Title: Riting in Fire

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Pairing: Harry/Draco

Warnings: Established relationship, a bit of angst, bonding ritual

Rating: PG-13

Wordcount: 2100

Summary: Harry and Draco have chosen an important way to mark their bond—a way that will leave it imprinted on the skin.

Author's Notes: This is another of my Advent fics, for thady, who gave me the prompt Harry/Draco, writing on skin. Please nothing too dark. This might sound dark, but it really isn't. Happy holidays!

Riting in Fire

"You are both determined and committed?" The nasal voice of the bonding wizard, the same one who had performed Bill and Fleur's wedding, filled the small stone room where Harry and Draco knelt, deep in the bowels of the Ministry.

"Yes," Harry whispered, his gaze never wavering from Draco's. Draco gave him a smile that exposed his teeth, all the way back to the corners of his gums. He looked predatory. He had a flame burning on the tip of his wand. It threw his face into controlled shadows and subdued light.

He looked like the man Harry wanted to bond with.

The bonding wizard nodded, or at least Harry had that impression, but since he didn't want to look up or away from Draco, it was hard to be sure. "Very well. This day, you leave behind all other ties for the primary one of your bonding to each other. You will mark each other with fire to show that." And the bonding wizard stepped back and walked out, locking the door, leaving them in the middle of the room that had nothing but a firepit in the floor.

Draco smiled and held up his wand. Harry mirrored the movement exactly. He had a flame on the end of his wand, too, although Draco's was as blue as lightning and Harry's was the rich scarlet of a phoenix.

"Shall we begin?" Draco whispered, his voice bouncing in unexpected echoes from the corners of the room.

Harry wanted to tell him he sounded exactly like the bonding wizard and not to be an idiot, but he ended up nodding instead, his throat thick. He reached forwards, one hand that Draco caught and held. Draco then turned him so that Harry was standing on the near side of the firepit, facing Draco, parallel to the leaping and flickering flames—white, these were—in the center of the pit.

"Trust me," Draco whispered, and raised his wand to Harry's forehead.

"I do," Harry whispered. Nothing else could have kept him there, not flinching, as the fire that burned on the hawthorn wood of Draco's wand without consuming it came closer and closer.

Draco hesitated for a second. Harry nearly opened his mouth to remind him that hesitation right now could be fatal, but Draco was the one who caught his breath and whispered back, "Then trust me harder than you ever have, just for this little while."

Harry didn't close his eyes as Draco's wand brushed back his fringe, although he could smell the scent of singed hair. He didn't close his eyes as the flame hovered above his eyelids, and then pressed into the lightning bolt scar.

He closed his eyes only when the brilliance became too much, and even then, he took the sight of Draco's tense, exhilarated face into the darkness with him.

Seeing Harry stand there in front of him, all quiet hope and tense expectation at once, his breathing coming a little faster, a little quicker, at the press of Draco's wand into his forehead, made Draco's throat dry out with longing.

This was the Harry he had met after the trials, who had handed him back his hawthorn wand and told him that his sentence of house arrest for two years made him lucky—while his eyes belied him, and told Draco that he never would have wanted to suffer that sentence himself.

This was the Harry Draco had met again at the Ministry, who had stared around the room when none of the Auror trainees wanted to partner up with Draco, and then stumped across the floor to stand with him.

This was the Harry who had given Draco private lessons when he started to fall behind the others in the Auror program, and then gone after the people who were trying to "practice" their torture curses on Draco with a viciousness that still left some of them taking different corridors to avoid Harry, years later.

This was the Harry who had spent time with him of his own free will, successfully and subtly juggled his friends' and Draco's competing claims for attention, and come out of it stronger and better for the struggle, as he had told Draco himself.

This was the man he wanted to bond with.

Draco pressed the fire into the scar, and other than the way Harry's shoulders tensed, there was no sign that it was painful. Draco swirled his wand back and forth, tracing over the lightning bolt scar, writing the words that the ritual required.

Aeterna conlocatio.

The words flashed and shone for a few seconds, suspended in midair above Harry's scar. Then they melted into his hair, wrapping around his forehead in a band like a glowing coronet. They had changed from blue to a mixture of blue and white, and a second later, shining green, deepest black, royal purple.

Draco drew a shaky breath. They had been told the fires would change like that, and something about the colors would represent them, their souls or the joining of their souls, but he really had no idea what those colors meant.

It didn't matter. As the words faded, they took Harry's lightning bolt scar with them. What was left was an entwined symbol of phoenix and tree, the phoenix that Harry felt a kinship to ever since he had returned from death and the tree that had once been a part of the Malfoy symbol. Looked at from a certain angle, the phoenix's wings were the bars of the letter H, the gracefully drooping branches of the tree a formation of D.

And Draco stepped back and lowered his wand, because his part in the ceremony was done, and it was time for Harry to stop shivering as though he stood in a snowstorm and reciprocate.

By the time Harry's eyes did open and he slid to a graceful kneeling posture in front of Draco, reaching out for his left arm, Draco was more than ready.

The tingling of the new mark on his forehead was pure pleasure, pure joy. Harry had never known that would happen. The description of the ceremony had seemed straightforward, one reason they'd chosen it. They would each erase a part of their pasts and enter into a new future together, represented by the intertwined symbols.

But this—this felt better than anything in a long time. Just being near Draco made his body hum and his blood wake up. It was a nice replacement for the pain that Voldemort had been able to cause him through the scar, that was for bloody sure.

Harry had to shake his head to focus back on the ceremony in front of him. He had wanted to do this, and Draco had wanted to do this, and both for his own need and for Draco's pleasure, Harry planned on doing it properly.

He took his wand out and ran it in a gentle caress down the Dark Mark. Draco shifted as if he would shove it in Harry's face. Harry nodded, and the scarlet flame on his wand reached out, dividing, wrapping slender arms around Draco's.

Aeterna conlocatio, Harry traced in the air, above the Mark.

For a second, the dark head of the viper lifted off Draco's arm, fangs snapping and body lashing at the intruder. Harry caught his breath in surprise. His scar hadn't done that, but he supposed he ought to have expected some bloody stubbornness from the bloody Dark Mark.

Then the words settled over it, and melted along the body of the snake, back into the skull, as if the snake was a road. Harry watched, almost holding his breath, and the scarlet flamed and flared and flashed. A phoenix rose out of the ruin of the Dark Mark, for a moment drooping its wings like the branches of the tree that formed beneath it. The flames burned red and orange and gold, living colors, bright colors.

Harry rocked back on his heels and looked up at Draco. Draco was breathing softly, fists clenched, as if this marking had hurt him more than the one he had given Harry had hurt Harry.

Well, that made sense, Harry thought. Draco had borne a deeper wound in the Mark. Harry's scar had never hurt since Voldemort died, but he knew that Draco's Mark had, tingling whenever someone used vile magic nearby.

But their mark was there now, their mark, the phoenix and the tree, the symbols of resurrection and of life, and Draco was already opening his eyes to look down at Harry. Harry stood up, clasping his hands, and leaned forwards.

Draco watched him, face open and not without fear, but also not without courage.

Harry touched his forehead tenderly, smoothing back the limp blond hair. Draco had finally been able to admit he needed help, that he was afraid, and he had come to Harry for help in solving those problems. Harry liked helping people, and he had jumped at the chance when he was sure Draco was sincere.

And Draco had borne up, surviving outside the protection of his parents, something Harry had once thought he never would. He couldn't forget the look in Draco's eyes, the sneer on his face, when he walked into Auror training and everyone turned to gape at him. It had reminded Harry of some of the times that the school had gaped at him when the Daily Prophet was spreading lies.

There were lies in the papers about Draco every day. He had never given them credence. He lived happily in spite of them. He checked his letters for charms and hexes that could hurt him, and had a ward that set fire to Howlers. He ignored the insults tossed his way, because he had Harry at his side and in his bed, and he had met the challenges that had fallen on him after the war with more grace than Harry had the right to ask of anyone.

With more grace than me, sometimes, Harry had to admit. He had exploded at more than one person who had asked questions about his relationship with Draco, even the ones that he knew later had innocent intentions.

Draco had been the one to pull him back, then. And Draco had been the one to confirm that he wanted the bonding when Harry asked for it, and the one to design half their symbol.

Draco was the one smiling at him now, reaching up to trace the new mark on Harry's forehead with one finger. Harry let his hand rest over the discarded Dark Mark in response, and felt it as cool, scarred skin, absolutely normal. If someone wanted to rave and rant about Draco being a Death Eater now, and say the Dark Mark made him so, they would have to come up with some new kind of evidence.

"My hero," Draco whispered to him, and leaned up to kiss him.

Harry kissed him back, hands tightening on his hips, and Draco gasped and stepped away, shaking his head a little.

"We still have part of the bonding to complete," he said, holding out his hand to Harry. "This was only one rite."

Harry knew that, but he still grumbled under his breath as he took Draco's arm and escorted him—or was escorted, it was hard to tell—to the door. Draco moved gracefully, languidly, eyes as heavy-lidded as if they really had completed the bonding the way Harry wanted to complete it.

Harry bowed over him and murmured into his ear, "Tonight?"

Draco nodded, and had no time to say more before the bonding wizard opened the door and they went on to the official registration of their new bond with the Ministry. But his arm was tight around Harry's waist now, his hand hovering just above his arse, and on his arm was the burn of their promise.

Harry shut his eyes, the better to feel the way Draco walked in tune with him. A phoenix and a tree are a pretty good promise of forever.

The End.