.
He’d thought he honestly didn’t remember much of it. After all, the memories that came to him most prominently were his mother’s sad eyes and the soft way his parents discussed him at night in trembling voices and the way his scar writhed and danced when Dumbledore or a visiting Unspeakable bent down towards him.
But now, as Draco escorted him towards the pillared porch, Harry remembered more. The pillar where he’d carved his name as a boy. The huge garden where his mother grew all sorts of varieties of lilies, more because James wanted her to than because she liked them herself. The Quidditch pitch where Sirius and Remus and James chased each other on brooms, yelling.
“We don’t have to do this right now. We can go back to our house and let my parents think whatever they like.”
Merlin, I must look bad. Harry mustered a smile for Draco and straightened his spine. “No. I came this far, and I do want to go on,” he added reassuringly at the dubious shine in Draco’s eyes. “Just—not as much as I thought I did.”
“You’ll tell me if it’s too much for you.”
Draco sounded as cold and furious as he had when Dumbledore invaded Harry’s flat. Harry knew the reason. Draco wanted to protect him more than he wanted to confront the Potters. Think of them that way.
“I will,” he said, and then turned and walked into what should have been his home for the first time since he was ten years old.
The lavish entrance hall was unfamiliar; he either hadn’t spent a lot of time here or they’d redecorated, he honestly couldn’t remember which. There was a huge painting of a woman rising from the waves on the far wall, and the room was huge and didn’t have many pieces of furniture, but a few mirrors gleamed here and there. M.H., who had followed behind them without saying anything so far, lifted his head to try to see himself in them.
Who is that?
Harry looked, and saw a child on the floor, staring up at them in shock, his mouth open a little. He had shaggy black hair and bright blue eyes that Harry didn’t remember in either of his parents’ faces. Well, that didn’t mean they didn’t have a blue-eyed relative hiding somewhere on the Potter family tree.
I know so little about them.
“Who are you?” the little boy blurted.
Harry swallowed. “Eric,” Draco was murmuring into his ear, but Harry knew who it must be. The brother he’d never met, the brother born five years ago.
“My name’s Harry,” was the only thing Harry felt he could say, even as he bent down towards the boy. M.H. slithered over, his tongue flickering out as if to compare Eric’s scent to Harry’s. “I used to live here.”
“No one told me about you!” Eric was staring at him and didn’t seem to know how to feel. If he was afraid of M.H., he didn’t show it. He was scowling at the floor instead. “I want someone to tell me everything,” he muttered. He flicked a finger against the toy in front of him, which seemed to be made of sleek silver balls and bells joined by wire. Harry honestly wasn’t sure what it was meant to do.
“Well, your parents exiled him, so that’s why they didn’t tell you,” said Draco. Harry turned and glared at him. He shrugged a little. “What?”
“He’s only a kid. He doesn’t know what exile means.”
“I do so! It means sending someone away.”
Harry smiled a little, but before he could open his mouth, a cold voice he remembered well spoke from the side. “Corrupting our son the way you did our daughter before you even told us you were back in the country?”
Harry shivered. He couldn’t recall the sounds of his father’s voice well, but then, James didn’t write to him very often. Lily did, and she was talking, now, the way she wrote. The tone and the pauses were all hers.
His mother wore a pair of green robes that Harry had to admit complemented her eyes and hair. From the soundless growl Draco uttered as he moved up beside Harry, he actually didn’t care about how Lily looked.
“We asked you to keep away,” Lily continued in a low voice. “To not corrupt or stain Dahlia’s wedding into the Malfoy family. And then you couldn’t even do that.” She shook her head and glanced to the side as if she had no idea how to react, what to say. Harry knew the exact moment she caught sight of M.H., because she stopped breathing for a second.
Tell me if she is prey. She doesn’t smell like prey.
“That is enough.” Draco’s voice rang like a sword being drawn from a scabbard. “I know Dumbledore must have sent you word. You truly didn’t realize that I would be bonding your son, not your daughter?”
Lily turned as if looking away from M.H. would make him cease to exist. Her face had gone blank. Harry, still reeling a bit from her words, swallowed and wondered if that was for the best. He could feel the warmth of Draco’s arm against his back, and that was the only thing that kept him from retreating.
He had thought he was ready. He had stood at Draco’s side as they faced his parents. He hadn’t realized…
He’d thought more of his heart was sealed away from the Potters’ anger than it was. It had been ten years, after all.
Not long enough, Harry decided, staring into his mother’s eyes. Maybe it never would be.
*
“He says that he used to live here, Mum!” Eric was tugging on Mrs. Potter’s hand. “How can he be bad? Or does corrupting mean something else?” He looked doubtfully at Draco and Harry and leaned against his mother.
Harry should be able to do that. Draco didn’t like the idea of making a scene in front of a five-year-old, but at the same time, he wouldn’t let Mrs. Potter use the child as an excuse to get out of the confrontation.
“Dumbledore told me nothing,” Lily said, disregarding her younger son for the moment.
“Mum.”
“Nothing,” Draco repeated softly, his eyes narrowed. He tried to understand what the Headmaster could be playing at, but nothing came to mind.
He shook his head. Well, it would be a different kind of confrontation with the Potters than he’d envisioned, then. But he had to grin as he thought that he might get to see some better stunned expressions.
He drew Harry against him. Harry went quietly. He had become still and glassy-eyed after Lily had spoken. Draco hoped to cure that as well as shock the parents who had thrown their most precious child away. “I’m bonding with Harry. I discovered his flat, and I discovered I like him much better than Dahlia. We’re already engaged, as you can see.” He turned his wrist. Lily Potter ought to know what the bracelets looked like.
Lily only blinked as if she hadn’t heard the announcement he’d made just a few minutes ago. Then she shook her head and said, “You can’t break Dahlia’s heart that way.”
“I doubt she has a heart to break,” Draco said. Harry’s hold tightened on his wrist, but Draco ignored it. Quite frankly, he was speaking exactly what he thought. Maybe he would have felt differently if Dahlia had ever shown she had one. “And I’ve made my choice. I’m not changing it back.” M.H. crawled lazily up to his feet, bobbing his head as if he approved of Draco’s decision.
“There speaks that spoiled Malfoy upbringing that I’d hoped you’d got over. Do you have any idea how much like a child you sound?”
“What? For declaring my mind and holding to my choice? Or for not doing what you wanted?”
Lily’s lips thinned. “Because you taunt and sound defiant and don’t—you can’t do that. There’s a betrothal contract. There’s a wedding being planned right now. Dahlia has set her whole heart on this.”
“I told you, I doubt that.” Draco stroked the side of Harry’s throat, and Harry finally relaxed with a little shiver and sigh, dropping a hand to M.H.’s head. If he hissed to the snake, it was too soft for Draco or Lily to hear. “You’ll have to find some other means to persuade me. Or better, gracefully give up and don’t try to persuade me. You’ll lose.”
Lily turned and stared at Harry instead—which Draco had to grudgingly admit was smart of her, as little as he wanted to praise anything about Lily Potter. She had to sense that Harry was a lot more rocked off his feet and weak-willed than Draco was at the moment. “I told you what you did to this family. Now you’re doing the second-worst thing you could possibly do. Why couldn’t you stay away?”
“I…I wanted to understand. And Draco told me I was a wizard, and I wanted my magic—”
“You’re a Squib!”
“You never sensed his power,” Draco drawled. Now was the time to find the answer to a question that had been puzzling him. “Even though he’s not a Squib. Explain to me how that happened. Why could you not sense the magic that I can feel, practically threatening to drown the room?”
Lily visibly struggled for a moment, while Eric looked on with big eyes. Then she said, “That’s not his power. It’s Voldemort’s. Harry is a Squib. What he carries around is—like a disease. Who in their right mind would use it? Any more than they would use some of the rituals Voldemort used, to try and make himself immortal!”
Draco stared at her. He opened his mouth. He thought he would give her some scolding about how ridiculous her perceptions were.
Instead, he started to laugh, stunning even himself.
Lily only stared at him without expression, without understanding. Harry jumped against him, then relaxed when M.H. twined around his ankles. Draco bent double with his laughter, although he still stayed right behind Harry, ready to shield him. Eric tugged on Lily’s hand and said insistently, “Mum.”
Draco finally managed to stop laughing. “So, the whole time,” he said, still having to force little bubbles of hysteria down, “you—you thought—oh, this is rich—calling Harry a Squib was a terminology issue? It didn’t even matter who was looking at Harry’s magic—it mattered what you called it?”
“It’s not his magic! It’s—”
“Show her what you can do, Harry,” Draco said, not moving. He would have tried to give some direction, but he was sure that Harry, so much nicer and more restrained than his birth family, would choose an appropriate display.
Lily flinched as Harry raised his wand, as if she was sure that he would burst out with an Unforgivable. But Harry only said, “Lumos,” clear as wind, and that kind of clear light began to blaze from the end of his wand. It filled the room from one end to the other, and lifted some unsightly shadows lying beneath the portrait of Aphrodite.
“That’s impossible,” Lily whispered.
“Why? You always knew he had magic, you just called it something else.”
“But Voldemort’s power—Voldemort’s power can’t be used except to hurt and kill.” Lily looked as if she was shrinking into herself like the turtles whose shells had made Harry’s wand.
“Mum.”
“Then perhaps you should admit that you made a mistake.” Draco smiled at her. “You might have given birth to a powerful Light wizard for a son. What you have now is a powerful Dark wizard.” He draped his hand over Harry’s shoulder and leaned in to kiss his cheek. “A powerful Dark wizard who would be well within his rights to turn his back on you.” Not that he thought Harry would forgive them anyway—he’d promised—but Draco couldn’t suppress the impulse to hold out the promise of forgiveness and then snatch it away again.
Lily only shook her head, looking overwhelmed. She finally snatched her hand away from Eric’s and shoved him hard towards the far side of the entrance hall, so hard that he stumbled. “Go get your father,” she said.
Eric opened his mouth as if to protest, but then he must have seen something in Lily’s face that decided him. He turned and ran as fast as he could towards the doorway hidden among the pillars.
Maybe because she’d decided that appealing to Draco was useless, Lily turned to Harry. “Do you approve of this?” she whispered. “Coming back and tormenting your family? Bringing a snake here, one of Voldemort’s creatures? Taking your sister’s betrothed away from her? I thought you were a Squib. I was wrong. I thought you had a shred of common human decency. Don’t let me be wrong about that.”
Draco wanted to shout, but he kept himself still. He thought Lily wouldn’t notice the way his hand tightened on Harry’s shoulder, or at least she wouldn’t have an idea of what it meant.
His bonding bracelet sparked with warmth and magic, and Harry’s bracelet sparked back. God, this had to go well. The more moments that passed without Harry speaking, though, the more Draco thought that he might have been affected by Lily’s plea.
Don’t let him be. Don’t let him think of anything right now but how much I love him.
*
Harry really wanted to cast some spells that would probably only confirm the ideas his mother had about him having Voldemort’s magic. He thought he already would have if not for the way Draco had draped himself over his back.
He did close his eyes and calm his temper. The words had—struck him. He’d thought they would go on striking. He’d thought he would have to struggle against the natural impulse to forgive his family and admit everything they said about him was true. After all, he’d spent so long thinking the way they thought.
It was nothing like that at all, after his shock at his mother’s initial words. Instead, all he could think about was how something closer to Draco’s words should be coming out of her mouth.
“Draco can make his own decisions,” Harry said, and opened his eyes. Lily flinched when he looked at her. Harry wondered why, when she hadn’t reacted much to anything he did so far. Maybe it was actually at M.H. rearing high to study her throat. “You’re talking as though a betrothal contract means anything without the participation of choice. Draco even went to the trouble to find me, so he was technically still bonding with a Potter. He’s trying to keep to the terms of his honor. What’s honorable about forcing him to marry someone he doesn’t care about, he can’t care about?”
“The only reason he has trouble caring about Dahlia is because of what you did to her.”
“No,” Harry snapped. “Even if my magic affected her somehow, I was a child. It would have been accidental magic, just like if I’d broken something you liked—”
“This was affecting one of our children!”
Harry blinked. Then he said, “Thank you for making it clear that you don’t consider me one of your children.”
Broken shards of something stirred and ground together in his chest. He supposed regret was part of it, but honestly, not a big part. He’d made the right decision, he was sure, in accepting Draco’s bonding offer, and that was apparently something he’d have to refuse in order to remain his parents’ child.
“You honestly can’t understand the difference between Dahlia and a vase you might have broken?” Lily whispered. She had her arms wrapped around herself, and she was shivering. Harry wondered idly if his magic was escaping control and actually cooling down the room. It felt like that to him, but he knew his impressions might not be that trustworthy. “I can’t believe I gave birth to you.”
Harry closed his eyes. Maybe it had been useless to come here. But the Malfoys had wanted to hear what the Potters said.
“I don’t know what happened to Dahlia,” Harry said, and forced his voice into calm. “Maybe we’ll never know, since it was so long ago now. But I don’t think that has anything to do with our bonding. Draco’s made his decision. I’ve accepted him. I would appreciate it if you would—”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Harry’s eyes flew open again. Yes, that was James, and he was creeping into the room and almost whispering. Harry thought it was because of Eric, who was peering around the pillars, but James went on whispering without looking behind him.
“You have to get out of the house before Dahlia sees you,” he said, softly, intensely. “She started crying earlier this afternoon, and she hasn’t been able to stop. This would be the final straw.”
“Good.”
Harry blinked. Even he hadn’t thought Draco would say something like that.
“At least that shows she has some emotions,” Draco continued on blithely. “Not enough to make me want to marry her, but it’s something. It means she might be able to open her heart to someone else.”
“You can’t—you can’t not want to marry my daughter.” James had apparently run his hands through his hair, or at least Harry hoped so. Not even his hair looked that messy naturally. “How can you not want to? She’s innocent.”
“She is not,” Draco said, and his voice had gone harsh again. “I don’t intend to stand here debating with you. Honestly, this is a courtesy visit. You should know that I’m going to bond with your son. I thought I would be the second one delivering the news, after Dumbledore, but since I’m not, then you should know.”
James turned and stared at Harry. Harry looked back. He had no idea what he expected to see in his father’s face, but it wasn’t anger or hatred. It was just desperation, so thick that Harry could almost feel it coiling around him. Then James shook his head and said, “He’s not my son.”
Draco sighed. “Yes, your wife already expressed that tiresome opinion. If you would just—”
“No,” James said, and his voice was stronger. “He is not my son. I hereby disown him. He’s not a Potter.”
Harry gasped. It felt as though a string he had never realized was wrapped around his chest had suddenly snapped. He put his hand up to his wildly beating heart, his twanging breastbone. M.H. lifted his head higher. What does this mean? Can I eat him?
No, Harry hissed back, not seeing the need to keep his Parseltongue quiet with this—this.
“There,” James continued, and stalked a step forwards, looking at Draco and not Harry. “Now you can’t bond with him. If you intend to honor the contract, you have to bond with—marry—a Potter. Now my daughter is the only choice.”
Harry said nothing. He didn’t know if there was anything to say. They’d made so many choices, Draco had sought him out so specifically because he was a Potter and the contract said—
“Then,” Draco said, and his voice was entirely gentle as he braced his hand against Harry’s breastbone and seemed to hold it in place, “fuck the contract.”
*
Phoenix-Rob: Narcissa is a littlel ess selfish than it seems, in that she thinks she knows Draco best and Dahlia would be the best wife for him; he just doesn't know it yet. But yes, she refuses to accept that he can make his own decisions.
Thank you!
Jan: James and Lily are trying to ignore M.H. as much as humanly possible. :)
Djaddict: Thank you for giving me the title of this chapter!
Myliewilde: Thanks!
- 13
- 14
- 15
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Bonded Consort