InsaneJournal

Harry remembered little afterwards. 

 

He was never intimately involved in the extraneous research — he had Horcruxes to find — so when Hermione approached him with a new spell he could only shrug and nod.

 

It sounded good, this binding power from another witch or wizard to him, so he would have the power of two.  Perfectly reasonable, in fact, and likely the only way he could defeat Voldemort.

 

The donor's magic had to be compatible with Harry's, of course, so the entire Order was called to Grimmauld Place and a spell to find the best donor was cast.

 

Harry clearly remembered praying that Snape would not be it.

 

Later, thinking about things more carefully, he remembered how Mrs Weasley had hovered so protectively behind Ginny as if ready to snatch her out of harm's way.

 

At the time, he'd thought nothing of it. 

 

His eye-sight might be rubbish, but his hindsight was perfectly fine.

 

The wisp which was supposed to surround the perfect donor — well, the best of the scruffy lot, as Remus put it — with light had danced around the living room and shot up the stairs.   No one was up there, of course.  Except Malfoy.  Of course. 

 

Snape had dragged Malfoy along with him when he pleaded his case to the Order.  He gave them proof that Dumbledore had arranged the whole thing, forced Snape to make an Unbreakable Vow to him in the matter, and that Malfoy was an idiot.

 

They already knew that, but tossing the prat out to be murdered was not something Good Guys did.

 

So Malfoy took up residence in Grimmauld Place.  He said nothing that wasn't in anger, he refused to attend meals, and generally acted like a feral cat captured in a house and treated like a pet.

 

People soon stopped speaking to him altogether, at which point a sort of restless peace descended on the house.

 

That night they — Lupin and Tonks and McGonagall, being the three people most likely to convince Malfoy of anything at this point — had trooped upstairs to discuss the matter.

 

When they descended, Mr and Mrs Weasley had gone up to state their case.

 

So Malfoy came downstairs, allowed Potter to slice his arm and sip his blood, allowed the spell to be said, and went back to his bedroom without so much as a "good night".

 

And that should have been that.

 

*

 

When Harry found himself hovering outside Malfoy's bedroom door a week later, he ascribed it to mental exhaustion. 

 

When he kept turning up, unlocking the outer locks and asking Malfoy to unlock the bloody inner ones, he started to suspect something had gone wrong.

 

He asked Hermione and thus learned for the first time that the spell was something dredged out of the Weasley family records, not something she had found in the Black family library.   That was something of a relief, since Harry couldn't imagine anything but trouble coming from a Black — Sirius excepted, of course.

 

The night Draco opened his door was the night Harry awoke.

 

Though he didn't realise it at the time.

 

*

 

"Why do you lock your door from the inside?"

 

"It seems," Malfoy drawled, "a reasonable precaution given the presence of the Weasley twins."

 

Harry snorted, already regretting coming here.  "You still have your wand, it's not like you're helpless."

 

"Is that so?"

 

Harry, for all he had obsessed over Malfoy for years, did not know him very well.  He did notice that there was something ... odd about his tone as he spoke.   He also noticed — belatedly, because he was Harry Potter and the day Draco Malfoy beat him would be a cold day in hell — that Draco kept his room extremely dark.

 

Without asking permission — it was his house, after all — Harry cast Lumos and jumped.

 

He'd known Malfoy hadn't been looking healthy before he sealed himself up in his now-suite, but he hadn't imagined that this was just down the hall from his own bedroom.

 

Malfoy was pale;  that was a given.  He was skinny; again, another simple fact.  Now he'd passed skinny and was now approaching skeletal, leaving the structure of his skull plain for all to see.   His eyes were sunken and surrounded by dark rings, his hair still thick but dry and broken, looking more like a straw than the sleek locks he'd had at school.

 

"What—"

 

Malfoy just looked at him and Harry knew, without a shadow of doubt, that Malfoy thought he was an utter idiot.  He didn't answer his own half-asked question, just broke the spell and stalked back to the door, the hall, what passed for normalcy in this sepulchre of a house.

 

He paused on the threshold and said,  "I don't care, you know."

 

"I know."

 

After deliberately locking all the outside locks, Harry calmly walked to the nearest bathroom, carefully[1]  locked the door, and was then deliberately, calmly, and firmly sick.

 

*

 

He blamed it on the Dursleys.  Why else would he seek out punishment?  No one — no one — in the house cared about Draco Malfoy.   No one looked askance at Harry.  People make sacrifices in war, and Malfoy had made his — too little and too late, to judge by the way the Weasleys discussed him. 

 

Harry could have passed his days as usual, intentionally forgetting the husk he was draining in the third bedroom down from his own.  

 

He could have, but he did not.

 

"You really should eat."

 

"I get sick if I do."

 

Harry sighed.  It would have helped if Malfoy had bothered to inflect his words these days.  But the days when a subtle inflection on Malfoy's part could send Harry into a roaring rage were gone.   Malfoy had one tone now:  tired.  A small part of Harry called it "defeated", but Harry really didn't want to think about that.  Tired he could handle; defeated meant Malfoy was really a person, really could be affected by something outside himself, really was more than a two-bit caricature.

 

Harry wasn't ready for that.

 

*

 

"Why did you agree to this?"

 

Draco looked at him, large eyes reflecting the light of the single candle he allowed.  "I want the Dark Lord to fall."

 

"Why?"

 

"He murdered my mother, Potter, in case you don't recall.  I know she wasn't perfection itself, but she was my mother.  She deserves that much respect from somebody."

 

"You could have fought with the Order yourself, you didn't have—"

 

"I would have been fighting with the Order, far more so than with the Dark Lord and his followers.  Provided they even let me out of this room, which is doubtful. They don't trust me and I don't trust them. This is my contribution."

 

"But what if you die?"  The words came out as a harsh whisper, rather than in the blasé tones as Harry had desired.

 

Draco just looked at him through the darkness.

 

*

 

"May I touch you?"

 

Harry received the reaction he'd expected.  "If you want."

 

It was the spell, obviously.  Not pity, not ... not anything else.  The strange itch which was always part of him these days stilled when he held Malfoy's hand in his own.   He was glad the spell hadn't had such an intense effect on Malfoy's hands — it was hard to imagine them getting any bonier than they had been to begin with.  They were strangely warm and Harry found himself tracing the skin lightly, caressing too-prominent knuckles, noting how dry the skin really was.

 

*

 

The progression from there was simple enough, though Harry denied it the whole way.  Malfoy, despite the nutrition potions he lived on, was losing strength.   Even sitting in a chair for any length of time exhausted him.  Harry tried to tell himself it was just the Good Guy thing to do when he just happened to stop by for a visit when Malfoy needed to use the loo or wanted a bath.  

 

How he knew these things was very much a matter of the spell.  It was the same way he knew Malfoy's dreams.  It was as if a low-intensity Legilimens had been cast on them.   He just knew.

 

The spell gained strength when he touched Malfoy and it was the only time Harry could really relax.  He thought that might be from Malfoy's constant low-level anxiety, or it might be his own anxiety as Horcrux after Horcrux was found and destroyed and the time for the last battle drew near.

 

So the night when Harry lay down beside Malfoy was not a surprise to either of them.

 

"It will be over soon."

 

"I know."

 

Harry studied Draco by the scant light.  On one level he was repulsed.  Malfoy looked like he was dying — though, of course, that was simply impossible.   This was a Weasley spell, after all, and they weren't Dark wizards.

 

On another level, touching Malfoy sent a jolt directly to Harry's groin. 

 

He sniffed along Malfoy's neck and placed a gentle kiss on his collarbone.  He tried to ignore the bone's prominence.  Malfoy stayed very still, neither responding nor resisting as Harry ghosted kisses over his face.

 

From their hand-holding sessions Harry knew his touch seemed to have a pleasant effect on Malfoy, so he continued, moving by degrees to kneel over his Slytherin.

 

Harry had absolutely no idea what he was doing, but, as instinct had served him quite well in more deadly situations, he was perfectly willing to let instinct guide him here.

 

Malfoy raised one long leg to press his knee firmly between them, and Harry got the faintest brush of fear from the boy.

 

"I don't want to."

 

Malfoy's words were calm enough but Harry felt the fear welling inside him.  It was then that he realised Malfoy had been using Occlumency against him all along.  

 

Malfoy's magic was all draining into Harry; he could not defend himself magically.  In this state he couldn't defend himself physically, either.   No one in the house cared if Harry — or anyone, really — hurt him, so long as no one killed him before the final battle.  He was utterly alone and dependent on Harry's decency.

 

The fear locked itself down before Harry could move. 

 

Harry eased back to lay beside the Slytherin.  He didn't try to reassure him with words:  touch would have to do.   Harry hugged him until Malfoy fell into exhausted slumber.

 

*

 

The next morning, when Ron saw him stumble blearily from Malfoy's room, he caught the faint flash of revulsion from his friend, but it was the manly clap on his shoulders and leering grin which hurt.

 

*

 

The long nights became longer when Malfoy stopped being able to sleep.  Harry wanted to ask if the spell hurt, but it was such a stupid question, with such a self-evident answer that he'd been ignoring for weeks that he didn't dare.   If Malfoy would have responded with scathing anger he might have tried, but this Malfoy ...  Harry didn't want to hurt him any more.

 

Harry stayed with him, and in his sleep he followed Malfoy's thoughts so much more clearly.

 

Malfoy lived in a different world.  It was subtle and strange to see their years at Hogwarts through Malfoy's eyes.

 

Where Harry saw children, Malfoy saw representatives of families.  Where Harry saw inexplicable spats Malfoy saw political wrangling, measured the benefits versus the cost of his interference, saw ways to manipulate people in the future based on their reactions to this or that provocation.

 

Where Harry couldn't tell a Muggle-born from a pureblood, again, Malfoy saw families.  Muggle-borns, at the very basest place in Malfoy's mind, were unknown quantities and therefore dangerous.   He hated Ron, but he knew Ron in a way even Harry did not, because Malfoy knew Ron's family and — this was seemingly the most important part to Malfoy — he knew the Weasley family history.  It was like knowing ahead of time how any Weasley was likely to respond in any given situation.  

 Knowledge really was power, and Malfoy had vast and intimate knowledge of the wizarding world.  He had knowledge Harry hadn't even known existed, knowledge which he hadn't even suspected existed because of some gap in the world.

 

Malfoy feared Muggle-borns and half-bloods because, historically, many Muggle-borns and halfbloods had been spies from Muggle authorities.   They had turned over purebloods during the trials of centuries past in return for their own safety, or money, or purely for spite.  Tom Riddle was not the first half-blood to go Dark.

 

Malfoy might not know a light switch from a microwave, but he was not so ignorant of the Muggle world as Harry had liked to think.  He knew the Church — whatever Church it might be — was losing power.  He also knew, however, that secular authorities were stepping into that power-vacuum and would be just as likely to try to purge wizarding folk from their population as the Church.  Worse, secular authorities might find wizarding folk useful.  Malfoy's imagination was filled with burnings and prisons, and wizards under the Imperius Curse by half-bloods and Muggleborns and forced to serve Muggles.

 

It was a bleak and cynical place, inside Malfoy's mind. 

 

*

 

It was during these long nights that Harry finally understood why Malfoy had agreed to the spell. 

 

He had recognised the basics of the thing, if not the specific Weasley additions.  Apparently most pureblood families had a similar spell in their family grimoires.

 

He believed it would kill him.  Again, he hadn't known the specifics of the death, except that it would look like a slow, lingering illness.  

 

He had agreed because of his mother;  that much was true.  He had not bothered with the full explanation because he didn't think Harry would understand.

 

Those long, lonely days shut up in this dark room had left Malfoy with nowhere to run when it came to thinking.

 

He blamed himself for his mother's death.  He blamed himself for Dumbledore's death — which didn't bother him too terribly — but he also blamed himself for letting Death Eaters into Hogwarts.   He was sickened by the thought of what might have happened that night, and sick enough over what had.

 

He was horrified that he'd almost murdered Katie Bell.  He might despise anyone who wasn't a pureblood, but he didn't want them all dead — just far, far away from himself and his family.

 

The matter of Ron bothered him far less than Dumbledore's death — bothered him far less than if he had accidentally almost killed Hermione. He had a strange, if extremely grudging, respect for her.   Ron he simply loathed.

 

While he felt a great deal of guilt over all these things, that guilt had not motivated him to allow the spell.

 

No, it was nothing so simple as guilt or anger which had forced him to that. 

 

If an abyss can be said to force someone to do anything, it was an abyss of pure misery, horror, and despair which had forced him to agree.   He had, single-handedly, destroyed his own family.  His mother was dead because of him.  His father would either die at the Dark Lord's hand or in battle because of him.  The Manor was now de facto property of Death Eaters and would remain so unless Harry won.

 

In that instance, of course, it would be seized by the Ministry and everything which was Malfoy would be destroyed.

 

If he'd thought it would somehow help defeat the Dark Lord, Malfoy would have gladly given himself to the Ministry, secure in the knowledge that they'd sentence him to Azkaban and throw away the key.

 

As he saw better odds of having some small part in destroying the Dark Lord and thereby salvaging some miniscule portion of his pride by letting Harry take his magic, he had walked into his own personal Azkaban willingly and with full acceptance.

 

*

 

Harry jumped, scattering the shards of the next-to-last Horcrux as he heard a faint echo of himself speaking in his own head.

 

Malfoy spent most of his time now in a near dream-state, barely conscious for most of the day, but not properly asleep, either.  Snape was afraid to dose him with sleeping draughts in his state, and he wasn't keeping his nutrition potions down, anyway.

 

This led to Harry being privy to Malfoy's thoughts  as a sort of constant background chatter.  He heard people walking by Malfoy's room, snatches of conversation, and he usually ignored them.

 

But hearing himself asking Malfoy to let him in — when he was nowhere near Malfoy's door — sent him up the stairs in a rush.

 

He wasn't even thinking as he hauled one of the twins off Draco by his collar, slinging the larger boy back with far more force than he could have imagined.   Only when the twins were at bay and he was standing braced between them and Draco did Harry's mind catch up with him.

 

There were no words — Harry was too angry to speak.

 

He heard Malfoy's harsh breathing behind him as he tried to catch his breath.

 

The twins were speaking — they had been for some time — but the first words Harry actually noticed were "...deserves after Bill".

 

"It's not like it matters."

 

All those thoughts he'd discounted as Malfoy's hallucinations came rushing back to Harry.

 

Malfoy thought that the Weasleys were undertaking to overwhelm the wizarding world with numbers.  It was a small society, after all, and the Weasleys were purebloods with the distinction of good reputation if not money.   They had a certain power.  With so many of the other pureblood lines ending these days, there was another power vacuum that needed filling.

 

Though Malfoy probably didn't know Bill from Charlie from Percy, he knew that one of the Weasley sons worked with dragons — which involved international politics and had a certain cachet of its own.   One worked for Gringotts — internationally, again, and with the added benefits of proximity to money and good relations with Goblins.  One worked at the Ministry — which was self-explanatory.   Two were businessmen — monetarily successful and building good relations for the family at home.  And, of course, the youngest brother was to be an Auror and the daughter — well, she was going to marry Harry Potter.

 

Malfoy did not see any of this as evil, just as another instance of pureblood politics.  It was a tried and true strategy:   the Malfoys, in more fruitful generations, had gained control of international wizarding shipping the same way.  He wasn't even certain the Weasley children were altogether aware of their roles in the greater family plan—certainly, either Percy was far more disloyal to his family than Harry thought and intentionally damaging their plans for power or he was simply looking out for Percy.

 

Nevertheless, Harry thought of Malfoy seeing families stretching out behind every pureblood student at Hogwarts.  They were people in their own right and representatives of their families. 

 

He'd said once that he didn't so much want Harry Potter to defeat the Dark Lord as he wanted the Potters to defeat him. 

 

It was a subtle difference Harry wouldn't have understood a month before.

 

Now he realised exactly how vulnerable he'd been when he entered the wizarding world.  He wasn't willing to say the Weasleys were evil — certainly Ron was as guileless as they came, back when they were eleven, anyway.  Harry  should have had his family behind him, but he hadn't.  He should have been aware of a power deeper and far older than that awarded merely for being The Boy Who Loved.  He had been ignorant and had been allowed to remain so.

 

The Weasleys had backed him. To the eyes of the wizarding world he was merely an adjunct of the Weasley family.  The Weasleys had risen in esteem by marrying their name to his.  He really didn't want to think it was a plot, but he realised that Mrs Weasley would not be blind to the possibilities once Harry joined her brood.

 

But he was not a Weasley.  He was a Potter -- the Potter, maybe, but that meant he had to choose between acting as the last and only Potter — or the head of the Potter family.

 

Harry stiffened his spine.  He might not know how this was really supposed to go, but he called to mind what he'd seen in the Mirror of Erised — Potters stretching back behind him, generation after generation, proud of him and lending him their power.

 

"How dare you," Harry said, feeling his chest swell.  He wondered if this was how Mrs Weasley felt just before she went on a tear, like the words were going to split him in two.

 

"He's always been a bullying git," Fred protested.

 

"When," Malfoy asked thickly, "did I ever go out of my way to hurt someone weaker than me?  It's no fun if they can't fight back."

 

George glared down at the Slytherin.  "This is for Bill, arsewipe."

 

Harry snorted.  "Then if Bill wants to beat the crap out of Malfoy, he can talk to me about it."

 

"Yeah, you might want to ask Bill before you go defending his honour," Bill himself drawled[2]  from the open door.

 

Under other circumstances it would have been comical to see the twins execute two perfect horror-movie turns.

 

Bill stepped aside enough for them to pass through the door, his gesture a silent command which they immediately obeyed. 

 

Bill entered the room and before Harry could stop him knelt down in front of Malfoy.

 

He touched the blond's bloody nose and tutted.  "Broken.  Hold still."

 

Malfoy yelped when Bill tugged his nose into place, then scowled up at him.

 

"I should have talked to you before, Malfoy," Bill said quietly.

 

Harry hated the look in Malfoy's eyes at those words.  Malfoys were not supposed to look like whipped dogs.

 

"You didn't have any choice.  You have never had any real choice — not since your father took the Dark Mark.  They were going to kill your parents.   In your place, I'd have done the same thing."

 

Bill stood and dusted off his knees, giving Harry a brief nod before leaving.

 

Harry did not need Malfoy's memories to realise that when Arthur died, Bill would be the head of the Weasleys.  He knew the twins far better than his parents did — and in much more useful ways, as a sibling would.   He could — and would — hurt them if necessary to make them toe the family line.

 

And he'd just reminded them of that and made it clear that abusing Draco would not be tolerated.  Probably their parents would turn a blind eye, but when the time came, Bill would remember, and he would make them pay.

 

How Harry had been so blind to all of this for so many years he didn't know.

 

*

 

When he came back from the battle soaked in blood he fully expected Draco to be dead.  Had it not been for Remus, Harry would have never left the battle field alive when he felt Malfoy collapse as he killed Voldemort.

 

The price was simply too high.

 

*

 

"You aren't allowed to be the tragic hero, y'know," Harry muttered.

 

Draco remained still.  Harry had demanded his ... whatever-he-was be taken to St Mungo's and given the best of care.  So, somehow, Malfoy was still alive.

 

Harry Potter — the Potter of Potter — had spoken.

 

He'd said a lot, too.  He'd talked about forgiveness and honour, duty and taking responsibility.  He didn't mention love, though he wondered now exactly how that compatible power seeking spell had been designed to work.   Those who knew the Prophecy knew the truth, which was enough.

 

Well, enough for them.  Harry meant to get Malfoy's opinion if he had to follow him to hell.

 

So he'd had to speak of Snape's sacrifices in order to speak of Draco's — and thus saved them both.  The way he looked at it now, he was saving two families, not a Potions Master he still hated and "merely" Draco Malfoy.

 

"You're going to be pissed when you wake up.  But I'd rather have you pissed than dead."

 

He'd researched the Binding spell enough to recognise the Potter version in the old spellbooks hidden under his parents' gold.  It was designed to cement marriages back in the days when pureblood boys would kidnap pureblood girls and marry them with or without anybody's consent.  With the girl's magic bound to her new "husband" she couldn't fight.   Eventually, as she sickened, she would agree to accept the situation.

 

It was an ugly spell, but given the number of variations among the pureblood families, a fairly popular one in some periods.

 

The only way to break it was to bind it back and thus equalise things.

 

Harry took the knife and ran it across his forearm, then pressed the bloody skin to Draco's lips.

 

Time would tell if he was making the biggest mistake of his life.  But that, as ever, was the Gryffindor way.