Chapter Forty-Two of "I Give You a Wondrous Mirror"- Different Worlds
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Chapter Forty-Two-Different Worlds
“I think I need to hear this explanation again,” Harry said finally. “In terms that I can understand, this time. Which means-“ He darted a glance at Draco, who just blinked. He didn’t see why Harry should blame him for this. “No abstract magical theory.”
Julia nodded. She had led Harry and Draco away from their children and Narcissa as soon as possible, into a secluded sitting room where they could talk without interruption. She had her arms folded across her lap now, in a gesture that Draco would have thought meant she was cold if she were human. As it was, with her eyes darting back and forth between them, Draco thought it might just mean that she was keeping herself from restless movements that would unsettle Harry further.
“Very well,” she said. “There has always been another world coming into existence, Mr. Potter. What did you think the mirrors and dreams were doing? They were showing you-and constructing, when you were asleep and refused to look into the mirrors-the world that could have been, if you had chosen the honor the life-debts from the moment that you gave his wand back to my nephew, instead of marrying your wife.”
Harry shook his head lightly. “But that world-“
“This world,” Julia corrected him. “The one you’re living in now, where you and my nephew have satisfied the life-debts by giving yourselves to each other, and where I don’t intend to be summoned out of my crypt to deal with this again anytime soon.”
Harry nodded this time, looking abashed, though Draco didn’t know why; he was hardly the one who had summoned the Malfoy ancestors. “But this world didn’t actually exist until we came into it. Did it?”
“No. But once you came into it, it had always existed.”
Harry closed his eyes and massaged his forehead with one hand. Draco felt a burst of affection and a burst of exasperation at the same time. Really, the magical concepts behind this were not that complicated, or shouldn’t have been for someone like Harry, who had lived through so many strange magical events in his life. He really should have paid better attention in school, Draco thought, taking a grip on his hand.
“I think, Aunt,” he said, “that Harry is having some trouble in figuring out which world is real-this one, or the one where a version of himself still lives with his wife.”
“They both are,” Julia said quietly. “Think of it this way, Mr. Potter. If you take a cloth and tear it into two strips, but do not tear it completely, so that the strips are still connected by a small string at the very end, which is the real cloth?”
“They both are,” Harry said, opening one eye and frowning at her.
Julia smiled triumphantly. “And so is the case here. These two worlds do share a common origin. Every bit of their history up until ten years ago is the same. But in this world, you chose to stay with my nephew and fulfill the four original life-debts by the giving of yourselves to one another. That means that you never married your wife, you have been an Auror, and you have been lovers with Draco for ten years-exactly as the dreams told you. The dreams were so vivid because the life-debts would not simply have plopped you into another world without a history. They wanted you to have memories, a chance of living in another place and knowing each other-“
“But that part isn’t real.” Harry looked as though he had scored a point in his argument with himself.
“Yes, it is,” Julia said patiently. Draco held himself back from battering the truth into Harry’s head, though he would have liked to. Julia could explain it better. “The dreams became real when you landed here. If you examine your body, I think you will find scars that come from adventures you dreamed.”
“But the history I lived through-“ Harry glanced at Draco. “That is the real history. It has to be.”
“It was real to you until a few hours ago,” Julia said quietly. “Now, it is not. Now, it is the history of the Harry you left behind, and it is only as real to you as the dreams were real to you while you lived in that world.”
Harry groaned under his breath. “So, in this world, I was never married to Ginny? I never worked in the Blood Reparations Department?”
“Yes,” said Julia.
“But then,” Harry said, as if pulling out a trump card, “how did I have my children? If I wasn’t married to Ginny-“
“You will have to ask Narcissa about that, I should imagine.” Julia spread her hands. “Remember that I have also split into two, so that there could be a Julia in either world. I share memories and knowledge with you, since you told me about the dreams. But because none of your dreams included your former wives, I do not know what their fate here might have been.”
“And there are so many other things that we don’t know,” Harry whispered, sinking into Draco’s side. Draco felt him shiver, and rubbed his shoulders encouragingly. “The memories that my friends have of the past ten years. What Draco does for a living. What Narcissa will think of us asking questions about our wives...”
“Ah,” said Julia. “That, I can answer. There needed to be some explanation in this world for why you shut yourselves up in a room with a mirror, after all. This version of your mother, Draco, told me that you were conducting a magical experiment together-something that I believe has to do with your occupation here. You had told your mother that you might be a bit woozy when you came out of it, and take some time to regain your memories. She will be prepared for odd questions that you ask her.”
Draco smiled. “Thank you.”
“I have one more question,” Harry said. “I’ve resigned myself to not understanding everything, if I have to.” But his lips were clamped shut, his nostrils flaring, and Draco thought he would probably take another run at understanding soon. “What will happen in that world we left behind? What will happen to-that version of myself who has my old history now, and my marriage vows, and my obligations?”
Julia’s smile twisted upwards. “For that,” she said, “you must look into a mirror.”
*
Narcissa smiled kindly and shifted Lily from one arm to the other so that his little girl could more easily reach the bottle she held. “It’s understandable that you would forget about Weasley and Marian for a little while in the wake of a powerful magical explosion, Harry. After all, you and Draco have focused on the children and not the women who produced them.” She looked down at Lily with such a besotted expression that Harry found himself smiling in spite of his anxiety.
Draco had barely left his side since they came through the mirror. Harry was glad of that. Whenever he needed to be reassured that he hadn’t gone mad or wasn’t suffering through some extended dream that gave him whatever he wanted but would demand a horrific price on his waking, he could lean sideways and feel Draco’s warmth against his flank. Draco always squeezed his hand when he did that.
“Marian was a contract, of course,” said Narcissa, and stroked the red fuzz forming on Lily’s head. “The pure-blood families have often done such things, in cases where a man or woman wanted children but did not want to marry, and as long as the legalities are respected, then such children are not any more looked down upon than the progeny of a legitimate marriage. Marian was an applicant who indicated that she would be willing to produce a child for Draco, but only one child. Her family did not so much pressure her to have an heir of her own as pressure her to bear a child so that she would seem like a woman in the eyes of a few of her older relatives.” Narcissa sniffed. “She would not have been the less a woman for remaining childless. But the ideals of the MacFusty clan are not mine.
“She contracted with Draco, had sex with him once, and carried Scorpius to term. She comes now and then to visit her son, but in truth, she does not seem all that interested in him.”
Draco trembled. This time, Harry was the one who leaned against him and offered what reassurance he could. He could only guess how relieved Draco must be, that in this world Marian was not the kind of mother who would seek to kidnap his son from under his nose.
“Your arrangement with Weasley was more complex.” Narcissa smiled at Harry, but there was a shade of pity in it. “She has been in a long-term relationship with that fellow-who is he, I can never remember his name, but he is the Seeker for the Montrose Magpies. But at any rate, he cannot give her children. She wanted children, and she knew that you did as well, even though neither of you could have stood to live in a permanent bond with one another. So you agreed, out of a friendship that I still do not understand, to have a few children together. I think Weasley found the experience less pleasing than you did. The moment she had a daughter, she ended the agreement.” Narcissa glanced down at Lily again and ruffled her hair. “And who would not have at least waited for this wondrous girl to be born?” she whispered.
Harry relaxed a little. At least, in this world, even if this version of Ginny had some of the same issues that his-
Or, really, the other Harry’s-
Ginny did, she had not let them control her relationship with her children. She could easily keep her distance from them, here, if she found herself growing irritable and snappish with them. And Narcissa would be the most adoring mother Lily could ever want.
“Thank you,” Harry said, when he realized that Narcissa had finished her recitation and was staring expectantly at him. “It does seem strange that I can’t remember this, yet, but I think bits and pieces of the memories are starting to come back to me.”
Draco nodded. “To me, as well.”
Narcissa smiled at them, and stood to kiss Draco on the forehead. Harry was more than startled when she kissed him there, too, right over the scar, without a flinch or a hesitation. Perhaps that was only her usual routine in this world where he had been part of her family for ten years. She wandered out then, cradling Lily. Harry and Draco sat in silence for a moment. Harry could hear the shouts of James and Al squabbling over something, with Teddy’s and Scorpius’s gentler voices joining in now and then.
And because they were alone, he felt free to turn to Draco and ask, “Do you think what we did was wrong?”
*
Marian will keep her distance. I have Scorpius and Harry in this world, and not her. That is wonderful.
Draco was so full of his own thoughts that it took him a moment to wrench free of them and consider Harry’s question. When he did, he frowned and studied his partner more closely. Harry was staring at him and gnawing on his lip, a good sign that he was close to interpreting Draco’s silence in the wrong way.
Draco put his arms around Harry and kissed him first, for reassurance and for the sheer pleasure in feeling the flex of real muscles under his hands and real lips beneath his, without the nagging marriage vows to drive Harry from his embrace. Harry gasped and opened his lips eagerly. The sensation was both delightfully new and wonderfully familiar, given that Draco knew it from the dreams they’d shared.
Harry let Draco bear him backwards until Draco was entertaining serious thoughts of locking and warding the door and making up for all the times they had missed right here, but at last Harry raised a hand and placed it firmly on Draco’s chest. Draco sighed, recognizing the signal that he wasn’t about to get everything he wanted right at the moment. He sat up, but kept his arms locked in place around Harry. He would never get enough of holding him.
“Why would it be wrong?” he asked.
“Because,” Harry said, “of the way that things are probably going in the other world. We left-well, me there, and you, and their children, with wives that they don’t love. How can they possibly have happy lives? Do we deserve to have happiness when it comes at their expense?”
“This was always going to happen,” Draco said, as calmly as he could, because of course Harry would try to ruin his joy with pesky ethical considerations like that. Stupid Gryffindor. “The life-debts would have kept tugging until you either changed your mind about uniting with me-“
“I never could have done that,” Harry murmured, and buried his face against Draco’s shoulder.
“Or until the worlds split.” Draco ran his hands up and down Harry’s back, nudging the robes aside so he could reach warm, yielding flesh. “They had to come true, and so did the marriage vows. What other solution do you imagine existed?”
“I can’t think of anything,” Harry admitted. “I just wish that there was a way to keep everyone happy, for us to have what we wanted, and yet give Ginny and Marian what they wanted, too.”
Draco closed his eyes and sat in thought for a moment. There was no way that he would ever be in perfect agreement with Harry; he despised Marian too much, and he loathed Ginny Weasley for what she had done and tried to do to his lover. But perhaps he could find the words that would persuade Harry to see things his way.
“Think of it like this,” he said slowly. “There’s at least a chance that those other versions of ourselves will find happiness, isn’t there? The life-debts won’t come true in that world. That means those versions of ourselves have to change their minds about being lovers. You’ll probably go back to your wife, and I’ll-content myself with something else.” The words stuck in his throat, but he knew they were true. He wasn’t the kind of person to spend the rest of his life pining over someone else. Harry would have been the first choice even of his other self, he was certain. But he could live without him, at least now that he was out of the gray apathy that had consumed his life for ten years in that world. “There’s at least the chance that new love can grow, and that you and Weasley will reconcile, and that I’ll come to some accommodation with Marian about Scorpius.”
“There’s the chance,” Harry echoed bleakly. “But we don’t know.”
Draco opened his eyes swiftly. “That’s right,” he said. “And now that we’re in a world where the life-debts haven’t scarred us like they did before, because we accepted them from the beginning, I’m the one who has to work to make sure you put your own happiness first. There’s nothing we could have done that would be perfect, Harry. There’s no way back now. Julia said that much. For the rest of their lives, and ours, we’ll only be images in mirrors to them, and they to us. And you’ll have to get used to that.”
Harry was quiet. Finally he murmured, “I reckon I never got used to being happy without someone else paying a price for it.”
“I think the price is acceptable,” Draco said firmly. “And just in case you don’t, I think I can change your mind.” He leaned down and fastened his lips on Harry’s.
Harry responded almost desperately, his hands clawing up the middle of Draco’s back, his blunt fingernails claiming their share of skin. His legs opened wide and twined with Draco’s, as well. Draco hardy minded. Though the experience in the dream-world had been real in every sense, there was still something special about actually lying on the real Harry in the middle of the real Malfoy Manor.
Along with real children, he realized, when someone began hammering on the door of the study, and then Al screamed, “Daddy! James hit me!”
Harry began to laugh against his mouth, and that allowed Draco to sit back and turn his growl of exasperation into a chuckle. Harry pressed his hand, straightened his clothes and hair-well, as much as his hair would permit itself to be straightened, in any case-and laid a quick kiss on his cheek. “Later, all right?” he whispered, before he slipped off to tend to his sons. Draco could hear his voice alternating between scolding and reassurance just a few moments later.
Draco lay back on the couch and stared at the ceiling, his arms folded behind his head. His breathing slowly returned to normal, and his body ceased to believe it had to feel Harry against it to feel alive.
Instead, the happiness that had burned in him since they came through the mirror returned. He clutched it to himself, greedy as he had always been of both pleasure and joy; the latter had been even rarer in his life than the former.
He would respect Harry’s concerns about the ethics of what they had done. He would give his partner all the time he needed to adjust to the fact that, here, he actually had what he wanted.
But nothing could make him decide, for himself, that this was wrong, or that he was not allowed to feel happiness.
*
Harry nestled his face into Tutela’s soft feathers and tried to keep tears from coursing down his cheeks. What had seemed true at first really was true: every feature of the first world that he loved and needed had been duplicated in the second.
The Guardian Angel hooted softly and cupped her foot beneath his chin. He had to look at her then, and Tutela hooted again, this time more strongly, when she realized he was crying. She bristled, looking twice as big as she had a few moments ago, and glared around the garden in search of the enemy who had hurt her human.
“It’s all right, Tutela,” Harry whispered. “It’s joy and sorrow together, and there’s not much that anyone but Draco can do about that.”
She didn’t look convinced, and scrambled to his shoulder to balance there with wings spread, just in case. Harry sniffled and wiped his nose with the back of his hand, desperately hoping he’d kept his tears concealed from the children who shared the garden with him.
“Why are you crying?”
He hadn’t kept his tears from Teddy, at least. Harry turned around to find that Teddy had turned his hair dark and his eyes green, making himself nearly the replica of Harry. He watched Harry with a solemn gaze, and it was so much like being watched by an older Al that Harry had answered before he realized that he didn’t know every nuance of his history with his godson here.
“Sadness about your grandmother, I suppose,” he said, with a faint smile. Then he held his breath and hoped he hadn’t just made a horrible mistake.
Teddy’s face changed, but it was a tremulous smile that lit it, not the incomprehension that Harry would have thought would be there if nothing had happened to Andromeda in this world. “Don’t be, Harry,” he said, and hugged Harry hard enough to make him gasp for breath a little. “It was just her time. She’d been unhappy for years, I think, and she wanted to see Mum and Granddad again. So she left.”
Harry clasped Teddy’s shoulders and nodded, while adding the information to the pile in his mind that differentiated this world from the original. Andromeda must have died, either of age or of simple loss of will to live. He had seen that a few times in his work for the Blood Reparations Department, when he was trying to track down older Muggleborns who hadn’t been able to bear the thought of losing their magic.
But here he didn’t work for the Blood Reparations Department, did he? He was an Auror. Just as he had thought he might want to be the last time he was in Hermione’s office in the other world. An Auror was sometimes in danger, but he had a partner, someone to watch his back. And he didn’t work under a friend who had hardened too much for Harry’s peace of mind.
Who was his partner here? What cases had they solved? The dreams hadn’t often included information like that, choosing instead to concentrate on the intimate detail of his and Draco’s lives. Harry supposed that made sense. The life-debts had wanted them, first and foremost, to be happy and comfortable with each other, and a lack of history for themselves would have counteracted that.
“Thank you, Teddy,” he said, and hugged his godson one more time before he stepped away. “I should be the one comforting you, not the other way around.”
Teddy shrugged, smiling a little, even though his eyes looked old and haunted-eyes, Harry thought, that the Teddy in the world where Andromeda had been cursed to sleep forever probably also had. “I thought it was coming,” he said. “I didn’t talk about it often, because she didn’t like me to; she thought I should concentrate on life, not death. But I wasn’t really surprised when I woke up the other morning and she was gone.” He paused and looked up at Harry with the first trace of anxiety he’d shown, other than the moments immediately after he rushed into the room where Harry and Draco had conducted their “experiment.” “But you are going to file the adoption request, aren’t you? You’re going to make me yours as soon as you can?”
“Of course,” Harry said firmly. “I’ll do that now, in fact.” He was sure that he could owl to the Ministry for the necessary information if he didn’t find the documents somewhere in the Manor. “Would you like to watch? I might need you to sign something, anyway.”
Teddy’s eyes were so bright that Harry stifled another impulse to cry. Tutela, on his shoulder, finally hooted and smoothed her feathers back into place.
*
“Harry?”
Harry looked up in surprise. Draco had left him by himself for some hours while he talked with his mother and put Scorpius to bed. Harry, who was preoccupied with other paperwork for Teddy and putting his own children to sleep, actually hadn’t expected his lover back so soon. He was currently writing letters to Ron and Hermione that would, delicately, feel out the present nature of the friendships between them.
He rose and crossed the study to Draco when he saw the strain in his face, though. “What is it?” he whispered.
Draco took his hand and lifted it to his lips. Harry waited patiently, eyes fastened on his lover’s face.
“I think,” Draco said, “that we ought to look in a mirror.”
Chapter 43.