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. |
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-One—Scars and Talking
“You have beautiful gardens.”
“I can hardly take credit for them,” Draco said ruefully as he leaned over next to Harry. They were on a balcony that Harry had at first mistaken for wrought iron. Then Draco had looked at him with one eyebrow raised, and Harry had to admit that it was unlikely the Malfoy builders of a five-floor cottage would content themselves with wrought iron. It was apparently an alloy of steel and silver, and it shimmered with dizzying reflections, and it was covered with dragons along the top. “I’m here even less often than the Manor. The house-elves are the ones who can tend them.”
“But you’ll come back more often now that you and I are bonded,” Harry said, watching the gardens. That was easier than confronting the look of intense passion Draco was directing at him right now. “And they’re still beautiful.”
They were. Harry hadn’t really had a chance to look at the gardens of Malfoy Manor, but he’d always imagined them as overly fussy and formal. These were still laid-out in a recognize pattern—flowers of different colors in different star-shaped or circular patches of stone, with grassy paths between—but the circles and stars danced around each other. Red and yellow led to nodding orange roses, with delicate pink flowers clumped near the red ones. And shimmering silver and blue flowers surrounded purple iris. The garden gave him something new to look at every time he glanced at it.
“You know a lot about gardens?”
Harry came back to himself with a start. Draco was staring at him in a slightly different way now, that intense look that meant he wanted to know everything. “Well, I’m not a Herbology genius. That’s Neville, you know.” He smiled, but Draco didn’t, and Harry fidgeted a little with his teacup. “But I like the way this one is laid out, even if it looks a little strange to me without trees to shade it.”
“You like gardens?”
Harry moved his fingers on his teacup’s handle, and said nothing.
“The way you’re resisting makes me think it’s a more important question than I knew.” Draco’s voice was quiet. He reached out and gently ran his fingers down the back of Harry’s knuckles, urging his grip into relaxing, and led him over to the small table on the balcony. “Please tell me, love.”
Harry would have, except he was afraid it wouldn’t be an isolated fact; it would lead into the kind of conversation that he really didn’t want to have. On the other hand, the only ones safer than Draco to have it with were his friends, and they already knew most of it.
“All right,” he said. “Muggles have no house-elves, as you know. So—um—I was the one who worked on my aunt’s garden. I know a lot about it. I wouldn’t say I love it. I mean, the process of gardening. But I like the way this one is laid out.”
He thought that might be bland enough to get Draco off the subject, but his fingers tightened over Harry’s.. “You were their house-elf.” It wasn’t a question.
Harry grimaced. It seemed he’d led right into what he’d hoped to avoid. He looked up. “Yes.”
“That doesn’t explain where some of the scars you have came from—unless they were making you garden with swords.”
Harry sighed. “Those come from my cousin. He hated me, so he convinced his friends to chase me and beat me up. Harry Hunting, they called it.”
He would have gone on, but he had to fall silent in surprise, because a white mist was manifesting around Draco’s body. His eyes blazed and shimmered with hatred, and he reached out one hand as if he was going to squeeze the throat of someone who wasn’t present. Harry blinked and shook his head, letting his hand rest on Draco’s wrist. “Calm down.”
“Where are they?”
“What?”
“Don’t play dumb, beloved, it doesn’t suit you. Where are they? Your cousin and your other relatives?”
“I honestly have no idea,” Harry said, and Draco must have heard that honesty in his voice, because he paused and the pale mist coiled back a little. “They left during the war with some of the people who were part of the Order of the Phoenix, and I haven’t seen them since.”
“They still need to pay for what they did.”
“They did,” Harry said, and the conviction in his voice made the mist dissipate further. “My cousin and I made up before they left. And my aunt and uncle…stewing in their own petty, vicious juices is enough.”
“No, it’s not.” The mist was surging back, making Draco’s eyes shine like mirrors with a strong light trained on them. “How could you let them go and not wreak vengeance on them, Harry?”
“Because I believe what I told you.” Harry stared him in the eye. “Nothing I could do to my aunt and uncle is as bad as being them. And I wouldn’t want my cousin harmed. I’ve dealt with it, Draco. I don’t want to bring it up and live through it again. I certainly don’t want anyone else taking vengeance for me.”
“That explains why you confessed it so openly to me, right?” Draco’s hand was curled, his claws coming close to breaking a teacup. “Because you’re over it and you don’t need anyone to take your part and you never hear the crying of the little boy who was being beaten up by his cousin at night?”
“Fair point,” Harry said, and grimaced. “Listen, the main thing is that I really don’t like thinking about it. But when I tell someone who doesn’t already know, they always react like this. Well, either that or they’d want to publish articles about it, which is another reason I don’t tell a lot of people. Draco, it’s over. It’s in the past.”
“You’re still suffering from it. The scars will always be there.”
“I know. But it’s not as though most of them are bad, and thank Merlin I’m not a model or someone who would have to—”
Draco leaned forwards with a snarl. Harry froze in surprise. He didn’t think he’d heard anything like that since they’d been back on Earth. “You know as well as I do that I’m not talking about the physical scars! The way you keep this quiet, as if everyone knowing about it would blame you and not the monsters who caused this. The way you flinch away from someone touching you when you can’t see where they’re coming from. You distrusted my mother just on principle, not because she’s a Malfoy and might have tried to hurt you once, but because that’s what you do. You don’t believe people half the time. You’re always braced for what’s going to happen in case they let you down—”
“That has nothing to do with the Dursleys and everything to do with the entire fucking wizarding world believing I was a murderer and a lunatic whenever they wanted!” Harry was on his feet, and he knew he was ranting, but he couldn’t stop, couldn’t prevent the heat that flooded through him from rising again. “Of course I think everyone but my closest friends are going to let me down, they always have! Even now they stalk me for articles, you saw that when we were coming out of the Ministry—”
“And you don’t think that’s rooted in your childhood?” Draco’s wings lifted him straight out of the chair, over the table, and down next to Harry. Harry started, which only gave Draco more time to wrap Harry in his wings and pull him roughly in to his chest. “Of course it is,” Draco murmured to him, and held him some more when Harry would have pulled free. “You’re not weak, but you’re right, you needed to mistrust people to survive. Only you’ve come to the point where you have the power not to need that anymore. I want to help you recover. See how good things can be when you can relax around people like my mother.”
Harry shut his eyes. He wanted to say it was all in the past and didn’t matter, that why did it matter that he’d been in the cupboard or not had enough food sometimes, or that he’d had Dudley kick him in the stomach hard enough that he’d vomited blood once or twice? Draco couldn’t travel back in time and save him from it, and Harry was fine now.
“You have the power not to need that anymore,” Draco repeated, fiercely, into his ear. “And the people.”
“What?”
“My mother will protect you. And my father, once he overcomes this stubborn fit.” Draco slid his hand slowly up Harry’s arm. “And me.”
“They’ll protect me for as long as we’re bonded, sure.”
“You think the bond is going to end anytime soon?” Draco’s wings were hunched and his voice haughty. His hand froze on Harry’s elbow.
“I mean—it’s just, if you do find someone you want more—”
Draco leaned against him, so hard that Harry ended up pinned against the side of the table. Draco nuzzled into his hair. “I tell you this is permanent, and you still question it,” he said, quietly enough that Harry could make out the hint of a growl to the tone.
“Draco—”
“I am not going to find anyone I want more,” Draco said, his voice pounding in the words like nails. “I am not going to find anyone else I desire to bond with. My father brought up the possibility, but my father is an idio—imbecile. You are mine. And I want you to acknowledge that the Dursleys did do you that damage,” he added, shifting back to something like a normal tone.
Harry closed his eyes. “Does that mean I need to talk about it?”
“Of course you need to talk about it.”
“I mean that I could just acknowledge you’re right, and that would be it. No need for an in-depth discussion.”
“Harry.”
Draco’s voice was so gentle, which Harry knew meant he wouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. He swallowed. Draco brushed his fingers across Harry’s eyelids. “I want you to look at me, please.”
Harry did that. Draco’s eyes were glittering with passion, determination, strength. Harry had never seen them that way.
“Not everything all at once,” Draco said. “But listen. The fact that you think I would ever abandon you, that you should give me up before I hurt you—that’s their legacy. Acknowledging it means saying that, not something empty about me being right. You wouldn’t believe it even if you said that, would you?” His hand was fussing with Harry’s fringe, swinging it back and forth as if he didn’t know whether or not he wanted it to cover Harry’s scar.
Harry swallowed and resisted the urge to shake his head. He caught control of his breath with a gasp and said, “I offered to let you go because I love you that much, Draco. If you do find someone you like better than me, I want you to have that choice.”
“And if I said that I’d never find someone I like better than you?”
Harry frowned before he could stop himself. Draco nodded. “You can’t really believe that. Part of you always thinks that you’re second best. A burden.” Harry flinched, and Draco paused. “That’s the way they referred to you?”
Harry managed to clear his throat. It seemed this conversation was happening, and what Draco wanted was to have it. “A freak, actually.”
Draco hissed, and for a second his wings flared out around him. Then he said, “Tell me what you can of it. I want to know.” He guided Harry back to the small table in the middle of the balcony and sat down again, though this time beside Harry instead of across the table. “I promise not to murder the Dursleys no matter what you say. Even if I want to.”
Harry shot him a concerned glance. He was more worried about how hard the conversation would be on Draco than on him.
But from the stern gaze Draco leveled him with, he knew what Harry was feeling and wanted the truth anyway. Harry swallowed, nodded, and said, “I suppose that you should know about the cupboard.”
Part of him couldn’t believe he was doing this. He wanted to freeze, run, hide, keep the words from escaping just in case Draco somehow used them against him later.
But that was only more proof that Draco had been right to instigate this conversation, so he had to keep going.
*
Draco watched Harry carefully as he leaned across the table to put his hand on Harry’s. It really felt, through the bond, as if his mate was about to grow wings of his own and launch himself off the balcony rather than talk about this.
I was right. But Draco took no pleasure in the knowledge. He didn’t want to corner Harry and force it out of him. He’d planned to just have that acknowledgment and move along.
But then his Veela instincts had started clamoring at the notion that Harry didn’t even want to admit that he’d been abused, that he wanted to turn away from the notion and hide it forever. And Draco had started feeling as though, if he didn’t raise the subject now, he would never get the chance. So he had pressed it, and now he was going to hear something about a cupboard.
“A cupboard?” Draco asked aloud, letting his own confusion inflect his voice.
Harry dashed his free hand across his forehead as if his scar still pained him the way it had in the days of Voldemort. But Draco knew—knew, absolutely, with a Veela’s instinctive knowledge—that that wasn’t it. “Where they kept me. My bedroom for ten years.”
Draco breathed slowly through the rage. He’d made a promise that he wouldn’t hunt the Dursleys down and exact vengeance on them, he reminded himself. Honestly, that was the only thing holding him in his seat right now. “Why did they do that?” he whispered.
“You think I understand them even now, Draco?” Harry shook his head. “I understand why they didn’t talk about magic in front of me, because they hated it and thought I would somehow not become a wizard if I grew up ignorant of my heritage. But the cupboard—I have no idea. They were just cruel.”
At least he can admit that much. Draco gently squeezed Harry’s hand. “How did you survive there?”
“They didn’t try to kill me, although I think maybe Dudley wanted to sometimes.” Harry gave him a wry look. “How does anyone survive being in a place where no one likes them much? I did.”
“What else did they do to you?”
Harry’s face grew shadowed, but at least he seemed committed to answering honestly. Draco was glad; he was tired of fighting that particular battle. There were so many more interesting ones he wanted to fight, on behalf of his mate, not against him.
“They didn’t give me food sometimes,” Harry said quietly. “They would tell me to go to the cupboard and forget about meals. And they had me do all sorts of chores. Outside, inside. Weeding the garden. Cooking the meals. Cleaning the floor. Cleaning up anything they broke. Doing the dishes. Washing clothes. Anything they could think of.” He sighed and met Draco’s eyes. “Please don’t think I’m against the concept of doing work like that. I think a lot of wizards rely too much on house-elves, anyway. I do think that we ought to get used to working with our magic and our hands instead of with their magic.”
Draco discounted that. It wasn’t the crux of the matter right now. Instead, that was Harry’s silly fear that Draco might think he was complaining too much, or being too selfish, or something like that. “Please never try to justify your relatives to me.”
“I’m not! I’m saying—”
“You’re saying that you don’t want to seem lazy, and that the chores they gave you weren’t bad. That’s wrong, Harry. They were horrendous. For them to rely on you like that, and then tell you that you’re worthless…” Draco shook his head. “You think it’s wrong of wizards to abuse their house-elves? And yet you can defend their treatment of you?”
Harry opened his mouth, and closed it, frowning. Draco smiled, a little. One less pleasant part of this task was confronting Harry with things that he had no ability to deny. He didn’t really want to be the one who brought Harry face-to-face with his unpleasant conceptions and broke him of them, but he would rather it was him than someone else.
“All right,” Harry said at last. “I wasn’t worthless, or a burden, or a freak, or lazy.”
Draco picked up both his hands and kissed them. “You’ll say that with more conviction, one day. But no, you weren’t. You’re not. Answer this, Harry. Do you think I could love someone who was like that?”
“No.”
Draco nodded. That at least was firm. “And do you think I love you?”
Harry met his eyes. “Of course you do.”
“Well, then.” Draco bent down and kissed Harry until he was losing the will to argue, and pulled Harry close against him before he flared his wings. “Let’s go and give you another lesson in why I love you and why you matter.”
“I know I matter.”
“Then this will be an easy lesson.”
Any resistance Harry might have put up melted when Draco seized him and flew him off the balcony and towards the bedroom they liked. He leaned his head back against Draco’s collarbone and sighed. He really did love being held and flown around, it seemed.
Draco caressed the back of his neck as he landed gently on the upper balcony outside the bedroom. Harry smiled up at him, gently dazed.
He’ll believe it completely someday, Draco decided in contentment, and led Harry inside.
*
SickPuppy: Thank you! Hopefully they're still adorable here.
Thunderbird: There is at least this chapter! Next chapter will probably return to the main story.
While AFF and its agents attempt to remove all illegal works from the site as quickly and thoroughly as possible, there is always the possibility that some submissions may be overlooked or dismissed in error. The AFF system includes a rigorous and complex abuse control system in order to prevent improper use of the AFF service, and we hope that its deployment indicates a good-faith effort to eliminate any illegal material on the site in a fair and unbiased manner. This abuse control system is run in accordance with the strict guidelines specified above.
All works displayed here, whether pictorial or literary, are the property of their owners and not Adult-FanFiction.org. Opinions stated in profiles of users may not reflect the opinions or views of Adult-FanFiction.org or any of its owners, agents, or related entities.
Website Domain ©2002-2017 by Apollo. PHP scripting, CSS style sheets, Database layout & Original artwork ©2005-2017 C. Kennington. Restructured Database & Forum skins ©2007-2017 J. Salva. Images, coding, and any other potentially liftable content may not be used without express written permission from their respective creator(s). Thank you for visiting!
Powered by Fiction Portal 2.0
Modifications © Manta2g, DemonGoddess
Site Owner - Apollo