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The Name I'll Give to Thee	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 42129 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 6
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Chapter Twenty-Seven—Know Thine Enemy

            “She says she doesn’t know anything more. But there’s no doubt that the attack on us with the dragon was definitely Shepherd.”

            Harry glanced up from the other side of the table, where he had been picking steadily at his food. Draco intended to keep an eye on that. When Harry didn’t have an appetite for the luxuries that Ossy could offer him, then Draco knew something had upset his stomach, his mind, or both. Maybe his conscience, after his effective torture of Robbs earlier.

            Draco pushed away the memory of how much that had upset his own stomach. They would have learned nothing without the Veritaserum. Whether she feared them, Shepherd, or the justice they might bring her to if she confessed anything, Robbs would have kept her mouth shut through all their threats.

            Harry is good at bringing threats to life.

            He was, and Draco had married him partially for that—or in consequence of that. He had made his threat to the Dementors’ ghosts real, in a way that no one else could have, or would have dared, and so Draco’s life had flown to pieces, and this marriage had risen from the ashes.

            If I think about all the things we owe each other and whether I should be more happy or frightened to have him in my life, I will go mad. Draco leaned forwards and clapped his hands. Harry looked up from his mostly untouched plate in response, blinking.

            “So,” Draco said, his eyes never moving from Harry’s face. “I want to know how you think we should fight these enemies.”

            Harry took a deep breath and put the plate off to one side. Ossy appeared next to him and glared at him. Harry resisted the glare, or ignored it, which made Draco stare at him all the more. His father had responded when Ossy glared like that, because one had no choice. But Harry simply said, “First, I want to know more about this connection between Shepherd and the attack. How could he have enough money to hire a dragon, or people capable of handling a dragon, and an assassin, but still need your vaults?”

            Draco smiled thinly. “An interesting question, and one that Robbs wasn’t able to provide the answer to. But I think they’re likely people that Shepherd owes money to himself, willing to grasp at straws rather than give up any chance of payment on the debts. Shepherd’s probably promised them—”

            “That he can pay them when he comes into the Malfoy estates,” Harry said, nodding. “Yes, I’ve investigated several crimes where something like that was the motive.” Draco ignored the frisson of feeling that hearing Harry talk about his Auror career brought him. He had promised to be reasonable. “But it still seems odd to me that he would have tried to kill me. Wouldn’t he automatically become the heir to the estates if you were dead? Why not target you?”

            Draco shook his head. “The status of my heir—if you and I both died—is unclear.” He paused, and watched Harry blink a moment and absorb, again, that he was the Malfoy heir. Draco wondered wearily how many repetitions it would take for Harry to understand that instinctively. “It might go to Shepherd, but there are other Malfoy relatives, some of whom might have forgotten all about that connection. The Ministry would most likely seize the estate and hold it in trust, and then manage to dispose of it in their own way.”

            “Your mother has no claim,” Harry murmured.

            Draco shook his head again. “To nothing except whatever property and money she brought into the marriage. She’s not a Malfoy by blood, but more than that, her status as the heir’s spouse was effectively ended when my father went to prison. I’m the head of the family, and you are my heir—”

            “Because of the adoption-like way the demi-marriage works,” Harry said, nodding thoughtfully. Draco smiled, glad that Harry didn’t require an explanation as to why he could be an heir of the family and Narcissa couldn’t. “All right. So he should have tried to kill you before you got married, if he was going to.”

            “Yes.” Draco leaned back, gaze fixed on Harry. “The succession of the family is assured now, even if I die childless, or simply die. You’re my heir.”

            Harry ducked his head as though he didn’t know whether he wanted to flinch or flush in embarrassment. Then he said, “So. All right. So that was probably Shepherd. Did she give you any information that would lead you to the people who stabbed you at the Ministry party?”

            Draco shook his head. “I think we were right before, and they are two separate sets of enemies, who perhaps want different things, not working together. That would make sense in that Shepherd wanted to kill you and whoever stabbed me at the party wanted to kill me.” He waited only until Harry nodded before he continued smoothly, “And now I want you to explain to me why you aren’t eating.”

            Harry blinked at him, then at his plate, and finally seemed to notice Ossy, who hadn’t moved or changed his glare in the time they’d been talking. He cleared his throat and said, “I thought—I thought you knew.”

            “Amazing as I am, Harry, I cannot read your mind.” Draco let himself lean back against his chair and relax, to show Harry that he didn’t want to pressure him. But he remained looking at him.

            Harry sighed. “All right. I know that one reason you didn’t want to force Veritaserum down Robbs’s throat was that Voldemort forced you to torture people during the war.”

            Draco stared at him. Then he said, “You sound very confident about the reasons for my reaction.”

            “Your face looked the way it did when I saw you in the visions that my scar gave me,” Harry said, putting his hand up to his forehead, and then lowering it again in confusion, perhaps because he had felt the dragon instead of the lightning bolt. “And I saw a similar memory in the demi-marriage ritual.”

            Draco felt as though someone had given him a blow to the stomach. He had never anticipated that that particular secret would come out.

            Or perhaps he had never anticipated that it would and the person who knew it would have a reaction other than laughing or condemning him for cowardice. Harry sat there and looked at him steadily with eyes full of compassion. Draco would have bolted out of the room if Blaise had known.

            But Harry is not Blaise. I think he amply proved that in the Ministry yesterday.

            Draco cleared his throat, because the conversation would go nowhere until he did, and then said, “And what about it? You took over and poured the potion down her throat so I didn’t have to. That’s the kind of thing spouses in a working marriage should do for each other, I think.”

            Harry took a breath as though about to plunge into deep water. “I know you probably dislike me more than you did, or—or despise me, or something, because I showed that I could commit that kind of torture.”

            Draco did some more staring. Then he said, “What have I done to make you think so?”

            “The way you looked at me after I did the forcing,” Harry said. “And after that. You were surprised I had that in me, and maybe you would have been happier if you’d never known.” He was talking to his hands in a monotone. “I’m sorry, Draco. I just think that we really did need to know the information she was concealing, and there was no way other than the Veritaserum to know that for sure. And she never would have taken it of her own free will.”

            Draco stood up. Harry watched him with wide eyes.

            Draco walked around the table. Harry looked as though he wished he were somewhere else.

            Draco placed his hands on Harry’s shoulders, leaned into his face, and said gently, “Listen, you idiot. I’m grateful that you could do what I couldn’t. You’re right in everything you said. It startled me that you could be that forceful, but I told you I know what I want, and I do. That’s you.”

*

            Harry wanted to close his eyes and sink deeper into sleep. This felt like a wonderful dream he should never wake up from, because nothing would ever be as good again.

            And then he blushed, because why was he thinking that kind of thing about Draco?

            Draco’s hands moved to his cheeks, and stroked up and down. Draco was still staring at him from too close, and for some reason it felt far more intimate than it should have, as though Harry didn’t have to just shut his eyes and turn away in order to end it. Harry hung his head and swallowed.

            “I want to know what you’re thinking,” Draco said quietly. “I did say this before, and you act as though this is the first time. So what are you thinking, Harry?” Harry told himself that he imagined the small pause between the last word and his name, as well as the way that Draco’s hand moved briefly to the back of his neck, as though to hold him in place.

            Harry took a deep breath. There was something preying on his mind, and he hoped Draco would listen to it instead of reacting with immediate outrage, because it was the only thing he had to offer. His confused, wordless emotions at the moment were beyond even him. “I just—I think that you should know Ron persuaded me to stand up against the Ministry.”

            Draco froze for a moment. But he didn’t take his hands away, or his eyes, and Harry shivered as Draco’s hands stroked up and down again. “How did he do that?” Draco asked. “By not being me?”

            Harry shook his head, and that dislodged Draco’s hands a little, but not enough to give Harry back his breath. “Not—exactly,” Harry whispered. “He didn’t talk about the danger he thought I would have endured. He talked about the anger that he’d had to handle as my partner.”

            Draco snorted, but still didn’t move away, although Harry thought the stroking of his hands was more mindless than anything now, not something he was thinking about. “He gave you someone to protect.”

            Harry lifted his eyebrows and retreated to the safe ground of a row they’d probably have forever. “That’s part of the reason I want to be an Auror, too. Some of it might come from a desire to please people and reconcile them to my fame, but not all of it.”

            “I do realize that,” Draco said, and then repeated it, as if he thought one speaking of it might not be enough to seal it in Harry’s mind. “I do realize that, Harry.”

            Harry was getting increasingly breathless, and he was sure that he would do something stupid if he had to remain near Draco much longer. He stood up and turned his back, breaking the hold, forcing his chair away. Ossy hopped to the side so Harry could see his glare still, but Harry wasn’t concerned with him right now.

            “Good,” Harry said over his shoulder. “Ron suggested a speech, and I think it should be that. But I’ll wait until after you decide what you want to do about Shepherd, of course. It might introduce lots of chaos right now just where we don’t want it, to try and fight a war on two fronts at the same time.”

            Draco said nothing. Harry thought for a moment he had left the room.

            Then footsteps sounded, and Draco came up and took hold of his waist the way he had when he was teaching Harry to dance, turning him around again. “You looked afraid just now,” Draco said. “You never do that. Why?”

            “Because it’s what people expect,” Harry snapped, and damn it, he could feel his heart getting all tangled up. He tried to move away.

            “I didn’t mean that,” Draco said, his voice adopting a quiet staccato that gave a very good picture of his feelings. “And you know it. I wanted to know why you were afraid just now.”

            Damn it. Harry reached up as though he could brush Draco’s hand away from his wrist, but Draco only caught his other hand, and turned it over, and held it, and tugged him closer.

            “You don’t run away,” Draco repeated softly. “I know you do other things as an Auror, but you’ve also always charged into danger, and told me that you didn’t want to give it up when I wanted you to. So what is this? What can I do to you that dozens of Dark wizards and torturers haven’t managed?” He leaned in until Harry felt as though he had never stood in a posture more intimate with anyone. “What truth frightens you here?”

            Harry stiffened his spine. He didn’t like to be hurt for the sake of pain, that much was true, and he wondered if Draco knew it. And he also wondered if Draco would care, or if he would go ahead and press the matter, if he knew what was really boiling beneath Harry’s calm exterior.

            Only one way to find out.

            Harry locked eyes with him, and said, “When you touched me just now, the way you looked at me and what you said right before you started questioning Robbs, made me think for a moment I was in danger of thinking of this as a conventional marriage. One where I could lose my heart, and lose myself to you, and want to be in your bed, even.”

            He broke the hold Draco had on his wrists without trouble, this time, because Draco was staring at him, wide-eyed and breathless, as if he wouldn’t have believed that Harry would dare to speak such words. Then he turned away and went quietly out of the room.

            Ossy met him on the stairs with a plate full of food. Harry ignored him, for the first time, and climbed on past. Ossy appeared again at the top, this time with a cake on the tray instead of the soup and chicken he had tried to present Harry with before.

            Harry hesitated. Ossy leaned forwards, and although his expression might have been enough to sour the cake, there was also a distinctly pleading look that made Harry sigh and use the knife and fork also on the tray to cut a piece of the cake.

            Ossy had little plates, too, and Harry took up his piece and wandered into the bedroom. The chocolate melted between his teeth, and the delicate flaking of the cake itself made him close his eyes and lean back on his bed. Chocolate cake might not be the best remedy for a (potentially) broken heart, but it was pretty bloody close.

*

            He said…he said…

            Draco stood there in the middle of the dining room and stared after Harry for so long that his legs began to ache. He sat down in his chair and stared at the untouched food on the other side of the table as a substitute for staring after Harry the way he wanted to.

            I never knew.

            But how should he have? He was the one who had requested this marriage, the one who had drawn Harry into it against his will. He had thought they might achieve a position of master and servant at first, and then discovered, when Harry enthusiastically began obeying him and locking his emotions away, how little tolerance he himself had for such a position. Then he had thought a working marriage, like some of the marriages of convenience that his ancestors’ books told him about, would be the best they could have.

            But now…

            I could—I could want him. And I can see how he thought I did, with what I said to him after he interrogated Robbs. That he was what I wanted. Maybe that made him think about things he wouldn’t have thought about otherwise.

            Draco licked his lips. He sat back in his chair and stared at the ceiling this time, since the other side of the table had rather lost its charm. His heart was beating fast, and Harry was right; being that close to him, looking into his eyes, was bound to stir up emotions, whether or not Draco wanted that to happen.

            These emotions, though?

            Draco made a little shoving motion with his right hand. Yes, these emotions. Harry was supporting him, sticking up for him. He had understood without being told that Draco did not want to interrogate Robbs, that it came too close to what he had endured during the war. And he had taken over despite what he had feared being good at torture would do to Draco’s perceptions of him.

            Those were not, perhaps, traits to inspire immediate, and especially passionate, love. But they were the kind of traits that Draco might have looked for in a partner, not simply a demi-spouse.

            He was afraid. Afraid that I would mock him, maybe, or just that I would withdraw. Afraid that I would be disgusted or not return things and turn my head aside and that would ruin what we have.

            Draco didn’t want to mock him. He wasn’t disgusted. He didn’t think they would ruin what they had, this comfortable partnership that meant he knew when Harry was in danger and he was gaining back some of what he had lost and he could touch him freely. He didn’t want to withdraw, either.

            But as long as I sit down here thinking that, and Harry’s upstairs thinking something different, then we won’t have a meeting of the minds.

            Do I want him? Perhaps it’s time to go up and tell him that.

*

            Harry finished the last crumb of his chocolate cake, and set the plate on the table beside his bed. At least, he meant to. The plate had barely touched the table’s surface when Ossy appeared, grabbed it, and vanished again.

            Harry grunted and leaned back on his pillows. He was a little bit ashamed of what he had done earlier, really. Running from Draco was stupid, and Draco was the kind of person who would never press Harry for more than he was giving right now. Why should he? Someday, they would be divorced, and both of them would be free to marry someone else. Draco would probably be eager to do so, because he would want heirs of his own blood, Malfoys who could inherit the properties because of something other than the same name.

            Someone knocked on his door. Harry blinked again. Ossy had just been here, Affy was probably with Narcissa, and Narcissa surely wouldn’t be up and walking around yet. But that seemed easier to believe than that Draco would come talk to him, after what had happened in the dining room.

            The knock repeated, and it was brisk and annoyed, even if the door to the room was Harry’s as much as any other Malfoy’s, the way Ossy had taught him. Harry licked his lips, sat up, and said, “Come in.”

            Draco stepped into the room and shut the door behind him, pressing his back against it as though he expected to be interrupted. His eyes shone directly at Harry, who suddenly felt as if he hadn’t eaten the cake at all. There was the same craving in his stomach that he had identified as hunger before.

            But hunger for what?

            This couldn’t be happening, though. Not really. As far as Harry knew, he had never experienced attraction towards Draco before they were married, and although he had seen him naked in the demi-marriage rituals, he hadn’t wanted to touch him the way he wanted to now, sliding his hand over smooth skin and looking Draco in the eyes to make sure that he enjoyed it.

            Besides. Even if he felt that way, there was no guarantee Draco would. He had probably come to clarify something else, something that would make Harry’s fears look laughable. So Harry tried to look alert and intelligent, and not flinch when Draco took a step towards him.

            “Harry,” Draco said gently, and the sound rippled up and down Harry’s spine and made him feel just the way he had when Draco was holding his hands and looking into his eyes. “We need to decide what we’re going to do.”

            It’s okay, just a strategy meeting, Harry told himself as his stomach plunged again like a dove hit by a hawk. That reaction made no sense. He should be relieved it was a strategy meeting, not the other way around. He nodded. “About the Ministry?”

            Draco blinked. Then he said, “No, you idiot. About what we both know perfectly well happened down there in the dining room.”

            Harry realized he was breathing far more harshly than he had a right to, and wanted to fling his hands up to keep Draco away. He was lounging in bed, too, while Draco was standing up, but if Draco came closer and leaned over him and perhaps pinned Harry to the pillow, which he could probably do with nothing more than his eyes—

            No. Harry stood up and climbed off the bed. “You know now why I was afraid,” he said, his voice strained and snapping. “What more do we need to discuss?”

            “Because you never thought I might return the feelings, or have some of the same ones,” Draco said, taking a step towards him. “But I do.”

            “But what about getting married to someone else someday?” Harry asked, backing away and nearly sitting down on the bed again as it slammed into the back of his knees. He swallowed, and swallowed again, but nothing was going to reduce the dryness in his throat, or the hunger in the bottom of his stomach. “I mean, someone who can give you children?”

            “There are other ways to get an heir,” Draco said, and smiled at him. “I’ve already experienced one of them.” He moved closer.

            “You can’t know what you’re saying.” Harry snapped out the words, because that was the only thing that could save Draco from making a horrible mistake. He wasn’t thinking. He didn’t want to stay married to Harry forever. At least, he wouldn’t if he really thought about it. And he had said that the demi-marriage could be annulled easily after five years if they didn’t sleep together. If they did…

            “You look afraid again,” Draco murmured provocatively. “And as much as I love the way you look in all situations, in all emotions, I’d think that particular one is one that you want to stop.”

            Harry glared at him and jerked his chin up. “I don’t mean to look afraid. I just think this is an action that you should take some more time to think about before you do it. That’s all.”

            “That’s all?” Draco asked, his eyes widening a little, although Harry didn’t see what he’d said that was so amazing.

            “Yes,” Harry said.

            “Then I’ve thought,” Draco said. “And I want to see what happens, at least, when I do this.”

            He reached out, and put his hands on Harry’s shoulders, and brought his mouth gently to Harry’s.

*

            Seiren: Harry, as you see here, actually is willing to consider it, but he’s worried that Draco hasn’t thought through all the consequences.

            moodysavage: Yes, and now Harry is wondering if they’re moving too fast towards romance.

            Diana: Here you are!

            CareLessLover: Maybe, but the fact that the dragon also threatened Draco sounds a little too uncontrolled for Blaise, don’t you think?

            delia cerrano: The next few chapters, yes. Not exactly this one, sorry.

            unneeded: Definitely not.

            polka dot: The torture, or the confession at the end?

            Nightlo: You mean he should be more proud?
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The Name I'll Give to Thee