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Chapter Twelve—Support and Endurance

Harry had one hand on Draco's back as he looked into his wife's room. He couldn't see much more than the side of Draco's profile, but that was enough to make out pale cheeks and a clenched jaw.

"I don't know if the blood is hers or not," Draco said, and then licked his lips. "I don't know the proper spell." He shifted his gaze to Harry. "Do you?"

Harry nodded minutely and stepped into the room past him, though he moved so that he could keep his left hand on Draco's back even as he drew his wand and cast the spell with his right. Al and Scorpius were safe with Narcissa, who had agreed to keep them both while her son investigated the scene with Harry's help. Harry wasn't sure if he should mention that detail to Ginny or not. She might want to know why he hadn't Apparated away from the Manor with Al the moment he knew there was danger nearby.

Then Harry chided himself for thinking of his wife, and so unflatteringly at that, when there was something he could do for Draco. He flicked the wand and cast the spell he had learned from Ron on those occasions when the work of the Aurors crossed the work of the Blood Reparations Department. "Cruor cognitor!"

The blood—and there were indeed great splotches of it, draped like veils on the curtains of the bed and running up the walls like the work of incompetent painters—began to glow golden. Harry narrowed his eyes against the intense light, and felt Draco seize his right wrist, as though the hand on his back were no longer enough for him. Harry leaned back in reassurance, and felt their shoulders touch, too.

God knows I'd want support at a time like this, if it were Ginny's blood I was facing.

The light bubbled and danced like molten metal; then it melted up into a gleaming pillar that rotated twice before it assumed human shape and features. Noting that no other figures had appeared, Harry nodded grimly. Yes, either Marian had nearly slaughtered her attacker, or only Marian had been hurt.

And, sure enough, the pillar took on the appearance of Draco's wife. Just in case there could be any doubt remaining, the light took the form of enormous arrows pointing from her to every drop of blood in the room. Draco let out a heavy sigh, as if someone had punched him in the solar plexus. Harry shifted again, this time so that he had the other man wrapped fully in his arms, just in case he was about to faint.

"It's all right," he whispered to him, and became aware he was rubbing his back, much the way he had rubbed Ginny's when the labor with James had lasted for forty hours. "She might still be alive. I'll help you search. I won't give up until we find her, or find out what happened to her. It's all right, Draco."

Draco said nothing for long moments. Harry let him take his time, keeping his head bowed, his hands continually moving and stroking.

When Draco did speak, what he said was nearly the last thing Harry would have expected.

"Is there a spell to tell how Marian shed the blood?" His voice was light, but underneath the surface, urgency rustled. "With a knife or a wand, in a battle with an enemy, or—or on purpose, perhaps?"

Harry felt a sour suspicion kindle in his belly. He hated the thought that Draco's wife could have done this to him, could have apparently plotted with the people accusing him of Esther Goldstein's murder—

But why was he surprised? She had tried to make Harry suspicious of Draco. She disliked her husband. And since she had been behind the wards, either she was the first victim of an awfully powerful wizard, who had managed to break the spells without alerting either Draco, master of the Manor, or Harry, sensitive to magic, or she had invited the perpetrator behind the wards herself.

"There are spells like that," Harry said, aware that he'd been silent a bit too long; Draco had drawn away and was looking at him strangely. "But I don't know them. Hermione will, almost certainly. She made a sort of study of blood magic when she became Head of the Blood Reparations Department, since so many of the supremacist groups claim that there are intrinsic differences between Muggleborns and other sorts of wizards. She thought she should know how they planned to prove that."

Draco nodded. "Then ask Granger for me, please," he said, hardly moving his lips. "I need to know, so that I can be prepared for what happens next." He paused. "Whether that's having Scorpius half an orphan, or—something else."

Harry nodded back. He started to withdraw his hold. "I'll go and ask Hermione right away—"

"Not now," said Draco, and suddenly his grip was firm, as though he had come around to Harry's belief that he was about to faint. "I need you to stay." He paused, and then, as if he had to offer some excuse for it, added, "We've hardly talked about my visions or your dreams at all, and I think we should."

Swallowing his unease at some of the details that discussion would reveal, Harry said, "All right." Draco was a friend, and right now, he was in need of comfort. Harry could hardly turn his back on him, could hardly walk away.

Maybe you should, whispered a voice in his head that sounded eerily like Ginny's. Lest you find yourself unable to do so later.

Harry shook the voice off impatiently. Three of the life-debts were already fulfilled. He and Draco were well on the way to shedding all bonds that connected them save that of freely chosen friendship.

The voice in the back of his head snickered, but fell silent as Harry escorted Draco back down the hall, to ask Narcissa to watch the boys for a little while longer while he and Draco talked.

Draco was bearing up well under the shock, he thought. After all, his wife might be dead, but his mind had jumped at once to the more likely explanation—that she had participated in this to try to cause him more doubt and fear—and perched there. Why wouldn't an enemy leave a body behind, so that Draco would be in for more trouble and embarrassment with the Aurors? And he refused to believe that someone else could have penetrated the wards without his knowing, even someone Marian had invited. If they had, then he and his mother and Scorpius were not safe, and he could not bear the thought of that.

He was well enough to be amused by Harry's flushed cheeks and avoiding of his eyes, anyway.

He softened his voice and leaned forwards. "I do think the details of the dreams are important, Harry. How can we begin our healing if we have no idea what the sickness entails?"

Harry coughed twice, and said, "Er. Yes, I know."

"You said that the dreams were realistic," Draco prodded. "I need to know more than that. Come on, tell me what they're like."

Harry tensed his shoulders and leaned on the table in deep thought. They were in the library, and Harry appeared to dislike the dark, close room; he kept glancing up at the bookshelves as if he thought they would fall over on him. He licked his lips and scowled one more time at the table.

Draco was just about to prod him again when Harry muttered, "Well. It's not as if they're just—dreams. Just glimpses of things I thought about during the day, I mean. How could they be? I hadn't seen you for ten years. They were more like—like visions, like the kind I used to have when I shared a mental link with Voldemort." He grimaced and balled his hands into fists. "They tell me a story of a life I suppose we could have shared. If the world was backwards and the sun rose in the west, I mean."

"I already knew all this," Draco reminded him quietly. "Harry. I need more than that. Tell me what happened in a few of the dreams. What makes you so embarrassed to talk about them?"

Harry fidgeted in his seat for a moment, then released a gusty sigh and sat back, evading Draco's delicate grab for his wrist. Draco ground his teeth, but kept his stare calm and patient, and finally Harry rubbed a hand across his eyes and said what they both already knew but which was less real when Harry wasn't voicing it aloud.

"I dream about you and me making love." He grimaced, paused as if rethinking his words, then shook his head in determination and pushed ahead. "I always wake up aroused from those dreams, and I'm afraid Ginny notices. I didn't used to think she did, but she's so edgy about me spending time around you, even if it's just to solve this mystery. I—"

"The details, Harry."

"Yeah." Harry stared at his fists. "Well, there's a sequence of dreams I've had. Not often, because I don't think any dream repeats more than once; there are just some that are similar to others. But I can recognize some of them as coming after or before the rest, until they form one connected story."

Draco bit his tongue so that he wouldn't urge Harry to hurry up again, and damage his recital. Harry might decide he didn't need to hear this at all if he showed so much impatience.

"I've been on a journey, I think. Or else I have a more dangerous job in this dream-world. In fact, I'm sure I do; I'm an Auror." Harry grinned humorlessly, as much to say that he was glad he didn't live in that world. "I just did something 'heroic and stupid,' to quote you, which nearly got me killed. You were furious at me, but your way of being furious—in those dreams, I mean—is to give me the silent treatment for a day or two, and then haul me into bed so hard and fast that we don't get up for at least two days."

Draco felt a faint throb from his groin. He didn't have an erection yet, but he would get one if Harry went on talking like this. As a matter of fact, that was the way he would treat a regular lover he was angry at. His one-night fucks didn't count. Marian doubly didn't count. But he would treat Harry like that, if he had him.

It's all me, he wanted to say. Those dreams are showing you the way I really am, the way I really would be if we were lovers.

But he couldn't be sure of that yet, so he clamped his teeth down on his tongue and kept his eyes on Harry, and waited.

"And it's—good." Harry was blushing fiercely now, and seemed to fight the word before it would emerge from his mouth. "You, um, make love to me, and allow yourself to be made love to, and you insist that I eat breakfast in bed instead of getting up to cook it—"

What kind of dream-world is this, in which I don't have house-elves? Draco thought, but the irrelevancy faded away as he listened.

"And you hold me down with your body, and move in this very slow sensual way that I can't even describe, and I can't take my eyes off you, your face and your eyes are shining, and it occurs to me that maybe you're even glad that you got angry, because it gives you the chance to do this and not have to worry about time or work schedules or anything else, just holding me there and moving inside me—"

Draco did his best to reduce his hiss to a soundless little gasp of air. He was hard, now, and the heat that blossomed in his belly had sent tendrils up into his torso to twine around his nipples. He didn't care that Harry might only be speaking this freely because he was glad to get the dreams off his chest, after ten years of not talking about them; he only knew that his mouth watered with the compulsion to kiss, his hands burned with the urge to touch.

"That's it," he broke in. He didn't want to end the flow of enticing details, but he would act recklessly in a moment anyway, so it might as well be an interruption of words and not grabbing Harry to haul him in.

Harry blinked, and his face suddenly shuttered, as if he'd become aware of his unusual freedom in speech. "What do you mean?"

"That is the way I make love," Draco said. "When I have a partner I care about, at least, and not just someone I'm using to relieve my needs."

Harry waved a hand. "Well, yes," he said, while his cheeks flushed further, "but this is all hypothetical anyway, Draco, since I'm not bent, and neither are you."

"As a matter of fact," Draco said calmly, "I'm bisexual, with a strong preference for men."

Harry stared at him.

"Did you really think," Draco asked, his eyebrows climbing a bit higher, "that I went without while my wife refused to share a bedroom with me?"

"Well, no, but I thought—women—" Harry fell silent, and he was staring at Draco goggle-eyed, as if the mere thought that Draco might not find his words or the images that had stormed his dreams disgusting had shocked him.

Draco burned. God, he wanted to show Harry how very not disgusting they were. He might not know Harry well yet, but the fierce, determined support of him, the comfort in the face of Marian's disappearance, the pleasure in the sight of Scorpius—all of those were things that he had never required of any of his lovers, because he knew he wouldn't get them. Harry could be more than any of those men had been, because he had it in him to be more already. Draco wouldn't have to be cool and reserved with him just to maintain a position of strength. Harry accepted both the vulnerability and the strength in Draco.

And if he could be brought to see that he didn't need to receive pleasure from an exclusively female body—

Despite knowing it was probably too soon, Draco found himself trying to convince Harry of that.

"Is it really so different?" he coaxed, his voice falling lower, into a graceful, impassioned register he had barely ever heard from himself. "Men and women both have tongues and mouths, nipples and hands, Harry. And hearts, for that matter. We're both human. I wouldn't say that everyone could see it that way, no, but you've grown more open-minded and more steadfast since I first knew you. I daresay that you could come to that kind of position."

"It's actually not that," Harry said. His hands trembled, before he folded them on top of each other and pretended they had never done any such thing. The primness would have made Draco smile ordinarily, but now it only made his longing increase. "I—I mean, it was the first thing that it occurred to me to say, but if many things had been different, I could have learned to love a man, I think. It's not that. It's Ginny. I'm married. I'm going to stay faithful."

He lifted his head, and Draco saw a determination in his eyes that not even the most resolute effort of his could ever beat down.

If there's going to be a move on this—and I won't overrule the possibility now—then it will have to come to from him.

"Of course you want to," said Draco, allowing his voice to lift into normal airs again. He saw Harry relax, and gave a subtle nod. Yes, it had been too soon. Harry would have to become more comfortable around him before he tried it again. "I wouldn't ever fault that. Tell me something else the dreams have been about. Even if we are lovers in that world, we can't stay in bed all the time."

Harry laughed. Draco's throat itched with want. He told it to go away. He'd borne with unrequited desire before this, and what were the last ten years but an exercise in how to deal with dashed hopes? He would do this.

"There's one," Harry said, his eyes lit again, "where we're on holiday. I forgot why, or else I never had the dream that told me why. So you wanted to Portkey to an island—one of the Bahamas, I think. But I wanted to go to Peru."

"Peru?" Draco asked. "Whatever for?"

"They have Peruivan Vipertooth Dragons there," said Harry, as if this were an entirely reasonable thing to say. "I've always wanted to see one. I never did get the chance to see one in the Triwizard Tournament, you'll remember." A brief wistful look crossed his face.

"After a dragon almost boiled you alive, forgive me for assuming that you'd never want to see one again."

Harry laughed a second time. Draco had to cross his legs. "Oh, that's not the only one I've ever been close to. There was also the one that I used to escape from Gringotts when Ron and Hermione and I broke into the vaults."

"What." Draco said it so flatly that he reminded himself of his father.

"Yes." Harry grinned at him. "But neither of those dragons was a Peruvian Vipertooth. So I want to see one."

"Get back to the story, Potter," Draco said, rolling his eyes. Only Harry Potter would want to be close to a large, dangerous beast with nasty, sharp, pointy teeth and a habit of frying its victims alive.

"So there was an argument about the Portkey," Harry resumed easily, folding his arms behind his head as if dragons were relaxing. "I tried to enchant it to take us to Peru, and you enchanted it to take us to your island, wherever it was, and we both cast the counterspell about five times. And then we both grabbed it and cast at the same time, and we ended up halfway between Peru and the Bahamas—somewhere in northern South America, if I remember correctly. We had a hell of a time finding a way back. And then you didn't speak to me for three days, and then you shagged me into the bed again. And shagged me quite enthusiastically on the way back, you understand."

Draco felt another sharp stab of craving, but this time it wasn't sexual, or not entirely sexual. He wanted a life where he could have argued with Harry like that, where he could have gone on adventures beside him, where they'd end up somewhere in northern South America and still be lovers and friends. It seemed quite unfair that this other version of him should have had all the luck.

He shook his head and reminded himself that the other version of him did not actually exist. Then he exhaled and said, "That sounds more detailed than my visions. Of course, I never spent long staring into a mirror, with reason." He quirked his lips when he saw Harry staring at the silver scars on his right forearm. "None of them ever attacked me like that before, but I always thought they could."

Harry nodded. "And what did you see when you did look into them?"

"Me and you," said Draco. "Embracing, usually. Making love. Tonguing each other's necks," he couldn't help adding.

Harry's eyes rested on his neck for a moment. Then he looked away and coughed. "Well. I should go to Hermione and see what she can tell me about spells to determine how blood was shed."

Draco nodded. He could have kept Harry here and talked to him happily for hours more, but the first intense need had passed, and he had promised that he wouldn't strain their friendship by dwelling too much on the sexual tension underlying it.

Even if that tension was obvious and everywhere, snarling and flickering under their simplest interaction like a brooding storm.

"Bring Al back any time you like," he added. "It would do Scorpius good to have a friend his own age, too."

The softened look he received for that was worth more than Harry's blush when he talked about shagging Draco and being shagged. Draco smiled back, and told himself that if their relationship never went further than that, he could be content.

Almost.

"Never going to let you go, you bastard—"

Harry tipped his head back and moaned. His ears were a particular weakness, and Draco knew it. Hell, Draco knew every single one of his weaknesses, and was never above exploiting any of them.

The perils of having a Slytherin lover, Harry thought hazily, and then his attention was submerged again as Draco attacked him, blowing and licking on his neck and ears, crawling on top of his body as Harry writhed on the mattress, already rendered nearly helpless with pleasure from the touches Draco had subjected him to so far. They were both naked; Draco had torn off their robes as soon as he got Harry into their bedroom. Normally, he enjoyed undressing slowly, but not this time.

This time, there had been a major misunderstanding. Harry had overheard Draco playing a complicated joking game with Blaise Zabini, and it had sounded as though Draco would be happier if Harry left. Harry, stung, had removed most of his effects from Malfoy Manor and then confronted Draco, with a memorized, prideful speech about how he could tell when he wasn't wanted.

Draco had screamed at him, told him the truth, and then dragged him in and prepared to fuck him wildly, in that order. And Harry could do nothing but yield and moan the moment he properly understood.

"Never going to let you go," Draco whispered to him. "It would kill me, you realize? After everything we've been through, life-debts and kidnapping and that disastrous attempt to be friends with each other's friends and all, I can't."

An hour ago, Harry would have doubted the truth of that. Now, feeling Draco's fingers dipping between his legs, toying with his nipples, rolling his balls, he couldn't. The touches were light, but he could feel the possessive force behind them. Their relationship had never been anything less than volatile, which was one thing that made Harry's friends worry for him. They didn't think it was normal for fights in which a couple seriously tried to knock each other's teeth in to be a part of their repertoire.

But it was the way he and Draco were, and Harry would not have wanted to change it for the world. And he was so glad that it wasn't ending that he could barely breathe, and so impatient that he wrapped his legs around Draco's waist and dragged him in. And Draco gasped with laughter and curses intermingled in his voice, and said—

Harry's eyes snapped open, and he shivered. He was aware of two things almost immediately. He hadn't known it was a dream this time.

And he was hard, so hard that he knew he would come if he moved, and the arousal he usually woke with was sheer need.

He closed his eyes and lay still. Beside him, Ginny was also still. This time, Harry realized that she almost certainly wasn't asleep.

But neither of them said anything. Harry was too mortified, and Ginny seemed determined not to initiate the conversation.

I hate this, Harry thought, staring at the ceiling, and resisting the urge to reach down and touch himself. Just a touch would bring him off, would damp the flames eating him from the inside out—would betray his wife. It was one thing to find unconscious release in a wet dream, but he wouldn't do it when he'd be the one at fault. I hate this curse. I want it ended. I don't want to have these dreams.

And so on and on he and Ginny lay, while Harry waited for his need to cool to manageable want and his erection to deflate, and his wife's side of the bed throbbed hurt at him.

He shamed himself by thinking of Draco's courage against an interest that he had far more reason than Harry to indulge, with his inclination for men already acknowledged and his bond with his wife passionless.

If he can do it—if he can preserve this friendship spotless, and back off when he realizes he's crossed the line—then I can, too. I will. I won't hurt him, and I won't hurt Ginny, like this.

And I won't hurt myself, either.

It made a fair bid to be the most uncomfortable night he'd ever spent, but Harry clung grimly to his stillness nonetheless. There were things more important than comfort.