Temporary Mate | By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 17288 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2 |
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story. |
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Chapter Nineteen—In Shock
Draco stared at his father, and moments passed, and no one said anything. Then Draco turned to Mother and said, “I want you to know something about Harry.”
“Draco.” Father had taken a step forwards as if he thought he could reclaim attention Draco didn’t want to give him.
It wasn’t an effort to keep looking at his mother’s eyes—patient, resigned, and upset for him. “Harry isn’t the arrogant bully I thought he was. His greatest wish is for someone to love him quietly, without caring about his fame. He saved my life by agreeing to bond with me. He actually resisted changing the temporary bond to a full one, because he thought I wouldn’t want that once I recovered from the Veela influence.”
“Why in the world didn’t you take him up on that, Draco?”
“That’s the reason I fell in love with him,” Draco continued, speaking only to his mother. “Because he wanted to spare me all the consequences he could. Because he cared about me even when I was making his life more difficult. Because my dignity and my needs matter to him.” Draco settled his wings more strongly on his shoulders. “I’m not going to break my bond with him for any temptation that you could offer me. I’ll take my leave.”
He’d barely moved towards the fireplace when Father shouted, hoarsely, “And what about the money you’re expecting to inherit from me? Do you care about that temptation?”
Draco halted and tilted his head back at his father with utter disdain. “Why do you care so much about keeping Harry out of the family?”
“He’s a half-blood!”
Draco sighed. “I abandoned those beliefs because I learned they were nonsense, Father. I honestly thought you’d done the same thing. So Harry having Muggle grandparents is all that matters to you? I could marry someone who spent the family fortune with abandon and hated me and caused public scandals, but it would be fine as long as their blood was pure?”
Father only clenched his fists. “Of course I don’t want to see you paired to someone who would scorn everything we stand for.”
“Then—”
“But Potter does,” Father said, speaking so quickly that Draco thought the expression on his face was probably speaking a great deal of his own words. “You don’t understand, Draco. Potter still says that we were wrong in public every day, simply by existing. That I was wrong to follow the Dark Lord. That pure-blood beliefs and families are a weakness more than a strength.”
“You were wrong.”
Father raised a hand and then dropped it slowly to his side, probably because he’d finally realized the words had already flown and he couldn’t shield himself from them. He stared at Draco with no expression except the pale flame of his rage burning in his eyes.
Draco shrugged at him. “Voldemort would have condemned me for turning into a Veela. He would have thought it was a weakness to be anything but a pure human wizard. I’m happy with Harry, Father. That matters more to me than all the gold in the world.”
“You’d let me disown you?”
“I couldn’t stop you, since you do still hold that power.” Draco smiled a little to see how that pale flame burned even hotter. Honestly, “But I’m not making you do it. You’re the only one who can choose that course of action.”
“You are worthless as a son.”
Father turned and stormed out of the room. Draco breathed out slowly. He hadn’t disowned Draco yet, at least, and Draco knew he would feel the unmistakable magical effects when it happened, including no longer being welcome in Malfoy Manor. But he didn’t have his father’s cooperation in keeping the papers away from Harry, either. He shook his head and faced the fireplace.
“You still have a mother.”
“Of course I do,” Draco said, coming to a stop and looking at her in surprise. “But I can’t ask you to act against Father.”
“Someone in this room just said that he did not control the actions of his parents.” Mother moved forwards and looped her arm through Draco’s. “I have as much experience in manipulating the press as your father does. Let us see whether this mate of yours is worth it.”
*
Harry stood up and frowned a little when he saw two figures coming back through the fire. Even though he hadn’t wanted to tell Draco, he had been absolutely unconvinced that Lucius Malfoy would agree to help them, let alone return with Draco to the house so soon.
But there they were—
No, wait, it was Narcissa Malfoy. And by the gentle smile she gave him as she stepped away from the flames and dusted the soot off her robes, she remembered that she had saved his life, and that he had spoken up for her after the war. Harry hadn’t thought that meant they owed each other anything, but he supposed she might be doing this more for Draco than him.
Then Draco claimed his attention, immediately coming across to Harry and embracing him with both wings, delicately sniffing his neck. Harry blinked. “Are you all right, Draco?’ he asked, reaching up to clasp his shoulder.
“You’re all right,” Draco said, and then stepped back and nodded. “No one tried to hurt you while I was gone. No one tried to touch you.”
Harry caught Narcissa’s eye from over Draco’s shoulder, and flushed. He would have tried to disentangle himself from Draco’s hold, but that was probably doomed to failure. “Um, Draco, of course I’m safe.”
“I had to make sure.”
Narcissa smiled a little, and said, “And that is the power of the Veela bond. Your father was ridiculous to suggest that you might break it.”
“Break it?” Harry felt himself stiffening almost as much as Draco, although Draco’s fluffed feathers and soft growl were undoubtedly more impressive. “Why would he want to do that? Didn’t Draco explain—”
“He did. But my husband pointed out ways in which bonds that started as temporary ones could be broken.” Narcissa shook her head, pursing her lips in a way that would have made Harry turn around and head the other way if he saw that face on an Auror coming towards him. It would mean paperwork at best. “He still weighs your blood status higher than anything else you have done.”
“Because he’s an idiot,” Draco interjected.
Narcissa frowned. “Draco. Do not call your father an idiot. I think the insult ‘imbecile’ more fitting.”
Harry snorted before he could stop himself. He would never have thought to hear Draco Malfoy’s mother and Lucius Malfoy’s wife say that. Narcissa smiled at him, the pursed lips relaxing in a way that he could appreciate.
“That’s better. I don’t enjoy having the man who defeated the Dark Lord staring at me in terror.”
Harry thought of objecting that it had been wariness and not terror, but thought better of it. “My blood status doesn’t weigh with you?”
Narcissa sighed. “In the world where we came out of the war standing higher than before, perhaps it would. But the only status we have now is the status of human beings. I want Draco to choose someone who will make him happy and treat him with dignity. And I can see that you do. Even at the cost of your own.”
Harry felt his face flush when he realized that she was looking meaningfully at the wing that Draco still had wrapped around his shoulders. “I don’t—I mean, I like Draco touching me that way.”
“That might be too much information, Harry.”
The look on Narcissa’s face said it wasn’t. Harry continued as doggedly as he could, while making sure that he skirted details that Narcissa didn’t need to know. “I wanted Draco to be free at first. I agreed to the temporary bond because I was sure it would be temporary and Draco just needed to survive until we reached the Veela enclave. But we needed each other more than that. And I couldn’t resist him.”
Narcissa nodded slowly. “So you did not give in because you wanted to be indulged, and you did not give in only because Draco required it of you. Good. I would not want my son to be bound either to a selfish hedonist or a selfless martyr.”
“Mother.”
“It is true.”
“I’m neither,” said Harry, although the back of his neck prickled even saying that. Honestly, on a day-to-day basis, he just didn’t talk about himself all that much. “Draco and I balance each other. We still need to talk sometimes about some of the displays that we both indulge in, but we know it, and we do talk.”
“Better and better, then.” Narcissa nodded and faced Draco. “Your father is a fool, also a permissible word. I will defend you to the papers. For now, I want you to remain either indoors or in a place that the wizarding public doesn’t frequent. I am going to paint you through my words first.”
Draco smiled. Harry added his own tentative smile to that. He didn’t trust Narcissa as much as Draco obviously did, but he knew that she wouldn’t harm them. There was no way to throw a bad light on Harry without making it reflect on Draco, at the moment.
“We are supposed to be on holiday,” Draco said, and tucked his head down so that he could nuzzle against the side of Harry’s neck. Harry started, then relaxed into it, hard as that was to do with Narcissa watching. “I’d like to take Harry to some of my favorite places. I suppose that Father won’t know if we use the cottage in France?”
“Of course not.” Narcissa inclined her head. “And that will be a good place to do some flying and accustom Harry to the life he will now lead.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is the first time that Draco has visited the Manor since he returned,” Narcissa said, with a slight smile for Harry. “That means that you have not yet been shown the wealth that is now yours by right.”
Harry just shook his head a little. “The only thing I need to make me happy is Draco,” he said, and wondered why Draco flushed. It was true. “We could live here or any place that Draco wants to be, and that would still—”
“And right now, I want to live at the cottage in France.”
Harry blinked and shut up. Draco’s eyes were shining with such determination, similar to but less lustful than the determination he’d showed Harry when they were still in the Veela dimension. He nodded slowly.
“Good.” Draco smiled and curled a wing even tighter around Harry’s shoulders. “We can trust you to take care of any impertinent questions here, Mother?”
“Of course you can, Draco.”
Harry, still a little bewildered, found Draco leading him towards the fireplace. He nodded and banished the worries from his mind forcefully. If Draco’s mother was going to remain here to take care of things, and he was on holiday from Auror duties anyway, then he wouldn’t worry. “Your cottage is hooked up to the Floo?”
“It is.” Draco curled his head down and nuzzled gently against Harry’s ear. “I want you to take us there. The address is Draco’s Home.”
Harry snorted a little as he reached for the Floo powder to cast into the flames. “They gave it to you before this?”
“Yes. Although my father could still access it if he wanted to. But Mother will keep him busy enough that he won’t even think of it.”
“Trust me for that, Draco.”
Harry managed one more weak, stunned smile at Narcissa before he had to call out the Floo address, and then they whirled away, Draco sheltering him in both silvery wings and crooning a little as if that would encourage Harry to relax. Harry swallowed and straightened up as they stepped out onto an alien hearth.
He looked around the drawing room, and then he looked around more slowly. Then he glanced at Draco and hoped that he was managing to convey honest surprise and not sarcasm. “This is a cottage?”
“My standards,” Draco said a little haughtily, “determine where we live. You said so yourself.”
“Right,” Harry agreed, still a little dazed. He looked again at the walls, so gleaming with gilding and garlands and glow that he honestly couldn’t tell what they were made of. A movement across the room startled him, but then he realized it was only his own reflection in a mirror. The mirror’s frame was made of silver and carved with shining serpents. The serpents had rubies for eyes.
Harry rubbed his own eyes. Draco took his hand and kissed it, looking at him anxiously. “Are you all right?”
“Just a little overwhelmed,” Harry said. “How many floors does this thing have?”
“Just five.”
Harry raised an eyebrow. Draco raised his back. “I know that this isn’t what you’re used to, but you’ll get used to it,” he said, and gently rubbed his finger across the top of Harry’s knuckles. “My standards, your standards. We’ll manage to meet in the middle.” He paused and tilted his head down, so that Harry thought he would nuzzle his neck again. But instead, Draco peered into his eyes. “No part of you longs for this?”
“I used to dream of living in a grand house somewhere when I was a kid.”
For a second, Draco’s hand tightened crushingly on his. “And?”
“Then I grew up and realized I wouldn’t.”
“If you want to act a bit childish while we’re here, it’s not as if I would mind,” Draco said softly as he drew Harry towards a staircase. “I want to indulge you. Pamper you. Not in ways that distress you, but anything you want and that it wouldn’t distress you to receive…yes, I want to give that to you.”
Harry swallowed slowly. Yes, he understood that, and he could think of all sorts of things he wanted. He simply wasn’t used to thinking they could be in his grasp, so asking for them had seemed pointless.
“Harry? What do you want?”
Harry hesitated, then gave in. They were nearly out of the room, into a corridor that actually might be made of jade, the color green it glowed. “I’d like to spend the night on a bed with silk sheets. I always wondered what it really felt like and whether it was so much more comfortable than an ordinary bed, the way the stories said.”
“The answer is yes.” Draco draped a wing around Harry’s shoulders and drew him upstairs. “This way.”
*
Harry was asleep.
Draco sat back and stared at him. Then he glanced around the bedroom. Honestly, it was one of the plainest in the cottage. He’d thought about trying to introduce Harry to one of the fancier ones, but he’d decided that Harry would probably revolt.
This one was alive with blue and green colors, subtle enchantments in the marble that shifted the stone back and forth between those shades, and always made Draco feel as if he was standing underwater—which, in truth, made him much more relaxed than anything except flying could. The bed was large and round, and had those silken sheets Harry had wanted marked with the same enchantment. Harry had lain down on them and then laughed in wonder.
“What is it?” Draco had asked, wings spread, ready to fly and get something else if Harry wanted it.
“It just feels like I’m drifting on water. That’s all. It feels so good.” Harry’s face had changed, and he’d reached up a hand. “Come on, Draco…”
And they’d made love, and Harry had gone to sleep, sprawled out the way Draco was looking at him now, his hands thrown back to rest on the pillows, his body squirming and making a nest of its own out of silk and satin.
Draco stroked Harry’s hip gently, but that didn’t wake him up. Neither did the soft crackle of the fire from the hearth nearby, or the way that Draco shifted back and forth on the bed. Harry was sleeping the slumber of the truly relaxed, which Draco knew was a compliment. Auror training would induce a kind of paranoia.
Harry had to trust him completely, to sleep like this.
Draco swallowed. There were so many things that he didn’t understand about Harry. If he’d really wanted to know what it was like to sleep on silk sheets, for one thing, why not just Transfigure his own?
But that didn’t seem to have occurred to him. Or—and Draco was afraid this was the truth, even if Harry would have denied it awake—Harry was convinced on some level that he didn’t deserve that level of magnificence. Or comfort. Or care.
He hadn’t been able to see his own face when he was talking with Mother, either. As if he was utterly surprised that she would agree to help, as if he assumed she would turn on him at any moment.
He’s so scarred, Draco thought, and didn’t mean the fading one on Harry’s brow. That mattered less to him than the slightest of the breaths Harry uttered. He might urge me to give him up if there was a way the bond could be broken. I can’t let him speak with Father without me there. I can’t let him think that Father is the only Malfoy who matters, either.
Draco lay down slowly behind Harry at last, stretching out his wings and draping them so that they rested comfortably on pillows and wouldn’t get broken or have crushed feathers, but would also surround Harry in warmth. Then he closed his eyes.
He would make the most of this holiday, when Harry didn’t have to worry about dashing off to save someone else. He would show Harry what it meant to be loved and cherished, not just by someone wealthy, not just by a Veela, but by someone who adored him.
And when we go back, we’ll understand each other better.
*
SickPuppy: Thank you! Yes, Harry is in some ways too nice, and despite risking his life on a regular basis, in other ways too cautious; he always thinks that maybe someone will say something worse about him for refusing an interview than they will for indulging them.
Thunderbird: Lucius would absolutely speak to Harry alone and convince him if he could, but Draco will not allow that to happen.
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