Chapter Two of 'Bonded Consort'- M.H.
Chapter One.
Title: Bonded Consort (2/18)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco eventually, one-sided Draco/OFC, Lily/James, Lucius/Narcissa, mentions of Pansy/Blaise
Content Notes: AU, courting, weird marriage customs, bonding
Rating: R
Summary: Nineteen years ago, the Potters betrothed their firstborn child to the firstborn Malfoy child. Eighteen years ago, Voldemort was defeated for good. Seventeen years ago, the Potters changed the contract so that their secondborn child was substituted for their firstborn. Now, Draco Malfoy is trying to work out what happened.
Author’s Notes: As you can probably see from the summary, this is a massive AU, some of the background of which will be explained as the story goes on. The most important facts to know are that Voldemort was vanquished for good in 1981 and thus the Potters are still alive; Harry did not attend Hogwarts; and Harry and Draco have never met. This story should be between eight and eighteen parts long, and will update on Tuesdays.
Thank you for all the reviews!
Chapter Two-M.H.
Harry took a step back and glared at the shelf above his head. The tiny spice rack he’d put there had fallen so far back against the wall he couldn’t see it. And the ladder he usually used had a loose rung.
He sighed and called the one who could help him, even though he didn’t want to. “M.H.!”
There was a long sigh from the next room.
“Come here and climb your pole and get my spices down,” Harry demanded, turning around. This room in his large flat was mostly just for storage, but he had plenty of clear space to see the door and the snake that hadn’t yet come through it.
Feed me a pig.
“You ate one yesterday. Do you want to explode?”
Promise me a pig.
Harry sighed. It wasn’t easy to get pigs in the middle of New York City, but it could be done. He often had to order animals to feed his patients, anyway, and this was only another example. “Fine. When you’re hungry again next month.”
M.H. came crawling through the door, and wound his three-meter body up the pole that stood next to the shelf. Casually, he stuck his head onto the flat surface and nudged the spice rack forwards. He did that with more care. It had only taken one mouthful of spices to convince him the scents were too strong and he wanted nothing to do with spilling them.
Harry reached up and caught the spice rack as it fell the few millimeters from the shelf. “Thank you.”
Praise me.
Harry rolled his eyes and left the room. “Thanking you should be sufficient.”
Praise me, M.H. repeated, slithering after him. He had glowing patches of black and brown that was almost gold on his scales, Harry knew, but he had known that fact for two years. He was running out of unique compliments to praise M.H. with, and compliments were the one thing M.H. remembered with ferocity and would object to if repeated.
“Fine,” he said. “You shine with umber color and impress me mightily.” He knew he hadn’t used that one before.
Silence behind him. Harry began to sift chopped onions into the bowl of chili he was making.
Define umber.
“Are you ever going to stop talking in imperatives?” Harry eyed the can of beans sitting on the counter and decided he’d used sufficient numbers of them. He had to chop the meat finer, though, or the chili would be filled with floating chunks of it, and M.H. would think they were mice and dive into the bowl again.
Tell me what an imperative is.
“You might as well go look it up for yourself.” Harry went back to chopping, and ignored the way that M.H. slithered away into the small drawing room. He would go to sleep and forget about this in a minute, and then Harry could actually make dinner.
But the bloody snake didn’t do what he usually did. He came slithering back, slowly and bumping along because of the bulge of the pig inside him, with the dictionary in his coils. He put it down at Harry’s feet and stretched his head up so he could see the chili. Harry protectively covered the meat he was chopping.
Read me what umber and imperatives are.
Harry closed his eyes. Sometimes he wondered why he put up with M.H., really he did. Then again, he felt like he had to put up with a snake he’d met, once, in Bolivia, who had then stubbornly followed his broomstick flight thousands of miles north and presented himself to Harry months later, demanding to be fed and complimented and named Mighty Hunter.
Harry called him M.H. as almost the only way he could distance himself from the ridiculousness of the situation.
But he sighed, and opened the dictionary, and read abbreviated versions of the definitions M.H. had also demanded. Really, he was the rudest snake Harry had ever met. “An imperative is an order. And umber is a dark yellow-brown.”
Now read me what I am.
Harry glanced longingly at his chili. But he should have known this would come up once M.H. fetched the dictionary. His determination to hear the things humans said about his kind was the main reason Harry had bought the book in the first place.
So he flipped through pages, although he could have recited it from memory by now, and read dully, “A bushmaster is the world’s longest viper, native to South America, and large enough to take wild pigs. It is colored black and brown, and belongs to the genus Lachesis.”
He glanced up to see if M.H. would think of another definition he wanted to hear, but the snake’s head was turned back over his coils so he could admire his reflection in one of his shiny scales. Harry snorted as he remembered that the bloody bushmaster had just shed his skin. It made him hungrier than usual, and vainer.
If that’s even possible, Harry thought, and tossed the dictionary on the floor for M.H. to take back to the bookshelves in the drawing room. He went back to cooking.
By the time the chili was finished, M.H. hadn’t done admiring himself. Harry shook his head and stepped around the book to reach his table.
Tell me how the chili tastes.
“Not like mice,” Harry said, which was the right response, since M.H. went back to admiring his reflection again. Harry did manage to sit down and get several burning mouthfuls of chili. He coughed in a delightful way and drank half the glass of milk he’d poured for himself. He had an early day tomorrow, with at least three garter snakes and a chameleon who’d come in to his practice for him to look at. It was harder to communicate with lizards using Parseltongue than snakes-mostly, Harry could make them understand him, but not understand them back-and he needed food and sleep.
So, of course, that was the moment, when he was thinking about it, for the owl to fly through the window and land in the middle of his table, holding out its leg with the letter. M.H. considered it as if he was thinking whether he could fit in the owl alongside the bulge of the pig.
Harry sighed and took the letter. He sighed harder when he saw the handwriting on the outside of the envelope. It was from his mother-well, Lily Potter, sometimes he thought he should call her.
Then again, neither of them really knew whether she had acted enough like a mother to merit the name.
Or if I’ve acted enough like a son.
In the end, since it was only a single sheet of parchment, Harry unfolded the letter and skimmed it.
You know that your sister’s marriage to Draco Malfoy is approaching. Please don’t come back to England for it. There’s too much chance that you would influence her again.
Harry rolled his eyes and snorted as he cast the letter to the floor. He wished he could set it on fire, but such things were beyond him. He would submerge it in water and get rid of his feelings-and the evidence that he wasn’t a Muggle-that way.
It’s approaching? Honestly, Mum. It’s two years away. And if Dahlia hasn’t broken free of the influence I had on her by now…
That just made him feel guilty, though. And sent a distant ache through the scar on his head, which was never completely silent.
Harry scowled, and ate his dinner, and went to bed. When he flicked out the light in the kitchen, M.H. hadn’t looked away from his reflection in his scales.
But sometime during the night, Harry felt the huge weight flop into the bed next to him. Harry rolled towards it. Bloody selfish snake, stealing all the heat instead of giving any.
Then again, it’s not like there’s ever going to be anyone else there…
Luckily, he was asleep again before he could follow out all the implications of that thought.
*
Draco stepped back into the Manor with a frown, and whipped his cloak from his shoulders hard enough to send the snow scattering. It was only a fine, light fall, but he didn’t care. He didn’t want any of it touching him.
He sat down in front of a blazing fire, snapped a bit at the house-elf who didn’t already have his mug of hot tea ready, and then sipped it and stared into the flames.
There should have been more about the exile of a child from a family as prominent as the Potters. Especially a child who had apparently survived the attack of the Dark Lord by himself. Draco had never fully understood that James and Lily hadn’t been home when the Dark Lord arrived. Something had lured them away, a diversion by a traitorous “friend” now in Azkaban, who had promised to stay with the baby while they ran after the distraction.
Like the Gryffindors they were.
Instead, the friend had turned out to be a Death Eater and summoned the Dark Lord. And then…something…happened. No one really knew what it was. But Lily and James had arrived during the tail end of it, and survived the magical disturbance, and fought for their lives, and bound and defeated their Death Eater friend, Peter Pettigrew.
They’d refused all interviews with the papers, and hidden behind the infamous Potter wards when the reporters tried to insist. At last, the lack of fresh information had carried the story off the front page. And the next year, the Potters had quietly changed the betrothal contract between their family and Draco’s, without notifying anyone why. And sent away the child later.
His name is Harry. The one who was meant to be my consort.
There hadn’t been any pictures of him. The newspapers had said he was “cute,” but that was a baby word that told Draco nothing about what he looked like now.
Draco slouched further back into his chair and sighed. So much for the newspaper research he’d spent the morning doing. He’d have to attempt something he hadn’t thought of until he was walking out of the Ministry. It wasn’t…
As much as Draco could think of anything not directly touching his family as a matter of honor, this was. And it made him flinch to contemplate it.
But the only people he could think of who held the answers were his parents and the Potters. And the Potters weren’t continually suspicious of attacks from every direction and armed with bezoars in their pockets and spells on their tongues.
As though his thoughts had summoned her, Draco’s mother appeared in the far door of the sitting room, studying him carefully. She cast, as if by instinct, a small spell that Draco knew from the wand movements would cool the air around her. “Draco. I wish to speak to you.”
Which means not in a setting so comfortable for me. Draco sighed, snapped his fingers, and handed his teacup back to the elf who appeared to take it. “Yes, Mother.”
He followed her down several corridors that seemed to bend more sharply than usual this morning, and be made of bleaker marble. Draco eyed them and shuddered. He was imagining sharing them for the rest of his life with a bride who insisted on being his perfect mirror and devoting herself to him while never letting him see beyond her polished surface.
It chilled him enough that he nearly considered trying his plan on Mother. Yes, she had the bezoar, but he wasn’t going to poison her. And its mere presence wouldn’t protect her from other potions.
But when she came to her destination, Draco’s pulse nearly leaped out of his chest. It was Father’s study they were going to. That put paid to all his dreams of getting away with using Veritaserum on his mother.
He walked in behind Narcissa, and saw Lucius standing up from his usual chair, which was on the other side of a formidable desk made of cherry, so shiny that Draco often wondered why he didn’t see more reflections in it. But there was another chair beside his, which Draco had never seen before. Narcissa walked over to the chair, turned her back to it, and stood facing Draco like his father’s fraternal twin.
Then they both sank back at once. Draco winced. He understood what this was about now, why they had chairs beside each other facing his one.
But he took the one chair anyway, because it was unthinkable for a Malfoy to run away from any situation. He clasped his hands in front of him and maintained his silence. At least he could make them work for that much.
His parents glanced at each other, communicating in the silent way Draco wanted. He felt a bit of steel arrive in his spine as he thought about that. They would condemn me to a marriage with someone I can never share that with.
“We have made a decision, Draco.”
“One that I trust you will approve of.” That was Mother’s code for “of course you will.” Draco only inclined his head to show he was listening.
“There are considerations that you may not be aware of, when it comes to certain political movements in the Ministry,” said Lucius, and exchanged another glance with Narcissa, this one a look that Draco resented being shut out of. “You know that some people have never trusted me to hold the good of Muggleborns in mind.”
Draco didn’t snort, but if Blaise and Pansy had been there, he didn’t think he could have resisted.
Father narrowed his eyes slightly, but continued. “And now Albus Dumbledore has decided to give up the Headmastership of Hogwarts and commit himself full-time to the Wizengamot.”
Draco did gape, then, ignoring his mother’s frown. “I thought you said once Dumbledore would never come out of there, Father.”
“I thought so, then. And it does mean that I will have a slightly freer hand in Hogwarts in the future. But it means a potential loss of power and prestige in the Wizengamot. We need something to make ourselves appear more congenial to the Light families and as if we are pursuing different ambitions than political ones.”
“So we are moving up your marriage to Dahlia,” said Narcissa.
“What? No!”
“You find fault with your betrothed bride?” Narcissa looked as if she had no eyebrows at the moment, so high were they raised.
“But it will show us sealing our alliance with the Potters instead of simply talking about it, and the papers will be full of the wedding preparations instead of reporting on my every move,” said his father. “And there are even some on the Wizengamot foolish enough to believe that will be all I am thinking about, as well.”
“You never answered my question, Draco.”
Draco decided he had to move on to an even more desperate plan than using Veritaserum on his parents. He had to tell them the truth.
“Yes, I find fault with her,” he said bluntly, and his mother gasped a little. “She never shares anything with me. Not like the way you two share things.” He waved his hand wildly up and down between his parents. “You actually know each other’s thoughts and opinions and dislikes. She parrots my opinions and tells me that she mildly likes a lot of things but would give up any one of them to please me, and she hasn’t told me her honest thoughts on anything since I’ve known her! There’s just this shining wall somewhere behind her eyes I can’t get through. I don’t want to marry her. I don’t want to break honor, either, but I thought-”
He didn’t get to explain his plan to substitute Harry for the contract so he would still be bonding a Potter, because his mother said, very softly, very coldly, “You will not break honor.”
“And I think you are being overdramatic,” Father added, his lip curled. “You look at a long-standing marriage and imagine that this level of trust and confidence should belong to two newlyweds. Foolish, Draco, beyond permission. You will achieve this level with Dahlia eventually.”
“I haven’t in eight years,” Draco said. “Please.” He nearly slipped from the chair and onto his knees. “I don’t want to marry her.” He thought of something else then. “And she’s not even of age! How can she get married? She has to be legally a Potter until she’s seventeen, unless someone else adopts her. And I couldn’t marry my sister!”
“There are certain forms of marriage that we are considering,” Narcissa said, and slid a bracelet of ivory down her wrist. “For example, the bride protection. You would be married in name for two years, until her seventeenth birthday. You would not sleep together, and the Potters in return would not receive any rights to call themselves part of our family. It would essentially be a deeper form of the betrothal.”
“But marriage in the eyes of the law,” Lucius hastened to add. “You should welcome this, Draco. Two years will give you the time to get to know her and establish the trust between you and her that you want.”
“And you will become reconciled,” said Narcissa, as if that were a good thing. “You can discover each other. You will give up thoughts of running away and marrying someone else.”
She knows me that well? Of course she does. She used to know when I was contemplating sneaking out of the house before I’d even done it.
Draco swallowed enough air to drown more protests than he had right now, and voiced the only one he thought might do some good, given his parents’ concern for reputation. “But I’m four years older than she is. Won’t there be concerns that I’m taking advantage of her? There are already some murmurs about the betrothal.” Granted, those came from his enemies in Slytherin when he still attended Hogwarts, but Lucius always said that even enemies could be made to work for you, if you used them well enough.
“Not with the bride protection type of betrothal. You’ll always have a chaperone, and you will see her more at the Potters’ house than here.”
“Even if I’m twenty-one when she’s seventeen-”
“This is final, Draco.”
And Draco knew when to retreat. He bowed his head a little and sighed. “All right. I can’t pretend to be delighted, but I do hope I will grow reconciled in time.”
“Of course you will,” said Narcissa, and there was tenderness in her voice for the first time. “You can’t always live with someone and eternally hate them. You would go mad. You will find the charms of obedience and submission when you have been around her long enough.”
I would rather kiss a turtle. But Draco kept his expression the same, and nodded and agreed, and escaped as soon as he could.
He would steal a march on his parents as they had on him. Draco made sure to take the vial of Veritaserum he already had brewed from that time a month ago when he’d been trying to discover whether Crabbe actually had the slightest spark of intelligence in his brain.
He was grimly aware, as he put on his cloak, that using a truth potion on his betrothed’s parents came nearly as close to violating honor as using it on his betrothed herself would.
But not if they never remember it.
Draco cast the Floo powder into his private fireplace and called out, “Stone Nest!”
Chapter Three.
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