Draco was willing, now, to admit that Madam Gloriosa wasn't just a queen. She was the mistress of hell, or at least the part of it that was known as the Risen Ones' Revelation Hour, and she had put Draco there for his past crimes. Draco would have apologized and promised never to sin again, if he had the least idea of what he'd done that was evil enough to merit this.
He, Bones, and two male vampires, whom Draco didn't know, sat in a small circle of chairs in Gloriosa's office. Gloriosa sat behind her desk, of course, beaming at all of them now and then—safe, no doubt, in the fact that she was the oldest one there and the most formidable. Draco couldn't imagine that the others were more eager than he was to be there, no matter what expressions they wore.
Each of them had had to state their names—Ryan Johnson and Thomas Gates were the others—and then explain what new lessons about being vampires they had learned in the past week. Those were the "revelations." And if Madam Gloriosa thought they were too strangely expressed, or that there was too much left unexpressed, she would "guide" the one who had spoken through reshaping their revelation in the language appropriate to V.A.M.P.S.
Bones almost never got that treatment. Gloriosa was having her say about every word out of Draco's mouth, of course.
"Now, Draco," Gloriosa said, and turned towards him. Bones had just finished describing how she had realized she no longer missed the sunlight, because the sight of the stars was enough for her—or, rather, "it fulfilled those parts of my vampire nature which would never have found a home in sunlight, showing that I accept reality." "What else have you learned this week?"
Draco swallowed the temptation to protest that it was Ryan's or Thomas's turn, and took a moment to ponder. He'd already talked about his sire and his claws and his relationship with his mother and his being a bonded vampire. He wasn't sure what there was left to say.
Oi, Malfoy! What are you doing? Your discomfort is so strong that it won't even let me stay in the midst of those stupid dreams about you I keep having.
Welcome to Revelation Hour, Draco snapped, too upset to make the conciliatory effort he'd been so proud of when Harry was taking his exam earlier that day. I sit around in a room with four other vampires and make statements about my life that Madam Gloriosa then runs through the wringer and makes into "something fitting," which I then have to say. I never even want to hear the words "fitting" and "appropriate" and "responsible" ever again.
This is the group that you told me about? Harry said cautiously. The one that gave you self-help literature?
Yes. Draco fought the temptation to moan. It wouldn't do any good. Gloriosa was already starting to look a bit impatient.
Ouch. Hermione tried to make me attend a seminar like that once; she claimed I probably had post-traumatic stress disorder from the war and that would make it better. I stood about five minutes of it. Harry paused a moment. Can your—I mean, can I help you?
Draco blinked, and didn't take the time to question why Harry would want to help him. This wasn't the time to produce an embarrassed mumble and a retreat. I have no idea. I'll ask.
"Er, Madam Gloriosa," he said. "Harry wants to talk to the rest of you. Is it all right if he speaks through me?"
For a long moment, everyone else in the room just stared at him. Draco wondered idly if they hadn't believed him when he'd said the bond was powerful enough to allow him to overhear Harry's thoughts and emotions at a distance.
"Certainly," Gloriosa said at last. Her blue eyes were still bright with suspicion, but she was giving little nods, too, as though to convince herself it was a good thing that Draco was taking an interest in his partner. "What revelations about your life does he want to share?" Draco thought he understood her willingness, now that he saw her eyes gleaming like a scalpel. She thought she had a new partner in embarrassing Draco.
She doesn't, Harry told him confidently. Like I said, Hermione made me go to a seminar. I hate the way they talk, but it's easy to get the trick of it. Tell her that I acknowledge I am powerless before the bond and that both of us have accepted the inevitability of its presence in our lives and are working to see the good inherent in it. They love that kind of thing.
Draco repeated it, trying not to cringe at the words emerging from his own mouth. Madam Gloriosa opened her eyes very wide and sat up. Draco then tried not to swallow or betray his dread with any other nuance of his expression or his body.
Finally, Madam Gloriosa said, with a kind of helpless smile showing her fangs, "Very good, Draco. Now it's your turn, Ryan."
I don't believe it, Draco thought. That's the first time I haven't been scolded in front of them. He paused, savoring the satisfied feelings that poured from Harry like a medicinal potion for soothing a cough. How did you know that, though? If you only went to one meeting?
Harry chuckled, a sound that kindled hunger in Draco's belly. Like I said, it's pretty easy. And Hermione forced a few self-help books on me, too. Never let her meet Madam Gloriosa. It sounds like they would get along all too well.
Draco licked his lips, only half-listening to Ryan's halting confession of how much pleasure he was learning to take in drinking blood, an act that had disgusted him at first. Listen, Harry. I—I know it's only been a day, but would you mind coming to the Manor tomorrow evening? I just—I just want to be near you.
There was a long, tense pause which Draco thought would end with refusal, but Harry only said, his tone alight with mild sparks, You really shouldn't try lying to someone who can read your thoughts. I realize you want blood.
Now who's hiding and lying mind-to-mind? Draco sent. Or ignoring the inevitability of the bond and how it impacts our lives? I want your blood, and you know it.
Harry was silent for long moments, and Draco could feel him turning over truths and decisions and emotions in his head like a tongue probing a loose tooth. Madam Gloriosa made the round of the room, soliciting revelations from Thomas and Bones, and then returned to him. Draco sat up straight, preparing to answer without Harry's help, but Harry said in some distraction, You know that being undead removes you from the company of normal humans permanently, and you're learning to accept that and rejoice in what you have, which Draco told Gloriosa. Other than a correction on the word "normal," she let him alone and went back to Ryan.
Finally, Harry said, I—I reckon that I might as well. It's true that I've been thinking about you for six months, and it can't be just coincidence that you became a vampire then. Can it? he added, as though he had some trouble accepting reality himself.
"I don't think so," Draco said.
"What?" Bones asked in annoyance. Ryan, interrupted in his story about something unnecessary and irrelevant to Draco's life, blinked at him. All of them were staring at him, while Harry laughed in his head. Draco had trouble suppressing a grin, even though Gloriosa was frowning. The sensation of Harry's laughter was one of the firstpleasant things he had felt since he became a vampire. The satiation of hunger was pleasant, too, but only in the way that solid, unremarkable food was.
It might be different when I get to suck Harry's blood, Draco thought, and didn't really care if Harry chose to acknowledge the thought or not. He bowed his head, mumbled an apology, and did his best to attend to Ryan's boring story.
He was already counting the hours until he saw Harry again, of course, with Harry quarreling with him about the number of minutes. But his presence did make the meeting far more tolerable than it might have been otherwise.
Harry couldn't stop smiling as he prepared to go to Malfoy Manor. He'd done well in his Auror training that day. Though Draco couldn't reach out over the miles to lend him a vampire's unnatural strength, he could warn Harry of threats that Harry only saw with his peripheral vision, and whisper that he should turn to the right instead of the left as he might have without due warning. That had impressed his instructors.
And worried Hermione, Harry knew. She had talked to him openly about why he hadn't wanted to look through the books today for a solution to remove the bond, and Harry didn't have a good answer.
But the truth was—
Of course it's the truth, Draco murmured sleepily in the back of his head. He was just emerging from a nap. One thing he hadn't told Harry was that he slept deeply when he did sleep, and emerged with all the slowness of a schoolboy who didn't want to wake up on the last morning of holiday.
The truth was, Harry didn't mind the bond as much as he thought he would.
He and Draco had already established boundaries, thoughts they politely ignored and emotions they remained silent about. It hadn't been nearly as hard as Harry had thought it would be. For one thing, Draco had quickly realized that any power imbalance between them could be redressed the next time he had an embarrassing thought or whinged to himself about the unfairness of the universe. And Draco did do a lot of whinging about the unfairness of the universe, and how the Ministry didn't have to take away his wand, regulations or no regulations, and how he missed his father, and how he wished he could move quietly like his mother, and—
Will you stop thinking about that? It's like being jabbed by needles.
To think about your own faults, of course it is, Harry thought tauntingly, and opened the door of the flat, calling a goodbye to Ron and Hermione.
He stopped immediately when he realized that Ginny was standing on the threshold, her hand raised to knock. She stared at him, and Harry wondered how he looked in her eyes. His robes were much too fine for an evening spent at home, or even just if he'd been popping around to the shops in Diagon Alley.
"Harry," she said, and straightened. The momentary bewilderment on her face was gone. She looked now every inch the young woman who had followed him into the Department of Mysteries and used her wand on the Death Eaters. "I told you that I would wait four days for my answer, remember? Well, it's the fourth day. I hope you have something more convincing to tell me this time." She nudged him out of the way with her hand and swept into the flat.
Harry turned around, ignoring Draco's growl of impatience from the back of his head, and his suggestion, Tell her that pink is not a good color on redheads, ever, and that since she's on holiday, she doesn't have to keep to those ridiculous Gryffindor shades.
"Ginny, now really isn't a good time," he said as calmly as he could.
She spun to face him, folding her arms. Harry watched her for a moment, stifling the urge to sigh. Ginny was still in her seventh year at Hogwarts, since her parents had determined that her aborted sixth year didn't count as proper schooling. She wore a Gryffindor tie and brilliant pink robes. She looked very, very young, Harry thought, considering her from the vantage of having an ageless vampire in his head.
That's not me, that's all you.
Maybe it was, Harry acknowledged. And maybe it was time to face up to his problems with Ginny with the courage he'd been Sorted into Gryffindor for.
Draco tried to seize on the memory of his Sorting, wanting to know more about what exactly Harry had been thinking to refuse Slytherin, but Harry ignored him as much as possible and said, "Ginny, I just don't want to date you anymore. I don't know why. I just—I don't like you that way anymore. I like you just fine as a sister and a friend. But not as a lover." He shrugged when her eyes widened, and wished he could say something more comforting. The suggestions Draco kept whispering included scrubbing off her freckles if she ever wanted to attract a man, which wasn't helpful. "I think—"
"Harry," Ginny whispered. She sounded so broken that he stopped talking and tried to listen attentively.
Weasleys. Such attention-lovers, Draco thought.
I am amazed that you did not implode with the irony of that statement, Harry told him.
You know what irony is?
"Harry," Ginny said, and this time she seemed to have a little more breath behind the words. "Don't you remember what happened during the last month of your seventh year?"
Harry's face burned. He did indeed remember. It was hard to forget the evening he had fallen asleep in the Gryffindor common room and Ginny had surprised him by climbing into his lap and starting to kiss him heatedly. That had been after he had already started losing interest in her—
It was June, after I became a vampire, Draco said. That's a good thing.
And so he had made awkward excuses, pushed her away, and gone to bed. But he had always known that she wanted to have sex with him that night, and would have if he had stayed on the couch.
"That's what I want," Ginny went on. "I know that you feel like you have to say you love me as a sister just so Ron won't get on you, but I promise, he's fine with it—"
"This isn't about Ron, Ginny," Harry said as firmly as he could. "This is about my feelings for you changing, and my not wanting to date you anymore."
"But I just want to know why." Ginny hugged her arms around herself and shivered, as if the chill of the winter's day had followed her inside.
Harry would have walked over and put his arms around her as little as a week ago. Now he was aware that he was standing in place like an awkward statue. He coughed and shifted.
"Part of it's magical," he said at last. She would find out about Draco eventually anyway, and he didn't want to look as if he'd been lying to avoid her finding out. "Draco Malfoy got turned into a vampire at the beginning of June, did you know that?"
Ginny dropped her arms from around herself and stared at him. "What does that have to do with us?" she asked.
Draco growled. Harry winced. He felt as if sharp fangs were nibbling along the edge of his ear when that happened.
"It turned out that Draco—"
"Draco?" Ginny raised her eyebrows the way Hermione had when Harry said he didn't care about trying to remove the bond anymore.
"Draco is a rather special kind of vampire," Harry continued, determined to get through all the interruptions and obstacles that she might throw in his path.
As if I could ever be anything but.
"He needs someone who's come back from the dead to share blood with him." Harry shrugged in response to Ginny's incredulous stare. "I didn't make up the rules. It has something to do with the vampire who bit him, I think. Anyway, he's already tied to me. He can hear my thoughts and sense my emotions—"
"He knows I'm here?" Ginny asked, her voice rising dangerously.
Tell her not to shout, Draco instructed peremptorily. She's hurting my head with all her Weasel shouting, and I'm not even there.
"Yes, he does." Harry held her eyes, and wished he had been able to break this more gently. Of course, four days ago, he hadn't even known that something was wrong with him. The obsession with Malfoy would have naturally faded if it weren't for Draco's vampirism, he was certain.
It would never have started if not for my vampirism. Draco sighed, a sound that rolled through his head like a gust of morning mist. Honestly, Harry, someone ought to sit you down and read you a lecture on cause and effect. I'm amazed that Granger never thought to do it.
"Then you can tell him," Ginny said, "that I'll find out how he's been enchanting you, and I'll make him stop." She nodded fiercely and marched towards the door, her head held high.
Harry was tempted to let her go, but he knew if that happened, then he'd be left with her expectations still clinging to him. Breaking up with Ginny had proven unexpectedly hard to do, but it had to be done.
"Ginny," he said. She stopped and glanced back at him.
"It's all right, Harry," she said kindly. "You're under his twisted spell right now. I know you're not yourself, and I forgive you for everything you said—"
"This is the real me," said Harry, as clearly and persuasively as he could. "The real me—I don't like you like that anymore, Ginny. I wouldn't want to date you anymore even if Draco decided he didn't want my blood tomorrow."
That's not going to happen. Get over here, won't you, so I can drink it?
Ginny closed her eyes. "But, Harry—"
"The reason doesn't matter. I can't explain it." Harry massaged his forehead. "Please, believe me, Ginny. It just won't happen."
He glanced up in time to see the truth strike her. Her hand coiled around the edge of the door as though she would wrench it from its hinges.
Then she gave a low sob, yanked the door open, and started running, not even bothering to close the door behind her. Harry darted after her, calling her name, but she had already vanished around the corner.
That is not how I wanted that to go, he thought, and rubbed his head again.
It went perfectly, Draco disagreed. Come to the Manor now. I can't wait to see you.
Draco knew Harry was still brooding when he arrived at the Manor, but he didn't really care. It wasn't as though he was about to let Harry run away with the Weasley girl, in any case. If Harry had tried to make things up to her, Draco would have mentally harassed him until he changed his mind and came to the place he was supposed to be.
A few nights—and naps—of dreams and the bond had taken their toll. The moment Harry walked into the study, Draco felt his teeth sharpen. He barely moved his lips out of the way of his lengthening fangs in time.
Harry didn't seem to notice, though. He just accepted the wine with a distracted nod, and then sat down in the same chair as before, staring into his drink and swirling it now and then. Draco coughed to get his attention, and then, seeing that wouldn't work, said mentally, Are you really that broken up about her?
"Yes," Harry said aloud, his voice worried. "Ginny's not the most rational person when she's upset. Maybe she didn't go home. Maybe she ran away into the snow somewhere and she's crying right now. I should have stayed with her, made sure she got back to the Burrow safely—"
"I believe," Draco said with a drawl, shoving impatience down the bond to show that he would much rather be done with the subject, "that that would be known as 'leading her on.' Rather what you seem to have done with her all these months that you've been thinking of me and not finding a good reason to break up with her."
Harry's shoulders squared, and then he snarled in Draco's general direction, looking outraged. Down the bond came a medley of emotions so confused that Draco swatted in front of his face before remembering that he didn't actually stand in the midst of smoke. "I didn't know about you or about your condition—"
"But you still used all sorts of excuses not to break up with her," Draco told him. It was dead reckoning; guilt had the tendency to float a large number of similar memories to the top of Harry's mind, a trait Draco couldn't help thinking would be useful in the future. "You sat there and smiled like a fool when you could have been telling her that you really didn't feel like dating her anymore. You avoided hurting her when hurting her would have been the best thing, because then it wouldn't have made her think I had you under some kind of Imperius—"
"I know perfectly well what I did!" Harry yelled, leaping to his feet. Draco tried not to sway with the sudden dizzying surge of blood he could feel and the fact that Harry's skin was now all sorts of flushed. "I should have been braver and made up my mind a long time ago! I know that, all right? It's not as though you have any room to go all on and on about bravery, not when you didn't have the courage to confront what being a vampire meant until you bonded with me!"
Draco snarled and stalked around the desk. His fangs were aching, and his belly seemed to expand into an echoing emptiness that stretched throughout his body. Somewhat optimistically, maybe, he had told his mother he didn't need blood tonight, that he would feed from Harry instead. And now he was paying for it. He could feel his rage rising rapidly, in a way that it wouldn't have if he hadn't been so thirsty. In the back of his head, where it did absolutely no good, he could hear Madam Gloriosa's voice telling him that all vampires were vulnerable to anger when they hadn't fed. "I was facing a more permanent and pressing transformation than you were. Besides, don't change the subject!" The inside of his head was red with blood and the desire for it. "You're pining after Weasley like you really did want to date her after all. Will you make up your mind? I didn't think the great Harry Potter, trainee Auror and the Savior of the Wizarding World, was generally this indecisive."
The bond darkened with the surge of rage that followed. And then Harry's wand was out again and he was shouting, "Incarcerous!"
Draco flew backwards, but this time he didn't land on the floor bound with ropes; he landed on his father's desk instead, and the ropes lashed themselves smoothly around the legs and top. He was neatly spread-eagled, left with a limited amount of room to maneuver. Draco felt a moment's admiration for the surge of magic—obviously Harry was letting his Auror training benefit him in some things—and a moment's fleeting envy for what he'd lost when he gave up his wand.
But then Harry was leaning over him, breath going like a bellows with rage, and Draco was reminded rather forcefully of what he'd gained. The blood-hunger made him tremble and arch up, even though he had no chance of breaking these ropes. He whined deep in his throat and opened his mouth in what felt like a rather snake-like motion.
"Harry," he panted. "Please."
"You know nothing about the Weasleys," Harry raged on, ignoring him. Nothing but incoherent emotion came down the bond, which probably explained both Harry's ignoring his reasonable request for blood and the odd, rambling words that emerged from his mouth. "You don't know anything about what it was like for me during the war, even if you do have all my memories. Why should I give you blood? You're nothing but the same selfish bastard you always were, vampirism and self-help programs aside—"
But he'd leaned closer and closer, sneering the words into Draco's face, and his throat was right there.
Draco lifted his head a little higher, and his fangs pierced the soft flesh of Harry Potter's neck for the first time.
It was—
Bliss.
Harry had never thought a vampire bite could be, but then, he hadn't spent much time thinking about vampire bites at all until he had found out he had to. If someone had asked him, though, he would have described it as gnawing on someone's neck. Surely that couldn't be pleasant for the bloke who was being bitten.
But this was.
Harry could feel not only the sharp pain that almost at once faded into a drawing ecstasy, but Draco's pleasure in the feeding, the sudden vanishing of the emptiness within him. This blood satisfied him more completely and fully than he had ever been satisfied before. Even his mother's blood didn't have the sweetness of Harry's. Animal blood was nothing to it. Draco was never drinking from another cow or chicken again.
The taste of ashes and disappointment washed from Draco's throat, and was replaced by liquid sunlight. He purred and tried to reach up to Harry, but his hands were still bound down by the rope. He whined softly.
Harry, pulling himself briefly out of the maelstrom of emotions, found laughter emerging. I think I rather like you this way, he thought at Draco. It makes up for some of the inequalities.
Draco started to reply that he could get out of the ropes at any time, since Harry didn't know about his claws, but then the blood stole his voice again and melted his body into liquescent compliance. Harry reached out, careful not to disturb the fangs from his throat, and gently squeezed the ends of Draco's fingers.
The claws popped out. Harry studied them and absently agreed that they were very nice. He shifted a bit. He was bent in an awkward position, his body half-sprawled across Draco's but his feet still on the floor. He was starting to think that wasn't quite satisfactory. The pleasure springing from his throat had inspired him with the wish to feel that good everywhere.
He dug a knee into the desk, froze for a moment with a deep shudder as Draco finished drinking and licked the wound at his neck to clot the blood, and then flopped down on the vampire. The skin that had been cold and rather papery against Harry's hands was flushed with warmth. The thought that the warmth had come from him only excited Harry further.
He could hardly talk, but with the bond between them, that didn't matter. He could send his thoughts to Draco even as he leaned down and tangled his tongue around the vampire's fangs, trying to figure out the safe way to kiss him.
I feel really, really good right now.
So do I, so do I, so do I, Draco repeated over and over, half-mindless. The blood had settled in his stomach, and he felt as if he were full for the first time in his life.
His mind would have told Harry other things if he'd listened, no doubt as irrelevant, but Harry didn't really want to hear. He rocked his groin against Draco's, and gasped at the sensation. None of his dreams had involved Draco tied to a desk, probably because Draco was the source of them and he thought that was too undignified, but the reality was better.
Draco's eyes flashed open then, and caught Harry's. The shadows were burned away in them, probably as a result of the blood. He darted his head upwards like a snake's to catch Harry's mouth once more, his neck stretching impossibly far, then let his legs fall open and rocked his hips in obscene invitation.
It's not obscene, it's just open. Not that you would know the difference, being Gryffindor and considering everything that has to do with sex obscene.
"Shut up," Harry panted, and then realized how stupid that was, helped along by Draco's enthusiastic agreement in his mind. But he ground himself down, and Draco realized with a gasp that there were other things to be enthusiastic about.
Harry was the one who had to pick up his wand and cast spells that undid the buttons, took off their shoes, and peeled their robes away, since he still wouldn't let Draco out of the ropes. Draco's hands flexed, the claws that Harry had uncovered—
You didn't uncover them, I told you about them.
—glinting in the dim firelight. Harry smiled a little. Draco could cut his way out of the bonds if he wanted to, but he didn't want to. Which meant that he did want this.
This is your fantasy, Potter, not mine.
"Not that I knew that, either," Harry said, and then lowered himself onto Draco's naked body with a groan. Their cocks were rubbing together now, warmth against warmth. Harry groaned a second time. He had fumbled around with Ginny a bit, but of course it never would have been like this, with so much hardness on both of them. And the fact that he was feeling Draco's sensations at the same time he felt his own made his body ripple with gooseflesh and every single small hair stand straight up.
Can you please not think about Weasley now?
Harry filled his mind with thoughts of her just to spite Draco, and Draco hissed and showed his fangs. His mouth was ringed with a few faint smears of blood; lack of practice or sheer excitement had kept him from swallowing all of it. Harry shivered again. The warmth had come from him, the blood had come from him, these ropes had come from him.
For the first time in months, he had actually decided something, and his decisions were the ones guiding matters.
It felt so wonderful, he shut his eyes and reached down to take both Draco and himself in hand, because nothing else would come close to conveying that wonder.
Draco gasped and arched his back again and again. He suspected that he looked silly doing that, but he couldn't be sure, because Harry's eyes were shut.
Draco could not have closed his own eyes for the world. His bloodthirst satisfied, he was drinking Harry in with his gaze. Lean muscles toughened a little with Auror training, glowing skin flushed with health and blood, neck stretched back in a gesture that made Draco writhe a little with the anticipation of his next drink. Harry's black hair looked to be in its natural habitat for the first time, fittingly wild, brushing against his shoulders with enticing little rasps.
And the only reason that Draco couldn't touch him was by choice—well, both their choices at the moment. But still.
And then there was the hand and the cock rubbing against him, which felt like four hands and two erections with the flowing of the bond, even though it shouldn't. Draco shivered, feeling so good he could hardly stand it.
One thing was missing, though.
"Harry," he said. "Open your eyes."
Harry's tattered thoughts assured Draco he was doing this because he wanted to, not because Draco had ordered him to, and then the eyes were open, passionate, aroused green in a way Draco had not even known green could be. Draco arched his back again, a whine exploding from his throat.
"Keep looking at me when you come," he said.
Harry shuddered, and then went on shuddering. The sensation snaked down and cut into Draco's spine. He lifted his legs as much as he could, catching and welcoming Harry's climax, the wet warmth that ran through his hands and across both their bodies, leaving Harry sleepy and sated and sticky and whole.
It was just lucky for him that Draco came in turn at the feel of Harry coming, because he was probably too tired to do a good job of it. Draco shouted, his sharp relief at his filled stomach combining with the normal pleasure to snap every muscle in his body taut for a moment.
And then he was lying on his back, breathing heavily out of habit, Harry draped across his body like the hide of some extinct animal. Draco curled his hands up, sliced through the ropes with his claws, and nearly embraced Harry before he remembered that he should probably retract the claws first. Then he gripped Harry's shoulders and smoothed them, his hands sliding in the sweat a moment before he began to learn the shape and contours of Harry's flanks and hips and spine.
"Should untie your legs," Harry said, voice sleepy.
"We can worry about that later," Draco replied. "A vampire advantage, you know. We can work our muscles into positions that you humans never can."
Harry yawned. "Should owl Ginny and explain what happened," he said, his words now so slurred that Draco only understood what he meant at all because of the bond.
"That can definitely wait until later," Draco said. "I'm sure she'll understand that you'll be too busy having rounds of fantastic sex and feeding me for the rest of your life to ever date her. You must admit that it is a time commitment."
"Incorri—" Harry said, and then gave up on the word and fell asleep halfway through.
Draco had read in the latest stack of V.A.M.P.S. literature about the feeling of holding a donor who was also a sexual partner after sex. There had been all sorts of sugary phrases of the kind Madam Gloriosa favored, about how such an experience almost made a vampire's heart beat again and the like.
Draco didn't think they were as ridiculous as he had, now.
Just for fun, he funneled his blood, Harry's blood, through his body and made his heart beat, once.
She had very carefully stayed away during the round of noises that the house-elves had come to report to her, but those had stopped some time ago. So now she opened the door of the study and absorbed the sight of Harry Potter, naked and obviously locked in contented sleep, sprawled on top of her son, who looked dead to the world in a good way.
Narcissa nodded in satisfaction. It had taken careful planning and more of the Malfoy fortune than she would have liked to make this come out the way she wanted, but in terms of time, it hadn't really been all that long.
Really, Draco would get nowhere in life without someone to protect him. She'd seen that in the first few days after the end of the war, even before Lucius fled to Madagascar. Draco was too dependent on her and Lucius, too coddled, and still untutored in the more powerful forms of magic for all that he had spent six years in Hogwarts. And there was no telling what might happen to him when she died.
Narcissa had thought about arranging for a protective wife for him, but the Malfoys had lost too much status. No family with the right kind of daughter would consider marrying her to Draco.
That had left Narcissa with the option she had eventually chosen, of calling in favors and learning as much as she could about vampires. When she had read the Night King's profile, she had known he was perfect. Draco would have the protection of being a vampire and the protection of a powerful man sharing his every thought and feeling.
Because, really, where else would he find someone to bond with who had come back from death if he did not choose Harry Potter?
Narcissa started to close the door. Draco would protect himself, and be protected, long after she had gone. She had done her duty as a mother.
Then she realized Draco's eyes were open, and he was watching her. He looked from her to Potter, and blinked, twice, a look of understanding creeping across his face. Narcissa waited, curious. Draco was growing up, but in many ways he was a child even now. He might explode with rage that she had dared to arrange his life for him.
Instead, Draco gave her an incredibly sweet smile and blew her a small kiss before embracing Potter more tightly.
Narcissa smiled and shut the door all the way this time. Draco was safe, she loved her son, and he still loved her. All was well in the world.
Finite.