[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Like Clouded Endless Stars, gen, Like a Malfoy series, 2/6

[lomonaaeren]

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Part Two

Harry rubbed his forehead as they sat down in the train compartment. Draco immediately leaned forwards and stared at him expectantly. “Headache?” he asked softly. “Or vision?” He aimed a Locking Spell at the compartment door.

Harry sighed and leaned back. He’d wanted to tell Draco to leave exceptions for Ron and Hermione in that spell, but he wasn’t sure whether Hermione would even want to sit with them. “Vision last night. Headache today.”

“Why didn’t you take the Headache Cure at breakfast?”

“Mother wouldn’t let me have it. I thought I was going to be sick to my stomach, and you can’t take the potion—”

“Without something lining your stomach, yes, of course I know that, Henry.”

Harry had to smile. Draco’s pompousness was endearing by now. He watched from half-closed eyes as Draco dug a Chocolate Frog out of his pocket and a pair of capped potions vials out of the other.

“Father thought you might be able to eat by the time you actually got on the train,” Draco murmured, and held out the vials. “Anti-Nausea Potion in the first one, Headache Cure in the second. Come on, eat, then drink.”

Harry gave him a more grateful smile and ate the Chocolate Frog slowly. Then he knocked back the Anti-Nausea Potion and reached for the Headache Cure just as the compartment door shuddered under someone’s knock. Draco sighed and released the Locking Charm.

“Wotcher, Harry!”

Harry swallowed the Headache Cure, but his stomach was fluttering for a reason that had nothing to do with the headache that was already beginning to recede or the lack of food from earlier. “Hey, Tonks!”

“Are you still going to be at the school, then?” Draco asked, moving to the side to make room for their cousin.

Tonks plopped down in between them, beaming indiscriminately at them both and changing the color of her hair to an eye-watering green with purple flecks. “Yeah. Dumbledore made some noises at me, but I think that Auror training isn’t for me anymore. Curse-Breaking is much more my thing, and I think—”

“Harry!”

Draco muttered something that had the word “Henry” in it, but Harry was rising to his feet, too glad to see both Ron and Hermione standing in the door of the compartment to care about his brother’s conniption. “Hey, you lot!”

“Hey, mate.” Ron came up and clapped Harry on the shoulder. He was obviously trying to indicate with his eyebrows and flickering glance that Hermione was still angry. Harry nodded. He’d expected that, when he’d sent her a letter the last week of the summer holiday and she hadn’t responded.

“Hermione,” Harry said.

“Granger,” Draco said, coiled tight on his seat in a way that would only be obvious to someone who knew him as well as Harry did.

“Malfoy,” Hermione said, but even though her voice was as cool as if she was talking to Draco, her eyes lingered on Harry. “I’m surprised that your protective parents let you come back to Hogwarts at all.”

“We discussed me staying away,” Harry said, and watched Hermione’s eyes widen a little. He wondered if she hadn’t thought they would, or if she was just surprised Harry was admitting it to her. “But I really wanted to go back to Hogwarts.” He smiled tentatively at her.

“And your parents don’t mind you associating with Mudbloods and blood traitors?”

“I don’t think those things—”

“But you’re perfectly happy with people that do!”

Hermione’s magic was making her hair spark and lifting it off her shoulders. Harry caught a glimpse of Draco opening his mouth from the corner of his eye, and fired off a sharp volley of sparks from his wand. Draco shut his mouth, and Harry turned back and faced Hermione, but not before he got a glimpse of Tonks’s wide eyes.

“Father thought those things,” he agreed. He was never going to pretend to believe the lie of Lucius being under the Imperius, not in front of his friends. “But he’s changed his tune now. He’s giving money to Minister Fudge to support Muggleborn education programs and extending appropriate invitations to them.”

“I suppose that wouldn’t include Professor McGonagall, who came and introduced me?”

“Yes, but she barely has the time, what with being Deputy Headmistress and Head of Gryffindor House and our Transfiguration professor, too. Surely it would help if there were more people who could introduce Muggleborns who had birthdays in the middle of the term instead of just all of them waiting for the summer?”

Hermione hesitated. Then she said, “It doesn’t count if he’s doing it just for you, instead of for the principle of the thing.”

“Does it count that you broke the rules and lied to a professor for our sakes?” Harry said, holding Hermione’s gaze. “Because we came and rescued you from the troll? You chose people over principles then.”

“I chose principles most of the time!”

Hermione’s eyes were shiny with tears, and Harry winced. This wasn’t the way he wanted things to go. He held up a placating hand and stepped back. “All right, Hermione. We can discuss this later.”

“Are you going to reject them?”

Harry scowled at her, as something he hadn’t known was fraying in him parted with an almost audible twang. “For what? The Headmaster who thinks that I should have stayed in the school when I’d fucking killed someone?”

Hermione turned and walked away.

Ron hesitated for a long moment. Then he sighed and sat down on the seat next to Harry. Harry swallowed. He had thought Ron was going to walk away with Hermione, and it would have hurt, a lot, if he had.

“Idiot,” Draco muttered. Tonks nodded.

“She’s not an idiot,” Ron snarled, because apparently not walking away with Hermione wasn’t the same thing as defending her. “She knows very well that your father wasn’t under the Imperius Curse in the war.”

“You know what?” Draco drew himself up and glared at Ron. “No, he wasn’t. He was a Death Eater. He was a horrible person. He’s made that clear to me.”

Ron blinked.

“But now he’s had his left arm chopped off and the Dark Mark removed so that the Dark Lord can’t force him to act against Henry. He’s getting the Minister to be on the side of Muggleborns and reject some of the bigoted people who would have been high in his esteem otherwise. He’s researching ways to destroy the Dark Lord. At what point does he get to have the past ignored, Weasley? At what point do you decide that he’s not secretly plotting to kill Granger? Because if nothing matters and nothing can change what he did, then he might as well just keep doing what makes sense to him, which is protecting Henry and me, and not give a shite what Granger thinks.”

Ron blinked several times. Harry felt as if he had been hit over the head with a hammer. He gaped at Draco, who turned pink when he saw the way Harry looked at him. Tonks was grinning.

Draco cleared his throat and shook his head.

“I just wonder, is all,” he muttered.

Ron found his voice. “That doesn’t change what he did in the past. In the first war. It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t still believe the wrong things even if he’s acting the right way.”

Surprisingly, Draco relaxed and shrugged. “All right.”

“All right?”

“You can believe that, and I’ll believe that he’s changed his mind and really wants to help Henry. I suppose we can see which one of us is right in the long run.”

Ron flushed bright red. Harry sat back on the seat and watched people rushing into the train through the windows. Honestly, this doesn’t sound like an argument he should interrupt, and he wasn’t sure what he would have said anyway. Tonks caught his eye and firmly nodded, so she must have thought the same thing.

“It’s not all right! He should apologize! Or Harry should come with us and not go back to your house, because Mr. Malfoy is wrong!”

“Ah.” Draco’s eyes glittered. “So once again it comes down to Henry abandoning his family. And going with whom? Your parents, I assume?”

“They don’t hate Hermione! They don’t hate Harry’s moth—” Ron stopped, and flushed harder.

“The woman everyone thought was his mother,” Draco said. “The woman who knew Henry was a kidnapped child and took him away anyway. The woman who knew he came from somewhere, and didn’t care.”

“The woman who died for him!”

“And wasn’t his mother.”

Harry took a deep breath and intervened. “Listen, Ron, I’m not going to walk away from my family, okay? If Hermione wants me to do something else, she can tell me, and I’ll think about it. But I’m not—no, I’m not going to abandon my family because she thinks my father is wrong.”

“I think it might be the only thing she’ll accept.”

Harry closed his eyes and shook his head, miserable. “And what if her dad turned out to be a horrible person? Would she abandon her family? Or would she be horrified to even hear us suggest it?”

“He’s not a horrible person, though, mate.”

“I’m asking.”

“Yeah, fine, she wouldn’t,” Ron muttered. “But—your dad hated people like her. He murdered people like her. Do you see how that’s different?”

“Yeah,” Harry said. “And I see that it’s a problem I can’t solve, because she won’t accept the only solution I could offer. She probably won’t accept any solution, because my father cutting his arm off wasn’t enough.” He felt very tired. “You can go tell her that I won’t walk away from my parents, and that I still want to be her friend.”

Ron folded his arms and gave Harry a mulish look. “You have that conversation with her.”

Harry shrugged and leaned back in the seat, closing his eyes. He felt as though someone had draped a blanket weighted with lead over his shoulders. It always came back to this, he thought. Always. His family was terrible, no matter which family it was. The Dursleys had hated him and abused him. The Potters had been kidnappers. The Malfoys were bigots and terrorists.

So he had to choose the ones who loved him. And that wasn’t Dumbledore or Sirius Black.

*

Albus leaned forwards intently as he watched Harry walk through the doors of the Great Hall with Ron and young Malfoy beside him. The dear boy looked as though someone had drained his body of blood and forced it back in backwards. He hesitated for a moment, saying something to Malfoy, and then turned towards his own House table with Ron.

Albus sighed. At least that was one thing he could count on, the enduring friendship between Harry and the two young Gryffindors he had been through so much with.

Even if Harry was sitting a rather worrying distance from Hermione.

Albus sat back in his chair and glanced at Sirius beside him. Of course, he wore a complex illusion that made him appear older than he was, his hair a startling white, and his eyes a shining blue. He was staring at Harry, and Albus nudged him with one elbow. No need to give away possible secrets to Sirius’s identity so early on.

Sirius sighed and averted his face, but whispered to Albus, “He just—acts like he’s a Malfoy.”

“Not all is lost, Sirius. Notice that he is still sitting at the Gryffindor table.”

“Only because the Slytherins would probably reject him if he went over there!”

Albus sighed in turn and squeezed Sirius’s hand. He only hoped that Sirius would not betray them with impulsive behavior before Harry ever got into the Defense classroom for this year.

“Headmaster.”

Albus turned with a start. There was a door next to the High Table that professors could use to exit and enter the Great Hall, but all of the people he had expected were here by now, except Minerva and Hagrid, escorting the first-years.

The tall man next to Albus’s chair bowed, a look of quiet amusement on his face. Albus narrowed his eyes. “Mr. Tonks.”

“Yes. I just wanted to tell you that the Malfoy family will be having me continue instructing their sons in Defense this year. Mr. Weasley and Miss Granger are welcome to join us. I’ll see about perhaps taking on other students as well, but Draco and Harry are my priority.”

“We have a Defense professor this year whom I am certain the Malfoys must find unobjectionable," Albus said, keeping his voice as low and soothing as possible. And one hand gripping Sirius’s arm, too, just in case he would have tried to jump up and murder Ted. “Maybe you can tell them that?”

“No offense, Headmaster, but you hired one of your oldest friends last year and failed to notice that he’d been replaced by a Death Eater.” Ted’s gaze drifted over Sirius. “It could be the same way this time.”

“My name is Arcturus Adley,” Sirius said curtly. He and Albus had spent quite a time discussing the name, and in the end, Albus had agreed that Sirius could go with a star name. It might encourage Harry, or Mrs. Malfoy, to think that he was related to the Blacks and open up to him. “I’m a half-blood, and I hate You-Know-Who.”

Ted merely shrugged. “The other Defense professors you’ve had here haven’t all been Death Eaters, but they’ve been dangerous in different ways.” He nodded to Albus. “Therefore, Harry won’t be attending Defense classes.”

Albus took a deep breath. The plan to get Harry closer to Sirius was only one of the ways he thought of to save the boy, but it would have been the easiest, and was one in which he had invested a considerably amount of time. “Mr. Tonks, I would urge you to reconsider. What cause can it serve to keep Harry cut off from his classmates all the time?”

Ted blinked, as if puzzled by the argument. “The cause of keeping him alive.”

“But it also stunts his social growth, and encourages him to distrust others.” Albus gave Ted his best smile. “Don’t you think that he needs to look beyond his family for friends?”

“He has them. Mr. Weasley and Miss Granger aren’t part of his family.”

Albus nodded to the Gryffindor table. It was now more than obvious that Hermione had turned away from Ron and Harry to talk with some of the other Gryffindor girls, with whom Albus never normally saw her associating. “Does that look like friendship?”

“They had a fight,” Ted murmured, sounding unconcerned. “They’ll get over it.”

“Mr. Tonks—”

“I simply told you so that you would be informed, Headmaster, not so you could debate the decision.”

Ted turned and walked away from the table. Albus went back to gripping Sirius’s arm. He wasn’t sure who Sirius might lash out at right now, but it would probably be several people, and they couldn’t afford to draw attention so early in the term.

“I’ll kill him,” Sirius breathed. “I promise, I’ll kill him.”

“And is that the way to endear yourself to Harry?” Albus asked sharply, mostly because he had to. “If you kill his—uncle?” Albus had to pause a moment to think about what relationship Ted would have to Harry. It still felt unnatural to him to think of Harry as a Malfoy at all.

Sirius slumped back in his chair and reached for his goblet of water. “No, but what else am I supposed to do?”

“I am sure we’ll figure something out,” Albus said firmly, and sat back to watch Minerva march the first-years into the Great Hall. His head and stomach were churning.

At this point, he had no idea how they would fight Voldemort. It kept him up at night far more than the idea of Harry simply being a Malfoy or being corrupted.

There must be something I can do.

*

“Tell me how your first week back at school has been, Harry.”

Harry relaxed against the couch behind him with a little sigh. Healer Letham had come to Hogwarts through a Floo that Harry had learned to open up for her in a version of the Room of Requirement. As long as he got there first, it worked fine.

And this looked a lot like the room in Malfoy Manor where they’d worked together this summer, down to the dove-grey cloth of the chairs and the quiet crackling of the fire and the smooth black marble walls. It relaxed Harry further.

“Weird.”

“Weird?”

Harry looked at her closely, but as always, Healer Letham didn’t sound like she was judging, just like she was curious. She had one foot tucked underneath her leg and the other leg dangling, the way she almost always sat, and a calm expression on her face.

Harry nodded. “Weird. There are people staring at me and whispering about what happened during the Third Task, and people who are saying to my face that nothing happened, and people speculating about my parents…” He shrugged.

“Why speculating about your parents?”

“It’s become obvious that Fudge is doing something unusual, what with promoting these Muggleborn initiatives.” Harry glanced to the side, silently asking for a copy of that morning’s Daily Prophet, and the room materialized it for him. Harry picked it up and flipped to the second article, since the first was about some scandal involving Celestina Warbeck. “‘Minister Fudge announces new security measures for checking on Muggleborn children in abusive Muggle homes,’” he read. “It’s noticeable because it’s not something Fudge has ever cared about before, and my father is known to have a lot of control over Fudge.”

“And it’s also not something your father has ever cared about before.”

Harry nodded. “So they’re speculating that he’s doing it for me, which is true enough. It’s just…weird to have everyone muttering about my family like that. But a lot of them still think of me as Harry Potter, so I suppose that’s one reason why.”

Healer Letham smiled gently. “I would never wish your childhood on anyone, but at least some of your first year in this world prepared you for such things.”

“Yeah.” Harry leaned further back in his chair and shrugged. “Part of the weirdness is people not knowing what to think about me. I’m Harry Potter but I’m not. Harry Potter was the savior but he didn’t exist.”

“Do those people include your friend Hermione?”

Harry swallowed and put down the cup of tea that he’d brought with him. The Room didn’t seem able to produce tea the right way; it popped up the things to make it or what tasted like hot water and nothing else. “Yeah,” he whispered. He swallowed again.

“I am here if you want to talk about it, Harry. But I won’t press you if you don’t.”

Harry frowned. “That’s pretty effective manipulation, you know. Then it makes me want to talk to you more.”

Healer Letham only smiled, and sipped her tea.

Harry closed his eyes and did his best to organize his thoughts. “Okay,” he said at last. “I can’t blame Hermione. I know that. If her family had been the kind of people who used to want to harm me, I would have a hard time trusting them.”

“But?”

“But I don’t know what she wants me to do.” The words burst out of Harry like rocks running downhill. “I’m not going to give up my family. I’m not going to say that Father should go to prison when he’s changing his ways. I’m not going to say that what he’s doing isn’t enough. I’m not going to tell her about everything he is doing, because there are some things that I don’t think anyone but us should know.”

Healer Letham nodded. “And when you speak with her, what does she say?”

“It’s mainly because of Father being a Death Eater. And I know he was a willing one, I know he wasn’t under the Imperius and that story is bollocks, but…he came for me in the graveyard. He killed Voldemort’s snake and the bit of him that was there. Or he did his best. I think the wraith flew away again the way he did after my first year. I don’t know how much more strongly I can show Hermione that he’s turned against Voldemort.”

“She thinks he should have done it before this point,” Healer Letham said softly. “She thinks he shouldn’t be doing it simply because of his son, but because of disinterested principle.”

“Yeah. Which is bollocks, too, because Hermione doesn’t even do everything out of disinterested principle. She’s lied to professors before so that we wouldn’t get in trouble, and she decided to still be friends with me when it came out that I was a Malfoy because she liked me. She should have just turned her back on me then if she thought all Malfoys were bad and couldn’t change. She didn’t really know much about Father then, but she knew Draco, he’d been pretty bad, and I accepted him.”

“What do you think pointing out the hypocrisy would get you?”

“Yelling.”

Healer Letham paused. Then she said, “I would still make the effort to talk to her. Miss Granger has been a good friend to you for a long time. But there is a spell I could teach you beforehand, which you could cast on her if she gives her permission.”

Harry blinked. “What kind of spell is it?”

“The kind that would make sure there is no yelling. That is the last thing you need. And while I think keeping Miss Granger’s friendship is worthwhile, a confrontation is not worth upsetting you as much as I think the yelling would.”

Harry looked down, flushing. Sometimes it felt humiliating to be so understood. But good, at the same time.

He nodded. “What’s the spell?”

*

“I can see that you’re very intelligent, Miss Granger.”

Part of Sirius despised himself, lying to a fifteen-year-old girl in the hope that it might get him closer to his godson. But he also thought that there was no other way he could do it. Harry hadn’t shown up to a Defense lesson yet, there was no getting to him through his brother—

(Sirius hated to think the word, but there it was).

--And he thought Ron Weasley was probably too loyal to Harry to take it well if a Defense professor started asking questions about his friend. But Granger blushed and smiled, and said, “Thank you, sir. But I think I got a question wrong on the quiz you gave us the first day. Written Defense isn’t always my forte.”

“That’s not your fault. I’ve heard so many stories about incompetent Defense professors these last few years.”

It was an opening, and Granger promptly took it. “Oh, yes, Professor Adley. Of course, poor Professor Lupin was trying his best and didn’t deserve to get sacked for being a werewolf, but Professor Moody last year was an actual Death Eater! And Professor Quirrell our first year was working for You-Know-Who, and Gilderoy Lockhart our second year—” For some reason, she blushed harder. “Well, he was awful, anyway.”

Sirius nodded solemnly. “I appreciate that many people must think that,” he said, and let a bit of wistfulness work its way into his voice. “Since there are students I understand are in your year but not attending my class.”

Granger seemed to take a deep breath. “You’re talking about the Malfoy twins, sir?”

“Yes.” Sirius watched her closely, and saw the way her eyes darted away while she reached up to fiddle with a piece of her hair. “It’s rather disheartening, to know the best I can do isn’t being welcomed by them…”

“Well, I mean, they’ve had bad experiences with those Defense professors I mentioned in the past,” Granger muttered. “Or Harry, I should say.”

“Harry? Oh, yes, we were told his name was Henry Malfoy, but he does go by Harry to his friends, from what I understand.”

Granger flinched a little. Then she nodded determinedly, her chin coming up. “Yes, sir, he does. And frankly, I think skipping Defense just because of past years is a little disingenuous. Even though Mr. Tonks, their uncle, is a very good teacher, he might overlook some of their faults just because he is their uncle.”

Sirius let his smile widen a little. He had just thought of something, and it wasn’t in the plan he and Albus had discussed, but he thought it was all the stronger for that. So far, Albus’s plans had failed. “And I have to wonder how much of it is the fault of blood purity nonsense.”

“Nonsense, sir?”

“Well, yes, Miss Granger. I’m a half-blood, you see. And one can’t overlook that the Malfoys are obsessed with blood purity.”

Granger blanched. “I didn’t know—I’m sorry, sir, I just thought you were a pureblood, because of the first name, you see. I made a snap judgment myself.”

“My father insisted on me carrying a name for a star or a constellation,” Sirius said, entirely truthfully, and made himself shrug. The memories that wanted to spring into his head when he thought about his family were probably making his expression so somber that Granger might think he was going to attack her. “He was the pureblood. My mother was more sensible.”

“And you think that the Malfoy twins might be prejudiced against you because of that?”

“I don’t know for certain. But it does seem pretty likely, you know? Because they didn’t even give my class one chance.”

Granger nodded, looking a little uncertain. Sirius hid a wince. He hated using her loyalty against her friend this way, but he had to get close to Harry. He had to say he was sorry. And he had to explain why he still thought he had made a good decision, why it had been better for Harry to grow up away from the Malfoys.

There was probably no saving Cissy, no matter what she claimed, or Lucius, either, not once he had got that thing on his arm. Maybe the older son was a dubious prospect. But there had to be a way to save Harry, his little godson, who had laughed so hard when Sirius tickled him as a baby that he’d end up hiccoughing.

“I don’t know, sir,” Granger said, sounding a little subdued. “I didn’t even think…I could talk to Harry about it, though. I know he would be horrified if he heard that you thought he was prejudiced against you. I’m pretty sure he would be horrified, anyway.”

Sirius did his best not to look pathetic. “Would you do that? I would be ever so grateful, Miss Granger.”

She gave him a more reserved smile. “Yes, sir, I’ll try. But I can’t guarantee that Harry will respond that well. He does have a track record of Defense professors trying to kill him.”

“All I can ask is that you try,” Sirius said quickly. He didn’t want her being too eager about it, in case it spooked Harry and he didn’t show up at all. But he couldn’t conceal his own eagerness, either.

“Okay, sir. I will.”

Sirius waited until she was gone to collapse back against the wall and take a deep breath. He thought that had gone well. Pretty well, anyway.

And soon, he would be speaking with Harry again. And maybe he could actually convince him of the truth. Harry had a core of goodness to him, from what Sirius had seen. He couldn’t be that happy with his stupid family.

Not really. Not true happiness. How could anyone look at a family like the Blacks or Malfoys and even think they know what it is?