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I Give You a Wondrous Mirror	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 17806 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 7
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Thank you again for all the reviews!

�� Chapter Eight�A Shattering Moment

�� I
understand that you�ve been to see my nephew.�

�� Harry
looked up in startlement. He�d just settled Teddy in the back garden with James
and Al under his supervision on toy brooms�for some reason, even though his
godson had little patience with the two younger boys in other activities, he
loved teaching them how to fly�and was rocking Lily, who had a bottle in her
mouth and sucked enthusiastically. He hadn�t expected a visitor, and certainly
not Andromeda Tonks, who had entered the house quietly.

��

�� The past
ten years had been kind to her, though sometimes Harry surprised an expression
in her eyes that made him sure she was thinking of her husband or daughter. She
moved more stiffly than before, and stared off into space for long periods of
time, and had more of an air of reservation even than Narcissa Malfoy did. But
she loved Teddy, and Harry was confident he had a good home with his
grandmother.

�� Andromeda,�
he said, and smiled at her, shifting Lily to his shoulder so he could put his
hand out to shake hers. �I hadn�t realized it was so late. I�ll call Teddy.� He
started to stand.

�� Andromeda
gestured for him to stay where he was�in a chair near the hearth in the large
drawing room beyond the kitchen, the center of life in the house�and sat down
across from him. �I came early on purpose, Harry. I wanted to know if it was
true that you�d been visiting with my nephew and�� Her mouth quirked for a
moment, as if she�d bitten into a biscuit with too much sugar. �My sister.�

�� Harry
nodded slowly, then moved Lily about again as she fussed. She was done with the
milk, so he patted her over his shoulder until she burped, and then stood her
upright in his lap. More and more, she liked to be on her feet when she
finished eating, her head turning slowly back and forth and her eyes moving
over every object with a baby�s silent wonder. Harry tickled the soft folds of
her neck while he wondered what else to say.

�� And how is
Narcissa?� Andromeda asked at last.

�� Fine, from
what little I saw of her,� Harry said. �Energetic.� He hesitated, then, because
he still couldn�t figure out the purpose of Andromeda�s visit but thought this
might be what she wanted to hear, added, �I don�t see her much, because I�m
working mostly with Draco. He was the one accused of murder, after all.�

�� And you
don�t think he did it?� Andromeda lifted her head, back straight, as if she
would easily absorb the impact of a positive answer.

�� I don�t
think he did, no,� Harry said firmly. �There are too many strange things about
this case for me to believe that. The only evidence was a piece of cloth with
the Malfoy crest on it found at the scene�entirely too convenient.� He had
little compunction in telling Andromeda the details, since he doubted that she
was either going to go to the press or to Malfoy Manor. She had tried to make
up with Narcissa after the war, but her sister had rejected the reconciliation for
reasons that Harry had never been comfortable inquiring about. �The Aurors are
making no progress. And Draco�s alibi for the night Esther Goldstein was
murdered is tight.� Except for one
hour, but Draco had answered Harry�s other questions too truthfully to permit
him much suspicion. �He�s not violent, not a killer. Voldemort had to coerce
him to torture people during the war.�

�� Andromeda
closed her eyes and nodded her head, with a small sigh of resignation. �Thank
you, Harry. That does�make things easier.� She glanced towards the window that looked
out on the Burrow�s back garden with a small smile. �And I don�t think I�ll
fetch Teddy quite yet. He should have some time to play with his favorite
cousins.�

�� Harry
smiled. Teddy called James, Al, and Lily his cousins even though that was true
only distantly or by courtesy. He listened for a moment, and heard Teddy saying
authoritatively, �You never fly that way, James, unless you want to fall from
the broom and break your head open.�

�� Maybe I
want to,� said James, to whom everything unfamiliar was a grand adventure, and
who was probably picturing the piles and piles of sweets and presents he�d get
from his parents if he was �sick.�

�� I wish I was that young, sometimes, Harry
thought, jogging Lily, and had never
known what death was.

�� But if he were that young, he could never have had
his children, much less been a good father. There were compensations for every
loss.

�� Lily�s hair
smelled sweet. Harry closed his eyes and lost himself in it.

*

�� Draco
prepared himself for bed with some smugness. It had been the best day he could
remember in a long time. Marian had absented herself in her own bedroom,
sulking; he�d won an argument with his mother; and he�d discovered more
information about life-debts that could prove useful to dissolving the curse
that connected him and Potter.

�� None of the
books stated it outright, but Draco had put the information together from the clues
between the lines. Life-debts pulled least urgently when there was only one of
them and they were fulfilled willingly and promptly. Add multiple life-debts, their
fulfillment delayed for years, and Potter still only helping Draco�s family because
Narcissa had asked him to�

�� Draco
grinned at the shrouded mirror. Perhaps he should tell Potter that they should
share a bed for three nights, and that would fulfill the other three debts that
hung between them. He might have to claim the debt that Potter owed him for not
exposing him to his enemies when Greyback captured him first, but Potter would
take the same payment for the debts Draco owed him once he realized how good Draco could make him feel.

�� It will never happen, Draco thought, as
he finished drawing on the soft formal robes that he was wearing to dinner that
night to please his mother, but it�s fun
to dream about. I wonder if the visions really did give me true hints as to his
preferences? If they had, then he knew Potter had a sensitive neck and ears
that he would make his first targets. Perhaps he should contrive to �innocently�
blow on Potter when he made his next visit tomorrow morning, and watch what
happened.

�� He turned
to the door of the loo, humming, and reached out to open it.

�� It resisted
him.

�� Draco took
a step backwards, his eyes narrowing, and drew his wand. Perhaps Marian had
chosen this evening to play a joke on him. If so, he was less appreciative of
it than she had no doubt hoped.

�� He cast Finite Incantatem, and then the Opening
Charm. The door remained firmly locked when he rattled it�no, stuck. The handle didn�t turn. The wood
didn�t move. It was as if it had expanded to fit the frame. Yet when he cast a
spell to reduce the action of water or air magic that could have caused the wood
to warp and swell, they didn�t work, either.

�� He shook
his head and resigned himself to calling his mother for help. It was
humiliating, seeing the disapproval in her eyes�she was of the opinion that he
should have been able to control Marian, and even live happily with her�but it
was better than staying locked in the loo because he was too proud to do it.

�� A buzzing
filled his ears as he lifted his wand to cast Sonorus on his throat. Eyes narrowed further, Draco cast the spell
anyway, then turned to see whether Marian had cast a wasp�s nest into the room
with him, or something else equally ridiculous.

�� The mirror
beneath the covering shroud was vibrating.

�� Draco
backed up a step, forgetting for a moment that the door wasn�t open and he
couldn�t simply leave. He swallowed twice, then aimed his wand at the mirror.
He was capable of conjuring a Shield Charm, wasn�t he? He would simply hold off
whatever threat might be coming from the mirror.

�� Not that
there was a threat coming from the mirror.

�� The mirror
continued to vibrate; Draco could feel the ripples traveling into the walls. He
conjured the Shield Charm, unwilling to wait for whatever might be happening
behind the cloth to actually happen.

�� And then
the cloth tore open, and the last thing Draco saw for what seemed to be
eternity was a storm of glass shards flying at him. He threw his arm up in
front of his face, instinctively, and felt slices open in his wrists and
fingers and palm. The Shield Charm had not defended him.

�� He
screamed, and it echoed oddly in his ears.

�� Oh, the Sonorus Charm, that�s right, he thought dazedly, and then pain came soaring
on the heels of the shock. He thought he got off one more scream before blood
loss dragged him into blackness.

*

�� Harry
started when he heard a voice shouting his name from the Floo connection in the
drawing room. Hardly anyone disturbed him and Ginny at dinner; Ron and Hermione
knew the time and would wait to contact them unless it was a genuine emergency.
Of course, it probably was an
emergency. Harry had thrown himself out of his chair and run madly into the
drawing room before Ginny even moved.

�� He stopped
dead, however, staring, when he realized that Narcissa Malfoy�s face was
projecting from the fireplace. He started to shake his head, started to say
something about how he had given his mornings to the Malfoys and he didn�t
intend to give any more time; she had probably only contacted him to shriek about
some Ministry insult, anyway. She had struck him as rather excitable.

�� My son has
been wounded,� she interrupted his attempts at speech. Her eyes were far too
wide, and there was a strange shine to them, like fever, but she was not yet
weeping. �A mirror in his loo exploded, and the glass shredded his arm open. I
have tried to staunch the wounds, but they will not stop bleeding. He keeps moaning
your name.� She leaned back and stared at him expectantly.

�� Call St.
Mungo�s,� Harry said, the first thing he could think of. �Can you do that?�

�� Narcissa
lifted her chin, and he saw a trace of her sister in her, after all. She had
endured the years since the war with the same dignity and sense of loss that
Andromeda had, he was now certain. �I will not let a stranger past my family�s
wards at this critical time unless I have no other choice. And you
misunderstand me. I can make the wounds stop bleeding for a time, but they open
again a few moments later. These are magical wounds. And I believe�I believe
that you may have something to do with them.� She turned her head to look over
her shoulder, and then whispered, �Draco,� and propelled herself up from the
hearth.

�� Harry had
only a moment to choose his course. He had no real choice, of course. Even if he and Malfoy hadn�t decided to
become friends, even if this curse hadn�t concerned him, he could hardly leave
an innocent man to die.

�� He snatched
a handful of Floo powder from the dish on the mantle, flung it into the flames,
and shouted, �Malfoy Manor!� just before he stepped through, hoping the fact that
Narcissa had contacted him meant that the way was open and he wouldn�t bounce
back into his own drawing room stinging from the wards.

�� He landed
safely in an immense vaulted room at the Manor he hadn�t seen before, however,
and choked in the soot and reeled with dizziness. Then he remembered what he
had come for and staggered across the room towards one still form and one
kneeling, frantically casting form.

�� Harry tried
not to knock into Narcissa as he rushed over to Draco, though he wasn�t sure he
entirely succeeded. He could see blood flowing across Malfoy�s arms and robes
from this near, and there were so many cuts,
and here and there buried glass splinters flashed like the eyes of insects.
Harry drew in a breath that sounded horrified even to himself.

�� He had seen
worse things when working for the Blood Reparations Department, and he had certainly
seen worse things during the war. But in most of those cases, he hadn�t seen
those people alive and well just the day before. This was more like�like Dobby�s
death than anything else.

�� He waved
his own wand, muttering one of his inexpert healing charms, and heard Draco
murmuring the same words over and over: Harry
Potter. Harry Potter. The notion that he might have caused this damage
somehow made him feel worse.

�� His left
hand groped out and slipped into Draco�s.

�� Gold burst
inside him and out. His vision dimmed, and he seemed to be rushing down a vast
tunnel that shone like light refracted in diamond patterns on water. His chest
ached. His arms stung and burned fiercely, as if he had taken the glass on
them.

�� If I could have stood between him and the
mirror�

�� The air in
his mouth seemed to solidify, and Harry wondered for a moment if death was
coming for him in turn, since he had made his impulsive wish to take the harm
that had befallen Malfoy on himself. But the solidity was simple sweetness,
melting and warm on his tongue. Harry blinked, and the golden vision vanished,
and he was kneeling again above Draco, fingers entwined with his as if they had
always done this.

�� He would
have thought the fading had begun again, but there was none of the same
disorienting, terrifying feeling this time. There was only sweetness, and warmth
around his lips when he inhaled, and a deep, violently beautiful scent when he
exhaled. The scent was emanating from Draco�or was it emanating from him? He
bent over Draco, staring at his arm, wondering if he had healed the skin over
the splinters and shards of glass that were still stuck in the wounds.

�� Draco�s arm
was entirely free of blood. It was
covered with a fine network of silvery scars, as faded as the words that
Umbridge had made Harry carve into his skin with her quill. He stared at them
in wonder and disquiet, and then noticed something fluffy and white resting in
Draco�s hair. He reached out to pluck it away, before his conscious mind could
convince him that it was glass Transfigured by the magic that had just taken
them.

�� It wasn�t
glass, Transfigured or not. It was a single feather, so soft that it hurt him
to touch it. An owl�s feather. Harry hadn�t forgotten the texture or the shape
or the color from his days of owning Hedwig, though he had refused to make a
pet of another owl since. He stared at the feather, and could think of
absolutely nothing to say.

�� Mr.
Potter?� Narcissa�s insistent voice dragged him back to reality. �What happened
to my son? How did his wounds heal so quickly?�

�� Harry shook
his head, and brushed at Draco again. More feathers came off on his hand,
prickling at his palm as they drifted away. He tried to free his tightly held
left hand so that he could shoo them off, but Draco curled his fingers around
it, and Harry couldn�t bear to deprive him of that comfort so soon after his
probable death.

�� I don�t
know, Mrs. Malfoy,� he said quietly, frowning at the man on the floor, and
trying to downplay the concern that still raged through him. You don�t really know him. You didn�t know
this would happen. Stop feeling guilty. �But I think you have to accept the
reality of the curse that plagues him now.�

*

�� It was the
burning of his scars that woke Draco.

�� He opened
his eyes slowly. He was stunned to see the faint light of dawn making its way
through his curtains. He had stared out that window often enough during the
year when the Dark Lord made the Manor his headquarters to recognize the color
of the sunrise, but he�d usually slept in later since he married.

�� The
memories came back then. The mirror. I�

�� And the
soft burning that he had associated so long with the legacy of Potter�s spell
came from his chest, but also from his left arm. And, come to think of it, his
fingers were cramped, as though someone held them.

�� He turned his
head.

�� Potter
slumped in a chair next to the bed, snoring, his glasses jammed between his
nose and his chin. His wand still rested in his lap. His left hand was tangled with
Draco�s own, his fingers resting not far away from a spidery lacing of silver
scars.

�� Draco
licked his lips. He thought he could piece together what had happened, scant
though the clues were. The curse had locked him in the loo, to make sure that
he would be wounded, and then shattered the mirror. The Sonorus Charm he�d cast on himself had alerted his mother when he
screamed, or he might have remained the loo until he�d died of blood loss. She�d
been able to rescue him because the curse had been done with him by then.

�� Or�perhaps not
quite. His mother must have contacted Potter, though Draco didn�t know what
symptoms during his blood loss might have prompted her to do that, or whether
Potter was simply the one outside person she trusted at this point. Potter had
arrived and somehow saved Draco�s life, the way he was so good at.

�� Had that
created a fifth life-debt to tie them together?

�� Draco did
not want to think about the probable consequences of that.

�� And now he
had scars in two places on his body that reacted to the presence of the curse.

�� Draco
licked his lips again and shifted position, and that woke Potter. He sighed
deeply and groaned, then lifted his head and massaged the back of his neck with
his free hand. He tried to use two to do it, and only then seemed to realize
that he still clasped Draco�s wrist. Draco saw the tide of color sweep over his
cheeks, and realized that the mirrors had not lied about one thing. That really
was the way Potter looked when he
blushed: his eyelids fluttering as if he wanted to close them, his ears turning
red just a moment later than the rest of his face.

�� Of course,
in Draco�s visions he had usually started to pant with pleasure first, or he
was screaming in the middle of some magnificent row. He didn�t usually look embarrassed.

�� Morning,
Draco,� he said. �I�how are you feeling?� He leaned to stare at the scars on
Draco�s arm as if he didn�t know how they�d got there, either.

�� Curious,�
Draco said, and stared pointedly at him.

�� Harry
mumbled out an explanation of last night�s events, looking even more embarrassed
when he recounted how Draco had kept muttering his name. Draco didn�t see why
he should look that way. Those words were what had made his mother summon
Harry, and thus had saved his life.

�� But I don�t
know what the scar means,� Harry finished, �or the feathers, or the scent I
smelled. It was like�rotting roses, really.� His eyes narrowed, and Draco got a
glimpse of the same stubborn Gryffindor he�d seen whenever they both chased the
Snitch. �But I can promise that I�ll try to get to the bottom of this.�

�� Draco
nodded slowly. �Good. I think there�s some research that we should at least
look into to counteract this curse.�

�� What�s
that?�

�� Life-debts.�
Draco raised an eyebrow when Harry made an incredulous little scoffing noise. �You
don�t think so? There are four of them tying us, counting the one that you�re
fulfilling right now for my mother. And since my mother thinks of herself as
part of the Malfoys, that�s a debt that you owe me just as much as you owe her.�

�� Harry
closed his eyes, as if thinking over the memory of that year of the war, and
then winced and nodded. �You�re probably right,� he said, and finally reached
down to his glasses and pulled them back up his face. �We should look into it.�
He hesitated for one moment, then added, �And the scars, though I�m afraid I
don�t know why yours would burn along with mine.�

�� You have a
curse scar,� said Draco, and glanced at the words he could see faintly cut into
the back of Harry�s right hand. �And that�well, it must have been made with a
cursed object, right? The scars on my chest come from a Dark Arts spell��

�� And I have
a mark on my chest from a Hor�I mean, a cursed object,� Harry said hastily,
cutting short Draco�s attempt to ask what he had been doing with a prostitute.
The dawning excitement glowing in Harry�s eyes was too good to tease him about,
anyway. �And this.� He turned his
arm, and Draco made out the mark of fangs. �Voldemort�s snake bit me. She was a
cursed object, too, in her own way.�

�� Then that
leaves out only the mirror that scarred me like this.� Draco nodded at his
arms. �Perhaps you could count it as an honorary Dark Arts object, since it was
acting as the conduit of our own special curse.�

�� Harry
laughed aloud�not mockingly, but with the pleasure of discovery. Draco caught
his eye again, and Harry grinned at him. Draco smiled back, and knew it was
with genuine happiness on his own part. This putting together clues had an
exhilaration to it. He could learn to like it.

�� Stay to
breakfast?� he asked, when Harry�s stomach gurgled.

�� Harry
hesitated as if he would refuse, then smiled again and nodded. �I should. And
since I give mornings to you lot anyway, I�ll get in some research with you
before I go home. Just let me firecall Ginny. She must be going frantic with
worry.�

�� It was only
when he shifted and drew his hand gently away that Draco realized neither of
them had made an effort to let go of each other since he woke up.

*

�� Daft Fear:
Glad you liked the conversation in the last chapter! There are many more of
those coming up, especially in Chapter 9.

�� Mangacat:
Draco refused to take Veritaserum in the presence of Aurors, for fears they�d
take advantage of the potion to learn other things that had nothing to do with
the case. And Harry isn�t officially trying to clear Draco with the Ministry;
he just wanted to know, for his own peace of mind, that Draco wasn�t lying
before he continued with the case.

�� Soria:
Draco is too afraid of the consequences to use the mirrors that way, really.

�� Thrnbrooke:
Thanks for reviewing!

�� rAiNwAtEr:
It�s a bit too soon for Harry to bring Albus for a play date.

�� Well, remember
that Ginny�s been confined in the house with the children for at least a few weeks
while Hermione recovered from her own pregnancy and Harry did her work and his.
I think her snatching at the chance to be outside it is normal.
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I Give You a Wondrous Mirror