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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 Seven—Flesh to Flesh

            “How was breakfast?”

            Harry rolled his eyes, but didn’t otherwise respond to Ginny’s inquiry. She knew how he felt about this marriage, and he knew how she felt, and it wasn’t worth arguing about. The best thing they could do was find a magical way to break the bond as soon as possible, so that Harry could escape and marry her. “You said that you’d need to explain this first magical solution again,” he said, and sat down across from Ginny at the table in the Leaky Cauldron. As long as they didn’t meet there, or meet every day, it was a spot they could use sometimes. Harry was glad; he was starving for one of the Leaky’s bowls of thick soup after a boring morning filing reports. “Is Hermione coming to join us?”

            Ginny, pausing with her hand hovering above the table as she stared at him, didn’t respond, but Hermione stepped up to him a moment later and kissed him on the cheek. “Right here,” she said. Harry noticed that she studied the ring on his left hand but made no motion to touch it.

            “Harry,” Ginny said.

            Harry glanced at her. She still hadn’t sat down. She had on a brilliant green robe today, he noticed wistfully, and it made her brown eyes glow, sparking hazel lights from their depths. Her hair shone more like fire than ever.

            “Yeah?” he asked. Hermione, he saw, had already settled in her seat at the right side of their table and was waving down a server to take their order. Whatever had made Ginny hesitate, she either didn’t know about it or wasn’t letting it affect her.

            “I asked because I wanted to know how your breakfast went,” Ginny said, and her voice had gone cold and soft. “If you can’t speak about it, then—then that’s fine, but you owe me the courtesy of an answer.”

            Harry stared at her, then sighed and drew back the hand he’d casually stretched out for her. He was trying not to touch her as much. She didn’t seem to like it, and it would feed the rumors about him cheating on her with Malfoy, or cheating on Malfoy with her; Harry never knew what the papers, still in an uproar about the mere existence of the marriage, would choose to say next.

            Besides, he had to cope with the revelation Malfoy had forced on him a few nights ago, that he might think of Ginny as solely the mother of his children, the way that pure-bloods usually thought about their families. He—wasn’t quite ready to face that again.

            “Sorry,” he said. “I thought you’d know. The same thing as ever. Mrs. Malfoy talking to me, trying to convince me that suddenly being adopted into the Malfoys is a great thing. Malfoy wandering through and annoying the piss out of me. House-elves who need the benefit of your expertise, Hermione.” Hermione smiled at him briefly. Harry cocked his head. “Malfoy coming is a bit unusual, I have to admit,” he added a minute later. “The bastard usually takes his breakfasts in bed. Too posh to sit down on a chair like the rest of us.”

            “It probably hurts the stick up his arse,” Ginny said lightly, and finally sat down. Harry smiled at her with relief that felt like cool water lapping him. Malfoy was wrong, he reassured himself. He didn’t think of Ginny as any way but the traditional, romantic one. He wanted to marry her and spend the rest of his life with her, grow old watching the lines appear around her eyes and getting familiar with every note of her laugh.

            “Yeah,” he said. “The sooner I can get out of that atmosphere, the better.” He turned to Hermione as the server put her glass of lemonade on the table and looked expectantly at him and Ginny. He was good. He almost didn’t let his eyes flicker to the faded scar on Harry’s forehead. “Um, pumpkin juice, and whatever the soup of the day is.”

            “Lemonade for me,” Ginny said. “Nothing to eat, thank you.”

            Harry turned to look at her. It wasn’t often that she skipped lunch. Ginny gave him a hard smile and folded her hands on the table. “Nothing personal, but talking about the Malfoys turns my stomach,” she said.

            Harry nodded. He could hardly expect her to be happy about it. He looked at Hermione again, who was in the middle of a sip. She held up one finger, then put the glass down and looked him dead in the eye. Harry fought to keep from squirming. Hermione had come out of the war with boundless enthusiasm for her chosen task of reforming those parts of the Ministry that dealt with magical creatures. Then she’d seen what she had to deal with and stared for a little while before she buckled down and got to work. She was as good a friend as she’d ever been, but dealing with her intensity was sometimes a bit hard.

            He could carefully ignore the other reason she peered intensely at him, if he tried.

            “How much do you know about this marriage bond so far?” Hermione asked.

            Harry chewed his lip. This wasn’t Hogwarts, and Hermione no longer insisted on hearing how much progress he’d made on his homework before she helped him with it. Well, there must be some other reason for her to ask the question, then. Harry shrugged. “Not much. They took my vaults, my name, my ability to live on my own. The bond will hurt us if we hurt each other, or if we spend too much time apart. Malfoy reckons that sleeping in the same house is enough to satisfy it, and that seems to have worked so far. The rings won’t let anyone else touch them, but otherwise, I’ve had no trouble shaking hands or hugging anyone or tackling that one suspect the other day to the ground. Malfoy claims that the Malfoy magic really recognizes me as part of the family, including the wards.” He thought about mentioning the statues; he knew Hermione would be fascinated and Ginny contemptuous in just the right way. But that felt weird and private somehow, and his stomach squirmed away from trying it. “That’s about it.”

            Hermione nodded. “Yeah, I thought that would be,” she said. “The reason the magical solutions are so hard to make work, and for that matter, so are the legal solutions—I’ll need to explain some more about the nature of the marriage bond.”

            Harry thought about complaining that he was eating lunch, but his joke to Malfoy about dry heaves the other night had been just a joke. Most of the time. When the server brought his soup, he nodded and took one sip. “Okay.”

            “The marriage bond is meant to join one person to a more powerful pure-blood family,” Hermione said. “Vaults and names are assigned to whoever’s the most powerful.” She sneered a bit. “I’ve read a lot of books that assume that the woman is always pulled into the man’s family, but they can only come to that conclusion by ignoring all those cases where the woman’s family was more powerful and they took him.”

            Harry paused. “Would it matter—” He caught Hermione’s glare and swallowed before he continued. “Would it matter which family initiated the bond? Like, if Lucius had tried this and my family was more powerful, would Malfoy have ended up with the name Potter?”

            Hermione smirked. “Yes. That’s exactly what would have happened.”

            Harry thought about it wistfully for a moment, then shook his head. “Wasn’t Lucius taking a risk?”

            “Not if he knew the history.” Hermione sighed and placed her palms flat on the table. She looked as though she was trying to smooth wrinkles out of an expensive robe, Harry thought. He wondered what was wrong. “But there’s more. When the marriage bond—settles itself, then it can curl more deeply into those people it affects than simply taking away the vault and the name of the partner from the less powerful family.”

            Harry ate some more soup before he responded, because he honestly needed the moment to keep from springing up and pacing back and forth. “So you’re saying that I could start obeying the Malfoys, or needing to spend more time around Malfoy.” He thought about pushing the bowl away, but he was too hungry to let the food go to waste. He would just do his best not to think about what he was hearing.

            “No,” Hermione said. “Not unless you were someone who had always wanted Malfoy’s friendship and attention.”

            Harry thought his shudder was enough to convey his answer to that. Ginny snickered.

            “No, I know you’re not.” Hermione’s voice softened, and this time she took his hand that wasn’t holding the spoon. “But you’re—Harry, don’t take this the wrong way. You’ve always wanted a family. It’s completely understandable,” she added hastily, as though she assumed Harry would take the words as an insult. “It makes you vulnerable, though. If someone offered you a home and family with a price tag attached, would you have the strength to resist?”

            “That’s exactly what Lucius has done,” Harry said. “And I think I’m resisting rather nicely, thank you.” He looked across the table at Ginny. She gave a faint smile and nodded. Harry wondered what that meant.

            “The problem is that it could involve more than that,” Hermione murmured. “The marriage bond will sense those needs and fasten on them. It changes itself in response to strong needs and desires from the partners, you see. It could bind you faster to the family because it’s a place where you could belong.”

            “You saw the Manor, at least once,” Harry said. All the color left Hermione’s face, and he winced, hating to have reminded her of the time she was there and tortured by Bellatrix. But he pushed doggedly on, since he’d already said it. “You—know what it’s like. There’s no way I could fit in there, Hermione, not for all the marriage bonds in the world.”

            “But you might start feeling more comfortable there,” Hermione said. “The bond might even modify the way Malfoy behaves towards you—it couldn’t do anything about his parents, though—to make sure that he welcomes you.”

            “What, like mind control? Imperius?” Harry shook his head and ate some more soup. “I have to assume that his parents would notice that happening to the poor bastard and help him. No one deserves that.”

            “If they approve,” Hermione said, “then they might not. And you told us that Lucius forced this bond in the first place and that his mother has been doing her level best to invite you into the family.”

            Harry closed his eyes, and the soup he had eaten so far curdled in his stomach. Suddenly, Narcissa’s soft conversation and the way she kept asking him if there was anything she could doe for him so that he would feel more at home in the Manor changed shape and proportion and angle in his head, like knives planted in flesh.

            No, he didn’t necessarily think that she knew about the marriage bond and had been trying to get him to stay there whether he wanted to or not. The problem was, it didn’t matter. Whether she knew or not, the end result could be the same if he listened to her or to the needy, orphaned part of himself and gave in.

            I can’t give in.

            But the bond might affect his emotions, too, Hermione said. Harry opened his eyes and turned to Ginny, the one whom he could trust, the one who knew him best. She had already seen slight changes in his behavior, he thought, like agreeing to eat meals with Narcissa when he didn’t have to, and that meant she was the best person to let him know when things changed even more. She met his gaze, eyes wide.

            “Let me know if I’m not acting like myself,” he said hurriedly. “Can you do that? No matter how much I might protest or talk about the need to go to the Manor? Just keep repeating it. Write me owls if necessary. I need to hear whatever you can tell me.”

            Ginny nodded. Her eyes were larger than ever now, but a minute later she smiled. “I’d consider it a pleasure, an honor,” she whispered, and held his hand.

            “Harry,” Hermione said, voice thick with disapproval, for some reason, even though she had been the one who’d brought this up. “That news wasn’t meant to make you even more paranoid, just to show you what we’re up against with this marriage bond and why there’s no simple solution.”

            “I don’t care,” Harry said. He could feel a familiar emotion running through his veins, flashing like quicksilver. The moment when it had last come to a head for him was obscure in his memory, overridden with darkness and lightning and the sound of what had held him prisoner dying. He clasped his hands tightly together in his lap and closed his eyes, breathing in such a way that he hoped he could control it. “I don’t care, Hermione. I was finally getting back on track, living the life I want to. You—have to see why this affects me so much.”

            “Calm down, Harry,” she whispered. “Yes, I do, but you need to make sure that you don’t make the Leaky cease to exist or something.”

            It was no exaggeration, Harry knew, not when he felt like this. It helped when Ginny put a steadying hand on his shoulder. He breathed, and the tumult slowly retreated, as did the danger that he would simply lash out with his magic because he had no choice. When he thought he could, he opened his eyes and nodded to Hermione.

            “So the solution to the bond,” Hermione went on as though she had never stopped speaking, “is to change the focus of your needs and desires so the bond can’t prey on them. Think about things you want besides a family. Think about them as much as possible. Find new hobbies.” She caught his eye, and too late, Harry saw the steely gleam behind hers. “Get some help with the problems that might make you most vulnerable.”

            “Not when it would mean telling someone that their precious hero was really missing for three months,” Harry hissed back.

            “You have to deal with this,” Hermione said. She had leaned back in the chair and folded her arms across her chest. “You don’t have to do it that way, but Harry, it’s destroying you. Pulling you apart from the inside.” She paused, studying him, then continued in a voice deep with compassion and grief. “I understand why you wanted to wait, but it’s been three months now, as long as you spent—there, and things aren’t getting any better. Please, Harry, get some help.”

            Harry shook his head. “You know about it,” he said, turning to include Ginny in his glance as well. “It’s not something I can tell anyone else about. They’d insist on—talking about things that I can’t talk about.”

            “Other things,” Hermione said.

            “Yes. Other things.” Their gazes crossed like swords. Harry shoved his chair back from his table, honestly no longer hungry now. Hermione and Ron and Ginny knew about the “other things” that Harry mean, but Harry had told them about it once, just like he’d told them about the source of the scars on his back once, and that was enough. He was never going to live through it awake again, not when he did so constantly in his dreams. “I’ll see what I can do about hobbies and focusing on other things than a family. Thanks for telling me, Hermione.”

            “Wait, Harry,” Ginny said softly, coming to her feet behind him. “Can I help?”

            Harry turned to give her a strained smile. “Yeah. Didn’t Charlie have an instrument of some kind? A harp or something that he didn’t want to play anymore?”

            “Mandolin,” Ginny murmured, watching him with even more sadness in her eyes, and pity. The pity was all right; she was one of the three people in the world Harry would have accepted it from. “I can send it over, if you’d like.”

            Harry grimaced when he remembered that she would have to send it to the Manor instead of his home, but nodded. “That’d be great, thanks.” He set his face to the door of the Leaky Cauldron and hoped that no one from the papers was lurking right outside the door. He could put up with articles that speculated gleefully about him fleeing from Ginny, the same way he could put up with articles about everything, but he’d prefer not to, right now.

            “I’ll send over the instructions for the incantation you’ll need to use after you’ve thought about other things for a month,” Hermione called after him.

            Harry nodded once and then escaped. It was raining a bit outside, which was perfectly fine with him. Sometimes he and the weather were in agreement, and Harry could use that after the day he’d had.

*

            Draco stepped out of the Muggle building and stood for a moment in the middle of the London street, his head half-turned. There were people all around him, of course, bustling and swaggering and striding past him, and they gave him annoyed glances that usually turned fascinated when they saw his robes. But that wasn’t Draco’s problem, nor what had caught his attention.

            Someone was following him.

            Draco was impressed with himself for having caught that particular fact in the middle of this crowd. He turned his head, shrugged a bit as though he had forgotten something and decided not to go back for it, and began to walk. His feet whispered across the ground. His robes swished. He hummed under his breath. All in all, he tried to present the ideal of a target who could be taken off-guard. The person could be a Muggle business rival.

            Not even a wizard, he thought, would notice the careful position of his hand on his wand beneath the right side of his robe.

            He moved on, his head bowed, awaiting the moment of the attack. He didn’t think the follower would wait long enough for him to get behind protections. Of course, perhaps they simply wanted to mark where he vanished so that they could come back and try later, but Draco didn’t think so. Whatever he had caught, whatever clue had alerted him to the presence of the follower in the first place, there was a suppressed urgency to it that hinted at a quick resolution to this, one way or the other.

            He headed towards the Leaky, deciding that he would walk into Diagon Alley as if everything looked normal and see whether the sense of this stalker vanished or not. If it came with him, at least he could say for certain that the person was a wizard.

            The Leaky Cauldron didn’t look busy, and Draco reached out to put a hand on the pub door so that he could open it. As he did so, two things happened at once. The door burst open, and Potter came through. He stumbled to a halt, turning his face up to the rain, his expression freezing as he saw Draco.

            Second, the footsteps behind Draco accelerated.

            Draco ignored the shock of seeing Potter here for now and spun around, his hand falling to his wand. The figure running towards him had a drawn wand already, and a slight blur around his movements indicated that he was using a charm to make the Muggles ignore him. Draco watched the precise way the man’s wand swept through the air, saw the grey hair at his temples, and suspected that he was not going to be able to get out of the way in time.

            The curse that sprouted from his wand was tangled, twisting, green, with slimy grey patches here and there, like a vine that had rotted. Draco didn’t recognize it, and that made his heart bang with equal parts fear and anger. He didn’t know who would be sending an assassin after him, but someone who was pure-blood might at least have the good taste to choose a curse he could counter.

            An arm looped around his waist, dragging him backwards. Potter whirled him, putting his back to the curse and his body between Draco and the magic. He shoved Draco to his knees with a harsh grunt, and then flung a Shield Charm up and around both of them.

            Draco turned his head and saw the wizard chanting, although the shield was thick enough that Draco could only watch his lips moving, not hear the incantations or have a hope of replying for himself. Potter countered with spells that sliced the green vines in half, cut the ground apart and uprooted them when the strange wizard tried to make something grow there, and withered the leaves that were twisting over the wizard’s head and down the sides of his neck. He did so without effort, a grim smile showing on the half of his face that was visible to Draco.

            He had been wrong about the Shield Charm, in fact. Potter had cast it only around Draco, and left himself outside it. Draco reckoned that made sense somewhere in his Auror brain—protect the innocent, fight the Dark wizards with his training—but it annoyed Draco. He wasn’t the helpless animals and maidens that Potter’s experience likely ran to him protecting too often.

            Potter turned with the flow of battle, and Draco could see his back.

            He stared. The grey scars he had seen before were there, but they had broken open and were oozing a thick, slimy sap. The sap trickled slowly over Potter’s muscles, and left more marks. It must have been agonizing, Draco thought, to have that eating away at your flesh, but Potter showed no sign that he noticed it.

            The grunt he had heard Potter give when he forced Draco down took on another significance. Draco had thought he’d made it simply from the effort of manhandling Draco, but it made all too much sense that he’d taken the curse the attacker had cast in the back instead. And of course, Apparating away would take more self-protective instinct than he had.

            Draco lunged to his feet and pounded on the Shield Charm. Potter didn’t look at him. He pressed the wizard in front of him harder instead, and the wizard finally broke, whirled around, and fled. Potter snarled triumphantly and took a step after him.

            “Potter!” Draco screamed.

            Potter turned around. He stared at Draco for a moment, then reached back and seemed to feel the sap coursing down between his shoulder blades.

            His face underwent a terrible convulsion: muscles twitching, turning red, then turning white, while a bit of foam appeared at the corners of his mouth. Then he shook his head, dissipated the Shield Charm with a flick of his wand, reached out, and gathered Draco in his arms.

            “I’ll take you to the Manor,” he said. “Get you behind the wards. No one should hurt you then.” His words were racing, in contrast—Draco wondered if it was deliberate contrast—to the slow flood that the curse had turned his blood into.

            Draco closed his hands firmly around Potter’s arms. “You need to get behind the wards, too,” he snapped, feeling the comforting tingle where their rings touched. “So that we can treat whatever—”

            “No.” Potter spoke the word as though it had the power to bring silence down on earth forever. “I have to get somewhere away from you where I can—repair this.” He closed his eyes, and Draco felt them start to Apparate.

            He broke free enough to shatter Potter’s focus, and repeated, as Potter’s eyes flew open again, “What do you mean? What do you need?”

            “I’ll destroy you if you’re not behind wards!” Potter snarled, and then he grabbed Draco and Apparated again.

            As they flew through the darkness, the only thing Draco could think was that the words were not a threat.

            They were a warning.

*

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The Marriage of True Minds