[one-shots]: Defendere, H/D, R, 4/4

[lomonaaeren]

Fourth part of a very long one-shot. Don't start reading this part; go back to part one.



“Which means,” Ron said, prodding at the bandage on his head and only taking his hand away when Hermione gave him a glare over the edge of the veil she was sewing, “that the Defendere bond is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do.”

“What, by warping my life out of control?” Harry asked, leaning back in his chair until just the tops of his feet were caught under the kitchen table. Hermione scowled at him in turn, and he let his chair drop back down. He frankly didn’t care if the chair legs scratched up the floor, which he could see Hermione getting ready to say. “And telling me lies? Some of the things, he might be right about, but not that bit. I don’t think that people would be better off without me. Otherwise, I would have stayed at that King’s Cross place where I saw Dumbledore.”

“Look, mate,” Ron began.

Harry held up his hand. “Nothing good ever begins with that phrase.”

“Then I’ll say it this way.” Hermione appeared to have got her needle to go the way she wanted it to for once, and she stared at him with an expression so serious that Harry nodded despite himself. “Harry. You’ve refused all sorts of favors because you were afraid that it would make your name a political commodity, and I thought that was commendable. And then there are the things that you’ve refused because you thought you didn’t deserve them, and I thought that was silly. Why did you refuse to marry Ginny?”

“Because she wanted the strict wedding vows you lot are going to have,” Harry said, staring out the window. “And I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

Harry swung around. “Well, it’s not because of what he said,” he snapped at Hermione. “It’s not because I thought that she was too good to be bound to me or something. Besides, if you’re taking everything Malfoy says as truth, then Ginny is one of my friends, and he said that I made exceptions for you.”

“Have you stayed friends?” Hermione asked gently. “I know that you talk to each other when she’s at the Burrow, but the last time we talked, she told me you never owl her anymore, and you never accept her lunch invitations.”

“I thought it was best if we made a clean break,” Harry muttered, scratching the back of his neck and closing his eyes.

“And I know that Parvati talked about you once,” Hermione continued quietly. “I think she was a little bit in love with you that last year we were at Hogwarts. And then there was Neville. Not that he wanted romance, but he would have liked it if you came by Hogwarts every once in a while and had a drink with him at the Three Broomsticks. You don’t. You don’t even visit Hogwarts, when I know how much you love it. Why?”

“How many people go back there once they’re out of school?” Harry was tempted to raise and drop the chair again, but instead he made himself meet Hermione’s eyes. If this was all a load of bollocks, then he should have the courage to do that. “I’m not unusual in avoiding it.”

“Avoiding it?” Ron said. “You don’t have to avoid it if it’s something everybody does.”

“Exactly.” Hermione nodded, looking wise, and still sewing. Any minute now, Harry thought sourly, she would cut a thread and look like one of the Three Fates. “You could visit if you wanted. McGonagall would be delighted to see you there, and Neville. But you stay away like it’s a penance. You wouldn’t even let Parvati firecall you. And I know Ron’s told me that you avoid getting close to any of the other Aurors. Why, Harry? What is it that makes you stay away from people? Whatever crimes you think you committed when you were a boy, surely you’ve redeemed yourself for them.”

Harry stood up and walked over to the window. It looked on the rumpled earth of what he reckoned would be a vegetable garden next year. He lowered his head onto his hands and shut his eyes.

Someone banged on the door.

Harry jerked his head up, whirling around with his wand in hand. Ron stood up, his brow wrinkling. “No one ought to be able to get through the wards around this place,” he muttered. “Except you, Harry, and anyone with Weasley blood. And Dad and George are busy, Charlie and Ginny are out of the country…”

The door opened before he could finish his catalogue. Draco strode in and walked straight to Harry. Of course, he might have seen him through the window and known where he was that way, but Harry knew what it meant that he didn’t even have to look around. The bloody bond functioning again.

Draco touched the side of his neck as though he thought Harry might have a problem there affecting his voice, and Harry shook his head. “I’m not wounded,” he said. “Did the bond tell you that I was?” He sort of hoped so. That would mean the bond had been wrong about something, and that meant they could have some hope it was loosening, and would fade away soon.

“No,” Draco said. “But once again, your distress pulled me here.” He turned to Hermione. “What did you say to him?”

“Just what you did this morning,” Hermione said. She hadn’t stopped sewing. Harry reckoned she was afraid that, if she stopped, her hands would forget the steady rhythm she’d had going. “Harry told us about it, and I think you’re right, that he’s afraid to get close to anyone because it’ll distort their lives.”

“That’s not bloody it!” Harry shouted, and saw Hermione finally flinch and drop the needle. “If people would listen to me about it, then they might be able to hear the truth.”

“What is it, then?” Draco turned to face him, moving slightly so Harry couldn’t see his friends’ faces anymore, just his. He spoke quietly.

“I’m afraid of someone getting close to me under false pretenses,” Harry snapped. “How could I tell that Parvati wanted to date me because she liked me? It could have been my fame.”

“And do you think that about Neville, too?” Hermione asked, rising to her feet so that she appeared behind Draco’s shoulder. Her face was red. “Neville is—one of the sweetest, kindest people we know, Harry! Do you think that he was going to invite you to dinner just to show off his famous friend?”

“Of course not,” Harry said, glancing off to the side.

“And McGonagall?” Ron asked, although he didn’t move nearer. Maybe he could read Draco’s body language better than Hermione. “She wouldn’t do that to you, mate. You know she wouldn’t.”

Harry closed his eyes. There was a roaring in his ears, a deep thunder like being under the sea. “Sorry. No. I know she wouldn’t.”

“Then what is it?” Hermione pressed. “I know that you didn’t want wedding vows as restrictive as the ones Ginny did, but that doesn’t explain why you haven’t found someone else, or why you won’t be with your friends unless they’re us, and I don’t know how to explain it to Neville when he asks why you didn’t meet him—”

“Enough.”

Only one word, from Draco, who Hermione didn’t have any reason to listen to, but it made the world seem to shake, and Harry blinked open his eyes to find that Draco had turned to face his friends. Once again, he had shifted so that Harry could see just the back of his shoulders. Harry swallowed, his throat hurting, and reached out to touch the middle of his back.

“That can wait a moment, Harry,” Draco said, though Harry wasn’t really sure what he meant. “Just let me take you home.”

“I don’t understand,” Hermione said, a little timidly now. “Why can’t he talk to us about it?”

“Because I misstepped,” Draco said. He reached back and ran a soothing hand along Harry’s arm. “I pressed too far this morning, and I was more eager to show off my knowledge of the bond than to consider whether he was ready to hear it. I knew it almost the minute he left, but I thought I would leave him alone and let him have some space to consider it.” He faced Harry, and sighed. “Sorry,” he said.

Harry studied him. Then he said, “It’s not that I distrust all these other people. It’s not that I don’t want to be close to them.”

Draco nodded, his face shut. “I know. You don’t have to talk about it right now. Let me take you home,” he repeated, and his hands tightened on Harry’s arms.

“I think that’s a good idea,” Hermione said, sounding worried. “Harry can talk to us later. I don’t—he doesn’t look good.”

Harry shook his head. He didn’t feel like he was going to be sick, exactly, but he did know that he didn’t feel like talking. He felt as though he’d been living in a normal house all along, or a house he thought was normal, and then someone showed him doors and floors that he’d never noticed. He felt like he had when he realized that most people didn’t have their bedrooms in cupboards.

“Yes, I pushed him too far,” Draco said, and even through his numbness Harry felt a faint flash of astonishment that Draco was blaming himself instead of Hermione and Ron. “It’s not something he’s thought about a lot, or he thought about it and assigned other reasons. You didn’t talk about it much, I think.” He put his arm around Harry’s shoulders and steered him towards the door.

Harry went, but he looked back at his friends and smiled. Hermione, who didn’t look as if she cared at all about the veil in her lap now, smiled back at him. Ron nodded to Malfoy and mouthed something that looked an awful lot like, I told you so.

Then they were outside the house, and then they were Apparating, and Harry sighed in relief when Draco took him straight to the kitchen, deposited him in a chair, and shoved food at him, starting with biscuits. Anything that didn’t require him to talk right now was a good thing.

*

Harry opened his eyes in his bed, and blinked. He seemed to be doing an awful lot of sleeping lately, but he could almost never remember getting to the bed.

He became aware of warmth layered along his back, and realized Draco was there. He turned his head, and got a mouthful of blond hair that he had to spit out.

“Hey.”

Draco’s eyes were blurred with sleep, and so was his voice. He dipped his head to lick along the back of Harry’s neck, and all of Harry’s senses stood up and screamed at once. It became much less important that he couldn’t remember how Draco had carried him to bed, or floated him, or whether he’d called Kreacher to help.

Harry rolled over and kissed Draco the way he’d kissed him in the library, all sudden assault and attack before Draco could get used to it. Draco responded this time, stroking his tongue along Harry’s, his hands coming to rest on Harry’s back. Harry realized that they were both mostly naked, just wearing their pants, and he shuddered from the feel of Draco’s soft clothed cock, reaching down.

Then he remembered the bond, and snatched his hand away, cursing.

“Potter, you have got to be kidding me,” Draco said, his voice a growl that some people might have mistaken for teasing, but Harry could hear the difference. There was real danger there. “Come on. We both want this. What are you waiting for?” He took Harry’s hand and tried to move it back to his groin.

“I’m waiting for myself to feel comfortable about this,” Harry hissed. He didn’t get out of the bed, because he had the vague feeling that that would be too much, but he forced himself to look Draco in the eye and say the thing that was true, not the thing he wanted to say. “And trying to remember that the bond is the only reason you’re here.”

Draco rolled away from him and flung his arm over his eyes. Harry paused to watch him in some suspicion. He didn’t know what Draco’s deep groans meant, since he wasn’t physically hurting him.

Then Draco took the arm off his eyes, rolled back, and said, “The bond can’t be broken. It’s permanent. And that means that you’ll probably never be one hundred percent comfortable with this. So we have to think of something else. I know that you tried to leave me room to act even though you were also setting up the Defendere bond. Right?”

Harry nodded, wondering if Draco wanted him to apologize for that. Harry would apologize for the bond if Draco wanted, for being the one to discover him like that, but not for trying to leave him free will.

“That means that I don’t have to do anything,” Draco said, speaking rapidly, a flush creeping up his face. “I do it because it feels good, or because it annoys me until I do something, the way your silent wailing pulled me out of St. Mungo’s the first day and to your friends’ house today.”

“I wasn’t wailing—”

“You have no idea of half the shit you have shoved in the back of your head,” Draco snapped. “Unfulfilled desires and loneliness and nightmares about dying alone. That’s the other side of your determination not to have anyone close to you because you might bind them to someone you think did one remarkable thing and that’s it. You’re dying for companionship, for friendship, for fucking sex. You’d give your right hand for something other than your right hand down there.”

“Fuck you,” Harry snarled.

“You’ve made it abundantly clear that you won’t.” Draco squirmed closer to him on elbows and knees. “Because—why? Because you think that it has to be my completely free and clear choice, or it’s not worth anything.”

“I’m not going to apologize for having that as an ideal,” Harry said flatly. “I’m not into rape.”

Draco’s eyes rolled so hard that Harry was sure he must have hurt himself. “Thing is,” he said, “you don’t trust anyone to have a free and clear choice. Me, because of the bond. Other people, because of your fame. Or because you think that your friend Longbottom is only inviting you to visit because he feels sorry for you, or because you think that McGonagall would only invite you back because she knows you miss Hogwarts. You say that you don’t want to force people to do things, they have to want them. But you don’t trust them to want them. You always think you’re influencing them somehow. So you’ve withdrawn into your own little fucking castle in the sky where you think you can’t possibly influence anybody. You would have pushed Weasley and Granger away, too, but they got in before the walls went up. Even then, you spend half your time wondering if you influenced them, too, if they would be your friends if they hadn’t shared adventures with you and if you hadn’t saved each other’s lives.”

Harry tore a hand through his hair. “Well, yeah, I wonder that, because who wouldn’t? It’s not bloody normal, you know, three eleven-year-olds fighting a sentient chess game and solving a potions logic puzzle to save the world—”

“But by that standard,” Draco said, speaking in a way that lowered his voice and put emphasis on the wrong words, “no one has a free choice. No decision anyone ever makes counts, because you could have influenced them by the way you acted. The way you smiled at them, the way you were friendly instead of rude, because they liked the way your eyes looked. That scar on your forehead, yes. You don’t give other people credit, Harry. You somehow think that you take away everyone’s free will just because they’re around you. And I’ve never heard of anything more arrogant.” He paused, then added, “Most self-pitying illusions are driven by conceit, in the end. I’ve often noticed that. After all, I had to come to terms with my own after the war ended.”

Harry shook his head and looked away. He could feel his skin tightening and warming, throbbing with shame. But at the same time—

“I don’t want to date someone who’s only after me because of my fame,” he muttered. “I don’t want to sleep with someone who’s only compelled to do so because of the bond.”

“I understand that,” Draco said. “And I would even accept that, but, if the bond faded tomorrow, then you would think I wanted to sleep with you because of the memories of the bond. You won’t take any decision I make as being driven by desire, instead of force.” He paused, then added softly, “And that is insulting. That is insulting enough to make me want to hit you, but I think I can wound you more deeply by telling you about all the rubbish that you’ve collected in the back of your brain instead.”

Harry turned his back and paced across the room with his arms wrapped around himself. He would have liked to deny this, but that would have meant denying the existence of the bond, and he knew that had to be real, because Draco wouldn’t ever have been in his house otherwise.

He was horribly afraid that it was true, besides. He had never been able to explain to Ron, or Hermione, or even Ginny, whose eyes had filled with tears when Harry had refused to marry her, why he was so strongly against bonds and vows and oaths of all kinds. He had sometimes talked about Snape’s Unbreakable Vows, he had sometimes talked about wanting a life free from compulsions like that after Dumbledore had bound him, but he had been uncomfortable even with other people choosing them of their own free will, the way Ron and Hermione were choosing to get married.

“All right,” Harry said at last, when he thought he could accept some of what Draco was saying, turning around and meeting his eyes. “Then what—what can I do to change things? What can I do to make this up to you?”

A smile flowed across Draco’s face, and then he rolled off the bed and flowed to his feet, too. “I like that,” he murmured, walking across the room to face Harry. “I like that, a lot, that you think of me first, before anyone else.” He trailed a hand down Harry’s chest.

Harry shifted. “You’re here. Neville’s not.”

Draco shook his head, but didn’t make a remark about being put in the same words as Neville, as Harry had expected. Instead, he put his hands on Harry’s shoulders, stared into his eyes, and murmured, “Accept that I want you. If you don’t want me, fine, but I think you do, and the first thing you need to do is trust me enough to know my own needs and desires—trust that there’s part of me that’s not mindless obedience driven by the bond.”

“Why do you want me if I’m such an idiot?” Harry asked.

“Fishing for compliments?” Draco murmured, but he was smiling, and leaned forwards to kiss him.

Harry kissed him back, his hands rising so that he could grip and knead Draco’s shoulders, feel the strength there, feel the shudder in him that could be the bond but could also simply be that he wanted Harry. Draco bit him beneath the chin and then started to urge him back, towards the bed. Harry wasn’t quite sure when they’d spun around, but he was breathless with wonder that they had.

He pulled his head back, though, and shook it when Draco sought his mouth again. “Draco,” he murmured. “Please. If everything you say is true, and you can see all the useless clutter in the back of my mind thanks to the bond, why do you want to be with me? I’m no prize, not if half the things you say are true.”

“They’re true,” Draco said, biting beneath his chin and then pushing with a gentle hand in the middle of Harry’s chest, so that he sank into the bed more than he toppled into it, led along helplessly by that touch. “But so is the rest of you.”

“Huh?” Harry was sure that Draco would roll his eyes in a minute, but he really didn’t understand.

Draco dropped to one knee beside him and looked down steadily at him. Harry looked back up, blinking, and Draco reached out a moment later, sighing, and stroked the back of his hand across Harry’s cheek.

“You have a conscious mind, too, and conscious motives,” he said quietly. “I know that you did a lot of what you did out of some fear that you would hurt people. It’s not rational, that fear, but you didn’t do it because you were greedy for power or wanted to live forever or—other motives that are very familiar to me.” For a moment, his gaze flickered to the Mark on his arm. “And when it comes down to it, you do what’s right. You didn’t let me die; you took up the bond instead of demanding that you keep your principles stainless. And not even Weasley would have blamed you if you had let me die.” He shivered a little, and looked Harry in the eye. “So you did that, even if you are annoyingly whiny about the results.”

Harry nodded, mind full of what Draco was saying in the same way he wanted his body to be full of him. “And you’re more than I ever thought you,” he murmured. “Patient, truthful, and if you have to protect me because of the bond, at least you do it in your own inimitable way.”

Draco smiled into his mouth then, and began reaching for the last of their clothes. “Can you imagine what it’s going to be like, fucking someone who can feel all your needs?” he whispered. “Especially the ones that you’ve let go too long, for fear of forcing someone else into your bed.”

Harry shuddered and felt the physical sensations starting to swallow up the rest as Draco touched him, swallowing up thought. He shook his head and started to force them back almost before he realized what he was doing.

Then he realized Draco had stopped moving. “Why?” Harry croaked, blinking eyes that felt sandy with desire up at him.

“Because you’re being an idiot,” Draco hissed in his ear, voice low and fierce. “You don’t need to worry about losing control or hurting someone. I know that your magic sometimes reacts in ways that frighten you. But the bond strengthens me, remember? I can do anything you need me to do.” Already he was moving again, rocking his hips gently into Harry’s. “Including resisting your power, if it strikes at me. Which I don’t think it will. There’s a level on which it recognizes and permits the Defendere bond, you know, or I couldn’t do so much.”

Harry stared at him, silent, shivering.

Then he tilted his head back and heard himself make a guttural noise as he gave it up, all of it, to the way that Draco wanted to touch him, take him, use him, need him.

Draco was silent and intent for a few minutes, moving faster than Harry had known he could, or seen him move except when he was defending him and Ron from the Dark wizards in the alley. He had Harry naked, and bowed his head to lap at his cock. Harry surged up with a shout, but Draco was already gone, coiling back around him, seizing his shoulders and pulling him with some urgency. Harry found himself on his knees and elbows before he knew what would happen.

And when he did, it was just what he wanted: the give of the mattress beneath his elbows, the way Draco moved above him, the way that Draco cursed shakily as he summoned the lube from a table next to him. Harry couldn’t remember the lube being put there, but he knew where it had come from. Draco, anticipating his needs, like always.

And it was all right. It was okay. Harry could take what he needed, this once, and that didn’t make him a monster or someone who would never return the favor. And the magic of the bond would keep Draco safe from any extraordinary reactions that Harry’s magic might have.

It was okay.

Harry felt muscles he seemed to have been carrying around coiled and tense for years relax when he realized that. He rolled his head down into the pillow and laughed aloud, and laughed again when Draco’s hand rebounded off the middle of his back in what almost felt like a slap. There were times that Draco was strangely easy to read, as well.

“No,” he whispered, turning his head so that the cloth wouldn’t swallow his words. “I’m not laughing at you. I’m just—this feels so good, why didn’t I try it before?”

“Because no one could get close enough to your stubborn arse to try this,” Draco said, and this time his curse was like a prayer. He had lost something, Harry thought, closing his eyes, most likely the cap of the lube bottle.

For the first time since he had knelt beside Draco within those concentric rings that could have meant his death and spoken the words, he tried to reach out, to feel the bond that connected them. Draco could feel it all the time, but Harry had never felt anything but the most fleeting sensations. Why was that?

Because you didn’t want to.

It was there when he looked, blazingly obvious, like a comet that trailed back from Harry and touched Draco on his throat and chest. Harry stroked it, curious, and Draco cursed again and thrust against his arse.

And if he touched it just right, it would tell him what Draco wanted, needed, too. At the moment, to fuck Harry. Just that.

And Harry let the awareness flit away from him at the sound of Draco’s hoarse voice murmuring his name, and spread his legs in the utter languor of knowing that Draco was right, that he could trust him, that it wasn’t only the bond that was making him want this. Because no bond could convey that much urgency, and no sympathetic, reflected lust could be so strong.

“Draco,” he whispered.

“Shit, you’re going to make me come before I get in there,” Draco hissed, and his hand rebounded off the middle of Harry’s back in a slap again. Harry laughed, dizzy and giddy, and raised his head, because enough blood was rushing to it as it was.

“I wouldn’t mind,” he said, and moved his arse to see if he could hit Draco’s cock and do just that.

“You might not, but I would,” Draco snarled, forcing him almost flat to the bed as he hunted for a pillow, and Harry laughed again, because it was good to hear Draco say things like that, to know that some of the reason his hands were rough on Harry’s hips as he groped and grabbed and lifted him was because he was following his own need as much as Harry’s.

“Then you can do most of the work,” Harry muttered, and let his hips settle into the pillow, which seemed to muffle the urgency spiraling up from his cock. His legs fell open, and he settled his head back into place on the other pillow with a groan. “It’s not like I mind.”

“Not now,” Draco said, and his finger probed at Harry’s hole.

Harry’s eyes shot open, and he hissed. But it was only the shock of it, that he hadn’t had something like this happen in a long time, and he kicked his legs back out and nudged at Draco with one ankle before he could say something. “Get on with it.”

Draco pushed two fingers into him this time, making Harry arch his back and mutter, and Draco hesitate for a moment. Harry opened one eye and glared up through his fringe in the general direction of where he knew Draco was, although, thanks to the fringe, he couldn’t really see anything. “Well? Do you pause this way with all your lovers, or do you hold back and ask them unnecessary questions all the time?”

“I haven’t asked you one unnecessary question so far,” Draco snapped, but thank Merlin, he was twisting his fingers in Harry again, going deep, going for the position that made Harry’s back arch and his hips snap down despite himself.

“Sometimes I wonder,” Harry said, which was inane but so what, Draco was saying inane things too, and he doubted that he could get his legs further apart, although in some ways he would have liked to, without special machinery.

Draco filled him with his fingers, driving so deep that Harry gasped and groaned and said, “That’s good,” on every stroke, and then he pulled away. Harry heard some more fussing, a groan, and the sound of a slick hand stroking, and intelligently reckoned that Draco was getting himself ready with the lube.

And then…

Fingers gripping his hips, biting deep. Harry imagined the red bruises he would have after this, the soreness he would carry, the slow, heavy shifting of his body, and smiled, lifting his hips and shoving back.

He buried Draco before Draco was ready, and the groan trembled in his ear. His hands settled down, then tore flakes of skin off. Harry cried out at the sharp pain, the slight sting, but really, it was so much less than the sensation of Draco’s cock sliding slowly into him.

It was…

It was deepness, and depth, and silence. It was full of Harry’s shocked grunting and Draco’s wavering motions behind him, as though he couldn’t get settled the way he wanted. It was full of sweat, working its way down Harry’s face and getting in his eyes to make him blink, and Draco’s slow, involuntary thrusts that made Harry hum and clench down, and the curses that, of course, started up again.

“Don’t you ever say anything pleasant in bed?” Harry murmured, and made his arse sway as he rose to his elbows again and glanced backwards.

“I need the curses to keep up with you,” Draco murmured, and lifted his head. His eyes burned as proud as a lion’s, even though he was in that weird half-crouch, half-straddle over Harry’s arse that had never made anyone, anywhere, look dignified. Harry tipped his head down and laughed deeply again, a motion that made ripples travel up his body and must have tightened something in his arse for Draco to gasp like that.

“Fuck me,” Harry murmured, bracing himself against the weight of gravity and reaching back for his cock. It was a live, warm thing in his grip, and he stroked, relishing the sheer pull of pleasure up his hand. “Do it now.”

That broke whatever barrier had been holding Draco back, maybe fear or maybe just worry. He grunted as he slammed into Harry, and Harry wavered and put both hands back on the bed.

“You make it so I can’t hold my cock when you do this,” he complained, his voice slurred and his mind exploding in dense white stars. He shoved himself back again, and again, and threw off Draco’s pace. At least that was something.

“You don’t need to,” Draco snapped, his voice full of heavy breathing. “I’m going to make you come on my cock, without a touch.”

It was an image. Harry still strove to keep himself up, but that was because he wanted to, and pictures of how Draco was doing it burned behind his eyes, at the same time as he could feel and hear better this way.

Draco timed his exhalations. Every fourth thrust he would seem to catch his breath, and then he would exhale it in a little sigh. Every tenth thrust he would adjust himself, and he seemed to be aiming for Harry’s prostate.

He must have found it sometimes, but it was honestly hard to tell. Harry felt so good by this point that the pleasure of being pounded like this rose and mingled with the rest of what he was feeling, and passed through him, and was him.

The air heated around them, and there came the smell of sizzling cloth and iron. Harry opened his eyes—

And yes, there was his magic, never completely normal again after his death and the exposure to the Deathly Hallows, although it was sometimes tamer than others, spiraling around him and making them both the focus of a galaxy of light and heat.

“Don’t tense up like that,” Draco murmured, and bit his neck hard enough to draw more blood. “I’ve got you.”

He does, Harry remembered abruptly. Yes, of course Draco did. Because the bond would let him do anything Harry needed, and if that included protection from the strange excesses of his power, well, Draco was more powerful.

Draco was in him, pulling and pounding, and the bond appeared like a flicker at the corner of Harry’s consciousness, stretching again, wet with saliva, wet like his arse was, and if he reached out and flicked it with one finger, like he was flicking a wineglass to make it fall over and shatter—

Draco cried out above him, and steadied for a moment. Harry once again found the balance to turn and look back at him, head cocked about why he had stopped.

Draco stared at him, mouth so wet that it looked obscene and Harry had the urge to lick it off his face. Then he said, “I have to fuck you,” and pushed Harry flat onto the bed. Harry gasped as the air was forced out of his body, and had only just got it back when Draco rose up, tugged Harry’s legs back and around him, and began to fuck him again.

It didn’t let up, the wild energy coursing through Draco and down into him, and then back up the other way as Harry kept touching the bond. Draco bent over him and growled, and Harry felt the sharp flutter in his stomach, like a knife of joy, the way that it touched him and pierced him and pulled him along.

It was okay. There was the bond, but it was okay. It could bind them equally if he let it, not with magic but with the fact that he wanted to give Draco what he needed, and it was all right—

That was the way to get around a bond, Harry thought, his brain slow to form the thought as it was shaken in his skull from the force of Draco’s thrusts. To join the other person in the bond, in the bed, and show them what it meant to you, and be with them, and let them have you, hold you, as you had them and held them—

Draco twisted and bent down by his ear, or close enough that Harry could feel his breath there, anyway, and hissed, “Come.”

The command flashed through him, through the bond, and Harry leaped high and came down as if falling over a waterfall’s brink.

It hurt, the orgasm Draco wrung out of him, and he was crying out and whimpering when Draco followed him, and he winced when Draco crashed down on top of him afterwards. The pleasure was still there, present anew every time Draco’s cock shifted inside him, and he was dazed and hurting and so vulnerable that that hurt, too.

Draco reached out and stroked his wounds, the bite and the fingermarks he had given Harry. Harry turned his head into his touch.

“I didn’t realize how rough I was being,” Draco said, but there was no apology in his tone, just quiet satisfaction. “You liked that. You really liked that.”

Harry nodded and then shuddered as he felt the first roll of abused muscles in his neck and back and spine. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I needed that.”

“And I told you that it felt good for me when I did what you needed,” Draco said, his voice so smug now that Harry tried to roll over and hit him. But that didn’t work when he was as tired as he was, and when Draco was still on top of and inside him. Draco just pulled back from the blow and continued in a thoughtful voice. “But that was something else again. How did you know to touch the bond that way?”

“I didn’t,” Harry said, sighed, confessed. The bed felt so smooth and soft beneath him, and he knew that Draco wouldn’t despise him for what he was about to say. That was good. “I wanted to see if I could locate it, or I thought I felt it and wanted to see if I could feel it more, and it was there. And I wanted to make you feel good.”

Draco snorted. “Selfish is the last thing you are,” he said, and pulled out of Harry with a smooth motion. When Harry shuddered this time, it was in appreciation. Draco crouched behind him and ran his hands slowly up and down Harry’s spine, probably locating and learning all the sensitive places that he had failed to when he was busy taking Harry.

“You don’t sound as though that’s a compliment,” Harry said, around a yawn.

“When any other person would have taken advantage of the bond as soon as he understood what it meant?” Draco shook his head, or so Harry assumed from the way small ends of hair brushed against his skin. He stifled a snicker, knowing he would have to tell Draco later that he had felt split ends, just to see what he did. “Of course it’s not. You’re far too full of yourself and smugness for your own good, Harry Potter.”

“It’s not smugness not to take advantage of you,” Harry murmured, his eyelids already lowering. He should pick up his wand and cast a variety of cleaning charms, he supposed, but he didn’t want to. “Unless you’re the kind of person who likes other people doing it.”

“You know I don’t,” Draco said, voice close to his ear now as his warm body arched over Harry’s back. “This is different.”

“Because of the bond.” Harry felt the return of the worry he had experienced about that earlier like a tide beginning to flow in, although at the moment, he was too tired to worry as much as he would have otherwise.

“Because it’s you.” Draco nipped his ear and then pulled back.

Harry yawned again, and said, “I’m too tired to argue with you.”

“Good to know that it only took a good fucking to achieve that result,” Draco said, and curled up around him. He might have cast cleaning charms, but Harry really wasn’t sure. He drifted off when Draco was still fussing around with his wand.

*

“Hi, Neville.”

“Harry!” Neville looked startled, and then wary, and then nothing but pleased. He swatted something off his hands which looked like rich soil and shook his head. “I’d given up on ever hearing from you.”

Harry winced. “Sorry, Nev. I was being stupid, and I know that now. I didn’t want to impose on you—”

“It’s not an imposition,” Neville interrupted, and he was looking at Harry sort of the way he had looked at Nagini before he cut her head off. Harry winced again, hoping that Neville didn’t have the Sword of Gryffindor anywhere handy.

“I know that, now,” he repeated. “A—good friend finally got me to see that you wouldn’t have invited me to visit if you didn’t want my company. Are you able to do anything this week? Or next week? I’d like to see you.”

Neville thought, tapping a finger against his teeth. His fingernails weren’t in the least dirty, Harry noted clinically, and then wondered what Draco would make of Harry noticing that detail, and resolved to tell him as soon as possible. “Hmm. Well, possibly,” he murmured. “This weekend I have an appointment at St. Mungo’s to advise them about a Petrification case, but next weekend—yeah, Saturday is free, and I shouldn’t have a lot of marking. See you at the Three Broomsticks about two?”

Harry smiled back, feeling his heart rise inside him. Maybe he didn’t deserve so much good fortune, or for his friends to forgive him; that might be the kind of thing he would have thought before Draco had explained to him how little he trusted people. But for now, if his friends wanted to forgive him and have him over to lunch, Harry would go. “Yeah. Thanks. See you then.”

*

“Who are you writing to?” Draco’s breath was low by his ear, warm, the way it had been when they first slept together. Harry twisted his head to the side and tried to steal a kiss, but Draco had already moved back and was watching him with half-darkened eyes.

“Did the bond tell you that you needed to interfere?” Harry asked, signing the letter and then looking around for the envelope he knew he’d left out for it. Draco silently bent down, picked it up from the floor, and held it out. Harry took it with a grunt of thanks and folded the letter carefully into it.

“No, this is all me,” Draco said, enunciating each word carefully. “You’re writing to Weasley, aren’t you?”

“Ginny, rather than Ron, but yes,” Harry told him, and stood up with the letter firmly in hand. He would have to go find a public post-owl—not ideal, but still better than having another owl after Hedwig.

Although, come to think of it, if he could manage a Malfoy, he might be better at taking care of other animals than he had always assumed.

“Why?” Draco stepped in front of him and stared at him.

Harry looked at him, and he didn’t need the bond to read the tightness in Draco’s shoulders, the tic that jumped briefly in his cheek, or the way his hands clenched in front of him. “I’m just apologizing for some things I said when she wanted to get married,” he said quietly. “Not going back to her.”

“If you’re over your fear of bonds,” Draco began.

“I’m not, entirely,” Harry said. “Which you would know if you could read my every thought perfectly,” he felt he had to add. But Draco’s expression only darkened, and Harry sighed. “I’m forcing myself not to let that fear control my actions anymore. But Draco, you’re the only one I’m with and the only one I want to be with. I promise, I’m not going to desert you because—”

“Because there’s the bond,” Draco said, and tucked his head down like he was getting ready to smash something with his forehead. Harry wondered if it was their barriers, or at least his. Draco had done much the same thing so far. “Yes, I see. But has it occurred to you that she might apologize and invite you for dinner, the way that your friend Longbottom did—”

“It was lunch.”

Draco ground his teeth, gave Harry a look that said how little the finer distinctions like that mattered in his world, and went on, all strained patience. “And you might go, and find that you want to marry her after all?”

“No,” Harry said, and reached out to loop his hands behind Draco’s neck and draw him closer. Draco went, but eyed the letter as if he would like to burn it all the while. “I don’t have that much courage.”

“Someday, you might,” Draco said softly, and looked at the letter again.

Harry rolled his eyes. “No. I don’t have the courage to construct a permanent bond that doesn’t have to be made—at least, not yet—and I don’t have the courage to desert you. Because you would find something that I ‘needed’ right in the middle of Ginny’s kitchen during the dinner, I’m sure.”

Draco blinked at him, and then said, “Yes. I would.” His hands came to rest on Harry’s waist, and he stared at him meanwhile with an odd, guarded, shining expression.

“And I would want you to,” Harry said softly, mouth a few inches away from Draco’s lips, “if I was mad enough to ever think that I could pull the past into the present.”

When Draco kissed him, it was hard enough to bump them both into the table and make the letter flutter to the ground, but Harry didn’t care about that. He kept careful track of it, and sent it later, after Draco lay drowsing and open in their bed, and Harry was sure that he had no doubt, from the way Harry had sucked him off, exactly how enthusiastic Harry was about participating in their bond.

And a few days later came the answer, gentle and straightforward, the way that Harry had tried to make his own words to Ginny:

I heard about the bond from Ron, and I’m glad that he’s done that much for you. You’re forgiven. Ginny.

*

“Remind me of what I get from you for going along with this again,” Draco hissed, out of the corner of his mouth.

“It’s a surprise, and I’ll tell you later,” Harry murmured back, not taking his eyes off Hermione, who was walking—in the wedding dress that she really had sewn most of herself, and which, because Hermione was scrupulously honest, had glints of blue and silver sewn in with the white—across the Burrow’s garden to the bonder and Ron, who both waited for her. Ron wore golden robes and looked as if he might float off the ground from the sheer proud inflation of his chest. And Hermione really did look beautiful, Harry thought; she had given up on the veil after all, and just walked along with her face to the world, the way she had when they fought evil and did homework and shared all their other waking hours together. Her parents stood with the Weasleys, Harry and Draco, Neville, Luna, Hannah Abbot, and the inevitable cluster of reporters in a circle all around them, and Harry could see that both Hermione’s parents were already dabbing at their eyes. “Look at them. This is their day.”

Draco grunted sourly at his side, but settled down, and Harry watched as Hermione took Ron’s hands and smiled up into his face. Then they both turned to face the bonder, who asked them, ritually, if they were sure that they wanted the stern wedding vows they’d requested. Both Ron and Hermione answered that they did, with a quiet dignity that made Harry shake his head.

Draco had been good for him, in so many ways. But he still knew that the only link he wanted that was this strong and permanent was the Defendere bond, formed under circumstances of danger and because he had to.

Then he darted a look at Draco, who was watching Ron and Hermione with a little less resentment than he pretended, and made a private change to that wording inside his head.

Well. It was the only bond like that that he wanted right now.

“Speak your vows,” the bonder finally said, after casting several spells that made the air around Ron and Hermione spark like the inside of a diamond.

Hermione and Ron had practiced—and Harry had to stifle a grin as he thought of how much they must have practiced—the vows so they could speak them together. Harry could see Hermione’s mum nodding in approval beside Mrs. Weasley, who had her hands clasped in front of her mouth and eyes so bright that she couldn’t talk. It was probably more feminist for Hermione not to speak after Ron, which she had told Harry traditionally happened at these weddings.

“For this life, I will be true only to you. For this life, I will consider myself bound to you, in honor, in faith, in honesty, in love. For this life, I will put you first, before all, and forsake all, to be at your side. For this life, I will ask you what you want—” Harry rather thought that part was Hermione’s addition “—and try to listen to you with patience and understanding. For this life, I will not retreat from anger, or from fights, or from the work of marriage. For this life, I marry you, and I will not be parted from you.”

There was an echo to their words, now that Harry listened, as though another couple were speaking their vows at the same time. And there were shadows swirling around both Ron and Hermione, settling on their shoulders and then flying away from them, trailing from their hair like banners or wings.

Ron smiled, and bent down when the bonder nodded and the last echoes of their words had faded to kiss Hermione. The looks on their faces told Harry they were utterly sure this was what they wanted.

It isn’t what I want. Not yet, at least.

The Weasleys surged forwards to congratulate Ron and Hermione, somewhat sweeping the other guests away in the rush. Draco clung close to Harry and lowered his head so that he could hiss into his ear, “This reward that you’ve promised me better be fucking worth it.”

Harry smiled, keeping his gaze straight ahead. “I want you to move in with me.”

A pause, and he could practically feel Draco turning the words over in his head, looking for traps. “I thought I already had,” he said at last, and there was such sharp suspicion in his words that Harry snickered a little in spite of himself and leaned back to touch Draco’s hand.

“No. I meant that I want you to move in with me, into my house,” Harry said. “Not Grimmauld Place. The house where I spent time before the bond.” He turned around and met Draco’s eyes.

Draco blinked, rapidly. Then he said, “I never understood why you prevented me from moving in there in the first place,” but his voice was soft and fast, and he looked away.

“Because I thought you would want your own room and potions lab and all the rest of it,” Harry said patiently. “But there’s a cellar I don’t use much, and we can transport in some of the books in the Black library. I have the shelves in the library, but not enough books to fill them. And as for you needing your own bedroom…” He rolled his eyes. “How much time have you ever spent in the room I gave you in Grimmauld Place?”

“I use it to hang my clothes,” Draco said, and then fell silent, one hand on Harry’s shoulder to steer him around the nearest mob of Weasley cousins, obviously thinking. “Does it have large cupboards, this house of yours?”

“I reckon they could be made larger,” Harry said calmly, “through the use of wizardspace.”

“And there might be time to ourselves?” Draco asked, bending his head so that he could breathe along Harry’s ear, and then his neck. There were times that Harry wished he had never showed Draco any of his sensitive spots, although it was highly probable that Draco would have discovered them anyway. He’d made more than one determined investigation over the last few days, one time not letting Harry up for half the morning as he learned his body and what made Harry twitch and cry.

Harry could feel himself hardening now, and he swallowed, determined not to show it to the great-aunt in front of him who frowned vaguely over his head. “With our own private Floo connection that we can shut, even,” he said. Shutting the Floo connection in Grimmauld Place didn’t always work, the fireplaces were so ancient.

Draco laughed softly, still into his ear, and said, “Then yes.”

The great-aunt’s frown changed into a smile. “What, is there another marriage in the offing?” she said, and nudged Harry with an elbow. “A little too blond for my tastes, but you could do worse.”

Harry felt his face flame red, and Draco murmured a compliment that he hoped would put the woman off. He would have turned his head and said something himself, but then—

Of course it was then, just when he was getting up close to Ron and Hermione and opening his mouth to congratulate them—

A curse soared overhead, and smashed into one of the pillars holding up a garland of decorative flowers. Draco snarled and promptly bore Harry to the ground. Harry could feel a protective mold of ice armor hardening over him, or maybe over Draco and him together, as the Defendere bond went into action.

Harry rolled over and cast a spell that lifted a few people to safety and opened up a line of sight for him at the same time.

He stared when he saw who it was, then snorted. The same group of rowdy teenage wizards that he and Ron had arrested in Hogsmeade not that long ago, and who seemed to have Apparated, drunk, to the first place they could find with a relatively large number of wizards. One of them had Splinched his left arm with a door, and the other could only be dangerous by accident.

He pushed at Draco’s arms, and Draco let him up and out of the ice armor. But he still got in front of Harry even when Harry said, “It’s all right. They’re only young idiots.”

Draco turned his head sideways and hissed. “I don’t care. I’m not going to take a chance. Not with you.”

Harry felt his eyes widen and something melt inside him. Maybe one of the barriers that Draco had talked about in the past, maybe not; he didn’t know.

But at that moment, he understood the bond, and how it could affect Draco, and how he could be happy with it, anyway.

More than even the sex had made him understand it.

He put a hand in the middle of Draco’s back and held him still as he turned his head around for a kiss, then shoved him forwards. “Then go defend me. Hero. Just don’t hurt them too badly.”

Draco was smiling as he turned around, and a gout of what looked like phoenix fire was already rising from him, followed by whips of crackling black energy that Harry didn’t actually recognize.

Harry followed him, deciding that being sheltered once in a while wasn’t that bad.

The End.