Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of How Noble In Reason. Thanks for reading along.

Chapter Nine—Harry Potter Is In Love

The letter Harry sent came back with its envelope torn and charred and the owl hooting softly in terror, checking over its shoulder as if whatever ward had caused the burning would have pursued it from the Manor.

The firecall Harry tried met barriers that he'd never encountered before, which actually turned into the heads of a hydra and struck at him through the flames. Harry wasted fifteen minutes chopping at the bloody things before he gave up and simply shut down the Floo.

The Apparition Harry risked bounced him back from the wards and landed him in a meadow from which he couldn't even see the Manor. Harry, his head aching, tried one more time, and this time he was flung through the air and landed in a field with a Muggle yelling at him and trying to break his leg. Harry stood up, used a quick Memory Charm, and Apparated out of there before matters could get any worse.

He tried stalking Draco in Diagon Alley and at the expensive parties that he must occasionally go to, but he never managed to find a time when he was shopping or visiting his friends. Harry was starting to think that the library opening ceremony had been an amazing exception, one Draco had made only for him. Most of the time, it seemed, he was content to stay inside the Manor and party with the people who came to him.

And how in the world am I going to get inside there?

He'd even tried riding his broom above, and that way got him closer. But the wards still snapped tight and surrounded the Manor with a thick, turtle-like dome when Harry tried to descend past the Owlery. He pulled up and sat there, hovering disconsolately, until the white owl rose from its perch at the Owlery window and chased him away.

There had to be a way inside, Harry thought, while he obsessed over Draco and his Auror work suffered and Ron and Hermione gave him odd looks. Harry had tried to explain the situation, but they had no suggestions. Hermione's eyes had clouded over with distress, while Ron shook his head.

"If he's that jealous of us, maybe he's not worth it?" he suggested. "It's not like you're going to drop us just to please him." He hesitated. "You're not, right?"

Harry clapped his best friend on the shoulder. It surprised him that Ron was sometimes so insecure about his place in Harry's life, but then, Ron had said that he still thought of the way he had left Harry and Hermione during the Horcrux quest. That wasn't something Harry ever dwelled on. "I'm not," he said. "I'm trying to come up with a way to show him that you're all important to me, without teaching him to have unrealistic expectations about what would happen if he demanded that I get rid of you."

"Or getting rid of your pride, I hope." Ron eyed him carefully. "It feels like he doesn't want to be caught, mate, no matter how hard you run."

"I know," Harry said. "But I can't be sure of that until I've really tried. I think he does want to be chased. If he doesn't want me to try at all, then he could have sent me a letter saying that, and I would have given up."

"Really?" Ron grinned. "Maybe he's afraid you'd think the letter was a hopeful sign."

Harry shrugged. He couldn't deny that, with as hard as he was trying to get through Draco's protections right now. "That could be, but as it is, silence doesn't tell me anything, whether he's irritated or indifferent or hoping himself."

Ron had to agree about that, and he pressed Harry's shoulder sympathetically with one hand before he left the office. Still, he was snickering, and Harry heard that before he got out the door. He called after him, "What's so funny?"

Ron turned back, grinning and shaking his head. "I told you that you would need someone who presented a challenge!" he called. "God forbid that anyone you Court or chase or fall in love with be easy."

He managed to vanish while Harry was still deciding what to throw.

Harry was tired. There were lots of causes for that—he was beginning to think that he would never reach Draco no matter what he did, and Binks was demanding his first "report" on Ron, and Hermione had experienced a slight scare earlier that day when she thought she was miscarrying, although she'd been fine—but still, they all built up into the single fact of his exhaustion as he sat in front of the fire that evening with his head in his hands.

No matter how he thought about it, there was always a problem. He couldn't give up his friends, but it seemed like that was the only thing that would make Draco happy. He could tell Draco that he'd thought about it and decided the Courting was the real reason for him to destroy Binks, but then he would be lying. He could tell Draco that Draco was the most important person in the world to him and that might be true, but Draco seemed disinclined to believe it as long as Harry was still worried about Ron.

Ron could be right. Someone whom Harry was working so hard to please without success was probably not worth it. Harry could empty his vaults in buying gifts and his desk of parchment in sending letters, but Draco would never respond and never look back. Maybe Harry should stop bothering him, too. That was what the silence probably meant: Draco had withdrawn into his shell and was waiting for Harry to get the message.

Their final row had been so stupid. That was what bothered Harry. If they'd fought for a real reason that proved they were incompatible, like Draco wanting Harry to do illegal things for him, that would be one thing. Harry could let him go then—with regret, yes, but not with any desire to get back together with him.

Well, without much desire, anyway.

Instead, it was a stupid reason, a stupid problem, and one that Harry could think of no way to solve.

You'd think what he wanted was to watch me tell off Binks for his sake, and somehow make it clear that it wasn't just about Ron at the same time, Harry thought in irritation, leaning back in his chair and trying to massage away the headache that had arisen in the front of his skull. To give him an invitation to the meeting I'm going to have with Binks when I tell him off—

Harry's eyes popped open.

Careful, careful, he told himself immediately, as excitement bubbled through his mind. It might not be right. It might not be possible. It might not be the best gift you could give him, or he might not want it if you did.

But the longer Harry thought about it, the more perfect it seemed. Draco had essentially complained that Harry wasn't standing up for him the right way, that he wanted some assurance Binks would be punished for the Courting as well as for trying to make Harry spy on Ron. There was no way that Harry, having admitted the one motive, could convince him the other was still important—unless he showed him.

Of course, getting Draco to see that would be a challenge, since he had so thoroughly cut off communication and Harry couldn't exactly abduct him and bring him to the Ministry. But Harry thought he could handle the challenge. Ron was right. A too-easy relationship filled him with worries, a too-hard one made him brood, but hand him a difficult thing to do and his mind boiled with ways to get around it.

The method we used in the Gauri case, he told himself, with a smile. Yes. We absolutely had to confront him with a scene that would cause him to crack, and we managed it. And I already know that the wards above Malfoy Manor are weaker than the others. I reckon Draco hardly thinks that someone's going to attack his Owlery.

Plus, the plan Harry had just hatched gave him the chance for a little personal revenge, which he was not about to turn down.

He spent the rest of the evening planning, and only went to bed at midnight because he knew he would be useless at casting the spells if he didn't get some rest. But then he was up again at three, staring at a book he hadn't opened since the Gauri case and practicing the incantations until they burned on his lips and the back of his eyelids.

Then he took his broom and flew to Malfoy Manor.

The white owl might be smart, but it was still only a bird. When Harry hovered on his broom beyond the Owlery and extended a hand with owl treats flavored like dead mice in it, it barely hesitated before it flew out and perched on his arm.

Harry promptly seized its neck and cast a spell on it that made it freeze in position. Its eyes fixed on him indignantly, and Harry thought it probably would have hooted, but the spell kept it from doing even that much.

"Listen to me," Harry whispered. "We're going to go on a little flight, and as long as you behave, everything will be all right. Try to bite me, and I'm going to have Quidditch gloves lined with owl feathers. I've heard that some people think they're good luck charms, and I doubt that anyone would object to the color. Understand?"

The owl might have tried to bite him, still, but it hunched down instead and sat there mute when he released it from most of the binding spell. Harry smiled, cast one more spell, and then slid down the broom and stared intently at the turtle-like web of wards over the Manor.

He was grateful for the years of experience he'd had in the Aurors, seeing and locating wards. It would have been difficult to find the faint blue lines at night otherwise. And he had to be aware of exactly where they were, or he was going to mess up the most vital part of the plan.

When he thought he had a good grasp on the gentle curve of the ward-dome and the way it rose, he began to fly. He was hanging from the broom, one arm curved around the shaft—while his hand clutched his wand—and the other arm dangling the owl, with its feet stuck firmly to his skin. Its wings hung free, which Harry needed them to, because he needed them to dip into the wards as if into a pool of water.

As they flew along, the owl's wings made the wards briefly blaze and then relax. Like all of Draco's birds, after all, it had permission to fly in and out. The wards weren't going to react to its presence with violence.

The last spell Harry had cast depended on that fact. The spell mixed with the wards, very slightly altering them, not making them less protective but making them capable of projecting the vision of a distant place when Harry called for it. No matter where Draco was in the house, as long as it was anywhere near the wards, he would see the vision.

And since he never seemed to leave, Harry thought a confrontation with Binks in the afternoon, projected to Draco through the wards so he could get an idea of what Harry wanted to do for him, would be just fine.

Harry had to fly all around the Manor and touch all the outer wards; the inner ones were beyond his power. But given that the Manor had so many windows and so many walls, it would be hard for Draco to be in a completely interior room. If he was, Harry thought he would still run into an outer one when he heard the sound of voices coming from the vision. Harry's was going to be one of those voices, and he would surely recognize it and want to know what Harry had done to pass his wards.

Finally, almost three hours later, Harry finished. He was near sunrise and also near exhaustion, so that the broom wobbled beneath him as he flew back to the Owlery. The white owl was beating its wings to get free now, and snapping its beak near his head. Harry was glad that he had carefully held his arm away from his body the whole way, and that he was such a good flyer, so that he didn't need two hands to control the broom.

"I told you that you would be Quidditch gloves if you moved," he told the owl.

It stopped moving. Harry laughed and cast the Finite that would release its feet from his arm. It took off and lifted its tail.

Harry managed to dodge the rain of shit that came down, but only because he had prior experience. "Getting predictable!" he called jauntily after the owl, and then flew in the direction of the Ministry. He could easily shrink the broom and store it in his office.

Now that he had the spell woven into Draco's wards, he could also wait and stage a confrontation with Binks later, if that was what he wanted, on a different day. That would give him more time to gather information about the man and prove that he was unfit for his post.

Harry consulted the state of his nerves and then snorted. Like he was going to be able to do that. And he was hardly going to depend on facts to force Binks out, anyway. It would be much more fun, and much more soothing to the excitement bouncing through his veins, if he acted today.

So he did.

"Sir? Can I speak with you a minute?"

As he stepped into the office, Harry moved his wand behind his back in the gesture of the spell that would trigger Draco's wards to start showing everything in Binks's office until he told them to stop. Binks didn't notice, because he'd had his head buried in papers when Harry stepped in. Harry had counted on that. If Binks had noticed, his paranoid nature would have rendered Harry's plan useless.

"Of course," Binks said, popping his head up and staring eagerly at him. "You have the first report on Weasley for me?"

Harry smiled, and knew it would look nasty. He'd counted on that, if not on the way Binks blinked and seemed as if he'd like to retreat for a moment. That was a bonus. "No, sir," he said cheerfully. "I've come to tell you to shove it up your arse, sir, all these stupid things that you've made me do."

Binks's mouth hung open. Harry laughed. How easy it was to surprise him. He seemed never to have considered that any of his subordinates might turn against him, despite the excellent reasons he'd offered.

"You will not say such things," Binks murmured when he had straightened up. "What stupid things have I made you do? I've made it possible for you to practice your job, and you should remember that, Auror Potter, if you don't want to find yourself on trial in front of the Wizengamot."

Oh, this is too good. Harry liked those words. They would make Draco see—or at least they should—that Harry was willing to risk a lot for him, and didn't care, that he would go ahead and do it anyway.

"Oh, let's see," Harry said, and began to tick off the points on his fingers. "You made me engage in a Courting when you knew that I would have to lie and Court Draco Malfoy in bad faith. You encouraged me to continue with the Courting despite my doubts. You told me that there was no other way I could do the work, even when I offered alternative plans. You were anxious not to contact Mr. Malfoy directly, feeling that there was no way that he would cooperate with the Aurors, but you never offered him the choice. You told me that the Auror Department would compensate me for the gifts I bought, and you approved my letters, therefore assuring that it wasn't a true Courting, but only something initiated at your request." Harry laid his hands on Binks's desk and leaned forwards to get into his face. "The fact that the Courting also allowed me to find the man I love is beside the point. You were still wrong."

Are you listening, Draco? Harry thought into the ringing silence that succeeded that. I hope you're listening.

Binks cleared his throat. "Malfoy had a piece of Voldemort in his house, Auror Potter—"

"But you assumed bad faith from the start," Harry cut in, this time loading his words with quiet menace. "You assumed that he knew and was trying to hide it, not that a parent or even a visitor was involved somehow. Hence why you forbade me to contact him in an open and honest manner. I knew that using the Courting like that was wrong. It's a pure-blood rite, special and sacred to them. I should have been stronger, yes, but that doesn't lessen the wrong that you did by demanding I perform it in the first place."

Binks had his hands on his chair now, leaning back from Harry and looking as though he needed the support. "No one is going to believe you," he said, rallying a bit. "No one will think that I forced you to do this."

"Ron saw the first letter," Harry said calmly. "He warned me that I was getting too deep, that I had too much emotion towards Draco already then, and I didn't listen. But he'll testify that I wrote it, and wrote it at your instigation."

"Of course your friend Weasley will say whatever you want him to say," Binks said bitterly. "You're both traitors together, aren't you?"

"Neither of us is a traitor to anything except your bigoted conception of the world," Harry said. His heart was pounding hard enough to make him sway in place, and it looked as though the room was changing into a spinning smear of colors that made him want to fall over. But he couldn't faint yet. He wouldn't faint. He would keep on speaking, and make Binks understand, and offer the same chance to Draco, though it was anyone's guess if he would take it. "Ron has wished me well in loving Draco, by the way." There. That ought to give Draco something else to think about.

"You don't agree that Mr. Weasley is a traitor?" Binks had seized on that out of everything Harry had said and seemed determined to worry it to death.

"No, I don't," Harry said. "And I don't see how you came up with that conclusion just because he's cheerful." Then he paused and shook his head. "Ah, but wait. You're the same one who came up with the conclusion that Draco had to be just like his parents. I can see the connection all too clearly now that I think about it."

Binks's face turned red. "I could sack you, Potter," he threatened.

"Right," Harry said, nodding. "You could. But I would fight it, and what would you give as a reason? That I found someone and fell in love because of a Courting that shouldn't have been done in the first place, but which you ordered me to do? That I refused to spy on my best friend because you wanted me to? That I didn't obey someone who's nothing more than a jumped-up little toad of a Wizengamot member's family?"

Binks took a step forwards, clutching his wand. Harry raised his wand and waited, although he held it deliberately low enough that anyone viewing this as a Pensieve memory in the future should be able to see he wouldn't have actually hurt Binks.

"Get out!" Binks screamed. "You're no longer an Auror!"

Harry grinned, bowed, and trotted out of the office, ducking the curse that sizzled into the door near the back of his head. That would make excellent viewing for the Wizengamot, too, or whoever actually ended up trying the case.

In the meantime, he had accomplished what he wanted to. He had declared his love for Draco publically—sort of—and he had showed Draco that wanting to protect him was a reason for Harry to fight. And he'd admitted his tangled motives in the Courting, all over again. He would stand by the declarations he had made here, that he was in love with Draco, whether or not Draco wanted to reveal his own feelings.

Whatever they are. What if this doesn't work?

Harry tossed the notion away as soon as it entered his mind. He would find a way around that obstacle, too, because he felt that, at the moment, he could fight his way past anything.

This time, when he Apparated to Malfoy Manor, the wards permitted him to land inside on the lawn. Harry closed his eyes to savor that before he opened them and saw the distant figure running madly towards him from the doors of the Manor.

Draco's blond hair blew around his face, which was pale and full of an emotion that Harry knew very well. He clasped Draco in his arms as they came together and spun him around, laughing, until the expression of fear and worry melted into irritation and Draco dug his heels into the ground, bringing them to a forceful stop.

"The fuck is going on?" Draco screamed into his face. "How the fuck did you do that? Do you know you just lost your job? Are you mental?"

"Quite possibly!" Harry yelled back. The wind seemed to pick up his words and toss them away, but that was all right; Harry knew what he was saying, after all. "I got past the wards with an Auror trick! But I'm not an Auror anymore! That's all right! I love you! I may possibly have had almost no sleep last night!"

Draco, being Draco, focused on the last words and nothing else. He was kind of like Binks that way, Harry thought hysterically. Draco would kill him if he said that aloud. He probably shouldn't. "So this is all the result of sleep-deprivation?" Draco demanded, and started fighting to be free of Harry's embrace.

Harry stepped back, releasing Draco, which put him off-balance, and then knelt on the ground in front of him and grabbed his hands. No matter how much Draco struggled, Harry refused to let him go, gazing soulfully up at him instead. He knew it was soulful, and knew that Draco would have the right to despise him, and didn't care. The whirling smear of colors had become nothing but Draco's face.

"Listen to me!" Harry said. "I love you. I love you because you trusted me, and took a chance despite all the chances in the world being against you. I love you because you haven't let yourself get into a rut when you could, with all those parties all the time, and no one would have blamed you. I love you because you can control your emotions and let them go at the same time, which is something I've always had trouble with. I love you because you're proud and touchy and you glow under your clothes. I love you because you want me. I love you because you confront me sometimes and you retreat sometimes and you're contradictory, like a real person. I love you for your stupid owl and your stupid sensitivity and your stupid clothes. I love you."

Draco stared down at him with his mouth open. Harry looked back. "I'm going to keep chasing you until you tell me to go away," he finished. "If you don't, then I'll just keep pushing forwards. Why not? Why not? I want you, I love you, and there's no reason that I should allow little things like wards to stand in the way."

Draco swallowed. "But my word would be enough to stand in the way?" he asked carefully.

"Yes," Harry said. "Your unambiguous word, saying that you didn't want me. Because this is based on my desire for your desire. If you don't want me, then the deal's off and I'll walk away." And at that moment, he thought he might be able to, to rise to his feet in the clear day and walk off.

If Draco would say that he didn't want him. If Draco would only be this open and honest, one last time.

Draco's hands fell to frame Harry's face. Then he shook his head. "You don't fight fair," he said.

"I tried to give you every chance to refuse," Harry began indignantly.

"No," Draco said, softly and fiercely enough to make Harry shut up. "Not that. I wouldn't say that unless I meant it," he added in a tone of disgust. "I mean that you're my fantasy, and when your fantasy comes after you and hunts you down and declares that you're his fantasy in front of the Head Auror and anyone who might have been listening at the door, how are you supposed to refuse?"

"And in front of you," Harry said. "That was the whole point."

"I know," Draco said, and dragged him to his feet. "I'm not going to be easy, you know. I'll probably still get jealous of Weasley sometimes." His eyes flashed, and then the line of his jaw softened a little. "Though I got the point of the display in front of the Head Auror, and how Weasley wasn't the only reason you went up against him."

"I'm yours," Harry said. "For everything I can give you."

"You had better not lie to me again," Draco said softly, with no humor. "You had better not fuck up in the same way again, by putting something else—the Ministry, your friends, your job—in front of me without telling me. Now that I know more about you, I'll hurt you if you do that."

Harry nodded. "I know." He waited, but Draco seemed content to gaze at his face. Harry cleared his throat. "Um, can I have that kiss now?"

Draco sighed and rolled his eyes, but did lean in. Harry seized his shoulders and kissed as hard as he could, driving his tongue straight into Draco's teeth, and then into his tongue and his gums and his cheeks. He might know a lot about Draco, but he didn't know everything there was to know, and that included his taste.

"We'll have to try," Draco said, when he pulled back. "This isn't settled or resolved."

"If it was, one of us would be dead," Harry said, and thought, There. That's the reason he's different from all the others, the reason I'll never grow bored with him. Because things are always changing, with him. I can never be the same from day to day. I can never be safe.

Being safe was overrated, Harry thought as he caressed Draco's face and learned the shape of his chin and his nose. He was Harry bloody Potter. Of course he couldn't have a safe love affair.

"I do love you, you know," he felt compelled to whisper.

Draco nodded and smiled. "I know. I—think I feel the same. It's just a little too confusing right now to tell."

In time, he would feel the same, completely, Harry knew. In time Harry would get his job back, and maybe move into Malfoy Manor, and maybe even gain the white owl's liking and respect—on the same day that Draco and Ron got along without jealousy. It would come in time.

So much would.

The End.