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The Rising of the Stones	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 13237 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Nineteen—Feast of the Soulless

            “I want you to explain what’s going on to me.” It wasn’t hard for Draco to whisper those words to Potter, not when music so loud was playing around them that it rattled Draco’s teeth.

            “Later. It’s too loud now.”

            And Potter smiled across the fire at one of the cloaked women—Draco thought it was a woman—who offered him a plate of thick bread and savory sauce, and dived straight into a discussion that Draco thought was meant to avoid him and nothing else. Potter slapped the bread into the sauce and said something of which Draco only caught “good enough for a rain unicorn,” which made the others laugh.

            Draco couldn’t always tell which of the cloaked markless wizards around them had been the ones accompanying them while Potter confronted Hail. He knew Oatten’s voice, but that was all. The others had remained largely mute, and had melted away from them when they entered this camp-cum-village. But then some had come back, and someone had lit a fire that seemed to burn water and moss, and the feast had started.

            But even if all the markless around them now had been the ones with them when Potter and Hail battled, they laughed with Potter as if he was a welcome guest, but not someone extraordinary, not someone who had demonstrated how powerful and dangerous he was.

            Don’t they wonder about it? Don’t they consider how in the world Potter can just go on talking like this and laughing and acting normal? Don’t they think the bargain he talked about making with Hail must be more than a little strange?

            On the other hand, if their indifference was real instead of some strange function of a culture where a bunch of people were born without soul-marks, then Draco didn’t want to encourage them to pay more attention. That might take away from the unique position he held with Potter right now.

            The feast went on and on, the music clashing with Draco’s thoughts until he felt as if someone had given him a blow on the head. He forced himself to sit still and smile and nod, even though he longed for quiet to think like a thirsty man longing for water. The feast had bread with the sauce, some greens Draco thought looked like roasted moss and honestly couldn’t bring himself to touch, and a bowl of sliced peaches that he ate because at least he knew what they were.

            Potter held court in the center of it all.

            He’s been lying all the time, Draco thought, licking sauce from his fingers because there were worse breaches of manners than that going on all around him, and no one seemed to care. When he pretended not to be anything special, when he said that he couldn’t face the public, and when he said he had to run away and hide because the force of people being against him was too much for him. He can handle himself just fine with this public.

            But then Draco paused as a new thought occurred to him. It happened abruptly enough that someone trying to take a plate of the fruit from him glared, and Draco shook his head and passed it on. He ignored the glare that followed. He couldn’t care that much what the markless thought of him.

            What if the reason he’s different here is because of their lack of soul-marks? These people are like him. He doesn’t have to feel different or inferior around them because they don’t have a destined love, either.

            Draco rolled his eyes a little. Or what he thinks of as a destined love.

            He studied Potter from beneath lowered eyelids, this time trying to make sure that he didn’t lose track of his surroundings so completely as to appear rude. He wasn’t concerned about how these people thought of him, true, but he did think they might tell Potter if they saw how interested Draco was in Potter’s performance.

            He’s fine here. His laughter is fuller, freer. I don’t think I’ve seen him stare at one person yet with envy the way he did even at Weasley and Granger.

            Draco brushed a hand across his lips. He’d told Potter what he thought about soul-marks, he’d thought he’d made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with the woman who bore the other half of his, and yet he remembered the blatant look of envy being directed even at him.

            Potter says that I don’t understand what it means to be born without a soul-mark, but he doesn’t understand, either. He has a blind spot about soul-marks, and he thinks I must be happier than he is, even if I would be happier to swap with him. Draco grimaced a little. Assuming the Ministry would have let me survive my first year, once they realized I didn’t have a mark.

            But whatever the problem is, we need to talk about it. And I know the perfect time to ask him.

            Draco sat back and waited patiently for the feast to end.

*

            The village-camp that the soulless lived in had spare houses for visitors. Well, Draco was calling it a house out of courtesy. It was really two small walls that leaned in towards each other, and the space in between the walls was filled with woven vines, moss, and branches. Draco shivered and immediately cast a few Warming Charms as he stepped through the door.

            “I could make a fire if you want,” Potter offered, ducking in behind him. He hadn’t objected when Draco tugged on his arm to get him to follow Draco into the house, but he stood now with his hands tucked into his pockets and his head turning from side to side as if he was looking for a real bed. “That’s not hard magic with stones.”

            “I know,” Draco said dryly. “But I’d like to handle the matter myself.” He turned around. “You’re going to be busy answering my questions, anyway.”

            Potter’s face blanked itself with remarkable efficiency. “What about?” he asked, and tensed his hands as if he expected to have to wrestle.

            “Why you continue to think of soul-marks as a blessing and a great thing despite knowing people, like me, who don’t have that destined love,” said Draco sharply. “Does it take you that long to get over your friends’ examples and realize not everyone is like them? And you were scolding me for not believing that you and wizards like Oatten are really soulless.”

            “You’ve had a lot more evidence than I have.”

            Draco rolled his eyes up. “Oh, excuse me for not trusting you the minute I heard something incredible—”

            “Why do you think your position was so much more believable? I’d heard all my life that soul-marks were the sign of a great love. And it wasn’t just my friends. It was their parents and my parents and other people I knew in Gryffindor.” Potter sighed and sat down on what was probably supposed to be the bed, a long cot slathered with moss and hanging vines. Or maybe made of them. It was honestly a little hard to tell, Draco thought. “It’s hard to realize that was a lie.”

            “Not a lie,” Draco said. He didn’t really think Granger and Weasley were forcing themselves to be with each other, or that Potter’s parents had, either. He moved over and crouched down in front of Potter. “Just…a different perspective. It means that you’re not deprived of love for the rest of your life because you happened to be born without a soul-mark. Honestly, I’d think you’d be celebrating,” he added.

            “Because I’m left out of something that everyone else experiences?”

            “It’s fully as natural to be born without a soul-mark as with one. It’s just that no one thinks so because of the Ministry being—unjust.” Draco could have used other words, but he chose the one most likely to convince Potter. “Why do you want to feel left out?”

            “I don’t!”

            Potter was on his feet suddenly, and Draco drew his wand before he thought about it. That was Auror training for you, he thought, staring up at Potter as he stood there with his chest heaving. It made certain reactions inevitable.

            Potter calmed down after a second and looked away. “Maybe it’s okay if you’ve had other close relationships,” he whispered. “But I only had Ron and Hermione, and a few other people who were always going to have their soulmates. I understood that I had to come in second to those relationships. I thought it didn’t matter then, because I was so sure the lightning bolt was my soul-mark and I would find my soulmate someday.

            “But to know that I’ll never have anything else, that I’ll never come first with someone—I suppose I did with my parents, but I can’t remember it…” Potter trailed off. “At least you can remember your parents loving you, Malfoy, even if you chose never to go to your soulmate. I can’t.”

            Draco tried to say something. His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth, and he didn’t think it was because of any curse Potter had cast. He shook his head and coughed.

            Potter looked at him with a brave little smile that Draco wanted to punch off his face. “I hope you don’t feel sorry for me. I pitied myself, for a long time, but I’ve got over it now. I’ve made a life for myself. I think my parents would be proud of me.”

            “I’m not feeling sorry for you,” Draco said, when he could pry his tongue loose.

            Potter nodded. “Good—”

            “You idiot.”

            Potter leaned forwards, delicately balanced on the heels of his feet, staring at Draco. “Excuse me?”

            “You stand there and tell the sad story of your life, and how much I should be grateful for.” Draco shifted closer to him. He wanted to do something, and he knew he would soon, from the energy bouncing and rippling through his muscles. He didn’t know what it was quite yet, but he would soon. “But you have a lot more advantages than you think you do. Ask me to feel sorry for you? It’s an insult.”

            Potter’s face turned tight and pinched. “I’m only asking that because I thought you might be already. And anyway, I told you that even if you would have liked to be born without a soul-mark, I don’t think—”

            “You’re competent,” Draco said. “That’s what irritates me the most about your little charade. You sit around and sigh and pretend that you’re a helpless victim of circumstance. But you have the tools to fight.”

            “Maybe I’m sick and tired of war!” Potter yelled. “Maybe I’d like to taste peace the way everyone else does!”

            “You know you can’t do that while the Minister still knows that you don’t have a soul-mark and is worried you might share the information with someone else,” Draco told him coldly. “You know. And you still stand there sounding wounded and self-righteous. So you have to do things you don’t want to do, Potter. So do we all.”

            “Like you? You abandoned your soulmate of your own free will. You decided to become an Auror of your own free will. I know you’ve overcome the reputation you had of being a Death Eater, I asked. That doesn’t mean—”

            “I didn’t mean that!”

            Potter gave him another haughty glare, and Draco found the outlet for his energy. He leaped across the room towards Potter, and Potter went back into the wall with a grunt. The house creaked around them, and what sounded like a pine branch snapped, but it didn’t fall in on them. That would have been embarrassing.

            Not to mention that Draco would have had to let Potter go to concentrate on that, and he didn’t want to do that right now for any reason.

            “You have a lot going for you,” Draco muttered into Potter’s ear, ignoring his thrashing. He couldn’t get free easily, unless he wanted to dive into the earth and come up behind Draco, and Draco didn’t think he would take the chance of doing that right now. He was as focused on Draco, his eyes as wide and unblinking, as Draco was on him.

            “You have money and friends who would die for you—friends you tried to shut out—and enough power to make creatures as dangerous as the rain unicorns respect you. Forgive me if I don’t believe that you have it as badly as some people do.”

            “Do you want to know what the bargain the unicorns made with me was?” Potter snarled in his face.

            Draco let his weight rest a little more comfortably against Potter, which meant against the wall, too, and smirked at him. “Yes, I do. I told you that I wanted to hear about it during that raucous meal, remember? Not my fault if you misinterpreted everything and assumed that I would be watching you with my mouth wide-open and my eyes full of pity.”

            Potter shoved at him, but with the way Draco was leaning, most of his weight wasn’t even on his feet now, only on his legs and his arms against Potter. Potter gave a huff and said, “I told them that I would let them consume me if I couldn’t master the earth magic they taught me. I was a fascinating specimen to them, since I technically still had a wand that would let me master it.”

            “But they didn’t consume you,” Draco guessed. “And now—what? Is Hail angry that he couldn’t eat you?”

            Potter snorted. It was starting to sound breathless, with the way Draco was leaning on him, but Draco had no intention of moving to let Potter have more air. He would vanish if that happened. Because, at heart, he was a coward and just wanted to feel sorry for himself.

            Draco couldn’t even say why that revelation made him burn like it did. But it did, and that meant he wasn’t going to let Potter do whatever he pleased. He pressed down, and waited.

            Potter finally hissed and said, “Hail assumed I would do what Oatten and the others do, and give them any people with soul-marks that they want to consume. But they were more interested in me than the others because I live in Britain. They don’t get a lot of victims from there. The unicorns think victims from other places taste—exotic.”

            Draco grimaced and avoided spitting. “And you refused.”

            Potter nodded. He seemed to have given up on escaping for the moment, leaning back on the wall and staring at the roof of woven branches, but Draco didn’t let up for all of that. “I restricted him to a bargain that involved them showing me how to use earth magic and escape from the grasp of the Elder Wand. It was a bet, sort of. They wagered I couldn’t do that. It turned out I could, and I escaped from the feast they wanted to make of me. Or the experiments they wanted to do on me. I’ve never been sure which one it was.”

            “And now?” Draco asked, shifting his weight again. He was getting uncomfortable with the angles that Potter seemed to be made of digging into him, but he was too wise to let Potter go, either.

            “Now he wants to eat me. Or make me do something else.” Potter gave a windy sigh and threw his head back as if the ceiling above them was infinitely more interesting than Draco’s face. “The problem with trying to talk about rain unicorns is that they’ll change their minds even about things that seem important to them, the way they did about eating you when the chance to challenge me came up. So there’s no point in trying to communicate about them clearly, or describe all the nuances of a conversation.”

            “If I said that I wanted to understand? That I think they at least believe they consume souls, whatever I believe about it?”

            Potter brought his head down and eyed Draco cautiously. “That might be acceptable. But it doesn’t make it any easier to talk about them clearly.”

            Draco caressed his arm, and didn’t miss the shiver that ran through Potter. “Good. Then you’ll swear to me that you’re not lying? That those were your terms of the bargain with the rain unicorns, and no more than that?”

            “What more than that would you like?”

            Draco gathered his strength and moved back from Potter in a half-lunge, so that he was standing easily on his own and Potter was rubbing his arm, glaring at Draco a little. “That’s a good beginning,” Draco said simply, ignoring the temptation to say more. “I may have more questions later, Potter. For now, good night.”

            And he moved over and lay down on the cot, ignoring the way that Potter swore incredulously to himself for a few minutes. On the other hand, Potter also left the tent-house without attempting to “wake” Draco.

            Draco closed his eyes only when he was sure he was alone, and let out another breath that made him tremble.

            Being that close to Potter had been too intense. It had relieved the energy boiling in Draco, slightly, to bolt across the house and fight with him, but at the same time, it had confirmed for him what kind of danger he was in.

            He didn’t want to want Harry Potter.

*
            SP777: Thank you! And looking forward to hearing from you.
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The Rising of the Stones