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lomonaaerenRemember, DH SPOILERS in this story!
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Seven—Strategies, Public and Private
“Why did she invite him?” Ginny managed to inflict a world of scorn on one helpless word.
“I don’t know.” Harry kept his voice calm as he glanced through the sheaf of parchments Hermione had sent him—the list of topics they would discuss at the meeting of the Blood Reparations Department. She could have waited, since they would see each other in only a few hours, but Hermione believed in encouraging her people to have good ideas even before they reached the meeting. “Draco has impressions of his own, given that he was part of the battle, I reckon. Hermione might just want one more pair of eyes so that she can learn as much as possible about our enemies.” He shifted a bit. Tutela was sitting on his left shoulder, her favorite perch, and though her talons didn’t hurt him, her weight tended to increase when Ginny was in the room.
“Harry.”
He glanced up and raised his eyebrows when he saw the pleading look on Ginny’s face, and the hand she had extended to him. He took it, and listened attentively while she fumbled her way through several declarations before settling on the one she wanted. It had become ridiculously easier to listen to Ginny ever since Tutela came. She would herd Harry out of the room with wingbeats about his head if she felt his anger build too much, and then make him chase her or play with his children or Floo Draco and trade jokes until he had laughed at least once. And she communicated so well—bobbing her head when he asked her questions, uttering warning hoots when James was about to pounce on Al, taking Harry’s chin in her foot and turning it towards her when she wanted him to pay attention. She truly was a Guardian Angel, and the best gift that anyone had ever given Harry.
But for now, Ginny, Harry thought, and stopping thinking about his owl to fasten his attention on her. She had settled for a brave pose, he thought, her eyes glistening just slightly as she gazed at him.
“Have you had any dreams of him in the past few nights?” she asked.
Harry blinked. “No,” he said. “But you know that I’ve been taking the Dreamless Sleep potion since—“
“You only took it on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday,” Ginny said, a muffled urgency in her voice. “It’s Saturday now. I’m asking you if you’d had any dreams since then, and hidden them from me.”
Startled, Harry paused, and then thought. No, actually, he hadn’t. His nights had been deep and calm, and if he had dreams, he remembered none of them on waking. He could remember all the dreams he had ever had of Draco, though, even the less sexual ones. If he didn’t recall them now, he wasn’t having them.
“No,” he said slowly.
Ginny’s hand tightened in his, but not to the point of pain, just the same kind of surreptitious little squeeze she used to give him when they were in front of reporters after Voldemort’s defeat and she was trying to keep him from snapping at the eager questions. “Then,” she whispered, “maybe they’re gone?”
“Maybe,” said Harry, unwilling to forsake the idea that he still had a connection with Draco. And then he shook his head. He should be happy if the dreams were leaving him alone. Maybe, now that all the life-debts but one were fulfilled, they were close to breaking apart from the mirror magic. Maybe he could look forward to a life beside his wife, instead of Draco.
His skin crawled. Harry took a slow, deep breath, and told himself not to be silly. He’d chosen Ginny originally. Why should he mourn if the bonds that had restricted his choices were gone, and now Draco was free to lose interest in him and find someone else?
Except that it doesn’t work that way, he thought, even as Tutela tightened her talons again and gave a low hoot of distress. He’s in love with you, now. And you know that he can’t just give you up that easily.
A discomforting thrill ran through him. Since he had learned that Draco loved him back, Harry was happier than he’d ever been, but at the same time, he knew he shouldn’t be—that he had no chance of getting his normal life back if he didn’t strive after it and wish for it. He wanted something he shouldn’t want, was made happy by what he knew was bad for him.
And if Draco seemed so much more attractive than Ginny did now, why shouldn’t that fade? Perhaps Harry would start finding faults with him in a few years the way he had with Ginny. He didn’t know. If he wanted to rest on certainty, he wouldn’t find it here.
There were only two things he knew for certain, he thought as Tutela nipped his ear. He had his Guardian Angel with him. And the dreams had stopped.
Well, a third thing. If he didn’t leave soon, he would be late for the strategy meeting. Hermione had told him to be there at ten-o’clock.
He gave Ginny a swift kiss, then touched Tutela’s back. She already knew that meant she should fly to her perch on the corner of the house, and she did it, though with one more final nip, and her flaps were reluctant and heavy. Harry smiled at his wife, and turned towards the door. He was Apparating to the Ministry, but under guard, at Hermione’s insistence.
“Harry?” Ginny asked. “Don’t you think this means there’s another chance for us?”
Harry paused and looked back at her. He let his voice emerge slow and thoughtful, daringly showing his exact feelings for once. “I don’t know,” he said.
The last thing he saw before the door shut was her face, shining with a hope that made him hurt inside.
*
Draco gave Millicent a tight smile and a little nod. “This looks to be accurate and invaluable information, Millicent. What will you want for it?”
“You think that I’ll start squeezing you for payment so soon?” Millicent’s eyes had the lazy, content look of a cat who had just received several minutes of human attention along with a full bowl of cream.
“You look like you want something,” Draco said. He mentally patted himself on the back for noticing. Not long ago, his instincts had been so dull that he would have assumed Millicent was helping him out of the goodness of her heart, and would have been caught off guard when she demanded her repayment.
Millicent sighed and passed a dramatic hand across her face. “Oh, dear. I obviously haven’t changed enough from school. I did think that you wouldn’t recognize my bargaining face.” She leaned forwards, so that it looked as if her head would poke out of the Floo and into his drawing room. “I want Potter to attend the opening of the new Phoenix Wizarding Library on the fifth.”
Draco blinked. “I didn’t know you were that interested in libraries, Millicent.”
“You didn’t ask what books the library carried,” said Millicent, and then waited for him to figure it out.
She must have been disappointed when Draco snapped his fingers and matched her smirk. “You finally found a safe place to store those books that you stole from your father’s study, didn’t you?” Millicent’s father had forbidden her to study Dark Arts, even though her much older brother had had the run of the house. Millicent, furious, had raided his study for books she was interested in, and had bragged about it several times at Hogwarts, but having books like that around was dangerous in these days of Aurors randomly raiding pure-blood houses.
“Yes.” Millicent’s eyes half-lidded again. “There will be wings that no one ever quite approaches, unless they hold a proper pass, of course. I’m basing the permission wards on Hogwarts’s Restricted Section. It’s a fascinating magical construction. This way, only those people who need those particular Dark Arts books will be able to see them, much less remove them from the library—and Aurors who want to check them over for illegal spells don’t count as having the need.” She flipped one hand as though to modestly dismiss her whole achievement. “There are still a few suspicious eyes on the library, since I made several donations to it, and Blaise’s mother made more. Putting Potter’s seal of approval on the thing will stop some of the rumors.”
“You’re brilliant,” Draco said, because compliments always went down well, and Millicent would be able to read his sincerity in his eyes and voice. Besides, there was no reason that he shouldn’t build up insurance for a future date.
Millicent uttered a light laugh and cut the Floo connection. Draco raised an eyebrow, gathered the documents that she had given him, and looked quickly through them. He didn’t have much time for investigation, since Granger had told him that he had to meet her at the Ministry at nine-thirty.
They were mostly deeds of possession for manor houses, some of them abandoned during the war, other damaged and sold by their disgusted owners, who had moved to more congenial surroundings. In each case, the same disguised handwriting appeared, though the aliases varied: Angelica Banks, Theodosia Angelsnight, Medea Timor. The remaining documents were statements of sale on land and on a shipment of “boulders” that were described with close accuracy in the report Millicent had snagged. Draco was willing to wager Malfoy Manor that those were actually dragon eggs, and not rocks.
He stood and slid the documents into the pocket of his robes, then snatched up a handful of Floo powder. His skin was tingling at the mere thought of being close to Harry again; it had been several days since that had last happened. Harry’s enraptured letter thanking him for Tutela—he’d named his Guardian Angel “Guardian” in Latin—and telling Draco that he was taking the Dreamless Sleep potion to please his wife had been their last post. They’d used the Floo to conduct brief conversations instead, and since Harry seemed to need them to remain light, Draco had obliged.
There was no reason that they should have gone a week without visiting each other, really, save that it had happened. And it had taken that long for Granger to put together a compendium of information on the Masked Lady sufficient for calling a full council of war.
Draco spoke the Floo designation for Granger’s office and stepped through, anticipating that Harry’s eyes would be the first pair he could meet honestly, as had happened the night they fought the dragons at Hogwarts.
Instead, he found himself facing Granger, who rose to her feet behind her desk with her wand trained on him, her eyes hard as amber.
Draco paused only a moment, and then made it seem as if he had not paused, sweeping into the room to sit down on the chair in front of Granger’s desk. “You told me to come earlier than Harry, didn’t you?” he asked, because if Harry had been there already, Draco was sure he would have been waiting at the Floo. “So that you could talk to me. Well done.”
The Granger he remembered from Hogwarts would have flushed and said something about how much she hated him. This Granger was a competent woman, as hard in her own way as the Masked Lady, and she didn’t let her fury slow her down any more than the sling around her left arm did. She jerked her head in a quick nod, and then sat down in her own chair.
“I want you to say away from Harry,” she said.
“Impossible,” Draco said lightly.
“Less impossible for you than for him.” There was no tone in her voice at all; if it wasn’t for the bright, disgusted sheen in her eyes, Draco might have thought he was facing a soulless Ministry official who cared for nothing but her job. Come to think of it, he realized as he studied her face, I’m not sure that that isn’t what she’s become. “I overheard your conversation in the corridor at Hogwarts. He’s in love with you. You have no such feelings. You can easily back away.”
Draco raised his eyebrows. He was not inclined to say that he loved Harry right now, though if asked he would not deny it. “How much do you know about the bonds that life-debts create between wizards, Granger? If you’re ignorant because you’re Muggleborn, just tell me.”
He hoped to use her resulting anger to push her off-balance, but she only narrowed her eyes and said, “I know that life-debts can be fulfilled, and the bonds broken. And I know that Ginny and Harry will both suffer if you continue to insist that he should be yours.”
“It is willingness that will drive him to answer those debts, and no pushing of mine,” Draco said gently. He didn’t feel much compassion for her—meddler that she was, head of a Department that existed to push people of wildly varying cultures together whether they wanted to coexist or not—but he could see her position, as friend of Harry’s wife first and Harry a distant second, and they were on the same side in the war. He did not want to antagonize her unnecessarily.
If it were necessary, of course, he would go into a private war with Granger for Harry, and the larger one could go hang.
“You required that he do something he hated doing,” Granger hissed. “He might be willing to come to you, but he’s deluded if he thinks that you could ever care for him back.”
“Did you listen,” Draco said, unable to believe that she had heard the conversation and could still think this way, “to the request I made of him? I ordered that he be happy, Granger. I had to order him to think about his own happiness. What does that say to you? That he’s just fine and healthy and happy without me, and that he’ll go on cheerfully doing whatever you need him to? It says to me that he’s worn out, and that he’s neglected his own happiness until he doesn’t recognize it as a need any more. With me, Harry will have someone who protects him as well as someone who is protected. I’ve made arrangements so that I won’t be constantly preying on his strength without even realizing it.” He paused, so that the words would come out just right, and added, “He could stand to have more than one friend who did that.”
Armored against such accusations, perhaps because she’d made them to herself in the dead of the night, Granger didn’t even blink. “He’s happy doing work for the Blood Reparations Department and spending time with his family,” she said briskly. “And he’s not happy about helping us in this war, but he’s doing it. I won’t have you distracting him, Malfoy.”
“Is that the way a friend would talk?” Draco asked quietly. “Is that something you would require of Mrs. Potter?”
“Ginny has different contributions to make,” said Granger. “She was never tested in battle, and she’s a competitive flyer, not one who could handle a broom around dragons.”
“She’s probably had more practice in chasing a Snitch than I have,” said Draco. “And yet, there I was. And there Harry was, even though he probably hasn’t spent much time on a broom casting. You don’t listen to yourself, I think, and certainly not to me. So much relies on Harry that you don’t dare question your debt to him, just in case everything falls apart.”
Granger drummed her fingers on the desk. “Am I to understand that you won’t leave Harry alone? I know you don’t respect honor much, Malfoy, or I would have appealed to you on this account before: Harry is a happily married man. He has a wife and children who need him and would be hurt by your interference. And using the life-debts to capture him is little better than slavery, since it’s not something he chose.”
“I feel reassured that you care little for Harry’s choices,” said Draco dryly. He might as well be dry. He wasn’t getting through to her with politeness. “This is still his choice, and might turn either way. If he finds that he can’t abandon his wife, then I won’t challenge his decision. I only want to be sure that he is speaking the truth and doing what’s best for him, not just for other people.”
“Harry thrives on doing what’s best for other people.”
“The wizarding world never gave him a choice in that,” said Draco, and stood. “Now. I don’t think that the time Harry’s arriving can be very far away, since you would have thought you needed only twenty minutes or so to convince me.” The look of surprise on Granger’s face would have amused him if he were in a mood to feel anything but ringing rage and sadness. “You have your answer. Everything still depends on Harry. And unlike some people in this room, I trust him to know what’s best for himself, and that that decision will not hurt others more than can be helped.”
“I don’t think he has any idea what he wants,” Granger snapped, “not when being with you would cost him everything.”
“If he can give up that ‘everything’ and still walk away with me,” Draco murmured, “I don’t think it’s so indispensable to him after all.”
Granger had risen to her feet, but the door opened then and Harry walked in.
He halted when he saw Draco, and his green eyes were deep with emotions that might have moved Draco to tears if he were given to expressing himself like that. There was pleasure, and joy, and uncertainty, and a kind of terror, the vertigo that someone felt in looking over a cliff.
What Draco didn’t see was the same soul-deep, tearing hurt that he’d witnessed at Hogwarts. Harry had moved beyond that, into territory where he might not know what happened next but at least could get away from the pain enough to think rationally.
Since Granger knew everything anyway, Draco moved up to Harry and laid his hand on his cheek. He could feel Granger watching as Harry immediately let the weight of his head rest there, his eyes wide and trusting.
Then Harry straightened and shot his friend a cool look Draco would never have believed him capable of.
“I think everyone’s here now, Hermione,” he said lightly, “since you told the others to meet in the administration room down the corridor.”
And he turned and stalked away, pausing long enough to brush a hand along Draco’s elbow in passing.
When he could catch his breath, Draco murmured, “Stop playing games with him and thinking he’s too stupid to see,” just in case Granger was inclined to take his advice, and then trotted after Harry.
*
Draco was bored.
He had absorbed Granger’s essential information in the first few minutes of the meeting: They still didn’t know who the Masked Lady was. There was now evidence—obtained from Charlie, the Dragon-Keeping Weasley—that numerous dragon sanctuaries had lost eggs, and that the Masked Lady had bought and raised them. Whatever methods she’d used to domesticate them for riding were still unknown, as well. The plans she’d used to attack Diagon Alley, Harry’s house, Malfoy Manor, and Hogwarts had taken her months to lay, and it was unlikely that she could do something else significant quickly.
Granger’s people had also discovered why she’d wanted to attack Hogwarts, or thought they had, via a third warning from the same person who’d warned them about the attacks on Diagon Alley and the school. When everything was laid waste, the Masked Lady would have used the confusion to place the blame on two of the Muggleborn supremacist groups involved. Pure-blood families, enraged and in mourning over the deaths of their children, would have attacked the Muggleborns, and the war would have started that way. With Harry dead and the attacks in Diagon Alley blamed on pure-blood supremacists, there would have been no public figure of sufficient strength and popularity to calm the fury.
Draco wondered idly if it stung Granger that she would never have that level of recognition and adoration that people gave Harry.
But even though he’d understood that, not all the Ministry officials had, and Granger was still explaining, along with why they had every reason to fear another attack from the Masked Lady in the future.
He was playing with Harry’s fingers beneath the table, noting that his own breathing was easier in Harry’s presence and that the touch of his skin was essential after a week of no dreams, when he realized the warning note had been passed down the table to him. He picked it up and looked at it, expecting to see nothing more than another disguised hand. After all, the traitor in the Masked Lady’s ranks wouldn’t have wanted to risk discovery himself.
And then he went cold, and the blood rushing in his ears drowned his voice; it was only because he planned to speak the words that he knew what he said. “I know this handwriting.”
Everyone turned expectantly towards him, and Minister Shacklebolt demanded, “You know who the Masked Lady is?”
“No,” Draco said softly. Harry was leaning against him now, rubbing small, soothing circles on his back, out of sight. The merest contact of their shoulders would have helped Draco; more gave him the strength to look up, meet every pair of eyes—Granger’s last—and say, “The person warning us of the attacks is my wife Marian.”
“How can that be?” Weasley asked, sounding baffled. He sat to Granger’s right as usual, and concealed his boredom with more skill than Draco. “I thought she set the Blood Hydra on you?”
“I think,” Draco said, his gaze fastened to the note, his mind wheeling through memories of the past—of how much Marian had loved Scorpius and how little she would have liked to hurt him— “that she might have joined the Masked Lady’s followers and learned too late that the blood magic they had her perform could have hurt her own son. She loves Scorpius. She wouldn’t turn against him. But she could hardly back out once she was enmeshed, either. She might risk sending us these warnings.” He frowned and passed the note up the table to Granger, who was impatiently reaching for it. “At the very least, I can’t think of a reason why anyone else would want to disguise her handwriting as Marian’s. She has to know that not many people would recognize it, and of the ones who did, still fewer would trust her.”
“No one, I hope,” Harry said into his ear.
Draco reached behind himself and squeezed Harry’s shoulder. He saw Weasley’s eyes narrow thoughtfully.
“We’ll see,” said Granger, who did not sound convinced. “I’ll have to run some tests on it first.”
“You’ve still made more of a contribution than anyone else here except Hermione has,” Harry murmured to him.
The sound of his voice was—proud. Draco basked in it, feeling it lap around him like a warm bath.
*
“Ah, Mr. Potter.” There was a long pause following the words, and then Eaglethorpe softly cleared his throat. “Forgive me, but you don’t look well.”
“No,” Harry murmured, sitting in the chair across from Eaglethorpe’s desk with his head in his hands. “I don’t think I am, and I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
A few days ago, in the Ministry meeting while he was sitting next to Draco, he thought nothing could have made him unhappy. The strain between him and Ginny was just something he would have to live with. He’d make sure that his being in love with Draco didn’t adversely affect his children. And he could do nothing to help the war for the moment, not until Hermione’s investigators uncovered more information about the Masked Lady. He’d finally found an accommodation between his duties and himself. He was more relaxed than he had been in years.
And then, a few hours after the meeting, his vision had started to blaze. Shadows looked wrong. Patches of color like afterimages hovered in the corners of his eyes, but darted away when he tried to focus on them. His head ached, and his tongue tangled around the simplest words.
Ginny had suggested he rest and eat simple foods, because he was probably sick. But nothing happened to alleviate the symptoms. Harry slept—still without dreams of Draco—and woke to find himself hardly able to see. Ginny’s concerned voice told him that his face was pale and his hands were shaking when he held them up in front of his eyes.
Harry had managed to clear his vision by using a few simple spells, stubbornly and over and over again, but neither Hermione nor Ron had any idea how to stop the hallucinations completely. Molly had fussed over him, seeming glad of the distraction from her grief, but even she, with her vast experience in raising seven children, couldn’t say what was wrong with him. Harry hadn’t contacted Draco; he didn’t want to spread any infection to him, Narcissa, or Scorpius.
Tutela had perched worriedly on the back of his bed and hooted softly over and over, but she wouldn’t drive him to play when he wasn’t feeling well. Ginny had asked whether he really needed to keep the appointment with Eaglethorpe, but Harry had insisted. With any luck, it would be the last one.
“Should you be here?” Eaglethorpe asked bluntly.
Harry forced himself to drop his hands and look the other man in the eye. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I’m seeing color patches and messing up my sentences and having headaches, but that’s still better than the way I felt yesterday morning or Saturday night.”
His eyes resigned, Eaglethorpe nodded. “So. Please tell me if you experienced attraction to any other man.”
“No,” Harry said quietly. “No more than I commonly find other women on the street attractive.”
The therapist gave him a melancholy smile. “Then, Mr. Potter, I’m afraid that I must tell you my diagnosis is love. It could be infatuation, of course, but I don’t think it is. These dreams have had ten years to work on your mind. You’re inclined to pursue Mr. Malfoy, and now that you’ve met him, you have opportunity to do so.” He shook his head. “This isn’t a mental illness, and still less a confusion of sexual orientation. Your orientation is exactly as flexible as it needs to be to accommodate loving this man, and no more.”
Harry nodded. “What makes you think so?” A patch of pink was shimmering in the corner of his eye. He resolutely ignored it.
“Because I have read your history and studied you as you sat in front of me,” Eaglethorpe said. “You’re extremely loyal, and your loyalties are not easily changed. Once you told me how Mr. Malfoy gained yours, I didn’t think it would waver. Of course, your loyalty to your wife was once as strong, but it is old and—forgive me—seems to receive little reinforcement from her side. It is only natural that this bond should shine strongly, after ten years of subtle reinforcement from the dreams and Mr. Malfoy’s accommodation of your desires.”
“The dreams have stopped,” Harry muttered.
“That—is worrisome,” Eaglethorpe said, and his voice sharpened. “Do you think that has something to do with your illness?”
Harry snorted. “I don’t see how. I’ve accepted that I love Draco, myself. I’ve told my wife. I spent the last week happier than I have been in some time.”
“Yes, none of that should have weakened you.” Eaglethorpe signed a piece of parchment, and then passed it across the desk to Harry. “I’m afraid there’s nothing more I can do for the particular problem you came to me with. If you’d like to talk to me in the future, please do arrange it. If you’ll just sign here?”
Harry smiled, though he knew it was weak, and stood up, reaching across the desk to sign.
He never remembered the quill touching the parchment, or his body hitting the floor.
Chapter 28.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Seven—Strategies, Public and Private
“Why did she invite him?” Ginny managed to inflict a world of scorn on one helpless word.
“I don’t know.” Harry kept his voice calm as he glanced through the sheaf of parchments Hermione had sent him—the list of topics they would discuss at the meeting of the Blood Reparations Department. She could have waited, since they would see each other in only a few hours, but Hermione believed in encouraging her people to have good ideas even before they reached the meeting. “Draco has impressions of his own, given that he was part of the battle, I reckon. Hermione might just want one more pair of eyes so that she can learn as much as possible about our enemies.” He shifted a bit. Tutela was sitting on his left shoulder, her favorite perch, and though her talons didn’t hurt him, her weight tended to increase when Ginny was in the room.
“Harry.”
He glanced up and raised his eyebrows when he saw the pleading look on Ginny’s face, and the hand she had extended to him. He took it, and listened attentively while she fumbled her way through several declarations before settling on the one she wanted. It had become ridiculously easier to listen to Ginny ever since Tutela came. She would herd Harry out of the room with wingbeats about his head if she felt his anger build too much, and then make him chase her or play with his children or Floo Draco and trade jokes until he had laughed at least once. And she communicated so well—bobbing her head when he asked her questions, uttering warning hoots when James was about to pounce on Al, taking Harry’s chin in her foot and turning it towards her when she wanted him to pay attention. She truly was a Guardian Angel, and the best gift that anyone had ever given Harry.
But for now, Ginny, Harry thought, and stopping thinking about his owl to fasten his attention on her. She had settled for a brave pose, he thought, her eyes glistening just slightly as she gazed at him.
“Have you had any dreams of him in the past few nights?” she asked.
Harry blinked. “No,” he said. “But you know that I’ve been taking the Dreamless Sleep potion since—“
“You only took it on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday,” Ginny said, a muffled urgency in her voice. “It’s Saturday now. I’m asking you if you’d had any dreams since then, and hidden them from me.”
Startled, Harry paused, and then thought. No, actually, he hadn’t. His nights had been deep and calm, and if he had dreams, he remembered none of them on waking. He could remember all the dreams he had ever had of Draco, though, even the less sexual ones. If he didn’t recall them now, he wasn’t having them.
“No,” he said slowly.
Ginny’s hand tightened in his, but not to the point of pain, just the same kind of surreptitious little squeeze she used to give him when they were in front of reporters after Voldemort’s defeat and she was trying to keep him from snapping at the eager questions. “Then,” she whispered, “maybe they’re gone?”
“Maybe,” said Harry, unwilling to forsake the idea that he still had a connection with Draco. And then he shook his head. He should be happy if the dreams were leaving him alone. Maybe, now that all the life-debts but one were fulfilled, they were close to breaking apart from the mirror magic. Maybe he could look forward to a life beside his wife, instead of Draco.
His skin crawled. Harry took a slow, deep breath, and told himself not to be silly. He’d chosen Ginny originally. Why should he mourn if the bonds that had restricted his choices were gone, and now Draco was free to lose interest in him and find someone else?
Except that it doesn’t work that way, he thought, even as Tutela tightened her talons again and gave a low hoot of distress. He’s in love with you, now. And you know that he can’t just give you up that easily.
A discomforting thrill ran through him. Since he had learned that Draco loved him back, Harry was happier than he’d ever been, but at the same time, he knew he shouldn’t be—that he had no chance of getting his normal life back if he didn’t strive after it and wish for it. He wanted something he shouldn’t want, was made happy by what he knew was bad for him.
And if Draco seemed so much more attractive than Ginny did now, why shouldn’t that fade? Perhaps Harry would start finding faults with him in a few years the way he had with Ginny. He didn’t know. If he wanted to rest on certainty, he wouldn’t find it here.
There were only two things he knew for certain, he thought as Tutela nipped his ear. He had his Guardian Angel with him. And the dreams had stopped.
Well, a third thing. If he didn’t leave soon, he would be late for the strategy meeting. Hermione had told him to be there at ten-o’clock.
He gave Ginny a swift kiss, then touched Tutela’s back. She already knew that meant she should fly to her perch on the corner of the house, and she did it, though with one more final nip, and her flaps were reluctant and heavy. Harry smiled at his wife, and turned towards the door. He was Apparating to the Ministry, but under guard, at Hermione’s insistence.
“Harry?” Ginny asked. “Don’t you think this means there’s another chance for us?”
Harry paused and looked back at her. He let his voice emerge slow and thoughtful, daringly showing his exact feelings for once. “I don’t know,” he said.
The last thing he saw before the door shut was her face, shining with a hope that made him hurt inside.
*
Draco gave Millicent a tight smile and a little nod. “This looks to be accurate and invaluable information, Millicent. What will you want for it?”
“You think that I’ll start squeezing you for payment so soon?” Millicent’s eyes had the lazy, content look of a cat who had just received several minutes of human attention along with a full bowl of cream.
“You look like you want something,” Draco said. He mentally patted himself on the back for noticing. Not long ago, his instincts had been so dull that he would have assumed Millicent was helping him out of the goodness of her heart, and would have been caught off guard when she demanded her repayment.
Millicent sighed and passed a dramatic hand across her face. “Oh, dear. I obviously haven’t changed enough from school. I did think that you wouldn’t recognize my bargaining face.” She leaned forwards, so that it looked as if her head would poke out of the Floo and into his drawing room. “I want Potter to attend the opening of the new Phoenix Wizarding Library on the fifth.”
Draco blinked. “I didn’t know you were that interested in libraries, Millicent.”
“You didn’t ask what books the library carried,” said Millicent, and then waited for him to figure it out.
She must have been disappointed when Draco snapped his fingers and matched her smirk. “You finally found a safe place to store those books that you stole from your father’s study, didn’t you?” Millicent’s father had forbidden her to study Dark Arts, even though her much older brother had had the run of the house. Millicent, furious, had raided his study for books she was interested in, and had bragged about it several times at Hogwarts, but having books like that around was dangerous in these days of Aurors randomly raiding pure-blood houses.
“Yes.” Millicent’s eyes half-lidded again. “There will be wings that no one ever quite approaches, unless they hold a proper pass, of course. I’m basing the permission wards on Hogwarts’s Restricted Section. It’s a fascinating magical construction. This way, only those people who need those particular Dark Arts books will be able to see them, much less remove them from the library—and Aurors who want to check them over for illegal spells don’t count as having the need.” She flipped one hand as though to modestly dismiss her whole achievement. “There are still a few suspicious eyes on the library, since I made several donations to it, and Blaise’s mother made more. Putting Potter’s seal of approval on the thing will stop some of the rumors.”
“You’re brilliant,” Draco said, because compliments always went down well, and Millicent would be able to read his sincerity in his eyes and voice. Besides, there was no reason that he shouldn’t build up insurance for a future date.
Millicent uttered a light laugh and cut the Floo connection. Draco raised an eyebrow, gathered the documents that she had given him, and looked quickly through them. He didn’t have much time for investigation, since Granger had told him that he had to meet her at the Ministry at nine-thirty.
They were mostly deeds of possession for manor houses, some of them abandoned during the war, other damaged and sold by their disgusted owners, who had moved to more congenial surroundings. In each case, the same disguised handwriting appeared, though the aliases varied: Angelica Banks, Theodosia Angelsnight, Medea Timor. The remaining documents were statements of sale on land and on a shipment of “boulders” that were described with close accuracy in the report Millicent had snagged. Draco was willing to wager Malfoy Manor that those were actually dragon eggs, and not rocks.
He stood and slid the documents into the pocket of his robes, then snatched up a handful of Floo powder. His skin was tingling at the mere thought of being close to Harry again; it had been several days since that had last happened. Harry’s enraptured letter thanking him for Tutela—he’d named his Guardian Angel “Guardian” in Latin—and telling Draco that he was taking the Dreamless Sleep potion to please his wife had been their last post. They’d used the Floo to conduct brief conversations instead, and since Harry seemed to need them to remain light, Draco had obliged.
There was no reason that they should have gone a week without visiting each other, really, save that it had happened. And it had taken that long for Granger to put together a compendium of information on the Masked Lady sufficient for calling a full council of war.
Draco spoke the Floo designation for Granger’s office and stepped through, anticipating that Harry’s eyes would be the first pair he could meet honestly, as had happened the night they fought the dragons at Hogwarts.
Instead, he found himself facing Granger, who rose to her feet behind her desk with her wand trained on him, her eyes hard as amber.
Draco paused only a moment, and then made it seem as if he had not paused, sweeping into the room to sit down on the chair in front of Granger’s desk. “You told me to come earlier than Harry, didn’t you?” he asked, because if Harry had been there already, Draco was sure he would have been waiting at the Floo. “So that you could talk to me. Well done.”
The Granger he remembered from Hogwarts would have flushed and said something about how much she hated him. This Granger was a competent woman, as hard in her own way as the Masked Lady, and she didn’t let her fury slow her down any more than the sling around her left arm did. She jerked her head in a quick nod, and then sat down in her own chair.
“I want you to say away from Harry,” she said.
“Impossible,” Draco said lightly.
“Less impossible for you than for him.” There was no tone in her voice at all; if it wasn’t for the bright, disgusted sheen in her eyes, Draco might have thought he was facing a soulless Ministry official who cared for nothing but her job. Come to think of it, he realized as he studied her face, I’m not sure that that isn’t what she’s become. “I overheard your conversation in the corridor at Hogwarts. He’s in love with you. You have no such feelings. You can easily back away.”
Draco raised his eyebrows. He was not inclined to say that he loved Harry right now, though if asked he would not deny it. “How much do you know about the bonds that life-debts create between wizards, Granger? If you’re ignorant because you’re Muggleborn, just tell me.”
He hoped to use her resulting anger to push her off-balance, but she only narrowed her eyes and said, “I know that life-debts can be fulfilled, and the bonds broken. And I know that Ginny and Harry will both suffer if you continue to insist that he should be yours.”
“It is willingness that will drive him to answer those debts, and no pushing of mine,” Draco said gently. He didn’t feel much compassion for her—meddler that she was, head of a Department that existed to push people of wildly varying cultures together whether they wanted to coexist or not—but he could see her position, as friend of Harry’s wife first and Harry a distant second, and they were on the same side in the war. He did not want to antagonize her unnecessarily.
If it were necessary, of course, he would go into a private war with Granger for Harry, and the larger one could go hang.
“You required that he do something he hated doing,” Granger hissed. “He might be willing to come to you, but he’s deluded if he thinks that you could ever care for him back.”
“Did you listen,” Draco said, unable to believe that she had heard the conversation and could still think this way, “to the request I made of him? I ordered that he be happy, Granger. I had to order him to think about his own happiness. What does that say to you? That he’s just fine and healthy and happy without me, and that he’ll go on cheerfully doing whatever you need him to? It says to me that he’s worn out, and that he’s neglected his own happiness until he doesn’t recognize it as a need any more. With me, Harry will have someone who protects him as well as someone who is protected. I’ve made arrangements so that I won’t be constantly preying on his strength without even realizing it.” He paused, so that the words would come out just right, and added, “He could stand to have more than one friend who did that.”
Armored against such accusations, perhaps because she’d made them to herself in the dead of the night, Granger didn’t even blink. “He’s happy doing work for the Blood Reparations Department and spending time with his family,” she said briskly. “And he’s not happy about helping us in this war, but he’s doing it. I won’t have you distracting him, Malfoy.”
“Is that the way a friend would talk?” Draco asked quietly. “Is that something you would require of Mrs. Potter?”
“Ginny has different contributions to make,” said Granger. “She was never tested in battle, and she’s a competitive flyer, not one who could handle a broom around dragons.”
“She’s probably had more practice in chasing a Snitch than I have,” said Draco. “And yet, there I was. And there Harry was, even though he probably hasn’t spent much time on a broom casting. You don’t listen to yourself, I think, and certainly not to me. So much relies on Harry that you don’t dare question your debt to him, just in case everything falls apart.”
Granger drummed her fingers on the desk. “Am I to understand that you won’t leave Harry alone? I know you don’t respect honor much, Malfoy, or I would have appealed to you on this account before: Harry is a happily married man. He has a wife and children who need him and would be hurt by your interference. And using the life-debts to capture him is little better than slavery, since it’s not something he chose.”
“I feel reassured that you care little for Harry’s choices,” said Draco dryly. He might as well be dry. He wasn’t getting through to her with politeness. “This is still his choice, and might turn either way. If he finds that he can’t abandon his wife, then I won’t challenge his decision. I only want to be sure that he is speaking the truth and doing what’s best for him, not just for other people.”
“Harry thrives on doing what’s best for other people.”
“The wizarding world never gave him a choice in that,” said Draco, and stood. “Now. I don’t think that the time Harry’s arriving can be very far away, since you would have thought you needed only twenty minutes or so to convince me.” The look of surprise on Granger’s face would have amused him if he were in a mood to feel anything but ringing rage and sadness. “You have your answer. Everything still depends on Harry. And unlike some people in this room, I trust him to know what’s best for himself, and that that decision will not hurt others more than can be helped.”
“I don’t think he has any idea what he wants,” Granger snapped, “not when being with you would cost him everything.”
“If he can give up that ‘everything’ and still walk away with me,” Draco murmured, “I don’t think it’s so indispensable to him after all.”
Granger had risen to her feet, but the door opened then and Harry walked in.
He halted when he saw Draco, and his green eyes were deep with emotions that might have moved Draco to tears if he were given to expressing himself like that. There was pleasure, and joy, and uncertainty, and a kind of terror, the vertigo that someone felt in looking over a cliff.
What Draco didn’t see was the same soul-deep, tearing hurt that he’d witnessed at Hogwarts. Harry had moved beyond that, into territory where he might not know what happened next but at least could get away from the pain enough to think rationally.
Since Granger knew everything anyway, Draco moved up to Harry and laid his hand on his cheek. He could feel Granger watching as Harry immediately let the weight of his head rest there, his eyes wide and trusting.
Then Harry straightened and shot his friend a cool look Draco would never have believed him capable of.
“I think everyone’s here now, Hermione,” he said lightly, “since you told the others to meet in the administration room down the corridor.”
And he turned and stalked away, pausing long enough to brush a hand along Draco’s elbow in passing.
When he could catch his breath, Draco murmured, “Stop playing games with him and thinking he’s too stupid to see,” just in case Granger was inclined to take his advice, and then trotted after Harry.
*
Draco was bored.
He had absorbed Granger’s essential information in the first few minutes of the meeting: They still didn’t know who the Masked Lady was. There was now evidence—obtained from Charlie, the Dragon-Keeping Weasley—that numerous dragon sanctuaries had lost eggs, and that the Masked Lady had bought and raised them. Whatever methods she’d used to domesticate them for riding were still unknown, as well. The plans she’d used to attack Diagon Alley, Harry’s house, Malfoy Manor, and Hogwarts had taken her months to lay, and it was unlikely that she could do something else significant quickly.
Granger’s people had also discovered why she’d wanted to attack Hogwarts, or thought they had, via a third warning from the same person who’d warned them about the attacks on Diagon Alley and the school. When everything was laid waste, the Masked Lady would have used the confusion to place the blame on two of the Muggleborn supremacist groups involved. Pure-blood families, enraged and in mourning over the deaths of their children, would have attacked the Muggleborns, and the war would have started that way. With Harry dead and the attacks in Diagon Alley blamed on pure-blood supremacists, there would have been no public figure of sufficient strength and popularity to calm the fury.
Draco wondered idly if it stung Granger that she would never have that level of recognition and adoration that people gave Harry.
But even though he’d understood that, not all the Ministry officials had, and Granger was still explaining, along with why they had every reason to fear another attack from the Masked Lady in the future.
He was playing with Harry’s fingers beneath the table, noting that his own breathing was easier in Harry’s presence and that the touch of his skin was essential after a week of no dreams, when he realized the warning note had been passed down the table to him. He picked it up and looked at it, expecting to see nothing more than another disguised hand. After all, the traitor in the Masked Lady’s ranks wouldn’t have wanted to risk discovery himself.
And then he went cold, and the blood rushing in his ears drowned his voice; it was only because he planned to speak the words that he knew what he said. “I know this handwriting.”
Everyone turned expectantly towards him, and Minister Shacklebolt demanded, “You know who the Masked Lady is?”
“No,” Draco said softly. Harry was leaning against him now, rubbing small, soothing circles on his back, out of sight. The merest contact of their shoulders would have helped Draco; more gave him the strength to look up, meet every pair of eyes—Granger’s last—and say, “The person warning us of the attacks is my wife Marian.”
“How can that be?” Weasley asked, sounding baffled. He sat to Granger’s right as usual, and concealed his boredom with more skill than Draco. “I thought she set the Blood Hydra on you?”
“I think,” Draco said, his gaze fastened to the note, his mind wheeling through memories of the past—of how much Marian had loved Scorpius and how little she would have liked to hurt him— “that she might have joined the Masked Lady’s followers and learned too late that the blood magic they had her perform could have hurt her own son. She loves Scorpius. She wouldn’t turn against him. But she could hardly back out once she was enmeshed, either. She might risk sending us these warnings.” He frowned and passed the note up the table to Granger, who was impatiently reaching for it. “At the very least, I can’t think of a reason why anyone else would want to disguise her handwriting as Marian’s. She has to know that not many people would recognize it, and of the ones who did, still fewer would trust her.”
“No one, I hope,” Harry said into his ear.
Draco reached behind himself and squeezed Harry’s shoulder. He saw Weasley’s eyes narrow thoughtfully.
“We’ll see,” said Granger, who did not sound convinced. “I’ll have to run some tests on it first.”
“You’ve still made more of a contribution than anyone else here except Hermione has,” Harry murmured to him.
The sound of his voice was—proud. Draco basked in it, feeling it lap around him like a warm bath.
*
“Ah, Mr. Potter.” There was a long pause following the words, and then Eaglethorpe softly cleared his throat. “Forgive me, but you don’t look well.”
“No,” Harry murmured, sitting in the chair across from Eaglethorpe’s desk with his head in his hands. “I don’t think I am, and I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
A few days ago, in the Ministry meeting while he was sitting next to Draco, he thought nothing could have made him unhappy. The strain between him and Ginny was just something he would have to live with. He’d make sure that his being in love with Draco didn’t adversely affect his children. And he could do nothing to help the war for the moment, not until Hermione’s investigators uncovered more information about the Masked Lady. He’d finally found an accommodation between his duties and himself. He was more relaxed than he had been in years.
And then, a few hours after the meeting, his vision had started to blaze. Shadows looked wrong. Patches of color like afterimages hovered in the corners of his eyes, but darted away when he tried to focus on them. His head ached, and his tongue tangled around the simplest words.
Ginny had suggested he rest and eat simple foods, because he was probably sick. But nothing happened to alleviate the symptoms. Harry slept—still without dreams of Draco—and woke to find himself hardly able to see. Ginny’s concerned voice told him that his face was pale and his hands were shaking when he held them up in front of his eyes.
Harry had managed to clear his vision by using a few simple spells, stubbornly and over and over again, but neither Hermione nor Ron had any idea how to stop the hallucinations completely. Molly had fussed over him, seeming glad of the distraction from her grief, but even she, with her vast experience in raising seven children, couldn’t say what was wrong with him. Harry hadn’t contacted Draco; he didn’t want to spread any infection to him, Narcissa, or Scorpius.
Tutela had perched worriedly on the back of his bed and hooted softly over and over, but she wouldn’t drive him to play when he wasn’t feeling well. Ginny had asked whether he really needed to keep the appointment with Eaglethorpe, but Harry had insisted. With any luck, it would be the last one.
“Should you be here?” Eaglethorpe asked bluntly.
Harry forced himself to drop his hands and look the other man in the eye. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I’m seeing color patches and messing up my sentences and having headaches, but that’s still better than the way I felt yesterday morning or Saturday night.”
His eyes resigned, Eaglethorpe nodded. “So. Please tell me if you experienced attraction to any other man.”
“No,” Harry said quietly. “No more than I commonly find other women on the street attractive.”
The therapist gave him a melancholy smile. “Then, Mr. Potter, I’m afraid that I must tell you my diagnosis is love. It could be infatuation, of course, but I don’t think it is. These dreams have had ten years to work on your mind. You’re inclined to pursue Mr. Malfoy, and now that you’ve met him, you have opportunity to do so.” He shook his head. “This isn’t a mental illness, and still less a confusion of sexual orientation. Your orientation is exactly as flexible as it needs to be to accommodate loving this man, and no more.”
Harry nodded. “What makes you think so?” A patch of pink was shimmering in the corner of his eye. He resolutely ignored it.
“Because I have read your history and studied you as you sat in front of me,” Eaglethorpe said. “You’re extremely loyal, and your loyalties are not easily changed. Once you told me how Mr. Malfoy gained yours, I didn’t think it would waver. Of course, your loyalty to your wife was once as strong, but it is old and—forgive me—seems to receive little reinforcement from her side. It is only natural that this bond should shine strongly, after ten years of subtle reinforcement from the dreams and Mr. Malfoy’s accommodation of your desires.”
“The dreams have stopped,” Harry muttered.
“That—is worrisome,” Eaglethorpe said, and his voice sharpened. “Do you think that has something to do with your illness?”
Harry snorted. “I don’t see how. I’ve accepted that I love Draco, myself. I’ve told my wife. I spent the last week happier than I have been in some time.”
“Yes, none of that should have weakened you.” Eaglethorpe signed a piece of parchment, and then passed it across the desk to Harry. “I’m afraid there’s nothing more I can do for the particular problem you came to me with. If you’d like to talk to me in the future, please do arrange it. If you’ll just sign here?”
Harry smiled, though he knew it was weak, and stood up, reaching across the desk to sign.
He never remembered the quill touching the parchment, or his body hitting the floor.
Chapter 28.
