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I Give You a Wondrous Mirror	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 17806 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 21
- 22
- 23
Thanks again for all the reviews!

Chapter
Twenty-Two�First Barrage

�� And that�s
as much as I know,� Harry said, sitting back with a little sigh against the
chair in Hermione�s office. He glanced in several directions, but there was
only one visible change to the room since he had visited Hermione to acquire
the Dreamless Sleep potion: a large map of wizarding Britain, stuck to the far
wall. Areas highlighted in red were mostly around London and included those
places most in danger from a concerted attack by their enemies, Harry
suspected. Similar red areas glowed around Hogwarts and Hogsmeade in Scotland,
and there was a brilliant red speck in Wiltshire.

�� He was more
than happy to look at the map while he waited for Hermione to decide on what
he�d told her about the life-debts and the odd, shifting nature of the magic
that connected him to Draco. Hermione�s face had started to change halfway
through the recitation, and Harry suspected she was angry at him. He couldn�t
really blame her. Not only her long friendship with Ginny but the fact that he
was quite sure she�d never considered cheating on Ron would be against him.

�� You�re
sure it�s life-debts?� Hermione asked in a quiet voice. �Not anything else that
might form the basis of this?�

�� Harry gave
her a cautious look. That was a more neutral question than he�d thought she�d
begin with. Of course, they were supposed
to be discussing the choice of bodyguards who would accompany him everywhere
but inside his home and Malfoy Manor�reluctantly, Hermione had agreed that even
people chosen from the ranks of the Blood Reparations Department would have too
many negative feelings towards Draco�and Draco was waiting for them to be done
with it in the corridor outside. Maybe she didn�t want to start screaming and alert
him that something was wrong, Harry thought.

�� Yes,�
Harry said. �Everything that Draco uncovered about that makes sense. If it�s
something else, it would have to be something that fits all the parameters of
life-debts but also has escaped any
kind of description in books of magic. Draco has researched this pretty
thoroughly.�

�� Hermione
pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. Then she said, �The reason
I asked was because the only way life-debts can work is by willingness.�

�� Harry
frowned. �They work whether or not someone wants to be saved, I thought.�

�� Not that.�
Hermione shook her head, still not looking at him. �The effects Malfoy
described, where the debts are trying to draw you closer together and make you
decide that only the gift of yourself is sufficient to pay them off�that works by willingness. I�ve studied
the history of life-debts��

�� Of course, Harry thought. If there was
something Hermione hadn�t studied, he didn�t know what it was. She had even acquired
something of an expertise on mysterious pure-blood traditions, since when she
became Head of the Blood Reparations Department she had needed to know if the
pure-bloods they were trying to soften could claim a traditional reason for
deferring contact with Muggleborns.

�� And the
only way that such a gift was ever made was sheer willingness. No one else
could force another wizard into it. No one could ask for it, even; if it happened, it was considered to be in
shockingly bad taste, and a wizard who tried to make the gift of himself
without wanting to would simply fail to dissolve the life-debts.� Hermione
opened her eyes at last, and her look cut through him. �So the only way this
will ever change is if you decide
that you�re willing to give yourself to him.�

�� Harry
narrowed his eyes. �I�m not sure I understand.�

�� The magic
can�t force you into this, Harry,� Hermione said. �Malfoy can�t force you into
this. No one but you can decide to make that sacrifice.� She leaned over the
desk. �That means that as long as you do what you�re supposed to do, and keep on loving and being faithful to Ginny,
then you�re in no danger.�

�� Harry
looked down at his lap.

�� Why is it
so hard?� Hermione asked, in the tone of a kind friend who�d been rebuffed by
someone she was trying to offer genuinely good advice to. Harry clenched his
jaw. That�s what she is. She�s right and
I�m wrong, and she�s making sure I know it. �What is so damn attractive
about him that you�re willing to give up honor and turn your back on your
marriage vows? Because nothing�s worth that, Harry. Would you really want your
children to grow up unhappy? And what about Ginny? Does she deserve to suffer
because you�ve got a few urges that she might not be able to satisfy?�

�� No,� Harry
said. �She doesn�t. And neither do the children, of course.�

�� So don�t want Malfoy,� Hermione said. �And
don�t even consider making him the gift of you. The life-debts aren�t actively
dangerous, from what you told me. Even the way the fifth one put Malfoy�s life
in danger only did it to establish a connection between you. There would have
been no point served if he died. Concentrate on the war instead, which can endanger you.� She stared at him
until Harry looked up again. �And I�d suggest that you spend less time with
him, too, and more time with Ginny. I think you need to be reminded just how
wonderful she really is.�

�� Yeah,�
Harry said, and no matter how he tried he could not keep the sarcasm out of his
tone, �I do.�

�� Hermione�s
face tightened. She said, �Keep on taking the Dreamless Sleep, as much of it as
is safe. Spend more time with your wife. Spend more time with your children.�
She hesitated, then added, �Have you and Ginny slept together much recently?�

�� His face
hurt with the blush that overtook it then. Harry looked away and muttered, �No.�

�� Well,
then, that might be part of the problem.� Hermione sounded relieved. �If you�re
experiencing sexual attraction to Malfoy, it�s probably just because you
haven�t received any satisfaction at
all, wouldn�t you say?�

�� Harry
opened his mouth to tell her that the attraction he felt for Draco was nothing
like what he�d felt for Ginny, even during those first passionate months of
marriage when they couldn�t keep their hands off each other, and then shut his
mouth again. Why should he tell her that? She would just dismiss it anyway. She
was the one who, because she�d never wanted anyone but Ron, thought that it was
impossible for one half of a happily married couple to want anyone else,
either.

�� But she was
right in at least one respect. What Harry felt was wrong. He should stop feeling it if he could, and he should
avoid feeding it at all costs. He couldn�t control his feelings, but he could
control his actions.

�� He would.

�� Who are my
bodyguards going to be?� he asked, to change the subject, and then went with Hermione
over the names and abilities of each one.

�� In the end
he chose two pure-blood witches whom he�d sometimes worked with on Blood
Reparations cases�Timolea Wesley, a distant relative of the Weasley family
whose great-grandfather had changed the spelling of their name, and Athena
Mockingbird�and a Muggleborn wizard who was engaged to Timolea, Erasmus Grant.
They�d meet him when he stepped outside the office, and keep up the protection
until the moment that he was safely behind his own wards again.

�� Harry rose
to his feet, thanking Hermione for everything. She spent a moment looking up at
him pensively, opened her mouth as if to offer more advice, and then shut it
with a snap and shook her head.

�� Never
mind, Harry,� she said softly. �I think you�ll see how right I am in a few more
months, and how good it would have been if you had stayed away from Malfoy.�

�� Harry
didn�t answer. He stepped out of the office, greeted Timolea, Athena, and
Erasmus, and avoided Draco�s gaze as much as possible. He also asked Athena to
accompany Draco back to the Manor, just so Draco wouldn�t have an excuse to ask
Harry to perform another Side-Along Apparition. It was occurring to Harry now
just how many opportunities Draco had taken to touch him in the past few hours,
and that he probably hadn�t needed help Apparating or recalling the entrance to
the Ministry at all.

�� He couldn�t
control his feelings, but he could control his actions, and at the moment, he
thought the wisest course was to be friendly but distant from Draco.

�� Draco gave
him a look just before he vanished in Athena�s company to show that he was less
than impressed. He also reached out and deliberately squeezed Harry�s wrist,
his hand lingering a bit longer than was comfortable.

�� Harry
turned miserably away, not least because that brief brush of flesh had been
enough to arouse him again.

�� But he had
to think of his wife, his family, and Draco�s future. Draco would want to find
another lover, since his marriage vows allowed for it and since he probably
wouldn�t want to reconcile with Marian even if he saw her alive again.

�� Harry
couldn�t be that lover. He couldn�t help Draco there. It was best if they just
both accepted the quiet stillbirth of the possible sexual dimension of their
relationship.

�� Harry wanted more than that. But that wasn�t
right. And he had to remember to do what was right.

*

�� Draco gave
a disgruntled sigh and attempted to read through the Daily Prophet again, though, since the �finest writers� at the
paper were oblivious of political events of any import, it of course carried
nothing about the war. There were a few articles wondering why Draco Malfoy
hadn�t been arrested for murder yet, but even they were less numerous and more
subdued than they had been. The Daily
Prophet was again reduced to reporting on scandals in the Ministry and
trying to follow Harry about.

�� Harry.

�� Did he really think Draco was above casting
spells that allowed him to listen at doorways, when he couldn�t use the wards in
the Manor to eavesdrop? And did he really
think that Granger was cautious enough and good enough to catch any possible
magic he used?

�� She wasn�t
and she hadn�t, and so Draco knew exactly why Harry had avoided his eyes when
he stepped out of the office, and looked torn between staying and pulling back
when Draco caught his hand.

�� Granger was
a fool. People couldn�t control their feelings, and Harry trying to discourage
his desire would only make it grow. Harry had been a Gryffindor. Fear wasn�t
natural to him, and Draco understood how to manipulate his natural inclinations
towards fearlessness and the urge to protect other people.

�� Much better
than his wife did, apparently.

�� The only
thing out of that entire conversation that had cheered him, and somewhat
removed the taste of Granger�s sanctimonious prattle about home and family from
his mouth, was that Harry and his Weasley hadn�t slept together for some time.
Perhaps his dreams had put her off, Draco thought hopefully.

�� He himself
had had the dreams multiple times per night since the day Harry had saved his
life, as if the magic were determined that he should know that vision of the
other possible life as well as Harry did. He recognized a few of the more
sexual ones from Harry�s descriptions. And he had had the one about the Portkey
that deposited them in South America, too.

�� They
remained with him even when he was awake, sharp and etched on his mind as
though someone had cut them in a pane of glass with the tip of a diamond. Even
if Draco�s own marriage vows had been stricter, he thought he would have
succumbed to the quite distinct hunger that had grown in him for an equal partner like that, someone he could
share trouble and danger as well as peaceful sunlit afternoons with.

�� Perhaps
someone else would be even more perfect for him, but Draco didn�t intend to
waste trouble and effort trying to find him or her. He wanted Harry. He was
going to have him. He was�

�� A scream
rang into the dining room. Draco was on his feet in instants, his heart beating
so hard that his head hurt. His mother looked up more warily from the end of
the table, where she�d been reading her own copy of the newspaper, and drew her
wand with a small silken sound he wouldn�t have recognized if he hadn�t heard
it for months and months during the Dark Lord�s occupation of the Manor.

�� The scream
repeated itself, and Draco managed to identify it this time. Not Scorpius, as
he�d been half-afraid, but the cry of a house-elf.

�� Still, this
did not sound like the distress that accompanied the discovery of a dirty room.
Draco began to edge his way towards the far door. His mother came behind him,
her steps cautious but her eyes so bright that Draco thought she was good a
warrior as any to have at his back.

�� Something
heavy and dark red lashed down the corridor at him.

�� Draco had
his wand raised and a Shield Charm up before he realized what he was doing. His
studies of defensive magic, conducted since Harry had managed to rouse him to consciousness
of the war, had sharpened his reflexes more than he realized. He had time, as
the attacking thing struck the Shield Charm and slid down it in a liquid mess,
to study and recognize it.

�� It was
blood. And when it picked itself up and faced him again, it had brilliant green
eyes, the sharp color of poison, located in the upper ridge of what could have
been a head, and Draco knew what it was.

�� A Blood
Hydra. It was a creature that could be created with the right incantations from
any large wound, and which was incredibly hard to kill. The heads could be cut
off, but it would sprout two heads in the place of each cut one, and it could
create more and more until all the liquid supporting it was gone.

�� The only
thing Draco wondered was how it could have got inside the wards, and then the
answer came to him and he cursed aloud.

�� I should have realized Marian was probably
performing blood magic with the incantations she was doing. The blood had
vanished from her room, and Draco had thought it thoroughly cleaned up. If the
Blood Hydra spell was already in effect, though, it would have simply shrunk
into a corner and then resurrected itself when commanded to do so.

�� I am going to kill you, Marian, wherever you
are, Draco thought, and bared his teeth at the creature.

�� A movement
back in the coils alerted him. He looked up, and saw Scorpius�s terrified face,
swinging above the serpent�s red, reared back. Blood wrapped his small body and
streaked his blond hair.

�� Draco was
still staring at his son when the hydra�s nearest head struck at him, enough
force behind it to shatter the Shield Charm.

*

�� Harry
sighed and cleaned cornflakes out of Al�s hair with a swift spell. James was
responsible for their being there, of course. He was trying to look innocent at
the moment, but since Harry had turned around just as he launched them at his
brother, there wasn�t much chance of that.

�� James,�
Harry began, hating the weary tone in his own voice. But really. �How many times have we told you not to throw food at your
brother?�

�� Ginny,
currently cleaning up a bubble of milk from Lily�s face, looked up and nodded
in support.

�� Lots,�
James said.

�� Then why
did you do it?� Harry said, and flicked his wand again to remove a trickle of
milk from Al�s cheek. His smaller son was holding on to a brave face, but his
quivering lower lip said that wouldn�t last long.

�� Because he
looks so stupid,� James said, and
waved his hand at Al. �Look at him.
Stupid face, stupid hair�� Al�s hair was like Harry�s, black and unmanageable
by any normal magic, while James had inherited Ginny�s own smoothness along
with her red color.

�� Al closed
his eyes tightly shut, but he had started crying anyway. Harry stepped around
the table and picked him up, swinging him back and forth in the vigorous
rocking motion that sometimes calmed him. James put a finger in his mouth and watched
this, mouthing something that looked like, �Crybaby,� at Al.

�� James
Sirius Potter,� Harry said, and James�s face changed; he knew Harry was serious
whenever he used his full name. �You are going to your room, and you won�t come
out until this afternoon.�

�� But Daaaaad,� James said, stretching the
vowel out in the long drawl that was, luckily, the only way he resembled Dudley
Dursley as a child. �That�s not faaaaair.
Teddy�s coming this afternoon, and he was going to take us on brooms again!�

�� Yes, I
know,� Harry said. �And maybe next time you�ll think about that before you hurt
your brother.�

�� James
stamped his foot. �But he was just standing there, looking stupid��

�� Someone
Apparated into the house. Harry jumped before he realized it was Andromeda, who
had free access to enter through the wards. She was holding Teddy by one hand.
Harry supposed she�d wanted to bring him a little early; sometimes a
ten-year-old wizard could be a bit much for an elderly witch living alone.

�� Then he saw
Andromeda�s white face, and folded himself around Al as he stepped closer to
her. �What�s wrong?� he asked. He caught a glimpse of James from the corner of
his eye, looking hopeful that this might mean he didn�t have to go to his room,
and Ginny, folding herself around Lily the same way he was instinctively trying
to protect Al. He was glad that they had that much in common at the moment, since
they�d had a quiet but intense argument last night about the amount of time he
was spending around Draco.

�� Read
these,� said Andromeda. She held out a sheaf of parchments to him, and shut her
eyes. Trickles of tears ran out from under them, but she turned away and tried
to busy herself with Teddy�who protested�so he wouldn�t see.

�� Harry
looked through the parchments, expertly balancing Al on one hip and with one
arm. They turned out to be letters, and each one was written in the same
disguised hand that had sent the warning to Salazar�s Snakes about his and
Draco�s presence in Diagon Alley. The things they proclaimed they would do to
Andromeda, and to Teddy while she watched�Harry was shaking with rage at the
end of them. If they were from the Masked Lady, she had learned the art of
personal torture from a finer master than Voldemort.

�� He lifted
his eyes, ready to reassure Andromeda that of course he would do anything he
could to protect her and his godson.

�� And then
the attack happened.

�� Enormous
balls of yellow-green gas puffed up from the center of the table, where the Daily Prophet lay open. Harry reacted so
fast he could barely follow his own movements; he drew his wand, cast a spell
that knocked James to the floor, and then dived, sheltering Al under his body.

�� He heard
Ginny and Andromeda cry out, but far more terrifying than that were the screams
of his children.

�� Harry felt
the gas curl around the edges of his hair. Just that touch of it made his skin
crisp and his eyes water and the horrible, tearing impulse to cough start in
his chest.

�� He did not
even want to imagine what that gas would do to a three-year-old, or a
two-year-old, or a five-month-old baby.

�� He rolled
over on his back, though he had dropped Al and was still sheltering him with
his shoulders, because he had to be able to see where the gas was. It had
lowered and spread, and now extended lazy tendrils around the table towards
James and Andromeda, and further into the house, so they couldn�t run away from
it.

�� His rage
boiling inside him, Harry lifted his wand and shouted a spell that he wasn�t
supposed to know, a spell that he had got from studying one of the Dark Arts
books that Hermione kept in her office purely for research purposes.

*

�� Draco
couldn�t breathe. His eyes watered with the effort of staring, trying to make
sure that Scorpius was all right. The Blood Hydra had broken the Shield Charm
and knocked him down, and now the nearest head swayed menacingly above him, as
though the evil will behind the spell were trying to decide whether it should
dive and break his ribs, or savor its own triumph further.

�� But Draco
couldn�t care if he did die in the
next moment. The Blood Hydra had his son.

�� He had to
do something to save Scorpius, but he had no idea what he could do. The nearest loop of the dark crimson body was pinning his
wand and his wand hand to the floor, and so far, it hadn�t done anything to
Scorpius. They were all caught in a sharpness beyond fear, waiting for the
moment when the tension would break.

�� A moment
later, he realized the Blood Hydra and he himself had made the same mistake: they
had forgotten about his mother.

�� Ardus!�

�� The Blood
Hydra screamed and thrashed like a living snake as Narcissa�s spell arched past
Draco, surrounding it with a corona of white-yellow glare like the light of a
desert sun. The Dehydration Curse struck deep into the blood, drying it from
the inside out, greedily swallowing and destroying the material it needed to
exist.

�� The weight
on Draco�s wand arm vanished.

�� And when
Scorpius, who had been suspended in the midst of the wet coils several feet
from the floor, began to drop, he was ready.

�� Accio Scorpius!� Draco shouted. He
hadn�t cast a spell with so much force in his life, and the result was that the
spell obeyed his unspoken intention as well as his stated one. Instead of
yanking his baby boy across the air, the Summoning Charm floated him gently
into Draco�s arms. Draco embraced him and bowed his head to rest his cheek on
the sweat-matted blond hair, wondering if he�d ever be able to let him go
again.

�� He felt
Narcissa�s hand on his shoulder a moment later, and then Scorpius whispered,
�Daddy?� And Draco had to blink the tears away.

�� But not the
burning rage that assaulted him now, slow and long-blazing, the desire to kill
the person or people who had caused him that moment of fear. The tears might
abandon his eyes, and welcome. That rage would never leave him.

*

�� Spiritus conpello!�

�� Harry�s
shouted spell gave him control of every molecule of air in the room. He was
suddenly intimately aware, in ways he had never wanted to be, of how his wife
and Andromeda and the children were breathing. And he could feel the small
currents passing around his own hair and in and out through the window and
beneath the door.

�� This spell
was considered Dark Arts because it would be easy for a wizard using it to
suffocate an enemy without fuss. But Harry had wanted to use it to take control
of the air on which the gas drifted, and it let him do that.

�� The gas
drove together into a compact ball at his will, though he could feel the magic
that had raised it out of the newspaper in the first place fighting weakly
against him. Harry shrieked, a sound of pure frustration and hatred, through
clenched teeth, and the magic bowed to his greater force. In moments, every
tiny bead of yellow-green smog was whirling together, faster and faster. Harry
cast another spell he wasn�t supposed to know, this time nonverbally. In the
next moment, the gas had ceased to exist.

�� He muttered
the Finite next, to release his
control of the others� air, and at once turned to check on Al. Al was crying
silently when Harry picked him up, and he clung so hard to his father that it
was difficult for Harry to check his nose and mouth at first, so that he could
make sure no gas had burrowed into his sinuses. But no, he was well.

�� When he
turned, he realized that Andromeda had already completed a similar check of
Teddy, and Ginny nodded at him over the tops of James and Lily�s heads to
signify that both were unhurt. She was clutching them tightly enough that James
was fussing. Harry couldn�t blame her.

�� He rose
swiftly to his feet, still cradling Al in his arms, and strode into the drawing
room. He didn�t consider the immediate consequences of his actions, how it
would get him a lecture from Ginny and from Hermione if she knew, because he needed to know.

�� He lit the
logs with a wave of his wand, cast a handful of Floo powder into the flames,
and shouted, �Malfoy Manor!�

�� It took him
several minutes to receive an answer, which made him stamp and fret and stroke
Al�s back in an attempt to recover a semblance of calm. But then Draco
appeared, holding Scorpius close enough that his head also softly entered the
flames.

�� Harry met
Draco�s eyes. He knew in an instant that something similar had happened, though
not the details, and he knew intimately the killing fury that had eclipsed all
of Draco�s other emotions.

�� He had
never shared a look so intense with another human being. Harry felt another
bond settle into place between them with a solid click, though it was more like
an iron chain than the soft, infinitely flexible connections of the life-debts.
They would fight this war together, yes, and now for the same reasons.

�� He�s
well,� Draco whispered.

�� And all�s
well here,� said Harry, the tension melting from his shoulders. �We��

�� A
thundering knock sounded on the door to the house. Harry turned around, wand
already held up before him.

�� He heard
Ginny asking a question, and smiled grimly. Good
girl. It was probably Ron or Hermione at the door, but she would make sure,
first, that it wasn�t someone using Polyjuice, by asking something only the
four of them would know.

�� Ron was in
the room a moment later, shaking off windblown bits of leaf, and flecks of
soot, and blood.

�� He answered
Harry�s questions with an expressive grimace, and then, �They hit Diagon Alley.
Brought down all the force they could, which was�enough. We received a warning
just a few minutes before, and so we were able to avert what might have been
the worst of it. But�� He shook his head.

�� Harry had
known Ron Weasley for seventeen years, and he knew something was wrong now. �What
is it?� he asked.

�� Ron shut
his eyes. �They hit every shop along the Alley especially hard,� he said. �We
need you to come right away. George is dying.�

*

�� Daft Fear:
Well, as Hermione told Harry in this chapter, Harry doesn�t need to give himself to Draco; it would
be by his choice and his choice alone. Their lives wouldn�t be comfortable with
the magic continually yanking at them, but it�s not a necessity to change the
balance that way.

�� Myra: Harry�s
life is about to get even more messy. *screws things up more*

�� A Randy
Harry: Draco would probably find tears just as hard to deal with from Harry. ;)

�� Ginny
essentially thinks Harry is having a midlife crisis, but she doesn�t know the
correct term for it.

�� Harry has,
um, other things to occupy his mind at the moment than whether other men are
attractive.

�� And yes,
Harry is becoming more and more loyal to Draco. But part of that loyalty is
that he wants Draco to find a lover that will satisfy him, instead of waiting
around for Harry, who can�t.

�� Mangacat:
Well, you might receive a clue to the Masked Lady�s identity soon.

�� Rafiq: The
next plot twist on Ginny�s path is something that you might find it hard to
forgive her for, yes. But she does it out of genuine fear of losing Harry.

�� Thrnbrooke,
Soria, Amiyom: Thank you for reviewing!
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I Give You a Wondrous Mirror