Chapter Forty-Four of 'The Marriage of True Minds'- In a Straight Line
Chapter Forty-Three.
Title: The Marriage of True Minds (44/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco eventually, Draco/Astoria, Harry/Ginny, and Harry/OMC.
Warnings: Sex (het and slash), angst, manipulation, bonding. Ignores the epilogue.
Rating: R
Summary: Lucius curses Harry and Draco into a forced marriage. They’re required only to live together, not to be together, and so both of them pursue relationships on the side. But as time passes, things change.
Author’s Notes: This will be a leisurely novel-length story, and at the moment, I don’t know how many chapters it will be. If you don’t like the cliché of a forced bond, it’s probably not going to appeal. The title comes from Shakespeare's Sonnet 116.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Forty-Four--In a Straight Line
Harry stared at Lucius in silence for a long second, and then looked automatically over his shoulder, half-afraid that Draco would come out of the shower and catch him. For the moment, however, there was nothing but light and steam from under the shut door, and Harry was able to ignore the buzzing of the bond that echoed in his teeth and spine.
"It depends on what you want to talk about," he said, finally, bringing his gaze back to Lucius's face. He couldn't keep his hand from cramping on his wand, but Lucius seemed to notice that and dismiss it in the same instant.
"I wish to talk to you about the marriage bond, and something you could do to make Draco happy." Lucius's gaze was heavy. "Can I come in?"
Harry shook his head immediately. These were still Draco's rooms, although they'd shared them more and more often lately, and he didn't think he had the power or the right to invite Lucius into them. He stepped out in the corridor instead and closed the door behind him. The bond promptly formed itself into an invisible rope around his waist and yanked. Harry tried hard to give no sign. The last thing he wanted was Lucius figuring out a way to use that against them.
"You have two minutes to convince me," he told Lucius. "And you're only getting that long because you used to be Draco's father."
Lucius leaned towards him like a vulture. Harry stared back. If this was all Lucius had in the way of intimidation tactics, then he needn't worry about anything the bastard could try.
"So insolent," Lucius murmured, in a way that sounded like he was dripping water from his mouth to the floor. "You have no idea what I'm going to say, and you've already disregarded it."
"There's a quarter of your time gone," Harry reminded him.
Lucius pulled himself back with a rattling breath, and for a moment one of his hands clenched as if he would grip Harry's neck and tug him backwards. Harry brought his wand up visibly, and Lucius let the breath out and shook his head, an expression of irritation on his face that almost made him look human again.
"You can get rid of this bond if you find a way to remove the rings from your fingers," Lucius said. "And that will free Draco to marry someone else, someone who can commit to him fully in the way that I know you never have. You still let your past history and your names stand between you. If you renounce him--"
Harry laughed. He couldn't help it. He sagged against the wall, giggling, while Lucius stared at him, and then looked over his head at the bedroom door as if he thought Draco had put Harry up to this.
"Why do you reject a solution so tailor-made for what you wanted?" Lucius asked in a low voice. "You were upset that I took you into our family by force, and rightfully so. You should be overjoyed at the thought of being a Potter again, and being able to have children who will continue the line."
"There are ways around that," Harry said. He didn't think he should tell Lucius the specifics of their bargain with Laura, especially when he wasn't sure that he understood it himself yet. "And in the meantime, what makes you think that my goals have stayed exactly the same? Draco told me that I thought too much like a pure-blood who valued nothing but family when I mourned the loss of my name. He was right. I've reconsidered it."
Lucius snarled in what looked like confusion. "If you marry him, you give up your name forever!"
"Only if we stay in the forced marriage bond," Harry said, and smiled at him when Lucius visibly bit down on the corner of his mouth to keep from asking for any more than that.
The bedroom door opened then, and Draco stepped out, cool and regal in a set of white morning robes. Harry thought he was the only one who saw the murderous flare, quickly checked, in his eyes when they rested on his father. He strolled forwards calmly enough to wrap his arm around Harry's shoulders, and leaned in for a leisurely snog.
Harry kissed him back, though he felt a bit bad that he hadn't brushed his teeth yet, the way Draco obviously had, and hadn't used a Breath-Freshening Charm either. Draco didn't seem to care. He drew out his moan more than usual, but otherwise it was an ordinary kiss, which meant that Harry's head was spinning when Draco pulled away and turned to face his father. His face looked like pounded iron. Lucius met it with much the same mask.
"Well, Lucius?" Draco asked. "What did you have to say to Harry that you could not say to both of us?" He pulled Harry a little closer, and Harry felt the happy hum of the bond, like a hive with dozens of bees coming and going. He leaned on Draco's shoulder and smiled at Lucius.
"I was attempting to convince him that he could have more of a life and security for his family name if he left you."
Harry blinked. He hadn't expected Lucius to be so blunt.
Draco gave Lucius an expression that was a mixture of a smile and a murderer's insane rictus. Harry blinked again. He wondered if he had been mistaken about who he would need to protect in this particular situation.
"Lucius," Draco whispered, "you will never convince him to leave me. I would go after him and seduce him back if you did. And his family name will be fully acknowledged in a combination with mine when we marry again."
Lucius fell back a step, and one hand reached for a flailing hold on the wall behind him. Of course, he dropped it in the next instant, probably because he realized how weak it made him look, but he still had his wide eyes fixed on his son.
Draco laughed slowly, deeply. "You didn't tell him?" he murmured to Harry. "The happy duty of telling him we're getting married falls to me?"
"Getting married," Lucius said, and looked back and forth between them, to the point that Harry didn't think he could have hidden his laughter if he had wanted to.
And he didn't really want to. The look on Lucius's face was too stunned, too new. He put up a hand as though to ward off the words and then leaned forwards and peered deeply into Draco's eyes. He looked like a Healer checking someone for the dilated pupils that were a mark of experimental potions use. Harry wrapped his arms around his belly and tried not to feel as though he were going to be sick with merriment.
"You are willing to do this," Lucius whispered. "To make a mockery of your family and your legacy, all because you find yourself in bed with this half-blood and enjoying it."
"If anyone lacks the right to talk about ruining a family and a legacy," Draco said, words so slow that they were building up and rolling before Harry really knew where they were going to go, "you are the one."
This made Lucius flush to the point that Harry would have thought he was in danger of a heart attack or a stroke if he'd met him in the course of an Auror case. "I am still your father," he said, voice cracking. "And you cannot make a marriage with my permission--"
"I cast you out of the family," Draco said. "And before that, the Wizengamot took away your power to act as the family's head. You do seem to have a hard time coming to grips with those basic facts, Father, and I'm not sure why. You know that this is reality and not a waking dream on your part, yes?"
"I can still forcibly marry you to someone else!"
Draco smiled, and Harry shivered. Even standing in the favorable shadow of that smile, he felt chilled. He stepped back a little and then pressed closer to Draco's side, not sure whether he wanted to get nearer or farther away. There were disadvantages to either one.
"You could try," Draco said quietly. "That much is true. But with the forced marriage bond still existing between us, only in a half-state, the results of such a move would be unpredictable, much as they were when you tried to dissolve the bond holding us together but our metal bands preserved it. Would you want to risk killing your son, Lucius? Or killing Harry Potter? That crime, you would go to Azkaban for." He paused. "If you lived."
The threat was palpable, and Harry thought he saw Lucius's bluster deflating. He turned his head away and closed his eyes. Finally, Harry thought, he was learning to see the real world as almost everyone else around them did. It was a world where he was stripped of power and influence, and he thought that was so horrible that he was willing to alienate Draco and Narcissa over it and behave like an idiot.
That's what all this was about. An attempt to make people value him, to show that he still had the power to make his family fear him and dance to his tune. He would have loved it if Draco and I had gone on trying to appease him and get him to reverse the bond, or annoyed each other to the point where anything else would have looked better, even giving him control of the family back.
Lucius's tower was falling now, his world tearing apart at the seams, and Harry stood there and watched it with understanding but no sympathy. If not for Lucius's ego, then this would have happened a long time ago. He had become too used to getting his way, and too desperate to cling to the tattered shreds of his power in a world where the Dark Lord was dead.
"Lucius."
And that was Narcissa's voice, from behind him, down the corridor. Harry watched Lucius's shoulders stiffen, and wondered how much time he had spent resisting the thought of his wife.
The wife he might have made hate him with his stupid posturing, his stupid antics. Harry shook his head. He would have been hard-put to understand that when he was first married to Draco, since he had no conception that anything he did would be enough to drive Ginny away from, but now he did. The thought of losing Draco filled him with panic as cold as arctic water.
And Lucius had to know that what little power he could still command, in the family or outside it, was probably not going to matter if he couldn't get Narcissa on his side.
"Wife," Lucius said. He went on with a little more confidence when Narcissa didn't respond, instead standing still with her hands folded inside the sleeves of her robes. "I've--changed my mind. I will allow our son-in-law into the family and not--not try to convince Draco to marry someone else."
"That may be too late," Narcissa said, and moved a step closer. Her face was beautiful, but inhuman, Harry thought, in the remote expression that she fixed on her husband. "How do we know that you will not change your mind at a later date? Why did you not change it earlier?"
Lucius jerked his head up, cheeks mottled with his flush. He really didn't look attractive at all, Harry thought with some smugness, and tightened his hold on Draco's arm. Not compared to his son.
Draco glanced at him curiously, but Harry ignored him. He thought it was more important to keep quiet right now and let Lucius and Narcissa speak.
Besides, he didn't know Draco would appreciate the joke.
"What is this?" Lucius snapped, in a voice so low that Harry thought it was meant to sound impressive or frightening. It just made Lucius sound as if he had a cold. "A formal interrogation? If you want to dismiss me because you no longer think me good enough for this family, then perhaps I should change my mind and retreat to trying to exile our son-in-law."
Harry thought about saying he had a name and Lucius should use it, but again it didn't seem like the right time to interrupt. Draco's hand tightening on his arm warned against it, too.
"And that is the reason we cannot trust you." Narcissa made a bow to Lucius that reminded Harry of the one you were supposed to give before you dueled someone. "You will change your mind with the veering winds of your pride and anger, because you put your own welfare before that of the family. That is not the way you taught Draco, and it is not the standard I shall hold you to."
She turned and departed, her back so straight and her stride so unfaltering that Harry half-thought she would look back over her shoulder once at Lucius, just to undercut the impression she was giving of coldness. But she didn't. She went, and left her husband staring after her.
"You're going to lose her," Draco said, his tone neutral as the blank front of an envelope. "You keep putting yourself before her, and that's not the way to live with a spouse." Again his hand tightened on Harry's arm; this time, Harry squeezed back.
Lucius gave them a lost, wild, hunted look. Harry began to wonder if his understanding had gone too deep after all. Lucius might realize that he had lost his power and the respect of his wife and son now, but that wasn't necessarily enough to make him reconsider. He'd been on the edge of realizing it before, and reversed himself, as Narcissa had so eloquently pointed out.
"I do not need to listen to you," Lucius said, but his voice was shaking, and his hand clenched in front of him as though he was trying to hold onto the trailing edge of Narcissa's robe, and use it to hold himself up.
"Of course you do," Draco said, and his voice was almost kind, although his eyes were implacable. "Since you don't have a prayer of retaining her if you do anything else."
Lucius turned and walked away. Harry had the impression that he was trying to mimic the way Narcissa had done it, but of course his stride was choppy and his head kept twitching as if he wanted to look over his shoulder. Harry did wait until he was out of sight to snicker, though. If Lucius was going to go back on his apparent resolve not to interfere with their marriage again, then Harry didn't want to be the one who made him do it.
The bond whined at him then, and he frowned and glanced up at Draco. The strain his jaw was under showed that he was feeling it, too.
"Why did it do that?" Harry asked. "We're close to each other, in the same room--"
Draco pulled him back into their bedroom and shut the door. "Too much time spent with other people, I think," he murmured, and tugged Harry close with one arm, seeking his mouth. "One of the books I skimmed yesterday mentioned that that's sometimes a consequence of an incomplete wedding ritual. It can even be the consequence for a couple that's going to use one of the rituals that ties them closer together, but hasn't yet."
Harry let Draco kiss him, and then pulled back so that he could shake his head and Draco could see it. "I really don't understand this," he said. "We don't know that we're going to use one of those rituals yet--"
Draco stopped him with a patient glance.
"What I mean," Harry said, and he could feel the flush mounting his face, "is that we aren't going to use one of the rituals that would tie us together so closely that no one else would be able to touch us. So why would this bond be reacting like this? And to your father, someone I'm not attracted to and you know that you can't be attracted to?"
*
Draco had to smile a bit. It was obvious that Harry could still compartmentalize things to an amazing extent. He had felt the jealousy the bond inspired himself, but he didn't understand how those feelings influenced behavior.
"Weren't you the one who accused me of being in love with my mother to the point that it's a good thing I'm not marrying a woman?" he asked, bowing his head so that he could nudge Harry's hair aside with his nose and find a barer patch of scalp. Harry shuddered, and Draco made a note to remember that to himself. "Yes, I thought that was you. The bond doesn't want us spending too much time or affection with anyone else, never mind that some of those people might be related to us by blood."
You don't always understand that, Harry. You think the way people should react is the way they do react. And that's one of the reasons that you're having so much trouble understanding the way your relatives acted towards you, and the way it continues to affect you.
But Draco kept that to himself for right now. It would only make Harry tense and nervous to bring it up again when they were concentrating, or should be concentrating, on their marriage, and he still hadn't figured out how to break the news to his mother. He would have to do it in exactly the right way.
Unfortunately, his mother's reaction would be less of a problem concerning the way he did it than would Harry's.
"I understand," Harry said. He abruptly pulled back and frowned at Draco. "I didn't tell you that my friends are coming this afternoon, did I?"
Draco let his eyes cool and shook his head. "Not exactly."
"But you did say that I could invite them." Harry's shoulders were tense, and his eyes were locked on Draco's face. "That you would prefer I invite them beyond the wards rather than that we go out to meet them."
"I said that, yes," Draco admitted reluctantly. He was beginning to regret it; he obviously hadn't been in his right mind when he thought that, because he'd just woken up and needed the shower before he could clear his thoughts. But he wouldn't take it back, for the sake of the arguments it would cause between him and Harry if he did. "I did," he repeated more strongly. "All right, fine. What do we have to do to get ready for them?"
"Remove the wards on a single fireplace." Harry had relaxed at his acknowledgment and was beaming happily at him. "That'll let them in through the Floo this afternoon."
Draco nodded. As long as he was with Harry--and even if he had wanted to leave Harry alone with his friends, the bond wouldn't let him be anywhere else--then he thought he could handle the disapproval and wonder in their eyes.
That's strange, he thought a moment later. Is that really the worst thing I can come up with? That they might disapprove of me, instead of welcoming me with open arms? Apparently it is. And yet just a few days ago, I would have been sure the worst thing was that they were intruding at all, and soiling the Manor with their presence.
The bond might be teaching him some things about Harry and how to relate to him as well as teaching Harry about how to relate to pure-blood families. Draco had to admit he was less displeased about that than he would have thought.
"Now." Harry reached down to pull at the robes Draco had hastily thrown on, and smiled at him with all the wickedness of the world in his eyes. "What about another shower? I think you got sweaty after confronting your father. It's a very emotionally difficult time for you, after all."
Draco laughed and surrendered, kissing Harry hard enough to mash his lips into his teeth. Then he guided Harry towards the shower. If Harry had picked up sufficient comfort in their bond to tease him, then Draco found it hard to regret having to face his friends this afternoon.
*
"Harry! Thank God you're well."
Harry had to wince a little at the way the words burst from Hermione's lips right before she hugged him, and he felt Draco stiffen. Not stiffening in the good way, either. But his friends were here, they didn't know as much as they should about what had been happening to him, and they deserved some consideration, too. He hugged Hermione and ignored the way the bond whined in his ears. Draco was still at his side, and the hug didn't last as long as Hermione wanted it to, so that would have to be enough.
Ron came out of the Floo behind Hermione, giving Harry a more reserved smile and losing his smile altogether when he nodded at Draco. Draco sneered at him and tried to loom in a way he just wasn't made for, what with his slender frame. Harry nudged him in the ribs to make him stagger and grunt a bit, and shook Ron's hand.
"There's been a lot happening in the past few days," he said. "Why don't we sit down? I'm sure that you have a lot to tell us about the hunt for the decay wizards, too, Ron."
There was a circle of chairs arrayed in front of the fireplace, all of them exactly the same size, thickly padded, and different only in their colors. Hermione took a seat in the blue one, with Ron in the pale green one beside her, and she looked around the room with a measured gaze that Harry knew was probably weighing up the value of the gilded mirrors and the hand-carved wooden knickknacks and considering how many house-elves they would pay for. Or possibly how much the house-elves had to dust. Ron took her hand, and Hermione visibly squeezed it.
Harry winced, then, when he remembered what kind of memories Hermione would have of the Manor. At least she hadn't been tortured in this room. He sat down with Draco in one of the aqua chairs, and Draco clasped his hand between them the same way Ron and Hermione were doing. The bond quieted.
"What's this about, mate?" Ron said bluntly. "You mentioned some of it, the broken bond and the changed bond, the last time we talked, but I still don't really see why that means that you have to stay behind wards."
"And I don't understand it at all," Hermione said firmly.
Harry explained the bond as best he could, making sure to talk about all the bands of metal he and Draco had earned and the way that Lucius had chosen to revoke the marriage bond at the worst possible time. With every word she heard, Hermione's lips tightened, and she exchanged more than one glance with Ron. Draco's grip got tighter on Harry's hand, too, and the whining of the bond in his ears picked up in both intensity and pitch.
Harry sighed. He had hoped he wouldn't need to be the peacemaker in a conflict between Draco and his friends, but it was looking more and more as if things would work out that way.
When he was done talking, Hermione leaned forwards. The intense compassion on her face made Harry sure of what she would say even before she opened her mouth.
"Harry. Are you sure this is what you want? The bond limits your movement, and you can't do your job when you're stuck at home all day or have Malfoy following you around."
Harry squeezed Draco's hand before he could respond, and said, "No. We don't want to stay like this. So we're looking for a marriage ritual that will settle the bond as well as tie us together."
Hermione's mouth fell open. "You're marrying him?"
"Yes," Draco said. "He proposed to me, not the other way around." His tone said how much he'd been itching to make that point.
"We were already married, technically," Harry said. "Now we're sort of...half-married. We want to correct that, and the best way to correct a half-marriage is with a real one. We've been reading up."
Ron, who had been quiet while they talked, abruptly shook his head. "Sorry, mate, but that might have to wait."
Draco snarled at Ron. Harry touched his arm to calm him and asked, "Why?"
"Because of some of the things the decay wizards have told us." Ron's eyes were fixed on his face, the expression he often wore when he was delivering the bad news to a victim's family. "The beast is wound into your magical signature the way the scars are wound into your body. You escaped halfway through its feeding and its conversion of you, but it--basically, you can't participate in any ceremony of commitment or any oathtaking because it'll interfere. The forced marriage didn't count since that was against your will." He took a deep breath. "But if you marry someone else, or take an Unbreakable Vow willingly, or anything like that, then it'll break loose. And start eating exactly where it left off."
Chapter Forty-Five.
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