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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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Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Forty-Three--Courting in Circles

            "Mistress d'Alveda is wishing to be speaking to you, sir!"

            Across the room, Harry's head came up from the book of wedding rites he was studying like a hawk focusing on a mouse. Draco tried not to let the automatic comparison his mind made disconcert him as he inclined his head and rose to his feet. "Very well, Eshi. If you would guide me to the fireplace, please?"

            "Guide us," Harry said, but under his breath, so that it was quite possible the house-elf anxiously bobbing and nodding in front of Draco's chair didn't hear him. Draco gave him a warning look and a beckoning gesture anyway. Harry practically trod on his heels as they left the sitting room and made their way to the neutral--in tints and furniture and decorations--room where the fireplace for receiving guests in a state of uncertain alliance was.

            Draco had assumed he would be happy to have his jealousy over Shelborn reciprocated. But that was before he had felt the tight clutch of fingers that Harry put on his elbow, and felt the way Harry shook before he pressed his chest against Draco's back and followed literally in his footsteps. He ended up reaching back more than once so that he could reassure Harry with a touch before they entered the room.

            Laura's head hovered in the flames, her face as calm and polite and secretly amused as ever. "I should offer congratulations," she said, before either of them could greet her. She inclined her head to Harry. "My felicitations for surviving yet another spirited attempt to kill you."

            "Thanks," Harry snapped out. He bit down on the end of the last word and edged around Draco so that Laura could make out the points where they touched. Laura's smile seemed to deepen, but she said nothing more to him, instead turning to Draco.

            "And perhaps I should congratulate you on achieving the virtues of concentration," she told him. "I can think of no other reason for you not to contact me in this past week, other than because you wished to focus on your spouse."

            Draco felt his face burn. Harry was leaning heavily on his shoulder, almost enough to knock him over, his hand turned so that Laura would be able to see the iron band on their rings but not make out that several of the other metals that should have been there were missing. He cleared his throat desperately and said, "Well, yes, I have been thinking about the matter of my marriage over the past week."

            "Tell her," Harry said, his lips so close above Draco's skin that it probably looked like a kiss from Laura's perspective. Draco grimaced and moved a slight step away, only to have Harry yank him back. "Tell her, or I will."

            And considerably less diplomatically than you would, was the silent threat behind those words. Draco cleared his throat again. "Harry and I have decided to--renew our bond," he said. "With a more carefully chosen ceremony, this time." Like Harry, he saw no reason to let Laura know that their bond and rings had changed as a result of his father's petty temper tantrum (although he was sure that she would keep their secret better than Shelborn would have).

            "Is that so." Laura's voice was so calm, so clipped, so tame that it was impossible to tell what she felt. Draco had envied her that level of control over her emotions. Now it seemed threatening to him, providing a cold, smooth, flat surface that he was more likely to slide off.

            You've been spending too much time around Harry and the other Gryffindors who growl out their emotions at a drop of a hat.

            Well, perhaps he had. That didn't change the way he was feeling now. Draco nodded to Laura and clamped down on some of the less diplomatic things he could have said.

            "It is," he said. "Did you firecall for a particular reason, or simply to renew our acquaintance? I am sorry that a week interrupted it. A beautiful woman like you deserves kinder attentions than that."

            Harry's hand ground down on his as if wanted to smash Draco's bones, but Draco didn't know whether it came from the word "kinder" or the compliment to Laura's appearance. He still said nothing. Draco felt the sharp prick of thorns against his throat, though, the way he had felt them once before, and suspected that Harry's wandless magic was stretching around him, hungrily and slowly waking up to a world where someone was threatening its owner.

            "I called because I think that I deserve a place in your plans," Laura said. "Having dedicated enough of my time and patience to you." She sounded brisk now. Draco had no idea if that came from not wanting to waste more "time and patience" on him, or because she had noticed the dangerous anger discharging from Harry. "Do you wish to create a contract with me where I would bear your children, or not? I can hardly believe that you wish to marry me, not with what you have just said."

            "I don't want him sleeping with anyone else."

            Draco winced. Trust Harry to be unsubtle. "This is one of the compromises that I told you about," he murmured to Harry, trying to keep the words low enough that Laura couldn't hear them, though by the way her expression was changing he thought it was too late. "If we marry, then we need to figure out a way to have children. Having someone on the side who can bear them is the best compromise I can think of."

            "On the side is an insulting phrase," Laura said. "I would insist on a properly signed contract, and I would want to know, as I did when I thought we were courting towards a traditional marriage, exactly what my compensation would be. Number of children would also be a concern." She was looking at Harry with a sharply critical gaze now, Draco noticed. Because of his ignorance of pure-blood ways? Because she had assumed they would have discussed this already?

            No. She's thinking about what it would be like to sleep with him, if she bore his children.

            Draco clamped down on the jealousy that flooded through him like bile, but it was surprisingly difficult. He didn't know why that should be. After all, if he slept with Laura, then he should allow the same privileges to Harry, assuming that Laura was in favor of them and Harry also was.

            But the mere thought made his hands want to tighten and choke the life out of someone. Preferably Laura, but he would do the same to Harry if he was the one who made the suggestion first.

            He looked up to find Harry watching him. Laura said nothing, but a faint, amused smile played along the sides of her lips. "It seems as though you can't agree with this, either," Harry told both of them at the same time, turning his head back and forth. "That bloody iron band."

            Draco blew out through his lips. "You've said that you don't want to sleep with anyone other than me," he told Harry carefully, disliking that they had to discuss this in front of Laura, but also knowing that it would probably be useless to ask Harry to wait, when it concerned her. "Would you mind if I slept with Laura, then? If you don't want to have--"

            "I would also mind you being unfaithful." Harry was smiling, which might have fooled someone who wasn't close enough to hear his teeth grinding or see his eyes. "I would mind it a lot."

            "There seems a simple and obvious solution to this, and I cannot believe that no one has suggested it," Laura remarked to the room at large.

            "What is that?" Draco turned towards her, and found that without thinking about it, he was also seeking to cover Harry from her sight. He shook his head in disgust and would have stepped backwards, except for Laura's smile and the way that Harry's hands closed like pincers on his shoulders. It seemed he enjoyed having Draco there, for certain values of "enjoy."

            "The conception of a child through an intermediary," Laura said, and her voice was still calm and her eyes shone and Draco wondered how he could ever have thought her like Harry. Well, perhaps she did have the same fire, but she controlled it far better than Harry did. "You collect your seed in a vessel that will preserve its potency." Draco felt his face flame, but Laura might have been discussing how she liked the house-elves to make her breakfast. No, on second thought, she would probably bring more passion to that. "Or you collect Potter's seed, if you wish to both have children--and as long as it is not more than the number we have agreed upon. There are Healers skilled in arranging the conceptions of witches who cannot conceive by their husbands or have difficulty carrying the child to term."

            "That's impossible," Draco said, and then snapped his teeth down. He wanted to say it was impossible because then his parents would have had more children, but that was not the sort of personal information that he wanted to reveal in front of Laura unless he absolutely had to.

            "No, it is quite possible," Laura said, staring at him. "Though I see why you would not have...kept up on developments such as this, when you believe that you need not pay attention to anything that does not involve your own marriages or your attempts to relax the constraints of those marriages."

            Draco flushed and shook his head, feeling unable to take up the conversation now. Surprisingly, it was Harry who did, clearing his throat and studying Laura as if she had gone from an enemy to an unexpected ally.

            "You're sure this would be safe for you?"

            Laura laughed, and the sound of her amusement still did things to Draco's nerves, but now the kind of twanging attention that it implanted them with didn't feel nearly as good as it had. "I would never do something that risked my own safety," Laura finished at last, shaking her head. "Never. I might wish for heirs of my own and the compensations that I am sure your family will provide me, but not enough to risk my life."

            Harry nodded, worrying his lip between his teeth as if he was concerned despite the reassurance. "And the child?"

            "I assure you, the child does not care how it was conceived."

            Harry's flush seemed to go all the way to the bone, and he shook his head. "The--child would be loved?"

            "By the ones who chose to conceive it, certainly," Laura said. "I do not think I could perform your role of a perfectly concerned and caring mother. From what I have read, you have rather exalted ideals in that area."

            "What the papers say about me is never more than half true," Harry snapped, his body angling slightly backwards into Draco's for reassurance. Draco nuzzled at his shoulder and hoped that he was managing somewhere between a glare and a smile for Laura. He didn't want to antagonize her, not if she was actually willing to bear children for their marriage, but he also didn't like her upsetting Harry.

            "I did not mean their ridiculous stories of how you have battled dragons and saved a hundred people with a single spell," Laura said. "I meant the interviews where you have talked about the family you wanted, and the photographs where you and Draco have looked at each other with light in your eyes." She paused, watching them. "Though for that last one, I could have supplied evidence out of my own observations."

            Harry turned and stared at Draco. Draco reached up and cleared a lock of hair off his forehead, because he couldn't not.

            "Yes," Laura said. "That is the one."

            Draco coughed and turned back to her. "You would agree to a contract that has you bear our children, then, in place of a traditional pure-blood marriage?" he asked.

            "This is much more like some traditional pure-blood marriages than you might think," Laura said, while Harry leaned against his shoulder, content and warm. "And yes, I will accept this." She paused for a moment, then snorted when Draco continued to stare at her. "You are not such a prize that I am broken-hearted about not being able to marry you."

            "He is a prize," Harry said, his voice soft and fervent, and his hand falling to intertwine his fingers with Draco's.

            "He would be for you," Laura retorted smartly. "But I think you should consider how different your marriage looks from the outside. I am glad that you have found someone who makes you look like that, Draco, but I would never be able to give you that. And now that I know you desire it..." She shrugged. "I would prefer to get on with my life and work. I will contact you in two days' time to work out the details of the contract."

            Her face vanished from the fire. Harry shook his head. "What a..." His voice trailed off.

            "What?" Draco moved around in front of him, lifting Harry's face with his hands, hungry for those green eyes to focus on him instead of spending any thought on Laura.

            "I was thinking any number of...words," Harry said, and then cleared his throat. "And then I realized that she behaves a lot like your mother. It's just that your mother cares about me, so I don't see the same side of her."

            "She can't match my mother for beauty or for grace," Draco said, inexplicably stung that Harry had found someone outside the family who he thought had the same traits.

            Harry snorted. He tried to cover it with a quick cough, but Draco knew him well enough by now to recognize the sound, never mind the pathetic attempt.

            "What?" Draco demanded, moving a step closer and bracing his arms on Harry's shoulders so that it would be harder for Harry to look away from him or throw him off.

            "I was just thinking," Harry said, and choked. Draco waited until he could speak again, hoping that this would be worth the effort he was using to pry the answers out of Harry. "That it's a good thing you're not marrying a woman," Harry muttered. "Because anyone you could find you would compare to your mother, and that's...that's not a good thing."

            Draco narrowed his eyes. "I love my mother."

            "Of course you do," Harry said. "But I doubt that your bride would have appreciated being compared to her constantly. And I'm not going to be your bride, by the way," he added suddenly. "Any ritual we find that seems like it might work to make the marriage bond settle will have to be adapted so that it sounds like two men are getting married."

            "Even if the bond might not settle if we change the ritual?" Draco asked bitingly, and when Harry hesitated, he rolled his eyes and bore in. "This is ridiculous, Harry. Really. I don't consider you a woman, I know that I'm not marrying someone who can give me children in the same way a woman could--which is the entire point of our arrangement with Laura in the first place--and I'm not in love with my mum."

            "You had to add the last bit last," Harry said, with a solemn nod. "I'm sure that you think that makes it sound more convincing."

            "It was the last thing I thought of," Draco retorted. "Listen. Are we going to consider more marriage rituals or not?"

            "Of course," Harry said, and then grinned at Draco and retreated back up the stairs to the room where they had been reading the books that covered different kinds of wedding rites. Draco followed him, eyes narrowed on his back.

            Someday, he was going to make Harry understand that family relationships between pure-bloods were perfectly normal, even if different from what he had envisioned. Someday, he was going to point out to Harry all the subtle ways that his treatment by those Muggles affected him.

            But perhaps it should not be today. Not until he had thought of a way to phrase those retorts that would shut Harry up for a time.

*

            "Harry. Please."

            Harry leaned back in his bed--Draco's bed, really--and stared up at the envelope hovering in front of him. It was pale blue instead of the red of a Howler, but when he reached for it, a voice had spoken from it. The voice was Hermione's, and he hadn't expected that--anything about it, really, from whose voice it would be to the soft, broken tone the words were said in.

            His first thought was that this could be a trick, because Hermione would never sound like that. But then he thought how long it had been since he last saw her, how much time he and Draco had spent lately sitting behind the wards and searching for a solution to the problem of the marriage bond, and he winced. His friends could be legitimately worried about him.

            And it had been delivered by Hermione's owl, who spread its wings from the table at the side of the bed and hooted threateningly. Harry glanced at it, then touched his wand to the envelope and cast a spell that should make it repeat its message. He'd been too dazed the first time to really take it in.

            The envelope made a sound like someone clearing a throat, then continued, "Harry, we'd like to see you. I know that Ron's talked to you about staying put in Malfoy Manor while the decay wizards are caught and their conspiracy investigated, but that was days ago."

            Harry relaxed. Yes, it had been. And he didn't think Ron would talk about that conversation with anyone he didn't trust, even under torture.

            "Harry. Please." The swallowing noise he had found it hardest to believe really came from Hermione. "We know that you're probably fine, but it wasn't so long ago that you hated this marriage and wanted out. Please." Then the voice fell silent, and the envelope continued hovering in the air for a moment before it fell to the bed.

            Harry reached out and let his hand hover above it for a moment before he snatched it back. Draco was stirring, and Harry knew he'd probably have to explain what the message was and who it was from before Draco would believe that it wasn't an unacceptable risk and unacceptable intrusion behind their wards.

            Draco listened to the explanation in silence, and then leaned over and kissed Harry thoroughly enough to make it feel as if he were washing Harry's mouth with his tongue. Harry was panting when he pulled back, trying to keep his eyes open and failing more often than he succeeded.

            "We can arrange a meeting with them in the Manor if you want," Draco said quietly.

            Harry blinked his eyes open and stared at him curiously. "I'd thought you would prefer to go out from behind the wards, so that they couldn't see our defenses." He knew his friends would never betray them, but Draco didn't have that same instinctive confidence.

            Draco sighed. "I would, but then my mother told us about a mile's separation being enough to kill us. I don't want to take the chance that someone could snatch one of us and Apparate us beyond that."

            Harry smiled and sat up, putting his arms around Draco's shoulders. "You know that we'll need to venture out again, that we'll need to take the chance that it'll be safe at some point?"

            "But not before we find the right wedding ritual," Draco muttered, burying his face in Harry's shoulder.

            It wasn't worth arguing about, especially not right now, when Draco had already given permission for a meeting that Harry hadn't thought he would. He compromised by releasing Draco and giving him a little shove in the direction of the bathroom. "Go take a shower and wake up," he murmured. "You're stumbling around in a daze right now."

            Draco gave him a sharp smile. "That's what you think," he said, and shut the door behind him.

            Harry turned back to the envelope and Hermione's owl. Draco had given him the freedom to choose the time of the meeting, he thought, and that meant it should be soon, to soothe his friends' anxieties as well as reassure them that he was all right and this had been a discussion with Draco, not something where he pleaded for consideration and Draco held the prize above his head.

            "I'm fine," he said softly, then realized he really ought to cast the recording spell before he gave his message. He used the same envelope, since he didn't want to go and find another one; the bond was already whining softly in his ears over the fact that he was separated from Draco by a single door. "I'm fine, Hermione. Thank you, though. I should have thought before about the fact that you've be worried. I'm sorry. You ought to know that Draco and I are engaged in a searching for a more ordinary wedding ritual right now, one that's going to bind us and get rid of this little problem between us that I'm sure Ron told you about." That was the most specific he was going to be, on the--slight--chance that this was someone imitating Hermione's voice instead of her. "In the meantime, you and Ron can come visit this afternoon at four if you want. It can be a little later if Ron needs more time to work." Hermione's hours were more irregular. "Floo to Malfoy Manor, and the wards will be down for you."

            He realized, as he reattached the envelope to the leg of Hermione's owl and watched it wing away, that he'd had no problem assuming Narcissa would agree to that. She had said this was Harry's home, so he would treat it like one.

            Besides, removing the wards on a single fireplace was probably less risky than removing the outside wards so that Ron and Hermione could Apparate in, which would have been Harry's first idea.

            He eyed the bathroom door thoughtfully. Steam was billowing from under it, and the bond whined in his ear like an angry mosquito. If he went and joined Draco, then it would be satisfied, and Draco would be satisfied, and he would be satisfied. In more than one way. He grinned and stood up.

            Someone knocked on the bedroom door. Harry hastily reached for one of the innumerable robes that Draco had dangling in his closet just beyond the bed. The house-elves would simply have popped in, so this had to be Narcissa, and Harry didn't feel like appearing naked in front of her. No matter how understanding she was about what he and Draco had been up to in the sitting room yesterday.

            But when he opened the door, it was to find Lucius standing there instead. Harry shook his wand into his hand and retreated a step, ready to slam the door shut and use his body as a barrier if he had to.

            Lucius only cleared his throat, looking quieter than Harry had assumed he could. "Harry," he said. He grimaced, and seemed to clear an obstacle from his throat, this time, before he could go on. "Son-in-law. May I speak to you?"

*

            unneeded: Thank you. I think a real marriage is probably the best for all concerned, even Ian; it'll show him that this isn't a decision Harry is just going to reverse and he should move on with his life.

            This chapter does begin some of the tying-up of those issues, I think.

            Night the Storyteller: Those questions will be answered, but I can't tell you the answers yet.

            SP777: Glad you enjoyed it. That part of the chapter seems to be the one that got the most enthusiastic reviews. ;)

            Ian was just trying to do his best to secure Harry's happiness, which is really what he cares about most. And he did get that dig at Draco in at the end by kissing Harry's hand.
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The Marriage of True Minds