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The Music of the Spheres	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 2033 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Title: The Music of the Spheres
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Established Harry/Draco
Rating: R
Warnings: Angst, minor character deaths
Summary: Surviving the Boneturn Plague may have been the easy part. Now, with the really powerful healing that Harry and Draco can do so highly in demand, they have to learn how to set limits. Sequel to “Plaguesong.”
Author’s Notes: Written for an anonymous request for a sequel to my Advent fic “Plaguesong,” which you should definitely read first. This takes place a few months after it, and responds to the request with Harry and Draco only being able to raise the power every week or so. Sorry, requester, but I wasn’t able to come up with a plotline where Harry and Draco would have to choose between healing Hermione and Narcissa.
This will be a three-shot.
The Music of the Spheres
            “No more than once a week.”
            Draco said the words aloud, but he was listening to the humming inside his head, the music that marked Harry’s rebellion against things. He wasn’t surprised when Harry flexed his fingers open and sang, But, even as he said aloud, “That might be a good idea.”
            You know as well as I do why we have to limit ourselves, Draco hummed back, raising the notes that always hung in the back of their heads an octave or two. We can limit the healing and continue to do some good. Or we can exhaust ourselves trying to heal everything the instant someone asks and die. You know as well as I do how close we came to dying last time.
            Harry’s mind blared, blazed, and slid sideways into what was more a cacophony than actual music. Draco had to listen hard to pick out the song. But how can we ask someone with a broken limb to wait a week?
            We can ask someone with a broken limb to wait longer than that. That isn’t a catastrophe. It isn’t a life-threatening injury. In fact, I’ve just about decided. No more healing broken limbs. The Healers can do it just as well.
            Harry looked at him with what someone else might have thought was a bored or disdainful expression, but those people weren’t in Harry’s head, and couldn’t hear every harpstring of anguish sounding down their bond. It could be a life-threatening injury sometimes.
            Then we heal the cases that have broken limbs as part of that, but not the ones that are just people wanting to walk faster or play Quidditch faster.
            Harry’s fingers rapped for a second on the edge of the table, an irritating counterpart to the music of his thoughts. You don’t know it’s always and only that.
            I’m going off their words in the letters. You’re willing to think that they’re just being modest and afraid to ask for too much, that they have deep reasons, Draco added, hearing the discord of Harry’s objection before he put it into words. And I’m willing to trust and believe them. If they really need healing for a different reason, a better reason, then they can write better letters.
            Harry got up and walked over to look out the window of the breakfast nook. Draco watched him, enjoying the way that the early sunlight added a faint golden tinge to Harry’s hair. It hadn’t seemed right to move back into either Harry’s house at Godric’s Hollow or Malfoy Manor after they had bonded; both places would have bad associations for one of them. And it wasn’t possible to live apart anymore. So they had bought a small house near the outskirts of Hogsmeade, and if it wasn’t what Draco had grown up with, at least he could approve of the polished wood on the walls and the wide windows placed in some odd but interesting corners of the rooms.
            Now, the silence lasted long enough that Draco asked, This is what you wanted too, isn’t it? You wanted some reason to refuse to do some of the healings. You just didn’t think you could refuse them and be a “good person.”
            Harry turned around and scowled mildly at him. And sometimes you could stand to be a better person. Sharp notes sang all around his words, like a hive of disturbed bees.
            It doesn’t change the fact that you were relying on me to set the parameters. Draco stood up and walked over to him. And I wouldn’t have if I wasn’t a “bad person.”
            Harry was silent for long enough that Draco thought this was going to turn into an extended argument. He wearily braced himself. He really didn’t want it to. But someone had to set limits, and Harry’s tendency to listen to sob stories and want to save everyone in the world wasn’t going to let him do it.
            “You’re right,” Harry whispered aloud. “I’m sorry.”
            Draco blinked. Apologies were still rare between them. They could be—pleasant with each other, in that they didn’t shout and fling things at one another and hold enormous fights like they had when in Hogwarts, but he still hadn’t expected this admission. “Yes?” he asked, and leaned on the windowsill.
            “If we spend all our time and magic healing minor injuries, then we won’t be able to help if, say, another plague comes along.” Harry finally tore his eyes from the view of the garden, which had been a churned field of mud until they brought in a few house-elves, and looked at Draco with a small nod. “You’re right.”
            Draco cocked his head. And about saying that I have to hold a certain line if we’re going to refuse the healings?
            Harry kept his head bowed as he smoothed one hand over the windowsill. About that, too, he said, when Draco had been about to scream in frustration.
            Good. Draco reached out and brushed one hand over Harry’s arm. It no longer felt as strange to touch him as it once had. They were bonded, and they’d had sex—even if all those times were to raise the power to heal the plague or something else—and it would have been stranger and more stubborn and stupid to be stand-offish. Read the letters later? Let’s go flying now.
            Harry’s breathing picked up the notes of his mind, which made them deep and contented. He smiled at Draco. Let’s.
*
            Harry sighed and hung from his broom by one hand for a moment as it lowered to the grass that Kreacher had planted with a single-minded intensity; apparently it was an insult for the grounds of a house where he lived to be covered with mud. That had been a great game. Draco had caught the Snitch, but so what? They hadn’t exactly been playing for points.
            They did have to set up a few barriers in their minds when they wanted to play, though. Otherwise, they both anticipated each other’s moves, and there was no challenge, or too much of a chance that they would crash into each other in midair.
            Harry.
            Harry blinked and looked up. Draco had already landed, which wasn’t unusual—he seemed to do most things quicker than Harry—and was leaning against the side of the small shed that held their brooms when they weren’t using them. His gaze was fastened on Harry in a way that usually only meant one thing.
            Who needs healing this time? Harry sent his broom into the shed with a flick of his wand and tried to send calm, soothing notes in Draco’s direction.
            No one does, Draco said, with peculiar emphasis. But how much in the mood are you to admit that I’m right? His last words were like the blast of a trumpet.
            I think I can acknowledge it when you are, Harry said cautiously.
            It occurred to me that the only times we’ve had sex are when we have to raise the power for a healing. How messed-up is that?
            Harry opened his mouth to disagree, and then paused. It was true that they had had sex for the first time to bond and get the necessary magical power of twinned minds to combat the Boneturn Plague. And the second time had been to heal a Wizengamot member on the verge of a fatal heart attack. And the third time had been for a critically ill child in St. Mungo’s who wasn’t expected to live. But they had to have had sex at least one time without it being for healing, right?
            No, Draco said. I told you, I’m right. Now his trumpet-voice was almost a whole brassy orchestra.
            Harry scratched the back of his neck and swallowed. There was something else, something red and orange and woodwind-like, starting up in the back of his mind. Anticipation. It isn’t that strange. We only bonded because of necessity. Because they didn’t have time to look for people who were more suited to raise the power. I thought—well, I thought that having sex for other reasons than healing wouldn’t come up, much.
            Draco took a long, prowling step towards him. So you’re content to be an instrument played by the Ministry for the rest of your life? To have our bond reduced to that? Because I am not.
            Damn it, Harry’s breathing was speeding up, and the noise of breathy music kept echoing it. I wanted—I wanted to, but I thought you wouldn’t want to. And it would have sounded strange to bring up.
            Draco laughed hard enough that Harry was hearing the noise above the notes that were swelling in his head, the soft, triumphant ones that always reminded Harry of some music he’d heard in Muggle movies. Most of the time, he only heard them right after they’d had sex and healed someone else. We haven’t been communicating with each other well, have we?
            And he stepped up and kissed Harry.
            Harry relaxed into the kiss. For once, it was nice not to have to worry about how much power they were raising, or what would happen when they found themselves in the world where magic was music and how they would locate the injury or illness they were trying to cure. He could focus more on the sensations outside his head, too, like Draco’s hand raking through his hair and his low, excited murmurs in the back of Harry’s mind.
            Yes, good.
            Such intense twinning and twining of their voices was happening now that Harry couldn’t tell his words from Draco’s. And it honestly didn’t seem to matter. He moved towards the house, and Draco moved along with him, hands busy and mouth hot and open, seeking.
            Then something slammed into Harry’s arm and screeched, and Draco said, “Oh, sod it,” and Harry surfaced from the drowning with a blink and a gasp.
            An owl was fluttering desperately in front of him, Hermione’s owl, distinctively brown with black tips to the feathers. Harry reached for the letter it bore, sighing. Hermione wouldn’t owl them unless it was a real emergency, unlike the vast majority of letters they received that wanted healing for non-dangerous illnesses and injuries.
            I knew you agreed with me.
            It’s good that I have you to protect me from myself, Harry said, and rested his hand on Draco’s arm for a minute as he opened the letter. He would need the protection and the support if it turned out that Hermione was sick, or Ron. Or, perhaps worse, one of Bill and Fleur’s kids.
            But Hermione’s letter didn’t say anything about who it was or what it was. It only said, Harry, come at once. Leave Draco behind.
            Because Harry read it and repeated the words to himself in his head—a habit Draco was always complaining about when Harry read books—the snarl of tangled notes came back to him at once. Like hell I’m staying here.
            “I know,” said Harry aloud, needing some distance from what was going to happen when he showed up at Hermione and Ron’s house with Draco in tow, and folded the letter. “And she at least could have told me what was going on.”
            Now, he had to imagine Ginny in a broom accident. George trying to kill himself. Someone falling victim to the Boneturn Plague because he and Draco hadn’t completely cured it. He felt his mind vibrating like a plucked string, and Draco reached out and put his mental hand on the string and calmed it down by force.
            If it was the Boneturn Plague, we would have heard about it before now. And you were there when we destroyed it. You know it is destroyed, not just hiding and waiting to come back.
            Yeah, Harry whispered, and swallowed down his panic.
            I shall have a word with her about what she puts in future letters.
            Draco, don’t do that, Harry said wearily as he pictured the argument that would erupt. Let’s just go.
            He Side-Alonged Draco, since he knew the house so much better. Draco was silent mentally, as far as words went, but he never quite put to sleep the background music of his mind, and Harry knew how doubtful and disdainful he was.
            Well, as much as Harry loved and trusted Hermione, he had to admit he was feeling somewhat the same. Hermione had been one of the few who had said that they had to be left alone to support their bond and get used to it, not expected to use constant miracles of healing. He wondered why, now, she would try to insist that separating from Draco was so important.
            And he hoped that when he found out what Hermione meant, it wasn’t something that would cleave him in two.
            Never, while I am here.
            Harry could tell himself all he wanted that Draco was only doing this for his own benefit, that after all, if something bad happened to Harry, it would also happen to the man bonded to him, but it warmed Harry’s heart nonetheless.
*
            “Harry. Thank goodness you’re here.”
            Granger’s hug to Potter was brief, but fierce, and she didn’t even make as big a deal about his presence as Draco had suspected, beyond a fleeting glance and sigh. She moved back, and they stepped into the drawing room of a house that was smaller and less comfortable than his and Harry’s. Draco held back his smugness and took the seat on the couch next to Harry, while Granger whirled around and sealed the Floo connection.
            “I want to make sure no one interrupts us,” she said, as if that wasn’t perfectly obvious, and took the couch across from them.
            She could at least have her house-elf offer us tea, Draco said, not so much because he meant the complaint as because that would distract Harry from his bewildering harmonics of worry over Granger, Weasley, and the rest of the Weasleys.
            You’re insufferable sometimes, Harry said, but the chorus of his mind smoothed out and silenced. He nodded to Draco as Granger clasped her hands in front of her and began to talk.
            “It’s the aftermath of the Boneturn Plague,” she said.
            “There hasn’t been a resurgence of it, has there?” Draco supposed Harry’s outer voice might have sounded calm, but his inner one had bounded back up into the harmonics of worry again. Draco took his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze, as well as turning a glare over to Granger. Instead of telling them the truth straightforwardly, she had to drag the revelation out and make it all melodramatic. She could have at least tried to ease Harry’s anxiety.
            “No,” said Granger, and looked startled, as though it had never occurred to her that someone would think that. Which only proved to Draco that he was the only one who really knew Harry.
            Oh, hush. She had no reason to think I would interpret it that way.
            My point stands.
            Harry grumbled, but he said, “All right. What did you mean, then?”
            “It’s the grief of the wizarding world,” said Granger, and she gave Harry such an earnest look that Draco would have gargled if he’d had the choice. “The sudden death of so many. Did you know there’s almost no family in wizarding Britain who hasn’t lost someone?”
            Draco held back his response, but he did say to Harry, Who felt the magic of the wizarding world as music? Who knew that the best response was to stop the plague from taking more, instead of dwelling on the grief for the dead?
            She’s making some sort of point, Harry said, although the tones of his mind were bruised in color, and that wasn’t a good combination, as far as Draco was concerned. He looked back at Granger and said, quietly, “What are you asking us to do?”
            “To heal that grief,” said Granger. “To ease it. You can hear the way that the grief is influencing their magic. It ought to be easy.”
            Draco narrowed his eyes and waited. But Harry didn’t tell her to piss off, and while Draco had been fuming from the beginning of Granger’s statement—because he and Harry had only ever healed physical ailments, not mental ones—the last sentence pushed him over the edge.
            “It ought to be easy?” he asked, and laughed. Granger would take everything she needed to from that laugh, if she was smart. And Harry was always telling him how smart she was. She shouldn’t need to ask for more.
            But Granger narrowed her eyes at him and said, “Compared to healing the plague itself? Of course it should be. You were fighting Voldemort’s magic then.” Draco hated the fact that the name still made him wince, and Granger smiled as if she thought that meant she’d persuaded him. “Here, you’re just fighting a natural process.”
            “Granger, do you listen to yourself, or is your head too dense to let the words echo?”
            Draco.
            Draco winced as the inside of his head started sounding like a metal pot with a baby banging a spoon on it. She is sounding stupid, he snapped back. Don’t tell me that you’re falling for her shit.
            She’s still one of my best friends. Harry turned to face Granger, although his mind was singing Hermione at Draco strongly enough to make him think of her that way if he’d been in a better mood, and adopted one of those patronizing, soothing tones. “Hermione. Why don’t you tell us what you mean? Why do you think we can heal grief and guilt when we’ve never done it before? That’s not easy. What we do is never easy, the way we have to raise the power and then find the injury in the music and sing it better, but grief would be especially hard.”
            “Because your magic was so powerful.” Granger was looking at both of them with an oddly mixed expression, wonder and reproach both at once. “Didn’t you know that? I could feel it when it ripped through me and chased away the tendrils of the plague that were starting to curl towards me. Even though I didn’t have it,” she added, perhaps seeing Draco’s skepticism. “I could still feel the change in the magic around me. If you can do that, then healing the grief ought to be a lot easier.”
            “We’ll have to see,” Harry began, soothingly.
            “No,” Draco snapped back. “We don’t have to see. We can’t do it.”
            Harry spent a moment breathing, while his mind jangled. Draco turned back to Granger and said, “We nearly killed ourselves trying to heal that case of Potions poisoning in St. Mungo’s a week ago. I’d already decided that we needed to restrict our healing. This is just another example of why we need to. Because otherwise, people will expect us to do the bloody impossible.”
            “But why would that exhaust you when healing the plague didn’t?” Granger shook her head, the picture of someone who couldn’t understand the very basic facts being presented to her. “It must be an odd magical power that can manage a great feat but not a little one.”
            “Well, that’s obvious, though,” Harry said, before Draco could respond. “I mean, we were raising the power the first time using a ritual, weren’t we? And that ritual added extra power to the bonding and the magic and—” He flushed, but he had committed to this, and apparently he would say it, even in front of his friend. “The sex.”
            Draco blinked. He hadn’t thought of it before, but he had wondered the same thing as Granger, why healing had become so much more exhausting after the ritual. Of course it made sense now. They had done the ritual in a prepared space and at a particular time, and with all the necessary alteration of mind that separated them from the usual, outside world. If they did it that way again, they might produce miracles of healing once more.
            Except that Draco—and he flung that thought at Harry, accenting it with screaming violins—didn’t want to have a ritual every time someone asked something else of them.
            “Then do the ritual again,” Granger continued, oblivious.
            “We can’t do the same one, since we’re already bonded.” Even Harry sounded a bit irritated now. “And we do have to rest. We can do about one healing a week, no more than that.”
            “Then you can try a different—”
            “No, we can’t, Granger,” Draco said. “Because I refuse to participate.”
            Granger looked at him with her lips slightly parted and the silliest look on her face. “Why?”
            “Because our bond and our magic and even our sex life has been turned into nothing more than a tool of healing for the wizarding world.” Draco stood up, and pulled Harry with him, jerking his arm when he didn’t respond. “We haven’t had the chance to start exploring how much we matter to each other because of the constant pleading letters. We are going home, and we’re going to spend some time having sex because we want to, not because someone is asking us to.” Granger’s face finally flamed as she caught up. “And I, for one, do not plan to spend the rest of my life being used.”
            “It’s helping people, not using you!”
            “Right,” Draco sneered. “Harry might be used to it. I’m not.”
            And he tugged Harry out of the house. Harry stumbled along behind him.
            But for Draco, the greatest proof was that he could have pulled loose, without trouble, and didn’t.
            Well, no. Perhaps the greatest proof was the soft, muted tune of green and silver in the back of Harry’s mind—one of relief.
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The Music of the Spheres