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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
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Chapter Thirty-One--Crossed Swords

            "How did the interview with your date go?"

            Harry started and looked up from the tray he had spread across his lap, the better to avoid eating dinner with Narcissa and Draco. Draco stood in the door of his bedroom, his arms folded, his spine held as if lounging against the doorway would be the height of grossness. His eyes, bright grey and filled with icy fire, never wavered from Harry's face. Harry waited a little, out of morbid curiosity, and sure enough, he never blinked.

            "It wasn't an interview, as such," Harry said, and forced himself to turn back to the beef roast in front of him. The house-elves had tried to foist something that they called lark's tongue on him, and Harry had sent it back, hoping fervently that it wasn't actually the tongue of some defenseless bird. At least they knew how to prepare ordinary food, too. "It was a conversation. I told him what was going on, and he agreed that he'd like to date me."

            "What's his name?" Draco might think he was making that question casual. Harry knew him too well not to feel the breathing weight of resentment behind it.

            "Ian Shelborn," Harry said, and took a defiantly large bite of the meat, looking up to capture Draco's gaze.

            Draco glanced aside, as if having Harry stare back this time was too much for his delicate little nerves. "Never heard of him," he said.

            Harry shrugged. "He's pure-blood. I wouldn't have approached him if I wasn't sure of that, because I think most people who aren't pure-blood would think this marriage is a sham and a farce, and we don't need to deal with that."

            Draco glanced at him and showed his teeth. "No need to include me in your dealings with Shelborn. I'm obviously not going to be there even in spirit, am I?"

            Harry rolled his eyes. "You had the chance to stop this, Draco. You wouldn't. I'm not ever going to allow anyone to have that level of power over me again. If you get to date someone else, so do I."

            Draco shook his head. "That isn't comparable," he said. "I'm seeking out Laura because I have a duty to my family to make the kind of marriage that they need to survive. If I can't have it with you, which is what I most want, then I'll need it with someone else. But you're seeking Shelborn out because of this need for fairness that you have. Not the same thing at all."

            Harry shut his eyes for a minute. He was actually glad that he was sitting down with the tray of food across his lap, because if he'd been standing he might have stalked over to Draco and hit him. And that probably wouldn't be very productive either for the future peace of their marriage, assuming it endured, or for the ritual that they would need to do together.

            "Draco," he said. "Listen to yourself."

            "I was," Draco said, and he sounded sulky for the first time in several days. "I said that I'll need a marriage no matter what, whereas you don't need to find another bloke to date, you're only doing it because you want to."

            "That's not the same thing," Harry breathed. "Once again, your traditions are more important to you than my needs. I told you everything about the beast and what it did to me, and you still have no idea. My needs still can't compare to yours." He opened his eyes and looked at Draco, glad that he could be calm now.

            Draco took a step backwards. Well, maybe "calm" was an exaggeration. But Harry still didn't stand up and attack as he spoke, and he felt he deserved some sort of reward for that. "Which is fair. You can feel that way. But in that case, we're right back where we were, valuing only what belongs to us, with no understanding of the objections the other person might have."

            "I don't understand what the beast has to do with this." Draco was attempting casual and failing, badly. If he had been a suspect under interrogation, Harry would have said that he was definitely guilty, or at least hiding someone who was. He tried to stand up straight, tried to project a veneer of confidence, but it wavered and cracked in the middle, and his voice sank. Perhaps he thought he'd be able to disguise his emotions better with a softer tone of voice. "You haven't explained that, just thrown words around and assumed I should know."

            Harry quelled his immediate angry reaction. It was possible. Not likely, when he had thought Draco knew more of his secrets than anyone, but possible. He might have misinterpreted the way that Draco looked at the scars on his back and even the way he tried to touch them, as if he knew...

            He banished the thoughts and spoke as neutrally as possible. "I couldn't do anything to rescue myself for three months. The food I ate, the water I drank, even the movements I made were all controlled by that beast. The only way I managed to break free was by doing something horrible enough that it left me with the beast in me, uncontrollable. You've seen me lose control twice since we married because I was reliving those memories, and when I do, my magic lashes out to defend me in the same way."

            Draco nodded. He actually did seem to be listening. Harry was gloomily unsure that it would make any difference in the end, but he went on speaking.

            "I'm never going to be helpless like that again. Never. I'm going to make sure that I can control my memories, and if I can't do that, at least I can control the way my magic reaches for other people. That was why--" He closed his eyes. He had to say this, but that didn't mean he had to look at Draco while he did it. "That was why I was so badly off after I killed those wizards who kidnapped us. The darkness, too, and the trauma of going through the memories again, but also killing them like that, eating them when I had promised it would never happen again."

            There came a hesitant, shuffling sound like Draco easing forwards a step. "You didn't have a choice. You know that they would have killed us if they had the chance. They were talking about feeding us to another beast, or maybe using us to summon one, when I heard them."

            "That doesn't matter," Harry said. "What matters is that I'd sworn to myself I wouldn't destroy living, breathing people like that again, no matter who they were, and then I did."

            "I'm sorry, Harry." For the first time in the conversation, Draco sounded like the person Harry had thought he knew, the man who had taken care of him after their encounter with the decay wizards. "I honestly didn't know that. Or--I think I caught the edges of it, but assumed it was you blaming yourself for more that isn't your fault."

            Harry snorted bitterly. "Believe me, I don't like the guilt complex any more than you do. I wish I was better at ignoring it. But that isn't something I promised myself I would do, unlike the others."

            Draco settled on the edge of the bed, from the noise of the sheets, and said, "And you've decided that waiting for me to figure out whether I want you or Laura, or even waiting until the ritual works, would be losing control of your life?"

            Harry opened his eyes and nodded. "From the beginning, neither of us could control the marriage bond or the restrictions it imposed on us," he said. "And then you decided to court this other person. Fine. I have to be able to do the same thing, or it's too much like being left in the darkness again, with a chain that I didn't choose on me." He flashed a sharp grin at Draco. "You know, if you really don't want me dating Ian, then you could just let me perform the ritual by myself, and that would count, for me, the same as you courting Laura."

            Draco tightened his jaw. "Not the same thing. I don't want to see you get killed, which you could if you did the ritual on your own without proper preparation. Idiot," he added, because apparently his opinion wasn't strong enough already.

            Harry rolled his eyes. "And to me, watching you date Laura and not being able to do anything in response, watching you move into a new life while I'm still trapped in this bond that I didn't choose, also hurts. Maybe not as much as the ritual going wrong, but it still does. All right, Draco? You don't have to share my feelings as long as you understand the way I feel."

            Draco stared at him. Then he said, "But that's--personal."

            "Yes?" Harry asked coolly. "Are you going to tell me that your fear of giving up Laura is somehow less personal?"

            Draco flushed. "No! I meant--it's personal feelings against traditions. Traditions that have kept my family going for centuries. Traditions that I was raised to respect. Traditions--"

            "That you've admitted you didn't know everything about, thanks to your father keeping things from you." Harry looked at him, seeking some sign of enlightenment in his face, finding none. "Haven't you thought that there are things worth questioning there, too, not just the way that forced marriages have been handled?"

            Draco lifted his head and clenched his jaw. "These traditions matter to me in the same way that choosing your own life matters to you," he said.

            "Fine," Harry said. "Then we're back at the same impasse. You have to do certain things because of your traditions. I have to do certain things because of my own psychological needs. Maybe we'll end up together, maybe not, but I resent the implication that what you want to do is natural and understandable and indisputably correct, and what I want to do isn't."

            Draco winced. "I didn't really mean to imply that," he muttered. "But I was always told that one individual doesn't matter next to the good of the family as a whole. That means that I have to be willing to sacrifice the things I'd like to have if the family demands something different."

            Harry snorted. "Who's demanding something different? You're attracted to me. Your mother would be just as happy if I stayed married, I think. Who is it you're trying to serve, but the concept of the Malfoy family in your own head, which doesn't really exist outside it?"

            Draco shook his head. "There's still a more abstract concept of the family, the good we need to consider."

            "Fine," Harry said.

            Draco frowned at him. "You keep saying that."

            "Because that's the point we keep arriving at." Harry leaned back, though not far enough to bring his scars into contact with cloth, and closed his eyes. "You make good points about what you want being necessary. I make good points about why I need the things I need. So we'll both go on as we were, with me dating Ian and you courting Laura and us preparing for the ritual, and one way or another we'll both have what we need."

            Draco didn't say anything. Harry opened his eyes and found him as tight as a drawn bow.

            "I know what you want," Harry whispered. "You want me to admit that my needs aren't as important as yours, that personal needs aren't the same as traditions, right?"

            "I would never ask you for that." Draco looked upright and haughty now.

            "But you implied it," Harry said. "When you stared at me as if it was impossible that I would feel differently from you." He felt very tired, and sort of disbelieving. It was hard to accept that Draco, who had been a refuge for him from the decay wizards and the evil memories, was now becoming someone he had to avoid because he made him weary. "So. We've accepted that we both understand the other's standards but don't share them, right? That's what this conversation was about?"

*

            Draco wanted to say that of course the conversation was about more than that. They were married. They had reason to trust each other. They should be able to speak of their deepest desires and not fear that the other would reject them for feeling them.

            But Harry's eyes were calm in that way they only attained when he felt he was right--not a common occurrence since he had admitted the truth about the scars to Draco. And his hand, which had been clenched on the edge of the tray, relaxed now and dangled at his side.

            "You look happy with this," Draco said bitterly.

            Harry laughed at him, and there was a boiling undertone to the sound that at least convinced Draco he felt more than he looked like he felt. "What? You really think that I am? What would make me happiest was if I knew whether I was attracted to blokes or just you, and you gave up the courtship of Laura, and we could explore that together."

            "But you won't accept that your attraction to me is something that comes from you, not the marriage bond changing you," Draco said.

            "And you won't accept that you don't need Laura because, whether or not I stay with you, you can court her later." Harry's gaze met his, calm and unblinking again. Calm because he's faced with opposition, Draco realized. He's always fought, all his life, for everything he wants or needs. You're not going to win over him by sheer struggle, or thinking you can wear him down.

            "It would be hard to open up a courtship later," Draco said, hating the way that the words stumbled off his tongue instead of flowing. "She would be insulted that I had broken off the first one. And there's no other pure-blood woman I can see myself accepting or being comfortable with."

            Harry nodded, looking unsurprised. "So we continue as we were." He turned back to finish his meal.

            Draco stood up and stared down at him. Harry showed no hesitation in meeting his eyes. There was no guilt there, Draco realized. There was unhappiness. But Harry didn't think he was doing anything wrong.

            He wasn't.

            Except for the squirming, rioting jealousy in Draco's gut that said he was, of course.

            "I wish this could change," Draco found himself whispering, with more passion than he had meant to put behind the sound. "I wish that we could be content with each other, and nothing more."

            Harry's eyes softened. "I wish that, too," he said. "But I've told you what the conditions are for that."

            Draco shook his head. "I wish there were no conditions."

            Harry's expression cooled again. "Of course you do," he said. "Because you want to know that I would fall in love with you and wait for you no matter what, no matter what happens with Laura or whether you ever decide that you want me enough to commit back to me." He shook his head. "Once, I could have done that. But the man who could have died when the beast ate him."

            "I didn't mean that."

            "Then what did you mean?"

            Draco shook his head again, driven to the brink of speechlessness. This just wasn't--he didn't want what Harry was accusing him of. He didn't want to be free to court anyone while Harry was bound to him.

            He thought.

            He just wanted Harry to understand, to understand why the courtship was so valuable to Draco, why it was high past time that he was married and doing something to enrich the Malfoy family vaults with Galleons, as well as the house with children.

            I don't think that you could enrich them much further than by marrying one of the most wealthy men in the wizarding world, one who didn't even use most of his money because he was holding it in trust for his children.

            Draco closed his eyes and raked his fingers through his hair. The problem was, the answers to his questions actually just shoved him further back into a state of paralysis. He wanted both, the marriage to Laura with all the children and the traditions and the silent, instinctive understanding of some concepts that he could never explain to Harry that it entailed, and he wanted the marriage to Harry with the passion and love and trust that it would give him. He didn't know how to choose between them.

            "Go lie down for a while, Draco." Harry's voice was gentle again. "Or sit and think. Do whatever you need to get your head in order. You look terrible."

            Draco opened his eyes and gave Harry a wry smile. "We seem to exchange roles," he said. "When I get less desperate, you get more desperate. And as it drains out of you, it seems to come back to me."

            "It's a balance I would do a lot to get out of," Harry agreed.

            Draco wanted to respond to the promise in his smile, wanted to reach out...

            But he couldn't do that without giving up one of the things he wanted.

            He turned and stumbled out of Harry's room, aiming for his. He knew what he felt like at the moment, and luckily there was no reason to contradict himself over this particular desire. He would send the elves for the most potent Firewhisky in the cellars and drink himself into a stupor.

*

            "Harry. I would appreciate if you would join me for breakfast this morning."

            Harry, about to escape out the door with a final smoothing of his Auror robes, turned around and blinked at Narcissa. She stood in the doorway that led to the dining room, her pale blue robes hanging about her as if they wouldn't dare do anything else, her eyes narrowed. The words had been a command compared to her usual level of subtle maneuvering, Harry thought wryly. Well, he reckoned he could understand that. She probably wanted to lecture him for what he had done to her son.

            Not that it would make Harry change his mind. Narcissa was much stronger than he had ever dreamed, more clever and more interested in his welfare, but there were certain things about him that he wouldn't alter for anyone. And pining for Draco while he chased someone else was an unacceptable course of action.

            Still, he followed her into the dining room and sat at the far end of the table while the house-elves brought the dishes in. Scones, at least five different kinds of melon, chunks of fresh pineapple swimming in their own juice, delicate slices of ham scattered among scrambled eggs, milk that foamed like beer...Harry shook his head helplessly over it even while he chose some of the melon and a scone.

            "You do not approve of us having this much to eat?"

            Narcissa's voice was deceptively mild. Harry looked up at her and started to open his mouth to answer, but she gestured for him to eat first. Harry took a few bites of the scone to soothe her before he replied. "It seems excessive, is all. You can have plenty of things for everyone to eat without such a wide choice."

            "We have the money to afford it," Narcissa said. "If we did wish to give food away, there are few who would accept it from us. What should we do, Harry, to satisfy your sensibilities?"

            "Is this going to be about Draco?" Harry asked. He was tired of subtlety that was only used to manipulate him into doing things he didn't want. "I've told him my terms for a marriage, and he's told me the same things. We've talked about it over and over again. I would really prefer that he deal with it himself than rely on his mother to coax me."

            Narcissa's eyes narrowed, but Harry thought it was with amusement and not anger. "No, Harry. Not that. I simply wish to understand you better. You rarely eat our food. You would have slept in a less comfortable bed than the one we gave you. I could understand disdain springing from our actions during the war and what we were to you, particularly during those first days of the marriage bond when you did not choose to be here. But you are past that point now, and you continue to flinch from our gifts. Why?"

            Harry hesitated. But being honest with Draco had felt good, even if it couldn't move them past the point they were stuck at. Being honest with Narcissa stood at least a chance of accomplishing the same thing.

            "I think it's excessive," he said. "I feel--there's too many choices. I like simple things. Simple breakfasts, and simple spaces where I can be alone. It's not that I hate having a big fireplace because there are other people freezing in Cornwall or something like that. But I don't need it. A smaller fireplace would give me just as much heat. And I'm holding my money in trust for my children, I think I told you. So I don't want to dip into my vaults to buy something I don't need."

            Narcissa sat up as though someone had rung a bell near her head. "I think I begin to see," she said. "Yes, I do. You want what you think you should need. You are not as committed to punishing yourself as I thought."

            Harry smiled back at her and took a bite of melon. "No. Not a masochist. Risking my life doesn't fall into the same category, no matter what some people think."

            "But what you might desire," Narcissa said, "what you might dream of, you cut that out of your life."

            Harry squirmed. He reckoned that had to be true, just based on what he'd said before, but hearing it phrased like that bothered him. "Not all the desires," he said. "Just the ones that would make other people suffer if I tried to fulfill them. I'm not a sadist, either."

            "Who suffers if you have more food at breakfast?" Narcissa whispered. "Who suffers if you sleep in a safe bed at night, if you have a large fire, if you have a house-elf devoted to serving you? Tell me."

            "The house-elf would suffer, in the last case," Harry retorted.

            "I will give you books to read on them that might clarify matters," Narcissa said, neatly cutting off that avenue of escape. "As for the rest? Who do they cost?"

            "You," Harry said, surprised that she couldn't see that. Draco would have got it at once. "You're paying money that you wouldn't have had to pay if I wasn't here. I don't want to be a--a burden." The word the Dursleys had used so often, the word he never wanted to hear again applied to him, and it seemed the best way to avoid that (other than avoiding the Dursleys) was making sure he didn't have excessive wants.

            "We are happy to pay the money," Narcissa said. "A family is worth more than Galleons."

            "With all Draco's talk of getting a rich wife, I don't think so," Harry muttered, and stabbed at his melon.

            "Consider this," Narcissa said. "Your combined vaults under the marriage bond bring more money to use than any bride Draco can marry."

            "Children--"

            "There are other ways."

            "Someone pure-blood," Harry said desperately. "I know Draco wants that."

            "Ah." Narcissa sat back and studied him. "If Draco is foolish enough not to realize that passion and loyalty and happiness are worth more than purity of blood--because those qualities of loyalty to the family and happiness in dwelling with the family are the primary reasons that our marriages were restricted to pure-bloods in the past--then there is nothing I can do. But I pray that you will not be unhappy. Do more of what you want, Harry. I would like you to."

            After that, there seemed nothing else to say. Harry hastily finished his breakfast and escaped the house with an apologetic mumble. What else could he say? It seemed--

            It sounded like--

            It sounded like Narcissa wasn't trying to bind him further into marriage with Draco, but was giving him her blessing to escape if he wasn't getting what he wanted.

            It was as though she cared more about him than about the future of the family.

            It was weird. Harry knew it couldn't be true.

            It hurt.

*

            Lumcer: Harry isn't really confused, except about what Draco really wants. But Draco sure is.

            SP777: Don't worry, the decay wizards definitely reappear. And Draco does go into a fit about Ian.

            polka dot: I didn't really describe him, did I? But Harry will describe him more in an upcoming chapter.

            unneeded: Both Lucius and the case reappear soon, yes.

            SamuraiSaaya: Thank you! I'm afraid this chapter doesn't have much interaction except on the Harry-Narcissa front, though.

            Night the Storyteller: Oh, that does make more sense; thank you.

            The bond doesn't tell Draco that Harry has kissed someone else. Draco won't know unless Harry tells him. And at the moment, they're still planning to carry out the ritual, because they can't depend on Lucius.

            Ayana_Kiriyashi: Thank you! I think that I can promise there is inspiration for many more chapters to come.
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The Marriage of True Minds