Chapter Fifteen of 'The Parselmouth Promise'- Completion

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Chapter Fifteen—Completion

“Did Jamie do all r—Merlin, Draco, are you okay?”

Draco lifted his head above the table and peered at Harry with one baleful eye. “Did you know that your son likes to get up in the middle of the night and play with ritual circles?”

Harry could feel his lips twitching with the impulse to laugh, and it was hard to keep down. He sat on the other side of the table from Draco and ran his hand through his hair. He could feel golden amusement flowing through the bond with Sela.

“Don’t do that,” Draco griped, reaching for the steaming pot of tea on the table and gulping down a scalding cup of it a second after he’d poured it. Harry hoped he did a better job of holding his face calm and inquiring than it felt like he’d done.

“Don’t do what?”

“Mess up your hair. I’m clinging to composure by my fingernails as it is.” Draco inverted the pot and drained it into his mouth, resulting in a hiss from Edwina. She didn’t seem to be saying any words, Harry noticed, just expressing displeasure. “And you with your stupid hair and the impulse to make me run my fingers through it—”

Utter silence. Draco snapped his mouth shut, looking horrified. Edwina rose, swaying back and forth on his shoulder, and subjected all of them to a loud and impassioned tirade about how her bondmate didn’t need to be waking up in the middle of the night to attend to noisy children, that it would have been fine, that Sapphire knew better even if James and Scorpius and Charlie didn’t.

Harry kept his eyes locked on Draco. He seemed to think, the more time that passed without Harry reacting to his statement, that he was safe. He leaned back against his chair and smiled a little as he gentled Edwina into silence.

“The boys weren’t that bad,” he said when she had stopped speaking and was sulking in a circle around his neck. “I did get up because I had alarms on the ritual circle room that rang when the door opened, but they weren’t in danger, and they were contrite enough to go back to bed when I told them to.”

“Did they say what they were trying to do?”

“Apparently see if they could call a snake for everyone in Britain so that there wouldn’t be any more prejudice against Parselmouths.”

Harry snorted. “I should have expected James to come up with a stunt like that, after listening to Skeeter’s little rant.”

“Actually, it appears to have been the idea of my darling offspring.” Draco rolled his shoulders and sat back with a long sigh, his eyes meeting Harry’s. “Scorpius has more exposure to the kind of bigotry that people are capable of.”

Harry nodded. One side-effect of keeping Jamie at home so much was that he’d been shielded from all of that. “I have something to tell you.”

“Oh? Good or bad?”

“I completed the bond with Sela.”

Draco sat up in his chair, quickly enough to startle Edwina, who responded with an offended hiss and coiled off his shoulder into his lap. Draco didn’t even reach out to soothe her. His eyes were brilliant and stayed on Harry. “Truly? Why did you do that?”

“Because I felt like it was time. And I’d hidden from the consequences of what other people did to me long enough.”

Draco blinked at him owlishly. Harry sat up. He was pretty sure that he could say this now and Draco wouldn’t take it wrong, given his little comment about touching Harry’s hair earlier. “And because I want to be able to practice ritual magic with you, in the way that I could only do if my bond with Sela was complete.”

Draco flushed deeply. Edwina stuck her head up and gave Harry an unimpressed look. Harry only gave her a fleeting smile, because his attention was on Draco. Sela was happily winding and unwinding her tail from around Harry’s neck, but she didn’t say anything.

“Why did you decide to do that?” Draco whispered.

“I think I already answered that, didn’t I?”

“I didn’t—mean to pressure you into completing the bond just because I wanted someone to practice ritual magic with.”

“You didn’t,” Harry said, and stood up and came around the table. Draco sat back against the chair and blinked at him for a bit. “You’re the one who explained the advantages to me and made me realize that I probably would have consented before this if Bandler and the idiots with prejudices about Parseltongue hadn’t done a number on my head.”

“And your ex-wife?”

“I don’t want to talk about her.”

Draco scowled a little, but seemed to have accepted that he’d have to take what he could get. He fastened his eyes on Harry and leaned forwards a little. “And when do you want to start practicing this ritual magic? Do you need to wait a few days until you become more comfortable in your completed bond?”

Harry wondered if Draco had noticed the breathiness around the edges of his own words that was giving him away. He smiled. “I don’t see a need to wait. I’m already comfortable with Sela, and the more so since she helped soothe some of the nightmares I was having last night.”

Draco shot to his feet, scooping up Edwina when she nearly fell on the floor. “Then let’s go.”

*

Draco found it harder than ever to take his eyes off Harry as they stood on opposite sides of the simple ritual circle he often used to have the children practice, or worked at with Pansy when the ritual was simple.

Draco wouldn’t have known what to attribute it to if Harry hadn’t told him about completing the bond with Sela. But the difference was noticeable, nonetheless. There was a greater lightness in the way Harry moved, a greater grace in the way he canted his head, and he stood with more confidence. And when Draco really focused, so hard that his eyes swam, he could make out the ethereal shimmer of a red and gold bond stretching between Sela and Harry, appearing to fade out into nothingness a few centimeters from the skin of each.

Of course Harry bloody Potter would have a bond that’s in Gryffindor colors.

Of course, Sela was herself a Gryffindor snake, which made it make sense. But Draco liked his theory better.

Harry lifted his head and extended his left arm out, stiff and straight. Sela slithered along it until she was near his wrist, where she wrapped her tail tight and hung on. Draco could see her eyes, brilliant in the dim light of the ritual room, and hear her soft, excited hisses. He could only wonder how long she had been searching for a partner, how intense had been her impatience as she waited for Harry to accept the bond.

And then he didn’t have to worry about that anymore, as the magic swept forth from Harry and Sela and grabbed and drowned him.

Draco barely managed a gasp, Edwina a hiss. This kind of raw and untutored grabbing was exactly the technique that Draco was working so hard to train Parselmouth children out of. It was dangerous because you couldn’t be sure that your own magic would meld well with that of the wizard or witch you grabbed, and if their magic didn’t blend—

Explosions would be the least of what could happen.

But soon Draco realized that Harry’s magic had swept them up like a vast but gentle wave, and his own power had reached out and blended with Harry’s as smoothly as a stream flowing into the sea. He shook his head to get rid of the dazed sensation and imitated Harry’s posture with his left arm extended, feeling Edwina’s tail loop securely around his wrist a second later.

The magic went washing back and forth between them, and then eddied into the ritual circle. The circle channeled it in a way that Draco hadn’t known it could, so the magic sloshed back and forth but didn’t overflow the bounds. Draco blinked hard and took a hissing breath that had no words in it as wonder and the intense need for control alike constrained his breathing.

“Draco?”

The sound of Harry Potter’s voice speaking his name in Parseltongue wasn’t something Draco had prepared himself for. He licked his lips and lifted his gaze. The circle had turned blue and golden with the sheen of their mingled power, but Harry was watching him with a gentle gaze that steadied Draco at once.

“Yes, Harry?” Draco spoke in Parseltongue without planning to, but in truth, the magic of the ritual might not have let him speak in English at all.

“I’m just realizing that we didn’t discuss what we were going to do with the magic before we gathered it, what kind of ritual we were going to conduct.” Harry sounded sheepish as he waggled his fingers at the shining pool between them. “What do you want to do? What does the school need?”

Draco flung his head back and laughed aloud. Harry smiled at him before he started laughing, and was still smiling when Draco was done. The magic that still swirled lazily between them kept them in tune, enough that Harry would know Draco wasn’t laughing at him.

“Yes,” Draco said. “I think we could use stronger wards. Intent wards, the kind that won’t let someone who has hostile intentions towards Parselmouths get within a mile of us. It should also keep out someone who can assume Animagus form like Skeeter could. What do you think of that?”

“What would it do to someone who isn’t a Parselmouth but might have some prejudices against it, but still might want to enroll their child here?”

“That’s where the brilliance of this being so strong comes in.” Draco gestured his hand between them to make the magic hum. “I couldn’t establish wards with exceptions for those kinds of people on my own. I’m not strong enough. But together, we can do it. Are you game?”

“I don’t know how to do it.”

“Don’t worry,” Draco said, and reached out to clasp what mattered more than Harry’s physical hand at the moment, the “hand” of Harry’s power that had already been extended towards him. “I know the theory. I’ll provide the guidance, and you provide the strength. Are you ready?”

“I think so,” Harry said, and the thrum of confidence in his voice was backed up by a sharp thrum, like the string of a plucked harp, that Draco knew must come from Sela.

Draco smiled, and closed his eyes, delving into the part of his mind where the theory about wards like this waited. He hadn’t memorized it so much as shared the memory between his own mind and Edwina’s. It was one of the many ways that a Parselmouth fully bonded with his or her serpent had an advantage over someone with an ordinary familiar. Now the outlines shifted back and forth, and Edwina’s shining form twined among them, pointing out the parts where Draco hadn’t had the ability to set them up.

Now he did.

Draco tilted his head back. The creation of wards normally required either incantations of great power, a team of wizards and witches working together, or a powerful elemental force buried in the earth and anchored there. This creation, though, was going to be purely an act of will, and Draco clenched his hands shut as the magic spiraled out of him and up and around, dancing as lazily as Edwina in one of her moods, and fire and glory lifted from Harry’s side of the circle, wrapping around Draco’s power with a surge he knew to be Sela running through it, like a thread of laughter in silence.

Draco reached out, and Harry’s soul was waiting for him.

That was what it felt like, his soul, not just his magic. Draco gasped aloud as the sensation of coiled and waiting anger, of cold rage, of desperation, of happiness, of pure power, surged around him, and memories of holding James close poured through his head, of stabbing a basilisk through the palate with a giant sword, of walking calmly to his death—

“Draco?”

Draco heard two voices speaking at once, Harry’s and Edwina’s. Sela’s was there in that the calm, glittering veil spun all around them had her magic in it. He swallowed back longing to be immersed in those memories again, and instead concentrated on the plans of the wards in his head. “Sorry. I got caught up in your memories for a bit.”

“Sorry,” Harry repeated. “I haven’t done this before. I didn’t realize how overwhelming they would be.” He pulled them back and hid them behind a thin sheet of what felt like ice, while continuing to feed his magic to Draco in a steady trickle.

Draco resisted the impulse to protest. If he wanted to feel the memories, then he would do it later, on his own time, when they didn’t have a school to shield.

He returned to the memories of the ward schemas and theory, and Edwina danced in his mind again, and the coils of black and golden bodies spiraled along the mental parchment that Draco had pinned to the wall of his mind. He felt Harry sharing it, hovering as if he was looking over Draco’s shoulder, but he didn’t disturb anything, and Draco didn’t have the impulse to demand that he back off. It felt as if he had always been there and Draco had noticed him for the first time just now, a natural part of their mingled magic.

It was overwhelming, and wonderful, and Draco began to spin the first threads of wards into existence with the knowledge that he wanted to feel this again and again.

*

Harry would be the first to admit that he had only half an idea what was going on.

Sela was trying to pass some of the information to him, but Harry didn’t have the knowledge of magical theory or the memories of ward outlines to make it easy for him to understand. He’d given up after a few minutes, ignoring her frustration, and concentrated instead on feeding magic to Draco.

There was plenty of magic to feed. Their singing, silent, colliding power moved in an endless maelstrom between them, and the hard part was maintaining some control of it so it didn’t crush both their bodies, not using it.

Harry watched it, feeling a little dazed, as the threads of gold and blue and silver and black turned into reality in Draco’s hands, wrapped around the school and rose in wards that would sense intent and bar those hostile to Parselmouths from the school, with small ruby knots of exceptions for those whose prejudice was based more on fear than hatred or greed for scandal or money. Where does all this magic come from? he asked Sela. I know that I’m not this strong, or I would have been able to defeat Voldemort more easily.

When two Parselmouths combine their magic in ritual craft, the whole is stronger than the sum of its parts, Sela replied proudly. She was maintaining her reared stance on his wrist without tiring, and for that matter, Harry didn’t feel the need to move or lower his arm, either. There is at least a third more strength available to them than otherwise. And Draco is a strong, experienced Parselmouth, stronger than he is as a wizard—

Wait. Parselmouth magic and wizard magic aren’t the same things?

Sela shot him what looked like a pitying look, while her body moved in a pattern he didn’t know. No, they aren’t. Can’t you feel the difference?

Harry thought he could, when he immersed himself in the magic and maintained only enough consciousness of the wards being spun into being to keep passing the power to Draco. Yes, perhaps, it—it felt as if this kind of magic was coming from a different place inside of him. He had been worried that it would feel rooted in his scar, but instead, it seemed to come from all his limbs and the center of his chest, drawing magic as if through the roots and veins of a tree, instead of just through his arm and wand.

It would not come from your scar, Sela said gently, while the wards grew fiercer and firmer, maintaining a stronger presence around the school, encasing it in a palace.

But that was where—

The Parseltongue spread and grew away from your scar long ago. Otherwise, it would have faded the way you thought it had at first when the Horcrux was taken.

Harry nodded. That made sense. He knew for sure that he didn’t have this kind of magical power to maintain this kind of torrent, no matter how many people thought he was secretly a Dark Lord or credited his defeat of Voldemort to pure power.

He was tiring, though. He found himself sinking to his knees. But his left arm remained stuck out, supported as much by the magic as by Sela, and he saw through Draco’s eyes as the pattern of the wards glittered and stabilized, studded with knots of exceptions. No exception for people to enter in Animagus form, though, Harry noticed with a smile.

Then the torrent faded, and the link between him and Draco collapsed abruptly.

Draco made a grasping motion towards him in the moment before he appeared to catch himself and lowered his arm. Edwina coiled herself around his wrist and flicked her tongue tiredly. Sela inched up Harry’s arm to his shoulder again. Harry stared at Draco and licked his lips, smiling. He had no reason to ask about the success of the wards, when he knew they had worked.

But he had to ask something about the yearning he could see in Draco’s eyes. “You want to try that again as soon as we can?” he asked quietly.

Eyes fastened on him as if there were no one else in the universe, Draco nodded.

And a soaring triumph that Harry didn’t understand moved through him.