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The Marriage of True Minds	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 55082 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Twenty-Two—Opposite Sides of the Ring

            “I had no idea that something so terrible had been done to him.”

            Draco nodded, but kept his head bent over his plate, partially because he hadn’t had a chance to eat before or since the kidnapping, and partially to give his mother time to recover herself. He reached out one hand behind him and skimmed it down the side of Harry’s hip, reassuring both of them that they were still in the same bed.

            Then he went back to the salad. The house-elves had covered it with pieces of chicken, slivers so delicate and chopped that it was easy to miss them among the lettuce. Draco had made a point of picking them out first this time instead of simply eating what came to his fork the way he usually did. His stomach felt like a hollow drum.

            “We must help him.”

            Draco smiled up at Narcissa as she rose to her feet, eyes fixed on Harry. “I agree. And I think the thing that would most help him right now is knowing how the ones who took us broke into the Ministry. They took me in the middle of the street, and using Muggle methods so that I wouldn’t sense their magic in time. It has to be worse for Harry, knowing that they came through the wards of a place where he felt safe. That will damage his confidence for some time to come.”

            And how do I know this? Draco suspected that a large part of it had to do with the ring on his finger. He sneaked a glance down at it, and shook his head when he saw the bronze shining again.

“I will do what I can to find out what we need to know while you stay with Harry,” Narcissa said. She looked like a spear at the moment, Draco thought admiringly, standing straight and proud with her face like a point of ice. She hesitated, then added, “And you will speak reason to him when he wakes up?”

“Of course,” Draco said, a bit insulted that she could think so little of him. “He’ll want to go back to work, but I won’t allow it for a few days.”

Narcissa gave him a steady glance. “I didn’t mean that. I mean that he’ll probably want to put distance between you, because he’ll fear how the marriage bond has changed him.”

Draco looked at his mother surreptitiously, to be sure that she hadn’t grown a marriage ring and a connection to their bond as well. It sounded perfectly like something Harry would try to do, but he was surprised she had noticed. “Yes,” he said. “And I won’t let him. He needs me too badly right now.”

            “Do you need him?” Narcissa ignored the hot flush Draco could feel creeping into his cheeks. “Because that may be the more pertinent question. He will fight back all the harder if he feels himself alone in his weaknesses, if he believes that you are unaffected by the bond, or affected only in being strengthened.”

            Draco turned the ring around so that she could see the bronze, although he had already shown it to her earlier. “Do you think this will let either of us go?”

            Narcissa cocked her head. “It may take some time to convince Harry of that.”

            “Then I will do what I must,” Draco said fiercely. The mere thought of letting Harry go to face the darkness on his own—as his mad plan would probably be—hurt him beneath the heart, as though someone was trying to uproot it from his body. “I won’t—Mother, don’t fear this. Get us the information on the Ministry that we need, and what the witnesses think happened.” He grimaced, feeling as though he was about to hand her a sour apple and tell her it was a sweet orange. “I know that Weasley saw him vanish. The youngest Weasley brother, Harry’s special friend. Would you mind talking to him?”

            Narcissa gave him a steady, bright glance. “Do you think I can fail to make myself charming even for one of them?”

            “Of course not,” Draco said. “I simply hate to ask you to do it.”

            “We both know that he would not speak to you,” his mother murmured. Draco tried to keep his cheeks from coloring. He never knew, when she said something that gently, if she was chiding him for his failure to control his emotions or simply stating a fact. “But yes, I do not mind. Not when it concerns my son-in-law.” The look she gave Harry then, prideful and possessive, would have irritated Draco if it came from someone who was not his mother.

            Including if it came from Ginevra Weasley.

            I cannot let him go. I don’t think he can let me go. I must make him see that, somehow.

            “Besides, between the two of us,” his mother said, stooping to kiss his cheek, “I think you have the harder task, although it will not involve you moving around as much. Good luck, Draco.” Her hand rested briefly on his shoulder in blessing before she turned away.

            Draco finished his salad, called for a bowl of vegetables, and then lay back in the bed next to Harry. Harry kept shifting restlessly to find him when he moved; when Draco pulled his hand back from Harry’s hip, he burrowed his head into Draco’s side, and when Draco leaned too far away to put his water glass on the tray, Harry tangled their legs together. Draco smiled only until he heard the first whimper out of Harry’s throat when that happened. Then he draped his arms around Harry’s shoulders, carefully avoiding the scars, and bent down to breathe in the scent of his hair.

            This was not something to play with. He was Harry’s source of strength at the moment, and he would stay with him, granting him everything he could ask for.

            Whether or not he knew to ask for it.

*

            Harry was alone in the darkness, and he wanted to scream, at least until he turned his head and saw the light shining steadily next to him.

            He’d never seen that before, in all his nightmares of the house where he’d been trapped and the beast that fed on him, and he paused a moment, wondering if it was a trick. If the wizards had captured him again, if they could reach into his head and make him think that he was seeing something that wasn’t there—

            But they had never granted a light to him. Not even the wizard Harry had killed, the one who had lost control of the beast, had done so. And if they could reach into his head, then he wasn’t really still in that pit, he was trapped somewhere in his mind, this was a memory, or a dream, and he could fight his way out.

            He held his hand out, and felt the warmth of the light on his fingers. It wasn’t just light, it was fire, and that was—

            Wonderful.

            He rose out of the sludge and the blackness with a fierceness that surprised him. It was the sort of ferocity that belonged to his memories of the time before the wizards using decay magic had captured him, the sort of clear-headed reaction he had assumed was impossible now. But somehow the light flew alongside him, flooding him with strength, touching him with shadowy, blurred images of wings that healed him. It was like flying alongside a representation of phoenix tears.

            And so Harry opened his eyes, and recognized the clock on the wall, and the bed that cradled him, and the man beside him.

            “How are you feeling?” Draco’s voice was deep and calm. His hand lay across Harry’s chest, which had the shirt gone, again, and he stroked the skin at the edge of a muscle lightly back and forth. His eyes were fastened on Harry’s face.

            Harry felt his skin heat up. He’d never had someone look at him that intimately, not even Ginny, which made no sense. Irritably, he reached up and shoved Draco’s hand away from him.

            Draco lifted it, but let it hover in the air for a moment as though he knew Harry would change his mind, and then brought it right back down where it had been. He stroked and smoothed, giving Harry a chance to feel ripples of sensation running through his skin and down to his groin. Then he moved it back and leaned on his pillow with a careful smile. “Should I take that shove for an answer to my question?” he murmured. “I hope not. I was looking for more details.”

            Harry shut his eyes and reminded himself that Draco had saved him in the darkness, that Harry wouldn’t have survived without him and, what was worse, could have devoured any innocent who came along. Or Draco himself. He knew all that was the truth. He knew that he owed Draco an answer to his question, at the very least.

            And he wanted to answer. He actually did. The problem was that his skin twitched and shivered the way that it did when a bug landed on it, and that Draco’s gaze rested against him like the pressure of another hand.

            Harry wanted at once to acknowledge what lay between them and to warn Draco that it would never be a real marriage, and he wasn’t sure that he knew how to do that without sounding either too soft or too heartless.

            “Harry,” Draco whispered.

            Harry sighed and opened his eyes. He had to stop lying to himself, at least. No, he wasn’t going to be able to back away as much as he wanted to, and his relationships with Draco and Ginny had both already changed forever. He only hoped that Ginny wouldn’t resent that fact too much when she learned it. Draco sounded as though he thought didn’t have anything to resent.

            “I’m fine,” Harry said. “My head hurts a bit,” he added, as he tried to sit up. “And my stomach. Do you have some food?”

            “Of course.” Draco snapped his fingers with the hand down at his side, and a house-elf appeared, bowed, and vanished again so fast that Harry stared doubtfully after it. Draco’s other hand rested on Harry’s hip, rubbing in slow circles the way his hand on Harry’s chest had. “I’m glad that you suffered no worse effects than what you already did,” Draco added in a quiet tone.

            Harry felt his face flame when he remembered what some of those “effects” had been. God, he’d actually begged Draco to stay beside him and said something about the light from his eyes, hadn’t he? He bowed his head.

            “No need to look ashamed,” Draco said, and bent down until he was at Harry’s level again and could smile at him under his drooping fringe. “After learning exactly what you went through, I’m more astonished that you managed to survive with so little trauma.”

            Harry gave him a shaky smile and decided that it would be best to change the subject—something made easier because the house-elf chose to come back with an enormous plate of what looked like spaghetti, if spaghetti came in red and gold and the sauce was white. Harry didn’t know what it was, but it sure smelled delicious. He sat up and rearranged the pillows so that he could continue sitting up while the tray was placed on his lap. He flinched when he picked up a fork and then dropped it. He hated that.

            “Do you need help?” Draco reclined beside him, watching with narrow, interested eyes as Harry started eating.

            “Only on not choking myself,” Harry said, and then let his eyes roll back in his head slightly as he moaned from the taste of the sauce. It was cheese-based, he could tell that much, but the red parts of the dish came from meat, and combined with the cheese and whatever else was in the sauce, they seemed to light fires in his mouth. He looked around for something to ease the heat, and Draco silently handed him a glass of milk. Harry nodded to him and drained it. Draco had another one already, which he arranged on the tray with little fluid motions that suggested he was used to lying beside wounded lovers who needed help with their food.

            Except that Harry knew he wasn’t one of those, and he hated himself for making the “lover” comparison, even in his head. He sighed and put down his fork after a few more delicious bites. “Did you find out anything about how they attacked through the Ministry wards?”

            “I sent my mother to find out,” Draco said.

            Harry blinked at him. “Oh. Does she have more contacts in the Ministry?”

            “Ignoring the obvious, Harry.” Draco’s voice was light, but his eyes weren’t, and he shifted over to rest his hand on Harry’s hip in what felt like a more possessive clutch than it had any right to be. “I didn’t go because I wanted to stay here with you. In fact, you whimpered every time I started to move away.”

            Harry’s flush felt painful, as did the way the food had suddenly lodged in his throat. “Sorry,” he said, and looked around for a glass of water. There was none, but when he clapped his hands, Juli appeared and he asked her for one. She was gone in a literal flash, by which time Harry thought he could turn back to Draco with a little more dignity.

            The slight smile curled at the corner of Draco’s mouth stole his dignity again. Harry shook his head at him. “If you won’t accept it when I say ‘sorry,’ then what will you accept?” he whispered.

            “You getting your head out of your arse,” Draco said. “You trusted me to protect you and bring you back to the Manor and watch over you while you slept. It’s time for you to realize that we can’t go back.” Now his eyes were wide and luminous again, but Harry didn’t think he liked above half the emotions making up that light.

            “I know that,” Harry said. “I’ll never think of you as an enemy again, and I’ll defend you as much as you like to Ron and the others. You saved my sanity.” He glanced at the bronze band on the ring and away. It was best if he didn’t think too much about it.

            “And I don’t despise you,” Draco finished. “So. What does that suggest to you about the marriage bond?”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “You can sound annoyingly like Snape sometimes, did you know that?”

            “Harry.” Draco eased closer to him again, eyes on him so bright that Harry tried to back away. He couldn’t, of course, with the pillows and the tray pinning him down, and he realized for the first time that it was a bad idea to have the food there after all. Then Juli appeared and gave him the glass of water, which meant he had to take it, and that left one hand less free for resisting Draco. Draco didn’t touch him this time, but leaned over him, and his eyes were so—

            His eyes were full of something Harry couldn’t deal with, that was all. He turned his face away. “I ought to firecall Ron before he tries storming the Manor,” he said lightly.

            “Can’t,” Draco said simply. “The Manor’s blood wards are up now. No one can enter who’s not part of the family, for any reason.”

            Harry closed his eyes. “You didn’t need to do that for me,” he said. “If you did that for me.” He wasn’t sure what was more presumptuous, Draco doing something like that for him or him assuming that Draco had ordered it for that reason.

            “I want you to feel safe.”

            Harry opened his eyes slowly. Draco was right there, and it was still as overwhelming as it had been a minute ago, but now he thought he could understand more of Draco’s impulse to be close to him. “Because you—care about me,” he said. “And you don’t think I’m weak no matter how much I need you.”

            Draco’s mouth clamped shut, and his nostrils flared. “No. And if you suggest such a thing again, then I’ll embarrass you by listing all the things about you that I find attractive, and all the ways that you’re strong.”

            “I should have remembered that you were a horrible, evil, sneaky Slytherin,” Harry said with some feeling. “Not even Ron would do something like that to me.”

            “Because, as much as he cares about you, he doesn’t know everything about you that I know.”

            And shit, the intensity was back again, just when Harry thought he’d cracked it with his stupid joke, and Draco was near enough to touch his throat and his face, and his eyes were huge, and his pupils were blazing black, and Harry felt the strong impulse to simply lie back beneath him and let him touch the way he wanted. The way Harry wanted.

            The way I wouldn’t want if not for this bond.

            That was the hell of it. What Harry felt now was good, but it made him have to question everything he was experiencing, because he knew that normally, he would have folded up his weakness in a hard shell and denied Draco the chance to look inside. Was he really doing it now only because Draco had saved him and Harry trusted him? Or did it, more likely, have to do with the changes that the marriage bond was forcing on them as more bands of metal joined the rings?

            He closed his eyes and turned his head away.

            “You’re being silly, now.” Draco’s tone was restrained and quiet, sounding like a statement of fact rather than a condemnation. “You can feel what’s going to happen as well as I can. Do mere friends spend time around each other shirtless and experience these intense flares of feeling that I’m getting?”

            “Sure,” Harry shot back, although his heart was pounding, and it had nothing to do with how near Draco’s hand was to his throat. Well, okay, it did, but not in the way that Harry would have preferred it do. “Ron and I did, when we were swimming near each other the summer before we went off on the Horcrux hunt.”

            Draco didn’t laugh, which Harry thought was a bad sign. And now his fingers closed lightly over Harry’s throat, although he moved them at once, sliding down to Harry’s collarbone as if he was forming a bracelet of flesh.

            Or a ring.

            Harry tensed and knocked Draco’s hand away this time. He heard an angry buzz from the rings, but he didn’t open his eyes. He knew that he wasn’t equal to what was building between them anymore, and Draco would see too much if he looked at him.

            “Harry,” Draco said.

            “Look,” Harry said, and he focused on the words as a means to leash reality and drag it back into some kind of familiar configuration. He could do this. He was equal to getting out of this, just not—not sharing the sort of things that Draco wanted them to share.

            “Yes?” Draco spoke politely, attentively, as though he wanted to hear what Harry was going to say more than anything.

            Harry kept himself from opening his eyes and glaring just in time. He really thought that he might let Draco kiss him if he did that.

            That’s the bond, he reminded himself again. Not some sort of innate attraction to Draco, or disloyalty to Ginny.

            Those particular thoughts hurt like knives driven into his flesh, like the beast’s suckers driven into his flesh—

            No. Nothing hurt as much as that. That was another thought to orient himself towards and spin around, stable. It had its own kind of gravity. Harry filled his mind with Ginny and forced himself to remember the exact shade of her hair before he continued.

            “I know that some things have to change now,” he said. “I know that I can’t lie to you, and that you’re the only one I’ll trust with the full story of what happened today. I’ll tell Ron and the others as much as I need to so that they can start hunting the wizards who attacked us, but—but not everything.”

            “I’m honored to be admitted to your confidence,” Draco said, and his fingers skimmed up Harry’s arm.

            He means it, too, Harry thought, which made his next words all the harder. But he did have to say them. Waiting and fretting would be stupid when he knew where his duty lay. The only difficult part was dragging the sounds out of his throat.

            “But that isn’t the same thing as marriage. I still don’t want to spend the rest of my life married to you and only you. I still don’t want to have sex with you.” He could feel Draco’s quiet smile when he said that, and hurried on, because he thought it was the statement he was most vulnerable on. He hated thinking of Draco that way, as an enemy who would take advantage of the vulnerabilities, but he had to. “I don’t love you the same way I love Ginny.”

            “But you do love me.” Draco’s voice was so simple then, so bright, like light shining through a crystal.

            Harry couldn’t help it. He opened his eyes and turned his face up.

            Draco still lay above him on one elbow, staring down at him with a face tamed and softened in ways that Harry couldn’t remember ever seeing it before. His eyes were half-lidded, and more brilliantly blue than grey. His fingers moved in gentle, random patterns up and down Harry’s arm.

            “Oh, damn,” Harry said helplessly, a commentary on Draco’s beauty as much as anything else.

            Draco bowed his head nearer. Harry’s eyes crossed trying to keep track of the expression on his face, but it never really varied, he saw, from calm and composed. “Yes,” he whispered. “I thought so. It’s changed. Maybe it’s too soon for it to be everything I asked you for a few days ago. That doesn’t matter, Harry, truly. What matters is that we can’t go back, and I think you know the end of this.”

            Harry closed his eyes again. That hurt more than the thought of what he was doing by betraying Ginny.

            “I don’t want to be forced to have sex with you because of the magic of the bond,” he whispered.

            “The magic can’t compel us that way.”

            “Bollocks,” Harry snapped, and his anger helped burn off some of the sweet-smelling fog that seemed to fill his head. He rolled away from Draco’s reaching hand and ignored the wrenching protest in the middle of his own belly, as well as the sudden sensation of unease that made his skin prickle. That was the stupid bond, trying to convince him that he felt safe only around Draco. Of course it would do that, after what they’d been through. Harry had to remember that he would be safe beyond wards, too, and with his friends, and everywhere that Draco couldn’t reach him if he took proper precautions. “It’s already making me crave your touch. If it can do that, it can go further.” He glanced at Draco over his shoulder. “It probably makes you want to touch me more, too. Why aren’t you upset?”

            Draco’s face was quiet, assessing. He reached out as if he would stroke Harry’s shoulder, but Harry managed to shake his head. Draco shrugged and let his hand drop.

            “Well?” Harry snapped, when some time had passed and he’d got no answer. “Why aren’t you upset that the bond’s twisting your emotions around?”

            Draco still paused a few seconds before he answered, but when he did, his voice was low and dark and sent glorious thrills rolling up and down Harry’s spine.

            “What I feel for you after something like that may be mixed up with and influenced by the bond’s magic. But I don’t think it is. I think it simply is true that that experience was overwhelming for us, for both you and me, and we can’t be the same after that. Perhaps the bond has something to do with that. But it doesn’t have to, not given everything that happened.”

            He leaned forwards, face crystalline with intensity now. “And I know that what I saw last night, when you willingly gave in to me, was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

            Harry bowed his head. God, he wasn’t equal to this, he couldn’t cope with it, the feeling of unease at being away from Draco redoubled and his hands clenched and he was afraid that he was going to weep—

            Draco’s hands eased him back into the pillows and brought a flood of comforting warmth into his stomach that chased away the cold. “Hush, Harry,” Draco whispered to him. “You can go back to being the hero tomorrow. Just let me take care of you for today.”

            Harry closed his eyes, knowing he would regret it later, knowing that it was probably more the bond than anything else, knowing that Draco would want nothing to do with him if he was in his own mind—

            And knowing, as Draco curled up beside him, that for now he needed this so badly that none of that mattered. He turned his head and buried his face in Draco’s shoulder, and let Draco hold him.

*

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The Marriage of True Minds