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Chapter Nineteen—Bound

Harry landed gently on the edge of the Manor's anti-Apparition wards. It had taken him what felt like forever to settle Lily so that she was sleeping, and then he'd watched Al and James play with the wands, unable to trust himself further away than a few feet from them. Horrible as it was, he wanted his family to be an anchor in that moment, his children a ballast that would draw him into their soft, unimportant conflicts and away from the weight of war that Hermione had delivered to him.

He had almost hoped that George would arrive later than he'd promised he would. Ostensibly, he was coming so that Harry could have a few extra hours to go to Diagon Alley and buy new dress robes for the dinner tonight. But when Harry mumbled and flushed as he stepped away from George, the other man had simply given him an understanding look and nodded. Harry suspected his behavior wouldn't be mentioned to Ginny.

He wouldn't be at Malfoy Manor for very long, he reassured himself as he jogged up the path towards the doors; the iron gates had dissolved for him as usual. After all, he didn't want to watch the weight of war settle on Draco's shoulders, either. It would dishearten him to hear that some of his enemies were organized, powerful, and clever.

It would be lighter for him, at least. That, Harry could try and use to cheer himself up. Draco was only a victim. He could concentrate on the healing and regrowth of his soul. Harry would be in the front ranks of soldiers with Hermione, struggling to subdue the forces that wanted to tear apart and subjugate the wizarding world. Where else should a hero be?

Stop it, he told himself, and swallowed his self-pity all at once, bitter and congealed lump that it was. Draco faced things that are harder than what you're going through right now, and he's still whole. Stop feeling as though you'll be ripped in two; you know very well that you won't be, and that you can survive this the way you've survived anything else.

He was almost to the front doors of the Manor when a burning in the scar over his heart nearly sent him to his knees. Harry gasped and pressed a hand to his chest, stunned when he felt heat actually rising through his shirt.

"What the hell?" he whispered, and lifted his head, looking frantically around the gardens for a cause of the burning. Was Draco out here?

The scar pulled at him, like a rope that nearly sent him sprawling before he fought his way to his feet and followed the tug. It yanked harder, evidently not satisfied with his obedience, and Harry swallowed soundlessly as he sped up.

This is getting worse. What in the world can we do to satisfy it? I don't—I don't understand—

And then he burst into a sheltered corner of the rose gardens, only vaguely noticing that there were no peacocks here, and came to a stop, a small shocked sound breaking from his throat.

Above a pool floated an enormous, glistening bubble of water, reminding Harry of a Shield Charm, if a Shield Charm could be bent and twisted to go over one's head and under one's feet as well as in front of the body. Inside the bubble floated Draco, his hair streaming as if he fell, his face turning a terrible bloated color.

Harry didn't need the burning in his chest or the tug forwards to find inspiration this time; he was already running feverishly, drawing his wand and screaming so hard that it made his throat hurt, "Accio Draco!"

The whole bubble flew towards him, while Draco's face turned more horrible colors. Harry screamed wordlessly this time, cast a Bubble-Head Charm on himself so fast that it seemed he'd willed it to appear, and then held his arms above his head in a diving position as the bubble struck him.

Water flooded all around him, crashing to the ground in a violent flood that should have broken the bubble apart. Harry wasn't surprised to find that it'd expanded instead, though, and that he was abruptly subjected to pressure at least as great as anything he'd felt in the Hogwarts lake during the second task of the Triwizard Tournament.

He didn't care. He couldn't care about anything at that moment but Draco drifting a few feet away from him. His universe had become exactly as small or large as that bubble was.

He sliced through the water, and if he wasn't a terrific swimmer, he was at least better than he'd been when he plunged into that pool in the woods all those years ago to retrieve the Sword of Gryffindor. He looped his arms around Draco, focused his magic—if there was any time when he ought to be able to perform wandlessly, it was now, when his heartbeat actually rocked his body with terror—and cast the Bubble-Head Charm again.

The contained air appeared around Draco's head. He began to cough, promptly filling it with water. Harry launched a shattering kick backwards, hurting his legs, and cradled Draco against his torso as if resting him there would make the near-drowning less likely to have hurt him.

They flopped out of the water, which had finally broken and now did surround them with a flat, shallow pool, turning the grass into a marshy mat. Harry removed the Bubble-Head Charms and pounded on Draco's chest, trying to get the water out of his lungs.

Draco coughed, but his head lolled limply to the side, even when Harry slapped him, and he wasn't breathing.

Harry felt his sanity trembling and threatening to break as the spell holding the bubble together had. He wasn't breathing.

"God, no," he thought he said, and then he forced himself to remember what Hermione had told him concerning Muggle methods of lifesaving. It wasn't as though he regularly dealt with drowned people in his line of work, but didn't—didn't it go something like pinching the nose, and tilting the head back, and breathing into the mouth?

Well, if it didn't, he didn't know anything better to do, and goddamn it, he needed something to do, or he would go mad.

He grabbed Draco's nose, tilted his head back, and leaned down to breathe directly into his mouth.

The moment their lips touched, the scar on Harry's chest burst into flame again. This time, though, Draco arched beneath him, and Harry saw a faint white-gold light streaking upwards through his robes. Draco moaned in something like pain, or perhaps ecstasy, and then the light was everywhere.

Harry felt the moments when the scar on his forehead, the remnants of the quilled words on his right hand, and the marks of Nagini's bite on his forearm flared as well. Draco's brow and forearm and hands answered—yes, even his hands, Harry saw, which were marked with puffy scratches that might have been the work of thorns.

And then the water raced out of Draco's mouth, and divided into two reaching tendrils around them, and bound them in an extra embrace.

Harry, who couldn't lift his head, couldn't part his lips from Draco's, didn't know for certain if all the scars followed the same pattern that the one on his chest and the Sectumsempra scars on Draco's chest did, but he wouldn't have been surprised if they did. The white-gold light he was bleeding and the white-gold light bleeding from Draco shot out like the water had, swayed in confused beams for a moment, and then knotted together like pairs of clasping hands. Harry shivered.

The fire had changed character. Now it was not the same painful sensation that had attacked him when he nearly went into the Manor and left Draco to drown, but the same sublime warmth he'd sometimes felt in his dreams. It wasn't sexual—not quite—but it bound them. He shivered again, and would have collapsed onto Draco, except that the banded light and the hovering water made it impossible to move down as well as up.

The warmth worked its way in from the outside and outwards from the scars, and Harry had to shut his eyes. He wondered for a moment if he would die of the heat, which steadily increased. Perhaps they would find his body locked to Draco's with the marks of a mysterious heatstroke or dehydration all over it.

But then the warmth died away. Harry could move again. He lifted his head and sat back on his heels, peering anxiously down at Draco. He had assumed, without even thinking about it, that the vanished water meant he hadn't drowned, but he might have suffered in other ways.

He winced at the thought of that suffering. And the thought of causing it—what if, in resisting the curse earlier, he'd inspired it to wreak this damage on Draco?—made him want to wear out his throat apologizing.

Draco's eyes were open. He was awake and aware. He took several deep, steady breaths, the sound rasping but clearing out, an unreadable expression on his face. His stare was fixed on Harry, and while it was so, the bands of light and water seemed to have come back again. Harry knelt obediently still, certain Draco didn't want him to move.

"Help me up," Draco whispered. "We need to talk."

Harry was more than happy to do so, even though he had begun to shiver again. He had a dim presentiment again, and this time, the idea that was struggling to be born concerned what Draco had to say.

Harry was more than happy to put it off as long as possible.

"I should have thought of it before, really."

It was nearly half-an-hour later. Draco was dry and warm now, wearing a new set of robes, and tucked into his own bed, at Harry's insistence. Harry had the same chair in which he'd sat to watch over Draco the night he'd been wounded by the mirror. And he was holding Draco's hand in his, and nibbling his lip, the expression on his face sometimes worried, sometimes ghastly with a terror Draco didn't think was at all for himself.

Draco gazed at him evenly. It was no good running from this. If Harry tried, Draco would just have to be the pillar of strength Harry had been for him in the box, and repeat the truth until Harry acknowledged it.

However, with a final deep breath not unlike the one he'd probably drawn before he sent his broom plunging after the Snitch, Harry finally looked back at Draco. And his green eyes were full of that relentless, unflinching bravery again. Draco approved.

"I should have thought of it," he whispered. "The correspondence was too great. Four scars. Four life-debts. The scars are the conduits for this curse. You said that you felt yours burning the night that my mother sent the letter to demand you fulfill your debt to her by exonerating me?"

Harry nodded hesitantly. A spark of disbelief had caught at the back of his eyes. Draco ignored it for now. This was all speculation, yes, just like everything else about the curse, but it was informed speculation. He was confident that Harry would incline to his view of the situation as he continued to explain.

"And since then, the curse has been trying to inflict an equal number of scars on me," Draco continued softly, staring at his forearm, and then his hands. To his complete lack of surprise, the wounds from the roses had closed on his right hand into the shape of faint silvery scars, no different in size from the ones he'd got from the mirror. He wondered, however, if Harry had noticed the new scar yet. "Presumably because that will make its operation easier."

"That's the strangest thing I've ever heard," Harry said flatly. At least he didn't say it was the most insane, Draco thought gratefully. "Why choose the scars to work through? And it—it has to be a coincidence that the number of life-debts we had between us and the number of scars I gained are the same."

Draco shrugged. "I'm still not sure where this magic came from, Harry." He smiled slightly; he'd nearly called Harry "Potter." It was instinct when he got that tone in his voice, as though they were back at Hogwarts arguing over some unimportant matter. "I suspect it can have its own laws if it wants to. It may have arisen only because it's been ten years and we still hadn't made a motion towards fulfilling our mutual life-debts. And then it chose your scars to match the number of life-debts, perhaps, not the other way around. If you'd had four fingers on one hand, perhaps it would have chopped off one of mine to make us even."

Harry exhaled loudly and closed his eyes. "All right. I have to admit that that sounds as if it makes sense—in a mad kind of way—and now that you have four scars—"

Draco shifted.

"—I really can't argue against it." Harry opened his eyes and pinned him with a desperate stare. "And so now we're returned to my major question. Why? Why was the infliction of this particular scar so much more dangerous than the others?"

Draco sighed. "Harry, I don't think it was dangerous at all."

"Bollocks!" Harry leaned forwards, his grip on Draco's hand tightening to painful. Draco only had to flex his fingers once, though, and Harry leaned back with a contrite look that told Draco his suspicions were likely to be correct. "You nearly died. You would have drowned if I hadn't shown up."

"But you did show up," Draco pointed out.

A dark flicker moved in Harry's eyes. "I had something to tell you."

It would be nothing good, Draco suspected, but he put aside both suspicion and enlightenment for now. "But what did you see when you arrived? Was I simply drifting in the pool?"

"You were in a bubble above it," Harry said, and suddenly his entire body bent and twisted as if he were caught in a bitter winter wind. "The curse arranged that," he whispered. "It arranged for you to be caught like that until I could arrive and rescue you."

Draco nodded. "I'm sure it did."

Harry shook his head wearily. "But why? Why wouldn't it have just wanted me to heal your wound to a scar? Why make it a rescue?"

Draco lifted his left hand. Harry frowned at it, uncomprehending, and then his eyes focused and he gasped. Draco nodded again. He had seen the new scar that lay there, then. The wounds from the roses had covered both his hands, and all had healed, instead of some thinning to scars and some vanishing.

He reached out and turned Harry's left hand over. On the back of it shone a new scar, the same faint red color that all of Harry's marks were. Harry stared at it in wonder, but Draco thought the wonder a mask over fear.

"What happened when you rescued me, Harry?" Draco asked quietly.

Harry bowed his head, and something like a sob came out of him. "I saved your life. It's a fifth life-debt." He breathed in silence for a moment, and then said, "Oh, shit."

"Yes," Draco said. He spent a moment stroking Harry's hair, letting them both gather their strength for what was to come. Harry would help him support it, in the end, but for the moment Draco needed to be the one to say the words, playing Harry's former role. "The curse is self-sustaining, now. It can put us in danger again and again, or we can fall into danger ourselves as we investigate Goldstein's murder and the activities of the Snakes, and of course we'll rescue each other. Each time we do, it's a new life-debt. The curse is moving to tie us to each other irrevocably. And I think we can safely say that the more scars that accumulate, the more conduits, the stronger it will grow."

"It doesn't make sense." Harry sat up restlessly, tossing his head back so that Draco's palm flew off his hair. Draco didn't mind. He did tighten his grip on Harry's hand so he couldn't get up and pace, though. He thought Harry should be sitting down by the time they arrived at the next revelation, and besides, he wanted him close. "After all, no new life-debt scars appeared when I turned the wounds on your forearm and forehead into scars."

"Those were dangerous," Draco said. "And I think the curse needed them to become conduits. These last scars—" He nodded again at the faint marks of the roses, which stretched from between his fingers to cross his knuckles. "They weren't life-threatening. Even if they'd bled copiously, I wasn't in danger from them. The magic arranged for you to find me drowning, instead, so that it could start constructing new life-debts immediately. And it attacked through the pool—"

"A reflective surface," Harry whispered.

"Yes," Draco said. God, I'm glad that he accepts this and talks to me sanely instead of making a scene. There are far worse people I could be trapped in a mess like this with. "I think I even have an answer as to why it might have done that just then. I was resisting a pull into a tunnel of light—"

"So was I!" Harry sat up further, so fast that Draco thought he might have hurt himself. "Or I did. Earlier today, I mean."

Draco nodded. "Whatever those tunnels of light signify, or that pull through the mirror that you told me you'd been subjected to when you still had mirrors in your house, I think they might be the more direct methods the curse employs. If we'd gone through them, it wouldn't have to do the rest of this to us. But we didn't, and then I took the wounds on my hands from clawing at the rosebushes. I think the curse saw an opportunity, and took it, both to give me the fourth scar and move us into the next stage."

"We're talking about it like it's intelligent, you realize?"

"In a way, it is," Draco said. "At least, it's merciless in its purpose. Rather like long-lasting commands from the Imperius Curse. Not that I would know anything about that, of course," he added in a superior tone—a stupid digression, but he'd badly needed to see Harry smile, even such a wan version of the expression as he got then. "But the commands keep on functioning even if the caster dies, as long as no one notices the curse and removes it. I think this magic is like that. It's in motion now. Whatever it wants to achieve, it's pressing ahead. When it finds a chance to make things better—for itself, that is—it takes it. And now it has a method that can keep on piling up and piling up, linking us to each other with life-debts forever."

"That's what I don't understand," Harry whispered, sounding broken now. "What does it want? In whose interest is it for us to be linked?"

And now came the revelation that had occurred to Draco while Harry fussed over him (and, at his request, concealed his half-drowned state from Narcissa). He didn't want to give it, but neither would he hide it. He and Harry would face the future together.

Besides, if he was right, they would soon have no choice about doing so.

"I don't think anyone cast this, Harry," he said quietly. "It's a natural side-effect—"

Harry snorted.

"More or less natural," Draco corrected himself, and then paused a moment to wonder that he could know what Harry was thinking so easily. A pressure on his hand made him blink and continue. "It's a side-effect of so many life-debts piled together. I've never heard of a case exactly like this, where the same number of life-debts was owed back and forth, and the two people bound like that ignored them for a long time. They weren't being fulfilled, so they decided to fulfill themselves."

"But then we could still escape," Harry said, his eyes brightening. "I only have to think of two more things that I want, and then all the life-debts are fulfilled."

"I read something else yesterday that makes me think not," Draco said. He wished he could turn his face aside so that he didn't have to watch the crumbling of hope in Harry's expression, but he cupped his hand along Harry's cheek instead, and took heart in the way the other man immediately nuzzled into it for comfort. "I didn't think about it at the time, because my thoughts were elsewhere—plotting and planning on how to get my life back."

Harry smiled then, his eyes soft and warm. He can be happy for others, at least, if not himself. Draco found himself cradling Harry's face more gently than ever. "That's great, Draco. You should. No one deserves a life more than you do."

Draco smiled back, half-helplessly and half because he knew that the very fervency behind Harry's declaration was contributing to their problem. "The book I read was on the history of life-debts," he said. "Why they first started being considered and collected in the mists of history—what the point of them was. They were first used to settle scores between enemies, apparently."

Harry made a face. "Seems like an inefficient way to go about it," he muttered. "After all, you fulfill the life-debt and then you can turn around and kill the bloke who annoyed you the next day."

Draco nodded slightly. "But the point wasn't just to hold power over an enemy because he owed you his life," he said. "The point was that life-debts often went unfulfilled for months, either because the wizard who held them wasn't eager to give them up or because he couldn't think of something suitable he wanted in return."

Harry closed his eyes. He sees the edges of it now, Draco thought, with a fierce, protective tenderness that amazed him. It somewhat echoed the way he felt about Scorpius, but he knew Scorpius was nearly helpless and would need his care for years to come. Harry wouldn't always; Draco wanted to give it to him, though. "They bound the wizards," he whispered.

"Very good," Draco said. "Yes. And that was the point. Harder to consider a bloke your enemy when you've lived in close company with him for months—which people who owed each other life-debts used to do—and you feel a bit of responsibility for his life, or know that he saved yours."

"So you think the life-debts are trying to link us just to link us?"

Draco nodded.

"Did you find anything—" Harry had to pause and moisten his lips with his tongue. Draco's eyes followed it in spite of himself. "Did you find anything on what happened if life-debts continued to accumulate? Forget about how long the wizards involved ignored them or if they owed equal numbers to each other. What happens if they're multiple?"

"Ah," Draco said. "Well. Some of our ancestors were intelligent people. They knew that some poor wizards wouldn't have enough material wealth to pay back their benefactors, and they were extremely unlikely to have anything else on offer. Except one thing, which everyone had. Themselves. The gift of a wizard cancels out multiple life-debts."

Disgust flickered in Harry's eyes. "Slavery?"

"Nothing like," Draco rapped out sharply. While he could understand Harry's dislike for the idea, he wasn't about to hear pure-blood traditions maligned. "Slavery is unwilling, Harry. That's why it's called what it is. No, the gift of themselves. The free and unselfish yielding of their presence, their gifts, their talents, their support. What you did for me in the box," he clarified, because Harry still didn't look as if he understood.

Harry straightened at once. "Then why aren't all our life-debts canceled already? We've become friends, we care about each other—"

"Because we are already tied to other people with magic nearly as strong as the life-debts." Draco tried to soften the blow by lowering his voice, but he suspected that nothing would truly ease it for Harry. "Specifically, our marriage vows."

Silence, for long moments. The fire flickering in the hearth—which Harry had insisted on, so that Draco could warm up—lit Harry's anguished stare, and then the tight squeeze of his shut eyes, and then the gleam of a few tears creeping from beneath them.

"Those dreams—"

"Those dreams," Draco said, "and the visions in the mirrors, and the pictures through the tunnels are, I think, the magic's suggestion about what would most easily please it. If we became what we are there—not just lovers, not just friends, but freely and wholly each other's—then it would stop building. That's what it wants. And that's the only thing likely to work if we continue to accumulate life-debts as I suspect we will from now on, either because the magic manipulates matters or in the normal course of this hunt. We're linked to each other, Harry, and it's because the magic wants us linked. Because the life-debts already tie us in a maze of connections, and the only way to bring them to their full potential is for us to give ourselves to each other."

More silence. Harry gave little gasping breaths into his hands, which he had pulled away from Draco's to cover his face. Draco kept the fingers cupping Harry's jaw in place, though, stroking now and then. He waited to see what would happen.

Harry gave a deep shudder, as if he were controlling the fit of weeping that wanted to overcome him, and then dropped his hands. And Draco bared his teeth when he saw the look in Harry's green eyes. Yes, there was the bravery, and there was the stubbornness, but it was not turned the way Draco had hoped.

"No," Harry said quietly, firmly. "I told you before. You have part of me, and that part is all your own. But I won't give up my connections to other people—my children, my friends, the people I work with—just to be yours. And the only lover I will ever have will be Ginny."

"Harry, you prat," Draco said, as gently as he could, which wasn't very. He'd blessed Harry's blindness before, because he thought it meant he could coax Harry gently in with Gryffindor tactics. Now he cursed it. We've already gone too far. The balance is delicate, and it's going to tip over any minute. And he should have figured out what I'm going to say now for himself. "The only person your relationship would change with is your wife. I don't care for Marian, and she doesn't care for me. You could still have your children and your friends and the people you work with in your life. We wouldn't vanish into a world of our own. The only thing that would need to be exclusive is the sexual relationship."

"And I," Harry said, his head lowering, his eyes flashing, his hair bristling with the crackle of escaping wild magic, "said. No."

Draco opened his mouth to point out that it was going to happen anyway, that the magic wouldn't stop pulling and tugging at them, that he thought it was likely that the dreams Harry had would grow in intensity from now on, that Harry was attracted to him already—

And then he closed his mouth.

Think, Draco, he scolded himself.

If he spoke those words, he would be pushing Harry. And that would make Harry retreat in injured dignity to the she-Weasel's side. And she would work hard to keep him there, and Harry would fight to keep from glancing in Draco's direction ever again.

And that would make the magic all the more likely to continue to build. The gift of themselves to each other had to be equal, and it had to be willing. That much, Draco knew from his reading on life-debts.

And he might be wrong, but he didn't think he was. If Harry refused, if he made Harry refuse, it could be months and months still before things ended as they had to end, with Harry following the desires that shone in the back of his eyes. Draco would much rather spend that time nurturing his desires and Harry's own, so that Harry wouldn't feel as if he were dragged into this like a cow brought to market.

"All right," he said quietly. "All right, Harry. I can respect that. We'll try to solve this by fulfilling the life-debts. Think of things that you want to ask me." He spread his arms and bowed, half-mocking. "I'm at your service."

Harry reared back and stared at Draco in spite of himself. For a moment, distrust screamed like a raven in the back of his head.

He's planning something, he must be—

But he couldn't sustain it, because he already trusted Draco too much. The voice silenced itself, and Harry doubted it would come back again.

And Draco was gazing calmly at him now—not without some distaste in the corners of his mouth, but he had yielded the argument. Or he had seen that it wasn't worth pressing right now, and decided it would be better to bring it up again later.

Harry couldn't remember the last time someone had done that for him.

He smiled, because he utterly couldn't help himself. If only his heart wasn't beating fit to break and the desire to speak more wasn't burning on the tip of his tongue—he wanted to say that wizarding marriage vows weren't capable of being dissolved, so Draco's solution wasn't a solution—he would have spoken words of devotion and friendship, because Draco deserved nothing less.

But nothing more, either.

Still, he could swallow his poisoned words when Draco had done so much for him. And he could reach out, clasp Draco's hand again, and say, "I'll think on it, all right? Get some rest."

"You'll stay," Draco said, as he settled back against the pillows. It wasn't a question, and Harry would have been offended if it had been.

"Of course," Harry said. He winced a bit. He had only just now realized how raw his throat was, doubtless from screaming.

"Here," Draco said, and picked up his wand, and Transfigured the chair, with Harry still sitting in it. He fell back with a shout of surprise, and found himself lying in a comfortable bed only a bit smaller than Draco's own. So massive was the bedroom that it fit easily.

And that was another thing. Draco could have been pushy and irritating and insisted that Harry sleep in the same bed as him. And he hadn't.

Harry didn't have the words to convey what that meant to him, so he just squeezed Draco's hand one more time and lay back to watch the silver-gray eyes slide shut. The silver lightning bolt on his forehead didn't mar his features at all, Harry considered. Rather, it added a balance that had been missing before.

He only meant to watch Draco and guard him from any more manifestations of the curse, but then his eyes slid shut. The sheets beneath him were so soft. The pillows cradled his head much better than the pillows at home did.

He was just…going to rest…for a moment…

He was gasping and nearly shrieking, pinned down on the bed beneath a steadily licking lover. It had been like this for hours. Or, at least, some time period that might as well have been hours. His skin was so sensitized that even the brush of silk against it made him jerk and writhe as if he were being tortured with Cruciatus.

A pleasant Cruciatus. But still. There was such a thing as enough.

"Please!" he moaned, and thought he heard a satisfied chuckle from his lover. Hadn't they made a bet, hours and days and centuries ago, that he would beg? Maybe they had. But he didn't care, he didn't fucking care, he just wanted something to touch his cock—

And then the hand slipped beneath his body and closed around him. And because it had been hours, and because of who the hand belonged to, the calluses on it that slipped against him, the way the fingers closed and squeezed just on this side of pain, and the harsh, satisfied, panting breaths that brushed his shoulder, he came with just a few strokes, screaming as if this were a victory in battle, a victory to be shared with his lover—

Draco's eyes shot open, and he became aware of two things: his body was steaming with heat, all over, and he had just come in his pants, messily enough that he squashed wetly when he rolled over.

He was just in time to hear a few unintelligible but still sweet whimpers from Harry, see the gleam of sweat and passion on his face, and then glimpse the spreading wet spot on the front of his robes.

Draco closed his eyes and turned back over so that Harry wouldn't be able to see how affected he'd been, in turn. He would just as soon not deal with Harry's embarrassment should he wake in the next moments. He wanted to think.

And then he became aware of two more things, as he thought.

First, the magic did indeed want to link them, and the links had become easier with their scars now matching each other's in number. Draco was more than ever convinced he was correct. He was open to the dreams that Harry had always been open to.

Second, if the dreams were always this intense, it was a wonder that Harry hadn't gone mad yet, and his ability to hold back from touching Draco was miraculous.

Will I be as strong, I wonder?

Draco felt a smile that was probably foolish curving his mouth. He shouldn't smile. There were still so many problems awaiting them.

But the thought of this, and then the thought of what his life had been like a few weeks ago—

He was rather live a breath of this, and die, than drag through years and years of that gray and closed-in existence.

The magic has an ally now, Harry. I'll do whatever it takes to make us both feel alive.

And to show you that you want it, too.