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lomonaaerenTitle: A Darkness Like Fire
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Mostly gen, with mentions of Lucius/Narcissa and Ted/Andromeda
Content Notes: AU (Harry is a Malfoy), violence, angst, mention of past character deaths, torture
Wordcount: This part 4100
Summary: Coming back from the graveyard isn’t simple. Harry struggles to recover as his family, both Malfoy and Black, gathers around him and begins the hunt for the Horcruxes.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics, short chaptered fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. This is also the sixth part of my Like a Malfoy series, and sequel to “How Like Hatred,” “A Name Like Henry,” “A Godfather Like Him,” “A Year Like This,” and “A Path Like Frost.” Read those first, or you won’t understand this one. This one will likely have three to four parts.
A Darkness Like Fire
“Is Henry going to be all right, Mother?”
Narcissa drew Draco gently against her side. Her elder son followed the motion, but he didn’t lower his eyes and he didn’t look away from her face. Narcissa smoothed her hand through his hair, and silently catalogued all the differences between Draco’s face and those of her younger son, currently senseless in a bedroom upstairs.
“Mother?”
“Yes,” Narcissa murmured. She wanted to give so many answers to that question, but Draco and Henry were different in their strengths, as well as their ability to hear those answers. “The Healers are working on him even now, you know.”
“I know that Healer Letham glared at me when I tried to go in his room,” Draco muttered.
“Henry does need peace and quiet right now, Draco.”
“I wouldn’t bother him!”
“Healer Letham considers certain things bothering that you and I wouldn’t,” Narcissa murmured. And that was true. For example, the Healer considered using Henry’s true name to be “bothering.” But after seeing the ferocity on the woman’s face when she’d met them in the Hogwarts hospital wing and seen Henry lying pale and silent in his father’s arms, Narcissa was grateful that she was there.
“I just want to talk to him—”
“That is part of the problem, Draco.” Narcissa turned them so that they were facing each other on the couch. “Henry doesn’t want to talk right now.”
“But he hasn’t talked for three days! That isn’t normal.”
He was stolen when he was a baby and grew up with abusive Muggles thinking he was a Potter. He is anything but normal.
But that was another thing Draco had no ability to hear right now. Narcissa took a slow breath that seemed to catch on hooks on its way out of her lungs. “Neither is what he had to do in the graveyard.”
“I wouldn’t be that upset if I killed someone who was trying to kill me.”
Narcissa touched the back of his head. “I know, but remember that you were raised here, in the lap of happiness and pleasure, and Henry was not.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
This was an answer Draco needed to hear, no matter how difficult it was to explain to him. Narcissa centered and calmed herself the way she had first learned to do practicing Occlumency with Mamma long ago. “You were raised to consider that your life is the most important one in the room, and enemies are for defeating,” she murmured at last. “Henry was told over and over again that he was worthless and a burden. And he was not encouraged to indulge in complex thinking either by the Muggles or once he reached Hogwarts.”
“Complex thinking like killing being okay if someone’s trying to kill you?”
Narcissa blinked and then smiled, pleased that Draco had seen straight to the heart of the situation. “Exactly.”
Draco stared at the bookshelves in the corner of the library sightlessly for a moment. Narcissa traced a finger over his cheekbone. He had his grandfather’s facial shape. Cygnus Black’s portrait was a foul-tempered, foul-mouthed thing that Narcissa fully intended not to introduce her children to until they were at least fifteen, but she saw her father every time she looked at her sons.
Both of them.
Ah, Henry, she thought, heart aching, and then Draco’s mouth opened and Narcissa turned back to him, relieved that at least one of her sons both needed her and was willing to say so aloud.
“Do you think he’ll come out of it?” Draco whispered.
“Yes,” Narcissa replied, and wrapped her arms around Draco when he shifted closer again. It was the truth. It might require more than Healers, it might require potions or the like, but the Malfoys would fight for Henry as fiercely as if he had been kidnapped all over again.
The only question is how long it will take.
*
Lucius stood outside Henry’s bedroom with his eyes fastened to the small figure in the bed and listened to his son breathe.
It mixed in his mind with the ringing of the bell on the twin of the charm embedded in Henry’s skin. When he had heard the bell ringing and known that Henry was in life-threatening danger, danger that should not have been able to catch up with him within the first turning of the maze—
Lucius bowed his head, and listened again to his son’s breathing until the internal sound of the bell died away.
Part of him felt helpless, frozen, the way he had after Henry had disappeared when he was a baby. What should he do? What could he do? No matter what they did, Henry was never safe. He was part of a prophecy that made him a target for the Dark Lord Lucius had once served. Sirius Black still wanted to kidnap him. Dumbledore still wanted to manipulate him. And he had been kidnapped, again.
Another part of him was filled with such freezing rage that he’d already destroyed three portraits and broken part of the Manor’s wards simply by walking along corridors or entering rooms where he couldn’t see Henry.
So he was here now. Where he could see his son and remember, again and again, that he had been kidnapped, but they had him back. Lucius had come to rescue him from his second kidnapping and destroyed the Dark Lord’s magical construct body and the snake he had been riding on, which Lucius now suspected was another Horcrux. Sirius Black and Dumbledore were being held at a distance by both wards and Henry’s distrust of them.
And Lucius would destroy anyone who touched his son.
A house-elf appeared with a glass of water that contained a Stamina Draught. It would replace sleep and food and keep him from feeling the pain of standing for at least a day. Lucius swallowed the water and returned the glass to the tray the elf had. It disappeared again.
He would pay for that later. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered right now but Henry.
Lucius leaned his shoulders against the wall and went back to his vigil.
*
Harry huddled under the piled blankets, far more luxurious than anything he’d ever had before he found out he was a Malfoy, and felt as if he was freezing.
Again and again, he saw Pettigrew dying in front of him. Again and again, the blood spurted from his throat. Again and again, Pettigrew crumpled and lay staring at the sky, someone who would never breathe again because of Harry.
Harry told himself, when he could listen to his own thoughts and not just see the images, that it had been a justifiable killing. Pettigrew would have sacrificed him, probably, to bring Voldemort back. Harry had overhead the whispered conversation his parents had had with an Auror that there’d been a huge cauldron in the graveyard and the ingredients for a necromantic ritual scattered all around it.
He knew that.
It didn’t matter.
Not against the sight of that spurting blood.
At least when he’d killed Quirrell, he’d never seen what actually happened. And the basilisk had been a monster in form, not human.
Harry tried to lay one memory against the other, to tell himself that since he’d killed people and creatures already, Pettigrew didn’t matter. It was a shock, yes, but not this much of one. He ought to be stronger than this.
Then the image of the spurting blood returned to him, and his mind faltered in the face of that. Harry wrapped one arm around his head and went back to sleep.
*
“We have the right to know what’s going on.”
Remus sighed and reached for one of the glasses of wine that Kreacher had served them. They’d had to cast some detection charms on the glasses so that they could be sure there weren’t any poisons or potions in the wine. Sirius would swear that he could still taste house-elf spit, though. “If there’s any news, you know Albus will share it with us. As it is, we know that Harry goes back to his family safely.”
Sirius scowled at Remus over his own glass. “You know they’re not his family, Remus. Not his real one. They don’t deserve one.”
“But Lily and James are dead, Padfoot. Who exactly are his family otherwise?”
Sirius hadn’t told Remus in any detail about the possible necromantic ritual that could turn Harry back into a Potter again. He’d let his best remaining friend think that he’d just wanted to convince Harry to let Sirius recast the illusions that would make him look like James and Lily’s son and to start calling himself Harry Potter again. Sirius stared into the fire now and didn’t answer.
How had this all gone so wrong?
Sirius had had the best intentions when he’d stolen Harry from the Malfoys. He’d looked at those innocent little babies in their cots, and then he’d looked at Lucius Malfoy—wearing the Dark Mark on his arm by then, although he didn’t show it openly, the bastard—and Narcissa, so pleased that she had two more children to raise and indoctrinate. And he’d thought of James and Lily, their marriage dying for want of children.
He couldn’t let his best mate be as miserable as losing Lily would make him. He couldn’t let Lily fall into despair when he had the chance to make her life better.
And sure, Cissy and Lucius could say that they’d missed Harry, but that was what they’d say anyway, wasn’t it? They would pretend to the tenderness and compassion they didn’t have in public in case people judged them otherwise, and do it in private to ensnare Harry so firmly that he couldn’t escape.
Ask the Muggles who died screaming under Lucius Malfoy’s Cruciatus Curse how much tenderness and compassion he has.
Sirius wished with all his soul that the deception had never been revealed. He still didn’t know how it had been. Okay, so Parseltongue was a magical language that could show up within a few weeks of birth, and for some reason Cissy’s younger son had been babbling in it. So what? They shouldn’t have immediately leaped to the conclusion that a kid speaking Parseltongue in Hogwarts was theirs.
That was another reason James and Lily should have lived, other than the fact that Sirius missed them like he’d miss air in his lungs. They would have taught Harry to suppress his Parseltongue, and then his stupid evil family never would have found him.
“Sirius, you aren’t thinking of kidnapping him again, are you?”
Sirius slowly shook his head. His trial had actually meant he’d been cleared of the charges of killing Pettigrew and the Muggles. And it had helped that Pettigrew’s body had shown up in a graveyard a few months later. Even with missing fingers and a cut throat, it was recognizably him.
Sirius didn’t want to go back to Azkaban. The whole of his being flinched from the thought.
So the only way we can get Harry back where he belongs, Sirius thought as he reached for his glass again, is persuading him around to our side.
*
“There is nothing more I can do for him.”
Andromeda hated the way her own voice sounded, low and subdued. Worse, Healer Letham simply glanced up and nodded at her before saying, “I would not expect you to have done more than you did.” She turned and faced the motionless figure lying in the bed again, bundled as he was in blankets that looked as if they might pile to reach the ceiling.
Andromeda opened her mouth, then closed it. Letham was a Mind-Healer, she reminded herself, which meant she was more useful here than Andromeda, whose talents and training had focused on the physical body and magical illnesses like dragonpox.
But Andromeda hated feeling helpless more than she hated anything in the world. And this was her nephew. She should be able to do something.
“Do you think he’ll speak again?” she asked at last.
“Yes, I do.”
That was all Letham said. Andromeda scowled at the side of her head. If Letham sensed the intensity of Andromeda’s gaze, she didn’t show it, focusing on Henry instead.
“Why do you think that?” Andromeda asked. “Why shouldn’t we try and get him to respond more than that now? Why do we just have to wait until he comes out of this—state of shock or whatever of his own free will?”
“That’s what’s best for Harry.”
“Henry. And how do you know?”
Letham turned and looked at her. She wasn’t that much older than Andromeda—at least, she wasn’t from what Andromeda knew of her. But being looked at like that made Andromeda feel as if she were back in Hogwarts serving detention under Minerva McGonagall. She flushed, and knew it was at least partially shame.
“Because I’m his Mind-Healer,” Letham said at last, and turned back to the bed.
Andromeda opened her mouth to say something, and ended up closing it again. She of all people should know how important it was to listen to a Healer, and she had hated the times when someone disobeyed her instructions.
She sighed, and went to get food and sleep for a few hours. If Letham, who seemed indefatigable, needed someone to spell her, Andromeda would be ready.
In the corridor, she passed Lucius, standing in the same creepy stance as he had so far, staring into the room. He hadn’t moved or gone to bed as far as Andromeda knew, and she tried to frown at him as she passed. The last thing this family needed was two patients.
(Even if, personally, Andromeda would have been thrilled to have someone whose condition she could do something about).
Lucius turned his head, and something cold and bottomless looked at her out of his eyes. Andromeda shivered a little and hurried on. She knew whom her sister had married, but there were times that she thought she didn’t know what.
*
Harry came gasping and clawing out of a nightmare. In the nightmare, he was attached to a snake, a small adder, and mourning the demise of his beautiful Nagini. He knew it was a nightmare, and he knew it was because of the Horcrux, and his face was damp with tears as he rolled over on his side and stared at Healer Letham.
She nodded to him, her face calm and composed. “Do you want any water?” she asked. “A potion?”
Harry couldn’t express how grateful he was that she put all her questions in yes/no terms. He shook his head and settled back.
Healer Letham watched him and nodded again. Then she went back to looking slightly off to the side, so that she would see any danger that was coming for Harry but wasn’t staring directly at him.
Harry couldn’t express how grateful he was for that, either.
He closed his eyes and drifted away into an uneasy sleep.
*
Draco stood outside Henry’s bedroom, in a place where the door would hide him from sight even if it swung open, and he could see his brother. Father was a little way down the corridor, visible through the door. Draco didn’t think he had taken his eyes from Henry since he’d come back with Draco’s little brother clasped in his arms, except when he had to take his Stamina Draught from a house-elf.
Draco didn’t understand.
Well, no, he did understand. He understood that Henry had been taken from them and that Father had gone and got him back. He understood that Henry had killed someone (even if that person was just a lying, cowardly traitor) and felt badly about it. He understood that there were dangers in the world that he hadn’t even contemplated. When he’d thought of the Dark Lord in the past, it hadn’t been as someone who would harm their family. Why would the Dark Lord want to? Father was one of his most faithful servants, and of course Draco would grow up and become one, too.
He’d never thought he would be kidnapped, if only because having his little brother kidnapped when they were a few weeks old had made Mother and Father extra vigilant about him.
Now he knew. Now Draco knew that it didn’t matter how dedicated someone was to watching you. It could happen any time.
It didn’t matter they were Malfoys or they had money. If death wanted to find you, it would. Death had come for Henry and would have succeeded if not for Uncle Ted giving them those charms for Christmas.
Draco closed his eyes and shuddered a little.
What he had told Mother was the truth. He would kill to defend himself, if he had to. And he wouldn’t have the reaction Henry had had to it.
But Draco wondered if he would act in time. Henry had only survived because of the charm, but he’d also dueled and tried to stop Pettigrew even if he hadn’t intended to kill him. Draco was afraid he would freeze up and not be able to think of any charms or jinxes or hexes or curses at all in his overwhelming shock.
And even if he had hated Henry and hadn’t wanted to protect him, there was no reason to think that the Dark Lord or Death Eaters would hold back from harming Draco just because they were mostly there for Henry.
Draco turned away and ghosted silently down the corridor. He needed to find Uncle Ted and ask for extra lessons.
*
Albus sat back behind his desk and sighed, long and low. Fawkes stirred on his perch and flew over, settling on Albus’s knee and trilling at him.
Albus smiled, but he knew it was a sad one. He stroked Fawkes’s feathers, and Fawkes bowed his head and nestled close.
“I knew what was happening, which path we were on, when Henry Malfoy was Harry Potter,” he whispered to Fawkes. His phoenix heard confessions and secrets that Albus would never share with anyone human. “What path are we on now? What kind of person will Harry become, in the embrace of his family, if they tell him over and over that killing doesn’t matter, so much so that he believes it?”
Albus had never been foolish enough to think he could control everything. But he had thought—hoped, assumed—that he would be able to manage some things. That he would be able to give Harry Potter a safe childhood, and wondrous years at Hogwarts, stretching out the time as much as possible before he was forced to reveal the prophecy to him.
Nothing had worked out as he’d hoped. Lily and James Potter had not been the people Albus had thought they were. Or Sirius Black. And the Dursleys made him flinch at the thought of them.
But Harry Potter was still a person separate and apart from his parents, or the unfortunate circumstances of his kidnapping. Albus had been startled when Harry had been revealed as Aldebaran Malfoy in his second year, and puzzled as to what it would mean for the prophecy. There was no way that Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy had defied Tom three times.
In the end, though, he hadn’t thought it would matter. Tom believed in the prophecy no matter who Harry’s blood parents were. Harry would have done better with the kind of training that Albus and the Order could have offered him, both magical and moral, but Albus was sure he would manage to survive and vanquish Tom. Love was a greater power than any dueling spell.
It wasn’t even the fact that Harry had killed Peter that dismayed Albus now. It had clearly been self-defense. It was what the Malfoys would encourage Harry to think and feel about that event, whether they would manage to turn him into someone who pushed away the thought that he had killed a man.
Or came to think of that man as someone less than human.
Albus closed his eyes. Harry Potter could survive in many ways. He might even be the better off for having a loving family behind him.
But not if he was twisted in the kind of monster that Lucius Malfoy was. Or even Narcissa Black.
Albus wished he knew what to do.
*
Harry woke from another nightmare, this time one that felt ordinary instead of a vision from Voldemort. He had dreamed that Pettigrew had survived the Severing Charm Harry had flung at his throat, and had sat up and turned to Harry and asked why Harry had murdered him.
Harry sat up and blinked at the tall window on the opposite side of the bed from Healer Letham’s chair. He hadn’t consciously noticed it before. This wasn’t his usual bedroom. Harry didn’t know why, other than maybe this room could have wards placed around it that his bedroom couldn’t. Or maybe Mother and Father hadn’t wanted to admit Healer Letham to his bedroom.
The window looked out in the direction of the Manor’s gardens and was a square of glass two times taller than Harry, crisscrossed with silver bars. Harry stood up, wincing at the shakiness of his legs, and nearly fell before he clutched at the table next to the bed.
He didn’t look over his shoulder to see if Healer Letham was watching him. Right now, he didn’t want to know. Instead, he walked over to the window and looked down at the gardens.
The grass was a brilliant and unnatural green, probably the result of spells the house-elves used on it. A white peacock was strutting on the grass with his train spread, and a peahen watched him without much interest. Harry slowly let his eyes trace the line of a small stream running between beds of bright red flowers.
He was thinking.
He could think and remember Pettigrew’s death all he liked. It wouldn’t change the fact that the death had happened. He could lie in bed and weep and have nightmares, and nothing would change how he felt.
Only one thing would. Well, two things.
Taking down Voldemort, and surviving.
If I feel so guilty about killing Pettigrew in the graveyard that I never do anything else again, Voldemort will have won.
Harry swallowed. He would probably always have nightmares about Pettigrew’s death, the way he had about the moment when Voldemort used the Killing Curse on Lily Potter. But he could try to make sure that those were the only nightmares he had, instead of adding to them by failing to protect people or hiding in bed for the rest of his life.
He turned around. Healer Letham was indeed watching him, but with her head turned to the side the way she often had when he was lying in bed. Now she looked at him straight on, as if knowing he could bear it, her face mild and patient as always.
“I want,” Harry said, and paused. His voice was croaky with three days of no use. Healer Letham floated a glass of water over to him, and Harry swallowed and swished it around in his mouth for a few minutes before he said, “I want to do something to make sure I can live with this.”
Healer Letham nodded, her face showing no surprise. “Do you want to begin by talking to me? Your family? Someone else?”
“My family first,” Harry said. “Then…can we have a session tomorrow? Or in a few days? When I’ve had some time to get back on my feet and eat something?”
“Of course.” Healer Letham stood, stretching in a weird way that made ripples travel all through her body. “I’ll be happy to call a house-elf with food for you if you want.”
“That’s okay,” Harry said. “I have something to do first. And I’m sorry for keeping you from your family,” he added, abruptly aware that she’d been sitting here for three days and he hadn’t seen her leave once.
“I was where I was needed and where I wanted to be,” Healer Letham said simply.
Harry gave her a shaky smile and limped towards the doorway.
Father came to attention the instant Harry crossed the threshold, but didn’t move towards him. Maybe he thought Harry would retreat back to the bed if he did. Harry walked straight up to him instead, and wrapped his arms around his father.
Slowly, Father embraced him back, and then pulled him close and held him desperately.
Harry closed his eyes. And something in him began the long journey back towards the light.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Mostly gen, with mentions of Lucius/Narcissa and Ted/Andromeda
Content Notes: AU (Harry is a Malfoy), violence, angst, mention of past character deaths, torture
Wordcount: This part 4100
Summary: Coming back from the graveyard isn’t simple. Harry struggles to recover as his family, both Malfoy and Black, gathers around him and begins the hunt for the Horcruxes.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics, short chaptered fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. This is also the sixth part of my Like a Malfoy series, and sequel to “How Like Hatred,” “A Name Like Henry,” “A Godfather Like Him,” “A Year Like This,” and “A Path Like Frost.” Read those first, or you won’t understand this one. This one will likely have three to four parts.
A Darkness Like Fire
“Is Henry going to be all right, Mother?”
Narcissa drew Draco gently against her side. Her elder son followed the motion, but he didn’t lower his eyes and he didn’t look away from her face. Narcissa smoothed her hand through his hair, and silently catalogued all the differences between Draco’s face and those of her younger son, currently senseless in a bedroom upstairs.
“Mother?”
“Yes,” Narcissa murmured. She wanted to give so many answers to that question, but Draco and Henry were different in their strengths, as well as their ability to hear those answers. “The Healers are working on him even now, you know.”
“I know that Healer Letham glared at me when I tried to go in his room,” Draco muttered.
“Henry does need peace and quiet right now, Draco.”
“I wouldn’t bother him!”
“Healer Letham considers certain things bothering that you and I wouldn’t,” Narcissa murmured. And that was true. For example, the Healer considered using Henry’s true name to be “bothering.” But after seeing the ferocity on the woman’s face when she’d met them in the Hogwarts hospital wing and seen Henry lying pale and silent in his father’s arms, Narcissa was grateful that she was there.
“I just want to talk to him—”
“That is part of the problem, Draco.” Narcissa turned them so that they were facing each other on the couch. “Henry doesn’t want to talk right now.”
“But he hasn’t talked for three days! That isn’t normal.”
He was stolen when he was a baby and grew up with abusive Muggles thinking he was a Potter. He is anything but normal.
But that was another thing Draco had no ability to hear right now. Narcissa took a slow breath that seemed to catch on hooks on its way out of her lungs. “Neither is what he had to do in the graveyard.”
“I wouldn’t be that upset if I killed someone who was trying to kill me.”
Narcissa touched the back of his head. “I know, but remember that you were raised here, in the lap of happiness and pleasure, and Henry was not.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
This was an answer Draco needed to hear, no matter how difficult it was to explain to him. Narcissa centered and calmed herself the way she had first learned to do practicing Occlumency with Mamma long ago. “You were raised to consider that your life is the most important one in the room, and enemies are for defeating,” she murmured at last. “Henry was told over and over again that he was worthless and a burden. And he was not encouraged to indulge in complex thinking either by the Muggles or once he reached Hogwarts.”
“Complex thinking like killing being okay if someone’s trying to kill you?”
Narcissa blinked and then smiled, pleased that Draco had seen straight to the heart of the situation. “Exactly.”
Draco stared at the bookshelves in the corner of the library sightlessly for a moment. Narcissa traced a finger over his cheekbone. He had his grandfather’s facial shape. Cygnus Black’s portrait was a foul-tempered, foul-mouthed thing that Narcissa fully intended not to introduce her children to until they were at least fifteen, but she saw her father every time she looked at her sons.
Both of them.
Ah, Henry, she thought, heart aching, and then Draco’s mouth opened and Narcissa turned back to him, relieved that at least one of her sons both needed her and was willing to say so aloud.
“Do you think he’ll come out of it?” Draco whispered.
“Yes,” Narcissa replied, and wrapped her arms around Draco when he shifted closer again. It was the truth. It might require more than Healers, it might require potions or the like, but the Malfoys would fight for Henry as fiercely as if he had been kidnapped all over again.
The only question is how long it will take.
*
Lucius stood outside Henry’s bedroom with his eyes fastened to the small figure in the bed and listened to his son breathe.
It mixed in his mind with the ringing of the bell on the twin of the charm embedded in Henry’s skin. When he had heard the bell ringing and known that Henry was in life-threatening danger, danger that should not have been able to catch up with him within the first turning of the maze—
Lucius bowed his head, and listened again to his son’s breathing until the internal sound of the bell died away.
Part of him felt helpless, frozen, the way he had after Henry had disappeared when he was a baby. What should he do? What could he do? No matter what they did, Henry was never safe. He was part of a prophecy that made him a target for the Dark Lord Lucius had once served. Sirius Black still wanted to kidnap him. Dumbledore still wanted to manipulate him. And he had been kidnapped, again.
Another part of him was filled with such freezing rage that he’d already destroyed three portraits and broken part of the Manor’s wards simply by walking along corridors or entering rooms where he couldn’t see Henry.
So he was here now. Where he could see his son and remember, again and again, that he had been kidnapped, but they had him back. Lucius had come to rescue him from his second kidnapping and destroyed the Dark Lord’s magical construct body and the snake he had been riding on, which Lucius now suspected was another Horcrux. Sirius Black and Dumbledore were being held at a distance by both wards and Henry’s distrust of them.
And Lucius would destroy anyone who touched his son.
A house-elf appeared with a glass of water that contained a Stamina Draught. It would replace sleep and food and keep him from feeling the pain of standing for at least a day. Lucius swallowed the water and returned the glass to the tray the elf had. It disappeared again.
He would pay for that later. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered right now but Henry.
Lucius leaned his shoulders against the wall and went back to his vigil.
*
Harry huddled under the piled blankets, far more luxurious than anything he’d ever had before he found out he was a Malfoy, and felt as if he was freezing.
Again and again, he saw Pettigrew dying in front of him. Again and again, the blood spurted from his throat. Again and again, Pettigrew crumpled and lay staring at the sky, someone who would never breathe again because of Harry.
Harry told himself, when he could listen to his own thoughts and not just see the images, that it had been a justifiable killing. Pettigrew would have sacrificed him, probably, to bring Voldemort back. Harry had overhead the whispered conversation his parents had had with an Auror that there’d been a huge cauldron in the graveyard and the ingredients for a necromantic ritual scattered all around it.
He knew that.
It didn’t matter.
Not against the sight of that spurting blood.
At least when he’d killed Quirrell, he’d never seen what actually happened. And the basilisk had been a monster in form, not human.
Harry tried to lay one memory against the other, to tell himself that since he’d killed people and creatures already, Pettigrew didn’t matter. It was a shock, yes, but not this much of one. He ought to be stronger than this.
Then the image of the spurting blood returned to him, and his mind faltered in the face of that. Harry wrapped one arm around his head and went back to sleep.
*
“We have the right to know what’s going on.”
Remus sighed and reached for one of the glasses of wine that Kreacher had served them. They’d had to cast some detection charms on the glasses so that they could be sure there weren’t any poisons or potions in the wine. Sirius would swear that he could still taste house-elf spit, though. “If there’s any news, you know Albus will share it with us. As it is, we know that Harry goes back to his family safely.”
Sirius scowled at Remus over his own glass. “You know they’re not his family, Remus. Not his real one. They don’t deserve one.”
“But Lily and James are dead, Padfoot. Who exactly are his family otherwise?”
Sirius hadn’t told Remus in any detail about the possible necromantic ritual that could turn Harry back into a Potter again. He’d let his best remaining friend think that he’d just wanted to convince Harry to let Sirius recast the illusions that would make him look like James and Lily’s son and to start calling himself Harry Potter again. Sirius stared into the fire now and didn’t answer.
How had this all gone so wrong?
Sirius had had the best intentions when he’d stolen Harry from the Malfoys. He’d looked at those innocent little babies in their cots, and then he’d looked at Lucius Malfoy—wearing the Dark Mark on his arm by then, although he didn’t show it openly, the bastard—and Narcissa, so pleased that she had two more children to raise and indoctrinate. And he’d thought of James and Lily, their marriage dying for want of children.
He couldn’t let his best mate be as miserable as losing Lily would make him. He couldn’t let Lily fall into despair when he had the chance to make her life better.
And sure, Cissy and Lucius could say that they’d missed Harry, but that was what they’d say anyway, wasn’t it? They would pretend to the tenderness and compassion they didn’t have in public in case people judged them otherwise, and do it in private to ensnare Harry so firmly that he couldn’t escape.
Ask the Muggles who died screaming under Lucius Malfoy’s Cruciatus Curse how much tenderness and compassion he has.
Sirius wished with all his soul that the deception had never been revealed. He still didn’t know how it had been. Okay, so Parseltongue was a magical language that could show up within a few weeks of birth, and for some reason Cissy’s younger son had been babbling in it. So what? They shouldn’t have immediately leaped to the conclusion that a kid speaking Parseltongue in Hogwarts was theirs.
That was another reason James and Lily should have lived, other than the fact that Sirius missed them like he’d miss air in his lungs. They would have taught Harry to suppress his Parseltongue, and then his stupid evil family never would have found him.
“Sirius, you aren’t thinking of kidnapping him again, are you?”
Sirius slowly shook his head. His trial had actually meant he’d been cleared of the charges of killing Pettigrew and the Muggles. And it had helped that Pettigrew’s body had shown up in a graveyard a few months later. Even with missing fingers and a cut throat, it was recognizably him.
Sirius didn’t want to go back to Azkaban. The whole of his being flinched from the thought.
So the only way we can get Harry back where he belongs, Sirius thought as he reached for his glass again, is persuading him around to our side.
*
“There is nothing more I can do for him.”
Andromeda hated the way her own voice sounded, low and subdued. Worse, Healer Letham simply glanced up and nodded at her before saying, “I would not expect you to have done more than you did.” She turned and faced the motionless figure lying in the bed again, bundled as he was in blankets that looked as if they might pile to reach the ceiling.
Andromeda opened her mouth, then closed it. Letham was a Mind-Healer, she reminded herself, which meant she was more useful here than Andromeda, whose talents and training had focused on the physical body and magical illnesses like dragonpox.
But Andromeda hated feeling helpless more than she hated anything in the world. And this was her nephew. She should be able to do something.
“Do you think he’ll speak again?” she asked at last.
“Yes, I do.”
That was all Letham said. Andromeda scowled at the side of her head. If Letham sensed the intensity of Andromeda’s gaze, she didn’t show it, focusing on Henry instead.
“Why do you think that?” Andromeda asked. “Why shouldn’t we try and get him to respond more than that now? Why do we just have to wait until he comes out of this—state of shock or whatever of his own free will?”
“That’s what’s best for Harry.”
“Henry. And how do you know?”
Letham turned and looked at her. She wasn’t that much older than Andromeda—at least, she wasn’t from what Andromeda knew of her. But being looked at like that made Andromeda feel as if she were back in Hogwarts serving detention under Minerva McGonagall. She flushed, and knew it was at least partially shame.
“Because I’m his Mind-Healer,” Letham said at last, and turned back to the bed.
Andromeda opened her mouth to say something, and ended up closing it again. She of all people should know how important it was to listen to a Healer, and she had hated the times when someone disobeyed her instructions.
She sighed, and went to get food and sleep for a few hours. If Letham, who seemed indefatigable, needed someone to spell her, Andromeda would be ready.
In the corridor, she passed Lucius, standing in the same creepy stance as he had so far, staring into the room. He hadn’t moved or gone to bed as far as Andromeda knew, and she tried to frown at him as she passed. The last thing this family needed was two patients.
(Even if, personally, Andromeda would have been thrilled to have someone whose condition she could do something about).
Lucius turned his head, and something cold and bottomless looked at her out of his eyes. Andromeda shivered a little and hurried on. She knew whom her sister had married, but there were times that she thought she didn’t know what.
*
Harry came gasping and clawing out of a nightmare. In the nightmare, he was attached to a snake, a small adder, and mourning the demise of his beautiful Nagini. He knew it was a nightmare, and he knew it was because of the Horcrux, and his face was damp with tears as he rolled over on his side and stared at Healer Letham.
She nodded to him, her face calm and composed. “Do you want any water?” she asked. “A potion?”
Harry couldn’t express how grateful he was that she put all her questions in yes/no terms. He shook his head and settled back.
Healer Letham watched him and nodded again. Then she went back to looking slightly off to the side, so that she would see any danger that was coming for Harry but wasn’t staring directly at him.
Harry couldn’t express how grateful he was for that, either.
He closed his eyes and drifted away into an uneasy sleep.
*
Draco stood outside Henry’s bedroom, in a place where the door would hide him from sight even if it swung open, and he could see his brother. Father was a little way down the corridor, visible through the door. Draco didn’t think he had taken his eyes from Henry since he’d come back with Draco’s little brother clasped in his arms, except when he had to take his Stamina Draught from a house-elf.
Draco didn’t understand.
Well, no, he did understand. He understood that Henry had been taken from them and that Father had gone and got him back. He understood that Henry had killed someone (even if that person was just a lying, cowardly traitor) and felt badly about it. He understood that there were dangers in the world that he hadn’t even contemplated. When he’d thought of the Dark Lord in the past, it hadn’t been as someone who would harm their family. Why would the Dark Lord want to? Father was one of his most faithful servants, and of course Draco would grow up and become one, too.
He’d never thought he would be kidnapped, if only because having his little brother kidnapped when they were a few weeks old had made Mother and Father extra vigilant about him.
Now he knew. Now Draco knew that it didn’t matter how dedicated someone was to watching you. It could happen any time.
It didn’t matter they were Malfoys or they had money. If death wanted to find you, it would. Death had come for Henry and would have succeeded if not for Uncle Ted giving them those charms for Christmas.
Draco closed his eyes and shuddered a little.
What he had told Mother was the truth. He would kill to defend himself, if he had to. And he wouldn’t have the reaction Henry had had to it.
But Draco wondered if he would act in time. Henry had only survived because of the charm, but he’d also dueled and tried to stop Pettigrew even if he hadn’t intended to kill him. Draco was afraid he would freeze up and not be able to think of any charms or jinxes or hexes or curses at all in his overwhelming shock.
And even if he had hated Henry and hadn’t wanted to protect him, there was no reason to think that the Dark Lord or Death Eaters would hold back from harming Draco just because they were mostly there for Henry.
Draco turned away and ghosted silently down the corridor. He needed to find Uncle Ted and ask for extra lessons.
*
Albus sat back behind his desk and sighed, long and low. Fawkes stirred on his perch and flew over, settling on Albus’s knee and trilling at him.
Albus smiled, but he knew it was a sad one. He stroked Fawkes’s feathers, and Fawkes bowed his head and nestled close.
“I knew what was happening, which path we were on, when Henry Malfoy was Harry Potter,” he whispered to Fawkes. His phoenix heard confessions and secrets that Albus would never share with anyone human. “What path are we on now? What kind of person will Harry become, in the embrace of his family, if they tell him over and over that killing doesn’t matter, so much so that he believes it?”
Albus had never been foolish enough to think he could control everything. But he had thought—hoped, assumed—that he would be able to manage some things. That he would be able to give Harry Potter a safe childhood, and wondrous years at Hogwarts, stretching out the time as much as possible before he was forced to reveal the prophecy to him.
Nothing had worked out as he’d hoped. Lily and James Potter had not been the people Albus had thought they were. Or Sirius Black. And the Dursleys made him flinch at the thought of them.
But Harry Potter was still a person separate and apart from his parents, or the unfortunate circumstances of his kidnapping. Albus had been startled when Harry had been revealed as Aldebaran Malfoy in his second year, and puzzled as to what it would mean for the prophecy. There was no way that Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy had defied Tom three times.
In the end, though, he hadn’t thought it would matter. Tom believed in the prophecy no matter who Harry’s blood parents were. Harry would have done better with the kind of training that Albus and the Order could have offered him, both magical and moral, but Albus was sure he would manage to survive and vanquish Tom. Love was a greater power than any dueling spell.
It wasn’t even the fact that Harry had killed Peter that dismayed Albus now. It had clearly been self-defense. It was what the Malfoys would encourage Harry to think and feel about that event, whether they would manage to turn him into someone who pushed away the thought that he had killed a man.
Or came to think of that man as someone less than human.
Albus closed his eyes. Harry Potter could survive in many ways. He might even be the better off for having a loving family behind him.
But not if he was twisted in the kind of monster that Lucius Malfoy was. Or even Narcissa Black.
Albus wished he knew what to do.
*
Harry woke from another nightmare, this time one that felt ordinary instead of a vision from Voldemort. He had dreamed that Pettigrew had survived the Severing Charm Harry had flung at his throat, and had sat up and turned to Harry and asked why Harry had murdered him.
Harry sat up and blinked at the tall window on the opposite side of the bed from Healer Letham’s chair. He hadn’t consciously noticed it before. This wasn’t his usual bedroom. Harry didn’t know why, other than maybe this room could have wards placed around it that his bedroom couldn’t. Or maybe Mother and Father hadn’t wanted to admit Healer Letham to his bedroom.
The window looked out in the direction of the Manor’s gardens and was a square of glass two times taller than Harry, crisscrossed with silver bars. Harry stood up, wincing at the shakiness of his legs, and nearly fell before he clutched at the table next to the bed.
He didn’t look over his shoulder to see if Healer Letham was watching him. Right now, he didn’t want to know. Instead, he walked over to the window and looked down at the gardens.
The grass was a brilliant and unnatural green, probably the result of spells the house-elves used on it. A white peacock was strutting on the grass with his train spread, and a peahen watched him without much interest. Harry slowly let his eyes trace the line of a small stream running between beds of bright red flowers.
He was thinking.
He could think and remember Pettigrew’s death all he liked. It wouldn’t change the fact that the death had happened. He could lie in bed and weep and have nightmares, and nothing would change how he felt.
Only one thing would. Well, two things.
Taking down Voldemort, and surviving.
If I feel so guilty about killing Pettigrew in the graveyard that I never do anything else again, Voldemort will have won.
Harry swallowed. He would probably always have nightmares about Pettigrew’s death, the way he had about the moment when Voldemort used the Killing Curse on Lily Potter. But he could try to make sure that those were the only nightmares he had, instead of adding to them by failing to protect people or hiding in bed for the rest of his life.
He turned around. Healer Letham was indeed watching him, but with her head turned to the side the way she often had when he was lying in bed. Now she looked at him straight on, as if knowing he could bear it, her face mild and patient as always.
“I want,” Harry said, and paused. His voice was croaky with three days of no use. Healer Letham floated a glass of water over to him, and Harry swallowed and swished it around in his mouth for a few minutes before he said, “I want to do something to make sure I can live with this.”
Healer Letham nodded, her face showing no surprise. “Do you want to begin by talking to me? Your family? Someone else?”
“My family first,” Harry said. “Then…can we have a session tomorrow? Or in a few days? When I’ve had some time to get back on my feet and eat something?”
“Of course.” Healer Letham stood, stretching in a weird way that made ripples travel all through her body. “I’ll be happy to call a house-elf with food for you if you want.”
“That’s okay,” Harry said. “I have something to do first. And I’m sorry for keeping you from your family,” he added, abruptly aware that she’d been sitting here for three days and he hadn’t seen her leave once.
“I was where I was needed and where I wanted to be,” Healer Letham said simply.
Harry gave her a shaky smile and limped towards the doorway.
Father came to attention the instant Harry crossed the threshold, but didn’t move towards him. Maybe he thought Harry would retreat back to the bed if he did. Harry walked straight up to him instead, and wrapped his arms around his father.
Slowly, Father embraced him back, and then pulled him close and held him desperately.
Harry closed his eyes. And something in him began the long journey back towards the light.
