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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
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Twenty-Nine--In a Private Place

            Harry tried to control his nervousness as they Apparated in front of the Manor and passed through the gates, aiming for one of the back gardens. Narcissa couldn't really know he was back, he had reassured himself. And she had promised to refrain from talking about the Dursleys unless he wanted to.

            Do I trust her to keep that promise?

            The problem was, he wasn't sure that he did. Or he did and he didn't. He admired her. He knew that she had gone out of her way to make him more comfortable in the house and the family when she didn't have to, and she had been welcoming from the beginning, while it had taken him and Draco much longer to get used to each other.

            On the other hand, she had discovered the secret that he would give a lot to protect in the first place. And she wanted him to talk about it.

            Harry had tried. He wasn't that stupid. He knew that what the Dursleys had done had hurt him, and sometimes he thought it would be better if he could talk about it.

            But he never had the right words, and the hints he dropped around his friends made them so upset that he'd just stopped. He didn't want them to get upset. He wanted them to understand, to understand everything, that it had been painful and humiliating and that it was over.

            Maybe Narcissa wouldn't be such a bad audience, at that. Harry thought she might have some more emotional distance from it, since she was older and had to have seen worse during the war when Voldemort was living right in her house.

            Or maybe not, since she also said that she considered him part of the family. Harry sighed. The only way he thought he could know for certain was to make the experiment and tell her, and he didn't want to do that without knowing for certain. Impasse.

            "Can you tell me what you're thinking so deeply about?"

            Draco's tone was edged. Harry blinked and glanced up, to realize that Draco had stopped walking and he'd got several steps ahead. He started to turn back, only to encounter a stare as unyielding as steel.

            But Harry had learned to read Draco a little better than he could at first, much better than he had ever thought he could have, and he saw beneath the surface now. Draco was breathing faster than their short walk, or even the brisk one through Diagon Alley before that, could account for, and his back was straight, the way Harry thought his might have been when he talked with Narcissa, waiting for a blow.

            He really hates it when I ignore him. Or when he thinks I'm ignoring him. It really bothers him. Harry frowned, startled that his attention could be that important to Draco, and then shrugged. It's probably the marriage bond again. Or he's starting to experience the same thing I am with the trust turning into--something else. Either way, we need to deal with it.

            "Sorry," he said. "I tried to apologize to your mother before I met you, and the conversation just got a little more intense than I expected, that was all. I was worrying over it."

            Draco's spine smoothed down, and he smiled. Harry blinked again. That little can calm him down? That's odd.

            "My mother tends to do that to people," Draco agreed easily. "But why worry over it? You know she would never do anything to hurt you." He began to walk again, glancing at Harry from the corner of his eye. They had passed the Manor by now and begun to reach the garden Harry liked best, the one with a smooth green lawn and blue flowers growing everywhere. Harry saw a flash from the corner of his eye and started, but it was just their reflections passing in a pool half-hidden among the bushes.

            "The topic she started up was hurtful in and of itself," Harry said. "Nothing she did."

            "What topic was it?"

            Harry grimaced and scratched the back of his neck. Great. I was trying to keep it from her, and now I've started it with him. "Nothing important."

            Draco swung around to face him, and Harry stopped walking. The flowers, the sunlight, the pool, the grass, they might have ceased to exist as far as Draco was concerned. He stared, and Harry felt his own back going up. He repressed the temptation to retreat. They'd come here to have this out, and one way or another, it was going to be.

            "I'm tired of you saying that," Draco said. "We're in the gardens of the Manor now, where we promised that we'd be honest with each other. Listen. You can refuse to answer the question, or you can give me an honest answer, but nothing else. No lies. It's not 'nothing' that would make you upset with my mother or make you stare off into the distance and ignore the fact that I'm right here."

            Harry closed his eyes. He'd set up the conditions himself. But it had seemed so much simpler on the street in London, where he'd learned that one assumption he made about Draco was wrong and he'd looked forward to learning more about what was real, what was right.

            He had forgotten that he would have to give of himself, and he had half-hoped that Draco would find talking about himself so fascinating that he wouldn't really care about Harry's answers.

            Second stupid assumption of the day. Third, if you count the way I hoped that Narcissa would leave me alone.

            "All right," he said. "We discussed my Muggle family. She made some guesses about them that were accurate, and some that weren't. I don't like discussing them. She promised not to do it again until I was ready, but I don't think I ever will be." He opened his eyes and stared hard at Draco. "Your turn. Why do you care if I pay attention to someone who isn't you, like Madam Rabelais?"

*

            His Muggle family.

            Yes, that would explain some things.

            Draco tried to ignore the visions that opened up before him, the things that Muggles could have done to Harry during the years when no one knew where he was and simply assumed that the Boy-Who-Lived must have the happiest, most fairytale-like life that anyone could wish for. After all, his entire existence seemed like a fairytale.

            Concentrating on the question that Harry had asked him was harder than he had thought it would be, but Draco relaxed himself with a breath that took out most of the air in his body and responded, "Because you're friendlier to people like that than you are with me. You might trust me, but you don't act like it in public. You don't smile at me the same way." He hesitated, then decided that his not speaking of what bothered him was unlikely to result in any change in Harry. Depending on him to simply know things like pure-blood customs, pure-blood manners, or why his behavior troubled Draco hadn't worked so far. "You barely touch me except when you want to move me somewhere, the way you hauled me down Diagon Alley."

            A dull flush swept Harry's cheeks. "I didn't know you wanted me to," he muttered.

            Draco laughed despite the fact that he knew the sound would come out ugly, and it did. "How have I not made that clear, Harry? I said--"

            "That you wanted to keep courting Laura, and you never mentioned anything when I said that I was attracted to you." Harry moved a step forwards. "When you first talked to me about pure-blood marriage and what it meant to you, you were careful to assure me that we could have other lovers. Yeah, you presented it that way so that I would know I could have children even if I stayed with you, but--Draco, it didn't sound as though you cared about having me in your bed at all."

            Draco licked his lips. "I don't think about that all the time as part of marriage," he said. "Of course it's important. Astoria is beautiful. Laura is beautiful."

            Harry's mouth twisted.

            "No, I didn't mean you aren't," Draco said hastily. He hated the way the conversation kept shifting around on him, as though they stood on land prone to earthquakes. He would think he had made an indisputable point, and then Harry would find some way around it. "I just meant that that wasn't the most important thing about you, that I'd still want you even if I didn't find you attractive."

            "But do you, one way or the other?" Harry's eyes were hard.

            Draco flushed. "Yes," he mumbled.

            Harry sighed softly. "Thank you," he said. "That's not the only thing I wanted to know, but it does reassure me."

            Draco half-turned his head away, wishing that he could plunge into the pool nearby to cool the blush on his cheeks, and struck back. "Why are you so insistent that I give up my courtship of Laura if you don't plan to stay in the bond? One minute you hated marriage with me and were ready to conduct that ritual by yourself to sever it, the next moment you hated the idea of giving it up."

*

            This one, Harry did know the answer to, but he took a few minutes to think, his eyes locked on Draco's face. He wondered what Draco would think if he knew that he only became more beautiful to Harry when he was dealing with anger or uncertainty. Draco might admire the kind of cold regality that the statues in the Malfoy museum had, or that his mother possessed in such abundance, but Harry preferred the warm, moving beauty that was all around them in the gardens right now.

            And which darted across Draco's face when he didn't remember and actively try to repress it.

            "I wanted to be free because I thought--still think--that the marriage bond is twisting us," Harry said. "You less than me, maybe, because you're closer to the traditions that spawned it in the first place, and you might be able to live with it if it never goes away. But it's making me act in weird ways. It's making me say things I wouldn't otherwise say, making me feel things I otherwise wouldn't feel--"

            "Like what?" Draco's voice was edged. Harry wondered if he knew that he had shifted one step closer to Harry and was now staring at him as if he expected Harry to break away and run at any second.

            "I got hard over you," Harry said. "The other day. And it was over nothing more than thinking about being pressed up against you, lying with you, the way we did after you rescued me from the beast."

            Draco stopped breathing. Harry watched his pupils dilate, his face flush again, but this time with more intensity, more hunger, and felt himself beginning to stiffen.

            Damn it, not now! He turned his back and walked over to put a hand on a large iris, bowing his head, hoping that hiding his face would give them both a chance to recover. "That's--I've never had that happen before with a bloke," he said. "I never wanted it to. That must mean the marriage bond changed me in some way. It has to. I was always attracted to women before, and I only dreamed about marrying one and having children."

            Draco took a moment or so to respond. Harry thought he was composing himself, but when he responded, his voice still had a raw edge. "Have you considered that the bond is simply revealing new things about you to yourself, instead of conjuring them out of thin air?"

            Harry glanced back at him. Draco's eyes glittered like light on water. He had again moved a step closer, and Harry's body tightened, his chest and groin filling with warmth.

            "Why?" Harry demanded. "What possible--why would I be attracted to blokes now when I never was before?"

            "You've changed an awful lot in the past few months." Draco's voice was soft, thoughtful. "Between the darkness and what happened to you there, your attempts to recover from it, and the bond. It's possible that you never would have known about this or needed it if you'd never been kidnapped. Perhaps you would have married your Weasley and everything would have happened as you predicted it." His voice roughened again, but Harry didn't think it was with desire, this time.

            "Instead," Draco said, with a wave around at the garden that seemed to dismiss it and the Manor, though Harry was sure he didn't mean it to come across that way, "this happened. Have you thought that you may have new aspects of yourself coming to the surface because you need them, because you're in new situations where you can act as you wouldn't have had to otherwise?"

            "Then it's not the bond," Harry said. "It's just my life that's fucked up, and fucking me over."

            Draco snorted. "I've never seen anyone so determined to think that his life is messed up if it's not going exactly according to plan," he said. "And you didn't answer the rest of my question. If you were so determined to stay out of the bond, you shouldn't have cared who else I wanted to marry. You should have been cheering on any rival you could get. Why do you want me to drop the courtship?"

            Harry shut his eyes. He felt only a shade less panic than he had when he thought Narcissa might divine every truth about the Dursleys without him saying anything. This was it. Say it and he couldn't go back.

            What, the way you can't go back now that you've admitted you're attracted to Draco?

            Harry smiled wryly and turned around. Draco still watched him, bright and steady and brilliant, there amid the flowers and the light.

            "Because half of me wants out of the marriage bond," Harry said. "And half of me thinks it's already too late, and even if the marriage bond is severed I'll still fall in love with you. I've felt--it's too intense, this stuff. More intense than what I felt for Ginny." It hurt, saying that, and it was also a relief, as though he'd released a tight iron band that had been constricting his breathing. "So I'd like someone who's going to fall in love with me, too. Marriage bond or not. Someone with his heart set on a courtship with a pure-blood woman--two things I won't ever be--can't do that."

*

            Draco viciously controlled his immediate reactions, which were to grin and gloat. He doubted that was what his relationship with Harry needed at the moment.

            Even if it's what you need?

            But no, it wasn't. He needed something else. He felt the deep, shivery desire explode from inside him, flooding his limbs with tingling energy, and began to walk forwards. Harry didn't move, only squinting at him, as if to say that he doubted Draco had the courage to carry this all the way through.

            Draco reached him. He reached out and put his hand on Harry's shoulders and tilted his head in.

            And then his own uncertainty froze him as effectively as a bar across his chest.

            Harry seemed to realize what was needed, and he smiled. If it had been a mocking smile, then Draco would have done his best to kill him, but it was a smile that simply stretched the corners of his mouth and made him look gentle and lovely and foolish. He leaned in and kissed Draco.

            Saliva flooded Draco's mouth, and the iron bar broke. He reached out and tightened his hold on Harry, though he didn't dare move his hands from his shoulders because it could easily result in his touching Harry's scars. He didn't want to do that right now, he didn't want to bring the beast or the darkness into it more than he already had by suggesting that some of Harry's changes resulted from that.

            He kissed Harry hard, hard enough to drive his own lips into his teeth. Harry kissed him back, rough and firm and with his own hand confidently gripping the back of Draco's neck, but he wouldn't open his mouth.

            With a gasp that sounded loud to his own ears, Draco broke off the kiss and traced his tongue over Harry's mouth, solemnly begging entry. Harry shuddered, and his knees buckled for a moment. Then he sighed and lapped his own tongue out to encounter Draco's, tracing copper and salt around his chin, around the curve of his lips, up to his cheek.

            Draco snarled and turned them to the side, trying to find a place where they could sit down or where he could at least press Harry up against something. They were going to lose their balance in a second, but he couldn't break away from the kiss, from the way that their tongues curled against each other like flames of the same fire now, from the heat that followed a second behind the twisting sensation of slickness, from the hardness of Harry against him, ribs and chest and hips and groin.

            It was Harry who stopped, pulling back from him with a gasp and a sharp closing of his eyes, as though that had been their primary connection. Draco ran a hand up his flank, hoping he was safely far enough from the scars, trying not to shudder with delight at the look on Harry's face.

            "That answer your question about who I'm attracted to?" he asked.

            Harry swallowed and nodded. "Yeah," he said. When he opened his eyes again, Draco leaned forwards to watch the shadows darting through them, and the way the pupils darkened the green. Harry jerked his head back a little, again as though this was more intimate than anything else they could have done, and lowered it. "Sorry," he mumbled. "But--does that mean that you'll stay with me if the ritual to sever the marriage bond doesn't work? And give up the courtship?"

            Draco lowered his own head. It was hard to make his mind refocus on anything when what he wanted was to find some way of coaxing Harry down to the grass and simply rub off against him. But they had been having an honest discussion before this, and they could be honest with words as well as with bodies.

            "I don't want to," Draco said.

            Harry flinched as though someone had stabbed him, and stood up straight. "Reckon that answers that question, then," he said brightly.

            Draco blinked, then sighed and reached out for him as Harry tried to get away. "No," he said. "I didn't mean that I didn't want to stay with you if the marriage bond endures. I meant that I didn't want to give up my courtship of Laura. Please," he added softly, when Harry continued to study him with bright, suspicious eyes. "You've given me more chances to prove that I'm not the boy you knew in school than I thought you would so far. Can you give me another?"

*

            Harry, his body and mind still ringing as though he'd struck stone with steel, watched Draco carefully. He looked more tired than anything else at the moment, though his face was still flushed with hunger, mottled with want.

            He looked vulnerable, and that reassured Harry, a bit, because it was how he felt at the moment himself.

            "Fine," he said at last, though Draco's first answer had made him want to jerk back and build up the walls again, and still did. I knew I was wrong to trust him, I knew I was wrong to trust him, sang the chant in the back of his head. He would despise me if I showed him everything, because that's weak and he's never going to yield that much to me. I know he won't.

            It was an effort to concentrate on the Draco in front of him instead of the imagined Draco in his head, but he managed, forcing his breathing calm and smooth and even. "All right," he said. "Why don't you want to give up your courtship of Laura?"

            Draco smiled and drew him closer, skimming his fingers lightly up and down Harry's sides. Harry squirmed. He was working hard not to pant. Trust Draco to find a place that felt good to touch that Harry hadn't known about.

            "Because I'm also afraid of being left alone," Draco said quietly, "with someone I risked everything for not being willing to risk that much for me. Just as you're afraid that you may fall in love with me, broken marriage bond or not. If I can court Laura and you at the same time, I'll have someone to be with if one of those courtships doesn't work. Letting go and committing everything to you sounds--hard."

            Harry scowled. "I can understand that," he said. "It doesn't mean I like it."

            Draco shifted, and his knee rubbed against the inside of Harry's thigh. He smiled, a smile that seemed to go deeper inside his face than most of them did, at Harry's groan. "Neither do I, after seeing you let go like that and realizing that you might do it with someone else if we don't stay together," he said. "Not nearly as much as I thought."

            Harry swallowed and said, "Fine. Another question, then. You'd prefer to go on dating me, or courting me, or however you want to put it, while also courting Laura."

            "That's not a question," Draco said, but the deep smile lingered on his face, and he ran another hand down Harry's right side. This time, Harry flinched away as it came too close to the scars, and Draco paused, fingers hovering in the air, smile fading.

            Harry tried not to feel bad about that. It probably would have happened with his question, anyway. "I know. But I know it's true, based on what you just said. So. How will you feel if I find someone else to date or court or be with while you're with Laura?"

            Draco half-jerked back, then seemed to remember he still had hold of Harry and would pull Harry along with him, and relaxed with a scowl. "I wouldn't like it," he said.

            "That's not enough reason not to do it," Harry pointed out, his heart rate slowing now. "Now if the fact that I don't like you courting Laura won't keep you from doing it."

            "Why do you want to find someone?" Draco's hands were restless on him, stroking over cloth and sometimes dipping under it as if he could possess Harry by touching him. Harry ignored the flashes of fire that the touches gave him as best he could. He wouldn't let Draco influence, or win, an argument like that.

            "Because I still think that it's weird for me to be attracted to blokes, changes or not, marriage bond or not," Harry said. "And I want to figure out whether it's something I need to live with, something permanent, or something temporary and only focused on you. I know a few blokes who've hinted--well, things I never took seriously because I never thought seriously about anyone but Ginny. But two of them are pure-blood and would probably understand this marriage bond possibly getting in the way of anything permanent. I thought I'd go to them and see what they say."

            Draco scowled harder. "I don't like it," he mumbled.

            "I won't, if you give up your courtship of Laura," Harry said quietly. "I'm not going to force you to do that, but on the other hand, I won't be the only one staying 'faithful' to a bond I never chose."

            Draco stared around the garden as if hoping for an answer written there, then relaxed with a loud sigh. "All right," he said. "I'll--you can try. And I'll court Laura, and we'll perform the ritual when we have the ingredients for it, and we'll see if that breaks the marriage bond." He stared at Harry. "What happens if it works?"

            "I don't know," Harry said. He felt much calmer and much lighter than he had in weeks. "That'll depend as much on you as on me."

            Draco snorted. "Uncertainty," he muttered.

            "I know," Harry agreed. "You hate it." He smiled at Draco. "Well?"

            Draco looked back at him, shining, and if Harry had been able to give in and trust life as completely as he could six months ago, then he might have said "Fuck it" and told Draco he could have whatever he wanted. But the darkness had happened, and Harry was never going to be that out of control again.

            Draco was beautiful. Harry thought he could love him. But that wasn't the same thing as giving everything up for him when he wouldn't promise.

            "All right," Draco said, and kissed him again, as if he hoped that would persuade Harry to change the mind.

            The kiss wasn't that persuasive, Harry thought as he tilted his head back and opened his mouth to admit Draco's languid tongue. But it came bloody close.

*

            Review responses for Chapter 28 are here: http://lomonaaerenrr.livejournal.com/33589.html
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The Marriage of True Minds