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Bonded Consort	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 33021 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Fifteen—Bated Breath
The breath really did seem to have stopped in Harry’s lungs. He felt cold. He might have fallen over, if not for Draco’s hands braced on his chest and back.
Then he heard Draco’s words, and felt as if he could force his lungs to work again. He did. He knew what Draco would say if he doubted himself or remained silent too long: they had won.
Before Harry could open his mouth, though, Lily had cut in, her eyes wide with disbelief. “Do you understand what you’re saying, Malfoy? We’ll never give you the time of day again if you don’t marry Dahlia now. Your honor will disappear. Your friends will make you a laughingstock. Your parents will turn their backs on you.”
“Unlike you,” said Draco, his voice so rich with contempt it sounded calm, “my parents only have one child. And unlike you, they don’t use disownment as a weapon. Threats of it, maybe. Not the actual gesture.” He leaned over Harry and whispered into his ear. “Are you okay?”
Harry nodded, and then whispered back, “Can you lean back a little, so they can see my face? I have something to say to them.”
Draco turned his head. Harry didn’t know for sure what Draco could see in his expression, since he was so close, but whatever it was brought a look of fierce delight to his face. He stroked Harry’s cheek and dropped his hand from his chest, using both arms to encircle Harry’s waist instead.
“I wanted to give you a chance,” Harry told his parents. Well, he supposed they weren’t his parents now. Other than the sudden sensation of unbinding magic inside him, he honestly wasn’t sure how disownment worked. “I wanted to say that you just didn’t understand Draco’s distaste for Dahlia and you didn’t know I was a wizard and you were so scared of Voldemort coming back that you made decisions based on fear.
“But now, I don’t care. You could have figured out I wasn’t a Squib if you wanted to. You could have figured out what happened to Dahlia. You could have told Dumbledore that I wasn’t possessed by Voldemort—”
“What do you call that, then?” James snapped, his finger swinging wildly at Harry. Harry assumed he was pointing at the scar. “A source of Dark magic! A sign that you were possessed by Voldemort! Have you even told Malfoy it moves on its own, sometimes?”
Draco’s fingers curled quickly into the sides of Harry’s waist. Harry moved a little so his hand brushed Draco’s arm and shook his head. “No, because it hasn’t come up. It doesn’t mean he’ll abandon me.”
Draco’s fingers relaxed.
“But you still haven’t been able to tell him the whole truth about yourself.” James’s eyes were wide. “You still haven’t mentioned that scar and the way it moves. How are you going to get through that conversation?”
“Like this,” Harry said. He tipped his head back until he could more or less see Draco over his own chin. “Draco, did you know that sometimes my scar moves?”
“No, I didn’t know that.” Draco’s face was tranquil, his voice the one Harry’s mentor had sometimes used when talking about a movie she’d liked. “Is there any pattern to the movements?”
“Not that I’ve ever been able to tell.”
Draco nodded. “Then someday, when we have other, more urgent things settled, we will sit down and figure it out. Would that be acceptable to you?”
The way Draco’s fingers curled into the sensitive skin between Harry’s ribs again said that it would have to be. But Harry had no trouble accepting it. He only nodded, gave Draco a winsome smile, and turned back to his parents to add, “Like that.”
Or are they my parents now? If they’ve disowned me, I suppose that technically, they don’t have any authority over me anymore, either.
James and Lily stared at each other. If they were telepathic and having some kind of silent conversation, Harry couldn’t tell. He noticed from the corner of his eye that Eric had edged into the room again.
“This is still putting dreams to ruin,” Lily whispered. “Dreams that were never yours to ruin. How can you be so needlessly cruel?”
“Dahlia’s dreams don’t matter to me,” Draco said.
“Nor me,” Harry had to add. “I don’t really know her. I was too young when you exiled me, and I don’t know what kind of girl she’s grown into.”
“Perhaps I should show you, then.”
Harry looked up quickly. Dahlia was standing just behind Eric, between the pillars that framed the room. Her head was bowed a little, and tears streaked her cheeks, and her eyes were dramatically open.
Lily reached out a trembling hand and touched Dahlia’s shoulder as she walked into the room. Harry found himself swallowing. That was the way he would have wished for his mother to touch him, as if she was concerned he would break. Not because he would break. Just that she feared he would, sometimes.
Harry then shook his head. It didn’t matter. Lily wasn’t his mother anymore, and frankly, it was a relief to know he wouldn’t have to feel the guilt over his own lack of love for her in the future.
James apparently thought Harry’s headshake meant something else. “You don’t get to deny Dahlia the chance to tell her story!”
“Let her tell it,” said Draco, his voice so cultured and bored that Harry smiled entirely against his will. “It doesn’t mean anyone is going to care about it.”
Lily’s fingers shook in their resting place on Dahlia’s shoulder. Dahlia raised her head, slowly. Harry watched her face and wondered for a second how Draco could ever have turned away from her to seek him out. She was pretty. Plus, there was enough passion blazing in her eyes to light up a whole room.
Of course, Draco had also said she didn’t usually show emotion. Maybe she was less pretty when she was blank-faced.
“All my life,” Dahlia began, her voice quivering, “I only wanted to make people happy. I would lie awake at night and wonder how I could get that. If I gave up some of my sweets to Lilac, or if I obeyed Mum and Dad the next day, or if I did what people told me, then it might happen.”
Draco yawned.
Harry felt a giggle rising up his throat so fast that he thought for a second it’d actually made it out. He swallowed audibly, and Draco leaned his chin on his shoulder and smiled at Dahlia. “Do go on.”
For a second, Harry thought Dahlia would burst into tears again. But then she caught her breath and continued speaking, her eyes lowered, resting on the floor. “I—I wished so hard. I wanted to be perfect. I wanted to be right.”
“That’s all anyone ever wanted from you, darling,” Lily whispered. Her voice was full of hope and belief and suppressed tears, and Harry felt a wince deep inside, again more from the loss of the kind of mother he wished he could have had than from the loss of Lily herself. “People who really know how to value you will know that you made the sacrifices to protect them.”
“As touching as this is,” Draco remarked, “we’ve got a melodramatic story to listen to.”
James actually pulled out his wand, but Harry aimed his at his fath—former father in response. It seemed James was more afraid of Harry’s alleged Dark magic than anything he’d seen Draco perform, because he froze. Harry nodded without taking his eyes from him, even when Dahlia began to speak again.
“I was—I was so afraid. I wished so hard. I wanted to be acceptable. I wanted to be acceptable to the Malfoys, because otherwise they might not let me marry Draco because I was a Light witch and a half-blood. I wanted to be the epitome of pure-blood manners, because I knew Mrs. Malfoy likes that. I wanted to have honor, because I knew that was important to the contract.” She turned limpid eyes on Draco. “And I wanted to be worthy of the only man I’ve ever loved.”
“You weren’t.”
Harry took Draco’s wrist in a gentle hand. He perfectly understood the impulse to strike back at Dahlia, but the more they did that, the longer they stretched this out.
“But I wanted to be,” Dalia whispered, “and you were the only one it didn’t work with.”
This time, neither Harry nor Draco said anything. Lily and James were saying enough for two people, anyway, whispering into their daughter’s ears and taking her hand.
Strange, Harry thought as he watched, that I can think of them as my parents, still, more easily than I can think of Dahlia as my sister.
“I don’t understand.” Dahlia stared at Draco with tragic eyes that made Harry bristle a little. He didn’t have much to be jealous of, not with Draco’s open and undeniable choice, but he felt it prickle his spine. Draco stroked his shoulder, and Harry found it easier to be still. “Why did you choose someone you thought was a Squib? You still wanted to marry a Potter, or you wouldn’t have chosen him at all. Why not someone you—knew, someone who was powerful, someone who worked so hard to be what you liked? What was wrong with me?”
Draco looked a little taken aback by the stress on that last word. “You were perfect for someone who was like my mother,” he said. “You couldn’t make yourself into someone who would please both my mother and me.”
“I should have been able to. I thought about it so much. I planned. I wished and wished and wished.”
Draco abruptly lifted his head. Harry glanced at him, thinking maybe James had tried to cast a spell or something, but instead, he was watching Dahlia, his eyes narrowed and contemplative.
“So the change that influenced you was magic,” he murmured.
Harry swallowed and felt his scar writhe. James cut in triumphantly, “See! We told you! Harry bewitched her when—”
“Not Harry’s magic,” Draco said. “Dahlia’s.”
*
Draco wanted to shake his head in wonder for not having thought of it before. He had assumed Dahlia was either a lying actor or someone who really was that shallow. He hadn’t thought about her wishing herself into that state, using accidental magic to make something happen that she wanted like she wanted to breathe.
Draco had read all about accidental magic in his private studies with his parents. Hogwarts didn’t cover it, other than explaining that it happened to children before they acquired their wands, for the most part, and were a sign that they weren’t Squibs. Draco wouldn’t be surprised if Harry not showing any accidental magic—except for supposedly enchanting Dahlia—after his encounter with Voldemort was a reason that the Potters had thought he was a Squib.
Of course, his magic hadn’t been accidental. It had been carefully controlled when it belonged to Voldemort, and that didn’t change simply because it had come to dwell with Harry.
But Dahlia had enchanted herself into that state. She had probably started feeling emotions again now because she had realized that her wish hadn’t come true, and that had loosened the grip of that magic on her.
Draco felt a slow smile come to his face as he understood. This was one of the few things that could convince his mother Dahlia was not the perfect match for him, if he phrased it in the right way.
“What are you talking about?” Dahlia asked, her voice rising.
Only because Harry asked the same question in the next moment, his voice much calmer, did Draco bother to answer at all. “You wanted to be perfect for everyone. You wanted it more than you wanted anything else. What do you suppose happened when your magic listened? I never denied that you were strong. Just not strong enough to be pleasing to me.”
Dahlia staggered a step back and stared at him with huge eyes. Draco wondered idly if she’d have found a way to wish herself more power if she’d understood he found that attractive. It had been known to happen with accidental magic.
But then, she had never understood him at all. And that was most of the reason they were here.
The other part of the reason is that Harry is just better than her in every way.
“That’s not—that can’t be right,” said Lily, shaking her head rapidly as if she was trying to get rid of a cloud of buzzing flies. “Dahlia can’t have wished herself into perfection for your family at four years old. She didn’t even know what marriage into your family meant at that point!”
Draco knew the answer to that one, too, and he was honestly a little annoyed with himself for never thinking of it before. Of course, he needed the knowledge of Dahlia’s accidental magic to unlock the whole mess, but a little thing like that shouldn’t have stopped a Malfoy.
“She didn’t know what marriage meant at that age. But she knew you wanted it. She would have lain awake thinking about it, thinking about how to please you, and that was the way she got shaped. Her magic shaped her.”
Draco paused and waited for them to come to the next obvious conclusion. None of them died. Even Harry had his head tilted back, his eyebrows raised as if he didn’t understand what Draco was getting at.
“That means,” Draco said, very slowly, “that there’s a reason you think she’s perfect and I ought to be happy to marry her even if I dislike her. Her magic shaped her into exactly what you wanted, and it reached out and shaped you, too. There’s no way a child that young could have not messed up sometimes, no matter what her magic did. So it changed your perceptions to make it easier for her to please you. Lowered your expectations.” He smiled a little. “No wonder you were so willing to turn on your other child who seemed to be a threat to her.”
James staggered as if Draco had been holding the end of a long rope attached to his waist and had released it. “No,” he said, but it had no voice behind it.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense with listening to her about how hard she wished for this.”
“No.”
“Deny it all you like.” Draco shrugged. “It probably worked better with you because you’re Light and I’m Dark. My mother either resisted it and Dahlia’s magic worked harder on Dahlia herself instead, or was of the mind to be pleased by what she saw on the surface and not look further until Dahlia was older. Then, of course, she would have known better how to act.”
“All of this is speculation,” James said, his voice so full of stress that it cracked. “You—you’re pretending to know the truth of something that no one can know the truth of, you think—”
“Oh, but it makes sense of so much! Why you were willing to exile Harry as a child. Why you didn’t look into whether he was a Squib or possessed of Voldemort’s magic or what. All you knew was that he was a threat to your beloved child. Dahlia wanted to be loved. Her magic made you love her.” Draco paused to think and looped his arms more firmly around Harry’s waist. “It is ironic, I suppose, that she did to you what you accused Harry of doing to her, but I don’t think it’s much more to be concerned with than that.”
All the while, delight hummed in the back of his mind. Yes, if he presented this the right way, his parents would be disgusted that the Potters had let themselves be enchanted and fooled, and much less likely to insist that he marry their “perfect pure-blood” daughter. Especially once they realized the daughter was really prone to fits of sobbing and jealousy of the brother she hadn’t seen in ten years.
“Draco?”
Harry’s voice. Draco let himself be lured out of his thoughts and looked into his eyes. “How sure are you of this?” Harry whispered.
“Sure in the sense that it makes sense.” Draco shrugged a little. “That doesn’t mean that I can know for certain without some tests. But it makes sense, right?”
Harry shivered a little and let out a small sigh. Draco raised his eyebrows, and Harry whispered, “I was almost sure that I didn’t affect her that way. But not completely sure.”
Draco smiled. “Then this has more purpose than just embarrassing her and your former family,” he said, and stroked the side of Harry’s neck. “That makes everything worth it.”
“You’re unbelievable,” said Lily, sounding numb. “You’re happy about this?”
“Happy in the sense that I get to bond who I want, of course.” Draco lifted his left shoulder in a graceful shrug. “And yes, I do think that it was worthwhile to tease this out and let Dahlia realize she has no chance of marrying me.” He looked at his former betrothed, and waited to see if something like remorse assaulted him.
Nothing happened. Dahlia only looked at him with blank, tearless eyes now.
“This—couldn’t have really happened,” James whispered. “Could it? What if it’s true?” He blinked at Lily. “We need to talk. We really need to talk.”
“It doesn’t matter to you that he doesn’t want to marry me?” Dahlia asked.
James’s eyes glazed and he started to open his mouth. Then he snapped it shut and said, “My God. He’s right.” He reached out and gently took his wife’s arm. “We have to talk. Dahlia, come on.”
Draco saw her hesitate. But even at this late stage, obeying her parents was ingrained. She followed them.
Eric stepped back into the room and stood staring at them. Then he squinted his eyes and said, “You’re strange. But I like you.”
Draco wasn’t sure if that was addressed to him or Harry. Probably Harry, though, since Eric did know him, a little. “Thank you,” Harry said a second later, because he’d probably come to the same conclusion.
“Come back,” said Eric, and turned and followed his parents and Dahlia, too.
Harry craned his neck back. Draco looked down at him, and Harry kissed him on the nose.
“I’m free, now.”
Draco nodded. “And I think I know how we might convince my parents.”
They walked out of the home that would never belong to Harry now, linked together, to find one that would.
*
Thunderbird: To a certain extent, Lily and James were not to blame. But they've gone too far for either Harry or Draco to forgive them now.
And thank you!
Djaddict: If someone means the threat of disownment enough, it can happen, via family magic I'll talk about more later in the story. But of course, James is now kind of wishing he could take it back...
Gothicpumpkin: Thank you!
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Bonded Consort