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lomonaaerenTitle: A Year Like This
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Background Lucius/Narcissa, otherwise gen
Content Notes: Massive AU (Harry is a Malfoy), angst, violence, dysfunctional family issues
Wordcount: This part 3700
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU. Harry goes back to Hogwarts for his third year, after a charged summer with his family. Sirius Black is still out there somewhere, the Ministry thinks it’s a good idea to send Dementors to the school, Dumbledore has things he wants to talk to Harry about, and Harry still doesn’t really know how to react to the notion that his father was once a Death Eater and his mother would literally kill to protect him. Also, Draco is a very, very annoying brother.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics, being posted between the summer solstice and the beginning of August this year. It’s also part of my “Like a Malfoy” series, and follows “How Like Hatred,” “A Name Like Henry,” and “A Godfather Like Him.” Don’t read this without reading those first. This will likely have five or six parts.
A Year Like This
“You’ll be having weekly sessions with Healer Letham, of course.”
Harry blinked as he looked up at his mother, who was floating robes into a trunk for him. The trunk had been a surprise, new and gleaming proudly in the middle of his bedroom when he’d woken up. Harry had accepted it—it was brilliant, really, with a lock that only he could touch—but he didn’t think he needed that and the new robes Mrs. Malfoy had bought and the eagle-feather quills she was adding to his supplies with a thoughtful curve to her mouth.
“I didn’t think that was allowed,” Harry said.
“Someone told you that children at Hogwarts can’t see Mind-Healers? Who?”
Harry winced a little. Mrs. Malfoy sounded far too interested in that, and he knew that she would pry and pull and treat him like a nut that had to be cracked open if he spent too much time letting her. Healer Letham sometimes felt as if she was doing that, too, but she was allowed.
And Harry didn’t have the same confused reaction to her that he did to his family.
“No one. I mean, I didn’t think students were allowed to leave the grounds to meet with their families or anyone else during the school year.”
Mrs. Malfoy smiled at him and stepped forwards to smooth his hair out. Harry had noticed that her touches had got lighter for a while over the summer, but now they were getting heavier again, as if she wanted to memorize what he felt like before he left for Hogwarts.
Harry wasn’t sure if that was an insight he would have had before he started having sessions with Healer Letham. It was—sometimes he didn’t like to think about. About the way he was changing from the person he used to be.
“Of course, most of the time that is true,” Mrs. Malfoy said. “Hogwarts is meant to teach students some degree of independence from their families and promote friendships within the House. But the Malfoys are not an ordinary family.”
“You mean Father bribed someone,” Harry said, resigned.
Mrs. Malfoy’s eyes still went a little misty when he referred to Mr. Malfoy as Father. Harry didn’t know if that was also something he noticed because of his sessions with Healer Letham, or if he would have noticed it before. “Of course he did. He would do anything for you, Henry.”
The name flowed easily from her lips now. More and more, Harry had the feeling that she saw him, and not the little boy that Healer Letham said the Malfoys had told stories about to each other and dreamed of when Harry was kidnapped when he was a baby.
By Sirius Black. Who was sane now.
Harry shook his head. Sane, but still running around somewhere, and he hadn’t come to the Ministry to try and tell them the truth about Peter Pettigrew. Harry thought he was still trying to hunt Pettigrew down.
Harry himself had written a secret message to the Ministry about Pettigrew that he’d had Dobby smuggle to them. But even though Dobby had assured Harry solemnly that he’d delivered the message, and Harry was sure he had, there’d been no response. Harry wondered whether someone had thought he was lying or mad.
“Henry? Are you listening?”
Harry sighed and blinked up at his mother. “Right. Father bribed someone. So I can go and see Healer Letham on the weekends?”
“Of course. And we’ll take you to Hogsmeade for sweets afterwards.”
Harry tensed. “Is Draco going to be all right with that?”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
Mrs. Malfoy seemed genuinely bewildered, so Harry tried to explain, even though he wasn’t sure that he had the right words. “I mean, my cousin Dudley—the boy I thought was my cousin Dudley—he would be really upset if someone else got something he could have. Draco might want to come for sweets, too. He might want to leave Hogwarts on the weekends, too. And he might be upset if I’m spending time with you and he’s not.”
His mother’s mouth twisted into a hard line. “Draco had us all to himself for twelve years, Henry. I think that he will realize sometimes we want to spend time with one of our sons, not both.”
Harry thought what Dudley would be like if he had a brother, and how much Draco had reminded him of Dudley the first time they’d met in Madam Malkin’s shop. But he also thought of how much Draco had changed in the last little while, along with their parents, and he didn’t say anything.
What did he know about having a brother?
*
“You are to write to us every week.”
Mr. Malfoy still sounded sterner than Harry thought he meant to. Healer Letham would probably say he was trying. Harry could try, too. So he nodded and said, “Yes, Father,” managing to put in the word “Father” for “sir” at the last moment.
Mr. Malfoy eyed him for a moment, and then dropped abruptly to give Harry a hug. Harry stood frozen for a second before he hugged him back. Behind them, the Hogwarts Express gave a long, urgent call.
“You know I love you,” Mr. Malfoy whispered into his ear.
And Harry had to nod, because he did know. He didn’t think it was the kind of love that he would have got from the Potters, but it wasn’t like he really remembered them, or thought of them the same way after knowing what they’d done.
He was probably going to take a long time to figure out who he really was, and that would just have to be what he lived with.
“Henry, come on!” yelled Draco from the train, practically hopping up and down, waving his hand to hurry him along.
“Go and see your brother,” Mr. Malfoy said, and released Harry with a lingering touch to his forehead. To his scar? Harry didn’t know. “And don’t hold it against your mother that she couldn’t bear to see you off. She’ll see you next weekend, after your first session with your Healer.”
Harry nodded. He honestly understood why Mrs. Malfoy hadn’t wanted to see Harry go away. Even if they would see each other so soon that the thought practically made Harry’s head spin. Even when he’d dreamed about having parents, he hadn’t thought he would be so different from the other kids at Hogwarts that he would get to spend this much time with them.
“Henry!”
“Go,” Mr. Malfoy said softly, and didn’t stop watching as Harry scrambled onto the Express to join his twin.
Harry waved back to him, as Draco was enthusiastically doing, and noted that Mr. Malfoy never looked away as the train sped off, turning a little as though he could follow it all the way to Hogwarts.
*
Sitting in the last compartment with the sleeping man who had Remus J. Lupin on his trunk had seemed like a good idea at the time, after Harry had said hello to Ron and Hermione. As Draco had said, if they tried to sit with both sets of their friends, they’d just be in the middle of a fight. And Harry had recognized the man’s name from Sirius’s story and had been interested to see what would happen if he woke up and talked.
But then it all started to go wrong. Because they had only played two games of Exploding Snap when Draco looked over at Lupin and sniffed.
“Imagine, having clothes that shabby!” he said, in what he probably thought was a soft voice. But Draco often had delusions about things like that. “And that trunk—it might have come from the war with Grindelwald.”
“You shut up.”
Draco stared at him. “What?”
“You. Shut. Up.” Harry spoke really quietly, but he could feel the rage brewing in the middle of his chest. Even he was surprised at how strong it was, but it was. “You have no idea what it’s like. To be poor, and just happy that you have clothes. Even if the clothes don’t fit. And possessions at all, even if they aren’t new.”
“The Muggles,” Draco said, with more understanding than Harry had expected him to show. But then he ruined it again. “But that doesn’t matter. You were never really poor, you were one of us. And he’s not.”
“So what?” Harry demanded. “Do you have to hate everyone who’s poorer than you?”
“No. I just think they aren’t as good as us.”
Harry shook his head. “They can be as good or as bad, Draco. Having money has nothing to do with who you are as a person.”
Draco blinked. “Yes, it does. Of course it does. It makes you more capable of holding intelligent conversations and—”
“What a load of rubbish, Malfoy.”
Ron and Hermione had slipped into the compartment, and Harry smiled gratefully at them. He didn’t know what Draco had been about to say, and he didn’t know how he would have reacted. “Hey! Did you get bored sitting with the other Gryffindors?”
Hermione snorted and sat down on Harry’s other side, ignoring the way Draco and Ron were glaring at each other. “Neville was fine. He has interesting things to say about Herbology, if anyone ever thought to listen. But Seamus was trying to light a Cauldron Cake on fire, and Dean was encouraging him. And all Parvati and Lavender want to talk about is some Quidditch player who got caught cheating on his wife.”
“People with money aren’t inherently more intelligent, Malfoy!”
“But they have greater sophistication, Weasley. If you paid the least bit of attention to history—”
“The history where your dad was a Death Eater?”
Draco’s face turned a bright and shiny pink, and he leaped up. “You take that back! He was under the Imperius! Everyone knows it!”
Ron laughed loudly enough that people on the other side of the planet probably heard him. Harry winced. “Only everyone who hasn’t taken his bribes. That’s another thing money does, it makes you—”
“Why is it so cold?”
Harry blinked and turned to look at Hermione. She was rubbing her arms with both hands, her eyes wide. When she glanced at Harry, he saw that her lips were blue. And then she breathed out, and a cloud of her breath went up in front of them.
“Why is it?” Draco said, sounding surprised.
Harry was glad that someone had distracted his brother and best friend from arguing, but he didn’t like the feeling that was creeping over him. Not just cold, he thought, and shivered. There was something walking towards him, like the greatest danger he’d ever felt. Like being back in the room with the Mirror of Erised and Quirrell being possessed by Voldemort again.
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “I want to get out of here.”
Darkness swept over them, and Harry realized then that he hadn’t even noticed the train stopping and the lights going out. He stared wildly around, and then at the door of their compartment. It was rattling.
Somewhere in the distance, other students screamed. But even that wasn’t as bad as the rattling door. And what would come through it.
Harry found himself backing up. He knew he should draw his wand and at least try to stand up in front of the threat, like a brave Gryffindor. But he couldn’t. His breath was choking him, and his heartbeat was hurting him, and even Sirius Black sitting on his windowsill had never scared him this badly.
The door slid open. A creature that stood so tall its head must be brushing the ceiling melted in. It had long robes, or maybe long wings, and its hands reached out towards Harry.
His eyes crossed and darkness surged around him. He could hear a voice laughing, and another voice screaming, “Not Harry! Not Harry!”
He crumpled to the floor, aware of someone shouting and shaking him, and then a sudden blaze of silver light.
Harry breathed, and it was like he’d been trying to breathe poison air and could suddenly breathe the fresh stuff again. He heard Draco saying, “Henry? Henry!”
It was so like the voice in the dream, or the vision, or whatever it had been, that he shivered again. But the cold was really gone, and he slowly worked himself back to his knees, with Draco hovering over him like he was going to kick everyone else out of the compartment any second.
“Are you all right, Mr. Potter?”
Harry glanced up with a gasp. Mr. Lupin was standing next to him, bending down and staring at him in concern.
“That’s not his name,” Draco said in the coldest voice Harry had ever heard him use. “His name is Henry Malfoy, and I want you to get away from my brother.” Now he had his wand drawn and pointing right at Lupin.
“My apologies,” Lupin said, without looking away from Harry. His nostrils fluttered just a little. Harry didn’t think he would have seen it if he didn’t already know Lupin was a werewolf. “But I think Mr. Malfoy should be able to say for himself what he wants to be called.”
Harry swallowed. “You know that I’m not really Harry Potter. I was kidnapped when I was a baby. It was all over the papers. Right?”
Lupin’s eyes widened a little. “Of course it was,” he said, stepping back. “But I still think everyone deserves the right to choose their own name.” He reached into a robe pocket and brought out a heavy packet of chocolate, which he started breaking up. “And a little chocolate, too. It’s medicinal when encountering Dementors.”
“Why are Dementors on the train?” Hermione demanded, sounding horrified.
“Hunting for Sirius Black.” Lupin’s face closed a little when he said that name, but again, Harry thought, it wasn’t something you would notice unless you were specifically looking for it. “When they come close, you relive your worst memories. Chocolate helps revive you.” He held out a piece insistently to Harry.
Harry took the piece and nibbled on it, ignoring the way that Draco hissed into his ear not to eat it. He still didn’t know for certain if Lupin had known about the kidnapping when Harry was a baby, but he didn’t think the man meant him any harm.
And the chocolate did help. It was like liquid warmth slid down his throat, and the air became even fresher. Harry smiled at Lupin, who smiled back, and opened his mouth to say something else, but Ron interrupted.
“What did you do to drive off that Dementor, Mr. Lupin? That was wicked!”
Lupin smiled at Ron and turned his head a little, without really taking his eyes off Harry. “It’s called the Patronus Charm. It summons a guardian that drives Dementors away. It takes a lot of skill and practice, but it’s something that we should perhaps work on learning together this year.”
“Why are you coming to the school exactly, sir?” Hermione asked.
“I’m the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.” Lupin smiled at her, too, and at last looked away from Harry, to his relief. “Fighting Dark creatures is part of what I do.” Then he looked right back at Harry again. “And you never did tell me what you want to be called, Mr…?”
“Malfoy,” Harry said. He’d made his decision. Maybe Lupin was someone he could trust, at least to try and get truth about Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew out to the Ministry. But he couldn’t trust him right now. And Sirius was still guilty of kidnapping Harry from his birth family, and Lupin might have known about it. “Henry Malfoy.”
Lupin sighed a little and nodded. “Of course. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to sit down again. Casting the Patronus Charm takes a lot out of someone.” He almost collapsed back into the seat he’d been sleeping in before.
Or the full moon does, Harry thought. He still wasn’t sure what to do with the knowledge that Lupin was a werewolf. Draco would probably have told him to blackmail Lupin with it, but Harry had some ethics Draco would never understand.
“Come on, Henry. We’re leaving.”
“Why?” Harry demanded, more because he didn’t want to just let Draco drag him everywhere than because he really objected. “I feel fine.”
“You don’t look fine, mate,” Ron said. Him supporting Draco was so strange that Harry just gaped at him. But Ron glared back. “You’re pale and shaking and look like you might collapse any second. Go sit down somewhere warm and eat some chocolate. And remember that money doesn’t make you a good person.”
Draco bristled, but didn’t say anything. He just yanked Harry out of the compartment, barely giving him time to wave goodbye to Ron and Hermione. Then he kept going down the train until he found a compartment with a few first-years in it, and glared at them until they squeaked and ran away.
“Draco,” Harry started to say, but Draco slammed the door shut and turned to him.
“You could have died! The Dementor was heading right for you!”
Oh. Well, that explained a few things. Harry had known that the Malfoys were paranoid about losing him—that was one reason Mrs. Malfoy had done what she did to Sirius on the day that he’d tried to kidnap Harry again—but he hadn’t realized that Draco would think of the Dementor the same way.
“I know,” he said softly. “But I’m still here.”
Draco gripped his shoulder and shook it, then let him go abruptly and began stalking around the compartment, waving his arms. “What is the Minister thinking? He normally never does anything without Father’s permission, but we had no idea about this! Are the Dementors even under anyone’s control, if they’re going to roam around the train and attack random students? Are they going to be at the school all year long? What is Fudge doing?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said, smiling. He had come up with a great idea. “But I know a way that we could get Fudge to back off on having them here.”
“How?”
“We tell him that Sirius is innocent of the crime he was accused of.”
“He is fucking not!” Draco was almost foaming at the mouth, but the thing that surprised Harry most was his swearing. “He kidnapped you, and I’m always going to remember and hate him for that!”
“I meant, betraying the Potters,” Harry said as patiently as he could. “Remember that he was never formally arrested and tried for the kidnapping. The Dementors are hunting him because they thought he was the Potters’ Secret-Keeper and because he broke out of Azkaban. If we can prove that he never did the one thing and they’re hunting an innocent man, then the Dementors will go back to Azkaban and the Minister will have to do something else about Sirius.”
“A formal trial for the kidnapping?”
“It’s a possibility,” Harry pointed out. He wasn’t sure it would go that far, mainly because he had no idea where Sirius was right now, and no idea whether the Minister would try him for something that had happened twelve years ago and that a lot of people still wanted to believe wasn’t true. But he didn’t want to explain all that to Draco right now.
Draco lowered his head and walked back and forth, thinking. Harry waited patiently. He didn’t always understand his brother as well as Draco seemed to understand him, but he thought Draco would make the right decision now. He didn’t want Harry eaten by Dementors any more than Harry wanted to be eaten.
“No.”
Harry started. “What?”
Draco turned and looked at him, eyes blazing. Harry would have fallen back if he thought there was any chance his brother would ever hurt him. He didn’t, but it was still suddenly uncomfortable to be in the same room with Draco.
“You don’t want Black punished,” Draco said. “Not really. You think that because he was in Azkaban for twelve years, what happened to him was enough. And he was innocent of the crime he was accused of.
“But he isn’t innocent of his real crime. And nothing will ever be enough for what he did. I don’t think I can hurt him, though. The only thing I can hope for is that a Dementor eats his soul. That’s the only way to make him really pay for what he did.”
“Draco.”
“We suffered every single day. Three people who never knew what happened to you. Even if he suffered a lot in Azkaban, we suffered three times as much as he did. He has to pay, Henry.”
Harry swallowed. The sound was painfully loud in the silent compartment. He shook his head.
“Do you know what I saw when the Dementor came close?” Draco demanded.
“No,” Harry whispered.
“The first time I really realized you were gone. When I was six. Before that, Mother told me, but I didn’t really know.” Draco’s face was so pale that Harry really thought he would faint. It looked like a skull. “That was when she told me the story again, and it hit me that I’d had a brother and I might never know what happened to you. I started crying. I couldn’t stop. Father had to feed me a Calming Draught to get me to stop crying and go to sleep. That’s what the Dementor showed me.” He paused. “What did yours show you?”
Harry supposed he could have lied and said something that would fit better with the Malfoys and what they wanted from him. But Draco had told him the truth, and Harry would tell him the same thing.
“My—adoptive mother,” he whispered. “Voldemort killing her.”
Draco nodded, his face distant and still like a skull, and turned around and walked out of the compartment.
Harry sat back on the seat and stayed there by himself until Ron and Hermione found him.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Background Lucius/Narcissa, otherwise gen
Content Notes: Massive AU (Harry is a Malfoy), angst, violence, dysfunctional family issues
Wordcount: This part 3700
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU. Harry goes back to Hogwarts for his third year, after a charged summer with his family. Sirius Black is still out there somewhere, the Ministry thinks it’s a good idea to send Dementors to the school, Dumbledore has things he wants to talk to Harry about, and Harry still doesn’t really know how to react to the notion that his father was once a Death Eater and his mother would literally kill to protect him. Also, Draco is a very, very annoying brother.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics, being posted between the summer solstice and the beginning of August this year. It’s also part of my “Like a Malfoy” series, and follows “How Like Hatred,” “A Name Like Henry,” and “A Godfather Like Him.” Don’t read this without reading those first. This will likely have five or six parts.
A Year Like This
“You’ll be having weekly sessions with Healer Letham, of course.”
Harry blinked as he looked up at his mother, who was floating robes into a trunk for him. The trunk had been a surprise, new and gleaming proudly in the middle of his bedroom when he’d woken up. Harry had accepted it—it was brilliant, really, with a lock that only he could touch—but he didn’t think he needed that and the new robes Mrs. Malfoy had bought and the eagle-feather quills she was adding to his supplies with a thoughtful curve to her mouth.
“I didn’t think that was allowed,” Harry said.
“Someone told you that children at Hogwarts can’t see Mind-Healers? Who?”
Harry winced a little. Mrs. Malfoy sounded far too interested in that, and he knew that she would pry and pull and treat him like a nut that had to be cracked open if he spent too much time letting her. Healer Letham sometimes felt as if she was doing that, too, but she was allowed.
And Harry didn’t have the same confused reaction to her that he did to his family.
“No one. I mean, I didn’t think students were allowed to leave the grounds to meet with their families or anyone else during the school year.”
Mrs. Malfoy smiled at him and stepped forwards to smooth his hair out. Harry had noticed that her touches had got lighter for a while over the summer, but now they were getting heavier again, as if she wanted to memorize what he felt like before he left for Hogwarts.
Harry wasn’t sure if that was an insight he would have had before he started having sessions with Healer Letham. It was—sometimes he didn’t like to think about. About the way he was changing from the person he used to be.
“Of course, most of the time that is true,” Mrs. Malfoy said. “Hogwarts is meant to teach students some degree of independence from their families and promote friendships within the House. But the Malfoys are not an ordinary family.”
“You mean Father bribed someone,” Harry said, resigned.
Mrs. Malfoy’s eyes still went a little misty when he referred to Mr. Malfoy as Father. Harry didn’t know if that was also something he noticed because of his sessions with Healer Letham, or if he would have noticed it before. “Of course he did. He would do anything for you, Henry.”
The name flowed easily from her lips now. More and more, Harry had the feeling that she saw him, and not the little boy that Healer Letham said the Malfoys had told stories about to each other and dreamed of when Harry was kidnapped when he was a baby.
By Sirius Black. Who was sane now.
Harry shook his head. Sane, but still running around somewhere, and he hadn’t come to the Ministry to try and tell them the truth about Peter Pettigrew. Harry thought he was still trying to hunt Pettigrew down.
Harry himself had written a secret message to the Ministry about Pettigrew that he’d had Dobby smuggle to them. But even though Dobby had assured Harry solemnly that he’d delivered the message, and Harry was sure he had, there’d been no response. Harry wondered whether someone had thought he was lying or mad.
“Henry? Are you listening?”
Harry sighed and blinked up at his mother. “Right. Father bribed someone. So I can go and see Healer Letham on the weekends?”
“Of course. And we’ll take you to Hogsmeade for sweets afterwards.”
Harry tensed. “Is Draco going to be all right with that?”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
Mrs. Malfoy seemed genuinely bewildered, so Harry tried to explain, even though he wasn’t sure that he had the right words. “I mean, my cousin Dudley—the boy I thought was my cousin Dudley—he would be really upset if someone else got something he could have. Draco might want to come for sweets, too. He might want to leave Hogwarts on the weekends, too. And he might be upset if I’m spending time with you and he’s not.”
His mother’s mouth twisted into a hard line. “Draco had us all to himself for twelve years, Henry. I think that he will realize sometimes we want to spend time with one of our sons, not both.”
Harry thought what Dudley would be like if he had a brother, and how much Draco had reminded him of Dudley the first time they’d met in Madam Malkin’s shop. But he also thought of how much Draco had changed in the last little while, along with their parents, and he didn’t say anything.
What did he know about having a brother?
*
“You are to write to us every week.”
Mr. Malfoy still sounded sterner than Harry thought he meant to. Healer Letham would probably say he was trying. Harry could try, too. So he nodded and said, “Yes, Father,” managing to put in the word “Father” for “sir” at the last moment.
Mr. Malfoy eyed him for a moment, and then dropped abruptly to give Harry a hug. Harry stood frozen for a second before he hugged him back. Behind them, the Hogwarts Express gave a long, urgent call.
“You know I love you,” Mr. Malfoy whispered into his ear.
And Harry had to nod, because he did know. He didn’t think it was the kind of love that he would have got from the Potters, but it wasn’t like he really remembered them, or thought of them the same way after knowing what they’d done.
He was probably going to take a long time to figure out who he really was, and that would just have to be what he lived with.
“Henry, come on!” yelled Draco from the train, practically hopping up and down, waving his hand to hurry him along.
“Go and see your brother,” Mr. Malfoy said, and released Harry with a lingering touch to his forehead. To his scar? Harry didn’t know. “And don’t hold it against your mother that she couldn’t bear to see you off. She’ll see you next weekend, after your first session with your Healer.”
Harry nodded. He honestly understood why Mrs. Malfoy hadn’t wanted to see Harry go away. Even if they would see each other so soon that the thought practically made Harry’s head spin. Even when he’d dreamed about having parents, he hadn’t thought he would be so different from the other kids at Hogwarts that he would get to spend this much time with them.
“Henry!”
“Go,” Mr. Malfoy said softly, and didn’t stop watching as Harry scrambled onto the Express to join his twin.
Harry waved back to him, as Draco was enthusiastically doing, and noted that Mr. Malfoy never looked away as the train sped off, turning a little as though he could follow it all the way to Hogwarts.
*
Sitting in the last compartment with the sleeping man who had Remus J. Lupin on his trunk had seemed like a good idea at the time, after Harry had said hello to Ron and Hermione. As Draco had said, if they tried to sit with both sets of their friends, they’d just be in the middle of a fight. And Harry had recognized the man’s name from Sirius’s story and had been interested to see what would happen if he woke up and talked.
But then it all started to go wrong. Because they had only played two games of Exploding Snap when Draco looked over at Lupin and sniffed.
“Imagine, having clothes that shabby!” he said, in what he probably thought was a soft voice. But Draco often had delusions about things like that. “And that trunk—it might have come from the war with Grindelwald.”
“You shut up.”
Draco stared at him. “What?”
“You. Shut. Up.” Harry spoke really quietly, but he could feel the rage brewing in the middle of his chest. Even he was surprised at how strong it was, but it was. “You have no idea what it’s like. To be poor, and just happy that you have clothes. Even if the clothes don’t fit. And possessions at all, even if they aren’t new.”
“The Muggles,” Draco said, with more understanding than Harry had expected him to show. But then he ruined it again. “But that doesn’t matter. You were never really poor, you were one of us. And he’s not.”
“So what?” Harry demanded. “Do you have to hate everyone who’s poorer than you?”
“No. I just think they aren’t as good as us.”
Harry shook his head. “They can be as good or as bad, Draco. Having money has nothing to do with who you are as a person.”
Draco blinked. “Yes, it does. Of course it does. It makes you more capable of holding intelligent conversations and—”
“What a load of rubbish, Malfoy.”
Ron and Hermione had slipped into the compartment, and Harry smiled gratefully at them. He didn’t know what Draco had been about to say, and he didn’t know how he would have reacted. “Hey! Did you get bored sitting with the other Gryffindors?”
Hermione snorted and sat down on Harry’s other side, ignoring the way Draco and Ron were glaring at each other. “Neville was fine. He has interesting things to say about Herbology, if anyone ever thought to listen. But Seamus was trying to light a Cauldron Cake on fire, and Dean was encouraging him. And all Parvati and Lavender want to talk about is some Quidditch player who got caught cheating on his wife.”
“People with money aren’t inherently more intelligent, Malfoy!”
“But they have greater sophistication, Weasley. If you paid the least bit of attention to history—”
“The history where your dad was a Death Eater?”
Draco’s face turned a bright and shiny pink, and he leaped up. “You take that back! He was under the Imperius! Everyone knows it!”
Ron laughed loudly enough that people on the other side of the planet probably heard him. Harry winced. “Only everyone who hasn’t taken his bribes. That’s another thing money does, it makes you—”
“Why is it so cold?”
Harry blinked and turned to look at Hermione. She was rubbing her arms with both hands, her eyes wide. When she glanced at Harry, he saw that her lips were blue. And then she breathed out, and a cloud of her breath went up in front of them.
“Why is it?” Draco said, sounding surprised.
Harry was glad that someone had distracted his brother and best friend from arguing, but he didn’t like the feeling that was creeping over him. Not just cold, he thought, and shivered. There was something walking towards him, like the greatest danger he’d ever felt. Like being back in the room with the Mirror of Erised and Quirrell being possessed by Voldemort again.
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “I want to get out of here.”
Darkness swept over them, and Harry realized then that he hadn’t even noticed the train stopping and the lights going out. He stared wildly around, and then at the door of their compartment. It was rattling.
Somewhere in the distance, other students screamed. But even that wasn’t as bad as the rattling door. And what would come through it.
Harry found himself backing up. He knew he should draw his wand and at least try to stand up in front of the threat, like a brave Gryffindor. But he couldn’t. His breath was choking him, and his heartbeat was hurting him, and even Sirius Black sitting on his windowsill had never scared him this badly.
The door slid open. A creature that stood so tall its head must be brushing the ceiling melted in. It had long robes, or maybe long wings, and its hands reached out towards Harry.
His eyes crossed and darkness surged around him. He could hear a voice laughing, and another voice screaming, “Not Harry! Not Harry!”
He crumpled to the floor, aware of someone shouting and shaking him, and then a sudden blaze of silver light.
Harry breathed, and it was like he’d been trying to breathe poison air and could suddenly breathe the fresh stuff again. He heard Draco saying, “Henry? Henry!”
It was so like the voice in the dream, or the vision, or whatever it had been, that he shivered again. But the cold was really gone, and he slowly worked himself back to his knees, with Draco hovering over him like he was going to kick everyone else out of the compartment any second.
“Are you all right, Mr. Potter?”
Harry glanced up with a gasp. Mr. Lupin was standing next to him, bending down and staring at him in concern.
“That’s not his name,” Draco said in the coldest voice Harry had ever heard him use. “His name is Henry Malfoy, and I want you to get away from my brother.” Now he had his wand drawn and pointing right at Lupin.
“My apologies,” Lupin said, without looking away from Harry. His nostrils fluttered just a little. Harry didn’t think he would have seen it if he didn’t already know Lupin was a werewolf. “But I think Mr. Malfoy should be able to say for himself what he wants to be called.”
Harry swallowed. “You know that I’m not really Harry Potter. I was kidnapped when I was a baby. It was all over the papers. Right?”
Lupin’s eyes widened a little. “Of course it was,” he said, stepping back. “But I still think everyone deserves the right to choose their own name.” He reached into a robe pocket and brought out a heavy packet of chocolate, which he started breaking up. “And a little chocolate, too. It’s medicinal when encountering Dementors.”
“Why are Dementors on the train?” Hermione demanded, sounding horrified.
“Hunting for Sirius Black.” Lupin’s face closed a little when he said that name, but again, Harry thought, it wasn’t something you would notice unless you were specifically looking for it. “When they come close, you relive your worst memories. Chocolate helps revive you.” He held out a piece insistently to Harry.
Harry took the piece and nibbled on it, ignoring the way that Draco hissed into his ear not to eat it. He still didn’t know for certain if Lupin had known about the kidnapping when Harry was a baby, but he didn’t think the man meant him any harm.
And the chocolate did help. It was like liquid warmth slid down his throat, and the air became even fresher. Harry smiled at Lupin, who smiled back, and opened his mouth to say something else, but Ron interrupted.
“What did you do to drive off that Dementor, Mr. Lupin? That was wicked!”
Lupin smiled at Ron and turned his head a little, without really taking his eyes off Harry. “It’s called the Patronus Charm. It summons a guardian that drives Dementors away. It takes a lot of skill and practice, but it’s something that we should perhaps work on learning together this year.”
“Why are you coming to the school exactly, sir?” Hermione asked.
“I’m the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.” Lupin smiled at her, too, and at last looked away from Harry, to his relief. “Fighting Dark creatures is part of what I do.” Then he looked right back at Harry again. “And you never did tell me what you want to be called, Mr…?”
“Malfoy,” Harry said. He’d made his decision. Maybe Lupin was someone he could trust, at least to try and get truth about Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew out to the Ministry. But he couldn’t trust him right now. And Sirius was still guilty of kidnapping Harry from his birth family, and Lupin might have known about it. “Henry Malfoy.”
Lupin sighed a little and nodded. “Of course. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to sit down again. Casting the Patronus Charm takes a lot out of someone.” He almost collapsed back into the seat he’d been sleeping in before.
Or the full moon does, Harry thought. He still wasn’t sure what to do with the knowledge that Lupin was a werewolf. Draco would probably have told him to blackmail Lupin with it, but Harry had some ethics Draco would never understand.
“Come on, Henry. We’re leaving.”
“Why?” Harry demanded, more because he didn’t want to just let Draco drag him everywhere than because he really objected. “I feel fine.”
“You don’t look fine, mate,” Ron said. Him supporting Draco was so strange that Harry just gaped at him. But Ron glared back. “You’re pale and shaking and look like you might collapse any second. Go sit down somewhere warm and eat some chocolate. And remember that money doesn’t make you a good person.”
Draco bristled, but didn’t say anything. He just yanked Harry out of the compartment, barely giving him time to wave goodbye to Ron and Hermione. Then he kept going down the train until he found a compartment with a few first-years in it, and glared at them until they squeaked and ran away.
“Draco,” Harry started to say, but Draco slammed the door shut and turned to him.
“You could have died! The Dementor was heading right for you!”
Oh. Well, that explained a few things. Harry had known that the Malfoys were paranoid about losing him—that was one reason Mrs. Malfoy had done what she did to Sirius on the day that he’d tried to kidnap Harry again—but he hadn’t realized that Draco would think of the Dementor the same way.
“I know,” he said softly. “But I’m still here.”
Draco gripped his shoulder and shook it, then let him go abruptly and began stalking around the compartment, waving his arms. “What is the Minister thinking? He normally never does anything without Father’s permission, but we had no idea about this! Are the Dementors even under anyone’s control, if they’re going to roam around the train and attack random students? Are they going to be at the school all year long? What is Fudge doing?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said, smiling. He had come up with a great idea. “But I know a way that we could get Fudge to back off on having them here.”
“How?”
“We tell him that Sirius is innocent of the crime he was accused of.”
“He is fucking not!” Draco was almost foaming at the mouth, but the thing that surprised Harry most was his swearing. “He kidnapped you, and I’m always going to remember and hate him for that!”
“I meant, betraying the Potters,” Harry said as patiently as he could. “Remember that he was never formally arrested and tried for the kidnapping. The Dementors are hunting him because they thought he was the Potters’ Secret-Keeper and because he broke out of Azkaban. If we can prove that he never did the one thing and they’re hunting an innocent man, then the Dementors will go back to Azkaban and the Minister will have to do something else about Sirius.”
“A formal trial for the kidnapping?”
“It’s a possibility,” Harry pointed out. He wasn’t sure it would go that far, mainly because he had no idea where Sirius was right now, and no idea whether the Minister would try him for something that had happened twelve years ago and that a lot of people still wanted to believe wasn’t true. But he didn’t want to explain all that to Draco right now.
Draco lowered his head and walked back and forth, thinking. Harry waited patiently. He didn’t always understand his brother as well as Draco seemed to understand him, but he thought Draco would make the right decision now. He didn’t want Harry eaten by Dementors any more than Harry wanted to be eaten.
“No.”
Harry started. “What?”
Draco turned and looked at him, eyes blazing. Harry would have fallen back if he thought there was any chance his brother would ever hurt him. He didn’t, but it was still suddenly uncomfortable to be in the same room with Draco.
“You don’t want Black punished,” Draco said. “Not really. You think that because he was in Azkaban for twelve years, what happened to him was enough. And he was innocent of the crime he was accused of.
“But he isn’t innocent of his real crime. And nothing will ever be enough for what he did. I don’t think I can hurt him, though. The only thing I can hope for is that a Dementor eats his soul. That’s the only way to make him really pay for what he did.”
“Draco.”
“We suffered every single day. Three people who never knew what happened to you. Even if he suffered a lot in Azkaban, we suffered three times as much as he did. He has to pay, Henry.”
Harry swallowed. The sound was painfully loud in the silent compartment. He shook his head.
“Do you know what I saw when the Dementor came close?” Draco demanded.
“No,” Harry whispered.
“The first time I really realized you were gone. When I was six. Before that, Mother told me, but I didn’t really know.” Draco’s face was so pale that Harry really thought he would faint. It looked like a skull. “That was when she told me the story again, and it hit me that I’d had a brother and I might never know what happened to you. I started crying. I couldn’t stop. Father had to feed me a Calming Draught to get me to stop crying and go to sleep. That’s what the Dementor showed me.” He paused. “What did yours show you?”
Harry supposed he could have lied and said something that would fit better with the Malfoys and what they wanted from him. But Draco had told him the truth, and Harry would tell him the same thing.
“My—adoptive mother,” he whispered. “Voldemort killing her.”
Draco nodded, his face distant and still like a skull, and turned around and walked out of the compartment.
Harry sat back on the seat and stayed there by himself until Ron and Hermione found him.
