Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Thirty-Six-Together in the Dazzle

As soon as they stepped outside the Ministry, Harry could pick the reporters out of the crowd. They tried to lounge casually, but they never did manage it. He thought it was something that got trained out of them when they were taught alertness and attention to the finer details around them. That training was more valuable than not for writing articles, but it meant they appeared like hounds on the scent to anyone who knew what to look for.

Too, he knew some of them by sight. The tall woman straightening up on the far side of the crowd was Sylvia Abernathy, one of the Prophet's more persistent gossip columnists. The man who was thin all over-thin glasses and eyebrows and moustache to go with everything else-represented the Cackler, a paper that mostly reported Quibbler-style about conspiracies but would follow any scandalous story about a wizarding world celebrity they could find. And there were a few others who opened their mouths and started yammering the minute they saw him.

Harry grimaced. This was why he hated doing things like this. Nod and look vaguely above their heads, give them nothing, and he stood some chance of holding his own in this contest.

But Draco had begun to swagger as soon as he saw them, his hand resting on Harry's shoulder and his smile so sharp that Harry thought it would slice the Cackler bloke's head off when he stared at him, and Harry reckoned that he couldn't ask him not to have fun. He followed along behind Draco in a resigned way as they came out onto the street and the reporters churned a way through the casual stream of people passing back and forth from the Ministry on legitimate business.

This is a legitimate business, too, Harry. He could almost hear Hermione's voice scolding him. Just because you don't like it...

Harry would like it better if reporters had some basic manners, but none of them knew what the word "dignity" looked like. Abernathy had her Quick-Quotes Quill poised near his face before he could duck behind Draco.

"Mr. Potter," she said, and gave him a smile so syrupy it would have made Rita Skeeter's jaw drop in shock. "Can you tell us, how soon are you leaving the marriage with Mr. Malfoy? Of course he'll tie you down and try to force you to commit to him, and I don't think that's a good idea for someone with as...long and varied a sexual record as you have."

Oh, she was good, Harry had to acknowledge. It wasn't just the smile, but the elaborate pause in her voice, as though she was searching for words that wouldn't hurt him. A few of the other reporters had stopped to stare at her in admiration.

Too bad for her that Draco wasn't one of them. (Though Harry did have a sudden flash of what Draco might act like if he reported on gossip and had to bite hastily on his lip to stifle a snort).

Draco took a step around Harry and smiled at Abernathy. "I'm sure you'll want to know that you're using the wrong name for Harry," he said. "He should be addressed as Harry Malfoy, due to the nature of the marriage bond." He paused, then added thoughtfully, "Fancy someone like you, who's spent so much time with pure-bloods, not knowing that."

A high flush colored Abernathy's cheekbones, and Harry had to work hard to stifle a chuckle, this time. He remembered hearing that her family wasn't pure-blood, but that she had worked hard to make people think so.

"My apologies," Abernathy said, becoming even softer and more polite, the way she had a gift for doing in the face of provocation. It was one reason Harry hadn't turned to insults when he spoke to her. He would always come out looking worse, no matter what he said. She faced Harry again and gave him a sort of sympathetic smile that seemed to argue she and Harry were alone together, facing a world of hostile, prejudiced pure-bloods. "Mr. Malfoy, then. When do you intend to leave-Mr. Malfoy?"

Harry smiled at her. He could see it would frustrate her, having to call two people by the same last name, and that gave him a flash of inspiration. "You still have the name wrong," he said coldly. "It's Auror Malfoy."

Draco's left arm was behind Harry's back. When Harry spoke the Malfoy last name as though it was his own, Harry felt Draco's fingers scraping up and down his arse. Draco's hand had curled in what seemed to be shock. Harry made sure he kept any smile off his face and eyed Abernathy sternly.

She did a little bow of her head and said, "Auror. When do you-"

"You've had them long enough, Sylvia, it's my turn," the thin man interrupted, and bustled up, inserting himself in a little gap between Harry and Abernathy's elbows. "We've seen lots of pictures of you admiring non-human beasts and beings, Malfoy. Who gave you the best ride?"

"I'd say Firebolt," Harry said obediently. Ron and Draco had come up with a list of the most likely offensive questions and prepared him with some answers. "I was once loyal to Nimbus, of course, but I'm afraid their brooms just can't compare with the newer and more expensive Firebolt models."

The thin man looked blank. Abernathy laughed at him and shoved him out of the way with her arse as she faced Harry again. "That isn't what we're talking about, and you know it," she said, her eyes sparking as though she was glad that Harry had turned out to be a worthy opponent after all. "We want to know who fucked you the best."

"The Ministry's fucked me over many a time," Harry said. That wasn't a question on the list of questions, but he saw no reason that he couldn't turn it around on Abernathy. Draco hadn't interfered so far, and Harry knew he would have if he disapproved of Harry's performance. "I can't give too many details that would lessen the public's trust in our leaders, of course, but-"

"Enough," Abernathy said, in a louder voice than Harry had thought that slender chest could contain. Well, he reckoned that she had to be able to surprise him some of the time or part of the challenge would be gone from confronting and evading the reporters. "We want to know who you had sex with, and right now. The trust of the public in you is at stake, Auror Potter." She pointed her quill at him, her face flushed, and Harry saw something in her eyes that he hadn't expected. She believed this story, or at least part of it, and she was disappointed in him. "They will want to know whether they've been loving and admiring a sex maniac, someone who only cares for the latest bed he can jump in and out of-"

"The only beds Auror Malfoy has been in during the past few months are the ones that I approved."

Harry jerked. He had been going to let Abernathy play herself out, but he had reckoned without Draco, who stepped forwards and let his own grin glint at her. It shone jaggedly enough to make Abernathy take a step back. Draco went on speaking into the silence he had created as smoothly as though he had planned this all along.

"Harry has two lovers at the moment, Auror Ian Shelborn and me. He certainly couldn't have gone on most of the liaisons that you think he had without inviting me along. And those photographs that you put so much stock in?" Draco moved his fingers, and a photograph torn out of the paper, the one that showed Harry supposedly snogging a dark-haired man, appeared in his hand. "Fakes."

Draco was a quick study, Harry had to admit, in things other than how to irritate him. He'd memorized the spell that Ian taught him within seconds. He murmured it now, and the enchantment on the photograph visibly tattered and spiraled away, revealing the original of the picture: Harry standing in front of the man, staring into his eyes, as he bound him with the ropes of the Incarcerous spell.

There was a rising murmur of excitement from the back of the crowd. Harry smiled. He suspected that many of them were only interested in a story they could write down and claim ownership of, which meant that it wouldn't matter to them where that story came from or who it concerned. There was just as much material to sell papers in declaring that Harry Potter was a wronged hero as in declaring that he was "the Salacious Savior," as the Cackler had put it that morning.

Well, maybe not quite as much, Harry admitted to himself a moment later. But the papers had published so many photographs that there wasn't much to fall back on if they wanted to continue the story. A new twist, like Harry being a victim after all, would make them happier than repetition of stale facts.

"That can't be true," Abernathy said, looking as though someone had killed her kitten. "We-we all saw them, we saw all of them, there's no way that all of them can be false..."

In silence, Draco held up the picture of Harry and the horse that Harry remembered from the case where the Dark wizard had enchanted pets to kill. Again the spell, again the smoke, again a photo that was perfectly innocent. Harry grinned at Draco, who twitched a corner of his mouth in response but didn't look away from the reporters in front of him.

"I would think," Draco said, his voice traveling out like a whip that Harry could almost see coiling around Abernathy's neck, "that the Daily Prophet would know their own photographs better than this. Since those pictures were the basis for the deception..." He got to trail off and look smug, which Harry was already beginning to suspect was one of his favorite things in the world.

"That doesn't mean all of them are false," the man from the Cackler said suddenly. "Or even that the ones you've shown us are! You could have put an enchantment on them that would make them appear innocent, because you want your husband out of trouble and the scandal is embarrassing!"

Other voices piped up agreeing with him, while someone else began to claim that they knew the incantation and it was only used for revealing the truth, not hiding it. Harry raised an eyebrow at Draco, who looked more annoyed than resigned. They'd tried, and Ian and Ron had other strategies up their sleeves.

Only Abernathy didn't join the growing cacophony. She stood still, except for a slight swaying, her eyes locked on Harry. Harry frowned. Had she taken the undermining of her story that personally? He didn't think she was the one who'd written the Prophet's report on the photos.

Then she reached down and drew her wand.

At the same time, the air filled with the heavy, sweetish scent of decay.

Harry reacted instinctively, spinning around and dropping Draco to the ground, behind him. He fell into a defensive crouch beside Draco and looked frantically at the crowd, wondering how he would protect them from the vines and the flowers that had apparently planted the beast in Grayson.

Then Abernathy shouted, and Harry realized he might not have to worry about that as a blast of pain and power took him in the chest and sheered what felt like a huge patch of skin away. He fell, twisting over to try to fire back, and skidded in something large and wet. When he looked down, he realized it was a pool of his own blood, already an inch deep.

This is bad, he thought, muzzily. This is very bad.

Rage such as Draco had never known stirred to life in him when he heard the rings buzz and saw Harry fall, his chest ripped open to expose the heart.

But the rage was because Harry was dying, and Draco had to prevent that no matter what, not go after Abernathy. He raised his wand and spat out a spell that he would normally never use in front of the Ministry, a Dark incantation that spread a shimmering, impenetrable shield over them. He dropped down beneath the mist of dark purple and turned to Harry. He would have to hope that the decay magic it seemed Abernathy wielded couldn't eat through the shield, as it had done with the Ministry wards his mother had discovered.

All this traveled through his mind and body in a splinter of a second.

Harry was dying. That much was obvious to Draco. Bleeding out, no one could survive that much blood, Draco's knees and legs were soaked in it. There was very little that would even keep him stable until someone could move him to St. Mungo's, not least because the movement alone would probably kill him.

But there were spells that might increase his chances of survival.

Sanguis, sanguis cruore, Draco thought in his head, because a nonverbal spell would be faster than a verbal one and speed mattered right now. He had no trouble putting enough force behind the spell, which was sometimes a problem when one was used to casting spells aloud only. Now, the magic leaped and ripped through him, slicing hard enough at his veins that he winced. But that was part of the point. The magic had to escape, and he was the conduit.

The magic bore a stream of blood with it, starting at his arm, though no cut was visible; it simply opened a vein and flowed into Harry. Draco was casting healing spells at the same time, tying together ragged strips of skin, creating a covering so that his own blood wouldn't immediately flow out again. He was growing steadily weaker, but the spell he had cast was the most powerful one he knew, the only one that could adjust itself in the face of continuing weakness, and if anything could save Harry, then he knew it would.

As Draco fell lower and lower beside Harry and his vision blurred and grew faint, he thought he saw movement outside their shield. Well, tough. If it was enemies, they hadn't managed to burn through yet. If it was friends, they could help the most by fighting Abernathy and not interfering with what Draco was trying to do for Harry. Clumsy healing spells or, worse, a misaimed Finite at the wrong time could undo Harry's chances of survival.

Draco knew that his own clear, cold mask of glazed ice over his emotions was a deception, that it would break in a while and his screams would leak through. Well, that was too bad. He would have to do what he could while he could, and if Harry survived, that would be more than he had thought could happen.

Hope wasn't thought. Hope wasn't rational.

The blood flow looped back and forth between him and Harry; as he weakened, the spell picked up the blood lying on the ground, Harry's blood, and poured it into him, so that he in turn could grow stronger and continue contributing the blood and weaving the skin that would keep Harry alive. Draco was vaguely aware that there were dangers to this, that wizards had died doing this, because a wizard's blood carried magic just as every other part of his body did and another wizard's body sometimes rejected that power. But, well, without it Harry would die. That made it as good as having no choice, where Draco was concerned.

His vision blurred, then cleared, then blurred again. The magic continued to make the rounds, tying them together, joining them together, transforming them together. Draco wanted to yelp in tiredness and collapse, but that would be stupid when it was still working. The magic would have stopped at once if Harry was dead, because the wizards who had invented it saw no point in killing two people.

As long as Draco could see that stream pouring through his uncut flesh, then Harry was still with him.

He pulled together two strips of skin above Harry's heart, panting. Then he sat back and stared down at a ragged but whole chest, the rents and slashes in it wounds of the kind that Draco thought someone could survive.

The magic stopped flowing.

For long moments, the world contracted, and Draco could feel the heartbeat in his own chest even more powerfully than the buzzing of the ring. The ring that would have fallen from his finger, he reminded himself, if Harry was dead. The ring that felt suddenly heavier, but Draco couldn't look at it right now; his eyes remained locked on Harry's chest, the way it was trembling.

The way it began to rise and fall.

Draco closed his eyes and leaned his head on Harry's legs, heedless of the blood smearing his cheeks and sticking to his hair. He knew that the Healers at St. Mungo's would have to do other things, that weaving skin back and contributing blood wasn't enough, but for a moment he let himself go and spoke silent thanks to whatever power wanted to receive it.

Then he conjured a stretcher, lifted Harry onto it with the gentlest of gentle spells, and looked up to see how the battle outside the shield was going, whether he could safely drop it or not.

Both Weasley and Shelborn were pounding on the shield, and it looked as though Abernathy had either escaped or someone had safely downed her, because Draco didn't see a sign of her. Either way was good enough for him. As long as she wasn't in the immediate vicinity, then she couldn't hurt Harry. He turned, placing his body as a barrier between Harry and his friends so that they couldn't hurt him accidentally, and then lowered the shield. He was staggering with tiredness, he realized abruptly, and needed the floating stretcher himself to keep upright.

"What happened?" Weasley's hair was literally standing on end, and for once it wasn't the reddest thing about him. The blood that smeared his robes was gleaming and sticky and sickly, and Draco had to look away from it. That was blood that had been outside the shield, and so outside the range of the Blood Transfer Spell he had cast to save Harry's life.

"Someone cut Harry's chest open," Draco said. "St. Mungo's. Now."

For once, neither Weasley nor Shelborn demanded arguments or explanations. They gathered up the edges of the stretcher, and Shelborn Apparated them. Draco blinked as they landed in a bright, clear room, which moments later was filled with shouts and scurrying mediwizards. He sat down hard in a chair, awaiting the moment when they would move Harry to a room, so that he could go with him.

He looked at his left hand. He had reached out for Harry's left hand without even realizing it, linking their rings together.

On both rings was a new band of metal, a heavy, dull one that Draco stared at without recognition for long moments. Well, the blood that covered everything certainly didn't help.

Iron.

Iron, the metal that ran in blood. Iron that was the sign the partners in the marriage had spilled their blood for one another.

Draco closed his eyes and had to fight back a hysterical giggle. Well, this was one way to create that band for the ring.

"...a real lead at last."

That promising sentence brought Harry up out of the darkness. He became aware that he was breathing with the aid of magic-that constricting sensation around his chest and nose was unmistakable-and grimaced. He always hated it, and he'd had more than his fair share of experience with that spell, since there were a few times after his escape from the darkness when he'd stopped breathing in the middle of his panic attacks.

He opened his eyes and turned his head, procedures that shouldn't have made him feel as if he were trying to cast a defensive spell with his left hand while fighting off three Dark wizards with his right.

Draco sat beside the bed, his left hand still linked and locked with Harry's. Harry's gaze went to him first, and stayed there, because he knew without asking, the way Draco's gaze lingered on him and clear sparks glowed in his eyes, that he had come close to dying and Draco had saved his life.

Again.

At least we already have the platinum band in the ring, Harry thought. For some reason, it seemed incredibly important.

"Mate!"

Ron tried to hug him, which, given all the bandages on Harry's chest as well as the way that Draco refused to let go of Harry's left hand, was a bit awkward. But Harry held Ron and patted his shoulder with his free hand, murmuring, and Ron made a noise like he was swallowing tears, and it was more than all right.

"Harry. Welcome back."

Ian was watching Harry with eyes that were so brilliant Harry had to squirm a little, even though he was lying in bed and there was a Healer coming through the doorway at the moment who raised a protest against exactly the kind of squirm that Harry wanted to do. "Thank you," he said. "What happened, exactly? I know that Sylvia Abernathy was using decay magic, but I don't know what spell she hit me with."

"A spell that tore your chest away," Draco said, and from the savage creaking in the back of his voice, he wanted Harry to pay attention to him. Harry rolled his head over again, and the sparks that he could see, or thought he could see, rising from Draco immediately calmed. Draco smiled at him and reached out, fingers tracing his collarbone as though checking for breaks. "I used another one that transfers my blood to you and gathered up the fallen blood to send back into my veins."

"I don't understand that part," Harry said, after thinking about it for a few seconds. "Wouldn't it have been easier to force the blood on the ground back into me?"

Draco shook his head. "Magic works strongly with cycles and circles, not so much with reversing the effects of another spell. Even Finite could only have removed Dark magic that was preventing you from healing, not given you your blood back. Plus, it would have been a bit useless without the skin to hold it in," he added dryly. "So I worked the skin, and the magic set up a cycle that would feed strength to me as I lost it and feed you strength as you lost it. When the magic reached a balance that meant you wouldn't immediately die, we could move you. But the Healers here did almost as much as I did."

"You don't believe that," Harry said quietly. Draco's eyes got that glow they only had when he knew he had saved Harry.

Draco tilted their hands in response. The rings had a new band, Harry saw when he glanced down. Iron.

"Do you mind?" Draco asked.

"I-of course not," Harry said, though if Ian's gaze had made him want to squirm, Draco's made him want to run out of the room. "It was just-unexpected, that's all. And of course, I thank you for saving my life."

"Out of here, now," the Healer said, who had been hovering in the background and looking more and more agitated as the conversation went on. "Auror Potter's still not strong enough for visitors."

Ron and Ian left, though not without squeezing Harry's hand on the way, but Draco stayed right where he was. The Healer seemed used to that, since she rolled her eyes and started working around him.

"I hope that we at least can stop this from happening again," Harry whispered, closing his eyes as exhaustion began to press on them.

"Oh, we didn't mention it, did we?" Draco asked. "They took Abernathy alive. And it seems she's a full conspirator, not an innocent victim."

That allowed Harry to smile as he slipped into sleep again.

Well, that, and the kiss he felt Draco press on his wedding ring.