[From Samhain to the Solstice]: A Path Like Frost, gen, Like a Malfoy series, 1/6

[lomonaaeren]

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Part Two

“Are you sure you’re all right, Father?”

There were times that Harry still found it hard to call Mr. Malfoy Father. But right now, with him even paler than usual and resting on his bed with pillows piled everywhere around him and half his left arm missing, it was easy.

“Yes, I’m fine.” Father closed his eyes for a second, his left arm twitching as if he wanted to reach out and pick up his wand, and had only now remembered why he couldn’t. “Why are you here, Henry? As much as I appreciate your presence, this is something a house-elf could do.”

Harry hesitated, but decided only the truth would probably let him remain. “I got left alone all the time when I was sick and hurt and upset at the Dursleys’. I don’t want to leave you alone.”

That got Father’s eyes opening very wide for a moment, but then he closed them again and nodded wearily. “Water, please.”

Harry carefully poured from the carafe sitting beside the bed, which had water in it laced with potions that were supposed to promote healing. Apparently Father was fine as far as physical pain was concerned, but his body was still recovering from the weight of the ritual.

“Thank you.” Father took the cup in his right hand and sipped carefully from it. His eyes were fixed on Harry, though. “Does that mean you would be willing to talk about your experiences with the Muggles?”

“I do talk about them,” Harry said, and waited until Father’s face began to change before he added, “With Healer Letham.”

Father grunted at him. “I still think it would benefit you to talk to someone else. One of us.”

“Why? You wanted me to have Mind-Healing, and I’m having Mind-Healing.”

Harry knew his voice was growing stubborn, but honestly, what did they want from him? He had done exactly as they wanted. He didn’t know why they wanted something more from him all of a sudden.

Father sighed. “I know, but we are your family. And while it’s your right to ask Healer Letham to keep your confidences, it does mean that it’s hard to be sure your healing is progressing as it should.”

“I’m more settled. Happier. You know that.”

“Yes, of course. I noticed.” Father’s eyes were soft as he looked at Harry, and he was smiling the way he had the day he told Harry would have his arm amputated to remove the Dark Mark. “I’m glad of it. But I wish you felt that you could trust us enough to tell the truth to us. That’s all.”

“Maybe someday,” Harry said. All sorts of things were true that he never would have thought could be two years ago, like him feeling happier in his family and thinking of Draco as his brother and Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy as his parents. That meant that he couldn’t rule out this changing someday, too.

“What would have to change?” Father leaned forwards, his left arm twitching as if he wanted to clench the hand that was currently missing.

“You would have to promise that you wouldn’t murder them.”

Silence. Father looked baffled. Harry looked steadily back at him.

“I do not understand this odd hesitation of yours.”

“It isn’t just a hesitation with you,” Harry said, because he thought it might make a difference if Father understood that. “I freed Pettigrew because Black would have murdered him. There wasn’t any other alternative I could see. Lupin was just standing there, and Black—”

“Yes, well, you know my opinion of that,” Father interrupted. That was true, Harry reflected. They’d had a long talk after his parents had learned that Harry had been alone with Black and Lupin, no matter how short the time period had been. “Killing Black would also have solved the problem.”

“Murder is wrong.”

“Perhaps someday you’ll change that idea.”

Harry just kept quiet. No matter what some of the people around him thought, both Gryffindors and Slytherins, he didn’t think it was that weird to see murder as immoral.

“I shall endeavor to earn more of your trust,” Father said, with a faint smile on his face, and gave him back the glass of water. “I understand that you have another meeting with Healer Letham tomorrow?”

With some relief, Harry let the subject be changed.

*

“And I don’t understand why that line is so hard for them not to urge me to cross. Why they want to turn me into a murderer.”

Healer Letham listened in silence, as she had to most of Harry’s long explanation. They were meeting in the same room in the Manor that they’d used last summer, and house-elves had brought them tea and biscuits. Harry leaned back now and finished his, sneaking little glances at Healer Letham from time to time. Her face was blank, her dangling leg swaying back and forth, and she seemed to be thinking.

“I don’t think they think of it as turning you into a murderer,” Healer Letham finally murmured. “They think of it as avenging you, when they’re talking about killing the Muggles who raised you. Or teaching how to defend yourself, when they think of you killing someone.”

“But you agree it’s wrong, right?”

“I agree that murder is,” Healer Letham said, and sipped from her teacup. “What I do know is that many people draw the line about what murder is elsewhere and find ways to justify it to themselves.”

“Okay, like what?”

“Self-defense, in times of war. There are many Aurors who killed Death Eaters, and I don’t think they spend all that many nights awake thinking about it. For that matter, some among your professors would have killed Death Eaters, in defense of themselves or their students. They don’t spend all their time condemning themselves, either.”

Harry felt a little daunted. “Well, but self-defense is different.”

“Not for some people. If you define murder as the killing of an intelligent being, then self-defense’s motivation does not make it different. It would still be the same act.”

Harry squinted at Healer Letham. “Are you deliberately trying to confuse me?” He wouldn’t accuse her of being on his parents’ side. Enough experiences had showed him that she did consider herself as working for Harry, no matter who paid her.

“No,” Healer Letham said, her voice gentle. “Trying to let you understand your parents’ thinking, although of course you are free not to adopt their thought processes or definitions for yourself.”

Harry let out a short breath. “Okay. So what other exceptions could there be to murder, beyond self-defense?”

“Vengeance,” said Healer Letham. “There are still old laws on the books that allow someone to challenge a second person to a duel when that second person has caused harm to their family. And that duel can be lethal.”

“I don’t think Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy are looking to duel the Dursleys.”

“No, I don’t think so, either. But that is undoubtedly part of the reason behind their puzzlement that you would consider the murder of your former caretakers as murder.”

“You agree it’s murder, too!”

“I agree that it would be, yes. We cannot expect the Muggles who raised you to abide by the laws that the magical world has established for such duels.”

Harry eyed her suspiciously. Healer Letham raised her eyebrows at him, smiling a little. Harry flushed. He was still looking at her as if she was trying to trick him, and she probably knew it.

“And that’s it? They just think of it as a duel, so them it’s not murder?”

“I think there is one other factor related to that, and that is blood purism. They are horrified because you were their son and went through that. They would have a lesser form of outrage if it were any other pureblood child who had suffered, and perhaps only a shrug if a Muggleborn child died of their Muggle family’s abuse.”

Harry was better at controlling his flinches around the word “abuse,” but he wasn’t perfect. Healer Letham didn’t comment on it, just went on sipping her tea.

“But that’s—horrible.”

“It is, Harry, but I think it is also an exaggeration of a mindset many people have, not completely different. When they hear of something horrible happening to someone else, even a child, many humans will shiver a little but not be outraged. Or they will feel a fleeting moment of anger and sadness, nothing else. They may even feel thankful that it is not happening to them or theirs.”

Harry nodded silently, thinking about the way that Uncle Vernon had even joked, sometimes, about things they saw on the news. Who cared about it happening to other people, as long as they were safely on the other side of the world, or freaks? Vernon had even bragged sometimes about the “muscles” Dudley had developed by beating up Harry.

“Harry?”

Harry started and looked up at Healer Letham. “Just remembering things,” he said. “What do you think will happen if I tell Mother and Father that I have no intention of ever letting them punish the Dursleys?”

“Say it long enough and loudly enough, and I think they will accept that you aren’t changing your mind.” Healer Letham sat up. “Now, on to other subjects. You never did tell me what happened to Lupin at the end of the year.”

“Oh.” Harry flushed again. “It’s stupid.”

“Perhaps you could let me be the judge of that?”

“I—well, it was like Lupin gave up after I released Pettigrew. He only spoke to me once more, a few weeks after the thing with Pettigrew, and he said that I was nothing like the boy he had thought I was.”

“What preconceptions could he have of you? Even if you had been James Potter’s son in blood and truth, you weren’t raised by him.”

“I know!” Harry flung up his arms. “I told him that. I mean, not in the same words. I’m not as eloquent as you are. But it seemed to break him. He avoided me after that, and he told Headmaster Dumbledore that he wouldn’t be returning at the end of the year. I think maybe he only took the job as Defense professor to reconnect with me or something.”

“Perhaps he did.”

“But that’s stupid. He knew I was a Malfoy by the time he got the job! The whole world did! And I didn’t know him, anyway.”

Healer Letham’s smile seemed to remove lines from her face. “As I believe we have established, Harry, many people do not do things for entirely rational reasons.”

*

“Thanks for asking if we could come, Harry.”

Harry smiled at Hermione as she bounced along beside him, bright-eyed, on the way to their Defense lesson with Ted Tonks in the ballroom. “Well, your parents were the ones who said yes, and you were the ones who asked your parents. I didn’t do so much, really.”

“Ruddy Malfoys would haven’t let us come if you hadn’t asked,” Ron pointed out, and looked around the ballroom with interest as they stepped inside.

Harry supposed that was true, especially given the way that Draco still sniffed when he caught sight of Harry’s best friends. Ted, however, smiled fiercely at them and nodded around the large ballroom. It was a pretty blue room with green glass panels on the walls, large and entirely empty.

“We’ve got a good training ground here,” Ted said. “Plenty of room to run and dodge. And even make weapons out of the walls.” He spun around and abruptly pointed to Hermione, who was looking as if she wanted parchment and a quill to write things down. “How could you make weapons out of the walls?”

“I suppose—you could Levitate the panels and hide behind one?”

“Interesting thought.” Ted snapped around to face Ron. “What about you?”

“You could fling the panels at people?”

“If you managed to Levitate them, yes, you could. Keep the weight of the panels in mind, though. What about you, Draco?”

“I would bring the chandelier down on someone’s heads.”

Hermione and Ron looked up a little nervously at the white gold chandelier over their heads, which supported maybe a hundred pounds of candles. Harry couldn’t blame them. He’d looked at it like that himself, the first time he had to spend more than a few minutes in here.

“Yes, but I asked you to consider the walls as weapons.”

“The chandelier makes a better one,” Draco said, and folded his arms. If he’d had a peacock’s tail, Harry thought with amusement, it would have been flared out behind him with indignation.

One afternoon he’d made the mistake of telling Draco Harry thought he would probably be a peacock Animagus, and Draco hadn’t spoken to him for a day, which was astonishingly long for Draco to keep his mouth shut.

“And you, Harry?”

“I’d shatter the glass into pieces and make it fly at people.”

Hermione gave Harry a startled look, as if she hadn’t thought he would be so violent, but Ted grinned and nodded. “That’s what I was thinking myself, although the others were interesting suggestions. More defense-oriented than offense-oriented, though, you two,” he told Hermione and Ron, and then looked at Draco. “And I do want you to keep in mind that the chandelier would be even harder to manipulate than the panels on the walls, thanks to its weight.”

“I wouldn’t try to float it! I would just cut through its chain and drop it.”

“And could you count on your enemies to stay where they were? It’s still an interesting idea, Draco, but it needs work.” Ted drew his wand and turned to Harry, who promptly drew his own in response. “And now I’ll show you a sequence Harry and I have been working on—”

“Henry—”

Ted ignored Draco. Just like Healer Letham, he called Harry by the name Harry still preferred. “Get ready, Harry.”

“Wait!” Hermione’s voice rose into a panicked little squeak. “I thought we were just—going to be taking notes and discussing the theoretical parts of Defense class! We can’t perform magic during the summer!”

“You can’t,” Draco said, looking down his nose in a way that Harry knew would more or less mean an instant fight, so he immediately flung himself in between them (verbally, anyway).

“Most of the time, we can’t either, Hermione,” he said, glancing at Draco and frowning when his brother started to open his mouth again. Draco shut it and rolled his eyes. “But Mr. Tonks used to be a Shadowfollower, one of the Ministry’s secret soldiers. They still grant him some privileges.”

“Yes, like training young warriors during the summer.” Ted still had his wand out, and Harry hadn’t exactly put his away, either, although he’d lowered it. Ted stung him with a hex for that forgetfulness. “Come on, now, Harry. Let’s show them what you’ve been practicing.”

Harry breathed slowly out, and nodded. He did kind of what to show Ron and Hermione what he’d been doing. Draco knew, but he’d only watched Harry and Ted practice the individual spells, not the whole thing.

“Ready,” Harry said, and then dodged abruptly to the side as Ted flung a Blasting Curse at him.

Ron and Hermione gasped, but their voices dimmed in Harry’s mind as he spun and dodged the other spells Ted was flinging at him—not serious battle curses, but all ones that would do heavy damage if they landed. Meanwhile, Harry Transfigured the stone beneath Ted’s feet to mud, set up shields that the curses destroyed sometimes but also sometimes rebounded off, and wove Ted’s robe around his feet to trip him up.

Ted came up laughing. Harry watched intently as his wand began to move. He had already warned Harry that he would end their sequence of spells with something Harry had never seen before, and he expected Harry to counter it with a spell that was taught in either first or second year.

“Voco fulgur!”

A lightning bolt, a real, honest-to-Merlin lightning bolt, flared into the air between them. Harry caught his breath sharply and almost somersaulted backwards as Ted aimed it at him. But it wasn’t actually moving yet. It was trailing around after Ted’s wand, but not moving towards Harry.

Harry ran through the first- and second-year spells he knew in his mind with the speed that only happened to him when he was actually fighting, staring at the lightning all the while. No shields, no jinxes, no hexes would block that.

Harry’s eyes focused on Ted for a second.

So stop the one who’s casting it!

Harry snapped his wand out and yelled, “Diffindo!”

The Severing Charm flew straight and true at Ted’s hand. Ted yelped a little as a bloody cut appeared there, and dropped his wand, although Harry thought that was either for their audience’s benefit or sheer surprise. The lightning bolt went out as his wand rolled on the floor and Ted’s will stopped empowering it.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Hermione gasped, when the duel was ended and Harry leaned against the wall and panted for a minute.

“I can cast the Severing Charm,” Harry said a little indignantly. It didn’t help that his voice was wavering. He thought it was more from how fast his mind had had to move than the fact that he’d had to use so much magic at once.

“No—I mean—I mean cast it against someone else.” Hermione looked as if she was trying very hard to find the right words, so she wouldn’t offend him.

Harry laughed, and that made Ron grin at him. “That was brilliant, mate! Do you think I can learn that?”

“Of course,” said Ted, and smiled at them all as he bent down to retrieve his wand and healed the small cut on the back of his hand. “It will take practice, of course. Harry and I have been practicing that sequence of spells for a few weeks now.”

“But what good does a sequence of spells do?” Draco broke in, impatient. “He’ll learn them all in a certain order, but how does it help him with real combat? No one’s going to use that exact same sequence.”

Draco sounded a little stiff. Harry tried to catch his eye, worried that he was thinking Ted would try to hurt Harry, but Draco wouldn’t look at him.

“Of course not,” Ted said. “But it will teach Harry—”

“Henry—”

“To be fast and light on his feet. Those spells I cast are heavy ones, and many people would panic simply to see them flying at them. Your brother can’t afford to do that. And we’re going to vary it, of course. Soon I’ll be mixing up the spells in different orders and adding new ones,” he added to Harry, who nodded eagerly. Defense was something he was good at and probably had to be good at, if Voldemort believed in the prophecy.

“You’re training him to face You-Know-Who?” Ron suddenly sounded like he wanted to learn less than he had.

“That is what we must assume,” said Ted. Then he turned towards Ron and smiled. “But of course, I’ll train you less hard than him. Do you want to come up here and give it a try?”

*

“Mr. Tonks is wonderful!” Hermione was practically hopping beside Harry all the way down the corridor back to the little sitting room where Dobby had tea set up for them. “I wish he could come and be our regular Defense professor!”

“Then the curse would get him,” Ron pointed out. He was cradling his left arm against his side, where Ted had hit it hard with a jinx, but he was grinning. “Still, it would be pretty brilliant. But I hear Professor Dumbledore’s getting a retired Auror to teach us this year, so it could still be great.”

“Who?” Hermione asked, and Harry leaned over to hear the answer, but Draco cleared his throat pointedly.

“Henry, can I talk to you?”

“Sure,” Harry said, a little concerned. Draco had been sullen for the last half of their Defense lesson. He waved his friends on and walked over to his brother, who was leaning against the wall with his eyes shut.

Harry wondered if Draco had been injured by a spell and he hadn’t noticed. But then Draco’s eyes opened, and they were just angry.

“Why do you have to show off like that?” Draco demanded. “Why do you like him so much? When he won’t even call you by your proper name!”

“I still want some people to call me Harry,” Harry said, because he didn’t understand the first part of Draco’s complaint at all. He hadn’t shown off! He’d just dodged a lot, and he and Ted had practiced those spells constantly anyway. “Ron and Hermione do it, and you don’t get all upset at them.”

“They’re going to have to change that if they want to stay your friends.”

“What? No, they don’t. I want—”

“You were showing off,” Draco snapped. “I know that you weren’t really intimidated by those spells. You talk about it like it’s hard for you, but it’s not!”

“I’m only not afraid of those spells because Ted and I practice them a lot—”

“Why is it so easy for you? Why are you so good in Defense all the time? Why are you so good at flying? I know you weren’t on a broom before you came to Hogwarts because of the Muggles! So where did you get it?”

Harry blinked at him for a long moment. Then he said, “Draco, are you jealous?”

Draco stiffened as though someone had hit him with a Petrificus Totalus. “I am not,” he hissed. “You take that back.”

“I mean, it’s okay if you are,” Harry said, even though he was thinking of Dudley and how horrible it was to have a family member—or someone you thought was a family member—chase you around and beat you up. “I understand, it has to be hard to be an only child with a brother you thought was gone forever and suddenly he comes back—”

“I am not jealous! Why would I be jealous of you growing up with filth in the Muggle world and wearing clothes for years that made you look worse than Weasley?”

“Oi!” Ron said, coming back around the corner. “Harry, what’s going on?”

“Henry!” Draco yelled, apparently losing his temper and his sanity at the same time. “His name is Henry! Why can’t you get it right, Weasel?”

“That’s enough!” Harry yelled back, appalled. He still thought this was about Draco being jealous that he was good in Defense, although he’d never known that Draco wanted to be good in Defense. “I told Ron I wanted to be called Harry, so he’s just doing what I want! And don’t call him names!” If Draco called Hermione a Mudblood next, then Harry was going to draw his wand and curse him, and he didn’t care how angry their parents got about it or what notices he might get about underage magic.

“Your name is Henry!” Draco whirled around to face him again. “You should want them to say it! Or do you just wish that you were back with your kidnappers again and everyone called you Harry and thought you were a Potter?”

Harry stared at him. “No,” he said, his voice softer than he meant it to be, because of the throbbing pain in his chest. It would have hurt less if Draco had hit him. “Of course not.”

“Then tell everyone to call you Henry.”

“No!”

“You’re pathetic,” Draco sneered at him. “A pureblood who clings to something kidnappers and traitors and Muggles call him.” He turned and stormed away up the corridor.

Harry took a step after him, and then stopped. He was no longer even certain why Draco was so angry, whether he was jealous or really hated that people called Harry by his old (real) name, or whether it was something else. But he knew he wouldn’t do any good by going and asking his brother right now.

“Mate? Are you okay?”

Harry took a deep breath and turned back to Ron. “I am. Come on, let’s go and have tea.”

He was glad that it was Ron here and not Hermione, because Ron just nodded and walked along with him, looking a little stunned himself, and not trying to make Harry “talk” about it or anything.

Harry’s head was buzzing, and he barely remembered the conversation that happened between him and Ron and Hermione. He mostly listened to Hermione chatter on about Ted and what a brilliant teacher he was, again. Neither he nor Ron, by silent agreement, mentioned the argument that had happened with Draco. Hermione would turn herself inside out to make it “right,” and she couldn’t, not really.

But the ache remained in Harry’s chest. Yeah, Draco had been angry. But Draco was the kind of person who got more honest, not less, when he was angry, and maybe this was his way of saying what he really meant.

What he really thought.

And the fear was there, sneaking through Harry’s mind like an enemy he couldn’t cast curses to combat.

Do Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy think that, too?