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Bonded Consort	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 33021 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Twenty-Three—Through the Gate
“Neither of us is going through that until you tell us what it does.”
Sirius gave them such a big-eyed glance that Harry would have melted and gone through the misty grey doorway in the wall, but Draco wouldn’t let him. His hand was locked on Harry’s arm. He didn’t move even when Harry tugged.
“Draco.”
“Harry. You’ve spent your life being mistreated by people who couldn’t just tell you the truth. I’m not about to let it happen again.”
Harry blinked. Then he faced Sirius. “That is a legitimate point. If this is something you want me to do, it shouldn’t be a big deal to tell the truth, should it?”
Sirius sighed and looked away from both of them, as well as the swirling grey portal that had opened in the wall of Grimmauld Place. Harry had been watching as closely as he could before it happened, and he was pretty sure that there hadn’t been a door there before. The mist that filled it shifted constantly, but showed nothing beyond even though it almost looked transparent.
“This is part of the ritual that’s required if a new Black heir is being accepted into the family.” Sirius spoke in a strained voice, and Harry looked sharply at him. If Sirius was regretting what he had offered Harry…
But then he saw the pallor of Sirius’s face, and the way sweat was sliding down his cheeks, and he started to believe that this wasn’t just a joke or Marauder stupidity.
“You really can’t talk about it anymore than that, can you?” Harry whispered.
Sirius gasped and abruptly sagged forwards, catching himself by his knuckles on a little end table next to the couch. “No,” he said, and cleared his throat. “I would if I could, pup. I really would. I know what your Malfoy means that you deserve the truth. But the magic doesn’t let me. It’s like waking up with a wet sock stuffed in your mouth after a night of drinking.”
“Should I ask why you’re familiar with that particular disgusting taste?” Draco asked, wrinkling his face hard enough to make it distort. Harry leaned on him and hid his smile against Draco’s shoulder.
“You could ask, but it wouldn’t do any good, because I don’t remember.”
Harry did laugh aloud this time, and ignored the way Draco glanced at him. He thought the mist in the doorway had swirled in time to his laughter. “Tell me one thing, if you can,” he added, because Sirius’s eyes had gone wary. “Does whatever is waiting for me through that doorway want to kill me?”
“No,” Sirius said, and gulped a little. “It wants to test you.”
“And if Harry fails the test, then he’ll die, right?” Draco snarled. His eyes gleamed like a werewolf’s.
“No. He’ll be found unworthy of being the Black heir, and I won’t be allowed to adopt him or give him my last name.”
Draco cocked his head slowly. Harry couldn’t really tell what he was thinking, but he knew the bright gleam of his eyes didn’t portend good things. Harry shook his head and touched his arm. “Sirius is doing what he can to make sure that I survive and get revenge on my family. That’s all he can do.”
“Thank you, Harry.”
“He also could have done more when you were a baby,” Draco muttered, for Harry’s ears alone.
Harry chose to ignore that. Honestly, what else was Sirius supposed to do? He would have got himself thrown into Azkaban if he’d followed some of the suggestions Draco had made when Harry asked him.
And he wouldn’t get anything done by standing here and angsting about what Sirius or Draco might say next. Harry stepped forwards. “I work through that gate and the mist closes about me,” he told Sirius. “And the test is waiting for me?”
Sirius had started to look strained again, but he stood up and nodded at that. “Yes. It won’t make itself hard to find.”
Harry grimaced a little. Wonderful. He had no idea how to do this. He hadn’t received the pure-blood education that Draco had and his siblings probably had and Draco was always ranting Harry should have. Well. He would go in and do his best.
“You don’t have to risk death in order to get revenge on your family, Harry. We’ll find something else.”
“Sirius said it wasn’t death,” Harry pointed out to him, not looking away from the gate. He didn’t have to turn around to hear Draco’s teeth grinding.
“It isn’t.”
“I love you,” Harry told Draco softly, and while he was standing there wide-eyed, leaned over and kissed his cheek, and then turned and plunged into the mist of the gateway.
*
“I’m not going to forgive you if this test ends up taking his life,” Draco told Black, his gaze fixed on the gateway. The frame looked as if it were made of ivory or bone. Either material would have told him something about the nature of the test Harry faced, but not knowing which it was, Draco couldn’t tell anything much. “He’s come this far and he deserves to have a life filled with peace and love, not more challenges.”
“You think I’d forgive myself?”
Draco gave Black a sharp look. The strain that meant he was trying to talk about something forbidden had left his face, but his gaze was still fixed, stricken, on the doorway.
I suppose he does care for Harry in his own way. And not being able to do something for him when he was a baby…
Draco sighed. For a few days he’d carried guilt for not realizing that something was up with the contract earlier and he had originally been betrothed to the Potters’ firstborn. But agony and guilt did no one any good, so he’d released them. He might have to hold Black innocent of the same offenses.
They stood in silence, and watched the mist, as grey as a pearl, shift back and forth.
*
Harry walked almost four steps, and then stopped. The mist was already drifting away, and he was standing next to a lake so blue that it seared his eyes. He blinked and looked up. Yes, there was a sunny sky above, or the lake wouldn’t have been so bright. He shook his head slowly. “What kind of test is this?”
“One I administer.”
Harry whipped around, his hand on his wand, even though he thought it wouldn’t do him much good here. A slender figure stepped towards him. It looked like a woman, at least in the face and the long flowing white hair down its back, but its body was green and joined like a giant insect’s. Its arms waved gently back and forth.
“Are you something connected to the Black family?”
“I am their first magical ancestor.” The—woman, Harry decided, because that was less confusing—cocked her head to the side and studied him. “They don’t acknowledge me because I wasn’t human, and they like to pretend they are, completely.”
That reminded Harry enough of what his family had done that he muttered, “It seems the wizarding world has a problem with that.”
“I do not smell any creature blood in you.”
Harry shook his head. “I’m a Parselmouth, and I changed from a Light wizard to a Dark one when I was a year old and a Dark wizard attacked me and I conquered his magic. My family is Light, and they didn’t like that. They said I was a Squib and exiled me, and then they disowned me when I came back.”
The woman gave a slight, graceful hop backwards, like a grasshopper. The stone around the lake was blossoming into high grass. Harry watched it and kept his hand on his wand. “Come with me. We have something to talk about.”
At least she didn’t say “much,” Harry thought as he followed her. That might mean he wouldn’t be here long, and that meant he wouldn’t distress Draco any more than absolutely necessary.
“This is a seat you may sit in if you think yourself worthy of it,” the woman said, when they had come down a small slope and then up a hillock that humped in front of them. She gestured. On top of the hillock was a black stone that, Harry realized slowly after he’d looked at it for a few seconds, was carved in the shape of a throne.
He shook his head. “No, thanks.”
“Why not? You deserve it. You could sit in it and be more comfortable than you would be on stone and grass while we talked.”
Harry turned and looked at her. He was sure this was part of the test, although he had no idea what it was meant to show. That he was going to reign over the Black family? That he wasn’t? “I don’t think I deserve a throne.”
“Why not? Has your family succeeded in shaming you so thoroughly that you won’t claim what many men would think of as their rightful due?” The woman rested her chin on one of her legs. “How sad.”
Harry had to smile a little, thinking of how those words might make Draco storm straight up the hill to the throne. The woman blinked at him. “I don’t deserve it because I’m not a ruler. I don’t actually want to rule anything. I want to bond with my betrothed, and I want to get to know my godfather. I want my parents to pay for what they did, and I want a peaceful life. But being a ruler wouldn’t get me that.”
The woman’s hair flowed slowly to the side, the only sign that she was cocking her head. Harry couldn’t actually see her do it. “Was the wizard you defeated a Dark Lord?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“It would account for my sense that you would take the throne. Does he still live in you?”
Harry sucked in a hoarse breath. “They said he did, and that was part of their basis for exiling me. Are you saying they were right?”
“You cannot hurt me even if I was saying that,” the woman murmured in response, and she stretched out one great insect leg. Harry gripped his wand, but she only shook her head. “Shhh. I won’t hurt you. I want to confirm something.”
Harry decided, reluctantly, that there was no point to her slaughtering every Black heir who came into the mists in search of the test. Their family would probably think it was more humiliating, and therefore more fun, if they lived and staggered out knowing of their failure. He let her touch his forehead.
His scar.
There was a flash of black light. The woman pulled back her leg and shook it a little. Then she said, “The Darkest magic is concentrated there. Not his spirit, not his will, but it’s no wonder some people thought it could be. That is a core of power you have hardly begun to tap.”
Harry stood there for a second, swaying. It wasn’t because of the black light. He had seen that, but he hadn’t felt a thing.
He was remembering some of the magical theory he’d read in the books that Draco had lent him, the magical education that Draco was always insisting he should have.
He whispered, “I read once about a man whose wand was very powerful. Specially made. I think the book said it had a Lethifold’s shadow inside the core. The wand would move on its own even after he died. Does that—is my scar like that? The Dark magic inside it could make it move?”
“It would be rare, but it could happen.” The woman lifted her head as if she would get a better look at him from another angle. “And I think you are rare enough that it is more likely than otherwise.”
Harry shut his eyes. “So it’s just—really Dark magic. Concentrated there.”
“Yes.”
“Why would it be concentrated there?”
“How did he try to kill you? Dark Lords would not ordinarily try to duel babies.”
“He aimed the Killing Curse at me. That’s all I know.”
The woman nodded. “He probably aimed the Killing Curse between your eyes. Many who use it do so. They want to watch the life fade from the eyes of their victims. It makes sense that the Darkest magic left over is bound near the kill site.” She paused, eyes staring into the distance as if she heard something he didn’t. “I would be careful trying to use that Dark magic. Though it has no will of its own, or his own, it is absurdly powerful and might well whip out of your control if you are not careful.”
“I didn’t know about it before today, so I didn’t try to use it. But thank you for the warning.”
The woman flicked her leg a little. “What kind of heir is the present Black family head adopting? Someone who does not want to sit in a throne, someone who has not received the basic magical training every child of my family line should…”
“Someone who has a lot of ambition and magic,” said Harry, and met her stare for stare. “Someone who still doesn’t know what the test is that I came here to pass, but then, I suppose that you don’t think me worthy to tell, either.”
The woman sighed between her small teeth. “Don’t be like that. I suppose it was stupid of me to say, anyway. You’re also a Parselmouth, and you’re—what were you before your family disowned you? What line?”
“Potter.”
The woman clapped her legs together. “And they got rid of you? They must have declined. At any rate, as far as I am concerned, you have passed the test.”
Harry stared at her. “What do you mean?” He glanced at the black throne again. “Was it not going up there and sitting in that thing?”
“It’s a test of character, something that the young Blacks didn’t have that much of all that often.” The woman shook her head and sighed again. “I tested you for honesty, for your opinion of yourself, for power, and for strength of character. You’ve passed all of them. I didn’t know you would until you started speaking. But you managed to pleasantly surprise me. It’s been a long time since I had a pleasant surprise.”
Harry nodded slowly. He supposed he could see why the Black family magic had kept Sirius from talking about this. There was no way to speak the truth if you were trying to think of what to say all the time, what would be the right answer. “Were you like that?”
“Was I like what?”
“Honest and powerful and strong of character. When you were alive, or out in the world.” He supposed it was possible she might still be alive if she wasn’t human. It seemed like centaurs and vampires and others could live a long time.
The woman shook her head, smiling a little. “That’s not the test you came here to pass. But you may return now. Simply do not speak of what you saw here to anyone who might have a direct influence on the Black family inheritance and need to prove themselves worthy of claiming it.” She waved a leg. “Then again, the magic would prevent you from saying something anyway. Speak to your lover if you like.”
“And the magic will prevent him from saying anything to our children?”
“Yes. What family are you bonding into?”
“The Malfoys.”
The woman tipped her head back and forth. “A good choice. The family that adopted you is making a good choice, and so is the family that you’ll bond into. A shame that your own blood made a different choice.”
“Yeah,” Harry said softly. “A shame.” He was starting to wonder how much of it was. Some of it was Dahlia’s magic, of course, and some of it was the fact that his parents were paranoid about Dark magic to the point that they wanted to be purely “Light,” but the rest of it…
It might all come back to Dumbledore and his incredible paranoia about Voldemort continuing to exist.
The woman extended a leg. “My congratulations. I look forward to meeting one of your children when the time comes for you to choose a new heir to the Black line.”
Harry shook it, and then turned towards the door again. “I just walk back up the hill and around the lake? The gate will be there?”
“Of course it will be there. This is my place most of the time. Why would I want to share it with humans for more than a short period of time, no matter how talented they are?”
Harry grinned at her over his shoulder, and then began to jog.
*
Harry stumbled out of the gate, and Draco snatched him and swept him up. He held Harry as close as he could, feeling the warmth of his arms and the beat of his heart and his laughing protests. He was safe, and Draco didn’t have to worry about his attempt to fit better into pure-blood society costing them both something they could never repay.
“What happened?” he murmured.
“I met one of the Black ancestresses. She had to decide if I was worthy to bear the name.” Harry leaned around him to speak to Black. “She did.”
“Oh, good. I didn’t ever really understand why she chose me, especially since my parents tried to disown me later, so I didn’t know if you would come back out.”
Draco held on more firmly to Harry, to keep from killing Black. Harry made soothing clucking noises at him. “Will you tell me what happened?” Draco whispered into his ear.
“Of course. But the magic will prevent us from telling our children, just in case one of them goes in there to try for the Black inheritance.”
Draco choked on something more than air for a second. Our children.
Harry pulled back, winked at him, and turned to say something to Black. It was about power and the scar on his forehead, and Draco knew he should listen.
But they had time. He could always ask Harry to repeat it.
For the moment, he wanted to stand there and watch his consort, the line of his back straight and his smile free and easy, and clad in a new name. Harry Black.
*
Asuka_Bloodberry: Thank you!
Phoenix-Rob: Awww. thank you!
SickPuppy: Well, the story was meant to make you angry at them, so I'm glad it succeeded!
And believe me, Harry hasn't forgotten about the blankets, either. ;)
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Bonded Consort