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Bonded Consort	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 33021 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Nine—Sprezzatura
“What did he say about you coming back with new clothes?”
Harry snorted and spent a minute arranging his robes in the wardrobe so that they didn’t smash some of his fussier shirts flat. Trust Draco to buy fussy shirts even when Harry had told him plain ones were fine.
“He said I should give him the old clothes to sleep on.”
“Of course he would. I’ve only known him a few days, but I’m coming to appreciate the way your snake thinks. And that would be a fitting fate for those Muggle rags that you were wearing when I showed up.”
Harry’s fingers curled into claws in the sides of the nearest robe before he could stop himself. Then he took a deep breath and turned to face Draco. Draco straightened up, head cocked, body radiating wary interest.
“Those clothes were the best I could afford. Please don’t call them rags. And of course I’m keeping them. When I go to my Muggle job—”
“But why would you want to keep that job? It obviously doesn’t pay you enough. And you’re going to have me now.”
“That doesn’t mean I want to rely on your money all the time.”
“But that’s what consorts do. It’s my privilege and honor to take care of you.”
Harry shook his head a little in response. “And what happens if this doesn’t work out? If you learn something about me that disgusts you? If your parents seize you when you go back to England and Obliviate you the way you did with my parents? There are—too many things that could happen in the next little while. It makes me relying on you exclusively really stupid. I think you would agree if you were looking at this from the outside instead of the inside.”
Draco stared at him with his lips slightly parted. Harry looked back. He knew he might seem stupid, saying that kind of thing when he was standing next to the wardrobe full of expensive clothes Draco had just bought for him, but that was the way things were.
The way things had been for nine years, anyway. He’d been expected to fend for himself once his mentor died, and even when he’d received wizarding help to do things like ward his flat or get the necessary paperwork to look older than he was and practice treating reptiles in America, he’d done favors in exchange for it. Not just trusted someone the way Draco was suggesting he do.
So, yeah, maybe it was stupid or rude or backwards. But he did want to listen to what Draco had to say in response to it.
*
He doesn’t have any reason to think that this will last forever.
Draco realized that quickly. He’d been treating Harry almost the way he would Blaise or Pansy, because it had been so easy to fall into that pattern with him. He trusted Harry, he liked him, he was attracted to him, he was angry but also proud of the way Harry had had to survive on his own with no help from the Potters. So he hadn’t thought a lot about what might happen if this all melted away, because he knew it wouldn’t.
But Harry didn’t have the years of friendship with him that Blaise and Pansy did, which would have made this kind of reservation an insult. Draco nodded and walked across the bedroom to gently touch Harry’s cheek. Harry tilted his head back and looked up at him in intent interest, his head cocking a little to the side.
“I’m going to stay away from my parents’ house until we’re bonded,” Draco began, “to answer one of your concerns. I can promise you that I won’t give them the chance to Obliviate me, ever. We’ll also be free to walk away from each other if we want to. At the moment, I can promise you nothing is further from my mind.”
Harry looked at him skeptically enough that Draco didn't know whether to smile or be enraged that his parents had given him that kind of attitude. He settled for looking as kind as he could, and Harry finally nodded, slowly, and said, "All right. Have you considered that I might not be what you want?"
"You're exactly what I want."
"For the past three days. When we go beyond that--"
"I wouldn't ever step into a bonding this hastily unless it already felt right," Draco said, and winced a little. This was exactly the sort of information his parents would have told him never to give out, but he had to. He owed Harry this. "I would have watched you from a distance and tried to gather information about you before I approached you, if I had the least inkling that you might not be the right consort for me."
Harry blinked, then blinked again. "So I have my--what? My face to thank for you not acting like a stalker?"
Draco controlled the impulse to snap back. Yes, he'd shared something personal and Harry wasn't reacting the way he'd hoped, but Harry had no idea how personal it was to him. "You have your whole story to thank. I was outraged by the way your parents treated you, and curious why no one ever told me I was betrothed to someone before your sister, and impatient to find out who you were. I had enough to approach you."
"Okay."
Harry seemed to be thinking about it deeply. Draco stepped back to the doorway to let him have his moment. He twitched to go over to the wardrobe and organize the new robes in a way that would make more sense, but Harry had already made it clear he didn't like the idea of Draco touching his clothes.
"Can we buy me a wand?"
Draco smiled. At least that sounded like a peace offering. "Of course. Let's leave right now."
*
Harry cursed under his breath as he stepped into the wandmaker's shop, which was called Calliope's. The scar on his forehead had started dancing and writhing, and that was something Muggles could have caught, never mind wizards.
But the witch who was apparently the proprietor of Calliope’s, or maybe Calliope herself, only gave it a single glance as she approached him. Her eyes were wide with something that might be interest, and she nodded at Harry. “May I?”
“May you what?” Harry grumbled, rubbing his forehead.
Calliope—as Harry was going to call her until he got her real name—gave Draco a bewildered glance. Draco sighed a little. “Forgive him. He’s just getting his first wand after thinking he was a Squib all his life. Hold out your right arm,” he added in a stage whisper to Harry, which annoyed Harry tremendously.
Harry did, while glaring at Draco all the while to let him know that Harry was doing it out of his free will, not because Draco had suggested it. On the other hand, since Draco simply looked delighted, that didn’t have the effect Harry wanted.
“Hm, mm,” Calliope muttered to herself, waving her wand over his arm and casting spells that didn’t seem to have any effect except a faint cool breeze on Harry’s skin. Harry eyed her dubiously in return. She looked to be maybe Lily’s age, but with lots of grey in her hair and a heavy scar around her wrist that might mean anything. “Well, I can feel a powerful reservoir of magic in you, but it’s untapped.”
“That’s what my—friend said.”
“Difficult one, aren’t you,” said Calliope, without sounding insulted. She walked behind her counter, and for the first time, Harry looked around her shop.
It was covered with cabinets and cupboards, all of them bulging as though they were full of ingredients for wands that only the locks kept from tumbling out. Harry raised his eyebrows a little when he noticed what looked like ordinary raven feathers dangling around one doorknob. He didn’t know of any wands that were made with such ordinary materials, instead of the ones from a magical creature, but he supposed it took all sorts.
Calliope followed his gaze and smiled. “I don’t think black phoenix feathers would be suited to you. It takes a lot of experience to bond with a wand that contains one of them.”
Harry blinked, and found himself smiling back before he thought about it. I suppose I deserve that for assuming.
“Good,” said Calliope, and flicked her wand at his face in a way that made another small, cool breeze pass over his lips. “I need a picture of what you look like in at least two moods. That way, the wand will know who to bond with.”
“What are you doing with the spells?”
“Getting a sense of you with my own wand. Then I’ll pass it over the ones I have here, and if none of them respond to that sense, then I’ll try different materials and see whether you need a new one made…”
Calliope’s lecture turned fascinating. Harry followed her further into the shop, not worrying about leaving Draco standing by the door. He could feel those burning, faithful eyes locked on him all the way.
Yeah, it was a good idea to have him bring me here.
*
Draco had his own ideas and reservations about the way that Calliope chose to do her work—Ollivander’s was very different—but he couldn’t deny the effectiveness, even as she cast spells of a weird sort and asked Harry strange questions.
It turned out that none of the wands in her shop suited him, after all. Calliope only shook her head with the cheerful smile of someone who enjoyed a challenge and turned to the first cabinet, opening it with a simple pass that didn’t look like an unlocking charm.
Draco started trying to predict to himself. What kind of feather, or heartstring, or hair, or wood, would Harry match with? Draco might have predicted unicorn hair, for his innocence, but he didn’t know if it was something Calliope used.
Then she pulled out a large wooden drawer that took up the entire inside of the cabinet and showed what she worked with, and Draco blinked.
Yeah, definitely different.
“These are snow turtle shells,” Calliope explained, lifting out domes of what Draco would have thought was mother-of-pearl, except that it didn’t have quite the iridescent sheen. “They hide at the very bottom of the Arctic Ocean and breed there, and normally their shells turn a normal turtle color when they die, so Muggles don’t even know they exist. We can harvest them by taking them off gently when they’re ready to move into a bigger shell…”
“I thought only crabs did that.”
“That’s because you’ve spent too much time in the Muggle world,” said Calliope, voicing a thought Draco agreed with for very different reasons. Then again, he wasn’t about to admit that he’d never heard of snow turtles, either. “If you want to understand our magical world, you’ll have to spend more time here.”
“I can only do that if I have a wand.”
“That’s true enough,” Draco said mildly, the only contribution to the debate that he really intended to make.
Calliope gave him a scolding look anyway and faced Harry, lifting a piece of shell that was shaped and carved differently from the others. “My wand tells me that you can’t have one made out of wood. You’ve had magic dammed up in you for too long. Think about hot water that’s pent up. What happens if you let it go too fast?”
“It floods.”
Calliope nodded. “Your magic is like that. You need a material that can handle the spells and other things you’ll do with it, and not explode on contact.” She tapped the glimmering white shell with her wand, once again doing nothing to it Draco could see, and then held the curved piece out to Harry. “Here. Hold it the way you would a wand.”
Its curve was more extreme than any wand Draco had ever seen. He opened his mouth to object.
But Harry reached out and cupped his hand around it, and the silent pulse of magic that filled the shop was like sunrise.
Draco leaned back against the wall and shielded his eyes. Then he realized there hadn’t been an actual light. It only felt as if he had been blinded, because the power was so intense. And Calliope wasn’t much better than he was, gaping at Harry.
Draco forgot about the pulse of magic and his possible objections to the shell as he looked at Harry’s face. Because that was what had really been Transfigured, not the dimness of the shop.
*
Harry had felt his magic before, when he spoke Parseltongue or flew on a broom, and then when Draco had let him hold his hawthorn wand. But it had always been…muted. Or after a while, as with Parseltongue, he had stopped feeling anything at all. He had decided that was too detached from Voldemort for him to feel it.
This, though.
This was like tasting chocolate for the first time. Seeing the sun when he’d spent his life in darkness. Bathing in cold and clean water when he’d had to make do with a little dirty trickle.
It tore through him, and hovered around him, and Harry bowed his head over the curve of shell, because he knew even if someone was able to show up right then and tell him that his magic was Voldemort’s and here was proof, he couldn’t give it up. He’d been a Squib, he’d envied wizards, but he would have died of jealousy long since if he’d known it was like this.
And he couldn’t go back to what he’d been. Not even to protect other people from any infection of Dark magic he might carry.
“That’s the right wand material,” said Calliope softly.
Harry raised his eyes and cleared his throat. “Yeah.”
“Now we need to find you the core.”
Harry kept hold of the hemisphere of snow turtle shell, stroking it, while he watched Calliope trail her wand over three other cupboards. She stopped in front of the fourth one and seemed to be listening to something, before she nodded and opened it.
Soft golden things tumbled out when she did. Harry blinked, thinking they were feathers at first, but Calliope laughed a little as she turned around and offered them on her hand. “Sun rattlesnake scales. They’re softer than any others. Sometimes they transition back and forth between snakes and birds. It would be a fair guess that you’re a Parselmouth?”
“Something you will not reveal to anyone,” said Draco, dangerously and pleasantly. Harry started. He’d been so caught up in the search for a wand core that he’d honestly almost forgotten Draco was there.
“Of course not,” Calliope said, “if you don’t want me to. Most people don’t know what my wands are made of anyway, not if I need to make a new one. They’ll probably assume that it’s made of birch, not turtle shell. And from there, they have no reason to think anything unusual about the core.” She extended the palm full of sun rattlesnake scales to Harry.
Harry touched them, and shuddered. There was something brittle and flexible about them at the same time, as if he was holding curls of copper, but he could feel the way they bounced across his palm, and see the way they glittered brighter than lamps in a lonely house at night.
“It’s right,” Calliope said, watching him. “This wand will be made with a touch of fear. But somehow, I don’t think you mind that.”
Harry raised his head, and looked in Draco’s direction. “I used to,” he said. “But not now that I have someone to share the risks with me.”
*
Draco still felt the hovering warmth in the center of his chest when Calliope had almost finished binding the rattlesnake scale core to the turtle shell.
Harry would have a beautiful wand. It would still shimmer like pearls in the right light, although as Calliope had said, most people would assume it was birch. They simply wouldn’t look in the right direction or think about the right things.
That was fine with Draco. The more people here who overlooked Harry, the more of a marvel left for him.
But when they went back to England…
Then Draco would arrange to let the nature of Harry’s wand slip in front of the Potters as soon as possible. Let them realize how unique he was. As he watched Calliope match another curve of turtle shell with the one she already had, and thread the scale through it, he inevitably always turned back to Harry, even though the wandmaking process wasn’t something he’d seen before or was likely to see again.
Harry’s face was the real wonder here.
And at last Calliope finished the wand, and placed it carefully in Harry’s hand.
Harry waved it, the way Draco had waved his wand in Ollivander’s shop so long ago, and all around him, the magic manifested again, visible this time as a soft glow that centered on Harry’s arm and forehead rather than the wand.
Calliope clapped her hands. Draco couldn’t help coming up and taking Harry in his arms, and if he had to change some of his Galleons for the smaller coins the American shops preferred, that didn’t matter.
He managed to keep Harry in the curve of his arm anyway.
They left the shop with Harry still shaking a little, staring at the wand he held, and then he looked up at Draco.
“Thank you. That was the best gift anyone’s ever given me.”
His face was alight again, and he already moved with a careless grace, taking for granted what he would have drawn back from and said was too much only a short time ago. Sprezzatura, Draco thought, remembering a long-ago Italian lesson. The art of making something that took a huge amount of effort look effortless.
Harry had actually halted in the middle of the street, head tilted back to look up at him, and Draco couldn’t help himself. He bent down, and pressed his lips slowly to Harry’s.
If he thought he had felt Harry’s magic before…
It was nothing compared to what happened then.
*
phoenix-rob: Thank you! And, well, there are some juicy parts other than that, too. :)
Jan: All the time. Partially because I have very little tolerance for sourness and it seems the food is always too sour for me.
Guess who: Not such a weird metaphor! I undesrtood what you meant, and I'm flattered.
nari-chan: Thank you!
Jester: Thank you! I promise all secrets will be revealed, eventually.
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Bonded Consort