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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-Six--Sharing the Same Blood

            "And you're certain this is going to work," Ron said for the fiftieth time. Harry had been keeping track of it, for lack of anything better to do.

            "I think that this is as close as we can come to the description of a perfect inferno ritual," Harry said, his hands steady as he poured the steaming liquid from one flask into the other. Draco had admitted that Harry's blood was the best material to make the circle that would protect the others--a battle Harry had thought he was going to lose--but had insisted that the blood be "purified" by exposure to different kinds of crystal and metal. That was all so much gibberish to Harry, but since he could accomplish it by pouring the blood from flasks and cups and casks and cauldrons into new ones, he was willing to go along with it.

            It was strange, he thought, watching his blood foam and chatter into the new flask, which was made of what looked like faceted crystal and showed him the blood easily. The liquid no longer felt like it had come out of his veins. The color remained a bright, shining scarlet instead of drying, a deeper red than the kind that Harry usually saw, as though it was the heart of a new-blooming rose. And the magical potency of it made his teeth ache just leaning close to it.

            "You look like a damn vampire, getting ready to drink it," Ron said crossly. "Can you lean away from it and focus on me for a second?"

            Harry grinned at his best friend and did so. "Yes? Did you find something new in the decay wizard conspiracy?"

            "Not exactly," Ron said grudgingly. He didn't seem to like admitting that the Ministry had done a perfectly competent job of rounding up Harry's attackers once they had solid information to go on. Harry had already listened to several tirades about how they should have done this earlier, the moment Harry came back suffering those wounds. "But I do think that maybe there's some other way."

            Harry sighed and set the flask of blood down. He wasn't supposed to pour it somewhere new more than once every half-hour, so that it could have the time to absorb the properties of whatever flask Draco had directed him to use next. "Some other way than to use my blood? We've been over this--"

            "No. I meant, some other way than the inferno ritual to get rid of the scars and the beast." Ron's eyes were grim. "Mate, I've been reading about inferno rituals. It's not true that they've never been tried on people before. They have, especially people whose minds had been twisted by the Imperius Curse or Legilimency. None of them worked. All those people burned to death."

            Harry tried to swallow, but his throat, unsurprisingly, felt dry. "That's what Hermione and Draco said, too," he agreed, and looked around at Draco's bubbling potions lab to distract himself. Another Blood-Replenishing Potion simmered away over a brazier, although Harry had drawn all the blood they'd need to make the circle. Draco seemed to feel that things wouldn't be perfect until Harry had swallowed two potions for every drop of blood he drew. "But they think they can make this one successful."

            "Harry."

            Ron's voice was shaking. Harry turned around, staring, and saw him clench his fists and turn away to glare at the wall.

            Harry came up behind his best friend and put a hand on his shoulder. "Ron, what is it?" If Ron had discovered something about the inferno ritual that distressed him, Harry wanted to know what it was--although he was also sure that Ron would have taken any serious concern straight to Hermione first off. Maybe Ron needed a different kind of reassurance than the theoretical ones she could give him, though.

            Ron took a deep breath, and then whispered savagely, "I want to destroy them, for what they did to you. And I want to destroy Lucius Malfoy, too. It's not fair that you should have to go through with this."

            Harry tightened his grip on Ron's shoulder, not knowing what to say. No, life wasn't fair, and that had been something he'd thought Ron had always accepted better than he had. Harry was the one who had flailed around during their fifth year convinced that life should be fair and that that meant he shouldn't have to fight Voldemort or do anything else involving him.

            But then again, Ron had always wanted to help, too. And standing back while Hermione did the research and Draco brewed the potions had to be wearing on him. He had helped capture the decay wizards, but for the past several days, there had been little that he could contribute.

            Harry licked his lips, and thought of something Ron could do, something that might make him feel more useful. Hermione and Draco didn't need explanations like this, because they seemed to grasp the theoretical implications right away. Harry, though, didn't. And he thought he should understand everything before they began the inferno ritual.

            Not to mention that Harry and Draco were currently experimenting with how long the bond could stretch apart before it summoned them back together, and Harry could use something to distract him from the whining thrum of the bond in his ears and the way it seemed to cut into his stomach.

            "Tell me again," he said. "Tell me why the beast would have manifested and attacked if Draco and I had just tried to complete the wedding ritual without doing the inferno one first. I never understood that."

            Ron gave him a dark look. "You don't have to humor me."

            "I can't answer your questions, either," Harry pointed out. "But you can try to answer mine."

            Ron considered that, and then smiled at him. "Fair enough. The beast stopped when you were about half-eaten, apparently. That's what the decay wizards said, and I reckon they should know." Ron made a disgusted grimace.

            Harry swallowed. He tried not to think about the decay wizards summoning beasts and eating them, or sacrificing people to them, when he could. There was only so much that he could stand to think about, when it came to something that ate people. "All right. But why wouldn't it have manifested through the forced marriage bond? That was a ceremony that was complete, since Lucius just had to will me and Draco together for it." He glanced at the four-banded ring on his finger.

            "Because that was still only half like a marriage bond," Ron said. "You had to live together, and you lost a few other things, but not everything. And you fought it. It was--an incomplete ceremony, basically, like the state the beast was caught in when it was pulled into your scars. It couldn't finish eating you, but it left its mark. And it didn't escape, but you didn't subdue it completely, either. Are you all right, mate?" he added suddenly.

            Harry's skin felt chilled, and he didn't think it was from the pulling and humming of the bond. He smiled at Ron and nodded sharply. "Well enough to finish talking about this. I think I need to know. So even the forced marriage bond ending didn't release it, because that was a half-state, too. But being completely married would complete the cycle and release it in some way?"

            "Exactly," Ron said. "That kind of bond would be the opposite of the situation it attacked you in in every way. You would be willingly entering it--they said something about the forced marriage bond also keeping the beast quiet because it was unwilling, like the way you felt when it had you--and it would be a full ceremony, carried all the way through to the end. That would basically kick the beast into rising and trying to finish what it had started, because it had a prior claim on you, in its eyes." Ron shuddered. "That's as much as I understood. Trying to follow it much more than that bothered me."

            Harry gave him a sickly smile. "Me, too, mate."

            Ron clapped him on the shoulder, and they stood there in silence, watching Harry's blood steam in the crystal flask. Harry relaxed a bit. The pull of the bond on him had quieted, now that he had something else to think about. He wondered if perhaps he and Draco needed to simply do that now and then, test the limits of the bond so that they didn't give in and start thinking that they needed to remain near each other no matter what happened and how dangerous it might be.

            Still, he was happy when Draco opened the lab door and came in with the next flask for his blood, his eyes immediately finding Harry's and holding them. He wasn't so happy when Draco saw Ron's hand on his shoulder and did his own version of the steaming in the crystalline flask currently cradling the blood, but they all had their challenges and limitations, and he would have done the same thing if he saw Draco with a friend of his.

            As for the implication that Draco would keep on doing it, to Ron and Hermione at least, even when the bond was settled and their marriage complete...

            We'll face that particular challenge when we come to it.

*

            If Draco tried to think about how many factors were going into the inferno ritual at the moment and how many things could go wrong, he would also go mad. So he concentrated on the individual steps in front of him.

            They had chosen a room in the Manor for this, of course. Choosing somewhere else had been possible, but the one time Harry spoke of it, Narcissa had turned and looked at him with arctic cold in her eyes. That had settled that. And Draco had agreed. Even letting Weasley and Granger inside the wards again was not as panic-inducing for him as trying to conduct such a delicate ritual somewhere else would have been.

            The room had served various purposes down the years: grand hall for impressing potential allies and prisoners of war; guest bedroom for Dark Lords; potions lab or library for the Malfoys who had been more studious than Draco. It was large enough, with rafters that rose to a curved half-dome to hold up the roof, and the walls were made of layered marble, a solid mass. Draco approved. They would need a room that didn't burn for the inferno ritual, and one that stood a chance of containing the magical explosion in case something went wrong.

            Before the ritual began, he had taken one other precaution, with his mother's full knowledge and approval. He had located Lucius, sitting in one of the rooms in the wing Draco had permitted him to retain, and placed him in an enchanted sleep that would last ten hours. No need for him to interfere. On the other hand, no need to leave him in a permanent coma should something go wrong with the ritual and both Draco and Narcissa die. The leadership of the family would return immediately to him in that case, and he would have to be free to make decisions.

            Draco felt his mood tremble like a flame when he thought about that. But there was no good in setting up a ritual like this and then refusing to face all the consequences.

            There was already a circle grooved into the center of the room's floor, wide and deep and layered with gold at the bottom. Draco had worried about whether they had enough of Harry's blood to pour into it and complete the circle, but Granger had told him that they had more than enough. Harry had drawn more than he'd told Draco about, and drunk more potions.

            Draco hadn't said anything about it as they prepared for the final steps of the ritual, because he did think that Harry needed full and unbroken concentration to carry out what he'd promised. But come to the end, with everyone safe and the beast destroyed, he and Harry were going to have a talk.

            Harry walked into the center of the circle first, his head bowed and his breathing calm. He had stripped his shirt so that he could bare the scars to the world, and Draco gritted his teeth when he saw the way Weasley and Granger looked at him. He might think that he's ugly with those scars and that no one else could possibly want him, but he's wrong. He could have had either of them for the asking. Or both.

            Harry would probably tell him that he was wrong and it was just the bond urging him to jealousy, but Draco didn't think so. He had to bite his tongue twice as Harry knelt down in the middle of the circle and watched Draco and Granger make the circle, pouring the blood into the long groove. Draco still didn't think there would be enough until he saw all the flasks and cauldrons and casks that Granger brought out. The blood had been purified and magically charged by its contact with the different kinds of materials that they had given Harry, and then thinned as far as possible, so that it would create a single layer of liquid in the circle.

            All of that flowed in your veins, Draco thought, and glared at Harry out of the corner of his eye as he poured, making sure that none of the blood slipped onto the floor or otherwise away from them. Stubborn oaf.

            Harry smiled at him as long as they could keep eye contact, and then bowed his head and went back to concentrating. Draco knew he needed that concentration to summon up the beast and make it respond to the calling ritual, so he kept silent as he poured and poured and poured.

            He knew the moment they finished, when the stream of blood coming from Granger's direction joined the one coming from his. There was a great steam and puff, and a scarlet column of light rose to the ceiling. It settled back down into a crimson glow. Harry was surrounded by a ring of his own blood, and Draco wouldn't be able to reach him for the rest of the ritual.

            Or ever again, if this goes wrong.

            Draco bit his tongue against the temptation to call out to Harry or to scold himself, and then retreated with Granger to the far corners of the room. She took up the far left-hand corner, while he took the far right-hand one. His mother moved into position opposite him, Weasley opposite Granger.

            Granger began the ritual, her voice so smooth and confident that Draco could have believed she did this every day. "I bring gifts for the seasons." On the floor in front of her she laid a small object that Draco found it difficult to distinguish from this distance, but he knew what it would be. "A bare twig for the winter." A green leaf followed. "New growth for the spring." Then a rose from the Manor gardens. "A flower for the summer." And one of last year's leaves, golden and trampled and gathered from the woods outside Hogwarts. "Old growth for the autumn."

            The air flashed, hard, and sparked. When Draco could see again, a glittering spiral rose in front of Granger, twisting through the colors of black, green, red, and gold. He let out a shaking breath. That was the beginning, then. Partially to call up power, partially to protect themselves from the fire, each of the four of them would call upon a significant four things, magically or naturally important.

            And it was his turn, now.

            "I bring gifts for the elements." Draco reached out and gathered up several coals from the brazier that burned beside him, dropping them in front of him. "Banked flames for the fire." Next came the crumbling clods of dirt he had gathered from the gardens. "Fertile soil for the earth." He tried not to flinch as he poured a little of the ditch-water he'd gathered that morning from its glass onto the floor. He wasn't dirtying anything, and the house-elves could clean it up later. "Fresh rain for the water." Last, he pursed his lips and blew out. "My clean breath for the air."

            The spiral that formed in front of him blazed scarlet and brown, blue and white. Draco watched it and tried to ignore the sped-up pounding of his heart as he realized that it blocked his vision of Harry kneeling in the circle. Not completely--he could still see Harry's head and shoulders if he squinted--but enough that he had to bite down on his tongue again so he wouldn't snap out a protest.

            Weasley began to speak, his words weirdly distorted. After a moment, Draco figured out that that was also due to the spiral, and managed to relax. They would get through this, he tried to reassure himself. They would. They would show the beast that it couldn't separate them, and with that, they would show the decay wizards, and Harry's friends, and Lucius, and everyone else who thought they might have better lives on their own.

            "I bring gifts for the directions," Weasley chanted. "Ice for the north." His wand flared, and the stones in front of him iced over. "Light for the east." Another spell made brilliance pour briefly over them, as if they stood outside in the gardens. "Heat for the south." Draco flinched as the fire of Weasley's spell touched his skin, then scowled at himself. He had to remember that they would face fire greater than that in a matter of moments. "Darkness for the west." And quiet blue-black twilight this time, reminding Draco of the calm, magical moment he had sometimes seen in between the moment the sun set and the moon rose.

            The spiral that formed to guard Weasley wrapped around his body instead of floating in the air in front of him, but Draco knew it was supposed to, and didn't worry. The colors here cycled more quickly, the colors of the spells, and he found it more difficult to see them.

            That left his mother, the most graceful and confident of them all, and Draco turned to her with simple faith that she would get it right. She nodded as if reassuring him, although Draco knew she would have trouble seeing the expression on his face. She knew him well enough to reckon what he was feeling, however.

            "I bring gifts for the wandering stars," she said. It had seemed appropriate that she take the planets, since she belonged to a house of people named for the stars and the constellations. "A feather for the small and swift Mercury, beloved of the sun." A dove's wing-feather lifted into the air and then fluttered to the ground, blown by her breath. "A candle for the bright Venus, lodestar of love and brilliance of the evening." The candle flared into life at her feet; Draco hadn't seen her wand move. "A grain of salt for Terra, beloved of its oceans." The light caught on the salt and made it glitter like a diamond. "A drop of blood for the ruddy Mars, proclaiming war on the horizon."

            She cut her wrist without pausing, and the drop of blood rolled out, hung, hesitated, fell.

            And that was the beginning, as the drop hit the stone and sealed the spiral that wrapped around her, bright as dreams or Mars, and Draco brought his wand down and hit the base of his wrist hard.

            His veins seemed to splinter open, and the blood poured out. Weasley and Granger were bleeding themselves at the same time, a few drops and no more. The more they gave to the ritual and the flowing protection that Harry's blood had already set up, the stronger the spell would become, but on the other hand, the weaker they would become for the feats of magic that they needed to perform to help Harry contain and control the beast.

            The blood added a fifth ring of red to all their spirals, and then rose up above them and formed a completely separate one, turning there, glittering and shining and flashing. Surrounded by symbolic fours, guarded by as much protection as they could summon with a week of preparations, Draco turned towards Harry. He was the one who would have to give the signal to the rest of them to add their magic to the circle.

            Harry still knelt in one place, his head bowed, breathing steadily and softly. Draco knew it would have to be so, but he still gritted his teeth, and wished they hadn't chosen a ritual that required him and Harry to be separated.

*

            It wasn't the hardest thing he had ever done. He would always have that comfort now, Harry thought dryly, because at least two things would always be harder: walking through the Forest towards Voldemort when he thought he would have to die permanently to save the world, and breaking free of the beast in the darkness.

            This wasn't the darkness. His friends were with him, his mother-in-law. His husband. They were doing all they could, as the supporters of the ritual, to protect him and stand by him.

            But he was the one who had to make that final choice, deliberately. That was the difference between inferno rituals to free possessed objects of their possession and inferno rituals to free people of a possession. A cursed box or book had the magic inflicted on them from the outside. A person had to make the choice. And if they didn't, the ritual would fail.

            At last, with a pass of his wand, Harry conjured flame from his blood in the circle around him. Above him, the spirals took up the shine and reflected it, and he was caught in a baking ring of heat.

            There would never be a better moment. It must be now.

            Harry set himself on fire.

            The flames ripped cries from him as they came out through his skin, as they caught on his clothing, as they sprouted from under his nails like bright claws. Harry had to control the impulse to roll on the floor and smother them that way. He knew the truth. They couldn't be smothered. They would merely keep burning, and he would look like an idiot. He hunched his shoulders and bowed his head, doing all he could to surrender to the heat, to look calm and confident and cool--

            Maybe not cool.

            The power called up from beyond the circle boomed at him. The spirals turning near the ceiling, made of burning blood, beamed more fire down at him. It hurt like a hundred bites all over Harry's body, every second, and the tears running down his face vanished into stream, but it was digging into the scars and reaching for the beast, calling the beast, bringing it to the surface and vanquishing the darkness with both the purifying heat and the light that the beast couldn't withstand--

            Then Harry heard it.

            The sound that had haunted his nightmares, the sound of the beast's suckers fastening on flesh, the ripple and tear of the great bat-wings beating the air.

            I can't do this.

            His mind descended into a screaming maelstrom, the memories overwhelming him again. He was back in the dark, crouched there with the scabbed sores forming on his buttocks from the pile of feces he sat in, feeling his flesh become liquid and flow away into the suckers, feeling his mouth stuffed with the false food that kept him alive every time he tried to scream--

            Death was better than this. Eating the beast was better than this.

            His magic lashed out, and Harry opened his eyes.

            The beast hovered above him, formless head and enormous wings and a body composed entirely of the hanging suckers around a flowing, amorphous mass. The suckers reached for him.

            Harry lost his mind.

*

            Emailen: Hope this satisfies.

            Kristinally: Thanks. I think you can see that something did go wrong. But I do think that the story will end relatively soon, with probably only seven or eight chapters left now.

            SP777: I...can't actually remember? Though I think the one in Intoxicate the Sun would be lenient with him if she met him.

            unneeded: Ron is still the voice of reason, and Draco and Narcissa have made sure that Lucius won't interfere. A good thing, with so many other things going wrong.

            Night the Storyteller: You mean, any more information? There's some, but it will wait until after the ritual.
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The Marriage of True Minds