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The Serenity of His Rage	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16982 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
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Chapter Fifteen—Hunters

            “You’ve been frowning at that letter for ten minutes,” said Draco, on the other side of the chessboard from Harry. “It’s short enough you could have read it in one. Give it here or I’ll take it and start reading it aloud.”

            “That wouldn’t embarrass me,” Harry pointed out, frowning at Draco in turn over the top of the parchment. “You already know what I feel.”

            “But there are lots of things that make you react as if you want to storm the gates of someone’s Manor,” Draco said. “You should take up Dark Arts. They’ll purge that right quick.”

            “You’re ridiculous,” Harry said, with a roll of his eyes, but it wasn’t as though Hermione’s letter contained secrets about Horcruxes that Draco didn’t already know. He handed it across the table, and Draco triumphantly put down a pawn and snatched the parchment, skimming it.

            He promptly snorted. The bond rippled in an arrow-like pattern of cold Harry had already come to recognize. It meant Draco was going to say something insulting about his friends, or really, anyone who wasn’t Draco himself, Snape, or Mr. Malfoy.

            “She doesn’t know why Dumbledore wanted me to stay with the Dursleys, either. But she trusts him, and he hasn’t really given her any reason not to. Don’t talk about her intelligence, or her House, or her blood, or her relationship with Ron.”

            Draco paused and stared at him in consternation. “That takes away all the good insults.”

            “That was sort of the point.” Harry rubbed the back of his neck, which was aching, and not really because of the hour he’d spent crouched over the game thinking about ways to snatch an impossible victory from Draco. “Listen, Draco, you distrust Dumbledore, and I don’t blame you. But my friends don’t have any reason to—”

            “I would, if only because he mistreated a friend of mine. I would listen to my friend before I listened to the Headmaster of the school.”

            “Really?” Harry took his hand off his eyes. “You mean to say that if Goyle came to you and complained that some professor wasn’t treating him fairly, you would believe what he says without investigating?”

            “Who said that I would skip the investigation step? But I would believe him enough to look into it. Not simply assume that it must be for the best because a professor was doing it, and scold you about homework.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “It’s been years since Hermione did that, either. I think the last time she really went to the professors that upset me was when she took my Firebolt third year because we didn’t know who it had come from and she thought it might be cursed. She gave it to McGonagall, and I couldn’t use it until it had been checked for curses.”

            “And it turned out to come from the man who was trying to kill you.”

            “My godfather,” Harry said, and closed his eyes for a second. The bond must have revealed to Draco what he was feeling, because his voice softened and he reached out to move Harry’s hand away from the chessboard.

            “Please don’t feel like that. It freezes my brain. It’s like being in a snowstorm.”

            Harry tried to snort and sound amusing. “You’re lucky that we weren’t soul-bonded right after it happened, then. There were a few days when I just thought about all the things I could have done to save Sirius over and over again.”

            “Tell me some of those famous plans. Since it seems, from what you’ve told me, that you could hardly do anything with Umbridge obstructing you.”

            “He’d given me a two-way mirror as a Christmas gift. I could have used that to talk to him and seen whether he was okay.”

            Draco blinked for a second. Then he said, “Yes, well, that’s more sensible than I thought you would say.”

            Harry smiled faintly. “You acknowledge someone else can be right? Start up the presses! We need a special edition of the Daily Prophet!”

            Draco sniffed and moved his pawn in what Harry thought was a random direction. Then again, Ron’s attempts to teach him chess hadn’t availed much. “What are you going to write to Granger?”

            “That I’m well and I’ll see her in a few days.”

            Draco’s hand paused, even though he didn’t look up. “That’s all?”

            “That’s all,” said Harry, with a firm nod. “I don’t know what’s going on with Dumbledore, what he might have told them. Without that knowledge, I can’t know if I need to persuade her into acting against Dumbledore or not. So I’ll remain polite and noncommittal.”

            The bond trembled. Harry snorted. “What, you didn’t think I knew a word like noncommittal?”

            “More that I didn’t think the great Harry Potter who’s always been so loyal to his friends would ever deliberately conceal information from them. Especially when Granger demanded to know where you are.”

            Harry shrugged. “I reckon that Dumbledore probably already knows. Snape most likely told him. If he does anything with that knowledge, that’s one thing. But either he doesn’t know yet or he hasn’t told Hermione, and if I tell her, then either way I have to deal with problems. By keeping silent, I win.” He eyed the board. “Can you move your knight that way?”

            “I can do whatever I like when you’re this distracted from the game.” Draco shook his head a little. “I just didn’t think you would be this sensible. It sounds more like rhetoric I would have expected from a Slytherin, to be honest.”

            Harry reached out to the bond. It shook, and it did have a fluttering edge that Harry had learned to put down to surprise, even a dazed emotion.

            “You’re the one who taught me some of that, you know,” Harry said quietly.

            “What?” Draco didn’t look up again, but the bond fluttered still harder, and he actually almost knocked one of his pieces off the board with the way his hand was moving.

            “That I should be sensible, and that it’s not the end of the world if I do something Dumbledore and my friends don’t want me to do. When we went to the Manor to rescue your father and I survived, I learned that.” Harry smiled at him. “Anyway. If she sends another letter I’ll just ignore it. I want you to help me learn Potions instead.”

            Draco rolled his eyes. “Because that’s something I can teach you in seven days.”

            “You’re probably a better teacher than Snape.”

            “I’ll never be a better brewer than Professor Snape,” Draco corrected him, with a hard stare that Harry ignored. “He’s incredible.”

            “Yes, but brewing and teaching aren’t the same thing, are they?” Harry pointed out. “I doubt Professor Slughorn brews most of his own potions anymore, but he’s still a better teacher. And he explains some things pretty clearly. Not so clearly as the Half-Blood Prince, but—”

            “Yes, that book you supposedly learned so much from.” Draco sat up. “Why do you need me to teach you Potions if you have that?”

            Harry made a face. “Don’t turn into Hermione. You’re already halfway there with correcting me on Snape’s title. And there are plenty of potions that don’t have any notes, or where I can’t decipher his handwriting, or where some other information is left out. I’m sure of it. I’ve tried brewing some of those potions and still didn’t get them right even though I’m sure I followed every instruction.”

            Draco’s eyes sparked, and the bond did much the same, rippling until Harry felt as though he would get a headache. “Now there’s a challenge worthy of a Malfoy,” he said. “Teaching someone who finds even excellent instructions hard to learn from? Probably because he ignored basic information for a long time just because the professor was a right git to him? Yes, let’s see if I can pack it into your head.”

            “Just because the professor was a git,” Harry repeated faintly.

            “What?” The bond was fluttering again, and from the way Draco looked at him, Harry knew he profoundly didn’t understand what Harry’s objection was.

            “I think that’s a good reason not to learn a subject!”

            “A Malfoy would have found the advantage in what the professor could teach him and ignored purely personal interactions for the sake of knowledge,” said Draco.

            “When you tilt your head like that, I can see up your nose. It’s hairy.”

            Draco clapped a hand to his nose immediately, even though he should have been able to tell from the bond that Harry was lying. The next instant, he’d jumped over the chessboard at Harry and was struggling with him on the floor, while Harry laughed.

            “You git!”

            “Hey, take the advantage of knowledge from the insults,” Harry gasped, tilted his head to the side away from Draco’s ineffectual punches. “Like in this case, the knowledge that you need to trim your nose hairs.”

            Draco got more serious then, and they rolled over several times before they finally came to a stop against the side of Draco’s bed. Draco had “won,” in the sense that he was gripping Harry’s shoulders and shaking him, because Harry was laughing too hard to put up any resistance. Draco shook him again, and Harry managed to get his chuckles under control and grin up at his bondmate.

            “I’m just trying to teach you to apply the lessons you’re teaching me.”

            Draco leaned towards him until their noses touched, and the bond was sluicing cold and warm water around them in equal measure—exasperation and fondness, Harry thought. “When I want your teaching, I’ll ask for it.”

            “I imagine there’s a lot of things I can instruct you on,” Harry said, to be deliberately provocative, and slid a hand onto Draco’s hip to heave him off.

            Draco froze and stared at him with shocked eyes. Harry frowned back, wondering what was wrong now, especially when the bond had also frozen like someone had cast an Icing Charm on a whole lake at once.

            Then he realized that his hand was on Draco’s hip, and Draco was leaning against it, and it was warm, and the warmth radiating down the bond with Draco was…

            Harry rolled over quickly and buried his head against the floor. Draco took a long minute to stand up in response. His leg dragged along Harry’s hip in turn, and now that Harry knew how it had affected Draco, that set up tingles in his skin, too, like falling fireworks.

            “I—I think it’s best if I start teaching you to brew,” Draco said in a strangled tone.

            Harry thought about making a stupid joke about stirring rods, but let the occasion pass. He wasn’t sure what would happen if he started talking about it now, honestly, and the way the bond was cracking and rippling like ice in the sun…

            He didn’t think Draco knew, either.

            Harry cleared his throat. “Okay. Let me—I mean, you go ahead and set up the lab, and I’ll stay here and—tidy up the chessboard.”

            It was a stupid excuse, but the way Draco accepted it immediately and left the room showed it was the one they needed. Harry “listened” to the way that Draco’s emotions dimmed as he went down the stairs, and shook his head a little. His hands shook when he picked up the first chess pieces, which made them complain.

            Harry put them down, and put his head in his hands again.

            It was only a little moment when Draco had been on top of him and Harry had made a stupid joke.

            But it had changed a lot of things, and Harry wasn’t sure what would happen now when he went downstairs and asked Draco to teach him potions. Would he keep thinking of the other things Draco could “instruct” him on?

            Well, don’t, that’s all, Harry told himself harshly, and began putting the chess pieces away again. At least this time, he didn’t increase the complaints they already had.

*

            Don’t watch his arse.

            Draco dragged his eyes away from, well, Harry’s arse as Harry bent over a cauldron and tried to move the stirring rod in the way Draco had shown him. Perfectly innocent things now seemed obscene. Draco bit his lip to the point it ached and told himself that it was even more awkward because they could each sense what the other one was feeling through the bond.

            From the way Harry moved uncertainly back from the cauldron and gave him a stiff smile, he might not know what Draco’s arousal felt like through the bond, but he knew exactly how and when things had changed.

            I’m distracting him more than Professor Snape ever did with bad teaching. Draco told himself that he had to pay real attention, because in a Potions lab accidents happened with incredible regularity, and forced a smile in return. “Yes, good. You have to keep it up that way for five minutes.”

            “How do you keep track of the time? I never saw Snape set a Tempus Charm, and the way he forbids anyone else to use their wands in class…”

            “Honestly, the great Potions brewers develop an instinctive sense of time, especially when they brew a potion multiple times.” Draco took pity when he saw the way Harry grimaced. “But I think it’s perfectly fine to use a Tempus to keep track when you don’t have a partner to count the seconds for you.”

            Harry’s eyebrows went up. “You had partners do that? We were too busy having two people dice and cut each ingredient.”

            “Vince was surprisingly good at it,” Draco began, and then flinched as different memories of what Vince had done came back to him. Harry’s hand was on his back in an instant, rubbing gently while the bond closed around Draco like warm arms.

            “Hey,” Harry said softly. “I think it’s reasonable to hate him for what he did and want to remember the good parts at the same time.”

            Draco nodded stiffly. His mind stopped buzzing in six different directions as he stood there close to Harry, and he regretted it when Harry suddenly coughed, moved away, and started concentrating intensely on the cauldron again.

            “Will you count the time for me?” Harry asked.

            You could just cast the charm. It was on Draco’s lips to say it, but he stopped when he felt the bond shaking again. And Harry wasn’t that shaky a person.

            “Yes, of course,” Draco said. Harry immediately smiled at him in a way that was even more like the warm arms around him.

            Draco dragged his mind away from what else was warm, and chanted the time to himself in his head while Harry stirred. Harry wanted to make this potion, he wanted to involve Draco in more than just a professor position, and he wanted them to get close again after the madness of what had happened upstairs. That was more than obvious.

            Is it madness? What if—

            But Draco let the thoughts go, not least because it was breaking up his concentration on the numbers. He faithfully called out the end of five minutes, and Harry took a step back and looked at him expectantly.

            “Let me just see,” Draco muttered, brushing past Harry to get to the cauldron.

            He wondered if he should be thankful or not that Harry was angling his hips away from him in the next second, so Draco had plenty of room to stand without contact with him and look into the cauldron.

            Thankful, he decided firmly when he felt the bond fluctuating again. Fantasies and dreams weren’t worth it if they disrupted the peace and stability of the friendship he and Harry had.

            Even if they were hard to ignore.

*

            “At times like this, it seems so strange to think that I’m going out to hunt Horcruxes soon.”

            “You don’t have to mention that, you know.”

            Harry smiled a little. Draco’s eyes were closed, and he sat in one of the pair of chairs that had been outside the Malfoy house since the first day Harry arrived. Harry had assumed one was for Draco and one for Lucius, and he’d offered to build his own chair, but Draco had only stared at him until Harry agreed that he could sit in one of those already there.

            “I sort of do,” Harry said. The day had slid by like golden molasses after their little wrestling match that morning. They’d eaten and argued and read side-by-side and tried to do more with the potion that kept stubbornly refusing to work the way it was supposed to do when Harry stood over the cauldron.

            But Harry wasn’t doing any kind of preparation for the Horcrux hunt, and that did bother him.

            “Not yet,” said Draco. His voice was a plea. His hand slid over Harry’s side as he shifted positions, and Harry started. He hadn’t even realized Draco was sitting that close. He supposed it was natural to regard his presence as safe now, thanks to the bond. “Let’s just think about what we want to do for a while. I assume Dumbledore’s going to train you or teach you or whatever when you go back. Just—stay here.”

            Harry sighed. “And think of ways to tell him that I want to visit you when I’m tired?”

            “Yes,” said Draco. “It’s not going to be like it was earlier this spring and summer. I won’t ever be that far from you again.”

            “You know I’d love you to go along if—”

“If Dumbledore would agree. If your friends would agree to let me participate in the hunt, instead of standing back and making doubtful noises about my capacity. Or my goodness, maybe.”

The bond had changed until it felt like spruce needles were stabbing into Harry’s brain through his eyes and ears. He sighed and rubbed at his nose. “I talked to my friends about the way we went to Malfoy Manor, and it seemed like the main problem they had with it was that I didn’t tell them. If they knew you would be there…”

“But we both knew Dumbledore would never allow that. And you’re not in the mood to defy him.”

Harry was quiet for a second. Then he said, “Maybe once I know more, I will be.”

            “Know more about what?” Draco’s eyes were closed, but Harry knew his attention was on him because of the arrowhead shape of the bond in his mind.

            “Know more about what the Horcrux hunt is supposed to do.” Harry rubbed his chin with one knuckle. He would have to ask Draco to cast a Shaving Charm again soon, unless he wanted to grow his beard. “I don’t know if we’ll be plotting in Hogwarts, or attending a regular Hogwarts year and taking off somewhere whenever someone finds a Horcrux, or be on the move all the time. I don’t know how easy it will be for you to come along.”

            Draco’s body jerked as though Harry had cast lightning directly into him, but he didn’t open his eyes. His voice was breathless anyway. “You would want me to?”

            “Of course. You know lots of spells, you’re smart, you’re loyal, you have as much reason to oppose Voldemort as any of us.” Draco still jumped a little in his seat, but the bond didn’t flinch when Harry said the name. Harry opened his eyes and smiled at Draco, proud of him. “But like I said, I would want to talk to Ron and Hermione first. They deserve to know.”

            Draco was quiet for a second, still watching the sunset. Then he said, “I notice Granger hasn’t written back to you since you said you would talk to her later.”

            “No. But then, she mostly wasn’t writing to me when I was with the Dursleys, either. I think Dumbledore told her the risk was too great.”

            “Was it?”

            Harry knew what Draco was asking, especially with the way his mind pressed on Harry’s now. He wasn’t asking him to know things he couldn’t know. He was asking him to make a moral decision.

            Harry reached out and pushed his hand down onto Draco’s. Draco tensed for a moment, and then seemed to physically remind himself to start breathing again.

            “I think,” Harry said, “if it was so great, Dumbledore should have explained it to me.”

            Draco rolled in his seat to face him. His eyes were alight. “Yes,” he said.

            “I’ve always done better with more information than too little,” Harry went on. “I didn’t know why it was so important that I had to learn Occlumency in my fifth year, and why Dumbledore was avoiding me then. I would have worked harder if I’d known. And if Snape had been willing to try the style of Occlumency with me that you did, or if Dumbledore had been willing to teach me himself, then Sirius might still be alive.”

            “I’m sorry for what I’m about to say.”

            “What?”

            Draco’s hand glanced gently off Harry’s jaw, rubbing along it the way Harry’s own hand had when he contemplated the Shaving Charm. He found himself shivering with something he thought was delight. “I’m glad that neither of them taught you, because then I wouldn’t have been able to. As awful as that sounds—and I know it sounds like I’m wishing your godfather dead—I’m glad I was the one to teach you.”

            Harry felt frozen for a second with conflicting emotions. There were several things he could do, and all of them were further than he wanted to go.

            He contented himself with gripping Draco’s hand hard and shaking it once. “I’m glad that you did, too,” he said.

            “Then that means—what?”

            Harry accepted the weight of the decision and the pleading that shone from Draco’s eyes, and inclined his head. “It means I’ll at least tell my friends that you’re going with us on the hunt. And—ask Dumbledore. Ask only because I don’t know yet what he’ll say and how I have to get around him,” he added quickly as Draco’s eyes narrowed. “He may agree for reasons of his own. You know how strange he is.”

            “Barmy,” Draco murmured, but he seemed too swept away by satisfaction to care as much as Harry had assumed he would be. “Well. Good.”

            And it seemed they sat there beaming at each other like idiots for too long until Mr. Malfoy came out and commanded them sharply to come to dinner, it was cold.

*

            Draco knew exactly where Harry was at all times. Of course, with the bond and them being closer to each other than they had been all summer, that wasn’t a surprise, but it did have a different meaning now when he lay down in the bed next to the one he had conjured for Harry and turned his head towards the sound of his steady breathing.

            Harry is going to fight. For me. And for me to have the right to go along and defend him. Just like we were—friends.

            But Draco hadn’t doubted they were friends for a while, and so he didn’t have a word to express what pounded and shouted in his head, part of the bond and yet outside that.

            Before he fell asleep, though, he found the word.

            He’s mine.

*

            Anon23: Thank you!

            Jan: Thank you!

            Severus sees Harry as putting Draco and Lucius at risk, so he’s not going to like at all the notion that Harry and Draco want to stay together.
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The Serenity of His Rage