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Bonded Consort	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 33015 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Five--First Conversation
"How did you find me?"
"I asked your parents, and they told me the truth," Draco said, looking around the kitchen as Harry set a cup of tea in front of him.
It really was a shabby little place, so small and dim and, well, unmagical that Draco felt a spasm of surprise. A lot of Squibs made a point of surrounding themselves with the refuse of the world that had tossed them out, as if they wanted to remind everyone of their origin. Draco had assumed Harry would be the same way.
But then, he's not really a Squib, is he?
No, he wasn't. The instant Draco had appeared in the flat, he'd felt the powerful Dark magic lapping and eddying and flowing in all directions, so much so that he felt as if he was underwater trying to catch his breath. Harry sat down in the chair opposite Draco now and looked at him skeptically, and Draco sighed. The black tides of the magic were whispering around him now, drawing him further out to sea.
The Potters wouldn't have sensed it in the same way as Draco, of course, since they were Light wizards. But that left the question up in the air of what Draco's parents had thought they were doing, refusing to bond their son to such a powerful mage.
"They hated the thought of what I became. They wouldn't just tell you."
"There might have been some Veritaserum involved," said Draco, and sipped at his tea.
"You...why in the world would you do that?"
"You said you know something of what your sister's like." Draco waited until Potter grimaced and nodded. "Imagine having to marry her."
A grin so swift flashed across Harry's face that Draco thought abruptly, I want to see him fly. He controlled the impulse to ask, especially since Harry's expression was already cooling into a frown. "But I'm the one who made her that way. So I'd think you would be seeking me out to duel me."
"I have no idea why you think you influenced her that way. But I don't have to know the source of her personality to know I despise her. And I don't despise you. I'd like to give it a chance, see if we can suit and you can become a good consort to me."
"It wasn't me, precisely. It was the magic in me. But that's a bit like saying it wasn't me but was some disease I have. You still can't let me be around normal wizards."
Draco leaned in, watching carefully. There were the words, yes, but there were also the twitches at the edges of Harry's mouth, and the lines of his eyes, and...
"You don't believe that."
Harry gaped at him, and then snatched his pride back and went for a full-on glare. Draco returned it with interest, while parts of him quivered on the inside with delight. Yes, he had known that his potential consort was too intelligent to fall for the sorts of lies the Potters believed.
"I was too young to remember doing it! But it's not like my parents would hate me and send me away for no reason. If they say I corrupted Dahlia, that has to be the truth."
"Corrupted," Draco said, and made sure Harry saw every inch of the roll of his eyes. "No, perhaps your magic influenced her in an undesirable directions. Perhaps. That's not the same as corruption. And if it happened when you were that young, no one could have expected you to control it. Instead, they should have trained you, made sure your magic couldn't get out of control again. They sent you away. What idiots they are."
He saw the restrained toss of Harry's head, the way his mouth wrinkled for a second. He agreed with Draco. Part of him hadn't forgiven his family.
Pity it wasn't the part in charge of his mouth.
"You weren't there. You don't have a right to judge them. And anyway, it isn't my magic, it's Voldemort's--"
"It's powerful and intoxicating, I'll grant you that," said Draco, and ignored the blatantly amazed look Harry turned on him. "But that doesn't make it the same as Voldemort's. They should have trained you. They should have known, even if some part of Voldemort survived after you destroyed him, that doesn't make it his magic. It makes it yours by right of conquest."
Harry sat as still as a toad trying to avoid a snake, except for his lips. Then he whispered, "I don't want to be a Dark wizard."
"That's the first stupid thing you've said. It's what you are. And you could have been using magic for years if people had had the training of you who acknowledged your power and taught you to understand it, instead of running away from the implications."
*
I could be a wizard.
The notion was like magnesium lighting him up from the inside. Harry could feel his breathing speeding faster and faster, thinking of it. He could cast spells. He could feel a wand spark in his hand. He could go back to Britain and not shame his family--
And then he shook his head and closed his eyes. "Wishful thinking, Malfoy," he said, without opening them. "You only know a little. You haven't studied the situation the way Dumbledore and my parents and the Unspeakables did for eight years before telling me it was hopeless. You can't just say that I'd be myself instead of Voldemort resurrected and have me believe it."
Temptation. He would never have believed Malfoy could offer this terrible temptation. He had thought he would listen to Malfoy, joke with him a bit, and send him on his way, one more wizard who had some fashionable idea about something that could redeem a Squib.
But Malfoy's eyes blazed so brilliantly at him that Harry knew he wouldn't be simply going away. And after all, he was the one who had seen the resentment at Harry's family, buried so deep that Harry hadn't met anyone else who had ever known about it.
"I want to know about these studies." Malfoy reached for the tray of biscuits Harry had, after more thought than he wanted to put into the matter, set out. "I want to know why they're so sure that you using a bit of magic would bring the Dark Lord back. And if that was true, he should have come back because you were using Parseltongue, you know."
Harry looked away. Honestly, he knew that. He had always tried to rationalize his use of Parseltongue, the way his mentor accepted it because she was a Parlsemouth herself, and the way he used it even when he didn't have to, to talk to snakes that had nothing to do with him. Now he made his living with it, so it couldn't be that bad, could it?
"Harry?"
"Yeah, it's active magic," Harry said, and ended up speaking it in a whisper. He had never thought he would be so reluctant to speak about this. Then again, it wasn't like he had expected anyone to come along he could talk to about it. "But it was one of Voldemort's talents, too. No Potter has ever been a Parselmouth. Doesn't that just prove I shouldn't use it?"
Malfoy's hand touched his suddenly. Harry started. When had the git crossed the room? "I think it proves that you've left yourself more of a crack than you think," Malfoy said into his ear, one hand wrapped around Harry's and his body leaning over until Harry could smell the faint scent of his robes. "That you can use magic, and you know it, and you make exceptions for a few talents. You can make exceptions for the rest."
"If they do turn out to hurt people?" Harry tilted his head back, even though he knew he shouldn't, to meet Malfoy's eyes. They shone blue-grey and a mixture of other colors, cloudy and close.
"Then we deal with that when the time comes. But the time can't come until you lose the fear your parents tried to instill in you."
Harry was quiet for a moment, studying Malfoy. Malfoy studied him back, so open and evaluating Harry felt his face turn pink. He swallowed and blurted into another question to stop the staring. "What happens if you spend all this time trying to help me and then I decide I don't want to be your consort?"
Malfoy smiled, and Harry felt his breath catch. Maybe it was just that he hadn't seen the smile from this close before. "It's up to me to make sure that you want to spend your time with me," Malfoy said, and his voice was low and close, too, and one hand came down, and he traced his fingertips slowly up Harry's wrist and arm. "My fault if you decide against me."
Harry's world narrowed down, for a second, to the sensation of a hand on his where no one had touched him before. Then he shook his head and sat calmly back. "All right. So you want to make a bargain? My willingness to consider your offer for your help in accessing my magic?"
"An honest offer on both sides," Malfoy said, and his breath was gentle and made Harry think of things he hadn't thought of before, in relation to anyone. "If you really want to consider it, both things, then I'll take the time."
Harry closed his eyes. "I need an answer to one more question."
"What's that?" Brush, brush, brush of his fingertips.
"What makes me so much better than Dahlia? You at least know what she's like. You don't know me at all. There could be something about me that disgusts or bores you just as much, so you don't want to stay with me after all. Why take the chance, the investment of your time and effort, instead of trying to persuade your parents to let you bond with someone more to your liking that you already know?"
*
It was a fair question. Draco knew he would have applauded it in his right mind. If Father had been on Draco's side about getting a consort instead of simply marrying Dahlia Potter, he would have applauded it, too.
But it was hard to remember why it was a sensible question with his head full of Harry, the scent of him, the flutter of his eyelashes, the way his voice trembled a little, almost unnoticeably, when Draco touched him. Draco had assumed without thinking that Harry would be a cynical, experienced man, raised away from pure-blood society as he'd been, without wizarding manners.
Instead...
He's wonderful. And probably a virgin because he probably feared that he'd lose control of Voldemort's magic in a moment of passion.
Draco forced himself to remember what was fair and sensible, not simply what he wanted, and answered calmly, without taking his hand away from Harry's arm and wrist. "I was willing to take a chance in the first place because you have no idea how much Dahlia bores and disgusts me. And I know I probably wouldn't be able to persuade my parents to take a chance on anyone else I knew, no matter how pure-blooded or proud. It's a matter of family honor.
"Then I saw you, and realized you fulfilled some of my criteria. Handsome enough, powerful enough, magical enough if you can grasp your power--"
"You realize that it's very unlikely to have children with a Squib consort at all, simply because they can't muster the magic that you need to brew the child in the first place?"
"You realize that you're not a Squib?"
Harry tilted his head and finally opened his eyes again. Merlin, they were green. "Not in the technical sense. But it might be a sense that would still get in the way of us having children. I want you to realize that."
"I took the chance despite not knowing. I have no fears anymore."
Harry half-smiled and reached out to grasp Draco's hand. "Then what do you want?"
"A period of time to get to know you. To court you." Draco reached down and drew out the glass bonding bracelets, turning them over so Harry could see them. "To persuade you to accept your rightful one of these."
Harry's eyes flickered hard with an emotion Draco couldn't decipher, but thought might be desire. And why not? Draco wasn't an unreasonable partner himself, and was holding out the key to a future Harry had always wanted: wizarding power certainly, and probably marriage, love, and a family.
"Promise me something."
"I won't rush you."
Harry shook his head and looked up. "Not that. I want you to promise that if you get to know me, and there's something about me that really does hurt you or make you want to back away, you'll do it. You don't deserve to be saddled with someone you don't want for the rest of your life because of what I want."
Draco caught Harry's hand and kissed the back of it. "Just that request tells me more about what kind of person you are than I've got from Dahlia in the eight years I've really known her."
Harry stared at his hand and then up at Draco as if he couldn't believe that Draco had just done that. Then he nodded, hesitantly, and said, "Well. If you're that determined."
"I am." Draco leaned back, thought about not saying the thing on the tip of his tongue, and then spoke it again. "I am, and I think you need to know that I won't change my mind even if it turns out that you had something to do with Dahlia's personality shift."
"I could do the same thing to you."
"No. I am neither a Light witch nor a child."
"But since I don't know what I did to influence her--"
"We'll figure it out together," Draco said, and his voice was firm enough that this time, Harry quieted and stared up at him. "You're used to fending on your own. I can see that. I don't expect it to change right away. But you might as well know that you have an ally in your corner who is not going to abandon you."
*
Harry couldn't get his breath.
It was different from the kind of breathlessness he had felt when Malfoy first Apparated into his flat, and different again from the kind he felt when he got a letter from his family. It was--the feeling he'd got, maybe, when he realized that M.H. had followed him thousands of miles just for someone to complain to and praise him.
Just for the pleasure of my company.
"You would be willing to help me get my magic back no matter what? Even if we end up not liking each other, or it ends up costing you your contract with Dahlia?"
"That's a cost I would be more than willing to pay," said Draco, his eyebrows arched as he stared at Harry. "But yes. You need a lot of reassurance."
Harry flushed, he knew it, but he held Draco's eyes and spoke the truth. "I'm not used to being able to trust anyone who isn't a snake."
"Promise me something, in return."
Harry nodded, although he felt he had to speak a word of caution. "I can't promise to teach you Parseltongue. I've never managed to teach anybody."
"That's because Parseltongue is a magical gift that you either have or you don't. It should have its proper level of respect." Draco hesitated, then leaned forwards and held Harry's eyes. "No, I want you to promise that you won't forgive your family in front of me. Maybe you will, when you go back to them in all the glory of your magic and they receive you the way they should. But I don't want to hear about it."
Harry laughed, with all his breathlessness behind it, and stood up suddenly, forcing Draco back a pace. He'd barely had time to narrow his eyes when Harry caught his hand and wrung it.
"I can promise you that I never will," Harry said. "The last thing on my mind is forgiving them after what they've done to me."
Again they were close, and Draco searched Harry's eyes for the reassurance he needed himself before he smiled, inclined his head, and said, "Very well. Then I think this is the beginning to a profitable alliance."
A second time he kissed the back of Harry's hand, and this time Harry listened to, even embraced, the tingles running through his body. If Draco could give him back his magic, this was more than worth it, whatever strange consort arrangement he might want from Harry in return.
If he couldn't do that, that might not matter. Not against the feeling of having someone human in his corner.
He at least cares about me being able to exercise my magic. There's at least that.
And holding Draco's eyes...
This could be a lot more than that.
*
SP777: Thank you!
phoenix-rob: Harry believed that his family had snubbed him for their own safety. He always believed that it was unfair, but he didn't think he could do anything about it without making the situation worse. Now that he knows he can, there's part of him that will take great delight in going back and rubbing this in their faces.
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Bonded Consort