[From Litha to Lammas]: Sleeping Dogs Lie, Harry/Draco, R, 3/5

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part Three

“That’s kind of weird, isn’t it?” Ron asked doubtfully. “Going to the Ball with your cousin?”

Harry rolled his eyes and tried another charm on his hair. This time, it gathered smoothly behind his neck and hovered there, and Harry Summoned the silver clip that Sirius had sent him for his birthday and clasped it behind his neck. It looked better long, he thought. He got more stares, but he was getting those anyway.

And best of all, it reduced Snape to spluttering, incoherent rage. Harry could only surmise that Sirius had had his hair this long at one point in his schooldays, although Harry kept forgetting to ask him.

“It saved me having to ask someone else,” Harry said, with a shrug. “And right before Draco asked me, I heard one of the third-year girls giggling about finding a love potion to slip me. No, thanks.”

“Whereas I have to go alone.”

Harry bit down on his lip, and then decided that he didn’t want to, actually. This was one of the things he had discussed with Sirius, along with the Yule Ball and whether he actually wanted to wear fancy dress robes, during their last meeting in the cave. Sirius had advocated being blunt. “If you wanted to ask Hermione, you should have done it earlier.”

Ron turned bright red. “I didn’t know she’d have a date!”

“Yeah, but you still should have done it earlier.”

“I didn’t want to ask her! I just wanted to go with a girl!”

“And then you made her feel like she was last choice because she was just a girl you happened to know. Smooth, Ron.”

“I’m not the bloke going with my cousin. My Slytherin cousin.”

Harry laughed. “With as much as Paddy talks about all the pureblood families being interrelated, that’s probably only because you aren’t taking a pureblood.”

Ron fumed for a second, and then sighed and leaned back against the wall near the bathroom mirror. His red face turned back to normal. Harry touched his shoulder. Ron had been really trying, ever since the end of the First Task, to control his temper and not just blurt things out. Harry appreciated it.

“Yeah, fine,” Ron muttered. “But I just…Hermione’s a great friend, but…”

“I know,” Harry said, even though he really didn’t. Sirius had talked about being blunt some of the time, but also that whatever was going on between Ron and Hermione, they really would have to sort out most of the truth themselves. “Let’s go.”

Ron fiddled with the edges of his cuffs one more time—Sirius had taught Harry a charm to cut off the old-fashioned lace there—and they walked out into the common room. Neville passed them with Ginny, who smiled shyly at Harry.

Harry smiled back at her and then looked away quickly. Ginny wasn’t the girl he’d heard giggling about the love potion and he didn’t think she would ever do it, but third-year girls in general were just getting on his nerves now.

As they made their way to the Great Hall, Ron split off from Harry, and Harry went to stand with the rest of the Champions. Cedric Diggory was standing with Cho Chang—Harry sighed a little—and Fleur Delacour with the Captain of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team, Davies something. She looked stunning and Davies looked stunned.

And Hermione was with Viktor Krum.

Harry blinked, then smiled, and walked over to them. “Hermione, you look really pretty,” he said. “Congratulations, Krum.”

Krum blinked at him and nodded. “I am being very lucky,” he agreed, and beamed at Hermione in a way that made her blush almost as brightly as Ron.

“Harry.”

Harry turned around, and his breath caught. Draco was walking over to join him in bright blue robes with silver stitching around the edges. He hadn’t allowed Harry to see the robes before the Ball, and Harry hadn’t worried much about it. After all, what he looked like wasn’t as important to him as the fact that Draco would protect him from people trying to put love potions in his food or make conversation he didn’t want to have.

But Draco did—look good. Harry was only realizing now how much the black school robes made him look washed-out, and how much better his pale hair—hanging straight to his shoulders, like Harry’s when it was free—appeared with some color.

Harry turned bright red himself. Hermione’s eyebrows went up. Harry shook his head at her and went over to take Draco’s hand. It was warm and slightly sweaty, but so what? Harry himself would probably have been looking for some way out of here if he wasn’t already so used to the stares.

“You look nice,” Harry muttered.

“So do you.”

Draco sounded calm and ordinary, and Harry told himself to calm the fuck down. Behaving like an idiot wasn’t what he was here to do.

“Champions!” called Professor McGonagall, stepping out of the Great Hall. Her eyes focused on Harry and Draco, and she blinked several times. But at least she didn’t say anything personal before she began to instruct them on how they’d enter and dance.

And if the dance wasn’t a complete disaster, that was much more creditable to Draco than to Harry.

*

“Happy Christmas, Harry.”

Harry smiled and leaned against Sirius’s shoulder. They were having a brief Christmas celebration in the cave. Sirius had wanted Harry to come to Andromeda’s house, but since everyone was staying at Hogwarts for the Yule Ball and everyone knew Harry never went home for Christmas, it would have looked suspicious.

Ron and Hermione would keep his secrets, Harry knew, but he didn’t need other people asking questions.

“This is for you,” Sirius said, and handed over a broom-shaped package.

“Dad,” Harry groaned, partially because that always made Sirius look like he was swallowing sunshine, and partially because he really felt that way. “You just gave me a Firebolt last year.”

Sirius laughed. “I didn’t say that it was a broom, did I?”

Harry eyed him and then opened the package. The part shaped like the broom bristles abruptly made a sploosh sound and puffed into a bright firework. Harry yelped and threw it away from him, where it clattered against the wall near their fire. Sirius rolled on the floor, laughing like a maniac.

“Is this a real present at all?” Harry grumbled. He could clearly feel the part that had been shaped like the broom handle, and it seemed to be solid, but he had to be sure.

Sirius turned over and grinned at him. “Sure. Unroll it.”

Harry snorted and took off the paper (green with small golden Snitches and red Quaffles darting over it). He unrolled the parchment and found it was a large family tree, done in black and silver lines. Harry blinked and stared.

“This is the Black family?” he whispered.

Sirius nodded and grabbed one edge of the parchment, unrolling it further and then sitting on it so that it wouldn’t move. It was a lot bigger than Harry had thought. He could see the outlines of branches and leaves and a trunk along the various names, too, so someone had drawn it actually as a tree.

“I wanted you to be able to see it,” Sirius explained. “There’s a tapestry in my awful family home that shows this in more detail, but frankly, you shouldn’t have to go there, ever. And it doesn’t show everybody, just the most recent generations and the people who married directly into the family. This way, you can see how you’re related to the Weasleys and the Potters, and all the rest.”

His voice was wistful when he said “Potters.” Harry leaned a hand on his shoulder for a minute before he leaned over to look.

Harry whistled as he did. “Wow, we really are related to everyone,” he said, and rejoiced in that he was able to say “we.”

Sirius laughed. “Yeah. Let’s see.” His finger touched a name—Cedrella Black—and then “Septimus Weasley,” next to her, following it down to Arthur Weasley’s name and then the names of all their seven children. “The original family tapestry has all these scorch marks where people they disapproved of were blasted off.” He rolled his eyes. “I didn’t copy that. Cedrella was disowned for marrying a supposed ‘blood traitor,’ but I wanted you to be able to see all the relationships.”

Harry worked it out carefully as he looked at the tree. “So Ron is my…”

“Third cousin once removed,” Sirius said promptly. “Since his grandmother was first cousins with my grandfather.”

“And he was giving me guff about Draco,” Harry muttered. “Saying it wasn’t a good idea to go to the Ball with my cousin. Neville went with Ginny, and they’re, uh, second cousins once removed according to this.”

Sirius shrugged. “I’m not always going to pretend it works out. My parents were second cousins, and they had an awful, horrible marriage.”

“So you don’t think I should have gone with Draco either?”

“I think you should do whatever you fucking want,” Sirius said. “And anyway, my parents didn’t have a horrible marriage because they were cousins. They had a horrible marriage because they were bigoted, horrible people.” He sighed and reached out to ruffle Harry’s hair. “Sorry, Harry. In that respect, you would have been better off with James’s parents.”

“But you’re my dad,” Harry said, and leaned against Sirius, and they were quiet together, looking at the scroll detailing their family and how many people they were connected to. Harry felt as though he was really sitting in the center of that enormous tree, with branches reaching everywhere.

*

“Black!”

Harry glanced up without meaning to; he’d got so used to being addressed by that name in his own head and with Draco and Cissa. Snape was looming over him, his face pinched and his hand clenched down at his side.

“Detention,” he said in a low voice, “for the gillyweed that you stole from my stores.”

“Sir, I didn’t—”

Snape swooped down so that he was so close to Harry, Harry could smell onions on his breath. Everyone in Potions class was staring. Harry felt his face heat up. He hated this. Being stared at because of things he couldn’t control was one thing; his professor making a scene was another.

“Be glad,” Snape whispered, “that I do not have proof that you are behind stealing the boomslang skin as well. Otherwise, it would be two weeks of detention. As it is, you will be serving one week. Come see me after class.”

Harry bit his lip. He could see Draco looking agitated out of the corner of his eye, and Ron turning red, but neither of them could help. Harry didn’t want to sour Draco’s relationship with Snape or the other Slytherins, and he didn’t want Ron getting in trouble for defending him. They were just getting back to normal after Harry rescuing Ron from the bottom of the lake, which had made Ron beyond happy.

“Yes, sir,” he said instead.

He bowed his head and got back to work, blinking a drop of sweat out of his eyes in case it would ruin the potion. When class was over, he turned and marched up to Snape’s desk, holding out the vial of the Deflating Draught they’d been working on.

Snape stared at him with eyes so full of hatred that Harry wondered he’d ever thought it was hatred last year. Or maybe second year. Last year, the rumors of Harry’s parentage had already been spreading.

“You will not wear that ridiculous decoration in my classroom again,” Snape sneered, gesturing at the silver clasp that tied Harry’s hair back.

Harry again bit his lip. It wasn’t worth arguing over, and he didn’t want Snape taking Sirius’s gift. “All right, sir.”

“You will cease your ridiculous affectation of having long hair, Mr.—Potter.”

“I don’t see why it matters if I tie it back like Parvati and Parkinson do, sir,” Harry said, as calmly as he could. He didn’t want to cut his hair. It was a way of connecting to Sirius, acknowledging him since Harry could hardly do so in other ways right now. “I’ll tie it back with something other than the clasp.”

“Boys are not meant to have long hair. And five points from Gryffindor for your cheek, Potter. You will cut your hair.”

“No, sir.” Harry could feel his eyes hardening, and he knew even Sirius would probably say it was a bad thing to antagonize Snape like this, but he didn’t care. Snape didn’t have the right to make decisions like this for him. “I’ll tie it back and not wear the clasp, but I won’t cut it.”

“Boys are not meant to!” Snape shouted.

“Then are you going to make Zabini cut his hair, too, sir?” Harry retorted. He had never been sure how long Blaise Zabini’s hair was, since he wore it in braids coiled closely to his scalp, but it was obviously long, and obviously didn’t get in his way when he was working in Potions. “If you are, then I’ll accept that I have to do it.”

“Enough of your cheek!”

Snape loomed right up close to him and raised one hand. Harry had no idea what he was going to do, draw his wand or something else, but it looked like the way Uncle Vernon would deliver a cuff to the back of Harry’s head. Harry jerked back and away.

Snape stared at him. Harry, heart leaping up into his throat, stared back. He had no idea what to say, if he could say anything.

Snape stared between his hand and Harry, and then abruptly lowered his hand. It trembled. He rubbed his eyes. “Get out of my class, Black,” he whispered. “Your detention is canceled.”

Harry knew better than to ask about his hair and the clasp. He turned around and fled.

*

“Professor Dumbledore has to do something about him,” Hermione fumed, pacing back and forth in the middle of the Gryffindor common room. Luckily, they were under the Privacy Spells that Draco had taught Harry to cast. “It’s obnoxious and so unfair! You’re right that he doesn’t care if Slytherins wear their hair long! He can’t just make these rules apply to one House!”

Harry sighed. He was already exhausted just from the thought of talking to Dumbledore, and he knew what the man would probably say: he trusted Snape, Snape had a reason to be teaching, Harry would understand when he was older, blah blah blah. Harry had asked him a few times about any progress on Harry’s dreams about Voldemort, which he’d had throughout the year. Each time, Professor Dumbledore had shaken his head and said he was doing research, but refused to say more.

“Harry? Aren’t you going to tell Sirius?”

That was Ron. Harry turned to face his best friend with a long sigh. “What do you think he would do?”

“Probably charge up to the school to duel Snape.” Ron looked as if this would make his day.

“Yeah, but I don’t want him to, when he’s a fugitive.”

“What if he finds out some other way?”

Harry raised his eyebrows at Ron. “What other way would that be? Your writing him and telling him something I specifically don’t want you to tell him?”

Ron sighed and slumped back in his chair. “Someone should do something about Snape.”

“Technically, Sirius already tried,” Harry muttered, thinking of their fifth year and the way Sirius had sent Snape down the tunnel to face Moony. Harry thought that had been horrible. He also thought that twelve years in Azkaban had probably been enough to pay for it and that Snape hating Sirius’s kid because of it was stupid. “No. I don’t want to tell him.”

“You’re too used to handling things on your own, Harry,” Hermione fretted. She came over and touched his hand.

“I know, but what else can I do? Half of them would overreact, and half of them don’t think I’m old enough to be living my own bloody life.”

Hermione smiled sadly. “I know.”

*

Harry began running the instant he saw Cedric come around the corner of the hedge maze into the area where the Cup was. It was probably stupid, considering he hadn’t wanted to be in the Tournament at all, but he wanted to make Sirius proud of him if he had to be here. Sirius had been so proud when he’d faced the dragons and when Harry had figured out the clue in the golden egg, and he’d spent time tutoring Harry on special spells that he could use in the Third Task.

Cedric was running, too, but he was limping from what looked like a worse injury than Harry’s Acromantula bite, and he was losing ground. Harry lunged forwards and locked his hand on the Cup’s handle—

And felt the hard jerk of a Portkey.

*

“Harry.”

That was all Sirius said, when Madam Pomfrey and Dumbledore and the Minister and Snape had left and it was just Sirius and Harry in the hospital wing. He cuddled as close to Harry as he could, arms wrapped around him, and whimpering in the back of his throat the same way he would have as a dog. Harry rolled over and cuddled close, too. He wasn’t even crying by now. The shock had settled deep in his bones, as deep as the ache from the Cruciatus and the cut on his arm where Wormtail had taken his blood.

“I’m so, so sorry,” Sirius whispered, and stroked Harry’s back. “I’ve failed as a parent. I’ve failed as a dad. I never should have let you stay in this bloody competition.”

Harry closed his eyes so the tears wouldn’t fall, and shook his head. “What could you have done?” he whispered. “They all told me I was bound to compete. Dumbledore didn’t try to find a way to get me out of it, not seriously. And no one—no one knew Moody was an imposter. It wasn’t your fault.”

Sirius held him some more. Then he said, “It’s the end.”

“The end of peace?” Harry had been half-drifting off, even though he ached so much and he was also listening for Madam Pomfrey to come back and Sirius to have to transform back into a dog. “Yeah, I know.”

“No,” Sirius said, and there was some kind of different tone in his voice, one that made Harry pull back and look up at him.

Sirius’s eyes were oddly lit in the moonlight falling through the hospital wing’s window. They seemed to gleam red like a dog’s, the way they had done the first time Harry had ever seen him, across the street on Privet Drive. Harry shuddered, because Voldemort’s had done the same thing, but he couldn’t bring himself to back away from Sirius. He knew Sirius would never hurt him.

“I mean that it’s the end of me just sitting back and letting you get in trouble,” Sirius said fiercely. “I should have done this last year, but all I could think of was getting away from Britain and the Dementors.” He still shuddered when he spoke their name, but not as badly as he had last year. “And I trusted Dumbledore to take care of you. That was shit, obviously.”

Harry stared at him with an open mouth. “You’re a fugitive. You can’t just take custody of me.”

“There are ways to do these kinds of things anonymously,” Sirius said, and snapped his teeth on the air. The more angry he got, the more dog-like he got, Harry thought. “Bribe the right people in the Ministry, and the right paperwork gets filed in the right place, and no one’s going to check on the signatures. I’ll alter a few things, and the paperwork in the Ministry will say that you’re Regulus’s son and he’s living with you.”

“Your dead brother? Don’t people know he’s dead?”

“No,” Sirius said promptly. “He disappeared during the war, and no one ever found his body. No trial, no sentence in Azkaban, nothing like that. The only official record is his death date on the bloody tapestry in that bloody house, and no one but me’s been there since our dear old mum died. Well, and Kreacher, but he’s not exactly traipsing off to the Ministry to report Regulus’s death, either.”

Harry swallowed, and swallowed again. “So we’re going to pretend that—well, but Dumbledore and Andromeda are going to know the difference.” He felt the excitement dying a slow death in his chest. It had been nice while it lasted.

“Andi isn’t going to betray me. And she doesn’t exactly know how Regulus died, either, or for certain that you’re my son. She could say under Veritaserum that you might be Regulus’s. Her husband and daughter know even less.” Sirius gave him a devilish grin. “Dumbledore is more of a problem, but I don’t intend to ask his permission.”

Harry felt his breathing come short. To think that he might be able to get away from the Dursleys and never have to see them again was incredible.

“You’ll—but he would know where we go, right? He knows that you’ve been staying with Andromeda? And he could tell the Ministry that it’s you and not Regulus who filed the paperwork.”

Sirius snorted. “He can’t prove that Regulus is dead, either. We’ll take care of that tonight. And he knows I’ve been staying with Andromeda, but that’s not going to matter in a few hours, either.”

Harry swallowed. “I, yeah, all right, Sirius. Please take me away.” He closed his eyes and shuddered. The image of Voldemort rearing out of the cauldron made his stomach twist, and he barely held his nausea back in time.

Sirius scooped him up from the bed. Harry thought he must have cast some kind of charm to make Harry’s weight lighter. He didn’t care, though. He wrapped his arms around his father’s neck and leaned in until he thought he could smell the scent of wet dog under the sweat of Sirius’s skin and the wool of his robes.

“The others are going to be worried,” he did think to whisper, as Sirius cast a Disillusionment Charm and slipped out of the hospital wing with Harry cradled against his chest.

“You can send them owls tomorrow,” Sirius murmured. “It truly shouldn’t take that long for us to settle ourselves.”

Harry closed his eyes and held on. He wondered drowsily if Sirius would use an illusion to look like Regulus when they had to go out in public. Or could he use Polyjuice Potion? No, you had to be alive for Polyjuice Potion to work, that was why Crouch had kept Moody alive all year…

Harry shuddered at the reminder, and how close he had come to being killed by the Death Eater in Crouch’s office. Sirius patted his back immediately and said softly, “Do you want me to cast a Sleeping Charm on you? The business I have to take care of is going to be tedious, anyway, and there’s nothing you can really do tonight.”

“Yes,” Harry whispered. He knew he wouldn’t sleep without nightmares. “Please.”

His dad’s wand tapped him on the head, and his dad’s voice whispered a soft incantation, and the world slipped away.

*

Harry opened his eyes and sat up, staring around. It took some time for his memory to catch up with his eyes, and then he started grinning. The room around him was weird, but it was a different, good kind of weird.

It had heavy dark wood on the walls and a huge four-poster bed in the middle of the room. It looked as though the curtains had been hit with a powerful Scouring Charm, so they were a faded dark green and patchy, but at least not actually grey with dust or moth-eaten. The pillows behind Harry were almost decadently soft, and so was the blanket tucked over him, even if they were also the same dark green. There was a table beside the bed with his glasses on it and a door over to the side that was probably the bathroom. Harry slipped the glasses on.

He started as a house-elf appeared in the center of the room, glaring at him. The elf was much uglier than Dobby, with patches of hair growing out of his ears and a battered black cloth wrapped around him. He looked as though he didn’t know what a bath was.

“Master Sirius’s filthy son be coming home,” said the elf, and folded his arms. “Kreacher is not liking it.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t like the looks of you, either,” Harry said, gesturing at him. “Do you ever clean yourself up? Or do you just leave a film of grime on whatever you touch? If you do, then I’ll be doing the cooking, thanks.”

Kreacher stared at him with his mouth open. He didn’t seem to have many teeth, and what he had left were jagged and yellow. He clapped his mouth shut with a snarl a second later and leaned forwards. “Master Sirius’s filthy son is very rude.”

“Still not as filthy as you.”

The door opened then, and Harry jumped, a little guilty. Sirius probably wouldn’t want him arguing with the elf. But Sirius either hadn’t heard what Harry had been saying or didn’t care, because he cast Kreacher an indifferent glance and focused on Harry. “It’s done.”

“All of it?” Harry asked, a little dazed.

“I didn’t sleep,” Sirius said, and came into the room with a bouncy step that Harry remembered from one of the times they’d met in the cave and Sirius had told him he’d been up all night thinking about new spells to teach Harry. “The paperwork saying you’re Regulus’s son is in the process of being filed. I’ve told Andi what to say if Dumbledore comes asking in a letter that burned right after she read it. I called your little elf friend Dobby and had him bring your trunk and things here. Hedwig is flying to us as we speak. And the wards around the house are the kind that’s going to kill anyone who enters without my permission.”

“Uh,” Harry said.

“Don’t worry, they’ll let owls through. But not Howlers.”

“Uh.”

“As soon as Hedwig gets here, you can write to your friends,” Sirius said. He kept bouncing on the balls of his feet and grinning at Harry. “Maybe they can come visit if we can find a way for them to do it subtly. And I’ll work on perfecting my illusion so that I can look like Regulus.”

“Uh.”

Sirius finally stopped bouncing and looked at Harry worriedly. “Are you okay? Oh, Merlin, did I make a mistake last night? Did you not want me to take you away? I’m so sorry, Harry, I have no idea how to be a father. I can take you back to Hogwarts if you want me to—”

Harry launched himself at Sirius from the middle of the bed. Sirius grunted and staggered back, arms clasping around Harry and holding him. He blinked, bewildered, into Harry’s face.

“No,” Harry said. “I just—no one’s ever done anything for me like this. And I know that I can write to Ron and Hermione and Draco and Cissa, no matter how worried they are right now. Thank you.” He buried his head in Sirius’s robes the way he had last night, the way he had in the cave, shaking.

Sirius held him close. Kreacher muttered something behind them about, “Filthy Master Harry is not being good Master Regulus’s son,” but neither of them paid attention to him.

Then someone began screaming from downstairs. Harry jumped. “FILTHY SON, HOW DARE YOU COME HOME! HOUSE OF MY ANCESTORS, BE CLEANSED OF THIS FILTH!”

Harry stared at Sirius. “Who is that?”

Sirius gave him the devilish grin again. “That’s my dear old mum, in portrait form. Come on. I can’t wait to introduce her to her illegitimate half-blood grandson.”