Madame Scarlet's

Author's Note: Many thanks to Laurel for her beta work on this chapter. I think this story has helped inspire her to write another story about me, this time, instead of writing about my cliffhangers, she's writing about my smut. I'm sure she'll finish and post it soon, and what I've seen of it so far it rather witty.

Chapter 12 An Unwise Merger

Harry woke up feeling peculiar. It was the only way he could describe it. It felt as though his teeth were freshly brushed and his cheeks felt wind burnt, except when he ran his tongue over his teeth he felt that early morning film coating them as usual. Definitely peculiar. He rolled over, throwing his arm over the place he expected to find his Mate to be sleeping, but found the bed empty. With a jolt, Harry sat up and scanned the Room of Requirement for any signs of Draco, but there were none.

His mind went into panic mode, imagining all the awful things that could have happened to him while Harry soundly slept. Perhaps Snape had snatched him up to exact his revenge, or maybe the Headmaster had already pulled the boy into his office for questioning. How could he have let Draco be kidnapped while he slept? What kind of Mate was he? Even though his mind anxiously wandered to all sorts of dreadful things, he noticed his heart rate hadn’t sped up, and when he stopped to take a deep breath so that he could think of what to do next, he realized he could feel Draco just as surely as he could feel himself. More importantly, he could somehow tell the other boy was safe.

He didn’t have much time to dwell on the fact that he now seemed to have another consciousness mingling with his own before Draco crept quietly into the room, smiling when he saw that Harry was awake.

“Morning, Love,” he called, setting his broom aside and rushing to jump into bed next to Harry, pulling him closer.

“What did you do?” Harry accused, remembering the incantation and the guilty expression on Draco’s face the night before. His concerns of what the spell had been, and the changes he had experienced as a result, had all been lost in their haste to get away and smothered by Harry’s guilt for what he’d done to his Professor, however deserved it was.

“I was just out flying,” Draco replied, his eyebrows knit together in confusion. “I couldn’t sleep and I didn’t want to wake you. I left a note,” he added, pointing to the folded parchment on the nightstand.

“I mean, what did you do to me?” Harry clarified. “I can feel you.”

Draco blanched; obviously hoping he could skirt the conversation for a bit longer, or perhaps forever. “I- I finished the bonding,” he stammered.

“What do you mean finished it?” Harry asked, his voice more of a growl than he’d intended.

“Well, we started it when you and Snape and I first… er… well, you know,” Draco replied, rambling like Harry sometimes did; it was odd to hear, the boy was usually so eloquent. “Then last night, when you made love to me, we completed the bond, but one of us had to say the incantation to finish it.”

“I don’t understand,” Harry whispered, his skin prickling as if there was a ghost nearby.

“It’s the bond between Mates,” Draco explained. “We were in trouble, the bond is what allowed us to fight Snape off, it kept our Incubus’ at bay so that we would only want one another.”

“So, just to get this straight,” Harry began, his eyes narrowing. “You decided to take away all my options?”

“What?” Draco’s face had gone paler at Harry’s assessment. “It’s not like that.”

“So, you didn’t seal us together for the rest of our lives and make it so that no one else would make me happy but you?” Harry asked, already knowing what the answer would be. The Slytherin’s presumptions made him furious. They’d only just come to some minor truce and then Draco goes and does this? It was too much.

“I, I thought you loved me,” Draco replied, his face set into an involuntary pout.

“I do love you,” Harry replied, and he softened at his own words. He was in love with the git, but that didn’t mean he wanted his life planned out for him without even getting a say. Why did that always happen, why did everyone in his life want some brand of control over him? Now that Dumbledore could no longer meddle in his affairs, Draco seemed to have taken up the mantle. He was so tired of being used and not being able to decide for himself how his life would turn out. They were still young. What if he found someone he was better matched to? What if they just weren’t compatible enough to stay together for the rest of their lives? He felt stuck. It was like he fell asleep a carefree student and woke up with a husband and responsibilities.

“But why couldn’t you talk to me about it first? Why couldn’t we make the decision together when we were both ready?” Harry continued.

“I thought Snape was going to rape us both,” Draco groaned. “I thought that the bond would help us resist.”

“It sounds like it would have simply made the act painful instead of enjoyable,” Harry countered.

“Do you want Snape?” Draco asked, looking abashed and deeply hurt.

“No!” Harry shouted and fell back into the soft pillows in frustration. “I want you, but what if that changes?”

Draco clutched his chest and Harry could feel the boy’s heart break through their connection. He reached out, tried to grab Draco’s hand, tried to tell the boy he didn’t mean it the way it sounded, but Draco lurched away from him, nearly toppling off the bed as he did.

After a moment Draco seemed to regain his composure and Harry felt a wall go up between him and what he could feel of his Mate. The loss physically burned and brought with it the pain of the longing Incubus.

“I’m sorry to have inconvenienced you, Potter,” Draco said, his voice the cold and distant tone Harry was familiar with from their many years as rivals. Even so, Harry would have traded away the familiarity of that voice to hear his Mate happy again. “I’ll do my best to find a remedy to my error.”

With that, he turned and stalked from their shared bedroom, and Harry didn’t see or feel him again for the remainder of the weekend.

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Hermione stared across the table at him at breakfast on Monday morning with cautious pity in her eyes. Harry could tell she wanted desperately to ask why Draco hadn’t eaten with them since Friday night, or what had happened in detention with Snape, or why Harry had been acting miserable and withdrawn all weekend, but she hadn’t opened her mouth, much to Harry’s amazement. He was grateful, of course, because he didn’t know what he would say in response to any of those questions, but he was still shocked she hadn’t tried to interfere; it was so unlike her.

Perhaps she knew it was for the best, just as Harry had been trying to tell himself all weekend. Draco was no good for him; even his friends could see it.

As Harry prodded his well-done sausage around his plate, he sighed, wishing he could get his heart and his mind to agree for once. He already missed the blond even though they had only officially dated for a single day. In spite of the fact that the few hours of happiness he felt were sullied by Snape and his perverted scheming, he had felt a connection to Draco outside of the bond that had been forced upon him –maybe even outside of the Incubus that stirred inside of him.

Instead of pumpkin juice, Harry poured himself some tea, an act that seemed to draw immense suspicion from his watching friends. “What?” Harry asked after taking a sip and deciding that he quite liked the warm liquid coursing down his throat.

“Feeling alright, Mate?” Ron asked, his eyebrows knit together in a frown.

“I’m fine,” Harry assured him dishonestly. Ron’s friendly term for him just brought on a fresh burst of heartache knowing that his own Mate wasn’t speaking to him.

“Malfoy told us what he did to you, Harry,” Hermione blurted before heaving a sigh of relief at her proclamation. She looked lighter, as if that news had been weighing heavily on her for quite some time, it certainly explained why she hadn’t been prying into his current mood or Draco’s absence –she already knew.

“Yeah, we don’t blame you for giving him the sack,” Ron added.

“I didn’t give him the sack,” Harry bit back rudely. “He left me.”

“But he said you were angry at him for bonding you two together,” Hermione replied, looking confused.

“I was angry, I am angry, but I didn’t break things off with him. He’s the one who walked out, he’s the one who hasn’t said a word to me all weekend,” Harry huffed. “Why would he tell you any of this?”

“He asked me to help him reverse the incantation,” Hermione told him. “He seems rather broken up about it.”

“Good,” Harry scoffed. “He performed magic on me without my permission, he deserves to feel bad.”

Hermione’s face took on a look of abject horror upon hearing those words. Harry was never this cruel, even as he said those things part of him winced in reply. What was happening to him? How could he be so uncaring towards his Mate’s? What was wrong with him now? Wasn’t having a sex crazed beast locked inside his body enough without adding in a multiple personality disorder?

The mere thought of the Incubus had the creature’s instincts rising up in him, forcing his eyes to seek out Draco, who was sitting across the Hall at the Slytherin table. Draco looked up and caught Harry’s gaze, his own eyes hopeful for a moment until he saw the anger emanating from the raven-haired boy. With a sigh, Draco bowed his head back to his own untouched meal and Harry turned back to his friends. “Let’s just leave it, okay? You don’t like Malfoy, Malfoy isn’t good for me, so we should just let it be.”

“Harry, I think you should know, I’ve agreed to help him,” Hermione stated, making it plain that her mind would not be changed. “He seems sincerely devoted to you.”

“I’m sure that’s just the bond,” Harry replied coldly. “Help him if you must, just leave me out of it. I’ll be happy enough to be rid of him.”

Hermione and Ron shared a look of dismay before dropping the subject. Hermione went back to her book while Ron shoved his breakfast into his mouth and neither one brought up the ‘M’ word again.

Potions only brought more questions. Harry expected Snape to be extra cruel to him for the way he’d left him on Friday night, but the man seemed cold and indifferent as usual, and mostly avoided Harry outright. When the assignment was divvied out, Harry felt oddly comfortable with it and started right away. He had no problems dividing and mixing ingredients and had his potion to the appropriate lavender color before even Hermione did.

“How did you do that?” Hermione asked scathingly, staring from his cauldron into her own.

Harry merely shrugged and looked over her ingredients. “You need to add more parsnip root,” he commented. “Just a thin slice more and then four clockwise stirs.”

“That’s not in the textbook,” Hermione chided, narrowing her eyes.

“It’s not?” Harry asked, pulling her book over. He hadn’t even bothered to get his out. The moment Snape told them what the potion was they’d be brewing today Harry had instinctually known exactly how to make it.

“You’re doing this from memory?” Hermione gasped, scrutinizing Harry with more suspicion than she had at breakfast. “What’s going on?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Harry barked harshly. “Maybe some of Draco’s potions talent transferred to me when he bonded us together,” he reasoned, trying to calm himself down. He didn’t understand why his temper continued to flair up at his friends. It certainly wasn’t them he was angry with.

She spared a glance back at the blond who was diligently stirring his own potion. “But even Draco’s reading from his textbook,” she observed and sure enough, when Harry looked back, the boy was bent over the book, sliding his thin finger along the page as he read the passage.

A chill ran down his spine as he looked back into Hermione’s wide brown eyes. “I-I don’t know then,” he whispered truthfully and it frightened him. Too much was changing too quickly and it was horribly overwhelming; he didn’t feel like himself anymore, and this didn’t feel like his life.

“I have a theory but I’d like to run it by Malfoy first,” she told him, chewing at the inside of her lips as she tried not to look too worried. Harry only nodded. “Tell us both after class.” He’d endure a visit with the blond who had betrayed and left him if it got him a resolution to whatever was wrong with him.

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The library was filled with second year Herbology students who were studying for a paper they had to write on Mandrake properties. Harry remembered that essay all too well and didn’t envy the young students. He arrived first, letting Hermione and Ron round up Draco while he headed straight for a seat in the back, as far away from the other students as he could get, to wait for them.

It had only been two days but he could feel his body going through Draco withdrawals. He felt pathetic being addicted to Malfoy like a drug, toxic and blissful all at once. He wanted to wrap himself up in the boy and, if he died that way, he knew it would be a happy suffocation, but he wasn’t ready for that. He wanted more from life than to be tied to the hip of a boy that, up until three days ago, he hated with all his might.

He didn’t know how Malfoy could so easily cast their animosity aside, maybe because the blond was often the instigator of their fights, or maybe because, out of the two of them, Draco was far crueler. He had to admit that the soft and pliable boy he knew of late seemed completely different to the terrible Slytherin brat he’d been accustomed to, but a week of good behavior didn’t outweigh years of bad. Then he had to take into consideration the fact that Draco had taken several liberties with Harry that were not his to take.

The Incubus wanted him, wanted to devour and keep Draco all for himself, but Harry wanted the opposite. He wished he could forget the way it felt to be buried deep within the boy, the way Draco looked with his eyes clouded with lust, or the way he practically sang his name with a need so palpable it set Harry’s flesh ablaze. Merging the two parts of Draco’s personality seemed impossible. Even if Harry could extract all the good bits and leave off the taunting and the sniping and the tricking, he still wondered if it could even work then. Perhaps he and Draco were just too different to be truly happy together.

Then there was this new development; the sudden burst of power he’d been unwilling or unable to control –he still didn’t know which- the rage and bitterness he felt boiling within him even now, the heightened skills… none of it made and sense to him and he just wanted it all to go away, and take the Incubus along with it.

What he had hoped might turn out to be his first normal school year had turned into his worst yet. Voldemort might have been gone but he now had new evils to deal with, terrors that lay in wait beneath his own skin. Why couldn’t he just have peace and quiet for once?

Harry could feel the moment Draco walked into the room. It was like the temperature shifted -growing warmer- and a heady scent filled his nostrils that hadn’t been there before. His skin began to heat up until it was a blazing inferno and Harry nearly winced at the pain of it, but then when his eyes met Draco’s stormy gaze it was like a soothing breeze caressed his skin, cooling his hot flesh to a more tolerable warmth.

“Potter,” Draco greeted curtly with a stony expression. Harry was disappointed to discover he wasn’t able to tell what the boy was feeling because of the powerful shields he’d erected between them.

Harry didn’t say anything. He wasn’t comfortable enough to call him by his first name, nor was he still angry enough to reply in like, so he simply offered the boy a soft smile and gestured to the seat beside him.

Draco’s face softened somewhat at the gesture, but he took the seat across from Harry instead. Hermione and Ron shuffled in right after and Hermione sat next to Draco while Ron took the seat next to Harry. It was as if sides had been drawn on a battlefield, and the tension between everyone was nearly that palpable.

“So, Harry’s been behaving… oddly since we saw him Saturday morning, and Draco, you said that you’ve been feeling off as well, am I right?” Hermione began, forgoing any pleasantries and just jumping to the heart of their problems.

Both boys nodded and Hermione then opened a large book she’d brought into the library with her. “I’ve read this over and over again and it didn’t make much sense to me until this morning in Potions. You see, it says here that the bond you performed was a general incantation if what you told me was correct,” she mentioned, directing her comment to Draco; apparently he had given her the incantation he used so that she could research a counter spell. “The incantation basically merged you two together so that you would share a single consciousness, which would be beneficial to you both with the Incubus lurking inside of you. I can see why it’s part of the ritual for your kind. Once honed, not only would you would be able to sense one another anywhere in the world and be able to communicate without speaking, but your Incubus’ would feed one another through your connection, which would allow for a smoother existence.”

The bond certainly didn’t seem like a bad thing once Hermione described it. Not feeling the urge to fuck something twenty-four hours a day would certainly be a huge relief to him. He couldn’t imagine ever having the opportunity to have a real job, or even leave the house for any great length of time in his current condition. There would be no telling when the Incubus might emerge and how much damage Harry might do. But still, it irked Harry that Draco couldn’t simply discuss it with him, and the fact that his Mate had made the decision without even consulting him was indicative of how things would most likely be between them forever. It was fairly obvious to Harry that Draco still saw himself as superior with all his high society breeding and social status, and that running Harry’s life wouldn’t have ended with this incantation.

“I agree it might have been useful,” Harry replied at last, “eventually.”

Draco’s steely gaze met his for a moment and then returned to the page Hermione was pointing at.

“Well, the problem occurred from the very start I believe,” Hermione pressed on. “When Draco spoke the incantation he wasn’t specific enough, and since the spell is only the last of three ritual parts, it went awry.”

“What do you mean by three ritual parts?” Ron asked.

“Well, the bonding must be performed on both sides, Harry had to give himself over willingly to Draco, and Draco had to return that favor, then the spell would complete the bond,” Hermione explained and Ron flushed a deep crimson, wishing he hadn’t asked.

“Oh,” he muttered at last and Harry smiled slightly at his discomfort.

“But we did all those things,” Draco told Hermione, ignoring Ron’s obvious disapproval of him having sex with Harry.

“Well, yes you did, otherwise it would have failed outright, but as I said before, you weren’t specific enough with the incantation. You didn’t single out you and Harry to be bonded together, and since Snape was part of the first part of the ritual,” she began, and then her voice tapered off as if she didn’t have the stomach to say it out loud.

“Snape is inside of me too?” Harry shouted in disgust, drawing the attention of several students nearby.

Hermione shushed him and Draco paled even more than usual at the implications of what Hermione had said. “Yes and no,” she replied in a hushed whisper. “My assumption is that he was only a minor part of your first time together, correct?”

Harry and Draco exchanged a look of confusion, neither knowing exactly what Hermione meant by ‘minor part’ and not wanting to divulge more than was necessary.

“Did he penetrate either of you?” she clarified, a pink blush creeping up her cheeks as she asked.

“No,” both boys replied in unison.

Ron looked queasy and Hermione seemed relieved. “And I also assume he had no part of the second time, correct?”

“Right,” Harry answered.

“So, only part of his consciousness was shared with you two, but when Draco closed himself off to you, Harry, it made Snape’s voice inside your head more prominent,” she explained. Apparently she’d had a very long conversation with Malfoy if she knew that the Slytherin had severed their mental connection. “It would account for your heightened Potions knowledge and for your recent cruelty, Harry.”

Harry opened his mouth to protest that he hadn’t been cruel, but he quickly snapped it shut. It was true, he had been constantly bitter and angry over the last few days and he hated it. “But then why isn’t Draco having these issues?”

“He would be if he let his wall down,” Hermione told them. “I believe it’s even affecting Snape, he was in a better mood than I’ve ever seen him today.”

“Which is sad, because a good mood for Snape is still a bad day for everyone else,” Ron muttered and the group all found themselves nodding.

“So, what now?” Harry asked.

“Now we try to reverse the incantation and set things to right,” Hermione replied.

Harry and Draco exchanged a look across the table, both boys longing to touch one another but afraid of what that would mean. Draco wanted Harry more than he’d ever wanted anyone, and that alone scared him. His father was still waiting in the shadows to pounce on them and separate him from Harry and, from what he could tell, Harry would prefer to be severed from him.

On the other side of the table Harry was just as conflicted. He truly felt as though he was in love with his Slytherin Mate, but was love enough? Draco had already proven that he was capable of being underhanded with him and negligent of his feelings and rights. He felt as though he couldn’t trust the boy, and what good was love without trust?

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Author's Note: I really love the twists and turns this story is taking on me and it has ended up even deeper than I imagined it could be.