Chapter Forty-Three of 'I Give You a Wondrous Mirror'- I Give You a Wondrous Mirror
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This is very nearly the last chapter of I Give You a Wondrous Mirror. There will be an epilogue after this, but nothing further. Thanks for coming along!
Chapter Forty-Three-I Give You a Wondrous Mirror
Draco could feel his heart pounding as he settled himself in front of the large mirror that had apparently hung on the wall of his and Harry’s bedroom in the Manor every day of this reality. It was a handsome piece, though not one he’d owned at home-
The other home-
Highly polished glass with an inner fire almost like a diamond’s, in a gilt frame carved with sporting lions and snakes. Draco thought it made an acceptable gate through which to allow Harry his first glimpse of the place they’d left behind.
Harry’s face was pale as he sat down to watch the mirror under Draco’s arm. Draco could understand that. He’d looked into a mirror already himself, wanting to experience the shifting images and test whether they would afflict him with guilt or sorrow, and it had taken him long moments to overcome the flinching sensation. This was the first mirror in ten years that hadn’t tried to attack him or show him things he didn’t want to see.
At first, the glass solely and simply reflected him and Harry. Harry stirred restlessly.
“Concentrate on what you want to see,” Draco whispered. “That’s the only way it works. I think the life-debts saw no need to have every random person who might look into a glass at the same time we did spying on our doubles’ lives.”
Harry took a deep breath and leaned forwards, squinting. Draco wrapped one arm around Harry’s shoulders and one around his waist. That was only partially because he thought his partner might need support, depending on the image that appeared. Most of it was just sheer pleasure in the fact that he could finally touch Harry without punishment.
Their reflections stretched, wavered, and then dissolved into boiling shadows, blue as the light of the sun on snow. A moment later, those shadows spun out, bleeding color, and formed into a small dining room that Harry recognized, from the way he quivered.
The other Harry and his wife sat facing each other across a small table-Draco wondered how their house-elves managed to place all the food properly on it, and then reminded himself that they didn’t have house-elves-arguing quietly. As the picture grew sharper and clearer, echoes of their voices began to emerge.
His Harry started. “That’s new,” he murmured.
“Perhaps we would have heard sounds from the images that haunted us, too, if we had wanted to listen,” Draco said, and then quieted, because the other Harry’s voice was canting upwards at a sharp pitch.
“-don’t think it’s going to be easy. But I want to do this, Ginny. I want to come back and be a part of your life and the kids’ lives again.”
Draco’s Harry bared his teeth. Draco ran a hand through his hair and down to his shoulders. It really was all over, and he could watch his other self’s life but he couldn’t help him. That was another thing Draco was hoping this glimpse of the secondary world would teach Harry.
“Why should I believe you?” Ginny’s eyes were red, and she rubbed at them now and then with the edge of her palm, making Draco fight to hold back a snort. There was acting and there was acting. “Just a day ago, you were willing to give yourself to Malfoy, and you didn’t want me around you anymore.”
“That was-“ The second Harry closed his eyes and swallowed. “I listened to James,” he whispered. “And Al. They missed their mum. And I missed you, too. I never realized just what it would cost me to become part of the Malfoy family. I never imagined that they had secrets like the ones they did hiding down in the crypts.” He opened his eyes and mustered a faint smile. “And it’ll be good for Scorpius Malfoy, too. He really needs his mum around. That would be much easier for Marian if I’m not clinging to Draco’s side.”
“Coward,” Harry hissed.
“Do you think it would have happened that way, if we stayed in that world?” Draco asked, not taking his eyes from the reflection.
“Of course not!” Harry said fiercely. And then his voice got softer, and not just because the reflected Ginny was speaking again. “I can see the seeds of it in me. Wanting to make other people happy instead of myself. Being frightened by how much effort it took to go after what I really wanted and needed. Using my children as an excuse to shelter from passion. But I can’t become that person, not now.”
Draco nodded, satisfied, and then paid attention to what the she-Weasel was saying again. Something about not being sure she could trust Harry, but that she wanted to, and she’d missed him, too. Now she leaned forwards, and put her hand on the other Harry’s, and said, “It’ll be a long, hard road, but I’m willing to try and reconcile if you are.”
The Harry in the mirror gave her a reprieved, guilty smile. His Harry hissed again. Draco glanced sideways at him. “Do you want to see anything else of their lives, or look at me and Marian now?”
“You and Marian.” Harry’s lip was curled with disgust, his eyes flashing in a way that made Draco suppress a moan; he badly wanted to change his suggestion to “shagging Harry through the mattress” instead. “I don’t think I can take any more of this.”
Draco nodded, and together they faced the mirror and concentrated again. The shadows ate the other Harry and Ginny-whom Draco would be just as glad not to watch-and then formed into the shapes of the other Draco and his wife. This time, Harry flinched.
Draco could see why. His other self’s face was pale and lost, and he kept glancing to the side, as if he imagined that Harry would be sitting in a chair next to him if he just looked hard enough.
Marian, on the other hand, was bent over a long scroll, murmuring to herself and ticking off items on her fingers. “And of course I’ll be there for important public events, and to welcome Scorpius back from Hogwarts, and for holidays. And you can keep an eye on me to make sure that I don’t kidnap him and take him to the Hebrides.” She flung her head back defiantly and stared at her husband, as if to say that Draco would have no reason ever to suspect her of that again.
The reflected Malfoy nodded heavily. “Yes, all right,” he said, and then leaned over to sign the scroll, followed by Marian signing it in a slightly different place. A legal contract, Draco knew. It was the only way his other self would be able to trust his wife around Scorpius.
Marian stood and walked out of the study then, and that Draco closed his eyes and sat still for a long moment. There was an expression of such desolation on his face that Draco thought he would have been moved himself, if he could have reached through.
But then the Draco in the mirror sat up, and set his jaw, and muttered, “Even if Harry was too scared to stay with me, there’s still Scorpius.”
He walked out of the room with unexpectedly steady steps. Draco approved. If the poor bastard couldn’t have a lover or a partner suited to him, then he would live for his son. There were worse things he could have done, such as sliding back into the apathy that had consumed the past ten years of his life.
His life. Not mine.
That was the most satisfying thing about their escape, to Draco. In a world where he and Harry had honored the call of the life-debts in the year after the war, they had both been stronger, more eager to defy conventions, more stubborn and apt to struggle against what their family and friends thought best for them. They still had children, but they weren’t bound to distasteful agreements in the creation of them.
Altogether, life was better for them here, and that was all Draco needed to relieve him of any false notions about going back and settings things right.
When he glanced at Harry, though, he surprised a look of intense pity on his lover’s face. Harry had even stretched a hand out to the mirror, but let it fall when the shadows ate that reflected Draco. Now he shook his head, his lower lip caught between his teeth.
Draco took his jaw in one hand and turned Harry about to face him. “Now do you see there’s nothing we can do?” he murmured. “We have our lives, and they have theirs. Will you feel guilty for decades because we split the parts of ourselves that had courage apart from the pieces that didn’t, and obeyed magical law?”
“No,” Harry whispered. “Not now. I can’t, now that I’ve seen them. That Harry could have tried to keep in contact with his Draco, even though the marriage vows would have prevented them from sleeping together. He could have faced up to the fact that he didn’t love Ginny anymore. But he’s retreating into the shell you rescued me from, with the scar and Tutela, and that’s his own fault. And doing those things is far more selfish than I ever realized.” He lifted his eyes to Draco’s, and determination had mingled with the sadness in them. “I won’t regret he can’t follow my path. I do feel sorry for the other Draco, though.”
He lifted his hands and clenched them in the front of Draco’s robes. “And I won’t lose my own joy because I’m brooding over them, either,” he said, and hauled Draco’s face down to kiss him.
*
Making love in reality turned out not to resemble the dream-world very much after all.
Harry had never realized how much the dream-world took care of, what with instant cushioning and lubrication and robes that simply vanished when one willed them to. For the first time, he had the experience of stumbling on the robe that he tried to haul off, and knocking his teeth against Draco’s as they kissed, and gazing at Draco’s entrance, when he spread his legs, with something like dismay, because it didn’t seem as if Harry’s fingers would fit in there, let alone his cock.
But there were other things that he had missed and rejoiced in having now, such as the scrape of dry skin under his fingers when he first coated them with oil Draco kept in the bedside table, and the sharp catch in Draco’s breath as he arched his hips up, and how his muscles rippled and flexed when Harry repositioned him on the bed for easier access.
And the knowledge that, in this reality, they had made love again, and again, and again, and that for them it was normal and expected.
Here, he wasn’t an idiot who had only realized too late in life that he shouldn’t have bound himself with such restrictive marriage vows, and whose every experience of being in bed with Draco was shadowed by memories of being in bed with Ginny. He still had those memories, of course; those things had still happened to him.
Or a version of him.
But, just as it was his choice to feel guilt for his advantages over his mirrored self or to reject that guilt, it was his choice to let those memories matter or not matter.
In this world, only he and Draco had those memories. No one else outside their two heads knew their pasts had been different. No one else knew that Harry was more familiar with itching vows than the taste of Draco’s skin.
Harry took the first steps to correct that now, bowing his head in order to fasten his mouth on Draco’s hip.
Draco undulated in surprise and pleasure as Harry sucked on his skin, purpling and marking it, and wearing out his own jaw. That hadn’t happened in the dream-world, either. Harry finally sat back with a gasp, shook oddly sweat-soaked hair out of his face-they’d barely exerted themselves, yet-and stared into Draco’s eyes. Draco stared back at him, face clouded with lust and excitement, and then made a pleading little push with his hips, urging Harry to get on with it.
Harry smiled at him. He felt like laughing, and there were tears in his eyes.
The small dots of blond hair covering Draco’s hips and stomach were springy against his fingertips when he pushed his hand over them.
The taste of the skin on Draco’s right hip was subtly different from the taste of the skin on his left hip.
His tongue pushed enthusiastically enough into Harry’s mouth when he was simply kissed, but it was nothing like the push he gave when Harry’s tongue was in his mouth and Harry’s first two fingers were in his arse.
He was apparently capable of lifting his legs to heights when he was fucked face-to-face that would have stunned Harry if he had known about it before.
The colors of his eyes were mesmerizing, powerfully so, when Harry at last angled his cock in the correct direction and pushed in.
*
Draco knew, now, that he had never had Harry’s full attention before when they made love. He’d always been distant, worrying about the marriage vows or the strangeness of shagging another man. And there had been the doubt and shadow of their situation with the life-debts and their children and the Masked Lady to worry about.
Now, for these few moments, there was nothing but the two of them together, and they had nothing but time.
Draco didn’t expect it to be this way every time. Sometimes it would be more impatient, sometimes stronger and angrier-the way that the dreams had shown them behaving when Draco was angry at Harry and pinned him down to really drive his cock into him-sometimes tight with the resentment of unpatched arguments, sometimes thicker with lust. The one thing the dreams, now their history, had been clear on was that this was not a perfect relationship, and never would be. It had nearly cracked apart more than once.
But this was their phoenix moment, the one point in time when they first shared their bodies fully and freely. It might never come again, but that did not make it the less precious while it happened.
Draco leaned back into the pillows and gave himself up to it completely.
His faint fear that Harry would still need guidance melted when he felt the way Harry pushed into him, gently enough to allow Draco time to adjust, but fast enough that he never had to wriggle and whinge about Harry teasing him. Harry paused when he was fully in, throwing back his head and giving a long, loud exhalation of breath that reminded Draco of a horse at the beginning of a race. His skin quivered and gleamed with sweat; Draco didn’t have to concentrate to make his heartbeat out. He stood with his eyes closed, and Draco was content to wait and rest and admire him.
Then Harry opened his eyes and began to thrust.
Draco let the fire burn him. He gave up on trying to hold back the needy sobs and grunts and cries working their way out of his mouth. Let Harry know he was doing a good job, so he wouldn’t hesitate to act the exact same way in the future.
His eyes rolled back in his head on a particularly well-placed thrust, and his mouth hung open, emitting no sound at all. God love Harry for being observant; he noticed, and thrust again at the same place and pace. Draco’s back arched, and he found himself humping his hips in the air. His legs were already over Harry’s shoulders, so that was quite a feat.
Harry laughed breathlessly.
Joy tore loose in Draco like flying fire. He soared in the dizzy spiral towards pleasure. Fear dropped away from him, and doubt, and uneasiness, until the only emotion left winging beside joy was love.
And then his orgasm hit, but while the physical side of it was a release, the emotional side was an escape into freedom.
He managed to open his eyes just in time, so he could carry a glimpse of green with him into the golden moment.
*
Lying draped over Draco, feeling his lover breathe hoarsely and deeply beneath him, his fingers shaking with fine tremors and his back and hips complaining at him, his mind still stupefied by what they had just shared, Harry was utterly sure that this was where he wanted to be for the rest of his life.
*
The morning brought a letter for Harry. Draco was trying to make sure James didn’t throw any food at Al and Scorpius, while Teddy bolted down his own breakfast and bounced out the door to ride his broom in the gardens. His mother sat nearby, cradling Harry’s daughter in her arms and cooing at her. Draco smirked. Lily would grow up as polished and correct, and as thoroughly spoiled, as any Malfoy daughter in the last two hundred years, he knew.
Not that he wouldn’t be doing his fair share of the spoiling himself, so perhaps he shouldn’t feel so superior, but it was the principle of the thing.
When the barn owl alighted on the table in front of Harry, Harry’s brow furrowed and he reached out hesitantly. He was quick enough, though, to catch James’s wrist just as he was about to stick a sausage in his little brother’s ear. James drew back his hand and pouted. Draco shook his head. He had managed to learn, by now, that he’d been intimately engaged in James’s rearing from the beginning, and yet the boy was still incredibly rude. Either he had an irrepressible spirit, or it was the Weasley in him coming through. Draco knew which explanation he preferred to believe.
“It’s from Hermione,” Harry said, with a tightness in his voice that Draco knew he was the only one at the table to understand. Narcissa looked up with a slight frown. Al leaned over to whisper something to Scorpius, who giggled. James promptly tried to snatch the letter.
“She’s writing to me!” he said. “Aunt Hermione is writing to me!”
Harry casually batted his son’s hand away-it made no difference what they did to James, Draco had already seen; he would just sulk and pout and try again later-and opened the letter. He scanned the first few lines and nodded to himself. Then he tucked the letter into his robe pocket and went back to helping the children put more food into their stomachs than in their hair.
Draco smiled slightly, proud of him. Harry must be dying to read the letter and learn more details about how his career and relationship with his friends here was different than in their original world, but his commitment to their family came first.
The fact that he probably also wanted Draco with him when he read the letter was likely, but Draco had already learned that Harry rarely did things for selfish motives alone, even when he was trying to.
*
Harry glanced sideways at Draco, who had sat on the couch beside him in the library. Draco smiled and leaned his head on Harry’s shoulder, at an angle that would permit him to read the letter while giving him the maximum amount of comfort. Harry snorted and turned his attention to Hermione’s neat handwriting.
Dear Harry:
Of course I believe you lost some of your memories in a magical experiment. You should really stop letting Draco use you for a test subject. His field is abstract magical theory, remember? He doesn’t need to put every theory into practical use.
“I thought so,” Draco murmured, sounding pleased. “The number of books on magical theory in the library said so. Apparently I’m trying to learn exactly where magic comes from, and why it marks some Muggles out as Mu-“
Harry coughed.
“Muggleborns.” Draco pushed him in the side with an elbow. “I would have said that.”
Harry rolled his eyes and looked back at the letter.
You’ve worked in the Auror Department for the past ten years, minus the times that you’ve taken off to pamper Draco when his feelings were hurt or to go on mad holidays with Draco or to care for the children when Draco’s help wasn’t enough.
“I wonder,” Draco said brightly, “does she blame me for a great deal of what goes wrong in your life, do you think?”
Your partner was Ron for seven years, but he’s taken up more responsibility for our children in the past three, so since then you’ve been partnered with Ares Stevenson.
Harry made a sharp noise of surprise, and Draco lifted his head to blink at him. “Is that good or bad?” he asked.
“Good.” Harry shook his head, marveling. Ares Stevenson was a pure-blood who, thanks to a remarkably liberal upbringing-his parents had eloped against their parents’ wishes and raised their son primarily on various ships and the road until it was time for Hogwarts-had sympathized and helped with most of the Blood Reparations work back in their original world. Harry couldn’t imagine he would be much different here. There seemed to be a limit to how much the life-debts would let this secondary world vary from its original, since Julia had said only their last ten years of history were different. “It would be hard for me to find a better partner, in fact.”
Hermione’s letter continued, And while I don’t think that I’ll ever become quite reconciled to your dating a Malfoy, I know better by now than to think he’s going anywhere.
“Even the brightest must admit defeat around me,” Draco murmured smugly.
Harry shoved him again.
Your arrangement with Ginny that produced your children is your own business, and I’ve never pretended to understand that, either, but you both seem happy, so why should I concern myself with it?
Draco frowned this time. “Are you certain it’s Granger writing this letter?”
“I don’t think she’s hardened quite as much in this world,” Harry said quietly. “At least, not to me. If I stood up to her earlier, she’s probably had time to accept it.”
Molly is still eager to see you, especially since George died in that Auror raid gone wrong in Diagon Alley a few months ago. She knows you tried your hardest to save him, but he was just too far gone even before they got him to hospital.
Harry swallowed. Well, it had been too much to hope, really, that George would still be alive in this world.
Draco’s hand found his shoulder and gently squeezed.
And before I tell you anything else, I want to see you, damn it. It’s been too long. Come over to our house tomorrow. I’ll owl you Floo instructions if you need them, too.
Love,
Hermione.
Harry folded the letter slowly.
“This will be risky, you know,” Draco muttered. “We still stand a chance of being caught out, since we don’t remember everything. And it will be hard to adjust to these lives outside the areas covered by the dreams.” He hesitated, then added, “That would be a legitimate reason to prefer our old lives over these.”
Harry turned to him. Draco looked a bit disdainful, but he had tried to be sensitive to Harry’s feelings, and Harry appreciated the gesture.
He leaned in to kiss Draco, long and slow, and then sat back and said softly, “This solution isn’t perfect. But I didn’t expect anything to be. And I’m so much happier here-“ He shook his head. “It’s hard to recognize as happiness. I keep expecting to fetch up against one of the things I was unhappy about in the first world and not finding it. I’ll never regret what we have. No, I don’t want to go back.”
This time, it was Draco who dragged him down on the couch, and James who banged on the door and shrieked an interruption. Harry laughed as Draco sat up and pushed his disheveled hair back with a soft curse.
“There’ll be other times,” he said.
Draco’s gaze suddenly sharpened, and Harry felt as if someone had plunged a sword through his body and transfixed his heart.
“Yes,” Draco said. “As many as we can bear.”
He took Harry’s hand and kissed the knuckles, causing James, who burst in a moment later, to wrinkle his nose and proclaim kissing “ew.” Harry laughed, but his eyes were on Draco’s, returning the piercing gaze, and the sentiment behind it.
It doesn’t matter how much we had to fight to have this life. We have it now, and any future struggles will be easier than what we’ve gone through already, because we’re together.
This is our time.
Epilogue.