Chapter Twenty-Four of 'Bonded Consort'- Reconcilations on the Horizon
Chapter Twenty-Three.
Title: Bonded Consort (24/27)
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.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Four--Reconciliations on the Horizon
Harry sighed and put a hand over his face as he watched Sirius surround the owl with a cube of blue light. "Will you let the poor thing go? Even if it turned out that it was delivering a cursed letter to me, it wouldn't be the bird's fault."
"I'm not going to take chances with your safety." Sirius gave Harry a grin across the table. "You can think of it as me being an overprotective father."
"I haven't needed a father so far."
"You supposedly didn't need a lover, either." Draco wrapped his arms around Harry's waist and draped his chin over his shoulder to watch Sirius cast another spell that showered the blue cube with sparks and made the owl hoot irritably. "But you have both now, and you're not getting rid of us for the asking."
Harry laughed a little and leaned back, closing his eyes as he let Draco's warmth wash over him. "I just don't think it's the owl's fault, is all. If you distrust my parents, then you could test the letter and leave the owl out of it."
"Sometimes those spells are less accurate." Sirius drew a cross with his wand, and the letter turned red. The owl turned unimpressed.
"How often?"
"Not very often," Sirius said shamelessly, without looking away from the bird.
Harry had to shake his head. Then he reached out and snatched the last muffin just as Draco absent-mindedly reached for it. Draco scowled at him. "That has poppy seeds."
"Which is why I should have it, and not you," Harry said, and bit into it. "Because I've been more deprived during my lifetime of sweet things."
Draco abruptly melted like treacle tart, leaning over him and breathing, "That's true. I didn't think about it. You must tell me right away if I ever--"
"Draco." Harry waited until he was sure that Draco was listening to him before he continued. "Sometimes I'm going to joke about what happened to me, okay? That's one way of dealing with it. I made jokes when it was just me and M.H., too. You need to go along with it. Don't always think you need to give me the muffins."
Draco was silent, intent, and Harry hoped he had the impression (the true one) that Harry was talking about far more than just muffins. Then he nodded and kissed Harry on the back of his neck, before adding to Sirius, "Have you determined yet whether they cursed the letter?"
"I'm about ninety-nine percent sure they didn't," Sirius announced cheerfully, and released the owl from its cube of light. The owl hooted again, this time in what sounded like relief to Harry, and spread its wings, but Sirius reached out and Summoned the letter from its foot before it could. Harry stared at him. Sirius added, "That's because of the other one percent."
The owl flew to the perch in the corner and began eating the owl treats there to soothe its ruffled feelings. M.H. came slithering around the corner and stopped, staring in fascination.
"You can't eat it," Harry told him.
I don't see why not.
"Because."
M.H. gave this as serious a study as though he had never heard that word in Parseltongue before. This is a reason?
"No curse!" Sirius said, before Harry could think of a reasonable way to deter M.H. He sent the letter flying over to Harry with yet another wand-flick, and Harry accepted it and turned it over. The seal was the heavy Potter crest, the one he had never been entitled to use even before his disownment. He shook his head.
"Are they trying to make a bad impression?"
"At this point, how could they make a good one?" Draco asked. "I'm more interested in what the letter says than what seal they used. Of course they'll try to make themselves look like a good little Light wizarding family on the outside. What does it say?"
Harry snickered and broke the seal, then rapidly scanned the letter inside. He blinked. Then he said slowly, "It says they want to reconcile with me. Or James does, anyway. There's nothing about Lily here. And they sound sincere."
"Black, cast again," Draco snapped as he ripped the letter away, almost fast enough to actually rip the paper. "There's clearly a Confundus Charm here that doesn't activate until the right person touches the parchment."
"Draco, for fuck's sake--" Harry lunged after the letter, and Draco held it over his head. Harry stood up on the chair to get to it, and Draco pulled him back down into his lap.
"Why do you want to forgive your parents?"
"I never said I did." Harry snatched the letter again, and watched as a small tear appeared in the corner of the parchment. Well, as long as it was small, they could cast Reparo on it. "I said they sounded sincere."
"See! See!"
"Let me read the letter, pup," said Sirius, and Harry rolled it up into a half-scroll and tossed it across the table to him before Draco could get hold of it again.
Draco slumped back down and glared at Harry when he caught his eye. "Why do you trust Black more than you trust me?"
"Oh, not this shit," Harry said, which visibly startled Draco, enough to make him blink and start paying attention to Harry. "Look. It doesn't mean I trust Sirius more. It's just that I want the opinions of people who haven't already made up their minds."
"I still think James should be carved to death with a rusty spoon," Sirius volunteered, not looking up from the letter. "And I don't think Harry should forgive him. I just want to see if this was a trap."
"Why a rusty spoon?" Draco asked, after hesitating a moment. Harry grinned and leaned back against him, content when Draco curled an arm around his waist. He knew that tone, and it meant Draco was being more understanding.
"Because there are spells that would make it hurt more." Sirius finished reading and raised his eyebrows. "Well. It actually does sound sincere, not that I think about it. Maybe that's why James didn't let Lily have any part in writing it. Maybe she can't sound sincere yet."
“And you want to just let him go trotting off to the Potters, I suppose,” said Draco, his voice such a low snarl that Harry whipped around to stare at him. “You don’t care about what they did to him, either. With Harry, I can understand it. He still doesn’t value himself the way he should, most of the time. But I don’t understand what you have to gain from this kind of pretense, Black.”
Sirius held out the letter. “You read it and see if it sounds sincere to you.”
A bigger tear spread across the letter, like a crack across hard ground, as Draco snatched the parchment back. Harry sighed and returned to spearing his toast with a long fork. He supposed Draco had reasons to be distrustful. But it was still…
Strange, sometimes. Wonderful, to have someone so much on his side that he would assume Harry needed to be protected like this. But strange.
*
Harry,
I’ll leave off the dear until you decide if that’s something you want me to call you. But I wanted to say that I’m sorry I disowned you. I should at least have thought about it instead of just reacting.
It’s strange to look back over the years and see how many things were just me reacting, from deciding it would be a good idea to exile you to being offended that your Malfoy wouldn’t think Dahlia was perfect. It’s like I was walking in a mist and thought it was clear sunlight. I know it’s the effect of being under Dahlia’s magic and then emerging from it. But I can see both the irrationality of my thoughts now and why they seemed rational to me at the time. I don’t know if this double vision will ever go away.
I would like to reconcile with you, eventually. I can’t put you back as part of the Potter family, and you probably wouldn’t want that anyway. But if you want to talk to me and not anyone else from the family, just say the word. Or send word with Sirius or Malfoy. I promise that I don’t want to meet without them, and there won’t be anyone else around.
Please answer, even if it’s just to tell me to fuck off. I’m sorry.
James Potter.
Part of Draco noted with approval that James hadn’t tried to say that he was Harry’s father or anything like that. And he hadn’t blamed Harry for what had happened. That was probably part of what made the letter sound sincere to Harry and Black.
But the rest of him was so deep in frozen rage that he didn’t care. Did James Potter think he could make up for nineteen years of neglect? Because that was what it really was. Harry might have been in exile for “only” nine years, but he’d been ignored at home before that, and told he was evil, and convinced that he could never have a lover or a family or a normal life.
And they had tried to tell him he couldn’t have magic, either. That was the part Draco could not forgive. There were wizards who never married or had children and were estranged from their families, who still led happy lives. There were none who thought they were Squibs who were happy.
“You won’t answer, of course. Or you’ll answer and decline.”
“No, I won’t.”
Draco turned his head slowly. He had seen his father do the same thing when he wanted to be intimidating, but he hadn’t actually planned on copying his father’s mannerisms. It was just something that had happened.
Harry stared into his eyes. “I get to make the decisions,” he said, and reached out and flicked Draco on the nose. “That means answering and meeting him somewhere public, with you and Sirius along.”
“I don’t want you to.” Draco held Harry’s eyes, and he spoke evenly. It would make things worse if he yelled. Harry had heard enough yelling in his life. That he seemed to want to get back into a situation where he would hear more yelling was ridiculous, but not enough to make Draco lose his temper. “Consider that. The man you’re in love with, who loves you, doesn’t want you to go.”
“Why not?”
“Because they treated you like shit. And they shouldn’t get a second chance.”
“First of all, this is only James, and not Lily,” Harry said, with the kind of patient good humor that made Draco wonder who had taught him to speak like that. Then he realized it was probably him. “So he, not they. And second, what made you think I intended to forgive him? I said I wouldn’t, and that’s still true.”
Draco stared. “But-he’s said he wants to reconcile, and you’re still considering going.”
Harry bobbed his head and widened his eyes a little. “No shit.”
Black laughed from across the table. Draco didn’t bother looking at him. Harry mattered more than anything Black could say, and always would. “Then what are you going to do if you aren’t going to forgive him?”
“Listen to him. I’m kind of interested in the justifications for what he said, and what’s he like now that he’s not living under Dahlia’s influence.” Harry carried blithely on before Draco could tell him again why it didn’t matter what James was like. “And I want to see his reactions when I tell him about what Dumbledore tried to make Dahlia do.”
“What she was willing to do.”
“Oh, I know. But I don’t think she would have had the courage to try and enslave you if he hadn’t put her up to it.”
Draco wavered, then ended up shrugging irritably. Harry was probably right. “All right. But why don’t you think he already knows about it?”
“Because I really think he would have said something about it in the letter. It’s not like his space was especially limited.”
Draco paused. If that was the case, then he, too, wanted to see at least one Potter’s face when they heard how Dumbledore had tried to use the eldest child they still acknowledged as part of their family. But it shouldn’t involve Harry putting himself in any kind of danger, even danger of getting insulted. “I’ll go and tell him, and then you can watch my memory in a Pensieve.”
"No." Harry's voice was soft but full of authority. "That's not how it's going to work, Draco."
"I wouldn't lie to you! Or fake the memory, or whatever you're worried about."
"And I don't think James is going to ambush me, or whatever you're worried about."
Draco had to pause again. Then he said, "You promised me that nothing would ever make you forgive them."
"And I won't. But I told you that already." Harry eyed him. "I think you're more worried than you need to be. That's all."
Draco sighed. "I can see this is an argument that I'm going to lose," he muttered, and ignored the way Black laughed again from across the table. "Fine. But we are both going with you, and so is M.H."
Nodding, Harry turned around. "I should write the letter and send it back as soon as possible so that we can be sure--" His words exploded abruptly into an indecipherable hiss of Parseltongue.
Draco whipped his wand out. But there was nothing to be afraid of, he saw after a moment, only a rather fat and lumpy bushmaster surrounded by a few bloodstained feathers.
Harry demanded something, or at least Draco thought it sounded like that from the tone. A soft shiver ran up his spine. One of his few regrets was that he couldn't understand Parseltongue. Of course, having a lover who did speak it and would do so whenever Draco wanted to hear him was a great compensation.
M.H. replied, and slithered out of the room. Harry put his head in his hands.
"Did he say why he ate the owl?" Black asked. Draco glanced at him, and saw some of the same glint of humor struggling to surface in Black's eyes.
"He said it was a snack, and we didn't try hard enough to prevent him from eating it, we didn't even notice when he bit it, so obviously it was here for him and we shouldn't bring birds into the house we can't protect."
Black stood up. "I'll find another owl for you. It's not as though I don't have plenty. Even a few James might still recognize." He winked and left the room. Draco heard him howling with laughter again before the door swung shut.
"Take M.H. with us," Draco told Harry again as he looked up through his fingers with a mortified expression.
"So he can eat more owls?"
"Because he won't be dangerous to other people since he just ate, but he still looks really impressive," Draco said, and squeezed Harry's hand until he saw him smile.
*
"Harry. Thanks for coming."
James was trembling a little, and he spoke with his eyes fastened on Harry, as if he didn't see Draco or Sirius at all. Harry didn't know whether to worry about that or not. At least it meant he was also ignoring M.H.
Harry had played out this scene in his mind so many times, except in his imagination it happened in the Potter house and not the Leaky Cauldron. And he didn't have anyone else with him, and Mum and his siblings were here too...
Harry sighed and let the fantasy drift away. I didn't even really have to make the promise to Draco not to forgive them. Too much has happened for this to be different.
"You're welcome," Harry said, and started to pull out the chair opposite to James at his little table, except Sirius had already pulled it out and sat in it, and Draco was tugging one free with a command in his eyes. It was the one furthest away from James, with Draco and Sirius both in between him and his former father. Harry rolled his eyes and sat down. He barely noticed Draco casting privacy charms around their table that would blur what everyone could hear and see. "Why did you want to come?'
"I told you about the way it felt to come out of--the compulsion Dahlia laid on us."
Harry nodded, and said nothing else. For one thing, Draco had an arm wrapped around him so tightly that it might actually cut off his air.
"I'm questioning other things, too," said James, and frowned and ran a hand through his hair. "Things that I don't think were like Dahlia's compulsion, but similar to it. When I was under that spell, lots of things people told me just made a lot more sense. It made sense that you had Voldemort's magic and you were evil." He stared at Harry. "And it made sense that Dumbledore was obsessed with Voldemort coming back."
"If you're trying to blame Harry for that, you really should shut up, James," Sirius advised him. He had a thoughtful look in his eyes that made Harry worry he might be about to conjure up another rusty spoon.
"No, I'm only explaining what happened. And I don't think Dumbledore used his magic on me, either. It was just easier to believe those paranoid speculations because I was also being influenced by Dahlia."
"I understand," Harry said, and smiled a little at the way James looked at him. Draco's arm tightened. Harry rolled his eyes. Let Draco do what he wanted. Harry was still the one who had to approve this. "So you don't really believe that my magic is evil or that I'm Voldemort waiting to be reborn?"
"No." James hesitated for a second. "One thing you should understand is that Dumbledore fought Voldemort for so long that he started--thinking he was capable of more than he was maybe actually capable of. Voldemort got away so many times and won so many battles when we thought we should have won them. I wouldn't blame the Headmaster for thinking that he must have invented some way of taking over your body."
"You might not blame him. I would."
Harry's turn to squeeze Draco this time, and he nodded to James. "Anyway. I'm going to take a test with the Unspeakables monitoring it to show that I'm not Voldemort."
"Will he actually believe that?"
"We'll have to see, won't we?"
James hesitantly cleared his throat. "I know that I can't reverse the disownment. I'm sorry. But--I could still give you some gifts from the Potter vaults. Galleons, artifacts, that should have been yours. Other than anything I can't give you because it's bound to the Potter bloodline, anything you can ask for is yours."
"Why would he need your money when he has mine?" Sirius murmured. He was leaning back with his eyes closed and his hands folded behind his head.
"What?"
"Harry's my son now," Sirius said, and opened a lazy eye to look at James. "He passed the trial that every Black heir has to pass, and now his last name is Black. Really, James. You think he would want Potter gold? Tsk."
James did gape with his jaw dropped. Harry smiled. He would have been sorry to miss it, if he had given in to Draco's pleas and stayed behind.
"And Dahlia tried to attack me and force me to love her outside your home, at the command of Dumbledore," Draco added. His chin was on Harry's shoulder and his voice as lazy as Sirius's, although his eyes were fully open, gleaming, and vicious. "I suppose you don't know that, either, and think Harry should just trust that Potter gifts aren't poisoned."
James sat imprisoned in silence.
"So you can see why I don't want Potter gold and you're not going to get Black forgiveness," Harry finished, as gently as he could. "If you just want to talk and apologize some more, though? We could do that." He stroked M.H., who had wound up the chair leg to rest his head on Harry's free shoulder. "If you remember who I am, a Parselmouth and a Dark wizard. And a Black."
It took James long, struggling moments to work his way past whatever he wanted to say. But then he did whisper, "All right. I can accept that, because I have to."
"You have to," Harry said serenely, and waited.
James looked him in the eye and smiled, a little unsteadily. "I'm starting to get a sense of the son I lost."
"And won't ever be getting back."
Trust Draco to twist the knife, Harry thought, rolling his eyes, but his silence was perhaps as unforgiving.
Which was the way it should be. And they did have a fairly pleasant conversation and lunch after that, minus Sirius's insistence on testing all of Harry's food for poison and Draco's steady stare at James.
It would never change back to what it could have been. But they might move forwards.
Chapter Twenty-Five.
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