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The Marriage of True Minds	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 55083 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
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Chapter Twenty-Three—Across the World

            “How sure are you of this information?”

            Narcissa paused and gave him a level look across the breakfast table. Draco raised his hand in apology and nodded. He shouldn’t have asked that question. If his mother had been less than completely sure, she would have continued her research until she had an answer or at least had discovered who was concealing it. “All right,” he said. “But it seems incredible. Surely they would have tried this before now if they were always capable of it?”

            His mother shook her head lightly, moving one strand of hair out of her face before she took a neat bite of the cream concoction that the house-elves had prepared this morning. They always did that when one of the family had been out late working the night before. Draco wondered idly for a moment why they hadn’t done it for Harry, and then snorted. Of course. The only time Harry had actually eaten after he came home had been that night in Draco’s rooms, three days ago, and Draco had plied him with more substantial food then. And he never had breakfast with them.

            This morning was no exception.

            “Their magic is powerful,” his mother said thoughtfully, “but even it must need some time to work. I suppose that they set their power on the Ministry wards and ordered them to decay, and then struck when they had a hole that had been worn through. But who can say how long it took them to wear through?”

            Draco nodded. When his mother had first brought him the news that the wards surrounding the Auror Department had merely worn and tattered away like rotting flesh, he had been incredulous, but this way made more sense. Harry did say that the decay magic was unlike anything the Ministry had seen before, and he had had the same problems identifying and stopping the source of his enemies’ power.

            “So at least we can tell Harry that no one betrayed him,” Draco said. “It was his enemies all along, but they are more powerful than he suspected.”

            “Yes.” His mother delicately patted a bit of cream off her lips with a napkin. “How sure are you that it was wise to let him go back to work this morning?”

            Draco sighed, but nodded in the way that he would if he was a fencer acknowledging a hit. Thus she repaid him for his doubt about her information before. “Not at all wise. I wanted him to rest another day. But he said two days was enough, and that he would feel better if he was back working on the case.”

            “That part is probably true,” Narcissa said, and crossed her hands on the table as she leaned forwards. “How will he react around others?”

            Draco looked down and rubbed his finger over the ring. He wasn’t sure if he should tell her about the short argument that they’d had when Harry was getting ready to leave for work. Draco didn’t like to think about it because he had pushed harder than he should have at the moment, and he knew it, and he hadn’t been able to resist pushing anyway.

            He had told Harry that he thought Harry should work a light day on the desk and come home at noon. He knew that was standard procedure for Aurors recovering from a disabling experience, and Harry must know it even better than him, since he was part of the Department. He hadn’t anticipated the way that Harry had frozen and then turned to face him, his arms folded in front of him.

            “That wasn’t a disabling experience.”

            Draco had lifted his eyebrows and stared Harry in the face, letting the sheer weight of reality press down on and crush that stupid statement.

            “Not disabling in the sense that you’re thinking of,” Harry said, starting to tap his fingers on his arm and then forcibly stilling them. He looked off to the side. “I wasn’t physically injured in any way that a night’s sleep couldn’t cure. That’s the reason for a noon rest. Aurors who were hurt badly enough to stay in hospital or who had to regrow a limb get those rests.”

            “Mentally is bad enough,” Draco said. “And tell me that you’re going to feel safe in the Ministry, with the wards that didn’t protect you.”

            Harry’s arms unfolded, but his face was cold and opaque, shutting Draco out. “I won’t feel safe,” he said, as if admitting the truth was a personal moral failing. “That doesn’t mean that I can let myself indulge in it.”

            “Indulge.” Draco was furious enough to feel his head buzz. He leaned forwards and reached out to put a hand on Harry’s shoulder.

            Harry ducked without seeming to think about it, and Draco paused. He’d been about to touch one of those scars. If he had ever had the permission to touch anywhere near them, it seemed Harry had just revoked it.

            Harry held his gaze for long moments, eyes ice-green. Then he’d turned and walked out of the house. Draco thought of sending Juli after him to make sure that he had everything he needed, and in the end, he didn’t.

            He glanced up now, and found his mother nodding at him as if he had confessed the whole conversation to her. Her smile was bright and troubled.

            “I would have preferred it if we could take care of him,” she said. “But if he will not listen to us, then we cannot cage him against his will.”

            “Healers do that all the time, to stubborn Aurors who want to go back to work.” Draco folded his arms in turn, and then dropped them when his mother raised an eyebrow. She didn’t approve of such ungraceful gestures, although Draco suspected that Harry would get a pass from her given his upbringing.

            “And you are not a Healer,” Narcissa said. “Not officially. I would call you Harry’s Healer, but he is unlikely to be able to acknowledge that role except at special times.”

            Draco closed his eyes, forcing away the cold, difficult ache in the center of his chest. He had last felt it during his sixth year, when he was striving—impossibly, it seemed—to save his parents. He wondered if he was always doomed to feel helpless where his family was concerned. Perhaps. Perhaps it wasn’t even the worst fate, considering what could have happened to Harry if they hadn’t had the marriage bond.

            But without the marriage bond, would he had given any thought to Harry’s demise other than a fleeting touch of sorrow if the story appeared in the morning paper?

            He liked to think he would have. He liked to think that the Prophet would have chosen some more moving writer than Skeeter to pen the editorial, and that the quality of the man would have shone through the words somehow, and told Draco what he was missing.

            But…

            He didn’t know. It felt intolerable not to care about Harry, to feel Harry push him away, but he didn’t actually know that he would ever have reacted like that without the marriage bond. That made Harry’s fears about the way the bond could twist their emotions make more sense.

            Draco let out a long, slow breath. He couldn’t live his life wrapped up in Harry, although it was tempting. He had to get back to his business, attend the meetings that he’d missed over the last few days, offer excuses, soothe ruffled tempers. And he had an owl to send.

            It was always possible that Harry might not ever yield. Draco would have laughed at the notion yesterday, but Harry hadn’t pushed him away with words then. In that case, Laura d’Alveda was still his second best choice.

*

            We need to talk. Lunch today, outside your office.

            That was all the owl from Ginny said, but it was enough to make Harry’s mouth dry out. He put the parchment down on the desk, wiped his lips, stared at it, and wiped his lips again.

            “Mate?”

            Right. Ron was still there. Harry straightened up and smiled at him. He couldn’t let Ron know that trouble might be brewing between him and Ginny, because Ron wouldn’t put the blame in the right place. It was Harry’s fault for not making the problems clear to Ginny and working through them with her first, not Draco’s. “Yeah? You got anything new on the Ness case?”

            There was nothing, or at least Harry got that from Ron’s scattered reassurances. He tried to keep his eyes away from the simple letter sitting on his desk, as deadly as a vial of plague germs, and they kept going back.

            He would have to be calm, that was all. He would have to accept any harsh words that Ginny chose to offer, he would have to be clear without being defensive, and he would have to…he would have to do the right thing, instead of the almost-right thing or the thing that felt convenient to him at the time.

            He wondered if staying in Draco’s bed for two days had been merely convenient.

            But no. He did think that he had needed it, and if he had tried to skip that rest, then he wouldn’t have been able to return to his job as quickly. As for Draco’s ridiculous idea of going home at noon, ha. Harry would go have lunch with Ginny, and then he would come back and work, and if he and Ron hadn’t solved the Ness case by the time evening came around, then it wouldn’t be his fault.

            He nodded, satisfied with himself, and turned to Ron. Ron was watching him carefully, almost holding his breath, as if he thought he could do something that would set off a flashback. Harry smiled to reassure him and leaned forwards, folding his hands on the desk. “So. What did Wilkinson find out about the runes?”

*

            “Draco. A word with you.”

            Draco raised an eyebrow and turned around. He still had the letter he had written to d’Alveda in his hands. He had been going to find a house-elf to take it to the Owlery, but he had looked out the window at the mild sunshine and decided that he wanted to walk. He hadn’t expected the call from behind him.

            “Lucius,” he said. “An unexpected surprise.”

            Lucius pulled to a stop at the head of the staircase he had called down, and his hands tightened briefly on the marble banisters. Then he shook his head as though to dismiss a fancy and continued down the steps. Draco waited for him, smiling faintly, but his father was a fool if he thought the smile indicated gentleness.

            You will never find me soft again. I wonder if you thought that I would be, without Harry around to lend me strength?

            Of course Draco would have preferred to have this confrontation when Harry was with him, but that was not the same as needing him. He turned the letter slightly as though looking it over for last-minute mistakes, though in reality he didn’t want Lucius getting a look at the name on it, and then fixed him with a polite glance as he came to a halt at the foot of the steps.

            “I had hoped that you would say ‘pleasure,’” Lucius murmured. “It is a pleasure to me, to see you.”

            “You’ve been without much company,” Draco said. “A flobberworm might be pleasant at the moment.” Lucius’s mouth worked, and Draco rolled his eyes, not caring now if he saw the impatience. He no longer owed this man the courtesy and respect that had kept his hands stilled for so long. “What do you want?”

            “A chat with my son.”

            “Who I no longer am.” Draco made a show of checking the gold watch that he wore on one wrist and turning away. “If that’s all, I have a meeting at noon that I should get to as soon as possible. Some of these people cannot be soothed by letter.”

            “Draco, this could be important information. I wish to speak to you about the marriage bond.”

            Draco controlled the prickling of tension that wanted to spread down his shoulders, and forced boredom out of him as if he was extending tendrils. “Yes, yes, I know, just one vault or a bit of power. You need not ask, Lucius.” It was hard, sometimes, to remember to address him by that name and not the relationship they no longer shared. “The answer is no.”

            “I am speaking now about your safety, and not the price I would ask for dissolving the bond,” Lucius said sharply.

            “Oh, did you discover something that would allow you to twist the bond around so that it strangles us if we don’t do as you wish?” Draco turned his head and gave his father a bland look. He had spent enough time reading in the library that he was fairly sure no such side to the bond existed. For one thing, his father would doubtless have used it by now. “I’m sorry, but I have more important things to worry about than your nonsense.”

            “I am talking about the scars on Potter’s back, and the danger that they could pose to you if the bond continues.”

            Draco spent a few quick moments, while to all appearances he was gazing at Lucius with somnolent boredom, reviewing the ways that Lucius could have heard about it. He could no longer command the house-elves to tell him, but Draco and his mother had not always been careful, and Harry could have been talking to himself or firecalling his friends, yesterday, about it without taking precautions. In the end, Draco thought, the most important thing was not to look for what or who had betrayed them but determine what Lucius already knew.

            “You can’t take them over and use them as weapons of mass destruction,” he said. “Sorry.”

            “If they kill you,” Lucius said, his face resembling the marble behind him now, “then my best hope for control of the family dies with you. I know that.”

            Draco shook his head. “They won’t kill me, Lucius. We’ve spent some time estimating the dangers, and the marriage bond itself creates a connection between us that should protect me. You gave us a measure of protection when you forced us together. Thank you for that,” he added wryly. “And you said before that you liked my chosen. Have you changed your mind?”

            Lucius said nothing, but watched him with eyes that seemed to have hardened. Draco smiled back at him. Of course Lucius was frustrated. Draco was no longer utterly miserable and on the verge of giving in to him just so that he would end the bond. None of his father’s plans were going the way he had expected them to.

            “You ought to know,” Lucius breathed at last, “that I do not want my son killed.”

            “If the scars kill me,” Draco said, “then the death stems directly from your actions. Your consequences contradict your words.”

            “There is no one in the world that you can trust as you can trust me,” Lucius said. “If you only knew how much the welfare of the family matters to me—”

            “Bollocks,” Draco said, and saw Lucius blink. He wasn’t used to Draco insulting him like that, no matter how angry he got. He had taught Draco that the family mattered before all, that personal quarrels between its members should be smoothed over so they could talk together and make financial decisions in cold civility, and that the magical words “the welfare of the family” should dissipate anger.

            But Draco understood the purpose of that education now, as he hadn’t before. It was of a piece with what Lucius had told him about forced marriage bonds. It was meant to control him, not make him a better heir.

            “What matters to you are your power and your safety,” Draco said, “and your ability to disguise them by calling them sacrifices for the good of the family. What you taught me, what you attempted to teach me, what you want me to do…those are related to propping you up in power. You don’t value the family as a whole, or you would have stepped peacefully aside when the Wizengamot gave its duties and rights to me and tried to teach me how to be a good head. But you’re so focused on getting your own back that it comes to read more like a desperate individual grasping for the only strength he can still possess.”

            Lucius hissed as though he was a kettle. “You have understood nothing if you think of it that way,” he said, but his voice shook, and Draco smiled.

            “Really?” he asked, all gentleness, all softness, because his father wasn’t the only one who could use a mask like that. “You should have had more confidence in your own teaching, that you were molding me into someone who could easily take on the family and do you proud. That you didn’t was my first clue. You never thought that anything you did was wrong, so how could you have taught me incorrectly?

            “You didn’t think you had. Instead, you simply weren’t ready to see me become your heir, whatever you said, until you were dead and no longer had to see it.”

            “Draco,” Lucius said once, and then stood there, as though he needed to carefully consider his next words.

            “I understand now,” Draco said. “And I understand the options that are open to me now, the ways I can change my life.” He bowed and smiled at his father for a moment. “A large number of them are because of Harry, and his coming into my life.”

            He left Lucius looking as if he were chewing dried, salted meat, and walked to the Owlery. The letter to d’Alveda didn’t burn his skin more than the leaping enthusiasm that worked through him on the inside.

            He was free of the most profound chains, the ones that Lucius had tried to bind around the inside of his skull.

*

            She was waiting for him in the corridor when he came out. Ron straightened up and looked back and forth between his sister and his best mate as though he assumed he would have to interfere, but from the moment he met Ginny’s eyes, Harry knew this was a conflict Ron could do no good by entering. It was up to him, the way it should have been from the beginning, when he first suspected that the marriage bond might steal him from Ginny.

            “Ron,” he said quietly. “Go away.” He would have looked to the side to smile at him reassuringly, but he found that he couldn’t take his eyes from Ginny’s, such a deep brown and so full of hurt and pride.

            “Yes, do,” Ginny said, and flipped her hand in a dismissive gesture. Harry wasn’t sure Ron would have taken that gesture from him, but with both of them agreed, he did nothing but nod and retreat. Harry had the impression that he looked over his shoulder multiple times, but then again, he couldn’t look away from Ginny to check.

            “Where can we go that’s private to talk?” Ginny asked, her words little more than an exhale.

            Harry led her to one of the interrogation rooms—not the best choices, perhaps, but the only utterly private spaces in the Department, and ones with thick wards. Ginny stepped in, took in the chairs and table and blank walls, and nodded, swooping one of the chairs out so that she could sit down in it. Harry took in the somberness of her black gown and silver jewelry against her red hair, and wondered if she was going to a funeral.

            She might as well be, if their conversation couldn’t work out the way he hoped it would.

            He sighed and took a seat across from her. “What did you most want to talk about?” he asked.

            “What that means,” Ginny said, and nodded at the ring on his finger. Harry honestly didn’t know what she had indicated until he looked down and saw the gleam of the bronze. He’d had time to get used to it during the two days he was with Draco, because Draco took the chance to refer to it so often and turn the rings so that it flashed.

            “That Draco saved my sanity,” he said. “The wizards who kidnapped me put me in a dark room, and I started to break down.” That much, he could tell anyone who was already aware of his fear of darkness without flinching. Harry wouldn’t hand that information to just anyone in the first place, of course. “I would have gone mad if they hadn’t brought Draco to the same place. The marriage bond flared and made me aware that I was causing him pain. He drew me back, and the way he spoke to me and touched me…”

            “You’re in love with him.”

            Of all the things Ginny might have said in response to his revelation, Harry hadn’t expected that. He started up and wildly shook his head. “That’s impossible, Ginny! I can’t be in love with two people at once, and I’m in love with you.”

            Ginny took a long, deep breath, and rose to her feet. She faced him, although Harry thought what she would really have liked was to pace back and forth.

            “I’ve never saved your sanity,” she said softly.

            “You did during my fifth year, when you reminded me that Voldemort had possessed you, too!” Harry leaned forwards pleadingly. “You gave me someone to talk to.”

            For a moment, Ginny smiled, and then the smile faded. “Yes, and you saved my life, too, when you came to rescue me in the Chamber of Secrets,” she told him, eyes steady. “But that was a long time ago, Harry. These incidents are recent. It’s no wonder you’re thinking more about Malfoy, or—there’s this look that comes into your eyes when you’re talking about him, did you know? Like you’re gazing on distant mountains, and you’re sick with longing to see what’s on the other side.”

            “Is that what you think?” Harry snarled. “That if someone saves my life in the future, I’ll fall in love with him, too? I’m not in love with Ron despite all the times we’ve saved each other’s lives as partners!”

            Ginny shook her head. “It’s different with Malfoy, the fact that you’re living with him, the intensity that you feel for each other.”

            “I never wanted to,” Harry whispered. He could feel her drawing away from him, ending it, and he didn’t know how to convince her to change her mind. “I didn’t choose this, not any of it.”

            “I know,” Ginny said. For a moment, she reached forwards and cupped his cheek. “But I think we need to face reality, Harry. I love you, you love me, but not always in the same ways, and you’re drawing away from me. I don’t want to be your lover on the side while you’re married to someone else. I want to be married to someone who’s the father of my children, who’s my only lover.”

            “Me, too!” Harry caught her hand and tried to hold it. “Please, Gin?”

            She gave him a gentle, killing smile. “If you’re free from the marriage bond and still think of me sometime in the next few years,” she said softly, “and I’m still free, then come find me, and we’ll try again. But I’m not going to wait around for you, and I don’t think you should wait for anyone, either.” She kissed him on the cheek this time. Harry tried to turn to the side and meet her lips with his, but she stepped back before that could happen. “I think you should be yourself, as hard as you can.”

            She walked out of the room.

            Harry bowed his head and put his left hand across it, feeling the hard, smooth, cold metal of the ring on his forehead. His chest ached.

            The marriage bond had given him many things that were valuable: a way to trust Draco, someone he felt comfortable talking to the scars about, two people he could say were his family, a place he could call home.

            But it was taking from him, too, and Harry didn’t think it had taken all it would yet. What was next? His friendships with Ron and Hermione? His welcome among the Weasleys? His career as an Auror?

            I don’t want to abandon everything I am, simply to be a Malfoy.

*

            Erin_49: There’s not a band for sexual attraction because that’s not an action in the same way that something like saving a life is. But there will be other bands, yes.

            And good call on Harry’s stubbornness resurfacing.

            unneeded: Yeah, it’s backfired a bit. Harry trusts Draco, but he doesn’t trust him more than his friends, just in a different way.

            polka dot: Glad you liked it.

            undisclosedtoyou: Thanks! I think that I feel the same way you do about Narcissa.

            Nubia: Harry doesn’t think it’s love yet.

            SP777: No one has thought of asking Lucius because the decaying magic and the beast are new as far as Harry can tell. Lucius wouldn’t be much help with utterly new magic.

            The individual bands are fairly small and braided into one another, so the ring only grows a little bit with each addition.

            I guess you got your wish about Ginny?

            Night the Storyteller: Ginny has made her decision. Not so sure about Ron and Hermione.
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The Marriage of True Minds