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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
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Chapter Twenty-Four--The Greatest Distance

            Harry allowed himself a few moments to cope with what Ginny had told him, and with the thoughts about Draco that fluttered about inside his skull, bumping into the sides like bugs trapped in a jar. Then he stood up, straightened his robes and his cloak, and made his decision.

            He would tell Ron and Hermione that it was no longer a possibility for him to marry Ginny. He would leave it up to Ginny to tell the rest of her family if she wanted to. He had no idea if she would want to or not.

            I never really knew her.

            But he was not going to tell anyone else. He knew that Draco would offer him sympathy, and Narcissa would speak pretty words about how it was always disappointing to lose the hand in marriage of a nice pure-blood girl. But behind the politeness would be a gleam of triumph, a certainty that, now that Harry no longer had a girlfriend, he would consent to have a husband.

            I'm still not bent. I'm still not pure-blood. I'm still not any of the things that I think Draco would ultimately demand in someone he spent the rest of his life with. I trust him, I like him, I'm his friend, but a few shared experiences in trauma can't create a lasting bond. If it did, then I would have been just as good friends with Neville and the rest of the Gryffindors I fought in the final battle with as I am with Ron and Hermione.

            Meanwhile, he had an owl to send to Hermione, asking about other ways to break the marriage bond, since apparently focusing on different hobbies and people didn't work. He had spent more time thinking about Draco than anyone else since he made that resolve.

            Harry paused with a hand on the door and shut his eyes. He couldn't go out there publically rattled. The gossip mills would start grinding, and then a story would appear in the Daily Prophet--without facts, but when had that ever stopped anyone who wanted to read about the Chosen One?--and that would irritate Draco.

            Harry didn't want to irritate Draco.

            He didn't want to hurt him.

            He just didn't want to fall in love with him, either. And sometimes he thought he might if he stayed close enough. Which would just be another disaster, since there was also a difference between loving someone and finding them sexually attractive. Draco deserved someone who would admire the beauty of his face and want to touch him in some other manner than clinging to him with terrified hands.

            He'll probably be hurt when he finds out that I kept breaking up with Ginny from him.

            Harry flinched, but nodded. Well, he could accept that. If he'd ever wanted to live a life without causing pain to anyone, he'd already lost the chance, since he'd hurt Ginny without being aware of it. He didn't think he knew himself very well, either, if he could just thrash around unaware of the way that the people he was closest to, and had been for years, looked at him.

            I'll try. I'll do what I can. But I really can't deal with the way that Draco would react to the news of Ginny walking away from me right now. I just...can't.

            Sometimes Harry was almost grateful for the mask of hero that the public had tried to press onto his face, uncomfortable as it could be. It gave him something to aspire to, something he could use to disguise his true feelings, and he wore it as he stepped out of the interrogation room and swept back to the office. Ron wouldn't have returned from lunch yet, but that was fine. It just gave him more time to settle his emotions into some kind of order.

            By the time that Ron did cautiously peek around the corner, Harry was deep in notes on the Ness case, and immediately fired a question at Ron about runes that made him protest he didn't know anything, and why wasn't Harry asking Hermione?

            Which, of course, gave Harry the perfect excuse to go and send her an owl without his best friend suspecting anything.

            Sometimes he wondered if the Hat's pick for Slytherin was something he should have ignored after all.

*

            Draco leaned back in his private office and yawned in satisfaction into the mirror. For a moment, his reflection smiled back at him, the way Draco had enchanted it to do when no one else was in here and he was feeling in need of the confirmation that he had done well.

            It had been a more than excellent day.

            Those investors and officials who had been displeased by Draco's abrupt disappearance from their negotiations last week had been placated, perhaps by the grave expression Draco permitted onto his face when he hinted at the "unavoidable consequences of family troubles" that he'd also mentioned in his letters to them. As always, Draco had encountered a few who complained that he hadn't sent e-mails, but those who couldn't accept that fact had long since ceased to conduct business with him. Draco dropped enough other dark hints to make them believe, or say that they did, that he'd had to deal with a murder in the family, and that he had personally taken care of the murderers.

            He worked in a world where such ruthlessness was respected. They resumed their rightful positions, circling around him like partner stars, and Draco could return to his business without fears that they would take the opportunity to backstab him. Well, at least without more fears on that score than usual.

            And this afternoon, an owl had brought him word from Laura d'Alveda.

            The letter lay on his desk now, the only single paper on the huge, smooth expanse of ebony wood. Draco reached down now and picked it up, idly admiring the swift strokes of her penmanship.

            Mr. Malfoy:

            Concerning your interesting offer, I propose a meeting on neutral territory. There is a small, newly-opened café in Mathematic Alley that I think would suit us admirably. Do you know it? Meet me there at noon any day of this week if you are serious about your offer.

            Laura d'Alveda.

            She wasted no time, Draco thought. A businesswoman. Clipped and curt, but courteous. She saw no use in pretending when they both knew what he had proposed and what he wanted.

            Harry would never be like that. When he was curt, it was because he was angry. When he was courteous, the person facing him had earned it, or at least Harry thought they had. He'd probably think "diplomacy" a four-letter word.

            Draco closed his eyes. He thought of Harry's face, the blazing green eyes and the expression of trustful sleep in it when he had rested in Draco's arms this weekend and the way his cheeks would flush because he had been doing something he probably thought too gauche for words, like staring at Draco for more than a minute or so.

            He thought of d'Alveda, the last time he had seen her, the smooth dark hair and the focused dark eyes and the sharp nose that sometimes reminded him of Snape's. Every gesture she made reeked of pure-blood, though to someone Muggle it probably reeked of expensive private education. She could conceal or reveal anger, embarrassment, or pleasure if it suited her purposes.

            One picture was the one Draco had often thought of in the past as his future.

            The other was the one he was increasingly coming to suspect would be his future.

            If he agrees to it, at least, Draco thought, and sat up and began to tend to the afternoon's business, wondering as he went what Harry was doing right now.

*

            Hermione's owl came back to him almost at once, her owl puffed up with importance at carrying two messages in half-an-hour.

            Dear Harry,

            I'm sorry to hear what happened, but I think your relationship with Ginny probably couldn't have endured. She wants the first place in the heart of whoever she's with, and that mans that she gave you up when she saw you letting Malfoy take the first place.

            "I didn't bloody let him," Harry complained under his breath as he walked back to his office with the letter. "He just happened to be the one to pull me back from the brink of insanity and despair."

            Then he paused and ran the last sentence through his head again, wondering how it would sound to someone outside the situation. He ended up shrugging impatiently. What mattered was how he and Draco and Ron and Hermione and Ginny dealt with this, not what someone outside it thought. After all, Harry had pretty much had cause to distrust outside interpretation for most of his life.

            There's another magical way to break the marriage bond. It doesn't often succeed, but I think you have a better chance at it than most people, because it requires powerful magic. It's a ritual circle in which you cleanse yourself of unwanted impurities. The marriage bond can be seen as one such impurity, if you play it right.

            She went into lots of details about the circle then, which Harry didn't bother to read. He'd do that when he was actually getting ready to prepare them. He skipped to the last paragraph, where Hermione stopped using words like "required hypotenuse."

            Be careful over the next few weeks. You don't absolutely have to convince yourself before the ritual starts that the marriage bond is something you want to get rid of, but it will make the moment of shedding it a lot easier when it actually arrives. So meditate, think about the reasons you want your life free of the Malfoy connection, and try not to be too intimate with him.

            Harry nodded silently to himself. About what he had figured, and what he would have to do anyway if Draco's suit for Laura d'Alveda's hand was successful.

            He didn't want it to be, with one part of him. That part churned and swarmed and hummed with jealousy like a hive of angry bees. Harry gritted his teeth when he thought about it and slowly forced the emotions back down.

            d'Alveda could never touch what he and Draco had had together. Harry would still be the one Draco had rescued from darkness, and Draco would still be the first one Harry had admitted all the details of his imprisonment to.

            That was what mattered. That was what Harry had to concentrate on. Ending the marriage bond would free both of them for a better future, and it didn't have to damage their friendship.

            Unless Harry let it.

            Draco could let it, too, he reminded himself, and thrust Hermione's letter into his robe pocket as he arrived back at the office. Ron glanced up at him curiously. "You got an answer already, mate?"

            Harry nodded. He'd asked Hermione about the runes first, before he asked about the ways to break the marriage bond, and so it wasn't a lie, what he'd told Ron. It was just a silent addition to the truth. "Yeah. Hermione says that they wouldn't be using the extra liquids from the body to make the runes if they didn't intend them as runes of imprisonment. That means..."

            He was already lying to one important person in his life. He would try not to make a habit of it without anyone else.

*

            "I don't want to be rude, Mrs. Malfoy."

            Draco stepped through the front doors in time to see his mother, who stood opposite Harry in the entrance hall, freeze. The change ran all through her body and stiffened her muscles, made her face a mask of marble, turned her hands into grasping scorpion's claws. Draco shook his head, silently amused, and went to hang up his own cloak. It was understandable that Harry would try to put some distance between him and the rest of the family, after their argument that morning, but he had chosen exactly the wrong way to do it.

            "You are being very rude at the moment," his mother said softly. "When I told you to call me Narcissa."

            Harry stepped back, one hand half-raised as if to shield himself. Then he recovered, took a deep breath, and said, "Of course. I'm sorry--Narcissa. But I really do have important things to do this evening that don't permit me to attend dinner with you. I'm sorry. I'd like to. But it's impossible."

            "Translation," Draco called as he strolled up to them. "I haven't eaten all day and I'm afraid of what my family will do when they find that out."

            For some reason, Harry's head snapped towards him with what looked to be genuine anger, his eyes practically on fire. Draco paused in mid-step, blinking. He thought that had happened when he said I'm afraid. Is he so obsessed with being the perfect Gryffindor hero that he can't admit to fear?

            But Draco had seen with his own eyes that that wasn't it, because the perfect Gryffindor hero would never have permitted himself to recover in the arms of a Slytherin. It must be something else.

            "It's none of your business what I eat," Harry snarled.

            "Why not?" Draco came to a halt with his hands clasped behind his back and smiled at Harry. Harry's face was brilliant red, and he leaned forwards as if he would spring on Draco and strangle him. "Family members should look out for each other. Especially spouses. My mother didn't have to worry much about Lucius, of course, since he would never have thought of denying himself sustenance, but you're a different matter. I already know that you tend to push food far down the list of possible concerns when you're nervous or busy."

            Harry settled back on his heels and moved a step away. "Does that make you the wife in this scenario, then?"

            "What does being the wife mean?" Draco cocked his head meditatively. "Worrying about someone else, being the prettier one, perhaps the one who gets fucked? Maybe."

            Harry's face, which had started to return to a normal color, turned so red that this time Draco thought he might choke. He shifted his weight backwards and shook his head. "Forget I said anything," he mumbled.

            "I assure you, my mother has heard worse," Draco said, and inclined his head in Narcissa's direction. "Particularly from my aunt."

            "That does not mean that I want you to pick up Bella's habit of discussing her bedroom activities at the dinner table, Draco," Narcissa said mildly. "Quite a disgusting activity."

            Harry peered back and forth between them, his face so bewildered that Draco took pity on him. He moved forwards again and looped his arm through Harry's. "Comparing me to a woman is not the insult you think it is," he said. "Marriage means something different to pure-bloods, as I believe I'd informed you already."

            "I didn't mean to insult," Harry started, and then closed his eyes and shook his head. He didn't remove his arm from Draco's, though, and the way he subtly leaned closer made Draco have to clamp his lip between his teeth so that he wouldn't laugh in triumph. Harry's mind might tell him that he should back away and try to romance his little Weasley, and leave Draco to a spouse who could give him children. But his body betrayed him, longing for the comfort that Draco could offer. Draco didn't think he could do it subtly, or he would have tried to rest his free hand on Harry's back for the extra soothing he could offer. "I just really don't have time. I didn't think I could say that politely."

            "You cannot," Narcissa said. "And in particular, I don't want to have to call the house-elves later to feed you. It is much more efficient, for them and for us, if we all eat at once. Come, Draco, Harry." She nodded to both of them and turned ahead to the dining room. Draco towed Harry along with him, though from his open mouth he was still trying to find some way of objecting.

            "Just relax," Draco murmured. "Did you think that you would be able to get away from my mother after insulting her?"

            "I didn't insult her," Harry muttered, bending towards him, and Draco sighed as Harry leaned more heavily on his arm. He enjoyed these moments of contact more than he should, since they were essentially stolen from beneath Harry's notice, but on the other hand, he doubted Harry would grant him as much and as freely as he had a few days ago. "I just said--I implied--oh, hell."

            Draco chuckled into his ear and pulled on his arm. "Yes, you did. You can admit it. People have done less to my mother and had a much worse reception. You're family, and she forgives you for that."

            Harry's face went promptly cold and remote, or as cold and remote as he knew how to make it, which primarily meant the color retreated from his cheeks and the passion from his eyes. "Family," he said. "For now."

            "You're still thinking of ways to end the marriage bond," Draco said. "Aren't you happy here?"

            Harry shook his head. "That has nothing to do with it. How can you marry Laura d'Alveda if I don't get out of the way?"

            "I could still contract a business alliance with her, if nothing else," Draco thought, and wondered if he should pity Harry or not. His own happiness has nothing to do with it. Of course.

            "Do stop whispering to each other, boys. I want some conversation during dinner."

            Harry straightened up, blushing so brilliantly that Draco suffered a brief twinge of jealousy. He would like to be able to affect his husband the same way, with a few carefully-chosen words.

            You can, he reminded himself then, thinking of the way Harry had reacted to him in bed over the last few days. Just not the whole time. And that's a good thing, because it would be boring if you could.

            The first course was duck in orange sauce, which Harry tasted as if he didn't know what the meat was. He might not have had it often enough to be sure, Draco thought, watching him with different eyes now. He was used to seeing the lines of weariness on Harry's face and trying to coax the spark out of his eyes; he was used to the lines of scars on his back, and the way that Harry's chest looked when he was shirtless.

            But there were other things he hadn't noticed before. Harry's startle reflexes, the way he turned his head sharply towards any sound, from the house-elves popping in to the loud clink of a fork on a plate. The way he held himself sharply upright in the chair, as though he hadn't often sat on furniture this fine to eat. (Remembering the benches in the Great Hall at Hogwarts, Draco had to admit that that in and of itself wasn't much of a revelation). The way he ate, neatly but quickly, as if to prevent someone from taking it away.

            The way his robes fit him. They were standard-issue Auror robes, of course, not tailoring, because God forbid that Harry allow anyone to give him gifts or order nice, expensive things for himself. And it was obvious that the robes, while they weren't too short or long at the ankles, had plenty of room at the sides.

            He was always so skinny. In school, I thought it was the Quidditch combined with the fact that he'd rather sneak after Voldemort's minions than eat dinner. But now that he's grown, what is it? Does he take off after suspects the same way? Draco had had the impression that Harry was a touch more responsible now, more likely to wait for his partner to catch up with him instead of trying to slaughter Dark wizards on his own. Perhaps not.

            Clues, clues to notice and assemble together. Perhaps they were linked to the way Harry had reacted to the suggestion that he was afraid. Perhaps Harry thought he should live up to others' expectations of them even if he denied aloud that he was a hero, and this was part of a program of rigorous self-sacrifice.

            We can teach him better.

*

            "And how much time has your friend Hermione spent studying runes? I admit it is a fascinating study, but one that bored me senseless."

            Harry sat there, eating his meat while he tried to think of how to respond. He wasn't even sure which startled him more: Narcissa Malfoy making polite conversation with him in the first place, her saying Hermione's name with no trace of contempt, or admitting that runes had bored her. Harry hadn't thought that most pure-bloods admitted weakness at anything, except perhaps tolerating Muggleborns.

            She's different than you always thought she was.

            But that still didn't mean that Harry wanted her as a mother-in-law for the rest of his life.

            "She's spent several years at it," Harry said, when he realized from Narcissa's pointed smile that he'd been silent too long. "Or--longer than that, I think. She took Ancient Runes at Hogwarts. I never wanted to," he added, thinking he owed Narcissa a tidbit for what she'd fed him. "It seemed too boring."

            Narcissa laughed softly. "Then that is one thing we have in common, Harry. One of many, I'm sure." And she eyed him so complacently that Harry blinked and lifted his fork as a shield between them.

            She really does think that I'm her son-in-law, and that I'm going to stay here as long as the marriage bond lasts. Or--longer. She acts like it's a permanent thing, and not even Draco thinks that.

            "We have heard Harry's news for the day," Narcissa announced then, and turned to Draco. "What is yours, my son?"

            Draco smiled at his mother, and the smile made Harry's throat abruptly ache. He didn't even know if it was because he wanted a mother to smile at like that, or because he wanted to make Draco smile like that himself. Make up your mind, idiot. Harry turned his attention to destruction of the piled fruit cake that the elves had brought.

            "Laura d'Alveda has agreed to meet me," Draco said. "Whether she will agree to marry me is, of course, a different discussion. But I am pleased with her manner. I think we want some of the same things."

            Harry closed his eyes, and told himself that that was a good thing. He would be leaving Draco in the hands of a woman like him, a woman who understood his goals and could give him what he wanted. Harry was sure that none of those criteria applied to him. He could give Draco someone to take care of, someone to trust, but he didn't think he could take care of Draco in return, other than saving his life at odd moments.

            A hand rested on his thigh. Harry jolted and looked at Draco. Yes, it was his, but he kept a calm smile on his face and talked with his mother as though it wasn't. Harry tried briefly to move away, and the hand tightened.

            I don't understand you, Harry thought in his direction. How can you plan to have a future wife while you hold onto me?

            Another puzzle to baffle him. Another reason to be glad that they were separating.

            But at the same time, Harry would have liked to understand, the same way that he would have liked to be able to trust Draco with the news of Ginny leaving and not fear his smugness.

            Another thing to regret.

*

            Anon: It's a braided ring, woven of a thin strand of each metal. Thus, each new braid doesn't add much to the size. Look up pictures of braided rings.

            polka dot: Yes, Ginny has made a decision she can be at peace with. But Harry hasn't.

            Nubia: Not sure what you mean.

            SP777: Not if Draco doesn't know that Ginny broke up with Harry.

            unneeded: Lucius has mostly been brooding. He's good at that.

            little_nite_owl: At the moment, that's not likely to happen. Harry thinks that Draco is going to go ahead and marry someone else, after all.

            Night the Storyteller: What he told Draco he wanted: children, a family to love, etc. And Draco sees no need to listen to Lucius now that he's out of the family.
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The Marriage of True Minds