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Chapter Twenty—Enlisted in the War

Harry woke, his eyes fluttering open so slowly that someone crouched above him with wand drawn would have managed to fire several curses in the time that it took him to see. He yawned and stretched his hands above his head, reveling in the languid good feeling that suffused him. He really should reacquire combat reflexes, if the horrible truth he and Hermione suspected was truth—

And that reminded him that he hadn't yet told Draco about that horrible truth.

And when he rolled over and felt the wetness coalescing around his groin, he knew exactly why he felt so good.

His face was on fire in moments, and he could almost feel the virtue of the sleep being diminished. He reached over, picked up his wand, and spelled the wetness away as casually as he could, before he dared to peek at the bed next to him and see if Draco had noticed.

Draco's eyes met his, wide open and calm.

Harry looked away. "Sorry," he murmured.

"For dreaming? Don't be." Draco sounded very gentle. "Besides, I may have—enjoyed myself as well."

Startled, Harry sat up, and then yelped as his arm went from beneath him and sent him sprawling back on the bed. He must have injured his elbow when he rescued Draco, he thought. He shook his head when Draco looked at him in concern, more interested in talking right now. "I've infected you with the dreams?"

"A most pleasant disease, if you have." Draco wore a faint smile now, and his gaze held Harry's, not letting it go. Harry caught his breath. He had imagined the deep intimacy and sense of comfort he felt with Draco would dissipate after he woke, but Draco was clearly inviting him to continue it. There was nothing in the world Harry wanted to do right now but look at him.

Recognizing how dangerous that was and could be, he sought to banish thoughts of love with thoughts of war. They had often been the antidote, in his experience. "There's something else I didn't tell you, because there wasn't time," he said abruptly. Draco's eyes crinkled a bit at the corners with disappointment. Harry turned his head away, though he told himself he was a coward for it. Well, I'll be brave in a little while. "Hermione and I think that the source of your problems is actually several groups working together. Both pure-blood and Muggleborn extremists, with at least one group of people substantially smarter than the other."

"Tell me," Draco said, his voice growing sharp, "how pure-bloods and Muggleborns can work together without casting the foundation of the universe into ruin."

Harry outlined the suspicions that he and Hermione had come up with, still keeping his eyes fastened on the sheets of his Transfigured bed. Draco sounded so different from the spiritless man whose listless life Harry had interrupted, and Harry caught himself in the middle of cataloguing every nuance of that change: the heightened tone, the rich interest behind the words, the soft noises he made that were indicative of response.

And then he realized that was dangerous, too, and forced himself to lose count. They would have enough troubles ahead without him complicating this. Yes, the life-bonds had already complicated this, but, as Draco had agreed, they might yet find a way to escape the seeming demand of the magic.

I can think of something I want, in fact.

Harry waited until he had reached the end of his outline of the groups' plans, as far as he and Hermione had been able to trace them, and then slid into his request. "Draco?" he asked. Draco narrowed his eyes, seeming to stare past him—into the distance of their enemies' schemes, Harry hoped, from which he would pull more brilliant conclusions to match Hermione's. "Can I ask for something to fulfill one of the life-debts you owe me?"

Draco was seeing him, now. "What would you want, Harry?" So much feathery desire in that one sentence. Harry's body tried to react to it. Well, Harry could force that to stop, too, and he used a nonverbal spell that only required a small wand movement to do so.

"Will you—will you stay safe?" Harry licked his lips when Draco frowned at him, clearly not understanding. "Will you—stay away from the fighting, so that I know you're at least behind powerful wards if our enemies try to attack you again?"

Draco lunged at him across the beds, seizing his hands and shaking them hard. Harry winced from the pressure and the strength of the grip, but he couldn't withdraw in any way. If nothing else, it was the first time that he'd seen genuine fury at him kindle in Draco's face.

"How dare you ask such a thing of me?" Draco's voice was flat and calm, which made it worse. "They're my enemies as much as yours, Harry—"

"I know that—"

"And you can't afford to leave me behind, not when there's so much I can do to help," Draco charged ahead, cutting him off. "It's better that we work together, not apart, where we'll just get in each other's way. It's better." Perhaps he saw some traces of doubt lingering around the corners of Harry's eyes, because he gave his hands another fierce shake. "Besides, you ought to know that I'm incapable of letting you go into battle alone."

"Something to do with the life-debts?" Harry asked, wondering if he'd missed a consequence of their bond in the intricate explanation of the magic Draco had given him earlier. It was possible. He needed a long time to think about things, while Draco seemed to leap to them instinctively once he had enough facts in front of him.

"No," Draco said. "What I mean is that I can't sit back and let someone I care for as much as I care for you walk into battle alone. I couldn't do it to Scorpius, and I couldn't do it to Mother—why do you think I fought so hard to protect her our sixth year in Hogwarts?—and I can't do it to you."

Harry swallowed. So my attempt to keep him safe just resulted in something that's more dangerous for the both of us.

"And you should know that you can't ask me for something like that," Draco went on, definitively. "So. Ask me for something else."

Harry let out a harsh breath. "I have something."

"Well?" Draco's eyes were so bright and challenging that that feeling returned, the one that asked what else in the world Harry wanted to look at. Harry carefully turned from it, swearing softly to himself. The battleground inside his head simply became more and more complicated.

That's not such a difference from the one outside my head, as a matter of fact. Harry licked his lips and said, "I want you to carry on being yourself as much as you can—rebuilding your life, and restoring your reputation, and finding things that make you happy again. Don't let our life-debts and our war overwhelm you completely. Don't neglect your happiness the way you did so many times this last decade."

Seeing the sudden still pose Draco had adopted, the way his hands had fallen still in Harry's, Harry added uncertainly, "Is that all right? I could try wording it a bit better, if you like."

He doesn't realize the consequences of what he's asking, clearly.

Harry Potter had just given Draco free sanction to do everything that he possibly could to win him.

Draco couldn't help smiling as he reached out and slipped one hand around the other man's cheek, letting his fingers splay to cup the jaw and his thumb smooth along Harry's lips. Harry bowed his head quietly, as if he were receiving one of the numerous Orders of Merlin which he'd been decorated with after the war, and tilted his face to rearrange himself more comfortably.

Heart full to bursting, Draco whispered, "I can do that. I can certainly do that."

"Good," Harry said, and he lifted his head, eyes touched lightly by the smile also growing on his lips. He opened his mouth.

Draco never knew what he would have said, because the door of his bedroom flung itself open just then, and admitted a whirlwind in the form of Ginny Potter.

The moment he saw her, Harry's face changed. He leaned away from Draco and sat up, folding his arms across his chest, looking anxiously at his wife. Draco let his hand drop casually to his side, and only raised an eyebrow when the woman stared at him accusingly. He hadn't done anything that he had to be ashamed of.

"Ginny," Harry breathed. "I forgot all about the dinner at Ron and Hermione's house. I'm sorry. I came to tell Draco—"

The strength seemed to flood out of her. Maybe it was the way Harry said his name, Draco thought; a Weasley might be able to hear the unconscious caress in his tone. Draco was hoping so, at least. The easiest enemy to fight was one who never took the field of battle.

She gave her first muffled, hiccoughing sob, embracing herself for comfort, and then turned and darted out of the room.

Harry gave Draco an anguished look, and then jumped off the bed and went after her. Draco leaned back carefully against his pillows, considering. He suspected that Ginny had probably arrived while he was asleep, which would explain why he hadn't felt the wards twang, and that his mother must have let her in. And perhaps she had wandered in search of her husband until now. It was the most rational explanation.

Nevertheless, Draco would speak with Narcissa later, to ensure that his family wasn't in danger.

For now, he activated the listening wards that could bring him sounds from every room in the Manor if he so desired. They sprang to life in the little antechamber where his rival stood sobbing as if her heart would break, and where Harry was attempting to soothe her tears as best as he could with loving, frantic words.

Draco lay back against his pillows and listened.

"Ginny, please—" Harry said, and tried to hold her. She turned away, still holding herself, curled so much inwards that he couldn't find a way to embrace her, couldn't find a hope that she would ever welcome him within her heart again. She was crying, but quietly, her face twisted tight with the urge to suppress the tears. "Please," he repeated, and put a hand on her shoulder, feeling supremely awkward. The one thing that destroyed his composure utterly was the sight of her tears. She had wept like this the night Lily was born, so painful was the birth---it had cut through all the spells the Healers tried to use to calm her—and Harry had felt the same urge to do something, and the same sense of futility. What would be appropriate? There was nothing in any of the social rules he had learned, or the personal ones he'd made with her in their life together, about what to say when a wife found another man touching her husband as if he had a claim to him.

He does have a claim to me, Harry thought. They both do. He took a deep breath, and rose above the pain. If he had wanted to avoid situations like this altogether, he would have stayed away from Draco altogether. No good in complaining about things that he'd asked for.

And if there were no right words, then he would speak his own.

"I didn't have sex with him," he said.

The bluntness, or maybe the direct address to what had to be Ginny's greatest fear, calmed her sobs. She shook her head and stared at him, her arms dropping away from her. Harry spread his hands to the sides, showing that he wouldn't try to approach her yet.

"He was touching you like…" said Ginny, and then trailed off. Harry supposed that none of the comparisons she could make would have been ones she wanted to hear.

"I know," Harry said. "And it was pure carelessness on my part to miss the dinner party. I came to Malfoy Manor to tell Draco some bad news about his enemies, found myself saving his life—again—and then fell asleep here and forgot about everything." He met her eyes. "I'm sorry."

Ginny closed her eyes. "It's not really the dinner party," she said. "It's everything the dinner party represents. Can you understand, Harry?"

"Yes," Harry said. "I can." He looked carefully at her for a moment, wondering whether she was strong enough to stand the words he'd speak, and then decided she was. Ginny had never been a coward. "You're afraid of losing me to him in soul and heart, not just body."

"Yes," Ginny said in turn. "Yes, that's it exactly." She raked a hand through her hair, which clung to her face thanks to the sweat and tears, and then glared at him. "And you don't seem to care much about the danger. Otherwise, why are you spending so much time cuddling beside him and sleeping with him? Because you did sleep with him, Harry, whether or not sex entered into it."

"I know," said Harry, also knowing that arguing semantics was not a good idea right now. "The reason I can't care as much about the danger is because I know my own resolves. I promised that I wouldn't abandon Draco after what he suffered in that box. I won't. And I won't abandon you, either, because I love you and you're my wife. I won't."

Ginny gave a small stamp of one foot. She was wearing a set of formal blue dress robes, Harry noticed for the first time, so she'd probably come back to the house, prepared for the dinner, and only then realized that he was missing and hadn't sent or left her word.

He winced, thinking of the fear that would have assaulted him if he'd arrived back at the house like that and found Ginny gone. No, the last thing he could blame her for was worrying.

"What did Malfoy suffer, that you feel so bound to stay with him?" she asked.

Harry bristled. There were many things he would do for Ginny—as many as he would do for Draco—but this was not one of them. "I promised that I wouldn't tell anyone else his secrets," he said. "I won't."

"Harry." Ginny took a deep breath, obviously trying to soften her voice, but it hadn't really worked when she continued. "Please. Just—it could help, you know. I don't know much about what happened to Malfoy during the war. I could be more sympathetic to him if I did. It might help us become friends."

"No," Harry said, in the same stubborn tone he'd used when Draco had tried to tell him that they'd need to become lovers. "No, and no again. You heard me, Ginny. There's many things I'll do for you. That is not one of them." He hoped that repeating his flat and uncompromising thoughts would help her see that.

"I don't understand," Ginny said, with a ring of wistfulness in her voice. "We used to compromise, Harry. And now it seems as though we oppose each other all the time, and for the smallest and pettiest of reasons."

Harry felt himself flush. It was true. He had become more and more stubborn and unreasonable lately. But he wasn't capable of surrendering his promise any more than Draco was capable of staying behind while he went to war.

"I know," he said. "I'm sorry. I don't know what happened, either."

"I do," said Ginny. "Malfoy." She looked steadily at him. "Harry. I don't think I'm out of bounds to demand that you give him up. Wouldn't you feel jealous if you saw another man touching me that way?"

Not as jealous as I would have, once. But Harry considered that that period of his life had passed, mostly, by the time he was seventeen.

"I could control it," he said in measured tones. "If the other man was a friend who was important to you, I'd try to control it."

Ginny held out one hand to him. Harry stepped closer and took it, though he wasn't sure that he felt like making the peace it implied.

"Think of the children, not of me." Her voice hovered on the edge of breaking again. "They need both their parents together, not split apart."

"You're threatening separation over this?" Harry stared at her incredulously. Though divorce was impossible with the kind of marriage bond he and Ginny had chosen, the couple could live apart, and some completely incompatible pairs chose that route.

"I—" And then Ginny turned her head away, and her shoulders began to shake, and she was crying again. Harry moved forwards and took her into his arms. He felt an odd reluctance to hold her, but he knew that came from being the one who had caused her tears in the first place.

He hated this, but he saw nothing better to do. Just hold on. Just endure. Just do what you have to do. She'll smile again, one day. One more life-debt to fulfill. Think of something else you want from Draco, and this magic should stop hunting you.

His mind filled with the images of the dream. Harry growled softly and banished them. He was not allowed to want that.

"I'm sorry," he said softly into Ginny's hair, over and over again. It was not the best solution, but it was the only one he had. He stroked her back and held her close, and when she turned away and made to depart from Malfoy Manor, he walked with his arm curled around her waist. He couldn't leave her in that moment.

He did use his wand to cast a Patronus that would bear his goodbye message to Draco. Ginny's lips tightened when she saw it, but she said nothing. Harry was glad. He would have had to argue with her about keeping in touch with Draco again, and then he would have felt even more wretched than he did.

Well, I have another therapy session with Eaglethorpe tomorrow. That might make her feel a bit better.

Harry imagined this done and over with, he and Ginny and Draco at a time years in the future, laughing, as friends, with no inappropriate feelings between him and Draco. A surge of longing struck him so powerfully that his steps wavered for a moment.

I want that. That's what I want.

And if the magic doesn't permit me to have that, it can go hang.

How…interesting.

Draco leaned back against his bed and grinned at the ceiling. He had overcome his startlement from the large silver stag that had pranced into his room and announced in Harry's voice that he was leaving, and would see him soon. He was reviewing the conversation he had overheard instead.

She's pushing him so hard, and she found his limits almost immediately. On the other hand, I've tested him again and again in the past few weeks, and I've only met absolute refusal once.

Draco suspected that he and the magic would have things even easier than he'd believed. Oh, Harry was stubborn, but he responded to kindness and rejection much the same way any human being would. Even he wouldn't be able to fight off the soft embrace of the one in preference for the stony road of the other for long.

And in the meantime…

Draco felt his smile cool, his eyes narrow. In the meantime, there was the war.

He meant to go into it at Harry's side, and he meant to win. In addition to the information he could gain from Blaise and Millicent, he intended to use his mother's Ministry contacts. Granted, they had brought them scant information about the Goldstein case, but that no longer worried Draco. Narcissa had asked them why the murderers had framed Draco, and that had been a question that the only ones who could answer it had every reason not to answer. Draco had a new set of questions to ask now, some so subtle that they would trick truth out of anyone not exceptionally wary.

In this war, he and Harry would fight on the same side.

Draco could not explain how much that thrilled him.

And there was another weapon he could bring to the battlefield, too, one that Harry would assuredly lack: knowledge of Dark Arts. Harry was too noble to use them. Their enemies weren't. And Draco didn't intend to die for want of a simple defensive spell that the Ministry had decided to place on a forbidden list in the past—a list they never revised to see if all the magic on it still counted as Dark Arts.

Draco stood and went to find the books he'd thought of, a small, savage grin playing around his mouth.

Yes, they were going to fight.

And they were going to win.

"No change from last week, then?" Eaglethorpe's voice was gruff but sympathetic. Harry merely raised an eyebrow in response, and Eaglethorpe laughed. "Trying not to think about it?"

"Yes." Harry sat back on the chair of worn green leather and stifled a sigh. He'd spent half the night trying to comfort Ginny, and then, on her insistence, taken the Dreamless Sleep a third time; she'd said she wouldn't be able to stand waking up to him calling Draco's name. He wouldn't be able to use it for at least another four days, now. And if Hermione or Draco found out about it, Harry was sure he'd have his entire stock of the potion raided and destroyed.

But it wasn't actually dangerous to use it three nights in a row, as long as it wasn't more than that and as long as the three nights weren't consecutive every single week. Harry was an adult, and he could make his own decisions.

"How many other dreams have you had?" Eaglethorpe asked, the quill in his hand hovering above the length of parchment in front of him.

"One every night I didn't use Dreamless Sleep," said Harry. "Five since I last saw you."

"And they're all sexual?"

Ah, yes, there's the blush. To think I almost missed it. Harry shook his head fiercely, though, so that Eaglethorpe wouldn't think him distracted and obsessed by memories of the dreams. "No. One was. But the others were—fairly ordinary, really. About arguments and a Ministry function that bored me out of my skull and an attempt by Draco's house-elves to redecorate the Manor which went disastrously." He found himself smiling faintly. Draco's dismay in that last dream had been so comical that Harry found himself wanting to slip hints to the Malfoy house-elves, just to compare the expression on his face in real life to the one that the magic created.

"Hm." Eaglethorpe scribbled something down on the parchment, then looked up at him. "And have the dreams altered in any way?"

Harry hesitated.

"The truth, Mr. Potter, please." The therapist's voice was gentle. "Believe me, I am under heavy oaths not to talk about this to anyone else."

"It's not that," said Harry. "I was just thinking of how to phrase it."

"Then please, don't let me hurry you."

Harry closed his eyes and thought. Then he said, ready to retract the words at any moment if he thought of a better way to say it, "One thing has happened constantly, I think, but I only noticed it now. I can remember the dreams perfectly. It's as though—they're more like memories of a life than stories. I forget stories pretty easily. But these are like filling in the blanks of a friend's life, one by one. Or recovering from amnesia. Unnaturally bright, and unnaturally sharp."

"Thank you," said Eaglethorpe, and wrote it down. "That could be very important information. And for my part, I believe you described it perfectly."

Harry opened his eyes and gave him a quick smile.

"And the other new thing?"

"My children are there," Harry said softly. "All three of them. My daughter Lily, and my sons James and Al," he elaborated, when Eaglethorpe's eyes invited him to introduce his children. "And Draco's son, Scorpius. The same age as they are now, or a bit younger. I've never had dreams that seem as though they're teenagers."

"And your wife?" Eaglethorpe's voice was very gentle, as though he understood how much pain the asking would give Harry. "Have you ever dreamed of her, Mr. Potter?"

"No," Harry said, and shook his head a little. "Nor Draco's wife, Marian."

Eaglethorpe asked him to describe the dreams again, which Harry dutifully did. Then the wizard sat back behind his desk and frowned thoughtfully. When he spoke, it was slow, as though he were testing his own words.

"This week, Mr. Potter, I'd like you to concentrate on thinking about other men," he said. "I know that you can't induce dreams—those are a product of the curse—but look at other men, and think about their level of attractiveness."

"How will that help?" Harry demanded, feeling his face flush again. It felt like treachery to both Draco and Ginny.

No, just to Ginny, he thought in determination, and shoved away that part of himself that would connect Draco to sex.

"I am attempting to see whether you find men in general handsome, or only Mr. Malfoy," said Eaglethorpe.

Harry let out a deep breath. Of course. That was one of the reasons that he had come to therapy in the first place, after all. He nodded. "All right. I'll do it."

Eaglethorpe gave him a sad glance, and Harry sat up in his chair. "You know something," he said. "What do you know?"

"I do not wish to prejudice your natural conclusions by explaining what I think I know at this time," the older wizard said. "I believe I'm right, but I may be wrong. I want one more week to think about it, and one more conversation with you to gather data. I promise, Mr. Potter, you shall hear what I suspect at the end of our next session."

With that, Harry had to be content, and he said his farewells and left the therapist's office to go home. He hoped Ginny would already have left for practice, and that Molly would depart when Harry showed up, so that he could spend some time alone with the children.

You want to avoid her.

Harry hunched his shoulders. Just a little while. Just until the worst of the guilt blows over.

His conscience did not answer. Harry could feel its silent condemnation anyway.

He gave a dry little chuckle, thinking of the way that the magic and Draco were pulling him one way, and how Ginny and the marriage vows were pulling him another.

I'm not exactly pleasing anyone right now.

There was a follow-up to that sentence he ignored as carefully as possible, because he understood it was dangerous—more dangerous than wanting to look at Draco.

Including myself.