[one-shots]: Defendere, H/D, R, 1/4
Title: Defendere
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione
Rating: R
Warnings: Flangst, some violence, sex, magical bonding, references to canonical child abuse, EWE.
Wordcount: 36,000
Summary: Harry stumbles into a magical ritual meant to enslave Draco, and manages to change the bond so that it leaves Draco with free will and the ability to make decisions even if he is bound to Harry. But that isn’t much comfort when it also leaves him with the ability to irritate the hell out of Harry in the name of “guarding” him.
Author’s Notes: This is being written as a gift for
groolover, who kindly Brit-picked my hd_holidays story for me. She specified a happy ending, which I promise there is, and even some humor along the way. The title is Latin for “to defend.”
Defendere
“Aurors! Open in the name of the Ministry!”
There was silence, and then scrambling, on the other side of the door. Harry half-rolled his eyes at Ron and kicked the door in. He had already quietly removed the charms that held it shut, and the half-rotten wood that made it up-any strength in the door had come from the magic guarding it-splintered as it hit the wall.
In the room beyond, several dozen people in black robes got in each other’s way as they tried to protect their “magical Work,” or so the letters that Harry and Ron had intercepted had called it. Harry saw a blur of candles on the walls, heard chanting and screams, caught a glimpse of magical circles chalked on the stone from the corner of his eye, and ducked the first curse with a grim satisfaction taking possession of his mind. Yes, their information had been accurate.
The first warlock, a grizzled apparition with a beard that twisted across his face like moss, rushed at him and raised his wand. He hadn’t got through half of his long, complicated chant when Harry’s defensive spell sealed his mouth shut and he fell over from Ron’s Tripping Jinx. Harry reached back with his hand, and felt Ron slap it in affirmation.
Some of the warlocks and witches involved tried to flee, but they tripped over each other, over their robes’ hems, and over the magic circles, some of which objected to having people enter them. Harry and Ron rounded them up easily, and soon it just became a matter of making sure they had everyone’s wands and that people were Stunned and bound, an endless round of Expelliarmus, Stupefy, Incarcerous, Expelliarmus, Stupefy, Incarcerous.
Harry snorted a little as he leaned against a wall, counting the bodies and running a hand over his forehead. His Auror trainers had been at pains to stress new spells when they taught him; spells he learned at Hogwarts were deemed childish and not appropriate for an Auror to use.
What they hadn’t emphasized was that most of the people who chose to become criminals in the wizarding world weren’t very competent. That was in the fine tradition of Voldemort, Harry considered, who had been powerful and cunning but insane. And with him gone, there weren’t many who could give Aurors a need to call on those more complicated spells.
At least, not very often. Harry whipped around as a scream came from further in the complex of tunnels. It sounded like pain and not fear, which meant it probably wasn’t one of the idiots they’d come here to capture.
He and Ron exchanged a glance, dividing the labor without discussion. Ron stayed with the prisoners and made sure none of them escaped or played bound while really unbound as Harry leaped in the direction of the cries.
They continued, shrill and piercing. Now he could hear chanting mingled with them, and swore, redoubling his speed. The information they’d collected said that the warlocks were trying to conduct magical rituals to enslave the wizarding world, rituals that wouldn’t work. But there were plenty of smaller versions that would enslave individuals and could.
Harry saw an iron door ahead of him, gleaming with huge black hinges and padlocks and chains ran around it. He snapped a Finite and a Reducto without slowing down, and the magic on the door shattered into sparkling fragments a moment before the metal itself did. Harry bowled through and into the center of the cavern beyond.
This time, what he caught glimpses of was yawning mouths, a burning brazier, someone crouched over a figure lying on the floor in the center of a circle-in fact, an overlapping ring of circles, gold and red and green-and wands turning towards him.
They were trying to enslave someone. They might already have done so.
Since the end of the war and the realization that he was finally free to choose his own life, and some other things, Harry had been a little less than sane about that particular Dark wizardly trick.
He didn’t remember half the spells he cast, but he knew that his Patronus charged the wizard crouching by the prisoner and scooped him up on its antlers, hurling him into the far wall. Harry whirled around to face the rest of the ritual-workers, and heard them chanting, saw them holding hands, trying to contain him.
Harry smiled at them all, and their chant faltered. Harry clasped his hands in front of him and lowered them as if he held a much longer wand than he really did, or a unicorn horn, and pointed straight at the center of their linked line.
The spell came bubbling out of the heart of him, out of the stillness that he’d carried with him ever since he looked into the eyes of the dead lying in the Great Hall and realized that this could have been prevented if people had just fought against Voldemort instead of cowering in fear or going along with him. This, too, was evil that could have been prevented if these people hadn’t followed mindlessly along in the name of greater power.
“Diffundito!”
The spell came out of him as a series of spreading blue rings, in contrast and cleanliness to what lay on the floor all around him. It hit the wizards standing opposite him and bore them backwards, to the sides, and up, smashing and holding them against the walls for a second. Harry’s Patronus charged up to his side and stood there, pawing its hooves and tossing its head, as though asking for more permission to throw more fools.
Harry laid his hand on the sparkling silver neck, though of course he couldn’t really feel anything, and shook his head. “You don’t need to,” he said. “The spell is getting rid of them.”
And it was. They shook, robes billowing and bodies flickering. Then they began to rip apart, to scatter, particles flying apart from one another, wands and drifting scraps of cloth separating and whirling in different directions, into the corners of the caves and cracks in the stone.
Eventually, their bodies would reform wherever their wands were, and they would come back to life. It was the reason the Ministry permitted the use of the spell in the first place instead of condemning it as murder, the way they would if it kept anyone in a permanent Scattered State. But in the meantime, Harry and Ron could put the wands in holding cells in the Ministry, and the warlocks would come back to themselves already good and caged.
And with memories of what it was like to be completely helpless and held apart from their own bodies for months at a time, memories that might make them reconsider ever trying to do it to anyone else.
Harry closed his eyes and sighed as the last traces of the wizards blew apart, and then turned to the really important person in the equation, the man still lying motionless in the middle of the central circle. He took a step forwards.
“Harry, don’t!”
Harry had never heard Ron sound like that, not even when they were talking about destroying Horcruxes. He froze with his foot in the air and craned his neck back around to stare at his partner.
Ron stood near the doorway, his face so white that all his freckles stood out. He shook his head. “Mate, do you know what you’ve done?” he whispered.
“Not yet,” Harry said steadily. His leg was beginning to hurt with holding his foot up, but he kept it in the air. He would do whatever Ron told him, because Ron would never try to order him around like this for something unimportant. “What did I do?”
Ron nodded to the circles on the floor. Harry studied them, and realized there were four: a large red one near the door that he’d already crossed; a smaller gold one inside that, which was right under his lifted foot; a green one that the wizard he’d tossed into the wall had been kneeling inside; and a tight red one that barely encircled the lying body. The circles crackled and sparked with power as if someone had been funneling electricity through them.
“Those circles-they’re meant to bind someone to someone else,” Ron said, his voice as sick as Harry felt at the thought. “To make them their slave, their sex toy, whatever they want to do with them.”
Harry nodded. “Well, we knew they were going to be doing this. But did I trigger the spell by crossing the circles?” His mind reared back from that, the enormity of that, and what he was going to do if he had triggered it.
“The spell had already started,” Ron said, his voice soft and as kind as Harry thought it could be under the circumstances. “But it means that the victim has to be bound to someone, and you’re the only person inside the circle right now. There’s no way to stop it. The ritual has to go ahead, or it opens-it opens the victim’s mind and drives them mad. Hermione wants to use a binding at our wedding, so she made me read up on all sorts of them,” he added.
Harry’s foot hurt badly by now. He lowered it carefully down next to the one that was still inside the larger red circle, hoping that would diminish the sparks. But they went on leaping, and a wall of them began to obscure the body in the central circle. Harry stared towards it, hoping desperately-
It was Malfoy.
Harry closed his eyes, and hissed. The realization ached in his chest like a blade thrust in. Malfoy had already been enslaved once, forced to do what Voldemort wanted, to torture people and live with it. Harry couldn’t think of anyone he would have wanted to spare more from slavery except his friends.
“It’s Malfoy,” he whispered. “Ron, I can’t bind him. He’s suffered too much from things like that already. Is there anything else you know that can get him out of here and leave him free? I’ve only crossed one circle. Maybe-” He started to move backwards.
Ron roared a warning at the same time as Harry felt a powerful sting between his shoulder blades. It hurled him at the golden circle, and as much as he tried to resist, he passed over it.
The circles he’d already passed rose up into circular iron walls behind him. Harry spun around and launched a spell at them, but the metal absorbed the magic without flinching. Harry hammered on them, and Ron shouted at him, and it took the tone in Ron’s voice to make Harry slow down and listen to him instead of simply hammering on.
“Harry, you have to do it now. You’re the only one left in the circles, and now-now you’re the only choice, even if I come in there. The ritual isn’t made for people who want to back out. It’ll destroy you and him both if you try. I’m sorry,” Ron added, his voice breaking.
Harry shut his eyes and bowed his head. For a long moment, he flicked a whip of contempt through himself. If he’d paid more attention to where he was going, listened to Ron more, taken the wizards in the room by surprise instead of charging in, then Malfoy might have had a chance to retain his freedom and his sanity both.
But it was only a moment, even if a long one. He’d also learned, since the war, that sometimes the decisions you had to make were just bad ones, and nothing would change them. He lifted his head and filled his lungs with air. “All right, Ron. What kind of options do I have? I can’t-I can’t take Malfoy as my slave. I’d rather risk what the ritual would do to me.”
“I know, Harry,” Ron whispered. “Hermione told me there are other bindings, too. You can bind him as your lover, or to think that he’s always been your friend-”
“Which kind would leave him the most freedom to act and to make up his own mind?” Harry cut in.
Ron was silent for long enough that Harry clenched his fists. Maybe there wasn’t any other choice, and if that was the case, then Harry would choose the friendship bond. Anything else was impossible, and as much as he hated interfering with Malfoy’s mind or memories, friendships at least could be broken if he wanted his freedom.
“The Defendere bond,” Ron said at last. “It would still connect you to him, and let him know when you’re in danger and what you need to survive, but it would mean that he could make the choice whether he wanted to rescue you or not.”
Harry breathed out harshly. “Good. He should know better than to think he needs to rescue me. We’ll do that one.”
“It’s permanent,” Ron said, warning in his tone.
“And anything else wouldn’t be?” Harry shook his head at Ron’s continued silence. “I know. The whole situation is fucked-up. I should have watched where I was going, and they shouldn’t have snatched him in the first place. But we’ll do what we have to to survive. How do I handle this?”
“Um-mate, I only studied this once-”
“Tell me as much as you remember,” Harry said, and glanced at the sparking, spitting circles. “I don’t think I’ll be allowed to get far off the program anyway. Something will nudge me along if you forget a word here or there.”
“It’s not so much the words, as the will,” Ron said. “And the blood. You have to make sure he drinks your blood. Ugh, mate, I’m sorry-”
“Feel sorrier for him,” Harry said crisply, and dragged off his Auror robes so he could more easily take out the knife in his boot. Then he stepped into the green circle. Another wall of iron appeared behind him, but as long as it didn’t cut him off from Ron’s voice, then he thought he could still do this. “At least I chose this much. Where is the blood supposed to come from?”
“Your wrist,” Ron said. “You have to take quite a lot, mate-I don’t think he stops drinking until he’s satisfied-”
“So, like that vampire case we worked last year, then,” Harry said lightly, dropping to one knee, half his attention on Malfoy and half on reassuring his best friend. He was calm, balanced between them. If he could do things, that was fine. He could save someone, and that was what mattered. “Fine. Do I have to get inside the central circle where he’s lying, do you know?”
“I think you have to have part of your body inside it,” Ron said. “Your knee, or something. Merlin, Hermione is going to kill me if I do something to hurt you-”
“It would be my fault, not yours,” Harry said quietly, and felt Ron accept it, the authority in his voice, bracing himself against it, the way they’d always done for each other since they became Auror partners. “All right. Any words I have to say as I take the blood?” He laid the knife along his wrist, grimacing wryly at it. It was ordinary steel, not the silver or the obsidian that would probably make the ritual go best. Well, needs must.
“I don’t think so,” Ron said. “Except maybe Defendere. It’s so hard to remember this, mate, sorry, and I wouldn’t remember this much if Hermione didn’t think it was a good idea to make me recite the different kinds of bindings in my sleep-”
“It’s okay,” Harry said, and then took a deep breath and gazed down at Malfoy’s face. He was pale, and so completely still that Harry felt a stab, for a moment, at the thought of binding himself to a corpse. But Malfoy moaned and his head shifted, strands of blond hair spilling towards Harry.
“I’ll try that, anyway,” Harry said, and moved his knee into the central circle.
The magic flickered into being all around them, walls of black iron this time, or black stone, smooth and sheer, and dark as a starless night. Yet light seemed to shine in the middle of the circle, allowing Harry to see Malfoy’s face all the more clearly. He nodded, to him or himself or Ron or the forces that had brought them here, and sliced the knife down and along his wrist.
“Defendere, defendere, defendere,” he began to murmur, and twisted the knife deep, ignoring the sting, watching Malfoy. Malfoy was no longer moving his head or moaning; instead, he lay with his brow furrowed and his head leaning to the side as if listening. When Harry began to whisper, he opened his eyes and stared at him, though with no sign of recognition.
“Give,” he said, and held out his hand. Harry shuddered to think of what the man who’d intended to enslave him might have placed in it, and then did his best to blank that out of his mind entirely, as the final moments of the ritual had blanked out Ron’s voice. Malfoy was the one who needed him now.
“Yes,” Harry said, and held out his arm so that Malfoy could get hold of it and direct his bloody wrist to Malfoy’s mouth. “But you belong to yourself, okay? We’re forming the Defendere bond, but that just means you’ll feel when I’m in danger. You don’t have to do anything about it. You can do what you want. I wouldn’t enslave you even this much, but Ron says that you’ll die without it. Sorry-”
Malfoy’s mouth fastened on his wound and began to suck. Harry braced himself with his free hand in the circle, grimacing. He could feel the bond settling into place like an iron harness that seemed to wind up from his wrist and towards his shoulders. From the way Malfoy gave a light gasp before he resumed his sucking, Harry assumed he felt something similar.
Harry sighed. It was exactly the kind of thing he didn’t want, that he’d decided after the war that he’d never wanted. He was happy for Ron and Hermione that they were getting married and wanted a strong bonding when they did so, because both of them had chosen it and they were so much in love that that practically glowed around them all the time, bond or not. But Harry didn’t want to be tied to anyone that closely.
It had eventually caused the end of his relationship with Ginny. She’d wanted a traditional wedding, a ceremony like Bill and Fleur’s, and Harry…didn’t.
She’s going to be pissed at me now, and she’ll have the right to be, Harry thought, feeling the bond settle deeper and deeper, into his bones and his blood and his stomach, his organs and his lungs. The very air he exhaled seemed tainted with it. He shivered and hoped Malfoy would be done with the blood soon. Lightest of the possible bonds or not, this Defendere thing was obviously going to affect them.
Probably it’ll grow a bit lighter when you’ve borne it for a while, Harry thought, and shivered again. The weakness was growing greater. Well, that was what happened when you lost a lot of blood.
Abruptly, Malfoy stopped sucking. Harry looked at him cautiously, and found him lying there with his eyes shut, his hands still locked around Harry’s wrist but otherwise asleep. Harry began to pull his arm away. With any luck, Malfoy would stay asleep until they could get him to St. Mungo’s and checked for any wounds or potions that the wizards who’d kidnapped him might have inflicted on him. Then Harry could send in someone neutral to explain the situation, and-
Malfoy’s eyes snapped open, and he turned his head until he was looking unerringly at Harry. His breath came heavily, and his face had a grimace on it that seemed to lock his teeth in place, but he still spoke with the same sharp edge to his voice as ever.
“It would be you, Potter, my own personal savior. Of course.” His hands moved restlessly up and down Harry’s sleeve, as though he didn’t like to let go quite yet. “Do you know what you’ve done?”
“The only thing I could, to save your life and give you some freedom in the bargain,” Harry said, and looked around. The obsidian walls were melting. “I know the bond seems heavy now. I’m sorry. But I disrupted the ritual, and by the time I was in the middle of it, the only thing I could do was go ahead.”
Malfoy laughed. The sound had less bitterness in it than Harry had expected, and his hands were still smoothing up and down Harry’s arm. It was distracting in a way that the sucking hadn’t been, and Harry pulled his arm away and used his wand to heal up the wound.
Malfoy was sitting up by then, giving him a faint smile that someone who didn’t know them both might call fond. His hair seemed to stand up around his head, but other than that, he looked remarkably good for someone who’d been snatched from his home and nearly enslaved. Harry nodded to him. “Can you stand?”
“If you need me to.” Malfoy’s eyes darkened, and Harry winced. He would be considering the consequences of the bond now, how it was always going to tug at him. Well, at least it shouldn’t be the kind of thing that prevented him from getting married or anything else.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” he muttered. “Ron told me the bond would tell you when I needed you to protect me. I know you’ll get lots of messages from me because I’m an Auror and I get in trouble all the time, but I hope that you’ll learn to live with them.”
Malfoy’s eyes had a queer glitter. “That’s what you think the Defendere bond entails?” he asked, his hand resting on Harry’s shoulder. Harry told himself that it probably had to do with the kind of closeness the bond brought about in its first moments, and tried not to mind it. “All it entails? Did Weasley tell you that?”
“Malfoy,” Ron said, appearing as the walls settled back into the circles and the circles themselves vanished from the floor. He folded his arms and shook his head at them both. “Arrogant as ever, when you ought to be on your knees thanking Harry for what he did for you.”
“Ron,” Harry hissed. He didn’t like someone joking about Malfoy kneeling to him, and Malfoy laughed beside him, bowing his head so that it was his brow resting against Harry’s shoulder, not just his hand. This time, he didn’t seem to notice when Harry shifted as if to throw him off.
“He doesn’t like that,” Malfoy whispered. His voice slurred and drifted, but he didn’t sound drunk, more in the throes of ecstasy. “Oh, not at all,” he added, and leaned closer to Harry, until his breath was warm and distracting in the hollow of Harry’s throat. “There’s so many things that he doesn’t like. He needs people to stop talking to him as though he’s a hero, he needs no one to kneel to him, he needs me to forget about this bond.” He lifted his head and gave Harry a smile that was all edges and no curve. “Sorry, but that last isn’t going to happen.”
Harry opened his mouth to shout, and then shut it and sighed. Really, he should be grateful for this sign of Malfoy’s stubbornness, because it meant that he did have his free will intact. He could sense what Harry needed, but he didn’t have to act on the realization, or feel tormented if he didn’t. That was the best they could hope for out of a situation like this.
And who knows? When we’ll have the time to work on it, now, maybe Hermione can even come up with a solution, or we can, at least as long as she’s distracted by the wedding.
“Come on, Malfoy, let’s get you to St. Mungo’s,” Harry said gently, and stood up, pulling Malfoy to his feet as he did so. Malfoy swayed and blinked, but seemed to maintain his balance well enough when Harry cautiously shifted back. He even lifted his head from Harry’s shoulder and stared around the cavern as though he was surprised to find himself there.
“Do you remember how they captured you?” Harry asked quietly.
Malfoy focused on him at once, dilated pupils and all. Harry studied his face, but could see none of the grey undertones to his skin or shivering that would characterize the more extreme reactions to the most common potions used to drug someone.
“Of course I know,” Malfoy snapped. “I’m recovering from a Dark ritual, not amnesiac or six years old.”
“Apologies,” Harry muttered, and turned to study the circles on the floor. They were gone completely, meaning they could move towards the door. He gave Malfoy his arm. Malfoy ignored it, took a step forwards, and ended up catapulting towards the floor with the slow grace of a chopped tree. Harry sighed, Levitated him back to his feet, and offered him his arm again.
This time, Malfoy took it, staring avidly into his face. Harry rolled his eyes. He had learned to put up with that kind of thing, if not like it, during the year right after the war, when the reporters had competed for the most obscure adjectives they could find about the color of his eyes.
“They came to the Manor and took me from there,” Malfoy said. He sounded less drunk now, but with no less of a shivering need to press close. Harry grimaced and helped him up the slight step down into the cavern, which he’d leaped without even noticing it in his fury when he’d come this way before. “I don’t know how they got through the wards, but I’d suggest hammering.”
“Hammering?” Harry questioned, and glanced back at Ron, who was gathering up the warlocks’ dropped wands and securing the main wizard, whom his Patronus had tossed against the wall. Ron lifted one shoulder in a shrug without looking around.
“A sophisticated name for an unsophisticated technique,” Malfoy murmured, and tilted his head back, shuddering as though someone was pouring cold water down his back. “They simply applied pressure to the wards, all at once, and all using the same spell. The wards are meant to withstand measured attacks, because most wizards wouldn’t use so much force simply to break in, and the defenders could resist them if they did.” Harry wondered if it was his imagination that Malfoy’s fingers tightened on his arm when he said the word defenders. “But they swept in, and I was the only one home. They took my wand before I could fight them.”
With a start, Harry remembered that he still had the hawthorn wand that had belonged to Malfoy before the war. Well, even if they couldn’t make their prisoners tell them where they’d put Malfoy’s things, then at least they could ensure he wasn’t helpless.
Malfoy’s fingers clenched down on Harry’s arm like links of chain. “Yes, Potter,” he whispered, tilting his head back and looking at Harry through his lowered eyelashes. “It’s very important that I not be helpless. You need me to protect you.”
“That’s what the bond says,” Harry pointed out gently. “It doesn’t mean that you need to do it if you don’t want to.”
Malfoy had the strangest, smallest smile on his face, and he shook his head. “You don’t understand what you did when you chose the Defendere bond,” he murmured. “You’ve linked us, and it’s important that I fulfill your needs.”
Harry winced. Well, he had known it wouldn’t be perfect, but still, hearing Malfoy say those words made revulsion crystallize and curdle inside him.
“You need someone who can help you do that,” Malfoy said, and lifted his head, his eyes gazing so straight at Harry that it was almost painful to see them. “You need-you need someone like me, who can teach you that some of your needs aren’t wrong, aren’t evil, are capable of being fulfilled like anyone else’s.”
Harry stared at him, then snorted. “You make me sound like some kind of deviant,” he said, glad that Ron was too involved in deliberately ignoring Malfoy to pay much attention to what Harry said, either. “I’ve never felt anything that had to be fulfilled like that, never needed something that I couldn’t get myself or get with help from my friends.”
Malfoy smiled at him, and his hand on Harry’s arm ran up and down, startling some of the small hairs on Harry’s skin into shivering life. “You only think that because you’ve never had someone like me, committed to you,” he said. “I assure you, Potter, when you get used to it, you’ll want it all the time.”
“Why am I standing here arguing with you, when you’re still under the influence of potions that probably make day look like night?” Harry asked the air, and turned to firmly lead Malfoy towards the door again.
Malfoy leaned against him, and sighed.
Harry repressed a shudder. The sigh didn’t have the sound of resignation or exasperation or sadness that he would have expected from someone put into this position, and especially not someone who had hated him for a long time.
It sounded like anticipation.
*
“Because that’s the way bonds like that work, Harry,” Hermione said, peering at him earnestly from her chair for a moment before she looked down at the dress in her lap. “They ensure that the person who’s bound to the master-ow!” She sucked at her pricked finger and scowled at the needle lying by her feet.
Harry leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling to stifle a grin. “Still no luck with the sewing, then?” he asked.
“It ought to be simple,” Hermione said sullenly, and bent down to pick up the needle. “Lots and lots of people who didn’t know how to do anything do it all the time!”
Harry cleared his throat, thought of saying that those people who didn’t know how to do “anything” had probably learned their skills from experience rather than trying to get them from books the way Hermione had tried, and then decided that he didn’t really want to die of a needle through the throat. “Can you use some word other than ‘master’ when you’re talking about this?” he asked.
“No,” Hermione said, and then softened when he stared at her. “I’m sorry, Harry. But that really is the way it is. The one who holds the bond-who created the bond in the first place-is the master, and the better and faster you understand that, the less likely you are to mistreat Malfoy.”
“But I don’t want to mistreat him,” Harry said, bringing down one fist on the arm of his chair. He heard a crack from the wood, and winced. When he got really angry, his magic burned under his skin, and sometimes it did things like that. “You know that, Hermione! I only did it to save his life, and now I want to give him his normal life back, as soon as he’s out of hospital.”
“His life isn’t going to be the same,” Hermione said, and sighed as she folded her hands on top of the dress, and then yelped as she once again pricked herself with the needle. Harry watched as she wrung the pain out before she continued. “A bond like that fills his mind with knowledge of your needs. It’s like having a telly on all the time. You can ignore it some of the time, but if something catches your attention, then you’re watching it, whether you want to or not. And the bond will push him to fulfill at least some of those needs, so that you have fewer and he can have peace in his own head.”
Harry shuddered. “That almost sounds worse than what some of the other bonds would have done,” he muttered.
“Oh, no, they all work like that,” Hermione said, and patted at her hair. Harry knew that she had tried a combination of potions to smooth it down, maybe the same kind she’d used at the Yule Ball, but it didn’t seem to have worked entirely; stray curls escaped here and there. “But the Defendere bond at least ensures that he’s focusing on needs like, oh, guarding your life, instead of crawling into your bed.”
Harry shuddered and worked his tongue back and forth in his mouth, controlling his very real need to spit. He sensed that Hermione wouldn’t approve of that, even if Harry was only doing it on the floor of his office.
He looked back up to find Hermione leaning closer, her eyes bright and soft. “I didn’t realize that it disgusted you that much,” she whispered. “Oh, Harry, I’m sorry. You’re the last person who should be put in this position.”
“No, Malfoy is,” Harry said, and shook his head as he swept the revulsion back into the depths of his soul. Malfoy could probably feel it, and the last thing Harry wanted him to think was that Harry was disgusted by him. “Anyway. Do you know-do you know a way to break a bond like this? I wondered why you weren’t opposing it the way you oppose house-elf slavery.”
“Because the bonds are different,” Hermione said. “And at least the people involved in them are human and they have some legal rights. Did you know that house-elves don’t even have the right to food? If the laws say-”
“All right,” Harry said hastily. Hermione was supposedly taking a holiday from house-elf law and all the rest of it because she wanted to prepare her own dress and catering and everything else for the wedding, but Harry knew it wouldn’t take much to make her go storming back to her books. “But what can I do to avoid harming him? If I have all these needs in my head and they’re tugging on him, then I don’t know what to do.”
“First,” Hermione said, “you have to accept that he’ll want to do what he can for you, and that means he’ll need to live with you.”
Harry grimaced. “I’ll probably move into Grimmauld Place for the duration, then,” he muttered. He couldn’t imagine Malfoy putting up with a house where he didn’t have at least his own bedroom, and more likely his own wing. “What else?”
“You’ll probably have to accept his escorting you when you go out to dinner or drinking and so on,” Hermione said, and leaned still nearer. Then she grabbed her elbow and stared at the dress. “How did a pin get there?” she asked plaintively.
“I don’t know,” Harry said, and then his lips twitched in spite of himself, though it was probably all right because she wasn’t looking. “Are you sure that you don’t want Molly to help you?”
“Some things, I have to do myself,” Hermione said firmly, and brushed her hair back from her forehead. “Anyway. He’ll want to be with you, because someone could attack you when you’re out eating, you know that. Look at what happened last year.”
Harry scowled. “What happened last year did because the restaurant’s security was bribable.”
“That might happen again,” Hermione said. “And you should really try to take fewer risks as an Auror, Harry. I’m sure that he’ll be able to feel you when you’re in danger, and that will drive him mad.” She raised an eyebrow at him when he spluttered. Harry no longer felt bad about smiling over her mishaps with the pins and needles. “Consider it from his point of view, Harry. His whole world has been changed.”
“I know,” Harry said. “I’m trying to think of that. But I can’t stop being in danger, even if I quit being an Auror tomorrow. Someone would always be coming after me to avenge Voldemort or because they think it would make them look cool to kill me or something. And the Ministry would never accept him tagging along with Ron and me. He’s not a qualified Auror, he can’t.”
“They make provisions for bonds, the same way they do when one of the sexual ones happens to someone who’s married.” Hermione picked up her needle, fixed it with a look that clearly told it to behave itself, and started to sew again. Harry heard her counting stitches under her breath before she looked up at him. “The Ministry might allow him to come along with you, because it’s a Defendere bond.”
Harry threw up his hands. “And everyone keeps mentioning that, but except that it allows him a little more free will, I don’t know what that means.”
“Because you don’t want to,” Hermione said placidly. “I told you that bonds changed people, Harry. He has better defensive magic now than he’s ever had, at least as long as he’s specifically trying to protect you. He’ll have better instincts for danger, heightened senses, the ability to see a short way into the future, maybe, in order to keep you safe from people who might strike suddenly. The Ministry might agree that that’s a fine substitute for Auror training. And you know it would keep Head Auror Debalus from having a heart attack every time you want to go out and do something on your own.”
Harry rolled his head on his neck, and didn’t answer. Head Auror Debalus had apparently taken the thought that Harry might die on an Auror mission-which was, Harry thought murderously, what happened to Aurors sometimes-so much to heart that he’d had messages to the press printed up in advance. They said, “The Chosen One is resting,” or “The Chosen One is recovering well,” or “We are sorry to report that the Chosen One has died.”
He didn’t want to be known as the Head Auror who lost the Boy-Who-Lived. Harry understood that. So far, he had won the battle to be allowed to go into the field like any regular Auror and take the risks rather than stay behind the desk and safely away from them, but it was getting more than a bit ridiculous, how much they fussed over him.
Then Harry paused and turned his head. Someone was hammering on the door of the office, which shouldn’t have happened, with Harry here late and Ron gone out drinking with Seamus to try and get some of the pre-wedding jitters out of the system. “Someone’s here, Hermione.”
“Take your wand,” she snapped at him without even looking up from her sewing. “You remember what happened when you didn’t?”
“That was one time,” Harry muttered, and checked to make sure that his wand was in his left sleeve for a quick cross-body draw before he stood up and unlocked the office door.
Malfoy fell over the threshold into Harry’s arms almost before Harry got it open, and snarled at him, “Stop your bloody brooding, won’t you?” He panted into Harry’s face and hauled him upright with his hands on his arms, swaying as though he’d run all the way from hospital. “I can feel it over in my room at St. Mungo’s. Like a load of bloody pigeons sitting on my head and squatting on a dozen eggs each.”
“Shit,” Harry said, and ran a hand through his hair. He hadn’t thought about the effect of his emotions on Malfoy, because he had assumed only fear and the anger he sometimes felt at criminals would matter. “You could feel me? We have to fix this, somehow.” He turned instinctively towards the corner of the office, where Hermione seemed to have wrestled the needle into submission.
Malfoy slapped him on the shoulder, pulling his attention back. “This is the way that bonds work, Potter,” he said. “What you need to get through your small and thick skull is that I’m here now. You don’t have to worry about the solutions to your problems because I’m going to solve them. I just want you to stop the worrying and let me get some bloody sleep. At home, preferably.”
“Right, we’ve got to get you back to the Manor,” Harry muttered, and put his arms cautiously around Malfoy, wondering all the while what he was going to do with him. This was why he hadn’t tried to get any more pets after Hedwig, even a regular post-owl. He sucked at taking care of anyone, people or animals. He could manage with his friends, but that was because Ron and Hermione had each other and took care of him, too, and it all sort of balanced out.
“Not the Manor,” Malfoy said, giving Harry a lopsided look that suggested he was the one who’d stumbled and banged his head into a new world on the way. “I want to go home with you.”
“Told you,” Hermione said, without looking up from her sewing. She looked innocently busy, and very feminine, and very traditional, and utterly impervious when Harry cast her an appealing stare.
“This is the way that bonds work,” Malfoy said, and even though Harry knew he was technically the master here, Malfoy’s hand felt very much like a shackle on his arm. “When we’re home, then we can discuss things, such as what I’m supposed to be defending you from and whether you’ll need me to sleep in the same room.”
Harry spluttered, Malfoy simply looked at him as though everything was settled, and Hermione’s needle darted in and out of the cloth like a fish leaping in and out of the sea.
“Fine,” Harry said at last. “Though I have no idea why you would have to sleep in the same bed.”
Too late, he realized that he should just have ignored that part of Malfoy’s chatter. He straightened up and thumped one hand on Harry’s chest, driving the air out of his lungs and moving him back a step. Harry grunted. He wondered if added strength was a gift of the Defendere bond, as well. He considered himself pretty fit for an Auror, and he knew Malfoy wouldn’t have been able to do that just a little while ago.
“You have no idea about yourself,” Malfoy whispered harshly, bending in until Harry had to struggle to keep him in focus. “The nightmares I can feel in you, the fears, the longings, the unfulfilled desires.” His smile ripped across his face. “I can’t exactly thank you for the bond, Potter, but I can at least say that I won’t ever be bored.”
“It’s good that you two boys are going to settle things,” Hermione said, without looking up from the dress.
Harry knew it was childish, but he still couldn’t help waving his wand on their way out the door and muttering a certain spell. Hermione shrieked, a tragic sound, as the needle leaped out of her fingers and pricked her again. Harry hid a snicker, and then straightened up and tried to make his face as stern as possible when he saw the way that Malfoy was looking at him.
“Anyway,” he said. “We should be going home.”
Malfoy nodded once, a slow, judicious motion that might have been either judgment or approval, and then held out his arm. Harry took it, intending to Side-Along Apparate him, but Malfoy was the one who whirled him away through the darkness without asking, weakness and all.
And him just out of hospital, too.
*
Malfoy won the argument Harry tried to have with him when they arrived on the doorstep of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place by simply ignoring Harry’s snarls about how he had known where the place was and snatching the key to the front door from his pocket. And he shouldn’t have known it was the key to the front door, either, Harry thought, following him into the entrance hall, even if it was a big iron key and the door had a big iron lock.
Malfoy just knew things. Apparition coordinates. The location of keys. When, or so he claimed, Harry needed someone to fight with and when he could disappear into the kitchen, humming tunelessly as he examined the food in the cabinets and proclaimed that Harry needed someone to teach him to have a sense of taste, in all meanings of the word.
Harry leaned against the wall and rubbed his eyes. At least he thought he knew what might have happened within his mind to summon Malfoy from St. Mungo’s. He’d been worrying about how to solve the problem of danger during his Auror missions. No, he didn’t want to hurt Malfoy, but there was no way that he would give his job up.
“You’re doing it again.”
Harry snapped his head up. Malfoy stood in front of him, his arms folded and his face so neutral that he might as well have been shouting. Harry sighed and straightened. “Worrying about you? Yeah. I’m afraid that’s going to be constant.”
“No, it’s not,” Malfoy said, and produced a truly dazzling smile, one that made Harry blink at him in a daze and miss the implications of his words for a moment, by which time Malfoy was continuing smoothly. “Because I won’t let it be. Do you know what you have to do, Potter? You have to let the bond function as it’s supposed to. Let me reassure you about what I can do to protect you.”
“Well, if any of my enemies are the type to be frightened by sneers and smirks and jibes about their Houses, then you’ll definitely win those fights,” Harry snapped back.
Malfoy’s smile softened into something less dazzling but more sincere. “Harry,” he said, and then paused, as if savoring the sound of the word. “You really need to find a better name,” he added conversationally. “That one doesn’t sound like it means much. Not an important enough name for the most powerful wizard in the wizarding world, you know?”
“I’m not the most powerful wizard,” Harry began with a faint sigh.
“You have no idea what you feel like,” Malfoy said, and reached out and placed a hand over his heart. “Here. I can feel the magic beaming and pouring out of you. And that increases my own, you know. I have to be stronger than you are to defend you, and the bond will ensure that I have all the strength necessary.”
Harry shook his head, as much as to cure his distraction over having Malfoy’s hand on his chest as for any other reason. “You sound a bit mad, Malfoy,” he said. “How are you going to keep me safe? And no, locking me up in the house all day is not an answer.”
“Of course not,” Malfoy said. “You would starve to death on weak tea and sandwiches. No, I am going to do something like this. Sanguis mortis!”
Harry felt the spell touch him in the middle of the chest, where it seemed to turn his blood cold. He wondered if that was Malfoy’s evil plan, to freeze him from the inside out and then claim that he was protecting the frozen corpse. After all, it wasn’t as though he could damage Harry any more after that.
Malfoy caught his eye and stared at him. Harry ducked his head, flushing. He didn’t know what else to do. It had been only a suspicion-and one that seemed more and more justified, the colder that spot on his chest grew-but he felt bad for having it now.
“You have no idea,” Malfoy began, and then lapsed into silence, shaking his head. “Here,” he said, and cast another spell that warmed Harry like a cloak draped over his shoulders. “At least that should reassure you that I have no evil intentions towards you.”
Harry said nothing, but only waited to see what the effect of the spell would be, while Malfoy stood in front of him, frowning, his fingers tapping against Harry’s shoulders the way Harry thought he might tap a table when he was thinking. In one way, it was reassuring to have Malfoy classify him as furniture. At least that meant he wouldn’t be thinking of Harry in any other way.
Any more intimate way.
“You have to let the bond function the way it’s supposed to,” Malfoy whispered, on a little exhale of a sigh. “You have to trust me.”
Harry shook his head. “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he whispered, “although it would help if you could explain your scary spells before you cast them. It’s more that I never wanted to put you in this position in the first place, and every time you have to do something because the bond compels you to, I’m reminded of what else it could cost you.”
Malfoy’s shoulders tensed for a moment. Then he said, “Why don’t you see how the bond sits with me, Potter, instead of assuming that I’m in a hurry to throw it off? Not all of us have your specific priorities, or desires, or needs, or nightmares.”
“And thank Merlin for that, right?” Harry muttered, letting his head fall back against the wall and closing his eyes as the coldness seemed to spread. He was shivering violently now, and his only satisfaction was that it seemed even Malfoy’s Warming Charm wasn’t effective against it. With an effort, he looked at Malfoy again. “Or who would have the nightmares about the Ministry falling apart and Muggleborns displacing pure-bloods?”
Malfoy snorted. “That wasn’t your best effort at all, Potter,” he said, and drew an idle cross in the air above Harry’s chest, above the cold spot. “And now, I think that-ah, yes, there it is.”
Harry glanced down. Yes, there was a spot on his chest that had started to glow and extend icy tendrils into the air, rather like ice armor. As he watched in disbelief, it spread out all over him, grey and white and shot through with blue shadows. He reached up, but felt nothing. It was like being encased in moonlight.
“You can’t feel anything when you touch it,” Malfoy said, in reply to his obvious incredulous glance. “That’s the point of it-to give you something that can’t weigh you down, that you’ll move gracefully in no matter how much it weighs. But if someone strikes at you, then I guarantee you they’ll feel it.” He glanced around, grinned when he spotted the pile of moldy tapestries in a corner that Harry still hadn’t thrown out, and picked one of them up. “Perfect,” he murmured. A wave from his wand, and it had transformed into a huge, blood-colored spike.
Harry immediately snatched up his wand, but Malfoy shook his head, rolling his eyes. “What did I say about trusting me?”
It was true that Malfoy had yet to really harm him. Harry stepped back hesitantly and let his hand fall to his side, and for a moment, Malfoy bounced the spike up and down in his hand. Then he flung it.
The spike hit the armor and exploded in a silent, rushing wave that caught Malfoy and made him stagger. Harry turned his head and saw the edge of it hit the pile of tapestries. They wavered and went up with a burst of dust that made him cough. Malfoy’s armor didn’t do anything about protecting his lungs, it seemed.
Malfoy laughed. “You do have a lot of needs, Potter. I look forward to tending to some of them. Others, not so much.” He leaned forwards. “Do you at least trust that I can protect you from your enemies how and as I need to?”
Harry nodded. “What was the spell?” he asked, as Malfoy murmured a Finite and banished the armor that clung to his chest, or rather to the air over his chest. “I’ve never heard of it.”
Malfoy gave him a dim and secret smile, taking a step forwards. Harry caught his breath, feeling the air tighten between them in a way he didn’t understand. He knew it had to be the bond, but he wasn’t sure why it would react like this. Just to tie him and Malfoy together, perhaps, and keep them close when at least one of them had the sense to be reluctant about it in the first place.
“One I made up,” Malfoy whispered. “One I imagined. And one that I never had the strength to make work before now.” He reached out and drew a fingernail down the center of Harry’s chest, rucking up his shirt. “Your bond is granting me all sorts of gifts, Potter, making me the powerful wizard I’ve always wanted to be. That’s one reason not to resent it.”
Harry winced. “Power doesn’t make up for the loss of freedom, Malfoy. You’ll see that eventually.”
Malfoy’s eyes narrowed, and filled with ice thicker than the armor that had protected Harry. “You should listen to how condescending you sound sometime,” he said, and spun away, stalking towards the kitchen. “And in the meantime, we’re ordering food from the Leaky. Why is it so bare in here?”
Harry, left alone, shook his head ruefully. At least he had to admit that the bond couldn’t be making Malfoy act in a way he didn’t want to all the time, not and leave him with the ability to protest and complain like that.
“Potter! I asked you a question.”
Sighing, Harry went into the kitchen to tend to his impatient-guest? Bondmate? Guardian? He had no idea what word was appropriate.
But no matter which one it was, he was fairly sure that one shouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night with him in the bed.
Part Two.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/442055.html. Comment wherever you like.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione
Rating: R
Warnings: Flangst, some violence, sex, magical bonding, references to canonical child abuse, EWE.
Wordcount: 36,000
Summary: Harry stumbles into a magical ritual meant to enslave Draco, and manages to change the bond so that it leaves Draco with free will and the ability to make decisions even if he is bound to Harry. But that isn’t much comfort when it also leaves him with the ability to irritate the hell out of Harry in the name of “guarding” him.
Author’s Notes: This is being written as a gift for
groolover, who kindly Brit-picked my hd_holidays story for me. She specified a happy ending, which I promise there is, and even some humor along the way. The title is Latin for “to defend.”
Defendere
“Aurors! Open in the name of the Ministry!”
There was silence, and then scrambling, on the other side of the door. Harry half-rolled his eyes at Ron and kicked the door in. He had already quietly removed the charms that held it shut, and the half-rotten wood that made it up-any strength in the door had come from the magic guarding it-splintered as it hit the wall.
In the room beyond, several dozen people in black robes got in each other’s way as they tried to protect their “magical Work,” or so the letters that Harry and Ron had intercepted had called it. Harry saw a blur of candles on the walls, heard chanting and screams, caught a glimpse of magical circles chalked on the stone from the corner of his eye, and ducked the first curse with a grim satisfaction taking possession of his mind. Yes, their information had been accurate.
The first warlock, a grizzled apparition with a beard that twisted across his face like moss, rushed at him and raised his wand. He hadn’t got through half of his long, complicated chant when Harry’s defensive spell sealed his mouth shut and he fell over from Ron’s Tripping Jinx. Harry reached back with his hand, and felt Ron slap it in affirmation.
Some of the warlocks and witches involved tried to flee, but they tripped over each other, over their robes’ hems, and over the magic circles, some of which objected to having people enter them. Harry and Ron rounded them up easily, and soon it just became a matter of making sure they had everyone’s wands and that people were Stunned and bound, an endless round of Expelliarmus, Stupefy, Incarcerous, Expelliarmus, Stupefy, Incarcerous.
Harry snorted a little as he leaned against a wall, counting the bodies and running a hand over his forehead. His Auror trainers had been at pains to stress new spells when they taught him; spells he learned at Hogwarts were deemed childish and not appropriate for an Auror to use.
What they hadn’t emphasized was that most of the people who chose to become criminals in the wizarding world weren’t very competent. That was in the fine tradition of Voldemort, Harry considered, who had been powerful and cunning but insane. And with him gone, there weren’t many who could give Aurors a need to call on those more complicated spells.
At least, not very often. Harry whipped around as a scream came from further in the complex of tunnels. It sounded like pain and not fear, which meant it probably wasn’t one of the idiots they’d come here to capture.
He and Ron exchanged a glance, dividing the labor without discussion. Ron stayed with the prisoners and made sure none of them escaped or played bound while really unbound as Harry leaped in the direction of the cries.
They continued, shrill and piercing. Now he could hear chanting mingled with them, and swore, redoubling his speed. The information they’d collected said that the warlocks were trying to conduct magical rituals to enslave the wizarding world, rituals that wouldn’t work. But there were plenty of smaller versions that would enslave individuals and could.
Harry saw an iron door ahead of him, gleaming with huge black hinges and padlocks and chains ran around it. He snapped a Finite and a Reducto without slowing down, and the magic on the door shattered into sparkling fragments a moment before the metal itself did. Harry bowled through and into the center of the cavern beyond.
This time, what he caught glimpses of was yawning mouths, a burning brazier, someone crouched over a figure lying on the floor in the center of a circle-in fact, an overlapping ring of circles, gold and red and green-and wands turning towards him.
They were trying to enslave someone. They might already have done so.
Since the end of the war and the realization that he was finally free to choose his own life, and some other things, Harry had been a little less than sane about that particular Dark wizardly trick.
He didn’t remember half the spells he cast, but he knew that his Patronus charged the wizard crouching by the prisoner and scooped him up on its antlers, hurling him into the far wall. Harry whirled around to face the rest of the ritual-workers, and heard them chanting, saw them holding hands, trying to contain him.
Harry smiled at them all, and their chant faltered. Harry clasped his hands in front of him and lowered them as if he held a much longer wand than he really did, or a unicorn horn, and pointed straight at the center of their linked line.
The spell came bubbling out of the heart of him, out of the stillness that he’d carried with him ever since he looked into the eyes of the dead lying in the Great Hall and realized that this could have been prevented if people had just fought against Voldemort instead of cowering in fear or going along with him. This, too, was evil that could have been prevented if these people hadn’t followed mindlessly along in the name of greater power.
“Diffundito!”
The spell came out of him as a series of spreading blue rings, in contrast and cleanliness to what lay on the floor all around him. It hit the wizards standing opposite him and bore them backwards, to the sides, and up, smashing and holding them against the walls for a second. Harry’s Patronus charged up to his side and stood there, pawing its hooves and tossing its head, as though asking for more permission to throw more fools.
Harry laid his hand on the sparkling silver neck, though of course he couldn’t really feel anything, and shook his head. “You don’t need to,” he said. “The spell is getting rid of them.”
And it was. They shook, robes billowing and bodies flickering. Then they began to rip apart, to scatter, particles flying apart from one another, wands and drifting scraps of cloth separating and whirling in different directions, into the corners of the caves and cracks in the stone.
Eventually, their bodies would reform wherever their wands were, and they would come back to life. It was the reason the Ministry permitted the use of the spell in the first place instead of condemning it as murder, the way they would if it kept anyone in a permanent Scattered State. But in the meantime, Harry and Ron could put the wands in holding cells in the Ministry, and the warlocks would come back to themselves already good and caged.
And with memories of what it was like to be completely helpless and held apart from their own bodies for months at a time, memories that might make them reconsider ever trying to do it to anyone else.
Harry closed his eyes and sighed as the last traces of the wizards blew apart, and then turned to the really important person in the equation, the man still lying motionless in the middle of the central circle. He took a step forwards.
“Harry, don’t!”
Harry had never heard Ron sound like that, not even when they were talking about destroying Horcruxes. He froze with his foot in the air and craned his neck back around to stare at his partner.
Ron stood near the doorway, his face so white that all his freckles stood out. He shook his head. “Mate, do you know what you’ve done?” he whispered.
“Not yet,” Harry said steadily. His leg was beginning to hurt with holding his foot up, but he kept it in the air. He would do whatever Ron told him, because Ron would never try to order him around like this for something unimportant. “What did I do?”
Ron nodded to the circles on the floor. Harry studied them, and realized there were four: a large red one near the door that he’d already crossed; a smaller gold one inside that, which was right under his lifted foot; a green one that the wizard he’d tossed into the wall had been kneeling inside; and a tight red one that barely encircled the lying body. The circles crackled and sparked with power as if someone had been funneling electricity through them.
“Those circles-they’re meant to bind someone to someone else,” Ron said, his voice as sick as Harry felt at the thought. “To make them their slave, their sex toy, whatever they want to do with them.”
Harry nodded. “Well, we knew they were going to be doing this. But did I trigger the spell by crossing the circles?” His mind reared back from that, the enormity of that, and what he was going to do if he had triggered it.
“The spell had already started,” Ron said, his voice soft and as kind as Harry thought it could be under the circumstances. “But it means that the victim has to be bound to someone, and you’re the only person inside the circle right now. There’s no way to stop it. The ritual has to go ahead, or it opens-it opens the victim’s mind and drives them mad. Hermione wants to use a binding at our wedding, so she made me read up on all sorts of them,” he added.
Harry’s foot hurt badly by now. He lowered it carefully down next to the one that was still inside the larger red circle, hoping that would diminish the sparks. But they went on leaping, and a wall of them began to obscure the body in the central circle. Harry stared towards it, hoping desperately-
It was Malfoy.
Harry closed his eyes, and hissed. The realization ached in his chest like a blade thrust in. Malfoy had already been enslaved once, forced to do what Voldemort wanted, to torture people and live with it. Harry couldn’t think of anyone he would have wanted to spare more from slavery except his friends.
“It’s Malfoy,” he whispered. “Ron, I can’t bind him. He’s suffered too much from things like that already. Is there anything else you know that can get him out of here and leave him free? I’ve only crossed one circle. Maybe-” He started to move backwards.
Ron roared a warning at the same time as Harry felt a powerful sting between his shoulder blades. It hurled him at the golden circle, and as much as he tried to resist, he passed over it.
The circles he’d already passed rose up into circular iron walls behind him. Harry spun around and launched a spell at them, but the metal absorbed the magic without flinching. Harry hammered on them, and Ron shouted at him, and it took the tone in Ron’s voice to make Harry slow down and listen to him instead of simply hammering on.
“Harry, you have to do it now. You’re the only one left in the circles, and now-now you’re the only choice, even if I come in there. The ritual isn’t made for people who want to back out. It’ll destroy you and him both if you try. I’m sorry,” Ron added, his voice breaking.
Harry shut his eyes and bowed his head. For a long moment, he flicked a whip of contempt through himself. If he’d paid more attention to where he was going, listened to Ron more, taken the wizards in the room by surprise instead of charging in, then Malfoy might have had a chance to retain his freedom and his sanity both.
But it was only a moment, even if a long one. He’d also learned, since the war, that sometimes the decisions you had to make were just bad ones, and nothing would change them. He lifted his head and filled his lungs with air. “All right, Ron. What kind of options do I have? I can’t-I can’t take Malfoy as my slave. I’d rather risk what the ritual would do to me.”
“I know, Harry,” Ron whispered. “Hermione told me there are other bindings, too. You can bind him as your lover, or to think that he’s always been your friend-”
“Which kind would leave him the most freedom to act and to make up his own mind?” Harry cut in.
Ron was silent for long enough that Harry clenched his fists. Maybe there wasn’t any other choice, and if that was the case, then Harry would choose the friendship bond. Anything else was impossible, and as much as he hated interfering with Malfoy’s mind or memories, friendships at least could be broken if he wanted his freedom.
“The Defendere bond,” Ron said at last. “It would still connect you to him, and let him know when you’re in danger and what you need to survive, but it would mean that he could make the choice whether he wanted to rescue you or not.”
Harry breathed out harshly. “Good. He should know better than to think he needs to rescue me. We’ll do that one.”
“It’s permanent,” Ron said, warning in his tone.
“And anything else wouldn’t be?” Harry shook his head at Ron’s continued silence. “I know. The whole situation is fucked-up. I should have watched where I was going, and they shouldn’t have snatched him in the first place. But we’ll do what we have to to survive. How do I handle this?”
“Um-mate, I only studied this once-”
“Tell me as much as you remember,” Harry said, and glanced at the sparking, spitting circles. “I don’t think I’ll be allowed to get far off the program anyway. Something will nudge me along if you forget a word here or there.”
“It’s not so much the words, as the will,” Ron said. “And the blood. You have to make sure he drinks your blood. Ugh, mate, I’m sorry-”
“Feel sorrier for him,” Harry said crisply, and dragged off his Auror robes so he could more easily take out the knife in his boot. Then he stepped into the green circle. Another wall of iron appeared behind him, but as long as it didn’t cut him off from Ron’s voice, then he thought he could still do this. “At least I chose this much. Where is the blood supposed to come from?”
“Your wrist,” Ron said. “You have to take quite a lot, mate-I don’t think he stops drinking until he’s satisfied-”
“So, like that vampire case we worked last year, then,” Harry said lightly, dropping to one knee, half his attention on Malfoy and half on reassuring his best friend. He was calm, balanced between them. If he could do things, that was fine. He could save someone, and that was what mattered. “Fine. Do I have to get inside the central circle where he’s lying, do you know?”
“I think you have to have part of your body inside it,” Ron said. “Your knee, or something. Merlin, Hermione is going to kill me if I do something to hurt you-”
“It would be my fault, not yours,” Harry said quietly, and felt Ron accept it, the authority in his voice, bracing himself against it, the way they’d always done for each other since they became Auror partners. “All right. Any words I have to say as I take the blood?” He laid the knife along his wrist, grimacing wryly at it. It was ordinary steel, not the silver or the obsidian that would probably make the ritual go best. Well, needs must.
“I don’t think so,” Ron said. “Except maybe Defendere. It’s so hard to remember this, mate, sorry, and I wouldn’t remember this much if Hermione didn’t think it was a good idea to make me recite the different kinds of bindings in my sleep-”
“It’s okay,” Harry said, and then took a deep breath and gazed down at Malfoy’s face. He was pale, and so completely still that Harry felt a stab, for a moment, at the thought of binding himself to a corpse. But Malfoy moaned and his head shifted, strands of blond hair spilling towards Harry.
“I’ll try that, anyway,” Harry said, and moved his knee into the central circle.
The magic flickered into being all around them, walls of black iron this time, or black stone, smooth and sheer, and dark as a starless night. Yet light seemed to shine in the middle of the circle, allowing Harry to see Malfoy’s face all the more clearly. He nodded, to him or himself or Ron or the forces that had brought them here, and sliced the knife down and along his wrist.
“Defendere, defendere, defendere,” he began to murmur, and twisted the knife deep, ignoring the sting, watching Malfoy. Malfoy was no longer moving his head or moaning; instead, he lay with his brow furrowed and his head leaning to the side as if listening. When Harry began to whisper, he opened his eyes and stared at him, though with no sign of recognition.
“Give,” he said, and held out his hand. Harry shuddered to think of what the man who’d intended to enslave him might have placed in it, and then did his best to blank that out of his mind entirely, as the final moments of the ritual had blanked out Ron’s voice. Malfoy was the one who needed him now.
“Yes,” Harry said, and held out his arm so that Malfoy could get hold of it and direct his bloody wrist to Malfoy’s mouth. “But you belong to yourself, okay? We’re forming the Defendere bond, but that just means you’ll feel when I’m in danger. You don’t have to do anything about it. You can do what you want. I wouldn’t enslave you even this much, but Ron says that you’ll die without it. Sorry-”
Malfoy’s mouth fastened on his wound and began to suck. Harry braced himself with his free hand in the circle, grimacing. He could feel the bond settling into place like an iron harness that seemed to wind up from his wrist and towards his shoulders. From the way Malfoy gave a light gasp before he resumed his sucking, Harry assumed he felt something similar.
Harry sighed. It was exactly the kind of thing he didn’t want, that he’d decided after the war that he’d never wanted. He was happy for Ron and Hermione that they were getting married and wanted a strong bonding when they did so, because both of them had chosen it and they were so much in love that that practically glowed around them all the time, bond or not. But Harry didn’t want to be tied to anyone that closely.
It had eventually caused the end of his relationship with Ginny. She’d wanted a traditional wedding, a ceremony like Bill and Fleur’s, and Harry…didn’t.
She’s going to be pissed at me now, and she’ll have the right to be, Harry thought, feeling the bond settle deeper and deeper, into his bones and his blood and his stomach, his organs and his lungs. The very air he exhaled seemed tainted with it. He shivered and hoped Malfoy would be done with the blood soon. Lightest of the possible bonds or not, this Defendere thing was obviously going to affect them.
Probably it’ll grow a bit lighter when you’ve borne it for a while, Harry thought, and shivered again. The weakness was growing greater. Well, that was what happened when you lost a lot of blood.
Abruptly, Malfoy stopped sucking. Harry looked at him cautiously, and found him lying there with his eyes shut, his hands still locked around Harry’s wrist but otherwise asleep. Harry began to pull his arm away. With any luck, Malfoy would stay asleep until they could get him to St. Mungo’s and checked for any wounds or potions that the wizards who’d kidnapped him might have inflicted on him. Then Harry could send in someone neutral to explain the situation, and-
Malfoy’s eyes snapped open, and he turned his head until he was looking unerringly at Harry. His breath came heavily, and his face had a grimace on it that seemed to lock his teeth in place, but he still spoke with the same sharp edge to his voice as ever.
“It would be you, Potter, my own personal savior. Of course.” His hands moved restlessly up and down Harry’s sleeve, as though he didn’t like to let go quite yet. “Do you know what you’ve done?”
“The only thing I could, to save your life and give you some freedom in the bargain,” Harry said, and looked around. The obsidian walls were melting. “I know the bond seems heavy now. I’m sorry. But I disrupted the ritual, and by the time I was in the middle of it, the only thing I could do was go ahead.”
Malfoy laughed. The sound had less bitterness in it than Harry had expected, and his hands were still smoothing up and down Harry’s arm. It was distracting in a way that the sucking hadn’t been, and Harry pulled his arm away and used his wand to heal up the wound.
Malfoy was sitting up by then, giving him a faint smile that someone who didn’t know them both might call fond. His hair seemed to stand up around his head, but other than that, he looked remarkably good for someone who’d been snatched from his home and nearly enslaved. Harry nodded to him. “Can you stand?”
“If you need me to.” Malfoy’s eyes darkened, and Harry winced. He would be considering the consequences of the bond now, how it was always going to tug at him. Well, at least it shouldn’t be the kind of thing that prevented him from getting married or anything else.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” he muttered. “Ron told me the bond would tell you when I needed you to protect me. I know you’ll get lots of messages from me because I’m an Auror and I get in trouble all the time, but I hope that you’ll learn to live with them.”
Malfoy’s eyes had a queer glitter. “That’s what you think the Defendere bond entails?” he asked, his hand resting on Harry’s shoulder. Harry told himself that it probably had to do with the kind of closeness the bond brought about in its first moments, and tried not to mind it. “All it entails? Did Weasley tell you that?”
“Malfoy,” Ron said, appearing as the walls settled back into the circles and the circles themselves vanished from the floor. He folded his arms and shook his head at them both. “Arrogant as ever, when you ought to be on your knees thanking Harry for what he did for you.”
“Ron,” Harry hissed. He didn’t like someone joking about Malfoy kneeling to him, and Malfoy laughed beside him, bowing his head so that it was his brow resting against Harry’s shoulder, not just his hand. This time, he didn’t seem to notice when Harry shifted as if to throw him off.
“He doesn’t like that,” Malfoy whispered. His voice slurred and drifted, but he didn’t sound drunk, more in the throes of ecstasy. “Oh, not at all,” he added, and leaned closer to Harry, until his breath was warm and distracting in the hollow of Harry’s throat. “There’s so many things that he doesn’t like. He needs people to stop talking to him as though he’s a hero, he needs no one to kneel to him, he needs me to forget about this bond.” He lifted his head and gave Harry a smile that was all edges and no curve. “Sorry, but that last isn’t going to happen.”
Harry opened his mouth to shout, and then shut it and sighed. Really, he should be grateful for this sign of Malfoy’s stubbornness, because it meant that he did have his free will intact. He could sense what Harry needed, but he didn’t have to act on the realization, or feel tormented if he didn’t. That was the best they could hope for out of a situation like this.
And who knows? When we’ll have the time to work on it, now, maybe Hermione can even come up with a solution, or we can, at least as long as she’s distracted by the wedding.
“Come on, Malfoy, let’s get you to St. Mungo’s,” Harry said gently, and stood up, pulling Malfoy to his feet as he did so. Malfoy swayed and blinked, but seemed to maintain his balance well enough when Harry cautiously shifted back. He even lifted his head from Harry’s shoulder and stared around the cavern as though he was surprised to find himself there.
“Do you remember how they captured you?” Harry asked quietly.
Malfoy focused on him at once, dilated pupils and all. Harry studied his face, but could see none of the grey undertones to his skin or shivering that would characterize the more extreme reactions to the most common potions used to drug someone.
“Of course I know,” Malfoy snapped. “I’m recovering from a Dark ritual, not amnesiac or six years old.”
“Apologies,” Harry muttered, and turned to study the circles on the floor. They were gone completely, meaning they could move towards the door. He gave Malfoy his arm. Malfoy ignored it, took a step forwards, and ended up catapulting towards the floor with the slow grace of a chopped tree. Harry sighed, Levitated him back to his feet, and offered him his arm again.
This time, Malfoy took it, staring avidly into his face. Harry rolled his eyes. He had learned to put up with that kind of thing, if not like it, during the year right after the war, when the reporters had competed for the most obscure adjectives they could find about the color of his eyes.
“They came to the Manor and took me from there,” Malfoy said. He sounded less drunk now, but with no less of a shivering need to press close. Harry grimaced and helped him up the slight step down into the cavern, which he’d leaped without even noticing it in his fury when he’d come this way before. “I don’t know how they got through the wards, but I’d suggest hammering.”
“Hammering?” Harry questioned, and glanced back at Ron, who was gathering up the warlocks’ dropped wands and securing the main wizard, whom his Patronus had tossed against the wall. Ron lifted one shoulder in a shrug without looking around.
“A sophisticated name for an unsophisticated technique,” Malfoy murmured, and tilted his head back, shuddering as though someone was pouring cold water down his back. “They simply applied pressure to the wards, all at once, and all using the same spell. The wards are meant to withstand measured attacks, because most wizards wouldn’t use so much force simply to break in, and the defenders could resist them if they did.” Harry wondered if it was his imagination that Malfoy’s fingers tightened on his arm when he said the word defenders. “But they swept in, and I was the only one home. They took my wand before I could fight them.”
With a start, Harry remembered that he still had the hawthorn wand that had belonged to Malfoy before the war. Well, even if they couldn’t make their prisoners tell them where they’d put Malfoy’s things, then at least they could ensure he wasn’t helpless.
Malfoy’s fingers clenched down on Harry’s arm like links of chain. “Yes, Potter,” he whispered, tilting his head back and looking at Harry through his lowered eyelashes. “It’s very important that I not be helpless. You need me to protect you.”
“That’s what the bond says,” Harry pointed out gently. “It doesn’t mean that you need to do it if you don’t want to.”
Malfoy had the strangest, smallest smile on his face, and he shook his head. “You don’t understand what you did when you chose the Defendere bond,” he murmured. “You’ve linked us, and it’s important that I fulfill your needs.”
Harry winced. Well, he had known it wouldn’t be perfect, but still, hearing Malfoy say those words made revulsion crystallize and curdle inside him.
“You need someone who can help you do that,” Malfoy said, and lifted his head, his eyes gazing so straight at Harry that it was almost painful to see them. “You need-you need someone like me, who can teach you that some of your needs aren’t wrong, aren’t evil, are capable of being fulfilled like anyone else’s.”
Harry stared at him, then snorted. “You make me sound like some kind of deviant,” he said, glad that Ron was too involved in deliberately ignoring Malfoy to pay much attention to what Harry said, either. “I’ve never felt anything that had to be fulfilled like that, never needed something that I couldn’t get myself or get with help from my friends.”
Malfoy smiled at him, and his hand on Harry’s arm ran up and down, startling some of the small hairs on Harry’s skin into shivering life. “You only think that because you’ve never had someone like me, committed to you,” he said. “I assure you, Potter, when you get used to it, you’ll want it all the time.”
“Why am I standing here arguing with you, when you’re still under the influence of potions that probably make day look like night?” Harry asked the air, and turned to firmly lead Malfoy towards the door again.
Malfoy leaned against him, and sighed.
Harry repressed a shudder. The sigh didn’t have the sound of resignation or exasperation or sadness that he would have expected from someone put into this position, and especially not someone who had hated him for a long time.
It sounded like anticipation.
*
“Because that’s the way bonds like that work, Harry,” Hermione said, peering at him earnestly from her chair for a moment before she looked down at the dress in her lap. “They ensure that the person who’s bound to the master-ow!” She sucked at her pricked finger and scowled at the needle lying by her feet.
Harry leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling to stifle a grin. “Still no luck with the sewing, then?” he asked.
“It ought to be simple,” Hermione said sullenly, and bent down to pick up the needle. “Lots and lots of people who didn’t know how to do anything do it all the time!”
Harry cleared his throat, thought of saying that those people who didn’t know how to do “anything” had probably learned their skills from experience rather than trying to get them from books the way Hermione had tried, and then decided that he didn’t really want to die of a needle through the throat. “Can you use some word other than ‘master’ when you’re talking about this?” he asked.
“No,” Hermione said, and then softened when he stared at her. “I’m sorry, Harry. But that really is the way it is. The one who holds the bond-who created the bond in the first place-is the master, and the better and faster you understand that, the less likely you are to mistreat Malfoy.”
“But I don’t want to mistreat him,” Harry said, bringing down one fist on the arm of his chair. He heard a crack from the wood, and winced. When he got really angry, his magic burned under his skin, and sometimes it did things like that. “You know that, Hermione! I only did it to save his life, and now I want to give him his normal life back, as soon as he’s out of hospital.”
“His life isn’t going to be the same,” Hermione said, and sighed as she folded her hands on top of the dress, and then yelped as she once again pricked herself with the needle. Harry watched as she wrung the pain out before she continued. “A bond like that fills his mind with knowledge of your needs. It’s like having a telly on all the time. You can ignore it some of the time, but if something catches your attention, then you’re watching it, whether you want to or not. And the bond will push him to fulfill at least some of those needs, so that you have fewer and he can have peace in his own head.”
Harry shuddered. “That almost sounds worse than what some of the other bonds would have done,” he muttered.
“Oh, no, they all work like that,” Hermione said, and patted at her hair. Harry knew that she had tried a combination of potions to smooth it down, maybe the same kind she’d used at the Yule Ball, but it didn’t seem to have worked entirely; stray curls escaped here and there. “But the Defendere bond at least ensures that he’s focusing on needs like, oh, guarding your life, instead of crawling into your bed.”
Harry shuddered and worked his tongue back and forth in his mouth, controlling his very real need to spit. He sensed that Hermione wouldn’t approve of that, even if Harry was only doing it on the floor of his office.
He looked back up to find Hermione leaning closer, her eyes bright and soft. “I didn’t realize that it disgusted you that much,” she whispered. “Oh, Harry, I’m sorry. You’re the last person who should be put in this position.”
“No, Malfoy is,” Harry said, and shook his head as he swept the revulsion back into the depths of his soul. Malfoy could probably feel it, and the last thing Harry wanted him to think was that Harry was disgusted by him. “Anyway. Do you know-do you know a way to break a bond like this? I wondered why you weren’t opposing it the way you oppose house-elf slavery.”
“Because the bonds are different,” Hermione said. “And at least the people involved in them are human and they have some legal rights. Did you know that house-elves don’t even have the right to food? If the laws say-”
“All right,” Harry said hastily. Hermione was supposedly taking a holiday from house-elf law and all the rest of it because she wanted to prepare her own dress and catering and everything else for the wedding, but Harry knew it wouldn’t take much to make her go storming back to her books. “But what can I do to avoid harming him? If I have all these needs in my head and they’re tugging on him, then I don’t know what to do.”
“First,” Hermione said, “you have to accept that he’ll want to do what he can for you, and that means he’ll need to live with you.”
Harry grimaced. “I’ll probably move into Grimmauld Place for the duration, then,” he muttered. He couldn’t imagine Malfoy putting up with a house where he didn’t have at least his own bedroom, and more likely his own wing. “What else?”
“You’ll probably have to accept his escorting you when you go out to dinner or drinking and so on,” Hermione said, and leaned still nearer. Then she grabbed her elbow and stared at the dress. “How did a pin get there?” she asked plaintively.
“I don’t know,” Harry said, and then his lips twitched in spite of himself, though it was probably all right because she wasn’t looking. “Are you sure that you don’t want Molly to help you?”
“Some things, I have to do myself,” Hermione said firmly, and brushed her hair back from her forehead. “Anyway. He’ll want to be with you, because someone could attack you when you’re out eating, you know that. Look at what happened last year.”
Harry scowled. “What happened last year did because the restaurant’s security was bribable.”
“That might happen again,” Hermione said. “And you should really try to take fewer risks as an Auror, Harry. I’m sure that he’ll be able to feel you when you’re in danger, and that will drive him mad.” She raised an eyebrow at him when he spluttered. Harry no longer felt bad about smiling over her mishaps with the pins and needles. “Consider it from his point of view, Harry. His whole world has been changed.”
“I know,” Harry said. “I’m trying to think of that. But I can’t stop being in danger, even if I quit being an Auror tomorrow. Someone would always be coming after me to avenge Voldemort or because they think it would make them look cool to kill me or something. And the Ministry would never accept him tagging along with Ron and me. He’s not a qualified Auror, he can’t.”
“They make provisions for bonds, the same way they do when one of the sexual ones happens to someone who’s married.” Hermione picked up her needle, fixed it with a look that clearly told it to behave itself, and started to sew again. Harry heard her counting stitches under her breath before she looked up at him. “The Ministry might allow him to come along with you, because it’s a Defendere bond.”
Harry threw up his hands. “And everyone keeps mentioning that, but except that it allows him a little more free will, I don’t know what that means.”
“Because you don’t want to,” Hermione said placidly. “I told you that bonds changed people, Harry. He has better defensive magic now than he’s ever had, at least as long as he’s specifically trying to protect you. He’ll have better instincts for danger, heightened senses, the ability to see a short way into the future, maybe, in order to keep you safe from people who might strike suddenly. The Ministry might agree that that’s a fine substitute for Auror training. And you know it would keep Head Auror Debalus from having a heart attack every time you want to go out and do something on your own.”
Harry rolled his head on his neck, and didn’t answer. Head Auror Debalus had apparently taken the thought that Harry might die on an Auror mission-which was, Harry thought murderously, what happened to Aurors sometimes-so much to heart that he’d had messages to the press printed up in advance. They said, “The Chosen One is resting,” or “The Chosen One is recovering well,” or “We are sorry to report that the Chosen One has died.”
He didn’t want to be known as the Head Auror who lost the Boy-Who-Lived. Harry understood that. So far, he had won the battle to be allowed to go into the field like any regular Auror and take the risks rather than stay behind the desk and safely away from them, but it was getting more than a bit ridiculous, how much they fussed over him.
Then Harry paused and turned his head. Someone was hammering on the door of the office, which shouldn’t have happened, with Harry here late and Ron gone out drinking with Seamus to try and get some of the pre-wedding jitters out of the system. “Someone’s here, Hermione.”
“Take your wand,” she snapped at him without even looking up from her sewing. “You remember what happened when you didn’t?”
“That was one time,” Harry muttered, and checked to make sure that his wand was in his left sleeve for a quick cross-body draw before he stood up and unlocked the office door.
Malfoy fell over the threshold into Harry’s arms almost before Harry got it open, and snarled at him, “Stop your bloody brooding, won’t you?” He panted into Harry’s face and hauled him upright with his hands on his arms, swaying as though he’d run all the way from hospital. “I can feel it over in my room at St. Mungo’s. Like a load of bloody pigeons sitting on my head and squatting on a dozen eggs each.”
“Shit,” Harry said, and ran a hand through his hair. He hadn’t thought about the effect of his emotions on Malfoy, because he had assumed only fear and the anger he sometimes felt at criminals would matter. “You could feel me? We have to fix this, somehow.” He turned instinctively towards the corner of the office, where Hermione seemed to have wrestled the needle into submission.
Malfoy slapped him on the shoulder, pulling his attention back. “This is the way that bonds work, Potter,” he said. “What you need to get through your small and thick skull is that I’m here now. You don’t have to worry about the solutions to your problems because I’m going to solve them. I just want you to stop the worrying and let me get some bloody sleep. At home, preferably.”
“Right, we’ve got to get you back to the Manor,” Harry muttered, and put his arms cautiously around Malfoy, wondering all the while what he was going to do with him. This was why he hadn’t tried to get any more pets after Hedwig, even a regular post-owl. He sucked at taking care of anyone, people or animals. He could manage with his friends, but that was because Ron and Hermione had each other and took care of him, too, and it all sort of balanced out.
“Not the Manor,” Malfoy said, giving Harry a lopsided look that suggested he was the one who’d stumbled and banged his head into a new world on the way. “I want to go home with you.”
“Told you,” Hermione said, without looking up from her sewing. She looked innocently busy, and very feminine, and very traditional, and utterly impervious when Harry cast her an appealing stare.
“This is the way that bonds work,” Malfoy said, and even though Harry knew he was technically the master here, Malfoy’s hand felt very much like a shackle on his arm. “When we’re home, then we can discuss things, such as what I’m supposed to be defending you from and whether you’ll need me to sleep in the same room.”
Harry spluttered, Malfoy simply looked at him as though everything was settled, and Hermione’s needle darted in and out of the cloth like a fish leaping in and out of the sea.
“Fine,” Harry said at last. “Though I have no idea why you would have to sleep in the same bed.”
Too late, he realized that he should just have ignored that part of Malfoy’s chatter. He straightened up and thumped one hand on Harry’s chest, driving the air out of his lungs and moving him back a step. Harry grunted. He wondered if added strength was a gift of the Defendere bond, as well. He considered himself pretty fit for an Auror, and he knew Malfoy wouldn’t have been able to do that just a little while ago.
“You have no idea about yourself,” Malfoy whispered harshly, bending in until Harry had to struggle to keep him in focus. “The nightmares I can feel in you, the fears, the longings, the unfulfilled desires.” His smile ripped across his face. “I can’t exactly thank you for the bond, Potter, but I can at least say that I won’t ever be bored.”
“It’s good that you two boys are going to settle things,” Hermione said, without looking up from the dress.
Harry knew it was childish, but he still couldn’t help waving his wand on their way out the door and muttering a certain spell. Hermione shrieked, a tragic sound, as the needle leaped out of her fingers and pricked her again. Harry hid a snicker, and then straightened up and tried to make his face as stern as possible when he saw the way that Malfoy was looking at him.
“Anyway,” he said. “We should be going home.”
Malfoy nodded once, a slow, judicious motion that might have been either judgment or approval, and then held out his arm. Harry took it, intending to Side-Along Apparate him, but Malfoy was the one who whirled him away through the darkness without asking, weakness and all.
And him just out of hospital, too.
*
Malfoy won the argument Harry tried to have with him when they arrived on the doorstep of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place by simply ignoring Harry’s snarls about how he had known where the place was and snatching the key to the front door from his pocket. And he shouldn’t have known it was the key to the front door, either, Harry thought, following him into the entrance hall, even if it was a big iron key and the door had a big iron lock.
Malfoy just knew things. Apparition coordinates. The location of keys. When, or so he claimed, Harry needed someone to fight with and when he could disappear into the kitchen, humming tunelessly as he examined the food in the cabinets and proclaimed that Harry needed someone to teach him to have a sense of taste, in all meanings of the word.
Harry leaned against the wall and rubbed his eyes. At least he thought he knew what might have happened within his mind to summon Malfoy from St. Mungo’s. He’d been worrying about how to solve the problem of danger during his Auror missions. No, he didn’t want to hurt Malfoy, but there was no way that he would give his job up.
“You’re doing it again.”
Harry snapped his head up. Malfoy stood in front of him, his arms folded and his face so neutral that he might as well have been shouting. Harry sighed and straightened. “Worrying about you? Yeah. I’m afraid that’s going to be constant.”
“No, it’s not,” Malfoy said, and produced a truly dazzling smile, one that made Harry blink at him in a daze and miss the implications of his words for a moment, by which time Malfoy was continuing smoothly. “Because I won’t let it be. Do you know what you have to do, Potter? You have to let the bond function as it’s supposed to. Let me reassure you about what I can do to protect you.”
“Well, if any of my enemies are the type to be frightened by sneers and smirks and jibes about their Houses, then you’ll definitely win those fights,” Harry snapped back.
Malfoy’s smile softened into something less dazzling but more sincere. “Harry,” he said, and then paused, as if savoring the sound of the word. “You really need to find a better name,” he added conversationally. “That one doesn’t sound like it means much. Not an important enough name for the most powerful wizard in the wizarding world, you know?”
“I’m not the most powerful wizard,” Harry began with a faint sigh.
“You have no idea what you feel like,” Malfoy said, and reached out and placed a hand over his heart. “Here. I can feel the magic beaming and pouring out of you. And that increases my own, you know. I have to be stronger than you are to defend you, and the bond will ensure that I have all the strength necessary.”
Harry shook his head, as much as to cure his distraction over having Malfoy’s hand on his chest as for any other reason. “You sound a bit mad, Malfoy,” he said. “How are you going to keep me safe? And no, locking me up in the house all day is not an answer.”
“Of course not,” Malfoy said. “You would starve to death on weak tea and sandwiches. No, I am going to do something like this. Sanguis mortis!”
Harry felt the spell touch him in the middle of the chest, where it seemed to turn his blood cold. He wondered if that was Malfoy’s evil plan, to freeze him from the inside out and then claim that he was protecting the frozen corpse. After all, it wasn’t as though he could damage Harry any more after that.
Malfoy caught his eye and stared at him. Harry ducked his head, flushing. He didn’t know what else to do. It had been only a suspicion-and one that seemed more and more justified, the colder that spot on his chest grew-but he felt bad for having it now.
“You have no idea,” Malfoy began, and then lapsed into silence, shaking his head. “Here,” he said, and cast another spell that warmed Harry like a cloak draped over his shoulders. “At least that should reassure you that I have no evil intentions towards you.”
Harry said nothing, but only waited to see what the effect of the spell would be, while Malfoy stood in front of him, frowning, his fingers tapping against Harry’s shoulders the way Harry thought he might tap a table when he was thinking. In one way, it was reassuring to have Malfoy classify him as furniture. At least that meant he wouldn’t be thinking of Harry in any other way.
Any more intimate way.
“You have to let the bond function the way it’s supposed to,” Malfoy whispered, on a little exhale of a sigh. “You have to trust me.”
Harry shook his head. “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he whispered, “although it would help if you could explain your scary spells before you cast them. It’s more that I never wanted to put you in this position in the first place, and every time you have to do something because the bond compels you to, I’m reminded of what else it could cost you.”
Malfoy’s shoulders tensed for a moment. Then he said, “Why don’t you see how the bond sits with me, Potter, instead of assuming that I’m in a hurry to throw it off? Not all of us have your specific priorities, or desires, or needs, or nightmares.”
“And thank Merlin for that, right?” Harry muttered, letting his head fall back against the wall and closing his eyes as the coldness seemed to spread. He was shivering violently now, and his only satisfaction was that it seemed even Malfoy’s Warming Charm wasn’t effective against it. With an effort, he looked at Malfoy again. “Or who would have the nightmares about the Ministry falling apart and Muggleborns displacing pure-bloods?”
Malfoy snorted. “That wasn’t your best effort at all, Potter,” he said, and drew an idle cross in the air above Harry’s chest, above the cold spot. “And now, I think that-ah, yes, there it is.”
Harry glanced down. Yes, there was a spot on his chest that had started to glow and extend icy tendrils into the air, rather like ice armor. As he watched in disbelief, it spread out all over him, grey and white and shot through with blue shadows. He reached up, but felt nothing. It was like being encased in moonlight.
“You can’t feel anything when you touch it,” Malfoy said, in reply to his obvious incredulous glance. “That’s the point of it-to give you something that can’t weigh you down, that you’ll move gracefully in no matter how much it weighs. But if someone strikes at you, then I guarantee you they’ll feel it.” He glanced around, grinned when he spotted the pile of moldy tapestries in a corner that Harry still hadn’t thrown out, and picked one of them up. “Perfect,” he murmured. A wave from his wand, and it had transformed into a huge, blood-colored spike.
Harry immediately snatched up his wand, but Malfoy shook his head, rolling his eyes. “What did I say about trusting me?”
It was true that Malfoy had yet to really harm him. Harry stepped back hesitantly and let his hand fall to his side, and for a moment, Malfoy bounced the spike up and down in his hand. Then he flung it.
The spike hit the armor and exploded in a silent, rushing wave that caught Malfoy and made him stagger. Harry turned his head and saw the edge of it hit the pile of tapestries. They wavered and went up with a burst of dust that made him cough. Malfoy’s armor didn’t do anything about protecting his lungs, it seemed.
Malfoy laughed. “You do have a lot of needs, Potter. I look forward to tending to some of them. Others, not so much.” He leaned forwards. “Do you at least trust that I can protect you from your enemies how and as I need to?”
Harry nodded. “What was the spell?” he asked, as Malfoy murmured a Finite and banished the armor that clung to his chest, or rather to the air over his chest. “I’ve never heard of it.”
Malfoy gave him a dim and secret smile, taking a step forwards. Harry caught his breath, feeling the air tighten between them in a way he didn’t understand. He knew it had to be the bond, but he wasn’t sure why it would react like this. Just to tie him and Malfoy together, perhaps, and keep them close when at least one of them had the sense to be reluctant about it in the first place.
“One I made up,” Malfoy whispered. “One I imagined. And one that I never had the strength to make work before now.” He reached out and drew a fingernail down the center of Harry’s chest, rucking up his shirt. “Your bond is granting me all sorts of gifts, Potter, making me the powerful wizard I’ve always wanted to be. That’s one reason not to resent it.”
Harry winced. “Power doesn’t make up for the loss of freedom, Malfoy. You’ll see that eventually.”
Malfoy’s eyes narrowed, and filled with ice thicker than the armor that had protected Harry. “You should listen to how condescending you sound sometime,” he said, and spun away, stalking towards the kitchen. “And in the meantime, we’re ordering food from the Leaky. Why is it so bare in here?”
Harry, left alone, shook his head ruefully. At least he had to admit that the bond couldn’t be making Malfoy act in a way he didn’t want to all the time, not and leave him with the ability to protest and complain like that.
“Potter! I asked you a question.”
Sighing, Harry went into the kitchen to tend to his impatient-guest? Bondmate? Guardian? He had no idea what word was appropriate.
But no matter which one it was, he was fairly sure that one shouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night with him in the bed.
Part Two.
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