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The Serenity of His Rage	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16981 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Three—The Bonding Ritual
            Draco stood with his arms folded on the parapet of the Astronomy Tower, staring over it at the ground below. It was hard to see, especially with dim stars and a hidden moon, but he found that appropriate.
            He shifted to feel the weight of his wand along his arm. He had spoken to Dumbledore that evening about how efforts to protect his father were going, and the answer was apparently “going.” Draco snorted. Of course they would be.
            Dumbledore had said something about being afraid that Slytherin Death Eaters would discover what was going on and stop them if he told Draco much more. Draco had pointed out that he knew Occlumency and the only Death Eater with much chance of spying on him in his rooms was already in the hands of the Ministry.
            It hadn’t changed anything.
            He doesn’t trust me.
            Part of him could acknowledge that Dumbledore was probably right not to. Draco would never go back to the Dark Lord again, not after what he had done to Mother, but he might take information the Order of the Phoenix gave him and use it to act on his own.
            But that wasn’t the point. The point was that Draco could have given an Unbreakable Vow, and Dumbledore would still act like he wasn’t trustworthy until Draco was in the bond with Potter. Because, for Dumbledore, “trustworthy” meant “under his control.”
            Like Potter is. And pathetic with being that way.
            “Malfoy?”
            Draco set his back and his hands, and got ready to whirl around and draw his wand if he had to. Was Potter here to spy on him for Dumbledore? An awfully strange coincidence, for him to come to the Astronomy Tower now, a place where Draco had not only gone to be alone but where Potter had no reason to be.
            But Potter only added, “Are you up here?” and, for a wonder, didn’t sound confrontational. Draco turned with narrowed eyes and silently balanced feet.
            Potter was standing near the staircase, looking around. A second later he saw Draco and nodded. He didn’t come towards him, though. He stepped off the staircase and walked towards the opposite parapet.
            Draco stared. He couldn’t believe that Potter had come up here for any reason but something to do with him. And Potter had been saying his name. How dare he now act as if he didn’t care whether Draco was here or not?’
            “Did Dumbledore send you?”
            “No. I thought we should talk about the bond before he sets it up, though. He was telling me he wanted to do it tomorrow night.”
            Draco opened his mouth to comment on Dumbledore not telling him about that, then closed it again. Now that he thought back, Dumbledore had probably mentioned it. But Draco had had other things on his mind at the moment, and real reason to shrug it off.
            He stared at Potter’s calmly turned back. The wind tugged at his hair, but unlike Draco, Potter made no motion to reach up to it. Then again, the wind probably couldn’t make his hair look any worse.
            “Why did you agree to the bond?” That was the most important question Draco was actually willing to ask.
            Potter nodded, as if responding to the silent importance behind the words as well as the actual question. “Because Dumbledore told me that it doesn’t have some of the consequences I assumed it did. We don’t need to spend a lot of time around each other. You can use Occlumency to block my thoughts, so you’ll have some mental privacy. It won’t be any worse than sharing my head with Voldemort.” Draco felt as though someone had stabbed an arrow through him at the name, still, but Potter went on. “You probably won’t torture people to death.”
            Draco paused. “You saw my mother die.”
            “Yes, I did.”
            Draco said nothing. He wouldn’t have wanted to see that memory. On the other hand, he wished he could take it whole out of Potter’s head and transplant it into his own. He didn’t want to share his mother with anyone.
            “Why aren’t you mocking me?”
            “Because while I don’t know a whole lot of what it’s like to be you, I know what it’s like to not have your parents there when you want them.”
            Potter turned around at last. For the first time, Draco wished it wasn’t so dark on top of the Tower. He would have liked to stare into Potter’s eyes and figure out whether his expression matched his words.
            “I still think it would matter more to you than this. Being bonded to your worst enemy.”
            “I am already bonded to my worst enemy. This is part of the solution.”
            Draco stared at him. Questions tumbled through him, and then an entirely ridiculous one came out his mouth. “You mean I’m not your worst enemy?”
            This time, he knew he didn’t miss either the quick lift of Potter’s eyebrows or the swift smile that followed. “Get back to me when you manage to travel back in time and make me an orphan, then possess a professor and drink unicorn blood, then return as your sixteen-year-old self and make me have to fight a basilisk, then resurrect yourself from my blood in a graveyard.”
            Draco leaned slowly back. He thought, and Potter didn’t interrupt him. Neither did he leave. He stood there, and Draco’s mind got to its conclusion much more quickly than he might have otherwise.
            The Dark Lord is my worst enemy, too.
            He had already planned for this bond to work, no matter how many snarls and insults he had to hold back. It was a pleasant surprise to find out he had even this much in common with Potter.
            “You really don’t mind.”
            “I wish there was some other way to do things. But then, I found out what Dumbledore told me about my…soul. I don’t want that. I want you in my head a lot more than I want that. And Dumbledore says you can help me get rid of it. That’s that.
            “I was more surprised that you agreed,” Potter added a second later. “I mean, you don’t seem to get much out of it, other than I suppose Dumbledore will trust you more once we’re bonded to each other.”
            Draco thought about getting angry. But his anger was cold ashes, and he couldn’t persuade them to fire up right now.
            “I get your protection. I get the Order of the Phoenix’s help to free my father. I care about my father more than anyone else.”
            “Yes, I understand that.”
            “Do you?” Potter might say he understood losing a mother, but he couldn’t remember living with his parents. If someone had asked Draco to think about who Harry Potter valued most—not that he would have much time to waste on such a pointless exercise—Draco would have said it was probably his best friends. Maybe the Muggle family he lived with and wasted so few words on.
            “Yes,” Potter said. “If I had a family, of course I would want to save them.”
            “Then you understand what I was doing this year?” Dumbledore. Dumbledore must have told him.
            Potter stared at him. “No. I don’t know what that was. But it makes sense that you would do it mostly because Voldemort threatened your parents.”
            Draco turned his head. He didn’t even know what he was feeling now. The desperation, and the deadly desire to free his father, and the determination, and the anger under that, ready to flower into fire after all if he gave it the right kindling. But he didn’t know what he should feel towards Potter.
            Soon you’ll know. All the time. You’ll know if Potter says something that sounds kind and he’s mocking you underneath.
            Draco didn’t know what to do with that revelation, either. He stood there and thought. Potter stirred, though, and moved past him, towards the staircase.
            “You don’t care that you’re being bonded to me?” Draco asked again.
            “If there was an alternative, I would have taken it. But there’s not an alternative.”
            “Don’t give me that, Potter. No one’s really that self-sacrificing and heroic.”
            “I suppose you’ll see my real motives tomorrow.”
            And Potter went down the stairs, and left Draco staring after him. Potter hadn’t sounded bothered about the revelation, which meant…
            Does he just not care? Has the Dark Lord threatened his life so many times that he’s stopped caring about what he does with it?
            But no, Draco didn’t hear that kind of resignation in his voice. He had known that resignation himself, so he would have known what it sounded like. He’d lain awake at night a lot in the past year and tried to think of some way to get his parents out that would let him just give up. He didn’t mind dying if it would save them, giving up if it would save them. He had never wanted to do the Dark Lord’s impossible task in the first place.
            No, Draco didn’t understand Potter any more than he ever had, and he didn’t know whether Potter had come to offer him understanding or something else.
            Well. I suppose he’s right and I’ll understand him better after tomorrow.
*
            “Potter.”
            Of course Snape is here. Dumbledore had at least warned Harry that he would be. Something about the Occlumency and Legilimency that apparently helped form the bond. Harry wondered why Dumbledore couldn’t do it himself, when he was also an Occlumens and a Legilimens, but he hadn’t asked.
            He didn’t—he didn’t care that much about the how, he had decided. It was one reason he hadn’t gone to the library with Hermione and done the reading about bonds she’d offered to help him with. He suspected she had done it herself and would be waiting to help him after this was done.
            Which he did appreciate. But knowing about it wouldn’t change it. He still had to go through with it. He might as well get on with things.
            “Professor,” was all Harry said, as he took off his Invisibility Cloak and balled it up to slide into his robe pocket. Snape stared at him the entire time. Merlin knew what he was thinking. Harry glanced around the cavern the Room of Requirement had turned into. It was made of smooth black stone that shone like oil in the light of the roaring fire in the center. Harry couldn’t see any windows or decorations.
            When he looked at the fire, he also noticed it wasn’t burning on a hearth, just what looked like a circle of rocks.
            Snape moved a little to the side. He probably wanted Harry to ask what he was doing. Harry wasn’t about to oblige him. He linked his hands together behind his back, because touching something would probably get Snape to bark at him about ruining the ritual preparations, and waited.
            The fire blazed hot. Snape was pouring something from a potions vial onto the floor. Harry didn’t think he was making a circle around the fire, although Harry’s vague ideas of bonding rituals told him a circle was probably required. Maybe he was making a small one on the stone in front of him.
            “Why did you agree to this, Potter?”
            Harry blinked and turned to Snape. “Because Dumbledore told me it would help get the Horcrux out of me,” he said. Dumbledore had insisted he trusted Snape with everything, so Harry would take him at his word.
            “And you believe him? I noticed that you did no research the past week to find out if it was the truth.”
            “I don’t have any reason to distrust Professor Dumbledore, Professor.”
            “You are a fool.”
            That’s Snape. Harry would have liked to snap back, but he’d done his own kind of preparation this past week, thinking about what was important. He kept his mouth shut and concentrated on the sound of his own breathing.
            Snape abruptly appeared in front of Harry, between him and the fire, and Harry started and reached for his wand before he thought better of it. Then he forced himself to unclench his fingers. He was sure Snape would do worse than scold him for drawing on a professor.
            “You’ve never thought about why you got away with things?” Snape hissed at him. Harry shuddered a little. The basilisk had nothing on angry Slytherins. “You’ve never thought about why the Headmaster favors you? You’re going to march to the end he chose for you with his eyes trustingly shut?”
            “I know now that he favored me partially because he thinks I can destroy Voldemort—”
            “Do not say the name.”
            And finally, long past the point where he thought he should have been able to, Harry lost his temper. He took a step forwards, his nose almost smashing against Snape’s, and Snape was the one to back up a step. Harry grinned. That felt so good, like a jolt that had got his heart beating again.
            “I can say it if I want to. I have a piece of his bloody soul inside me, don’t I? And that makes me disgusted like you wouldn’t believe. Headmaster Dumbledore said this would help. I’m willing to trust him, yeah. I don’t think he’s lying about this, and I don’t think he’s lying about the bond making it better. So there.”
            Snape didn’t even take points for the language. He only stood there with his robes gathered around him, and then he not-quite-snapped, “So you think this bond will also be for Mr. Malfoy’s good?”
            “I talked to him yesterday. He told me what he hoped to get from it. I understood where he’s coming from. We can both live with it. I can, anyway. A lot more easily than I can with being Voldemort’s Horcrux.”
            “Well put, Harry. Is the potions circle ready, Severus?”
            Harry turned around. Dumbledore had walked into the room, and behind him came Malfoy, walking as though there was a straight, clear road in front of him. He nodded once to Harry before his eyes flicked away.
            “It is.” Snape seemed to have tucked whatever strange thing had made him confront Harry fully away. He turned and took something else out of his pocket. Harry squinted at it. It looked like a huge ruby, but it was so dark that even the fire didn’t illuminate it well. Now and then Harry just thought he could see a deep red flash from it. “When you are ready, Headmaster.”
            “Now, boys.” Dumbledore turned and faced them. The way he was standing, the firelight caught all too well on his black and withered hand. Harry flinched, but reminded himself they were doing this partially to get rid of Horcruxes and Voldemort’s evil forever. “You’ve read about the ritual.”
            “Yes.”
            “No.”
            Dumbledore bent a soft, disappointed gaze on Harry. “I would have expected better of you, Harry.”
            “It’s going to happen anyway, and I’m going to go through with it no matter what you ask of me.” Harry ignored the sensation of Malfoy gaping at him. Maybe he hadn’t really believed what Harry had said on the Astronomy Tower yesterday. Well, that wasn’t Harry’s fault. “Nothing you can do would put me off, Headmaster. I didn’t need to read about it.”
            “You didn’t want to know what you needed to do? How like your father.”
            Dumbledore raised a hand, but Harry answered back anyway. “You would have told me what I needed to do anyway, because you wouldn’t trust me if I said that I did read it—”
            “Enough, Harry. The first step, boys, is that you need to bare the part of you that possesses a connection to Voldemort.”
            Harry caught a glimpse of Malfoy rolling up his left sleeve, and shuddered a little. The Dark Mark was going to be ugly. He hoped he could calmly look at it. He pushed his fringe up and bound it to the top of his head with a quick Sticking Charm.
            Snape snorted. Harry ignored him.
            “That will do,” said Dumbledore. Harry thought, from the sharp twinkle in his eyes, that he was on the verge of laughing himself, but Harry wouldn’t mind it from him. “Now. Harry, you need to step back until Professor Snape tells you to stop. You’ll be inside the potions circle on the eastern side of the fire, and Mr. Malfoy, you’ll need to back up on the western side of the fire until I tell you to stop.”
            Hoping that Snape, with his random hostility towards the bond, wouldn’t give Harry the wrong instructions, Harry backed up slowly. He felt his heel touch something slick at the moment Snape barked, “Stop.”
            Harry did, and then glanced across the fire. Malfoy was already in place. He watched Harry with intense pale eyes. That helped distract Harry somewhat from the Mark on his arm like a massive bruise.
            “Right,” Dumbledore said, nodding. “The circles of potions around you will attune you to each other. Luckily for us, you have the connections to Voldemort that will make your souls somewhat similar already.”
            “A piece of the Dark Lord’s soul is inside my arm?”
            Harry smiled a little. Malfoy had said that calmly, considering.
            “No,” said Dumbledore soothingly. “Only that his magic in your Mark should respond to the Horcrux in Harry’s scar. We will not be bonding two complete strangers. This is one reason I’ve chosen a bond that replicates the one the Horcrux gives Harry.”
            Dumbledore began to chant in Latin. Harry heard Snape pick it up from the fourth side of the fire. Harry supposed it was the northern one. That would fit Snape’s soul, he thought.
            Although Dumbledore hadn’t really said what they should do, Harry kept his eyes locked on Malfoy’s across the flames. Malfoy only watched him with the same glitter in them, and Harry swallowed when he realized there was something writhing and twisting on Malfoy’s arm. He tried not to look at it.
            Harry felt the first tug of something in his scar a minute later. He wrapped his arms around himself, but did nothing. If he had managed to survive Dumbledore telling him that he was a Horcrux, then he should be able to do the same thing now, when he was finally on the verge of getting rid of it.
            The magic began to coil around him and Malfoy then, in a blazing mist that Harry could see making huge rings throughout the cavern. Dumbledore’s and Snape’s voices were getting sharper now, more urgent.
            Is the spell not working?
            But when the mist around them broke into fire, then Harry decided there wasn’t a problem. And then a chain of fire wrapped around his forehead, at the height of his scar, and the uncomfortable squirming he assumed was the Horcrux stopped.
            At the same moment, a bracelet of blue flame wrapped around Malfoy’s arm. Malfoy shifted a little as if to ease some pressure, and then the blue flame whipped towards Harry, who was wearing his own red and gold.
            Harry bowed his head a little. The chains connected in the middle, over the bonfire, and there was a smacking, rattling sound as though someone had slapped bones together.
            Harry gasped. He felt that in his bones, something that had woken up and wasn’t the Horcrux. It was as if he had—another arm, a limb he’d never felt before, and it was numb and tingling and on the other side of the room. He wanted it with him.
            He felt something else turn over and fall towards him, and looked up in time to see a lime-green light tumbling in a curtain from the ceiling of the cavern. He waited for it to touch him, since that seemed to be the right thing to do.
            Then it inundated his head and shoulders, and a second later he screamed in agony.
*
            Why is he over there? He needs to be closer.
            Only the knowledge that they had to keep their feet in circles made of potions kept Draco from moving towards Potter. He clenched his teeth instead and watched as the curtain of mingled emotions touched Potter first. He had known it would. Potter had the “heavier” need for the bond, in the terminology of the books Draco had read. Draco wasn’t the one with a murderer’s soul-shard attached to his own. Therefore, the bond would root in Potter and grow towards Draco, and the magic would transform him more.
            But Potter seemed not to have known that. He was screaming. He dropped to his knees, and Draco nearly surged forwards. If he got out of the circle of potions…
            But even though Potter had knelt, he was apparently still inside the circle. Eerie green light draped his head and shoulders like the tendrils of plants. He turned his head, and he’d stopped screaming. Draco could, though, see a small line of blood running down the corner of his jaw where he’d bitten his tongue.
            Potter…
            Draco wanted to go to him, but he needed the bond to work more than he needed Potter to be okay right now. He stared, and then saw a curtain falling towards him from his own section of the roof. This one was made of lacy, transparent light, but Draco knew it would hurt when it touched him. He shut his eyes.
            Even so, the brilliance when it touched him was so bright it flared like a sunburst on his closed eyelids before the pain began.
            It echoed around his head, more like a scream than anything. It burned in his limbs, and expanded until Draco thought it was worse than the Dark Lord’s Cruciatus. He felt as though someone had cast that curse on him, then cast it again.
            And amid his bones tearing loose of their sockets and the scream that started to cramp in the back of his throat, there was something else. Not pain, but anxiety and the frantic desire to stand and run.
            Not mine.
            He was feeling Potter’s pain, too. Or his fear of it. The physical sensation wouldn’t actually translate across the bond, Draco knew. He had read all about it. He would be able to tell if Potter was happy when he rode his broom, for example, but not actually feel the broom beneath him or the wind in his face.
            The lessening of the pain, that distance from it, meant he could think again. Draco got his hands beneath him—he had knelt without realizing it, too—and lifted his head so he could look across the fire between them.
            Potter, panting, turned his head to stare at him. He was no longer screaming or holding back a scream. Draco felt the wonder in his head, the expanding shock, and the desire to hold back the emotions.
            Draco grimaced and closed his eyes. It was up to him to raise the Occlumency barriers. Potter would be hopeless at it, with those wide-open, clear, expressive eyes and the incurable honesty that made him do things like follow Draco up onto the Astronomy Tower.
            Draco thought of the Tower, the sleek, rearing bulk of it, and he layered stone after stone in his mind until the wall was acceptable. Then he nodded and opened his eyes. The emotions had already dimmed to the point that they only lapped at the bottom of his tower. He could open the gates and let them in at any time, but they wouldn’t dominate him.
            From the way Potter gaped at him, he was still feeling Draco’s. Draco shrugged. That was the way it was. He could block the assault of Potter’s, but his own still went flowing over the top of the tower like wind. If Potter actually cared about that, he would learn to build Occlumency walls of his own, and quickly.
            Draco sneaked a look at his Dark Mark. The Mark had gone back to normal, and the sensation of something struggling and alive in it had vanished. He nodded and rose to his feet. All the while, he tested his ability to keep the tower intact while he stood and moved.
            It was easier than he had thought, balancing that load in his mind. Draco shook his head a little. Yes, the whisper of Potter’s emotions grew stronger when he paid attention to them, but he didn’t have to pay attention to them. In time, it would become simply part of the murmuring background noise of his mind, the way the pain of a slight headache was for him.
            But there was one aspect of the bond he remembered being mentioned that he was curious about. “Headmaster, you said we would also be able to see through each other’s eyes,” Draco said, turning carefully to face Dumbledore. “Does that start soon? Or do we have to consciously concentrate to find it?”
            “I think Mr. Potter can explain that better than he can. He is the one with the most extensive experience with the bond to Voldemort.”
            Draco hated the way he felt as though someone was digging splinters under his nails at the name, but he nodded and turned to Potter. Potter had stood up himself and was feeling with slow fingers over his scar. He glanced up at Draco, and the waves lapped with more strength at the base of the tower.
            Draco ignored them.
            “Most of the time, I can only see through his eyes in dreams,” Potter said, his voice getting stronger. “I haven’t ever tried to seek him out beyond that. And once I saw through the eyes of his snake, but that’s because she’s also—a Horcrux. I don’t think you have to worry about that.”
            As if I was. Draco slowly slanted his head down. “So I simply have to maintain the Occlumency barrier in dreams?” The fact that he hadn’t immediately acquired double vision here was an excellent argument that it didn’t function all the time.
            “Yes. Or, of course, you can let it down and have someone to fight beside you in your nightmares.”
            Draco wondered incredulously why the Headmaster had thought that tactic would appeal to Slytherins. But he only nodded and said, “Yes, sir. I understand. What else do we need to do in the next few weeks?”
            As Dumbledore began to explain, Draco was aware of Potter staring at him. He ignored that, too. Until he decided how much of Potter’s emotions he wanted to let through and how Potter was reacting to his, ignoring the bond was the best thing.
*
            I never knew he was so different.
            Harry had felt Malfoy’s fear jump when Dumbledore spoke Voldemort’s name. He had felt him tense when he rose to his feet, and he could sense what Malfoy felt now, a swirling mixture of impatience and worry and determination and—
            “Are you paying attention, Harry? This affects you just as much.”
            Harry flushed, knowing Snape was probably sneering at him, and focused on Dumbledore again. “Yes, Professor. You said that we should try to keep the barriers up during dreams, we don’t have to spend time with each other during the day, and I should keep away from Malfoy so if there are other spies in the school, they don’t suspect what’s going to happen.” Which was the disappearance of Malfoy and his father after the Easter holiday.
            “Potter can parrot the words back without knowing what they meant,” Snape said. “Potter, I am going to give you a book on Occlumency. Pay attention to it.”
            Malfoy’s amusement spiked and played up and down in the back of Harry’s head like someone on a piano. “Yes, Professor,” Harry said.
            I’ll have to learn to separate my emotions from Malfoy’s, and soon.
            But he also knew that even if the bond was only ever one way, and he saw Malfoy in his dreams and felt Malfoy’s emotions but Malfoy didn’t with him, things were going to change. Because now Harry knew when Malfoy was upset or afraid or laughing or trying to hold it together, no matter what his face said.
            It was…
            I can know someone else. Someone who’s not Voldemort.
            And Malfoy didn’t feel the sharp loathing that Harry had suspected he would find. Malfoy didn’t seem disgusted that Harry was a Horcrux.
            It was different than Harry had thought. It was something he could lean on, think about, be with.
            They’ll probably break the bond after the end of the war, Harry told himself, something Hermione had shared with him. Or even when the Horcrux shard is far enough away from my own soul. There’s no reason to have it continue after that.
            But right now, Harry knew he would mourn such a prospect. And he and Malfoy had only been bonded five minutes.
            He’s not just a reminder of what I’m fighting for. He could be someone I fight for.
*
Jan: Thank you!
moon: Thanks! Snape’s POV won’t be as frequent in this as Harry and Draco’s, but I think you can tell what he’s thinking from his interjections here.
SP777: Remind me not to leave you alone with Dumbledore.
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The Serenity of His Rage