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Chapter Seventeen—Harry's War

"You're home very late."

Harry paused in hanging up his cloak on the hook next to the door, then smiled to himself. He had thought Ginny would attack first, desperately seeking to establish her own ground. If she could put him on the defensive from the beginning, after all, she believed that she would stand a better chance of winning.

She doesn't understand yet that nothing she can say will grant her a victory—at least not in the matter of my spending time with Draco. Harry moved further into the library, where she sat. It was late, and Harry could hear the subdued breathing of the children from down the corridor, a talent developed from the time when Al's sleep had been so deep that Harry had feared that he might stop breathing at any moment. Ginny sat with her elbows on the table in front of her, her hands clasping the sides of her head and acting with her hair to hide her face.

"I am," he said. "I won't say that I'm sorry for staying with Draco at the hospital, but I am sorry that it meant I couldn't come home right away."

Ginny boiled to her feet. Since she'd been flying regularly with the Holyhead Harpies, she'd gained a lithe grace that Harry thought even he couldn't have surpassed during the days when he'd been Gryffindor Seeker. She had just washed her hair, he thought, because it settled in a heavy mat across her back instead of swirling around her. There was only one soft light in the library, Ginny's wand glowing with a Lumos charm, and so he couldn't see her very well.

"And that's all the apology I get, is it?" she hissed at him.

Harry watched her. Let her blow the majority of her anger out, and then he would attempt to explain. He had made his choice for rational reasons, and he would get nowhere if he tried to explain irrationally.

"I very nearly had to tell our children that their father was never coming home again," Ginny said, stalking forwards. Her wavering shadow stretched long behind her in the light of the spell, like the shadow of a stalking tiger. "And why? Because you couldn't keep away from Diagon Alley, where you went on nothing but a Malfoy's say-so!

"You've spent more and more time away from our family—away from the children, away from me—just because Malfoy wants you to. Teddy hardly sees you anymore. You haven't completed a mission for the Blood Reparations Department in weeks. Tell me, Harry, is it fair, is it right, that we should be shuffled aside for the sake of your—your infatuation with Malfoy?"

Harry was sorely tempted to say something then. He knew that the charge of neglecting his children and Teddy had some truth to it. But he remained still, and let Ginny come close enough that he could feel the restless heat of her body.

"I don't understand it," Ginny whispered, and her voice cracked down the middle. "Ten years you've been content to ignore this curse you live with, and it was easy enough to ignore, too, since we didn't have mirrors and we could always pretend the dreams didn't exist. And now you want to learn the truth of it? What's so special about Malfoy, that he should be able to get you to do something that I never could?"

Harry met her eyes steadily, feeling compassion unfold in him. No wonder her anger was so vicious. There wasn't just sexual jealousy here, but envy on a whole other level. Ginny understood, just like he did and just like Draco did, what was important.

He could have made some joke about how Draco had been able to get him to attack with fists and hexes flying, too, and how she could never have done that. But Ginny's eyes told him that right now wasn't the time for humor.

"I don't object to you trying to solve this murder case. I know you have no choice, since it was a life-debt, and that of course you don't want anyone, even Malfoy, to die." Ginny had folded her arms around herself as if she were cold. "But I object to you giving your entire life over to him. I want you back, Harry. Where you insist on drifting right now is somewhere none of us can follow. I won't have it."

There was a terrible, raw fear underlying her words, and Harry couldn't resist the impulse any longer. He reached out and gathered her into his arms.

Ginny didn't struggle, but she stiffened further, not falling soft and sweet and pliant either. Harry would have been disappointed if she had. It would have been a sign that she was pushing her anger back into a small box, and this wasn't an emotion that could be willed to disappear that way. It was important that he and Ginny talk about what lay between them—it would be important in every conversation they had from now on—and Harry was relieved that she could at least speak it clearly.

"You'll have me," he whispered. "You'll always have me."

Ginny sucked in a surprised breath.

"Just not all of me," Harry added quietly.

She tugged, then, and Harry let her retreat to the edge of the loosest circle of his arms. She didn't show any urge to go further than that, instead staring at him narrow-eyed. "What does that mean?"

"You don't have all of me now, Ginny," Harry said. He normally would have said something along the lines of, "Isn't it obvious?" but this wasn't an ordinary row. Or, rather, this calmness of mind was his new "normal"—necessary if he was to have everything in his life that he wanted to have, and if he were to play the role towards everyone that he needed to play. "Parts of me belong to James and Al and Lily. And Ron and Hermione, of course. And the rest of your family. And Teddy and Andromeda—"

"But that's different," Ginny said fervently. "Of course I want you to love our children! And I trust Ron and Hermione and my family. And Teddy's your godson, of course you should love him."

Harry blinked. He had not expected to see her arriving at this conclusion, or at least, not quite this fast.

"I don't love Draco in the way you're thinking of," he said.

Ginny frowned at him.

"I will never love him like I love you," Harry said precisely. Even if things greatly changed between Draco and me, that would remain true. "And certainly he's not a child, to be loved like that. The closest it would come is to the bond I share with Ron and Hermione."

"And I don't want you to have that," Ginny replied immediately. "I don't trust him, Harry. What in the world does he want with you? What can you offer him that he's grasping after you like this?"

Hurt caught hold of him in the corners of the eyes and at the roots of his hair. Harry took a rough breath and told the emotion to go hang. Yes, it had sounded as though Ginny thought he couldn't offer anyone any good in and of himself, but she hadn't meant it that way. Draco was the one she thought incapable of simple friendship.

That was another thing he would have to get used to: controlling the instant reaction to careless words and looking behind them for what people really meant.

It wasn't easy. But he was the one who had chosen this path. He would remind himself of that whenever he faltered.

"I can choose my own friendships," he told her with all the restraint he could muster. "As for what I can offer him—well. I kept him sane in the box we were trapped in. I know that Hermione must have told you about the box."

"She did." Ginny had bowed her head so that he couldn't see her eyes now. Harry debated putting a hand beneath her chin and lifting her face again, but decided that would go too far.

"I kept him sane there," he repeated softly. "He's terrified of dark and small spaces, thanks to an experience in the war. I talked to him, and explained how I saw him, and how I think he can overcome the weakness that's always plagued him and become someone grander and greater."

"You hinted that talking to him wasn't all you did," Ginny whispered accusingly.

"No," said Harry. "He touched me. Kissed me—"

Ginny whirled away from him and stood still for a moment before her shoulders heaved once. Then she crossed the room in one step, snatched up her wand, and turned it on him.

Harry lifted his own wand to counter her Stinging Hex, then avoided the Tripping Jinx and said to her, "I didn't betray our marriage vows, Ginny."

"You did—"

"No," Harry said. "Remember the bonding we chose? I have to touch someone else with sexual intent, with the intention to betray you, before the vows react. And then they plague the person with itching that lasts for hours. I would still have it if I wanted to make love to Draco and touched him that way. I didn't. I touched him and let him touch me because that's what he needed."

Ginny swallowed, and her wand wavered, though it didn't drop. Harry suspected she had forgotten that clause of their bonding. There were several different kinds of marriage, from the completely open kind that some couples who might leave each other had, to the one Harry suspected Draco had, which simply forbade one partner to bring his or her lovers home to a shared house.

He and Ginny had chosen a strict bonding, which punished errant actions but not desires; after all, as Ginny had whispered to him, laughing, the night before they wed, it was not as though she deserved punishment for sometimes looking at Dean Thomas with longing, and why should she worry he'd leave her for a beautiful woman he saw on the street? No human could control his or her heart. Actually sleeping with someone was never an accident, but the wanting might be.

Neither of them had ever thought that there was someone else they might want to spend the rest of their lives with. It would have been natural for Ginny to forget about the consequences of betrayal. When were they going to come up?

"I didn't betray you," Harry repeated calmly. "I have a friendship with Draco, and nothing more. I won't let you dictate the content of my friendships, any more than I try to tell you that you can't drink an extra butterbeer with Glynnis instead of coming home right away after practices. But you're my wife, Ginny. I won't forget that, and the part of me that you own will always belong to you."

Ginny shut her eyes. And then her wand dropped to the floor altogether as she rushed forwards to embrace him. Harry barely got his own wand out of the way in time.

He held her as she cried, and whispered that she wouldn't have suspected anything except that Harry seemed so happy when he was with Draco, and he seemed to have adapted so instantly to him, given their years-long hatred in Hogwarts. Then it was Harry's turn to explain his own compassion for Draco, trapped in his home with a wife who hated him—and, lately, a wife who vanished and seemed to have betrayed sensitive information about him to his enemies—and his strong reactions. They had both changed in ten years, and that was responsible for much more of the transformation than anything else. He pitied Draco and admired what he might become, but he didn't love him.

The confession he had made to Draco in the box came back to him.

Yet.

And the curl of Draco's tongue in his mouth lingered there like a taste, even now.

But Harry refused to feel guilt over that. This was the exact reason that he and Ginny hadn't chosen a set of marriage vows which punished desire. Yes, he could feel a tingle like sizzling fireflies heating his blood when he thought about Draco touching him.

But so long as he never made his dreams real, what he felt didn't matter.

Ginny pulled back from his embrace at last, and looked at him with a serious expression on her face. "And you'll go to therapy?"

"I will," Harry promised.

Such a small sacrifice, to make her happy. Compared to what I did for Draco in the box, it's really nothing at all.

Harry had seemed cautious when Draco asked him to bring both his elder children the next time he visited, but he'd agreed. Now Draco stood with Scorpius in his arms just back from the front doors—simple caution urged him not to step onto the stoop, where his enemies might yet take a shot at him—and watched in amusement as Harry herded his sons up the path towards Malfoy Manor.

Al was walking, but he leaned frequently against his father's legs, seeming to tire easily. The red-haired boy who must be James raced ahead, chased one of the peacocks—which fled with shattered dignity—and then came back to his father and shouted something about apple trees and a pool he could see in the back and did Daddy see that bird?

Abruptly, James turned away from Harry and ran full-tilt towards him. Draco could feel Scorpius tense up in his arms, but he held his boy safely above James, and Scorpius relaxed again.

James jerked to a stop and stared up at him with frank appraisal. He had hazel eyes. Draco, staring back, couldn't remember whether they were actually the same color as Ginny Potter's or not. Of course, it wasn't as though he'd spent a lot of time staring at Ginny Potter in school.

He knew exactly what color Harry's eyes were, though it was hard to describe them because their green didn't have its equal on earth.

He was brought back to the present when James announced, "You're too small to be a dad."

Draco blinked. That was certainly a new one. "And how many dads do you know?" he asked. Scorpius cuddled closer to him at the sound of his voice and blinked at James, too.

"Dad and Uncle Ron and Uncle Bill and Grandpa and Uncle Percy," said James instantly. "And they're all big. You're not. You're not a dad." The boy looked mightily pleased by his own deductive reasoning.

Draco nodded gravely, coughing to hide his amusement.

"He's my dad," said Scorpius, frowning.

"Yeah, but you're not a real kid," said James, waving his hand.

Scorpius's brow puckered in the way it did when he was about to fuss. Luckily, Harry had arrived with Al just then—perhaps hurried on by the sight of Draco facing James without reinforcements—and Scorpius's attention immediately switched to his new friend. He stretched out his hand, and Al caught it. An instant later, both boys were beaming. James folded his arms and pouted.

If only it were that easy with their father, Draco thought with a momentary touch of regret, but Harry's large, sweet smile on seeing him made him remember why it would be worth the wait. He did manage to skim his hand over Harry's arm as he reached out to pat James's head, and Harry shifted a bit, then nodded, as though he recognized that as something Draco needed to do.

Something you need, too, Draco thought, staring hard at Harry, then looked at James, who had ducked away from him with an indignant splutter. "Have you ever chased a real Snitch?" he asked.

James's face instantly changed to interest. "No! You don't have one. Not even Dad has one!"

Harry rolled his eyes, but he nodded subtle permission, so Draco swung Scorpius to his shoulder and gestured inside the house. "I do," he said. "I'll let you chase it if you promise to mind my mother."

"I'll mind," said James, with the certainty of a child giving a promise he intended to break and had broken many times in the past. Draco hid a smile. Narcissa would keep track of him, and of Al and Scorpius as they played together, without trouble. She had lit up around the children last time, perhaps because they would actually do what she ordered them to do.

And she had been so much lighter and more cheerful in the last days, starting from the time Draco kissed her and told her that he was starting to overcome the nightmares Bellatrix had left him with. His coming back to life had brought her along with him. Draco had only thought she was alive before. Now, she bustled with new plans and projects, and he could even listen to them and argue back without wanting to throw something.

And it's all due to Harry.

Draco watched him covetously out of the corners of his eyes as they went to fetch the miniature Snitch for James and then to place the children in Narcissa's care, storing up every glimpse he could catch of green eyes widening or the dark head turning or the lean body moving, to recall when Harry wasn't there. On such things he would live until the moment that he could convince Harry that what he needed was just as important as what his wife needed.

He would have a long struggle against Harry's self-sacrificing nature, he knew.

He was prepared for the struggle.

He could be stronger than he was. Harry showed him the way, and he'd be there to help as Draco grew in strength, but he'd left the actual path open for Draco to discover.

That was as it should be. Draco had done enough moping during the last years, and had spent enough time feeling that someone should rescue him. He'd like to start having a share in the rescuing.

It began, necessarily, with dry research. Draco had found what he thought were references to mirror magic, and visions seen in mirrors, in two of the books his father had hidden from the Aurors. But the bits of mirror lore were scattered among spells that the books' author had written down simply to prove his skills at gathering arcane knowledge. He and Harry would have to read them all the way through and then sift out the useful bits from the rubbish when they were done.

Even that task was more pleasant than Draco thought it would be. He and Harry worked side by side at the same table. Harry had started to take the chair across from him, but Draco had shaken his head and pointed to the seat already arranged in front of the second enormous and dusty book, Travels Through Ancient Wisdom.

Harry had raised an eyebrow, but complied.

And so they read with their shoulders brushing, and sometimes their arms or wrists when Harry reached out to turn a page. Occasionally, Harry murmured a question in an abstracted tone, and Draco did his best to answer it. Their quills scratched over the parchment in front of them, and though they moved at different paces and at different times, Draco could detect no difference in their sounds when he listened.

He and Harry were matched.

He could feel body warmth on his side, if that was what he needed, just by bending a little. And once when he couldn't find a useful bit of information in ten densely-argued pages and had started to grind his teeth, Harry's hand settled gently over his shoulder and began to massage. Draco relaxed at once, even tipping his head to the side so that his brow, marked with the new scar, brushed Harry's hair. Harry didn't pause or tense, but kept up the soothing strokes.

Harry was comfortable with touching him.

Relaxed, cheered, and made secure by Harry's presence, Draco got through much more work than he had thought he would. And Harry filled nearly as many pages of parchment with notes.

It was a pleasure Draco hadn't known since the old days when he sometimes helped Professor Snape brew potions: two minds swooping along the same track, hunting the same goal, with absolute harmony.

It was the first of many pleasures that he looked forwards to sharing with Harry.

"Welcome, Mr. Potter. Please sit down."

One thing Harry liked about Michael Eaglethorpe at once: other than the obligatory flick of his eyes to the scar on Harry's forehead, he didn't seem overly impressed or awed to be treating the Savior of the Wizarding World. He nodded Harry towards a chair in front of his desk, which Harry gladly took. It was old, worn green leather, comfortable. The office itself was comfortable, in fact, with a few restrained landscape paintings. If Eaglethorpe had degrees or awards, he seemed to take care not to intimidate ordinary visitors to his office with them.

"I was trained in a mixture of Muggle and Mind-Healer methods," he said, when Harry asked. "I'd have to forever be hiding half my qualifications from half my patients."

He smiled when he said it. He was an older man, perhaps in his late forties, with his own long scar that trailed across his scalp and made the graying black hair flare white along it. He was heavyset, and moved like Arthur Weasley after a good meal. His eyes were calm and gray, and he sat back behind the desk to consider Harry with them trained steadily on his face.

"I want to have a simple conversation with you," he began. "You came here to figure out why you're having dreams about another man?"

"I know why," Harry said. "It's part of a curse that's attacked both of us. But I've reacted—well, physically—to them." He could feel his face heating up, but he forged ahead. "And my wife suggested I come here, so that I could learn why."

Eaglethorpe nodded slowly. "Then it wasn't your own decision to come here?"

"Not really, no." Harry supposed that could be construed as insulting, but he didn't want to hide anything from this man, either. Honesty was his new mantra, no matter how exhausting it had been over the past few days, explaining to Ginny why he took James as well as Al along to visit Malfoy Manor.

Come to think of it, he'd relaxed most when he was with Draco.

Harry shrugged to himself. So I have different methods of relating to them. I knew that already.

"Hm." Eaglethorpe cocked his head. "Then let's start with simple questions. Have you ever considered yourself gay?"

"No." Harry had seen no reason to. After all, he'd successfully ignored the dreams about Draco for years, and he had a wife and three children ready to testify to the fact that he had no problems desiring women.

"Have you ever had dreams about other men?"

Harry half-smirked, wondering what Eaglethorpe would make of his visions of Voldemort. "Not sexual ones."

"Can you describe the content of a typical dream about Mr. Malfoy for me?"

His face nearly hurt with how hot it flushed, as if he had sunburn, but Harry drew his breath and did as asked. He summarized the dream he'd had a few nights before he and Draco were captured, the one he had woken from so hard that he would have come if he moved, and then went back over it in more detail at Eaglethorpe's insistence. His frown became deeper and deeper as Harry continued.

"I've never heard of a curse that operated this way," he admitted when Harry finally finished.

"Neither have we," Harry said.

"We?"

"Malfoy and I."

Eaglethorpe looked at him thoughtfully. "You don't think it would be a good idea to curtail your association with Mr. Malfoy while you're trying to divine your sexual orientation?"

"No," said Harry.

"Why not?"

"Because Draco needs the contact with me," Harry said, his voice deepening. The mere thought of abandoning Draco because Harry might have some ridiculous sexual issue—ridiculous because he'd never sleep with someone but Ginny anyway—made him want to attack the person suggesting it. "And I'm his friend. And whatever I decide about my orientation is for the comfort of my wife. It's for her that I'm coming to these therapy sessions. It won't affect the way I interact with Draco."

Never mind that it had been easy to see Draco at Malfoy Manor the other day with his head thrown back in passion, courtesy of a dream Harry had had the night before he visited. This time, he'd been the one fucking Draco into the bed, desperately whispering words of love and promising never to leave.

But he had learned some self-control. He wouldn't snatch at what hung in front of him like a child at a sweet. He might spend a lot of time around boys three and two years old, but he was not them. It was only childish people who betrayed their marriage vows.

Except for Draco.

Yes, but his situation had been different, Harry argued with himself. He could not find it in himself to condemn Draco for that, after meeting Marian. He could still condemn him for other things—like spending ten years drifting helplessly through life—but that was an area of Draco's life he had no right to judge, private business, between him and his wife.

"I see." Eaglethorpe appeared more disturbed than before, though Harry didn't know why. He'd only told the truth. "Well, your hour is up for now, Mr. Potter. I'll see you again in a week."

Harry stood, nodded, managed a smile, and left.

He strode along the corridors that would lead him to the lift—Eaglethorpe worked out of a building in the middle of Muggle London—and then forced himself to halt and take a deep breath.

This was going to be the hardest part of the war he was fighting to be honest and calm and rational, he thought, the part where he fought himself. He only had to see an expression of hurt on Ginny's and Draco's faces to know what it would cost if he turned his back on either one of them. But when he was alone, he was tempted to give in to his rage or sink into a morass of self-pity.

He could overcome it. He could avoid the temptation to yell or scream or tell people they didn't understand, since it was his responsibility to tell them if they didn't understand.

He pushed the button to call the lift, and leaned on the wall, his arms folded and his head tilted back.

He'd win. It would just take some time, that was all.