[From Litha to Lammas]: A Year Like This, Malfoy series, gen, PG-13, 2/5 or 6

[lomonaaeren]

Part One.

Title: A Year Like This (2/6)
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 5000
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.

Thank you for all the reviews!

Part Two

“Your father is very displeased with Minister Fudge.”

Harry had to smile a little as he sat down across from Healer Letham on a grey couch in a room on the sixth floor. Apparently, Mr. Malfoy’s bribery had included a way to get and decorate a room in the castle. Harry would have worried about the security and whether someone was listening in, but Healer Letham had spent their first ten minutes today casting a series of privacy charms. The air in the room still bristled and sparkled.

“Yes, Mother said.” Harry licked his lips. “You don’t disapprove of the way that Father bribes him? Or the way that he bribed people so we could meet?”

“My judgments about your family wouldn’t be helpful to you. At least right now.” Healer Letham shrugged and curled one foot under one leg, letting the other dangle down towards the floor. The room really had become almost a replica of the one where they’d met for the summer in Malfoy Manor, although the walls were stone instead of hidden behind paneling. “If the day ever comes when they are, you can be sure I’ll tell you.”

“All right.” Harry hesitated. “Does it have to be about my family? Can I talk to you about my professors?”

“Yes, you can. Are you having problems with them?”

“Not all of them. They had half a year to get used to calling me Henry Malfoy. But two of them are acting kind of strange…”

“Do tell me.”

Harry nodded slowly and sat up. He felt better when he was honest with Healer Letham and allowed her to help him. It was an odd sensation, since in the past, the thought of talking to someone like this would have made him choke. But he supposed that his name and appearance weren’t the only things that had changed a lot in the past year.

“One of them’s Professor Snape,” Harry said. “He was kind of devastated last year when it turned out that I wasn’t who he thought I was. I think because he hated my father, except my father turned out not to be my father. I mean, not James Potter.”

“And how is he expressing that?”

“Staring at me a lot, and looking away from me when I look back at him. And he used to get after me in Potions, and he never does that now.” Harry licked his lips. “And he said something last year about making a Vow to protect me because he thought I was Lily Potter’s son.”

Healer Letham sat up. “Vows are serious business, Harry. Did he never say anything else about this?”

“No,” Harry admitted. “And I’ve tried to talk to him about it, but he ignores me if I come up to him before or after class, and I can’t ask it in class with everyone else listening. I’ve tried to follow him a bit when he goes back to his office or something, but he always manages to slip away from me. I think he knows a lot of the secret passages in the castle.”

Healer Letham was frowning deeply. “This is something I will look into for you, Harry,” she said. “I don’t know why he would make that Vow, and it sounds like he’s determined not to talk to you about it. But he’ll talk to me.”

“But he’d have to know that you’re my Mind-Healer.”

“Yes.” She studied him thoughtfully. “Are you that ashamed to have other people know about me, then?”

“Ashamed of needing Mind-Healing,” Harry snapped. “I’m not broken.”

“No more you are,” Healer Letham said. “Do you still regard Professor Snape as an enemy? You think he might use this knowledge against you?”

“I don’t know,” Harry said. He shrugged uncomfortably, but Healer Letham was still waiting in that way she had, so he sighed and went on. “If he made that Vow to protect me, maybe he really can’t. But maybe he could, because the Vow is about Lily Potter’s son, and he doesn’t exist.”

“I will ask him,” Healer Letham said. “And if necessary, ask him to make another one. Who’s the other professor who’s been acting strangely?”

“Professor Lupin, the new Defense teacher.” Harry was just as glad to move away from the subject of Snape and his weirdness. “He was one of Sirius Black and James Potter’s best friends, you know, and a werewolf.” He hesitated, but Healer Letham only nodded calmly. Probably she had done the reading Harry had, and knew that most werewolves were only dangerous on the actual full moon. “He asked me what I wanted to be called on the train, and he seemed disappointed that I told him Malfoy. And he keeps asking me if I want to learn the Patronus Charm. And I want to tell him that Sirius Black is innocent—”

“Of the crime people thought he committed.”

Harry gave a choppy nod. It wasn’t as though he could ever forget that Black was actually guilty of kidnapping him, not when he was surrounded by people who would never let him forget it. “But I don’t know what Professor Lupin would do. If he would believe me. Or maybe he would, but then just try to help Sirius kidnap me again.”

“Hmmm.” Healer Letham leaned back on the couch. “This problem is not so easily handled as that of Professor Snape. Has he said why he thinks you, in particular, need to learn the Patronus Charm? It’s not easy to perform.”

“Because I was so badly affected by the Dementors on the train.”

Harry winced as he said it, and Healer Letham caught it, of course. She looked at him patiently, and looked, and Harry huffed finally and told her.

“And now Draco is angry with me,” Harry finished up, “because it’s my adoptive mother’s death I hear when a Dementor comes close to me. I think he wishes my worst memory was being kidnapped or something.”

“It would be extremely unlikely that a baby that young would be able to form memories.”

“Can I please tell Draco that?”

“Yes, of course.” Healer Letham considered him. “But I think that Draco’s words bother you because part of you agrees with them, do you not? You still do not understand how to relate to the Potters. People who died for the love of you, but also kidnapped you from loving parents and a brother who grew up mourning the loss of you. People who are indirectly responsible for you being targeted by Voldemort and growing up with abusive Muggles.”

Harry winced and looked off to the side. “Do I have to decide how I feel about them today?”

“Of course not. But you need to keep thinking about it. Putting aside the thoughts and denying them doesn’t work.”

“Anyway, what am I supposed to do about Professor Lupin?” Harry asked, returning hastily to the problem that he thought was complicated, but seemed a lot less complicated now than he’d assumed.

“I would try speaking to him and see if you can make him understand that you really are Henry Malfoy, that this isn’t something forced onto you. He might be thinking of you as an innocent, unhappy victim who’s going along with your new identity because he thinks you haven’t a choice.”

Harry grimaced. “And I shouldn’t say anything about Sirius yet?”

“I would say not. This is something subtle and complicated. Better to allow your father to work on it from the Ministry angle.”

“He wants Sirius eaten by Dementors, though! Draco showed me his letter.”

They’d both written home about the Dementors on the train, of course. Harry had received a letter full of assurances and kindness about how his reaction didn’t make him weak, and a box of sweets that Mrs. Malfoy really seemed to believe Harry could eat before they saw each other again. Draco had got a much blunter letter from Mr. Malfoy alone that told him to protect Harry and promised Sirius was only going to have his soul eaten because Mr. Malfoy couldn’t think of anything worse.

“Your father knew Draco would show that to you. What do you think that says about him?”

“I don’t know. Subtlety makes my head hurt.”

Healer Letham smiled. “I think you might be too caught up in the idea of House traits and that you’re not allowed to be subtle or cunning, as a Gryffindor. You can be, if you like. Imagine why your father would want you to know he thinks that.”

Harry swallowed and leaned back in the grey couch that contained him. Healer Letham, meanwhile, looked a little off to the side, somehow attentive and listening in a way that didn’t need her to stare directly at him. Harry had never met anyone else who could do that.

Harry wrestled with the problem in his head for a few minutes. One of the problems with the problem was that there wasn’t any one right answer, Harry thought. Draco would probably think something different from him. And Draco knew their parents better.

But Mr. Malfoy had written that letter to Draco. And he’d known Mrs. Malfoy would be writing her supportive and warm letter to Harry, with the comments that Mr. Malfoy had added to it. Why did he want Harry to see both of the letters?

Harry caught his breath, and Healer Letham turned to him at once.

“He’s trying to be honest,” Harry whispered. “He knows I was upset with them for lying about the house-elves, and trying to keep me away from Dobby. And he told me the truth about not really being under the Imperius Curse, too. Other people lied about who I really was, and it was terrible when the lie ended. Sirius never should have stolen me and lied in the first place. The Potters shouldn’t have lied about me being their son. Father wants me to know that he’s being as honest with me as he can.”

“And if you find the truth ugly and wish you didn’t know it?”

“I might wish it was different, but I would never rather not know it. I want to know it.”

Healer Letham’s smile was slow in coming, but like dawn when it did. “Good. I think you’re right. He wants you whole-heartedly as his son, Harry, and while I imagine that he also wishes things were different, he is committed to trying to make you more comfortable.”

“Do you think I could ask him to leave Sirius alone—no.”

“No,” Healer Letham echoed. “Do not seek to change your father’s core, Harry. Instead, work on understanding him, and helping him understand you. If you would find his revenge unforgivable, tell him so. I’m sure he would forego it and choose something else if he knew getting Black’s soul eaten would mean losing you.”

Harry was quiet.

“Harry?”

Harry licked his lips and said slowly, “I feel horrible for saying this, because Sirius didn’t deserve to be sent to Azkaban for what they thought he did, but he tried to kidnap me again this summer. He might have deserved to be sent there for taking me. And part of me—part of me feels that I would be safest if he was dead.”

“And yet another part of you feels horrible for thinking like that. Because he has had his sanity restored and might not want to kidnap you anymore.”

Harry shut his eyes and nodded.

Healer Letham sighed. “I wish there was some other way I could make your burdens easier. But as you said of yourself, I would always rather know the truth than not know it. Please continue to discuss it with me.”

Harry gave her a shaky smile, and their talk turned to other things.

*

“Henry.”

If Harry thought his mother had hugged him hard before he left for Hogwarts, it was nothing compared to what she did now. Her arms locked around him as if they were a cage, and Harry held onto her and tried not to think about the woman he’d heard screaming when the Dementor had come near.

“Over here, son.”

His father was sitting at a table in the middle of the private room they’d been granted at a small restaurant called the Silver Swan, which was apparently a few streets down from the small parts of Hogsmeade Harry had seen when he was reading the carriages to the school. The room was dazzlingly silver, everything gleaming as if made of metal, even the wood their chairs were made of. But they were perfectly comfortable when Harry sat on his, and the napkins were soft and sliding like velvet in his hand.

“What would you like to eat?” Mr. Malfoy asked, while Mrs. Malfoy sat down next to Harry so she could keep her arm around his shoulders.

“I don’t know what they have.”

“They’ll serve you literally anything you ask for,” said Mr. Malfoy, a trifle smugly. “That’s what they’re famous for. The ability to Summon the right ingredients and cook food from all over the world.”

Harry’s mind went a little blank. Despite his family’s efforts over the summer, he honestly didn’t know very much about food, and no fancy French or Italian dishes. He nibbled his lip and said the first thing that came into his mind. “Beef Wellington.” It was something the Dursleys had eaten but Harry had never got to have.

“Why not?” Mrs. Malfoy said. “You should have everything you want, Henry, darling.”

Harry smiled at her, and Mr. Malfoy rapped his wand against the table in what seemed to be a star-shaped pattern, making points of light flare briefly. They must have ordered already, Harry thought, or someone was listening to them, because no one said anything or confirmed their order.

Mr. Malfoy put his wand away, and turned to Harry. “I have secured tutoring in the Patronus Charm for you.”

Harry felt his mouth fall open a little. “You think I can master it?” he had to ask. “Even though I’m just thirteen?”

“You have a strong will and a determined intelligence,” Mr. Malfoy said. “And it requires happy memories. I hope we have managed to give you enough of those that drawing on them will be easier than it might have been a year ago.”

“And you are our son,” his mother said, her voice soft with adoration. “Yes, we think you can do it.”

“All right,” Harry said. “But am I going to be leaving the school for it? And will Draco and Ron and Hermione be able to learn, too?”

“Draco has expressed a desire to learn, and will,” Mr. Malfoy said firmly. “I will pay more to the tutor if she agrees to take on your friends. I must ask her if she will. Keep in mind that, if you learn well enough, you may also be able to teach the spell to your friends if your tutor doesn’t agree. The lessons will be at the school.”

“Thanks.” Harry fiddled with his napkin. “Professor Lupin keeps talking about wanting to teach me the Patronus.”

Mr. Malfoy didn’t actually leap out of his seat and march over to Hogwarts to kill Professor Lupin, but Harry had the feeling that he would have liked to. “You will not be doing that,” he said.

Harry took a single angry breath, and then bit it back. He was still getting used to having parents. The Dursleys would have tried to forbid him from learning the Patronus Charm, sure, but the Dursleys also wouldn’t have found a tutor who could teach him.

“Okay,” he said.

“Good,” said Mrs. Malfoy, still not taking her arm from around Harry’s shoulders, as their food popped onto the table in front of them. “Now, tell us how you’re getting along with your other professors who didn’t used to be best friends with your kidnapper.”

*

“Please stay after class, Mr. Malfoy.”

Harry turned around with a sigh. For the first time, he was really regretting that he didn’t have Defense with Slytherin. Draco would have come up with a lot more effective ways to oppose Professor Lupin than Harry could.

Harry didn’t like the man, exactly. He was too pushy, but he’d never actually mentioned being friends with Harry’s—James Potter, either. He just hinted and sighed and shook his head now and then as if Harry disappointed him.

Hermione was picking up her books slowly behind Harry, and giving him a significant look. Harry eyed her, then shook his head. He knew she would create a diversion of some sort, but it wouldn’t keep Professor Lupin from doing this again next time.

Harry just had to talk to the man and get him to back off. At the moment, Harry didn’t even care if that made it harder to get his help in making the Dementors back off, later. If he found out that Sirius Black was innocent, he shouldn’t need Harry to be the one to tell him.

“All right, sir,” Harry said, as Ron and Hermione left the room. “Can you tell me what you want to talk about?”

“The Patronus Charm, of course. Given your extreme reaction to the Dementors on the train, it’s more beneficial for you to learn it than it would be for most students. And since it takes so long to learn, the sooner we start—”

“Thanks, sir. But my parents got me a tutor.”

Professor Lupin just stared at him blankly. Harry stared back, his hands clenched into fists by his sides. In another of those shifts he didn’t always understand, his chest was burning with anger.

Maybe it was just because Lupin just kept pushing, and pushing, and pushing, and acting as if they had some kind of special connection when he’d never been around while Harry thought he was a Potter and still hadn’t said he’d been there for part of Harry’s childhood. He was acting stupid.

“Ah, yes,” said Lupin at last. He shifted his balance a little, and then shook his head. “I was trying to keep my concerns to myself, Mr. Malfoy, but I do think I need to say something.”

“What concerns?” Harry asked flatly.

“I do have to wonder if suddenly acquiring a family has led you to ignore some of the—more questionable aspects of their behavior.”

“Like my father being a Death Eater, you mean?”

He got another blank stare. Harry bit back the temptation to smile, because Lupin would probably misunderstand it and think he was just joking. This was almost fun.

“Yes,” Lupin said, hoarsely. “I didn’t realize he had told you about that.”

“Yes, he did.”

“And you approve of that?”

“I don’t like it,” Harry said. “I wish it hadn’t happened. But I also wish that Sirius Black hadn’t kidnapped me from my real parents.” And there, it was out and he really did wish that, his sometimes complicated feelings about the Malfoys and the Potters notwithstanding.

Lupin hesitated again. Harry wondered if he would admit that he had known Sirius and the Potters, but he didn’t. Instead, he gave a weak laugh. “Forgive me, Mr. Malfoy. I did consider it my duty as your professor to investigate and make sure that you hadn’t walked into an abusive situation, however.”

“Really? Draco didn’t say you asked him anything like this.”

Lupin just floundered some more. Harry shook his head a little. The man was an effective teacher, but it seemed like that only worked with groups of students or something. Put him alone in a room with Harry, and he didn’t know what to do.

Or maybe it’s just that I’m not behaving the way he thinks Harry Potter would. Should. He thought the Malfoys were abusing me and he could be the great rescuer or something, and they’re not, and now he can’t do anything.

Harry rolled his eyes at the thought. He didn’t need more people thinking he was some kind of special icon and savior and should do what they thought he should.

“It appears I was mistaken,” Lupin murmured. “If you have a tutor for the Patronus Charm, please do update me on your progress, Mr. Malfoy. I would be interested to see how close you come to mastering the charm.”

Harry shrugged. “I can do that, sir. Do you have anything else to say to me? Only I think Potions starts in a few minutes, and I hate disappointing Professor Snape.”

Lupin sighed sadly. “Of course. Thank you for granting me the opportunity to speak with you, Mr. Malfoy.”

He’s such a weird person, Harry thought as he walked out the door. Or maybe just weak. Or blind. I suppose I don’t know.

And it’s really not worth finding out.

*

“Wotcher! I’m Tonks.”

Harry blinked at the young woman who was standing in the middle of the classroom that Dobby had appeared to direct them to. Draco, who had walked in right behind him, frowned and shook his head a little when Harry looked at him.

Hermione and Ron—who the tutor had agreed to take on, too—stared at her outright. At least that meant Harry wasn’t alone in thinking that it was strange she had bright blue hair and a pig’s snout in the middle of her face.

It got worse when the pig’s snout sank back into her face and her hair turned a shiny black. Tonks grinned at them and then laughed. “Merlin, your faces!”

“You’re a Metamorphmagus,” Draco said slowly. “I didn’t think there were any of them left in Britain.”

Tonks’s eyes glinted a little. They were bright green right now, the way Harry’s used to be, but he decided she had done that as a matter of convenience, or because she wanted to. “A Metamorphmagus, and your cousin,” she said, with a quick glance at Harry. “I’m Andromeda Tonks’s daughter.”

Harry stared for a second before he remembered that their mother had said she’d had a sister called Andromeda. From the sad way she spoke of her, Harry had always thought she was dead. Of course, that didn’t mean she couldn’t have had a daughter before she died, Harry supposed.

“My Aunt Andromeda who ran off and married a Mudblood?” Draco asked.

“Draco!”

“Malfoy!”

Draco acted as if Hermione didn’t exist, turning to glare at Harry. “Well, it’s true! And you can’t even pretend that you care about the word anymore, because your real mother wasn’t one of them!”

“One of my best friends still is. Or did you forget that part?”

Draco definitely had, from the way his face flushed for a second. But he shook his head stubbornly and said, “I don’t understand why we’re being tutored by someone our parents can’t possibly approve of!”

Tonks aimed her wand at Draco and muttered a single soft word. Draco shrieked as his own wand soared out of his pocket and across to land in Tonks’s hand. Harry wondered what that spell had been. It didn’t sound like Expelliarmus.

“Your parents were the ones who hired me,” Tonks said, cooler than she’d been a minute before. “I was in the middle of qualifying for Auror training, but I started to question if that was what I really wanted to do, and then Aunt Narcissa reached out to me and suggested that they’d pay me a lot of money to teach my little cousins. I could get to see if I like a different career instead, and I could get to know family. Although I’m not sure that one of you is really worth knowing, come to that.”

Draco stared at her. Harry supposed it was both shock at what she’d said and at the fact that their parents had actually hired her.

“So your mother named you Tonks?” Harry asked quickly.

Tonks glanced at him and snorted. “That’s the name I use.”

“What’s your first name?” Draco demanded.

“I don’t have to tell the brat who slandered my father that.” Tonks deliberately turned and faced Ron and Hermione. “You must be Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. I hope that you’re more interested in learning about the Patronus Charm than arguing about my name or my parents?”

Ron nodded hastily. Hermione stood up tall and straight. “Yes,” she said firmly. “I hate the Dementors. I want to make sure that all of us can fend them off if it comes to that.”

“That’s the attitude I like!” Tonks said, and even though she didn’t look at Draco, Harry saw him flush again out of the corner of his eye. “Now, the first thing we’ll practice with is the incantation and wand movement.” She turned around, tossing Draco’s wand back to him with a small motion, and drew her own. “Watch carefully.” She made the wand movement with big, exaggerated gestures, and then called, “Expecto Patronum!”

Harry hadn’t really seen what happened with Lupin’s Patronus on the train, and Ron and Hermione hadn’t been able to describe it clearly, either. Now he watched with his mouth open as a silvery jackrabbit leaped out of the end of Tonks’s wand and ran around the room, pausing to stretch its legs when it got to the middle.

“It can drive away Dementors when any Dementors are nearby, of course,” Tonks said briskly. “For now, I’ll have you practice on the wand movement and incantation, and then we’ll move on to trying to make it work.”

*

“She’s really brilliant, isn’t she?” Hermione asked. She was almost bouncing in her seat at the Gryffindor table. They’d just had their second lesson with Tonks, and Harry had to smile at her.

“Yeah, she is,” Harry agreed, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He’d reached down to touch the crinkle of parchment in his robe pocket again for the seventh time that day. At least.

“Are you all right, mate?” Ron asked, leaning near enough that his voice sort of slid under Hermione’s excited chatter. “You’ve acted weird about that letter all day.”

“I’m all right,” Harry said, and smiled at his best friend. From the look on Ron’s face, he wasn’t really convincing. Harry shook his head and sat up. “I’m all right,” he repeated, more firmly.

And he was. The letter hadn’t upset him. It had just surprised him.

It was from his mother, and Harry had written to her about why she’d picked Tonks and why she hadn’t told him about it. The answer to the second question was just that it was a pleasant surprise she’d tried to arrange for him, Mrs. Malfoy had written.

But part of her answer to the first question kept lingering in Harry’s mind.

“I want you to feel that you have a bigger and more connected family than just us, Henry. I can do nothing about most of the Black and Malfoy families being dead or in prison, and nothing about how much of an enemy Cousin Sirius is. But I can give you back another cousin. I am working to try and make sure I can give you back your uncle and aunt, as well.”

Harry had grown up thinking he had only an aunt and uncle and cousin, and then he’d adapted to thinking he didn’t have them, but he did have a mother and a father and a twin brother. And now he might really have both.

He hadn’t known Mother cared about that.

“Okay,” Ron said, and nodded, and then took out Scabbers from his pocket. He tried to feed the rat, who was draped over his hand, a bit of cheese, but Scabbers just turned his head.

“He still isn’t any better?” Harry asked, trying to turn his mind away from his own problems.

“No.” Ron sighed and dropped Scabbers back into his pocket. “I thought it was just Hermione’s beast of a cat trying to hurt him, but he’s like this even when Crookshanks isn’t around.”

“Crookshanks was only—”

“You saw him yourself, Hermione, the way he went after him yesterday—”

“Students, I must ask you to pay attention for a moment.”

Harry started and looked away from Ron and Hermione. Professor Dumbledore’s announcement had put an end to his friends’ argument, anyway. The Headmaster was standing up at the Head Table, waiting for chatter at the student tables to die down. He looked sad and old, the way he had when he told Harry about the prophecy.

Harry glanced at the Slytherin table for a second. Draco stopped pretending to ignore him and just shrugged. He didn’t know what this was about either, then.

“This evening,” Professor Dumbledore said quietly, “two of our professors intercepted Sirius Black trying to break into the castle. He unfortunately escaped without being captured, and before the professors in question could summon the Dementors. I will ask you to be extremely cautious when you venture outside the castle, and next weekend’s Hogsmeade trip will be under heavy escort. The Dementors are likely to be on hand when Quidditch games are played, as well.” He held up his hand at the way everyone half-shouted. “I know this is distressing, and I wish I did not have to be the bearer of bad news. But we cannot forget that Sirius Black is a dangerous man, and the Dementors are here as part of the effort to protect us from him.”

He glanced at Harry for a moment, and a second later, a little note fluttered away from the professors’ table and landed in front of Harry. Harry unfolded it. It said simply, Please come see me after dinner, Mr. Malfoy. I am fond of Ice Mice.

Harry sat back and blinked. He hadn’t had any private visits with Professor Dumbledore this year, but then, that wasn’t surprising, since he hadn’t got in trouble and Dumbledore didn’t really have a reason to speak with him. But now…

Maybe there was someone Harry could speak to about how Sirius hadn’t been the traitor to the Potters, after all.