Chapter Twenty-Six of 'Bonded Consort'- The Unspeakables' Test
Chapter Twenty-Five.
Title: Bonded Consort (26/29)
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-Six-The Unspeakables’ Test
“Sirius, you could stop glaring at everyone.”
“I could,” Sirius agreed as he walked with Harry through the entrance of the Department of Mysteries and stared at two Unspeakables in a way that made them reach up to check that their hoods were fully covering their faces. “But I don’t want to.”
Harry rolled his eyes and got slightly in front of Sirius as they headed towards the arched black doorway they’d been told to expect. “You’re as bad as Draco.”
“He would be glaring, too, if he’d walked in with us.”
Harry shook his head. Draco had insisted on going earlier, to question the Unspeakables who would be conducting the test on Harry’s magical core and ensuring that, in his words, “everything is all right.” Harry smiled as the grey door in front of them swung open and revealed Draco lounging against the wall of the bare steel room on the other side.
“Draco,” he said, and heard Sirius chuckle, either at the scowl on Draco’s face that he’d predicted or the way that that scowl melted when he saw Harry. Harry walked up to him and kissed him hard enough that his own lips tingled. Draco put his arms around him and pulled him in, continuing the kiss long past the point where small spots of color and blackness began to dance in front of Harry’s vision.
But he understood when Draco let him sag back and Harry turned to face the three Unspeakables who stood in front of them with grey robes. Draco was glaring over his shoulder, Sirius stood glaring next to him, and they presented a united front.
Or as united as we can be when I look dazed from the kiss. I hope.
“You swore the vow to inform Harry of the results, and stay honest and neutral, and only inform Dumbledore of the results when Harry tells you that you can,” Draco said, his voice hissing and scraping like scales along the walls. “If you break that vow-”
“We will die,” said the tall Unspeakable on the far right, whose voice had a strange echo. Harry thought for a moment of mechanical voiceboxes he had heard a few times.
“It’s Unbreakable,” Draco said, with a small nod. “But you will suffer if you find a loophole and don’t die.”
He said nothing about how, which might be a wise choice, and made the two shorter Unspeakables shuffle. The tall one showed no such uneasiness. He turned to Harry and inclined his head. “Mr.-Black, are you ready for the test?”
Harry turned to study the other things in the room for the first time. There was a large metal triangle inlaid into the floor; he didn’t know enough about such things to say for sure, but he thought it might be silver blended with steel. In the middle of it was a star-shape, its five points reaching out to touch various places on the sides of the triangle. There was something hovering above that, but it only looked like silver mist no matter how hard Harry squinted.
“The field is where I’ll stand?” Harry asked. He could only guess, because there was little information available about this test outside the Department of Mysteries.
“Yes.” Even as the tall Unspeakable spoke, the field snapped into being. It looked like a transparent silver cylinder with a door open in the side of it. “You will walk into this, and the test will produce an image of your magical core that shows up on every side of the triangle. The star contains and channels the energies of the test.”
Harry glanced at Draco. He nodded, his lips pulled in. He still wasn’t happy about this test, but he was telling Harry the magical theory made sense.
Harry faced Sirius in turn. Sirius gave a short nod, too.
Then there were no more excuses. Not that Harry really wanted to make any. He had some hope that this test would spare him from Dumbledore’s suspicions in the future. He nodded at the Unspeakables and moved forwards.
The triangle’s metal sparked beneath his feet, but Draco had told him that would happen and he didn’t have to worry about it. The star hummed as he crossed it, although Harry didn’t have to step on its thin metal outlines the way he’d had to with the triangle. Then Harry was staring into the center of the cylinder.
Other than a faint mistiness shimmering there, similar to what it had looked like before fully forming, there was no difference between the air outside the cylinder and the air inside it.
Harry swallowed back uneasiness and a dozen other emotions that would only make Draco and Sirius feel worse, and stepped in.
*
Draco clenched one hand into a fist, not caring if the Unspeakables caught a glimpse of the scowl on his face. He was watching Harry walk away from him yet again, the way he’d watched him walk through the door that led to the Black Heirship test. He was getting tired of this.
He would have Harry permanently at his side soon enough, and he didn’t want to ruin his parents’ careful plans, when they were still struggling so hard to accustom themselves to the consort Draco had chosen. But he was thinking of asking them to speed up the bonding nonetheless.
For a moment, the opening into the cylinder remained torn behind Harry. Then the door snapped to, and the mist that had filled the center of the field before swirled up around Harry. Draco squinted to make sure he could still see him.
Harry stood there as if nothing concerned him. Draco scanned him slowly, memorizing the sheen of his eyes and his bonding bracelet.
He would know in an instant if something started going wrong.
“If you would lift your hands above your head, Mr. Black,” the hollow voice of the tall Unspeakable said, seeming to boom from the walls. “And hold them there while the magic reaches out to you.”
I should be in there with him, to make sure nothing can happen.
Black cleared his throat behind Draco. Draco gave a sharp nod without taking his eyes off Harry. He knew he couldn’t. He knew he would have to stay here. He knew it had been Harry’s decision to go through with this test, to try and make Dumbledore’s accusations evaporate.
That didn’t mean he had to like it.
*
It felt as though a gigantic invisible spoon had descended and begun to scoop out the center of his chest.
Harry valiantly bit his lip, and managed to get through most of that without giggling. But a laugh did break from his lips as the spoon lifted and began to retract, still invisible.
“Is something wrong, Mr. Black?”
It was still odd to hear himself referred to by his new last name, but Harry tamped down the giggles and shook his head. He didn’t say anything, not sure whether it would disrupt the test, if that was over now or not.
A soft pearly-golden glow began to shine overhead. Looking up between his splayed arms, Harry could see that it was shaped like an open, hollow-centered ring. It was floating down towards him. Harry licked his lips.
He wasn’t sure what would happen when the ring touched him, but he had given his word, and he wouldn’t go back now. He extended a hand up towards the ring.
No one yelled at him from beyond the cylinder, the star, and the triangle. Harry reckoned that moving right now must not be important.
The ring slid down around his arm first, but kept going, descending until Harry was encased in it. It felt like nothing in particular. Harry smelled a hint of iron to it, but he kept his eyes locked on the ring, and saw nothing that indicated it was actually made of iron. Or that it would turn to that and crush him.
The ring eventually slid through the floor, around his feet, and then an enormous flash of light struck the room. Blinking, Harry turned to look up at the walls.
The image of his magical core was being projected there, the way the tall Unspeakable had said it would be.
The image came to life slowly enough that Harry wasn’t sure what he was seeing at first. When he did understand, he blinked in surprise. The pearly-gold glow of the ring was preserved there. Harry had thought his core would look Darker than that.
But eventually he managed to make out other colors showing through the white and gold. There was a swirling, dancing cloud of green and purple, shot through with dark blue. The white and gold drifted around the edge of that storm as gentler clouds. Now and then Harry thought he saw one of them reach out a tendril of what could be called lightning and run it through the maelstrom.
“What does that mean?” Harry asked, glad that his voice wasn’t shaking. “What do the different colors symbolize?”
“The green and purple show that you would be skilled in certain sorts of magic, if you wanted to practice them,” said the tall Unspeakable. The two shorter ones with him had backed off as if they wanted to see the image of his core better. “The Dark Arts is the green-named for its resemblance to the Killing Curse-and the purple is human-to-animal Transfiguration, specifically. The blue is a sign of a lesser talent at elemental air manipulation. It would take more time and practice to bring that magic to the surface.”
“Oh,” Harry said, a little dazed. He didn’t have to look at Draco and Sirius to know they were almost bursting with pride. He could feel it from their direction.
“The colors around the outside of your core represent your self-control,” said the Unspeakable. He held up his wand and traced a circle in the air, and a small ring of bright red appeared around the gold and pearl clouds on the walls. “The gold says that you temper your magic with compassion. The pearl with thoughtfulness.”
Harry had to grin. He couldn’t imagine a result that would show up Dumbledore much better. “What about the lightning they keep reaching out to the clouds with?”
“That’s not lightning, Mr. Potter,” said one of the shorter Unspeakables, sounding shocked. Draco turned to stare at them, and so did Harry, and the Unspeakable cleared his or her throat and said weakly, “Mr. Black, I mean. That’s a sign of how your good qualities are reaching out to the Dark magic.”
Harry opened his mouth to comment on their judgment, but the tall Unspeakable said, “Yeliana. We do not call such things good by their nature. We talk of them by their color, their identity, and their place in the circle.”
Yeliana dropped their head and stared somewhere in the direction of the floor. Harry looked at the tall Unspeakable, who nodded sharply and said, “I apologize for the ignorance of my colleague, Mr. Black. But those are not flickers of lightning. They do touch your magical core, but their purpose is to temper it, as I said before.”
“What happens to someone who doesn’t have qualities like that tempering their core?”
“They probably would not have survived to adulthood, of course. Any magic must have some kind of restraint-Light or Dark, minor talent or greater-or it will simply explode through the child’s skin and kill them.”
Harry blinked. He had never heard of that. He supposed there were some dangers that being a Squib could save you from.
But, he had to admit to himself as he turned to step out of the triangle and saw the way Draco’s face glowed and Sirius’s was lit up by his grin, I do prefer being a powerful wizard.
*
Draco embraced Harry and lowered his head until he could breathe the words directly into his ear. “How does it feel to know that you’re special enough to impress an Unspeakable?”
“He was impressed? I couldn’t tell.”
Black slapped Harry on the back and laughed that ringing laugh that made Draco twitch, most of the time, because of the number of people who would turn around and look. Luckily, there was no one except them and the Unspeakables who had conducted the test here. “Of course he was! They can talk about it using neutral words all they want, but I can tell approval when they hear it.”
“What do you want to tell Dumbledore?” Draco demanded, moving on to the more important things. “And when?”
Harry tilted his head to look at the picture on the wall from several angles. Draco did the same thing. This was his consort’s magical core. Of course he was going to take the opportunity to look. It wasn’t as if it went on display all the time.
“Is there a way that you can keep this image on the walls and explain it to Dumbledore?” Harry abruptly asked the tall Unspeakable.
“Yes. Do you wish to be present?”
Harry nodded. “Summon him now. We can wait.” He leaned loosely back against Draco and grinned a little.
“What’s going on?” Draco whispered to him as he stroked the nape of Harry’s neck. He didn’t object if Harry wanted to show this to Dumbledore, since he wouldn’t be in any danger, but- “I thought you never wanted to see him again.”
“I don’t want him to threaten you again. That’s not the same thing as objecting to watching his jaw drop.”
Draco snorted and pulled Harry away from the metal triangle. It looked inert right now, but Merlin knew what an Unspeakable artifact would do if someone accidentally touched it. “I think he’s a greater threat to you than me.”
“Who was nearly raped of their free will by my darling sister?”
“I threw it off, though.”
“And I’m not going to take any more chances with you than you are with me.”
Draco blinked, then shrugged. If that was the way Harry wanted it to be-it didn’t displease Draco.
Harry grinned and, when neither Black nor the Unspeakables were looking, nudged his hips back in a way that made it obvious he had noticed the state of Draco’s non-displeasure.
Draco bit his lip and held firmly still as he listened to the Floo call from the other room. When they got back home, unless Black or Harry wanted to plan revenge on Dumbledore right away, then he was going to spend a lot of time with Harry. Privately. Behind a locked door.
When the tall Unspeakable came back through the door, Dumbledore was following him. He looked at Harry for only a moment, seeming to use his eyes to edit Draco out of reality, and then turned and stared at the gleaming image on the walls. He locked his hands behind his back and stood gazing.
Enough time passed that Draco shifted restlessly, not happy about leaving this confrontation solely up to Harry. Harry seemed to sense that, and spoke. “Do you need someone to explain the colors to you, Mr. Dumbledore?” he asked solicitously.
If Draco hadn’t been watching for it, he never would have seen the slight tremble that ran up Dumbledore’s spine. He cleared his throat and shook his head. “No, I think I understand them, Mr. Black,” he said. “Even if it’s a long time since I attended to this part of my education.”
There. His voice had a tremble at the end, too.
Dumbledore went on staring at the wall. Draco scoffed. He’s so much of a coward, he can’t face us and admit he was wrong. “Do you see any trace of evil, self-willed magic there, Dumbledore?” he asked.
The old man’s shoulders rose and fell. Then he turned around. “No,” he whispered.
Oh, very good, Draco thought, and knew he would have to put this memory in a Pensieve so he could watch it from several different angles. Dumbledore was trying to play this off with an air of calm wisdom, but he couldn’t. There were lines along the corners of his mouth that looked brand-new, and as Draco watched, he raised one hand slowly so that it covered his face.
Devastated. Yes, that was a good word.
Amazingly, Black managed to stay quiet and out of it, so that Harry could speak. “So you were wrong. So you sent me into exile for ten years based on your own mistake. So you were so paranoid about Voldemort coming back that you messed up my entire life.” He hesitated, and Draco wondered what accusation could be so terrible that Harry would be afraid to say it. Then he added, “And messed up my relationship with my parents and my sister.”
He doesn’t really care about that-
No, he didn’t, Draco realized a moment later, as Harry reached back and squeezed his hand, hard. But Dumbledore did. Harry had realized what a whip to the man’s heart that would be.
My consort, Draco thought, squeezing Harry’s hand back, is perfect.
“I am so, so sorry,” Dumbledore whispered. He sounded stricken with remorse.
“You can’t hope for forgiveness. Not when you were the major architect of the whole thing.”
Dumbledore turned slowly away, without answering, and went to lean on the wall beneath the shining image of Harry’s magical core, staring up at it. Again he covered his face with one hand a moment later. He was shaking now, fine tremors that spread throughout his being.
He knows Harry will never forgive him. Really feels it.
And Draco knew that was as it should be. Harry might choose to spend time with his younger siblings, might choose to associate with the elder Potters if he could stand them, but he barely knew Dumbledore and had no reason to think fondly of him. There would be no pardon, ever.
Maybe, Draco thought, as Black put a finger to his lips and tiptoed with exaggerated smoothness out of the room, living with that knowledge is the worst punishment Dumbledore could receive.
Chapter Twenty-Seven.
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