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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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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty—Backlash
Draco snickered and leaned his hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Why aren’t you laughing?”
“I’m still trying to understand. Why he was so insistent about me being Voldemort and getting exiled, I mean. I was a baby. I hadn’t done anything to him. So why?”
“Who cares?” Sirius asked, sticking his head in front of the image of Dumbledore striding towards the Potters’ house, his face grim. “Maybe it’s because he thinks he’s always right and he doesn’t like to be wrong. Maybe because he’s paranoid about Voldemort and didn’t know how to determine that he was gone forever. Maybe he was Peter’s secret lover and disappointed he was locked up. I don’t know. Don’t worry about it, Harry. Just enjoy.”
Harry folded his arms and didn’t look away from the image of Dumbledore knocking on the front door. When it opened, an owl carrying a Howler dived in behind him. Harry thought he could hear a slight snatch of screaming before the door slammed shut again, but Sirius’s images through the spell didn’t give a lot of sound.
Sirius canceled the spell with a wave of his hand and turned to consider Harry. “You’re less happy than I expected.”
“I don’t like things I don’t understand, when they affect my life,” Harry admitted. He reached down to touch M.H., who had come with them and who Sirius had scowled at for two seconds before Draco told him about how much M.H. had scared the Potters. Now Sirius thought he was the greatest snake ever. “I didn’t much like being a Squib, but at least I understood it. Now, with Dumbledore…”
“You’re worried about him retaliating?”
“Not so much against me. I don’t have a lot he can take, except my new reputation. I’m worried about him retaliating against Draco, and you, and Remus.”
Sirius clucked his tongue hard against his teeth. “What would reassure you? I can’t get Dumbledore apologizing in person, but I can try something else.”
Harry blinked. “What something else?” It had never occurred to him that there was something else Sirius could try.
“Well,” said Sirius, drawing out the word like a strand of treacle tart, “just for example, you have no last name now.”
“That’s not a problem.” Draco leaned forwards as if he thought he had to shield Harry even from his godfather. Harry squeezed his upper arm and moved him gently aside. Draco went, but he picked up Harry’s arm on the way and showed off his bonding bracelet to Sirius. “When we bond, he’ll take the last name Malfoy.”
“And I’m sure he’s very grateful for that,” Sirius said, rolling his eyes. “But you tell me you made your parents accept your decision.”
“Yes?” Draco was coiled, cool, ready to fight. Harry stroked his shoulder. He thought Draco hadn’t forgiven Sirius yet for seemingly abandoning Harry for the last eighteen years, but Harry had. Draco needed to calm down.
“Then they’re probably going to want a formal bonding, right? Pure-blood customs and great big fireworks and—all right, Cousin Cissy was never one for fireworks. But it’ll take a bunch of time to organize.”
“What’s your point?”
“There’s another last name Harry can have in those months while he waits for your parents to write the guest list,” Sirius said, and smiled at Harry over Draco’s head again. “Black. If he wants it.”
Harry stared at him. He had never imagined something like this would happen—but, of course, he had never imagined the Potters disowning him. He coughed. “But—what about your family? I mean, I don’t know a whole lot about it. I don’t remember. Dahlia was the one who got the genealogy lessons.”
“I had a brother,” Sirius said, and for a moment he looked truly uncomfortable for the first time since Harry had met him. “Regulus. He was a Death Eater, and he died in the war. I never knew exactly how. But my parents didn’t have any other children, and all my cousins were girls who married into some other family and took their name. And I haven’t ever found a woman who was worth my charming personality.” He flipped his hair across his eyes and winked at Harry.
Harry rolled his eyes. Draco rolled his harder.
“So. I have a spot as the Black heir going begging. James used to press me about taking one of his other kids, but that was when we were still talking, and I don’t really know them now. Not that I would want Dahlia anyway. What do you say, kid? Want to become the heir of a pure-blood family and really piss James and Lily off?”
Harry coughed and said, “I—it’s incredibly generous.”
“That sounds like a no. Consider this.” Sirius snapped his fingers. “It would also piss off Dumbledore, and it’ll make my parents spin in their graves. You get to annoy five people for the price of two.” He beamed at Harry hopefully.
Harry drew breath with difficulty. He felt like he had when he’d thought Draco had come seeking him as his consort simply because of the contract. “I—don’t want you to feel like you have to do something about me, Sirius. Just because I’m here. And I don’t want you to do it just to piss the Potters off.”
“It’s all of those and more!” Sirius bounced in place on the couch. “But really, Harry, I like you. You’re a lot different than I thought any Squib released to the Muggle world would have been—”
“Harry is not a Squib—”
“Stuff it, Malfoy. Thought he was a Squib, then. There’s not a good term for that.” Sirius stopped bouncing and looked at Harry with hopeful eyes. “And you’re so different from a kid of James and Lily that I’m amazed. You’ve done all right for yourself.” He glanced at M.H. “Took something they hated about you and turned it into a means to survive. I want to do this. I would offer it even if James was still sensible and you were still his heir. I mean it.”
Harry drew a deep, painful breath. He felt Draco touch his shoulder in wonder and doubt, and Harry turned his head and smiled at him. Then he looked back at Sirius. “You really mean it? That you would do it even if I still had parents?”
“Yes.”
Sirius was smiling—Harry thought it took a lot to make him stop smiling—but it was deeper and more meaningful than the way he smiled and laughed at pranks. Harry held out his hand.
“I’m just a little overwhelmed,” he said. “I went from feeling like I had no one, to having Draco, to having no family, then to having you. It’s—I want to. It’s just sudden.”
Sirius gave what might honestly have been a howl of joyful triumph, and dodged forwards to seize Harry around the waist. For a second Draco tried to keep hold of Harry’s arm and he actually thought it might be torn off; then Sirius was whirling around the floor with him and laughing and Draco let go and it was okay. Harry hugged him back, and felt the tears he was about to start crying melt away from his eyelids and leave him whole.
“Thank you,” Sirius said. “I never wanted to give this stupid Black inheritance away to someone who didn’t want it, but I didn’t want to leave it to rot, either. Now I know someone will have it who wants it, and I can help you, and I can do something to make up for not saving you when they exiled you, and I can spite James and Lily all at once.” He set Harry on the floor and grinned at him. “There’s nothing about this that’s not good.”
“You realize,” Draco said in a drawling voice from the couch, “that accepting your place as Harry’s father means that you’ll have to participate in the bonding. At least, the traditional bonding that I suspect my parents will decree.”
Sirius made a face. “Really?”
“Yes.”
Sirius waved his hand. “All right, all right, I can do that. And that means I get to spite Cousin Cissy, too.” He flopped down on the couch again and gestured to Draco, who pulled Harry possessively back to his side. “And your father. And any other stuffy relatives who might come to the bonding and have some connection to the Blacks. This is turning out to be a really great day all around.”
*
Draco sighed as they ate the last of their lunch. Black had offered to let them stay and eat with him in celebration, but Draco felt he’d shared his consort quite enough with the over-enthusiastic mutt. He wanted a little time to themselves.
“Do you think they do regret what they did?”
Draco listened, but he only heard genuine curiosity in Harry’s tone, not regret for having done what they had to do with regards to the Potters. He leaned across the table to take his hand, kissed the back of it, and said, “Probably. I suppose we won’t know unless they owl us.”
“I wonder if there’s some way we can find out.”
Draco puckered his lips. He honestly hadn’t expected Harry to be that eager. “We could go back to Black’s and ask him to look through his spell again, I suppose.”
“That doesn’t have sound and it won’t show them unless they actually come out of the house. I want—I want to hear their voices. See their faces.”
Draco smiled and lifted Harry’s hand to kiss it again. “There’s that vindictive streak I always knew had to be there, under the Potter goodness.”
“Maybe I’m learning something from my adopted father.”
Draco laughed and stood up. “All right. There are no spells I can use that will see inside the house directly, but I can set up an alarm that will let us know when someone comes out of the house. Then we can attach a monitoring spell to their hands or arms and it’ll show us whatever they’re present for.”
Harry started. “You can do that?”
“Of course.”
“I’m wondering how my former parents ever survived their immersion in your world. It doesn’t sound like they were half ruthless enough.”
Draco shrugged. He had started believing a long time ago that his parents regretted going to the Potters and asking for a betrothal contract, but he understood it now. They had thought Harry was going to be the one to defeat Voldemort, and they wanted to be on the winning side. And when they thought Harry was a Squib, they insisted on changing the contract to have a bride who wouldn’t dishonor their son, but they didn’t want to break their word.
Their honor was as crippling in its way as the Potters’ lack of it.
I never intend to be crippled, Draco thought, and wrapped his arm around Harry’s shoulders. “I could set the alarm spell, or we could be more active. Should we go to the Potters’ house under a Disillusionment Charm and wait for someone to come out?” he asked.
Harry grinned and leaned up to kiss him. “You, on the other hand, are more than ruthless enough,” he said, when he broke away.
Draco preened, and wrapped himself more tightly around Harry as they walked out the door.
*
The first person to come out the door was Dahlia.
Harry felt himself freeze, even though he knew she couldn’t see them under Draco’s expert Disillusionment Charm. It was more—seeing the sister he had been blamed for influencing for so long. Seeing her walking along, wiping at her eyes. He wondered if she was actually going somewhere. She probably couldn’t Apparate yet.
Draco breathed the spell beside him, and something that looked like a white pebble soared away from his wand and into Dahlia’s skin. She didn’t seem to notice. She wiped her eyes again and then turned and looked around as if waiting for someone.
“You have an interesting choice of spells, boys.”
Harry felt his body snap taut. Dumbledore was behind them, and he was smiling sadly at them. A second later, he had canceled their Disillusionment Charm.
“Professor Dumbledore?” Dahlia’s eyes were wide. She must have been waiting for Dumbledore, Harry decided, but she hadn’t known he would ambush them.
“Yes.” Dumbledore considered them both. Harry felt Draco grab and turn them so that they stood back-to-back. Dumbledore didn’t appear alarmed, or fall into a dueling stance. “I ought to have known that you couldn’t leave your family alone, Harry. Dark wizards don’t usually leave Light wizards that conquered them alone.”
Harry stared at Dumbledore with his lips a little parted. He—he didn’t have words. Luckily, Draco had enough for both of them.
“Conquered them? Perhaps you meant disowned them. Or cast them out. Or were afraid of a child. Aren’t those the words you mean, Dumbledore?”
Dahlia gave a little gasp. Harry didn’t have time to think about why. Dumbledore had stepped towards him and was staring at the scar on his forehead.
“That is the true remnant of Voldemort’s possession of you, Harry,” he said. He sounded as if he was talking to himself. “You haven’t mentioned it to the young man who’s so eager to bond with you instead of doing his duty by his betrothed, have you? How it writhes sometimes? How you can feel Voldemort’s evil will through it.”
Harry said, “I never felt any evil will.”
Draco leaned his chin on Harry’s shoulder and sighed almost into his ear. “You can leave off your efforts to split us up, Professor Dumbledore. I noticed Harry’s scar moving a long time ago. I reckoned it had something to do with Voldemort.” Dumbledore’s eyes widened. Harry supposed it must be a Malfoy saying that particular name. “But I wanted to wait until Harry was comfortable enough to tell me.”
“I am,” Harry whispered backwards. “It just slipped my mind.”
“I know.”
“You do not,” Dumbledore said, so strongly that Draco actually looked at him in pity. “You do not understand the magic behind that scar, or why it is so evil. No one does.”
“Then it’s pretty rich for you to imply Harry should have told me, when he can’t know, either.” Draco’s eyes were bored, but his hold around Harry’s waist—he’d turned so his chest was to Harry’s back—was tight. “Are you going to give up now and go away? We won’t do what you want no matter what incentive you offer us.”
“There are things I can easily do. Tactics I am reluctant to employ, but they would make you go crawling back to your rightful place.”
“Then I’m not interested in hearing you explain them.”
“I am trying to make this easy for you,” Dumbledore said, and his voice cracked a little. “Do you understand, Mr. Malfoy? I am trying to make you see that we can compromise, and I don’t have to unleash the other weapons in my arsenal.”
“That sounds like a threat. Not a compromise.”
Harry sighed a little. Draco was so good at putting words around something that felt unacceptable to Harry, but which he had a hard time saying was unacceptable. He was glad to have found a partner—a consort—who could do that.
“You can still walk away from this, Mr. Malfoy. You did nothing except be born a few months before—Harry to a family who wanted to be on the winning side and thought to betroth their child to the Potter firstborn. You can still enjoy life with a woman who loves you.”
“She’s not the woman who interests me.”
“There are far worse things than a little boredom in a marriage, Mr. Malfoy. If you ask your parents, I’m sure they would agree with me.”
“Draco?” Dahlia interjected in a soft little voice. Harry twitched, but didn’t bother glancing at her. He knew he would see nothing of interest. “I’m still in love with you. You would always have love if you lived with me. Always.”
“Not interested.”
“I don’t want to do this, Professor Dumbledore,” Dahlia said, and turned to Dumbledore. More tears were flowing down her cheeks.
Harry thought she meant that she didn’t want to talk to them anymore and would retreat into the house, but Dumbledore grimaced and sighed. “I know, my dear, but you have to. It’s the only way that you’ll ever have what you want, and the only way the wizarding world will ever have peace. And a way for you to redeem yourself.”
Dahlia had her arms wrapped around herself, shivering, when Harry looked at her. Harry shifted warily backwards, ready to reach for his wand if he had to.
But instead of taking her wand out, Dahlia focused her eyes on Draco. Harry thought he could feel a brief glow of magic from her.
Then she said, “Draco, you’re in love with me. I want you to be in love with me. I want that more than anything else.”
And Harry felt the powerful magic moving through the air, in waves from her focused on Draco, and he knew their battle was far from over.
*
Jan: Well, you're not alone in wanting to know how they'd react!
Phoenix-Rob: There's really no chance that Harry will forgive his parents, but he remains curious about them.
Asuka_Bloodberry: Thanks so much!
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Bonded Consort