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The Marriage of True Minds	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 55082 -:- 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 Four--The Distance Between Rings

            "It's--too much."

            That was the instinctive reaction that came out of Harry when Narcissa swung open the door of his rooms and showed what lay beyond to him. He was backing away before he realized what was happening, body turned as if he could shield his trunk and his Auror robes from the sight of the rooms.

            Narcissa turned to face him, keeping her hands away from her body. Her eyes were mild and interested. Well, maybe she knew I'd behave strangely after seeing me downstairs, Harry thought, ducking his chin to avoid her gaze. "What do you mean?" she asked. "Help me understand."

            Harry stared at the rooms again instead of answering. The door was some white wood--birch? Harry had never been any good with identifying different kinds--and carved with a swirling spiral pattern that had silver and gold threaded through it. Harry had thought that was fancy enough.

            But what lay beyond was far more impressive. And he already knew that he couldn't allow the Malfoys to give it to him.

            The room he could make out was done in dark, rich colors, mostly reds, and Harry's first thought was that it would hide the blood. The fireplace glowed in one corner of the room, larger than the wall of his flat at home. The bed sprawled, enormous, across the center, a complicated arrangement of hooks and curtains draped around it, so that, Harry reckoned, you could admit exactly as much light as you wanted. Golden bell-pulls hung here and there. A full circle of chairs extended beyond the bed, with an alcove to the left of them that could swallow his pathetic bookshelves. The chairs were all overstuffed to the point that it looked like they had large fluffy cats lying on them. Harry could make out other tables and chairs scattered in other places, too.

            He also saw a few open doors, one of which looked as though it led down a corridor, one that revealed the gleaming tiles of a bathroom.

            Harry snapped back to himself to find Narcissa's gaze on him. He coughed and shook his head. "You're being very nice to me, madam," he said. "Nicer than the situation requires. But I can't accept this. I have no way to repay you."

            Narcissa's smile grew edged. "Harry, you are being rude," she said softly. "I have asked you to call me Narcissa."

            Harry stared, but she only continued, words flowing as smoothly as though that was the only rude thing he'd said. "You need not repay us. I explained the parameters of the situation. None of us, save my husband, wished for this to happen, but now that it has, we will and shall treat you as one of the family. Family deserves space and a home. You will have both." She sounded like Trelawney making a prophecy.

            Harry shook his head. He wondered how he could explain. Ron and Hermione would have understood at once. Ginny--well, it hurt to think about Ginny, but he knew she would have understood, too. He couldn't sleep in the Malfoys' nice bed and eat their nice food and use their nice rooms without taking more than he should. It was like taking bribes for Auror work.

            Yet another reminder about how different and difficult it was for him here, isolated in the middle of Malfoys.

            "It's too much," he said at last, when Narcissa had gone on staring at him without being able to miraculously read his mind. "I need a bedroom and a bathroom, sure--or access to a bathroom. Not all the rest."

            Narcissa smiled. "If you wish, you may certainly fetch your meals for yourself, rather than allowing the house-elves to bring them to you in bed. I fear that my son does too much of that, and it is spoiling him. And there is nothing that says you have to use the whole space. Sleep in the bed if you wish, arrange your books, light the fire, and ignore the rest."

            Harry nodded slowly. "All right." It sounded like a livable compromise, at least, and he knew Narcissa was being more patient with him than either Draco or Lucius would have been. He stepped into the bedroom, clutching hard at the bundle of Auror robes. He would need a place to hang them, too, but the closet was at an awkward angle from the bed. Harry would prefer the series of hooks he could see at the foot. He wanted to see them as soon as he woke up, so he could always remember who he was and where he really belonged.

            Narcissa clapped her hands, and a rush of house-elves came through the room, lighting the fire and beating dust off the bed and drawing back the curtains on the windows that Harry hadn't noticed before. They were at least as tall as six men of Harry's height, and they looked out on a small, glowing jewel of a garden, surrounded by the stone walls of the Manor. Harry cast a glance out them, then turned and looked around the room again.

            "What is the matter?" Narcissa, hovering at his side, cast him an attentive glance.

            "I--the colors," Harry said, hating to fuss, but also knowing that he wouldn't last one night in here, the way the darkness would close down when he had only the fire for light. The Malfoys would find out he had nightmares in complete darkness now, and that was intolerable. "Could they be lighter?"

            Narcissa smiled, shiningly pleased about something. Harry didn't know what. Perhaps she just really, really liked interior decorating. "Which colors would you prefer, Harry?"

            Harry hesitated, unsure. His walls at home were just white. "Green, I s'pose," he said at last. "As long as it's light. And maybe a bit of brown?" He looked at Narcissa from the corner of his eye, to see if that meant with her approval.

            "The house-elves will have it ready by morning." Narcissa pressed Harry's shoulder. "I am glad that you are settling in," she murmured. "Juli will be your house-elf." One of the elves preparing the fire turned away from the hearth and bowed deeply to him. She had long white hairs on her ears, braided with small silver bells and tassels. "You may send her to me at any time if she cannot fetch you something you need or if you have a question."

            "Thank you," Harry said, and waited until she was gone before he gave his first order to Juli. "Put lots of wood on the fire, please. Enough that it won't burn out during the night."

            "Yes, Master Harry Malfoy." Juli bobbed up and down, ignoring Harry's frown, then snapped her fingers. A pile of logs appeared beside her. Harry opened his mouth to say that that was too much, that she could take some of them away--

            And thought again about what the Malfoys might find out if he woke in darkness. He shook his head. He couldn't take that risk.

            Harry hung up his robes, arranged his books, and hesitated when he came to the trunk. It held his photo album of his parents, his Invisibility Cloak, and Hedwig's old cage. In the end, he shook his head and left it locked, as well as ordering Juli not to let any of the other elves touch it. He couldn't risk unpacking it in these confines, either.

            He undressed and dragged on the pair of sleeping trousers he'd used since various things happened; he couldn't sleep wearing a shirt now, any more than he could sleep on his back. Then he dropped onto the bed, ignoring the sinfully soft and comfortable sheets that embraced his legs as much as he could, and closed his eyes. The firelight swarmed over his shoulders, banishing the shadows that might have lingered.

            Perhaps it was early to go to sleep, but he wasn't hungry and he knew he would need his strength for the days ahead.

*

            Draco woke when the wards tingled and snapped in his ears, much earlier than normal. His first hazy thought was that he had known his mother would go visiting today, but at seven in the morning?

            Then he remembered Potter, and hissed through his teeth. Of course the bastard would go to work this early, like a model Gryffindor. Draco rolled over and stretched out a hand. Teri, one of the older and more reliable elves, was bowing beside his bed before he had completed the gesture.

            "Find--Harry," Draco said, remembering just in time to use a name that Teri would recognize, "and remind him that he needs to be careful about what he says today."

            Teri nodded, several times as a form of bowing and once to show that he understood the order, and then vanished. Draco turned back into his comfortable position and wrapped his arms beneath his head, attempting to return to sleep.

            But wakefulness, and the reminder of his marriage, had him and wouldn't let him go. Draco pulled his hand from beneath his head so that he could study the ring. It shone softly in the light of the fire as well as the sun beginning to storm the windows, but Draco still thought it an ugly thing.

            He would have to spend time with the older books today, seeking out the limits of the rings' powers and how many hours he and Potter needed to stay together. The sooner he knew exactly what they had to do, the sooner he could set up the confines within which he could be comfortable.

            Potter would learn to be comfortable within them, too, or he would suffer. Draco only intended to let this affect him out in public, where his apparent tranquility in a marriage of convenience would only be one of many masks that he had to wear.

            He sat up, shook himself off, and summoned his breakfast with a clap of his hands. He always ate the same thing in the mornings: toast, sliced oranges and pineapples in a single delicate cup, and bits of chicken wrapped in cream. It helped him think.

            He wondered, with a snort, what Potter had had for breakfast. Probably half the eggs they had in the house, to look at him. Potter must eat a lot of sulfur, for the purposes of exhaling it at Malfoys as brimstone later.

*

            "Harry, mate, I'm so sorry."

            Harry stretched a big smile across his lips as yet another camera flashed outside his office, and then the reporter ducked down the corridor before someone could ask him uncomfortable questions about what he was doing in the Auror section of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. "Yeah, Ron, me too."

            Ron clasped his shoulder for a moment longer, then stepped back and shook his head. "So you want me to just say that I didn't know it was coming, but it makes sense, with your craving for privacy and safety?" he murmured, barely moving his lips. Harry felt another flare of gratitude for Ginny. However she had convinced Ron that it would be better to be discreet, it was holding. Ron so far hadn't said a single thing relating to the marriage above a whisper.

            "Yeah," Harry said back. "Malfoy doesn't know I told you lot the truth. And I'll never hear the end of it if he finds out."

            Ron smiled at him, a bloodthirsty expression. "That's what Ginny said."

            Harry relaxed a little more. Yes, he could see that, and it was the best tactic to take. Ron would be much more pleased with this stupid bloody farce of a marriage if he saw pretending ignorance of how it had really happened as a game to get one over on Malfoy. Once past the initial explosion, which he hadn't wanted to face last night, Harry was actually more worried about Hermione. She would help Ginny with research to find a way out of the bond, and she might be less than discreet with some of the questions that she asked.

            "The rest of your family knows?" Harry asked in a murmur as he bent down and picked up the top file that lay on his desk. He'd deliberately been given light work today. Jansen had called him in to interrogate him, and then warned him that he had to remain free today to answer questions. Only for today, because he did have a job to do, but Jansen was the kind of ruthlessly pragmatic Head Auror who thought it better to have one missed day of work than to have Harry dodging questions a week later.

            Harry could see and admire the source of that pragmatism, but he did wish that he could sometimes escape having applied to him.

            "Yeah," Ron says. "Dad and Mum are sorry for you, but they can keep that hidden. Charlie's out of the country, and Bill doesn't cross paths with Malfoy anyway. Percy gave this little speech about healing old wounds. George..." Ron's face darkened a little. "I don't know. I hope that he won't pull any pranks on Malfoy."

            Harry winced and nodded. George had good days and bad days, but they were hard to tell apart until you found yourself in the middle of a prank that had deadly, instead of inconvenient, ways to go wrong.

            "Good," he said. "I want my family with me through this, as long as they can endure it."

            Ron smiled at him. "We are your family," he said fervently, his hand dropping down to squeeze the back of Harry's left one. "The only one you'll ever need."

            Harry opened his mouth to answer--he had the words all ready to go, the right ones this time, unlike the aimless flailing he'd had to do with Narcissa last night--but just then, Ron's index finger brushed the ring.

            A sharp glow of energy leaped into the air and formed a glittering curtain of sparks that extended from ceiling to floor, driving Ron and Harry apart. At the same moment, Ron swore furiously and shook his hand. Harry stared at it and saw smoke rising from the nails, while the fingers dangled limp, as paralyzed as Harry had felt yesterday afternoon when Malfoy used the rings on him.

            "What the fuck?" Ron exploded.

            "That's what happens when someone touches a marriage ring used by one of the old pure-blood families," chirped a voice from the corridor, and Auror Hilda Florenses learned around the door, eyes bright with excitement. "It makes sure that they can't touch. It's a symbol for the other non-touching that's supposed to go on." She giggled and stepped into their office. "Can I ask you some questions, Harry? I mean, it's just so unexpected, and you have to give us the chance to ask, don't you? We didn't even know that you considered Malfoy enough of an ally to ask for a marriage like this!"

            Harry shifted closer to Ron, but Ron gave the ring a wary glance, and Harry stopped with a sigh. He reckoned he could understand why Ron didn't want Harry touching him right now. Besides, the wall of sparks was fading, but still snapped warningly when Harry glanced at it. Perhaps it wasn't a good idea to give the ring another excuse.

            Just one day, Jansen said. Answer questions, be "candid," and that will encourage people to run away with the information and gloat over it rather than asking me more all the time under the impression that I'm being secretive.

            "Would anyone have believed it?" he asked with a wide, fake smile. He was good at fake smiles. He'd practiced them over and over again for three months. "But I met with Malfoy quietly. I knew that I would need someone with wards strong enough to give me something like a normal life behind them, but I didn't know many people. And Malfoy and I have some connections, you know. We saved each other's lives during the war, and I fought with his wand."

            Florenses giggled again and stepped closer. There were other Aurors behind her, listening, Harry saw. "Wow! Of course, I knew that." Harry doubted she had, because so few people had wanted to acknowledge Malfoy's part in the war and how Harry would never have won without him, but she went on before he could even roll his eyes. "But you didn't show anything of this extreme desire for privacy before. Does this have something to do with the scars on your back?"

            Harry's smile froze, and his magic whipped out and coiled around Florenses's hands, dragging them behind her back and binding her wrists together. No one else could see anything, of course, but Harry could feel the tensed and tingling energy of the cuffs, and how they could stab into her body if he gave the word.

            Florenses went silent and white, staring at him with large eyes, and two of the Aurors behind her stepped away suddenly enough to make people fall to the floor. "Calm down, mate," Ron was whispering somewhere, but Harry could hardly hear him behind the roaring rush of pain in his ears.

            Pain originating in the scars.

            Scars he would have to cover with a glamour, after all. He hadn't worn one so far because then someone would see it and get more curious about what it covered than they would with simple cloth, but he would have to start now. It was intolerable that anyone should look at them for long, or touch them, or guess where they came from. The Ministry had helped him with covering up the other signs of what had happened. The least he could do was take responsibility for the traces left on his body.

            It took more than the effort it had taken to talk to Narcissa yesterday, but Harry spread his fingers wide and called the magic back to him. It coiled into his body and burned there, rings of thorns that wanted to go surround someone else and sting them to death. Harry shook his head sharply. Then he focused on Florenses and said lightly, "Sorry about that. But the scars are part of something I can't talk about, and all the people who've asked me about them so far have been enemies who tried to kill me. I reacted before I thought about what I was doing."

            Florenses nodded and muttered something that might have been acceptance of his apology, then retreated. The others Aurors behind her peered in once at Harry, then drew back, too. Harry sat down at his desk and put his head in his hands.

            Ron cleared his throat. "Mate, you need to talk to someone--"

            "Who?" Harry asked bitterly. "You and Hermione already know everything, and you're the only ones I feel comfortable telling."

            Ron sighed windily and crouched down so he could catch Harry's eye. "You remember how sometimes in school, I was sort of a jerk?" he asked. "Envying you for getting to compete in the Tri-Wizard Tournament and when I thought that you'd let being a hero go to your head on the Horcrux hunt?"

            "That wasn't you, that was the Horcrux," Harry said. He would point that out as many times as possible, as many times as needed. He thought Ron still hadn't forgiven himself for most of the "sins" he'd committed as a teenager, even though he'd been about a hundred times smarter and braver than most people Harry knew.

            Ron flushed, but stared at him steadily until Harry nodded. "Of course I remember." Those years still burned brightly in his mind, better than almost anything since.

            "I was an idiot as well as a jerk," Ron said. "I wouldn't want your life for anything. Seriously, why does all the bloody weird shit happen to you?"

            And Harry began to laugh in spite of himself, and Ron squeezed the one shoulder that wasn't scarred, and they went back to their work until the next questioner appeared and Harry had to spin the next part of his story. By then, the glamour was firmly in place above his scars, and his fake smile was better than ever.

*

            Draco sighed and tossed back the hood of his cloak as he stepped inside the Manor at last. The best part of spending his day with Muggles was that no one had known about his marriage to ask about it. Some of them had eyed his ring, but they already thought Draco was eccentric anyway, given his preferred method of dress. Draco would, sometimes, admit that the company of Muggle business leaders and investors he needed to liaise with to maintain the Malfoy connections with various companies was more relaxing than the company of his own kind.

            Particularly when the company of his own kind was Potter, currently having an argument with a house-elf in one corner of the entrance hall. Draco didn't think Potter had noticed him yet. He leaned a shoulder on the wall and listened in.

            "...whatever Master Harry Malfoy asks," the elf was saying earnestly. "But wes cannot be leaving the room dirties! Is impossible!"

            "I'm not asking you to leave it dirty." Potter swept his fringe back from his forehead with one hand. The hand shook. Draco noticed blood around the nails and sneered. It made sense that Potter would have a habit of chewing on his cuticles. He hadn't grown up in civilized surroundings, after all, which would have taught him not to do that. "I'm only asking you not to dust that particular section of the room. I don't want it disturbed."

            "Oh, that section!" The elf stopped tugging on her ears. "Is simple, Master Harry Malfoy! Yous is only having to ask!"

            Draco rolled his eyes, but Potter smiled as if the elf hadn't cost him some dirtying of his hands and nodded. "Thank you, Juli." Ignoring the way that the house-elf looked about to faint from his praise, he turned towards the stairs and froze when he noticed Draco.

            "Malfoy," he said evenly. "I've been meaning to ask you. How much time do we need to spend in the same room, or the same house, so the marriage bond won’t punish us for violating its terms?"

            Draco studied him with narrowed eyes, wondering if such a sensible question was a joke, but Potter only stared back, levelly. Draco let his eyes wander to the git's robe collar, and saw unmarked skin there. Well, of course Potter would be sensitive about how ugly he was, around the beauties of the Manor.

            "I looked it up this morning," Draco said at last, after thinking of and discarding several reasons not to answer. Granger probably told him to ask it. "Sleeping here was considered most important for a marriage--the ideal of sleeping in the same bed and establishing a bond being in play then, of course. If you spend your nights here, that should be sufficient."

            Potter nodded. "And when I'm gone overnight on a case?"



            "Don't make a habit of it," Draco said, waiting for the inevitable explosion.

            But Potter's eyes just went distant, as if he were concentrating on a solution to the problem that had nothing to do with Draco, and then he turned away and walked up the stairs.

            Draco blinked after him, unsettled. So many things were just as he would have expected: Potter's looks, his personal habits, the ingratitude for his rooms that his mother had told Draco about over lunch this afternoon--and Draco didn't know why she thought it was a symptom of some deeper problem; to Draco, it was only Potter being Potter--and his refusal to understand what a marriage bond really was and meant.

            And then there was the way he suppressed his temper most of the time and asked sensible questions.

            Draco shrugged and sent an elf to retrieve the Daily Prophet. It was time to see how badly Potter had fouled up his first public presentation as a Malfoy.

*

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The Marriage of True Minds