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Chapter Five—Reversal

Potter was entertaining, Draco had to give him that. When his ex-partner’s voice soared up the stairs, promising dire things if Potter didn’t appear at once, he leaped down the last several stairs and threw a flurry of golden sparks about him as he went.

Draco stationed himself unobtrusively in the shadows at the top of the staircase, not far from the voracious-looking Healer who had summoned Potter to the attendance of his impatient lover. The man Potter confronted seemed to promise better things than Adoranar, at least as far as looks went. Adoranar had been handsome, but it was a collated, common kind of handsomeness; one could find his features in half-a-dozen other men without looking. This man had silvery-gray hair despite the youth of his face and blue-green eyes Draco could make out from here.

For a moment, he pictured this man kneeling above Potter, thrusting into him, those vivid eyes alight with pleasure. Draco dismissed the fantasy with an irritated toss of his head. He had no idea what positions Potter preferred or what he looked like when he was about to come. Perhaps he would be ugly, his mouth slack and letting a line of drool roll down his chin, as happened to some men Draco had had the misfortune to fall into bed with.

Draco hoped not, for his own sake.

“I thought perhaps a threat would bring you more quickly than coaxing,” the man said, and Draco set himself to watch and listen. The man had his hand held out to Potter, but Potter refused to accept it. Draco couldn’t blame him. On the other hand, he could blame Potter for not using a subtle, irrevocable curse on the bastard for the insult. Anyone who summoned him in such an undignified manner would have had that much to answer for. “Never mind that it didn’t work once. We always deserve second chances, you and I.”

“I know as well as you do that it isn’t second chances that brought you here today,” Potter said. He hissed as if he were speaking Parseltongue. When he motioned with his wand towards the other, Draco saw in his motion all that anger his holding back of a curse seemed to deny. “Why are you here?”

The man pressed a hand melodramatically over his heart. Draco frowned. Yes, really, Potter had execrable taste in lovers. Does that mean he will thwart all my advances in favor of picking up some Mudblood mediwitch who watches her patients with cows’ eyes? “Why, Harry, aren’t I allowed to try to help my lover advance in life?”

Draco didn’t like the man addressing Potter by his first name. From the ugly emotion that wrinkled his face, neither did Potter. “I’m not your lover.”

Is his definition of that label tied to physical intimacy, then? Draco bit his thumb thoughtfully, content to do so because he was unobserved. That might mean problems, were we to try and bind him to stronger service to the family. He and I would not spend all our time in bed.

“No,” said the idiot confronting Potter. Draco watched with a slightly parted mouth as he tried to intimidate Potter, leaning towards him and speaking with an anger-stained expression and harsh tones in his voice. Didn’t he know that trying to tower over Potter, short as he was, didn’t work? Draco had had to learn these things by trial and error, but he had spent enough time with Potter to have known them already. “And I’m going to make you regret that for the rest of your life.”

And how would he do that? Draco raised a cynical eyebrow. I don’t care how many friends he’s got, Potter has still more influence, not least because of his name.

He watched Potter shift his shoulders as if he were wondering how he had come to be stuck with this burden. “You know I’m perfectly happy being a mediwizard,” Potter murmured. “Surely someone with your intellect could have understood that.”

“But you should have been a hero.” The other man smiled in the way that Draco had seen Pansy use when she wanted to strangle her mother for getting pregnant when Pansy was nineteen. “No matter how poor your qualifications for it are.”

Draco felt his breath coming faster, shallow and hungry. This was the source of the conflict between Potter and his lover, then? He had wanted to date more than a mediwizard, and Potter had not cared to oblige him?

Draco thought he had just gained a valuable piece of advice about seducing Potter. Don’t refer to his lack of skill, then; that would win a cheerful acknowledgment from him at best. Take an interest in what healing skills he did have, instead. Speak of being sure that he could cure Lucius. Flatter his self-confidence, which seemed lacking—or else he would have adopted a more commanding air towards people he had no reason to either like or trust, such as Adoranar—and coax out the anger Draco could read in his stance now.

That should result in a swifter welcome to his bed. And, Draco could admit, he would take some pleasure in seeing Potter smile at him with more reason and more frequency.

Potter leaned towards the other man then, and said something Draco couldn’t hear. Draco stirred impatiently. Doesn’t he realize there’s an audience up here who needs to know what he’s like?

Luckily, the melodramatic idiot seemed to realize it. Draco would have blessed him if he could have thought well of someone who had managed to drive Potter from his side. “Yes. A sheep-like willingness to sacrifice yourself, as you’ve told me multiple times—“

“No.” Potter said, and raised his voice. Draco smiled. There was something to admire in the way that Potter turned from side to side, collecting gazes and interest, dissipating the power of the private conference between his ex-lover and himself, which might have inspired the man to think he could win Potter back otherwise. Perhaps he’s not as uncomfortable with his influence as he appears, only unwilling to use it. “It also took courage to walk to my death. No one else who was still alive knew I’d have to sacrifice myself to kill Voldemort. I could have run away and denied my destiny. I didn’t. And then I still faced Voldemort afterwards, when he had the Elder Wand and could probably have destroyed me.

“And it’s courage that leads to my going in among patients every day and facing diseases and curses, magic gone awry and poisons, that you’d never be able to stomach. You’re more comfortable with the idea of a hero who comes home with his own blood on him than you are with the idea that I’ve got the blood plunging my hands wrist-deep into someone else’s wound.”

Draco licked his lips. His mouth was dry with desire again, and he couldn’t blame the other man for the stricken look on his face. If he had any familiarity with pure-blood society at all, then he would know how many people valued the kind of courage Potter had just described. Granted, it had to be tamed instead of allied to Gryffindor impulsiveness, and it was properly employed in the defense of the family, not in killing Dark Lords who might have bettered the position of the Malfoys with a little careful handling. But it was rare.

There might be reasons to court Potter beyond the immediate advantage in caring for his father, Draco thought.

“I never was what you wanted, Xavier,” Potter said. Though he stood with his back half-turned to Draco and thus he couldn’t be sure, Draco thought he was smiling. “But maybe you’ll learn to appreciate me for what I am, if you come watch me perform surgery and—“

Xavier turned and stalked away. Draco restrained a triumphant laugh as he understood Potter’s strategy. Xavier—and Draco meant to discover his surname as soon as he could—must have a dislike for surgery. Yes, he had made a mistake when he let Potter go, but he seemed to have made a greater one choosing him for a lover in the first place.

The Healer who was Potter’s superior met him at the bottom of the stairs and began to talk to him. Potter bowed his head and said nothing. Draco, watching, felt impatience blaze up in him like a windy fire again. He had just seen that Potter did have the courage and the sharp tongue to resist the lecture the Healer was undoubtedly giving him, and his influence and powerful friends could not be in question. Why in the name of Merlin didn’t he do it? Why did he accept the burdens others piled on him but accept no easing of them, such as Draco had tried to offer him with the massage to take the headache away?

Once, Draco and his mother had discussed what qualities, other than loyalty and willingness to defend the family, Draco should look for in a partner, and which ones would be most dangerous to him. Narcissa had named the willingness to suffer as one of the perilous qualities. Draco had sat up and stared at her.

“Think of it, dear one,” his mother had said, leaning close. Her eyes were particularly intent that day, and Draco remembered she had worn her blonde hair bound on her head in a crown-shape, with pins stuck through it. She had rarely looked more beautiful. Of course, Draco understood that part of the reason she appeared that way was in order to better persuade him, but he could still admire the effect even as he analyzed it. “The willingness to suffer leads to a desire for suffering, in order that one may display one’s great patience and fortitude underneath it. That becomes the opposite of strength. Hunger for pain is not ability to suffer pain in a family’s defense, which is a different and a virtue, more closely bound to the idea that one would do it in a time of need. The one who drives herself to seek out pain becomes a martyr, because she values the compassion and tribute wrung from others as she suffers more than she values good health.”

Draco had agreed that martyrs were a troublesome breed, and sworn that he wouldn’t seek out one as his prefect mate. Of course, back then he had thought it impossible he would ever be attracted to one.

Now he had to look at Potter and wonder if the presence of that personality quirk outweighed the other reasons to court him.

The source of his martyrdom mattered, Draco decided. If Potter endured pain because he believed he deserved no better, that was one kind, and perhaps easier to cure than the craving for pain his mother had described.

Potter looked up just then, as if he had sensed that Draco’s thoughts orbited him. Draco met his eyes and nodded. Potter stared at him with challenge in his face, but Draco would learn how to get behind that challenge, knock it down, and give Potter pleasure as well as taking his own.

Since his mother was still with his father and thus Draco was not required to protect Lucius, he turned away to put his plan into motion. He could learn about Potter from the Daily Prophet. It was not Potter’s true, conscious motives that he wanted to study, after all, but the unconscious ones revealed by his actions.

*

Draco pushed the last Daily Prophet away, frowning lightly. The house-elves had been all too glad to fetch the old papers for him; Lucius kept a library of them as he kept a library of every document that might someday be useful. And the documents library was a beautiful room to read in, silver and white with gently melting and freezing images on the walls that would change from random patterns into scenes of wizards taming centaurs, climbing snowy mountains, and walking through snow-covered, dense forests. This room was meant to convey a sense of challenge and overcoming those challenges.

No, Draco’s perturbation came from elsewhere than his surroundings. He ran his thumb over his lips, pondering what he had learned—or not learned.

Potter had broken up with six lovers in the span of seven years. Four of the partings had been amicable; the two women Potter had dated, including the youngest Weasley, had said simply that they weren’t right for each other in the inevitable interviews the Prophet managed to coax out of them. One of the men, Francis Belfield, had shrugged and said that he wished Potter well, but they weren’t compatible. The other man, Gene—the Prophet report had been too intimidated or too lazy even to discover his last name—had shrugged and said nothing.

But Julius Adoranar and Xavier Brandeis, as the last lover’s surname turned out to be… Draco shook his head, marveling. Adoranar had covered an entire two pages of the paper in what was more a monologue than an interview, lamenting that Potter clung to outdated moral standards that wouldn’t let him understand the complexities of the human heart and how someone could love two people at once. From what he had seen of Adoranar, Draco suspected this translated to “how someone could have sex with two people at once,” but Adoranar was the kind of hypocrite who would believe fervently that he was the wronged party, and do so no matter how much evidence was placed in front of him.

Brandeis was another matter. He had evidently constructed a false kidnapping plot that was meant to lure Potter into displaying his heroism. Instead, Potter had reacted like a sensible person and called the Aurors. Brandeis had broken up with him over it and spread bitter, loud rumors about what deficiencies Potter had in the bedchamber, whilst never being specific enough to get him sued.

Draco had to chuckle as he read that story, no matter what unfortunate things it said about Potter. At least he had matured in one way. He no longer regarded himself as someone who had to cure all the evils of the world as far as its Dark wizards went. He knew what was beyond his strength.

Unfortunately, the ability to embrace change seemed to be one of those things. In every story Draco had read, the strong impression he’d received was that his ex-lovers had left Potter, and not the other way around. He couldn’t have been happy with either Adoranar or Brandeis, and yet he hadn’t repudiated them. They had been the ones to decide that he didn’t meet their standards.

Impatient and without eyes, every one of them, Draco thought in scorn. Belfield, at least, came from a pure-blood family, albeit a minor one. It was inexcusable that he shouldn’t have realized what advantage Potter could offer to his family and fought to secure him for that reason alone. The result made it easier for Draco to capture him, but didn’t prevent his contempt for Belfield.

The evidence pointed towards Potter being the sort of martyr who suffered pain and refused to change things and challenge for his proper place because he thought he didn’t deserve any better. He would indignantly cast off the attentions of those trying to seduce him or make trouble for him, but only after he had got rid of them in the first place. Perhaps it was less trouble to maintain his sex-free life now than it was to take either of them back and try to train them out of their evil qualities, Draco thought idly.

He had to reconsider if he wanted the connection with Potter. Someone who would forget the physical necessities, as it seemed Potter did, or grimace and put up with pain because he thought he had something more important to do… Did he take risks with his life alone, or with others’? Could Draco actually trust him to heal Lucius, if someone else collapsed bleeding in front of him and he had to choose between obligations?

Draco folded his arms behind his head and leaned back in his chair, lifting one boot onto the table. At once Rogers, the oldest Malfoy house-elf, appeared with a bow and a clean square of linen. Draco smiled and suspended his boot, letting Rogers put the linen beneath it. Rogers vanished with another bow. He combined to perfection the indulgence of his masters and his zeal to protect the physical beauties of the Manor.

Despite his general admission that what his mother said was sense, Draco had to admit, as well, that he did not perfectly share her estimation of the qualities important in a lover. He would have to choose one eventually, of course, either to continue the Malfoy line via pregnancy if it were a woman or for his own support and comfort if it were a man. It looked stronger to one’s enemies if one settled down with a particular person instead of always hopping from warm body to warm body like a flea, the way Potter had. Having children was no problem if his partner was a man; the true pure-blood families, like his, practiced the custom of blood adoption. No sharing was more important than that of blood, and the willingness to share or spill it in defense made one part of the family instantly.

But Draco also wanted qualities that his mother did not rate as valuable, or at least not valuable enough to make a fuss to secure. He wanted someone who could laugh with him and make him laugh, someone who was beautiful and randy and good in bed, someone who required a small amount of coaxing and seduction. Loyalty to the family was without question and beyond price, so Draco had had to let a few candidates he quite liked go when it became apparent that nothing could persuade them to consider the Malfoy family as the most important thing.

He did not want a relationship that merely worked. He did not want the ideal of harmony that his parents presented to the world outside their walls. He wanted—as he could whisper to himself in the privacy of his skull, as he would not have admitted even before house-elves—a changing coruscation of emotions and colors, a constant newness within the bonds of familiarity.

He looked around at the mountains and the forests, the exotic animals and the conquests, on the walls around him.

A challenge.

*

It happened between one moment and the next. Draco was standing in a corner of Lucius’s room, watching the door with one eye and his father with the other, and not speaking, because Lucius had requested silence. From the crossed hands in his lap and the tight lines gathered around the corners of his father’s mouth, Draco thought he was probably weighing the risks of remaining in hospital against the risks of removing to Malfoy Manor.

Then he screamed.

Draco whipped around, startled and horrified. A bubbling wound was pulling itself open across the middle of Lucius’s chest; it was as if someone stood above his father and dragged a knife down his torso. Draco cast a curse at the air, but hit no one. He rushed towards the bed and then found himself hovering helplessly. He didn’t know why Potter’s spells had failed, or which ones had failed, and he had not the slightest idea what he needed to do to renew them.

His father was dying in front of his eyes, and he could do nothing to stop it.

In the moments before panic would have overwhelmed him and he would have run babbling from the room in search of a Healer, Potter appeared. From the crack of it, he must actually have Apparated into the room, which Draco had thought was impossible with the hospital’s wards. He blinked, not caring if Potter looked towards him and saw the plea in his eyes. Help my father, he would have said, if he had a share of Potter’s attention at that moment.

But he didn’t, very properly. Instead, Potter aimed his wand as if he had always known what to do and chanted, “Defendo hostiam cum corde meo!”

Draco had barely begun to translate the Latin when the air broke apart. Potter was spouting light the color of fresh blood, which assumed the forms of riders on horses for a moment before it vanished into Lucius’s body. Then the red light was wrapping Lucius entirely, and Potter swayed on his feet, and magic blasted past Draco like the traveling edge of a wildfire, and he knew something profound had happened, though he had not the least idea what.

His father’s cuts closed. That was the important thing. Draco sagged back against the wall, shaking, and waited to see what Lucius would say. He could use the moments to compose himself and to come to terms with the undeniable thing that had just happened, whatever the hidden significance of the spell.

Potter saved my father’s life.

A more profound life-debt was owed a wizard who saved the life of a pure-blood patriarch or matriarch. Draco knew Potter hadn’t performed the spell to earn the debt, though. He had simply worked the magic because it was the right thing to do at the moment.

Draco had never thought he would be so grateful for Potter’s instinctive heroism.

“What happened?” Lucius whispered. That softness of voice was an honor, though Draco doubted Potter knew enough to recognize it as such.

“Someone took off the spells that protected you,” Potter said. He raised one hand as though he would wrap it around his own throat, but in the end lowered it to his side. Draco, his eyes alive with devouring curiosity towards Potter’s every movement now, was glad that he knew enough not to hurt himself in that fashion. “The curse immediately tried to return. I’d protected your chest better, and your enemy couldn’t have removed that magic without awakening you, so the curse wasn’t as severe there.”

“And the spell you used to defend me?” Lucius raised himself on one arm. Draco understood, though the part of him that was most his father’s son wanted to rush forwards and make Lucius lie down again. Lucius had made enough concessions to his physical weakness; now it was time for strength. “I thought I caught a phrase referring to ‘heart,’ but that was all.”

“Your education is not lacking in Latin, at least,” Potter murmured mockingly. Lucius caught his lower lip between his teeth, but said nothing, and Potter shook his head as if scolding himself. Draco wanted to step forwards, wrap his arms around him, and explain how little such scolding was deserved, but he wanted to hear the answer, too. And if Potter had rejected a massage, he would fight his way out of an embrace. “Defendo hostiam cum corde meo. ‘I defend the victim with my heart.’ Known as the Heart’s Blessing in some circles.”

Draco froze. His heartbeat roared in his ears.

“It sounds intolerably twee,” Lucius said. “What does it mean?”

“I’m sharing my life force with you,” Harry said. “So long as my heart beats, you cannot die.”

Lucius went very still, as well he might. Draco shut his eyes and shivered.

The sharing of life-force—and the sharing of blood, implied by the spell’s name and the red color of the light that had powered it. Potter, an outsider to the family, someone who owed them no obligation, had shared his blood with them.

Draco felt a spiral of emotions begin low in his gut, racing up towards his head. He didn’t try to hurry the revelation of what they were; he had enough to cope with in that moment, as he tried to keep from collapsing.

All the world hated pure-blood families, and the Malfoys were in a more precarious position than usual, having been prominent on the losing side of the war. Draco had learned to accept in the past few years that he would probably have to hope for his grandchildren to achieve respect, and not expect it himself. Meanwhile, he drew inwards to form a defensive hedge with Lucius and Narcissa and gazed back towards the position they had lost with resentment, whilst watching the rest of the world with distrust. No one would move to help them. They could use or bribe or manipulate others with false humility, but no one would make a sacrifice that benefited them unless it was accidental.

The emotions coiled around his heart, squeezing it savagely before they continued their journey upwards.

And now Potter had performed the most sacred and powerful gesture that he possibly could have—the gesture used to seal adoptions, to seal spouses into the family after a long and careful courtship—and willingly offered his life and his blood for them. And he had done it casually, with no view to ultimate gain.

Draco’s eyes snapped open as the emotions reached his brain and he knew them. Respect, and admiration for the qualities in Potter that had prompted him to this even if he didn’t know what it meant, and overpowering desire.

Here was the partner he had hoped for, the challenge he wanted to conquer. Someone loyal and beautiful and capable of making him laugh, and someone sealed into the family. Draco ground his teeth against the impulse to knock Potter to the floor right now and seal him into the family with other liquids than blood.

Potter, of course, spoke on a different level entirely, because he would see but not understand Lucius’s incredulity. “I’m young and healthy, and I stand a better chance of recognizing the medical curses that someone in hospital would probably use. They’ll have to go through me to get to you from now on. I would have used this spell from the beginning, but it is risky and requires concentration and power I don’t usually have access to. Probably only the fear that you were going to die immediately could have pushed me to get it right.”

“I know what it means to share life force with someone,” Lucius said at last, his voice quiet and strangled.

And so do I, Draco thought, as he stared with narrowed eyes at Potter, who looked uncomprehending still. And so will you, by the time I’m done with you, Harry.

It was both personal and familial, both what Draco had wanted and what the family needed, and that was what made it perfect.

He could feel hope wreathing around his soul, as the misfortunes of the past decade reversed themselves in instants. What might they not hope for, with Harry Potter as part of their family?

What might not he hope for, with someone like Harry at his side, in his bed?

It would take some time to seduce Harry, of course, but if there was anyone with greater skill and a better will in the world to do it than himself, Draco could not imagine him.