![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lomonaaerenRemember, DH SPOILERS in this story!
Thank you again for all the reviews!
And more angst. Did I mention this is the angsty part of the story?
Chapter Twenty-Five—Points of Love, Points of Honor
Draco kept a careful eye on Harry. He knew something had made his eyes go wide, and his face look as though he had just stepped over the edge of an unexpected cliff. He planned to watch Harry until he knew what was wrong, and then insist that he confront it, or at least tell Draco about whatever it was, immediately.
It couldn’t be the scar, could it?
But when Draco peered again at the scar through the remnants of Harry’s tattered robes, it seemed the same as it had when he looked the first time: a red line of skin that began at Harry’s shoulder and twisted down his flank, over his ribs, and finally stopped somewhere around the inner thigh. The life-debts did good healing work. Madam Pomfrey wouldn’t even need to look at it for long when she came around.
But then she’ll ask inconvenient questions about it, won’t she?
Draco shot a quick glance over his shoulder. The matron seemed almost finished with Granger, who now wore a sling, and she would probably be working her way around the infirmary to Harry soon. And Draco found himself reluctant to either explain the scar or tell someone else the truth about the life-debts, which would only result in determined efforts to separate him and Harry—from Granger, if no one else. He was reluctant to entertain the idea of anything that would let Harry draw further away.
And that included Harry’s own, blushing silence, his eyes now averted to the floor next to the bed instead of Draco.
Draco made his decision. He had already told Madam Pomfrey that Harry’s wounds weren’t bad, which was true. A further lie would harm nothing.
“Come,” he said, tugging at Harry’s wrist.
“Pardon?” Harry looked up at him, wild-eyed as though Draco had just made a sexual innuendo.
Draco blinked, but decided that now was not the time to tease Harry about his responsiveness. He tugged again, and Harry finally seemed to grasp what he wanted, looking from his own scar to Madam Pomfrey and back again. He nodded, stood, and slid off the infirmary bed. Granger, from the sudden turn of her head, noticed them go, but no one else did. And a moment later she was called off to her husband’s bedside to make him swallow a potion the matron insisted he needed, anyway.
They stepped out into the corridor, and Draco darted a glance around just to make sure they really were alone. Then he drew his wand and cast a privacy ward for extra measure. He wouldn’t give Harry a chance to draw away because of imagined listeners, either.
“Now,” he said, turning and facing Harry, keeping him lightly fenced in between his body and the wall. “Will you tell me why you looked as though your best friend had died a few minutes ago?”
*
Harry drew a deep breath, and then nodded. He had already made up his mind to tell Draco, hadn’t he? He had even decided what to say. It had to be spoken just right, or Draco would think up some way to get around it, or some reason why it didn’t matter.
But this mattered. So much. Harry hadn’t tested the strength of the marriage vows he’d made to Ginny against the life-debts, but he was willing to wager they were as strong. After all, he and she had carefully chosen the sternest set, the set that could never be dissolved or even worked around.
Draco leaned in and raised an eyebrow. He didn’t need to do or say anything more than that. Harry picked up his courage in both hands and began to speak.
“I realized something just now,” he said quietly. “Something that might not make you happy.”
Draco blinked rapidly several times. “So long as it’s not some nonsense about giving up on our friendship,” he said. “I think, after that, any question of separating from each other is academic. Isn’t it?”
Harry had to smile at the sudden touch of uncertainty in Draco’s tone, and his protectiveness arose again. Here was a man who had endured ten years of insecurity. If Harry could prevent the return of those feelings, he would.
“It depends on the sort of separation you mean,” said Harry. Draco still had a worried glint in his eyes—obvious if you knew where to look for it—and Harry couldn’t put the truth off any longer. “I’m in love with you.”
He could watch the realization work in through Draco’s ears to the rest of his brain. His eyes blinked so quickly that it looked as though he were trying to keep back tears, and then he leaned forwards and his hands fell lightly on Harry’s shoulders. He was swaying, as though he would lose his balance any moment.
“Harry,” he whispered. His voice thrilled with emotions Harry couldn’t examine, lest his own resolve to protect both Ginny and Draco weaken.
Protection. That was what Draco most needed from him at the moment. Harry could give nothing more precious.
He made his point by leaning in himself, scooping up a handful of Draco’s hair and palming his cheek with the same motion, and kissing him.
He had meant the kiss to make a point. He had not known that it would catch him up, too, his first kiss with the man he loved, and that sparks of several different fires would be lit along his spine all at once. He pressed closer, realizing only vaguely that Draco wasn’t fighting to get away, but mimicking his actions. He was too focused on the new sensations to think about what that meant, though he knew they were part of the reason he was enjoying this so much. Closeness, and warmth, and an encompassing he had never felt with Ginny, as though Draco embraced and forgave even those parts of him that had used the Unforgivables in battle—
And then the itching started.
Harry’s back exploded into fire, along with every inch of his ribs a moment later—save the skin where the scar ran—and he pulled away from Draco with a gasp. Draco kept his hands on Harry like glue or lead weights, staring dazedly into his eyes. Harry leaned back on the wall, trying to push away the itching and the angry buzzing of the strained marriage vows in his ears.
It didn’t work. The vows had been meant to cling and punish until the erring husband or wife stepped safely back inside limits. Harry still wanted to kiss Draco, and he was still touching him, even if it wasn’t with desire, and he was still hard for him and thinking about bare pale skin and a world where he hadn’t married Ginny. He would have to break contact before the sensations retreated, and he would have to be back inside the same house with Ginny before they would leave him completely.
“Why did you stop? Does my breath smell that bad?”
Behind the joking tone in Draco’s voice was immense hurt. He probably thought Harry was yet another one of the lovers he’d had after Marian who hadn’t lasted, whom he couldn’t trust. Harry shook his head and rested his hand on Draco’s shoulder, cautiously, watching his eyes and not his lips. The itching dwindled to a tolerable level, and he found that he could shape coherent sentences again.
“You’re not disgusting,” he said quietly. “It’s the marriage vows I made with Ginny. They’re the sternest kind—“
“The kind that punish you when you touch someone else sexually?” Draco’s surprise and uncertainty had been replaced with disgust. “Why in the world would you do that? Why would anyone do that? Those vows existed to let parents take erring children to task back in the Dark Ages, not to govern the lives of adults!”
Harry managed a chuckle. “I was very romantic and Gryffindor when I married Ginny and couldn’t imagine wanting anyone else. Why wouldn’t I have sworn to them? And she wanted to, as well.” He closed his eyes, partially because his gaze had started to slip lower and the warning snarl in his ears had intensified, and partially because he needed to gather his strength for what he wanted to say next. That kiss had shocked him in both good and bad ways.
“I’m in love with you,” he repeated. “But it’s not going to change anything. It can’t. Other than the fact that—“
Draco’s hand had tightened on his shoulder blade hard enough to hurt. Harry winced, but he had his strength back now, and he could look and meet Draco incredibly angry, raging eye to calm and composed one.
“Other than the fact that I want your happiness with every part of me that’s selfless,” Harry continued softly. “And maybe some parts that aren’t, even though I’d also like to demand that you sacrifice and wait for me. But that’s not fair. You need someone who can give you everything you want and need, Draco. That includes a sexual relationship. You wasted too many years inside a gray shell, chained to Marian and hating everything about yourself. I don’t want that to happen ever again. Find a lover who can make you happy, just as happy as I can make you, and also give himself or herself to you sexually. It would be better.”
“And I’m just supposed to ignore the fact that you’re in love with me,” Draco said flatly.
“Are you in love with me?” Harry stared at him, and it was Draco’s turn to flush a bit and glance away.
“Not that—I’m aware of,” he said carefully. “The feelings involved are rather delicate, after all, and it’s been some time since I’ve been able to express them.”
“See?” Harry said.
“See what?” Draco stared back at him, his eyes widening and deepening like hurricanes with his fury. “I see you offering yourself as a martyr to me whether I want that as a gift or not!”
“And I don’t want to be a martyr,” said Harry, shrugging. He was a bit calmer now. This was closer to his conception of what had to happen. “It would have been easier if I hadn’t fallen in love with you.”
“Easier for whom?” Draco demanded. “Especially since, no matter what I can or can’t call the state of my feelings right now, I know that I would rather have you in my bed and my life than any other person I’ve ever met?”
“Easier for me,” said Harry. “The marriage vows will keep me from ever being with you, Draco. I’ll have to long and watch and wait, and that’s unfair and stupid and I wish it didn’t have to be that way—but I’d hate to see you make a sacrifice of yourself for me even more. Find someone else who will make you happy. There has to be someone else out there for you who’s better than I am.”
“And if there isn’t?” Draco’s face had hardened into a mask of rage, as if he thought Harry was giving up of his own free will.
“I think there can be,” said Harry. “But regardless, the most we’ll ever be is friends. I told you about the marriage vows, and you saw them in action just now—“
“Do you want me?”
Harry managed to gesture to his groin, which was still painfully swollen. He could make a joke of this, and if Draco laughed, that might help him. “What does it look like?”
“That’s only part of it,” said Draco, staring at him like a kestrel about to swoop down on a mouse. “Do you want me, Harry? For more than just sex? Do you want to spend time with me in the ways proper to a bound pair? Am I the most important person in your life? Would you do anything for me?”
Harry’s hands betrayed him and reached out to cup Draco’s cheeks again. He stopped a few inches short of his skin, so that he wouldn’t actually touch him, but even the sight of Draco looking at him like that, fierce and proud and defiant and beloved, made him fill with a painful mixture of longing and bitterness.
“Yes,” he whispered. “Or, at least, you’re as important as the children and Ginny. And it can’t be otherwise, Draco,” he hastened to add. “You know why. The life-debts can’t be dissolved, but the marriage vows can’t be, either.”
“There has to be a way to get around that,” Draco insisted. “There was a way to nullify multiple life-debts all at once, by the willing gift of a wizard or witch. Why can’t there be a way to nullify marriage vows?”
Harry frowned. Draco wasn’t taking the news the way he had hoped. “But there isn’t,” he said. “This kind of vow has existed for hundreds of years, and someone would have discovered a way around it if there was one. There’s not. I think you should accept that, and try to be happy. Find someone else—“
*
Draco gave Harry a revolted glare that shut him up immediately.
Well, there’s that, at least. I wouldn’t want the man I think I’m falling in love with to be completely stupid.
“I don’t want anyone else,” said Draco levelly. “I want you. We are going to find a way around that marriage vow, and then we’ll have each other.”
Harry closed his eyes as though he were striving for patience. “Draco,” he said. “Find someone else.”
“No,” Draco said. It was so very simple. Harry was in love with him, therefore that was a reason for Draco to strive to his utmost. Surely everyone else in the world would understand that? Why did Draco get the one person who couldn’t?
Harry’s lucky he has other attributes to make up for that.
“You told me that you wanted me to be happy,” he continued. “It’s how I’m fulfilling one of my life-debts to you. Well. You’re necessary to my happiness, so I won’t stop until you’re completely mine.”
Harry blinked, looking bewildered. “But you don’t know that’s true,” he argued, as if this were all a matter of logic. “I could be necessary to your happiness and yet stay your friend. Surely another lover would just increase the total of your happiness, because it would be one more person in your life whom you could share something with?”
Draco had no prohibitions holding him back from touching Harry, so he reached out and cupped his face as he had the evening they found out about the life-debts. Harry started to rest on the palm, then drew back, wary and alert, wearing the expression of a man pursued by a kicked hornet hive.
Draco snarled under his breath, condemning Harry and the Weasley’s younger and more foolish Gryffindor selves for ruining the easy trust he had with the present Harry. He had the right to. He was having the dreams about me even then, he said. He should have known it would come to this someday.
“Tell me it wouldn’t tear you up inside to see men parading through the door and into my bed,” Draco whispered.
“It would,” said Harry. “But I would get over it. I’d have to. I want you happy more than I care about making myself happy.”
His green eyes were wide and utterly sincere.
Draco froze. He knew Harry had no idea what a self-revealing thing he’d just said.
And suddenly, some of the few things he hadn’t understood about Harry’s behavior over the past weeks made sense. Why he’d agreed to send George Weasley into death when he must have known the burden would weigh on him and he could never tell the truth to any of his adopted family. Why he’d agreed to go to therapy. Why he’d sometimes touched Draco without hesitation, sometimes held himself back as if thinking of his wife.
He was trying to make everyone happy except himself. He had shouldered the burden without even thinking about it, likely, and when Draco became important to him, Draco’s emotions became his to safeguard, just one more boulder to pick up and carry. He balanced them as best he could, and when it seemed as though nothing he could do was right, he made hasty and miserable compromises. The Weasleys and Granger probably picked at Harry’s patience and strength like vultures feeding on a decaying corpse bit by bit, and never realized it.
Neither had Draco, when he demanded Harry’s time and attention and wanted to win the contests he seemed to be having with Ginny Weasley. He had seen Harry worn down, but not known how guilty a part he was playing in it.
Well. That stops right now.
“Harry,” he said. “I hope that you never need to say anything like that again. And right now, I have something to ask of you.”
Harry blinked in startlement, then relaxed. “Oh, yes,” he said. “That sixth life-debt. I do rather owe that to you.” His eyes were bright, and Draco swallowed sickness—not because Harry was less than beautiful at the moment, but because his eagerness came from the opportunity to do things for someone else, not just because it was Draco or because he wanted to be rid of the responsibility of the life-debts.
So long as he’s thinking about serving other people, he doesn’t have to face up to the mess he’s making of his own life.
But that’s done.
Draco had avoided pushing so far, but now he was going to. And not for the sake of his own claim to Harry—at least, not directly. Harry had done the protecting so far, until Draco reversed matters by saving his life tonight. And that trend would continue until Harry proved himself capable of sparing the strength to guard Draco again.
“You’re making the same promise that I made to you,” Draco said.
“Five minutes of my time while you speak under Veritaserum?” Harry asked.
“Not that,” said Draco, grinding his teeth against the tirade he wanted to spout at Harry’s defensive mechanisms. They’d been well-practiced for years and years, and Draco himself had fallen for them. It was no wonder Harry thought that might happen again. He made an effort to speak calmly, choking back the defensive fury that was in part against the Weasleys and Granger and in part against himself and in part against whoever had taught Harry to behave like this in the first place. Maybe I should blame the Dark Lord. “The promise that I made to seek my own welfare, and do whatever I needed to to become happy. Only you’re applying it to your happiness, not mine.”
He waited.
Harry’s eyes turned a deep, distressed green.
Draco firmly touched the side of Harry’s face, and nodded.
“Please,” Harry whispered intensely, as though Draco had just made a threat to kill his children. “I can’t—I know that I can’t refuse to pay that if you demand it, but I can persuade you out of it. Please? Ask something else.”
“No,” Draco whispered back, and clasped the other side of Harry’s face, holding him still when Harry tried to shake his head in denial. “This is what I want. This is what you’re going to give me.”
“Ask something else.”
God, it was hard to ignore the hoarse pleading in his tone, but Draco managed. He held Harry’s gaze evenly. “It’s not so hard a request to fulfill,” he said. “Most wizards would be jumping at the chance to give such an easy payment. Why aren’t you, Harry?”
“You know why.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
Harry swallowed several times, each time opening his mouth as though he were going to speak, and then closing it and swallowing again. He seemed to have a piece of jagged glass stuck in his throat.
Finally, he said, “You know better than anyone else, because you know about George. Draco, I’m just barely managing you and Ginny and the children and the war as it is. I can make you all satisfied, and I can give my best effort to fighting the war, but only if nothing else piles on top of me. That’s why I was so upset when I realized I’d fallen in love with you. That’s why I—that’s the selfish reason I want to see you settled with someone else, so I’m not subjected to temptation and torn up about this, too. Please, ask something else.”
“Did I ask to be managed?” Draco said, being sure to keep his voice soothing. “Did your wife?”
“I have to,” Harry snapped. “I can’t lose either of you, I can’t hurt either of you, I can’t make you unhappy—“
“Do you know how much it hurts me,” said Draco, and it was easy to say the words despite how self-baring they were, “when I watch you suffer?”
Harry turned his head away. “And I’ll suffer more if you have me make this promise,” he said. “I don’t have time to think of myself right now, Draco. I’m just too busy. That will come later. A month or two, and maybe you’ll have found someone you like, at least temporarily, and Hermione and I will have tracked the Masked Lady down. Then I can rest. But—“
“And maybe that won’t happen,” said Draco, “at least as far as the Masked Lady is concerned. I can promise you that I won’t have settled down with a new lover. I don’t intend to date anyone else. I intend to find a way around these marriage vows, and give you as much peace as I can.
“I do understand the burdens you’re struggling with, Harry. But I know, too, that you’ll only go on adding them on, not resting. Your wife will come up with some new crisis, or one of your children will get sick, or someone will dream up a project that just requires the involvement of the Boy-Who-Lived. And you’ll agree. You always do. And then will come the day when you can’t get up anymore, and all the people who are standing on your shoulders and don’t know it will fall down. You need someone who makes you defend yourself before it’s too late. That’s what I’m doing.”
Harry said nothing at all. He stood with head bowed. He wasn’t crying, but there was a pale tinge to his face that Draco might have thought came from the wound if he didn’t know better.
Draco softened his voice further. He really, really didn’t want Harry to think that Draco was against him. Nothing could be further from the truth. He was Harry’s only true ally against a world that wanted to devour him—other than his children, maybe, but they were too young to help—and Harry had to keep trusting him.
“Harry Potter, I request and require that you fight for your own happiness as hard as you’re fighting for mine.” It wasn’t fair to require him to fight as hard as he was for his wife’s, Draco thought. If he gave more to her, that was his choice. But Draco would not allow their efforts, as a pair, to be unequal.
A pair. He licked his lips in excitement and longing. That meant more than he had thought, more than he had thought it could. He had not expected Harry to fall in love with him long before he was ready to become Draco’s lover.
But he had, and the marriage vows were a problem, but not an insurmountable one. Draco refused to let them be.
Harry shivered. “I’ll need your help,” he said dully, as if that were shameful to confess. “If I start collapsing under the extra weight, I’ll need your help.” His repetition of phrases seemed constant and involuntary; they marked his powerlessness more clearly than anything else Draco had seen tonight.
“You’ll have it,” said Draco, and kissed him, and, stepping back, dissolved the privacy ward. He continued to watch Harry in silence for some moments. Harry looked up at him, and though his eyes remained cloudy and dull, he nodded, once.
That was all the promise Draco required. Harry Potter had a way of sticking to his vows.
He strolled off gently down the corridor. Harry would need some time to think about this alone. Draco would fetch his broom, which he’d abandoned on the outskirts of the school in his haste to get Harry to the infirmary.
Hope lengthened his strides. He could do this. They could do this. They would.
*
Harry waited with his eyes shut for some time, because he had to. Then he looked up, turned to face the infirmary doorway, and asked, “How long were you watching, Hermione?”
Hermione stepped into plain sight. The sling around her right arm made Harry wince, but the look of accusation on her face went home like an arrow.
He glanced away.
“Long enough to hear that you want to cheat on your wife,” Hermione said, voice clipped. “Long enough to understand that you should have stayed far, far away from Draco Malfoy.” She paused, and took a deep breath.
“You’ll tell Ginny about this, Harry,” she said. “All of it. Or I will.”
Harry looked at her then. Her eyes were full of rejection—not for him, but for that part of him dedicated to Draco.
She turned and walked away.
Harry stood quite still for a moment, then began to shift the weight of his commitments again, carefully, because he had to do it alone.
Chapter 26.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
And more angst. Did I mention this is the angsty part of the story?
Chapter Twenty-Five—Points of Love, Points of Honor
Draco kept a careful eye on Harry. He knew something had made his eyes go wide, and his face look as though he had just stepped over the edge of an unexpected cliff. He planned to watch Harry until he knew what was wrong, and then insist that he confront it, or at least tell Draco about whatever it was, immediately.
It couldn’t be the scar, could it?
But when Draco peered again at the scar through the remnants of Harry’s tattered robes, it seemed the same as it had when he looked the first time: a red line of skin that began at Harry’s shoulder and twisted down his flank, over his ribs, and finally stopped somewhere around the inner thigh. The life-debts did good healing work. Madam Pomfrey wouldn’t even need to look at it for long when she came around.
But then she’ll ask inconvenient questions about it, won’t she?
Draco shot a quick glance over his shoulder. The matron seemed almost finished with Granger, who now wore a sling, and she would probably be working her way around the infirmary to Harry soon. And Draco found himself reluctant to either explain the scar or tell someone else the truth about the life-debts, which would only result in determined efforts to separate him and Harry—from Granger, if no one else. He was reluctant to entertain the idea of anything that would let Harry draw further away.
And that included Harry’s own, blushing silence, his eyes now averted to the floor next to the bed instead of Draco.
Draco made his decision. He had already told Madam Pomfrey that Harry’s wounds weren’t bad, which was true. A further lie would harm nothing.
“Come,” he said, tugging at Harry’s wrist.
“Pardon?” Harry looked up at him, wild-eyed as though Draco had just made a sexual innuendo.
Draco blinked, but decided that now was not the time to tease Harry about his responsiveness. He tugged again, and Harry finally seemed to grasp what he wanted, looking from his own scar to Madam Pomfrey and back again. He nodded, stood, and slid off the infirmary bed. Granger, from the sudden turn of her head, noticed them go, but no one else did. And a moment later she was called off to her husband’s bedside to make him swallow a potion the matron insisted he needed, anyway.
They stepped out into the corridor, and Draco darted a glance around just to make sure they really were alone. Then he drew his wand and cast a privacy ward for extra measure. He wouldn’t give Harry a chance to draw away because of imagined listeners, either.
“Now,” he said, turning and facing Harry, keeping him lightly fenced in between his body and the wall. “Will you tell me why you looked as though your best friend had died a few minutes ago?”
*
Harry drew a deep breath, and then nodded. He had already made up his mind to tell Draco, hadn’t he? He had even decided what to say. It had to be spoken just right, or Draco would think up some way to get around it, or some reason why it didn’t matter.
But this mattered. So much. Harry hadn’t tested the strength of the marriage vows he’d made to Ginny against the life-debts, but he was willing to wager they were as strong. After all, he and she had carefully chosen the sternest set, the set that could never be dissolved or even worked around.
Draco leaned in and raised an eyebrow. He didn’t need to do or say anything more than that. Harry picked up his courage in both hands and began to speak.
“I realized something just now,” he said quietly. “Something that might not make you happy.”
Draco blinked rapidly several times. “So long as it’s not some nonsense about giving up on our friendship,” he said. “I think, after that, any question of separating from each other is academic. Isn’t it?”
Harry had to smile at the sudden touch of uncertainty in Draco’s tone, and his protectiveness arose again. Here was a man who had endured ten years of insecurity. If Harry could prevent the return of those feelings, he would.
“It depends on the sort of separation you mean,” said Harry. Draco still had a worried glint in his eyes—obvious if you knew where to look for it—and Harry couldn’t put the truth off any longer. “I’m in love with you.”
He could watch the realization work in through Draco’s ears to the rest of his brain. His eyes blinked so quickly that it looked as though he were trying to keep back tears, and then he leaned forwards and his hands fell lightly on Harry’s shoulders. He was swaying, as though he would lose his balance any moment.
“Harry,” he whispered. His voice thrilled with emotions Harry couldn’t examine, lest his own resolve to protect both Ginny and Draco weaken.
Protection. That was what Draco most needed from him at the moment. Harry could give nothing more precious.
He made his point by leaning in himself, scooping up a handful of Draco’s hair and palming his cheek with the same motion, and kissing him.
He had meant the kiss to make a point. He had not known that it would catch him up, too, his first kiss with the man he loved, and that sparks of several different fires would be lit along his spine all at once. He pressed closer, realizing only vaguely that Draco wasn’t fighting to get away, but mimicking his actions. He was too focused on the new sensations to think about what that meant, though he knew they were part of the reason he was enjoying this so much. Closeness, and warmth, and an encompassing he had never felt with Ginny, as though Draco embraced and forgave even those parts of him that had used the Unforgivables in battle—
And then the itching started.
Harry’s back exploded into fire, along with every inch of his ribs a moment later—save the skin where the scar ran—and he pulled away from Draco with a gasp. Draco kept his hands on Harry like glue or lead weights, staring dazedly into his eyes. Harry leaned back on the wall, trying to push away the itching and the angry buzzing of the strained marriage vows in his ears.
It didn’t work. The vows had been meant to cling and punish until the erring husband or wife stepped safely back inside limits. Harry still wanted to kiss Draco, and he was still touching him, even if it wasn’t with desire, and he was still hard for him and thinking about bare pale skin and a world where he hadn’t married Ginny. He would have to break contact before the sensations retreated, and he would have to be back inside the same house with Ginny before they would leave him completely.
“Why did you stop? Does my breath smell that bad?”
Behind the joking tone in Draco’s voice was immense hurt. He probably thought Harry was yet another one of the lovers he’d had after Marian who hadn’t lasted, whom he couldn’t trust. Harry shook his head and rested his hand on Draco’s shoulder, cautiously, watching his eyes and not his lips. The itching dwindled to a tolerable level, and he found that he could shape coherent sentences again.
“You’re not disgusting,” he said quietly. “It’s the marriage vows I made with Ginny. They’re the sternest kind—“
“The kind that punish you when you touch someone else sexually?” Draco’s surprise and uncertainty had been replaced with disgust. “Why in the world would you do that? Why would anyone do that? Those vows existed to let parents take erring children to task back in the Dark Ages, not to govern the lives of adults!”
Harry managed a chuckle. “I was very romantic and Gryffindor when I married Ginny and couldn’t imagine wanting anyone else. Why wouldn’t I have sworn to them? And she wanted to, as well.” He closed his eyes, partially because his gaze had started to slip lower and the warning snarl in his ears had intensified, and partially because he needed to gather his strength for what he wanted to say next. That kiss had shocked him in both good and bad ways.
“I’m in love with you,” he repeated. “But it’s not going to change anything. It can’t. Other than the fact that—“
Draco’s hand had tightened on his shoulder blade hard enough to hurt. Harry winced, but he had his strength back now, and he could look and meet Draco incredibly angry, raging eye to calm and composed one.
“Other than the fact that I want your happiness with every part of me that’s selfless,” Harry continued softly. “And maybe some parts that aren’t, even though I’d also like to demand that you sacrifice and wait for me. But that’s not fair. You need someone who can give you everything you want and need, Draco. That includes a sexual relationship. You wasted too many years inside a gray shell, chained to Marian and hating everything about yourself. I don’t want that to happen ever again. Find a lover who can make you happy, just as happy as I can make you, and also give himself or herself to you sexually. It would be better.”
“And I’m just supposed to ignore the fact that you’re in love with me,” Draco said flatly.
“Are you in love with me?” Harry stared at him, and it was Draco’s turn to flush a bit and glance away.
“Not that—I’m aware of,” he said carefully. “The feelings involved are rather delicate, after all, and it’s been some time since I’ve been able to express them.”
“See?” Harry said.
“See what?” Draco stared back at him, his eyes widening and deepening like hurricanes with his fury. “I see you offering yourself as a martyr to me whether I want that as a gift or not!”
“And I don’t want to be a martyr,” said Harry, shrugging. He was a bit calmer now. This was closer to his conception of what had to happen. “It would have been easier if I hadn’t fallen in love with you.”
“Easier for whom?” Draco demanded. “Especially since, no matter what I can or can’t call the state of my feelings right now, I know that I would rather have you in my bed and my life than any other person I’ve ever met?”
“Easier for me,” said Harry. “The marriage vows will keep me from ever being with you, Draco. I’ll have to long and watch and wait, and that’s unfair and stupid and I wish it didn’t have to be that way—but I’d hate to see you make a sacrifice of yourself for me even more. Find someone else who will make you happy. There has to be someone else out there for you who’s better than I am.”
“And if there isn’t?” Draco’s face had hardened into a mask of rage, as if he thought Harry was giving up of his own free will.
“I think there can be,” said Harry. “But regardless, the most we’ll ever be is friends. I told you about the marriage vows, and you saw them in action just now—“
“Do you want me?”
Harry managed to gesture to his groin, which was still painfully swollen. He could make a joke of this, and if Draco laughed, that might help him. “What does it look like?”
“That’s only part of it,” said Draco, staring at him like a kestrel about to swoop down on a mouse. “Do you want me, Harry? For more than just sex? Do you want to spend time with me in the ways proper to a bound pair? Am I the most important person in your life? Would you do anything for me?”
Harry’s hands betrayed him and reached out to cup Draco’s cheeks again. He stopped a few inches short of his skin, so that he wouldn’t actually touch him, but even the sight of Draco looking at him like that, fierce and proud and defiant and beloved, made him fill with a painful mixture of longing and bitterness.
“Yes,” he whispered. “Or, at least, you’re as important as the children and Ginny. And it can’t be otherwise, Draco,” he hastened to add. “You know why. The life-debts can’t be dissolved, but the marriage vows can’t be, either.”
“There has to be a way to get around that,” Draco insisted. “There was a way to nullify multiple life-debts all at once, by the willing gift of a wizard or witch. Why can’t there be a way to nullify marriage vows?”
Harry frowned. Draco wasn’t taking the news the way he had hoped. “But there isn’t,” he said. “This kind of vow has existed for hundreds of years, and someone would have discovered a way around it if there was one. There’s not. I think you should accept that, and try to be happy. Find someone else—“
*
Draco gave Harry a revolted glare that shut him up immediately.
Well, there’s that, at least. I wouldn’t want the man I think I’m falling in love with to be completely stupid.
“I don’t want anyone else,” said Draco levelly. “I want you. We are going to find a way around that marriage vow, and then we’ll have each other.”
Harry closed his eyes as though he were striving for patience. “Draco,” he said. “Find someone else.”
“No,” Draco said. It was so very simple. Harry was in love with him, therefore that was a reason for Draco to strive to his utmost. Surely everyone else in the world would understand that? Why did Draco get the one person who couldn’t?
Harry’s lucky he has other attributes to make up for that.
“You told me that you wanted me to be happy,” he continued. “It’s how I’m fulfilling one of my life-debts to you. Well. You’re necessary to my happiness, so I won’t stop until you’re completely mine.”
Harry blinked, looking bewildered. “But you don’t know that’s true,” he argued, as if this were all a matter of logic. “I could be necessary to your happiness and yet stay your friend. Surely another lover would just increase the total of your happiness, because it would be one more person in your life whom you could share something with?”
Draco had no prohibitions holding him back from touching Harry, so he reached out and cupped his face as he had the evening they found out about the life-debts. Harry started to rest on the palm, then drew back, wary and alert, wearing the expression of a man pursued by a kicked hornet hive.
Draco snarled under his breath, condemning Harry and the Weasley’s younger and more foolish Gryffindor selves for ruining the easy trust he had with the present Harry. He had the right to. He was having the dreams about me even then, he said. He should have known it would come to this someday.
“Tell me it wouldn’t tear you up inside to see men parading through the door and into my bed,” Draco whispered.
“It would,” said Harry. “But I would get over it. I’d have to. I want you happy more than I care about making myself happy.”
His green eyes were wide and utterly sincere.
Draco froze. He knew Harry had no idea what a self-revealing thing he’d just said.
And suddenly, some of the few things he hadn’t understood about Harry’s behavior over the past weeks made sense. Why he’d agreed to send George Weasley into death when he must have known the burden would weigh on him and he could never tell the truth to any of his adopted family. Why he’d agreed to go to therapy. Why he’d sometimes touched Draco without hesitation, sometimes held himself back as if thinking of his wife.
He was trying to make everyone happy except himself. He had shouldered the burden without even thinking about it, likely, and when Draco became important to him, Draco’s emotions became his to safeguard, just one more boulder to pick up and carry. He balanced them as best he could, and when it seemed as though nothing he could do was right, he made hasty and miserable compromises. The Weasleys and Granger probably picked at Harry’s patience and strength like vultures feeding on a decaying corpse bit by bit, and never realized it.
Neither had Draco, when he demanded Harry’s time and attention and wanted to win the contests he seemed to be having with Ginny Weasley. He had seen Harry worn down, but not known how guilty a part he was playing in it.
Well. That stops right now.
“Harry,” he said. “I hope that you never need to say anything like that again. And right now, I have something to ask of you.”
Harry blinked in startlement, then relaxed. “Oh, yes,” he said. “That sixth life-debt. I do rather owe that to you.” His eyes were bright, and Draco swallowed sickness—not because Harry was less than beautiful at the moment, but because his eagerness came from the opportunity to do things for someone else, not just because it was Draco or because he wanted to be rid of the responsibility of the life-debts.
So long as he’s thinking about serving other people, he doesn’t have to face up to the mess he’s making of his own life.
But that’s done.
Draco had avoided pushing so far, but now he was going to. And not for the sake of his own claim to Harry—at least, not directly. Harry had done the protecting so far, until Draco reversed matters by saving his life tonight. And that trend would continue until Harry proved himself capable of sparing the strength to guard Draco again.
“You’re making the same promise that I made to you,” Draco said.
“Five minutes of my time while you speak under Veritaserum?” Harry asked.
“Not that,” said Draco, grinding his teeth against the tirade he wanted to spout at Harry’s defensive mechanisms. They’d been well-practiced for years and years, and Draco himself had fallen for them. It was no wonder Harry thought that might happen again. He made an effort to speak calmly, choking back the defensive fury that was in part against the Weasleys and Granger and in part against himself and in part against whoever had taught Harry to behave like this in the first place. Maybe I should blame the Dark Lord. “The promise that I made to seek my own welfare, and do whatever I needed to to become happy. Only you’re applying it to your happiness, not mine.”
He waited.
Harry’s eyes turned a deep, distressed green.
Draco firmly touched the side of Harry’s face, and nodded.
“Please,” Harry whispered intensely, as though Draco had just made a threat to kill his children. “I can’t—I know that I can’t refuse to pay that if you demand it, but I can persuade you out of it. Please? Ask something else.”
“No,” Draco whispered back, and clasped the other side of Harry’s face, holding him still when Harry tried to shake his head in denial. “This is what I want. This is what you’re going to give me.”
“Ask something else.”
God, it was hard to ignore the hoarse pleading in his tone, but Draco managed. He held Harry’s gaze evenly. “It’s not so hard a request to fulfill,” he said. “Most wizards would be jumping at the chance to give such an easy payment. Why aren’t you, Harry?”
“You know why.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
Harry swallowed several times, each time opening his mouth as though he were going to speak, and then closing it and swallowing again. He seemed to have a piece of jagged glass stuck in his throat.
Finally, he said, “You know better than anyone else, because you know about George. Draco, I’m just barely managing you and Ginny and the children and the war as it is. I can make you all satisfied, and I can give my best effort to fighting the war, but only if nothing else piles on top of me. That’s why I was so upset when I realized I’d fallen in love with you. That’s why I—that’s the selfish reason I want to see you settled with someone else, so I’m not subjected to temptation and torn up about this, too. Please, ask something else.”
“Did I ask to be managed?” Draco said, being sure to keep his voice soothing. “Did your wife?”
“I have to,” Harry snapped. “I can’t lose either of you, I can’t hurt either of you, I can’t make you unhappy—“
“Do you know how much it hurts me,” said Draco, and it was easy to say the words despite how self-baring they were, “when I watch you suffer?”
Harry turned his head away. “And I’ll suffer more if you have me make this promise,” he said. “I don’t have time to think of myself right now, Draco. I’m just too busy. That will come later. A month or two, and maybe you’ll have found someone you like, at least temporarily, and Hermione and I will have tracked the Masked Lady down. Then I can rest. But—“
“And maybe that won’t happen,” said Draco, “at least as far as the Masked Lady is concerned. I can promise you that I won’t have settled down with a new lover. I don’t intend to date anyone else. I intend to find a way around these marriage vows, and give you as much peace as I can.
“I do understand the burdens you’re struggling with, Harry. But I know, too, that you’ll only go on adding them on, not resting. Your wife will come up with some new crisis, or one of your children will get sick, or someone will dream up a project that just requires the involvement of the Boy-Who-Lived. And you’ll agree. You always do. And then will come the day when you can’t get up anymore, and all the people who are standing on your shoulders and don’t know it will fall down. You need someone who makes you defend yourself before it’s too late. That’s what I’m doing.”
Harry said nothing at all. He stood with head bowed. He wasn’t crying, but there was a pale tinge to his face that Draco might have thought came from the wound if he didn’t know better.
Draco softened his voice further. He really, really didn’t want Harry to think that Draco was against him. Nothing could be further from the truth. He was Harry’s only true ally against a world that wanted to devour him—other than his children, maybe, but they were too young to help—and Harry had to keep trusting him.
“Harry Potter, I request and require that you fight for your own happiness as hard as you’re fighting for mine.” It wasn’t fair to require him to fight as hard as he was for his wife’s, Draco thought. If he gave more to her, that was his choice. But Draco would not allow their efforts, as a pair, to be unequal.
A pair. He licked his lips in excitement and longing. That meant more than he had thought, more than he had thought it could. He had not expected Harry to fall in love with him long before he was ready to become Draco’s lover.
But he had, and the marriage vows were a problem, but not an insurmountable one. Draco refused to let them be.
Harry shivered. “I’ll need your help,” he said dully, as if that were shameful to confess. “If I start collapsing under the extra weight, I’ll need your help.” His repetition of phrases seemed constant and involuntary; they marked his powerlessness more clearly than anything else Draco had seen tonight.
“You’ll have it,” said Draco, and kissed him, and, stepping back, dissolved the privacy ward. He continued to watch Harry in silence for some moments. Harry looked up at him, and though his eyes remained cloudy and dull, he nodded, once.
That was all the promise Draco required. Harry Potter had a way of sticking to his vows.
He strolled off gently down the corridor. Harry would need some time to think about this alone. Draco would fetch his broom, which he’d abandoned on the outskirts of the school in his haste to get Harry to the infirmary.
Hope lengthened his strides. He could do this. They could do this. They would.
*
Harry waited with his eyes shut for some time, because he had to. Then he looked up, turned to face the infirmary doorway, and asked, “How long were you watching, Hermione?”
Hermione stepped into plain sight. The sling around her right arm made Harry wince, but the look of accusation on her face went home like an arrow.
He glanced away.
“Long enough to hear that you want to cheat on your wife,” Hermione said, voice clipped. “Long enough to understand that you should have stayed far, far away from Draco Malfoy.” She paused, and took a deep breath.
“You’ll tell Ginny about this, Harry,” she said. “All of it. Or I will.”
Harry looked at her then. Her eyes were full of rejection—not for him, but for that part of him dedicated to Draco.
She turned and walked away.
Harry stood quite still for a moment, then began to shift the weight of his commitments again, carefully, because he had to do it alone.
Chapter 26.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 01:05 am (UTC)I think I should have read them the other way round, but both have left me wanting to read more - you know you're obsessed when you stay up especially in the hopes of catching the new chapter.
I've really enjoyed reading all your stories and oneshots, I love the way how you portray your characters and I especially love how you can write Harry and Draco in a variety of situations and keep them in character without each story being a carbon copy of the previous.
I'm going to stop gushing as it's now just past 2am UK and I'm about ready to crash.
When I get some more time and am more awake I'll write a proper review.
~ Kaze
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 05:19 pm (UTC)I'm glad you like the varieties. I'm trying to avoid common fandom clichés while still staying true to the storylines I've started- some of which incorporate those clichés, or at least bits of them (Harry being unhappy in his marriage to Ginny, etc.)
I hope you had a good night's sleep!
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 01:28 am (UTC)I am filled equally with utter H8 for Hermione right now, and utter squee that "Yes! Someone saw the WHOLE THING!" That scene was just so revealing, and it really struck me deeply. Draco cares so so much for Harry, and he's the only one who knows him enough to see that Harry's comming apart at the seams. Wich is part of the reason why I'm so mad at Hermione, because she's his best friend, and she doesn't seemed to be worried about his happiness at all, or even realise that Harry is so full of grief and turmiol and self-loathing and the desperate desire to make everyone he cares about except himself happy, that he is just going to collapse. All this suppression he's beed doing is not healthy and Hermione should see that. But she doesnt. But Draco does ^^.
Harry's utter devastation at Draco's request for the life-debt just broke my heart. But it's necessary. Harry can't keep going on like this, and he has to fight for his happiness too. But, that's going to make an utter clusterfuck out of his life, it really is. And Draco is just so worried that even his seduction of Harry seems to be taking a back seat, wich is cause for concern right there.
And oh, is Ginny gonna find out soon? *sparkley eyes* I can't wait, really. Because I am an angst h0r and I LOVE making a clusterfuck out of my favorite boys' lives ^^
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 05:22 pm (UTC)Hermione did see them, but there's a difference between seeing and watching. She has her own perception of what she just witnessed, and it's not a very flattering one for Harry.
Basically, Ginny poisoned the well by getting to Hermione first. If Hermione had come to see the matter through Harry's viewpoint, then she might be on his side. But exactly because of Harry's belief that he should be immune to any form of suffering or complaint, he didn't say anything, so she thought he was fine.
(Besides, she tends to believe Harry when he says that he can put things off for just a little while longer and then he'll collapse, because that's what she does).
Harry will try, almost absent-mindedly, to go against Draco's request, because that's what he does automatically. But the life-debts are getting more aggressive now, and will force him to pay attention to his happiness more.
The next chapter does indeed contain Harry and Ginny's conversation.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 01:45 am (UTC)woo poor Harry this is the more difficult debts, but finally someway he will think of him too.
i will be waiting for the next chapter! im totally in love with this fic
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 05:23 pm (UTC)And thank you!
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 02:02 am (UTC)I wait for each new installment of this and Determined Frame of Mind. Very satisfying.
K
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 05:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 02:29 am (UTC)Teensy typo: “Yes,” he whispered. “Or, at least, you’re as important as the children and Ginny. And it can’t be otherwise, Draco,” he hastened to add. “You know why. The life-debs can’t be dissolved, but the marriage vows can’t be, either.”
That should be "life-debts".
But back to the story. You said this would be angsty, and it was. But I'm thrilled that someone is making Harry think about his own happiness. Because he was going to collapse otherwise. Still might.
I know you won't say anything yet about how they'll get around the marriage vows, but I am terribly curious about it and can't wait to read more.
I agree with
And I'm curious about something completely unrelated to the plot of this chapter, but more about your writing process. As an author, how much of the plot of the story do you work out before you start writing? Do you outline? Work out paragraphs of plot/summary? Or do you have a general idea in your head about where you want to go and let the story fill itself out? How much leeway do you give the story--e.g. do you let it tangent off on its own, or do you keep it rigidly to your plot? As an author myself, I've struggled with stories and written myself into corners and had great successes, when I've just written off the top of my head, or when I've outlined and worked out the plot in detail, or when I've just had a general idea and tried to work towards that. And I haven't really found a process that consistently works. I realize that perhaps it all depends on the story, and how inspired you are to write it, so one set process may not work for every plot. I'm just curious about how other authors approach writing.
And I loved this chapter, love this story, can't wait for more.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 05:49 pm (UTC)Harry will find it very hard to think about his happiness. The life-debts have ways of making sure they're fulfilled, though (which is one reason that Harry just couldn't refuse Narcissa's request for his help in the first place).
The idea as to how they'll get around the marriage vows is already present in the story. That's all I can say.
Ginny got to Hermione first, and so Hermione sees Harry's falling in love with Draco as a pattern of unhappiness stretching across years. She's not feeling very charitable to Harry at the moment.
I usually don't have a complete outline. With this story, for example, I definitely know the end and the mechanisms for achieving the end, but a lot of the individual scenes (like Harry and Draco being trapped in the box) were totally unplanned when I first started. On the other hand, when an important scene like that appears, it sort of "calls" the action of the next few chapters up like islands, so I always have a few stepping stones ahead.
Mostly, my only consistent way of working is "trust the story." If I want to put in a weird-sounding idea, do it; it'll bear fruit later. That's part of the reason I went with my impulse to make the Salazar's Snakes really kind of dumb, even though it didn't make sense at first. It was only as I wrote Chapter 18 that I came up with the idea of their being pawns of someone smarter.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 08:59 pm (UTC)Omg, something in my brain just went *click*. If being with Draco is necessary to Harry's happiness, wont the life-debt magic kinda... idk, 'kick' the marriage vows out of the way? Or... something. Because the magic is just *so* powerful, and has means of gaining power, while the vows... don't.
Or couldn't one of them choose sex as a payment for a life-debt? Although... that could go very, very wrong xD. I dunno, thats just the idea I had.... maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong xDD.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-07 01:49 pm (UTC)Neither of them would ask for sex for payment. It would cause way too much trouble between them.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 02:50 am (UTC)However, thank you for giving me something to enjoy. They are creative and they keep you on your toes.
I am far from coherent right now. So I will just be a proper fangirl!. I totally love them! :-)
-Kym
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 05:49 pm (UTC)And I'm very, very glad you enjoy them. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 03:24 am (UTC)Hermione. Oh, Hermione. You're fighting a losing battle here, lady. She's irritating me so much, mostly because she's not supporting Harry for Harry, rather she's acting under the guise of helping him in order to pull him away from Draco and towards Ginny. It's not his best interests that she's looking out for. And, as much as I want Ginny to find out about this (you know that Ginny and I have a strained relationship), I hate that Hermione's forcing the issue. Oh, you're writing this so well.
Harry’s back exploded into fire, along with every inch of his ribs a moment later—save the skin where the scar ran—and he pulled away from Draco with a gasp.
This sentence interests me...
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 05:51 pm (UTC)Draco got the inspiration from Harry's asking him to be happy in the first place as the fulfillment of a life-debt, but the idea to use it in such a sneaky way is all his own. :)
Hermione thinks Harry's a lot stronger than Ginny, and doesn't need as much help. It would take a sheer nervous breakdown from Harry to convince her otherwise- which, of course, Harry would do anything to prevent.
Well, it's true that the scars are not subject to the marriage vows, but I can't imagine that Harry would like the idea of becoming scarred all over until the itching stops. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 04:06 am (UTC)Hermione sure isn't helping, either!
Are you going to make Harry ger so scarred that nothing itches from the vows? Perhaps the life-debts will nullify them eventually... Man, I REALLY hope it works!
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 05:52 pm (UTC)And no, she isn't.
I have another solution in mind for the marriage vows.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 04:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 03:04 pm (UTC)I feel so sorry for Harry in this chapter. His world just seems to crumble around him. At least there's Draco there ready to help pick up the pieces, but then he's got his own agenda. Poor, poor Harry!!
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 05:53 pm (UTC)Hermione cast a small spell that pierced a hole in Draco's wards, just like someone might get through a hole in the wards around a building.
Harry's breakdown, when it comes, is pretty spectacular.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 04:53 pm (UTC)Beautiful chapter! :D
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 05:55 pm (UTC)Hermione thinks Harry should have seen the danger signals and stayed away from Draco, not "indulged" himself with Draco's presence.
And thank you!
no subject
Date: 2007-10-06 10:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-07 01:40 pm (UTC)And Harry cannot chase off Draco no matter how hard he tries, it seems.
Thanks!
no subject
Date: 2007-10-07 01:33 pm (UTC)Now if Harry could just stand up a bit for himself like in the prev. chap.that would be nice.
“And what about mine?” Harry snapped, turning to look at her." that was so nice for Harry to rebel and for once think about himself!
no subject
Date: 2007-10-07 01:42 pm (UTC)In a few chapters, Harry does stand up for himself. But it takes a large betrayal, something he simply cannot tolerate even for the sake of a friend.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-07 02:18 pm (UTC)OhOHOH!!!SOUNDS LIKE BIG DRAMA COMMING UP AHAID!
Now I'm totally beside myself!I love you!
no subject
Date: 2007-10-08 02:49 am (UTC)I’ve thought and thought and thought and I haven’t a CLUE as to how they’re going to get around the vows (and I love that). Well I did have a *thought* but I’m sure it’s wrong so I won’t mention it. Thank you for building the suspense and not making it obvious – or if it is obvious to others maybe I’m just oblivious : ). In any event, I can’t wait to see what happens next. Great job.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-08 01:42 pm (UTC)The real problem seems to be exactly what Draco is complaining about, Harry never stands up for himself - only others. I'm really interested to see how this debt request throws a wrench into Harry's juggling act.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-26 05:05 pm (UTC)You're mean.
Cheryl
Not liking her so much as I was in the beginning. She has a point, of course, and has always been pretty darned bossy concerning Harry, and thinks everyone should live within a strict code of honor, which I think is a lot of the problem she has with Draco (and Slytherins in general). I think it's interesting how she has become so obsessed with her job that she's completely fallen out of touch with Harry's feelings. She used to be quite good at knowing what was underneath Harry's (admittedly lousy) facades. She needs a wake-up call as badly as Harry did.
I know you're going somewhere with her, so I'll shut up now. This chapter was beyond brilliance. You are the Angel of Angst.