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Bonded Consort	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 33021 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Three--Potter Truths
Draco expected a house-elf to meet him as he stepped out of the Floo, but instead it was Lilac, Dahlia's younger sister, who this September would be a third-year in Gryffindor. She widened her eyes the minute she saw him and performed a curtsey, then said, "Um. Dahlia's in her room."
Draco eyed her critically for a moment. She was a lot different than Dahlia, expressing actual emotion, but far too young for him--not to mention that she was so interested in Healing Draco doubted she would notice any boy trying to propose to her who wasn't holding a potions vial. "I didn't come to see her. Where are your parents?"
Lilac's spine straightened a little, maybe because she didn't think she was about to get caught in a stony glaring session--she knew well enough how Draco felt about Dahlia--and nodded towards the right. Draco nodded back and walked away, feeling her hazel eyes burn with curiosity after him.
No matter. Draco intended to set up enough privacy spells around the room that neither Dahlia, Lilac, or the Potters' five-year-old son Eric could hear anything that went on in it.
James Potter was sitting on a chair in front of the fire glaring at a potion, while Lily sat beside him with a chessboard in her hands that she appeared to be playing both sides of. They shot him looks of surprise, and then Lily stood and inclined her head. "Draco. We didn't know you and Dahlia had made an appointment to meet today."
"We didn't, actually. I had some concerns about the betrothal, and I wanted to speak to both of you about them." Draco took off his cloak and hung it on a peg near the generous fireplace.
Lily looked at James, and they seemed to communicate in a way similar to the silent tongue his parents used. "If this is about moving the wedding up..."
"It is." Draco smiled as he slid his hand around the vial of Veritaserum in one robe pocket. "Tangentially."
"Your father has his concerns, which are political, but they make sense for all that." James tried to put the potion aside, but Lily laid a polite elbow into his ribs, and he glared again and swallowed most of it. It was a glowing green, and it must be some wound-healing potion Draco hadn't heard of. He knew James had been wounded fairly recently in a raid gone wrong. "And I won't deny that I'll be glad to have Dahlia married."
"Why? Has someone else offered for her?" Draco paused his hand. He would still use the Veritaserum on the Potters, because at this point the need to know what had happened to Harry pounded in him like a second heartbeat, but if someone else had offered for Dahlia and she wanted him, then that would solve one of his problems.
"Oh, no. Of course not. They know how devoted she is to you."
Devoted like a doll is devoted to its owner. "I see. Then what is it?"
"Dahlia is almost defining herself by this marriage," Lily said, her face solemn. "Not even most of her pure-blood friends do that. If it happens younger than she was expecting, that gives her another two years to grow up, to start anticipating other things." She hesitated, then added, "No offense, Draco, but I don't think anyone should be the center of such fervent devotion. It always makes the collision with a real flaw more painful later."
Draco smiled politely. He would have agreed, perhaps, during his last year in Hogwarts, but now he doubted Dahlia would show such emotion even if he ever disappointed her. "None taken. I do have some questions I'd like to ask you, though."
Behind his back, his wand waved, putting up the spells that would turn children and house-elves alike away from the room until the conversation finished, and locking the doors.
"But you've known Dahlia all her life. What questions could there be?"
"Come on, Lils. If he has some qualms, I think we ought to treat them seriously. Dahlia doesn't, but that's not unusual for boys and girls to feel differently."
Lily gave James an exasperated glance, and Draco struck. Neither Potter had their wands out, and that was the best chance he would get. He didn't dare contest against James's Auror training or Lily's several-years-in-a-row dueling championship for adults in Britain.
He Disarmed them wordlessly, so they knew nothing about it until their wands came flying out of their sleeves. Draco snatched them, spun out of the way of the kick James automatically launched at him--too far away to connect anyway--and then bound them to their chairs. James gaped at him in disbelief. Lily sank back with her eyes burning.
"We should have checked him for the Imperius Curse right away. Who could not want to marry Dahlia?"
"Those wards haven't come down, Lils. I would have felt them."
"The reason I don't want to marry your precious daughter," Draco said, feeling secure enough since he would use the Memory Charm on them afterwards, "is that she's as boring as dirt."
That made Lily join James in gaping. Draco rolled his eyes. "Even if she acts differently in the bosom of her loving family, you must have noticed how she acted around me. Perfect and doll-like and always agreeing. How could I want a woman like that?"
"Your...mother is a woman like that!"
"Then you haven't noticed her subtle signals when she's angry." Draco smiled at them, all teeth. "I want to know what happened to the Potter child I was originally betrothed to."
James's mouth slammed shut. The flame in Lily's eyes grew fierce. Neither spoke.
Draco shrugged. Seeing how much they would volunteer was more a game than anything. He hadn't expected substantial facts without the Veritaserum, not when they'd hidden them for so long. "All right," he said, and moved the vial of potion into view. "Bottoms up."
"You can't--"
Draco used another wordless charm to freeze James's head in place, and dripped the three drops of Veritaserum on his tongue. He had to do the same to Lily. She only glared at him in contempt as he massaged her throat to make her swallow.
"If you would have just told me, I wouldn't have had to do this."
"There were reasons..."
The potion took hold of her then, and Draco shook his head as he watched the glaze grip her eyes. "Well, reasons you'll tell me in a minute. Where is Harry Potter?"
"In New York City," said James, with little jerks of his neck that might have meant he was trying to fight the Veritaserum.
Draco blinked. "You're joking."
Neither of them said anything, since that hadn't registered as a question.
"Why is he there?"
"He's a Squib," said Lily this time, at the same moment as James said, "He's dangerous for our other children."
Draco sorted out the words, and couldn't stop himself from laughing so loudly he would have earned a frown from his mother. Luckily, she wasn't there. "How could he be dangerous to your other children if he was a Squib?"
He directed this question more firmly and exclusively at Lily, so she was the one who answered. "When he was two, he got filled with Lord Voldemort's magic. It suppressed his own magic. So he's a Squib. But the influence of Lord Voldemort is dangerous for anyone else. He turned Dahlia into what she is today."
Draco stared with his mouth open. "What she is today?"
"Gentle and compliant and with no opinions of her own. He suppressed them."
Draco had never heard of such a thing. Even the Dark Lord, at the height of his power, had used Imperius on people, or blackmailed them, or tortured them into doing what he wanted, or tried to lure them to his side with promises of power. Why would he have done that if he could simply influence them in some direction?
But neither of the Potters was answering something Draco didn't ask, so he finally said, "He was four years old. Why would you think it was him?"
"He was around her. And Dahlia started changing. She stopped asking questions and she stopped saying things she thought. He suppressed her."
Draco shook his head. The Potters believed it was true, but Veritaserum couldn't distinguish absolute truth from what someone believed. For the first time, Draco found himself impatient with that limitation of the potion. "Why did my parents change the contract? Or why did you change the contract?"
"He was a Squib after the attack by Voldemort. Your parents didn't want him betrothed to you."
Draco grimaced, the only acknowledgment he would make to himself that he had asked the questions in the wrong order. "Why did my parents want a betrothal to the Potter family in the first place?"
"They knew of the prophecy that said Harry would defeat Voldemort. They wanted to be on the winning side."
Draco sagged slowly back. A prophecy. No wonder that some of my attempts to sort things out never made sense. A prophecy would account for both Voldemort's interest in an eighteen-month-old and why his parents might change sides, or think a half-blood boy worth their son's time as consort. "What happened that night?"
"We don't know. We weren't there," said James.
Draco rolled his eyes to acknowledge Veritaserum's other limitations. "What is the theory of what happened that night? Of why Harry became a Squib?"
"Harry had been prophesied as Voldemort's equal. The magic that he struck him with was the exact equal of Harry's magic, but Dark instead of Light. Harry absorbed it and kept it from affecting him or killing him, and he drained so much magic that Voldemort's body couldn't sustain itself. But he also absorbed so much that all his will has to go to holding onto that magic. He can't use any. He doesn't have any of his own left uncovered."
Draco narrowed his eyes. "What do you think will happen if Harry does let go of the magic?"
"Voldemort returns."
Draco could see why no one would want that, but he still had questions. "What made you think of this theory?"
"Dumbledore and the Unspeakables thought of it."
Draco rolled his eyes a little, and said, "All right, why do they think that?"
"It was the only thing that made sense. There were no rituals or wards that would have helped Harry resist. Only equal magic could best Voldemort's power. Your parents wanted to betroth him to you even more after he was born because they could feel his magic from rooms away. But after he met Voldemort, that sense of power was gone."
"Gone?"
"Like it was smothered."
Draco spent a few minutes thinking about this. There was some life returning to Lily's eyes, so he couldn't spend too long, but he did need to sort through his thoughts and make sense of what he'd heard.
His parents' motives in accepting a betrothal contract made sense now, as did their motives after Harry had apparently become a Squib. They couldn't possibly break the contract and bring shame to their family, but they also couldn't bear the shame of a Squib consort. So they had demanded the only solution they could, or gone along with the solution the Potters proposed, that they wait for another Potter child to be born who would have magic and could fulfill the contract. Then everyone could keep their honor.
But it still seemed strange to Draco that they would think their son had influenced their daughter in some scary negative Dark way when he was only four years older than Dahlia, or that they would think Voldemort's magic was caged, Harry's magic smothered, instead of them destroying each other in a perfect meeting of opposites. There was something he was still missing.
"How did Dumbledore and the Unspeakables put together the theory of what happened?" he asked next.
"Voldemort hit him with the Killing Curse. It left a scar. The scar resonated with such powerful Dark magic that they could feel Voldemort's presence, and the presence of Harry's magic, far under that. And Harry started displaying talents he never had before."
"Such as?" Someone ought to invent a more powerful version of Veritaserum that would make dragging answers out of people easier, in Draco's opinion.
"Parseltongue. And understanding words that he couldn't understand when they were spoken in front of him before."
Draco felt as though someone had snapped him upright with a whip. He had never thought that Parseltongue might be one of those “signs” that Harry was possessed of Voldemort’s magic. “Parseltongue?”
“Yes.”
There was a spark in James’s eyes as if he was fighting the Veritaserum, too. Draco hurried on. “What happened when he spoke Parseltongue?”
“He could talk with snakes.”
Draco snarled a little. “No. I mean, how did you react? How did my parents react, if they knew? Was that what made you make the decision to send him away?”
Their voices overlapped each other’s as they spoke, but Draco picked up the important parts easily enough. Yes, his parents had reacted by agreeing that Harry should be sent away and raised by a Squib in South America who apparently was an old acquaintance of Narcissa’s mother, Druella Rosier. They had kept Harry until he was ten years old. That was old enough.
And the Potters had reacted with horror, and the insistence that Harry was corrupting his sister, and might corrupt Lilac if he was let near her often enough. Dahlia had changed. The magic Harry carried was dangerous when he used it, which he did when he was speaking Parseltongue or using words before he could speak them properly.
So he learned to hate and fear the one special talent he had. They sent him to someone who didn’t mind that, someone they didn’t think could be influenced because they were a Squib. Or maybe they didn’t care about her being influenced.
Draco asked, “What decided you that he was influencing my lovely betrothed instead of her just changing because she spent time with him?”
“Who changes dramatically like that? And we could feel the malevolence of the magic glowing through his skin all the time. He would corrupt any Light wizard or witch he spent time with! Muggles, Squibs, they couldn’t be touched, but wizards could!”
Draco wanted to laugh. And they seem to think I’m Light.
“We sent him to live where he would be safe, and so would the other people around him,” Lily continued. There was wetness glistening at the edges of her lashes, and she seemed to be volunteering the information of her own free will. “We did the best we could, we kept him as long as we could, but it was so obvious, what he was doing to Dahlia. And he would never be able to have a normal life in our world. Lilian Rosier promised she could teach him to blend into the Muggle world and use his talents to best effect.”
Someone less superstitious. I hope he has had a better life. But Draco still intended to go after Harry, because otherwise, the Potters and his parents would still insist that he marry Dahlia. Draco was confident of his ability to erase their memories of this conversation, but not plant a suggestion that would make them decide he shouldn’t marry their daughter.
And because—well. Because he thought he might live better with someone who had Dark magic, even if he couldn’t use it, and spoke Parseltongue than with Dahlia.
“What does Harry look like?”
Both the Potters looked thrown by the question, but it was James who answered. “My hair, and Lily’s eyes.”
“He sounds stunning,” Draco purred, and relished the way they both looked at him with dislike.
“You have no idea—no idea what would happen to your family if you dissolved the contract,” said James, and threw off the Veritaserum to lean forwards in the bonds Draco had inflicted on him. “You have no idea how Harry would corrupt and destroy you. And he would never mean to.”
“That’s the sad thing, the tragic thing,” said Lily, and her eyes glinted with the tears that she pretended to be crying. “He never meant to. But he couldn’t help the influence leaking out from him and poisoning Dahlia’s mind. And you won’t be able to stop it from corrupting you, either.”
“Tell me how to find him.”
Lily balked, still, but the words spiraled off her tongue before she could stop them. “I send the post owls to Harry Potter at Saint Patrick’s Flat, New York City.”
Draco nodded. He would write to Harry first. It seemed like the best thing for both of them. If Harry refused to see him, then Draco would find a way to show up in person.
“But I’ve already written telling him not to come back to England for the wedding,” Lily added virtuously. “You needn’t think that he’s going to show up and save you from joining your hand to Dahlia’s.”
“I never intended that. I’m going to save myself. And him,” Draco added, because it sounded as though Harry could use someone who thought of him for once.
“We’re going to remember,” James growled, his arms straining against the bonds. “No matter what kind of charm you put on us. We’ll remember, we’ll make sure Dahlia is happy, and we’ll keep her from being corrupted any more by Voldemort.”
Draco only shook his head. There were lots of things he wanted to say, but on the whole, he thought Harry was the one who deserved the chance to say them. “I don’t think so.” He banished the ropes with one flick of his wand, and Obliviated them both in the same pass, before James could leap out of his chair the way he wanted to. “We had a pleasant chat about the forthcoming wedding, and you’re satisfied that Dahlia will be happy.”
Their eyes glazed, they murmured something, and Draco excused himself as soon as he could. He had a letter to write, an owl to send, and a consort to court.
It might not work out exactly as I hope, but Harry is already more interesting than Dahlia.
*
SP777: Hidden away, yes, and then sent away.
Thanks!
Jan: Well, they did think it was a good excuse.
moodysavage: Well, yes, the Potters do blame Harry for that. But Draco thinks it's ridiculous.
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Bonded Consort