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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
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Forty-Five--Steps in the Dance

            Draco felt a blast of light and pain tear through him like a falling star. He took a deep breath to restrain himself and remember that he shouldn't kill the one who had brought him the news, the one who was concerned for Harry and might have told them something which would be valuable.

            It was difficult, however, when Weasley was staring at them with a hounded expression that said more clearly than words that he thought Draco and Harry wouldn't be able to get married, and Granger wore an expression that had enough satisfaction mixed into the pity to poison Draco.

            "The solution is simple, surely," he said, and was surprised that his voice did not tremble. Harry cast him a wondering glance, and Draco nodded to him. "We find a way to eliminate the beast. There was, at one point, a ritual Harry was interested in that might be able to do that. And then we wed." His fingers wound their way into Harry's, and he bore down with crushing pressure, the better to kill any objections before Harry might voice them.

            Harry nodded. "Hermione can help me with the ritual," he said. "And now that we know that--"

            Draco interrupted him by the simple expedient of leaning on his shoulder and staring at him until Harry shut up. "Why would you choose her to help with the ritual?" he asked. "Instead of me?"

            "Because I don't want you at risk with the beast," Harry said, his eyes acquiring darker green flecks as he reached up and shoved at Draco's shoulder. Draco didn't move away. He didn't see why he should have to. "And Hermione has an emotional distance from this that means she'll be able to focus on the details of the ritual and not on how much danger I'm in--"

            "I care about you, too, Harry," Granger interrupted, and she looked more than a little offended.

            "I didn't mean that," Harry started.

            "And I have no intention of standing back and letting you do this without me, not when it also affects my safety," Draco announced, with a hauteur that he thought should be sufficient to crush Harry's pretensions. "Really, Harry. If you had thought about this, you would understand--"

            "That's the only reason you care about him?" Granger's eyes and voice were bright with chilly precision, like ice lit by the sun. "Because it affects your safety? I'm sure that he would be interested in--"

            "Will you stop it?"

            That was, surprisingly, Weasley. They all shut up and stared at him, though in Draco's case that wasn't because he was surprised he had interfered in the conversation; of course all of Harry's friends would have something obsessive to say about his marriage, since they were obsessive about everything else concerning him. It was only that he was surprised Weasley's contribution was something sensible.

            "This doesn't get us any further into solving the problem." Weasley ran a hand through his red hair, rendering it so bad that Draco thought it wouldn't get any worse without special help, and frowned at them. "I'm sure that we all care about Harry and freeing him from the beast. Whether that's because we simply want him free from a threat to his life or whether we want to marry him later is immaterial."

            "You're sure that we should be encouraging this?" Granger looked back and forth from her husband to Harry with a frown. "After all, we still don't know that Harry really agreed to this marriage of his own free will. We don't know how much the bond might have changed him while it was still in full existence, or how much it might be affecting him now that it's only half-there."

            "I promise," Harry said, and to Draco his voice had all the triumphant echoes of a trumpet, "I'm not unwilling now. What the bond left us when it collapsed was our own choices to protect each other. I want to be with him."

            "Because you saved each other's lives?" Granger frowned more deeply. "I think most relationships need a stronger basis than that."

            "Most relationships don't have a stronger basis than that," Draco snapped, unable to stay silent any longer. He wondered how Harry functioned when he was surrounded by people this consistently stupid. "We have each other, and that's the end of it. I won't let him go."

            "If he wanted to marry someone else, you wouldn't, you mean?" Granger crossed her legs and gave him a shark's smile. "I think--"

            "Stop it."

            Harry was the one who said it this time, and Granger turned and paid more serious attention to him when he did. Draco wondered what she would think if someone told her that she obviously put more weight on the words of her best friend than on her husband. He had to hold back his temptation to tell her exactly that, in fact. "Why? Harry, do you really care for him outside whatever sex the bond might have compelled you to have and the dangers that you faced together?"

            "I think that I do, yes." Harry frowned at her. "And I won't say I'm sure, because you'll pick it apart. This started with a forced bond. It's not going to end there. Yes, I want the beast gone as much as you do, so that I'll be safe and Draco will be safe and I can live the rest of my life with him. Can we concentrate on that, please? Not on whether your dislike of Draco is enough to make me reconsider marrying him?"

            Granger flushed. Weasley reached out and took her hand, shaking his head. Draco thought he understood, then. Granger was indeed reacting this way because of her concern for her best friend, but she thought she was reacting this way because of her logic and her analysis of what was best. She wouldn't like being told otherwise.

            "I only want you to be happy," she murmured.

            "I know." Harry reached out to her this time, and although the bond buzzed like an angry wasp, Draco permitted it. He thought both Harry and Granger needed the reassurance. "I've always known that, Hermione. And when this bond began, I would have agreed with you. I never could have seen myself ending up here. But now I am here, and...I want to be."

            Granger surveyed Harry's face for long minutes before she bit her lip, nodded, and released his hand. Draco relaxed. He didn't gather Harry's hand up to himself, because he wasn't that jealous, but he did tighten his grip on Harry's shoulder.

            "It's ridiculous to try and keep me at a distance," he muttered into Harry's ear. "I love you. I should be there."

            "If we can find a ritual that has parts for everyone, fine," Harry said. He didn't look away from Granger. "Will the ritual that I planned to use to cleanse myself of impurities work for something like this, Hermione?"

            Granger shook her head. Her Weasley had hold of her hand again, but Draco didn't think he needed to; from the signs he could read around Granger's eyes, that fine brain was ticking along its tracks again, without a chance of being distracted by undue worry. "That one would have been risky to do on your own, and it was meant to do nothing more than heal your scars. To eliminate the beast, we'll need a ritual that combines purification with killing." She paused, then said, "Inferno."

            Draco knew what she meant at once. She wasn't the only one in the room with a good education. "Of course not," he said. He thought his voice was normal, but Weasley looked at him, and Draco paused and tried to moderate his tone before he went on. "It's far too dangerous."

            "For me?" Harry asked. "I don't know what you mean, and I'd like to, before you get in some kind of private argument with Hermione over it."

            Draco could feel himself flush. Harry had had the right to give him that scolding. He cleared his throat and said, "An inferno ritual is one that's meant to burn the evil out of something--an artifact, usually. It renders it clean, as if it had just come from the hands of its maker. The fire ensures the death of the Dark magic on it, or the possession by a malevolent ghost, or whatever else it was that made it unsafe to use. I've never heard of one used on a person." He challenged Granger with a single glance that he didn't think either Weasley or Harry would object to, since he and she were the only ones who knew how much emotion it carried.

            Granger gave him back glance for glance, and said, "There are variations meant to work on people. What they need is preparation--they can't be done in the course of a single evening--and support. We'll need at least five people altogether, Harry and four operating outside the circle. Ron and I will be two of them, of course."

            Weasley nodded, not as if his wife had made a decision for him without consulting him but as if he simply agreed. Harry smiled back at them. Draco felt a distant ache. He had a family closer than Harry's, but he didn't have the same experience with friendship that Harry did.

            "I will be one," Draco said. "And so will my mother, who has already accepted Harry as a son-in-law to the family, with greetings in the name of her birth House."

            Granger stared at him. Then she looked down as if she was going to check his wrists for signs of a cursed bracelet that would make him say such things. "That's a strong welcome," she said slowly. "If she's competent to do the magic and willing to commit, we can use her."

            Draco gave Granger a brittle smile and kept silent. He didn't need the warning pressure of Harry's hand on his wrist, not at all. He understood that Granger had never met his mother under circumstances conducive to making a true estimate of her, so she couldn't understand how insulting her words were.

            She would learn better.

            "I can undergo any fire," Harry said, without any ornamental bravery in his voice. "But I am worried about danger to the four of you." He squeezed Draco's hand without looking away from his friends. It was a good thing the bond was contented with that slight touch, Draco thought, since he wasn't.

            "With a properly built ritual circle, there won't be any danger," Granger said, and gave them a smile that had enough light in it that Draco could see why Harry cared about her. "Shall we begin?"

*

            Harry leaned back from the book and yawned widely enough to make his jaws crack. Sometimes he thought he had been reading about rituals most of his life, and he would go on reading about them until he died. The difference was that he was looking up protective rituals now, instead of ones that would lead to marriage.

            He glanced up across the room, and watched Draco squinting at his own book, his frown pronounced. Close beside him sat Narcissa, who could read like a statue as well as stand like one. Now and then, her left hand scribbled notes on the parchment that rested on a table next to her chair.

            "Are you growing weary, Harry?" Narcissa didn't look up from her book, but Harry knew he ought to have suspected that she would catch the slight flash of motion from his direction. "I can have Juli fetch a blanket so that you might go to sleep."

            Harry opened his mouth to say that he could just go to his room and leave them here without bothering them, then closed it with a sigh. The bond, right. Sometimes he was almost capable of forgetting about that. "I'll be fine, Narcissa," he murmured. "I'm tired of research, not tired in a bodily fashion." He tossed the book on the couch beside him and shook his head. "I want to think about something that's not rituals."

            "There is something else we might talk about," Narcissa said, laying down her book and watching him with luminous eyes. "But you have previously indicated that you were unwilling to speak with me about it."

            The Dursleys. Harry tensed and made sure that he didn't look at Draco. He didn't think that Draco would have betrayed what Harry had told him about his relatives to his mother, not without asking Harry's permission. But he couldn't deal with this right now. He picked up the book again and shook his head.

            Narcissa sighed. "The topic of what I can do to make you more comfortable in our home is so distasteful to you?"

            Oh. Harry hesitated, then shrugged. "I don't know that I'll need a separate bedroom now," he said. "I could move my things into Draco's closet, and you could use it for something else."

            "I think it as well that all of us should have a separate space," Narcissa said. "For the moments when those arguments all couples have become worse than normal." She paused. "I have wanted to make several gifts to you, but my fear that they would not be welcome holds me back. Would you want an owl of your own, Harry?"

            Harry's throat tightened, and he shook his head. "My owl died in the war," he explained, when Narcissa studied him. "She was a gift from Hagrid, the first one a friend ever gave me. I don't want any bird to replace her."

            Narcissa's eyes softened. "Yes, we never forget such special gifts," she said. "Well. There are other birds trained to fly post, although many of them are not as clever or widely-traveled as owls. A raven?"

            Harry blinked again. "No, thank you," he said. "I said no bird, and I meant it. Not an owl, not a raven, not a pigeon."

            Narcissa nodded and raised one hand as if she would protect her ear. "As you wish, Harry. But I would ask that you not shout at me."

            Harry sighed and rubbed his hand over his forehead. "This is the reason I don't generally talk about things like this," he muttered. "I get angry too easily when people are only trying to help, and then I feel bad and feel even less like talking about it. So. Sorry. But I don't want a bird. I don't want a new broom. I don't want an enchanted mirror. None of those things." He picked up his book. Suddenly, reading about rituals sounded positively appealing.

            "Harry."

            It was Draco this time. Harry reluctantly glanced up at him and felt the bond make a pleased noise in his ear. He grimaced. There were times that he wished he hadn't started thinking of the bond as a living creature. It had a personality like a hyperactive child.

            Draco's eyes were steady and calm. "Why those particular gifts?" he asked. "What would you like?"

            "Privacy," Harry said shortly, and turned back to his book.

            Draco moved. Harry kept the book up and between them as Draco moved over to the sofa to sit beside him, and hunched his shoulders when he felt Draco's hand moving on his side. Draco and Narcissa might not care that she'd almost caught them having sex, but Harry was a more private person and didn't want to do anything obscene in front of her.

            Draco's hand settled on his side, moving back and forth, in a slow circle over his ribs. Harry released several high, loosened breaths and managed to lean against the sofa back, closing his eyes.

            "That's better," Draco said, and then Summoned his book to him and went on reading beside Harry.

            Gradually, the tension crept out of Harry's shoulders. He shot a glance at Draco, who was concentrating on his book, lips moving soundlessly as he read, and then at Narcissa. She looked as if she was doing much the same thing.

            Maybe it was all right if he said stupid things, because they would still listen to him and then back off and let him think about it for a while. Harry knew that, but there was a difference between knowing something and knowing it.

            After a while, he even managed to get used to the sensation of Draco's fingers tracing his ribs in circles and return to reading about bloody rituals. Bloody, sometimes, in every sense of the word.

*

            "That's the ritual we had settled on, as well."

            Draco still didn't like Granger. She spoke to him as if she was a camel looking to bite, and even through the flames and with the crackle and hiss of the Floo connection nearly overpowering her words, she sounded superior enough to add an edge to Draco's teeth. But when she nodded and then looked at Harry with an absolutely calm and confident gaze, he could see why Harry kept her around. She was a good planner, and she could make one feel that the wildest plans would succeed.

            "Good," Harry said. "Then you know that we'll each have to contribute a bit of blood to make the ritual work?"

            Draco eyed Harry's posture: crouched forwards on the edge of the couch, his knees hunched up, his hands loosely clasped between them. The bond was on the edge of shrilling, not because they were far from each other or too close to someone else, but because Harry was tense and shut up in himself, closed away from a sharing with Draco. Draco reached out and forcibly draped an arm over Harry's shoulders, drawing him against his side.

            Granger looked hard at him. Harry blinked, and then he relaxed and turned back to Granger.

            "That's all right?" he asked, and now there was a flare to his eyes and a tone to his voice that was much more familiar to Draco than the closed-in one that had made the bond whine. Oh, he knew where the shut-in look came from, all right. He just never wanted to see it again, and didn't think that he had given Harry an excuse to do it.

            "Yes," Granger said. She sounded as if she was sliding back from a posture of attack. The camel had lowered its head and was innocently grazing when its rider turned around again, Draco thought wryly. "Ron's willing to do the same." She glanced at Draco. "I know that some pure-bloods are very touchy about the actual liquid in their veins. You and your mother can do this, Malfoy?"

            "You should read fewer novels and more histories," Draco said lazily, and enjoyed watching Granger flush. "Harry is family. He's mine. Of course we're willing to contribute blood."

            Granger too-obviously murdered any impulse she might have had to ignore him, audibly reminded herself that this was for Harry, and then turned around and concentrated on her friend again. "What are we going to make the circle for the ritual from? I know the decay wizards were using blood, but that was to summon and not contain the creature."

            "They drew one binding rune in blood." Harry's eyes were steady. "It's got to be blood, and it's got to be mine."

            Draco tightened his grip to near-crushing pressure, and didn't care who knew it. The bond was singing in his ears, almost screeching, reacting to his fear. Besides, he thought Granger wouldn't accuse him of hurting her precious friend, not when she was saying, "Are you mad?" too loudly to hear the bond.

            "It has to be," Harry said. "Listen. The inferno ritual only works when someone uses the strongest possible binding to destroy the Dark magic inside it, and when it can prevent the magic from escaping to hurt the supporters."

            "That doesn't mean--" Draco began, furious that Harry would have decided this without consulting him.

            "Yes, it does." Harry turned on him, and it wasn't fair that he was using the confidence Draco had given him by touching him against Draco, but it seemed to be happening anyway. "I want this to work, Draco. I want us to never have to worry about it again, so that we can get married and get on with the rest of our lives. We'll use my blood. It will attract the beast as well as bind it. It--made me bleed, among other things. We'll kill it."

            "That much blood will kill you," Granger said, and Draco didn't know whether he should be angry or not about her stating his main argument first.

            "Not if I leech it slowly, over several days," Harry said. "And there are such things as Blood-Replenishing Potions."

            "That's not the point," Draco said. "The point is that there are other things that will work just as well, and that will be less dangerous to you." His hand tightened again, and now he was almost hiding Harry's face against his shoulder. That was fine. If a mouthful of shirt and sweat and human being who cared about him would change Harry's mind about this mad plan, then Draco was perfectly willing to do that.

            "I don't care." Harry's mouth was set in a stubborn line. "I care about keeping you safe--"

            "And not staying safe yourself?" Granger interrupted. "That would be you all over again, Harry. Do you remember that argument you and Ron had in the second year of Auror training? Do you really need to have it again with someone?"

            Draco gritted his teeth, and hung onto his silence with an effort. Harry looked conflicted, and that meant he might listen. Interrupting now, out of sheer jealousy because Granger knew something about Harry that he didn't, would be counterproductive.

            But then Harry's lips closed down into a single straight line, and he stood up and shook his head, shaking Draco's arm off at the same moment. "Not the same," he said. "This isn't an ongoing situation, the way that capturing Dark wizards for me is. This is a one-time event. And if I take long enough and drink all the potions I need, then I can avoid the loss of blood that would kill me."

            He turned away, and Draco caught sight of the set of his jaw. He seized Granger's gaze when she opened her mouth again, and shook his head. She looked camel-like once more until she took a look at Harry.

            Then she sighed, and put out one hand as if she could touch him through the flames. Draco was glad she couldn't, both because of the bond and because that gesture told him something about their friendship he hadn't understood so far.

            "All right," she said. "All right, Harry, if that's the way you want it. But do make sure that you use the best potions."

            "I'll be brewing them," Draco said.

            Harry turned around and smiled at him. And even Granger gave him an approving nod, as though she assumed that Draco's brewing skills were up to par and she wouldn't be checking on them later.

            You impossible, ridiculous, interfering, foolish idiot, Draco thought, as he said his farewells to Granger and stood to cross the room to Harry. You're worth it, but you're probably going to give me a heart attack before I'm thirty.

            But one thing you're not going to do is die of blood loss, or die because of the beast. You aren't.

*

            SP777: Don't blame Ron! He would have gone on with the conversation if I'd allowed it.

            Lucius still wants power if he can get it. The problem is that he keeps trying methods that ceased to work when he stopped being head of the family.

            unneeded: I think you can see the solution they've chosen to the problem of the beast, if not to the problem of Lucius yet.

            Night the Storyteller: No. Lucius has finally had the lesson pounded into his head that that particular tactic doesn't work.
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The Marriage of True Minds