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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
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Chapter Sixteen—On the Same Couch

            The room Draco led him to was yet another one Harry had never seen before, the walls a rich blue-green as though someone had wanted to create the impression of being under the sea, the couches running all along the length of the walls to leave room for an enormous sunken pit in the middle of the floor. The floor was filled with a serene pool of water, the surface marked only by large, drifting blue flowers of a kind that Harry didn’t recognize. He rolled his eyes when he first saw them. Of course. We don’t want to ruin the color scheme of the room, after all.

            Draco shut the door behind him and lit a fire in the fireplace—Harry had missed the place where the couch paused to let the hearth through—with a flick of his wand. Harry jumped, and then shook his head. Of course he should have noticed the fireplace the first time. Any room in the Malfoy house would have one.

            And he was just as glad of any light that would help keep the darkness back. He moved over to stand beside the flames.

            Draco sat down on the end of the couch closest to the hearth, and extended a hand to the cushion beside him in invitation. Harry swallowed, hesitated, and then sat. His head was buzzing as if he’d had too much wine. He could feel the ring around his finger buzzing in much the same way, the energy increasing whenever Draco’s hand ventured near.

            “You needn’t look as if I were going to eat you.”

            Draco sounded amused. Harry shook his head and managed to raise his eyes to Draco, who lounged back on the couch as though it was the only natural way to sit. “I’m afraid of how this might change me,” he said. “If you’re persuasive enough, and I don’t have any reason to think you won’t be.”

            “If I manage to change your mind,” Draco said, “that would be normal for a good teaching lesson. Or business negotiation.”

            Oi! Some of Harry’s muscles tensed for a different reason, then. “So that’s what this is?” he asked. “A business negotiation?” He looked straight into Draco’s eyes and let his lips move up in a thin smile. “How interesting.”

*

            Damn. I should have remembered that he wouldn’t like to think of marriage that way, even if it is one.

            It was a stupid misstep, and one that Draco knew he would need to give himself time to recover from. He backed away to the extent of staring into the fire. “Do you mind if I ask you something?” he murmured.

            “Depends on what it is.”

            Yes. He is more guarded than before. Draco knew he had got the edge downstairs by standing close to Harry and appealing to his better nature, but Harry would be convinced he had been mistaken, now, and the whole thing was a ploy.

            Which, in some senses, was true. Draco wanted Harry to at least consider the possibility of making their marriage bond sincere, and that meant he had to overcome those Gryffindor scruples that said any emotion was better than any rational decision.

            “How did you know that you loved Weasley, that you wanted to marry her?” Draco tilted his head up, making sure the firelight and the shadows concealed part of his face. He wanted to hide anything that Harry might mistake as insincerity. He wanted to look vulnerable and hopeful, and he thought it might have worked when Harry paused before answering, frowning at him.

            As it turned out, though, the hesitation seemed to have come from something else. “I don’t think I can describe it,” Harry muttered, and spread his hands wide. Draco watched the steel flash from the ring, taking strength from the fact that it was there at all. Harry couldn’t escape the fact that he felt something for Draco, however inconvenient the fact might be for him.

            “Try,” Draco insisted.

            Harry frowned at him again. “Well, you must have seen something of the procedure with your parents. Or when you decided to marry Astoria.”

            Draco shook his head. “Even if I had, I don’t think I can judge from those examples now, with my mother so angry at my father, and my father taking stupid risks in the name of gaining back the power of the head of the family, not caring how much he hurts my mother. And I was mistaken in Astoria. She wasn’t the sort of spouse I wanted.”

            “You think I would be?” Harry laughed shortly. “I can’t give you children. I can’t give you more money than I already have. I fight for all sorts of ideals that you despise, and I would have put your father in prison if I could have, even though I testified for you and your mother. We’re the least suited pair you could find in Britain, Draco. Your father knew what he was doing when he tied us together.”

            “And yet,” Draco said. “We haven’t killed each other. You haven’t even tried to move out of the Manor and brought on the pain inherent in the bond because you’re so angry with me. If my father intended to make me so miserable that we would give in, he’s miscalculated.”

            “That still makes me a long way from the person you should marry,” Harry said firmly. “And you’re a long way from the person I want to marry, Draco, even if you’re a much more decent bloke than I thought and even if I feel sorry for you. I’m not in love with you.”

“I think we could make a good marriage anyway,” Draco said.

            “Why, then?”

            He couldn’t be as subtle as he would have liked to be, building up to the subject of compatibility and introducing doubts about the depth of Harry’s “love” for Weasley with one stroke. But Draco still kept a pleasant expression on his face. “Because we care about each other,” he said. “Because your happiness in the marriage bond is of much greater importance to me than I thought it would be. Because of this.” He held up and turned the ring again. “What makes you so sure that we could back out of this, even if we wanted to, with the bond so far advanced?”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “You should have talked to one of my friends. They could have told you that I don’t take negative reasons as reasons to give up. There are magical ways of challenging the bond. I haven’t advanced very far in the method I’ve decided to use yet. We could still escape.”

            “Which one do you intend to use, then?” Draco blinked at him. He hadn’t thought about Harry doing research on ways to escape the bond, but he should have. Harry must have decided that he didn’t have any other options, not when Lucius wouldn’t be worked on to even consider changing the bond and letting them go.

            “The one that will focus my mind on the business of my ordinary life, and keep me from being drawn too far in by the bond,” Harry said promptly. “I’m picking up new hobbies, I’m spending more time with my friends, and I’m thinking more about my job.” For a moment, he acquired a look that Draco had only seen on his face when he described his escape from the beast, but he shook it away and continued before Draco could think to ask about it. “If I keep up that focus, the way I should, then the bond can’t have the chance to change my feelings for you and pull us together the way it wants to.”

            “Would it be such a terrible thing if it did?” Draco found himself thinking of Astoria, who’d also had the ability to change the topic and the angle of attack on him, but he didn’t think Harry was deliberately doing it to attack. He simply didn’t hold the same priorities that Draco did, and refused to acknowledge that some of those priorities might be admirable.

            “Yes,” Harry said. “I love Ginny. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life apart from her. She’s in love with me. I don’t want to make her unhappy. And there’s really no reason for us to stay married, Malfoy. Friends, maybe.”

            “Don’t call me that.” Draco surprised himself with the strength and viciousness of his reaction, even if that viciousness only emerged in the softness of his voice when he spoke.

            “Friend?” Harry shrugged. “I don’t have to. Maybe you’re right, maybe it would be best if we didn’t have even that much of a connection to each other.”

            “Don’t call me by my last name.” Draco scooted along the couch towards Harry, which startled him enough to make him lean back, flinching as though he thought that Draco would strike him. Draco controlled himself and didn’t do that, although he would have liked to, instead hissing directly into Harry’s face. “Do you really think that all those things are going to happen, that you can break the bond no matter how long you concentrate on your job and your other life? We’ve come too far. We can’t go back. We’re bound.”

            “You didn’t feel that way about the platinum strand in the rings.” Harry’s eyes were wide, his breath coming fast, but his hands, clenched in his lap, didn’t show signs of yielding. “Are you only reacting like this to the steel because now there are two extra bands? Or is it something else? Because I’ve got to tell you, that you’d be willing to change your life this much, that you’d give up searching for a pure-blood wife so that you could have me, doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

            Draco shook his head. He had to keep reminding himself that Harry didn’t feel and understand things as he did. His life would have been much easier if that was the case, but then again, they probably wouldn’t have had half the same conversations. He made sure that his voice was calm and smooth when he spoke again. “It’s the extra band, and which one it is. The steel never appears except at the judgment of the magic. It’s fairly easy to save someone else’s life. It’s hard to know when a decision or an action is of the kind that could have changed someone else’s life.”

            Harry laughed. “But I should be used to that, because I’ve taken a lot of actions like it,” he said. “If this is something different from the actions I undertook when I defeated Voldemort, then I wish you’d explain it to me.”

            Draco gritted his teeth. Of course he would be saddled not only with a spouse who found it hard to understand pure-blood traditions and customs, but also one who was so used to performing heroic actions that he didn’t think this was anything out of the ordinary.

            “You might be used to it,” he said. “I’m not.”

            Harry snorted. “I testified for you. Okay, so we didn’t wear the rings then, but this isn’t the first time something like this has linked us. I even owed you life-debts before we got married, and you owed them to me. You’re acting as though the steel band should have some special, life-altering significance. I just don’t see why, because it doesn’t introduce anything new into our—relationship.” He sounded as though he had striven for a different word to describe it, and then finally settled for that one, although it wasn’t as neutral as he would have liked.

            “We weren’t married then, no,” Draco said. “It makes all the difference.”

            “Because of the steel,” Harry said, skeptical eyes fastened on him, “and because we’re a little friendlier to each other, you want to try staying married.”

            “I’d like you to consider it, yes,” Draco said.

            Harry sighed and leaned forwards, running his fingers through his hair. “You don’t really understand,” he whispered. Draco wanted to shake him, or at least proclaim that he did and thought Harry was being ridiculous, but he held his hands motionless at his sides, and after a few moments Harry began to speak again, his voice halting.

            “I want so much more than just a business arrangement, Draco. I want someone I love and who loves me. I want children. I want—”

            “You can have the children, at least,” Draco interrupted, unable to stay silent any longer. “I found out in the books, the books that my ancestors left but which I never bothered to read properly before, that we can have almost anything we want. I could have a child outside the marriage and still rear it as a Malfoy, with magic to ensure that the adoption took. Or you could have a child and have it raised as a Malfoy.”

            “And if I don’t want that?” Harry’s eyes were steady on him. “If I wanted it raised as a Potter, instead?”

            Draco grimaced. The books hadn’t spoken of that, but he was sure that it was possible. It would simply mean that Harry’s child wouldn’t receive the rituals that would make it a Malfoy and therefore eligible to inherit. “As long as you wouldn’t mind me having a child of my own and rearing it as heir,” he said.

            “And the love?” Harry regarded him with calm, wide eyes, looking as though he had braced himself to drive a sword into his breast and didn’t quite believe it when he realized that he had stopped short. “Can you provide that?”

            “You could have all the lovers that you wanted,” Draco promised, “as long as you were discreet. We’d certainly both need lovers, if we intended to have children.”

            Harry shook his head.

            “But why not?” Draco insisted, leaning in so that he could lock their rings together. Harry twisted his arm neatly away, and Draco was forced to lift his hands, showing that he had no intention to try and touch him again. “Aren’t we good together? Can you say that you ever expected to feel as much for me as you do? If there are ways of living with this marriage bond—and there are—then why should we to force ourselves apart?”

*

            A harsh laugh caught in the back of Harry’s throat, and he shook his head. For the first time since the marriage bond, he felt the emotion that he had when he watched Draco in the courtroom after his trial.

            Pity.

            “You don’t get it, do you?” he asked.

            “Get what?” Draco was still watching his hand, as though he thought he’d have a better chance of catching Harry if he waited a bit and could take him off-guard.

            “What I want in marriage,” Harry said. “What you would want in marriage, if you weren’t so focused on the idea of heirs and a business arrangement and nothing else. I don’t want an alliance. I don’t even want a friendship. I want love. And, Draco, that’s one thing I don’t feel for you, and I can’t feel for you, not as long as we’re this different.”

            Draco cocked his head. He seemed to have run into a barrier he hadn’t known was there. “I grant you, it won’t be exactly the kind of arrangement that your parents had, or that the Weasleys have. But it’s still the best we can do with the situation as it is, I think.”

            “No,” Harry said flatly. “I won’t settle for something because you think we can’t do any better. I won’t get into a marriage that way, especially, when I still want to marry Ginny.” An image of her flooded him, as he’d seen her the other night, smiling at him from a chair across the table while he bounced Victoire on his knee, and he sighed. “I’m glad that I get along with you. If we can continue this—friendship, or whatever it is, until your father comes to his senses, that’s fine. But it won’t go further than that.”

            Draco blinked. “I wasn’t implying that you had to fall in love with me, or have sex with me. I was just implying that you would stay married to me.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “I don’t separate marriage from love and sex that way, Draco. I just don’t. So we can try to get along, we can keep struggling against Lucius, but we aren’t going to do more than that. You might as well understand it and batter it through your skull, however thoughts get through.”

            Draco only frowned at him again. “You can’t seriously think that I’d give up on someone like you?”

            “You might as well,” Harry said. “Unless by ‘giving up’ you mean that you’d stop having civil conversations with me. I wouldn’t like that.” He thought of the way that he’d had the impulse to go and comfort Draco last night, and shrugged. “And if you want to talk to me sometimes about what’s troubling you, you could do that.”

            “Do you know how many pure-blood marriages never have half of what we do?” Draco demanded. “The closeness, the trust, the shared secrets? This is the best option I have at the moment, the one I think I want to stay with.”

            “You mean the one you think you probably should stay with, because you’re worried that any other pure-blood woman will reject you now that you have a husband?”

            Draco drew himself up like a snake. “It’s not about that!”

            “I think it is,” Harry said. He felt a little cruel, but then again, Draco had shown himself to be thick-headed so far, not understanding Harry’s objections as if they simply weren’t real, rather than coming from a different person. Maybe cruelty would get through to him in a way that sweet reason and feelings didn’t. He’s probably more familiar with it. “You’re making arrangements in your head for children and being with a pure-blood woman, while still keeping the things that you like about this marriage bond. But if you had the chance to fight free of it, then I don’t think you’d keep me.”

            Draco stared at him and then looked away. Harry had thrown him on the defensive, at last. So many emotions splashed and darted across his face that Harry didn’t know which one would win until he said softly, “I’ve never met anyone who can affect me like you do.”

            “That isn’t a good basis for a marriage, though,” Harry said quietly. “Not the kind I want, not even the kind you want. Your parents have more than that, don’t they?”

            “They never had a steel band.” Draco looked at him, then away.

            “But they never had a forced marriage bond, either.” Harry stared at his ring again. The steel and the platinum bands still shone, but no matter how long he looked at them, he didn’t feel the deep, soul-changing awe of them that Draco apparently did. “I want you to have more than that, and I want me to have more than that. Not to mention that I’m still in love with someone who’s decidedly not you. I’m not about to give that up for what you’re offering.”

            “You still think of me as your enemy.”

            Harry was startled into laughter. “Compared to the wizards who kidnapped me, and the killer I’m tracking right now, and your father?” he asked, shaking his head as Draco’s nostrils flared. “Of course not. But I do think of you as one relationship among many in my life, not the one that’s most fulfilling or the one that I want to give everything else up for.”

            “Would you give up everything else for your Weasley, if she asked you to?”

            “She never would,” Harry said. “Because she’s pure-blood and understands how these things work, and because she’s compassionate in her own right. But yes, I would.”

*

            Draco was afraid he could identify the emotion stirring in the depths of his gut, and he didn’t like it.

            Jealousy.

            He shook his head. That wasn’t something he could admit to, and it wasn’t something he wanted to feel. Harry would have too much of an advantage if he didn’t care who Draco spent time or slept with but Draco cared about that with him.

            “You don’t know what I’m asking for,” he said, when his voice was smooth again, “because you don’t have the context to understand it. More than an alliance, more than a friendship, not quite a love affair. A level of commitment that these rings imply and that you’ve already proven yourself willing to show. Or do you regret that you saved my life now, because of the things I’m asking you?”

            Harry sighed. “It just comes down to different priorities, Draco,” he said, and there was pity in his eyes, and Draco wanted to spit. The only thing that kept him from doing it was that Malfoys didn’t do that. “Of course I’m glad that I saved your life, and stopped your father from hitting you with that curse. But I save a lot of people’s lives. That’s one of the reasons I chose to work as an Auror, so that I’d be able to do it more. It’s not—you’re not unique. Just saving you doesn’t lead me to contemplate a relationship like the one you’re talking about.”

            “These rings are something you’ve never encountered before,” Draco said, and it was a struggle to hold his voice smooth this time. He hadn’t anticipated that Harry would reject him again. It hurt far more than it had when he was eleven, perhaps because they were closer now, perhaps because he understood what he was losing more than his child-self had been able to judge the friend he never had a chance to acquire. “Doesn’t that make me unique in your experience?”

            “You, yes,” Harry said. “I told you, I would prefer it if we don’t go back to sniping at each other. But that’s a long way from making this relationship permanent, or even from remaining friends once the bond is gone.”

            Draco stared at him. He just didn’t understand, he finally had to admit, the way Harry had accused him of doing. He had thought Harry would leap at the chance to make this permanent, because it made so much sense. Their bond was stable, they got along well, they had other sorts of bonds like the life-debts connecting them, there were ways for them to have what they wanted—children, other lovers, outside relationships—while still remaining part of a family and having the luxury and the safety that the Manor and the wards implied. What else did Harry want? It wasn’t as though Draco had objected to him having children by Weasley or dating her. What did the marriage bond mean to him that it didn’t mean to Draco?

            “I thought you wanted a family most of all,” he said.

            Something sparked in Harry’s eyes. “Of course I do,” he said. “But the family should be people I love, not people I simply care for and ally with.”

            “You can like me without loving me.”

            “And I do.” Harry held his eyes. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to crawl into your bed or accept you as my spouse.”

            “I never asked for that first,” Draco pointed out.

            “But marriage means that to me,” Harry countered, immovable. “And marriage also means, to me, faithfulness. I’d have split loyalties if I tried to date Ginny and stay married to you. I don’t want that.”

            “But we could live with that.”

            “You could, and maybe whoever you picked as the mother of your children could,” Harry said. “I can’t.”

            And he stood up and walked out of the room, pausing at the doorway to add over his shoulder, “Good night, Draco. If you need help with something else, like going through the list of potential brides, then I could do that, as long as you tell me enough about them that I can make an informed decision.”

            Draco was left to stare into the fire and wonder what had gone wrong. Everything was desirable. The marriage bond could give them what they wanted, including a perfect way of thumbing their noses at Lucius.

            But for Harry, it somehow wasn’t enough.

            Draco was left with the uneasy feeling that if he tried to contend again with Harry’s prejudices and persuade him to his side, he would simply lose again.

            So perhaps he ought to accept the offer Harry had just made, to help Draco find a wife who could adapt to the situation, instead of the offer that circumstances and desires and needs and everything else seemed to hold out—

            Foundering on the rock of Harry’s soul.

*

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The Marriage of True Minds