Chapter Sixty-Two: Wood and Bone and Blood and Iron
Draco flexed his fingers in a slow pattern that his mother had taught him the last time he visited her, to make himself calm down and think about something else. It kept him from snapping immediately at Harry, who sat with his arms folded on the other side of the bed and didn't seem to understand what he'd done wrong.
"Well, I don't see it," he said at last. "How could you free a mother and a child? House elves are valuable, and house elf children can work within a few days of being born. The owner wouldn't have given them up."
"He already had," Harry said promptly. "The webs over the house elves link to the owners' intentions, which I didn't know. He believed she would die in childbirth, and the baby with her. He'd resigned his claim to them, and that's why Dobby and I could step in and interfere." He shrugged. "It doesn't make any difference to the free will of the owner. In one sense, they would be gone from his control. Now they're simply gone from his control in another sense."
Draco braced himself. He could tell he and Harry were going to collide, and he didn't want that, just a few days before February second and the fourth courting ritual. "Harry," he said.
"Yes?"
Draco licked his lips and leaned forward. "It makes a large difference. If you had saved their lives and maintained the webs, the owner would have wanted them back, don't you think? And if he had known there was a way they could survive the night, he would have never resigned his claim to them. You lied, at least by omission, by not waking him up and telling him the truth."
There was silence for a moment. Draco, who had expected an angry outburst, was surprised. He watched Harry sit there with head bowed, and wondered if it was possible that he was actually thinking about this.
Then Harry lifted his face, and Draco recoiled a bit at the look in his eyes. He told himself to be still and not flinch, though, even when the shadow of a snake draped over Harry's shoulders. If he backed down from Harry through fear of his magic, he would never be an equal partner in their disputes. He would always have only the opinions that Harry allowed him to hold or express, and no others. He was striking a blow for his own freedom by not flinching.
That didn't stop him from wanting to yield just so that the thick flow of magic over him would turn sweet. But those instincts were only instincts, and he could control them. Draco breathed softly, his eyes fixed on Harry's face.
"I should have maintained the webs?" Harry asked softly. "Do you realize that asking me to do so violates every commitment I have as a vates, Draco?"
"I thought you already did that," said Draco. "By violating the owner's free will, I mean. He should have known, and should have made the decision to let Jiv and her son go with full knowledge of what was happening." He paused, and then flung the words. If nothing else, they might make Harry so angry as to throw him off-balance. "Or are you afraid that he'd refuse, and you'd have to abide by the respect for wizards' free will that you promised, and that means that you'd have to see that freeing house elves is wrong-headed?"
Something burst behind him. Draco thought one of the bedposts had cracked clean through. He still did not let himself back down. At the moment, his trust in Harry was a fragile thing, as likely to splinter as a bedpost was, but he still would not yield. Harry was Harry, and Harry would never hurt him.
"Freeing house elves is not wrong-headed," said Harry softly, after a long, ominous pause. "If their service was something natural, the ancient wizards would never have had to put a web on them to compel their slavery in the first place. And though I would have argued with the owner had he maintained a claim to them—I wouldn't have had a choice, because then the webs would likely have been too strong for me to cut through—I don't think that what I did this time was wrong."
"Why not?" Draco challenged him insistently. If Harry couldn't defend his position in an argument with him, then he wouldn't be able to defend it with political rivals. Draco was doing him a favor, really.
"Because I would have had to actively help in the enslavement of house elves," said Harry. "I would have had to heal Jiv and her son and haul them back into their webs. You maintain that the owner would have wanted to keep them if he had known I could save their lives, and not otherwise. And why should I save their lives just so that he could keep them?"
"Because—" Draco paused.
"I already know that I'm not going to like whatever you have to say next." Harry's face was frozen. "Just say it, Draco."
"Because a wizard's will is more important than a house elf's will," said Draco. "Because he deserved the chance to know it. Because I still think that a wizard's allegiance should be to his own kind, Harry, and you owed Jiv's owner more responsibility than you showed him."
"I see." Harry gave him a nod, then stood and walked towards the door.
Draco couldn't help it; he called out after him, "Where are you going?"
Harry looked back at him. "To think, Draco. That's all." He paused for a moment, and spoke words that he probably meant to be comforting without any softness in his face, which meant they weren't comforting at all. "It doesn't involve giving you the silent treatment again, or leaving you. If I did either of those things, you'd know." He held up his hand so that the Black ring on it shone, and Draco imagined he would probably strip it off as a sign that their courting ritual was done, if he should decide to do so.
Then he shut the door of their bedroom, and shut Draco off from him for a time. Draco lay back on the bed, and thought.
At one point, he saw a glimmer of scales move past the bed, and Argutus raised his head up to look at him. The Omen snake let out a long, breathless hiss that was probably the equivalent of a scolding in Parseltongue, and then hooked himself around the handle of the door and went after Harry.
Draco scowled and rolled over to push his face into the pillow.
What had Harry expected him to say when he told him about this? He knew where Draco stood. He knew what Draco thought about Mudbloods. It was one thing to treat them politely in public, and another thing to actually think them equal to pureblood wizards. Draco didn't. Their magic could be the same. Their blood never would be, and neither would their heritage. There were dozens of things that Draco, raised in a pureblood environment, knew and accepted the way that a fish knew and accepted water. Granger would never know them. Hannah Abbott, from Hufflepuff, violated them all the time, minor rules of politeness about staring and what words one used in public. Merlin, even Harry—
And there he stopped, because if someone had asked him to judge Harry on behavior, without knowing anything about his blood, Draco knew what he would have said. He would have called him pureblood.
He rolled restlessly off the bed and pulled on a set of clean robes; the ones he wore were too rumpled for his taste now, and covered with sweat from the fear he'd briefly felt once Harry's magic spread throughout the room. As they settled around his shoulders, Draco relaxed. There was something soothing about wearing clothes cleaned with house elf magic. He would make sure to tell Harry so, the next time he saw him.
He didn't dare go in search of Harry, so he set about arranging the components he would need for the Imbolc ritual. It still wasn't for a few days yet; he had plenty of time to find them and then persuade Harry to come near enough so that the ritual could start. Perhaps, in a way, it was a good thing they were having this argument now. There was no other courting ritual that would fit angry words so well.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Harry was still "thinking" at breakfast the next morning. Draco did make his comment about robes cleaned with house elf magic, and Harry turned and stared directly at him.
Of course, Harry then said, "I use a cleaning charm that cleans all the cloth in the room, Draco. Including your robes. House elves haven't touched anything in our bedroom for months." And that stole all his triumph.
Draco turned away with a helpless scowl. He ate a few bites of pancakes, took a few sips of pumpkin juice, but the savor had gone out of all of them. Then he burst out, "And what's going to happen to families who can't afford to give up their house elves, Harry? The ones who'll have to buy food and cook it on their own from now on? Have you thought about that?"
Harry turned and stared at him. "Draco," he said a moment later. "Did you really not know?"
"Know what?" Draco demanded.
"It's something I suspected, but Hermione confirmed it," said Harry, small puffs of breath escaping him that made him sound unattractive and impatient. Draco considered telling him so, but decided that not interrupting might be the best course of action right now. "Owners of house elves do give them money to buy food, but it's smaller amounts than they'd have to spend on food on their own—Knuts instead of Sickles or Galleons. The house elves take that and use it in markets run by house elves who are bound to harvest and take care of the food, rather than clean and care for a single specific household. They buy the food cheaply, but it's still good. The house elves take the money back to whoever owns the fields. That's the way that a few pureblood families have profited all these years, really: supplying the house elf market. They could raise the price at any time, and they have, sometimes. That's part of the reason that some pureblood families, like the Weasleys, stopped owning house elves. It was cheaper for them to conjure or buy their own food, especially when they had a good Transfiguration wizard, than send the house elves to buy it."
"That's not—" said Draco. "You're lying. You must be."
"Why?" Harry asked.
"My father never mentioned anything like that."
"Have you asked him?"
"Why would I ask him about house elves?"
"My point is made."
"Sarcasm doesn't suit you, Harry," said Draco. He jabbed his fork into his pancakes and glared at them, wishing he didn't have to think about them being made from flour and—other things that house elves bought at a house elf market, run over by squashy green fingers.
"Oh," said Harry softly. "And here it was going to be my new way of facing the world."
Draco shoved his plate back. The food didn't taste good any more. "If you knew about this," he said harshly, "why didn't you do something about it years ago?"
"Because I didn't know," Harry said. "I wasn't curious enough either, Draco. I've taken what steps I can to rectify that, but they're very small, and some of them are undoubtedly too late. I've benefited as much as any wizard who attends Hogwarts by the fact that house elves are slaves here. And Merlin knows, now, what I've done to other species that I didn't even realize at the time. The wizards who wove those webs were clever. They hid the house elf market and the webs themselves so that their descendants, us, would never even have to think about where our food came from and how our world got along. And thinking about it hurts, and involves self-blame, and will take years to heal. I do know that. I'm not demanding that everyone change right now if they object to changing. That's the reason that I haven't simply broken all the webs on house elves in Hogwarts with a wave of my hand. But I'm not going to join in this weaving as a deliberate affair any more. That's the reason I didn't go to Jiv's owner and tell him I could save her life, and her son's life. Either I would have had to let them die to make a point, or I would have had to conspire to put them back under webs if he decided that he wanted them his and alive. There are some things that my allegiance to other wizards and other wizards' free wills can't command, Draco, and active torture of another species is one of them."
Draco shook his head. "It's simpler than you think, Harry," he whispered. "Or more complex. I'm not sure which any more."
"Tell me which." Harry's voice had calmed a bit, no longer a raging tide, but more like calm, flowing water. "I'd be happy to listen, Draco. None of the arguments I've heard so far for keeping house elves as slaves sound reasonable to me, but maybe one will. Talk to me. Make me see the situation has some side I haven't considered."
"It's part of our heritage," Draco said quietly. "Can you understand that, Harry? My family is different from a family like the Weasleys, who let their house elves go. And I know that you don't care as much about family heritage, given that you renounced your last name and that you don't seem to even care about Black treasures except as a source of magic, but you should understand this. House elves are ours like the dances are ours."
"But the dances are a matter of training and binding yourselves," said Harry. "This trains and binds another species."
"That doesn't make a difference in the eyes of a pureblooded wizard considering his heritage." Draco made a vague gesture with his arm, and wished he could put what he meant into words more easily. "They're all the same. The house elves are a piece of it, neither more nor less important than the rest, that speaks a message about the family's wealth and purity of blood to another family."
"It's a message written in wasted lives, Draco." Harry's voice had acquired the passionate, quiet tone Draco had learned to fear. "I don't think that's worth either the ink or the parchment it requires."
"But it's there," said Draco. "And you said yourself, Harry, that you'd benefited from the enslavement of house elves. So you ought to be able to understand this. How can you expect people to think differently about it when you yourself haven't thought differently about it until now?"
Harry watched him thoughtfully for a moment. Then he said, "I can't expect them to change their minds on the spot. What I can do is keep presenting the truth—and presenting myself with the truth. If I make assumptions, change them. If I make a mistake, atone for it. If I benefit from the services of house elves in some way I don't even notice right now, stop it. This path isn't ever going to end for me, either, Draco, any more than for a typical pureblood wizard, unless I actually manage to free all house elves in my lifetime, which frankly I would be surprised to see happen. There will always be something new to discover, something I neglected, something I should have thought of before and feel like an idiot for not thinking of. I have to change my thinking, test it. I'll throw ideas off a cliff and see if they shatter. And if they don't, they still have to be tested, again and again."
Draco shuddered. The notion of doing that to his own mind and thoughts revolted him. There was no rest in it, no peace.
And this was the kind of thing that Harry wanted to do for the rest of his life?
"Excuse me," he muttered, and stood, pushing back the bench, and fled from the Great Hall. He could feel Harry's eyes on his back the whole way, not condemning, but faintly puzzled, as if he did not understand why what he had said had scared Draco.
He can face up to that, maybe, Draco thought, as he leaned against the wall outside the Hall's entrance and tried to catch his breath. But how can anyone else? He's asking the rest of us to share that path? How can he?
What scared Draco most was that he couldn't stop thinking about the house elf markets, now, and how his family did pay for their food, just in small coins. And how it was a web that bound the house elves to serve the Malfoys, and not magic and pride and purity of blood that awed them into doing so, as Draco had been taught was the case.
If he could not stop thinking about those things, did that mean they would eventually draw him down the path to join Harry? That he would come to agree because those thoughts would not stop whispering in his head, would not stop confronting him with inconvenient truths?
That was a frightening thing.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Draco felt the pull of the Imbolc ritual the moment he opened his eyes. He rolled slowly over and looked at Harry, who had spent the night with him, though he had spoken of little before they laid down and went to sleep. Harry lay with his cheek pillowed on his hand, his breathing soft and slow and deep. The Many snake curled around his throat, and the Omen snake wrapped around his legs, both shifted their heads to look at Draco.
The moment Harry opened his eyes, and their gazes locked, the ritual would begin.
Draco took a deep breath, and scrambled out of bed. He had to go to the loo first.
As he moved, he glanced at the small table next to the bed, where he'd arranged the materials he would need for the ritual. A branch from the Forbidden Forest marked the presence of wood. There was a delicate owl bone saved from Potions, and a corked vial of mouse's blood, and an iron heart bought from a shop in Hogsmeade. Harry had either not noticed as Draco slowly accumulated them, or had chosen to say nothing about them.
In a short time, Draco knew, he would have no choice. The ritual already swayed and flowed around him, insistent as a tide. This was a different kind of pull than the one at the Breaking of Boundaries, which wanted them near each other. This one felt like a call to battle, the horn that marked the beginning of ancient wars between Dark Lords and Light Lords.
And it should, Draco thought. This was the Presence of War.
He shut the door of the loo behind him and raked his fingers through his hair, striving to slow his breathing. The Presence of War would affect him the wrong way if he weren't calm. Draco would enter the battle half-hysterical, and determined to win, when that wasn't the ritual's purpose at all. It was to show up the differences in the minds of the joined partners, make them see and feel where their deepest disagreements lay, and how they might function as comrades in battle despite that. Just as this year's Walpurgis ritual, the fifth one in the cycle, would reaffirm them as friends and lovers, the Presence of War was meant as an exploration of the relationship they would share when they fought.
The depth from the Breaking of Boundaries would still be there. Draco was almost not looking forward to that. He and Harry would slide into each other's minds. This time, though, the magic would guide what they saw.
And it would not all be wonderful.
"Draco?" Harry was knocking on the door.
"I'll be right out," Draco shouted, damning his voice as it shook, and hurried to relieve himself. He wouldn't have time for a shower. That was all right. The Presence of War was in the room, gliding shadows of curses haunting the walls, and one was rarely clean on a battlefield, anyway.
He finished, and washed his hands, and then opened the door. His eyes met Harry's.
Harry gasped as the ritual sliced the air between them, as their minds opened and slid into each other's. Draco braced himself with one hand against the door, blinking dizzily. That was the only way he could keep hold of his own body as his head turned and his thoughts blended with Harry's in a context that made having just one opinion seem bizarre.
He swam down into a chasm of guilt he hadn't known existed. Harry did harbor some guilt about having benefited from house elf slavery from so many years, and he was determined to help lift house elves' webs partially so that he didn't have to suffer any more. It was a selfish motive that he didn't seem to have considered. Draco spun and showed the chasm to Harry, wondering what he would say about it.
Harry's answer was to expose a tiny nugget Draco hadn't been aware of in himself: that even if he came to believe Harry was right, he would still act as if he were wrong, and refuse to think about it, much the way he refused to think about his father killing Mudbloods, because to do otherwise was to lack family pride. And is avoiding humility any better a motive than avoiding guilt? Harry asked.
Draco flinched, but felt his anger rising to sustain him. He just had to balance that anger, keep it cold instead of burning hot, so that the Presence of War wouldn't urge him and Harry into an all-out battle. He replied, At least I know what I am. I've always been a Malfoy. That's always been important to me.
Even though your father disowned you? Harry spun out skeins of memory: Draco's decision to go to Harry during the rebellion, his joy and relief when Draco had come to Woodhouse, Draco's spiteful reply to Lucius that had probably encouraged Lucius's own stubbornness. And is being a Malfoy more important to you than I am?
Draco snarled at him. That's not a fair question, Harry.
I think it deserves an answer.
Then I think I deserve an answer. Is being vates more important to you than I am?
Harry, infuriatingly, swung into cold anger as if he'd been swimming there all his life, tumbling down through cascades of light while he considered, without letting up on his irritation with Draco. It's the most important task I have, said Harry at last. That doesn't mean it's more important than you are. I put people and tasks in different categories. That's like asking if breathing is more important to me than eating. They both matter vastly to me. I might die more slowly if you take one away from me than I would the other, but they're both necessary to sustain life.
This was why Draco hated arguing with Harry, because he managed to make everything sound so reasonable.
Harry tossed back images of Draco sulking in a corner, or hitting Connor with a hex that turned his hair purple, or something else juvenile. He disliked arguing with Draco because Draco often acted like a child, or believed something was right and just wouldn't admit it.
I'm not a child nearly as often as your brother is, Draco snarled. And you go along with it, you know. Or else why play that prank where you told me that the charms on your Firebolt meant you couldn't rescue him and he drowned?
That was a mistake, said Harry. I'm sorry for it. How many bloody apologies do you need, Draco? Fourteen? Sixteen? Ten?
I need you to mean it. I need you to care enough for me in the first place that you wouldn't have agreed to play the prank just to appease your brother.
And if I agree to do something just to appease you? How is that different?
I'm your partner. I should matter more than your brother.
Just the way that I matter more than your father and your family name. I see.
You have no idea what it's like. You're not pureblood.
I can see into your mind at the moment, Draco. I have an excellent idea of what it's like. I'm seeing it in all the particulars. Harry's voice grew edged with acid. It seems that most of what it 'means' to be pureblood doesn't have its own significance. You define yourself in relation to your opposites. You couldn't be pureblood if there weren't Mudbloods. And you couldn't raise yourself above other families if there weren't families like the Weasleys who were poor. You depend on them for your existence. Your history songs and your dances and your manners are so wound into them that without them, you'd have no context to put the songs and the dances and the manners in. And that's really fucking pathetic, Draco.
Draco knew he was wounded, that if he thought too seriously about Harry's words, he had the potential to let them go too deep. So he defended himself by reaching for the tangled knot of emotions that still lay closest to Harry's center. And you? Have you thought about what it means that you could have beauty and wealth and power and pride, and you ignore it all because—why? You don't find them of inherent value? Have you ever thought that someone else valuing them might be right? That thousands of wizards down the generations valuing them might mean you should give them another look?
Because they're not important to me. Harry's voice had a sound of self-satisfaction that Draco hated. At least before his latest change, he might retreat and admit that Draco could have a point. Now, he trusted his own impressions enough to stand his ground.
And you love that about me, admit it.
Harry's voice sounded as if it were coming from the center of his mind. Draco started. He hadn't thought Harry had slid that far, that deep, that fast.
I have. He felt Harry's presence turning like a snake in a burrow in the center of his mind, nudging at the core of his beliefs. You'll always be something finer and stronger than you want to allow yourself to be, Draco. When the situation calls for it, you can rise into that strength. You'll fight and defend me from your father because I matter to you. You'll choose between your family and me, when it wasn't right or fair to force you to do so, because you didn't concentrate on the rightness or fairness of the circumstances. When you think about what you want, and are persuaded that it's time to make an effort to achieve it, you soar. The rest of the time, you're content to creep on the ground, or sulk and wait for the person arguing with you to get tired of the argument. That's it, isn't it, Draco? The problem with your making a change isn't that you're incapable of thinking anyone who isn't a pureblood is right. It's that—
Don't you dare say it, Harry Potter, Draco warned him.
It's laziness. And fear. Fear of what such an immense change would mean, laziness about making that change at the deepest levels of your being.
Draco rushed him.
It was a physical charge, a short one that ended with him tackling Harry to the floor. But it was more a mental charge, one that carried him over the barriers Harry had put in the way and landed him squarely in the center of Harry's own mind.
He could see glittering justifications stretched all around him. Harry had his own fears, and chief among them was yielding to the longings he sometimes experienced, for freedom and beauty of his own, or to lie back and not take life so seriously for a morning, or to just do the easier thing, like letting house elves feed him. He hadn't destroyed those desires. It wasn't that he never felt them. Instead—
Draco laughed. You think I'm afraid of something ridiculous, Harry? Look at yourself! Do you really think wallowing in bed for a morning would mean that you go on wallowing the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and never experience self-denial again? He snorted.
I got over those, Harry defended himself. I'm growing better. I value pleasure now, and I know that I deserve it.
Not all the time. Draco nudged and poked some more. You still have those ridiculous fears. You still hope your noticing of beauty will go away. You still welcome the backsliding you'll do, because it proves to you you're human. You've finally reached the point at which you count yourself equal to other people. Well done. Now acknowledge that most of the time you're better than they are, more. It's lying if you don't, and burying your head in the sand. It means that you get frustrated at them for not making 'easy' decisions that are really only easy to you. You're not everyone, Harry, and it's silly to pretend you are. Count yourself extraordinary.
Confront your fears.
You first.
The Presence of War snorted around them like a well-satisfied horse, and Draco started. He'd been so caught up in the argument that he hadn't thought of keeping his balance, only the battle. And now Harry was aware of the pulsing magic, too, and he stilled beneath Draco, his fish-like thoughts stirring the water with their tails.
What comes next? He asked it as though he hated to ask Draco anything, but Draco was the one who knew about the ritual, so he had to. Draco gloated in the knowledge, and received a lash of fiery anger back. That would be so magnificent if Harry ever let it out in sex, he thought.
Does everything come back to fucking with you?
It comes back to fucking with you, Draco corrected, and then stood. Harry rolled his head to track his progress as Draco went over to the table beside the bed and gathered up the branch, the bone, the vial of blood, and the iron heart. When he carried them back over, Harry sat up.
What are those?
Honestly, you should be able to see. You're in my head. But I'll indulge your own laziness. Draco grinned at Harry's snarl, and laid the objects out on the floor. Now. You have to choose one of them.
And do what with them?
Just choose, first. Feel drawn to them. Listen to what one calls you.
Harry's eyes narrowed; he suspected Draco was making fun of him. But he turned and looked at the objects, reaching out, his hand hovering over them.
Draco let his breathing slow, and turned his own attention to the objects. The iron heart didn't call to him. Nor did the vial of blood. But that meant his hand swerved towards the bone and the branch, and he knew, he just knew, that whichever one he chose wouldn't be the one Harry chose.
Sure enough, his hand closed on the bone, and Harry's on the branch.
What does that mean? Harry demanded.
Draco replied before Harry could dig through his mind looking for the answer, which would have been uncomfortable. The four objects all have different meanings. The ritual is called the Presence of War, but it used to be known as the Bonding of Wood and Bone and Blood and Iron. He turned to face Harry, folding his legs in front of him. It has to do with facing war, and which object you consider to be the way you fight. Iron is strong, but more brittle than most metals; it needs to be forged into steel before it can take blows. That's the war of someone who would rather do anything than surrender. And blood flows everywhere, but it dries. That's the war-way of someone who would rather shed the blood and then forget about it. Vengeance answers for all. Last time pays for all, he added, on an inspiration; he knew that Harry knew the phrase from the justice ritual he'd used on his mother.
Harry nodded slowly. And the bone?
It means that I prefer digging out conflicts. Draco gave the bone a light twitch. I can break. I'm more fragile than the iron is, even. But bones are usually surrounded by ligaments and flesh and tendons that protect them and prevent them from snapping simply from the ordinary stresses of life. I like to surround myself with that context, and then dig far enough down to feast on the bones of my enemies. I prefer allies, not acting on my own.
The wood? Harry turned the branch back and forth in his hand, as if to admire it. He probably was, Draco thought.
You're alive. You change and grow around conflict. I can do that, too, but bone grows with less force and more slowly than a tree does. A tree can break a branch and still be mostly alive, while a broken bone has to be reassembled. Draco reached out and laid his hand on Harry's arm. Of course, you also bow before storms, and can drop individual branches to keep the roots and the trunk thriving. So you'll compromise more readily than I can, and listen to others' angry winds more readily than I can.
And that means we're not right for each other?
It does not, Draco said, barely resisting the urge to snap. We needed to see into each other's heads instead of just choosing wood or bone or blood or iron so that we would understand each other's choices. The Breaking of Boundaries confirmed our essential likeness. This confirms one of our essential differences. And now we have to live with it, instead of backing out.
Harry caressed the branch for a moment, looking thoughtful. Then he leaned forward and kissed Draco, hard.
Draco was happy enough to return the kiss, even though he pulled back a moment later and said, We still have things to talk about, you know, and you also know that you'll end up compromising before I will.
And you know that you'll shatter before I will, and that I'll be there to reassemble you, Harry retorted.
Draco smiled in spite of himself. So long as that's clear.
It is.
Draco lay back, and settled in for a debate on the ethics of house elves, Mudbloods, and whatever else Harry wanted to discuss. Hard satisfaction, rather like a bone itself, shone in his chest.
They were not perfectly matched. But Draco thought he would have been more worried if they were. There was no way that their wildly disparate lives could have shaped them that well for each other. "A perfect match" would have meant large discrepancies, somewhere, they were ignoring.
And now they knew each other better, and their arguments could proceed on the basis of confidence instead of ignorance.
They might not convince each other for a long time. But they were speaking. And if one of them was bone and the other wood, at least they had good reasons for being so.
Draco could live with Harry being a tree in battle, if only because he knew he was flesh where it counted.
I did hear that, you know.
