lomonaaeren

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Chapter Ten—Conversations in Depth

“Where are Scorpius and James?”

“They’re going to be fine in the nursery for right now, Potter. Pansy’s watching them. And Edwina and Sela.”

Potter leaned back in his chair, a comfortable green one in front of the massive drawing room fireplace that Draco had hoped would help relax him. Vain hope, he scoffed to himself as Potter breathed slowly in and out through parted lips, his gaze narrowed on Draco. Draco wondered idly if Potter realized how much like a predator he looked at the moment.

Potter might be flattered at the compliment, but he would think of himself as only a protective predator. Someone who could keep his son, and perhaps others, safe in the face of those who wanted to hurt him.

Draco thought he might be the only person on earth at the moment who knew how predatory Potter was in other respects, and how good a partner for a venomous snake.

“You removed the serpents from the room for a reason, Malfoy. Why?”

“What do you assume I think of you after your little display in Diagon Alley?”

When Potter grimaced, Draco wished he had phrased it differently. But he wouldn’t go back and apologize. He and Potter both had reasons to press forwards now.

“I’m sorry for that. The only thought in my head was getting her to stop, but I shouldn’t have used that kind of spell in front of Scorpius. It won’t happen again.”

“Merlin, Potter, you think that’s what I’m upset about? Of course not.”

“Then I can stay apart from you and Scorpius when we go to Diagon Alley. Or you can tell me when you’re going and I’ll make sure that we’re there at different times. I didn’t mean to endanger you and Scorpius by being there.”

“Listen to me, you fucker,” Draco snapped, a little aghast. The more he learned about Potter’s mindset, the sicker he felt. At least his words made Potter blink and pay attention. “I’m not upset because you used that spell, or because you were there. You protected Scorpius—and me, and Edwina—from being hurt. The last thing I am is upset.”

“No, you are. Just not about that.” Potter’s eyes narrowed further. “What, then?”

“We owe you a bloody life-debt. Probably a few other people in Diagon Alley, too, if Moonborn had turned her wand on them, but that’s harder to argue. But Scorpius and I? Of course we do.” Draco half-bowed to him from his chair. “I formally acknowledge the life-debt I owe you and ask you to tell me if there’s something in particular you would like to be paid for it.”

Potter flung himself to his feet with a snarl and paced towards him. Halfway there, he seemed to decide it was a bad idea—to Draco’s secret disappointment—and turned the other way, roughly kicking the rug so it rucked up in front of him. Draco watched the slim lines of Potter’s back tighten in the firelight.

He doesn’t eat enough, Draco thought idly. Probably too focused on how much James eats.

“What about that upsets you?” Draco asked softly. “You’re right that I was upset, but it’s because I saw you disdained and treated like you were the criminal by those Aurors. I would have liked to see a lot more people acknowledge what they owe you.”

“That’s how it begins.”

“What begins?”

“Someone thinks they owe me. They start resenting me for it. Then they start resenting me for not being the perfect person they wanted me to be. And I can’t have that happen, Malfoy. This school is already too important to Jamie.”

Draco swore again, and made Potter turn towards him, eyes wide. At least it had broken him from his trance of self-loathing.

“I’m not like those other twats, Potter. I don’t care how you saved my life and Scorpius’s, just that you did. I’m not going to turn on you or accuse you of being a Dark Arts practitioner or sell your secrets for money. You saved my son’s life. You don’t understand how precious that is to me. Even though you should, since you have a son of your own. I’ll guard your back or offer James extra education or go and tell off the press if you want. Just tell me what you need.”

Potter turned abruptly away from him and stared at the fire. Draco watched him and waited for some response, but it was a long time in coming. Once again, he wondered what Potter was thinking.

*

No one except Ron and Hermione has ever offered that.

Harry’s eyes burned as he stared at the fire. Why couldn’t someone offer that, if it was so simple for someone who used to be his enemy to do? Why had everyone else turned on him and insisted there was something wrong with him, wrong with James, wrong with the way Harry lived his life?

Even when my Mind-Healer betrayed me, they still liked him better than me.

Harry slowly shook his head. Maybe the point wasn’t to wonder why other people had turned their backs on him. Maybe the point was to accept what Malfoy was offering.

“I accept your debt,” he said quietly, turning back and seeing Malfoy sit on the edge of the chair as if he was going to rise. “Thank you. But I can’t think of anything else that I need. Not right now. Maybe eventually I will.” He hesitated. “Is it all right to let a life-debt rest unresolved for a while?”

Malfoy nodded slowly, looking surprised. Harry refused to wonder which part of this had surprised him. “Of course. But I can think of one thing you probably need more than anything else, and I’d like to at least offer it.”

“What?”

“I’d like to be your friend.”

Harry’s shoulders slowly lowered again, but he blinked at Malfoy, wondering. “I—why would you want to?”

Malfoy’s mouth hung open a little. “Potter.”

“Normally I would think that someone wanted to be friends with me for the money or fame, but I know you have too much money of your own to care about that, and the kind of fame I bring along isn’t—worth it.” Harry cleared his throat. “So I’m just trying to figure out what your motivation is.”

“You need one,” Malfoy said slowly. “Didn’t you hear me?”

Harry sighed. “Okay, Malfoy, so forgive me, but I don’t think you’re exactly known for being altruistic.”

Malfoy started to answer, and then stopped himself and bit his lips firmly. “No,” he said. “What I was going to say isn’t fair. So let’s say, besides the fact that I’ve changed since Hogwarts, I care a hell of a lot more about fellow Parselmouths than I ever did about most of our peers at school.”

Harry sighed again as he thought about the way Malfoy had worked in the ritual circle with Parkinson and Goyle and the rest. “Yes, all right. But you know that I’m a difficult, prickly bastard to get along with?”

“I’m not doing this because I think it would be easy, Potter. I’m doing it because you need a friend and this is how I’d like to resolve my debt.” Malfoy’s eyes went towards the door that led into the nursery where Scorpius and Jamie were playing. “And I make it a point to try and be friends with the parents of Scorpius’s friends.”

Harry relaxed a little more. That all made sense. And at least Malfoy knew a little of what he was getting into. “Okay. Then I suppose you might as well call me Harry, not Potter.”

*

Draco was unprepared for the feeling like a firework going off under his breastbone.

Did I really have that much resentment towards him for not taking my hand on the train?

Draco thought admitting that would be far more embarrassing than anything else he’d admitted so far, so he only cleared his throat. “Thank you, Harry.” Harry’s gaze was brilliant on his face, and he started a little when Draco spoke his name, as if he wasn’t used to hearing it himself. “I—please call me Draco.”

Harry smiled slightly. “Thank you, Draco.”

The way he said it made Draco certain that he would have gone along with saying “Malfoy,” even after offering his own first name, if that was what Draco had wanted. Draco narrowed his eyes. “You are too damn self-sacrificing.”

Harry snorted. “Asking you to be my friend is self-sacrificing?”

“You didn’t ask. I offered.” Draco stared at him some more, and then gestured towards the chair in front of the fireplace. Harry came over and sat down on it. Draco folded his arms. “You were convinced I was going to reject you after seeing you perform that spell on Moonborn. Why?”

“It’s violent. And it’s not Dark Arts, but it looks a lot like it.”

“And you think I have some sort of problem with Dark Arts? When I performed it myself during the war?”

“What you did during the war was because you had no choice. I got a vision of you torturing someone once, you know. It was absolutely clear that it only happened because Voldemort made you do it.” Harry shifted. “I can’t blame you for wanting to keep away from all spells like that in the future. And I did this in front of Scorpius.”

“Well, let’s get rid of this impression right now,” Draco said flatly, the same anger boiling in him that had shown up as he watched the Aurors interrogate Harry. “I will never be angry about anything you choose to defend my son or yours. All right? And if you cast a Dark spell someday, then I’ll trust you had a good reason for it.”

Harry gaped at him. Draco wanted to curse someone, but it wasn’t Harry, and he had no idea who would be the best target, anyway.

“Who convinced you that everyone would always betray you?” Draco snapped. “Was it that bastard of a Mind-Healer? Because I could definitely find a way to make his broken oaths torment him even though obviously he broke them without many consequences so far.”

Harry’s mouth opened a little more, and then he shut it, shook his head, and ran his fingers through his hair. Draco bit the inside of his mouth. Otherwise, he would have said “Stop,” and he knew Harry would take that as too much criticism right now.

“No,” Harry said quietly. “He was the worst, but—well, Gryffindor hated me and Ron and Hermione for losing so many points in first year, and people thought I was the Heir of Slytherin in second year and a cheater to get into the Triwizard Tournament in fourth year and a delusional liar in my fifth one. Then they thought of me as the Chosen One in sixth year and just assumed I would forget all about what they said. And I had to, because the only alternative was leaving them to die, and they didn’t deserve death for thinking badly of me.”

“That’s it,” Draco said, snapping his fingers. He couldn’t believe he’d never seen it before. Then again, he’d never had an honest conversation with Harry before, either.

“What’s it?” Harry eyed him as if he were mad.

“You’ve always felt that you had to forgive people who betrayed you because the stakes were too high. You forgave them or someone died. You had to go down after that basilisk despite everyone calling you the Heir of Slytherin because otherwise, Ginny Weasley would have died.” Harry still flinched at the sound of his wife’s name. Draco was going to get to the bottom of that, too. “You had to participate in the Tournament because no one would let you out of the contract and forgive Weasley because otherwise, you would have stood alone except for Granger.”

Harry’s eyes cooled. “I forgave Ron because he’s my friend. And he acted like an arse, but let’s look who’s talking here.”

Draco thought Weasley was worse, because Draco hadn’t been Harry’s friend at the time, and he wouldn’t have ever trusted someone who had thought he was lying and cheating again. But he simply shrugged. “And you had to keep fighting during fifth year because he was back, and otherwise, there would only have been a few people, like Dumbledore, to stand against him.”

Harry shrugged back. “It’s the way my life’s been. That doesn’t mean other people deserve to suffer. I don’t want you to curse anyone on my behalf.”

Draco sighed. “If you’re sure.”

“Yes, I am. You want to keep being my friend? Then be my friend and stand by me the way Ron and Hermione did after that debacle with the Mind-Healer. Don’t curse people. I don’t like that.”

Draco felt his lips twitch. He wanted to say that cursing people was what he was good at, but he doubted Harry would find that funny. He nodded. “If you don’t want me to, then I won’t. I can listen to what my friends want and adapt my behavior accordingly.”

Harry nodded slowly. “All right. Then I—suppose we’re friends.”

His voice sounded strained and formal. Then again, the situation was already that way, Draco thought. He didn’t think he would have cracked through the thick walls that had formed around Harry any other way.

He could almost have thanked the werewolf for showing up in Diagon Alley, except for the danger she had posed to their children.

“Shall we rejoin Scorpius and Jamie, Harry?” he asked, standing and seeing the way that Harry braced for a moment as if against a blow. “I know that Scorpius will probably wonder why Edwina is with them, eventually, and not with me.”

“Okay,” Harry said, and swallowed, and seemed to hold his breath until he fell into step beside Draco as they walked to the nursery.

Skittish. Wild. Defensive. Nervous.

None of the words were ones that Draco would have thought to apply to Harry Potter for most of his life, except perhaps the second. But now he was inside those barriers, and he would do nothing to risk his place. That meant seeing Harry as he really was, and being prepared to react if he needed distance or did something Draco would otherwise have considered strange, but which sprang from the fear for his son’s life.

The sooner I can heal the scars, the better. Maybe he’d like me to curse someone for him someday.

*

“Are you okay, Daddy?”

Harry started and turned with a small smile to look at Jamie. His son was standing with his arms wrapped around Sapphire, but the snake appeared to be asleep, or else so deeply relaxed that it was the same thing. James was staring at him with wide eyes that hid nothing of their emotions, for all that they looked like Ginny’s and she had hidden her emotions all the time.

Don’t think about that. There’s no reason to think about that. Besides, you’re probably misremembering and she showed her emotions more openly than you thought.

“I’m okay, Jamie,” he said softly, and reached out to ruffle his son’s hair.

Jamie accepted that, but then said, “I’m tired, Daddy. So is Sapphire. Can we go to bed now?” Since he spoke the last words in Parseltongue, they came out rather more like, “Can we go to short-sleep now?” Parseltongue did distinguish between “short-sleep” and hibernation.

“Yeah.” Harry scooped James up, along with Sapphire, ignoring the way that Sela shifted on his shoulder. She was smart enough not to even think of biting James or the other snake.

He got them to James’s bedroom and had his son wash his face and brush his teeth, in spite of his yawns and his claims that he was too tired to do so. Maybe it was because the Dursleys had never cared whether Harry was clean or not, but he was going to make sure that James was.

“Tell me story,” James said, curling up in the bed so that his hand was underneath his cheek. Sapphire was coiled up in what might have been the same position if he’d had hands, floating in his jar of water next to the bed.

“All right,” Harry said, even though he knew Jamie wouldn’t make it to the end of one. He sat down next to him and laid his hand on James’s shoulder so his son would know he was there. James sighed and cuddled closer. “Once, there was a lonely boy who wished for friends.”

He paused, startled by what had come out of his mouth.

“Is this a sad story? I don’t want a sad story, Daddy.” James forced his eyes open and looked up beseechingly at him.

“No,” Harry whispered. “No, it’s not really a sad story.” And for the first time ever, he didn’t feel like it was a lie, saying that. “The boy did find friends, you know. They went on grand quests with him. They saved the world with him.”

“Like you,” Jamie said, and curled up so tightly that he looked like a snail.

“Snail boy,” Harry murmured, and James was drifting off, because he didn’t even protest at the nickname the way he would have usually. “Yeah, he had two best friends. And then he got another one later,” Harry went on, in a soft voice, because James most definitely was asleep this time.

Harry sat back with a sigh, only to jump when Sela slithered up his arm to the side of his neck.

“You had better mean me.”

“I don’t know where I stand with you,” Harry hissed back, carefully taking his hand away from James’s bed and making his way towards the bedroom. “I was talking about Draco, since he agreed to be my friend.”

“That is such a revelation to you?”

Harry shrugged, and removed Sela from his shoulder so he could get out of his robes. She watched him intently from the bed, and he ended up turning his back. He probably shouldn’t be embarrassed about getting undressed in front of a snake, but there were lots of things he shouldn’t have to be embarrassed about that he was.

“Most people don’t want to be friends with me.”

“Those people are stupid.”

Harry didn’t answer, because he couldn’t actually say they were. They were stupid for what they judged him on, yes, but what if they knew about the impulses that showed up in Harry’s head and heart sometimes? The impulses to rip someone apart, to force them to kneel with the Imperius and beg his forgiveness?

He wouldn’t do those things, but he’d thought about them.

“And you are stupid for not letting me into your head to help with the nightmares.”

“You might tell someone what you see.”

“Who would I tell? Most humans cannot understand me.”

“A Parselmouth could.” Harry turned back once he’d put on his pyjamas and slid into the bed. Sela wriggled over with a sharp flick of her tail and then lay down against the warmth of his skin. “You could tell someone in Draco’s circle who would make fun of me.”

“I would not! And Draco wouldn’t.”

“No,” Harry agreed slowly, certainly the first time he ever would have agreed to a statement like that about Draco Malfoy. “I don’t think he would.”