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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-Seven--An Artificial Distance

            Harry opened his eyes and grimaced. His head pounded the way it did when he hadn't got enough to eat the day before. His stomach also felt like it was sticking to his ribs. He sighed and started to sit up.

            Draco lifted his head from a book and crossed the room to him. "How are you feeling?" he asked quietly.

            Harry studied Draco's face before he answered. Draco looked remarkably calm and collected for someone who had felt the ring buzzing to indicate Harry was in danger, but then again, that could simply indicate that he'd had time to think about it. Harry darted a glance around the room, and groaned. Most of the light came from the fire. He'd slept longer than he thought.

            "I have to stop making a habit of this," he muttered.

            "Caging up your emotions until they eat you alive? I quite agree." Draco didn't smile, although his tone had something like a touch of humor in it. "If you could refrain from hurting my mother, I'd also appreciate it."

            Harry winced. "I didn't do that, did I?"

            "She was far more affected than she would have been if she had spoken with someone outside the family on the same topics." Draco paused, watching him. Harry said nothing, tracing a finger along the edge of his blanket's pattern instead. Draco's voice sharpened. "That ought to tell you how she regards you. This marriage is real in all the most important ways."

            Harry paused to gather his strength before he responded. No, he really didn't want to shout at Draco. He didn't want to go back to exactly what he'd done before, forcing himself away from the Malfoys because their family life was closing in on him like a cage.

            But some things had to change. One of them was this insistence that the marriage bond was the equivalent of any freely chosen marriage. Harry leaned back as much as he could without brushing the pillows with his scars and looked up.

            "I'm getting my strength back," he said. "And I'm going to use some of that strength to disagree with you."

            "I imagine that you will," Draco said. "You wouldn't have let me take care of you in the first place if you weren't at the edge of your strength."

            Harry smiled grimly. "That's true, but I meant it in another way. I trust you, Draco. But I want you to trust me, too."

            Draco frowned at him. "What question have you asked me that I have not answered?"

            "How serious are you about courting Laura d'Alveda?" Harry shifted his arms across the sheets and nodded. Yes, his muscles felt as if he'd had a full night's sleep, which meant that--once he'd had something to eat--he should have the ability to do what he needed to do. "You want her as a wife, and me as a husband. There's a contradiction there that I'd like to have explained." He made the last words diamond-edged as he looked up and into Draco's eyes.

*

            Draco wanted to snap back that Harry didn't understand the complexities of pure-blood tradition, and that he hadn't seemed receptive so far to the idea of being Draco's husband. What did he want, clearly explained and logical feelings when his own were anything but?

            Then Draco caught himself with a sharp breath and closed his eyes, shaking his head. No, that wasn't the way to go about it. Harry would still have lingering traces of embarrassment because he had needed so much care, and the last thing Draco wanted to show him was something that Harry would take as a sign of contempt.

            "I am serious about it because I want a true marriage, by my standards," Draco began.

            "Which you already have, you keep telling me," Harry said. "Why seek something you think is real when you have it?" He sat up all the way, the sheets falling around him, his eyes fastened intently on Draco's face. He didn't have his wand right now, and he didn't need it, not when he could cause terror in Draco just by staring at him. Or, well, not terror, Draco tried to reassure himself. Just the desire to be somewhere safe on the other side of the universe. "So what is it? Is Laura your back-up plan in case I prove more reluctant than you anticipated?"

            Draco paused, but if he was going to pride himself on telling the truth, he couldn't deny that he had thought in exactly those terms. He nodded.

            Harry's eyes flared, and then the shadows that Draco was used to seeing but hated crowded into the back of them. "I see," he said quietly, to no one. His hands clenched in the sheets, and he looked as if he was fighting back a shout. "Well. If you want me to think this is a real marriage, then you'll have to stop the courting. If you don't want me to, continue it, and then help me figure out some way to break the bond."

            "There is no way." Draco took a stiff step forwards, and then stopped himself. He wouldn't touch Harry unless he knew it would be a caress or a reassuring touch instead of the strike it felt like he would give. "My father can change his mind, or one of us can die, and the bond would leave the other free to remarry. Those are the only ones I know."

            Harry gave him a deep smile. "And you've told me yourself that you didn't do some of the reading you should have done, because your father convinced you that certain things about your pure-blood heritage were true that clearly aren't." The last word stung Draco like ice. "Hermione told me about a ritual that can cleanse one of unwanted stains. I was about to perform it when you interrupted me."

            "To get rid of your scars?" Draco asked, because that was the first use that would have occurred to him.

            "To get rid of the bond."

            Draco reared back. He opened his mouth, and realized that he had no words. His throat ached, and he shook his head, but there was no ability to speak when he now knew how Harry regarded their marriage.

            "Why shouldn't I do it?" Harry's eyes were so bright that it would have been pleasant to be able to dismiss his words with the pretense that he had a fever, but Draco knew they were beyond that. "You're seeking another wife. I just hurt your mother, who's been supportive of me for the most part. I don't fit in here. The wards, even, only accept me because of this." He held up his left hand as though making a declaration of war, and the ring shone sullenly. "Your father's been exiled from the family because of me, and I haven't brought any valuable qualities in that could have replaced him. I can't give you children. From every perspective that makes any sense, you should help me break the bond because it's a bad business arrangement."

            There were words in Draco's mouth, now; the only trouble lay in choosing which ones to voice first. He finally did, and his voice cracked from the start, which made him sound less impressive. Then again, given the way Harry was watching him, maybe what he needed was less impressive. "You don't understand. What about the times we saved each other, the trust you've shown me, the secrets you've told? Do you think all of that means nothing?"

            "I think the effect can't linger," Harry said, and now his voice was gentler, and he looked at Draco with something like compassion. "The problem is that we can't build a relationship on things like that, on moments that flash and vanish. I saved your life, but then you saved mine, so there's no life-debt. You got me to rest immediately after the traumatic experiences, but you seem to be turning that into a compulsion to make me rest from my ordinary job, which can't happen. That's the problem, Draco. I can't go on showing you trust just because I showed it once. I have to be an Auror, and I have to investigate cases that are going to put me in danger and make you upset, and you have to be a pure-blood and hold attitudes that I find repugnant in general, even if you relax them for me. It can't work. I think it could serve to make us friends, but even with my friends, I shared other things beyond the life-saving. That was just what made us the most noticeable to other people."

            Draco shook his head. "I can give you more," he said. "I want to give you more. But you keep rejecting it."

            "Not the help," Harry said. "The advice, yes, and the luxuries. But that's it. What else do you really have to offer me, Draco?"

            Draco winced. He might deserve that, on some level--

            But not every level, which meant that behind that came the anger, leaping down into his body from his mind like a kindling fire.

            He leaned forwards. Harry met him gaze-to-gaze, so that they actually ended up closer than Draco would have liked. He tried to ignore that. The important part was spitting the words at Harry and making him understand the truth, even if he had to coat Harry's face with actual spittle.

            "Help. Advice. Luxuries, all of those. And a way to keep you from dying of misguided nobility before you hit thirty, you fucking wanker."

            Harry, damn him, looked just as calm as if someone hadn't started shouting at him. "What if I said my life is not the highest price that I can imagine paying?"

            "It's the highest price I can!" Draco shouted.

            "Even that's not true," Harry said. "I accept that you don't want me to die," he added, cutting off another of Draco's rants before it could begin. "But you could pay with your home, and your own life, and your mother's. I'm just not that important in the scheme of things to the Malfoy family, Draco. I know that. I'm not really surprised, especially when you're courting another woman to become your spouse while I still officially am. Hell, I helped you pick her name out. But you see why it makes me feel that I'm not really part of the family?"

            Draco glared at him, reduced to silence again. It wasn't that he didn't have plenty of arguments he could make, but, well...

            To make them, to state flatly that Harry was important to him and no one could replace him, would mean that he had to give up his backup plans. No pure-blood woman to fall back on comfortably and marry if Harry deserted him. No means to gain social acceptability among his peers the way a real wedding would have. No means to have children.

            Then Draco closed his eyes.

            He had just thought of a marriage with Laura as a "real" one. Which rather contradicted all he'd told Harry about how real this marriage bond was to him, and what it meant.

            And there were means to have children. It simply meant that he would have to do something more complicated than sleeping with his spouse.

            Draco shivered. He had to let go of the ledge he was clinging to and drop into the storm if he was going to satisfy Harry. He had to trust Harry as much as Harry had trusted him with the secret of the scars and how they came to be, and then to touch them.

            He didn't know if he could do it.

            When he opened his eyes, Harry was nodding. "And that's it," he said softly. "It's not that I don't like you, Draco, or trust you. It's that those things are not the same as being married. Not for you, not for me, not even under your mother's definition." He shrugged a little, and for a moment his mouth clamped tight, his face turning bright red. Then he plunged on. "I think I might even be s-sexually attracted to you, but that doesn't make a marriage, either. Thanks for teaching me new things about myself, I suppose? But I'll have to pursue them outside our bond."

            "No, you won't," Draco said.

            "That doesn't mean the same thing as that I don't have to," Harry said, and his eyes had that mad glitter again. "And if we break the bond and so aren't married anymore, then you won't have the ability to dictate what I should do. I wouldn't have to stay here anymore, either. I could go back home, and--"

            "You don't understand," Draco said, although a part of his mind whispered that he couldn't blame Harry for that, not when he hadn't understood until this moment, either. He put his hands on the bed and leaned forwards, doing his best to loom over Harry. Harry just stared back at him, not moving. Note: never attempt to intimidate him when he thinks he's right. "You won't do such things because--because the thought of you sleeping with someone else is repulsive to me."

            "That's just too damn bad, isn't it?" Harry asked softly. "Because the thought of a real spouse, someone who really belongs with me, courting someone else, is also repulsive. But you want to do that. Which means that the marriage isn't real, and I can date and sleep with someone else if I want to."

            Draco shook his head. He wanted to say something about the blistering, rageful jealousy in his mouth without letting it spill over onto Harry, and wasn't sure that he could. Was he the only one affected like this? he wondered. Harry didn't seem jealous so far, or at least he didn't experience this thrumming upset that Draco got from the mere thought of seeing Harry touch another person.

            "It's different," he said at last. "You know what my ideal of marriage is. There would be no passion between Laura and me. We would compromise. But you--I don't want more passion between you and someone else than there is between us."

            "And that's the fucking problem." Harry's voice had lowered, but only got stronger and firmer for all that. "You don't want a marriage like I want, but you don't want me free to find one, either. Well, fuck you. Only I never will," he added tauntingly, and started to roll out of bed.

            Draco reached out and put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

            He choked a minute later. Harry's wand had come out of nowhere and dug into his throat. Draco held still as Harry reached out, picked up his hand, and dropped it from his shoulder to his side.

            "I didn't give you permission to touch my scars," Harry said.

            "You--you came close," Draco said, waiting until Harry had dropped the wand from his throat to try and speak. His heart was hammering wildly, and he didn't know what he was doing or what he wanted or what he would say next. Is this how Harry feels, all the time? It's horrible. "Or you gave me permission to touch the skin between them."

            "And now I'm revoking it." Harry's eyes were brighter and calmer than Draco wanted them to be now.

            Draco closed his eyes. That one statement hurt more than all the thoughts he'd had about Laura not being willing to marry him.

            Which should tell you something.

            But Draco still winced back from the thought of promising that he would give up Laura. Harry hadn't made any such promises; he had talked about going out and finding someone else to fuck, in fact.

            The jealousy burned the inside of Draco's throat again. He opened his eyes. "Fine. Fine, I won't touch you." He backed away and bit the inside of his cheek, hard. He hated the thought of someone else seeing Harry's scars, hearing his war stories, putting him to bed--

            And he had to stop that thought before he broke a wall with his fist. He looked back at Harry and sought for, and found, a calm center where he could speak from. "All right. What would make the marriage real to you? What would keep you here, instead of moving out the minute you get the chance?" What will keep you in my bed?

*

            Harry examined Draco for a minute. His hair was mussed, and his cheeks were such a bright pink that Harry thought he could have made toast on them, and his hands kept flexing shut and open at his sides, full of so much energy that Harry wondered whether he had to worry about Draco punching him.

            He didn't think so. Then again, he'd had lots of thoughts about Draco that had turned out to be less rational than he'd believed at the time.

            "I want you to let me go through with the ritual," he said at last. "I have to be free from the bond." He tried to gentle his voice when Draco's eyes widened. "Don't you see? It's hurting us both, holding us both back from what we really want. It's best if we get rid of it."

            "I've never heard of a ritual that would," Draco said stubbornly.

            Harry rolled his eyes. "And as we all know, your education on such topics has been so complete that it could rival the contents of libraries," he said acidly.

            Draco's flinch seemed to rumble back and forth, all the way up his body. "That was uncalled-for," he said at last.

            "Sorry." Harry shrugged. "But, believe it or not, I really don't want to spend the rest of my life married to someone I fight with like this. Someone I can trust, someone who's helped me, but who isn't all the things I would need someone married to me to be."

            "I could try to be," Draco said. "If you tried to be to me."

            "Fine," Harry said. "Then I could promise not to date anyone else as long as we're still married. If you promise not to court Laura."

            Draco hesitated.

            Harry snorted. "I thought not."

            "I can't--you're asking me to give up an awful lot," Draco said in a voice that stormed and surged through Harry's veins like a tide of alien blood. "A promise of security, of safety. The promise that I could marry someone who would understand the kind of marriage I want, and choose to give it to me. The business-like proposal that I still feel most comfortable with."

            Harry nodded. "I know. And I don't think that either of us should have to compromise, not on something this important. Oh, sure, compromises are part of marriage," he added, seeing Draco open his mouth to argue that part. "But you want all those things, and there are some things I just can't do, like bearing you children. And there are things I'm not willing to give up, like someone I can have sex with and fall in love with. On those things, no, we can't compromise."

            Draco stared at him. "This situation is unusual," he said at last. "But the marriage is as real to us as if I had courted you the way I'm courting Laura."

            "Not real enough to give her up for me," Harry said.

            Draco dropped his eyes.

            "I'll apologize to your mother," Harry said, and stood up, with a careful stretch. His muscles responded to him better than they had that morning, and, much better, the brewing confusion and anger and horror were gone. That was good. Now he could work. He didn't have to try and keep secrets concealed from Draco, either. That might have been what was making me feel worst of all. "And to you, if you want. But I'd really appreciate your help and support in this ritual, because I think it's our best chance to snap the marriage bond."

            "What happens if it doesn't work?" Draco demanded, abruptly, savagely, taking a single long stride forwards as though he assumed Harry would allow Draco to corner him again. "Are you just going to pretend that we're not married anymore, and go out and fuck someone else?"

            "I'll figure that out when it happens," Harry said, and laughed as he heard a rumble from his stomach. "Do you have food about? I'm starving."

            Draco continued looking at him as if he hadn't heard a word Harry had said, or, more likely, as if he were hoping for the failure of the ritual. Harry shrugged and snapped his fingers. Juli appeared before the sound faded. He had to admit, there were some things about being a Malfoy that he would miss when they were gone.

            "I'd like toast, pumpkin juice, whatever kind of meat would be easiest for you to make, a bunch of fruit, and ice cream," he told her. Juli bowed to him, eyes shining ecstatically, and vanished again. Harry turned around to find Draco still staring at him.

            "What?" he asked.

*

            Draco shook his head. He felt as though a world he was confident of knowing how to navigate had broken into little pieces around him. He had been the one to help Harry so far, and letting him out of that dependent role was hard. He wanted to say that, and he wanted to say that he had never known anyone as resilient as Harry, and he wanted to say that he was willing to do a lot to stay in the marriage.

            Laura wasn't even the sticking point. Draco could imagine a future where he stayed married to Harry, and used one of the other methods he had read about to secure the next Malfoy heir.

            But to let go, to just fall, when Harry wanted out and the ritual could work and Draco would be the one left standing there with all his work wasted, all his trust invested when he wouldn't get as much in return, all his boundaries crossed for someone who wouldn't realize the sacrifice he was making...

            He couldn't do it. Not right now, at least. (Not that he had any idea if mere time would change his mind about this, either).

            "Harry," he whispered.

            "What?" Harry watched him with bright, merciless eyes. Draco wondered if that was the last thing a mouse would see, looking up at a hawk as it swooped down.

            Draco took a deep breath, and retreated to an earlier point in the conversation. Telling Harry how he felt right now would also count as a pushing forward of trust into unfamiliar waters, too deep.

            "You said that you share things with your friends outside of the life-saving," he said. "Ordinary moments."

            Harry nodded. "I did."

            "What if we can do those kinds of things?" Draco asked. "What if they worked? Would you go on a date with me, spend time with me at my business one day, or let me spend time with you? Would that work?"

            Harry blinked. "Well," he said at last, "we could try. It doesn't mean that I'd agree to stay married just because we got along there, you know."

            Draco would have liked more of a guarantee, but he nodded. "Agreed," he said. "And in return, I'll help you work on the ritual."

            "Ever the bargain-making Slytherin," Harry said, and although his smile was wide and his voice gentle, his eyes looked a little sad.

            How can I stop being that? Draco thought, sitting down as Harry's food appeared and Harry took a chair to eat it. How can I bend myself until I break when I don't know if it would be worth it, if you would stay?

            He pushed the thoughts aside, because they wouldn't help, and turned to something that would.

            "Tell me about the ritual."

*

            Erin_49: Thank you! Yes, Harry was too focused to notice the ring buzzing, and his emotions were so chaotic he might have ignored it even if he noticed.

            Draco doesn't think there's any way to break the bond; Harry does. We'll see which one of them is right.

            unneeded: A good thing, yes. But Harry doesn't think that being this weak is a good thing, and he's going to struggle against the positions being as simple as Draco being the one with strength and Harry being the one who needs to be taken care of.

            Lumcer: Thank you! I don't yet know how long the story will be, but probably at least 45 chapters or so.

            polka dot: You'll get your chance.

            SP777: Good catch! Yes, that happened, but Harry is alert again and feeling ambivalent about it once more.
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The Marriage of True Minds