lomonaaeren

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Chapter Fourteen—Calling

“It’s lovely to see you, Mr. Potter.”

“It is not lovely to see you, Ms. Skeeter,” Harry said evenly, and stepped past her into the school, guiding Jamie along with one hand on his shoulder. “If you have something you want to say to me, you can do it by owl.”

Skeeter sighed extravagantly and followed him into the level of the school where parents would bring their children in the morning. Harry made sure that Jamie was behind him, along with Sapphire, when he turned around. Sela remained coiled around Harry’s neck, but she was watching Skeeter, and the bond between her and Harry thrummed with silent tension.

“You can’t use the weapon of my being an illegal Animagus against me anymore. I’m registered.”

“Foolish of you to assume that’s the only weapon I carry.”

“And foolish of you to assume he stands alone.”

Harry felt something in him relax as Draco walked through the door on the far side of the anteroom, shutting it before Skeeter would have had a chance to see beyond it. Draco was dressed in formal, flowing purple robes, and his expression was frigidly polite. He had one hand resting on Edwina’s back, as if to restrain her, but she was rearing on his shoulder with her hood puffed out.

Skeeter stared at Draco as if she had never seen him before. Then she gave him a small smile. “I was unaware that we had any quarrel between us, Mr. Malfoy.”

“When you come into my school and start harassing my professors, then yes, we do,” Draco said evenly.

Skeeter blinked a few times. Then she said, “Surely the—surely you don’t think of Harry Potter as a close friend.”

Harry felt a sick lurch in his stomach, because he could already see how Skeeter would write the article, and twist everything around, and make it sound as though Draco had hired him as a professor only because of some torrid affair between them. From the way Skeeter was smiling, she could follow the progress of Harry’s thoughts and was sure she had won.

Draco just stared at Skeeter flatly, until her smile faltered, and then said, “As a matter of fact, I do. And I think that he has a reason to be here, which you don’t. Get out of my property, Skeeter.”

“The public won’t like Parselmouths very much if you don’t make an ally of me,” Skeeter said softly. “You underestimate how much influence I wield at the Prophet, even now.”

“I think that perhaps you should be less concerned with that and more with what might be hiding in the shadows under your bed tonight.”

Skeeter’s mouth dropped open a little. She shut her jaw immediately and focused on Draco, which was a good thing, because Harry was having a hard time controlling either the laughter that wanted to burst out of him or the warmth that was bubbling up in his stomach. “Is that a threat, Mr. Malfoy?”

“Why not? You’ve already made one, so I wanted to use your native language.”

“What is Mr. Malfoy talking about, Daddy? She’s not like us.”

“He just means that he’s trying to make her understand what will happen if she tries to hurt us,” Harry hissed back.

He didn’t think he would have seen it if he was a little further away from her, but Skeeter immediately turned to face him when he started speaking Parseltongue, and her face went pale. Harry raised his eyebrows. Huh. So Draco’s threat of sending snakes after her had some basis in reality.

“You—you’re really a Parselmouth,” Skeeter said in a slightly dazed voice.

“She can’t hurt us?”

“No, she can’t hurt us.”

Skeeter backed up a step, one hand reaching out as if to grasp a railing that wasn’t there for support. Harry gave her a hard smile. “What’s the matter, Ms. Skeeter? Surely you wouldn’t have tried to blackmail me or write a scandalous story about me if you imagined I wasn’t really a Parselmouth?”

Skeeter stared at him a few seconds more. Then she looked between him and Draco, and focused for a second on Sela, who had unwound herself enough to look like she was moving towards Skeeter down Harry’s arm.

And then she turned and walked out.

Harry blinked after her as the outer door fell softly shut, and turned to look at Draco. “Why do you think she did that?”

Draco held up a hand, concentrating for a moment, and Harry thought he was probably using the wards to make sure Skeeter was really gone. Then he nodded and turned back to Harry, but spoke in Parseltongue. “Because she believed that you were malleable and probably not even a Parselmouth, and now she abruptly has to reevaluate her whole belief system when you proved strong and a threat.”

“But she already knew I was a Parselmouth.”

“It’s one thing to know that, and another thing to come face-to-face with it. Especially if she’s one of those people who feared us before we became widespread. Did she ever see you face-to-face when you were speaking Parseltongue?”

Harry concentrated for a second, trying to remember, but ended up shaking his head. “No, I don’t think so. I didn’t speak it much in school outside of second year, and she wasn’t really spying on me then. I don’t think.”

“She would have written articles about you if she was. And despite everything, she might have believed those rumors that you lost Parseltongue after Voldemort died.”

Harry smiled. “Thank you for being here.”

“It was my pleasure,” Draco said, with a smile and a lingering look that Harry only returned for a second before he thought he was probably making Draco uncomfortable and coughed.

“Let’s get you to class, young man,” he told Jamie, and floated Sapphire along with him as they headed for the classroom where Parkinson would be waiting for them. To Sela, Harry added, “I’m surprised that you didn’t ask if you could bite her.”

“Why should I when you are fighting the battle?”

Harry blinked, and tucked those words away to think about for a while.

*

“Can James spend the night, Daddy?”

Draco blinked and looked up from the pile of paperwork he was scanning through: parchments to make sure that his school was in good standing with the Ministry, requests from parents to have their children evaluated, letters that would have been Howlers if the writers had been a little ruder. It took him a moment to refocus on Scorpius. “What did you say?”

“I want James to spend the night.” Scorpius folded his arms and glared at Draco. Charlie shifted a little on his shoulder, but he was too good-natured to glare the way Scorpius probably would have preferred, the way Edwina would back Draco up.

Or Sela Harry.

Draco removed the reading glasses he’d started using when casting Sight-Sharpening Charms on his eyes moved to every day instead of once a week. “I don’t know if his father would like that.”

“So I just need to ask Professor Harry?”

Draco knew he should probably forbid it. Harry was sensitive about the thought of anyone else caring for James, and for understandable reasons. And Scorpius didn’t need to go through the snarling or snapping he might be subject to if he asked and Harry said no.

But Draco didn’t think Harry would really snarl at a child, one of his students. And he was curious himself as to whether Harry would trust Draco to care for James.

“You just need to ask him,” Draco said, and waited only a moment for his son to beam and bolt from the office before he stood up, collecting a sleepy Edwina, and followed close behind. It was time to see what happened.

*

“Professor Harry.”

Harry turned from the fireplace with a pinch of Floo powder in his hand. He and James were already a little late for dinner, and James was so sleepy that Harry worried he might fall face-down into a bowl of soup if they didn’t hurry. “Yes, Scorpius?” Belatedly, he realized that Scorpius was speaking in English, something he rarely bothered to do around other Parselmouths, and that Charlie was awake and watching them both closely.

Scorpius folded his hands behind his back. Harry was aware that Draco had come into the room behind him and that James was peering around Harry, but he didn’t look away from Scorpius.

“I wanted to ask if James could stay the night, please. Daddy said you wouldn’t want him to but I had to ask.”

Harry grunted. He glanced at Draco and only got a cool glance back. Draco was standing with his arms not quite crossed, watching and—watching. Because of course he was, and what Harry said next would matter to more people than just Scorpius and Jamie.

Jamie was jumping up and down while not moving out from behind Harry. “Please, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy? Please?”

Harry tried to ignore the intense crawling sensation that the thought of being separated from James brought with it. He had to slow this down as much as possible and think. He found himself reaching towards Sela on his shoulder and touched her scales after a deliberate moment when he might have chosen not to.

“I think it for the best,” Sela hissed, although not in a way that was private, of course, not when everyone in the room understood the bloody language.

Of course she did. Harry focused on Draco and found him looking back with a calm expression on his face, less opaque than before. And that was also a deliberate choice, one that he flicked his eyelids at in irritation before he spoke.

“I wouldn’t mind if Jamie wants to stay. I’ll go home and make sure that I can get him a toothbrush and a set of robes for tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Daddy!” Jamie hugged his legs and then flung himself around them, chattering wildly at Scorpius. The way that Sapphire and Charlie flicked their tongues at each other probably had some meaning Harry was too unfamiliar with snakes to catch.

“Why did you do it?”

Harry turned to Draco again. “It was the right decision. He needs a friend. He’s—been isolated. It’s not something I should have done. I realize that now. I was trying to protect him from people who would use him or curse him because he’s my son, but I was also, perhaps, trying to protect him from getting his heart bruised like I did.”

Draco had been opening his mouth to say something, but he closed it now and shook his head. Harry watched him curiously. “What?”

“I thought you were about to go off on another monologue about how everything’s all your fault and you deserve everything that happened to you.”

“You’ve helped to change my mind. And even if I did deserve what happened, Jamie didn’t.” Harry nodded to where James and Scorpius had already started to argue over who would manage to stay up later without falling asleep. “Look how happy he is. It was the right decision.”

“I’ll take good care of him.”

Draco’s voice was muted. Harry had the sense that he was stepping back from something that would have ripped open wounds in both of them, or maybe just a conversation they weren’t ready for.

Sela hissed something to him, but Harry didn’t register it, too focused on Draco. “Yes, I know that. I never would have let him stay if I thought otherwise, no matter how much he wanted it.”

Draco blinked, then smiled faintly. “I can’t think that you deserved it, either, you know.”

This wasn’t a conversation Harry felt equipped to have at the moment. He dipped his head in thanks and said, “I know. I’ll come back with Jamie’s clothing and toothbrush, like I said.” He reached out for the Floo powder on Draco’s mantel again.

“I’ll take good care of him,” Draco repeated to Harry’s back.

Harry nodded, and disappeared into the Floo to go home. Sela was hissing contentedly from where she was looped around his neck. He decided that was a good sign. Probably, at least.

*

Draco cracked open Scorpius’s door to peer into the bedroom. Draco had conjured a cot for Jamie, and then the boys had argued over which one of them would get to sleep in it, because it was obviously so much more brilliant than a bed. Draco wasn’t sure which one of them had finally taken it, because their arguing had subsided a while ago.

He snorted when he saw both Jamie and Scorp curled asleep on the floor, their snakes also asleep next to them.

“You like the Potter youngling.”

Draco touched Edwina’s back and nodded. She had swayed forwards so that she could see around his head into the room, too. “Of course. He’s enthusiastic and smart and can benefit our school by showing that the son of someone famous also plans to embrace his Parseltongue. Someone who wasn’t a Slytherin.”

“But would you be so eager to take care of him if he didn’t come with his father?”

Edwina would sometimes sleep away entire days, and then she would come out with a kind of question like this, as piercing as her fangs. Luckily, she didn’t mind if he took some time to answer it. Draco went on watching the boys while he touched her scales here and there, ending up on the retracted hood that framed her face.

“No,” Draco replied at last. “Probably not. He could have still become Scorpius’s friend in that case, but I doubt I would be as close to his parents.”

Edwina gave a soft, satisfied hiss. “You know how well your magic would blend with his in the ritual room.”

Draco nodded. “Of course. But until he completes the full bond with Sela, we won’t blend well. And I think he’s frightened of reaching out to someone else when his marriage ended so badly.”

“I do not understand humans.”

Draco smoothed her scales without answering again, studied the boys a moment, and decided he didn’t have to move them to the bed or cot. If they were sore when they woke up in the bed, that was what the simple Healing Charms he often used on Scorpius were for. He closed the door and went to bed.

As he changed clothes, brushed his teeth, and placed Edwina on the heated rock where she preferred to sleep at night, his mind turned back to Harry. Draco thought he probably didn’t understand the immense amount of courage apparently required for Harry to let his son spend the night at a different person’s house. Hadn’t he done it before with Jamie’s grandparents?

Perhaps not. Or not often. Not if he thought they were supporting his ridiculous wife.

Draco sneered at his reflection in the mirror and used a simple Hair-Straightening Charm that would ensure he didn’t wake up with bedhead. How anyone could have decided to support a mother who ran away from her child and then proclaimed her hatred of Parseltongue instead of the father who was willing to take care of his son even if he despised Parselmouths, too…

Draco shrugged. It wasn’t his business to think through the wrongheaded notions of the public as it applied to Parselmouths. He needed to know them so that he could respond to them, but understanding them was beyond him.

As he crawled into bed and extended his hand to rest on the table that held Edwina’s rock, he let his mind wander to Harry’s tight, pinched expression the first time he had escorted Jamie into the school.

I suppose he has more reason than most people to resent his Parseltongue, when it made everyone turn against him second year and made his life difficult after the war, Draco thought drowsily. But even he was able to change his mind. If he can, then it shouldn’t be beyond the ordinary, biased members of the public who barely ever hear people speaking it.

*

Harry turned away from Jamie’s room for the second time that night, having been reminded, yet again, that it was empty, and Jamie was over at Scorpius’s house. Draco’s house.

“He will be all right,” Sela said from his shoulder.

“That’s not really what I’m worried about,” Harry whispered as he walked back into his bedroom. “I check on him several times a night. He’s always there, and now he’s not.”

Sela said nothing for long enough that Harry thought he would just go back to sleep without further input from her. But as he sat on the edge of his bed, she looped towards him and looked at him long and earnestly, or with as much of that kind of expression on her face as a snake could have.

“I can help if you will let me deepen the bond with you,” Sela said softly.

“I thought it was about letting you into my mind and dreams. I thought we’d done that.”

“This is more than that. It involves pooling our magic together. You will be able to perform certain natural tricks that are my domain. I will be able to mimic your spells.”

Harry blinked and stared at her. Sela looked calmly back. She certainly didn’t seem to be lying, if it was even possible for a snake to lie in Parseltongue. So far, Harry had never heard one try. “I…does this make it easier to do ritual magic with a compatible Parselmouth, as well?”

“Yes. Both humans and the humans’ snakes.”

Harry took a deep breath. His mind was on the circle where his and Draco’s magic had mingled, and the heights that Draco had said they would achieve if Harry bonded completely with Sela.

Draco.

It was partially for Jamie that he was doing this. But it had gone beyond just Jamie a long time ago. Harry had already admitted to himself that he found Draco attractive. Being able to practice full ritual magic with him was different than going on a date, of course Harry knew that, but it was still a way to get closer to him.

Harry met Sela’s eyes. “Tell me what I have to do.”